Category Archives: Politics & News

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Look the Other Way

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Other than ShumpleCare, Gov. Peter Shumlin (D-VT) has been acting pretty much like a good Repuglican.

His $4.8 billion 2011 budget proposal slashed human services spending. Even the Vermont House Repuglican leader was pleased that the governor was “mostly sticking to not raising taxes and he is looking at ways to cut structural costs.”

In the wake of Irene, Gov. Shumlin eschewed the big government solutions, supporting and cheerleading community volunteers where they could help and building infrastructure where the government should. He even hired former top Repuglican aide Neale Lunderville as Irene-Czar.

And then he reminded us that he is a Big-D Demorat after all.

See, Demorats don’t believe in law. Oh, they believe in making law. But the law doesn’t apply to them unless it’s a “good” law.

Vermont state troopers made a routine traffic stop on I-89 about a week ago. In the stop they discovered that two migrant farm workers from Mexico were in the country illegally.

That’s an important distinction. The two migrant farm workers from Mexico had entered the country illegally.

Let me make that clear. The two migrant farm workers from Mexico had broken the law entering and staying in this country.

A decade or so ago, the U.S. Border Patrol, stretched thin, seconded Vermont police to that agency. In addition to enforcing all the law, Vermont police have the explicit duty to enforce customs and immigration laws. The driver of the car they stopped, a U.S. citizen, received a speeding ticket.

The staties turned the farm workers over to the Homeland Security. The Vermont Migrant Farmworker Solidarity Project has branded the incident “racial profiling.” They ginned up a protest that included a human chain to block the Border Patrol vehicles from transferring the illegals to another facility for processing. Police arrested three protesters. I’m thinking they should have checked for green cards.

Reporter Stewart Ledbetter of WPTZ-TV interviewed Gov. Shumlin about the brouhaha. The governor said Vermont should “look the other way” when dealing with the illegal “guest workers” on Vermont farms. “We have always had a policy in Vermont where we kind of look the other way as much as we can.”

Gov. Shumlin said “look the other way” is Vermont policy on “undocumented” farm workers because the state dairy farms cannot survive without them.

Any end. Any means.

Apparently, I couldn’t buy any milk today unless it came from illegally squeezed teats.


“Every officer, whether judicial, executive, or military, in authority under this State, before entering upon the execution of office, shall take and subscribe the following oath or affirmation …” [Vermont Constitution]

Then Governor-elect Peter Shumlin’s big moment came when the Paul Rieber, Chief Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court, administered the oath of office:
Shumlin OathPaul Rieber: “I do solemnly swear … according to law.”
Peter Shumlin: “I do solemnly swear … according to law.”
R: “I solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution
S: “I solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution”
R: “Of the state of Vermont”
S: “Of the state of Vermont”
R: “And the Constitution of the United States”
S: “And the Constitution of the United States”
R: “So help me God”
S: “So help me God.”
R: “Congratulations, Governor.”

I need milk today, so I guess it is in my best interest that the Governor is a law-breaking Demorat.

UPDATE: November 4, 2011

Governor Peter Shumlin (D-VT) today announced his new “bias free” policing policy for Vermont State Police.

Vermont will commit no resources to prevent illegal immigration.

The new policy orders Vermont state troopers not try to identify people whose only suspected violation is that they are present in the United States without proper documentation; troopers clearly should investigate any suspected criminal activity.

crim·i·nal /ˈkrimənl/ Of or relating to a crime, a person who has committed a crime.

crime /krīm/ An action that may be prosecuted by the state and is punishable by law.

I’m thinking the crime here is that the governor of a state has made as policy that the state will investigate any suspected criminal activity as long as they don’t investigate that criminal activity.

“Dayumn, That JLo Is a Comely Thing”

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The Chrysler/Fiat marketing masterminds have followed native-son rapper Eminem’s Chrysler 200 commercial “imported from Detroit” (I called it the best ad on the Super Bowl) with a new one.

