It’s Monday, January 30th, 2012….but before we begin, gas prices have risen rather sharply in past few weeks.  Can anyone seriously doubt had there been a Republican incumbent in the White House, this would have been the lead story for every MSM outlet across the country?

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, since we’re on the subject of the Progressive Press’ rank hypocrisy, we present the real face of racism in America:

Oh, the humanity!  As Newbusters.org‘s Noel Sheppard reports, even NBC’s Brian Williams expressed incredulity, asking viewers, “Who have you ever seen talking to the president like this?”

Uh….Brian,….

….that would be YOU!  The only difference of course being Brewer’s just the Republican governor of one of the fastest growing states in the Union, Williams the self-impressed anchor of national nightly news program….with steadily falling ratings.

Next up, Jonah Goldberg details….

Obama’s Vision for a Spartan America

 

President Obama’s State of the Union address was disgusting. The president began with a moving tribute to the armed forces and their accomplishments. But as he has done many times now, he celebrated martial virtues not to rally support for the military, but to cover himself in glory — he killed Osama bin Laden! — and to convince the American people that they should fall in line and march in lockstep.

He said of the military: “At a time when too many of our institutions have let us down, they exceed all expectations. They’re not consumed with personal ambition. They don’t obsess over their differences. They focus on the mission at hand. They work together. Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example. Think about the America within our reach.”

That is disgusting. What Obama is saying, quite plainly, is that America would be better off if it wasn’t America any longer. He’s making the case not for American exceptionalism, but Spartan exceptionalism.

It’s far worse than anything George W. Bush, the supposed warmonger, ever said. Bush, the alleged fascist, didn’t want to militarize our free country; he tried to use our military to make militarized countries free.

Indeed, Obama is upending the very point of a military in a free society. We have a military to keep our society free. We do not have a military to teach us the best way to give up our freedom. Our warriors surrender their liberties and risk their lives to protect ours. The promise of American life for Obama is that if we all try our best and work our hardest, we can be like a military unit striving for a single goal. I’ve seen pictures of that from North Korea. No thank you, Mr. President.

Of course, Obama’s militaristic fantasizing isn’t new. Ever since William James coined the phrase “the moral equivalent of war,” liberalism has been obsessed with finding ways to mobilize civilian life with the efficiency and conformity of military life. “Martial virtues,” James wrote, “must be the enduring cement” of American society: “intrepidity, contempt of softness, surrender of private interest, obedience to command must still remain the rock upon which states are built.” His disciple, liberal philosopher John Dewey, hoped for a social order that would force Americans to lay aside “our good-natured individualism and march in step.”

This is why Obama’s administration believes a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. This is why Obama has been prattling about “Sputnik moments” and sighing over his envy of China and its rulers. This is why his spinners endeavored to translate the death of bin Laden as some sort of vindication of his domestic agenda: because he cannot lead a free people where he thinks they should go.

At the end of his address, Obama once again cast the slain bin Laden as the Vercingetorix to his Caesar. (Vercingetorix was the defeated Gaulic chieftain whom Caesar triumphantly paraded through Rome.) “All that mattered that day was the mission. No one thought about politics. No one thought about themselves,” Obama rhapsodized.

The warriors on the ground “only succeeded … because every single member of that unit did their job. … More than that, the mission only succeeded because every member of that unit trusted each other — because you can’t charge up those stairs, into darkness and danger, unless you know that there’s somebody behind you, watching your back. So it is with America.”

“This nation is great because we worked as a team. This nation is great because we get each other’s backs.”

No. Wrong. It is not so with America. This nation isn’t great because we work as a team with the president as our captain. America is great because America is free. It is great not because we put our self-interest aside, but because we have the right to pursue happiness.

I don’t blame the president for being exhausted with the mess and bother of democracy and politics, since he has proved so inadequate at coping with the demands of both. Nor do I think he truly seeks to impose martial virtues on America. (A position with which we’d respectfully disagree!) But he does desperately want his opponents to shut up and march in place. And he seems to think this bilge will convince them to do so.

What I can’t forgive, however, is the way he tries to pass off his ideal of an America where everyone marches as one as a better America. It wouldn’t be America at all.

The esteem with which we hold Jonah Goldberg is second to none; but he’s as mistaken regarding The Obamao’s motives as Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain were Hitler’s.  An inability to recognize Evil is inherent in many of the Good, and Goldberg seemingly shares this particular foible.

