It is actually the second of these that has high significance. It comes from Mad Magazine which has always been mildly centre-left. It comes out of New York, not prime acreage for conservatives and aimed at 12-14 year old boys who are seldom by then on the right side of politics. For Mad to buy into this is a sign of some very strong shifts going on. People even amongst these elites must be starting to feel the damage caused of Obama stupidity and incompetence having an effect. Interesting to see even if too late.
The Obama scandal-a-day approach to politics is beyond clever. Rather than each scandal building upwards into one large fortissimo of outrage, each succeeding scandal makes people forget about the scandal from the day before, especially with the media on hand to play down everything if it’s done by a party of the left. Look at this. Disgusting beyond all measures, but as part of a far-left administration of such startling incompetence willing to lie about everything, everyone is just weary of pointing out the obvious.
Qatar allowing released Taliban men to move freely in country…
Reintegration: Military hides Bergdahl from public view…
FLASHBACK: ‘Converted to Islam And Taught Captors Bomb Making Skills’…
NYT: Left note explaining desertion before going AWOL…
REPORT: Wanted to Renounce Citizenship…
Team Leader: ‘A lot more to story than soldier walking away’…
Death sentence ‘in the realm of possibilities’…
Pentagon knew whereabouts but didn’t risk rescue…
14 SOLDIERS WERE LOST Searching for Bergdahl…
Never Officially Listed as POW…
White House apologizes for ‘oversight’ in notification failure…
FATHER: ‘I am still working to free all Guantanamo prisoners’…
MAG: White House Overrode Internal Objections To Terrorist Release…
‘Suck it up and salute’…
Rubio: Obama ‘Believes He’s Become Monarch Or Emperor’…
Anger explodes…
And by this time tomorrow or at the latest the day after there will be something else. But this is a policy that works only on the left. If you are a right -of-centre party, a scandal-a-day is a technique I wouldn’t try. For parties of the right, even if there is nothing going on, the media will be sure to find something even if there’s nothing much there to be found.
The list of referred articles from Drudge and not one mentions the likely point:
Qatar allowing released Taliban men to move freely in country…
Reintegration: Military hides Bergdahl from public view…
FLASHBACK: ‘Converted to Islam And Taught Captors Bomb Making Skills’…
NYT: Left note explaining desertion before going AWOL…
REPORT: Wanted to Renounce Citizenship…
Team Leader: ‘A lot more to story than soldier walking away’…
Death sentence ‘in the realm of possibilities’…
Pentagon knew whereabouts but didn’t risk rescue…
14 SOLDIERS WERE LOST Searching for Bergdahl…
Never Officially Listed as POW…
White House apologizes for ‘oversight’ in notification failure…
FATHER: ‘I am still working to free all Guantanamo prisoners’…
MAG: White House Overrode Internal Objections To Terrorist Release…
‘Suck it up and salute’…
Rubio: Obama ‘Believes He’s Become Monarch Or Emperor’…
Anger explodes…
Democracy is very well-defended against public opinion. Political parties, especially, are immune to almost everything that the majority actually desires, and are much less interested in mass tastes than shopkeepers, broadcasters, or industrial corporations. Modern politicians employ battalions of professional deceivers and manipulators, whose main job is to persuade the electorate to want what they are already being given, or what they are going to get. Our democratic leaders much prefer this to giving the people what they actually want.
So it is quite funny to watch men and women who are publicly dedicated to government for, by, and of the people, getting angry and exasperated when the people actually speak.
Events in Britain over the last few days have reminded me strongly of Berthold Brecht’s embittered sneer at his East German Communist comrades who, faced with a revolt by the workers they claimed to represent, ordered those workers to do penance for this outrage.
As Brecht sarcastically enquired, “Wouldn’t it be simpler if the Government just dissolved the people and elected another?”
And what has brought on these reflections on politicians and democratic principles?
Here, the very large vote for the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), a fourth party which incoherently but emphatically defies the consensus, has been treated by politicians and their media toadies as a problem with the voters which has somehow to be contained.
The idea that all these voters have broken the loyalties of a lifetime for good reason, and that leaving the European Union and restoring control of the national borders are good ideas (which they are), is never considered for a second. Instead, having been dismissed as ignorant bigots for the past six weeks, the insurgent voters are now the object of a campaign to bamboozle them with fake sympathy, combined with an utter refusal to do what they want.
