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

 

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

 

Nuckols is the editorial page editor for the Roanoke Times, owned by the billionaire Batten family who have moved their Christina around the state from one property to another.

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

 

Glenn Reynolds calls people like Christina Nuckols Democrat partisans with bylines.  

Who’s Checking the Fact Checkers?

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

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

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

Obama cartoon - Ramirez

Religion of Peaced Update via DRUDGE

French police arrest suspect in soldier stabbing...

Recent convert to Islam...

---

Accused Fort Hood Gunman to Represent Self...

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

Rand Paul in Iowa April 2011

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

How Ed Markey Embraced Financial Crisis.

Via Glenn Reynolds:

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

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

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

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

Have you noticed that spring is a little late this year?

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

“Indeed, the sun could be on the threshold of a mini-Maunder event right now. Ongoing Solar Cycle 24 [the current short term 11 year cycle] is the weakest in more than 50 years. Moreover, there is (controversial) evidence of a long-term weakening trend in the magnetic field strength of sunspots. Matt Penn and William Livingston of the National Solar Observatory predict that by the time Solar Cycle 25 arrives, magnetic fields on the sun will be so weak that few if any sunspots will be formed. Independent lines of research involving helioseismology and surface polar fields tend to support their conclusion.”

That is even more significant because NASA’s climate science has been controlled for years by global warming hysteric James Hansen, who recently announced his retirement.

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

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

That report quoted Yuri Nagovitsyn of the Pulkovo Observatory saying, “Evidently, solar activity is on the decrease. The 11-year cycle doesn’t bring about considerable climate change – only 1-2%. The impact of the 200-year cycle is greater – up to 50%. In this respect, we could be in for a cooling period that lasts 200-250 years.” In other words, another Little Ice Age.

Here in Virginia we have not run our A/C much this year. In fact, at times we had to turn on the heat.  In Michigan they had to move the Memorial day cookout inside and snow fell in New York.  But Eugene Robinson insists that there is no ‘great amount of uncertainty’ about whether the planet is warming and why.”   When theory and reality collide, the fanatic rejects reality.

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

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

Rand Paul Debunks the Shameful Demagoguery against Apple

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

Glenn Reynolds on what happens when politicians do wrong.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read the whole thing, including this

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

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

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

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

Savages of Stockholm

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

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

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

After the riots die down and the fires are put out, there will be more talk about integrating them, but what are they being integrated into; a culture that doesn't resist when their cars are torched? Why would they want to join a culture that leaves you unable to protect what is yours? Why would anyone join a culture that makes you so weak and impotent that anyone can come and take what belongs to you?

...

Both West and East have their own processes. And both processes are colliding. The Swedes bring their cars and the savages bring their flames. The burning cars are a metaphor for the impact of Muslim immigration on Sweden and the West.

 

The issues created by a clash of cultures can be resolved, I believe.  But they can't be solved is they are not faces and there is every indication that the Ruling Class on Western culture is unwilling, or afraid, to face the issues.  They know that they can't cow the Muslims so they try to cow the Westerners. 

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

This is just too good not to reprint in full.

Tim Blair

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

You can’t help but feel a little bit sorry for your average Muslim terrorist. They go to all the trouble of blowing up children in Boston, killing US Army personnel in Texas, detonating bars in Bali, flying jets into New York skyscrapers and now basically removing a soldier’s head in a London street, all in the holy name of Islam.

 

But where’s the credit?

 

Where’s the respect?

 

Following yesterday’s murderous outrage, one of the alleged killers – easily identified by blood-covered hands and two dripping knives – stood in the street and declared to the world he’d slaughtered his victim as a direct consequence of Islamic beliefs.

 

There are “many, many ayat throughout the Koran,” the man said, citing the book’s ninth chapter, that encourage followers to “fight them as they fight us.”

 

That’s a fairly clear message. Also clear were the cries of “Allahu Akbar” as the two alleged murderers went about carving and hacking at the fallen soldier’s body, having already run him down with a car.

 

Then, as usual, the western media’s reflexive timidity kicked in. The default mode in any coverage of Islamic violence is a painfully cautious avoidance of Islam.

