Random -- As Long As It Does A Lot O Damage To America Somehow...

Instapundit » Blog Archive » JAMES TARANTO: Show of Farce: Obama’s Syria approach defies satire. “I’ve not made a decision.”…: "In the PBS interview, Obama also stressed that the option before him was a minimal one. America will act, he said, “if, in fact, we can take limited, tailored approaches, not getting drawn into a long conflict, not a repetition of, you know, Iraq, which I know a lot of people are worried about.” Politico summed that up with the headline “Obama: Syria Won’t Be Iraq.” Andy Borowitz, resident satirist at The New Yorker, summed it up with the headline “Obama Promises Syria Strike Will Have No Objective.” Here’s his pretend Obama quote: “Let me be clear. Our goal will not be to effect régime change, or alter the balance of power in Syria, or bring the civil war there to an end. We will simply do something random there for one or two days and then leave.”"

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Bull Connor Was Not A Libertarian

Review & Outlook: Government and Segregation - WSJ.com: "Racial hatreds were—and often still are—rooted in historical and individual prejudice. But that prejudice was so destructive before the Civil War because it was harnessed to state-imposed slavery. And it became so pernicious again in the post-Reconstruction South because states enforced it through arrests and prosecution—or, in the case of the KKK, by doing nothing as blacks were harassed, beaten and killed. Bull Connor was not a libertarian. Federal laws had to be passed, and federal enforcement imposed, precisely because the national government was the only force powerful enough to break state-enforced segregation. It's a point worth recalling when the President invokes government as a source of unalloyed political virtue."

H/T Glenn.

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A Democrat In The White House

Instapundit » Blog Archive » YOU KNOW THERE’S A DEMOCRAT IN THE WHITE HOUSE WHEN YOU SEE HEADLINES LIKE THIS IN THE NEW YORK TIME…: "YOU KNOW THERE’S A DEMOCRAT IN THE WHITE HOUSE WHEN YOU SEE HEADLINES LIKE THIS IN THE NEW YORK TIMES: Bomb Syria, Even if It Is Illegal.

Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 10:33 pm"

Yup.

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Jackasses Soil MLK's Memory

Sen. Tim Scott wasn’t invited to event commemorating MLK march on Washington | WashingtonExaminer.com: "Sen. Tim Scott, R.-S.C., the only African American serving in the United States Senate, wasn't invited to the event commemorating the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's march on Washington, though a host of Democratic luminaries spoke on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

“Senator Scott was not invited to speak at the event,” Greg Blair, a spokesman for the South Carolina lawmaker, said in a statement to the Washington Examiner."

Frankly, they should all be in jail for horrendous corruption never mind just plain being Jackasses. Sen. Scott is a gentleman and a scholar for the calm way he dealt with this slight.

Because apparently he doesn't exist you see...

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That Besotted Lover

PRESIDENT WHO GIVES SPEECHES ON EVERY SINGLE POLITICAL INITIATIVE DECIDES TO NOT INFORM THE PUBLIC THAT HE'S PLUNGING THE COUNTRY INTO A THIRD WAR; CLAIMS DECISION IS NOT POLITICALLY MOTIVATED: "TV is "Old Europe." Last month it was New Europe, and next month it will be New Europe again.

This president doesn't merely lie. He lies flagrantly, ludicrously, bizarrely, absurdly.

He tells the sort of lies that only a besotted lover could believe.

And fortunately for him, the American media is just that besotted lover. And of course the American media understands why he was out all night and now stinks of stripper perfume and cruise missiles."

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The Edouard Daladier Moment

The DiploMad 2.0: Obama and an Edouard Daladier Moment: "Not only in the Middle East do we see this move away from the USA. In Latin America, for example, our long-time ally Colombia has just about given up on Obama. The callous and exceptionally stupid and arrogant manner in which the misadminsitration handled the free trade agreement and its refusal to stand up to Venezuela in Honduras, has convinced the Colombians to look elsewhere. We will see others follow, including Israel which will begin to develop a policy much more independent of us than heretofore. All this forms part of the legacy of long-term damage done by the man who brought "a spring to the step" of parking attendants in the basement of the State Department."

RTWT.

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Did We Forget To Mention It's Google?

