Oh yeah that'll work: Amazon hires Obama's liar to run PR and lobbying

Jay Carney.

Story here.

Senator Rand Paul is clearly desperate for attention, accuses Jeb Bush of marijuana hypocrisy

Seen here:

Paul, who like Bush is considering whether to seek the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, contrasted Bush's opposition to legalizing medical marijuana with his admitted drug use while a student at Phillips Academy, an elite prep school in Andover, Mass.

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Notice the libertarian Paul isn't going after Bush's amnesty stand. No, it's not that Jeb isn't conservative enough, it's that he isn't libertarian enough.

Meanwhile Scott Walker and Jeb Bush have sucked all the air out of Rand Paul's room. Paul is way back in the polling, pulling 9.5% compared to 13% and 14.5% for the respective front runners in the latest Real Clear Politics average.

At this stage of the game it looks like this is going to be a Bush Walker ticket in 2016.

US Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain remind me of the spineless Michigan Republican legislature

Here's Lindsey Grahamnesty:

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopolous” Sunday that he supports voting for a clean DHS bill and letting the court decide on immigration.

“I hope that Republicans will come together and back the court case, file a friend of the court brief with the court, and fund DHS,” Graham said. “I am willing and ready to pass a DHS funding bill and let this play out in court. The worst possible outcome for this nation is to defund the Department of Homeland Security, given the multiple threats we face to our homeland, and I will not be part of that.”

Graham’s main Senate cohort, Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, had a similar sentiment Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

“We now have an exit sign. And that is the federal court decision saying that the president's actions unilaterally are unconstitutional,” McCain said. “And I think we have got a great argument to the United States Supreme Court, where it will go, because 22 times the president of the United States said it was unconstitutional for him to take the action that he had decided to take.”

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In other words, elected representatives to Washington DC should do everything but represent their constituents in order that nothing may make them a target on election day.

These spineless cowards hide behind the skirts of the judicial system in a way which reminds me of nothing so much as the politics of the state of Michigan, where legislators defer everything controversial to the decision of the electorate.

Here in Michigan incendiary issues like taxes and spending are typically put to a referendum and made a part of the constitution, which can't be changed without another such vote of the people, giving the politicians a skirt to hide behind less black than the robes worn by the judiciary, but just as effete.

We might as well dispense with the expense and farce of representation, and let the courts decide everything, or the people, since we have no men left to lead us.

Great Lakes Ice Cover is 25% ahead of this time last year: a warning for GDP?

Last year on this date the total ice cover was just 67%, when GDP was going negative supposedly because of the terrible winter we were having. The year before, ice cover on this date was 74.3%. As of yesterday, ice covers 84.4% of the Great Lakes, 25% ahead of last year.

Will GDP tank in 1Q2015 because of this?

We won't have what passes for complete knowledge about this until the end of June.

Data here.

If Obama can say Edward Snowden and George Bush aren't patriots, then Rudy Giuliani can say whatever he wants about Obama

Obama called Snowden unpatriotic in August 2013

Obama called Bush unpatriotic July 3, 2008

WaPo worries about Jeb's wife's spending of personal money, totally ignores Michelle Obama's marathon milking of the taxpayers

It took a FOIA request of the most transparent government ever to find out that Moochelle Obama milked the taxpayers for a $250,000 vacation in Ireland in 2013, but the Washington Post is all abuzz tonight over Jeb Bush's wife's personal spending on jewelry.

Keith Koffler reported here in April 2014 about Moochelle:

"First Lady Michelle Obama’s egregious use of the G-8 Summit in Northern Ireland last June to stage a luxury, touristy side-trip for herself and her daughters to Dublin cost taxpayers at least $251,161 according to documents obtained by Judicial Watch.

"But the cost is almost certainly much higher. For example, a separate Air Force jet that appeared to be Air Force Two, which costs more than $10,000 an hour to fly, was dispatched to Ireland to handle Michelle’s vacation-related travel. This cost is not included in the figures provided to Judicial Watch."

But WaPo's story, "Documents show the expensive tastes of Jeb Bush’s low-key wife", here, only has this to stay about the extravagant and unethical spending of President Obama's wife:

"First lady Michelle Obama drew fire for wearing a pair of sneakers that cost upward of $500 when she went to bag groceries at a food bank in 2009."

Senate Democrats to mount fourth filibuster to block funding of Dept. of Homeland Security before it runs out of money

Here's the lede from Politico:

Late Monday afternoon, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will force the fourth vote in three weeks on a bill to fund the massive agency that protects Americans from terrorists, floods and incursions across the borders. Senate Democrats will almost certainly block it again.

Former NY Mayor Rudy Giuliani tells it like it is about Obama the commie

Quoted here:

“I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that this President loves America. He doesn’t love you. He doesn’t love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up: To love this country."

“Look, this man was brought up basically in a white family, so whatever he learned or didn’t learn, I attribute this more to the influence of communism and socialism. I don’t (see) this President as being particularly a product of African-American society or something like that. He isn’t. Logically, think about his background. . . The ideas that are troubling me and are leading to this come from communists with whom he associated when he was 9 years old."

Germany blinks: Greeks win time, funding and an end to previous austerity agreements

Reported here:

Mr Tsipras added the extension would finally put an end to the "asphyxiation" Greece has suffered since 2012.

"Yesterday's agreement with the Eurogroup cancels the commitments of the previous government for cuts to wages and pensions, for firings in the public sector, for VAT rises on food, medicine," added the prime minister.

"We averted plans by blind conservative powers, within and outside the country, to asphyxiate Greece on February 28," he said.

