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Thursday, August 11, 2011

Tom Friedman fantasizes: What if Boehner joined forces with Obama and totally dismissed the tea party?


posted at 10:06 pm on August 10, 2011 by Allahpundit
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As bad as that sounds, you need to know that this column was written as a faux AP news article to appreciate its true horror. So desperate is the left’s intelligentsia to see Obama fulfill his promise as redeemer of liberal dreams that they’ve given up analysis and taken to fanfic instead.

This guy may very well have action figures of Obama and Boehner stashed away in his home.

    Washington (AP) — It was a news conference the likes of which the White House had never seen. President Obama stood in the East Room, flanked by the House speaker, John Boehner; the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell; the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid; and the House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi. The president asked Mr. Boehner to speak first:

    “My fellow Americans,” the Ohio Republican began. “We have just concluded a meeting with the president, prompted by this moment of extraordinary economic peril. Our party, as you know, is convinced that the main reason for our economic decline is that we have too much debt, that government has grown too big and that taxes and regulations are choking our dynamism. But I have to acknowledge that, over the years, our party has contributed to this debt burden and government spending binge. We are not innocent, and, therefore, we owe the country a strategy for governing and for fixing a problem that we helped to create — instead of just blocking the president. The G.O.P. is better than that and has more to offer the nation. Therefore, we have informed the president that our legislators are ready to reopen negotiations immediately on a ‘Grand Bargain’ to address all these debt issues once and for all and that everything will be on the table from our side — including tax reform that closes loopholes and eliminates wasteful subsidies, and, if need be, tax increases. To those who voted for us, rest assured that we will bring our conservative values to these negotiations and an emphasis on markets and meritocracies, but also a spirit of compromise and a recognition that both sides will have to bend if we are going to get the kind of comprehensive budget agreement the country needs. To my Tea Party colleagues, I say: thank you. Your passion helped spur the nation to action, but the country cannot be governed, and our future secured, by bowing solely to the passions of any single group — liberal or conservative. I know that the Tea Party activists are true patriots and they will work with us as well. President Obama: Let’s fix the country together and then compete in 2012 over who can best manage a growing pie rather than a shrinking one.”

And so it came to be that John Boehner became a centrist Democrat and repudiated the core constituency that made him Speaker. After that comes a “warm embrace” between Obama and Boehner and a Grand Bargain very much along the lines of Tom Friedman’s (and Obama’s) own policy preferences before the column ends: “At that point, all five leaders shook hands and retreated into the Oval Office. It was exactly 9:29 a.m. One minute later, the New York Stock Exchange opened. The Dow was up 1,223 points at the open — an all-time record.” Apart from a few days in late 2008, when the Dow was insanely volatile due to the financial crisis and TARP, the biggest gain it’s ever made was 499 points. Such is the awesomeness of the Friedman platform that, if only congressional leaders would endorse it, we’d shatter the all-time one-day record on Wall Street in a burst of green, pro-ChiCom, “effective government” exuberance. They pay Friedman hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to write this stuff.

I almost feel guilty making you read it. Here, here’s a video of the greatest hitter of all time taking batting practice to try to redeem this post.

Consumer Sentiment Curbs Appeal of Aussie



Australian dollarThe Australian dollar resumed its movement down after the yesterday’s gains as consumer sentiment declined this month, reducing attractiveness of the nation’s currency.

The Westpac-Melbourne Institute Consumer Sentiment index fell 3.5 percent in August from July. This declined followed the drop by 8.3 percent in July. The Aussie (the nickname of the Australian currency) also weakened as the pledge of the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates stable hasn’t reduced pessimism among Forex traders.

AUD/USD retreated from 1.0353 to 1.0343 as of 11:51 GMT after jumping to 1.0414 today. AUD/JPY fell from 79.66 to 79.15, following the advance to 80.34.

If you have any questions, comments or opinions regarding the Australian Dollar, feel free to post them using the commentary form below.

