Friday, April 20, 2012

Good news! Joe Kennedy the 12th wants to end 'cheap oil'

Joe Kennedy the 19th believes he has a royal right of inheritance to Barney Frank's seat. No, I mean his Congressional seat. How else to explain this idiocy:

Ever since he entered the race for Massachusetts' Fourth Congressional District, Joseph Kennedy III has been facing criticism for avoiding discussing any substantive issues. Even left-leaning blogs have pointed out that his website lacked an issues page.


Well, Kennedy finally stepped up this week and gave the voters some idea about where he stands on the issues:

Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama — they’ve all talked about the same thing: the need to wean ourselves off our debilitating dependence on foreign oil.

The cycle that allows cheap oil to trump tough choices has to stop. Forty years is enough.

- Joe Kennedy III, April 17, 2012, "A Note From Joe"

So our problem is cheap oil. Who knew?

I'm sure that comment gives a lot of comfort to the residents of Massachusetts, many of whom are dependent on heating oil each winter.

So I created the following bumper-sticker:


Feel free to spread it around. I know Joe Kennedy is often described as "out of touch". That's a monumental understatement.

Update: Bonus sticker!



Related: Support Sean Bielat.

Obama's Weiner

But he's not a crass, vindictive pol:

“ Enjoy your last ride on Air Force One. ”

— President Obama to Anthony Weiner after the then-New York congressmen ripped into the president’s health care plan during a 2009 plane ride to Washington, according to Politico.


Robert Draper’s upcoming book “Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives” excerpted in Politico. And this was before Weiner’s Twitter photos.

Gee, I wonder what kind of psychological profile matches President Obama's behavior?


Image: Celebrity Baby Scoop.

Chart illustrating the uncanny resemblance of the federal government to an organized criminal operation

Remember the charges of racism leveled by the Left after Newt Gingrich called Barack Obama "the Foodstamp President"?

How about "The Disability President"?

A record 5.4 million workers and their dependents have signed up to collect federal disability checks since President Obama took office, according to the latest official government data, as discouraged workers increasingly give up looking for jobs and take advantage of the federal program...


...Since the recession ended in June 2009, the number of people who've signed up for disability benefits is twice the job growth figure. In just the first four months of this year, 539,000 joined the disability rolls and more than 725,000 put in applications.

As a result, by April there were 10.8 million people on disability, according to Social Security Administration data released this week. Even after accounting for all those who've left the program — mainly because they hit retirement age or died — that's up 53% from a decade ago.

I'm sure many of you also recall this disturbing chart:


It illustrates the number of Americans dependent on (or simply abusing) the Food Stamp program.

Not only is Barack Obama intentionally growing an entire underclass dependent on government largess, but he is also facilitating corruption and fraud on a scale unseen in American history. Whether it's disability, food stamps, Medicare, or Medicaid, this government is supporting tens of billions of dollars in fraudulent wealth transfers.

Whether this administration has undisclosed ties to organized crime -- or whether its naked incompetence is simply facilitating organized crime -- is a question best left as an exercise for the reader.


Pic Dump #blogconclt

The "Obama ate my dog" meme just won't die.

The Looking Spoon:


Spotted on Free Republic:


What happens when PJ Media's Vodkapundit is confronted with the question: "Why in hell are you drinking bourbon"?


DaTechGuy has more photos of #BlogConCLT, including multiple platters of wings leveled by conservative bloggers:


At least I think they were wings. They tasted like chicken, anyhow.


ABC News Obliterates the Race-Baiters: Graphic Photo of George Zimmerman's Head

Well, this certainly changes the trajectory of the story:

A new photograph obtained exclusively by ABC News showing the bloodied back of George Zimmerman's head, which was apparently taken three minutes after he shot and killed Trayvon Martin, gives possible credence to his claim that Martin had bashed his head against the concrete as Zimmerman fought for his life...


The revelation comes as his attorney and prosecutors prepare for Zimmerman's bail hearing today, which could result in his being released from a Florida jail. Zimmerman, 28, is being held on charges of second-degree murder for the Feb. 26 shooting of Martin, 17, which could carry a life sentence if he is convicted.

The exclusive image shows blood trickling down the back of Zimmerman's head from two cuts. It also shows a possible contusion forming on the crown of his head. The original police report that night notes that the back of Zimmerman's head was wet, and that he was bleeding from the nose and head.

