Census Bureau Provides The Obama/Bush Legacy: One In Six In Poverty In The US From 2007-2010

This is the Obama/Bush legacy.

The top-down/federal-gubbermint-gunna-fix-it-all/crony capitalist, utterly incompetent and corrupt approach to governance does. not. work. Oddly enough, the real descent into Perdition coincides with the Democrats taking control of both houses of Congress in 2007. Hmmm....

One in six in poverty. Do we need to wait a bit longer for more results? Until it's one in five, perhaps?

Oddly enough, OS found this tidbit from a link provided by the NEA, aka the Democrat party's most obsequious Kool-Aid consumers.

How do they fail to understand?

Commonwealth of Kentucky v. Lagnatta: Five Years Spent Awaiting Trial, Exonerated Before Trial. OS Has A Few Questions.

The whole sad tale is reported here in the Courier-Journal.

The murder of Tina Tatro in 2007 was one of those depressingly familiar stories of the horrible end of a humble life. The police assured everyone they had their man, case closed, another bad guy off the street, no need to loiter and look any further, just move on there thank you very much.

Problem is, they had the wrong guy. They arrested Carlos Lagnatta on the grand jury testimony of Ms. Tatro's boyfriend. But, hey--Carlos was black, with a drug and violent crime history, he was seen in the neighborhood, the boyfriend said he did it, so--let's move on.

That appears to be the thinking of the original lead prosecutor, one Jason Butler. Defense demands for DNA evidence to actually link the suspect with the physical facts in the case were, shall we say, put on a slooooow boat to China. After all, Carlos was black, with a drug and violent crime history, he was seen in the neighborhood, the boyfriend said he did it, so--let's move on.

It took years to get the DNA tests done. Carlos lives in jail, no trial date, nothing being done to dispose of the case, but hey--Carlos was black, with a drug and violent crime history, he was seen in the neighborhood, the boyfriend said he did it, so--let's move on.

 In January 2011, Lagantta's original defense attorneys, Sheila Seadler and Michael Ferraraccio, laid the blame for the delay on police and the original prosecutor, Jason Butler, who is no longer with the office.
 
"Not to throw him under the bus, but he has dragged his feet on this (DNA testing) for a long time," Ferraraccio told Eckerle during that early 2011 hearing.

And Seadler said in court records that investigators failed to initially obtain and analyze some evidence, prompting the defense to request the testing years later.

Butler, who is in private practice now, acknowledged it took a long time to get the DNA testing, but denied dragging his feet. He argued in April that getting DNA tests is a lengthy procedure exacerbated in past years in Kentucky, as labs were unable to keep up with soaring demand.

Evidence? Schmevidence! Besides, Carlos was black, with a drug and violent crime history, he was seen in the neighborhood, the boyfriend said he did it, so--let's move on.

Finally--the DNA tests are completed, after the departure of Jason Butler, it appears. And, Holy Exoneration Batman!!, the DNA collected from poor Ms. Tatro's body points to The Boyfriend!
Dear Heavens, Whood-a-thunk-it!  A boyfriend killing his ladyfriend, blaming it on someone else and lying to the police and prosecutors! That's just unheard of!

Besides,  Carlos was black, with a drug and violent crime history, he was seen in the neighborhood, the boyfriend said he did it, so--let's move on.

So, today, five years later. Carlos is a free man, or at least not languishing in jail. He had to plead guilty to some lesser charges just to finally be able to walk away. God knows the prosecutor's office didn't want to send him to the streets to find an attorney to help him sue them out of existence.

Could it be that Jason Butler knew his case was not that strong, but decided to simply put Carlos on ice, let him simply disappear into the system, maybe wait for some other snitch to rat him out on some other charge, and keep him locked away, one means or another After all, Carlos was black, with a drug and violent crime history...it's all for a good cause, right?

So, now: What happens to Jason Butler? Does anyone, anywhere in the system--his former boss, the judge, the defendant--anyone at least take this man to the bar association to let him explain why he should still be practicing law? Does the judge not sanction his office in some way? Do people who do this simply walk away and do it again and again?

Here is his new address and vita--pretty impressive, is it not? Except...he buried an innocent man on a murder charge for five years.    He left that bit out, don't-cha-know.

Sorta' makes one want to put him on the old speed-dial in case a lawyer is needed in Lousiville, right? Especially if one is black...with a criminal record...

