Blog Heap of Links for the day 29 August 2011
Obamanation
Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division in the Obama administration. ... Every single new attorney hired has a history thick with left-wing activism.
classic Obama: patronizing, dishonest, syntactically muddled, and grammatically challenged. ... Another distinctive Obama flaw is to allow a string of words to float in space.... an uninspired assemblage of words with a nearly random application of commas and tenses. ... tends to the awkward, passive, and verbose. ... Scarier than Obama's style, however, is his thinking....
Last week, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) and a number of other Congressmen with states who rely heavily on energy production for economic stability, sent a letter to EPA head Lisa Jackson expressing some concerns over her agency's impartiality. At the heart of their complaints, a series of backdoor regulations the EPA has put into place in recent months: regulations that are not only harming American energy industries, but which are actively destroying jobs in a already troubled economy.
The majority of the American People are clearly seeing that President Obama's Brand of Hope and Change (Keynesian Economics) simply doesn't work. It is real hard to sell the American people on the myth that you are working so hard on our behalf, when we continue to get photo-ops of you on the golf course or on vacation in Martha's Vineyard.
John Lund wants to exclude himself and other union labor consultants from the onerous new "Employer" and "Labor Consultants" regulations that DOL is currently proposing. If union bosses were covered by the 'Employer' definition, then Big Labor law firms like the NEA's Bredhoff & Kaiser would be required to file the new reports in order to comply with its new regulations. This Employer definition change will effectively eliminate union bosses from ever having to disclose timely details of their payments to Justice for Janitors, Interfaith Worker Justice, or any other Big Labor front groups participating in their labor persuader activities.
Obama and Michelle closing down Bar Harbor, Maine to dine in upscale restaurants with a "Latin flair" is quite different from G.W. fishing on his family's estate in Kennebunkport prior to hosting a "Lobster Summit" for Vladimir Putin.
Borrowing Planned Parenthood's talking points almost verbatim, the Obama administration is now encouraging parents to begin thinking about their children, and even babies, as "sexual beings" who should be allowed to sexually stimulate themselves from infancy. ... parents are told to encourage children to keep masturbating in private. ...
Police Riot
A Concord man giving away lemonade at a farmer's market was threatened with wiretapping charges last Saturday when he refused to stop filming a police officer and a fellow vendor.
Criminally Stupid
CHICKASHA, Oklahoma -- A Chickasha couple claims a group of angry teens beat them unconscious and are now bragging about the attack on Facebook.... "Bobby call me. I gotta tell you a story. I just beat this dude's a** and hit a b***h. I got my second assault & battery charge tonight." According to the Coopers, police haven't made any arrests, despite the admissions from several teens.
Sharia Sucks
CAIR... sent Rep. Allen West (R-FL) a letter asking him to cut off ties with leading anti-Muslim activists like Pamela Geller and Brigitte Gabriel... a one-word response... "NUTS!"
Disinformation Propaganda and Spin
If the claim is now being made that to be properly "Anti-Jihadist" you really now do simply have to be anti-Muslim, period, and cannot attempt any overtures or any sort of goodwill gestures towards Muslims you actually believe are moderate (and seem to be so), then sign me down because I'm not part of that. I think that is where people are driving this bus. It's easier to just dismiss them all than try to make distinctions.
...like so many information-based institutions, Wikipedia has also come under growing criticism from political conservatives who see a leftwing bias, sometimes overt and often subtle, in its entries. Some on the Right take the claim so seriously that in protest they created Conservapedia as an alternative. Finding examples of Wikipedia's bias is not difficult. One need only compare the entries of figures who do the same thing but from opposite sides of the political spectrum. Consider Ann Coulter versus Michael Moore. Coulter's entry (on August 9, 2011) was 9028 words long.* Of this longer-than-usual entry, 3220 words were devoted to "Controversies and criticism" in which a series of incidents involving Coulter and quotes from her are cited with accompanying condemnations, primarily from her opponents on the Left. That's 35.6 percent of Coulter's entry devoted to making her look bad. By contrast, Moore's entry is 2876 words (the more standard length for entries on political commentators), with 130 devoted to "Controversy." That's 4.5% of the word count, a fraction of Coulter's. Does this mean that an "unbiased" commentator would find Coulter eight times as "controversial" as Moore?
Under Tyranny
Officials in Longhui County, a rural area of Hunan Province, have a history of kidnapping unauthorized babies and selling them on the black market when the parents are unable to pay exorbitant fines that may amount to five times their annual income. ... Yang Libing, the father of a nine-month-old girl who was snatched from his parents' home in 2005 while he was working in another town. ... Yang's offense was failing to register his marriage, rendering any offspring illegal.
9/11 - still with us
the Central Intelligence Agency is demanding extensive cuts from the memoir of a former F.B.I. agent who spent years near the center of the battle against Al Qaeda. ... Ali H. Soufan, argues in the book that the C.I.A. missed a chance to derail the 2001 plot by withholding from the F.B.I. information about two future 9/11 hijackers living in San Diego.... gives a detailed, firsthand account of the C.I.A.'s move toward brutal treatment in its interrogations, saying the harsh methods used on the agency's first important captive, Abu Zubaydah, were unnecessary and counterproductive....
