Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Would You Trust this Woman?


Washington (CNN) Former secretary of State and likely 2016 White House aspirant Hillary Clinton sought to tamp down concerns about her use of private email while leading the State Department during a press conference at the United Nations on Tuesday. While she maintained she had not broken any rules, she also said she would not be turning over the private server housing her correspondence, despite calls for her to release it for an independent review.
Can you imagine telling the IRS you're not turning over private records?  If we were still a nation of laws, federal agents would have already seized her clandestine mail server and charged her with mishandling official federal information governed by federal statutes.  She created a private stash of government records that is in violation of federal directives.

Hillary claimed she could not have both an official and a personal e-mail account on one device, but...
Others offer a different story. BuzzFeed's Evan McMorris-Santoro reported that when he was transportation secretary, Ray LaHood had both government and personal e-mail on one BlackBerry device. Emily Miller, a journalist who was an appointee in the State Department under President George W. Bush, indicated the same, tweeting that "we had both unclassified State email and personal email on the same Blackberry" when she was in the administration. (WaPo)
Hillary's penchant for secrecy and need to be above the law opened the door to foreign intelligence. There is no way that server was not hacked...
if the best of the best are after your information, you need the best of your best protecting it. And there is simply no way that a “homebrew” server is EVER going to have the security and resources appropriate to defend it adequately.

Even using a webmail system like Gmail, Outlook or Yahoo would have been better because those companies have the expertise and capability to meet at least some of the threat this class of information would face. (Geekwire)
But she turned all the e-mails over...  "Trust me!"

Were you reassured when she flicked away all concerns with an imperious wave of her witch-like claw?  Don't worry!  Her staff has combed through her secret server and provided all relevant e-mail to the State Department.  Nothing to see here, move along!

Her problem is, the press is not moving along. John King at CNN Writes...
Secrecy. Shielding documents. Accusations of arrogance and hypocrisy. Debates about the letter and the spirit of the rules. A public defense -- but also jitters and disbelief -- from fellow Democrats. Legitimate criticism along with some eye-rolling conspiracy theories from Republicans.
Later in the article, he flashes back to 1996 when then First Lady Clinton engendered...
"...a climate of fear in which officials did not dare question Mrs. Clinton's wishes."
FYI, John King and CNN are not members of the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy.  If the GOOPers are smart, they will shut their pie-holes and stay out of this.  Hillary's black magic is too strong for such weaklings.  If Hillary goes down, it will be at the hands of Clinton-fatigued Democrats in the party and in the press who long for fresh blood.  

I don't know yet if she is toast, but I do think she is a lying, stinking sack from top to bottom. What do you think?

Related Links:
Questions of Security and Transparency
Clinton Flashback
Did She do anything wrong?




Tuesday, March 10, 2015

The Competence of Government


An Inspector General report from 5 March reveals the amazing longevity of the American people...

There are over 6.5 Million people in the Social Security Administration database born prior to June 16, 1901.  They also found several thousand people born before the Civil War.

Even better, they're active... between 2008 and 2011 the SSA received 4,024 E-Verify requests for people born prior to 1901 as well.

IRS IG Audit

Mo' Government, Mo' Better

Monday, March 9, 2015

Ferguson: State-Sponsored Lawfare

The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.  
-- Dick the Butcher
The Justice Department has released its damning report on the Ferguson Police Department.  Activists seized upon the statistics in the report that show minorities, who make up 67% of Ferguson, have negative contact with police and the judicial system on a much higher percentage.  Actually, that is the weakest part of the report.  Heather MacDonald efficiently bats down the 'disparate impact' argument:
There are few criminal laws that do not have a disparate impact on blacks, because the black crime rate is more elevated than the white crime rate. Black males between the ages of 14 and 17, for example, die from homicide nationally at nearly ten times the rate of white and Hispanic males of the same ages combined, because the black youth homicide rate is similarly skewed. Blacks commit property crimes at about three times the rate of their presence in the national population, according to arrest data.  (Heather MacDonald - NRO) 
More damning are the first-hand reports and hard evidence of blatant racist words and actions by police officers.  Racism exists, even in the halls of government power, but that does not explain away societal dysfunction in places like Ferguson.

