Sunday, June 22, 2008

Who needs a damn lapel pin when we've got a seal?


The LA Times' Top of the Ticket -- "Barack Obama gets his own nifty Great Seal; all he needs now is votes":

Just before the president of the United States makes an appearance at a speech, a usually tall, muscular person with a machine gun hanging under his suit coat quietly walks on stage and hangs the presidential seal on the podium front... It's an impressive looking thing that conveys a sense of the power of the top elected office in the land and, indeed, the free world.

But Barack Obama's crowd has decided not to wait for any of the formalities like a presidential election, an inauguration or even a nomination, which he still hasn't actually officially won yet. Wasn't it Hillary Clinton who was so sidely accused of thinking her nomination was inevitable?

Dr. Banks suggests that the Great Seal of Obama can be used as a fashion accoutrement (e.g., Flava Flav).

Update: Don Surber calls it "The Great Seal of the United 57 States of Obama."

Motivational Poster o' the Day


I'd never heard of Cat Fu before.


Hat tip: Bern

Larwyn's Link Kerplosion: Why Obama dropped public funding


Breitbart TV: Former Clinton Volunteer Now Supporting McCain Claims Threats by Obama Supporters ("Obama staff called me a racist... I was attacked in the Internet blogs and by Keith Olbermann as a racist. I have been receiving threats at my home and threats to my children.")

Daily Mail (UK): Angel of Darfur: a nurse reveals the brutality in Africa's meanest country

Politico: Obama alienates the editors

Indymedia: David White speaks truth to the powerless.

Ace of Spades: The New York Times discovers Surge has worked just as last of Surge troops arrive home.

Canada Free Press: Creators of carbon credit scheme cashing in on it.

Auto Blog Green: Mercedes wants to eliminate petroleum from its lineup by 2015 (err, won't that put a bit of a strain on the electric grid?)

Anchoress: Obama, the 527 lies, and racism

Extreme Mortman (via Instapundit): Is this the ad that scared Obama into dropping public funding?

Four dollar gas still not high enough for Democrats to act


In his Saturday radio address, President Bush pushed for Congress to help lower gas prices the only way possible: increase supply.

The fundamental problem behind high gas prices is that the supply of oil has not kept up with the rising demand across the world. One obvious solution is for America to increase our domestic oil production. So my Administration has repeatedly called on Congress to open access to new oil exploration here in the United States. Unfortunately, Democrats on Capitol Hill have rejected virtually every proposal. Now Americans are paying the price at the pump for this obstruction. So this week, I asked Democratic congressional leaders to take the side of working families and small businesses and farmers and ranchers and move forward with four steps to expand American oil and gasoline production.


...There's also an executive prohibition on exploration in the [Outer Continental Shelf], which I will lift when Congress lifts the legislative ban.


...Second, we should expand American oil production by tapping into the extraordinary potential of oil shale. ... One major deposit in the Rocky Mountain West alone would equal current annual oil imports for more than a hundred years. Unfortunately, Democrats in Congress are standing in the way of further development. In last year's omnibus spending bill, Democratic leaders inserted a provision blocking oil shale leasing on Federal lands. That provision can be taken out as easily as it was slipped in -- and Congress should do so immediately.


...It has been 30 years since a new refinery was built in our Nation, and lawsuits and red tape have made it extremely costly to expand or modify existing refineries. The result is that America now imports millions of barrels of fully refined gasoline from abroad. This imposes needless costs on American families and drivers. It deprives American workers of good jobs.


...I know Democratic leaders have opposed some of these policies in the past. Now that their opposition has helped drive gas prices to record levels, I ask them to reconsider their positions. If congressional leaders leave for the Fourth of July recess without taking action, they will need to explain why $4-a-gallon gasoline is not enough incentive for them to act.

Update: Randall Hoven at the American Thinker:

Barack Obama is against lifting the ban on drilling for oil offshore because it would not reduce gas prices "this year, next year, five years from now."

