Poor Richard's News

The result of a state-run media

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 10:50:43 -0600

Thankfully, Kim Jong-Il, the ruthless dictator who has been killing and oppressing his own people has assumed room temperature. But North Koreans still love him and worship him as if he was a god. How can this be? State-run media. When a massive government controls all media outlets (including the internet), no one is told the truth. Every story that ever ran on North Korean television or newspapers intended to create the image of a bold, benevolent leader, when, in actuality, he was a tyrannical, murdering, war-monger who kept his people poor. Remember this map of big-government North Korea vs free capitalist South Korea?

They live in the dark ages (quite literally) yet continue to praise the man that keeps them there. It’s not stockholm syndrome, it’s the media. Watch this video of North Koreans wailing in grief over the loss of their beloved dictator and then thank God and our founders for the 1st amendment.

Washington Times: Fast and Furious is Obama's Watergate

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 10:50:00 -0600

I’ve always wondered why the Fast and Furious scandal wasn’t the lead story on literally every news outlet in the country. There was a murder and a cover-up, all because of politicians who were simply trying to push an agenda. The obvious reason for the lack of real coverage is that Obama is a liberal democrat in an election year and the media is going to bend over backwards to protect their man…just like last election cycle. But with the amount of information that we now know (thanks to alternative media), even the liberal, so-called mainstream media shouldn’t be able to squelch it much longer.

From the Washington Times:

A year ago this week, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered. He died protecting his country from brutal Mexican gangsters. Two AK-47 assault rifles were found at his death site. We now know the horrifying truth: Agent Terry was killed by weapons that were part of an illegal Obama administration operation to smuggle arms to the dangerous drug cartels. He was a victim of his own government. This is not only a major scandal; it is a high crime that potentially reaches all the way to the White House, implicating senior officials. It is President Obama’s Watergate.

Operation Fast and Furious was run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and overseen by the Justice Department. It started under the leadership of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. Fast and Furious enabled straw gun purchases from licensed dealers in Arizona, in which more than 2,000 weapons were smuggled to Mexican drug kingpins. ATF claims it was seeking to track the weapons as part of a larger crackdown on the growing violence in the Southwest. Instead, ATF effectively has armed murderous gangs. About 300 Mexicans have been killed by Fast and Furious weapons. More than 1,400 guns remain lost. Agent Terry likely will not be the last U.S. casualty.

Mr. Holder insists he was unaware of what took place until after media reports of the scandal appeared in early 2011. This is false. Such a vast operation only could have occurred with the full knowledge and consent of senior administration officials. Massive gun-running and smuggling is not carried out by low-level ATF bureaucrats unless there is authorization from the top. There is a systematic cover-up.

Read the Rest

It’s refreshing to see a mainstream news agency tell the truth about what is going on. Holder knew (as did Obama) about the program and sat idly by while a border patrol agent was killed with a weapon supplied to the bad buys by the US. Holder knew and it’s obvious to everyone. But I like what Rick Perry said in the debate last night:

“If I’m the president of the United States and I find out there is an operation like Fast and Furious, and I found out my attorney general didn’t know about it, I would have him resign immediately,”

He’s exactly right. Suppose that Holder is telling the truth. If he didn’t know that such a massive program was going on under his nose, despite 5 memos informing him of the activities, he should be fired for being negligent. Either way, Holder should be gone. But through all the lies and cover-ups, let’s not forget that someone was killed and Holder has blood on his hands.

It's official: Teachers make twice that of private sector workers

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 13:00:11 -0600

Remember when the extremely talented yet remarkably ignorant Matt Damon said that teachers made “Sh**y” salaries?

Well, apparently what he meant by “Sh**y” was “Awesome.” I feel ya, Matt. I sometimes accidentally say the exact opposite of what I mean to say too.

From CNS News:

Public school teachers receive greater average hourly compensation in wages and benefits than any other group of state and local government workers and receive more than twice as much in average hourly wages and benefits as workers in private industry, according to a new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Public primary, secondary and special education teachers are paid an average of $56.59 per hour in combined wages and benefits, BLS said in the report released last week.

That is slightly more than twice the $28.24 in average hourly wages and benefits paid to workers in private industry.

Read the Rest

Read that last sentence again. The same teachers who pitched a tantrum over the summer about not making enough, make twice that of those paying their salaries. Twice. Someone should tell that to Matt Damon.

Harry Reid doing his best to define stupid

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 08:58:07 -0600

How was he elected again?

