The popularity of Ronald Reagan remains high 24 years after he left office. So much so that Obama, of all people, has tried to associate himself with Reagan in his class warfare battle. Here we see that he has directed White house presidential biographers  Michael Beschloss and Hugh Sidey to change the official entry of the White Presidential biography web site to try and bask in some reflected glow:

In a June 28, 1985 speech Reagan called for a fairer tax code, one where a multi-millionaire did not have a lower tax rate than his secretary. Today, President Obama is calling for the same with the Buffett Rule.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/ronaldreagan

Obama has been taking Reagan’s statements out of context in order to make himself look less like a class warfare hawk than he is. He really is shameless.

Contrary to Obama’s suggestion that he was specifically arguing for a new tax provision aimed at the superwealthy, Reagan was barnstorming the country in an effort to reduce taxes for all Americans, mainly by cutting rates, simplifying the tax system and eliminating tax shelters that allowed some people to avoid paying any taxes at all.

In other words, Reagan was pushing for a tax cut for everyone, not just an increase on a few. (The highest tax bracket at the time was 50 percent.) He even wanted to cut the tax rate on capital gains from 20 percent to 17.5 percent. 

As Reagan put it in his May 28 address to the nation:

“We want to cut taxes, not opportunity. As you can see, the percentage of income tax owed would come down, way down, for those earning less than $15,000, down for earnings between $15,000 and $30,000, down for earnings between $30,000 and $50,000, and down for those earning more than $50,000…. By lowering everyone’s tax rates all the way up the income scale, each of us will have a greater incentive to climb higher, to excel, to help America grow.”

Reagan was calling for a broad-based tax cut, in a period when there was rampant abuse of the system and some wealthy individuals were paying little or no taxes. Obama, by contrast, has focused most of his rhetorical attention on a provision that would raise taxes on the super-wealthy. The tax data show such individuals generally are already paying substantial taxes — the effective tax rate for the top one percent of taxpayers was 29.5 percent in 2007, according to the Congressional Budget Office — though there are some cases in which they may pay a lower average rate than middle-class Americans.

Obama, in his budget, has vaguely called for “reform of the tax system” that would include simplifying the tax code and lowering tax rates, but the White House has offered few details, in contrast to the detailed plan laid out by Reagan. Thus Obama’s primary focus on boosting the taxes paid by the rich is completely different from Reagan’s notion of a “fair share.” 

The Buffett Rule is not aimed at tax shelters per se, but instead seeks to go after people who earn most of their income from investments, which are taxed at a lower rate (15 percent) than ordinary income. In effect, it is a tax surcharge that adds to the complexity of the tax system. Reagan, by contrast, wanted to lower tax rates for the wealthy and even lower the capital gains rate, while ensuring the notorious tax shelters of the early 1980s were eliminated.

* http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/president-obama-quoting-reagan-out-of-context/2012/04/11/gIQAaOsZBT_blog.html

Boxer Manny Pacquiao has been banned from the Grove shopping mall because of comments he made about gay marriage. In an interview with National Conservative Examiner, Pacquiao addressed President Obama’s recent endorsement of gay marriage. “God’s words first … obey God’s law first before considering the laws of man,” Pacquiao told the Examiner. “God only expects man and woman to be together and to be legally married,” the boxer is quoted as saying. “It should not be of the same sex, so as to adulterate the altar of matrimony, like in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah.” The article goes on to say that “Pacquiao’s directive for Obama calls societies to fear God and not to promote sin, inclusive of same-sex marriage and cohabitation.”

On Monday night, the Grove, owned by shopping mall magnate Rick Caruso, posted a statement on Twitter saying Pacquiao is not allowed on the premises.

The tweet reads: “Boxer Manny Pacquiao is not welcome at @TheGroveLA. @TheGroveLA is a gathering place for all Angelenos, not a place for intolerance.”

So Caruso and The Grove simply will not tolerate anyone whose views on this matter differ from theirs. That is what passes for tolerance on the left.

I, for one, will not be shopping at the Grove henceforth. Besides the fact that the Grove is intolerant, it has crappy, overpriced metrosexual stores, limited parking and a stupid trolley that takes up space in the walkway.

I happened to be at the right place at the right time, with camera ( f8 and be there, as the saying goes) and got some shots of the procession of bikes making up the Run For The Wall memorial bike run. They had filled the south parking lot at Victoria Gardens Mall, and left at around 8am. I think their ultimate goal is to be at the Vietnam Memorial in DC by Memorial Day.

According to their web site:

Mission Statement: To promote healing among ALL veterans and their families and friends, to call for an accounting of all Prisoners of War and those Missing in Action (POW/MIA), to honor the memory of those Killed in Action (KIA) from all wars, and to support our military personnel all over the world.

