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Friday, May 31, 2013

Boy, the Head of the IRS Went to the White House A Lot


And now it looks like the IRS was a key part of Obama's successful re-election effort.

Megan McArdle uses a particularly weak "mirroring" technique to clear Team Obama. Mirroring is when you project your own beliefs and attitudes onto others.


I think the administration needs to explain this. Not because I think that Obama called Doug Shulman into his office to tell him to persecute the Tea Party. That explanation is unlikely for all sorts of reasons:


1. Delaying perhaps 100 applications for 501(c)(4) status did not meaningfully impact the election. I'm not minimizing what happened to those groups; it's absolutely outrageous that the IRS told its workers to be on the lookout for the words Tea Party and Patriot in the names. But I can't believe that it was a deliberate political strategy, because there's no way such a strategy would have worked. It's moronic: all cost and no benefit. And whatever you think about Obama's political strategists, they are definitely not morons.


2. If they were having secret, clandestine meetings to order grossly illegal behavior, it would probably be foolish to have them in the White House, where the visits would be recorded. Much easier for the staffer to meet in the IRS, or a nearby Starbucks.

To this day you still have people wondering how the most arguably progressive and educated nation in 20th Century Europe, Germany, the home of Schiller and Goethe could have descended in to the mire of totalitarianism.  McArdle and most of the people in the press simply don't want to face the possibility that Team Obama could be behind this.  Because then they would have to face the fact that something or someone would have to do something about it. 

DRUDGE on ObamaCare



OBAMACARE NIGHTMARE: 146% RATE HIKE IN CA...

HHS Rations Enrollment in Pre-Existing Condition Plan...

Website Informs Young Girls About 'Mutual Masturbation'...

Cashin: Strange things on Wall Street

CNBC's Courtney Reagan and Art Cashin, of UBS, discuss trading in Japan and its impact on Europe and the U.S. "Something strange is afoot," he says.

The Dow closed down over 200 points.

Gun Violence Rocks Chicago as 8 are Shot in One Day


Just another day in gun-control city.

Chicago police said that the teenager, Patrick Sykes, was shot several times early Thursday afternoon. They said that witnesses offered conflicting versions of what occurred, with the shooters having been either on bicycles or on foot.

Two people were taken into custody for questioning, but they were released without any charges being filed, police said.

The 24-hour period of gun violence also included the shooting of an 18-year-old man, three women and several others.

Meanwhile New Poll Shows England Wants Its Guns Back

It's not even close.

'Uncommon Knowledge:' Who Killed the Liberal Arts?


Incendiary Thought: Men Don't Whine About Work-Life Balance, They Just Get It Done


Now batting for Pedro Borbon:

Men have given up the pipe, smoking jacket and slippers routine to help around the house and do some actual parenting. We're better off for it, but I don't hear alot of whining among my set about what has been lost or the lack of balance yadayada. We do what we have to do and life is mostly good. That doesn't make for ripe or copious material to keep hundreds of Men's Studies professors preoccupied in our illustrious higher education system.

From the comments:
 Conservative women don't tend to gripe much either, they just get the job done.

The people (of both sexes) who seem to complain about life's challenges are those on the left, as well as the emotionally stunted, but I repeat myself.

Tomy Macrini must read the Daily Mail

The best way to win an argument? Shout louder than everyone else.
Being confident and loud is the best way to win an argument - even if you are wrong, a new study suggests.
 
If you ever listen to Tony Macrini, Norfolk's morning drive-time radio talker, you know his favorite technique for winning an argument with a call-in listener, he cuts off the caller and starts shouting louder.
 
Macrini's shtick is cynicism. But it's a studied pose in which he's cynical about all the right issues. He's the loud-mouth version of the Virginia Pilot; impeccably politically correct having all the right attitudes about Liberal pieties and all the Liberal's enemies as his own.

But the loud, braying defense of all he considers holy is his trademark. Of course it helps if you control the microphone.

Those racist Liberals at the Virginian Pilot

 
It should now be apparent to even the blind that Liberalism is drenched in racism. Hiding behind their crocodile tears for the black community is the implicit assumption that blacks are inferior. After all, what are decades of “affirmative action” but assumptions that people with black skin can’t make it on their own. George Bush called it the soft bigotry of low expectations.
 
Barack Obama is our first affirmative action president; Liberals voted for him because he is – in Joe Biden’s memorable phrase – “clean and articulate” and voting for the first black president made them feel good about themselves. Chris Matthews once said “For an hour, I forgot that Obama was black.”
 
So to the racists at the Virginian Pilot, Rev. E. W. Jackson is a godsend. They finally have a black man they can attack with all the venom for people with black skin that have withheld for so long. The editorial pages, the Op-Eds and the letters to the editor will be filled with hate and ridicule for this good man up to and after the election for Lieutenant Governor of Virginia. Finally, a black Republican; finally a black man they can openly hate. What a relief.

Thursday, May 30, 2013

IRS Harassed Conservative Youth Groups Too



Linchpins of Liberty founder Kevin Kookogey on how the IRS targeted his organization, and the lawsuit he recently filed against the agency.

College students thank IRS for illegally targeting conservative groups



If people wonder how Fascist and Communist leaders managed to take over their countries, look no further than the students here. And this experiment can be conducted at any college campus. Respect for the rights of others has to be taught and in Academia students are taught to hate Conservatives and that the Constitution is an out-dated restriction on the government.

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Mark Steyn: Michele Bachmann ‘could have been America’s Mrs. Thatcher’


If you don't know what a "Crony Capitalist" is you just might be an editorial writer.

 
Christina Nuckols has this in common with most of the people in the dead tree news industry: she hates Ken Cuccinelli with the heat of a thousand suns. So she chooses to tag him with the accusation that he’s a crony capitalist for accepting donations for companies that support his stand on their industry and the environment. Using that slur, which is pretty much all the editors of Virginia’s newspapers have left, the term loses its meaning. Is Obama a crony capitalist because he and his PACs accept money from business interests? No; Obama is a crony capitalist because he shovels tax money to companies who can’t make it on their own. In fact, like Solyndra and the scores of “solyndras” that have followed in its wake, they can’t even make money when they got huge loans and subsidies from the Federal treasury. Hardly a week passes without the announcement of another “green” company that got direct financial aid from the Obama administration going bust. Crony Capitalism is hard at work when pals and allies of the administration get money, loans, or special regulations that enrich the Crony Capitalists at the expense of the taxpayer.  Allowing companies to engage in business by removing crushing regulation is the very opposite of crony capitalism.  
 
Nuckols is the editorial page editor for the Roanoke Times, owned by the billionaire Batten family who have moved their Christina around the state from one property to another.

