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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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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Abuse

Ted Cruz: Obama Has 'Absolutely Been Abusing His Power' -- Fusion.: "Cruz: Absolutely, but his point was he was focusing on a statement President Obama made at the State of the Union where if he said if Congress doesn't act to enact his agenda that he will do it anyway on his own. And one of the things I am very concerned about is the explosion of power in the federal government. We've got the NSA seizing our cell phone records, our emails, and we have seen this president expand presidential power in a way that is contrary to the Constitution.

Ramos: You think President Obama has been abusing his power?

Cruz: I think he has absolutely been abusing his power and when you have a president who says "regardless of whether Congress acts I'm going to force my agenda on the American people," that's wrong, that's not consistent with our constitutional protections."

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Not A Peep

The WSJ's Weekend Interview With Xia Yeliang: The China Americans Don't See - WSJ.com: "The 21st-century romance between America's universities and China continues to blossom, with New York University opening a Shanghai campus last month and Duke to follow next year. Nearly 100 U.S. campuses host "Confucius Institutes" funded by the Chinese government, and President Obama has set a goal for next year of seeing 100,000 American students studying in the Middle Kingdom. Meanwhile, Peking University last week purged economics professor Xia Yeliang, an outspoken liberal, with hardly a peep of protest from American academics."

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Told

Bookworm Room: "As some of my past posts reveal, I wrote all that was necessary four years ago, when I pretty accurately predicted what would come to pass.  Now that things have played out as any sentient being not blinded by ideology could foresee, all I’m left with is “I told you so.”  And just as “I told you so” is a conversation stopper in real life, it’s also a dead-end blog-wise.

I told you that Obama would let Iran build the bomb.

I told you that Saudi Arabia and Israel would bond (somewhat) over a common Iranian enemy.

I told you that Obamacare couldn’t be self-sustaining because it was built upon an economic house of cards.

I told you that Obama would abandon our allies and embrace our enemies.

I told you that the European economic model would collapse in the face of economic reality.

I told you that Obama’s passive response to the Green revolution in Iran and the Arab spring would result in resurgent Islamism.

I told you that, while I don’t believe Obama is a religious man, his heart lies with Islam.

I told you that Obama is antisemitic."

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Rank Incompetence

Althouse: Embarrassingly lame joke Jennifer Granholm had ready for her "Meet the Press" effort to buck up support for Obamacare.: "Quite beyond the irritating palliative medicine of Obama's choler, there's the flaunting of rank incompetence. Obama supervising the writing of code?! He knows nothing about writing code. The notion that he'd select himself as the supervisor of an activity about which he lacks any expertise only heightens our suspicion that he's been selecting the wrong people all along."

Far beyond just rank incompetence, actually. Malignant narcissism is of course just a form of mental illness.

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Legalized Extortion

'Extortion': Schweizer Says DC 'Just Like the Mob, Except It's Legal': "Peter Schweizer argued that Washington's political establishment creates threatening bills to scare wealthy interests into making big campaign donations and to hire favored lobbyists, similar to the mafia's tactic of requiring "protection money" on Friday. Schweizer, President of the Government Accountability Institute and Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large, argued that point during a Friday Yahoo! Finance appearance discussing his new book, Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets. Washington, D.C. runs "just like the mob, except it's legal," said Schweizer. "If problems are being solved, if things are going smoothly and things are being fixed, a lot of people are not going to give. The party establishments and the political leaders from both sides are collaborating a lot more than they let on," explained Schweizer."

Bingo.

Why do you think that big insurance and big pharma eventually ended up paying for Obamafail's political ads and messaging to pressure for its adoption?  Because they turned the threats from the politicians into a crony opportunity to line their own pockets with inflated payments from consumers that they couldn't get otherwise.  Full price pharmaceuticals and bloated and ever inflating insurance prices paid for out of the Treasury when -- as always -- the "consumer" can no longer afford them?  Where do we sign up?

Oh.  And when I say "paid for out of the Treasury" I mean they get the newly printed Fed money first and then it trickles down to you.  If at all.

Just remember that there's no inflation.  Never mind that everything you own is going down while everything you need to buy -- did I forget to mention Obamafail? -- is going up.

