LOSE WEIGHT BY EATING Avocados And Other Fatty Foods.
Archive for 2015
July 26, 2015
SHE’LL DO FOR THE MARKET WHAT SHE DID FOR RELATIONS WITH RUSSIA! Hillary: capitalism needs a “reset.”
MAYBE THIS IS WHY TRUMP’S ATTACKS ON HIM DIDN’T BACKFIRE: Sen. Heller: John McCain ‘Wouldn’t Accept’ Amendment to Arm Troops on Bases Before Chattanooga Attack.
CRUISE SHIP ASSOCIATION not exactly bursting with excitement over Cayman cruise ship dock proposal.
Related: Cayman Islands Tourism Association Adds Voice to Cruise Port Opposition.
I’ve written about this before.
MICKEY KAUS: How Trump Could (Perversely) Save the GOP.
Related: How Jeb Can Hurt The GOP.
CHANGE: Walmart announces infant car seat designed to prevent hot car deaths. “In most new cars, an alert sounds if a driver or passenger is not wearing a seat belt or if headlights are left on. Using a similar idea, a sensor on the infant seat harness triggers a series of tones if a child is still buckled in when the ignition is switched off. The feature is meant to remind drivers who might forget that a child is in the vehicle.”
This is kid stuff. You need a motion sensor in the car, coupled with a thermometer. When the temp gets above 100 degrees and the sensor shows the car’s occupied, the windows should automatically roll down, or the AC come on. Coming soon to Teslas, probably.
IRAN DEAL IS AN IMPEACHABLE OFFENSE: So says Andrew McCarthy in his latest NRO post.
The president “must certainly be punishable for giving false information to the Senate.” One can imagine hearing such counsel from a contemporary United States senator on the receiving end of President Obama’s “full disclosure” of the nuclear deal with Iran. But the admonition actually came from James Iredell, a champion of the Constitution’s ratification, who was later appointed to the Supreme Court by President George Washington.
Iredell was addressing the obligations the new Constitution imposed on the president in the arena of international affairs. Notwithstanding the chief executive’s broad powers to “regulate all intercourse with foreign powers,” it would be the president’s “duty to impart to the Senate every material intelligence he receives.” Indeed, among the most egregious offenses a president could commit would be fraudulently inducing senators “to enter into measures injurious to their country, and which they would not have consented to had the true state of things been disclosed to them.” . . .
After a few days of misdirection, administration officials now admit that there are “side deals” that the administration has not revealed to Congress and does not intend to make public. So far, we know of two “side deals” — who knows how many more there may actually be? As the Center for Security Policy’s Fred Fleitz writes in National Review, they involve (a) a full accounting of Iran’s prior nuclear activities (many of which are believed to have been in blatant violation of international law) and (b) access to the Parchin military base, where Iran has conducted explosive testing related to nuclear missiles. . . .
Now consider this: Under cover of this IAEA ruse, Obama ran to the Security Council and rammed through a resolution commencing implementation of his Iran deal before Congress or the American people could consider it. He thus undermined American sovereignty and the Constitution by scheming to impose an international-law fait accompli. And he thus undermined American national security by transferring his inspection commitments to an international agency that he knows is not close to being capable of executing them — an agency that will be further hampered by notice restrictions that, as Charles Krauthammer concludes, render the inspections “farcical” in any event.
The Constitution forbids providing aid and comfort to America’s enemies. And the Framers’ notion that a president would be punishable for deceiving Congress regarding the conduct of foreign affairs meant that lawmakers would be obliged to use their constitutional powers to protect the United States — not merely shriek on cable television as if they were powerless spectators.
Well?
McCarthy’s right, of course. But as his ending query reveals, no one realistically expects the Republican establishment to call for impeachment, despite the fact that the House GOP could issue articles of impeachment with a simple majority vote, sending the case to the Senate for conviction (which would require 2/3 supermajority).
Why not? Because the GOP leadership has given up, and like a jilted lover, is trying so hard to “look the other way” that it no longer sees the obvious, and has lost all self-confidence in its own power, and the power of the truth. It also is betting the farm–i.e., the country–that the U.S. can survive another 18 months of an Obama presidency, and that the next (hopefully) GOP President can magically “cure” all of the Obama-induced cancers. It’s a risky and stupid gamble.
AT AMAZON, deals on Asics Athletic Shoes.
UNEXPECTEDLY: Fall in gas prices hasn’t led to increased consumer spending. “Visa CFO Prabhu also said the company felt that the money being conserved at the pump was being funneled into savings accounts, a trend that has been backed up in various economic data reports. . . . But just a few months ago, the collapse in gas prices was supposed to be the next big thing for the US economy. Instead, it seems like nothing has happened.”
Maybe consumers realize that we can’t expect any real economic improvement until after January 2017 at the earliest.
JUDGING BY RECENT NEWS REPORTS, NEITHER ONE HAS EXACTLY BEEN OVERPERFORMING: IRS Directors Of Professional Responsibility And Whistleblower Offices Swap Jobs.
POLITICO: Tennessee Is the Capital of American Jihad.
Well, we may have had the wrong U.S. Attorney.
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: After Jeep Hack, Chrysler Recalls 1.4M Vehicles for Bug Fix.
