Video clip of the day

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The absurdities surrounding the Affordable Care Act abound so you can just file the following under "You just can't make this up".


From the Daily Caller:

The Department of Health and Human Services has crowned a YouTube video entitled “Forget About The Price Tag” as the grand prize winner in a contest meant to encourage young people to sign up for Obamacare.

The video contest, announced in August — in partnership with a group called Young Invincibles — encouraged participants to produce clips filled with pro-Obamacare messaging.

HHS’s grand prize-winning video, announced Monday by the White House, features a young woman named Erin McDonald singing an Obamacare-loving version of Jessie J’s hit single, “Price Tag.”

A law sold on the premise that other people are going to pay for your healthcare... so of course, the winning video is titled "Forget About The Price Tag."


And when these Young Invincibles, who are being counted on to foot the bill for this entire Ponzi scheme get smacked up side the head by sticker shock, it's... no biggie, man... forget about the price tag.


Another brilliant marketing ploy by Team O: telling 20 and 30-somethings hammered by sky-rocketing premiums that it's all for the greater good when making the world a better place via the Affordable Care Act.


When you are convinced you are the smartest kids in the room and that your crap doesn't stink, we suppose it leads you to do and say all sort of critically un-selfaware things.

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An affront to rodents everywhere

Last week, Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana), chief architect of ObamaCare, said he feared the implementation of ObamaCare would be a "trainwreck". And this week, in the ultimate /drops mic maneuver, Baucus said he would not be running for re-election in 2014. Peace out, Senator.

And in other totally related news....


It's been said that rats are the first to sense a sinking ship. In this case, then, we would be giving rats a bad name by comparison because only now is Congress coming around to the fact that the healthcare law they voted for is a steaming pile of crap.

The very people that put together the hopelessly byzantine, unworkable and unsustainable Affordable Healthcare Act (aka ObamaCare) are now frantically trying to exempt themselves and their staff from that which they championed and that for which they voted.

Though these folks aren't the sharpest tools in the shed, neither are they stupid. They knew. They knew what a disaster this thing was going to be even as they were foisting it upon the rest of us. What else explains solid Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate that still required bribes, backroom arm-twisting and mid-night Christmas Eve votes in order to get it through.

And now, when reality is about to crack them upside the head with a two by four, they are all looking to bail out.


From Politico:

Congressional leaders in both parties are engaged in high-level, confidential talks about exempting lawmakers and Capitol Hill aides from the insurance exchanges they are mandated to join as part of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, sources in both parties said.

The talks - which involve Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), the Obama administration and other top lawmakers - are extraordinarily sensitive, with both sides acutely aware of the potential for political fallout from giving carve-outs from the hugely controversial law to 535 lawmakers and thousands of their aides. Discussions have stretched out for months, sources said.

A source close to the talks says: "Everyone has to hold hands on this and jump, or nothing is going to get done."

Funny. We recall that being the general sentiment and strategy to get ObamaCare passed in the first place.



Back to the article:

Yet if Capitol Hill leaders move forward with the plan, they risk being dubbed hypocrites by their political rivals and the American public. By removing themselves from a key Obamacare component, lawmakers and aides would be held to a different standard than the people who put them in office.


Democrats, in particular, would take a public hammering as the traditional boosters of Obamacare. Republicans would undoubtedly attempt to shred them over any attempt to escape coverage by it, unless Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) give Democrats cover by backing it.

There is concern in some quarters that the provision requiring lawmakers and staffers to join the exchanges, if it isn't revised, could lead to a "brain drain" on Capitol Hill, as several sources close to the talks put it.

The problem stems from whether members and aides set to enter the exchanges would have their health insurance premiums subsidized by their employer - in this case, the federal government. If not, aides and lawmakers in both parties fear that staffers - especially low-paid junior aides - could be hit with thousands of dollars in new health care costs, prompting them to seek jobs elsewhere. Older, more senior staffers could also retire or jump to the private sector rather than face a big financial penalty.

We also recall being told it would be the young and elderly that would benefit most from ObamaCare. It's always a revelation when people find out that reality doesn't square with the snake oil sales pitch.

Plus, lawmakers - especially those with long careers in public service and smaller bank accounts - are also concerned about the hit to their own wallets.

Plus..! Cry us a river. Color us cynical but we remain skeptical that any public servant with "long careers" will be too concerned with their own wallets unless they were just too stupid to carve out a golden parachute for themselves during all those years in D.C.



More:

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) is worried about the provision. The No. 2 House Democrat has personally raised the issue with Boehner and other party leaders, sources said.

"Mr. Hoyer is looking at this policy, like all other policies in the Affordable Care Act, to ensure they're being implemented in a way that's workable for everyone, including members and staff," said Katie Grant, Hoyer's communications director.

Congress' approach to implementing ObamaCare reminds us of how we approached final exams back at Seminary. The biggest difference being, of course, our panicked running around at 11 at night looking for the "pony" exam from last semester didn't screw over an entire nation. In fact, Congress hopes that their flailing in the wee hours will result in a passing grade even after blowing off the exam.

