Thursday, July 29, 2010

An Amerikan Revolution

clipped from www.moonbattery.com

No one should be surprised that, having been absorbed by our collectivist government, GM is now applying Obamanomics:

General Motors Co., the automaker 61 percent owned by the U.S., is buying subprime lender AmeriCredit Corp. for $3.5 billion to help it reach more customers with leases and loans to borrowers with faulty credit records.

Remember 2008, the year Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, with assistance from the Community Reinvestment Act, ACORN, and leftist lawyers like Barack Hussein Obama, managed to collapse the housing market, sending the economy into a tailspin? Now the same strategy will be applied to the auto industry.

Can't afford a car? Who cares? The important thing is your skin color — that, and keeping union members employed. Here are the keys; the taxpayer will pick up the bill.

GovermentMotors.jpg

Stop The White Man

clipped from www.moonbattery.com

Shirley Sherrod, whom the media has reinvented as Rosa Parks II, isn't the only race-obsessed militant moonbat in her household. Here her husband Charles holds forth on the topic of sticking it good to the white man and his Uncle Tom accomplices:

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Silicon Photonics

Someday in the future, we may look back on the technology we're using today and laugh that we were using electrons to carry data in and around computers.

Intel Corporation this week announced a research prototype representing the world's first silicon-based optical data connection with integrated lasers. The link can move data over longer distances and many times faster than today's copper technology; up to 50 gigabits of data per second. This is the equivalent of an entire HD movie being transmitted each second.

The technology, called silicon photonics, will have far reaching applications. For example, at these data rates one transmit far higher-definition video in a teleconference than what our 1080p sets can display. Silicon photonics will also enable datacenters to be more flexible in location and setup.

Welcome to Light Peak...

Ridden

According to Douglas, the teaching of the Declaration had no general applicability beyond the immediate situation that confronted the Founding Fathers. Restating Douglas's argument, Lincoln asked "in all soberness, if all these things, if indulged in, if ratified, if confirmed and endorsed, if taught to our children, and repeated to them, do not tend to rub out the sentiment of liberty in the country, and to transform this Government into a government of some other form." This is certainly one of the question that is raised in acute form by the doctrine of welfare state liberalism in general and by Obamacare as a case in point.

belongs in the same family as "the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments in favor of king-craft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden." That's Lincoln again.

14 Weeks

clipped from www.redstate.com

Seeing as the one that the Democratic Governors Association came up with recently was simultaneously: foul-mouthed; pathetically lame; and very possibly in violation of American copyright law… I’d thought that I’d take pity on the poor, doomed fellows and let them take a look at what a good campaign ad looks like. From the RGA, a reminder that there’s an election in 14 weeks:

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Moore Lives

clipped from news.cnet.com
Shown are Intel's 50Gbps silicon laser transmitter and optical receiver connected by a standard fiber.

Intel has unveiled the prototype of a high-speed fiber-optic data system based on silicon chips with integrated lasers and detectors. The system runs at 50Gbps, with Intel claiming future scalability to 1Tbps and beyond.

Unlike current systems, Intel's prototype does not depend on discrete components to generate and detect light; instead, these are part of the same silicon substrate that contains other components, and can be made at the same time on the same dies during chip fabrication.

"It's about bringing silicon manufacturing to optical communications, bringing Moore's Law to high-bandwidth communications for every computing platform, and revolutionizing applications in the future," said Mario Paniccia, Intel fellow and director of Intel's Photonics Technology lab.

Jack*ss Is As Jack*ss Does

clipped from pajamasmedia.com

IF ONLY HE WERE AS CHEAP WITH OUR MONEY AS HE IS WITH HIS OWN: Rep. Barney Frank causes scene demanding discount. “Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank caused a scene when he demanded a $1 senior discount on his ferry fare to Fire Island’s popular gay haunt, The Pines, last Friday. Frank was turned down by ticket clerks at the dock in Sayville because he didn’t have the required Suffolk County Senior Citizens ID. A witness reports, ‘Frank made such a drama over the senior rate that I contemplated offering him the dollar to cool down the situation.’”


