Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Should I be concerned that this motivational poster is hanging on my daughter's wall?



Hat tip: Bern.

That eerie feeling that's been bugging you


Man, I've had this creepy feeling for sooooo long.

Whatcha mean?

I don't know, but it feels like something's been watching me for months! Ever since last November!

Oh, yeah, that figures.

Why?

Well, check it out...

Well, what the hell is it?

That?

That's the money you could have saved by voting Republican!


Uncanny. Qadhafi Reads Obama's Mind.




Hat tip: Dan from New York.

How to tell when a banana goes bad...


From Papa B. I'm just the messenger here.

How to tell when a banana goes bad...


Rimshot, please.

Drinking: All the Benefits of Yoga Without the Pain


Ben sent this one in...

Savasana: Position of total relaxation.

Balasana: Position that brings the sensation of peace and calm.

Setu Bandha Sarvangasana: This position calms the brain and heals tired legs.

Marjayasana: Position stimulates the midrift area and the spinal column.

Halasana: Excellent for back pain and insomnia.

Dolphin: Excellent for the shoulder area, thorax, legs, and arms.

Salambhasana: Great exercise to stimulate the lumbar area, legs, and arms.

Ananda Balasana: This position is great for massaging the hip area.

Malasana: This position, for ankles and back muscles.

So, lets start drinking.........!


Larwyn's Linx: Stimulating Leftist Causes, But Not the Economy

Have a great link you'd like me to review? Drop me an email or reply via Twitter.

Nation

ACORN and the AGs: AT (Fitzgibbons)
6 Federal Laws, Regs Violated By NEA Conference Call: BigWood
ACORN Investigations Open Across the Nation: LawHawk

NEA and health propaganda: it's already begun: BigWood
Conyers and Frank: Investigate ACORN: Surber
Hoyer: what ACORN de-funding?: Corner

Congressional tax committee head: yes, it's a tax: Ace
Dems target conservative school board candidates: ASD
ACORN's mysterious sugar daddy: Hot Air

Economy

CBO predicts Social Security cash deficits in 2010: Morrissey
The Pacemaker Tax: Surber
Ratings Downgrade: Surowiecki

How Missouri cut junk lawsuits: Blunt
It's Come to This: Toll Lanes Called Racist: JWF
Last person out of Motown, please turn out the lights: BlogProf

Stimulating Leftist Causes, Not the Economy: AT (Shiver)

Media

All the President's Socialists: Where is the Media?: NZ
Michelle Malkin has feelings, too: Beast
Can't all conservatives at least agree that Beck is not the enemy?: RSM

U.S. 'Diversity Czar' Taking Heat: Times
Axelrod beclowns himself trying to explain Obama's opposition to health insurance portability: AT (Lifson)
Left admits: We Claimed to Support "Good War" in Afghanistan as Macho political strategy but We Never Meant It: Ace

Climate & Energy

Politics of Fear -- Obama Tells UN: "Act on Global Warming Or Face 'Irreversible Catastrophe': GWP
Lies about Carbon Emissions: Anchoress
Energy Secretary Chu: Americans Are Like Teenagers: GWP

Nuclear energy: the only solution: PJM (Tipler)

World

What happened to the 'War of Necessity'?: Greenroom
Obama "Impatient" With 5,000 Year Old Conflict: WklyStd
Khadafy Parks His Tent On Trump Property: JWF

Honduras in crisis, with a hand from President Obama: Hewitt
Here is your Afghan national army: CJ
Pro-Democracy Honduran Supporters Rally Against Marxism in St.Louis: GWP

SciTech

Did Hitler and Porsche Steal the VW Beetle Design?: PJM

Cornucopia

New Tsar Wars Action Figures Are Here: ATO
Who is Vera Baker?: TAB
The Banned Pelosi-Bush-Frank SNL Skit: SNL

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Harry Reid gives GOP direct warning on healthcare; I give Harry Reid a direct warning: start looking for outplacement services


The Hill reports that Senate Majority Leader Harry ("Loser") Reid is now issuing direct threats to Republicans ("Reid gives GOP direct warning on healthcare").

