Monday, November 21, 2011

POLITICAL DIGEST 11/22/2011 CONSERVATIVE


JFK Anniversary
It’s been 48 years since President John Kennedy was murdered by a Communist who had connections with Castro’s secret service. An excellent history article in American Heritage last year made the connection clearly, and attributed it to retaliation for Robert Kennedy’s efforts to eliminate Castro. The media, of course, blamed the murder on the climate of hate created by the right wing. They are still at that meme, despite decades of leftist violence.

Sorry for no digests since Friday
Between trying to clean out a condo for sale and healthcare appointments, I haven’t turned on a computer in three days. Thus today I had 601 e-mails on my three addresses, and this digest will be rather long. Had to delete many unread, jokes, cute stuff, and political stuff without links. Things that came in formatted for the blog all got in, I think. Thanks to all the blog feeders. Hope you were entertained by the posts I left behind, linked below if you missed them.

Liberal Swan Song

An Ode From 1949

Occupy Bagram

Look! Up in the sky!


Supercommittee appears unlikely to reach agreement
Agreement is not the goal of either party. Putting the blame for the coming pain on the other party is the goal. Unfortunately, the Dems have the media on their side, like having the refs with you in a football game. ~Bob.

Deficit supercommittee members expected to announce failure
Excerpt: The supercommittee is expected to make plain on Monday that it will fall short of its deficit-reducing mandate, an outcome many in Washington have expected for days. The panel technically has a Wednesday deadline for their deficit-reduction package, which must be at least $1.2 trillion over a decade to avoid across-the-board cuts.

Why Conflict with Public Unions Will Continue
Excerpt: Notwithstanding the recent demise of reform in Ohio, conflict over government labor relations is far from over and is very likely to continue. This is especially the case in states where the public workforce is heavily unionized and where slow economic growth will cause persistent budget problems -- especially as pension and health benefits for retired workers crowd out other parts of their budgets. Yet the recent strife between state lawmakers and local labor unions brings to the forefront the pervasive and harmful effects of public-sector unionization, says Daniel DiSalvo, a senior fellow with the Manhattan Institute. In the 1950s, about one-third of nonagricultural workers belonged to unions, yet this is the high-water mark for aggregate unionization. Today, only about 6 percent of private-sector workers belong to unions, while public-sectors have become drastically more powerful in recent decades. While less than 10 percent of full-time public employees were unionized in 1960, this figure has grown to 36 percent today, dwarfing this same share in the private sector.

Iran may have sent Libya shells for chemical weapons
Excerpt: The Obama administration is investigating whether Iran supplied the Libyan government of Moammar Gaddafi with hundreds of special artillery shells for chemical weapons that Libya kept secret for decades, U.S. officials said. The shells, which Libya filled with highly toxic mustard agent, were uncovered in recent weeks by revolutionary fighters at two sites in central Libya. (And why would Iran have shells to deliver chemical weapons? Part of their peaceful nuclear program I suppose? ~Bob.)

Excerpt: House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is blaming President Obama for the failure of the congressional supercommittee to reach a deal for cutting the deficit. The Speaker’s office sent out a memo Monday morning that says the supercommittee “was unable to reach agreement because President Obama and Washington Democrats insisted on dramatic tax hikes on American job creators, which would make our economy worse.”

Democrats’ ‘Satan sandwich’ starts tasting pretty good http://thehill.com/homenews/house/194473-dems-satan-sandwich-starts-tasting-pretty-good-
Excerpt: The bipartisan debt-limit deal, famously called a “Satan sandwich” by a prominent Democrat this summer, is looking more heavenly to the left. Republicans crowed after striking the agreement with President Obama, while congressional Democrats cried foul. Despite the White House’s endorsement of the bill, 95 House Democrats voted against it. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), chairman of the Budget Committee, subsequently said Republicans called Obama’s bluff. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said he got 98 percent of what he wanted in the deal. Three months later, members of both parties are looking at the deal much differently.

VIDEO: Allen West to Media: "Stop Being Afraid of this President...The Guy Sitting at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is Destroying this Country" - (Jim Hoft, Gateway Pundit)
Excerpt: Rep. Allen West blasted the corrupt media for shirking their responsibility and ignoring the devastating policies of President Obama. CNS News reported: Congressman Allen West (R-Fla.) called on the media to “stop being afraid” of President Barack Obama who is “destroying this country.” West made his remarks on Tuesday at a press conference in support of the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline. (Here he comes! Yes! - Kate in LA)

Huffington Post Lays Steaming Pile For Sharia and Islamic Slavery - (KGS, Tundra Tabloids)
Excerpt: Yes, the HuffPo author really said the Koran is against slavery. Koran: 33:50 – “Prophet, We have made lawful to you the wives to whom you have granted dowries and the slave girls whom God has given you as booty.”

Pentagon Receives Massive Bunker-Busting Bombs, Denies Targeting Iran
Excerpt: Pentagon officials are speaking publicly about the military's new 30,000-pound massive ordnance penetrator, or MOP, known now as the biggest "bunker-busting bomb" in the world. The Air Force has already received an undisclosed number of these bombs from Boeing, all designed to fit exclusively with the B-2 and B-52 bombers. "It gives us a far greater capability to reach and destroy an enemy's weapons of mass destruction that are located in well protected underground facilities... to a magnitude far greater than we have now," Pentagon Spokesman Capt. John Kirby said at a briefing Wednesday. (All well and good, but we need to test it to see if it works. Say, I have an idea…~Bob.)