DOJ Shoots Itself in the Foot Identifying Google in Data Request Case - HotHardware: "“[Redacted] has a First Amendment right to communicate transparently with its users and the public regarding its receipt of the NSL," the court filing reads. "In light of broadly available misinformation about [redacted] receipt of and compliance with national security process and the concerns and questions of its users… [redacted] seeks to advance the public debate by taking reasonable, limited steps to increase transparency regarding its practices." There are a bunch of references to the unnamed company throughout the document, though on page 8, the DoJ missed a reference to Google where it reads, "the public's already healthy interest in Google's receipt of, and response to, national security legal process skyrocketed." The Wall Street Journal attempted to elicit comments from all involved, and not surprisingly, nobody is willing to speak about the matter."

Geniuses I tell ya'.

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You'll Overlook Things ... Literally

Want to Feel Like You’re Flying with Jets? Watch This Stunning Air Reel | Video | TheBlaze.com: "Alright, it might look like two minutes of promotional flight footage for airlines or the military — and it is promotional footage — but when you see how stunning the aerial cinematography is in Wolfe Air’s latest reel, you might be able to overlook this."

Wolfe Air Reel from 3DF on Vimeo.

Wow.

Did I forget to mention you need to go full screen?

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The Good Ol' N. S. O A.

The Best NSA Visual Yet | Power Line: "Hat tip to Jim Geraghty of National Review‘s “Morning Jolt” (and if you don’t subscribe–it’s free–you’re missing out) for pointing us to the best NSA put on yet:"

Du'O.

UPDATE: Forgot to mention today's dish on LOVEINT. But don't worry, nobody's been disciplined for it or anything. It's harmless, doncha' know.

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The Real Story Of WWII

Glenn Beck Tells the Fascinating History of World War II Like You’ve Never Heard It Before | TheBlaze.com: "“[Knudsen's] family actually told him, ‘Bill, how can you do this? FDR has demonized you. You can’t go to work for that guy – he doesn’t stand for anything you stand for,’” Beck said.

But Knudsen went to Washington and said he was there to serve the country, and he did it for a dollar a year.

“Under Big Bill’s guidance that the American industry reached a production capability that surprised even the president,” Beck said. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, our economy had steadily improved, unemployment had sharply fallen, and we had far more in our arsenal.

“Ultimately, we out-produced the Axis Powers in numbers previously thought impossible, and we surpassed them in quality…” Beck said. “This was only possible at the very last hour because government got out of private life and industry and deferred to the individual.”"

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Bizarro Recovery

Bizarro Recovery - Ricochet.com: "The tough economy has pushed the average U.S. household income down even further than it was when the Great Recession ended, according to a recent report. American households are earning 4.4 percent less, when adjusted for inflation, than they were when the economic recovery began four years ago, according to a report by Sentier Research."

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Rights

Bookworm Room: "One of my conservative friends posted this on Facebook:"

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Ex Uno Multa Mendacia

Ex Uno Multa Mendacia [Darleen Click] | protein wisdom: "*President Barack Obama told Americans Friday that federal aid is reserved for citizens, even though his deputies have drafted complex regulations to give taxpayer-funded Obamacare subsidies to foreign students and to millions of guest workers."

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Soma Real Bad Kim

BreaKim Bad: 40-50% Of North Koreans Seriously Addicted To Meth | Zero Hedge: "Perhaps in an effort to numb themselves of the daily grind of a delusional dictator amid widespread starvation, North Koreans have turned en masse to the 'bingdu' or ice. As the WSJ notes, a study in the Spring of 2013 found that "Almost every adult in that area (of North Korea) has experienced using ice and not just once," and the author noted that "at least 40% to 50% are seriously addicted to the drug." Unsurprisingly for the closed nation, there is no official data, but as poppy fields disappeared in the nation, meth dealers were quick to step in and 'Heisenberg' the people's needs. Now "doing ice is a social thing; it is a lot of fun," as the 'epidemic' has spread from mid-ranking officials and police officers in 2004-2008 to the general population of students and youth now."

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Over Her Signature

Instapundit » Blog Archive » CAN HILLARY CLINTON SURVIVE BENGHAZI? “Well, sure: she’s a Democrat. That’s the easy, cynical …: "CAN HILLARY CLINTON SURVIVE BENGHAZI? “Well, sure: she’s a Democrat. That’s the easy, cynical response, and let’s face it–it’s probably right. Still, by any normal standard Benghazi would be considered a career-ending debacle. Four men, including one of her own ambassadors, were murdered on Hillary’s watch, after they had pleaded with her State Department for better security. The cable denying the ambassador’s request for better protection went out over Hillary’s signature.”

Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 2:30 pm"

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Put A Fork In Us

Ace of Spades HQ: "A Department of Defense teaching guide meant to fight extremism advises students that rather than “dressing in sheets” modern-day radicals “will talk of individual liberties, states’ rights, and how to make the world a better place,” and describes 18th-century American patriots seeking freedom from the British as belonging to “extremist ideologies.”"

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ObamaCare-uption

Going, Going, Gone | The Weekly Standard: "But the early signs do suggest serious problems that run deep, and that will be difficult to juggle for long. They suggest, above all, that America’s health care debate is very far from over. 

This is a fact that many Obamacare defenders have found difficult to accept. Passage of the law has neither made it more popular nor settled the basic dispute about it, as both the law itself and the case for it continue to weaken and shift. Obamacare as it is now being implemented could not have been enacted in 2010. Shorn of the short-term fiscal fig leaf of the CLASS Act, absent the revenue and insurance-market stabilization of the employer mandate, stripped of eligibility verification for subsidies costing billions of taxpayer dollars, saddled with an assault on religious liberty—all of which has been done by the law’s own champions and defenders—the bill would never have had the votes to become law even in the heavily Democratic 111th Congress."

Du'O.

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Did I Forget To Mention That You're A Socialist?

Ace of Spades HQ: "Actually modern liberalism includes quite a lot of what used to be unique to socialism. And I don't think modern paleo-cons are opposed to public education."

I'm going to stop posting for a day or two. This post and the last are too important -- you need to grok them for a while.

Well OK. There's something else you need to grok(law) also:

I feel like that now, knowing that persons I don't know can paw through all my thoughts and hopes and plans in my emails with you.

They tell us that if you send or receive an email from outside the US, it will be read. If it's encrypted, they keep it for five years, presumably in the hopes of tech advancing to be able to decrypt it against your will and without your knowledge. Groklaw has readers all over the world.

And:

One way of beginning to understand privacy is by looking at what happens to people in extreme situations where it is absent. Recalling his time in Auschwitz, Primo Levi observed that "solitude in a Camp is more precious and rare than bread." Solitude is one state of privacy, and even amidst the overwhelming death, starvation, and horror of the camps, Levi knew he missed it.... Levi spent much of his life finding words for his camp experience. How, he wonders aloud in Survival in Auschwitz, do you describe "the demolition of a man," an offense for which "our language lacks words."...

One function of privacy is to provide a safe space away from terror or other assaultive experiences. When you remove a person's ability to sequester herself, or intimate information about herself, you make her extremely vulnerable....

You may not be interested in Big Brother -- but he is interested in you.

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The Fall

Buck Sexton Traces Parallels Between Fall of the Roman Empire, Rise of the Ottoman Empire and What’s Happening Today | TheBlaze.com: "He began by reminding that the Roman Empire in the 6th century was actually Christian, and was divided between the Western and Eastern Roman Empire.

“One of the questions, of course, is why was it breaking up and also, how was it eroding from within?” Sexton asked.  “Because we know that from the [Arabian Peninsula], Muhammed and then the first caliphs…were able to take this entire Christian area in a very short period of time. Why was that?  It was because it had eroded from the inside.”

“The Romans had an overextended military, they had debased their currency to pay off their debts, they had a bureaucracy that essentially was living as a parasite on the entirety of the Roman people…They also had a loss of control over their borders,” Sexton said.

“That sounds completely foreign,” host Glenn Beck responded sarcastically."

I sure am glad we have nothing in common with that scenario!

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Teaching Dependency

Instapundit » Blog Archive » HOPEY-CHANGEY: When Welfare Pays Better Than Work. Here’s an offer for you: $38,004 per year, …: "Here’s an offer for you: $38,004 per year, tax free.No work required.Apply at your local welfare office.

The federal government funds 126 separate programs targeted towards low-income people, 72 of which provide either cash or in-kind benefits to individuals. (The rest fund community-wide programs for low-income neighborhoods, with no direct benefits to individuals.) State and local governments operate more welfare programs. Of course, no individual or family gets benefits from all 72 programs, but many do get aid from a number of them at any point in time.

Today, the Cato institute is releasing a new study looking at the state-by-state value of welfare for a mother with two children. In the Empire State, a family receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Medicaid, food stamps, WIC, public housing, utility assistance and free commodities (like milk and cheese) would have a package of benefits worth $38,004, the seventh-highest in the nation.

While that might not sound overly generous, remember that welfare benefits aren’t taxed, while wages are. So someone in New York would have to earn more than $21 per hour to be better off than they would be on welfare.That’s more than the average statewide entry-level salary for a teacher."

No words for this.

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