Friday, December 07, 2012

Larwyn's Linx: Republican House better not abandon 59,142,004 voters

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

Nation

Republican House better not abandon 59,142,004 voters: LI
The trouble with being dependent on the government: Elephant
DeMint stepping down; SC Gov. Haley to appoint replacement: Malkin

Oops: Howard Dean admits everyone needs to pay higher taxes: Ace
Mutiny Against Boo-Hoo Boehner: MB
Obamacare is not a sure thing: Schlafly

It’s Time To Turn the Tables on this Presidential Bully: DLim
Republicans Miss the Point on ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Debate: Rasmussen
Maybe it is all about race: Instapundit

Economy

Michigan, Yes Michigan, Passes Right To Work Law: Ace
Obama to GOP on debt ceiling: “I will not play that game”: Hot Air
Exposing Washington’s Dishonest Budget Math: Cato

Carney: Not sure how many Dems support Obama’s ‘deficit’ plan: Malkin
Hey, Fat Cat Unions: Pay Your “Fair Share”: Malkin
Unions Attempt to Embrace Democracy, by Preventing Vote: Hideout

Scandal Central

Update on Obama's gun running schemes to Arab "rebels"...: WinSol
Democrat Gun-Grabber Donne Trotter’s Fake ‘Security Guard’ Job: Publius
Dean Exposes Obama's Need For Middle Class Tax Hike: IBD

Climate & Energy

Global Warming Skeptic Marc Morano Debates Bill Nye the Science Guy on Climate Change: NB
Lord Monckton Evicted from UN Climate Summit After Challenging Global Warming: RtPlanet
Obamahaus: DC

Media

When Will Republicans Finally Tell The Media They're Not Getting More Subsidies?: Ace
See B.S. From CBS CEO: Driscoll
Krauthammer: Obama can lie with such surety, cold-bloodedness that I almost admire him: Scoop

PJTV Exclusive: How NBC Editors Made the Zimmerman 911 Call Sound Racist: Tatler
George Zimmerman Suing NBC For Selectively Editing 911 Call to Make Him Sound Racist: MenRec
Mark Levin blasts libcaller who wants rich to pay 50% tax rate: Scoop

Rapper Big Boi On Obama: Warns “Our Freedoms Are Getting Taken Away”: GWP
Costas continues his anti-gun jihad: AWD
Unexpectedly, Crowder Finds That Random Dems Espouse Conservative Ideas: RSM

World

Keep the Aspidistra Flying: Driscoll
Russian Paper Compares Obama's Fools to Stalin's Fools: Reagan Coalition
Jewish students fleeing University of Edinburgh in fear: Matzav

The incompetence and corruption at the heart of the United Nations exposed: CDN
Blind Sheik Would Be Proud Of Egypt's New Constitution: IBD
UNbelievable: Watch how the UN treats Syria with your own eyes: Matzav

Sci-Tech (courtesy BadBlue.com/Tech)

Ubuntu Linux and Windows 8: Head-to-Head at Last: LinuxInsider
Leaked: ITU's secret Internet surveillance standard discussion draft: Boing Boing
Do Devs Need Custom Linux Laptops? Dell Thinks So: ADTmag

Cornucopia

Makin’ Bacon: Detroit Style: MOTUS
This Is the Freakiest, Most Perfect Artificial Eyeball I’ve Ever See: Gizmodo
Romney campaign had $25.7 million left after U.S. election: Reuters

Image: Atlas Shrugs
Today's Larwyn's Linx sponsored by: Climate Depot

QOTD: "Referring to the market turmoil in Europe over the need for tax and spending reform, [former Senator Alan] Simpson said: "We are the healthiest horse in the glue factory."

"Just a single piece of paper will get the markets off our case," Simpson said. "Germany has a plan – it's not in writing but it's a plan, so the markets don't bother them. France is stumbling. If they don't write something on the back of a piece of paper soon, why that will be the core of Europe begin to rot out. And this all affects us."

Asked by Fortune what advice he would give middle class investors who wonder whether they should sell stocks before the end of the year, Simpson demurred: "I wouldn't advise anybody to do anything, but I can tell you now and before Dec. 31, I think "hunker" would be a hell of a word." --Allan Dodds Frank

Thursday, December 06, 2012

MEETING THIRD WORLD CHALLENGES WITH FIRST WORLD SOLUTIONS: GravityLight illuminates without batteries or fuel

Very cool:

The lack of reliable electricity in developing countries puts a damper on more than just technology use -- having to run kerosene lamps, or even those based on solar power, often involves recurring costs that whittle away at very modest incomes.

GravityLight has built an LED lamp that just might lift the burden. As the name implies, a weight (usually the very bag that the lamp ships in) generates electricity through natural force: the few seconds it takes to lift the weight can generate 30 minutes of light without ever replacing a battery or fuel supply.

