The Virginian Pilot’s Front Page Editorials

The Virginian Pilot, like most of the MSM doesn’t keep its editorial opinion on the editorial page. The paper’s editorial opinions are on full display on the front page.

 

How?

 

By its editors’ decisions as to what constitutes the news.

 

Since the shootings in Connecticut, the editors of the Virginian Pilot have decided that the front page of this so-called “local” paper should be devoted to the shooting. Not so controversial you say? Well, what about relegating the Benghazi attacks on our embassy and the death of our Americans to the back pages? Even today, the report that the Obama administration was derelict in its duty in protecting the embassy in Benghazi gets inside-the paper coverage.

 

Meanwhile the school shootings get covered on the front page of the paper, the front page of the second section (Hampton Roads) and the lead editorial, an op-ed, every letter to the editor that they printed as well as a totally misleading editorial cartoon by Tom Toles, a well-paid liar for the Washington Post, telling us that the shooter was using a machine gun (he wasn’t).

 

There was a brief mention on the inside of the paper about the fact that a pistol purchased by the George Gillett, Asst. Special Agent in Charge of ATF Phoenix when Fast and Furious began ended up at a fatal shooting in Mexico. What was not mentioned is that Agent Gillett falsified information to buy the gun in the first place.   No curiosity was exhibited as to how a gun owned by the ATF agent in charge of the ATF Phoenix office ended up in a Mexican crime scene.   It must be just one of those coincidences.  But it does allow the Virginian Pilot's editors to claim later on, in case anyone  ever asks, that they covered the story.  It's called papering your behind.

 

And once again the paper called Fast and Furious a “botched gun tracking operation” when it was nothing of the sort. There was no gun tracking. The Obama administration facilitated the sale of guns to Mexican drug cartels. Every time Fast & Furious is described as a botched operation it furthers that lie that somehow the transfer of over 2000 guns to violent killers in Mexico was an accident. Let’s put it as plainly as we can. Fast & Furious was deliberately designed to provide an excuse for new gun control laws by insuring that American guns would appear at Mexican murder scenes. That having failed to use Fast & Furious as intended, the Obama administration, in coordination with the MSM have gleefully used the shootings in Connecticut as the new excuse to take guns out of the hands of civilians.

 

Next time the press tries to tell you that the editorials are relegated to the editorial page, keep this simple example in mind. 

"Do you know what a barrel shroud is?"

Remember that our children are so precious to us that it is imperative that we leave them utterly and completely defenseless.

Uncle Sam Books 50% Loss As Government Motors Buys Back 200MM Shares From Tim Geithner

A few days after divesting its stake in the firm that started it all, AIG, and at a profit at that (ignoring that the risk has merely been onboarded by the Fed whose DV01 is now $2+ billion as a result), the US Treasury continues to divest of all its bailout stake, this time proceeding to GM, where the channel stuffing firm just announced it would buyback 200MM shares from the US government at a price of $27.50. More importantly, the "Treasury said it intends to sell its other remaining 300.1 million shares through various means in an orderly fashion within the next 12-15 months, subject to market conditions. Treasury intends to begin its disposition of those 300.1 million common shares as soon as January 2013 pursuant to a pre-arranged written trading plan. The manner, amount, and timing of the sales under the plan are dependent upon a number of factors." Assuming a price in the $27.50 range, this implies a nearly 50% loss on the government's breakeven price of $54. So much for the "profit" spin. One hopes all those Union votes were well worth the now booked $40+ billion cost to all taxpayers.

Harry Reid in 2010: "I Carried a Gun Every Place I Went"...

Only the ruling class needs guns.

Harry Reid in 2010: "I Carried a Gun Every Place I Went"...

Obama taps Biden to lead gun grab...

He’s a Lumberjack, and He’s OK: The Wobbly Scholarship of Erik Loomis, Ph.D.

The taxpayers of Rhode Island (and the parents of university students) are paying Erik Loomis to teach kids the history of dildos.

And here's how he got his PhD:  Loomis earned his Ph.D (with distinction!; C.V. here) writing about (in part) homosexual lumberjacks and castrated Marxists in the early 1900s (well, okay, only one castrated Marxist).

