MY NEW 4-WHEEL LOVE:  The 2013 Aston Martin Rapide.  Not your typical 4-door family sedan.  Swoon.

THE 6 BIGGEST 2008 DEBATE PROMISES OBAMA DIDN’T KEEP:  Don’t expect his tonight’s promises to be any different.

OBAMA’S CHANNELING OF AL SHARPTON IS “OLD NEWS” TO PROGRESSIVES:   Progressives and liberals in the mainstream media are scrambling to dismiss the significance of the video released yesterday by the Daily Caller, showing then-candidate Obama channeling his inner Al Sharpton.  James Rainey at the LA Times concludes:

With the release of the video this week, some of Obama’s familiar enemies want to relitigate his old relationships. They want to reopen the question of whether the president is someone Americans really don’t know. Maybe voters can’t wait for a second trial on the president’s sentiments on race. But it’s more likely the only ones who will be listening will be the ones who already condemned him the first time around.

As I stated in an earlier post, this is a revelation to many people who voted for Obama because they thought (wrongly, as it turned out) he represented a post-racial America. It is most emphatically not merely the ones who “already condemned him the first time around.”  People wanted hope and change— many of them have now lost hope and realize the “change” Obama wants apparently applies only to white folks, whom he sees as fundamentally racist.  This is not the post-racial man that most well meaning Americans thought they voted for.

BOTOX, PLEASE! I’M FEELING A BIT DEPRESSED:  Apparently, a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical study has revealed that botox–a popular, muscle-paralyzing wrinkle smoother– reduced depression symptoms by an impressive 47%, compared to 9% for the placebo group.

I have a feeling a whole lot of middle aged folks are now going to start finding themselves “depressed” and demanding Botox treatment.

ANIMAL FARM:  A farmer in Oregon was found dead inside his hog pen, and his body had been substantially eaten by the swine. Investigators don’t yet know if he died of natural causes and was then eaten by the large hungry beasts, or if the hungry beasts harbored malicious intent, a la George Orwell’s Animal Farm.

Makes you kind of rethink eating bacon, doesn’t it?  Nah– eat or be eaten!

WELCOME TO POST-RACIAL AMERICA (PSYCH!):  Ah yes, remember those heady days back in 2008, when Americans of all races voted for a young Senator named Barack Hussein Obama in the sincere hope that he would heal this country’s racial divisions, ushering in a new, post-racial era?  Fuggedaboutit. It was merely a carefully crafted illusion, intentionally designed to tug on the heart strings of well-meaning, ordinary folks hoping for a color blind society.

But Obama showed his real face–the Billy Joel “Stranger”-type freaky face (“Well we all have a face that we hide away forever. And we take them out and show ourselves when everyone has gone.”)– in this Daily Caller video, in a 2008 speech to an audience of black ministers.  Copping an insincere, absurd, stereotypical black “accent,” then-candidate Obama repeatedly suggests that the federal government behaves in a purposefully racist manner.  In its response to Hurricane Katrina, for example, Obama says the following:

Now here’s the thing, when 9-11 happened in New York City, they waived the Stafford Act — said, ‘This is too serious a problem. We can’t expect New York City to rebuild on its own. Forget that dollar you gotta put in. Well, here’s ten dollars.’ And that was the right thing to do. When Hurricane Andrew struck in Florida, people said, ‘Look at this devastation. We don’t expect you to come up with y’own money, here. Here’s the money to rebuild. We’re not gonna wait for you to scratch it together — because you’re part of the American family.

What’s happening down in New Orleans? Where’s your dollar? Where’s your Stafford Act money? Makes no sense! Tells me that somehow, the people down in New Orleans they don’t care about as much!

Sound familiar? Rapper Kayne West’s made an eerily similar, racist claim that, because of the Katrina response, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”

We might expect this attitude from an uneducated, uncouth rapper, but someone who wants to be President of the United States– all of us– black, white, and purple with pink polka dots?  I dare say that if this video had been played by the mainstream media and candidate Obama had been vigorously questioned about it, many Americans’ idealism about the post-racialism he purported to represent would have been irreparably shattered

GOT (LACTOSE FREE) MILK? THIS GENETICALLY ENGINEERED COW DOES:  Scientists in New Zealand have genetically engineered a cow, Daisy, who produces lactose-free milk.  They used a combination of cloning  and RNA interference techniques to produce 57 cow embryos.  Of the implanted embryos, only 4 pregnancies and one birth (Daisy) resulted.  Daisy was born without a tail.