What more evidence does one need that ObamaCare was negotiated and legislated in bad faith? And what more evidence does one need that the entire Washington D.C. governing apparatus is a corrupt and illegitimate cabal.

For those of you out there that continue to vote in favor of "Free S#it", this is what it results in. Elected representatives giving you exactly what you want and having the sense to know what a bad deal it is and exercising the most basic self-preservation instincts by exempting themselves from the negative consequences of what you have asked/voted for.

What have we been tweeting

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A free society requires a free press. While true, saying fails to mention anything abt corrupt press.

We can’t buy the “bias” angle anymore as it goes far beyond the simple statist cheerleading of this country’s 4th estate.

What inspired that tweet was MSNBC deliberately editing a legislative hearing this week in Hartford, CT to make it look as if Neil Heslin, the father of a Sandy Hook victim who was testifying, was being heckled by members of the audience. In fact, he was not being heckled.

This is shameless journalistic malpractice to alter footage of an event in order to stack the deck against those with whom’s politics you disagree.

We felt a similar manner of disgust in the tone of coverage regarding Abu Ghraib and now Benghazi. We have forgotten the exact figure but the NY Times ran a front page story on the tasteless and disgusting photos taken of Iraqi prisoners by our troops minding the prison for 33 straight days. Howls of indignation echoed from the media-political class calling for Rumsfeld’s and, at times, Bush’s head. We may remind everybody that though, humiliating, none of the prisoners died.

Fast forward some 8-9 years and the absolute fiasco that was Benghazi generates barely a shrug from our nation’s press. We ignored constant pleas for beefing up security there and as a result four Americans are dead from a well-coordinated assault on the Benghazi consulate on 9-11. There is probably a handful of embassies/consulates we would want to pay particular attention to on the anniversary of the worst terrorist attack on this country in its history and Benghazi, a hub of anti-Qaddafi Islamist activity, would certainly be one of them.

And when it all went up in smoke, the administration immediately, and against all logic and reason, blamed some totally obscure alleged anti-Islam Youtube movie trailer. They maintained this lie for weeks and no one had the balls to call them out on it.

And when Hilary Clinton, before stepping down as Secretary of State, beclowned herself in congressional testimony (“What difference does it make?”) she was labeled by the press a tough-minded statesmen who, incredibly enough, may have possibly been using these hearings to launch her 2016 presidential campaign.

As far as we can tell, the only person that has been punished for this travesty is the poor sap who made the crappy Youtube movie trailer.


Again, mere bias doesn’t adequately explain what is going on here. The press has effectively abdicated their responsibility to have an inherently adversarial relationship with a presidential administration. Indeed, it appears quite the opposiste They are all, with few exceptions, corrupt to the core.

Maybe that fact alone is the single best reason for a Republican president.

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Video clip of the day

This one’s a laugh-riot for which we think you will agree and for which we tweeted a summation:

Celebrities at the epicenter of gun violence demanding an end to gun violence or something.

3-1/2 minutes of Hollywood actors and actresses pensive, head-cocked moralizing mashed-up with their greatest cinematic shoot-outs.


(NSFW though we wholeheartedly agree with sentiment expressed at the end of the video)







Yes. That was Jamie Foxx right out of the gate. Foxx is starring in Quentin Tarantino’s over-the-top violent neo-Spaghetti Western, Django Unchained.

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, some of those folks might look familiar from also appearing in the creepiest and most sycophantic campaign video of all-time, the “I Pledge” video. This is not merely coincidental.


Alas, heartbreak: 2:33: Rich Eisen of the NFL Network. Noooooooo……



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Video clip of the day and some related thoughts

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Penn and Teller break down the gun control debate in this near-30 minute video. Yes, a tad long for our ADHD society but well-worth the time.


(NSFW warning)

"Gang members like myself, like gun control laws because we know they are a joke."

It is duly noted, however, that having some poodle-walking/snuggling, sweater-wearing, city-dwelling dandy to advocate on the gun control side is some sort of set-up, right?



The notion that gun ownership is not just for protection from others but also from our government is one that is not brought up in public that often (conversation not fit for polite society?) but perhaps should be.

After all, the American Defense Authorization Act, a bipartisan affair, gives the executive branch the power to detain U.S. citizens without cause. This is fundamentally at odds with the freedoms and liberties guaranteed by the constitution, the same constitution that guarantees our right to bear arms.





Check out this from Glenn Reynolds writing for USA Today:

Is Hate A Liberal Value? A 20-year-old lunatic stole some guns and killed people. Who's to blame? According to a lot of our supposedly rational and tolerant opinion leaders, it's . . . the NRA, a civil-rights organization whose only crime was to oppose laws banning guns. (Ironically, it wasn't even successful in Connecticut, which has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation.)

