Showing posts with label MSM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MSM. Show all posts

Friday, February 17, 2012

Conservative News Made Simple

Need an easier and faster way to read the most important stories from all of your favorite blogs and news sites?

BadBlue.com monitors Twitter to determine which news stories are most important, based upon retweets and discussion. It runs 24-by-7 monitoring hundreds of blogs and new sites.

While it may look a bit like the Drudge Report, there are many differences. For instance, you can find the top stories that are trending now, over the last 24 hours, the last week, or even the last month.

You can also track the popularity of each story over time. Here's an example:

Need a list of stories from each news source? Here are the top stories from Ricochet.com:

Check it out. And if you like it, bookmark BadBlue and follow its updates on Twitter at @BadBlueNews.

Now conservatives have a real news portal.


Thursday, February 16, 2012

Remember that scene in Animal House when they flashed the slide of Flounder on the screen?

Drudge does it again:

Getty captions this photo as follows: "US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivers remarks at an event in recognition of the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation February 16, 2012 in the Benjamin Franklin Room of the Department of State in Washington, DC."

Drudge really needs to have some sort of interstitial warning when running a lede photo like that.


Tuesday, February 14, 2012

BBC: "America's homeless resort to tent cities"

Of course, America's "journalists" are nowhere to be found.

America's homeless resort to tent cities


...Just off the side of a motorway on the fringes of the picturesque town of Ann Arbor, Michigan, a mismatched collection of 30 tents tucked in the woods has become home - home to those who are either unemployed, or whose wages are so low that they can no longer afford to pay rent.

Conditions are unhygienic. There are no toilets and electricity is only available in the one communal tent where the campers huddle around a wood stove for warmth in the heart of winter... Ice weighs down the roofs of tents, and rain regularly drips onto the sleeping campers' faces.

Tent cities have sprung up in and around at least 55 American cities - they represent the bleak reality of America's poverty crisis... There are an estimated 5,000 people living in the dozens of camps that have sprung up across America.

...Unemployment in America today has not reached the astronomical levels of the 1930s, but barring a short spike in 1982, it has not been this high since the Depression era... There are now 13 million unemployed Americans, which is three million more than when President Barack Obama was first elected. ... The stark reality is that many of them are people who very recently lived comfortable middle-class lives.

The real unemployment rate is over 15 percent. Only through obvious, political skulduggery (like disappearing 1.2 million workers from the workforce in a single month) are the headline numbers reporting to be "improving".

And the media -- which is now indistinguishable from the Democrat Party -- laps it right up. And then wonder why their profession is dying.


Sunday, February 12, 2012

Shhh. No one tell legacy media that a huge battle is raging in Britain to privatize the National Health Service

The failures of England's National Health Service (NHS) are well known throughout Europe. Of course, as Congressional Democrats and President Obama rammed through their own takeover of the health care industry here in the U.S., legacy media was careful to ignore all of the headlines from abroad.

The often-horrific levels of health care delivered by the NHS became so controversial that the current debate is over how much should be privatized. That's right: the DMV-like NHS will inevitably be dismantled in favor of private health care.

Because government-run health care can't work, won't work and hasn't ever worked in all of human history.

Almost two years in the making, the once eye-catching plan to take the axe to the NHS's bloated bureaucracy and hand power to family doctors has become a metaphor for Mr Cameron's worst failings as Prime Minister – lack of attention to detail, a hands-off management style, misplaced loyalty to old friends and a deep-rooted belief that shouting at the Despatch Box will silence one's critics.

...There has also been the lack of consistency; where once ministers boasted of having the professional bodies signed up and on board, they now claim angry and almost universal opposition is an inevitable outcome of radical reform. What was once hailed as the biggest change in the NHS for 60 years is now being represented as a logical, small-scale continuation of Blairite reforms. In July 2010, Mr Lansley boldly declared that "people voted for change" – which doesn't sit well with his pre-election promise of no more top-down reorganisations.

...In a sign of the fiasco at the heart of the Government, it is now the Liberal Democrats who speak most warmly about the legislation, having rewritten large passages in a coup led by Baroness Williams. The Lib Dems are furious after working hard behind the scenes to be constructive. "The Tories are flip-flopping all over the place," says one. "Cameron is panicking about local elections in May," says another, adding pointedly: "It is very much their Bill."

This, my friends, is the future of health care here in the U.S.

No lack of coverage, but deadly lack of health care. Rationing. Horror stories. Begging your representatives for treatment for yourself or your family members.

Until it all finally collapses. Just like the NHS.


Related: State-run Health Care, By the Numbers.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Chinese Plutocrats Hire Migrant Workers to Wait in Line for New iPhone 4; Thomas Friedman Hardest Hit

Thomas Friedman (pronounced: fried - man) is a Marxist New York Times hack who simply loves China's form of government.

