Saturday, April 30, 2011
Obama shines at White House correspondents' dinner
Hot Senate races in 2012
If we are counting correctly, the next general election in the United States will take place in about eighteen months on Tuesday, November 6, 2012. Between now and then there will be a great many nomination races not only to see who the Republicans put up against President Obama but also for House and Senate seats in both parties.
- Nevada: John Ensign has resigned; U.S. Rep. Dean Heller (R) has been appointed to fill out the term
- Arizona: John Kyl
- Massachusetts: Scott Brown
- Maine: Olympia Snowe
- Indiana: Dick Lugar
- Utah: Orrin Hatch
- Virginia: Jim Webb
- North Dakota: Kent Conrad
- New Mexico: Jeff Bingaman
- Florida: Bill Nelson
- Michigan: Debbie Stabenow
- Ohio: Sherrod Brown
- Missouri: Clair McCaskill
- Montana: John Tester
- Nebraska: Ben Nelson
- Pennsylvania: Bob Casey
- West Virginia: Joe Manchin
Here come the WHO-crats. World Health Organization takes on chronic disease. But how? With research, medicine, and cures? Or with national, and now international, nanny-statism?
But as the Post article makes clear, the WHO vision of better health for the future is driven more by politics than by science. That is, the leaders of his new health push will be bureaucratic regulators, not disease-eradicators. We also need medical science more than we need governmental red tape, however well-meaning that red-tape might seem to be.
Indeed, many companies are heavily involved in good-hearted public education. One such company is Dole Foods. Inspired by the visionary leadership of owner David Murdock, Dole has created the Dole Nutrition Institute, which spends many millions each year in pro bono efforts to inform Americans, especially, the young, about the benefits of healthy eating and a healthy lifestyle. To be sure, Dole is in the healthy foods business to begin with, but the Nutrition Institute's health-promotion efforts reach far beyond what Dole sells. Indeed, Murdock has personally endowed an entire research campus in North Carolina, dedicated to public-spirited research on nutrition and health.
Murdock and the Dole Nutrition Institute provide a sterling example of education for health. And their efforts are all voluntary; we can note that neither Murdock nor the Dole Nutrition Institute, has any power to make anybody do anything.
Yet as we know, government operates on a different principle--the principle that if persuasion doesn't work, there's always the option of coercion.
And while the science of, say, the dangers of some lifestyle habits, such as smoking or snuff, are completely settled, it's still the case that tobacco users have rights--even if not everyone agrees.
So we can only wonder what future policy directives will be coming out of WHO and lesser entities in the months and years to come. Here’s more from the Post report:
Healthy eating is good, and informed consumer choice is good, too, as part of our overall commitment to personal freedom and individual dignity and autonomy. But if the Affordable Care Act of 2010, aka "Obamacare," is an indication, any idea that paternalistic public health officials think is a good idea--will soon be a mandatory idea.
And so, once again, the American people will have to rise up and defend their rights. Including their right to do things that Washington DC doesn't approve of. Such populist rebellions have happened before, even very recently. And now it looks as if another such upsurge is coming.
Can Sila Sahin Save The Women of Islam?
Islamic internet sites are being monitored by the BND - the German intelligence agency - after threats were posted about her "shaming Muslim womanhood" and "prostituting herself for money".
One poster on the Jihad Watch website wrote: "She needs to be very careful..." Another simply said: "She must pay."
A kebab shop owner, asked on German TV what he would do if Sila were his daughter, replied: "I would kill her. I really mean that. That doesn't fit with my culture."
The Islamic Community of Germany has called for a boycott of Sila.
About three million Muslim immigrants live in Germany, which has seen numerous honour killings in recent years by fanatical husbands, fathers and brothers.
In 2009, an asylum seeker was sentenced to life after killing his "too independent" German wife.
One police intelligence officer said of Sila: "I think what she did was either very brave, or very stupid.She will be double-locking her door at night for a long time to come."
Wow, the German police were much braver back in the day when all they had to do was round up Jews and put them into cattle cars. I suppose if they want to learn courage, they can lear at the feet of Sila Sahin:
Sila, 25 - star of German soap Good Times, Bad Times - claimed the shoot was a reaction to the "slavery" of her youth.
She added: "What I want to say with these photos is, 'Girls, we don't have to live according to the rules imposed upon us'.
