Reader Tips

"Please, America, let's agree to never have a vagina protest ever again."

Check out the top photo.

Interesting/disturbing/old-hat: Two Classic Experiments On Conformity & Hierarchy.

h/t

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/06/21/toronto-man-raises-200k-for-elderly-bus-monitor-bullied-by-students-in-viral-video/

This had me gritting my teeth in fury (the bullying part) and tearing up when I read what Max Sidorov did about it.

That video's hard to watch, Rita.

"The children are our future" indeed.

Good for Max Sidorov, though.

Breitbart's Mary Chastain, reporting on the "Big Three" networks' coverage of recent developments regarding Fast and Furious, gives high marks to CBS, who have been covering the story since the very beginning, but gives a failing grade (as it were) to the Dem-proxy spin-machines ABC and NBC.

Excerpts:

"The Fast & Furious scandal and President Obama's first-ever invocation of executive privilege received only third-highest priority during ABC's broadcast. Anchor Diane Sawyer spoke as if the 18-month old scandal was itself breaking news. In fairness, it would be breaking news to viewers of ABC World News. A quick search of the program's coverage yields zero results…"

Later,

"Brian Williams did not look happy at the beginning of NBC Nightly News tonight, and I don’t blame him. The House Oversight Committee voted Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt. This meant the controversy was, for the second time ever, too large for him to deny its newsworthiness.

"Though Fast & Furious was the lead story for Nightly News, it was full of spin and jabs against Republicans. According to Mr. Williams, 'Washington has blown up into a caustic partisan fight, and a showdown is coming over the power of the American president.' Mr. Holder was not found in contempt because of executive privilege. He was found in contempt for withholding documents. He could have avoided this if he just showed up to yesterday’s meeting with the 1,300 pages he promised. The president's interference was not the genesis of this conflict."

Doug Ross notes that Brian Williams, assuming and probably hoping that NBC viewers would have no idea what the hell has been going on, introduced the coverage with this characterization/summarization:

"If you're not following the complexities of Fast & Furious, it looks just like more of our broken politics."

"Please, America, let's agree to never have a vagina protest ever again."

What are they protesting, lack of use?

The RBC has been downgraded by Moody's today.

Further to CBS's commendable refusal to act as the Obama administration's propagandists by eliding the Fast & Furious story, here's an excerpt from a "CBS News Investigates" report:

ATF officials didn't intend to publicly disclose their own role in letting Mexican cartels obtain the weapons, but emails show they discussed using the sales, including sales encouraged by ATF, to justify a new gun regulation called "Demand Letter 3" that would require some U.S. gun shops to report the sale of multiple rifles or "long guns."

LOL.

I just went to Instapundit and the page-top banner ad was for RBC.

I guess they thought I had just typed "RBC" for complimentary reasons.

That's a relief, andycanuck.

Been busy.

Thought the CPC party would be thrown out by now. Was sure that the MSM concensites had some kind of smokin' robocall gun, or something?

Re: Underground Finns!

Great idea. Not exactly new. Has anyone read Alice in Wonderland??

Idea-man Bryan Caplan of the Library of Economics and Liberty:

"I don't just think that immigration restrictions are bad policy; I think they're a grotesque crime against humanity - with all that implies. Given this starting point, Obama's semi-amnesty for hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants sounds like the best U.S. political news of the 21st-century. I can't remember the last time any American policy change actually made me happy or even hopeful. I'd like to believe this is for real."

RWCG responds to Caplan's "tour de force display of smartifying himself into utter stupidity":

"It’s kind of fascinating to see what a highly intelligent person can talk himself into. You have to be a special kind of genius to fail to understand basic points like: nation-states exist, and have borders, and have a fundamental interest in controlling those borders, meaning, ideally, via law enforcement rather than vigilantism and tit-for-tat guerilla raids (but the latter could just as easily be arranged). 99.999% of the world – even probably most of the people Bryan thinks he’s helping – understands all this full well and really without much controversy. Only if you get a special sort of education and ensconce yourself into a sufficiently comfortable bubble do you learn to forget it and talk yourself out of this sort of common sense. There’s almost something Zen about it, like training your body to slow down its heartbeat. Or is that Hindu/fakirs? Well whatever, I’m definitely not there yet."

