Blog Heap o'Links for May 2012

Twitter has become the battleground for the 2012 elections and the fight to push the country further left or closer to the right. It is the vehicle that not only informs and influences the opinions of others, but often it is Twitter that actually drives the news cycle.... thought this might be the perfect opportunity to share a list of the “Top Ten Dirty Tricks Leftists Play Online...." there are some on the left who vehemently disagree with such tactics.... there are some on the right who might not play entirely fairly, either.... the instigators of such tactics I’m about to list below appear to be overwhelmingly left-leaning....

Photos... show five men arrested Monday, April 30, 2012... accused of plotting to blow up a bridge near Cleveland, Ohio... no danger to the public... explosives were inoperable... controlled by an undercover FBI employee... target of the plot was a bridge that carries a four-lane state highway over part of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park in the Brecksville area, about 15 miles south of downtown Cleveland... [alleged that] the five #occupiers repeatedly attempted to blow up the Cuyahoga Valley National Park Bridgey bridge over the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, about 15 miles south of downtown Cleveland.... The bridge links two wealthy suburbs.... Occupy Cleveland group says the men were associated with the movement but don’t represent Occupy Cleveland or its nonviolent views. [Of course not.]

The blind Chinese human-rights activist Chen Guangcheng, who escaped from house arrest on April 22 and may be under the protection of the U.S. Embassy, was initially detained for exposing the massive abuse of Chinese women under China’s one-child policy. His documentation of forced sterilizations and abortions landed him in jail for four years, followed by a year and a half of house arrest. His daring escape has now triggered renewed attacks on organizations engaged in helping Chinese women keep and feed their infants.

Seven thousand miles, one way, is a long journey to share war remarks with countrymen that he should have and could have shared back home many months ago. Despite the administration's best backgrounding sales efforts, the document he signed with Afghan President Hamid Karzai is a meaningless basic agreement to talk later about forging a real agreement. ... Nothing was essentially changed by what the media lovingly called his "secret trip" to the war zone, which was simply unannounced for security reasons. ... One little-noticed provision of the agreement Obama and Karzai signed Tuesday, however, is that American troops will remain in Afghanistan for not one, not two, not even three more years. They will be there for 12 more years, until 2024, helping. So, John McCain was correct after all about lengthy U.S. troop stationings. ... Nor, as it turns out, could the politically-inclined president of the United States find room anywhere among his 1,556 words for the seven letters that could make his surges and all those sacrifices seem more worthwhile: "victory."

One night I took her to see a new play by a black playwright. It was a very angry play, but very funny. Typical black American humor. The audience was mostly black, and everybody was laughing and clapping and hollering like they were in church. After the play was over, my friend started talking about why black people were so angry all the time. I said it was a matter of remembering—nobody asks why Jews remember the Holocaust, I think I said—and she said that’s different, and I said it wasn’t, and she said that anger was just a dead end. We had a big fight, right in front of the theater. When we got back to the car she started crying. She couldn’t be black, she said. She would if she could, but she couldn’t. She could only be herself, and wasn’t that enough. [Presidential bullsh!t from Dreams From My Father; only the names are real; the facts have been changed to seduce the innocent.]

One of the more mysterious characters from President Obama's 1995 autobiography Dreams From My Father is the so-called 'New York girlfriend.' Obama never referred to her by name, or even by psuedonym, but he describes her appearance, her voice, and her mannerisms in specific detail. But Obama has now told biographer David Maraniss that the 'New York girlfriend' was actually a composite character, based off of multiple girlfriends he had both in New York City and in Chicago. [Or boyfriends. Or both or neither. Or Ayers made the whole thing up. Everything the SCoaMF says is a lie, so who cares!]

The federal probe that resulted last night in the arrest of five purported anarchists for allegedly plotting to bomb an Ohio bridge began last year at an Occupy Wall Street rally in Cleveland that was infiltrated by an informant who was directed to attend the event by his FBI handlers. ... Defendant Brandon Baxter... “suggested getting tacks that they could throw out of the back of the car if they get in a chase.” This getaway tactic was last successfully used in a Batman episode from 1967.

The Drug Enforcement Administration issued an apology Wednesday to a California student who was picked up during a drug raid and left in a holding cell for several days without food, water or access to a toilet.... was never arrested, was not going to be charged with a crime and should have been released... drank his own urine to survive and that he bit into his glasses to break them and tried to use a shard to scratch “Sorry Mom” into his arm.... lights went off at one point and stayed off for several days.... [My crystal ball suggests this student has a rich lawsuit in his future.]

Left-Wing Bizarro World [poster: "Cracker" v "Minority"]

A man exposed himself to a woman inside the Bucks County Association for the Blind. [This made Drudge I presume because haha it's funny a man exposing himself to the blind, except that isn't the story, just the inference you're expected to make. Sheesh!]

