November 18 –

ROMNEY'S LOSS BEGAN 50 YEARS AGO...
PETRAEUS A PATRIOT? ...
HOSTESS WITH THE LEAST-EST

- - - - -

Precisely what grade of moron believes Attorney General Eric Holder didn't tell Obama that the head of the CIA, Petraeus, was being investigated long before the election?

- - - - -

Please. Let us hear no more bullfeathers from or about General Petraeus and his noble commitment to “Duty, honor, country.” The man knew he was lying – to Congress, yet – when he went along with the bogus story that the Benghazi murders were provoked by some video about Muslims.
    He's a self-aggrandizing scumbag who not only betrayed his wife, he betrayed the whole country. In a rational world, he'd have his scrawny butt thrown in prison for perjury.

- - - - -

One ongoing episode and its permutations tells you all you need to know about liberals' understanding of economics.
     Hostess is a company that makes bakery products. Twinkies, Ho-Ho's, Wonder Bread and cupcakes are its best-known products. It is in a competitive industry. It got caught in a cost vs. price bind. It was forced by economic circumstances to tell its workers it could no longer continue doing business on a money-losing basis.
     Union leaders and activists evidently thought the company could, should and would continue to pay workers wages and benefits, regardless of economic realities.
     They thought wrong. The company, bankrupt, has gone out of business, causing 18,000 workers to lose their jobs.
     Unions certainly have a place and an obligation to obtain for workers the best pay, benefits and working conditions that economic circumstances permit. But no matter how fervently union activists wish to believe otherwise there are immutable laws of economics, the first of which is: If your outgo exceeds your income, your upkeep will be your downfall.
      Now, typical of leftist thinking, there are actually demands that the government take over Hostess ... and keep cranking out those Twinkies!

                                                                                       - - - - -

Lovers of sweet junk-food are in distress over the shut-down of Hostess, purveyor of such goods. Many complain they can't find a Ho-Ho anywhere. Yet Gen. David Petraeus and Gen. John Allen managed to find at least one apiece.

                                                                                       - - - - -
Jay Leno
    :General Petraeus agreed to testify before Congress.  I guess he figured, 'Why not?'  Those questions can't be any tougher than the ones he's getting at home right now."

Why did Obama want to downplay the FACT that the Benghazi murders came in a terrorist attack? Because it makes obvious that his claim that “Al Qaeda is defeated” was a blatant lie and undermined his sophomoric stance that (as a fellow Muslim?) his overtures to that murderous culture had improved relations with its adherents.

- - - - -

Here's the American – make that “human” – mentality in a nutshell:
    Poll-taker – “At what level of income should a person pay higher taxes?”
    Citizen – “Anyone who makes ten grand a year more than I get.”

- - - - -

    While it is a sad fact that most Americans are so ill-informed the Benghazi murders had little impact (especially given media collusion in the cover-up), a strong attack by Romney in the final debate might have made some small difference. Instead, he didn't even mention the outrageous lies and dereliction of duty by Obama.
    The Tea Party element within the Republican party has made mistakes – the choice of idiots as Senate candidates in Indiana and Missouri, plus the Nevada debacle that allowed Harry Reid to keep his seat two years ago – the fact remains that they have given some badly-needed backbone to the GOP.
    By the way, I'll be surprised if House Speaker John Boehner doesn't cave in to Obama on a tax increase, however it may be disguised. Also look for “comprehensive immigration reform,” for which Republicans will get no credit; only more opposing votes. And what will we get? Mark Steyn probably has it right …
    “Republicans think they're importing hardworking immigrants who want a shot at the American Dream; the Democrats think they're importing clients for Big Government. The Left is right: Just under 60 percent of immigrants receive some form of welfare. I see the recent Republican proposals for some form of amnesty contain all sorts of supposed safeguards against gaming the system, including a $525 application fee for each stage of the legalization process. On my own recent visit to a U.S. Immigration office, I was interested to be told that, as a matter of policy, the Obama administration is now rubber-stamping all 'fee waiver' requests for 'exceptional hardship' filed by members of approved identity groups. And so it will go for all those GOP safeguards. While Canada and Australia compete for high-skilled immigrants, America fast-tracks an unskilled welfare class of such economic benefit to their new homeland they can't even afford a couple of hundred bucks for the necessary paperwork.”

- - - - -

Middle-East Arabs have clearly decided that they can now attack Israel without fear that the U.S. will intervene or support the beleaguered little island of Democracy surrounded by an ocean of Muslim hatred. It is equally clear that the Israelis now understand that they are on their own with no expectation of support from Barack Hussein Obama.
    If Israel comes to a bottom-line choice of either use their nuclear weapons or face extinction … well, which would you do?  
   And yet American Jews still voted overwhelmingly for Barack Hussein Obama.
   Amazing.