"There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today. One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century." --Thomas Friedman

Yep, that's right: Friedman's pining for a totalitarian form of fascism.

To put it in the kindest terms.

So I'm sure this despicable human being will be ecstatic to hear how China's plutocrats are spending their money:

On January 13th, Apple’s new iPhone 4S was finally made available for purchase in China。By 7PM, over one thousands eager customers were lined up outside Beijing’s two official Apple Inc. retail stores, in Sanlitun and Xidan. The crowd was made up of a large number of migrant workers from Hebei province and Beijing’s Daxing...

...By 7pm, the crowd outside of the Xidan location had surpassed 1,000 people. This number includes the Apple store’s staff as well as police officers that were dispatched by the city government to maintain order at the scene.

...As the day went on, the crowd grew. Tensions rose when the clock struck 8pm and the promised dinner was still nowhere to be seen. Around the same time, it became evident that the number of Apple employees was insufficient to provide for the needs of the hundreds waiting in line. Some began to worry that after already waiting in line for a full day, they would still be unable to get their hands on the new cell phone.

The situation further intensified when those hired to wait in line began to worry that they would not be compensated for their hours of waiting, knowing that their pay was conditional upon whether or not they produced the iPhone 4s. Some began to abort the plan and headed home, still leaving several hundreds committed to waiting in line...

Someday I hope that Friedman, Sean Penn, Samuel L. Jackson -- and the rest of the clueless, incredibly wealthy freaks who take America for granted -- will get to experience life as a migrant in China.

Just for a couple of years. Or ten.

Such a lesson might help them better appreciate America, because they obviously don't have a semblance of a clue right now. They take their stunning wealth for granted, when the default condition for man is poverty, misery and an all-powerful government that suppresses individual liberty and expression. Kind of like being a migrant in the PRC.

Friedman and his ilk are disgraceful schmucks.


Related: Thomas Friedman Has a Plan for Managing the Climate, the Economy and More!.

Must-Read Transcript -- Breitbart at CPAC: This Is Not Your Mother's Democratic Party

Transcript by Biff Spackle, Junior Cub Reporter:

Right now, my Twitter feed is already calling me a big fat homosexual. Hello, children at home. No, your Dad's not gay. That's how the Left rolls.

Everybody asks me: why do you retweet? Why do you do that? ...In fact, there's probably no one in the world I respect more than Professor Hugh Hewitt and the other day he took me aside. He said, "I don't think you should do that, Andrew." Well, Professor Hewitt, on this issue I disagree.

Because they've held over our heads -- with contempt -- the false narrative of their innate tolerance. The least tolerant people you'll ever meet in your entire lives -- I know it, I live it every day. And I retweet it to remind them that I know exactly who they are.

...This is my war cry for 2012. You need to join me in my war against the institutional left.

This is not your mother's Democratic Party... duh! John Podesta and George Soros? This is not your mother's Democratic Party You know whose party it is? ...I have a thesis about who we're fighting against on the hard left... [In college] I had no idea these [left-wing academics] people were actually serious about the malarkey they were teaching. The post-structuralist, politically correct garbage.

Unfortunately in 2004, the radical Left [executed] a coup d'etat of the Democratic Party. And basically kicked a person -- that four years was called 'the standard-bearer of decency in the Democratic Party'. And that person was Joe Lieberman.

That was the end of the Democratic Party. And in 2010, the DLC went under.

There's no such thing as a moderate Democrat. And so what do we get now, in Barack Obama?

In this election we're going to vet him


I've got videos, by the way, and in this election we're going to vet him. I've got videos. This election we're going to vet him. From his college days, to show you why racial division and class warfare are central to what 'hope and change' was sold in 2008.

The videos are going to come out. The narrative is going to come out: that Barack Obama met a bunch of silver pony-tails [left wing academics] back in the 1980s, like Bill [Ayers] and Bernadine Dohrn who said "one day, we're going to have the presidency.'

And the rest of us slept while they plotted and they plotted and they plotted. And they oversaw hundreds of millions of dollars in the Annenberg Challenge, from real capitalists, who gave it to their children and their children's children [who] then became communists. We've got to work on that...

Barack Obama is a radical and we should not be afraid to say it. And Barack Obama was launched from Bill and Bernadine's salon... it became self-evident to me that [Obama enjoyed] many a meal there... And don't tell me, ABC, CBS and NBC that I can't posit that theory, because it is a self-evident truth. Just like it was a self-evident truth that he was with Jeremiah Wright. And just as it was a self-evident truth that when he was at Harvard, he was advocating for the worst of the worst to join the faculty. Radicals. Radicals at "Beirut on the Charles".