For people who are interested, here is a recording of Christina interviewing a member of a gun rights group who tells us that she misrepresented what he told her.   By the way, recording your conversations with reporters is always a good idea.  If they lie about what you said, as usually happens (they wrote the article before they interviewed you, they're just hunting for the right quote to support their story), you can then put the recording on the Internet.  Sending a letter to the editor does no good; it won't be printed. 
 
Glenn Reynolds calls people like Christina Nuckols Democrat partisans with bylines.  

Who’s Checking the Fact Checkers?

As the first person to empirically demonstrate the liberal, pro-Democrat bias in the Washington press corps, Lichter's analysis is worth further study and comment. His study – and in the interests of full disclosure, he was once a professor of mine at the George Washington University - "examined 100 statements involving factual claims by Democrats (46 claims) and Republicans (54 claims), which were fact-checked by PolitiFact.com during the four month period from the start of President Obama's second term on January 20 through May 22, 2013." The conclusion: Republicans lie more.

Or do they? As the Wall Street Journal's James Taranto has consistently reported, the fact checking business often – too often for anyone's good – turns on matters of opinion rather than matters of "fact." One recent example that drives the point home is the Washington Post's recent fact check that gave President Barack Obama "four Pinocchios" for asserting that he had, in fact, called what happened in Benghazi an act of "terrorism."

According to the Post's Glenn Kessler, Obama did in fact refer to it the next day in a Rose Garden address as an "act of terror," but did not call it "terrorism." Is this a distinction without a difference? Hardly, at least as far as former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney might be concerned. It will be a long time before anyone forgets how the second presidential debate turned into a tag team match with Obama and CNN's Candy Crowley both explaining to the mystified Republican that Romney was, in fact, wrong when he accused the president of not having called the Benghazi attack a terrorist incident.

Obama cartoon - Ramirez

Religion of Peaced Update via DRUDGE

French police arrest suspect in soldier stabbing...

Recent convert to Islam...



Accused Fort Hood Gunman to Represent Self...

The French suspect was known to investigators, Mr. Valls said, but he urged caution and said: “I cannot talk about radical Islam.” He said investigators wanted to know more about the suspect’s “motivation, background and family environment.”

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Rand Paul in Iowa April 2011

Rand Paul on the new ObamaCare diagnostic codes: Obamacare regulations contain two separate doctor diagnosis codes for injuries sustained from turtles. Were you bitten, or did you collide with this slow creature? Uncle Sam wants to know

How Ed Markey Embraced Financial Crisis.



Let me put it in terms a smart financial journalist like Brauchli can readily understand. On Wall Street, financial crisis destroys jobs. Here in Washington, it creates them. The rest is just details.

For the Ruling Class, crises are a golden opportunity.  Tim Noah

"Isn't this exciting?" Rep. Ed Markey enthused to me on Oct. 19, 1987 ("Black Monday"). A young congressional correspondent for Newsweek with nary a stock or bond to my name, even I was taken aback by Markey's undisguised pleasure. When you stop and think about it, though, it makes perfect sense. Modern Washington owes its very existence to the 1929 crash, which occasioned a vast expansion of the federal government under President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

To the Horror of Global Warming Alarmists, Global Cooling Is Here

Have you noticed that spring is a little late this year?
At first the current stall out of global warming was due to the ocean cycles turning back to cold. But something much more ominous has developed over this period. Sunspots run in 11 year short term cycles, with longer cyclical trends of 90 and even 200 years. The number of sunspots declined substantially in the last 11 year cycle, after flattening out over the previous 20 years. But in the current cycle, sunspot activity has collapsed. NASA’s Science News report for January 8, 2013 states,

“Indeed, the sun could be on the threshold of a mini-Maunder event right now. Ongoing Solar Cycle 24 [the current short term 11 year cycle] is the weakest in more than 50 years. Moreover, there is (controversial) evidence of a long-term weakening trend in the magnetic field strength of sunspots. Matt Penn and William Livingston of the National Solar Observatory predict that by the time Solar Cycle 25 arrives, magnetic fields on the sun will be so weak that few if any sunspots will be formed. Independent lines of research involving helioseismology and surface polar fields tend to support their conclusion.”
That is even more significant because NASA’s climate science has been controlled for years by global warming hysteric James Hansen, who recently announced his retirement.

But this same concern is increasingly being echoed worldwide. The Voice of Russia reported on April 22, 2013,

“Global warming which has been the subject of so many discussions in recent years, may give way to global cooling. According to scientists from the Pulkovo Observatory in St.Petersburg, solar activity is waning, so the average yearly temperature will begin to decline as well. Scientists from Britain and the US chime in saying that forecasts for global cooling are far from groundless.”

That report quoted Yuri Nagovitsyn of the Pulkovo Observatory saying, “Evidently, solar activity is on the decrease. The 11-year cycle doesn’t bring about considerable climate change – only 1-2%. The impact of the 200-year cycle is greater – up to 50%. In this respect, we could be in for a cooling period that lasts 200-250 years.” In other words, another Little Ice Age.
Here in Virginia we have not run our A/C much this year. In fact, at times we had to turn on the heat.  In Michigan they had to move the Memorial day cookout inside and snow fell in New York.  But Eugene Robinson insists that there is no ‘great amount of uncertainty’ about whether the planet is warming and why.”   When theory and reality collide, the fanatic rejects reality.

Rand Paul Speaks for America, Grills Obama Hack about Real Freedom of Choice


Two Examples of Reprehensible and Outrageous TSA Behavior…and Senator Rand Paul Speaks Up for Common Sense


Rand Paul Debunks the Shameful Demagoguery against Apple


We entrust an inordinate amount of power to people who don't feel any pain when we fall down.

Glenn Reynolds on what happens when politicians do wrong.
As scandals explode across Washington -- from the IRS scandals, to the Benghazi scandal, to the HHS donations scandal, to Pigford and more -- one thing that I've noticed is that the people involved don't seem to suffer much. There are consequences, but not for them. Likewise, Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., left office in disgrace, but wound up with surprisingly lucrative consulting gigs.

This reminds me of something writer Robert Heinlein once said: "Any government will work if authority and responsibility are equal and coordinate. This does not ensure 'good' government, it simply ensures that it will work. But such governments are rare — most people want to run things, but want no part of the blame. This used to be called the 'backseat driver' syndrome."

Government officials are happy making and executing plans that affect the lives of millions, but when things go wrong, well ... they're willing to accept the responsibility, but they're not willing to take the blame. What's the difference? People who are to blame lose their jobs. People who are "responsible," do not. The blame, such as it is, winds up deflected on to The System, or something else suitably abstract.

