Monday, December 29, 2014

Larwyn's Linx: Crime as Politics

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Nation

Crime as Politics: Victor Davis Hanson
The TRUE Great Failure of Barack Obama: Moe Lane
The latest battle in the long leftist war: The anti-police protests: John Ruberry

334 blacks killed 2014 in Chicago – no riots: FAM
Black Lies Matter: Bryce Buchanan
Looking Back: The Good, The Bad And The Progressive: Derek Hunter

Why We Need Broken Windows Policing: City Journal
Leftist Protesters Forfeit Any Moral Standing They Might Have Had: GayPatriot
Thousands Support Police In “Sea Of Blue” Rallies Across The Country: WZ

LA police shot at while sitting in their patrol car, LA under tactical alert : Scoop
Everyone Says Jeb Bush Is A Conservative – Except Conservatives: CHQ
Contrary to WH Claims, Only Tiny Fraction of 'Surge' Border-Jumpers Deported: CIS

Economy

The Law of the Lots: AmInt
BANNED: Obama to Save You From Evil Donut Sprinkles!: Wizbang
Gerard Depardieu was right! France scraps its 75% ‘super tax’: Twitchy

Scandal Central

The border invasion continues...: RRW
Bill de Blasio Turned His Back On The NYPD: That’s Why They Returned The Gesture: Jay Caruso
Supreme Irony: That Awkward Moment When Anti-Police Protesters Call Police: WZ

Climate & Energy

Regulation gone wild – Christmas lights are the next target of nanny state: WUWT

Media

Winning Quotes in the MRC’s Annual Awards for the Year’s Worst Reporting: MRC
Hey GQ, can’t find any crazy Democrats? Here are 16: Kyle Smith
The 50 Best Conservative Columnists Of 2014 (7th Annual): John Hawkins

Searching for the Next Michael Brown: Colin Flaherty
Same Old Script: Chris Muir, DBD
James Woods tweets photo just in time to explain CBS’s RIDICULOUS Obama headline!: BPR

COUNTDOWN! Good Guys of 2014: Watchdog
Media Nearly Silent After NC Cop Thwarts NYPD-Style Assassination Attempt: Bob Owens
Protesters Descend on Redskins Stadium Before Cowboys Game: Sooper

Bob Woodward: The world is CLEARLY NOT safer now than a year ago: Scoop
Hatemail: STFU Edition (Language Warning): Dana Loesch
Ferguson Protestor, Once Lauded for Non-Violence, Arrested for Arson and Burglary: Mediaite

World

Writer at American Thinker: What is America’s survival plan?: RRW
Our Administration’s Working Hard to Keep Terror Groups off UAE Terror List: Sara Noble
Canada Rejects U.N. Arms Treaty: Robert Farago

Geert Wilders Was Right: Uzay Bulut
Turns Out ISIS is Bad at Governing: AmInt
Sweden: Immigration controversy heats up as mosque is set ablaze: RRW

Sci-Tech (courtesy BadBlue Tech News)

The Enormous Implications Of Facebook Indexing 1 Trillion Of Our Posts: Josh Constine
Israel-from-space pics take off online: Times of Israel
55 quotes that defined the tech industry in 2014: GeekWire

Cornucopia

Sony: ‘The Interview’ Has Made Over $15 Million Online: Variety
How Dumb of Me: Norman Hooben
Austrian filmmaker uncovers apparent secret Nazi nuclear complex: JPost

Image: Sony: ‘The Interview’ Has Made Over $15 Million Online
Sponsored by: Boehner REPLACEMENT INSTRUCTIONS; Your step by step guide to replacing the SPEAKER!

QOTD: "[The IRS] responding to a subpoena, tells congressional investigators that it cannot produce 28 months of Lois Lerner’s emails because the hard drive they were stored on failed, and the hard drive was thrown away, and the backup tapes were erased, and no printed copies were saved — contrary to the IRS’s own record-keeping policy, which was eaten by the IRS’s dog. “It was just one crazy thing after another,” states the IRS, “and it got us to thinking: All these years we’ve been subjecting taxpayers to everything short of rectal probes if they can’t produce EVERY SINGLE DOCUMENT WE WANT, and here we lose YEARS worth of official records! So from now on, if taxpayers tell us they lost something, or just plain forgot to make a tax payment, we’ll be like, ‘Hey, whatever! Stuff happens!’ Because who are we to judge?”" --Dave Barry's Year End Review (via American Digest)

Sunday, December 28, 2014

HERE THEY ARE: The 2014 Fabulous 50 Blog Award Winners #Fab50

The moment you've been waiting for is here.

The votes are in. The anxious nominees' fingernails have been chewed down to the quick.

Winner - 2014 Fabulous 50 Blog AwardsAnd at least one blogger just excused himself to go to the bathroom (number two, apparently, based upon the length of time he's been gone).