It's hard to make this stuff up if you were writing comedy.  This amoral monster is entrusted with instructing student from their freshmen to their senior year. Why was the second-rate intellect hired?

Howard Kurtz - Gun Expert

What is a "high-magazine clip?" The highly paid and incredibly smart Howie Kurtz explains:

Should Jared Loughner have been able to obtain 30 rounds of ammunition to kill six people and wound Gabby Giffords, or should there be limits on high-magazine clips?

You know how you sometimes type along and the words on the screen are not quite right and the spell checker is desperately trying to make corrections? There is not checker for stupid.  The media is going to be full of stories composed by people who literally lack a clue about guns, but know that they are evil and need to be banned.  Especially those "high-magazine clips." You know what they say about journalism: You tend to believe it until it’s about something you actually know.

RGIII, ‘Cornball Brothers,’ and the Blackness Code

Is this man Black? Some people are asking the question.

Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III (RGIII, as he is known) has a problem. It turns out that some black commentators, and probably some black elites, don’t think he is black enough — because he dared to publicly state that he didn’t want to be judged solely by his skin color as an NFL quarterback.

Last Thursday morning on First Take, ESPN’s Rob Parker uttered a comment for which he was later fired, although he probably only said what some African Americans think but don’t publicly express: “My question is, and it’s just a straight, honest question: Is he a brother, or is he a cornball brother?”

I’d never heard the term before, so I did a quick search and landed at UrbanDictionary.com. Here is the definition I found there:

Cornball brother: An African-American man who chooses not to follow the stereotype . . . life choices include marrying white women, being a Republican, and not being ‘down with the cause.’

Bill Cosby got in trouble with the Blackness Police when he discussed the problems of the Black underclass. He was accused to blaming the poor when he had the courage to mention "that which must not be named."

It was the NAACP’s 50th-anniversary celebration of Brown v. Board of Education, in 2004, and Cosby had the audacity to talk about some of the serious challenges facing African Americans, particularly in America’s inner cities.

“Brown versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person’s problem,” he said. “We’ve got to take the neighborhood back. We’ve got to go in there. Just forget telling your child to go to the Peace Corps. It’s right around the corner.”

Not exactly fighting words, you’d think. Cosby then addressed the problems confronting black Americans: senseless black-on-black crime in America, failing public schools that so poorly serve young black men, and a dysfunctional welfare state.

“There’s no English being spoken, and they’re walking and they’re angry,” he said. “Oh, God, they’re angry and they have pistols and they shoot and they do stupid things. And after they kill somebody, they don’t have a plan. Just murder somebody. Boom. Over what? A pizza?”

He went on to talk about the problem of illegitimacy as it affects black America:

Five or six different children, same woman, eight, ten different husbands or whatever, pretty soon you’re going to have to have DNA cards so you can tell who you’re making love to. You don’t know who this is. It might be your grandmother. I’m telling you, they’re young enough. Hey, you have a baby when you’re twelve. Your baby turns 13 and has a baby, how old are you? Huh? Grandmother.

He closed out the speech with some words about the legacy of all of those who fought the civil-rights battles of the 1960s: “I just want to get you as angry as you ought to be. When you walk around the neighborhood and you see this stuff, that stuff’s not funny. These people are not funny anymore. And that’s not [my] brother. And that’s not my sister.”

 

Decades after ML King gave his heralded speech about wishing to be judged by the content of his character, not the color of his skin,  the people who share his skin color insist that if you are Black you must think Black, act  Black, marry Black, vote Black.  If you don't you will be denounced as a traitor to your race.  You will be damned in the halls of academia and in the columns of newspapers and magazines.  Broadcasters will condemn you and books will be written castigating you.  The KKK does not have more rigid standards of race consciousness that the upholders of racial purity on the Black Plantation.

But there are encouraging signs. At least those enforcers of the Black code are finding a smaller audience. The conservative community has its own media now which it uses to denounce the racists on the Left. Bill Cosby is no longer alone on his judgment. Is there irony in the fact that the part of the culture that is most in tune with ML King’s wish about skin color and character is the white conservative? Perhaps not, because Dr. King was rumored to be a Republican.  

