May 23, 2012
But Glenn Beck Is The Crazy One
Tarek Fatah with Glenn Beck.
Your browser does not support iframes.
h/t Soccermom
"Lament for a national blogosphere"
I'm not even sure this is worth linking to.
For it is the very rare Canadian politics or news blog that manages to grab a critical mass of eyeballs and break out of its tiny community of like-minded people; and almost none that sets the agenda. [...]
There's no good reason Canadians couldn't have created some of the most popular blogs, which rarely depend on original reporting that would require someone to have boots on the ground in a particular place. It's not difficult to imagine a sharp blog on North American politics that gets the bulk of its traffic from the U.S. while also mixing in a hefty dose of Canadian issues.
Simon Houpt writes for the Globe and Mail, with a weekday circulation equal to that of the population of St. Catharines, Ontario.
Hashtag Of The Entitlement Generation
Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com
Via Ed Driscoll (who has lots more).
The Children Are Our Future
And that's why my bulk food storage containers are all labeled Roundup Ready®
Reader Tips
Tonight, we take a look man's attempt to achieve The Miracle of Flight. Come on, fly!…
The comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.
May 22, 2012
The Sound Of Settled Science
What evil lurks in the hearts of scientists? Behavioral ecologist Daniele Fanelli knows. In a meta-analysis of 18 surveys of researchers, he found only 2 percent ’fessed up to falsifying or manipulating data...but 14 percent said they knew a colleague who had.
h/t AK
Is There Nothing That Obama Can't Do?
I don't think they saw this one coming;
Forty-three Catholic dioceses and organizations across the country have announced religious liberty lawsuits against the federal government to challenge the Obama administration’s contraception mandate.
[...]
Several Catholic universities around the country also joined in the lawsuits, including The Catholic University of America, the University of Notre Dame and Franciscan University of Steubenville.
Notre Dame president Fr. John Jenkins, C.S.C., said the lawsuit was filed “neither lightly nor gladly, but with sober determination.”
“We do not seek to impose our religious beliefs on others,” he explained in an email to Notre Dame employees.
Rather, he explained, “we simply ask that the Government not impose its values on the University when those values conflict with our religious teachings.”
Related - I confess that not in my wildest dreams did I imagine President Obama’s campaign would be so awful.
Not Waiting For The Asteroid
At over the 1300 words -- which is 1300 more than The Times has given the explosive allegation that the Obama campaign bribed Reverend Wright in 2008 -- the piece purports to be a profile of a woman suffering from MS who finds what the headline calls, the "pricey private world" of dressage, therapeutic.
We Don't Need No Stinking Giant Fans
Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
In a landmark ruling, a judge has found oil sands giant Syncrude Canada Ltd. guilty of a pair of environmental charges stemming from the deaths of 1,606 birds two years ago.
East County Magazine, May 2012;
In a precedent that has horrified wildlife experts, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has authorized the “take” (meaning harassment, displacement or even death) of 10 endangered Peninsular Bighorn sheep — 5 ewes and 5 lambs.
The decision comes after federal wildlife officials were provided photographic evidence that the endangered animals were seen in recent weeks on the site of the just-approved Ocotillo Express wind energy facility—a presence federal officials and the project developer have long denied.
What We Really Need Is Democracy
With a 9-11 Truther to vote for.
The Tolerant Left
Robert Stacy McCain and his family flee for safety. Credible threats from leftist terrorist and convicted felon Brett Kimberlin.
We Don't Need No Stinking Giant Mirrors
NP:
When a local energy economics expert received a flyer advertising solar panels for his roof in the mail, he did what few other potential customers are willing to do: the math.
h/t Dan
The World Is Being Run By Crazy People
It’s easier to fake being a loser than a winner. And so the victim-hero was born.
Reader Tips
Tonight Wade Hemsworth complains - and with good reason - about those vexatious, mad-making little critters in the woods of north On-tar-i-o-i-o: here's The Blackfly Song.
The comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.
May 21, 2012
This Is Awkward
Facebook shares [FB 33.94 -4.2918 (-11.23%) ] sank on Monday without the full support of the company's underwriters, leaving some investors down 25 percent from where they were Friday afternoon.
The Decline And Fall Of The American Empire
In the lawsuit titled “United States of America vs. 434 Main Street, Tewksbury, Massachusetts” the government is suing an inanimate object, the motel Caswell’s father built in 1955. The U.S. Department of Justice intends to seize it, sell it for perhaps $1.5 million and give up to 80 percent of that to the Tewksbury Police Department, whose budget is just $5.5 million. The Caswells have not been charged with, let alone convicted of, a crime. They are being persecuted by two governments eager to profit from what is antiseptically called the “equitable sharing” of the fruits of civil forfeiture, a process of government enrichment that often is indistinguishable from robbery.
h/t Kevin
Y2Kyoto: I'll Miss The Polar Ice Caps
Ice warnings halt U.K. rowers' Atlantic crossing
Morris said he hopes the cancellation of their voyage still draws attention to global warming and the melting of the polar ice caps.
h/t Maz2
The Tolerant Left
"Didn’t Obama bully somebody, though?”
h/t KevinB
Reader Tips
The family of Robin Gibb announced last night that the 62-year-old member of the brother-group Bee Gees had succumbed to cancer. Tonight's Tips music features a ballad, characteristic of the group's well-crafted pop confections, in which Robin's distinctive voice can be heard singing the title line at the start of the choruses: from 1975, here's Baby As You Turn Away.
The comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.
May 20, 2012
"A system built, not on economic logic, but on political hubris and vanity."
Right across Europe, much of the public has been deeply suspicious of the euro ever since the idea was conceived. The French only voted “oui” to joining by the narrowest of margins, after their government cobbled together votes from former colonies. The German public, like citizens in so many other member states, was never granted a referendum.
Since the single currency’s 1999 launch, in fact, there hasn’t been a single independent opinion poll in Germany in favour of euro membership. No wonder the hard-working German public is seething about the prospect of yet more Greek bail-outs – and who can blame them?
Canajun, eh?
Any thoughts on this (BBC World television is running a series trying to explain us)?
What does it mean to be Canadian?
Y2Kyoto: State Of Anorexia Envirosa
Via Instapundit;
Vitamin A deficiency affects the immune system, leading to illness and frequently to blindness. It probably causes more deaths than malaria, HIV or tuberculosis, killing as many people every single day as the Fukushima tsunami. It can be solved by eating green vegetables and meat, but for many poor Asians, who can afford only rice, that remains an impossible dream. To deal with the problem, “biofortification” with genetically modified food plants is 1/10th as costly as dietary supplements.“Golden rice”—with two extra genes to make beta-carotene, the raw material for vitamin A—was a technical triumph, identical to ordinary rice except in color. Painstaking negotiations led to companies waiving their patent rights so the plant could be grown and regrown free by anybody.
Yet today, 14 years later, it still has not been licensed to growers anywhere in the world. The reason is regulatory red tape deliberately imposed to appease the opponents of genetic modification, which Adrian Dubock, head of the golden rice project, describes as “a witch-hunt for suspected theoretical environmental problems…[because] many activist NGOs thought that genetically engineered crops should be opposed as part of their anti-globalization agenda.”
It is surprising to find that an effective solution to the problem consistently rated by experts as the poor world’s highest priority has been stubbornly opposed by so many pressure groups supposedly acting on behalf of the poor.
The Children Are Our Future
And that's why I have 3 cases of mace in my basement.