UPDATE: My bad. The interview is well worth the five minutes:

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A Tale O Magical Thinking

Obamacare, IT, and magic thinking : And Still I Persist…: "My best guess is that sooner or later, the ‘Apply Now’ section of Healthcare.gov is going to have to be shut down for an extended period, and that will set an interesting chain of events into motion, including a possible delay of the individual mandate. With the just-this-weekend-announced “surge” effort, it appears that the Administration is finally taking the problems seriously.  But that effort will take time, particularly to the extent that the system has to communicate with various existing Federal systems. It also invites the wrath of Brooks’s Law:

Adding manpower to a late project makes it later.

– Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man-Month, 1975.

Bring in the best and the brightest, and all will be fixed in days if not hours? More magical thinking."

Socialism takes on Brooks' Law.

Brooks' Law will lose of course.  Because you'll never find out about any of it on the news.  Because to Deltons, if it isn't on TV it doesn't exist.

What Fred Brooks?

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Cardinal Importance

PJ Media » Quietly, Israel and the Gulf States Draw Closer Together: "On the face of it, any alliance between Jewish Israel and Salafi Saudi Arabia might appear an absurdity.  Israel is a liberal democracy and a Jewish state.  Saudi Arabia is a repressive absolute monarchy, based on a particular Salafi Muslim outlook which is deeply anti-Jewish and anti-Christian in nature."

This ideology is not a dead letter for the Saudis. Rather, they invest heavily in spreading their particular rigid form of Islam in the west and elsewhere. Their media and education system are rife with anti-Jewish prejudice.

But a clear distinction is made by the Saudis between the world of ideology/media/culture and the realm of raison d’etat. Hence, there is no reason to think they would not be able to publicly vilify Israel, while maintaining off the radar links with it against more immediate enemies.

In this regard, it is worth remembering the Wikileaks revelation of remarks made in private by Saudi King Abdullah to American General David Petraeus in April, 2008, in which he recommended military action against the Iranian nuclear program. The king referred to Iran as the “head of the snake,” which should be cut off. No similarly venomous remarks on Israel were quoted from the conversation, which took place far from the public eye.

Of course the common interests only go so far. Saudi Arabia supports Salafi Islamist forces in both Syria and Egypt. Saudi money finds its way to Salafi elements among the Palestinians. But the areas of commonality are on issues of cardinal importance to both countries.

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Mind Boggling

Moonbattery » John McAfee on ObamaCare Software: "Software experts discuss the “mindboggling” incompetence that characterizes Obama’s Healthcare.gov:"

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Because You Have To Be Asleep To Believe It

Warning: What This Dead Comedian Said About The "American Dream" Might Upset You | Zero Hedge: ""The only true American value that is left... Buying Things..." There’s a reason for why education sucks and why it’s never going to be fixed, and that’s not the only hard hitting truths that George Carlin shares in this video..."

The fact that there's less than 20K hits on this video is all you need to know: They've won.

Speaking of which, you may have missed this.

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Sooo...

Instapundit » Blog Archive » AMANDA CARPENTER: “Sooo… Obama shut down the govt to stop GOP from making any change to law he ha…: "OCTOBER 23, 2013

AMANDA CARPENTER: “Sooo… Obama shut down the govt to stop GOP from making any change to law he had to change a week later. Good times.”

Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 9:32 pm"

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Anyone With More Than Half A Neuron To Rub Together...

Instapundit » Blog Archive » LEAKS AND SECRETS: Fired White House Tweeter Accused Official of Leaking Stuxnet. “Joseph, who was…: "OCTOBER 23, 2013

LEAKS AND SECRETS: Fired White House Tweeter Accused Official of Leaking Stuxnet. “Joseph, who was outed in a report Tuesday in The Daily Beast, criticized and insulted dozens of Obama administration officials, lawmakers, Capitol Hill staffers, and journalists during his two-year stint on social media. But his number-one target was Deputy National Security Advisor for Communications Ben Rhodes, a senior official close to President Obama. Rhodes worked for the same department as Joseph, albeit at a much higher level. In the summer of 2012, Joseph issued multiple tweets under his @natsecwonk account suggesting that Rhodes was the source of classified information leaked to the press about the Stuxnet virus, a joint U.S.-Israeli cyber warfare effort to sabotage Iran’s nuclear centrifuge program. Joseph, as an official in the non-proliferation bureau of the State Department and later inside the White House, was part of the administration’s team working on the Iranian nuclear issue.”

Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 11:48 pm"

... already believed this to a near certainty. The only question was which Obamoron it was that did it...

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COTD: Not An Option

Seven 'Solutions' That Won't Save Obamacare - Bloomberg:
Marc Whipple Ken Hoag • 6 minutes ago 

Failure is not an option.

