And that’s why my broom gently weeps.
h/t AtlanticJim
It’s Probably Nothing
A member of the Iranian parliament’s National Security Committee said on Monday that the military was set to practice its ability to close the Gulf to shipping at the narrow Strait of Hormuz, the most important oil transit channel in the world, but there was no official confirmation.
Grenade Attack In Belgium
At least two people have been killed and up to 47 others wounded when up to four grenades exploded outside the main courthouse in the eastern Belgian city of Liege.
Via Drudge
Reader Tips
Honey, I Finished The Internet
h/t Jeff
You Can Find Racism Everywhere … If You Insist Upon It
American radio talk show host, Dennis Prager, featured this column on his show this morning. Entitled “Black, Female and Single”, it was written by a graduate student named Angela Stanley. It starts off quite harmlessly:
FEW things in life are more irritating than the unsolicited comments I get that black women, like me, are unlikely to marry. Family members ask, “Are you ever going to get married?” as if I am remaining single purposely to keep them from attending my wedding. Well-meaning married friends try to sell me on the idea that being single is liberating. And then there is my octogenarian aunt whom I love, but who also manages to unintentionally sucker punch me whenever I visit with the comment, “Maybe if you’d just straighten your hair you’d be able to find a man.”
Note that Ms. Stanley is mostly referring to the comments of her family members, especially her elderly aunt. One would naturally assume that these people are African-Americans.
A bit further down her column takes an insane left turn:
So why all of the negative attention on black women? It is part of a persistent historical and present-day attack on black people in America, with black men made into deviants and black women into problems.
Huh?!? How on earth did the comments of her Black relatives get transformed into a “persistent historical and present-day attack on black people in America” by Caucasians?!? The answer to this question may very well lie in Ms. Stanley’s research interests: race, gender, American politics, and public policy.
This is Example #57,349 of how the brainwashing of the Religion of Leftism has replaced Logical Thinking throughout academia.
We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Fans
Update: Looks like a false alarm. Content at the WCO link has been updated, click for further details.
Original post below:
Looks like somebody can’t handle the truth. This just went up at Wind Concerns Ontario;
Due to a threat of legal action, this site will no longer be updated. For more info, please contact: wco-board@googlegroups.com .
“Gun Owners Have Long Been the Whipping Boy of Canadian Politics”
Solomon Friedman is an Ottawa based lawyer who specializes in the criminal defense of gun owners throughout Eastern Ontario.
Last month he appeared before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security (SECU) about the proposed bill (C-19) to abolish the long gun registry. It’s well worth a watch:
You can visit Mr. Friedman’s website here: FirearmsLaw.ca
Update – Related Articles:
Michael Taube – h/t L. Hill
Solomon Friedman – h/t Hans
Operation Fast and Furious
If Obama were Republican, this would be news.
Via.
Fact Checking the “Fact Checkers”
A popular (and well founded) complaint about journalists is that the vast majority of them lean to the left and cannot seemingly report anything objectively anymore. Their bias always seem to seep through.
One of thousands of examples of this rampant bias was recently discussed here.
As the Weekly Standard’s Mark Hemingway points out in great detail, these journalists can’t even suppress their bias when they put their “fact check hats” on. The entire genre of Fact Checking articles is entirely based on the premise of an unbiased perspective. Yet they’re failing dismally at this.
Here’s a snippet from Hemingway’s excellent piece:
The media establishment has largely rallied round the self-satisfied consensus that fact checking is a noble pursuit. Nonetheless there are signs of an impending crack-up. In their rush to hop on the fact-checking bandwagon, the media appear to have given little thought to what their new obsession says about how well or poorly they perform their jobs.
It’s impossible for the media to fact check without rendering judgment on their own failures. Seeing the words “fact check” in a headline plants the idea in the reader’s mind that it’s something out of the ordinary for journalists to check facts. Shouldn’t that be an everyday part of their jobs that goes without saying? And if they aren’t normally checking facts, what exactly is it that they’re doing?
