Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Apple: We Just Make Crappy Software

Apple says never worked with NSA on iPhone hacks | Reuters: "(Reuters) - Apple Inc has never worked with the U.S. National Security Agency and is unaware of efforts to target its smartphones, the company said in response to reports that the spy agency had developed a system to hack into and monitor iPhones. Germany's Der Spiegel reported this week that a secretive unit of the NSA, which is under fire for the extent and depth of its spying programs around the world, makes specialized gear and software to infiltrate and monitor a plethora of computing devices, including mobile phones."
Yeah, that's the ticket!

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Happy Weimar!

‘Looks Like Weimar Germany’: The Viral Photo Out of Connecticut That’s Giving Some Gun Owners Chills | TheBlaze.com: "Connecticut gun owners are rushing to register certain firearms and ammunition that will be considered illegal contraband in the new year. Under a wide-ranging gun control law passed after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, they have until Tuesday to submit the paperwork with the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection. “Holy crap. Looks like Weimar Germany,” Twitter user @votermom said of the photo."

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Monday, December 30, 2013

Spot The Dictator

Spot The Dictator | Zero Hedge: "The following brilliant collage of actual photos put together by Frank Schallmaier at the Dutch Volkskrant, shows two things: a narcissistic, megalomanical, self-absorbed supreme ruler of a socialist paradise and another guy who apparently has an identical taste in propaganda pics."
Update from a tip in the ZH comments:

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Sunday, December 29, 2013

Barry Christmas

Moonbattery » Open Thread: "Via LMAObama.com and Infidel Bloggers Alliance, on a tip from R F."

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Permanent Access

NSA can reportedly bug computer equipment before it reaches buyers: "Don't think that the NSA always has to wait until people are using technology to start snooping on it. Spiegel has obtained documents which claim that the agency's Tailored Access Operations (TAO) group can intercept computer equipment orders and install tracking hardware or software before the shipments even reach their buyers. The division can target a wide array of hardware, too. Another NSA section, ANT, reportedly has a catalog of tools that can install back doors in everything from Cisco and Huawei network systems through to hard drives from most major manufacturers, including Seagate and Western Digital. Some of these bugs can give the NSA "permanent" access, since they're designed to persist if the owner wipes a device's storage or upgrades its firmware. The leak suggests that the targeted manufacturers aren't aware of what's happening; Cisco and other firms tell Spiegel they don't coordinate with the NSA."

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Watched

Moonbattery » Never a Private Moment: "Compliments of Stormfax."

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Fooled

Moonbattery » Open Thread: "On a tip from TED."

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Friday, December 27, 2013

The Speech Police

Ace of Spades HQ: "Our current social understanding of free speech is this: You can speak your mind freely if you have a large enough army of supporters to pressure a company into resisting pressure from a large army of Speech Police.

This is not free speech. This is free speech as an exceptional thing -- only for those with a wide, passionate following -- not as a routine thing.

A&E is a cowardly organization. First it puts Robertson on "indefinite hiatus" under pressure from one group of people, then it puts him back on the air because they've been pressured by a somewhat larger group of people.

At no point did they trip over anything resembling a general principle of speech free from "consequences" of broad application."

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Not So Hot At 45

Students put AccuWeather long-range forecasts to the test: "Though these results are based on a limited dataset that spanned only one season (essentially, meteorological autumn) and only maximum temperatures were considered, they are remarkably consistent with the experience of seasoned mid-latitude forecasters: Beyond about 10 days, climatology (on average) is as good as, if not better than, any deterministic forecast."
Basically the same question occurred to me a number of months back when Accuweather announced their 45 day forecasts. So I took a look at my town:
UUUGLYYY! I couldn't stop laughing long enough to do a more rigorous analysis!

But don't worry your pretty head now, their 100 year forecasts are worth betting trillions on!  (H/T Joel at OpenSnow)

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The Tyranny Problem

Moonbattery » 2013: Best and Bleakest: "Because many of us make mistakes that can have bad consequences, some intellectuals believe that it is the role of government to intervene and make some of our decisions for us. From what galaxy government is going to hire creatures who do not make mistakes is a question they leave unanswered. — Thomas Sowell

This country has a mental health problem disguised as a gun problem and a tyranny problem disguised as a security problem. — Joe Rogan

Republicans spent a lot of time whining that, if Obama was prepared to negotiate with the Iranians, the Syrians, and the Russians, why wouldn’t he negotiate with the GOP? Well, the obvious answer is Rouhani, Assad, and Putin don’t curl up in a fetal position at the first tut-tut from Bob Schieffer or Diane Sawyer. — Mark Steyn"

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Checked, And Way Too Good

Instapundit » Blog Archive » IT’S FUNNY WHEN STEREOTYPES SELF-CONFIRM: Obamacare’s Pajama Boy: ‘I am a liberal f***.’ “…: "IT’S FUNNY WHEN STEREOTYPES SELF-CONFIRM: Obamacare’s Pajama Boy: ‘I am a liberal f***.’ “A Liberal Fuck is not a Democrat, but rather someone who combines political data and theory, extreme leftist views and sarcasm to win any argument while make [sic] the opponents feel terrible about themselves. I won every argument but one.” Yeah, the one where you showed your face. He also hates “conservative gay pricks.” In other words, he’s pretty much exactly what you figured when you saw his picture. Most self-revelatory remark: “I’m afraid it would be the ultimate surrender if I knew the truth.” Or maybe this one: “We have no morals, and we will attack you.” So he’s ready for his MSNBC co-anchor slot.

Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 10:36 am"

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Thursday, December 26, 2013

Me-Me-Me-Me

Merry belated Me-mas | Power Line: "A.F. Branco posted this seasonal cartoon — “Merry Me-mas” — at Legal Insurrection on December 16, but I didn’t catch up with it until this morning. This one stings. In case you missed it, here it is."

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Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Downfall

Moonbattery » Open Thread: "Compliments of Jack Bauer."

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Merry Christmas to all who are serving and have served our country in the military!

Merry Christmas to all who are serving and have served our country in the military!: "(Thank you to Robert Arvanitis for that wonderful second image.)"
I can't top this so here it is:

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Monday, December 23, 2013

A Columbia State O Mind

Wonderful things hiding in my inbox: "That the attack on the Robertsons has nothing to do with gay issues and everything to do with their overall politics is nicely illustrated in this poster:"

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Sunday, December 22, 2013

Forty One Years Ago ...

... seems like an eternity.

Remastered, Stabilised Apollo 16 Footage Of The Lunar Rover Looks Just Beautiful: "A remastered, stabilised clip of Nasa's Apollo 16 astronauts driving a Lunar Rover on the Moon back in 1972 has brought renewed attention on the fact that, you know, astronauts have driven on the moon. Yes the fact that humans ever landed on the Moon at all is, arguably, cool enough. But it is also true that, while there, we also took some pretty decent video footage. And now it's looking better than ever."

Bah. Just oppressive imperialistic white men. And did you know that in Sweden they are oppressing a different population?

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Manufactured Outrage

Found it on Facebook (actually, found two things on Facebook): "We’ve become a profoundly un-serious nation. It’s one thing to be lighthearted; it’s another thing to be lacking in any ballast. The world burns around us, and we pander to GLAAD’s manufactured outrage."