Reid told Republicans that he would prefer to pass healthcare reform under regular order but warned that he would not hesitate to use budget reconciliation if the legislation stalled in committee. The Senate Finance Committee began marking up a sprawling healthcare reform bill on Tuesday morning.

...Reid then spelled out how healthcare would pass under budget reconciliation proceedings, giving his colleagues a clear picture of what they face if they fail to reach bipartisan agreement.

“On reconciliation, under the order, there’s only 20 hours of debate,” Reid explained...

Here's a warning for you, Reid. Consider it career counseling. Or, rather, end-of-career counseling.

Go ahead, make my day. We will spend whatever it takes, call as many Nevada voters as we can, write and email as much material as it takes (your pathetic record on the economy since taking over in 2006, for starters) to defeat you in 2010.

Does the year 1994 ring a bell? Well, the outrage now dwarfs that of '94. Americans aren't ready for Dear Leader's brand of socialism. Not by a long shot.

You want to overhaul one-sixth of the economy, against the wishes of the American people, with 20 hours of debate?

Hey, Reid: call an outplacement service. Now. Before the rush.


'I am become government, the destroyer of worlds'


A full page ad in today's Wall Street Journal carries a powerful message from Free Enterprise Nation. It is a self-described non-partisan, private-sector advocacy group that lobbies for free markets. Its first task, aside from fundraising, is educating private sector employees about the outrageous excesses of government workers. Salaries, benefits, overall expenditures -- any metric you could name -- are on suicidal trajectories.

The chickens control not only the hen-house, but the whole damn farm as well.

Wages

• One state of California pensioner retired with an annual salary of $500,000 a year.
• An Illinois driver's traning teacher earned $170,000 a year before retiring with an annual pension of $130,000.
• A Department of Energy administrator received a $63K bonus on top of his $172K base bay.

• Federal civilian wages average around $80K, while private sector wages average $50K.
• Between 2000 and 2008, wages for federal civilian workers rose 54% versus $28% for private sector workers.
• The U.S. government paid more than a third of a billion dollars in bonuses in fiscal year 2008.

• In 2008, 40% of all workers for the bankrupt city of Vallejo, California, were paid more than $100K annually.
• The state of New York paid $460,000,000 in overtime in 2007.
• A New York "Developmental Aide" worked enough overtime to earn $111K even though her base salary was $39K.

• In Illinois, 420 physical education teachers make over $100K, with the top one earning $163,000.
• Also in Illinois, 332 English teachers earn over $100K, with the highest paid at $164,000.
• And 94 drivers education teachers make over $100K. The highest paid is $170,000.

Benefits

• Comparing combined wages and benefits, federal workers average $120K versus $60K for the private sector.
• This places the value of benefits for federal workers at $40K annually, four times that of the private sector.
• Only 12% of private sector retirees have defined benefit pension plans; and they are not eligible for full Social Security benefits until they are nearly 70.

• Government workers have pension plans that allow them to retire 10-25 years earlier and with far richer payments than Social Security would provide.
• A Fort Worth, Texas police chief recently retired at age 55 with an annual pension of $189K. A successor retired at age 52 with a pension of $114K.
• In San Jose, California, 256 city retirees earn more than $100K, which represents three to five times the Social Security benefit, while retiring in their mid-50s.

• Florida spent over $1.6 billon on health care coverage for state employees.
• Florida taxpayers footed the bill for $1.44 billion of the total.
• Florida worker contributions accounted for less than 10% ($156 million) of the total.

Double-Dipping/Spiking/Pension Abuse

• More than 4,000 Arizona employees "double-dip" (collect full pensions and lump sum payments while working).
• A police commander in Delray Beach, Florida retired at age 42 with a $65K pension and now earns another salary.
• In Florida, more than 9,000 state employees and 200 elected officials are double-dipping.

