Obama's stimulus plan: Groundhog (the movie)Day

Rich Lowry writing in the National Review:

On the economy, the president’s administration has been hyperactive and ineffectual, a fatal combination, and all he can offer is more of the same. He is stuck on stimulus. It’s not Morning Again in America so much as Groundhog’s Day.



LINK:  trying the same thing over, and over, and over with the same result and expecting a different result?=insanity

"Do you want a free phone with those food stamps"?--Free phone program costing taxpayers $2.1 billion this year

You're probably familiar with the food stamp program which grew from $35 billion in 2008 to $75 billion last year. But did you know that getting food stamps also makes you eligible for a free government cell phone?

A program called Lifeline provides free phones and free monthly minutes to anyone on food stamps, WIC, Medicaid, Head Start, and several other government programs. And just like food stamps, Lifeline (aka "phone stamps") has been growing by leaps and bounds since 2008, at significant cost to taxpayers.

In 2011, the FCC estimated the cost(page 153) of the program would be $2.1 billion and said it would reach $3.3 billion by 2014 absent major reforms. The FCC also found that part of the problem with the program was rampant fraud.

LINK:  what next, a free Volt?

Different strokes for different folks

Cougars are moving eastward, back to the mid-west.

Cougars are recolonising the mid-western United States, according to scientists, reversing 100 years of decline.

The population of big cats, also known as American mountain lions, has rocketed in these states, from less than a hundred in 1990 to about 30,000 today. Michelle LaRue from the University of Minnesota said that the midwest population of cougars had been "effectively zero" two decades ago. "That's why this is so exciting," she said. "We have hard evidence that the western population has spread." The population of cougars declined substantially from about 1900, victims of hunting and a lack of suitable prey. Once considered a "bounty predator" and hunted to near extinction locally, cougars are now protected by law.

Three established breeding populations now exist in the upper midwest, in North Dakota, the Black Hills in South Dakota, and Nebraska, said LaRue, but cougars have been venturing far outside this range.



LINK:  Cat comeback

Palestinian children pose in military garb for kindergarten graduation

Children attending a kindergarten in Gaza that is run by Islamic Jihad celebrated their graduation by dressing up in army attire, waving toy rifles and chanting anti-Israel slogans.

“It is our obligation to educate the children to love the resistance, Palestine and Jerusalem, so they will recognize the importance of Palestine and who its enemy is,” the kindergarten’s director said. The children were dressed up in uniforms of Jihad’s armed-wing, the al-Quds Brigades, and each of them received a toy rifle [...] One child, Hamza, said “When I grow up I’ll join Islamic Jihad and the al-Quds Brigades. I’ll fight the Zionist enemy and fire missiles at it until I die as a shahid [martyr] and join my father in heaven. “I love the resistance and the martyrs and Palestine, and I want to blow myself up on Zionists and kill them on a bus in a suicide bombing,” he said.

LINK:  young terrorists in training

Madonna's Exposure Tour

                                       

             Madonna in Rome                                         Madonna in Turkey


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Is she trying to keep up with Lady Gaga, or just becoming more of an exhibitionist in middle age?

DNC spokesman: "...Bush tax cuts did some good things for the middle class"

“Broadly speaking, Republicans and Democrats don’t want to see, especially at a time where the economy needs all the fuel it can get, don’t want to see us raising taxes on the middle class. So for example, some of the Bush tax cuts did some good things for the middle class, and certainly don’t want to see, this time, tax increases on the middle class.”



LINK:  sure to be taken to the Obama woodshed soon

Jobless claims UP last week.

More Americans than forecast applied for unemployment insurance payments last week, another sign the labor market is struggling to improve.


Claims for jobless benefits unexpectedly climbed by 6,000 to 386,000 in the week ended June 9 from a revised 380,000 the prior week that was more than first estimated, Labor Departmentfigures showed today in Washington. Economists projected claims would fall to 375,000, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey.

LINK: Jobless claims UP

When the U.S. looks in the economic mirror it should see Europe

Daniel Henninger writing in the WSJ:


Italy's youth unemployment rate is 36% and Spain's an almost incomprehensible 50%. Does anyone really believe that Europe's smart young people don't want to work? That its engineers, designers, business-school graduates, architects, scientists and the rest wouldn't thrive, create new companies, new jobs, and produce benefit for Italy, Spain, France or the U.K. if they had breathing room to do so and were allowed to retain their earned income rather than transfer most of it to l'état?

  Here's pro-growth advice no one in Europe will take: Stop listening to the IMF bleeders and the Obama spenders. If you wish to relearn real, long-term growth, consult the U.S. governors who did that themselves. Scott Walker in Wisconsin, Mitch Daniels in Indiana and Chris Christie in New Jersey all took over states nearly as moribund as Italy and Spain and put before their publics hard but obvious choices about spending, taxes, pensions, unions and bureaucracies. Their publics voted against dying.

One may ask: Would a European electorate, if given an honest chance to choose self-salvation rather than the bleed-to-death choices they've been given the past two years, vote to save themselves? The betting here is many indeed would vote for a liberated future. Or would have.

LINK:  Europe is burning

Matt Cain pitches perfect game for the Giants

Matt Cain pitched the 22nd perfect game in major league history and first for the Giants, striking out a career-high 14 and getting help from two spectacular catches to beat the Houston Astros 10-0 on Wednesday night.


LINK:  perfect game