Earlier News About the Australian Dollar:

Australian Dollar Attempts Stop Decline, Fails (2011-08-09)
Eighth Session of Suffering for Aussie (2011-08-08)
AUD Down on Economic Outlook Revision (2011-08-05)
Australian Dollar Continues Its Correction on Weak Retail Sales (2011-08-03)
AUD Surges Against Everything on Higher Inflation Numbers (2011-07-27)


This entry was posted on TopForexNews on Wednesday, August 10th, 2011 at 11:51 am and is filed under Australian Dollar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the en

Kanon Wakeshima






Kanon Wakeshima (分島 花音) is a Japanese singer and cellist. Produced by Mana, Wakeshima debuted under the DefStar Records label on May 28, 2008 with the single "Still Doll", the ending theme for the anime adaptation of the manga series Vampire Knight. She also provided the voice for a maid that appears in the eighth episode of the series. Wakeshima's second single "Suna no Oshiro", released on November 12, 2008, was used as the ending theme for the series' second season (subtitled Guilty). | She was nominated for a Best Newcomer award for 2008 in the fourth annual Shojo Beat Music Awards, nominees of which are determined by surveying "record companies, music journalists, music experts, and music fans".



Kanon Wakeshima Pictures










Video: When open-carry is your only option

posted at 11:25 am on August 10, 2011 by Ed Morrissey
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Reason TV takes a close look at the issue of handgun rights and carry permits in California, one of the few “may-issue” states left in the nation. County sheriffs may issue or deny permits at their discretion, and as the video states, they don’t usually approve applications from most law-abiding citizens. That forces people like Sam Wolanyk to carry unloaded weapons openly, which has the state legislature in a lather — and people debating the nature of the Constitutional right to keep and bear arms, or in this case, bare arms


As most Hot Air readers know, I have a carry permit in Minnesota, although even some people in this state don’t realize that the permit doesn’t restrict me to concealed carry. I can open-carry if I like.  Normally, I don’t like, although I support those who do.  To me, open carry is unnecessarily provocative, plus it marks me as a primary target if, God forbid, I end up in a dangerous situation where it becomes an issue.  Police officers carry openly because it’s part of their job, and if carry permit training teaches anything valuable (it teaches many valuable lessons, of course), it’s that a carry permit is not a Junior G-Man badge.  I have it for my own personal safety, for specific as well as general reasons.

I’d take an even dimmer view of open carry of unloaded weapons — an unloaded gun provides all the provocation with none of the immediate defense capacity — but in this case, it’s instructive.  The state of California wants to ban a practice that presents no immediate threat, conducted by law-abiding citizens with no record, that has produced no shooting incidents.  Anti-gun advocates would rather waste time on this than, say, solving the massive budgetary and debt problems the state faces, as well as solving the problem by allowing law-abiding citizens to get concealed-carry permits with a “must-issue” law.

This reaches the point of absurdity near the end of the video, when the author of a bill to ban open carry of unloaded weapons,Assemblyman Anthony Portantino, tells Reason TV that the purpose of the 2nd Amendment is to protect property — which doesn’t include the person himself.  That’s actually backwards, even under existing lethal-force-in-self-defense laws.  People are not permitted to use lethal force to protect property in California, or Minnesota either, with or without carry permits.  (Neither can the police, by the way.)  They can only use lethal force of any kind when faced with an immediate threat in which a reasonable person fears for their own life or of “great bodily harm,” which roughly means losing a limb or an eye, not just getting beaten up.  All the carry permit allows is the ability to have the lethal force at hand if that situation arises; it doesn’t exempt the permit holder from laws defining lethal force in self-defense.  In most cases, and certainly in Minnesota, those laws require a victim to retreat first if possible rather than using the lethal force, sometimes even in their own homes.

It seems that Portantino doesn’t even understand current law in his own state.  Why should Californians trust him to amend it in ways that reduce their ability to defend themselves?

Addendum (previously published but still applicable): My late friend Joel Rosenberg literally wrote the book on carry licensing in Minnesota, The Carry Book: Minnesota Edition.  Unfortunately Joel passed away before he could complete an edition that looked at the issue nationally, but even if you’re not in Minnesota, there is a ton of good advice for those who want to pursue carry licenses and handle firearms.  My particular favorite chapter of the book is titled, “Cowardice 201: A PhD Seminar in Advanced Staying Out of Trouble,” in which Joel reveals that the true secret of karate is to run faster than everyone else.  Self-defense starts with keeping out of situations where you will likely find yourself threatened.  Joel’s book is a sobering read, literally and figuratively

Saturday, July 23, 2011

ราตรีแดงสด “อั้ม”ผ่าร่องอก บีบอึ๋มกลมบ๊อก!

 


FHM 100 Sexiest Women in the World 2011 & 8th Anniversary & 100th Issue Celebration


 


 


 





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