Who did I miss? (Things my brother sent me)

I just received my tax return for 2011 back from the IRS. It puzzles me!!!
They are questioning how many dependents I claimed.
I guess it was because of my response to the line : "List all dependents"
I replied: 12 million illegal immigrants; 3 million crack heads;
42 million unemployed people on food stamps, 2 million people in over 243 prisons;
Half of Mexico ; and 535 persons in the U.S. House and Senate.Evidently, this was NOT an acceptable answer.
I KEEP ASKING MYSELF, WHO THE HELL DID I MISS?

Radical Chic Meets Geritol

Via Glenn Reynolds, Ed Driscoll

If true, as I wrote the other day, the sixties are now complete: A president supported by an ex-Weatherman and the New Black Panthers might as well have a Winter Soldier in his cabinet for the complete Radical Chic Meets Geritol experience. If only Leonard Bernstein was still around to savor the moment.

The Death Porn Media

Smitty at The Other McCain writes Death Porn Media Victim Unexpectedly Negative About The Encounter

I could not agree more.  The wall-to-wall coverage of the latest mass murder, filled with incorrect information, pictures of crying children and parents, stand-ups of so-called "reporters" but in actual fact ghouls, purveyors of violence porn, made me turn off the set and refuse to read the stories.  You can get all the facts from DRUDGE. 

Think about what you have seen and read and let me summarize it for you: a kid went onto a school and killed 26 people, mostly young children.  Everything else, literally everything else, and there is very little else, is either wrong or irrelevant. 

Here is what one woman had to say about her experience when she was a 14 year-old and a friend, a fellow student, was killed in school.

I can’t remember if she told us then that Mike had died. I can’t remember how I found my best friend Tori, but I know that I did. I can’t remember how I ended up on the front lawn of the school, surrounded by friends who were crying into their hands, their backpacks strewn across the sidewalk, the swirl of police lights shining down on us like sunshine.

But you know what I do remember?

YOU were there. YOU, with your enormous video cameras. YOU, with your microphones poking into the bubble of grief that grew bigger as we waited for our parents to find us. YOU, with your horrible questions about what had happened, had we known Mike, had we seen anything? No parents there yet, just children. No teachers, just children. And you.

Some of us screamed at you to leave us alone. Some of us answered your sick questions, because you were the grown-ups, and we were the kids. I don’t even know how you got there so fast, before our parents, before anyone else could swoop us back inside and ask you to leave. But there you were, with your vans and your lights, asking us how it felt to know that another child had been killed. How it felt to be scared. How it felt to wonder about the names of everyone else, to be desperately hoping for more information, while feeling terrified about what the truth would really be.

I remember you. I remember your names. I remember what channel you were from. I remember that you filled the parking lot at Mike’s funeral. You stood in a line outside of the door, devouring the footage of crying football players running away from the service, like rabid hungry wolves. You replayed the video of Mike being loaded into the ambulance, over and over and over again, even when people wrote to you and asked you to stop.

And you were there today, in Newtown. Asking children who can barely spell their names what it felt like to have the trajectory of their life changed in a single morning.

How the fuck do you think it feels?

They will remember you. They will remember feeling violated by you. Their parents will regret that the veil of shock blurred their vision enough to allow you to interview their children.

Our country is struggling with finding the answers we need to keep our babies safe. We are struggling with how we feel about guns, and how we feel about mental health care. Report on that.

But the 14 year old child in me begs you, begs you, to not ask children to report on what it felt like. What it sounded like. How scary it was.

These ghouls with microphones and cameras are not looking for information, they're not "reporting." They are collecting people's grief, shock and fear and distilling it to feed out in little five and ten second snippets so that they can attract eyeballs of the rubberneckers and sell those eyeballs to car dealers, furniture stores and soft drink bottlers hawking their wares. They are using your emotion to make money and don't give a damn about how you really feel. In fact they worse you feel, the more you cry, the more grief you exhibit, the better for them because that makes for better theater.  

Glenn Reynolds: 

They’re just Big Evil Corporations who don’t care what happens to children as they pursue profit without end.

Helen Smith points out that

Seeing other shooters showered with media coverage leads to a possible copycat effect, as outlined in the book The Copycat Effect: How the Media and Popular Culture Trigger the Mayhem in Tomorrow’s Headlines.