Walter Chrysler founded his Chrysler Corporation out of the ashes of Maxwell-Chalmers to build cars in Detroit City in 1925. Since then, Chrysler has bought and shut down a number of car lines including AMC, American, Barreiros, Graham Brothers, Commer, DeSoto, Eagle, Canadian Fargo, Hillman, Hudson, Humber, Imperial, Karrier, Maxwell, Nash, Plymouth, Rambler, Renault, Simca, Singer, Sunbeam, and the Valiant in the U.S., Canada, and Australia.

After the DaimlerChrysler fiasco, the company sold 80.1% of Chrysler Group to Cerberus Capital Management, a private equity firm. In the 2009 Obamanatationalization, Daimler agreed to give its remaining 19.9% stake to Cerberus Capital Management and to pay another $600 million into the automaker’s pension fund. The Obamanation then financed the sale of old Chrysler’s assets to New Chrysler with $6.6 billion paid to Cerebus. Chrysler repaid its $7.6 billion loans to the United States and Canadian governments in May, 2011.

I have to wonder how it is that Chrysler’s stockholder (Cerebus) got the gold while General Motor’s stockholders (Rufus and me) got the shaft, all in the same year. I guess screwing over the German Daimler AG (and us) was enough for the Obamanation.

Anyway, Eminem grew up in Detroit as did the car company. Ad agency Wieden+Kennedy celebrated that. (Portland, Oregon-based Wieden+Kennedy, known for its Nike ads, replaced the BBDO as Chrysler’s agency of record in 2009.)

This week, the beautiful Jennifer Lopez sings and drives her way to endorse the new

.
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wait for it
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Fiat 500C.
JLo sold herself for a flee flop.

Rufus said, “The Chrysler/Fiat thing — especially the 500 — is one of the most hateful things about the Obamanation’s Detroit.

“If the Progressives like Italy so much, they should go Berlusconi. They can stay forever if they love it that much.

“But dayumn that JLo is a comely thing!”

Sure.

So where’s the story? The Fiat is maybe the worst car sold in America since the Yugo but the bean counters and the Obamanation think the response in the ad is real.

Of course, the mob left the car behind when they carried off JLo. The bean counters and the Obamanation didn’t notice that.

Maybe JLo should have held out for an iPhone.

Bear Market

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A friend wrote on Google Plus last week,

Considering the effect President Obama’s last two speeches had on the Dow Jones Industrial Averages, I wonder if we’ll be looking at a Black Friday style Stock Nosedive?

That is what we call a trigger event (others include tsunamis, terrorist attacks, and travelers with influenza). That and another news story triggered a Big Thought.

The stock market dropped 300 points today in response to the President’s speech.

Then-Senator and presidential-expectee Obama’s “world that stands as one” speech in July of 2008 came at a market inflection point.

The new president made his inaugural address January 20, 2009. The Dow slid. He and Mr. Biden delivered remarks on the Economy in January, 2009. The Dow continued to slide. He spoke of regulation in the financial sector in February. The Dow dropped some more. He made his Innovation and Jobs remarks. The Dow dropped below 7,000.

He stopped talking about important stuff. The market started to recover.

Time passed.

He said “government can … create the conditions for companies to succeed” in April of 2010 and the Dow began to slide again.

Mr. Obama delivered a speech on the national debt in April of 2011. Guess what happened? He was on the stump last month and announced half a trillion in spending just last week.

That preceded that immediate 300 point slide which some pundits say has nothing to do with us and everything to do with Europe.

Here’s the problem. The data is inconclusive.

Oh, sure, I made an interesting case blaming the drop in my 401K on (liberal) presidential speeches but I’m sure some (liberal) pundit can dig through Yahoo finance to compare (conservative) presidential speeches to downward market performance.

I’m thinking we need a better indicator.

I’m thinking Animal Planet; after all, the stock market is represented by the bulls and the bears, right? And that brings me to the second news story.