Zimmerman told police that night that he shot and killed the teenager in self-defense after Martin punched him and pounced on him.

Good on ABC News.

Barack Obama, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and MSNBC hardest hit.


Hat tip: Melissa Clouthier.

Larwyn's Linx: The Obama Administration May Be Nearing A Complete and Total Breakdown

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

Nation

The Obama Administration Looks To Be Close To A Breakdown: Hanson
Ted Nugent Meets Secret Service: Ace
Tapper grills Carney on non-stop campaign travel: Scoop

Dem Senator: Obamacare Represents Failure: GWP
Pelosi: Amend the First Amendment: CNS
Trayvon Martin: New From Daily Beast: JOM

Economy

The Governing Class and Us: Foundry
Teacher upset she can't retire at 47: Events
Sessions Rips Senate Democrats Over Failure to Pass Budget: GWP

Gunmaker alleges political bias by Bank of America: LI
Thanks Obama! Food stamp users increase 70% since 2007: FAM
Audit Notes: Bank Run, Silicon Valley Small-ball, Anti-Free: CJR

American Tune: Goldfish & Clowns
Issues vs. ‘distractions’: Goldberg
AT&T-Verizon: The inevitable duopoly?: Fortune

Scandal Central

New Culture Of Irresponsibility: IBD
Every Picture Tells a Story: Solyndra Building for Sale!: WS
Investigate Nugent But Not Farrakhan?: IBD

2012 Elections

Rubio Slip: "If I Do A Good Job As Vice President": RCP
Lefty Mediaite Blogger: Mitt Romney’s “Obama Isn’t Working” Banner Is Racist: WZ
Pelosi Denies Obama Is In 'Campaign Mode': Exam

Climate & Energy

White House First to Say Chevy Volt Not Ready For Prime Time: NLPC
Obama’s Department of Homeland Security Forms Green Police: CDN
Obama faces defeat on pipeline as Dems defect: York

Media

Michele Bachmann- Obama “Waving a Tar Baby in the Air”: Shark Tank
Harrowing Mel Gibson rant released by screenwriter Joe Eszterhas: Fox
Lifetime's Perky Prostitute: RWN

No More “Mr. Obama Is a Nice Guy”: Malkin
The 25 Best Quotes From Thomas Sowell: RWN
Dana Loesch in Chicago owns Occupy sympathizer over rapes and vandalism: FAM

World

How the Eurocrisis Will Affect the West: Gatestone
Iran Marks Holocaust Remembrance Day By Playing Holocaust-Denying Cartoons On TV: WZ
The Summit of the America’s in nutshell: Babalu

Sci-Tech

Microsoft Uncloaks Windows 8 for ‘Consumerized’ Businesses: Wired
Vietnam asks WHO to help identify killer disease: AP
Facebook Cools New Data Center With Hot Southern Air: Wired

Cornucopia

That Dawg Won’t Hunt: MOTUS
"Is He Too Old For Me?": Dear Wendy
Twitter has fun creating socialist band names: Twitchy

Image: Ace o' Spades
Today's Larwyn's Linx sponsored by: Please support Jim DeMint's Senate Conservatives Fund

QOTD: "Obama, it would seem, wants to deny to others what he will not deny to himself. He wants to deny to the children of others what he will not deny to his own children. He wants to amass riches, but he doesn't want you to amass wealth. He doesn't mind private school for his own children, but he minds it for your children. He doesn't mind eating whatever he wants to eat, but he minds what you eat. He doesn't mind taking that 747 one frivolous trip after another, one self-serving fundraising after another, but he minds what you drive and how much fuel you use. And we can go on and on." --Mark Levin

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Not Trayvon: 'I don't want to go back with him'

Although highly relevant to the Trayvon Martin tragedy, you won't read this story in old media:

Ten-year-old Abdifatah Mohamud was running for his life down Sycamore Street at about 5 p.m. Tuesday when a concerned neighbor stopped to try to help. Seeing the boy's stepfather chasing after him, the neighbor helped the man, Ali Mohamed Mohamud, catch up with the child.

The boy didn't want to go home with Mohamud.

"I told the boy, 'Daddy promises nothing is going to happen,'" the neighbor later told The Buffalo News. "The boy said to me: 'No, he always says that.'"