So we're more than pleased to announce the winners of the 2014 Fabulous 50 Blog Awards, the most prestigious new media awards in the conservative blogosphere.

Or, at the very least, in the 993 area code.

These awards recognize a variety of blogs and websites operating in the conservative hemisphere of the Internet, all of which have worked tirelessly to promote conservatism, free market capitalism, fiscal sanity, the sovereignty of the individual, and otherwise protect America from the cockroach-like Statists -- some in very unique ways.

So, without further ado, may I have the envelopes, please?


Larwyn's Linx: Not peaceful protests: Promoting a race war that will lead to "communist revolution"

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Nation

Not peaceful protests: Promoting a race war toward "communist revolution": Zombie
Meet The Agitators Behind The New York Protests And Cop Killings: NoisyRm
'Car plowed us down': LA demonstrators burn flag, block traffic: Twitchy

Muslim Congressman’s Ferguson Panel has Al Qaeda, Taliban Speakers : Tatler
Cops assassinated: the result of allowing an evil lie to grow: Lloyd Marcus
Partners in protest: The anti-Israel, cop-bash link: William Jacobson

A Mississippi Burning – The Curious Case Of Jessica Lane Chambers: Treehouse
A City on the Brink: Matthew Hennessey
'Liberated' Obama builds momentum: The Hill

De Blasio Speaks At Cops Funeral, Thousands of Police Officers Do This: Federalist
Oof: Bill de Blasio spurned by NYPD at Rafael Ramos funeral: Moe Lane
23,000 cops mourn slain brother at funeral: Post

Economy

Surprise: Medicaid Recipients Could See Significant Access Reductions: RWN
Marc Cuban Warns of a Massive Crash in the Education Market: Mac Slavo
Dem pols attempt to sic Feds on successful Wisconsin school choice program: EAG

Scandal Central

Unanswered Benghazi Questions: Second in a Series: Sharyl Attkisson
Sharyl Attkisson: Docs indicate ATF was using Fast and Furious to justify new gun regs: Thomas Lifson
IRS Says it ‘Mistakenly’ Penalized GOP Candidate Christine O’Donnell For a Second Time: RWN

Climate & Energy

Where Have I Seen This Before?: MB
Snow leaves thousands of motorists stranded in French Alps: Phys.org
Man Goes To Bear Country To See Bears, Gets Mauled, Blamed On “Climate Change”: Cove

Media

Alone for Christmas: Mark Steyn
Obama, Liberals Shocked; Discover Most Americans Still Want To Choose Own HealthCare: DownTrend
Oh, you wretched tallists!: Sweasel

Listen To Martin Luther King Jr Instead Of Al Sharpton: Hideout
Moonbats Celebrate Christmas by Assaulting Nativity Scenes: MB
Don Lemon Is Officially One Of The Worst Parts Of Journalism In 2014: Uproxx

World

The Destruction of the Middle East: Denis MacEoin
The Jihadist Connection to Epidemic Child Abuse: James Lewis
Van Plows Through Christmas Shoppers, While Driver Shouts ‘Allahu akbar’: IOTW Report

Iranian Army Social Media: IRGC Troops At Lebanon-Israel Border: MEMRI
As Russia’s Economy Collapses, Putin Cancels Holidays: WZ
Kim Jong-Un's People Call Obama A Horrible Racial Slur After The Interview Is Released: Perez Hilton

Sci-Tech (courtesy BadBlue Tech News)

Coca-Cola Headquarters Disconnects Office Voicemail in Effort to Increase Productivity: The Daily Meal
AirAsia Flight Goes Missing Between Indonesia and SIngapore: Slashdot
Outstanding photos of the X-15, the fastest manned aircraft ever made: Gizmodo

Cornucopia

Thanks Sammie, and you can keep the shirt: MOTUS
The baby from Teletubbies reveals herself: Telegraph
$82,000 stolen from "social justice" nonprofit paid for plastic surgery, trips, Victoria's Secret: Trib

Image: Pic Of The Day: Justin Ramos Wears His Father’s Police Jacket At Funeral
Today's Larwyn's Linx sponsored by: New: BadBlue Real-Time Sports News, 24x7x365

QOTD: "New York City’s anti-cop activists are scrambling for cover now that two NYPD officers, Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, have been slain in cold blood on a Brooklyn street by a suspected gang member seeking revenge for the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. For the last several weeks, Gotham has been the scene of nightly, inflammatory protests against the NYPD. An assortment of self-proclaimed social-justice activists have disrupted traffic, assaulted officers, and demanded an end to Broken Windows policing. The city’s progressive elites, including Mayor Bill de Blasio and city council speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, have accommodated the protesters—offering them aid and comfort in the media, entertaining their wilder claims, and standing silent as they defamed the NYPD as racist killers....