Quite unaware of how this sounds, my country’s political and media elite simply cannot stop themselves treating legitimate discontent as some sort of pathology. They, the governing class, cannot possibly be the problem. It must the voters who are mistaken, misguided, or in some way mentally ill.
Our elites wish for world government while people like myself wish to preserve those tiny enclaves of sanity in the midst of a quite mad world. It won’t happen and so 2114 will be as unimaginably different from 2014 as this year is from the world a century ago. But a one-world horror with an international elite is the aim right now amongst our progressives irrespective of what anyone might wish for and desire. I remember border crossings and national money and much else about which I wish we could turn back the clock. So I am with Peter Hitchens on this and much else besides.
Victor Davis Hanson looks at the incredible staying power of a president who is ruining his own country and yet finds its critics at the other end of the garden. They don’t even describe him as a Teflon President since, to his supporters, Obama has hardly put a foot wrong. Nothings sticks because, in their view, there is nothing to stick. Here are three of the factors that keep Obama’s numbers in the acceptable zone.
1) His record support among minorities will not change since 70-90% of various hyphenated groups see the Obama tenure as long-overdue representation of their own interests — economic, ethnic, and symbolic. . . .
2) The media is not just overwhelmingly hard left, but hard left with a chip on its shoulder that its own views are neither accepted by the majority nor usually implemented by government.
All the above scandals and embarrassments would have ruined a Bush, given that such mishaps would have been headlined daily in the New York Times (e.g., “VA, Benghazi, AP, NSA, IRS overwhelm sinking Bush administration”) or Washington Post (“Bush Cabinet Paralyzed by Scandal”). . . .
3) The well-off are indifferent to the Obama record, interested only in its symbolic resonance. Doctrinaire liberalism resonates mostly with the very wealthy. We see that by the voting patterns of our bluest counties, or the contributions of the very affluent. In contrast, Republicanism is mostly embedded within the middle class and upper middle class, while liberalism is a coalition of the affluent and the poor.
But while these are important according to Hanson, the area he specially identifies is this:
For the liberal grandee . . . Obama represents their utopian dreams where an anointed technocracy, exempt from the messy ramifications of its own ideology, directs from on high a socially just society — diverse, green, non-judgmental, neutral abroad, tribal at home — in which an equality of result is ensured, albeit with proper exemptions for the better educated and more sophisticated, whose perks are necessary to give them proper downtime for their exhausting work on our behalf.
He may throw like a girl, screw everything up he touches, make America a worse place to live, leave the world far more dangerous than it was, but at least he’s not one of those rubes like Sarah Palin. And for this, and this alone, all is forgiven assuming it is even noticed there is anything he has to ask forgiveness for.
North Korea’s energy security problem is well documented, revolving around four distinct challenges: supply, generation, power transmission, and secondary usage. Of these four challenges, electricity generation and transmission are the two that can be addressed through the UNFCCC.
Renewable energy may be the most appropriate vehicle for increasing generation capacity because unlike large centralised fossil-fuels, renewables can be scaled locally which reduces their up-front cost.
Just how batty are these people. From Powerline where Steve Hayward thought the story might have come from The Onion but this is so disconnected from reality that insanity comes to mind as a possible inspiration.
The United States is becoming an ideologically driven police state. The ideology is a Rampant Liberalism where no distinctions are permitted to be said in a host of areas at risk of career and reputation. In all these areas, and you know what they are, the rule is that if you have nothing good to say then don’t say anything at all. But this ideological assault is now being coupled with a repressive use of the policing agencies. The US remains prosperous because of its inheritance from the past, but even that is no longer guaranteed going forwards say a decade and a half. It is this story that has again brought these issues to mind.
Look at the above picture. Does she look like the sort of person who would attack an armed officer of the law especially where there were quite a number of other such armed officers of the law right there as well. Here’s the story.