In two related items, as AEI‘s Gary Schmitt and the WSJ recount, while at the same time eviscerating America’s economy, Team Tick-Tock doggedly pursues her weakening abroad:

It’s crazy to take an accountant’s approach to cutting the defense budget

 

The November 2010 congressional elections brought a host of new members came to Washington. Elected, they believed, and correctly so, to change the course in the nation’s capital, their first priority was getting government spending and the immense deficit it was producing under control.

The federal government had become unmanageable Leviathan and they were determined to pare it back and change course in the face of an administration that appeared determined not only to keep government big and active but expand its reach even further.

Faced with an annual deficit total approaching $1.5 trillion, it was natural that the new Republican majority in the House would look to cut government spending. And because the Department of Defense is, by far, the largest piece of the pie when it comes to the “discretionary” part of the federal budget, it became a natural target for reductions.

As was repeated ad nauseum by many on the Hill and by pundits, defense had to be “on the table” if the deficit was to be tackled.

The result was enactment of the budget control act this past year that mandated more than $450 billion in defense cuts and, potentially, another $500 billion if the “super committee” could not agree on a deficit-reduction plan to pare back the federal deficit—which it didn’t.

However, all of these numbers were divorced from two key points. The first is that defense had already been “on the table.” Even before the elections in 2010, the Obama administration had already reduced planned defense expenditures by nearly $400 billion, eliminating among other things the continued procurement of the F-22, the most advanced fighter aircraft in the world.

Second, while it is true that the defense budget had grown substantially since the attacks on 9/11, most of that growth had come from expenditures tied to the wars and pay and benefits for our all-volunteer military force.

What it was not going to were programs to replace and modernize the military’s planes, ships, helicopters and vehicles at a level necessary to prevent America’s arsenal from becoming increasingly old, worn-out and difficult to maintain.

The “procurement holiday” of the 1990’s was allowed to slide into and through the first decade of the 21st Century—something the new members had little knowledge of.

The fact is, the government had been deferring “recapitalizing” its military for more than a decade and a half and that bill came due precisely when the economy went into recession, government revenues declined precipitously and the deficit exploded.

What was missing from Congress’ deliberations over the budget and the macro-level cuts it was willing to impose on the Pentagon was exactly what these might mean for American grand strategy and America’s military capabilities. But with the release of the administration’s new defense guidance in early January and yesterday’s announcement by the Pentagon of its budget for the upcoming year, we now know what the concrete consequences of the cuts being made will be.

Behind all the rhetoric coming from the administration about the country having a smarter, more agile and more technologically-advanced military, the reality is that America’s armed forces will be smaller, less capable and, as a result, will face greater risk in carrying out the country’s security commitments and keeping our adversaries at bay.

Despite the defense “hole” that the military is in, the administration is proposing to cut spending this upcoming year by some $45 billion from what it wanted just a year ago, eliminate nearly $260 billion from planned expenditures over the next five years, and, with inflation factored in, “flat line” defense’s top line for the next half decade at least.

What this means programmatically is, among other things: a cut in our land forces of 100,000; the delayed production of the needed new helicopters and stealthy jets; the elimination of one-tenth of the Air Force’s tactical fighter squadrons and scores of vital air-transport planes; and a reduction in ships and shipbuilding plans that leaves the Navy fleet at its smallest since before WWI. (As detailed in next item below.)

And there is no question that there will be less money for pursuing new technologies to sustain American military superiority into the future, for advancing missile defense capabilities and for repairing our nuclear weapons infrastructure to ensure we have a safe and effective strategic deterrent.

Such cuts might make sense if they really and truly were to make a dent in the federal red ink. However, the $45 billion in savings that will result from paring back the defense budget are peanuts when compared to a deficit that will once again be over one trillion dollars this year.

And, finally, the cuts might also make sense if we knew for a fact that our future security needs would be less than what they have been in the past. Yet, as former Defense Secretary Robert Gates pointedly noted little less than a year ago while addressing the cadets at West Point, “When it comes to predicting the nature and location of our next military engagements, since Vietnam, our record has been perfect—we have never once gotten it right.” (Yeah….right before he left office after helping start our Military down the slippery slope!)

As Gates’ statement suggests, it’s no longer sufficient to take an accountant’s approach to the defense budget. With real people and real programs now being cut, Congress needs to step back and reexamine the likely strategic consequences of the decisions that are now being put forward by the Obama administration.

Admiral Obama

A diminished Navy can’t meet its multiple global missions.

 

President Obama plans to cut the Pentagon budget by half a trillion dollars or more in the next decade. He also wants the military to take on new missions, principally for the Navy to lead an American strategic “pivot” to the Asia-Pacific.