But when you cut the linkage between outcomes and experience, you make learning much more difficult. When you were a toddler learning to walk, you fell down a lot. This was unpleasant: shocking, at least, and often painful. Thus, you learned to fall down a lot less often.

But imagine if falling down didn't hurt. You wouldn't have learned not to fall, or at least, you would have accumulated a lot more bruises along the way.

Given the low penalties for failure it faces, our political class is one for whom falling down is usually painless and even -- given the surprisingly common tendency of people who have presided over debacles to be given promotions rather than the boot -- actually pleasurable. The leaders move society's arms and legs, but we're the ones who collect the bruises.

Read the whole thing, including this
Then, of course, there's the unfortunate fact that the worse the economy does, the more important the government becomes. As Tim Noah pointed out back when the financial crisis was new, "On Wall Street, financial crisis destroys jobs. Here in Washington, it creates them. The rest is just details."

Some incentive system. And yet they want us to trust them to "fix the economy." My worry is that their idea of "fixed" may not be the same as mine.

Holder: "... a howling conflict of interest."


Monday, May 27, 2013

Europe has many fine traditions. Its newest tradition is the burning car.


Savages of Stockholm
Civilization is not a product, it's a process. You can't export it. You can ship a bunch of cars to Somalia, but you can't ship the process that makes a culture build a car. You can hand out PhD's to them based on knowledge and test taking skills, but you can't endow them with a respect for ideas. You can set up democratic elections in Afghanistan and Egypt, but you can't export the process that explains why the elections shouldn't be abolished after the side with the most guns wins.

That's just as true of a lot of the second and third generation immigrants who are no more Swedes than the South Africans became Africans or the English settlers of the American Colonies became Indians. They may own iPhones, dye their hair and listen to the same music that you do, but they often don't have the same assumptions. They bought the product, but not the process. They can drive cars and when they get bored, they can burn them, because they aren't their cars. They're your cars.

And the hair dye and the music and the democratic elections aren't theirs either. Those are things they took from you and if they get bored with them, they'll put on Hijabs, ban music and go back to tyranny, because what they have is a product, not a process. They walked into the movie in the middle and they like some of it, but it's confusing and they don't understand why the hero doesn't just shoot the villain in the head, take his woman and then raise a dozen children in his lair.

After the riots die down and the fires are put out, there will be more talk about integrating them, but what are they being integrated into; a culture that doesn't resist when their cars are torched? Why would they want to join a culture that leaves you unable to protect what is yours? Why would anyone join a culture that makes you so weak and impotent that anyone can come and take what belongs to you?
...
Both West and East have their own processes. And both processes are colliding. The Swedes bring their cars and the savages bring their flames. The burning cars are a metaphor for the impact of Muslim immigration on Sweden and the West.
 
The issues created by a clash of cultures can be resolved, I believe.  But they can't be solved is they are not faces and there is every indication that the Ruling Class on Western culture is unwilling, or afraid, to face the issues.  They know that they can't cow the Muslims so they try to cow the Westerners. 

You can’t help but feel a little bit sorry for your average Muslim terrorist.

This is just too good not to reprint in full.

Tim Blair

Friday, May, 24, 2013,(11:24am)

You can’t help but feel a little bit sorry for your average Muslim terrorist. They go to all the trouble of blowing up children in Boston, killing US Army personnel in Texas, detonating bars in Bali, flying jets into New York skyscrapers and now basically removing a soldier’s head in a London street, all in the holy name of Islam.
 
But where’s the credit?
 
Where’s the respect?
 
Following yesterday’s murderous outrage, one of the alleged killers – easily identified by blood-covered hands and two dripping knives – stood in the street and declared to the world he’d slaughtered his victim as a direct consequence of Islamic beliefs.
 
There are “many, many ayat throughout the Koran,” the man said, citing the book’s ninth chapter, that encourage followers to “fight them as they fight us.”
 
That’s a fairly clear message. Also clear were the cries of “Allahu Akbar” as the two alleged murderers went about carving and hacking at the fallen soldier’s body, having already run him down with a car.
 
Then, as usual, the western media’s reflexive timidity kicked in. The default mode in any coverage of Islamic violence is a painfully cautious avoidance of Islam.
 
British television network ITV was among the first to broadcast the alleged killer’s speech, but neatly edited any mention of the Koran by talking over him. “In a south London street,” a voiceover intoned, “a man with bloodied hands carrying a knife and machete approaches a camera and tries to justify what just happened.”
 
We then heard the fellow’s so-called justification, which made little sense without knowing anything about his blatant and declared Islamic motivation: “I apologise that women had to witness this today but in our lands our women have to see the same.”
 
Actually, I’m pretty sure that women in “his lands” don’t usually see South London psychopaths chopping heads off in the street. The standard Islamist slaughter devices in “his lands” are guns and bombs, such as were deployed by Muslims in Iraq over the past week to kill nearly 100 people, almost all of them sharing the Islamic faith.
 
Perhaps those killers subsequently delivered “political statements” about their acts. That’s how one BBC report described the alleged killer’s South London speech: “Footage has emerged showing a man wielding a bloodied meat cleaver and making political statements.”
 
These “political statements” are a popular feature of Islamic communication in the UK. At a London rally in 2006, the following political statements were presented in the form of hand-printed signs: “Behead those who insult Islam.” “Massacre those who insult Islam.” “Annihilate those who insult Islam.”
 
Alert readers many detect a theme here. Also, extremist Muslims now own at least one copy of Roget’s Thesaurus and have learned how to read it.
 
Despite these abundant warnings, literally written in black and white, the ABC yesterday described the murder as a “gruesome attack that no one saw coming.” Those signs might have been a clue. So, too, may have been unceasing Islamic attacks on western targets.
 
Media timidity in the face of these obvious declarations is matched by equally feeble responses from the political classes. Richard Barrett, a former United Nations co-ordinator for the al-Qaida and Taliban monitoring team, offered this insight following yesterday’s brutality: “The idea that this may be terrorism inspired by some sort of religious extremist belief is quite plausible.”
 
Quite plausible, old chap? Quite plausible, you say? Well, let’s not jump to any conclusions simply because some Koran-quoting maniac carrying two bloody knives has just cut off a man’s head. Maybe he had trouble at home.
 
Anyway, look on the bright side. “There are always going to be these incidents and thankfully they are limited to the death of a few people,” Barrett continued, “which is clearly much better than attacking a transport system or flying two planes into the Twin Towers.”
 
