Doug Ross @ Journal: May 2012

Thursday, May 31, 2012

Who wants to go for a swim with me in the Niger River?

Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?

Hat tip: John Jay.

Obama: Some of my best friends are Jews!

From Haaretz:

Earlier Tuesday afternoon, Obama and White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew met about 20 Conservative Jewish community leaders. ...

"I not going to tell you again how I even feel about Israel, but why [are] we still talking about it," Obama said, reminding his guests that all his friends in Chicago were Jewish - and at the beginning of his political career he was accused of being a puppet of the Israel lobby. ...

Obama also stressed he probably knows about Judaism more than any other president, because he read about it - and wondered how come no one asks Speaker of the House of Representatives John Boehner or Senate minority leader Mitch McConnel [sic] about their support to Israel."

... 1. The reason no one asks John Boehner or Mitch McConnell about their support for Israel is ... because they really do support Israel. The reason people ask Barack Obama about his support for Israel is because his support for Israel has been equivocal. [Ed: at best.]

2. It's truly pathetic that Obama has to reach for the tired (to say the least) trope that some of his best friends were Jewish. Actually, one wishes more of his best friends were pro-Israel Christians. They might have had more luck convincing him, a fellow Christian, that he should be pro-Israel.

3. And the claim that Obama knows more about Judaism than any president? His vanity boggles the mind. One could begin by citing Adams and Madison, who knew Hebrew, or Harry Truman, who knew Jewish history ... but it's silly to dignify this claim with a rebuttal. In thinking about the presidents since Truman, though, I'd guess the president who knew the most about Judaism was Jimmy Carter, who taught Sunday school and had a deep interest in religion. So let's stipulate that of the modern presidents, Carter and Obama "know" the most about Judaism. But what is it they know? In Obama's case, one could ask whether what he “knows” is what he learned from Rashid Khalidi and Jeremiah Wright.

In 2008, Gateway Pundit's Jim Hoft penned the best summary of Obama's extremist ties I've yet read:

Anyone who believes that Barack Obama, who spent 20 years in a Jew-hating church, with a Jew-hating pastor, and hung around Jew haters, is going to be a friend of Israel is a fool.

The complete roster of Obama's friends and supporters, first published in 2008, is truly eye-opening.

Hat tip: G.M. Roper.

Traveling abroad? You may want to leave the laptop at home

Government Security News reports that international travelers should have absolutely zero confidence in the Internet connections provided by foreign hotels.

The FBI is warning traveling commercial and government laptop users that malicious programs can worm their way onto their machines through hotel connections overseas through bogus software updates.

A May 21 bulletin from the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) warns that malware disguised as innocuous software updates awaits unwary travelers as they log onto hotel-hosted Internet connections. The agency said recent analysis from its investigators and other government agencies showed that Cyber criminals are targeting travelers through pop-up windows while they connect to the Internet in their hotel rooms. Apparently, criminals set up bogus hotel connections to intercept traffic before the hotel guest can reach the legitimate hotel connection.

It said recent cases show the malware presents the traveler with a pop-up window telling them to update a widely-used software product.

In these instances, the travelers attempting to set up the hotel room Internet connection and was presented with a pop-up window notifying the user to update a widely used software product, it said. The pop-up window looks like a common software update notice, according to the agency. If the laptop user clicks on “accept” to install the update, they install the malware.

IC3 recommended all government, private industry, and academic personnel traveling abroad be extra cautious before updating software using hotel Internet connections. It also recommended checking the author or digital certificate of any prompted update to see if it corresponds to the software vendor. If it doesn’t, it may reveal an attempted attack, it said.

The only way to even try to mitigate these kinds of threats is to surf immediately to a known SSL proxy site (e.g., your company's SSL VPN). By surfing to a known SSL site first, you can avoid the most common man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks.