The Higher Education Bubble
The patterns seem extremely similar to the housing bubble with certain segments taking up the roll of subprime lenders and the entire industry getting excited by easy finance and an unrelenting line of demand. The only problem of courses is the debt is being backed by the U.S. government (i.e., taxpayers) and we all know what happens when the bubble pops.
Plenty of charts at the link. (h/tInstapundit)
We Don’t Need No Stinking Sparky Cars
A Los Angeles firm has quietly assembled a Trojan horse electric car designed to carry the Chinese military-industrial complex deep into America’s auto market. Detroit should be afraid, very afraid. And anyone in the U.S. unemployment line — along with American taxpayers, who are subsidizing this sham — should be outraged.
More at Death By China. (h/t Brian)
Dear China,
So funny, you’ll cry.
You have not replied to my last 47 attempts to contact you regarding the 700 billion Euro loan we discussed. I have tried to contact you by phone, via Federal Express, various Ambassadors, a US destroyer with a party of EU diplomats concealed on the aft deck, and E-cards with pictures of big-eyed European Finance Ministers holding their hands out. I am very disappointed in you – I felt that we were developing such a beautiful relationship when you started buying Greek bonds. It is obvious that we have so much in common – you have money and we need money.
(h/t Adrian)
Related – borrowing of industrialised governments has surged beyond $10tr this year and is forecast to grow further in 2012.
Reader Tips
For the well and truly bored – Kenny’s internet controlled Christmas lights. It takes a few seconds for the on/off switch to engage – the cabin’s in Alaska. Providing we don’t take down his system.
Should that happen, here’s Part 2 of this evening’s eclectic offering – Guinness World Records for the Two Dimensional.
For the even more bored, the comments are open for your tips.
Gingrich On Israel
Democrat media are making a big deal this morning about Mitt Romney’s $10,000 bet offer last evening during the Iowa debate. That wasn’t the “big deal”.
This was:
Excerpts from the Gingrich Youtube channel. Complete debate video here.
Are the Republicans Already Self-Destructing?
I’ve long heard it conceded by conservative American political commentators that, while the Democrats may be the “Evil Party”, the Republicans are very likely the “Stupid Party”. They’re not referring to the rank & file supporters of either party but rather to those who run them.
Can’t say I’m very pleased to see the antics going on with the mainstream Republican candidates or with the fellow living out on his own private island.
Britain Grows a Backbone
Late last week British Prime Minister David Cameron said “nein” to a new treaty that would have taken even more power away from the people of the UK and their elected officials. Of course, balking at more integration with the failing socialist behemoth gained him much admonition from those in the collective but now Britain is free to forge a new path. But perhaps historians will view Mr. Cameron much more favourably:
“I had dreamed myself away,”
Laureys, a neurologist at the University of Liege in Belgium, published a study in BMC Neurology earlier this year saying Houben could be one of many cases of falsely diagnosed comas around the world. He discovered that although Houben was completely paralysed, he was also completely conscious — it was just that he was unable to communicate the fact.
h/t Kevin
Reader Tips
New footage from the Japanese tsunami, this from a car’s on board camera.
Your tips in the comments.
Durbageddon
What the media are not telling you…
Behind the scenes, throughout the year since Cancun, the now-permanent bureaucrats who have made highly-profitable careers out of what they lovingly call “the process” have been beavering away at what is now a 138-page document. Its catchy title is “Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action Under the Convention — Update of the amalgamation of draft texts in preparation of [one imagines they mean ‘for’] a comprehensive and balanced outcome to be presented to the Conference of the Parties for adoption at its seventeenth session: note by the Chair.” In plain English, these are the conclusions the bureaucracy wants.
The contents of this document, turgidly drafted with all the UN’s skill at what the former head of its documentation center used to call “transparent impenetrability”, are not just off the wall – they are lunatic.
Latest: Talks descend into farce.