Beginning Of The End

clipped from www.nytimes.com KABUL, Afghanistan — Two senior Afghan officials were showing President Hamid Karzai the evidence of the spectacular rocket attack on a nationwide peace conference earlier this month when Mr. Karzai told them that he believed the Taliban were not responsible. “The president did not show any interest in the evidence — none — he treated it like a piece of dirt,” said Amrullah Saleh, then the director of the Afghan intelligence service. Mr. Saleh declined to discuss Mr. Karzai’s reasoning in more detail. But a prominent Afghan with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Mr. Karzai suggested in the meeting that it might have been the Americans who carried it out. Minutes after the exchange, Mr. Saleh and the interior minister, Hanif Atmar, resigned — the most dramatic defection from Mr. Karzai’s government since he came to power nine years ago. Mr. Saleh and Mr. Atmar said they quit because Mr. Karzai made clear that he no longer considered them loyal.

Very Cool

clipped from ace.mu.nu It's from several years ago, but it's new to me.

Shock

clipped from www.moonbattery.com We all knew it was true, and admissions from ACORN employees are proving we were right all along. The radical activist group ACORN "works" for the Democratic Party and deliberately promotes election fraud, ACORN employees told FBI investigators, according to an FBI document dump Wednesday. The documents obtained by Judicial Watch, a watchdog group, are FBI investigators' reports related to the 2007 investigation and arrest of eight St. Louis, Mo., workers from ACORN's Project Vote affiliate for violation of election laws. All eight employees involved in the scandal later pleaded guilty to voter registration fraud.

You'll Get To Keep It?

clipped from blogs.investors.com Internal White House documents reveal that 51% of employers may have to relinquish their current health care coverage by 2013 due to ObamaCare. That numbers soars to 66% for small-business employers. The documents — product of a joint project of the Labor Department, the Health and Human Services Department and the IRS — examine the effects new regulations would have on existing, or “grandfathered,” employer-based health care plans. Draft copies of the documents were reportedly leaked to House Republicans earlier in the week. Rep. Bill Posey, R-Fla., posted them on his Web site Friday afternoon.  (View the full report here.) Under interim regulations, current employer-based coverage would not be grandfathered and hence subject to the health care laws’ consumer provisions if: * The plan eliminates benefits related to diagnosis or treatment of a particular condition. * The plan increases the percentage of a cost-sharing requirement

Horsepuckey.

We Con The World

clipped from hotair.com What happens when a song parody skewering a politically-correct target reaches viral stage on YouTube?  Caroline Glick gives us the answer: As Israel went offline for the Jewish sabbath, YouTube removed most versions of Latma’s hit parody song We Con the World. If you try to access the song on YouTube you receive the notification: This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Warner/ Chappell Music, Inc. . Copyright experts we advised with before posting the song told us in no uncertain terms that we were within our rights to use the song because we did so in accordance with the Fair Use Doctrine.

Whatever He Thinks He's In

clipped from www.moonbattery.com Sexual predator allegations notwithstanding, Alvin Greene has certainly managed to go from zero to a bit more than 15 minutes of fame. The Democrat nominee, duly elected by South Carolineans to run against Republican Jim DeMint for United States Senate, is nothing if he isn't articulate. "I'm the Democratic Party nominee," Greene says in the interview at his father's home on a lonely stretch of rural highway in central South Carolina. "The people have spoken. The people of South Carolina have spoken. The people of South Carolina have spoken. We have to be pro-South Carolina. The people of South Carolina have spoken. We have to be pro-South Carolina." [...] "I check my e-mail, like, it varies, maybe -- I'm more, I mean -- two or three times a week," he says. "I prefer the telephone. I'm a little old-fashioned. I prefer the telephone. That's the easiest." Mr. Greene was, and still is, in it for the long haul. Whatever it is he thinks he's in, that is.

Kind Of Like Liberal Journalists

clipped from www.moonbattery.com Government-mandated green energy is wonderful for the crony capitalists at GE, but not so nice for animals. Not only do the hideous windmills sprouting up on our dime hack birds to pieces, now we learn that solar panels kill off the insects fish need for food. Solar panels might be a cornerstone of green energy, but new research shows that they may have a dark side: the panels are a mesmerizing, lethal attraction to certain aquatic insects Kind of like liberal journalists watching an endless loop of Comrade Obama's teleprompter readings. But insects are much more useful than liberal journalists. The potential insect losses are important, Robertson said, because the insects provide food for fish and other aquatic species. "Aquatic insects are a fundamentally important base of the aquatic food web," he said. No problem. Although every program imposed by the government results in negative unintended consequences, these can be dealt with by imposing more government programs.

