Friday, October 19, 2012

Romney Addresses 67th Annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner

Watch the video at the following link. Romney was funny but had enough edge to make the President uncomfortable. Excellent job.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/10/18/romney_addresses_67th_annua...

Here a few quotes:

Romney: “I was hoping that President Obama would bring Joe Biden along, because he’ll laugh at anything.”

Romney says headlines will say “polls show Obama leading from behind.”

Romney says the press will report on this event: “Obama embraced by Catholics; Romney has dinner with rich people”.

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Thursday, October 11, 2012

Lara Logan: Gov’t 'Major Lie Being Propagated'…Al Qaeda Coming Back

Eleven years later, “they” still hate us, now more than ever, Lara Logan told the Chicago crowd. The Taliban and al-Qaida have not been vanquished, she added. They’re coming back.

“I chose this subject because, one, I can’t stand, that there is a major lie being propagated …” Logan declared in her native South African accent.

The lie is that America’s military might has tamed the Taliban.

“There is this narrative coming out of Washington for the last two years,” Logan said. It is driven in part by “Taliban apologists,” who claim “they are just the poor moderate, gentler, kinder Taliban,” she added sarcastically. “It’s such nonsense!”

Follow the link for video and reactions:

http://nation.foxnews.com/lara-logan/2012/10/08/lara-logan-lifts-veil-barack-...

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Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Jack Welch: I Was Right About That Strange Jobs Report

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444897304578046260406091012.htm...

My next tweet, on Oct. 5, the one that got the attention of the Obama campaign and its supporters, read: “Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can’t debate so change numbers.”

As I said that same evening in an interview on CNN, if I could write that tweet again, I would have added a few question marks at the end, as with my earlier tweet, to make it clear I was raising a question.

But I’m not sorry for the heated debate that ensued. I’m not the first person to question government numbers, and hopefully I won’t be the last. Take, for example, one of my chief critics in this go-round, Austan Goolsbee, former chairman of the Obama administration’s Council of Economic Advisers. Back in 2003, Mr. Goolsbee himself, commenting on a Bush-era unemployment figure, wrote in a New York Times op-ed: “the government has cooked the books.”

Read the whole thing.

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Latest O’Keefe Video Shows Obama Campaign Voter Fraud

http://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2012/10/10/latest-okeefe-video-shows-obama...

James O’Keefe has done it again – this time capturing video of a paid Obama Organizing for America director in Houston, Texas, assisting a double-voting scheme directed toward Florida. In the video, an undercover Obama “volunteer” tells Organizing for America’s Stephanie Caballero that she wanted to vote twice to help reelect President Obama.

The undercover “volunteer” tells Caballero, “I’m going to vote by ballot and then I have mine here too.”

After the volunteer tells Caballero her plan, Caballero volunteers to help the double voter get the forms to request an absentee ballot in Florida. “I’ll print that out and you just have to mail it back,” Caballero says.

Follow the link for video. It’s posted on YouTube here:

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A Well-Lined Nest

Big Bird is a One-Percenter.

http://freebeacon.com/a-well-lined-nest/

And PBS receives only about 12 percent of its budget from the federal government, totaling a $445 million grant over two years.

“Eliminating the $445 million set aside in the federal budget for PBS would be a blow, no question. But it wouldn’t be the end,” writes the Christian Science Monitor.

In any case, it appears Big Bird’s nest is lushly lined.

“Carroll Spinney, who has played Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch since the show’s inception, earned more than $314,000 in compensation in 2011,” reports MSN.

The money from the federal government is not even enough to fund top executives’ salaries for Sesame Workshop.

Former Sesame Workshop CEO Gary Knell earned $988,456 in the fiscal year that ended in June 2011, and the current CEO, H. Melvin Ming, made $584,572 during the same period, records show.

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Monday, September 24, 2012

Elizabeth Warren’s law license problem

http://legalinsurrection.com/2012/09/elizabeth-warrens-law-license-problem/

Whatever the political implications of the exchange, Warren’s representation of Travelers raises another big potential problem for Warren.

Warren represented not just Travelers, but numerous other companies starting in the late 1990s working out of and using her Harvard Law School office in Cambridge, which she listed as her office of record on briefs filed with various courts. Warren, however, never has been licensed to practice law in Massachusetts.

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Friday, September 14, 2012

Obama’s Great Islamist Delusion has come home to roost

http://legalinsurrection.com/2012/09/obamas-great-islamist-delusion-has-come-...

We cast aside Hosni Mubarak on a moment’s notice without taking steps to give non-Islamist parties a timetable to organize an effective transition; we overthrew Muammar Gaddafi, teaching tyrants the lesson that giving up nuclear ambitions is a deadly mistake, and then promptly departed leaving chaos; and we have isolated Israel among a sea of Islamist radicals as it seeks to stop the Iranian’s march towards nuclear weapon capability.

Follow the link for video from Obama’s famous Cairo speech (June 2009).

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Thursday, September 13, 2012

Jennifer Rubin: New attack on Americans; Obama foreign policy in disarray

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/new-attack-on-americans-o...

Jamie Fly of the Foreign Policy Initiative spoke for many foreign policy critics, who for years have been fretting about Obama’s unwillingness to pursue a coherent strategy in the region. He told Right Turn: “We are beginning to see the real world effects of ‘leading from behind.’ The President has been more focused on burnishing his supposed national security credentials than helping to ensure that the revolutions of the Arab Spring lead to more long-term stability and increased opportunities for the people of the region.” He also recalled the unseemly victory lap after Libyan rebels emerged victorious in the civil war. “Libya may eventually be seen as a ‘mission accomplished’ moment in which the President of the United States was more interested in declaring victory than in helping the Libyans win the peace. Now, we and they are left to pick up the pieces.”

Most immediate is the seemingly bizarre insistence on going forward with aid to the Islamist government in Egypt that failed to protect our embassy. The Wall Street Journal reports: “The Obama administration is in the final stages of organizing a $1 billion package to ease the rising debt burden of Mr. Morsi’s government. The U.S. also gives Egypt $1.3 billion a year in military aid.”

