Mitt Romney's Speech to the NAACP

Pundette has this, "Romney's NAACP speech":

That Mitt Romney got booed yesterday during his speech to the NAACP shouldn't come as news to anyone. The surprising part, for me, is that he didn't pander to his audience or soften his message, but instead uttered an inconvenient truth: that President Obama's policies have made things worse for black Americans "in almost every way." The speech strikes me as a sincere appeal for black votes, as well as an appeal to conservatives like me...

And me too. It's a good speech. And Romney was right to go before the NAACP with a message of traditional values.

RELATED: From Dan Riehl, "Tommy Christopher, Rachel Maddow Expose Their Racism In Misguided Romney Attack" (via Memeorandum).

The Total Hypocrisy of the Obama Administration

Here's Michelle Malkin on Hannity's last night:

PREVIOUSLY: "Barack Obama's Tax Shelters."

Freedom to Blog Update July 12, 2012

Alex Pareene published a ridiculously slimy account of the Brett Kimberlin controversy Tuesday, "Brett Kimberlin versus right-wing bloggers." Pareene is perhaps the prototypical progressive Internet sleezeball. A former blogger at Gawker/Wonkette, he's famous for attacking Michelle Malkin with crude Asian whore ping-pong ball slurs. Patterico has the epic smackdown, "Salon Does Damage Control for Brett Kimberlin":

Pareene describes Kimberlin’s victim’s as people who “receive a great deal of joy from pretending to be the victims of unprovoked and terrible persecution.” Ask Aaron Walker how much joy he received when he and his wife lost their jobs, he was arrested, and spent money defending against frivolous actions from Kimberlin. It was not “joy” I experienced when Kimberlin’s site published photos of my house and my address; when he filed a state bar complaint against me; when he attempted to file frivolous criminal charges against me with the California Attorney General and the stalking unit of my office; or when he complained to my office numerous times about me.

And so on and so forth.

Pareene mentions Kimberlin’s main defense to the bombings — that some of the witnesses were hypnotized — without mentioning the damning evidence against him, such as his possession of timers and explosive materials consistent with those used in the bombings. Nowhere is there a mention of the wrongful death judgment obtained by Carl DeLong’s widow, or the fact that Kimberlin refused to pay it while collecting over a million dollars from the Tides Foundation, Barbra Streisand, and other liberal marks.

There is so much more I could talk about, but I have to get to work.

This piece pretends to be journalism, but it isn’t. It’s cover to Brett Kimberlin, pure and simple. Pareene repeats Kimberlin’s allegations and doesn’t bother to talk to any of his victims.

It’s Gawker-style “journalism,” at Salon.

Pareene interviewed Brett Kimbelin, but not one of the conservatives who claim intimidation by the Kimberlin network. Robert Stacy McCain has more, "East Coast Opium Kingpin Alex Pareene Writes About ‘Standard-Issue Right-Wing Character Assassination’ of Kimberlin."

Plus, Bob Belvedere has an update on the saga, "The #BrettKimberlin Report D+46: Alex Pareene – Amateur."

And Pareene's laughing about it on Twitter, "Liberal bloggers make jokes about SWAT-ting."

I'm still amazed at those arguing that the Kimberlin story isn't partisan. Once again, there are a couple of progressives who see this as a First Amendment fight, but most on the left have blown this off as some conspiracy cooked up by the crazed conservatives on Twitter.

In any case, back over at the source of this, see Aaron Worthing, "Exclusive: The State’s Attorney Has Given Brett Kimberlin a License to Perjure Himself and He Used it in Kimberlin v. Norton."

I've spoken to my attorney and I'll be updating on Scott Eric Kaufman's campaign of workplace harassment and intimidation.

Luke Bryan Apologizes for Reading Words to National Anthem at All Star Game

I've never seen anyone read the lyrics off their wrist, but this guy did, and it was too obvious.

ABC News reports, "Singer Luke Bryan Apologizes for National Anthem Controversy."

And London's Daily Mail has the video, "Did country singer check his hand for National Anthem lyrics during All-Star Game?"

Michelle Fields and Sandra Smith Discuss New American Crossroads Ad 'War On Women' on Hannity's

It's a powerful ad.

Mitt Romney and the New Gilded Age — Really!

I was writing tongue in cheek when I snarked about how "this year the left is so utterly bankrupt that all they can do is hit Republicans as vicious, undeserving throwbacks to the (so-called) economic obscenities of the Gilded Age."

But it's true!

See #OWS cheerleader and former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich, at the Nation, "Mitt Romney and the New Gilded Age":

The election of 2012 raises two perplexing questions. The first is how the GOP could put up someone for president who so brazenly epitomizes the excesses of casino capitalism that have nearly destroyed the economy and overwhelmed our democracy. The second is why the Democrats have failed to point this out.

he White House has criticized Mitt Romney for his years at the helm of Bain Capital, pointing to a deal that led to the bankruptcy of GS Technologies, a Bain investment in Kansas City that went belly up in 2001 at the cost of 750 jobs. But the White House hasn’t connected Romney’s Bain to the larger scourge of casino capitalism. Not surprisingly, its criticism has quickly degenerated into a “he said, she said” feud over what proportion of the companies that Bain bought and loaded up with debt subsequently went broke (it’s about 20 percent), and how many people lost their jobs relative to how many jobs were added because of Bain’s financial maneuvers (that depends on when you start and stop the clock). And it has invited a Republican countercharge that the administration gambled away taxpayer money on its own bad bet, the Solyndra solar panel company.

But the real issue here isn’t Bain’s betting record. It’s that Romney’s Bain is part of the same system as Jamie Dimon’s JPMorgan Chase, Jon Corzine’s MF Global and Lloyd Blankfein’s Goldman Sachs—a system that has turned much of the economy into a betting parlor that nearly imploded in 2008, destroying millions of jobs and devastating household incomes. The winners in this system are top Wall Street executives and traders, private-equity managers and hedge-fund moguls, 
and the losers are most of the rest of us. The system is largely responsible for the greatest concentration of the nation’s income and wealth at the very top since the Gilded Age of the nineteenth century, with the richest 400 Americans owning as much as the bottom 150 million put together. And these multimillionaires and billionaires are now actively buying the 2012 election—and with it, American democracy.

The biggest players in this system have, like Romney, made their profits placing big bets with other people’s money. If the bets go well, the players make out like bandits. If they go badly, the burden lands on average workers and taxpayers. The 750 peo-
ple at GS Technologies who lost their jobs thanks to a bad deal engineered by Romney’s Bain were a small foreshadowing of the 15 million who lost jobs after the cumulative dealmaking 
of the entire financial sector pushed the whole economy off a cliff. And relative to the cost to taxpayers of bailing out Wall Street, Solyndra is a rounding error.

Connect the dots of casino capitalism, and you get Mitt Romney. The fortunes raked in by financial dealmakers depend on special goodies baked into the tax code such as “carried interest,” which allows Romney and other partners in private-equity firms (as well as in many venture-capital and hedge funds) to treat their incomes as capital gains taxed at a maximum of
15 percent. This is how Romney managed to pay an average of 14 percent on more than $42 million of combined income in 2010 and 2011. But the carried-interest loophole makes no economic sense. Conservatives try to justify the tax code’s generous preference for capital gains as a reward to risk-takers—but Romney and other private-equity partners risk little, if any, of their personal wealth. They mostly bet with other investors’ money, including the pension savings of average working people.

Another goodie allows private-equity partners to sock away almost any amount of their earnings into a tax-deferred IRA, while the rest of us are limited to a few thousand dollars a year. The partners can merely low-ball the value of whatever portion of their investment partnership they put away—even valuing it at zero—because the tax code considers a partnership interest to have value only in the future. This explains how Romney’s IRA is worth as much as $101 million. The tax code further subsidizes private equity and much of the rest of the financial sector by making interest on debt tax-deductible, while taxing profits and dividends. This creates huge incentives for financiers to find ways of substituting debt for equity and is a major reason America’s biggest banks have leveraged America to the hilt. It’s also why Romney’s Bain and other private-equity partnerships have done the same to the companies they buy.

