Watch this, now.  It is worth your time.

h/t @bdomenech

In steps Juan Williams.  We probably disagree on most issues, but he’s a bright, thoughtful guy I’ll listen to.  He usually stays away from the typical leftist “you disagree? How dare you, you’re a racist!” tripe.

His piece in The Hill today, “Racial Code Words Obscure the Real Issues” gives me pause to wonder if I shouldn’t rethink that.  If he or anyone else on the left has a secret decoder ring, I have 6 Frosted Flakes box tops, $5, and a self-addressed stamped envelope.  Just tell me where to send it.

Let’s break down Mr. Williams’ first three examples of coded language:

entitlement society – this phrase and this idea has been around long before Obama became president. Government largess is today doled out on the backs of the 53% of us actually paying income taxes. Social security. Welfare.  The push for universal healthcare.  Cradle to grave handouts from the government, paid for by you and I.  France has been an entitlement society for many years.  Massive taxes, a stagnant economy, and virtually no entrepreneurial innovation are the obvious and undeniable result.In a free society, you do not have a right to a demand, expect, and use the force of government to make me give you my stuff.   No one is entitled to take that which I have worked for.  Sadly mistaken are those who truly believe that what is their’s is their’s, and what’s mine is also their’s.

(image: Gateway Pundit)

poor work ethic - people who can but won’t work are lazy, useless drains on the rest of productive society and don’t deserve a dime of my hard earned wealth, born from the fruits of my labor. You work, you eat. You don’t work? Hope a charity feels sorry for your waste of flesh, because I sure don’t. A poor work ethic goes along with an entitlement society. The attitude that says “I don’t need to earn it, you should give it to me!  If you won’t, I’m going to take it!” used to be a source of shame.  Now it is celebrated and coddled by the left.  Mr. Williams bemoans how few blue collar jobs are available.  There are two reasons for that: First, unions extort exorbitant wages and benefits from companies, meaning there are fewer jobs to be had.  Labor costs alone for UAW shops average around $70/hr.  Second, in the United States, taxes on corporations are some of the highest in the world – 5th highest overall and twice the average.  That is money that could have been used to hire more people.  The argument here is that because there aren’t enough jobs to go around, we need more entitlement spending.  More entitlement spending means taking more money out of the private sector, laundering it through several government bureaucracies who really couldn’t care less about waste, fraud and abuse, and then finally cutting a check to someone sitting on their couch at home all day with their Cable TV tuned to VH-1.  A vicious circle barely covers it.  Want more jobs?  Eliminate the government-sourced protection racket for massively wealthy unions by disbanding the NLRB, lower taxes to spur investment, and eliminate useless, monstrous, and burdensome bureaucratic nightmare regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley.  Government does not create jobs, government does not create wealth.  Government destroys wealth.

food stamp president – more people are on food stamps – an entitlement – than at any other time in our history. That is a simple fact.  The closest thing President Obama ever had to a job was a community organizer in Chicago — a fancy label for “one who teaches people to demand handouts from businesses, tax payers, and government”.  One may recall the premiere community organizing outfit – ACORN – famously demanding loans for people who could not possibly repay them, and in other cases physically storming into a bank with the express intent of intimidating – extorting – the bank officials to meet their demands.

If you don’t work, you don’t eat.  We the people don’t owe anyone food, housing, or cell phones.  One college student’s stories about her time working at Wal-mart and the abuse of welfare programs that she witnessed is infuriating – because we’re paying for these bums.  They’re mooching off our dime.

We choose, through volunteering, charity, civic organizations, and our churches to help those less fortunate.  Unlike the left would have us believe, government forcibly taking from one and giving to another isn’t charity. It is theft.  The sad reality is that for all their rhetoric about wanting to help the poor, those who self-identify as liberals give far less to charity than their conservative counterparts.  Leftists don’t believe in the capability of the individual to be good or generous.  They do believe government must, by force, take from some people and give to others in the name of “leveling the playing field”.

Disappointingly enough, the truth is there is no code book, and no decoder ring.  This makes it impossible for the conservative to win any argument.  No matter what words, label, or phrase we employ to convey our ideas a leftist will see racism because they want to — but more importantly because they can’t win the argument on the merits.

I’m not a racist, and I don’t have to speak from an obtuse politically correct phrase book prove it to anyone.  I want government out of your life as much as I do out of mine, and the guy running a business so that he is free to hire you – provided you’re willing to show up on time, work hard, and stop demanding that the rest of us owe you something by nature of your existence on this earth.

