The Euro Zone Crumbling
And so continues the crumbling of the European socialist project.
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Content
Not Black Enough
At least the US isn’t the only place where a politician might be shunned for not being “black enough” according to arbitrary criteria in an effort to capture the “black vote”. The New York Times:
SHE has unmistakably African roots, from her birthplace (the kingdom of Swaziland) to one of her native tongues (isiZulu) to her mocha skin.
But for many people, Lindiwe Mazibuko is just not black enough.
During a parliamentary session this year, a government minister here called her a coconut (white on the inside, brown on the outside). One political opponent described Ms. Mazibuko as the tea girl, or servant, for the leader of the country’s chief opposition party. Twitter users have flung racial slurs at her, called her a token and said she was naïve.
Even a member of her own party was quoted as saying that when you closed your eyes and listened to Ms. Mazibuko, “you would say a white person is talking to you.”
The only differences are cultural. Rather than our “oreo”, it’s coconut. Rather than our Uncle Tom or house nigger, it’s tea girl. But though the exact terms may be different, it’s all racism just the same.
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Ron Paul: Superhero
Ron Paul: Superhero.
All proceeds go towards RevolutionPAC, a Super Pac that supports Paul, and made this video.
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Successes
Who needs to worry about failures when we can have success? Glenn Greenwald on the “success” of Libya:
It quickly became ossified conventional wisdom that NATO’s war in Libya to aid rebel factions in overthrowing Moammar Gaddafi was a clear human rights victory. But the reality in post-Gaddafi Libya has long been in tension with that claim, and that’s true today more so than ever[.]
Success indeed.
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More Greendoggles
Another company touted by the Obama administration as a success for his green agenda goes belly up. global post:
Just two days after Obama touted his adminstration’s green energy programs, Ener1, an electric battery maker that received a $118 million grant from the US Department of Energy, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
Oops.
Here’s what President Obama said Tuesday night in his State of the Union address, in reference to Ener1:
“In three years, our partnership with the private sector has already positioned America to be the world’s leading manufacturer of high-tech batteries.”
When will daft politicians who know dick about dick stop stealing my money so that their buddies can live their dreams of being savior of the world by having their pockets lined with my goddamn money in order to start a company?
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Real Science
It’s nice to see real scientists taking environmental science back from the global warming alarmists who hijacked it 3 1/2 decades ago and engaging in real science. The Wall Street Journal:
Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job.
This is not the way science is supposed to work, but we have seen it before—for example, in the frightening period when Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union. Soviet biologists who revealed that they believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs. Many were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death.
Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word “incontrovertible” from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question “cui bono?” Or the modern update, “Follow the money.”
Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet. Lysenko and his team lived very well, and they fiercely defended their dogma and the privileges it brought them.
[. . .]
If elected officials feel compelled to “do something” about climate, we recommend supporting the excellent scientists who are increasing our understanding of climate with well-designed instruments on satellites, in the oceans and on land, and in the analysis of observational data. The better we understand climate, the better we can cope with its ever-changing nature, which has complicated human life throughout history. However, much of the huge private and government investment in climate is badly in need of critical review.
Every candidate should support rational measures to protect and improve our environment, but it makes no sense at all to back expensive programs that divert resources from real needs and are based on alarming but untenable claims of “incontrovertible” evidence.
Bravo.
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Accountability
When government has a monopoly over deciding who is an isn’t accountable, we all lose. Cato @ Liberty:
[The health nannies in New York City are blatantly creating false advertising] again. On January 9, Gotham’s for-your-own-good crew unveiled a new ad warning “Portions have grown. So has Type 2 diabetes, which can lead to amputations,” dramatically illustrated with a photo of an obese man with a stump where his leg had been. But as the New York Times reports, city officials “did not let on that the man shown — whose photo came from a company that supplies stock images to advertising firms and others — was not an amputee and may not have had diabetes.” Instead, they just Photoshopped his leg off, which certainly got the effect they were looking for, albeit at the cost of photographic reality. At an agency developing an ad campaign for a private company, someone might have advised adding a little fine print taking note that the picture was of a model and had been altered, lest the manipulation turn into the story itself, or even attract the interest of federal truth-in-advertising regulators. But the Bloomberg crew probably isn’t worried about the latter, given that their constant stream of hectic propaganda is fueled by generous grants from the federal government itself.
When government is not held to the same standards as the private sphere, the rule of law means little. Money from the taxpayers of New York City is being stolen in order to advance a questionable agenda that uses blatant false advertising. How there will be no accountability in this case is disturbing.
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Acting Like the KGB
A Canadian blogger arrested for “libel”, claiming that his local police act like authoritarian thugs while going about doing their jobs. In response, they raid his house with a 8 man team (you can never underestimate how dangerous those middle aged bloggers can be, and the threat their words can pose to officer safety), and seize his computer. According to Canuckistanian law, it is up to the blogger to prove that what he said is true or that he had reason to believe it’s true.