Both links via Foseti.

Greatest Context-Free Exchanges From the HOC, volume #37:

NDP MP Jonathan Tremblay: "Without further ado, I want to offer my sincerest apologies to the member for Westmount—Ville-Marie for the loss of the items that were intended for him. The mistake was entirely mine and I unequivocally acknowledge this now. I wish to make amends to the member as soon as possible. I also want to say that despite the comments made by the member for Westmount—Ville-Marie, it was an honest mistake, made in good faith. The incident occurred more than two months ago now…."

Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureux: "Concern was expressed yesterday in regard to the contents of the package…At this point, I would suggest that we leave it for the member for Westmount—Ville-Marie to report back. We believe it is of a fairly serious nature. It involves not only the opening, but also the consuming of the contents of a package, as opposed to opening it, finding out that it is not ours and then returning it...."

The Most Arrogant Man in the World:

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DAqxl9qiFonc&v=Aqxl9qiFonc&gl=US

Stay ignorant, my friends.

Reginald - Love that! Here *cough* is a better link.

Mao Stlong* Lepolt.

Gleetings flom Lio.

"Mr. Strong was flown in from China at UN (that is, taxpayers’) expense to be regaled by a group of corporations on Monday as a “very special guest of honour.”"

*Ex-Liberal leader Bob Rae's uncle Mo Strong, c/o Red China.

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/06/21/peter-foster-the-rio-future-we-avoided/

Mao Stlong's Red China: Too Big to FAIL.

...-
"In the last decade, China has invested $4 trillion in housing. Sixty-five million homes remain vacant. Behold history’s biggest ever property bubble... more»"

http://www.aldaily.com/

...-

"Decision time for China"

"This spring in Beijing, I asked a businessman an obvious question about the risks to China of an economic crash-landing, to which I got a less obvious reply. It is impossible to travel around China without concluding that the place is in the grip of a building frenzy. In less than a decade, China has pumped around $4 trillion into property; tens of millions of houses and apartments as well as Ozymandian public buildings and factory estates – and what hits the eye is how much of it all stands empty. Across the country, uninhabited concrete blocks scab the land, not only in the megacities of the eastern seaboard but also in the sleepier southwest; from filthy mining towns in Henan, all the way to entire ghost towns in Inner Mongolia. With an estimated 65 million homes standing vacant, residential construction last year was still running at a rate of five times demand.

"Dwarfing even the $2 trillion borrowed for the Railway Ministry’s high-speed networks since 2008, and the thousands of kilometres of 4–6 lane toll roads with barely a vehicle on them, China’s building binge is the most striking example of what Prime Minister Wen Jiabao famously, but impotently, denounced in 2007 as the country’s “unbalanced, unstable, uncoordinated and unsustainable” model of economic development. Now, with house prices and sales sagging in response to government restrictions aimed at deflating history’s biggest ever property bubble, and with local governments as deep in bad debt as the developers, I asked the businessman what was to prevent the bubble actually bursting, in a spectacular financial explosion?

His answer was that it wouldn’t happen."

http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1064549.ece

Of gunmen, Mohammed's gunmen, Senators, and leftist liberals.

...-

"Taliban gunmen storm hotel"

...-

"Back-door gun registry show-down"

"OTTAWA - Pro and anti-gun forces moseyed into the Senate corral on Thursday for a show-down over the back-door long gun registry."

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Politics/2012/06/21/19906276-qmi.html

Here is a funny take on why the front fell off.

This happened in off shore Australia.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcU4t6zRAKg

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/06/21/luka-rocco-magnotta-facebook/

I find this a tad disturbing too: Magnotta's Facebook fans find him "inspirational".