And that who's in the White House. And that's who's outside right now [the Occupy movement] telling you that you don't have a right to be here. They would squelch your free speech just as easily as they do at Harvard, Vassar, Yale, Wesleyan - they're a bunch of totalitarian freaks.

The media can no longer be called objective journalists


And they pal around with our friends in the mainstream media. I always thought the media leaned to the left... but when they act like a Provost at a politically correct university and tell people to shut up, [then] no longer can they be called objective journalists. They're playing for the other side.

They've been part of demonizing good and decent people. They tried to defeat the Tea Party and when they failed, just like when they tried to create a [leftist] Rush Limbaugh and they failed with Air America, they want what they can't have. They wanted what they could not have and what did they create?

They created the "Occupy Movement". What is the Occupy Movement, you may ask? It's a natural, organic group of people -- you've never seen before in your life. Wait a sec-- these exact people protested against you at the GOP Welcoming Committee in 2008-- and two of them were arrested for planting Molotov cocktails. [These] are radicals against the police, radicals against you, exactly like Occupy, the same exact people, the same people who organized "Camp Casey" in Crawford, these are the same exact people who went down the highway at the end of the summer when Katrina happened, created Occupy New Orleans.

It's the same radicals, they've been in your life since 'Senator Obama' became part of your vocabulary. They are at war with you. They attack you. They throw eggs at you. And -- guess what? -- the media looks the other way. You're domestic terrorists, you know. Janet Napolitano warned me about that.

Yet when this group emerged, what happened? ...This is my thesis: the anti-war movement was never about anti-war. It was a Saul Alinsky community-organizing tool to get Barack Obama and the Left elected. It went away immediately.

The Occupy Movement is the Definition of Un-American


And the mainstream media created a narrative... Time Magazine's "Person of the Year... this is the anti-war movement! How do I know this? Because if I told this to ABC, CBS and NBC, they'd tell me it's a conspiracy theory -- that it's just a bunch of organic people. There's no organization going on, even though we have the emails to prove it. Or the undercover videos of Natasha Leonard of The New York Times organizing with the radicals. No, that didn't mean anything!

Bernadine Dohrn pointed out to me when I was snarkily asking 'What ever happened to the anti-war movement?', she let loose an affirmation of everything I know to be true. She said, "Well, that's not true... it's more or less what Occupy Wall Street is." And the mainstream media refuses to tell you that these are the same shock troops that have been ... instigating [against] us, instigating riots against the police, these people are the definition of un-American.

I don't care who our candidate is


You want a unity speech? I'll give you a unity speech. I don't care who our candidate is.

I haven't since the beginning of this... ask not what the candidate can do for you, ask what you can do for the candidate!

And that's what the Tea Party is.

We are there to confront [the radical left] on behalf of our candidate!

I will march behind who ever our candidate is. Because if we don't, we lose.

There are two paths! There are two paths! One is America, the other is Occupy! One is America, the other is Occupy! And I don't care, and along the way... I've realized over the last three years that the Republican Party and the conservative movement is not what ABC, CBS and NBC put on the screen.

They try to portray you in the worst possible light... and when I travel around the United States meeting people in the Tea Party who care -- black, white, gay, straight -- anyone that's willing to stand next to me to fight the progressive left, I will be in that bunker, and if you're not in that bunker 'cause you're not satisfied with this candidate, more than shame on you. You're on the other side.

Erick Erickson -- you listening?


Tuesday, February 07, 2012

Media to Obama: We've got your back [Dan from NY]

Dan from NY:

In this short video, Obama complains to Matt Lauer that the Constitution has gotten in his way and he hasn’t been able to “force” Congress to pass all the legislation he wanted. Even allowing for the fact that Fox cut this clip just as Obama was trying to repair his gaffe, it still exposes a man with a strong authoritarian streak and an outsized ego.

Oh, and one more thing. We just spent a solid week hearing from all corners of the media that Romney is “not concerned about the very poor.” Are you surprised that the same gang hasn’t swarmed over Obama’s revealing slip? (Rhetorical question]

Yes, that pesky Constitution -- which Obama took an oath to uphold -- keeps getting in the way.


Monday, February 06, 2012

CBS New York: "Catholic League Poised To Go To War With Obama Over Mandatory Birth Control Payments"

Hey, David Gregory: can you hear me now, you pencil-necked geek?

Catholic League Poised To Go To War With Obama Over Mandatory Birth Control Payments


Donohue Says 70 Million Of His Voters Ready To Alter Presidential Election


NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Catholic leaders upped the ante Monday, threatening to challenge the Obama administration over a provision of the new health care law that would require all employers, including religious institutions, to pay for birth control.