There are many areas of blame that can be explored in a mass killing. I think that much of it has to do first with the perpetrator and also with deinstitutionalization, but others think differently. If some idiots want to blame the Second Amendment for the recent killings, go ahead. But if you do, you will also have to blame the First Amendment, which allows freedom of the press and which has just as much to do with these events. If citizens’ rights to bear arms is in question here, then so is the right to a free press. Are we really willing to give up our freedoms that easily? Wouldn’t it make more sense to figure out how and when to treat the mentally ill so that murder isn’t an option?

And you know, it takes a certain kind of person who lacks the empathy to shove a microphone in some scared child's face.  It's a man or woman without a soul.  Without a shred of human decency.  It takes a death porn pimp.

“Why should you need ID to buy a gun when you don’t need ID to vote for the people who want to take away your right to buy a gun?”

From Glenn Reynolds

MARK SHIELDS HAS NO IDEA WHAT HE’S TALKING ABOUT: “In the United States of America in 2012, it’s easier in many states . . . to buy an automatic weapon than it is to rent an automobile.”

Er, no, it’s not.

He and Rupert Murdoch need to do a little bit of studying before trying to capitalize on this tragedy.

UPDATE: Reader Bruce Goldston snarks: “Why should you need ID to buy a gun when you don’t need ID to vote for the people who want to take away your right to buy a gun?”

It isn't news, it's just rubbernecking. The media is doing everyitng to insure that another would-be mass murderer proceeds with his fantasy.

A forensic psychologist says what can be done to reduce the chances of this happening again.  If the media doesn’t want to propagate mass murders:

·         Don’t start the story with sirens blaring.

·         Don’t have photographs of the killer.

·         Don’t make this 24/7 coverage.

·         Do everything you can not to make the body count the lead story.

·         Not to make the killer some kind of anti-hero.

·         Do localize this story to the affected community and make it as boring as possible in every other market.

·         Every time we have intense saturation coverage we expect to see on or two more.

Patrick Moran smashed in his girlfriend’s face; Tommy Christopher slams the real villains: Ace and Twitchy

Let’s recap: Patrick Moran, son of Dem Rep. Jim Moran, entered a guilty plea for assaulting his girlfriend, Kelly Hoffman. She now says it was “accidental,” but officers on the scene witnessed the woman-beating sleazebag slam Hoffmans’ head into a metal trash can cage. She was “bleeding heavily” from what appeared to be a broken nose and her eye socket was so swollen a medical technician suspected a skull fracture.
But you know who’s “really horrible and stupid”? Conservatives, natch. You know, no redeeming (D) after their names.

Trashcan Accident @SimonTemplarPV

Sensitive, lady-loving Mediaite feminist Tommy Christopher was so distraught over the appalling domestic abuse that he immediately lashed out at the filthy lowlife. Er, make that lowlifes: Twitchy and blogger Ace of Spades.

 

Tea Party thugs destroy black man’s business

Wait, did I say Tea Party thugs? I meant union thugs. Sorry to confuse you, lefties and the media (PTR). You can go away now, because this won’t interest you.

Apparently union protesters targeted anything that had a white tent yesterday, even reportedly taking out the hot dog stand of Lansing fixture Clint Tarver.




As they were destroying his business they were calling him N*gger & Uncle Tom.

The White House declines to condemn union violence in Michigan even though if Obama had a brother he would look like Clint Tarver. And of course the MSM is telling us that ‘The protests were mostly peaceful’

Belafonte’s Advice to Obama: Imprison Opposition “Like a Third World Dictator”

When the Left takes power, the result is always the same.

The Muslim says, “If Allah wills it.” The Christian says, “In Jesus’ name.” The liberal says, “Studies have shown.”

The Muslim says, “If Allah wills it.” The Christian says, “In Jesus’ name.” The liberal says, “Studies have shown.” These are the sacred words that establish the authoritative truth of whatever ruinous mischief the liberal is about to propose.

“Studies” are one of the principal means by which the liberal regime maintains and extends its power.

Years ago I attended a conference of Swiss academic types in New York City. Their subject was Swiss immigration and multiculturalism policies. They maintained that multiculturalism and diversity was the way for Switzerland to go, because “studies” showed that it worked. Though I was just the guest of a guest at this event, I interposed: “So Switzerland has existed as a successful society for seven hundred years, and you want to change it radically—on the basis of “studies“? They didn’t get my point. Humorlessly they maintained that their studies were the best authority.