These maneuvers shift all the economic risk to debtors, who sometimes can’t repay what they owe. That’s rarely a problem for the financiers who engineer the deals; they’re sufficiently diversified to withstand some losses, or they’ve already taken their profits and moved on. But piles of debt play havoc with the lives of real people in the real economy when the companies they work for can’t meet their payments, or the banks they rely on stop lending money, or the contractors they depend on go broke—often with the result that they can’t meet their own debt payments and lose their homes, cars and savings.

It took more than a decade for America to recover from the Great Crash of 1929 after the financial sector had gorged itself on debt, and it’s taking years to recover from the more limited but still terrible crash of 2008. The same kinds of convulsions have occurred on a smaller scale at a host of companies since the go-go years of the 1980s, when private-equity firms like Bain began doing leveraged buyouts—taking over a target company, loading it up with debt, using the tax deduction that comes with the debt to boost the target company’s profits, cutting payrolls and then reselling the company at a higher price.

Sometimes these maneuvers work, sometimes they end in disaster; but they always generate giant rewards for the dealmakers while shifting the risk to workers and taxpayers. In 1988 drugstore chain Revco went under when it couldn’t meet its debt payments on a $1.6 billion leveraged buyout engineered by Salomon Brothers. In 1989 the private-equity firm of Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts completed the notorious and ultimately disastrous buyout of RJR Nabisco for $31 billion, much of it in high-yield (“junk”) bonds. In 1993 Bain Capital became a majority shareholder in GS Technologies and loaded it with debt. In 2001 it went down when it couldn’t meet payments on that debt load. But even as these firms sank, Bain and the other dealmakers continued to collect lucrative fees—transaction fees, advisory fees, management fees—sucking the companies dry until the bitter end. According to a review by the New York Times of firms that went bankrupt on Romney’s watch, Bain structured the deals so that its executives would always win, even if employees, creditors and Bain’s own investors lost out. That’s been Big Finance’s MO.

By the time Romney co-founded Bain Capital in 1984, financial wheeling and dealing was the most lucrative part of the economy, sucking into its Gordon Gekko–like maw the brightest and most ambitious MBAs, who wanted nothing more than to make huge amounts of money as quickly as possible. Between the mid-1980s and 2007, financial-sector earnings made up two-thirds of all the growth in incomes. At the same time, wages for most Americans stagnated as employers, under mounting pressure from Wall Street and private-equity firms like Bain, slashed payrolls and shipped jobs overseas.

The 2008 crash only briefly interrupted the bonanza. Last year, according to a recent Bloomberg Markets analysis, America’s top fifty financial CEOs got a 20.4 percent pay hike, even as the wages of most Americans continued to drop. Topping the Bloomberg list were two of the same private-equity barons who did the RJR Nabisco deal a quarter-century ago—Henry Kravis and George Roberts, who took home $30 million each. According to the 2011 tax records he released, Romney was not far behind.

* * *

We’ve entered a new Gilded Age, of which Mitt Romney is the perfect reflection...

I expect we'll be hearing a lot more of this "Gilded Age" bullshit.

Must-See TV: Romney Adviser John Sununu Schools MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell on Outsourcing

"You're struggling, Andrea, you're struggling."

PREVIOUSLY: "Barack Obama's Tax Shelters."

VIDEO: Ohio Freight Train Derails

Gnarly.

See the background report at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, "Ohio freight train derails, causing fiery blast."

The Obama Administration's Growing Welfare Dependency Regime

From Tuesday night on the O'Reilly Factor:

The 'God Particle' and God

From Dennis Prager, at National Review:

They found the “God particle.”

That was the headline splashed all over America’s news media. It turns out that the name actually derives from substituting “God particle” for “goddamn particle,” the original name some scientists had given the elusive particle. But the media adopted the former nomenclature.

Why?

Because otherwise the bulk of humanity would not pay attention.

Physicists went nuts. And no one can blame them. For decades, they have searched for the particle that may explain why there is any mass in the universe. And 10 billion dollars was spent on the machine that probably proved its existence.

Without any disrespect to the enormous intellectual achievement of these scientists, let me state that I identify with the mass of humanity that doesn’t really care about the existence of the Higgs boson.

Those scientists and science writers who have likened this discovery to the discovery of DNA are wrong. If significance means relevance to the human condition, the discovery of DNA merited a ten out of ten and the Higgs boson might merit a two.

This does not mean that the search was either a waste of time or money. Both the time and money invested were necessary because satiating our curiosity about the natural world is one of the noblest ambitions of the human race.

But scientific discovery and meaning are not necessarily related. As one of the leading physicists of our time, Steven Weinberg, has written, “The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.”

And pointlessness is the point. The discovery of the Higgs boson brings us no closer to understanding why there is a universe, not to mention whether life has meaning. In fact, no scientific discovery ever made will ever explain why there is existence. Nor will it render good and evil anything more than subjective opinion, or explain why human beings have consciousness or anything else that truly matters.

The only thing that can explain existence and answer these other questions is God or some other similar metaphysical belief.

Continue reading.

Theo's Wednesday Hotties

In case you missed 'em, "Wednesday Wenches...", and "Bonus Babe..."

NewsBusted: 'June's Terrible Unemployment Numbers'

A really good clip, via Theo Spark:

The Surprising Moral Case for Free Enterprise

Via Theo Spark:

Get Brooks' book, The Road to Freedom: How to Win the Fight for Free Enterprise.

Obama's War on Women

Via Theo Spark:

B-2 Stealth Bomber Takes Off at Royal International Air Tattoo 2012

This is the U.S. Air Force B-2 Spirit stealth bomber, via Theo Spark:

And here's this from Wikipedia:

The Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit (also known as the Stealth Bomber) is an American strategic bomber, featuring low observable stealth technology designed for penetrating dense anti-aircraft defenses; it is able to deploy both conventional and nuclear weapons. The bomber has a crew of two and can drop up to eighty 500 lb (230 kg)-class JDAM GPS-guided bombs, or sixteen 2,400 lb (1,100 kg) B83 nuclear bombs. The B-2 is the only aircraft that can carry large air to surface standoff weapons in a stealth configuration.

Rare Baseball Cards Could Bring Up to $3 Million at Auction

A great story, at the Los Angeles Times, "Found money: Treasure trove of baseball cards may be worth millions":

DEFIANCE, Ohio — Karl Kissner picked up a soot-covered cardboard box that had been under a wooden dollhouse in his grandfather's attic. Taking a look inside, he saw hundreds of baseball cards bundled with twine. They were smaller than the ones he was used to seeing.

But some of the names were familiar: Hall of Famers Ty Cobb, Cy Young and Honus Wagner.

Then he put the box on a dresser and went back to digging through the attic.

It wasn't until two weeks later that he learned that his family had come across what experts say is one of the biggest, most exciting finds in the history of sports card collecting, a discovery worth perhaps millions.

The cards are from an extremely rare series issued around 1910. Up to now, the few known to exist were in so-so condition at best, with faded images and worn edges. But the ones from the attic in the town of Defiance are nearly pristine, untouched for more than a century. The colors are vibrant, the borders crisp and white.

"It's like finding the Mona Lisa in the attic," Kissner said.

Sports card experts who authenticated the find say they may never again see something this impressive.

"Every future find will ultimately be compared to this," said Joe Orlando, president of Professional Sports Authenticator.

The best of the bunch — 37 cards — are expected to bring a total of $500,000 when they are sold at auction in August during the National Sports Collectors Convention in Baltimore. There are about 700 cards in all that could be worth up to $3 million, experts say. They include such legends as Christy Mathewson and Connie Mack.

More at the link.

In Defense of Brad Pitt's Mom

From Michelle Malkin:

Hollywood and the American left love diversity, except when it offends their “progressive” value system.

