The Pima County Sheriff Department knew that Loughner made previous death threats

Could it be that Pima County Sheriff Dupnik's putting the blame on Rush Limbaugh and call to end the violent rhetoric was a ploy to cover up his own department's failure to act?

I'M BACK!

After spending too much time blogging/commenting on other websites, I realized a few things: 1) I was spending too much blogging on other websites; 2) the format on many of those sites is very similar to a chat room in that you have very limited space to make a meaningful post, you spend much of your time trying to limit the amount of characters you use via abbreviations, acronyms, etc., and the temptation is to just take potshots at the post to which you are responding because of the limitations on size; and 3) people on the Left are not willing to set aside their ideologies and listen to facts. This fact is no better displayed then in the reactions of the Left to the horrific events in Arizona this past weekend. The immediate response of the Leftist media was to blame the Right, even though there were absolutely no facts to support a finding that the shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, was motivated by anything he heard, saw, or read from the Right. Others took a different tact: instead of directly blaming the Right and conservative media, they attributed it to vitriolic rhetoric. "Vitriolic rhetoric" is the Left's way of saying: "the Right" or "conservative media." A nine year old girl and 5 other people died, for God's sake. 12 other people were wounded. Show some respect. Don't try to capitalize on their misery for political gain, especially when you have to grope blindly in the dark to find something worthwhile to include in your idiotic screeds.

Speaking of being opportunistic, it took less than a day for the Progressives to give their typical response: guns and certain words and symbols (not people, mind you, but guns and free speech) kill people, so we have to ban them. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy said that she was going to introduce a bill this past Monday (she made this comment on Sunday) that would impose stricter bans on handguns. Do you think she might have already drafted that bill and kept it tucked away somewhere waiting for the right opportunity? Do you think that her staff was able to, during the weekend and after the shooting (basically on a Sunday), just pull that bill out of thin air? As "Dead Fish" Rahm Emanuel would say: "Never let a good crisis go to waste." Rep. Bob Brady (D-PA) thought that it was a good idea to introduce legislation that would make it a federal crime to use language or symbols that could be perceived as threatening or inciting violence against a federal official or member of Congress. Now, no one wants anyone to threaten or incite violence against a federal official, but Congressman Brady seems to not understand that he is trampling on the First Amendment when he suggests that. By the way, Congressman, who is going to be the person that makes the decision? A Commerce Department bureaucrat? Someone who will be part of a new agency called, perhaps, the Federal Bureau of Dangerous Language and Symbols? A little too Orwellian for me, thank you.

I realized very quickly after this weekend that I had had enough of endless arguing with liberals who fail to set aside their scripts and talking points long enough to survey the evidence. It was time to make a change. In short, it is very, VERY good to be back and I look forward to being able to rant with abandon and achieve a modicum of catharsis by posting again on this blog. Come join me!

Quote of the day

"I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death." - Thomas Paine

An update to my April 18th post: the President's nominee for Supreme Court Justice, Elena Kagan, is a former employee of...GOLDMAN SACHS!

Hagiography

I am reading The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama. The book is fascinating in that it is wholly revealing of Barack Obama's character. Many will find some of the revelations surprising considering that the author, David Remnick, is the editor of The New Yorker and clearly a dyed in the wool liberal. For example, Chapters 10 and 11 repeatedly talk about, in the words of many people who were close to Obama, that he is an absolute chameleon or, more appropriately, a manufactured politician. From Salim Muwakkil: “His ambitions were well disguised…One reason that he was so knowledgeable about the arcana of black politics is that he studied it and he crafted himself. He doesn’t share the traditional ancestral narrative. That’s not part of his being. One of the reasons he is so attractive to a lot of people is that he doesn’t have this sense of cultural grievance. He never had that sense of a family being socialized to subservience. He has an ease of interaction with whites that a lot of African-Americans don’t have. He had to learn that cultural repertoire of African-Americans. The notion that you are socialized in an environment that insisted that you aren’t inferior, that you spend much of your energy proving that you aren’t inferior, that kind of double consciousness – he didn’t have to deal with that. He has Malcolm’s capacity for self-creation. That’s what Barack did. He made himself, like a kind of existential hero. He picked this out and that out, and he created himself." I find these comments to be creepy, if not fairly alarming. A person who "creates himself" for the sake of politics is not trustworthy. Yet, Remnick apparently sees nothing wrong with that because he quotes one person after another who express that same theme: Terry Link - “One thing Barack has is the ability to adapt." Bobby Rush - "He’s been adapting all his life. He had the discipline to accomplish it and the foresight to see what his vision of himself required, you know? Barack’s calculating in almost every decision in terms of how he wanted to project himself."

