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June 30, 2010
California Taxpayers Pay 71¢ for 1¢
Posted by Dave Blount at 6:29 PM
An economy spontaneously organized by voluntary exchange and enlightened self-interest runs efficiently. But as we're learning, an economy coercively organized by Big Government runs a little differently:
California Farmers like Casey Stone of Yolo County pay property tax on what their land produces, not on what it'd be worth if there were a house, or a strip mall on it.
"That's the long term battle about keeping open space in California," Stone explains.
And the State of California used to help in that battle by making-up for the lower property taxes with payments to cities and counties. That is, until the Great Recession. Now, the State pays $1,000. And that's a total; $1000 divided between all the cities and counties.
"It's a pointless number. It just keeps the operation on the books," Stone says.
But more than pointless, in the case of 6 counties and cites, the payment was only pennies. And that's less than the 71 cents it cost to process the payment and get a receipt. [For example,] 71 cents to send a single penny to Camarillo [County].
At least the bureauweenies mean well. Note that the objective of the program is to suppress economic development.
On a tip from Muddypaw.
Frustrated Moonbat Shopper Goes Nuts
Posted by Dave Blount at 2:23 PM
Ever see Dawn of the Dead, where berserk zombies take over a shopping mall? Here's an even scarier concept: what if the zombies weren't allowed into the mall in the first place?
You've got to love the t-shirt.
On a tip from Wingmann.
RIP, Robert Byrd
Posted by Dave Blount at 1:10 PM
A fit resting place for the former top Democrat Senator and KKK Kleagle:
Compliments of Jim Lavery.
VA Hospital Exposes Vets to HIV
Posted by Dave Blount at 11:59 AM
"What about the Veterans Administration?" screech proponents of socialized medicine. "That's run by the government." Yes, I can tell:
John Cochran VA Medical Center in St. Louis has recently mailed letters to 1,812 veterans telling them they could contract hepatitis B, hepatitis C and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) after visiting the medical center for dental work, said Rep. Russ Carnahan. …
The issue stems from a failure to clean dental instruments properly, the hospital told CNN affiliate KSDK.
Not to worry, bureaucrats have made everything right by setting up "education centers to help patients who may have been infected." If that doesn't help, maybe they'll convene a committee to discuss whether the problem should be discussed by future committees.
Let me predict the liberal rebuttal: "I told you not only homosexuals and junkies get HIV!"
On a tip from Wiggins.
And Now a Few Words From Chairman Zero's Spiritual Mentor
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 10:45 AM
'I Can No More Disown [Rev. Wright] Than I Can Disown the Black Community. 'As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children." - B. Hussein Obama on Reverend Jeremiah Wright, March 2008
During a five-day seminar Wright taught last week in Chicago, he was back at it, claiming that whites and Jews are controlling the flow of worldwide information and oppressing blacks in Israel and America.
"You are not now, nor have you ever been, nor will you ever be a brother to white folk," he said. "And if you do not realize that, you are in serious trouble."
He cited the writings of Bill Jones -- author of the book "Is God a White Racist?" -- as proof that white people cannot be trusted. "Bill said, 'They just killed four of their own at Kent State. They'll step on you like a cockroach and keep on movin', cause you not a brother to them.' "
He said the educational system in America is designed by whites to miseducate blacks "not by benign neglect but by malignant intent."
Guess he didn't hear about the "Blacks Only" field trips.
The civil-rights movement, Wright said, was never about racial equality: "It was always about becoming white . . . to master what [they] do." Martin Luther King, he said, was misguided for advocating nonviolence among his people, "born in the oven of America."
And Obama not only listened to this stuff for twenty years, he gave Reverend Wright's church $25,000. Kind of puts Glenn Beck's comment about Obama's "deep-seated hatred of white people" in context, doesn't it?
Don't Pay Taxes Without It
Posted by Dave Blount at 9:52 AM
At last, something to defend taxpayers from the depredations of our pathologically greedy government — the Obama Tax Hike Prevention Card:
Here's how it works:
"This card a tangible reminder that Obama has deliberately broken his central campaign promise not to raise any form of taxes on Americans earning less than $250,000," said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, in a release. "The last President to break his tax pledge - Bush 41 - served only one term."
If you'd like to give one of these cards a test run, here's how it works: If you make under $250,000 and find yourself facing any of the new taxes highlighted by ATR ("Tax on Indoor Tanning Services," "Medicine Cabinet Tax," "Special Needs Kids Tax," etc.), you present the card and, if challenged "politely ask, 'Excuse me, but are you calling President Obama a liar?'"
Many of Comrade Obama's planned tax hikes will be so ubiquitous that the card should be displayed before purchasing anything whatsoever. The massive tax increases entailed in Cap & Trade, like the proposed VAT, apply to literally everything we pay money for.
On a tip from Nancz.
Obama May Be Turning Jews Against Democrats
Posted by Dave Blount at 9:29 AM
Some good may actually come of the catastrophic farce known as the Obama Administration — provided Jews learn from it to stop shooting themselves in the foot by supporting Democrats.
McLaughlin & Associates, a national polling company, recently released the "National Survey of Jewish Voters" which reported that while Jewish voters favored Obama 78 percent to 12 percent in the 2008 presidential exit polls, currently, "only 42 percent of voters would re-elect him, while the plurality (46 percent) would consider voting for someone else."
The main reason: Obama, like the increasingly radical Democrat Party in general, is hostile to Israel and at best ambivalent toward Islamic terrorists.
Our Hamas-backed adolescent president is even less popular among Jews in Israel. Zionist Organization of America found that 65% of Israelis oppose BHO's policy toward Israel, with 21% in support. If the latter number seems high, keep in mind that due to the self-hatred entailed in moonbat ideology, 21% of Israelis would probably support Iran's policy toward Israel.
ZOA's Morton Klein comments,
Coupled with earlier results showing the abysmal level of support for Obama among Israelis after 18 months of public condemnation, criticism and pressure while placing no pressure at all on Palestinians and largely ignoring incitement to hatred and murder within Palestinian society, here is further evidence that Israelis do not support Obama's policy and do not believe American Jews should either.
Terrified of the November elections, some in the Democrat Party have already begun running from the ugly ultra-left extremism personified by Comrade Obama. But once the underlying nature of the party's base has been seen, it can only be unseen by the most determinedly blind.
On a tip from Mega.
Open Thread
Posted by Dave Blount at 9:21 AM
Wanted: JournoList -- Reward: $100,000
Posted by The MaryHunter at 9:00 AM
David Weigel, the mainstream media's new poster child for left-wing liberal bias, was eloquently described recently by Van Helsing as a "foul-mouthed, sophomoric, blinkered, ultrapartisan extremist." As predicted, he has moved on to an even sloppier gig at the fetid pigsty that is MSNBC.
How was Weigel outed? Why, it was the mysterious, the legendary, "JournoList 400" -- a collection of journalism's most perfidious, most disgusting... well, let me allow Andrew Breitbart to describe them:
Ezra Klein's "JournoList 400" is the epitome of progressive and liberal collusion that conservatives, Tea Partiers, moderates and many independents have long suspected and feared exists at the heart of contemporary American political journalism. Now that collusion has been exposed when one of the weakest links in that cabal, Dave Weigel, was outed. Weigel was, in all likelihood, exposed because - to whoever the rat was who leaked his emails -- he wasn't liberal enough.
Breitbart is so intrigued by this prize JournoList that he is offering $100,000 for the full archive, "Source Fully Protected."
We want the list of journalists that comprised the 400 members of the "JournoList" and we want the contents of the listserv. Why should Weigel be the only person exposed and humiliated?
I therefore offer the sum of $100,000 to the person who provides the full "JournoList" archive. We will protect that person's privacy and identity forever. No one will ever know who became $100,000 richer - and did the right thing, morally and ethically -- by shining the light of truth on this seamy underworld of the media.
$100,000 is not a lot to spend on the Holy Grail of media bias when there is a country to save.
C'mon, guys and gals of the Liberal MSM. Journalism can't be all that lucrative unless you get outed, so why not out everyone? You get a hundred grand, and your colleagues, even you, can write about the experience of being fired by semi-reputable news organizations and hired by MSNBC on the next day. Looks like a win-win.
For a behind-the-scenes look at the JournoList jockos, visit Iowahawk.
Moonbats Are Painting Andes White to Please Gaia
Posted by Dave Blount at 8:47 AM
Since the imaginary global warming crisis is absurd, efforts to combat it must also be absurd. Fortunately, moonbats have the ideal mindset to come up with appropriate solutions — such as painting the Andes white:
By painting the mountains, Eduardo Gold hopes to replicate the effect of Andean glaciers, which reflect back sunlight and hence heat back through the atmosphere.
This sounds like a joke, but they're actually doing it.
Four workmen have been given the task of painting three peaks, starting with Peru's Chalon Sombrero peak, which lies 4,756 metres above sea level. … The painters who have already completed two hectares of a planned 70 have been recruited from Licapa village, which depends on the run-off from the mountain for its water.
It's unclear whether they are painting the mountains solid white, or painting a giant white likeness of Al Gore's face.
Global warming isn't real, but damage caused by fools mistaking their left-wing ideology for scientific reality very well might be — if only the economic damage to those forced to pay for environmentalist master plans.
The £135,000-project is funded by the World Bank after Mr Gold won a "100 Ideas to Save the Planet" competition last year.
That means money stolen out of your paycheck finances this lunacy.
Painting mountains white won out over some other fascinating ideas:
Firing mirrors into space to reflect the sun's rays, or feeding cattle garlic to reduce methane emissions have been mooted.
Peru's Environment Minister Antonio Brack sums up the mountain-painting project succinctly:
"It's nonsense."
If it doesn't cause liberals to proclaim the problem to be solved, why don't we paint the ocean? Maybe we should try painting it black, so the sun can't find us.
On a tip from Anonymous Countermoonbat.
More Oil Spill Clean-Up Blocked by the Obamacracy
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 7:28 AM
The largest skimming ship in the world -- known as an "A Whale" -- is expected to arrive in the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday, but will be prevented from contracting with BP to help clean up the oil spill until the federal government decides that the vessel is "effective."
The administration could have issued a waiver and put the vessel to work immediately. For that matter, it could have requested and approved the vessel weeks ago. The EPA's Draconian regulations coupled with the Coast Guard's fanatical bureaucratism have created a situation where the perfect is the enemy of the good.
My challenge to Obama's fanboys remains: Defend Captain Wonderful's Response to the Oil Spill. So far, no takers.
Environmentalist Whackos Sue to Stop July 4 Fireworks
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 6:49 AM
The left has found an environmentalist excuse to prevent traditional patriotic expression.
The Coastal Environmental Rights Foundation is suing the city of La Jolla, CA to stop its fireworks display, claiming that the Independence Day tradition is perilous to the area's sensitive maritime resources.
According to the organization's lawsuit, the city of La Jolla did not apply for a Coastal Development permit or comply with the California Environmental Quality Act.The foundation also alleged that the ecological impacts of the Fourth of July show, including traffic and the pollutants from firework debris entering the region's coastal resources, have not been considered in an environmental review.
Funny how things that hippies like to do never get in the crosshairs of the environmental left.
Rolling Stone's Excellent Anti-War Adventure
Posted by The MaryHunter at 5:29 AM
The gnomish Greg Gutfeld opines on the America-hating, military-loathing left's favorite rag.
Item #3: Barack Obama, Our First Woman President
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 5:07 AM
Obama fan-girl Kathleen Parker says Barack Obama may be our first woman president, which is only fair because Bill Clinton was already (according to Toni Morrison) our first black president.
Generally speaking, men and women communicate differently. Women tend to be coalition builders rather than mavericks (with the occasional rogue exception). While men seek ways to measure themselves against others, for reasons requiring no elaboration, women form circles and talk it out.
Obama is a chatterbox who makes Alan Alda look like Genghis Khan.
She goes on to say that it's his style of passivity and talky coalition-building that has made him so blowfully ineffectual in dealing with situations that demand action, like the gulf oil spill. (Still waiting for a fanboy to step up to the plate and defend his response, BTW.) I think this is an insult to Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, either of whom would have acted decisively in response to the oil spill.
Parker isn't the first to make this observation, Lucy Berrington and Jeff Onore made a similar observation back in 2008.
He is like a woman: slim, good looking, with long elegant fingers, appealingly dressed - all terms more typically ascribed to female candidates.
Hillary has long been accused of androgyny - trying to sound like a man, flexing her rhetorical muscle - but on Thursday night it was Obama who won the androgyny sweepstakes.
Mark Morford just excused himself to the men's room and won't be back for ten minutes. Do NOT shake hands with him afterwards.
Item #2: Hybrids Suck
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 4:42 AM
So here's the deal with a hybrid --- you pay a massive premium up front (versus the cost of a non-hybrid) --- and depreciation rapes you when you get rid of the thing.
According to a report from the UK's Glass Guide, unless manufacturers properly address customer concerns regarding battery life and performance, the new breed of electric vehicles (EV) soon to be launched will have residual values well below those of rival gasoline and diesel models, with a typical electric vehicle retaining only 10% of its value after five years of ownership, compared to gas and diesel-fueled counterparts retaining 25% of their value in that time period. According to Andy Carroll, managing director at Glass's, the alarming rate of depreciation is a function of customer recognition that the typical EV battery will have a useful life of up to eight years and will cost thousands of dollars to replace.
Where's the sense in that? After eight years, the hybrid is worth less than the mandatory Obama sticker on the bumper.
Morning Briefs for Odin's Day Item #1: More Teen Gun Violence
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 3:58 AM
A 15-year-old boy and his 12-year-old brother sister were home alone when the 15 year old took out his dad's gun. Tragedy ensued. (Sorry, the original link said brother, it has apparently been amended.)
Did I say tragedy? I meant that other word, heroism.
The boy, 15, and hisbrothersister, 12, were alone about 2:45 p.m. when someone tried to kick open the front door then soon after the back door of their home in the 2600 block of Royal Place Court, officials said.
When one of the suspected burglars kicked open a window, the boy grabbed a rifle and fired. Both burglars then fled, officials said.
Soon after the shooting, a man showed up at Tomball Methodist Hospital with a gunshot wound. He is being questioned by investigators.
The children were not injured during the ordeal, officials said.
What a disappointment for the anti-gun left. Elena Kagan, Barack Obama, and the liberal wing of the Supreme Court would have preferred to see the boys kids robbed and murdered. That would have made them feel self-righteous in their smug liberal pieties about the joys of a utopia in which law-abiding people are completely disarmed.
June 29, 2010
My Idea of a Congresswoman
Posted by Dave Blount at 7:26 PM
Here's some luck: since I live in Arizona's Congressional District 3, I'll have a chance to vote for Pamela Gorman:
Uh oh. I think Mark Morford just wet his pants again.
On a tip from J.
Budget Canceled
Posted by Dave Blount at 7:14 PM
If only that meant federal spending was canceled.
On a tip from Ericka.
Obama's Oil Spill Clusterfrak Continues
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 5:15 PM
You are not going to frakking believe this.
Why does neither the U.S. government nor U.S. energy companies have on hand the cleanup technology available in Europe? Ironically, the superior European technology runs afoul of U.S. environmental rules. The voracious Dutch vessels, for example, continuously suck up vast quantities of oily water, extract most of the oil and then spit overboard vast quantities of nearly oil-free water. Nearly oil-free isn't good enough for the U.S. regulators, who have a standard of 15 parts per million -- if water isn't at least 99.9985% pure, it may not be returned to the Gulf of Mexico.
When ships in U.S. waters take in oil-contaminated water, they are forced to store it. As U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the official in charge of the clean-up operation, explained in a press briefing on June 11, "We have skimmed, to date, about 18 million gallons of oily water--the oil has to be decanted from that [and] our yield is usually somewhere around 10% or 15% on that." In other words, U.S. ships have mostly been removing water from the Gulf, requiring them to make up to 10 times as many trips to storage facilities where they off-load their oil-water mixture, an approach Koops calls "crazy."
The Americans, overwhelmed by the catastrophic consequences of the BP spill, finally relented and took the Dutch up on their offer -- but only partly. Because the U.S. didn't want Dutch ships working the Gulf, the U.S. airlifted the Dutch equipment to the Gulf and then retrofitted it to U.S. vessels. And rather than have experienced Dutch crews immediately operate the oil-skimming equipment, to appease labour unions the U.S. postponed the clean-up operation to allow U.S. crews to be trained.
Obama fanboys step up. Defend the competence of your mighty community organizer! Come on, step up. Don't be shy.
Hat Tip: AoS HQ
Update: Come on, fanboys. You guys were all over the gay thread. But you can't spare a minute or two to praise your Dear Leader's oil spill fu? Hey You Guys? BRS? Mindless Drone? Fez? lao? Hellooo-o-o-o-o... anybody out there?
Focus Groups Contemplate Car Wreck That Is Obama
Posted by The MaryHunter at 4:29 PM
The big political story for President Obama -- in case anyone has missed it -- is that almost since he was elected, he has been losing independent voters in droves. The BP gulf oil spill isn't helping his ratings with swing voters, either.
As oil continues to gush into the Gulf of Mexico, the results of a nationwide focus group effort indicate that Republicans aren't the only ones questioning President Obama's experience and ability to lead during a crisis: Independents are joining that chorus, too.
During the focus groups, independent voters used the words "frustration," "upsetting," "confusion," "incompetence" and "anger" to describe both Obama and BP. They drew comparisons of Obama's handling of the oil spill to the way the federal government responded to Hurricane Katrina during the Bush administration.
"It should be troubling for Democrats should this critique take hold among more swing voters," the report states.
An intriguing question asked of the focus groupees was "if President Obama was a car, what type of car would be be?" Respondents gave some colorful analogies:
One man said an Edsel because Obama is "something that had a lot of hype, but failed to live up to expectations." Another described the president as a "wrecked Ferrari," because he's "something that looked great many people, but [is] now ruined."
A wrecked Ferrari Enzo, for example, could represent a loss of over $1 million. About 13 million such crashes would just about equal the Obama economic wreck. And, that's not even counting his utter incompetency of the Gulf spill management.
Open Thread
Posted by Dave Blount at 1:34 PM
Video: Pete Stark Insults His Constituents
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 12:32 PM
Congressman Fortney "Pete" Stark, arrogant progressive buffoon from California's 13th district, confronts a constituent's questions about border security by calling him a murderer, claiming that the border is secure, and then mocking their concerns about border security and unemployment.
Condescending, arrogant, clueless... yet convinced of his utter infallibility, Pete Stark reminds us of everything we hate about arrogant, leftist politicians. In this respect, there is no difference between Pete Stark and Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Steny Hoyer, Chuck Schumer or any other member of the Democrat leadership.
Hat Tip: Mashed Up Bag of Meat with Lipstick.
Kos: "My Birther Poll Was Complete Bunk"
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 12:07 PM
A while back, Markos Moulitsas the head headcase at DailyKos, commissioned a poll that purported to show that conservatives were a bunch of whackjobs. He is using the poll as the basis for his new book, American Taliban, the central thesis of which is that there is no difference between American conservatives and the fanatical inbred Taliban folk who blew up statues, crush gays under rocks, and deny women educations. This information was lapped up by progressive blogs and news outlets like the Washington Post.
Well, guess what? Moulitsas is now suing Research 2000, alleging that they, more or less, made up all the data they fed to him in polls.
Maybe next time Kos should hire Rasmussen.
Lie Back and Think of Gaia
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 11:51 AM
I am not yet convinced of the credibility of the masseuse who claims Al Gore sexually assaulted her. I'm not ruling it out because I once made the acquaintance of the maintenance crew chief for Air Force 2 when Al Gore was VP, and he told me some stories that if true suggest that what he is alleged to have done would not be out of character. I'm not going to condemn Gore on the basis of gossip and hearsay, although I do find the whole thing funny as hell. But this bit from the woman's account is notable.
Later, she talked to friends, liberals like herself, who advised against telling police. One asked her "to just suck it up; otherwise, the world's going to be destroyed from global warming."
I remember how the feminists rallied around Bill Clinton despite credible allegations of rape and proven allegations that he sexually exploited a 21 year old female intern. Given the history, It's not implausible that some progressive dingbat would advise a friend to take one for the team because the Sex Poodle was humanity's last line of defense against Manbearpig.
Conservative Women Subjected to the Ultimate Insult
Posted by Dave Blount at 11:05 AM
Liberals' inclination to project their worst flaws onto their opponents has lurched into self-parody before, but the absurdity of Mark Morford's latest incoherent fit of pique in the San Franfreakshow Comical could be unprecedented.
Morford is possibly the worst writer you will ever see in print. A sample paragraph:
And I'm tossing in a dash of pop culture, all the MIAs and Lady Gagas and Miley Cyruses, the Kathryn Bigelows and the ditzbombs of "Sex and the City," trying to parse and understand and see some sort of through-line.
This sadistic abuser of the English language had been hoping that feminism would remake the world more to his liking:
See, long was it believed, via some utopian/naive vision held by "enlightened" men and women alike, that if and when the feminist movement — all three waves of it, really, from Virginia Woolf to Betty Freidan, bell hooks to riot grrls — finally started to get everything it desired, there would surely be some wonderful sea change in the culture, a new paradigm to replace all the ugly, outdated structures of power and ego erected by old white men, something far more fluid and interesting, liberal and heartfelt and, well, nonmasculine.
But to his tremendous disappointment, he's discovered that not all women are moonbats.
Examples are, sadly, legion. Witness, won't you, the zeitgeist's nightmare trifecta of largely insufferable women, the Sarah Palin/Carly Fiorina/Michele Bachmann hydra-headed hellbeast of pseudo-women, one part huge cash reserves, one part evil grammar-abusing ditzball psychopath, one part sassy misinformed moxie, overlaid with wonky ideas of motherhood, love of guns and ignorance of sex and reproductive rights.
Liberals have subjected Sarah Palin to a cascade of petty insults for the past two years, but to be called "grammar-abusing" by a semiliterate hack who begins paragraphs with the conjunction "and" may top them all. However, for sheer hypocrisy it may not match denouncing conservative women for their concept of motherhood and for not advocating abortion in the same disjointed sentence.
On a tip from Smorfia48.
The High Cost of Other People Living Beyond Their Means
Posted by Dave Blount at 9:41 AM
At least we've learned our lesson, and the Fanny/Freddy debacle that caused the economy to collapse in 2008 has been put behind us… Say, what's that jutting up out of the ocean just ahead?
For American taxpayers, now on the hook for some $145 billion in housing losses connected to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans, that amount could be just the tip of the iceberg.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the losses could balloon to $400 billion. And if housing prices fall further, some experts caution, the cost to the taxpayer could hit as much as $1 trillion.
It's not as if nothing has changed at government-run Fannie and Freddie since the 2008 crash. Now they're avoiding middle class home-buyers to focus more exclusively on selling homes to those who can't afford them. In the Obama lexicon, this is known as "spreading the wealth around."
Every penny flushed down the toilet in the name of "social justice" by Fannie/Freddie will be made up by taxpayers. Otherwise, we might anger the communist Chinese into cutting off the money our rulers have sold America's future for.
At the crux of the financial crisis, the government took over Fannie and Freddie to avert possible massive losses for banks, money-market funds and, perhaps, most importantly, foreign institutions that purchased billions of Fannie and Freddie debt because of its implied government guarantee.
The Chinese, for example, had invested heavily, and the US decided it didn't want them to take a loss on their investment.
Others can afford their mortgages, but choose not to pay them:
Nearly one in five delinquent mortgages through the first half of 2009 was owned by someone who could afford to pay, but decided defaulting was a smarter financial play. …
The theory is it's more financially savvy in the long run to walk away from a devalued home than continue to pay on the mortgage. …
Strategic defaulters gamble that banks won't come after them because they are too overwhelmed with foreclosures.
The rest of us shoulder the burden as this drives the value of our homes still lower.
Under a government that promotes irresponsibility and parasitism, those who pay their bills are effectively slaves to those who don't.
On tips from Anonymous Countermoonbat.
Dave Weigel Lands Another Gig Already
Posted by Dave Blount at 8:58 AM
When the foul-mouthed left-wing scorpion David Weigel lost his job of reporting on conservatives for WaPo after his sputtering hebephrenic hatred of conservatives became public knowledge, Moonbattery predicted it would be only a temporary setback in his career. Sure enough, he has already secured another position. You'd never guess where:
Well that didn't take long. Just a few days after resigning from the Washington Post, journalist [sic] Dave Weigel has landed a new gig in television news.
Weigel has joined MSNBC as a paid contributor, and will appear regularly on "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," as well as other programming on the network.
Congrats, Weigel: you have found a fitting home. The monkey cage is a great place to live if all you want is to crap in your hand and fling it.
On a tip from Infidel Joe.
Union Thugs at Play at Toys R Us
Posted by Dave Blount at 8:36 AM
By now we all know that Comrade Obama is in very tight with the unions — so tight that he discarded the rule of law to favor the UAW at the expense of secured creditors when he seized control of Chrysler. If he is able to ram Card Check through Congress, unions will have an opportunity to use coercive tactics to take over most every workplace in America. What kind of country will this be if that happens? A local story from King of Prussia, Pennsylvania offers an example:
Officers responded at 7:10 a.m. Wednesday to the King of Prussia Plaza area of Mall Boulevard for reports that union protestors were blocking the entranceway to the new Toys R Us building site. While en route, an assault was reported in the mall parking lot.
Upon arrival, police found two construction trucks with their rear windows completely shattered, and one victim bleeding from the head. The victims said they were blocked by numerous union protesters from entering the construction site, and so they drove to the mall area to await police assistance.
A short time later, a black sedan pulled up and several men exited with baseball bats, ran up to the two trucks and repeatedly slammed the bats into the windows. As the workers exited the trucks, at least two were then physically assaulted with the baseball bats, and one victim had to be hospitalized. Another victim was able to use his cell phone to photograph the assailants and their vehicle.
Police said the construction site is being protested by Local 401 of the Iron Workers Union.
Get used to it; there will be a lot more stories like this in the aftermath of Fundamental Transformation.
On a tip from Forest.
Item #3: Ginsburg's Dissent in Heller Based on Foreign Law
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 4:56 AM
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg --- the woman who never hired a single African-American as a clerk or intern in 13 years on the DC Circuit and who agrees like our troll from Toronto that abortion is good because it keeps the mud races down --- dissented from the view that the Second Amendment applies to the states. Her dissent on the earlier Heller case was explicitly on the basis that foreign countries practice gun control.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented in Heller and wondered why the right to bear arms was necessary to extend to the states. "[I]f the notion is that these are principles that any free society would adopt, well, a lot of free societies have rejected the right to keep and bear arms."
Listen, dingbat, it's not your job to make the USA follow other countries' laws. Your job is to uphold the Constitution. And, BTW, you consistently fail at it.
Hat Tip: Knowledge Is Power
Item #2: Bill Press "Glenn Beck = Al Qaeda"
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 4:08 AM
Lefty hack radio host Bill Press compares Glenn Beck to Al Qaeda. (And this makes perfect sense to progressives.)
The National Park Service has given Glenn Beck permission to hold a Tea Party rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28 - 47 years to the day after Martin Luther King gave his magnificent 'I Have A Dream' speech," Press wrote in a June 16 post on his blog. "If you ask me, that's like granting al Qaeda permission to hold a rally on September 11 - at Ground Zero. What the hell were those bureaucrats at the Park Service thinking?
I forget, how many people has Glenn Beck mass-murdered. Could someone go to wikipedia and look that up for me? Because I am thinking the answer is "zero" but I could be off by a few thousand.
Curiously, Medea Mutters --- who are usually so all over it when a radio talk show host says something out of line --- seems to have no comment on Mr. Press's comment.
Nor does Medea Mutters care that Press's fellow left-wing radio talker, Mike Malloy, openly hopes that Dick Cheney dies and promises to celebrate with champagne if he does.
Stay classy, radio left.
Morning Briefs for Tuesday Item #1: Moonbats Wail and Moan Over Gun Rights Decision
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 3:55 AM
Predictably, some members of the gun-grabbing left are in hysterics over the SCOTUS Second Amendment decision.
People will die because of this decision. It is a victory only for the gun lobby and America's fading firearms industry. The inevitable tide of frivolous pro-gun litigation destined to follow will force cities, counties, and states to expend scarce resources to defend longstanding, effective public safety laws. The gun lobby and gunmakers are seeking nothing less than the complete dismantling of our nation's gun laws in a cynical effort to try and stem the long-term drop in gun ownership and save the dwindling gun industry. The 30,000 lives claimed annually by gun violence and the families destroyed in the wake of mass shootings and murder-suicides mean little to the gun lobby and the firearm manufacturers it protects. - Violence Policy Center
Oh, the tears of unfathomable sadness! My-yummy! Mm-yummy
And at the Puffington Host...
The Bill of Rights guarantees a right to bear "arms". Probably legs, hands and feet too. If it guarantees the right to carry a gun, then why can't I drive a tank down the street? Why can't I have a loaded cannon in my front yard? Why can't I deply private nuclear weapons? Isn't that guaranteed in the second ammendment? What's the difference? They all kill. They are all effective in the persuit of "self defense" These gun lovers have no interest in self defense. If they did they would rely on the fists God gave them and not on firepower designed to kill. - Huffington Post "Superposter" spiegelp
And the critic who thought The Phantom Menace was an awesome movie says...
"At Least 29 Shot In Chicago Over The Weekend." It's the fault of our damn unconstitutional gun laws. - Roger Ebert
Technically, he's correct.
June 28, 2010
Elena Kagan Explains Why It's Okay to Ban Books
Posted by Dave Blount at 6:21 PM
According to Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, laws banning books pose no First Amendment problems, because they might not be enforced:
In the Age of Hopey Change, this authoritarian apparatchik passes for a Constitutional scholar.
We just saw the crucial Second Amendment saved from being effectively repealed by a single vote. If Comrade Obama gets Kagan on the Court and then one more moonbat from the same mold, he can consider America to have been "fundamentally transformed" into something other than America.
Via Breitbart.tv. On tips from Milton and J.
Lois Lane, Woman of Color
Posted by Dave Blount at 3:14 PM
With the progressive emphasis on indoctrinating children, comic books are the last place to expect to find relief from political correctness — even if you go back to 1970:
If only it were this easy, think of the employment opportunities that would be available to each of us.
On a tip from Edward.
Open Thread
Posted by Dave Blount at 1:33 PM
Profiles in Moonbattery: David Weigel
Posted by Dave Blount at 12:21 PM
How does cartoonish left-wing spin manage to twist supposedly serious newspapers like the Washington Post into liberal self-parodies? Because until they are exposed and forced to resign, unhinged fanatics like David Weigel are paid to see to it. Via The Daily Caller:
Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh famously said he hoped President Obama would "fail" in January, 2009. Almost a year later, when Limbaugh was rushed to the hospital with chest pains, Washington Post reporter David Weigel had a wish of his own. "I hope he fails," Weigel cracked to fellow liberal reporters on the "Journolist" email list-serv.
Naturally Weigel was then hired by WaPo to provide fair and balanced coverage of the conservative movement. It was hard work, as Weigel whines:
"Honestly, it's been tough to find fresh angles sometimes — how many times can I report that these [tea party] activists are joyfully signing up with the agenda of discredited right-winger X and discredited right-wing group Y?" Weigel lamented in one February email.
In other posts, Weigel describes conservatives as using the media to "violently, angrily divide America." According to Weigel, their motives include "racism" and protecting "white privilege," and for some of the top conservatives in D.C., a nihilistic thirst for power.
Only a leftist accusing proponents of smaller government of being thirsty for power could top the hypocrisy of denouncing "racism" and then brandishing the racist club of the phony term "white privilege."