• Florida spends $300 million annually on salaries and pensions for double-dippers
• A community college president got a lump sum of $893K, earns $442K annually, and has a $15K/month pension.
• A small college president got a lump sum of $585K and earns $286K annually, in addition to his $10K/month pension.

• A Northwest Florida State College president got a lump sum of $553,228 and earns $228,000 annually, in addition to his $8,803/month pension.
• A state attorney who "changed his mind about retirement" collected a lump sum of $519,995, makes an annual salary of $153,139, in addition to a $7,750/month pension.
• A Sheriff collected a lump sum of $311,173, makes an annual salary of $128,000, and receives a monthly pension of $5,699.

• In San Francisco, a recent civil grand jury report noted the prevalence of “spiking,” or boosting pension benefits via final work year promotions, a practice that has resulted, in the past decade, in over half of the police and firefighters earning pensions in excess of the wages they earned while actively working
• In Arkansas, at least 144 employees retired and then returned to the same job since 2001.
• In New York, nearly 700 retired teachers and administrators receive pensions over $100K.

Employment

• Between July 2008 and July 2009, the private sector lost 5.2 million jobs while government grew by 238,000 workers.
• Since December 2007, private sector employment has declined 5.74% while government payroll grew nearly 1%.
• From March 2009 to June 2009, the number of government employees rose from 20,904,000 to 21,446,000.

Growing Debt and Unfunded Liabilities

• The total public debt is now at $11.8 trillion
• Interest payments alone on debt came to $452 billion in 2008.
• Next year, America's debt will exceed 60% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

• The unfunded liability for Social Security is $17.5 trillion in 2009.
• The unfunded liability for Medicare is more than $92 trillion in 2009.
• The unfunded liability for state and local pension plans is more than $3.5 trillion if we use the same assumptions as private plans.

These figures are unsustainable

The public sector unions -- like the ACORN-riddled SEIU -- are destroying the budgets of cities, states and the federal government.

Now you can see why President Obama is hell-bent on nationalizing one-sixth of the economy with his thinly disguised health care "overhaul".

It helps hasten the destruction of the hated free market system and perhaps capitalism itself.

Visit The Free Enterprise Nation and see how you can help stop this insanity.

Landslide


Politico held an online poll after the Values Voter Summit, asking Who should have won the presidential straw poll at the event?

Sarah Palin won in a landslide, collecting more votes than all other candidates combined.


Hat tip: Mike Z.

Sarah Alinsky


Rule #5, Rules for Radicals, by Saul Alinsky:

5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counteract ridicule. It also infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.

Considering that Sarah Palin needs utter only a single statement -- and political hacks, the mainstream media, Hollywood celebrities and lefty blogs react with foaming-at-the-mouth fury -- I'd say she's learned much from Alinsky.


Idea: Mike Z.

Larwyn's Linx: It's not a tax BECAUSE I SAID SO

Have a great link you'd like me to review? Drop me an email or reply via Twitter.

Nation

Taxpayer-funded Serve.gov funnels recruits to ACORN: BigGov
Health mandate is not a tax BECAUSE I SAID SO: Patterico
ACORN? Who knew?: WSJ (Fund)

Gleichschaltung and the NEA: PJM (Kimball)
‘Department of Alternative Thinking’ Proposed: BigWood
42% of Uninsured Do Not Approve of Obamacare: GWP

Astroturfing the NEA: Winner & Associates involved: Jawa
Race Card Played in Virginia Governor's Race?: RSM
"I didn't even know that ACORN was...": InstaPundit

Chaos, destruction expected from moonbats in Pittsburgh: STACLU
What's Up, Doc?: PJM (Fernandez)
If I could amend the Constitution: Greenroom

Economy

SEIU president Andy Stern’s culture of corruption: Malkin
Another Big Labor Operative in White House has ACORN ties: BigGov
ACORN 'makes Enron look simple': Bloomberg

BofA is ACORN ‘Partner’ and Major Funder: NLPC
Unable To Sell Homes, Brokers Turn To Arson: Insider
The week that was... long, long ago: Zero Hedge

