The Vpered IdiOt

New Obama slogan has long ties to Marxism, socialism - Washington Times: "The Obama campaign apparently didn't look backwards into history when selecting its new campaign slogan, "Forward" — a word with a long and rich association with European Marxism.

Many Communist and radical publications and entities throughout the 19th and 20th centuries had the name "Forward!" or its foreign cognates. Wikipedia has an entire section called "Forward (generic name of socialist publications)."

"The name Forward carries a special meaning in socialist political terminology. It has been frequently used as a name for socialist, communist and other left-wing newspapers and publications," the online encyclopedia explains.

The slogan "Forward!" reflected the conviction of European Marxists and radicals that their movements reflected the march of history, which would move forward past capitalism and into socialism and communism."

These people have the research skills of kindergartners.

I wonder how long before this page is disappeared from Wikipedia by the nutjobs? While it's still up you can go there and figure out my title.

And don't forget to look over at the top of the right sidebar -- that's been there a very long time. And yes, you're being crushed...

Read More......

Screwing The Pooch

Cuisines from My Stepfather - National Review Online: "Axelrod is right. Obama’s appetite for dogs isn’t as critical as his appetite for spending and statism. But it was part of his cool. “Mitt Romney isn’t cool,” declared Brian Montopoli of CBS News this week in a story headlined “Can Mitt Romney Make Boring Sexy”? For economically beleaguered Americans, the more pertinent question is: “Can Barack Obama Make Cool Affordable”? It’s not just that Obama ate the dog, but that he’s screwing the pooch."

Read More......

Death From Afrolantica

The PJ Tatler » The Hatred of Derrick Bell’s Afrolantica Legacies: "The 28-year-old Barack Obama on Derrick Bell in 1990:

He hasn’t done it simply because of the excellence of his scholarship. Although his scholarship has opened up new vistas and new horizons and changed the standards of what legal writing is about. … Open up your hearts and minds to the words of Professor Derrick Bell.

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah wasn’t about sex. It was about idolatry. When secular critics relate the war stories from the Old Testament of the Jewish conquests of Canaan, here’s what they don’t tell you: these other tribes the ancient Israelites went to war against practiced child sacrifice. That’s why they couldn’t be tolerated then and why we must win the war against them today.

Human sacrifice is the end result of any idolatry taken to its conclusion. Worship something other than a variant of the God of ethical monotheism and you’ll end up doing evil things. Worship nature, man-made images and ideas, people and politicians, Harvard professors, one’s own ego… and the result is that people become what they worship — they become death."

Read More......

Salby Strikes - A Reminder

While we're starstruck, a reminder that we're planet-struck as well:

What – you mean we aren’t controlling the climate? | Watts Up With That?: "The narrative of the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming has been challenged at many levels but this presentation by Professor Murry Salby, Chair of Climate at Macquarie University rips up the very foundations of the story.

The talk (in the video below) was given at the Sydney Institute 2nd Aug 2011

He elegantly shows that there is a solid correlation between natural climate factors (global temperature and soil moisture content) and the net gain (or loss) in global atmospheric content when the latter is averaged over a two year period. The hanging question remains, if natural factors drive more than 90% of the growth in CO2 how significant is the contribution of human generated emissions. The answer is simple… not very."

Click through and watch the vid.

Read More......

Starstruck

Did exploding stars help life on Earth to thrive?: "Prof. Svensmark looked back through 500 million years of geological and astronomical data and considered the proximity of the Sun to supernovae as it moves around our Galaxy, the Milky Way. In particular, when the Sun is passing through the spiral arms of the Milky Way, it encounters newly forming clusters of stars. These so-called open clusters, which disperse over time, have a range of ages and sizes and will have started with a small proportion of stars massive enough to explode as supernovae. From the data on open clusters, Prof. Svensmark was able to deduce how the rate at which supernovae exploded near the Solar System varied over time.

Comparing this with the geological record, he found that the changing frequency of nearby supernovae seems to have strongly shaped the conditions for life on Earth. Whenever the Sun and its planets have visited regions of enhanced star formation in the Milky Way Galaxy, where exploding stars are most common, life has prospered. Prof. Svensmark remarks in the paper, "The biosphere seems to contain a reflection of the sky, in that the evolution of life mirrors the evolution of the Galaxy.""

And wait for it...:

The data also support the idea of a long-term link between cosmic rays and climate, with these climatic changes underlying the biological effects. And compared with the temperature variations seen on short timescales as a consequence of the Sun's influence on the influx of cosmic rays, the heating and cooling of the Earth due to cosmic rays varying with the prevailing supernova rate have been far larger.

The director of DTU Space, Prof. Eigil Friis-Christensen, comments: "When this enquiry into effects of cosmic rays from supernova remnants began 16 years ago, we never imagined that it would lead us so deep into time, or into so many aspects of the Earth's history. The connection to evolution is a culmination of this work."

Calder has a great write-up of course including this:

Didn't realize that the alarmists are actually deniers of evolution on a cosmic scale, did you? When you look into the eyes of an alarmist, you are looking into the eyes of a dinosaur. Or a bird brain if you prefer.

UPDATE: I remembered a comment from a previous post on WUWT re the CERN CLOUD experiment and have a modification:

It's the suns, stupid!

Heh.

Read More......

Brittle

Why Airport Security Is Broken—And How to Fix It - WSJ.com: "Airport security in America is broken. I should know. For 3½ years—from my confirmation in July 2005 to President Barack Obama's inauguration in January 2009—I served as the head of the Transportation Security Administration.

You know the TSA. We're the ones who make you take off your shoes before padding through a metal detector in your socks (hopefully without holes in them). We're the ones who make you throw out your water bottles. We're the ones who end up on the evening news when someone's grandma gets patted down or a child's toy gets confiscated as a security risk. If you're a frequent traveler, you probably hate us.

More than a decade after 9/11, it is a national embarrassment that our airport security system remains so hopelessly bureaucratic and disconnected from the people whom it is meant to protect. Preventing terrorist attacks on air travel demands flexibility and the constant reassessment of threats. It also demands strong public support, which the current system has plainly failed to achieve.

