IF NOT, THE JEWS ARE A BUNCH OF GRUBES: Are Democrats Losing the Jews? In this year’s midterms, Jews voted for Republican candidates more than they have in any election in the last decade.
Archive for 2014
November 14, 2014
LAWS ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Federal judge tells CFPB it must give depositions even if doing so ‘annoys.’ “A federal judge forced the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to obey the same rules of discovery in civil litigation that apply to everybody else even if government officials are annoyed by them. . . . Tucker suggested that CFPB’s aggressiveness may be a result of having ‘more junior staff attorneys [who] may be less experienced. In addition, some staffers are relative newcomers to consumer financial services issues.'” I suspect that they’re entitled Obamabots who just think the rules don’t apply to them.
HEY THEY DON’T CALL HIM PRESIDENT GOLDMAN SACHS FOR NOTHING, YOU KNOW: Forget the 1%: It is the 0.01% who are really getting ahead in America.
ROLL CALL: Obama Veto Pen Could Soon Get A Workout.
President Barack Obama might want to find some veto pens. A lot of them. After setting a modern record for fewest vetoes — just two early on in his presidency — thanks to a Democratic Senate, Republicans could soon be sending him reams of legislative cannon fodder.
While conventional wisdom suggests relatively few controversial bills would head to the president’s desk, because after all, Republicans will need at least six senators who caucus with the Democrats to beat back filibusters — Republicans can bypass filibusters in multiple ways if Democrats try to gum up the works.
Republicans have already talked about using the budget reconciliation rules to bypass filibusters so they can put spending and tax bills on the president’s desk with their priorities — including potentially an attempt to gut much of Obamacare.
They also plan to use another power to strike at the heart of Obama’s pen-and-phone agenda. Under the Congressional Review Act, the House and Senate can vote to block recently enacted regulations, and such votes cannot be filibustered.
Or, you know, go full Harry Reid and just eliminate filibusters entirely. Because democracy! Speaking of which, will we see any more pieces from lefty pundits on how the filibuster is an evil relic of slavery or something?
A CALL TO RESET U.S. NUCLEAR STRATEGY: Report: Obama urged to get more nukes, stop acting like war is ‘unthinkable.’
WE MUST DISSOLVE THE PEOPLE AND ELECT ANOTHER: The Hill: Obama Going Big On Immigration?
President Obama appears to be closing in on a decision on executive orders that would provide work permits and protection from deportation for millions of immigrants in the United States illegally.
Two reports, one from Fox News and a second from The New York Times, suggest the president is prepared to dramatically expand his deferred action program, allowing the parents of children who are legal residents or citizens of the United States to avoid deportation proceedings. Obama could also expand the eligibility for the current deferred action program, which allows children who were brought to the United States illegally and remained in violation of the law to stay in the country.
It’s not yet clear how many millions of people would be eligible for the new protections; the White House is reportedly still weighing how long immigrant parents would need to have resided in the U.S. to be eligible for the program. But according to the reports, between 2.5 million and 4.5 million of the nation’s estimated 11.7 million illegal immigrants could qualify.
The president is also poised to expand how the federal government issues specialty visas for high-tech workers. Immigration activists earlier this year suggested that rather than counting each individual family member against a legislatively mandated cap for the program, the government could instead only count the head of a family — and not siblings, spouses, or children.
And with the “high tech” visas, I guess we’re dissolving the workforce, too.
THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR . . . OH, HELL, YOU KNOW THE REST: Democratic Senator Tim Kaine calls the war against ISIS “illegal.”
GOVERNMENT IS JUST ANOTHER WORD FOR THE THINGS WE CHOOSE TO DO TOGETHER: FBI’s “Suicide Letter” to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Dangers of Unchecked Surveillance.
Note: The Attorney General who initiated spying on King was Bobby Kennedy.
IT’S LIES ALL THE WAY DOWN: DOJ admits its lawyer misled appeals court during oral argument.