I don’t know about you, but I think I’d pass on drinking Daisy’s milk.

THE 10 SLOWEST SPORTS CARS OF ALL TIME:  Don’t admit it if you owned one.  LOL.

EVER SEEN A LILIGER?:  It’s a hybrid between a liger (lion-tiger hybrid) mother and a lion father.  The first liliger was born in a Russian zoo recently.  It’s very cute, to be sure, but kind of weird in a chimerical way.

THE WHITEST MAN TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT (BUT THAT’S NOT RACIST BECAUSE THE PERSON WHO SAID IT IS  A PROGRESSIVE):  And being a progressive makes it okay, of course, to say all kinds of outrageously offensive, racist things.  You can’t make this stuff up, people:  Stephanie Li, an English professor blogging over at the Huffington Post, says Mitt Romney  “truly is the whitest man to run for president because he doesn’t realize how his whiteness has influenced his life and how his class standing provided him with remarkable educational and financial opportunities.”  Further (as though she really needed to go further!):

This theme and the Romney’s repeated vow that they are the creators of their own success taps into long standing myths of the self-made American man, a man who is always implicitly white. But Romney’s narrative of rugged individualism is as false as the image of self-reliant colonists and frontiersman who made their fortunes in large part by relying on the slave trade and the exploitation of Native Americans. Romney’s blindness to his own racial privilege is a further function of his whiteness and its invisible entitlements.

So let me get this straight:  The “myth” of being “self-made” can only be attained by white males– and specifically a subset of white males who “rely[] on the slave trade and the exploitation of Native Americans”?

This race-obsessed view of things is of course common in progressive circles, including the critical race theory circles in which former adjunct law professor Barack Obama ran.  Consider also this incendiary op-ed by Lee Siegel that ran in the New York Times, in which Siegel said,

The simple, impolitely stated fact is that Mitt Romney is the whitest white man to run for president in recent memory.

Of course, I’m not talking about a strict count of melanin density. I’m referring to the countless subtle and not-so-subtle ways he telegraphs to a certain type of voter that he is the cultural alternative to America’s first black president. It is a whiteness grounded in a retro vision of the country, one of white picket fences and stay-at-home moms and fathers unashamed of working hard for corporate America.

Yes, you heard that right:  Not only is Romney the “whitest white man” but this label means that such super-white folks have a “retro vision of the country” involving white picket fences, stay-at-home moms (watch those lady parts, y’all!), and fathers “unashamed” of working hard for “corporate America” (and what a shameful thing that really is).

Wow.  Really– just wow.  Can you feel the hatred?

PURPOSE OF CAIRO ATTACK?  FREE THE BLIND SHEIK!:  Kerry Picket at the Washington Times blogs today about the probable reason the Obama Administration refused to call the Egyptian embassy attack “terrorism” for so long–preferring instead to blame the incident (and others around the globe like it) as a “spontaneous” outburst of anger directed at a lame You Tube video about Mohammed.

The reason?  Because it knew that the attacks were an effort to bully the Administration into freeing 74 year-old Omar Abdul Rahman, aka the Blind Sheik, who is currently serving a life sentence at a federal pen in North Carolina after his conviction for seditious conspiracy after issuing a fatwa to set off bombs in the NYC subways.

Because as PJ Media reporter Raymond Ibrahim posted on September 10– one day before the attacks— an Egyptian paper called el Fagr reported that various jihadi groups had issued a statement “threatening to burn the U.S. Embassy in Cairo to the ground.”  According to Ibrahim’s post:

According to El Fagr, they are calling for the immediate release of the Islamic jihadis who are imprisonment and in detention centers in the U.S. including Guantanamo Bay: “The group, which consists of many members from al-Qaeda, called [especially] for the quick release of the jihadi [mujahid] sheikh, Omar Abdul Rahman [the “Blind Sheikh”], whom they described as a scholar and jihadi who sacrificed his life for the Egyptian Umma, who was ignored by the Mubarak regime, and [President] Morsi is refusing to intervene on his behalf and release him, despite promising that he would. The Islamic Group has threatened to burn the U.S. Embassy in Cairo with those in it, and taking hostage those who remain [alive], unless the Blind Sheikh is immediately released.”

