John Kerry Will Pay Taxes IF They Are Owed

How noble. That’s what you’re supposed to do BEFORE you get caught, Herman (Munster.)

That's a good question: where ARE the apologies

from the left-wing boobs for all this crap?
And while we're at it, how about some apologies for all the false allegations by Frank Rich, Paul Krugman, Charles Blow and numerous left-wing bloggers claiming that health care protesters were violent, and falsely linking the Tea Parties to the Amy Bishop shooting, the IRS Plane Crasher, the Fort Hood attack, and the Pentagon shooter.

And while we're at it, all the left-wing bloggers who called health care protesters thugs and a mob and astroturf and terrorists and Birthers and harassers and manufactured and frightening and vicious and "Karl Rove's wet dream."

And while we're at it, the Democratic Party and left-wing bloggers who have seized on a strategy of painting all political opponents as crazy.
There's more; go take a look.

News Flash For Idiots: Just because it lives in a park

doesn't mean you can screw with it.

What the hell is wrong with these people?

By the way, why the hell is the Dept. of Agriculture

making low-income housing loans?

As to the attempted canonization of Shirley Sherrod,

I'd like to quote some things from her:
You know, I haven’t seen such a mean-spirited people as I’ve seen lately over this issue of health care. Some of the racism we thought was buried. Didn’t it surface? Now, we endured eight years of the Bush’s and we didn’t do the stuff these Republicans are doing because you have a black President.
...
On Andrew Breitbart: I know I’ve gotten past black versus white. He’s probably the person who’s never gotten past it and never attempted to get past it.

I think he would like to get us stuck back in the times of slavery. That’s where I think he would like to see all black people end up again.

COOPER: You think — you think he’s racist?

SHERROD: … I think he’s so vicious. Yes, I do.

And I think that’s why he’s so vicious against a black president, you know. He would go after me. I don’t think it was even the NAACP he was totally after. I think he was after a black president.
...
On Fox News: “They are after a bigger thing, they would love to take us back to where we were many years ago. Back to where black people were looking down, not looking white folks in the face, not being able to compete for a job out there and not be a whole person.”
Reliably hitting the left talking points, despite the facts:
But for all the chatter—some of it from Sherrod herself—that she was done in by Fox News, the network didn’t touch the story until her forced resignation was made public Monday evening, with the exception of brief comments by O’Reilly. After a news meeting Monday afternoon, an email directive was sent to the news staff in which Fox Senior Vice President Michael Clemente said: “Let’s take our time and get the facts straight on this story. Can we get confirmation and comments from Sherrod before going on-air. Let’s make sure we do this right.”
There's been a bunch of people waning to throw Breitbart under the bus; I think that's a BIG mistake. His original point was to show that while the NAALCP is accusing the tea party of racism, the NAALCP hasn't spent any time cleaning their own house. Oh, he's proven that. Now Sherrod has a lot of people, in the name of "See! I'M not one of the nasty ones, I'm a GOOD right-winger!", giving her praise she really doesn't deserve, and she's using it as a club. She and the left can't be allowed to get away with that.

Speaking of the left, and the major media, CNN is just drooling at the thought of shutting down competition AND people who cover stories CNN would rather not be heard:
Anchors Kyra Phillips and John Roberts discussed the "mixed blessing of the internet," and agreed that there should be a crackdown on anonymous bloggers who disparage others on the internet.

"There are so many great things that the internet does and has to offer, but at the same time, Kyra, as you know, there is this dark side," Roberts said. "Imagine what would have happened if we hadn't taken a look at what happened with Shirley Sherrod and plumbed the depths further and found out that what had been posted on the internet was not in fact reflective of what she said."
You'll note that CNN has flat ignored or glossed-over the other things Sherrod said that don't fit their narrative AND ignored or glossed-over the marxist 'rich vs.poor' crap; I doubt they're happy with people pointing that out, either.
"Well what Andrew talked about with me was this idea of a gatekeeper but there are huge first amendment rights that come into play here - freedom of speech and all that. And he said the people who need to be the gatekeepers are the media to check into these stories," said Roberts.
Totally ignoring the fact that if the major media HAD BEEN DOING THE JOB OF REPORTING THE NEWS, ALL OF IT, there wouldn't have been this explosion of alternate media; but they won't want you to think about that.

CNN, there are reasons you were nicknamed the Clinton News Network, and you're carrying on that tradition; you want to shut people like Breitbart and the Geek and me down? Screw you.

When a politician is having a birthday party

and tickets cost between $1,000 and $25,000... fits right in with all the other crap he's pulled, doesn't it?

Of course, you've got all your bought friends
...Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (who's taken $29,000 in Rangel campaign cash) praised the "enormous amount of great public service" he's done and promised to attend.
some of them, anyway, to attend.

I'm wondering: considering Rangel's past, and who's in the White House, can hints of "They're after me because I'm black" be far away?

Yeah, I know, Rangel'd say 'African-American'; he's not from Africa and I'm not politically correct, so screw that.

The San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Department needs to clean house

Apparently starting at the top.
When San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Deputy Darren Murphy responded to a “shots fired” call in April 2008, he decided en route that he was going to make an arrest.

He did far more than that. Murphy and other deputies made an unwarranted entry into a home, and then into a locked gun safe. Murphy's uncensored, darkly disturbing observations and behavior following his Code-3 arrival at the rural home of longtime SLO County resident Matt Hart were picked up by Murphy's and other deputies’ own recorders. Those recordings provide a rare, frighteningly revealing, behind-the-scenes perspective of how one local law enforcement agency views the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and other laws its personnel are sworn to uphold.

Sheriff’s spinner Rob Bryn declined to confirm the identities of any of the deputies appearing or heard in the recordings, or to discuss any aspect of the Hart home invasion. So we've done that for you. (Bryn, ever the public servant, eventually stopped responding to e-mails from a KCCN.tv reporter.)
It's a long video. You get to hear the Sheriff and deputies deciding what bullshit they'll use to justify what they're doing; a perfect example of "I have a badge, and I can do anything I want. And make up any reason I think I need to excuse it."

Interesting piece: Donald Berwick, the Pro-Gun Control Lobby, and Paternalism

So why do the health care and the gun control statists persist in their wrong views despite the evidence to the contrary? As writer Ayn Rand once noted, “the trouble is not in the nonsense they accept, but in what makes them accept it.” In this case, the statists are driven by a fundamentally flawed view of human nature.

Like Berwick, many gun control advocates disdain the rationality of ordinary men. As Jeffrey Snyder observed in “Fighting Back: Crime, Self-Defense, and the Right to Carry a Handgun“:

…[P]roponents of the “Dodge City” argument can only believe that common, ordinary law-abiding citizens are seething cauldrons of homicidal rage, ready to kill to avenge any slight to their dignity, eager to seek out and summarily execute the lawless. Only lack of immediate access to a gun restrains them and prevents the blood from flowing in the streets. They are so morally and mentally deficient that they will readily mistake their permit to carry a weapon in self-defense as a state-sanctioned license to kill at will. … People are basically accidents or crimes waiting to happen.

In contrast,

Supporters of shall-issue licensing laws … [hold] a decidedly different view of their fellow citizens — namely, that they are not creatures driven by impulse and desire but are entitled to the trust properly accorded a moral and rational being capable of exercising judgment and self-control. Supporters of shall-issue licensing laws implicitly believe that a person’s character and actions do not fundamentally change merely because he has a tool at hand with which he can more perfectly and readily act on his fleeting impulses and desires. … [P]ermitting them to carry a firearm (which they already have the de facto ability to do) will not change their character or fundamental nature or their actions.

