NJ: the fix is in

At the Wall Street Journal, John Fund reports that ACORN and affiliates are active in this year's close NJ governor's race:

Plenty of reasons exist for suspecting absentee fraud may play a significant role in tomorrow's Garden State contests. Groups associated with Acorn in neighboring Pennsylvania and New York appear to have moved into the state. An independent candidate for mayor in Camden has already leveled charges that voter fraud is occurring in his city. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party in New Jersey is taking advantage of a new loosely written vote-by-mail law to pressure county clerks not to vigorously use signature checks to evaluate the authenticity of absentee ballots, the only verification procedure allowed.

The state has received a flood of 180,000 absentee ballot requests. On some 3,000 forms the signature doesn't match the one on file with county clerks. Yet citing concerns that voters would be disenfranchised, Democratic Party lawyer Paul Josephson wrote New Jersey's secretary of state asking her "to instruct County Clerks not to deny applications on the basis of signature comparison alone." Mr. Josephson maintained that county clerks "may be overworked and are likely not trained in handwriting analysis" and insisted that voters with suspect applications should be allowed to cast provisional ballots. Those ballots, of course, would then provide a pool of votes that would be subject to litigation in any recount, with the occupant of New Jersey's highest office determined by Florida 2000-style scrutiny of ballot applications.

Absentee voter fraud is in danger of becoming a hardy perennial in New Jersey. Atlantic City Councilman Marty Small and 13 campaign workers were indicted in September on charges of conspiring to commit election fraud using absentee ballots. One worker pleaded guilty last month. In Newark, five campaign workers were indicted in August on charges involving absentee ballot fraud.

Victor Negron, a campaign adviser for independent mayoral candidate Roberto Feliz, a former director of Camden's public works department, says he's shocked that more than fifteen times the normal number of voters are casting absentee ballots in Camden this year. In the 2005, when the city's voters voted for both governor and mayor on the same day, only 200 absentee ballots were cast. This year, some 3,700 have already been received. At least four voters have approached the Feliz campaign to complain that an absentee ballot was sent to them without their permission or cast for them without their understanding the documents they were signing. .... [Emph. added]

UPDATE: Allegedly, Mark Allen of Galloway Township, NJ, reports that NJ election officials told him that a fraudulent absentee ballot was submitted in his name.

PREVIOUSLY on the subject of vote fraud:
NJ Dems demand equal rights for fraudulent voters
Nevada accuses ACORN of 39 felonies
Three Obama supporters plead guilty
Another ex-ACORN worker pleads guilty
An insider's guide to vote fraud

Metallica proud of its music's message to Gitmo terrorists

While other bands are currently in the news opposing Gitmo, remember that Metallica's lead vocalist had a different take on the meaning of the use of their music at Gitmo. From Revolver Magazine:

Metallica frontman James Hetfield recently told German-language TV network 3sat that part of him was proud the U.S. military chose the band’s music to torture prisoners at U.S. detention centers in Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay. “It’s strong; it’s music that’s powerful,” Hetfield says. “It represents something that they don’t like—maybe freedom, aggression… I don’t know… Freedom of speech."

It seems that the White House will have to expand its enemies list.

The NY Times as a fever swamp

To see what passes for wisdom at the New York Times, once known as the paper of record, check out this Frank Rich column:So, why does he thinks that the GOP is full of extreme Marxists ("Stalinists")? Well, that never becomes clear. He does claim that the contest between Republican Dede Scazzafava and Conservative Party nominee Hoffman in the special election for New York's 23rd district was "riotous and bloody national G.O.P. civil war." That might be true except that there were no riots and there was no blood. He continues:

The battle for upstate New York confirms just how swiftly the right has devolved into a wacky, paranoid cult that is as eager to eat its own as it is to destroy Obama. ....

And Scozzafava is a mainstream conservative by New York standards; one statistical measure found her voting record slightly to the right of her fellow Republicans in the Assembly. .... [Emph. added]

So, Frank Rich wants to claim that Scozzafava is a "mainstream conservative" but that "the right," which is a "wacky paranoid cult," is attacking her because they want "to eat their own." However, today, former candidate Dede Scozzafava has endorsed the Democrat in the race. That makes Rich's claim that she is a "mainstream conservative" absurd. Further, it shows that "the right" had correctly figured out that she was a liberal. The only person in the story who appears "wacky" and "paranoid" would be Frank Rich.