Something has to give. Care to guess what?

The Administration’s record to date is undeniable. Defense was targeted from day one in office, and Mr. Obama disguised his latest, steepest retrenchment as part of a new “strategic review” earlier this month. The Pentagon on Thursday previewed the cuts, announcing that the 2013 defense budget due next month will decline for the first time since 1998. As spending on entitlements rises, budget cuts disproportionately hit the Pentagon, which accounts for a fifth of federal spending but over half the deficit reduction.

A closer look at the Navy reveals the damage. The Pentagon announced that seven cruisers will be decommissioned sooner than planned. Plans to purchase new Virginia-class submarines, a large-deck amphibious ship and smaller attack vessels will be delayed or reduced. Mr. Obama vetoed the Navy’s offer to drop one of 11 aircraft carriers, but that decision may be revisited if he is re-elected. As Chief of Naval Operations Jonathan Greenert wrote last month, the service in 2025 “may be smaller than today.” This is not good news. The Navy’s fleet is already too small and its ships too old to perform its multiple missions. The fleet has shrunk by half in two decades and currently stands at 285. At the height of the Reagan Cold War buildup in 1987, the Navy had 568 carriers, destroyers, submarines and other ships.

Five years ago, the Navy pledged to get back to a floor of 313 ships sometime in the next decade. But even that shipbuilding plan was stingy in ambition and funding, favoring smaller, relatively inexpensive combat and supply ships. An update last year cut the number of ballistic missile submarines to 12 from 14. The Pentagon’s latest budget plan makes it virtually impossible for the Navy to meet the 313 ship goal. And as Defense Secretary Leon Panetta wrote in a letter to Congress in November, if it cuts another $500 billion next January under “sequestration,” the U.S. may be looking at a “fleet of fewer than 230 ships.”

Administration officials have little choice but to talk down the usefulness of a larger fleet. “We have the 600-ship Navy [now],” in terms of overall capabilities, Navy Undersecretary Bob Work said at an industry conference this month. “The numbers don’t [matter]. We span the globe.”

He has a point that the weapons and technologies on today’s ships have improved greatly since the Reagan era. The Pentagon has rightly focused as well on developing unmanned vessels and electronic warfare to ensure “access,” in military speak, to any potential hot spot. “We will have a Navy that maintains a forward presence and is able to penetrate enemy defenses,” says Mr. Panetta.

But there’s a catch: The planet isn’t smaller. A ship can only be in one place at one time. So numbers do matter if the Navy is asked to chase pirates in Somalia, ferry humanitarian aid to Haiti, protect the Strait of Hormuz and keep a muscular presence in the South China Sea—to name a few of the recent and growing demands on the fleet. To cite another, the Obama Administration has also pivoted from ground- to sea-based missile defenses. This means that Aegis class cruisers must be parked in the Mediterranean to guard against an Iranian attack.

An independent bipartisan panel that went over the Pentagon’s last Quadrennial Defense Review in 2010 said that the U.S. needed a larger Navy. It recommended 346 ships, including 11 aircraft carrier groups and 55 attack submarines (compared to only 48 in current plans), which it justified by invoking—as President Obama implicitly did earlier this month—the rise of China.

“To preserve our interests, the United States will need to retain the ability to transit freely the areas of the Western Pacific for security and economic reason,” the panel wrote. A 313-or-fewer ship Navy doesn’t look imposing from Beijing. (Yet another of The Obamao’s own panels whose recommendations he refuses to even acknowledge.)

Doves these days say that the U.S. is in an arms race only with itself, and that it spends nearly half of the world’s defense dollars, so why not cut spending to 2.7% of GDP, a level last reached before Pearl Harbor? (Can said doves name one aggressor mere diplomacy has ever deterred?) Yet the Chinese certainly behave as if they are in an arms race. China is building dozens of new ships, plus cheap and quiet diesel-electric submarines and antiship missiles that pose a threat to U.S carriers.

China’s strategic goal is to undercut America’s naval preeminence in the Pacific. Analysts estimate that Beijing’s defense budget, which isn’t exactly transparent, may be as high as $300 billion in purchasing power parity terms due to the lower cost of running a military in China. The base Pentagon budget for fiscal year 2013, which doesn’t include war costs, will be $525 billion, and future budgets will further narrow the gap with China.

The U.S. needs 11 aircraft carriers, even when no other country has more than one, because no other country does what it does. American military power has ensured global peace and prosperity since World War II. The Navy is the symbol and instrument of America’s ability to project power. Its deterioration would hasten the end of the Pax Americana, carrying a high and dangerous price for the world.