It comes standard with your government contracted services.

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Enough To Make You Think?

The Best and the Brightest | National Review Online: "Think of it as applying expert knowledge vs. channeling social knowledge. It’s the difference between how the left and the right think about a lot of policy questions, very much including health care.  That doesn’t mean the problems with Healthcare.gov can’t or won’t be solved, of course. But it probably means they won’t be solved by infusing Silicon Valley brilliance into the process. The spirit in which this site was created was like the spirit the law seeks to impose on the health-care system: managerial, not innovative. Its early problems are almost enough to make you think that maybe the federal government shouldn’t have too much control over a health-care system badly in need of innovation and efficiency, aren’t they?"

Unfortunately it won't be enough to make the deltas think. Mustafa O'Mond and his long line of progressive predecessors have succeeded in training the deltas to be incapable of thinking.

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$380 In "Cuts"

Mike Smiley: "A short, brilliantly done funny skit that demonstrates very simply why we're in this economic mess."

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His Mind Is A Stagnant Pool

Belmont Club » Lagged: "He became enamored of Muslim Brotherhood only to discover that the populations of the Middle East had passed them by. His Secretary of State, John Kerry, is even now trying to solve the puzzle of peace in the Middle East by brokering an irrelevant agreement between Palestine and Israel, as if the world were back in 1947. And now, after finding the Saudis have left his wagon train, almost while he wasn’t looking, the president has hitched his wagon to Teheran a decade late and a trillion dollars short. He’s right on schedule to implement Obamacare in about 3 years time, when the website finally comes online, just in time to realize the government can’t afford it, and neither can its members.  He seems to live, not in time nor even in eternity, but in the stagnant pool he imagines is timeless."

Or just malevalant. My money's on the latter.

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And Perhaps In Yours Also...

Playing cat and mouse with searing history | Power Line: "We understand: her wish is granted. Her face, illuminated at night, peers out a window facing those celebrated hills. It is as if the years in hiding, the hideous deaths, the barbarity that took hold through indulgence and accommodation had never happened. Instead, we are left with a fantasy — lessons about planting trees and shunning bullies instead of confronting tyrants and crematories. Such a comforting displacement is a familiar characteristic of childhood. And perhaps, occasionally, of Hollywood as well."

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Nothing New Under The Sun

Bummed About the GOP Congressional Debacle? John Wayne’s Wisdom on Liberals From Nearly 40 Years Ago Might Help | TheBlaze.com: "Okay, pilgrim — here’s the Duke as only he can say it, credited on YouTube to interviewer Tony Macklin. (Warning: as you might expect, a bit of slightly salty language ahead):"

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Patriotism Update

“Feds Studying How to Use Twitter For ‘Depression Surveillance’” | protein wisdom: "Dissent is patriotic only when progressives work to breach the Constitution; in all other instances, it’s a sign of some or other mental disorder that the government will help you through — either by way of reeducation or, if that doesn’t work, well, Bill Ayers — the man who helped launch the career of our current Manchurian President — had a few ideas."

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How Convenient: Now He Can Direct Drone Strikes Against The American People...

Obama to tap ex-Pentagon official for Homeland Security: "Johnson, who left his Pentagon post in 2012, also provided legal guidance in the use of unmanned drones against terrorism suspects overseas, and in the use of military commissions — rather than civilian courts — to try suspects. The Homeland Security nominee also led a crackdown on unauthorized news leaks at the Defense Department, including a warning to a former Navy SEAL who wrote a book about the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden."

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Well, He Bowed To The Chinese Too...

Examiner Editorial: GM got bailout, now ships jobs to China | WashingtonExaminer.com: "Saving General Motors from bankruptcy was among President Obama’s most frequently cited achievements when he ran for re-election last year. Democrats everywhere touted the company’s revival as proof of the 2009 bailout’s wisdom. That was then. Now, Obama has quietly released the auto manufacturer from a bailout requirement that it increase its production in the U.S. Instead, GM is spending billions of dollars building up its production capacity in ... China. This is happening despite the fact that the Treasury Department has to date recovered just $36 billion of its original $51 billion loan to GM. By most analysts’ predictions, American taxpayers will be out approximately $10 billion when the remaining stock is sold off. Which is a long way of saying that it now appears that taxpayers paid $10 billion to make it easier for GM to accelerate its foreign outsourcing and send more manufacturing jobs to China."