I would say there were about 600 bikes of all types, plus support vehicles. The local fire department provided a flag arch for them to ride under, as well as an honor guard.

Seems like a worthy cause, and something fun to do if you are retired and like to ride. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t do it, because I don’t do big group rides, but it was fun to watch.

Rock squirrel, Canon EOS 1d Mk II, Sigma 100-300 f4 EX

Questions have arisen about the veracity of Obama’s autobiography. It seems he may have made up certain people and described things that didn’t happen, in a manner that he calls “compression”.

“One night I took her to see a new play by a black playwright. It was a very angry play, but very funny. Typical black American humor. The audience was mostly black, and everybody was laughing and clapping and hollering like they were in church. After the play was over, my friend started talking about why black people were so angry all the time. I said it was a matter of remembering—nobody asks why Jews remember the Holocaust, I think I said—and she said that’s different, and I said it wasn’t, and she said that anger was just a dead end. We had a big fight, right in front of the theater. When we got back to the car she started crying. She couldn’t be black, she said. She would if she could, but she couldn’t. She could only be herself, and wasn’t that enough.

“None of this happened with Genevieve,” Maraniss writes. “She remembered going to the theater only once with Barack, and it was not to see a work by a black playwright. When asked about this decades later, during a White House interview, Obama acknowledged that the scene did not happen with Genevieve. “It is an incident that happened,” he said. But not with her.

When asked whether this was dishonest he gave this curious answer:

“I thought that [the anecdote involving the reaction of a white girlfriend to the angry black play] was a useful theme to make about sort of the interactions that I had in the relationships with white girlfriends. And so, that occupies, what, two paragraphs in the book? My attitude was it would be dishonest for me not to touch on that at all … so that was an example of sort of editorially how do I figure that out?””

So it would have been dishonest not to be dishonest. Get it? Me either.

Politico:  http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/05/obama-ny-girlfriend-was-composite-character-122272.html

I have have a hard time understanding how many otherwise intelligent people voted for Obama, and not just voted for him, but actually believed he would be different. They believed him when he said he would not accept private campaign financing. They believed him when he said he he wanted to get big money from corporate lobbyists out of politics. They believed him when he said he would get down to the business of turning America around, and righting the ship.

Will facts change the minds of the Kool-Aid  drinkers? I doubt it. They bought into the Obama myth so deeply that any suggestion that they might, just might, have been wrong about The One cuts so deeply into their psyche that the defense shields quickly go up, and they raise the usual weapons, like racist, elitist, red stater, and liar, and start firing. Keep firing facts at them and the most you can hope for is a “ Well, I don’t care, I like him anyway.”

Mail Online, a UK publication, has an interesting article on a new book by Brendan Doherty, The Rise of the Permanent Presidential Campaign. according to Mail,

Barack Obama has already held more re-election fundraising events than every elected president since Richard Nixon combined, according to figures to be published in a new book. Obama is also the only president in the past 35 years to visit every electoral battleground state in his first year of office.

Doherty, who has compiled statistics about presidential travel and fundraising going back to President Jimmy Carter in 1977, found that Obama had held 104 fundraisers by March 6th this year, compared to 94 held by Presidents Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Snr, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush combined.

Since then, Obama has held another 20 fundraisers, bringing his total to 124. Carter held four re-election fundraisers in the 1980 campaign, Reagan zero in 1984, Bush Snr 19 in 1992, Clinton 14 in 1996 and Bush Jnr 57 in 2004.

Do you know who Metta World Peace is? Neither did I; in fact, I had never heard of said person until I overheard the name while listening to sports on the local news a week or so ago and they were talking about the Lakers game. Apparently MWP plays for the Lakers. He looked vaguely familiar, though, so naturally I Googled him. Turns out MWP is one Ron Artest, who legally changed his name to Metta World Peace last September.

MWP is a pretty good ball player. Very good, in fact. But MWP is probably best known for his involvement in the infamous Pacers-Pistons player/fan brawl on November 19, 2004. Here’s the Wiki recap:

With less than a minute left in the game, a fight broke out between players on the court. After the fight was broken up, a drink was thrown from the stands at then Pacers player Ron Artest while he was lying on the scorer’s table. Artest then entered the crowd and sparked a massive brawl between players and fans.

The repercussions led to nine players being suspended without pay for a total of 146 games, which led to $11 million in salary being lost by the players. Five players were also charged with assault, and eventually sentenced to a year of probation and community service.

