The First Monday In September

Labor Day. Where services like garbage collection get the day off if only to make it up on the weekend.

Other services have the day off completely. But does the DMV really need the Labor Day off? They already get a 9 - 5 working break for their normal day.

More about unions and how the public sector unions (read, government workers) are growing.

[T]hey've been soaring in the public sector. Last year, for the first time, the number of unionized public employees exceeded the number of unionized private workers -- 7.9 million to 7.4 million.

Now, since the country has five times as many private jobs as public ones, this was possible only because the public unionization rate (37.4 percent) was more than five times higher than the private one (7.2 percent).

Another big difference: The average federal worker is compensated at $123,000 a year, including $42,000 in benefits -- more than twice what the average private worker gets. (State and local government employees don't do as well, but still beat private-sector pay.)

And these days a public job is a lot more likely to be truly a 9 to 5 affair than a private one.

I don't know if Obama was born in the US or abroad and I don't care. Part of the reason why he doesn't show his birth certificate is to marginalize those demanding to see it. But his behavior is very un-American. Case in point: Barack reported the United States to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights because some states have right to work laws and can't organize into unions. To me that's a feature, not a bug.



Stuart Varney embodies the American spirit more than Barack Hussain Obama ever has.

And yet even more union corruption. Enough to grind my teeth down to nubs. They say they are for the little guy. They say they are for the working man. But why is it the higher ups keep on lining their pockets at the expense of the membership?

Michelle Malkin has even more about unions and thugs. But I repeat myself.

And that's enough time spent on unions.

Cynthia Tucker: Slicing atoms with a mental hammer. It's not the color of Obama's skin but the nature of his policies.

I'll leave the last word for Nick Gillespie at Reason were he sums up Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor rally at the Lincoln Memorial.

4. The attendees saw a continuity between George Bush and Barack Obama, spendthrift and ineffectual Republicans and Democrats. To me, this was the most interesting aspect of the crowd. There were definitely more Republicans than Democrats (who may have been missing almost totally), but virtually everyone we talked with identified as an independent. Who was fed up with the past decade, really, not just the past 18 or so months of Obama.

It's "We The People" Not "We The Plover"

I haven't talked enough about radical environmental groups here. One more thing on the "I need to do" list for this blog. Among others, a tip jar.*

Many of them fall into the Watermelon category. Green on the outside but Red (Marxist, Socialist, whatever your flavor is) on the inside. Self proclaimed socialist and former 'Green Jobs Czar' Van Jones is a perfect example.

Lisa was kind enough to email these to me. It's a bit long but worth sitting through it to see how environmentalists is using government encroachment to force people off their private property in The Outer Banks (OBX) in North Carolina. It's forced relocation.

Until the Audubon Society needs to sell off some of their land for money. That's primo beach front property. Plovers be damned when there's a buck to be made for the Watermelons.





For more info click here.

*Hey, it can happen. My parents might read this blog one day close to my birthday decide not to send the card that year.

Stacy McCain Is Quoting Rhett Butler

It must be serious.

Some things are predictable — i.e., that the Palin-haters would decide it was a good time to recycle the old SPLC/LGF attacks on me in order to exploit my interview with Todd Palin for a guilt-by-association smear. When Rachel Maddow tried the same trick last fall — based on my friend Lynn Vincent’s collaboration with Sarah Palin on Going Rogue — I made a few points in my response:

I don’t have to explain myself or prove a negative. . . .
There is no obligation for me to speak a word in my own defense.

Earlier this year, I described the Left’s tactics in dealing with an LGF attack on Dennis Prager:

• Bad Faith – The accusation that conservatives are motivated by bad faith (mala fides) is essential to the Left’s attacks. Stigmatizing and marginalizing conservatives is much easier than debating them. Cogent arguments about policy become unnecessary to advancing the Left’s political agenda if they can dismiss its opponents as racist, sexist, homophobic, etc.
• The Ransom Note Method – By carefully selecting “evidence” of bad faith, the Left is able to present a distorted image of its conservative targets. Out-of-context quotes and controversial biographical data are cherry-picked and re-assembled (in the manner of a kidnapper assembling a ransom note) to present the target in the most damning possible light. This method is particularly effective against conservative talk-radio personalities who engage in polemic battle with leftists. This is why Media Matters devotes such enormous resources to monitoring talk radio in hopes of grabbing a 40-second “gotcha” sound-bite.
• The ‘Links and Ties’ Method – More than simple guilt-by-association, the Links-and-Ties Method involves presenting a chain of incidental connections to suggest a sympathy of views that does not actually exist. To wit: Target A once spoke at Event B which was sponsored by Group C, co-founded by Person D who once made controversial statement E. By this method, it is implied that Target A actually endorses Statement E.
• Telescoping and Telepathy – The actions, statements and associations of a conservative target acquire a trans-temporal permanence in the smear attacks of the Left. Once a target is associated (however incidentally) with controversy, this association can be repeated endlessly as evidence of bad faith, no matter how many years intervene. Furthermore, if the target is associated in Year X with a respectable person or organization that becomes controversial in Year X+5, that association can be cited in Year X+10 as evidence against the target – even if the target had no involvement in the cause of controversy. Finally, all evidence of bad faith accumulated by these methods is presented as indicative of the target’s deepest and unwavering personal convictions, as if the accuser were possessed of telepathic mind-reading abilities.
• Deny, Denounce, Repudiate – The key to these attack methods is the presumption of the target’s guilt. The accuser, having carefully selected the evidence to be discussed in the manner of a prosecutor making an indictment, demands that the target deny the accusation, denounce the bad-faith views involved, and repudiate the persons and organizations to whom he has been connected by the links-and-ties method. As anyone who has been targeted by such attacks can attest, it’s rather like being accused in one of Stalin’s infamous Moscow “show trials.”