This is no joke. ...May 19 to May 21... flight advisory... by the Federal Aviation Administration... bans non-commercial aircraft from flying within 10 nautical miles of downtown Chicago and below 18,000 feet. A nautical mile is about one minute of arc of latitude along any meridian. It amounts to 1,852 meters, or about 1.15078 standard miles. “The United States Government may use deadly force against the airborne aircraft, if it is determined that the aircraft poses an imminent security threat.... Be advised that noncompliance with the published (notice to airmen) may result in the use of force.” ...lesser violations by airmen might result in civil penalties and the suspension of airmen certificates, as well as criminal charges....

...Bill Warren... Californian treasure hunter... claims he has located [Osama Bin Laden's] cadaver... 200 miles to the west of the Indian city of Surat.... says he's aiming at starting the mission [to retrieve the body] on June 1, and that he may be able to find the body in "under a week...." declares that his only fear is that the US Government would kill him or sink his boat....

Houston's ConocoPhillips, the oil giant formed ten years ago by merging Conoco Inc., with Phillips Petroleum, will spin off its refinery business effective tomorrow, May 1, 2012. ... The upstream company, which will retain the ConocoPhillps name and continue to headquarter in Houston, is the largest independent oil and gas in the US. The refining and distribution company will be named Phillips 66 and will also be headquartered in Houston. ... There is as yet no word about job losses here in Houston or at the former headquarters company towns of Bartlesville (Phillips) and Ponca City (Conoco), Oklahoma.

At least a dozen people in the United States have been diagnosed with H-SAM [Highly Superior Auto-Biographical Memory]. “Every single thing that you have ever done is on your hard drive....” she believes that by improving your memory you can live a more conscious life.

At least a dozen people in the United States have been diagnosed with H-SAM [Highly Superior Auto-Biographical Memory]. “Every single thing that you have ever done is on your hard drive....” she believes that by improving your memory you can live a more conscious life.

That gem from outer space was found at the Lotus park where Brenda, her kids and her collie come to nearly every day.... Meteorites landed in California’s Gold Country several days ago, creating a modern day gold rush.... Geologists, treasure hunters and scientists all took a look at Brenda’s find. “As I opened my hand, there was a huge gasp,” she said. Scientists have told her what she had in her hands could be 4 to 6 billion years old.

...two [Hamilton, N.J.] sisters, aged 94 and 93, fought off an armed 27-year-old man who tried to rob them and steal their car.... he started swinging his knife and threatening the women... instead of simply giving in, the 94-year-old driver swung her arm back to hit and block the suspect while the 93-year-old sister got out and began to scream for help.... the man took off.... He was later located and taken into custody.... As for the two sisters, they are doing fine and don't know what all the fuss is all about. They declined a request for an interview and asked for their names to remain private....

It’s time for Republicans to pronounce: Women are smarter than this. How does one convert unyielding and uninformed liberals? With reason and knowledge. To enter into this battle, one must be armed, agile, sharp, and resolute. Here are some tools. When the Democrats start ranting, use the GIRLFRIENDS acronym to forge through the storm.

According to reports from various industry sources, the Chinese government has begun the process of picking a national computer chip instruction set architecture (ISA). This ISA would have to be used for any projects backed with government money — which, in a communist country such as China, is a fairly long list of public and private enterprises and institutions, including China Mobile, the largest wireless carrier in the world. ... developing a brand new ISA — a daunting task, considering you have to create an entire software (compiler, developer, apps) and hardware (CPU, chipset, motherboard) ecosystem from scratch. But, there are benefits to building your own CPU architecture. ...silicon-level monitoring and censorship ...a ubiquitous, always-open backdoor that can be used by Chinese intelligence agencies... DNS and IP address blacklist [built] into the hardware itself ...implement a hardware-level 10pm curfew for video games... code that automatically turns negative mentions of Hu Jintao (the Chinese president) into positives, and inserts a few honorifics at the same time ...a latent botnet of hundreds of millions of computers that can be activated upon the commencement of World War III. Or, or, or… [The word "benefits," as employed here, is not value-oriented.]

There's a cop blog in Chicago, Second City Cop, and let me tell you the cops are plenty worried about the shenannigans about to be unleashed by the OWSers and the May Day commies and of course the NATO summit later in the month. There have been stashes of human waste found in bottles, hundreds of pop bottles, all lined up ready to be hurled at cops.

...plans in place for a mass evacuation of downtown in the event of riots on May 20-21 ... Red Cross memo out of Milwaukee indicates.... Officials there have been asked to make plans to assist residents in the event of a mass exodus. Chicago officials say the plan didn’t come from them. The U.S. Secret Service isn’t talking. There also are reports that a heavily armed security team will start making a very public appearance around federal buildings in the Loop this week. Officials with the Chicago NATO host committee were completely in the dark. They had no reports of any such plans. A source told CBS 2 that security forces in full battle gear would not be seen this week. ...

