The Won Percent

Via Instapundit – the hypocrisy of the Left is shining so bright for everyone but themselves to see. In the past month we’ve seen Morgan Freeman accuse the conservative Tea Party of being racist, only to have Herman Cain rise to the topof the TP presidential candidate list.

And the Occupy Wall Street crowd is demanding their fair share from the evil 1% while supporting The Won, himself a standing member of the 1%.

In the comments at exurbanleague: “You forgot that he has gotten more money from Wall Street than any other politician ever.”

Everyone is hypocritical at some time and to various degrees. But these examples of excess are stunning, along with MSM’s willingness to pretend it doesn’t exist.

clipped from www.exurbanleague.com

American Press Gone Soft

The only thing that’s gotten soft in America is press coverage of Democrat politicians. This guy was given a free ride, both during his campaign and after the election, by the MSM that is only now coming to grips with their mistake. For an institution that claims to be the “Forth Estate” these people were soundly asleep at the wheel.

clipped from abcnews.go.com Obama: U.S. Had “Gotten a Little Soft” in Last Couple Decades, Lost Competitiveness In an interview with an Orlando TV station Thursday, President Obama said that the U.S. had “gotten a little soft” in the last couple decades, losing its competitiveness. “The way I think about it is, this is a great, great country that had gotten a little soft and we didn’t have that same competitive edge that we needed over the last couple of decades,” he said. “We need to get back on track.”

Mother of All Mothers

Capturing bin Laden ‘would unleash hell’

Yes, yes… we’ve heard it all before. Now will come the mother of all “mother-of-all” threats. Watch us shake in our freedom.

Seriously… not particularly joyful about OBL’s death but let’s talk some truth about this Islamic culture – it sucks.

They’re always angry about something, whether it’s pork, or cartoons, or the Koran, or women not entirely covered in sheets.

Worst. Culture. Ever.

Osama Bin Laden, 1957-2011

Death of a Terrorist

This is the work of a terrorist…

Their day will come.

DHS Got Your Back – Again

Napolitano Visits Devastated Alabama Neighborhoods – FoxNews.com

Stupid question… what does the Dept of Homeland Security have to do with a community digging out from a natural disaster? Am I reading this wrong – wouldn’t DHS be more appropriate for a terrorist incident?

I think the same question was asked about them shutting down internet sites suspected of illegally sharing music files.

The Destruction of Economic Facts – BusinessWeek

The Destruction of Economic Facts – BusinessWeek

This is huge and well worth reading… titled “The Destruction of Economic Fact”, this article is about how financial rules have been changed to circumnavigate the truth in order to gain short term profit. The end result is not just uncertainty, but an erosion of stability that previously attracted so much worldwide investment into the US economy.

Money quote:

…businesses are left to figure out reality on the basis of connections, influence, and private information. Just like we do in developing and former communist countries.

Obama Birth Certificate

Obama’s got a birth certificate problem… connect the dots:

1. Since before his election the question was asked whether he is a natural US citizen – a qualification for any US president. His campaign successfully reduced this question to being a ridiculous exercise reserved for the wacko fringe element.
2. Even after his election, mainstream (supposedly not wacko) people continued with the questioning. See Mike Huckabee, who attempts to pull himself out of the wacko fringe element by saying he “misspoke”.
3. Neil Abercrombie, current DEMOCRAT governor of Hawaii, decides to take on the wacko fringe element and summon the vast powers of his island domain to prove Obama was indeed born in Hawaii.
4. Neil Abercombie, current DEMOCRAT governor of Hawaii, comes to the conclusion that his vast powers are not enough to prove Obama was indeed born in Hawaii… it’s a privacy thing so don’t even ask about it.
5. Donald Trump jumps into the fray, willing to be cast among the wacko fringe elements, and claims Obama has no birth certificate.

Look, it’s pretty simple. Either there’s a real problem and the president has run out of political tricks to hide it, or there isn’t a problem and conclusive evidence will prove all of his critics are frothing idiots.

In any case momentum is growing around this issue and simply calling others lunatics because they ask a question isn’t going to suffice much longer.

UPDATE: Then there’s this regarding Jerome Corsi’s book, Where’s the Birth Certificate?: The Case that Barack Obama is not Eligible to be President on Amazon.com. In hardcover no less…

Change Is Constant

This was exceptional… an excellent look at how much w resist growth and change and how much more God wants both of those things in our lives.

This quote TOTALLY sums up my life experience:

We’d like to manage life elegantly and smoothly.  We’d like the time to consider every challenge and decision carefully, weigh the odds, and then act calmly and deliberately.  God doesn’t seem to want that to happen.  He keeps throwing us into the deep end of the pool when we still aren’t sure we can swim without water wings; he wants us out in the Tour de France when we still miss our training wheels.