Less than six hours later, Abdifatah was dead, brutally beaten, and his stepfather, Ali Mohamed Mohamud, was under arrest.

The boy was tied to a chair with duct tape, a sock stuffed in his mouth, and he was beaten with a stick or blunt object in the basement of their Guilford Street home, near the Broadway Market, authorities said... The stepfather was angry because the boy, a fifth-grader at the International Preparatory School on Clinton Street, had fallen behind in his homework...

...Mohamud, 40, a native of Somalia who has been in the United States for a decade, was charged with second-degree murder. Police investigators were shocked over the viciousness of the beating... "The defendant admitted he tied up his 10-year-old stepson, admitted that he put a sock in his mouth, put duct tape over the mouth and beat him to death with a stick or similar blunt object," Finnerty said.

And this story is simply too heartbreaking to use the all-too-suitable "Boy who could have been Obama's son..."

Pity the professional race-baiting scam artists -- Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson foremost among them -- won't be seen within 250 miles of this case.


Hat tip: Winterspirit.

Photo o' the day (and maybe the week)

Uncle Ben:


Totalitarian Climate Kook Wants Warming Deniers' Homes to Burn

Someone allegedly named "Steve Zwick" somehow hacked into Forbes' content management system and posted a vicious screed attacking those who believe global warming is a money-making scam. Which, of course, it is.

...the denial machine is ratcheting up its disinformation campaign, and therein lies the problem. Every time someone validates or fine-tunes the science, ten or twelve well-funded and active propagandists pop up to distorting it – usually by twisting the attempts at fine-tuning into “proof” that the models are fundamentally useless, and then launching childish attacks on the scientists themselves.

This propaganda has already set us back two decades, during which the costs of dealing with climate change have risen and our chances of curtailing it have diminished... Let’s take a page from those Tennessee firemen we heard about a few times last year – the ones who stood idly by as houses burned to the ground because their owners had refused to pay a measly $75 fee.

We can apply this same logic to climate change.

We know who the active denialists are – not the people who buy the lies, mind you, but the people who create the lies. Let’s start keeping track of them now, and when the famines come, let’s make them pay. Let’s let their houses burn. Let’s swap their safe land for submerged islands. Let’s force them to bear the cost of rising food prices.

Email ZwickThey broke the climate. Why should the rest of us have to pay for it? ... The models have proven incredibly accurate when it comes to projecting the overall rise in extreme events, they still can’t tell you exactly which specific storms arose from climate change and which would have happened anyway – and they probably never will. They also can’t tell us which company’s emissions caused which change in temperature – and that’s something they’ll never be able to do, because CO2 emissions all get mixed up in the air.

Tell you what, Zwick -- if that is your real name -- how about you warmists go without fossil fuels instead? See, we Constitutional conservatives aren't wannabe totalitarian despots like you nuts. We just want you to live as if there really is a climate crisis.

So, if you want to impress us, we want to see you living without electricity, without food shipped by truck, without the use of automobiles, without using plastics, without jetting around the planet, without all of the wonders provided by our magnificent civilization.

And this, we know, you will not do.

Which is why you and your unscientific religion of Eco-Statism must be dismissed.

So go stick your head in some sand and live like you preach, Zwitler.


Related: Global Warming Comics -- The Fraudulent And The Immoral. Hat tip: Climate Depot.

Larwyn's Linx: Michelle Trots Out Recycled Messianic Campaign Blather

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

Nation

Michelle Trots Out Recycled Messianic Campaign Blather: Cove
Zoning the Ocean: Hudson
Allen West Does Not Regret Making “Communist” Comment: Shark

10 Things You Need To Know About Obama's Second Term: IBD
llegal Alien Steals 5-Year-Old’s Identity: RSM
Why Voters Should Abolish the Mega Millions Lottery: Forbes

Economy

Illinois Shows What Not to Do: Malanga
Grocery Store Items Up Nearly 7% in Q1 of 2012: HAP
Unhinged Lefties Spew Hatred, Racism, and Filth in Wisconsin: MBT

Recovery Is Hurting Women More Than Men: S&L
Why we can’t go back to sky-high, 1950s tax rates: Peth
Holder's Pal Sharpton Owes $1MM to Creditors, Feds: Beacon