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Libya rescue squad ran into fierce, accurate ambush

http://af.reuters.com/article/libyaNews/idAFL5E8KCMYB20120912?pageNumber=1&am...

Miscommunication which understated the number of American survivors awaiting rescue – there were 37, nearly four times as many as the Libyan commander expected – also meant survivors and rescuers found themselves short of transport to escape this second battle, delaying an eventual dawn break for the airport.

Captain Fathi al-Obeidi, whose special operations unit was ordered by Libya’s authorities to meet an eight-man force at Benghazi airport, said that after his men and the U.S. squad had found the American survivors who had evacuated the blazing consulate, the ostensibly secret location in an isolated villa came under an intense and highly accurate mortar barrage.

“I really believe that this attack was planned,” he said, adding to suggestions by other Libyan officials that at least some of the hostility towards the Americans was the work of experienced combatants. “The accuracy with which the mortars hit us was too good for any regular revolutionaries.”

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Hayes: Wait, Who's Political?

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-romney-libya-cairo-whos-political_6...

So as the media pound Mitt Romney for allegedly violating the inviolable space around 9/11 and difficulties overseas, remember this about Barack Obama. He sought campaign volunteers and his top adviser launched a harsh attack on Romney early on 9/11. His top surrogate, Bill Clinton, let loose a tough attack on Romney and entitlements that evening. Obama rejected a meeting with a key ally potentially on the verge of war at least in part because he might need to be campaigning at the end of the month. And after a pause of his campaign activities that lasted approximately 14 ½ hours, the president resumed his normal campaign schedule with a trip to Las Vegas, where gave a speech that echoed his address to the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte last week.

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Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Romney: Obama administration response to embassy attacks 'disgraceful'

Byron York writes:

http://washingtonexaminer.com/article/2507676#.UFB9YkJAes1
> The United States responded not by condemning the Egyptian attackers but by condemning anyone who might have "hurt the religious feelings of Muslims." An apologetic statement released by the U.S. embassy expressed offense at those who might have upset Muslim sensibilities but did not express any outrage, or even disapproval, of those who would storm a U.S. embassy and destroy the American flag.

> Late Tuesday, after eschewing hard-edged political statements in observance of the 9/11 anniversary, Romney released a statement on the violence. "I'm outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi," Romney said. "It's disgraceful that the Obama administration's first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks."

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Krauthammer: Statement to embassy mob should be 'go to hell'

watch the video:

http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/11/krauthammer-rips-us-embassy-in-egypt-says-a...

Earlier in the day, after the American embassy had been attacked, the embassy issued a statement condemning what is believed to be the cause of the unrest — a video disparaging the Prophet Muhammad that was produced in the United States.

Krauthammer: “I would issue a statement saying to the mob, ‘Go to hell.’ The way America works, the way a democracy works, is that everybody has a right to express themselves. We don’t police our speech and you ought to apologize to the United States for storming an embassy and the violation of the ultimate sacred principle of democracy, which is protecting embassies and missions abroad. For the U.S. to what, essentially, issue a veiled apology, I think is disgraceful.”

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Wednesday, September 05, 2012

Krauthammer on Michelle Obama's Speech

http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/05/krauthammer-on-michelle-obamas-brilliant-sp...

Krauthammer went on to say that despite of his high marks for the performance, the substance was not believable.

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Tuesday, September 04, 2012

Thomas Sowell: Obama's Dreams

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/09/04/obamas_dreams_115291.html

Barack Obama is one of those people who are often wrong but never in doubt. When he burst upon the national political scene as a presidential candidate in 2008, even some conservatives were impressed by his confidence.

But confident ignorance is one of the most dangerous qualities in a leader of a nation. If he has the rhetorical skills to inspire the same confidence in himself by others, then you have the ingredients for national disaster.

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Friday, August 31, 2012

Goldberg sums up the GOP Convention

Jonah Goldberg writes in the latest G-file newsletter:

But the two most effective and representative lines of the whole convention came from Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan (as it should be).

From Romney: “President Obama promised to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family.”

While this isn’t necessarily red meat, it’s got a nice pinkish hue bordering on red at the center. It also shows why red meat can be effective. Liberals hate this line because they think making fun of global warming is sacrilegious and “anti-science.” So they’re attacking him for it. But the average voter doesn’t hear anti-scientific blasphemy, they hear, “Obama talks a big game about things that either don’t matter or he can’t do. Meanwhile this guy says he’s going to focus on the economy and getting my kid a job that gets him out of the basement.”

Which brings me to what I think was easily the best line of the night, from Paul Ryan.

We are four years into this presidency. The issue is not the economy that Barack Obama inherited, not the economy as he envisions, but this economy that we are living. College graduates should not have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they can move out and get going with life.

That is brilliant and one of the few lines of the whole convention that elicited serious pangs of writerly envy. It works so well because it is poignant, funny, and feels very, very true. It captures the faded coolness and fizzled hype of the original Obama frenzy. That’s a great message from a young (younger than me!) politician aimed at young people. But it also works very well for older people. People who are no longer all that young understand the pain and anxiety of wasted time and unfulfilled potential. The image makes you feel for the young adults effectively trapped at the bottom of an economic escalator that seems to be moving down as they try to climb up.

Go to NationalReview.com to sign up for the newsletter.

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Goldberg sums up the GOP Convention

Jonah Goldberg writes in the latest G-file newsletter:

But the two most effective and representative lines of the whole convention came from Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan (as it should be).

From Romney: “President Obama promised to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family.”

While this isn’t necessarily red meat, it’s got a nice pinkish hue bordering on red at the center. It also shows why red meat can be effective. Liberals hate this line because they think making fun of global warming is sacrilegious and “anti-science.” So they’re attacking him for it. But the average voter doesn’t hear anti-scientific blasphemy, they hear, “Obama talks a big game about things that either don’t matter or he can’t do. Meanwhile this guy says he’s going to focus on the economy and getting my kid a job that gets him out of the basement.”