In other words, both the gun control statists and the health care statists believe that we are fundamentally irrational creatures incapable of managing our lives. Hence, the government must restrict our freedoms for our own good.

The statists’ paternalistic view of human nature also explains their constant double-standards. Men like Berwick believe they are qualified to impose draconian rules over the citizenry, because we cannot make such decisions for ourselves. But as the wiser “leaders,” they need not follow the same rules themselves.

Hence, Berwick has exempted himself from his own Medicare restrictions. Similarly, many of the strongest opponents of gun rights have no qualms about using their political “pull” to enable themselves and their cronies to carry guns for self-protection.

While that particular anonymous is pissing and moaning and calling us names

for being mean to Sherrod, here's a little something more he probably won't have a problem with:

...The cash (settlement) award acknowledges racial discrimination on the part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the years 1981-85. ... New Communities is due to receive approximately $13 million ($8,247,560 for loss of land and $4,241,602 for loss of income; plus $150,000 each to Shirley and Charles for pain and suffering). There may also be an unspecified amount in forgiveness of debt. ... (Pigford vs Vilsack)

hm… 1985… That’s about 24 years ago, isn’t it. Just about the time some other farmer was sent to “one of his own kind” for help. Funny coincidence, that.

$8,247,560 is $1,375 per acre. Don’t know if that’s a lot or a little for that particular area in that era. $4,241,602 is $848,320 per year for the years cited. Which might sound like a lot, but ‘taint so much when the costs of seed, fuel, equipment, water [y’all pay for water in The South?] etc. are factored in. 6,000 acres of flat farming land is a helluva big area to work.

OTOH, $300,000 for “Pain & Suffering” ... For being turned down for a loan? [If that’s the going rate, I know some particularly adventurous fellas who would never need a loan again.] I wonder if the ‘settlement’ involved any job offers… Just askin’ questions, here; not like I’m throwin’ anyone through a plate glass window…
...

In addition, USDA’s Farm Service Agency spent over $166 million on salaries and expenses on this case from 1999-2009, according to agency records.

Members of Congress may approve another $1.15 billion this week to settle cases from what some estimate may be an additional 80,000 African-Americans who have also claimed to have been discriminated against by USDA staff.

Wow. That is a pile of our money. And more to come? That’s a heap of discriminating. Or something.

Already, the number of people who have been paid and are still seeking payment will likely exceed the 26,785 black farmers who were considered to even be operating back in 1997, according to USDA. That’s the year the case initially began as Pigford v. (then Agriculture Secretary) Glickman and sources predicted that, at most, 3,000 might qualify.

That’s a lot of folks. And we thought it was just Shirley, waaay back when, and one [1] white farmer; before she changed her ways and realized that race isn’t the issue, class is.

Clearly we’re no longer talking about the Sherrods and their New Communities farm. 26,000 folks is a a good-size town; not a farming group. 80,000 is a city.

Add that to all the stuff she said in that speech, and she doesn't seem all that damned saintly, does she? Especially when she's accusing people of wanting to bring back slavery and other such idiocy.

I don't want to hear one more damned word from Kerry

on the subject of people 'not paying their fair share'.
Sen. John Kerry, who has repeatedly voted to raise taxes while in Congress, dodged a whopping six-figure state tax bill on his new multimillion-dollar yacht by mooring her in Newport, R.I.
...
But instead of berthing the vessel in Nantucket, where the senator summers with the missus, Teresa Heinz, Isabel’s hailing port is listed as “Newport” on her stern.

Could the reason be that the Ocean State repealed its Boat Sales and Use Tax back in 1993, making the tiny state to the south a haven - like the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and Nassau - for tax-skirting luxury yacht owners?

Cash-strapped Massachusetts still collects a 6.25 percent sales tax and an annual excise tax on yachts. Sources say Isabel sold for something in the neighborhood of $7 million, meaning Kerry saved approximately $437,500 in sales tax and an annual excise tax of about $70,000.
Miserable little hypocritical son of a bitch.

On the newer Journolist(aka Corrupt Journalists On Parade)

revelations, I'm going to simplify this: go to Insty and just start looking for 'journo'; you'll find a lot. I'm just going to list a couple:
That’s the quote that jumps out at me from Journogeddon Day 3: Get Sarah. Not that there’s any question that most of the media had knives out for Palin from the moment she stepped on the national stage, but it’s eye-opening to see it stated so bluntly. Here’s the full quote from today’s Jonathan Strong piece:

Daniel Levy of the Century Foundation noted that Obama’s “non-official campaign” would need to work hard to discredit Palin. “This seems to me like an occasion when the non-official campaign has a big role to play in defining Palin, shaping the terms of the conversation and saying things that the official [Obama] campaign shouldn’t say – very hard-hitting stuff, including some of the things that people have been noting here – scare people about having this woefully inexperienced, no foreign policy/national security/right-wing christia wing-nut a heartbeat away …… bang away at McCain’s age making this unusually significant …”

Which, oddly enough, is precisely what ended up happening. And then the people who noticed the pattern, and wondered if there was some sort of collusion behind the scenes, were called paranoid.

More White House coordination with media:
What he didn't expect, was what had him thinking: Stay or walk out?

The White House Press Corps had been tipped off that there would be something in the President's speech dealing with Hoekstra. Hoekstra got wind of it but had no idea would it would be. He was pretty sure Obama would not endorse him for governor.

...After the speech, everyone grabbed a shovel for the ground breaker and just after the first blade of dirt was tossed, the national and state media swarmed all over Hoekstra.And from Henry Payne at The Michigan View:

The Washington Post's White House reporter Anne Kornblut was there and added this detail on the White House set up:

"Obama welcomed Hoekstra during his opening remarks. At the same moment, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs sent a note to reporters pointing out Hoekstra as a 'great quote opportunity!' in the audience."

It was a coordinated ambush by a classless regime.


People who were(are?) Journolist members who work for Obama.


And a very coordinated attack on a guy who dared to ask questions about a protected organization:
Reading the report, I realized Ackerman and his friends used this same strategy against me, attacked me as a racist, and attempted to put me through the plate-glass window because of my exposés on the supposedly “pro-Israel” lobbying organization J Street.

All of a sudden, at the end of October 2009, a pack of howling bloggers started nipping at my heels, accusing me of racism. I had written for Pajamas Media a fact-filled exposé about J Street’s founders, and about some of the contributors to the J Street PAC who were well-known pro-Saudi, Palestinian, Arab-American, and pro-Iranian activists. I added a few State Department Arabists for good measure. How could this group call itself “pro-Israel?” I asked.

Immediately, a torrent of condemnations hit from some of Israel’s strongest critics and from J Street advocates (I prefer “J Street-Walkers”): Spencer Ackerman, Andrew Sullivan, Daniel Luban, MJ Rosenberg, and Max Fisher. Lara Friedman from Americans for Peace Now also weighed in.
...
After reading the Ackerman strategy to attack those who sought to expose the Obama-Wright connection, it’s very clear the same tactic was deployed to protect J Street. Serious Washington reporters who can smell J Street’s type of fraud from a mile away have avoided investigating the outfit, originally called “the Soros project” in its early life. Several reporters have material on a Turkish donor to J Street’s PAC who was thrown off of the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2008 when they learned he was involved in the production of the anti-American, anti-Semitic film Valley of the Wolves.