2012 Elections

Levin: Senate GOP tries to silence conservatives: Scoop
Lacking fresh ideas, Obama scares voters with stale tactics: GayPatriot
Mourdock has #INsen lead, Lugar solicits Dems: Hoosier Access

Scandal Central

Fast and Furious – Will Obama Administration Ever Come Clean?: RS
The President's Big Greenwash: Fortune
Limbaugh: Katie Pavlich's 'Fast and Furious': DLim

Climate & Energy

10 Years Ago Today, Dems Say ANWR Won’t Yield Oil for 10 Years: Foundry
ANWR: It’s Been ’10 Years,’ We Could Have Been Reaping Rewards Now: Publius
Obama's Atomic Solyndra: Wasserman [Extreme Caution: Eco-Statist Kook Alert]

Media

Axelrod’s Compulsion to Confess, Makes the Case for Mitt Romney: Bruce
Robin Leach: Obama Is a 'Socialist' - He Is 'Whipping Up This Racial War and This Economic Divide': NB
15-year old who could look like Obama's son pleads guilty to killing 92-year old white female: HyScience

Dog Wars: Stuck to the Roof of Romney’s Car vs. Stuck to the Roof of Obama’s Mouth: Powers
She-PAC's New Ad: 2012 Won't Be A War On Women It Will Be A War By Women: GWP
NYT Questions Michelle Obama's Food Beliefs: S&L

BREAKING: The dog Obama ate as a child was FEMALE.: Beacon
Conservative Twitter-sphere Goes Wild After Daily Caller Reveals Obama Consumed Dog As A Child: Mediaite
Barack Obama’s review of William Ayers' book: Zombie (2008)

World

About those better roads in China...: AEI
Report: Soros-Funded Think Tank Violated Federal Laws: Beacon
Smart Power: White House Stunned By Argentine Oil Expropriation: IBD

Best Buy - Unrepentant "Platinum Sponsor" of CAIR: Boker Tov
IPT Exclusive: Jihadis' New Toulouse Inspiration: IPT
The Bama Bus Revisited: That Was Fast!: Urban Infidel

Yom HaShoah–Shifra’s Reflections on Holocaust Remembrance Day: Bruce
Spanish Auction #Fail As 10Y Borrowing Cost Highest In 5 Months: ZH
US: 3 agents out in wake of Secret Service scandal: ynet

Sci-Tech

Google lawyer trips Oracle CEO Ellison in court: Boing Boing
Facebook Is Not Interested In Your So-Called 'Privacy' Preferences: Consumerist
How Mobile Technologies Are Shaping a New Generation: HBR

Cornucopia

If You Read Just One 'Obama Eats Dogs' Post Today, Read This One...: HayRide
Out of the Darkness: Hot Dogs!: MOTUS
The Doolittle Tokyo Raid 70 Years Ago Today › 2.0: The Blogmocracy: Blogmocracy

Hitler Finds Out Obama Ate His Dog: Bookworm
It’s An Appetizer, Mr. Marshall…: iOTW
Touré, 9/11 Truther: Breitbat

Image: Moonbat Tracker
Today's Larwyn's Linx sponsored by: Support Ted Cruz for U.S. Senate

QOTD: ". . . if you don’t have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare the voters. IF you don’t have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone that people should run from. You make a big election about small things. And you know what it’s worked before — because it feeds into the cynicism we all have about government. When Washington doesn’t work, all its promises seem empty." ----Barack Obama, 2008

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Hilarity: Obama tries to claim credit for Ohio's economic resurgence, which was orchestrated by... GOP Gov. John Kasich

President Obama was visiting Ohio today and tried to take credit for the Buckeye state's economic resurgence.

Obama, speaking Wednesday at Lorain County Community College in the Cleveland-area town of Elyria, touted his support for investment in job training programs that connect community colleges with unemployed workers, programs he warned the Republicans would "gut" under their budget blueprint...

...Obama's trip to Ohio -- the 20th of his presidency, according to CBS News -- was ostensibly official, and not a campaign event. But he again used the congressional Republicans as a proxy to frame the general election case against Romney. [Ed.: and again stuck taxpayers with the bill for his campaign expenses.]

..."What's the better way to make our economy stronger? Give more tax breaks to every millionaire and billionaire in the country, or make investments in education and research and healthcare and job training?" he asked.