Here’s the sum of it all:

The answer that Christianity gives to the ancient problem of why a good God allows evil to exist really comes down to three things.  The first is that God plays for keeps.  He creates for real.  When he chose to make beings with free will he accepted this meant he would let their choices stand.  For better or worse, we are co-creators of the world with God and what we do and what we choose counts.  Our acts have real consequences.

Second: God wants us to grow.  God throws us into deep rivers with swift currents because he wants us to learn to swim.  He hasn’t created humanity to be a troupe of harmless lambs gamboling across sunny pastures.  We are made in God’s image and intended to grow into beings greater, more capable, more far seeing, more loving and more true than we can imagine today.  He pits us against real challenges with real consequences, natural and historical — the wrath of volcanoes and the upheavals in the economy — to bring us closer to the fulness of being he intends us to reach.

And finally, says the Holy Week story, God shares.  He rides Hell’s roller coaster of personal, political and economic uncertainty with us.  He knows the failure and the pain that comes with real life in a real world.  He does not answer our questions about evil and suffering with a series of propositions.  He answers us with a presence, his, in the middle of it all.

Regulating the Internet

Instapundit » Blog Archive » READER MARTIN MURCEK ON THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION’S INTERNET ID POLICY: “So, I need to give my ‘real…

Oh this is too good…

Reader Kevin Greene snarks: “I’d be more than happy to present the government a copy of my original long-form birth certificate in order to use the internet. And I’ll do that the day Barack Obama shows me his.”

Truth vs. Intellectualism

Instapundit » Blog Archive » A DEFENSE OF “ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM:” Part of the problem is that the American distrust of intelle…

This just spells it out so clearly… we’re in the midst of dealing with an “intellectualism” that really is bending the truth to fit political goals (global warming, diversity, environmentalism, etc.) while claiming to be so much smarter than those who would disagree.

I’m all for the truth. Even when it hurts, most people respond enormously when they face the truth. And it doesn’t take an Ivy League degree to recognize the difference between right and wrong.

All it takes is a willingness to admit you might be wrong.

US – Libya War

Gadhafi vows long war after US, allies strike – Yahoo! News

Ex-FREAKIN-scuse me… WHERE ARE THE PROTESTERS?!!!

Cindy Sheehan? Campouts at the presidents house? Protests in San Francisco? The moral urgency? David Letterman? Jon Stewart? Stephen Colbert? Nancy Pelosi? NY Times? Declaration of War from congress – or even a resolution?

Oh thats right… back then it was all about oil.

UPDATE: Found this in the comments section of the Althouse blog:

JayC said…
Scott Walker’s invasion of Libya is an illegal war of choice on a sovereign nation. No blood for cheese! Wait a minute… I think I have the wrong script. Give me a minute, here.
3/19/11 9:31 PM

China, Middle East, and US Support

China paper blasts Middle East protest movements – Yahoo! News

Sorry Fox News, Rush, Glenn and every other conservative pundit out there – as much as we’d all like to see Obama assertively step up to the plate in support of the Mideast protesters it ain’t gonna happen.

Because supporting the Mideast protesters will eventually lead to the question of China’s own protesters, and we sold our democracy soul to China a long time ago.

MSM and John Edwards – Both Guilty

Instapundit » Blog Archive » MICKEY KAUS: Here is the problem I have with indicting John Edwards. I just want to point out th…

More fuel for my rage against the press… bastards. Again, this was one of the press’ favorites and he was so close to a presidential nomination.

San Francisco – Just Deal With It!

Barrage of Game-Promotion Ballons and Fliers Pollute San Francisco [UPDATES] – SFist

This is what people in San Francisco get freaked about… balloons in the bay. These are video game promotional balloons that ended up in the bay instead of in the air.

As you can see, the balloons have now settled in the Bay where they run the risk of threatening wildlife.

Seriously – nothing substantial is at risk, except maybe the fragile “house of cards” image that environmentalists have of the environment.

Cause of the Financial Crisis

Zombie » Outside Job: Using the Oscars to legitimize a political theory

Good stuff shedding light on liberal advocates pushing lenders to make bad loans, then decrying efforts by those banks to turn bad money into good, and all while proudly twisting the truth in an Oscar winning movie.

Yup – sounds like a liberal.

The meltdown was not caused by the bankers who mislabeled their risky debt; the economy would have collapsed no matter who was holding the bag when it all went sour. The only crime committed by the villains depicted in Inside Job was to make sure they weren’t personally liable when all those bad investments went kablooey.

And I like this description of big business… because this is what a large company that’s trying to attract investors is SUPPOSED to be like:

It’s clever to stir up populist outrage against the fatcats who tried to enrich themselves when everyone else went broke. Who doesn’t hate devious fatcats? Even I hate them. But in this case I know that they didn’t cause the recession: they merely tried to profit from it. Because that’s what fatcats do: They try to profit from anything, in any financial climate. That’s what makes them fatcats.