The most damning aspect of the report was the trail of evidence leading back to a city hall that conspired to use the police force and municipal court system to squeeze more revenue from the citizenry.  This goes beyond race, and it happens all over America, in small towns, big cities, state governments, federal agencies...

Our judicial system and tort law has been hijacked by government criminal gangs and pirates with law degrees.  They infest our legislative bodies, where they confect incomprehensible legalistic monstrosities and hang them over our heads, like dark banks of pregnant storm clouds, ready to burst and inundate us.

Piss off the man, and he will unleash the thunder and lightning, to the point where if you parked your car illegally in Ferguson (or DC, or anywhere else in America) and failed to pay the initial ticket, the fine will grow out of any common sense proportion and financially swamp you.  The Ferguson municipal code, enforced by its court system, routinely preyed upon residents with such tactics, mostly poor minorities with no power to fight back.

United Police State of America

Does anyone really think that Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) is any more corrupt than his fellow gangsters up on Crapital Hill?  How many times has Nancy Pelosi ridden in the Google Plane that uses federally-owned Moffett Field?  How many billions has Democrat Senator Diane Feinstein and her husband made off of war profiteering?   Harry Reid?  Need I say more?  The man is crapulent with power, greed and corruption.  Ask anyone from his state.  Nothing happens, no deal gets done, without Reid's blessing.  He enjoys plenipotentiary thumbs-up or thumbs-down on every Nevada project.  Do you really believe he is clean?

Menendez went down because he pissed off somebody powerful, and the thing is, the way our convoluted, incomprehensible legal system works, we're all criminals!  The Law hangs over our heads like the Sword of Damocles.  Every now and then, it fells someone powerful who forgot how the game was played, but it claims its greatest number of victims among the powerless of Ferguson, Missouri, and every other locality across the Police State of America.

Sure, there are racist cops, corrupt cops, cops who get off on abusing their power, but they are the foot soldiers of the lawyers.  Do you really think a pasty-faced Harvard grad in an Armani suit and thousand dollar wingtips is going to attempt to do his own dirty work?  Hell No!  He leaves it to his government-sanctioned enforcers armed with clubs, guns and the full weight of the law, which will drop on you like a piano if you don't comply.
 
A nation of the lawyers, by the lawyers, and for the lawyers...

We labor under the lash of a lawyerocracy.  Our justice system long ago ceased being a natural outpouring of the morals and standards of the people.  It is now a rotten edifice infested with rats and cockroaches who use it to accrete power, abuse others and enrich themselves.

The government of Ferguson has wronged its people by abusing the law and using it as a cudgel to rob its citizens and cow them into submission.  This is not an isolated incident, and it isn't particular to Ferguson.  It is a pervasive, endemic cancer that is rotting the nation and eating the people alive.  Governments at every level have corrupted and perverted the very concept of justice.  Is it any wonder people have lost faith in government, our institutions, and our capricious system of laws? 
     
See also:
The Gangsters of Ferguson - Ta-Nehisi Coates
Washington Post - 12 Key highlights from the Ferguson Report

Sunday, March 8, 2015

Daylight Saving Time



That is correct, you lost an hour of sleep last night, why? It wasn't for the farmers... agriculture has opposed DST since the beginning.  Farmer's now have an hour less of daylight to get the cows milked and their goods to market.  That extra hour of daylight in the evening?  You stole it from the farmers.

It doesn't save energy, lighting is such a miniscule portion of energy usage the .02% decrease in energy usage for lighting is outweighed by the .15% increase in usage due to additional cooling requirements - Osaka Study.  The National Bureau of Economic Research did a study in Indiana before and after the adoption of DST and found a 1-4% increase in energy consumption.

Studies have shown an increased risk in heart attacks with the clock jump forward, an increased risk in suicides is also associated with the jump.

Think of the poor cows.


Saturday, March 7, 2015

Saturday Sessions: Singing Nuns

Now I still have no idea why, but someone was listening to this at work yesterday... over and over again, thought I'd share it and see if anyone remembers her.






There is however a modern equivalent of Sister Luc-Gabrielle (Jeanne Deckers) a.k.a Sœur Sourire, and that would be Sister Cristina below who won the 2014 Voice of Italy television competition (the Italian version of The Voice):





Friday, March 6, 2015

What do you know?