...Catholic leaders are furious and determined to harness the voting power of the nation’s 70 million Catholic voters to stop a provision of President Barack Obama’s new heath car reform bill that will force Catholic schools, hospitals and charities to buy birth control pills, abortion-producing drugs and sterilization coverage for their employees.

“Never before, unprecedented in American history, for the federal government to line up against the Roman Catholic Church,” said Catholic League head Bill Donohue.

Already Archbishop Timothy Dolan has spoken out against the law and priests around the country have mobilized, reading letters from the pulpit. Donohue said Catholic officials will stop at nothing to put a stop to it.

“This is going to be fought out with lawsuits, with court decisions, and, dare I say it, maybe even in the streets,” Donohue said.

Maybe a real miracle will occur and David Gregory of Meet the Depressed will read something besides The New York Times. Because, based upon Sunday's show, he's either an embarrassing moron or a DNC hack. Actually, I forgot a third option: perhaps he's both.

NEWT GINGRICH: Furthermore, you know, he's--he has declared what--it's not just an economic election, you know, he's basically declared war on the Catholic Church, and that's the language of Archbishop Dolan of New York. And I think you're going to see a very severe reaction to the idea of a radical Obama administration...

DAVID GREGORY, HOST: Well, let's--explain what you're talking about.

GINGRICH: ...imposing secular rules on religion.

GREGORY: This is for insurance to be provided, including contraception, for employees around the country.

GINGRICH: Right.

GREGORY: And--but religious institutions would be exempted. How is this a war against religion...

GINGRICH: No.

GREGORY: Well, religious institutions, churches and the like, would be exempted, and there are states that have very similar rules to ensure the health and safety of, of women that they get covered in their workplace, whether it be a Catholic hospital or other kind of institution.

GINGRICH: Well, I mean, you, you just managed to precisely repeat the Obama administration's line, which is also the American Civil Liberties Union line...

I love how these liberal hacks always argue with their Republican guests as they try to toe the Axelrod talking points. Curiously, we never see them act contentiously with, say, Obama, Wasserman-Manhands, Schmuck Schumer, and the like.

It's times like these that I really miss Tim Russert.


Friday, February 03, 2012

A Conservative Alternative to the Drudge Report?

BadBlue News ServiceSenator Fred Thompson says that "Romney has Drudge (top news source) in back pocket."

While that may or may not be true, there appears to be an alternative news aggregator that seems to be taking off. BadBlue.com monitors the social networks to determine which news stories are getting the most "buzz". It runs 24/7/365 monitoring hundreds of news sites and (most importantly!) blogs.

Here's how it looked when this post was created:

Unlike the Drudge Report, you can find the top stories that are trending now, over the last 24 hours, the last week, or even the last month.

You can even track the popularity of each story over time. Here's an example:

Need a list of stories from each news source? Here are the top stories from Ace of Spades:

Check it out and, if you like it, bookmark BadBlue and follow its updates on Twitter at @BadBlueNews.

Now conservatives have a choice.


Lies, Damn Lies, and Obama's Unemployment Numbers

Look up bogus in the dictionary and odds are you'll see a picture of President Obama standing in front of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Such is the reputation of the BLS as the nation's leading producer of economic propaganda.

You may have seen their headline number of 8.3% unemployment earlier today. What you didn't see is that the BLS had to "disappear" 1.2 million people out of the workforce over the last month alone to achieve that "drop".

It’s the headline that a President facing re-election with a dismal economic record didn’t want to see:

1.2 million people driven out of the workforce in a single month!


A frantic White House exploded into damage-control mode, as a deeply shaken President Obama retreated into his chambers. Nervous spokesmen fanned across the airwaves to stammer apologies, search for silver linings among the storm clouds, offer campaign boilerplate about “hope and change,” and desperately search for some way to blame George Bush for an absolute unemployment disaster that occurred over three years after he left office…

What’s that, you say? You didn’t see that headline? Well, of course not, silly. All you’re seeing in the headlines is good news, because the official, heavily-massaged U-3 unemployment rate fell to 8.3 percent. Fewer people in the workforce means the percentage of unemployed people in the workforce drops.

Tyler Durden uses an illustration to explain how the Democrat employment scam works:

Sick of the BLS propaganda? Then do the following calculation with us: using BLS data, the US civilian non-institutional population was 242,269 in January, an increase of 1.7 million month over month: apply the long-term average labor force participation rate of 65.8% to this number..., and you get 159.4 million: that is what the real labor force should be.

The BLS [instead] reported ... 154.4 million: a tiny 5 million difference. Then add these people who the BLS is purposefully ignoring yet who most certainly are in dire need of labor and/or a job to the 12.758 million reported unemployed by the BLS and you get 17.776 million in real unemployed workers.