Find The Difference - Why Ponzi Finance Fails: Denninger
Obama fund-raiser charged in $290 million fraud: GWP
Chronicles of Government Efficiency: 2-Year SSD backlog in Detroit: BlogProf

Media

Grading What They Asked the One: Surber
Obama “happy to look at” newspaper bailout bill: Hot Air
The propaganda of Time Magazine covers: ABC

What, Me ACORN?: Ace
Pics from Milwaukee Tea Party: InstaPundit
Response to a subscription offer from the New York Times: Varones

Why is the Left so angry at Blacks who love America?: AT (Marcus)
A Roundup of the NEA Propaganda Scandal: Lane
Check Out All The Grassroots Supporters Of ObamaCare: STACLU

Climate & Energy

Scientists pull an about face on global warming: Calgary Herald
Fact-checking Friedman: France's Radioactive Waste Issues: RBO

World

Barack Obama ready to slash US nuclear arsenal: Guardian (UK)
ACME Anti-War Protest Co.: Crittenden
Obama Doctrine: Force Friends to Cave; Bribe Enemies: Rubin

U.N. to U.S.: you should be more green, like China: Gormogons
The (Iranian) Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Ledeen
U.K. healthcare epiphany: You know, we should really be encouraging more old people to off themselves: BlogProf

SciTech

Good luck! Microsoft's secret plans to kill Apple revealed: BizInsider

Cornucopia

Crash Test: 2009 Chevy Malibu vs. 1959 Chevy Bel-Air: IIHS (Vid)
Joy of Blondiehood: BrutHon
Anchorman: the Legend of Ernie Anastos: Varones (Caution: language warning)

FOUND: Bush White House NEA Conference Call Transcript: BigWood

Monday, September 21, 2009

The "Walk-Away" Crisis


The Los Angeles Times describes an unexpected side-effect of the real estate meltdown: debtors with high credit scores and excellent payment histories are suddenly "walking away" from their mortgages.

National credit bureau Experian teamed up with consulting firm Oliver Wyman to analyze 24 million individual credit files. The findings were truly surprising:

The number of strategic defaults is far beyond most industry estimates -- 588,000 nationwide during 2008, more than double the total in 2007. They represented 18% of all serious delinquencies that extended for more than 60 days in last year's fourth quarter.

Strategic defaulters often go straight from perfect payment histories to no mortgage payments at all. This is in stark contrast with most financially distressed borrowers, who try to keep paying on their mortgage even after they've fallen behind on other accounts.

Strategic defaults are heavily concentrated in negative-equity markets where home values zoomed during the boom and have cratered since 2006. In California last year, the number of strategic defaults was 68 times higher than it was in 2005. In Florida it was 46 times higher. In most other parts of the country, defaults were about nine times higher in 2008 than in 2005.

Two-thirds of strategic defaulters have only one mortgage -- the one they're walking away from on their primary homes. Individuals who have mortgages on multiple houses also have a higher likelihood of strategic default, but researchers believe that many of these walkaways are from investment properties or second homes.

Homeowners with large mortgage balances generally are more likely to pull the plug than those with lower balances. Similarly, people with credit ratings in the two highest categories measured by VantageScore -- a joint scoring venture created by Experian and the two other national credit bureaus, Equifax and TransUnion -- are far more likely to default strategically than people in lower score categories.

People who default strategically and lose their houses appear to understand the consequences of what they're doing. Piyush Tantia, an Oliver Wyman partner and a principal researcher on the study, said strategic defaulters "are clearly sophisticated," based on the patterns of selective payments observable in their credit files. For example, they tend not to default on home equity lines of credit until after they bail out on their main mortgages, sometimes to draw down more cash on the equity line.

This would confirm a contention published in August by Deutsche Bank. It predicted the percentage of underwater mortgages in the U.S. will reach 48% by the first quarter of 2011.


Now combine this forecast with the fact that a negative loan-to-value (LTV -- or "underwater") mortgage is "the single most important factor" in a foreclosure, based upon a study of millions of individual loans.

