Blog Heap of Links for the day 14 November 2012

Police say they found Henry Hamilton’s body in his bedroom Nov. 8, along with a living will with handwritten words “Do not revive! (expletive) Obama!” Two empty prescription empty pill bottles were in the dining room. … was anxious about his tanning business

[For the record… Democrats and Barack Obama placed an oppressive racist tanning tax in their health care bill to help pay for the plan. -Jim Hoft]

This veneration of the leader and the paternalistic “knowing the people’s will before the people themselves know” is part and parcel of American progressivism, not just in Wilson’s time (and, to an extent, his predecessor, TR), but in the present day in his modern acolyte, Obama. Goldberg discusses this tendency extensively in his must-read, “Liberal Fascism,” and it’s an unhealthy one in a democratic republic, something far too many succumb to.

David Brooks, David Frum, Bill Kristol (oh, how his father must be spinning in his grave), John Boner Boehner, Rand Paul, even Bobby Jindal, WTF is wrong with you people? Most of the garbage in the links above is business-as-usual from the Usual Suspects, but that last one in particular really grinds my gears.

Here is how quickly live data happens using a relatively low-tech example of how President Obama’s team of mathematicians used live signals.

Thousands Called for the Overthrow of Dictator King Abdullah today in massive street protests. [video]

For Ike, it was Lebanon’s civil war and Israel’s Sinai invasion. For Lyndon Johnson, it was the 1967 Six-Day War. For Nixon, it was the 1973 war. For Carter, it was the Iranian Revolution. For Ronald Reagan, it was Lebanon. For George H.W. Bush, it was Iraq. For Bill Clinton, it was Al Qaeda and Afghanistan. For George W. Bush, it was Iraq and Afghanistan. For Barack Obama’s first term, it was Iran and Afghanistan, again. And for Obama’s second term, I fear that it could be the full nightmare — all of them at once. The whole Middle East erupts in one giant sound and light show of civil wars, states collapsing and refugee dislocations, as the keystone of the entire region — Syria — gets pulled asunder and the disorder spills across the neighborhood.

Ripped off from another site:
"All of you should have a look at this picture of the dead terorists car:

http://goo.gl/vtKgb

Do you have any idea how much it has taken to make a missile that only causes this tiny amount of damage? The precision and mass/velocity/design of the kinetic vehicle and warhead are awe inspiring.

If they had used a conventional Hellfire round there would be a crater 6 feet in diameter and 6 foot deep. Instead the headlights have survived.

Anyone who states that the IDF use indiscriminate force can fuck off. "

We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force. Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother." I consider it all hopeless at this point. We shall have to try to prevent things from coming to that, if at all possible. Our armed forces, however, are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under.' —Martin van Creveld, professor of military history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, quoted by David Hirst

If Israel were to take out the dam with a nuke, a rush of boiling, radioactive water would go up the Nile and scald and contaminate everything in its path. Unfortunately for Egypt, 95% of its population is within 12 miles of the Nile.

Granted, that would probably only happen if Israel were to exercise the Samson Option, but still…

Israel is bracing for terrorist attacks perfectly understandable spontaneous reactions to a video

Fixed!

Rambam Hospital in Haifa … wartime operating room a dozen stories down, to the third level of an underground parking garage that will become, should bombs fall again, one of the world’s largest emergency hospitals. At 645,000 square feet, the three stories will house 2,000 medical stations -- enough to care not only for those wounded physically or psychologically from the war zone, but also for the most critically ill inpatients and outpatients needing regular treatments like dialysis.

Army bombs multiple terror targets in the Gaza Strip, killing up to six, as Operation Pillar of Defense commences against Hamas and Islamic Jihad targets; Hamas’s armed wing warns assassination of top activist has ‘opened the gates of hell’

Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi… “We don’t have the majority but we have the gavel.” [Um, what?]

The Obama Administration is developing a new socialist constitution for America to replace the original Constitution written by our Founders. Every single one of these huge bills being rammed through congress is simply another article of the Obama constitution which allows no amendments by Republicans.

The people need to understand that these huge 1000 to 2000 page bills — the 111 Congress agenda — are all parts of one master blueprint for a new socialist government. The master plan has been split up into different component pieces so that the people won't notice how they will all fit back together until after they become law.

Murgan Salem al-Gohary, 50, an Islamist leader twice-sentenced under former President Hosni Mubarak for advocating violence, told Egyptian media that the historical landmarks are 'idolatrous' and must be destroyed.