The crux of the problem, as I learned in my years at the helm, is our wrongheaded approach to risk. In attempting to eliminate all risk from flying, we have made air travel an unending nightmare for U.S. passengers and visitors from overseas, while at the same time creating a security system that is brittle where it needs to be supple."

Du'O.

Read More......

Another Tinfoil Apocalypse Update

Iranian Navy | Saber Rattling | Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi | The Daily Caller: "The Islamic Republic of Iran said Tuesday that it has the ability to position a naval vessel within three miles of the East Coast of the United States.

“The power of our naval forces is such that we have a presence in all the waters of the world and, if needed, we can move to within three miles of New York,” Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi said Tuesday during a speech to the students of the University of Yazd in Iran. His remarks were quoted by an Iranian student news agency.

This naval saber rattling represents a stark escalation in Iran’s war rhetoric, as the West weighs the question of whether to impose new economic sanctions or directly attack the Islamic regime’s illicit nuclear facilities."

As Gagdad has pointed out:

It's pretty odd when you can be less than five years away from the nuclear bomb but more than five centuries away from the nuclear age.

Read More......

So That's OK Then

The Corner - National Review Online: "So the more Afghan soldiers Nato soldiers train, the more Nato soldiers Afghan soldiers kill. But as long as it’s proportional it’s no big deal:

“Quite often people resolve their personal problems by resorting to the use of a weapon. It’s more of a cultural thing here.”

So that’s okay then.

This seems as good a time as any to dust off Burke’s line that “men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” Which is not un-germane to Andy, Mario and Mark K’s back-and-forth on whether, in the Arab world, the Muslim Brotherhood is the path to democracy. “Democracy” – as in a polling station and ballot box – is the last piece of liberty’s puzzle. What comes first are property rights, legal systems, freedom of speech and of conscience, a civil society rather than a tribal one. Absent those, the “cultural thing” will out."

Hmm. Do we have a civil society in the U.S. anymore? Whoops.

Read More......

Team Tactics?

Aerial Armada Assembles Off Iran: "The mix of old and upgraded F-15s and ultra-modern F-22s is no accident. When the Pentagon stopped producing the nearly $400-million-a-copy Raptor after 187 units — half as many as the Air Force said it needed — the flying branch committed to keeping 250 F-15Cs in service until 2025 at the earliest. Pilots began developing team tactics for the two fighter types.

“We have a woefully tiny F-22 fleet,” said Gen. Mike Hostage, the Air Force’s main fighter commander. So the flying branch worked out a system whereby large numbers of F-15s cover for small numbers of Raptors that sneak in around an enemy’s flank in full stealth mode. “Our objective is to fly in front with the F-22s, and have the persistence to stay there while the [F-22s] are conducting their [low-observable] attack,” Maj. Todd Giggy, an Eagle pilot, told Aviation Week."

Read More......

Yup

Moonbattery » Open Thread: "Via TonyRogers.com, on a tip from Wingmann."

Read More......

Bartering QOTD

Michael Krieger On The Rebirth Of Barter | ZeroHedge: "One of the most important articles I have read this week comes from Forbes contributor Gordon Chang.  In it he states that China is preparing to avoid U.S. sanctions on Iran by paying for oil with gold.  Not only that but he also mentions that China has already been bartering with Iran to get a hold of petroleum."

And as a bonus we have a twofer QOTD embedded in the post:

Outwardly we have a Constitutional government. We have operating within our government and political system, another body representing another form of government, a bureaucratic elite which believes our Constitution is outmoded.- Senator William Jenner(1908-1985) U.S. Senator (IN-R)

The Final Act of the Uruguay Round, marking the conclusion of the most ambitious trade negotiation of our century, will give birth – in Morocco – to the World Trade Organization, the third pillar of the New World Order, along with the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund.- Government of Morocco April, 1994 Source: New York Times, full page ad by the government of Morocco

But what do Moroccans and Republican curmudgeons know?

Silly. The man and the dog aren't working together you paranoid sheep, you...

Read More......

QOTD: HLM

Guest Post: H.L. Mencken Was Right | ZeroHedge: "“The men that American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest the most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.”  HLM"

Any questions?

Read More......

Tools

A Bad Day In Court for the Obama Administration | Power Line: "JUSTICE SCALIA: So we have to — we have to enforce our laws in a manner that will please Mexico. Is that what you’re saying?

GENERAL VERRILLI: No, Your Honor, but what — no, Your Honor, I’m not saying that –

JUSTICE SCALIA: Sounded like what you were saying.

So the Obama administration had a tough day in court today, and deservedly so. Let’s hope that the Supreme Court’s majority opinion in this case delivers President Obama the stinging rebuke that he so richly deserves.

UPDATE: Ironically, the Obama administration’s sheer incompetence is the one factor now mitigating our illegal immigration problem–an unintended consequence of the fact that Obama completely fails to understand economics:"

Read More......

Plus More .. And Then Some

Which Came First - The Spending Or The Debt? | ZeroHedge: "In a wonderfully succinct clip, Professor Antony Davies addresses the oft-cited perspective that Government has a debt problem. While correct in fact, he examines the data and summarily notes that debt is caused by deficits leaving the question of what's to blame - too much spending or too little tax revenues? The dramatic rise in spending per-capita by the government is exponentially larger than the rise in price levels over the last few decades and while so much time is spent on Healthcare costs - even that pales in significance relative to the rise in Federal Government spending. The lesson, he notes, is that we don't have a debt problem, we don't even have a deficit problem, what we have is a spending problem - leaving a tax solution impotent. An interesting conclusion on the day when the Fed once again promises to keep rates low forever implicitly supporting a government budget via its low interest expense..."

Read More......

Haavaad Maath (Part 1,493,841)

TaxProf Blog: Hubbard: Obama's Budget Means 11% Tax Increase on Those Earning: "Finally, the president would limit certain tax deductions for individuals with incomes over $200,000. This would net $584 billion over the next decade.

Now let's review the math. All these tax increases on upper-income taxpayers are projected to raise $148 billion per year. Viewed next to proposed additional spending of roughly $500 billion per year, or this year's federal budget deficit of $1.3 trillion, the president's budget faces an arithmetic challenge.