More jobs for ISIS!

Sausage stuffer operator!

Pig roast supervisor!

Pig castrator!

Ann Coulter: It looks like Republicans are throwing the fight on illegal alien amnesty

Seen here:

"It's hard to avoid concluding that Republicans aren't trying to make the right arguments. In fact, it kind of looks like they're intentionally throwing the fight on amnesty. If a Republican majority in both houses of Congress can't stop Obama from issuing illegal immigrants Social Security cards and years of back welfare payments, there is no reason to vote Republican ever again." 

Note to Ann: "intentionally" is redundant when throwing a fight.

I knew there was a reason I never much liked Newsmax

Seen here:

"Newsmax, a conservative news organization, last year pledged $1 million to the Clinton Foundation over a five-year period, according to a spokesman for Chris Ruddy, the organization’s CEO. Mr. Ruddy has been friends with the Clintons since 2007," reports the [The Wall Street] Journal.

Three jobs for ISIS, courtesy of the US State Department

hog farmer!

hog processor!

sausage chef!

Record low to date in 2015 in Grand Rapids, MI is minus 13 degrees F

Libertarian John Tamny displays the anti-intellectualism characteristic of the breed

Here in "The Beatles And Wealth Inequality: A Reminder That Education Is Irrelevant To Success".

It's a veritable cornucopia of wrong, sentimental tosh in pursuit of a thesis.

It ignores the fact that George Harrison went to a pretty good school in Liverpool. It doesn't understand that Ringo was prevented from making academic progress as a child by recurring severe illnesses. It is unaware that Ringo actually was punching a time clock at a day job when he became interested in the drums, and that though it was his life's work he didn't play when the band wasn't recording.

Tamny also makes a mountain out of the molehill of Ringo Starr's two-week hiatus from the Beatles in 1968, which supposedly showed the rest of the Beatles how much they needed him. They didn't. Ringo spent much of his time in studio playing cards while the others whacked out their tracks as the group headed for a breakup.

Tamny would have made a better case using Rush Limbaugh as his example. The man's made piles and piles of dough but routinely slaughters math, attacks college education and has a lazy mind.

Judge appointed by George W. Bush blocks Obama's deportation gambit

From the story here:

A federal judge in South Texas on Monday temporarily blocked President Barack Obama's executive action on immigration, giving a coalition of 26 states time to pursue a lawsuit that aims to permanently stop the orders.

U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen's decision comes after a hearing in Brownsville in January and puts on hold Obama's orders that could spare as many as five million people who are in the U.S. illegally from deportation.

Hanen wrote in a memorandum accompanying his order that the lawsuit should go forward and that without a preliminary injunction the states will "suffer irreparable harm in this case."

"The genie would be impossible to put back into the bottle," he wrote, adding that he agreed with the plaintiffs' argument that legalizing the presence of millions of people is a "virtually irreversible" action. ...

Hanen, who's been on the federal court since 2002 after being nominated by President George W. Bush, regularly handles border cases but wasn't known for being outspoken on immigration until a 2013 case. In an order in that case, Hanen suggested the Homeland Security Department should be arresting parents living in the U.S. illegally who induce their children to cross the border illegally.

Gretchen Morgenson smells a rat: Fannie/Freddie bailout cost us nearly $188 billion, but Treasury rakes in the profits

Gretchen Morgenson for The New York Times, here:

For decades, the companies had maintained that their mortgage operations posed no risk to taxpayers; their pals in Congress echoed this refrain. But then came the mortgage debacle, and taxpayers had to shore up the companies with $187.5 billion. Initially, Fannie and Freddie had to pay interest on the loan. But in August 2012, the Treasury and F.H.F.A. abruptly changed the agreement; under the so-called third amendment, the government began sweeping all the companies’ profits into the Treasury. Since then, Fannie and Freddie have been immensely profitable. As of last December, the Treasury had received a total of $225.4 billion from the companies. ... 

The initial $187.5 billion loan remains outstanding, however, because of the deal’s structure. ...

But recall what was going on in mid-2012. The presidential election was in full swing, and Democrats and Republicans were clashing over the debt ceiling. That May, in a shock to many, Fannie and Freddie reported profits from their operations for the first time since the mortgage crisis. The amount: $4.5 billion. And plenty more was to come. Certainly, giving the Treasury access to billions of dollars in the companies’ profits during this time provided financial flexibility to the executive branch that Congress might not otherwise have approved.

Rate of citizenship renunciation soars from 700 a year under Bush to 2300 a year under Obama

CNN Money reports here that the number of people turning in their US passports for the four years 2011-2014 totals 9129, which is a rate of 2282 per year.

Starting under George Bush in fiscal 2005 through fiscal 2010 a total of 4000 said goodbye to US citizenship, a rate of 667 per year.

Howard Dean thinks a president must have a college degree, unless the president is a Democrat

Yeaaaaaaahhhhhh!

Seen here:

SCARBOROUGH: Are you serious? You're saying [Scott Walker] might not be qualified because he didn't finish college?

DEAN: I think there are going to be a lot of people who worry about that. 

SCARBOROUGH: Do you worry about people that don't finish college? 

DEAN: I worry about people being President of the United States not knowing much about the world and not knowing much about science. I worry about that. 

SCARBOROUGH: Oh my God. Let's name the people that didn't finish college that have changed this world. 

DEAN: Harry Truman, who was a great president, there's no question about it.

NBC is so incompetent it can't report accurately how old its own reporter was when he died

The audio, the chyron and the caption say he was 56, but the headline and the lede both say he was 58.