"You can observe a lot by watching"

You can observe a lot by watching, said Yogi Berra. And it’s true, but you often have to overcome the mind’s tendency to see what isn’t there, or to ignore what is there. For example, I found a box of chocolate candy in a store. The candy is round and covered with chocolate powder, making look like a chocolate truffle. And that’s what I thought that the box said. But it didn’t, the box was actually labelled “Truffes,” French for truffles. It was actually a month before I noticed what the box really said.

Filling in missing letters or ignoring misspelled words, scanning, is indispensable as a way of reading for most of us, otherwise reading would be a chore instead of an escape into another world. It's what makes proofreading so difficult; we often see what should be there, but isn't.  We can look at a page and instead of reading words, letter by letter, our minds ingest phrases, sentences even whole paragraphs at a glance while our minds create images of what an author is conveying with what are actually squiggles on a page.

But sometimes it pays to go back and read s l o w l y.  I occasionally look at magazines that arrive at my home or office and try to view them from a new perspective. Instead of reading the text or glancing at the pictures I try to look deeper and see what the medium tells us about ourselves and about our culture ... and the culture of the people who created the words and the pictures. One of the most interesting magazines for doing this is called Departures, a glossy magazine produced by American Express. It’s filled with very upscale advertising for everything from jewelry and watches to yachts and planes. This leads me to observe the world of upscale culture via ads aimed at the very rich.

For example, the first 30 pages of the November/December issue were completely devoted to full page advertising. High fashion models sporting purses, watches, jewelry and clothing. Surprisingly, watches lead all other categories. Why would this be since, for most people, watches are really no longer necessary for telling us the time. Our computers tell us the time, so do our VCRs, our toasters, our thermostats, our radios, roadside signs and – of course – our phones; telling time is the number one function of cell phones. My son doesn't wear a watch but he carries his cell phone at all times.  So why the ads for watches that sell for upward of $300,000? Simple, it’s a fashion statement. They don’t tell its wearers the time, it tells people who wear them, and those who see them wear them, that the wearer can afford the financial equivalent of the typical suburban home on his wrist … and pay cash. That makes the Ascot Chang (another advertiser) suit at a mere $3900 and a shirt for $335 appear a veritable bargain.

But for cultural significance what caught my eye was a two page spread for the Waldorf Astoria. The picture was taken in the Waldorf lobby of a woman wearing a tight fitting knee length knit dress walking toward us. She is looking out of the side of  her eyes, looking at a man striding into the lobby with his back to us. The focus is on the woman and her obvious interest in the man. It’s not an image of a happy couple meeting at the hotel; the lobby is not even particularly attractive. The message is that the Waldorf is where bored upper class “cougars” go to find younger men. And that, along with ads for yachts that can be chartered for a million dollars per week (plus, fuel, food, drinks and don’t forget to tip) tell us a lot about our culture.

The next time you see a magazine, TV show, a movie or an Internet website, shed your preconceptions, look at it with a new eye and see the message you may have skipped at first glance. You may see things you may not have seen before. And it may teach you something about a world you may not know exists.

(Edited 1/16/2014)

Half of U.S. Counties Haven’t Recovered From Recession

About half of the nation’s 3,069 county economies are still short of their prerecession economic output, reflecting the uneven economic recovery,

Well, it is tough when Team Obama is working so hard to put a spoke in the wheels of the economy ... except for the part run by crony capitalists and Obama bundlers.

Spanish-language Obamacare website is written in 'Spangli

The Administration of the Perfectly Creased Pants, run by the guy who should have been elected to be a GQ model, (no thinking required) strikes again.

It launched two months late, but the rollout of the Spanish version of the federal Obamacare portal has been just as disastrous as its English counterpart’s October debut, according to an Associated Press report.

This time, the problem is lousy translations and glitches that send users back to the English version of HealthCare.gov.

The AP says the translations on so poor that many users feel they were computer-generated. The name of the site, CuidadoDeSalud.gov, can be litterally read as “for the caution of health.”

One health navigator who works in Miami told the wire service that, if anything, the site is written in “Spanglish.

Want to get rid of the Third Amendment out of fairness? You support the troops, don't you?

California, home of the fruits and nuts:

Californians Sign Petition Allowing U.S. Troops to Commandeer Their Homes



Note how enthusiastic some of the young girls are.

Two other young women simply agreed with everything Dice said even though most of it was nonsense. “They should be able to come into your house and they can quarter there forever if they want to.” Dice stated, as the women both replied “oh yeah definitely” and “I agree”.

These people are what make California, California.  Gives new whole new and chilling meaning to the song by Whitney HJouson "Children are our Future."

Will Federal Investigators Probe Obama Administration about Christie ads?

Well, that's embarrassing!

Christie office: Obama administration approved Jersey Shore TV ads

Via DRUDGE & Daily Caller.

Those Moderate Muslims!

Via Small Dead Animals

"Firefighters struggled to subdue the flames as the decades-old Al-Saeh library went up in smoke on Friday in the Serail neighborhood of Tripoli. Despite firefighters' best efforts, little of the trove of historic books and manuscripts was recovered from the wreckage. 'Two thirds of some 80,000 books and manuscripts housed there,' a security source told Agence France Press, referring to the items destroyed. The source added that the blaze was started after a manuscript insulting the Prophet Mohammed was found hidden in the pages of one of the library books.

Hurricane Sandy ended Mitt Romney's presidential bid, now it'll end Christie's.

What about the Republicans? Christie burned a lot of bridges in that debate, and in his embrace (literally) of Obama in those final days of the 2012 election. Ironically, it's the Obama administration that is widening its probe into the use of those funds now. Don't expect too many Republicans to rush to Christie's side in this fight, except to point out that the $2.2 million difference between the two advertising campaign proposals amounts to 0.041% of the porkfest Barack Obama and Chris Christie demanded from Congress for Sandy relief.

He must have thought he was being smart. Such political ineptitude on display here by Christie. Piss off a huge number of your potential base so that when the opening salvo is launched you've got no allies. Well played.

What doe you do if 95 million people can't find jobs and the economy sucks?

If you're a Democrat you propose bringing in millions of illegal immigrants to take all the entry level jobs and raising the minimum wage so that Americans won't be hired.  Then you extend unemployment benefits for 50 years so that no one ever needs to actually get a job.

Hillary Clinton's Enemies List

There was a special circle of Clinton hell reserved for people who had endorsed Obama or stayed on the fence after Bill and Hillary had raised money for them, appointed them to a political post or written a recommendation to ice their kid’s application to an elite school. On one early draft of the hit list, each Democratic member of Congress was assigned a numerical grade from 1 to 7, with the most helpful to Hillary earning 1s and the most treacherous drawing 7s. The set of 7s included Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), Bob Casey (D-Pa.) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), as well as Reps. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Baron Hill (D-Ind.) and Rob Andrews (D-N.J.).

Obamacare

Journalists for Obama

Obama Voter Remorse

They’re not the Fourth Estate. They’re the Praetorian Guard.