Oof. But still the Deltas worship the Teleprompter Jesus...

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Everyone's A Buddy

NSA collecting email and messaging contacts worldwide, Yahoo moves to encrypt webmail by default: "Don't think that the NSA's bulk communication data collection is focused solely on the communications themselves. The Washington Post has published more Edward Snowden documents which reveal that the agency collects large volumes of contact lists from email and instant messaging users around the world. While the NSA gathers the information on foreign soil, its method reportedly prevents it from automatically screening out any Americans in the list. The NSA and anonymous officials argue that American laws prevent analysts from accessing data unless they believe there's a foreign target hidden with, but the strategy still has the government storing contacts for "millions" of people."

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Crony Corruption And Effectiveness Don't Mix

How federal cronies built -- and botched -- Healthcare.gov | E government - InfoWorld: "The biggest problem with Healthcare.gov seems simple enough: It was built by people who are apparently far more familiar with government cronyism than they are with IT.

That's one of the insights that can be gleaned from the work done by the Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that focuses on government transparency. In a report filed this past week, the group examined why the system broke as horribly as it did: The contracts awarded to those who built it were, by and large, existing government contractors with "deep political pockets.""

The website turns out to be a mirror of the crony corruption that gave us Obamacare in the first place. What a shock.

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Some Are More Equal Than Others

Belmont Club » Some Are More Equal Than Others: "For once Benjamin consented to break his rule, and he read out to her what was written on the wall. There was nothing there now except a single Commandment. It ran:

ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS

And how could it be different with Obamacare? Remember this simple maxim: “all healthcare is affordable but some healthcare is more affordable than others.”"

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Reagan Repealed Rewind

When Democrats Repealed Reagan's 'Signature' Health Law: "We hear constantly--it was repeated on MSNBC today, for example--that it is unreasonable to expect President Barack Obama to accept any changes to his "signature" legislative achievement, Obamacare.

That was not the case when it came to President Ronald Reagan's "signature" health insurance reform, the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988, which was supported by both parties at the time but repealed later after widespread protest at town hall meetings over costs and the like (sound familiar?)."

Heh. And Reagan was not the small government conservative he is remembered as. Admittedly, that was heavily because he had to bargain with a Dem controlled congress to get what he wanted.

But sadly, we didn't actually win the Cold War, did we?  You think I'm wrong?  Then when exactly did the occupation and de-nuclearization of the Russians -- the evil core of the Soviet Union -- happen?

It didn't.  And don't diss Vlad to this day lest you ingest a strong whiff of polonium...

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Criminal Lying Jack*sses

neo-neocon » Blog Archive » David Horowitz: what the newer left learned from the older left: "Having looked at activist political life from both sides now for quite a while, Horowitz is uniquely positioned to comment on left and right, old and new. Here is a small portion of what he said in a searing address he recently gave to the Kohler conference of the Bradley Foundation:

There is a marked difference between the radicals of the Sixties and the radical movement Obama is part of. In the Sixties, as radicals we said what we thought and blurted out what we wanted. We wanted a revolution, and we wanted it now. It was actually very decent of us to warn others as to what we intended. But because we blurted out our goal, we didn’t get very far. Americans were onto us. Those who remained on the left when the Sixties were over, learned from their experience. They learned to lie. The strategy of the lie is progressives’ new gospel. It is what the progressive bible — Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals — is all about."

This is far, far beyond a RTWT.

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The (Really Loud) Grasshopper At Your Feet ... Mostly

SpaceX Grasshopper Video: Now THAT is a Rocketship - NASA Watch: "SpaceX Grasshopper Video: Now THAT is a Rocketship"

Go full screen and turn it up to 11.

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Madison's Reminder

James Madison Quotes (Author of The Federalist Papers): "“Disarm the people- that is the best and most effective way to enslave them.”
― James Madison"

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"No"

Why did Sen Ted Cruz quote Rush Limbaugh’s dad? | Reclaim Our Republic: "Of those 56 who signed the Declaration of Independence, nine died of wounds or hardships during the war. Five were captured and imprisoned, in each case with brutal treatment. Several lost wives, sons or entire families. One lost his 13 children. Two wives were brutally treated. All were at one time or another the victims of manhunts and driven from their homes. Twelve signers had their homes completely burned. Seventeen lost everything they owned. Yet not one defected or went back on his pledged word. Their honor, and the nation they sacrificed so much to create is still intact.

And, finally, there is the New Jersey signer, Abraham Clark.

