Friday Fume...and it's meant to be sarcasm people so don't get bent out of shape...

By: Craig Andresen

How ‘bout that State of the Union speech, huh?

In Egypt, when a guy wins a “DEMOCRATIC” election and then, declares himself the DICTATOR…The OPPOSITION PARTY has him ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL!!!

Over here…The opposition party offers a trio of rebuttals and then goes on a retreat.

In Orange County California…Police served a search warrant…5 MONTHS AFTER NEIGHBORS REPORTED A STENCH COMING FROM A HOUSE…SO BAD IT MADE THEM PUKE…And found a TEACHER living amongst approximately…450 SNAKES AND RATS…MANY OF WHICH WERE DEAD WITH THE LIVES ONES CANABALIZING THE DEAD ONES!!!

Sounds like the assembled audience at the  SOTU but only stinking half as bad.

AND…

It’s Super Bowl week and we now why the Falcons went 4 and 12 last year.

They knew the big game was set for NEW JERSEY in FEBRUARY and…

THEY WERE AFRAID THERE MIGHT BE 2 INCHES OF SNOW!!!

Patriots and friends…It’s Friday and…

I’m fuming.

And then…There were 3…Heading for the elected socialists retirement VILLAGES, where they can relax, play golf and REAP THE REWARDS OF BEING CAREER A-HOLES!!!

That’s right…

First, it was George Miller from the house…THEN…Max Baucus…2 ARCHITECTS OF OBAMACARE to announce THEIR impending “CAN’T WIN BECAUSE OF OBAMUNISM” 

retirements and now…

YOU CAN ADD HENRY WAXMAN to the list.

When it comes to the Obamacare criticism he’s been getting from people who have been thrown from their insurance policies…

I guess Waxman’s had…

A SNOOT FULL!!!

According to the groundhog…

“After 40 years in Congress, it’s time for someone else to have the chance to make his or her mark.”

It’s California folks so, don’t get to expecting even so much as a RINO is gonna get THAT seat.

It’ll be just another mark making Marxist.

But you can SEE what’s happening…All those who DREW UP THE SOCIALIST MANDATE are the FIRST democRATS TO JUMP OFF THE SINKING SHIP!!!

The cowards…PUT IN PLACE A SYSTEM THAT IS DESTROYING THE ECONOMY AND COSTING AMERICANS…THROUGH THE WAXMAN…I mean…NOSE…MAKE THE CORRUPT IRS ENFORCE IT AND LAUNCH A WEBSITE DESIGNED FOR IDENTITY THIEVES TO STEAL ALL OUR PERSONAL INFO AND THEN…

RUN AWAY AND TELL US IT’S TIME TO MAKE WAY…FOR A NEW SOCIALIST???

And you morons think anybody’s convinced that Obamacare’s working and the Tea Party is FINISHED???

If that wasn’t so LAUGHABLE…I’d be…

Fuming.

Well…Isn’t this nice.

DISNEY has introduced their FIRST GAY CHARACTERS to one of their shows.

In a throwback to the 1920’s, Disney will ditch their “HAPPIEST” place on earth moniker for…

DISNEY…THE “GAYEST” PLACE ON EARTH!!!

Sorry San Fran…Your queens have been replaced by RODENTS.

In the story from “Good Luck Charlie” the girl’s parents invite her little friend over for a play date and “Taylor” who could be a boy OR a girl…Shows up with His or HER 2 moms.

According to Disney and their PR department, they did it, “to be relevant to kids and families around the world and to reflect themes of diversity and inclusiveness.”

GREAT!!!!!

So…We’ll be expecting to see DUCK DYNASTY moving to DISNEY soon???

Maybe Disney could REALLY break new ground and be TOTALLY RADICAL by producing a NEW show called…

“TEA TIME WITH TED CRUZ!!!!!!”

No???

Well then, SOMEBODY needs to inform Disney that being, 

“relevant to kids and families around the world and to reflect themes of diversity and inclusiveness,” is NOT a ONE WAY STREET before we wind up with a bunch of BLACK, GAY, HOMELESS, ILLEGAL ALIEN, GUYS GETTING FREE,TAXPAYER FUNDED SEX CHANGES AND STICKING THEIR ASSES IN THE AIR 5 TIMES A DAY TO THE CALL TO MUZZIKETEER PRAYERS!!!!!

I’m fuming.

And finally…

Let me take a moment and address the end of the world.

Dear Atlanta…

IT WAS 2 INCHES OF FREAKIN’ SNOW!!!