Which brings me to what I think was easily the best line of the night, from Paul Ryan.

We are four years into this presidency. The issue is not the economy that Barack Obama inherited, not the economy as he envisions, but this economy that we are living. College graduates should not have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they can move out and get going with life.

That is brilliant and one of the few lines of the whole convention that elicited serious pangs of writerly envy. It works so well because it is poignant, funny, and feels very, very true. It captures the faded coolness and fizzled hype of the original Obama frenzy. That’s a great message from a young (younger than me!) politician aimed at young people. But it also works very well for older people. People who are no longer all that young understand the pain and anxiety of wasted time and unfulfilled potential. The image makes you feel for the young adults effectively trapped at the bottom of an economic escalator that seems to be moving down as they try to climb up.

Go to NationalReview.com to sign up for the newsletter.

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Thursday, August 30, 2012

Jennifer Rubin: Ryan freaks out Obamaland

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/ryan-freaks-out-obamaland...

The Democrats are losing it, literally. The Obama camp and its surrogates are losing the fight to control the narrative about Mitt Romney and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) They are losing the effort to distract voters through the presence at the GOP convention of Obama campaign staffers such as Robert Gibbs and Ben LaBolt, who spend their time wandering about and whining to the media here in Tampa about the “negativity” of the other side. They are losing the ability to con the media into focusing on likability, as if perceptions of Romney and Ryan wouldn’t improve after this event.

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Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Richard Epstein: Paul Ryan’s Intellectual Muse

http://www.hoover.org/publications/defining-ideas/article/126521

In 1944, when Roosevelt unveiled his “Second Bill of Rights,” Friedrich von Hayek, an Austrian economist, political theorist, and future Nobel Prize winner, wrote The Road To Serfdom. That book rightly became a sensation both in England and in the United States, especially after the publication of its condensed version in The Reader’s Digest in April 1945. Hayek’s basic message was the exact opposite of Roosevelt’s. He was deeply suspicious of government intervention into markets, thinking that it could lead to economic stagnation on the one hand and to political tyranny on the other.

The Reader’s Digest version of The Road to Serfdom:

http://www.barefootsworld.net/serfdom.html

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Friday, August 24, 2012

Niall Ferguson on Why Barack Obama Needs to Go

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/08/19/niall-ferguson-on-why-barack...

Why does Paul Ryan scare the president so much? Because Obama has broken his promises, and it’s clear that the GOP ticket’s path to prosperity is our only hope.

Read the whole thing.

He also has a response to his critics:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/21/niall-ferguson-defends-newsw...

Runner up is James Fallows of The Atlantic for his hilariously pompous post “As a Harvard Alum, I Apologize.” Well, as an Oxford alum, I laugh.

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Thursday, August 23, 2012

A Nation Adrift From the Rule of Law

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/08/a_nation_adrift_from_the_rule_of_...

Excellent piece in the Wall Street Journal by David Keel, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, about how the idea of the rule of law has been gutted over the last few years

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Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Barone: GM goes from bad to worse despite Obama bailout

http://washingtonexaminer.com/gm-goes-from-bad-to-worse-despite-obama-bailout...

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that GM is bleeding money because of decisions made by a management eager to please its political masters — and by the terms of the bankruptcy arranged by Obama car czars Ron Bloom and Steven Rattner.

Rattner himself admitted late last year, in a speech to the Detroit Economic Club, that “We should have asked the [United Auto Workers] to do a bit more. We did not ask any UAW member to take a cut in their pay.” Nonunion employees of GM spin-off Delphi lost their pensions. UAW members didn’t.

The UAW got its political payoff. And GM, according to Forbes writer Louis Woodhill, is headed to bankruptcy again.

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Thursday, August 16, 2012

Erskine Bowles: Barack Obama Scuttled the Deficit Commission's Work, Not Paul Ryan

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/08/15/Erskine-Bowles-Barack-Obam...

Bowles goes on to say that Obama eventually had some kind words for the commission’s work, but the thrust of his comments is that President Obama didn’t get behind the proposal, despite it meeting and exceeding his own criteria for success.

In other words, according to the Democratic chairman of the bipartisan deficit commission, it wasn’t Paul Ryan that doomed the effort. It was Barack Obama.

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Monday, August 13, 2012

Podhoretz on Ryan, Uniting the right

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/uniting_the_right_rwan8uk...

The secret of Paul Ryan is that he is a blend of the two; philosophically a small-government conservative, managerially a fiscal conservative.

He wants to reduce the size of government for the reasons the Tea Party elucidated — that Big Government saps individual initiative and is a betrayal of the rights enumerated in the Constitution. But he has also mastered the language and the approach of the fiscal conservatives, and has used them to get very specific about the threat posed to the American future by the coming tsunami in entitlement spending.

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George Will: Romney’s presidential pick

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-will-romneys-presidential-pick/...

When Ryan said in Norfolk, “We won’t replace our Founding principles, we will reapply them,” he effectively challenged Obama to say what Obama believes, which is: Madison was an extremist in enunciating the principles of limited government — the enumeration and separation of powers. And Jefferson was an extremist in asserting that government exists not to grant rights but to “secure” natural rights that pre-exist government.

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Thursday, August 09, 2012

Has the Obama Campaign Finally Gone Too Far? - The Soptic Ad

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/08/has-the-obama-campaign-finally-...

The ad is outrageous on so many levels–the woman never worked for Bain Capital or any Bain-associated company; she died seven years after Romney left Bain, at a time when Bain was being run by a major Obama fundraiser; she had her own health insurance that had nothing to do with Bain, and her death had nothing to do with insurance anyway; she went to a hospital thinking she had pneumonia and turned out to be suffering from an incurable cancer–that it has horrified every halfway-objective observer.