In celebrating Ohio's comeback, Obama is unintentionally repudiating his own policies. It turns out that, in spite of Obama, Ohio is 4th in the nation in job creation and tops in the Midwest. In the previous four years before Republican Gov. Kasich came into office, Ohio was 48th.

Even the states that are ahead of Ohio in job creation are far larger. Check out the other members of the top five job-creating states: Texas, New York, California and Florida. All are far more populous than Ohio. Florida, for instance, has 6.5 million more people, yet Ohio edged it out in job creation.

In fact, February's BLS data showed that Ohio created more jobs than any other state. When was the last time that happened? Can't tell, because the BLS doesn't offer data prior to the Clinton era, so it's been at least that long.

In short, Ohio proves that conservative fiscal policies work in spite of Barack Obama. While Obama's "leadership" destroyed America's pristine AAA credit rating, S&P was simultaneously upgrading Ohio's rating.

And for Obama to run to Ohio and try to take credit for its success is outrageous, but not unexpected coming from the man who claimed "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it."

Kasich has a damn good record when it comes to fiscal policies. Bill Clinton won't ever admit it in public, but the real architect of the much-ballyhooed 'Clinton Surplus' was none other than John Kasich, the Paul Ryan of Newt Gingrich's House of Representatives.


Why women live longer than men: a photo essay, part II

Window cleaning... made simple!

It's the Do-it-yourself Diving Board Kit, from Blam-O!

Laughable: DNC Press Release Regurgitator Known As Politico Asserts Ted Nugent is Romney's Hilary Rosen

Well, this certainly smacks of desperation:

Progressive bloggers erupted in fury over controversial comments about President Barack Obama by rocker Ted Nugent and complained about a lack of media coverage, especially compared with the super-saturation reporting on Hilary Rosen’s remarks last week about stay-at-home moms.

Nugent, who has endorsed Mitt Romney, said over the weekend, “We need to ride into that battlefield and chop their heads off in November … “If Barack Obama becomes the president in November again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year. … Our president, attorney general, our vice president, Hillary Clinton — they’re criminals, they’re criminals.”

Hey, Tim Mak -- if that is your real name -- here's a news-flash:

• Hilary Rosen is a professional Democrat political operative linked directly to the Obama administration (having only visited the Obama White House a scant 35 times)

• Ted Nugent is a private citizen with absolutely no role in any Republican campaign

Get the difference, nincompoop?


What an Obama second term means to Bishop Jenky: a Hitlerian end to Catholic institutions and the means to accomplish it

Last week, an Illinois Bishop compared President Obama's virulently secular policies to those of Hitler and Stalin:

Angrily condemning President Obama for his “radical pro-abortion and extreme secularist agenda,” an Illinois bishop likened his leadership to Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin last weekend and urged Catholics to vote against him.

“This fall, every practicing Catholic must vote, and must vote their Catholic consciences, or by the following fall our Catholic schools, our Catholic hospitals, our Catholic Newman Centers, all our public ministries—only excepting our church buildings – could easily be shut down,” said Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria at a gathering of Catholic men on Saturday... "...no Catholic institution, under any circumstance, can ever cooperate with the intrinsic evil of killing innocent human life in the womb,” he said...

The bishop warned that because of the president’s mandate for forcing religious employers to fund contraceptives, sterilizations, and abortion-inducing drugs, America is on a path leading to the state of past dictatorships when Christians were forced to “huddle and hide,” such as Bismarck’s Kulturkampf, Hitler’s Nazis, and Stalin’s Communists.

“Hitler and Stalin, at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services, and health care,” he said.

“In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, Barack Obama – with his radical, pro-abortion and extreme secularist agenda, now seems intent on following a similar path,” he added.

Think Bishop Glenn is overstating things?

I'd like to remind you of a pair of bizarre Obama statements, one just prior to his election and one just after.

But first, let's set the stage by recalling a 2011 missive from John Podesta, one of Barack Obama's key 2008 campaign advisers. In a position paper, Podesta laid the "D" card on the table for all to see.

No, not "depression". We've already got that.

I'm talking about a de facto "dictatorship". Bypassing the will of the people -- as if that hasn't happened enough in the last three-and-a-half years -- through a set of unconstitutional Czars, Executive Orders, unilateral declarations, and the massive administrative state.