Witness the reaction to actor Brad Pitt’s mother, Jane, who publicly opposed President Obama’s re-election. Mrs. Pitt’s pro-life, anti-gay marriage statement to her local paper last week enflamed the Tolerance Mob. And her mere expression of dissident political views exposed the glittering hypocrisy of the left-wing “No H8″ campaign.

Continue reading.

PREVIOUSLY: "The Sadly Obligatory Post on Brad Pitt's Mom Receiving Death Threats from 'Tolerant' Gay Rights Progressives."

Red Hot Jennifer Lopez Hits the Beach in Brazil

Remember, she's No. 1 on Forbe's hot Celebrity 100.

And she's looking good in her Brazil bikini.

At London's Daily Mail, "Red hot Jennifer Lopez shows off her trim figure in a sexy bikini as she hits the beach with boyfriend Casper and her twins."

Barack Obama Outsourcing Jobs

Here's the new project from the RNC, "Obamanomics Outsourced."

Also at Politico, "Mitt Romney: Barack Obama is ‘outsourcer in chief’."

Barack Obama's Tax Shelters

I can't ever recall as much class warfare in American politics. The Democrats always wage it, but this year the left is so utterly bankrupt that all they can do is hit Republicans as vicious, undeserving throwbacks to the (so-called) economic obscenities of the Gilded Age. 

Exhibit A this afternoon is the lead editorial at today's New York Times, "Mr. Romney's Financial Black Hole" via Memeorandum. Folks can read it all at the link. The editors really go off on Romney, attacking him for the alleged moral transgression of not releasing even more tax returns, and especially for his financial portfolio, which includes a number of offshore investments designed to reduce tax liability (a tax strategy that any good tax adviser would recommend). But for all the editorial's outrage and bluster (which zeros in on Romney's lingering ties to Bain), here's the key passage:

Firms like Bain park money in the Caymans because the islands have no taxes on capital gains, profits or income for foreigners. But just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.

Checking that Memeorandum thread, we see the radical lefties are all up in knots about this, as usual. The problem, of course, is the rank hypocrisy of the New York Times and its progressive minions. If folks want to call out presidential candidates for their tax avoidance strategies, then they should at least be fair and balanced about it. While President Obama enjoys far less wealth than Romney, he's clearly not ashamed of employing the same kind of tax avoidance schemes as the largest of the large private equity firms. See, for example, the Washington Free Beacon from April, "Obama Family Tax Shelter: First Family Transfers Wealth, Avoids Taxes:

President Obama and his wife, Michele, gave a total of $48,000 in tax-free gifts to their daughters, according to tax records made public on Friday.

The president and his wife separately gave each daughter a $12,000 gift under a section of the federal tax code that exempts such donations from federal taxes.

There is nothing illegal about the president’s taking advantage of this tax shelter, but it does raise eyebrows given that he has lamented the myriad tax exemptions used by the wealthy—“millionaires and billionaires” like himself—to pay less in taxes. He has yet to propose a comprehensive plan to reform the byzantine tax code.

The Obama’s tax return indicates that the gifts, likely for their daughter’s college educations, began in 2007, when the maximum exemptible amount was $24,000 per couple. The maximum exemption has since increased to $26,000 per couple.

The Obamas paid a total federal tax rate of 20.5 percent on a gross adjusted income $789,674, which would typically fall within the top federal rate of 35 percent. According to an analysis of the president’s tax return, he may have paid a lower rate than his secretary despite making more than eight times as much money as she did.

His most recent tax proposal—the so-called “Buffett Rule”—would increase taxes on about 4,000 millionaires and raise about $4.7 billion in new revenue per year, enough to cover about 0.4 percent of the projected budget deficit in 2012. Though the rule would apparently not hit the president himself.

Supporters of the rule have acknowledged that the projected revenue from the “Buffett Rule,” which the Democratic-led Senate is expected to vote down, is “not even a meaningful small amount.”

The Obama’s untaxed gift to their daughters will leave American taxpayers to subsidize the college education of the children of the multi-millionaire Obamas.

Again, it's not the amount of money at issue, it's the purported ethical implications of Obama's tax strategies. Not only has the president and his wife taken advantage of tax loopholes to shelter income in the name of the daughters' education, they've taken enough tax deductions to end up paying an effective rate below what the president's own secretary paid. All the stupid talk about "the Buffet Rule" is bullshit designed to mask a radical left-wing program of sticking it to those with more --- especially pernicious since there's not enough income available from the highest income earners to pay for the dramatic expansion of spending required under this redistributionist regime.

And that's just the tip of the hypocrisy iceberg.

Here's Daniel Halper, at the Weekly Standard, "Dem. Chair Invested in Swiss Banks, Foreign Drug Companies, and the State Bank of India." And also from Matt Lewis at the Daily Caller, "Nancy Pelosi made between $1-5 million on Asian investments in 2011." Plus, at Fire Andrea Mitchell, "Obama’s adviser and BFF Valerie Jarrett has a line of credit from a Bermuda insurance company valued between $100,000 and $250,000."

Check back on this. We'll see lots more Democrat tax shelters and off-shore banking hypocrisies as the days and weeks unfold. The trick is for Romney and the Republicans to hit back twice as hard against the left's despicable and completely opportunistic faux outrage.

Jonah Goldberg on Ideology

This is awesome:

And see Goldberg's, The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas.

And check out the new book from Norman Berdichevsky, The Left is Seldom Right. I read the first chapter at the link. It's fascinating.

Mary Katharine Ham Joins Hot Air!

Hot Air just got a lot hotter!

See Allahpundit's announcement, "Welcome Hot Air’s new editor-at-large, Mary Katharine Ham."

And Mary Katharine has her first post, "Finally: Blogger works for site everyone always thought she worked for anyway":

Just a quick note to say hey and thank you for your generous welcome, everyone! I’ve been a fan of HotAir since its launch, and a fan of Ed’s and AP’s since almost the beginning of their blogging careers. It’s truly a privilege to work with them and the rest of the crew here.

Read it all at the link.

She's a very sweet and friendly woman, and an awesome conservative!

NRA Rallies Gun Owners to Go ALL IN for Freedom

Via Theo Spark:

RELATED: See Katie Pavlich, at Townhall, "Obama's Coming Gun Control: Through the UN."

National Gay Rights Organizations Silent After 'It Gets Better' Spokesman Dan Savage Attacks Conservatives With Hateful, Hypocritical Slurs

A great post at Gay Patriot, "Bloggers criticize Dan Savage for his “hateful statements” (GLAAD, HRC, NGLTF silent)."

Read it all at the link.

It turns out that Savage attacks gay conservatives as "cum dumps" on Twitter, the sick f-ker.

...if you know ANYTHING about the truth of who Dan Savage is, you likely already know that he’s among the biggest hypocrites to walk the Earth.

The quote's from Misfit Politics, and don't miss that post as well.

And here's another one of the "biggest hypocrites to walk the Earth."

Progressives freak douchebags destroying this country. Sheesh.

Obama Tax Hike on Incomes Over $200,000 to Hit Biggest Job Creators

At Heritage, "Obama’s Tax Hike on Job Creators."

Huge Glaciers in the Area Between Pakistan and China are NOT Melting — Flies in Face of Predictions of Climate Activists

The "climate activists" are idiots and liars, like, for example, Susie Madrak at the aptly-titled Crooks and Liars.

See London's Daily Mail, "Satellite study of Asian mountains show that glaciers are NOT melting - and some are actually gaining new ice":

Huge glaciers in the area between Pakistan and China are puzzling scientists - and disproving the doom-laden predictions of some climate experts.

The glaciers in the Karakoram Range between northern Pakistan and western China have actually grown, rather than shrinking.

Unlike most mountain glaciers, the Karakoram glaciers, which account for 3 percent of the total ice-covered area in the world, excluding Greenland and Antarctica, are not shrinking.

A team of French glaciologists has recently confirmed that these glaciers on average have remained stable or may have even grown slightly in recent years.

The new study used data from satellites to study the Karakoram Range of northern Pakistan and western China.

