This is a replica of the Engine that traveled on the North Central Railroad in New Freedom, PA that Lincoln traveled on to his way to Gettysburg to deliver his famous Address about the Battle there. First time fired up. Deliverd yesterday.
Check this: http://www.steamintohistory.com/
. . . a jury may not infer that a person is guilty of anything simply because he has exercised his Fifth Amendment right not to testify on the basis that he might incriminate himself. Your Editor, however, is not on a jury, and may infer anything he wishes! From THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:
Director of IRS Unit Says She Won’t Testify
Head of Unit at Center of Controversy Involving Conservative Groups Won’t Answer Congress’s Questions
By John D McKinnon, Siobhan Hughes and Damian Paletta | Updated May 21, 2013, 12:59 p.m. ETWASHINGTON—Lois Lerner, the head of the Internal Revenue Service office that targeted conservative groups, intends to invoke her constitutional right against self-incrimination and decline to answer questions about the matter when questioned by a congressional committee Wednesday.
Ms. Lerner, director of the tax-exempt-organizations division at the IRS, notified the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform through her attorney that she wouldn’t answer questions on the matter, according to a committee spokesman.
Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) will require her to appear at the hearing anyway, a spokesman said Tuesday.
“Chairman Issa remains hopeful that she will ultimately decide to testify tomorrow about her knowledge of outrageous IRS targeting of Americans for their political beliefs,” said the spokesman, Ali Ahmad.
More at the link.
Your Editor suspects that Mrs Lerner’s attorney will be angling for immunity from prosecution1; such immunity would require her to testify, whether she wished to do so or not, or be held in contempt of Congress. Your Editor also suspects that the Obama Administration’s people will, quietly, of course, be telling Mrs Lerner to do everything she possibly can to not testify.
How much do I trust the Obama Administration? Is less than zero a possible answer?
IRIS
Hint: Ever watch Everyone Loves Raymond?
If true, The Feces Will Hit The Whirling Blades!
Bombshell: Govt Official Says Hillary Spearheaded Benghazi Review, Not Independent Board
One of the four State Department employees, who was recently disciplined by their former boss Hillary Clinton, has broken his silence concerning Benghazi and has leveled some very big charges at the former Secretary of State. He is now indicating that the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her staff were the ones that led the review of the Benghazi attacks, not an independent board.
The Daily Beast reports,
Raymond Maxwell was placed on forced “administrative leave” after the State Department’s own internal investigation, conducted by an Administrative Review Board (ARB) led by former State Department official Tom Pickering. Five months after he was told to clean out his desk and leave the building, Maxwell remains in professional and legal limbo, having been associated publicly with the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other American for reasons that remain unclear.
Maxwell, who served as deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs from August 2011 until his removal last December, following tours in Iraq and Syria, spoke publicly for the first time in an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast.
“The overall goal is to restore my honor,” said Maxwell, who has filed grievances regarding his treatment with the State Department’s Human Resources Bureau and the American Foreign Service Association, which represents the interests of foreign-service officers. The other three officials placed on leave were in the Diplomatic Security Bureau, leaving Maxwell as the only official in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs (NEA), which had responsibility for Libya, to lose his job.
“I had no involvement to any degree with decisions on security and the funding of security at our diplomatic mission in Benghazi,” he said.
Before I heard about the magnitude of the Oklahoma tornado, I tweeted:
Hamburgers on the back patio this evening; life is good.
— Dana Pico (@Dana_TFSJ) May 21, 2013
Obviously, you see a tweet like that when there is such a terrible tragedy unfolding, and you have to wonder about it. But, for me, life is good. We’re not broke, we both have good jobs, and my sisters, whom I have not seen for several years, are coming to visit this weekend. The tragedy in Oklahoma is something I see on my television screen; the tragedy in Oklahoma happened to other people.
Now, we could become “other people” at any time; you just never know when something like that will happen to you. The bombing at the Boston Marathon was an act of terrorism, but for the people killed and injured, it is a tragedy in the same sense as the Oklahoma tornado: for someone who lost a leg in Boston, there is no real difference between having been injured by terrorists than having been injured by nature.