Hat tip: B. Daniel Blatt

An economics lesson

Dr. John B. Taylor, a professor of economics at Stanford asks his economics class to explain why, over the past 50 years, US real wages+fringe benefits have tripled:People who have grown up believing in the propaganda from the "unbiased" media expect the answer to be unions or minimum wage or anything other than productivity. Here is a plot of real non-farm productivity and real compensation (wages and benefits) plotted against year:If you think about it, it is obvious: the annual income per worker is the amount that is produced during a year divided by the number of workers. The only sustainable way that that can increase is by increasing productivity. It follows, for example, that union work rules, which limit productivity, while they may 'benefit' that union's workers, will reduce the average national income.

The real global warming agenda

The New York Times reports:

European Union leaders on Friday offered to contribute money to a global fund to help developing countries tackle global warming hoping kick-start stalled talks on a new agreement on climate change.

The European Commission had called on E.U. leaders to make an offer of up to 15 billion euros annually by 2020.

Mr. Reinfeldt, the Swedish prime minister, said leaders had instead agreed that developing nations needed about 100 billion euros annually by 2020 and that, of that sum, between 22 billion euros and 50 billion euros would have to come from public funds, as opposed to private sources like investments in carbon-reduction projects.

Global Warmism is all about government redistribution of wealth. If global warming didn't exist, the left would have to invent it. (Hat tip: Sweetness & Light)

In addition to global wealth redistribution, global warming also serves a domestic agenda. Last May, in regards to global warming, Speaker Pelosi said "Every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory." Democrats generally advocate increased government control of individual lives. Global warming provides the excuse to regulate "every aspect." (Hat tip: Robert L.)

Apple and iPolitics

Reviews say Motorola's new Droid phone will not be competition for the iPhone.  Weisshaupt summarizes why:

Essentially the iPhone is safe from the Droid because most iPhone users are liberals. They are people who WANT a Mommy and Daddy watching over them. iPhone developers  must navigate a Byzantine approval process that is so bad, that some even stoop to using Microsoft's .NET to get things done.  Apple tests and approves every application offered on the iPhone to make sure they all play nice together. This of course ensures the phone will deliver the beautiful and slick  user experience Apple has decided its users will have. The iPhone is a good example of the "one-size-fits all" top-down mentality of liberals.  If you want a different experience from what your masters thinks you SHOULD have and SHOULD want, you are just SOL.  The lowercase "i" in iPhone doesn't occur by accident. The individual just isn't as important, and the "Phone" takes precedence. Many iPhone and Mac  users come near to worshipping Apple and their products,  going so far as to genuflect when they turn on a Apple device, ensure they face San Jose 3 times a day to give thanks for their iLife and to pray for the saving of the pagans who do not yet have one.

Weisskopf's analysis is not completely accurate: I know many Apple fans and they do not face San Jose to give thanks. They face Cupertino.

Hat tip: Instapundit.

Rep. Speier rewrites history

Today, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA), a member of the House Financial Services committee, wrote a quite jarring sentence to her constituents:

One year after the nearly-catastrophic meltdown of our financial system, Congress is finally addressing the root causes: deregulation, uncontrolled speculation and lack of oversight from the agencies who were supposed to be minding the store.

What were the Financial Services Committee and its current Chairman, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), doing while the crisis brewed? You guessed it: they were advocating lower lending standards, riskier loans, and denying the possibility of financial problems. For example, Rep. Frank and Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) sent a letter to the heads of Fannie and Freddie exhorting them to lower lending standards for condo buyers. He claimed that those two agencies "are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' Rep. Frank claimed Fannie Mae and Feddie Mac were "fundamentally sound financially" (see this video starting at 1:37). Rep. Frank consistently advocated "affordable mortgages" which is a code phrase for giving mortgage loans to those who cannot afford them which happens to be exactly what caused the current crisis.

Rep. Speier's statement that the crisis was caused by lack of regulation and oversight appears to be the opposite of the truth: it was regulation ("affordable mortgages") and oversight (like Rep. Frank's letter to Frannie Mae and Freddie Mac) that were direct causes of the financial crisis.

RELATED: Videos of Rep. Frank's faulty memories on the financial crisis are here. A video primer on the Democrat's Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) is here. There is more on the history of the crisis is here. More details of the CRA, including how Pres. Bush's reforms made it worse, are here.

MORE: The East Bridgewater Savings Bank, through cautious management, not only survived the mortgage meltdown, but is solvent and even profitable. What did the regulators say about that: the FDIC complained that, under the requirements of the CRA, it is not making enough risky loans.

The vicious cycle of liberalism

Peggy Noonan writes on the liberal tax cycle:

This week the New York Post carried a report that 1.5 million people had left high-tax New York state between 2000 and 2008, more than a million of them from even higher-tax New York City. They took their tax dollars with them—in 2006 alone more than $4 billion.

You know what New York, both state and city, will do to make up for the lost money. They'll raise taxes.