...I also did not know that all the alternative energy sources Senator Obama advocates could be brought on line "this summer". Wow, those windmill guys are good.

...I guess that means we can count on a President Obama to ignore the impending bankruptcies of Social Security and Medicare, for example.

Of course, Obama's logic is based on the premise that gasoline prices would not fall until new oil is actually put in barrels. But as Larry Kudlow points out , oil investors will start bidding down the price as soon as the knowledge of the availability of new oil becomes more certain. That could mean that, if the ban on offshore drilling is lifted this summer, gas prices could fall this summer or the next few years.


Hat tip: John at Powerline

Holograms on handsets by 2010


I'd heard that tiny projectors will soon be built into mobile phones (3M is working on one), but not that holographic displays will soon be possible as well.

Holographic mobile handsets capable of projecting, capturing, and sending 3D images have been developed by Indian tech giant Infosys... By 2010, the devices will routinely beam 3D films, games, and virtual goods into our laps, according Infosys, which has patented the handset.

The portable machines will capture and send 3D snapshots of the surrounding world, helping accident investigators, teachers, and doctors work remotely by instantly relaying realistic depictions of car damage, injuries, medical scans, or educational aids... The powerful onboard processor on the Infosys machine would build a series of 2D shots taken, for example, from a digital camera, into 3D holograms using algorithms called 'Fourier' transformations to calculate the extra third dimension.

The patent, granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, says this allows complex 3D holographic images to be squeezed through the narrow pipes of existing communications networks by sending only the unprocessed data to be translated into the 3D hologram at the other end.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

The progressive dictionary of names for George W. Bush


The progressives have a lot of names for President George W. Bush:

Dubya, Bushie, Shrub, Chimp, Smirky, Bushitler, Chickenhawk One, Hitlerburton, Chimpowitz, Rove's Puppet, Cowboy Hitlerstein, AWOL McPsycho, Bushollini, Cheney's Sock Puppet, Chimpy McDrunkard, Darth Moron, Toxic Texan, Dim Son, Drinky McCokeSpoon, Emperor Chimpatine, Fearful Leader, Herr Bush, Moron-in-Chief, and Satan's Monkey.

Consider: after John Kerry was defeated by Bush in the the 2004 presidential election and even after Democrats took control of Congress in 2006, "progressives" have been beaten like a bongo drum by Chimpy.

Defeated by Bush on: funding the Iraq war (many, many times).

Defeated by Bush on: the 'Surge'.

Defeated by Bush on: a timetable for surrender.

Defeated by Bush on: terrorist surveillance.

Defeated by Bush on: retroactive immunity for the telephone companies.

Defeated by Bush on: key appointees like Michael Mukasey.

Defeated by Bush on: Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson fabrications that attempted to implicate Karl Rove, Darth Cheney, and others.

The key question for "progressives": because you assert that George W. Bush is retarded... and because he continues to crush each and every one of your initiatives... what does that say about the "progressive" movement?

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Hat tip: Blue Dog Democrats. Ehm, related question for the "progressives" out there: did you ever stop and consider what electing conservatives would mean? That's a rhetorical question, because that would require deduction and thinking ahead -- two traits that socialists aren't known for.

Darcy Burner at OpenLeft says "We need better Democrats." No, Dars, you need real Democrats. Men like JFK and Harry S Truman. Men who believed in the superiority of the American dream; who supported the U.S. military; and wouldn't hesitate to protect freedom around the world.

Instead we get headlines like this -- from September 2007 -- "Democrats tell Petraeus that Iraq surge has failed."

Beyond the seal: the trappings of Obama's faux presidency


You've probably seen Barack Obama's bogus presidential seal.


However, Junior Cub Reporter Biff Spackle went undercover to find other trappings of Obama's campaign, which are designed to lend gravitas to the candidate whose resume fits on a coaster.



Top: Marine One, the president's helicopter. Bottom: Kucinich One, Obama's attack helicopter.



