Sergio Mendes w/ India Arie

Dionne Warwick-I Say A Little Prayer For You

Towers Of The Ennedi

Extended 12 minute sneak-peek of Camp 4 Collective’s film festival cut of Towers of the Ennedi (link here)

Branson, Mo. Salutes Fallen Marine

Running daily or weekly body counts aren't as prevalent in the mainstream media as they were during the last administration. But a relatively little known troubling fact is: "...for the 1,241 combat-related deaths that occurred since the Afghanistan war began in October 2001, about 64 percent happened in the two years since Obama took office."

O-Bummer

Jonah Goldberg, National Review Online, April 22, 2011 12:00 A.M.

The Unhappy President

The president has always had a gift for self-pity.

The Oval Office, I always thought I was going to have really cool phones and stuff. . . . I’m like, “C’mon guys, I’m the president of the United States. Where’s the fancy buttons and stuff and the big screen comes up?” It doesn’t happen.
— Pres. Barack H. Obama

The list of people I feel sorry for is long. It includes not just all of the people I know personally who are suffering from one misfortune or another, but the billions around the world who’re having a rougher time than they ought: Japanese earthquake victims, targets of ethnic cleansing, etc. Then there’s the supplemental list, which includes everyone from fans of Lost who were ripped off by the series finale to the guy in the middle seat on a long flight
But one guy who doesn’t make the list is Barack Obama.

And yet the president seems eager for people to know he feels aggrieved. All of a sudden, he’s had a few “hot mic” incidents in which he “accidentally” vented his displeasure about various alleged insults. His staff let it be known that the president feels the head of China’s one-party authoritarian regime has it better than him, because no one second-guesses Hu Jintao.

“I just miss — I miss being anonymous,” he told some magazine executives recently. “I miss Saturday morning, rolling out of bed, not shaving, getting into my car with my girls . . . taking walks. I can’t take a walk.” He says the reason he plays so much golf is that it’s the only way he can get away from the “bubble” he’s in.

None of this is entirely new. The president has always had a gift for self-pity. And blame-shifting. “It’s Bush’s fault” could be the subtitle of his presidency.

And from the outset, the president has had little patience with critics. Serious critiques are always illegitimate “talking points.” In the summer of ’09 he started insisting that he didn’t want to hear “a lot of talking” from Republicans. The time for debate always seems to be over when it’s clear to everyone that he’s losing the argument. When abroad, he loves to whine about the impertinence of the press.

I can’t prove it, but I’m also hardly alone (on the right or the left) in thinking the president really just doesn’t like the job anymore. He’s testier. His response to the Republican budget plan was not merely dishonest, hypocritical, and partisan, it was bitterly personal.

One can understand his frustration. The guy who once said to a reporter during the 2008 campaign, “You know, I actually believe my own bulls***” about fundamentally transforming America, is now forced to run as a reactionary, defending “Medicare as we know it” from “radicals” who — gasp! — want to change America. The overrated and inexperienced politician, accustomed to nothing but adulation, who was swept into office thanks to discontent with the incumbent, is now himself the incumbent desperately trying to explain how he’s done nothing wrong.

He demonized George W. Bush as an evil fool, but Obama has been forced to adopt many of the very policies he derided as evil and foolish. The “change” candidate is now the “more of the same” guy.

That’d put anybody in a funk.

But I don’t care. The presidency is not like his Nobel Prize — an award for just being you. If you hate the job, don’t run.

Moreover, I don’t think that’s the whole story. Many of his seemingly self-pitying jokes and asides just don’t seem that innocent to me, never mind endearing. [...] (read all here)

Sensitivity Training 101

EPA Doesn't Factor Jobs

Posted 06:47 PM ET-  IBD Editorial

"Jobs: The EPA admits to Congress that it does not take into account the impact of its regulations on employment, the economy or international competitiveness. Neither, apparently, does the White House.

"This stunning revelation was made by EPA Administrator Mathy Stanislaus in response to a question by Colorado GOP Rep. Cory Gardner. It came during Stanislaus' testimony before the House Environment and Energy Committee on Thursday and exposes the Obama administration's public posture on jobs and the environment as a fraud.