"For years I subordinated myself to various societal constraints. The Playboy photo shoot was a total act of liberation."
As with Veena Malik, I pray for her safety. Much like the American Left reacts with vicious outrage and unadulterated hatred any time one of "their own" - a black, a woman - leaves the Democratic plantation and becomes a Republican, Muslims fundamentalists know that if women throw off the veil and declare themselves to be beautiful, free, and worthy of admiration and respect, their entire system of misogynistic semi-slavery can come tumbling down. After all, what's the point of adhering to a 12th century religion if you can't even get a cowering, terrified, humiliated female to serve your every sick whim?
Veena and Sila may be the sparks that starts the rebellion among Muslim women, which will lead to a breaking off of strict Muslim men, who will shed their beards and remove their robes if that's what it takes to get the hot ladies. Sometimes faith is only (fore)skin deep.
In honor of her guts, we'll give Sila a photo spread of her own, just like we did for Veena. Muslims, feel free to shake your fist at your monitors in outrage, then just move your hands down south....
That's Sila on the left, Janini Uhse in the middle, and not sure about the hottie on the right. WARNINIG: The next shot is very NSFW, but....wow:
Friday, April 29, 2011
Elephant Dung #28: Is NY-26 the new NY-23?
(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.)
William and Kate: The Royal Wedding
In case you've been living under a rock and you haven't heard, Prince William married Kate Middleton earlier this morning in a royal ceremony broadcasted world-wide.
Now, I love weddings as much as the next person, actually probably a little bit more, but frankly I feel like for the most part people were obsessed.
Kate looked gorgeous in her Sarah Burton of Alexander McQueen gown, and William stunning in his Scarlet Irish Guard uniform. The bride and groom both seemed genuinely happy, but that couldn't be said for everyone in attendance...
For me, this was the best picture to come out of the whole thing:
Little 3-year-old bridesmaid, Grace van Cutsem, covers her ears as the crowd of roughly 1 million people roar with glee after witnessing Prince William of Whales kiss his bride Kate Duchess of Cambridge on the balcony of Buckingham Palace .
Photo of the Day: Royal Wedding insanity 2
Obama Offends "Carnies"; But Gets A Job Offer Nevertheless...
"We’re not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers.”
The response to Barack Obama's ugly and slanderous slur was fast and furious:
"I am extremely upset by the reference," said Frank Zaitshik, who runs Wade Shows, a carnival business with over 100 amusement rides and attractions that entertains over 15 million people each year.
Zaitshik, a second generation carnival worker -- a term he prefers to the word "carny," which is used as a pejorative -- has spent much of his life battling negative stereotypes about his industry.
And as to be expected, Obama even got the terminology wrong. What an intellectual lightweight:
In fact, the correct term is "talker," according to Scott Baker, who has been doing this sort of work for 16 years, currently with the Coney Island Sideshow.
"Anyone who uses the term 'barker' is betraying their ignorance," Baker said. "You have 'inside talkers' and 'outside talkers,' and sometimes the term 'lecturer' is used. But the term 'barker' has never been used."
Baker said he has a bone to pick with people who use the term "carnival barker" and admitted to being shocked when the President singled out his industry.
"Our jaws did drop," Baker said. "This silliness has gone on for years, but, the fact is, we work very hard to create a great show. We pride ourselves in Class A entertainment."
And the final humiliation for the president: An job offer that seems to be a perfect match for his intellectual capabilities and warped worldview...
If Obama wants to make it up to Baker, he said he's got just the solution.
"I think the President should come see our show," he said. "We'll let him in for the kid's price. Maybe we can use his birth certificate as the 'blow-off,' which is the extra entertainment that's not officially part of the show...
Barack Obama as a sideshow freak? Wikipedia describes "blow-off" thusly:
The ten-in-one would often end in a "blowoff" or "ding," an extra act not advertised on the outside, which could be viewed for an additional fee. The blowoff act would be described provocatively, often as something deemed too strong for women and children,....
