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5/31/14

Barack Obama's Diary: Golfing is such sweet sorrow

  I played golf today with my buddy Wall Street banker Robert Wolf, a mega-donor to me and other Democrats. We played at Fort Belvoir with my aides Joe Paulsen and Marv Nicholson.
The  weather was perfect for cleansing my soul after the bloody business of parting company with Jay Carney and Eric Shinseki yesterday. And  then there was my so-called 'secret' lunch with Hillary who left the private dining room carpet wet with tears after I told her that she was getting no help from me, in the wake of Benghazi. But enough about me.

Even after death, vet neglect continues

Over the last 15 months, 52 unclaimed bodies of U.S. military veterans accumulated at the Los Angeles County morgue because nobody arranged transportation to Riverside National Cemetery for burial, The LA Times reports
As of Thursday, the county could not explain why. "All the people who touched this process are working together to figure out how this occurred," said county spokesman David Sommers.
The problem reportedly began in 2013, after Rose Hills Mortuaries in Alhambra, which transported the bodies of homeless veterans under a charity program, started turning down some bodies that it said did not meet eligibility requirements.  All the people who touched this process are working together to figure out how this occurred.
Jessica McDunn, a spokesperson for Rose Hills' parent company, Service Corp. International of Houston, said that the program is limited to homeless veterans and that Rose Hills does not accept a body if the deceased's family has been located, even if the family is unwilling to claim the remains.

5/30/14

Obama, still hopeless after all these years, says Rudy

President Barack Obama came into office lacking basic executive skills, and after six years in office has shown he does not have natural leadership capabilities to manage the country, said former Republican Mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani.
"He's not cut out to be an executive. He doesn't have either the background and experience or the natural skills of an executive," Giuliani told Fox News' "America's Newsroom." "There is nothing in this man's background to suggest that he could run the most complicated organization in the world."
Giuliani said that when Obama took office, he hoped he would have "the natural talent" to lead effectively, but said the president has since shown "he doesn't have it." The president's temperament was suited, by instinct, to that of a "professor," Giuliani suggested.  Source



The Dung Beetle Award goes to...

The Academy of Dung Beetles has voted to roll its award towards  a judge who sentenced a father to one year of probation and a $200 fine for making his son walk a mile home from school as a form of discipline.
Hawaii Judge Kathleen Watanabe called the punishment "old-school" and no longer appropriate, The Garden Island newspaper reported Thursday.
Robert Demond of Kilauea said he picked up his son from school and asked about a matter that had been brought to his attention. When the son didn't respond, Demond made him walk home to think about his actions.  Demond was also ordered to attend a parenting class after being convicted of endangering the welfare of a minor, a misdemeanor.    [ECS]

Socialized medicine in action: New Zealand gives points for pain

New Zealanders who need surgery are ranked by their pain and assigned a number - they only make it on to the waiting list if their number is high enough to meet five different thresholds.
These thresholds are getting further out of reach every year, despite the Government pushing more money into elective surgery, clinicians and experts say.
This is because the demand for healthcare is limitless and the ability to pay for it is not.  The gap between the patients who meet the clinical threshold for surgery, but fall short of  hospitals' financial threshold is widening, New Zealand Medical Association (NZMA) chairman Dr Mark Peterson says. [Source]   [BJS]

5/29/14

Quoke of the Day

Joke Obama quote from Keith Koffler's White House Dossier---“Are you kidding? I wouldn’t let him babysit my goldfish! Oh, the mike is on? Yes, I have full confidence in Eric Shinseki”

Obamas spend $2 million during Africa trip

Newly obtained records released Thursday by Judicial Watch revealed that lodging, security and “entertainment” for the Obamas’ entourage during their trip last year to Africa cost taxpayers nearly $2.2 million.
“The Obamas clearly either do not understand the value of a dollar – or understand it all too well when someone else is picking up the tab,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.  Read more         [ECS]

5/28/14

Dim Crims: Robber flees woman, 89

Strange enough that a would-be robber of a small-town store in Washington state used a sword as his weapon of choice and a bicycle as his getaway vehicle. But what truly elevates the story is that the store's owner, an 89-year-old widow, just wasn't having it, reports USA Today. Miyo Koba of Moses Lake tells KREM-TV that she refused the robber's demand to open the register and instead threatened him with scissors. When he pushed her away and she fell, she spotted a golf club.
"I ... tried to swing this club at him and I tried to hit his head a couple times but I couldn't reach it,” she says. She then started bashing him in the legs, rattling him enough that he fled with the register. Or tried to anyway. It's apparently difficult to ride a bike while carrying one, not to mention a sword, and police recovered it near the scene, still full of money. [More]   [BJS]

Barack Obama's Diary: How to lead by pushing others to the front

Dear Diary: Never have I been so insulted! I bestowed my presence upon the cadets of West Point today and most of them failed to rise to their feet to applaud Me. They will all shortly be introduced to the audit process  of  the IRS. If there be as little as a candy bar missing, they will be left to rot in  some foul foreign  brig. Never have I, Barack Hussein Obama, been so egregiously dishonored in full view of the public. After all I've done for servicemen and women and veterans stricken with disease! The ingratitude!

The audacity of Inertia

According to my copy of The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama is deeply disturbed by "income inequality," access to healthcare for poor people and having U.S. troops on aimless missions abroad.  If only he could be in charge, he would fix these things, writes Charlie Hurt in The Washington Times
Oh, and he also really doesn't like all the nasty partisan squabbling among politicians in Washington. That needs to be fixed, too.
"The distribution of wealth is even more skewed, and levels of inequality are now higher than at any time since the Gilded Age," then-Sen. Obama lamented in his 2006 book. He flayed former President Ronald Reagan, whose "domestic policies tilted heavily toward economic growth with corporate raiders making tidy profits throughout the eighties while unions were busted.
If only HE could become president.
Today, these problems are even worse, Charlie Hurt continues. [Read it all]

Barack Obama's Diary: Congratulations to me

Dear Diary: I bestride the Earth like a Colossus, one moment I am in Afghanistan receiving homage from my mighty Army and the next I am at the White House  declaring Peace in Our Time, carefully contrived to coincide with  the final curtain descending on my triumphant presidency. By then most of the inconvenient stragglers who are clogging up the waiting lists of the VA will have dropped off the twig. I will be able to take my place among the immortals, Lincoln, Washington,  Jefferson.  I can see it now,  a new US capital city of Obama, D.C.  the Obama Memorial standing twice as high as Washington's modest obelisk.  I could hug myself with delight! In fact I will do that right now. But enough about me.