Only 1 in 1000 Americans can name the five freedoms guaranteed by the first amendment; Speech, Press, Religion, Assembly, and Petition...But 22% of us can name all five of the Simpsons; Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie.

Take the Perils of Perception Quiz

I scored 8/9... I have to admit I got the percentage of Americans over 65 wrong.

If you want to have some real fun... take the other countries quizes.

I also scored 8/9 on Canada's test... I got the percentage of immigrants wrong. I scored 9/9 on the South Korea test (I did live there for a while). I scored 8/9 on the British test, again I got the percentage of immigrants wrong and while I lived there I wasn't in a big city and underestimated the immigrant population.

Germany 4/9, France 6/9, Italy 9/9, Australia 8/9, Spain 9/9, Belgium 8/9, Sweden 8/9, Japan 8/9, Hungary 7/9, Poland 7/9


After America and Canada I took the tests randomly, not in the order listed above and learned a bit from the test... I took Germany third and Hungary and Poland last.  I noticed I tended to under or over estimate immigrant populations, undoubtedly influenced by the news cycle.  

How did you do?


Thursday, March 5, 2015

Martin O'Malley


Rumors abound that Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, who just announced that he won't seek the US Senate seat of Barbara Mikulski could be poised to mount a challenge against Hillary Clinton for the 2016 Democratic nomination.

What do you think?  Should he challenge Hillary "got my own server" Clinton?  A lifelong politician with little real world experience other than politics, is he what America really needs?




Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Bibi


Yesterday Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to the US Congress and the President had this to say:

Netanyahu had been proven wrong about his diplomatic initiatives before and that Netanyahu has in the past made "all sorts of claims" about the deal and that "none of that has come true."

And I thought to myself... Gee, the exact same thing could be said about Barrack Obama.

Benjamin Netanyahu had this to say about President Obama:

“We appreciate all that President Obama has done for Israel,” he said. “Some of it is widely known... Some of what the president has done for Israel is less well-known. In each of those moments, I called the president, and he was there,” Netanyahu said. “And some of what the president has done for Israel might never be known, because it touches on some of the most sensitive and strategic issues that arise between an American president and an Israeli prime minister.  But I know it!” he continued. “And I will always be grateful to President Obama for that support.”

Now ask yourself, who's the child?

What's the Iranian response? Well the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution affiliated website the Mashregh News called for the assassination of Benjamin Netanyahu's children and ran the following photo:
 
 

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

The Ministry of Truth?



There was an article in New Scientist about Google wanting to rank websites by truthfulness instead of popularity (which is sort of how it works now, although in truth it is a tad more complicated than that.  Keep in mind Google recently announced they also want to rank websites based on mobile friendliness as well.

First, in the interest of truth, New Scientist is a non-peer reviewed science weekly published in the UK.  Second, Google is attempting to address a real issue... if you're searching for truth a search engine isn't necessarily the way to go.  There is an entire industry based on boosting websites rankings (Search Engine Optimization) in results; search engine results are more about popularity than anything else.  Do a search for vaccines and pro and con websites seem to get equal billing.  Very democratic but then democracy also has nothing to do with truth.

The described proposal is to cross-reference web site information against the Google Knowledge Vault to fact check information to influence rankings.  This is pretty cut and dried when it comes to how many inches are in a meter, somewhat less so when you're talking about whether a politician cheated on his wife. So the question the becomes who gets to decide what is true and what is not?

There is no doubt that search engines serve as powerful tool in the shaping of public opinion, what people see when Googling Scott Walker or Elizabeth Warren can influence millions and possibly the outcome of elections.  This is no different than the power once wielded by the great newspapers of the past, but then theoretically there was a journalistic code of ethics, are programmers and software geeks bound under any such code? Should they be?

There are dangers and benefits both present in such a proposal, what do you think?

Monday, March 2, 2015

Neologisms, NeoComms and the News




* - This post employs neologisms to critically analyze the progressive statists and neocommunists in our midst.  There is a glossary at the bottom of the post for your convenience.

It is a sign of the times that parody no longer possesses shock value thanks to real-life becoming a parody of itself.  Who would have thought that the United States of Great Satan Amrika would elect a man named Hussein?