A bear stole a Prius last week.

The Prius is a hybrid electric car that Toyota calls a “mid-size” sedan. On sale since 1997, the car gets regular EPA, California Air Resources Board (CARB), and Far Green ratings among the cleanest and most efficient vehicles sold. That’s based on smog contributions, toxic emissions, and apparent gas mileage.

Don’t get me started on “apparent gas mileage” and the government finagling of fuel economy figures.

Certain cars have become the darlings of demographic groups. The Subaru is the national car of Vermont (popularly known as the “Subi-truck” although the Forester station wagon is the vehicle of choice). According to epinions, “BMW drivers are bar none, the worst around.” And the Toyota Prius is the darling of the left.

The McCarthy family, on vacation in Lake Tahoe last week, has a story right out of Jellystone Park: a bear stole their car. If they had gone to Central Park, the car thief might have caused less damage.

The bear broke into their car, rummaged around, took off down the hill, and crashed into a nearby yard. Then, like any good car thief, he completely trashed inside of their Prius. “He had ripped out the back seat. There’s nothing left. There’s nothing left inside of our Prius. Gone,” said CeCe McCarthy.

A bear stole a Prius. A bull has never in the history of cars or the stock market (heh) stolen a Prius.

Bears are liberals. Bulls aren’t.

Whoda think it?

Thus concludeth my primer on the stock market.

Thor’s Trials & Tribulations

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The President of these United States is going to talk tonight. “My fellow Americans, I will set you free! Jobs jobs jobs jobs jobs for everyone.”

25 million unemployed and every person without a job has heard those words before.

I’m thinking tonight Mr. Obama’s words will again be all hat and no cow(boys). And that may be the biggest trial of all.

Jack of All Trades

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The lizard is affronted, annoyed, slightly choleric, exasperated, fierce, vexed, and more than a little disappointed.

On her Monday Peeve over there, she wrote, “I’m not even gonna get into dual-language packaging and how the employees at stores always put the Spanish side out when stocking the shelves.”

So I will.

Packaging is part of the issue. After all, having the same descriptions in two or seven languages on the box is more irritating to those of us who don’t wear our readers all the time but including a user manual in those same two or seven languages means either even smaller print or a lot more paper in each and every box.

Most manufacturers shrink the print and quadruple the paper. More for the waste stream.

This is an issue that not only could help Congress take its mind off important actions like renaming post offices and their vacation; it can also increase liberal schizophrenia.

We need a law, see, that bans multiple language packaging and user manuals. And forms. We do, after all, place the environmental impact of the waste stream above all else.


In our effort to become Jacks and Jills of all trades
We have become the Masters of Baiters.
We can do more.We can save money and go green if we just reduce, recycle, and reuse the lingua franca of the United States.With 14 million Hispanic residents, California has the largest population of people who self-identify as Hispanic or Latino. That’s about one-third of the state population. (Florida is number three, behind Texas, with 4.2 million or not quite one-quarter of the population.)On the other hand, there is no accurate count of the number of Muslims in the United States, because the U.S. Census Bureau does not collect data on religious identification. The Council on American-Islamic Relations reported 7 million people nationwide self-identified in 2011.

“Press 3 for Arabic?”

[Image]California’s Muslims make up some 3.4% of that state’s population or 20% of the national total. Michigan’s Muslims appear to be 1.8% of the Michigan population, less than half that state’s Hispanic population. Recognizing the extreme need to cut down the vast northwestern forests, the California Medi-Cal Eligibility forms may be available in more than Arabic, including Armenian, Chinese, Farsi, Hmong, Khmer, Korean, Laotian, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese. And English. The State of Michigan Public Assistance also offers help English, Spanish, and Arabic.

“Now on top of all the paper, the state offices have to have 17 different writing systems?” Rufus said. “Bleeping morons.”

Here’s the bait: all you environmentalists reading this? Isn’t it time to cut this kind of waste from our government, our shelves, our stream?