Oops! Newt Gingrich's bad Beck interview

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 09:53:32 -0600

Newt: “I guess I’m a Theodore Roosevelt Republican”

List of things he’s “for”: government intervention in health care, government regulation and government subsidies. Yeah, sounds like a tea partier.

Read the transcript on glennbeck.com…if it doesn’t nauseate you.

Lefty activist judge headed for lifetime appointment

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 09:13:00 -0600

And no one seemed to know about the vote regarding her that is scheduled for today. Apparently she’s not a big fan of guns, babies or freedom in general. But don’t take my word for it.

From Life News:

President Barack Obama is attempting to pack the courts with yet another pro-abortion activist, this time wanting to replace Supreme Court Justice John Roberts on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals with Caitlin Halligan…

…“Like so many others, Halligan is an attractive candidate to the Left because she brings to the table an extensive resume of radicalism,” Perkins says.

“As Solicitor General, Halligan sided with the National Organization for Women in a brief that tried to slam pro-life protestors with extortion and racketeering charges under a twisted interpretation of the Hobbs Act,” he explains. “Their claim was so outside the mainstream that the U.S. Supreme Court threw it out in an 8-1 decision.”

Read the Rest

Surprisingly, until recently, the NRA had been silent about her terrible gun stance (pardon the pun) although it is atrocious, leaving Gun Owners of America the task of getting the word out. But the NRA did release a statement and an open letter yesterday.

The moral of the story, contact your senators and tell them not to approve this hard-left activist judge.

H/T: Redstate

Obama Knew

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 11:52:00 -0600

Hey, what do Gary Grindler, Eric Holder and Barack Obama have in common? They all knew about the gun-running operation known as ‘Fast and Furious’. Sure, the White House is denying it, but that’s to be expected. Admitting to it might just mean the end of his presidency. But let’s look at the evidence, shall we?

Not only did Holder receive five, separate memos informing him of ‘Fast and Furious’, but documents (that came out in October) show that the then-Deputy Attorney General, Gary Grindler, was also briefed.

From CBS News:

Documents recently turned over by the Justice Department to Congressional investigators indicate that then-Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler received a detailed briefing on Fast and Furious more than a year and a half ago.

“Deputy Attorney General” is the Justice Department’s No. 2 figure, directly under Attorney General Eric Holder.

Grindler moved from Deputy Attorney General to a spot as Holder’s chief of staff last January.

The briefing Grindler attended was on March 12, 2010, six months into ATF’s Operation Fast and Furious, which allowed thousands of weapons on the street in an attempt to track down Mexican drug cartels. Portions of the documents are redacted.

Read the Rest

No one denies that Grindler knew of what was going on. And that’s where the White House is going to have some trouble. See, Grindler visited the White House no less than 14 times during the operation. Four of which were meetings with the President himself.

From the White House visitor’s log:

Now, I understand that all of this is circumstantial but it would be enough to convince any jury. Are we actually to believe that Eric Holder didn’t know after receiving five memos and that Obama didn’t know after personally meeting with Gary Grindler 4 different times during the operation? Were they just chewing the fat? Doubtful.

More at the Daily Caller and Director Blue

Land of the Free

Sat, 03 Dec 2011 08:40:49 -0600

The delusion of Global Warming

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 16:19:28 -0600

By now I’m sure you’ve all heard about Climategate II, yet another group of leaked emails showing the unbelievable bias of climate “scientists” (more can be found here). The emails are so damning that even the not-so-conservative UK Telegraph is admitting that AWG is the biggest delusion of our time.

From the UK Telegraph:

To grasp the almost suicidal state of unreality our Government has been driven into by the obsession with global warming, it is necessary to put together the two sides to an overall picture – each vividly highlighted by events of recent days.

On one hand there is the utterly lamentable state of the science which underpins it all, illuminated yet again by “Climategate 2.0”, the latest release of emails between the leading scientists who for years have been at the heart of the warming scare (which I return to below). On the other hand, we see the damage done by the political consequences of this scare, which will directly impinge, in various ways, on all our lives.

Read the Rest

Glad to see more people are coming around to the truth.

OWSomeness

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 02:01:22 -0600

This one is a little older but fantastic nonetheless:

H/T: iowntheworld

Pelosi: Yeah, we plan on screwing up child care just like health care

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 12:07:00 -0600

Nancy we-have-to-pass-the-bill-to-see-what’s-in-it Pelosi vows to get the government even more involved in the lives of every day Americans by getting involved in child care. Because, you know, that’s what George Washington would do.