Further, who would have envisioned an American President slapping down Israel and disrespecting her leaders?  Sure, maybe the Zionist lobby has too much influence, but President Obama counters it by letting Sunni Muslim Brotherhood types dictate policy to him, when he's not busy taking marching orders from the racists at La Raza.
 
I know, saying such "racist" things causes the Obama fanboys and fangirls to self-flatulate and blow up the conversation with a gaseous fireball of indignant rage, thereby destroying bipartisan comity.

But anyway, here's a news article snippet:

Obama Threatened to Shoot Down Israeli Planes
The Bethlehem-based news agency Ma’an has cited a Kuwaiti newspaper report Saturday, that US President Barack Obama thwarted an Israeli military attack against Iran's nuclear facilities in 2014 by threatening to shoot down Israeli jets before they could reach their targets in Iran. (Israel National News)

Can you believe that?  Although it is quite possible, the leftwing Proglodytes will dismiss it as rightwing kookery.  This is known as a  Leftwing Lafftosh, whereby the hive defends the throne by throwing up a wall of fake laughter, works every time.

But anyway...

Nina Pham Sues Texas Hospital
Nina Pham, the nurse who contracted ebola while treating infected immigrant Thomas Eric Duncan, is suing...
"...Texas Health Resources alleging that while she became the American face of the fight against the disease, the hospital’s lack of training and proper equipment and violations of her privacy made her “a symbol of corporate neglect — a casualty of a hospital system’s failure to prepare for a known and impending medical crisis.”" (Dallas News)
She should be suing President Obama and his Office of Border Non-Enforcement and Immigration Welcome Mat Weenies at the Heimatlandsicherheitabteilung for letting Mr. Ebola enter the country so he could infect Ms. Pham and others.  How many people does our government have to sicken, maim and kill before people have enough and demand accountability?

Ask progressives a simple, neutral question like why doesn't our government test immigrants for diseases, or restrict immigration from known ebola hot zones, and Obama's defenders will Wriggle the Game by pretending to not understand the question.  Hardcore marxists like the Beantown Quacker will pull the old Il Canardo and divert the thread down the primrose path of irrelevancies, trivialities, teacup tempests, and made-up controversies.

But I digress... 

Modern Lawfare...  Dealt from the bottom of the Race Card Deck

As they say in those cheesy infomercials, "But wait!  There's more!"

Here's the best part of the story.  Nurse Pham isn't the first to sue Dallas Presbyterian Hospital:
Duncan's nephew, Josephus Weeks, toured Dallas with civil rights leader Jesse Jackson and Duncan's mother at his side. On CNN, Weeks accused the hospital of letting Duncan die because he was black. And he hinted at a lawsuit.

Weeks went quiet in November, after the hospital paid Duncan's parents and children an undisclosed cash settlement. He's been out of the media since then, and didn't return a reporter's call.(Dallas News)
I wonder what "Reverend" Highjacks'em's take was?    

Neologism Glossary 

Please read and provide corrections, suggestions, criticisms, etc...

Proglodyte:
a. A member of a fabulous or prehistoric race of socialist government worshipers that lives in ideological caves, dens, or holes.
b. A regressive progressive considered to be reclusive, reactionary, out of date, or brutish. 
c. Resembling a nonhuman ape that hoots rudimentary words like "Science!" or "Tolerance," despite a demonstrated incomprehension of their meaning.
d. An ideologically deaf and blind animal that lives underground, as an ant or a worm. Not in scientific use.

Liberal Lafftosh:
a.
A rhetorical feint; an attempt to dismiss legitimate criticism as balderdash.
b. An endeavor to flick away unpleasant facts by laughing them off. Employed by illiberal leftists to avoid serious discussion of anything that exposes their dogma for the tarpit of illogic and incoherence that it is.

Wriggling the Game:
a. Leftwing debating tactic whereby the duplicitous dogmatist feigns ignorance or purposely misunderstands a simple question posed by a right-thinking person.
b. (Il)Liberal attempt to slither out of any dangerous situation where facts and logic endanger (il)liberal orthodoxy.

Self-Flatulation:
a. A flamboyant leftwing gambit to upend the conversational chessboard when facts become unpleasant or when a normal person (aka 'the enemy') exposes some point of progressive political correctness to ridicule or scorn.
b. Self-Flatuate: To explode in righteous anger and malodorous indignation and fill the debate forum with noxious charges of racism, sexism, insensitivity, islamophobia, xenophobia, Mexican-hatred, dwarf tossing, anti-transgender-otherism, Queerty-fear, gunpowder-related penis inadequacy, homophobia, Christophilia, war-mongering, wage inequality, cat juggling, or any other white privilege crime invented by the academic left.