 

British television network ITV was among the first to broadcast the alleged killer’s speech, but neatly edited any mention of the Koran by talking over him. “In a south London street,” a voiceover intoned, “a man with bloodied hands carrying a knife and machete approaches a camera and tries to justify what just happened.”

 

We then heard the fellow’s so-called justification, which made little sense without knowing anything about his blatant and declared Islamic motivation: “I apologise that women had to witness this today but in our lands our women have to see the same.”

 

Actually, I’m pretty sure that women in “his lands” don’t usually see South London psychopaths chopping heads off in the street. The standard Islamist slaughter devices in “his lands” are guns and bombs, such as were deployed by Muslims in Iraq over the past week to kill nearly 100 people, almost all of them sharing the Islamic faith.

 

Perhaps those killers subsequently delivered “political statements” about their acts. That’s how one BBC report described the alleged killer’s South London speech: “Footage has emerged showing a man wielding a bloodied meat cleaver and making political statements.”

 

These “political statements” are a popular feature of Islamic communication in the UK. At a London rally in 2006, the following political statements were presented in the form of hand-printed signs: “Behead those who insult Islam.” “Massacre those who insult Islam.” “Annihilate those who insult Islam.”

 

Alert readers many detect a theme here. Also, extremist Muslims now own at least one copy of Roget’s Thesaurus and have learned how to read it.

 

Despite these abundant warnings, literally written in black and white, the ABC yesterday described the murder as a “gruesome attack that no one saw coming.” Those signs might have been a clue. So, too, may have been unceasing Islamic attacks on western targets.

 

Media timidity in the face of these obvious declarations is matched by equally feeble responses from the political classes. Richard Barrett, a former United Nations co-ordinator for the al-Qaida and Taliban monitoring team, offered this insight following yesterday’s brutality: “The idea that this may be terrorism inspired by some sort of religious extremist belief is quite plausible.”

 

Quite plausible, old chap? Quite plausible, you say? Well, let’s not jump to any conclusions simply because some Koran-quoting maniac carrying two bloody knives has just cut off a man’s head. Maybe he had trouble at home.

 

Anyway, look on the bright side. “There are always going to be these incidents and thankfully they are limited to the death of a few people,” Barrett continued, “which is clearly much better than attacking a transport system or flying two planes into the Twin Towers.”

 

You have to get up … in the morning to sneak anything past this bloke. Even better was Lord Carlile, a former Liberal Democrat MP who seems a perfect caricature of weak western weaseldom. “We have to learn proportionate lessons from what has occurred,” he told the BBC a few hours after the killing.

 

Someone was beheaded while walking along a London street. What, exactly, is a properly “proportionate lesson” to be learned from this? Lord Carlile didn’t say, but he also provided the standard line from anyone seeking to avoid facing obvious Islamic issues: “We mustn’t rush to judgment.”

 

If a knife-carrying fundamentalist tells you he killed a man because the Koran told him to, the amount of time spent considering judgment should be no longer than it takes to hear the words.

Apologists for Islamic terror think that by dodging clear statements of intent they appear thoughtful and considerate, leading to the kind of comically evasive chat yesterday between the ABC’s Emily Bourke and UK government advisor Derrick Campbell. “In fairness, we’ve listened to the statements of the individuals involved in this horrific attack and it’s quite clear they’re making political statements,” said Campbell.

 

There are those “political statements” again. At the same time, Campbell warned, “we still don’t know enough information to be really clear about whether it is specifically a terrorist attack.”

At this point Bourke should have realised she was talking to an idiot and ended the interview, but the ABC host was up for further deep political conversation. “Might it highlight a broader underbelly of discontent with the government?” she mused. “Perhaps broader concern about the British government’s foreign policy, for example?”

 

Or perhaps the killers did it because they’re extremist Islamic lunatics. Just a theory.

The Dem's Dream Ticket

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

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

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

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

From PRWeb:

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

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

Memorial Day weekend violence erupts across city of Chicago

At least 17 people have been shot over the Memorial Day weekend, and six of them died.

They once called this the "city that works." Now it's a Beirut on the Calumet.

Swedes Take to the Streets to Defend Their Neighborhoods

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

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

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

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

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