But that's redundant, isn't it?

Left Turns

clipped from www.moonbattery.com

Meanwhile, Over In Colorado's 3rd

clipped from www.moonbattery.com I am a man of faith, a Constitution carrying, conservative Republican. I am a retired Colonel, Airborne Ranger, finished my military career in the JAG Corps, and am a recovering lawyer. My decision to run for political office for the first time in my life was born in the anger I felt with the political deceit, rampant spending and corruption in Washington. I share your anger at what is happening to our country, and your determination to take our country back. I have been endorsed by Combat Veteran's For Congress as well as Sheriff Richard Mack. I am proud to have been endorsed by the Grand Junction Results, Bear's Ears Patriot and the Southern Colorado Tea Parties. You go, Bob.

... while we have the lunatic liar Betsy Markey in the 4th. Unbelievable.

Walruses

clipped from justoneminute.typepad.com CAN'T WAIT TO READ THE PLAN:  Tim Dickinson wrote a devastating account of Team Obama's effort in the Gulf, which included this detail on a past BP plan (p. 2): Nowhere was the absurdity of the policy more evident than in the application that BP submitted for its Deepwater Horizon well only two months after Obama took office. BP claims that a spill is "unlikely" and states that it anticipates "no adverse impacts" to endangered wildlife or fisheries. Should a spill occur, it says, "no significant adverse impacts are expected" for the region's beaches, wetlands and coastal nesting birds. The company, noting that such elements are "not required" as part of the application, contains no scenario for a potential blowout, and no site-specific plan to respond to a spill. Instead, it cites an Oil Spill Response Plan that it had prepared for the entire Gulf region. Among the sensitive species BP anticipates protecting in the semitropical Gulf? "Walruses"

COTD: Useless Eaters

clipped from maxkeiser.com You see the people who brought you the Bilderberg, view themselves as the master race and quite simply view us, the regular people, as "useless eaters" , using up the resources that are theirs.  The end is simple, it's to break us.  The great depression that's already starting will break many financially, mentally, and spiritually. And after all is said and done the "master race" of eyeball triangle worshipers will firmly be in charge and have the world and it's resources to themselves.  At least that's what they want, whether we as citizens let them achieve that goal, we'll see.

Scales Are Falling

clipped from www.moonbattery.com A Tea Party message from Rachel Higgs, a lifelong Democrat who voted for Obama:

O Governing Genius

clipped from pajamasmedia.com I GUESS THERE MUST STILL BE PEOPLE WITH JOBS HE HASN’T ALIENATED: Obama Puts Mortgage Interest Deduction On Chopping Block. And how’s this going to impact the housing bust? UPDATE: Related: How To Kill A Recovery. ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader emails: “Speaking for myself, just the rumour of ending the mortgage deduction has caused me today to call off my house search. Not just because of the loss of the deduction to me personally, but because it’s easy to imagine this crashing prices, which is all you need to, in fact, crash prices.” Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 2:57 pm

They Hung Him

clipped from gatewaypundit.firstthings.com

An "R" Has Been Dropped

clipped from www.moonbattery.com The Manchurian Moonbat is ideal: offspring of an African socialist and a left-wing hippie, raised amid Muslims, mentored by one America-hating communist after another. Even his name is perfect for the quintessential enemy of the country liberals love to hate; Hussein naturally calls to mind Saddam Hussein, just as even his supporters can't help but mix up Obama with Osama. His first name is highly suitable too, even if an R has been dropped. The Wikipedia page on Barracks Communism explains: Barracks communism (also referred to as Nechayevshchina) is the term coined by Karl Marx to refer to a 'crude', authoritarian forced collectivism and communism, where all aspects of life are bureaucratically regimented and communal. … Later, political theorists of the Soviet Union applied this term to the People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong (1950s-1970s). No wonder the media love Chairman Zero so much. They must have invented him. He is too perfect a parody to be real.

A Reminder: Hitler's National Socialism

clipped from www.moonbattery.com The left has pulled off one of the greatest propaganda coups in history by not only disowning Hitler, but even passing him off as a conservative. A conservative wants to conserve the foundations of society; it is progressives who want the foundations destroyed to make way for authoritarian utopias. Hitler's intense hostility toward Christianity was no more conservative than his far left economic views, both of which put him on the same page as our modern liberal rulers: World At War the 1974 series narrated by Lawrence Olivier is showing again on the Military Channel. In one episode, a personal secretary to Hitler, Traudi Junge, recalls the last moments in the Furherbunker with Hitler before he shot himself. Hitler called his staff to attention, going down the line with some comments to each. In her presence she reports one of the last things he uttered was a condemnation of the Jews and capitalism. Hitler was a madman. He was also a Socialist to his very core.