Clash Of Titans: Canada Battles Powerful Green Lobby

“The Harper government’s confrontation with the opposition parties over Bill C-38 was the parliamentary manifestation of an epic clash between two titanic constituencies. In one camp are resource extraction entrepreneurs seeking less fettered access to the treasures of Western and Northern Canada. They look to Asia for investors and customers.
The rival camp are rentiers from Central and Atlantic Canada who are economically and ideologically aligned with their counterparts in Western Europe and the US Northeast. They want to preserve the wealth within their realm. They favour neo-corporatist and quasi-autarkist policies.

If the Harper program is successful, then Kitimat, Prince George, Whitehorse, Yellowknife, Grand Prairie, Fort McMurray, and Prince Albert will burst like popcorn kernels on a hot fry-pan. Hundreds of thousands of tradespeople, entrepreneurs, labourers, tenants, and consumers will emigrate out of Atlantic and Central Canada for points west-by-northwest. This rush will benefit Canadians in general, but it will exert a protracted economic drag on the areas being left behind.

Many in Canada’s old metropoles advocate for renewable energy, recycling, and the “100 mile diet.” Such policies seek to emancipate the metropoles from dependence upon the hinterland and to stem the outflow of money and skills.

Fools believe this clash is about saving caribou.”

http://thegwpf.org/best-of-blogs/6013-clash-of-titans-canada-battles-powerful-green-lobby.html

Casus belli predates Mohammedanism.

...-

"Syria 'shoots down Turkish fighter jet'"

"Syrian air defences “shot down” the Turkish jet fighter that went missing while on patrol near the border between the two countries on Friday, according to local television reports."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/9349777/Syria-shoots-down-Turkish-fighter-jet.html

H/T Tony & Mrs. Blair.

Fox meat not kosher for school meals.

...-

"Martha tells The Telegraph her school meals have improved since she started blogging on the subject."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/9349845/School-dinner-blogger-Martha-Payne-explains-it-has-led-to-big-improvements-in-the-meals.html

George turns to Robert; Robert defers to Ari, the antique Greek*.

Is there anyone capable of translating Robert's blather from the Greek?

...-

"As political economist Robert Skidelsky, who comes at this issue from a different angle, observes in the Guardian today:

"Aristotle knew of insatiability only as a personal vice; he had no inkling of the collective, politically orchestrated insatiability that we call economic growth. The civilization of "always more" would have struck him as moral and political madness. And, beyond a certain point, it is also economic madness. This is not just or mainly because we will soon enough run up against the natural limits to growth. It is because we cannot go on for much longer economising on labour faster than we can find new uses for it."

"Rio+20 draft text is 283 paragraphs of fluff"

"World leaders have spent 20 years bracing themselves to express 'deep concern' about the world's environmental crises, but not to do anything about them"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2012/jun/22/rio-20-earth-summit-brazil

*Greeks today:

Greek government hit by double health scare"

"New finance minister rushed to hospital after reportedly fainting, and PM to undergo surgery for eye problem"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/22/greek-government-double-health-scare

The children are our future and that's why I'm LMAO.

"A handful of Montgomery County, Maryland teens are purposefully using fake license plates to fool local speed cameras, breaking the law, and causing citations to be sent to innocent drivers.

The Montgomery County Sentinel reports the trend to be a fad amongst local high schools, with teachers and fellow students as the most popular targets. Fooling the cameras is easy: the students tape a fake license plate, printed on glossy paper and using license-plate-like fonts downloaded off the web, over their real license plate – then set off cameras. Days later, a $40 citation appears in the mail for whomever the fake plates are actually registered to."

http://www.dailytech.com/Students+Use+Speed+Cameras+to+Frame+Innocent+Drivers+Prank+Teachers/article13749.htm

via Reason: http://reason.com/blog/2012/06/22/if-you-have-a-license-plate-youre-going

"In place of Merkel’s “it’s for the Euro” the principle “it’s for the children” is substituted for a reason everywhere else."

"The End of Westphalia"

"You know there’s a chance that hell has frozen over when you see an article titled “A Stealth Coup d’État in the United States” published in Pravda, quoting Thomas Jefferson and authored by a retired United States Army colonel."

http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2012/06/22/the-end-of-westphalia/#more-22968

Walk with O'Green. Save you soles.

