So you gets what you gets.

I have absolutely no sympathy. 18,500 people are losing their jobs and it's entirely their own fault. This is a bad economy to be jobless in. You'd think they might have heard.

But they didn't. And Richard Trumka wants you to know it's because of "Bain-like" policies. Such as owners wishing to make a profit on their companies, and not simply operate them as public charities for the benefit of the unions and the pension operations.

“What’s happening with Hostess Brands is a microcosm of what’s wrong with America, as Bain-style Wall Street vultures make themselves rich by making America poor,” Trumka said in a public statement. “Crony capitalism and consistently poor management drove Hostess into the ground, but its workers are paying the price.”

Earlier Friday, Hostess Brands announced that it would be closing, which the company said was precipitated by a workersÂ’ strike.

...

“These workers, who consistently make great products Americans love and have offered multiple concessions, want their company to succeed,” Trumka said in the statement. “They have bravely taken a stand against the corporate race-to-the-bottom. And now they and their communities are suffering the tragedy of a needless layoff. This is wrong. It has to stop. It’s wrecking America.”

...

In 2009, Hostess came out of bankruptcy thanks in part to private equity firm Ripplewood Holdings, which made a $130 million investment...

So the company was already in bankruptcy, and a Bain-like private equity firm brought it out of bankruptcy due to a $130 million investment, which the investors, get this, hoped to one day see a profit on.

The union workers disagreed, and told the investors that they should not only never expect a profit, but that they would continue escalating demands so that additional bankruptcies and additional bailouts of millions of dollars would follow.

So, the investors said: See ya. No use throwing good money after bad.

But remember, it's the people who spent $130 million to bring the company out of bankruptcy who are the villains here.

Unionism seems to be animated by the religious conviction that only the union laborer is deserving to make any money whatsoever for his exertions. Everyone else -- investors, owners, taxpayers -- exists solely to donate their money to the cause of union profit.

Posted by: Ace at 11:57 AM | Comments (556)
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Some women apparently have the option of being Strong Capable Women or Weepy Defenseless Little Girls as convenience suits them.

Republican senators' angry criticism of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice over her initial account of the deadly Sept. 11 attack in Libya smacks of sexism and racism, a dozen female members of the House said Friday.

In unusually personal terms, the Democratic women lashed out at Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham who earlier this week called Rice unqualified and untrustworthy and promised to scuttle her nomination if President Barack Obama nominates her to succeed Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

...

In a separate appearance after a briefing on Libya, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the growing criticism of Rice "is almost as if the attempt is to assassinate her character."

...

"It is a shame that anytime something goes wrong, they pick on women and minorities," Fudge said.

Ohhh, Fudge.

Kirsten Powers is offended by Obama's creation of a new Damsel in Distress meme.

Don't pick on the little lady.

Wednesday, President Obama bizarrely cast the U.N. Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, as some delicate flower the boys should stop picking on for her dissembling claims on five Sunday talk shows following the killing of 4 Americans in Benghazi. But, there is no damsel in distress and Obama's paternalistic bravado in defense of a top administration official is going to come back to haunt him.

"If Sen. McCain and Sen. Graham and others want to go after somebody, they should go after me," Obama intoned to the stenographers worshipping at his feet.

...

The conceit of Obama's argument is that people are picking on a helpless girl -- a lowly U.N. ambassador -- because they are afraid of the big bad president.

Oh, please.

President Obama, incredibly, claimed that he was "happy to have the discussion" about Benghazi.

Really?

Because every time anyone asks the president about Benghazi he claims he can't say anything because there is an investigation going on. The State Department actually said at one point that they would no longer take questions on the issue from reporters.

Senator Graham's response to the president's revelations and accusations at the press conference was exactly right: He said, "Mr. President, don't think for one minute I don't hold you ultimately responsible for Benghazi."

The president says he is ready to talk about this? Great. We are all ears.

Posted by: Ace at 11:39 AM | Comments (190)
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I have something essayish to add to this, but it's taking a while. Rather than just leave the blog blank for another hour, I'll link Rush first.

Video at the link. Here's what he said:

As you know, I'm a big technophile, and I read every tech blog there is, particularly those related to Apple. And all of these people contributing and writing and posting these blogs are under 30. And they live in a different world than I do and they live in a different world than I grew up in. The things that they just assume are true, like there is no doubt whatsoever that we are destroying the planet with global warming, no doubt. They can't even conceive of what you and I both know to be the truth, and that is, the whole global warming thing is a hoax. They do not even think it's a political issue. They do not realize that everything they believe in has been totally corrupted by politics. What they think is science is nothing more than corruption by the left, but they don't know any better. It's what they've been exposed to from as early on in their lives as their brains were capable of learning anything. And that happens to be the kind of thinking that populates the entertainment culture and so forth. I really think that the solution to our problems are not really political. I think conservatives are seen by young people and the left and the pop culture the way they are not because of what these people have been taught about conservatism. It's purely cultural. They don't know ideology. They don't know liberal versus conservative. They've not been told, for example, that Romney is a skunk or whatever because he is a conservative. It goes far deeper than that.