How big is that challenge? Maintaining the president's higher spending will require raising taxes for all Americans. Assuming the president favors raising marginal tax rates over broadening the tax base (consistent with his failure to consider the tax proposals from Bowles-Simpson), an across-the-board tax increase of 11% for taxpayers with incomes under $200,000 would be required to raise the money the president proposes to spend."

And of course there's the inevitable comment:

Ah, but he doesn't intend to raise as much revenue as he spends. He plans to continue to spend many more times as much as he takes in. Then when the bill comes due 5 or 10 years from now, he won't be POTUS any more. It won't be his problem. It will be yours and mine, and that of our children and grandchildren. He doesn't care, because he doesn't need to care.

Posted by: Robert Hanson | Apr 25, 2012 4:36:00 PM

System broken? Much?

Read More......

Prelude

George Zimmerman: Prelude to a shooting | Reuters: "The 28-year-old insurance-fraud investigator comes from a deeply Catholic background and was taught in his early years to do right by those less fortunate. He was raised in a racially integrated household and himself has black roots through an Afro-Peruvian great-grandfather - the father of the maternal grandmother who helped raise him.

A criminal justice student who aspired to become a judge, Zimmerman also concerned himself with the safety of his neighbors after a series of break-ins committed by young African-American men.

Though civil rights demonstrators have argued Zimmerman should not have prejudged Martin, one black neighbor of the Zimmermans said recent history should be taken into account.

"Let's talk about the elephant in the room. I'm black, OK?" the woman said, declining to be identified because she anticipated backlash due to her race. She leaned in to look a reporter directly in the eyes. "There were black boys robbing houses in this neighborhood," she said. "That's why George was suspicious of Trayvon Martin.""

Well look-ee here. It appears that Reuters has decided to put their reporters in the crossfire also. And make no mistake they now are.

God help us all.

Read More......

Big BrO Is A Mental Case

Child Labor Laws | Farming | Department of Labor | The Daily Caller: "A proposal from the Obama administration to prevent children from doing farm chores has drawn plenty of criticism from rural-district members of Congress. But now it’s attracting barbs from farm kids themselves.

The Department of Labor is poised to put the finishing touches on a rule that would apply child-labor laws to children working on family farms, prohibiting them from performing a list of jobs on their own families’ land.

Under the rules, children under 18 could no longer work “in the storing, marketing and transporting of farm product raw materials.”"

You're going to be starving in the dark. This is triple insurance on the starving part.

Read More......

Returning The Maldives

Grope and Change - National Review Online: "And yet the more guys on the payroll, the less anyone does. For all the hooker-cavorting among a bored entourage with time on its hands, there was no one to proofread President Obama’s speech. So he stood up in public and attempted to pander to the Latins by referring to the sovereign British territory of the Falkland Islands by the designation of its temporary Argentine usurpers 30 years ago: “Las Malvinas.” Except that his writers got it wrong. So the president of the United States called it “the Maldives,” an entirely different bit of British Commonwealth real estate half a world away in the Indian Ocean. Were the speechwriting staff also face down in the hooker bar? “Jush a minute, baby. Hic. The preshhhiduh wansh a couple rewrites. ‘I call on London to return British Columbia to Colombia.’ Thash should do it. Lesh go back to my room and I’ll show you my prompter.”"

Read More......

O Onions & Oil

How Will Obama Protect Us From Onion Speculators? - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine: "President Obama last week pledged to end the speculation in oil futures that even he doesn’t claim has made the price of gas more expensive. According to Obama’s politics – which amount to a stubborn belief that Americans are as ignorant of the law and easily propagandized as they were in 1935 – this is a smart move. But it's a vacuous proposal that will not stop price swings in oil, and it could even make oil pricing more erratic."

How's them for onions? RTWT.

Read More......

predatOrs

Instapundit » Blog Archive » HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: To Pay Off Loans, Grads Put Off Marriage, Children. Between the …: "Deferring payments to avoid default is costly, too. Danielle Jokela of Chicago earned a two-year degree and worked for a while to build savings before deciding to pursue a dream by enrolling at age 25 at a private, for-profit college in Chicago to study interior design. The college’s staff helped her fill out applications for $79,000 in government and private loans. “I had no clue” about likely future earnings or the size of future payments, which ballooned by her 2008 graduation to more than $100,000 after interest and fees.

She couldn’t find a job as an interior designer and twice had to ask lenders to defer payments for a few months. After interest plus forbearance fees that were added to the loans, she still owes $98,000, even after making payments for most of five years, says Ms. Jokela, 32, who is working as an independent contractor doing administrative tasks for a construction company.

By the time she pays off the loans 25 years from now, she will have paid $211,000.

Any other industry that did this sort of thing would be denounced as predatory, but government and higher education get a pass.

Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 10:52 pm"

Sheep on stilts.

Read More......

Reducing You

Instapundit » Blog Archive » THAT’S THE “NONPARTISAN CBO” SPEAKING: CBO: Obama Budget Would Reduce Economic Growth. “Larger de…: "THAT’S THE “NONPARTISAN CBO” SPEAKING: CBO: Obama Budget Would Reduce Economic Growth. “Larger deficits caused by the budget would cause the government to issue more bonds, sucking up private capital to finance its debts and thereby reducing the funds businesses could use to expand and hire, the CBO said. An increased tax on capital gains included in the president’s plan would also tend to reduce private capital, it says.”

Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 7:51 am"

Which goes nicely with this:
And this video has the COTD:

climate change = wrath of god

energy use = sin

carbon tax = penance

al gore = priest

rothschild environmental bank = gold plated vatican wealth (which helps glorify god, honest)

wind turbines = crucifixes, church spires

green enforcers = spanish inquisition

scientific data = heresy

Same old oppressive, controlling, thieving, manipulative bullshit, run by the same crowd of criminal psychopaths... just slightly updated for a more technological age, that's all. Wake up, smell the coffee.

theawecabinet 11 minutes ago 4

Read More......

Which Has Worked For Democrats In The Past

Asinus Aureus Update - By Kevin D. Williamson - The Corner - National Review Online: "You have to go pretty far back in the Romney family tree — nearly to the 19th century, in fact — before you find a polygamist. His father was monogamous. His grandfather was monogamous. His great grandfather was not. But Helaman Pratt is not on the ballot, having contracted a severe case of death in 1909, nearly 40 years before Mitt Romney was born. ...