Wouldn’t a 8 man police raid and confiscation of his computer in response to the utterly horrible crime of criticizing his local police be proof enough that his local police act like authoritarian thugs while going about doing their jobs?
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Appropriate Retirement Gifts
When someone decides to retire, it is often appropriate to get that person a parting gift. Sometimes a plaque is what one can expect, others might get a watch or a tie pin or a set of cufflinks, and still others should only expect a cake and a short office party. But one thing that generally shouldn’t be on the list of retirement gifts is to give someone legislation which expands the drug war even further, and further exerts even more control over other people, as was the case with Gabrielle Giffords. Fox News Latino:
It was a rare moment when Republicans and Democrats united — on a U.S.-Mexico border measure, no less.
But this bill was not just any bill.It was the last piece of legislation offered by Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who made a painstaking effort to walk into the chambers of the House of Representatives on Wednesday to cast her last vote and to submit her resignation, more than a year after she was gravely wounded by a would-be assassin.
Giffords’ bill would impose tougher penalties on smugglers who use small, low-flying aircraft to avoid radar detection and bring drugs across the Mexican border.
The vote was 408-0.
So Congress can’t muster a goddamn budget in over 3 years, complains incessantly on how the other team won’t play nice, being able to pass only the most “important” bills,
Fuck you, House of Representatives. Fuck. You.
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1. Important being defined as those bills which exert greater government control over everyday Americans while they shread any semblance of Constitutional rights we have left such as the NDAA which codifies in to law indefinite detention powers over American citizens arrested on American soil, able to be held without charge, trial, or counsel and renewing and expanding the PATRIOT Act.
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I’m Not the Only One
I sure am glad I’m not the only one with this kind of contempt for government work. The Lexington Herald-Leader:
A penguin pooped Tuesday on the Senate floor near the desk of Senate President David Williams.
Good for you, penguin. Good for you.
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Who Could’ve Known?
There’s just no way to predict that this could happen. None.
Actors in adult movies filmed in Los Angeles will be required to use condoms under an ordinance signed into law by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, in a move that industry leaders say could lead them to abandon the nation’s porn capital.
And don’t you love it when two third party actors conspire together in order to “protect” you?
Officials with the Aids Healthcare Foundation, which lobbied for years for such a law, welcomed the decision and said they would turn their attention to getting a similar condom requirement adopted elsewhere.
“The city of Los Angeles has done the right thing. They’ve done the right thing for the performers,” said Michael Weinstein, president of the foundation, which had pushed for the measure for six years.
He said its adoption was crucial in protecting adult film actors from HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.
You mean the HIV that the trade association for the porn industry claims hasn’t been transmitted amongst those in the porn industry for over 5 years?
The definition of evil is using the government to force measures on others under penalty of law.
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Academic Lore
If there is one idea that the leftists in the western educational sphere have perpetuated which is not only false, but downright fucking annoying, is the idea that the only way of being educated, or that the only education worth receiving, is the one given during the daytime, by teachers, in a classroom.
Dutch teenager Laura Dekker finished her solo sailing journey around the world in good spirits, despite endless debate about the terms under which she is allowed to be at sea.
She completed her 518-day trek today after docking her yacht Guppy in St. Maarten, ending a yearlong expedition that supposedly made her the youngest person ever to sail alone around the globe, though her trip was interrupted at several points.
Ms Dekker, 16, faced several court cases from the time she announced her intentions to travel the world at the age of 14. She said government organisations tried to deter her from her journey, and because of that, she may not return home to the Netherlands.
Dutch authorities tried to block Ms Dekker’s trip, arguing she was too young to risk her life, while school officials complained she should be in a classroom.
I suppose she did miss “Foreign Culture” month in Middle School because she was too busy traveling around the world and interacting with foreign cultures. How dare she think that life experience could teach her something that she couldn’t learn in a classroom from a book?
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No GPS Without Warrant
When SCOTUS decides a case 9-0 we can be assured that either we the people have been royally fucked by the judiciary, or justice has been served and the state has been properly bitch slapped for making what is clearly a very shitty law or method to enforce the law. In a decision released today, United States v Jones, a case about the constitutionality of placing GPS devices on a person’s car without a search warrant, justice has been served. From the decision:
The Government’s attachment of the GPS device to the vehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s movements, constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment. Pp. 3–12.
(a) The Fourth Amendment protects the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” Here, the Government’s physical intrusion on an “effect” for the purpose of obtaining information constitutes a “search.” This type of encroachment on an area enumerated in the Amendment would have been considered a search within the meaning of the Amendment at the time it was adopted.
Good for us.
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Good News!
