LEE RODGERSOLDEST TRICK IN TV NEWS -
CAMERAS LIE ...
BEN BERNANKE: WISE OR STUPID? ...
GOV. JERRY DUG HIS OWN HOLE
BEN BERNANKE: WISE OR STUPID? ...
GOV. JERRY DUG HIS OWN HOLE
Everybody sing along ...
"It's a long, long time ... from May to December ...
... and the money grows short ... when you reach September ..."
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If you only saw yesterday's TV coverage of Obama's speech to the troops at Ft. Bliss, Texas, you'd think he was warmly received because of the medium-close-up of clusters of (mostly black) troops applauding him.
A wider shot would have given you the true picture: most were silently staring at him.
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Speaking of our self-aggrandizing president ...
The stands will be packed for his acceptance speech in Charlotte because free tickets are being given away and union stooges bussed in from all over the country to fill the seats. It's an old Broadway showbiz game called "papering the house."
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It is obvious that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is utterly devoid of (A) imagination or even (B) the ability to learn from the experience of others or even himself.
The man who has the largest voice in the government's financial policy says, in his desperation to save Obama's job, that the answer is ... more stimulus spending by the government.
Did he not notice the utter failure of that project earlier in the Obama era, when the only thing that was accomplished was massive debt, largely to China?
Does he not care about older folk, many of whom depend on income from their CDs to supplement Social Security benefits and maintain a decent standard of living?
And how can he not know that cheap money, with interest rates as low as zero failed to bring Japan out of a prolonged recession.
All his foolish policies are doing is to ensure that when the inevitable inflation bursts loose, it will be even worse. Anyone with the most elementary understanding of economics knows -- or should know -- that if the printing of dollars outpaces growth in the economy, that is bound to be the result.
We are governed, and our lives directed, by fools.
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Columnist/author Burt Prelutsky has an agenda to propose ...
"If Romney and Ryan win, and the GOP manages to regain control of the Senate, the celebration will be short-lived unless they repeal ObamaCare; institute long overdue changes in healthcare; do away with several federal departments and cabinet positions; undertake welfare reform, taking millions of undeserving people off food stamps; passing a federal law against lying about disabilities in order to fatten up pension checks; get America out of the U.N. and the U.N. out of America; and revoking public sector unions.
"Even as radical a left-winger as FDR knew that the very idea of allowing civil servants to unionize was insane. It was only after he saw how easily Robert F. Wagner, Jr., won re-election as New York’s mayor after allowing city employees to unionize that John Kennedy decided that he would help assure his own re-election by doing the same for federal employees.
"We see the result of this madness in cities and states across America, as more and more of them go bankrupt as a result of the sweetheart union contracts that gutless, self-serving, politicians have cut over the past several decades."
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Eventually, as even California Governor Jerry Brown now admits, the chickens do come home to roost. In this case, he refers to the bloated, out-of-control pension plans for state and local government employees.
He doesn't mention his own major contribution to the situation; i.e., being among the leaders in green-lighting government employee unions, which he did for the usual political reason: buying votes from those unionized workers with taxpayer dollars. Jack Kennedy did it at the federal level for the same purpose. And with the same result.
Democrats -- it's what they do. Putting them in positions of political power is, to quote P. J. O'Rourke, "Like giving whiskey and the car keys to a teenage boy."
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The ever-insightful Dr. Thomas Sowell addresses the determined ignorance of Barack Obama ...
"Obama was already doctrinaire at a very early age — and ill-informed or misinformed on both history and economics.
"Obama did not simply happen to encounter a lot of people on the far-left fringe during his life. As he spells out in his book, he actively sought out such people.
"When Obama wrote that many people 'had been enslaved only because of the color of their skin,' he was repeating a common piece of gross misinformation. For thousands of years, people enslaved other people of the same race as themselves, whether in Europe, Asia, Africa or the Western Hemisphere.
"His statement in "Dreams from My Father" about how white men went to Africa to 'drag away the conquered in chains' betrays his ignorance of African history.
"During the era of the Atlantic slave trade, most of Africa was ruled by Africans, who sold some of their slaves to white men.
"Europeans enslaved other Europeans for centuries before the first African was brought in bondage to the Western Hemisphere.
"The very word ' slave' is derived from the name of a European people once widely held in bondage, the Slavs." -- Investors Business Daily
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A reminder that investing in fads can be hazardous to your financial health. Facebook stock hit the market on a wave of juvenile enthusiasm and had a starting price of $38 per share.
It's now less than half that number.
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Jim Eason forwards this jewel of insight ...
A woman applied for a job in a Florida lemon grove and seemed to be far too qualified for the job.
She had a liberal arts degree from the University of Michigan, had worked as a social worker and a school teacher.
The foreman frowned and said, "That's fine, but have you ever picked lemons before?"
She replied, " I've been divorced three times, owned a Chrysler - and I voted for Obama."
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The less said the better ... about the Ann Arbor, Michigan, man who called the police to complain that the hooker he was patronizing had raised her price.
That's what happens when you don't keep up with business news.
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Craig Ferguson --
"I can't wait to see the debate between Ryan and Joe Biden. Biden is said to be already trying out different strategies. So far the one that Obama likes is where Biden pretends to have food poisoning and they cancel the debate."
"...and now, if you'll excuse me..."