Given that there is nothing of substance to be learned about Mitt Romney from the habits of his long-dead great grandfather, the only possible conclusion is that Schweitzer and other Democrats are actively cultivating bigotry for political gain. Which has worked for Democrats in the past:"

Read More......

Our Great Misfortune

Spengler » Dog-Eating and Obama’s Identity: "It really isn’t unfair at all to bring Obama’s canine consumption to public attention. The president isn’t really one of us. He’s a dog-eater. He tells the story in his memoir to emphasize that viscerally, Obama identifies with the Third World of his upbringing more than with the America of his adulthood. It is our great misfortune to have a president who dislikes our country at this juncture in our history."

Spengler smashes this one out of the park as you can see. But not just at the end. RTWT.

Read More......

Ain't Misbehavin'?

» Mandatory ‘Big Brother’ Black Boxes In All New Cars From 2015 Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!: "The ultimate Big Brother scenario would be a system whereby every driver had to get de facto permission from the state to drive each time they get behind the wheel, once it had been determined from an iris scan that they were good citizens who have paid all their taxes and not misbehaved.

The push to pressure car manufacturers to install black box tracking devices in all new cars has been ongoing for over a decade. In 2006, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration encouraged but did not require automobile manufacturers to install the systems."

Baaaah. Sheep.

Read More......

Put This On Top Of Your Car And Smoke It

'Jim' 'Treacher' (jtlol) on Twitter: "'Jim' 'Treacher' ‏ @jtLOL Reply Retweet Favorite · Open
Q: Why did @MittRomney put his dog on top of the car? A: So @BarackObama wouldn't eat it. #WeWillNotBeSilenced #GenK9"

Heh.

Read More......

Dog Meat

Instapundit » Blog Archive » NOBODY TELL SEAMUS: Obama Used To Eat Dog Meat. “Say what you want about Romney, but at least he o…: "NOBODY TELL SEAMUS: Obama Used To Eat Dog Meat. “Say what you want about Romney, but at least he only put a dog on the roof of his car, not the roof of his mouth.”

UPDATE: “Libs think Romney acted jerky with a dog. Whereas Obama was fond of dog jerky.”

Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 10:55 pm"

Read More......

Making It Hard For The Vichy Catholics

Whoa!… IL Bishop: Obama Following the Path of Hitler and Stalin (Video) | The Gateway Pundit: "In a homily delivered Saturday, Bishop Daniel R. Jenky of the Diocese of Peoria, Illinois challenged President Obama’s HHS mandate, suggesting that the president was following the same path as Hitler and Stalin.

“Hitler and Stalin, at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services, and health care,” Jenky said. “In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, Barack Obama – with his radical, pro abortion and extreme secularist agenda, now seems intent on following a similar path.” Jenky added."

Peoria isn't that far from the Chicago river. I'm guessing some custom Chicago cement bishop boots are being cast even as we speak...

Read More......

With A "T"

Defensive Gun Uses Save the U.S. One Trillion Dollars Per Year | The Truth About Guns: "So figuring that the average DGU saves one half of a person’s life—as“gun violence” predominantly affects younger demographics—that gives us $3.465 million per half life.
Putting this all together, we find that the monetary benefit of guns (by way of DGUs) is roughly 1.02 trillion dollars per year. Trillion. With a ‘T’."

Read More......

Rotten From The Head Down

Instapundit » Blog Archive » THE NATION SAYS THAT THE REAL HILARY ROSEN SCANDAL is that she’s just another of the many corporate …: "This kind of climate comes down from the top. Related: Why Hilary Rosen visited at the White House. Including 5 meetings with President Goldman Sachs.

Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 6:39 pm"

Read More......

The Horse Chestnut

Belmont Club » Burdened by Success: "Odds are that $35,800 doesn’t buy a lot of air time in the White House these days, at least not in comparison to the big boys who can command billions and hundreds of billions of dollars in influence.  But given the amount of money it has received from supporters since 2008, when it opened for 24 hour business, there must be a lot of chits outstanding.

But the trouble with operating like an Internet Cafe is that you have to give your customers what they came for. Sooner or later, they get tired of staring at the logo on the screen. To understand his problem, imagine President Obama as a beleaguered short order cook who has 200 pending orders for burgers pinned to the order board and can’t bear to tell them he doesn’t know how to cook; that it was all a misunderstanding. He sold all the orders on the strength of a beautifully printed menu and a good line of patter at the door.

But in the end he doesn’t know a horse from a horse chestnut and neither does his waiter, David Axelrod."

Read More......

Romney's New Ad: A Preview

Axelrod TKO-ed by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday - Right Turn - The Washington Post: "Like his boss, Axelrod seems almost at a loss to respond once the talking points are challenged. But I imagined his invitation to choose “between economy that produces a growing middle class and gives people a chance to get ahead and their kids a chance to get ahead and an economy that continues down the road we are on, and everybody else is running faster and faster just to keep pace,” might just become a Mitt Romney campaign ad. Obviously, the only thing left to do is to scare people that unless we re-elect President Obama we’ll be going back to the bad old days of President George W. Bush."

Heh. Speaking O moronic doofuses...

Read More......

The Du'O Quo

Former Dem. Congressman Kennedy Alleges 'Quid Pro Quo' for Access to White House | The Weekly Standard: "Access to the Obama White House is in direct correlation to the amount of money donated to the president's reelection effort and the Democratic party, the New York Times reports today.

The Times reports: "those who donated the most to Mr. Obama and the Democratic Party since he started running for president were far more likely to visit the White House than others. Among donors who gave $30,000 or less, about 20 percent visited the White House, according to a New York Times analysis that matched names in the visitor logs with donor records. But among those who donated $100,000 or more, the figure rises to about 75 percent. Approximately two-thirds of the president’s top fund-raisers in the 2008 campaign visited the White House at least once, some of them numerous times."

But the most explosive allegation in the news story comes from former Democratic congressman Patrick Kennedy, son of the late Ted Kenney, who calls what the Obama White House is doing "quid pro quo." "

Isn't that a shock? My goodness me the things that moronic doofuses that believe they're kings O the universe say...

Read More......

Where To Find The Real Social Darwinism

Fantasies of Social Darwinism: "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.