More on the story:

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/08/omg-joe-soptic-the-anti-romney-cancer...

http://ace.mu.nu/archives/331761.php

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/148291/

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Monday, August 06, 2012

Repeal the Hollywood tax cuts!

http://washingtonexaminer.com/sunday-reflection-repeal-the-hollywood-tax-cuts...

The movie excise tax was imposed in response to the high deficits after World War Two. Deficits are high again, and there’s already historical precedent. Of course, to keep up with technology, the tax should now apply to DVDs, downloadable movies, pay-per-view and the like.

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Friday, August 03, 2012

Charles Krauthammer: Romney’s excellent trip

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-romneys-excellent-...

Look at how Romney was received. In Israel, its popular prime minister lavished on him a welcome so warm as to be a near-endorsement. In Poland, Romney received an actualendorsement from Lech Walesa, former dissident, former president, Cold War giant, Polish hero.

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Tuesday, July 31, 2012

DOJ Official May Have Lied About the New Black Panther Case

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/07/30/federal-court-doj-official-may-have-lied...

But what is most disturbing about this court order is that it strongly suggests that Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez essentially lied in sworn testimony. At a hearing before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights on May 14, 2010, Perez was asked by Commissioner Peter Kirsanow whether “any political leadership [was] involved in the decision not to pursue this particular case.” Perez’s answer, on page 79 of the transcript of that hearing, is an uncategorical “No.” When the statements of Perez are compared to the documents that Judicial Watch forced DOJ to release in the FOIA lawsuit, it is clear Judge Walton was polite when he said they are contradictory and “cast doubt on the accuracy” of Perez’s account.

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DEA Gone Wild

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/312666/dea-gone-wild-kevin-d-williamson

In short, the DEA here commandeered private property from a law-abiding businessman and ineptly deployed it in an operation that got a man killed and now endangers a family that had nothing to do with the case. There is a term for what the DEA did with that truck: grand theft auto.

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Thursday, July 12, 2012

6 charts that show the Welfare State run amok

http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/07/6-charts-that-show-the-welfare-state-run-amok/

These charts show an out-of-control welfare state that is about to get even bigger, increasing both budget costs and dependency.

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Tuesday, July 03, 2012

Incinerating America’s West

http://pjmedia.com/blog/incinerating-america’s-west/?singlepage=true

The beetles have been spreading uncontrollably because continuously connected and extremely thick forests densely populated with mature trees provide the ideal environment for their proliferation. Logging to thin the forests of mature trees that afford the beetles their favorite homes would slow their growth considerably. Logging out tree-free gaps between sections of forests would impose quarantine limits on the epidemic. Logging out trees that have already been killed would remove fuel for the otherwise inevitable conflagration.

the same environmental groups that have halted western logging regard the idea of using DDT to stop the pine beetle with near hysteria. Rachel Carson’s 1962 tome Silent Spring (which falsely argued that the vital pesticide DDT should be banned because it was killing the birds, when actually it was protecting them — and us — from insect-borne diseases) is virtually sacred scripture to the greens, and the successful campaign to ban DDT that followed from its promotion serves as the core of their proudest creation myth. In enshrining this myth, the anti-technology cult has chosen to heartlessly turn its head away from the massive amount of human misery it has caused through its narcissistic sacrifice of millions of African children to malaria. It must perforce regard the very idea that its object of hatred might be used to save our forests and their wildlife from incineration as nothing short of outright heresy.

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Saturday, June 30, 2012

Obama Contributor, Who Helped Enact Assault-Weapons Ban, Ran ‘Fast and Furious’

Good background information on what we currently know about the players in the Fast and Furious scandal:

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-contributor-who-helped-enact-assault-we...

Dennis K. Burke, who as a lawyer for the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee in the 1990s was a key player behind the enactment of the 1994 assault-weapons ban, and who then went on to become Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano’s chief of staff, and a contributor to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential primary campaign, and then a member of Obama’s transition team focusing on border-enforcement issues, ended up in the Obama administration as the U.S. attorney in Arizona responsible for overseeing Operation Fast and Furious.

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Friday, June 29, 2012

No, It's Not a Tax - from the Dissent

The following is taken from the dissent from the majority ruling in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act cases.

http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/304323

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Thursday, June 28, 2012

The mandate survived. Will the market?

http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/06/the-mandate-survived-will-the-market/

The penalty—now a tax—for failing to purchase insurance in 2014 is $95–for the entire year. That is far less than the monthly insurance premium even young healthy people would pay. It rises to $695 in 2016, or 2.5 percent of income, and increases with inflation thereafter. For a young person trying to afford rent and pay a student loan, the decision is clear. Delaying an insurance purchase is money in the bank, and the tax is too small to matter.

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Looking for a Silver-Lining: A Victory For Limited Government (maybe)

ObamaCare is constitutional because it's really a tax! The Supreme Court doesn't care what Obama said at the time or what the solicitor general said during oral arguments, they just read the text of the law (unlike most of the congressmen who voted for it) and decided they'd better find a way to let it stand.

So Chief Justice Roberts is like the basketball ref who doesn't want to call a potentially game-changing foul late in the fourth quarter. "Let 'em play!" Well, I don't like the decision, but in the long run, it's better to settle this politically rather than in the courts.

Rand Simberg writes:

http://www.transterrestrial.com/?p=43179

> The bill was allowed to stand only because Justice Roberts declared that it passed constitutional muster under the Congress’s ability to tax (presumably under Article I, Section 8), and that while it had been fraudulently passed (that’s why the president had to lie about it being a tax — he knew that if he admitted it, he would not only lose whatever “moderate” support he had for it, but that he would be going back on his promise not to raise taxes on the middle class), that didn’t make it unconstitutional. Here is a key phrase from his opinion: “It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.”

> The nation made a terrible political choice in 2008. It started to fix it in 2010, largely driven by this monstrosity. We have another chance in November to fix it once and for all, with a new president and Senate, and I suspect that’s going to happen. But going forward, future courts will recognize that the Commerce Clause is not a get-out-of-jail-free card for any tyrannical thing that the federal government chooses to do. If we want to continue to rein it in, an amendment of the taxing clause might be useful going forward.