Headline courtesy of Glenn Reynolds

Government officials and political operatives working for Christie, for weird and petty reasons, chose to make traffic worse. That’s the takeaway. When they are reminded of the fact that people working on Christie’s behalf thought it was a good political game to mire tens of thousands of their fellow Americans in the nightmarish gridlock that is a daily dreaded prospect for tens of millions, they will be discomfited by that and by the politician in whose name it was done.

And yet, you know what is also something everybody would find “relatable”? Politicians who sic the tax man on others for political gain. Everybody has to deal with the IRS and fears it. Last year, we learned from the Internal Revenue Service itself that it had targeted ideological opponents of the president for special scrutiny and investigation — because they were ideological opponents.

That’s juicy, just as Bridgegate is juicy. It’s something we can all understand, it speaks to our greatest fears, and it’s the sort of thing TV newspeople could gab about for days on end without needing a fresh piece of news to keep it going.

And yet, according to Scott Whitlock of the Media Research Center, “In less than 24 hours, the three networks have devoted 17 times more coverage to a traffic scandal involving Chris Christie than they’ve allowed in the last six months to Barack Obama’s Internal Revenue Service controversy.”

Why? Oh, come on, you know why. Christie belongs to one political party. Obama belongs to the other. You know which ones they belong to. And you know which ones the people at the three networks belong to, too: In surveys going back decades, anywhere from 80% to 90% of Washington’s journalists say they vote Democratic.

Scandals are not just about themselves; they are about the media atmosphere that surrounds them. They are perpetuated and deepened by the attention of journalists, whose relentless pursuit of every angle keeps the story going. That is exactly what has been missing from the IRS scandal from its outset; Republicans in Congress have been the dogged pursuers, not the press.

From the article written by  John Podhoretz

To the journalists, the Obamans don’t look like crooks and cheats. Far from it. For them, it’s like looking in a mirror.

In September, Elspeth Reeve of The Atlantic Wire took note of 24 major journalists who have taken posts at senior levels in the Obama administration. All of them have worked for decades in various news organizations, thus creating personal ties and bonds of affection with literally hundreds of working reporters and editors.

The journalists are not covering up for their friends and their spouses. They just believe the people they know could not be responsible for behaving badly, or cravenly, or for crass political advantage —and the tone they strike when such things are discussed is often one of offense, as though it is a sign of low character to believe otherwise. It would be, well, like believing the journalists themselves were crooks.

The "Big Money" Boogeyman

The shills who prate constantly about big money in politics are nauseating. Some even pretend that Obama gathered billions of dollars in contributions one dollar at a time. I recall, and probably you do too, that he gathered millions from anonymous donors via a credit card scam on which the security system was turned off. One of those donors even identified himself – and I ‘m not kidding – as Osama bin Laden, another as “Good will Hunting.”

Not one millionaire or billionaire has ever harmed me, but the Liberals in Washington have taken money from my pay and from my investment income, they have forced me to buy more expensive light bulbs, intruded into my bathroom and decided my toilet was a hazard to the planet, they have passed so many laws that I commit several felonies before breakfast. When they take charge of cities like Detroit they bleed them to death until they go bankrupt. They have forced millions to lose their health insurance under the pretense that they were going to improve American health care. They have imposed the largest Ponzi schemes in the history of the world via social Security and Medicare. They have transformed the world’s richest country into history’s brokest country without breaking a sweat. They own the distinction of spending a billion dollars on “stimulus” without actually creating a single job. They managed to elect a half-black President who promised to bridge the racial divided and who managed to set back race relations fifty years.

We are told to believe that Obama didn’t know about Fast and Furious, he didn’t know that the IRS going after conservative groups and auditing his political opponents, that he read about DOJ going after James Rosen in the paper, that NSA isn’t spying on Americans and that Benghazi was a demonstration about a video that got out of hand. We have to believe that when Obama told us we could keep our insurance, doctor and hospital if we wanted to he was telling the truth. And the press covered up the Obama scandals like a dog burying a bone.

But I’m supposed to fear rich people. Well there’s one rich person I fear and he’s named Obama. Not because he’s rich but because he or an underling can cause the entire power of the government – IRS, DOJ, EPA, and all the rest of the government’s alphabet agencies to come down on me and bury me.  And even if I'm as innocent as a lamb, that will make no difference; the process will destroy me.

Obamacare’s Stunning Redistribution of Wealth

Frontpage Mag.

For all the attention Obamacare has drawn in recent weeks, few observers have noted that the law is having the unexpected, yet most welcome, effect of transforming scores of millions of Americans, virtually overnight, into generous benefactors of the less fortunate. A real-world example—representative of countless millions of similar situations—will make this crystal clear:

Let’s say that you are a healthy, hardworking 54-year-old single adult in San Francisco earning $45,960 per year—the income level at which federal Obamacare subsidies from your fellow taxpayers are no longer available to help you pay your monthly health-insurance premiums. As a San Francisco resident, you are permitted to choose from among 16 separate Obamacare-compliant insurance plans. Four of these are so-called “Bronze” plans, low-level policies whose average premium will cost you $453 per month, or $5,436 per year. In exchange for those premium payments, a Bronze plan will cover 60% of your medical expenses—that is, after you meet the $5,000 out-of-pocket annual deductible. For this priceless peace of mind, you can thank Obamacare—the Democratic Party’s gift to a grateful America.

Let us contrast your case with that of Joe, another 54-year-old single individual in San Francisco, who happens to be an obese alcoholic and longtime drug abuser with little ambition and no history of ever having held a full-time job for very long. Joe currently earns $15,860 per year, which is just above the income level that would have made him eligible for Medicaid. Because Joe doesn’t qualify for Medicaid, Obamacare stipulates that he must now purchase his own health insurance—thereby proving that, contrary to the shrill rhetoric of conservative naysayers, no one gets an undeserved free ride under Obamacare.

Like you, Joe can choose from among 16 separate plans that are available to San Francisco residents. But unlike you, he is eligible to receive federal government subsidies—money that other, wealthier Americans, such as you, magnanimously “contribute” toward the healthcare expenses of financially “disadvantaged” individuals. If he selects one of the four Bronze plans (whose average monthly premium is $453), Joe qualifies for $452 in average monthly subsidies—meaning that, regardless of which Bronze plan he chooses, he will pay a monthly premium of exactly $1. You read that correctly. The very same healthcare plan that would cost you $453 per month, is available to Joe for $1 per month—i.e., the cost of three oatmeal-raisin cookies at your local Subway sandwich shop. Over the course of a year, you will pay a total of $5,436 in policy premiums, while Joe, who sadly failed to qualify for free healthcare through Medicaid, will pay his own fair share of $12. This is all in the interest of social justice, you understand. And please, don’t even think about whispering that Obamacare might be some sort of “wealth redistribution” scheme, lest you expose yourself as a petulant reactionary who doesn’t give a damn about sick people.

But wait, there's more ... read the whole thing.

The Hand of God

Gerard Vander Leun has written a wonderful essay about this, and the universe that God made along with you and me. And about the difference between "facts" and "truth."

