Taste the New Civility. Wallow in the compassion for ordinary Americans.

Then take a shower to wash away the slime. Quick. Note: link is safe; no link to the liberal scum from me.

Sometimes it’s absolutely necessary to remind ourselves that, when the shooting war with these odious filthbags actually starts, it’s not all going to be fun and games, you know.

(Via Jeff)

Cue ominous music:

The processed foods that reach US consumers, and increasingly people in all high-income countries, are remarkably inexpensive, tasty, and convenient to prepare. They are intensely marketed and highly profitable to corporate producers.

OH MY GOD! We have a crisis situation on our hands, one requiring heavy doses of scolding, propaganda, and the gentle, soothing hand of government intervention to rein in our obscene, greedy, insatiable lust for cheap and tasty food.

Yep, it’s a solution in search of a problem, all right. And leave it to the finger-wagging nannies to jump right in with both left feet:

Where does the profit come from? In part, it comes from use of subsidized commodities. But profits are also generated by capturing increasingly larger shares of the market and by selling the population more food – and calories – than it needs. In this marketing environment, obesity is collateral damage.

The food industry’s ultimately anti-social behavior – whether conscious or inadvertent – is spreading globally. In higher income countries, it is ubiquitous, whereas in places where people have less disposable income, it is but the camel’s nose under the tent. Thus, effective strategies to reduce obesity may vary depending on penetration by the industry – and less developed nations may still have more opportunities to avoid obesity, by getting ahead of the curve.

Now, how to come to grips with these evil corporate villains and their irresponsible efforts to profit from the unconscionable desire of people for inexpensive, tasty, and convenient foods? What to do, what to do…EUREKA! An idea presents itself!

The tobacco analogy: this industry, which deliberately encouraged children to become addicted to cigarettes as early as possible, then continued to market cigarettes even once well aware of the health dangers. We now know the health dangers of obesity, but the epidemic continues. To protect the public, perhaps we can learn from anti-smoking efforts about means to constrain the food industry.

Food is not cigarettes. We must eat to live. We cannot eliminate the food industry to reverse the obesity epidemic, but we can constrain its anti-social behavior.

Is anybody sick enough yet of these simpering busybodies to feel a sudden, intense desire to cease all attempts at persuasion or argument and just punch them right in their sallow, pinched faces? Besides me, I mean. The idea of their arrogating all rights to their pluperfect selves to “constrain” behavior at the expense of our right to choose for ourselves — for our own good, as they define it — is enough to do it for me all by itself, aside from my visceral contempt for their prissy horror at precisely what those choices might be.

KEEP YOUR LAWS OFF MY INEXPENSIVE, TASTY, AND CONVENIENT FOOD, YOU OFFICIOUS SCHOOLMARMS!

(Via Jacob Sullum)

Update! You know, the more I think about this horseshit, the more disgusted I get. “We cannot eliminate the food industry…” But, ohh, the desire to is palpable; it wafts off this stinkburger of an article like a bad smell. And what inspires this sick Leftist fantasy to “eliminate the food industry”, or at least “constrain its anti-social behavior,” as defined by their holy selves? Why, the horrid crime of conspiring to broaden the choices of the cattle-like public, lowing as it lazily chews its loathsome, calorie-drenched cud, in the way of inexpensive, tasty, convenient food. Why, such a spectacle of freedom of choice unfettered by the God-like input of omniscient and omnipotent experts — like, say, themselves — would be enough to shock the drab, government-issued grey tunic right off of any good liberal fascist.

Off every one of the commie bastards. Preferably from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.

Let the shooting begin update! They will never stop until they’re dead. Never.

The federal government proposedsweeping new guidelines on Thursday that could push the food industry to overhaul how it advertises cereal, soda pop, snacks, restaurant meals and other foods to children.

Citing an epidemic of childhood obesity, regulators are taking aim at a range of tactics used to market foods high in sugar, fat or salt to children, including the use of cartoon characters like Toucan Sam, the brightly colored Froot Loops pitchman, who appears in television commercials and online games as well as on cereal boxes.

Regulators are asking food makers and restaurant companies to make a choice: make your products healthier or stop advertising them to youngsters.

“Toucan Sam can sell healthy food or junk food,” said Dale Kunkel, a communications professor at the University of Arizona who studies the marketing of children’s food. “This forces Toucan Sam to be associated with healthier products.”

The only word you need to know, the only word that matters: forces. Because this is what they are. This is what they do. They will never stop trying to control every jot and tittle of American life, as long as there is breath in their miserable bodies. There is only one way to remove the Progressivist jackboot from our necks. There is no middle ground or compromise with them; there is only resistance, or capitulation. And you don’t get to vote for who runs the FTC, any more than you do with all the other alphabet-soup bureaucratic tyrannies currently running our lives and issuing demands that we have no choice but to comply with.

America as we once knew it is long, long gone; what we’re left with is…this. Sorry to have to say it, but you know as well as I do that it’s true.

Michael Walsh merely scratches the surface of it, concluding thusly:

So, our elected representatives in Congress may pass a law and a president may sign it, but if Obama decides — absent any Supreme Court ruling — that the law is unconstitutional, out it goes.

It all boils down to this: Are we to be a constitutional government with three distinct branches, or a single executive entity that makes policy, carries it out and decides for itself whether it’s constitutional or not?

Oh, that one has been answered many times over already. Welcome to the USSSA, Mike! All hail His Majesty the King! Or, y’know, else.

Krauthammer delivers a stinging rebuke:

It is the fate of any assertive superpower to be envied, denounced and blamed for everything under the sun. Nothing has changed. Moreover, for a country so deeply reviled, why during the massive unrest in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan and Syria have anti-American demonstrations been such a rarity?

Who truly reviles America the hegemon? The world that Obama lived in and shaped him intellectually: the elite universities; his Hyde Park milieu (including his not-to-be-mentioned friends, William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn); the church he attended for two decades, ringing with sermons more virulently anti-American than anything heard in today’s full-throated uprising of the Arab Street.