Il Canardo:
a.
A tactic used by sour consumers of Salon and The Nation to curdle the conversation by introducing pungent clots of sneering socialist slash-and-burn propaganda guaranteed to inflame and roil right-thinking interlocutors.
b. A diversionary stinkbomb tossed by ducks possessed of only a left wing. Emitting toxic conversational poisons and thought-choking irrelevancies, this tactic is almost guaranteed to shut down useful debate.
c. A disruptive quacking. Despite urban legends to the contrary, the Beantown Quacker's brays of "Saint Ronnie Raygun!" and "Tinkle Down!" do indeed have an echo, which often derails the debate and sends it downward into Morons Snorting Nothing But Communism trivialities, invented 'facts' and bandwagon communist labor movement campfire songs.

The Jersey Special:
a. An operatic rodomontade of bluster, bombast and ranting vulgarities that explodes from Garden State leftwingers when they have no rebuttal to sensible conservative commentary.  Instead, they unleash gasconades of inflated braggadocio in an attempt to elevate their status from that of a humble freight yard ape at an East Coast dock into an expert in foreign affairs and international finance.
b. Occurs when a "liberal" cigarette chomper in a porkpie hat stomps on the gas and attempts to evade the truth but ends up sliding off the Jersey Turnpike of truth. He curses, raves like a maniac, and spins his rhetorical wheels trying to justify the unjustifiable, explain the inexplicable, and defend the indefensible. Stuck, he hangs his arm out the window like a Christmas ham and continues to pompously lecture us as he revs the engine, mud flying from the spinning tires, plastering unfortunate bystanders with a farrago of bluster and pseudo-intellectualism. His cartoonish antics are accompanied by smelly, billowing clouds of dust and smoke as the marxist malefactor burns rubber, screeches, and mires the car deeper into the intellectual ruts he creates.

* * *

Those are some of my neologisms, and you've seen them before. Do you have any? Please post them in the comments section for the amusement of all.

Sunday, March 1, 2015

Open Post

I'm having weather induced internet difficulties, so have at it.  What do you want to talk about?  The FCC, Rand Paul, DHS? Anything is fair game.

Saturday, February 28, 2015

A Tribute to Winter

This was originally going to be a tribute to New England's winter, but since it's been snowing for the past week...


Friday, February 27, 2015

What are we Afraid of?

Midnight Mist: Miguel Virkkunen Carvalho

As it turns out, the number one fear we have is... walking alone at night, at least according to a survey by Chapman University

  1. Walking alone at night
  2. Becoming the victim of identity theft
  3. Lack of safety on the Internet
  4. Being the victim of a mass/random shooting
  5. Public speaking
The One Thing Americans Fear Most

I found that surprising, city or country I like walking at night alone or with company.  In fact none of the things on the list really bother me at all.  Public speaking used to be a fear of mine but after being forced to do it repeatedly it doesn't really bother me much at all (that's called exposure therapy by the way, although my exposure came through life not in anything formal).   I'm not particularly phobic about anything that I'm aware of, bugs, spiders, snakes, heights, flying, thunder/lightning, none of your standard phobia subjects are anything that bother me. I stumbled onto this study after reading a story about cetaphobia, the fear of whales, certainly an odd one yet one that supposedly hundreds of thousands suffer from.  Perhaps I'm just lucky, how about you?


Thursday, February 26, 2015

What Recovery?