Here's how he ends: (Excerpt:)

Do I, an exemplar of the most advanced culture in history, actually believe that this is the image, the manifestation, the fading photograph of the hand of God, the Supreme Being? Of course not. Not for a moment do I think that what I see in this image is that. I believe... no... I know for a fact that what I am seeing is merely gas and stars in a seemingly random arrangement shining in a narrow, very narrow, part of the spectrum so that, to my deeper mind and imagination, I pull together some vague shapes in the play of color on the void and relate it to what I have seen elsewhere, felt elsewhen -- and out of that produce a feeling, thought, in my mind that makes my eyes see what appears to be an impossible hand reaching across space long ago in exactly nowhere. It's a cosmic Rorschach image, a glowing gasblot somewhere in limitless space. That it is a 'hand' is impossible. It is even more impossible that it is even an image of a hand.

But that is not the most impossible thing about this image.

What is even more impossible than this utter impossibility is the fact that you see it too.

I know, from all the facts that I have learned, that if the Earth itself were positioned in relative space a few degrees this way or that, moving at a slightly different relative speed towards a slightly different point in the sky, with its local group of stars slightly tilted a bit this way or a bit that way, that the purely imaginary impression of this being a hand would disappear utterly. It might look like a dagger. It might look like a flower. It might look like nothing other than the random assortment of gas clouds that it most assuredly is. What it would not look like, given just a few minor (on the cosmic scale) variations is 'The Hand of God.'

And that's a stone cold fact. Note it. File it. Toss it to the top of the always rising mountain range of facts that we love to build as bulwarks against the dark.

But is it the truth?

Well, it is a true fact. But here's another.

After all the facts are filed, here I am and there you are. We're spinning about an immense ball of thermonuclear fire on the third stone out from the Sun. We're the end product, as of today, of a great chain of being stretching backwards in time for billions of years to a primordial spark that we do not know or understand. That spark created life here and began the long process to us. It began life that is -- as far as we know today for a fact -- the only life anywhere in the billions of light years we can see. (Yes, I know it is unlikely we are alone, but until we know differently for a fact, that's the fact.) We do not know the why of it all even though the persistence of the miracle whispers there must be a why. At the same time, it is highly likely that beings as limited as we obviously are will never know the why. The why is pretty much outside of science, barely within metaphysics, and above our evolution grade.

What we do know is that, because of how we are made and what we have become, through suffering, striving, effort and, yes, grace, that there are some six billion of us that can look at this strange image of gas and stars and somehow understand it as a hand. And that, at will, we can move our hands to write words such as these to reach across space and time and make others like us understand that although it looks like a hand it cannot possibly be one; that such a thing is utterly impossible.

If you don't think that's a miracle that surpasses all understanding, you simply don't have all the facts.

U.S. war gains in Iraq now lost or threatened

USA Today

A nation once seen as a great hope in the Middle East is unraveling, as al-Qaeda sinks its teeth in, and a bloodied America wonders what could have been.

If you want a war lost, put Obama in charge. He can even lose a war that was already won.

And if you think that al Qaeda wants to stop in the Middle East, you have your head so far up your posterior you have trouble breathing.

Hillary Clinton ranks last on U.S. 'most admired' list, behind Rush Limbaugh, Bush

Run, Hillary, Run!

Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state who leads all 2016 presidential polls, ranks dead last on a new top 10 poll of who Americans admire most, and at the bottom of who the world admires most, behind celebs like Angelina Jolie and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

According to the new YouGov.com poll conducted for the Times of London, Microsoft's Bill Gates is the most admired person in the world, ahead of Pope Francis and President Obama, the runner-up on that list. Clinton ranks 27th on YouGov's world list.

On the U.S. list, she does even worse, coming in 10th of 10 listed and most named. Among Americans, Pope Francis is the most admired, followed by the president, evangelist Billy Graham and former President George W. Bush. Even Rush Limbaugh, the nation's most popular conservative talk radio host, beat Clinton. He came in ninth.

For the poll, YouGov went to 13 countries that hold more than half the world's population and asked people to name who they admire most. Only those living were allowed to be listed.

People all over the world agree.  They don't see the appeal of a dumpy, aging, woman in relaxed waist pants suits whose only claim to fame is that she helped cover up her husband's infidelities.  On the other hand, she is actually an improvement over Obama.  It's rumored that "Hillary!" may not actually hate America.

Obama: "Maryland would lead the charge ..." for ObamaCare. Read all about its spectacular failure.

On the morning of Oct. 1, shortly after Obama had proclaimed that Maryland would lead the charge in signing up residents for new health-care plans, the director of the state’s health exchange was repeatedly rejected by the network before she became the first to log on, with the help of her IT staff.

Remember how we've been told that the States that signed up to create their own ObamaCare marketplaces were dong really, really well? It's a lie.

Read the the gory details about the disaster of ObamaCare in Maryland.

TV gives 'Bridgegate' 17 times more coverage in 1 day than IRS scandal in 6 months

Why do they do this?  Because they are Democrats and because they can.

Record-High 42% of Americans Identify as Independents

Republican identification lowest in at least 25 years

Well, it's hard to identify with the Republicans when they try so hard to be Democrats in sheep's clothing. Looks like people are looking for a new party. Maybe somebody could do something about that, perhaps over tea?

Iraqi ambassador slams Obama, praises Bush

How's that "smart diplomacy" working out for ya?

OBAMA DONOR TO HEAD IRS TEA PARTY TARGETING INVESTIGATION

Via Breitbart

Rep. Issa noted that current and former IRS officials revealed Barbara Bosserman, a trial attorney within the IRS's Civil Rights Commission, is leading the internal investigation.

Bosserman's leadership raises all sorts of questions about the investigation's fairness. Rep. Issa's investigations revealed that she has been a loyal financial backer of the DNC since 2004 and has donated multiple times personally to President Obama's two campaigns. Her personal donation total reaches $6,750 to both the party and President Obama.

So what are members of Congress going to do about it?

Another Not-Good Day for Obama

Ex-Defense Sec. Slams Biden, Reveals He Nearly Quit...
Says Obama, Hillary Opposition to Iraq Surge Was 'Political'...
WASHPOST: Memoir Could Haunt in 2016...
The Quiet Fury...



GATES THROWS BOOK AT O

RACHEL MADDOW IS CRAZY, TOO

Read this article which points out that not only does Rachel Maddow lie, but that she supports forced drug testing for people on welfare.

A final level of deception remains to be revealed: one of the many companies that have contributed to the State Policy Network is Comcast, which owns MSNBC and is Rachel Maddow’s employer. So in her Thursday broadcast, Maddow could equally well have said that MSNBC “ha[s] been promoting forced drug tests for people on welfare,” and that FFGA is an “MSNBC-affiliated group.” She didn’t do this for obvious reasons. She knew that she was addressing a stupid audience that would never know the difference.

If Rachel Maddow is the best that MSNBC has to offer, MSNBC is in even deeper trouble than its steep ratings decline would indicate.

Global Warming Update

CHICAGO SMASHES RECORDS...
CHILL MAP...
COLDEST AIR IN 20 YEARS...
'LIFE-THREATENING'... 
South Pole warmer than O'Hare...
Arctic birds seen in Florida... 
Canada Startled by 'Frost Quakes'...
'Exposed skin may freeze in less than five minutes'...
Oil output threatened from Texas to N. Dakota...
Power Demand Soars...
Texas grid pushed to edge...Indianapolis Mayor Bans Driving...
JETBLUE To Halt All Flights To, From Boston, NY, NJ...
AMERICAN AIRLINES Cancels Flights Over Frozen Fuel Supply, Cold Employees...