The president and his minions on the left could be purple with red polka dots and I wouldn’t really care.  I do care that they think they’re much smarter than me and have decided the fruits of my labor belong to them to distribute as they deem fit.

President Obama is above it all, our first post-American president.  He certainly didn’t learn anything from his trip to Ohio, because on the heels of killing the Keystone pipeline project and associated jobs, he has struck again in Orlando.  On short notice, he decided to show up in Disney World interrupting and disrupting the vacations of thousands of families to give a speech, ironically on tourism.

Normal folks save up years and years to afford a trip to the Magic Kingdom.  Mom and Dad have to coordinate their time off from work between their own bosses and each other, the kids’ school, etc.  They save and plan well in advance.  Most people can’t just stay over an extra day to make up the time and aren’t likely to get a refund on their park admission.

This is our president.  A man above the country, above the people who, never having held one, knows nothing about a real job and working long hours to be able to afford the extravagance of a trip to Orlando.  Ever the community organizer, Obama’s hubris and disrespect for the individual he claims to champion knows no bounds.  So far out of touch and out of step with flyover country, it would be laughable if it weren’t so infuriating.

Read more: Walt Disney World, The Place Where Dreams Come True…Unless Obama is in Town

h/t @rumpfshaker

In A More Perfect Constitution, Virginia Law professor Larry Sabato makes an interesting proposal that we divide the country into regions and let a handful of states hold their primaries (or caucuses) on the same day.  Every election cycle, a different group of states gets to go first.

I’ve heard the argument that who goes first doesn’t really matter.  Then why not let someone else?  The problem with “Iowa goes first, New Hampshire goes second” is that it sets the momentum.  When all the polling is done, when all the straw polls are finished, this is the first official vote.  With the momentum goes support – ground, financial, media, etc.  Iowa gets a massive amount of attention from the candidates while states like Missouri and Ohio – whom Larry O’Connor correctly argues are much more representative of the nation as a whole – aren’t even an after thought by the time their primaries come around.

When the last poll comes out before the Iowa caucuses start and bat-crazy Ron Paul is a mere two points behind the much more polished, savvy, and reasonable poll leader Mitt Romney – something is wrong.  I’m not necessarily a fan of Romney.   However, quickly summarizing Ron Paul’s finer foreign policy positions:

• thinks it’s cool for Iran to have the bomb
• we’re basically responsible for bringing 9/11 onto ourselves
• asserts the former administration reacted to 9/11 with glee

If this guy wins Iowa, and that momentum carries him to the Republican nomination for the most powerful office in the world – the way we choose our nominees is completely broken.

ARLINGTON, Va. – Sgt. Ruben Troyer, senior horse trainer, Caisson platoon, 3d U.S. Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard), uses his Amish upbringing to help train horses in the Caisson platoon.

Within the area of Holmes County, Ohio, rests the world’s largest Amish community, a community which taught Sgt. Ruben Troyer, from an early age, the true value of horses.

“There were 20 to 30 horses specific to my family,” said Troyer. “Horses were our transportation and our means to farm. They were our livelihood.”

Read the rest of the story

29 November 2006:
The whereabouts of a Texas Tech graduate remain unknown after the F-16 he was piloting crashed in Iraq. Military officials say Major Troy Gilbert was firing on targets at a low altitude when his jet went down near Falluja in Iraq Monday. The jet was based out of Cannon Air Force Base in Clovis, New Mexico, which is about 100 miles from Lubbock. DNA samples taken from the scene are being tested.

The 34-year-old has been stationed at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona since March 2004. That’s where family and friends made statements today. NewsChannel 11′s Jennifer Vogel shares the story.

Major Troy Gilbert is a well decorated soldier who was selected to become a Presidential Advance Agent. He would often travel to classified locations to meet Air Force One. But the one thing friends, family and colleagues tell NewsChannel 11 he is most proud of is his time as a father and a husband.

“Troy was first and foremost a wonderful husband and father.” That was the first message family members wanted the public to know about their own personal hero, Major Troy L. Gilbert.

This Thanksgiving, I’m grateful for the sacrifices of Major Gilbert and his family, Captain Giglio, and the 30 soldiers lost one day not so long ago.  We are the home of the brave and the land of the free because of people like these.