Top: The president's specially made Cadillac DTS limousine. Bottom: Hillary One, Obama's plush ride. It last belonged to the former first lady, who auctioned the vehicle to raise cash.



Top: Air Force One, the president's famous airplane. Bottom: Moonbat One, Obama's luxurious aircraft, reportedly on loan from George Soros and Babs Streisand. Word has it that built-in hookahs are installed in every seat.

Top iPhone Disappointments


Is the new 3G iPhone the be-all and end-all of smartphones? Not according to Forbes' Brian Caulfield.

...imperfections still lurk, in spite of Chairman Steve Jobs' maniacal attention to detail. Even before its release, there are some niggling issues--some minor, others major--that make the iPhone a mere gadget, just like any other. Just ask those pesky bloggers:

The Cost

Those crafty phone companies! Yes, at $199, the new iPhone is cheaper up-front than the original, which first went on sale starting at $499 last year. It is not, however, less expensive to own. Do the math you find out and the iPhone will cost $160 more over two years than the original iPhone because AT&T put together a pricier data plan for the phone to help it subsidize the up-front cost of the handset. The gadget fiends at Gizmodo called that "a small price to play," but Bits, the technology blog at The New York Times, called it "a step backwards for consumers"...

No Voice Dialing
No blogger we've seen has complained about this yet. Maybe that's because all the geeks who might whine about how tough it is to dial the iPhone died in fiery auto wrecks first, seeing as the iPhone doesn't have the voice-recognition smarts to let users dial verbally--the one feature makes the BlackBerry, with its nubby little plastic keyboard, usable on the road...

The battery replacement issue -- basically, you can't replace batteries -- still exists and is a significant problem in my view.

Will someone please ask Qadhafi to stop smearing Obama?


Thomas Lifson, writing at the indispensible American Thinker:

The Obama campaign faces a burgeoning problem: the tendency of certain highly-placed Muslims overseas to declare that he is of their faith. The latest to do so is Libya's Qadhafi, in remarks made marking the anniversary of the U.S. air raid on Libya. MEMRI provides this transcript:

There are elections in America now. Along came a black citizen of Kenyan African origins, a Muslim, who had studied in an Islamic school in Indonesia. His name is Obama. All the people in the Arab and Islamic world and in Africa applauded this man. They welcomed him and prayed for him and for his success, and they may have even been involved in legitimate contribution campaigns to enable him to win the American presidency.

We still hope that this black man will take pride in his African and Islamic identity, and in his faith, and that [he will know] that he has rights in America, and that he will change America from evil to good, and that America will establish relations that will serve it well with other peoples, especially the Arabs.

Americans believe that Barack Obama has every right to become a Christian as an adult and proclaim his faith in Jesus Christ. Americans understand that true religious identity depends on the faith one accepts. But we deceive ourselves if we believe the rest of the world thinks this way...

...The campaign has so far been rather effective at suppressing discussion of any of the complexities of Barack Obama's connection to the faith of his father. To even broach the subject is to be branded a smear artist, to have "emails" invoked as cyber boogeymen, and to be an "Islamophobe."

Obama has been celebrated as a man who repair America's image overseas. But images are tricky things, and managing them overseas may be impossible.

Oh, and I forgot: Gadhafi says the Israelis were behind the JFK assassination.

So he's got that going for him.

Update: Obama's brother Malik didn't get the memo, either.

Related: LGF

More proof: Saddam Hussein had operational ties to Al Qaeda


In 2002 Saddam Hussein's intelligence organization wrote a letter to Al Qaeda chieftain Ayman al-Zawahiri requesting a meeting regarding the launch of terrorist operations. The invaluable MEMRI translation service reports

The Kurdish daily Kurdistani Nwe has published a 2002 letter from the Iraqi presidency that it says proves that there was cooperation between the regime of Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda.

