Hey Mr. President, are your ears burning yet?

So the President says America has "gotten a little soft”...

Larry Correia disagrees:

Maybe your golf buddies are soft, and your union thugs are soft, and your legion of academics that have never held a real job are soft, and the societal leeches that depend on the Democrats’ perpetual welfare state are soft, but most Americans are not soft.

...and he proceeds to explain, in a fine rant.  RTWT.

LATER, related:  Who’s weak?

...We’re now being treated to the spectacle of a President demanding passage of a bill his Party won’t support, peddled using the name of a billionaire who refuses to endorse it.

Only one thing left to do:  Cue the bunny rabbit.

(Correia Via Lin W’s comment at Vodkapundit.)

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 23:17:00 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 127 words, total size 2 kb.

The mob moves in

Now that the government has fixed it so the numbers we get from its own departments are thoroughly cooked, it’s time to deal with the ones coming from the private sector.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has notified Standard & Poor’s that civil charges may be filed against the credit-ratings firm for its 2007 grading of a high-risk securities deal.

Bill Quick:

This is just Chicago Way style payback for S&P daring to downgrade the US thanks to Barry Obama’s socialist spending spree.

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 15:05:07 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 85 words, total size 1 kb.

If you read the WSJ on line...

...you’ll be interested their new "privacy” policy.

Posted by: Old Grouch in The Press at 23:42:58 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 14 words, total size 1 kb.

Wishes for a new, good year

To all my Jewish friends (even especially the ones who drive me crazy!).

Related:

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 23:51:30 GMT | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 43 words, total size 1 kb.

Bride of “Why government costs so much”

Associated Press:

...The Energy Department has approved two loan guarantees worth more than $1billion for solar energy projects in Nevada and Arizona..., under the same program that paid for a $535 million loan to Solyndra Inc., a now-bankrupt solar panel maker...

What could possibly go wrong?


UPDATE (110929 14:40):  Well, possibly this?

Of that $1 billion in guarantees, $737 million went to "Tonopah Solar,” a subsidiary of a California-based company named SolarReserve.  Which has an "investment partner” called PCG.  Whose number-two man just happens to be Nancy Pelosi’s brother-in-law.

Nothing like keeping it all in the family.

(Update rewritten from this report by Jim Hoft, via American Glob via the invaluable AOS sidebar.)

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 22:51:45 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 124 words, total size 4 kb.

By his “friends” you shall know him

New York Post:

JP Morgan honcho Jamie Dimon, once a "fat cat” ally of President Obama, seems to have strayed to Republican contender Mitt Romney.

Dimon, a lifelong Democrat who was rumored to be on Obama’s short list for treasury secretary before he settled on Tim Geithner, met privately with Romney on Tuesday morning before a fund-raiser at Brasserie 8¹/2 hosted by Highbridge Capital, a JPMorgan-owned hedge fund.

Unsurprising.  After all, the well-being of "lifelong Democrats” and their too-big-to-fail crony corporations is always an important concern for the RINO Republicans.  If Romney wasn’t one of them, he’d have had enough sense to not get caught anywhere near that crowd.

Elsewhere, related:

(Post story via Insty.)

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 16:48:06 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 151 words, total size 3 kb.

Trial balloon?

North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue says the times are too grave for us to indulge in that "election” stuff:

You have to have more ability from Congress, I think, to work together and to get over the partisan bickering and focus on fixing things.  I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won't hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover.  I really hope that someone can agree with me on that.

Spokesman Chris Mackey later said the governor was "...obviously using hyperbole to highlight what we can all agree is a serious problem...” (well, what else would he say?), but witnesses report "her tone was level and she asked others to support her on the idea.”  Anybody have a recording?  (UPDATE: Jeff does!)

Every day in every way, Glenn Beck sounds less crazy.  Which is not necessarily a Good Thing.

Elsewhere:

More (110928 14:30):
Oh, THAT Explains It  Dept:
(Via Daily Caller via Ace. New Republic link HT: Jeff.)

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 00:45:31 GMT | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 258 words, total size 6 kb.

Connection? What connection?

From today’s Ace Of Spades sidebar:

Related:

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 15:33:24 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 184 words, total size 3 kb.

Son of “Why government costs so much”

Associated Press:

The federal government has doled out more than $600 million in benefit payments to dead people over the past five years...

But wait, there’s more!

More than 89,000 stimulus payments [not the same thing]... went to people who were either dead [$18 million] or in prison [$4.3 million]...

You may call it fraud.  Our politician friends probably call it "taking care of the constituency.”

(Via:  Radley)

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 18:26:27 GMT | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 65 words, total size 2 kb.

And while we’re culling agencies...

(Via:  Reason via Insty)

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 01:07:46 GMT | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 19 words, total size 1 kb.