A typical MITM attack delivers a non-SSL web page to your browser, but also includes some very special (and unwelcome) malware. The intent is to exploit your browser's vulnerabilities using specially crafted HTTP/HTML-based attacks. Or, in the case, the MITM attempts a social engineering attack, using the promise of a software update.

Surfing directly to a safe SSL site may help -- but isn't guaranteed -- to mitigate the threat. SSL to a trusted site is, in nearly all cases, impossible to MITM. But I say it isn't guaranteed because a hotel could deliver a landing page (e.g., to prompt you to enter the hotel's Internet pass-phrase) prior to letting you surf SSL. And that landing page could theoretically launch an attack.

The best advice would be to dispense with the laptop on your trip abroad. If you can't do that, travel with a pristine (newly imaged) laptop and then get it re-imaged when you return.

Five Reasons the Economy Remains in the Obama Depression

The funny thing is, President Obama still tries to blame President Bush for the current and ongoing malaise. But everyone knows that Obama had Congressional super-majorities of Democrats for his first two years in office. And they implemented every single progressive wet-dream possible, from Obamacare, to Cash-for-Clunkers, to various mortgage programs, to "Financial Reform", to green energy scams, and heaven knows what else.

And what did we get for that five or six trillion in additional Democrat debt?

• 1Q GDP was revised down to 1.9% from 2.2%. The previous four GDP quarters of Obama recovery: 0.4%, 1.3%, 1.8%, 3.0%. Keep in mind that research from the Federal Reserve finds that that since 1947, when two-quarter annualized real GDP growth falls below 2 percent, recession follows within a year 48 percent of the time...

• Initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 10,000 to a seasonally adjusted 383,000. Claims have now risen in seven of the past eight weeks. The four-week moving average for new claims increased 3,750 to 374,500.

• ADP said 133,000 private-sector jobs were created in May vs. analyst expectations of 150,000.

• Job cuts jumped by 53% in May from April... according to a report by consultancy firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. CNBC also notes that “employers announced plans to cut 61,887 staff from their payrolls in May, 67 percent more than in the same month of last year. The figure represents the most job cuts since last September.”

• The Rasmussen Consumer Index find that 59% think the U.S. is currently in a recession.

James Pethokoukis includes the accompanying chart in his piece, which tracks President Obama's Intrade reelection odds. While they're dropping, they remain over 50 percent.

Which means all of us have much more work to do: educating our friends, neighbors, coworkers, and family members.

We have a society to save.

New York City's Official Acceptable Behavior Guidebook, by Mayor Michael Bloomberg

Hi, I'm Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City. And here's the first chapter of our Official Acceptable Behavior Guide for visitors to the Big Apple!

Crapping on official city vehicles, including police cars? A-okay!

Possessing soft drinks larger than 16 ounces in size? Sorry, you'll have to visit some other city for that!

Stay tuned for our next chapter, where we'll discuss heroin use versus salt consumption.

Hat tip: Aaron.

Kewl Map: 56 Years of Tornadoes Tracked

Now this is a great use of mapping historical data to a geospatial representation.

John Nelson used 56 years worth of NOAA data to create a beautiful map of the most powerful tornadoes of the past five-plus decades.

Got this data from NOAA via the spectacular Data.gov. It tracks 56 years of tornado paths along with a host of attribute information. Here, the tracks are categorized by their F-Scale (which isn't the latest and greatest means but good enough for a hack like me), where brighter strokes represent more violent storms.

This is yet another example of the power of data visualization.

Hat tip: BadBlue.com/tech.

Larwyn's Linx: Why Is Trump Bigger News Than, Say, Jon Corzine?

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QOTD: "Perhaps support for BHO among veterans can be attributed to head injuries." --Smitty

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Civility: Progressive kook pushes World War II vet while screeching "f*** you" to him at Allen West town-hall

The word disgusting doesn't begin to describe the actions of these progressive loons -- especially seeing as how we're just hours after Memorial Day.