In a recovery, you would expect to see higher median income. In Obama’s recovery, median incomes have actually dropped. Median inflation-adjusted household income in 2013 was $2,100 lower than when President Obama took office (and $3,600 lower than when George W. Bush took office). Productivity is up by 7.2 percent since the end of the recession, but hourly wages at the end of June 2009 were the same as they were at the end of October 2014: $22.15. Most Americans didn’t lose their jobs during the recession. But most Americans haven’t seen their incomes go up in this recovery.  This is the crisis known as “wage stagnation.”  Commentary Magazine - The Truth About Wage Stagnation


Bargaining power has shifted to employers, based on workers’ fears of permanent job loss.  Since 2000, it notes, a shrinking share of workers has changed jobs. In economics jargon, labor markets have “less fluidity”; workers are “moving less among jobs” than before. By reducing turnover, this defensiveness relaxes pressure on employers to increase compensation.  The study finds the tendency of people to shift jobs has dropped by almost one-third, from about 13 percent of the 16-and-over population in 2000 to 9 percent in 2013. Slower growth in compensation has, in turn, reduced labor’s share of the national income.  Washington Post -What's behind Wage Stagnation

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Uh, yeah, right.


J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. is preparing to charge large institutional customers for some deposits, citing new rules that make holding money for the clients too costly, according to a memo reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and people familiar with the plan.

J.P. Morgan is making the moves because certain deposits are less profitable to handle than they used to be. New federal rules essentially penalize banks for holding deposits viewed as prone to fleeing during a crisis or a stressed environment.

Market Watch
Wall Street Journal

Let's see.... I give you my money, you give me some trivial amount of interest, turn around and loan it out for 5, 10, 15%... and it's too costly?  I got news for you J.P, you're not doing it right.

How long do you think it will take for this to trickle down to retail accounts?


Tuesday, February 24, 2015

A Government Monopoly on Information

Obama's FCC is set to vote Thursday on secret new Internet regulations and restrictions 

No transparency, no requests for comment, no debate on the Star Chamber's plan to clamp down on our Internet freedoms, and drag our internet quality and access down to Europe's level.

What?  You thought Europe's Internet was better?  Think again...

Pro-government regulation progressives have been making that claim based upon outdated studies.  Here are articles from this past year that cite newer studies and more recent data:

Financial Times:  Studies Show US Beats Europe on Broadband Speed and Access

Forbes:  The Grass Isn't Greener in Europe

Net Neutered

Progressives of all parties love attaching warm and fuzzy feel good names like "Net Neutrality" to their statist projects in order to mask their true intent: Power and Control.

Obama's first Internet power grab was back in 2008, but the courts slapped him down in 2010, finding his FCC Kommisars had no legal basis for demanding Comcast stop throttling BitTorrent transfers.  (for a constitutional scholar, he sure gets caught doing a lot of unconstitutional stuff)

Like all determined dictatorial regimes, the 0-Ministration has found another bludgeon:  The Communications Act of 1934.  As Homer Simpson would ask, "is that thing still around?"  Yes it is, and Papa's got a brand new bag.

Five years ago, the propaganda driver was hatred of Comcast (I'm not a customer).  This time around, leftwingers are rallying around...  hatred of Comcast!  Damn them for charging us money for their services!  The debate is confusing, Comcast could win or lose from Net Neutrality, and the company claims to be for it, while critics call Comcast's professed support a wolf in sheep's clothing.

Fairness

The added twist big government leftists now put on the debate is that every little bit of data should be treated equally, regardless if she is a bit of e-mail emanating from a big millionaire CEO or a humble blogger's upload; a streaming movie or song, or just a  workaday bit carrying one piece of a useless fart joke or a Gawker video meme on whether Kim Kardashian's butt can fit inside a battery powered car.

This in itself betrays a fundamental ignorance of how networks works, but I won't bore you with packet switching theory, packet differences, QoS, and bandwidth.  Guess what?  ISPs, content providers and fat pipe infrastructure owners work this out on their own every day within existing commerce regulations without any help from Big Government.  Yes, Comcast now collects more from Netflix, because Netflix on its own accounts for over 33% of internet traffic, the rest is used up by TMZ, porn, and peer-to-peer sharing of pirated content, with about one percent going to legitimate business use.

The Obamanet

Does anyone really think the government laying its clumsy mitts on the internet will make it better?  Does government make anything better?  Do you want an internet run by the same bureaucratic sludge factory that bring you Amtrack and the Post Office?

The verdict on Obamacare is in:  Wildly more expensive than promised, it did help a few uninsurables and people at the bottom, but at the expense of everybody else, many of whom lost their doctors and their preferred plans.  Government penetration of the healthcare market goes back decades, and health care inflation runs double that of the CPI, or higher, and despite Obamacare it is rising.

Education is the other market suffering forcible government penetration, and it's products and services are triple the CPI, measured since 1978.