The simple construction also has helpful side benefits, such as powering up other devices and a clip that can replace the bag with most anything that weighs around 20 pounds. The crowdfunded project's donation tiers ask $25 to donate a light to the developing world or $50 to also get one for yourself, but it's a small price to pay in the long run -- and when mass production should see prices fall below $5, the GravityLight might just change the lighting landscape for those who need it most.

What a great idea. I would encourage you to check out the crowdfunding site and consider helping out if you can.


Hat tip: BadBlue.com/Tech.

"BIZARRE ECONOMIC SUICIDE PACT": Jim Geraghty's Soak-the-Blue-State-Rich Tax Plan

Jim Geraghty is an evil genius:

...the assessment from Joel Kotkin of Forbes about how blue states voted for policies that are likely to hurt themselves was pretty fascinating:

With their enthusiastic backing of President Obama and the Democratic Party on Election Day, the bluest parts of America may have embraced a program utterly at odds with their economic self-interest. The almost uniform support of blue states' congressional representatives for the administration's campaign for tax "fairness" represents a kind of bizarre economic suicide pact.

Any move to raise taxes on the rich -- defined as households making over $250,000 annually -- strikes directly at the economies of these states, which depend heavily on the earnings of high-income professionals, entrepreneurs and technical workers. In fact, when you examine which states, and metropolitan areas, have the highest concentrations of such people, it turns out they are overwhelmingly located in the bluest states and regions
.

So I put together my "Soak the Blue State Rich" plan:

• Keep the tax rate on capital gains the same.

• Raise income taxes on the top income bracket for 2013, those making $398,350 and up (single filers, married joint filers, or head of household).

• Means-test, or eliminate entirely, the mortgage-interest deduction (which benefits taxpayers in areas with the highest real-estate values and mortgages -- i.e., Hawaii, D.C., New York, California, and Connecticut).

• Means-test or eliminate entirely the federal deduction of state and local taxes, which is disproportionately utilized by those in high-tax blue states: “In 2005, taxpayers in California and New York together made up 20 percent of those claiming the deduction and accounted for 30 percent of its value. Itemizers in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and California claimed on average over $12,000 per household.”

Of course, there are some wealthy right-leaning folk who will get snared under this plan. But they will have at least two options to alleviate their tax bill: first, move to red states with lower real-estate prices, lower state and local taxes, and lower costs of living...

I'm Doug Ross, and I endorse this tax plan.


AND THE HITS JUST KEEP ON COMING FOR THAT HILARIOUS ARAB SPRINGY THING: Hillary's "Reformer" Deploys Chemical Weapons

Not to worry, though: the strong and steady hand of Barack Obama will see us through this latest crisis that threatens to descend into World War III.

U.S. "very concerned" about Syria's WMD prep


Whether the U.S. enters the war in Syria appears to be up to the dictator Bashir al-Assad.

On Monday, CBS News reported the Assad regime had given orders to prepare chemical weapons for possible use to put down the revolt that has been raging for more than a year and a half.


President Obama said use of these weapons of mass destruction would be "totally unacceptable."

U.S. intelligence so far has not detected any sign Syria is loading chemical weapons onto aircraft, but Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said it appears the embattled Assad regime is preparing to do just that.

I'm so confused. Didn't Hillary Clinton call Syria's dictator a "reformer" little more than a year ago?

Seriously, though, this shouldn't be a concern for anyone with family or financial interests in the Middle East. The president's strategy of Leading From Behind™ should work perfectly, since he'll be in Hawaii for 20 days on his latest vacation extravaganza, which will only cost us a paltry $4 million while the Middle East boils over.


WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? The U.N.'s Internet Surveillance Document Leaked

The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) is an agency of the United Nations, a world body largely populated with dictatorships, oligarchies, violent theocracies and other delightful governments. The ITU is, as you may have heard, making a play to takeover control of the Internet.

Yesterday morning, I wrote about the closed-door [ITU] meeting where they were working on standardizing "deep packet inspection" -- a technology crucial to mass Internet surveillance. Other standards bodies have refused to touch DPI because of the risk to Internet users that arises from making it easier to spy on them. But not the ITU.

The ITU standardization effort has been conducted in secret, without public scrutiny. Now, Asher Wolf writes:

I publicly asked (via Twitter) if anyone could give me access to documents relating to the ITU's DPI recommendations, now endorsed by the U.N. The ITU's senior communications officer, Toby Johnson, emailed me a copy of their unpublished policy recommendations.

OOOPS!

5 hours later, they emailed, asking me not to publish it, in part or in whole, and that it was for my eyes only.

Please publish it (credit me for sending it to you.)