Further wallowing in liberal projection, Weigel calls Newt Gingrich "an amoral blowhard" and Matt Drudge "an amoral shut-in." Usually the people who gave us B.J. Clinton accuse anyone who isn't amoral of being judgmental, which I have heard spat out by libs like a four-letter curse word — speaking of which:
In April, Weigel wrote that the problem with the mainstream media is "this need to give equal/extra time to 'real American' views, no matter how {EXPLETIVE DELETED} moronic, which just so happen to be the views of the conglomerates that run the media and/or buy up ads."
Apparently the mainstream media regards even itself as excessively sympathetic to the views of normal Americans and to economic freedom.
When the avowed communist Van Jones — to whom Obama unaccountably funneled $60 billion of our money — was exposed as a paranoid lunatic and forced to operate from the sidelines for awhile, Weigel applied his impartial journalistic acumen to get to the root of the problem: conservative racism.
When Obama's "green jobs czar" Van Jones resigned after it was revealed he signed a 9/11 "truther" petition, alleging the government may have conspired to allow terrorists to kill 3,000 civilians, Weigel highlighted the alleged racism of Glenn Beck — Jones's top critic.
"One extra, obvious point — Beck's campaign against Jones was transparently racial … he treated his very white, very angry audience to video after video of Jones giving scorching speeches. At one point Beck just eschewed subtlety and played videos of Jones alongside videos of Jeremiah Wright while he remained on the screen mugging like Harpo Marx," Weigel said.
Real journalists who actually attempt to get at the truth instead of regurgitating liberal talking points earn Weigel's special ire:
In a thread with the subject line, "ACORN Ratf*cker arrested," Journolisters discussed how James O'Keefe, whose undercover reporting showed officials from activist group ACORN willing to help a fake prostitution ring skirt the law, had been arrested in another, failed operation at Sen. Mary Landrieu's (D-LA) office.
Weigel's response: "HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH.
"Deep breath.
"HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHA.
"He's either going to get a radio talk show or start a prison ministry. That's was [sic] successful conservative ratf*ckers do for their second acts," Weigel wrote…
The term "ratf*cker" is a favorite of Weigel's. Let's hope this isn't liberal projection yet again; he could catch a nasty disease.
In short, David Weigel is a foul-mouthed, sophomoric, blinkered, ultrapartisan extremist. No doubt a Pulitzer prize waits in his future, despite his temporary setback at WaPo. By the way, Weigel used to write for Reason, emphasizing that despite its libertarian views, this publication is hardly a reliable friend of conservatives.
On a tip from Becca.
Red Kite Falls Victim to Cuisinart of the Air
Posted by Dave Blount at 11:20 AM
Where's Sherlock Holmes when we need him? Someone must uncover who killed the endangered red kite that was found dead beneath an environmentally friendly windmill.
The carcass of the rare red kite was discovered at the Fairburn wind farm in Ross-shire. It was examined by a Scottish Agricultural College vet and was found to have suffered bruising and fractures consistent with an impact.
Not to worry, the authorities are on top of the case:
A SSE [Scottish and Southern Energy] spokeswoman said last night: "As soon as we were aware of this incident we notified the authorities, including the RSPB [Royal Society for the Protection of Birds]. Since then we have been carrying out extensive investigations into what caused the death of this red kite and how it ended up at the bottom of one of the turbines. These investigations are still ongoing."
Despite the windmill being guaranteed as "harmless to wildlife" by the same bureauweenies who tell us these hideous boondoggles can generate electricity efficiently, Aedán Smith of the RSPB believes he's found the culprit — and the solution:
"Evidence suggests that the kite is most likely to have been killed by collision with a turbine. … We will continue to work closely with SSE and others to find ways of reducing the risk to red kites and other birds from wind farms still further. I hope that we will also be able to secure additional funding to help this threatened species."
That is, the solution to Big Government stealing people's money and wasting it on absurd contraptions that are better at chopping up birds than generating power is to have Big Government steal more money and pour it upon windmills' victims. No doubt the kite's surviving kin will be set up with nest eggs to compensate them for their loss.
On a tip from Byron.
Meet Otis McDonald
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 10:34 AM
Otis McDonald is the plaintiff in the Supreme Court gun rights care decided today. Mr. McDonald is the kind of person the white liberal elitist establishment seeks to disarm for the benefit of drug dealers and home invaders.
Hat Tip: AoS HQ
Name for Radical Movement SOAR Already Taken
Posted by Dave Blount at 9:57 AM
The progressive revolutionaries behaving like the cavechildren they are in Toronto are good at breaking windows and shouting leftist slogans, but less skillful at using search engines — or they would be able to come up with names that haven't already been taken. From the comically serious website "The Guerrilla Underground Network: Dispatches & Communiqués From the Frontlines of the Global Social War":
We are calling ourselves Southern Ontario Anarchist Resistance (SOAR), and this June, we want you to hop to Toronto. In the last decade, our movements have spent a lot of time arguing about summit hopping. This conversation has often been interesting and productive, but we feel that the time has come to stop talking, and to start causing some {EXPLETIVE DELETED}! SOAR is calling for three actions, between the afternoon of Saturday, June 26th and the evening of the 27th.
The author signs off with the line "Be the riot you wish to see," in case anyone doesn't know what an "action" is.
Here's the first comment in response to this foundation-shaking call for chaos:
Please be advised that we at Southern Ontario Animal Rescue (S.O.A.R.) request that you immediately cease and desist using the acronym S.O.A.R. in any form of media including, but not limited to, websites, news articles and on line blogs. This acronym is copyrighted and trademarked by us and has been in use since February 2005.
Southern Ontario Animal Rescue (SOAR) is a very dedicated group of volunteers in Southern Ontario, Canada, committed to rescuing all breeds of dogs in need.
Maybe the two SOARS could merge and provide kennel space and free hose-downs for anarchist squatter types. Better still, the moonbat SOAR could follow the advice of the next commenter:
Either go home to your rich parents, or get a job.
Don't accuse the Vladimir Lenin wannabes of deliberately stealing the name from Southern Ontario Animal Rescue. They were probably just angling for financing from George Soros, whose name means "will soar" in Esperanto.
On a tip from Air2air.
Grijalva's Constituents Are Getting Restless
Posted by Dave Blount at 9:01 AM
Arizona's Congressional District 7 is run as a fiefdom by Raul (formerly Ralph) Grijalva, a militant moonbat who actually called on the rest of the country to boycott his own state for attempting to enforce federal immigration law with SB1070. Grijalva presides over an extensive political machine, which with the help of Tucson's wacky voter base usually ensures his reelection by wide margins. But the peasants are getting restless:
TUCSON (KGUN9-TV) - Boycott Arizona? We'll boycott you! That's the message some tea-party members had for our local congressman Congressman Raul Grijalva.
Grijalva's been pushing for an economic boycott of his own state since the governor signed the immigration law. Grijalva is up for re-election this November and people who we met today are determined to unseat him. A big crowd gathered in front of Grijalva's office Saturday morning.
These folks are also upset about Grijalva's backing of the Arizona boycott.
A more clear-cut case of the hostility of our "respresentatives" toward their own constituents would be difficult to imagine. Grijalva's Republican challenger Ruth McClung is a charming and highly intelligent lady, as I've had the pleasure of learning firsthand. But she has her work cut out for her, taking on Grijalva's massive machine (which has been stealing her yard signs, BTW) and the latte-sipping, Volvo-driving moonbat voters who seem to dominate Tucson. Here she is at the rally:
Now why would anyone call Grijalva a racist? Maybe because of this:
During an interview on MSNBC's Keith Olberman, Grijalva said, "We're asking organizations, civic, religious, labor, Latino, organizations of color to refrain from using Arizona as a convention site, to refrain from spending their dollars in the state of Arizona until Arizona turns the clock forward instead of backwards and joins the rest of the union."
Note how Grijalva, like other malignant leftists, turns the issues of border security, law enforcement, and American sovereignty into yet another opportunity to fan the flames of race hate and tear our country apart with his call to "organizations of color."
They used to say all politics is local, but with America's future fundamentally threatened by the vermin currently running the federal government, it's all national now. If you'd like to see one fewer treasonous quisling in Washington, do whatever you can for Ruth.
On a tip from Infidel Joe.
SCOTUS Just Barely Affirms Right to Bear Arms
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 8:21 AM
Today's ruling means that the four liberal justices of the Supreme Court don't believe the 2nd Amendment really means it when it says "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
You have to shake your head and marvel. Liberal judges can make up "penumbras" and "emanation" when they want to find a "right" --- like privacy or abortion --- that is nowhere to be found in the language of the Constitution. And then they can turn around and just ignore or invalidate language in the Constitution that could not be more plain.
Update: It is especially poignant that on the same day a Senator who once belonged to the Klan departs this mortal coil, the SCOTUS delivers a ruling on the Right to Bear Arms that cites the right of freed slaves (freedmen) to bear arms as part of the historical background of the Second Amendment.
"Every man . . . should have the right to bear armsfor the defense of himself and family and his home-stead. And if the cabin door of the freedman is broken open and the intruder enters for purposes as vile as were known to slavery, then should a well-loaded musket be in the hand of the occupant to send the pol-luted wretch to another world, where his wretched-ness will forever remain complete."
Stephen Breyer, "Wise Latina" Sotomayor, Ruth Bader "Never hired an African-American when she practiced law" Ginsburg, and John Paul Stevens would have voted to deny the right of Freed Slaves to protect themselves.
The dissenters are couching their dissent in the language of states' rights, and professing that states and localities should be able to make up their own laws about gun control. It will be interesting to see how they vote about states' rights when ObamaCare's Individual Mandates and Arizona's Immigration Enforcement Law make it to the Supreme Court.
Some Questions for Kagan
Posted by The MaryHunter at 6:53 AM
Today's mental gymnastics from George Will offers a long list of compelling questions that have a significant chance of not being asked of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan. Here are a few that would particularly liven the otherwise dull, grand-standy proceedings (which will yield completely unsurprising results):
-- Some persons argue that our nation has a "living" Constitution; the court has spoken of "the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society." But Justice Antonin Scalia, speaking against "changeability" and stressing "the whole antievolutionary purpose of a constitution," says "its whole purpose is to prevent change -- to embed certain rights in such a manner that future generations cannot readily take them away. A society that adopts a bill of rights is skeptical that 'evolving standards of decency' always 'mark progress,' and that societies always 'mature,' as opposed to rot." Is he wrong?
-- The 10th Amendment ("The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people") is, as former Delaware governor Pete du Pont has said, "to the Constitution what the Chicago Cubs are to the World Series: of only occasional appearance and little consequence." Were the authors of the Bill of Rights silly to include this amendment?
-- In Bush v. Gore, which settled the 2000 election, seven justices ruled that Florida vote recounts that were being conducted in different jurisdictions under subjective and contradictory standards were incompatible with the Constitution's guarantee of "equal protection of the laws." Were they right?
-- You have said: "There is no federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage." But that depends on what the meaning of "is" is. There was no constitutional right to abortion until the court discovered one 185 years after the Constitution was ratified, when the right was spotted lurking in emanations of penumbras of other rights. What is to prevent the court from similarly discovering a right to same-sex marriage?
And by far, the most sublime:
-- Bonus question: In Roe v. Wade, the court held that the abortion right is different in each of the three trimesters of pregnancy. Is it odd that the meaning of the Constitution's text would be different if the number of months in the gestation of a human infant were a prime number?
I'm sure that there are any number of brilliant questions out there among our kind (and even not-so-kind) readership that won't be asked.
Item #4: Obama's BFF denounces the "genocidal state of Israel"
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 5:12 AM
Obama's BFF (that's "Best Friend Forever" for those of you in Rio Linda) Hugo Chavez has sided with his strategic partner Mahmoud Ahmadinnerjacket, terror-coddling optometrist Baby Assad and Uber-MILF Helen Thomas in calling for the destruction of the "genocidal" state of Israel.
"We have common enemies," Chavez said, describing them as "the Yankee empire, the genocidal state of Israel."
"Someday the genocidal state of Israel will be put in its place, in the proper place and hopefully a real democratic state will be born," Chavez said Saturday. "But it has become the murderous arm of the Yankee empire - who can doubt it? - which threatens all of us."
Obama, we note, has in the past aligned himself with Chavez in, for example, opposing the ouster of a communist strongman in Honduras. He's not a big fan of Israel, either. And we all know how concerned he was when the Mullahs were murdering folk in the streets of Tehran last year. So, I'm not expecting any comment from the White House on his BFF's latest attack on a U.S. ally.
Hat Tip: Gateway Pundit
Item #3: White Sheets to be Flown at Half-Staff Today
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 4:23 AM
Senator Robert Byrd has died at 92. White n----rs everywhere have declared a day of mourning. Byrd didn't invent pork spending, but he did play a huge role in making it the central operating principle of the U.S. Senate. From open racism in the civil rights era, to a narcissistic obsession with having things names after himself, to destructive levels of spending in the service of vote-buying, Byrd epitomized much of the worst of the Democrat party's tendencies.
We don't need to speak ill of the dead, but if we are honest, we must acknowledge there is little if anything to be proud of in Senator Byrd's long Senate legacy. To his credit, however, he never killed a campaign worker while driving drunk over a bridge or joined another senator in making a waitress sandwich. His personal and family life seem to have been relatively decent for a Democrat senator.
The search is on now for a Democrat bench-warmer to hold the seat and vote in mindless lockstep with Reid, Schumer, and Durbin. Who'll start the bidding? After all, a senate seat is "a f--king valuable thing." And a West Virginia senate seat is apparently a life-long position.
Item #2: Obama Regime's Pro-Abortion Radicalism Threatens Aid to Africa
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 4:17 AM
The (conservative, by the way) Canadian government has a plan for reducing infant mortality and maternal mortality in Africa. Based on studies of what works, the Canadian initiative focuses on improving the status and political power of women so that the governments of developing countries are more responsive to the needs of families; in addition to increased support for better hygiene, access to clean water, better nutrition, better education for women, and expanded medical care.
Sounds like a good idea, right? Sounds like an idea any reasonable person who cares about the health of women and children in developing countries would support, right? Well, The Obama Regime opposes the plan because it doesn't do enough to advance abortion as the preferred form of population control.
Hillary Clinton, when asked about Canada's G8 plan to address infant and maternal health in the developing world, said the following: "You cannot have maternal health without reproductive health. And reproductive health includes contraception and family planning and access to legal, safe abortion."
That's right, under the pro-abortion radicalism of the Obama Regime, you aren't allowed to save children unless you promise to butcher children. And U.S. support for the Canadian Plan is being held hostage to pro-abortion special interests. Much in the same way the gulf cleanup was held hostage to union special interests, only with more baby-killing.
In a related story,as shown in this un-embeddable video, a leftist Canadian politician with pictures of mass murderer progressive hero Che Guevara on his office wall begins to talk about abortion. Promptly, an earthquake strikes.
Take. The. Hint.
Morning Briefs for Monday Item #1: Under Socialized Medicine, You're Better Off Being a Kitteh
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 3:41 AM
Good Morning Patriots, Good Morning Lefties Who Are a Constant Source of Material and Amusement,
Under Airstrip One's system of socialized health care -- which progressives think is just the bee's knees --- breast cancer patients are denied life-saving drugs and desperate victims of Ingsoc resort to do it yourself dentistry. (Sex change ops for freakazoids are fully covered, though.)
On the other hand, if you're a kitteh and you need state-of-the-art bionic appendages, you're good to go. Probably because the Government hasn't yet decided that veterinary care is a right, and so has left it in the private sector.
June 27, 2010
Things You Don't See at a Tea Party
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 9:31 PM
Although Chrissy "Tingles" Matthews and the rest of the Obama Fanboys desperately wish they were, these are not the scenes of right-wingers protesting for lower deficits and smaller government.
And while the "anarchists" were running amok in the streets, the Toronto Police were apparently busy threatening, punching, and arresting reporters who were trying to cover the G20 disturbances.
Hat tip: Perfunction
Senator Aghast at Obama's Bungling of Oil Spill
Posted by Dave Blount at 6:34 PM
Senator George LeMieux (R-FL) on Obama's approach to the Gulf oil spill:
We may never know for sure if Obama is staggeringly incompetent, or if he's skillfully executing a plan to destroy the country on purpose. If the objective of his Deepwater Horizon fumbling is to guarantee maximum damage to set the stage for Tax & Charade or nationalizing the energy sector, or just to advance the overall economic policy of pushing the country toward a depression that would be used to justify still more government expansion, Chairman Zero is nowhere near as dumb as he sounds off-teleprompter.
On a tip from Michelle.
Are the U.S. and Israel Heading for Divorce?
Posted by The MaryHunter at 3:33 PM
In short: probably. Just a week before Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to meet Bumbling Obama in the White House, Israel's ambassador to the United States is not all that up about the staying power of Israel's longest and closest relationship with another nation.
Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to Washington, told foreign ministry colleagues at a private briefing in Jerusalem that they were facing a long and potentially irrevocable estrangement.
Sources said Mr Oren told the meeting: "There is no crisis in Israel-US relations because in a crisis there are ups and downs. [Instead] relations are in a state of tectonic rift in which continents are drifting apart."
[...]
According to Mr Oren, attempts to gain leverage over President Obama through some of his "pro-Israel" aides - believed to be a reference to Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief-of-staff, and Dennis Ross, a senior State Department official - had failed.
"It's a one man show," Mr Oren reportedly told his colleagues.
That "one man" -- indeed, The One -- simply doesn't care for Israel a wit and has peronally disrespected Netanyahu on at least one occasion. This grim assessment from the Israeli Ambassador comes only days after 87 senators signed a bipartisan letter begging Chairman Zero to support its only true ally in the Middle East. Even Al Franken signed on to this letter.
When they meet, expect to see our Dear Leader all chummy and vacuous with a stalwart and diplomatic Netanyahu. Expect shortened photo-ops with the Israeli PM (if he's even so lucky to have one). And in the end, expect no improvement in U.S.-Israeli relations for the foreseeable future.
What a pathetic waste of a relationship, in order to try an cultivate a fantasy love affair with the Islamic world that could only end in our defeat and dhimmitude.
Open Thread
Posted by Dave Blount at 1:21 PM
Shopping for Jewelry in Monterrey, Mexico
Posted by Dave Blount at 1:18 PM
One advantage of our rulers deliberately allowing Mexico's underclass to colonize and culturally annex the Southwest is that when life in Los Angeles, Houston, and Phoenix becomes indistinguishable from the chaos south of the border, shopping will be much more exciting. Highlights from a trip to a jewelry store in Monterrey:
On a tip from Hail The Amberlamps!
Pedophiles Exploit Wikipedia in the Culture War
Posted by Dave Blount at 12:45 PM
In case you need another reason to take anything you read on Wikipedia with a grain of salt:
Chat room posts show a clear effort by pedophiles to use Wikipedia, which can be accessed unfiltered in public schools across the country, to further their agenda. Message board posts often include links to specific Wikipedia articles that the participants say need to be edited to "normalize" pedophile behavior in the public eye and to recruit more pedophiles into their community.
"Pedophiles have campaigned to push their point of view that 'pedophilia is OK and doesn't hurt children' on Wikipedia," says Xavier Von Erck, director of the online pedophile watchdog organization Perverted Justice Foundation and Wikisposure.com, its offshoot project devoted to tracking pedophiles and pedophile activism on Wikipedia. "This has been a problem since Wikipedia started."
Perverts who prey on children use the message boards BoyChat and GirlChat to encourage each other to exploit Wikipedia. A poster at the latter opines,
"It is of the utmost importance that pedophiles newly daring to google "pedophile" or "pedophilia," or look them up directly in Wikipedia, in an effort to understand themselves better, are able to get unbiased information .... Many of these men and women are in dire need of support.
"Secondly, nonpedophiles who recognize the increasingly sensationalistic media treatment, etc., and turn to the Web to find the facts or people who use the Web as their primary source of information: If they turn to Wikipedia, Wikipedia should give a fair and balanced view. This community needs that to happen....
"That should be the primary focus of our Wikipedia efforts. If you have to 'lie and hide' to keep our influence balanced against the bigots, then by all means lie and hide to do it. By all means, do not give up the fight to self-identify on the user pages, but make sure you do not let it stop you from editing!"
That is, first pedophiles convince each other that their depraved practices are acceptable. Then they convince the rest of us. Anyone who objects is a "bigot." The strategy has worked well for those homosexuals who don't publicly emphasize attraction to children.
Wikipedia pages of interest to our next privileged I mean oppressed minority include "Child Sex Tourism," "Sexual Objectification," "Child Erotica," and "Simulated Child Pornography." At the rate political correctness is deranging our society, frequenters of these pages will be entitled to preferential hiring within a generation. Andrea Mitchell might still be around to ooh and aah in admiration of our first openly pedophile Supreme Court justice.
On a tip from Chad.
Unicorn Farts, Baby, Unicorn Farts!
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 6:32 AM
A group of dimwits calling themselves "Hands Across the Sands" led by over-tanned Florida senator-wannabe and general parasitic mollusk Charlie Crist showed up on a beach in Pensacola to demand an end to offshore (and onshore) oil drilling. One of them "tootled softly on a Native-American style flute."
And after finishing their ritual protest against the evils of fossil fuel production, they got back into their cars, drove home to watch themselves on television and turned up the air conditioning.
"Hands Across the Sands" claims on its website, that "This movement is not about politics..." And goes on to provide the following mission statement:
To convince our State Legislators, Governors, Congress and President Obama to stop the expansion of offshore oil drilling and to adopt policies encouraging clean and renewable energy sources. America needs legislation that creates tax incentives and subsidies to encourage the growth of clean energy and renewable industries for America's future.
Nope, not about politics at all. Nice to see the usual progressive standards of honesty are being upheld.
Hat Tips: Patterico, Knowledge is Power.
Toronto Police Politely Observe While "Anarchists" Burn the City
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 6:11 AM
Via Mark Steyn, it seems that Canadian police, wrapped in body armor and heavily beweaponed, stood by and watched while "anarchists" at the G8 (or G20 or whatever they're calling that place Bammy went to play golf and tell other leaders of the world's semi-capitalist economies to spend money as recklessly as he is) summit in Toronto smashed windows, burned cars, and otherwise behaved like the thugs the police in civilized countries are supposed to protect civilized people from. Apparently because the police were afraid that if someone videoed them interfering, it might end up on YouTube and draw angry comments in ALLCAPS.
I can't help but notice that you never see scenes like these at Tea Party rallies.
I put "Anarchists" in quotes because that's what they're called by media and the progressives who insist "They're not with us." But these "anarchists" are burning and pillaging in the name of higher taxes, more government spending, more regulation. They're not anarchists. They're progressive fascists who are a little impatient that leaders like Obama have their boot on the throat of capitalism but haven't stomped down yet.
June 26, 2010
"Democrats Should Blame Republicans for Obama's Failure" - Some Dingbat
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 8:27 PM
The President, Congressional leaders, and Democrats of all stripes should be yelling day in, day out, that REPUBLICANS ARE SABOTAGING NATIONAL ECONOMIC RECOVERY. AND PREVENTING JOB GROWTH, JUST FOR POLITICAL ADVANTAGE. That should be the message all the time, led by the President.
Yeah, because frankly the Republicans haven't been blamed enough by the Democrats. (/sarc, as though that tag were necessary).
And it's also the Republicans' fault that Democrats --- despite owning the White House, a 59-41 majority in the senate, and a 70 seat majority in the House --- can't pass hard-left legislation in accordance with the president's agenda. And it's the Republicans' fault that massive spending leads to huge deficits. And it's the Republicans' fault that shackling employers with new mandates (health care) and the threat of additional mandates (cap and trade, financial industry over-regulation) stifles job creation.
Can you believe people are stupid enough to believe this crapola?
Oh, I looked up the dingbat on Wikipedia. She's a Harvard sociology professor, and a beneficiary of the grievance industry.
In the early 1980s, she publicly alleged that Harvard had denied her tenure (1980) because she was a woman, a charge which was found to be justified by an internal review committee in 1981, by which point she was teaching at the University of Chicago. In 1985, Harvard offered her a tenured position (its first ever for a female sociologist), which she accepted.
Or maybe they denied her tenure because she's a dingbat who thinks that YELLING AT PEOPLE IN ALLCAPS WILL GET HER POINTS ACROSS LIKE A STUPID AOL NOOB!
That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.
City Taken Over Illegal Immigrants Collapses into Bankruptcy and Lawlessness
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 6:06 PM
Dateline Maywood, California. This Los Angeles County municipality --- 97% Hispanic, 40% illegal --- was one of the first cities to declare itself a sanctuary city and to demand a boycott of the state of Arizona for enforcing immigration laws. Its city council is entirely Hispanic and dominated by La Raza racists. Years ago, it prohibited its police department from confiscating cars from unlicensed drivers. It has demanded Congress grant unconditional amnesty to illegal immigrants. It is every progressive left/Wall Street Journal policy on open borders concentrated in one Los Angeles suburb.
How's that working out for them?
Today, Maywood is broke. Its police department dismantled along with all other city departments and personnel. Only the city council remains and a city manager to manage the contracts with other agencies for city services in Maywood.
Even the L.A. Times called the Maywood Police Department a "haven for misfit cops." Their story alleged that a veteran officer was extorting sex from relatives of a criminal fugitive; that another officer tried to run over the president of the Maywood Police Commission; and that another officer has impregnated a teenage police-explorer scout.
Maywood is the end result of what Obama-Napolitano-La Raza-the Arizona boycotters and the editorial board of the WSJ want for America.
Hat Tip: Bill.
Meanwhile, Back at the Joe Biden "Recovery Summer" Tour
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 2:40 PM
Sheriff Joe beats feet after a business owner asks him to lower his taxes.
Meanwhile, Sheriff Joe's boss, President Clueless Hack, arrives at the G8 economic summit. First words out of his mouth: "You've got a lot of golf courses here, don't you?"
Open Thread
Posted by Dave Blount at 11:11 AM
Jan Brewer Isn't Ready to Surrender
Posted by Dave Blount at 10:58 AM
It was awfully thoughtful of our quisling rulers to post warnings that due to the undefended border and federal opposition to the enforcement of immigration law, Americans on their own land are no longer safe from foreign invaders. But the helpful signs aren't quite enough to satisfy Arizona Governor Jan Brewer:
Hat tip: American Power.
Poverty in America
Posted by Dave Blount at 10:40 AM
But if the current gang stays in charge for long, things are likely to get quite a bit worse.
On a tip from Anonymous Countermoonbat.
Caturday Post: How a Common Sense Conservative President Might Have Handled the Deepwater Horizon Spill
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 8:45 AM
Sure, we all know Obumble has completely, totally, and comprehensively botched every aspect of the response to the Deepwater Horizon spill. However, "OK, Mr. Smarty Pants. How would you guys have handled it?" Is a legitimate question. Except for maybe the Mr. Smarty-Pants part.
Suppose, instead of the World's Greatest Community Organizer, we had a common sense conservative president in the White House. How would she, or he, have handled the Deepwater Horizon Spill. I think it would have gone something like this.
1. The Jones Act would have been suspended immediately and indefinitely so that foreign offers of assistance could be accepted unconditionally.
2. An Executive Order would have gone out barring all executive branch agencies from interfering with clean-up efforts at the state and local levels.
3. Another Executive Order would have gone out ordering all executive branch agencies to provide any resources demanded by state and local agencies.
4. And if the president were really on-the-ball, he would get the country's top petroleum engineers and geologists together and give them three days to come up with best, second best, and fallback solutions to stopping the leak. All government resources would be made available to implement the solutions the Task Force arrived at.
5. When the beaches were safe and the hole was plugged, then and only then would the president turn his attention to BP's culpability. Also, the Task Force would be asked to submit contingency plans for dealing with future spills.
Realistically, I don't see anyone in the Mitt Palin - Sarah Romney Republican Party having enough vision to implement all of those. Maybe Chris Christie or Bobby Jindal, since they seem to have more leadership acumen. But I think we can all agree that those five steps would have been superior to the Obama response:
1. Shut down deepwater drilling and destroy 50,000 jobs.
2. Play Golf.
3. Refuse foreign offers of assistance until pressure from the right forces you to accept them.
4. Posture about kicking somebody's ass. Whine that you can't suck up the oil with a straw.
5. Play more golf.
6. Allow your regulatory agencies to shut down state and local efforts to contain the spill.
7. Shakedown BP for some money.
8. Push Cap and Trade Legislation.
9. Rename the Federal Agency in charge of regulating offshore drilling.
10. Play more golf.
June 25, 2010
Union Tool Demonstrates Standard Progressive Debate Techniques
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 9:06 PM
1. Blame Bush for Obama's failures. ("Bush's tax cuts caused the deficits, not Obama's 30% increase in spending.")
2. Attempt to change the subject instead of answering the question. ("Let's not talk about the failure of the deficit spending to create jobs, let's talk about the {public sector} jobs that weren't destroyed.")
3. When all else fails, call your opponent names. ("How dare you demand a direct answer to a question instead of my talking points, you're an a-hole!")
Hat Tip: Knowledge Is Power
Chris Matthews: Conservative Republicans Are Suicide Bombers
Posted by The MaryHunter at 6:00 PM
The uninhibited Tweety never ceases to entertain. After accusing conservative Republicans of a Stalinist purge against Specter, Christ, and Bennett, he ups the ante with an islamofascist allusion for conservatives running against faithful progressive Democrats.
"Being a suicide bomber is the new political role model," Chris Matthews told his Friday "Hardball" audience. "Just kill everything, destroy everything, blow it up, nothing gets done. You're dead, but who cares?" he added, referring to conservative Republicans running against Democrats in the 2010 midterms.
Hilda Solis Offers Federal Assistance to Illegal Aliens
Posted by Dave Blount at 12:53 PM
It isn't as if the federal government isn't doing anything at all about the waves upon waves of illegal immigration that are sinking the Southwest into insolvency. The Feds do what they can to help — to help the invaders, that is. Here Obama's communist Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis spends your tax money on an ad encouraging illegal aliens to use federal resources to ensure they are getting paid enough at the jobs they take from Americans:
On a tip from Bill T.
Transsexual Freakazoid Is Ruled Both Man and Woman
Posted by Dave Blount at 10:20 AM
At last Britain has cleared up the confusion over whether a transsexual is a man or a woman. The answer: s/he is both, depending on whichever is more advantageous.
A transsexual man has won the right to be treated as a man in the marriage system and a woman in the pension system.
Christopher Timbrell, who has changed his name to Christine, [Wednesday] won his case against the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
Three Appeal Court judges ruled he was being discriminated against by not receiving a woman's pension and he will now be paid backdated funds.
It gets even weirder…
Under the Gender Recognition Act Mr Timbrell can apply to be viewed in law as a woman but he must first dissolve or annul his marriage.
Mr Timbrell is still married to his wife, Joy, and they say they do not want to divorce.
Two women cannot be legally married in the UK but the Court decided that Mr Timbrell should be allowed to remain married to his wife, and claim a woman's pension.
Men can't collect their pension until age 65, but Timbrell will get his at 60, because he's a woman — but he's also a man, despite having undergone the ghastly choppadickophomy procedure at age 59, or his marriage wouldn't be valid.
Considering how far the liberal establishment bends over backward to cater to freaks at everyone else's expense, it's surprising they didn't set a new retirement age of 27 for the sexually disoriented.
On a tip from Steve T.
Paul McCartney Supports Obama's Mishandling of Oil Spill
Posted by Dave Blount at 9:51 AM
Given that he has not only done nothing to fulfill his duties and protect the Gulf Coast from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, but has actually exacerbated the crisis by shutting down drilling and presiding over a bumbling bureaucracy that has prevented the competent from using skimmers and sand berms, it's hard to believe that a staggering 44% actually approve of the way our first adolescent president has botched the crisis. At this point, how clueless would you have to be to still support Obama? Here's how clueless:
[Antediluvian moonbat pop star Paul McCartney] defended US President Barack Obama's conduct during the crisis…
The singer said: "I don't accept the criticism of Barack over the oil spill."