Menaces

clipped from www.forbes.com

A comedian or satirist could not have come up with the recent scenario of Treasury Chief Timothy Geithner and other Administration officials suddenly trying to reassure corporate chieftains that the Obama Administration is pro business and loves free enterprise. A close and powerful Obama aide, Valerie Jarrett, sent Verizon CEO (and Business Roundtable chairman) Ivan Seidenberg a letter declaring: "While we may disagree on some issues, we have an open door and are always willing to consider input and ideas from everyone, including the business community." That's like Dracula saying he prefers bottled water to blood.

The truth is that not even the Franklin Roosevelt Administration was as hostile to and ignorant about free enterprise as this Administration is. Almost every action Obama officials take underscores their belief in the stereotype that businesspeople are mostly amoral, corner-cutting, consumer-shafting, pollution-loving menaces.

Monday, July 26, 2010

Du'O (Part 86,937)

clipped from www.usatoday.com
Goldman Sachs sent $4.3 billion in federal tax money to 32 entities, including many overseas banks, hedge funds and pensions, according to information made public Friday night.

Hmmm...

clipped from abcnews.go.com


For 86 days, oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico from BP's damaged well, dumping some 200 million gallons of crude into sensitive ecosystems. BP and the federal government have amassed an army to clean the oil up, but there's one problem -- they're having trouble finding it.

Welcome To The Socialist Hell In Your Future

clipped from www.moonbattery.com

Anyone who thinks communist socialism is less evil than Hitler's National Socialism needs to scrape up the courage to watch The Soviet Story:

Give the Left enough power, and Americans will rot in mass graves. Don't take my word for it; Obama's cohorts have already said so.


Sunday, July 25, 2010

Sycophants

RAMclr800-072610-protection.jpg

I thought, as I think most people did, that the support of the liberal press would do Obama more good than it has. One wonders whether he might have been better off if not surrounded by sycophants.

O Reminder

September 29, 2008



A READER AT A MAJOR NEWSROOM EMAILS: "Off the record, every suspicion you have about MSM being in the tank for O is true. We have a team of 4 people going thru dumpsters in Alaska and 4 in arizona. Not a single one looking into Acorn, Ayers or Freddiemae. Editor refuses to publish anything that would jeopardize election for O, and betting you dollars to donuts same is true at NYT, others. People cheer when CNN or NBC run another Palin-mocking but raising any reasonable inquiry into obama is derided or flat out ignored. The fix is in, and its working." I asked permission to reprint without attribution and it was granted.

mOna

clipped from www.cashill.com

One day, an artist friend of mine stopped by the house and spied the painting.

“Who did that?” he asked.

“I did,” I answered proudly.

“I can believe you did the face,” said my friend, a funny, blunt guy. “That sucks. But who did the eyes?”

“I did,” I answered. He stared at me hard. “I had help,” I added sheepishly.

“You had more than help.”

In reading Barack Obama’s 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father, my friend’s accurate assessment of my TR portrait resonates.

With no known prior writing except, by his own admission, “a journal of daily reflections and very bad poetry,” Obama is alleged to have sat down and written the above sentence. I could just as probably have painted the Mona Lisa.

“unruly maleness,” “unadorned insistence on respect” and “withdrawal into a smaller and smaller coil of rage” lace the book.

These are the “eyes” of the book. Yet in the several spontaneous interviews Obama has given on the subject of race, one sees not a glimpse of this eloquence and insight.

Same As It Ever Was

clipped from newsbusters.org

The folks at PolitiZoid have done it again, this time using the Talking Heads classic "Once in a Lifetime" to bash Obama's response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill:

"And you may ask yourself, 'Did I really vote for him?'" (lyrics and commentary follow with original Talking Heads video):

Letting the days go by, play another round of golf
Letting the days go by, crude oil is flowing in the Gulf
Will it be blue again, after the oil is gone
They'll fix it this time, blame is going all around.

And you may ask yourself, "How do I fix this?"
And you may ask yourself, "How much oil is in there anyway?"
You may tell yourself, "These are not my poll numbers!"
And you may tell yourself, "This is not my friendly press!"

You Can't Make This Stuff Up

clipped from newsbusters.org
Director Oliver Stone belittled the Holocaust during a shocking interview with the Sunday Times today, claiming that America's focus on the Jewish massacre was a product of the "Jewish domination of the media."