English Defence League Stitched Up By The 'Occupy' Movement - (Pyrus, English Defence League)
Excerpt: The reason given for the arrests (surprisingly no one was charged…) was that someone had allegedly put on a social networking site that the EDL intended to confront the protestors camped outside of St Paul’s Cathedral. As Brendan says, the reason for the arrests was that “they might have been thinking about doing something dodgy.” Here’s a newsflash for the British government: anyone who spends their time, for example, burning flags, burning poppies, telling us how ‘the West will pay’, or showing solidarity with various terrorist groups around the world… those people ‘might be thinking about doing something dodgy.’

Egypt, Syria, Turkey: The Lepers With The Fewest Fingers - (Robert P. Goldman, Pajamas Media)
Excerpt: With the financial news focused on the unraveling of Europe’s state finances, the mounting economic catastrophe in the Muslim world has barely merited a mention. Egypt and Syria are about to go over a cliff, while Turkey, supposedly the poster boy for Islamic success, faces a nasty economic reversal — not a catastrophe of Egyptian proportions, but sufficient to destroy Tayyip Erdogan’s reputation as an economic wizard and make his fractious country hard to govern.

$1.4 Billion Payoff to Kennedy Green Energy Swindle
Excerpt: President John F. Kennedy’s nephew, Robert Kennedy, Jr., netted a $1.4 billion bailout for his company, BrightSource, through a loan guarantee issued by a former employee-turned Department of Energy official. As always with massive green energy fraud, the crime boils down to money laundering by Obama to pay off campaign donors.

The American Platoon: The Battle of Fallujah and its impact on a group of young Marines
Excerpt: First Platoon suffered some of the highest casualties in Fallujah: four killed in action — Lance Cpl. Nick Larson, Lance Cpl. Nathan Wood, Lance Cpl. Mike Hanks, and Lance Cpl. Benjamin Bryan — and 31 wounded, many more than once. But in many ways, what happened in Fallujah paled in comparison with the sacrifices the men have made since.

Why Islam is Not a Religion - (Rebecca Bynum, New English Review)
Excerpt: So even if one disobeys Islam, it is still God’s will that he did so. If there is no difference between man’s will and God’s will, there is no God to seek. In Islam God is unknowable – he is completely transcendent and his will is all things. Theologically this is the equivalent to saying there is no God.

Michele Bachmann: Waterboarding Is 'Uncomfortable,' But It Would Be 'Absurd' To Have The President Try It
She is NOT CFR, Trilateral Commission, or Bilderberg, NOT Federal Reserve, never flirted with the Dems, is who she is, I see a real person here. (I didn't say she was perfect). She is for ending deficit spending and debt. Last year you were rooting for Cain, this week it is Newt. You've been holding your nose so far. Now take a deep breath of fresh air. --Don Hank

What UCLA Students know about Israel
“Jaywalking” ignorance on display. Cute girls though, even if dumb. ~Bob.

Florida's Medicaid Reform
Excerpt: During its five years of operations, Florida's Medicaid Reform Pilot has been a decided success, improving the health of enrolled patients, achieving high patient satisfaction and keeping cost increases below average. Since then, Florida has passed its Statewide Reform, which promises to extend these benefits throughout the state. If Florida's Medicaid Reform Pilot experience were replicated nationwide, the outcomes in almost every facet of the program would be significantly improved and would offer participants meaningful reforms to a system that has been falling into decay, says Tarren Bragdon, of the Heritage Foundation. The pilot program, which was isolated to five counties in Florida, saved an estimated $161 million per year, with an aggregate estimated annual savings of $1.9 billion when the reform is put in place statewide. Researchers suggest that if a similar program were to be put in place nationwide, it would save $91 billion annually.

Road to Nowhere
Excerpt: Economists have long recognized the value of infrastructure. Highways, bridges, airports and canals are the conduits through which almost all goods are transported. But the kind of infrastructure spending the government has been indulging in since 2008 is unlikely to produce much of a stimulus as it is not timely, targeted or temporary -- three requirements recognized by Larry Summers, former Obama advisor, for effective stimulus, says Veronique de Rugy, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center. With regard to timeliness, infrastructure improvement is difficult to make happen quickly because it is notorious for being a multistage process.

Focused on Foreign Policy by Edwin J. Feulner
Excerpt: When the presidential debates between George W. Bush and Al Gore were held in October 2000, the 9/11 attacks were less than a year away. Guess how many times “al Qaeda” or “Osama bin Laden” came up in those debates? Not once.

Worth Reading: So-Called Electability and MSM Bias
Excerpt: Can you imagine how differently our political climate would be if the mainstream media had the slightest inclination toward fairness and balance? The liberal media have never, to my knowledge, shined the spotlight on Obama's many embarrassing gaffes. They have rarely called attention to his deceit, broken promises and policy failures. Part of the reason is their presupposition that because he's a credentialed left-winger, he is brilliant, and any departure from that is a mere aberration, an exception that couldn't possibly detract from his presumptive brilliance. And as a bona fide "progressive," he is imbued with superior moral standards, and his misdeeds must be excused in exchange for his dedication to policies the liberal media deem are ethically unassailable.