2 INCHES!!!

Okay, I realize it doesn’t snow in Atlanta very often and they don’t have a fleet of snow plows on standby but…

YOU DIDN’T NEED A FLEET OF SNOW PLOWS…WHAT YOU NEEDED WAS…

A BROOM!!!

IT WAS 2 INCHES OF SNOW FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!!

Are You Smarter Than a Communist?

John Ransom / Townhall Columnist

Well it’s official.

We’ve known that I'm smarter than a communist, but now comes confirmation that I’m smarter than government economists—which still is a rather hollow accolade.

GDP figures for 2013 came out and despite a doubtful surge that came in the last half of the year GDP still managed to squeak under 2%, just as I predicted at the beginning of the year.

“For 2013 as a whole,” says ABCNews, “the economy grew a tepid 1.9 percent, weaker than the 2.8 percent increase in 2012, the Commerce Department said Thursday. Growth was held back last year by higher taxes and federal spending cuts.”

And Obamacare.

And Dodd-Frank.

And the War on Energy, the EPA, the IRS, the Fed and the general problems that Democrats have with adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing conspired to keep growth slow. You'd have to be a communist not to admit of theses facts.

But, if you like your abacus, you can keep your abacus.

“For some reason, today pundits are appalled by the loss of Fed credibility…. Perhaps instead of that,” writes ZeroHedge, our favorite finance crime fighter, “the sophisticated financial community should focus on the core of the problem: the Fed's chronic inability to look even more than a couple of years into the future without being dead wrong about what transpires, even in the absence of a great financial crisis (which the Fed never could predict in the first place of course).”

In graph below ZH details the various revisions to GDP for 2013 that the Fed has made as it got closer and closer to its target date.

What’s most appalling about it is that even in June and September of this year, the Fed was still forecasting high even as the economy needed 4.1% and 3.2% annual growth rates in quarter three and four respectively just to come in under 2% for the year.

But don’t worry say economists. This year should be much, much better.

“This year, economists think the economy will get a lift from continued gains in hiring,” writes ABCNews. “Further steady job growth would give more households money to spend and help lift consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of economic activity.”

Yeah, steady job growth?

The jobs numbers are at best mixed, as are a whole host of other data on the economy going into 2014.

How one sees the economy depends on whether one is a glass half-full kind a guy or a glass half empty kind a guy.

Personally I’m more like a Washington is half full of it kind of guy, and always the wrong half.

Job gains of always been the key to economic growth, and there’s not a lot of good news on that front. While it’s true that unemployment claims of been trending down the last several years, 2013 has been sideways. And a late surge of volatility in the index could point to a reversal of the trend since about September 2013.

US Initial Claims for Unemployment Insurance data by YCharts

 

As seen in the chart above claims volatility has picked up substantially since September. Much of that volatility is due to unemployment claims not being processed in a timely manner in certain large states. But if you apply just a little technical analysis since September to the chart, there's no doubt that there's been at least a temporary reversal. Claims are not trending downward, they’re trending upward.

And even the mainstream media has recently acknowledged that much of the improvement in the unemployment rate is coming via a shrinking workforce, not a growing number of jobs.

That’s akin to breaking a 12-inch ruler in half, and then claiming that one half of the ruler is still equal to one foot.

David Williams of WilliamsEdge and PageTrader.com, a sponsor for Ransom Notes Radio and a specialist at forecasting market direction, has told me that 2014 will mark an important market top.

By the time of the midterm elections in 2014 the market should be reversing course, or at least sideways, in my estimation. Williams believes that this could mark the beginning of a multi-year bear market.

That’s a good news and bad news scenario.

The bad news obviously is that nobody likes the stock market to go down when all of us in one manner another are vested in stock markets returns for our retirement plan.

The good news however could be that 2014 might be the year where Main Street and Wall Street start to work in tandem to affect change.

Because as usual Washington, DC has it wrong: Wall Street and Main Street will always have more in common than anyone has with Washington, DC. We don’t need Washington protecting Main Street from Wall Street.

We just need Washington to stop being the uninvited third wheel to the economic machine driven by Wall Street and Main Street.

Remember: I’m not a government economist. Or a communist.

I’m just smarter than either.

But then so are you.

School Choice and Common Core: Mortal Enemies

Michelle Malkin / Townhall Columnist

 

The freedom-enhancing, life-improving power of school choice is more than a theory for me. It's more than a talking points memo or teleprompter speech. Unlike many of the politicians paying lip service to National School Choice Week this week, the issue of expanding educational opportunity and freedom for all is something I live, breathe, practice and witness every day. 