The hatred was intense. One Rhode Island professor issued a call -- later deleted -- for NRA head Wayne LaPierre's "head on a stick." People like author Joyce Carol Oates and actress Marg Helgenberger wished for NRA members to be shot. So did Texas Democratic Party official John Cobarruvias, who also called the NRA a "terrorist organization," and Texas Republican congressman Louis Gohmert a "terror baby."

Nor were reporters, who are supposed to be neutral, much better. As The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg commented, "Reporters on my Twitter feed seem to hate the NRA more than anything else, ever. "

Calling people murderers and wishing them to be shot sits oddly with claims to be against violence. The NRA -- like the ACLU, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers or Planned Parenthood -- exists to advocate policies its members want. It's free speech. The group-hate directed at the NRA is ugly and says ugly things about those consumed by it.

Hey, Glenn, don't you know that civility and courteous discourse are only for us knuckle-dragging, bitter-clingers in fly-over country. Hatred emitted from the ruling class is just their awesomeness leaking out.

And where the 4th estate is not doing their side of the debate any favors

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There are many well-meaning folks out there that believe in the 2nd amendment but also believe in strict gun control. We can sympathize with these people. We may not agree with them but we can understand their belief that by simply restricting the quantity of guns in legal circulation, you can lower crime and perhaps even prevent massacres like what happened 2-1/2 weeks ago in Newtown, CT.

This post isn’t directed at those folks. For years, we have believed that for the rabid anti-gun left, it wasn’t about gun control and the resulting public safety benefits – it was about control, period. We have before us a shining example of this and it is represented by a New York state newspaper owned by the Gannett Company which has seen fit to publish an interactive pin map that provides the names and addresses of all registered pistol owners in the Westchester and Rockland counties.

Call it control through intimidation as we can see no reasonable explanation for why the Lower Hudson Journal News chose to do this other than what we have stated.

It’s reminiscent of similar maps that were available on the internet that provided the names and addresses of those who gave financial support to California’s Prop. 8 initiative (opposed same-sex marriage) back in 2008.

The paper obtained the permit records via the Freedom of Information Act but provided no explanation of why they decided to compile the data and publish it in the form of the map.

It is duly noted that lohud.com advises commenters to be "smart and civil". Precisely what is smart and civil about publishing this map? What did the paper hope to achieve towards creating a "civil environment for conversation" by publishing this map? Further noted from the comment section is that no one else thought this was a keen idea either.

With the internet and Twitter rife with anti-2nd amendment idiots calling for the deaths of NRA members and gun owners, this is appalling.

For those out there seeking stricter gun control laws while insisting they are not coming for our guns, what the Journal News did is not doing anything to convince us otherwise.

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Noted "Patriotic Millionaire/Billionaire" out pedaling his distortions again

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Warren Buffett is back in the news again calling for higher taxes on the super-rich like himself.*





From Yahoo News:

Warren Buffett, the legendary investor who changed the debate about U.S. tax reform in 2011 with a call for the rich to pay more, is now calling for minimum tax rates for millionaires.

In a New York Times editorial printed on Monday, Buffett suggested Congress move immediately to implement minimum taxes of 30 percent on incomes of $1 million to $10 million and 35 percent above that.

"A plain and simple rule like that will block the efforts of lobbyists, lawyers and contribution-hungry legislators to keep the ultra rich paying rates well below those incurred by people with income just a tiny fraction of ours," Buffett wrote.

"Only a minimum tax on very high incomes will prevent the stated tax rate from being eviscerated by these warriors for the wealthy," he added.

The new push is in keeping with the one he made in the same newspaper in August 2011, in which he decried the "coddling" of the super-rich. He used himself and his secretary as an example, noting that her tax rate was much higher than his even though her income was just a tiny fraction of what he made.

"Warren Buffett's secretary" became a political meme following that editorial, and the said secretary, Debbie Bosanek, was ultimately a guest of President Barack Obama at this year's State of the Union address.

If this tired chimera of Buffet's secretary paying more in taxes is going to be trotted out again, we're going to shoot it down again because it is misleading and given the context of it being a presidential campaign meme that it was in 2012, shamelessly cynical.

You see, the reason Buffett's secretary pays more in income tax is because she makes more income (salary) than does Buffett. Buffett, nobly, allows himself an income salary of only $100,000 where he grants his secretary a salary far greater than that (we've heard it rumored anywhere from $250,000 to $400,000).

Naturally, then, his secretary is going to be paying more taxes on her salary income. Obviously, where Buffett derives the majority of his income is in capital gains and dividends that are taxed at far lower rates than the highest marginal income tax rates that hit his secretary's salary (15% vs. 33-35%).

So, we don't need higher taxes on the rich. What we need and what Buffett would do voluntarily if he wasn't being so dishonest in making his argument, is billionaires to start paying themselves salaries of, well, billionaires. Start paying themselves salaries commensurate with what they are worth. Instead, these so-called patriotic millionaires and billionaires are merely acting in the rational manner that any of us would in shielding their income from getting gouged by the man in a manner totally in keeping with the law.