As to why Democrats in Congress seem unconcerned by record-breaking federal deficits, she writes:

They don't feel anxious, because they never had anything to be anxious about. They grew up in an America surrounded by phrases—"strongest nation in the world," "indispensable nation," "unipolar power," "highest standard of living"—and are not bright enough, or serious enough, to imagine that they can damage that, hurt it, even fatally.

We are governed at all levels by America's luckiest children, sons and daughters of the abundance, and they call themselves optimists but they're not optimists—they're unimaginative. They don't have faith, they've just never been foreclosed on.

Commander-in-chief Obama

James Lavery illustrates our current military strategy:Pres. Obama is normally a shoot-from-the-hip want-immediate-action kind of a guy (Examples: stimulus, nationalized health care, cap-and-tax). Why does he appear to be vacillating on Afghanistan? In my opinion, his delay deciding is because of important national considerations: he does not want to announce an unpopular decision until after the special elections.

NJ Dems demand equal rights for fraudulent voters

"Paul P. Josephson, a lawyer representing the New Jersey Democratic State Committee, wrote to Secretary of State Nina Mitchell Wells, asking her to 'instruct County Clerks not to deny (vote by mail) applications on the basis of signature comparison alone.' "

Socialism isn't cheap!

According to the Economist, as reprinted by Wikipedia, the five countries with the highest prices for a Big Mac (as of 4 February 2009) are:

1. Norway - USD 5.79
2. Switzerland - USD 5.60
3. Denmark - USD 5.07
4. Sweden - USD 4.58
5. Eurozone - USD 4.38

Krauthammer on a roll

Spiegel interviews a feisty Charles Krauthammer. First, Speigel talks of admiring Pres. Obama:

SPIEGEL: Maybe Europeans want to just see a different America, one they can admire again.

Krauthammer: Admire? Look at Obama's speech at the UN General Assembly: "No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation." Take the first half of that sentence: No nation can dominate another. There is no eight year old who would say that -- it's so absurd. And the second half? That is adolescent utopianism.

After Krauthammer suggested that international institutuions are "90 percent worthless and 10 percent harmful", Der Speigel asked:

SPIEGEL: And there is not even 1 percent that is constructive?

Krauthammer: No. The UN is worse than disaster. The UN creates conflicts. Look at the disgraceful UN Human Rights Council: It transmits norms which are harmful, anti-liberty, and anti-Semitic among other things. The world would be better off in its absence.

On Obama's foreign policy:

SPIEGEL: You famously coined the term "Reagan Doctrine" to describe Ronald Reagan's foreign policy. What is the "Obama Doctrine?"

Krauthammer: I would say his vision of the world appears to me to be so naïve that I am not even sure he's able to develop a doctrine. He has a view of the world as regulated by self-enforcing international norms, where the peace is kept by some kind of vague international consensus, something called the international community, which to me is a fiction, acting through obviously inadequate and worthless international agencies. I wouldn't elevate that kind of thinking to a doctrine because I have too much respect for the word doctrine.

SPIEGEL: Are you saying that diplomacy always fails?

Krauthammer: No, foolishness does. Perhaps when he gets nowhere on Iran, nowhere with North Korea, when he gets nothing from the Russians in return for what he did to the Poles and the Czechs, gets nowhere in the Middle East peace talks -- maybe at that point he'll begin to rethink whether the world really runs by international norms, consensus, and sweetness and light, or whether it rests on the foundation of American and Western power that, in the final analysis, guarantees peace.

SPIEGEL: That is the cynical approach.

Krauthammer: The realist approach. Henry Kissinger once said that peace can be achieved only one of two ways: hegemony or balance of power. Now that is real realism. What the Obama administration pretends is realism is naïve nonsense.

On healthcare reform:

SPIEGEL: How could Obama still win Republican support for healthcare reform?

Krauthammer: He should finally realize that we need to reform our insane malpractice system. The US is spending between $60 and $200 billion a year on protection against lawsuits. I used to be a doctor, I know how much is wasted on defensive medicine. Everybody I practiced with spends hours and enormous amounts of money on wasted tests, diagnostic and procedures -- all to avoid lawsuits. The Democrats will not touch it. When Howard Dean was asked why, he said honestly and explicitly that Democrats don't want to antagonize the trial lawyers who donate huge amounts of money to the Democrats.

Read the whole thing.

Racism in E. St. Louis?

Explaining his preference for a black candidate, Mayor Alvin Parks allegedly said "the city wasn't ready to hire a white police chief."

Separately, Mayor Parks explains how FBI's searches of his offices were a "good thing."

