Blog Heap of Links for the day 30 July 2011

Just so we all know what happened, in the middle of the debt talks, in the middle of the markets dropping, in the middle of credit rating companies looking to downgrade the US bond rating, Obama gleefully enacts a standard that is twice the standard of today. As of yet, no major car company has shown the ability to meet the 2016 mandated standard of 35 mpg so why not push for an even higher standard? [h/t Doug Brady at Conservatives4Palin]

President Barack Obama's speech to the nation Monday night was highly disturbing. Because read carefully, it reveals a president wildly divorced from the fundamental realities of the nation he is supposed to be leading.

Surprise, surprise! The DNC's first ad out of the election 2012 gate, is a wink, wink…nudge, nudge to illegal aliens and their supporters. Why just the other day Obama told LaRaza how tempted he was to "bypass congress" and "change laws" on his own.

President Obama specifically asked Eric Holder to do a "complete review" of "current gun enforcement operations," in April 2009, yet Eric Holder and President Obama deny they authorized or knew anything specific about Operation Fast and Furious until 2011? It seems too "coincidental" that the President of the United States was talking about "ballistics and gun tracing" in April 2009, when Operation Fast and Furious started in Fall 2009, especially when the agencies he listed in the 2009 press conference, DHS, DOJ, ATF, "everybody involved," match up with Newell's admission about which agencies came up with the idea for Fast and Furious in the first place, which included, as stated above, DEA, IRS, ATF, DHS, and the Obama DOJ.

Republican presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann's failure to address a disturbing trend of teen suicides within her own congressional district does not reflect well on her White House ambitions, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi told The Advocate Thursday. ... At least four suicide victims, as Mother Jones noted in a feature published Monday, had been reported victims of bullying because they were LGBT or perceived to be LGBT. ... There are several things wrong with this: Getting attacked by Nancy Pelosi is good for Republicans. To say "X got bullied" and "X committed suicide" shows correlation, not causation. What about all of the gay people who didn't commit suicide? But this is just more "Republicans are homophobes" propaganda.

As drug smugglers from the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico sent a never-ending stream of cocaine across the border and into a vast U.S. distribution web in Los Angeles, DEA agents were watching and listening.

Iran's escalating activity on the territory of its western neighbor, Iraq, could end up becoming the real catalyst for a U.S.-Iranian conflict. That was the message conveyed by General Martin Dempsey, the incoming Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at his July 26th confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee. ... Iran has been allowed to wage irregular warfare against the United States and its Coalition allies for years with virtual impunity. Policymakers in Washington and European capitals, fearful of a drift into even greater regional conflict, have chosen largely to ignore Iran's provocations and keep the peace with the Islamic Republic. And as a result, Iran's leaders have become convinced that their extensive interference in Iraq is by and large a cost-free exercise. But all this could soon change. "[T]here is a high potential that Iran will make a serious miscalculation of US resolve," Gen. Dempsey told lawmakers in Congress. "As long as we've got those soldiers there, we're going to do whatever we have to do to protect them." Doing so could lead inexorably to conflict with the Islamic Republic.

The security situation in Iraq is more dangerous than it was a year ago, according to a government watchdog report issued Saturday that cites more attacks on U.S. troops, a continuing wave of assassinations targeting Iraqi officials and a growing number of indirect rocket strikes on Baghdad's Green Zone. ... The findings contrast with public statements by U.S. diplomatic and military officials in Iraq and come as Washington awaits a final decision by Iraqi leaders on whether they want U.S. troops to stay in the country beyond the expiration of a three-year security agreement in December. U.S. officials have said they are willing to extend the American military presence into 2012 only after receiving a formal request from Iraqi leaders.

Iarpa, the intelligence community's way-out research shop, wants to know where you took that vacation picture over the Fourth of July. It wants to know where you took that snapshot with your friends when you were at that New Year's Eve party. Oh yeah, and if you happen to be a terrorist and you took a photo with some of your buddies while prepping for a raid, the agency definitely wants to know where you took that picture — and it's looking for ideas to help figure it out. In an announcement for its new "Finder" program, the agency says that it is looking for ways to geolocate (a fancy word for "locate" that implies having coordinates for a place) images by extracting data from the images themselves and using this to make guesses about where they were taken. ... And you better believe that it's not just spooks who want to know where images were taken. Google, Facebook, Apple and all the other internet and social media giants are probably looking to do the same thing so that they can better understand where their users are and what they are doing there. So before long your Facebook or Google+ account will be automatically tagging who is in your pictures and where they were taken… …and spooks might be, too.