Fodder for a Counterargument by George Will
Excerpt: Shortly before the Supreme Court agreed to rule on the constitutionality of Obamacare's individual mandate, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit affirmed, 2-1, its constitutionality. Writing for the majority, Judge Laurence Silberman, a Reagan appointee, brusquely acknowledged that upholding the mandate means there is no limit to Congress' powers under the Commerce Clause. Fortunately, Silberman's stark assertion may strengthen the counterargument. Silberman forces the Supreme Court's five conservatives to face the sobering implications of affirming the power asserted with the mandate.

The Pipeline Sellout by Charles Krauthammer
Excerpt: In 2008, the slogan was "Yes We Can." For 2011-12, it's "We Can't Wait." What happened in between? Candidate Obama, the vessel into which myriad dreams were poured, met the reality of governance. His near-$1 trillion stimulus begat a stagnant economy with 9 percent unemployment. His attempt at Wall Street reform left in place a still too-big-to-fail financial system as vulnerable today as when he came into office. His green energy fantasies yielded Solyndra cronyism and a cap-and-trade regime not even a Democratic Congress would pass.

Dear Average American: It's All Your Fault by Jonah Goldberg
Excerpt: Congratulations, average American! It's your turn to be blamed for President Obama's -- and America's -- problems. This is the biggest honor you've won since Time magazine named "you" the Person of the Year. Being the root cause of our dire national predicament puts you in some very august company indeed. You are joining the ranks of George W. Bush, the Japanese tsunami, the Arab Spring, Wall Street fat cats and other luminaries, both living and merely anthropomorphized.

American spies outed, CIA suffers in Lebanonhttp://apnews.myway.com/article/20111121/D9R53CD80.html
CIA now stands for “Caught In the Act.” ~Bob. Excerpt: The CIA's operations in Lebanon have been badly damaged after Hezbollah identified and captured a number of U.S. spies recently, current and former U.S. officials told The Associated Press. The intelligence debacle is particularly troubling because the CIA saw it coming.

The Double Standard on Booing
Excerpt: Yesterday First Lady Michelle Obama and Jill Biden appeared at the last NASCAR race of the season to serve as co-grand marshals and shout “Gentlemen, start your engines!” The appearance was part of the Joining Forces initiative and yesterday, according to the White House, FLOTUS was joined by “5,000 active duty and retired military personnel and families and thousands of NASCAR fans” and was loudly booed when her name was announced over the loud speakers.

Happy Halal Thanksgiving by Pamela Geller
Excerpt: Did you know that the turkey you're going to enjoy on Thanksgiving Day this Thursday is probably halal? If it's a Butterball turkey, then it certainly is -- whether you like it or not. … Others object because of the cruelty to animals that halal slaughter necessitates. Where are the PETA clowns and the ridiculous celebs who pose naked on giant billboards for PETA and "animal rights"? They would rather see people die of cancer or AIDS than see animals used in drug testing, but torturous and painful Islamic slaughter is OK. (Sure enough. I went to the Butterball site and they DO tout their turkeys as Halal (Islam) approved. (see link and message below). You know what galls me the most? Even though the Jewish population is many times greater than the Muslim population, at least in the US, they slap Jewish customers in the face by omitting Kosher approved from the list! There is a decided anti-Jewish and pro-Islam bias everywhere in the West right now, instigated by the elites, and it is part of our corporate culture. Some unwary folks, esp in Europe, have bought into their message that somehow, Israel, the most democratic nation in the Middle East, is worse than the other countries -- NONE of which allow Jews to settle there, some of which even refuse travel visas to Jews -- even though Israel has no such restrictions for Muslims. And of course, Israelis do not make a habit of bombing Western cities, executing women for not wearing their hijabs, or for converting to Christianity. Big companies like Butterball are extremely arrogant when they do this sort of thing, because they think they are too big to fail and that somehow, their Muslim customers (less than 1% of their business) come first (around Christmas time, for crying out loud???). Folks, I for one will NEVER buy another Butterball product! I hope some of you will join me in this life long boycott. BTW, Butterball is always the most expensive turkey at the places we used to shop. Why pay more for the right to be insulted?). --Don Hank)

The Left-Behinds
Excerpt: But in many ways, the people here are part of a much broader trend toward long-term unemployment in America. As in Braddock, and now a slew of communities laid low by the housing bubble and bust, the phenomenon can feed on itself and create a vicious cycle of disappearing jobs, declining incomes, higher foreclosures, and more layoffs. (…) “We have a large population in their teens or 20s with relatively low levels of education,” says Jeff Michael, a labor expert at the University of the Pacific (Stockton). “It’s a huge problem: a whole generation of young people who are going to find difficult employment prospects.” (When I refer to a medium (like the National Journal) as being “center-left” or (like Daily Beast) “left-center,” what I’m referring to is the degree I perceive them as supporting individual rights and the economic expression of those rights in the form of capitalism. I generally consider Daily Beast to be more anti-capitalist than National Journal, but reading this article makes me wonder if I should rethink that. The politics of the media may not change the essential truth of the news being reported, but it will change the presentation—or lack of presentation—and can do so in ways that impact the truthfulness of the news. Several times in this article, the author makes reference to “unfettered capitalism” (or uses similar phrases) and makes clear he’s against it. The implication is that “unfettered capitalism” is what we have now, and look how bad it is. The author seems to think highly of the state-dominated industrial systems of China and other “command economies” in mostly formerly communist countries.  In a capitalist economy, property is owned and controlled by private citizens. In a communist economy, property is owned and controlled by “the people” as embodied in the state. In a fascist economy, the property is OWNED mostly by private citizens, but is CONTROLLED by the state. By those definitions, almost all national economies are fascistic. In particular, we in the USA do NOT have—and have never had at any time in the past—an “unfettered capitalism.” Instead, we get the worst of all worlds, a regulatory state trying, ineptly, to control an economy that they neither understand nor like (it’s STILL too damned free!). This is more than splitting hairs. The problem is not enough capitalism rather than too much of it. This article is almost an object lesson in how to slant the news. Ron P.)

