YES, MY RSS FEED IS STILL SCREWED UP, but I didn’t expect it would merit such high-level coverage. This is connected with the server upgrade, for reasons I don’t fully understand, but I’m promised it will be fixed and working at the old address Real Soon Now.
Archive for 2012
August 16, 2012
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): N.Y. Fed says municipal bond defaults higher than ratings agency counts. “Defaults on municipal bonds for decades have been far higher than reported by rating agencies, bringing into question the true risk of a common investment widely considered to be safe, according to a study released Wednesday by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Economists at the agency counted 2,521 muni bond defaults since 1970, whereas ratings agency Moody’s Investors Service, for instance, reported 71.”
PATRICK POOLE: The Biggest D.C. Spy Scandal You Haven’t Heard About (Part Two). “As I noted in Part One, while the establishment media reported on Fai’s arrest, the story virtually disappeared from all of the leading news outlets. But while the U.S. media was ignoring the scandal entirely, the matter was the subject of considerable media scrutiny in Indian and Pakistani media. One curious episode that received no attention from the U.S. media was the strange death of Fai’s conspirator, Zaheer Ahmad.”
KIRSTEN POWERS: Why The Screwed Generation Is Turning To Paul Ryan. “While Democrats attack Ryan’s Medicare plan as ‘radical’ and portray him as pushing granny off the cliff, young people don’t seem to be buying this caricature. Or maybe ‘radical’ is what they want.”
#GREENFAIL: Gone With The Wind. “Just days after the Export-Import Bank approved a multi-million dollar federal loan guarantee to benefit a mostly foreign-based wind-energy outfit, the company pink-slipped more than 200 American workers.”
INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Look Who the Press Is Blaming for the Ugly Campaign. “What a surprise. Mitt Romney finally throws a counterpunch to a series of outrageous Obama campaign lies, and the press accuses Romney of going negative. The media’s pro-Obama bias is a wonder to behold.”
SENATOR BLUTARSKY: Bigotry Just Ain’t What It Used To Be.
AMERICA’S WEIMAR MOMENT? Reader Kevin Hedges writes:
Many years ago in an undergrad World History course, the professor asserted that German democracy died not in 1933 with Hitler becoming Chancellor but years earlier. It died when roving bands of Brown Shirts beat up Jews in the streets, and the average respectable German citizen responded by looking the other way. I am reminded of that today with the FRC shooting and the MSM pretending it didn’t happen. Leftist shootings, vandalized Chick-fil-As, Black Panthers at voting stations, many, many churches burned and vandalized, media silence and the drumbeat of hate and demonization continues. I honestly wonder if democratic pluralism is dead. Some are openly saying it is. Your thoughts would be appreciated.
No one who has attended a Tea Party rally is likely to agree. However, it’s certainly true that there are people out there who would be happy if things came to such a pass. And someday, they might. But this is not that day.
August 15, 2012
HAVE YOU NO DECENCY? HuffPo attacks Family Research Council just hours after shooting.
HAVEN’T WE HAD ENOUGH OF THE ADMINISTRATION’S HATE-FILLED ELIMINATIONIST RHETORIC? Michelle Obama Says More Women Will Die if Romney’s Elected.
PROF. JACOBSON: SPLC’s Hatewatch Gives Cover To Hate.
UPDATE: The Hill: Shooting spurs heated debate on gay rights, ‘hate group’ label.
Related: DC Shooter Carried Chick-fil-A Bag With Him to FRC HQ – Was Volunteer at LGBT Center.
Now if he’d been a Tea Partier, it would be news. Or even if Brian Ross could have found a Tea Partier with the same name on the Internet . . . .
ANOTHER UPDATE: John Hinderaker: Thoughts on the Family Research Council Shooting. “Liberals should take a deep breath and re-think how they talk about public policy issues. If they are looking for haters, it would seem that the mirror is a good place to start.”
“IT WAS A HEINOUS CRIME, BUT NOT A HATE CRIME.” But if he’d shot them in self-defense, that would have been a hate crime. . . .
HARRY HARRISON HAS DIED. Rest in peace.
I very much enjoyed the Stainless Steel Rat books, and, of course, Make Room! Make Room! was the basis for Soylent Green. But his less-famous later work, like The Hammer and the Cross, was also quite good.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Love Sex? Get Better At Kissing.
PAUL RYAN IN COLORADO: Sarah Hoyt reports. A surprisingly large, and surprisingly young, crowd. “Note that none of the people around me were what I’d call ‘hard conservatives.’ We differed on various points including whether or not we’re overpopulated, but we all agreed we’re going to be broke, if that’s not stopped. And most of us worried about children and grandchildren.”
