Romney Hits Back

Apparently, I’m not the only one growing wearing of Obama’s attacks on capitalism and private equity capital. Now even Democrats are speaking out:

OCCUPY MOVEMENT MEMBERS PLAN BOMBINGS

For over a year, we have heard from the Left and various prominent Democrats (including President Obama) of how the Occupy movement was a healthy, even patriotic expression of the anger of the “99%” of Americans not rich or priveleged.

They were just like us, only a bit grubbier!

Then came a year’s worth of stories and images of street violence, rape, and just plain unsanitary practices! The real story of the Occupy movement was that these miscreants were not just like us. Unless “us” means the New Communist International!

Now five Occupy Cleveland, arrested earlier this month, stand accused in a plot to blow up a bridge over Cuyahoga Valley National Park near Cleveland!

While the Occupy Cleveland Movement has scrambled to distance itself from what they characterized as a “fringe element”; it is apparent that some of these were both leaders and long-time, “die hard” member of the Cleveland Occupy group.

Left-Right: Douglas Wright, Brandon Baxter, Anthony Hayne, Joshua Stafford, Connor Stevens; self-described anarchist arrested in Cleveland bomb plot.

Anthony Hayne, 35, of Cleveland, has a criminal record dating to 2000. His participation in the alleged plot is particularly embarrassing to those who defend the Occupy Movement as a “peaceful” one; and that these suspects were only on the fringe of the organization.

Hayne’s signed the lease for a West Side warehouse used by members of the Occupy Cleveland group for organizational acctivites and housing! Leaders of organizations rent office and other space for any organiztion; not “kook” fringe members!

Brandon Baxter was one of the few Occupy Cleveland Movement members to remain throughout the cold winter months; when most of the hangers-on and dillitantes had gone home.

Someone close to the Movement recalled Baxter, Hayne, Stafford and Wright as members of a small but vocal faction that “found little use for peaceful demonstration.”

All throughout the country, hard-core anarchists and communists have found a home within the Occupy movement. If the various violent May Day protests are any indication, this violent “fringe” will be more and more influential in group’s activities.

Just today, in Chicago, three activists were arrested in another bomb-making plot!

Standby: You ain’t seen nothin yet!

 

Sacrificial Scams

By the incomparable Ann Coulter

The real class warfare in this country isn’t rich  vs.  poor, it’s government employees vs. we, the taxpayers, who pay their   salaries. Working for the government is supposed to be a  trade-off: You  can’t be fired and don’t have to exert yourself, but you  will receive  smaller remuneration than in the private sector, where  layoffs are  common (especially in the Obama economy!). Instead,  government jobs are  safe, secure, pressure-free — and now, amazingly  lucrative!

Whether it’s in Wisconsin, Illinois, California or  the nation’s  capital, today’s public sector workers expect to do little  or no work  (I’m not counting partying in Las Vegas as “work”), and  then be lavishly  compensated. Often, the only heavy lifting they do all  week is picking  up their paychecks.

When government  employees mobbed the state capitol in Wisconsin  last year, the upside  was: They got to bully people. The downside:  Voters finally found out  what these public servants were being paid. Their compensation  included not only straight salary, but also  lavish overtime benefits,  pensions, health care plans, sick days and  vacation time (most of which  they spent protesting).

The unions thought they could fight  back against Gov. Scott  Walker’s tiny pension rollbacks without anyone  finding out the details.  Most people saw what public employees were  getting and assumed it was a  misprint. Two years ago, seven bus drivers in Madison, Wis., made more than $100,000 a year. A few years before that, we found out that the city manager of  little  Bell, Calif. — per capita annual income $24,800 — was making   $787,637, or including benefits: $1.5 million a year. The chief of   police was getting $457,000 a year — $770,046 counting benefits –   making him the first chief of police to commit highway robbery on the  job!  The assistant city manager was taking home $376,288 per year, for a   total compensation package of $845,960.

All were Democrats, the party of Big Government. Speaking  of which — whatever happened to that investigation  Gov. Jerry Brown  was launching into these thieving public servants  drawing  million-dollar pensions from California taxpayers? The Bell  scandal  broke during the California gubernatorial race between Meg  Whitman and  Jerry Brown, who was then state attorney general. Brown  vowed a  no-holds-barred inquiry. Anyone seen his report yet? Jerry Brown will demand to see Obama’s birth certificate before  he  will call for a rollback of these undeserved, million-dollar  government  pensions.

Less than 20 percent of private sector employees  get pensions.  Most people save their own money for retirement — for  example, through  401(k)s. By contrast, government employees expect to  be paid by us for  the rest of their lives.

Former  representative and amateur home pornographer Anthony  Weiner was a  member of Congress until he resigned last June in order to  spend more  time with his hard drive. He will probably end up collecting  about a  million dollars from his 80 percent taxpayer-funded government  pension.

These are the “1 percent” deserving of the public’s wrath:   We’re paying their salaries. We weren’t taxed to pay Mitt Romney’s   salary at Bain Capital. We aren’t taxed to pay the salaries of Jamie   Dimon or Alex Rodriguez. Anthony Weiner? Him, we pay for.

Government employees expect to live like something out of the  czar’s  court — and then have us admire them as if they’re Rosa Parks.