Mexico Attorney General Wants U.S. Gun Walkers Extradited
Excerpt: Mexico's top cop Attorney General Marisela Morales has requested the extradition of six people suspected of providing guns to drug cartels. She told the Mexico's lower house of Congress last Wednesday three of the suspects are in Texas and three are in California. Morales did not mention the gun walking operation known as Fast and Furious nor did she name the individual suspects. But, according to the Latin American Herald Tribune, "One of the requests involves three people believed to have acquired a large number of weapons under the Fast and Furious program." (Wouldn’t you love to see Holder and Obama doing a perp walk in Mexico City? ~Bob.)

Obama’s Half-Billion-Dollar Crony Drug Deal
Excerpt: What do you get when you mix Democratic fat-cat donations, Big Labor favors, pharmaceutical lobbying and Beltway business as usual? Answer: another toxic half-billion-dollar Barack Obama-approved crony deal. Move over, Solyndra. Here comes Siga-Gate. This latest Chicago-style payoff on your dime involves a dubious smallpox drug backed by a liberal billionaire investor, along with a former union boss who was one of the White House’s most frequent visitors. They’re the “1 percent” with 100 percent immunity from the selectively outraged Occupier mobs that purport to oppose partisan government bailouts and handouts to privileged corporations. (If someone breaks one window in your neighborhood, you notice. When half are broken, you tend to tune them out. So it is with Obama’s Crony Socialism deals. ~Bob.)

Gunwalker scandal broadens--the FBI connection
Confidential informants who are participating in the Congressional probe of the Project Gunwalker (Operation Fast and Furious) scandal have now zeroed in on the FBI connection. Such a connection has been hinted at in the past, but information relayed today shows that FBI involvement was much deeper than anyone imagined. The investigation into Gunwalker has revealed a scandal involving multiple departments of the Obama Administration--Justice, FBI, ATF, ICE, DEA, DHS, and State. These connections have been verified through previously hidden emails and documents, and sworn testimony of whistleblowers.

The Hillary Moment: President Obama can't win by running a constructive campaign, and he won't be able to govern if he does win a second term.
Excerpt: When Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson accepted the reality that they could not effectively govern the nation if they sought re-election to the White House, both men took the moral high ground and decided against running for a new term as president. President Obama is facing a similar reality—and he must reach the same conclusion. He should abandon his candidacy for re-election in favor of a clear alternative, one capable not only of saving the Democratic Party, but more important, of governing effectively and in a way that preserves the most important of the president's accomplishments. He should step aside for the one candidate who would become, by acclamation, the nominee of the Democratic Party: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

#OWS Hijacked: #OccupyCongress Next Steps On Unions’ Agenda
Excerpt: Did it really need to take two months for New York City Mayor Bloomberg to figure out that unions have hijacked the #OccupyMovement? Most sane observers knew that from the very start when the Transport Workers Union in New York endorsed the squatters in Zuccotti Park, opening the flood gates for other unions, the Democrats, and the institutional Left to climb on board. Since then, unions have provided paid protesters, legal representation, money, advertising, and even offered their property to the #OWS movement.

The Enablers: Democrats On Board with the Party of the Rich
Excerpt: Even with control of the House, Republicans couldn't divert tax money to the rich without help from key Democrats in the Senate. (Rolling Stone calling OWS. Come in, OWS. Sorry, sir they are too high to be reached. ~Bob.)

A Gold Rush of Subsidies in Clean Energy Search
Excerpt: Halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, on a former cattle ranch and gypsum mine, NRG Energy is building an engineering marvel: a compound of nearly a million solar panels that will produce enough electricity to power about 100,000 homes. The project is also a marvel in another, less obvious way: Taxpayers and ratepayers are providing subsidies worth almost as much as the entire $1.6 billion cost of the project. Similar subsidy packages have been given to 15 other solar- and wind-power electric plants since 2009. (Even the cheerleading NYT may be starting to understand the financial costs required to “make green energy possible.”. Ron P.)

The Coming European Superstate That Germany Plans To Cram Down The Throats Of The Rest Of Europe
Excerpt: A lot of people were puzzled about what German Chancellor Angela Merkel meant when she recently stated that the ultimate solution to the financial crisis in the EU would "mean more Europe, not less Europe". Well, now we are finding out. A leaked internal German government memo entitled "The Future of the EU: Required Integration Policy Improvements for the Creation of a Stability Union" actually proposes the creation of a "European Monetary Fund" which would be given the power to run the economies of troubled European nations.