And armed force, if necessary, according to Podesta.

Oh, Doug -- that's so controversial.

Fine. If it's not a dictatorship, please tell me what you would call the form of government that Podesta calls for?

Because it's certainly not a representative republic nor Constitutional in any way.

The U.S. Constitution and the laws of our nation grant the president significant authority to make and implement policy... The ability of President Obama to accomplish important change through these powers [including executive orders and armed forces] should not be underestimated [in] continuing to make progress.

Now back to Obama's pair of statements, which got very little publicity despite their highly inflammatory and un-American nature.

In March of 2009, at the dedication ceremony of the National Defense University's Abraham Lincoln Hall, President Obama expressed his need for a civilian national security force (MP3, 74:00 mark; DOD press release, transcript):

America must balance and integrate all elements of our national power. We can not continue to push the burden onto our military alone, or leave dormant any aspect of the arsenal of American capability. That's why my administration is committed to renewing diplomacy as a tool of American power and developing our civilian national security capabilities.

"Our civilian national security capabilities?"

In July of 2008, Jim Lindren noted a couple of peculiar sentences in a Barack Obama speech.

In Barack Obama’s July 2, 2008 speech calling America to national service, Obama proposed “a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded” as our military... This has prompted some in the blogosphere to raise the specter of a huge new domestic paramilitary organization...

[Obama said] "We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."

Curiously, the official transcript of the speech omitted those last two sentences.

After the last three-and-a-half years, can there be any real doubt as to what Obama meant?

And what George Soros John Podesta is after?

The Left used to enjoy calling Bush a fascist, but the closest thing this country has ever had to a dictator -- from the iconography to the vicious language to the unconstitutional power-grabs -- is Barack Obama.

Old media did its level best to suppress these bizarre sentences. And the Soros tools at Media Matters claimed, in their usual Riefenstahl-esque way, that Obama didn't mean what he meant.

Without an election hanging over his head, and given his swelling list of outrageous, extra-Constitutional activities, can there be any doubt what lies ahead should this man serve a second term?

I will vote for a soup can over Barack Obama in 2012. Because this country -- and the Constitution -- simply cannot survive his reelection.

Dog: It's Not Just for Dinner Anymore

The Daily Caller's brilliant Jim Treacher discovered the ultimate counter to the progressives' latest pathetic attacks against Mitt Romney. Back in the eighties, the candidate and his family apparently vacationed with their dog, which was transported in a carrier strapped to the family Truckster's roof. Baby boomers will recall that this practice was commonplace in that era.

In any event, Treacher recalled an event recounted in one of Obama's several autobiographies: as a child, young Barry Soetero -- his name at the time -- enjoyed an entree of roast dog. It's not just for dinner any more.

"With Lolo, I learned how to eat small green chill peppers raw with dinner (plenty of rice), and, away from the dinner table, I was introduced to dog meat (tough), snake meat (tougher), and roasted grasshopper (crunchy). Like many Indonesians, Lolo followed a brand of Islam that could make room for the remnants of more ancient animist and Hindu faiths. He explained that a man took on the powers of whatever he ate: One day soon, he promised, he would bring home a piece of tiger meat for us to share."

In short, Treacher's response to the Romney vacation allegations turned out to be the rhetorical equivalent of a Blake Griffin dunk over Pau Gasol. The reactions have been priceless.

Sondrakistan offers us the exclusive picture:


And John Hawkins relays this very special Obama campaign button:


It's a "Dog Eat Dog" world in Washington.

I refer, of course, to the outstanding Eddie Bunker crime novel and not the recent canine kerfuffle.


Update: MOTUS:



Larwyn's Linx: The Tea Party: The greatest feminist movement?