It is the liberal elites who revile the American colossus and devoutly wish to see it cut down to size. Leading from behind — diminishing America’s global standing and assertiveness — is a reaction to their view of America, not the world’s.

Other presidents have taken anti-Americanism as a given, rather than evidence of American malignancy, believing — as do most Americans — in the rightness of our cause and the nobility of our intentions. Obama thinks anti-Americanism is a verdict on America’s fitness for leadership. I would suggest that “leading from behind” is a verdict on Obama’s fitness for leadership.

Leading from behind is not leading. It is abdicating. It is also an oxymoron. Yet a sympathetic journalist, channeling an Obama adviser, elevates it to a doctrine. The president is no doubt flattered. The rest of us are merely stunned.

Oh, I’d say not stunned, so much as disgusted and infuriated. After all, most of us figured out what the inevitable end state of liberal self-loathing is a long time ago, as well as its influence on their policy choices, and expect no less than the Obama style of tail-chasing confusion and incoherence from any of the smug, pseudo-intellectual twits.

Just girding our loins out here, per Sheriff Greasy Joe:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Wal-Mart said Thursday that it is bringing guns back to many of its U.S. stores in an effort to lift slumping sales.

In 2006, Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500), the world’s largest retailer stopped selling guns in the majority of its stores, blaming slow demand for those types of firearms.

Guns are only one of many things that will be making a comeback in Ogabe’s Amerikkka, as His Royal Dumbfuckness continues doing to us what Stalin did to Russia, Castro did to Cuba, and Chavez did to Venezuela. Hunting to put food on the table, gardening, canning, sewing, reading by candlelight — look for gushy Style-section articles on all this New Hotness in a paper near you soon, as more and more of Ogabe’s socialist programs really get their teeth into prosperity’s neck and start shaking and wrenching the last spark of life out of American capitalism…as intended. New category for stuff like this, and I don’t know what took me so long coming up with it.

Hinderaker asks it:

What is the central purpose of government? That question might be tricky to answer in theory, but here in the U.S., the practical answer is easy: the principal function of our national government is to transfer wealth from the young and the middle-aged to the elderly. Such transfers currently account for around $1.159 trillion, nearly one-half trillion more than we spend for national defense, and far more than any other category of the budget.

Am I the only person who finds this bizarre? No political philosopher has ever argued that the central purpose of government is to transfer wealth to the elderly. No politician, to my knowledge, has ever run for office on such a platform.

Au contraire, John. Well, kinda, anyway. Every single Democrat Socialist one, and more than a few Republicrats, do it all the time. They’re just a good bit less than honest and direct about it.

Far, far from it; Obama is the most successful King we’ve ever had.

The left’s “energy” initiatives of the past decade—the entire purpose of energy policy, in fact—have been aimed at artificially driving fossil fuel prices up to incentivize the bitter clingers to embrace the government’s Utopian energy schemes. No secret has been made of it. In 2008, candidate Barack Obama was asked by CNBC’s John Harwood, “So could the (high) oil prices help us?” Obama: “I think that I would have preferred a gradual adjustment.” Sudden spikes are bad (politically speaking), but gradual price spikes? Helpful. That same year, current U.S. “Energy” Secretary (then just a zany professor) Steven Chu clarified that “somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”

Who says this administration doesn’t get things done?

What we need are clean energy investments, properly inflated tires, Chinese-style rail systems—all free of the distraction of capitalism. Also, we must rid the nation of oil subsidies. This I completely support, as long as the funds are reinvested into projects beneficial for the struggling American worker, say, bike paths or public service announcements.

We all, you see, have to make adjustments. As President Obama explained, “if you’re complaining about the price of gas and you’re only getting 8 miles a gallon…you might want to think about a trade-in.” What kind of trade-in, sir? Let me guess. A $41,000 economy-class government-made Chevy vehicle (a real cost of 100K-plus without taxpayer support) that plugs into expensive government-subsidized energy produced by the sweet howling wind? Yes, these are the serious people.

Then, of course, there is all the profit-mongering we keep hearing about. The Congressional Budget Office reported that in January, federal and state fuel taxes sucked in about 48 cents per gallon for gasoline and 53 cents per gallon for diesel fuel. Government typically sees more profit per gallon of gas than the oil companies. At least the fossil fuel oligarchs—smart enough to control the entire world market but too dumb to do it more often—have the decency to provide a product before taking carnal advantage of us at the pumps.

Well, hey, all the more reason to hate them, then.

But remember how I’ve always said that urban liberals would be changing their tune once the price of gas, among the other forces intentionally unleashed on the consumer by Obamaflation, forced them to pay forty bucks for a head of lettuce? Those good times are a-coming on fast, folks, and the backlash is starting up in earnest.

Yet another Big Government “success” story.

The U.S. government has “helped” no group more than it has “helped” the American Indians. It stuns me when President Obama appears before Indian groups and says things like, “Few have been ignored by Washington for as long as Native Americans.”

Ignored? Are you kidding me? They should be so lucky. The government has made most Indian tribes wards of the state. Government manages their land, provides their health care, and pays for housing and child care. Twenty different departments and agencies have special “native American” programs. The result? Indians have the highest poverty rate, nearly 25 percent, and the lowest life expectancy of any group in America. Sixty-six percent are born to single mothers.

Nevertheless, Indian activists want more government “help.”

It is intuitive to assume that, when people struggle, government “help” is the answer. The opposite is true. American groups who are helped the most, do the worst.

Consider the Lumbees of Robeson County, N.C.—a tribe not recognized as sovereign by the government and therefore ineligible for most of the “help” given other tribes. The Lumbees do much better than those recognized tribes.

Lumbees own their homes and succeed in business. They include real estate developer Jim Thomas, who used to own the Sacramento Kings, and Jack Lowery, who helped start the Cracker Barrel Restaurants. Lumbees started the first Indian-owned bank, which now has 12 branches.