AVG TEMP IN USA 17.2°F

Not everything is coming to a halt because of the cold.

Bud Norman reminds us that ...

Which is not to say that there’s nothing going on in the world except the cold. Al-Qaeda has recaptured the Iraqi city of Fallujah that American soldiers and Marines once fought bravely to liberate, it is increasingly apparent that Obamacare is clearly not the cure for the common cold, and the newly-inaugurated commie mayor of New York City has begun his campaign to create a socialist utopia by banning Central Park carriage rides and conveniently freeing up the stables for a campaign donor’s new development, among other things. All of it is dispiriting, but it’s hard to get one’s blood appropriately boiling about it when the wind chill is well below zero. Whatever the next debacle the Obama administration is planning, they should unleash it now while the public is preoccupied with this even more dreadful weather.

This explains a lot: "Modern art was CIA 'weapon' "

"We have met the enemy and he is us."

I wonder how this crap ever managed to convince people that they are looking at "art."  Now I know.  It was done with my tax money, and yours.

The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art - including the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko - as a weapon in the Cold War. In the manner of a Renaissance prince - except that it acted secretly - the CIA fostered and promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting around the world for more than 20 years.

Once it became fashionable, shown in top galleries and museums it was not possible to actually say it was crap if you wanted to maintain your membership in the church of what's happening now. It explains urinals and toilets on display in museums. It explains why rich plutocrats, like the people running Paine Webber, would have "art" made up of pieces of burlap scattered haphazardly over a piece of canvas displayed on the walls of their headquarters in New York City (something I saw and found hard to believe I was actually seeing).  To collect and pay for this sort of garbage requires a willing suspension of disbelief, the ability to fool yourself into thinking that something ugly is actually beautiful. 

Racism! Squirrel!

Kevin Williamson on the racism of the Left.

It is no accident that American progressives put so many of us in mind of our Puritan ancestors: not for their virtues, such as they are, but for their sanctimoniousness, their humorlessness, their grim little mouths set permanently in rictuses (surely Mr. Salesses would insist on “ricti”) of self-satisfaction biting down on disgust. Like the accusers in 17th-century Salem or the contemporary Wahhabist eager to behead such witches as may be found lingering upon Saudi soil, the progressive sees the work of the Archnemesis everywhere at all times — especially when there is something to be gained from doing so.

As in the case of witchcraft, trials on charges of racism admit spectral evidence. Martin Bashir on the IRS scandal: “Republicans are using [it] as their latest weapon in the war against the black man. ‘IRS’ is the new ‘nigger.’” Touré on Mitt Romney’s vocabulary: “[He] said ‘anger’ twice. . . . I don’t say it lightly, but this is niggerization.” Jonathan Capehart: Mentioning that Obama went to Harvard is racist “because it insinuates that he took the place of someone else through affirmative action, that someone else being someone white.” Lawrence O’Donnell: “The Republican party is saying that the president of the United States has bosses, that the unions boss him around. Does that sound to you like they are trying to consciously or subconsciously deliver the racist message that, of course, of course a black man can’t be the real boss?” Janeane Garofalo: “Do you remember teabaggers? It was just so much easier when we could just call them racists. I just don’t know why we can’t call them racists, or functionally retarded adults. The functionally retarded adults, the racists — with their cries of, ‘I want my country back.’ You know what they’re really saying is, ‘I want my white guy back.’” Karen Finney on Herman Cain: “They like him because they think he’s a black man who knows his place.” Chris Matthews: “It’s the sense that the white race must rule . . . and they can’t stand the idea that a man who’s not white is president. That is real, that sense of racial superiority.” Etc., ad nauseam.

Touré’s concept of “niggerization” is very subtle, so subtle, in fact, that only the most discerning of sensibilities — presumably Touré’s — can detect it, like one of those world-class master sommeliers uncovering notes of burnt pencil shavings in an ’82 Bordeaux. The less subtle forms of that phenomenon — for example, using the famous racial epithet on national television — have been in the 21st century restricted to members of the political party that Touré supports, for reasons that are no doubt subtle beyond the brute understanding of the uninitiated. And that is the state of play today: When Robert Byrd, a Democratic senator and Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan, helpfully elucidates the concept of “white niggers” on the evening news, that’s an unfortunate episode that demands sympathy for the wretched old coot. But when the Associated Press accurately transcribes the current president’s faux-folksy “g”-dropping — “Stop complainin’,” etc. — the verdict from MSNBC is not just “racist” but “inherently racist.”

Except he really does talk that way. Sometimes. And if you’ve ever noticed that Barack Obama’s propensity for slipping into ersatz southern cornpone preacher-speak correlates with the complexion of the audience being addressed, you might wonder who, exactly, is behaving in a way that is “inherently racist.” But such thoughts are unthinkable.

It isn’t just politics and the president. Jesse Jackson on Dan Gilbert’s dealings with LeBron James: His actions “personify a slave/master mentality.” A Dallas county commissioner flipped out over the “racist” name of devil’s food cake, and insisted that the astronomical term “black hole” was similarly “racist.” (Challenged by some constituents on his acuity, he replied: “All of you are white. Go to hell.” Still in office, not a racist.) The NAACP doesn’t think “black hole” is racist, but it thinks that a space-themed Hallmark audio card is actually saying “black whore.” In a Buzzfeed piece on racial “microaggressions,” a young woman complained that she was victimized by racism in the form of having been picked to play the part of Dora the Explorer in a school skit “just because I’m Mexican.” Dora the Explorer, for the record, is not Mexican, but instead belongs to a demographic cohort of recent vintage: generic Latina.

Senate candidate suggests moving federal capital from Washington

Not a bad idea.  It would take the Ruling Class and their acolytes a few years to move, and that would buy the country some time.

One of the men seeking the GOP nomination for Nebraska’s open Senate seat is proposing moving the capital from Washington to his home state, saying it would be an effective way to cut out the lobbyists and special interests that have turned Capitol Hill into an ATM dispensing taxpayers’ money.

“That’s it, the way to cure the incredible ineffectiveness and dysfunction of both parties in Washington — we move the Capitol to Nebraska,” Ben Sasse, a university president and former Bush administration official, said in 3-0-second campaign ad that ran in Nebraska over the weekend during the NFL playoff games.

Mr. Sasse said he doesn’t actually believe there are the votes in Congress to move the capital, but said proposing the move is a “thought experiment” designed to pose the question of what the founders would think if they saw the influence-peddling and extent of federal intervention in Americans’ lives.

“I think that they, Nebraska work-a-day folks, think that we’re on the precipice of national decline and they don’t think Washington gets it at all,” Mr. Sasse said in a telephone interview.

U.S. troops prevented from helping even as al Qaeda overruns Iraqi cities

Obama's losing the war that Bush won.  By failing to negotiate a status of forces agreement at the beginning of his term in office, he guaranteed that Iraq would fall either to Iran or to al Qaeda.