What does this mean? That using just the BLS denominator in calculating the unemployed rate of 154.4 million, the real unemployment rate actually rose in January to 11.5%. Compare that with the BLS reported decline from 8.5% to 8.3%. It also means that the spread between the reported and implied unemployment rate just soared to a fresh 30-year high of 3.2%. And that is how with a calculator and just one minute of math, one strips away countless hours of BLS propaganda.

Oh, and just for reinforcement, the invaluable James Pethokoukis piles on:

...If the size of the U.S. labor force as a share of the total population was the same as it was when Barack Obama took office... the U-3 unemployment rate would be 11.0 percent.

...Then there’s the broader, U-6 measure of unemployment which includes the discouraged plus part-timers who wish they had full time work. That unemployment rate is still a sky-high 15.1 percent.

Based on Peth's data, the BLS has "disappeared" a startling four million workers to get unemployment "down" to 8.3 percent.

This kind of egregious activity -- certain to go unreported upon by legacy media -- is why I like to call the BLS unemployment numbers "the Eric Holder of Economic Reports."


Sunday, January 29, 2012

Due to popular demand...

Several bloggers requested that I create some buttons or sidebar badges for the new BadBlue news service. Okay, it wasn't several. It was one. But still...

To use this beauty:

Just copy this text and paste it into your template.


Or to use one of the following buttons, simply click the one you want, then copy the text in the HTML block below to paste into your template:

350 pixels wide
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HTML to use in your template:

If you don't know what BadBlue is, click here. Basically, it's a news service for the rest of us, completely automated using social networking chatter as the barometer for promoting news stories. So far it seems to be catching on.

Newt Gingrich Fires Back Against GOP Old Guard, Ann Coulter Hardest Hit

Ann Coulter is one of America's most talented conservative columnists. Of late, she has been curiously dogged in attacking Newt Gingrich -- unquestionably a captain of the "Reagan Revolution" -- while backing a man whose conservative credentials are dicey at best. Today Gingrich fired back.

Fox News Latino’s Victor Garcia did a phone interview with Newt Gingrich. During which the Former Speaker was asked about the recent Ann Coulter and Tom Delay criticisms...

Victor Garcia: You have been taking a lot of hits from Tom Delay now, Ann Coulter some of these people that some would consider on the far right of the conservative spectrum. What is your response to the criticism of those ones? Why do you think they are attacking you?

Newt Gingrich: Look I think there are a whole bunch of folks who represent the old order; they attacked Ronald Reagan in 1980 exactly the same way. They are looking at a national poll that shows me ahead of Romney 52-39 in a two way race and they are recognizing that if I come back as president, that I will be for very dramatic, very bold change and they are terrified. I have no interest in what Tom Delay did that got him in trouble. I thought it was wrong and a mistake, I have a very different approach to that and I have no Idea what motivates Ann Coulter but I find that she is all over the map. Basically she is for Romney and therefore anything she says about me is a reflection of the fact that she is for Romney. I expect people who are for Romney to attack me because they are terrified because he is losing.

I have no problem whatsoever with Coulter voicing her opinion, but she should -- like Karl Rove -- disclose whether any financial interests are playing a part in her support for Romney.


Hat tip: BadBlue.

Saturday, January 28, 2012

I accuse this chart of being racist!

James Pethokoukis calls this "the economic chart that may doom the Obama presidency."

Even if [Friday's] GDP report—for the fourth quarter of 2011—shows 3 percent growth or better [Ed: it did not, coming in at 2.8, worse than expected], it would be just the fourth time that has happened since the economy began turning up in June 2009: 3.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009, 3.9 percent in the first quarter of 2010, and 3.8 percent in the second quarter of 2010. But no 3 percent-plus quarters since then.

The first nine quarters of the Reagan Recovery, by contrast, looked like this: 5.1 percent, 9.3 percent, 8.1 percent, 8.5 percent, 8.0 percent, 7.1 percent, 3.9 percent, 3.3 percent, 3.8, percent, 3.4 percent. In fact, the Reagan Boom went from the first quarter of 1983 until the second quarter of 1986 without notching a sub-3 percent GDP quarter.

So, while the Reagan Recovery quickly made up for lost years of growth, not so much for the Obama Recovery, as this chart in today’s Wall Street Journal makes clear:


Over at Business Insider, a surprisingly left-wing rag given its ostensible focus on the private sector economy, some ludicrous hack named Joe Weisenthal insists that all of this data is irrelevant. His latest piece, basically a troll's post with a larger-than-usual website, is entitled "Why The Obama Recovery Has Been Much More Impressive Than Reagan's" (no link, you can find it if you want to).

Another thing about Reagan was that he was a deficit-lover.
Reagan presided over the largest (still) one-year annual jump in the size of the national debt. (And PS: that just happened to be right after the recession, when the economy started growing like crazy as Pethokoukis notes)... The conditions behind the Great Recession were far worse than anything Reagan inherited, and Obama has pulled off a recovery with less of a sustained growth in Federal Government spending.

