After 40 Years, Photographer Captures Lightning Bolt Striking Statue of Liberty

At London's Daily Mail, "That's some attraction: Photographer captures amazing image of lightning bolt as it strikes Statue of Liberty":

This is the amazing moment a lightning bolt was captured as it struck the iconic Statue of Liberty.

The impressive image was caught by New York photographer Jay Fine who spent the night braving the storm in Battery Park City, Manhattan, in a bid to get the perfect picture.

Mr Fine spent nearly two hours poised with his camera and took more than 80 other shots before striking lucky with this particular bolt of lightning at 8.45pm on September 22.

The 58-year-old, who has been trying for more than 40 years to capture the magnificent moment, said he was stunned when he saw the image.

Michael Tracey, Editorial Intern at The Nation, Blows Off Evidence of Alex Knepper Pedophilia as 'Trivial Bunk' - UPDATED!!

Alex Knepper's been laying kinda low this last couple of days, following the explosive evidence of his tendencies toward pedophilia. Alex tweeted yesterday that he'd have a "Statement forthcoming that will put all of this in its proper context." And he tweet this morning that his statement is delayed because "I'm in talks."

Considering the evidence that's been collected on Alex Knepper's pedophilia, particularly his long series of morally repugnant and possibly criminal postings on gay teen message-boards, it's hard to phathom that anyone would want to negotiate these issues over "talks." Seriously. Knepper needs some time off. A long time. Possibly behind bars.

And David Frum needs to fire Alex Knepper. The most recent figure to call for Knepper's termination is Erick Erickson, at Red State, "David Frum and the Limits to Deviancy":

What makes this relevant, despite its sordid nature, is NewsReal Blog having tipped off Frum to his employee’s behavior and other conservative sites giving this Alex Knepper character a forum. You’d like to think that had they known of his predilections, they would not.

Ironically, when I mentioned this on Twitter, the only people who spoke up in the guy’s defense were some of the more rabid socialists defending the guy’s “refreshingly unconventional conservatism,” which is to say he is not a conservative at all.

Nope.

Not conservative at all. With the exception of the faux-conservatives at FrumForum, the only support for Alex Knepper is coming from the extremist fringes of the radical left, including Michael Tracey, editorial intern at The Nation:

And leftists are supposed to represent some "reality-based community"? I guess the reality is that, for socialists, there's no traditional moral standard worth preserving these days. As Erick Erickson indicates:

If we are to accept that Alex Knepper is 20 and therefore a kid, we should not treat this kid as any sort of authority on any vein of conservatism. If we accept he is an adult and we should engage on his thoughts, then we must recognize that his behavior is outside the bounds of acceptable conduct and he should not be rewarded while engaging in perverse behavior.

There is no place in normal society for this — no place at all.

RELATED: "Why is FrumForum Featuring the Internet’s Foremost Defender of Perverts?"

**********

UPDATE: Dave Swindle sends along this response:

"I spent over an hour yesterday on the phone with Michael Tracey explaining the evidence, our motivations for publishing the story, and the background. He struck me as sincere in wanting to uncover the truth, a decent human being, and in no way willing to excuse pedophilia. If he writes a story for The Nation I hope he will do so once he has come to a solid conclusion about whether Alex Knepper actually is a pedophile or not."

And David Frum "fires" Alex Knepper with a counter-attack on NewsReal that's simply insane: "About Alex Knepper."

I'll have some my thoughts on this later this afternoon.

Mainstreaming Genocidal Insanity? Pamela Geller in the New York Times

Digby's a bit jealous:

I've been following Atlas Shrugged since 2005. If anyone would have told me then in five years she'd be heading a national anti-Muslim movement and would be profiled in the NY Times, I would have thought it was a joke. She was always at the very fringe of the hysterical war bloggers, set apart from the worst genocidal hatemongers only by her pulchritudinous crudity. In this insane political period, she's thoroughly mainstream. Wow. Just wow.

