Kudos to CPAC for letting Jonathan Krohn speak, but why was he limited to two minutes? He makes more sense than anybody else who spoke there.
4 May, 2009
OK, that’s enough, Joe
Joe the Plumber, you played a good role during the election, that of showing what thugs Barry and his media cronies were. It was illustrative to see how badly The One handled a decent, honest question from a Regular Guy.
You even gave being a war correspondent the old college try, and did better at it than most “professional” journalists.
Thanks for your service, Joe. Now it’s time to go back home and resume your normal life. Because interviews like this make you look like an incoherent fool and will not, repeat not, help get any good people elected. This is the sort of thing that will haunt you if God ever “tells you” to run for office.
Our Most Radical President
Krauthammer has it exactly right.
But once the law is passed, the only job a judge has is to interpret the law without consideration of a person’s standing in life. Otherwise you could never have, say, a bank foreclosing on a home, because who, after all, is more affected, a bank that might lose a few dollars, or a family that’s going to lose its home and future livelihood, et cetera?
The whole idea blinds a justice and the statutes that we have outside our courthouses of a blindfold over justice is that you do not look at a person’s station in life, their needs in life, requirements in life. It’s entirely about the law.
And for Obama to state the exact opposite openly as a way that will guide him in his appointments is quite radical.
I could see this coming before the election, and I know I’m not the only one.
Happy Cuatro de Cinco!
Once again, President “57 States” has to be glad that his last name isn’t Bush.
(Apologists will point out that May is the fifth month, and the months in Japanese are just numbers, so He was actually just being Pacific Rim Hip.)
Update:
At this blog, at least, I will be poking fun and laughing at this eminently risible president as often and as loudly as I feel like. And trust me, his race(s) have nothing to do with it, no matter how much He or His sycophants want to play that card.
I mean, He is funny in ways that Bush never really was. And Biden? Where does one even start?
Politics Can Kill You
Remember this face when the chatterers in Washington go on about “Single Payer Health Care”, aka socialized medicine. It probably won’t survive long.
President Appeasement’s Iranian Pals
have attacked Iraq.
Details on the airstrikes remain sketchy. Voice of America says the attacks were carried out by helicopters, which remained in Iranian airspace. Al-Arabiyah television, on the other hand, says it was “Iranian planes [that] raided those villages.”
It is a serious development because the Iraqi airspace is under the control of the US Air Force and under US protection. So the raids are either approved by the United States, as was the case when a US nod was previously given to the Turkish Army, or such operation was a surprise by the Iranians.
AP: Hard-Hitting News You Need
Important event at the White House. In-depth coverage vital to every American.
But the AP needs to dig deeper. Missing from this report: The flowers that spontaneously bloomed beneath Their feet. The ethereal faerie music. The ponies and unicorns at play. The kittens.
Where are the frollicking fuzzy little kittens, dammit!
3 May, 2009
Be Afraid
Be very afraid.
As the insurgency of the Taliban and Al Qaeda spreads in Pakistan, senior American officials say they are increasingly concerned about new vulnerabilities for Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, including the potential for militants to snatch a weapon in transport or to insert sympathizers into laboratories or fuel-production facilities.
The officials emphasized that there was no reason to believe that the arsenal, most of which is south of the capital, Islamabad, faced an imminent threat. President Obama said last week that he remained confident that keeping the country’s nuclear infrastructure secure was the top priority of Pakistan’s armed forces.
But the United States does not know where all of Pakistan’s nuclear sites are located, and its concerns have intensified in the last two weeks since the Taliban entered Buner, a district 60 miles from the capital. The spread of the insurgency has left American officials less willing to accept blanket assurances from Pakistan that the weapons are safe.
Claims that Pakistan is not an Islamic country are of little comfort.
Jon Stewart vs. Truman the War Criminal
This report by Bill Whittle is required viewing.
“Kids don’t have a union”
This could be the best political news of the decade, if someone will sieze the opportunity.
It’s worth saying again: If the twittish, PC L.A.Times is now going after the teachers’ unions, those unions have lost the PR battle in the mainstream press. Does President Obama (“We can afford nothing but the best when it comes to our children’s teachers”) know this? Do the Republicans who are desperately looking for an issue to use against the Dems?
Bear in mind that the teachers’ unions are not a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democrat Party – it’s the other way around. The national union alone has more paid political operatives than both major parties combined. The damage to this country that is done by other unions, like in the automobile industry, pales compared to the damage done by the teachers’ unions.
2 May, 2009
Wolfram Alpha is Coming
Wolfram is the Real Deal and, in spite of the typically breathless tone of this news article, Wolfram Alpha is very exciting indeed. I can hardly wait to play with it.Wolfram Alpha will not only give a straight answer to questions such as “how high is Mount Everest?”, but it will also produce a neat page of related information – all properly sourced – such as geographical location and nearby towns, and other mountains, complete with graphs and charts.
The real innovation, however, is in its ability to work things out “on the fly”, according to its British inventor, Dr Stephen Wolfram. If you ask it to compare the height of Mount Everest to the length of the Golden Gate Bridge, it will tell you. Or ask what the weather was like in London on the day John F Kennedy was assassinated, it will cross-check and provide the answer. Ask it about D sharp major, it will play the scale. Type in “10 flips for four heads” and it will guess that you need to know the probability of coin-tossing. If you want to know when the next solar eclipse over Chicago is, or the exact current location of the International Space Station, it can work it out.