 

My mother was a public school teacher who taught in a majority-minority district in New Jersey for more than two decades. She and my father worked hard to put their own children in a mix of public and private Catholic schools. My own two children have been enrolled in private schools, religious schools and public schools. After a great deal of research, we moved from the East Coast to Colorado to escape the corrupted, dumbed-down curriculum of an overpriced private girls' school.

Life lesson: It's not just government schools that are the problem. Many supposedly "elite" schools indulge in the senseless pedagogical fads that infect monopoly public schools.

Every family in America deserves maximized, customized choices in education. It is the ultimate key to closing that "income inequality" gap the politicos are always gabbling about. Yet, the White House and Democrats beholden to public school unions and their money are the ones blocking the school choice door.

We were blessed to find a community of parents and public school educators in Colorado Springs who embrace high standards, academic excellence and strong character education for students of every race, creed and class. Competition in the secondary-school marketplace provided a desperately needed alternative for educational consumers who wanted more and better for their kids.

For the past four years, our kids, now 13 and 10, attended a high-achieving public charter school that caters to a truly diverse student body.

Our 13-year-old is now in 8th grade at the charter school. This year, we opted to homeschool our youngest. We cobbled together a 5th-grade curriculum with excellent materials from the Calvert homeschool series, Memoria Press and classic Saxon Math. Another nearby public charter school offers a homeschool collective once a week.

Family participation is not an afterthought. It's the engine that drives everything. The dedicated parents, grandparents, foster parents and legal guardians I've met in the charter school movement and homeschooling community see themselves as their children's primary educational providers. Not the U.S. Department of Education. Not the White House. Not GOP politicians cashing in on top-down "education reform."

After several years of educational satisfaction, however, we've encountered another sobering life lesson: There is no escape, no foolproof sanctuary, from the reach of meddling Fed Ed bureaucrats and cash-hungry special interests who think they know what's best for our kids.

Big-government Republicans such as Jeb Bush and flip-flopping Mike Huckabee pay lip service to increasing school choice and supporting charter schools, private schools and homeschooling. Yet, they have been among the loudest GOP peddlers of the Common Core "standards"/textbook/testing/data collection regime thrust upon schools who want nothing to do with it.

"Alignment" with the new regime means mediocrity, mandates, privacy invasions and encroachments on local control and educational sovereignty. I've seen it in my daughter's polluted math curriculum. We are not alone. The threat is not just in one subject. It's systemic.

Derek Anderson, principal of Ridgeview Classical Schools in Fort Collins, Colo., wrote to me last fall about the existential threat his charter school faces. "Ridgeview Classical Schools is a K-12 charter school that offers a classical liberal arts education to approximately 800 students. We were established in 2001, and we have generally been one of the top three schools in Colorado since opening," he said. "Our most significant issue with Common Core and the PARCC exams is that we feel we will lose the autonomy and other protections granted to us when Colorado adopted its Charter Schools Act in 1994."

As I've noted, PARCC is the behemoth, federally funded testing consortium (the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) that raked in $186 million through President Obama's Race to the Top program to develop nationalized tests "aligned" to the top-down Common Core program. Anderson and informed administrators, educators and parents like him understand: "PARCC is truly the enforcement mechanism that will coerce schools into adopting the Common Core curriculum. We cannot do this. It is entirely against the mission and philosophy of our school."

It is, in short, sabotage. Anderson calls it an "almost existential dilemma. Our mission and philosophy are irreconcilable with Common Core's."

Homeschool mom of six and blogger Karen Braun of Michigan sees the threat to her choice, too. Her trenchant message: "True school choice allows a parent to choose any school that meets their child's needs, not just those that adopt Common Core State standards and assessments."

No fully funded school voucher system in the world can improve the educational experience if Fed Ed controls the classroom and homeschool room. Coerced conformity kills choice.

State Department adviser on “extremism” urges U.S. to “befriend” al Qaeda

Robert Spencer  / Jihad Watch

 

Establishment “experts” on foreign policy and Islamic jihad terror generally suffer from willful ignorance about the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat, and traffic in comforting politically correct fictions about Islam being a religion of peace that has been hijacked by a tiny minority of extremists — a fiction that has led the U.S. into numerous disastrous, indeed catastrophic, foreign policy errors. This is one of the more egregious manifestations of the self-defeating, futile courses of action they advocate: three members of the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations (Michael Doran, Will McCants, and Clint Watts, pictured above left to right in that order), including a former State Department Senior Adviser (McCants), advocate that we befriend an al Qaeda group that they think is “moderate” in order to wean it away from “extremism.”

