Friday Afternoon Roundup - The Debts, the Debts are Calling

WASTED PRIMARIES

Ideally the primaries should have built momentum for the emergence of a winning candidate to represent the Republican Party, instead they have dampened enthusiasm and made everyone involved look worse for just being involved. The best hope for winning a national election is the hope that few non-Republicans were paying attention or will remember what went on.

Much of the blame goes to Romney and the Republican establishment which was determined to win at any cost and went negative hard and fast. The rest is history. Obama's standing is improving and he's tipped to win the election. The game will change once the primaries are over and the party has a nominee, but it's clear that the acrimony and pettiness has alienated a lot of people.

Instead of competing on a vision for the country, the candidates, with media help, spent months hurling smears at each other. Among the candidates, Romney benefited the most from that type of campaign, but Obama is the one who really scores. The media successfully painted Republicans as being hateful and divisive and the material for that smear job came from within.

The Not-Romneyites are often criticized for focusing more on beating Romney than defeating Obama, and while that is occasionally true, it is truer to say that the establishment cares more about making sure that Romney is the nominee than about defeating Obama. For the Not-Romneyites it's about principles, for the Romneyites it's about power.

The Romney establishment has acted with the same elitist arrogance and insufferable disdain that has characterized the Obama Administration, dismissing popular dislike for their approach by pushing forward and waiting for the peasants to fall in line. But the peasants aren't falling into line. Romney is still flailing. The entire election has been a survey of candidates that most voters prefer to Romney and the last few months have shown that they prefer just about anyone to him. That isn't good news, but the establishment doesn't care. And that's scary. For people who claim to want to win the election, they aren't taking the situation too seriously. If we do end up with a brokered convention, it will be their obtuse unwillingness to pay attention to their own electorate that will be the cause.

Romney has a solid lead in delegates and will likely steamroll his way to the convention, but for now he's doing it with few decisive victories. And that's not good news for anyone.




FOLLOW THE MONEY

The media has spent a great deal of time touting the claim that Romney would be the richest president in half a century. But Romney’s net worth of approximately 200 million dollars would not even make him the richest senator. For all the news stories about his wealth, if Romney ran for Congress, he wouldn’t even make it as the wealthiest member of the House of Representatives. The combined net worth of Obama and his cabinet in 2010 was around 150 million dollars.

The federal government spends over 20 billion dollars per work day. Romney’s entire net worth isn’t even 1 percent of the money spent by the federal government in a single day. A higher tax rate for Romney would be no more than a snowflake in the avalanche of federal spending.

If we were to confiscate Romney’s entire fortune, what would that buy us?

Obama proposed spending 200 million dollars on a Portland to Milwaukie light rail line. Milwaukie, a city in Oregon, is less than seven miles away from Portland. You can drive there in 15 minutes. It has a population of 20,000 which comes out to about 200,000 in light rail dollars per person.

In the last five years, over 600 million dollars in payments have been improperly made to dead federal employees. The good news is that Romney’s entire net worth might cover a year of wrongful payments to dead bureaucrats.

You can see my entire article, Romney's Wealth in Context at Front Page Magazine




THE USS JOHN ROLL

John Roll worked his way up from a bailiff to city attorney to United States attorney to a Federal judgeship. He handled an immense caseload and worked to promote democracy and human rights in Eastern Europe. He was shot and killed on January 28, 2011. And he is not getting a ship named after him.


When the gunman opened fire, former army colonel Bill Badger tackled him and helped hold him until the police arrived. The 74 year old Badger had been wounded by Loughner and was three times his age, but nevertheless grabbed his arm, forced him down and made him drop his gun. Badger does not consider himself a hero. "Once you're in the military, you never retire. You're always there to help the community and the people who are in danger," he said. Bill Badger is not getting a ship named after him.

Gabrielle Giffords was a Fulbright scholar who became the CEO of her family company at the age of 26. After it was sold five years later she ran for public office.  After four years of holding local offices in the Arizona house and senate, she ran for congress with major liberal backing. After three terms she attracted the attention of a mental patient who opened fire at one of her events and killed six people, including a 9 year old girl, three people in their 70's and Judge Roll.

Giffords was not killed. But she did get a book deal out of it. Representing her in the deal was Obama and Clinton attorney Robert Barnett. The actual author of the book, Jeffrey Zaslow was killed just this month, only a few months after the book was released. As a consolation prize, Giffords also got a navy vessel named after her.

There is no USS John Roll, but there will be a USS Gabrielle Giffords. Of the six living people for whom naval vessels were named in this century, she is only one of two who never served in the military. The other man was the Secretary of the Navy during World War II.




OF CONTROVERSIAL BENEFACTORS

After Sheldon Adelson, Gingrich's "controversial benefactor", meet Foster Friess, Santorum's "controversial benefactor". Oddly Obama's "controversial benefactor" who was a Nazi collaborator, a wanted criminal and a bigot never comes up when the media starts discussing those "controversial benefactors".




A TRULY SPECIAL VALENTINE'S DAY

Last year there were at least 675 honor killings in Pakistan and that number is a fraction of the total figure which can only be guessed at due to the culture of silence. In Sindh, famously known as “The Gateway of Islam,” where many Pakistani Romeo and Juliets run away to elope, there have been 227 such killings. To understand just how common this culture of death really is, we are introduced to one such couple. Her sister was killed for falling asleep on a train and coming home late, which convinced her family that she had run off with another man. His brother was killed for dating outside the clan. Together they are both on the run with a death sentence on their heads, which means that two siblings in each family were marked for honor killings.

There was a time when every family either had a member who fell victim to Polio or knew someone who had. In Pakistan, Islamic morals are the local Polio, and everyone knows someone who has been touched by the disease.