The Ninety and Nine.

"*There were ninety and nine that safely lay
In the shelter of the fold.
But one was out on the hills away,
Far off from the gates of gold.
Away on the mountains wild and bare.
Away from the tender Shepherd’s care.
Away from the tender Shepherd’s care."

...-

"Obama: Candidate of the 1 Percent"

"General Carl von Clausewitz warned that artillery is the one weapon that an enterprising adversary could turn against its former owners. Barack Obama's support for cap and trade allows us to similarly turn his class warfare rhetoric against him.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), a strong supporter of Obama's cap-and-trade agenda, has provided us more than ample means to do so. Gillibrand argues in favor of the 21st-century counterpart of indulgence-peddling as follows:

According to financial experts, carbon permits could quickly become the world's largest commodities market, growing to as much as $3 trillion by 2020 from just over $100 billion today. With thousands of firms and energy producers buying and selling permits to emit carbon, transaction fees for exchanges and clearing alone could top nearly half a billion dollars.

... An infrastructure is already beginning to form, as entities like the New York Stock Exchange, J.P. Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and the new Green Exchange are developing carbon trading platforms or expanding their environmental trading desks. There are nearly 100 funds already focused on green investments.

This agenda is very nice for the well-paid executives of J.P. "We just lost two billion dollars of our investors' money" Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, which can line their pockets even more with commissions on the exchange of carbon indulgences, but it has no identifiable benefits for ordinary Americans. We can therefore argue credibly that Gillibrand and Obama are enablers of would-be economic parasites who seek to leech off ordinary Americans, and we will now show why this language of class warfare is accurate.

Obama and His Economic Parasites

An economic parasite is easily identifiable from the answer to the following question:".

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/06/obama_candidate_of_the_1_percent.html

*90 & 9: Ira David Sankey

The gay community needs to pick better representatives... *double-facepalm*

This is not how you win friends in the White House.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/gay-activists-visiting-white-house-take-photos-of-themselves-flipping-off-reagan-portrait/#comments

Selfish peasants! Why should you have presents? Just because it's your wedding or birthday or something? How does that keep Michelle in vacations and $540.00 sneakers? You need to learn to sacrifice for the collective. Barack requires you to work!

You and your stupid selfish weddings and loved ones.

http://weaselzippers.us/2012/06/22/obama-asks-people-getting-married-to-forgo-gifts-ask-guests-to-donate-to-his-campaign-instead/

Not from Rio.

"We have stopped power sales to Greece,".

H/T "10. wretchard

“The lights are going out all over Europe” — literally."

http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2012/06/22/the-end-of-westphalia/#more-22968

...-

"Risk of Greek blackouts increases as traders cut or halt power supplies"

"Power traders in at least four countries have reduced or halted electricity exports to Greece due to non-payments, helping to force market prices sharply higher in a potential blow to struggling industries and raising the risk of blackouts during the tourist season."

"With Greece deep in crisis, power grid operator LAGHE owes foreign and domestic suppliers 3 27 million euros ($410 million), a court document obtained by Reuters showed, as its revenue falls due to the recession and a refusal by many Greeks to pay their bills.

Trading sources said that at least four trading companies in Switzerland, Italy, Bulgaria and Germany have either lowered or cut off sales to Greece due to high credit risk and delays in payments over the past 2-3 months for power they sold.

"We have stopped power sales to Greece," said Claus Urbanke, head of new markets at Statkraft, a Nordic utility which trades electricity throughout Europe.

"We have quite considerably reduced volumes in order to control risk exposure in Greece due to the delays of payments by the market operator," said a Swiss-based trader.

The traders asked not to be identified or their companies named as they are not authorised to speak to the press."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9349980/Risk-of-Greek-blackouts-increases-as-traders-cut-or-halt-power-supplies.html

New postmedia poll : dippers 38 / con 35. This is complete lunacy. The cuts should have been way deeper.