Just too much to deal with right now. Personally, I'd rather hit the range than keep reading about this crap. Which, unfortunately, they'd like: I'm not a big name, but the more people who keep talking about this and passing word, the worse it is for them.

Well, censorship of opposing views IS

a very progressive viewpoint, nowadays.

So is lying.

Irish homeowners can now legally use guns to defend themselves

if their homes are attacked under new legislation.

The new home defense bill has moved the balance of rights back to the house owner if his home is broken into "where it should always have been", say top Irish police.

The police association of superintendents and inspectors, the AGSI, stated that “the current situation, which legally demands a house owner retreat from an intruder, was intolerable".
A very fine thing to hear. There are problems, of course:
The Irish Council for Civil Liberties however, stated it would inspect the bill to establish that it was "human-rights compliant".
Which makes me wonder, where were these bozos when the human right of self-defense was being castrated?
Oh, that's right; they don't think that one counts.

More of the wonders of socialized medicine

A gruelling course of chemotherapy caused his weight to plummet to just two stone.

So when five-year-old cancer patient Lewis Mighty put on a few pounds, his mother was overjoyed.

Until, that is, she received a letter from the NHS bluntly telling her that Lewis was overweight.

With astonishing insensitivity, it warned her that he was at risk of cancer - despite being just two pounds over his recommended weight.

The letter suggested Lewis should take up swimming, even though an intravenous drip in his chest to deliver life-saving drugs prevents him from being in water.

One-size-fits-all medicine, using a bullshit BMI-type scale I don't doubt.

She also said Lewis's consultant 'couldn't believe it' and speculated the NHS officials are not using an up-to-date system for calculating children's healthy weight.

The letter comes days after the parents of healthy five-year-olds Gracie Hill and Bailey Russell received similar warnings from NHS Derby City that they were overweight.

Like their parents, Lewis's mother said she had decided not to tell her son about what had happened as she thought it might upset him.

'If they pumped as much money into diagnosing cancer as they do into weighing and measuring the kids, we wouldn't be in this position,' she added.
Ah, but that wouldn't give them this kind of control of your lives...

So the current 'victim of the right' is playing it

for all she figures it's worth. And the media is spinning all kinds of crap. Which brings me to this:
* Why Can't Media Matters Read? : Well, its not just Media Matters but almost every liberal pundit and member of the mainstream media. Who knew that Big Government was like Playboy Magazine. Everyone was so quick to watch the original video posted on Big Government that no one took the time to read the article that Andrew Breitbart wrote. While the article was critical of Ms Sherrod, that was not the focus of the article. The "money paragraph" in Breitbart's piece was

Sherrod’s racist tale is received by the NAACP audience with nodding approval and murmurs of recognition and agreement. Hardly the behavior of the group now holding itself up as the supreme judge of another groups’ racial tolerance.

Breitbart was not going after Sherrod he was going after the NAACP and their politically motivated attack on the Tea Party. His purpose in posting the video was to point out the reaction of the crowd much more than the speech of Sherrod.
I think they very desperately want to ignore and cover up that matter; it doesn't fit with what they want to push at all.


Speaking of racial bullcrap,
Decisions on which car dealerships to close as part of the auto industry bailout -- closures the Obama administration forced on General Motors and Chrysler -- were based in part on race and gender, according to a report by Troubled Asset Relief Program Special Inspector General Neal M. Barofsky.

[D]ealerships were retained because they were recently appointed, were key wholesale parts dealers, or were minority- or woman-owned dealerships. [Emphasis added.]

Thus, to meet numbers forced on them by the Obama administration, General Motors and Chrysler were forced to shutter other, potentially more viable, dealerships. The livelihood of potentially tens of thousands of families was thus eliminated simply because their dealerships were not minority- or woman-owned.
...
But the news media has ignored key elements of Barofsky's report -- elements that are far more damaging, if possible, to Obama. As we reported earlier in the week, a top Obama official, manufacturing czar and "Auto Team" leader Ron Bloom admitted that the dealerships could have been kept open, saving those jobs, "but that doing so would have been inconsistent with the President's mandate for 'shared sacrifice.'"

Got that? Obama wanted 'shared sacrifice' so he screwed thousands of people out of their jobs, closed dealerships... so just how did Obama share this sacrifice, I wonder?
More at Michelle Malkin.


Back to the Journolist professional journalists:
But in many other exchanges, the Journolisters clearly had another, more partisan goal in mind: to formulate the most effective talking points in order to defeat Palin and McCain and help elect Barack Obama president. The tone was more campaign headquarters than newsroom.

Volokh has a post noting the "This makes me not trust you" problems brought up by all this;

he ends it with a message from Henry Farrell, GW professor and blogger at Crooked Timberwho says(in part)
Just to say that your post on journolist seems to me to be seriously misconceived. As a former member of journolist, I can tell you quite honestly that there wasn’t any story coordination, or anything like it. Nor, if you read the Daily Caller article carefully, despite its deliberately misleading headline, do they have any proof of same. Etc. Except that I read this:
Ed Kilgore, managing editor of the Democratic Strategist blog, argued that journalists and others trying to help the Obama campaign should focus on Palin’s beliefs. “The criticism of her really, really needs to be ideological, not just about experience. If we concede she’s a ‘maverick,’ we will have done John McCain an enormous service. And let’s don’t concede the claim that [Hillary Clinton] supporters are likely to be very attracted to her,” Kilgore said.

and
Mother Jones’s Stein loved the idea. “That’s excellent! If enough people – people on this list? – write that the pick is sexist, you’ll have the networks debating it for days. And that negates the SINGLE thing Palin brings to the ticket,” he wrote.

and the Journolist clowns referring to themselves as 'the unofficial Obama Campaign', and that pretty much says Mr. Farrell is full of crap.

This Journolist crap is just amazing

The list members and apologists keep saying "Hey, this was nothing but 'people bitching about their jobs' stuff, it doesn't mean anything" while we read about them
Planning to label people 'racist' just to try to shut them up,
Coordinating to help get Obama elected,
Talking about ways to try to get Fox News off the air
and so on. Insty has some of the newer links touching on all this.

It's been pointed out that this has some of the same effect as the CRU e-mails: it gives reason, if you didn't have it before, to look on everything from these people with suspicion. Thanks, Journolisters and professional journalists, you've done the same thing for your 'profession' that the release of the CRU mails and AGW hysteria and lying has done for science. Congratulations.

Among the reasons I think a lot of enviroweenies should be horsewhipped

is idiocy like this.
Monsanto Company, the Missouri-based biotechnology firm, has donated seeds to Haiti to help kickstart food production in the earthquake-ravaged country. In so doing, they’ve stirred up the kind of controversy that seems to follow the company. The 475-ton donation has sparked a storm of protest not only in Haiti but also in the United States. A coalition of Haitian peasant groups organized a protest march in June and have vowed to burn the donated seed.
But wait! It gets even better!!
This is not Monsanto's first rodeo, as we Missourians would say, so the company has made it clear that no genetically modified seeds were included in the donation. This delicacy did not impress the marchers, who protested under banners of "Down with GMO and hybrid seeds." Genetically modified seeds have long been controversial, but it's a surprise to find that hybridization, around since Gregor Mendel's time in the 1800s, can also inspire protest marches. Somehow, it doesn't seem obvious that hybrid broccoli seeds are the 82nd Airborne of cultural imperialism.
The modification of plants brought us God-knows how many varieties of crops long before people in labs started working on it; it used to be called 'selective breeding': save the seeds from the plants that produced more/had bigger seeds or fruits/handled the weather better and plant those next time(check out how many varieties of corn the mesoamericans bred, including landraces suited to new areas). But that's somehow become Eville Frankenfoods to these idiots.
Doudou Pierre, whose title is the "national coordinating committee member for the National Haitian Network for Food Sovereignty and Food Security," explains the protests this way: "We're for seeds that have never been touched by multinationals." The idea of local seed is driving the protests, as writer Beverly Bell explains: “Haitian social movements’ concern is not just about the dangers of the chemicals and the possibility of future GMOs imports. They claim that the future of Haiti depends on local production with local food for local consumption, in what is called food sovereignty."
Hey, Doudou(and isn't that just SUCH an appropriate name for this shithead?),
A: The first thing is to feed the hungry people, and
B: THEY'VE GOT TO HAVE SOMETHING TO PLANT BEFORE THEY CAN EVEN ATTEMPT YOUR IDIOT FOOD SOVEREIGNTY!
Ahem.