Now just in time for Valentine’s Day, in Faisalbad, a city named after the Saudi king, two men were arrested for killing their sisters. In Punjab, a man killed his wife and sister and their mother, because he suspected his wife of talking on her cell phone to another man. In Toronto, a city not yet renamed after a Saudi king, a Muslim cook was sentenced to jail for strangling his wife. This comes on the heels of the conviction of the Shafias in Ontario for murdering their three daughters and Mohammed Shafia’s first wife.

The entire piece A Muslim Love Story is up at Front Page Magazine





NO MUSLIM TERRORISM TO SEE HERE

Authorities have arrested a man on his way to the U.S. Capitol for what he thought would be a suicide attack on one of the nation's most symbolic landmarks, Fox News has learned exclusively.

The man, in his 30s and of Moroccan descent, was nabbed following a lengthy investigation by the FBI, initiated after he expressed interest in conducting an attack. The man thought undercover FBI agents assisting him in his plot were associates of Al Qaeda.

When he was arrested Friday in Washington, he was carrying with him a vest supposedly packed with explosives, but the material inside was not actually dangerous, A short time earlier, he had been praying at a mosque in the Washington area.

...but I'm sure  he was only praying for peace





NO PRO-TERRORIST BIAS TO SEE HERE

The New York Times’ newly appointed Jerusalem bureau chief played Twitter footsie on Tuesday with some of Israel’s most extreme non-terrorist critics.

Jodi Rudoren, until recently the paper’s education editor, is set to take control of the Times’ Jerusalem bureau following the exit of longtime chief Ethan Bronner.

Already, Rudoren is beaming out cutesy missives to prominent, self-described anti-Zionist players such as Ali Abunimah, co-founder of Electronic Intifada, a website that contains a treasure trove of writings highly antagonistic toward the Jewish state.

Rudoren also Tweeted yesterday with the website Mondoweiss, an online portal that is known to traffic in Israel-bashing.

Despite the outcry over Rudoren’s schmooze session, the incoming Jerusalem bureau chief continues to publicly praise Israel’s critics. This morning, Rudoren took to Twitter to praise Peter Beinart’s forthcoming The Crisis of Zionism which she called “terrific: provocative, readable, full of reporting and reflection.”

This is not exactly shocking. It just tells us that the regime is staying the same at a paper which specializes in pro-terrorist propaganda. Twitter gives us an eye into the heart of the beast, it lets us see their agendas without the disguises of journalism.

On Jodi Rudoren's Twitter feed right now, is a retweet from an Electronic Intifada contributor and two retweets from a Muslim who claims to "dabble in the art of Zionist busting". This isn't interaction, it's straight up promotion.

Rudoren claims that she's "reaching out" to people of different stripes, but the bottom line is she's retweeting material from people who want to destroy Israel and there aren't a lot of reasons to be doing that unless you sympathize with their cause.




SADDLE ON UP BOYS

Anthony Shadid, New York Times' corresponded and two time Pulitzer winner and author of Legacy of the Prophet, Despots, Democrats and the Politics of Islam, died in Syria of an allergy to horses. Shadid had boasted of risking his life "covering Israeli atrocities". Sadly while he was on the alert for the Jewish menace, he never saw the equine threat coming. Had he spent more time investigating what the equines were up to, he might still be alive today.

Who knew that Mr. Ed was more dangerous to New York Times propagandists than the IDF and the US Marines?




IT'S NUCLEAR DOOM

A year ago, the Fukushima nuclear power plant was massively damaged by a powerful earthquake then a huge tidal wave. Now, a year later, we have a more complete picture, and its not what many people think. So far no one has died from radiation leaks as a result of the plant's damage. No one has even been reported as becoming sick. In fact, no one has required decontamination except plant workers. In other words, the leak was minimal and not problematic. (Word Around the Net, via American Digest)

But the real damage may have been done to the nuclear industry, particularly in Europe, which suffered a severe setback from the latest meltdown panic. With "Clean Energy" having its own meltdown, the big winners of the big scare were your friendly neighborhood sheiks.




REAL MONEY

First you start talking about 132 billion dollars a month and eventually it starts to become real money.




GRADING ON A DOWNWARDS SLANT

Children get grades for following government mandates. Schools get grades for compelling students to follow government mandates. Government officials get grades for compelling schools to compel students to follow government mandates.

And after all that our educational system is in the toilet. It's like grades don't matter.




THE ROUNDUP

One chart to rue them all.

The seven varieties of gun control advocate Via Gunslinger's Journal

FBI counterterrorism program falls victim to counter-counterterrorism political correctness.

Dude Where'd My Legs Go?

Just wait till our debt comes due and we're the Greeks

Idiocy is, of course, an important part of the problem in Brussels, explaining many of the errors of judgment and basic competence over the past few years. But what is more striking by far is the sheer callousness and inhumanity of EU commissioners such as Mr Rehn, as they preside over a Brussels regime that is in the course of destroying what used to be a proud, famous and reasonably well-functioning country.

In these terrible circumstances, how can the British liberal Left, which claims to place such value on compassion and decency, continue to support the EU? I am old enough to recall their rhetoric when Margaret Thatcher was driving through her monetarist policies as a response to the recession of the early Eighties. Many of the attacks were incredibly personal and vicious. The British prime minister (who, of course, was later to warn so presciently against monetary union) was accused of lacking any kind of compassion or humanity. Yet the loss of economic output during the 1979-82 recession was scarcely 6 per cent, less than a third of the scale of the depression now being suffered by the unfortunate Greeks. Unemployment peaked at 10.8 per cent, just over half of where Greece is now.

The reality is that Margaret Thatcher was an infinitely more compassionate and pragmatic figure than Amadeu Altafaj-Tardio’s boss Olli Rehn and his appalling associates. She would never have destroyed an entire nation on the back of an economic dogma.