And finally the bit about fooling a TV audience that’s more interested in entertainment than politics… but maybe took the bait as well:

But most Americans will never know any of this. Inside Job dominates the headlines, and the thesis it puts forth is the accepted wisdom of an angry nation. Only the few of you reading this essay, plus a handful of researchers and analysts, are aware that there’s a different side to the story. I concede my likely defeat in this particular battle from the War of Ideas. But all I can do is call it like I see it, a tiny voice in a hurricane of disinformation blowing in the other direction.

Chicago and California – One and the Same

Rahm Emanuel transition team member resigns after questions on state ethics violations – chicagotribune.com

Where oh where to start…

Let’s begin with Judy Erwin, former IL lawmaker busted last year for conducting campaign business while on the governement clock. In other words, during Barak Obama’s campaign in 2008 she was getting paid by non-partisan taxpayers to work on a partisan campaign. A big no-no, which not only got her fined and fired but she also was made to promise never again to work for the state of IL.

All of this came to light last summer.

But things get busy and it’s easy to forget promises made in the bliss of summer, especially those that come with a fine and losing your job. Why should we wonder at her paid position on newly elected Rahm Emanuel’s transition team? This was a political explosion that even Rahm recognized needed swift attention.

Next we’ll move to Rahm’s campaign theme of ethical reform… Rahm Emanuel… the guy who needed a state supreme court decision to calculate just how much he bent the residency law to legally make the Chicago ballot.

Put it this way – Rahm Emanuel is to ethics like Hollywood is to Christianity. Any attempt to even pretend there’s a connection will only convince those who are either incredibly foolish or who truly want to be fooled.

Which brings me and my battered California ego to ask the question, “Who the hell voted for this guy… based on ETHICS?!!” And the only reason I mention California is because the rest of the nation wonders at why we still vote the same incumbents into office despite the obvious disaster that sticks to their hands (see 2nd time gov Jerry Brown and Sen. Barbara Boxer, teacher and public employee unions).

So the only explanation I can see is it really is the same in Chicago as California. Gerrymandered voting districts, voter rolls filled with dead people, and media bias willing to turn a blind eye.

No wonder Chicago looks so familiar to this California native.

Oscar Night Temperatures

AccuWeather.com – Weather News | Unusual Cold Expected for Oscars Red Carpet

Sorry – I just have to take a shot at Hollywood liberals who drank the global warming kool-aid. Expected high temps will be in the 50s…

Such a high temperature is more than 10 degrees below normal, making this one of the coldest red carpet ceremonies in Oscar history. In fact, the forecast high of 56 is just two degrees above the record for lowest high temperature for the date.

Without sounding too bitter, I hope you freeze your silicon butts off in those designer fashions on the red carpet.

Media Double Standards

Wisconsin Unions vs. The Tea Party: A Classic Double Standard – WSJ.com

More double standards from a press that is so blind to their blindness that it’s almost funny – except it’s not.

Choice quote:

When it comes to the Tea Party, network correspondents seem to enjoy playing “civility cop,” emphasizing a few radical and inflammatory signs in ways that imply that the entire cause is extreme. Radical and inflammatory signs were easily found at the Wisconsin protests, but the networks uttered not one peep of disapproval — overwhelming evidence of a double standard that should embarrass any network journalist who still purports to be fair and balanced.

 

 

Women, the Press, and the Middle East

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2011/02/21/daily-mail-lara-logan-stripped-punched-and-whipped-flag-poles

So let’s face it – the idea of an objective unbiased news source was a myth all along. We have NEVER had an unbiased media, and if you’re watching the evening news on TV or reading a daily paper in the morning, you better know who’s doing the writing and what their political views are.

In light of that, I would much rather know the politics of a news source as a backdrop to their story. Reporters who DON’T exaggerate their political opponents score high marks – those that do are discounted accordingly.

Think about it – according to our unbiased press the greatest threat to modern feminism is Sarah Palin.

Regarding the status of women in the middle east, I’ll defer to this opinion:

Posted an image of this because links on the internet are very unreliable. But here's the URL: http://ace.mu.nu/archives/312107.php

Rules of a Liberal Media

Caroline Glick :: Lara Logan and the media rules

Choice selections:

Identity politics revolve around the narrative of victimization. For adherents to identity politics, the victim is not a person, but a member of a privileged victim group. That is, the status of victimhood is not determined by facts, but by membership in an identity group. Stories about victims are not dictated by facts. Victim stories are tailored to fit the victim. Facts, values and individual responsibility are all irrelevant.

In light of this, a person’s membership in specific victim groups is far more important than his behavior. And there is a clear pecking order of victimhood in identity politics.

Anti-American Third World national, religious and ethnic groups are at the top of the victim food chain. They out-victim everyone else.