Chicken Little’s Publicity Plan
Don’t say “the sky is falling”, just say “there are atmospheric disturbances.”
Doesn’t matter what you call it, as long as you get your way.
Discovery’s Creation
The intriguing story of how “The Wedge” was outed by a guy in a copy room. And how a tiny think tank in Seattle has tried to pollute science education in the entire country – with a few backfires along the way.
All that was asked now was that students be apprised that there was a controversy.
That was apparently all that was in question when, in late 2004, a district school board in a small suburb of York, Pa., voted 6-3 that high-school students “will be made aware of gaps/problems in Darwin’s theory and of other theories of evolution including, but not limited to, intelligent design.” A month later, the board mandated that starting in January 2005, ninth-grade biology teachers would be required to read to their students a four-paragraph statement encouraging students to look into alternatives to Darwin and suggesting Of Pandas and People (available in the school library) as a good place to start.
Even though the new policy did not include active teaching of intelligent-design theory, Discovery Institute fellows issued a warning that the policy went too far and might, in fact, damage the cause rather than further it. Little did they know how damaging it would be. On Dec. 14, 2004, a district parent opposed to the new policy filed suit in federal court to block it. Tammy J. Kitzmiller and 11 other parents were represented in their suit against the Dover Area School District by 13 lawyers from the ACLU, the Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the National Center for Science Education. Against this legal lineup, the constitutional-law equivalent of the Pittsburgh Steelers offensive line, were the Dover board’s defenders, fielded by the conservative Thomas More Law Center of Ann Arbor, Mich.
Considering that the Center for Science and Culture had publicly opposed making the situation in Dover a test case, it seems curious that two of the Discovery Institute’s most prominent fellows signed on to testify at the trial as expert witnesses: Lehigh University biochemist Michael J. Behe and University of Idaho microbiologist Scott Minnich. But testify they did, and it was their testimony, more than that of many experts fielded by the plaintiffs, that left the scientific credentials of intelligent design in tatters.
The Chicago Way
“Nice life you have there, Chrysler executive. It would be a shame if something bad were to happen to it.”
That our empty-suit President is rather a thug comes as no surprise. Does anybody really think someone can rocket to the top of Chicago politics and retain a halo?
I hate to say it, but I told you so.
Update:
Remember, this Chicago thug is also a student of Alinsky.
1 May, 2009
Our Serious Leadership Problem
And how it, with the help of the ACLU, will probably get more US forces killed.
Outside the puzzle palace, I’m told that commands are girding for any upswing in violence should additional images come out. They completely understand what is likely to be the 2d and 3d order effects and are properly preparing. Our troops are not stupid. They’ll be ready.
Politics of Personal Destruction
I thought Miss California didn’t do such a great job at answering the gay marriage question, but then the bar is kind of low in an event that requires bikinis and high heels. Her answer was, at least, civil.
And the breast implants? Who cares? She’s competing in a bikini and high heels. Like we expect Berkeley “earth mother” types with hairy armpits and floppy boobs to show up there? (Their answers would be even dumber, I hazard.)
But look at these two boobs:
Yes, I realized that by posting that video on this blog, which occasionally has more than 80 readers per day, I have doubled Keith Olbermann’s audience.
Sue me.
Algore: World’s Most Dangerous Source of Hot Air
Watch his face squirm before he answers the first question in the first video on this page.
Even the Newt Gingrich video is worth watching.
On Being a Gun Nut
Christopher Hitchens, who not only doesn’t own a gun but doesn’t want to, gets it.
As I argue in my book ‘A Brief History of Crime’, it’s the great gulf between police and public over how the law should be enforced that lies behind two important features of modern Britain. The frequent arrests of people for defending themselves or their property are not accidents or quirks. They are the consequence of the Criminal Justice system’s abandonment of old-fashioned ideas of punishment; also of that system’s social democratic belief that crime has ‘social’ causes and the ownership of property isn’t absolute. Most law-abiding people don’t really accept this. They think criminals do bad things because they lack conscience or restraint, not because they were abused as children or their dole payments are too small. And they don’t see why they have to barricade their houses or hide their worldly goods from view on the assumption that some unrestrained low-life is otherwise bound to steal them. So they regard it as legitimate to hurt and punish those who rob them or otherwise attack them. If they were allowed to enforce the law as they see it, they would quickly show the police and courts up as useless and mistaken. One of the most important jobs of the police is to stop us looking after ourselves, in case we do a better job than PC Plod.
Guns simply take this to a higher level
Grandpa Sponge
If creationists don’t like to admit that we’re apes, they’re really not going to like this. Fascinating story, though. Be sure to check out the illustrated steps.
However, sponges seem unlikely ancestors. They are little more than a loose assemblage of cells that lack the true tissues and organs found in higher animals. Plus their structure – a porous mass of interconnected water channels – is nothing like that of any other animal. As a result, most zoologists tend to put sponges on a side branch of the animal tree, an abortive experiment that led nowhere. That’s what makes Kevin Peterson’s results so thought-provoking.