Read on for a story that’s depressingly familiar — especially the ending.

So the most transparent, open regime in history finally decided to release Honest Barrack Obama’s birth certificate, after coming up with every phony excuse in the book not to.

As I’ve said, I never cared much one way or the other on this one. What does kind of bug me, though, is how so many on our side were so snidely dismissive of raising the issue at all, and how they always sniffed that it was a “distraction” from more serious issues.

Well, why, exactly? Who says you can’t — or shouldn’t — go after this tyrant on every front imaginable? You can’t muster enough breath to slam him on policy and then keep pressure on him for seemingly trivial stuff too, and so must let slide on one or the other? What are ya, a wheezing asthmatic or something?

Instead of declaring some things off limits, we ought to be throwing everything possible at him, going after him hammer and tongs on any and all imaginable subjects. Anything that even looks like a weakness ought to be exploited fully. When was the last time he and his media henchmen declared anything at all off-limits when they were seeking to destroy an opponent?

And the claim that the Left would use this to paint all conservatives as lunatics — well, hey, I sure am glad that’s over with now. Surely now we’ll start to have the kind of civil, gentlemanly debate that certain more effete types have always dreamed of, but that has never actually existed in this country for even a moment. No more accusations of racism or extremism from the Left; the days of incivility and unfounded smears hurled at anyone who disagrees with them are over at last.

Hold your breath waiting for it, whydon’tcha. Schmucks.

Wake the fuck up, people. The lying, despotic shitweasels of the Left will never extend you the least courtesy or benefit of the doubt — never, as in not ever — and you long ago ran out of other cheeks to turn.

Trump just demonstrated how it’s done: as soon as the Pretend pResident announced he was releasing the birth certificate, Trump immediately slammed him on the secrecy surrounding his university records. If we’re ever going to beat this guy, this is how: by keeping him on the defensive, sticking and moving, pasting him hard every time he pulls his gloves down from in front of his pulped face. It damned sure won’t be done by claiming to be just too nice and civilized to get down and dirty with a dishonest, amoral thug like him.

You “serious,” “moderate,” “reasonable” types really think you’re going to beat this vicious douchebag by pulling your punches and declaring any line of attack at all off-limits? Really?

Far from “weakening” the conservative cause as some Righty milquetoasts would have it, Trump just made all the prissy RINOs look completely ineffectual, and Obama himself look like a mendacious, lily-livered weasel. In other words, he shone a light on a couple of home truths. He said “jump,” and the moment Ogabe’s minions saw some political damage being done, Ogabe responded with a hearty “how high?” If Trump accomplishes nothing else worthwhile with this bid for power of his, he’s done that much at least.

Bill wraps the whole mess up with a reminder of the lies already told to cover for His Highness; the question of the Royal birth certificate was supposedly “answered” by his media buttlicks in at least three different ways already, every one of them now rendered demonstrably false. For anyone who said there’s “no story here,” well, there’s one for ya — more to the point, for any real journalist with the gumption and integrity to delve into it. Assuming there are any, I mean.

Update! Hayward misfires for the first time, running down a list of topics Ogabe should have focused on for a press conference instead, and winding up with:

Instead, we got a press conference about the release of Obama’s birth certificate. If that distracted you from the above matters, or other important stories I haven’t listed, the White House thanks you for your cooperation.

If he wanted to do a presser on any of the issues John mentioned, there’s nothing in the world stopping him from it — today, tomorrow, or any time. For that matter, he could’ve mentioned them at the one held yesterday. He’s not talking about those things because he doesn’t want to, and he’s not going to start now that the birth cert issue is more or less dispensed with. He wouldn’t utter a word of truth about those issues even if he did.

The idea that any of us who are out here rapidly going broke under Obamaflation, out of work, or suffering in a host of other ways as a direct result of the pain the King has intentionally inflicted on ordinary Americans with his socialist policies can’t possibly focus on more than one or two issues at a time and will therefore be “distracted” by the Birther issue isn’t just wrong; it’s insulting, although I’m sure Hayward doesn’t mean it that way.

Into the fray update! The “serious” conservatives and RINOs, trembling in their sensible shoes with both fear and anger at the prospective loss of their perpetual also-ran status, get out the long knives at last and go to work…on Donald Trump.

Fringe, uncivil extremist update! Ask the “serious” paintywaists: can’t we all just get along? Answers McCarthy…well, see for yourself.

One of the things Obama said yesterday was unintentionally striking. He contended that no one should ever have questioned his birth certificate because credible people who had seen it had described it in affidavits. Naturally, he didn’t mention why they were in the position of having to describe it in affidavits: namely, because Obama had refused to authorize production of the actual birth certificate, which he could have done at any moment over the last three years. Look how easy it would have been.

If George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, or even a Republican the media likes (say, John McCain) had taken purposeful steps to block examination of so basic a document, the media would surely have turned such obstinacy into a scandal. The public might not have leapt to extravagant conclusions about whether they’d really been born in Kenya, or on Mars, or wherever. But they’d have thought it was intolerably strange that campaigns were retaining lawyers and amassing affidavits rather than just producing a seemingly innocuous, readily producible document. The story would never have been about the people asking for the birth certificate; it would have been about the candidate who was moving heaven and earth to prevent people from seeing it.

So, assuming as we should the legitimacy of the long-form birth certificate produced yesterday, the only thing that makes sense is that Obama knows the mainstream media is in his hip pocket. That is, he knew that he would not be held to the same standard as other politicians, and that if he acted in an unreasonable manner by withholding basic, easily available information that any other person seeking the presidency would be expected — be compelled — to produce, the media would portray as weirdos those demanding the information, not Obama and his stonewalling accomplices. And he also knows that, having now finally produced the document only because the game was starting to hurt him politically, the media will not focus on how easy it would have been to produce the birth certificate three years ago, or on how much time and money has been wasted by his gamesmanship; they’ll instead portray him as beleaguered and the people who have been seeking the basic information (i.e., doing the media’s job) as discredited whackos.