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Trust

Twitter / AHMalcolm: Obama lists all the things ...: "Obama lists all the things he knows nothing about. There've been quite a few."

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The Left Ducks

Instapundit » Blog Archive » ADRIENNE ROYER: Why Duck Dynasty Threatens The Left. “The surprise should be how liberals dismisse…: "DECEMBER 21, 2013

ADRIENNE ROYER: Why Duck Dynasty Threatens The Left. “The surprise should be how liberals dismissed the rise of Duck Dynasty until this fall, when it was too late to stem the show’s popularity. Once it became evident that this family held so much influence, the left suddenly realized they faced the first threat to their decades-long monopoly on popular culture.”"

UPDATE: From the comments: “When Phil Robertson was 50 years old, the Congress and President of the United States signed a law in Defense of Marriage that refused to recognize gay marriage. Now A&E thinks that point of view is so awful that it cannot air someone who agreed with Bill Clinton.” Or Barack Obama, before 2012.

Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 11:54 pm

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Saturday, December 21, 2013

Hoo Boy

Ace of Spades HQ: "From RD Brewer at Twitter, it looks like someone ticked off the lighting crew. I don't even care if it's real, it's crafty."

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The End of the Beginning

Moonbattery » The End of the Beginning: "Bill Whittle explains why the liberal media that created it will no longer be able to prop up the farcical presidency of Barack Hussein Obama thanks to ObamaCare:"

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Everything Must Be Gayed

As a warm up Steyn brings back Bob Hope:

National Review Online | Print: "Here are two jokes one can no longer tell on American television. But you can still find them in the archives, out on the edge of town, in Sub-Basement Level 12 of the ever-expanding Smithsonian Mausoleum of the Unsayable. First, Bob Hope, touring the world in the year or so after the passage of the 1975 Consenting Adult Sex Bill:

“I’ve just flown in from California, where they’ve made homosexuality legal. I thought I’d get out before they make it compulsory.”"
But then there's this:
The asphyxiating embrace of ideological conformity was famously captured by Nikolai Krylenko, the People’s Commissar for Justice, in a speech to the Soviet Congress of Chess Players in 1932, at which he attacked the very concept of “the neutrality of chess.” It was necessary for chess to be Sovietized like everything else. “We must organize shock brigades of chess players, and begin immediate realization of a Five-Year Plan for chess,” he declared.

Six years later, the political winds having shifted, Krylenko was executed as an enemy of the people. But his spirit lives on among the Commissars of Gay Compliance at GLAAD. It is not enough to have gay marriage for gays. Everything must be gayed. There must be Five-Year Gay Plans for American bakeries, and the Christian church, and reality TV.
The spirit of Ernst Rohm lives on...

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Friday, December 20, 2013

Stalin Smiling

Paglia: Duck Dynasty uproar 'utterly fascist, utterly Stalinist' | The Daily Caller: "Paglia went on to point out that while she is an atheist she respects religion and has been frustrated by the intolerance of gay activists. “I think that this intolerance by gay activists toward the full spectrum of human beliefs is a sign of immaturity, juvenility,” Paglia said. “This is not the mark of a true intellectual life. This is why there is no cultural life now in the U.S. Why nothing is of interest coming from the major media in terms of cultural criticism. Why the graduates of the Ivy League with their A, A, A+ grades are complete cultural illiterates, etc. is because they are not being educated in any way to give respect to opposing view points.” “There is a dialogue going on human civilization, for heaven sakes. It’s not just this monologue coming from fanatics who have displaced the religious beliefs of their parents into a political movement,” she added. “And that is what happened to feminism, and that is what happened to gay activism, a fanaticism.”"

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Wednesday, December 18, 2013

The Third Amendment Explicated

Moonbattery » Gun Control for Dummies: "Who better than a dummy to put the Second Amendment in the context of the rest of the Bill of Rights in terms even a moonbat could understand?"

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Selfie

Selfie [Darleen Click] | protein wisdom: "Selfie [Darleen Click]"

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Barack Dukakis

Mid-Week in Pictures: The Pajama Game Special Edition | Power Line: "Some things just can’t wait for the weekend.  Like Michael Dukakis riding in a tank.  Or the PR geniuses behind Obamacare putting out the Pajama Boy ad.  Did Christmas get moved up on the calendar, or did we skip straight to April Fool’s Day?"

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Tuesday, December 17, 2013

He Can Get Away With Anything Can't He?

Found it on Facebook: Americans and assault weapons: "How blessed to be Obama, when you’re never troubled by your own hypocrisy. As with any good narcissist, it’s always the truth at the moment that you’re saying it:"

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Monday, December 16, 2013

Welcome To The Tinfoil Apocalypse (Google Edition)

Instapundit » Blog Archive » TWEET OF THE DAY: Google motto 2004: Don’t be evil Google motto 2010: Evil is tricky to defin…: "DECEMBER 16, 2013
TWEET OF THE DAY:

Google motto 2004: Don’t be evil
Google motto 2010: Evil is tricky to define
Google motto 2013: We make military robots
Heh. So long as they’re more Bolo than Terminator.

Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 11:16 pm"
The ones they bought look more like Terminator to me...

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Sunday, December 15, 2013

Confidence

Instapundit » Blog Archive » GOVERNMENT HEALTH CARE: Public Confidence in Britain’s NHS At Record Low. “Three damning reports l…: "DECEMBER 15, 2013

GOVERNMENT HEALTH CARE: Public Confidence in Britain’s NHS At Record Low. “Three damning reports last night laid bare the crisis in NHS hospitals, maternity units and GP surgeries. One investigation revealed that a quarter of new mothers were abandoned by their midwives during labour, with some left to give birth on the floor or in corridors. The second found that mistakes deemed so serious they should never happen are being made in hospitals five times a week. And the third survey said thousands of patients have all but given up trying to secure appointments with their family doctor.”

Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 9:04 pm"
Did I forget to mention that monopolies -- did I forget to mention that government is a monopoly by definition? -- love to con you that they have feedback mechanisms just like private enterprise but of course they actually don't when you look closely?

They think everyone is named "Mark" and unfortunately with all the brainwashing levers they control they're largely correct...

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That's Not My Job, Man!

Another prescient post from the past: "The same principle of failing to invest specific people with responsibility — and thereby creating a responsibility vacuum — holds true when the government sucks responsibility away from people and distributes it into its vast machinery.  Suddenly, individuals aren’t responsible — and you can’t find the clerk with the cash when you need him.

My sister once worked with a secretary who felt put upon. No matter what one asked her to do, she came back with a single answer: “That’s not my job, man.” Since she was working for a private company, she was fired as soon as the company felt that it had protected itself against a potential wrongful discharge lawsuit. In the federal world, this same gal would not only have lifetime employment, she’d be teaching taxpayer-funded seminars on avoiding direct responsibility for anything.
I wrote those words long before the Obamacare fiasco revealed itself in its full glory to the American people — and long before we learned that part of the problem was that no one was in charge. Obama didn’t talk to Sebelius, Sebelius didn’t talk to her people, and the people tasked with the work were pushed aside when they tried to talk to anyone. For each of them, when it came to taking responsibility, the controlling ethos was “That’s not my job, man!”"

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Saturday, December 14, 2013

A History O Mental Illness

Ace of Spades HQ: "From @RyanLGustafson."