So the battle that we face is not really an ideological one. I must confess, I think the solution will be found in ideology, but I must confess, I think I've been a little wrong. I have waxed eloquent here on this program. I have longed for the day where people understand what liberalism is ideologically. I have begged the Republican Party to campaign on ideology and to explain to people what liberalism is by pointing liberals out. You want to see liberalism, look at Detroit. You want to see liberalism, look at California. You want to see liberalism, look at Cuba. You want to see liberalism, look at Venezuela. The Republicans haven't done it. I don't know why, don't care right now. But the young people do look at Cuba, and they lionize Che Guevara. They wear his T-shirts. They look at Cuba, they don't see any big problem there. They don't know. My only point here is I'm just scratching the surface on this, by the way, so I'm speaking off the top my head here, but I really think that the way this is going to have to be attacked and dealt with is not to set politics aside. I'm not saying that none of this is political, but it's a cultural problem we face. The reason conservatives have been so maligned and are so maligned, the reason people who don't know us think of us the way they do is not because they understand politics. It's a cultural thing.

This was Breitbart's main idea, that politics was simply the expression of choices and preferences that had already been decided by the culture.

Not vice versa. We have to understand which part is the tail and which is the dog. Politics is not the dog. Politics is the tail that gets wagged. Culture is the dog that wags the tail.

If you're looking at politics, you're looking at the very tip of the iceberg, and missing the tons of mass supporting it.

When we cast votes in an election, we are not voting to change the culture. Rather, our voting is our culture given expression in the form of the political outcomes it has created.

It's a huge task. Huger than most people even know. I'll write about that next.

Posted by: Ace at 10:32 AM | Comments (490)
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Three and a half stars. Full review below the fold. more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:02 AM | Comments (264)
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There are two possibilities here. Both may be true.

The Democrats may simply be posturing in order to wring a complete victory in negotiations. By threatening to take the country over the fiscal cliff, and seeming to mean it, they will force Republicans -- whose allegiance is to the nation, and not the progressive ideology -- to stop them by giving them everything they want.

The other possibility is that they're not just posturing and that they do mean it. Charles Krauthammer has been talking about this -- the Democrats know that to finance their ever growing welfare state they will have to tax the middle class. What better way to do it than to take us over the fiscal cliff (automatically raising income taxes on the middle class) and simply say "The Republicans did it, they wouldn't compromise?"

The other part of it, the automatic sequestration part, is likewise something they desire. Deep slashes to the military without having to vote for it? There are also cuts to Medicare, of course, but the Democrats are moving away from the old vote and besides, lots and lots of old people will continue voting for Democrats no matter how much they cut from Medicare (as they proved this last election).

And there's one more thing: We're going to have a recession, with the fiscal cliff or without it. It's better for Obama and the Democrats to have a recession that they can claim "was all because of Republicans" rather than one which is plainly owned by Obama.

All in all, the Democrats have arranged to win on all their spending and taxing objectives, and all they have to do is nothing. They just need to claim "We tried to compromise but the Republicans wouldn't let us compromise with them."

So which is it? Posturing or plan?

Both sides insist they want a deal before January, but a rising chorus of voices, especially Democrats, say they would rather go over the cliff than accept a deal that raised too few taxes while extracting too many cuts, especially to Medicare and Medicaid.

The only problem with this is if the media makes a mighty noise about Democrats' willingness to destroy the country in pursuit of ideological objectives.

What do you imagine the odds of that are?

Posted by: Ace at 09:24 AM | Comments (271)
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Now I have to tell you I've gone a little further on that headline than the actual article does: It does not say who stripped the Al Qaeda information out of Susan Rice's talking points. Someone did, in some vague "inter-agency process," we're calling it, apparently.

I'm comfortable with my assumption. Cui bono?

It was all a lie. Not just the initial lies, but Obama's feigned outrage at being questioned about it at a debate.

I don't know if this is actually fresh information or if it was available earlier this morning, and I just missed it. But I know it's very important.

Former CIA Director David Petraeus testified in a closed-door hearing Friday morning that his agency determined immediately after the Sept. 11 Libya attack that "Al Qaeda involvement" was suspected -- but the line was taken out in the final version circulated to administration officials, according to a top lawmaker who was briefed.

...

"No one knows yet exactly who came up with the final version of the talking points," [Rep. Peter King] said.

....

"His testimony today was that from the start, he had told us that this was a terrorist attack," King said, adding that he told Petraeus he had a "different recollection."

Still, the claim that the CIA's original talking points were changed is sure to stoke controversy on the Hill.

"The original talking points were much more specific about Al Qaeda involvement. And yet the final ones just said indications of extremists," King said, adding that the final version was the product of a vague "inter-agency process."

Further, King said a CIA analyst specifically told lawmakers that the Al Qaeda affiliates line "was taken out."

Posted by: Ace at 08:29 AM | Comments (303)
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The Secret Patriots of the media are okay with this.

