OCCUPY CLEVELAND PARTICIPANT PLEADS GUILTY TO BOMBING PLOT. AP leaves mention of his affiliation to the last paragraph of the story. I’m sure they’d do the same if the Tea Party were involved. . . .
Archive for 2012
July 25, 2012
I’M SURE DAN FROOMKIN’S TITLE IS RACIST SOMEHOW: The Dark Side of the Obama White House. “But a case can be made that what’s even more surprising is Obama’s abuse of secrecy. Publicly an advocate of government transparency and oversight, Obama has nevertheless hidden the most controversial and unilateral aspects of his presidency — including new ways of waging acknowledged and unacknowledged wars — more thoroughly and effectively than anyone might have imagined. . . . And another question: What ever happened to Obama the liberal civil libertarian?”
I think he’s hiding out with the Obama who promised “net spending cuts.”
COMMUNICATIONS: Why Talk When You Can Text? “Britons prefer to text friends or keep in touch on Facebook rather than chat on the phone, leading to the first ever decline in mobile voice calls, according to the UK’s telecoms regulator.” I’m sure the same thing is happening here, and I suspect that it will ameliorate the bandwidth shortage somewhat.
WHEN MARIE CLAIRE VENTURES INTO POLITICS, embarrassment results.
POLICE RESCUE SEX DOLL FROM RIVER: “A team of 18 police officers was sent to rescue a ‘drowning woman’ from a Chinese river – only to find it was a sex doll.”
THE NEW MCCARTHYISM: Eugene Volokh: No Building Permits for Opponent of Same-Sex Marriage. “But denying a private business permits because of such speech by its owner is a blatant First Amendment violation. Even when it comes to government contracting — where the government is choosing how to spend government money — the government generally may not discriminate based on the contractor’s speech, see Board of County Commissioners v. Umbehr (1996). It is even clearer that the government may not make decisions about how people will be allowed to use their own property based on the speaker’s past speech.”
These people don’t care about the Constitution. It’s about power.
THE GREATEST OLYMPIC RACE YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF. “In 1936, nine American rowers took on the Nazis in front of Hitler and 75,000 screaming Germans.”
READER BOOK PLUG: Reader John Eddy writes to ask a mention of his book, Methuselah’s Daughter, coauthored with blogger Dean Esmay. Done!
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY: Artificial Jellyfish Made From Rat Cells Swims Like the Real Thing.
JOURNALISM: Washington Post Reporter Allows College Officials to Alter Story on Controversial Test. They’ve been doing that for Obama officials for years. . . .
WHAT THE 21ST CENTURY NEEDS: Manly Baby Buggies. “Baby buggies, reinvented as sleek, high-tech designer objects, have become boy’s toys for a young generation of hands-on dads.”
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): New Home Sales Miss By Most In 20 Months. “This is the first miss since October of last year and the biggest miss of expectations since October 2010. . . . Median home prices also fell appreciably. Hope is fading as we note that of the 33,000 total new houses sold in June, 11,000 have not even been started, and 11,000 are still under construction and the number of homes sold at a price over $750,000 was less than 1,000.”
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Kenneth Anderson: Why Does The UN Still Exist? “Corrupt and ineffective, it falsely promises that global governance and peace are near at hand.”
TRANSPARENCY: “Lost amid the hilarity of watching Senator Dianne Feinstein do a Cory Booker impersonation by denying she meant what she said about White House leaks was another, and perhaps more significant, retraction. The Department of Justice had to file a motion admitting that the CIA had found numerous documents that should have been released in a Freedom of Information Act request from Judicial Watch about White House interaction with filmmakers producing a movie about the killing of Osama bin Laden. . . . Well … oopsie! This relates directly to the issue around which Feinstein danced yesterday, which is the intentional leaking of national-security information to burnish the reputation of Barack Obama.”
PLAYING DEFENSE ON SMALL BUSINESS: Obama’s “I am not a witch” ad. I don’t believe him. He clearly weighs the same as a duck. “Apparently, Obama’s standing on the economy has so fallen so low that the argument for his reelection is now reduced to ‘I don’t hate business. Honest.'”
UPDATE: Gov. Bobby Jindal:
President Obama is in New Orleans today. One wonders if, during his visit to the Crescent City, he will repeat the now infamous claim that “If you have a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” Given the firestorm that erupted after that claim, it’s doubtful he will do so.
But we should not forget his words. President Obama’s comments were not a one-off gaffe. Instead, they define his administration.
Indeed.
MORE: Team Romney aggressively courting small business in swing states this week.
Plus, Ann Althouse reviews Obama’s ad: “Apparently, he’s gotten the message that nastily attacking Romney isn’t working. Here’s his new ad, in which he actually seems kind of like Romney . . . . Snuck in there is the old Obama theme: tax the rich. It’s camouflaged within a lot of Romneyesque pro-capitalism talk. I think the Obama people have decided that lefty edge is a loser. Americans will chose capitalism over socialism if you make it stark. So he’s repackaging himself as moderate.” It worked in 2008, but he had a less visible track record then.
MORE STILL: Useful advice from reader Mark Throneberry: “DONT GET COCKY! DONT GET COCKY! DONT GET COCKY!”
SOCIALISM: Hollande to French Business: The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves. “You cannot build a successful economy by punishing and penalizing legitimate business anymore than you can raise morale by beating the crew. French socialists forget that from time to time; it is an expensive lesson to relearn.”
ENERGY-EFFICIENT CFL BULBS can damage your skin.
To my surprise, it’s still possible to stock up on 100 watt incandescents. I wonder if it’s like the high-capacity magazine ban, where so many were stockpiled that you could buy them right up until the “ban” was repealed. I hope so. Especially about the repeal part.
INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: President’s Attack On Success Shows U.S. Falling, Not Rising.
In a speech on July 13 in Roanoke, Va., President Obama said this about successful people:
“You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hard-working people out there. … If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.”
Why limit the discussion to the United States?
Everywhere on our planet, there are smart and hard-working people striving for success and a decent life. Like in the United States, every country has people building roads and using these roads to get to places of work; some people are good teachers, some are good farmers, etc. Most human societies have the same general components.
I am sure Barack Obama saw plenty of smart and hard-working people in Indonesia, where he lived as a child. Why is Indonesia, a country very rich in natural resources, poor?
My husband, our friends and I worked hard in the USSR. Fresh from college, full of enthusiasm, we were in our prime years.
Soviet communists had created a system according to teachings by Karl Marx. This system was based on the principles of equality: Rich exploiters (private business owners) didn’t have a place in this “workers’ paradise.” Therefore, entrepreneurs were outlawed.
There were many talented inventors in the Soviet Union. To register their invention and obtain a patent, they had to include names of official communist leaders as co-creators, putting their names above their own. If government leaders could not comprehend the idea or its relevance to the future, the invention died.
The same applied to works of art. In this “just society,” people were whipped into conformity. Smart or not smart, all were equally poor.
Government central planners in the USSR, or China, or Cuba, didn’t invent modern technology, and Soviet-made computers of the late 1970s were imitations of IBM’s, created from stolen blueprints.
And even in the United States, the Internet became valuable only once the private sector took over and commercialized it. But read the whole thing.
Plus this: “Did Barack Obama study any history? Hard to say, as his college records are sealed.” Ouch.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: What Does the “Twilight of the Elites” Mean to Elite Higher Ed?
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