The director also defended Hitler and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and railed against the "powerful lobby" of Jews in America.

Stone said that his upcoming Showtime documentary series "Secret History of America," seeks to put Hitler and Communist dictator Joseph Stalin "in context."

"Hitler was a Frankenstein but there was also a Dr Frankenstein. German industrialists, the Americans and the British. He had a lot of support," Stone told Sunday Times' reporter Camilla Long.

BPO'ed


THE US government secretly advised Scottish ministers it would be "far preferable" to free the Lockerbie bomber than jail him in Libya.

The intervention, which has angered US relatives of those who died in the attack, was made by Richard LeBaron, deputy head of the US embassy in London, a week before Megrahi was freed in August last year on grounds that he had terminal cancer.

The document, acquired by a well-placed US source, threatens to undermine US President Barack Obama's claim last week that all Americans were "surprised, disappointed and angry" to learn of Megrahi's release.

Despite the controversy over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and Megrahi's release, it emerged over the weekend that BP is planning deep-water drilling off Libya.

Louisiana Is tOast

Last Tuesday, Northrop Grumman Corp., faced with tighter Pentagon spending and Obama administration priorities aimed at Afghanistan and away from the Navy, said it would shut its Avondale shipyard - the state’s largest industrial employer with about 5,000 workers - in early 2013 after two military ships are finished.

Avondale already was the subject of concern, since the program to build amphibious assault vessels will end in 2016, but Northrop decided to build the last two vessels at Pascagoula, Miss.

Another source of misery is the deepwater petroleum drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico. The six-month “pause” that the Obama administration insists on could kill the drilling business off the Louisiana coast for years, industry and government officials warn.

Of the 33 deepwater rigs in the Gulf when the Deepwater Horizon exploded, two found new long-term homes in Egypt and off the coast of Africa within a week — just as the industry promised would happen.

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Connecticut???

clipped from www.youtube.com

Nullification

clipped from www.qando.net

And that’s where the probable “nullification” may take place –i.e. the nullification of the intent of the AZ law which had at its foundation the apprehension, removal and deportation of illegals found in the state.  As Jacobson says:

While the survival of this aspect of the Arizona immigration law would still outrage opponents, the practical effect would be to allow federal authorities to nullify the state law in practice by refusing to take custody of or prosecute those turned over by state authorities.

Indeed, this is what happens sometimes in Rhode Island, when the State Police notify federal authorities and there are no outstanding warrants on the person.


Willful disregard for the law. 

Isn’t one of the foundational principles of our nation “the rule of law” and not the “rule of men”?  Isn’t such willful disregard counter to that principle?  How does one count on being equal with all other men before the law when the government can arbitrarily decide what it will and won’t enforce?

As Government Expands...

clipped from www.moonbattery.com

There's no better way to start off Saturday night than with a shot of 100 proof countermoonbattery, compliments of Ronaldus Maximus:

COTD: Objectives

clipped from pajamasmedia.com

MICHAEL MOYNIHAN: “False (or flimsy) accusations of racism abound—they are everywhere one looks—though they rarely provoke the level of outrage seen in the Sherrod affair.” Well, because they’re usually aimed at Republicans.

But Moynihan’s piece produced the comment of the week:


My take:

(1) Breitbart was aiming at the NAACP as a reaction to yet another baseless Tea Party racism charge. Boy, did he hit his target. Sherrod was purely incidental.

(2) Breitbart succeeded in making the NAACP look racist, succeeded in provoking them into making an unfounded charge of racism themselves, and succeeded in stampeding the whole lefty racism industry into suddenly pontificating about the need for context and the horribleness of unfounded charges of racism.

I would say Breitbart has, once again, achieved all his objectives.


Indeed.


The Sherrod

clipped from biggovernment.com
“I’ve watched the full tape. It gets worse; it doesn’t get better! It’s not that Andrew Breitbart took out something that what was going to somehow get her off the hook. She hangs herself later on with footage that Andrew Breitbart I believe did not have on his.”

kryptObama

Signs accumulate that the President is becoming political kryptonite for Democrat candidates.

August 9th huh? Let me check my calendar. Oh darn the luck Mr. President, I'm going to be making a campaign stop at the Johnson County Fair. My schedule is really packed right now, but maybe we can do lunch in...say...mid November.