Your Tax Dollars At Play
As far as I'm concerned, much of government is a racket that uses coercion to reward interest groups with unearned wealth. ... Asset forfeiture occurs when government seizes property that is associated with a crime. That sounds reasonable — and it is reasonable if someone is convicted of, say, bank robbery and the government confiscates the stolen cash and any loot purchased with that money. But it is not reasonable (or moral, or just, or appropriate) when government seizes assets without a conviction. And it is downright disgusting when the government steals (and I use that word deliberately) the assets of innocent parties....
Life and Death
...text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005. ... three stories from my life... you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. ... getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again ... Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.... [h/t Cuz BD]
World Without Borders
The 22-year US military veteran, freshman congressman, Tea Party darling and passionate Israel advocate talks to Herb Keinon.... West sat down with The Jerusalem Post and pulled no punches when talking about his view of the Palestinians, Iran, Israel and the African-American community, and Jonathan Pollard.
Repeal! Repeal! Repeal!
Scheutte, for example, has gone after registered patients who engage in the collective growing or sharing of marijuana plants on cooperative marijuana farms. Why? Because the law, he believes, requires each patient's plants to be grown and maintained in a "separate" enclosed, locked facility that is only accessible to the registered patient or the patient's registered primary caregiver. This is just, plain hazing—and he didn't even have to toke up to do it.
The Michigan Court of Appeals ruled earlier today that a 2008 state law legalizing the use of medical marijuana does not cover the sale of the drug
Policing Ourselves
In recent years police forces across the country have become increasingly militarized. To a small degree, that trend represents a rational response in an arms race against the criminal element's escalating firepower. But more of it has to do with the lavishing of federal Homeland Security funds on local law-enforcement agencies. Local departments have used the money to buy themselves all kinds of fancy toys.... In "Overkill," a 2006 paper for the Cato Institute, Radley Balko traces the rise of paramilitary policing to the 1980s and the war on drugs. One of the earliest developments was the Military Cooperation With Law Enforcement Act, whose purpose was to let the military lend a hand in drug interdiction. In the three decades since, the trend has only spread. ... The paramilitary approach to law enforcement flies in the face of the idea that the police and the citizens are on the same side. Officer Friendly, strolling the block in a blue uniform and playing a paradiddle with his baton on a white picket fence, looks like he is ready to help carry groceries for the little old lady who lives on the corner. A cop in combat gear with an assault rifle slung over his shoulder looks like he is ready to go to war. In war, there is no presumption of innocence—and the opposing side is not a fellow citizen with constitutional rights. He is the enemy.
Belief and State
Economy Without Borders
Back before FDR, there was a real economic theory that has died and we need to resurrect it, pat it on the back, and cheer for it like we cheer for Rick Perry. It was called Distributism. ... ownership of the means of production should be spread as widely as possible among the general populace, rather than being centralized under the control of the state (state socialism) or a few large businesses or wealthy private individuals (plutarchic capitalism). ...
Educating Ourselves
we're on more equal footing than we may think when it comes to how our brains learn. And it's a mistake to assume students will respond and remember information better depending on how it's presented.
US Military
"A lone Tomb Sentinel, 3d U.S. Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard), walks his tour in humble reverence during Hurricane Irene in Arlington National Cemetery, Va., Aug 27. Members of The Old Guard have guarded the Tomb every second, of every day regardless of weather or holidays since April 6, 1948."
Sarah Palin 2012
Two weeks away from the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, presidential candidate and Texas Rep. Ron Paul says that U.S. intervention in the Middle East is a main motivation behind terrorist hostilities toward America, and that Islam is not a threat to the nation.
Frank Luntz, formerly considered to be an objective pollster whose reports could be counted upon for their evenhanded dissemination of scientifically generated data, has just come out of the closet as America's newest Sarah Palin basher. According to the newly self redefined Luntz, "…there is no room for Sarah Palin…" to join the presidential race since she and Michelle Bachmann are basically the same candidate. ... I say it without hesitation that Mr. Luntz could not have been more completely wrong had he chosen to vent his partisan agenda on any other topic. That he could be so utterly incorrect about something so easily apparent to any who approach the topic with their eyes open is doubtless less than reassuring to those considering paying him for his opinion. ...
Palin hasn't officially entered the race she's already running third in primary polls in Florida. (Wow — running third although she isn't even a candidate yet.) So what happens if she gets in and gets the nomination? What if the race ends up being Palin v. Obama? If it does, Obama may find out how Walter Mondale felt after running against Reagan in 1984. But he will surely find out how Jimmy Carter felt when he faced Reagan in 1980. ... Palin v. Obama will be a landslide (and Obama knows it).
The Trans-Texas Corridor is one such emerging line of criticism against Gov. Perry. First proposed by Perry in 2002, the north-south running road would have also included a railway, petroleum pipeline, power lines, and communications cables. ... conservatives who criticize Gov. Perry over the proposed use of eminent domain to build a road aren't just wrong — they're actually advocating a position that is unconstitutional it its core. ... [Hmmmm. Not all the facts are included in this article.]
America the Beautiful
After some much needed rest at home, an Oklahoman traveling across the country on horseback will resume his journey Thursday. Luke Nowlin is going through Vinita, Nowata, Bartlesville and Pawhuska over the next few days. He's riding a horse nearly 4,000 miles, from sea to shining sea, to rediscover what makes America great. Nowlin and his horse Pirate are winding their way through the Ozarks in Missouri, 1,400 miles in the saddle so far.