The scene: a town-hall event for Rep. Allen West. At the behest of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz or her ilk, progressives make a make a habit of targeting West because they hate the Constitution and they despise America*. They know that West stands for both -- and, unlike these punks, he's put his life on the line protecting their right to protest him.

In what appears to be the aftermath of a town-hall, several World War II vets stand up for West as a couple of the moonbats try to insult him.

Instead of honoring their service, the liberals go after these heroes, to the point of putting hands on one while dropping the f-bomb on him.

Because that's the way liberals roll, don't ya know?

These progressives disgust me. They ought to hang their heads in shame, but that would require the capability of actually feeling shame.

Take heart, patriots, because November is coming.

* Sorry, drones, but you can't love America and support a presidential candidate who repeatedly promises to 'fundamentally transform' it, as Barack Obama did.

Chart: Major Leaguer vs. Rookie Leaguer

I wasn't blessed to know Ronald Reagan, but Mr. Obama -- you are definitely no Ronald Reagan. In fact, you're not even in the same league.

Forget the Reagan recovery. What if the Obama recovery was just, you know, average? Maybe in some alternate reality Obama’s stimulus plan involved cutting taxes for investors and entrepreneurs. And maybe Earth-Two Obama took a pass on government-centered healthcare reform.

Here is what the economy might look like today:

...Investors Business Daily has the rest of the chart.

As I've mentioned before, Mr. Obama is historic, but not in any way that can be construed as good for America.

Just a Reminder... Defeat Obama in November

Dan from New York:

In case you’ve forgotten, or lost your focus, here’s another reason why we should send Obama back to Chicago first chance we get.

Morning Bell: The White House Defends Public Equity
By Mike Brownfield

Up is down, left is right, good is bad, and day is night. If you wander inside the Washington, D.C., beltway, you’ll enter a bizarro world where, at times, commonsense is replaced by a localized logic that is completely divorced from the reality.

The latest example of political gobbledygook comes courtesy of White House press secretary Jay Carney, who yesterday lapsed into rambling rhetoric when asked to explain how President Obama can defend the failed Solyndra solar boondoggle, yet attack private sector investments that sometimes fail but oftentimes succeed. Here’s his response:

Look…there, there, there is the…the…difference in that, your overall view of what…huh, your responsibilities are as president and what your view of the economic future is.

And the president believes as he’s made clear that a president’s responsibility is not just to, ah, those who win but those who, for example in a company where ah, there have been layoffs or a company that has gone bankrupt, that we have to ah make sure that those folks have the means to find other employment, that they have the ability to train for other kinds of work and that’s part of the overall responsibility a president has.

Got all that?

For the duration of his Administration, President Obama has dished out billions of dollars to politically favored companies in pursuit of job creation and a new “green” economy. It’s taxpayer-funded crony capitalism that has neither created new jobs nor produced the green-energy payout that the president was looking for. In fact, it’s a policy that has failed miserably, leading to bankruptcy after bankruptcy. Yet despite all the failures — and zero successes — the president and his Administration are defending the indefensible and standing by a policy that has squandered taxpayer money.

In one instance, President Obama committed $465 million of taxpayer money to Tesla, which was founded by a campaign mega-donor and the 63rd richest man in the world, Elon Musk, to build a $130,000 battery-powered sports car that becomes permanently inoperable if left uncharged for 30 days...

It’s gotten so bad that Congress is launching probes of federal green energy programs, including the Energy Department loan program... In one program, of the $20.5 billion in loans granted, $16.4 billion went to companies linked to donors who contributed to Obama and the Democratic Party.

At the same time the president is defending his taxpayer-funded failures, he’s attacking free enterprise, including in private equity and venture capitalism — enterprises in which investors voluntarily put up their own money to invest in new ideas and rescue existing companies. Sometimes those ventures fail, sometimes their inevitable failure is delayed but temporarily saves jobs amid restructuring, but many times they succeed — generating profits and producing new jobs.