The appalling bigotry of Sally Kern II
The Republican-controlled Oklahoma House of Representatives passed a proposed constitutional amendment [on Wednesday] that would eliminate Affirmative Action in state government. The offical GOP reasoning for the change is that while "discrimination exists," "I don't think Affirmative Action has been as successful as we like to believe," the bill's sponsor, state Rep. T.W. Shannon (R), explained. But perpetual extremist state Rep. Sally Kern (R) offered her argument for ending the system that helps minorities advance: "blacks" simply don't work as hard as whites:Rep. Sally Kern, R-Oklahoma City, said minorities earn less than white people because they don't work as hard and have less initiative.
"We have a high percentage of blacks in prison, and that's tragic, but are they in prison just because they are black or because they don't want to study as hard in school? I've taught school, and I saw a lot of people of color who didn't study hard because they said the government would take care of them."
Allen West Knows Why He's In The "Crosshairs"...
Congressman West knows why he, more than any freshman Representative from the class of 2010, must be defeated at all costs:
...Mr. West’s place in the Democratic crosshairs stems, he said, from the fact “that I scare the liberal establishment.”
“You’re looking at a black man who was brought up in the inner cities, career military, a conservative, married going on 22 two years, two beautiful daughters, and for whatever reason that really does scare them,” he said. “My theory is that for whatever reason I could cause others like me to reject these liberal social-welfare policies.”
His theory is spot-on. If other minorities see that you can flee the Democrat's plantation and survive, even thrive, hell, they might do the same thing. And without that constituency, the Democrats are out of business, now and forever.
So they do to West what any plantation boss would to an escaped slave: Mock him, deride him, but secretly hate him, and work tirelessly to either bring him back in chains, or bring him back dead, so that the message gets thru loud and clear to any other would-be defectors....
What's new in New York's 23rd Congressional District?
Here's the script:
Hello, I'm calling from the National Republican Congressional Committee with an important alert about your Congressman Bill Owens. Thanks to Owens' addiction to spending, the federal government borrows $4 billion every day. That's given us fourteen trillion dollars in debt on the backs of our children and grandchildren. And Bill Owens is making it worse. He voted for another Pelosi budget that would strangle our economy with more spending, more debt and more borrowing from China. Call Congressman Owens and tell him to stop spending your money. Paid for by the National Republican Congressional Committee. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
And, if you insist, here's the ad:
Just to prove the game is on, a spokesperson for Congressman Owens responded by saying:
Now the Washington attack dogs are trying to distract voters from Rep. Owens' fight to protect Upstate seniors from the Ryan Budget, which would end Medicare as we know it and increase health care costs for the next generation of seniors.
Indeed.
Washington Post Gets Definitive On Obama's Intelligence...
But even as he suggested that one controversy might be put to rest, Trump raised new questions Wednesday about Obama’s background.
“The word is, according to what I’ve read, is that he was a terrible student when he went Occidental. He then gets to Columbia. He then gets to Harvard,” Trump said. “I heard at Columbia he wasn’t a very good student. He then gets to Harvard. How do you get into Harvard if you’re not a good student?”
Obama, a former constitutional law professor and the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, is widely recognized as an intellectual heavyweight...
By who, exactly? The folks who work at the Washington Post?
You would think that if a major newspaper would make this type of assertion in a news story, they would follow it up with anecdotal evidence of said subject's intellectual heft. But strangely enough, none is provided. The next sentences goes on to repeat Obama's proven falsehood (thank you, Jake Tapper) about the "birther" story dominating new coverage...
A sad trend amongst liberals is that when provided unassailable evidence that their pet theories do not work when applied to real life, their answer is not to reconsider their convictions, but to close their eyes, stamp their feet, plug their ears, and repeat their false assertions ad nausem, as if it will act as a magic talisman to bend reality to their demands.
Seems as if the Washington Post is now travelling down the same road...
Rebels without a cause
To be honest, I've come to hate activists, even when I agree with them. The passion behind so many crusades has often rendered the crusaders irrational, intemperate and more than half blind. It prompts them to accept spurious facts and figures and sometimes to invent them and in too many cases there's a kind of regenerative feedback that mimics a PA system with too much gain. It begins to howl and screech. Whatever was said into the microphone and what the howling is about matters little, only the joy of crusading, which not only surpasseth understanding, but prevents it.