"Gardner was asking about an EPA regulation that would govern industries that recycle coal and ash and other fossil fuel byproducts. Recycling is a good thing. Recycled coal ash makes concrete stronger, wallboard more durable and the shingles on your roof longer-lasting.

"We have not directly taken a look at jobs in this proposal," Stanislaus said. That's odd, since his testimony seems to contradict Executive Order 13563, issued by President Obama in January, which requires that all new rules issued by federal agencies take job creation into account. As we have learned, you have to watch what the administration does, not what it says.

"As reported in the Daily Caller, the EPA issued a statement on April 30, 2010, in the appendix of its regulatory impact analysis of its coal ash regulation that said the assessment "does not include either qualitative or quantitative estimation of the potential effects of the proposed rule on economic productivity, economic productivity, economic growth employment, job creation or international economic competitiveness."

"The EPA recently issued an endangerment finding that determined carbon dioxide, the product of human respiration and the basis of all plant and animal life on earth, is a dangerous pollutant. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed with the EPA that it had the authority under the Clean Air Act to do this, even though Congress repeatedly and explicitly refused to include so-called greenhouse gases in the act's regulatory scope.

"Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and a co-author with House committee Chairman Fred Upton of a bill to strip the EPA of authority to regulate greenhouse gases, has rightly noted that Congress deliberately did not regulate so-called greenhouse gases with the Clean Air Act, a bill designed to deal with air quality, not the climate.

"Inhofe notes that while the Supreme Court said the EPA had the discretion to "decide whether greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare," it did not authorize draconian regulations based on flawed science, regulations that would impose an economy-crushing hidden tax on businesses, energy producers and the American consumer."  

Soaking "Rich" Gaining Ground Among Dems

"Gallup: Today’s Democrats Twice as Likely as Depression-Era Americans to Favor Redistributing Wealth"

Terence P. Jeffrey , (CNSNews.com) - Democrats in America today are twice as likely as Americans in the Great Depression era to favor imposing heavy taxes on the rich as a means of redistributing wealth, according to data published today by the Gallup poll.

A Gallup poll conducted April 7-11, in the lead-up to the annual deadline for filing federal tax returns, showed that 71 percent of Democrats believe the government should use heavy taxes on the rich to redistribute wealth. In 1939, after ten years of the Great Depression, only 35 percent of all Americans believed government should do that.

In the April 11-17 survey, Gallup asked more than 1,000 American adults: “People feel differently about how far a government should go. Here is a phrase which some people believe in and some don’t. Do you think our government should or should not redistribute wealth by heavy taxes on the rich?”

71 percent of Democrats told Gallup the government should impose heavy taxes on the rich to redistribute wealth and 26 percent said the government should not. By contrast, only 28 percent of Republicans said the government should impose heavy taxes on the rich to redistribute wealth, while 69 percent said the government should not.

Overall, in the April 7-11 Gallup survey, 47 percent of Americans said government should impose heavy taxes on the rich to redistribute wealth while 49 percent said the government should not.

According to Gallup, back in March 1939, after a decade of the Great Depression, the Roper poll conducted a survey for Fortune Magazine asking the same question. At that time, only 35 percent of Americans believed government should impose heavy taxes on the rich to redistribute wealth while 54 percent said government should not.

Although public support for taxing the rich to redistribute wealth is higher today than it was in 1939, it is a bit lower than it was at the beginning of the Obama presidency.

When Gallup asked the question in a survey conducted March 27-29, 2009, two months after Obama’s inauguration, 50 percent said they favored heavy taxes on the rich to redistribute wealth while 46 percent said they did not.

On Wednesday, Obama delivered a speech outlining his plan for dealing with the national debt and calling for higher taxes on wealthier Americans. The Gallup survey on taxing the rich was completed two days before the president’s speech. (article)

Tom Jones - Did Trouble Me

Paul Ryan Asks 'What If...'