Nudge, Nudge, Wink, Winking Out (Detroit Edition)

Moonbattery » Detroit Goes Dark: "Nothing could be more emblematic of the contrast between leftism and liberty than this famous night view of the Korean peninsula:

Detroit — America’s most liberal city — is close on North Korea’s heels:

Detroit, whose 139 square miles contain 60 percent fewer residents than in 1950, will try to nudge them into a smaller living space by eliminating almost half its streetlights.

“To nudge” — liberalese for “to corral” — is a favorite term of Comrade Obama’s Regulatory Czar Cass Sunstein."

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On Truly Effective Regulation

Glad We Saved 'Em - Ricochet.com: "Okay, stipulated: JP Morgan is a publicly-traded company.  If the shareholders want to get rid of the incompetents who manage the bank, they should move to do so.  None of my business.  (Well, actually, it's some of my business: I own some JP Morgan shares....)

But let's all remember this episode the next time the banks come, hat in hand, for taxpayer-subsidized bailouts.

I've said it before in this space, but it bears repeating: the only -- only -- banking regulation that's effective is the sight of bankers selling apples on the street.

Next time, let them sink."

Skin. In. The. Game.

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Into The Sea….

Instapundit » Blog Archive » FROM BILL WHITTLE: Afterburner: Into The Sea….: "FROM BILL WHITTLE: Afterburner: Into The Sea.

Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 8:50 am"

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A Little History They're Trying To Stuff Down The Memory Hole

Next ice age « Calder's Updates: "Those who rewrite the history of climate science to suit the man-made global warming hypothesis hate to be reminded that global cooling and the threat of a new ice age rang alarm bells in the 1960s and 1970s. In the Orwellian manner they try to airbrush out the distinguished experts involved, and to say it was just a scare story dreamed up by stupid reporters like me.

No, we didn’t make it up. I was present in Rome in 1961 when global cooling was already the main concern at a conference of the World Meteorological Organization and Unesco (see the Unesco reference). The discussions were led by Hubert Lamb of the UK Met Office, who went on to found the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

A persistent concern of Lamb and others was that the world might return to a Little Ice Age like that of 300 years ago. But the improving knowledge of glacial history, and especially the apparent brevity of warm interglacials, prompted anxiety about a full-blown ice age. George Kukla, together with Robert Matthews of Brown University, convened a conference in 1972 entitled “The Present Interglacial: How and When will it End?”, and reported it in Science magazine."

This is a definite RTWT.

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Innumeracy (Part 4,893,921)

The stunning chart that shows the Obama spending binge really happened « The Enterprise Blog: "But there were a few problems with Nutting’s numbers. Nutting’s methodology assumes spending in the first year of a presidential term should be credited to the previous president. OK, fine. But he attributed a $410 billion spending bill in March of 2009 to George W. Bush even though it was signed by Barack Obama. Nutting also didn’t use inflation adjusted numbers.

But I did both of those and got wildly different results from Nutting, as seen in the chart at the top of this post. (Note: I looked at absolute spending as opposed to the rate of increase.)

My numbers show that spending under the ’10-’13 Obama budgets far outstrips spending by a generation of presidential predecessors. This should not be surprising since spending as a share of GDP under Obama is the highest in U.S. history outside of World War II."

Oh yes. And then there's Mark Levin's point from "Liberty and Tyranny" that in inflation adjusted dollars WWII cost something like $3.6B. Obama's deficits are already on the order of $5T.

And never mind that if FedGov used accrual accounting as it should, the deficit this year alone would be $5T ... according to ... USA Today.

Ugghh.

But don't worry, they'll still be endorsing O Duce.

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Second Class

Mary Ann Glendon: Why the Bishops Are Suing the U.S. Government - WSJ.com: "This week Catholic bishops are heading to federal courts across the country to defend religious liberty. On Monday they filed 12 lawsuits on behalf of a diverse group of 43 Catholic entities that are challenging the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) sterilization, abortifacient and birth-control insurance mandate.