5/27/14

How ObamaCare will 'screw black doctors'

By linking doctor pay to patient satisfaction scores, Obamacare’s ‘pay for performance’ system is going to disproportionately hurt minority doctors. Daniela Drake explains why:
"Imagine that you’re an optimistic third-year medical student walking into the ER. Your first patient says to you, “I don’t want any niggers touching me.” There you are in your brand new white coat—the apotheosis of your and your parents’ hopes and dreams—but still, to this patient, you’re a nigger. You try to ignore the sting in your eyes—the shame of it. You suck it up, say nothing, and move on.
This kind of thing has happened to me from time to time—even as a studious, light-skinned offspring of a white father and black mother; even as a person who has “no discernible negro accent”; even as a person who was schooled since I was knee-high to respond to the question of what race I am by saying, “Homo sapiens -- sapiens because there is no such thing as race.”
But it turns out that to a lot of people, I’m still a nigger..."   [Read it all]

Sobriety test

0ur Vermont correspondent RK,  who appears to have had  a skinful over the Memorial Day weekend, sends this:

Europe's voters move sharply Right

Europe's parliamentary elections have resulted in big gains for those opposed to  Eurocrat over-reach, including right-wing parties in France, the UK, and Greece, the BBC reports. "The people have spoken loud and clear," said the leader of France's National Front, Marine Le Pen. "They no longer want to be led by those outside our borders … They want to be protected from globalization and take back the reins of their destiny." The party won just three seats in 2009; this time, it's poised to take 25, the most of any French party. French president Francois Hollande's party won just 14% of the vote compared to the National Front's 25%.  In Britain, the "Euroskeptic" UK Independence Party won 27% of the vote, winning a national vote for the first time and knocking the two main parties, Labour and Conservative, into second and third place. [More]

5/26/14

Your taxes in action: Agency rates all staff 'excellent'

One government agency has decided that the results of employee performance evaluations are too discriminatory, and eliminated the process entirely. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced on Monday that it will now award all employees the highest rating regardless of performance.
The CFPB, which oversees transactions in the financial sector for the federal government, decided to no longer conduct employee reviews because there were just too many apparent “significant disparities” between the races, ages, and locations of its employees.
According to American Banker, this new policy is set to cost over $5 million dollars, as it will now pay employees as if they received the highest evaluation score. The previous system ranked staff on their performance from a scale ranging from one to five, with five being the best score a CFPB staffer could receive after a review of their work on the job.
[Read more]

Obama's vanishing 'competence'

Obama came to the White House with a carefully cultivated image for almost preternatural competence — an image no one esteemed more highly than he did. “I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,” he had told his campaign staff. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that . . . I’m a better political director than my political director.”
He may still believe it, writes Jeff Jacoby in The Boston Globe, but most Americans no longer do. "The Obama administration hasn’t been distinguished by cool, cerebral, sure-footed professionalism, but by something closer to amateur hour."    [Read it all]          [BJS

Bungling White House reveals Afghanistan CIA agent

The identity of the highest-ranking CIA agent in Afghanistan was leaked to the media this weekend—by the White House itself. The error occurred in a list of top officials who were joining President Obama during his visit to Kabul yesterday. The military gave the list to the White House press office, which emailed it to journalists. It ended up in a report sent to some 6,000 people, The Washington Post reports.
A Post reporter noticed that the report referred to a "station chief," indicating a country's top CIA official. He notified the White House press office, and top officials recognized the problem; they sent out a new list, leaving off the name. What's next for the CIA officer isn't certain, the Post notes, but the administration asked the paper not to reveal his identity out of concern for his safety. [More]       [BJS]

Dems call Obama 'incompetent, flat-footed, detached'

CNN's John King reports that Democrats are privately calling President Obama "detached," "flat footed," and "incompetent."
"Forget for a moment that Republican outrage," said King on his CNN show. "More and more Democrats in key 2014 races are calling for the president to get a spine, they say, and fire his Veterans Affairs secretary. And what more and more Democrats are saying privately is scathing, calling the president and his team detached, flat footed, even incompetent.
"Maggie Haberman," said King turning to a panelist, "that's what strikes me, what democrats are saying privately in the wakes of the healthcare.gov problems, they see a president who doesn't want to take command, doesn't want to act fast. Raising the competence question. Some Democrats, who believe in government, [are saying] this White House doesn't appear to have its hand on the lever."
Haberman of Politico agreed, cited more examples, and added: "All of this adds up to somebody who just doesn't seem at all involved."

5/25/14

Dim Crims: Thieves send selfies, arrested

A pair of thieves managed to steal a teen's phone during a party—and they promptly incriminated themselves by sending a selfie to the kid's friends. One of the thieves has now turned himself in, and he's been charged with petit larceny, police say. Khayyam Alexander, 16, and his partner in crime took 14-year-old James Pugliatti's phone during a party for under-18s in New York, officials say, per The New York Daily News.
On the subway afterward, the thieves took a picture of themselves, The New York Post reports. They cleverly sent it to all Pugliatti's friends via the photo-messaging app Snapchat, the Post notes. One friend got a screenshot and forwarded it to Pugliatti's mom. Annette Pugliatti also reportedly received a vulgar message from the thieves.  [Source]    [BJS]

Barack Obama's Diary: Good morning, B-a-g-r-a-m!