He gave two sons to the officer corps in the Revolutionary Army. They were captured and sent to that infamous British prison hulk afloat in New York Harbor known as the hell ship Jersey, where 11,000 American captives were to die. The younger Clarks were treated with a special brutality because of their father. One was put in solitary and given no food. With the end almost in sight, with the war almost won, no one could have blamed Abraham Clark for acceding to the British request when they offered him his sons’ lives if he would recant and come out for the King and Parliament. The utter despair in this man’s heart, the anguish in his very soul, must reach out to each one of us down through 200 years with his answer: “No.”"

This is way beyond a RTWT.  Freedom is not free.

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Jack*ss, Meet Dumbo

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

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America: The Land O Sergeant Shultz

Holocaust ignorance in the public schools - Atlas Shrugs: "In this above video, 94 Maidens author Rhonda Fink-Whitman interviews Pennsylvania public school graduates currently enrolled at four different PA universities to see what they know about the Holocaust, WWII, and genocide in general. They. know. nothing."

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It's Boycott Time

Visa Subsidiary Cuts Ties with Nation's Largest Gun Shop: "Hyatt Gun Shop states that a subsidiary of Visa shut down payments for its customers' online gun purchases, effectively cutting ties with "the nation's largest gun store," Hyatt claims, because of legal online gun sales. Hyatt Gun Shop is located in Charlotte, NC, and owner Larry Hyatt says Authorize.net—described on its website as "a solution of Cybersource, a wholly owned subsidiary of Visa"—sent him an email saying they were ending their business relationship with his store over "the sale of firearms or any similar product.""

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It's The Logs That Are Missing

Belmont Club » The Same But Different: "The seizure is at one level the result of a system previously designed to produce a multi-attribute Pareto optimal solution suddenly forced into becoming a zero-sum game. The US political system is designed to resolve problems by horse trading, via buying factions off. But the lack of money has made meaningful horse trading impossible. The log rollers are still there; it’s the logs that are missing. For years the solution to the shortfall has been to merely print more and more. Lately this works less and less.

As those who are now reeling in shock over their new Obamacare premium notices can testify, what used to be a horse trading system has now become exactly zero sum. To pay for the uninsurable you must overcharge the insurable. While in the past it was possible to square the circle from some indefinite stash, a la Detroit, that has become impossible of late. This hard fact makes any possible compromise unstable because it is not supported by any cash flow. The challenge confronting any “deal” the Republicans and Obama can strike is who will pay for it. In particular who will pay for Obamacare, which has been promised to the Democratic base? Who will pay for increases the debt limit, which have likewise been promised to the Democratic base?

The answer of course is “someone”. But getting that someone to cough up will now be like pulling teeth. The brief panic caused by the temporary malfunction of the EBT system showed, as little else could, how nobody is in the mood to give up anything anymore while nobody feels like paying for anything either. That is the cage in which Obama and the Republican leadership now find themselves trapped."

Another RTWT from Wretchard.

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Farce

Moonbattery » ObamaCare: More Than a Glitch: " Now for the farce:"

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Trick, No Treat

Bookworm Room » It’s a Democrat-style Halloween: "I got a great email from a friend:"

Bookworm is on a roll...

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That Stupid Tocqueville

Bookworm Room » Found it on Facebook: "No introduction or conclusion is necessary for this one:"

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James Madison On The Power Of The Purse

James Madison Anticipates the Possibility of Government Shutdown--and Predicts that the House of Representatives Can and Should Prevail | The Volokh ConspiracyThe Volokh Conspiracy: "The House of Representatives cannot only refuse, but they alone can propose, the supplies requisite for the support of government. They, in a word, hold the purse that powerful instrument by which we behold, in the history of the British Constitution, an infant and humble representation of the people gradually enlarging the sphere of its activity and importance, and finally reducing, as far as it seems to have wished, all the overgrown prerogatives of the other branches of the government. This power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure."

Can you say "overgrown prerogatives"? I'm quite sure the teleprompter Jesus can't.

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Nonessential

Bookworm Room » Sunny TV: The view from a non-essential federal worker: "Sunny TV: The view from a non-essential federal worker"

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COTD: Understanding Snowden ... And The Real Washington

Jesse Ventura Calls For "American Revolution" Against The "Corrupt System" | Zero Hedge: "considering he was a high school drop out........... I really dislike the continued reference to Edward as a "Dropout" like he's some stupid idiot who would'nt go to class. Edward Snowden suffers from Epilepsy. He was not physically able to go to school his junior and senior year. The man was and is sick. Edward also had a relapse, a seizure, mere months before we all learned of him. I think that's one of the reasons Edward came forward. Edward knows he's not long for this world. In my 57 years I've had three friends who were epileptic and they all passed on before the age of 40."

