The Worst Acceptance Speech Ever
A train wreck at best, Mariah Carey with too much to drink stole the show at the Palm Springs International Film Festival after being named Breakthrough Actress for her role in the movie ‘Precious.’
She is precious…
An Obama Appointee Who Paid His/Her Taxes
Obama continues making all sorts of “firsts”.
For Amanda Simpson, America’s first openly transgender presidential appointee, the job in the U.S. Commerce Department is an honor and the culmination of a career dedicated to understanding military technology.
President Obama recently named Amanda Simpson to be a Senior Technical Advisor to the Commerce Department. Simpson will monitor the exports of U.S. weapons technology.
But what gnaws at her, she says, is the fear of being labeled a token who was hired because of her sexual identity rather than on her merits.
“Being the first sucks,” she told ABC News.com. “I’d rather not be the first but someone has to be first, or among the first. I think I’m experienced and very well qualified to deal with anything that might show up because I’ve broken barriers at lots of other places and I always win people over with who I am and what I can do.
She has 30 years in the industry but can’t escape the feeling that some will see her appointment as a political maneuver.
“[There will be] questions like: Is this a token? Are you here to do a job or just to fill a quota or appease other people? In that regard it makes it a bit more difficult,” she said. “I’m sure I will have to do and intend to do a far superior job than any other person. But I’m sure I will always be second guessed.”
Weighing in…What a freak show this presidency is.
Seems the trade has its share of transgendered stars:
How many Rocket Scientists with 30 years experience in defence areas, who have degrees in both Engineering and Business Administration, as well as Physics?
- Professor Lynn Conway, former head of the Defence Strategic Computing Initiative transitioned some time ago.
- Dr Stephanie Langhoff, Chief Scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Centre transitioned too.
California Bus Crash – Quite a Scene
N(quite)SFW: The VH1 reality show will be set back by this crash… and California wasn’t ready for this.
Classic Hockey Fights
I miss Bob Probert.. hockey hasn’t been the same.
Then the legendary Flyers.. Dave Schultz was a one-of-a-kind.
A New Style Of Political Ad
Sure to terrify the Democrats.. and brutally honest. If I were a Republican candidate, I would consider it as my only ad to run.
I find it hard to believe Democrats will come close to holding power in congress.
Bright days ahead, once the purge is complete.
California Completely Misses The Point
As California continues to melt down, an article today in the Oakland Tribune forecasts the challenge (tax revenue) and completely forgets where the money actually comes from.
They point out the welfare will need to be cut, along with schools, and state workers…
Enrollment in California classrooms could swell, public colleges may further limit enrollment and raise student fees, state workers could face another year of furloughs, and the poor may stop receiving welfare unless Schwarzenegger and lawmakers agree to raise revenue.
Since February, California has made nearly $60 billion in adjustments to its annual spending plan. That has come in the form of cuts to education and social service programs, temporary hikes in the sales and income taxes, an increase in the vehicle license fee and one-time infusions of cash from the federal stimulus package.
The stimulus funding and temporary taxes will begin to end at the end of 2010, leaving less revenue for the second half of the fiscal year that will begin in July. Compounding California’s problem are lawsuits that have reversed several of this year’s budget decisions, contributing to a $6 billion deficit in the current fiscal year.
The state also has been unable to adopt prison and health care cuts it passed in the last budget.
Here’s a novel idea:
Make the state friendly to business and people who pay taxes. Raise tax revenue by allowing people to make money. Profits = Jobs = Tax Revenue.
Creating a climate for growth is the only way out – increasing taxes and relying on handouts will only continue the death spiral.
The liberal idea that you can tax or spend your way out of a financial crisis has really paid off so far.
If they want to be genius, all they need to do is rid themselves of the laws that kill business, cut social spending and lower taxes… it will bring people and business back to the state and the tax revenue they so dearly need.
In BC, we have a government that is following California down this road… HST will be a killer, along with the new taxes we’ll be blessed with after the Winter Olympics. (No one has an inkling of how much the games will actually cost us.) Health care is already being rationed and as it increases in percentage of our budget spending, it will continue to rapidly decline.