The letter, which appeared on the paper's front page, was published by the intelligence apparatus of the Iraqi presidency and discussed an intention to meet with Ayman Al-Zawahiri in order to examine a plan drawn up by the Iraqi presidency to carry out a "revenge operation" in Saudi Arabia.

The lies about Iraq promoted by the hard left bank of American politics continue to unravel.

Put bluntly, there were proven ties between Hussein's Iraq and Al-Qaeda.

And even the left-leaning mainstream media is reporting that the longstanding 'Bush lied' theme was as phony as the bogus Obama presidential seal.

Disgraced Senator Harry "The War is Lost" Reid could not be reached for comment.

Hat tip: Gateway Pundit

Friday, June 20, 2008

Obamath: producing more oil won't produce more oil


USA Today quotes Barack Obama:

"Believe me -– if I thought that there was any evidence at all that drilling could save people money who are struggling to fill up their tanks by this summer or this year or even the next few years, I would consider it. But it won’t. And John McCain knows that."

Translation:

"Believe me -- if I thought that there was any evidence at all that drilling for more oil would produce more oil, I would consider it. But it won't. And if you're stupid enough to believe that, you'll love my administration!

Taxes on "windfall profits"? Price controls?



If I were you, I'd print your gas rationing cards in advance.

Update: Only 60% of Americans want more drilling and refining, so the Democrats are sure to ignore the will of the people (since it benefits our national security and reduces funding for terrorism).

Update II: Reliapundit does the math.

Update III: Linked by Fausta. Thanks!

He's got his own official seal?


The dude requested his own faux-presidential seal?

Eh, I think that may be problem.

Update: Redstate: Section 18 USC 713[4] Arrest Obama Now.



Hat tip: Reliapundit

Obama appears to have blatantly lied about Rezko


The Chicago Sun-Times (via Reliapundit):

As a state senator, Barack Obama wrote letters to city and state officials supporting his political patron Tony Rezko's successful bid to get more than $14 million from taxpayers to build apartments...

...Obama's letters, written nearly nine years ago, for the first time show the Democratic presidential hopeful did a political favor for Rezko -- a longtime friend, campaign fund-raiser and client of the law firm where Obama worked -- who was indicted last fall on federal charges that accuse him of demanding kickbacks from companies seeking state business under Gov. Blagojevich...

Earlier, author John K. Wilson and other sources quoted Obama as denying any assistance to Rezko's corrupt operation.

Rezko’s eye for scouting political talent was amazing, but he did not capitalize on Obama’s influence. Obama said he had known Rezko for twenty years and "he had never asked me for anything. I’ve never done any favors for him." ...The reality is that all politicians have connections to people like Rezko. What matters is whether they acquiesce to the demands of such donors or serve the public good.

I guess assistance that netted Rezko nearly a million dollars of skim doesn't qualify as a "favor" in Chicago.

Hope! Change!*

*Hope and Change now available in convenient 8-oz., Chicago-style packaging.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Echoes of the peanut man: déjà vu all over again


A blast from the past, courtesy of the Department of Energy's official website (emphasis mine):

* Price controls on oil
* A windfall profits tax
* Taxpayer-funded boondoggles on solar energy
* Taxpayer-funded boondoggles on synthetic fuels

Yes, ripped from today's headlines are the very strategies set in motion by the worst president in history: James Earl Carter. Let's pause a moment here and reminisce about 8% unemployment, 16% inflation, and 17% auto loan rates.

So when today's Democrats call for these very same measures, let's remember that Barack O'Carter is running for office (I hear that's the name he prefers.)

Polarik: Was Obama's 'Certificate of Birth' Forged?


Graphics guru Polarik, writing at Townhall, examines Barack Obama's Certificate of Birth. And it raises more questions than it answers.

The Daily Kos blog has posted a JPG that allegedly is Barack Obama's "Certificate of Birth." From a detailed analysis of the image and the text, it looks like it was created by a graphics program, and is not a true copy of an original, certified document.