That Buffett wraps himself in the flag, however, reveals Buffett to be merely a tool... and a tool of the President in his continuing class warfare.

Besides, the President himself acknowledged raising taxes on the rich would do nothing to close the deficit gap or pay down the debt thus implicitly admitting to his own stoking of resentment of the rich.




* We've blogged about this issue several times before, so if it seems old hat, we apologize. Sometimes, however, it's good to remind ourselves and others of just why it is an idea like Buffet's doesn't pass the sniff test and which also sets off our highly tuned and calibrated B.S. alarm.

And the Walter Duranty award for Soviet apologists goes to...

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... this loser professor from Montclair State University in New Jersey.

Your tax dollars at work, gang:






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They don't want "active participants", they want zombies

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From the Washington Examiner:

The Obama campaign has launched its “For All” campaign, encouraging supporters to take pictures of themselves with their hands on their hearts and a note explaining why they support President Obama.

Actress Jessica Alba uses the Pledge of Allegiance as an example of the campaign in an email to supporters.

“Growing up, my classmates and I started every day with a ritual: We’d stand up, put our right hand over our hearts, and say the Pledge of Allegiance,” explains Alba. “To me, that gesture was a promise. A promise to be involved and engaged in this country’s future. A promise to work for liberty and justice — and for affordable education, health care, and equality — for all.”

Alba joins Hollywood actresses Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson by photographing herself with her hand on her heart pledging to vote for Obama.

Taking a pledge to vote (ostensibly for Obama) is not cool, it’s not cute and it’s not hip. It’s undemocratic but we suppose that’s the point. It’s downright creepy but totally in keeping with a voting bloc that went completely nuts when three people were water-boarded during the Bush administration but support a President who granted himself the power to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens without cause and who casually dials-up drone strikes because he can’t be bothered with the messy business of intelligence-gathering.


It’s also the same voting bloc that sees no contradiction in supporting a civilian trial for Club Gitmo detainees but doesn’t bat an eye when the President and Attorney General tells us not to worry because people like Khalid Sheik Mohammed would never see the light of day even if he were convicted.


This is all not the result of “active participation”. It’s all good, you see, because it’s our guy.

Hooray, our guy!

What we've been tweeting

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It was confirmed after we tweeted that this particular #hashtag originated as a Democratic party idea to allow young people to engage in some critical thinking with respect to their leaders.

Tweet: If #WhatObamataughtme originated w/Dems, it demonstrates their unwavering commitment not to this country rather a cult of personality. Sickos.

To be fair, we engaged in similar thought exercises while we were younger as well but it was in regard to a Jew living in Palestine some 2,000 years ago.




Dammit. They had to go there. They had to go there. And in response to this zonbiefied sycophantism, we're forced, as a Pavlovian response, to run this palate cleanser of grade-schoolers we can only assume for which that hashtag was intended to reach.

Enjoy.

I pledge to be a servant to our President.

Time for that shower.

California's disgrace

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The dismal state of the state of California owes much to basic incompetence and a religious zeal for failed statist policies but as you are about to find out there is also a moral failing that is at once symptomatic and causal to California’s overall wretchedness.

After the 2001 terrorist attacks, California lawmakers sought a way to channel the patriotic fervor and use it to help victims' families and law enforcement. Their answer: Specialty memorial license plates emblazoned with the words, "We Will Never Forget."

Part of the money raised through the sale of the plates was to fund scholarships for children of California residents who perished in the attacks, while the majority -- 85 percent -- was to help fund anti-terrorism efforts.

But a review by The Associated Press of the $15 million collected since lawmakers approved the "California Memorial Scholarship Program" shows only a small fraction of the money went to scholarships. While 40 percent has funded anti-terror training programs, $3 million was raided by Gov. Jerry Brown and his predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to plug the state's budget deficit.

Millions more have been spent on budget items with little relation to direct threats of terrorism, including livestock diseases and workplace safety.

Moreover, the California Department of Motor Vehicles has been advertising the plates as helping the children of Sept. 11 victims, even though the state stopped funding the scholarship program seven years ago. The specialty plate fund continues to take in $1.5 million a year.

Somebody ought to do something about this, right? Well, how about one of the people responsible for this pilfering in the first place?

Late Tuesday, in response to the AP report, Brown ordered his finance department to audit California's entire specialty license program, which was established by the Legislature in 1992, said Elizabeth Ashford, a spokeswoman for the governor.

We imagine the Governor was shocked, shocked such behavior was taking place.


Of the $15 million that has been raised through this program, only $21,000 has been allocated to scholarships and even that portion of the program was discontinued in 2005 even though the plate program still advertises the scholarships being an active part of the program.

The original legislation said the remainder of the money would go to law enforcement, fire protection, and public health agencies to be used "exclusively for purposes directly related to fighting terrorism."