Also note:

1. The recommendations *NEVER* discuss the impact of DPI.

2. A FEW EXAMPLES OF POTENTIAL DPI USE CITED BY THE ITU:

"I.9.2 DPI engine use case: Simple fixed string matching for BitTorrent"
"II.3.4 Example “Forwarding copy right protected audio content”"
"II.3.6 Example “Detection of a specific transferred file from a particular user”"
"II.4.2 Example “Security check – Block SIP messages (across entire SIP traffic) with specific content types”"
"II.4.5 Example “Identify particular host by evaluating all RTCP SDES packets”"
"II.4.6 Example “Measure Spanish Jabber traffic”"
"II.4.7 Example “Blocking of dedicated games”"
"II.4.11 Example “Identify uploading BitTorrent users”"
"II.4.13 Example “Blocking Peer-to-Peer VoIP telephony
with proprietary end-to-end application control protocols”"
"II.5.1 Example “Detecting a specific Peer-to-Peer VoIP telephony with proprietary end-to-end application control protocols”"

Hit the jump for more of Asher's analysis and the download link:
3. Security threats against DPI entities is listed as:
- Destruction of DPI-related information;
- Corruption or modification of DPI-related information;
- Theft, removal or loss of DPI-related information;
- Disclosure of DPI-related information;
- Interruption of services (specifically mentions DoS.)

Giving the U.N. control of the Internet is akin to giving a 16-year old boy keys to the new Porsche and a fifth of Southern Comfort.


JAN 2013: The Statement the Next Speaker of the House Must Give

As Ned Ryun suggests, with some luck January may bring a new Speaker of the House. A conservative Speaker. And this is the kind of plain talk -- the truth --- that the American people need to hear.

We're not going to raise the debt ceiling without spending cuts that address the so-called "Stimulus" package, which was sold as a one-time, emergency measure. We're not going to raise the debt ceiling without these necessary cuts, because our entire system faces a fiscal disaster without them.

By the way, we don't live in a dictatorship. We live in a Republic with checks and balances.

If the President attempts to illegally raise the debt ceiling without Congress and thereby violates the Constitution, there are remedies and we will hold him accountable.

Furthermore, we are not going to raise the debt ceiling without three questions being answered by Senator Harry Reid and the President:

1. At what point will Democrats have borrowed enough from America's young people and from future generations? Is there a dollar limit or a percentage of GDP they can point to and say, "That's it! That's the limit!"?

2. At what point will Democrats have spent enough? Is there a dollar limit or a threshold of GDP that, once surpassed, they admit their central planning in the housing, health care, retirement, banking and other markets have failed?

3. How much longer will Democrats operate the country without a budget? For the first time in modern American history, Democrats have refused to pass a budget for three years in a row, an act which no country, no state, no city, and certainly no family would ever tolerate.

Because if they can't identify any limits on their spending -- if they recognize no constraints to their policies nor learn from the past -- then they are tacitly admitting that they intend to poison, through bankruptcy and fiscal chaos, the American system of government.

None of America's young people should tolerate this fiscal destruction and I pledge that this Congress will stand up for America's youth. We will not tolerate Democrats poisoning the wellspring of freedom any longer.


Larwyn's Linx: Only 16 Members Can Unseat Boehner, Group Says

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

Nation

Only 16 Members Can Unseat Boehner, Group Says: Breitbart
Boehner Has To Go: Ignore the Constitution, Party Uber Alles!: Riehl
Palin: Boehner's Sellout Won't Be Forgotten in 2014: Breitbart

Democrats poised to raise taxes… on their own voters: Moe Lane
“Sadly, I was wrong” about Obama, isn’t good enough: LI
Go kulak — more of nothing is nothing: LI

Weird: Reid declines to bring a vote on Obama’s cliff plan: Hot Air
Boehner to members: Leadership is watching your voting patterns: Hill
Steyn: Obama aims to finish FDR's work, create 'a big Sweden': HySci

Economy

It's Never Different This Time: ZH
Detroit To Obama: Where's Our Obama Money?: Joshua
The 11 Death Spiral States: ZH

Report: Obamacare Patients Likely To Struggle To Find Doctors: Reason
The underworked public employee: AEI
Bombshell: Deutsche Bank Hid $12 Billion In Losses To Avoid Bail-Out: ZH

Scandal Central

Grassley keeping Fast and Furious investigation alive; heads roll: Twitchy
Elizabeth Warren’s Senate Campaign: a tsunami of red ink, “coffee and pizza” to blame: DTG
Michelle Malkin: The right needs to stop navel gazing and start fighting the leftist radicalization of America: Scoop

Media

Conservatives Actually Suck at This: Erickson
Norquist: Obama’s Failed Fiscal Cliff Ideas Like a ‘Seinfeld Episode Where No Learning Takes Place’: Publius
Obama Seeking Third Term? Entrepreneur Scares Up Business With Dubious Claim: USN&WR

The 60 Best Conservative Blogs For 2012 (6th Annual): RWN
An Open Letter to Colin Powell from the Frederick Douglass Foundation: FDFNY
Amber Alert: Paul Ryan: Camp o' the Saints

Krauthammer: Obama has U.S. more than Halfway to Collapse of Dollar and the Economy: FreeLight
White House Opens Its Doors to MSNBC Hosts: AIM
Sharpton Way Behind on Washington, D.C. Rent; Faces Eviction: NLPC

World

For Israel, double trouble in Syrian WMDs, jihadis on border: Hayom
CAIR Targets Morsi/Brotherhood Critics: IPT
Islam’s Rise and the West’s Denial: Creeping