Read the rest.

Robert Stacy McCain is a very effective voice for the Conservative Blog-O-Sphere. No wonder people who don't like him scream RAAAAACISM when he speaks. It's one way they try to tell him to shut up.

Feminists Object To Taylor Swift's New Song

Via Cassie. A good kind of feminist.

And by feminist I mean ugly, liberal, progressive women. As if there are any other kind.

It's a good song too. Surprisingly for how pop/rock country has turned into. It tells of the same story time and time again. Boy meets girl, fall in love, fight, and do they or don't they get back together? Taylor Swift wrote the song so, yes. They do get back together.

The part of the song that's tying the feminazi's panties into knots? The chorus here:

You said, "I remember how we felt, sitting by the water.
And every time I look at you, it's like the first time.
I fell in love with a careless man's careful daughter.
She is the best thing that's ever been mine."

Cassie quotes the reason why it's "objectional":

This song is rife with freaky-deaky, weirdo language that frames Swift as someone perpetually under the ownership, or at least care, of a male authority. The lyrics describe her as not a woman, but as a “careless man’s careful daughter” that her new boyfriend has “made a rebel of.” This is problematic to me, in the sense that it implies a transfer of her ownership from one man to another. I think it’s weird in this song that she doesn’t seem to have any sense of her own identity away from the love interest, or her father. I do, however, give her props for the use of the line “we got bills to pay.” Though grammatically incorrect, it implies that Taylor will be helping to pay the bills though some means of gainful employment. Let’s go back in time 50 years so that I can congratulate her on being progressive!

Notice how the songwriter's desire for a normal relationship is marginalized for the feminist version of "ownership".

Can't Jamie Keiles of Teenagerie leave a song well enough alone? Read Cassy's take on it. She has much more to say about it.

The video is posted below so you can listen to it and enjoy it for what it is. A love song.

Taylor Swift - New Music - More Music Videos

Taylor Swift: The object of hate and envy for every feminist in the blogosphere.

Forget Going Out To A Movie, Rent A DVD: It's Ten Buck Friday

I know what you are thinking, "Sure I can call up my girlfriend and go out on a date tonight" but wait. There's something better that that.

It's called Ten Buck Friday.

You can donate to a worthy conservative candidate for congress or governor instead of a date.

So if you haven't figured it out yet, it's called Ten Buck Friday and the concept is simple enough:

Conscientiously Conservative came up with a great idea. Each Friday she is donating $10 to a worthy conservative candidate now up to the November election. Several bloggers have joined the effort. Note that, if $10 is too much, do less, or do more if you can. The point is to get it on our calendars and in our minds – rather than putting it off for another time.

And if you are not sure who to donate to, Right Klik offers a poll to help choose. A sort of a guideline to follow, not really the rules. This week Ilario Pantano won [quoting Michelle Malkin].

Longtime readers of this blog and Hot Air know the extraordinary story of Ilario Pantano’s heroism. He’s the Marine sniper-turned-Wall Street trader who rejoined the military after 9/11, faced the death penalty for killing two Iraqi insurgents in the heat of battle in a terrorist-infested town near Baghdad, fought fiercely and successfully to clear his name, wrote the book Warlord chronicling his experiences, and defended other defenders who volunteer to put themselves in harm’s way for their countrymen.

Come one. It's a worthy cause. And you didn't really have a date tonight anyway.

Thanks to Bob Belvedere for the reminder. And it's always good to throw Bob a link because he is very generous with linking back. Not to mention he's a heck of a blogger too considering he is living behind enemy lines in The People's Republic of New England.

Bob, The chair is against the wall. The chair is against the wall.

It's Atlas Shrugged Day

"A white rectangle hung over the city, imparting the date to the men in the streets below. In the rusty light of this evening's sunset, the rectangle said: September 2."

Happy Atlas Shrugged Day!

The War We Couldn't Afford Vs. The Stimulus We Needed

I want to make sure I have this straight. The federal government borrowing from China to fund the War on Terror was bad but the federal government borrowing from China to pay for make work jobs was good. At least that was the working theory as I understood it when the Democrats where trying to sell the idea back at the start of 09.

The only problem is that it didn't work. And the Democrats own this failure now.

Stimulus at work!

According to CBO numbers in its Budget and Economic Outlook published this month, the cost of Operation Iraqi Freedom was $709 billion for military and related activities, including training of Iraqi forces and diplomatic operations.

Chart thanks to Fox News.

The projected cost of the stimulus, which passed in February 2009, and is expected to have a shelf life of two years, was $862 billion.

The U.S. deficit for fiscal year 2010 is expected to be $1.3 trillion, according to CBO. That compares to a 2007 deficit of $160.7 billion and a 2008 deficit of $458.6 billion, according to data provided by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.

In 2007 and 2008, the deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product was 1.2 percent and 3.2 percent, respectively.

Read the entire article.

Robert Gibbs Is Caught Lying

In other news, the sky is blue and water is wet.