Gen. Keane and others who fought in Iraq are watching their gains slip away. “We’re creeping right back to where the situation was at the beginning of the surge in 2007,” he said. “We’re not quite there yet, but we’re getting close.

“What we could do to help them is some advisers at the major headquarters to provide some advice to them in terms on what the strategy should be and the tactics should be,” he said. “We’re not talking about returning troops again. That’s not going to be politically viable.”

Gen. Keane, who was Army vice chief of staff and a key adviser to the George W. Bush administration on how to defeat the insurgency, said Mr. al-Maliki’s government has returned to its old way of operating.

“We trained them an awful lot on how to do this, but the fact of the matter is they have ignored in the past a lot of our counterinsurgency practices by simply posting checkpoints along roads and being considerably more defensive than what you need to be in terms of a protect-the-population counterinsurgency strategy, which is what they will need to do to gain the momentum back. That’s going to be critical for them,” he said.

Of course he also screwed up Afghanistan.

Elite of Ancient Pompeii Dined on Sea Urchin, Giraffe

Pompeii was a bustling Roman city that was buried in ash after the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79. Ellis and his colleagues excavated about 20 shop fronts near one of the once-bustling gates of Pompeii known as the Portia Stabia. The latrines and cesspits behind the food sellers revealed charred food waste from the kitchens, as well as human waste, that dated as far back as the fourth century B.C., when Pompeii was still in an early stage of development. [Preserved Pompeii: Photos Reveal City in Ash]

Along with grains, the waste revealed that the commoners of Pompeii ate a simple, but fairly varied, Mediterranean diet that included lentils, olives, nuts and fish, as well as the odd scrap of salted meat.

More upscale restaurants could be distinguished by the wider array of delicacies they served.

"The material from the drains revealed a range and quantity of materials to suggest a rather clear socioeconomic distinction between the activities and consumption habits of each property, which were otherwise indistinguishable hospitality businesses," Ellis said.

For instance, the drains at a more central property contained traces of imported foods such as shellfish, sea urchin and even a giraffe's leg.

"This is thought to be the only giraffe bone ever recorded from an archaeological excavation in Roman Italy," Ellis said. "How part of the animal, butchered, came to be a kitchen scrap in a seemingly standard Pompeian restaurant not only speaks to long-distance trade in exotic and wild animals, but also something of the richness, variety and range of a nonelite diet."

I have read that in medieval times the wealthy ate peacock.  Not that peacock tasted good; I'm told it's dry and tough, but it was a pretty bird and so it was served with its plumage on the platter making for a very impressive presentation.  So people ate it as a status symbol and pretended to like it.

Why does this remind me of Obama and the press?

Everybody Hates Cathy Brennan: Troll Under the Bridge on the Crazyville Road

Stacy McCain informs us of a really, really bad cat-fight between lesbians who are "unaltered" and those who were created via surgery.  You never knew that this was an issue?  You must not get out very much!

I would call this being on the cutting edge of societal evolution, but Rush Limbaugh has already taken that phrase and made it his.

The unstable isotope of insanity that is feminism reached critical mass a few months ago when radical feminist Cathy Brennan threatened legal action against the socialist magazine Jacobin, which published an article by Samantha Allen that included this:

A small but vocal band of activists known as “Radfems” see transgender women like myself as a blight on the feminist movement, but — because their views are not representative of the feminist movement as a whole — many trans-inclusive feminists refer to them as TERFs, or Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists.

DETROIT POLICE CHIEF SAYS ARMED, LAW-ABIDING AMERICANS ‘TRANSLATES INTO CRIME REDUCTION’

In a crime-ridden city dominated by progressives, one might not expect the police chief to advocate citizens protecting themselves. But that’s exactly what happened in Detroit on Thursday.

Detroit Police Chief James Craig was speaking at a press conference at police headquarters when he revealed how his opinion of concealed carry permits radically shifted over the years.

“Coming from California, where it takes an act of Congress to get a concealed weapon permit, I got to Maine, where they give out lots of CCWs [carrying concealed weapon permits], and I had a stack of CCW permits I was denying; that was my orientation,” Craig, who had a 28-year career with the LAPD remarked.

“I changed my orientation real quick. Maine is one of the safest places in America. Clearly, suspects knew that good Americans were armed,” he added.

Craig was appointed chief of police for the Portland, Maine Police Department on May 4, 2009, before returning to Detroit as chief of police July 1, 2013.

In 2013, Detroit saw a 7 percent drop in violent crime. Craig said the department recorded a 50% clearance rate for 2013 homicides, which was an improvement, but his goal this year is 70% clearance rate.

The Detroit News points out that this isn’t the first time Craig has spoken out in favor of concealed carry permits.

Speaking on the Paul W. Smith show several weeks ago, Craig remarked: “There’s a number of CPL (concealed pistol license) holders running around the city of Detroit. I think it acts as a deterrent. Good Americans with CPLs translates into crime reduction. I learned that real quick in the state of Maine.”

Rick Ector of the Firearm Academy of Detroit said Craig’s comments represent a “huge, radical departure” from other police chiefs.

When your city is bankrupt and the cops don't really show up, carrying your won weapons is really the smart thing to do.

PRESIDENT OBAMA, WHILE ON HAWAII VACATION, LAMBASTES GOP WHO ‘WENT HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS’ AND ABANDONED LESS FORTUNATE

He gets away with this bullshit because he's the press' darling.

While the GOP was home for the holidays, how did Obama spend some of his two-week trip across the Pacific? The Times described a bit of it:

He played golf eight out of 14 days. And he and the first lady, Michelle Obama, stepped out for dinner at a few of their favorite restaurants: Alan Wong’s, Morimoto Waikiki (twice!) and Nobu Waikiki.

Island Snow, the president’s favorite spot for shave ice — the island’s syrupy, brightly colored and refreshingly sweet version of the snow cone — even had a message board in its back room reminding its employees to “wear Island Snow T-shirts all week long while the president is here!!

"Refreshingly Sweet?"  How big a suckup do you have to be to use a term like "refreshingly sweet?"

The Truth About the Spanish Inquisition

In order to understand the Spanish Inquisition, which began in the late 15th century, we must look briefly at its predecessor, the medieval Inquisition. Before we do, though, it’s worth pointing out that the medieval world was not the modern world. For medieval people, religion was not something one just did at church. It was their science, their philosophy, their politics, their identity, and their hope for salvation. It was not a personal preference but an abiding and universal truth. Heresy, then, struck at the heart of that truth. It doomed the heretic, endangered those near him, and tore apart the fabric of community. Medieval Europeans were not alone in this view. It was shared by numerous cultures around the world. The modern practice of universal religious toleration is itself quite new and uniquely Western.

Indeed, and an interesting expiation on the Inquisition as a positive good for the times.

Obama's TV Watch

In a neat essay The Presidential Boob Tube, Bud Norman comments on the NY Slimes admiration for President Obama's leisure time activities.  It's worth while going there to read the whole thing, but here's something we can agree with wholeheartedly.