Like most Americans, the bishops have long taken for granted the religious freedom that has enabled this nation's diverse religions to flourish in relative harmony. But over the past year they have become increasingly concerned about the erosion of conscience protections for church-related individuals and institutions. Their top-rated program for assistance to human trafficking victims was denied funding for refusing to provide "the full range of reproductive services," including abortion. For a time, Catholic Relief Services faced a similar threat to its international relief programs. The bishops fear religious liberty is becoming a second-class right."

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Debacle

Obama's Debacle - By David Rothkopf | Foreign Policy: "He cut out the generals. He cut out the secretary of defense. He cut out the secretary of state. And in the end, he produced a schizophrenic policy that will almost certainly go down as the greatest foreign-policy debacle of his administration.

Afghanistan may not be Barack Obama's Vietnam, but that is only because it has failed to stir national tensions in the way the war in Southeast Asia did. He may therefore get away with his errors in judgment and his victimization by circumstance to a degree that Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon could not. But it is impossible to read accounts like David Sanger's in the New York Times this weekend without concluding that the primary drivers behind U.S. AfPak policy for the past three years have been politics, naivete, and intellectual dishonesty. "

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Annular Solar Eclipse 2012

Annular Solar Eclipse 2012 – data and images | Watts Up With That?: "What you may see (with a proper filter) is this:"

What I "saw" in New Mexico over the internet was this (yes, someone let me post to Pinterest -- the rest are here):

Source: events.slooh.com via Studio on Pinterest

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Bain or Bane?

Bain or Bane? | Power Line: "That’s my hope, anyway. Michael Ramirez sees it the same way. Here he contrasts Romney’s successful leadership of Bain with Obama’s failures as the bane of our economy:"

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Composite All The Way Down

Instapundit » Blog Archive » MARK STEYN: The Eternally Shifting Sands of Obama’s Biography. So the lunatic theory that Barack…: "Whereas Kenya puts you at the heart of what, in an otherwise notably orderly decolonization process by the British, was a bitter and violent struggle against the white man’s rule. Cool! The composite chicks dig it, and the literary agents. . . . In a post-modern America, the things that Gatsby attempted to fake – an elite schooling – Obama actually had; the things that Gatsby attempted to obscure – the impoverished roots – merely add to Obama’s luster. Gatsby claimed to have gone to Oxford, but nobody knew him there because he never went; Obama had a million bucks’ worth of elite education at Occidental, Columbia and Harvard Law, and still nobody knew him (“Fox News contacted some 400 of his classmates and found no one who remembered him”). In that sense, Obama out-Gatsbys Gatsby.

The thing about Obama is, there’s no there there. It’s composite all the way down.

Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 7:40 am"

Click through and read Steyn's whole thing. Expertly done.

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All 57 States

Ace of Spades HQ: "From JohnE..."

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Was Obama Himself the First Birther?

Ed Driscoll » Was Obama Himself the First Birther?: "Related: Jim Treacher squares the circle: “Obama wasn’t born in Kenya, except when he claims he was born in Kenya:”

Either Obama was born in Kenya or he wasn’t. I remain skeptical that he was. The question is, then: Why did he claim to be? What advantage did he think it gave him at the time?

Maybe Elizabeth Warren can tell us…

To coin a popular Blogospheric phrase, heh."

Indeed.

And you need to watch Jack Cashill:


But Jack is too optimistic. This will all die out within the next few days and there will most definitely be no questions asked in the press room. Even if corpses are required to make it so. Say, I wonder if Jack has a convenient heart condition like Andrew did?

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The histOry

Obama’s record « A Brief History…: "I called Kelley last week and he recollected the private conversation as follows:

“He said, ‘Cliff, I’m gonna make me a U.S. Senator.’”

“Oh, you are? Who might that be?”

“Barack Obama.”

Jones appointed Obama sponsor of virtually every high-profile piece of legislation, angering many rank-and-file state legislators who had more seniority than Obama and had spent years championing the bills.