"I think he's been great. It's tough if we Brits whinge that he's whingeing at us. Tough, then don't spill oil."
Note how moonbats reflexively side with those who attack their own country. Comrade Obama has repeatedly gone out of his way to insult Britain, starting long before the oil spill. But Sir Paul implies that his fellow Brits deserve this disrespectful treatment.
Amazingly, that wasn't the stupidest thing McCartney had to say. Here you almost have to admire how much idiocy he manages to pack into two short sentences:
Sadly we need disasters like this to show people. Some people don't believe in climate warming — like those who don't believe there was a Holocaust.
Not believing in a discredited hoax is the same as willfully denying the murder of 6 million Jews. Except that now no one can deny global warming, because the oil spill decisively proves that not using GE's overpriced curlicue light bulbs will make it be too warm for the polar bears.
Whenever the nails-on-a-blackboard bubblegum recorded by The Beatles is inflicted on my ears, it seems that nothing could be more annoying. But McCartney manages to be even more irritating than his absurdly overrated music.
On tips from John L and Charles.
Home Depot Again Supports Immersing Children in Homosexual Depravity
Posted by Dave Blount at 8:55 AM
The campaign to introduce children to the appallingly depraved homosexual lifestyle marches on — with continued support from Home Depot:
The home-improvement giant has sponsored yet another "gay" pride event and provided children's craft workshops "in the midst of loud and boisterous gay activities" at the 2010 Southern Maine Pride Festival in Portland, Maine, according to the American Family Association.
The point of the workshops: to encourage people to bring children. For an idea of what the phrase "loud and boisterous" can mean in the context of "gay activities," the strong of stomach are referred to Zombietime.
Home Creepo goes out of its way to associate itself with publicly flaunted homosexual depravity:
In photos of the June 19 Maine festival, Home Depot's logo can be spotted on plastic cups, "My toy store" bumper stickers and aprons. People wearing Home Depot aprons sat on a float above a large and prominently placed placard of a Home Depot orange race car. …
Photos of the event [Warning: parental discretion advised] from various photographers show scantily clad men dressed only in brightly colored underwear briefs or unbuttoned shorts as they celebrated aboard parade floats.
Other men dressed in flamboyant women's clothing, and one impersonating a Catholic nun marched and carried a sign that read, "All acts of love and pleasure are my rituals."
This isn't the first time Homo Depot has encouraged participation by children in these pageants of perversity:
In 2009, Home Depot contributed more than $5,000 to the Nashville Gay Pride festival, One News Now reported. The retailer also conducted the children's craft workshops at a special booth there.
According to the report, Home Depot has sponsored similar children's activities at homosexual affairs in Atlanta, Kansas City, Durham, Portland and San Diego.
The company explains that "celebrating diversity and practicing inclusion" — i.e., ramming politically correct degeneracy down the public's throat — are "necessary to stay competitive" because "today's market is as diverse as it's ever been."
Someone get the word to the militant moonbats in charge that today's market is so diverse, it even includes decent normal people disgusted by our liberal rulers' attempts to turn America into Sodom.
At least the spectacle in Portland didn't include a 10-year-old sex toy as Grand Marshal.
On a tip from Oiao.
Blago and O: The Plot Thickens
Posted by The MaryHunter at 8:22 AM
Revealed by Blago's former chief of staff: Chairman Zero knew.
A top aide to former Gov. Rod Blagojevich said he believed Barack Obama knew of Blagojevich's plot to win himself a presidential Cabinet post in exchange for appointing Valerie Jarrett to the U.S. Senate.
John Harris, Blagojevich's former chief of staff, testified Wednesday in the former governor's corruption trial that three days after the Nov. 4, 2008, presidential election, the ex-governor told Harris he felt confident Obama knew he wanted to swap perks.
"The president understands that the governor would be willing to make the appointment of Valerie Jarrett as long as he gets what he's asked for. . . . The governor gets the Cabinet appointment he's asked for," Harris said, explaining a recorded call.
[...]
Defense lawyers say Harris' testimony contradicts the government's previous public statements that Obama knew nothing about deal-making involving the Senate seat appointment.
Don't count on this really going anywhere, since the MSM still is BFF with O. Plus, the tendrils of power that Obama's crew spew reach farther and wider than any punk Illinois governor's could possibly. But then again, there is that little matter of Twinkle Toes Rahm leaving the White House soon...
Hat tip: Big Government.
Open Thread
Posted by Dave Blount at 7:50 AM
The EPA Says Milk Is Petroleum
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 7:36 AM
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is classifying milk as oil because it contains a percentage of animal fat, which is a non-petroleum oil. (Dairy Farmers) would be required to develop and implement spill prevention plans for milk storage tanks. The rules are set to take effect in November, though that date might be pushed back.
This policy is mainly driven by nut-job environmental extremists like the Sierra Club's Gayle Miller:
"Milk is wholesome in a child's body. It is devastating in a waterway," Miller said. "The fact that it's biodegradable is irrelevant if people die as a result of cryptosporidium, beaches close for E. coli and fish are killed."
Gayle Miller is what intelligent people refer to as a dingbat. She shows here she knows about as much about biochemistry as Peggy West knows about geography. This qualifies her as an expert by Obama administration standards.
Hat Tip: Rosalind.
Teh Gheys Choose 10-Year-Old Boy as Pride Parade Grand Marshal
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 7:19 AM
A 10 year old boy has been selected as the Grand Marshal of the NW Arkansas Gay Pride Parade. Way to fight that stereotype of rampant pederasty, guys.
I don't think you have to be a homophobe to find this disturbing on many levels. Just to name a few:
- Gay Pride parades are notorious for celebrating sleaze. The organizers of the NW Arkansas Pride Parade declare that their event is "family-friendly," but the evidence is that teh gheys define "family friendly" rather broadly.
- This kid rocketed to progressive fame by refusing to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. So, once again, anti-American behavior is rewarded and celebrated by the progressive left.
- This kid's dad is a piece of work, don't you think? Pimping out his son in service of his personal political agenda? Sadly, it's all too typical for activist parents to exploit their kids as extensions of their agenda.
I'm not down with parents of any political persuasion who use their kids as props. But at least at a Tea Party, they're not putting them around a bunch of guys in studded leather and buttless chaps leading around other guys on dog leashes.
Hat Tip: Mats.
Item #3: Bawney Fwank Ith Inthane
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 4:22 AM
According to Massachusetts' favorite mincing pederast, the Federal Government has never ever over-regulated anything or interfered with economic activity through pointlessly overzealous bureaucratic interference.
Rep. Barney Frank on government regulations: "The general fear that the banking members, that we're going to over regulate on behalf of consumers is a fantasy unrelated to any human experience. The federal government has never done that."
The Federal Government never over-regulates? Really, Aunt Barney? Tell that to the oil skimmers in Lousiana who got sent back to port so bureaucrats could count life jackets. Tell that to the barrier builders in the Gulf Coast who were prevented from saving fish and wildlife by the bureaucrats at the Fish and Wildlife service.
For that matter, tell it to the banks that the Federal Government forced to give loans out to politically favored groups that had no chance of paying them back, which is a big part of the reason we're in this economic mess.
Update: To fully appreciate the Bawney Fwank speaking style, watch this clip.
Item #2: Chicks Dig Sociopaths
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 4:09 AM
What is it about serial killers that drives the babes crazy? Joren Van Der Sloot says he's getting marriage proposals in prison.
Murder suspect Joran van der Sloot says he has been receiving multiple marriage offers from women while in his Lima, Peru, cell. If true, that would add him to a long list of prison heartthrobs.
"Women who send love letters and proposals of marriage to famous criminals are not uncommon," the founder of Park Dietz & Associates in Newport Beach, Calif., told AOL News.
Infamous men behind bars enjoy the slew of women who flock to them, Dietz said, and will often carry on relationships with more than one woman at a time -- sometimes as many as five or six.
Dr. Dietz goes on to say that these women were frequently abandoned in childhood or raised in homes where fathers were absent. It would be interesting to survey these women and see how they felt about global warming, animal rights, socialized healthcare, and other moonbat issues. I have a sneaking suspicion there's a strong correlation between women who think socialist policies are good and women who think serial killers are husband material.
Morning Briefs for Friday Item #1: California Welfare Recipients Gamble at Taxpayer Expense
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 3:31 AM
Good Morning Right-Wing Patriots, Good Morning Angry Left-Coast Beverage Workers,
Yet another reason California is totally boned, the ATM machines at California Casinos take welfare cards.
California welfare recipients are able to use state-issued debit cards to withdraw cash on gaming floors in more than half of the casinos in the state, a Los Angeles Times review of records found.
The cards, provided by the Department of Social Services to help recipients feed and clothe their families, work in automated teller machines at 32 of 58 tribal casinos and 47 of 90 state-licensed poker rooms, the review found.
Wasting taxpayer money and destroying the social fabric, a progressive two-fer.
June 24, 2010
Obama's Chicago Network
Posted by Dave Blount at 6:59 PM
If only this weren't reality television:
On a tip from TED.
This Dingbat Is a Democrat County Supervisor
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 6:55 PM
And she apparently thinks Arizona is located somewhere near Ohio.
Peggy West. Democrat County Supervisor of Milwaukee Wisconsin and a shining example of the value of a public education.
Hope & Change
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 5:12 PM
How It's Possible That Osama Obama Could Be Elected Only 7 Years After 9/11
Posted by Dave Blount at 4:07 PM
How could a left-wing fool at best ambivalent as to whether he sides with America against Islamic terrorists get elected POTUS only 7 years after the horrific atrocities of 9/11 — winning by an overwhelming majority in New York, home of Ground Zero? This video explains it:
On a tip from x101ABNDevil.
A Little Snack for Beelzebub
Posted by Dave Blount at 3:04 PM
On a tip from TED.
Welfare Queen Lives in $700,000 Home
Posted by Dave Blount at 1:06 PM
As the Michael Bloomberg/NY Times campaign to get as many people as possible on food stamps makes clear, welfare isn't just for the relatively poor anymore:
A Paradise Township [Pennsylvania] woman pleaded no contest to a $19,500 welfare fraud case that authorities filed after learning she collected food stamps and assistance funds while living in a home worth nearly $700,000.
Tanya L. Postell, 27, was sentenced to three years of probation and ordered to pay restitution.
Wow, three years of probation, that's pretty stiff. Plus she had to give back the money.
For every welfare cheat who's caught, hundreds aren't. We'd best get used to it; the bigger the government gets, the bigger the pot of other people's gold tempting all manner of looters, moochers, and crooks.
On a tip from Forest.
Authoritarian Moonbats Want to Take the Smile Out of Happy Meals
Posted by Dave Blount at 11:57 AM
File this one under "Militant Liberals Snatch Candy From Laughing Babies' Mouths":
The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a liberal consumer advocacy organization, has announced it will sue McDonald's unless the fast-food franchise stops using toys to market its "Happy Meals" to children.
"This morning, CSPI notified McDonald's that we will file a lawsuit against the company unless it stops using toys to beguile young children," said Executive Director Michael F. Jacobson, Ph.D., at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday.
"We contend that tempting kids with toys is unfair and deceptive both to kids who don't understand the concept of advertising and to their parents who have to put up with their nagging children," he said.
If only someone would protect us from nagging moonbats.
In yet another astonishingly hypocritical example of liberal projection, a nanny state thug explains that CSPI is imposing its totalitarian views on McDonald's customers because Mickey D is a bully.
CNSNews.com asked attorney Stephen Gardner, the director of litigation at CSPI who wrote the letter to McDonald's threatening the lawsuit, why his group is not targeting Wendy's, Burger King and others. …
"McDonald's is … the 'Big Kahuna' — it's the bully on the playground here," said Gardner.
Funny, I would have thought the bully on the playground was the snarling progressive who wants to take away kids' toys, not the business offering people something they want for a price they can afford.
Gardner then offered up still more projection by bellowing that McDonald's is
"deliberately trying to supplant parental authority and parental responsibility by turning these kids into little screaming viral marketers sitting in the backseat demanding to go to McDonald's to get some cheap piece of plastic."
In contrast, dictating to parents whether or not they can buy Happy Meals for the children Gardner finds so distasteful isn't supplanting parental authority, but rather enlightening parents as to how much better their kids will turn out if they are raised not by themselves, but by sanctimonious left-wing do-gooders through the instrument of Big Government.
On tips from B1bbet, Jimbo, and The Ulminator.
General McChrystal, Political and Social Liberal
Posted by The MaryHunter at 11:00 AM
Just in case you were thinking that McChrystal spouted off and then resigned so he could run against Obama in 2012 as a Republican, think again. As it turns out, he is one of those whack-job military liberals.
Even more about McChrystal: now it can be told. The story about him voting for Obama is not contrived. He is a political liberal. He is a social liberal. He banned Fox News from the television sets in his headquarters. Yes, really. This puts to rest another false rumor: that McChrystal deliberately precipitated his firing because he wants to run for President.
Meanwhile, as noted here earlier, the liberal-progressive media and punditry are praising Obama's "brilliant" choice of Gen. Petraeus despite the fact that the same folks, and especially Obama and other liberal Democrat senators, were excoriating George Bush's "General Betray-Us" as he was engineering The Surge in Iraq.
Hypocrisy knows no limits on the left. Or is it simply selective amnesia?
Terror Atrocities Establish Arabic as Trendy Language to Study
Posted by Dave Blount at 10:38 AM
Given the current course of events, language students should be encouraged to learn Spanish and Chinese, since unless moonbattery is turned back this country will soon largely speak the former and be owned and/or ruled by the latter. However, thanks to 9/11, Arabic is a much trendier language to study, to the delight of the New York Slimes:
Luke Smith-Stevens was 9 when he heard a roar and looked up to see one of the two planes that would hit the twin towers flying directly over his classroom's skylight. In the subsequent months, he tried to make sense of the conversations he overheard and half-understood, the ubiquitous feelings of rage.
"If you tell your average 9-year-old that all people from this part of the world are bad, chances are they're not going to buy it," said Mr. Smith-Stevens, now 18. But it wasn't until he was in high school at Friends Seminary in the East Village that he felt he had the chance to go back and "re-examine that feeling that what I was being told wasn't true."
In his junior year, Mr. Smith-Stevens jumped at the chance to study Arabic culture, not as an outsider looking in, but as an outsider inviting himself in, through the portal of language. The school had just started offering Arabic, and he was among 30 students who signed up. This fall, the school plans to offer Arabic III, and 42 students are scheduled to study the language.
French and Spanish are still more popular at Friends, but Arabic has come to have a certain cachet. Hayes Peebles, a senior who is also a singer-songwriter and something of a local celebrity, has taken it for two years. His friend Konstantine Adamopoulos, a senior of Greek and Puerto Rican descent, also is in the class, and has been known to walk down the street rapping in Arabic.
Rapping in Arabic as you wade through East Village dog crap — there's no surer way to win a reporter's heart. Readers are told that there is "a complicated fascination with Arab culture, and some of its associations for New Yorkers [i.e., 9/11], that undoubtedly attracted the teenage mind" — not to mention the liberal mind.
The obvious point is not to provide translators for the military or the NSA, but to promote language study as a left-wing political statement. For example, students are urged to listen to a Palestinian rap act. Progressives can take extra satisfaction in the knowledge that with the encouragement of their teachers, some of these kids will follow in the footsteps of Johnny Taliban and Adam Gadahn.
On a tip from Henry.
Democrat Congressman Contrasts "Good American People" with "Minorities" and "Defectives"
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 10:03 AM
The progressive mask of bigotry slips again.
We're giving relief to people that I deal with in my office every day now unfortunately. But because of the longevity of this recession, these are people -- and they're not minorities and they're not defective and they're not all the things you'd like to insinuate that these programs are about -- these are average, good American people.
Hat Tip: AoS HQ
Al Gore, Giggling Crazed Sex Poodle
Posted by Dave Blount at 9:21 AM
Life isn't always a bowl of cherries, even for zillionaire climate crusader Al Gore. Sure, he's got a vast new mansion and a carbon footprint any 19th century industrialist could take pride in, but his marriage has fallen apart, he has been exposed as a philanderer, global warming is now recognized by most anyone who knows what year it is as a hoax, and as mentioned earlier, he stands accused of molesting a masseuse. From The Smoking Gun:
In a bizarre statement to police, the Oregon woman who claims that Al Gore fondled and groped her during a massage session described the former Vice President as a giggling "crazed sex poodle" who gave a "come hither" look before pouncing on her in a Portland hotel suite. In a taped January 2009 interview with cops, the 54-year-old woman, a licensed masseuse whose name has been redacted from police records, read from a lengthy prepared statement that detailed her alleged October 2006 encounter with Gore at the Hotel Lucia. … [The masseuse] approached Portland police and sought to memorialize her allegations against Gore, who she portrayed as a tipsy, handsy predator who forced her to drink Grand Marnier, pinned her to a bed, and forcibly French kissed her. The woman's statement--which could be mistaken for R-rated Vice Presidential fan fiction--describes Gore as a man with a "violent temper as well as extremely dictatorial commanding attitude besides his Mr. Smiley Global Warming concern persona." After fleeing Gore's suite, the woman returned home to discover, a la Lewinsky, "stains on the front of my black slacks." Suspecting that the stains were Gore bodily fluids, the woman made sure not to clean them.
As with Monica, the proof is in the pudding. Maybe this woman is a crank, but the forcible French kissing certainly does sound like Albert. Here's a PDF of the police report.
Try as they might, Gore's friends in the media won't be able to prop up the collapsing reputation of a man once so mighty that he almost managed to bully his way into the Oval Office even after losing the presidential election. Now that self-indulgence has reduced his malignant career to bawdy vaudeville, and his Great Global Warming Swindle has been revealed by the ham-fisted Obama as a naked grab for money and power, Prince Albert will be left to rot and grow fatter in his lonely mansion. The best he can hope for is that his Hollyweird friends will help him be remembered as something more formidable than a "giggling crazed sex poodle":
On tips from Edward, J, Julie, Chris, and Bernie.
Open Thread
Posted by Dave Blount at 7:42 AM
Item #5: More From the Memory Hole
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 4:35 AM
Obama's disrespect for General Petraeus isn't the only thing MiniTru (a.k.a. the MFM) is burying. Back in 2007, the consensus of all the learned elites in media, academia, and politics was that the Euro was destined to eclipse the dollar as the world's currency of choice, and that Eurotopia's secular social democracy was the pinnacle of civilization and economic development that would leave the USA on the ash-heap of history. The evidence was everywhere... even in hip-hop videos.
In a video for the movie "American Gangster,'' hip-hop maestro Jay-Z thumbs through a wad of 500-euro notes on a night of cruising through the concrete canyons of New York, a city where the euro isn't legal tender. The euro gained against the dollar today as European economic growth in the third quarter accelerated more than forecast.
What a difference three years makes.
Germany's budget savings policy risks destroying the European project and a collapse of the euro cannot be ruled out, billionaire investor George Soros said in a newspaper interview released on Wednesday.
In other words, unless German workers are willing to bail out Greek and Portuguese bureaucrats, the Euro is doomed. In other words, the Euro is doomed.
Item #4: Al Gore --- Creeper
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 4:26 AM
And all this time you thought BJ Clinton was the naughty one.
Portland, Ore. -- Portland police say they investigated allegations that former Vice President Al Gore had "unwanted sexual contact" with a massage therapist during an October 2006 visit, but they found insufficient evidence to support the woman's claims.
The article goes onto say that the matter was "handled civilly" and the woman declined to pursue charges. "Handled civilly" sounds like a payoff to me, but it's also possible the woman was just a flake.
One thing's for certain; if Dick Cheney or Dan Quayle had been subject to similar allegations, the MFM would be covering it wall-to-wall and the late night monologue jokes would be endless, regardless of how the case was disposed. But Gore will get a pass once again.
Item #3: MiniTrue Covers For Chairman Zero
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 3:59 AM
Obama appointed General David Petraeus to take over for General Stanley McChrystal in Afghanistan after McChrystal offended the world's greatest community organizer by daring to criticize him and some of the idiots in his administration. Everyone was supposed to be impressed because Petraeus very successfully managed to make the Surge in Iraq successful. Most people conveniently overlooked the fact that, back in 2007, Senator Obama opposed the surge in Iraq and was openly campaigning for its (and General Petraeus's) failure. The left-wing outfit MoveOn-dot-org even took out an ad in the New York Times calling him "General Betray-Us." A number of Democrats and Republicans voted to condemn the ad. Obama wasn't one of them.
We were all supposed to forget about that. We don't actually have a MiniTrue, but we have the MFM, which achieves much the same result by not mentioning this inconvenient fact of history. And MoveOn-dot-org also did their best to help by deleting the web page featuring the ad and their explanation for it.
Hat Tip: JW Wright.
Item #2: Hippies Spew Hatred at McChrystal
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 3:56 AM
The McChrystal affair has given the progressive left license to drop its occasional pretense of supporting the troops and let their anti-military freak flags fly. Case in point, Overlander at DailyKooks:
America's military is not made up of our best and brightest, but of our sickest and most pathological criminals. Half frat boy, half eighth-grader, half murderer and all evil, McChrystal is a sad remnant of Donald Rumsfeld's dysfunctional Pentagon
Obama should sack McChrystal because McChrystal is a ruthless, bullying criminal with the emotional development of a 13-year-old skateboarder.
I am guessing this guy's lunch money was regularly stolen by a 13-year-old skateboarder. And not in middle school, I mean, like last year.
Morning Briefs for Thor's Day Item #1: Even in Red China, Gun Control Fails
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 3:35 AM
Zero tolerance gun bans are one of the Holy Grails of progressive socialism. Despite denials from the always-dishonest left, B. Hussein Obama supported a ban on "the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns" as well as many other gun restrictions while in state government in Illinois. The leftist vision of utopia is one where handguns are illegal, and no one fights, robs, or threatens anyone else because of mandatory conflict resolution classes in grades K through 12. Also, no one ever gets old and all of our energy comes from clean, renewable unicorn farts, but that's a subject for another post.
The left may fantasize about a gun-free utopia, but in the real world, not even the brutally authoritarian Chinese so admired by Obama, Thomas Friedman, Bill Maher and other progressives have been able to achieve the gun-free utopia of progressive pipe dreams.
Gun control laws implemented by Mao and the Communist Party are some of the most severe firearms laws in the world. Since 1966, the government has prohibited the private manufacture, sale, transport, possession and import or export of bullets and guns. Possessing a single gun can yield a three-year prison sentence, while perpetrators of gun crimes are often executed.
Yet despite harsh penalties, "There has been an increase [of gun crime] in recent years," said Ding Xinzhen of Chongqing Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of Law. "It can be attributed to the rich-poor gap and unfair distribution of social benefits, together with inefficient government management [of gun laws]."
The growth of gun crimes being reported in state media coincides with the development of a gun culture in China. Web sites and magazines cater to the growing market. For instance, 'Small Arms', a bi-weekly glossy magazine, has 60,000 subscribers, and guns are regularly featured in Chinese films. The government has green-lighted shooting clubs in some cities, and businessmen are turning to hunting as a leisure activity.
If a gun culture can arise even under one of planet Earth's most brutal (and admired by the progressive left) regimes, it is a hopeful sign that freedom here can be preserved as well.
BTW: My 14-year-old is has been at church camp this week. On Monday, they went to a shooting range where he and the other boys practiced firing pistols and shotguns. And just to horrify the progs further, the camp is not co-ed. Girls go to a separate camp from the boys!
June 23, 2010
Creepy Pervert Sent to Jail (No, Unfortunately, Not Kevin Jennings)
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 7:09 PM
In Michigan, a seriously creeped-up pervert is… thankfully… heading for jail and not to the office of the Safe Schools Czar, although he may yet find work as a senior aide to the Democrat governor of Ohio. That link won't give you details of how sick this guy is… a pedophile foot fetishist who used aliases to get jobs where he could work with kids and get them to show him their feet. But this link will.
This story caught my attention because the judge who sentenced Il Pervertissimo is the brother of my best friend from high school. He also went after Jack "Dr. Death" Kevorkian as a prosecutor. (In contrast, a recent Obama judicial appointee thinks being a pervert should be a mitigating factor in sentencing, and that dangerous sickos are entitled to leniency.)
What it also made me think about is… how many of these creeps control their sick perversion enough to be able to work at Foot Locker or Sports Authority, and we don't even know about it? It's enough to make you shop on-line for the rest of your life.
Screw progressive tolerance. Some deviant behaviors shouldn't be tolerated. Intolerance of evil and perversion is a good and necessary thing.
On a related note, you have heard by now, of course, that Client Number Nine is getting his own CNN Show.
Elena Kagan Loved What Happened to Robert Bork
Posted by Dave Blount at 6:05 PM
Remember the travesty of congressional procedure that constituted the Bork hearings, at which the highly qualified Robert Bork was squashed as a Supreme Court nominee on purely ideological grounds, i.e., because Bork isn't a moonbat? Elena Kagan does — she "loved what happened in the Bork hearings":
If this is a just world, something similar will happen to her.
On a tip from TrickleUpPolitics.
To Those Prepared to Make the Ultimate Sacrifice
Posted by The MaryHunter at 4:19 PM
A little reality check on not only the McChrystal resignation, but the whole concept of "sacrifice" for our cherished Military during the Obama regime:
Lie of the Day
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 2:01 PM
"I don't make this decision based on any difference in policy with Gen. McChrystal, as we are in full agreement about our strategy. Nor do I make this decision out of any sense of personal insult." - B. Hussein Obama explaining why he's kicking McChrystal to the curb.
Yeah, right, Bammy. Whatever.
Funny thing, isn't it.? Obama dithered for months over whether to send more troops to Afghanistan. Obama dithered for weeks over how to respond to the Deepwater Horizon spill. But when McChrystal criticized the president, he was gone in a day.
Also, you know what is absent from the coverage of the McChrystal thing? Any discussion at all of whether his criticisms of Obama's administration were valid. No one seems to want to talk about that.
Prince Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies
Posted by Dave Blount at 12:07 PM
Flies are attracted to the dead. Does this one have supernatural insight into the state of Comrade Obama's misbegotten presidency?
Probably not. Corpses aren't the only things that draw flies.
On tips from Rich and Stormfax.
Why BHO Discarded Churchill Bust in Favor of Picture of Himself Walking on Water
Posted by Dave Blount at 10:25 AM
Comrade Obama didn't only discard the bust of Winston Churchill because he hates our closest ally England, or even to make way for the New Yorker magazine picture of himself walking on water. Churchill earned his personal ire by accurately describing Chairman Zero's ideology:
Compliments of Zappatrust. Tips: J, Anonymous Countermoonbat.
Mexico Joins Our Quisling Government in War on Arizona
Posted by Dave Blount at 10:00 AM
In case clubbing us over the head with their treasonous intent was too subtle for the federal government to get its message across, Mexico has helpfully stepped in to help clarify: yes, our rulers are working in concert with a foreign country that is invading and colonizing our territory. Mexico is actually joining the suit Quisling General Eric Holder is inflicting on Arizona for attempting to enforce immigration law:
Mexico joined a legal challenge to Arizona's controversial new immigration law on Tuesday, arguing that the measure is unconstitutional and would harm bilateral relations with the United States.
Thank you Mexico, for once again reminding us that treason is not too harsh a word to describe what the scum dominating the federal government is engaged in.
Hat tip: Hot Air. On a tip from J.
Sex Ed Keeps Pushing the Envelope
Posted by Dave Blount at 9:22 AM
You can't say our government-run schools aren't teaching kids anything. They just aren't teaching what we would want them to teach:
Parents are outraged after young teenagers were instructed on graphic sexual acts during a Planned Parenthood sex education class at the local high school in Shenandoah, Iowa.
"It was horribly inappropriate," Colleen Dostal told Fox News Radio. "To do that in a mixed-gender classroom, — I truly believe it was inappropriate."
Dostal's 14-year-old son was one of a handful of eighth graders in the class. The students, she said, were given instruction on how to perform female exams and the instructor used a 3-D, anatomically correct male sex organ to explain how to use a condom.
But Dostal said she was most upset over the instructor simulating sexual acts using stuffed animals designed to resemble STD's.
"I do not understand why any adult with a classroom of children would show them sexual positions," she told Fox News Radio. "I think that's horribly inappropriate."
What's horribly inappropriate is letting the same demented progressives who are using control of the government to ruin our economy, and control of the media to ruin our culture, to also use control of schools to ruin children by submersing them in degeneracy.
Calling in Planned Parenthood to encourage adolescents to have sex is also horribly inappropriate, considering that this execrable taxpayer-funded organization profits from every unwanted pregnancy it "terminates." PP is the Joe Camel of pubescent baby-butchering.
Superintendent Dick Profit complains that the school doesn't have any choice but to call in professional perverts to corrupt the children under its care:
"It's a political hot potato; it's a religious hot potato; it's a parental hot potato. It's all of these things that cause a crack in the system between society, parents and schools, and we're still required to do it."
That's because our schools are run by the government, and government = coercion, or in the case of 2010 America, government = coercion + moonbat depravity.
On a tip from Sean.
Employment in the USSA
Posted by Dave Blount at 8:38 AM
The one supposed benefit of socialism is the theoretical potential for full "employment." In the USSR, two state slaves would be assigned to watch one cow graze all day for barely enough money to stay perpetually drunk, but no one could say they didn't have a job. In the USSA, school crossing guards watch over intersections when there are no kids around. From suburban New York:
NEW ROCHELLE — School crossing guards continue to stand at or near 18 intersections in the city from 11 a.m. to 1:10 p.m., nearly a year after the district ended half-day kindergarten programs.
Where the topics of employment and insanity cross, both government and unions are surely involved.
School and union officials say the guards' contract was not changed to reflect the new hours after the district moved to full day kindergarten last September, and the schedule is expected to stay in place through the end of 2011, when the contract expires. …
"It's a frustrating issue and it seems silly, but it is mandatory collective bargaining," said City Manager Charles Strome…
Rosetta Pegues, who represents the city's crossing guards in the Civil Service Employees Association Local 1860, said guards need to work a certain amount of hours to qualify for unemployment benefits.
The Maytag repairman can stop feeling sorry for himself; New Rochelle crossing guards are even lonelier:
"They put me here and I don't see nobody," said Patricia Carlos, 55, who stood alone at Mayflower and Webster avenues on a recent Wednesday.
Students are no longer dismissed at midday except for the rare half day, so the guards have few, if any, children to cross at those hours. …
The Journal News visited five crossing guard posts and found that all were staffed by their assigned guards, but there were virtually no students. The guards read and sat in their cars or chatted with each other during their shifts.
Meanwhile, our liberal rulers are aggressively expanding the reach of both government and unions, so that our entire economy can be run at this level of efficiency. The Soviet Union won't be the last bloated socialist superpower to collapse if Democrats aren't turned back sharply and soon.
On a tip from Wiggins.
Open Thread
Posted by Dave Blount at 7:45 AM
Washington Post Proves Me Right
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 7:13 AM
When I posted about the Republican primary victories of Nikki Haley and Tim Scott in South Carolina, I noted that the victory of a woman of Indian descent and a man of African descent would not stop the left from smearing Republicans as racist. And I was right. Note how the Washington Post opens its coverage of their primary victories.
The Republican Party stepped away from its long and uncomfortable history of racial and ethnic politics in South Carolina on Tuesday, nominating an Indian American woman for governor and an African American man for the House.
Yes, the MFM (Mutha-Frakkin' Media for those of you in Rio Linda) uses the occasion of Republicans choosing minorities as their candidates to remind their sheep-like readers that Republicans are racist.
Although several comments to the article criticize the WaPo's focus on race, the WaPo's progressive readers react with reliable knee-jerkery.
