Discord Riddles Libyan Factions--send in the drones

"Six weeks after the fall of Tripoli, the palmy days of rebel unity have begun to disintegrate into a spiral of infighting, political jockeying and even the occasional violent flare-up threatening to derail Libya's post-Gadhafi transition.

Regional rivalries between fighters from the western mountains and Tripoli have in recent days come perilously close to exploding into open warfare in the capital. In some neighborhoods, multiple leaders claim sovereignty for their groups amid a deepening battle over the makeup of a citywide military council."

No surprises here, and let's hope Mr. Obama stays out of this one.Discord Riddles Libyan Factions - WSJ.com

Holding hands?

I'm sorry, but I almost dropped the cat when I read this advice column at Ask Jen & Barb.

My children are 9 and 11. Girl and Boy respectively. They fight all the time. Spout hateful words at each other constantly. I have tried things like making them hold hands and of course lectured them. Any ideas on how to get my children to show each other they love and care for each other.

Hi Jessica, They need major consequences. There needs to be a zero tolerance for hateful words. Take away whatever it is they hold near and dear to them (i.e. time on the computer, toys, play dates, etc.). They need to know that if they treat each other that way, they will have consequences. Stay strong and do not waiver. Good luck! Jen

Probably Mom is yelling at them. And she wonders why they are nasty to each other? And what sister and brother want to hold hands? Yuk!! When are these kids together? In the car--when Mom is on the cell phone ignoring them so they quarrel to get her attention. Or she's on the computer at home so they fight in order not to be ignored. This case needs a bit more investigation.

How can I get my children to show they love and care for each other? | Jen and Barb, Mom Life

Obama's Thursday news conference

This isn't how I perceived it, but littletboca is indulging in some wishful thinking that Democrats actually see through this guy:

"[Democrats] sat and listened to a man who’s acting like a caged animal – he’s on the fight and will attack any and all who get in his way. His body language along with his rhetoric reveals his anger and discontent. Americans, it looks like we have a problem that could be worse than the economy.

The Commander in Chief alienates himself from his duties in the White House; he’s in a campaign mode and oblivious to the real world. Obama appears to be functioning on hot air and incapable of facing reality. This person truly is living in a fictitious make believe world.

Democrats know the Obama’s jobs plan isn’t paid for and they know the brunt of the cost for this second stimulus will be placed on taxpayer’s shoulders. Democrats must be thinking about several things this morning: (1) How can we replace this person in the 2012 elections, and (2) How do we get him to stop campaigning and, (3) What do we do with him between now and 2012?

Obama Dealt Democrats a Losing Hand | RedState

Party of Whiners

"Our current President is callow and incompetent. Does anyone doubt that any of our three top candidates are FAR superior to His Oneness?" So why, Barleycorn asks, are Republicans such whiners?

My personal preference right now would be in the order Perry, Cain, Romney, but my problems with Mitt Romney are not over whether he could handle the job. I feel certain he is a big enough man to sit in the Oval Office and fulfill the oath. If Romney is the nominee I will support him to the nth degree next Fall.

The same goes for Herman Cain. I worry some about his tendency to allow the media to frame the soundbites in interviews, but I’ve no doubt he has the brains, knowledge, and temperment to fill the office.

Rick Perry is a horrible debater but presidents are not Debaters in Chief. They assemble, delegate, persuade, and lead. Debating is a fine exercise for young minds but a foolish part of our presidential elections.

Party of Whiners | RedState

41 Obama White House aides owe the IRS $831,000 in back taxes -- and they're not alone

This is old news (Sept 2010) so the figure may be higher now:

"Federal employees across the nation owe fully $1 billion in back taxes to the IRS. As in, 1,000 x one million dollars. All this political jabber about giving middle-class Americans a tax cut. Thousands of feds have been giving themselves one all along -- unofficially. And these tax scofflaws include more than three dozen folks who work for the president with that newly decorated Oval Office." Maybe the "Occupy Wall Street" crowd could expand their horizons to the federal gov't which created the regulations they are protesting.

41 Obama White House aides owe the IRS $831,000 in back taxes -- and they're not alone - latimes.com

I sort of backed into this story (which I think I've written about before) because I came across a tax law professor Alex Raskolnikov who had written a paper that began, "Crime and punishment. . . and so forth." If you are familiar with Russian literature, Raskolnikov was the main character in Crime and Punishment, a novel by Dostoevsky.