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It's Good For The King

Instapundit » Blog Archive » SPYING: White House to preserve controversial policy on NSA, Cyber Command leadership. “The Obama …: "SPYING: White House to preserve controversial policy on NSA, Cyber Command leadership. “The Obama administration has decided to preserve a controversial arrangement under which a single military official is permitted to direct both the National Security Agency and the military’s cyberwarfare command despite an external review panel’s recommendation against doing so, according to U.S. officials. The decision by President Obama comes amid signs that the White House is not inclined to place significant new restraints on the NSA’s activities and favors maintaining an agency program that collects data on virtually all phone calls of Americans, although it is likely to impose additional privacy-protection measures.”

Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 12:48 pm"
Why change something that's good for you?

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On Deck: North Korea

Belmont Club » Majesty: "Scratch any communist country — or communist party — and you will find aristocracy. Nicholas Eberstadt, writing in the Washington Post explains how “Pyongyang Royalty” works.  There is a ruling house in North Korea and indeed one reason why the regime  was stable for so long, Eberstadt argues,  is because its Royals observed an unwritten rule never to execute each other. It is a rule that Emperor Kim Yong-un has just broken."
RTWT. This is a masterpiece from Richard. I can't recommend it enough.

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Welcome To South Africa

Sultan Knish: Friday Afternoon Roundup - Coverage Mandate is Freedom: "As a Communist, Mandela had always envisioned a one-party state.

“Under a Communist Party Government South Africa will become a land of milk and honey. Political, economic and social rights will cease to be enjoyed by Whites only. They will be shared equally by Whites and Non-Whites. There will be enough land and houses for all. There will be no unemployment, starvation and disease,” Mandela wrote.

Today South Africa has a 26 percent unemployment rate and a 17 percent HIV rate. Among the 18-34 age group, 56 percent of whites, 53 percent of Indians and 43 percent of those of mixed race want to leave the country. Among blacks the number is only at 33 percent which still means that a third would like to leave."

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Thursday, December 12, 2013

Coincidence Or Corruption?

Ace of Spades HQ: "Considering the very real connections with Bill Elliott in this series of events and his audit and its timing and your subsequent series of contacts by the IRS, what do you draw from their behavior toward you each?

Tucker: I feel a bit like Catherine Englebrecht right now. Catherine and her husband are Tea Party patriots who were systematically targeted by the IRS, ATF, FBI, and OSHA for a 'long train of abuses' over a three year period in what is arguably the most egregious abuse of this administration's power over law abiding citizens as of yet on record.

After listening to Lois Lerner plead the 5th during congressional testimony and then conveniently 'retiring' early and then listening to the IRS chief counsel use the term 'I don't recall,' no less than 80 times during congressional testimony, I no longer believe in coincidences. I believe Bill and I are both being targeted for exercising our first amendment rights by accurately criticizing Barack Obama's disastrous health care law."
Wow. I think I know the answer to that one. Click through and read it all...

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Tuesday, December 10, 2013

The Sad Selfie Day

The visible manifestation of narcissism in the White House — or how not to behave at a memorial service *UPDATED*: "It is a very sad day for America when this vulgar, exhibitionistic, narcissistic couple stands before the world as our representatives. It is what it is, though. Those who hate America will still hate it. And those who love America will feel sympathy for her sufferings. UPDATE:  Brilliant headline at Drudge:"

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Monday, December 9, 2013

Directive 10-289 Watch

Examiner Editorial: Obamacare will end up forcing doctors to take patients | WashingtonExaminer.com: "Being the smart politicians that they are, they may already have contingency plans to do just that. As National Review Online's Kevin Williamson pointed out recently, “In the long run, the fact that physicians have a choice about whom they see and where they practice is the most significant challenge to the full implementation of Obamacare. The logical thing -- politically and economically -- is to eliminate that choice. You don't have to formally nationalize the health-care industry; you just nationalize 40 percent of each physician's practice and call it his ‘fair share.' ”

In the meantime, unless their rebellion magically goes away soon, expect in coming days an increasing flood of criticism of physicians from Obamacare’s backers. They will never admit Obamacare causes a doctor shortage, so they will demonize them to set the stage for nationalizing them. They’ll probably call it something like the “National Health Service.”"

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Sunday, December 8, 2013

The Indictment

NBC's Todd Reveals The One Phrase That Undermines The 'Whole Idea Of Government As A Solution' | Independent Journal Review: "“That is an acknowledgement that, ‘You know what? If this was a government operation for a long time and it failed, now we’re bringing in the private sector folks.’ I mean, that is an indictment on the whole idea of government as a solution, frankly…”
Yes, Chuck, it is. Now, if could only get the “progressives” to realize it. Before it’s too late, that is."
Du'O.

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The Cargo Cult O The MacGuffinized Feather

Obama and the magic feather: "There have been some interesting attempts to explain the curious psychology of the Obama years, in which an executive office that was already too powerful seized incredible new powers, while conducting an unprecedented semi-nationalization of an entire industry... but the President himself is held completely innocent and blameless for everything that happens.  There's a stunning cognitive dissonance between the nearly religious belief of Barack Obama's followers that he's a superior, elevated being, the smartest man ever to hold the Oval Office - a belief he happily encourages while nourishing a cult of personality, and occasionally remarking that he's better qualified to do every job in the Administration than whoever currently holds it - and the absolute refusal to hold him responsible.  "
RTWT.

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The Hidden Agenda

Ace of Spades HQ: "And whatever other topics the fetid swamps of your minds can imagine."

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Equality Today

Drug tests for welfare recipients: "I have a job. I work, they pay me. I pay my taxes & the government distributes my taxes as it sees fit. In order to get that paycheck, in my case, I am required to pass a random urine test (with which I have no problem). What I do have a problem with is the distribution of my taxes to people who don’t have to pass a urine test. So, here is my question: Shouldn’t one have to pass a urine test to get a welfare check because I have to pass one to earn it for them?"

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Whoops!

Father of Modern Finance Warns US, Europe: 'None of Their Debt Is Credible,' Recession in 2014: "One of the fathers of modern finance and a winner of this year's Nobel prize for economics said the bloated deficits of the United States and European nations may lead to a worldwide recession.

Eugene Fama, whoe "shared the economics prize for research into market prices and asset bubbles" with Robert Shiller and Lars Peter Hansen, told Reuters on Saturday that the markets may not find the debts of European nations and the United States to be credible."
Thank god he's just another mean Republican dimwit so we don't have to listen...

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Saturday, December 7, 2013

Pearl Harbor Becomes Caught In The Memory hOle

Sultan Knish: A Date That Will Live Forever in Infamy: "Early copies of President Roosevelt's upcoming speech to Congress likewise warn the American public of the dangers of overreaction.

"We are not at war with Japan," it says. "We are at war with a tiny handful of extremists who are attempting to drag the Japanese people into a conflict. But we must keep a cool head and not allow them to win by provoking a war. We will defeat this enemy, but we will do it by not fighting them.""

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The "Crackers" Are Not Extinct

Is Black Underperformance A Result Of The Welfare State? - Investors.com: "Depressing news about black students scoring far below white students on various mental tests has become so familiar that people in different parts of the ideological spectrum have long ago developed their different explanations for why this is so.

But both may have to do some rethinking, in light of radically different news from England.