NYT: Arms Shipments ‘Secretly’ Approved by Obama Ended Up in Hands of Islamists: Blaze
Syrian military reportedly mixing sarin gas; Has ‘red line’ been crossed?: Twitchy
Report: Mullen’s personal computers hacked by Chinese: ArmyTimes

Sci-Tech (courtesy BadBlue.com/Tech)

Brain Disease Found In NFL Players: Slashdot
Harry Reid Launches Online Gambling Power Grab: Tatler
World's Oldest Dinosaur Foosil Found in Museum: Verge

Cornucopia

Wisconsin Judge Orders Deadbeat Dad Of Nine (With Six Women) To Stop Procreating: TSG
Tapper to Carney: Back to “hostage” again, eh, champ?: Hot Air
Global media conceals fact that soccer players who beat Dutch referee to death were Militant Lutherans: JihadWatch

Image: Obituary: Maj. Gen. Tony Deane Drummond
Today's Larwyn's Linx sponsored by: Tell Boehner to Reinstate the “Fiscal Four”

QOTD: "In 2001, Democrats argued 100 percent of the Bush tax cuts were bad. Now, 98 percent of them are so good that to consider removing them is bad. Progress." --Charlie W. Cook

Bonus QOTD: "First, stop inviting squishy Republicans to take the flag flanked stage at conservative conferences thereby providing conservative bona fides to those who do not deserve it.

Second, conservatives should set up a super PAC dedicated to defeating Saxby Chambliss in Georgia and maybe Lindsey Graham in South Carolina. Don’t do a major super PAC to do both, but one for each.

Third, conservatives need to invest in their ground game. They need to begin tomorrow using technology like Political Gravity or similar software to organize and outmaneuver the GOP itself. They’ll need to work to unify early behind Senate challengers in Louisiana and elsewhere too.

Fourth, they need to use off year elections at the municipal level next year and ballot questions to begin testing the data.

Fifth, they are going to need to convince the grassroots that the GOP is salvageable by convincing the grassroots to clean house in primaries with credible challengers.

Sixth, they need to actually practice discernment. There are a lot of self-styled conservative groups and consultants out there not worth a warm bucket of spit. There are a lot of candidates who talk the talk, but are terrible candidates who cannot win general elections. Conservatives need to discern the good from the bad. They can start by taking direction from groups like Heritage Action for America, Senate Conservatives Fund, Club For Growth, American Majority, the Madison Project, and a few others that have solid records and are actually interested in winning, not just losing well, and then are willing to still stand on the ramparts fighting when everybody else is caving to the glow of orange tans.

Conservatives are either going to hang together or separately. Right now they are getting played because Boehner, McConnell, and the like are sure the conservative movement has become a paper tiger. And, to be honest, conservatives have shown them this is true.

The only way to change it is money or primary challengers or, better, both. Citizens United showed it doesn’t really work as the critics said it would in the Presidential cycle. But it worked in 2010 for conservative activists against the establishment.

Conservatives now need to work even harder in 2014. Either start blowing stuff up or shut up. " --Erick Erickson

Wednesday, December 05, 2012

STRATEGIC THINKING: The 5 Best Traits

Innovation Excellence proffers the most important characteristics of strategic thinkers.

1. Open to valuable perspectives from multiple sources

...great strategic thinking is about the right combination of three diverse perspectives: front-line organizational experience, broad functional knowledge, and creative energy... People with front-line experience help frame and ground business issues. Those with functional knowledge of key business processes understand important capabilities. Creative people see and address opportunities in unconventional ways.

Any of these groups, working by themselves, will create a strategic direction lacking in some essential way. Working together, there’s the potential for game-changing moves...

2. Adept at incorporating both logic and emotion into their thinking

...Rarely do important organizational and market changes succeed or fail solely through an analytical and logic-based business case. Hard numbers may win the day for selling new ideas in the executive suite, but when it comes to successful implementation, emotions such as fear, hope, passion, and frustration are vital in moving people to embrace major change...

3. Comfortable thinking in ways extending beyond today’s reality

You can’t afford to have people masquerading as strategic thinkers who cannot think outside today’s reality. Solid strategic thinkers have to be able to free themselves from today to consider multiple possibilities for how your organization’s course may play out in the future...

4. Constantly questioning both the familiar and the new

Many people are fine questioning what they don’t support... People who are completely comfortable with just the way things are right now suddenly discover their questioning mojos when the possibility of dramatic change rears its head.

The best strategic thinkers question yesterday, today, tomorrow, and everything in the future. Additionally, the more they explore strategic options, the more new questions they generate. Strategic thinking is about exploration...

5. Open to not answering or resolving every strategic issue

This characteristic goes hand in hand with the previous one about constantly questioning. While successful executives are largely rewarded for moving things to successful resolution – and that’s vital for business performance – effective strategic thinkers do have to be able to moderate any tendencies to prematurely resolve strategic issues...