This strategy has been followed again and again, and never accomplished anything but the loss of American lives and the waste of American money and materiel. For months now numerous people have claimed that if we didn’t aid the Syrian “moderates,” they would have nowhere to turn but to the “extremists.” We aided them, although not as much as some people would have liked (including Barack Obama and John Kerry), and they turned to the “extremists” anyway.

It is not surprising that the puerile and silly Will McCants is fronting this notion. He is one of the learned analysts who are essentially children in adult’s clothing, babbling on like fifth graders about “bad guys” and ideas that are “crazy pants.” McCants also harbors a Reza Aslan-like fondness for contemptuous Twitter abuse of those who dare to suggest that Islamic texts and teachings may sometimes incite believers to violence.

This is the kind of boy who sets State Department policy these days. No wonder we’re in the fix we’re in.

“State Department Adviser on Extremism Urges US to ‘Befriend’ Al Qaeda,” by Daniel Greenfield at FrontPage, January 29:

Officially there are no more terrorist attacks, just man-caused disasters brought about by offensive YouTube videos. Also there are no more terrorists. Just Violent Extremists. And there’s no more counter-terrorism, just experts on Countering Violent Extremism.

William McCants was a U.S. State Department senior adviser for countering violent extremism and is a director of the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World at the Brookings liberal think tank.

At the CFR’s Foreign Affairs, McCants joined together with two others to argue that Ahrar al-Sham is, and I quote, “an al Qaeda–Linked Group Worth Befriending.”

With the collapse of the Free Syrian Army, the Islamic Front is now the only game in town for the people who insist that we should counter Al Qaeda by supporting Al Qaeda.

The article begins by defending Obama’s stupid jayvee crack, denounces the “political rights” and argues that, “The al Qaeda of yesterday is gone. What is left is a collection of many different splinter organizations, some of which have their own — and profoundly local — agendas.”

That line is a bit misleading. The Al Qaeda of yesterday is not  gone, it’s overshadowed by local organizations, meaning that Al Qaeda has accomplished its goal of serving as a vanguard for a global movement of terrorist groups committed to its worldview.

The “jayvees” have overshadowed the Lakers because they have more people, more weapons and more territory. While the Lakers are content to sit and watch the expansion of new franchises around the world.

“Today, two different al Qaeda affiliates, the al-Nusra front and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), are battling each other in Syria’s Raqqa province. Perhaps Oliver North might argue that it is incumbent on the United States to take out both groups. But a more nuanced take would lead the president to ask key questions before taking precipitate action.”

The article conveniently avoids answering the question while taking the time to sneer at Oliver North. But as the experts know full well, the old Al Qaeda had its share of violent conflicts.

The outcome of such a conflict is responsible for Zawahiri’s current position.

Then the article argues that Ahrar al-Sham and the rest of the Islamic Front are the best hope for defeating Al Qaeda in Iraq. That may or may not be so, but the article fails to qualify why we should care which flavor of Al Qaeda emerges victorious in the battle to lose to Assad.

“Second, designating Ahrar al-Sham as a terrorist group would destroy what little chance the United States has of building relationships with the other militias in the Islamic Front. Those relationships will be important for ensuring that the Front treats Syrian civilians well during the war and after, should Assad ever be toppled. Making a direct enemy of Ahrar al-Sham would also make it extremely difficult for U.S. nongovernmental organizations to move aid through territory controlled by it and the Islamic Front, because U.S. law prohibits working with terrorist organizations.”

Which would be a good thing, because we could finally stop providing aid to terrorists.

Are we supposed to collaborate with Al Qaeda in the hopes that it will treat civilians and NGOs well when it takes over? Does that sound like the behavior of any Al Qaeda linked group?

“Finally, Ahrar al-Sham’s leader, Hassan Abboud, has never endorsed bin Laden’s vision of a global jihad. His struggle is limited to Syria. Designating his group as a terrorist organization might backfire by pushing it completely into al Qaeda’s camp.”

And this is where it gets truly stupid.

The vision of a global Jihad wasn’t something that Bin Laden came up with, it was something that Islam came up with. A group that believes in the primacy of Islamic law and rule in Syria also believes that this state of affairs should exist worldwide.

Furthermore Al’Suri was Al Qaeda’s representative in Syria all along and was a co-founder of Ahrar al-Sham. That means a direct Al Qaeda involvement in setting up this flavor of Al Qaeda.

The article clings to the idea that we shouldn’t push an Al Qaeda linked group all the way into Al Qaeda’s camp by designating it as a terrorist group.

How exactly is this appeasement supposed to turn back time?