On April 4, Mitt Romney had his turn in front of the newspapermen. “The president came here yesterday and railed against arguments no one is making—and criticized policies no one is proposing. It’s one of his favorite strategies—setting up straw men to distract from his record.

One suspects that even Romney had no idea how right he was.”

This is a RTWT.

Read More......

He Thinks Knows You're Stupid

What’s <i>Your</i> Plan? - National Review Online: "And that’s the problem. For what Obama’s spending, there aren’t enough of them, or us, or “the rich” — and there never will be. There is only one Warren Buffett. He is the third-wealthiest person on the planet. The first is a Mexican, and beyond the reach of the U.S. Treasury. Mr. Buffett is worth $44 billion. If he donated the entire lot to the government of the United States, they would blow through it within four and a half days. Okay, so who’s the fourth-richest guy? He’s French. And the fifth guy’s a Spaniard. Number six is Larry Ellison. He’s American, but that loser is only worth $36 billion. So he and Buffett between them could keep the United States government going for a week. The next-richest American is Christy Walton of Walmart, and she’s barely a semi-Buffett. So her $25 billion will see you through a couple of days of the second week. There aren’t a lot of other semi-Buffetts, but, if you scrounge around, you can rustle up some hemi-demi-semi-Buffetts: 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 a year.

But there are a lot of “millionaires,” depending on how you define it. Jerry Brown, California’s reborn Governor Moonbeam, defines his “millionaire’s tax” as applying to anybody who earns more than $250,000 a year. “Anybody who makes $250,000 becomes a millionaire very quickly,” he explained. “You just need four years.” This may be the simplest wealth-creation advice since Bob Hope was asked to respond back in 1967 to reports that he was worth half a billion dollars. “Anyone can do it,” said Hope. “All you have to do is save a million dollars a year for 500 years.”

It’s that easy, folks! Like President Obama says, all you have to do to pay off his 2011 deficit is save $3.2 billion a year for 500 years.

He thinks you’re stupid."

Well, if not stupid at least innumerate.

Read More......

Money For Nuthin

Fix income inequality with $10 million loans for everyone! - The Washington Post: "Are you concerned about growing income inequality in America? Are you resentful of all that wealth concentrated in the 1 percent? I’ve got the perfect solution, a modest proposal that involves just a small adjustment in the Federal Reserve’s easy monetary policy. Best of all, it will mean that none of us have to work for a living anymore.

For several years now, the Fed has been making money available to the financial sector at near-zero interest rates. Big banks and hedge funds, among others, have taken this cheap money and invested it in securities with high yields. This type of profit-making, called the “carry trade,” has been enormously profitable for them.

So why not let everyone participate?

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.)"

Wow -- pitch perfect. RTWT. I'm going to have to research Sheila Bair a bit more... Hold on... OK, I obviously haven't been paying enough attention -- it looks like she was the second coming of Brooksley Born.

Read More......

Darleen Has COTD On Her Own Post

Vagina Warriors double down: Hillary Rosen was right about that *itch Ann but she was taken out of context and stay-at-home-moms are really lazy, luxury items or something [Darleen Click] | protein wisdom: "Darleen says April 13, 2012 at 4:52 pm

Ann Romney doesn’t have a real job.

Yeah, you know, like having a part-time, make up your own work schedule, $300K/yr job at a hospital that was so valuable it’s eliminated once you quit."

Heh.

Read More......

The Master Stroker

Belmont Club » The Oopsa Cycle: "Of course it makes perfect sense to trust someone in order to prove that you will be betrayed. People do this all the time. Surely this unassailable logic will only strengthen the President’s reputation among international diplomats, who we last imagined chorusing at a cocktail party. How will they receive this latest demarche from the White House? Will they now conclude that the President has now backed little Kim into a corner? That he is poised to deliver yet another master-stroke of diplomacy?"

Good God -- what a mental midget. Well, to be fair there's more than one...

Read More......

OMG

Backfire | Power Line: "Michael Ramirez, the world’s greatest editorial cartoonist, weighs in on the Democrats’ ill-fated attack on Ann Romney:"

I laughed till I cried...

Read More......

Not What Great Leaders Do

Instapundit » Blog Archive » ENEMIES LISTS: GE Ex-CEO Jack Welch Blasts Obama Leadership. President Obama’s “divide-and-c…: "ENEMIES LISTS: GE Ex-CEO Jack Welch Blasts Obama Leadership.

President Obama’s “divide-and-conquer” approach isn’t what great leaders do, Jack Welch said Thursday. . . .

“It was the insurance executives in health care. It was the bankers in the collapse. It was the oil companies as oil prices go up. It was Congress if things didn’t go the way he wanted. And recently it’s been the Supreme Court,” he said.

“He’s got an enemies list that would make Richard Nixon proud.”"

But if you hadn't figured out by now that he's not a leader of any sort you're pretty much insensate...

Read More......

The Swindle

Instapundit » Blog Archive » RICHARD FERNANDEZ ON CHINA, NORTH KOREA, AND THE AMERICAN ACADEMY: The thing about Communism, at …: "RICHARD FERNANDEZ ON CHINA, NORTH KOREA, AND THE AMERICAN ACADEMY:

The thing about Communism, at least to the uninitiated, is that it appears to be identical in all respects to a hereditary aristocracy. If one didn’t know better it would seem that the more Communist a country, such as North Korea, the more it resembles a monarchy. In China the children of the Polituburo members are actually called princesses and princes and they gad about in a style that make the current European royalty look like a bunch of low-rent grifters.

How admirable then, that intellectuals like Cornell West, Van Jones and Bill Ayers can go around and seriously sell socialism and Marxism in the name of “equality” and “egalitarianism”. You know, because they are one with the Common Man."

And now you know why you need to add Wretchard to your daily reads... And you might want to add some of Eric's classics as well. Umm, and you know this guy's name was actually Eric too, don't you?

UPDATE: OK, how can I resist? Glory to Stalin!

Read More......

Cored

Why is Apple Getting Cored in Washington? - Forbes: "But it doesn’t cost hundreds. Even after “collusion,” sometimes it costs more than an inferior regular hardback book, sometimes less. The lack of wonder and gratitude reminds me of Louis C. K.’s “Everything’s Amazing and Nobody’s Happy.”

