November 2009 Archives

The hard-working folks over at Recovery.gov, ever on guard for that rare instance of government inefficiency that occurs only once in a decade or so, have responded with commendable speed to news reports of erroneous/incompetent/fraudulent data in the records of stimulus money spent to save (or "create" jobs). No longer does their database report on taxpayer funds wasted invested in places like the nonexistent 99th U.S. Congressional District of Puerto Rico. No, sir. Everything's been scrubbed squeaky clean, and the original records now show each offending transaction taking place in an "unassigned congressional district."

What's that you say? You want to know what the original data showed? Oh, c'mon. You can trust faceless, nameless bureaucrats in Washington to behave with the most scrupulous ethical standards. They're from the government, and they're here to help you.

Pardon me? You still don't trust them? You must be one of those bitter people clinging to their Bibles and their guns out in the sticks. Besides, it's too late now. The original data's gone. Unless you know someone who scooped up some of the data before it was altered erased corrected, you're out of luck.

Hey, wait a second. Guess who snagged the original data for Ohio, put it in Excel spreadsheet format, and sorted it all by district?

I love blunt conservative honesty, especially from a politician!

I just looked up the summary of Ohio data on Recovery.gov and here's some of what I found. Compare the numbers for jobs created/"saved" and money wasted spent for Ohio's 18 congressional districts, and the numbers for the ten nonexistent districts that turned up.

$5.3 million went to nonexistent congressional districts, creating (or maybe it's "saving") 11 jobs. That's $482,174 per job. How do I sign up for that sweet deal? Then there's the average waste stimulus per job in our actual 18 districts, which works out to $294,758 ... still not too shabby. If I can snag one of the 149.5 jobs here in the 13th District, I will have cost America's taxpayers a cool $1,026,735! Betty Sutton, call your office. I want a job.

That's "transparency" in the age of Hope and Change™ for ya. Is this incompetent accounting, dishonest accounting, or both?

Want more? Nineteen out of the top twenty Porkulus recipients in Ohio are state, county, or municipal government entities. The one that's not government owned is "a single-purpose environmental remediation Limited Liability Corporation dedicated to providing remediation services to the United States Department of Energy at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant site." In other words, a government contractor.

Boy oh boy, that Porkulus sure did stimulate the free market, didn't it? Way to go, Governor Strickland ... you sure know how to allocate funds. I can't wait to experience the joys of Obamacare, Cap & Trade, and amnesty for illegals.

For more analysis, check out Ohio Watchdog.

Statements like these rekindle my belief that America still has a chance:

If you have been reading us for any length of time, you know that we used to make fun of "Dubya" nearly every day...parroting the same comedic bits we heard in our Democrat circles, where Bush is still, to this day, lampooned as a chimp, a bumbling idiot, and a poor, clumsy public speaker.

...

[We] will always be grateful for what George and Laura Bush did this week, with no media attention, when they very quietly went to Ft. Hood and met personally with the families of the victims of this terrorist attack.

FOR HOURS.

The Bushes went and met privately with these families for HOURS, hugging them, holding them, comforting them.

If there are any of you out there with any connection at all to the Bushes, we implore you to give them our thanks...you tell them that a bunch of gay Hillary guys in Boystown, Chicago were wrong about the Bushes...and are deeply, deeply sorry for any jokes we told about them in the past, any bad thoughts we had about these good, good people.

...

Criticize their policies academically and intelligently and discuss the Bush presidency in historical and political terms...but you mess with the Bushes personally and, from this day forward, you'll answer to us.

...

Thank you for your service, Mr. President. We're sorry we didn't appreciate you while you were in office, but we thank Heaven we've wised up and can see the good you are out there doing, under the radar, today.

They have something to say about Dick Cheney, too. The post is a must read.

Thanks, guys. Kudos.

Under Nancy Pelosi's version of ObamaCare,

Americans who do not maintain "acceptable health insurance coverage" and who choose not to pay the bill's new individual mandate tax (generally 2.5% of income), are subject to numerous civil and criminal penalties, including criminal fines of up to $250,000 and imprisonment of up to five years.

By what authority can Congress require people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States? Please refer to this previous question to aid your answer.

In Flanders Fields
By Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

If jihadist ideology is supposedly a perversion of true Islam, how can it be "Islamophobic" to identify and remove jihadists from our military?

Behold the people who elected Barack Obama and his running mate, uh ... um ...

Imagine that. Ignoramuses in L.A.! Who'd a thunk it?

Perpetual RINO weasel David Frum drives to the hoop for a dunk on Sarah Palin ... and gets stuffed by Doctor Zero:

That isn't a glass of sherry gripped in David Frum's sweaty fist, Palinistas. It's a mug of scalding hot coffee, and it's going right down your throats. Personally, I'm stuck in an alternative reality where a hardcore leftist is running up astronomical deficits and double-digit unemployment, in the service of a liberty-destroying collectivist agenda. I wonder how many hard feelings the voters of 2012 will carry for the woman who gave 110% effort to save us from this little branch in the time line, and has the battle scars to show for it... assuming they can tear themselves away from obsessing over those "statistical studies that show her as the only vice presidential nominee in ticket to have hurt her ticket."

...

Do you suppose that tsunami of frivolous lawsuits from the Democrat slander machine might have had something to do with her "failure to make any serious progress" as governor? It doesn't matter to the dutiful scribes of conventional wisdom. When the Washington Post counts a Republican out, David Frum will always be there with a bottle of chloroform, to make sure they don't get back up. Deviation from the accepted script for Republican political life is dangerous populism.

...

Palin has developed a remarkable knack for saying all the things President Obama should be saying, at any given moment. While Obama was serving as the warm-up act for anti-American and anti-Semitic nutjobs at the United Nations, Palin spoke of her country's proud tradition of liberty and capitalism in Hong Kong. While Obama pondered whether the ruins of the Berlin Wall would make a suitable backdrop for his magnificence, Palin wrote of the twilight struggle between Ronald Reagan's America and the Evil Empire... and wasn't shy about naming both the heroes and villains.

Hey, David ... go sit on the bench and let the pros play. Twerp.

Incidentally, Sarah's back on Twitter.

@SarahPalinUSA

This documentary premieres on PBS on Veteran's Day. Set your DVR.

Don't miss it!

Darn right. Jesse Hathaway's all over this Ohio Democratic Party scandal.

We had 606 voters today. Pretty high for an off-off-year election. If memory serves, we had around 750 voters show up for the 2008 election.

Newt on Scozzafava:

As other Republicans threw their support behind Hoffman's momentum, Gingrich argued that the party needed to be more inclusive of moderates if it had a hope of retaking the majority.

He told The Associated Press he was disappointed, and "deeply upset" that Scozzafava endorsed Owens.

"How could she have accepted all that support?" he said, adding later: "I'm very, very let down because she told everybody she was a Republican, and she said she was a loyal Republican."

Gingrich now backs Hoffman.

Gimme a break. Newt's a lot of things, but stupid isn't one of them.