Now add in the fact that some expert observers believe that an enormous block of homes -- whose mortgages have already defaulted -- are being hidden by banks to avoid the impact of write-downs on their balance sheets.


[This] "Shadow inventory has the potential to give us another leg down on home prices during the second half of the year," said Steven Wood, chief economist at Insight Economics in Danville, California... "It appears that there is a significant amount of shadow inventory in the form of bank owned properties, which will continue to grow with the rising in delinquencies," he said...

Doctor Housing Bubble concludes, "...with those toxic Alt-A mortgages, how many homeowners are going to opt for the ridiculous modifications that basically make them lifelong renters with zero mobility? ...Summer selling season is nearing the end and we are now going into the slow selling season with shadow inventory coming into the light."

Buckle your seat belts: it would appear that a major deflationary spiral has yet to unwind.

Each foreclosure harms the prices of neighboring homes; this leads to more underwater mortgages; which, in turn, results in more foreclosures... rinse and repeat until done. And banks will have to continue hiding as much shadow inventory as possible, especially in California, to prevent a real financial crisis.

Now consider that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were at the epicenter of the housing meltdown, purchasing and repackaging all sorts of toxic mortgages. And Congressional Democrats continue to stonewall an investigation into those entities.

Given this outstanding track record, it's no wonder voters are so excited about the Democrats' effort to take over another one-sixth of the economy: the health care system. And it's a good thing we have such an experienced hand, with a phenomenal track record of economic achievement, serving in the White House.


Update: "European commercial property owners face debt time-bomb."

Update II: "California Will not see Housing Peak until 2030."

Security flaw puts White House website "at the mercy of" CrazyEgg.com


The White House website devotes a significant chunk of its real estate marketing the need "to protect cyberspace for what we use it for today and will need in the future."

While there is little doubt that said needs are real, it is truly ironic that WhiteHouse.gov suffers from a painfully amateurish security vulnerability.

The key weakness? The White House website includes a tracking library from cetrk.com. The JavaScript library, created by "CrazyEgg.com", is typically used to produce graphical "heat maps" that show which pages visitors are clicking.

<p class="subtxt">Signed: Thursday, January 29, 2009  </p>
</div>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://cetrk.com/pages/scripts/0010/4306.js"> </script>

</div>
<div class="grdspan4" id="body_left">

<!-- mod-search332 -->

So who is "CrazyEgg"? A cursory review reveals that it appears to be a small company based in La Mirada, CA which markets graphical web analytic tools.

The www.cetrk.com name has a single IP address, but it reverse maps to node9.crazyegg.com. Other DNS names map to this address including mail.cetrik.com, garm.cetrk.com and cetrk.com.

Far be it from me to impugn the security practices of CrazyEgg, but the name doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

Why is including code from a less trusted, third-party website such a bad idea? As the Cyber Security Institute blog notes:

"By referring to javascript that’s hosted elsewhere, you’re basically at the mercy of that other organization... to not do evil with it,” says David Campbell, a security consultant and a leader of the Open Web Application Security Project (http://www.owasp.org/) (OWASP). "By... pointing to javascript from somewhere else, that vulnerability is there."

...Campbell and three other website security experts interviewed for this story say it would be trivial for anyone with control of the [remote JavaScript] file to hijack authentication cookies or other session variables used to validate users accessing [administration pages]."

Worse still, if malicious users were to compromise cetrk.com, they could do more than track and hijack visitor sessions. They could also deliver malware to every visitor to WhiteHouse.gov.

In other words, the security of the White House website hinges on the goodwill and security practices of CrazyEgg.com.

It's an astonishingly poor practice and should be addressed immediately.


BREAKING from Breitbart's Big Hollywood: New Audio Reveals White House Used NEA to Market Ultra-Partisan Propaganda


Minutes ago, Big Hollywood released explosive audiotapes which reveal the White House attempted to leverage taxpayer funds in order to create partisan propaganda.