The Nov. 9-15 issue of the distinguished British magazine "The Economist" reports that, among children who are eligible for free meals in England's schools, black children of immigrants from Africa meet the standards of school tests nearly 60% of the time — as do immigrant children from Bangladesh and Pakistan.

Black children of immigrants from the Caribbean meet the standards less than 50% of the time.

At the bottom, among those children who are all from families with low enough incomes to receive free meals at school, are white English children, who meet the standards 30% of the time.

"The Economist" points out that, in one borough of London, white students scored lower than black students in any London borough."
You can find the decoder ring to my title here in the sixth para.

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A Tale O WikiLaws

Obama paves the path to removing Obamacare « Hot Air: "The President delayed some portions of the bill. He claimed that he wouldn’t enforce others imposed on the health insurance companies. HHS is now proposing to make new changes to alter a provision of Obamacare known as the “risk corridors” program, channeling more money to insurers who no longer think they can pull a rabbit out of this particular hat. And all of these actions are making changes – either directly or in de facto enforcement – to a piece of legislation passed through Congress and signed by his own hand.

In the old days, you needed to go back to the well and make changes through the legislative process. By Klein’s reckoning, those days are past. Getting the bill through once is sufficient, and after that the Executive Office can just tailor things as needed. Such tailoring could obviously include directing the appropriate offices and functions to simply ignore the whole thing, no? It sort of takes the idea of presidential signing statements to a whole new level. And who would have guessed that Barack Obama would solve this puzzle himself?"
Hmm...

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Heh

Denier land: How deniers view global warming | Watts Up With That?: "Thanks to Skeptical Science and ScienceFrontier for making this video possible. We can now see the error of our ways."

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Hey Amazon

Instapundit » Blog Archive » SEEN ON FACEBOOK: …: "SEEN ON FACEBOOK:" 

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Witch! Witch!

The NSA’s Witch Hunt | Hoover Institution: "Why do I think there are only 100 terrorists in the country? Consider the Transportation Security Administration. In the TSA’s own tests, TSA employees caught 40 percent of the bombs present on passengers and in luggage (for a 40 percent sensitivity). Astute readers will notice that the lousy success rate for the TSA’s screening combined with the lack of airplane hijackings over the past decade can mean only one thing: There just aren’t that many motivated terrorists in our society.

If we consider that there have been two attempted hijackings in the post-9/11—and present TSA—era, then we can assume that two potential hijackers were caught beforehand. In other words, four tried and half were caught, leaving two who successfully entered their planes: the shoe bomber and the underwear bomber. Interestingly, there have been exactly zero successful attempts, primarily due to passenger activism. The TSA is not the only bulwark against in-air terrorist activities; we must include flight crews and motivated passengers. It appears, therefore, that the TSA’s actions and all those security lines we have endured over the years have likely prevented zero or close to zero hijackings."
Do you float in water? That person just drowned. Wait -- were they a witch or not?

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Memory hOle In The Won

ACLJ: Obama was one of the 'outraged' before he wasn't | The Daily Caller: "“Americans have a right to be angry about it, and I’m angry about it,” Obama added days later when he announced the resignation of acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller, due to the controversy, days later.

Thursday night however, Obama was more frustrated with the people who expressed outrage at the targeting during an interview with MSNBC host Chris Matthews. (Related: ‘Suddenly Everybody’s Outraged’ Obama dismisses IRS targeting of conservatives, which he called ‘outrageous’ in May)

“If, on the other hand, you’ve got an office in Cincinnati, in the IRS office that — I think, for bureaucratic reasons, is trying to streamline what is a difficult law to interpret about whether a nonprofit is actually a political organization deserves a tax exempt agency. And they’ve got a list, and suddenly everybody’s outraged,” Obama said, going on to express dismay that even “so-called progressives” were “outraged at the possibility” of targeting."
What firing of the IRS director? Well, because he was about to retire anyway and it was all for show.

The one talent I have to credit Obama with is keeping all these lies organized with a straight face.  He is a truly talented psychopath.

And he has the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect powerfully on his side for those few non-Deltas in the population. Which leaves all seven of us to watch and marvel at the panem et circenses.

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Friday, December 6, 2013

MacGuffins Lost

Ace of Spades HQ: "And this isn't a new phenomenon, either. Since the beginning of this movie, the fanbois have cared very little for MacGuffins (notice they don't care how many thousands of Americans have died in Afghanistan), but have been intensely interested in the Hero's emotional response to it all.

You root for the Hero to win because you like the Hero -- not because you're particularly invested in the Hero's actual goals. And you despise the Villains simply because they're standing in the way of the Hero's triumph.

Chris Matthews sums up, neatly, his only genuine interest in American politics for the past five years:
“We have real people in this country with real power and status who have used that status of power to hurt the country so they could hurt the president.”
Only the Hero matters. The MacGuffin never does.

The Hero is our hopes and dreams. And the Hero has come to us; he has come amongst us."
RTWT ... Did I forget to mention you should RTWT?

UPDATE: And then I found this which has just appeared from Bill Whittle.  What a powerful compare and contrast exercise:
It seems that virtually every culture has independently invented, on their own from the depths of the Collective Unconscious (which is likely hard-wired into the human brain) the same exact story -- the same myth – told again and again and again.

It’s The Journey of the Hero, and it is amazing to me how perfectly it is retold and re-invented and yet remains exactly the same, because the Journey of the Hero speaks to the deepest heart in each of us.
Also RTWT of course.  And let me guess, you haven't read Le Bon's "Psychology of Crowds" yet have you?

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Forecasting Future Ignoring

“What prevents the president from ignoring election laws?” [Darleen Click] | protein wisdom: "Wow."

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Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Perfect

Instapundit » Blog Archive » COMPARE AND CONTRAST: “Obama has a web site that doesn’t work and drones that kill people. Amazon h…: "COMPARE AND CONTRAST: “Obama has a web site that doesn’t work and drones that kill people. Amazon has a functioning web site and drones that deliver gifts.”

Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 9:50 pm"

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Sonder

This Powerful Video Explains Individualism in a Way That Most Liberals Can Understand | Independent Journal Review: "The author of this video John Koenig coined the term “sonder” to describe “the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.” It is a fascinating bit of film.

As an additional comment, this is why many people are individualists: they believe each person is unique and has the right to live his or her own life free from the coercion of others. When someone forces others to do things against their will, they are stealing a part of their lives, and destroying their ultimate capability. And yet that is what today’s elites propose to do for hundreds of millions of people. Just a thought, feel free to draw your own conclusions."
Nicely done.

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Another Example Of Putting "Broke" In Perspective

Know a Liberal in Denial of How Bad Our National Deficit Is? Show Them This. | Independent Journal Review: "This was originally posted in 2012, but it still does a great job of explaining the national deficit. SHARE this simple video with anyone who is in denial of just how bad our government’s spending has gotten."

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Heinlein On Obamadeath

Robert A. Heinlein - Wikiquote: "There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him."

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Bad Luck (Periodic Reprise)

Robert A. Heinlein - Wikiquote: "Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as "bad luck.""

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Monday, December 2, 2013

COTD: It All Makes Sense Now!

Belmont Club » Accidental Hero:
"Kinuachdrach

It all makes sense now!

