Quick Takes, March 10, 2011

ITEM: Thomas Jakobsson of Naval Guards, a private security firm, announced (here) that six of his operatives boarded and retook the yacht belonging to a Dutch couple which had been seized by Somali pirates. Apparently the family locked themselves in a safe room and the security operatives engaged in a brief firefight with the pirates during which no one was injured. This is not the same Dutch yacht recently seized by Somali pirates; that hostage situation remains in play. Hmm. Don’t we have a world-renowned force of naval commandos who do something like that? I believe they’re called “Navy SEALs” or something. Why don’t we turn them loose to wreak the kind of constructive havoc for which they are famous? Given adequate freedom and assets, I suspect they would happily see that the pirate menace was eliminated in short order. Mr. Obama?

ITEM: I’ve Been Telling My Wife About This For Years! According to Fox Boston (here), a five-year German study has produce uplifting, prominent results. In a study of 500 men, half were told to refrain from looking at breasts for five years, and the other half were told to “”ogle them daily.” The study found that the men who stared at breasts “more often showed lower rates of heart problems, a lower resting heart rate and lower blood pressure.” “Stare at breasts for 10 minutes a day,” recommended the researchers. This may be an urban legend, but I don’t know. Just to be safe, I may try to double, even triple the recommendation. Can’t be too careful these days.

ITEM: He Said What?! Remember the old Hee Haw line? Patient: “Doc, it hurts when I do this.” Doc: “Then don’t do that.” Comes now Treasure Secretary Timothy Geithner, who, according to Powerline (here), testified before the Senate Budget Committee on Feb. 17 about Mr. Obama’s budget. His budget, you may recall, will increase Federal spending 65% by decade’s end, racking up another $12 trillion and interest payments on the debt costing $844 billion per year by 2021. Give him credit for honesty; Mr. Geithner admitted that the costs of the budget are “unsustainable” and “excessively high.” Well why, Mr. Secretary, if you know that, why are you proposing and--sort of--defending the darned thing?

Item: Louis Renault Rides Again! Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood testified before the Senate Budget Committee on March 3 (here) in support of the Obama Administration’s plan to increase the budget of the Transportation Department by 62%. You read correctly: 62%. Unlike Mr. Geithner, who apparently has at least some sense of shame and honesty, Secretary LaHood shocked, shocked! the senators by claiming that the Obama budget would pay down the national debt. Even if every hopenchangey assumption on which that budget is based was true (and if so, I’m investing in that Nigerian unicorn ranch that keeps sending me e-mails), the budget will run at least a $600 billion deficit each and every year. This is, in the DOT, apparently what passes for rational thought and fiscal responsibility. But then again, they’re all about high-speed rail too...

ITEM: Shouldn’t America’s Ambassador to the United Nations represent...America? Not so much these days. When George Schultz was Secretary of State, he often invited new foreign service officers to his office and asked them to point out, on a map, the country they would be representing. They would invariably point to the nation to which they had been posted. Mr. Schultz would then point to America and tell them that it was the nation they represented. According to Fox News (here) British Prime Minister David Cameron is defunding four U.N agencies at the end of next year. They are: The UN International Development Organization, UN-Habitat, The International Labor Organization, and the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. Mr. Cameron, faced with his own budget crunch, has concluded that the agencies don’t accomplish squat, and don’t accomplish it at a very high cost indeed, so England is no longer playing. In the meantime, American Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice has been criss-crossing the nation trying to raise money for the UN. Uh, wasn’t she supposed to represent American interests at the UN, not fundraise for it? I get so confused by these high-level issues. Rather a shame we don’t have a Secretary of State like Mr. Schultz anymore, isn’t it? Discuss.

ITEM: But shouldn’t the Attorney General represent all Americans? Not so much. Via Politico (here) Attorney General Eric Holder, testifying before a House Appropriations subcommittee, denied that the DOJ is enforcing voting laws--particularly the now infamous New Black Panther case--unequally. Responding to civil rights attorney Bartle Bull, who witnessed the Black Panthers intimidating voters outside a Philadelphia polling place in 2008, and who called it the most serious act of voter intimidation he had witnessed in his career, Holder said: “when you compare what people endured in the South in the 60s...I think it does a great disservice to people who put their lives on the line, who risked all, for my people.” Hmmm. “...for my people.” Take a moment, if you will, to see what the indispensable Michelle Malkin has to say about her people (here). The people of the United States, people of every color, are your people Mr. Attorney General. Why don’t you know that?