The new Egyptian President, Mohamed Morsi, has publicly called for the release of the Blind Sheik for “humanitarian” reasons.  The White House denies any plans to release the Blind Sheik.

Whether the White House does/does not consider the freeing of the Blind Sheik, the more salient question for reporters to ask is this?  Why did radical Islamists believe that such a terrorist ploy would possibly get traction with the Obama Administration?  Does the “Obama Doctrine” of appeasement to radical Islamists (and other avowed enemies of the U.S.) encourage this sort of terrorist behavior?

One can see that, if properly understood as an act of terrorism, these acts of violence should trigger much greater– and long overdue– scrutiny of the Obama Administration’s foreign policy.

POLITICIZING THE SUPREME COURT, PROGRESSIVE STYLE:   In the debate between Massachusetts U.S. Senator Scott Brown and his Democrat challenger, progressive poster girl Elizabeth Warren, Scott was asked  to name his “model” U.S. Supreme Court Justice.  Brown responded that Justice Antonin Scalia was “very good,” a choice that immediately drew respectful boos from the oh-so-tolerant progressives/liberals in the audience.

Elizabeth Warren wasted no time capitalizing on Scott’s selection, tweeting that Scalia is “adamantly opposed to Roe v. Wade” (the abortion decision).  Ah, there those progressives go again:  Not-so-subtly warning us females that we’d better watch our lady parts!

Oh, and why is it okay for progressive leaders like Warren to politicize the Supreme Court while others of the same ilk– e.g., her Harvard Law colleague Laurence Tribe–go around condemning (loudly) anything they perceive as politicization of the Supreme Court?  Can you say, “hypocrisy”?

MORE HOPE & CHANGE (BUT WAY LESS PRIVACY):  An ACLU report reveals that warrantless, electronic monitoring of Americans’ communications (email; phone calls, etc.) have increased a whopping 60% since 2009, all on the Obama Administration’s watch.

Good for the ACLU for issuing the report.  Now:  Where is the all the liberal/progressive outrage?  Will Keith Olbermann call President Obama a “fascist,” as he did when President Bush engaged in similar warrantless eavesdropping?     I don’t know about you, but I hear only crickets from the mainstream media.

VOTING ANARCHY IN PENNSYLVANIA:  A Pennsylvania state trial judge, Robert Simpson, has blocked the implementation of a law requiring voters to show I.D. Earlier in the month, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ordered Judge Simpson to block the law unless he determined there would be no voter disenfranchisement and that new state voter IDs are easy to obtain.  Simpson said that he could not say that there would be “no” voter disenfranchisement.  An appeal back to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is expected.

Tea party groups in Pennsylvania have expressed their intent to campaign against the retention election of two Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices, Ron Castille (a Republican) and Max Baer (a Democrat), if the voter I.D. law is not implemented.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, has ruled that requiring voter I.D. is perfectly constitutional.  It prevents voter fraud.  Without such measures, our elections are a third-world sham.  Any politician that tells you otherwise– that voter I.D. laws are about “disenfranchisement,” for example–is willing to sacrifice the integrity of our republic for political gain.

STOP LYING, MR. PRESIDENT:  NJ Governor Chris Christie shocks This Week’s host George Stephanopoulos by saying that, if Christie were debating the President, he would tell him, “Stop lying, Mr. President.”  If only Mitt Romney had similar chutzpah. It’s kind of like dating:  There’s something about a bad boy unafraid to tell it like it is.  Nice guys– like Romney–don’t get any (votes, that is).

SUCH A SOFTIE (ON TERRORISM, THAT IS):  Retired Navy commander J.D. Gordon has a great op-ed n the Washington Times discussing the Obama Administration’s decision to release from Gitmo Canadian terrorist Omar Khadr back to Canada. Khadr was almost 16 years old when he threw a grenade that killed Army Sargeant Christopher Speer.  Khadr pleaded guilty of war crimes and received an eight-year sentence. He’ll be eligible for parole next year.