Camp Pendleton didn't see cross flap coming
Excerpt: A memorial cross atop a Camp Pendleton hillside installed by former Marines and widows of troops killed in Iraq is prompting a fight that base officials say they didn't see coming and are scrambling to resolve. The cross, erected Nov. 11 in the Camp Horno area in the northern portion of the 125,000-acre base, has raised the ire of a military atheist group, whose leader says it's an unconstitutional tacit endorsement of Christianity.

Romney Under Fire for Free Healthcare to Illegals
Excerpt: Texas Gov. Rick Perry, stung by opponents for allowing in-state college tuition for children of illegals, has leaped on reports that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s signature healthcare measure gave free care to undocumented immigrants. “Governor Romney’s government-mandated healthcare plan provided free care for illegal immigrants in Massachusetts, establishing just the kind of illegal immigration magnet Governor Romney claims to oppose,” Perry spokesman Mark Miner said.

Wonderful: Occupy Mob Now Defecating Inside St Paul's Cathedral
Excerpt: These are just horrible human beings, if you can actually call them that. I’d call them animals but that would be an insult to our furry friends. How much longer much people suffer this assault on decency?: The St Paul’s Cathedral protest camp has become littered with human waste and graffiti, while alcohol and drug use are rife, according to legal documents filed by the City of London.

The Desecration of St Paul's - Melanie Phillips
Excerpt: The cathedral authorities are thus recording grossly uncivilised, antisocial behaviour which, in their own words, is desecrating the holy space of St Paul’s Cathedral. And yet, as we all know, the same cathedral authorities have refused to take action to end this affront to decency in their own churchyard. They have washed their hands of it and in effect dumped the entire mess into the lap of the City of London Corporation, so that the church can continue to show that its own heart bleeds for the poor.
Not only is this egregious hypocrisy, but it tells us more clearly than ever before that when it comes to defending a civilised society against its wreckers – indeed, when it comes to defending the church itself against sacrilege and desecration – the Church of England will be on the wrong side.

Wind farms are useless, says Duke
In a withering assault on the onshore wind turbine industry, the Duke said the farms were “a disgrace”. He also criticised the industry’s reliance on subsidies from electricity customers, claimed wind farms would “never work” and accused people who support them of believing in a “fairy tale”.
73% Think Most Bailout Money Went To Those Who Caused Economic Crisis
Excerpt: Americans believe more strongly than ever that most of the government bailout money for the financial industry went to those who caused the economic meltdown and that the government hasn’t tried hard enough to bring Wall Street criminals to justice. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 73% of American Adults now think most of the bailout money went to the people who created the economic crisis.

Ethiopian troops move into Somalia: witnesses
Excerpt: Scores of Ethiopian military vehicles pushed at least 80 km (50 miles) into neighbouring Somalia on Saturday, residents said, five weeks after Kenya entered Somalia to fight Islamist militants it blames for a wave of kidnappings on its soil.

Muslim with U.S. passport blows himself up in Pakistan
Excerpt: Why not? No screening -- absolutely none -- is done of Muslims who immigrate to the U.S. to try to determine whether or not they hold jihadist sentiments. As imperfect as such screening would inevitably be, the fact that there is none is an indication of how willfully blind official Washington is. They assume that only a tiny minority of Muslims are "Islamists," and know that it would be the height of "Islamophobia" to question prospective entrants into the country about these matters in any way. "Man with US passport blows himself up in Pakistan," from AP, November 19.

Mark Steyn: Penn State's Institutional Weakness
Excerpt: For the sake of argument, let us so stipulate. Nevertheless, as the Canadian blogger Kathy Shaidle wrote some years ago: "When we say 'we don't know what we'd do under the same circumstances,' we make cowardice the default position." I quote that line in my current book, in a section on the "no man's land" of contemporary culture. It contrasts the behavior of the men on the Titanic who (notwithstanding James Cameron's wretched movie) went down with the ship and those of the École Polytechnique in Montreal decades later who, ordered to leave the classroom by a lone gunman, meekly did as they were told and stood passively in the corridor as he shot all the women. Even if I'm wetting my panties, it's better to have the social norm of the Titanic and fail to live up to it than to have the social norm of the Polytechnique and sink with it.

Mark Steyn: Wolf Whistling
Excerpt: Rich, re that “Man Arrested And Charged In Bomb Plot,” don’t worry about Señor Pimentel also being “known as Muhammad Yusuf.” Mayor Bloomberg has already pronounced him a “lone wolf“:

Sick: Sandusky Victim Bullied Out Of School - Jammie Wearing Fool
Excerpt: Apparently these folks in Pennsylvania still can’t come to grips with the fact Joe Paterno will no longer be coaching in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child molestation scandal. Now we learn that “Victim One” has been forced to leave school during his senior year of high school because he’s being bullied by kids upset with Paterno’s firing.

Five Los Zetas members caught in Chicago police dragnet
Excerpt: “One indictment in this group signals the first federal prosecution in Chicago of defendants allegedly tied to Los Zetas drug-trafficking cartel, and the seizures of cash represented a significant blow to the operation of this alleged money transportation cell.” -- Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois.