Socialized medicine controlled by government bureaucrats with no alternative than to follow their judgments works just as (libertarians) predicted. Protected groups do well while individuals get screwed at the hands policy wonks in cheap suits.
Across Britain, an increasing number of patients like Evans are facing more pain and longer waits. That’s because the National Health Service is being forced to trim 20 billion pounds ($31 billion) from its budget by 2015, as part of the most radical changes made since the system was founded more than 60 years ago.
For many hospitals, that means saving money by raising the threshold for who qualifies for treatment and extending waiting times for non-lifesaving surgeries.
Bureaucrats making health decisions. Great. Just what I’m looking forward to.
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Reason 1,254,965
Malicious false accusations using the police in order to run an experiment.
A former Gilbert High student said a police officer falsely accused her of stealing as part of a school experiment.
According to information gathered by CBS 5, Kelly Shea said a police officer pulled her out of class in 2008 and accused her of stealing another student’s iPod.
Shea said when she denied it, Gilbert police Officer Kevin Kowalski searched her backpack without consent.
A lawsuit filed by Shea’s family says Kowalski never found an iPod but still threatened to charge the girl with a felony.
The lawsuit also says Shea started crying before Kowalski said he was conducting a psychology experiment authorized by a teacher.
Schools organizing and openly condoning a student being falsely accused of a serious crime, actively denied her rights, and terrorized under penalty of severe punishment. What could go wrong?
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Good Job, Florida
Bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy. And trying to rope everyday people in to enforcing it. Good job, Florida.
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Porn Abuse
This disturbs me too, Representative Pam Dickerson. NO ONE should be able to abuse the good name of a porn starlet by photoshopping the face of a miserable politician over said starlet’s body.
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A Tip
Never, ever get a tattoo on your dick.
A 21-year-old Iranian man has a permanent semi-erection after having “borow be salaamat” (good luck with your journeys) and the letter “M” (his girlfriend’s initial) tattooed on his penis.
The man, whose name is unknown, was diagnosed with nonischemic priapism — a condition resulting from the inability of blood to exit the penis. His case was detailed in the latest issue of the Journal of Sexual Medicine.
“In our case, most probably, the handheld needle penetrated the penis too deep, creating an arteriovenous fistula,” wrote the study authors from Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences in Kermanshah, Iran. A fistula is a connection between two organs or vessels — in this case an artery and a vein — that normally don’t connect.
“For eight days after tattooing, the penis was painful, and thus there were no erections,” the authors wrote. “After that, the patient noticed longer-than-usual sleep-related erections. This progressed, within a week, to a constantly half-rigid penis, day and night.”
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Greendoggles
Obama’s green energy technology initiative isn’t about making clean energy, but about stealing money from the productive sector of the US economy and using it to line the pockets of his supporters. Investors Business Daily:
The Obama administration promised a future with a clean, green economy. Instead, it’s left us with failed government “investments” in projects driven by politics rather than prudence.
While campaigning for the presidency in 2008, Barack Obama swore he’d create millions of green jobs.
“We’ll invest $15 billion a year over the next decade in renewable energy, creating 5 million new green jobs that pay well, can’t be outsourced and help end our dependence on foreign oil,” he said that fall.
Three years into the Obama presidency, the country has yet to see a wave of green-collar jobs. What it has seen is government pouring taxpayers’ money into pet projects that wasted the cash. A particularly sore example is Solyndra, which not only went bankrupt after taking in more than $500 million in taxpayers’ dollars, but also became the target of an FBI probe.
According to one analysis, at least 12 clean energy companies “are having trouble after collectively being approved for more than $6.5 billion in federal assistance.”
What is meant by “having trouble” is that these companies (though I like to think that calling them fronts for embezzling stolen funds as being more accurate) have an unsustainable business plan, and we the people have been forced in to bankrolling it at the point of a gun, and that they’re about to go under while my children and grandchildren are left holding the IOU to China. Fucking great.
That these companies are unable to get the loans they need to conduct business through the private sector, either big dollar investors or banks willing to risk their money, should be a sign that these projects are unsustainable, and taking tax money from productive individuals to fund these poorly thought ventures should be criminal. If you aren’t willing to risk your own fucking money on a project, it almost surely ought not be done.
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And Reason 1,254,964
NYC Teacher punishes children for using the bathroom more than three times weekly. The Daily Mail:
When children first start learning to use the toilet, they are usually rewarded each time they go.
But now a Brooklyn elementary school is doing the reverse of that – by offering prizes to those students who don’t go and penalizing those who go more than three times a week.
Parents of PS 90 students in teacher Stephanie Warner’s class are angry after it emerged she was setting limits on the amount of time fifth-graders’ could use the toilet.
Someone needs to shove a goddamn hand grenade up that authoritarian cunt’s ass, sans pin.
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