After them come the Western victims: Racial minorities, women, homosexuals, children and animals. [Editorial Note: I would add the environment to this list.]

Israelis, Jews, Americans, white males and rich people are the predetermined perpetrators. No matter how badly they are victimized, brave reporters will go to heroic lengths to ignore, underplay or explain away their suffering.

Towards the end the truth is summarized:

Identity politics are nothing more than socially acceptable bigotry. Those who practice them are racist bigots who have replaced liberal values that hold everyone to the same moral and criminal standards with illiberal values that judge people’s morality and criminality by the identity group with which they are most readily associated.

When we understand identity politics, we understand how it is that the wholesale assaults against foreign journalists have received so little analysis. Lara Logan and the other hundred reporters attacked in Tahrir Square are real victims, not because of who they are, but because of what happened to them. The Egyptians who attacked them are real criminals, not because of who they are, but because of what they did.

Physician, Heal Thyself!

Instapundit » Blog Archive » YOU THINK? Social Scientist Sees Bias Within: Discrimination is always high on the agenda at the…

I never thought someone could make such a speech to an audience of liberals and live to tell about it. The speaker is Jonathan Haidt at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology convention, and here’s the political make up of his audience:

He polled his audience at the San Antonio Convention Center, starting by asking how many considered themselves politically liberal. A sea of hands appeared, and Dr. Haidt estimated that liberals made up 80 percent of the 1,000 psychologists in the ballroom. When he asked for centrists and libertarians, he spotted fewer than three dozen hands. And then, when he asked for conservatives, he counted a grand total of three.

And his observation to them:

“This is a statistically impossible lack of diversity,” Dr. Haidt concluded, noting polls showing that 40 percent of Americans are conservative and 20 percent are liberal… Anywhere in the world that social psychologists see women or minorities underrepresented by a factor of two or three, our minds jump to discrimination as the explanation,” said Dr. Haidt, who called himself a longtime liberal turned centrist. “But when we find out that conservatives are underrepresented among us by a factor of more than 100, suddenly everyone finds it quite easy to generate alternate explanations.”

Read it all, but here’s the kicker. After absorbing this body blow, Dr. Haidt challenged the executive committee to endorse a goal of “10% conservative membership by 2020.”

Wow… 10%. That’s the most unbalanced representation of reality by people charged with having a hold on such. Physicians, heal yourselves!

And the executive committee rejected this goal.

God’s Grace and Common People

The PJ Tatler » The real political parties

Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: 1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depositary of the public interests.

This is a quote from Thomas Jefferson and “…although not the most wise depository” is my emphasis. It’s also the thought that has been coming to mind recently.

Common people are by definition not “the best” so it’s understandable there will be those who think normal people are not capable of governing themselves. However a frequent component of common people is the ability to recognize the limits of their talents, which will often result in the restraint of humility along with a capacity to understand the faltering limits of others.

“There but for the grace of God go I” would be a phrase more comfortable in the conversation of a common man than an academic “public servant”. And why shouldn’t it be since we’ve all but dismissed the topic of God from our public forums.

Trust me on this – the greatest powers of God are reserved for the weak and the humble. And the opposite is very much true as well – pride is a nearly insurmountable obstacle to receiving God’s grace.

So while the common man is not the best at everything, he has a resource available that may as well be considered a secret weapon in the eyes of those who would look down upon him. And that weapon is the grace of God.

Student Loans and Bankruptcy

Instapundit » Blog Archive » HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: “Nearly half of the nation’s undergraduates show almost no gains in…

I don’t think the general public is quite aware of this yet… while declaring bankruptcy used to be an act of shame, it is so common now that people even think it’s the smart thing to do.

The problem with student loans is if you made an unwise decision and borrowed your way thru college, you’re stuck with that debt for life. You cannot file bankruptcy and walk away from a student loan.

I like Glenn Reynold’s summary statement:

…any other industry that encouraged its customers to go into debt like this would be characterized as predatory.

Dude Where’s My Brain

http://pajamasmedia.com/eddriscoll/2011/01/06/the-frat-pack-is-back-baby/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=facebook

So this article is about the MSM treating Dem politicians better than R’s. That’s old news to me, however I noticed this in the comments about the surfboard photo:

Whats worse is the surfer photo is clearly staged. First, nobody travels with boards not in surfboard travel bags. Besides protection, it keeps the wax off you your Mens Warehouse suit when you carry it, you nitwits.

Some brilliant staffer thought this would be a great idea to connect with the youth vote, or some crap like that, and didn’t like the way the board bags looked (“guys, take the boards out of the bag so we can see them. And take those leashes off, that doesn’t look good”). Also, only one of the guys knows how to carry the board correctly. Pathetic.