Barry wanted that deal with Iran so that Iranian oil could flood the global oil market, driving the price down, and bankrupting all those evil American entrepreneuers who had outwitted his bureaucrats and found ways to frac for oil in the US. And if Iran ends up nuking Israel as a side effect ... well, Barry's view is that will just show all those Jews who voted for him who really is boss."
There's more...

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Sunday, December 1, 2013

Silicon Chasm: The New Feudalism

Silicon Chasm: "While I was driving with Berkey around Atherton, Tyler Cowen, economics professor at George Mason University and author of The Great Stagnation (2011), published a new book, Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation. There, Cowen bluntly predicted what he called “wage polarization.” The increasing ability of computers to perform ordinary tasks will inexorably transform America into an income oligarchy in which the top 15 percent of people—with skills “that are a complement to the computer”—will enjoy “cheery” labor-market prospects and soaring incomes, while the bottom 85 percent, that is to say, 267 million out of America’s 315 million people, will be lucky to find Walmart-level jobs or scrape together marginal “freelance” livings running $25-a-pop errands for their betters via TaskRabbit (say, picking up and delivering a pair of designer shoes from Nordstrom) or renting out their spare bedrooms (if they have any) to overnight lodgers via Airbnb. That is, if they’ll be working at all. “There are many other historical periods, including medieval times, where inequality is high, upward mobility is fairly low, and the social order is fairly stable, even if we as moderns find some aspects of that order objectionable,” Cowen writes in his new book.

In other words, what is coming is the “new feudalism,” a phrase coined by Chapman University urban studies professor Joel Kotkin, a prolific media presence whose New Geography website is an outlet for the trend’s most vocal critics. “It’s a weird Upstairs, Downstairs world in which there’s the gentry, and the role for everybody else is to be their servants,” Kotkin said in a telephone interview. “The agenda of the gentry is to force the working class to live in apartments for the rest of their lives and be serfs. But there’s a weird cognitive dissonance. Everyone who says people ought to be living in apartments actually lives in gigantic houses or has multiple houses.”"
In case you are still under the sway of the propagandists: RTWT.

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Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Gobble, Gobble

Instapundit » Blog Archive » IN RESPONSE TO THE OBAMA HEALTHCARE TALKING POINTS FOR THANKSGIVING, Ace Of Spades offers an alterna…: "IN RESPONSE TO THE OBAMA HEALTHCARE TALKING POINTS FOR THANKSGIVING, Ace Of Spades offers an alternative set. Sample: “Hey remember when you said that Obamacare was going to work great, and then, when people asked you how it actually worked, you sort of implied they were stupid for not knowing, and yet you never provided any evidence that you had any idea of how it was supposed to work yourself? Yeah, you were wrong to do that.”

Still, it makes sense people would talk about ObamaCare at Thanksgiving — it’s the biggest legislative turkey of the century!

Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 5:09 pm"

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Sunday, November 24, 2013

Centrifugal Farce (Munich Reprise Edition)

Assessing the Iran deal | Power Line: "Third, Iran has broken the psychological momentum and effect of the international economic sanctions. While estimates differ on Iran’s precise gain, it is considerable ($7 billion is the lowest estimate), and presages much more. Tehran correctly assessed that a mere six-months’ easing of sanctions will make it extraordinarily hard for the West to reverse direction, even faced with systematic violations of Iran’s nuclear pledges. Major oil-importing countries (China, India, South Korea, and others) were already chafing under U.S. sanctions, sensing President Obama had no stomach either to impose sanctions on them, or pay the domestic political price of granting further waivers.
Whole thing here, and all of it is very much worth reading.

STEVE adds: Methinks we should call this for what it is: centrifugal farce."
You may not know that Czechoslovakia was not allowed to participate in the negotiation at Munich between Chamberlain and Hitler for its effective surrender. And Israel has not been allowed to negotiate it's own surrender in this case apparently.

Somehow, Obama seems to not actually understand that Israel is a nuclear power.  Just as the Arabs didn't in '73 to their near extinction.

That will be sugar plums and lollipops compared to this time around...

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Stopped Clock Watch (Low N Edition)

Al Sharpton condemns ‘knockout’ attacks | New York Post: "Rev. Al Sharpton condemned “knockout” attacks Saturday but stopped short of calling for marches against the brutal hate crimes.

“This kind of behavior is deplorable and must be condemned by all us,” he said at his weekly National Action Network meeting in Harlem. “We would not be silent if it was the other way around. We cannot be silent or in any way reluctant to confront it when it is coming from our own community.”

On Monday, Sharpton and other leaders plan to discuss a “next move.”"
If he actually keeps this in the forefront I'll be shocked. And at that point I would be truly forthcoming with praise if it turns out to be more than just lip service. I doubt it, but I'll keep an eye out.

In the same vein, it isn't true that I don't agree with Obama on anything. We are in complete agreement that the American people are in desperate need of mental health care. On my dime if necessary.

And until today I would have said that Al's need was foremost among them...

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Did You Know?

Ace of Spades HQ: "Hey, do you know what famous person died on Nov. 22, 1963? Well, C.S. Lewis, for one. I ask again, do you know what famous person died on Nov. 22, 1963? How about Aldous Huxley?

Huxley wrote a royal crap ton of stuff, stories, satire, and novels, and was one of the leading intellectuals of his day. His best known work is probably the dystopian novel Brave New World.

Lewis also wrote a royal crap ton of stuff, and perhaps best known for The Screwtape Letters, although I believe the best way to get to know him is by reading Mere Christianity or, my personal favorite, God In The Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics. And of course, the Narnia Chronicles.

Kennedy "wrote" Profiles in Courage, and I use quotes because it is now known that he wrote PiC the same way that Barak Obama wrote his books, i.e. he didn't. Instead, PiC was mostly written by his lackey speechwriter Ted Sorensen, who admitted decades later that he very well paid by Kennedy for his ghost writing services. Because of his work, Kennedy was awarded a Pulitzer Prize."

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Dear Neighbors,

Ace of Spades HQ: "And anything else that emerges from the darkest depths of your scary minds....."
Couldn't you at least consider "Moo'ing" when farmer Obama walks by?
(Oof. The image resize screwed this up somehow. You just need to know that all the turkeys are "Moo'ing" and the farmer is blind with a cane.)

Let me guess -- you've never even read "Animal Farm" have you?

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Luckily, We Can Trust Them With All This Power

N.S.A. Report Outlined Goals for More Power - NYTimes.com: "And it wants to find ways to combine all of its technical tools to enhance its surveillance powers. The N.S.A. will seek to integrate its “capabilities to reach previously inaccessible targets in support of exploitation, cyberdefense and cyberoperations,” the paper stated.

The agency also intends to improve its access to encrypted communications used by individuals, businesses and foreign governments, the strategy document said. The N.S.A. has already had some success in defeating encryption, The New York Times has reported, but the document makes it clear that countering “ubiquitous, strong, commercial network encryption” is a top priority. The agency plans to fight back against the rise of encryption through relationships with companies that develop encryption tools and through espionage operations. In other countries, the document said, the N.S.A. must also “counter indigenous cryptographic programs by targeting their industrial bases with all available Sigint and Humint” — human intelligence, meaning spies."
Because there's no possibility they might use it to gain even more power or use it "accidentally on purpose" against us.

The phrase "accidentally on purpose" was one of my Dad's favorites to question people's real motives.  It's come back to me more and more lately with all the crap and lies hitting the fan.