This is a photo of Arielle Lipsen (a good friend of mine) who was thrown to the ground and hit with the butt of a DEA agent’s rifle. She is now wrongfully being charged with assaulting a federal agent during a DEA raid of her sister’s smoke shop in Texas. Her sister gave the following statement to a local news site:
“She was having a conversation with a female agent, and trying to give the agents the lock code,” Ilana Lipsen claimed. “She was trying to tell them there was no key, but a code. There were too many officers and about half of them were doing nothing, then this one agent charged at her, threw her, kicked her legs out from under her, and when she was falling, her leg brushed up against his leg. That’s when he said ‘you’re trying to beat a federal agent’ and shoved the butt of his rifle into her neck.” (via BigBendNow)
Arielle reached out to me last night asking if I could help get eyes on her story because not only is she being wrongly accused, but her bond restrictions are insane. She said: “Part of the bond restrictions is that my sister retract all her statements from the press and say that I was never assaulted and that she lied.”
She asked me if I could get people’s eyes on this story. This is a thing to scream about. There’s no reason for a federal agent to put his hands on an unarmed, unthreatening citizen. Not only was she assaulted (LOOK AT THAT PHOTO) but now they might actually send her to jail.
Wow. Can they put restrictions like that on her bond?? They won’t let her out unless they tell the press they lied? I can’t eve wrap my brain around that.
On Tuesday, both Ilana and Arielle Lipsen were indicted on federal charges.
Arielle Lipsen was indicted on one count of assault on a federal officer causing bodily injury and Ilana Lipsen was indicted on one count of person under indictment receipt of ammunition.
Purple Zone owners Ilana Lipson, and her mother, Rosa Lipsen, are currently under state indictment for multiple first-degree felony manufacture, deliver, or possession of a controlled substance following four previous raids beginning in November 2012.
They’ve pleaded not guilty to the charges.
“They’re just trying to find something against me,” Ilana said. “This is extreme harassment. I’m aware of my 4th Amendment rights and they violated it.”
The catalyst for the most current raid, Lipsen also claims, was her internet search history, as well as her business dealings with China.
“They link people with internet search history. I own a hookah lounge, so I’m always looking at new products, and I breed, train, and show Arabian horses, so I’m always looking at them online. I do business with China. All my e-cigarette merchandise is bought directly from Chinese distributors,” she said. “It’s the last reach from the DEA in Brewster to get something from nothing. There were 30-plus officers at my shop, and they seized my personal and business computers, my camera, my cell phone, and my registered guns. They also seized packages of kratom, which is a legal herbal stimulant. They absolutely did not find anything illicit or any contraband.”
The officers, Lipsen also said, turned the security cameras in her shop to face the walls and not capture any agents in the raid.
“I’m not aware of the agents doing that,” said DEA Spokesperson Lilia Rico, who also said that the DEA don’t run cameras during raids.
The guns and ammunition seized in the raid, Rico also said, were taken as Lipsen is currently under state indictment.
Photos by citizen photojournalist Cochran that he had posted to Facebook during the end of the raid were deleted, then reposted once Facebook officials found nothing conflicting with their code, despite requests from authorities.
“The whole deal is just scary,” said Cochran, who witnessed the tail end of the raid. “It just shows the violent, confrontational aspects of modern policing and the increasing militarization of the nation’s police forces, as well as accusations of funding terrorism to get access and warrants against anyone.”
The use of terror, Cochran and Lipsen said, has been a part of Operation Synergy phase II.
“They claimed that I had ties with Hezbollah and Syria, which is ridiculous,” said Lipsen. “How can I, a Jewish woman who supports the State of Israel, contribute to those groups or states?”
Tommy Yancy was savagely beaten, tasered and attacked by five officers after the traffic stop.
Yancy died on the street.
And here’s the video:
There are still people who will discuss these things in public so the news can get out. The reasons, though, we know any of this at all is because there are still people foolhardy enough to say things in public and with pocket videos everywhere, some of it gets recorded, But with the IRS and other federal agencies on the loose, you must be a very brave person to take any of these things on. Not only is this out of control, there seems to be no feedback loop that will end any of this any time soon.