The World Is Being Run By Crazy People
Energy Secretary Reviews Avengers on Facebook, Sees Promise of Green Energy in Hollywood Movie
H.M.S. Uh-Oh
Europe sees huge influx of deposits into the Bank of See-Ya'-Later:
Worries about a run on Greek banks have rattled Athens this week, after savers withdrew at least 700 million euros on Monday alone…Five of Greece’s top banks saw 37 billion euros taken out last year, including 12 billion from EFG Eurobank and 8-9 billion apiece at National Bank of Greece, Piraeus and Alpha Bank. In February, Evangelos Venizelos, finance minister at the time, said only 16 billion euros had gone abroad, with a third of that going to Britain. Savers have shifted to property, gold and other banks, or stashed it privately.
Well, at least the rest of Europe is secu….
It is not only Greeks who are worried about their savings. Data shows depositors have also taken flight from banks in Belgium, France and Italy. And on Thursday, Spain’s Bankia was reported to have seen more than 1 billion euros drained by its customers in the past week…..More than 120 billion euros was taken from two banks in Belgium alone...Some 90 billion euros was taken from France’s banks, including around 30 billion each from Credit Agricole and BNP Paribas.
It's all good.
Reader Tips
In our Saturday night long weekend musical amusement, bluegrass legends Flatt & Scruggs cover Bob Dylan's Like A Rolling Stone.
No, really.
The comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.
May 19, 2012
Dim, dimmer...
…dimmest:
"At the moment that (Trayvon Martin) confronted or was confronted by the wannabe cop loser who was stalking him, turns out he probably did beat the dog shit out of that guy. I just want to say if I had a son he would not look like Trayvon Martin, but I hope he would act like him."
Well, he wouldn't. The son of Bill Maher would hire someone to act like Trayvon.
Getting up to speed
Yup, pretty much:
Okay, let me see if I have all this straight. Bill Clinton, a white Southerner, was the first black president. Obama, an apparently straight guy, is the first gay president. George Zimmerman, a Hispanic, is a white guy. Elizabeth Warren, the whitest white woman anybody ever saw, is an Injun.Andrew Sullivan, a liberal, considers himself the last “true conservative.” The Democrat Socialists, left-wingers to a fault, consider themselves “centrist” or “moderate,” and Mitt Romney, who is a liberal, is a “right-wing extremist"…[…]...Violent OWS revolutionaries are “mostly peaceful.” Layabouts who collect government benefits are “hard-working Americans,” and…
Continue your re-education here.
The Preakness
America saw a rivalry not just between two horses, or even between two brothers, but between two worlds. Arthur, despite his own Thoroughbred breeding, came to represent the outsiders of the sport, while Easy Goer, bred by the great Claiborne Farm — now operated by Arthur’s brother Seth — and by 80-year-old Ogden Phipps, a pillar of New York racing, was thought to represent the racing establishment.Sunday Silence duels Easy Goer in the 1989 Preakness.
Post time for the the 2012 running is at 6pm Eastern.
And another win for Derby winner I'll Have Another.
[Loband: Object Removed -]
Breaking sports news video. MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL highlights and more.
David Cameron's Britain
Where the foxes caper unmolested, the government packs your school lunch and repeat after me: "Goo goo. Gaa gaa."
It's Probably Nothing
So, global finance again approaches the brink of severe crisis. And we all know what that means. Market participants have been conditioned to expect aggressive policy responses – and policymakers have been conditioned to dare not disappoint the markets. So the critical question becomes how close we have come to that perilous juncture where policymakers are unable to deliver. When does the scope of market and economic imbalances overwhelm policy tools? Or, more precisely and critically, when do the markets begin to lose faith in the efficacy of policy measures (not to mention, the actual policymakers)?
h/t george
This Is Awkward
After a poll released this week showed President Barack Obama only beating his Democratic primary opponent John Wolfe Jr. by seven points, 45 percent to 38 percent, in Arkansas's Fourth Congressional District, state Democrats moved to practically disenfranchise Arkansas voters. "[D]elegates Wolfe might claim won't be recognized at the national convention," national party officials are telling state Democrats. Wolfe is being accused of not following the party rules.“They want a coronation,” Wolfe tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD. “They’re conflating [Obama] with the party. Are we supposed to call him ‘Dear Leader’? Is this some kind of North Korea thing?
h/t Bemused
Y2Kyoto: State Of Anorexia Envirosa
You first, you son of a bitch.