PREVIOUSLY on racism:

Overt Racism in Tennessee
San Franciscans discriminate against blacks
"He's not black and he can't represent me, that's just the bottom line"
"NAACP defends racism."
Stanford finds Democrats are racist
Obama nominates a racist
Leaders acknowledge Democrat base is racist
"That's just how white folks will do you." ---Barack Obama
Dem says Dem primary voters are racist
Dems accuse Bill and Hillary of racism

Obama's war on Fox, updated

Fox's ratings are up and Pres. Obama's are down. Glenn McCoy cleverly illustrates the results of the White House's war on Fox News:
PREVIOUSLY:
War on Fox shows White House's frustrations and amateurishness.
Obama's Nixonesque attempt to isolate Fox fails
What the war on Fox shows about Obama's priorities

The public option refuses to die

Sen. Reid tried to revivify the public option. Nate Beeler illustrates:The attempt does not appear to have succeeded. Reid's claim to allow states to "opt-out" seems likely to be a fraud, and lacks critical support. After reviewing the latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters, John Hinderaker writes:

[B]y a margin of 3-1, voters think Obamacare will raise the cost of health care, and by more than two to one, voters believe it will make the quality of health care worse. Isn't that the death knell for government medicine? If not, why not?

When HillaryCare proved unpopular, Bill Clinton and the Democratic Congress dropped it. None of our current leaders appear to be as sensible.

Does your workplace smell ethical?

According to a Brigham Young University study, people's ethics improve when they are in a clean-smelling environment.

Barack Milhous Obama

Michael Ramirez illustrates:
PREVIOUSLY on the Obama-Nixon connection:
Obama goes back to the future
Geo. Will on Obama learning from Nixon
"I'm not naive."
Pew says Obama more polarizing than Nixon
Do all Dems maintain an enemies list?

RELATED: Pres. Obama jokes about having the IRS audit his enemies. TheNewNixon has a collection of similar rhetoric from Nixon and Obama.

Obama steals your tax refund

As the Philadelphia Inquirer reports today, Pres. Obama's "stimulus" plan lowered the amounts for IRS withholding for many. This means you may have had an increase in your take-home pay. The catch is that Obama didn't actually lower tax rates, just the withholding: So, in April, many people will find their refund check surprisingly small. The Inquirer writes:

That little extra bit of money in the form of a larger paycheck tied to the Obama stimulus plan could end up taking a bite out of your federal income tax refund or even leave you owing taxes, say observers.

The stimulus plan lowered federal income tax withholding rates, which results in more take-home pay but less money going toward taxes. The downside is some taxpayers may end up with not enough taxes being withheld to cover what they owe in 2009. ....

Single taxpayers who are working at more than one job and married couples filing jointly in a situation where both spouses work are the most likely groups of taxpayers to be caught short.

"They are probably going to find out they are either getting a lot less back or they might owe," said Mark Steber, chief tax officer at Jackson Hewitt Tax Service, a tax preparation firm.

Others that could face this scenario are those who can be claimed as a dependent on someone else's tax return (for example, a working student claimed as a dependent on a parent's tax return) and some Social Security recipients who work.

HHS says Obamacare will cause costs to go up and 12 million will lose their employer-coverage

From BigGovernment:

Richard Foster, Chief Actuary for the Department of Health and Human Services’ Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, released this week to several Congressional offices a financial analysis of HR 3200, the House version of ObamaCare. He reached some inconvenient conclusions for President Obama and Congressional Leadership:

-“Total national health expenditures under this bill would increase by an estimated 2.7 percent in 2019…”

-“The additional demand for health services could be difficult to meet initially with existing health provider resources and could lead to price increases, cost-shifting, and/or changes in providers’ willingness to treat patients with low-reimbursement health coverage.”

-More than half of the expansion in coverage (18 million out of 34 million) would be from increased Medicaid coverage.

-12 million people would lose employer-sponsored coverage.

-The productivity adjustments to Medicare are “unrealistic” and providers “might end their participation” because the cuts would make serving Medicare beneficiaries unprofitable.

-Medicare Advantage enrollment would decrease by 64 percent (from a projected level of 13.2 million to 4.7 million under the proposal).

As of today, HHS still hadn’t published the analysis on their website, even though it was written by its own staff.

One reason for the 2nd Amendment

The sign reads:

My next door neighbor
wants to BAN all guns!

Their house is
NOT ARMED!

Out of respect for their opinions
I promise NOT to use MY GUNS
to PROTECT THEM

Because there is no law that liberals can pass that would prevent criminals from getting guns, gun control laws are all about assuring criminals that they can commit crimes against innocent civilians without fear.

Hat tip: Gunslinger's Journal