Guide to Obama’s Floundering Foreclosure Programs

I knew from blogging occasionally on this topic that the results of Obama's foreclosure help programs were miserable, but I just had no idea they were this bad!

Making Homes Affordable 2009
The Home Affordable Refinance Program 2009
Emergency Home Owners Loan Program 2010
Housing Finance Agency Innovation Fund [billions to the states to figure it out]
Change bankruptcy laws 2011
Reduce principal on underwater mortgages 2011
Turn foreclosed homes into rental properties 2011

All have failed, or achieved so little they are laughable.

There are many links in this story which you need to read. Obama's advisors and Chicago carry-alongs are like kids in the U.S. candy shop.

Our Guide to Obama’s Floundering Foreclosure Programs - ProPublica

Repeal the Death Tax--from 0 to 35% in 2011

"America’s family businesses and farmers were hit by a large estate tax increase, from 0% to 35%, at the beginning of 2011, making planning and passing on farms and businesses to the next generation even more difficult. As it stands, more than 70% of family businesses do not survive to the second generation, and a full 90% of family businesses do not survive to the third. In 2011, the political landscape has changed but family businesses are still struggling, family farms are liquidating, and even more jobs are at stake."

I didn't realize the death tax had made such a comeback. Why does the Obama administration hate small businesses and farmers so much? Easy. They are the backbone of the economy, and he wants it to collapse. So when conservatives say we want him to fail, we mean we don't want him to collapse the economy with oppressive taxes and regulations that destroy businesses and jobs.

My mother and her siblings inherited their parents' farms in Illinois and Iowa when they died in 1963 and 1968, however, the taxes then were so oppressive, most of the land had to be sold in order to pay the taxes.

"As part of the tax deal struck at the end of 2010, Congress set the death tax at 35 percent with a $5 million exemption for 2011 and 2012. The death tax did not apply in 2010 because the 2001 and 2003 tax relief abolished the harmful tax. Even though the death tax is resurrected, the new rate and exemption levels represent a substantial improvement from where the death tax was in 2000 before the tax cuts: 60 percent with just a $1 million exemption. Despite the positive advances the death tax is back in place and therefore has resumed destroying jobs and slowing the economy."

Death Taxes

The Latest Book on Obama

I wish I had more confidence that people still read books today. The new one on Obama sounds like a winner--Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President, by Ron Suskind.

R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. writes at American Spectator, "The book tells us what we Obama critics have all been saying since early on. This President is the most incompetent and ideologically rigid president in American history. . . How are all the Liberal sages going to get out of their absurd exaggerations of Obama's modest gifts? Increasingly they admit that Obama has chosen the wrong policies, but he speaks so beautifully -- using a teleprompter for the most measly address. Ah, but he is so forceful. So is his former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, when he dons his tutu. But he is curious, adventurous, a sponge for new ideas. Actually he has been a hopeless socialist, lost in Fabian abstractions. . . Skip the first 150 pages. The author needs an editor. Settle with Suskind's discussion of the fights between the boys and the girls on the White House staff, and Obama's utterly insensitive meeting with the aggrieved ladies at a dinner he held to placate them. . . Suskind contains his narrative to Obama's economic policy and, to a lesser degree, healthcare. There is nothing in the book about foreign policy or the way this President has conducted two foreign wars and a worldwide effort against terrorism. My agents tell me Obama's conduct of foreign affairs and of the war on terror are even more appalling."

The American Spectator : The Book on Obama

Steve Jobs 1955-2011

Jobs was born out of wedlock to two graduate students, and was adopted by an Armenian-American couple rather than aborted or raised by a single mom. Armenians (Christians) themselves had been slaughtered by the Turks (Moslems) and some escaped to the U.S. His birthfather was a Syrian immigrant. How the threads of ethnicity and history are woven in the United States where freedom to live and explore and invent come together!

As Jobs' life was slipping away this week, thousands of ungrateful, whiny, manipulated college students, using his inventions which made him incredibly wealthy--with more cash than our government--protested in "Occupy Wall Street" on the streets of New York and campuses all around the very country and values that gave him that opportunity. They want "redistribution" (aka communism) of other people's wealth, whereas Steve Jobs dropped out of college and went out and created wealth and jobs. Maybe we need a few drop-outs from that "Occupy Wall Street" crowd to go out and do some real work like cashiering or flipping burgers and put their faculty in the unemployment lines.