> People have been asking in comments which house this bill originated in. I thought that it was the House, but apparently the original House bill isn’t the one that finally passed — the one that the court just ruled on originated in the Senate. This opens up an entirely new line of legal attack, because any revenue bill must originate in the House. No one had bothered to make this argument in the past, because no one had considered the mandate a tax. But now that the court has declared it to be so, it could be struck down as unconstitutional because of the process.

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Saturday, June 23, 2012

Andrew McCarthy: Fast and Furious and OCDETF

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/303808/fast-and-furious-and-ocdetf-and...

Why is President Obama denying Congress and the public access to critical information about his administration’s part in a shockingly ill-conceived investigation that resulted in the murder of Brian Terry, a heroic federal Border Patrol agent and veteran U.S. Marine. And when I say “his administration’s part,” that, too, is intentional.

When the president intervened with an eleventh-hour privilege assertion as the House committee verged on citing his obstructive attorney general for contempt, the Obamedia storyline, naturally, was that Obama was protecting Holder. But if we know anything after a half-decade of closely watching Barack Obama, it is this: The One is in it for The One. The president invoked executive privilege because he is protecting himself.

There is little doubt that the wiretap applications would show that senior DOJ officials were aware of the gunwalking tactic long before Agent Terry was gunned down on December 14, 2010. But that’s not the half of it. Bet your bottom dollar that gunwalking was discussed in the consideration of whether to make Fast and Furious an OCDETF case in the first place. OCDETF investigations, moreover, are carefully monitored by the Justice Department throughout, to ensure that the extraordinary flow of funding continues to be worthwhile. I’m wagering that senior DOJ officials — which is to say, Obama-administration political appointees — knew about the gunwalking for close to a year before Agent Terry’s death.

Read the whole thing.

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Thursday, June 21, 2012

Obama’s Claim of Executive Privilege: It’s Frivolous

Power Line:

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/06/obamas-claim-of-executive-privi...

Today Deputy Attorney General James Cole advised Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, that the Department of Justice will not respond to the committee’s subpoena of certain documents relating to the Fast and Furious scandal. Instead, the Obama administration is asserting a claim of executive privilege for the reasons laid out in Eric Holder’s letter to President Obama dated June 19.

Holder’s letter is a remarkable document. Viewed from a strictly technical standpoint, it is a terrible piece of legal work.

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Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Obama Invokes Executive Privilege

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/303402/obama-invokes-executive-privilege...

What’s next? A House Government Reform Committee vote, followed by a full House vote, then a referral to the U.S. attorney, who will decline to prosecute contempt because of the privilege invocation (or the House may simply bypass that step, given its frivolousness). Failing a criminal prosecution for contempt, if Issa and company remain resolute, a House civil suit to enforce the subpoena will follow, as happened in the Rove/Miers contempt situation.

On the political side, one thing now is clear. Fast and Furious is owned, lock, stock and barrel, by the president. No longer is this a merely DOJ problem. The president’s invocation of his privilege makes the problem his own.

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Sunday, June 10, 2012

SWAT-ting bloggers

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/302174/who-will-protect-freedom-blog-m...

Chambliss and Marchant called specific attention to one terrifying tactic against these bloggers: SWAT-ting. These hoaxes occur “when a perpetrator contacts local police to report a violent incident at a target’s home.” Callers disguise their true identities and locations in order to provoke SWAT and police forces into descending on targets’ homes in a high-firepower response that is potentially deadly.

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Saturday, June 09, 2012

John Yoo: Obama, Drones and Thomas Aquinas

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303665904577452271794312802.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

The administration has made little secret of its near-total reliance on drone operations to fight the war on terror. The ironies abound. Candidate Obama campaigned on narrowing presidential wartime power, closing Guantanamo Bay, trying terrorists in civilian courts, ending enhanced interrogation, and moving away from a wartime approach to terrorism toward a criminal-justice approach. Mr. Obama has avoided these vexing detention issues simply by depriving terrorists of all of their rights—by killing them.

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Bill Clinton and Barack Obama

Great picture on Jonah Goldberg’s article about Bill Clinton…

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/302122/searching-surrogate-jonah-goldberg

The funny thing about Clinton is that he just pretends everything is hunky-dory, like the guy who tries to suppress a grin as he watches you drink the laxative-spiked punch, or Vizzini in The Princess Bride when he thinks the Dread Pirate Roberts is the one about to die from iocane-powder poisoning. Bill does what Bill does. Just ask Hillary.

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Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Cherokees to Elizabeth Warren: 'We don't claim you!'

The Cherokees are on the Warren path...

http://dailycaller.com/2012/05/30/cherokees-to-elizabeth-warren-we-dont-claim-you/

More than 150 Cherokee Indians have joined a group online demanding more information from Massachusetts senate candidate Elizabeth Warren about her claims of Native American heritage.

“You claim to be Cherokee. …We don’t claim you!” the group “Cherokees Demand Truth from Elizabeth Warren” declares on its website.

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Saturday, May 26, 2012

Ready, Fire, Aim - Team Obama’s Reputation Is Vastly Overrated

http://freebeacon.com/ready-fire-aim/

Democrats may be able to forget Obama’s campaign finance hypocrisy. They may laugh off the Rosen and Biden gaffes. But Cory Booker’s remarks will haunt them, because in just a few sentences, the mayor exposed a growing rift in the Democratic Party.

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Tuesday, May 22, 2012

The Church Goes To Court

http://www.nysun.com/editorials/the-church-goes-to-court/87830/

Congratulations are in order for the Catholic Church, whose archdioceses in America went to federal court today to challenge the Obama administration on the contraception mandates. Something like a dozen federal lawsuits were filed against the administration by something on the order of 43 plaintiffs, including the Archdiocese of New York, among others, and the crown jewel in Catholic education in America, Notre Dame.