It wasn’t too long after we moved to Virginia in the mid-1980s that there was a local news story: a woman, minding her own business, driving home from work on Oceana Boulevard in Virginia Beach was alive one second and dead the next, when an A-6 from Oceana Naval Air Station had a problem on take-off, and fell right on top of her car. It was a tragedy, completely unexpected, a bolt out of the blue, and it could have happened just as easily to someone else, including to me, as it did to the woman who was killed.
We all have sympathy for the people who lost their loved ones, who lost their homes, who lost their livelihoods, and somehow, we all know, that it could have been us. For me, and for the vast majority of Americans, life is just as good now as it was before the tornado struck. That’s a heck of a difference when you think about it.
Yorkshire has already noted this, but I wanted to add the story from THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:
Treasury Knew IRS Was Planning Apology
By Damian Paletta, Peter Nicholas and John McKinnon
The Internal Revenue Service briefed the Treasury Department extensively last month about a looming inspector general’s report that would find the agency had inappropriately targeted for extra scrutiny applications from conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, a new timeline of events shows.
The IRS consulted Treasury in late April about its plans to pre-emptively apologize for its actions, and a flurry of conversations transpired that included White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and senior Treasury officials, Obama administration officials said Monday.
Two people kept out of the loop, according to administration officials, were President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew. Neither was consulted, administration officials said, because their staff wanted to ensure that it didn’t appear they had interfered in any way in the process.
Secretary of the Treasury Jacob Lew
Just who the heck is in charge in the Obama Administration?
There are only two possible interpretations on this:
If it is the latter, why lie? Anybody with any sense at all understands that, these days, secrets don’t stay secrets, and once the first part comes out, way too many people start looking and digging for more details, until the whole sordid mess emerges. This is the kind of story in which it would have been better to tell the complete truth, from the beginning.
That assumes, of course, that the President and Secretary Lew weren’t in on the story much, much earlier. It’s one thing to say that White House officials knew a month ago, and something else to say that they knew last year, before the election.
If it’s the former, just who the heck has the authority to decide that no one is going to tell the President of the United States and the Secretary of the Treasury about a problem of this magnitude?
Irrelevent? Only heard when we heard? Not Involved? What else are we SUPPOSED to believe? BO’s Government Union Buddies meet at the White House, the next day the TEA Party applications get special treatment, or is it non-treatment, get inane questions, get delayed, get screwed. Now we are supposed to suspend all belief nothing out of the ordinary went on in Cincinnati, then other offices. We’re now hearing this type of treatment came from up high, not rogue employees. We’re suppose to now suspend all belief that all the scandals now showing up, BO had Zero beforehand knowledge. I think BO is also trying to sell waterfront property, just show up at a new moon low tide. And we’re told also to believe all these “things” happening are “IRRELEVENT.”
White House senior aides knew details of IRS probe but didn’t tell Obama, spokesman says
By Juliet Eilperin and Zachary A. Goldfarb, Published: May 20, 2013 at 5:06 pm
Senior White House officials, including Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, learned last month about a review by the Treasury Department’s inspector general into whether the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, but they did not inform President Obama, the White House said Monday.
The acknowledgement is the White House’s latest disclosure in a piecemeal, sometimes confusing release of details concerning the extent to which White House officials knew of the IG’s findings that IRS officials engaged in the “inappropriate” targeting of conservative non-profits for heightened scrutiny. Previously, the White House said counsel Kathryn Ruemmler did not learn about the final results of the investigation until the week of April 22nd, and had not disclosed that McDonough and other aides had also been told about the investigation. On Monday, White House Spokesman Jay Carney said a member of Ruemmler’s staff learned of the probe the week of April 16; Ruemmler learned of the investigation on April 24th; and after that point she informed the chief of staff and other aides about the probe’s findings.
. . . so he’ll probably want to make it mandatory.
Mike Bloomberg: Skip college, become a plumber
New York City’s billionaire mayor tells students that most of them should avoid a costly degree and instead learn a well-paying trade.
By Aimee Picchi | MSN MoneyMike Bloomberg, the outspoken mayor of New York City and the ultrawealthy founder of the financial data and media company that bears his name, is turning his attention to another of society’s woes: the rising cost of a college education.