It’s hard to say what’s more depressing, Obama’s cynicism or the zeal with which the media does his bidding.

Or the sad spectacle of supposed conservatives attacking the one guy who had the balls to stick it to Obama, rather than forcefully go after Mr Perfect Crease themselves. Pray tell, who is it that’s supposed to be damaging the GOP and handicapping the effort to remove the Charlatan In Chief again?

Recovery Summer v2.0 is working out about as well as last year’s model.

U.S. economic growth slowed more than expected in the first quarter as higher food and gasoline prices dampened consumer spending, and sent a broad measure of inflation rising at its fastest pace in 2-1/2 years.

In the very next paragraph, the idiot propagandists demonstrate the Left’s feeble grasp of how economies actually work:

But the pull back in output, which was also the result of harsh winter weather, a widening trade gap as well as weak government spending, will probably be fleeting given a firming labor market.

Weak government spending. Firming labor market. Riiiight. No wonder these “experts” do such a bang-up job of running our lives for us.

Here’s a real news flash for anyone fool enough to swallow the Obama-sucking propaganda from the Ministry of Truth: there is no “recovery.” There will BE no recovery as long as socialists remain in charge. All any of them really know how to do is destroy the institutions and systems built by better, smarter men than they’ll ever be, and replace them with unworkable college-boy fantasies and faux-utopian command-and-control pipe dreams that have never produced anything but misery, deprivation, and enslavement throughout human history.

(Via Insty)

My internet connection has been sketchy the last couple of days — construction in the neighborhood is screwing things up, and will for a couple more, or so they say — so posting is gonna be scarce. But I gotta get this in while I can: I’ve always believed that sometimes, a good solid cussing is the only way to really say it. Steyn provides a sterling example:

There is a word for a judge who tries and convicts a man without testimony or representation or a jury of his peers. I mean, aside from words like “dick”, “ass” and “cunt”, all of which one might apply to ”Judge” Geiger-Adams. That word is sham. As with any show trial in any nickel-and-dime banana-republic presidency-for-life, the outward forms of “justice” are deployed for a precise inversion of it. That’s wretched enough when it happens in North Korea or the Soviet Union. When a jurisdiction that’s heir to one of the oldest sustained legal inheritances on the planet decides to dump due process, it’s even more shameful.

What’s wrong with Geiger-Adams’ court? You notice that I appear above to have called him a “dick”, “ass” and “cunt”. So what? I’m a dead white male, he’s a dead white male. I could say everything Guy Earle is alleged to have said to Ms Pardy – including the bit about the strap-on – and “Judge” Geiger-Adams would have to take it. No “human rights” law is infringed if I launch a blizzard of four-letter words at a fucking dickhead asshole cunt like Geiger-Adams. But, if Ms Pardy is around, the vulgar, witless boorishness that is the stock in trade of the average “comedy” club gets dramatically upgraded to “discrimination in the provision of a service customarily available to the public, on the basis of her sex and sexual orientation” – in other words, a hate crime.

This is an assault on one of the most basic principles of justice – equality before the law. Instead, one citizen has different rights than another according to which preferred identity groups he (or more often she) falls into. In his newspaper column, my friend Ezra Levant wonders if, under the Geiger-Adams Comedy Regime, it’s okay for Chris Rock and Eddie Murphy to use racist words for which pastier types would be prosecuted. But this isn’t even a hypothetical fancy: This very month at the University of Connecticut, an anthropology professor teaching a class on the cultural significance of “the N-word” showed clips of Chris Rock and Richard Pryor using “the N-word”. Shortly thereafter the professor was reported for, er, using “the N-word”. The prof is white. The student who reported him is the “Multicultural and Diversity Senator” on the student council, a member of the Black Students’ Association and an activist who wants to “instigate unity on campus”. And let’s face it, the easiest way to “unity” is to “instigate” it, isn’t it? So the hapless professor is now being forced to take “diversity training”, because nothing says “diversity” like mandatory “unity”. And to think American students have run up a trillion dollars in college debt for the privilege of being “taught” by the kind of pansies who agree to submit to “diversity training” for committing the crime of using “the N-word” in a class about the cultural significance of “the N-word”.

The great strength of Common Law is its antipathy to “collective rights” – because the ultimate minority is the individual. If you elevate group rights over individual liberty, you’re mainly empowering not “minorities” but the state, which becomes the sole legitimate arbiter of relations between various groups. And empowering the state means empowering the likes of Commissar Geiger-Adams to preside over four-year investigations into the precise degree of smooching between two patrons of a late-night comedy club. That’s why group rights are “the key Nanny State concept”. What we are witnessing, from the comedy clubs of Vancouver to the groves of academe in Connecticut, is not just the collapse of liberty but the death of the human spirit. There is something deeply sick about the willingness of freeborn citizens to submit to statist enforcers like Geiger-Adams.

Ain’t that the truth. Steyn is righteously pissed off at the cowardly sheep, and doesn’t pull any punches. Nor should, nor should any of the rest of us.

One more time: gas prices are cripplingly high because Obama and the Democrat Socialists want them that way. No other reason.

Obama and his minions have been chasing the green jobs chimera for so long that it’s an instinct. They pompously suggest that Americans ought to trade in their current vehicles for pricey, government-approved matchbox cars, asserting still that there’s “no quick fix” for high energy prices. History, and very recent history at that, indicates that they are mistaken.

Take a look at this chart compiled by metalprices.com. It’s the price of a barrel of crude oil over the past 5 years.
See that big peak in the middle? That was the last oil spike, in the summer of 2008. Notice how the price hit a high point, then fell off a cliff afterwards?

The day corresponding to that peak, an all-time high of $145.16/barrel, was July 14, 2008. By some strange coincidence, that was the very same day then-President George W. Bush lifted, by executive order, a federal ban on offshore oil drilling.