Hey, Joe - I wonder who was in control of the House during the Reagan years? Oh, yeah -- that's right. The Democrats, who insisted every one of Reagan's austerity budgets was "Dead On Arrival". Reagan wanted to eliminate the Department of Education, for instance. Sound like a big spender to you, Joe?

Reagan inherited double-digit unemployment, double-digit inflation, an oil crisis, a resurgent Soviet Union, and he'd turned America around in three years with a Democrat-controlled Congress. As a commenter observes:

A recap of Hope and Change since President Obama took office in Jan 2009. Comparing economic indicators starting in Jan 2009 to present day:

1. Federal debt has increased by 43% from $10.6 trillion to $15 trillion.
2. Americans living in poverty have increased by 16% from 39.8 million to 46.2 million.
3. Total unemployment (U6) has increased by 68% from 13.7 million to 23 million.
4. Price of gasoline has increased by 80% from $1.86/gal to $3.35/gal
5. Americans on food stamps have increased 42% from 31.8 million to 45.2 million
6. Home foreclosures per year have increased by 34% from 850,000 to 1,140,000
7. Total bankruptcy filings per year have increased by 42% from 1,117,641 to 1,593,081.
8. Median Household incomes have declined by 4%.
9. Average selling price of new homes has declined by 10%.
10. US dollar compared to foreign currencies has declined by 8.7%. [US dollar index of 85.9 in Jan 2009 to 78.5 in Dec 2011.]
11. US dollar compared to gold has declined 105%. [$855/oz. to $1750/oz.]

Not to mention adding a new, wildly unpopular and massive new entitlement program (Obamacare) when our existing entitlements are circling the drain.

Hey, Joe: you gonna put some ice on that, brother?


Friday, January 27, 2012

I guess the drones didn't like my questions for President Obama

So Google's YouTube service is sponsoring a post-State of the Campaign Union Q&A with President Obama and the drones are out in force. After submitting what I believe are reasonable questions and having many of them voted up, the O-bots began swarming and down-dinging them.

Suffice it to say that Obama will field no tough questions in this venue, whether through tacit censorship or simply because charismatic demagogues don't take tough questions.


Hey, Leonard Pitts: Is This Chart More or Less Racist Than Newt Gingrich?

Leonard who? Exactly. Leonard Pitts -- for the 99.9999999% of Americans who've never heard of him -- is a back-bencher op-ed columnist who never met an opportunity to race-bait that he didn't like. Pitts' specialty is interpreting every statement --- including the terms "food stamps", "arugula", and "golfer-in-chief" -- as a secret racist code known only to Republicans... and Leonard Pitts.

Let's listen in as all six of Pitt's neurons fire at once to create version 17,031 of the same column he's written weekly for years (subtitled, "Republican are racists"):

I got my first job when I was 12. The deacons at my church paid me $2 a week to keep it swept and mopped... So I do not need Newt Gingrich to lecture me about a good work ethic. In this, I suspect I speak for the vast majority of 39 million African Americans.

There has been a lot of talk about whether Gingrich’s recent language , including his performance at last week’s South Carolina debate and his earlier declaration that Barack Obama has been America’s best “food-stamp president,” amounts to a coded appeal to racist sensitivities. The answer is simple: yes.

In this, Gingrich joins a line of Republicans stretching back at least to Richard Nixon. From that president’s trumpeting of “law and order” (i.e., “I will get these black demonstrators off the streets.”) to Ronald Reagan’s denunciation of “welfare queens” (i.e., “I will stop these lazy black women from living high on your tax dollars.”) to George H.W. Bush’s use of Willie Horton (i.e., “Elect me or this scary black man will get you..”) the GOP long ago mastered the craft of using nonracial language to say racial things.

So I assume Pitts will agree with me when I categorically condemn the Office of Management and Budget, the U.S. Census Bureau and the USDA for helping to produce this chart:

...While it's true that the country has been headed in this direction for many years — with the explosion in entitlements since the 1960s and the aging of the population — Obama has, in fact, greatly accelerated the trend...

Direct payments. The amount of money the federal government hands out in direct payments to individuals steadily increased over the past four decades, but shot up under Obama, climbing by almost $600 billion — a 32% increase — in his first three years. And Obama's last budget called for these payments to climb another $500 billion by 2016, at which point they would account for fully two-thirds of all federal spending.

...Food stamps. This year, more than 46 million (15% of all Americans) will get food stamps. That's 45% higher than when Obama took office, and twice as high as the average for the previous 40 years. This surge was driven in part by the recession, but also because Obama boosted the benefit amount as part of his stimulus plan.