America Before the Entitlement State - Yaron Brook and Don Watkins
Excerpt: If you were homeless in Chicago in 1933, for example, you could find shelter at one of the city’s 614 YMCAs, or one of its 89 Salvation Army barracks, or one of its 75 Goodwill Industries dormitories. “In fact,” writes Trattner, “so rapidly did private agencies multiply that before long America’s larger cities had what to many people was an embarrassing number of them. Charity directories took as many as 100 pages to list and describe the numerous voluntary agencies that sought to alleviate misery, and combat every imaginable emergency.”

The Dull Bigotry of BBC Europhiles - Daniel Hannan
Excerpt: There was a feeble gag on [BBC] Radio 4 just now which imagined Nigel Farage, the UKIP leader, protesting that Queen Victoria 'shouldn't have married a German'. In Beebworld, obviously, anyone who criticises the EU is secretly motivated by xenophobia. There was, though, a slight flaw in the joke, of which the scriptwriters were evidently unaware. Nigel Farage is himself married to a German.

Foreign Hackers Target U. S. Water Plant - Ellen Nakashima
Excerpt: Experts said the cyber-attack, if confirmed, would be the first known to have damaged one of the systems that supply Americans with water, electricity and other essentials of modern life. Companies and government agencies that rely on the Internet have for years been routine targets of hackers, but most incidents have resulted from attempts to steal information or interrupt the functioning of Web sites. The incident in Springfield, Ill., would mark a departure because it apparently caused physical destruction.

Walking along Avenue J(ew) by Arnold Ahlert
On Wednesday, it was reported that some vandal had sprayed a sign at the Brooklyn subway stop on Avenue J, and turned it into Avenue "Jew." Here are some of the comments left by readers. All of the grammar, syntax and spelling--or lack thereof--has been left intact: "It's about time!" "the Jews deserve everything they get." "yes while you have been swindling the masses with your Zionist Jewish supremacy and your chosen people sham...but worst then you are your so called christian goyim stooges" "Nearly every "anti-semitic" thing you`ve seen on the news in the last 10 years has been by a jew." "US support of Israel and interference in the Arab world caused 9/11."

Excerpt: One oil pipeline could provide more energy than all of America’s solar and wind power. The two big energy stories of the moment are the Obama administration’s announcement that it will wait another year before making a final decision on the Keystone XL pipeline, and the continued pummeling of the Department of Energy and Energy Secretary Steven Chu for their handling of the $529 million loan guarantee to Solyndra.(Cost doesn’t matter. Energy is judged as to how warm and fuzzy it makes liberals feel, not what the poor and working class have to shell out of it. ~Bob.)

14,000 abandoned wind turbines
Excerpt: As Jimi Hendrix may have put it: “And the wind cries bankrupt…” Minnesotans for Global Warming report that in the last 30 years, the United States has had 14,000 wind turbines abandoned. Apparently, once the subsidies and the wind run out, these 20-story high Cuisinarts are de-bladed and retired. This means more bats and migratory birds will live.

Spain Rejects Socialism - Only 3% of EU Citizens Now Have Left-wing Governments - Daniel Hannan
Excerpt: Congratulations to Mariano Rajoy, whose Partido Popular has won a thumping victory in Spain: nearly eleven million votes to the Socialists' seven million, 186 seats to their 110. It's not often that you get the same headline in ABC and El País , but a result on such a scale allowed no room for interpretation: the two old rivals agreed that Spain had entrusted her future wholly to the conservatives.

Insight: In Iowa, Farmland Boom Means End of an Era for Many - Reuters
Excerpt: Across the Midwest, the dizzying surge in rural land prices is accelerating a fundamental reshaping of the farm sector in the world's biggest food exporter. Instead of digging in to benefit from the boom in grain prices, the next generation is opting to cash out of the small, family-owned farms that harbor centuries of rural wisdom and deep tradition.

The Accountability Charade
Excerpt: You can't spell "accountability" without "A," "C" and "T." But in Washington, government officials routinely get away with "taking personal responsibility" by mouthing empty words devoid of action. Heads nod in collective agreement that mistakes were made. But heads never roll. The Obama administration has raised this accountability charade to an art form.

Greasing the solar skids
Excerpt: So it turns out that Solyndra may be just the tip of the iceberg that is the Obama administration’s politically charged energy-loan scandal. Even as Energy Secretary Stephen Chu was on Capitol Hill this week, claiming — against all the e-mail evidence — that the White House played no role in the Solyndra debacle, came word of an even bigger potential scandal. Turns out a California-based “green jobs” firm with a troubled financial history got a $1.4 billion Energy Department loan guarantee — three times the size of Solyndra’s jackpot — despite mountains of debt.

Goldman Sachs Rule the World - James Delingpole
Excerpt: "The governments don't rule the world. Goldman Sachs rules the world," claimed a shockingly outspoken trader, Alessio Rastani, on the BBC two months ago. "The savings of millions of people are going to vanish," he said, warning viewers they should "get prepared" because "economic crisis is like a cancer, if you just wait and wait thinking this will go away, just like a cancer it's going to grow and it's going to be too late."