Bush’s order was, of course, immediately dismissed by the “experts.” Reuters waved away the action as “a largely symbolic move unlikely to have any short-term impact on high gasoline costs.” Barack Obama’s campaign lectured that if “offshore drilling would provide short-term relief at the pump or a long-term strategy for energy independence, it would be worthy of our consideration, regardless of the risks. But most experts, even within the Bush administration, concede it would do neither.”

There was just one problem: reality. Even though, as critcs were eager to point out, any additional American drilling was years in the future, oil prices immediately went into free-fall. By Friday, July 18,the price of a barrel of crude had dropped to $128.94, a 12% decrease. A month later, on August 14, the price had fallen to $115.05. In spectacular fashion, Bush’s academic and media critics were proven seriously wrong.

For commodities traders who’d been pricing oil based on a supposition of scarcity, the potential for millions of additional barrels on the market hit like a thunderbolt. The simple act of putting America’s resources on the table popped the oil bubble, and a stunning price drop followed in short order. By election day, November 4, the price of a barrel of crude had plummeted to $70.84 — a 51% decrease in less than five months.

Many links throughout, which I didn’t transcribe. As telling as all that is, Will’s conclusion spells it out in even starker terms.

This nightmare is NOT happening by accident, folks. Nor is it beyond anyone’s control. it is a manipulation, plain and simple, run by people who demonstrably do not have America’s best interest in mind.

Credit where due update! Bill provides the graphic representation of the sorry truth:

John Hawkins, one of the hardest working guys in the blog biz, sends word of his new joint venture with the redoubtable Doug Ross: Trending Right. Give ‘em a look; I ain’t much of a Twitter guy myself, but it’s bound to be good. And as a sort of clearinghouse of the most-linked conservative stories on Twitter each hour, it ought to be a good source for even an old stick-in-the-mud Twitteresistor like me.

You didn’t think for a moment they had any intention of trying to bring them down any, did you?

Shell Oil Company has announced it must scrap efforts to drill for oil this summer in the Arctic Ocean off the northern coast of Alaska. The decision comes following a ruling by the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board to withhold critical air permits. The move has angered some in Congress and triggered a flurry of legislation aimed at stripping the EPA of its oil drilling oversight.

Shell has spent five years and nearly $4 billion dollars on plans to explore for oil in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. The leases alone cost $2.2 billion. Shell Vice President Pete Slaiby says obtaining similar air permits for a drilling operation in the Gulf of Mexico would take about 45 days. He’s especially frustrated over the appeal board’s suggestion that the Arctic drill would somehow be hazardous for the people who live in the area. “We think the issues were really not major,” Slaiby said, “and clearly not impactful for the communities we work in.”

The closest village to where Shell proposed to drill is Kaktovik, Alaska. It is one of the most remote places in the United States. According to the latest census, the population is 245 and nearly all of the residents are Alaska natives. The village, which is 1 square mile, sits right along the shores of the Beaufort Sea, 70 miles away from the proposed off-shore drill site.

The EPA’s appeals board ruled that Shell had not taken into consideration emissions from an ice-breaking vessel when calculating overall greenhouse gas emissions from the project. Environmental groups were thrilled by the ruling.

“What the modeling showed was in communities like Kaktovik, Shell’s drilling would increase air pollution levels close to air quality standards,” said Eric Grafe, Earthjustice’s lead attorney on the case. Earthjustice was joined by Center for Biological Diversity and the Alaska Wilderness League in challenging the air permits.

At stake is an estimated 27 billion barrels of oil. That’s how much the U. S. Geological Survey believes is in the U.S. portion of the Arctic Ocean. For perspective, that represents two and a half times more oil than has flowed down the Trans Alaska pipeline throughout its 30-year history. That pipeline is getting dangerously low on oil. At 660,000 barrels a day, it’s carrying only one-third its capacity.

Production on the North Slope of Alaska is declining at a rate of about 7 percent a year. If the volume gets much lower, pipeline officials say they will have to shut it down. Alaska officials are blasting the Environmental Protection Agency. 
“It’s driving investment and production overseas,” said Alaska’s DNR Commissioner Dan Sullivan. “That doesn’t help the United States in any way, shape or form.”

The EPA did not return repeated calls and e-mails.

Why would they? They owe the serfs they rule with an iron fist no explanations, and no apologies. In a tyranny such as this one, czars, minions, and toadies are accountable to no one but the King.

Credit where due update! Via Glenn, a GREAT idea. Exercise your freedom to express your disgust with this malignant idiot and his despotic bureaucracy while you still can, folks.

Sadly, dismally, Terry Jones has proved ‘em right once again.

Pastor Terry Jones and Assistant Pastor Wayne Sapp may be leaders of an obscure and failing micro-church, the Dove World Outreach Center, in Gainesville, Florida, but they are world class blasphemers against Islam. Earlier this month they applied for a permit to continue their public and provocative criticism of Islam — which this time was not to burn a Koran but to “peacefully … protest sharia and jihad” in front of the largest mosque in the United States, in the most Muslim area of the country. Not only was their protest, planned for last Friday, blocked by court order, but they were convicted by Michigan’s 19th District Court of being likely to breach the peace.

In March, the two pastors stirred international controversy and, in Afghanistan, lethal violence, by staging a Koran burning. On Friday, April 22, they had planned a two-man demonstration to protest “sharia and jihad” during the weekly prayer service outside the the Shiite Islamic Center of America, in Dearborn, Michigan. News of their application for a protest permit prompted at least four serious death threats against them from “metro Detroiters,” according to the police chief. They were told by authorities they would have to cover the costs of a massive security effort for their protest, amounting to $46,000. They refused and were promptly prosecuted on the afternoon of the 22nd. They were found guilty of intending to disturb the peace, ordered by the court to stay away from the Dearborn mosque for the next three years, and briefly jailed for refusing to pay the “peace bond,” to ensure there would be no public disturbance — a bond that the prosecutor had requested to be set at $46,000 but which the court had reduced to $1.It appears that the jury, judge, prosecutor and police chief, all feared that the planned protest would set off local Muslim riots or other violent actions.