ANALOGIZING UNIONS TO COMMUNISTS: Dana Milbank at the Washington Post draws an amusing (even if unintended) parallel in his latest column, “Why Scott Walker is so dangerous.”
This is the essence of Walker’s appeal — and why he is so dangerous. He is not as outrageous as Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), but his technique of scapegoating unions for the nation’s ills is no less demagogic. Sixty-five years ago, another man from Wisconsin made himself a national reputation by frightening the country about the menace of communists, though the actual danger they represented was negligible. Scott Walker is not Joe McCarthy, but his technique is similar: He suggests that the nation’s ills can be cured by fighting labor unions (foremost among the “big government special interests” hurting the United States), even though unions represent just 11 percent of the U.S. workforce and have been at a low ebb. . . .
But deception is the demagogue’s tool. Walker spoke Thursday about “the death threats not just against me and my family but against our lawmakers” and about the nails put in the driveway of one lawmaker to puncture his tires. Such behavior is beyond the pale — though hardly unique to Walker’s opponents. And some of Walker’s claims — including the alleged threat to “gut” his wife “like a deer” and of protesters “beating” and “rocking” a car he was in — could not be substantiated by independent authorities.
Such deception, however, is in the service only of the larger deceit at the core of his candidacy: By scapegoating toothless trade unions as powerful and malign interests, he enlists working people in his cause of aiding the rich and the strong.
Notice how Milbank himself engages in outlandish deception: He insinuates that Walker is somehow lying about the death threats he has received, saying that they “could not be substantiated by independent authorities.” But the threats made by union thugs against Walker and his fellow Wisconsin Republicans do, indeed, appear to have been substantiated, as evidenced here, here, here and here. For Milbank to suggest that Walker is lying because Milbank failed to even conduct a cursory Google search to confirm the validity of the threats tells you everything you need to know about Milbank’s far-left agenda and lack of veracity.
On the larger level, Milbank is trying to convince the low information reader that Walker’s campaign to end outlandish, expensive, taxpayer-funded perks for public union workers is somehow analogous to Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s campaign against Communism. The only think McCarthy and Walker have in common is that they’re both from Wisconsin. But Milbank’s unintended analogy between Unions and Communists is on point, as they both encourage working the minimum amount, guaranteed jobs for life (regardless of merit), and redistributing wealth. So maybe Milbank is right, after all: Scott Walker’s willingness to take on public sector unions is dangerous indeed– to these liberal/progressive/Marxist values. No wonder Milbank is afraid.
NOW UP: The Carnival Of Nuclear Energy.
THE STORY OF MOIRA GREYLAND:
I was born into a family of famous gay pagan authors in the late Sixties. My mother was Marion Zimmer Bradley, and my father was Walter Breen. Between them, they wrote over 100 books: my mother wrote science fiction and fantasy (Mists of Avalon), and my father wrote books on numismatics: he was a coin expert.
What they did to me is a matter of unfortunate public record: suffice to say that both parents wanted me to be gay and were horrifed at my being female. My mother molested me from ages 3-12. The first time I remember my father doing anything especially violent to me I was five. Yes he raped me. I don’t like to think about it. If you want to know about his shenanigans with little girls, and you have a very strong stomach, you can google the Breendoggle, which was the scandal which ALMOST drummed him out of science fiction fandom.
It’s a sad story.
SPACE: New Horizons mission shares more high-res Pluto images. “The images are the last of the initial download splurge, as scientists will now focus on processing the data streaming in slowly but surely from the probe and as it continues to speed away from Earth. NASA will release more imagery and data in September.”
LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: Building a Single-molecule Transistor from Scratch.
MSNBC: Poll: Do You Think People Should Be Allowed To Carry Guns In Public? Guess which answer I gave.
WHEN POLICE SWAT TEAMS DO THINGS SOLDIERS WEREN’T ALLOWED TO DO IN IRAQ.
But in Iraq we cared what the population thought of us.
BECAUSE THEY’RE HYPOCRITES: Ace at Ace of Spades on the Race-Baiting Hypocrisy of Jon Stewart:
Jon Stewart’s Only Black Writer Told Him He Was Uncomfortable With Stewart’s “Black Guy” Impression; Racist Jon Stewart Told Him to “F*** Off,” Angrily.
I kind of understand Stewart’s reaction — it is, in fact, annoying to be accused of bad motives (racism has in fact been defined as the worst possible motive in existence) over things that are, or at least seem, harmless, and without harmful intent.
On the other hand, this jackass is, like Seth Rogen, a reliable cheerleader for SJW attacks so long as they’re directed at other people; only when such attacks are directed at themselves do they suddenly feel that maybe this censorship-by-contrived-hypersensitivity is stultifying, anti-creativity, anti-thought and ultimately anti-human.
But per the rules Jon Stewart inflicts on others: He’s a g*d-damn racist. . . .
F*** you, Jon Stewart. You’re a hypocrite, a liar, and — by your own rules — an unrepentant racist who not only won’t check his privilege, but who uses his privilege to silence any black voices who dissent against you.
Way to speak truth to power, Ace. These liberal/progressives deserve to be called out–every single time–on their hypocrisy. Don’t hold back calling them the “r” word, because they surely would not, if the tables were turned.
DRIVING TO THE SOUTH POLE in hybrid Hummers.