On August 10th, the National Endowment for the Arts, the White House Office of Public Engagement, and the Corporation for National and Community Service hosted a conference call with a handpicked arts group. This arts group played a key role in Obama’s arts effort during his election campaign, as declared by the organizers of the call, and many on the call played a role in the now famous Obama Hope poster.

Much of the talk on the conference call was a build up to what the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) was specifically asking of this group. In the following segment, Buffy Wicks, Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, clearly identifies this arts group as a pro-Obama collective and warns them of some “specific asks” that will be delivered later in the meeting.

...Later in the call, “specific asks” were delivered by Yosi Sergant, then Communications Director of the National Endowment for the Arts. What were the "asks"? They were for this pro-Obama arts group to create art on several hotly debated political issues, including health care...

...Setting up a propaganda machine is a dangerous precedent. The creation of a machine to address any issues, even ones with noble intentions, can be wielded by the state to create a climate amenable to the policies of those in power. Does anyone believe that once these artists are in place and we move to the election cycle, that the art they create will be bipartisan?

Is any of this legal? The use of White House employees to drive a purely partisan agenda?

Leveraging the NEA's taxpayer funds as a blunt weapon to force artists to create state-approved propaganda?

I'm no expert, but I suspect some big shoes have yet to drop.


Update: @Jim Geraghty: "The White House has no f'ing business making 'specific asks' of artists on an NEA-sponsored conference call."

Update II: John Nolte has an excellent analysis and quotes George Will: "“[T]he Obama administration is tightening the cinch on subsidized artists, conscripting them into the crusade to further politicize the 17 percent of the economy that is health care."

Update III: Attorney John Hinderaker at Power Line:

...the operation may well have been illegal. Public funds are not supposed to be expended to support partisan projects. Beyond that, it is unconstitutional to grant or deny federal funds on the basis of the recipient's political actions or opinions. National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley. The NEA is the single largest funder of the arts, and several participants in the August 10 conference call had recently received NEA checks. It would have been entirely reasonable for those on the phone call to conclude that future NEA funding could be influenced by their willingness to play ball with the Obama administration's political agenda. Moreover, the Hatch Act limits the ability of federal employees to engage in partisan politics. Sergant's sending of the email invitation to artists and arts groups, using his government email account, could be considered a bright line violation of the act, as could his apparent solicitation of political support from any arts group that had an application for funding pending before the NEA. Likewise, Ms. Wicks' participation in the call would appear to be illegal if she was "on duty" and if the call was deemed political in nature.

Don't hold your breath waiting for the Attorney General to investigate.

Andrew Breitbart's Stake in the Heart


This morning, members of the mainstream media woke up all over the country fixated on a single question: What is Andrew Breitbart up to?

Before he unleashed the ACORN blockbuster, the new media superstar issued a thinly veiled warning to the denizens of the fourth estate who had ignored the Van Jones story until the point of no return.

For most people in this country, the resignation was the first they had heard of Van Jones. For this sin of journalistic omission, there's institutional media blame. Bias is too tame a word for the utter shamelessness on display: Only Republican scandals - real and imagined - matter...

...the American mainstream media - ABC, NBC, CBS, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, et al - must be held to account for sitting on the sidelines as this major story kept building without them, went viral on YouTube, and then became so large that a key appointee of President Obama was forced to step down...

...Much of America has started to realize that not only was Mr. Obama not vetted before he became president, he and his fellow unvetted cohorts continue to be given a pass...

This morning, writing in The Washington Times, Breitbart offered another intriguing glimpse into his approach.

...launching [the] compelling and stylized [ACORN] videos, we needed to offer the full transcripts and audio to the public in the name of transparency, and to offer Fox News the full footage of each video before each was released. We had to devise a plan that would force the media to see the evidence before they had enough time to destroy these two idealistic 20-something truth seekers. Mr. O'Keefe agreed to post the full audio and full transcript of his video experiences at BigGovernment.com... Thus was born a multimedia, multiplatform strategy designed to force the reluctant hands of ABC, CBS, NBC, the New York Times and The Washington Post.