So my observation is this administration is starting it’s 3rd year and they’re still making bonehead mistakes. Not that this is foreign policy type of stuff, but seriously – wasn’t this supposed to be the cream of the crop Ivy League grads and all that crap?

Thank You And Goodbye

Instapundit » Blog Archive » VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The New Sophists. “In 2009, brilliant economists in the Obama administration …

This very simply says all there is to say about our current and future financial health.

Keep Your Laws Off My Body – By Jonah Goldberg – The Corner – National Review Online

via Keep Your Laws Off My Body – By Jonah Goldberg – The Corner – National Review Online

There are so many liberal/progressive ideas that just don’t make sense…

From the comments section:

In addition to the health care mandate, we have the bureacrats telling us what we can eat, how much to exercise and that we can’t drink alcohol, soda or tap water. Oh, we also can’t introduce smoke tobacco variety into our bodies, but we should legalize pot marijuana smoking.

There is no consistency here, no logic at all.

 

GM – Pieces Are (Still) Missing

UPDATE: http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/kausfiles/2010/12/29/the-bull-in-gm-bullishness.html

So GM’s fate remains to be seen but at least from the above article I’m seeing similar opinions from others. The comments section in particular spells out exactly why I’m rooting for GM’s failure – yes, I think GM should fail. All companies that are poorly run, receive government handouts, and step all over innocent investors (who thought they were buying a Dow Jones index quality stock) should fail… the sooner the better.

And just to make sure it’s captured, here’s the comment from the above article that spells it out:

jms

Because the Obama administration allowed GM to restructure without touching the Union contracts, GM was placed right back on a new, slightly longer trajectory towards bankruptcy, which will occur under an unsympethetic Tea Party / Republican administration. This whole mess was a big scoop of tax dollars handed over to the unions to keep the party going for a year or two.

Personally, my resentment lies not in the bailout, but in the fact that the “pre-packaged bankruptcy” was really just a collusion between the Obama Administration, the Obama-controlled TARP banks, and GM to muscle the bondholders out of the way and hand the company over to the unions.

Bondholders are supposed to receive 100% of their money before unsecured creditors see a penny, but because the Obama Administration had seized control of the major banks holding the majority of GM bonds, and rewarded them by allowing them to borrow huge amounts of money interest-free from the Fed and purchase interest-bearing Treasury bills, a majority of the government-control bond holders “agreed” to forfeit their bonds. The small bondholders, like the Indiana Teachers Union and anyone and everyone who ever purchased GM bonds individually as a retirement investment were the victims of this act of outright big-government/big business theft.

That’s why I will never, ever buy another GM or Chrysler product again. To do so would be the moral equivalent of receiving stolen property. The company is permanently deeply tainted by the lawless theft of bond assets from the individuals and small investors who put their faith in the laws of the United States of America that this would not — could not — ever happen.

As far as I’m concerned GM and Chrysler can’t go bankrupt and out of business fast enough.

Today, 07:31:51 – Flag – Reply

11/20/2010 – Something doesn’t add up… GM does an IPO that is wildly successful, even to the point of driving the market up 10% in a single day.

Why?

Did the UAW disappear? Did the government’s meddling in their business vanish? Did orders for the Volt jump enormously?

I just don’t get what has changed about GM since they entered bankruptcy earlier this year. And I realize I don’t know all the subtle angles of every issue involved here… but something just doesn’t add up.

WikiLeaks – The End is Near

Okay, quick review… WikiLeaks founder Julian Assaunge goes to jail for publishing secrets of top officials in the US government. Also in those documents were embarrassing things about other world leaders – not just Americans.

But WikiLeaks has a poison pill, a way of lashing out at others if they are threatened… they’ll simply take down the websites of a few large institutions. Paypal, Mastercard, Visa,  and whoever else is on their enemies list. And this disruption isn’t from a single source, which would be easier to track down and defend against or prosecute. No, this attack comes from many (“thousands” they claim) sources.

So my question for the WikiLeaks crowd is, just what do you think will be the end result? Will it be your Utopian world where nobody (at least nobody on your enemies list) can keep secrets? Do you think Paypal, Mastercard et al are going to free Assange and life will return to the happy days of yore?

Let me tell you what will happen. Assange will be dragged thru years of court appearances and will likely never see the free light of a day outside of jail. And your beloved web which has allowed you to demonstrate your clever powers? It will be captured and locked down so that information, which used to be assumed free for all, will be locked tight. Laws will be passed (aided by the entertainment industry who would be more than happy to get back their restrictive copyrights) to make it more difficult if not impossible to lawfully share information.

It’s coming… wait for it. WikiLeaks thought they were fighting for free access and what they have done is to force the hand that will lock down the internet.

Bastards.

UPDATE: Aaaaand here it is. The saving grace here is the UN was the same institution that tried forcing the Global Warming fraud on everyone. We can only hope this initiative meets the same result.