You have to get up … in the morning to sneak anything past this bloke. Even better was Lord Carlile, a former Liberal Democrat MP who seems a perfect caricature of weak western weaseldom. “We have to learn proportionate lessons from what has occurred,” he told the BBC a few hours after the killing.
 
Someone was beheaded while walking along a London street. What, exactly, is a properly “proportionate lesson” to be learned from this? Lord Carlile didn’t say, but he also provided the standard line from anyone seeking to avoid facing obvious Islamic issues: “We mustn’t rush to judgment.”
 
If a knife-carrying fundamentalist tells you he killed a man because the Koran told him to, the amount of time spent considering judgment should be no longer than it takes to hear the words.
Apologists for Islamic terror think that by dodging clear statements of intent they appear thoughtful and considerate, leading to the kind of comically evasive chat yesterday between the ABC’s Emily Bourke and UK government advisor Derrick Campbell. “In fairness, we’ve listened to the statements of the individuals involved in this horrific attack and it’s quite clear they’re making political statements,” said Campbell.
 
There are those “political statements” again. At the same time, Campbell warned, “we still don’t know enough information to be really clear about whether it is specifically a terrorist attack.”
At this point Bourke should have realised she was talking to an idiot and ended the interview, but the ABC host was up for further deep political conversation. “Might it highlight a broader underbelly of discontent with the government?” she mused. “Perhaps broader concern about the British government’s foreign policy, for example?”
 
Or perhaps the killers did it because they’re extremist Islamic lunatics. Just a theory.

The Dem's Dream Ticket


2,000 Brits take to streets to honor fallen Squaddie, media attacks marchers

Well of course.  They're afraid of the Muslims and hate regular people.

Debunking The Notion That Men Are The Domestic Abusers And Women Are The Abused

...Among PASK's findings are that, except for sexual coercion, men and women perpetrate physical and non-physical forms of abuse at comparable rates, most domestic violence is mutual, women are as controlling as men, domestic violence by men and women is correlated with essentially the same risk factors, and male and female perpetrators are motivated for similar reasons.

From PRWeb:
The most comprehensive review of the scholarly domestic violence research literature ever conducted concludes, among other things, that women perpetrate physical and emotional abuse, and engage in control behaviors, at comparable rates to men. The study was directed by the Editor-in-Chief of Partner Abuse, a Springer Publishing Company journal.

Hamel also argues that men are not only disproportionately arrested in domestic violence cases, but sometimes arrested for arbitrary reasons, citing, for example, that police often arrest the bigger and stronger party in cases where the perpetrator is unclear. “Such policies are not only ineffective but violate people’s civil rights,” Hamel concludes. “People in the domestic violence field say that ‘it’s all about the victims.’ Well, the victim is not always the one hit, but sometimes the one arrested.”

Memorial Day weekend violence erupts across city of Chicago

At least 17 people have been shot over the Memorial Day weekend, and six of them died.
They once called this the "city that works." Now it's a Beirut on the Calumet.

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Swedes Take to the Streets to Defend Their Neighborhoods


Stockholm. Faced by another night of terror at the hands of predominantly immigrant rioters, Swedes grown tired of the police’s inability to put an end to the unrest took to the streets Friday night to defend their neighborhoods.

The vigilantes were described as a motley crew of homeowners and concerned citizens, as well as neo-Nazi activists and football hooligans.

In the Stockholm suburb of Tumba the police decided to abandon their earlier non-intervention policy as a large group of police officers rounded up and dispersed a group of vigilantes trying to fend off rioters.

The decision to round up vigilantes while, according to Stockholm Chief of Police Mats Löfving, ”doing as little as possible” to stop rioters, met with a wave of protests in various social media and on the Internet. Representatives of some vigilante groups contacted Fria Tider to give their view of last night’s events.

I wonder who described the Swedes as neo-Nazis and football hooligans.  And just who are the "youths" who are rioting?

"He who must not be named."

Richard Fernandez says it's like a scene from Marvel comics.  Actually it's like a scene from Harry Potter where it's forbidden to actually refer to Lord Voldemort by name.

We have the President of France tell us that we should not jump to conclusions about who stabbed a French soldier.

“The lone attacker was described as a young man wearing a Muslim prayer cap and a North African-style robe called a jellabah. According to a police account, he was monitored on security cameras and seen shedding his robe and fleeing in European clothes before disappearing into the crowd in a subway and suburban train entrance.”
Who could this be? the French leader is baffled.  In Sweden the police have adopted a policy of passive bystanding, except if some Swedes try to protect their property, then they swing into action with clubs and riot gear.

The same kind of bizarre game is being played by the press in the coverage of the riots in Stockholm, now going for almost a week. The Washington Post sets out five charts to explain Sweden’s “youth riots.” “The violent youth riots that spread across Stockholm’s suburbs this week seem at odds with the public perception of Sweden as one of the world’s most liberal and tolerant countries.” We are told the “youth riots” are due to the relative underprivilege of the “foreign born.” But does the Post mean Chinese immigrants then? No they don’t. The Washington Post knows what it means and we are supposed to know what it means, but we are not supposed to admit that we know what it means.

One can only conclude that the authorities themselves jumped to conclusions before anyone else. That they were sure from the first instant what they were dealing with since they knew exactly what words or phrases nobody could refer to. And you can’t do that unless you yourself have jumped to the same conclusions nobody else should jump to.

Thus, references to Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, or Mexicans appeared little censored. Why, you can chaff these people with no consequence. But words referring to certain identities we are not supposed to associate with the news stories are quickly punished such that the UK authorities, who lack the manpower to monitor individuals with terror files at MI5 as long as one’s arm, can still find an ample number of policemen to track down on Facebook and Twitter.
What is it that these lying weasels who head the West's democracies fear? Are they prisoners of their own delusions?
In some paradoxical way, the enemies of the West are now freer than their targets; free, by virtue of their defiance, from the mind-boggling hypocrisy and doublethink that encumber anyone who still subscribes to conventional wisdom. If radical Islamism has any merit at all, it lies in seeing a supine and defenseless culture for what it really is: a fat, idiotic target waiting to be plundered.

How does Holder survive?

Michael A. Walsh calls him Obama's alter ego. Holder says and does things that the president can't say.

By turns whiny, shifty, obfuscatory, petulant, insulting and arrogant, Holder has become a fixture before congressional investigating committees, fending off one Obama scandal after another, while proclaiming that he — the nation’s top cop — doesn’t know anything about anything and highly resents any implication that he does.

Indeed, all the Obama scandals — the murderous gunrunning scheme called Fast and Furious, the secret monitoring of the Associated Press and Fox News reporter James Rosen (personally approved by Holder), even the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative and Tea Party groups for special scrutiny — find their nexus at the top of the Justice Department.