...Jonathan Klein, CNN's president, is emerging as symbol of the mainstream media's last depressing days.

In an interview with Megyn Kelly on Fox News, Breitbart explained his rationale.

There is something desperately wrong with the mainstream media. And that's why we did the rollout the way that we did, because we wanted to not just expose ACORN for being corrupt, we wanted to expose that the mainstream media would treat this exactly like they treated the Van Jones story. And that's ignored until the consequences got too great for them to ignore.

Accuracy in Media's K. Daniel Glover asserts that Breitbart's plan is "to force the mainstream media to report the news."

I disagree. I believe Breitbart aims to put a stake the heart of the mainstream media's bellwether: The New York Times.

Lorie Byrd at Wizbang has an eerily similar take:

If you follow all the links above and track the story as it has evolved, you will see that there was plenty of "there" there and there has been plenty of time for the national media to pick up on it. Yet most in the mainstream media ignored it.

Consider Breitbart's careful staging of the ACORN story. He unpeeled the onion, layer by layer.

Each layer revealed more festering rot, more intellectual bankruptcy undergirding the mainstream media. Or, as some call it, the state-run media.

Let's walk through the thought process of a typical Times reader exposed to the second or third major story days or weeks after other outlets broke it.

1) "Despite plenty of opportunities, my newspaper refused to investigate this outrageous waste of my tax money."

2) "After someone else investigated the story and broke a major scandal, my newspaper refused to report on the story."

3) "Ergo, my newspaper is completely irrelevant."

Party affiliations and political views notwithstanding, few intelligent readers want to miss out on a series of major news stories. Yet Times' subscribers have been kept in the dark day after day, week after week, month after month.

Therefore, don't be surprised to see second half 2009 financial results for The New York Times Company described as "catastrophic."

And Andrew Breitbart's burgeoning new media empire is poised to benefit greatly. Perhaps he's the Hearst of our age.


Larwyn's Linx: Sowing ACORN's Seeds of Destruction

Have a great link you'd like me to review? Drop me an email or reply via Twitter.

Nation

ACORN's Seeds of Destruction: Post
ACORN scandal puts Bachmann in the spotlight: SC Times
Obama endorses 'choice and competition': AT (Wright)

Graph o' the day: AT (Hoven)
A Head Rolls at the NEA: Big Hollywood
IRS sniffing around ACORN's books: AT (Moran)

Hannah's Dad debunks ACORN's charges: Prairie
What not to wear at an MOH ceremony: GWP
All of the nasty things the GOP says: DBB

Health care debate angers seniors: Times
Great moments in ACORN history: SIGIS

Pregame Report: The NEA Conference Call: Big Hollywood
The Truth is Toxic to Them: TAB

Economy

Line o' the Day: InstaPundit
Is a mandate a tax increase?: JOM
Detroit media talks up the fun-cession: BlogProf

SEIU Leader Sentenced to 25 Years for Child Molestation: GWP
ACORN’s Unseen Victims, Its Own Workers: BigGov
Think of it as the world's biggest economic jumper cables: FairTax

Media

Newsweek: Is your baby racist?: AmDig
Breitbart Promises New Bombshell from “Left Field”: Patterico
ABC to Obama: What about ACORN's apparent support for child slavery sex rings?: Jawa

Let's hear it for George: Wizbang
NY Times: Conservative Talk Radio Is Like Gangsta Rap: GWP
Sheer crazy from Media Matters: Wizbang

Administration looks to nationalize newspapers: Big Lizards
Obama appears open to a newspaper bailout bill: Hill
Will on 'Liberal McCarthyism': 'When In Doubt, Blame Racism': NewsBusters

Science proves... Maureen Dowd is a Racist: AT (Lewis)
NY Times reports on Edwards scandal in the nick of time: PJM (Simon)

Climate & Energy

Carbon offset kiosk at SFO sells carbon credits at 60 times the market rate: Watts
Today's protests from around the world: SondraK