It's ugly jealousy, that's for sure. The post's URL reads "mainstreaming-genocidal-insanity."

Digby suspects Pamela Geller wants to round up Muslims for the camps? That's a little much, and no doubt Pamela's wall-to-wall Sunday coverage was too. Pamela's havin' a huge impact (I'm sure King Charles dropped a load as well). I saw the Times' write up early Saturday, so it took a little while to make the blog cycle. Pamela repudiated the report, saying "It is full of distortions, inaccuracies and lies from beginning to end." She liked the interview, however, which was published separately. See Atlas Shrugs, "The New York Times: Outraged, Outrageous and Unhinged."

She not dissing the publicity, in any case. And who would? "Wall-to-Wall Atlas in The New York Times."

And here's Pamela at the 9/11 SIOA rally, and my photo-essay: "Faith, Freedom, and Memory: Report From Ground Zero, September 11, 2010."

'Teaching is the most intellectually stimulating thing that I've ever done. There is no other job that is as difficult or interesting'

"To Miss With Love"?

More on Katharine Birbalsingh, at London's Telegraph:

Katharine Birbalsingh, deputy head of an inner-city secondary school, kept an online diary in which she recounted events involving unnamed pupils and colleagues.

In her blog, she describes in eloquent, despairing voice how schools suffer from high levels of disruption and underachievement – problems she claims are the fault of the system itself.

"I feel torn between the loyalty that I have to my school and the loyalty that I have to children in general," she says.

"Teaching is the most intellectually stimulating thing that I've ever done. There is no other job that is as difficult or interesting.

"But British education is not just broken it is fundamentally broken.

"I hope the public will read about this, remember it and insist on change. Because we are in desperate need for change."

Hat Tip: Carouser in the comments.

RELATED: "The Political Persecution of Katharine Birbalsingh."

New Miley Cyrus Video Too Hot?

She's only 17, so yeah, these underage hotties are a little freaky. But not for MTV, apparently: "Old Prudes Complain That Miley Cyrus' 'Who Owns My Heart' Is Too Sexy‎."

The video's at the link. This young lady still plays on Disney Channel. But they all play up the sexiness as they get older (remember Selena Gomez), since that's the name of the game in the industry nowadays.

And hey! No doubt Scott Eric "Taliban" Kaufman's on the case!

Aboard the Nuclear-Powered Aircraft Carrier USS Nimitz

Via Theo Spark:

The P.J. O'Rourke Interview

C/O John Hawkins at Right Wing News:

P.J. O'Rourke is not only knowledgable, he's one of the best writers the Right has ever produced. Additionally, he's the single best foreign affairs reporter I've ever read. Nobody makes another country come alive like P.J. O'Rourke.

I can also tell you from personal experience that P.J.'s new book Don't Vote It Just Encourages the Bastards is outstanding. If you won't take my word for it, then look at the quotes I compiled from his book and make your own judgment.

What follows is a slightly edited transcript of an interview I did with P.J. last Wednesday. Enjoy!

Head over to Right Wing News for the interview.

Yet More Leftist Accusations of RAAAAACISM!!

At Sean Linnane, "STORMBRINGER ACCUSED OF RACISM":

BarryS - Linnane, you only have to read your blog to know that you are a racist, and that you surround yourself with racists. Do you call your wife a “Klingon” as Michelle Obama was described on your blog?

The full details are at the link. What's key is that if a leftist made such allegedly disparaging ("Klingon") remarks the Democrat-secular collectivists would be stumbling over themselves proclaiming the "free speech" rights to hatred. Typical leftist hypocrisy.

Dana Loesch Takes Over as Editor-in-Chief at Big Journalism

And that makes my day.

See Dana's post, "Allow Me to Introduce Myself…" (via Instapundit):

I don’t know if I ever believed in the infallibility of a journalist’s objectivity, but I definitely stopped flirting with the notion as a young adult. There is bias for agenda and bias for truth.