One reader plays the predictable "Uncle Tom" card:
owingsmillsnurse wrote: the south is still filled with a buch of racist. andif this sourthern "negro" listened to what republican say about blacks both behind closed doors and now blatantly to our faces he would not even contemplate running as a good ole boy of the south -6/23/2010 9:52:48 AM
One of the progressives even bashes Nikki Haley for mixing with white folk:
joy5 wrote: Yes...like Nikki Haley isn't white with a deep tan. Married to a white guy.
The more it changes, the more it stays the same. - 6/23/2010 5:30:12 AM
And another progressive parrot squawks about "white privilege."
thelma1 wrote: Nikki Haley and Tim Scott speak volumes for race. Both are teapartiers, now, what could speak any louder about race than that? I am sick of Americans who speak with a fork tongue!!!!!!!! Stepped away from race, indeed! Both are as whites as they come! Meaning that they will guard this white priviledge system with everything they have in their self-hating bones. 6/23/2010 7:48:04 AM
Obama Regime to Louisiana Wetlands: "Up Yours!"
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 7:08 AM
Glenn Beck Mocks Fat Jihadist Adam Gadahn
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 5:49 AM
The progressive left despises Glenn Beck with the white-hot fury of an exploding sun. (Media Matters might as well rename itself Smear-Glenn-Beck-All-the-Time-dot-org). Their hatred is driven mainly because Beck is so effective when he mocks their heroes. Their feelers get hurt.
Adam Gadahn is the model of an idealistic young progressive who recognizes America's flaws and aligns himself with "oppressed peoples" to "speak truth to power." He has rejected Western capitalism and embraced an exotic foreign culture. He even criticizes Obama in the only acceptable manner; from the left. If progressives didn't abort their children, they would want them to grow up to be polycultural world citizens like Adam Gadahn. Watch as Glenn Beck mocks him hilariously.
Minority Republicans Win Primaries, Progressives Lose a Meme
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 5:45 AM
South Carolina Republicans nominated an African-American man and a woman of Sikh descent as their nominees for Congress and the Governor's office respectively. Both of these candidates were heavily supported by the Tea Party patriots. Congratulations Tim Scott and Nikki Haley.
Nevertheless, progressive leftists will continue to caricature Republicans and conservatives as bigoted racists. And Nikki Haley, the candidate for governor, will no doubt be trashed like Sarah Palin. Not only is she an attractive, conservative woman... but she's also an ethnic minority. The left has no mechanism for coping with this violation of their stereotype-driven worldview other than to slam and smear.
But, take comfort, progressives. You still have Alvin Greene.
Obama Regime Determined to Export Jobs to Brazil
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 5:20 AM
Chairman Zero's ill advised moratorium on deep sea oil drilling --- which will have more devastating economic consequences for the Gulf Coast states than the spill itself --- was struck down by a judge yesterday. But the Obama Regime is bound and determined to see all of those high-paying jobs outsourced to Brazil and other places. The regime is preparing another moratorium order.
This moratorium is, in the words of Joe Biden, a BFD.
The companies that own and lease these deep water drilling rigs now lose their future lease revenue less any termination fees. These rigs can cost $500 million dollars and can lease for $500,000 per day. They will be looking to redeploy these rigs as quickly as possible. The only place they can redeploy these assets is foreign markets. These rigs are expensive to move and will typically be leased on multi-year leases. Once they leave they will not be available again for a long time. You can't just shut down deepwater drilling in this country for 6 months and then quickly turn it on again.
I have seen estimates that each deepwater drilling rig is responsible for the employment of 1,400 people. This not only counts the people who actually work on the rig but also all the people who provide services to the operator and make all of the equipment and supplies that are used to drill these very expensive wells.
The moratorium, if allowed to stand, will cost an estimated 50,000 American workers their jobs. Obama has finally chosen whose ass to kick--- those of American oil workers in the Gulf States.
I am sure it's just a coincidence that the Democrat Party's favorite financier, George Soros, is heavily invested in Brazilian oil.
Item #3: Please Don't Feed the Vagrants
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 4:47 AM
A store-owner in Ocean Beach, California got fed up with aggressive, obnoxious pan-handlers harassing his customers demanding (not asking for) spare change. He responded by exercising his free speech and selling bumper-stickers reading: "Welcome to Ocean Beach/Please don't feed our bums."
Local moonbats are incensed. One local blogger put down his bong long enough to whine:
"The stickers carry a message of hate."
The 62-year-old blogger wants... surprise surprise... a boycott of the store that sells the stickers, because that will preserve the community's sense of "laid-back tolerance." I guess progressive tolerance is only for dysfunctional social parasites; not for honest merchants trying to make a living.
Item #2: CNN Sympathizes With All the Wannabe Publicity Whores "Suffering in Silence"
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 4:32 AM
CNN gave an interview to Constance McMillen, the narcissistic teenage twit whose high school canceled the prom rather than bow to her need for public validation of her lesbianism. Naturally, the CNN reporter had nothing but sympathy for the deeply oppressed McMillen --- who has received national publicity, and a $30,000 scholarship from Ellen DeGenerate.
"Before I let you go, for people who are watching and watched your story the past few months, what message- what have you taken away from this, and what message might you have for- maybe, some other teens who are suffering in silence?"
So, "suffering in silence" now means suing your school for not indulging your lifestyle? Look, if McMillen is complaining that no one is listening to her whine, maybe she should have gone on a network other than CNN. (Which, BTW, seems to be trying to become 'America's Gheyest News Network.')
I don't even care that she's a lesbian, or thinks she's a lesbian, or whatever. It's the whole culture of "someone didn't cater to my feelings so I'm suing" that grinds my gears.
You want to complain about students whose voices are being silenced, consider the Christian Kids who aren't allowed to give a prayer at commencement. Nobody's lining up to give them scholarships and TV interviews.
And speaking of whining and suing because their feelers are hurt, a gay advocacy group is charging McDonald's with hypocrisy after the global fast food giant aired a gay-themed commercial in France and their desperate need for societal validation demands that McDonald's run the ad in the USA as well.
Morning Briefs for Odin's Day, Item #1: On Civility
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 3:50 AM
Good Morning Conservative Patriots, Good Morning Left-Wing Typography Police,
R.S. McCain posts on how Republican "civility" is arguably soft treason.
"Civility" has been defined in such a way that Democrats routinely get away with rhetorical overkill, while Republicans are compelled to limit their discourse to terms acceptable to liberals.
You don't win arguments that way. I'm all in favor of conservatives trying to keep to the discursive high ground, but I'm sick of watching Republicans being thrown under the bus by conservative pundits for speaking out bluntly.
It's not hard to think of examples. Democrat Pete Stark said that George W. Bush enjoyed it when soldiers got their heads blown off. No Big Deal. Cynthia McKinney said that George W. Bush knew in advance about the 9-11-2001 Terrorist Attacks. No Big Deal. But let Joe Barton apologize to Tony Hayward and... well, you'd think he had stood on the house floor and advocated machine-gunning daycare centers.
Thoughts?
June 22, 2010
Religion of Peace Picture of the Week
Posted by Dave Blount at 10:57 PM
From a Turkish rally in favor of the "Freedom Flotilla" propaganda spectacles supporting Hamas:
According to Argue With Everyone, to text translates to "Hands of Health." My Turkish is a little rusty, but the symbol speaks for itself, succinctly summing up where the Muslims and moonbats are heading hand in hand.
On a tip from SR.
The High Cost of Mediocrity
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 6:55 PM
I have often said of our bloated education spending in this country, "Why do we pay so much for mediocrity, when we could spend a lot less and get the same level of mediocrity?"
This chart from the Cato Institute bears me out. While the cost of education in inflation-adjusted dollars has skyrocketed since 1970, the results have remained fairly mediocre.
Hat Tip: AoS HQ Ace also has good stuff on how the Narcissist-in-Chief replaced Churchill's bust with a picture of himself, and how Jimmy Carter is sad because the Supreme Court has limited his ability to pal around with the terrorist Jew-killers he loves so very, very much.
Obama's Mortgage Relief Program: More Fail
Posted by The MaryHunter at 6:45 PM
If someone is keeping track of all of the failures of the Obama regime, here's another legendary one:
More than a third of the 1.24 million borrowers who have enrolled in the $75 billion mortgage modification program have dropped out. That exceeds the number of people who have managed to have their loan payments reduced to help them keep their homes.
Last month alone,155,000 borrowers left the program -- bringing the total to 436,000 who have dropped out since it began in March 2009.
About 340,000 homeowners have received permanent loan modifications and are making payments on time.
First, Democrats set up the biggest financial crisis since the Carter stagflation years, even though Barney Frank insisted a collapse could never happen. Then, a huge proportion of the folks who scrambled to benefit from this Democrat government bailout intended to fix the mess, instead bail like deadbeats. What else would you expect from the Progressive Nanny State mentality, Obama style?
![mortgage_funny_sign[7].jpg](http://www.moonbattery.com/mortgage_funny_sign%5B7%5D.jpg)
Chairman Zero Considering Mass Amnesty by Executive Order?
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 5:42 PM
This is one of those times one hopes one is just being paranoid.
Several Senators have learned of a possible plan by the Obama Administration that would provide a mass Amnesty for the nation's 11-18 million illegal aliens. Led by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), eight Senators addressed a letter to the President asking for answers to questions about a plan that would allow DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano to provide an amnesty if they can't secure enough votes for a bill in the Senate.
Hat Tip: Knowledge is Power
Moonbat Tech: Druidic Sun God Worship
Posted by Dave Blount at 3:20 PM
Look what passes for "Technology and Science" at liberal MSNBC:
SALISBURY, England - Thousands of New Agers and neo-pagans danced and whooped in delight Monday as a bright early morning sun rose above the ancient stone circle Stonehenge, marking the summer solstice.
The event had the euphoric feel of an Obama campaign rally:
As the sun rose, a woman climbed a rock in the circle center and blew a horn, welcoming in the longest day of the year north of the equator. Drums, tambourines, and cheers reverberated in the background.
"It means a lot to us … being British and following our pagan roots," said Victoria Campbell, who watched on, wearing a pair of white angel's wings and had a mass of multicolored flowers in her hair. The 29-year-old Londoner, who works in the finance industry, also said that "getting away from the city" was a major draw.
"It is stunning," said Stewart Dyer, a 43-year-old National Health Service worker and dancer on his first trip to the solstice celebration. "To actually be able to dance amongst the stones, to be able to touch the stones, to be that close to such an ancient monument is unbelievable."
Unbelievable is the word for it, all right. As for the purpose of Stonehenge, other than to inspire drug-addled neo-hippies and MSNBC Technology and Science features:
"The truthful answer is we don't know exactly what it was for," said Amanda Chadburn, an archaeologist with English Heritage, which manages the site.
Maybe from the moonbat point of view this story really is about science. Dancing amongst the stones erected in homage to the sinister gods of the dark ages makes as much sense as trying to meet our energy needs with flaky boondoggles like biofuels and windmills. A few human sacrifices might cause the lights to come on by magic.
On a tip from Ianto.
More Naked Moonbats on Wheels Take on the Energy Industry and the Oppression of Clothing
Posted by Dave Blount at 12:40 PM
As liberalism rots away both spirits and minds like some B movie zombie plague, this is what the last sane Americans are up against. From moonbatty Madison, Wisconsin:
Unless you want to lose your lunch, absolutely do not click this link to see another naked moonbat on wheels boldly combating our standard of living.
On a tip from J.
Judge Blocks Obama's Extra-Constitutional Offshore Drilling Moratorium
Posted by The MaryHunter at 11:39 AM
It's nice to see that the Judiciary (at least this one member of the Judiciary) is not completely beholden to The One and his progressive schemes, and actually understands the rule of law over thuggery.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) - A federal judge in New Orleans has blocked a six-month moratorium on new deepwater drilling projects that was imposed in response to the massive Gulf oil spill.
Several companies that ferry people and supplies and provide other services to offshore drilling rigs had asked U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman in New Orleans to overturn the moratorium.
President Barack Obama's administration has halted the approval of any new permits for deepwater drilling and suspended drilling at 33 exploratory wells in the Gulf.
Feldman says in his ruling that the Interior Department failed to provide adequate reasoning for the moratorium. He says it seems to assume that because one rig failed, all companies and rigs doing deepwater drilling pose an imminent danger.
The domino effect of job losses from the misguided moratorium now at least has a fignting chance of being stopped. Due to this decision, it also seems a bit less likely that the McChrystal/Rolling Stone interview will sufficiently displace the Gulf story from the headlines. Judge Feldman has shone another light onto the incompetence and utter failure of this Man-child President who is incapable of understanding the first thing about managing a disaster, let alone understanding the subtleties of a massive segment of the American economy.
Arguing by Arson
Posted by Dave Blount at 10:27 AM
Being an American, 72-year-old David Jungerman wanted to exercise his right to express himself politically. So he parked a trailer in his cornfield along US 71 an hour south of Kansas City painted with the message:
Are you a Producer or Parasite
Democrats — Party of the Parasites
Hard to argue with that. Yet the opposition managed this eloquent rebuttal:
On May 12, Jungerman's trailer was torched. The Rich Hill volunteer fire department responded. A week later, it was set afire again. The firefighters put it out again.
Then flames erupted in an empty farm house that Jungerman owns.
He reached the obvious conclusion:
"They don't like free speech."
Jungerman explained that his message does not refer to the dying breed of moderate and even conservative Democrats, but to "the national Democrat parasite base that is sucking this country dry."
The truck is still on display — thanks to the vandals:
"I would have pulled it out of there by now if they hadn't burned the tires off."
Wherever you have liberals behaving coercively, you have unintended consequences.
On a tip from SR.
Profiles in Countermoonbattery: Kelis Rogers
Posted by Dave Blount at 9:52 AM
Kudos to Kelis, who won't knuckle under to PETA's intimidation tactics:
Singer Kelis is known for being pretty outspoken. Earlier this year, she wrote an open letter to PETA, who had criticized her penchant for wearing fur and eating meat. "I would eat pterodactyl if you found some and you told me it was meaty and delicious," she wrote on her MySpace page in January. "I eat meat, and in fact my mouth salivates as I type the word meat!"
She revisited her war of words with PETA recently, telling USA TODAY's Arienne Thompson that she doesn't agree with the animal-rights group's tactics and will continue to wear fur and eat meat "every day, absolutely."
Kelis sums up PETA's bullying:
"At the end of the day, they're terrorists and that's my issue. I don't think anybody's beliefs should be forced on anyone like that. I'm an American; I live here. It's my right, and that's my stance on it."
As for having PETA splash red paint on any of her furs in the future, Kelis says she won't stand for it.
"I wouldn't suggest that someone do that because you terrorize me, I'll terrorize you, basically."
Spine in the entertainment industry is as precious as it is rare.
On a tip from MP.
Hotel Anchor Baby
Posted by Dave Blount at 9:15 AM
Insanity is like dishonesty. Just as little lies lead to bigger lies, the wacky interpretation of the 14th Amendment that grants US citizenship to foreigners who happen to be born here has led to full-blown rubber room lunacy. The latest paroxysm of preposterousness — Hotel Anchor Baby:
New York's first "birth tourism" hotel is now catering to pregnant foreign nationals seeking to deliver their babies in the U.S. to obtain "birthright citizenship" for their children, Jerome Corsi's Red Alert reports.
The Marmara Manhattan, a high-rise suites hotel located in New York's Upper East Side, is offering a one-bedroom suite accommodation for $5,100 a month with airport transfer, baby cradle and a gift set for the mother, according to BreakingTravelNews.com.
Medical fees, at a cost of around $30,000, are arranged by the hotel separately. The Marmara Manhattan hotel is part of a Turkish hospitality chain.
Foreign nationals expecting babies make travel plans through a "birth tourism" agency to travel to the United States at the right time to give birth.
For more affordable accommodations, undocumented Democrats can drop their lucrative anchor babies at any cheap motel along the admittedly intentionally unsecured border. As for the astronomically expensive medical fees, they can be waved away with the magic words, "No have money."
On a tip from Bill T.
Wind Farms Paid to Shut Down When the Wind Blows
Posted by Dave Blount at 8:46 AM
One of the reasons windmills cannot generate energy efficiently is that the wind doesn't always blow — and when it does blow, bureaucrats pay wind farms to shut down:
Energy firms will receive thousands of pounds a day per wind farm to turn off their turbines because the National Grid cannot use the power they are producing.
Critics of wind farms have seized on the revelation as evidence of the unsuitability of turbines to meet the UK's energy needs in the future. They claim that the 'intermittent' nature of wind makes such farms unreliable providers of electricity.
The word "claim" in this context means "observe the obvious fact."
The National Grid fears that on breezy summer nights, wind farms could actually cause a surge in the electricity supply which is not met by demand from businesses and households.
The electricity cannot be stored, so one solution — known as the 'balancing mechanism' — is to switch off or reduce the power supplied. …
The first successful test shut down of wind farms took place three weeks ago. Scottish Power received £13,000 for closing down two farms for a little over an hour on 30 May at about five in the morning.
Whereas coal and gas power stations often pay the National Grid £15 to £20 per megawatt hour they do not supply, Scottish Power was paid £180 per megawatt hour during the test to switch off its turbines. …
Earlier this year, The Sunday Telegraph revealed that electricity customers are paying more than £1 billion a year to subsidise wind farms and other forms of renewable energy.
This is why the corrupt crony capitalists at GE are so into green energy that they have devoted their NBC Universal holding to propagandizing on its behalf. It is an utter boondoggle, but so long as it is coercively subsidized to the hilt, they'll make a fortune off it. Meanwhile, the "small people" (as Obama's pro-green energy financiers at BP call us) will pay much more for much less, so that politicians can thump their chests and proclaim that they've saved the polar bears by altering the weather.
On tips from Oiao and Gibbswtr.
Open Thread
Posted by Dave Blount at 7:39 AM
"General McChrystal Speaks Truth to Power"
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 6:18 AM
That's what the headline would read if McChrystal had been the Commander in Charge of Afghanistan operations under George W. Bush, and was on the record saying things like this:
McChrystal, the article reports, took control of the war, the article states, "by never taking his eye off the real enemy: The wimps in the White House."
McChrystal also said the former community organizer was "unprepared" to be commander-in-chief of the military. Now, if he had served under Bush and echoed left-wing criticisms, he'd be a hero. But since McChrystal is instead serving under The Great Messiah of Hope and Change, the MFM are treating his complaints that the president is feckless and incompetent a little differently.
Remember, this is the guy Obama refused to meet with for over six months. But Bammy cleared his schedule to meet with a self-centered teenaged lesbian who became a progressive hero after getting her high school prom canceled.
Demonstrates this administration's regime's priorities pretty clearly.
MBFT #3: The DUMB Lays Down the Law
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 4:20 AM
The loons at the Democrat Underground Message Board (DUMB) have decided that there's been an intolerable amount of deviance from the party line. Therefore, board administrators have laid down a ridiculously detailed list of rules to micromanage what is acceptable commentary in DUmmieland. Here are but a few of the new rules.
{ } Inappropriate attacks against Democrats
- Insults against prominent Democrats, such as "F--- Obama."
- Name-calling against prominent Democrats. Calling Barack Obama "Barry" or some other name.
- Repeating Republican partisan attacks against Democrats.
- Broadly suggesting that there is no difference between Barack Obama and George W. Bush, or that there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans. (Arguing that specific policies are the same would be permitted.)
- Suggesting that President Obama has perpetrated a "con job" or "fraud," or similarly over-the-top assertions of bad faith.
- Advocating voting against Democrats, or in favor of third-party or GOP candidates.
- Broad-brush smears against Democrats generally. Broad expressions of contempt toward Democrats generally.
Wouldn't it have been easier just to say "all criticism of Democrats is forbidden?"
Violators of the new rule will be hit with the ban-hammer. Just like on LGF.
Hat tip: DUmmie FUnnies.
MBFT #2: Obama "Recovery" Update
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 4:10 AM
So, how is that awesome Obama Recovery going? Let's check in:
2010 just notched up its 83rd bank failure. This compares with 40 failures by this time in 2009.
And Fannie and Freddie are taking over foreclosed homes at the rate of one every 90 seconds. So far, taxpayers are on the hook for $150 Billion in bailouts to Fannie and Freddie, but the ultimate number is likely to be $400 Billion or more.
And Bammy's big mortgage bailout program? Unsurprisingly, another colossal FAIL. $75 Billion down the crapper just so those people who bought more house than they could afford could delay the inevitable a few months.
MBFT #1: Hugo Chavez Sends in His Thugs to Steal Food
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 3:31 AM
Another triumph for Marxist Hope and Change, Venezuelan dictator and Hollywood idol Hugo Chavez is now looting warehouses to confiscate food as his scheme of nationalizing supermarkets and confiscating farms proves about as successful as Robby Mugabe's policies of doing the same.
Venezuelan army soldiers swept through the working class, pro-Chavez neighborhood of Catia in Caracas last week, seizing 120 tons of rice along with coffee and powdered milk that officials said was to be sold above regulated prices.
You see Obama's BFF had to regulate prices because he thought, at some point, grocers were making enough money. And he just wanted to spread the wealth around.
But, of course, the only reason socialism has never worked is because the right people have never been in charge.
I guess we better just hope that Hugo's BFF Barack Obama has put better people in charge of running our economy than he put in charge of cleaning up the oil spill.
June 21, 2010
Portraits in Moonbattery: Kristiane Backer
Posted by Dave Blount at 10:58 PM
Kristiane Backer scores a moonbat hat trick: an environmentalist Muslim spawned by the European version of the cultural cesspool MTV:
Assuming she's lesbian and reveres Obama, Backer is as close to liberal perfection as a Caucasian can get.
On a tip from Stormfax.
Behind the Curtain
Posted by The MaryHunter at 5:08 PM
I would be remiss if I did not follow up on BigFurHat's "What's Inside Obama's Head?" contest at iOTW. The results were overwhelming: first place went to: nothing. However, some other suggestions inspired BFH, including my personal favorite: Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkel Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs.
Courtesy of iOwnTheWorld.
Under Bush, Wealthier Wealthy Coughed Up More Taxes
Posted by The MaryHunter at 3:29 PM
The wealthy are evil, especially if they become more wealthy. At least that's the liberal line. But what if those wealthier folks ended up giving up more of their loot to the government -- from the policies of that dastardly Bush?
After dipping in the early part of the Bush administration, by 2007 the top quintile of earners - the 20 percent who made the most - paid nearly 70 percent of all the taxes that the federal government collected, according to Congressional Budget Office figures. That includes a staggering 86 percent of the income tax being paid by just the top quintile of earners.
Meanwhile, if your earnings were in the lower two quintiles, you too got wealthier -- at the expense of the richies.
By contrast, the bottom 40 percent on average not only pay no income tax, but they siphon money back from the federal government in the form of the Earned Income Tax Credit, a 35-year-old program designed to offset some of what low-income workers pay in Social Security taxes.
News like this should cause all the progressive Bush-haters to rethink their unreasonable dislike for this leader who, through conservative tax policies, helped to finance even more of the "working poor" so they could buy more cell phones, cable TV, and acquire those subprime mortgages.
On the other hand, darker days are coming for the redistributionist economy under Obama, as the end of the Bush tax cuts in the weak economic climate will likely give us a double-dip recession and simultaneously reduce overall wealth and tax revenue.
Gold or Tungsten?
Posted by Dave Blount at 1:12 PM
Now that we have the most transparent government of all time, maybe we can find out if there's still gold in Fort Knox — or just gold-plated tungsten:
Roughly 15 years ago — during the Clinton Administration [think Robert Rubin, Sir Alan Greenspan and Lawrence Summers] — between 1.3 and 1.5 million 400 oz tungsten blanks were allegedly manufactured by a very high-end, sophisticated refiner in the USA [more than 16 Thousand metric tonnes]. Subsequently, 640,000 of these tungsten blanks received their gold plating and WERE shipped to Ft. Knox and remain there to this day.
With the caliber leadership we've had, anything's possible — that is, anything except fiscal responsibility and sound governance. Even something as crazy as this would be no more outrageous than digging the country $130 trillion into debt.
On a tip from Anonymous Countermoonbat.
Boston Gay Pride Week
Posted by Dave Blount at 11:36 AM
MassResistance reports on Gay Pride Week in Boston, which allowed politicians and establishment institutions yet another opportunity to voice their full-throated support for sexual depravity and cultural disintegration. For nine days on end, the streets of Beantown spilled over with scenes like this:
Prominent features included:
• Sado-masochism, bondage, etc.
• Transgenderism and cross-dressing.
• General weirdness and vulgarity.
• Political messages.
• Inclusion of lots of children.
• Politicians.
• Corporations, hospitals, civic groups, churches.
• Media news blackout.
The last can be expected with events and occurrences that expose what liberals are trying to turn our country into.
To sum up:
The official underlying theme this year was homosexual militancy. And that message was repeated everywhere. "Riots to Rights" was the rallying cry.
As with all Gay Pride events, what exactly perverts are supposed to be proud of was left unexplained. Maybe they're proud of the increasing political power they wield.
On a tip from Oiao.
English Flag Banned in England Again
Posted by Dave Blount at 10:25 AM
Once again the English are banning their own flag:
More than 1,200 workers have been banned from flying England flags on their own cars by managers — over fears they could deemed as racist.
Employees at the housing association were sent a group e-mail warning that decking out their personal vehicles with the St George's flags could 'discriminate' against those who don't support England during the World Cup.
Managers at Bolton At Home in Greater Manchester, which manages 18,200 council houses in Bolton, insist cars owned by their workforce must remain 'neutral' in order to treat all its 'customers with respect and without discrimination'.
Readers will recall that the Cross of Saint George has been suppressed by militant moonbats before (e.g., here and here and here and here and here).
A culture rotted away by political correctness to such an extreme that it treats its own flag as an obscenity has two choices: turn back liberalism or die.
On a tip from SR.
Free Condoms in Public Elementary School
Posted by Dave Blount at 9:50 AM
These days public schools don't pay much attention to the tired old topics of yesteryear — reading, writing, arithmetic, etc. Now the emphasis is on learning fun stuff, like sexual intercourse and disregarding the wishes of parents:
A New England school district has approved a measure that will provide free condoms to elementary school students and direct teachers not to comply with parental wishes to the contrary.
The policy, unanimously approved by the Provincetown School Committee does not include an age limit — meaning children of any age ask for — and receive — free condoms.
The committee also directed school leaders not to honor requests from any parent who might object to their child receiving condoms. In other words mommy and daddy — you don't have a right to prevent your 7-year-old from getting a contraceptive device.
With their emphasis on corrupting children and arrogating parental authority on behalf of The State, you would think liberals would love this policy. But not necessarily:
The policy does stipulate that kids must consult with a nurse or trained counselor before getting their sexual protection — and that upset some of the committee members, according to the Provincetown Banner.
"I can see some kids opting out because of the conversation. I'm not against [the policy]. I'm just trying to put myself in that teenager's spot," said committee member Carrie Notaro.
"I don't like that students can't be discreet about this," committee member Shannon Patrick told the newspaper. "They have to go and ask for it. I'd rather them not have the conservation [with counselors] and have the condom than not have the condom."
School superintendent Beth Singer attempted to quell these objections by explaining that the kids are so young, they wouldn't know how or when to use a condom if taxpayer-financed counselors didn't teach them. Most likely the kids will want the free condoms to use as water balloons; to instill degeneracy at the youngest possible age, it's crucial that our public employees explain what they're really for.
On a tip from Bill T.
Moonbat Tech: Jump Rope Generator
Posted by Dave Blount at 8:30 AM
With Comrade Obama all but declaring war on the oil and coal industries that make our cars go and the lights come on, it's a good thing that his fellow moonbats have the smarts to generate power by other means. The E Rope, for example:
Besides being good for your flubber, skipping seems to be a good way for harnessing energy to recharge batteries. I know this idea is not so new; we have seen how jumping a rope can power a torch and juice batteries. However design is not only about problem solving, but also about refining existing solutions, hence the E Rope.
As conventional energy sources are gradually crushed out of existence by our liberal rulers, new applications will be found for the E Rope. Imagine the power plants of our utopian future: rows and rows of public employees frantically jumping rope to keep the lights on in government buildings. Combating fossil fuel use, unemployment, and obesity all at once — that's progress!
On a tip from Air2air.
Stimulus Spending: A Losing Bet
Posted by Dave Blount at 8:05 AM
Where did all the $zillions of pork barrel "stimulus" loot go? Obviously not into creating jobs; that's accomplished by cutting taxes, not by wasting mountains of money, thereby forcing them to be raised. The cash went down absurd moonbat rat holes and into the pockets of crony capitalists and other assorted friends of our rulers. Here's an example:
With the support of Sen. Chris Dodd, D.-Conn., the federal government has awarded $54 million to Connecticut's politically well-connected Mohegan Indian tribe, which operates one of the highest grossing casinos in the U.S.
The tribe runs the sprawling Mohegan Sun casino, halfway between New York City and Boston, which earned more than $1.3 billion in gross revenues in 2009. Each tribe member receives a cut of the profits, a number a tribal official said was "less than $30,000" per capita per year. The stimulus money is a loan from a U.S. Department of Agriculture rural development program that is meant to help communities of less than 20,000 people that have been "unable to obtain other credit at reasonable rates and terms and are unable to finance the proposed project from their own resources."
Liberal economics in a nutshell: the rich get richer, the poor are paid to stay poor, and everyone else gets their pockets turned inside out.
On a tip from Smoke TNT.
Open Thread
Posted by Dave Blount at 7:37 AM
Rahm, We Hardly Knew Thee
Posted by The MaryHunter at 7:21 AM
Insiders claim that Rahm "Twinkle Toes" Emanuel is just growing effing tired of the idealistic blowhards of President Obama's inner circle. So, he's planning to leave before the end of Chairman Zero's only term.
Washington insiders say he will quit within six to eight months in frustration at their unwillingness to "bang heads together" to get policy pushed through.
Mr Emanuel, 50, enjoys a good working relationship with Mr Obama but they are understood to have reached an understanding that differences over style mean he will serve only half the full four-year term.
Give him a break.That "Dead Fish" moniker was clearly wearing thin. The man is an artist at heart. Knee-capping and naked strolls in the congressional gym were keeping him away from his first career choice.
Ann Coulter, You're What the Moonbats Call "El Terible"
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 4:23 AM
Pointing out that the sexual deviancy of Alvin Greene was perfectly okay with Democrats when Bill Clinton did it is just... well, it's just not PC!
Hat Tip: Gateway Pundit
Item #3: Only in Leftist Fever Dreams
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 4:00 AM
1. Government Concentration Camps
2. Moooslims!
3. They're Coming to Take Your Guns
4. Article 3 of the United States Constitution
5. Plotting Global Elites
6. The Decline of Married White Christians*
7. The Graying of the Culture Warriors
8. White Minority Status*
9. And the Browning of America*
10. Unions: White working-class "Reagan Democrats" voting for the colored guy? The horror!*
*Note how four of the ten are about race.
The left apparently believes that every conservative tea-partier who believes in fiscal restraint, personal responsibility, limited government, and free enterprise would be 100% in support of a president financing a neo-Marxist re-engineering of our society with trillions in deficit spending... if only he had two white parents instead of one.
The truth is, this is just another liberal projecting his own racism onto the other side. Obama owes his job to liberal racism (i.e. Affirmative Action). Face it: a white ultra-liberal, half-term senator with a history of radical associations would have washed out of the Democrat primaries in 2008 with <5% of the vote, no matter how well he read a Teleprompter. The melanin content of Obama's skin matters way more to them than it does to us.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, the real Republican Party, the Tea Party, and the conservative right have all endorsed a well-qualified African-American for a congressional seat in South Carolina.
Now, that's the kind of stuff that keeps the left up at night.
Item #2: Paris Surrenders
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 3:58 AM
Some residents of Paris wanted to have a little cocktail party last Friday with wine, cheese, and sausage. But, the Muslims... whom we are told are not at all in control of Europe's urban areas, but are just a loyal tile in the beautiful multicultural mosaic that is 21st Century Eurotopia... threatened violence because it was their "holy day," and sausage and wine offend their religious dietary proscriptions. The Police sided with the Muslims, and shut down the party before it even happened.