In an era of disruptive change -- in which technology moves at lightning speed, when the economy is fragile, and when entrepreneurs feel they have nothing to lose -- strategic thinkers are at a premium.


Hat tip: BadBlue.com/Tech.

FLUSH HIM: We Only Need 16 Votes to Depose Boehner

Great idea from Ned Ryun:

While the caucus has already voted in support of John Boehner as speaker of the 113th Congress, the final floor vote doesn’t happen until early January.

Everyone thinks it’s a fairytale, but the Conservative Movement is capable of firing Boehner with just 16 votes.

The House rules demand that a Speaker receive a majority—218 votes—to be elected speaker. If no nominee for speaker receives 218, the House remains speakerless—as it did during parts of the Civil War.

If 16 House Republicans were to abstain from voting for Speaker, Boehner would only receive 217 votes.

Once we depose Boehner and cause a firestorm, the Republican caucus will get the memo: Pick someone else! These 16 Republicans only need to hold out until the caucus chooses a new leader.

For Speaker, I suggest members who are anti-establishment, but still have broad support. Congressmen Jim Jordan of Ohio would be my pick. He just finished leading the Republican Study Committee and proposed the best budget we’ve seen come out of Congress.

Republicans and conservatives deserve a more articulate, more conservative leader. In fact, we need one if we want to keep the House majority and take the Senate. Boehner has been Obama’s punching bag and has lost every public battle with the President. Now, he’s waging an internal war on conservatives.

Remember, we lost seats in the House under his leadership. He has failed as spokesman for the movement. Boehner has been in Congress for 22 years, and he looks like and embodies the typical DC politician. Can’t we find someone fresher to lead the party forward?

I'll say this about Jim Jordan: he ain't gonna be anyone's punching bag.

My only fear about this idea is that House Democrats will join with the RINO establishment to keep the Weeper Speaker in power.



QOTD: Sarah Palin Shreds John Boehner and the Miserable Failures in the Establishment GOP

Now this is what I call speaking truth to power:

Please read and pass along this article.

We send good conservatives to D.C. to fulfill the promises they made to the electorate, and yet when they stay true to their word the permanent political class in their own party punishes them.

This won't be forgotten come 2014.

Right now the GOP establishment is more concerned about the opinion of the media and the Georgetown cocktail circuit than they are “we the people” who hired them. For all this new talk of how the GOP needs a “populist movement,” it would do them good to remember they already have one; it’s called the Tea Party movement, and it won for them the majority they now enjoy in the House.

John Boehner needs a primary challenger in Ohio. The qualifications are simple: he or she must be able to fog a mirror.


CONGRATULATIONS, DEMS! "Get ready for some startling [health care] rate increases"

From the party that brought you Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Social Security, Medicare, "Great Society" and every other bankrupt exercise in central planning, comes the ultimate in epic fails

The Affordable Care Act: Ten Months to Launch “Obamacare”––Get Ready for Some Startling Rate Increases

...I conducted an informal survey of a number of insurers... On average, expect a 30% to 40% increase in the baseline cost of individual health insurance to account for the new premium taxes, reinsurance costs, benefit mandate increases, and underwriting reforms...

In states with the least mandates or for health insurance companies with the tightest underwriting now, the increase could be a lot more...

[E]xpect individual health insurance rates for people in their 20s and early 30s to about double…

Will the feds be ready to provide an insurance exchange in all of the states that don’t have one on October 1, 2013?

I have no idea. And neither does anyone else I talk to inside the Beltway. We only hear vague reports that parts of the new federal exchange information systems are in testing.

The former CIA director couldn’t get away with an affair in this town but the Obama administration has a complete lid on just where they are on health insurance exchanges and haven’t shown any willingness to want to talk about their progress toward launching on time––except to tell us all not to worry.

We are all worried. I would not want to be responsible for the work that remains and only have ten months to do it…

The Republicans said this would not work. If it does not launch on time, or does with serious problems, I would not want to be an incumbent Democrat.

I told them not to call this the “Affordable Care Act.”

I can't wait for these losers to try and blame this SCOAMF on Bush.

Oh, and let's come up with a more appropriate name for the Democrat Party:

The Bankruptocrat Party?

The Crashocrat Party?

The Lying-Sack-o-crat Party?

The Failocrat Party?

Help me out here, folks.


Image hat tip: Looking Spoon.