Yet nary a voice of dissention from a single member of the Navy Brass!

Next up, courtesy of Jim Gleaves, Patriot Post‘s Mark Alexander offers his observation on the Misstatement of Disunion:

As anticipated by all parties present, there was not one solitary free market economic remedy mentioned in his entire diatribe. Every “solution” was predicated on government engineering via intervention, regulation or redistribution — consistent with his dogmatic Democratic Socialist ideology. Predictably, he peppered his prose with populist appeals and classist rhetoric focused on “fairness.”

BO’s classist message was contradicted by his wife’s iridescent cobalt blue dress. I’m told it came from the Barbara Tfank Resort Collection, but at $2,400, I doubt Michelle picked it up on one of those photo-op trips to Target. The two Obamas act like trailer trash who won the lucky lotto in 2008, and they’ve now elevated their station to the bourgeoisie.

What follows are two assessments of Obama’s SOTU, one brief and the other more comprehensive.

The short version: “I went … I know … My … My … I took office … I’m president … I will work … I intend … I will oppose … I want … I took … I refused … me … my … my … me … I will sign … I set … I will go … I will not … I promise … I hear … I want … me … My … I want … I am … I spoke … me … I believe … my … I took … me … I will sign … my … my … my … I will not … I will not walk … I will not cede … I will … I’m directing … my … I will sign … I’ve … my … my … I’ve … I guess … I will not … I will … I will not … I will … my … I told … my …me … my … I get … I don’t … I recognize … I bet … I’ve … me … I will … I ask … I’ve … me … I believe … my … my … I can … I have … I will take … I mean … I intend … I’ve … I’ve … I’ve … me … I began … my … I sat … me for president … me … I look … I’m (Applause.)”

Meanwhile, the WSJ sheds light on one of the great shibboleths of modern Liberalism:

The Myth of Starving Americans

According to the Census Bureau, 96% of parents classified as poor said their children were never hungry.

 

We take it as a given that hunger stalks America. We hear it in the news, we see a myriad of government and private organizations set up to feed the hungry. And we are often reminded of the greatest of all ironies—in the richest nation on earth, there are still those without enough to eat. But are these media portrayals of hunger in America accurate?

A hungry child is the ultimate third rail in the entitlement debate. Few candidates—Democrat, Republican or independent—would even question conventional wisdom on this particular issue because that would make them look indifferent to hungry children and that, of course, is political death.

The U.S. government spends close to $1 trillion a year providing cash, food, housing, medical care and services to poor and near-poor people. Of that figure, about $111 billion is spent on food in federal and state programs. Yet despite this spending, stories of rampant hunger persist. With all that money going out, how is that possible?

In a report published last September by the Heritage Foundation, researchers Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield asked that very question. They found that, according to Census Bureau data for 2009 (the most recent year statistics are available), of the almost 50 million Americans classified as poor, 96% of the parents said their children were never hungry. Eighty-three percent of poor families reported having enough food to eat, and 82% of poor adults said they were never hungry at any time in 2009 due to a lack of food or money. (Hells Bells!  My youngest son is a senior in college, and even he, from time to time, could claim to be hungry.  Starving?  No!  Hungry?  Only as opposed to being full!)

One could deduce that the reason the vast percentage of America’s poor say they are never hungry is precisely because of federal and state assistance, but the government offers no way of testing whether this is true or false.

What’s clear is that the number of Americans on food stamps—as Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich pointed out in a recent debate—is at a record high. In 2011, more than 46 million Americans—about one in seven—received food stamps.

Perhaps of greater consequence is the belief of many that food should now be free. In a recent report in the magazine Wisconsin Interest, reporter Mike Nichols discovered that in the 2010-11 school year, approximately 373,000 children received free school lunches in Wisconsin. But there are nowhere near 373,000 kids in the state who come from families falling anywhere near the poverty line. The obvious explanation: A lot of middle-class and upper-middle-class kids are eating lunch at taxpayer expense.

This is not just a Wisconsin phenomenon. Nationally, one out of four school children received a free lunch in 1970, according to the state and federal government data examined by Mr. Nichols. Today, two out of three lunches served in schools are free or nearly free.