Perhaps it is heartening that the president isn’t indulging in “Green Acres” and “Sea Hunt” through the old rabbit ears in the early morning hours, but we can’t help being worried by what a dedicated couch potato they president seems to be. Each of the president’s favorite programs are sprawling epics that require considerable time, and we’ve binge-watched just enough of them to know how they can cut deeply into a working day. Dishes have gone unwashed and floors unswept around here as a result of old premium cable series on Netflix, and it is therefore worrisome to think that the far more consequential chores of a president might go undone as a result of a television addiction. Elsewhere in The Times we are told that the president’s unprecedented presidential golf habit is “Carrying On a Presidential Tradition, One Leisurely Round at a Time,” as if Obama’s time on the links somehow makes him another Eisenhower, but it cannot dispel a nagging suspicion that Obama isn’t quite the workaholic one might want in the Oval Office.

"...a nagging suspicion that Obama isn't quite the workaholic one might want in the Oval Office." Lord yes, think of the damage he could do if he worked at it.

Top 10 Reasons Obama Abandoned The Men in Benghazi

Top 10 Reasons Obama Abandoned The Men in Benghazi
10. Wanted our Libyan allies to rescue the consulate, but they were busy attacking it.
9. Election coming up, yannow?
8. Valerie Jarrett’s cell phone was turned off.
7. Afraid of damaging the reputation of the Nobel Prize committee.
6. Could not believe that our consulate was attacked by the Religion of Peace.
5. Waited for focus group opinion polls to determine best response.
4. Vegas Babay!
3. Strike team still waiting for Libyan entry visas.
2. SEALs vote Republican.
1. It’s George Bush’s fault.

If you think unemployment has gone down, check these stgatistics

“34%: The unemployment rate for Americans ages 16-17. The unemployment rate for teenage Hispanic Americans is 48%, and the rate for teenage Black Americans is 60%.”

Why does Obama hate teens, Hispanics and Blacks?

The IRS Scandal, Day 241

Most presidents pray with Pastor Billy Graham when they get elected, but President Obama audited him to get reelected. In May of 2013, the IRS scandal was revealed when officials admitted it had improperly targeted Tea Party and other conservative groups for audits who had requested tax-exempt status.

Democrats tried to calm the storm with the false claim that the IRS targeted “progressive” groups as well as conservatives. But rebuffing that ridiculous charge, the Treasury Department’s inspector general revealed that 292 – which is 100 percent – of Tea Party groups seeking special tax status were put under IRS review, while just 6 progressive groups were targeted.

The scandal appeared to be fading following the resignation of Lois Lerner, but a round of emails leaked by the Ways and Means to the Wall Street Journal, showed Lois Lerner and other Washington bureaucrats were involved in a huge partisan undertaking that was nearly impossible to execute on their own. But that was the end of the road for accountability, despite the worst aspect of the IRS scandal not even making it to a press room.

A research paper from Stan Vueger of AEI, Andreas Madestam of Stockholm University, Daniel Shoag and David Yanagizawa-Drott (both from the Harvard Kennedy School), took a look at how much impact the Tea Party had on voter turnout in the 2010 election. Their conclusions provide the most troubling element to this story, and everyone in the media ignored it.

According to the joint conservative-liberal scholarship paper: “The data show that had the Tea Party groups continued to grow at the pace seen in 2009 and 2010, and had their effect on the 2012 vote been similar to that seen in 2010, they would have brought the Republican Party as many as 5 – 8.5 million votes compared to Obama’s victory margin of 5 million.”

Lying and cheating were part of the Obama MO from the day he entered politics in the living room of a terrorist.

RAND PAUL TO LEAD CLASS-ACTION LAWSUIT AGAINST OBAMA OVER NSA SPYING

What took them so long?

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is leading a class-action lawsuit with hundreds of thousands of Americans against President Barack Obama’s National Security Agency (NSA) over its spying on the American people, Breitbart News has learned.

Sen. Paul will be discussing the lawsuit in an exclusive appearance on Fox News with host Eric Bolling at 10 PM ET on Friday. Breitbart News has learned that Paul will file the class action lawsuit soon in the D.C. District Court and that he will be filing it as an individual, not as a U.S. Senator. For a U.S. Senator to file a such a class action lawsuit against the President of the United States would be extremely rare.

PRESIDENT LEAVES HAWAII, MICHELLE OBAMA STAYS ON AS 'BIRTHDAY PRESENT'

Trouble in paradise?

Yeah, that's it, leaving Michelle behind is a "birthday present."

Biggest Winners for 2013

1. President Vladimir Putin and Russia

The champagne corks were popping in the Kremlin after a banner 2013. With Edward Snowden ensconced in Moscow, Putin can celebrate Russia’s biggest embarrassment of the United States since the fall of the Soviet Union. But that’s only the beginning. Russia’s client Assad defied bloodcurdling White House threats of bombing raids and demands that “Assad must go” in Russia’s biggest geopolitical victory over the United States since Brezhnev was in power. As icing on the cake, a desperate, fumbling White House had to accept a Russian proposal to escape from the trap President Obama built for himself. Russian foreign policy makers hadn’t had this much fun since the Bay of Pigs. Finally, to complete the Kremlin’s annus mirabilus, a clueless European Union lost out to Russia in a battle to bring Ukraine into a trade association with the rich western bloc. What makes this string of impressive victories even more impressive is that President Putin is playing with a weak hand. His economy is in trouble, his army is rife with corruption, his population is in decline, and his coutry faces a growing Chinese superpower to the east and a growing threat from terrorists in the south. Underfunded, underequipped, and underrespected, Vladimir Putin danced rings around Barack Obama, John Kerry and Angela Merkel this year. Western stupidity is his chief strategic asset, and in 2013 at least, there was a lot of that going around.

2. Iran ...

Read the rest. Soon, the biggest losers. I expect Barack Hussein Obama to head the list. But he's having a grand time on the taxpayer's dime.

 I nominate the American People as the real biggest losers.

TARP Was Bad, but the Looming Obamacare Bailout for Corrupt Insurance Companies Could Be Worse

My doctor dislikes insurance companies and a few years ago dropped out of the system.  I never had a problem with them; they always paid what they said they would and I have had my share of claims.  But it seems that the industry decided to get behind ObamaCare ... with an eye toward getting a government bailout if things did not go well, and I understand why my doctor disliked health insurance. 

First big banks were the beneficiaries of Crony Capitalism, now it's Big Insurance.  Read the article by Dan Mitchell, then laugh at the cartoons.  

An example

Al-Qaeda-linked force captures Fallujah amid rise in violence in Iraq

Al Qaeda's on the Run?  Obama's victory lap was just a little too soon.  But it did get him past the election, and I guess that's good enough for government work in the Obama Era.

Alleged Serial "Knockout" Puncher Arrested In Connection With Six Attacks

The NYPD says they have arrested a man suspected of committing six unprovoked assaults in Brooklyn, including an alleged assault on a woman walking with her 7-year-old child in Midwood last week. He has been charged with six counts of assault as a hate crime, along with several additional attempted assault and harassment charges.

 

Will the Federal government step in, and add additional charges related to these crimes? These were serious Hate Crimes, all white women, some with children, and even the elderly!