Very interesting on Snowden.

And then there's the real Washington:

I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.

RTWT.  And the then the entire thing.  I almost vomited when the moron Nancy Pelosi recently took Washington's Farewell Address completely out of context to support her nasty jack*assery.

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The Orwellian "Shutdown"

The Mises View: "Government Shutdown, Spending Cuts, and other Fables" | Peter G. Klein - YouTube: "Peter G. Klein explains that the "shutdown" is no shutdown and urges us to reject the economic version of Orwellian doublespeak. Klein is the Mises Institute's Executive Director and Carl Menger Research Fellow."

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O'Brien Watch

Oh, the Irony! John Ondrasik Is Kicked Out of Jefferson Memorial | Power Line: "The irony of an American citizen being chased away from a memorial to Thomas Jefferson because, well, you can’t visit monuments when our government is 17% shut down, is almost too much. But consider the significance of the fact that a guard was present. That expense was being incurred, just as if the memorial were open; so why did it need to be closed? The difference was that instead of being there to provide security, the guard’s role was to chase away any visitors who were bold enough to ignore the signs and the yellow tape.

All of which is more evidence that the Obama administration is engaged in a massive charade to hype the damage allegedly done by the partial shutdown. It corroborates the Park Service ranger quoted by the Washington Times who said, “We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can. It’s disgusting.”"

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Muir Does Obamaha Beach

Day by Day Cartoon by Chris Muir :: October 6, 2013 Archives: "Obamaha Beach."

Wow. Just wow.

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All The Wedding Bells And Tax Credits On Earth...

Jason Jordan strikes again:

Marriage, Class, and Causal Confusion | Jason Jordan: "Like these failed progressive accounts, all this talking up of marriage is just another confusion of causes with effects.

As with college education or home ownership, stable marriages are a marker of the middle class and the culture that makes it, not the cause thereof. The State can subsidize and incentivize marriage as much as it wants; the result won’t be any different than its disastrous schemes to subsidize college education or home ownership. Cum hoc is not propter hoc, and “tight connection” does not imply “root cause”…for all the reasons Mead should already know.

For a deep insight into the true “root cause” of poverty, don’t look to the wonkblogs and their endless graphs of statistically-convenient measures. Instead, search “Maury Povich paternity test” on youtube.

All the wedding bells and tax credits on Earth will not fix that. Like cheap student loans or sub-prime mortgages, they are nothing more than an ideological poultice loosely pasted over gaping wound."

Yes, now you know where my catchy (plagiarized) title came from ;) And this immediately evoked "Reynold's Law" with me:

The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle-class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we’ll have more middle-class people. But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay, in the middle class. Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them.

Go RTWT. I'll wait.

Now that I re-read philo's piece, I realize where I didn't before that if you had to explain the interaction of grand illusion, "Gaslighting" and methodology with which the Delta masses are herded by their "betters" in a handful of paragraphs, philo may take the prize here.

But if you have some multiples of that to work with my current recommendation easily remains Jordan's piece from this past spring: "The Eye That Watches And The Hand That Feeds: A Requiem For The Revolutionary".  It begins thus:

Keynesian economic policy enjoys the singular advantage of assuring bureaucrats and politicians of their abiding importance, as well as calling for ever larger quantities of money to pass through their hands. Since Nixon’s famous admission, critics of Keynesianism have come to recognize this advantage as insuperable; and as no amount of reasoned argument can offset such incentives, they have resigned themselves to awaiting the inevitable end result of the terminal engorgement of the State. ...

If you have a morsel of a brain you already know you need to go RTWT immediately. I'll wait a little longer this time...

You'll finish it in sober awe. But you may not thank me since it will challenge your soul's foundation of optimism.

Which is why I think there are so many intuitively self-selected Delta ostrich escapists among a reasonably large subset of people who are smart enough not to be.

That and just watching what happens to people that step out of line.  You wouldn't want to be mentioned negatively in Teleprompter Jesus' next rant now would you?  Or audited by the IRS...

