Barack Obama's Diary: Golfing is such sweet sorrow

  I played golf today with my buddy Wall Street banker Robert Wolf, a mega-donor to me and other Democrats. We played at Fort Belvoir with my aides Joe Paulsen and Marv Nicholson.
The  weather was perfect for cleansing my soul after the bloody business of parting company with Jay Carney and Eric Shinseki yesterday. And  then there was my so-called 'secret' lunch with Hillary who left the private dining room carpet wet with tears after I told her that she was getting no help from me, in the wake of Benghazi. But enough about me.

Even after death, vet neglect continues

Over the last 15 months, 52 unclaimed bodies of U.S. military veterans accumulated at the Los Angeles County morgue because nobody arranged transportation to Riverside National Cemetery for burial, The LA Times reports
As of Thursday, the county could not explain why. "All the people who touched this process are working together to figure out how this occurred," said county spokesman David Sommers.
The problem reportedly began in 2013, after Rose Hills Mortuaries in Alhambra, which transported the bodies of homeless veterans under a charity program, started turning down some bodies that it said did not meet eligibility requirements.  All the people who touched this process are working together to figure out how this occurred.
Jessica McDunn, a spokesperson for Rose Hills' parent company, Service Corp. International of Houston, said that the program is limited to homeless veterans and that Rose Hills does not accept a body if the deceased's family has been located, even if the family is unwilling to claim the remains.

Obama, still hopeless after all these years, says Rudy

President Barack Obama came into office lacking basic executive skills, and after six years in office has shown he does not have natural leadership capabilities to manage the country, said former Republican Mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani.
"He's not cut out to be an executive. He doesn't have either the background and experience or the natural skills of an executive," Giuliani told Fox News' "America's Newsroom." "There is nothing in this man's background to suggest that he could run the most complicated organization in the world."
Giuliani said that when Obama took office, he hoped he would have "the natural talent" to lead effectively, but said the president has since shown "he doesn't have it." The president's temperament was suited, by instinct, to that of a "professor," Giuliani suggested.  Source

The Dung Beetle Award goes to...

The Academy of Dung Beetles has voted to roll its award towards  a judge who sentenced a father to one year of probation and a $200 fine for making his son walk a mile home from school as a form of discipline.
Hawaii Judge Kathleen Watanabe called the punishment "old-school" and no longer appropriate, The Garden Island newspaper reported Thursday.
Robert Demond of Kilauea said he picked up his son from school and asked about a matter that had been brought to his attention. When the son didn't respond, Demond made him walk home to think about his actions.  Demond was also ordered to attend a parenting class after being convicted of endangering the welfare of a minor, a misdemeanor.    [ECS]

Socialized medicine in action: New Zealand gives points for pain

New Zealanders who need surgery are ranked by their pain and assigned a number - they only make it on to the waiting list if their number is high enough to meet five different thresholds.
These thresholds are getting further out of reach every year, despite the Government pushing more money into elective surgery, clinicians and experts say.
This is because the demand for healthcare is limitless and the ability to pay for it is not.  The gap between the patients who meet the clinical threshold for surgery, but fall short of  hospitals' financial threshold is widening, New Zealand Medical Association (NZMA) chairman Dr Mark Peterson says. [Source]   [BJS]

Quoke of the Day

Joke Obama quote from Keith Koffler's White House Dossier---“Are you kidding? I wouldn’t let him babysit my goldfish! Oh, the mike is on? Yes, I have full confidence in Eric Shinseki”

Obamas spend $2 million during Africa trip

Newly obtained records released Thursday by Judicial Watch revealed that lodging, security and “entertainment” for the Obamas’ entourage during their trip last year to Africa cost taxpayers nearly $2.2 million.
“The Obamas clearly either do not understand the value of a dollar – or understand it all too well when someone else is picking up the tab,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.  Read more         [ECS]

Dim Crims: Robber flees woman, 89

Strange enough that a would-be robber of a small-town store in Washington state used a sword as his weapon of choice and a bicycle as his getaway vehicle. But what truly elevates the story is that the store's owner, an 89-year-old widow, just wasn't having it, reports USA Today. Miyo Koba of Moses Lake tells KREM-TV that she refused the robber's demand to open the register and instead threatened him with scissors. When he pushed her away and she fell, she spotted a golf club.
"I ... tried to swing this club at him and I tried to hit his head a couple times but I couldn't reach it,” she says. She then started bashing him in the legs, rattling him enough that he fled with the register. Or tried to anyway. It's apparently difficult to ride a bike while carrying one, not to mention a sword, and police recovered it near the scene, still full of money. [More]   [BJS]

Barack Obama's Diary: How to lead by pushing others to the front

Dear Diary: Never have I been so insulted! I bestowed my presence upon the cadets of West Point today and most of them failed to rise to their feet to applaud Me. They will all shortly be introduced to the audit process  of  the IRS. If there be as little as a candy bar missing, they will be left to rot in  some foul foreign  brig. Never have I, Barack Hussein Obama, been so egregiously dishonored in full view of the public. After all I've done for servicemen and women and veterans stricken with disease! The ingratitude!