I've been working with computers, printers, and typewriters for over 20 years, and given a set of printed letters, I can discern what kind of device made them. Printer output is quite different from the text created by a graphics program, and even if a document looks "official," it may not be.

The "Certificate of Birth," which I will call "COB," is posted on the Kos website as a color JPG. The reason for making it a color JPG, IMHO, is to induce the viewer to believe that this is a genuine copy of an original document -- something that a black & white, or even greyscale, reproduction would not convey as well.

Basically, anyone could have produced this document on his or her own computer, and I'll tell you why.

But it's not just on the DailyKos site. Barack Obama's official site appears to have the same image, albeit in smaller form.

Read the analysis. I've got a hundred bucks that says this image is a fake.

Update: Rants and Refinements spots this gem:


An ink stamp on the back of the certificate soaks through enough to show us the date: Jun 6, 2007. This is all a bit odd for me.


Hat tip: JonJayRay

In-flight Internet access: because we're not connected enough


Crotchety old Walter Mossberg (and I mean that in a good way) got to try out the new in-flight Internet access offered on some airlines.

The Gogo service will cost a flat fee of $12.95 for flights of three hours or longer, and $9.95 for shorter trips... The service operates at respectable, if not blazing, speeds -- similar to what you'd get on a cellular broadband service or a slow home DSL line. On my test flight, download speeds varied from 266 kilobits per second to about 1.4 megabits per second, with the most typical speeds hovering between 500 and 600 kbps. Upload speeds were between 250 and 300 kbps. I found that most of the tasks I tested, except for streaming video, felt smooth and normal.

Speeds could degrade on a large plane with scores of people online simultaneously. But Aircell claims it has the technology to make my experience representative for anyone doing common tasks, such as Web surfing and email. During my test flight, eight laptops and six Wi-Fi-enabled smart phones were using the system simultaneously. All registered decent speeds, except for a couple of minutes when the plane was crossing between the zones controlled by the company's ground-based towers.

Aircell gets Internet access to the planes through a network of 92 towers scattered across North America. These essentially are cellphone towers, carrying a high-speed cellphone data signal, except that the Aircell antennas point up, into the sky. A receiver on the underside of the aircraft picks up the signal, which is then distributed through the plane via Wi-Fi.

It's only available in the U.S. (for the time being).

And as for using Skype or otherwise bypassing the brutally expensive Airphones? Gogo reportedly blocks all voice services, so you'll have to stick with IM and email.

Hat tip: Gretawire

Cojones: Congressional Democrats openly endorse communism


Silly me: I thought communism was dead. But it appears to have risen like a phoenix on Dianabol -- at least in the minds of Congressional Democrats and Obama supporters.

Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) wants oil refineries to be "owned by the people of the United States." In other words, he'd put refineries in the hands of big government -- presumably a new agency. Say, the Department of Refinining and Gas Rationing.

Interviewed on Fox, Obama supporter Malia Lazu of Oil Change International essentially stated that Hugo Chavez was on the right track when he nationalized Venezuela's oil industry.

"This isn't shareholders' oil, this is our oil."

Didn't I read about this during the rise of the Soviet Union, say, circa 1917? Stealing private property and making it the government's?

But wait! There's more!

"When Congress can set prices, we can set prices."

Price controls: those worked out well in the 1970's!

"We need a nationalized oil structure."

Most Americans would immediately recognize this as the first step on the road to Communism and economic ruin. In other words, another Carter administration.

Beldar adds:

The Dems are well into the stage of “irrational exuberance” which foretells the pop of their political bubble. When a Congressmen on the House Ways & Means Committee can propose nationalizing the energy industry without realizing that voters may notice that “Hey, that’s communism!” then they’re well and truly drunk off of their own fumes...

They're marketing communism and think no one will notice? Pass the yohimbe, Norton.

This isn't a game. This is the energy industry we're talkin' about. It sustains our entire economy.