Pastor Jones and Sapp are unsympathetic figures. Their anti-Muslim antics over the past seven months, when they first threatened to burn the Islamic holy book, have seemed designed as much to grab media attention for themselves as to deliberately insult Muslims. But the First Amendment’s broad protections for free speech have been defined by court cases revolving around all manner of  unpopular speech and bigotry— from Ku Klux Klan leaders, Nazis, other racists and, most recently, anti-gay activists in a case involving protests at the funerals of fallen American soldiers. Islam would be given deferential treatment if this decision is allowed to stand.

Well, of course it would. State-sanctioned religions usually are, aren’t they?

I have to admit, I’m beginning to find the obligatory “Jones is disgusting and despicable” disclaimers just a wee mite tiresome at this point. He’s out there on the ragged edge, fighting against a very insidious thing that no one else seems willing to confront. If things keep on as they are, we might very well be looking back on him in a very different light in ten or twenty years. Hats off to the ACLU, too, for standing up for the First Amendment (pdf link) here.

Silly, silly question:

Can federal bureaucrats tell a private company where to build a factory?

Members of President Obama’s National Labor Relations Board think they can. In a decision that even the New York Times is describing as “highly unusual for the federal government,” Lafe Solomon, who was appointed to the board by Obama, filed a complaint on behalf of the NLRB on Wednesday seeking to force the Boeing Co. to build an assembly line in Washington state instead of South Carolina. The NLRB action stems from Boeing’s October 2009 decision to build a new factory for its new 787 Dreamliner airplane near Charleston, S.C. Boeing first sought to build the new plant near its existing facility in Puget Sound, but negotiations with the International Association of Machinists broke down when the union refused to agree to a long-term no-strike clause. The IAM had struck four times since 1989, costing Boeing at least $1.8 billion in revenue.

That’s when Boeing chose South Carolina, a right-to-work state where, unlike Washington, workers are not forced to join unions. As a result of this policy, only 6.2 percent of South Carolinians belong to unions. Construction of Boeing’s new Charleston factory is nearly complete, and the company has already hired more than 1,000 new employees, drawn mostly from within the immediate region. And back in Washington, Boeing has actually increased employment at its Puget Sound plant by 2,000 workers. But that isn’t good enough for the IAM or the Obama White House. After suffering major defeats in Wisconsin and Ohio, the labor movement is looking for a scalp. Obama’s NLRB is trying to turn Boeing into one.

The NLRB is hanging its case on a senior Boeing official’s statement to the Seattle Times that “The overriding factor [in transferring the line] … was that we cannot afford to have a work stoppage, you know, every three years.” The NLRB absurdly claims this is “unlawful employer speech” that infringes on “a worker’s fundamental” right to strike. But the Supreme Court has long held that firms may consider the economic effect of strikes when making business decisions. Also, Boeing’s existing collective bargaining agreement with the IAM allows Boeing to build facilities at other locations. An administrative law judge will hear Boeing’s objection to the NLRB’s complaint June 14, so there still is hope sanity will prevail. But a decision in favor of the IAM would be a disaster not just for Boeing, but for American workers everywhere.

This lawless, illegitimate ruling junta thinks it can do absolutely anything, to any of its subjects, at any time. They’re right. After everything we’ve seen them get away with already, there’s absolutely no reason on earth for them to think otherwise, and no reason for any of us to contradict their assessment.

That would be Piss Be Upon Him, as far as i’m concerned.

The same president who once advised Americans to inflate their tires to beat high gas prices, and who recently told a father of 10 that he should cram his family into a hybrid minivan that doesn’t yet exist, has had his boot on the neck of Gulf of Mexico oil production for nearly a year now, to paraphrase his secretary of the interior. Obama’s intervention began with a lie when White House officials falsely represented to the public and to a court that scientists had approved their blanket drilling moratorium after the BP oil spill. The administration then defied a federal court by replacing its original moratorium, which had been struck down, with a substantively identical second moratorium.

One result of this action is that the Obama administration was found in contempt of court. But a further and more consequential result, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, is that American offshore oil production as a whole is down 13 percent. The Wall Street Journal reports that, thanks to Obama’s ban on deep-water drilling and his administration’s subsequent slow-walking of permit applications, we are losing out on 375,000 barrels of oil per day. That’s just over 2 percent of American consumption that simply vanished — an amount that is more than enough to affect prices at the pump — and about one-third of the daily production losses because of Libya’s ongoing civil war.

At today’s prices, the Obama-induced loss of production represents $40 million per day in lost oil revenue. Spread over a full year, that comes to $14.6 billion that could be supporting thousands of sustainable, good-paying American jobs at no cost to the taxpayer. That is a much better deal than Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package, which appears to have added far more to the national debt than it ever will to national employment. It seems clear that ideological and not economic considerations are at work in this administration’s energy policy. The same politician who once said that energy prices would “necessarily skyrocket” under his plan seems less intent on job creation or energy security than he is on putting oil producers in a regulatory straitjacket and browbeating Americans into accepting the lower standard of living that inevitably results from energy scarcity.

Our King is a lousy, lying, Leftist bastard, and this is all going just the way he wanted it to. It’s lucky for him real Americans will never get the opportunity to thank him in the manner he truly deserves for the suffering he’s causing, directly and intentionally.

Update! Okay, the jug-eared prick has gotta be kidding, right? He’s GOTTA be.

RENO, Nev. – President Barack Obama said Thursday that the Justice Department will try to “root out” cases of fraud or manipulation in oil markets, even as Attorney General Eric Holder suggested a variety of legal reasons may be behind gasoline’s surge to $4 a gallon.