At the 2008 Democratic National Convention, Barack and Michelle  Obama  both paid heartfelt tributes to themselves for passing up   money-grubbing private sector jobs to work in “public service.” In her speech, Michelle boasted that she had “tried to give back to this country.” “… That’s why I left a job at a law firm for a career in  public  service, working to empower young people to volunteer in their   communities.” She was hired by the University of Chicago  Hospital as soon as  her husband became a state senator. When he was  elected to the U.S.  Senate, her salary nearly tripled, from $121,910 to  $316,962 — and the  junior senator from Illinois returned the favor by  sending taxpayer  dollars the hospital’s way.

By Obama’s  second year in the U.S. Senate, in 2006, Michelle  Obama’s compensation  from “public service” was approximately $375,000 a  year — more than  triple the average salary for a lawyer in the United  States with 20  years’ experience. (America to the Obamas: “You two have sacrificed enough. Please retire and kick back a little!”)

Vice President Joe Biden, long touted as the poorest U.S.  senator,  took home $248,459 in household income in 2006, including his  public  school teacher wife’s salary, also paid by taxpayers. In 2007,  these  working poor made $319,853. This puts the couple nearly into the  top 1  percent of all earners in the U.S., where the median household  income  was $48,201 in 2006 and $50,233 in 2007. A career in “public service” pays well.

Spinning Same-Sex Marriage

(This is a guest editorial, from an old friend, Russ Farris. Here he opines on the subject of same-sed marriage; something our President now says he favors. It was so well expressed, I wanted to share it with you, my readers!)

Spinning Same-Sex Marriage

I’m opposed to same-sex marriage, and a friend asked if I would follow the will of the people when they start voting for same-sex marriage. I will, though I’ll do it with bad grace. Let me explain why.

        Fifty years ago I worked at Cape Canaveral and I occasionally calibrated and repaired the Sperry Gyrocompasses  used on missile recovery ships. A gyro is sort of like a spinning top, but instead of spinning on a table top, a gyro spins in a system of “gimbals” that allow it to move in any direction. By using a subtle system of weights, you can make a gyro orient itself so that its axis of spin is exactly parallel to the Earth’s axis of spin. In that case, you have a gyrocompass; one end of the gyro always points towards the North Star.

        The Sperry gyrocompass had a gyro that weighed 14 pounds and spun at 3,000 rpm. When you stopped or adjusted it, the gyro had a distressing tendency to “tumble,” much like a spinning top tumbles as it slows down. When the gyro tumbled, it would sometimes destroy thousands of dollars worth of gimbals and electronics. It would also snap your arm like a toothpick if you happened to be working on it at the time. People who could work on Sperry gyrocompasses without making them tumble made a lot of money (at least it was a lot of money for a young man just out of the Navy).

        If you apply pressure to the axis of a gyro, the axis won’t move in the direction of the pressure, it moves at a ninety-degree angle to the pressure. When you turned a Sperry gyrocompass on, the weights and electronics would start nudging it towards its north-south alignment. It typically took 12 hours to “settle.” Customers didn’t like watching us twiddle our thumbs for 12 hours, so we would nudge the gyros into place manually by pressing our thumbs against the gimbals. If you did it right, the gyro would settle in half an hour. If you did it wrong, the gyro would tumble and break your arm.

The Sperry gimbals  supported the weight of the gyro, its motor, and its feedback mechanisms–about fifty pounds altogether. The accuracy of the gyrocompass depended on the entire assembly being carefully balanced, and I was getting the big bucks to make the compass accurate, i.e., balanced. Resting a penny on one of the gimbals would, over a period of hours, introduce an error of several degrees. A captain using such a gyrocompass could make some very bad decisions.

        Working on gyrocompasses made me aware of how small forces working over a long time can produce large changes. In gyrocompasses, the phenomenon is called precession. In politics, it’s called spin.

        I’m a big fan of a book called The Wisdom of Crowds .The book gives a good theoretical explanation for the success of democracy. The author argues that a large bunch of ordinary people can, under favorable circumstances, make better decisions than a small bunch of experts.

        He also explains how democracy can be undermined by whims and fancies, and how those whims and fancies can be generated and manipulated by small groups of “experts.” He cites at some length a 19th Century book called Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds . I read Popular Delusions about 30 years ago; it’s one of the books that turned me into a skeptic and a conservative.

        In social, political, and scientific issues, misinformation and disinformation act like pennies resting on the gimbals. Over time they drive us off course. Saul Alinsky    discovered the power of spin in the Thirties and his disciples have been trying to steer the ship of state this way and that by pressing their thumbs against the gimbals ever since.

        I don’t have a good reason for opposing same-sex marriages. I just sense that it is a bad idea. The majority of people have agreed with me in election after election. Still, the handful of people who strongly support same-sex marriage have kept their thumbs on the gimbals and they are moving us in the direction they want to go–especially in California. I hope there are no rocks or shoals on our new course. Russ Farris  http://www.polymicrobial.com/

Jon Lovitz slams Obama

POLITICS: ITS ALWAYS BEEN A DIRTY GAME!

This from “The more things change, the more they stay the same” file:

“Make sure that your election campaign is one long parade, magnificent and splendid, appealing to popular taste, presenting a grand and dignified spectacle. If at all possible, you should also arrange for some scandal to be stirred up against your competitors, involving either criminal behavior or sex or bribery, depending on their character.”
–Quintus Cicero, written c. 55 B.C., advising his brother Marcus Tullius Cicero during his campaign for the Roman consulship.

Ode To the Welfare State

The more things change, the more they stay the same. This appeared in the New York Daily News on November 4, 1949