Artest was given the longest suspension; he was suspended for the remainder of the 2004–05 NBA season, a suspension which eventually totaled 86 games (73 regular season and 13 subsequent playoff games), the longest suspension for an on-court incident in NBA history

Artest,,,sorry, Metta World Peace, has had a colorful disciplinary history in the NBA:

Artest was suspended for three games in 2003 for destroying a TV camera at Madison Square Garden, and for four games the same year for a confrontation with Miami Heat coach Pat Riley.^[50] He was also suspended for two games in the early 2004–05 season by Pacers coach Rick Carlisle after he allegedly asked for a month off because he was tired from promoting an R&B album for the group Allure on his production label. He previously had been suspended 12 times in his 13-year career but only once, for one game, in his three seasons with the Lakers.

MWP latest disgraceful incident occurred last night during the Lakers 114-106 victory over Oklahoma. As MWP stood pounding his chest after making a dunk, Oklahoma’s James Harden walked by him toward the sidelines. MWP cocked his arm and delivered a powerful blow to Harden’s ear with his elbow. Harden fell to the floor, and had to be taken to a hospital for check for a possible concussion. MWP was immediately ejected from the game.

MWP claimed that the incident was accidental. During an after game press conference he delivered this disingenuous explanation:

“During that play, I just dunked on Durant and Ibaka. I got real emotional, real excited,” World Peace said after the Lakers’ 114-106 double overtime victory Sunday over the Oklahoma City Thunder. “It’s unfortunate that James had to get hit with an unintentional elbow. I hope he’s OK.

Watch the slow-motion at 1:02 in the video and see if you think it was incidental contact.

I watched it several times and believe it was entirely intentional. If anyone else did that to someone outside of a professional basketball arena they would be arrested for assault and battery. MWP should have been arrested as soon as he hit the locker room.

I’m not a basketball fan but I have always thought the Lakers are a class outfit; they obviously have been the most successful sports franchise in LA history. Why they would hire a clown like MWP, with all his baggage and potential for trouble?  Undoubtedly, he will get a lengthy suspension for his latest outrage. I hope he gets a permanent ejection from Los Angeles sports.

Wrong.

Here is the real reason, as this page from the San Diego Unified School District explains:

The state of California funds school districts based on student attendance, also known as Average Daily Attendance (ADA), at school. ADA is calculated by dividing the total number of days of student attendance by the number of days of school taught during the same period.
Example:
Michael has perfect attendance, calculated this way:
142 days attended ÷ by 142 days of school taught = 1.0 ADA
Hannah attended 136 of the 142 days taught, calculated this way:
136 days attended ÷ by 142 days of school taught = .96 ADA

Here is the example they give:

Michael has perfect attendance, calculated this way:
142 days attended ÷ by 142 days of school taught = 1.0 ADA

Hannah attended 136 of the 142 days taught, calculated this way:
136 days attended ÷ by 142 days of school taught = .96 ADA

A student like Michael, with perfect attendance, generates $5,786* in revenue for the district. It is calculated this way: 1.0 ADA x $5,786 revenue limit per ADA = $5,786.

A student like Hannah, who may miss several days, generates less revenue. In this case, ADA is calculated this way: .96 ADA x $5,786 revenue limit per ADA = $5,554
In this case, there was a loss of $232 in possible revenue.

Hannah was a bad girl. Hanna cost the school $232 in free money. She also cost the school $5 in lottery money:

Lottery
1.0 ADA x $118 = $118
.96 ADA x $118= $113

And since she is a “Special Education” student, she cost the district an extra $26:

Special Education
1.0 ADA x $643= $643
.96 ADA x $643 = $617

Interestingly,schools receive funding for homeschooled students if parents work through the school, because this does not cut off funding they receive for student attendance (ADA, or average daily attendance). So in the case of homeschooling they get paid for not teaching your kids. Pretty good deal.

Note the interesting choice of words used. Michael “generated” revenue for the district. Hannah “generated” less revenue. In reality, neither one of them generated anything. The district was given money by the state. You and I generated the money.

In case you were worried that White House staffers may have been involved in the Secret Service scandal in Colombia, rest assured that an investigation was conducted, and no evidence of wrongdoing was found. This according to intrepid White House spokesliar Jay Carney.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney announced that White House legal counsel has concluded no White House staff engaged in any “misconduct” in Cartagena.

“The decision to conduct a review here, internally, was simply done out of due diligence,” Carney said. “There is no indication of any misconduct by any member of the White House advance team or staff.”

That’s right, the WH’s own legal staff conducted the investigation. No sense in wasting the time of impartial investigators on an investigation that clearly was unwarranted.

Carney refused to give any details on the investigation, such as whether the investigation included checking hotel records in Colombia or interviewing the White House advance team that went to Cartagena.
“There’s no point in getting into the details of this internal review except to say that it was conducted,” he said.

Details are unimportant; the investigation was conducted, everyone was cleared and that’s all you need to know. Continued questioning along this line is clear evidence of bias against our first bi-racial president. Next topic, please.