Oh, it’s definitely fraud and manipulation, all right. Fraud and manipulation committed by the Obama regime, knowingly and with malice aforethought. But wait, it gets worse:

He (Holder) promised to “be vigilant in monitoring the oil and gas markets for any wrongdoing so that consumers can be confident they are not paying higher prices as a result of illegal activity.”

Gee, would “illegal activity” include defying court orders to remove the regime’s illegal drilling ban in the Gulf? Somehow, I’m guessing not.

For sheer, staggering gall, no one is ever going to top these duplicitous pieces of shit. Destroy the economy, intentionally and systematically; bray about energy prices “necessarily” skyrocketing; actively see to it that they do just that; openly sneer at the people you’re damaging by suggesting they go out and get themselves a useless, overpriced Green-weenie-mobile; and, to top it all off, announce yet another commission to “get to the bottom of this” — a commission for which the taxpayers — those who are suffering the most from the outrageous actions of this despotic grotesquerie of a government — will be footing yet another stiff bill.

And all of this courtesy of our bestest buddies and regal protectors in the Ogabe regime, who are only concerned about our well-being and just looking out for our best interests. They’ll be deciding for us what our best interests are, thanks, even though they have repeatedly demonstrated a complete inability to grasp the most rudimentary concepts of what actually makes a successful, prosperous economy work.

Sometimes all you can really do is just sit back and shake your head in awe at the incredible chutzpah displayed by the mendoucheous blackguards.

Deflection update! The last word:

Barack Obama wants higher energy prices. I mean, this is the same man who said that the cost of energy would “necessarily skyrocket” under his ‘cap-and-trade’ policies.

He predicted it. He wanted it. He’s got it.

He is to blame. Not “speculators”. Not capitalism. Him. Obama.

The truth, at last visible through the flimsy scrim of Ogabe’s transparent lies.

Because Ken “Jesusland” Layne is a self-serving, dishonest shitweasel. Among other very damned good reasons.

Not that any of you are likely to be looking in on that sleazy cesspool anyway. But just in case you were thinking about it, for some unfathomable reason.

Update! Be sure not to miss Gutfeld’s evisceration of these “hideous, pathetic tools,” linked above, which is absolutely merciless — just as it ought to be.

Take ‘em down update! Advertisers fleeing Layne’s filthy hate site in droves. Good.

So the twit hurriedly declares victory after an erroneous media report gave her a 200 vote margin, but the final, official, correct tally shows her 7000 votes down, and that just IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

Right. She only wants to ensure the proper functioning of representative democracy, like all Democrat Socialists. FOR THE PEOPLE!!

Madison — Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg asked Wednesday for a statewide recount – the first in 22 years – to check the results in the April 5 state Supreme Court race she lost to Justice David Prosser.

That recount will start next week, at taxpayers’ expense, the state Government Accountability Board said.

Of course, contra my title, AP points out the real reason behind this left-wing charlatan’s game:

The point of this, of course, isn’t to seriously contest a 7,000-vote deficit. The point is to keep the left motivated by doing whatever possible to question the legitimacy of Prosser’s win.

Exactly. In other words, despite her risible claim to being “independent” during the campaign, Kloppenburg is just another lying Left douchebag who refuses to abide by the legitimate result of a free and fair election, and holds the people in utter contempt. The bottom line:

“Apparently nothing will stop (Kloppenburg) from going ahead and wasting taxpayers’ hard-earned money to discover what election officials did on April 5 – that Justice David Prosser was re-elected,” Prosser campaign spokesman Brian Nemoir said in a written statement that noted no recount in state history had reversed this many votes.

“With the official canvass showing her down by over 7,300 votes, the only way she can achieve her nakedly political goal is to do one thing: challenge and disenfranchise thousands of Wisconsin citizens who exercised their right to vote April 5 and believed this election over,” Nemoir said.

That’s about the size of it, yeah. As I said, she’s every bit as committed to the proper functioning of representative democracy as any other Democrat Socialist — ie, not even slightly.

Oh, this is just too, too rich.

The College Republicans at the University of California-Merced ask fellow students, who support raising taxes on the rich, if they would be willing to redistribute their GPAs. They don’t think it’s a good idea because they earned their grades.

Really? REALLY?

Tough shit, cupcake. See, under the system you favor, nobody is going to ask you if you like it. The bossheads and czars don’t give a tinker’s dam about what you think you’ve “earned” and what you ought to be allowed to keep. They’re going to take it, as much as they want, until they say enough. Under your system, achievement, excellence, and success are inherently unfair, and therefore unacceptable. Somebody’s self-esteem might be damaged, after all, and we can’t have that. So shut up, bend over, and give it up with a smile. Just like you think everybody else ought to do.

How can anybody with a lick of sense not absolutely loathe these people?

(Via Maet)

You knew from the moment they decided to meddle in this, sticking their fat noses into our very homes, that something like this was inevitable, right?

Fears have been reignited about the safety of energy saving light bulbs after a group of scientists warned that they contain cancer causing chemicals.

Their report advises that the bulbs should not be left on for extended periods, particularly near someone’s head, as they emit poisonous materials when switched on.

Peter Braun, who carried out the tests at the Berlin’s Alab Laboratory, said: “For such carcinogenic substances it is important they are kept as far away as possible from the human environment.”

The bulbs are already widely used in the UK following EU direction to phase out traditional incandescent lighting by the end of this year.

But the German scientists claimed that several carcinogenic chemicals and toxins were released when the environmentally-friendly compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) were switched on, including phenol, naphthalene and styrene.
Andreas Kirchner, of the Federation of German Engineers, said: “Electrical smog develops around these lamps.

“I, therefore, use them only very economically. They should not be used in unventilated areas and definitely not in the proximity of the head.”

Strong message follows:

To all Progressives: GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOME AND MY LIFE. You are far too goddamned stupid to have any business making even the least of my decisions for me, even though you’ve somehow convinced yourselves that you know everydamnedthing. And you haven’t the right. Get it? YOU HAVE NO RIGHT.