Bloomberg, known for his battle against large, sugary sodas, offered some advice to students during his weekly radio show Friday, according to the New York Daily News.
“The people who are going to have the biggest problem are college graduates who aren’t rocket scientists, if you will, not at the top of their class,” Bloomberg said. “Compare a plumber to going to Harvard College — being a plumber, actually for the average person, probably would be a better deal.”
Bloomberg, himself a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and Harvard Business School, pointed out that plumbers make a good living and don’t have to deal with paying off huge college loans.
More at the link, including statistics on what plumbers can expect to earn.
A plumber I once knew — I haven’t seen him in over 20 years — once told me that the reason he made such good money was that he was willing to stick his hands in other people’s [insert vulgar slang term for solid biological waste.] Well, yeah, I can see why he’d get a premium for that kind of work. 
But it’s good advice from Mayor Bloomberg: we will need all sorts of skilled tradesmen, and plumbers and electricians and carpenters will be in demand and make good money. Mr Bloomberg pointed out that you can’t outsource plumbing, and your Editor would add that when you have a plumbing emergency, you have a plumbing emergency, and it’s not something that can be put off for a while: when the water is leaking or the waste line fails, it has to get fixed, and fixed right then.
More, while many plumbers are employees of other companies, the opportunity to go into business for yourself exists. There are license requirements, but it’s not a heavy initial investment business: the tools that a plumber needs to start out can all fit in one van. The same is true of electricians. As you gain experience, you can add more kinds of projects into your repertoire.
It’s a matter of being willing to work, to stick your hands where other people won’t, but it is good, honest work. A plumber can’t be stupid, but most of the things which have to be learned are learned from experience and common sense.
The Chief Executive Officer of Abercrombie and Fitch, Mike Jeffries, made some comments concerning the company’s business model which have our friends on the left very, very upset:
Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Explains Why He Hates Fat Chicks
By Sean Levinson \ May 3, 2013Abercrombie & Fitch print ad
Anyone who’s been to Abercrombie & Fitch in the last few years has probably noticed that they don’t carry XL or XXL sizes of women’s clothing because they don’t want overweight women wearing their brand.
According to this popular teen clothing retailer, fat chicks will just never be a part of the “in” crowd.
They take a big risk with this tactic because two of Abercrombie’s biggest competitors, H&M and American Eagle, both offer XXL sizes for men and women.
The largest women’s pants available at Abercrombie are a size 10, while H&M goes up to 16 and American Eagle goes even farther to 18.
Abercrombie’s attitude towards plus-sized women derives from CEO Mike Jeffries. Robin Lewis, author of The New Rules of Retail, spoke to Business Insider about the kind of people Jeffries wants advertising his brand.
More at the link, and I will let you read Mr Jeffries’ comments there. But I will cite the last line in Mr Levinson’s article:
Is Mike Jeffries the worst CEO in the world? Here are the 13 most ridiculous things that Abercrombie’s CEO has ever said.
The reader will notice that Mr Levinson’s article is sourced from an interview given by Mr Jeffries in 2006, so it’s clear that Mr Jeffries’ business model for ANF should have had plenty of time to succeed or fail in the intervening years. Mr Jeffries felt the need to apologize for his 2006 remarks, because they were causing such controversy.
But is Mr Jeffries the worst CEO in the world? If you look at ANF’s profit margins, he’s clearly one of the best!1 Their gross profit margin was a whopping 62.26% in the first quarter of 2013, which placed them in the 88th percentile overall,2 the 87th percentile in the consumer cyclical sector,3 and in the 95th percentile in apparel stores.4Mr Levinson wrote that ANF was taking “a big risk” with Mr Jeffries’ strategy, because two of their major competitors offer larger sizes. However, ANF is significantly outperforming AEO in profit margin; Mr Levinson’s statement, had it been accurate, should have been proven out by the two companies’ relative performance. That ANF has consistently outperformed AEO demonstrates that Mr Levinson’s statement was not realistic.