How many more Carlos Lagnattas are sitting in local jails?

OS is no bleeding liberal. Carlos is not a nice man--he does have a drug and violent crime history. But when the police and prosecutors so badly fumble a case such as this, it is easy to guess that there are many more out there. There are some really bad people walking the streets. Each one of these fiascos makes it that much tougher to protect the innocent and restrain the criminals.

OS does know that this nation is sitting on a ticking time bomb with a justice system that behaves in this manner.   If it's Carlos this year, it will be someone else's turn, much closer to home, next year.

Romney Picks Ryan: Three Cheers For The Geeks

Think about it, ya'll. If this country ever needed grown-ups in charge, it's now. These past four years have shown us what happens when we hand over management of the Republic to narcissistic children.

Is Romney exciting? No. Which may be a really good thing. He's actually kind of geeky.

Paul Ryan? No thrill up the leg, but he does know how to do math, and honestly folks, that's what we need.

Daniel Hannan, wrting about us from afar, says encouraging words about Ryan, and shares this video:




Since 1992, we've had Bubbah, George Dubyah, and Himself. That's twenty years of serious mismanagement. Time to hire grownups, and see if they can't right the ship.

In the meantime, OS is giving his shekels to conservatives at the state house level, and to conservatives running to unseat leftist incumbents. The state house people are our last line of defense, and it would be good to see a few more like Jesse Jackson Jr depart the scene from Washington.

Sometimes, Only Laughter Will Do: The Amish Farmer

HT Doug Ross

An Amish farmer walking, notices a man drinking from his pond, with his hand. 

 The Amish man shouts: "Trink das wasser nicht. Die kuhen haben dahin gesheissen." Which means: "Don't drink the water, the cows have pooped in it." 

The man shouts back: "I'm from Chicago and just down here campaigning for Obama, I can't understand you. Please speak in English." 

 The Amish man says: "Use two hands, you'll get more."

Calculated Risk: Note: 7.58% (SA) and 4.27% equals 11.85%

Bill McBride, the brilliant blogger at Calculated Risk, is one of OS's heroes. He is so dispassionate, so laconic, and he knows how to do simple math so as to (as Ricky Ricardo would say..) 'splain things to us Looocey.

Today, Bill 'splains a small bit of the reality of the real economy. The economy we, who do not work on The Street or in D.C. or have Ivy League MBA's or permanent sinecures at universities or state gubbermint bureaucracies, live in. The real economy.

The delinquency rate for mortgage loans on one-to-four-unit residential properties increased to a seasonally adjusted rate of 7.58 percent of all loans outstanding as of the end of the second quarter of 2012, an increase of 18 basis points from the first quarter, but a decrease of 86 basis points from one year ago, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) National Delinquency Survey.

The delinquency rate includes loans that are at least one payment past due but does not include loans in the process of foreclosure. The percentage of loans on which foreclosure actions were started during the second quarter was 0.96 percent, unchanged from last quarter and from one year ago. The percentage of loans in the foreclosure process at the end of the second quarter was 4.27 percent, down 12 basis points from the first quarter and 16 basis points lower than one year ago. The serious delinquency rate, the percentage of loans that are 90 days or more past due or in the process of foreclosure, was 7.31 percent, a decrease of 13 basis points from last quarter and a decrease of 54 basis points from one year ago. 

OK, fair enough, makes the eyes glaze over a bit. Then McBride does his simple math:

7.58% (SA) and 4.27% equals 11.85%

That is to say, 11.85% of all mortgages are in serious trouble.  That's just short of 12%.

So, OS decided to do a bit of his own simple math, remembering the days when stock quotes were reported in 'eighths'--the old traders could do math in their heads, and keep it all straight under that system. 

100 divided by 12 comes up to 8.3. As in, one in eight mortgages in the United States is in trouble.

Here, in the real economy, this is trouble. 

Official unemployment is 8.3%. Real unemployment is close to 20%, in the aggregate. That comes out to one in five.  For young black men, it may be double that. An entire generation is in danger of being lost to the streets and the justice system, because in order to have a job, a person must have basic literacy in place, basic social skills in place, some sort of marketable skill to offer the world. We have college graduates fixing coffees at Starbucks, lots of them. Fifteen-year-olds can make coffee, as sophomores in high school. Where do they go for those first jobs if those slots are filled by twenty-five-year-olds with B.A.'s?

 

Here, in the real economy, this is trouble.