Unpredictable Man For Unpredictable Time

From Audacity to Animosity – WSJ.com

This is an interesting article about the Democrats choice of whether to support Obama or a primary challenger in the 2012 election. But it also called to mind other thoughts I had about the man.

Presidents, like normal people, grow and adapt to situations around them… since the Cambridge cop incident I’ve been waiting and watching for how Mr. Obama would grow into the presidency.

Not sure I can say he is growing in the right direction – might even speculate his primary desire is to just stop being president.

And that is not good.

UPDATE: Add this to the commentary of the Obama+Clinton-Obama press conference.

Pathetic, Gutless Poseurs

Daily Pundit » Pathetic, Gutless Poseurs

Easily the best commentary on politically correct but truly wannabee avant-garde artists… publicly funded, the bastards.

Why Wikileaks

Instapundit » Blog Archive » THOUGHTS ON THE POLITICS OF WIKILEAKS, from Pejman Yousefzadeh. “In addition to their being no big …

Been trying to figure out the whole Wikileaks thing – not the good or bad of it so much as why it’s allowed to happen. When someone is allowed to embarrass a president and powerful country, there must be a reason all the powers involved have been either limited or released.

Glenn Reynold’s comments in the above link come the closest to explaining things:

If I were more suspicious, I would say that this is someone’s effort — perhaps someone burned by leaks in the past Administration — to teach the career bureaucrats who were behind those leaks that leaking may be a bad thing, and that a world in which any statement may be leaked to the press is not a world that’s good for them.

Homeland Security & Hollywood

Homeland Security seizes domain names – The Hills Hillicon Valley

Can someone explain to me why the Department of Homeland Security is doing dirty work for the entertainment industry? Web domains are being shut down due to copyright violations.

And this is a threat to the national security because…?

TSA is for the Little People

TSA: Some govt officials to skip airport security – Yahoo! News

Christie in 2012

For those who don’t know about Chris Christie, this is just one of the reasons why he’s projected as a possible 2012 presidential candidate for the Republicans.

Chris Christie tells of apology from President of the Teachers Union

►

Don’t Touch My Junk

Charles Krauthammer – Dont touch my junk

As usual, Mr. K zeros in on the point while cutting away all the nonsense that tries to hide it.

Good quote…

In “Up in the Air,” that ironic take on the cramped freneticism of airport life, George Clooney explains why he always follows Asians in the security line:

“They pack light, travel efficiently, and they got a thing for slip-on shoes, God love ‘em.”

“That’s racist!”

“I’m like my mother. I stereotype. It’s faster.”

That riff is a crowd-pleaser because everyone knows that the entire apparatus of the security line is a national homage to political correctness. Nowhere do more people meekly acquiesce to more useless inconvenience and needless indignity for less purpose. Wizened seniors strain to untie their shoes; beltless salesmen struggle comically to hold up their pants; 3-year-olds scream while being searched insanely for explosives – when everyone, everyone, knows that none of these people is a threat to anyone.

And another…

We pretend that we go through this nonsense as a small price paid to ensure the safety of air travel. Rubbish. This has nothing to do with safety – 95 percent of these inspections, searches, shoe removals and pat-downs are ridiculously unnecessary. The only reason we continue to do this is that people are too cowed to even question the absurd taboo against profiling – when the profile of the airline attacker is narrow, concrete, uniquely definable and universally known. So instead of seeking out terrorists, we seek out tubes of gel in stroller pouches.

Gotta love the K man.

SEC Laws For The Little People

Capitol Hill’s Stock Trading: What the Academic Research Concludes – Deal Journal – WSJ

Did you know Congress is exempt from stock insider trading laws?

As the Journal points out, a piece of legislation called the STOCK Act proposes to bar members of Congress from trading securities based on nonpublic information they obtain. The bill so far has languished.

“Is it really surprising that this has gotten stuck?” Bainbridge said in an interview. “Until there is a very big scandal, it’s one of those classic good government reforms that will go nowhere.”

Bastards.

Tax Laws For The Little People

Proof Positive: A Tale of Four Tax Cheats

This is just disgusting…

Short story – of these four people who didn’t pay taxes, the only one scheduled for jail time is the one who ISN’T a politician.

I just went from having no opinion about Wesley Snipes to rooting for him to beat the system.

Human Brain – Simply Awesome

Human brain has more switches than all computers on Earth | Health Tech – CNET News

We are wonderfully made. The quote I loved:

They found that the brain’s complexity is beyond anything they’d imagined, almost to the point of being beyond belief, says Stephen Smith, a professor of molecular and cellular physiology and senior author of the paper describing the study:

One synapse, by itself, is more like a microprocessor–with both memory-storage and information-processing elements–than a mere on/off switch. In fact, one synapse may contain on the order of 1,000 molecular-scale switches. A single human brain has more switches than all the computers and routers and Internet connections on Earth.