“I took all the beatings and insults and endured all the racist comments over the years from nasty Republican committee chairmen,” State Senator Rickey Hendon, the original sponsor of landmark racial profiling and videotaped confession legislation yanked away by Jones and given to Obama, complained to me at the time. “Barack didn’t have to endure any of it, yet, in the end, he got all the credit."

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COTD^3

The PJ Tatler » Fauxcahontas and Faux Kenyan? Liberals and False IDs: "Elizabeth Warren – Cherokee contributed recipes to the cook book Pow Wow Chow"

This is one of the most hilarious comment sequences I've ever seen (click to enlarge):

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Do I Have Say Du'O Anymore?

Obama’s bin Laden leaks angered military | Washington Examiner: "When they published their revealing book last August about the nation’s fight against terrorism, the authors, two New York Times national security reporters, immediately felt heat from the Pentagon for dishing too much operational info about the killing of Osama bin Laden.

“I was stopped by a very senior officer in the special operations community who basically wanted to rip my lungs out,” said Thom Shanker, who co-authored “Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America's Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda,” with Eric Schmitt.

But, he revealed at a counter terrorism expo this week, the info came directly and officially from the White House, not some garbage can digging operation. “I said to him, ‘Sir, that information came officially to us from the podium at the White House,’” Shanker said."

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And A Good Thing Too

iowahawk: One Afternoon In a Garage in Reno, Nevada: "When I heard about how this innovative $23,000 public-private partnership was helping Paul and Val, I couldn't wait to fly out here on Air Force One and see all these incredible bargains for myself. Bargains like this 4.5 horsepower Briggs & Stratton go-kart for only $6,000! So who wants to step up and buy this fun...

Bob, please, I'm just getting to the sale, and... oh. Are you sure? Well, okay. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm sorry, I'm going to have to go ahead and pull the sale on that go-kart. Apparently they were outlawed by the Comprehensive Go-Kart Emissions & Safety Act I signed 2009. And a good thing too, because nothing matters to me more than safety, the environment, and also the economy. But don't worry, there are plenty of other great bargains here. Like this commemorative Obama-Biden Inauguration collector's plate, made of real porcelain! And only $50! Who wants to be the first to buy this piece of history?"

Heh.

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Humor Break

NewsBusted 5/11/12 - YouTube: "NewsBusted 5/11/12"

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Depression In The Memory hOle

Fast response: RNC already up with Obama-forgot-the-recession spot « Hot Air: "Don’t expect the RNC or Mitt Romney’s team to get amnesia over this, either.  “Sometimes I forget” will likely accompany every spot on the economy both organizations produce from now until the election."

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Propaganda

Instapundit » Blog Archive » BLOG COMMENT OF THE DAY: “We may not quite be living under communism, but we are certainly living un…: "BLOG COMMENT OF THE DAY: “We may not quite be living under communism, but we are certainly living under its media apparatus.”

Posted by Ed Driscoll at 4:55 pm"

Yup.

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Sit Down And Shut Up

Ace of Spades HQ: "Richard Nixon's got nothing on Barack Hussein Obama.

Frank VanderSloot is the CEO of Melaleuca Inc. The 63-year-old has run that wellness-products company for 26 years out of tiny Idaho Falls, Idaho. Last August, Mr. VanderSloot gave $1 million to Restore Our Future, the Super PAC that supports Mitt Romney.

Three weeks ago, an Obama campaign website, "Keeping GOP Honest," took the extraordinary step of publicly naming and assailing eight private citizens backing Mr. Romney. Titled "Behind the curtain: a brief history of Romney's donors," the post accused the eight of being "wealthy individuals with less-than-reputable records." Mr. VanderSloot was one of the eight, smeared particularly as being "litigious, combative and a bitter foe of the gay rights movement."

About a week after that post, a man named Michael Wolf contacted the Bonneville County Courthouse in Idaho Falls in search of court records regarding Mr. VanderSloot. Specifically, Mr. Wolf wanted all the documents dealing with Mr. VanderSloot's divorces, as well as a case involving a dispute with a former Melaleuca employee."

Can't you tell my shock is palpable?

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