U.S. Seeking al Qaeda Terrorist Linked to Benghazi Attack

The identification of Jamal as an al Qaeda member linked to the Benghazi attack contradicts a recent New York Times investigative report that concluded there was no evidence al Qaeda or foreign terrorists were behind the Benghazi attack that is currently the subject of several congressional inquiries.

The decks will; need a lot more clearing if the NY Slimes intends to make it easier for Hillary! to ascend to the throne.

But the history of smears and cover-ups by the Left teaches us that if we think that just because the first time a lie is uttered - and it's an obvious lie - that it does not need rebuttal, quickly and often until the one who lied is beaten to a veritable pulp. The Left has done a relentless job of driving serious examination of scandals like Fast and Furious, the IRS and the Tea Party, Benghazi the lies surrounding Obamacare and many others and making an examination of them out-of-bounds. They even made Bill Clinton's sexual acts with Monica Lewinski a point of pride! And don't you dare mention his rape of Juanita Broaddrick!

Unless there is a drumbeat to counter the Times' lies, it will soon become accepted that Benghazi was, just like Obama and Clinton lied initially, a demonstration that goes out of hand caused by a video.  

ObamaCare Update

OBAMACARE: Doctor's Office Spends 2 Hours On Hold With Insurer For Surgery Authorization, Before Giving Up...

Frustrated patients walk out of hospitals without treatment...

Global Warming Update

RECORD COLD CLOSES SCHOOLS IN MIDWEST...
MINNESOTA 'WORST' DEEP FREEZE IN 20 YEARS...
FROSTBITE IN MINUTES...
2010'S SET TO BECOME SNOWIEST DECADE ON RECORD FOR EAST COAST...KILLER CHILLER MAP...
MAN BURNS DOWN HOUSE TRYING TO THAW PIPES WITH BLOW DRYER...
UPDATE: COAST GUARD TO ASSIST RESCUE SHIPS STUCK IN ANTARCTIC ICE...
'Thousands of trees will have to be planted to offset carbon footprint'...


HISTORIC FREEZE: WINDCHILLS 70 BELOW ZERO?

Obamas live like royalty on lavish Hawaiian holiday

I've always said that  Obama would have been OK as a GQ model, perfectly pressed crease and all.  As a president the world would have been better off with Mel Blanc, the voice of Porky Pig.

Global warming update

MINNESOTA 'WORST' DEEP FREEZE IN 20 YEARS...
WINDCHILLS MAY HIT -50°
BLAST: UP TO 30" OF SNOW IN NEW ENGLAND...
TOTALS...
UPDATE...
'EXPOSED SKIN FREEZES IN 15 MINS'...
WORKER CRUSHED TO DEATH BY 100-FT SALT PILE...
KILLER CHILLER MAP...
NYC MAYOR: 'TOO COLD FOR SCHOOL'...
SON PLAYED ROLE IN CANCELLATION?
AMERICANS SPENT $7.45 BILLION FIGHTING 'GLOBAL WARMING' -- IN OTHER COUNTRIES...
ANTARCTIC ICE SHELF MELT 'LOWEST EVER RECORDED'...
MSNBC HOST COMPLAINS OF 'SNOW TROLLING'...
NOW ANTARTIC RESCUE SHIP STUCK IN ICE...



COLDEST GAME IN HISTORY?
-8° IN GREEN BAY

When seconds count, th epolice are only 74 minutes away.

Trey Gowdy Dismantles The NY Times' Bogus Benghazi Report

8 Things Liberals Do to Avoid Having an Honest Debate - Broken Down to a Science

1. Ad Hominem (Name-Calling aka “You’re a Racist!” etc.)

2. Distracting (aka “Pivoting” aka “Changing the Subject”)

3. Somebody Else Did It Before (aka Two Wrongs Make a Right)

4. Obama Doesn’t Know What’s Going On (Or Did I Do That?)

5. It’s a Far-Right Conspiracy (Or The Koch Brothers Did It)

6. You Heard That on Faux News

7. Argumentum Ad Misericordium (Or “Do it for the Children”)

8. It’s Bush’s Fault

Read the whole thing.

EZRA KLEIN TO LEAVE WAPO AFTER JEFF BEZOS KILLS $10M DREAM PROJECT

Journolist founder Ezra Klein wanted to re-create it with more money.  Go ask George Soros, Ezra, he's got more money.

Obama’s Half-Brother ‘Floored’ About President’s Lying About Meeting Him

If you like your brother you can keep your brother.

“I was floored by it — I don’t know why he said it,” Ndesandjo said to Laura Ingraham, adding that he had met the president several times over the years and still isn’t sure what his motivation was for making the claim. “I think he was being president and was not being my brother,” Ndesandjo said.

Makes you wonder what Obama has NOT lied about.

Why lie about something like this?

From their first meeting, which took place in the 1980s in Kenya, where he lived as an American ex-pat, Ndesandjo​ said both he and the president had different views: Ndesandjo was trying to distance himself from his father and his father’s name, while Obama was looking to further embrace his father’s roots.

Now I'm getting more and more curious about Obama's college records.  Many have speculated that he attended as a self-identified "foreign student," the same way his biography on his book said he was "born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii."  

ObamaCare Update

Via DRUDGE

IT BEGINS: Hospital workers go unpaid...

Obamacare rings in new year with more mayhem...

New Taxes and Fees...

Prof blames 'Southern white radicals'...

Frustrated patients walk out of hospitals without treatment...

'Cheerleader' Learns She Can't Afford Coverage For Herself, Toddler Son...

STUDY: ER Visits, Costs to Increase...

Frozen Out: 98% of Stories Ignore That Ice-bound Ship Was On Global Warming Mission

A group of climate change scientists were rescued by helicopter Jan. 2, after being stranded in the ice since Christmas morning. But the majority of the broadcast networks’ reports about the ice-locked climate researchers never mentioned climate change.

Naturally. Climate change is a religion, not a scientific issue. True believers ignore evidence to the contrary.

Global Warming Update

Via DRUDGE



'GLOBAL WARMING' INTENSIFIES...

Blizzard to Reach From NYC to Boston...

CHILL MAP...

USA ushers in 2014 with record-low temps...

Chicago Sees Biggest Snowfall In 15 Years...

NFL: Bitter cold coming to Green Bay on Sunday - High of four degrees...

---

Winnipeg deep freeze -- cold as uninhabited planet...

---

Frozen Out: 98% of Network Stories Ignore That Ice-bound Ship Was On 'Global Warming' Mission...

---

PETA Sending Out Women Clad In Lettuce Bikinis In Sub-Zero Temps To Urge Veganism...

Obama to Americans: You don't deserve to be free.

President Obama’s Kansas speech is a remarkable document. In calling for more government controls, more taxation, more collectivism, he has two paragraphs that give the show away. Take a look at them.

there is a certain crowd in Washington who, for the last few decades, have said, let’s respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If we just cut more regulations and cut more taxes–especially for the wealthy–our economy will grow stronger. Sure, they say, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, then jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everybody else. And, they argue, even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, well, that’s the price of liberty.