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Sunday, May 20, 2012

Ratcheting Up The Crisis In Europe | Via Meadia

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/05/19/ratcheting-up-the-crisis-in-europe/

The success of this little merry-go-round is why Europe calmed down last December. The ECB in effect prints money which it gives to busted banks. The busted banks lend the money to insolvent governments at artificially low rates (but at rates that still allow the banks to make a profit). It was a neat little trick that kept the crisis quiet without forcing the Germans to admit openly that the ECB was in effect using German resources to bail out the rest of the zone.

Bank runs, even virtual bank runs, would blow this fragile arrangements to bits. As the prospect of Greece leaving the euro becomes more likely, savers in Portugal, Spain and Italy have to start wondering if their countries, too, will have to jump ship. Sophisticated investors have been moving their money out of those countries for some time; things may soon reach a pass in which ordinary, unsophisticated investors start to do the same thing. 

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Friday, May 18, 2012

Thursday, May 17, 2012

NC Non-Citizens Voting, Dead Offered Ballots, UNC Officials Embrace Voter Fraud

Project Veritas undercover work:

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Narcissism update: Obama now inserts himself into online bios of past presidents

Instapundit has links to the story plus commentary on Rutherford B. Hayes:

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/143212/

Hayesbio

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The Death of the Hockey Stick?

http://pjmedia.com/blog/the-death-of-the-hockey-stick/?singlepage=true

But at a minimum it should be the final blow to the hockey stick, and perhaps to the very notion that bristlecone pines and larches are accurate thermometers. It should also be a final blow to the credibility of many of the leading lights of climate “science,” but based on history, it probably won’t be, at least among the political class.

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Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Al-Qaeda Infiltrator was Working for Brits not CIA, Cover Blown for Election Year Politics

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/05/14/bombshell-al-qaeda-infiltrator-was-working-for-brits-not-cia-cover-blown-for-election-year-politics/

The double-agent hadn’t been recruited and placed by the CIA, but by British intelligence, who also managed the operation. In fact, the Americans had only recently been made aware of the joint British-Saudi effort.

The leaks about the operation from the American side have infuriated British intelligence officials, who had hoped to continue the operation. The leaks not only scuttled the mission but put the life of the asset in jeopardy. Even CIA officials, joining their MI5 and MI6 counterparts, were describing the leaks as “despicable,” attributing them to the Obama administration.

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Monday, May 14, 2012

NC Democratic Party chairman resigns, then unresigns

http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/05/12/2060883/democratic-party-chair-resigns...

David Parker, the besieged state Democratic Party chairman, said Saturday that he would remain in his post after the party’s ruling committee voted not to accept his resignation.

In doing so, Parker defied pressure from party leaders from Washington to Raleigh to step aside because of the concern that his handling of sexual harassment accusations by a staffer would damage the party’s efforts in the fall.

The move came despite an effort by party leaders including Gov. Bev Perdue, Democratic gubernatorial nominee Walter Dalton, key state elected leaders, the national party, and the White House to ease Parker out.

The pressure came as Republicans have repeatedly hammered the Democrats on the scandal, and national political stories cite it as a reason why it will be difficult for President Barack Obama to carry North Carolina again in November.

At issue was Parker’s handling of a sexual harassment accusation brought by a staffer against Jay Parmley, the party’s executive director. There were criticisms of the confidential settlement in the matter, whether Parker should have taken it to the Executive Committee, and Parker’s off-key news conference last month.

For a little background on Jay Parmley, see this article:

http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/23/leading-nc-democrat-already-accused-of-sexu...

Rebecca Burgin, a long-time former girlfriend of former North Carolina Democratic Party executive director Jay Parmley, told The Daily Caller that she believes Parmley infected her with HIV.

Parmley resigned on April 15 amid sexual harassment allegations from a former young male staffer.

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Saturday, May 12, 2012

Genealogist for Elizabeth Warren 1/32 Cherokee claim goes silent, source document shown false

http://legalinsurrection.com/2012/05/genealogist-who-claimed-elizabeth-warren...

There is nothing left of the claim that Elizabeth Warren is 1/32 Cherokee. The documentary sources have been debunked, and the genealogist and genealogical society which originated the story and upon whom the Warren campaign relies are not talking.

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Wednesday, May 09, 2012

Obama declares support for gay marriage

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-announces-his-support-for-same-sex-marriage.html

President Obama today announced that he now supports same-sex marriage, reversing his longstanding opposition amid growing pressure from the Democratic base and even his own vice president.

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Naomi Schaefer Riley: The Academic Mob Rules

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304363104577391842133259230.htm...

Recently, the Chronicle of Higher Education published a cover story called “Black Studies: ‘Swaggering Into the Future,’” in which the reporter described how “young black-studies scholars … are less consumed than their predecessors with the need to validate the field or explain why they are pursuing doctorates in their discipline.”

So last week, on the Chronicle’s “Brainstorm” blog (where I was paid to be a regular contributor), I suggested that the dissertation topics of the graduate students mentioned were obscure at best and “a collection of left-wing victimization claptrap,” at worst.

In 1974, Thomas Sowell wrote that from the beginnings of the discipline, “the demands for black studies differed from demands for other forms of new academic studies in that they … restricted the philosophical and political positions acceptable, even from black scholars in such programs.”

Thirty-five years later in a piece for the Minding the Campus website, former Berkeley Prof. John McWhorter noted that little had changed: “Too often the curriculum of African-American Studies departments gives the impression that racism and disadvantage are the most important things to note and study about being black.”

My critics have suggested that I do not believe the black experience in America is worthy of study. That is not true. It’s just that the best of this work rarely comes out of black studies departments. Scholars like Roland Fryer in Harvard’s economics department have done pathbreaking research on the causes of economic disparities between blacks and whites. And Eugene Genovese’s work on slavery and the role of religion in black American history retains its seminal role in the field decades after its publication.