Tossing Obama and his posse will be a good and necessary start to getting back on our feet. OS knows, even if we do that, and almost everything goes right as we go forward, we are probably 5-10 years away from really being back in the saddle. 

So, someone please explain to OS why Harry Reid is obsessed with Mitt's tax returns?

Once More, Into The Breach--The US Backing The Syrian Rebels

When we remember the high moral indignation, righteous indignation, screaming crowds of demonstrators indignation, DixieChicksStandingUpForTheRight indignation, about US intervention in the Middle East, let us contemplate this modest news report from the Jerusalem Post.

We are in this Syria mess up to our ears, and have been all along. We are helping co-ordinate it, fund it, run it. The blood is flowing. A secret war has been waged in our name, with our money. This makes Iran-Contra of the 1980's look like child's play. This is the stuff of the John LeCarre novels.

And we really have no clear idea who 'The Opposition' is, except that they certainly won't be European Social Democrat types. They will be some form of Islamist cause.  They will turn their new shiny weapons against us and Israel.

There are families sending their children off to school in Tennessee today, little knowing that their eighth-grade boys and girls are slated for extinction in about 8-10 years, courtesy of the Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Barack Hussein Obama.

OS heads off to the polls this morning, to vote in the local primary election.  It is heartening to see a raft of conservative candidates on the ballot, for positions ranging from school board to US Senate. OS plans to vote from the bottom up--namely voting for the individuals most likely to work to negate and undo the damage done by Obama and his Leftist allies. OS views it as insurance: Even if Himself somehow manages to recapture the White House, he faces a world in which most of the states, from school board to Senate are in the hands of people who will not offer a morsel of cooperation.

Who knows, we may yet save a few of those fourteen-year-old boys and girls yet.

Modern Banking, Explained

No comment needed!

OS Ruminates On Dog Ownership And Our Present Situation

After about of year of searching, Mr. and Mrs. OS finally took delivery of a new border collie puppy. The search through the rescue services had been futile, as every attempt to inquire about a rescued pooch was either ignored or rebuffed. We have land, twenty years of vet references, and three other of the breed in the house, so it isn't like we were novice apartment dwellers...oh, well.

In the end, we found a breeder with puppies from a great sire and dam--both cleared for genetic problems, so we don't end up with a blind and limping dog. And The Puppy did not disappoint. She is a beauty, of sweet disposition and an outgoing personality.

Today was the day to mail off the AKC registration, and make the first visit to the vet. She checked out beautifully, and never protested all the poking and prodding.

On the way over, though, it did dawn on OS that he lives in a paradoxical moment. The Puppy, in her lifetime, will likely receive much better medical care than most of the residents of this county.

The analogy is not exact, obviously: Dogs don't smoke, drink, drive cars, or engage in sexual behaviors that put them in the path of venereal diseases or HIV. Their life spans are much shorter than humans, and even though they are mammals, they are less complicated than humans. They don't marry, go to school like we do, earn wages, have to make tough decisions about life. It costs much less to treat a dog than a human, and if the costs are prohibitive or the dog is too far gone, the euthanasia route is taken.

They're dogs. Can't do that to people, because they are, well, people.

And yet--there are a lot of people in this county who don't smoke, drink, or screw around. They live responsibly. And they live on the fringes of health care availability, usually waiting until they are acutely ill before they hit the emergency room and hear the bad news about the serious underlying condition that caused the acute misery. The Puppy is going to fare better than they, because OS is a responsible dog owner. There is a disconnect here, a dissonance. OS doesn't exactly know how to resolve it, or if it's possible. But it makes him uncomfortable.

Something else, last week, made OS uncomfortable: An 11:00 pm visit to a WalMart in a small Midwestern town. He saw more than a few moms with little children (and tattoos) grocery shopping. He saw a lot more people who looked terribly beaten down by life, people who seemed to to have lost hope that life was going to get better.  He was there shopping for a bottle of wine to share with colleagues at a conference, and could not wait to depart the store. The conference involved teaching academic skills to motivated young people--all of them, even if of modest means, well-cared-for children from intact homes with motivated parents who scraped together money to make the week possible for their kids.

The contrast was disheartening. As proud and happy as he was about the kids he was teaching, he was shocked at the kids he saw at the Wal-Mart at 11:00 pm.