From a Pelosi-loving Washington Post:

…Last week, the California congresswoman hit five cities in five days, barnstorming for money to try to win the 25 more seats it would take to regain control. And if that happens — or when, according to her — at the top of her to-do list, she says, will be “doing for child care what we did for health-care reform” — pushing comprehensive change.

Unbelievable. Why is the default position of Democrats inevitably more federal government intervention? She thinks that just because she won a popularity contest in San Francisco, she can control the lives of literally every American. Facepalm. But wait, there’s more:

…“One of the great pieces of unfinished business is high-quality child care; I wonder why we just can’t do that,’’ Pelosi said. Her spokesman Drew Hammill said later that she doesn’t have a specific child-care proposal at the ready; that’s what the legislative process is for.

Read the Rest

“I wonder why we just can’t do that.” Seriously. She said those words. It’s almost as if she’s not even vaguely familiar with the Constitution that she swore to uphold. It would be laughable if it weren’t so sad. Now, Pelosi probably isn’t a regular reader of Poor Richard’s News but I would really love to ask her at what point government intervention becomes too much. Is there any limit?

H/T: Hotair

Obama administration: uh, yeah, don't talk about how corrupt we are until after the election

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 21:53:05 -0600

And the plot thickens. According to a Solyndra investment adviser, the Department of Energy was pressuring Solyndra to keep the news of its job hemorrhaging quiet until after the 2010 election.

From the Washington Post (believe it or not):

The Obama administration, which gave the solar company Solyndra a half-billion-dollar loan to help create jobs, asked the company to delay announcing it would lay off workers until after the hotly contested November 2010 midterm elections that imperiled Democratic control of Congress, newly released e-mails show.

The announcement could have been politically damaging because President Obama and others in the administration had held up Solyndra as a poster child of its clean-energy initiative, saying the company’s new factory, built with the help of stimulus money, could create 1,000 jobs.

Could have been politically damaging? Ya think?

The Energy Department “continues to be cooperative” and committed to a November drawdown on the loan, the Solyndra adviser wrote. “They did push very hard for us to hold our announcement of the consolidation to employees and vendors to Nov. 3rd — oddly they didn’t give a reason for that date.”

Read the Rest

How could this investor adviser be so gleefully ignorant as to wonder why November 3rd was chosen? Was he joking?

H/T: Ace of Spades

Supreme Court to hear Obamacare

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 10:40:45 -0600

Assuming that the members of the Supreme Court didn’t fail reading comprehension, the law should be ruled unconstitutional in a matter of minutes. But I don’t necessarily expect that to happen.

From the AP via Yahoo!:

The Supreme Court said Monday it will hear arguments next March over President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul — a case that could shake the political landscape just as voters are about to decide if Obama deserves another term.

The decision to hear arguments in the spring allows plenty of time for a decision in late June, just over four months before Election Day. This sets up an election-year showdown over the White House’s main domestic policy achievement.

The justices announced they will hear more than five hours of arguments, an extraordinarily long session, from lawyers on the constitutionality of a provision at the heart of the law and other related questions about the act. The central provision in question is the requirement that individuals buy health insurance starting in 2014 or pay a penalty.

A White House spokesman said, “We are pleased that the court has agreed to hear this case.”

“We know the Affordable Care Act is constitutional and are confident the Supreme Court will agree,” communications direct Dan Pfeiffer said in a statement.

Read the Rest

I think it’s funny when the white house shows it’s poker face. I have a legitimate question for them. If forcing private citizens to buy things isn’t unconstitutional, what is?

Occupying Insanity

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 13:55:42 -0600

If it weren’t so scary:

It would be funny:

Happy Veterans Day!

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 11:37:51 -0600

Just a reminder, unlike Memorial Day, which is a holiday specifically set aside to remember those who have died in war, Veterans Day is for all veterans, especially the living. Thank a veteran today.

Good News! No more American flags in school

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 14:12:19 -0600

California judge: No way you’re allowed to wear an American flag shirt to school. Where do you think you are, America?

From The Volokh Conspiracy:

Dariano v. Morgan Hill Unified School District (N.D. Cal.), decided the day before yesterday, upholds a California high school’s decision to forbid students from wearing American flag T-shirts on Cinco de Mayo.

The decision might well be correct under Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School Dist. (1969), which allows a “heckler’s veto” in K-12 school: Schools may indeed restrict student speech when it’s likely to cause substantial disruption, even when the disruption stems from other students’ hostility to the speech. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I think the speech restriction violates a California statute that gives students extra protection, but that claim wasn’t raised in this federal lawsuit.