When Carney was asked to justify the president’s defense of one, but criticism of the other, he just couldn’t do it. That’s no surprise, in that the two positions are logically inconsistent.

This episode calls to mind a quote from George Orwell, a frequent and pointed critic of modern political discourse:

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible… Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness… the great enemy of clear language is insincerity. Where there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms …

...In Washington, the Obama Administration is hard at work defending the crony capitalist machine while lambasting the free market system — and it shows no signs of letting up.

November is coming.

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BadBlue.com -- the fifth most popular political news aggregator in the 997 area code -- now has a sister site. BadBlue.com/tech tracks the top technology blogs and news sites in real-time.

If you're a tech news junkie, check it out.

Not treasonous at all: New Jersey company exploits federal loophole to assist Iran with nuclear research -- Report

If this report is accurate, Lawrenceville Plasma Physics (LLP) has some serious explaining to do.

[LLP] announced they've already "signed a contract on May 20 with the Plasma Physics Research Center (PPRC) of I. Azad University in Tehran, Iran." ... A quick Internet search of this Iranian institution — consisting of a chain of colleges — shows that its full name is "Islamic Azad University." It's a small detail, but a little strange of the LLP official press release to diminish their new partner's name to a mere I. It just looked like someone wanted to dust that fact under the rug.

But how is this partnership even possible given U.S.-Iran relations? Well, there's a loop-hole:

The agreement falls within an exemption to the otherwise broad sanctions of the US against Iran. The US Department of Treasury’s regulations include a general license which “authorizes collaborating with “academics and research institutions” of sanctioned countries on the… creation and enhancement of written publications.”

The two research teams will collaborate on writing scientific publications about their joint discoveries on aneutronic fusion. The LLP [site] explains:

In the past three years, Iran has become a major player in the small but growing global effort to achieve aneutronic fusion power—controlled nuclear fusion using fuels that produce no neutrons. Controlled fusion harnesses the power that heats the sun--nuclear fusion--as a source of energy for peaceful purposes. Fuels that don’t produce neutrons are important because neutrons can be extremely destructive, damaging the structure of a fusion generator and inducing radioactivity.

...Fars News Agency reports that LLP's work could be a game-changer, if things go to plan: it's "one of several small companies that believe they can crack fusion far sooner than can ITER or the National Ignition Facility (NIF), another international behemoth, based in Livermore, California. "

Methinks that LLP's head of public relations is fielding some calls as we speak. If this report is accurate, LLP should consider relocating to Tehran to get all of the true benefits of their partnership.

Hat tip: RF.

Larwyn's Linx: Confirmed by Medicare Actuaries -- Obamacare Requires Massive Cuts in Medicare

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Nation

CMS: Obamacare Requires Massive Cuts in Medicare: IBD
Top Five Ways Obamacare Crushes the Middle Class: Foundry
Tragedy: MoveOn.org claims to be facing financial disaster: Pundit

Cruz, Dewhurst Will Face Off Runoff 7/31; Romney Clinches: Malkin
Trayvon:Did a year of drug abuse result in predictable violence?: Treehouse
Obama Exposes Seal Team 6 for... a Self-Promoting Movie?: NoisyRm

Shocker: "Birthers" Doing Failed Media's Job?: Riehl
Three of Mitt Romney's emerging strengths: Malcolm
Allen West Rips Progs: 'Lets Talk About Obama Doing Blow':

Economy

Consumer Confidence Flatlines Under Obama: IBD
More federal control has made things much better, right?: BDT
A Tale of Two Campaign Ads: the Economy vs. a Distraction: Bruce

Barrett Can't Name One Policy He'd Pursue to Create Jobs in WI: WS
Obama awards Medal of Freedom to radical socalist: Dollard
Silicon Valley donations to Obama reach record levels: ArsTech