And Democrats believe government can do it better?

One look at the local DMV should disabuse any rational person from that notion.

But these aren't rational people. They're Communists and nothing except another economic disaster will get it through their thick skulls.

More: Michelle Malkin

Keith Olbermann: World's Worst Hypocrite?


The invaluable Olbermann Watch:

This has to be quoted verbatim, since it is rich in Olbypocrisy and irony [as Keith Olbermann earlier this week said]:

It's not an unreasonable request to ask that personal attacks against the wife of the candidate as part of a misguided strategy to torpedo a political campaign be off limits.

Stop the tivo! Let's set The Wayback Machine for just a few weeks ago:

KEITH OLBERMANN: So Cindy, your husband is running a fully negative campaign. He's a flaming fraud. And if you think he's clean, so are you!

Cindy McCain, today's "worst person in the world"!


Attacking the wife of a decorated POW as a "fraud"...

...now that's what an Edward R. Murrow or Tim Russert would have done!

With Olbermann, though, it is hard to say whether it's hypocrisy or stupidity.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

PCs: the beige box goes the way of the Dodo Bird


News.com has an excellent gallery of futuristic PCs.

This FIT device concept, also a finalist in the competition, helps users adhere to a fitness plan with calorie-burn and heart-rate monitors, progress reports, and more...

If the fitness plan is not followed, the device adjusts the user's diet to keep him or her from consuming too many calories. The more calories burned, the more calories he or she is allowed to consume.

Credit: Microsoft/Wes Rhoad

Anyone want to buy a slightly used PC XT running Microsoft Bob?

Set the wayback machine to September 10, 2001, Mr. Obama!


Jammie Wearing Fool:

Quiz time: What do Madeleine Albright, Warren Christopher, William Perry, Jamie Gorelick, Tony Lake, Susan Rice, Greg Craig, Eric Holder, Richard Danzig and Jim Steinberg all have in common?

They're all former Clinton Administration officials in some capacity, many of them undistinguished.

So going back to the 90s represents change?

Today he'll be working with a senior working group, which includes most of the above. Gorelick, of course, was responsible for the wall that hampered the pursuit of terrorists during her time as No. 2 to the bumbling Janet Reno.

In 2004 progressive news site Common Dreams expressed shock and dismay with her presence on the 9/11 Commission ("'Whitewash': 9/11 Director Gave Evidence to Own Inquiry"):

[The 9/11 Commission] was rocked Thursday by the bizarre revelation that two of its senior officials were so closely involved in the events they are investigating that they have had to be interviewed as part of the inquiry.

...Jamie S. Gorelick, one the 10 members of the commission and the other official who has answered investigators' questions, was a senior official under Attorney General Janet Reno in the Clinton administration.

...But the revelations have been greeted with dismay by the commission's critics, especially survivors and relatives of the dead, because they suggest the investigation will be -- in the words of Kristen Breitweiser, who lost her husband Ron in tower 2 of the World Trade Center -- "a whitewash."

...The news is a particularly sharp blow to the commission's credibility because Gorelick and Zelikow are the two officials to whom the White House has granted the greatest access to the most secret and sensitive national security documents of all, the presidential daily briefings.

Of the antiques advising Obama, Dean Barnett adds:

Rhetorical skills aside, Obama is a decidedly inside-the-box thinker. If he were really going to take America’s national security in a new direction, he wouldn’t be seeking counsel from these fossils.

A good way to get a sequel to 9/11 is to use the same failed people and policies of the Clinton administration.

Remember Sandy Berger's admitted coverup of 9/11 material in the National Archives? Pity the 9/11 Troofer geniuses never checked into that very real conspiracy.

For a guy whose watchword is "Change!", Obama went to the Smithsonian to retrieve this pathetic crew.

Update: Speaking of a September 10, 2001 mindset, Obama's advisers have informed Usama Bin Laden that he can appeal to the U.S. court system if he is captured.