There is something funny going on in Texas. Only last year Bill White paid for an ad featuring a picture of himself and Barack Obama trumpeting the slogan "The Dream, The Hope, The Change." This year the Democrat candidate for governor is looking to distance himself from an increasingly unpopular president.

The Dallas Morning News quotes White who said "I was in the oil and gas business when he was a community organizer." The gubernatorial hopeful added.

"There are some people, including me, who believe that the president is spending a lot more money than we're taking in, is spending too much money in Washington," White said in an interview.

Two-fer

clipped from pajamasmedia.com

SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO EMBARRASS YOURSELF WITH A YACHT TO BE A DEMOCRATIC SENATOR, but apparently it helps: Jeff Greene denies his anchor damaged Belize reef.


On a Tuesday morning five years ago, Summerwind, a three-story, 145-foot luxury yacht, maneuvered above the celebrated barrier reef that lines the coast of Belize.

There it dropped anchor — and plunged into controversy over severe damage to a coral reef system officially recognized by the United Nations as one of the world’s most magnificent and irreplaceable treasures.

And, oddly, Greene today says the incident never happened, despite extensive publicity about it at the time (including statements from his representatives), eyewitness accounts, scientific surveys of the damage and an extensive case file at the country’s Department of Environment.


At least he pays his taxes. As far as we know, anyway. Oh, wait: “Greene bought Summerwind in 2003, registering it in the Marshall Islands, a well-known tax haven.”

It’s a two-fer!

Broke -- And Soon To Be Broken

clipped from www.zerohedge.com

America's biggest creditor - China - has called our bluff.

As
the Financial Times notes,
the head of China's biggest credit rating agency has said America is insolvent and that U.S. credit
ratings are a joke:

The head of China’s largest
credit rating agency has slammed his western counterparts for causing
the global financial crisis and said that as the world’s largest
creditor nation China should have a bigger say in how governments and
their debt are rated.

Indeed, Guan is even dissing America's
military prowess:

“Actually, the huge military
expenditure of the US is not created by themselves but comes from
borrowed money, which is not sustainable.”
The fact that America spends
more than the rest of the world combined on our military means that we
can keep an artificially high credit rating. But ironically, all the
money we're spending on our military means that we become less and less
credit-worthy ... and that we'll no longer be able to fund our military.

Average Americans

clipped from hotair.com

WEEKLY ADDRESS: President Obama Vows to Continue Standing Up to the Special Interests on Behalf of the American People


And here’s his vow:

A hundred years ago, one of the great Republican Presidents, Teddy Roosevelt, fought to limit special interest spending and influence over American political campaigns and warned of the impact of unbridled, corporate spending.

General Electric once again spent more money on lobbying than any other company — $8.3 million last quarter

Of course, General Electric’s lobbying interests don’t include the advocacy work of the news and opinion departments of both NBC and MS-NBC, who remain steadfast allies of the administration.

The top three trade lobbies — lobbying groups that represent single industries — are all health-sector lobbies that vocally and repeatedly supported Obama’s health care overhaul.

It’s possible that the President considers these incredibly wealthy, very influential corporations just another bunch of “average Americans”

Wrong Way Obama

clipped from www.nytimes.com


Even as the new coalition government said it would make enormous cuts in the public sector, it initially promised to leave health care alone. But in one of its most surprising moves so far, it has done the opposite, proposing what would be the most radical reorganization of the National Health Service, as the system is called, since its inception in 1948.


In a document, or white paper, outlining the plan, the government admitted that the changes would “cause significant disruption and loss of jobs.” But it said: “The current architecture of the health system has developed piecemeal, involves duplication and is unwieldy. Liberating the N.H.S., and putting power in the hands of patients and clinicians, means we will be able to effect a radical simplification, and remove layers of management.”

Welcome To The Police State

Senate Democrat Majority Leader Harry Reid is quietly trying to nationalize rules governing every police, fire and first responder union in the nation.
Imagine the loss of control that local governments will face when first responder unions no longer have to deal with local rules and laws but can force a federal one-size-fits-all style rule on all local governments. Local governments will no longer be able to determine pay scales and benefits and will lose control of their own ability to budget. Reid’s plan will also completely remove the ability of voters to have any say in local matters as a top down control from Washington will rule the day where it concerns local police, fire and other first responders.
If H.R.413 passes no local government will be able to fire a cop or fireman without appealing to the federal government, a source far, far removed from the local area and a source completely unfamiliar with the needs and interests of that local area.