"The Klu Klux Klan is not wearing sheets. The Klan is wearing Air Jordans."

Blaming Whitey.



"Everything that's negative about the American Negro is the fault of white America."

• "50% of black female 18- 45 have genital herpes.
• 60% of black men drop out of high school.
• The leading cause of death for black men is other black men.
• How to become a professional victim."

The contrast to an earlier generation is amazing. 

I attended a memorial service at Howard University last weekend for a very accomplished woman who died at age 97. She was black and was born during the era of Jim Crow. She wanted to be a doctor and was accepted to medical school in Kansas in the 1930s. She was told that she could only attend for two years after which she would have to transfer to a black medical school because white patients would not want to be treated by a black person. She went to Howard for her last 2 years of medical school, practiced in New York, and along the way not only delivered countless babies but attracted countless friends.  In addition to private practice she held high level positions as a medical administrator for both public and private organizations.

She is the embodiment of the individual who did not allow adversity to stand in her way. She not only overcame racial prejudice, she overcame the untimely death of both her husband and her only child. She didn’t resent, she didn’t hate, she never made excuses and lived life to the full. Her generosity was remarked by the many speakers at her memorial service. She gave generously of herself and the treasure she accumulated in this world and has gone on to her reward.  I am proud to have known her and be part of her circle of friends.

I sometimes wonder if she, and people of her generation who found an ethnic community that was much healthier than the one that exists today, may have been fortunate to live in a time when white people were open in their discrimination.  Instead, the modern Liberal continues to look down on his Black neighbors, but does so with a debilitating “benevolence” that robs them of the need to succeed.

 

What caused the change?   Why did a black woman born in 1915 succeed despite all the obstacles placed in her way while so many black women (and men) born after the Civil Rights Act blame Whitey for their failure? 

It’s interesting isn’t it? There was no federal program aimed specifically at Irish immigrants, or Chinese, or Poles or Italians despite widespread discrimination against them. Could it be that the absence of Benevolent Liberalism, “benign neglect” in Patrick Moynihan’s words, permitted them to succeed using their own efforts? How do you overcome benevolence that always looks down at you as a helpless lesser being who can’t succeed by your own effort but, like a competitor in the Special Olympics, is a racial, cultural or ethnic cripple?

Let Liberal columnist Nicholas Kristof whose column appears in the Leftist New York Times explain it.  He's writing about people living in Appalachia, but he could be talking about a major part of the the black community:

“This is painful for a liberal to admit, but conservatives have a point when they suggest that America’s safety net can sometimes entangle people in a soul-crushing dependency. Our poverty programs do rescue many people, but other times they backfire.”

My friend grew up at a time when there were no government anti-poverty programs that paid unmarried women to have babies, or keep their children illiterate.

Antipoverty programs also discourage marriage: In a means-tested program like S.S.I., a woman raising a child may receive a bigger check if she refrains from marrying that hard-working guy she likes. Yet marriage is one of the best forces to blunt poverty. In married couple households only one child in 10 grows up in poverty, while almost half do in single-mother households.

Most wrenching of all are the parents who think it’s best if a child stays illiterate, because then the family may be able to claim a disability check each month.

The transition of a child being the means for providing government aid to their parents to receiving government aid as an adult is seamless.  Kristof again:

That is a burden on taxpayers, of course, but it can be even worse for children whose families have a huge stake in their failing in school. Those kids may never recover: a 2009 study found that nearly two-thirds of these children make the transition at age 18 into S.S.I. for the adult disabled. They may never hold a job in their entire lives and are condemned to a life of poverty on the dole — and that’s the outcome of a program intended to fight poverty.

Kristof provides an example of a girl who also wanted to be a doctor but who found the government safety net  instead.

Ms. Hurley says that she was raped by a family member when she was 12, and that another family member then introduced her to narcotics. She became an addict, she says, mostly to prescription painkillers that are widely trafficked here.

Equipped with a crackling intelligence, Ms. Hurley once aspired to be a doctor. But her addictions and a rebellious nature got her kicked out of high school, and at 16 she became engaged to a boyfriend and soon had his baby.