Dear Diary, as scholars read these pages avidly in the distant future they will  be struck by my exrraordinary ingenuity and my towering intellect. The tone of criticism of my Administration's handling of the VA scandal was growing increasingly strident and nasty last week.  "It's time I did another covert visit to Afghanistan ," I told Valerie Jarrett.  She quickly set it up after my Saturday round of golf and instead of motorcading home after the game I was whisked off to Joint Base Andrews and Air Force One, fueled up and ready to go. Marvelous Marv, my trip director, has now reached the standard of  attention to detail of Reggie Love, his predecessor. Waiting for me on my pillows was a chocolate mint, a foil sheet of Ambien tablets  and  Badgie, my comfort blanket. After a  dinner of wagyu beef steak, fries and broccoli. I took my tablets, and soon fell into the kind of sleep only granted to the pure of heart. That would be me. There was a deafening thump! I sat up wide-eyed with fear.   "Aaaugh!"  A scream filled my private bedroom. It was me. We were supposed to arrive at Bagram base under cover of darkness, but runway lights were flashing past. How long before Afghanis opened fire on my Jumbo with RPGs  and mortars? " Get me outta here Marv!", I begged, holding onto his llegs and then  his ankles as he dragged me to the exit.
As he threw open the door, three reassuringly huge  marines stepped in, raised me bodily and  carried me down the steps and into the cafeteria. "Welcome to Bagram, Sir," they said. Safe at last!

Why is China stirring trouble in Asia?

Let me suggest an answer, writes Hugh White. China is trying to build what President Xi Jinping calls 'a new model of great power relations'. To understand how this might be the aim of Beijing's actions, we have to recognise that under his 'new model', Xi wants China to wield much more power and influence in Asia than it has for the past few centuries. These things are inherently zero-sum, so for China to have more power and influence, America must have less. This is what Xi and his colleagues are trying to achieve.
Their reasoning is simple enough. They know that America's position in Asia is built on its network of alliances and partnerships with many of China's neighbours. They believe that weakening these relationships is the easiest way to weaken US regional power. And they know that, beneath the flowery diplomatic phrases, the bedrock of these alliances and partnerships is the confidence America's Asian friends have that America is able and willing to protect them from China's power.
So the easiest way for Beijing to weaken Washington's power in Asia is to undermine this confidence. And the easiest way to do that is for Beijing to press those friends and allies hard on issues in which America's own interests are not immediately engaged – like a string of maritime disputes in which the US has no direct stake.
By using direct armed pressure in these disputes, China makes its neighbours more eager for US military support, and at the same time makes America less willing to give it, because of the clear risk of a direct US-China clash. In other words, by confronting America's friends with force, China confronts America with the choice between deserting its friends and fighting China. Beijing is betting that, faced with this choice, America will back off and leave its allies and friends unsupported. This will weaken America's alliances and partnerships, undermine US power in Asia, and enhance China's power.   [more]                          [BJS]

Cartoon: Rick McKee

[The Augusta Chronicle]

5/23/14

School sees 'bad behavior' in a cloud

The thought police are at it again, and this time the victim is an 8-year-old boy. As part of a school "imagination" project, the boy drew a picture of a gun. Of course, the school freaked out and claimed the boy's action demonstrated "bad behavior." What is going on in this country? asks Bobby Eberle.
As reported on KKTV.com in Colorado Springs, second grade student Cody Smith was at school and was told to go outside with his class, "look at the clouds, and then use his imagination to draw what he saw." Cody looked up and drew a picture of a gun. [Source]     ECS

Nigel Farage wins stunning UK victory

The  U.K. Independence Party made sweeping gains in local elections in Britain, according to preliminary
results released on Friday, shaking the country’s political establishment and leaving its mainstream parties scrambling for a response.  The right-wing party took far more votes than expected from the two parties in the center-right coalition government and from the opposition Labour Party, and won at least 150 local council seats; it held 2 before.
Though the U.K. Independence Party has yet to gain a seat in the national Parliament, its leader, Nigel Farage, said it was now “a serious player.”
“The UKIP fox is in the Westminster henhouse,” he said on Friday. Laughing Conservative has been a firm supporter of Farage for years. Farage has exceptional public speaking skills, and detests bureaucrats and big government. What's not to like?
The voting on Thursday coincided with elections for Britain’s representatives in the European Parliament. Though those results will not be announced until Sunday night, they appeared likely to reflect similar sweeping gains for Mr. Farage’s party. [Source]


The World according to Igor

Our man in Alaska, TG, likes this short video of Igor Sikorski, the man who invented the helicopter --especially three points he makes at: 1:20, 2:45, and 4:24.
Our elected officials should all take special  note of what Sikorski says at 1:20, writes TG... they should be held to the laws and regulations they inflict on the rest of us.

5/22/14

Cartoon: Rick McKee

[The Augusta Chronicle]

Outrageous: Gitmo men get better care than our vets

By now most Americans have heard about the VA’s infamous patient “secret wait lists” which reportedly contributed to the deaths of up to 40 veterans in the Phoenix area alone. Those patriots were American heroes who served our country proudly. Yet they were left to die waiting to see a doctor.
Here’s another secret the White House doesn’t want you to know about the VA: Al Qaeda detainees get better medical treatment than our veterans.
Say what?
"Yes, it’s true," writes  J.D. Powers. "I know because I served as a Pentagon spokesman from 2005-2009 and visited Guantanamo Bay Naval Base over 30 times during those years.  [Source]                  [ECS]

How ObamaCare bureaucracy degrades patient care

"When I'm operating on a child, I shouldn't have to wonder if Medicaid will OK a change in the surgical plan," writes Zane Pollard in the WSJ.  "The bond of trust between patient and physician has always been the essential ingredient in medicine, assuring that the patient receives individual attention and the best possible medical care. Yet often lost in the seemingly endless debate over the Affordable Care Act is how the health-care bureaucracy, with its rigid procedures and regulations, undermines trust and degrades care. In my pediatric ophthalmology practice, I have experienced firsthand how government limits a doctor's options and threatens the traditional bond of trust."   [Source]                    [BJS]

5/21/14

Socialists in action: France builds 2000 trains too wide for platforms

The good news: France is getting 2,000 shiny new trains. The not-so-good news: It seems those shiny new trains, which CNN notes ran a hefty $20.5 billion, are too wide to fit in many of the nation's 1,200 platforms, making actual travel difficult. The forehead-slapping quote from a rep for national rail operator RFF: "We discovered the problem a bit late, we recognize that and we accept responsibility on that score." The cost of that responsibility, in the form of repairs made so far, is $110 million and counting, reports Reuters. Apparently RFF submitted dimensions from platforms less than 30 years old; the problem being that many stations are older and have a narrower gap between tracks.  [Source]     [BJS]