There is no problem here, but one is being created by antitrust’s disruptiveness. Law professor Geoff Manne noted one of many potential consequences: “To assess the competitive effects of this pricing scheme in the e-book (content) market without considering the competitive effects in the e-reader (platform) market is a mistake. It would be an even graver mistake to focus on market power at any given moment rather than on the overall dynamism of the industry.”

Indeed. Even if most price collusion were deliberate anti-consumer mischief, markets would still curb it better than regulators could. Not that curbing mischief is what antitrusters are doing anyway; economic regulation like antitrust exists to enable “vulture” capitalists who want to avoid competition yet simultaneously gain access to the customers of others."

RTWT. And here's the video for those who haven't seen it. Seriously, this should have 100x the views it has.As someone said, you live in a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security.

Read More......

Worth 1000 Words

Fed Intervention and the Market: "If a picture is worth a thousand words, this chart needs little additional explanation — except perhaps for those who are puzzled by the Jackson Hole callout. The reference is to Chairman Bernanke's speech at the Fed's 2010 annual symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Bernanke strongly hinted about the forthcoming Federal Reserve intervention that was subsequently initiated in November of 2010, namely, the second round of quantitative easing, aka QE2."

And there's another 1000 words to see also...

Read More......

Ritual Defamation ... And Waco

Articles: Editgate, Spittlegate, and the Left's 'Race-Gating' Tradition: "Sacco and Vanzetti were the first in a long line of ethnics whose exploitability interested the left more than their innocence.  Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Leonard Peltier, Geronimo Pratt, and Mumia Abu-Jamal, like Sacco and Vanzetti, were all convicted of their crimes, but the evidence mattered little to those who wanted to spank America before the world. 

With the passing of the Comintern, America's homegrown radicals picked up the playbook and directed their own game plans.  Thinking anti-racism a more viable strategy than revolution, they expanded the definition of racism to include more behaviors against more groups, requiring more and more invasive remedies.  Among those remedies, as George Zimmerman has learned the hard way, is that old Stalinist standby, "ritual defamation."

...

Twenty years prior, the decision-makers in that complex had even less use for a headline that read, "Clinton Tank Attack on Religious Community Kills 26 Blacks, 13 Other Minorities." So they fully suppressed the race angle. I doubt if even Al Sharpton knows that most of those killed at Waco were minorities."

Didn't know that, did you?

Read More......

It's Not Humans

Blockbuster: Planetary temperature controls CO2 levels — not humans « JoNova: Science, carbon, climate and tax: "The largest increases year-to-year occurred when the world warmed fastest due to El Nino conditions. The smallest increases correlated with volcanoes which pump dust up into the atmosphere and keep the world cooler for a while. In other words, temperature controls CO2 levels on a yearly time-scale, and according to Salby, man-made emissions have little effect.

The climate models assume that most of the rise in CO2 (from 280 ppmv in1780 to 392 ppmv today) was due to industrialization and fossil fuel use. But the globe has been warming during that period (in fact since the depths of the Little Ice Age around 1680), so warmer conditions could be the reason that CO2 has been rising.

Salby does not dispute that some of the rise in CO2 levels is due to man-made emissions, but found that temperature alone explains about 80% of the variation in CO2 levels."

I posted a while ago about this but didn't link the excellent video of the talk -- there, fixed. (Actually, the talk is excellent but the video has some issues here and there.)

Unfortunately, embedding is not enabled for the video so you'll have to click. You won't be sorry.

Read More......

Today's Stopped Clock Watch: FDR Edition

RealClearPolitics - The Origins of Entitlement: "When Roosevelt proposed Social Security in 1935, he envisioned a contributory pension plan. Workers' payroll taxes ("contributions") would be saved and used to pay their retirement benefits. Initially, before workers had time to pay into the system, there would be temporary subsidies. But Roosevelt rejected Social Security as a "pay-as-you-go" system that channeled the taxes of today's workers to pay today's retirees. That, he believed, would saddle future generations with huge debts -- or higher taxes -- as the number of retirees expanded.

Discovering that the original draft proposal wasn't a contributory pension, Roosevelt ordered it rewritten and complained to Frances Perkins, his labor secretary: "This is the same old dole under another name. It is almost dishonest to build up an accumulated deficit for the Congress ... to meet."

But Roosevelt's vision didn't prevail. In the 1940s and early 1950s, Congress gradually switched Social Security to a pay-as-you-go system."

Even FDR wasn't all wrong all the time. Of course he was wrong about the "almost dishonest" part. See also here and here.

Read More......

Often Always Wrong But Never In Doubt

BACON: Sugar shock - Washington Times: "Gupta: “So, with the best of intentions, they said, it’s time to reduce fat in the American diet.”

Lustig: “And we did. And guess what? Heart disease, metabolic syndrome, diabetes and death are skyrocketing.”

Gupta: “Dr. Lustig believes that’s primarily because we replaced a lot of that fat with added sugars.”

Lustig: “When you take the fat out of the food, it tastes like cardboard. The food industry knew that. So they replaced it with sugar.”

Prediction 1: Often wrong but never in doubt, the progressives and do-gooders will develop amnesia about the past 40 years of regulatory activism. The old “settled science” will go down the memory hole, to be replaced with a new “settled science.” With new demons to castigate and a new cause to justify meddling in peoples’ lives on the grounds that they are too ignorant, slothful or obstinate to do what’s good for them, progressives will embark joyfully upon a new crusade. Soon we’ll be hearing how sugar is as addictive as cocaine. (Oh, wait, Dr. Gupta quoted a different scientist saying exactly that.) Sugar companies will replace the fat peddlers at McDonald’s as the new villains du jour. (Dr. Gupta also interviewed a sugar-industry lobbyist.)

Prediction 2: Progressives will not engage in the slightest bit of introspection. It will never occur to them to think, “Gee, if the science wasn’t really settled about heart disease, could the science really be settled about, say, global warming?”"

Read More......

They Have The Ring

Video: ObamaCare, the NDAA, and the Ring of Power « Hot Air: "One of these is Bill Whittle’s latest Firewall, in which my friend manages to tie together ObamaCare, the recently-passed NDAA, the Constitution, and Lord of the Rings.  That’s way too tempting for me to pass up — and not coincidentally, that’s the point Bill wants to make in this video:"

Read More......