Troubles By The Carload

clipped from cfecon.blogspot.com

QOTD: Alien Invaders

clipped from www.qando.net Obama seems to think corporations are alien invaders sent here to destroy us and should be handled accordingly — yet seething peoples who actually do want to destroy us should be confronted with diplomacy and listening. Given the last 16 months or so, it is hard to mount an argument that would refute his point.

Culture

clipped from www.forbes.com When will the familiar label "Made in China" switch to something more challenging: "Invented in China"? Not for another decade at least, according to investors and technology entrepreneurs who gathered recently at an event in Beijing to discuss the topic. (For video of the event, click here.) Sure, some things are already being invented in China. Internet whizzes have pushed advances in mobile gaming and instant messaging. But many obstacles prevent a full-scale leap into widespread inventing. One hurdle is culture. Entrepreneurs in China are still afraid of failure, noted Feng Deng of Northern Light Venture Capital. A failed startup in Silicon Valley is practically a badge of honor. In addition, entrepreneurs in China may be good at coding software, but they make for lousy managers. That often keeps their businesses from scaling.

Pagan Charms

clipped from www.davidwarrenonline.com I like to dwell on the wisdom of our ancestors. It took us millennia to emerge from the primitive notion that a malignant agency must lie behind every unfortunate experience. Indeed, the Catholic Church spent centuries fighting folk pagan beliefs in things like evil fairies, and the whole notion the Devil can compel any person to act against his will -- only to watch an explosion of witch-hunting and related popular hysterias at the time of the Reformation. In so many ways, the trend of post-Christian society today is back to pagan superstitions: to the belief that malice lies behind every misfortune, and to the related idea that various, essentially pagan charms can be used to ward off that to which all flesh is heir. The belief that, for instance, laws can be passed, that change the entire order of nature, is among the most irrational of these. Sheer human stupidity is the cause of any number of human catastrophes -- including the stupidity of superstition itself.

Wait, What?!

clipped from www.firstthings.com Wait, what? Critics have bashed President Obama for being slow to seize the political initiative in combating the BP oil spill in the Gulf Coast, now widely believed to be the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. The White House has battled back, releasing a timeline of events showing that Obama was briefed—and deploying the Coast Guard—within 24 hours of the Deepwater Horizon blowout. What has not been previously disclosed: The president was not only briefed on the real-time events of the spill, but also on just how bad it would be—and how hard it would be to plug the hole. Publishing this at 8:46 PM on a Friday night, when it is least likely to be noticed, Richard Wollfe sends out a trial balloon, to see if it will float some sympathy toward the White House: Hey, America, Obama knew it was going to be really bad, and there was nothing he could actually do about that, so he did nothing about anything.

The 2nd Verse

clipped from www.moonbattery.com Our liberal rulers will never be able to obliterate (i.e., "fundamentally transform") America without putting an end to the Tea Party movement. Here the American spirit comes bubbling up to the surface at a Tea Party in Georgia:

The Copper Clapper Caper

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com President Obama has announced the appointment of retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper, a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and current undersecretary of defense for intelligence, to be the next Director of National Intelligence. Eli Lake has some interesting background on Clapper. According to Lake, in 2004 Clapper supported the view that Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq sent weapons and documents to Syria in the weeks before the 2003 U.S. invasion. Clapper's nomination reminded me of the "The Copper Clapper Caper" skit broadcast in 1968 on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. In the skit Jack Webb hilariously reprised his "Dragnet" role as Sergeant Joe Friday and Johnny Carson played Everyman reporting the crime. (In 1968 "Dragnet" was in its second television run; the series remained in NBC's lineup until 1970.) Forty years later, the skit still inspires laughter.

I Understand That It Is There That You Wish To Send Me

clipped from www.jpost.com Dear Ms. Thomas, I read on numerous Web sites the remarks attributed to you (and I did not see any denial) that we, the Jews must “get the hell out of Palestine” and “go home” to Germany or Poland. I am convinced that you are aware of the events which took place during the years 1939-1945 but, to be certain, I think it appropriate to tell you a little about my parents My mother was sent to Palestine from Germany in 1933 with the rise of the Nazis to power by her farseeing parents. The British blockade, which prevented Jews fleeing the Nazi horrors from entering, made it difficult for her and only the pretext of coming on a tourist visit enabled her to enter and remain alive. Her older sister, Sarah, her husband and three children aged 12, 10 and seven did not succeed in finding a way of coming to Palestine and were sent by the Nazis to Poland and from there, their journey to the Auschwitz gas chambers, was short. I understand that it is there that you wish to send me.