A Tale O Corruption

clipped from hotair.com

The expose on Journolist, a now defunct, listserv that included hundreds of liberal journalists, detailed:



  • the Journolisters’ attempt, during the 2008 presidential campaign to kill and bury stories about Obama’s relationship with “Reverend” Jeremiah Wright;

  • their push to deliberately smear innocent conservative journalists and politicos as “racists” and “bigots”

  • their twisted passion to see Rush Limbaugh killed off and dead;

  • their intolerant desire to have the government censor and shut down Fox News; and

  • their baldly partisan effort to coordinate liberal talking points that would discredit Sarah Palin and John McCain, while helping to elect Barack Obama president.



Considering that Journolist included journalists from Washington Post, the New York Times, National Public Radio, New Republic, and Time, one has to wonder if the biggest story covered up in 2008 was the illegal coordination between ACORN and the Obama campaign.

Friday, July 23, 2010

The Real Divide

The current state of American politics can be summed up in this poll data, published today by Rasmussen Reports:


75% of Likely Voters prefer free markets over a government managed economy. Just 14% think a government managed economy is better while 11% are not sure.


Well, one would hope so. But here is the kicker:


America's Political Class is far less enamored with the virtues of a free market. In fact, Political Class voters narrowly prefer a government managed economy over free markets by a 44% to 37% margin.


That strikes me as a rather stunning finding.

journOlist

clipped from townhall.com

Oh, and -- surprise! -- it turns out that the "O" in Journolist stands for "Obama."


In 2008, participants shared talking points about how to shape coverage to help Obama. They tried to paint any negative coverage of Obama's racist and hateful pastor, Jeremiah Wright, as out of bounds. Journalists at such "objective" news organizations as Newsweek, Bloomberg, Time and The Economist joined conversations with open partisans about the best way to criticize Sarah Palin.


In other words, Journolist is a symptom, not the disease. And the disease is not a secret conspiracy but something more like the "Open Conspiracy" H.G. Wells fantasized about, where the smartest, best people at every institution make their progressive vision for the world their top priority.

"This isn't about ideology. ... We just call them like we see them. ... We don't have an agenda."


The open conspiracy that perpetuates that lie is far more pernicious than any chat room.

The Full Bucky

clipped from www.popsci.com

The space discoveries are piling up this week. Next up: Astronomers working with NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered buckyballs in space for the very first time, putting an end to a decades-long search for the largest molecules now known to exist in space.

tOast

clipped from pajamasmedia.com

JONAH GOLDBERG: “Shirley Sherrod, who didn’t know who Andrew Breitbart was 72 hours ago, now knows him well enough to say that he wants to put all blacks back into slavery. If I were David Axelrod, I’d be calling this woman and beg her to stop talking. And, yes, she does owe Andrew an apology.”

UPDATE: Reader Bill Ernoehazy writes: “Glenn: At this point I think it’s worth asking: Did someone on Vilsack’s staff push for a panicky ejection because Sherrod had a _reputation_ for race-baiting? In less than three days she’s castigated the President, and now Breitbart, on nakedly racial grounds. What did Vilsack’s staff know, and when will WE know it?”

ANOTHER UPDATE: More thoughts from Dave Price. “And remember — the Obama admin now owns Shirley Sherrod. There’s no way for them to look good on this anymore.

the already oil-drenched competence myth is now taking a slash to the jugular.”


Cracked And Crackling

clipped from pajamasmedia.com

CNN HOST CALLS FOR crackdown on bloggers. Of course.

UPDATE: Reader Eugene Heim writes:


I think you got to this point much sooner than I, but my reaction to that story is:

Who do these people think they are that they seek to determine what I should be able to read or hear? I am better educated, have seen and done things that they can only pontificate about (military, private sector, federal employee), and -going out a limb here- am more intelligent than these people who wish to regulate what I can know and think.

I hope I speak for many when I say, I might be late to the game, but I am awake and taking the field.


I think a lot of people feel this way.