Much Obliged, Idiots

NW Burglars Continue To Not Get It: Another Burglar Killed, More Flee | The Truth About Guns: "While the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin saga unfolds in Florida amid protests and death threats, a different story is quietly playing itself out in the opposite corner of the country. But you might not know much about it, because this Northwest self-defense story isn’t getting much airplay on network news. Maybe because it doesn’t play into their race-baiting, anti-gun narrative.

This story just keeps going and going, because NW burglars continue to practically beg to be shot by breaking into other people’s homes. And NW homeowners keep obliging them by shooting them."

Read More......

The Problem With Pacifism

Belmont Club » Soy Un Perdedor: "The problem with pacifism,  Michael Walzer once observed, is that “you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” Americans all throughout the Vietnam War were assured by the press that it was “unwinnable” — but Ho Chi Minh and Giap never believed it was anything other than winnable — and proceeded to win it themselves. Some authors have argued that the primary cultural impact of Vietnam was to permanently destroy America’s evil “victory culture” and permanently relocate the enemy to within its borders. We have met the enemy, and it will always be us.

But as the New York Times reminds its readers, nobody else has bothered to buy into the culture of impotence. “The senior leadership of the Chinese government increasingly views the competition between the United States and China as a zero-sum game, with China the likely long-range winner if the American economy and domestic political system continue to stumble, according to an influential Chinese policy analyst.”"

And also with fascifism -- apologies to Eric Blair.

Read More......

Today's O Wow

A Saturday Word from Tocqueville | Power Line: "Not that many people–me included–spend much time reading one of Tocqueville’s other books, The Old Regime and the Revolution, in which he offers this sage observation that is quite apropos the Age of Obama:

“A man’s admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him.”"

Did I forget to mention that O Duce absolutely radiates contempt?

Read More......

A Historical Corruption Reminder: The "Reconciliation" Measure

Why the Supreme Court Will Strike Down All of Obamacare - Forbes: "Barack Obama made a national laughingstock out of himself with his recent comments on the Obamacare law now before the Supreme Court. Obama said on Monday, “I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.” (emphasis added).

President Obama is not stupid. But he thinks you are. He knows the Obamacare health care takeover was not passed by a strong majority. But he figures you’re so dumb he can rewrite recent history in plain sight. The law passed a House with a huge Democrat majority at the time by only 219-212. It did not get a single Republican vote, but the opposition was bipartisan.

The law also barely squeaked past a Senate filibuster despite an overwhelming 60 Senate Democrats, and even then humiliating buyoffs were necessary. Public opposition was so strong that the ultraliberal Democrat controlled Massachusetts, the only state to go for George McGovern in 1972, elected a Republican in a special election for Sen. Ted Kennedy’s seat, to terminate the Democrats’ filibuster-proof majority. That required final passage of the law improperly in violation of Congressional rules as a reconciliation measure, which is only to be used to clean up the budget and so cannot be filibustered."

Reconciliation measure my *ss. This "government" is worse than a mafia -- at least the mafia's sheep know something's not right.

Read More......

Pyongyang On The Potomac

Belmont Club » The View From France: "The turnover in Washington is now comparable to turnover in Pyongyang. Death from old age, not defeat in primary elections, is the biggest agent of change in the bureaucratic ossuaries by the Potomac."

Of course, Mike Church's "Mordor On The Potomac" is hard to beat. But if anyone can it's Wretchard.

Read More......

Bolsheviks In Disguise

The Corner - National Review Online: "Because the trials were taking place behind a curtain of foreignness, parochial British readers might have thought that such things as old Bolsheviks confessing to having been Trotskyite saboteurs all along were inexplicable Russian oddities rather than the Big Lies characteristic of all totalitarianisms. So Orwell translates the trials into the terms of British political life of 1938 (when Neville Chamberlain was Tory prime minister and Winston Churchill a rebellious Conservative backbencher.) The result is as follows:

Mr. Winston Churchill, now in exile in Portugal, is plotting to overthrow the British Empire and establish communism in England. By the use of unlimited Russian money he has succeeded in building up a huge Churchillite organization which includes members of Parliament, factory managers, Roman Catholic bishops, and practically the whole of the Primrose League [a highly respectable organization of Conservative ladies.] Almost every day some dastardly act of sabotage is laid bare — sometimes a plot to blow up the House of Lords, sometimes an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the Royal racing stables. Eighty percent of the Beefeaters in the Tower [of London] are discovered to be agents of the Comintern. . . . And meanwhile the Churchillites . . . never cease from proclaiming that it is they who are the real defenders of Capitalism and that Chamberlain and the rest of his gang are no more than a set of Bolsheviks in disguise. "

Welcome to Comrade O's world. Except substitute Sarah Palin for Trotsky.

Read More......

Hot Rails To H*ll

Dismantling the Time Bomb - By Andrew Stuttaford - The Corner - National Review Online: "A month or so ago, I linked to a piece by the FT’s Gideon Rachman on the German view of the euro zone crisis, quoting, in particular, this:

Behind the scenes, however, some of the brightest minds in the German government have a sense of deep foreboding. Twice in the past year I have found myself sitting next to different senior German officials at a dinner who have proceeded to tell me that the whole single currency was a terrible mistake. Speaking of the euro, one of my companions said: “It seems to me that we have invented a machine from hell that we cannot turn off.” The image was so bleak and Strangelovian that I laughed. But, I am afraid, it’s not really very funny."

Read More......

Backyard Takedown

Guest Post: Four Signs Of Asia’s Rise Over The West | ZeroHedge: "3) According to a new study from the Inter-American Dialogue, China is now dominating emerging market development finance, especially in Latin America.

In the past, countries like Brazil, Ecuador, and Venezuela went to the World Bank and IMF when they needed money. But now these vestigial organizations of the old western hierarchy are becoming a sideshow to Chinese financial muscle.

The study shows that, since 2005, Chinese banks have loaned more money and made more loan commitments to Latin America than the World Bank and International Development Bank combined… and they’re doing it at higher interest rates.