But in 2008, Schwarzenegger, a Republican, borrowed $2 million to close a budget gap. Last year, Brown, a Democrat, borrowed another $1 million.

So, are there any plans to repay the program? Shut up, they explained:

Neither loan has been repaid nor are their deadlines to ensure they will be. Ashford, said the loans have done no harm and that the governor has no immediate plans to repay them.

"We're trying to simultaneously balance the budget and fund important programs," she said. "If there was an indication that borrowing this money was going to negatively impact this program, we wouldn't borrow the money."

How the hell can you negatively impact this program when effectively, there is no scholarship program? Absolutely disgraceful.



What makes this all the more pathetic is that the amount that is significant with respect to college scholarships for the intended sons and daughters of California’s fallen is just a rounding error when it comes to California’s budget and specifically, California’s budget shortfall.

To put a wrap on this, allow us to feature your typical world-weary and disgruntled California Texas citizen:

Patricia Anderson, who paid $98 for a personalized memorial plate reading "WE R 4US," said she signed up for the program primarily to show respect for victims of the 9/11 attacks. Anderson said she was disheartened but not surprised to learn that much of the money has gone to fill the state deficit or used for general purposes.

"That's California," said Anderson, who now lives near Austin, Texas. "It's kind of a given these days -- nothing is spent on what it's supposed to be."

And this is precisely the reason why we are giving a big fat No to Prop. 29.


Misallocation of funds and having no intention of repaying the funding source while spitting on the graves of 9-11 victims. Congratulations Governors Schwarzenegger and Brown on your very, very special trifecta.

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Here's some more of that new civility we've been hearing about: a round-up

Alternate headline: You know you're winning the battle when the liberal-Left responds with violence and misogyny but we're being redundant.


The liberal-left is hitting back against conservatives in the only way they know how.


First up, here's an AFL-CIO honcho taking it to a South Carolina governor, Nikki Haley, pinata. Click here for Youtube video as embed was disabled.

That probably was not that egregious but ask yourself something: do those look and sound like the kind of folks your Mom and Pop would be pleased to see you hanging out with?






Next up, Hustler (yes, it's still around) published a photoshopped image of conservative pundit/talker S.E. Cupp performing oral sex. If you must, a blurred image can be found here.

A couple of things raced through our mind when we found out about this: the real outrage here would be if Hustler didn't pull a sophmoric toilet-stall stunt like this. And, who really thinks the 82 zit-riddled 16 yr. olds that don't have internet and which comprise Hustler's target demographic out there would know who S.E. Cupp is?

And yes, Twitter has been blowing up at #istandwithsecupp.

Our favorite contribution thus far: S.E. Cupp: still faster than LarryFlynt.

(shameless plug: get in on the Twitter fun and follow us at @deanriehm)





And finally, conservative blogger/writer Robert Stacy McCain (The Other McCain blog) and his family have taken flight from their home in Maryland to an undisclosed location due to credible threats on him by convicted terrorist and lefty sweetheart, Brett Kimberlin.

Law enforcement officials have been made aware that convicted terrorist Brett Kimberlin appears to be engaged in an attempt to intimidate me into being silent about his sordid criminal history.

Appropriate precautions have been taken to ensure the safety of my family and others who might be endangered if Kimberlin resorts to violence to accomplish his malicious purposes. At the urging of concerned friends, we have vacated our former residence and I am now blogging from a secret location which Kimberlin will be unable to discover or reach. Nevertheless, we sincerely ask for intercessory prayer, that God will send angels to guard us in this grave crisis.

In fact, this crisis is an answer to prayer: My wife and I had been contemplating whether to leave Maryland, and had asked that God would give us a sign. Guess we got what we prayed for — unexpectedly!

Nevertheless, my sudden relocation — The Mother of All Road Trips, as it were — will involve large expenses. We will have to rent a new house, pay people to pack up the belongings at our former residence, and move everything to the new location.

Remember that this is still a Shameless Capitalist Blog, and keep in mind The Five Most Important Words in the English Language . . .

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

We could never figure out just what is the fascination with violent criminals and terrorists and the liberal-Left of this country. Blowing up stuff and trying to blou up people is not romantic. It's stupid. And your a damn fool if you think otherwise.

With the election season heating up, we suppose we should brace ourselves for more of the same.

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Oddly enough, we don't think he'll take his own advice

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Alternative headline: Like engineers, ask an environmentalist and you'll get the truth.

The big tent of Malthusians and warmists have really fallen on some hard times. They keep getting their hands caught in the cookie jar when it comes to cooking the books with respect to climate data and when they're not doing that, they're basically admitting that their efforts aren't really about stopping and reversing global warming climate change but rather wealth distribution.

Think we're joking?:

Ottmar Edenhofer, a German economist and co-chair of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Working Group III on Mitigation of Climate Change (say that twice), told the Neue Zurcher Zeitung last week: "The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War." After all, redistributing global wealth is no small matter.