Later, a minor seismological disturbance was recorded as Charles Martel started spinning in his grave.
The Charles Johnson "I See a Nazi Behind Every Bush" crowd is claiming that the group throwing the party were just Euro-Fascists who deserved to have their party shut down. But if the authorities can shut down a cocktail party they deem hateful, what's to stop them from shutting down a blog they also deem hateful?
Morning Briefs for Monday Item #1: A County Goes Rogue, Obama's Coast Guard Acts Stupidly
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 3:53 AM
Good Monday Morning Right-Wing Patriots, Good Morning Left-Wing Mama's Boys,
Fed up with the Obama Regime's ongoing incompetence, Okaloosa County Florida has gone rogue. Rather than for the Feds to stop counting life jackets and telling foreign governments "No thanks, we'd rather botch this ourselves," the county is going ahead with the construction of barriers to protect its beaches from oil leaking from the Deepwater Horizon spill on its own.
Obama's Coast Guard --- fresh from defending its position of halting skimming operations so bureaucrats could count life jackets and fire extinguishers --- has responded by reportedly running its boats over the booms and barriers Okaloosa county has erected.
Remember, the entire Obamunist philosophy of governance is based on the premise that state and local authorities are stupid and therefore the Federal Government must have supremacy in all matters. The response to the spill gives lie to this premise.
June 20, 2010
BHO's Bow Reflex
Posted by Dave Blount at 5:47 PM
Good thing BP CEO Tony Hayward is a (crony) capitalist. Otherwise, as a foreign leader unpopular with the American people, he would trigger Comrade Obama's bow reflex, even as he goofs off on a yacht:
Compliments of Air2air.
Senator Jon Kyl Explains Why Obama (Like Bush Before Him) Refuses to Secure the Border
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 5:25 PM
Skip ahead to 3:30 in the clip. Long story short, the Obama Regime refuses to enforce existing immigration law, but promises ("pinky swear") to enforce future immigration laws if they are passed.
So much for Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution: "
Hat Tip: Knowledge Is Power
Of Course It Was a Shakedown: Part II
Posted by Dave Blount at 4:33 PM
A little augmentation for the post on MSNBC Obamunist Ed Schultz confirming that of course the $20 billion Chairman Zero wrung out of BP was a shakedown — here's a video that adds in Contessa Brewer of the same network righteously denouncing Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) for using the term, as well as Schultz egging on Comrade Obama to be even more of a dictator:
Via NewsBusters, on a tip from Ken.
More Future History
Posted by Dave Blount at 12:51 PM
After the triumph of socialism, state historians will need to sharpen their Photoshop skills to document the role of the great Barack Hussein Obama. Future generations will learn that he was always present wherever votaries of Big Government marched in lockstep toward the glory of collectivism. Fortunately, they already have a head start in their work. Here's more:
Even the insufferable moonbat John Cleese marched with the Moonbat Messiah at his side at the Ministry of Silly Walks:
Compliments of John L.
Work Stops so Bammy Can Yap
Posted by Dave Blount at 12:24 PM
Let's not complain about B. Hussein spending so much time playing golf instead of pretending to attend to responsibilities that are clearly over his head. If we could get him to do nothing else until his farcical presidency is finally over, think of the money we'd save. Here we see how workers were idled (without pay) so that he could yap about the taxpayer money he's pouring down the drain in Columbus:
On a tip from Oiao.
The Obama Touch Continues
Posted by Dave Blount at 11:37 AM
Fathers Matter
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 8:34 AM
Father's Day seemed like a good occasion to post a link to this interview. Contra what we are told endlessly by radical feministas and their allies in the media, a turkey baster cannot replace an actual father.
From Hollywood to the halls of the academy, as I point out that WSJ piece, we often get the message that dads are superfluous. Plenty of people see men as second-class mothers. And large numbers of men and women in the U.S. think, on average, that single mothers can do just as good a job as a married mother and father in raising children.
But the science does not support the idea that fathers are fungible....
Children of donor dads are also much more likely to end up in trouble with the law before age 25, and to turn to drugs and alcohol to fill the paternal hole in their soul. For example, the offspring of maverick moms are 177 percent more likely to have a problem with substance abuse and are 146 percent more likely to report having had a run-in with the law, compared with offspring of two biological parents.
One mom, one dad, committed and monogamous is simply the best model for raising children and for sustaining the positive values of society. God doesn't write these laws because He's on the side of the corporate white patriarchy; His laws are a gift to us. If we follow them, life generally works out pretty well. When we break them, all Hell breaks loose.
Profiles in Countermoonbattery: David Nesenoff
Posted by The MaryHunter at 7:57 AM
It was a case of being in the right place at the right time. But that does not diminish what Rabbi David Nessenoff did. He simply had trekked down to Washington, DC, with his teenage son, his son's friend, and a video camera, in order to cover a Jewish heritage celebration at the White House. What happened next is now marked indelibly on our minds as the day that began the long-overdue extrication of rabid Jew-hater and anti-Zionist Helen Thomas from the White House Press Corps.
Rabbi Nesenoff describes the whole event and comments, especially about that immortal "oooh" he uttered as Kristallnacht Helen was telling him that the the Jews must get the hell out of Israel:
In the past weeks I have relived this moment over and over, on television and radio, in newspapers and blogs. I've listened to a constant stream of commentary. And my sharpest impression is this: Where before I saw a foggy anti-Israel, anti-Jewish link, it's now clear. This feeling is not about statehood. It's about an ingrown, organic hate. It's a sentiment that bears no connection to history, dates, passages or verses. Erase the facts, the dates and the lore. Erase the Jew. Incredibly, even the Nazis said to the Jews, "Go home to Palestine." But Thomas and a babbling stream in our world and country dictate to Jewish people to "go home to Poland and Germany." Yeah, I said "oooh."
My "oooh" was the sound of the shofar ram's horn calling a loud primal tikeya, the extended ancient whole note from my very core. My existence was being erased. Every room in every Holiday Inn in America has, next to the bed, in the drawer, a Bible, beside the yellow pages and the breakfast menu. Christianity believes in the Jewish ancestry. Islam believes in the prophets Moses and Jesus. Can we just rip away the history of Jews in Israel like a Band-Aid, one quick motion across the centuries? Oooh.
Rabbi Nesenoff shined a kleig light on the 800-pound cockroach in the White House press room that everyone was too embarrassed to notice. He also upped the ante for those who would still prefer anti-Jewish, anti-Israel discourse in America.
June 19, 2010
______ for Brains
Posted by The MaryHunter at 3:47 PM
iOwnTheWorld has a brilliant little contest going. Head on over and help BigFurHat figure out what's inside Obama's noodle. The most popular suggestion in BFH's comment thread gets their name in lights or an evening in the Lincoln Bedroom or something.
Our Dear Leader Speaks
Posted by The MaryHunter at 2:21 PM
The profound inarticulateness of Barack Obama becomes so much more clear when he is matched against even a few former presidents.
Compliments of Granny Jan.
Hat tip: iOwnTheWorld.
About That Seattle Cop Thing
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 1:28 PM
A lot of progressives and ultra-libertarians have their panties in a wad because Seattle police punched a woman who was resisting arrest. After seeing the video, I am unsympathetic. IMHO, little Miss Hissy FIt got what she was asking for. Unfortunately, some moonbat judge and "jury of her peers" is probably going to award her millions. Because that's how steeped in moonbattery our society and legal system are. Our societal moonbattery is why this whole incident happened, because at some point Little Miss Hissy Fit got the idea in her head that it was okay to violently resist a cop who was doing his job.
Now, I'm not one of those people who supports law enforcement no matter what. For example, the PG County Police Thugs who beat up a U-MD student for no apparent reason deserve jail and the department deserves to be massively sued. But I am rational enough to recognize that society only works if we give law enforcement a certain degree of deference. Much as I don't care for cops, I'm not gonna be screaming and trying to throw fists if one of them has stopped me for something, even if I don't agree with the charge. Because that would be just plain stupid.
Congresskook Gabrielle Giffords Wants to Use Green Energy to Fight Taliban
Posted by Dave Blount at 12:21 PM
If you were wondering why victory in the longest war in US history is nowhere in sight, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) presents the answer — our country is run by moonbats. Here Gabby demands that General David Petraeus explain why the military doesn't help save the planet by using hydropower in the Afghan deserts:
It isn't just Obama. Under Democrat rule, the entire federal government has degenerated into a farce. At least if we survive this lunatic kakistocracy, we'll be able to look back and laugh until our bellies hurt.
Via Cubachi, on a tip from Edward.
Most Hypocritical Man in the World
Posted by Dave Blount at 11:32 AM
We know that the Most Interesting Man in the World drinks Dos Equis, but what does the most Hypocritical Man in the World drink?
My guess is Shirley Temples — with a "little blow" on the side.
On a tip from Mike.
Open Thread
Posted by Dave Blount at 11:07 AM
Mexican Military Incursions Into USA
Posted by Dave Blount at 11:01 AM
The reason it would be nice to have a federal government, instead of a gang of bumbling looters filling the void in its absence, is that we need one to deal with crises like the Deepwater Horizon spill, and more importantly, to defend our country from foreign invasion:
It was this bad under Bush. Imagine what's going on now that we are ruled by people who would erupt in applause when Mexico's President Felipe Calderon rudely and hypocritically denounced Arizona for attempting to enforce immigration law — people who would travel to Latin America to announce that immigration enforcement will be snuffed out in the courts, and that amnesty is coming soon.
On a tip from x101ABNDevil.
Bob Etheridge Versus John Wayne
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 8:18 AM
Hat Tip: Knowledge Is Power
Caturday Culture Post: The Three Terrors
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 7:43 AM
Featuring three guys Bammy can't wait to bow down to. Enjoy the video before YouTube finds a lame excuse to delete it.
Thanks: Leah on teh Facebooks.
June 18, 2010
Guess What Kids? Bammy's Buying Us a Car Company
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 6:05 PM
Well, not really. What Bammy is actually doing is taking our tax money and giving it to a car company. We taxpayers don't get any actual ownership or financial benefit from the deal.
Tesla plans to spend $42 million to purchase the former New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. plant in Fremont, Calif., a few months after the IPO. The plant is owned by Toyota and Motors Liquidation Co., which is the remains of the former General Motors Corp. that is in bankruptcy.
As a condition of Tesla's $465 million loan facility from the U.S. Department of Energy, 50% of the proceeds from the IPO must be set aside in an account to pay for capital expenses related to building the Model S, which would include purchasing the plant. The DOE loan can be used to reimburse Tesla for the costs.
In other words, the government is forcing Tesla to use shareholder money to buy a factory, but then will pay back the shareholders with taxpayer money.
Better yet, the car company builds $100,000 cars. So, basically, he's subsidizing a car company for his rich elite homies. Does this make him a non-socialist?
Obama's Ground Zero Moment
Posted by The MaryHunter at 3:40 PM
Clearly, this is Bush's fault.
Courtesy of Flopping Aces, on a knock-down tip from TED.
Detroit, an Endless Source of Amusement
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 2:12 PM
Otis Mathis, school board president for Detroit Public Schools, is attempting to rescind his resignation after being accused by the district superintendent of fondling himself in front of her.
Board vice president Anthony Adams today released a two-page letter from Superintendent Teresa Gueyser accusing Mathis of touching himself during a recent meeting. She called it his "usual habit" during one-on-one meetings. She said she tries to ignore it.
So, in addition to being about as literate as the average left-wing troll, Mr Mathis apparently likes to give himself hernia tests in front of subordinates. Either that, or he's auditioning to become the next Safe Schools Czar.
North Koreans Abandoning Socialism?
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 12:25 PM
While Obama, Pelosi, and Reid push ever hard to install a centrally planned, political economy in the USA, other nations are giving up on "from each according to his means, to each according to his needs." The North Korean regime, facing mass starvation, has lifted all restrictions on private markets.
The list of socialist true believers is shrinking down to Hugo Chavez, Robert Mugabe, and Bammy; whose policies on health care, student loans, energy, and financial regulation all embrace a vastly expanded Government Role and sometimes a complete takeover. Only 8% of his appointees have experience in the private sector; his administration is made up of the kind of people who think counting life jackets is more important than cleaning up an oil spill. Can those who claim Chairman Zero isn't technically a socialist, please point to one thing he has done to advance free enterprise?
[And, no, you economically illiterate leftist nincomboobs, a taxpayer subsidy to buy a house or a car is not a free-market policy.]
Ed Schultz Confirms: Of Course It Was a Shakedown
Posted by Dave Blount at 11:12 AM
Nobody likes the bumbling crony capitalists at BP, least of all countermoonbats, considering that they gave more money to Comrade Obama than to any other candidate in the past 20 years and were lobbying to enrich themselves at the price of our country's ruin through the Cap & Tax conspiracy. But the rule of law applies to everyone, even lizards low enough to crawl into bed with Obama and then get knifed by him. Like Congressman Joe Barton, I find it alarming in the extreme that the President of the USA can exploit an accident to shake down a corporation for a $20 billion slush fund.
Encouraged by the contemptible cowardice of a Republican Party that appallingly stooped low enough to force Barton to apologize, liberals have been squawking in sanctimonious outrage about his entirely appropriate use of the term "shakedown." Yet one of Obama's most loyal cheerleaders at MSNBC used the same term while praising the Hoodlum in Chief for committing this act of grand larceny. Quoting the Stalinist thug Ed Schultz:
President Obama, you are the dude.
The president takes the heads of BP behind closed doors, shakes them down for $20 billion, and gets an apology. …the president of the United States took on a multinational, shook them down for $20 billion for the American people. President Obama got more out of BP than the Congress ever has.
And just remember, weeks ago the Democrats were trying to lift the liability cap from $75 million to $10 billion. … President Obama doubled the amount in a 20-minute meeting.
The $75 million liability cap was no obstacle because under Hopey Change, laws can be changed retroactively into whatever the Manchurian Moonbat wants. This is how it works in tin-pot dictatorships of the sort Ed Schultz and the rest of the liberal media are trying to make of America.
Hold on, Schultz is still crowing:
President Obama has done more to kick ass on oil companies than any other president ever has. … And now, you know what? This $20 billion is just chump change. It's not a cap. It's a start.
The effects on economic stability of having a president whose major accomplishment is to "kick ass on oil companies" and loot them into probable bankruptcy to the delight of his adolescent Marxist supporters will become increasingly obvious as the recession heads into its second dip.
Why couldn't a settlement have been reached by legal means, for example, through legislation instead of by a de facto dictator's decree? Schultz explains:
He can't go to Congress and get $20 billion because the Republicans will never work with him. So his only option is to go to the American people and say look, we're going to hold these people accountable, I'm going to have to figure it out some way. We're going to hold them accountable.
So, he doesn't meet with them right away, but over time he lets this boil up with emotion of the American people, puts BP in a corner as far as public relations is concerned. Let's all get documented, then he says come on into my office, now it's time to talk. And he walks away in a 20-minute meeting with a $20 billion commitment.
Has any other president done that? And the answer to that question is absolutely not.
If the law gets in your way, throw the law out the window and apply extortion behind closed doors. As if Republicans on the whole had any inclination, let alone the numbers or the guts, to defend BP anyway.
Schultz is right about one thing. No other president in American history would have behaved like this. Consider America "fundamentally transformed."
On a tip from Wingmann.
Obama Regime Goes to Latin America to Announce Plans to Undercut Immigration Enforcement
Posted by Dave Blount at 10:13 AM
How appropriate: the gang of treasonous socialist looters claiming to be our government announces in a Latin American country that it intends to use the courts to prevent Arizona from enforcing federal immigration law. Here's Shrillary Rotten in Ecuador:
"[T]he Justice Department, under [Comrade Obama's] direction, will be bringing a lawsuit against the act [Arizona's SB1070]. But the more important commitment that President Obama has made is to try to introduce and pass comprehensive immigration reform [i.e., amnesty for illegal aliens, which will open the floodgates for tens of millions more]. That is what we need [to expand the welfare roles and the Democrat voter base, and to move the economy closer to a Cloward-Piven style total collapse]. Everyone knows it, and the President is committed to doing it."
It would be difficult for these quislings to make it more obvious that America's rulers are not on America's side.
On a tip from Conan.
Moonbat Establishmentarians Demand Sex Ed for 5-Year-Olds
Posted by Dave Blount at 9:47 AM
MSNBC and the depraved bureaucrats overseeing Britain's socialist healthcare team up to bring us an important message — government schools need to teach 5-year-olds about sex:
Sex education should be taught to children from the age of five to give them the skills and confidence to delay sexual intimacy until they are ready, a British health watchdog said on Thursday.
Inadequate sex education at a young age is widely seen as contributing to Britain's steep rate of teenage conception, still amongst the highest in Europe despite a 13 percent fall over the past decade.
So that's why Britain is sinking beneath a tide of teenage welfare moms. There isn't enough sex education. Back in the Victoria Era, 5-year-olds were taught all about sex, so this problem was avoided.
The latest guidance from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is in draft form and will not be compulsory, but the agency said it expected local authorities and others to follow it.
How typical of soft tyranny: it's not compulsory, but you're expected to do it. The ironically named NICE also serves as the Death Panel for socialized medicine in Britain, deciding who gets to live and who is no longer useful to The State.
Meanwhile, outside of the bubble of liberal ideology inhabited by MSNBC and British bureaucrats, the push for ever more corruption of children through sex education has predictably led to more teenage pregnancy.
On a tip from Ianto.
Tea Party Goes International
Posted by Dave Blount at 9:15 AM
There was a time when America inspired the world with its devotion to liberty. Despite the authoritarians currently running our government, that time isn't over. Better sit down for this, moonbats — the Tea Party has gone international:
As Tea Party protests pop up in places like Moscow, Tel Aviv and the Hague, Americans may question whether the Tea Party platform can cross international and cultural borders. For activists outside the U.S., the answer is a resounding "yes."
"I think the message of the American Revolution is global. The message of natural, unalienable rights, the message of opposition to tyrannical government -- that's not just well-known, that's universal," Boris Karpa, organizer of the Israeli Tea Party, told The Daily Caller in an e-mail. "As you know well, many countries have based their founding documents on the U.S. Declaration of Independence or other American documents."
Although several international organizers had never even heard of the Boston Tea Party until U.S. protests brought the events of 1773 back into the spotlight, they now wear the Tea Party badge proudly as an example of American exceptionalism worth emulating.
"This [Tea Party] title is ideal for Russia," Max Kronos, organizer of the Moscow Tea Party, told The Daily Caller in an e-mail. "This event has forever gone down in history — in Russia, such events have not happened."
The statist media abroad doesn't like the Tea Party any better than it does at home. The same bigoted smears are used to discredit it.
"The mainstream media calls the U.S. Tea Parties a bunch of gun-loving racist rednecks," Roy Hofkamp, organizer of the Dutch Tea Party, told The Daily Caller in an e-mail. "That image in the media was not an advantage for us, but fortunately more and more Dutch people get their news from foreign media and they knew our intentions were good."
Those intentions — laissez-faire capitalism, low taxes and fewer regulations — cross boundaries.
Despite the best efforts of our collectivist rulers, love of liberty isn't an easy flame to snuff out. As the leftward ratchet of ever more bloated government brings whole economies crashing down, the flame may even begin to spread.
On a tip from J.
$1.2 Million in Stimulus Loot Fed to Squirrels
Posted by Dave Blount at 8:49 AM
Some people wonder in awe how the Moonbat Messiah has managed to hold unemployment to only about twice what it was before Democrats took over Congress in 2006. His secret: stimulus spending. Here's where the money goes:
An Arizona Department of Transportation project to install 41 canopy tunnel bridges on Mount Graham to aid the sustainability of the endangered Mount Graham red squirrel will be entirely funded by stimulus money from the federal government.
According to Bill Harmon, ADOT's Safford District engineer, preliminary numbers suggest the project will cost about $1.2 million.
Here's how flushing $1.2 million of your money down the toilet on behalf of a rodent will "stimulate" the economy:
Harmon … believes the project will be an enhancement to the area for various reasons, including providing jobs for the construction and maintenance of the bridges and equipment, bringing more scientists to the area who will require local services and increasing eco-tourism in the area.
Bureauweenies have grown arrogant enough to feed us this crap with a straight face while millions are out of work, kept that way by a government grown so huge that it is smothering the economy.
Hat tip: The Outdoor Pressroom, on a tip from Steve.
Smear Tags on OpenDNS
Posted by Dave Blount at 8:13 AM
Liberals prefer to use state censorship to express their reverence for freedom of expression, but Big Government moves a little slowly (as people in the Gulf know only too well), so sometimes they take things into their own hands by exploiting independent projects like OpenDNS, a service that allows you to blackball sites you disagree with by smearing them with Hate and Pornography tags. These tags can be used by businesses, schools, private users, and inevitably Big Brother to block sites.
Unsurprisingly, moonbats have used OpenDNS to draw a bead on conservatives. Free Republic has been tagged as a hate site. Moonbattery missed out on the Hate tag, but received Nudity and Pornography tags. Even a screenshot of the site was deemed offensive:
Fortunately, countermoonbats can have a say. Look up sites here, then cast your vote regarding the appropriateness of the tags affixed to them, or affix tags of your own. Registration takes a few seconds.
On a tip from Oiao.
Coming from Obamanation: $7 Gasoline
Posted by The MaryHunter at 8:01 AM
President Obama has decided to dodge responsibility for the Gulf oil disaster by cleverly changing the subject to Cap and Tax. A clutch of esteemed Harvard researchers have determined at least one sobering effect of such legislation.
To meet the Obama administration's targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, some researchers say, Americans may have to experience a sobering reality: gas at $7 a gallon.
To reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the transportation sector 14 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, the cost of driving would simply have to increase, according to a report released Thursday by researchers at Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
[...]
Researchers said that vehicle miles traveled will increase by more than 30 percent between 2010 and 2030 unless policymakers increase fuel taxes.In order to save the planet from a hoax, the Obama Regime is prepared to crush the economy of this nation. Through such gas taxes as predicted by these Hahvaad experts, who gets hurt the most? Those "little people" that the Democrat party claims to "look out for." Will we soon be looking back at these per-gal tax rates with wistful nostalgia as we plod about in our government mandated GM pedal-cars?
Congrats, progressive trolls! This is the very Hope and Change you were voting for.
Hat tip: Free Republic.
Open Thread
Posted by Dave Blount at 7:03 AM
Oh, No. She Didn't Just Say That Did She?
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 6:26 AM
If (Obama) thinks that some guys on the rigs are the only people that are going to be affected by a six-month oil moratorium, he's out of his cotton-picking mind. -- Julia Reed, Newsweek senior editor on CNN on Anderson Cooper 360, June 16.
Item #4: I Guess It's Just Part of Their Culture
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 5:56 AM
The multicultural residents of a deep-blue west coast city celebrated a sports victory in the traditional manner of urban trash. The LA Times gives us a rundown of the violence that occurred after the Lakers won the NBA Championship.
Crowds hurled bottles and other objects at police, smashed marquees, jumped on vehicles, broke windows, and set rubbish dumpsters and vehicles on fire along Figueroa Street north of Staples Center and on Flower Street.
At 7th and Flower, a car believed to be a taxicab was engulfed in flames.
At least one person was beaten unconscious as fights broke out on Flower Street near Olympic Boulevard.
One police officer suffered a broken nose.
As night wore on, fire crews responded to many rubbish fires and some vehicle fires.
At least 12 people were arrested for crimes including public drunkenness, vandalism and inciting a riot. One person was arrested for assault on a police officer.
Hat Tip: Knowledge Is Power
Item #3: The Murders the Media Don't Cover
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 5:06 AM
As Mark Steyn points out, the MFM ... who claim to be staunchly opposed to violence against women and "hate crimes" ... make an exception for Islamic Honor killings. One Canadian radio host has even suggested that honor killers be shown leniency because murdering women is a cultural norm for Muslims.
John Oakley is seriously entertaining the question of whether Canadian judges should give those who commit "honour" killings a break because they have different "cultural practices" and may not be aware of our norms and laws; defence attorney Lawrence Ben-Eliezer thinks judges should take these differences into consideration because we have "multiculturalism".
I guess it's no more stupid than our American legal custom of letting murderers walk free because a cop once used the n-word.
Steyn goes on to point out that the MFM has a huge blind spot when it comes to covering Islamic Honor Killings by contrasting the New York Times coverage of the Matthew Shepard "hate crime" (311 stories) with their coverage of the Aasiya Hassan honor killing (1 story). Matthew Shepard's murder ... which was less a hate crime than a cautionary example of why it's a bad idea to leave a bar with people you don't know to have sex and use drugs ... not only received saturation news coverage, but also led to plays, movies, songs... Laws were passed in his name. He became a victim-martyr in the secular left roll of victim-saints.
But dead Muslim women? Meh, who cares? It's just part of their culture.
Item #2: I Take That Back, Humanity Is Doomed
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 4:51 AM
An Australian "scientist" has declared that the human race will be extinct within 100 years.
We humans are about to be wiped out in a few decades. The grandchildren of many of us will not live to old age.
Hear it from Frank Fenner, emeritus professor of microbiology at the Australian National University and the man who helped eradicate smallpox.
"Homo sapiens will become extinct, perhaps within 100 years," he told The Australian this week.
"It's an irreversible situation." Blame global warming.
He's a scientist, so it must be true. Because scientists don't never lie and ain't never wrong. Or, so I am told.
Morning Briefs for Friday Item #1: Good News, Everyone! Humanity Is Saved!
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 4:49 AM
Good Morning, Right-Wing Patriots. Good Morning Silly Sods of the Progressive Left,
Katie Couric is looking into buying a Prius. The Earth is saved. All glory to our elite media betters!
My daughter and I - Ellie is here home from college. She's getting ready to go away tomorrow for two months as a camp counselor. We were talking and Ellie was funny because she was saying, "mom, can we get another car"-- because she's driving now, to have more flexibility for her. And I said "maybe" and then she said to me today, "you know, we shouldn't get another car and, by the way, we should turn in the car we have," which is a Chrysler mini-van -- am I hip or what? And get a Prius or a hybrid." And I said, "you know, Ellie, we should do that." And we're going to look into it.
Will she be going to the Prius Pious dealership by executive jet or caravan of black Chevy suburbans? Or is she just trying to get Al Gore's attention, now that he's on the market?
June 17, 2010
Americans Line Up to Do the Jobs Americans Won't Do
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 8:46 PM
Another open borders talking point shot down...
Federal Bureaucrats Strike Again
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 8:36 PM
Once again, the difference between leadership and incompetence is illustrated. Governor Bobby Jindal dispatched a flotilla of barges equipped with suction hoses to suck up the oil from the Gulf. But once again, Federal bureaucrats shut him down.
Sixteen barges sat stationary today, although they were sucking up thousands of gallons of BP's oil as recently as Tuesday. Workers in hazmat suits and gas masks pumped the oil out of the Louisiana waters and into steel tanks. It was a homegrown idea that seemed to be effective at collecting the thick gunk.
So why stop now?
The Coast Guard ordered the stoppage because of reasons that Jindal found frustrating. The Coast Guard needed to confirm that there were fire extinguishers and life vests on board, and then it had trouble contacting the people who built the barges.
Eventually, the oil barges were able to get moving again, but once again we see how the Federal Government is the impediment to solving a problem.
But don't worry, fellow Americans. Obama *and* his energy secretary are both Nobel Prize laureates! We are privileged to have such masterful leadership at this time in history.
Just wait until they're fully in charge of health care.
Hat Tip: Knowledge Is Power.
Alvin M. Greene (D-Neverland): The Warm Bath Analogy
Posted by The MaryHunter at 6:35 PM
As irritating as Jon Stewart can be, he does tend to nail hypocrisy, irony, and inanity pretty well. In this case, he examines the South Carolina Democrat party's attempt to blame Republicans for what will go down as the most bizarrodelic election result in modern American history.
Profiles in Countermoonbattery: Gene Simmons
Posted by Dave Blount at 4:59 PM
The entertainment industry isn't exactly conducive to wholesome sentiments, yet a surprising number of major stars from the golden age of rock n roll have emerged as inspiring countermoonbats — Ted Nugent, Alice Cooper, Joe Perry of Aerosmith, and of course, Gene Simmons of Kiss:
On a tip from AlphaMail.
Obama's Post-Oval Office Address Bump Slump
Posted by The MaryHunter at 1:45 PM
If Dear Leader was looking for some political boost from his ass-kicking, Big Government, cap-and-tax-promoting chat from the Oval Office, well it seems that he's got another thing look coming.
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows that 26% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty-six percent (46%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -20 (see trends).
Overall, 43% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the president's performance. Fifty-six percent (56%) now disapprove. The president's approval rating has held steady in the 46% - 47% range for six months and it remains to be seen whether this new low is merely statistical noise or the start of a lasting change.
More "Hope for Change" perhaps? What's more, Rasmussen also reports statistics for what we have seen already: the lamestream media do not appear to be Chairman Zero's complete lap dogs anymore.
The Rasmussen Reports Media Meter shows that media coverage of President Obama has been 39% positive over the past week. Since the passage of the health care law, coverage has ranged from a high of 60% positive to a low of 39% positive.
And, just so a prog troll doesn't prance about in the comment thread thinking that they've scored some profound intellectual point: Republican voters are none too happy about their GOP representatives, either.
Seventy-two percent (72%) of GOP voters continue to believe that Republicans in Congress are out of touch with the party's base. By contrast, 61% of Democratic voters think their representatives in Congress have done a good job of representing Democratic values over the past several years
This is a clear message that even GOP incumbents had better watch out in November. It will be interesting to see which direction Democrat voter support goes for their representatives as the summer wears on and they learn more (if they choose to open their eyes and ears, that is) about what DNC-championed issues such as ObamaCare and Cap-and-Tax will really do to our nation and the economy.
It Was Bad Enough the First Time
Posted by Dave Blount at 1:16 PM
What a nasty case of déjà vu:
If Carter led to Reagan, the Manchurian Moonbat could only lead to Thomas Jefferson returned from the grave.
On a tip from J.
Life Is Good in Teachers Unions, Even in Detroit
Posted by Dave Blount at 10:55 AM
No matter how bad things get, a few always manage to live high on the hog. Often they are the ones who made things so bad in the first place. Take Michigan, for example — a once vibrant state that has been economically devastated by the unions that destroyed the auto industry. If you're living well in the Detroit area, chances are you belong to a union. Teacher's unions are especially advantageous:
Despite multimillion-dollar budget shortfalls in school districts across Metro Detroit, teachers continue to enjoy generous benefits that range from free health care to longevity pay, an analysis of teacher contracts in 10 of the area's largest school districts shows.
Teachers in Dearborn, Plymouth-Canton, Southfield and Warren Consolidated Schools pay nothing monthly for health care as long as they stay in network and as little as $5 or $10 co-pays for prescription drugs and doctors' office visits, according to their contracts. Farmington and Troy also pay nothing monthly but do pay annual deductibles.
A Detroit News review of 10 contracts covering more than 5,000 teachers who teach more than 100,000 students in Macomb, Oakland and Wayne counties shows teachers often get 10-14 sick days a year, which they can bank; tuition reimbursement for continuing their education; and coverage of chiropractor visits. …teachers in Utica Community Schools, the second-largest school district in the state, can get up to 38 "therapeutic massage" visits at a chiropractor's office a year with no co-pay under their contract.
While teachers are taking three weeks of "sick days" on top of their four months of vacation and treating themselves to near weekly massages on the taxpayer's dime,
Reeling from state funding cuts, Metro Detroit school districts are dipping into fund balances, closing schools, laying off staff and privatizing services.