That's true but there is a much bigger reason. Holder is more than Obama's trigger man, he's holding Obama up. There are too many bodies buried by Holder to allow someone else, perhaps with a higher threshold of corruption, to take over Justice. Obama can't take the chance that the truth of Fast and Furious, the IRS, the internal spying, come out during his administration.

Without Holder, Obama becomes vulternable to the law. Glenn Reynolds: Holder is also protection

Woman arrested in Myrtle Beach for wearing thong swimsuit

After covering up.

Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/2013/05/25/2786497/woman-arrested-in-myrtle-beach.html#storylink=cpy

Maoist rebels kill dozens in India

NEW DELHI (AP) -- Indian officials reacted with outrage Sunday to an audacious attack by about 200 suspected Maoist rebels who killed 24 people by setting off a bomb and firing on a convoy carrying ruling party leaders and members in an insurgency-wracked state.

Saturday's ambush, which targeted Congress party politicians returning from a campaign event with the area's indigenous tribal community, appeared to be a warning to officials to stay away from the rebels' main base of support.

Why do they hate Indians so?

What Detroit crisis? Pension fund trustees hang out in Hawaii

(Reuters) - The city of Detroit may be facing a deepening financial crisis but that hasn't stopped four trustees of its public pension funds from spending $22,000 of retirement system funds to attend a conference in Hawaii this week....

The four trustees from Detroit were among hundreds of pension officials from around the country who traveled in the past week to Honolulu for the annual convention of the National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems. Nowling said that Orr's team did not think they had the power to prevent the trip.

Usually the conference captures little outside attention. This year, though, it has faced criticism for its choice of venue, the Hilton Hawaiian Village Waikiki Beach Resort with its five-acre salt-water lagoon, five swimming pools, and flamingos, penguins and turtles.

Attendees claim this is NOT a vacation ashey drink expense accoutn Mai-tais at poolside.

Just a bunch of misguided individuals.

Two men who claimed they had a bomb tried to burst into the cockpit of a flight bound for Britain, triggering fighter jets to be scrambled to intercept the aircraft.


Jet diverted to Stansted after two passengers
__________________________________________________________________________________

Swedish police call in back-up after worst riots in years

Posted Sat May 25, 2013 8:20am AEST
Police in Stockholm called in reinforcements after rioters set cars and a school ablaze in a fifth night of rioting, described as the worst in years.
 
_______________________________________________________________________________
 

British Soldier Beheaded Outside London Barracks


A man believed to be a British soldier was beheaded and hacked up with a meat cleaver by two men, who were then shot by police in London Wednesday afternoon, authorities say.

The victim was cut up "like a piece of meat," said one eyewitness to the slaughter, which occurred in broad daylight near an Army barracks.

The shocking slaughter in the Woolwich area of southeast London was being treated as a possible terrorist attack.
 
____________________________________________________________________________

Richard Fernandez stitches these things together and makes the point that
So it’s only understandable that President Obama’s speech for today focuses on sexual assaults in the military while David Cameron is concentrating on the issue of gay marriage. ...

When things are tough it’s time to deal with the really important things. Count on it. From here on we’ll hear more about the troubles of reality show contestants and the wardrobe malfunctions of buxom celebrities. What else can our dear leaders do? Face the facts?

Trivia is most appealing when the substantial is least. But it’s not all escapism; excessive amounts of unspinnable tidings create a genuine saturation. Back in the days of the Cold War, naval analysts used to count the number of fire control radars on a ship to calculate the number of missiles you had to fire to sink it. If a warship had four radars the ‘price of admission’ was five missiles. The fifth it was presumed, would be one more than the defensive systems could handle. This is analogous to the situation the news is currently in. The narrative machine is overloaded.
 
Presidential roadies can't spin fast enough or claim to know nothing about anything before the next info bomb hits or the next Muslim on Jihadi does something "totally unexpected."  After as while, things begin stick to even the most resistant mind so that even editors of the Virginia Pilot have to divert their gaze from a blank stare into space to realize that their tin God has really screwed up.

Drudge: JERSEY SHORE OPEN FOR BUSINESS


JERSEY SHORE OPEN FOR BUSINESS


Good job,Barry!

Saturday, May 25, 2013

Blazing Cat Fur: They're not Riots, They're "Diversity Bonfires"

The Five



Bob Beckel says it's Muslims!

It's Not About the Nail: "Don't try to fix it. I just need you to listen."


Parking Tickets Issued on Wrecks while Stockholm Burns

It's good to know that Stockholm police have their priorities right.



Since last Sunday, May 19, rioters have taken to the streets of Stockholm’s suburbs every night, torching cars, schools, stores, office buildings and residential complexes. Yesterday, a police station in RÃ¥gsved, a suburb four kilometers south of Stockholm, was attacked and set on fire.

But while the Stockholm riots keep spreading and intensifying, Swedish police have adopted a tactic of non-interference. ”Our ambition is really to do as little as possible,” Stockholm Chief of Police Mats Löfving explained to the Swedish newspaper Expressen on Tuesday.

”We go to the crime scenes, but when we get there we stand and wait,” elaborated Lars Byström, the media relations officer of the Stockholm Police Department. ”If we see a burning car, we let it burn if there is no risk of the fire spreading to other cars or buildings nearby. By doing so we minimize the risk of having rocks thrown at us.”

Swedish parking laws, however, continue to be rigidly enforced despite the increasingly chaotic situation. Early Wednesday, while documenting the destruction after a night of rioting in the Stockholm suburb of Alby, a reporter from Fria Tider observed a parking enforcement officer writing a ticket for a burnt-out Ford.

When questioned, the officer explained that the ticket was issued because the vehicle lacked a tag showing its time of arrival. The fact that the vehicle had been effectively destroyed – its windshield smashed and the interior heavily damaged by fire – was irrelevant according to the meter maid, who asked Fria Tider’s photographer to destroy the photos he had taken. Her employer, the parking company P-service, refused to comment when Fria Tider contacted them on Wednesday afternoon.

H/T VanderLeun 

Why I Like Ted Cruz - again


They don’t want to integrate’: Fifth night of youth rioting rocks Stockholm


So how is that tolerance working out for you?

Anatomy of a liberal shakedown - the H Street Project


The Center for American Progress: where crony capitalists meet Team Obama.
What a fantastic talent liberals possess, the ability to talk out of both sides of their mouths. One side utters platitudes about campaign finance reform and the nefarious influence of money in politics, while the other whispers in the ears of oligarchs and plutocrats. One side slanders Republicans as the tools of corporate interests, while the other solicits donations from some of the largest corporations in the world. The next journalist to examine influence peddling on K Street need only walk two blocks south, to H Street. There he’ll find one heck of a story.