One in four Haitians is hungry and, even before the earthquake, the average caloric intake in the country was far below United Nations-recommended levels. But that, of course, is of no consequence when compared to the importance of planting seeds untouched by multinational hands. Better starvation than accepting gifts from a company as evil as Monsanto.
At least according to the enviroweenies, who aren't starving in Haiti but are quite willing to use starving people to push their idiot ideas.
Not to worry, as a coalition of church groups in the United States is providing 13,300 machetes and 9,200 hoes for the Haitian peasants. The groups are also supplying local and organic seeds, as many Haitian farmers are too poor to purchase seeds of any kind, even local and organic seeds. By all means, protect the “sovereignty” and integrity of the Haitian food system: hoes, machetes, and local and organic seeds have done such a good job of feeding Haitians in the past.
And lets not look at the fact that those seeds are- even if never touched by a minion of the Eville Corporations- the products of hybridization(but it didn't involve a lab in the recent past, so that doesn't count anyway, right?)
The groups organizing against the gift are quite certain that Haitian farmers can't possibly be trained to handle the seeds safely. That's the worst sort of condescension; the seed treatments are the same as those used widely and safely for decades in the United States. There’s no reason Haitian farmers couldn’t use them as well.
Yeah, those third-world peasants just aren't smart enough to learn things like that. Ignore that those who get a chance tend to do very well in places like the US; we're a horrible country so that doesn't count, either. "Just shut up and let us give direction to the lesser beings!" seems to be the attitude.
Critics also worry that the hybrid seeds won't grow without fertilizer and chemicals, which the peasant farmers can't afford. Nothing could be further from the truth. Hybrid seeds will increase yields over open-pollinated seeds, whether purchased fertilizer is applied or not. This is why U.S. farmers adopted hybrids a generation before the widespread availability of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Having said that, an increase in the use of purchased fertilizers by Haitian agriculture would increase output. When people are starving, that is a worthwhile goal.
Now, there he goes confusing the Progressive Ideal by throwing in inconvenient facts!

The whole piece is pretty damned depressing. And makes you want to plant people like Ed Begley as fertilizer for helping keep this garbage going. If these bastards really cared about Haiti, they'd help them get a crop in with the donated seed, and- since it's so damned important to them- get the heirloom seeds all together for the next growing season. But no, that's not good enough, is it? Better people go hungry than use that nasty hybrid seed.


Yes, there are problems with some companies and some patented varieties; that can be dealt with. So can hunger when greenie idiots and progressives(bit of redundancy there) don't prevent it.

A little more history comes out about Sherrod,

which may explain why Obama & Co. were so quick to throw her under the bus.

Insty pointed to something about the Journolist mess

that I'd not considered:
The real problem with JournoList is that much of it consisted of exchanges among people who worked for institutions about how to best hijack their employers for the cause of Progressivism. Thus, the J-List discussion revealed yesterday in the Daily Caller was about how the group could get their media organizations to play down the Reverend Wright affair and help elect Barack Obama.

Were I an editor of one of these institutions, I would instantly fire any employee who participated in this gross violation of his/her duty. For example, the J-List included Washington Post reporters, and the idea that the paper has been turned into a propaganda organ is a big reason it is bleeding readers and influence.

Broward County SO gets a kick in the ass

from the judge:
“Just as a kind of a query, what legal authority does the sheriff or anybody have to walk in to someone’s home and take property?” [Broward Circuit Judge Dale Ross] said. “Don’t we call that, in the business, stealing?”

[Mila Schwartzreich, the lawyer representing the Broward Sheriff’s Office] said state statute allowed the taking of property when there is a breach of the peace, which Ross again questioned.

“Breach of the peace was when Mr. Weinstein threatened suicide,” Schwartzreich said.

Ross did not seem satisfied.

“What happens is Mr. Policeman shows up at your house and routinely confiscates property,” Ross said. He called the sheriff’s deputies’ actions “well intended,” but added: “You don’t really have authority to take them. And now, lo and behold, they won’t give ‘em back.”

The court is the only entity that can inquire into Weinstein’s mental fitness, he said....
Nice to have the judge tell the LE involved "Just because you have a badge doesn't mean you can make up your own laws."

Original post on this here.

Commenter on the Volokh post points out "Fine, say they had the emergency authority to take his guns and have him checked out: once that was done and the doctor cleared him, they had no damned authority to keep his guns, and yet they claimed "We can't give them back until you get a court order(my wording)."

Control of your health care is like gun control: it's reall all about

control.
Starting Jan. 1, 2012, Form 1099s will become a means of reporting to the Internal Revenue Service the purchases of all goods and services by small businesses and self-employed people that exceed $600 during a calendar year. Precious metals such as coins and bullion fall into this category and coin dealers have been among those most rankled by the change.
...
Pat Heller, who owns Liberty Coin Service in Lansing, Mich., deals with around 1,000 customers every week. Many are individuals looking to protect wealth in an uncertain economy, he said, while others are dealers like him.

With spot market prices for gold at nearly $1,200 an ounce, Heller estimates that he'll be filling out between 10,000 and 20,000 tax forms per year after the new law takes effect.

"I'll have to hire two full-time people just to track all this stuff, which cuts into my profitability," he said.
They don't care if you're profitable; they just care how much they can squeeze out of you before you run dry.

One more piece of bullshit appearing out of the Obamacare Cloud.

Ok, so it's a Beretta commercial;

still some good shooting

Thanks to Keith for the pointer

Two toons, just because I like them

(thanks to Theo)
and it's working!

Among the other Journolist revelations

is the level of hate a lot of these reporters have:
In a post to the list-serv Journolist, an online meeting place for liberal journalists, Spitz wrote that she would “Laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out” as Limbaugh writhed in torment.

In boasting that she would gleefully watch a man die in front of her eyes, Spitz seemed to shock even herself. “I never knew I had this much hate in me,” she wrote. “But he deserves it.”
There's a nice progressive viewpoint for you: if you can't jail someone for saying things you don't like, you can at least enjoy their death.

Speaking of nice progressives,
“I am genuinely scared” of Fox, wrote Guardian columnist Daniel Davies, because it “shows you that a genuinely shameless and unethical media organisation *cannot* be controlled by any form of peer pressure or self-regulation, and nor can it be successfully cold-shouldered or ostracised. In order to have even a semblance of control, you need a tough legal framework.”
Yeah, because these clowns want someone having a 'semblance of control' over- oh, wait, not over themselves, only over media they don't like. Yeah. You know, proper censorship.