Michelle tells kids to monitor family racism

"Taking a page out of the political handbook of every fascist society and dystopian sci-fi novel, Michelle Obama is telling kids to monitor their parents for crimes against the state.
"The woman who was never proud of her country until she and her husband were deposited in the White House spoke to a class in Topeka, Kansas last Friday where she told students to monitor their parents for racist speech because she and her hubby can only do so much without good little informants like them back home..." [Source]

5/20/14

Academia Nuts: School officials try to kill honors night

EAST GREENWICH, R.I. —Citing concerns about the "exclusive nature" of the annual honors night at Archie R. Cole Middle School, school officials have decided to scrap the tradition.
Instead, students who would normally be recognized at the annual spring tradition will be honored during team-based recognition ceremonies and graduation. [Source]
Update: School Changes Heart, Honors Night Back on the Table after Parent Outcry   [ECS]

When Obama resigns: A rant for the ages

"Despite the best efforts of the mainstream media and the political establishment to protect Barack Obama, they can no longer hide the incompetence and criminality of the most divisive and sordid administration in American history," writes Lawrence Sellin.
Former National Security Council Spokesman Tommy “dude, this was like two years ago” Vietor is the poster boy of the Obama Administration; a collection of inexperienced, emotionally immature ideologues, whose “the ends justify the means” mentality permits them to tell any lie, violate any law and indifferently sacrifice lives as long as it serves their political objectives,
"This bungling and scandal-prone gaggle of amoral nitwits, led by a talking teleprompter, survives only because the extent of their dishonesty is matched by that of the political-media establishment and the public’s inexplicable willingness to tolerate it. It is, in fact, explainable. Just as certain banks were “too big to fail,” Barack Obama is, quite simply, too corrupt to fail.
The “too big to fail” theory asserts that certain financial institutions are so large and so interconnected that their failure would be disastrous to the economy, and they, therefore, must be supported by government when they face difficulty.  [Source]

5/19/14

Barack Obama's Diary: Take THAT, you rittle yerrow devils

Dear Diary: I'm heartily sick of being kicked around by furriners like Pootin, so decided to make stand today and authorised Eric Withholder to issue arrest warrants for various nefarious Chinese who have been hacking into big corporate networks in the US. Rittle yerrow devils have apparently been consuming trade secrets like they are gigantic orders of General Tsao's chicken [yum!]. These spies operate from China, so will never see the inside of a US jail. But it's the symbolism that matters, burnishing the image of decisive action that my Administration is  now famous for. But enough about me.

Cheney: Putin pushes 'weak' Obama around

Dick Cheney via  Fox News Sunday: "There has developed over the years of the Obama administration, I think, a sense on the part of others, that we have a weak government. We saw, for example, the mere request from Putin, President Obama withdrew the plans for a missile defense program based in Poland and the Czech Republic. He’s demonstrated repeatedly, I think, that he in fact can be pushed around, if you will, by the Putins, and I don’t think that Mr. Putin has any hesitation at all from the standpoint of the American president of changing his course of action. I think he’s taken advantage of this opportunity when he thinks we have a weak president to try to restore some of the old Soviet Union.”" 

Dim Crims: Pharmacy robber outwitted

 A man who robbed a Manhattan pharmacy at gunpoint yesterday pulled the wrong bottle from the shelf, and it cost him his life, reports NBC New York. But it wasn't drugs that did him in, it was the GPS tracking device on the decoy bottle he grabbed. Police were able to zero in on him after the robbery, finding him stuck in traffic on a service road. As officers approached his vehicle, they say he pointed a gun at them, and they opened fire, reports The New York Times. Scott Kato, 45, who has a long record of pharmacy robberies, was killed.  [Source]    [BJS]

5/17/14

Pregnant woman allowed to give birth before execution

An Islamic court in the Sudanese capital has said that a pregnant woman sentenced to hang for apostasy after she married a Christian man will be allowed to give birth before she is executed.
Meriam Yehya Ibrahim, 27, who was born to a Muslim father but brought up a Christian by her mother, was convicted on Sunday in Khartoum and given three days to recant her faith or face a possible death sentence.

“We gave you three days to recant but you insist on not returning to Islam. I sentence you to be hanged,” Judge Abbas Mohammed Al-Khalifa told Mrs Ibrahim, addressing her by her father’s name, Adraf Al-Hadi Mohammed Abdullah.
Mrs Ibrahim also faces a sentence of flogging for adultery on the grounds that her marriage to a Christian man from South Sudan is considered void under Islamic law. She will be given 100 lashes. Because her father was Muslim, she was considered by the court to be the same.
Laughing Conservative expects  Mrs Ibrahim will be take comfort from the fact that the Obamas no doubt are urgently preparing  a hashtag to defend her,

New app offers free stock trades

The ultimate in low-commission  stock trading is $0 per trade, and that model is about to hit the street. "Robinhood", a new app in the works has a huge waiting list precisely because it offers trade commissions for nothing. Read more

Cartoon: Rick McKee

[The Augusta Chronicle]

Fencers banned from campus

 The newly-formed fencing club at North Dakota State University (NDSU) cannot practice on campus thanks to the university’s weapons policy.
“The current interpretation of the non-weapon policy in NDSU…understands our fencing equipment as weapons,” Enrique Alvarez, the club’s coach, told Valley News Live.
The swords the club uses have no sharp points or blades. The tips are flat and spring-loaded. Still, the university deems them weapons; as such, possession or use of the swords is prohibited on university owned or controlled property.  [ECS]

Barack Obama's Diary: Gasp at my intelligence

Dear Diary: There are days when I want to hug myself, I am so damned clever. Today was one such day. Valerie Jarrett  felt that the VA debacle was spreading like a California wildfire. Shinseki would likely have to fall on his sword to protect both me and the Administration from fall-out. "I have an idea, Val. Why don't you find  a senior VA person who's close to retirement and remind them that they have very nice pension and we wouldn't want anything to happen to it now would we?" Valerie came back an hour later and said she had found someone who would be a perfect fit. " Great work, Val,  this Bagel guy sounds perfect."
"Petzel, Barry."It's Petzel." Whatever...but enough about me.