The researchers found that the ice had actually increased in thickness by 0.11 (plus or minus 0.22) meters per year between 1999 and 2008.

Experts cautioned that the gain is so small that the glaciers might not actually be growing - but what is clear is that the glaciers are not shrinking, according to a report published in Nature Geoscience.

Continue reading.

CNN's Dana Bash Covers #MASenate Race — Elizabeth Warren 'Really Surprised' Anyone Would Make Native American Claims a 'Political Issue'

It's a fair and balanced report, at CNN, "Bipartisanship isn't dirty word in Massachusetts Senate race." Elizabeth Warren stays on message, er, false message, that is.

From Bash's report:

Question over Native American heritage

But Warren has stumbled over an issue that she admits tripped her up.

When the Boston Herald reported that Harvard University had touted Warren as a minority faculty member and that she was listed as part Native American in law school directories, she at first said she knew nothing about it.

But after weeks of questions from the media and accusations by her opponents that she claimed minority status to advance her career, Warren admitted that she had listed herself as part Cherokee in faculty directories at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania in order to meet people with similar backgrounds.

"I listed myself in the directory in the hopes that it might mean that I would be invited to a luncheon, a group, something that might happen with people who are like I am. Nothing like that ever happened, that was clearly not the use for it, and so I stopped checking it off," Warren told reporters in May.

As a first-time politician, Warren admits she could have responded faster.

"I was really surprised that anyone wanted to make this a political issue. I was really surprised by that and very slow to respond to it," Warren said. "I'm like every other kid. I learned about my family from my parents."

Warren explained she heard stories from her parents about having to elope because her father's family did not accept her mother's because of her Native American roots.

"My mom and dad were very much in love. They grew up in a little town that had been Indian Territory just a few years earlier. When they wanted to get married, my father's parents said no because my mother was part Cherokee and part Delaware. And my parents fought it as long as they could and finally they eloped," Warren said.

"I lived with that, between two families," she said.

But Brown has not backed down, insisting that Warren's failure to explain herself from the beginning calls her integrity into question.

"When you run for high elected office you have to pass a test, and that test is one of honesty, trustworthiness and truthfulness, and she's failed that test," Brown said.

He continues to call on his opponent to release confidential documents to show whether or not she claimed her Native American roots on job applications.

A Republican source even gave CNN a copy of Warren's mother's death certificate, which listed her as white, not Native American.

Asked about that, Warren simply repeated that her parents "grew up in a very different time."

"They grew up in a little town that had been Indian Territory. My mother's family was part Cherokee and part Delaware. That's who they were," she said.

Harvard administrators said they did not know about Warren's ancestral claims when they hired her. And Warren bristled when asked if she considers herself a minority, saying simply that she is proud of her heritage.

"This is part of who I am. This is who I am," she said.

Warren said Brown is distracting from issues that really matter to people.

Asked whether he and other Republicans are engaging in divide and conquer politics, Brown responded that he is engaged in issues that touch people's lives "every day."
"With all due respect, I'm getting things done," said Brown.

At this point, it's going to be up to the voters to resolve the issue of Warren's Native American heritage. And that will be a political resolution, for or against the candidate. No amount of disconfirming evidence is going to shake this crazy woman from her fictitious belief about some long lost Cherokee heritage. It's family lore to her, even if her own actions as part of that family call into doubt everything she claims. For example, Warren's previous "high cheekbones" line has been called into question, at Legal Insurrection, "Serious doubt cast on Elizabeth Warren’s “Aunt Bea” “high cheekbones” story."

So no matter what evidence or non-evidence is presented --- like the reports CNN's Bash presented to the candidate --- Warren will continue to throw up smokescreens, whine about how surprising it is that her falsehoods have become a political liability, and decry the "right-wing extremists" who're attacking her "unfairly."

Legal Insurrection has more, "Challenge to Boston Phoenix: Defend Elizabeth Warren on Cherokee issue, or drop “right-wing smear machine” accusation." And see, "Elizabeth Warren has raised $24 million, but still is not Cherokee."

National League Wins All-Star Game, 8-0

At the Los Angeles Times, "National League defeats American League, 8-0, in All-Star Game":

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Pablo Sandoval and Melky Cabrera turned the All-Star game into a Giant blowout.

Flashing their bright orange spikes and booming bats, the San Francisco sluggers keyed a five-run blitz against Justin Verlander in the first inning that sent the National League to an 8-0 romp over the American League on Tuesday night.

Cabrera homered and won the MVP award, and Giants teammate Matt Cain started a strong pitching performance for the NL in its most-lopsided All-Star victory. Cain combined with Stephen Strasburg, R.A. Dickey, Aroldis Chapman and the rest of a lights-out staff on a six-hitter.

"San Francisco Giants show," Matt Kemp of the rival Dodgers said during the game.

Ryan Braun, an All-Star again after his drug suspension was overturned last winter, doubled, tripled and made a fine catch in the outfield to help give the NL its first three-game winning streak in two decades.

Chipper Jones singled in his final All-Star at-bat at age 40 as the NL, under retired manager Tony La Russa, once again claimed home-field advantage in the World Series.

Teen sensation Bryce Harper had a shaky All-Star debut. Fellow rookie Mike Trout, only 20, showed off his dynamic skills.

The game was pretty much decided a few moments after it started.

Yeah, that first inning was a blowout.

More at the New York Times, "N.L. All-Stars Crush A.L. to Earn Home-Field Advantage for World Series":

Melky Cabrera, who played for the host Royals last season before a trade to San Francisco, was named most valuable player. Cabrera singled off Verlander and scored the game’s first run, and smashed a two-run homer off Matt Harrison in the fourth inning.

Cabrera, who has played for four teams in the last four seasons, became the first Giant to win the All-Star M.V.P. award since another well-traveled outfielder, Bobby Bonds, did it at this ballpark in 1973.

“I didn’t come to win the M.V.P.,” Cabrera, sitting with his mother and grandmother at the postgame news conference, said through a translator. “That was just a surprise. It was a great gift the Lord gave me. But the same opportunity Kansas City gave me last year is the same opportunity San Francisco gave me this year, to play every day and show my talent. I’m just thankful for the fans who gave me an opportunity to be here.”

San Bernardino City Council Votes for Municipal Bankruptcy

The Los Angeles Times tweets: "San Bernardino council votes to file for bankruptcy."

And just now posted at the Times' website, "San Bernardino files for bankruptcy protection":

Facing a $45-million budget shortfall and the prospect of not being able to pay city workers, the San Bernardino City Council on Tuesday voted to file municipal bankruptcy, the third California city to do so in recent weeks.

The vote came shortly after the interim city manager recommended seeking bankruptcy protection, saying the city may not be able to make payroll over the next three months. "We have an immediate cash-flow issue," Andrea Miller told the mayor and seven-member City Council.

Here's the earlier report, "San Bernardino should file for bankruptcy, city manager says."

Two weeks ago it was Stockton: "City of Stockton Goes Bankrupt."

Canadian Broadcast Standards Council Threatens to Shut Down Ezra Levant

Via Blazing Cat Fur, "Ezra Responds to Censor Threats."

There's video at the link.

I watched the whole thing. Ezra asks his viewers to write Canadian Premier Stephen Harper to repeal Section 5 of the Canadian Broadcasting Regulations. And here's Ezra's post from last month, after one of the earlier attempts to censor Sun TV, "Expose and dispose: My five-point plan to fight back at the broadcast standards council."

See also:

* "Canadian Broadcast Standard Council's letter to Sun News Network."

* "Sun News Network's response to the Canadian Broadcast Standard Council."

And rembember: this is left-wing progressive censorship of conservatives speech. It is a partisan issue. It's the defining issue of the current era, a global challenge for those standing up for freedom.

Taxes Take Center Stage on Campaign Trail

At U.S. News, "Obama, Romney Campaign in Swing States, Talk Taxes":

The twists and turns of the presidential campaign led President Barack Obama to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Tuesday to campaign for his proposal to extend most of the Bush-era tax cuts and Republican hopeful Mitt Romney to Grand Junction, Colo., to take questions from a town hall audience.