I had a comment by brave Anonymous

on my previous post on Ben Jealous & Co. playing victim. I'll add this to the response:
Go to Instapundit and read this post, including these two parts:
The portions of the tape of interest to Breitbart are those in which members of the NAACP laugh at and approve of Sherrod’s initial impulse to provide inferior service to a white farmer. These NAACP members have been caught on tape condoning racism by a government official and demonstrating their own racism. Meanwhile, the NAACP condemns the Tea Party for what appears to be phantom racism.”
and

Sitting here catching up and into my second glass of wine, I’ll second C.J. Burch’s take on the l’affair Breitbart.

So, we’re to believe that the NAACP somehow forgot the story of history’s single example of a confessed African-American racist and her redemption in their rush to judgment?

Incongruous with my wine it may be, but, pass the popcorn.

The NAACP and their obedient little hacks in the major media are trying very hard to spin this story to make people forget about those things; and we're going to keep yelling to make sure that doesn't happen.

Anonymous, by your 'Breitbart should be jailed' crap you betray yourself as one more useful idiot(at best) or instigator of this garbage; in either case, screw you. And the bigoted progressive little pony you rode in on.

Added: Gateway has a bit more on the bullcrap from Jealous:

We are appalled by her actions, just as we are with abuses of power against farmers of color and female farmers.

Her actions were shameful. While she went on to explain in the story that she ultimately realized her mistake, as well as the common predicament of working people of all races, she gave no indication she had attempted to right the wrong she had done to this man.

The reaction from many in the audience is disturbing. We will be looking into the behavior of NAACP representatives at this local event and take any appropriate action.

We thank those who brought this to our national office’s attention…

But, President Jealous forgot to mention one thing.
He was in the audience. If you listen to the Sherrod’s speech at Annual NAACP Freedom Fund Dinner in Georgia in March you’ll here her thank her guests and…
“The President who is with us tonight.”

Well the president certainly didn’t get up and lecture the audience about their disturbing reaction to the speech, did he? If President Jealous is going to investigate the disgusting audience reaction at this NAACP event he may want to start by looking in a mirror.

And this from Dan Riehl:
In both the full video and a 3 minute excerpt I produced, Sherrod labels the entire Republican Party racist, claiming they simply can't stand to see a black man in the White House. She also characterizes totally legitimate political opposition to ObamaCare from average citizens as mean and ultimately racist in the end. Had some previous Bush appointee called the Democrat Party a bunch of race-baiting hucksters, or poverty pimps - putting black citizens in that camp, too - there is no way said official would be able to keep their position. Yet, that is precisely what Sherrod did, only it was Republicans and her political opponents she so openly smeared.

Added: ref the "Breitbart edited it!" claim,
...So we asked Andrew Breitbart, the founder of Big Government, why he hasn't posted the full video.

"I don't have it," Breitbart told TPMmuckraker in an interview. Breitbart said his source sent him just the edited clips at first, but is in the process of sending the full video.

Breitbart said he'll post the full video, if he can get permission from the video production company who filmed it for a local NAACP chapter. He also maintained that he didn't edit the clip and that it was sent to him already edited.

Ben Jealous and the NAACP is so full of crap

we could stand them in the fields to fertilize the crop:
When this statement was released it seemed very important , after all Ms. Sherrod was speaking at an NAACP function, and while Big Government only had access to the video they released, the NAACP had access to the entire video. Certainty they must have seen the entire video before they condemned Shirley Sherrod. Well Certainly not!

As soon as Ms Sherrod blasted the NAACP for not talking to her before bashing her the NAACP withdrew their statement. That’s when Ben Jealous then called Sherrod to find out her side of the story.

Following their conversation NAACP President Jealous released the following statement

“With regard to the initial media coverage of the resignation of USDA official Shirley Sherrod, we have come to the conclusion we were snookered by Fox News and Tea Party Activist Andrew Breitbart into believing she had harmed white farmers because of racial bias,” said Jealous. “Having reviewed the full tape, spoken to Ms. Sherrod, and most importantly heard the testimony of the white farmers mentioned in this story, we now believe the organization that edited the documents did so with the intention of deceiving millions of Americans.”

“The fact is Ms. Sherrod did help the white farmers mentioned in her speech,” he continued. “They personally credit her with helping to save their family farm.”

Snookered??? How could they be snookered, Shirley Sherrod spoke at an NAACP event. Mr. Jealous had access to the entire tape but he never bothered to look at it before he blasted Ms Sherrod.

Sorry Mr. Jealous, but you can’t be snookered when you hold all of the evidence. And you are still missing a major part of the video its not necessarily about Shirley Sherrod. Watch the video again, listen for the approval of the crowd as she talked disparagingly about the white farmer and how she sent him to one of his own for help. You see, Ms Sherrod’s story doesn’t change the fact that the NAACP audience seemed to have approved of her actions when she talked about not helping the white farmer.

That's what first struck me about this "We wuz robbed!" bullshit: She spoke at a NAACP event! THEY WERE THERE LISTENING and had the ENTIRE VIDEO; so how the hell could they be 'fooled' into not knowing what all she said?

And there's another slight problem: her talking about screwing over this farmer('sending him to one of his own kind', etc.) and the audience speaking approvingly; was THAT a 'We were fooled!" also, Jealous, you crooked bastard?

We're a step closer to the Slammers

The U.S. Navy has used a a laser weapon to shoot down four unmanned aerial vehicles in a test that rings up memories of Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" missile defense shield in the 1980s.
There's no specifics- type of laser, wattage, how long it was actually on the drone- but shooting one down is still a step forward. Especially added to this:
The tests were overseen by the Defense Ministry, the Israeli Air Force and the Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd. which developed the Iron Dome, slated to become operational and deployed along the Gaza border in the coming weeks.

The missile barrages that the system succeeded in intercepting included a number of rockets that mimicked Kassam and longer-range Grad-model Katyusha rockets that are known to be in Hamas’s arsenal.


Couple of days ago Billy Beck pointed out 'this is not good'; well, it's even not gooder now:
Oakland police have their hands full. In addition to a shootout on the freeway and a police-involved shooting at a BART station, officers are now on the hunt for an apparent sniper trying to take out officers.

"They hear gunshots and can feel the bullets pass by them," police spokesman Officer Jeff Thomason said. "They can hear them whizzing by."


Foreign major media seems to be just as ball-less and PC-at-any-cost as most of ours. Even as the enemy is slowly taking over, they just can't make themselves name the enemy. Found through this post at Chicago Boys.


Flying Pig!


Snork... hehehehehe...
If you wish to go mock a fruitcake at PETA, go here. Hell, if you wish to mock a PETA fruitcake you can stay right here and do it! I’d love to hear your best “I screwed with a PETA fruitcake by ________” essays!


I can eat cake any day. This is the only time I can blow one up.
Well, Happy Birthday(delayed), lass.


Yeah, it's just friggin' awful how bad the palisimians in Gaza have it; how do they survive?


And finally,
A: Officer dumbass shouldn't be aiming a weapon at someone so carelessly, and
B: KEEP YOUR DAMNED FINGER OFF THE TRIGGER, DUMBASS!

Ok, Oliver, you first: turn over ALL your wealth

and possessions to the government so they can 'properly' distribute it. Then you can go to hell; this is not the socialist hellhole-in-the-making of Venezuela that you're so fond of.

And, by the way, if socialist Venezuela under that bozo Chavez is so damned wonderful, why do you live here?