Edenhofer let the environmental cat out of the bag when he said "climate policy is redistributing the world's wealth" and that "it's a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization."

As we're finding out with the current administration, if your policies aren't working, don't talk about them. Talk about anything else except that at which you have failed.

Anyway, all that may not be the biggest problem with the faith-based AGW set. What pales in comparison to the above is a messaging problem. The message is this: they don't like you (humans) too much and would kindly desire that you excuse yourself from this mortal coil either voluntarily or involuntarily.


Here's Finnish environmentalist Pentti Linkola on the miserableness of the human condition:

"What to do, when a ship carrying a hundred passengers suddenly capsizes and there is only one lifeboat? When the lifeboat is full, those who hate life will try to load it with more people and sink the lot. Those who love and respect life will take the ship's axe and sever the extra hands that cling to the sides."

"The composition of the Greens seems to be the same as that of the population in general — mainly pieces of drifting wood, people who never think."

"A minority can never have any other effective means to influence the course of matters but through the use of violence."

"Any dictatorship would be better than modern democracy. There cannot be so incompetent dictator, that he would show more stupidity than a majority of the people. Best dictatorship would be one where lots of heads would roll and government would prevent any economical growth."

(ed. note: this is working out exactly as desired in places like North Korea and Cuba)

"The most central and irrational faith among people is the faith in technology and economical growth. Its priests believe until their death that material prosperity bring enjoyment and happiness - even though all the proofs in history have shown that only lack and attempt cause a life worth living, that the material prosperity doesn't bring anything else than despair. These priests believe in technology still when they choke in their gas masks."

"That there are billions of people over 60kg weight on this planet is recklessness."

"Alternative movements and groups are a welcome relief and a present for the society of economic growth."

"We will have to...learn from the history of revolutionary movements — the national socialists, the Finnish Stalinists, from the many stages of the Russian revolution, from the methods of the Red Brigades — and forget our narcissistic selves."

(ed. note: the entirety of the message of the 20 the century was this: "Oh... we learned, alright.")

"Everything we have developed over the last 100 years should be destroyed."

"A fundamental, devastating error is to set up a political system based on desire. Society and life are been organized on basis of what an individual wants, not on what is good for him or her...Just as only one out of 100,000 has the talent to be an engineer or an acrobat, only a few are those truly capable of managing the matters of a nation or mankind as a whole...In this time and this part of the World we are headlessly hanging on democracy and parliamentary system, even though these are the most mindless and desperate experiments of the mankind...In democratic coutries the destruction of nature and sum of ecological disasters has accumulated most...Our only hope lies in strong central government and uncompromizing control of the individual citizen."

Boy, oh, boy. If there is a more anti-BwD message, Linkola wins and the place and show horses aren't even in the picture.

Linkola then goes on to call for licensed birth-giving, the involuntary confiscation of private property, the end of competition and the return to a hunter-gatherer culture. He wants to turn back the clock of humanity to a time from which we've progressed from because, well... not having a car and having to hunt or fish for our meals every freaking day of one's miserable existence on this planet sucked.

There's a term for folks like Linkola besides idiot and it's totalitarian fascist. They aren't nice people. Does he sound nice? We don't like them and we encourage you to not like them as well.

We know what you are saying, though. You're saying, "Look, he's some crank that lives on a boat that no one outside of Finland (or maybe even his own dock) have heard of. That is true but what he is calling for and the means in which to accomplish it, have also been called for by far more main stream-accepted doom-and-gloomers like Paul Ehrlich, though in somewhat softer terms. What Ehrlich provides is some window-dressing to arrive at the same conclusion as Linkola (we swear that sounds like some blog-sharing program).

Scratch not too far below the surface of the environmental agenda and you find yourself a wide-ranging slew of propositions whereby the god-given rights and desires (remember: there's a reason why we don't live in caves, anymore) of the individual are subjugated to the will of the collective as determined by others be they rulers, committees, bureaucrats, even benevolent despots which is the extreme green's ultimate dream.

It's all a lie. Precisely because we have pursued freedom and liberty, we have been able to develop technology, much to the ironic chagrin of the Linkster, that has allowed this planet and its people to survive past the doomsday hour predicted by the likes of Ehrlich and his kind.

Let's face it: they are not really concerned with the fate of you or even the planet. For whatever sick reason, these people hate freedom. They hate liberty and the power within the individual that it has the potential to unleash.

Hey, we can't figure it out. Go catch a fish, bring it to Linkola and maybe he can tell you why he is so filled with hatred.

Posts that write themselves

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We'll take the bullet on this one and do the heavy lifting because we don't think anyone else in the righty blogospere is going to cover the following news item... right?

After a short stand off between a group of veterans and the head of the Lake County, FL Democrat Party, an American flag that had been altered to depict an image of Barack Obama in the space where the stars are normally located was taken down.

The Lake County Democratic Headquarters in Tavares has been flying two American flags outside their office. The first an American Flag and the second the altered flag.