A new Washington Post/ABC News national poll showed the two men deadlocked at 47 percent support each, cementing the importance of swing states like Iowa and Colorado. Other new swing-state surveys showed Obama leading Romney 50 percent to 42 percent in Virginia and the two candidates virtually tied in North Carolina.

Romney, during his town hall on Tuesday, continually labeled Obama a "old-style liberal" in an attempt to stem some of the momentum the Democrat's campaign has sought to build based on news reports describing Romney as profiting from outsourcing jobs and criticism he's faced for declining to further disclose his personal finances.

"If there's an outsourcer in chief, it's the president of the United States, not the guy who's running to replace him," Romney said, referring to federal monies sent to renewable energy companies that manufacture components like solar panels in China.

Romney also took aim at the president's proposal to extend the Bush-era tax cuts to all but those making more than $250,000 a year.

"You've got to be careful--when people in Washington say they are lowering taxes, hold onto your wallet," Romney said. "Because in fact he didn't lower taxes for anybody. For some people he announced your taxes are going to stay the same. And then for others, for job creators and small businesses, he announced a massive tax increase."

The former Massachusetts governor said in light of last week's weak job growth report, Obama's proposal is "the sort of thing only an extreme liberal could think of" ....

But Obama pressed his case at a campaign event in Iowa, claiming that his proposals seek to strengthen the middle class to grow the sluggish economy.

"All we ask is for our hard work to pay off; for our responsibility to be rewarded," Obama said. "We tried what they're selling and it didn't work."

The president, echoing a theme he's highlighted in other recent campaign stops, knocked Congress for creating a stalemate that's stalling the economy.

"What's holding us back from meeting this challenge is a stalemate in Washington between two fundamentally different views," he said. "This election is about breaking that stalemate."

I don't trust the Washington Post's polls, but Ed Morrissey took a stab at that latest one: "This just in: Bain attack still not working":

Two analyses from the flawed WaPo/ABC poll, as well as spending in swing states, deliver grim news to Team Obama this morning. Their main line of attack in which they hope to paint Mitt Romney as an uber-rich vampire capitalist clearly isn’t moving the needle among voters — and that’s true despite an overwhelming spending advantage Barack Obama has enjoyed in the early going. Unless they can come up with a better argument, Romney’s fundraising will shortly put them in a very big hole.

Read it all at the link (via Memeorandum).

MD Rabbi Alam, Obama Ally and Democrat Candidate for Missouri Secretary of State, Claims No Jews Died on 9/11

This guy's a mainstream Democrat, running for statewide office in Missouri, and boasts personal invitations to the Obama White House.

This is no anomaly. This is today's Democrat Party Jew-hating establishment.

At Atlas Shrugs, "Democrat Jew-hatred: Missouri Muslim Politician Claims 'No Jews Died During the Attacks of 9/11."

This is today's Democrat party. And so is this. What red-blooded, freedom-loving American would associate with the fifth column? Folks should be fleeing in droves ......

This guy is Obama's former satellite campaign manager. More Jew-hatred on Obama's Website: Hub for hate, terror and antisemitism.

Islamic Jew-hatred, it's in the quran.

And see the Washington Free Beacon, "Secretary of Truth":

A Democratic Party caucus chairman vying to become Missouri’s next secretary of state is a 9/11 Truther who has associated with a radical Muslim cleric and trafficked in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

MD Rabbi Alam is an Obama campaign ally and Missouri-based Democratic activist who chairs the National Democratic Party Asian American Caucus (NDPAAC), a Democratic National Committee-sponsored organization that liaises with Asian minorities.

Alam, who was born in Bangladesh, served as a “satellite campaign manager” for then-candidate Barack Obama and the Democratic Party during the 2008 elections, and has since been invited to the White House.

Alam has speculated about Jewish involvement in the September 11th terrorist attacks and participated in an event with a Muslim cleric who has accused Israel of terrorism and alleged that the U.S. invented the HIV disease.

“Why [was] 9/11 was a official holidy [sic] for all jewish [sic] people worked in the the [sic] WTC?” Alam asked in an Internet discussion titled, “Was 9/11 a conspiracy??”

Alam went on to tout the 9/11 Truther film Loose Change 9/11, and challenged readers to “tell me how many of the Jewish people died on the 9/11 tragedy?”

Asked in an interview Monday about his provocative views, Alam stood by his controversial writings, admitting that he has been “waiting to discuss it with somebody.”

“My question was, ‘What’s the reason not a single Jew was killed on that day,’” Alam said, maintaining that his inquiries are based on facts, rather than a bias against Jewish people. “Was there a single Jew killed on that day?”

The State Department long ago debunked the insinuation that Jews, forewarned about the attacks, stayed home on September 11. Officials estimate that somewhere between 200 and 400 Jews died in the World Trade Center; five Israeli citizens also perished in the attacks.

Alam, however, still has many questions, and cites “articles and research” purportedly showing that Jews were not killed.

Alam spent the next 20 minutes of the interview explaining the impossibility that commercial airliners could have singlehandedly knocked down the Twin Towers.

“I have 100 percent doubts. It doesn’t add up,” he said. “My bottom line is the plane is not solely responsible for destroying the whole building.”

Alam’s longstanding ties to the president and Democratic Party make his radical views about the 9/11 attacks and Jewish people all the more startling, political insiders and campaign experts say.

“When people make the Jewish claim with respect to the 9/11 attacks, that is such a red flag for an anti-Semite,” said Debra Burlingame, a board member of the national security group Keep America Safe. “It’s a dirty little truth for the 9/11 Truthers.”

Check the guy's website.

And remember, DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz boasts a top staffer who slurs Jews on Facebook as "Jew-bags." See: "In flap over Jewish slur, Debbie Wasserman Schultz stands by aide."

It's the party of hate.

RELATED: From Ben Shapiro, at FrontPage, "74 Anti-Israel Democrats."

Added: Blazing Cat Fur links. Thanks!

Florida Teenager Loses Right Arm in Alligator Attack

The Los Angeles Times reports, "Florida teen loses arm -- but not his wit -- to alligator."

Lots more at London's Daily Mail, "'You're not the only left-handed person in the family now': Brave teen jokes with his sister after having right arm bitten off by ALLIGATOR."

Great White Shark Encounters on Both Coasts of United States

Folks feel as though they're living through Peter Benchley's "Jaws." So far there have been no deaths.

The Santa Cruz Sentinel reports on a great white shark attack on Saturday, "Shark attacks kayak near Pleasure Point." And this morning's Los Angeles Times reports on the Cape Cod great white sighting from Saturday as well, "Cape Cod shark: 'I just paddled,' kayaker says."

[Walter] Szulc, of Manchester, N.H., didn't realize he was being followed until the nearby paddle-border, Dana Richardson, began waving and yelling, "Shark!" That's when Szulc looked over his shoulder. "I saw the fin right away and I figured this is either it, or I'm going to paddle in," Szulc told reporters later.

Richardson had spotted it earlier about a mile south and said it trailed him as well. He was headed for Nauset Beach to alert lifeguards.

The fish got there first.

"I didn't want to just yell, 'Shark, shark,' and scare people," said Richardson, a Cape Cod resident and longtime surfer and paddle-boarder. "But when I saw the fin following the kayaker, I began yelling and waving my paddle."

The sighting came on the same day that a great white drew attention in Santa Cruz after chomping off the end of a kayak. The kayaker was thrown into the water and stunned, but not injured.

More at LAT, "Cape Cod shark scare: More people, more sharks, more run-ins," and at CSM, "Great white sharks: Close encounters on East and West coasts (+video).

Mr. Szulc is interview at CNN, "Brian Todd reports on the sightings of sharks in Cape Cod."

The Sadly Obligatory Post on Brad Pitt's Mom Receiving Death Threats from 'Tolerant' Gay Rights Progressives

Lonely Conservatives has the story, "Brad Pitt’s Mother Receives Death Threats After Writing Anti-Obama Op-Ed."