But apparently in the EU, up is down, left is right, and 2+2=5 because they have ruled that bottled water makers can no longer claim consuming their product prevents dehydration. That is correct. You are no longer allowed to state the obvious. The penalty? Two years in prison.

Prof Brian Ratcliffe, spokesman for the Nutrition Society, said dehydration was usually caused by a clinical condition and that one could remain adequately hydrated without drinking water.

Regardless of what other product (Gatorade, pop, tea, etc) or method (IV fluids) may be available, if drinking this bottle of water accomplishes that which I say it does – namely hydrating the consumer – there is no problem.

I can stay warm by lighting a fire. I can also stay warm by getting under a blanket. The fact that fire warms me does not negate the effectiveness of a blanket, or diminish the blanket’s capacity in any way. It is pure stupidity and big government gone completely out of control to order blanket makers, under penalty of law, they can’t say their product keeps you warm because a fire would accomplish the same result.

This is who the left in America wants us to be more like?

A friend of mine who still does the type of work I did in Franklin County forwarded me the following email laying out what a disaster last week’s election was.  One has to wonder not necessarily about whether the county-wide mistake was intentional but a) did anyone have an opportunity to take advantage of it and b) how much worse was it, really?  I know from working at a major university when an electronic theft of personal information happened that the official story isn’t even close to what actually happened.

From: Precinct Election Officials <PEO@xxx.franklincountyohio.gov>
Subject: Election Night Results Tapes
To: “xxxxx@xxx.xxx”
Date: Friday, November 11, 2011, 9:20 AM

November 11, 2011

Dear Polling Official:

On Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at about 7:45 p.m. the machine trouble phone bank suddenly became overwhelmed with calls reporting that you, our poll workers were unable to print results tapes from the last voting machine for the voting locations once all voting machines had been closed.  Once we started taking the calls about being unable to print results tapes it took several minutes (an eternity) to determine the cause of the problem, discuss how to most efficiently address the problem to get results reporting and get all operators informed on a backup plan so they could better answer your calls and relay the information.  The next problem was that while we were trying to assess the issue, the calls in the queue grew and unfortunately many of you were still waiting for answers.

In the hour from 7:45 to 8:45 p.m. over six hundred calls came to the machine trouble call center and many of the locations probably tried multiple times to get their call through.  Our thirteen operators were able to answer three hundred sixty calls and inform the polling officials to pack up their supplies and deliver them to the warehouse without results tapes.  In that same period two hundred seventy two calls were abandoned.  A robo call was made to all of the Board’s PEO cell phones about an hour into this situation.

Let us explain the reason for the problem.  As each election is begun there is an election preferences page where the programmers define how voting machines will function for the current election.  There are choices on this page for each jurisdiction using the voting system to define.  Two of the items on that page that the programmer are to address is whether  “Zero Tapes” and “Results Tapes” are to be printed for the election.  To have a tape or tapes printed the programmer insert the number of tapes needed in the space provided next to the tape type.  Some of you may remember that in past history, the board required two “Zero Tapes” printed as the polls were opened in the morning and two “Results Tapes” as the polls were closed. We eliminated the opening zero tape several years ago and retain the practice of printing results tapes (one to post and one to be returned) with supplies.  In error the programmers for this election inadvertently specified two (2) “Zero Tapes” and zero (0) “Results Tapes”. The values entered should have been reversed.  During the programming and testing of our database settings we open polls on a few machines, put test votes on machines and print results tapes to insure all aspects of the system work.  However because we do this testing up to five weeks prior to election day, we use an override pass code rather than the actual process a poll worker would follow to generate the results tape since the date and time on the voting machine is set to a date and time other than 7:30 p.m. (polls closing time) on the date of the election.

We apologize for the mistake that caused this frustration as the end of a very long day. Let me assure you that additional procedures will be implemented to insure that these setting are set properly for future elections.   Let me also commend you on the exemplary way you dealt with this challenge and finished out your duties the best that you could.  All Franklin County election returns had been checked in, were processed and unofficial results for 324,515 voters were posted by 12:21 a.m.

We thank you for your service to the voters of the county and your understanding in this matter.

Sincerely,

William A. Anthony, Jr.
Director

Nathan D. Burd
Deputy Director

Karen S. Cotton
Manager of Election Operations

Is the explanation sufficient or acceptable?  I’m skeptical, but you decide.

Military members and their families on twitter. Please take a minute to say thank you to some of them today.