...In just nine years, entitlement spending is on track to eat up 61% of the federal budget, according to the CBO. And unless these programs are cut back, they will soon consume all federal taxes, one CBO budget scenario predicts.

In other words, we're headed for complete fiscal collapse -- and Pitts is cheering Obama on with unsustainable programs wracked with fraud, cronyism, and ill-intentions.

And are things better for African-Americans under Obama? Of course not. In fact, a new low -- less than 80% of African-Americans (I assume Pitts thinks they're racist, too) -- now support President Obama.

Ronald Reagan inherited a far worse economy from Jimmy Carter: double-digit inflation; double-digit unemployment; and a Soviet Empire that was extending its tentacles all over the globe while the U.S. had single-handedly begun disarming itself.

In three years' time, Reagan had transformed the economy to the benefit of all Americans by unleashing the private sector through smaller government, less regulation, and lower taxes for all -- especially the productive members of society, irrespective of race, religion, creed or hair color.

Instead of building on a proven template of color-blind success, Pitts continues his failed career of race-baiting, which requires him to ignore history, facts, logic and reason in pursuit of a Utopian society that can't exist, won't exist and has never existed in all of human history. His path is the path to misery and, like all drones, he's too stupid to even comprehend his own endgame.


Thursday, January 26, 2012

Graphing the popularity of a breaking news story...

The BadBlue automated news service added a cool new feature this weekend: you can now track the popularity of a given news story over time. Here's an example:

If you visit the BadBlue home page, you'll notice each story has the following format: headline, news source, popularity and permalink (the ∞ symbol).

Obviously, if you click on the headline, you'll go to the news story. If you click on the name of the news source, you'll get a complete listing of the top stories collected by the news service:

You'll also notice from the detail above that there is a permalink symbol (the mark). Click on that to see the chart of that story's popularity and any comments on the story itself.

Check it out. It's kinda like the Drudge Report, but automated to be more non-partisan. Heh.


Thought Experiment: Imagine This Ad Running in The New York Times

That booming sound you heard in the distance was the head of Bloomberg (the idiot mayor, not the news service) exploding.


Hat tip: Jay Paull Vintage Print Advertisements.

Here are some photos you'll never see in legacy media: the Volt crash test that torched a whole series of cars

Odd. I must have missed this report on ABC, NBC, CBS and in The New York Slimes:

I attended Wednesday’s 8:00am (8am?!?) House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing entitled:

Volt Vehicle Fire: What Did NHTSA Know And When Did They Know It?

The witnesses [included] National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA), Barack Obama-appointee Administrator David Strickland... [and] General Motors (GM), Barack Obama-appointee CEO Dan Akerson.

...This hearing was all about a single June Volt blaze. The battery burst into flames about three weeks after a test crash at and by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA).

A fire about which Obama’s NHTSA did tell the Obama White House. But a fire about which neither Obama’s NHTSA, the Obama Administration nor Obama’s GM told the American people for nearly six months – and then did so only when forced by a looming Bloomberg news story.

...Joan Claybrook, a former administrator at NHTSA believes part of the reason for the delay was the “fragility of Volt sales.” Yet she also believes that “NHTSA could have put out a consumer alert, not to tell them [customers] for six months makes no sense to me.” ...For Obama, notifying Americans of their potential immolation-by-Volt is of less import than his keeping his gig past November.

The one NHTSA Volt fire discussed at the hearing was not the only NHTSA Volt fire that occurred. In November, there were two others. After conducting three different tests two weeks ago, the NHTSA found that the Volt’s battery either caught fire or began to smoke in two out of the three.

So that’s three Volt fires – all in the hands of the Obama Administration, all after crashes... There were [also] three other, private-owner Volt fires. None of which involved Volts that were in crashes.

...There was the Volt that in April burst into flames – twice. These were the fires that led to Obama’s NHTSA beginning its investigation. And then in November another Volt leapt into flames. While Obama’s NHTSA was still investigating – but after the NHTSA-Obama Administration-GM cover-up had come to light (get it?)...

...We still have no idea what caused these fires. The only thing we do know is that they were not caused by crashes – because these cars were never in crashes. So why did Obama’s NHTSA, the Obama Administration and Obama’s GM singularly focus on (but one of three) post-crash Volt fires ... [w]hen none of these three privately-owned combustible Volts had been in accidents?

We – still – don’t know. Anything.

But don’t worry: The Obama Administration has declared that the Obama-owned GM Chevy Volt is perfectly safe – just in time for Obama’s reelection campaign.

Indeed. The Volt is safe. We guarantee it. Who's we? Shut the hell up, peons.