And also at the New York Post, "Brad Pitt’s mom faces death threats after anti-Obama letter":

Brad Pitt’s mom Jane Pitt has faced a barrage of death threats and other slurs after writing to her local paper bashing President Obama and his positions on gay marriage and abortion.

“Brad Pitt’s mom, die,” said one Twitter post, according to Web site Twitchy, while another tweet read, “[bleep] you, brad pitt's mom. the gay community made your kid a star, you whacko” and another says, “Brad Pitt’s mom wrote an anti-gay pro-Romney editorial. Kill the Bitch.”

The venomous tweets erupted after the “Moneyball” star’s mother wrote a letter to her local Missouri paper, the Springfield News-Leader, saying of the upcoming election, “Any Christian who does not vote or writes in a name is casting a vote for [Mitt] Romney’s opponent, Barack Hussein Obama — a man who sat in Jeremiah Wright’s church for years, did not hold a public ceremony to mark the National Day of Prayer, and is a liberal who supports the killing of unborn babies and same-sex marriage.”

The Twitchy entry is here, "No H8? Tolerance bullies hurl vile slurs at Brad Pitt’s pro-Romney Christian mom."

Really, this is the radical homosexual left in a nutshell. No rationalizing, no excuse-making, can lift this burden off the progressive left. It's just one hate-filled attack after another, hurled against anyone who deviates from the fake tolerance agenda of the homosexual values-destruction cult.

There's a roundup at Memeorandum, FWIW.

Mike Trout and Mark Trumbo Bring It Home for the Angels

From Bill Shaiken, at the Los Angeles Times, "Mike Trout and Mark Trumbo are bringing it home for Angels."

To say Mike Trout and Mark Trumbo saved the Angels' season reeks of hyperbole. We're going to go one better, though.

Trout and Trumbo revived a franchise sagging under the weight of bloated contracts, mercenary outfielders and October letdowns. If the Angels do get to their first World Series under the ownership of Arte Moreno, the day they called up Trout might be just as significant as the day they signed Albert Pujols.

Probably more so.

Until the Angels summoned Trout from the minor leagues, Pujols had no one to drive in. Until the Angels installed Trumbo in the lineup every day, Pujols had no reliable power threat behind him.

Trout did not make the team out of spring training, crowded out by veterans with guaranteed dollars. Pujols pushed Trumbo off of first base, and out of the everyday lineup.

Now Trout and Trumbo appear anchored in the Angels' outfield — now, and for the next decade.

"When guys perform like this, you let them do what they do and get out of the way," Angels General Manager Jerry Dipoto said.

And see ESPN's Buster Olney at this video clip, "Award Winning Angels."

RELATED: From Chris Erskine, "Time to celebrate the star of sports at the All-Star break — baseball."

CNN's Suzanne Malveaux Slobbers Over 'Former GOP Prodigy' Jonathan Krohn

I tweeted Johnathan Krohn during the segment:

Dude! @JonathanLKrohn, man at least try to have a compelling reason for spinelessly abandoning core values you were raised with. #DUH@CNN
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) July 9, 2012

And it's not just Suzanne Malveaux who's been slobbering over the kid. And that's the thing: he's just a child. One of the more absurd memes I read last week was how Krohn was challenging the notion that people get more conservative as they get older. I'm like, right, he's a freakin' a teenager! And besides, I've read the book. It's good. No one writes about something like that, conservatism, without having a deep-seated moral sense of what it's all about. What's so amazing is how transparently dishonest Krohn's transformation has been. He's been arguing that he essentially parroted conservative talking points when he was 13 years old. But anyone who's seen the CPAC clip recognized a true child prodigy who could really walk the walk. And Krohn loved the adulation. Now he's getting it from the other side, as you can see from his Twitter feed. He's mainlining the stuff. He's getting ready for college and he's probably been bullied by his progressive peers, because that's what they do. He frankly caved to the abuse. I won't be surprised if he ODs sometime in the future, or announces he's getting married to a longtime homosexual partner. There's frankly something wrong with the guy at this point and his second 15 minutes will be up shortly.

FWIW, see Krohn's piece at Salon: "I was a right-wing child star."

California Can't Afford ObamaCare's Medi-Cal Expansion

An awesome piece, from George Skelton, at the Los Angeles Times, "'Affordable' Care Act? Not so much for Sacramento":

In Washington, it's called the Affordable Care Act. In Sacramento, it could be become known as another budget buster.

Obamacare — as it's pugnaciously tagged by the political right — may not be affordable at all for California state government.

Soon after the federal healthcare act was passed by Congress in 2010, the Schwarzenegger administration in Sacramento calculated a state price tag of up to $2.65 billion annually.

The Brown administration has torn up that price tag, but doesn't have a new one. They're working on it, "trying to be much more precise," says Len Finocchio, associate director of the Department of Health Care Services.

Good luck on that. As Sacramento consistently demonstrates, being precise on government spending projections is virtually impossible.

But Finocchio acknowledges that the federal act will result in a heavier state financial load. "We almost certainly will be adding Medi-Cal enrollees, and that will be a cost," he notes.

The additional burden on the states is a negative aspect of the healthcare overhaul that seldom gets discussed, especially in Obama-rooting, liberal-dominated Sacramento.

That's California for you, also known as Cuba on the Pacific.

Read the whole thing. Skelton offers a dose of fiscal sobriety that's badly missing these days.

Texas Governor Rick Perry Won't Implement ObamaCare

Good for him.

States are going bankrupt over ObamaCare's unfunded mandates. Of course, the idiot radical progressives are attacking conservative governors on this as racist crackpots, which is all they've got as their socialist program goes down in flames.

Democrats Get All Jittery Over White House 'Taxmageddon' Strategy for 2013

You gotta love this, at the Wall Street Journal, "Democrats and the Tax Cliff":

President Obama has staked his re-election on the promise to raise taxes on anyone making more than $200,000 a year, but it's going to be fascinating to see if he can hold other Democrats through Election Day. June marked the third month in a row of lousy job creation, and the economy is growing slowly even as the January 2013 tax cliff grows closer by the day.

Already, as many as six Democratic Senators are hedging their bets as the economy looks worse. That list includes Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Jon Tester of Montana, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Bill Nelson of Florida, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Jim Webb of Virginia. The first four are running for re-election this year, while the last two are leaving the Senate. They haven't all declared outright support for postponing the tax hikes, but they have expressed a willingness to negotiate a deal with Republicans that would avoid raising taxes on anyone next year.

RTWT.

Bull Goes on the Rampage at Bous a la Mers Festival in Denia, Spain

I'm getting a kick out of this stuff.

At London's Daily Mail, "Running at full speed with horns out to attack: Shocking moment a raging bull rammed a fearless reveller into the sea."

And lots more from Canada's National Post, "Picture Post: Will this Pamplona bull hit the running target?"

Rosie Jones Classic Photo Roundup

At Egotastic, "Rosie Jones Pictures for An Early Happy Birthday."

The Relentless War Against the Family in Britain

From Melanie Phillips, at London's Daily Mail, "The real meaning of lifestyle choice":

The relentless war against the family in Britain continues in the highest court of the land. Baroness Hale, the veteran ‘lifestyle choice’ radical who, as a member of the UK Supreme Court, is the country’s top female judge, has called for cohabiting couples to be given more legal rights.

According to the Times (£) Lady Hale admires the situation in Scotland where the law is different, and in which the Supreme Court recently upheld a ruling by the Edinburgh Court of Session which ordered a man to pay his former cohabiting partner nearly £40,000 after their relationship broke down.

According to Lady Hale, Scottish law on this issue was both ‘practicable and fair.’ She said:

‘It does not impose upon unmarried couples the responsibilities of marriage but redresses the gains and losses flowing from their relationship.’

Family lawyers have backed her up, saying:

‘The current situation for people who live together in England and Wales more often than not creates injustice and hardship, and our current law fails to reflect the way people are choosing to live their lives.’