Facing a $33 million shortfall, Utica Community Schools plans to close four elementary schools at the end of this school year, as does Farmington Public Schools. Lincoln Park plans to close one elementary school, consolidate its preschool program, and close another school for children with special needs.
Greedy teachers union goons claim that the schools aren't closing because they can't afford the outlandishly extravagant benefits, but because they are losing students. True enough, they are — because of the economic devastation wrought by unions and the stratospheric taxes required to pay public employees to loaf and get massages, people are escaping from Michigan as fast as they can dump their houses.
Fortunately for our Democrat rulers, they've found a solution to the problem. Put a guy in the White House who will turn the entire country into Detroit, and people will have nowhere to move. They'll have to sit still and pay their skyrocketing taxes like good little slaves. After all, someone has to pay to keep the union gravy train on the rails.
On a tip from Edward.
This Will Drive the Teabashers Nuts
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 10:20 AM
The haterade-drinkers who despise the tea-parties and all they stand for (individual liberty, limited government, fiscal restraint, personal responsibility) and who insist that "tea-baggers" are uneducated racist xenophobic idiots aren't going to like the fact that tea parties are catching on internationally.
As Tea Party protests pop up in places like Moscow, Tel Aviv and the Hague, Americans may question whether the Tea Party platform can cross international and cultural borders. For activists outside the U.S., the answer is a resounding "yes."
"I think the message of the American Revolution is global. The message of natural, unalienable rights, the message of opposition to tyrannical government -- that's not just well-known, that's universal," Boris Karpa, organizer of the Israeli Tea Party, told The Daily Caller in an e-mail. "As you know well, many countries have based their founding documents on the U.S. Declaration of Independence or other American documents."
This next quote tickled me.
"The mainstream media calls the U.S. Tea Parties a bunch of gun-loving racist rednecks," [an] organizer of the Dutch Tea Party told The Daily Caller in an e-mail. "That image in the media was not an advantage for us, but fortunately more and more Dutch people get their news from foreign media and they knew our intentions were good."
The socialists may get their global revolution after all. But it may not be what they imagined.
Hat Tip: Knowledge Is Power
PS. If it makes the Haterade drinkers feel any better, Joe Wilson's campaign office was vandalized last night.
More Zero Tolerance Idiocy from "Educators"
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 10:02 AM
In deep blue Rhode Island, an eight year old boy was sent home from school for wearing an Army hat with plastic soldiers on it. You see, the tiny plastic soldiers carried even tinier plastic "guns," which violated the school's "no weapons" policies.
Here's how the school's super-genius superintendent justified the action.
Superintendent Kenneth R. Di Pietro said the principal told the family that the hat would be fine if David replaced the Army men holding weapons with ones that didn't have any.
Di Pietro said the district does not allow images of weapons or drugs on clothing. For example, it would not allow a student to wear a shirt with a picture of a marijuana leaf on it.
Yeah, soldiers with guns = hippies with doobies. Liberal thought at its finest.
The kid should have just sliced off the weapons and posed the plastic soldiers erotically. He would have gotten a standing ovation.
Future History
Posted by Dave Blount at 9:55 AM
You had to know that airbrushing Winston Churchill's cigar out of history was only the beginning. If the liberals in control of the information establishment could pass the radical leftist Adolf Hitler off as a conservative, maybe they could go one better and rehabilitate his image. After all, as a socialist, he only wanted what was best for the people. Next we'll learn that Comrade Obama was right there beside him, sticking it to special interests on behalf of the working masses. Compliments of Sad Hill:
Dems Move to Seize Control of Internet
Posted by Dave Blount at 9:11 AM
The radical leftists currently in control of the federal government know that they have until the November elections to do as much damage to our country and our liberty as possible, and they aren't wasting a minute. The latest outrage — the Senate is handing Comrade Obama totalitarian power over the Internet. From CNET:
A new U.S. Senate bill would grant the president far-reaching emergency powers to seize control of or even shut down portions of the Internet.
The legislation announced [last] Thursday says that companies such as broadband providers, search engines, or software firms that the government selects "shall immediately comply with any emergency measure or action developed" by the Department of Homeland Security. …
That emergency authority would allow the federal government to "preserve those networks and assets and our country and protect our people," Joe Lieberman, the primary sponsor of the measure and the chairman of the Homeland Security committee, told reporters…
Note that the nefarious Joe Lieberman is also a sponsor of the latest attempt to deliberately plunge us into a depression with Cap & Tax. Some say Lieberman isn't so bad, because his fellow moonbats resent him for siding with Israel against its Muslim enemies. But this lone redeeming quality does not make him any less a menace to our country. No one who would participate in Al Gore's attempt to bully his way into the White House after losing the 2000 election belongs anywhere near a position of authority.
This latest leap forward toward totalitarianism is encountering resistance:
TechAmerica, probably the largest U.S. technology lobby group, said it was concerned about "unintended consequences that would result from the legislation's regulatory approach" and "the potential for absolute power." And the Center for Democracy and Technology publicly worried that the Lieberman bill's emergency powers "include authority to shut down or limit Internet traffic on private systems."
"Absolute power" is not hyperbole.
Under PCNAA [Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act], the federal government's power to force private companies to comply with emergency decrees would become unusually broad. Any company on a list created by Homeland Security that also "relies on" the Internet, the telephone system, or any other component of the U.S. "information infrastructure" would be subject to command by a new National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications (NCCC) that would be created inside Homeland Security.
Janet Napolitano, who considers our own veterans more of a threat to the country than Islamic terrorists (not that she would ever use such a politically incorrect term as "Islamic terrorist"), may soon determine what you can and cannot read online. Couldn't happen in America? Welcome to Hopey Change.
As with literally every initiative of our current government, this bill would recklessly expand the federal behemoth's size and scope.
Lieberman's proposal would form a powerful and extensive new Homeland Security bureaucracy around the NCCC, including "no less" than two deputy directors, and liaison officers to the Defense Department, Justice Department, Commerce Department, and the Director of National Intelligence. …
The NCCC also would be granted the power to monitor the "security status" of private sector Web sites, broadband providers, and other Internet components. … Selected private companies would be required to participate in "information sharing" with the Feds. …
The prospect of a vast new cybersecurity bureaucracy with power to command the private sector worries some privacy advocates. "This is a plan for an auto-immune reaction," says Jim Harper, director of information studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. "When something goes wrong, the government will attack our infrastructure and make society weaker."
This is exactly what is happening with the Deepwater Horizon spill. Damage caused by the spill has been bad enough, especially since the government prevented mitigation efforts. But the government's reaction to the crisis — shutting down oil drilling — will cause far more damage. This is known in Democrat circles as "never letting a crisis go to waste."
As always with our corporatist rulers, Big Business will be bribed into going along — at our expense.
To sweeten the deal for industry groups, Lieberman has included a tantalizing offer absent from earlier drafts: immunity from civil lawsuits. If a software company's programming error costs customers billions, or a broadband provider intentionally cuts off its customers in response to a federal command, neither would be liable.
McAfee — a company that I have learned from personal experience cannot be trusted with credit card numbers — calls it a "very important piece of legislation." Apparently McAfee doesn't mind trading our liberty for increased sales of their substandard security products to government agencies.
It will take decades even to sort out how many liberties we are losing under this regime. Whether the country will survive long enough to reclaim them is an open question.
On tips from Oiao, J, and Stormfax.
Moonbat Educators: Kids Shouldn't Have Best Friends
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 8:44 AM
The "experts" are telling parents that notions of having a best friend are bourgeois and atavistic. In the era of hope and change, children should have many comrades.
The classic best-friend bond -- the two special pals who share secrets and exploits, who gravitate to each other on the playground and who head out the door together every day after school -- signals potential trouble for school officials intent on discouraging anything that hints of exclusivity, because of concerns about bullying.
Christine Laycob, director of counseling at Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School in St. Louis: "We try to talk to kids and work with them to get them to have big groups of friends and not be so possessive about friends.Parents sometimes say Johnny needs that one special friend. We say he doesn't need a best friend."
Yeah, we can't have kids forming bonds of trust and loyalty with other individuals. They might learn the lesson that it's better to rely on another human being instead of the state. Besides, they'll be better off if they hang out with a pack of other comrades. What's the worst that could happen?
Here Comes Our Green Energy Future
Posted by Dave Blount at 8:25 AM
Compliments of Cons.Underground:
As the Manchurian Moonbat's big speech on Tuesday made clear, deliberately plunging the economy into a "green energy future" — i.e., second Great Depression — with Cap & Trade is still very much on the agenda. Obviously, the vast majority are opposed — but we were opposed to federal seizure of the healthcare industry too. If lame duck Dems are able to get Crap & Tax through the Senate for BHO's eager signature, literally millions will be thrown out of work, adding to the government dependents Democrats increasingly rely on for votes. Then comes amnesty, opening the floodgates to tens of millions of Third World peasants who will quickly make their way to the welfare rolls and the voting booths. It is still very much in doubt whether America will survive the cataclysm of a communist punk being elected President.
On tips from James and Varla.
Open Thread
Posted by Dave Blount at 7:41 AM
Border Security 2.0
Posted by The MaryHunter at 7:23 AM
Helen Thomas has a second career in the works that could serve our nation's interests well.
Hat tip: iOwnTheWorld, on an offensive tip from TED.
A Vintage French Socialist Whine
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 5:57 AM
The French Government --- facing the same dire financial circumstances as the rest of Eurotopia --- has decided to slowly and gradually raise the retirement age for bureaucrats all the way from 60 to 62. France already has a mandatory 35 hour work week (enforced by labor patrols) and three weeks mandatory vacation each year.
French socialists are squealing at this outrage.
The Socialist Party's general secretary, Francois Hollande, called the government's plan "the most unjust reform" and accused Sarkozy of making poor people pay for the economic crisis and strained financial markets.
"Today is a day of sadness and anger," agreed Jean-Luc Melanchon, who heads the Left Party. "The end of retirement at 60 is the end of a world."
Yes, French socialists ... also Greek socialists, Spanish socialists, Portuguese socialists, and American Democrats... your dream-world is just about to end. Your fantasy world where people live 80 years and only contribute economically for 30 of those years (at most) and where less than half the population is actually productive is unsustainable. Math is hard, but it is also inevitable.
The socialist dream-world can end with a crash when its unsustainable system tumbles down around you, or it can end with a gradual return to personal and economic responsibility. But it will end. It must end.
Chris Christie gets it.
Rick Barber for President
Posted by The MaryHunter at 5:15 AM
Oh shoot, is Rick Barber just running for Congress in Alabama's 2nd District? Well it's still quite an inspiring campaign message.
Item #3: The Obama Recovery Soars on
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 5:06 AM
New claims for Funemployment rose by 12,000 last week. Claims for ongoing funemployment rose by 88,000.
Item #2: Is Feminism All About Abortion? You Betcha!
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 4:32 AM
At the Washington Post, atheist dingbat Susan Jacoby is apoplectic that pro-life women are running for office.
Sarah Palin, the Tea Party's Red Queen, is the personification of the two strands in right-wing thought and politics. And Palin is the mistress of the art of claiming moral standing as a result of what she does with her reproductive system. Remember all the times she exhibited her Down syndrome son on the campaign trail in 2008? Fiorina's repellent attempt to bolster her anti-abortion credentials by lamenting her own infertility is directly inspired by Palin's message, "Look at me, I'm a wonderful woman because that I had a child with a mental disability. And you women who had abortions in the same circumstance are bad, bad, bad. "
Odd, isn't it, that in the eyes of these deluded dingbats, true womanhood lies in doing exactly the opposite of the task which women are physically, emotionally, and spiritually designed to do; bear children. No, in the eyes of these degenerates, the only real women are the ones that kill their babies.
Morning Briefs for Thor's Day, Item #1: Not Even the Washington Compost Believes the Teacher's Unions
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 4:01 AM
The Teacher's Unions always whine that if taxes are not constantly increased, teachers will be laid off and "education will suffer" (TM). ["Think of the children!' (TM)] But not even the reliably liberal Washington Post is buying this argument scare tactic bullshirt any more.
Start with that scary number of 300,000 teacher layoffs, which has been bandied about in numerous newspaper articles. The sources for it are interested parties: teachers unions and school administrators, whose national organizations counted layoff warning notices that have already been sent out this spring and extrapolated from there. Notably, however, even these sources usually describe the threatened positions as "education jobs" - not teachers. That's because the figures actually include not only kindergarten through 12th grade classroom instructors, but also support staff (bus drivers, custodians, et al.) and even community college faculty.
The teachers unions have set it up so that the teachers are always first on the chopping block and bloated bureaucracy last. It's pure blackmail, and it's long past time they were called on it.
June 16, 2010
San Fran Grand Nan's Office Extortion Plan
Posted by The MaryHunter at 4:03 PM
Nancy Pelosi likes her home district offices big. Big, and expensive.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi upgraded her San Francisco district office last fall when she moved into a new office building with a rent of almost $19,000 a month, paid for by taxpayers.
That's over a quarter of a million bucks a year, folks. It's enough to account for hiring about 2,900 new census workers for one day, before firing them and hiring them again the next week.
Roll Call reports that's the highest rent for any House member's office, and almost double the next-highest. Pelosi's staff maintains the new office space is nearly a third larger, has increased security measures and saves taxpayer money through its energy-saving features.
You've got to be saving some pretty serious energy in order to cover a rent like that.
This may not be quite as audacious as billing We the People for personal travel by her family, but this mad grab for prime office space certainly seems like an attempt by Pelosi to extract whatever she can from the little people, before her clout as Speaker evaporates in November 2010.
Everybody Marvel at PBO's Mad Leadership Skillz
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 3:41 PM
Chairman Zero's mewling fanboys are having joygasms because their hero met today with the CEO of BP and gave him a good talking to and managed to shake him down for $20B. "Such leadership!" they gush. "This will put those right-wing fascists in their place."
Now, for another perspective.
Petty Little Bureaucrat Report
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 2:31 PM
In Arkansas, Ryan Snodgrass, a river guide and certified swiftwater rescuer, saved a 13 year old girl from drowning in a swollen river. He was promptly arrested by authorities.
Ryan Daniel Snodgrass, a 28-year-old guide with Arkansas Valley Adventures rafting company, was charged with "obstructing government operations," said Clear Creek Sheriff Don Krueger.
And we're all supposed to cry when local law enforcement gets their pensions cut.
Hat Tip: Knowledge Is Power
On the Beach With Comrade Obama
Posted by Dave Blount at 1:37 PM
United States Cedes Chunk of Arizona to Mexico
Posted by The MaryHunter at 11:37 AM
Remember this sign posted yesterday? Here's a little more detail on this story. The bottom line: United States land eighty miles and three counties deep into Arizona is threatened, our citizens are warned to stay away. The local sheriff does not have the resources or manpower to secure part of his own county.
This is not just some forgotten reservation. It is a chunk of our sovereign nation. Obama can feign outrage over an oil spill, but he won't even lift a finger against this travesty of an insecure border.
Hat tip: iOwnTheWorld.
Why Obama's EPA Turned Down the Dutch Offer to Help
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 10:41 AM
Bureaucratic Idiocy at its most facepalmtastic.
The U.S. Government has apparently reconsidered a Dutch offer to supply 4 oil skimmers. These are large arms that are attached to oil tankers that pump oil and water from the surface of the ocean into the tanker. Water pumped into the tanker will settle to the bottom of the tanker and is then pumped back into the ocean to make room for more oil. Each system will collect 5,000 tons of oil each day.
The Dutch offered to fly their skimmer arm systems to the Gulf 3 days after the oil spill started. The offer was apparently turned down because EPA regulations do not allow water with oil to be pumped back into the ocean. If all the oily water was retained in the tanker, the capacity of the system would be greatly diminished because most of what is pumped into the tanker is sea water.
Get it? The EPA wouldn't let them suck lots of oil out of the ocean because they would be returning small amounts of oil into the ocean.
But don't worry, Bammy's Energy Secretary won a Nobel Prize.
Winston Churchill's Cigar Goes Down the Memory Hole
Posted by Dave Blount at 10:36 AM
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
— George Orwell
Those who control the present share Adolf Hitler's disdain for smoking, so they went back in time and snatched away Winston Churchill's trademark cigar:
We are living in the novel 1984.
Worse still might befall Churchill, considering Comrade Obama's open hatred for the hero. Soon our history books will feature pictures like this one of the Yalta Conference:
At least they left him with eye holes.
On tips from Byron, Chris H, and Varla.
So Much for One Man, One Vote
Posted by Dave Blount at 9:06 AM
The USA's absorption by Latin America is not proceeding quickly enough for the moonbats running our legal system, who have resorted to a quirky election gimmick in an attempt to put Hispanics in charge of Port Chester, NY:
Although the village of about 30,000 residents is nearly half Hispanic, no Latino had ever been elected to any of the six trustee seats, which until now were chosen in a conventional at-large election. Most voters were white, and white candidates always won.
Federal Judge Stephen Robinson said that violated the Voting Rights Act, and he approved a remedy suggested by village officials: a system called cumulative voting, in which residents get six votes each to apportion as they wish among the candidates.
A federal judge actually ruled that the whiteness of the people who win democratic elections is in itself a violation. If the six votes per voter trick doesn't prevent Caucasians from getting elected, they might cut to the chase and impose a racial quota system for public office holders. There's no time to mess around; the public is liable to wake up and resist before liberals have finished reducing this to a Third World country.
On tips from Jimbo, Bill V, Matt S, and Wiggins.
How Can This Be?
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 8:58 AM
How can 42% of Americans still approve of President Kickass McDimbulb's job performance? Are there really that many unionized public sector employees and trial lawyers in the country?
Another take on Obama's Terrible Speech: "There's a pipe spewing a gazillion gobs of oil into the gulf, so let's build more windmills"
Also, the AP has fact-checked Bammy's speech and found it wanting.
Obama's Address: An Intellectual Black Hole
Posted by The MaryHunter at 8:48 AM
The Heritage Foundation put out a concise, spot-on analysis of Chairman Zero's absolute nothing of an Oval Office address. It's a short and highly recommended read; here's their closing paragraph:
In his 1979 "malaise" speech, President Carter told the American people: "I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy. ... The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence." Carter was wrong. America was not suffering from a crisis of confidence. As the election of President Ronald Reagan would show the next year, it was the Carter administration that was suffering ... from a crisis of leadership. Today, our country is in crisis again. The Obama administration's constant blame shifting, politicization, and lack of organization demonstrate a crisis of competence. To restore America's faith, the White House should drop irrelevant policy priorities, refrain from making the economic damage worse, end unnecessary bureaucratic delays, and restructure the response and recovery efforts. As MSNBC's Keith Olbermann said following the address: "It was a great speech if you've been on another planet for the last 57 days."
As Daniel Foster at NRO noted: "Oval addresses are best reserved for wars and resignations." No brilliance, no useful information, not even a decisive statement of a new policy direction ushered forth out of Dear Leader's pie hole. Just tired class-warfare politics, a pitch for an economically destructive energy policy, lawless threats against BP, and more lies. It was as if his presence on my TV screen sucked the light right out of the room. It exemplified, even for even the progressive cheerleaders at MSDNC, the utter lack of creative and intellectual brilliance that now resides in the (erstwhile) most powerful elected office in the world.
Eurotopia's Bleak Future
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 8:18 AM
In an extraordinary briefing to trade union chiefs last week, Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso set out an 'apocalyptic' vision in which crisis-hit countries in southern Europe could fall victim to military coups or popular uprisings as interest rates soar and public services collapse because their governments run out of money.
I'm not convinced things are that bleak. I do note that Greeks and Spaniards are not exactly warming to the fiscal austerity the IMF says is needed to make them solvent again. But I think there are alternatives to the Mad Max scenario, the collapse and abandonment of the Euro, followed by debt default and global debt reset being foremost among them. None of which necessarily leads to gay S&M biker gangs laying siege to our walled refining outposts.
Whale Droppings Cure Global Warming
Posted by Dave Blount at 8:10 AM
Considering moonbats' obsessions with whales and with all things scatological, it's surprising that they have only now stumbled upon the substance that could cure the earth of the imaginary global warming crisis — whale droppings:
Southern Ocean sperm whales are an unexpected ally in the fight against global warming, removing the equivalent carbon emissions from 40,000 cars each year thanks to their faeces, a study found on Wednesday.
The cetaceans have been previously fingered as climate culprits because they breathe out carbon dioxide (CO2), the commonest greenhouse gas.
You know who else breathes out carbon dioxide? You! Climate culprit!
Actually, water vapor is a far more significant greenhouse gas. Did you take a shower this morning? Then you're twice a climate culprit!
Here's how the majestic whales redeem themselves for breathing:
Australian biologists estimated that the estimated 12,000 sperm whales in the Southern Ocean each defecate around 50 tonnes of iron into the sea every year after digesting the fish and squid they hunt.
The iron is a terrific food for phytoplankton — marine plants that live near the ocean surface and which suck up CO2 from the atmosphere through photosynthesis.
As a result of faecal fertilisation, the whales remove 400,000 tonnes of carbon each year, twice as much as the 200,000 tonnes of CO2 that they contribute through respiration.
Here we see the true reason Al Gore qualifies as an environmental saint. When he opens his mouth, he releases more defecation than CO2, thus cooling the globe to the great relief of the polar bears.
But back to the whales. You had to know where this story was going…
Industrialised whaling not only gravely threatened Southern Ocean sperm whales, it also damaged a major carbon "sink," the scientific term for something that removes more greenhouse gases than it produces… The future of sperm whales and other species comes under scrutiny next week in Agadir, Morocco, where the International Whaling Commission (IWC) discusses a plan to relax a 24-year moratorium on commercial whaling.
Funny how many scientific discoveries are perfectly timed to aid the liberal agenda these days.
On a tip from Muddypaw.
Open Thread
Posted by Dave Blount at 7:47 AM
Mitch Daniels "Truce" Would Be a Surrender to Moonbattery
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 5:22 AM
Much like Drew at AoS HQ, I'm not sure how Mitch Daniels' "truce" on social issues is supposed to work. Will the gay groups agree to stand down on pushing gay marriage? Will Hollywood stand down on producing its cultural sewer of entertainment? Will the ACLU stand down on trying to sterilize any acknowledgment of Christianity from the public sphere? Will groups like GLSEN stand down from pushing a gay agenda in the public schools? Will NARAL stop pushing for taxpayer-funded abortion anytime, any place, for any reason, at any stage of pregnancy?
It's akin to when a progressive leftist says, "We need to put aside these divisive issues and work together," what they really mean is "Conservatives need to shut up and do what progressives tell them."
Unless Mitch Daniels can come up with a compelling way to get the other side to stand down, his proposal isn't for a truce, it's for social conservatives to unilaterally disarm.
Item #3: No Tears for BP
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 4:50 AM
Normally, when a corporation is being used as a whipping boy by the Obama Regime's Propaganda Machine, one's reaction is instinctive sympathy. We know that to Obama and his minions, corporations are not seen as providers of goods, services, and jobs... but are all corrupt exploiters of the working class and despoilers of the environment. However, BP is undeserving of sympathy because until everything went south with the Deepwater Horizon spill, they were very much in bed with the progressive Democrats.
The (John) Kerry-BP alliance for an energy bill that included a cap-and-trade scheme for greenhouse gases pokes a hole in a favorite claim of President Obama and his allies in the media -- that BP's lobbyists have fought fiercely to be left alone. Lobbying records show that BP is no free-market crusader, but instead a close friend of big government whenever it serves the company's bottom line.
While BP has resisted some government interventions, it has lobbied for tax hikes, greenhouse gas restraints, the stimulus bill, the Wall Street bailout, and subsidies for oil pipelines, solar panels, natural gas and biofuels.
The executives of BP had a very cozy relationship with the environmental left, and planned to reap big dividends as the Government forced taxpayers' money to be directed into their corporate coffers. But then came the spill, and now BP is the topic of anti-capitalist rants like this one from Massachusetts Communist Ed Markey.
"I think we have to put the victims at the top of the list and the shareholders and the bondholders down below them. And I don't think there will be any debate about that. And if there is a shareholder that actually holds that position, then if you kick them in the heart, you break your toe. It is there (sic) company, they invested in it and unfortunately they did so not in good times, but in as bad times as well."
i.e. Screw the pension funds, and screw all the little people who hold BP stock. But, by all means, bail out the people who took out mortgages they couldn't afford, bail out the people who charged up massive credit card debt, and bail out the people who ran up six figure student loan debt getting useless women's studies degrees. But if people make investments in creating jobs and industry? Screw 'em!
Item #2: FoxNews Takes Off to the Great White North
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 4:43 AM
Not really, but a French-Canadian billionaire is preparing to launch a conservative news channel for Canada.
Quebecor Chief Executive Pierre Karl Peladeau said Sun TV News would provide much-needed competition for all-news channels operated by public broadcaster Canadian Broadcasting Corp and by CTV, part owned by telecoms giant BCE Inc and newspaper publisher Torstar Corp.
Those who support a diversity of opinions and perspectives for the public to choose from should cheer this development. This would exclude the progressive left, of course.
Morning Briefs for Odin's Day, Item #1: How Bad Was Bammy's Speech?
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 4:30 AM
It was so bad, not even Tingles and Obie liked it.
Olbermann: "It was a great speech if you were on another planet for the last 57 days."
Matthews compared Obama to Carter.
Olbermann: "Nothing specific at all was said."
Matthews: "No direction."
Howard Fineman: "He wasn't specific enough."
Olbermann: "I don't think he aimed low, I don't think he aimed at all. It's startling."
Howard Fineman: Obama should be acting like a "commander-in-chief."
Matthews: Ludicrous that he keeps saying [Secretary of Energy] Chu has a Nobel prize. "I'll barf if he does it one more time."
Not to worry. This is just so when they are back on their knees at the altar of the bronze Marxist Messiah in 2012, they can say "Remember when we criticized him in 2010? See how objective we were?"
Daniel Hannan Unloads on Bammy
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 2:28 AM
Daniel Hannan regrets his endorsement of Barack Obama in 2008, and vividly catalogs Chairman Zeros failures in the process of repudiating it.
It was he who chose, in defiance of public opinion, to establish a state-run healthcare system. It was he who presumed to tell private sector employees what they could earn, he who adopted the asinine cap-and-trade rules, and he who re-federalised social security, thereby reversing the single most beneficial reform of the Clinton years.
These errors are not random. They amount to a comprehensive strategy of Europeanisation: Euro-carbon taxes, Euro-disarmament, Euro-healthcare, Euro-welfare, Euro-spending levels, Euro-tax levels and, inevitably, Euro-unemployment levels. Any American reader who wants to know where Obamification will lead should spend a week with me in the European Parliament. I'm working in your future and, believe me, you won't like it.. . .
His fondness for the EU is matched by his disdain for the United Kingdom. It's not the diplomatic snubs that bother me: the dissing of Gordon Brown, the insulting gifts, the sending back of Winston Churchill's bust. It's not even the faux-anger towards the company he insists on calling "British" Petroleum. (No such firm has existed since the merger of BP and Amoco nine years ago. Thirty-nine per cent of BP shares are American-owned, and 40 per cent British-owned. The stricken rig in the Gulf is owned by Transocean, and the drilling was carried out by Halliburton, yet Obama isn't demanding compensation from either of these American corporations.). . .
All these things are minor irritants compared to the way the Obama administration is backing Peronist Argentina's claim to the Falkland Islands - or, as Obama's people call them, "the Malvinas". British troops were the only sizeable contingent to support the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have fought alongside America in most of the conflicts of the past hundred years. Yet, when the chips are down, Obama lines up with Hugo Chávez and Daniel Ortega against us.
Not that we should feel singled out. The Obama administration has scorned America's other established friends. It has betrayed Poland and the Czech Republic, whose Atlanticist governments had agreed to accept the American missile defence system at immense political cost, only to find the project cancelled. It has alienated Israel and India. It has even managed to fall out with Canada over its "Buy American" rules and its decision to drill in disputed Arctic waters. Never has there been a worse time to be a US ally.
No one denies that Obama was dealt a rotten economic hand; but he has played it ineptly. His policies are serving to make his country poorer, less free and less respected. And that is a problem for all of us .
UK Telegraph by way of Weasel Zippers.
I used to think McCain would have been only marginally better than Obama. Now, it is difficult to imagine anyone with the exception of Alvin Green doing a worse job. And if they could train Alvin Green to read a Teleprompter, he and Obama would be equally qualified to serve as president.
June 15, 2010
Notice Something About This Sign?
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 7:08 PM
There are now places within our national borders in which it's easier for the local government to post signs warning Americans to stay out than it is to warn armed foreign invaders to stay out.I note with interest that it's not translated into Spanish.
From: Knowledge Is Power
Related from Weasel Zippers: "We call armed foreigners crossing the border invaders, Democrats call them voters."
Separated at Birth?
Posted by Dave Blount at 2:17 PM
Psycho Congressthug Bob Etheridge and Droopy:
Don't let the sleepy look lull you into dropping your guard. Wake up Etheridge and he's liable to bite your leg.
By the way, even some of the moonbats at Salon consider Etheridge's attack on the students who asked if he supports Comrade Obama's agenda to be
a clear case of assault and battery (the unedited video from the first camera is here). There is some speculation that the individuals questioning him have some connection to the right-wing organization of Andrew Breitbart. I hope it goes without saying how irrelevant that is. The only reason I think this is worth noting is this: imagine what would have happened to those students if this situation had been reversed, and it was they who had physically assaulted Rep. Etheridge, rather than the other way around. How quickly would they have been arrested and prosecuted? The application of our laws isn't supposed to depend upon who is perpetrating the crime and who the victim is. Obviously, there are few principles, if there are any, more discarded than that one in Washington, but it would be nice to see its being applied in this instance by having this Congressman, obviously inebriated with an extreme sense of entitlement, arrested and charged.
But there's no need for trolls to start baking cakes with files in them. Etheridge will be charged with assault right around the time the Arctic ice cap melts.
On a tip from Ron.
Top Climate Scientist: Few Scientists Ever Believed in Global Warming Hoax
Posted by Dave Blount at 12:03 PM
As the global warming farce crumbles, it comes to light that very few scientists ever believed in it to begin with:
The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change misled the press and public into believing that thousands of scientists backed its claims on manmade global warming, according to Mike Hulme, a prominent climate scientist and IPCC insider. The actual number of scientists who backed that claim was "only a few dozen experts," he states in a paper for Progress in Physical Geography, co-authored with student Martin Mahony.
"Claims such as '2,500 of the world's leading scientists have reached a consensus that human activities are having a significant influence on the climate' are disingenuous," the paper states unambiguously, adding that they rendered "the IPCC vulnerable to outside criticism."
Hulme, Professor of Climate Change in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia — the university of Climategate fame — is the founding Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and one of the UK's most prominent climate scientists. Among his many roles in the climate change establishment, Hulme was the IPCC's co-ordinating Lead Author for its chapter on 'Climate scenario development' for its Third Assessment Report and a contributing author of several other chapters.
Meanwhile, as Gateway Pundit points out, the Arctic ice cap has only three years left to melt to comply with Al Gore's prophesy. I wonder if Vegas is taking odds.
Catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is collapsing even faster than the other massively hyped lie of our time, Barack Hussein Obama's absurd presidency. Unfortunately, that won't necessarily prevent BHO from plunging us into a depression by ramming through Cap & Trade in its name.
On a tip from Edward.
Etheridge Does Rockwell
Posted by The MaryHunter at 11:33 AM
More accurately, iOTW's HippieCritic does Democrat Rep. Bob "Who Are You" Etheridge a la Rockwell.
Compliments of iOwnTheWorld.