The audacity of Inertia

According to my copy of The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama is deeply disturbed by "income inequality," access to healthcare for poor people and having U.S. troops on aimless missions abroad.  If only he could be in charge, he would fix these things, writes Charlie Hurt in The Washington Times
Oh, and he also really doesn't like all the nasty partisan squabbling among politicians in Washington. That needs to be fixed, too.
"The distribution of wealth is even more skewed, and levels of inequality are now higher than at any time since the Gilded Age," then-Sen. Obama lamented in his 2006 book. He flayed former President Ronald Reagan, whose "domestic policies tilted heavily toward economic growth with corporate raiders making tidy profits throughout the eighties while unions were busted.
If only HE could become president.
Today, these problems are even worse, Charlie Hurt continues. [Read it all]

Barack Obama's Diary: Congratulations to me

Dear Diary: I bestride the Earth like a Colossus, one moment I am in Afghanistan receiving homage from my mighty Army and the next I am at the White House  declaring Peace in Our Time, carefully contrived to coincide with  the final curtain descending on my triumphant presidency. By then most of the inconvenient stragglers who are clogging up the waiting lists of the VA will have dropped off the twig. I will be able to take my place among the immortals, Lincoln, Washington,  Jefferson.  I can see it now,  a new US capital city of Obama, D.C.  the Obama Memorial standing twice as high as Washington's modest obelisk.  I could hug myself with delight! In fact I will do that right now. But enough about me.

How ObamaCare will 'screw black doctors'

By linking doctor pay to patient satisfaction scores, Obamacare’s ‘pay for performance’ system is going to disproportionately hurt minority doctors. Daniela Drake explains why:
"Imagine that you’re an optimistic third-year medical student walking into the ER. Your first patient says to you, “I don’t want any niggers touching me.” There you are in your brand new white coat—the apotheosis of your and your parents’ hopes and dreams—but still, to this patient, you’re a nigger. You try to ignore the sting in your eyes—the shame of it. You suck it up, say nothing, and move on.
This kind of thing has happened to me from time to time—even as a studious, light-skinned offspring of a white father and black mother; even as a person who has “no discernible negro accent”; even as a person who was schooled since I was knee-high to respond to the question of what race I am by saying, “Homo sapiens -- sapiens because there is no such thing as race.”
But it turns out that to a lot of people, I’m still a nigger..."   [Read it all]

Sobriety test

0ur Vermont correspondent RK,  who appears to have had  a skinful over the Memorial Day weekend, sends this:

Europe's voters move sharply Right

Europe's parliamentary elections have resulted in big gains for those opposed to  Eurocrat over-reach, including right-wing parties in France, the UK, and Greece, the BBC reports. "The people have spoken loud and clear," said the leader of France's National Front, Marine Le Pen. "They no longer want to be led by those outside our borders … They want to be protected from globalization and take back the reins of their destiny." The party won just three seats in 2009; this time, it's poised to take 25, the most of any French party. French president Francois Hollande's party won just 14% of the vote compared to the National Front's 25%.  In Britain, the "Euroskeptic" UK Independence Party won 27% of the vote, winning a national vote for the first time and knocking the two main parties, Labour and Conservative, into second and third place. [More]

Your taxes in action: Agency rates all staff 'excellent'

One government agency has decided that the results of employee performance evaluations are too discriminatory, and eliminated the process entirely. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced on Monday that it will now award all employees the highest rating regardless of performance.
The CFPB, which oversees transactions in the financial sector for the federal government, decided to no longer conduct employee reviews because there were just too many apparent “significant disparities” between the races, ages, and locations of its employees.
According to American Banker, this new policy is set to cost over $5 million dollars, as it will now pay employees as if they received the highest evaluation score. The previous system ranked staff on their performance from a scale ranging from one to five, with five being the best score a CFPB staffer could receive after a review of their work on the job.
[Read more]