There is very little difference between the drug addiction that destroyed Ms. Hurley's hopes and the government programs that provide low level maintenance to people who do not have the family and community support that allow people to escape the poverty trap.  I would like to think that my friend who was memorialized last weekend would have been able to achieve her goals despite all the modern obstacles that exist.  But I believe that the segregation and racism of her time was as much a spur as an obstacle, while the honey trap of government programs are vastly more debilitating. 
   

White House declines to condemn union violence in Michigan

The union violence, which included at least one televised assault on a journalist, followed an Obama rally in Michigan Dec. 10....

However, Carney then choose to shift the subject from Michigan’s labor dispute by calling on other reports for questions.

“Let me move around,” he said.

Like in Benghazi, the White House claims to be the last to know.

12-11-12 Steven Crowder on The Dana Show

One day after Obama incites Tony Cummings to beat Steven Crowder up.

Democrats Turn Violent in Michigan

AFP tent torn down with women and children in it. Was punched in the face four times. RT and await the video.

David Burge@iowahawkblog

Michigan union thugs' pet legislator promises violencetwitter.com/MIHouseDems/st…

Lindsay Veremis@LindsayVeremis

Rep. Geiss: there will be repercussions "there will be blood" this undoes 100 years of labor relations #righttowork

Dutchman launches life-sized replica of Noah's Ark

DORDRECHT, Netherlands (AP) — Just as the first storms of winter roll in, Dutchman Johan Huibers has finished his 20-year quest to build a full-scale, functioning model of Noah's Ark — an undertaking of, well, biblical proportions.

Huibers, a Christian, used books 6-9 of Genesis as his inspiration, following the instructions God gives Noah down to the last cubit.

Translating to modern measurements, Huibers came up with a vessel that works out to a whopping 427 feet (130 meters) long, 95 feet (29 meters) across and 75 feet (23 meters) high. Perhaps not big enough to fit every species on Earth, two by two, as described in the Bible, but plenty of space, for instance, for a pair elephants to dance a tango.

Tennis player Caroline Wozniacki accused of 'racist' impersonation of Serena Williams by stuffing bra and pants

Immelt: Communist China 'Works'

The chairman of the President Barack Obama's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of GE, praised China this morning on CBS:

Judge finds NC ‘Choose Life’ plates unconstitutional

RALEIGH, N.C. – A federal judge has ruled it is unconstitutional for North Carolina to issue pro-life license plates unless the state offers similar plates supporting abortion rights.

U.S. District Court Judge James C. Fox ruled on Friday that North Carolina cannot produce or distribute the “Choose Life” plate.

Judge Fox concluded, “The State’s offering of a Choose Life license plate in the absence of a pro-choice plate constitutes viewpoint discrimination in violation of the First Amendment.”

The American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina Legal Foundation had filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina in Sept. 2011 on behalf of North Carolinians seeking a specialty license plate that supports a woman’s right to reproductive freedom.

“This is a great victory for the free speech rights of all North Carolinians, regardless of their point of view on reproductive freedom,” said Chris Brook, legal director of the ACLU-NCLF.

There's something not quite right about hailing the suppression of a license plate as a victory for free speech, but the ACLU seems to think so. Of course, the NC legislature could offer a "choose Death" license plate.

US sending 20 more F-16s to Egypt, despite turmoil in Cairo

Arming the Muslim Brotherhood. Paid for by you, the US taxpayer.

"The Morsi-led Muslim Brotherhood government has not proven to be a partner for democracy as they had promised, given the recent attempted power grab," a senior Republican congressional aide told FoxNews.com.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, (R-Fla.), who chairs the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, recently criticized U.S. military aid to Egypt:

“The Obama administration wants to simply throw money at an Egyptian government that the president cannot even clearly state is an ally of the United States,” Rep. Ros-Lehtinen said.

The $213 million order, which is paid for by U.S. taxpayers and is part of Egypt's foreign aid package from America, had to be approved by lawmakers in Washington.While the basic F-16 has been a military workhorse for top air forces for more than 25 years, the cockpit electronics are constantly updated and the models Egypt is getting are the best defense contractor Lockheed Martin makes.

If it comes to war between Israel and Egypt, the US will have armed both countries.