Take genital mutilation, for instance. On the list of people I hate well in excess of my general contempt for humanity are those who painfully slice up young girls in a way that is intended to prevent them from enjoying sex as an adult. Yes, we have a constitutional ban on government interference with "free exercise" of religion, but we have a long standing interpretation of it that limits that free exercise to otherwise legal actions. We are, even so, usually able to make fair decisions because we distinguish between minor cosmetic surgery and malicious mutilation without a lot of hysteria. We can sometimes tell whether a comparison is ludicrous or not. We're able to take notice of the testimony of close to a billion males that it's not an impairment; unless we're prone to activism, that is.
Is circumcision, demanded by two of the major religious categories, really the kind of "mutilation" that falls outside of constitutional protection? To the activists of San Francisco, there are no uncertainties and certainly no distinction between something that is initially agonizing and a cruel lifelong impairment and something that isn't either. And let me be clear, this isn't a subject that will be illuminated by our traditional, left-right dichotomy. It simply doesn't matter whether it's liberals or Conservatives behind it; whether it's neither or both. I'd go so far as to say that the stated justifications for banning the circumcision of male babies is irrelevant to the passion for it and has too much to do with "aesthetics" to be more than an excuse. So I'm not going to indulge myself in modern fashion by invoking the traditional straw men ( and women of course) and restrict my contempt for people who need to have a cause and need it so much they aren't quite scrupulous about the high contrast, black and white scenarios they use in their passion plays.
If the crusade succeeds, much like the one that captured Jerusalem in 1099, the City by the bay will be as slippery a thing to hold on to. Jews and Muslims will simply use maternity facilities elsewhere or have the religious rite performed elsewhere. The Brit Milah, given in Gen. 17:10-14 to Abraham and in Lev. 12:3 is carried out on the eighth day. Muslims have a similar guideline. The law them would be only an inconvenience, like having to drive to the next town to purchase alcohol is in some places.
What then will it accomplish than, after all the sound and fury and obsession with penises wanes? Certainly nothing to stop what was intended to be stopped unless a further incursion by the dominant religion into the neighborhood of tolerance was part of the game all along.
(Cross posted from Human Voices)
Elephant Dung #27: Rand Paul takes aim at Donald Trump's questionable Republican cred
(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.)
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Thursday took a swipe at billionaire businessman Donald Trump, demanding to see his "Republican registration."
While speaking at a breakfast with New Hampshire Republicans one day after "The Donald" visited the Granite State, Paul riffed off the potential GOP presidential candidate's "birther" questions.
"I've come to New Hampshire today because I'm very concerned," said Paul, according to The New York Times. "I want to see the original long-form certificate of Donald Trump's Republican registration."
Paul's comments follow up on some GOP-aligned groups' effort to discredit Trump as a conservative. The free-market Club for Growth has accused Trump of being a liberal for his previous support of universal healthcare and his desire to raise tariffs on China.
Paul Ryan Gets A Standing "O"...
Check out Granny at the :20 mark standing up and applauding the Ryan plan. Not quite the image the Democrats were trying to manufacture during the Easter recess, no matter how much co-operation they got from CNN and NBC:
To be fair, protesters have been seen on the outskirts of Paul Ryan's town halls:
Good luck with the faux outrage, guys. We've got the real thing, and in case you haven't noticed, it's pointed precisely in your direction...
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Obama, Panetta, Petraeus
The next defense secretary will have to wind down the wars without losing them and will almost certainly have to cut the budget without wreaking havoc in the Pentagon. It's a nightmare job for anyone, but Panetta has as much experience as anyone at carving out that sort of territory.
I don't much care for him, and he's come to be an apologist for the Bush-Obama national security state, but I suppose he has the political clout to lead what is undeniably a deeply political office. (Whether he manages to secure the trust and support of the military brass, not to mention of the rank-and-file, is another matter, though that may not matter given his political priorities in the months/years ahead.)
Picking Petraeus to run the CIA is a move worthy of chess masters. He's been a wartime commander of one sort or another for eight years, almost non-stop. It's time for him to leave the battlefield; that was clear even to him. Yet for much of that time, he's also been a household name -- and widely hailed as the U.S. military's finest strategic mind in a generation. So the question -- which would have been vexing for any president -- is: What to do with this guy? Some who are close to the general refer to this question, with a slight smile and a cocked eyebrow, as "the Petraeus problem."
*****
Keeping Petraeus on the inside -- in a job that's related to, but not quite of, the military -- is a judicious stroke.