Steve Jobs, brilliant entrepreneur, however, was a moral midget and cad himself. He had an out of wedlock daughter with his high school girl friend and denied paternity for years, so his daughter was raised with the help of his fellow Californians on welfare. His birth parents later married (after his adoption) and he has a full sister, but he steadfastly refused to even meet with his birthfather. And I don't think it was the money. So in addition to being extremely talented, wealthy, and a cad, he was also hard hearted and unforgiving to the end.

http://www.minyanville.com/special-features/articles/lisa-brennan-jobs-business-icons-rich/8/31/2010/id/29768

Democrats Anonymous

The first step is admitting you have a problem. . .

The redistribution rants

Harry Reid wants more taxes from millionaires and billionaires which won't create jobs, but it will make the great unwashed, sniveling whiners picketing on Wall Street happy. Obviously, these Occupy Wall Street antics don't help Obama's phony plea for more jobs (aka campaign 2012), so we know their intention is to bring the economy to a halt--with the President's help. It's too bad these gullible students didn't take more Russian Soviet history--the first to the barricades are the first to be put on trial by their fellow revolutionaries, imprisoned and killed.

The autum leaves--taking a break from blogging

Next time, I'll try to not get the trash container in the view.

Was an American citizen deprived of due process?

According to government reports and news sources from around the world, the well-known American-born radical Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki was killed in Yemen on Friday, September 30, 2011, along with American jihadi propagandist Samir Khan. This report is designed to provide background on al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the organization al-Awlaki headed, and the influence he and Khan had on global terrorism. The report includes information on:

-Terrorist activity by al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula and al-Qa'ida in Yemen;
-Terrorism by the larger al-Qa'ida network;
-Anwar al-Awlaki's involvement with terrorists targeting the United States; and
-al-Awlaki's rise as an English-language jihadi propagandist.

Anwar al-Awlaki was a leader of the al-Qa’ida (AQ)-affiliated group based in Yemen, known as AQAP. Samir Khan was the editor of AQAP’s English-language publication, Inspire.

Read more here.

Van Jones Warns Of A Progressive "October Offensive" Against Tea Party

Isn't it interesting that with college students tearing up the streets of New York, getting arrested, being cheered on and rallied by the likes of Susan Sarandon, Cornell West, and Michael Moore, there are those out there, like former Obama staffer Van Jones, who see the Tea Party as a threat to their own take over of the United States? Amazing times we live in.

And if you're a Democrat who's been grumbling in the background about the Tea Party without knowing a thing about what they stand for (smaller government, less taxation), you're aiding this insanity. Obama came out for his buddy Prof. Gates in Boston in 2009 against the police who were investigating a break-in, and I suppose Van Jones is hoping for more of the same.

Around here Tea Parties have wild, crazy gatherings in Unitarian churches and public libraries. Not exactly Moore and Sarandon's hangouts.

Van Jones Warns Of A Progressive "October Offensive" Against Tea Party | RealClearPolitics

Texting while driving--ban it!

Yesterday on TV I watched a rally at the statehouse about H.B. 99--to ban texting while driving. I learned there's even an app for cell phones that will disable it while driving. Many people spoke at this rally, but none was more effective than Tina Yanssen who tearfully told the story of her dad's death in 2010.

Tina Yanssen's father was killed by a 19 year old neighbor texting while driving. It's already illegal in many cities, but wasn't in their rural Ohio area. Her dad had lost 165 lbs by walking after being told at Disney he was too big to go on the rides with his grandchildren. He lost the weight, but had postponed a trip with the grandkids to FL to attend his mother's funeral, but ended up at his own. He was 55.

At the time of his death, he wore a fluorescent green shirt with stripes of reflective tape. He walked along the side of rural Middletown Road, facing oncoming traffic. . . Another Unity Road resident, Whitney Yaeger, 19, was on Middletown Road that morning too. As she was driving — she would later tell an Ohio State Highway Patrol trooper — she was texting on her phone.