H Street is the home of the Center for American Progress (CAP), founded by former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta in the fall of 2003. Originally conceived as a think tank to match the conservative Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute, CAP quickly dropped the thinking and became, simply, a tank. Its objective was to overpower conservatives and Republicans, to devastate them with a fusillade of government activism, to pulverize their fortifications with ammunition loaded into the progressive echo chamber.

Good weapons don’t come cheap. CAP requires considerable stimulus to acquire, track, and destroy its targets. Podesta’s fundraising methods, as one might expect from a Clintonite, were ingenious. He incorporated two entities: The Center for American Progress as a tax-deductible nonprofit 501(c)(3), and the Center for American Progress Action Fund as a tax-exempt 501(c)(4). Donations would not be disclosed, allowing contributors the protection of anonymity even as CAP called for transparency in political giving and government regulation of political speech.

CAP and CAP Action shared office space, and employees of one entity often wrote for the other, but Podesta’s media flacks always were careful to distinguish between them. CAP, for instance, is where you find the high-toned stuff, the demographic determinism of Ruy Teixeira and the collected ravings of Larry Former Reagan Official Korb.

CAP Action is of a lower brow. It publishes the ThinkProgress blog, where for a time you could read, among other critics of the “lobby,” the foreign policy analysis of one Zaid Jilani, who described his opponents on Twitter as “Israel-firsters”; the creative misspellings of amateur philosopher and terrorist impersonator Matthew Yglesias; and the factually half-baked conspiracy theories of Lee Fang. Think of them as the greats.

Like other greats, all three young men have since left the building, moving on to the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (Jilani), Slate (Yglesias), and the Nation (Fang). Funny enough, it was another Nation writer, Ken Silverstein, who published the bombshell report last week on the finances of his colleague’s former employer, exposing for the first time the identities of corporate donors to the Center for American Progress.

Silverstein’s work, like other reporting from the Los Angeles Times and Mother Jones and the WFB, explores the numerous ditches and culverts irrigated by the river of left-wing dark money that flows through American politics. Essential reading, his piece reveals the extent to which liberal groups benefit from the business community’s desire to get right with the mandarins who have the power to sue and investigate and boycott and demonize. For immunity, and for favor, companies are willing to pay a pretty penny.

Silverstein describes how CAP, in just a few years, grew from seed money provided by the secretive Democracy Alliance of progressive donors to obtain assets of more than $20 million. Its finances took a hit in 2006 despite the Democratic victory in that year’s midterm elections. The following year, CAP management created the Business Alliance, “a membership rewards program for corporate contributors.”

Money came in. And when Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, the alliance grew. “CAP’s total assets now top $44 million,” Silverstein reports, “and its Action Fund treasury holds $6 million more.” CAP’s ability to reflect and influence the opinion of liberal elites, however, is priceless.

Silverstein obtained a document CAP used in 2011 to pitch possible members of the Business Alliance. Slog past the barely literate sentences—“Recognizing the importance of the private sector perspective in the issues debate, the Business Alliance program has proven to be a successful way to keep CAP and its experts connected with and cognizant of business perspectives on the issues of highest priority on our work”—and one arrives finally at the nitty-gritty.

Three levels of membership are described. A $25,000 annual contribution gains one’s corporation entry to “regularly scheduled roundtable discussions with CAP experts, business, Hill, and national leaders”; “two opportunities to engage CAP experts in private meetings”; “invitation to VIP events with leaders from government, business, and academia”; and “updates on new CAP reports and products from Business Alliance staff relevant to your unique interests.”

For a $50,000 annual contribution, one’s corporation enjoys all of those benefits, as well as “two additional opportunities to engage CAP experts in private meetings”; an “exclusive Business Alliance overview meeting offering analyses of issues on Capitol Hill”; and a “private session with American Progress communications and outreach staff.”

And for those special interests that just can’t meet and engage and attend sessions enough, a $100,000 contribution gets one’s corporation all of those benefits, as well as a “membership in Green Energy Economy Council (GEEC)”; a “membership in International Business Council pilot program”; an “invitation to participate in Global Progress Summit”; and a “private meeting with a member of the American Progress Executive Committee.” Only in Obama’s America does it cost $100k to be called a GEEC.

Not stated directly, of course, is that what all of the briefings and interactions and councils get you is entry into the corridors of a think tank with close ties to the presidency. Podesta, whose brother is one of the most influential lobbyists in town, oversaw the transition team that staffed the Obama administration. As American Progress chairman, he watches over his empire. The current head of CAP is Neera Tanden, who has worked for Obama and Hillary Clinton. Tom Perriello, a former liberal Democratic congressman who was one of the president’s favorites, runs CAP Action. These are influential people.

So influential are they, that the Department of Energy loan program that gave us Solyndra and First Solar was largely designed in CAP’s offices. Silverstein tells the appalling story of how a CAP representative praised First Solar in congressional testimony, and promoted it in CAP publications, without revealing that the solar manufacturer was a member of the Business Alliance, and that one of CAP’s board members was also on the board of First Solar. (He left the First Solar board in 2012.)

“CAP’s promotion of the company’s interests has supplemented First Solar’s aggressive Washington lobbying efforts, on which it spent more than $800,000 during 2011 and 2012,” Silverstein writes. The investment returned dividends. Such lobbying has allowed First Solar to enjoy hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer-backed loans and subsidies.

“CAP is a strong proponent of alternative energy, so there’s no reason to doubt the sincerity of its advocacy,” Silverstein observes. No reason at all. Yet I wonder if Silverstein would have been so charitable if the organization he was describing was, say, Americans for Prosperity, and the donors Charles and David Koch.

We know already that as long as the companies belong to politically correct institutions and back politically correct causes, they are indulged and given the benefit of the doubt. But this street goes in only one direction. Travel with the wrong fellows, support the wrong causes, and you will be picketed, boycotted, tarred, feathered, and dragged through the media mud.

What First Solar and other members of the Business Alliance such as Pacific Gas and Electric, General Electric, Boeing, Lockheed, the University of Phoenix, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, the Confederation of Businessmen and Industrialists of Turkey, Goldman Sachs, Walmart, and Comcast are really buying, then, is not so much access but insurance. They are contributing to the Center for American Progress so that they, too, can benefit from the liberal ability to speak from both sides of the mouth. They can reap the benefits of the market, and even of government privilege, so long as they express concern, real or fake, over global warming or abortion rights or affirmative action or whatever the liberal cause of the day happens to be.