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Saturday, May 05, 2012

Steyn: Composite Americans

Mark Steyn writing about Elizabeth Warren:

http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/299092

How does she know she’s a Cherokee maiden? Well, she cites her grandfather’s “high cheekbones,” and says the Indian stuff is part of her family “lore.” Which was evidently good enough for Harvard Lore School when they were looking to rack up a few affirmative-action credits. The former Obama special adviser to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and former chairperson of the Congressional Oversight Panel now says that “I listed myself in the directory in the hopes that it might mean that I would be invited to a luncheon, a group, something that might happen with people who are like I am,” and certainly not for personal career advancement or anything like that. Like everyone else, she was shocked, shocked to discover that, as the Boston Herald reported, “Harvard LawSchool officials listed Warren as Native American in the ’90s, when the school was under fierce fire for their faculty’s lack of diversity.”

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Thursday, May 03, 2012

Obama Campaign: Romney Would Ruin Life of Composite Woman

Ben Shapiro writes:

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/05/03/Obama-fictional-life-of-julia

President Obama’s campaign re-election website has put up a public relations initiative called “The Life of Julia.” The goal of this initiative: to compare “how President Obama’s policies would help one woman over her lifetime – and how Mitt Romney would change her story.” It’s propaganda of the worst order. It’s a typical Obama scare tactic. And worst of all, it assumes that Julia will remain dependent on the government her entire life.

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Wednesday, May 02, 2012

Obama: 'New York girlfriend' was composite

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/05/obama-ny-girlfriend-was-composite-character-122272.html

One of the more mysterious characters from President Obama's 1995 autobiography Dreams From My Father is the so-called 'New York girlfriend.' Obama never referred to her by name, or even by psuedonym, but he describes her appearance, her voice, and her mannerisms in specific detail.
But Obama has now told biographer David Maraniss that the 'New York girlfriend' was actually a composite character, based off of multiple girlfriends he had both in New York City and in Chicago.

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Tuesday, May 01, 2012

Elizabeth Warren’s embattled campaign: Cherokee tie found 5 generations ago

The BostonHerald.com reports:

http://bostonherald.com/news/us_politics/view.bg?articleid=1061128421&format=...

> Meanwhile, Warren’s camp issued statements from five faculty members at the four universities where she’s taught, including Harvard Law School and University of Pennsylvania, to knock down any suggestion she used her Native American background to get hired.
>> “To suggest that she needed some special advantage to be hired here or anywhere is just silly. She was hired for her great abilities as a teacher and a scholar. Her family tree had nothing to do with it,” wrote Jay Westbrook, chairman of the business law school at the University of Texas at Austin, who hired Warren.

What a second... Is someone suggesting that an affirmative action hire is somehow less qualified than someone from a privileged background? That maybe the color of one's skin would be a special advantage beyond one's abilities as a teacher and a scholar? That's an outrageous claim, and I demand to see the evidence.

Elizabeth Warren made sure that her employers knew she was 1/32 Cherokee so that they would have an opportunity to show that they had no bias against people of 1/32 color. She in no way, intended to take away an opportunity from someone of 1/16 or more color. Hiring is not just about numbers! Unless of course you're a mathematics professor, which Warren is not, so there's no story here. Move along.

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Defection Denied

According to a report in the Washington Free Beacon:

http://freebeacon.com/defection-denied-2/

The office of Vice President Joe Biden overruled State and Justice Department officials in denying the political asylum request of a senior Chinese communist official last February over fears the high-level defection would upset the U.S. visit of China’s vice president, according to U.S. officials.

The defector, Wang Lijun, was turned away after 30 hours inside the U.S. Consulate Chengdu and given over to China’s Ministry of State Security, the political police and intelligence service.

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Thursday, April 26, 2012

What 'Gutsy Call'?: CIA Memo Reveals Admiral Controlled bin Laden Mission

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/04/26/Get-bin-laden-memo-CYA

The memo puts all control in the hands of Admiral McRaven – the “timing, operational decision making and control” are all up to McRaven. So the notion that Obama and his team were walking through every stage of the operation is incorrect. The hero here was McRaven, not Obama. And had the mission gone wrong, McRaven surely would have been thrown under the bus.

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Coulter: Romney on Illegal Immigration

http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2012-04-25.html

If you're not sure how you feel about illegal immigration, ask yourself this: "Do I have a nanny, a maid, a pool boy, a chauffeur, a cook or a business requiring lots of cheap labor that the rest of America will have to subsidize with social services to make up for the wages I'm paying?" Press "1" to answer in English. 

If the answer is "no," illegal immigration is a bad deal for you. Cheap labor is cheap only for the employer. 

Today, 70 percent of illegal immigrant households collect government benefits -- as do 57 percent of all immigrant households -- compared to 39 percent of native households. 

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A Bad Day In Court for the Obama Administration

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/04/a-bad-day-in-court-for-the-obama-administration.php

Justice Sotomayor was commenting here on an extraordinary aspect of the Obama administration’s position, to the effect that it is OK if individual Arizona law enforcement officers decide to cooperate with federal immigration authorities, but if the state directs them all to cooperate, it is somehow unconstitutional. The Obama administration literally argued that for a state to engage in “systematic cooperation” with the federal government on immigration is unlawful. We can’t blame Mr. Verrilli for his inability to sell that bizarre argument. We do blame Barack Obama and Eric Holder for trying to assert it.

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Sunday, April 22, 2012

Really, Dog Eating Is Not Funny

Earth Day leader killed, composted girlfriend

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42711922/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/earth-day-co-founder-killed-composted-girlfriend/#.T5Ru4u1Aes1

Ira Einhorn was on stage hosting the first Earth Day event at the Fairmount Park in Philadelphia on April 22, 1970. Seven years later, police raided his closet and found the "composted" body of his ex-girlfriend inside a trunk.

Posted via email from The Blue Pelican

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

North Carolina same-sex scandal for Democrats

http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/16/nc-dems-demand-state-chairmans-resignation-compare-harassment-scandal-to-watergate/

Last week The Daily Caller uncovered emails that seemed to show that an unidentified state Democratic Party official, later revealed to be Parmley, sexually harassed communications staffer Adriadn Ortega.