The global warming clergy will never give up their faith. They have grown insanely wealthy and powerful on the back of bamboozling the hoi polloi and have no intention of letting go the riches that have flowed in their direction since this scam began. So if you are one of those with an open mind about the minimal likelihood of a carbon planetary death over the next century, then the assault on Professor Lennart Bengtsson will just seem par for the course. And while James Delingpole thinks this may be “a bridge too far” for the AGW brigade, it is really nothing more than a small skirmish in The Great Climate War that was settled long ago. So while it’s a big story today and even made it to the front page of The Times, you are kidding yourself if you think it will make the slightest difference. Other than the billions it will cost us in wealth, since it is billions we do not have and will never earn, money we will never receive cannot be used in a campaign of our own to turn this particular tide. The only thing we have on our side are the facts. So it goes. But the Bengtsson moment is nevertheless a moment worthy of our consideration.
Bengtsson is a scientist who has moved from having accepted the global warming hypothesis to a more sceptical approach, last month joining the board of Nigel Lawson’s Global Warming Policy Foundation. This is the story of the reaction from his fellow “scientists”.
The leading Swedish climatologist and former director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, astonished the academic world with his decision to join the advisory council of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), founded by renowned climate change critic Lord Lawson.
Explaining his decision earlier this month, Professor Bengtsson said he wanted to learn from the highly qualified experts at the GWPF in areas outside of his own expertise and to help widen the debate through his own extensive meteorological knowledge.
His perceived “defection” was described as the biggest switch from the pro-climate change lobby to the sceptic camp to date.
But in his resignation letter to the London-based GWPF today, the 79-year-old said the enormous pressure he had felt from around the world to his appointment on the organisation’s Academic Advisory Council had become “virtually unbearable”.
Prof Bengtsson added: “If this is going to continue I will be unable to conduct my normal work and will even start to worry about my health and safety. I see therefore no other way out therefore than resigning from GWPF.
“I had not [been] expecting such an enormous world-wide pressure put at me from a community that I have been close to all my active life. Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship, etc.
“I see no limit and end to what will happen. It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy. I would never have expecting anything similar in such an original peaceful community as meteorology. Apparently it has been transformed in recent years.”
The Professor’s letter concluded: “Under these situation I will be unable to contribute positively to the work of GWPF and consequently therefore I believe it is the best for me to reverse my decision to join its Board at the earliest possible time.”
As someone commented, this ‘has the potential to do as much harm to climate science as did the Climategate emails’. Exactly my point. It will do no harm at all.
Paul Caron, who has been following the dead cat IRS scandal, has an article in USA Today on The media ignore IRS scandal. He therefore writes:
Today’s news media are largely ignoring the IRS scandal, and it is impossible to have confidence in the current investigations by the FBI, Justice Department, and House committee. I am not suggesting that the current scandal in the end will rise to the level of Watergate. But the allegations are serious, and fair-minded Americans of both parties should agree that a thorough investigation needs to be undertaken to either debunk them or confirm them.
Step one should be to give Lois Lerner full immunity from prosecution in exchange for her testimony. And then let the chips fall where they may.
Rise to the level of Watergate! This is so far beyond Watergate that even to suggest a comparison is to downgrade the significance of what went on. Whatever else Nixon did or did not do, at no stage was it ever suggested that he had even been aware of what was being done never mind having been involved.
With Lerner and the IRS it is completely different. The probability is not small that this is an Obama operation and originated in the White House. Lerner knows the truth but will never speak, and even if she did the media would never report what she said. Caron’s work is for the historians, not for political comment by anyone with a sentimental attachment to the left. The fact that it even showed up in USA Today is all the evidence you need that no one on the left thinks it will ever come to anything at all.
Since facts don’t matter in the global warming debate, this won’t matter either. But this is from a post at Powerline titled, MICHAEL MANN IS A LIAR AND A CHEAT. HERE’S WHY. See the diagram? This is the text that goes with it:
The figure on the left is a blow-up of the far-right portion of the dramatic hockey stick diagram as it was featured in the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report. It purports to show steeply rising temperatures in the latter portion of the 20th century. The green line represents Keith Briffa’s tree ring data. Note how it discreetly disappears behind the other lines. The graphic on the right shows Briffa’s data as it actually existed. The later decades of Briffa’s data, showing a sharp decline in temperature after 1960, were simply cut out in the diagram as published by the IPCC.
There is clearly no fighting it any more. I’ll just have to go and see if I can get a grant.
Law of Markets 