Why? Because developing nations have figured out that when you take the World Bank’s money, you have to put up with them telling you how to run your government. Chinese bank loans don’t come with political strings attached.

It’s extraordinary that this is happening in the US’s backyard."

RTWT.

Read More......

"The Broken Window Fallacy" (Part 7,593,527)

"The Broken Window Fallacy": Why Government Stimulus Spending Will Keep The Unemployment Rate High | ZeroHedge: "In our busy days, it is all too easy to fall into the trap of hearing (and believing) the latest headline and its associated spin. For some reason, three minute videos can quickly and easily remove these 'spins' without the need for a PhD. In today's 3:06 un-spin, the broken-window-fallacy is addressed as the seen versus unseen impact of the idiocy of a broken-window's (or war, or destroying homes, or...) positive impact on an economy is explained in cartoon style. The sad fact is that this fallacy remains at the core of mainstream policy-making"

Burning down the village to save it indeed.

Read More......

All A Misunderstanding ...

Obama Walks Back Supreme Court Threat, Still Gets It Wrong | Power Line: "This is, of course, entirely different from what Obama said yesterday, but it comes no nearer the truth. First of all, when did Obamacare become an “economic issue,” a matter of “commerce”?” I thought it was all about women’s health care, like Roe v. Wade. Evidently that was a misunderstanding.

But that’s a minor point. Is there any truth to Obama’s claim that the Supreme Court hasn’t invalidated any statutes that are “economic” and relate to “commerce” since Lochner v. New York, which was in 1905? Of course not. To name just a few examples a great deal more recent than 1905, the Court ruled unconstitutional provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that had permitted only “for cause” removal of members of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board in 2010; the 1990 Mushroom Promotion, Research and Consumer Information Act in 2001 (this case was actually quite similar to Obamacare because the Court held unconstitutional provisions that required mushroom growers to contribute to mushroom promotion programs); provisions of the Patent and Plant Variety Remedy Clarification Act, the Trademark Remedy Clarification Act, and the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act in 1992; the Harbor Maintenance Tax Act in 1998; the Transfer Act which authorized the transfer of operating control of Washington National Airport and Dulles International Airport from the Department of Transportation to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority in 1991; and many, many more dating back to 1905.

One could be charitable and say that Barack Obama is a bullshitter who makes stuff up whenever he is in a tough spot, or one could say that he is a habitual liar. Take your pick."

... or bullsh*t hip deep. If you can't pick correctly by now you I hope you like the cave you'll soon enough be reduced to living in.

Read More......

Criminal By Assumption

Carbon Emissions Are Good - National Review Online: "In contrast, the role of humanity in raising global CO2 levels is relatively clear, and power allegedly needed to suppress it is enormous. The problem may be the direct opposite of what was previously alleged, but the solution is the same — more control. The fact that increased CO2 is constructive and highly beneficial to both mankind and the natural world is ignored.

This is deeply irrational. Indeed, consider for a moment what the situation would be if not only temperatures, but atmospheric CO2 levels, were to resume falling. That would truly be a cause for alarm, as it would imperil all life on earth.

But for those seeking the power to oppress humanity, any change in nature effected by humans, no matter how beneficial, is criminal by assumption."

The real criminals are our rulers.

Read More......

Every Species O Fraud And Injustice

Fast Forward Through Fiat's Fantastic Fabrications | ZeroHedge: "Paper money has had the effect in your state that it will ever have, to ruin commerce, oppress the honest, and open the door to every species of fraud and injustice."

George Washington -- in a letter to Jabez Bowen, Rhode Island, Jan. 9, 1787"

Any questions?

Read More......

Churlish

Swingin’ Kennedy - National Review Online: "A land of laws decays almost imperceptibly into a land of legalisms, which is why America has 50 percent of the world’s lawyers. Like most of his colleagues, lifetime legislator John Conyers (a congressman for 47 years) didn’t bother reading the 2,700-page health-care bill he voted for. As he said with disarming honesty, he wouldn’t understand it even if he did: “They get up and say, ‘Read the bill.’ What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?”

It would be churlish to direct readers to the video posted on the Internet of Representative Conyers finding time to peruse a copy of Playboy while on a commuter flight to Detroit. So let’s take him at his word that it would be unreasonable to expect a legislator to know what it is he’s actually legislating into law. Who does read the thing? “What happened to the Eighth Amendment?” sighed Justice Scalia the other day. That’s the bit about cruel and unusual punishment. “You really want us to go through these 2,700 pages . . . ? Or do you expect us to give this function to our law clerks?”"

Read More......

April Fools

Why Regulation Is Good For Growth | ZeroHedge: "The biggest problem with “free” markets is the stupidity of the common people. How can they possibly know what they want, or what they want to achieve when they have not attended prestigious universities like Oxford, Harvard, or Yale? Without help from central planners working with fact-based information derived from simulations, mathematical models, and empirical studies the common people will never be able to make informed economic choices. Thanks to the genius of central planning for the common good — as well as the hard work and self-sacrifice of central planners — the common people are liberated from making difficult economic decisions. They can concentrate on what they are qualified to decide — what to have for lunch (so long as its contents have been approved by central planners for consumption), what to name their children (so long as it comes from a list of names pre-approved by central planners), or what to watch on television (so long as the transmission has been approved by government censors)."

Of course, on ZeroHedge this is an April Fools piece complete with a derisively noted Krugman quote.

But at the NYeT this is on the front page every day. Topsy-turvy world indeed.

Read More......

They're Baaack...

Internet activity 'to be monitored' under new laws - Telegraph: "Under legislation expected in next month's Queen's Speech, internet companies will be instructed to install hardware enabling GCHQ – the Government's electronic "listening" agency – to examine "on demand" any phone call made, text message and email sent, and website accessed in "real time", The Sunday Times reported.

A previous attempt to introduce a similar law was abandoned by the former Labour government in 2006 in the face of fierce opposition.

However ministers believe it is essential that the police and security services have access to such communications data in order to tackle terrorism and protect the public.
Although GCHQ would not be able to access the content of such communications without a warrant, the legislation would enable it to trace people individuals or groups are in contact with, and how often and for how long they are in communication."

And soon to be Baaa(r)aaack... no doubt. For all us sheeple know it's already in operation over here.

Read More......