This morning I was looking at Morning Joe when they said we
had the potential for a repeat of the Blizzard of ’78 this weekend. Apparently there are several computer weather
models and the spread is as much as 1” to 16” inches in parts of NY State.
If 72 hours out our computer models have a 1600% margin of
error what makes anyone think it’s sensible to base spending on computer models
forecasting “climate change” over 30 or
50 years?
Lost among the talk of the Robert Menendez and the Hookers
and the Dominican donors is this story out of New
Jersey:
An Elmwood Park man pleaded
guilty on Tuesday to conspiring with his brother to violate federal election
law by steering $21,400 in illegal campaign contributions to U.S. Sen. Bob
Menendez.
Benedetto
Bigica, 45, admitted that he worked with his brother, Joseph, of Franklin Lakes, from
April 2005 to April 2008 to make the illegal contributions, U.S. Attorney Paul
J. Fishman said.
And Joseph threw in his share:
Joseph Bigica, 47, an insurance broker, was a prominent Democratic
contributor who won millions of dollars in no-bid government contracts across
North Jersey. Authorities said he recruited 19 people, including family members
and business associates, and used them as straw donors to make 30 illegal
contributions to Menendez’s campaigns, totaling $98,600 from 2005 to 2009.
How did senator Menendez describe this? His office called the Senator a “victim”
That’s why he didn’t pay those
Hookers,he
didn’t want them to be victims.
Would we even be talking about
Menendez if Jay Leno didn’t crack a joke about him?
I was really excited about Robert Spencer being a speaker at
the annual Catholic Men’s Conference for the Worcester Diocese. It’s a great event, it was the first such
men’s conference in the country and spawned a slew of them nationwide and there
is no sight like 1000+ men lined up for confession.
Then this
happened:
I was scheduled to appear at a Catholic Men's Conference in Worcester,
Massachusetts on March 16, until today, when the Roman Catholic Bishop of
Worcester, Robert McManus, directed that my appearance be canceled. McManus was
under pressure from Islamic supremacist groups who were calling and emailing
the diocese demanding that he cancel my appearance. I've been informed that
they were asked to call the diocese and demand the cancellation by a Boston
Globe reporter named Lisa J. Wangsness, who contacted me this morning and
appears to have instigated the entire controversy.
Meanwhile He spoke at the Natick
VFW this week I interviewed him afterwards:
I know the Bishop and he’s a pretty decent guy who has not
given into the media in the past. I
suspect he was badly played by the various groups involved but what really
confuses me is this:
The Globe has not and likely will not be any sort of ally of
the church and when the “new evangelization” gets into full swing the same
people screaming for the removal of Spencer will be objecting to Catholic proselytizing.
What will happen when these same people start objecting
then?
In
Massachusetts the GOP has only 11% registration, last week the state party had
an election for a new Chairman. Kirsten
Hughes was the winner and spoke to me after her election.
She
is a competent and energetic person who might be able to pull it off,
unfortunately the method by which she was umm less than
optimal:
Thursday’s debacle left the activists who
attended outraged. They were
upset with the blatant attempt to steal the election during the first ballot,
angered at the attempt to block the 2nd after the votes were cast, befuddled
when their candidate was made to announce his defeat ad simply outraged that
they had to literally scream for the vote count of the second ballot (41-39)
before it was given.Meanwhile the Mass GOP managed to shoot itself in the
foot during the election for party chair between eventual winner Kirsten Hughes
Karl Rove, Scott Brown and Mitt Romney not withstanding ,
you can’t win an election attacking your party and you can’t grow a party by
treating your base this way. Perhaps
when the GOP figures that out I’ll come
back.
Things continue to go poorly in Egypt, in addition to the
issues with freedom now they have an issue with
bread:
the government is telling Egyptians (almost half of whom live on less
than $2 a day) to eat less. You can’t make this sort of thing up. Egypt lost
another $1.4 billion in foreign exchange reserves in January, and probably is
flat broke after figuring in arrears to oil and food suppliers, and it imports
half its food, so something had to give. In response, Egypt’s Islamist
government is emulating North Korea’s approach to food shortages:
But …but I thought with Mubarek out his family wasn’t
stealing anymore? Where is that money
going? Well that’s a good question but
the origin of this issue likely comes from another
source:
"We
need stability to get tourists back. But the Islamist rule is provoking more
instability and rage," said Sayed Abdel Tawab, a 33-year-old tour guide
who has seen his daily earnings shrink from $32 per day to $11.
"I
have no hope there will be stability," said Yasser Bahlol, 33, in his own
souvenir stand as he idly surveyed what would previously have been a bustling,
high-season flow of visitors. Only a few Egyptian visitors wandered past,
spending little.
It’s hard to pay for imported calories when you chase away
the tourists who provide the capital for them.
As Spengler puts it…
We are watching something unique and terrible in modern history, namely
the disintegration of a society of 80 million people, with the prospect of real
hunger–a self-made famine brought about by social and political disaster rather
than crop failure or war.
I don’t know how unique it is. There is a certain fellow named Mugabi who
managed to turn his country into a land of food shortages.
The Ravens won the
superbowl, that didn’t surprise me, that they were able to strop the 49ers on a
goal line stand, that didn’t surprise me either, but I object to the entire
philosophy of the entire non-call on the 4th and goal play.
Either holding is a flagable offense or it is not. The rule book doesn’t say holding is allowed
if it is in the 4th quarter of the Superbowl with under two minutes
to play.
That’s why I like baseball, umps
might blow a play on occasion but the rules are the rules are the rules and you
can’t run out the clock to win.
The game has become a lot about the ads, some ads like the
Paul Harvey Farm ad will be remembered long after they are done, others like
the Go Daddy Kiss will soon be forgotten.
The ad that I will remember most is the Prom Ad. I hated it and its personal. I always was told there were plenty of people
at the prom alone, but at my senior prom I was the only single there. A cloth was tied to the empty chair next to me Single most humiliating experience of my
life.
The real irony, my wife to be, same High School Class was at
home, wasn’t asked.
Shouldawouldacouda ….
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