Sen. Lindsay Graham(Treacherous RINO)

is at least consistent: you can't trust him, and he'll suck up to whoever he thinks can do him the most good. Voters excepted, of course.

Insty notes a slight problem with coyotes

some in places they didn't live in the past. And points to this post, where Williamson weaves together the attitudes of liberal/progressive types towards dealing with wild animals and about guns. And home schooling, and other signs of "I want the government out of my life as much as possible." You know, the things that horrify them. He ends with this:
Just as state schooling is not about education, but about the state, gun control is not about guns: It’s about control. A citizen who can fend for himself when the predators come or the schools fail is less inclined to look to the state for sustenance and oversight in other areas of life. To progressives, that’s an invitation to anarchy. To the men who wrote the Second Amendment, it was a condition of citizenship in a free republic. It’s what free men did, and do.

Well, well, Shirley Sherrod, one of the NAACP's favorite bigots,

has a rather interesting past. And got a lot of taxpayer money. And there are some questions that need to be asked.

• Was Ms. Sherrod's USDA appointment an unspoken condition of her organization's settlement?
• How much "debt forgiveness" is involved in USDA's settlement with New Communities?
• Why were the Sherrods so deserving of a combined $300,000 in "pain and suffering" payments -- amounts that far exceed the average payout thus far to everyone else? ($1.15 billion divided by 16,000 is about $72,000)?
• Given that New Communities wound down its operations so long ago (it appears that this occurred sometime during the late 1980s), what is really being done with that $13 million in settlement money?

Yeah, I think there ought to be answers, from USDA and from the Sherrods.

It should also be noted she's now blaming Fox News and the tea party for her not having that job anymore; couldn't POSSIBLY be because of her own words and actions(of course); it's all those evil racist white people!

Just a couple of things this morning

other than the Journalist scumbaggery; that deserved A Post Of Its Own. First, Think Progress is still faking racist bullshit about the tea party.


Second, the story Bellesiles was pushing? Yeah, it was a 'story', all right. But all the blame is placed on the student. I'm tempted to say 'of course'. Not like a academic with a past of lying and faking information would have had anything to do with knowingly spreading a false story...

Maybe I'm being too hard on him, maybe he just didn't check anything before repeating the story. But with his record, I don't trust him.


More on the Black Panther voter intimidation case. Please note that the people corroborating what Adams said have done so under oath; further note that the DOJ didn't want them to testify. Doesn't say much for the integrity at Holder's department.


More politically correct racism. Think the Journolist clowns and the other major media will report it?


That's it for now. Busy stuff to do, and I did something to my hand the other day and typing isn't a lot of fun right now.

A fine example of why we SHOULD NOT trust much of our major media:

because they're bigots and manipulate the 'news' to suit their own views.
Others went further. According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.

In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”
...
Thomas Schaller, a columnist for the Baltimore Sun as well as a political science professor, upped the ante from there. In a post with the subject header, “why don’t we use the power of this list to do something about the debate?” Schaller proposed coordinating a “smart statement expressing disgust” at the questions Gibson and Stephanopoulos had posed to Obama.

“It would create quite a stir, I bet, and be a warning against future behavior of the sort,” Schaller wrote.

Tomasky approved. “YES. A thousand times yes,” he exclaimed.
...
Jeremiah Wright was back in the news after making a series of media appearances. At the National Press Club, Wright claimed Obama had only repudiated his beliefs for “political reasons.” Wright also reiterated his charge that the U.S. federal government had created AIDS as a means of committing genocide against African Americans.

It was another crisis, and members of Journolist again rose to help Obama.

Chris Hayes of the Nation posted on April 29, 2008, urging his colleagues to ignore Wright. Hayes directed his message to “particularly those in the ostensible mainstream media” who were members of the list.

And take real note of this piece of crap:
Michael Tomasky, a writer for the Guardian, also tried to rally his fellow members of Journolist: “Listen folks–in my opinion, we all have to do what we can to kill ABC and this idiocy in whatever venues we have. This isn’t about defending Obama. This is about how the [mainstream media] kills any chance of discourse that actually serves the people.”
Got that? Somebody actually had the nerve to ask Obama questions about Wright, that that 'is not discourse that actually serves the people'. Because it makes Obama look bad, and the Anointed Journalists don't like it.

This is the Journolist bunch. Who tell us they're just journalists doing their job, etc. Except their damned job is NOT supposed to involved planning to trash people for daring to ask questions the Anointed Journalists don't like; their job is NOT supposed to be suppressing news just because they like the candidate the news causes problems for.

So the question isn't "Why don't you trust us?", it's "Why SHOULD we trust you and what you 'report'?"

Have to point to a couple of things before I hit the shower

First, the bigot at USDA has resigned:
The Agriculture Department announced Monday, shortly after FoxNews.com published its initial report on the video, that Sherrod had resigned.
I'm guessing the chances of any punitive action are about zero. Unless, of course, some honky farmers who realize they were screwed over file a suit. Wouldn't that be interesting?

Another thing that pisses me off: she makes a big deal in the video of What he didn’t know while he was taking all that time trying to show me he was superior to me was I was trying to decide just how much help I was going to give him,” she said. Assuming he actually did ANYTHING, I wonder if it occurred to her that he was trying to buck himself up? Having to come to them for help, lot of farmers I've known would be galled mightily by having to. Of course, to someone like Sherrod ANYTHING from a white guy would be a sign of racism...

And Breitbart says he has more video coming of similar racist bullshit from/in the NAACP.


Second, remember the union thug slapping at a tea party protester?
Yup. Mike Griffing was CNA’s 2009 Director of Collective Bargaining, with a salary of just under $164K. I was not aware that you could make this kind of money by going to anti-Whitman rallies and sneak-attacking people who have had the effrontery to put you and your group on the public record! Clearly we all picked the wrong career path.


Last, I'm very much with Insty on the "You can't record US!" crap from LE:
“So then the question is, ‘Are the words of a police officer spoken on duty, in uniform, in public a ‘private conversation.’ And every court that has ever considered that question has said that they are not.” Police have no expectation of privacy. They certainly don’t recognize any such in the rest of us. And prosecutors who bring such charges should lose their jobs, and maybe their law licenses. Law enforcement officials who are afraid of public accountability do not deserve their offices, or our respect or deference. Act like a thug, expect to be thought of as a thug.
About sums it up.

In some of the latest corrupt scientist globular warmering news,

Yeah, that inquiry was really thorough and fair, wasn't it?
Previously I have said this about the lack of integrity regarding the recent Climategate investigations:

The investigations thus far are much like having a trial with judge, jury, reporters, spectators, and defendant, but no plaintiff. The plaintiff is locked outside the courtroom sitting in the hall hollering and hoping the jury hears some of what he has to say. Is it any wonder the verdicts keep coming up “not guilty”?

Now from Bishop Hill we learn that it appears that the Oxburgh investigation let Dr. Phil Jones endorse what evidence (papers he’s published) to review. So let me amend what I said above:

The investigations thus far are much like having a trial with judge, jury, reporters, spectators, and defendant, but no plaintiff. The plaintiff is locked outside the courtroom sitting in the hall hollering and hoping the jury hears some of what he has to say. And, to add insult to injury, when you let the accused endorse which pieces of evidence might be a “fair sample”, is it any wonder the verdicts keep coming up “not guilty”?

This entire mess is snowballing again with UEA, CRU, and Dr. Jones right at the center again.
I'll repeat what I said before: this is a disgrace not only because of the trashing of the scientific method with the aim of getting the preferred conclusion, but because- when you have not only the original fraud but the current 'pretend to investigate' bullcrap- you're giving people reason to doubt the science overall. Why trust scientists when they'll not only twist things this way, but other scientists will cover for them with crap like this?

