Mark Bossingham

Simply nuts

IS THIS the America we were waiting for? From the San Francisco Chronicle.

Oakland -- About 60 people marched and rallied in Oakland on Wednesday to condemn the police and honor Lovelle Mixon, who was killed by Oakland police after he fatally shot four officers Saturday.

Lolo Darnell, one of Mixon's cousins at the demonstration, said, "He needs sympathy too. If he's a criminal, everybody's a criminal."

Tokyo Construction—really!

AT LAST it seems they are actually going to put up that building next door. I am betting on an office building, but who knows? Japanese builders are much faster than in the States and the techniques more advanced. I had the opportunity to watch a major condo project going up in Honolulu through repeated visits, and it looked like something you might see go up in the third world. Except nobody can slow-walk a site like a construction worker in Hawaii. It would take months if not years to nail together a dog house.

'Punch-drunk'

THIS WOULD be fun if my investments weren't circling the drain. On “60 Minutes” the Obamster's yucking it up about the financial mess prompted Steve Kroft to ask, “Are you punch-drunk?”

Obama calls AIG execs suicide bombers

AFTER DECIDING that true terrorists will no longer be called enemy combatants, an Geneva Convention construct, not something cooked up by George Bush, the "one" shoots his mouth off again. "First class temperament" my ass.

The same is true with AIG.... It was the right thing to do to step in. Here’s the problem. It’s almost like they’ve got — they’ve got a bomb strapped to them and they’ve got their hand on the trigger. You don’t want them to blow up. But you’ve got to kind of talk them, ease that finger off the trigger.

There's little new under the sun

THOMAS JEFFERSON said:

"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious." I think he was right.

The straw dog

IF BARACK Obama starts barking about the "false choice between (whatever he believes) and (what no one on the planet believes)" one more time I will scream.

George Will's yogurt-covered moon

GEORGE WILL is not usually laugh-out-loud funny, but his latest column worked for me.

The implausibility of this opportunistic hypothesis is deepened by Obama's rhetoric, which says "catastrophe" impends unless everything is done simultaneously. But his budget, in effect, says the danger will soon be gone and the new risk will be whiplash from the economy's sudden acceleration. Although only a small fraction of the supposedly countercyclical stimulus will be spent by the end of the year, the budget assumes that by then the economy will have perked up, and that it will grow robustly -- 3.2 percent, 4 percent and 4.6 percent -- in the next three years. Growth supposedly will cut the deficit in half -- growth and the $1.6 trillion "saved" by first assuming, and then "canceling," a 10-year continuation of the surge in Iraq. Why, one wonders, not "save" $5 trillion by proposing to spend that amount to cover the moon with yogurt and then canceling the proposal?

Obama's 'secret' letter debacle

RUSSIA HAS refused give Obama an excuse to cancel the missile shield in East Europe. Like his overtures to Iran, his "secret" letter ploy has blown up in his face. Why should Putin make a deal, he's going to get what he wants, anyway. Obama wants to pull the plug on missile deployment to Poland and the Czech Republic, The Russians know this. Now, he'll just have to find another excuse. Something along the lines of "too expensive," while absurd in the face of his "stimulus" package, will have to do.

Markets vote no

THE DOW is down nearly 3,000 points since Obama was elected. I seriously doubt our "transformational" president cares. It's not possible for him to drive it down to zero, is it?