5/16/14

VA scandal 'threatens Obama'

The Financial Times, a newspaper not known for sensationalism, speculates that the ever-growing VA scandal could engulf Obama himself.  [Details here]

Academia Nuts: No fun for YOU, kiddies

An annual year-end kindergarten show has been canceled at a New York school because the kids have to keep working so they will be “college and career” ready. Really.
That’s what it says in a letter sent to parents by Ellen Best-Laimit, the interim principal of Harley Avenue Primary School in Elwood, N.Y., and four kindergarten teachers. The play was to be staged over two days, May 14 and 15, according to the school’s calendar.  [Source]

Academia Nuts: Camel is 'racist' say students

Students at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota have cancelled an event to celebrate the end of the year after complaints that bringing a camel on campus could offend those of Middle Eastern cultures.
The “Hump Day” event, put on by the Residence Hall Association (RHA), was supposed to be “a petting zoo type of atmosphere” in which students could hang out and take photos with a live camel. According to Aaron Macke, the group’s advisor, the camel is owned by a local vendor and trained for special events.
“It appears however, this program is dividing people and would make for an uncomfortable and possibly unsafe environment for everyone attending or providing the program. As a result, RHA has decided to cancel the event.”    [Source]



5/15/14

Ben Carson re-weighs Presidential run

Ben Carson has said that while he doesn't have a plan to make a run, and would only do so if he felt "called by God." Now, he is "starting to feel it."
According to The Weekly Standard, the retired director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital said his thoughts about running for president have been affected recently by the enthusiastic audience he has received from across the country.
. "Over the years, there have been many attempts to get me to throw my hat in the political arena," Carson wrote in his new book, "One Nation: What We Can All Do to Save America's Future." 

"I have been offered support from around the country and tremendous financial resources if I decide to run for national office. But I have not felt the call to run," he wrote, adding that "If I felt called by God to officially enter the world of politics, I would certainly not hesitate to do so."
 in an interview this week, Carson told The Weekly Standard he's "starting to feel it. Because every place I go, it's unbelievable."
He said one woman "really touched me the other night … She just kept clinging to my hand and said, 'You have to run. You have to run.' And so many people tell me that, and so I think I'm starting to hear something"   [More]



Cartoon: Nate Beeler

[The Columbus Dispatch]

Dim Crims: Gator aids cops

Calvin Rodriguez, 22, was driving a hot Honda Civic Tuesday when he was spotted by Port St. Lucie Police officers. Rodriguez sped off with cops on his tail.
According to a police report, the vehicle “began driving at a high rate of speed and was lost sight of.” Rodriguez’s escape, however, was not without complications, cops noted.
“The Honda was later discovered to have crashed into an alligator, causing it to crash into a median,” police reported. A search of the 1999 Honda yielded a set of “shaved keys” that Rodriguez reportedly told police he used to “boost” cars.

Exquisite engraving...

Our Alaska contributor, TG, is in fine form today and sends this: 



Coffee Break

From our sharp-eyed contributor in Alaska, TG.

Benghazi : Most Americans think Obama, Hillary lied

A Fox News poll says that 54 percent of voters think the Obama administration has been deceitful about the events surrounding the Benghazi attacks. Half say the same about former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton (50 percent). In addition, by a 51-39 percent margin, voters say the White House knowingly lied about the attacks to help President Obama’s re-election campaign.  Even among Democrats, 25 percent say Obama has tried to deceive on Benghazi and 23 percent think the White House lied to help the campaign. [More here]


Dim Crims: Not-so-smart Alec

Actor Alec Baldwin was handcuffed by police Tuesday after he allegedly rode his bike the wrong way on Fifth Avenue and argued with officers who tried to ticket him.
He later tweeted that "New York City is a mismanaged carnival of stupidity that is desperate for revenue and anxious to criminalize behavior once thought benign."
A law enforcement source said Baldwin was seen riding his bike the wrong way near 16th Street in the Flatiron district and when police stopped to give him a summons, he grew angry.
Baldwin, who was wearing a black jacket, black shorts and a black visor, was not carrying ID, the source said. When police are handing out a summons to someone who has no ID, they bring the person to the police station. He was issued two summonses, one for riding his bike the wrong way and another for disorderly conduct, an NYPD spokesman said.   [Source]

Man claims to be God, Obama cleared

A man claiming to be God rammed a truck through the front of a Baltimore-area television station Tuesday.Police took a suspect into custody about five hours after the incident, officials said at a news conference.
"It's very clear the subject is suffering from emotional or mental health issues," Police Chief James Johnson said. The identity of the man was not immediately disclosed. Laughing Conservative has been unable to confirm a rumor that  it was Barack Obama.

5/12/14

Darwin's unexploded bomb: Don't miss this

'This book is an attempt to understand the world as it is, not as it ought to be.’ So writes Nicholas Wade, the British-born science editor of The New York Times, in his new book A Troublesome Inheritance. 
For some time the post-War view of human nature as being largely culturally-formed has been under attack just as surely as the biblical explanation of mankind’s creation began to face pressure in the early 19th century. What Steven Pinker called the blank slate view of our species, whereby humans are products of social conditions and therefore possible to mould and to perfect through reform, has been undermined by scientific discoveries in various areas.

But the most sensitive, and potentially troubling to the modern psyche, is the difference between human population groups that have evolved over the past 50,000 years. As Wade writes: ‘The fact that human evolution has been recent, copious, and regional is not widely recognized, even though it has now been reported by many articles in the literature of genetics. The reason is in part that the knowledge is so new and in part because it raises awkward challenges to deeply held conventional wisdom.’

The political objections are a reaction to the horrific things done in the name of race in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, culminating in the Final Solution, after which the UN’s Ashley Montagu made the influential declaration that race was to all intents and purposes a fiction. Before that, anthropologist Franz Boas had popularised the idea that we are entirely products of culture.

This has remained the conventional view, indeed the only one that academics could safely hold; yet a number of inconsistencies have begun to crack away at this noble idea.

Among them is the recent knowledge that evolution can take place far quicker than people once thought. Greg Cochran and Henry Harpending, in their book The 10,000 Year Explosion, argued that human evolution had sped up since the advent of the first cities. The drastic changes in our ancestors’ environment created new evolutionary pressures; among them were selection for qualities that were beneficial in our larger communities, such as lower levels of aggression, deferred gratification (vital for farmers), a greater willingness to trust people outside of close kin group, and the qualities required for craftsmanship, finance and various other complex skills. Thus civilisation had increased the rate of evolution, and was continuing to do so.