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

Nation

The Tea Party: The greatest feminist movement?: LI
West: Who's the Craziest Person Ever to Set Foot in Congress?: Nice Deb
IRS Might Have Stalinist Powers Under New Law: IBD

AZ Voter ID Law Upheld By Ninth Circuit (!) Court of Appeals: WZ
US Bishop: “Obama Following Path of Hitler And Stalin": Nice Deb
Tax (Disappearing) Freedom Day: Blumer

Injustice Dept. Is On the Ground Supporting Al Sharpton’s Racist Mob: MB
Estrada, victim of Democrat filibuster, to fight Obama appointments: Times
DNC press secretary has meltdown over Ted Nugent: Twitchy

Economy

Send out the punter!: Beacon
Harry Reid Shuts Down the Budget Process: Power Line
New Yorkers Line Up For Fake Obama Stimulus Cards: HAP

The Real GSA Scandal: Job-Killing Big Labor Payoffs: Malkin
Barry's Bank: Beacon
The Unfairness of the Buffett Tax: AEI

Good Economists: Williams
The Economy Needs No Conductor: Stossel
Jennifer Granholm doesn’t remember anything about being governor: NakedDC

Scandal Central

Pics show GSA official spa-soaking, drinking wine on the taxpayer dime: Beacon
Solyndra Employees Get $368K in Bonuses: Beacon
More Layoffs At Obama-Funded Electric Carmaker Fisker, Delaware Plant Is “Absolutely Empty”: WZ

House blocks EPA from banning lead in ammunition: Events
Human Rights Campaign leaks list of pro-marriage donors and their addresses: Wintery Knight
73% Think Photo ID Requirement Before Voting Does Not Discriminate: Rasmussen

2012 Elections

Republicans Lead in All Four WI Senate Recall Elections: Ace
Romney put a dog on top of a car, Obama put a dog on top of rice while eating it: FAM
The Blue Dogs’ death rattle?: Moe Lane

Climate & Energy

A Banana Republic, Unless You Can Avoid It: Hayek
Power grab: Obama’s “crackdown” on speculators is just another attempt to strangle free markets: IBD
Oil prices spike after Obama announces Chavez-like crackdown on 'Speculators' (i.e., Investors): Exam

Media

Media Matters’ targets revealed: business, wealth, Christianity: DC
Married Secret Service agents’ classy motto revealed: ‘Wheels up, rings off’: Twitchy
IBD: WaPo Admits Trying to Bury Story that ObamaCare Adds to the Deficit: Tatler

Documents: U.S., U.K. Officials Were Worried About Obama’s 'Anti-American', 'Anti-White' Father: WZ
Did Ted Nugent Really Threaten the President?: Tatler
The Rocks in Tom Friedman’s Head: NoisyRm

Mooch: “This President Has Brought Us Out of The Dark And Into The Light”: WZ
AP Downplays Bad News About Housing Starts and Removes It From Headline: NB
Political Automotive Art: Meet "The Bama Bus": Urban Infidel

World

U.S. Sends Anti-Israel Advisor to Anti-Semitic Sweden: Gatestone
Exodus: Public school in Denmark says it can no longer take Jewish children because of 'security': Steyn
Beijing's Kim Connection: Beacon

Sci-Tech

Why a top app maker is ditching BlackBerry: CNN
Microsoft Really Blew It With These 9 Enterprise Products: Insider
Copyright conundrum in Oracle-Google case: Is a computer language fair game?: CNet

NASA’s Discovery shuttle wows Washington in 45-minute flyover: WaPo
Sprint’s Galaxy Nexus: Can a Second Google Wallet Phone Ignite Mobile Payments?: Wired

Cornucopia

Wall Street Insider: “Obama Is Pulling The Mask Away For All The World To See”: Ulsterman Report
1st iOTW Merit Badge Issued: iOTW
And Now, An Economic Report From Mitt Romney’s Dog Seamus: Glob

1912 Titanic Disaster: Was Racism To Blame?: Cube
BigFurHat’s 99 Second Radio Show – Guest: Ann Barnhardt: iOTW
My Very First Romney 2012 button “At Least I Didn’t Eat My Dog” + a Bonus Obama Button: RWN

Image: 1912 Titanic Disaster: Was Racism To Blame?
Today's Larwyn's Linx sponsored by: Ted Cruz for Senate

QOTD: "Even Obama is doing worse under President Obama." --Jay Leno

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Kewl: Memeorandum Helps Visualize Political Spin

Well, this appears to be a useful tool.

...the universe of political blogs is largely split in two, with conservative and liberal blogs rarely covering the same stories or linking to the same sites. But it can be very challenging to tell their political leanings at a glance, especially with names like “Balloon Juice,” “Weasel Zippers,” or “The Volokh Conspiracy.”

So, four years ago, I launched a project with Delicious/Tasty Labs founder Joshua Schachter to visualize the linking biases of various political blogs on Memeorandum by looking at their past behavior.