Way cool…

Why Apple Sucks

The Beatles arrive on iTunes, at last – Yahoo! News

Here again we have build up of an exciting announcement from Apple, only to be let down… the Beatles, fully 40 years after they broke up, are now available on iTunes.

Wow.

Pardon my yawn but I’ve been playing Beatles songs on my iPod for so long now that I’m pretty much sick of them. Bought the CDs… ripped to mp3… copied to iTunes… sync with iPod – don’t blink or you’ll miss the magic.

Why does Apple deserve any attention at all, except for the fact that a sizable portion of the population swoons over every Apple event. Some might argue that in itself is newsworthy, but at a certain point it becomes merely predictable and about as newsworthy as a traffic jam during the morning commute.

 

Fake Education

The Shadow Scholar – The Chronicle Review – The Chronicle of Higher Education

Don’t know if this is true or not… a lot of educators in the comment section ridicule the feasibility, but then they have a vested interest in it being not true.

If it is true – simply stunning.

Democrat Disaster Continues to Unfold

Instapundit » Blog Archive » RECLUSIVE LEFTIST: “There is no schadenfreude in the Smoking Lounge. Every single thing I wrote and…

Certainily I’m no political prophet but even I could see this one coming from far away.

To begin with the media was painting Obama as The One. I’m popping brain cells trying to solve the puzzle of this – a POLITICIAN is being hailed as the single person who will solve all problems, not just of our country, but OF THE WORLD. And this was unquestionably true not merely because of what he said, but because of how well he looked and sounded when he said it.

I’m sorry, but I have to pause and ask the question – what kind of mush minded simpletons are granted the authority to sway public opinion with such immature sophomoric crap? I’m talking about news editors and producers, TV talking heads, university intellectuals – people that we assume have some minimum level of intelligence in order to qualify for a seat at the public forum. Boatloads of these people didn’t just swing and strikeout on Obama but they then proceeded to run the bases jumping up and down as if they hit a game winning homer. The reality is stunning in it’s juxtaposition to their imaginations.

This man was allowed DURING A PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN to, within a single week, both swear familial allegence to his pastor of 20 years and then claim to not know who the man was – and everyone was not supposed to notice.

Two years, a trillion dollars, and an epic failure in the mid-term elections later, and now the Democrats notice.

White Culture

Sort of cranky this morning after reading about revisionist history of the civil rights movement. On the heals of electing a black president we Americans, particularly conservatives, are still evil racists who secretly hate blacks and other minorities.

What a load of crap.

This comes after an evening enjoying cigars and beer with a good “white” friend of mine (funny, I never thought of him as being white) who made a statement about enjoying his church because it’s mostly white.

At first I was sort of put off and the racism alarm went off in my head.

But then I started thinking… there are many churches that are all black. There are also many churches that are all Asian and openly advertise Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese. Visit a Mexican neighborhood and you will certainly find churches that are all Mexican.

Certainly nobody has forced these churches to segregate. In fact the assumption is made that people attend the church of their color because they’re comfortable with it. But when white Americans make that choice they instantly transform into racists.

What a load of crap.

Show me the White Entertainment Channel. Show me White History Month. Show me White Pride Month. Show me the National Association for the Advancement of White People.

The usual response to this is everything is already setup to benefit the white race, so there is no need to further emphasize it. That also is a bunch of crap.

In every possible place where highlighting your heritage exists there is political correctness to squash my white Anglo culture. It is taboo. It is racist. It is shameful.

When will I be allowed to proudly proclaim my heritage?

Obama and Apple Marketing

So I was reading this about Obama and the sales job his campaign worked during the 2008 election. And as usual the comments section contained a gem of truth:

4. Jack Olson

Marketers love to create a cult brand because cult status guarantees a hard core of customers so emotionally invested in the brand that they not only won’t switch but they express their contempt for buyers of other brands. When a man buys a Harley Davidson jacket, a Valvoline gimmee cap, or a Smith & Wesson belt buckle, or when he puts a decal on his Ford of a little boy peeing on a Chevy emblem, he’s identifying himself with the cult brand. The marketers have succeeded in making him feel superior through identification with their brand, like a woman who just doesn’t feel right unless her sweater was designed by Donna Karan. Obama created a successful cult brand. The danger of a cult brand, though, is that marketers who overprice the product, oversell it, or let it grow obsolete, lose the customers who bought the product but didn’t join the cult. They feel a sense of disappointment for having bought the product instead of a sense of superiority. They may even join a competitive cult brand. If the creators of the Tea Party fall prey to the temptations which have undermined the Obama cult brand, they will lose popularity, too.