Their research was solid, yet as Wade says, ‘Scientific enquiry thus runs into potential conflict with the public policy interest of not generating possibly invidious comparisons that might foment racism’.

Among the areas explored by Cochran and Harpending, along with another academic, Jason Hardy, has been Ashkenazi intelligence, and yet a previous paper, despite being considered ‘fascinating’ by editors, could not be published in the United States.

It is obviously understandable why Jewish intelligence and success, the subject of extreme and violent jealousies through the ages, makes people nervous. But the outsized contribution of Jews to almost all fields must surely interest all but the dullest of minds: just 0.2 per cent of the world population, Jews accounted for 29 per cent of Nobel Prizes in the late 20th century, and 32 per cent so far in 21st century. That tiny, remarkable country Israel recently won its fifth Chemistry Prize in a decade.

One can admire Jewish culture and the Jewish work ethic, but the idea that this enormous level of achievement is purely cultural, while possible, certainly does not pass the Occam’s razor test. As Wade says, ‘People are highly imitative, and if the Jewish advantage were purely cultural, such as hectoring mothers or a special devotion to education, there would be little to prevent others from copying it.’ They haven’t.

The same is true of the Chinese, who across Asia and now the rest of the world have formed highly successful business communities and, like the Jews, have suffered attacks from jealous neighbours: ‘If Chinese business success were purely cultural, everyone should find it easy to adopt the same methods. This is not the case because social behaviour, of Chinese and others, is genetically shaped.’

As he says: ‘New evidence strongly suggests that the very different kinds of society seen in the various races and in the world’s great civilizations differ not just because of their received culture – in other words, in what is learned from birth – but also because of variations in the social behaviour of their members, carried down in their genes.’

The implications of this will trouble many people, seeing as it suggests that certain traits differ on average among population groups. He cites the MAO-A enzyme; people with only 2 copies (rather than 3, 4 or 5) have a much higher level of delinquency. And ‘if individuals can differ in the genetic structure of their MAO-A gene and its controls, is the same also true of races and ethnicities? The answer is yes.’ A team in Haifa looked at people from seven ethnicities and found 41 variations in the portions of the genes they decoded, with ‘substantial differentiation between populations’.

So why do so many people confidently argue that there is no such thing as race, because there are ‘no clear distinct racial boundaries’. This he calls ‘verbal subterfuge’, arguing: ‘When a distinct boundary develops between races, they are no longer races but separate species. So to say there are no precise boundaries between races is like saying there are no square circles.’

Wade is critical of leading biologists, economists and psychologists who have simply dismissed possible non-cultural explanations as racist, or who pin their hopes in geographic determinism, or shy away from recent evolution because of the political implications. This, he says, has nothing to do with its scientific validity but the ‘political dangers’ that researchers face in ‘pursuing the truth too far’.

The political dangers are very real; various academics have lost their jobs or faced quite extreme harassment for voicing the belief that differences in group IQ scores are partly hereditary, despite there being solid evidence that intelligence is under genetic control.

And yet these ‘accusations of racism against anyone who suggests that cognitive capacities might differ between human populations groups… are shaped by leftist and Marxist political dogma, not by science.’ He says: ‘The common sense conclusion – that race is both a biological reality and a politically fraught idea with sometimes pernicious consequences – has also eluded’ much of academia.
Don't miss the rest of this fascinating and provocative essay Here           [BJS]


How Reagan snookered Gorbachev

For decades, Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)—an ambitious ground- and space-based “shield” to protect the United States from nuclear ballistic missiles—has been mocked and criticized. First proposed by the president in 1983, it was immediately dubbed “Star Wars” by the mainstream media and dismissed as unscientific, infeasible and even counter-productive. The Union of Concerned Scientists, 100,000 members strong, was fierce in its opposition. The Arms Control Association declared that SDI would end arms control, while some Soviets felt SDI would end the world. Domestic critics became furious, and the Kremlin went ballistic.
But while Reagan’s critics might not have taken his pet technology seriously, the Russians certainly did. Even though SDI was decades away from being implemented, if not beyond the reach of technology altogether, the threat the shield presented—along with Reagan’s dogged commitment to it—was enough to scare Soviet leader Mikhael Gorbachev into reforms that would eventually bring down the Soviet Union. In short: “Star Wars” never worked as Reagan wished. It worked even better. And Ken Adelman should know, because he saw it all happen. Read it all   [BJS]



Dim Crims: Drunk Man drives to police HQ

Police say a 31-year-old man has been arrested after he drove to a Louisiana state police headquarters to file an accident report while drunk. Patrick Ruffner called state police Saturday, saying his vehicle was struck by a hit-and-run driver on Interstate 10 in Baton Rouge. He was told to come to Troop A's offices to fill out a crash report. A trooper says that when Ruffner got out of his SUV, a trooper smelled alcohol and gave him field sobriety and breath tests. Ruffner was booked with driving on a suspended license and with first-offense driving while intoxicated.  More        [BJS]. 

Ann Coulter responds to FLOTUS

[From: Sooper Mexican]

Progress Notes for Patient 540463, OBAMA, Barack, H

5/11/14   My phone rang early today with an agitated Valerie Jarrett on the line. "Doctor," she pleaded," Can you make  a House call today?"
"What's up?"
"He's been seized by the desire to fly Air Force One  to Nigeria, there to bomb the rebels with iPads so they can see Michelle's Instagram pleading: "Bring Back Our Girls".
I have been puzzled by the hullabaloo this issue has caused. Normally this far-away incident would barely have achieved the excitement of "Small earthquake in Chile, few hurt" in the MSM. But Patient, and the MSM need something to distract from Benghazi and the IRS scandal.
"Are you sure he's not showing paranoia after partaking of his stash of Blueberry Yum  Yum? "I asked.
"No. I've checked his secret compartment in the Resolute Desk. and it's full."
" OK, Ms Jarrett," I said  "Encourage him to rest and I will see him ASAP."
--Dictated by S.H.Rink, M.D.  

5/11/14

Dim Crims: Deadly irony

Haitham Gamal "was on the road to recovery" after three drunk-driving convictions, says his lawyer. Unfortunately, he was also on the road—on his bike, as per a California-mandated license suspension—when a 19-year-old driver who was allegedly drunk and speeding hit and killed the 38-year-old Gamal. "He was doing the right thing, and somebody hit him that had been drinking," lawyer Walter Cole tells The OC Register. "A lot of my clients are in denial. He wasn't." Gamal was sentenced the day before his death to five years' probation and 45 days in jail; he leaves behind a wife and young children.