Another of his favorites was the toast: "As good as you are, and as bad as I am, I'm as good as you are as bad as I am."  The more I think about it this is an excellent expression of the case against Leviathan government. Those who think they're better than others can easily fall into narcissistic and manipulative power madness. I've become steadily less sanguine about the prospects of the rapidly deteriorating middle class in the face of these so-called people.

Another joke I grew up with was: "How can you tell when a politician is lying? ... Their lips are moving." And then there was Mark Twain's common sense observation that Congress was the country's only native criminal class.

But the politicians and compliant Praetorian Guard media seem to have done their damnedest to expunge common sense from the culture. The reason being that that's the only way to keep the current status quo of kleptocratic kakistocracy from imploding. (This is a great piece I ran across lately on that topic.)

I guess the apple doesn't fall very far from the tree.  Well ... I won't talk about my Mom today as I was remembering her fondly yesterday in spite of her vast failings on the political front...

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Saturday, November 23, 2013

LOLOL

Narcissist in chief strikes again on 50th anniversary of JFK’s death [pic, bonus Photoshops] | Twitchy: LOLOL. I MUST have a framed print of this. Via @sjkz

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Tuesday, November 19, 2013

COTD: Run Away!

Healthcare.gov: Worse Than Ever, But Don’t Be Distracted | Power Line:

Douglas Cassel · Harvard University

I am in the industry and have read the bill cover to cover. There are many shoes left to drop, almost too many to even discuss coherently. However, the most important one may be the medicaid utilization projections made by the government. These projections assume utilization rates similar to those of the Kaiser system for new Medicaid patients. The actual demand for care, and subsequent costs, will be much higher. As such, the demand for care could swamp the system, particularly in the inner cities, and the costs will overwhelm the federal and state budgets(who will eventually cover these expenses). I actually support some sort of universal healthcare as a societal imperative, but remain astounded by the deficiencies of this law, and the profound ignorance of the people that passed it.

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Winston Smith, Call Your Office

Instapundit » Blog Archive » TRUST: Documents say NSA repeatedly promised to stop surveillance rules violations. “The Obama adm…: "TRUST: Documents say NSA repeatedly promised to stop surveillance rules violations. “The Obama administration published the heavily censored files Monday night as part of an ongoing civil liberties lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the government’s collection of phone records, which the White House has said is important to countering terrorism. The files published Monday night were so heavily censored that one of the two justifications for the government to search through Americans’ phone records was blacked out.”

Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 8:17 am"
Apparently, Obama is racist against himself or something...

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Monday, November 18, 2013

How Inconvenient

Bookworm Room » Liberal logic when it comes to guns: "Hat tip: Caped Crusader"

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Sunday, November 17, 2013

No Kidding

Dana Loesch’s house storm damaged; Still manages hilarious observation about homeowners policy [pic] | Twitchy: I'm glad we don’t have Obamacare house insurance.

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Dishonesty

Ace of Spades HQ: "Anti-gun groups thrive on dishonesty, Exhibit 3,256,918:"

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Saturday, November 16, 2013

COTD #2: Nobody Told Him

Through The Sheer Brilliance Of Barack Obama's Foreign Policy Vision, Israel and Saudi Arabia Are Now Working Together: "43 Can't wait for him to explain that nobody told him Iran was a problem.

Posted by: Mama AJ at November 16, 2013 09:25 PM (SUKHu)"

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Takeover? What Takeover?

Ace of Spades HQ: "@verumserum pointed out that the left claims it's a "lie" that Obama has subjected the health care industry to a "government takeover." All the various lefty fact-checking sites have called this "FALSE" or "PANTS ON FIRE" multiple times.

And yet here's Obama summoning health care executives to order them to take actions which actually are illegal under last week's law.

Sure seems to be a government takeover to me."

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Friday, November 15, 2013

COTD: Still Digging

Thus Spake Obama | National Review Online: Aris Total Judas Unrepentant • 44 minutes ago
GWB left us down a well.
BHO dug to China and refinanced the shovel.

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Thursday, November 14, 2013

A Reminder

Michelle Malkin | Obama threatens to veto bill which would do pretty much what he said he wanted to do Thursday morning «: Reminder: Obama shut down the government instead of accepting a Republican plan to do what he's now admitting he needs to do.
Because he's still lying that he would let anyone keep their plans of course.

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Wednesday, November 13, 2013

COTD: Your 44th President

This chart does not look good for President Obama:
"johnhiggins1990
9:00 PM MST

The corruption of Nixon, the incompetence of Carter, the dishonesty of Clinton, and the ratings of Bush...  ladies and gentlemen, your 44th President, Barack Obama!"

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He Cared For The Poor, You Know...

Instapundit » Blog Archive » COMMUNISM/SOCIALISM ALWAYS ENDS THIS WAY, AS THE COVERT LOOTING BECOMES OVERT: Venezuela’s Economic…: "As oil prices fell, the government inevitably ran into political trouble, which it has tried to manage with ill-considered economic interventions such as price controls. Shortages of basic household goods are common, and currency restrictions have sent the price of airline tickets soaring as Venezuelans resort to vacations as a way to get a hold of scarce foreign currency.

These restrictions tend to fall apart, creating the need for even more extreme measures.
Sooner or later, you run out of other people’s money. But hey, when Chavez died his family was somehow worth billions. Because he cared for the poor, you know.

Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 10:30 am"

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Tuesday, November 12, 2013

The Sweatshop Of The "Radicals"

Ace of Spades HQ: "If you listen to artists, writers, academics and journalists, you would think that thousands of them operate in a radical underground. They say the right things. They 'speak truth to power', 'transgress boundaries', and all the rest of it. But you will have noticed that they are careful only to challenge religions that won't hurt them (Christianity) and governments that won't arrest them (democracies).
And here is where the Great Revolution begins:"
Yes, that's right, the revolution starts here - in some Third World sweatshop!
But, alas, not in the way that Leftists have traditionally fantasized about: the bloody uprising, the cowed elite, the self-appointed and strangely middle-class functionaries of the proletarian dictatorship coldly dispensing "justice."

The workers are busy. They have orders to fill, and there won't be a "revolution" unless the young Western leftists get their silly masks to give them a sense of fake camaraderie and being part of the night.
Today most 'radicals' on the left are merely engaged in dissident role-playing along with a bit of revolutionary cosplay and puppetry.

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Monday, November 11, 2013

Wow

“All my love, forever and ever …” [Darleen Click] | protein wisdom: "“All my love, forever and ever …”"
Just click over and WTWT.

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Sunday, November 10, 2013

* Except For Yours

The United States Of Hypocrisy (In One Cartoon) | Zero Hedge: "...because it's always what's not said that matters..."

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Nothing Was Ever Discovered To Be Missing

Ace of Spades HQ: "The "seven wonders of Communism" makes a point about the economy. Accordingly, in Communism, 1. All had work. 2. Even though all had a job, no one did anything.  3. Even if none of us has done anything useful, the "State Plan" was filled above 100%. 4. Although the "Plan" has been "over fulfilled", you could not buy anything. 5. Even if nothing was offered for sale, everybody had all he needed. 6. Even if everybody had everything he needed, all were stealing. 7. Although everybody was stealing, nothing was ever discovered to be missing."
And:
The "five rules of survival in Socialism" are instructional. "1. Do not think. 2. If you must think, do not speak. 3. If you think and speak, refrain from writing. 4. If you must think, speak and write, then do not sign charters. 5. In case you think, speak up, write and sign, then do not be surprised by what happens to you.
Got it, comrade?