". . . she didn’t hit him, she ran over him,” Yanssens charges. “She left tire tracks up his right leg, across his pelvis and up his right arm. He didn’t stand a chance because she fractured his pelvis, pulverized multiple major branches of his right femoral artery, and bruised over 25 percent of his liver.”

He died early that afternoon in St. Elizabeth Health Center.

I googled the case to see what became of Yaeger, but without a texting law, this wasn't even "reckless driving" but a misdemeanor. Yaeger thinks even a misdemeanor charge with 6 mo. jail time is too severe for killing Muslovski, so she has chosen to go to trial.

http://www.vindy.com/news/2011/aug/29/coming-to-grips-with-the-dangers-of-dist/

Whether you're a pedestrian or a driver, if you see no hands on the wheel and eyes looking down, get out of the way--a driving texter is worse than drunk--at least drunks usually have their eyes open.

Money woes for the Obama campaign?

Saw this in James Taranto's WSJ column--he's on the e-mail list:

The Great Deflation also seems to be hitting the president's campaign treasury. The emails used to ask for $5, so the request for $3 amounts to 40% off. At this rate, pretty soon Obama will be asking for change rather than promising it.

For bigger donors, discounts run as deep as 75%. Next week in St. Louis, Obama speaks to Generation 44, an organization of supporters who aren't as young as they used to be. "The group has a limited number of $1,000 tickets available for $250," KSDK-TV reports.

Blighted property in Columbus, Ohio

Tonight I clicked through to channel 2 "Just the Facts" (local issues) and came across a program on how the city deals with blighted property. You wouldn't think that would be too fascinating, but it was well done. The narrator/host, Columbus City Attorney Richard Pheiffer was on Myrtle Avenue, which had some very nice homes, and some homes that were boarded up and overgrown with weeds and hazards. Nice trees. So I googled it, and although I don't have a photo of the house he was explaining, I do have the page. The house was built around 1910, as was the first home we bought in 1962 in Champaign, IL for $14,000. This house is for sale for $15,500, and of course, needs a lot of work, but so did ours. What was remarkable was Pfeiffer's explanation of how difficult it is for the city to track down an owner (a real person to talk to) since many are owned by a limited liability company (LLC) to even serve if taxes are in arrears or the building unsafe.

Newt 'n me

I was a big fan of Newt before I was ever a Republican--I liked his American history tapes. Not anymore.

The Tea Party over on Facebook asked in an opinion poll:Aside from who you favor for president, who do you think has the most knowledge, experience and history...
And then Newt was the runaway choice, because yes, he does have knowledge, experience and history. A history as a philandering womanizer, and sorry bubba, we've been that route in the 90s. Now I know that will eliminate a lot of candidates, but if your wife can't trust you, why should I? Why should the British or the Turks?

And when these politicians drag the Roman Catholic church through this annulment muck, I loose respect for everyone involved, including Callista, 23 years his junior, a former staffer with whom he had an affair while married, and Newt's current wife. They were both adults, they knew what they were doing, so let them be grown up about it and live with the results. Just don't ask me to participate.

Holding Obama's Party Accountable

Peter Ferrara is Senior Fellow at the Carleson Center for Public Policy, Director of Entitlement and Budget Policy for the Heartland Institute, and General Counsel of the American Civil Rights Union. He thinks Obama has reshaped the Democratic Party, making it weaker; but I think he has reshaped the Republican party even more, and until it can gather a little strength from have all its RINOs kneecapped by the Tea Party, I would get too confident.

The American Spectator : Holding Obama's Party Accountable

Safer sex vs. safe sex

I noticed in the JAMA article about topics doctors need to cover to prepare for barriers that LGBT patients face, safer sex was on the list. Wasn't familiar with that, so I googled it.

It's another term in our ever changing lexicon. It is now used instead of "safe sex."

"When people speak of "safe sex" today, they are referring to abstinence. Abstaining from sex and sexual play is the only sure method to avoid catching an STD and to prevent an unplanned pregnancy. Although it may not prevent a pregnancy, having sex within a committed, monogamous, long-term relationship with someone who has tested free of any STDs is also generally considered to be safe sex."

Actually, because an inflected comparative such as "safer" or "handsomer" or "brighter," would mean "more than safe," or handsome or bright, the term "safer sex" to mean something less safe than no sex (abstinence), really makes no sense at all. This might be difficult to understand for a non-native speaker--or even a native speaker!