They are not participating in an intellectual project or a political movement or a trade association but a shakedown, a scam, a caper—a compelling and labyrinthine detective story that is only beginning to be unraveled.

Steyn: "To the Slaughter"

On Wednesday, Drummer Lee Rigby of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, a man who had served Queen and country honorably in the hell of Helmand Province in Afghanistan, emerged from his barracks on Wellington Street, named after the Duke thereof, in southeast London. Minutes later, he was hacked to death in broad daylight and in full view of onlookers by two men with machetes who crowed “Allahu akbar!” as they dumped his carcass in the middle of the street like so much road kill...
 
If you’re thinking of getting steamed over all that, don’t. Simon Jenkins, the former editor of the Times of London, cautioned against “mass hysteria” over “mundane acts of violence.”
 
That’s easy for him to say. Woolwich is an unfashionable part of town, and Sir Simon is unlikely to find himself there of an afternoon stroll. Drummer Rigby had less choice in the matter. Being jumped by barbarians with machetes is certainly “mundane” in Somalia and Sudan, but it’s the sort of thing that would once have been considered somewhat unusual on a sunny afternoon in south London — at least as unusual as, say, blowing up eight-year-old boys at the Boston Marathon. It was “mundane” only in the sense that, as at weddings and kindergarten concerts, the reflexive reaction of everybody present was to get out their cell phones and start filming.
...
The BBC’s Nick Robinson accidentally described the men as being “of Muslim appearance,” but quickly walked it back lest impressionable types get the idea that there’s anything “of Muslim appearance” about a guy waving a machete and saying “Allahu akbar.” A man is on TV dripping blood in front of a dead British soldier and swearing “by Almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you,” yet it’s the BBC reporter who’s apologizing for “causing offence.” To David Cameron, Drummer Rigby’s horrific end was “not just an attack on Britain and on the British way of life, it was also a betrayal of Islam. . . . There is nothing in Islam that justifies this truly dreadful act.”

Read the whole thing.

How much of Bloomberg’s fortune was gotten from monitoring his customers?


Virtually all the major financial institutions use Bloomberg terminals.  I say virtually all because it’s possible that there may be a hold-out, but Bloomberg is indispensable to the financial world.  It now appears that the Bloomberg sales force, the guys at the bottom of the information pyramid, has access to their customer’s usage patterns and could see what they were doing.  How much more can the top guy find out about what his customers are doing? 

For people who are not in the financial industry an explantion is in order.  The Bloomberg system is like Google, Bing, Facebook and the telephone company combined.  It’s a vast data base for people who want to look up statistics and financial facts.  But it’s also a communications network that allows Bloomberg’s customer to make trades.  The people who run the Bloomberg System can monitor this, and Michael Bloomberg is at the top of that system.  The Week:
"At Bloomberg, omniscience is a feature, not a bug." Monitoring terminal users' data has long been part of an obsession with controlling and using all available data at the company, where "stalking is simply part of the culture." Employees can keep tabs on each other, checking when someone scans — or "badges" — out of an office, and management is said to log every keystroke to track staff and outside customers. That Bloomberg culture explains how hundreds of people at the company could spy on customers "without batting an eye." In fact, this suddenly "inexcusable" practice highlights a key to Bloomberg's phenomenal success. "Data comes into the company — as much as possible, from wherever possible — but it doesn't leave because, at Bloomberg, information is money."

Being able to know what a huge hedge fund manager, the traders at Goldman Sachs or the guys at the Federal Reserve are doing before they even do (log every keystroke) it is a huge advantage if someone wanted to use that information to make money.
Of course he’s not supposed to do that. 
Of course the IRS is not supposed to attack conservative groups as a way of silencing opposition to Obama, the Holder Justice Department is not supposed to spy on reporters, and the mainstream media is not supposed to be blatantly partisan, but that’s the way it is. 
Glenn Reynolds has remarked that   “In the Obama era, the question isn’t whether you’re paranoid. It’s whether you’re paranoid enough.”
I never questioned that the information that the Bloomberg terminal I was using would be misused.  The fact is that my inquiries were plain vanilla and I did not trade on the system.  But questions about the misuse of any data base are no longer related to the tin-foil-hat crowd.  So the question occurs to people who are getting very suspicious about spying and corruption: were all of the billions Michael Bloomberg accumulated just  due to the rental fees on his terminals or was some part based on the illicit use of the system he created; a system that made it possible for him to spy on his customers?  In the Obama era that question can no longer be dismissed.

Killing vs. Tweeting in England


The English legal system stood down for 20 minutes as a British soldier was run down and hacked to death on a London Street.  The unarmed police waited for the armed police. 

Meanwhile two men "tweeted" uncomplimentary comments about the practitioners of Islam who committed the murder.  Police reacted swiftly and arrested the tweeters.

The brutal murder of an off-duty soldier by two Muslim activists continues to dominate the news in Great Britain. The scene was utterly bizarre: in broad daylight, in a busy section of London, the two Muslims apparently ran the soldier down with a car, within a block or two of his barracks, and then attacked him with knives and a meat cleaver. They attempted to behead him, apparently not quite successfully, as hundreds of passers-by looked on. No one stopped them–private ownership of firearms being illegal in the U.K.–but three random women, who have been extravagantly praised for their bravery, tended to the soldier’s body and engaged the murderers in conversation, in hopes of diverting them from killing anyone else. This went on for quite a while.
I was puzzled by early reports which indicated that police were present at the scene from the beginning, but also suggested that the killers waited for something like 20 minutes for policemen to arrive, whereupon they attacked them. It turns out that the reports were not inconsistent. There were policemen on the scene from the beginning, but they were unarmed:
Although other bystanders watched in horror and police waited helplessly for armed officers to arrive, Gemini modestly insisted her [sic] and her mother were not heroes and had done what anyone else would do.
The idea of policemen in one of the world’s major cities “wait[ing] helplessly for armed officers to arrive,” while murderers parade up and down the street soaked in blood and the body of a half-beheaded soldier lies in the street, is almost unbelievable. And yet that is the state of law enforcement in Great Britain. The average American household is better armed than a London policeman, and as a result, it was left to a few women from the crowd of bystanders to try to deal with cleaver-wielding murderers.

But that doesn’t mean the British are entirely lax with respect to law enforcement. No, not at all: it just depends which laws you are talking about. If you mean laws against carving up innocent people on the street with knives, well, the Brits have a problem. But if you complain about such an outrage on Facebook or Twitter, you’re going to be crushed by the full majesty of the law.

Well, it is a lot less risky to arrest a tweeter than a killer.