Yesterday, the House Judiciary Committee voted 19-10 for H.R. 1981, a data-retention bill that will require your ISP to spy on everything you do online and save records of it for 12 months. California Rep Zoe Lofgren, one of the Democrats who opposed the bill, called it a "data bank of every digital act by every American" that would "let us find out where every single American visited Web sites."

Likely inspired by the Chinese art of paper-cutting, these highly-detailed false lashes by Taiwanese designer Ting yu Wang incorporates designs, animals, and sometimes even a whole scene that will fit atop your eyelids.

Feminism is better termed femisogyny because it is an ideology which hates all things feminine in women

Below I've highlighted seven key questions that should be asked of our education system. Interestingly, all of the problems they touch on have one common culprit: mass standardization. While left-liberals love to espouse the virtues of diversity, their actions do not follow their words. Real diversity is achieved by respecting the liberties of individuals, not by forcing conformity on them. Real educational diversity requires the freedom to define and pursue education according to one's values, interests, and aptitude. Education will be revolutionized once these liberties are afforded. [h/t to Cuz BD]

I found this blog awhile back and haven't missed a Daily Grudge since. Keep on doing what you are doing, because it is working. For so long, I thought I was alone, now I know I have patriot brothers and sisters all over the nation…it has inspired me and strengthened me to do things I never imagined. [Commenter blessed2beme3]

Two weeks after a Texas congressman tried force a House vote on his bill mandating that servicemembers be paid first in the event of a government shutdown, only nine representatives have signed on. The so-called discharge petition requires 218 signatures.

Make no mistake: that's what happened over the past weekend. We have been through a mercilessly condensed version of a presidential campaign, lasting only hours, in which Barack Obama ran against his own image, demonstrated himself unworthy of office, and threw away any chance of victory in next year's contest.

Gallup Shows Governor Palin's Favorable Rating Among GOP/GOP-Leaning Indies to Be Back Over 70%. That's what my math shows when you multiply the percentage of Republican/Republican-leaning indies who recognize the candidate by the percentage of Republican/Republican-leaning indies who have an overall favorable opinion of the candidate.

In every reputable battleground state poll conducted over the past month, Obama's support is weak. In most of them, he trails Republican front-runner Mitt Romney. For all the talk of a closely fought 2012 election, if Obama can't turn around his fortunes in states such as Michigan and New Hampshire, next year's presidential election could end up being a GOP landslide.

President Obama's job approval rating is at a new low, averaging 40% in July 26-28 Gallup Daily tracking.

Romney has a financial stake in the success of climate change legislation. [h/t to The Pagan Temple, commenter on Sister Toldjah]

Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson wrote an awesome book that chronicled his "awakening," if you will, titled, From Rage to Responsibility . The book reminds me of David Mamet's book, The Secret Knowledge, in that he and Peterson simply stopped taking Leftist ideology as unquestionable truth. Because they saw first hand the misery and havoc Leftist policies wreak on American culture and the destruction of the individual, as well as the high the cost to people when they play the "blame game." These two men know the price paid for even daring to question "Liberal Orthodoxy." Hmm... no wonder Leftisits and Islamists get along so well. [Commenter Victora Hernandez]

While President Obama, Senate Democrats and inside the beltway Republicans remain addicted to spending more money they do not have, a brave bloc of Congressional Members have stood up and said, "no". These 22 brave members of Congress bucked their party leadership and voted against Speaker Boehner's debt ceiling bill. These lawmakers understand full well that they were elected to represent the American People and to reject the Washington D.C. wheeling and dealing that got us in this mess in the first place.

Rush Limbaugh: The Republican leadership is operating out of fear. I want you to think, to transfer that to your personal life, and I want to ask you to consider: Whenever you do anything out of fear, how does it turn out? Doing anything from the perspective of fear is disastrous, or potentially so. And that has been the position of the Republican leadership and the inside-the-Beltway so-called conservative media. Fear. Fear of being blamed, primarily. But fear of other things. The age-old fears, the fears rooted in the mentality of being consistent, constant losers. ... Winners do not compromise. Winners do not compromise with themselves. The winners who do compromise are winners who still don't believe in themselves as winners, who still think of themselves as losers. And you and I are finished with supporting people who think of themselves as losers, or in the minority, or we don't have the power, or we don't control all three branches, or what have you. ... The Tea Party is putting country before party. They can't be bought off with committee assignments or with campaign re-election funds. They can't be bought, and Washington can't understand this.