The threats are being taken seriously as ten years ago Gohary helped smash a pair of giant Buddha statues in Afghanistan.

Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Jesse Sharkey, who spoke at one of the breakout sessions, was just one of the hundreds of attendees, many of them teachers, there to strategize about the next phases of the partnership between Chicago Socialists and the Chicago Teachers Union. Of course, all recording was strictly verboten unless you had been preapproved by the Chicago Socialists.

It’s red a America that is the real moocher --Ashoka

Once again, a case of statistics lie, and liars use statistics
1) Seven out of the ten richest counties reside in DC, yet your author elected to omit it. Why ?

Because federal spending per dollar of taxes paid there is almost three times HIGHER than the next highest blue state, New Mexico
No wonder rich liberals want to spend more.
One would expect DC to be somewhat higher by nature of this being where lots of useless bureaucrats park their carcasses, but wow.

2) A state such as California is much more expensive to live in than a state like, say South Dakota.
Therefore taxable incomes will reflect this.

3)In lesser populated states such as Alaska, the costs of wasteful federal boondoggles such as the bridge to nowhere will be highlighted to a greater extent on a chart such as this over say, the billions poured into California’s light rail travesty, or Boston’s big dig money pit.

Then you have your unequal distribution by way of military bases (can’t put them in every state)
So who really isn’t paying their “fair share” ?
How about half the population that has NO federal tax liability whatsoever?

But even more importantly, with a deficit fast approaching twenty trillion dollars, it’s the spending stupid.

We get this same argument over state spending on highways here.
The libs from the cities throw up charts showing the least populated counties get more spending per capita on state roads than does the metro aria as an argument to jack gas taxes for more wasteful utopian light rail projects.

Or how they generously throw taxpayer money to billionaires to build luxurious playpens, (aka generous Obama donor) then feign outrage as those billionaires demand payment from those same taxpayers to get in.
http://www.twincities.com/sports/ci_21986386/vikings-stadium-mark-dayton...

Two days after the election, Obama's favorite economist, Paul Krugman, set the tone for the intransigent left in a column titled: "Let's not make a deal." Boiled down, his advice to Obama was this: Don't give in to any Republican demands, even if doing so would "inflict damage on a still-shaky economy." After all, Obama would be better positioned to "weather any blowback from economic troubles." Krugman's advice may be disturbingly cold and calculating, but he has plenty of company on the left.

President Barack Obama has responded to House Speaker John Boehner's gesture last week towards reaching a deal to avoid the Jan. 1 "fiscal cliff" of tax hikes and spending cuts, putting a specific demand on the table: $1.6 trillion in new tax revenues, reached by raising tax rates on the wealthy in addition to other "tax revenues." The offer is twice as high as a deal Obama scuttled last year, suggesting he may be prepared to let talks fail again.

“We will do everything in our power to block Rice,” said Sen. John McCain … New Hampshire Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte criticized Rice’s constant appearances on network television, and South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham questioned why an official in her position would be the administration’s lead public figure on the Benghazi incident.

Graham suggested the White House may have been taking cover by putting Rice front-and-center on cable news talk shows just days after the Benghazi attack.

President Barack Obama revealed at his press conference this afternoon that he is responsible for sending U.N. ambassador Susan Rice to speak to the American people a few days after the September 11 Benghazi terror attack.

heard something funny yesterday:

How do you make John Kerry for Sec of State seem like a good idea?

First, you start a rumor about John Kerry being the next Secretary of Defense.

Is the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy turning into Katrina-on-the-Hudson? Pretty much, and that tells us some things about Sandy, and Katrina, and the press. … "As Brian Sotelo tells it, when it became clear that the residents were less than enamored with their new accommodations last Wednesday night and were letting the outside world know about it, officials tried to stop them from taking pictures, turned off the WiFi and said they couldn't charge their smart phones because there wasn't enough power," Stephen Edelson writes in the Asbury Park Press.

Nine members of the Wisconsin state legislature say they plan to back a bill to arrest federal officials who try to implement Obamacare.

“With the close relationship that the president has with Attorney General Holder and the regular FBI briefings he receives, does anyone really believe that Obama was unaware of this investigation until recently?” Inhofe, a senior member of Senate Armed Services Committee and a member of Senate Foreign Relations Committee, asked in a statement. … Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton… “The idea that the White House didn’t learn of this potential problem until Election Day, I just find incomprehensible. Did the attorney general sit on this information for two months?”