Using singular value decomposition, the linear algebra at the heart of your Netflix recommendations, we reduced the entire matrix of blogger-to-article relationships to a single dimension. Imagine a single line grouping like-minded blogs together based on the diversity of the stories they cover, with hardcore left- and right-leaning blogs on opposite sides of the spectrum.

Using those precalculated values, we load the data from Google Spreadsheets and color the links on Memeorandum, based on where they fall on the spectrum. The brighter the color, the more frequently they only cover stories by their counterparts.


This simple visualization leads to some interesting insights. Compare these two articles, which were trending on Memeorandum at this writing:


Seeing each site’s potential bias provides the context for understanding how news is spread. Right-leaning blogs are eager to point out new evidence that George Zimmerman was hurt the day he shot Trayvon Martin, but left-leaning blogs aren’t covering that story. Likewise, only left-leaning news sites appear to be covering the news of Ted Nugent’s threatening remarks to the president, but conservative blogs aren’t. This visualization also makes it easy to spot outliers, the sources that are breaking away from their past behavior to link to something beyond their usual circle.

This browser add-on is free and open source. We’ve updated the data sources for the first time since 2008, and Memeorandum Colors now works natively in Chrome, in addition to Firefox....

Directions to install the add-on are here, near the bottom of the page.

The only quibble: I define any article that's red as American. Anything blue means Marxist.

And since I'm a political centrist, I'm assuming any links to my blog will be utterly neutral in color. Like beige.


Class: FLOTUS matches Ann Romney's Multiple Sclerosis, then raises

Wasn't there a recurring character on SNL a few years ago that would always try to one-up everyone else's stories?

That's who Michelle Obama reminds me of.

First Lady Michelle Obama recalled her father's battle with multiple sclerosis (MS) as she explained "what's at stake" in this election between President Obama and Mitt Romney -- whose wife has MS.

Mrs. Obama recalled her father's MS during a campaign fundraiser, saying he "had MS, was a blue-collar city worker all his life . . . [and her parents] saved for us, they sacrificed everything for us, why? Because they wanted something more for me and my brother." The First Lady summarized the anecdote by saying "that's what's at stake" -- by which she referred to the idea that "if you work hard, you can build a decent life for yourself and an even better life for your kids . . . So believe me, your President knows what it means whan a family struggles," she added after talking about his life raised by a single mom.

The implication seemed to be that the president better understands the trials of people with MS, and of working class people like Mrs. Obama's father. But the First Lady might have forgotten that Ann Romney, Mitt Romney's wife, also has MS....

Laura Bush had more class in her toenail clippings than this claque of unreconstructed Chicago pols. And I include the president's handlers, Valerie Jarrett and David "Red Diaper Baby" Axelrod, in that crew.


Women: please don't be a victim like Ann Romney

Via the precocious People's Cube comes this helpful public service message:


What a cluster-fluke.


Hat tip: iOwnTheWorld.

2,000 Green-Slips Issued By Solar Outfit, Which -- Predictably -- Had Received $1.5 Billion in Taxpayer Loans

I've read about so many green energy scams like this one that I was forced to quit updating the Handy Dandy Energygate Cheat Sheet.

First Solar, a solar energy company that received a $1.46 billion loan guarantee from the Department of Energy, announced today that it will layoff 2,000 workers in the United States and world-wide.

The company will "indefinitely idle" four production lines in Malaysia and shutter a plant in Germany. "These actions, combined with other personnel reductions in Europe and the U.S., will reduce First Solar's global workforce by approximately 2,000 positions, about 30 percent of the total," First Solar announced today.



...In December, First Solar laid off 100 employees at a Santa Clara , Calif., plant. The DOE has committed $1.46 billion to a project in Riverside County, California expected to create 15 permanent jobs and 550 construction jobs.

The Washington Examiner's Tim Carney reported last month that the Export-Import Bank also subsidizes First Solar, helping the company "to sell solar panels to itself" by having a Canadian solar company "wholly owned" by First Solar [purchase] its parent company's products.

Scamtabulous!

When green-collar workers get pink-slipped, are we supposed to call them 'green-slips' or just 'the utterly predictable failures of Democrat central planners'?


Related: Mark Levin Nukes Obama's Energy Lies [Transcript]