Tunisia: Islamic party figure who announced aspirations to caliphate selected as prime minister
excerpt: "Last Sunday, [Hamadi] Jebali, the party's number two official, alarmed some by bringing up 'the caliphate'." The Ennahda party did not sweep him under the rug in embarrassment for reportedly going on about his personal aspirations to be a modern-day successor to the first few rulers of the entire Islamic world after Muhammad's death, the "rightly guided" caliphs. They have not reacted with alarm at the implied aspirations for ruling beyond Tunisia's borders. No, he was a favorite for the office of prime minister, and it is now more or less official that he will assume the office.

VIDEO: Occupy Portland Man Places Small Child Between Himself and Police

DUMB: Occupy Wall Street Will Pledge To Refuse Paying Back Their Student Loans. DUMBER: Professors from NYU, CUNY Back Them Up.
Excerpt: I know academia is completely detached from reality (hence the rampant belief in socialism) but these professors do realize students tuition pays their salaries? Via The College Fix: Forgiveness of student loan debt has emerged as one of the most consistent demands of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Later today, New York-based protesters will announce a new campaign aimed at accomplishing this goal... (Time to cancel the student loan program. They are borrowing money and not getting educated. ~Bob.)

Michelle booed at NASCAR

Make 29% On Your Money, Guaranteed!
Excerpt: Finally, the total subsidies for this plant were $1,430 million dollars. So this single “successful” green project will cost the consumerthree times what Solyndra cost. And in return … we get energy priced at 50% above the market. Thanks, Energy Department, glad to know you have my back. (A perfect example of crony capitalism and how it hurts us all. This isn’t just happening in California, it’s in every state. But, green energy is GOOD for you, isn’t it? Except for the part that empties your wallet, of course. Emphasis is in the original. Ron P.)

Officially Establishing Transsexual Freakazoids as Legally Superior
Excerpt: Assuming the bill passes the upper chamber and gets avidly pro-pervert Governor Coupe Deval’s signature, men will have a “right” to barge into the women’s locker room and take off their clothes. But don’t worry — this only applies to sexual deviants. If your wife or daughter is accosted in the restroom by a person of privileged perversity, try to restrain the natural impulse. Assaulting normal people is bad; in a moonbattocracy, assaulting perverts is worse:

Protesting Hate by Promoting Anti-Semitism
"Iranophobia," an irrational fear of all things Iranian, has become the Islamic regime's catch-all excuse for international criticism. Groups like the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the representative body of the world's Muslim nations, are pushing for a United Nations resolution to ban denigration of Islam and other religions. But hate towards Jews remains a key part of political speech and culture throughout Islamic countries, even those touched by the Arab Spring. A "Million Man March against the Judaization of Jerusalem," organized by Egyptian-American Imam Salah Sultan, is planned for Monday in downtown Cairo.

The 1% of the 99% - Moonbattery
Excerpt: No matter how often moonbats make a pageant of it, you can’t help but be astonished at the sheer massiveness of their hypocrisy. From the egalitarian utopia of Occupy Wall Street: The $700-per-night W Hotel Downtown last week hosted both Peter Dutro, one of a select few OWS members on the powerful finance committee, and Brad Spitzer, a California-based analyst who not only secretly took part in protests during a week-long business trip but offered shelter to protesters in his swanky platinum-card room. “Tents are not for me,” he confessed, when confronted in the sleek black lobby of the Washington Street hotel where sources described him as a “repeat” guest.

The Democrats Were Not For Me
Excerpt: I was programmed at birth to be a Democrat, a big city liberal. My parents were Irish and Catholic. Pardon any redundancy. In my slice of the East Bronx, you went to high school, you did a few years in the military, and then you came home to look for a job with Con Ed or the city.

Sheriff wants changes to Cook County ordinance
Excerpt: Law sponsored by Commissioner Jesus "Chuy" Garcia prohibits cops from holding illegal immigrants arrested for other crimes Citing concerns over the potential release of dangerous felons who are in the country illegally, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart has been pushing for changes to a controversial county ordinance that requires law enforcement to ignore federal requests to hold illegal immigrants who are arrested for other crimes.

Man Allegedly Throws Aluminum Water Bottle At Student's Face
Excerpt: The man asked the student if she was going to the protest on Sproul Plaza [at UC Berkeley], and when the victim answered “no,” the suspect yelled at her. “People like you are the reason that California is in debt,” he said, according to the crime alert. The suspect then threw a full aluminum water bottle at the victim’s face, the crime alert said. (Yuh, this is the California attitude. The whole of LA is like an Occupy site. - Kate in LA)

The Next War
Excerpt: It is an unalterable fact of human nature that the perception of weakness invites aggression. For us, it has been that way since the founding of the republic. We disarmed after the American Revolution. That's how we ended up with the War of 1812. (If I were to guess how the next war would go, this would be my prediction: It will begin by surprise on our soil with multiple nuclear explosions. Most will target cities, some will be EMP weapons. They will be delivered by a variety of methods including submarines, ship containers, trucks, and railroad cars as well as missiles and bombs from aircraft. Our immediate losses will be between 5 million and 20 million dead and 3 or 4 times that many injured. When two hours pass without any response from us, the South American despots will join the Iran-North Korea-Pakistan consortium with the blessing—though not the open support—of China and Russia (plus various Middle Eastern and Asian despots). If we can respond between 2 hours and 5 hours from the beginning of hostilities, there may be no actual invasion other than from Mexico; if there is no response, we will be invaded by “rescuers and First Responders” (actually military invasion forces) from various countries of the consortium. It is conceivable that we could “win” the war, even at this point, but even winning is too horrid to contemplate. Small children might be “saved,” as would some of the prettier young women. By one means or another, the rest of us will die, mostly of starvation. And, the United States of America will be no more as the New Dark Ages begin. Cheerful thoughts, eh? I’d be happy to be wrong. Ron P.)