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Saturday, November 9, 2013

Spiked

Bloomberg News Is Said to Curb Articles That Might Anger China - NYTimes.com: "BEIJING — The decision came in an early evening call to four journalists huddled in a Hong Kong conference room. On the line 12 time zones away in New York was their boss, Matthew Winkler, the longtime editor in chief of Bloomberg News. And they were frustrated by what he was telling them.

The investigative report they had been working on for the better part of a year, which detailed the hidden financial ties between one of the wealthiest men in China and the families of top Chinese leaders, would not be published.

In the call late last month, Mr. Winkler defended his decision, comparing it to the self-censorship by foreign news bureaus trying to preserve their ability to report inside Nazi-era Germany, according to Bloomberg employees familiar with the discussion."

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The End O Morality

Morality is for suckers … [Darleen Click] | protein wisdom: "“The system is there and it’s available.”"

The fact that this has only 26K views says she's right, huh?

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2010 Video: Obama Admitted It

2010 Video: Obama Admits Millions 'Might Have to Change Their Coverage': "OBAMA:  Since you asked me a question, let me respond. The 8 to 9 million people you refer to that might have to change their coverage -- keep in mind out of the 300 million Americans that we are talking about -- would be folks who the CBO, the Congressional Budget Office,  estimates would find the deal in the exchange better -- would be a better deal. So, yes, they would change coverage because they got more choice and competition.
So even though the president knew that eight to nine million people "might have to change their coverage" way back in February of 2010, afterwards, for three-plus years -- especially while running for reelection -- Obama continued to reassure the American people that if you like your health care plan, you can keep it. Period. End of story."
Of course he either didn't admit all of it or didn't know all of it also even then.

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Friday, November 8, 2013

Luv Guv

Sultan Knish: Love Your Government: "With everything at stake, voters keep picking the candidates they think love them the most. The exit polls keep showing that voters choose unqualified radicals like Barack Obama or Bill de Blasio because they're "likable", "share their values" and "care about them."

Experience came in dead last in the New York election, both literally in Lhota's case, and in the exit polls, which showed voters ranking experience somewhere between a dead zebra and a mugger on the C train. 34 percent wanted someone who shared their values. 30 percent wanted change. And an unspecified number of right-wing lunatics wanted experience.

Voting is starting to look a lot like dating. A big chunk of the electorate doesn't just want someone to manage a government. They want someone who will make them feel special, share their values and love them back.

Government is becoming more personal, even as it's becoming more impersonal. Newly hatched ducks develop an attachment to their wire mothers. Children neglected by their parents fixate on their nannies. And what of a generation of broken families?"
RTWT. It even explains how W won if you can believe that...

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Good Grief

Moonbattery » What Obama Is Good At: "Nobel Peace Prize laureate Barack Hussein Obama boasts that he is “really good at killing people.” Sunny investigates what else he’s good at:"

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Thursday, November 7, 2013

Parsing

Parsing Obama’s Promise | Power Line: "Michael Ramirez has come up with a way of reading President Obama’s famous pledge that defends Obama against the charge of being a liar. Actually, it isn’t any dumber than the ones Obama himself has come up with. Who knows, Jay Carney may use it one of these days:"

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COTD: No Response

Time for Internet Engineers to Fight Back Against the "Surveillance Internet" | MIT Technology Review: "dtutelman 16 hours ago 
"The basic problem is that at its core, the existing ‘net is merely a bigger and fancier version of the original one that assumed everyone was honest and trustworthy (all of the early users were researchers in government and academic labs)."

Bingo!

A 100% cooperative community was indeed the mindset of the developers of ARPANET -- which was the foundation for the Internet infrastructure today. In 1974, Cerf and Kahn published their proposal for the IP protocol (still the foundation for Internet routing; upgrades have been aimed at improving capacity, not security or accountability). The year before, I was one of three reviewers for the paper for IEEE Transactions on Communications. I pointed out this problem in my review, but there was never any response."

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Tuesday, November 5, 2013

DMV Healthcare Update

Bookworm Room » Four minutes of facts and analysis about Obamacare’s negative effects on young people: "She talks fast, and has a fascinatingly mobile face, and everything she says makes sense:"

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Gaslight (Part 7,594,381)

Bookworm Room » Having been caught engaged in out-and-out fraud, Obama engages in a familiar pattern to cover up his lies *UPDATED*: "Think of it this way:  We’re all living out the movie Gaslight, with Obama as the dangerously manipulative, dishonest Charles Boyer character, and the American public as the hapless, helpless Ingrid Bergman character, whom Boyer is trying to drive mad so that he can take her wealth. (Which raises the question whether Ted Cruz is the Joseph Cotten character who rides to the rescue….)

Even though I’m right about something depressing, I’m human enough to take some pleasure in having been right in the first place.  So, forgive me for analyzing Obama’s latest lies, and his lie about those lies, using a post I wrote five-and-a-half years ago, when I first realized he was using the narcissist’s classic approach to lying and manipulation."

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Thanks Again, Suckers

Maybe Pain Will Teach You Millenials Not To Vote For Your Own Serfdom - Kurt Schlichter - Page full: "It breaks my heart to see the young lawyers I hire hobbled by six figures of debt. But hey, your desperation works fine for us established folks. I got 297 applications for a junior associate position. Let me say that again – 297. Most of them weren’t even practicing law – they were brewing coffee, not writing briefs. Now, I understand that most of you learned nothing but liberal clichés in college, but take a guess: As an employer, are the salaries I pay generally more or less when I have 297 people competing for each job?

So feel free to keep voting for the liberals who keep you in chains. I’ll take my cheaper insurance, my future Social Security checks, and the other benefits that come from being established without guilt. The guys who you squander your votes upon certainly won’t change that equation. You’ll tread water in life, but hey, at least those conservatives won’t be in charge!

Thanks again, suckers. Now get off my lawn."

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Monday, November 4, 2013

A Fleeting Glimmer Of Change About The Hope

Moonbattery » All the President’s Scandals: "Obama’s standard defense for the many scandals that characterize his misbegotten administration is that he has no idea what is going on under his supposed command. Let’s see if even college students — who were so enthusiastic about putting him in power — regard him as incompetent, deceitful, or transparent:"

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Yep, You Guessed It

Instapundit » Blog Archive » AVIK ROY: The Myth Of Americans’ Poor Life Expectancy. If you really want to measure health outc…: "If you really want to measure health outcomes, the best way to do it is at the point of medical intervention. If you have a heart attack, how long do you live in the U.S. vs. another country? If you’re diagnosed with breast cancer? In 2008, a group of investigators conducted a worldwide study of cancer survival rates, called CONCORD. They looked at 5-year survival rates for breast cancer, colon and rectal cancer, and prostate cancer. I compiled their data for the U.S., Canada, Australia, Japan, and western Europe. Guess who came out number one?
Yep, you guessed it."