Now, it’s a simple theory. And we have to admit, it’s one that speaks to our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of too much government. That’s in America’s DNA. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. (Laughter.) But here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked. (Applause.) It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible postwar booms of the ’50s and ’60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade. (Applause.) I mean, understand, it’s not as if we haven’t tried this theory.

This is a great example of Obama's everlasting use of the straw man argument.

I’m in that “certain crowd” that has been saying for decades that the market will take care of everything. It’s not really a crowd, it’s a tiny group of radicals–radicals for capitalism, in Ayn Rand’s well-turned phrase.

The only thing that the market doesn’t take care of is anti-market acts: acts that initiate physical force. That’s why we need government: to wield retaliatory force to defend individual rights.

Radicals for capitalism would, as the Declaration of Independence says, use government only “to secure these rights”–the rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. (Yes, I added “property” in there–property rights are inseparable from the other three.)

That’s the political philosophy on which Obama is trying to hang the blame for the recent financial crisis and every other social ill. But ask yourself, are we few radical capitalists in charge? Have radical capitalists been in charge at any time in the last, oh, say 100 years?

I pick 100 years deliberately, because it was exactly 100 years ago that a gigantic anti-capitalist measure was put into effect: the Federal Reserve System. For 100 years, government, not the free market, has controlled money and banking. How’s that worked out? How’s the value of the dollar held up since 1913? Is it worth one-fiftieth of its value then or only one-one-hundredth? You be the judge. How did the dollar hold up over the 100 years before this government take-over of money and banking? It actually gained slightly in value.

Laissez-faire hasn’t existed since the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. That was the first of a plethora of government crimes against the free market.

The Obama wish is the wish of every dictator, every slave owner, every racist who ever said that the black man isn't smart enough to make it on his won.

We radical capitalists say that it was the regulatory-welfare state that imploded in 2008. You may disagree, but let’s argue that out, rather than engaging in the Big Lie that what failed was laissez-faire and individualism.

The question is: in the messy mixture of government controls and remnants of capitalism, which element caused the Great Depression and the recent financial crisis?

By raising that question, we uncover the fundamental: the meaning of capitalism and the meaning of government controls. Capitalism means freedom. Government means force.

Suddenly, the whole issue comes into focus: Obama is saying that freedom leads to poverty and force leads to wealth. He’s saying: “Look, we tried leaving you free to live your own life, and that didn’t work. You have to be forced, you have to have your earnings seized by the state, you have to work under our directions–under penalty of fines or imprisonment. You don’t deserve to be free.”

As a bit of ugly irony, this is precisely what former white slave-owners said after the Civil War: “The black man can’t handle freedom; we have to force him for his own good.” The innovation of the Left is to extend that viewpoint to all races.

Putting the issue as force vs. freedom shows how the shoe is on the other foot regarding what Obama said. Let me re-write it:

there is a certain crowd in Washington who, for the last few decades, have said, let’s respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The government will take care of everything,” they tell us. If we just pile on even more regulations and raise taxes–especially on the wealthy–our economy will grow stronger. Sure, they say, there will be winners and losers. But if the losers are protected by more social programs and a higher minimum wage, if there is more Quantitative Easing by the Fed, then jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle up to everybody else. And, they argue, even if prosperity doesn’t trickle up, well, that’s the price of the social safety net.

Now, it’s a simple theory. And we have to admit, it’s one that speaks to our intellectuals’ collectivism and Paul Krugman’s skepticism about freedom. That’s in Harvard’s DNA. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. (Laughter.) But here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked. (Applause.) It didn’t work when it was tried in the Soviet Union. It’s not what led to the incredible booms in India and China. And it didn’t work when Europe tried it during over the last decades. (Applause.) I mean, understand, it’s not as if we haven’t tried this statist theory.

Let's remember what kind of economy we really have, what people in government really want. And then remind ourselves that when the Ruling Class gets what it really wants it always ends badly.

Industry, not environmentalists, killed traditional bulbs

Say goodbye to the regular light bulb this New Year.

For more than a century, the traditional incandescent bulb was the symbol of American innovation. Starting Jan. 1, the famous bulb is illegal to manufacture in the U.S., and it has become a fitting symbol for the collusion of big business and big government.

The 2007 Energy Bill, a stew of regulations and subsidies, set mandatory efficiency standards for most light bulbs. Any bulbs that couldn't produce a given brightness at the specified energy input would be illegal. That meant the 25-cent bulbs most Americans used in nearly every socket of their home would be outlawed.

People often assume green regulations like this represent the triumph of environmental activists trying to save the plant. That’s rarely the case, and it wasn't here. Light bulb manufacturers whole-heartedly supported the efficiency standards. General Electric, Sylvania and Philips — the three companies that dominated the bulb industry — all backed the 2007 rule, while opposing proposals to explicitly outlaw incandescent technology (thus leaving the door open for high-efficiency incandescents).

This wasn't a case of an industry getting on board with an inevitable regulation in order to tweak it. The lighting industry was the main reason the legislation was moving. As the New York Times reported in 2011, “Philips formed a coalition with environmental groups including the Natural Resources Defense Council to push for higher standards.”

Competitive markets with low costs of entry have a characteristic that consumers love and businesses lament: very low profit margins. GE, Philips and Sylvania dominated the U.S. market in incandescents, but they couldn’t convert that dominance into price hikes. Because of light bulb’s low material and manufacturing costs, any big climb in prices would have invited new competitors to undercut the giants — and that new competitor would probably have won a distribution deal with Wal-Mart.

So, simply the threat of competition kept profit margins low on the traditional light bulb — that's the magic of capitalism. GE and Sylvania searched for higher profits by improving the bulb — think of the GE Soft White bulb. These companies, with their giant research budgets, made advances with halogen, LED and fluorescent technologies, and even high-efficiency incandescents. They sold these bulbs at a much higher prices — but they couldn’t get many customers to buy them for those high prices. That's the hard part about capitalism — consumers, not manufacturers, get to demand what something is worth.

Capitalism ruining their party, the bulb-makers turned to government. Philips teamed up with NRDC. GE leaned on its huge lobbying army — the largest in the nation — and soon they were able to ban the low-profit-margin bulbs.

Charlottesville Newspaper Shuts Down Comments on Knockout Game Report for 'Hateful Nature'

On alternate days the press demand that we have a "conversation on race."

Liberal Media Hack Dan Milbank Returns from Vacation - and Blames Republicans. A Day in the Life of a Professional Propagandist.

Matt Drudge supplies the picture

And the headline:

MILBANK: Media's growing frivolous focus...

Doesn't Dana look a little like an older Pajama boy?

Now THAT'S a model airplane (Airbus A380)

A radio-controlled Airbus A380 model plane with a decidedly non-miniature wingspan of 17 feet takes off and circles above a model aircraft event in Switzerland in this video by Swiss model aircraft enthusiast Thomas Bodmer. The 1:15 scale model was built by fellow enthusiast Michael Schlemmer and has four miniature jet engines, a 2.6 gallon tank, and weighs 154 pounds. Be sure to turn up your volume to hear the remarkably realistic roar of the model’s engines.