...An institution can absorb only so much slander. Are the cops overly sensitive to criticism? If so, they have good reason: like officers Liu and Ramos, they put their lives on the line every day. They go to work every morning knowing that this could be the day they don’t come home. Not many of us can say that we understand what that feels like. Certainly, few of the angry undergraduates and middle-class trustafarians shutting down freeways and lying down in the middle of Grand Central know anything about it.

Bill de Blasio’s New York is an upside-down world, where a police force responsible for transforming a crime-plagued metropolis into the safest big city in America can be openly defamed—and where two more NYPD families [spent] Christmas in mourning. " --Matthew Hennessey

Saturday, December 27, 2014

SNYDER: Junk Bonds are the Canary in the Economic Coal Mine

By Michael Snyder

Do you want to know if the stock market is going to crash next year? Just keep an eye on junk bonds. Prior to the horrific collapse of stocks in 2008, high yield debt collapsed first. And as you will see below, high yield debt is starting to crash again. The primary reason for this is the price of oil. The energy sector accounts for approximately 15 to 20 percent of the entire junk bond market, and those energy bonds are taking a tremendous beating right now. This panic in energy bonds is infecting the broader high yield debt market, and investors have been pulling money out at a frightening pace. And as I have written about previously, almost every single time junk bonds decline substantially, stocks end up following suit. So don’t be fooled by the fact that some comforting words from Janet Yellen caused stock prices to jump over the past couple of days. If you really want to know where the stock market is heading in 2015, keep a close eye on the market for high yield debt.

If you are not familiar with junk bonds, the concept is actually very simple. Corporations that do not have high credit ratings typically have to pay higher interest rates to borrow money. The following is how USA Today describes these bonds…

High-yield bonds are long-term IOUs issued by companies with shaky credit ratings. Just like credit card users, companies with poor credit must pay higher interest rates on loans than those with gold-plated credit histories.

But in recent years, interest rates on junk bonds have gone down to ridiculously low levels. This is another bubble that was created by Federal Reserve policies, and it is a colossal disaster waiting to happen. And unfortunately, there are already signs that this bubble is now beginning to burst

GELERNTER: States Can End "Executive Amnesty" Without a Lawsuit

Writing in National Review, Josh Gelernter offers a very different spin on the "nullification" debate. While acknowledging that the judiciary has consistently ruled against the nullification doctrine, insisting only it has the authority to declare laws unconstitutional, Obama's "Executive Amnesty" is something very different from a law.

This week, Tennessee became the 25th state to join a lawsuit against the president’s executive amnesty order. The lawsuit may work, but there’s another, more direct, and considerably more interesting redress against executive overreach [first p]roposed in 1798 by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

...The nullification doctrine posits that, as the federal government is the product of the Constitution, and the Constitution is a compact of the states, it’s the states that have the final say on any law’s constitutionality. If a state determines that a law exceeds the terms of the compact to which it agreed, it has the right to nullify that law within its own borders.

Jefferson and Madison’s idea was for states to declare the Alien and Sedition Acts null and void. Instead of joining a lawsuit against the executive amnesty, those 25 states could simply deem the executive amnesty null and void, and refuse to recognize illegal aliens’ work permits or issue them driver’s licenses.

Why, you wonder, would that be better than filing a lawsuit? In a certain sense, it wouldn’t — because winning that suit would strike down Mr. Obama’s order in all 50 states. Which is not an unlikely outcome, given the order’s extremely shaky legal footing. However —

The judiciary has consistently ruled against the nullification doctrine, asserting its unique, judicial right to declare laws unconstitutional. But this executive order isn’t a law. And given its extremely shaky legal footing, it isn’t difficult to imagine a federal bench recognizing the states’ right to disregard federal orders that don’t clearly have the force of law. And that would be a tremendous — tremendous — blow against the executive’s assumption of legislative powers.

But in the shorter, directer term: It [nullification] would force the Obama administration to go on offense, suing the states to enforce a law that isn’t a law. And I don’t think that case can be made.

I think this is an intriguing idea. Gelernter notes that your state's governor and attorney general should be contacted, especially if you live in a red or purple state.

Nullification may be a non-starter under normal circumstances, but nullifying non-laws should be anything but controversial.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

EXCELLENT NEWS: Mainstream, Moderate Muslim Group Cheers Unveiling of ISIS Flag on Mt. Everest

Yes, really. Muslim Matters is a news hub for all things Islamic, with a special focus on Western countries. MM has a mere 425,000 "likes" on Facebook, which indicates it is quite mainstream.


Of course, he's not just holding up a book; he's also holding up a flag. And not just any flag, the black flag of ISIS.