The reason it’s important is here’s a man who knows the administration holds his fate in its hands, and he gives testimony completely at variance with what the Secretary of Defense had said the day before, at variance with what he’d heard from his station chief in Tripoli, and with everything that we had heard. Was he influenced by the fact that he knew his fate was held by people within the administration at that time? -Charles Krauthammer

Former CIA Director David Petraeus has agreed to testify about the Libya terror attack before the House and Senate intelligence committees

…here are 10 of cinema's most obnoxious tropes that you see in Oscar-bait film after Oscar-bait film, with two entries dedicated solely to the most shameless award-whore movies in recent history

…contains the dietary fiber Dextrin, which Pepsi’s Japan distributor claims will reduce the amount of fat absorbed by the body. … The indigestible fiber causes people to feel fuller, which helps prevent them from eating too much. The additive also causes an increased number of bowel movements…. [Oh, well, let's have another bottle of that!]

Drillers in Utah and Colorado are poking into a massive shale deposit trying to find a way to unlock oil reserves that are so vast they would swamp OPEC. … "In the past 100 years — in all of human history -- we have consumed 1 trillion barrels of oil. There are several times that much here,"

Dear Republican Establishment:
We hear you. We hear you blaming us for Mitt Romney’s recent defeat in the Presidential election. Now hear us….
The Conservative Grassroots

Republicans should recognize that, on balance, Americans remain moderate—holding a mix of liberal and conservative views. They generally believe that small government is better and that ObamaCare is bad. But the exit poll shows that 59% believe abortion should be legal, 65% support a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants, and a surprising plurality support legalizing same-sex marriage in their states.

Threading the ideological needle with this electorate is vital for the Republicans in the future

The misconduct investigation occurred last year after the student’s parents alleged that the teacher, Juliet Hibbs, persuaded the student to come out as a lesbian, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports. The school’s principal, Jon Marlow, initiated the investigation. The district ultimately exonerated Hibbs and took no action against her or anyone else.

In the 1950s, Soviet engineers built a massive city in the Caspian Sea off the coast of Azerbaijan. It was a network of oil platforms linked by hundreds of kilometers of roads and housing 5,000 workers, with a cinema, a park and apartment blocks. Gradually disintegrating but still closely guarded… Neft Dashlari, far out in the Caspian Sea. … In Neft Dashlari's heyday, some 2,000 drilling platforms were spread in a 30-kilometer circle, joined by a network of bridge viaducts spanning 300 kilometers. Trucks thundered across the bridges and eight-story apartment blocks were built for the 5,000 workers who sometimes spent weeks on Neft Dashlari. The voyage back to the mainland could take anything between six and twelve hours, depending on the type of ship. The island had its own beverage factory, soccer pitch, library, bakery, laundry, 300-seat cinema, bathhouse, vegetable garden and even a tree-lined park for which the soil was brought from the mainland. … most of the rigs are now out of use or can't be reached because the bridges leading to them have collapsed. Of the 300 kilometers of roads, only 45 kilometers remain usable, and even they have fallen into disrepair. During a flood a few years ago, many apartments were submerged up to the second story…. In a few decades, rusting steel jutting out of the waves and old seacharts will be all that remain of this gigantic labyrinth in the sea.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has reportedly demoted the former head of U.S. Africa Command, who was accused of spending thousands of dollars on lavish travel and other unauthorized expenses. …stripped Gen. William 'Kip' Ward of a star, which means that he must now retire as a three-star lieutenant general. Ward must also repay the government $82,000.

re the question why military generals being pilloried. Hitler did the same thing as did Stalin when they were consolidating power. They got rid of the ranking military officers that would not toe the company line. This was to negate or at least lessen the chance of a coup being started. Tyrants follow the same checklist, I think this is what is going on. Take them down and scare the ones that are left into cooperating.

In spite of my efforts, the government has grown exponentially, taxes remain excessive, and the prolific increase of incomprehensible regulations continues. Wars are constant and pursued without congressional declaration, deficits rise to the sky, poverty is rampant and dependency on the federal government is now worse than any time in our history.
 All this with minimal concerns for the deficits and unfunded liabilities that common sense tells us cannot go on much longer. …
 [I]n the early part of the 20th century, our politicians promoted the notion that the tax and monetary systems had to change if we were to involve ourselves in excessive domestic and military spending. That is why Congress gave us the Federal Reserve and the income tax.
 The majority of Americans and many government officials agreed that sacrificing some liberty was necessary to carry out what some claimed to be 'progressive' ideas.
 "If it's not accepted that big government, fiat money, ignoring liberty, central economic planning, welfarism, and warfarism caused our crisis we can expect a continuous and dangerous march toward corporatism and even fascism with even more loss of our liberties. Prosperity for a large middle class though will become an abstract dream. …
 "The Internet will provide the alternative to the government/media complex that controls the news and most political propaganda. This is why it's essential that the Internet remains free of government regulation. -Ron Paul