As Gordon points out, Khadr is no ordinary Gitmo terrorist:

The latest detainee to leave, Mr. Khadr, is a Canadian citizen of Egyptian-Palestinian descent who hails from Canada’s notorious “first family of terrorism.”

His father, Ahmed Khadr, was one of Osama Bin Laden’s top financiers in Afghanistan and Pakistan, using a network of boys’ orphanages as a charity front. His brothers and sisters also grew up into al Qaeda, raised with bin Laden’s kids at an ultra-secure terrorist compound outside Kandahar prior to Sept. 11.

OBAMA CAMPAIGN: DON’T THROW ME IN THAT BRIAR PATCH!:  The briar patch being the first debate.  Yep, that’s right:  Obama campaign deputy manager Stephanie Cutter says, “[W]e’re coming into this debate very realistic that Mitt Romney is likely to win if he plays his cards right. If he performs and fills in those details and has that [conversation] with the American people, instead of having, you know, a punching match and just leveling insults at the President like he’s done over the past two years. If he fills in his policy details, talks in specifics about his plans for the future he could win this debate.”

Can you say “spin”?  And yeah, that’s exactly what the Obama folks  want:  A wonky Mitt Romney getting stuck in the briar patch of policy details.  My advice to Romney?  The opposite:  Come out punching– insults aren’t necessary; just facts such as:

1.  A complete inability/unwillingness to own up to the threat of the “t” word– terrorism.  And a concomitant failed Obama Doctrine foreign policy. Cite Libya/Egypt/Tunisia et al.; the failed preference to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in ordinary criminal court; refusing to label the Ft. Hood shooting an act of terrorism.

2.  A complete disconnect with the desires of the American public re: health care reform.  Obamacare does zero to reduce costs (in fact, as my recent post revealed, costs are going up) or expand the number of providers, while simultaneously forcing tens of millions of uninsured and employers to buy expensive health insurance policies they can’t afford already.  The American people don’t want this “reform”– never have, never will.  And no, Mr. President, they will not learn to like it once its devastating effects kick in beginning 2014.   The President’s “signature” legislative accomplishment is, in short, an utter disaster.

3.  A dangerous policy of downplaying the Iranian nuclear threat at the expense of Israel, the only true democracy in the Middle East and one of America’s closest (and most important) allies.

4.  An utter disregard for the Constitution, as evidenced by executive orders that completely undercut the legislative branch— e.g., deciding not to deport certain young persons here illegally; gutting the work requirements of welfare reform; ignoring the testing and monitoring requirements of No Child Left Behind.

5. A completely failing economy, by any measure you prefer– jobs, GDP, median household income, deficits, downgraded credit rating, etc.  It is the worst economy virtually anyone alive can remember.  Four more years of this????

These are just a few starting talking points, of course.  I’m sure my co-bloggers and the Instapundit readers can think of many more.

REYNOLDS/FOLEY 2016 PLATFORM:   If chosen as Glenn’s 2016 running mate (a selection I strongly advise against), I would add to his thoughtful 2016 platform the following:

9.  Unabashedly defend the original meaning of the Constitution.  Boldly proclaim that it isn’t a “living” document subject to infinitely capacious “re-interpretation.”  Confess that it can only be legitimately amended in one way:  via the amendment procedures of Article V (2/3 of both houses of Congress; 3/4 of states’ ratification).  Tell the American people that this respects their authorship and control over their social charter, taking it back from an unelected-for-life, elitist federal judiciary.

A PRODUCTIVITY BOON: KITTENS!:   According to a recent Japanese study, research subjects are notably able to finish productive tasks after viewing pictures of little fuzzy kittens and other baby animals. 

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, REDUX:  Next Wednesday (Oct. 10), the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in another affirmative action case, Fisher v. University of Texas.  The case comes just a few years after the Supreme Court decided a pair of landmark affirmative action cases involving the University of Michigan.  In the main Michigan case, Grutter v. Bollinger, a deeply divided (5-4) Court upheld the use of race as “one factor” in a “holistic” admissions program with the end goal of creating a “critical mass” of certain minority students in the name of racial “diversity.”