Media

Travesty: Aaron Walker Arrested for Blogging? Clearing Some of the Fog Surrounding Today’s Litigation: Patterico
IBD At Kimberlin Hearing: Walker Handcuffed, 1st Amendment Muzzled: IBD
Charles Krauthammer Calls Hypocrisy On Obama’s 'Kill List': Glob

Aaron Walker Arrested After Maryland Hearing on Kimberlin Case: RSM
And you thought justice was blind…: ProWis
J. Christian Adams Talks To Tony Katz How Citizens Can End “SWATting”: NoisyRm

Mark Levin Calls for Sharpton to be Fired for 'Accusing Republicans of Genocide': NB
"Born in Kenya": Slate
Are American Jews Beginning To Rebel Against Pulpit Progressive-ism?: Lid

World

Muslim Brotherhood Plotting To Take Over Jordan?: Gatestone
While all eyes look to the skies, Israel's navy prepares its own surprises: Hayom
Exclusive Pictures: Inside the Navy’s Newest Spy Sub: Wired

Did the State Department just create 5 million Palestinian refugees?: ForPol
Great News: Backdoor Found in Chinese-Made Military Silicon Chips: Schneier
Christians Should "Convert, Pay Tribute, or Leave," Says Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood Candidate?: Gatestone

Sci-Tech

How much exercise it takes to burn off snack calories: KABC-7
10 Glorious Social Networks that Failed Miserably: PTI
This new Facebook phone: Why would anyone want one?: CNet

Cornucopia

Recovered Memories: MOTUS
Why Do You Create?: Sundries
So You Want to Be a Programmer: Coding Horror

Image: (Looking Spoon)
Today's Larwyn's Linx sponsored by: Help Scott Walker In Wisconsin

QOTD: "We conservatives in talk radio, we come under blistering attack from the Left, from phony reporters, even from executives in this business or in that business. And really when you think about what most of us say and how most of us behave and how and many of us have passion and so forth. It’s the way nature, it’s the way people operate and work normally. You know, you’re not a talking head. You’re a human being with emotions and moods and interests, and some things rile you and some things make you happy, some things get you excited. You know?…But there are lines. And the lines for conservative talkers are much tighter, much harsher than they are for the others.

Al Sharpton is a disgrace. And yet everybody’s afraid of him. He’s on the radio. NBC News hires him over at MSNBC, or MSLSD as I call it. He brings nothing to the table. Nothing. He can barely speak in complete sentences. No, it’s true. He’s a race-baiter in my humble opinion. You saw what he did in Florida, first one on the scene if not the early ones in the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman case. And that’s certainly not the first. And yet, he’s not considered that controversial.

But today I’m calling for the, for the firing of Al Sharpton. I don’t believe I’ve ever done this before…But enough is enough. It’s not a bad word here or a bad thought, bad comment here over a long record. No, this man is loathsome." --Mark Levin

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Microsoft patents asking your friends 'does my butt look big in this?' on a social network

And now you know the patent system is officially broken.

Microsoft has patented an online personal appearance adviser for those of us without a hotline straight through to Put This On's Jesse Thorn...

...Simply upload a pair of pictures of yourself in different hair, makeup and clothing choices and let the denizens of the internet vote on which one makes you look the best. Sounding similar to HotorNot and FaceMash, this patent purports to shift the emphasis to help the style-challenged choose a suitable wardrobe.

Not to be overly morbid, but you can just envision the lawsuits after the first angst-ridden teen commits suicide post-"appearance adviser".

Sah-weet: Computer Hardware Made In China Includes Anti-Global Warming Features Plus Backdoors for Chinese Military, But Mostly Backdoors for Chinese Military

Rejected backup headline: "Say, I've got an idea: let's buy more crap from China!"