Yet while the judge might have been right in his decision, the situation in the school seems very bad. When we’re at the point that students can’t safely display the American flag in an American school, because of a fear that other students will attack them for it — on May 5 or on any other day — and the school feels unable to prevent such attacks (by punishing the threateners and the attackers, and by teaching students tolerance for other students’ speech), something is badly wrong.

Read the Rest

Which Constitution are the people of California reading? The one that gives the government the right to ban students from wearing certain shirts? Because I’m not familiar with that one. The irony is, the American flag is the representation of a land that is historically synonymous with freedom. Freedom of all kinds…including what your t-shirt has on it.

In defense of Perry

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 13:01:06 -0600

I have to admit, I wasn’t watching the debate last night. Personally, I’m sick of debates. We all know where the candidates stand on the issues. Mitt Romney is a leftist, Ron Paul is a libertarian and all the rest of them fall somewhere on the right side of the scale. But by all accounts, the moment of the night was when Rick Perry flubbed a simple question about which government agencies he’d do away with.

Here’s the video:

Awkward? Indeed. Disqualifying? No way. At least, it shouldn’t be. The media will use any excuse to render someone utterly unqualified for a given elected office, including: race, background, physical shortcomings, religion, eloquence, party affiliation, intelligence, gender, family history, etc. But it shouldn’t be that way. Votes for the presidency should not be based on anything but policy. Which candidate will most closely adhere to the Constitution? That should be the only consideration.

A “senior moment” under the immense pressure of a nationally televised presidential debate only shows his humanness and should, in no way, be disqualifying.

Thinking the state should mandate vaccines and pay for illegals to go to college? Now that’s disqualifying.

Finally: A Christmas tree tax

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 00:24:00 -0600

Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree, you’ll soon be more expensive. Yeah, this should stimulate the economy.

From the Heritage Foundation:

President Obama’s Agriculture Department today announced that it will impose a new 15-cent charge on all fresh Christmas trees—the Christmas Tree Tax—to support a new Federal program to improve the image and marketing of Christmas trees.

In the Federal Register of November 8, 2011, Acting Administrator of Agricultural Marketing David R. Shipman announced that the Secretary of Agriculture will appoint a Christmas Tree Promotion Board. The purpose of the Board is to run a “program of promotion, research, evaluation, and information designed to strengthen the Christmas tree industry’s position in the marketplace; maintain and expend existing markets for Christmas trees; and to carry out programs, plans, and projects designed to provide maximum benefits to the Christmas tree industry” (7 CFR 1214.46(n)). And the program of “information” is to include efforts to “enhance the image of Christmas trees and the Christmas tree industry in the United States” (7 CFR 1214.10).

To pay for the new Federal Christmas tree image improvement and marketing program, the Department of Agriculture imposed a 15-cent fee on all sales of fresh Christmas trees by sellers of more than 500 trees per year (7 CFR 1214.52). And, of course, the Christmas tree sellers are free to pass along the 15-cent Federal fee to consumers who buy their Christmas trees.

Read the Rest

UPDATE: According to ABC, mean old “conservative media” outlets have stopped it from being implemented or something.

Laissez les Bon Temps Roulez

Sat, 05 Nov 2011 23:09:59 -0500

Congratulations, Tigers.

From ESPN:

No. 1 LSU gained the inside track to the BCS title game, beating No. 2 Alabama 9-6 on Drew Alleman’s 25-yard field goal in overtime after a fierce defensive struggle in which neither team reached the end zone Saturday night.

The Crimson Tide missed four field goals, including Cade Foster’s 52-yard attempt after Alabama got the ball first in the extra period. LSU appeared to win the game on Michael Ford’s run around left end after taking a pitch, but he stepped out of bounds at the 7.

After two plays gained nothing, LSU (9-0, 6-0 Southeastern Conference) sent on Alleman to attempt his third field goal of the game on third down. Alabama (8-1, 5-1) tried to freeze him by calling timeout, but he calmly knocked it through to set off a wild celebration by the visiting team.

The crowd of more than 100,000 at Bryant-Denny Stadium — most of them dressed in crimson — sat in stunned silence as LSU celebrated its victory in only the 23rd regular-season matchup between the top two teams in The Associated Press rankings.

Read the Rest

For those still in the dark...yes, Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger was a racist.

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 18:33:20 -0500

Somebody please alert the dolts at Salon.com. I’m not going to link to their drivel.