When even Al-Arabiya is reporting that ISIS has committed crimes against humanity, you may want to rethink the cheerleading, fellows. To wit, "Massacres, beheading boys as young as 15, and amputations and lashings in public squares that residents -- including children -- are forced to watch figure on the list of crimes, as does the widespread use of child soldiers, stoning women to death for suspected adultery and holding women as sexual slaves and forcing them to bear children for the fighters."

Or is ISIS now what passes for moderate, mainstream Islam?


Hat tip: BadBlue News. Reference: "Know Your Terror Flags."

Larwyn's Linx: The Party of the Rich

Send us tips! Bloggers: install a Larwyn's Linx widget. Get real-time news, 24/7, at BadBlue.

Nation

The Party of the Rich: Thomas Lifson
Likely GOP 2016 Field Diverse but Not Hyphenated: LI
Dear Gop: Show, Don’t Tell: Jonah Goldberg

Obama's Alternate Universe: Sara Noble
Mexican Cartel claims they have kidnapped Border Patrol agent: WAW
Only One-In-Four Obamacare Enrollees Returning To Sign Up Again: Robert Gehl

Erica Garner Tweets Link That Could Get Cop's Family Killed: Sara Noble
Race Rioters Target Fox News HQ: Here’s What They’re Planning: ConTrib
Several arrests made regarding threats against cops: NYPD: Fox

Thousands Pay Tribute To Murdered NYPD Rafael Ramos: Treehouse
Ferguson Protesters Abuse Janitor at Police Union Headquarters: ProgsToday
‘Shots fired’ at Chicago WinterWonderfest brawl: Twitchy

Economy

Justice Department Grants Linked to Cop-killing Rap Video: Alex Newman
Common Core: Why are 10th graders reading 50 Shades of Grey type books?: EAG
Welfare drug testing pilot program signed into law by Michigan Gov.: FreeRep

Scandal Central

Unanswered Benghazi Questions: First in a Series: Sharyl Attkisson
Judge Laura Johnson Frees Thug Who Assaulted Police: MB
Boehner and GOP Allowed Obama to Add thousands of Amnesty Workers With 2015 Budget: Wizbang

Climate & Energy

Tomorrow’s Weather Today: Matthew Hennessey
Google Goes Off the Climate Change Deep End: Paul Driessen
Oil companies struggle to sell off assets in down market: James Osborne

Media

Loathsome Sharpton: Cops Speaking Out Against NYPD Murders are ‘Cheap Demagogues’: JWF
Left-leaning AP says police killings of blacks is year’s top story; I vote for Meriam Ibrahim: Allen West
Former Washington and Lee student expelled following rape accusation, sues school: CI

We Have a Moral Divide, Not a Racial One: Dennis Prager
Al Sharpton "a Vulgar Human Being" According to Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke : J4A
HILARIOUS: Boehner Wishes Merry Christmas – Social Media Responds With Anger: RWN

World

Obama Wants Group With Ties To ’93 And ’01 WTC Attacks Removed From Terror List: Shoebat
Bachmann: Obama Supports 'Agenda' of Muslims Who want to Turn 'U.S.' into 'Islamic Caliphate': Shoebat
I wonder how many more Muslims are now working in DHS?: BNI

Obama Promises to End 'Combat Mission' in Afghanistan 'Next Week': Daniel Halper
Christians on the Run from Iraq : Nina Shea
Winning: The Triumph Of Islamic Terrorism: StrategyPage

Imagine No Religion: Theodore Dalrymple
Nearly 20,000 People Marched In Anti-Islam Demonstration In Germany Yesterday: WZ
Horror night in Swedish Muslim ghetto: gang raped, raped until bleeding with a gun: 10News.dk

Sci-Tech (courtesy BadBlue Tech News)

Possible Hack Of Sony, Microsoft Game Console Sites: Scott Neuman, NPR
Review: Smith & Bradley Sans-13: Jerking the Trigger
The Greeks designed forerunner of the modern computer: CFP

Cornucopia

The Left Is Upset With This Bad Bad Leroy Brown Parody About Michael Brown: IOTW Report
Don’t Tread on Metal: Nicholas James Pell
Skeptical Football: The NFC South Isn’t The Worst Division In NFL History: 538

Image: ‘Feed the Pigs’: Woman Arrested After Throwing Bacon in Police Department
Sponsored by: Boehner REPLACEMENT INSTRUCTIONS; Your step by step guide to replacing the SPEAKER!

QOTD: "Where was President Obama throughout the long night of the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya? What decisions did the Commander-in-Chief make and what actions did he take while Americans were under assault on foreign soil? Considering that the U.S. embassy in Egypt had already been overrun earlier in the day, and that further attacks on other U.S. facilities were anticipated throughout the night, how involved was the President in tracking the volatile, regional developments?" --Sharyl Attkisson