Do you believe government regulation can make the following two claims possible?

A Lexus for the price of a 4-cylinder Chevrolet sub-compact!

A porterhouse steak and lobster dinner for the price of burger and fries!

If you do, then you probably support Obama's Net Neutrality.

What is Net Neutrality?

James Simpson at Watchdog.org has written an excellent article on Net Neutrality.

Here are some highlights:
Under contemplated net neutrality rules, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like Verizon and Comcast would not be allowed to charge higher prices for more access.
Here is the true motive.  Just as Obamacare hopes to strangle what's left of the private insurance and health market, making it ripe for complete government takeover, Net Neutrality will do the same for the internet, making it a government utility under government control:
Net neutrality is a form of price control, and price controls everywhere distort the market. By affording equal access to all comers at below cost, demand will skyrocket while supply dries up. If an ISP cannot provide Internet access at a profit, it will go out of business. The government will then step in to take its place.
It's a great article with many useful links, so please go give it a thorough read.  The author ends by asking why people rightly upset at government spying on them would want to turn the internet over to that same government?

Related question:  Would you rest easy with the internet in the hands of a moralist GOP government?  It's a public utility, and we can't have it streaming filth into our public schools, can we?  It's for the children!

Monday, February 23, 2015

America: An Islamic Nation?

We must ask the question:  Is President Obama insane? 

He made this statement at his Summit on Countering Violent Extremism of Mysterious Origins:
"Here in America, Islam has been woven into the fabric of our country since its founding." (Whitehouse.Gov)
Is he nuts?  That is an absurd statement.  Does he actually believe it?  I agree with his comments that follow.  Muslims have and continue to make contributions to our society.  There probably were Muslims in Colonial America, but they had nothing to do with the founding or weaving our national fabric. 

Who Died and Made Obama the Defender of Islam?

This statement from the same speech is not his to make.  The US President is not a spokesman or defender of any religion:
"Al Qaeda and ISIL and groups like it are desperate for legitimacy. They try to portray themselves as religious leaders -- holy warriors in defense of Islam. That’s why ISIL presumes to declare itself the “Islamic State.”"
[...]

"Of course, the terrorists do not speak for over a billion Muslims who reject their hateful ideology. They no more represent Islam than any madman who kills innocents in the name of God represents Christianity or Judaism or Buddhism or Hinduism. No religion is responsible for terrorism. People are responsible for violence and terrorism." (Applause.)

Who is Barack Obama to make such a statement?  Is he an Imam?  A religious scholar?  The ISIL butchers are Islamic.  They are Muslims, and they are raping, burning and beheading based upon a literal reading of the Koran.  Islamic hate preachers are egging them on.  It is not the place of a President of a secular republic to characterize a religion, negatively or positively, to defend or attack it.

This statement from a UN speech is also inappropriate:  
"The future must not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam"
Oh really?  Is he prepared to back that up with action?  I agree that the US President must stand up for tolerance of all religions and avoid giving offense, but he's beyond that.  Would it be appropriate for him to criticize Islam?  Of course not.  By the same token, he is not qualified to defend it either.  That is the job of Muslims.

"The Bible is a Cheap Copy of the Koran"

Islam was founded by Muhammad in the 7th Century, but Muslims uniquely believe that God created the world Islamic, and that from Adam and Eve on, we are all created Muslims.  Those of us who are not Muslims are corrupted.  Although parts of the Koran read like a fractured fairy tale version of Bible stories, Muslims insist Islam came first.  Before Christianity.  Before Judaism.  Allah forbid anyone make the suggestion that Muhammad cribbed Bible stories but got them twisted up.  No, Muslims believe that the Koran is the only correct and true Word of God.

This is the mindset of the Islamic faith, and the President and his amateur dog whistlers pander to its religious bigotries and self-important beliefs of unique supremacy with every ridiculous utterance about the religion of peace. I understand where the Obama Administration is coming from.  We are not at war with Islam, and we wish its peaceful practitioners no ill.  But Obama's folks find it impossible to make such simple declarations.

If only little Hadji had a Falafel Stand...

Obama's Sophmore Girls' Foreign Policy Club lecture us that we can't win a war by killing the enemy.  Another absurd statement.  Could you imagine Churchill or FDR spouting such inanities?  But Obama's Giggly Girls do it with a condescending smirk and allow that we are probably not sophisticated enough to grasp such nuance.

