No Recession With A Government Job

This is the sad thing about the DC area in general and working for the federal government in particular. Government workers are rarely impacted by recessions which means they don't fully grasp what's happening in the rest of the country.

An example of this is Fairfax County which is on the Virginia side of DC and chockablock with federal workers or government contract workers. Not only is it one of the wealthiest counties in the country it is also flush with cash. Fairfax County ends year with $100M surplus

There could be many reasons for this plenty but given it's low unemployment rate of 4.5%, I'm fairly certain it is the reasons state above. It's a crying shame that some of the root causes of America's current economic problems can be laid at the feet of the very people benefiting the most from this crisis.

Polanski's Carnage

Child-Rapist Roman Polanski's film "Carnage" is being released soon and has appeared at the Venice Film Festival.

Needless to say, as I've either linked to articles or blogged about Polanski's shameful behavior here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, I am not a Polanski fan nor am I a fan of actors who are willing to work with or defend Polanski.

The cast list of "Carnage" is below, complete cast and crew list is here.

Jodie Foster
Kate Winslet
Christoph Waltz
John C. Reilly

Freedom of Speech being a value I uphold requires me to allow for differing opinions but it also allows me to judge those opinions and values and speak out against them. Roman Polanski is a child-rapist and anyone who supports him is a tool who does not deserve my financial support by viewing their films.

Obama’s Ozone Action Shows Internal Conflicts

Below is an article my husband posted over at National Review Online (link here):

The president today told the EPA not to continue with action on new ozone standards until 2013 (January 19, perhaps?). An outright cancellation of the rule-making would have been better, but this illustrates that the president is trying to juggle the certainty of destroying many thousands of jobs with the demands of Big Green (who would rather like to see those jobs destroyed). In fact, the main implication of this delay is that the president clearly rejects Lisa Jackson’s outrageous claims that environmental regulations lead to more jobs. If they did create jobs he wouldn’t have taken this action.

My colleague Myron Ebell spells out the political calculations:

What is shameful about the President’s decision to delay the new ozone rule is that it’s all about improving his chances of being re-elected and has nothing to do with the economic damage that the rule would do. The fact that the President still wants to go ahead after he gets re-elected with a regulation that has been estimated to cost $1 trillion a year shows that he could care less about the U. S. economy and the millions of people who have lost their jobs.

In other words, he wants to wait until the economy recovers before he starts destroying it again.

— Iain Murray is the author of Stealing You Blind: How Government Fatcats Are Getting Rich Off of You.

Fast & Furious Round-Up - ATF's Criminal Actions 09-02

ATF Death Watch 66: Obama Fires Acting ATF Director Melson More here

The ATF is having a party (more here) to celebrate successfully breaking the law. (More here, scroll down to "month")

Meet the New Boss... Melson is out, only to be replaced by B.Todd Jones.

New warning bells in Operation Fast and Furious probe (More here from Washington Examiner)

Gunwalker: Details of Coverup Revealed. Emails reveal attempts to hide that Gunwalker guns were present at Brian Terry's murder — within hours of Terry's death.

In a letter, Grassley and Issa say the lead prosecutor on Fast and Furious, Assistant U.S. Attorney Emory Hurley, learned almost immediately that guns allowed onto the street in his case, had been recovered at Terry’s murder. “(I)n the hours after Agent Terry’s death,” says the letter from Grassley and Issa, Hurley apparently “contemplated the connection between the two cases and sought to prevent the connection from being disclosed.” The Justice Department recently transferred Hurley out of the criminal division into the civil division.

An internal ATF email dated the day after Terry’s death reveals the quick decision to not disclose the source of the weapons found at the murder scene: “… this way we do not divulge our current case (Fast and Furious) or the Border Patrol shooting case.”

Another ATF email indicates that the justification both offices used to not charge the suspect with crimes related to the murder scene “was to not ‘complicate’ the FBI’s investigation.”

ATF whistleblowers revealed the link between the two cases to Congressional investigators and CBS News, saying their supervisors were attempting to cover it up.

TEA Party Debt Commission & One of the Four Freedoms

From Instapundit comes the following reporting -

TEA PARTY DEBT COMMISSION UPDATE: David Kirkham of the Utah Tea Party emails: “We are about to start the Tea Party Debt Commission meeting. Standing room only. There must be 200 people crammed in here. I am one of 12 national members on the commission (to mirror the 12 congressional members). Our kick off meeting is in Salt Lake City tonight. The people are suggesting solutions to our nation’s debt problem. This is exciting.”

To coin a phrase, this is what democracy looks like.

UPDATE: A followup email: “The line to speak is out the door. There is a lot of passion in this room. The politicians don’t see us rallying in the streets because we are rallying in meetings and on campaign staffs. Our greatest hope is they underestimate our resolve to get our government spending under control.” Indeed. Another photo below.

And reader Tom Brosz emails: “The second photo immediately reminded me of Norman Rockwell’s ‘Freedom of Speech’ painting, part of his ‘Four Freedoms’ series.”

For your reference, this is the picture Mr. Brosz is refering to -

Employee Salaries

--- Salary of retired US Presidents .............$180,000 FOR LIFE

Salary of House/Senate .......................$174,000 FOR LIFE

Salary of Speaker of the House ............$223,500 FOR LIFE

Salary of Majority/Minority Leaders ...... $193,400 FOR LIFE

Average Salary of a teacher ................ $40,065

Average Salary of Soldier DEPLOYED IN AFGHANISTAN $38,000

I think we found where the cuts should be made

Sounds Reasonable To Me

From My In-Box.

This woman is 51 Karan Diwan is a TV health guru advocating a holistic approach to nutrition and health, promoting exercise, a vegetarian diet of organic fruits and vegetables. She recommends detox diets, colonic irrigation and supplements, also states that yeast is harmful, that the color of food is nutritionally significant, and the futility of fecal examination.



This woman is 50 Nigella Lawson is a TV cook in Great Britian, who eats nothing but meat, butter and desserts.

I rest my case...

Actually Nigella is one of my heros!

Threats from the Weathermen

Do We Really Need a National Weather Service? My husband wrote this article over the weekend and he has gotten threats and insults for this article including a call to our home at 10:30pm on a Sunday which is unacceptable.

By the way, I name and shame. The call appears to be from a man named Bill Martin from Wilmington, DE according to call-back information and an Internet search.

But the important thing about this article and the reaction too it is if the National Weather Service were abolished, these meteorologists could get far better jobs without it.

Right now there is just one service which all industries use. Imagine the job competition among industries like insurance and airlines, oil exploration and construction companies if they all had to hire their own meteorologists.

Take the archeology. It is easy to think of an archeologist's job as one for professors and museum public-sector folks. But there are good archaeologist jobs out there working for private sector development companies and the cell phone industry. I know this because certain of my family members did. So why can't meteorologists?

In short, my husband's recommendation opens up the playing field for meteorologists to specialize or generalize as much as they wish. There would be certain advantageous cross-pollination of thinking and a real requirement for both accuracy and a better understanding of how humans interact with the climate.

And yet, these close-minded weathermen think it is okay to insult, threaten and disrupt the man who dared suggest these ideas. For shame.

For the record, we are now going to trace and record all our phone calls from unlisted or unknown numbers. If we are threatened or harassed in any way (and I have a very broad definition of harassment), I will call the police and file charges.