...In a letter to all residents at 520 South State Street, the property manager is strongly recommending that everyone find alternative places to stay during the summit. The managers point out violence and damage from past protests in other cities could engulf Chicago as well. Besides recommending that residents also not have any guests between May 18th through the 21st, management also says access to the building will be quote "very limited." The building's revolving door will be locked Friday morning and IDs will be checked. ...

The Milwaukee Red Cross is preparing in case people from Chicago need to evacuate the city during the NATO Summit. ... "If a tornado would hit Chicago, we're an evacuation area. If there would be a large scale power outage, we're an evacuation area. This isn't anything out of the normal for us. ... Anytime there are large gatherings of people, Presidential inaugurations, the Super Bowl, the Chicago Marathon, the American Red Cross is asked to have a contingency plan in case there would be an evacuation." The NATO summit happens next month.

WTC 1, the Freedom Tower, which will surpass 1,250 feet today, will taunt the Empire State Building (height: 1,250 feet) by lighting a blue and white color scheme this evening. Those colors were chosen to mock the Empire State Building’s controversial 2010 decision not to light the building in honor of the 100th anniversary of Mother Teresa’s birth. Didn't see that coming.

Update - Andy: As luck would have it, I visited the 9/11 memorial yesterday and took this picture of One WTC [photo]

235 Great pic but it still leaves me feeling v. empty. Nothing will ever replace the Twin Towers.
Posted by: laceyunderalls

239 The worst is when you're watching an old movie or looking at pictures and you see the twin towers in the background. Then you get a wave of "sick" immediately followed by "fury" and then "hopelessness" and then an increased desire to un-elect muslims from office...
Posted by: Dagny, warrior queen

Let me get this straight: If Reagan decides (yes, covertly) to send aid to the Nicaraguan Contras (nominal Christians fighting commies) in the face of a congressional ban, that's high treason requiring endless months of breathless negative commentary from the New York Times, and endless months of outraged committee hearings on Capital Hill.

If Obama decides to overtly send aid to Hamas (nominal Muslims who murder Jews and other nominal Muslims),.that's nothing to worry about and nobody important, except for some morons on a right wing blog even notices and comments on it, before moving on to the next story: Justice for SlayVon!

Got it.

Okay, this is kind of interesting. This story in the Washington Free Beacon talks about the political decision to not sell our gubmint held shares in GM; to do so would mean the amount of loss is made public:

http://tinyurl.com/6wt5dnq

So then I did a little research. We the peeeeple hold 500 million shares of GM. Per a Feb.14, 2012 CNN article, if they were sold at the then current price of $25.40 per share, we would show a loss of $12.7 billion. That is on top of the $7 billion we are already in the hole on the deal. Source:

http://tinyurl.com/7jckre3

So what is the current share price? $23.57

So gee, at 500 million shares that's another $750 million loss. The stock will have to reach $51 per share for us to break even.

Sigh.

For decades, city centers and intercity roads have suffered from heavy traffic congestion and air pollution from car emissions. To diminish these effects, governments have tried to get people out of their cars and onto public transport such as trains, trams, buses and metros, as well was using non-polluting bicycles. Unfortunately, this has mostly proven to be unsuccessful. At least partly to blame here are poor connections between different modes of transport, longer traveling times and delays, as well as a lack of comfort and privacy. Designers and engineers are now exploring new public transport concepts, which are more capable of competing with the car by offering quicker, and in some cases individualized, transportation, as well as introducing a new range of personal city vehicles. [Mostly to blame is that mass transportation is not what people want! That said, there are some nice designs here. And flying cars!]

“It’s time we focused on reality instead of rhetoric.” The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity released this powerful ad recently. The group boldly mocks the #occupy criminal movement in the powerful pro-American ad. [Video]

Nina Rhodes-Hughes wants the world to know that, despite what history says, Sirhan was not the only gunman firing shots when Kennedy was murdered a few feet away from her at a Los Angeles hotel. "What has to come out is that there was another shooter to my right," Rhodes-Hughes said in an exclusive interview with CNN. "The truth has got to be told. No more cover-ups."

Another grim milestone: Over twice as many US soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan under Barack Obama than under George W. Bush.

Tea Partiers and other constitutionally minded Americans for whom "Anyone but Obama" rings hollow, and who still harbor hopes of a third-party challenge to the GOP establishment, may find food for thought in a living example of such a conservative challenge -- namely, that which arose in Canada a quarter-century ago. Americans would benefit from a careful evaluation of their neighbors' success. [Well, maybe. The vast majority of Americans are pretty much totally stuck in the Republicrat-Demican mindset.]