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Du'O (Part 4,507,495)

Ace of Spades HQ: "Via genuine AoS Commenters Deety and Tasker, a great catch. Chad Henderson actually disclosed that he was a partisan paid to post "advocacy" things on social media. Click on the tweet and blow the picture up. So who's the bad guy here? Chad Henderson was not coy about his passionate support of Barack Obama, or his volunteer (???) position with OFA. And here, he says "Something you should know about me..." and then discloses he's paid to post advocacy stuff."

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Fair

Moonbattery » Open Thread: "From The Libtard Show.

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Nothing More Dangerous

Ace of Spades HQ: Obama: Why, Just Imagine If a Worker Wanted to Extract Concessions from a Factory. And So He Stopped Working and Shut the Factory Down. Imagine Such a Thing. He'd be Fired!: "There's nothing more dangerous than the Egotistical Idiot whose personality dysfunctions effectively hide his incompetence from himself. Such a man will make mistake after mistake after mistake, and will never learn a damn thing from it, because his Ego will just keep telling him, "You're the best.""

He forgot narcissistic of course...

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The Metaphor

Instapundit » Blog Archive » TRAIN WRECK: ObamaCare Website Going Down Over The Weekend To “Fix Glitches.” Related: Analysis…: "He said because so much traffic was going back and forth between the users’ computers and the server hosting the government website, it was as if the system was attacking itself.

Hancock described the situation as similar to what happens when hackers conduct a distributed denial of service, or DDOS, attack on a website: they get large numbers of computers to simultaneously request information from the server that runs a website, overwhelming it and causing it to crash or otherwise stumble. “The site basically DDOS’d itself,” he said.

Kind of a metaphor for the whole Obama administration, really.

Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 11:15 pm"

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Dream Into Nightmare

Da Tech Guy On DaRadio Blog » Blog Archive » Miriam Carey Shatters Media Dreams: "The driver was a black woman with  mental health issues and a young child violating every stereotype the media held dear, given she lived in Ct. they couldn’t even blame her postpartum depression on lack of access to abortion. And a two-week story about the violence of the tea party with heavy face time dominating the landscape faded toward the bottom of Memeorandum and the hour-long segments with just a little news tossed on it became a small opening before going back to hitting the GOP on the government shutdown. It’s sad to see a dream fade so quickly."

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COTD: Not Crazy After All

Capitol Suspect Miriam Carey Believed Obama Electronically Monitored Her - ABC News: Woody001

"believed President Obama was electronically monitoring her Connecticut home in order to broadcast her life on television." Gosh, She's was not crazy after all! After all, isn't that the modus operandi of the Democrats?

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Just Don't Be A Peon

Bookworm Room » No Obamacare until all exemptions are overturned: "I can tell you from the inside how that works. I spent two years on active duty fulfilling my military obligation, which was of course a government run hospital. After residency specialty training of several more years, I was in solo private practice for 45 years. For 18 years as part of my department contribution to training residents I spent one day weekly supervising surgery with residents at a VA hospital, where they received the major part of their hands on surgical training. Any government hospital receives a yearly budget, and once this is spent you simply will not receive the treatment you need until the following month or year when the budget will allow acquisition of that which is needed. You will be strung along until the budget allows purchasing necessary items. Of course, if you are an “upper level” person a “special purchase” is always available. Just don’t be a peon or need something special at the wrong time of the month or year, as the case may be. ..."

This is one of those rare RTWT comments. I'll wait while you do. Now take a gander at this:

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The Bird In Plain View

Need health care coverage? Just dial 1-800-F**KYO to reach Obamacare’s national hotline | The Daily Caller: "Need health insurance? The Obama administration has you covered. Simply dial 1-800-FUCKYO to reach the next available health-care provider.

Far from being a mistype, that’s the official number that Health and Human Services wants Americans to dial when seeking health care. Obamacare’s national call center really did list its number as 1-800-318-2596, helpfully spelling out President Barack Obama’s tendency to blatantly flip the bird in plain view."

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Mr. Cruz-Smith Goes To Washington

David Gelernter: How to talk to liars | Power Line: "If you’ve seen Mr Smith Goes to Washington, you recall that Jimmy Stewart filibusters his heart out on the Senate floor as a monstrous political machine suppresses all reports of what he is doing—like crushing eggshells–and the public turns against the lonely senator. For Jimmy Stewart, read House Republicans. Congressional Republicans ought to memorize, and preface their every statement with, some simple formula. “One: Make Congress and the White House obey the same Obamacare rules you do. Two: Obama let business off for a year; we want workers to be let off for a year too. That’s the GOP plan. What part don’t you like?” Only by hitting the nail on the head again and again and again will Republicans be heard."