Mr Jeffries’ statements may have been impolitic, but the reaction to them by our friends on the left demonstrate a cold, hard fact: liberals simply don’t understand economics. The primary goal of any corporation is to make money for its shareholders, period.5 Their purpose is not to be nice guys, their purpose is not to please everybody, but simply to make money, and Abercrombie & Fitch makes money.
Nor do they understand very much about psychology. Mr Jeffries might have apologized, because he had to, for telling the truth about his business model, but, in calling for a boycott of Abercrombie & Fitch’s clothing, because they market only to the cool and the good-looking, they have placed a premium on ANF’s clothing: if you wear it, you have been defined, by a major American corporation, as cool and good looking. Does anyone (reasonably) think that won’t appeal directly to ANF’s target customers?
The Abercrombie story demonstrates what is wrong with liberal thinking when it comes to economics and to the real world: they feel that such things should just be wrong, but don’t really think things through. It did not take your Editor much time to look up ANF’s economic results, and Mr Levinson, and the other liberals who have been so utterly aghast at Mr Jeffries’ remarks, ought to have done so themselves. If they had, they’d have realized that whatever Mr Jeffries is doing with ANF, it has been a success. He might apologize for an impolitic statement, but there’s absolutely no reason for him to change a business plan which has been working and profitable for his shareholders.
__________________________
From THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:
North Korea Fires Another Missile Sunday
By Kyong-Ae Choi and Alastair Gale | Sunday, May 19, 2013 As of 2:04 PM EDTKim Jong-un, the only fat kid in North Korea
SEOUL—North Korea on Sunday fired a short-range missile into the sea off the eastern coast of the Korean peninsula following three similar launches Saturday, once again stirring tensions that had appeared to ease in the wake of a recent series of threats directed at South Korea and the U.S.
The latest missile firing came after the South Korean government on Sunday condemned Pyongyang’s earlier launches and urged it to come to the negotiating table over the jointly run Kaesong Industrial Complex to allow South Korean companies to withdraw their raw materials and finished goods.
On Sunday, U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon also asked the North to refrain from further missile tests.
The missiles posed no danger to neighboring countries. Analysts said the launches, which aren’t uncommon, were likely intended as a protest against joint South Korean-U.S. naval drills last week. North Korea, a financially beleaguered state hit by fresh U.N. sanctions following its nuclear test in February, may expect the launches will prompt the offer of dialogue from the U.S., they said.
More at the link.
At THE FIRST STREET JOURNAL, we have already said that North Korea’s testing of atomic bombs does not bother us in the slightest, and that we wish for them to test more such devices. It is our position that, weapons grade1 (or weapons usable2) fissile material is a difficult and expansive thing to produce, and if the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea wishes to take the atomic bombs that they have been able to build and blow them up in holes in the ground, that’s great: it leaves them with fewer on hand.
Though the short range missiles that the DPRK fired into the sea are much less of a burden on that country’s strained economy, each one does have a cost, and each one wasted into the sea is one less that the DPRK has in its arsenal.
We have noted, in the past, our approval of the Obama Administration’s policies toward North Korea: President Obama does not seem to be rewarding North Korea for its bellicose actions, nor giving vent to silliness after each DPRK provocation.3 Continuing to ignore President Kim’s attempts at provocation is the right way to go, and the more missiles he shoots off into the sea, the better.
_______________________________
Get your "Don't Blame Me" bumper sticker, via Cafe Press, by William Teach of The Pirate's Cove. Click on the sticker to order, only $3.99 each.
C D Collins
Kentucky native CD Collins follows the story- telling traditions of the South, both as a solo artist and when accom- panied by musicians. As one of originators of the early ‘90s resurgence of spoken-word with live music, her work has been archived in award-winning compact discs.
C D is an old friend of mine from Mt Sterling.
Many of our friends on the left believe that we are undertaxed. If you believe that you don't pay enough in taxes, you can use the button above to connect to the United States Treasury Department, and voluntarily pay more in taxes.
To find the National Debt on any given day, click on the icon, and fill in the dates for which the information is desired. At the end of Monday, March 19, 2012, more had been added to the national debt in three years and two months under President Obama than had been added in eight years under President Bush.