If those rapists and head-choppers only had jobs...  If Adolph Hitler had only scored his own art gallery in 1932...  If only there were more jobs down at the Wienerschnitzel plant, Heinz and his school chums would never have joined the Gestapo...

Our government is off the rails, Neonazis are on the rise in Iraq and Syria, and Obama is handing Iran billions of dollars, and his laughing gas girls from Foggy Bottom lecture us with sophomoric platitudes.

In Obama's Defense

Below are two of the best articles I could find that that touch on Obama's outrageous claims about Islam and our nation's founding.  They are heavy on claiming Deism is really "Christian Islam," and they overemphasize Islam's influence on the Enlightenment, the Renaissance, Classical Scholasticism and intellectual luminaries like John Locke, but the arguments cite facts and are well-presented. 
 
Salon:  Our Founding Fathers Included Islam

Founders' Indebtedness to Islamic Thought

Sunday, February 22, 2015

The Law is Truly an Ass

The Artful Dodger - George Cruikshank


Salt Lake City, Utah (CBS LAS VEGAS) – A Utah woman has been granted the ability to sue herself for negligence in the case of a deadly accident that killed her husband in 2011.

The Utah Court of Appeals has ruled that Barbara Bagley will be allowed to proceed with a wrongful-death lawsuit against herself for alleged negligence in the Dec. 27, 2011 accident east of Battle Mountain, Nev., that killed her husband, the Salt Lake City Tribune reports. Court documents show that Bagley will be suing the driver of the vehicle, Bagley, for an unspecified amount of money stemming from losses in medical, funeral costs and mental anguish.


Attorneys for Bagley say the widow is pursuing legal action for the benefit of the estate, and not just herself. Creditors will be paid prior to Bagley receiving the money she’d receive as her husband’s sole heir.  

Why not, the only people who have anything to lose are her insurers... who by the way, are defending her.

Just... WOW

* For those wondering about the engraving above, it is from Oliver Twist, the most commonly referenced work in which the statement "The law is an ass" appears.  An earlier work in which the statement appears is in Revenge for Honor, a play by Henry Glapthorne published posthumously in 1654.  So it is established that the Law has been an Ass for a very long time.

Saturday, February 21, 2015

Say it ain't So...

Funny how old songs can gain new relevance.  Here's Roger Daltry singing Murray Head's Say it Ain't so Joe. Lyrics are below.


Here are the lyrics...

Say It Ain't So, Joe (1975)
by Murray Head

Say it ain't so Joe, please, say it ain't so.
That's not what I wanna hear Joe, ain't I, got a right to know?
Say it ain't so Joe, please, say it ain't so.
I'm sure they're telling us lies Joe; please tell us it ain't so.

They told us that our hero has played his trump card;
He doesn't know how to go on.
We're clinging to his charm and determined smile,
But the good ol' days have gone.

The image and the Empire may be falling apart;
The money has gotten scarce,
One man's word held the country together,
But the truth is getting fierce.
Say it ain't so Joe, please, say it ain't so.
We pinned our hopes on you Joe and they're, ruining our show.

Ooh babies, don't you think; we're gonna get burned?
Ooh babies, don't you think; we're gonna get burned?
We're gonna get turned, we're gonna get learned,
Yes, we're gonna get turned.
We're gonna get burned, we're gonna get learned,
Yes, we're gonna get burned.
We're gonna get burned, we're gonna get learned,
Yes, we're gonna get turned, we're gonna get burned.

Friday, February 20, 2015

Flat Earthers Rejoice

 In what seems like what has turned into pick on Islam week the following video is somewhat amusing... not that Islam has a monopoly on idiots or anything...





This was a position previously stated by Saleh Al-Fawzan, a member of the Saudi Council of Senior Scholars who stated that there is no doubt that the sun revolves around the earth:
  
There is no doubt about it. The Koran says: "The sun runs…" Nevertheless, they say that the sun stands in place and the Earth moves. This contradicts the Koran. Ignoring the Koran and adopting modern theories is not something a Muslim can do. A Muslim must follow the Koran. MemriTV



I said it was flat, I never said it wasn't Round!