The emails indicated that the Democratic Party made a financial settlement with Ortega, and that both Ortega and Parmley signed non-disclosure agreements to keep the incident quiet.

Local news outlets have reported that Ortega was fired after he made the sexual-harassment allegations, and that the state party has not been transparent about his firing since it happened.

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Monday, April 16, 2012

Goldberg: Fantasies of Social Darwinism

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/fantasies-social-darwinism_637016.html

> One reason the term “Social Darwinism” caught on with progressives was that it served to divert attention from the sins of “reform Darwinism” — i.e., the progressive passion for eugenics. The progressives advocated aggressive statist intervention to improve the genetic stock of the country, while the alleged Social Darwinists championed laissez-faire and private charity and—gasp—reproductive freedom. Moreover, the term Social Darwinism, which in Europe was used to justify nationalist and racist theories of the Hitlerian variety, was the perfect label for playing guilt-by-association in America. Ever since Hofstadter’s book, liberals have used the term to accuse conservatives of desperately wanting to return to a past that never was.

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Saturday, April 14, 2012

Derb - By Mark Steyn

Just before Easter, Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, announced that John Derbyshire is no longer associated with the magazine after he published an "indefensible" article in another publication.

Derb's article: "The Talk: Nonblack Version" is here:

http://takimag.com/article/the_talk_nonblack_version_john_derbyshire

Lowry's announcement is here:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/295514/parting-ways-rich-lowry

Mark Steyn reacts:

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/295591/re-derb-mark-steyn

> I regret the loss of John Derbyshire to National Review. Short version: Didn’t like the piece, but don’t think NR should have hustled him into the drive-thru guillotine on the basis of 24 hours of hysteria from the Internet’s sans-culottes.

> NR shouldn’t be rewarding those who want to play this game. The more sacrifices you offer up, the more ravenously the volcano belches.
>> PS If Derb’s piece is sufficiently beyond the pale that its author must be terminated immediately, why is its publisher — our old friend Taki — proudly listed on the NR masthead?

Derb has more to say here:

http://takimag.com/article/talking_back_john_derbyshire


----

My take: If you don't like what Derb wrote, refute it in writing. You don't owe him a job, but you do owe him an argument. Don't just dismiss him as offensive with the implication that he's a racist. As a result of this incident, I am canceling my subscription to National Review. It's too bad it had to end this way.

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Sheila Bair: Fix income inequality with $10 million loans for everyone!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fix-income-inequality-with-10-million-loans-for-everyone/2012/04/13/gIQATUQAFT_story.html

Under my plan, each American household could borrow $10 million from the Fed at zero interest. The more conservative among us can take that money and buy 10-year Treasury bonds. At the current 2 percent annual interest rate, we can pocket a nice $200,000 a year to live on. The more adventuresome can buy 10-year Greek debt at 21 percent, for an annual income of $2.1 million. Or if Greece is a little too risky for you, go with Portugal, at about 12 percent, or $1.2 million dollars a year. (No sense in getting greedy.)

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Mark Steyn: Buying ‘Buffett Rule’ makes you a fool

http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/buffett-349130-obama-tax.html#

Sometimes societies become too stupid to survive. A nation that takes Barack Obama's current rhetorical flourishes seriously is certainly well advanced along that dismal path. The current federal debt burden works out at about $140,000 per federal taxpayer, and President Obama is proposing to increase both debt and taxes. Are you one of those taxpayers? How much more do you want added to your $140,000 debt burden?

If you confiscate the total wealth of the Forbes 400 richest Americans it comes to $1.5 trillion, which is just a little less than the Obama budget deficit for year.

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Holder Meets Sharpton - Andrew C. McCarthy

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/296005/holder-meets-sharpton-andrew-c-...

> Holder is currently in “partnership” with his fast friend on the highly charged Trayvon Martin case. In the days before the nation’s chief federal law-enforcement official lionized the CEO of the nation’s racial-grievance industry, Sharpton had been in Florida, threatening that his “action network” — as in “direct action,” the community-organizer’s stock-in-trade — would “move to the next level” if authorities in Sanford, Fla., failed to arrest George Zimmerman, the man (or, if you prefer the New York Times Agitator’s Glossary, the “white Hispanic”) who shot Mr. Martin, a black 17-year-old.
> With such notches on his belt as Crown Heights and Freddie’s Fashion Mart, there’s not a lot of mystery involved when the Reverend Al starts conjuring “the next level” of “action.” Still, never what you’d call a master of subtlety, Sharpton — between inciting mobs with demands to “arrest Zimmerman now!” — expressly threatened to “occupy” the city of Sanford.
>> The nation’s chief federal law enforcer reacted to these threats of lawlessness with paeans to Sharpton’s besotted history.

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Medical Daily: Drinking Alcohol May Significantly Enhance Problem Solving Skills

http://medicaldaily.com/news/20120411/9496/alcohol-solving-skills-analytical-thinking-creativity-study.htm

Scientists found that men who either drank two pints of beer or two glasses of wine before solving brain teasers not only got more questions right, they also were quicker in delivering correct answers, compared to men who answered the questions sober.

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Thursday, April 05, 2012

Shelby Steele: The Exploitation of Trayvon Martin

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303302504577323691134926300.html

So the idea that Trayvon Martin is today's Emmett Till, as the Rev. Jackson has said, suggests nothing less than a stubborn nostalgia for America's racist past. In that bygone era civil rights leaders and white liberals stood on the highest moral ground. They literally knew themselves—given their genuine longing to see racism overcome—as historically transformative people. If the world resisted them, as it surely did, it only made them larger than life.

It was a time when standing on the side of the good required true selflessness and so it ennobled people. And this chance to ennoble oneself through a courageous moral stand is what so many blacks and white liberals miss today—now that white racism is such a defeated idea. There is a nostalgia for that time when posture alone ennobled. So today even the hint of old-fashioned raw racism excites with its potential for ennoblement.

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