Barack Obama's Diary: Pants on fire

Dear Diary: I had an agreeable day today, with a round of golf at  joint base Andrews. As I was lying in bed at bedtime [I lie anytime it suits me. ]  I said to Michelle:" What are you thinking about?"
She replied:"Why, those poor girls in Nigeria, of course."
"Me, too," I lied. "Maybe we should send selfies  tomorrow asking  Boko's Harem to release them unharmed urgently"
"Barry.. I'm not sure they have laptops in the jungle."
"There's an easy solution, Mich," I replied. "We'll drop some fully charged iPads into the area. Am I a  genius or am I a genius?"  I turned over and pulled badgie, my comfort blanket, from his nest beneath my pillow. Soon I was dreaming of flying low over Nigeria in Taxpayer One, bombing the jungle with iPads.

Why friends don't let friends...

Our Alaska contributor, TG, sends this video compilation showing why friends don't let friends vote Democrat:

Bearded drag queen wins Euro song contest

Decadence: Austrian Conchita Wurst, a bearded drag queen, has won the  multinational Eurovision Song Contest with his song, Rise like  a Phoenix. [Source]

5/10/14

Barack Obama's Diary: Michelle snaps into action

Dear Diary: As I was dozing  in bed with Michelle this morning I said:  "Mich...are you thinking of what I'm thinking of?
"You mean  about those poor kidnapped girls in Nigeria? 
"Yes...It's the first thing I think about every morning, after I've thought about Me."
"Barry, I've had an idea. Why don't we take decisive action  with a picture of me on social media with a card reading: " #Bring Back our girls!"
"That's brilliant, Mich. That'll hit Boko's Harem in the gonads and  make us look like were making a decisive response without having to put boots on the ground."
" OK, Barry, I'll call Pete Souza and set it up."
And so it came to pass. Boko's Harem would have seen Michelle's picture on their wind-powered jungle-resistant laptops, immediately after it was posted and begun to seek ways to return the girls unharmed. But enough about me.

UK: the world's first 'soft' totalitarian state?

Is Britain becoming the world's first "soft totalitarian" state? That's the question posed by Hal G P Colebatch in The Australian newspaper.
He writes: "Nikolai Bukharin claimed one of the Bolshevik Revolution's principal tasks was 'to alter people's actual psychology'. Britain is not Bolshevik, but a campaign to alter people's psychology and create a new Homo britannicus is under way without even a fig leaf of disguise.
"The Government is pushing ahead with legislation that will criminalise politically incorrect jokes, with a maximum punishment of up to seven years' prison. The House of Lords tried to insert a free-speech amendment, but Justice Secretary Jack Straw knocked it out."
Colebatch gives several examples, including a 14-year-old girl arrested for "racism" because she wanted to sit with fellow English-speakers in class. [Source]

Bring back our balls...



It is hard not to have total contempt for a political culture that thinks the picture above
 is a useful contribution to rescuing 276 schoolgirls kidnapped by jihadist savages in Nigeria,writes the incomparable Mark Steyn. "Yet some pajama boy at the White House evidently felt getting the First Lady to pose with this week's Hashtag of Western Impotence would reflect well upon the Administration. The horrible thing is they may be right: Michelle showed she cared - on social media! - and that's all that matters, isn't it?
"Just as the last floppo hashtag, #WeStandWithUkraine, didn't actually involve standing with Ukraine, so #BringBackOurGirls doesn't require bringing back our girls. There are only a half-dozen special forces around the planet capable of doing that without getting most or all of the hostages killed: the British, the French, the Americans, Israelis, Germans, Aussies, maybe a couple of others. So, unless something of that nature is being lined up, those schoolgirls are headed into slavery, and the wretched pleading passivity of Mrs Obama's hashtag is just a form of moral preening. [Source]

5/9/14

Dim Crims: 1.Teen posts crimes on Facebook. 2. Noisy mile-high couple arrested

  1. 1. A Florida teenager faces a slew of charges after police say he hit four cars and put five people, including himself, in the hospital. It's not helping his case that the 18-year-old recorded it on video and posted it to YouTube under the title "Me driving like an idiot."
  2. 2. A drunk British woman decided it would be a good idea to join the mile-high club with a man she'd just met on a Virgin Atlantic flight from London to Las Vegas. Passengers complained about the loud and lascivious cries emanating from the restroom. The couple, cursing loudly, were extracted by the flight crew, and arrested when the plane landed.  [Source]




Cartoon: Rick McKee

[The Augusta Chronicle]

Email shows VA staff gaming the system

A Veterans Affairs employee at the VA Medical Center in Cheyenne, Wyoming, has been placed on administrative leave after CBS News obtained an email showing an employee directing his staff on how to game the appointments system to make it appear as though veterans were being seen within the VA's 14-day directive. Full details here.     [BJS]

5/8/14

Barack Obama's Diary: My day looking down on fly-over country

Dear Diary: This was a day spent flying to California for two fundraisers then back again to the White House. The moment after take-off from Andrews Air Force base,  I settled into my private cabin and withdrew  Badgie, my comfort blanket, from his nest beneath my pillows where he is placed by my trip director Marv Nicholson. Marv now keeps Badgie  in a small cotton  bag, I suspect because he does not want direct contact with Badgie's  slighty malodorous fabric. I curled up on the bed and ran Badgie's glorious satin edge against my soft and delicate cheeks. It was balm for the soul. Quickly I was transported to the land of Nod...
Hark! My iPresidentophone woke me with the sonorous baritones  of the Red Army choir singing the chorus from  Song of the Volga Boatmen.  Who but Putin,' the vulgar river boat man? "Obamavitch," quoth he, "Regarding Ukraine , don't get your knickers in a twist, as the British say, we have ceased  further incursions into that part of Russia. Enjoy your day in California." But enough about me.