I’D LIKE TO SEE THESE ASKED: Questions for Loretta Lynch About the Role of Law Enforcement in Our Lives. “It is time for a national debate, and the confirmation hearings on the nomination of Loretta Lynch to become attorney general can provide an excellent platform.”
THE WAGES OF SEX-BAITING: The internet hates men, and no one’s a winner. “Depictions of decent men have now become strikingly absent online. The overall suggestion is that men are guilty until proven innocent; this only reinforces gender stereotyping. Indeed, we have reached a stage where feminist sites like Jezebel run stories like ‘How to kick men in the balls: an illustrated guide’, confirming the impression that the internet hates men.”
Well, just the feminist part.
Related: “Viral Video” Was Staged Clickbait.
YEAH, THEY’RE NOT DOING ANY BETTER WITH SANDY: 20,000 FEMA Katrina projects in limbo years later; feds can’t verify work done.
November 13, 2014
LIFE IN THE OBAMA ERA: Department Of Justice Spy Planes Listening To Americans’ Cellphones. Tar. Feathers.
TRIFECTA: Thoughts on the 367 mph school bus.
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: “What you’ve done with men is just a more efficient, animal-friendly version of this strategy.”
A CONVERSATION WITH JOHN CLEESE. Note this Rippetoe-friendly point: “I was so skinny. I was a bag of bones up to about fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. Because in those days, you’ve got to remember, Ethan, it was quite a long time ago. Working out in gyms, with weights, was a very unusual thing to do, you know? It never occurred to me that one could build one’s strength up. I started going to gyms in London, and I found after a couple years of working out, I simply got a little bit stronger. And that made a lot of difference and gave me a little more control. Because if you’re very lanky and weak, you don’t have the biophysical coordination. While I had good hand-eye coordination – I could always play ball games quite well – it was only after I started to work out for a few years that I began to feel physically less clumsy and awkward.”
HE WASN’T THERE AGAIN TODAY: Charles Bonnet Syndrome.
AT AMAZON, up to 56% off in Movies & TV.
MILO YIANNOPOULOS: The Authoritarian Left Was on Course to Win the Culture Wars… then Along Came #GamerGate.
GamerGate is remarkable—and attracts the interest of people like me—because it represents perhaps the first time in the last decade or more that a significant incursion has been made in the culture wars against guilt-mongerers, nannies, authoritarians and far-Left agitators.
Industry after industry has toppled over, putting up no more of a fight than, say, France in 1940. Publishing, journalism, TV… all lie supine beneath the crowing, cackling, censorious battle-axes, male and female, of the third-wave feminist and social justice causes.
But not gamers. Lovers of video games, on seeing their colleagues unfairly hounded as misogynists, on watching journalists credulously reporting scandalous sexual assault claims just because a person was perceived to be “right-wing” and on seeing the games they love attacked and their very identities denied and ridiculed, have said: no. This will not stand.
The reaction in the press has been bewilderment and, then, apoplectic rage, driven at least in part by a media establishment that sees video gamers—the supposed dorks and basement-dwellers of popular imagination—mounting a credible and effective defence against the liars, frauds, neurotics and attention-seekers who have already destroyed morale and wrecked culture in the comic, sci fi and fantasy worlds.
In other words, some of the bitterness comes from people who are shocked that it took video gamers to say, “No more of this, thank you.”
Because hard-core gaming is overwhelmingly male—don’t believe cherry-picked statistics that tell you women now make up 50 per cent of gamers; they don’t, in any meaningful sense—and because those men are often of a stubborn, obsessive, hyper-competitive and systematic bent, it has produced an army finally capable of launching offensives against the censors—using the censors’ own tactics, such as advertiser boycotts, against them.
Many in the non-gaming world can learn from this.
IF YOU’RE GAINING WEIGHT BECAUSE YOU’RE ADDING MUSCLE, THAT’S NOT SO BAD: Exercising But Gaining Weight.
AT FIRST I THOUGHT THIS WOULD BE ABOUT THE SR-52 I HAD IN HIGH SCHOOL: The Surprising Complexity of Old-School Calculators.