Understand why the Democrats won't pass a budget: Because they cannot pass a budget which is both responsible (which would involve cuts to discretionary spending and, ultimately, entitlements) and politically juicy for the base (which wants spending to climb ever upwards). Since they cannot produce a document which does both, they simply pass no budget, and make contradictory promises of both responsibility and outlandish spending depending on which audience they're addressing. If they're talking to Anderson Cooper on CNN, and he's pretending he's interested in fiscal responsibility, they make noises about fiscal responsibility. When they talk to Democratic crowds, they promise that not a dime of any spending will be touched.

You can't do this if you have a budget which specifies, in precise dollar figures, what you actually plan to do.

And note further the election has just passed-- if it was ever politically safe for Democrats to pass a budget, it's right now. They have nearly two full years before the next midterms.

Even so, that's still not enough for Democrats.

en. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) confirmed Thursday that she will seek the chairmanship of the Senate Budget Committee next year but told The Hill that she cannot commit to doing a budget.

This opens up the possibility that Senate Democrats will avoiding passing a budget resolution for the fourth year in a row.

The last time the Senate passed a standalone budget resolution was in 2009.

This past year, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said a budget was not necessary because the top-line spending number for appropriations was set in the August 2011 debt-ceiling deal.

If you speak vaguely enough, you can lie flagrantly without providing strong evidence that you're lying. That's their real plan.

Posted by: Ace at 08:06 AM | Comments (158)
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And other Things Which Would Have Been More Useful To Know Three Weeks Ago.

David Petraeus is going to tell members of Congress that he “knew almost immediately after the September 11th attack, that the group Ansar al Sharia, the al Qaeda sympathizing group in Libya was responsible for the attacks,” CNN reports.

In his closed door meeting on the Hill, “[Petraeus] will also say he had his own talking points separate from U.N. ambassador Susan Rice. [Hers] came from somewhere other in the administration than his direct talking points,” Barbara Starr of CNN reports, referencing a source close to Petraeus.

The former CIA director will move to further himself from comments that didnÂ’t accurately characterize the terror attack that Rice made 5 days after on national television shows.

“When he looks at what Susan Rice said,” CNN reports, “here is what Petraeus’s take is, according to my source. Petraeus developed some talking points laying it all out. those talking points as always were approved by the intelligence community. But then he sees Susan Rice make her statements and he sees input from other areas of the administration. Petraeus — it is believed — will tell the committee he is not certain where Susan Rice got all of her information.”

Now, for weeks and weeks, we've been told that these Talking Points, as they're called, came directly from the "Intelligence Community."

Now a very high ranking member of that community says they didn't come from the IC at all, and thinks they came from the White House -- which was our strong suspicion before the Administration began telling the media this came from the IC.

The other thing he's claiming is that while he initially briefed Congressmen that there was some "evidence" for the Administration's story (the spontaneous protest), this was "disproved over time" -- in other words, "I didn't perjure myself, because even though what I said was wrong, I didn't know it was wrong when I said it."

But he's also claiming now that he new this was terrorism "almost immediately."

It appears he lied for Obama when it was critical that he lie for Obama. And now he's doing a Modified Limited Hang-Out, telling mostly the truth, while maintaining he also told the truth when he told a different account of the truth.

And I wonder why he'd do that.

Posted by: Ace at 06:47 AM | Comments (360)
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18,500 people are going to lose their jobs because one union decided that they thought it was possible to get blood from a stone.

"We deeply regret the necessity of today's decision, but we do not have the financial resources to weather an extended nationwide strike," said CEO Gregory Rayburn in a statement.

Hostess will move to sell its assets to the highest bidder. That could mean new life for some of its most popular products, which could be scooped up at auction and attached to products from other companies.

A letter that Hostess sent to its network of stores that carry its product said it expects "there will be great interest in our brands." But it said it could not give a time frame for when the sales would take place and its products would be available again.

But even if those brands are bought and restarted, the Hostess workers will not get their jobs back.

"The industry has overcapacity. We're overcapacity. Our rivals are overcapacity," said Rayburn in an interview on CNBC. Asked if the shutdown decision could be reversed if the Bakers' union agreed to immediately return to work, he responded, "Too late."

If feel bad for the workers who weren't part of the idiotic bakers union but have zero sympathy for the idiots who were. Hostess was already in bankruptcy, they were out of money, broke, finished. They had a plan to try and claw their way back and the bakers said, "no".

What was Hostess offering?

The concessions, which affect both the bakery union and Teamsters, call for cuts in wages and benefits of 27 percent to 32 percent over the five-year contract, with an immediate wage cut of 8 percent, the bakery union said. The company stopped contributing to workers' pensions last year.

The bakery union represents about 5,680 Hostess workers, about 30 percent of Hostess' total work force.

Pretty steep cuts but still 68% to 73% > 0%.

Union idiots are free to choose this course of action but they are also going to have to live with the consequences of that choice. The important thing is that these people get no public assistance benefits whatsoever. In this economy there is no reason that people struggling to get by should subsidize people who throw away jobs.

People voted for irresponsibility, now they must get it. No soft landings, no pity. It's time for harsh lessons to be learned.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:13 AM | Comments (386)
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Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:14 AM | Comments (298)
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