The original goal of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty in the 1960s was relatively conservative. LBJ said he wanted to turn the poor from “tax eaters to tax payers.” But the opposite seems to have occurred. (As with every, single other supposedly well-intentioned Liberal giveaway!)  Where there were once strict guidelines regarding the type of food that was available for food stamps, almost all constraints (save liquor) have been dropped. Even the term food stamps is antiquated—people now use plastic cards that resemble credit cards, thus alleviating any stigma connected to welfare.

Various industries have benefited from food stamps over the years—from the local bodega and chain grocers to America’s farmers. In fact, you may soon see today’s benefits card used in a restaurant near you. The fast food industry is lobbying Congress to make these cards available in their establishments. (You know, have it your way!) That’s somewhat irrelevant since benefit cards are already sold for cash, allowing the sellers to buy whatever they please anyway.

Fraud is a major problem, and not just at the federal level. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo are currently at odds over whether to continue an anti-fraud attempt to fingerprint benefit recipients. Mr. Bloomberg says it saves millions of taxpayer dollars every year by keeping people from applying for assistance multiple times. Mr. Cuomo says it stigmatizes people and thus keeps hungry children from eating. (In the same way showing a picture ID, necessary for almost every other aspect of American life, stigmatizes poor Blacks at polling booths and keeps them from voting for Dimocrats!)

But reform is possible. “This isn’t rocket science,” says Heritage’s Mr. Rector. If able-bodied, non-elderly recipients of food stamps were required to work or at least show they are looking for work, the numbers would drop dramatically and poverty would decline as well. “That’s exactly what happened under welfare reform in 1996,” he says.

The lessons are clear. All it takes is the political leadership.

HA!!!  We have but one observation; if so many of America’s poor are starving, why is it so many in poverty in this country are so wretchedly….

 ….obese?!?

Then there’s these two classics from James Taranto and Best of the Web:

 North Carolina elects its governors in presidential election years, and the incumbent, Bev Perdue, launched her re-election campaign in feisty fashion yesterday, as the Charlotte News & Observer reports:

Like the rest of the nation, North Carolina has been facing difficult economic times–demanding many difficult decisions. I have had to make painful budget cuts in important areas of government. But I believe I have approached this challenge in a way that is consistent with my values and the values that have made our state a wonderful place to live and raise a family. I have spent my tenure in office–and, in fact, my adult lifetime–fighting for things that I care deeply about. And as anyone who knows me will tell you, I do not back down from tough fights.

Yep, there’s no quit in Bev Perdue! She’s going to keep fighting for the things she cares deep–oh wait, sorry. That’s not her re-election announcement, it’s her retirement announcement.

Never mind.

A couple of readers sent us this quote from a speech President Obama gave at a UPS plant in Las Vegas yesterday:

“On Tuesday at the State of the Union, I laid out my vision for how we move forward. I laid out a blueprint for an economy that’s built to last, that has a firm foundation. Where we’re making stuff and selling stuff and moving it around and UPS drivers are dropping things off everywhere.”

We got a kick out of the comments our readers made: “He sounds a lot like the kid that really hoped teacher wouldn’t call on him,” observes T. Young. And Jim Orheim: “My seventh- and fourth-graders (in public school!) can articulate what the economy is better than this.”

As well as knowing far more about how it actually works!

And in the Education Section….

College presidents alarmed over Obama’s cost-control plan

 

Fuzzy math, Illinois State University’s president called it. “Political theater of the worst sort,” said the University of Washington’s head.

President Obama’s new plan to force colleges and universities to contain tuition or face losing federal dollars is raising alarm among education leaders who worry about the threat of government overreach. Particularly sharp words came from the presidents of public universities; they’re already frustrated by increasing state budget cuts.

The reality, said Illinois State’s Al Bowman, is that simple changes cannot easily overcome deficits at many public schools. He said he was happy to hear Obama, in a speech Friday at the University of Michigan, urge state-level support of public universities. But, Bowman said, given the decreases in state aid, tying federal support to tuition prices is a product of fuzzy math.

Illinois has lowered public support for higher educaton by about one-third over the past decade when adjusted for inflation. Illinois State, with 21,000 students, has raised tuition almost 47 percent since 2007, from $6,150 a year for an in-state undergraduate student to $9,030.

“Most people, including the president, assume if universities were simply more efficient they would be able to operate with much smaller state subsidies, and I believe there are certainly efficiency gains that can be realized,” Bowman said. “But they pale in comparison to the loss in state support.”

Bowman said the undergraduate experience can be made cheaper, but there are trade-offs.

Spoken like a guy who’s never had to balance a budget….in reaction to the actions of ANOTHER guy who’s never had to balance a budget!