Friday, May 24, 2013

The Story of Catherine Engelbrecht and the IRS, FBI, OSHA, BATF and the Chicago Way.

Peggy Noonan's article in the Wall street Journal about Catherine Engelbrecht tells you all you need to know about the Obama government.
But the most important IRS story came not from the hearings but from Mike Huckabee's program on Fox News Channel. He interviewed and told the story of Catherine Engelbrecht—a nice woman, a citizen, an American. She and her husband live in Richmond, Texas. They have a small manufacturing business. In the past few years she became interested in public policy and founded two groups, King Street Patriots, and True the Vote.

In July 2010 she sent applications to the IRS for tax-exempt status. What followed was not the harassment, intrusiveness and delay we're now used to hearing of. The US government came down on her with full force.

In December 2010 the FBI came to ask about a person who'd attended a King Street Patriots function. In January 2011 the FBI had more questions. The same month the IRS audited her business tax returns. In May 2011 the FBI called again for a general inquiry about King Street Patriots. In June 2011 Engelbrecht's personal tax returns were audited and the FBI called again. In October 2011 a round of questions on True the Vote. In November 2011 another call from the FBI. The next month, more questions from the FBI. In February 2012 a third round of IRS questions on True the Vote. In February 2012 a first round of questions on King Street Patriots. The same month the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms did an unscheduled audit of her business. (It had a license to make firearms but didn't make them.) In July 2012 the Occupational Safety and Health Administration did an unscheduled audit. In November 2012 more IRS questions on True the Vote. In March 2013, more questions. In April 2013 a second ATF audit.

All this because she requested tax-exempt status for a local conservative group and for one that registers voters and tries to get dead people off the rolls. Her attorney, Cleta Mitchell, who provided the timeline above, told me: "These people, they are just regular Americans. They try to get dead people off the voter rolls, you would think that they are serial killers."

This week Ms. Engelbrecht, who still hasn't received her exemptions, sued the IRS.
This did not come about because of some low level employee in a cubicle in Cincinnati. When that many government agencies come down on you, that's the Chicago way.
This was Chicago. And for a business owner to get involved meant one thing: It would cost you money and somebody from government could destroy you.

The health inspectors would come, and the revenue department, the building inspectors, the fire inspectors, on and on. The city code books aren't thick because politicians like to write new laws and regulations. The codes are thick because when government swings them at a citizen, they hurt.

And who swings the codes and regulations at those who'd open their mouths? A government worker. That government worker owes his or her job to the political boss. And that boss has a boss.

The worker doesn't have to be told. The worker wants a promotion. If an irritant rises, it is erased. The hack gets a promotion. This is government.

So everybody kept their mouths shut, and Chicago was hailed by national political reporters as the city that works.

I didn't understand it all back then, but I understand it now. Once there were old bosses. Now there are new bosses. And shopkeepers still keep their mouths shut. Tavern owners still keep their mouths shut.

Even billionaires keep their mouths shut.

One hard-working billionaire whose children own the Chicago Cubs dared to open his mouth. Joe Ricketts considered funding a political group critical of Obama before last year's campaign. Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama's former chief of staff, made it clear that if the Cubs wanted City Hall's approval to refurbish decrepit Wrigley Field, Ricketts better back off.

It happened. He backed off. It was sickening. But it was and is Chicago.

And now — with the IRS used as political muscle and the Obama administration keeping that secret until after the president was elected — America understands it too.



All the President's Men


Peggy Noonan gets it almost right

The WSJ’s Peggy Noonan lays out the known facts of the IRS case and concludes that it requires a special prosecutor. She’s right, and frankly, it’s amazing how in a week, the American media has pretty much come around from the question of if a special prosecutor is needed for the IRS investigation, to how broad should be the limits of the special prosecutor’s investigation?

But here’s where Noonan gets it wrong. Right in the last paragraph:


“Again, if what happened at the IRS is not stopped now—if the internal corruption within it is not broken—it will never stop, and never be broken. The American people will never again be able to have the slightest confidence in the revenue-gathering arm of their government. And that, actually, would be tragic.”

Actually it wouldn’t be “tragic” if the American people were not to have confidence in this or any arm of their government. It would be exactly what the Founders called for.

My favorite quotation from the entire 85 editions of the Federalist Papers is this one from Federalist 25 by Alexander Hamilton:



“The people are always most in danger when the means of injuring their rights are in the possession of those of whom they entertain the least suspicion.”


In fact, you could almost sum up the gist of the entire Constitution with that single statement,

I wish I had said that.

"Racist" Terms

Glenn Reynolds links to an article about the reason that fried chicken is now a racist term.
The article Culinary Racism gives various explanations going back to slavery.
The most obvious explanation derives from the historical fact that fried chicken dishes were popular in slave homes on Southern plantations. In many cases, chickens were the only livestock animals that slaves were permitted to raise on their own, and—given that Scots founded much of the American South—there’s speculation that African-Americans tweaked and perfected their masters’ imported tradition of frying birds.

But there's a problem with this because lots of people like fried chicken: A lot of it is regional: people in the South are perceived to like friend chicken more than their northern counterparts. The South is poorer than the North and chicken is less expensive than beef so the fondness for chicken could be explained by relative wealth. I'm a Dutch immigrant and I love fried chicken; does that make me Black? Should I avoid serving friend chicken at any gathering where Blacks are present? If my Black friends serve friend chicken are they self-hating?

Let me propose an alternative explanation. The fried chicken=racist equation was created by the very powerful Race Industry. As an illustration of how these associations are created we need only refer to some of the Liberal race hustlers of today who tell us that:
  • Lazy=racists
  • Colored=racist (ever since the RI invented other terms)
  • Negro=racist  (ever since the RI invented other terms)
  • Niggardly=racist (out of ignorance a perfectly good word was outlawed)
  • Boy=racist
  • Cotton pickin’=racist
  • Urban=racist  (this really is a euphemism when used by the "good people")
  • “shuck and jive”=racist (except when Chris Matthews or Andrew Coumo uses it)
  • “this president”=racist
  • Chicago=racist
  • References to golf (if played by Obama)=racist
  • Whitewash=racist
  • Limbaugh=racist (just because)
Before this list gets too long, let’s just go with the Chris Matthews definition of racist to include any criticism of Barack Obama. In fact, it is fair to broaden that to include any criticism of Blacks (can I say that; is that still the accepted term?) as racist. That’s why I was so shocked to see the Miami police department preparing for an "Urban Beach Weekend" without being accused of blatant racism. Now that it’s been pointed out, expect the “Justice Brothers” to hop on a plane and lead the demonstrations.