Larwyn's Linx: GOP "Doomsday" plan for fiscal cliff spells doom...for GOP

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

Nation

GOP "Doomsday" plan for fiscal cliff spells doom for the GOP: WyBlog
Night of the Dull Knives: Camp o' the Saints
Shocking: House Republicans Cave on Taxes, Entitlements: Foundry

Mark Levin goes Nuclear on John Boehner: Scoop
Future Generations: Williams
Boehner tax increase sparks conservative backlash: Times

Master of the plausible lie: Sowell
Christmas for Obama Bundlers: Malkin
Ryan: We're Further From Agreement Than When We Started: Ace

Economy

Let’s Be Honest, Call Modern Democrat Party The Socialist Party: CFP
Taxes hikes are a distraction. It is all about spending.: FW
Obama Is A Man Who Has Never ...: Boortz

SoCal Port Strike Costs $1B a Day; Clerks Reject $190K Offer: RS
Doing just fine! Obama says ‘economy is poised to take off’: Twitchy
The Left’s Flip-Flop on the Bush Tax Cuts: American

Scandal Central

With Purge, House GOP Leadership Reaches New Low: Cato
House GOP Leaders Purged Conservatives Using Secret List: Breitbart
Rep. Justin Amash slams GOP leadership: ‘They booted me for working to reduce debt’: Twitchy

Climate & Energy

How A Spanish Scam Artist Punk'd The Ukraine For $1.1 Billion: ZH
Oyster Farm Loses To Federal Bullies And Eco-Fanatics: IBD

Media

Meet the Press, Check the Facts: Cato
Gergen: Democrats would rather humiliate GOP than solve fiscal cliff: Hot Air
Michael Moore received $841,145 in incentives to film anti-corporate welfare documentary in Michigan: Exam

Barack Obama thinks cable news is the devil, long live cable news: NakedDC
Dumb Statement From Romney Advisor Stuart Stevens: Ace
Piers Morgan never saw it coming.: Gun Free Zone

Costas: Gee, Maybe My 20-Second Easy-Bake Gun Control Screed Wasn't Appropriate: Ace
Americans oppose Obamacare by 10 point margin: WS
‘Reporter’ Kelly O’Donnell: Squee! Obama sat next to a GOP girl governor at meeting; secret message?: Twitchy

World

All Class: Obama Says Republicans, Not al Qaeda, Are Top National Security Threat: Beacon
CAIR Takes Out Full-Page Ad Calling For “Improved Relationship” With Republicans: WZ
"A protest by tens of thousands of Egyptians outside the presidential palace in Cairo turned violent": AP

Obama's Bestest Pal In Cairo Flees His Pharaoic Palace As Demonstrators Battle Police: Ace
The Russian Limbaugh: Cube
Did You Hear Gen. Boykin’s Warnings about Obama's Brand of Marxism?: NoisyRm

Sci-Tech (courtesy BadBlue.com/Tech)

Google Deserves Our Gratitude; FTC Deserves Our Condemnation: ObjStd
Irrelevancy Leads to Failure – Worry for Yahoo, Microsoft, HP, Sears, etc.: InnovExc
Windows 8 Flops: Twitchy

Cornucopia

Benghazi => ‘High On A Mountaintop’: RSM
PETA Crashes Biker Gathering… Not to be missed…: Steady Drip
Diplomacy In the Age of Nuclear Wintour: MOTUS

Image: Chicago Teachers Union VP Busted Participating in Midwest Marxism Conference
Today's Larwyn's Linx sponsored by: Tell John Boehner To Stop Purging Fiscal Conservatives!

QOTD: "This isn't rocket science. Everyone knows that when you take money out of the economy, it destroys jobs, and everyone knows that when you give politicians more money, they spend it. This is why Republicans must oppose tax increases and insist on real spending reductions that shrink the size of government and allow Americans to keep more of their hard-earned money." --Jim DeMint

Tuesday, December 04, 2012

ARTIST'S CONCEPTION: How President Obama Will Honor Kate Middleton and the Royal Birth

The Looking Spoon:

Obama recently "honored" Rosa Parks, and Neil Armstrong when he died.

Months ago I did a post about how he worked himself into the bios of every former president going back to Calvin Coolidge... Why would this be different?


No word on whether the President plans on sending a shower gift of DVDs or an iPod loaded with his speeches.


LATEST SMARTPHONE MARKET SHARE DATA: Apple Regains Top Spot, Edging Out Android

Here's a great table spotted in PC World that breaks down the latest smartphone sales by OS and carrier:

Android sales have declined in the U.S., helping iOS regain the top spot among smartphone platforms sold in the three-month period ending in October, according to the latest research from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.

...The figures from Kantar are different from a recent comScore MobiLens survey that found that Android is dominating with 53.6 percent of the market after a 1.4 percentage point increase. Apple was in second with 34.3 percent of the market after a 0.9 percentage point increase. Both surveys rely on user interviews, but the comScore survey does not include the month of October, while Kantar’s does...


...The month of October is relevant to this study because this is when iPhone 5 sales took off after a late September launch. Kantar attributes Apple’s double-digit rise in share specifically to the iPhone 5.

...Also thanks to the iPhone 5, AT&T has regained its spot as the top-selling smartphone carrier for the latest period, with 34.7 percent of smartphones sold, overtaking Verizon at 27.5 percent. Sprint and T-Mobile follow with 19.9 percent and 8.4 percent, respectively...

It's shocking to think back just three short years ago, when Apple and RIM were battling neck-and-neck for leadership of the smartphone market. It's been a fast downhill ride for the BlackBerry platform ever since.