World

Obama Foreign Policy Advisor: US Should Shoot Down Israeli Jets: GWP
The threat to Rifqa Bary in context: TAB
Sweden slashes income taxes to promote job growth: Fausta

Belgium's Death Rattle Eeyore
Apostasy and the Islamic Nations: AT (Bostom)

Cornucopia

One step closer to Hollywood; one step closer to George Clooney: Fetch my flying monkeys
Pre-Emptive Usage of Hillary Condemned: LGF
What it takes to become America's next top model: Cracked

Ask Hillary: Parkway
The Obameter: Threat Conditions with a smile!: Anticrat

BREAKING: Breitbart Unleashes Preview of Next Blockbuster Scoop


Go now and read it all.

My question is not whether crimes were committed within the Executive Branch, it's 'how many'.


Update, Monday 9/21: Breitbart adds:

...filmmaker James O'Keefe and actress Hannah Giles deserve a Pulitzer Prize for their expose of deep corruption and unspeakable immorality at the ACORN housing division. But more important, I won't rest until they receive a grant to continue their partisan artistry from the National Endowment for the Arts.

That's this week's mission.


Sunday, September 20, 2009

Insane Progressive Headline o' the Day


I'm morally opposed to providing a direct link, but suffice it to say that you can easily find anti-human diatribes typical of the hard left enviro-statist media. A Reuters article ("Contraceptives vital to climate fight") characterizes their aims:

Contraception advice is crucial to poor countries' battle with climate change, and policy makers are failing their people if they continue to shy away from the issue, a leading family planning expert said on Friday.

Leo Bryant, a lead researcher on a World Health Organisation study on population growth and climate change, said the stigma attached to birth control in both developing and developed countries was hindering vital progress.

"We are certainly not advocating that governments should start telling people how many children they can have," said Bryant, an advocacy manager at the family planning group Marie Stopes International, who wrote a commentary in the Lancet medical journal on Friday.

"The ability to choose your family size...is a fundamental human right. But lack of access to family planning means millions of people in developing countries don't have that right," he told Reuters...

Repeat: the "stigma attached to birth control" is "hindering vital progress" in combating global warming or... climate change or... whatever they're calling it these days, now that the Earth is demonstrably cooler than ever.


Keith Olbermann's Psyche


Finally: Junior Cub Reporter Biff Spackle finds the authoritative diagram of Olbermann's brain:

If, like me, you feel on the onset of nausea every time "Strap-on Keith" appears during NBC's football broadcasts, I recommend one soothing tonic. OlbermannWatch is the definitive resource for incessant mockery of the world's most bizarre propagandist.

A shockingly racist screed from... NPR?


MoneyRunner points his spotlight at a bizarre diatribe authored by none other than NPR's Frank James (emphases mine).

[The] NPR commentator... has chosen to excuse the the ACORN personnel who are willing to help an assumed pimp and prostitute to set up a brothel, import under-age Central American children to become sex slaves, avoid taxes and scam the banks. [James] attributes this to the culture of the black underclass.

It's also important to keep in mind that ACORN's workers are coming from the same low-income neighborhoods the organization serves, with all that entails -- poor schools, high crime and the sorts of social problems that have been documented for decades.

So the flaws conservatives are pointing out about ACORN are not so much problems associated with that organization per se but more about the problems of being poor and minority in urban America.

NPR has been accused of racism by liberals (see comments on the NPR website) and conservatives alike who deny that this is what black culture is all about. Yet look at the videos. The ACORN personnel don’t bat an eye...

Selling children into sex slavery? No problem.

Illegal immigration? Can do!

Tax evasion? Elementary, my dear.

Democrats revel in keeping minorities under their thumbs. They oppose charter schools and school choice for inner city kids; welfare reform and a concomitant reduction in single-parent families; and the free-market, a system which truly knows no racism.

Some genuine introspection on the part of real progressives would raise serious questions about their support of Democrat Party bigwigs.


Update: State public relations officer Errol Lewis calls the ACORN tapes a "witch hunt".