November 7, 2010 – 6:20 am

The thing that struck me was this applies to Apple as well. The statement “…a hard core of customers so emotionally invested in the brand that they not only won’t switch but they express their contempt for buyers of other brands” could be read as the very definition of Apple customers.

And I think that’s why I’ve joined the “competitive cult brand” of PCs. I see Apple products as falling short of the advertising.

Stimulus Weatherization Buys Shoddy Work

Report: In Obama’s Chicago, stimulus weatherization money buys shoddy work, widespread fraud | Washington Examiner

Every time I heard the president try to sell weatherization I thought of the same ridiculous claim that inflating tires was going to help with gas prices.

Wasn’t this guy supposed to be smart? Hell, Bush could come up with these ideas with one arm tied behind his brain.

Apple – I Just Don’t Get It

Apple unveils new MacBook Air, previews revamped Mac OS X – Yahoo! News

Okay, so some minor build up as Apple announces two new laptop models… MacBook Air 11″ and 13″ models. Here’s what caught my eye (and what I don’t get about the whole Apple thing):

Starting at $1,299 for the new 13-inch Air ($200 cheaper than last year’s entry-level Air) and $999 for the 11.6-inch version, both models sport Intel Core 2 Duo processors…

Core 2 Duo? Thats an old processor model… Intel Core i processors have been out for months – why is Apple attempting to sell new sizzle with an older line of processors? And at those prices?!!

I just bought a 13″ Dell Vostro with Core i5 processor, 4Gb RAM and 230Gb hard drive for $580. That was tax, license, shipping… EVERYTHING… delivered to my door in two days. And I could have gotten it for a lot less if I chose a Core 2 Duo processor!

I just don’t understand how Apple mesmerizes their customers into paying top dollar for what is quite simply older generation performance.

Oh, and I do own an iPod Touch so I’m not just a PC guy slamming anything Apple.

How To Deal With Terrorists

general-pershing-big.jpg 640×590

Because, if you haven’t been paying attention, this is how they deal with us.

Global Warming – Redefining Scientists

Hal Lewis: My Resignation From The American Physical Society

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

SHOCKER: Rampant Fraud Threat to China

Instapundit » Blog Archive » SHOCKER: Rampant Fraud Threat to China’s Brisk Ascent. “The exposure of Mr. Zheng’s faked cred…

This is what I’ve been waiting for all along… everyone is claiming China has their act together, they have the manufacturing sector, the growth, the MONEY. And yet corruption will leave them bankrupt like everyone else.

Wait and see – a country of that size with a communist government able to eliminate inconvenient checks and balances… and you have a situation ripe for fraud.

Obama – Community Organizer Struggles With First Amendment

Obama: Fox News is ‘destructive’ to America – CNN Political Ticker – CNN.com Blogs

Fox News a target for Obama again:

Fox News pushes “a point of view that I disagree with. It’s a point of view that I think is ultimately destructive for the long-term growth of a country that has a vibrant middle class and is competitive in the world,” Obama said.

So when the press is in your back pocket and buries stories about Rev. Wright or exalts your community organizing experience, you’re okay with that. But if any dare to oppose your political views they are destructive to America.

Pick one – struggling economy, 10% unemployment, illegal immigration, nuclear Iran, Euro meltdown, trade war with China… any of these are worthy of presidential focus. But to repeatedly take on Fox News is essentially saying you have a problem with the First Amendment.

It is so painfully obvious that the first African American president is merely a community organizer struggling with issues above his pay grade.

Environmentalism is CRAP

Green jobs no longer golden in stimulus – Washington Times

Okay, I say this understanding that we have a responsibility to manage natural resources and not abuse or waste things. However after years of repeated hysteria over catastrophic disasters (Himalayan glaciers gone in 10 years! Polar bears are drowning! Oil spill destroys the Gulf!) the green movement is totally void of legitimacy.

Today when I encounter a green product in the stores I IMMEDIATELY look for something else. Green products are essentially more expensive lower quality compromises. CFL light bulbs are crap – that’s why people are hoarding normal incandescent bulbs.

Then to find out Obama himself realizes investment in green jobs means boosting China’s economy is final confirmation of what I’ve suspected for so long… environmentalism is CRAP.

Only about $20 billion of the allotted funds have been spent – the slowest disbursement rate for any category of stimulus spending. Private analysts are skeptical of White House estimates that the green funding created 190,700 jobs.

The Department of Energy estimated that 82,000 jobs have been created and has acknowledged that as much as 80 percent of some green programs, including $2.3 billion of manufacturing tax credits, went to foreign firms that employed workers primarily in countries includingChina, South Korea and Spain, rather than in the United States.

Peter Morici, a business professor at the University of Maryland, said much of the green stimulus funding was “squandered.”

“Large grants to build green buildings don’t generate many new jobs, except for a few architects,” he said. “Subsidies for windmills and solar panels created lots of jobs in China,” but few at home.