Hat tip: BadBlue.com/Tech.

NOT HYPOCRITICAL IN THE LEAST: Now the Left SIMPLY ADORES the Bush Tax Cuts

I'm stunned that vintage media ignores the hypocrisy of a Democrat Party that now urges extensions to the same "Bush Tax Cuts" they pilloried for a decade.

Opponents of the Bush tax cuts have done a silent flip-flop on whether those cuts helped the middle class.

With the so-called fiscal cliff approaching, politicians are virtually unanimous that the expiration of the Bush-era tax law presents a clear and present danger to the middle class. According to the White House, the typical middle class family’s taxes would jump by $2,200 per year. The president recently took this message directly to the people [...with the hashtag My2K...]

Curiously, however, hardly anyone has noticed that today’s sentiment is a flip-flop for just about any Democrat who has run for any political office any time in the past decade — from the presidency on down....
...In other words, if the Bush cuts actually were just “tax cuts for the rich,” then their expiration couldn’t hurt the middle class. On the other hand, if their expiration would hurt the middle class, then characterizing them as “tax cuts for the rich” was a false message all along.

[...American] history (available from the Tax Foundation) begs two questions. First: is it wise to assume that a feel-good increase in the top tax rate will really extract a higher share of the total taxes from the top earners? If so, by all means, let’s proceed — but we should at least understand that recent history doesn’t necessarily support our case. Second: just what is a “fair share”? The top 10 percent of income tax payers paid 64 percent of the burden when Clinton left office, and they are paying significantly more of the burden today — so if they’re not paying their “fair share” yet, they were even further away from paying their “fair share” under Clinton...

What, then, is the “fair share” of the top income tax payers: 80 percent of the total? 90 percent? 100 percent? If we don’t define “fair share,” we can never know whether we’ve reached — or unfairly overshot — the goal.

What is a "fair share" of your income -- your life -- that the government deserves?

Whatever they say it is, of course.

Remember, we no longer live in a Constitutional Republic.


CHEERY: The Debt Dam Bursts In Two to Four Years

Economic writer Robert Wiedemer's assessment matches those of former House Ways and Means chief Chris Carter and Paul Ryan: we have two years -- four years at the outside -- before the federal government's Ponzi scheme implodes.

...this dollar bubble and this government debt bubble – will burst. It is not as if it will not burst for 15 or 20 years. We say it is somewhere in two to four years. You need to be prepared for it.

The debt will always be funded as long as the Federal Reserve stands willing to buy all the bonds that the government sells. At some point, that creates inflation: that pushes up interest rates. The Fed will fight those interest rates going up. At first, they can do it. They just print more money. That keeps interest rates down, but ultimately that inflation will force them up. We cannot just pull the money out and raise interest rates now; it's going to pop the real estate and stock bubbles.

What is going to happen is the Fed is going to lose control of those interest rates. When you print too much money, it gets you control short-term, but it is a recipe for losing control long-term. With those interest rates going up, what is going to pop? The stock market and real estate bubbles. All of that is what kicks off the big problem going forward. Normally you would say the bond market is going to be the problem, but I would tell you that it is actually going to be more stocks and eventually even real estate combined. Then ultimately, the bond market starts to go down, and down quickly once it starts.

When the dam finally breaks, it will break quickly. Literally, it is in a matter of months or certainly no more than a year once it really starts to go.

You get very, very high inflation. We could have stock market holidays and things like that.

The big difference between now and the depression is that the government is also in trouble at this point. We are really not going to have a huge failure until the government kind of comes to its wits' end. It will, but it comes as a last massive orgy of money printing to try to save everything - unlike anything you have seen yet. QE1, QE2, QE3 is nothing like what the Fed has to do when this thing starts to fall. They have to print, buy, and buy, and buy, and try to keep up the falling house. They will not be able to do it, but that will be the reaction.

Then at some point, it is not going to work and the whole thing goes.

As Mark Levin observes, the only bright spot is that the progressive kooks are going down the tubes along with the rest of us.


Chart: Wikipedia.


BRUTAL PHOTO: Protesters in Egypt Slam Obama

This photo, posted by @Bushpir8, depicts Egyptians who are simply delighted at the Obama-supported "Arab Spring":


Is the rationale for President Obama's embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood just a crazy conspiracy theory -- or is it so sane that you just blew your mind?