A veterans group arrived late this afternoon with the media in tow and demanded that the second flag be taken down. Don Van Beck, executive director of the Veterans Memorial at Fountain Park asked that the altered flag be removed, explaining that it was in violation of federal flag code. He offered a POW/MIA flag to fly in its place.

Nancy Hurlburt, the Democratic Party Chair for Lake County, said she would research the issue but didn’t take the Obama flag down immediately, prompting Van Beck to declare that they would take the flag down for her.

“No, you will not. This is private property,” Hurlbert responded.

After a short time spent ‘researching’, Hurlbert relented and took down the flag while the veterans looked on. She did not accept the POW/MIA flag offered as a replacement.

Why on earth did this woman think this would possibly be a good idea? We're going to assume the approval chain was an extremely short one as anyone with just a passing knowledge of the flag code would know that defacing or depicting an image on the flag is a no-no. Besides, shameless, bootlicking, hagiography is so 2008-2009. The thrill is gone, Ms. Hulbert, and everyone knows it.



And speaking of shameless, bootlicking hagiography from years gone past, you would not be mistaken if you thought this post was merely an excuse to play one of our favorite Youtube clips of all-time.

It just doesn't get any more self-serving and creepy than this, folks, Enjoy.
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Douche-baggery at its finest

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Still more great moments in the brief, brief history of the "new civility"

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No set-up necessary. Here's the clip from Jon Stewart's show:

She has to be in on it, right? She has to!

To think that someone this supposedly educated could be so insularly clueless and so utterly un-self aware is a prospect we are having a tough time getting our brain wrapped around.

Just more evidence that "civility" is nothing more than a big fat "STFU" from the political class.

When you lose Harry Belafonte

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Here's Harry Belafonte prattling on with respect to his disillusionment with Barack Obama on a recent radio chat on “Smiley & West,” co-hosted by Tavis Smiley and Cornel West:

“My question is, what legacy will he leave, having the opportunity to serve under such hugely dramatic circumstances and had such a huge impact on the universal state of things … how could he have had such a splendid opportunity to do more than most presidents would have ever been able to do, and he let that opportunity slip away from him.

I’m very cautious of the fact that those who think he has some second agenda and only if he could be given a second term for us to see the new light, new things will be revealed, new efforts will be made to take us to a place other than where we’ve been and where we languish. I just don’t trust that. I don’t believe that’s a safe way and accurate way to look at this scenario. If there was the kind of moral compass serving Barack Obama the way we hoped, the moral force would have helped him make choices, the absence of that force in his equations, that barometer to guide him when he has to make these decisions that are hugely complicated, he should have come to the table with the things that would have helped us in this moment of crisis.”

We're seeing more and more of these lefties-disappointed-in-Obama ramblings and for the life of us, we can't make any sense of them whatsoever. We suppose that shouldn't be surprising as when you project completely vague and nebulous Hopenchange-y expectations upon your hopelessly out-of-his-depth Presidential candidate, then articulating exactly why it is you're disappointed and the specifics of what you would like to see accomplished come across as equally vague and nebulous.

But we're here to help out these despondent liberals by cutting through the haze of their own uncertainty and malaise: Wasn't out-of-control spending, indefinite detention of U.S. citizens without cause, putting us on the road to socialized medicine, the use of signing statements and executive orders, taking over car companies that will cost us tens of billions of dollars, participating in unauthorized wars and whacking U.S. citizens abroad an excellent enough one-term start for any good liberal?

Crime, smog, traffic, graffiti and all they have to show for it is their crappy newspaper

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One in a series that takes a look at what's going on up at the L.A. Times.


The paper of record for Southern California continues to beclown itself: first it was an endorsement of California's high-speed rail program based upon the Egyptian pyramids and now a caricature of Michelle Obama is deemed racist.


The following image appeared on the conservative blog Gateway Pundit last week:

Here's the Times "Culture Monster", Christopher Knight breaking it all down for you in case you didn't notice the obvious racism:

A baldly racist depiction of First Lady Michelle Obama that appeared Tuesday on a right-wing website is based on a 1775 portrait of Marie Antoinette by Jean-Baptiste André Gautier-Dagoty (1740-1786). The full-length painting hangs outside Paris in the Palace of Versailles.

The Internet image grafts Obama's face onto Gautier-Dagoty's lavish depiction of the French queen, dressed in full regalia. It also replaces the draped left arm of the young monarch, then barely 20, with a muscular black arm and shifts the position of the right hand to place it in front of a world globe.

The caricature of Obama as a profligate queen relies on the racist stereotype of an "uppity Negro," which emerged among slave masters in an earlier American era. Obama, born into a working-class Chicago family whose roots are traced to the pre-Civil War South, graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Law School, prior to holding several high-level positions in the academic and private sectors.

Thanks for the mini-bio, Chris. We suppose that was given to someway and somehow prop up your ridiculous racism charge.