Op-ed:

Except for one...shameful cowards all

By: Diane Sori

To have the inner strength to stand by one's convictions and act in accordance with those beliefs, especially in spite of criticism...that's the definition of courage. And those with courage act in defiance of any inner fear of reprisal they might have for they put others before themselves.

I think our Founder's expected our leaders to be men of courage, especially when attending to 'the people's business.' How disappointed they would be if they saw the Republicans of today cowering in fear before the man, who on Tuesday night, declared himself to be America's first king...NO...dictator is more like it...for when Barack HUSSEIN Obama basically rendered Congress politically impotent by saying he will bypass them and do what he wants to do...he NOT only trampled on the Constitution, he totally rendered it null and void in his mind.

And so the knife was dug deep into America's back...a knife that the Republicans in this Congress are just plain out and out too afraid to remove.

Fear of the race card being used against them now takes precedence over the oath of office they took...an oath to do their constituent's bidding and to protect and defend the law of our land...the Constitution. Shameful to say the least...complicit in America's downfall at most.

When Barack HUSSEIN Obama said that, he would "go it alone" and "Whenever and wherever I can take steps without legislation to expand opportunity for more American families, that is what I am going to do," and then added in that "every mayor, governor and state legislator in America...you don't have to wait for Congress to act," every single Republican member of both Houses of Congress should have stood up and walked out en-masse as that would have sent a powerful message to the man who would be king...to the man who would be dictator...that he will NEVER be either.

And then after a hush fell over those remaining...those NEVER expecting the Republicans to have actually grown a spine...then the provost marshal should have entered the room and arrested this sham of a president for his deliberate violation of his Constitutional oath of office.

But sadly, this was NOT to be for as a collective body the Republicans who comprise this Congress... and even those in the TEA Party...just stood there and applauded the words of the man who NOT only rendered them politically impotent but who also made them a cowardly laughing stock. And now we know that come November all must be voted out of office...well maybe NOT all for one man...Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas)...had the courage, strength of conviction, and simple guts to do what in his heart he knew had to be done as he and he alone stood up and walked out on this sham of a president who spewed traitorously mocking words against the Constitution.

"Tonight I left early after hearing how the President is further abusing his Constitutional powers," Stockman said. "I could not bear to watch as he continued to cross the clearly-defined boundaries of the Constitutional separation of powers...Needless to say, I am deeply disappointed in the tone and content of tonight’s address."

Stockman has in the past been a vocal critic of Obama and his policies, especially his use of Executive Orders when he doesn't get Congress to do his bidding... Executive Orders which Stockman says are "a wholesale violation of his oath of office and a disqualifying offense."

And how right he is.

But what is on par shock value wise with Stockman's walking out but diametrically opposite in its nobility is the media's...and that includes FOX News...total lack of coverage of this most honorable display of love for our Constitution and love for all America stands for.

The media...the in-the-pocket for Obama media...instead of doing their job of reporting the news NOT hiding the news instead stumbles over itself to see who can best throw the protective blanket around Obama and his abomination of a speech...a media who stumbles as they try to see who can keep the myth of 'the anointed savior of us all' going the longest. Never mind that this man just basically said the Constitution be damned...NEVER mind that Obama has successfully used fear of the race card to keep those elected to serve 'We the People' subservient to his wishes and wants... NEVER mind that the 'Free Press' clause of the Constitution has now been turned into the 'What Obama Says We Can Report On' clause...NEVER mind all that for the American media by their very lack of action has now been rendered as null and void as the Constitution Barack HUSSEIN Obama deems a relic of the past.

Remember this is the man who said before he ran for the presidency that "the U.S. suffers from a fundamentally flawed Constitution"...this is the man who told Vladimir Putin at the Asian/Pacific Summit “It doesn’t matter since for all intent and purposes the US Constitution is dead”...and this is the man who in a 2001 public radio interview said the Constitution was a “charter of negative liberties, full of constraints imposed upon us by our Founding Fathers."

And then when a man of courage stands up and walks out in defense of the Constitution...our nation's founding document...the media chooses to remain silent as they instead fawn over the one they helped 'anoint' to the highest office in our land...NEVER mind that his address bordered on treason.

And so today things continue on as usual...the media is keeping all criticism off Barack HUSSEIN Obama and his most grievous and treasonous State of the Union address yet...those in Congress still have NO spine or courage to do what they know needs to be done...and 'We the People' just got screwed again by the man who has now crowned himself king.

And saddest of all is that the America our Founder's envisioned has been lost to a man who revels in his destruction of all we hold dear...and Congress' lack of actions has aided him every step of the way.