Add this to the "I don't want to hear one damned word about other people being racist

from the dirtbags in the NAACP:
Breitbart delivers on that promise today at Big Government, showing USDA official Shirley Sherrod explain to an appreciative NAACP audience in July 2009 how she deliberately withheld information from a white farmer in Georgia trying to save his land and his business:


In the first video, Sherrod describes how she racially discriminates against a white farmer. She describes how she is torn over how much she will choose to help him. And, she admits that she doesn’t do everything she can for him, because he is white. Eventually, her basic humanity informs that this white man is poor and needs help. But she decides that he should get help from “one of his own kind”. She refers him to a white lawyer.
Miserable, bigoted little hypocrites. But WE need to deal with- oh, hell, never mind, you already know.

I think I'll start off with a gun bigot

On the other hand, Henigan’s idea of justice for law-abiding gun owners is the presumption of guilt until they prove innocence by getting investigated by police prior to buying guns (licensing) and then keeping tabs on the suspected gun owner/criminal by maintaining a list of guns owned (registration).

Henigan considers all this “reasonable.”
followed by this:
Henigan also declared that it’s “absolutely false” that the Brady Campaign is trying to take away Americans’ right to own guns. But the following data indicate it’s his assertion that’s “absolutely false.”
...
Beginning in 2001, the Brady Campaign published annual “report cards” grading states on their gun control laws. Brady’s “A” states had the most gun control, while “F” states had the least.

After collating Brady grades with the BRFSS data, interesting correlations appear:

* Brady’s favorite (A) states average the lowest gun ownership rates.
* Brady’s “worst” (F) states average the highest gun ownership.
* As grades drop from A to F, gun ownership consistently rises.

Brady’s “A” states were the only group with decreasing gun ownership rates from 2001 to 2002, indicating that gun control laws may make it harder and/or more expensive for law-abiding citizens to purchase firearms: if people either don’t bother or move to gun-friendly states seeking more liberal gun rights, ownership rates decline over time.

Despite Henigan’s denial, his “reasonable gun restrictions” correlate with reduced gun ownership.
No surprise to most of us.


Another of the wonders that keep coming out of the Obamacare bill:
So let’s recap here. Post contributor Benny Kass promises to “debunk” the “rumors” that “the health-care legislation Congress passed this year will impose a sales tax on all real estate sales.” And he concludes, “In the meantime, don’t believe the rumors.” But in fact the health-care law did include a new tax on real estate profits. It’s not exactly a sales tax, and it won’t apply to most people. But the only real inaccuracy in the “rumors” that he said “are flying” was the word “all.” It’s only a 3.8 percent tax on some real estate sales, no doubt only a minority of sales, though perhaps affecting more readers of the Washington Post Real Estate section than people in less-affluent regions where housing prices didn’t soar and then remain high. Frankly, I’ve seen more effective debunkings.


It needs to be pointed out once again just what a pile of crap the Democrats shoved through with Obamacare:
When Congress required most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty, Democrats denied that they were creating a new tax. But in court, the Obama administration and its allies now defend the requirement as an exercise of the government’s “power to lay and collect taxes.”

And that power, they say, is even more sweeping than the federal power to regulate interstate commerce.

Administration officials say the tax argument is a linchpin of their legal case in defense of the health care overhaul and its individual mandate, now being challenged in court by more than 20 states and several private organizations.


I do not think that the NAACP was out of order in asking the Tea Party movement to separate itself from the racists in its midst, but the famous civil rights organization ought to start by following the same suggestion.
Tell you what, Mr. Crouch: give me some facts about 'the racists in its midst' that are not based on lies, or flatly manufactured by leftists. And lots of slanders, can't forget slander from the NAACP and friends. To borrow a bit,
As there racists in the Tea Party? I assure you there are as many racists in the Tea Party as there are at Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Burger King, Harvard University, your local car wash and the NAACP. Any organization of any size will attract individuals with fringe, even radical beliefs. The measure of the culture and character of an organization is revealed after those radical elements are exposed, and the organization has to decide how to deal with those radicals.

The NAACP refuses to discipline their radicals. The Tea Party expels them.


(thanks to Theo for the 'toon)


Notes on how Trent Lott and a bunch of other GOP brass need a kick in the ass:
And what might that worry be? Why, that Tea Party backed Senate GOP candidates like Rand Paul in Kentucky, Ken Buck in Colorado, and Sharron Angle in Nevada won't roll over and do what they are told by their betters in the congressional GOP leadership if they get to the nation's capitol.

In other words, they might actually come to D.C. determined to do exactly what voters sent them here to do, which is to shake this place to its foundations in the campaign to restore and reinvigorate the American republic.


Bob Schieffer is either an incompetent fool, or a liar. A bit more:
Here’s Schieffer trying to explain. Video by way of Newsbusters:

That reminds me of Charlie Gibson saying he didn’t report the ACORN scandal because he didn’t know about it.


When I asked them why, they told me: “We stopped you for having out-of-country plates. We have a new policy of pulling over random vehicles with US plates in order to ensure that the individual has all the necessary papers to be in the country legally."
Y'know, there are places in Mexico I'd like to see, but I refuse to put money in that country's pockets while they demand free entry here while closing their borders to anyone who doesn't meet approval.

Crap. I just discovered my shopping list. And all the stuff I needed that I don't have because I lost the list. To the store I go.

A little further on that radiator

in case you aren't familiar with this and run into it; people like Og and Dick can skip as I'm sure they read my original note and said something like "You didn't know that? Dumbass."

I mentioned the overflow tank also acts as the filler location; the cap holds pressure. Take it off, open the drain cock on the bottom of the radiator and let it go. Then you have to use something like a siphon or vacuum pump to suck all the old coolant out of the tank(I used the vacuum pump I have for bleeding brakes and soaking epoxy into stuff).

When it's completely drained, close the drain, mix your coolant and water 50/50 and fill the overflow tank(is it still that, really?), then start the engine. It slowly sucked the coolant into the system, I just kept adding solution until it stopped drawing. I'll check the tank again after driving it a while and top off if needed.

Couple of notes: I checked a Ford forum looking for information when I first found no cap, which is where I found 'fill the tank and start the engine'. One guy there said his would not suck the solution in, the consensus was that his thermostat may not be working; no idea. He took his to a shop, and they stuck a vacuum hose onto one of the hoses going to the tank and sucked the coolant in that way.

Second, it occurred to me as I watched the stuff flow that you could, after things have stopped draining, start the motor for a minute so any old coolant still in the system would be pumped to the radiator to drain; if there was any, it wasn't much, so I didn't worry about it. Doing it again, I'd give it a try.

I look around and what do I find?

Another piece of liberal misogyny, but don't worry: they're crapping all over a 'proper' bad woman, so it's ok.
Although the prospect of Meryl Streep playing Margaret Thatcher may have pleased some admirers of the Conservative former prime minister, her children have been horrified to discover more about the film.

Mandrake hears that the screenplay of The Iron Lady depicts Baroness Thatcher as an elderly dementia-sufferer looking back on her career with sadness. She is shown talking to herself and unaware that her husband, Sir Denis Thatcher, has died.
The same people who claim conservatives dislike women, etc., just can't wait to piss all over a woman who didn't fit into a proper liberal, progressive box. Streep, you're a bitch. In a very bad way.