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What's In It

Now we find out what’s in it: Obamacare’s taxpayer bailout for health insurers | Conservative Intelligence Briefing: "Over at The Incidental Economist, Adrianna McIntyre explains part of the health care law that many people probably did not know was in it. (I know I didn’t — at least not in detail.) Even if the individual mandate is delayed for a year, she points out, the private insurance market won’t immediately be destroyed by the so-called “adverse selection death spiral” — the crash that occurs when health plans contain too many sick people (net-users of the money in the pool) and not enough net-payers (healthy people).

The short version? Obamacare contains a partial bailout for insurers with losses greater than 3 percent in any of the first three years"

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Saturday, November 2, 2013

The Slop Bucket

Moonbattery: "Via 100 Percent FED Up, on a tip from G. Fox."

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COTD: The Law: All Three End States Simultaneously

Flashback - Ace circa Oct 2004: "Around 1850, Bastiat wrote "The Law." One of his salient points is that when the law is allowed to be used as a means of plunder, there are only three possible end states: 1. The few use the law to plunder from the many; 2. The many use the law to plunder from the few; and 3. Everyone uses the law to plunder from everyone else. I think it's fair to say that we have arrived at all three end states simultaneously, fueled solely by the Fed's ability to print money. When that ends, things are going to get really interesting. Probably after 2017, because the Fed will print through the 2016 elections to hide the damage as much as possible and get Hillary elected.

Posted by: Caesar North of the Rubicon at November 02, 2013 11:37 AM (HubSo)"

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Friday, November 1, 2013

All You Need To Know

Navy SEALs ordered to remove 'don't tread on me' Navy Jack from uniforms | The Daily Caller: "After reading the email, I first wondered, ‘why?’ (Actually, first I headed to the gym to take out my frustration and anger on some unsuspecting weights with the fury and intensity only a former Navy SEAL can exert.) Why would our leaders sell out our heritage? Why would they rob present and future sailors of our battle cry?

When a friend of mine asked his leadership the same question, he was told, “The Jack is too closely associated with radical groups.” We must assume that this thought policeman embedded in the SEAL community is speaking of the Tea Party, whose flag (which also dates from the American Revolution) depicts a snake with the same defiant slogan as The Navy Jack."

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Thursday, October 31, 2013

The Emanuel Goldsteining of Ted Cruz

Bookworm Room » I’m not the only one noticing the Emanuel Goldsteining of Ted Cruz: "I’m not the only one noticing the hate raining down on Cruz, a hatred unanchored to what he actually is, does or says.  Bryan Preston calls it “The Emanuel Goldstein-ing of Ted Cruz.”  Because you’re all ridiculously erudite (much more so than I am), you remember Emanuel Goldstein as the object of the daily “two minutes of hatred” in 1984.  It was a useful way to keep both party members and proles from turning their hatred and discontent onto Big Brother."
Du'O.

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Regime O Fraud On Stilts

Election Integrity Activists: Obamacare 'Biggest Voter Registration Fraud Scheme in History': "Several election integrity activists have alleged that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), or Obamacare, does not appear to have been an effort to conduct healthcare reform to fix what was described in 2009 and 2010 as a broken healthcare system. 

The law passed Congress with just Democratic Party support. Instead of being an honest attempt to fix America’s healthcare woes, “I think [it] is the biggest voter registration fraud scheme in the history of the world,” said Gregg Phillips, the founder of the election integrity group Voters Trust, in an interview with Breitbart News Wednesday morning.

Phillips and Catherine Engelbrecht of True The Vote, another election integrity group, cite as proof what left-wing organizations are saying about how they plan to use Obamacare. Demos, a left-wing organization funded by liberal billionaire George Soros, published a report earlier this year titled: “Building a Healthy Democracy: Registering 68 Million People to Vote Through Health Benefit Exchanges.”"
You don't have to watch what the left hand is doing. You don't have to end up starving to death in the dark in the basement of your burned out shell of a house, either. But I see no way for you to avoid it at the rate you're going.

In case you weren't paying attention to what was really going on with Obama's regime -- and you weren't -- it turns out that the Tea Party IRS assault victim poster woman was Catherine Engelbrecht.

To wit: FBI interviews. IRS audits. More IRS questions. More FBI questioning. IRS questionnaires -- can you send us every Facebook post and Tweet you've ever written? (How about that Lois Lerner anyway? Do you think she's laughing at your credulity just a bit?) An audit by the ATF. And OSHA audit resulting in fines even though when the inspector ended the visit she "complimented them on their tightly run shop and said she didn’t know why she had been sent to examine it" -- do you suppose her Fuehrers over-ruled her clean report? Democrat congressional committee scrutiny. A visit by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality leading to the need for a $2000 per year permit. Two more rounds of questions by the IRS. Oh, and another unscheduled audit by the ATF.

Care to guess why after reading this little nightmare of a piece?

Yes, that would be because she headed the Tea Party leaning organization most focused and effective on exposing voter fraud by the left.

And this Breitbart story is about what again?

That's right: Massive. Leftist. Voter. Fraud.

But what do I know?

What's that? This is just all normal government stuff and she's just being a conspiracy theorist?

Really?

Then if this is "normal" what do you think the odds are that this country won't have all its small businesses run out of existence post haste?

In case you think I'm wrong about the big picture here, then you obviously haven't read this either.  How's them apples?

Did I forget to mention that via Obamafraud, millions of people newly shuttled into Medicaid can register to vote without showing up before any government representative as is now required by the already laughable "motor voter" laws signed by Saint Billy Jeff Cigar?  You didn't miss that part of the article, did you?

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Hippest President Evah

Ace of Spades HQ: "Biden said he and Obama were under the impression the site was ready.

"Neither he or I are technology geeks and we assumed it was up and ready to run," he told HLN."
And boy howdy, can he spot talent to be his left hand doofus or what?

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Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Perfect

Hilarious! Viral Saudi Video Mocking Ban On Women Driving ~ J O S H U A P U N D I T: "Now, where else but in the Middle East would you find an acapella Bob Marley infused vid making fun of the Saudi ban on women driving...

By the way, the reference to keeping the ovaries safe was the official government rationale for keeping the ban in place, believe it or not. Enjoy!"

Gotta protect those ovaries ya know. The Saudis may be the only people dumber and nastier than Algore...

And speaking of ovaries, this guy has balls.  I hope his King lets him keep them.

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Would You Believe The Denial?

Belmont Club » The Universal Obamaphone: "The reason that lies kill is the same reason that the truth saves. The truth allows us to see reality approaching and thus avoid the perils with which we invariably contend. What an administration has done is blind and deceive itself. It is consequently now naked before its enemies, defenseless against itself.

Here’s a question for Bill Greider. If President Obama was unaware that he was spying on himself, would you believe the denial?"
Wretchard strikes again. RTWT.

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And Then He Laughed Hysterically After He Lied

Ace of Spades HQ: "Obama has it within his power to call up the HHS reg-writers and instruct them to honor the promise he made time and again for two years. And he doesn't want people to know this, because he is determined to break that promise.

That promise was always a lie, and not a meaningless lie at the periphery, but a central lie propping up the political campaign for ObamaCare. Had he told Americans that they would be losing their current health care in order to be dumped into what is effectively a high-risk pool, so that they could subsidize high-risk clients, the public would have rejected the law even more strongly than they [fixed ed.] did.

So he lied. And lied. And lied. And lied some more."

UPDATE:

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