VIA JUSTIN BINIK-THOMAS a photo of Paul Ryan speaking at Miami U. Of Ohio:
More photos here. And a Miami-Ohio reader emails: “Granted, as an alum, Paul Ryan could expect a nice crowd at Miami U; but what’s really amazing is that most freshmen don’t move in until tomorrow and most upperclassmen not until the weekend. Given Miami’s bucolic, rural setting (i.e. in the middle of nowhere), I imagine most of those folks drove at least 30 minutes from Dayton or Cincinnati. My daughter–who’s heading back on Friday–is bummed she missed him, but she’s looking forward to casting her first vote this November for a fellow RedHawk (Redskin in his case, but that’s a political story of a different sort). If it’s a tight race in Ohio, the Miami alumni base voting for one of their own could make the difference.”
ON BIDEN, READER DICK BLOCKSMA WRITES:
Remember, we ended a career on “Macaca.”
This is my thought on hearing Biden and the response and I’m angry and disgusted.
And, while I’m at it; when Sadly,No and Truthout dedicated 6+ months to Valerie Plame’s “outing” I gave them the benefit of allowing their concern was the integrity of our security. But now when multiple meaningful leaks occur, crickets. Well, Fuck ’em all.
Yeah, to give people the benefit of the doubt, there has to be doubt.
Related: Obama: Race-Baiting Comments I Put Biden Up To Were Taken Out of Context. Has the Biden under-busing begun?
And reader Tom Kennedy writes: “No one in Delaware says y’all, ever, and yes I’m including ‘lower, slower’ Delaware in this. It’s dizzying to reflect that Biden, a bigot and a fool, is there to make up for Obama’s inadequacies”
UPDATE: Videos: Black Leaders Say Biden’s ‘Chains’ Comment was Insulting to Blacks and All Americans. Including this: “The good news is that Obama-Biden’s campaign of hate isn’t fooling anyone. Former VA Gov. Doug Wilder went on Fox today and also called Biden out. Wilder says that slavery is ‘nothing to joke about.'”
THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT OBJECT IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY: The Pallet.
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: In a live chat, Prudie offers advice on a woman who hasn’t told her boyfriend she used to be a man.
AT AMAZON, bestsellers in Biographies & Memoirs.
JOHN KASS ON JOE BIDEN’S MINSTREL SHOW:
Biden took a race card from the deck of Team Obama 2012, and stuck that race card to the tip of his shoe, and then slammed the whole darn thing into his mouth so hard that it must have scraped off half of the vice presidential taste buds.
“Look at what they value and look at their budget and what they’re proposing,” Biden said of the Republicans at a campaign stop in Danville, Va. “Romney wants to let the — he said in the first 100 days he’s going to let the big banks once again write their own rules.”
Then it happened. Biden began waving his right hand, palm up, and he adopted what he must have thought was the accent of a black minister.
“Unchain Wall Street,” said Preacher Joe, reaching to the heavens, “They’re going to put y’all back in chains.”
Y’all.
Is that how people in Delaware talk? Or is it how white Democratic politicians speak when they’re using dialect to talk down to black voters? What’s next, Preacher Joe? Spirituals? Or are you going to carry around copies of “A Raisin in the Sun” and “To Kill a Mockingbird”?
Team Obama tried to defend Biden, but it was nonsensical babbling.
Well, that fits. Plus this:
Should Hillary Clinton come to Obama’s rescue? Why should she? When she and Obama faced off for the 2008 presidential nomination, Clinton and her husband, the former president, had the race card played against them by Team Obama. . . .
For all his vulgarity and faux-preacher dialect and smarmy pol tricks in Virginia, Biden showed the American people what they can expect from the Obama campaign in the months ahead. And he distilled the Obama re-election effort down to its basic elements:
Class war and race.
Y’all.
Indeed.
Related: Georgia Black Republicans Invite Biden To “Sweet Tea Summit.”
AT KURZWEIL AI, Giulio Priscio reviews Howard Bloom’s The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos Creates. “The God Problem defies categorization; it’s a cascade of books within books within books, like the novels of Joyce and Pynchon. The difference is that Bloom writes about the thoughts of the deepest thinkers of all times, from the Babylonians to our days, then proposes new ideas of his own. I call it ‘scientific poetry.’ The science is rigorous, and the philosophy is sound, but Bloom is first and foremost a great writer who makes cerebral stuff emotionally moving and entertaining. This book has no equations, it is not written for scientists, but it’s an excellent science book that will help readers not only understand science better, but also love it more.”