I find that youths of the Religion of Submission are once again rioting and burning in France because a RoS armed robber was killed by police.
Muslim youths torched 50-60 cars, attacked a train and fired on police with automatic weapons following the death of a young Muslim man who robbed a casino.
...
Trams and buses were also held up by gangs brandishing baseball bats and bars, and a service station was looted.


I find another of the wonderful side effects of Obamacare is coming out:
The plans, being tested in places like San Diego, New York and Chicago, are likely to appeal especially to small businesses that already provide insurance to their employees, but are concerned about the ever-spiraling cost of coverage.

But large employers, as well, are starting to show some interest, and insurers and consultants expect that, over time, businesses of all sizes will gravitate toward these plans in an effort to cut costs.

The tradeoff, they say, is that more Americans will be asked to pay higher prices for the privilege of choosing or keeping their own doctors if they are outside the new networks. That could come as a surprise many who remember the repeated assurances from President Obama and other officials that consumers would retain variety of health-care choices.
Yeah, you'll be able to keep your doctor, your plan. If you can afford it. If they're still around.


A little more turns up on Obama's latest appointed communist:
But before we get to that, it’s important to flesh out what Berwick has in mind when he talks about rationing. His praise of NICE is significant. The apparatchiks of that soulless health care bureaucracy have, quite literally, calculated how much money a single year of the average Brit’s life is worth (about $45,000). And if a patient needs treatment or drugs that exceed that amount, he’s out of luck. Consequently, the British news media are full of stories like those of Jack Rosser and Albert Baxter, both of whom were denied cancer drugs. The former is only alive today because an American benefactor came to his rescue. The latter killed himself when informed that he would not receive treatment.

Are the views of Obama’s new CMS administrator really so extreme that he actually approves of a health care system that rations care so callously? Absolutely. In fact, the word “approve” is something of an understatement. Berwick has publicly stated that he loves it, a sentiment that he has also put in writing: “I am romantic about the National Health Service; I love it.” Even worse, he goes on to say that his affection for Great Britain’s socialized medical system is inspired by his loathing for its American counterpart: “All I need to do to rediscover the romance is to look at health care in my own country.” This doesn’t leave much doubt about where Berwick stands on rationing and what sort of rationing he favors.
...
As CEO of this enterprise, Dr. Berwick earned a cool $2.3 million in 2008. But, more to the point, IHI will provide him with private health care coverage during his declining years: “The Institute created a postretirement health benefit plan for its chief executive officer (CEO). It provides the CEO and his spouse medical insurance from retirement until death.”

In other words, Dr. Berwick has made sure that he and his wife will never be subjected to the tender mercies of Medicare, the health care program for seniors over which he now has control. Thus, even after he has implemented rationing programs modeled after those of NICE, he won’t have to worry about his wife suffering for lack of drugs deemed too pricey by some obscure comparative effectiveness calculation.


I find that the NAACP has no problem with racism and bigotry; as long as it's racism and bigotry they approve of:
"Any Negro leader who is against these brothers for what they have done... I pray to the almighty God that from this night forward...there will be war on every 'so-called negro' that don't want to u-nite for the benefit of all of our people."


I find(thanks to Kevin) that the Geek has a piece you should read, which includes(stealing the part Kevin quoted):
A generation before the American Revolution, the English philosopher John Locke dug a deep well from which the waters of liberty are drawn, laying out the manner in which explicit, finite, enumerated Powers can be delegated by the People to government, while reserving all other prerogatives to themselves.

A generation later, the French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau poisoned, pissed and shat into that well, restating the social compact with key bits sabotaged to support collectivism and the oppression of the individual by the allegedly infallible democratic will of the people.

The refutation of this point is a simple question: "Is there any process of democracy that will justly allow you to rape another against their will?"

If the answer is no, then there are limits to what the democratic will of the people can justly enable, and the remainder of the argument is about where those limits are, and by what process/axiom/principle they are discovered or established.

If the answer is yes, I don't want to know you, it'd be best for you never to encounter me.

It's been a long, hot, busy day; I need a shower and bed. I will note that I discovered something this afternoon: Son's unit is rotating back to the US soon, and I'm going to drive his truck and some of his & the wife's stored stuff to them. In preparation I've been going over things and found it's been long enough that the coolant needed to be changed. So I found a gallon of suitable stuff(two, counting the water) and opened the hood and discovered the radiator on his truck has no cap. At all. It uses the overflow tank as both that and the filler. I just stood there for a minute going "Whiskey tango FOXTROT?"

It made changing the stuff interesting.

To the GOP leadership and arrogant politicians: you keep crapping on us

and we'll make you you go looking for work, however long it takes.
Erick Erickson blogged this Washington Post item last night. His post contains an anecdote about a Tea Party favorite GOP politician mocking Tea Partiers after attending a TP rally. That happened later, while sitting in the Capitol Club. I've had off the record conversations on the topic with Hill Republicans. It's not surprising to hear one say something akin to, well, you know those bloggers, they're not very bright people, a bit crazy, with too much time on their hands. Then they'll catch themselves and say, present company excluded, of course.

and this from that jackass McConnell:
"Oh my goodness -- in the whole country is there racism?" McConnell responded when asked by CNN "State of the Union" host Candy Crowley if there was racism in the movement, as charged by the NAACP.

"I'm not interested in getting into that debate," the leader said. "...There are all kinds of things in America that make me uncomfortable, both on the right and the left."
I believe the correct term for someone like this is 'Chickenshit'.

"So much for the Commerce Clause challenge to Individual Mandate

being "frivolous"
Remember when the Commerce Clause challenge to the individual insurance mandate was dismissed by all serious and knowledgeable constitutional law professors and Nancy Pelosi as “frivolous”? Well, as Jonathan notes below, the administration is now apparently telling the New York Times that the individual insurance “requirement” and “penalty” is really an exercise of the Tax Power of Congress.

Administration officials say the tax argument is a linchpin of their legal case in defense of the health care overhaul and its individual mandate, now being challenged in court by more than 20 states and several private organizations.

Let that sink in for a moment. If the Commerce Clause claim of power were a slam dunk, as previously alleged, would there be any need now to change or supplement that theory? Maybe the administration lawyers confronted the inconvenient fact that the Commerce Clause has never in history been used to mandate that all Americans enter into a commercial relationship with a private company on pain of a “penalty” enforced by the IRS. So there is no Supreme Court ruling that such a claim of power is constitutional. In short, this claim of power is both factually and judicially unprecedented.
Read it all. Looks like this is getting even more interesting. And desperate on the part of some.

Under the heading of PC Idiocy

we have this:
Instead, what annoyed the inmates were the faces of the foosball players.

They were too western-looking or, in some accounts, they offended some fundamentalist Islamists because of their association with idol worship.

So the U.S. military filed off the faces so that the terror suspects wouldn’t be offended.


In local news we have a politician who paid attention to the "You can't search OUR offices!" crap from the House a couple of years ago:
State Rep. Randy Terrill is asking a judge to halt a state grand jury investigation into political corruption allegations.

Terrill claims he cannot be questioned before a state grand jury about legislative activity because of this language in the state constitution: "Senators and Representatives shall, except for treason, felony, or breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during the session of the Legislature, and in going to and returning from the same, and, for any speech or debate in either House, shall not be questioned in any other place."
Isn't it nice to know what kind of clowns wound up in our public offices?


Ok, this is going to give fodder to conspiracy theorists.


Union thugs being union thugs.


Bleah. Too something for this mess. More later.