ITEM: Uh, shouldn’t the Secretary of Labor represent all American workers? Not so much, if you’re Barack Obama’s SOL. Speaking at the winter meeting of the Democrat National Committee in Washington last weekend (here). Solis promised aid to union workers who are “under assault” in Wisconsin and elsewhere. “Our brothers and sisters in public employee unions,” she intoned, also throwing red meat to a ravenous crowd by exclaiming “the fight is on!” Hmm. Would that mean the Federal government is fighting the government of Wisconsin? The taxpayers? All non-union workers in America (the overwhelming majority)? Discuss.

ITEM: This Says It All: On March 6, Tea Party Members converged on the Wisconsin Capital building in Madison to stage a counter protest? Not quite: To clean up the swinish mess left by two weeks of union protests. What? Those racist, evil, nasty, violent Tea Partiers? The same, taking out other people’s garbage, as usual.

ITEM: It’s Already Happened. This week, gas spiked in Orlando, Florida at $5.29 per gallon. The national average is, for the moment, $3.38 per gallon, but Mr. Obama’s illegal refusal to issue permits for Gulf oil drilling alone--with the sole exception of one permit to allow a well that was already near completion to start up again--has cut US production by 13%. That’s a 13% cut, on top of no new production being allowed virtually anywhere in America. Hope. Change. Had enough?

ITEM: You’re Joking, Right? Afraid not. In the People’s Republic of Massachusetts, State Senator Andrew Petruccelli has re-introduced legislation establishing a commission to study GPS tracking for firearms. Jim Wallace of the Mass. Gun Owner’s Action League (here) notes that “Twelve years ago we had 1.5 million gun owners. Today that’s down to about 230 thousand. Gun crime has risen 200 percent. What else do you need to know?” What indeed.

ITEM: From the Washington Post via the indispensable Powerline (here), we learn that Mr. Obama is “preparing for the prospect that Islamist governments will take hold in North Africa and Middle East.” Mr. Obama and his sycophants also apparently believe that there are big differences between the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda. Indeed. The MB prefers to use sharp knives when sawing off the heads of live infidels, while al-Qaeda prefers dull knives. The idiocy of the Obama administration is truly stunning. They would do well--and potentially save untold American lives--to remember that most venerable of Middle Eastern aphorisms: The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

ITEM: Weren’t These Guys Supposed To Explore Space Or Something? For the second time in two years (here), a NASA rocket carrying a satellite intended to study global warming has “failed to reach orbit” as NASA has termed it. The average man-in-the-street would say something like “sucker crashed in the ocean! Whap!” The cost this time? A bit under half a billion dollars. Does anyone else think that cosmic irony is at play when every satellite our space agency sends up to engage in non-space research augers in?

ITEM: So That’s How You Do It! From Popular Mechanics (here) comes the story of two enterprising MIT students, Justin Lee and Oliver Yeh who sent a camera package into space on a five hour flight, reaching 93,000 feet, for $150. By all means, take the link. I understand NASA is out of the space business and all about the Muslim self-esteem business. Anyone needing space services might consider getting in touch with Justin and Oliver. With a budget of, say, $1000, perhaps a return trip to the moon?

ITEM: Do yourself a favor and visit Powerline (here) for Scott’s essay on Barack Obama and Israel. “We wouldn’t say the same of Barack Obama. His obtuseness regarding Israel forms part of a larger pattern of arrogance matched with wrongheadedness. Monumental self-regard matched with rank stupidity.” It only gets better from there. Do visit.

ITEM: And at the Daily Beast (here), Hell has frozen over and pigs are doing barrel rolls overhead. Liberal commentator Kristin Powers retracted a column she wrote in support of continued federal funding for Planned Parenthood. She discovered that PP published false statistics, and came to a rational, honorable conclusion: “Whatever you think of abortion rights, this is not the kind of organization that taxpayers should be funding.” Well done Ms. Powers. Please continue with your second step to independence of thought and toward liberty. We’ll we waiting to welcome you.