Something has seriously gone awry, and bumper-sticker slogans and thirty-second ads designed to ruin the life of a political opponent and the next tax scheme and the next election and the next aren't going to come close to solving the dilemma.

All OS could think of after his purchase was to get back to his conference and double down on teaching the kids he had in front of him. For now, that's still the only plan he has available.

Maybe time spent with The Puppy will renew his soul a bit, and some new idea will emerge. She's in her crate now, snoring away, blissfully uninvolved with any of the tragedies of the world outside her home.

She's doing her job perfectly, effortlessly.

She's a dog, after all.

OS Pauses To Remember Andy Griffith

Bless him, he brought us all such joy and gentle good humor. The cast of characters in his shows were so loved, because they so resembled people we love in our small-town Southern lives. Sheriff Andy kept order by moral suasion, by the constant appeal to everyone's better angels.

Yes, it was fiction. But this fiction made all our lives better, reminded us of who we might be.

In tribute, the great theme penned by Earl Hagen, Herbert Spencer and Everett Sloan--with the lyrics sung by Andy himself.

One of the great tunes of 20th Century America, with a lovely lyric to match. Andy would have wanted us all to enjoy one last moment...

More On The Roberts Fiasco At SCOTUS from CBS--Holy Cow What A Mess...

And remember, ya'll. We're stuck with this amoral cowardly turkey for life.

Which makes electing a fire-breathing conservative Senate imperative, so that the next appointments make Roberts irrelevant. He can play golf, go to cocktail parties, give commencement speeches, but he needs to be put in a position where he never ever influences public life again.

CBS News reports the shameful episode--linked above, excerpted a bit below.

Chief Justice John Roberts initially sided with the Supreme Court's four conservative justices to strike down the heart of President Obama's health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act, but later changed his position and formed an alliance with liberals to uphold the bulk of the law, according to two sources with specific knowledge of the deliberations.
Roberts then withstood a month-long, desperate campaign to bring him back to his original position, the sources said. Ironically, Justice Anthony Kennedy - believed by many conservatives to be the justice most likely to defect and vote for the law - led the effort to try to bring Roberts back to the fold.

"He was relentless," one source said of Kennedy's efforts. "He was very engaged in this." 

But this time, Roberts held firm. And so the conservatives handed him their own message which, as one justice put it, essentially translated into, "You're on your own."

The conservatives refused to join any aspect of his opinion, including sections with which they agreed, such as his analysis imposing limits on Congress' power under the Commerce Clause, the sources said.

Instead, the four joined forces and crafted a highly unusual, unsigned joint dissent. They deliberately ignored Roberts' decision, the sources said, as if they were no longer even willing to engage with him in debate. 

But, why would he do this, and how did he accomplish the coup? Read on, ya'll. It jes' keeps gittin'
slimier and slimier:

Because Roberts was the most senior justice in the majority to strike down the mandate, he got to choose which justice would write the Court's historic decision. He kept it for himself.

(In other words, he hijacked the process, and performed a 'switcher-oonie' on his colleagues. A classic three-card monte.)


Over the next six weeks, as Roberts began to craft the decision striking down the mandate, the external pressure began to grow. Roberts almost certainly was aware of it. 

Some of the conservatives, such as Justice Clarence Thomas, deliberately avoid news articles on the Court when issues are pending (and avoid some publications altogether, such as The New York Times). They've explained that they don't want to be influenced by outside opinion or feel pressure from outlets that are perceived as liberal.

But Roberts pays attention to media coverage. As Chief Justice, he is keenly aware of his leadership role on the Court, and he also is sensitive to how the Court is perceived by the public. 

There were countless news articles in May warning of damage to the Court - and to Roberts' reputation - if the Court were to strike down the mandate. Leading politicians, including the President himself, had expressed confidence the mandate would be upheld.

The Fix Was IN, ya'll. Roberts voted to strike down, then hijacked the process, then revealed his true intentions. This explains why several colleagues will no longer engage him in debate. From this point on, they have to assume when his lips are moving--he's lying.

The Executive Branch is in the hands of lawless hustlers. The Senate is in the hands of Obama's enablers. The House is breathing fire, but can't get much done, and the Supreme Court is about to grind to a standstill. The Chief Justice is a duplicitous, vain hack, and the other Justices know it.

This is a recipe for really, really, really bad trouble. Until grown-ups retake the Senate, and pay freaking attention to the people they appoint to lower courts, we are in for a world of hurt.