The Meaning of the OWS Day of Protest
Excerpt: In the day’s OWS protest, the motley crew of old New Left veterans, younger self-proclaimed socialists, Communists, and anarchists, as well as a bunch of New York University students protesting their private university’s tuition hikes, were to be joined by the SIEU and other AFL-CIO affiliates, who have decided to link their dwindling power to the OWS bandwagon — a move that will eventually backfire and lead to further erosion of trade union strength. After all, a movement that seeks to prevent working people from getting to their jobs is not likely to be popular with the union rank-and-file. This week, even the usually hesitant Anti-Defamation League released a report that showed how much of the OWS included supporters of Hamas, opponents of Israel’s right to exist, and old fashioned anti-Semites.

With winter looming, labor unions fortify Occupy camp
Excerpt: Some of the country’s most powerful unions are providing the infrastructure and amenities to keep the Occupy D.C. encampment fortified going into the winter. The camp’s portable toilets are being provided by the Service Employees International Union, the 2.1-million-member organization that helped Barack Obama win the presidency and recently backed his re-election bid. The estimated 100 demonstrators staying each night in McPherson Square, just blocks from the White House, can take a hot shower at the AFL-CIO headquarters on 16th Street Northwest

Too Much Exposure
Excerpt: [W]e may well see many incumbents—those wearing blue Democratic jerseys as well as those wearing red Republican ones—thrown out the window, not so much because of the color of their uniforms but because of their proximity to windows. The combination of angry base voters in both parties and new congressional maps could mean that several House incumbents will lose their primaries. Voters in redrawn or competitive districts could toss out others who don’t have strong bonds with their districts even while members in more solid seats nearby win reelection without too much difficulty.

2nd test affirms faster-than-light particles
Excerpt: A second experiment at the European facility that reported subatomic particles zooming faster than the speed of light -- stunning the world of physics -- has reached the same result, scientists said late Thursday. The "positive outcome of the [second] test makes us more confident in the result," said Fernando Ferroni, president of the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics, in a statement released late Thursday. Ferroni is one of 160 physicists involved in the international collaboration known as OPERA (Oscillation Project with Emulsion Tracking Apparatus) that performed the experiment. While the second experiment "has made an important test of consistency of its result," Ferroni added, "a final word can only be said by analogous measurements performed elsewhere in the world." (THIS is the way real science is done: by replication of results and re-checking to be sure the results are valid. There is at least a slight possibility the time difference is due to some alternative shorter pathway—neutrinos can and do go through any known matter, even of planetary size, as though it wasn’t there—not yet accounted for, or even that the timing devices are not perfectly synchronous. For a result like this that overturns—or at least changes—a century of accepted basic science, it will probably need to be repeated many times before being widely accepted. If it is real, the door to faster than light travel might be open just a crack. Hello, stars, here we come. Ron P.)

Old Sexual Harassment Accusations are Seedy Way to Sink Political Candidates
Excerpt: The media feeding frenzy over allegations of sexual harassment by Herman Cain is going to cause a shift in how we view sexual harassment. According to a University of Michigan research study last year, 90 percent of women report being sexually harassed in the workplace. This number sounds absurd. If acted upon, it would turn workplaces into Gulag camps. At some point when are women just being overly sensitive or incorrectly construing annoying behavior as sexual harassment? What percentage of sexual harassment complaints are filed merely in order to get back at a co-worker? At the same time, 86 percent of women say they would flirt with a co-worker in order to get what they wanted. This contradictory finding makes it unfair to punish unwanted flirting with draconian measures. Yet this is precisely what is being done to Herman Cain, who is about to lose his presidential bid over sexual harassment allegations from years ago.

Iran Training Palestinians with New Missiles
Excerpt: Israeli military officials believe Palestinian terrorists have traveled to Iran for training with sophisticated Russian-made antitank missiles, the Jerusalem Post reports. Hamas and Islamic Jihad have acquired hundreds of longer range missiles, which can travel more than four kilometers and penetrate many types of armored Israeli vehicles.

Herman Cain Gets Secret Service Protection After Death Threats
Excerpt: Herman Cain on Thursday became the first Republican presidential candidate to receive Secret Service protection. Cain asked for the security and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and congressional leaders approved his request Thursday, Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan confirmed. Elite agents were expected to begin protecting the former pizza company executive sometime Thursday. (I hope the Secret Service catches anyone threatening any candidate, even Obama (I plan to vote against him—again—but, he's still the President). It would be extraordinarily bad news for the whole country if candidates started being culled other than at the ballot box. There may be more Democrats than Republicans, but considering the higher proportion of veterans and hunters among Republicans, we are probably the better shots. I was a Sharpshooter twice and an Expert twice in 4 annual tries in the USMC—and I wasn’t even good by the prevailing standards. Ron P.)


-- 
Robert A. Hall

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