Reader Tips
When all the skies are grey and it's a rainy day, think of the birdies in spring, and when you're up to your neck in hot water, Be Like The Kettle and Sing.
Thanks for the song, Vera.
The comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.
May 18, 2012
Honey, I Finished The Internet
Favourite British dogs: in pictures. (h/t John)
Submerged
Dauntless Doug Saunders of the Globe has some funny ideas in his cloud cuckoo land:
...Today we need to recognize the fact that, despite what Laurier did a century ago, Canada remains a victim of underpopulation. We do not have enough people, given our dispersed geography, to form the cultural, educational and political institutions, the consumer markets, the technological, administrative and political talent pool, the infrastructure-building tax base, the creative and artistic mass necessary to have a leading role in the world...
It is time to act. Canada should build its population to a size – at least 100 million – that will allow it to determine its own future, maintain its standard of living against the coming challenges and have a large enough body of talent and revenue to solve its largest problems. All it takes is a sustained and determined increase in immigration, to at least 400,000 permanent immigrants per year...
Funny that the UK and France did pretty well in terms of the areas Dauntless Doug worries about--and played pretty leading roles in the word--with populations of 41.6 million and 40.7 million respectively. In 1901.
Canada's population is now estimated at 34.8 million. What is Dauntless Doug ingesting?
Y2Kyoto: I'll Miss The Polar Ice Caps
Overall, however, the observed changes have little impact on the mass balance of the region. We therefore conclude that in contrast with their counterparts in the Amundsen and Bellingshausen Seas (Rignot et al., 2008) the ice streams and ice shelves in the broad region under investigation herein have not been changed in a significant way in the past 12 yr, which suggests that the ice dynamics of the entire region does not have a strong impact on the mass budget of the Antarctic continent.
Don't Tease Us Like That
Stursberg grimaces as he describes the impact of losing HNIC and its 450 hours of prime time Canadian programming. “What needs to happen is people need to have a serious conversation about the future of the CBC. The next few years are going to be very difficult. It’s at a point that, in three years, CBC might just collapse.
h/t EBD
Pleasing Your Enemies Does Not Turn Them Into Friends
"Even by Stupid Party standards, it was an impressive display of preemptive surrender."
The Tolerant Left
A plea for historical accuracy - "I wonder if I commisioned Ms. Sutherland to do a portrait of Messiah Jack with two young Asian girls in a tug and pull room with wifey partially hid behind a curtain as a voyeur the Kingston Library would hang it up for me?"
This Is Not Your Grandma's Humane Society
Guilt: It’s Not Just For Jews and Catholics Anymore.
The animal rights movement that emerged in the ‘70s was changing, too. I, myself, would have been ripe for the picking as literature flooded my mailbox exposing with sickening evidence the horrors of vivisection. But the movement morphed; It became polarizing, unreasonable, and increasingly radical. Where it had once appealed to our pathos, it devolved into using our old friend, guilt. Guilt for eating meat, guilt for wearing fur, riding in a rodeo and eating Kentucky Fried Chicken – all deeds vulnerable to criticism as we learned more about their respective industries.
But guilt for owning a purebred dog?
Welcome to the new elitism.
What's The Opposite Of Diversity?
The reaction to my blog post ranged from puerile to vitriolic. The graduate students I mentioned and the senior faculty who advise them at Northwestern University accused me (in guest blogs posted by the Chronicle editors) of bigotry and cowardice. The former wrote that "in a bid to not be 'out-niggered' [their word] by her right-wing cohort, Riley found some black women graduate students to beat up on." (I confess I don't actually know what that means.) One fellow blogger (and hundreds of commenters) called my post "racist."
h/t EBD