ITEM: We’re Number 1! We’re Number 1! At $223 billion, the federal government set a new for the deficit in a single month in February. Recall, if you will, Democrats excoriating President Bush for a similar yearly budget deficit. And now? They’re serious about budget cutting, offering as much as $6 billion in cuts--which would represent only a tiny fraction of a single percent of February’s budget, to say nothing about our trillion dollar+ yearly budget deficit. We’re not going to be number one much longer, particularly if Barack Obama is a two-term president.

ITEM: Aw! It’s Almost Like A Cute, Sick Puppy Or Something: From Hot Air (here) comes the news of an internal White House memo that fell into the hands of CBS News. Apparently there has been a national contest for high schools with a fabulous prize: A graduation teleprompter reading by Barack Obama! Apparently the memo noted that by the deadline of Feb. 25, only 14 applications had been received. Aw! Poor Barack! (Sung, preferably by small school children in creepy, hypnotic cadence): “MM, MM, MM, Barack Hussein Obama! Don’t no one want Obama! MM, MM, MM!”

ITEM: And in Wisconsin, Republicans finally showed some backbone and voted to strip state workers of collective bargaining privileges. Of course, unions and Democrat senators still hiding out in Illinois were not amused. Let’s review: Collective bargaining is a privilege, not a right, and can be granted or taken away at will. The Democrat Senators have been gone three weeks, and refuse to do their jobs. They lost what they were most trying to avoid anyway. Gov. Walker even offered concessions, but the Democrats refused. Now Wisconsin can actually be effective in dealing with budgetary issues. And Democrat supporters are screeching “This is not Democracy!” Oh, and running away to keep a legislature from functioning for three weeks is? Some people have no sense of shame.

ITEM: Speaking on the floor of the Congress March 2, Jesse Jackson Jr. proposed an innovative solution to unemployment: Add a bunch of new rights to the Constitution! Talk about an epiphany! His ideas: Every family will have a right to a “decent home.” Everyone will have a right to medical care. Everyone will have a right to a “decent education,” which will include an iPod and laptop computer for every student. Of course, he didn’t bother to mention how these “rights” would be funded, but in the same expansive (as in government expansion) spirit, here’s my initial list of new rights: I’d like a right to the handgun, “assault weapon” and unlimited ammunition of my choice. The right to my own personal jet aircraft with unlimited fuel would be pretty neat. Oh yes, and the right to periodically slap congress critters upside their heads to knock a little sense into them might be a good idea as well. Note to the satirically challenged: I am not, in fact, advocating actually assaulting any member of Congress or anyone else. It’s a joke. You see, by making outlandish comparisons, the joke is ridiculing Jackson’s equally outlandish comparisons by...oh never mind. Some people just can’t take a joke.

ITEM: I Swear I’m Not Making This Up! Department: Via Hot Air (here), Senate Minority Leader (ah, it feels so good to say that!) Harry Reid took to the floor of the Senate recently to castigate the heartless brutes who want to eliminate subsidies to public broadcasting and the National Endowments of the Arts and Humanities. Senator Reid was particularly concerned that without taxpayer largess, an annual cowboy poetry festival in Nevada might be headed for the last roundup, it might end up in that big corral in the sky, it might get shot first and asked questions later, it might...OK, OK, I’m back. I’m better now. At least I’m glad to see that the Dems are taking this whole budget thing seriously. I mean, revamping Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are serious matters, but they pale in comparison to the possibility of defunding something as important to national and world security and fiscal stability as Nevada cowboy poetry. So here’s my contribution to this vital genre:

A Cowboy’s Lament

It was raining the day I got off the bus,
and met my ma, who ain’t no fuss.
Prison was hard, but I did my time,
fer eatin’ too much salt, and makin’ bad rhyme.

Sally Sue run off with my dog on a whim,
LordaMighty how I miss him.
Now they’re defundin’ cowboy poetry; that makes be blue,
But if I had it to do all over again, I’d do it all over you.

Thank the Good Lord we have intellectual giants such as Senator Reid doing the people’s business!

And with that thought in mind, get along little poetic doggies, and I’ll see yuh next Thursday! Yeeeeeeeeee-hah!