- - - - -

Note to Ashleigh Banfield of CNN: Yes, Jerusalem IS the capital of Israel. Dope.

- - - - -

Here's how one small business has chosen to deal with the expensive burden imposed by Obamacare.
    This particular businessman owns several fast-food franchised restaurants; a half-dozen or so. Collectively they employ a couple of hundred people – enough that he would be required to provide the stipulated Obamacare health plan. He sold them individually for one dollar each to his family members and for about $500 in legal fees he converted his company into five or six smaller companies, none employing more than 49 people. Presto! No need to comply with Obamacare!

- - - - -

- - - - -

A life in radio ... (Cont.) ... the Chicago mob ...
     I spent a good part of my early radio career in Chicago -- two turns adding up to more than a dozen years.  You can't live in Chi-town that long, especially in a job with a fairly high level of media visibility, without getting to know a bit about the mobsters who've long played a prominent role in the politics, economic and social structure of the city.   
    Here are a few more examples from personal experience.
     I lived most of my time in Chicago on one of the highest floors of one of the Marina City round towers that were a Chicago landmark located on State Street at the Chicago River, just north of the loop. Bertrand Goldberg, the architect who designed the then-revolutionary project, was a friend of a friend and got me a great deal on an apartment there.
    My upstairs neighbor, directly above my apartment, turned out to be Murray "The Camel" Humphries who was the equivalent of Meyer Lansky as counsellor and solon of the Big Five of the Chicago Mafia.
    He was always pleasant in the elevator and I didn't know who/what he was for my first few years in the building. Eventually he died in his apartment. Natural causes. When the police had to remove the solid-steel door he'd installed in order to get it, they found that his master-bedroom closet, directly above mine, was full of weapons and enough explosives to decapitate the building.
    My late travel business partner had one of Chicago's Big Five Mafiosi marry into his family. The bride didn't know what Joe "Little Caesar" DiVarco really did for a living (you can look him up on the internet) until their honeymoon, when he gave her a sketchy summary and informed her that the only way out -- for her or him -- was "feet first."
    Joe had worked his way up by being a hit-man for Sam Giancana and was known to have murdered at least 37 men without ever spending a night in jail for any of his hits.
    He ran gambling, vice and the "juice" racket (short-term loans at extortionate rates) on Chicago's north side and owned "The Shirt Shop," a modest menswear store on Rush Street in the nightclub district, as a front for his business. His bookmaking operation alone was reported to take in over a million dollars a week. Nicest, most soft-spoken chap you'd ever want to meet. I made it a point during our few casual meetings never to annoy him.

    One of my best friends was a promotion guy for Decca Records. His family name ended in a vowel, and only after a long acquaintance did I learn that Sam "Momo" Giancana had grown up with him. As little boys, they'd even slept in the same bed when his family took the Giancana lad in from a life on the street.
    They remained friends, although their lives took very different paths. My friend was totally legit; Sam killed people for a living.
    Periodically they'd get together for lunch or dinner and Sam would ask if there was anything his childhood friend needed. The answer was always, "Thanks, but nothing."
    At the time I was dating a young woman whose ex-husband was discharged from the Marine Corps on grounds of being mentally disturbed. He'd returned to Chicago from California and had begun calling and threatening her.
    I casually mentioned it to my record-promoter friend over lunch and he replied noncomittally.
    A few days later he asked if my lady friend was still having problems with her ex- and I told him the calls had suddenly stopped. Suddenly an alarming possibility occurred to me. I asked if he'd mentioned my lady friend's little "problem" to Sam.
    Slowly -- and it was like pulling teeth -- he admitted that, while he told Sam -- as he always did -- that he needed no favors himself, he did mention a minor annoyance a friend (me) was having.
    He hastily added that nothing disabling had happened to the ex-husband -- whom the police had been unable to find, by the way. It seems he had been found and visited by a couple of large men, one of whom was carrying a baseball bat, and handed a one-way airline ticket to Los Angeles. It had been explained to him that he could use the ticket and never return to Chicago ... or he could say goodbye to his kneecaps.
    However mentally disturbed he may have otherwise been, the choice was not difficult.

- - - - -

Jay Leno –
     "The economy is so bad MSNBC had to lay off 300 Obama spokesmen. The economy is so bad, President Obama sent Susan Rice out to defend it.”

                                                                                            - - - - -