Get out of my life, or be thrown out, with extreme prejudice. Yes, that means violently. You haven’t the right, and you damned well better figure that out, before enough of us decide we’ve had enough of your obstreperous, obnoxious douchebaggery to finally do something forceful about you and start sending you smarmy worms to Hell in job lots. You may have thought the “election” of your Boy King proved you finally had us all cowed. You were wrong.

Once more, and for all: GET OUT OF MY LIFE, before it’s too late. Give it some very careful thought. That is all.

(Via Insty)

Morons. Fucking morons, the entire sorry lot of them.

A case of mistaken identity has entangled a small family-owned Des Moines company in union protests and led to a death threat.

Angry callers are mistaking Koch Brothers, a Des Moines office supply firm, with the brothers who own Koch Industries, the global energy conglomerate. Billionaires Charles and David Koch have fought Wisconsin unions, financed the tea party and opposed climate change rules.

Fucking morons. That’s just about all there really is left to say about them. Are you a Leftist? Then sorry, but you’re fucking moron.

You moron.

(Via Hoft)

Don’t argue, I’m right update! I say again: fucking morons.

Hayward runs down the litany of destruction:

The national debt has increased by $4 trillion since President Obama took office. If the Republicans had gotten the $100 billion in cuts they promised the Tea Party – which would have been a truly historic achievement – they would have recovered 2% of the money Obama has spent in just two years.  We have to do better than that, if we want any more historic achievements in America’s future.

The Democrats want a “clean” bill to raise the debt ceiling in May, with no conditions or requirements attached. America should not comply with this demand. Amendments to permanently cap government spending as a percentage of GDP, and require a balanced budget, should be the minimum and uncompromising requirements. This is not a time for Republicans to win a few debating points, and bank a little political capital for future contests. The future is dying right now.

Make the Democrats ask the American people to support a system of limitless debt and inevitable ruin. Require them to name a debt total that would be high enough to satisfy their greed. $15 trillion? $20 trillion? Force Democrats to admit that no amount of taxation could possibly wipe out the debt they incurred, by throwing the numbers at them until they break, or flee the stage. Make them do the compromising for a change.

It’s a nice thought and all, but it’s never going to happen. The Reublicrats refused to cut even a fraction of a percent of the fraction of a percent they solemnly promised, and almost all of their “cuts” were illusory. Might as well stock up on popcorn, ammo, and magazines, and sit back to watch the fireworks.

Earlier in the piece, Hayward says, “The Left doesn’t bargain that way.” The truth is, the Left doesn’t have to bargain at all, and they know it. All they have to do is sit back and wait for the inevitable capitulation, as they keep gnawing away at our freedom and self-determination in the meantime. Like the termites Hayward often refers to them as being, they’ve chewed the nation’s foundation into sawdust, enough so that the house can’t be fixed. It’s going to have to be rebuilt instead.

Run by pissants:

ALBANY – State bureaucrats have identified a potentially deadly hazard facing our children this summer – freeze tag.

That’s right, officials have decided the age-old street game – along with Wiffle Ball, kickball and dodgeball – poses a “significant risk of injury.”

And classics like Capture the Flag, Steal the Bacon and Red Rover are also deemed dangerous in new state regulations for day camps.

“It looks like Albany bureaucrats are looking for kids to just sit in a corner in a house all day and not be outside,” said state Sen. Patty Ritchie (R-St. Lawrence County).

“I don’t think Wiffle Ball is a dangerous sport.”

Of course it is; simply getting out of bed in the morning involves some element of danger and risk, after all, and so does absolutely everything else one might do in the course of a normal day. That isn’t the point. The point is, the Almighty State and the whimpering, gutless dweebs who run it think it’s their job to manage all that risk, and most especially, to decide for everyone living in their command-and-control Perfect Society which ones are acceptable and which aren’t.

Which dumbing down and general pussification of the Meek and Humbled inevitably leads to pathetic nonsense like this:

BURLINGTON, Mass., April 19 (UPI) — A young man innocently walking with an umbrella mistaken for a rifle triggered the evacuation of a shopping mall in Burlington, Mass., Tuesday, police said.

Dozens of people were reportedly hospitalized after the horrific incident, for everything from sudden nervous breakdowns to diaper rash caused by urinating on themselves from sheer terror, a police spokesman said.

I may have made that last bit up. But it’s all too close to reality these days.

When Ogabe uses a word, it means just what he chooses it to mean, neither more nor less.

A few weeks ago, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights transmitted its report on DOJ’s handling of the New Black Panther Party (“NBPP”) matter to the president and Congress. Among other things, the report detailed DOJ’s prodigious stonewalling of the commission’s investigation — DOJ’s refusal to release personnel to testify before the commission and DOJ’s withholding of reams of pertinent documents.

The president wrote a letter in response (perhaps more accurately, a White House functionary wrote a letter to which the president affixed his signature), proclaiming the “historic progress” his administration has made in increasing transparency in government.

The president’s formulaic response is completely disconnected from the facts surrounding DOJ’s conduct during the commission’s NBPP investigation. Despite being compelled by statute to cooperate fully with the commission’s investigation, DOJ

• refused to answer 18 separate interrogatories
• refused to provide witness statements for 12 key witnesses
• refused to respond to 22 requests for production of documents
• failed to provided requested e-mails between Civil Rights Division personnel and other DOJ officials regarding DOJ’s dismissal of the NBPP lawsuit
• barred two key DOJ attorneys from testifying (both of the attorneys defied DOJ and testified before the commission at considerable risk to their careers)
• failed to provide even draft pleadings in the NBPP case
• invoked specious privileges in order to withhold critical information but failed to invoke executive privilege
• refused to provide a privilege log

DOJ’s obstinacy during the investigation was astonishing.

OFF WITH HIS HEAD for questioning the prerogatives of the King!