http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/obamas-whopper-about-ru... > So, rather than “not looking forwards,” as Obama put it, Hayes quickly embraced the new technology. > Besides historians, Obama’s staff also could have checked with the White House Historical Association, which recounts Hayes’s interest in the telephone in a classroom lesson for children in grades 4-8. http://www.whitehousehistory.org/whha_classroom/classroom_4-8-presidentspeak.... > In 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-1881) spoke on the telephone to the instrument’s inventor, Alexander Graham Bell. Two years later, Hayes had his own telephone in the White House. But the invention was so new that very few homes or offices in Washington had phones, so Hayes had few people to talk to. In fact, the president’s telephone number was "1."
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Rutherford B. Hayes is calling
May 10, 1877:
Hayes has first phone installed in White House
On this day in 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes has the White House's first telephone installed in the mansion's telegraph room. President Hayes embraced the new technology, though he rarely received phone calls. In fact, the Treasury Department possessed the only other direct phone line to the White House at that time.
Friday, March 16, 2012
Obama is the Candidate of Fear
The Washington Free Beacon writes:
http://freebeacon.com/column-obama-is-the-candidate-of-fear/Barack Obama is now the candidate of fear. The press is so occupied by the Republican horserace that it has missed one of the biggest stories of the age: the Obama team’s adoption of tactics that the president would have ruled out as “politics as usual” only four years ago. The shift is born of necessity. Despite holding fundraisers at twice the rate of his predecessor, the Obama campaign’s high burn rate has left the president with less cash on hand than Bush had at this point in the 2004 cycle. These money troubles spurred the president’s hypocritical decision last month to support outright the Priorities USA super PAC.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Justice Department to Force Public Pools to Install Elevators
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/justice-department-force-public-pools-install-elevators_633885.html
A new regulation from the Justice Department will require “public-access swimming pools across the country to install handicapped-accessible ramps and lifts or face a fine of up to $100,000,” the Hill reports. This regulation could cost “hotels and other organizations ... to spend up to $9,000 to stay in compliance with the rule.”
The elevators must be permanent structures, not portable ones, though many hotels across the country only realized this “clarification” to the Justice Department’s regulation recently.
"This is another one-size-fits-all big government mandate that could have a negative impact on Americans," DeMint told the Examiner. "It could lead to increased litigation and heavy fines that could force pools to close or raise fees on families. Pools with public access should have the flexibility to work directly with people with disabilities to accommodate their needs."
There might be hope, though, for pool owners and operators. South Carolina Republican senators DeMint and Lindsey Graham introduced legislation earlier in the week that “would prevent the attorney general from enforcing any rule related to public pools,” as the Hill reports.
Obama Law Requires $1 Abortion Subsidy From Every Insured American
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/11181-obama-law-requires-1-abortion-subsidy-from-every-insured-american
The controversial “individual mandate” in the ObamaCare health diktat, which requires Americans to buy health insurance or face a hefty fine, also requires something else: The insured party, thanks to a finalized version of the mandate, must pay a $1 premium to fund abortions.
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Hard times for Obama Motors
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=50102
The fallout from Barack Obama’s absolute incompetence as an “investor” continues to descend into farce, as we learn that Government Motors – touted as some kind of “success” by Obama, even though taxpayers lost $26 billion on it – is now on the hook for the junk-bond degeneration of French automaker PSA Peugeot Citroen.
Sunday, March 04, 2012
The Shirley Sherrod tape was not misleading
http://legalinsurrection.com/2012/03/saturday-night-card-game-repeat-after-me-the-shirley-sherrod-tape-was-not-misleading/
What really was going on was that the crowd reaction to Sherrod’s comments caught on the tape was very damaging to the NAACP and those who attacked the Tea Party movement as racist. The crowd cheered when Sherrod recounted her long-ago hostility to the white farmer, and that crowd reaction was the real story. Focusing the debate on the editing of the tape was a convenient distraction.
So let’s put to bed the claim that the original Sherrod tape was misleading, defamatory or reflective of racial codes or racism on the part of Breitbart.
Andrew Breitbart is not around to defend himself anymore, and we owe it to him to push back, hard.
Follow the link for video.