'Vulture spying for Israel' caught in Sudan

"Israeli spy."

Sudanese officials are said to have concluded that the bird was a secret agent after discovering it was fitted with GPS and solar-powered equipment capable of broadcasting images via satellite, according to Haaretz newspaper, which cited an Egyptian website, El Balad.

The vulture also had a tag attached to its leg with "Israel Nature Service" and "Hebrew University, Jerusalem", leading to accusations that it was on an Israeli surveillance mission.

You just can't make this stuff up. 

The Royal Presidency: Obama lives better than kings.

Mark Steyn:

In his recent book Presidential Perks Gone Royal, Robert Keith Gray, a former Eisenhower staffer, revealed that last year the U.S. presidency cost American taxpayers $1.4 billion. Over the same period, the entire royal family cost British taxpayers about $57 million. There’s nothing “royal” about the current level of “presidential perks”: The Obama family costs taxpayers more than every European royal house put together.

In the American republic, even the dogs cost more. The Queen is a famous corgi lover and has been breeding them since she was a young girl. Now in her late 80s she’s slowing down and only keeps four. The president has one pooch, a photo-op accessory called Bo, who unlike the corgis requires a full-time handler. In contrast to the stingy remuneration offered by the royal household, the presidential dog-walker is one of 226 White House staff earning over $100,000 a year. For many centuries, the King had a courtier whose somewhat intimate duties were reflected in his title: the Groom of the Stool, a position abolished in 1559. Now, after two and a third centuries, the American presidency has evolved to the point that it has a full-time six-figure Groom of the Canine Stool. Will he be accompanying the president on Air Force One to liaise with the Keeper of the Privy Flatscreen over screenings of Lassie?

Read the whole thing.

If Good and Evil Exist, God Exists

As a second feature:
Do You Have Free Will?

Rescue of Roger Locher

An incredible story of the American military.

Obama Backers Duck Obama Taxes

Guess who’s looking to avoid Obama’s “patriotic” tax increases: The Washington Post and Warren Buffett!

It appears that the Washington Post intends to pay all of its projected 2013 dividends in 2012. Corporations typically pay dividends one every quarter but that is simply a custom, not a law. So the Washington Post company plans to pay all four of the dividends it planned to pay in 2013 in December 2012. Why? Well, in 2012 the tax on dividends is 15%. In 2013 the rate can go as high as 43.4%.

And guess who the largest shareholder in the Washington Post company is. Right, you Mensa member you, it’s Warren Buffett with 1.7 million shares. That means that Warren “I’m not being taxed enough” Buffett is going to collect $17 million this year on which he pays less than half of what his patriotic share would be.

Do you think that a discreet phone call was made to the Washington Post by its largest shareholder who wanted to avoid paying his “fair” share? Why so cynical? Don’t you believe in coincidences? 

I don’t want to call this “crony capitalism” or part of the culture of corruption, but the next time Warren Buffett opens his fat trap about not paying enough in taxes, I want to shove this down his throat. Buffett has built his entire empire around tax avoidance. Berkshire Hathaway is organized as an insurance company with an insurance company’s ability to defer income while in in reality it’s a mutual fund. The special deal Buffett got from the Washington Post is simply one in a long string of special deals that Buffett has been able to pull off because of his wealth. A lot of the businesses that he owns were purchased as below-market deals because the heirs of the founder wanted to cash out.

Rush Limbaugh is right about Buffett: he’s using his tax-me-more rhetoric to deflect the Left from going after his wealth by pretending he’s one of them. And they have always fallen for it. In reality, Buffett, not Romney, is the real vulture capitalist, swooping in on sick and dying companies and lending them money in return for terms that no one else can get. He’s made literally billions that way. This Washington Post dividend is simply the cherry on the sundae.

Bob Woodward: ‘Who is Barack Obama?’ (Washington keeps wondering about the Manchurian Candidate)

Yet they voted for him

Woodward also spoke about his impressions of Obama, calling the president a figure surrounded by “mystery.”

When asked what he’d most like to know about Obama, Woodward said he knows the president keeps a diary and that he’d like to read it.

“What’s driving him? Who is Barack Obama?” he said. “A description of that inner life will be something if it’s candid.”