In a related item, courtesy of George Lawlor, the New York Post reports one reason the cost of education is so blasted high:

Disgraced teacher is worth $10M, makes $100,000 a year, does nothing, & refuses to leave

 

Hell no, he won’t go. In a defiant raspberry to the city Department of Education — and taxpayers — disgraced teacher Alan Rosenfeld, 66, won’t retire. Deemed a danger to kids, the typing teacher with a $10 million real estate portfolio hasn’t been allowed in a classroom for more than a decade, but still collects $100,049 a year in city salary — plus health benefits, a growing pension nest egg, vacation and sick pay.

Mayor Bloomberg and Gov. Cuomo can call for better teacher evaluations until they’re blue-faced, but Rosenfeld and six peers with similar gigs costing about $650,000 a year in total salaries are untouchable. Under a system shackled by protections for tenured teachers, they can’t be fired, the DOE says. (SURE they can; Dimocrats just aren’t willing to take the steps necessary to make it happen!)

“It’s an F-U,” a friend of Rosenfeld said of his refusal to quit. “He’s happy about it, and very proud that he beat the system. This is a great show-up-but-don’t-do-anything job.”

Accused in 2001 of making lewd comments and ogling eighth-grade girls’ butts at IS 347 in Queens, Rosenfeld was slapped with a week off without pay after the DOE failed to produce enough witnesses at a hearing. But instead of returning Rosenfeld to the classroom, the DOE kept him in one of its notorious “rubber rooms,” where teachers in misconduct cases sat idle or napped. As The Post reported, Rosenfeld kept busy managing his many investment properties and working on his law practice. He’s a licensed attorney and real-estate broker.

Since the DOE closed the teacher holding pens in June 2010, those facing disciplinary charges were scattered to offices and given tasks such as answering phones, filing and photocopying. But Rosenfeld and six others whose cases have long been closed are “permanently reassigned.” Rosenfeld reports to the Division of School Facilities, which maintains DOE buildings, in a warehouse in Long Island City.

Asked what work he does, Rosenfeld laughingly told his friend, “Oh, I Xeroxed something the other day.” Rosenfeld could have retired four years ago at 62, but his pension grows by $1,700 for each year he stays — even without teaching. If he quit today, his annual pension would total an estimated $85,400. “Why not make it bigger?” the friend said. Rosenfeld will also get paid for 100 unused sick days when he leaves. New York has no mandatory retirement age for teachers.

That let rubber-room granddaddy Roland Pierre make a mockery of the system. He finally retired at age 76 last year — 14 years after he was yanked from PS 138 in Brooklyn and never taught again. Criminal charges in 1997 that he molested a sixth-grade girl were dropped. He got $97,101 a year.

“It’s a tremendous waste of money,” said Marcus Winters, a Manhattan Institute expert on teacher evaluation. “While we don’t want to remove people just because they’ve been accused, we also want the school system to cut ties with teachers it’s not going to put in the classroom.” But Winters added, “If these people are actually dangerous, it’s better to waste the money than to put them back with kids.”

We frankly wouldn’t shed a tear were we to see the faces of Rosenfeld….AND his “friend”….on a milk carton.  Please also note no one quoted in this article, NO ONE, even acknowledged the fault for this travesty lies WHOLLY with gutless politicians and intransigent unions.

On the Lighter Side….

And next, courtesy of Taylor Chess, our cameras caught up with Captain Francesco Schettino on the first day on his new job:

Mama mia!  Thisa water….she’sa everyawhere I go!

Turning to the Entertainment Section….

Sajak says he and Vanna White got drunk before ‘Wheel of Fortune’ tapings back in the day

 

Pat Sajak admits that in the early days of “Wheel of Fortune” he and Vanna Whitewould knock back a few during breaks. He was asked on ESPN 2’s “Dan Le Batard is Highly Questionable” whether he was ever intoxicated on the show. Sajak responded with a laugh, “Yes,” People reported. “When I first started and was much youngerand could tolerate those things. We had a different show then.

At the time, the show had a long break during tapings when he and White would go to a nearby Mexican restaurant for margaritas. “Vanna and I would … have two or three or six and then come and do the last shows and have trouble recognizing the alphabet,” he said. “I had a great time. (Getting drunk with Vanna….no kidding Pat had a great time!) I have no idea if the shows were any good, but no one said anything, so I guess I did OK.”

That explains the sunglasses!

And finally, in Tales of the Unexplained….and Totally Unbelievable:

Fran Drescher Claims She Was Abducted By Aliens

 

Hey….pictures don’t lie!

Magoo