David Kupelian wrote an article in 2008 about how Obama was "The Manchurian Candidate:" http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=79411. Kupelian describes the character from the book and movie as follows: "In the classic 1962 movie thriller "The Manchurian Candidate," a man was programmed by communist handlers, and then emerged into the public arena as a hero, with a largely manufactured history, large parts of which were either obscured or changed. Then he was planted into a position of great influence, having been programmed to usher in tremendous change at the appointed time." He then ties this into Obama. Strangely, Remnick, a leftist writer of a leftist magazine, quotes people that say the same thing: Bobby Rush - “The forces that created him were the same forces that were always coming after me…But Barack was backed by that same liberal elite cadre or cabal that came out of Hyde Park. These folks, they didn’t like me. I wasn’t upper crust. I came from the streets of Chicago. I’m not Harvard or Ivy League, although I’ve got two master’s degrees. I’ll never be accepted a member of the elite…And Barack was the antithesis of a street person. I saw this as racist. They wanted someone with a better pedigree.” Later, Rush is quoted as saying: “My whole effort was to make sure that people knew that Barack Obama was being used as a tool of the white liberals. Now, these people later on also helped launch him as a candidate to the U.S. Senate and as President. You cannot deny Obama’s brilliance, his disciplined approach. He is a very political guy, very calculating.”

Why would the liberal press, Remnick included, who have had a slathering lovefest with the President ever since he spoke at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and who have, invariably, refused to report anything remotely damaging to this administration or critical of its policies, suddenly roll out these ostensibly negative quotes about their guy? I think the answer lies in the attitude of liberal elitism. Remnick and other liberals do not see the assumption of an alter-ego to get yourself elected as being something negative. First, liberals care little about character. Two, they care quite a bit about intentions. If Obama assumed a persona or public identity in order to get elected and work miracles (in their eyes), then that is acceptable because what he accomplishes will be for the collective good and, therefore, his intentions are noble. Thirdly, his skillful self-creation shows how intelligent he is and that is the sine qua non for all of liberaldom.

GOLDMAN SACHS IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL

I previously promised to post about Goldman Sachs' connections with the Obama administration and I have not been able to return to the topic. However, in light of the SEC's recent proclamation that it will pursue fraud charges against Goldman Sachs, there is no better time than now. Let me preface my comments by stating that the SEC's investigation of Goldman Sachs will be an absolute farce. The Obama Administration is so inextricably intertwined with Goldman Sachs that 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. should be renamed the Gold House. GS donated almost $1m to Obama’s presidential campaign, more than any other contributor except Cal-Berkley. (By the way, Citigroup added $701K and JPMorganChase another $695K). In December 2008, a New York Times editorial questioned the motivation of then New York Federal Reserve President Timothy Geithner’s decision to let Lehman Brothers fail (GS's other competitors: Merrill Lynch & BearStearns similarly did not receive bailouts). Two days later, Geithner advocated for the bailout of AIG and its counterparties. As a result of the bailout, AIG was able to pay many of its creditors and trade partners, including a cool $6 billion to GS. In September 2008, Geithner had a meeting to discuss the AIG bailout, and GS CEO Lloyd Blankfein was the only Wall Street leader at the meeting. At the time, GS was AIG’s largest trading partner. During the campaign, Obama attended a private GS dinner and when it came time to name a running mate, Obama turned to GS Board Member James Johnson for help. Johnson was forced to vacate the post as a result.

Former Goldman Sachs' employees fill a number of high-level cabinet and departmental posts or otherwise have close connections to GS. Mark Patterson, a former GS lobbyist and former VP of Gov’t Relations, is Tim Geithner’s chief of staff. Obama’s deputy national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, was paid $3.9 million in 2008 by a Washington law firm whose major clients include GS. Lawrence Summers, Obama’s chief economic adviser, received $135,000 last year for a speech he made to GS executives. Other high level financial positions held in the Obama administration by former Goldman Sachs executives are Neel Kashkari, heading the TARP bailout; Gary Gensler, top executive at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission; Michael Paese, Rep. Barney Frank’s top aide, who is the chair of the House Financial Services Committee; former GS Vice Chairman Robert Hormats is the State Department's undersecretary for economic, energy and agricultural affairs; Dianna Farrell, Deputy Director, National Economic Council, is a former GS Financial Analyst; Stephen Friedman, Chairman, President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, is a former GS Board Member (Chairman, 1990-94; Director, 2005-2009); Philip Murphy, Ambassador to Germany, was the former head of Goldman Sachs, Frankfurt; and John Thain, Advisor to Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geitner, was GS President and Chief Operating Officer (1999-2003). But here's the kicker: the Obama administration created a new position at the SEC: COO of the SEC enforcement division. With whom did they fill the post? None other than Adam Storch, former VP of Goldman Sachs’ Business Intelligence Group. So the guy who is in charge of enforcing any potential penalties against Goldman Sachs is a former GS guy. You just can't make this stuff up.

Meanwhile, GS’s stock is up 77% this year. GS will pay a total of more than $22 billion in salaries and bonuses to its 29,400 employees. Average compensation will hit $772,857, an all-time record. In 2006, before the financial crisis, the company paid out $661,490 per employee. Oh, how it pays to be in bed with the big O...

Books to read

I am reading a fantastic book by Thomas Sowell called A Conflict of Visions. The book advances a theory about two opposing ways of looking at the world - the constrained and the unconstrained - and posits that each vision forms the basis of the differences in political ideologies that continue to this date. Sowell is so smart he will make your head hurt - but his use of practical applications and direct quotes from major contributors to the respective visions make this book a joy to read.