Thursday, March 01, 2012
Andrew Breitbart Dead At 43
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/03/01/andrew-breitbart-dies-natural-caus... > Widely read conservative Internet publisher Andrew Breitbart, whose flare for battle with politicians and the mainstream media earned him a reputation as one of the nation's most influential commentators, died Thursday.>> The websites he founded ran a statement Thursday morning announcing that Breitbart, 43, died "unexpectedly from natural causes" in Los Angeles shortly after midnight.
http://www.breitbart.tv/in-memoriam-andrew-breitbart-1969-2012/ http://www.breitbart.tv/jonah-goldberg-one-of-the-most-fearless-people-i-ever... http://video.foxnews.com/v/1482639008001/
http://www.breitbart.tv/in-memoriam-andrew-breitbart-1969-2012/ http://www.breitbart.tv/jonah-goldberg-one-of-the-most-fearless-people-i-ever... http://video.foxnews.com/v/1482639008001/
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Why Apologize to Afghanistan? - Andrew C. McCarthy
Read the whole thing: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/291925/why-apologize-afghanistan-andre... > The facts are that the Korans were seized at a jail because jihadists imprisoned there were using them not for prayer but to communicate incendiary messages. The soldiers dispatched to burn refuse from the jail were not the officials who had seized the books, had no idea they were burning Korans, and tried desperately to retrieve the books when the situation was brought to their attention. > If our government believes the Taliban and other factions are our enemies, allied with al-Qaeda to kill Americans, then we should unleash our military to destroy them. This should not be an endless counterinsurgency experiment that prioritizes the protection of Afghan civilians and the construction of Afghan civil society; it should be a war that our vast might enables us to win rapidly and decisively.
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Mark Steyn: Governments Become Financially Insolvent When They Become Demographically Insolvent
http://news.investors.com/Article.aspx?id=601602&p=1&ibdbot=1 > For purposes of comparison, by 1788 Louis XVI's government in France was spending a mere 60% of revenues on debt service, and we know how that worked out for His Majesty shortly thereafter.
>> Not to worry, says Barry Antoinette. Let them eat condoms.
>> This is a very curious priority for a dying republic. "Birth control" is accessible, indeed ubiquitous, and, by comparison with anything from a gallon of gas to basic cable, one of the cheapest expenses in the average budget. Not even Rick Santorum, that notorious scourge of the sexually liberated, wishes to restrain the individual right to contraception.
>
> Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, distills the current hysteria thus: "It's as if we passed a law requiring mosques to sell bacon and then, when people objected, responded by saying 'What's wrong with bacon? You're trying to ban bacon!!!!'"
>> Not to worry, says Barry Antoinette. Let them eat condoms.
>> This is a very curious priority for a dying republic. "Birth control" is accessible, indeed ubiquitous, and, by comparison with anything from a gallon of gas to basic cable, one of the cheapest expenses in the average budget. Not even Rick Santorum, that notorious scourge of the sexually liberated, wishes to restrain the individual right to contraception.
>
> Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, distills the current hysteria thus: "It's as if we passed a law requiring mosques to sell bacon and then, when people objected, responded by saying 'What's wrong with bacon? You're trying to ban bacon!!!!'"
Friday, February 17, 2012
Obama’s Cynicism for Me, Not for Thee - Jonah Goldberg
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/291284/obama-s-cynicism-me-not-thee-jo... > Now Obama’s defenders, starting with the man himself, insist this isn’t his fault. He’s actually super persuasive and bipartisan, he just suffers from the fact that the Republicans are the most unreasonable politicians ever, so he can’t be blamed for utterly failing to work with them. It’s like the guy who insists that he’s a real ladies’ man but can’t get a phone number because all of the hot women in the bar just happen to be gay.
>> Actually, it’s worse than that. Everywhere the president goes, he explains that he’s failed to get anything done either because the system is broken or because his opponents lack the honor and decency to work with him. Such arguments define cynicism.
>> Actually, it’s worse than that. Everywhere the president goes, he explains that he’s failed to get anything done either because the system is broken or because his opponents lack the honor and decency to work with him. Such arguments define cynicism.
Andrew C. McCarthy on Free Contraception
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/291230/no-free-lunch-its-still-cheap-lunch-andrew-c-mccarthy
The Bill of Rights, however, protects individual liberty from abusive government action. The First Amendment does not merely protect the religious liberty of groups of people who formally organize as a religious enterprise. It protects the individual believer, who has as much right as the Archdiocese of New York to resist government compulsion that violates his conscience. Under the Left’s First Amendment, we’re supposed to be deferential to every Saudi alien Islamic supremacist whack-job who wants to replace the Constitution with sharia, but an American citizen who personally objects to abortifacients should pipe down and pay up unless he’s the CEO of Catholic Charities? I don’t think so.