If this doesn't make you leery of every single piece of hardware made in the PRC, I don't know what will:

Backdoor Found in Chinese-Made Military Silicon Chips
We all knew this was possible, but researchers have found the exploit in the wild:

"Claims were made by the intelligence agencies around the world, from MI5, NSA and IARPA, that silicon chips could be infected. We developed breakthrough silicon chip scanning technology to investigate these claims. We chose an American military chip that is highly secure with sophisticated encryption standard, manufactured in China. Our aim was to perform advanced code breaking and to see if there were any unexpected features on the chip. We scanned the silicon chip in an affordable time and found a previously unknown backdoor inserted by the manufacturer. This backdoor has a key, which we were able to extract. If you use this key you can disable the chip or reprogram it at will, even if locked by the user with their own key. This particular chip is prevalent in many systems from weapons, nuclear power plants to public transport. In other words, this backdoor access could be turned into an advanced Stuxnet weapon to attack potentially millions of systems. The scale and range of possible attacks has huge implications for National Security and public infrastructure."

...The chip in question was designed in the U.S. by a U.S. company, but manufactured in China.

Anything (and I do mean anything) manufactured in the PRC could well have some very special -- and undocumented -- functionality courtesy of the PLA (People's Liberation Army).

I am hopeful that most sophisticated buyers were already aware of this possibility.

Hat tip: badblue.com/tech.

Cutting Through the Crap: Which President Was the Biggest Spender in Recent American History?

The Cato Institute helps refute the laughable administration claims that President Obama is some sort of deficit hawk. That could be true, but -- if so -- it's only in some sort of alternate universe, like the one where Mr. Spock wears a Fu Manchu mustache.

...the main debate is about which president was the biggest overall spender. So I’ve run through the numbers... and here’s a new table looking at the rankings based on average annual changes in inflation-adjusted primary spending, minus the distorting impact of deposit insurance and TARP.

Obama is still in the second-to-last position, but spending is increasing by “only” 5.5 percent per year rather than 7.0 percent annually. This is obviously because defense spending is not growing as fast as domestic spending.

Reagan remains in first place, though his score drops now that his defense buildup is part of the calculations. Clinton, conversely, stays in second place but his score jumps because he benefited from the peace dividend after Reagan’s policies led to the collapse of the Soviet Empire.

Let’s now look at these numbers from a policy perspective. Rahn Curve research shows that government is far too big today, so the goal of fiscal policy should be to restrain the burden of government spending relative to economic output.

This means that policy moves in the right direction when government grows more slowly than the private sector, as it did under Reagan and Clinton.

But if government spending is growing faster than the productive sector of the economy, as has been the case during the Bush-Obama years, then a nation eventually will become Greece.

Hey, Axelrod -- here's a helpful hint: when even the Associated Press shreds your propaganda, you may want to switch your line of attack. Cause it's definitely not working.

I blame Bush: Facebook loses $35 Billion In Value Since IPO

In emulating President Obama, I feel it imperative that we identify a scapegoat for this disaster. And who better than George W. Bush? Or, at the very least, Millard Fillmore? Or anyone but the Democrat National Committee's Wall Street backers, in fact.

Pain, pain, and more pain for Facebook’s stock. Facebook sunk into the $20s for the first time today, declining about 9 percent as options trading started. The decline also came a day after a third wave of reports came out about a Facebook phone, which would push the company into the risky and expensive world of building hardware.

Shares hit a new low of $28.65 and have closed nearly 10 percent lower at $28.84. After-hours trading has the company down another 0.5 percent to $28.69. That gives the company a market capitalization of $79.02 billion, down from $115 billion market cap Facebook opened at on the day of its IPO when it started trading at $42.05 a share.** (That said, if you’re a glass-is-half-full kind of person, Facebook is now cheap, cheap, cheap!)

The key factor affecting share prices might be options trading. Bloomberg said that puts are exceeding calls by 1.3-to-1.

This must be a good thing, right? Because we know that income inequality is evil. Certainly it's not fair that Facebook's founders are worth billions. We need everyone to be equal, kind of like in North Korea or Cuba or Zimbabwe.

Hat tip: BadBlue.com/tech.