Importing a Criminal Underclass
Posted by Dave Blount at 10:36 AM
The bleeding heart quislings of the news media are fond of framing the Mexican invasion in terms of huddled masses yearning to breathe free, diligent workers seeking opportunity, yadda yadda yadda. This line of propaganda yanks on the heartstrings because as liberals keep reminding us, we are a nation of immigrants. But there is a world of difference between a legitimate immigrant and an illegal alien, who is a criminal by definition. As Human Events reminds us, if you break one law, you will probably break others:
The Government Accountability Office, (GAO), released a study it conducted in 2005 of 55,322 incarcerated illegal aliens. The study population averaged 8 arrests each … 97% had more than one arrest and an astonishing 26% had over eleven arrests. This only included crimes committed in the US. How many crimes they each committed in their country of origin are unknown.
Each illegal alien in the study averaged 13 offenses and 24% of those offenses were for drug crimes. About 12% were for murder, robbery, assault and sexually related crimes. 21% of offenses were immigration offenses. The other offenses included property related offenses, traffic violations, fraud and obstruction of justice.
It seems undocumented Democrats would spend too much time in jail to have the opportunity to commit so many crimes. But under a legal system run by liberals, they mostly run loose.
According to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, at the end of fiscal year 2008, there were 557,762 fugitive alien cases left unsolved.
Those who are finally deported come back across the border like yo-yos.
Most of the theft committed by illegal aliens is sanctioned by the government:
[M]any of the illegal aliens come to America to benefit from programs such as our health care system. California's border counties incurred $79 million in emergency care for illegal aliens, the highest cost in the country according the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). Under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, hospitals with emergency rooms are required to treat and stabilize patients with emergency medical needs regardless of whether or not they are in the country legally or whether they are able to pay for the treatment. …
FAIR estimated the medical cost of treating illegal immigrants in California in 2004 to be $1.5 billion. Today that figure would be much higher. And it is those people who currently have health insurance that foot the bill.
The roots of America's success and Mexico's failure go back to their founding. American settlers arrived in wilderness to build a country out of nothing. Spanish Conquistadors came to Mexico to loot the Aztecs. Our work ethic allowed us to go much longer without succumbing to kleptocracy, aka socialism, and the economic stagnation that inevitably results from it.
The contrast carries through to the present day. Whereas legitimate immigrants come here to become Americans, illegal aliens sneak across the unguarded border to help themselves to the wealth others created. Ever eager to bring down America any way they can, liberals support them to the hilt.
On a tip from Oiao.
Bureauweenies Blow $800,000 on Defining Three Words
Posted by Dave Blount at 9:54 AM
The reason the standard of living invariably goes down as the size of government goes up is that bureaucrats do not spend other people's money as wisely as we spend our own. For yet another example, refer to the moonbat dystopia of the San Franfreakshow area:
Believe it or not, BART [Bay Area Rapid Transit] is spending $800,000 to come up with a definition of just what constitutes a "major service change."
Most of us would simply reach for a dictionary, but BART has to make the feds happy, and that means a three-month process that includes:
— Holding 35 community meetings.
— Hiring a small army of translators to staff the meetings.
— Bringing in a crew of six-figure consultants to manage the meetings and issue the obligatory reports.
Yet the $800,000 is only the beginning of the waste — and it isn't only locals on the hook for the bill:
It all started a few months back when the Federal Transit Administration nixed $70 million in stimulus money that would have helped BART build a people-mover line from the Coliseum Station to Oakland International Airport.
The feds said BART hadn't considered what impact possible higher fares and a "major service change" would have on low-income, minority and limited-English-speaking riders.
The $800,000 must be wasted for the sake of jumping through the requisite politically correct hoops, before Bay Area bureauweenies can proceed to wasting $70 million on a project that probably isn't needed and certainly shouldn't be coercively financed at the expense of people across the country who will never use it or even know it exists. But according to the liberal faith, flushing mountains of other people's money down frivolous pork projects that we cannot afford "stimulates" the economy.
On a tip from Anonymous Countermoonbat.
Open Thread
Posted by Dave Blount at 9:38 AM
Alvin M. Greene for U.S. Senate -- Not?
Posted by The MaryHunter at 8:48 AM
It's been a week. Alvin M. Greene (D-Neverland) has gotten well more than his allotted 15 minutes of fame as the out-of-nowhere Democrat candidate for United States Senate. But will he actually get the chance to go head-to-head with Republican Senator Jim DeMint in November? Not if the South Carolina Democrat Party gets its way.
Nobody can offer more than a theory - Mr. Greene's name appeared on the ballot above his rival's - as to why, without yard signs, a website or any other visible signs of leaving his father's house to campaign he was able to defeat Vic Rawl, an experienced politician who did campaign for the June 8 Democratic primary.
[...]
But Mr. Rawl, who lost by 18 percentage points, is eager to have the results overturned, and the Democratic Party's 92-member executive committee is beginning its investigation with a hearing Thursday.
It's kinda like somebody slipped the S.C. Democrat Party a mickey. Now, the deeply embarrassed Party has scraped herself up off the motel room floor, found her undergarments, and stumbled back home to explain how she was hijacked at gunpoint by rednecks -- yea, that's now she lost her stockings.
What's next? Why, of course! They're endeavoring to undercut the will of the people and overturn an election result. Because it just doesn't seem right, you know, that Greene, an inarticulate unemployed African American military veteran with no computer or cell phone, should have beat a rich white professional politician.
The Party of The People (Especially the Little Ones) has no shame. And I haven't even invoked a charge of racism yet. Just imagine if the shoe had been on the other foot and the Republicans had been caught off guard like this -- and if they dared to mention replacing the winning (African American) candidate after an upset primary victory.
Well, really, it's more like this.
Moonbat Sportswriter Roots for America to Lose World Cup
Posted by Dave Blount at 8:27 AM
Despite soccer being too simplistic and uneventful to entertain many Americans, some do care how well our team does in the World Cup — sportswriter Norman Chad, for example, who out of sheer moonbattery wants us to lose:
I would not love to see America win the World Cup.
Frankly, we don't need another feather in our already overstuffed cap. And considering soccer is the world's game — and most of the world is at odds with America at any given moment — I think it might be a nice idea for Uncle Sam, in an effort to promote world harmony, to lie down in South Africa. …
Americans are a pretty xenophobic lot when, in truth, we're the ones who provoke an intense dislike. Most of the world does not threaten us; rather, most of the world is terrified by us. We're a little too big, a little too rich and a little too powerful and, every once in a while, we muscle up and flex our military might in foreign lands.
There is much fear and loathing of America elsewhere. …
Outside of American borders, others are tired of us dictating our way of life, tired of us exporting Adam Sandler everywhere, tired of us winning. I empathize, and this time around, I'm willing to root for the others. … So, yes, I'm rooting for the other guy in South Africa…
Sportswriters tend to be sorry characters who have no talent for either sports or writing, and their opinions on political matters are about as interesting as Matt Damon's on astrophysics, but unfortunately Chad's twisted views are representative of a mentality that is literally destroying our country. His brand of moonbattery has made it possible for treasonous vermin like Harry Reid to proclaim during wartime that the "war is lost" without being immediately driven out of office, and even for the ultimate "other guy" — an ultra-left community organizer with no serious credentials who clearly doesn't like this country very much — to be elected President of the USA.
One Norman Chad is like one cockroach; repulsive, but no big deal. Except there is never just one cockroach. It's not as if Chad came up with these malignant thoughts on his own.
On a tip from Murff.
Our Fair and Balanced MFM
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 7:58 AM
When Republican George Allen used the word "Macaca" to address a guy following him around with a video camera, the Washington Post ran 131 articles about it, 13 of which were on the Front Page.
When Democrat North Carolina Congressman Bob Etheridge went eggroll on a guy who approached him with a camera and asked if he supported his president's agenda, the Washington Post gave it three paragraphs on page C3.
Hat Tip: Ace. BTW, if you aren't reading Ace's daily economic briefings, you're missing out.
BTOW, the progressive left has a phrase they use when the gross bias of the MFM is pointed out. They claim we are "crying victimhood." No, dears. That's what your girly-boy president does when he whines that nothing is his fault and everybody is picking on him. We're just pointing out the facts here, and facts tend to bias toward conservatism.
Obama's BFF Prepares to Impose Prohibition
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 5:30 AM
Hugo Chavez thinks his subjects drink too much. And so, in true progressive fashion, he has ordered a military crackdown on liquor stores and threatened to nationalize Venezuela's brewing industry.
President Hugo Chavez says he wants Venezuelans to stop drinking so much alcohol, and he has ordered the military to crack down on businesses selling beer on the streets or after legal hours.
Venezuelans' taste for beer and Scotch whisky is an irritation to the leftist president, and he raised liquor and cigarette taxes three years ago while calling for similar measures _ to little effect.
Chavez says he is leading the country toward socialism and the transition requires a moral crusade to change Venezuelans' values.
Chavez has ordered the expropriation of some of (Venezuela's largest brewery) Polar's warehouses, and has warned he could decide to take over more of the company. If the government did take over the Polar brewery, it would be shut down, Chavez has warned.
Gee, I thought only right-wing Christian conservatives were out to legislate morality. It will be interesting to see this latest action rationalized by the like of Oliver Stone, Sean Penn, Danny Glover, and other cool, famous people who adore Hugo Chavez.
Also, some of Obama's mewling fanboys think it's unfair to imply that Obama and Chavez are best buddies. My response, a picture is worth a thousand words.
You don't exactly see Bammy greeting the Prime Minister of Israel or the CEO of BP with a smile and a fist-bump.
Item #4: Leadership
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 5:28 AM
After waiting for over four weeks while the Obama Regime dawdled, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has ordered the National Guard to go ahead and begin construction of sand barriers to protect the Louisiana Coast from oil.
In essence, he is daring the regime to shut him down, and daring the environmentalist whackos to sue him.
This is what leadership is. Leadership is taking action and getting stuff done. It's not whining about the problems you "inheritied," conducting seminars, or loudly proclaiming that you're looking for an ass to kick. And leadership entails the risk that your chosen course of action might not work.
Failure is always the risk of taking action, but it is the inevitable consequence of inaction in the face of crisis.
Item #3: When All Else Fails, Cry Racism
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 4:50 AM
The Partisan Democrat Talking Points Memo blog is delighted to inform you that Obama's lowest approval ratings are in the former slave states. Ipso facto, if you don't agree with Obama, it's because you want to bring back slavery.
This is one of those sweet little lies Obama's fanboys use to comfort themselves, so that they can feel virtuous while continuing to support their utter failure of a president.
BTW, according to NPR, Racism is also the reason conservatives don't care for soccer so much. White conservatives just hate sports played by brown people... except for football, baseball, and basketball.
Your challenge for today, find something that can't be blamed on racism.
Item #2: Kicking Organic Food Snobbery Up a Notch
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 4:35 AM
Now that even Wal-Mart is selling organics, the food snobs of the left had to figure out a way to maintain their narcissistic perception of moral ecological superiority. They have done so by creating a new level of food snobbery one step above organic, it's called "authentic."
To have an "authentic" label, food would have to be sold directly by the person or family who grew it -- no middleman. "Fresh fruits and vegetables, milk, eggs, and meat [would be] produced within a 50-mile radius of their place of final sale," Coleman wrote, suggesting possible standards. "The seed and storage crops (grains, beans, nuts, potatoes, etc.) [would be] produced within a 300-mile radius." Only "traditional processed foods" -- cheese, bread, wine -- could claim to be "made with authentic ingredients."
Moonbat one-upmanship. It's what they do instead of, you know, useful stuff. I think if we keep pushing them, eventually they'll have to eat dirt.
Hat Tip: Tony (not Toni) on Facebook
Morning Briefs for Tuesday Item #1: Good News Everyone
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 3:32 AM
Good Morning Right-Wing Patriots, Good Morning Silly Leftist Comment Spammers,
Massachusetts lawmakers passed an amendment on Monday expected to save the job of a public high school ROTC instructor who refused to pay teachers union fees.
State senator Richard R. Tisei introduced legislation last week on behalf of Maj. Stephen L. Godin, a retired Marine and ROTC instructor who was told he'd get the ax if he didn't chalk up a $500 teachers union "agency fee."
Tisei, who is also running for lieutenant governor on the Republican ticket, reintroduced the bill as an amendment to a supplement bill that was passed by the Massachusetts Senate and House. The language added to the bill exempts public school junior ROTC teachers across the state from having to pay union fees. It is now headed to Gov. Deval Patrick's office for signature. He has 10 days to sign it.
It's a good thing this is an election year, the one time Democrats occasionally side with the people against the special interests.
Now, if we could only get the public schools completely de-unionized, we might be able to save public education.
Hat Tip: AoS HQ
June 14, 2010
Who Are You?
Posted by Dave Blount at 8:43 PM
If North Carolina voters have the sense to throw the thuggish Dem Rep. Bob Etheridge out of office in the fall, maybe he can move on to a musical career:
On a tip from Wingmann.
Don't Make Excuses, Chides Bush-Blamer in Chief
Posted by Dave Blount at 8:36 PM
Naked Moonbats on Wheels Assail Energy Industry
Posted by Dave Blount at 7:09 PM
Maybe instead of sterilants, Obama's Science Czar should consider putting antipsychotic medication in the water supply:
This is why I don't live in New York anymore.
Via PolitiPage, on a tip from Oiao.
Open Thread
Posted by Dave Blount at 4:12 PM
Profiles in Countermoonbattery: Sophie B. Hawkins
Posted by The MaryHunter at 3:45 PM
Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter Sophie B. Hawkins has had enough of the hypocritical "socially aware" celebrities who go all out to raise awareness when a Republican president has a crisis on his watch, but simply circle the wagons when "their man" is in power and there's a national disaster. Instead, Ms. Hawkins is speaking out against celeb Obots and Chairman Zero himself.
A Hillary supporter, before, after, and between songs, Sophie lashes out at Hollywood's lack of response to the Gulf, President Obama's breathtaking lack of leadership, voices her opposition to the war in Iraq, and talks about becoming a "former liberal" who now feels the sting of apostasy and the pressure to tow the pro-Obama line.
In an interview with The Hill, Ms. Hawkins goes into more detail about her anti-Obama feelings.
The singer campaigned on the trail with Hillary Rodham Clinton during her presidential campaign, and told The Hill from her tour bus that she "never believed in [Obama's] philosophy" -- which she said runs contrary to her beliefs in "smaller government, smart government, flexible government."
OK, so as a self-professed progressive, Hillary may not have been the best choice of a candidate who was for "smaller government," but we digress.
"I think the writing was on the wall," Hawkins said. "I honestly couldn't believe so many people were into him."
She describes herself as a centrist who's identified with the Democratic and Green parties, but said even though she's never been Republican she wouldn't cross that vote off the list if the right leader came along.
In fact, she's open to a Republican Congress.
"I want the Congress that really is going to listen to the people," she said. "I really don't care what party it is anymore."
On top of her serious swaying away from the Left, Ms. Hawkins will donate all of the proceeds for her new single, "The Land, the Sea and the Sky," to the Waterkeeper Alliance, a gulf coast charity. That's much more, it's fair to say, than many of her fellow celeb "altruists" are doing.
Props to Sophie B. for going, rather vocally, against the grain. She even attended a Tea Party rally in Santa Monica that was attended by "mostly all Democrats." Sure, she's got a ways to go, but she has all the makings of a celeb convert to sensibility.
Moonbat Teachers Use School Assembly Honoring Military Service to Draw Attention to Themselves
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 3:21 PM
Two teachers at Dennis Yarmouth Regional High School have touched off a firestorm after holding up an "End War" sign at a school assembly where six students who've enlisted in the military were being honored.
The students received a standing ovation, but at that point the two teachers sat down refusing to clap.
Teacher Marybeth Verani defends her protest saying, "I'm showing students in a democracy how to exercise dissent."
Typical progressive leftists. Their narcissism demands that they become the center of attention at a program honoring others, and shove their left-wing politics in everyone's faces.
Separated at Birth?
Posted by Dave Blount at 3:02 PM
Their faces are almost as similar as their hate-based leftist politics:
The resemblance goes so deep, Helen Thomas might have a Nobel Prize in her future.
Compliments of The Only Other Conservative in Seattle.
Babies Need Protection From Animal Rights Fiends After Getting Mauled by Fox
Posted by Dave Blount at 1:36 PM
It's bad enough when small children are attacked by vicious wild animals — but there are worse creatures on the loose. From the madhouse known as Airstrip One:
The family whose babies were savaged by a fox in their cots are being given police protection over fears of an attack by animal rights activists.
Nine-month-old twins Lola and Isabella Koupparis were taken to hospital with 'life- changing' injuries that left them looking like 'something out of a horror movie' after a fox crept through patio doors left open nine days ago.
Isabella has only just been taken out of intensive care and is likely to be in hospital for at least another week, while Lola was allowed home on Friday, with facial scars and a bandaged arm.
In response to this horrifying incident, four foxes have been trapped and killed. Animal rights kooks are outraged.
Some, writing on a website called Urban Fox Defender, suggest the case is being used as propaganda in the campaign to bring back foxhunting, which was banned under the Labour government. … A police source said: 'We are aware that there is a potential threat', and an officer has been assigned to guard the family's home.
That's how crazy things are now. Give moonbattery another decade to corrode Britain's sanity and instead of trapping a few foxes, the authorities would demand that the Koupparis family leave their home lest their presence aggravate the furry little darlings.
On a tip from Smorfia48.
Newsweek Attacks Marriage
Posted by Dave Blount at 12:22 PM
You can't always learn what malignant objectives leftists are pursuing by listening to what they accuse the resistance of. Sometimes you have to stoop to reading their most execrable publications — like MSNBC's website, which recently proclaimed in flagrant opposition to all evidence that fathers are not needed, or Newsweek, which asks us to believe that marriage isn't either:
Once upon a time, marriage made sense. … But 40 years after the feminist movement established our rights in the workplace, a generation after the divorce rate peaked, and a decade after Sex and the City made singledom chic, marriage is — from a legal and practical standpoint, anyway — no longer necessary.
Since our liberal rulers stack the deck against marriage, we may as well abandon the whole notion:
Thanks largely to the efforts of same-sex-marriage advocates, heterosexual couples have more unmarried rights to partnership now than ever. … To put the icing on the cake, it often pays to stay single: federal law favors unmarried taxpayers in almost every case — only those whose incomes are wildly unequal get a real tax break — and under President Obama's new health plan, low-earning single people get better subsidies to buy insurance. As Diana Furchtgott-Roth, writing for the Hudson Institute, put it, "Goodbye, marriage." As of 2013, "unwed Americans may find it even more advantageous — financially, anyway — to stay single."
Even more astonishing arguments in favor of abandoning holy matrimony include the claims that "having children out of wedlock lost its stigma a long time ago" (maybe it has among liberals); "women who use their partner's [i.e., husband's] name are regarded as less intelligent, less competent, less ambitious, and thus less likely to be hired"; and "the permanence of marriage seems naive, almost arrogant." Anthropologist Helen Fisher is trotted out from her ivory tower to announce that humans are actually meant to have monogamous relationships that last only for three or four years. Apparently kids don't need families after that.
This pernicious garbage is belied by our moonbat overlords' motives in publishing it. American society has to be destroyed before it can be "fundamentally transformed" (i.e., replaced by something radically different and unspeakably vile). The liberal media's hostility toward the family confirms that it is what holds our civilization together.
On a tip from Ianto.
Where Are All Those Altruistic Celebrities?
Posted by The MaryHunter at 11:48 AM
In Hollywood, the crickets have been chirping in deafening fashion, lo these 55-plus days since the BP oil spill began. Where are our celebrities, who were so quick to jump on the bandwagons for Haiti, Darfur, and of course, Katrina? Very suspiciously MIA.
When you look at Hollywood's recent history in rallying for this kind of thing, you're left to ask why? Where are the telethons and public pleas for humanitarian assistance? [...] Is it that calling any attention to the ongoing catastrophe in the Gulf can only hurt Their One? What else could it be?
[...]
And in the Gulf, with the exception of Kevin Costner, all we've seen thus far from Hollywood are shockingly shameless A-listers covering for Obama and behaving in ways little better than price-gougers as they cravenly exploit this environmental and economic catastrophe to push their own political agendas.
By way of a wee comparison between past efforts and present pathetic ones:
According to Indiana University's Center on Philanthropy, donations to help have Haiti added up to $1.3 billion so far; Hurricane Katrina was an even bigger catalyst for altruism, commanding a whopping $5.3 billion. By contrast, the celebrity effort in the wake of the gulf oil spill has been a D-plus, B-list effort at best. [In mid-May], Lenny Kravitz, Mos Def, John Legend and others took part in Gulf Aid, a fundraising concert held in New Orleans, which producer Ben Jaffe says raised $350,000 for fishing families and wetlands restoration.
One might conclude that, if disasters happen in which there might be any hint of culpability from the government, well then they're OK to go and pitch for... unless it's not Bush 43's fault. Given this sick logic, maybe W should take one for the team and confess that it was all his doing.
The flip side is: at least the likes of Sean Penn are NOT down in the middle of the muck, screwing things up and drawing valuable gulf resources for their own rescue.
Update and Bump: Modern Civility
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 11:38 AM
When will people learn that you can't act in public the way left wing trolls act in the comment sections of right wing blogs?
Police say four customers in a vehicle at a Wendy's drive-thru lane midday Saturday claimed their order was incorrect. Police say they hurled drinks, hamburgers and fries at an employee inside.
Police say the employee then threw food at the vehicle, hitting it with a drink, ketchup and fries, and two people from the vehicle went inside the restaurant, where they fought with employees.
Source: Detroit News
Another great example of civility, Democrat congresscritter Bob Etheridge attacks a college student.
Leftish website Mediaite declares Bob Etheridge a hero for courageously assaulting the young students while doing a memorable Roger Daltry impression.
Update: The Democrat Party is defending Bob Etheridge on the basis of --- and I am not making this up --- the college kids in the video were probably Republicans, and it's okay to be rude, obnoxious and physical with Republicans. Especially those Republicans who ask a Democrat congressman if he supports a Democrat President.
Under Socialized Medicine, Belgian Nurses Admit to Killing Patients
Posted by Dave Blount at 8:42 AM
Our government-dominated healthcare future is already on display in Belgium, where liberalism has triumphed to the extent that many Belgian nurses freely admit to killing the patients in their charge:
A high proportion of deaths classed as euthanasia in Belgium involved patients who did not ask for their lives to be ended, a study found.
More than 100 nurses admitted to researchers that they had taken part in 'terminations without request or consent'.
The legal term for this is murder.
Since its legalisation eight years ago, euthanasia now accounts for 2 per cent of deaths in Belgium — or around 2,000 a year.
The researchers found that a fifth of nurses admitted being involved in the assisted suicide of a patient.
But nearly half of these — 120 of 248 — also said there was no consent.
Of course, those are only the ones foolish enough to admit to homicide.
It is likely many nurses "under-reported" their involvement for fear of admitting an illegal activity, the study said.
Dr. Peter Saunders, director of Care Not Killing, is trying to keep euthanasia out of Britain's already highly hazardous version of socialized medicine. As he remarks,
"We should take a warning from this that wherever you draw the line, people will go up to it and beyond it."
Especially when the people involved are acting on behalf of increasingly unrestrained Big Government.
Down the slippery slope we slide. At the bottom is a world in which only those deemed valuable to The State are allowed to exist.
On a tip from Anonymous Countermoonbat.
Senate Approves BHO's Pick of Pro-Criminal Judge Robert Chatigny
Posted by Dave Blount at 8:11 AM
The economy and the Gulf Coast aren't the only things Comrade Obama has been systematically destroying through left-wing extremism and/or incompetence; our legal system and by extension society itself are vulnerable to the dictates of the maniacs he's been appointing to federal benches. OpenMarket.org offers an example:
On a party-line vote, the Senate Judiciary Committee has approved President Obama's promotion of a federal judge who tried to block the execution of a serial killer and rapist known as the Roadside Strangler based on the unbelievable ground that this serial killer's "sexual sadism" was a mitigating factor. The judge did so even though this serial killer admitted his sentence was appropriate and did not seek to challenge it. Obama nominated this judge to serve on a federal appeals court known as the 2nd Circuit.
The judge in question, Robert Chatigny, could be onto something. If the Roadside Strangler Michael Ross can be excused for raping and murdering eight women because he's a victim of his own "sexual sadism," maybe Obama, his union enablers, and his crony capitalist bankrollers (Goldman Sachs, GE, BP, etc.) can be excused for looting our economy into incipient bankruptcy because they are victims of their own "pathological greed."
Roll Call is quoted on the judge with a special soft spot for sex criminals, even by liberal standards:
The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the nomination of Judge Robert Chatigny to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Thursday on a largely party-line vote despite stiff GOP opposition over his handling of child pornography and rape cases as a district court judge. With Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) abstaining on the vote, the committee's other 11 Democrats approved the nomination Thursday morning, while the committee's entire seven-member contingent of Republicans voted 'no.' In a series of cases involving defendants found guilty of child pornography, rape and sexual assault cases, Chatigny used the process of downward departure to reduce their sentences. Chatigny also played a central role in the 'roadside strangler' case. In that case, Chatigny allegedly threatened to pull the law license of the attorney for a convicted killer — who has been on death row for 15 years — unless he continued his efforts to have the sentence overturned."
Democrats are the party of victims, but only willing victims. Rape victims are on their own.
A moonbat activist like Chatigny will have plenty of company on the bench:
An even more radical Obama nominee, Goodwin Liu, was previously approved on a party-line vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Liu is a Berkeley law professor who believes that the Constitution requires racial quotas and welfare, and is hostile to "free enterprise, private ownership of property, and limited government." If confirmed by the full Senate, Liu would sit on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the nation's largest federal appeals court.
Then we have B. Hussein's picks for the Supremes, the aggressively racist Sonya Sotomayor and military-loathing Elena Kagan. If you think our courts are madhouses now, wait until the Manchurian Moonbat has had four years to stuff them full of his fellow fundamental transformers of America.
On a tip from Rosalind.
Think R E C O V E R Y !
Posted by The MaryHunter at 6:00 AM
This image of our times still inspires despondent yet determined Patriots everywhere.
2010/2012/2013
On an inspirational tip from Sewer Rat, Michèle, and Bergbiker.
Item #3: The Celebrity King and Queen of America
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 4:45 AM
New York Waste of Times Columnist Nicholas Kristof's has suggested that the USA anoint a celebrity king and queen to serve as a distraction from Obama's bumbling incompetence. (Although I think what he actually may have said was handle the ceremonial duties so Obama could get more "work" done.)
Lunaticcringeradio Blair-Warnered a brilliant idea that we should mock Kristof's idea further, perhaps by suggesting hilarious celebrities that could serve as our monarchs. Or, maybe we could just do what trendy high school seniors are doing and make a couple of lisping gay dudes King and Queen.
Morning Briefs for Monday Item #1: Another Victory for Progressive Censorship
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 4:34 AM
Good Morning Right-Wing Patriots, Good Morning Left-Wing Pom-Pom Girls for Fascism, *
In the spirit of Angelo Carusone, YouTube has removed the popular "We Con The World" video, allegedly over "copyright concerns." Even though the Supreme Court has ruled that parody is fair use.
This is on top of Paypal shutting dowm Pamela Geller's (Atlas Shrugs) account, alleging that her blog is a "hate site."
Progs will quibble that Angelo Carusone, PayPay, and YouTube have nothing to do with each other, or even that none of these cases are really even censorship per se. But the common thread is they all represent progressive efforts to silence opinions they don't like (i.e. "hate speech").
* With many apologies for anyone who spontaneously pictured lao, andy, and fez in cheerleader outfits just now.
June 13, 2010
Open Thread
Posted by Dave Blount at 7:24 PM
Pelosi: We'll Stop Blaming Bush When the Problems Go Away
Posted by Dave Blount at 7:21 PM
Wondering when our Democrat rulers will stop blaming their failures on the previous administration? Probably never, according to Nasty Pelousy, who says she'll stop blaming W "when the problems go away":
Apparently there are no chronological limits to W's culpability.
On a tip from Edward.
Why Not Just Clear It Up?
Posted by Dave Blount at 7:12 PM
I know, I know, if we don't just drop this, moonbats will squawk that we're "Birthers," as if that somehow settles the issue. But here's another reminder that we don't even know where the Manchurian Moonbat was born:
B. Hussein's birthplace is the least of our problems. But it's likely that somewhere hidden in his off-limits background are more serious concerns. Otherwise, why doesn't Mr. Transparency just let the public know who he really is?
On a tip from Turkey Lurker.
Gulf Coast: Another Victim of Obama's Love of Unions
Posted by Dave Blount at 2:03 PM
From the very beginning, other countries kindly offered oil skimmers to mitigate the damage from the Deep Horizon spill. But they were prevented from helping in the name of the Jones Act, which restricts the activities of foreign ships in American waters. Why not just set the Jones Act aside, as W did after Katrina? Apparently because it would allow for labor not controlled by the unions that helped put Comrade Obama in power:
If Chairman Zero would sacrifice our staggering economy to his overpaid public sector union cronies with a massive bailout, why wouldn't he sacrifice the Gulf Coast? According to the script, Big Oil will get blamed for the mess anyway. Fortunately, not everyone is dim enough to accept Administration spin.
On tips from Edward and J. Hat tip: Flopping Aces.
PayPal Tries to Shut Down Pamela Geller
Posted by Dave Blount at 12:15 PM
Imagine what it would be like to live under Islamic rule. If you organized protests against building a giant mosque next to Ground Zero to commemorate the Muslim triumph on 9/11, the authorities would shut you down, just as they would for being involved in resistance organizations like Freedom Defense Initiative and Stop Islamicization of America. Putting a graphic like this on your blog could really get you in trouble:
Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs has committed all the offenses listed above. Consequently, the establishment is attempting to shut her up — not in some futuristic dystopian caliphate but right here in 2010 American. As punishment for offending The Prophet, PayPal is threatening to cut off her account after labeling Atlas Shrugs a "hate" site. For a blogger, this is the equivalent of not being allowed to use currency.
Bizarre and horrific as it is, most of us are beginning to come to grips with the fact that our liberal Democrat rulers side with the Islamic maniacs at war with America. But it isn't necessarily only our Democrat rulers. As American Spectator points out,
PayPal is a division of the online market eBay, whose former CEO Meg Whitman recently won the Republican gubernatorial nomination in California.
The rot of moonbattery has eaten into every sector of our culture. Where there are moonbats, there will be censorship and dhimmitude coercively imposed by jihadists' useful idiot allies.
On tips from Stormfax and Rosalind. Hat tip: iOwnTheWorld.
Keep Trying, You'll Get It Right Yet
Posted by Dave Blount at 11:17 AM
Imitating the customs of patriotic little people must be harder for our rulers than you might expect. Check out the wedding rings and buttons if you think this picture was flipped:
At least Comrade Obama is trying now, which is more than his apologists used to be able to say.
On a tip from Oiao.
Update:
Looks like this one goes under Fake But Accurate, as explained in the comments.
The Coming Economic Train Wreck, Courtesy of Obama
Posted by The MaryHunter at 8:45 AM
The brilliant and amazingly understandable economist Art Laffer warns of the coming doom in 2011: a double-dip recession fueled by President Obama's overdrive deficit-spending policies and the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. The two spell a one-two knockout punch for the American economy.
In a recent WSJ article, Laffer explains it in a bit more detail. The take-home message:
Now, if people know tax rates will be higher next year than they are this year, what will those people do this year? They will shift production and income out of next year into this year to the extent possible. As a result, income this year has already been inflated above where it otherwise should be and next year, 2011, income will be lower than it otherwise should be.
Also, the prospect of rising prices, higher interest rates and more regulations next year will further entice demand and supply to be shifted from 2011 into 2010. In my view, this shift of income and demand is a major reason that the economy in 2010 has appeared as strong as it has. When we pass the tax boundary of Jan. 1, 2011, my best guess is that the train goes off the tracks and we get our worst nightmare of a severe "double dip" recession.