How many Americans have died to protect this country and to keep us united? But what… because we lost a couple of elections and gained an ObamaCare we're going to grab our marbles and crybaby all the way home to Texahomastan? Wanting to cut and run from the fight for your country is cowardice.

Deport everyone that signed a petition to deport everyone that signed a petition to withdraw the United States.
Signatures needed by December 14, 2012 to reach goal of 25,000. Needed: 24,998

In the aftermath of the 2012 election, the vast majority of states are either entirely blue or entirely red, their entire legislatures and governors of one party or the other. As the Wall Street Journal reports, “In 46 states, the same party now controls both chambers of the legislature, creating distinct divisions between red and blue states.” That’s the highest number in 70 years. When governors are counted as well, there are just 12 states across the country with divided government. A full 38 states are of a single party.

If this continues, we are watching the end of America as we know it.

Red states are governed very differently from blue states. Of the 22 right-to-work states, which have provided 72% of the jobs under the weak Obama recovery, only Iowa (which has a non-partisan unicameral legislature) and Nevada (Democrat-controlled legislature) are not solid red. Meanwhile, the bluest states – states like Michigan and California and Illinois – are totally bankrupt.

What we are seeing is a complete divide throughout the country on the state level. We only get to elect one president. But on a state-by-state basis, it’s clear that the American people have two very different ideas of which way they want this country to head.

If the blue states hold true to form and the red states continue to grow, it will not be long before the red states are largely subsidizing the blue states.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry isn’t the only chief executive of a state to announce that recent talk of seceding from the U.S. doesn’t interest him. Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam and Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley both said Tuesday that they don’t plan to take action to separate their states from the U.S. federal system

Less than a week after a New Orleans suburbanite petitioned the White House to allow Louisiana to secede from the United States, petitions from seven states have collected enough signatures to trigger a promised review from the Obama administration. By 6:00 a.m. EST Wednesday, more than 675,000 digital signatures appeared on 69 separate secession petitions covering all 50 states, according to a Daily Caller analysis of requests lodged with the White House’s “We the People” online petition system. A petition from Vermont, where talk of secession is a regular feature of political life, was the final entry.

On today’s college and university campuses, students are repeatedly being punished for expressing the “wrong” opinion on just about any controversial topic. At the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), we’ve won battle after battle against schools that restrict student speech, yet campus censorship continues to flourish

How e-voting machines compare to Vegas slot machines

For the last several months as I confidently predicted a Mitt Romney victory there were two people who consistently told me I was dead wrong, both are local business owners who deal with people every single day. Their daily interactions with people told them that the country was too far gone and Obama was going to win this election.

Speaking of crawling over shit, I suggest next election we don't spread all that broken glass around that we were so certain republicans were going to crawl through to get to the polls. Maybe replace it with boy scouts, helping walk them through freshly swept pavement? Just throwing that idea out there.

Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) is refusing to concede to Democrat Patrick Murphy, but that hasn’t kept Murphy from Washington. … After the results are officially certified Friday, West will have 10 days to contest the outcome of the race in court…. Michael McDonald, associate professor of government and politics at George Mason University, said that there might be grounds for a full recount because the total number of votes cast had shifted so much after the partial recount….

This attempt at a boycott is is overwhelmingly ironic for two separate reasons.

First, recall back to the Rush Limbaugh-Sandra Fluke controversy when advertisers were pulling their money from the program in response to the left’s astroturfed secondary boycott that attempted, and failed, to get Limbaugh off the air.

Who was one of those heroes that stepped in, removed their advertising dollars, and added to the left’s effort to silence one of their greatest foes? You guessed it…

…group called Rebooting America that is proposing that Friday be a national day of appreciation for the pizza chain, whose chief executive officer is being attacked for saying employees’ hours might be cut to cover the cost of implementing their health insurance under ObamaCare. the conservative group has hatched a social media-based campaign that centers on encouraging people to buy a pizza pie at a Papa John’s store, taking a photo of the outing and then posting it on a Facebook page or tweeting it.