Related: Exclusive Photo: First Chevy Volts arrive at local dealers


Photos: Charging Point.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Obama Henchman John Podesta Lumps Canada In With Terror States To Justify the Disastrous Keystone XL Decision

John Podesta is one of a long line of Soros-funded Obama stooges (which is the term they prefer, I hear) who runs the ill-named "Center for American Progress". From all appearances, CAP's mission is three-fold: (a) to de-industrialize America through eco-Marxism; (b) to continue pushing the country down the road to a failed, European social welfare state; and (c) to manufacture propaganda for the state, Hugo Chavez-style.

For the latter purpose, Podesta was able to secure a forum at The Wall Street Journal this morning. He used it to deliver one of the more malicious pieces of propaganda ever printed in an American newspaper. The op-ed was timed, of course, to reinforce tonight's State of the Union address and, in particular, to justify Obama's disastrous Keystone XL pipeline decision.

In the hubbub around the president's decision not to approve the proposed Keystone XL pipeline between Canada and the United States, Americans missed the big picture. While conservatives have been fighting to build a pipeline to import more foreign oil and deepen U.S. dependence, the U.S. is poised to transform its energy portfolio by developing domestic resources—renewable and mineral—that will let it become a net exporter of clean energy and energy technology in this decade...

Renewable energy resources like those produced by Solyndra?

And since when was Canada lumped in with America's enemies?

Only in the mind of a malevolent, Soros-controlled drone could Canada be equated with a totalitarian Islamist terror state.

Under President Obama's leadership, we appear to be at the beginning of a domestic gas and oil boom. After a four-decade decline in oil production, the U.S. is now producing more than half of our oil domestically. This can free us from our addiction to foreign-sourced barrels, particularly if we utilize our dramatically larger and cheaper natural gas reserves. Natural gas now costs the equivalent of less than $15 per barrel, versus the $100-plus barrels we import from the Middle East... [But there] are critical environmental questions associated with developing these resources, particularly concerning methane leakage and water pollution.

Buried in this pile of literary excrement is the caveat that applies to all Obama dictums: companies will get regulated out of business by the EPA, the Department of the Interior, the Bureau of Land Management, and dozens of other elements of the bloated federal bureaucracy long before a single watt of energy is ever produced.

I'll spare you the rest of Podesta's verbal diarrhea.

Decades from now, when the complete history of the Obama administration is written, its accomplices like John Podesta -- who betrayed their country for a few pieces of Soros' gold -- will receive the full measure of scorn and hatred they deserve. Future generations destined to suffer because of nefarious individuals like Podesta will curse their names and, if there is any justice at all, turn their gravesites into landfills.


Sunday, January 22, 2012

Debunking the Beltway Hacks' Latest Spin: Gingrich Will Harm Down-Ticket Republicans

The latest folderol emanating from the utterly embarrassed Beltway elites -- many of whom were surreptitiously on the Romney payroll -- is that Newt Gingrich's poor "likability" scores will harm down-ticket Republicans.

If history is any indicator, this is about as accurate as their mantra-like predictions, repeated ad infinitum, that Mitt Romney would run away with the nomination because of his "electability".

Rasmussen Reports explains what Obama's failed presidency really means to down-ticket Democrats:

Going into the final weekend of [Jimmy Carter's 1980] campaign..., Gallup had Carter’s Republican opponent, Ronald Reagan, up three points. Harris had him up five points, while Newsweek and The Washington Post had Carter up one.

But at the end, the bottom fell out for Carter. “I’ve never seen anything like it in polling,” said Pat Caddell, Carter’s pollster. What was a close race turned into a big Reagan lead in the last hours of the campaign; he ended up winning 489 electoral votes and a 51%-41% victory over Carter. Likely aiding Reagan at the end was the one and only debate between the two, held just a week before the election, when Reagan memorably asked voters “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” ...With Carter captaining the Democratic ship, election night in 1980 was Titanic-esque. Democrats lost 12 Senate seats and 33 House seats.

...Given the divided control of the government, some commentators we respect have noted the possibility of a total switcheroo in Washington next year: President Obama loses the presidency, the Republicans take the Senate and the Democrats re-take the House.

That, of course, is possible. But it would be a first in the modern history of the republic: Since 1860, an incumbent president has never lost the White House in the same election that his party won control of either house of Congress from the other party. Similarly, the House and the Senate flipping in opposite directions has never happened in the same election in the same timeframe. In other words, regardless of what happens in the presidential race, a scenario in which Democrats captured the House next year and Republicans captured the Senate would be, in a word, historic.

So history tells us that Democrats need Obama to roar back and win a second term in order to flip the House. And even that might not be enough.

So when Karl Rove, who has yet to reveal any financial interests he may have vested in one or more of the GOP candidates, next opines about Newt's "likability", you can take his "analysis" with a giant grain of salt.

Say, a 31 percentage point-sized grain of salt.