Of course, if Chairman Zero's aim is to destroy the American economy so as to give himself more cause to step in and take over more industries, then one must admit that he's doing exactly what he and his progressive lackeys intended.
Angelo Carusone - Progressive Hero
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 8:14 AM
Angelo Carusone is a law student at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has become a hero to the Progressive Left through his obsessed crusade to get Glenn Beck off the air through advertiser boycotts.
Armed with his homemade transcripts, Carusone dispatches letters or e-mails to corporate executives asking them if they are aware that their ads are running in an hour when Glenn Beck said, "[insert newest offensive sound bite]." Many times, that's enough to make advertisers pull their commercials, although Carusone admits that by now his reputation for peskiness may help grease the wheels.
And it doesn't stop with Glenn Beck. Carusone is determined to force everyone who expresses an opinion he disagrees with off the air. "Carusone is mounting similar campaigns targeting Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and CNN."
The progressive left rationalizes this with lame BS like: "We're not censoring him, we're just trying to hold him accountable." Nonsense. This is about the left trying to silence any prominent person who expresses an opposition opinion.
It's much easier than constructing a counter-argument, disputing facts, or defending the progressive movement's long history of failure and fascism.
Obama's Drilling Moratorium Boosts Economy
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 5:48 AM
Specifically, the Brazilian economy.
Brazil could benefit from the BP Gulf of Mexico spill as a U.S. moratorium on offshore drilling boosts available rigs for the country's deep water oil exploration program.
Even as an ecological catastrophe makes the future of U.S. offshore drilling less certain, Brazil is plowing ahead with a $220 billion five-year plan to tap oil fields even deeper than BP's (BP.L) ill-fated Gulf well, which is still leaking crude.
With an estimated 35 rigs idled in the Gulf of Mexico, Brazil is already receiving inquiries from companies looking to move their rigs here, where vast discoveries in recent years may soon turn the country into a major crude exporter.
Also, from Gateway Pundit, the Feds are banning flights over the oil slick. Nothing to see here, comrades. Move along.
But don't worry, comrades, Glorious LReader has a new brilliant plan to fix the economy, $50 Billion in SEIU and Teacher's Union bailouts. And that's just a down payment. The public pension systems have over a trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities. As one commenter at AoS HQ accurately states:
If Obama has his way, the average citizen will be bound into indentured servitude to support legions of overpaid government workers whose main utility to the State is a reliable Democratic vote come election day.
June 12, 2010
Obama Administration Is Completely Unprepared for Next Major Terror Attack
Posted by Dave Blount at 5:25 PM
The government has had nearly a decade since 9/11 to prepare itself for the next major attack, which will likely dwarf the World Trade Center atrocity with the help of weapons of mass destruction. But a recent report from the inspector general of the Justice Department reveals that our current rulers have been spending their time no more fruitfully than they spend our money. As Peggy Noonan explains,
the crucial job of Justice is to manage and coordinate law enforcement and step in if state and local authorities are overwhelmed.
So how would Justice do, almost nine years after the attacks of 9/11? Poorly. "The Department is not prepared to fulfill its role … to ensure public safety and security in the event of a WMD incident," says the 61-page report. Justice has yet to assign an entity or individual with clear responsibility for oversight or management of WMD response; it has not catalogued its resources in terms of either personnel or equipment; it does not have written plans or checklists in case of a WMD attack. A deputy assistant attorney general for policy and planning is quoted as saying "it is not clear" who in the department is responsible for handling WMD response. Workers interviewed said the department's operational response program "lacks leadership and oversight." An unidentified Justice Department official was quoted: "We are totally unprepared." He added. "Right now, being totally effective would never happen. Everybody would be winging it."
The inspector general's staff interviewed 36 senior officials involved in the department's emergency response planning and summarized the finding: "It was clear that no person or entity is managing the overall Department's response activities." You could almost see them scratching their heads and saying, "No one's in charge here."
Be appalled, but don't be surprised. The Justice Department is run by people who are aggressively sympathetic to the Islamic terrorists who may unleash a holocaust by the time you finish reading this.
The rest of the Obamanation Administration is no more likely to keep us safe:
Six months ago, the bipartisan Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism gave both the Obama administration and Congress failing grades on preparedness for biological attack. It said, "the US is failing to address several urgent threats, especially bioterrorism."
Elections have consequences. If the consequences of taking moonbattery to the psychotic extreme of putting Barack Hussein Obama in the White House are not catastrophic, it will be the greatest stroke of luck in history.
On a tip from Varla.
Open Thread
Posted by Dave Blount at 4:52 PM
Never Again
Posted by Dave Blount at 4:45 PM
Never again. You can say that again.
On a tip from Turkey Lurker.
NAACP Hallmark and the Facebook Flame War
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 3:52 PM
My link to the Hot Air Post about the NAACP's Hallmark stupidity led to a rather amusing Flame War on Facebook when one of my white liberal friends first defended the NAACP and then proceeded to lecture my African-American niece-in-law about how she should feel oppressed by white privilege. I've put that Flame War into Robot Theater format.
Notes: In two spots, the comments her character makes in the cartoon are comments I actually made on Facebook. Xtranormal only allows two characters. She was okay with the substitutions. Also, the exchange went on after it stops here, but I had already started making the cartoon by then. Also, the dialogue has been edited because raw comments don't always work as dialogue. Um, I think that's pretty much all the caveats.
Chucky Is for Israel
Posted by The MaryHunter at 11:47 AM
Senator Chuck-U Schumer is certainly a lot of things, but it turns out that now he's a supporter of the Gaza blockade. Here he is in a speech at an Orthodox Union event in Washington, D.C.
Among his comments:
During one point of his speech, Schumer turned his attention to the situation in Gaza. He told the audience that the "Palestinian people still don't believe in the Jewish state, in a two-state solution," and also that "they don't believe in the Torah, in David." He went on to say "you have to force them to say Israel is here to stay."
This is ticking off a lot of anti-Israel liberals and Arab Hamas supporters, needless to say. So, it must be a good thing.
Is is safe to actually give Schumer props for anything? It feels so uncomfortable...
Reconquistador Menaces Elderly Patriots
Posted by Dave Blount at 9:53 AM
In the interests of fairness, let's listen to the point of view of a presumed opponent of Arizona's SB1070. Here an eloquent Reconquistador shares the finer points of his ideology with Tea Party patriots in Monterey County, California. As you might expect, the language is not suitable for children, work, or civilized company.
On tips from SR and J. Hat tips: Gateway Pundit, P/Oed Patriot.
Must Be a Slow News Week
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 9:30 AM
Since Newsweek is featuring yet another Sarah Palin hit piece on their cover this week, I have to conclude that there is nothing going on in the world that's more important than smearing a private citizen who is not in public office. I have to assume that the Gulf Oil Spill, the European Debt Crisis, the Escalating of Tensions in the Middle East and on the Korean Peninsula, the Mexican Drug War, the imminent collapse of the Euro, the Rise of Islamism in Turkey, the arrest of Jihadists in New Jersey, Chris Christie's budget cutting crusade, the USA's worsening relations with Great Britain, the Sestak/Romanoff/Blagojevich scandals, the wretched May economic numbers, ... all of these stories are less important than doing yet another hit piece on Sarah Palin.
ACORN Confesses!
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 8:45 AM
We all knew it was true, and admissions from ACORN employees are proving we were right all along.
The radical activist group ACORN "works" for the Democratic Party and deliberately promotes election fraud, ACORN employees told FBI investigators, according to an FBI document dump Wednesday.
The documents obtained by Judicial Watch, a watchdog group, are FBI investigators' reports related to the 2007 investigation and arrest of eight St. Louis, Mo., workers from ACORN's Project Vote affiliate for violation of election laws. All eight employees involved in the scandal later pleaded guilty to voter registration fraud.
The handwritten reports by FBI agents show that ACORN employees reported numerous irregularities in the nonprofit group's business practices.
According to one report, an ACORN employee said the purpose of "[f]raudulent cards" was "[t]o cause confusion on election day to keep polls open longer," "[t]o allow people who can't vote to vote," and "[t]o allow to vote multiple times."
Hat Tip: Knowledge Is Power.
June 11, 2010
Bill Maher Is a Far King Idiot — Again
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 8:56 PM
I know you knew that already, but check out his latest rant comparing oil workers to child pornographers and suggesting they should lose their jobs and go to work building windmills.
New rule - stop talking about jobs being lost in a murderous, hateful industry like it's a bad thing. Now, last week I may have hurt a few feelings when my response to the complaint that jobs will be lost in the offshore drilling business was, "F--- your jobs." But I meant it. And it goes double for burning coal and chopping down redwoods. Sorry, roughnecks, but eventually you're going to have to find something else to do. Try building windmills. You know what happens when windmills collapse into the sea? A splash. You know, it's Washington gospel that jobs in the private sector are better than government jobs. You even hear Democrats saying it. But oil jobs are private, and look at the toll this industry takes: cooking the planet; enslaving us to Saudi Arabia; killing animals. If the government hired away all the 58,000 oil workers who work now in the state of Louisiana, and paid them their same salary to work repairing infrastructure and building solar panels, it would cost us $5.5 billion which the Pentagon loses every day in the couch. Wouldn't that be worth it? Is working on an oil rig really that great a job anyway? You spend weeks at a time on a floating well in the ocean. Do you want to avoid your family that bad, take up golf. Yes, the oil industry creates jobs - so does the kiddie porn industry.
Let's just extract a few of the utterly idiotic ideas in that statement.
- Oil makes us dependent on Saudi Arabia, so we should shut down domestic drilling.
- Government jobs are better than private jobs, so everybody should work for the Government. I guess we'll just borrow money from China to pay everybody.
- Windmills and solar panels can supply all of our energy needs.
- We don't need oil for plastics or fertilizers or anything.
- The oil industry is "murderous and hateful." Hateful? As opposed to a Hollywood creep telling people he hopes they lose their jobs?
- Working on an oil rig seems unpleasant to Bill Maher, let him tell you what kind of job you should have.
- Oil = child pornography.
- By implication, Coal mining = child pornography (Since he hates people who do those jobs, too).
- Also, Logging = child pornography.
Remember, this is the idiot who insisted that Brazil was "off oil" even though they get a higher percentage of their energy use from oil than the USA does; 49% versus 27% in the USA.
Man, I Wish I Were in This Guy's District
Posted by The MaryHunter at 6:17 PM
I grew up in the West, but it was the Way Too Far West. Now as an East Coaster stuck in a blue-gerrymandered congressional district in a reddish purple county in a bluer-than-blue state, I long for the chance to someday live in a district where I could vote for somebody like Bob McConnell (3rd Congressional District, Colorado).
I am a man of faith, a Constitution carrying, conservative Republican. I am a retired Colonel, Airborne Ranger, finished my military career in the JAG Corps, and am a recovering lawyer. My decision to run for political office for the first time in my life was born in the anger I felt with the political deceit, rampant spending and corruption in Washington. I share your anger at what is happening to our country, and your determination to take our country back. I have been endorsed by Combat Veteran's For Congress as well as Sheriff Richard Mack. I am proud to have been endorsed by the Grand Junction Results, Bear's Ears Patriot and the Southern Colorado Tea Parties.
You go, Bob.
Hat tip: SondraK.
Why No One Who Shouts "Racism" Will Ever Be Taken Seriously Again
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 2:11 PM
Dumb: The NAACP whining that a greeting card with a reference to "Black Holes" is racist.
Dumber: The MFM treating this as a legitimate complaint.
Congratulations, NAACP. You make Amos and Andy look like rocket engineers by comparison
Source: Hot Air by way of AoS HQ
Cash for Clunkers Was a Clunker
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 1:23 PM
Economically ignorant progressives praised the Obama Regime's "Cash for Clunkers" Program as a brilliant example of what Government Intervention could accomplish in terms of Economic Stimulus. Conservatives said it was a waste of billions of dollars to bribe consumers into buying new cars in August instead of September. Who was right? Let's take a look at the graph.
I think conservatives got the better part of that argument.
Source: Coyote Blog
Obama Regime Lied to Justify Drilling Moratorium
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 12:07 PM
The seven experts who advised President Obama on how to deal with offshore drilling safety after the Deepwater Horizon explosion are accusing his administration of misrepresenting their views to make it appear that they supported a six-month drilling moratorium -- something they actually oppose.
The experts, recommended by the National Academy of Engineering, say Interior Secretary Ken Salazar modified their report last month, after they signed it, to include two paragraphs calling for the moratorium on existing drilling and new permits.
I'm not saying this means the Chairman Zero Regime is more interested in promoting an anti-drilling agenda than in cleaning up the spill.
But, I'm not not saying it either.
Beam Me Up, Scotty!
Posted by The MaryHunter at 11:36 AM
Courtesy of TOS (sort of), via iOwnTheWorld.
How Often Do You See an Unfrozen Caveman Hippie Call a RINO a Nazi?
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 11:01 AM
Moonbeam Brown, the Australopithecus nominated by California Democrats as their gubernatorial candidate launches his campaign by comparing his "Republican" rival Meg Whitman to a Nazi.
Referring to billionaire Republican Meg Whitman's willingness to spend up to $150 million of her own money to win the election, [KCBS reporter Doug Sovern] quotes Brown as saying, "It's like Joseph Goebbels. Goebbels invented this kind of propaganda. He took control of the whole world. She wants to be president. That's her ambition, the first woman president. That's what this is all about."
Moonbeam probably hasn't heard of "Godwin's Law." But he's to be forgiven for that. It's one of those new-fangled internet things. And like most of our modern ways, it confuses and frightens him.
On the other hand, like everyone else running for statewide office in California this year, Meg Whitman both sucks and blows. This should be called the Year of the Oreck. So, what will it be, California? A fossilized seventies retread, or Ahnuld's third term in drag?
Update: Moonbeam has an explanation for his comment. It doesn't count because he was jogging when he said it. He went on to explain that jogging was a hip new fad and all the young people were doing it.
Carly Fiorina may have stepped in it big-time with her catty hair comment. To a thinking person, it's a non-issue, but to others, it reinforces her HP image as tart and unpersonable. (No wonder she and McCain hit it off.)
Funny how the most unexpected things can throw off a campaign. Not funny that this gets more media play than Ma'am Boxer dressing down a general in a petty and obnoxious way.
Obama Economic Recovery Right On Track
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 10:15 AM
Following up on the super-terrific May jobs news that the Obama fanboy blogs failed to mention, and the awesometacular 1,100 point May stock market drop that they also didn't post about, retail sales in May declined 1.2%.
But, hey, this is probably our fault for expecting Obama to be Superman.
Hat Tip: The Blogmocracy
Open Thread
Posted by Dave Blount at 8:59 AM
Mystery Candidate Alvin M. Greene Worked Hard, Got His Message Out to Voters
Posted by The MaryHunter at 8:50 AM
Alvin M. Greene (D-Neverland) is ready to fight for the South Carolina United States Senate seat and no one, not even him, is exactly sure how or why.
This is a candidate who displays even more nebulous nuance than did Barack Obama in 2008. He doesn't even have a catchy non-slogan slogan yet. Still, he knows how to get his message out, in a manner of speaking. Or not speaking.
Among the excuses offered up for how an unemployed, sexual-harassment-accused, Army-Air Force veteran who lives with his parents ascended to this candidacy is that he is black. Imagine that: being nominated because of the color of your skin. Indeed, the flood of cynical racism that flows through the Democrat party knows no limits.
Sister Toldjah collected a few other theories.
On articulate tips from TrickleUpPolitics and Fred C. Dobbs (thanks for the info, Fred).
WaPo Columnist: Obama Not to Blame for Not Living Up to Our Hype Americans' Unrealistic Expectations
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 8:46 AM
Obama, fairly enough, is reaping what he sowed in assigning himself an impossible mission as a global savior. But Americans are his culpable enablers. Few people want to hear this, but he's doing the best he can, considering the difficult circumstances that he and the nation face. And what he needs most from the public is a quality that distinguishes adults from children: patience.
Or, put another way: America, grow up!
Excuse me, Mr. Starobin, but wasn't it you and your colleagues in the MFM who sold us this bill of goods that Obama was an agent of change, a light-worker, "one of the smartest presidents ever," "1 of the 1000 smartest people in America," "sort of God?" Didn't Obama declare himself to be Superman when he said...
This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth. This was the moment--this was the time--when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves and our highest ideals.
Did Mr. Starobin or anyone at the WaPo criticize this speech as over the top? I Googled it and didn't find any criticism.
The MFM were uncritical cheerleaders for this guy throughout 2008 and will wave their pom-poms for him again in 2012. And this dimbulb Starobin blames the American people for having unrealistic expectations?
And since when is mere competence in a president an unrealistic expectation? Yeah, maybe only Superman could have personally plugged the oil hole. But you don't have to be Superman to let Royal Dutch Shell come in to siphon up the spill with 50 available supertankers, to let Bobby Jindal build protective sand berms, or to deploy miles of oil booms that are sitting in a warehouse in Maine.
Something else, too... when Lex Luthor was threatening to heap devastation on the world, Superman didn't nip off for a round of golf, party with Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder, or head of to San Francisco to raise funds for Barbara Boxer.
Obama isn't Superman. He's not even Jimmy Olsen.
Solar Energy Oppresses Fish
Posted by Dave Blount at 8:44 AM
Government-mandated green energy is wonderful for the crony capitalists at GE, but not so nice for animals. Not only do the hideous windmills sprouting up on our dime hack birds to pieces, now we learn that solar panels kill off the insects fish need for food.
Solar panels might be a cornerstone of green energy, but new research shows that they may have a dark side: the panels are a mesmerizing, lethal attraction to certain aquatic insects, drawing them to the panels' surface and trapping them there until they die.
"It's like these organisms become dazzled to death," said Bruce Robertson of Michigan State University's W.K. Kellogg Biological Station in Hickory Corners who led the study. "It's like going to the most amazing 3D movie you've ever seen and you can't leave. They just fly and fly and fly over these surfaces, and they get exhausted and die."
Kind of like liberal journalists watching an endless loop of Comrade Obama's teleprompter readings. But insects are much more useful than liberal journalists.
The potential insect losses are important, Robertson said, because the insects provide food for fish and other aquatic species. "Aquatic insects are a fundamentally important base of the aquatic food web," he said.
No problem. Although every program imposed by the government results in negative unintended consequences, these can be dealt with by imposing more government programs. When the Census is over, BHO can keep the unemployment numbers looking less awful by paying the unemployed to sprinkle fish food wherever the aquatic insects go missing. Borrowing a few hundred $billion more from the ChiComs ought to cover it.
On a tip from Oiao.
Militant Gays Demand to Donate Risky Blood
Posted by Dave Blount at 8:00 AM
The shrieking fairies of the homosexual rights movement must figure that everyone bends over too far to be nice to them for them to maintain their privileged role as put-upon victims. That would explain why they go so far out of their way to infuriate anyone with less patience than a saint. This ought to work – they're demanding the right to donate their possibly AIDS-tainted blood:
Gay rights organizations say the regulation [forbidding blood donation by homosexual men] discriminates against gay and bisexual men. They point out that heterosexual men who have had sex with an HIV-positive partner or a prostitute are barred from donating blood for only 12 months after that contact.
Could it be that homosexuals tend to wallow in a shockingly degenerate lifestyle that makes it much likelier that their blood is infected? Yes it could:
The FDA, explaining the current policy, points out that men who have had sex with men since 1977 have an HIV prevalence that's 60 times higher than the general population. The agency contends its first obligation is to ensure the safety of the blood supply.
However, politically correct posturing and pandering to the homosexual lobby are much more important than the safety of the blood supply. Just ask Hanoi John Kerry:
Still, a group of U.S. senators and representatives, led by Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts and Rep. Mike Quigley of Illinois, this week asked the FDA to end its "discriminatory" ban.
They'll probably get their way, considering the caliber of the people running Washington. Already the travel ban on HIV carriers entering the country has been lifted, to the accompaniment of Obamanation Administration duckspeak about stigma and stereotypes.
At least if a little kid goes in for a blood transfusion and consequently dies slowly of a horrific disease that is normally only acquired by those who ask for it, he can crawl to his grave with the satisfaction of knowing that no perverts were stigmatized.
Here's an idea for Obama's Science Czar John Holdren: instead of sterilants, maybe he could find some way to put AIDS in the water supply. If everyone had AIDS, we would achieve equality — what a triumph over the stereotyping indulged in by bigots who associate diseases with high-risk behavior!
On a tip from Ianto.
Alvin M. Greene (D-Neverland) for Senate
Posted by The MaryHunter at 7:05 AM
Sexual predator allegations notwithstanding, Alvin Greene has certainly managed to go from zero to a bit more than 15 minutes of fame. The Democrat nominee, duly elected by South Carolineans to run against Republican Jim DeMint for United States Senate, is nothing if he isn't articulate.
"I'm the Democratic Party nominee," Greene says in the interview at his father's home on a lonely stretch of rural highway in central South Carolina. "The people have spoken. The people of South Carolina have spoken. The people of South Carolina have spoken. We have to be pro-South Carolina. The people of South Carolina have spoken. We have to be pro-South Carolina."
[...]
"I check my e-mail, like, it varies, maybe -- I'm more, I mean -- two or three times a week," he says. "I prefer the telephone. I'm a little old-fashioned. I prefer the telephone. That's the easiest."
[...]
A campaign flier lies on the table. "Satin green," he says proudly. "It's pretty. I like that." Greene won't say who printed it or where it was distributed. He cautions that it's his only copy and should be handled with care. Asked how many fliers were printed, he says "hundreds," then pauses.
"Maybe thousands. Hundreds. Maybe a hundred. I don't know exactly."
Hmm, I guess that means he's nothing. Or to be fair, he's at least an enigma that is poetically emblematic of the best that the Obama Kool-aid Democrat generation can offer. The chairwoman of the South Carolina Democratic party did try to talk Mr. Greene out of running, even said he could get his $10,400 campaign filing fee refunded. But nope. Mr. Greene was, and still is, in it for the long haul.
Whatever it is he thinks he's in, that is.
Naturally, liberal pundits and the folks at The Washington Post believe that Greene was a secret plot by Karl Rove the Republicans to put forth a fabulously weak candidate against Jim DeMint, so as to try and secure this vulnerable Republican's Senate seat. Of course, Sen. DeMint is as vulnerable as a polar bear facing down a naked liberal blogger armed only with an iPad.
OR: could it be that Greene is really a Democrat Party plot, an effort to read the writing on the wall and save political resources for another day? Inquiring minds are uninterested.
Item #4: Sarah Palin Post! Swarm! Swarm!
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 6:30 AM
Sarah Palin had a pretty good night last Tuesday. Candidates she endorsed won in California, South Carolina, and Nevada. This has led right-wing bloggers to write about her influence within the Republican party, and has led left-wing bloggers to launch a new internet rumor that she has had breast implants.
So, what is the story circulating among the lefty blogs and now worming its way into traditional media regarding Sarah Palin today? Not the success of the candidates she endorsed, but, rather, her breasts. That's right. The big question of the day, first promulgated by the always inane Wonkette, is whether or not Sarah Palin had breast implants. I suppose we should just be grateful that it's not incessant investigation of her uterus again, although I'm sure Andrew "I've finally lost my already weak grasp on sanity" Sullivan will work that in somehow.
If you wanna know why the left is so bitter and nasty toward attractive Republican women, consider their women for a second. Hillary Clinton. Debbie "Did Someone Say Cake" Stabenow. Barbara "Gargoyle" Mikulski. Nancy "The Cryptkeeper" Pelosi. I get the bitterness and the need to start catty internet rumors. I really do.
Item #3: The Moral of This Story Is: Keep It to Yourself, Teach
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 3:52 AM
Elizabeth Collins was a teacher at a private girls' school in Philadelphia. When one of her students delivered a speech in class about "Obama's Lies," Collins (a progressive Obama-cultie) whined about it on her blog. When the girl's parents complained, she went to her blog and whined about them, too. So, the school fired her (which private schools can actually do to bad teachers, unlike public ones).
Despite The Philadelphia Inquirer's best attempt to spin the teacher as the victim, anyone remotely familiar with how progressives lie can see through the thin tissue of rationalization and victimhood she spins; blaming the student and the parent for her own bad judgment. But the end of the story gives some hope that even progressive teachers can learn their lessons.
In an interview, Collins said she was not sure she wants to return to the profession. "I feel so vulnerable," she said. "If something this weird can happen, I'm not sure that I want to do it again."
She's not sure she wants to write whiny little rants about her students on her blog again? Good, message received and understood.
Item #2: How We Know the MFM Is Just Making Up the "Threat" of Tea Party Violence
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 3:47 AM
Chris "Tingles" Matthews recently did a propaganda piece on the "rising threat of Tea Party violence." Ace argues that this proves there is no real threat of Tea Party violence, because if there really were, Chris Matthews et al. would be going out of their way not to upset the Tea Partiers, instead of attacking them at every opportunity. After all, when was the last time you saw MSDNC do a show on the threat of Muslim extremist violence? The MFM never talk about threats from people they are genuinely afraid of.
Morning Briefs for Friday Item #1: Alien Culties Against Capital Punishment
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at 3:13 AM
Good Morning Right-Wing Patriots, Good Morning HopeandChange-o-nauts,
Way back in 1985, Ronnie Lee Gardner shot to death Michael Burdell while trying to escape from jail in Utah. He was sentenced to death, but has been allowed to continue breathing my air for 25 years. Which is probably longer than he would have survived as a criminal on the outside, but I digress. Gardner is supposed to die by firing squad next week, but Burdell's family is pleading for the "justice" system to allow him to live.
And that's where it gets really weird.
The two are members of a Salt Lake City-based religious movement called Summum. Burdell was also a member. Summum was founded in 1975 by the late Corky Ra, also known as Summum Bonum Amon Ra, after he said he was visited by other beings.
Nu said in her statement she met Burdell while the two were living in Arizona and she was making frequent trips to the Summum center in Utah. She introduced Burdell to the movement, and he became a member. They moved to Salt Lake City in 1982.
"In addition to Michael's personal beliefs, the Summum faith opposes capital punishment,"
I looked into this SUMMUM cult a little further. And I found out its basic belief system.
1. SUMMUM is MIND, thought; the universe is a mental creation.
2. As above, so below; as below, so above.
3. Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates.
4. Everything is dual; everything has an opposing point; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; extremes bond; all truths are but partial truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled.
5. Everything flows out and in; everything has its season; all things rise and fall; the pendulum swing expresses itself in everything; the measure of the swing to the right is the measure of the swing to the left; rhythm compensates.
6. Every cause has its effect; every effect has its cause; everything happens according to Law; Chance is just a name for Law not recognized; there are many fields of causation, but nothing escapes the Law of Destiny.
7. Gender is in everything; everything has its masculine and feminine principles; Gender manifests on all levels.
About what you'd expect from a religion created by someone named Corky in 1975 who claimed to talk to aliens.
They also mummify their dead. And their dead pets.
Weird.
June 10, 2010
Comrade Obama Opens Another Pair of Eyes
Posted by Dave Blount at 7:28 PM
A Tea Party message from Rachel Higgs, a lifelong Democrat who voted for Obama:
Before this nightmare is over, there will be an entire generation of new conservatives converted by Chairman Zero. It will be the only thing anyone has to thank him for.
On a tip from Henry.
Counterdhimmi Ringtone
Posted by Dave Blount at 7:06 PM
Just for laughs, here's a ringtone guaranteed to elicit screams of righteous indignation from every moonbat within earshot.
Compliments of Turkey Lurker.
Is It Too Soon to Name Obama Worst President in US History?
Posted by Dave Blount at 6:56 PM
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) doesn't think so:
With every passing day of this catastrophic farce, more agree.
On a tip from Stormfax.
Separated at Birth?
Posted by The MaryHunter at 6:28 PM
On an astute observation from Son of Taz.
Federalizing Your Retirement: Ready for WealthCare?
Posted by The MaryHunter at 5:55 PM
As reported here back in January, Chairman Zero is interested in your 401k. Very interested. Whatever could be a bigger boon to a government drowning in unimaginable debt than to let that government seize control over the trillions of dollars worth in assets held by you, me, and 61% of private-sector working Americans? Proponents of federalizing pension plans claim that, due to the recent (Democrat-policy-enabled, subprime-mortgage-induced) financial meltdown, millions of Americans are less confident of the financial system and are at serious risk of losing their pensions. That idea went over like a lead balloon with 90% of 3,000 households surveyed by the Investment Company Institute, but it hasn't stopped the Obama regime from dreaming that dream.
Oh sure, the government sought out public input on the idea this spring (barely publicized; only 700 folks commented) and at least two detailed reports were prepared.
Two reports referenced in recent Committee hearings and the U.S. Labor and Treasury departments' joint RFI discussed government-run options. The Annual Report of the White House Task Force on the Middle Class, released in February, strongly favors automatic IRAs, annuitization, and GRAs (see Annual-report-middle-class.pdf). A July 2009 Government Accountability Office report on private pensions prepared for the House committee details the advantages and trade-offs of alternative retirement options currently under consideration (see GAO-09-642.pdf).
One option would be the Universal 401(k) Plan giving every worker, including part-time employees and recent hires not yet eligible for an employer-sponsored plan, access to a government-administered defined contribution retirement savings account. Workers would be enrolled automatically unless they opted out.
The Guaranteed Retirement Accounts plan proposes a mandatory system with both defined benefit and defined contribution features. The report makes it clear in footnote 79 that this system would work only if everyone has to participate: "A mandatory retirement system cannot ensure 100 percent coverage if certain groups, such as very low-income workers, are exempt from the mandate."
The report also warns that requiring workers and employers to contribute to any type of pension plan would increase the costs and divert funds from other uses, such as employers' business expenses and workers' basic necessities. Under such a scenario, employers might have to reduce compensation to employees, disproportionately affecting lower-income workers and small businesses.
[...]
Finally, the report concludes that any centralization or nationalization of the private pension system, especially one that guaranteed a rate of return, "may be a costly and complex effort that requires new regulatory and oversight efforts. These costs could be passed on to workers, employers, and taxpayers in general."
Mmmm, more regulatory and oversight efforts by the government. Who'da thunk? Just imagine what could happen to the retirement assets of millions of Americans if Uncle Sam got hold of them. Those assets would become IOUs faster than Obama's post-election plummet in the polls, and the fruits of the government regulatory and oversight efforts would doubtless be redistributed through funding of numerous unfunded mandates.
As Roger Daltrey sang: "I hope I die before I get old." I sure as hell won't have any way to afford getting old, if things irrevocably go the Hopeychange way.
On a rich tip from Bergbiker.
What Was Really Written on Sarah Palin's Hand
Posted by Dave Blount at 5:04 PM
Crist Ditches "Pro-Life" Page from Campaign Web Site
Posted by The MaryHunter at 3:45 PM
In what could never be considered a political move in any way, Florida Independent Governor Weasel Charlie Crist does a curious thing to his campaign website: he scrubs references to his "pro-life" views.
In the latest development in the race for the open U.S. Senate seat in Florida, Governor Charlie Crist is coming under fire for removing the pro-life section of his campaign website. This comes on the day the legislature sent him a bill that would allow women to see an ultrasound of their baby before an abortion.
Crist has already hinted he will veto the legislation, which also allows Florida to opt out of some of the abortion funding under the new national health care law President Barack Obama signed.
Sounds like endorsement-hunting to me -- but the thought of actually seeking out the blessing of his mancrush Barack Obama means he must be completely oblivious to the whole Obama Touch thing.
Perhaps Crist just wants to distinguish himself in some teensy way from Republican gubinatorial candidate Marco Rubio, who is avidly pro-life. The Rubio campaign made a screen shot of the pro-life page that used to appear on the Crist for Senate web site, just for old time's sake.
Could it be that Crist is even more cynical than Sen. Arlen Specter, who jumps and shifts parties like cheap dates but who has been consistent in his avidly pro-abortion stance throughout his career?