There is no denial of birth control: Birth control will be readily accessible at cheap prices for anyone who wants it, and the issue is not religious organizations but individual liberty — a matter on which there can be no compromise consistent with the Constitution. When it comes to “constitutional” rights that progressive judges have invented out of whole cloth, Leftists never compromise. Why should we be goaded into a compromise regarding rights that are expressly, undeniably part of the social compact?
Thursday, February 16, 2012
To infinity and beyond! This is the debt chart Obama and Geithner should be ashamed of
Follow the link to see a chart of our future national debt. There's also a comparison to Paul Ryan's plan.
http://blog.american.com/2012/02/this-is-the-debt-chart-obama-and-geithner-should-be-ashamed-of/ Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Fliers griping over Obama ‘grope hike’
http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/137135/
Reynolds, a gun rights advocate, said that with a reported $32 billion total package of proposed airport fees and cuts, “for that kind of money, they could give every frequent flier a gun, which would do more to stop hijackings than the TSA clown show.”
Monday, February 13, 2012
Do Medical School Acceptance Rates Reflect Preferences for Preferred Minority Groups?
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2012/02/do-medical-school-acceptance-rates-from.html
1. For those students applying to medical school with average GPAs (3.40 to 3.59) and average MCAT scores (27-29), black applicants were almost three times more likely to be admitted than their Asian counterparts (85.9% vs. 30%), and 2.4 times more likely than their white counterparts (85.9% vs. 35.9%). Likewise, Hispanic students with average GPAs and average MCAT scores were about twice as likely to be accepted as white applicants (68.7% vs. 35.9%), and more than twice as likely as Asian applicants (68.7% vs. 30%). 2. For students applying to medical school with slightly below average GPAs of 3.20-3.39 and slightly below average MCAT scores of 24-26 (first column in the table), black applicants were more than 8 times as likely to be admitted as Asians (67.3% vs. 7.7%), and more than 5 times as likely as whites.
If a racial bias saves the self-esteem of one child, it's worth it. Diversity of intelligence is our greatest asset in medical school. Grades are over-rated for doctors. I want my medical care providers to reflect America, not just the smart kids.
Thursday, February 09, 2012
Rick Santorum Is Right: Gas Prices Caused the Great Recession
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/rick-santorum-is-right-gas-prices-caused-the-great-recession/252790/
In 2009, economist James Hamilton published a paper that retroactively forecast what an oil shock, like the one we experienced in 2007-08, would do to GDP. And guess what? His model accurately predicated much of the collapse in GDP that resulted from the Great Recession -- as if there had been no housing bubble or financial crisis! The oil spike was that bad.
Still, there was a housing bubble. And there was a financial crisis. How do we account for them and still hold onto the gas story? Here's a one-paragraph theory of the Great Recession that begins with gasoline. Cheap gas ruled in the 1990s. This encouraged families to settle down farther from the cities where they worked. In the 2000s, super-low interest rates, declining lending standards, and an appetite for mortgages on Wall Street (among other factors) further encouraged sprawl and residential development in the 'burbs. As the price of gas went up, families stopped buying homes 30 minutes from the city. For folks shacking up in the exurbs, higher gas bills ate into mortgage money. For companies, higher energy bills shocked productivity. Classic oil-shock + housing development arrested + financial crisis = Great Recession.
Alternative Futures for a Fractured American Culture - Charles Murray
Video of the talk is available at the link: http://www.aei.org/events/2012/02/06/alternative-futures-for-a-fractured-amer... > In his April 2011 Bradley Lecture at AEI, Charles Murray presented data documenting America’s divergence into classes that are different from anything our nation has ever known. In this companion lecture, Murray will discuss how this divergence is affecting American life and what we can expect in the future. He will present two scenarios--one that ends with America as a European social democracy and another in which America experiences a "civic great awakening"--and assess the forces that work in favor of each.
Wednesday, February 01, 2012
Getting Nowhere, Very Fast - Thomas Sowell
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/289686/getting-nowhere-very-fast-thoma... > The only reason for even thinking about building a high-speed-rail line between Fresno and Bakersfield is just to get the project underway with federal money, making it politically more difficult to stop the larger project for a similar rail line between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
>> In other words, they are going to start wasting money out in the valley, so that they will be able to waste more money later on, along the coast. This may not make any sense economically, but it can make sense politically for Jerry Brown and Barack Obama.>
>> In other words, they are going to start wasting money out in the valley, so that they will be able to waste more money later on, along the coast. This may not make any sense economically, but it can make sense politically for Jerry Brown and Barack Obama.>
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