But the whole point is that cohabitation is the way they are choosing to live their lives. They could choose to get married. They choose not to, because they do not want to be married. They may want to preserve their independence; they may be averse to making a commitment to another person; they may think marriage is an outdated institution. Whatever the reason, it is their choice not to get married.

But marriage is an institution which inescapably confers obligations on those who enter into it. It is a solemn commitment – the most solemn commitment – one person can make to another.  It entails above all obligations between the spouses. The benefits that accrue to marriage are ineradicably bound up with those obligations.

The absence of legal protection in cohabitation follows from the fact that, unlike marriage, cohabitation is a loose partnership between individuals who remain ultimately free of each other; they can walk out of the relationship with no strings attached. This is the ‘lifestyle choice’ they make. If those benefits are bestowed on people who choose not to undertake their concomitant obligations, this is not only fundamentally unjust.  It vitiates the very nature of a contractual or covenantal agreement. If those who choose to duck the commitment of marriage can nevertheless obtain its benefits, this makes a mockery of and undermines the institution of marriage itself.

More at the link.

Marriage is just a politically convenient football for the left. If you're a swinger, who needs it? But if you're a radical homosexual extremist, marriage is the bee's knees. F-king progressive freak jackwagons.

Monday Malware Hype Fizzles as Few Lose Internet Access

This story was all the rage last week, about how hundreds of thousands of Internet users would be locked out of access because of a secret malicious infection from years ago, or something. It turns out, well, not so much. At the Wall Street Journal, "Malware Threat to Internet Corralled"

WASHINGTON—The malware threat to the Internet likely has been tamed.

Leading Internet-service providers said Sunday that they had moved to ensure that computers infected with malware left behind by a hacking spree that started in 2007 continue to access the Internet normally. On Monday, there were few signs that many Americans had lost their Web access.

Since November the Federal Bureau of Investigation has authorized the operation of servers to allow infected computers to run normally, but those servers went offline at midnight.

Comcast Corp. has reached out to customers with infected machines. Verizon Communications Inc. is connecting customers who lost connectivity to the Internet with technicians who can remove the malware. And AT&T Inc. said it has taken steps to make sure none of its customers lose their Internet connections.

Officials from the companies played down the threat, and some cybersecurity experts said computer antivirus programs and updated operating systems have cleaned most infected computers. The FBI had estimated that 64,000 computers were affected.

Stewart Baker, a former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security and partner at the law firm Steptoe & Johnson, said Monday there had been too much hype around the malware threat, which never posed much of a problem.

Exactly.

Anderson Cooper Coming Out Shows How Homosexuality Has Gone Totally Mainstream, or Something

It was pretty much a collective duh when the news broke last week on Anderson Cooper being gay.

Howard Kurtz covered the news on Sunday, and Tim Graham responds at NewsBusters, "CNN Unanimously Approves of Anderson Cooper's Sexuality, Boasts He's Now 'Mainstream,' Not on the 'Wrong Side of History'." It turns out Eric Deggans, interviewed at the clip, bashed conservatives as "haters" who should be banned from the networks in hit job last year at PuffHo, "My Thoughts on MLK Day: When Will News Media Stop Enabling Anti-Gay Activists?"

Michaelangelo Signorile is interviewed at the clip as well (and boy does he look like the stereotypical homosexual). Signorile, as some may recall, notoriously slimed Robert Stacy McCain in a hit piece about ten years back. I'm not linking, but Saberpoint has a related entry that corrects the record: "Robert Stacy McCain: I Know Him Better Than Charles Johnson Does."

And remember, homosexuality is in fact a perversion from the norm, and the left's normalization campaign is in fact a destructive program that is destabilizing for society. Check the archives for more, and see, for example, "Conservatives Block Homosexual Marriage Law in Washington State."

VIDEO: Taliban Execute Woman in Parwan Province, Afghanistan

An original version is here.

And at the New York Times, "In Video of Execution, Reign of Taliban Recalled":

KABUL, Afghanistan — The scene that Afghan officials say was caught on video last month near Kabul was as horrific as it was once common in Afghanistan: a Taliban fighter executing a woman with repeated shots to the back of her head as his compatriots and scores of villagers watch, and then cheer.

The crime the woman was accused of: adultery.

The video, which has begun circulating in Kabul, recalls the Taliban’s five-year reign in Afghanistan, when public executions were advertised on the radio and people accused of crimes were shot in front of crowds that packed the capital’s stadium. Adultery was among the crimes punishable by death.

The execution captured on the video took place in the Shinwari district of Parwan Province, in central Afghanistan, less than a two-hour drive from Kabul. It occurred on or around June 23, said Col. Masjidi, a senior provincial police official. Colonel Masjidi, like many Afghans, uses a single name.

These were bogus charges of adultery against the woman.

And at Atlas Shrugs, "Obama's 'Peace' Partners, the Taliban, Publicly Execute Woman Near Kabul."

Obama to Push Extension of Middle-Class Tax Cuts

From Laura Meckler, at the Wall Street Journal (via Memeorandum):

President Barack Obama on Monday proposed a one-year extension of the Bush-era tax cuts for families earning less than $250,000 a year, an effort to shift the conversation from the sagging economy toward tax fairness.

Mr. Obama appeared in the East Room, surrounded by people who would benefit from the extension. It is another display of the power of incumbency, which lets a president command attention for his ideas in grand surroundings not available to his challenger.

President Obama is launching a push to extend tax cuts for the middle class, Sara Murray reports on Markets Hub. (Photo: Getty Images)

His campaign will amplify the message with a series of battleground-state events this week, and Mr. Obama will make the same case on a campaign trip to Iowa on Tuesday.

The president has long supported a permanent extension of the tax cuts for families earning less than $250,000 and has called for cuts aiding wealthier families to expire.

But Monday's event marked the first time he specifically called for a one-year extension for the lower-earning group.

"Let's not hold the vast majority of all Americans and our entire economy hostage while we debate the merits of another tax cut for the wealthy," Mr. Obama said.

Senate Democrats plan a vote in the next month on the proposal, which will amplify Mr. Obama's message, though it is not expected to pass. Indeed, no resolution on the issue is expected until after the November election.

And here's the headline at Wizbang, "Obama to Shift Focus From Dismal Jobs Outlook to Raising Taxes."

Well, it's just more class warfare, in any case. And if Team Romney gets its act together they'll be out with rapid reaction taking points hammering Obama on his ObamaCare tax boondoggle, and all the rest of the costs this administration has imposed on average Americans. See more at the Foundry, "Obama Finally Enters the Taxmageddon Debate—With a Tax Increase," and at the Weekly Standard, "Obama Tax Increase Would Hit Business Owners Hard."

Plus see all the coverage at Memeorandum.

Victoria Secret Model Alessandra Ambrosio Takes to the Beach in Malibu

She looks great --- and she just had a baby in May.

See London's Daily Mail, "Keep your eyes on the ball boys! Alessandra Ambrosio plays beach volleyball in a crop top and bikini bottoms," and "What a pair of angels! Bikini-clad Victoria's Secret model Alessandra Ambrosio frolics in the sea with her gorgeous daughter Anja."

Also at the Blemish, "Alessandra Ambrosio in a Bikini Two Months After Giving Birth."

Three Gored During Monday's Running of the Bulls in Pamplona

Some of the other outlets, like Telegraph UK, have edited the video.

But the Guardian has a raw cut, "Pamplona bull run: Britons and American gored - video."

PREVIOUSLY: "Man Dragged by a Bull at Pamplona 2012."

The Supreme Court Leaks Continue

Check Orin Kerr at Volokh, via Althouse, "Someone on the conservative side of the Supreme Court 'wants us to know that they’re pissed off, and they want us to know why'."

Jan Crawford at CBS News initially reported the leaks.

'Excuses'

The latest ad from Crossroads GPS:

According to National Journal, "American Crossroads has purchased more than $39.8 million in advertising across at least 10 states between Labor Day and Election Day."