Fairly or not and rightly or wrongly, the First Lady has aquired an image of an imperious and priviledged individual. It's no stretch then to caricaturize her as a modern day Marie Antoinette. That's racist? No. It's not.

So, boiling things down to its most elemental, what Knight apparently thinks is racist, then is that a black American woman is caricaturized as a.. black American woman.




Commenter to the article, Isaac Bishop Junior, makes great points regarding projection, intellectual bankruptcy and the identity politics that absolutely consume the liberal-left:

An absolutely ignorant, irresponsible, uninformed piece of yellow journalism, and an example to the rest of the leftist media. Knight, you've outdone yourself, and you stand as an example of why the newspaper is rightfully destined to die out as a media outlet. As both an American that happens to be black, and a Conservative, I find nothing racist about this image. However, I do find plenty of racism in you. Like all leftists, you hide behind skin color as a shield. You make ethnicity and sexual orientation the center of all political conversation, showing that if anyone has an obsession with it, its the left (i.e.: people like you). This hit piece you've scrawled is nothing more than another clear indicator that the liberal tank is on "E", and you've no intellectual ammunition left to fight with, so, as opposed to debating issues, you argue nonsensical BS, like this. I remember the last time this happened, in regards to the "jokerized" Obama picture. The left touted this as an example of 'right-wing hatred' and 'racism', only to have it found out that a leftist "Palestinian" did it. Where were you, then? Hiding under your desks, plotting another outrage to manufacture. It is no wonder California is the cesspool it is, today; with your writings enabling it, they'll never climb out of the sewer they've voluntarily walked themselves into.

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Matt Millen likes: helmet on helment action. Alliteration... not so much

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Matt Millen, again, put his utmost meat-headed idiocy on display the other night during ESPN's Fiesta Bowl broadcast between the Stanford Cardinal and the Oklahoma State Cowboys, commenting favorably on a helmet-to-helmet hit for which Deadspin commenter Eddie Murray Sparkles reminded us of happier times when Millen's complete ineptitude was suffered exclusively by Detroit Lions fans.

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Musburger Munchies Matchup: Martin Mauls Montgomery; McDonough Mentions Malfeasance; Matt Millen Drafts Wide Receiver.

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Video clip of the day

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Via Hot Air

A nice breakdown of the differences between the tea party and #OWS.

Classic liberalism vs. modern progressiveism

Downward spiral

Again, with respect to soundbites...

tea party: "End the bailouts, subsidies and crony capitalism."

OWS: "End the bailouts, subsidies and crony capitalism (... but give me mine)"

Contrary to the sloganeering, OWS is not opposed one bit to government intervention into the markets, if it means wealth redistribution via involuntary confiscation to favored political classes. In that respect, OWS is being intellectually and morally inconsistent.

The flash mobs that materialized at retailers around the country on Black Friday are indicative of this mindset. "Occupying" the time of shoppers is an involuntary confiscation and interference with customers' right to enter into a business contract with Wal Mart, Target, whomever... against the arbitrary wishes of the flash mob. This intimidation tactic is a form of mob tyranny all in the name of hopelessly uninformed, selfish moral preening.




Oh, and one last thing... Memo to you Obamaville squatters: We hate shopping. Absolutely despise it. We are probably in a foul enough mood as it is if you happen to find us at the mall or a big box retailer - don't tempt physical reprisal on account of your "right" to act like a complete fool.

Your #OWS update

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The charade continues:

The office space city officials have offered Occupy L.A. protesters to woo them off the City Hall lawn is only a few hundred feet away from the encampment in an underground shopping center known as the Los Angeles Mall.

The 10,000-square-foot office space used to be a bookstore, according to Jim Lafferty of the National Lawyers Guild, who has been negotiating with the city on behalf of the protesters.

At the Occupy general assembly meeting Monday night, Lafferty told protesters that city officials had offered them a $1-a-year lease for the space. He said he and the other negotiators had not yet seen the lease but it appeared the city would pay for utilities, as well.

The city has also said it would provide protesters with land on which to farm, although it was not known where.

It was unclear whether the Occupy protesters would agree to the deal.

Lafferty said he and others who have been meeting with officials are just messengers. He told the protesters the proposal was "just a report back about what the city is willing to do if you do something."

"The important thing is, we have said to the city we do not represent you," he said.

Yet another perfect metaphor for the Occupy movement: The Man giving into threats of violence* in return for goodies to these terrorists community organizers who will, in turn, only be co-opted into the existing union-based - identity politics - grievance industry power structure.

City Hall and the Occupiers... they're one big family and cut of the same cloth, gang. Don't be fooled. What further proof did one need than Oakland Mayor, Jean Quan allowing city employees to take leave days in order to join the Occupy protests?

The big cities that have been accommodating to the Obamaville squatters are so because they are complicit with goals both stated and implied of income redistribution and the perpetual class warfare struggle.



* The web version of this story from earlier this morning, explicitly stated that the desire to avoid violence was the chief reason for throwing Occupy these bones.