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A Lot Alike, Actually

Instapundit » Blog Archive » HOW INTERNET CENSORSHIP ACTUALLY WORKS IN CHINA: Studies show that the government permits some diss…: "OCTOBER 3, 2013

HOW INTERNET CENSORSHIP ACTUALLY WORKS IN CHINA: Studies show that the government permits some dissent online—but strikes down hard on calls for collective action. So, kinda like the IRS and the Tea Party, then?

Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 10:00 am"

That and continual character assassination by the Praetorian Guard...

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Your Government ... Run By Corrupt Jackasses

IRS targeted Dr. Ben Carson after Prayer Breakfast speech - Washington Times: "Just months after he gave a speech earlier this year that challenged America’s leadership in President Obama’s presence, Dr. Ben Carson was targeted by IRS agents who requested to review his real estate holdings and then conducted a full audit without finding any wrongdoing.

“I guess it could be a coincidence, but I never had been audited before and never really had any encounters with the IRS,” Dr. Carson said in an interview Thursday with The Washington Times. “But it certainly would make one suspicious because we know now the IRS has been used for political purposes and therefore actions like this come under suspicion.”"

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Primo Presstitution

Yes, that's right, Jamie should be in jail instead of free as a vulture:

Matt Taibbi On The CNBC "Presstitutes" | Zero Hedge: "CNBC has a special position in the presstitute media hierarchy. They basically defend Wall Street at all costs. The station represents the most important media gatekeeper for the financial oligarch, crony class.The following video is an interview on the daily political talk show Majority Report, hosted by Sam Seder. In this episode, he discusses with Matt Taibbi the recent appearance of Salon’s Alex Pareene on CNBC in which Maria Bartiromo unabashedly presstitutes herself out for Jaime Dimon and JP Morgan in an utterly embarrassing manner.   The clip is a little over 16 minutes, but well worth your time. Sam Seder is pretty hilarious and his rapport with Taibbi is excellent."

Well, holding that aside...

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All The Useless $120,000 Can Buy

Instapundit » Blog Archive » WHAT THEY DO WHEN THE GOVERNMENT IS OPEN: Bureaucrats at tiny federal agency FMCS buy legions of lu…: "OCTOBER 1, 2013

WHAT THEY DO WHEN THE GOVERNMENT IS OPEN: Bureaucrats at tiny federal agency FMCS buy legions of luxuries with purchase cards. “One federal employee leased a $53,000 take-home car with taxpayer money in apparent defiance of federal regulations and regularly billed the government for service at shops such as BMW of Fairfax. Others charged the government monthly for family members’ cell phones and high-end TV packages and Internet at home — and even at second homes. Managers freely made out checks to employees without requiring documentation of how it would be spent, giving $1,316 directly to one who said she was reimbursing herself for furniture she bought for a “home office” and using convenience checks to give workers bonuses. Government employees used federal purchase cards to order items such as a $560 Bose stereo and $1,490 for two high-definition televisions that could not be located. All of these examples happened at the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, an obscure runaway government agency where the median annual salary is $120,000.”"

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Disarray

Instapundit » Blog Archive » NICK GILLESPIE: Let Us Be Clear: Obama Deserves Chief Responsibility for Gov’t Shutdown. “Boehner …: "OCTOBER 1, 2013

NICK GILLESPIE: Let Us Be Clear: Obama Deserves Chief Responsibility for Gov’t Shutdown. “Boehner and the GOP may well be ‘anarchists’ and Reid and the Dems may be useless. But it’s the president who runs the show.” Obama wanted a shutdown, and Obama got a shutdown. He likes chaos, division and fingerpointing.

UPDATE: You can’t blame the House GOP for this: Despite Three-and-a-Half Years To Prep Obamacare, A Fiasco Takes Shape. “A responsible steward of taxpayer dollars would never have considered opening the exchanges in their current state of disarray. . . . The press has certainly known about the bureaucracy’s failure to execute for well over a year. Yet, with very rare exceptions, one will search in vain for coverage of the missed deadlines, internal control weaknesses, and emptied slush funds from the Associated Press, the New York Times, or the broadcast networks.”"

My guess is that Obama will rename Obamacare to Repubicare and say it's not his fault.  And Google will do a global search and replace on all their results to cover his *ss.  Nothing is ever his fault after all...

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