(Also on POLITICO: Woodward: Obama didn't fix economy)

Woodward said that, especially compared to former President George W. Bush, Obama keeps his thoughts and intentions more to himself.

“There wasn’t a lot of mystery about how Bush felt: He was a gut player and, as he said, it was his job to put some calcium in the spine,” he said. “But I think Obama is a little bit more of an uncertain figure, and quite frankly, I think when he writes his own autobiography about his time as president, and there is more excavation of all this, we’re going to discover that he’s working it out as he plays the game.”

A psychological study of Obama voters, at least those who did not vote for him because of race, would be fascinating.

O Come, Emmanuel - Christmas Version - ThePianoGuys

College - Bringing Families Together

David and Bathsheba, a very modern story.

This is a story of great men behaving despicably.

 

It’s a fascinating story for several reasons, but one of them is that it's such a modern story.  It could be told of men and women today. It’s the story of a hero who achieves fame and power. He finds an attractive woman who just happens to be married to someone else and seduces her.

2 One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful,
3 and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, "Isn't this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite?"
4 Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her. (She had purified herself from her uncleanness.) Then she went back home.

The woman gets pregnant, this was before the government passed out free birth control.

5 The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, "I am pregnant."

So we need a cover-up. The husband is away at war and gets called back home and is encouraged to go to his house and to sleep with his wife so that he can be fooled into thinking the baby is his. But he's committed to his king and to his buddies in the army so he refuses.

6 So David sent this word to Joab: "Send me Uriah the Hittite." And Joab sent him to David.
7 When Uriah came to him, David asked him how Joab was, how the soldiers were and how the war was going.
8Then David said to Uriah, "Go down to your house and wash your feet." So Uriah left the palace, and a gift from the king was sent after him.
9 But Uriah slept at the entrance to the palace with all his master's servants and did not go down to his house.
10 When David was told, "Uriah did not go home," he asked him, "Haven't you just come from a distance? Why didn't you go home?"
11 Uriah said to David, "The ark and Israel and Judah are staying in tents, and my master Joab and my lord's men are camped in the open fields. How could I go to my house to eat and drink and lie with my wife? As surely as you live, I will not do such a thing!"

Next, he’s invited to a party to get him drunk, but he still refuses to go home to be with his wife.

12 Then David said to him, "Stay here one more day, and tomorrow I will send you back." So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next.
13 At David's invitation, he ate and drank with him, and David made him drunk. But in the evening Uriah went out to sleep on his mat among his master's servants; he did not go home.

So the decision is finally made to kill the husband.

14 In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah.
15 In it he wrote, "Put Uriah in the front line where the fighting is fiercest. Then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die."
16 So while Joab had the city under siege, he put Uriah at a place where he knew the strongest defenders were.
17 When the men of the city came out and fought against Joab, some of the men in David's army fell; moreover, Uriah the Hittite died.

After the husband is killed, there is a cover-up.

18 Joab sent David a full account of the battle.
19 He instructed the messenger: "When you have finished giving the king this account of the battle,
20 the king's anger may flare up, and he may ask you, 'Why did you get so close to the city to fight? Didn't you know they would shoot arrows from the wall?
21 Who killed Abimelech son of Jerub-Besheth ? Didn't a woman throw an upper millstone on him from the wall, so that he died in Thebez? Why did you get so close to the wall?' If he asks you this, then say to him, 'Also, your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead.' "
22 The messenger set out, and when he arrived he told David everything Joab had sent him to say.
23 The messenger said to David, "The men overpowered us and came out against us in the open, but we drove them back to the entrance to the city gate.
24 Then the archers shot arrows at your servants from the wall, and some of the king's men died. Moreover, your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead."
25 David told the messenger, "Say this to Joab: 'Don't let this upset you; the sword devours one as well as another. Press the attack against the city and destroy it.' Say this to encourage Joab."
26 When Uriah's wife heard that her husband was dead, she mourned for him.
27 After the time of mourning was over, David had her brought to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. But the thing David had done displeased the LORD.

Change a few names and places and this story could be taken from events that take place today. There is really nothing new under the sun, including the decision to look the other way when it suits those in power.

Believe It or Not, This Is an Illusion: The Most Mind-Blowing Thing You’ll See All Day