Cartoon: Nate Beeler

[The Columbus Dispatch]

5/7/14

Congress corners Lerner

Heads are starting to roll over the IRS’s felonious targeting of conservative groups for their participation in the political process. Lois Lerner, who has already refused to cooperate after she waived her Fifth Amendment privileges, has been  voted in contempt of Congress by the full House.
A contempt vote has possible criminal ramifications for Lerner, who has stonewalled every effort to get to the truth about exactly who did what during the IRS scandal.   Read more

Cartoon: Rick McKee

[The Augusta Chronicle]

5/6/14

Enough said: Obama is my copilot

Our man in Alaska, TG, sends this classic photo:



5/5/14

Progress Notes for Patient 540463: OBAMA, Barack, H.

5/5/2014: After specialist attention from another psychiatrist in DC I am ready to re-undertake the care and nurturing of Primary Patient, and get him through all the crises brought on by his Godzilla-sized Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I have agreed with Valerie Jarrett that she will call me when Patient shows any evidence of reversal of progress. Meanwhile, I will consult the works of Jung and Freud for ideas on how to proceed with further treatment of this moron. --Dictated by S.H.Rink. M.D.

Barack Obama's Diary: Hot sauce

Dear Diary: I was interviewed today by local and national meteorologists. They sought my prognostications on Climate Change which I was happy to give, since I know more about meteors than most meteorologists.  Meteors, I told them,  only become visible when they burn up in the Earth's atmosphere. That silenced them for a while, until one impertinent  twerp suggested that the "large amount" of hot air emanating from the White House might be accelerating global warming. As if. I met with the Ketchup King in the early evening hoping that he had not  stoked more fury in Ukraine. Alas, the lugubrious Lurch seems to have fanned the conflict still further and, in Israel, Bibi will no longer even speak to him, which is making a renewal of peace talks something of a challenge. But Lurch does sometimes achieve things by simply boring people into submission -- anything to stop that awful droning.  But I can at least put some  blame for foreign policy blunders on him, now that George W is no longer a credible target. But enough about me.

Cuomo's aides 'act in the shadows'

 Aides to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo are sending emails from private accounts to conduct official business.  The tactic appears to be another item in the toolbox of an administration that, despite Cuomo's early vows of unprecedented transparency, has become known for an obsession with secrecy. Emailing from private accounts can help officials hide communications and discussions that are supposed to be available to the public.
“Government business should never be conducted through private email accounts. Not only does it make it difficult to retrieve what is a government record, but it just invites the suspicion that a government employee is attempting to evade accountability by supervisors and the public,” said Christopher Dunn of the New York Civil Liberties Union, a frequent requester of records under the state’s Freedom of Information Law.  [Source]     [BJS]

Joke of the Day...

TG, our guy in Alaska, sends this:

A young Arab asks his father, “What is that weird hat you are wearing?”
The father said, “Why, it’s a ‘chechia’ because in the desert it protects our heads from the sun.”
“And what is this type of clothing that you are wearing?” asked the young man.
“It’s a ‘djbellah’ because in the desert it is very hot and it protects the body.” said the father.
The son asked, “And what about those ugly shoes on your feet?
His father replied, “These are ‘babouches”, which keep us from burning our feet in the desert.”
“So tell me then,” said the boy.
“Yes, my son?”
“Why are you living in Dearborn, Michigan and still wearing all this sh*t?”

5/4/14

Academia nuts: 'Abolish white race'

Harvard professor wants white race 'abolished'

Joke of the Day...

From RK, Our Man in Vermont:
How many Democrats does it take to change a light bulb?
All of them.
One to hold the light bulb while the rest screw America.

Socialized medicine in action

The chances of being diagnosed with a symptomatic pineal gland cyst are similar to winning a small lottery — and in Alberta you might need that jackpot just to pay for the surgery.
It’s a tale of benign agony for the unfortunate few to be diagnosed in this province: Excruciating headaches, vision loss, muscle spasms, fatigue, anxiety and extreme mood swings, to name some of the symptoms. But it won’t kill you.
That, coupled with the fact no doctor in Canada apparently feels comfortable removing a benign cyst from deep within in the brain, means Alberta doesn’t consider pineal gland cysts a big deal.
Or at least the province won’t typically pay for the surgery.  Patients in Alberta can either endure a life of painful, non-malignant misery, or they can somehow raise the quarter-million dollars needed to pay a U.S. specialist. For the unlucky few, Alberta’s default funding decision has been to rule the cyst-removal surgery elective, putting it in the same up-to-you category as a boob job or hip replacement.
That means the $250,000 bill is the patient’s problem. [Source]              [BJS]






Dim Crims: Blundering burglars

From TG, Laughing Conservative's man in Alaska:

5/2/14

Dim crims: Drugs vs. booze

After a man in upstate New York called police to say that his car had been hit by a driver who didn't stop, cops caught up to both vehicles on the Taconic Parkway in Columbia County and pulled them over. Troopers charged the driver who reported the incident, 38-year-old Malcolm Sidbury, with driving while impaired by drugs. They charged the second driver, 57-year-old Thomas Robbins, with driving while intoxicated.  [ Source]   [BJS]

Kenneth Y. Tomlinson: Impeccably conservative

 Laughing Conservative,  who owes Kenneth Y. Tomlinson a huge debt for his mentoring and encouragement, isn't laughing today. Tomlinson,  an impeccable conservative, master of narrative journalism and former Editor-in-Chief of Reader's Digest, who subsequently made a powerful stand against liberal bias in public broadcasting, died Friday.  

Benghazi bombshell blasts White House

Former CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson has uncovered an email indicating that the State Department knew at a very high level, immediately after the incidents, that the Benghazi attacks were conducted by a terrorist organization affiliated with al Qaeda.
The email, sent by Acting Assistant Secretary of State for the Near East Beth Jones, contradicts assertions made at the time by the White House and Secretary of State Clinton, Jones’ boss, that the motivation for the attacks was a video.
From Attkisson’s report, posted on her own website, sharylattkisson.com:

The email is entitled “Libya update from Beth Jones.” Jones was then-Assistant Secretary of State to Hillary Clinton. According to the email, Jones spoke to Libya’s Ambassador at 9:45am on Sept. 12, 2012 following the attacks.
“When [the Libyan Ambassador] said his government suspected that former Qaddafi regime elements carried out the attacks, I told him the group that conducted the attacks—Ansar Al Sharia—is affiliated with Islamic extremists,” Jones reports in the email.

There is no uncertainty assigned to the assessment, which does not mention a video or a protest.