The statistics for B.C. are daunting: Promised surpluses turned into record deficits; over 40,000 private sector jobs disappeared; exports fell by 25 per cent; and the number of EI recipients more than doubled.
If BC hopes to avoid the same fate as California, maybe now would be a good time to use the HST introduction to kill off personal income tax. Or to bring in a flat tax? At minimum, lower the provincial sales tax rate to counter the punishing effects HST will have on all the new items that will be taxed.
It may even save the Campbell Liberals from extinction.
The only reason they are introducing HST is the bribe that comes along with it… this one-time payment from the Federal Government is short sighted and will prove to cost more than they can imagine.
2010 should be the year of jobs, not taxes. Unfortunately, we are blessed with left-wing policies that ignore where the money comes from.
Daniel Hollinger at Hollinger International has links to articles on school reform
Obama’s Dangerous Strategy
Bill Kristol Takes The Obama Administration to task for the way they are handling terror.
“Closing the embassy in Yemen last night? No one wants State Department officials put at risk, but that is a sign of weakness. Closing the embassy? We can’t protect our own embassy in Yemen, a place where we have special operations forces. A place we say we’re working with the government on the front lines of the war on terror? And there’s a terror threat, and we close the embassy?
Kristol’s damning summation: “That’s a victory for al Qaeda. This last week has been a victory for al Qaeda in that region, I’m afraid.”
Starting to be shades of the past when the US handled terror as an inconvenience. Obama needs to quit worrying about what Dick Cheney says and start working on fighting a war that he is (reluctantly) in.
Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan.. you have to wonder if Obama is up to the task?
The reason the country is uneasy about the Obama administration’s response to this attack is a distinct sense of not just incompetence but incomprehension. From the very beginning, President Obama has relentlessly tried to downplay and deny the nature of the terrorist threat we continue to face. Napolitano renames terrorism “man-caused disasters.” Obama goes abroad and pledges to cleanse America of its post-9/11 counterterrorist sins. Hence, Guantanamo will close, CIA interrogators will face a special prosecutor, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will bask in a civilian trial in New York — a trifecta of political correctness and image management.
This is all quite mad even in Obama’s terms. He sends 30,000 troops to fight terror overseas, yet if any terrorists come to attack us here, they are magically transformed from enemy into defendant.
The logic is perverse. If we find Abdulmutallab in an al-Qaeda training camp in Yemen, where he is merely preparing for a terror attack, we snuff him out with a Predator — no judge, no jury, no qualms. But if we catch him in the United States in the very act of mass murder, he instantly acquires protection not just from execution by drone but even from interrogation.
The president said that this incident highlights “the nature of those who threaten our homeland.” But the president is constantly denying the nature of those who threaten our homeland. On Tuesday, he referred five times to Abdulmutallab (and his terrorist ilk) as “extremist(s).”
A man who shoots abortion doctors is an extremist. An eco-fanatic who torches logging sites is an extremist. Abdulmutallab is not one of these. He is a jihadist. And unlike the guys who shoot abortion doctors, jihadists have cells all over the world; they blow up trains in London, nightclubs in Bali, and airplanes over Detroit (if they can); and they are openly pledged to wage war on America.
Any government can through laxity let someone slip through the cracks. But a government that refuses to admit that we are at war, indeed, refuses even to name the enemy — jihadist is a word banished from the Obama lexicon — turns laxity into a governing philosophy.
Victor Davis Hansen has some great “war on terror” 2010 predictions here.
Worst Communicators Of The Year
The worst and best communicator list is in: from the left and the right.
Some surprises… Barry and Sarah both came in at #10.
Guess how Barry ranked…
- He is aloof and professorial, actually most often speaking formally with his nose a bit aloft
- He speaks in bursts and a repetitious cadence, almost in a sing-song manner
- He leans with an enormous emphasis on scripts and the teleprompter
- He has NEVER learned how to use the teleprompter well
- Often he makes gaffes when he speaks spontaneously
- And he is way over exposed, where speaking on the trivial diminishes the important
The list of the best and the worst..
The New Crown of the Great Communicator Goes To:
You Voted Democrat?
A good video – for us Canadians, substitute the Liberal party and it is almost 100%
Made at http://www.xtranormal.com where anyone can make a movie.. have fun.