Larwyn's Linx: Fiscal Cliff Debate Is About the Size Of Government, Not Taxing 'The Rich'

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

Nation

Fiscal Cliff Debate Is About Size Of Government, Not 'The Rich': Sowell
Forum: The Fiscal Cliff – Let It Happen Or Grand Bargain?: Watcher
The Purge of House Conservatives Continues: RS

Why I'm Enlisting In Andrew Breitbart's War: Breitbart
Conservatives need to use better tactics and language: Kuznicki
Obama Aide: With These Republicans, There’d Still Be Slavery: Beacon

I am Thankful for John Boehner, Eric Cantor, and Kevin McCarthy: RS
Pressure Coming From Below: Loudon
The Reasoning Behind Allen West: Scoop

Economy

Let's Have a Depression Now: Pelerin
GM Channel Stuffing WTF!?: ZH
ObamaCare’s Magical Premium Tax: Cato

The 1930s All Over Again?: Brenner
Obama Should Return To Clinton-Era Spending Levels: IBD
Fed President Promotes Political Lies: Denninger

Who's Not Bargaining in Good Faith?: Samuelson
Obama: I am the law: Exam
I'll See Your Economic Collapse and Raise You National Demise: Duke

Scandal Central

State Department Spent 4.5 Million for Embassy Art, Had No Money for Benghazi Security: FPM
The $2 Billion Stimulus Disaster You've Never Heard About: MenRec
Since Election Day, Obama has golfed more times than worked on Fiscal Cliff deal: IHTM

Media

An open letter to Bob Costas and Jason Whitlock: DPU
Thinned-Skin President Taunts Kid Rock For Supporting Romney, Tells Him I'm Still Here: WZ
Why some people voted Democrat: CDN

Don't Care Any More: Zilla
Embarrassment to mankind Keith Olbermann says Iraq veteran and amputee ‘embarrasses the military’: Twitchy
Seven Black Teenagers Attack 1 White Teenager And Beat Him Senseless: HySci

The 50 Best Conservative Columnists Of 2012 (4th Annual): RWN
Left-Wing Media Plans to Get Tough on Obama: AIM
Bloody new photo of Trayvon Martin's killer released: Trib

Columnist Who Inspired Bob Costas Drops New Bomb: 'The NRA Is the New KKK': NB
The 7 Pieces of Advice by Trotsky for Obama, found in the 1934 Chicago Tribune: Hideout
Leftist Idiots Barricade Themselves Inside Keystone XL Pipe in Texas: GWP

World

Hungarian Parlimentarian Calls For “List Of Jews” To Be Compiled: NoisyRm
10 Lies About the Israel-Hamas Conflict: IPT
Judge off Hood case; Hasan shave order tossed: ArmyTimes

Video: Assad Moving Chemical Weapons: WorldThreats
The ITU treaty could be bad news if unchecked: RS
Gun Control Debate Erupts on Hannity: Blaze

Sci-Tech (courtesy BadBlue.com/Tech)

2012 Social Media Report: Users Spend 58% More Time on Social, App Usage More Than Doubles: Marketingland
A Third of Young Adults (and Some Bloggers You Know) Use Social Media in the Bathroom: Mashable
Autonomy Foes Circling to Poach Customers: Channelnomics

Cornucopia

We Honor Artistic Expression: MOTUS
Tire Irons and Handcuffs: The Sheik Returns: Primordial Slack
Time For Bernanke To Retract His Sworn Testimony To Congress: ZH

Image: Twitchy
Today's Larwyn's Linx sponsored by: The Objective Standard

QOTD: "In a Bloomberg story titled, appropriately enough "Treasury Scarcity to Grow as Fed Buys 90% of New Bonds" we read that "the Fed, in its efforts to boost growth, will add about $45 billion of Treasuries a month to the $40 billion in mortgage debt it’s purchasing, effectively absorbing about 90 percent of net new dollar-denominated fixed-income assets, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co." Actually that's incorrect and it is more like 100%. What is however 100% correct is what the bolded means in plain language: it is now accepted that the Fed will outright monetize all gross US issuance. Let us repeat this sentence for those who just had flashbacks to Adam Fergusson's "When money dies." The Fed is now monetizing practically all net new debt...

...What Bernanke implicitly, and in one week explicitly, has announced is that it now takes $85 billion in monthly Flow injection from the Fed just to keep the market from collapsing." --Tyler Durden

Monday, December 03, 2012

NIELSEN'S LATEST: State of the Media--The Social Media Report 2012

Some interesting snippets from Nielsen's annual recap:

• The top social networks in terms of users...


• The phenomenal growth of mobile...


• And the implications for customer service...


Marketingland has the synopsis.


BRUISED AND BATTERED: Gee, I wonder why we never saw this photo of George Zimmerman before?

Uhm... it's quite, eh, curious that this photograph was never released before.

A color photograph of George Zimmerman with a bloody, swollen nose taken on the night he shot and killed unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin last February was posted on the Internet on Monday by Zimmerman's legal defense team.

...On February 26, Zimmerman, who was a neighborhood watch volunteer, shot and killed 17-year-old Martin who was walking to the home in Sanford where he was staying with his father.

Zimmerman's murder trial is set for June 2013.

Zimmerman claims he shot Martin in self defense during a struggle.

"Does it really show what happened that night to George? Yes," O'Mara said... O'Mara told Reuters that prosecutors in May had given him a grainy black-and-white photocopy of the image which was taken in the back seat of a Sanford police cruiser. O'Mara said he received the digital image from prosecutors after repeated demands by his office and he posted it Monday on Zimmerman's defense website.

Al Sharpton and Touréyonce hardest hit.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.