Andy Murray's Gracious Speech Following Wimbledon Loss

I promised an update at my previous post: "Andy Murray Worn Down in Heatbreak Loss to Roger Federer at Wimbledon."

As noted, there was a rain delay during the third set. It takes almost an hour to close the stadium at Wimbledon so during that time ESPN anchor Mike Tirico introduced a news segment on Andy Murray's background, especially on the tragedy in his hometown of Dunblane, Scotland. In 1996 a shooter entered Dunblane Primary School and killed 16 young children and one teacher before turning a gun on himself. The kids were 5 and 6-year-olds. The Wikipedia entry for the shooting is here. The ESPN segment included news clips of emotionally distraught parents running down the street to the school. Dunblane's a small town of 8,000 or so residents. And the shooting was one of the worst in the history of Great Britain, so that background is a big part of the huge emotional support for Andy Murray.

The New York Times reports on Dunblane's support for Murray, "Scottish Town Rises And Falls With Andy Murray":

DUNBLANE, Scotland — Inside Dunblane Youth Centre, strangers hugged, fists were pumped and children cheered. Boys lay on chairs shaped like tennis balls. Girls with Scottish flags painted on their cheeks wove through the crowd chanting, “Let’s go, Andy!” The room was so crammed with people breathing stale, warm air that personal space seemed more an extravagance than a basic courtesy, but no one seemed to mind because up there, on the giant projection screen, was one of them.

The people of this village 30 miles northeast of Glasgow have congregated before, have packed its pubs and its social halls and its gathering spots, to watch their most famous son compete at Wimbledon. For three straight years, Andy Murray had reached the semifinals, and for three straight years, Murray had lost. They lauded his effort — “the Scots love a valiant loser,” said Gordon Sloan, of nearby Greenloaning — but yearned for glory.

“We’ve been teased a lot these past few years,” David Macaskill of Dundee said. “A lot of Scottish hearts broken.”

That chance for glory came Sunday, against the indomitable Roger Federer. An island that had produced a men’s Wimbledon finalist for the first time since 1938 wondered if Murray would actually win. A country prayed. A town hoped.

In the town center, two popular pubs, the Village Inn and the Dunblane Hotel, heaved with people 45 minutes before the 2 p.m. start. Crowds spilled onto Stirling Road, which was not a problem because few cars were out driving anyway. Those who could not spend their afternoon planted in front of a television still tracked the score. Outside the youth center, a coffee van blared the radio broadcast of the match. At Simply M&S, the supermarket next door, cashiers asked customers for updates.

Sitting at a table in the Dunblane Bowling Club, Doreen Rose tried convincing herself before the match that Murray could win, should win, would win. “He’s won 8 of 15 matches against Federer,” said Rose, of nearby Callendar. “But they’ve never played on grass. Oh, I don’t know. I’m so nervous, I can’t think.”

Murray captured the first two games of the first set (“Come on, Andy!”), then lost the next two (“Go get ’em, Andy!”). When Murray broke Federer to go ahead, 5-4, Malky McLachlan of Dunblane was standing against a wall. He was cradling his 16-month-old son, Magnus, who was sleeping through the commotion — and through what was Murray’s first set won in a Grand Slam final. “Maybe he’ll see more history when he wakes up,” McLachlan said.

Magnus woke up about a half-hour later, when Murray was toiling through an arduous second set. Federer broke Murray at 5-6, and Sheena Herley of Dunblane sensed a shift in the mood.

“It’s a wee bit subdued now,” Herley said.

More at the link.

Plus, some reactions to Murray's emotional speech. At Telegraph UK, "Wimbledon 2012: Tearful Andy Murray loses on court, but wins the nation’s heart," London's Daily Mail, "Murray lost to a master of the universe, the tennis equivalent of Pele or Ali - tearful Andy's hopes dashed as Federer wins 17th Slam," and the Guardian, "Andy Murray: the fans' tears."

And a critical reaction at USA Today, "ESPN dropped the ball on Murray's reaction." And the Chattanooga Times Free Press, "Roger Federer, Andy Murray both won."

Are We Anywhere Close to Containing the Costs of Healthcare?

At the Wall Street Journal, "The Crushing Cost of Care":

On Valentine's Day 2009, Scott Crawford, 41 years old, received the break that he thought would save his life. A surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore removed his ailing heart and put in a healthy one. The transplant was a success.

But complications put the former tire-warehouse worker in intensive care for almost a year. Surgeons removed his gall bladder, his left leg and part of a lung. And Mr. Crawford soon became one of the most expensive Americans on Medicare.

A sliver of the sickest patients account for the majority of Medicare spending - and young people can often have the highest costs. WSJ's Janet Adamy discusses the case of Scott Crawford, who became one of the most expensive Americans on Medicare.

As his condition turned grave, one of his doctors questioned whether to keep treating him. Nurses reported feeling "moral distress" over his unrelenting pain. Still, medical opinion was split, and Mr. Crawford's family, with the backing of his transplant surgeon, pushed forward.

A few days before Christmas 2009, Mr. Crawford died, leaving behind a young son.

According to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Medicare data, the government spent $2.1 million on his inpatient and outpatient care in 2009. That was the fifth costliest of all Medicare beneficiaries that year and the highest among those who died by that year's end. Medicare covered Mr. Crawford's costs through federal disability insurance.

A primary goal of the 2010 health-care overhaul that the Supreme Court upheld last week is to slow the growth of costs. Even so, the law does little to address a simple fact: A sliver of the sickest patients account for the majority of U.S. health-care spending. In 2009, the top 10% of Medicare beneficiaries who received hospital care accounted for 64% of the program's hospital spending, the Journal's analysis found.

Younger patients like Mr. Crawford were more expensive, representing just 18.5% of the beneficiaries who received hospital care but 23.7% of the total cost. Seniors vastly outnumbered them, however, and consumed 76% of the total hospital costs.

As for Medicare's long-term cost trajectory, it is relentlessly upward. The program's net expenditures totaled $486 billion last year, according to the Congressional Budget Office, or 13.5% of all federal expenditures. In March, the CBO projected that Medicare expenditures would grow an average of 5.7% per year through 2022 and equal 16.2% of all federal outlays.

Medicare patients rack up disproportionate costs in the final year of life. In 2009, 6.6% of the people who received hospital care died. Those 1.6 million people accounted for 22.3% of total hospital expenditures, the Journal's analysis shows.

But efforts by policy makers to tackle the question of end-of-life care have foundered recently. In the debate over President Barack Obama's health-care overhaul, an initiative to help Medicare beneficiaries plan end-of-life care sank after opponents labeled it a "death panel."

"We're always going to have patients in the Medicare program that need a disproportionate number of resources," said Jonathan Blum, deputy administrator and director for Medicare. As for Mr. Crawford, "A lot of the costs were driven by complications that could have been avoided," he said, citing an early infection as an example.

Continue reading.

Some patients are going to cost more, despite all the treatment to prevent infections and so forth. And when you get a patient like Mr. Crawford, no one's going to recommend that we pull the plug, because that's not what we do. The problem is that overall healthcare costs are out of control and ObamaCare will not address the problem and is expected to make matters worse.

Newspaper Industry Is Running Out of Time to Adapt to Digital Future

Well, this piece is from NYT's David Carr, who notoriously slammed Kansans and Missourians and people with "low sloping foreheads."

So take it FWIW: "The Fissures Are Growing for Papers." (Via Mediagazer.)

Is Spanking Okay?

Here's an ABC News clip from the other day: "Parenting Techniques: To Spank or Not to Spank?"

I personally think it's okay. That said, I don't like spanking my kids all that much. I feel guilty, and that's because society has said it's not okay. It's to the point where I feel like Child Protective Services will be breathing down my neck. That's me though. Overall, I think it should be up to the parents. The recent viral video of the man beating his kid with a belt for not catching a baseball is child abuse. Parents who give their kids a good swift open-hand swat to the butt, after the kids have been behaving badly, are disciplining their children as they see fit. 

Theo's Sunday Hotties

All good.

See: "Sunday Totty...", and "Bedtime Totty..."