The University of Texas policy being challenged does two things:  (1) It automatically admits, in a race-blind manner, the top 10% of every high school’s graduating class; and (2) for the remaining seats, the University uses the “holistic” approach, in which race is one factor.  The challenger of the law, a white female, asserts that using option 1 (race-neutral “top 10%”) negates the need for using option 2 (race consciousness).  Because, in other words, option1 yields a sufficiently “diverse” student body, why continue to use race at all?

The question before the Court is pretty straightforward:  Once a race-neutral policy is in place that creates a diverse student body, is it consistent with the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to then use race in the name of “diversity”?

Justice Kagan has recused herself from the Fisher case, leaving only 8 Justices to decide.

A WHOLE NEW MEANING TO DRUNK OFF YOUR A**:   Apparently the frat boys at the University of Tennessee have discovered a new, faster, and dangerous way to get drunk:  the alcohol enema.  It was discovered by hospital emergency room physicians after a very drunk young man presented for blood alcohol poisoning and personnel observed lacerations/wounds to his rectal area, raising concerns that he’d been sodomized.

The young ladies’ (and I use this term liberally) version?  Alcohol-soaked tampons.

THE TEA PARTY IS NO SLEEPING GIANT, BECAUSE IT’S NOT SLEEPING:  A Breitbart story reveals that a recent AP/GfK poll (not covered, of course, by the mainstream media) reveals that 31% of likely voters– almost one-third– are self-identified tea party supporters. 

I’ve been saying this all along:  The tea partiers can’t wait to vote this year.  They will turn up in droves to pull the lever in protest against President Obama’s policies. Wait and see.

BINAURAL BEATS A “DIGITAL DRUG”?:  Scientists in Dubai are calling for the country to ban “binaural beats,” a type of music long known to induce meditation and relaxation.  The reason? Binaural beats are believed to induce an altered state of consciousness (how dare it!) that mimics some drugs such as ecstasy or pot.

Try it out for yourself here. 

FEDERALIZING EDUCATION–NO CHILD GETS AHEAD:  Sam Blumenfeld over at the New American points out that all this progressive-style “testing” of our children in public schools hasn’t done a single thing to improve education.  Of course it’s not just the progressives who love federalizing the curriculum; President George W. Bush and his brother, former Governor Jeb Bush (FL), were chief proponents of “No Child Left Behind” (known in my household as “No Child Gets Ahead (Because That Wouldn’t Be Fair!)) and its devastating effect on public school learning, forcing teachers to “teach to the test.”  Observes Blumenfeld:

It’s hard to imagine that we can continue educating our school children to become dumbed-down socialists without this nation becoming eventually a socialist society. That’s why the kind of Congress we get in 2013 will determine whether or not we continue down this road to socialism or finally reverse course.

Anyone who has taught young people over the last 10-20 years or so (as I have–though admittedly my law students are the educational system’s “cream of the crop”) will acknowledge that there has been a massive, noticeable loss of critical thinking skills, creating an environment ripe for a socialist/communitarian state.  The “dumbing down” of American children should be a much larger issue in this election.

AMERICAN IMPERIALISM, PROGRESSIVE STYLE:  We all know how the progressives/liberals decry American “imperialism” every chance they get.  In a classic case of hypocrisy, however, they’re asking the Supreme Court today, in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Shell Petroleum, to open up U.S. courts to tort claims filed against U.S. corporations for “human rights” violations the corporations allegedly committed in other countries.  Their argument for this ludicrous overreach of US sovereignty?  The Alien Tort Statute (ATS), which says:

The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.

The ATS was designed to protect foreign ambassadors harmed on U.S. soil, allowing such state-law torts to be heard by the more objective and interested U.S. (as opposed to state) courts.  Using it to open U.S. courthouse doors for any alleged human rights atrocity claimed “by an alien for a tort” committed overseas is not only a perversion of the statute’s meaning (aka, congressional intent) but also the very kind of aggressive use of U.S. jurisdiction that progressives normally condemn.

Oh, that’s right:  It’s okay to ignore U.S. sovereign jurisdictional limits when it’s for the “right” reasons.