Drop The Charade

Moonbattery » Obama Grants Highest Civilian Honor to Radical Socialist Dolores Huerta: "What else can Obama do to disgrace the office of the presidency? I know — award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to a commie:

President Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Tuesday to Dolores Huerta, an 82-year-old labor activist and co-founder of the United Farm Workers union.

Huerta is also an honorary chair of the Democratic Socialists of America.

DSA describes itself as “the largest socialist organization in the United States, and the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International.”

Readers might remember Huerta as the unhinged moonbat who shrieked at Tucson schoolchildren that “Republicans hate Latinos.”

She has said of socialist dictator Hugo Chavez’s oppressive and disastrously failed policies, “Why can’t we do that here in the United States?”

By now we can drop the absurd charade that Barack Hussein is not a socialist."

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The LBJ Way

The Times on Obama - By John Yoo - The Corner - National Review Online: "Pointing out the hypocrisies of the Obama administration is becoming a sport, and the New York Times is only providing more targets. Candidate Obama promised to close Guantanamo Bay, but President Obama had no plan for an alternative prison. Candidate Obama criticized the Bush-administration interrogation policies (on which I worked), but President Obama sought to create exceptions to Miranda warnings (which he demands) for terrorists so that FBI questioning can continue. Candidate Obama criticized the Bush administration’s war approach to terrorism, but President Obama has ramped up the use of drone attacks to kill terrorist leaders.

But the most disturbing aspect of the latest NYT insider’s account of the war on terrorism, no doubt timed to shore up Candidate Obama’s national-security credentials for his re-election campaign, is the selection process for drone targets. Apparently President Obama personally selects the targets and approves each operation. This is both an incredible misuse of presidential time and a serious distortion of proper war management. Does no one remember the problems created when Lyndon Johnson took a similar hand in the Vietnam war?"

Good God what an ignorant doofus.

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30mph

RealClearPolitics - 'Meaningful Work': ""Education" is a word that covers a lot of very different things, from vital, life-saving medical skills to frivolous courses to absolutely counterproductive courses that fill people with a sense of grievance and entitlement, without giving them either the skills to earn a living or a realistic understanding of the world required for a citizen in a free society.

The lack of realism among many highly educated people has been demonstrated in many ways.

When I saw signs in Yellowstone National Park warning visitors not to get too close to a buffalo, I realized that this was a warning that no illiterate farmer of a bygone century would have needed. No one would have had to tell him not to mess with a huge animal that literally weighs a ton, and can charge at you at 30 miles an hour."

Or: As Eric put it they are living in a "bourgeois illusion bred of money and security". At least until the buffalo stomp them.

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Lunatic Deceptions

Belmont Club » Friday Night Follies: "From that point of view, Operation Babarossa was just a means to an end. Not even a strategical end, but some darkly religious one. The result was a monstrous tail wagging the geopolitical dog. In a smaller sense the campaign in Afghanistan may also have been fought for inverted reasons. It became useful a “war of necessity” simply because someone needed a talking point to contrast to the “war of choice” which was Iraq.  The battles were useful as political statements to rival factions in Washington and in politics.  Their significance on the ground was perhaps entirely incidental. In the end, Afghanistan proved a war of choice too, and as such disposable.

It seems strange but true that things are often undertaken for reasons other than those given. As the common European currency crumbles, it is instructive to reflect that it was never created for itself. As an act of economic policy it was lunacy. What it had to recommend it was political ambition. When the simple common market idea became transformed into the  project to build a new European superstate, they needed a cement to glue everything together and the Euro was it."

And the sheep continue their bleating.

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Memorial Day 2012, 3pm

Articles: A Day to Remember Our Fallen: "On Memorial Day, many Americans have a barbeque, spend the day in a department store looking for sales, or otherwise enjoy a day off work.  What often does not happen is a reflection on the true meaning of the holiday.

Memorial Day is intended to be a day of remembrance for those who have died serving this great nation during war.  In December 2000, the National Day of Remembrance was founded to help re-educate and remind Americans of the true meaning and tradition of Memorial Day, by asking that at 3 pm local time, a moment of remembrance and respect be observed with a moment of silence."

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Stone Age Trinity Update: Mimetic Desire

Thou Can’t Not Covet - Science News: "As every kid knows, the very best toy is the one that someone else is playing with. A new study on covetous adults explains why other people’s possessions always seem better.

Seeds of this desire are sown in the mirror neuron system, a part of the brain that is activated in a similar pattern whether a person is performing an action or merely watching someone else do it.

“Mimetic desire” was first articulated by the French philosopher René Girard in the 1980s. Envy can spread among people like a disease, a force that explains much of human behavior, Girard proposed. Now, French neuroscientists have verified the phenomenon and even attempted to explain how it happens."

It's short, RTWT.

And of all days we learn the French are making a useful contribution on Memorial Day. Of course, socialist envy had just reared it head (even stronger) again in France so I guess it IS the laboratory for this sort of science, non?

Oh yes, about that title...

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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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