MORE FROM THE NO-GOOD-DEED-GOES-UNPUNISHED DEPARTMENT: ‘Robin Hoods’ who feed parking meters are hit with lawsuit in New Hampshire.
Archive for 2013
May 17, 2013
RAND SIMBERG: A CULTURE OF INTIMIDATION. “If Barack Obama didn’t directly order the harassment of his political enemies, he certainly encouraged it.” Punch back twice as hard.
AUSTIN BAY: Benghazi Revisited: The Dead Get Pinocchios.
In a column published on Sept. 18, 2012, I argued that verified tactical military details of the engagement, the iconic date itself, and subsequent, very explicit statements by Libyan government authorities, left no doubt that on 9-11-2012 the U.S. consulate in Benghazi suffered a planned attack by an organized anti-American militant Islamist militia. A terrorist force had hit us with another 9-11 terror attack, and Americans had died, among them our ambassador to Libya.
Given the facts, the Obama administration’s bizarre claim that a sacrilegious Internet video had inflamed peaceful Libyan demonstrators — and in an outburst spurred by overwhelming theological pain, this moody crowd murdered our unfortunate ambassador — just didn’t wash. . . . As for passing major media smell tests before the 2012 presidential election? Of course the blarney passed ’em! But eight months after the attack and six months after the election, even President Barack Obama’s chief media enablers have begun to acknowledge the video-did-it propaganda tizzy the administration orchestrated was stench itself.
And orchestrated propaganda it was, with the video-did-it narrative hedged by presidential statements calculated to slyly finesse terrorist complicity in the attack.
Glenn Kessler, who writes the Washington Post’s fact-checker column, now informs his readers that the president’s claim he called the Benghazi attack an “attack of terrorism” rates four Pinocchios. That’s Kessler’s cute way of calling our president a complete and thorough liar. . . .
The video whopper and the slippery presidential phraseology were coordinated spin — the video to fool the rubes pre-election, the slick rhetoric to fool them now.
Read the whole thing. And note: “On Sept. 16, Libya’s interim president, Mohammed el-Megari, announced that he had no doubts the militia’s leaders had predetermined the date of the attack. That same day U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice appeared on five television shows and repeatedly blamed the video.” Scapegoated filmmaker Nakoula is still in jail.
WHEN FOOD IS LOVE: Sexcereal Boasts Spoonfuls Of Libido Boosts. “Billing itself as ‘the world’s first all-natural, GMO-free, gender-based breakfast cereal,’ Sexcereal comes in two packages: ‘The Male cereal supports testosterone and energy levels,’ according to the website, ‘while the Female cereal was created with hormonal balance and desire in mind.'”
THE MORE THINGS CHANGE: Bill Gates Is The Richest Man In The World Again.
AT AMAZON, Warehouse Deals in Electronics.
From the comments: “Yes, the Obama IRS delayed Tea Party group applications to limit their political activities and covered it up to win an election. That is obvious, inarguable, and criminal.”
WHY WOMEN LIVE LONGER. “Women live longer than men partly because their immune systems age more slowly, a study suggests. As the body’s defences weaken over time, men’s increased susceptibility to disease shortens their lifespans, say Japanese scientists. Tests of immune function could give an indication of true biological age, they report in Immunity & Ageing journal.”
PROF. JACOBSON: IRS planted question at ABA mtg disclosing targeting of conservatives. “At the hearings this morning, Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller admitted Lerner knew about the question in advance, and that it was planned by the IRS.”
IF ONLY HE’D BEEN A TEA PARTIER, WITH A COPY OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE OR SOMETHING: Howie Carr: Note praising Allah didn’t float PC boat.
Finally, we get the note in the boat — a month late.
Do you how much media effort has been devoted to unearthing what Dzhokhar Tsarnaev apparently thought was his last will and testament? But somehow, the cops held it tight until yesterday. . . . No big surprises in the note in the boat. The Joker said his brother Speedbump was a “martyr in paradise,” and that the victims in Boston were “collateral damage” for Muslim civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. He praised Allah and said, “When you attack one Muslim, you attack all Muslims.” Tell that to the Syrians, EBT boy.
The big question is, Why the monthlong blackout on the note in the boat? Why didn’t the feds release it immediately?
And the answer is obvious. It didn’t fit the Politically Correct narrative, that the reasons for this shocking atrocity remained a mystery, a riddle, an enigma, wink wink nudge nudge.
It’s all about the narrative. It’s okay to demonize Tea Partiers, but not jihadists. That would be racist or something.
EMILY ESFAHANI SMITH: Is Sex Still Sexy?
BARACK OBAMA AND THE CASE AGAINST EMPATHY. “Empathy has some unfortunate features—it is parochial, narrow-minded, and innumerate. We’re often at our best when we’re smart enough not to rely on it.”
Psychopaths are surprisingly high in empathy. They understand other people’s feelings very well. They just don’t care, except to the extent that they can use them for their own benefit.
HOW TO PLAN YOUR LIFE, when you can’t plan your life.
SCIENCE: Cheap Magnetic Helmet Detects Some Kinds of Brain Damage. “A helmet that sends a magnetic field through the wearer’s head might someday offer a quick way to reveal whether the brain is swelling or bleeding as the result of an injury. In a prototype of the helmet, a small halo-like coil generates a magnetic field above a person’s head; another coil, just above the ears, detects the magnetic field induced in the volunteer’s brain. Because liquid such as blood affects the magnetic field’s phase, the team behind the device was able to distinguish eight brain-injured patients from 46 healthy volunteers in a pilot study, they report in the journal PLOS One.”
SCIENCE: Erotic Kama Sutra App Details Sex in 3D. “The latest version of the Kama Sutra — the ancient Sanskrit manual on human sexuality — comes with a free, augmented-reality app that turns the book’s illustrations into pop-up holograms for smartphones or tablets. Each image can be rotated 360 degrees so viewers can get more detailed perspective of each sexual position.”
PERHAPS SOME WEIGHT-LIFTING — BUT, NO, GRAVITY’S MUCH LOWER DOWN THERE: The Earth’s Core Is Weaker Than We Thought.
COVERUP: Report: IRS Deliberately Chose Not to Fess Up to Scandal Before Election. “[I]f this fact came out in September 2012, in the middle of a presidential election? The terrain would have looked very different.”
SPEEDING UP MENTAL MATH BY ZAPPING THE BRAIN WITH ELECTRICITY.
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why Don’t We Have Fusion Power?
FIVE QUESTIONS about the AP surveillance scandal. Plus, a Bivens action against Holder, et al.?
DON’T LET NOBODY TURN YOU AROUND: Ann Althouse is unpersuaded by former IRS Commissioner Steve Miller’s excuses. With a Captain Renault video clip.
DEREK LOWE ON drug development and Heinleinian “Bad Luck.”
IN THE MAIL: From Brent Wolfingbarger, The Dirty Secret.
NOW AVAILABLE ON SSRN, MY LATEST SECOND AMENDMENT PIECE, coauthored with Brannon Denning: How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Second Amendment: a Reply to Professor Magarian.
Download it early and often!