Though I work in broadcasting and host a daily radio show, I got my start in print journalism. I’m a weensy-government conservative from the Midwest, Christian, mother of two, homeschooler, and my hobby, profession, and passion is news. I regularly provide political analysis on Fox, CNN, CBS, and ABC, and have been featured before on Big J as a contributor. I’ve blogged since 2001 and was first attracted to the medium by its wild west aesthetic, if simply telling the truth that corporate media wasn’t telling could be so rebellious as to be defined as “wild west.” Now, with the advance of social media, the combination of the mediums in a new era of information distribution are endless. It’s a great time to work in this field.

RTWT.

And congratulations to Dana Loesch!

Secret Service Releases 'Overexhuberant' Book-Thrower

And being a Democrat helps, no doubt.

Had this guy been a tea partier DHS would have escalated the threat level and the entire leftist netroots fever swamp would have been screaming bloody murder at the "right-wing eliminationism." As it is we've got some new leftie outrage over RAAAAACISM this afternoon: "White Men With Guns — Reconstruction Redux." Oh brother. Geez, that's a new one. And hey, I'm a swarthy non-Scotsman, but the bigot commenters at Bonejob Keefe's think that's just great freedom of expression. But wait 'till November 3rd. The tidal wave will be bigger than anyone's predicting, and no doubt a few lamebrain lefties will scream RAAAAACISM!!

Dick Cheney Appears 'Gaunt and Frail' at Bakersfield Business Conference — Leftists Celebrate With Death Chants

Via JammieWearing Fool, and at NY Daily News.

And from the comments at the article:

THE DEVIL KEEPS HIS FAVIORATE SON GOING AFTER FIVE HEART ATTACKS, WELL GOD WILL END THAT SOON ENOUGH SON OF SATAN, SPAWN OF LUCIFER.

*****

Paybacks a bi**h isn't it you war profiteering dirt bag.

*****

Anyone want to start a "DEATHPOOL?"

*****

Why won't this man just die already?

*****

Was the event during the day? Because obviously it was before he could feed himself from the blood of innocents.

That is the first five comments, if you can believe it. There's a total of 69 comments at the link, but no need to go further. This is typical Democrat-leftist hatred and secular demonology.

I report this stuff all the time. The usual rejoinder is "both sides do it." And I'm sure they do. What you don't see is folks on the right working overtime to defend the the "free speech rights" of the demons of the leftist fever swamps. Truly disgusting, but not out of the ordinary at all.

Obama-Dems Reach New Low

At Cold Fury:

And with the sleazy passel of grifters currently running the criminal enterprise misnomered the “Democratic” Party, that’s saying something. But my God, the balls on our sorry excuse for a Pee-resident, and his henchmen too.

“Karl Rove, Ed Gillespie: They’re Bush Cronies. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce: They’re Shills for Big Business,” the ad’s narrator says. “And they’re stealing our democracy. Spending millions from secret donors to elect Republicans to do their bidding in Congress. It appears they’re even taking secret foreign money to influence our elections.”

The president leveled a similar charge while on the campaign trail last week in Maryland, saying, “Just this week, we learned that one of the largest groups paying for these ads regularly takes in money from foreign corporations.”

“Have these people no shame?” Rove said of the attacks leveled at him and the Chamber. “Does the president of the United States have such little regard for the office he holds that he goes out there and makes these kind of baseless charges against his political enemies? This is just beyond the pale. How dare the president do this?”

“This is a desperate and I think disturbing trend by the President of the United States to tar his political adversaries with some kind of enemies list, without being unrestrained by any facts or evidence whatsoever.”

The punchline here, of course, is that one of the means by which the jug-eared son of a bitch hijacked American democracy and stole the ’08 election — aside from vote-suppression efforts by his pet goons in the New BlacKKK Fascist Party, and who even knows how many hundreds of thousands of instances of vote-fraud by his ACORN sneak-thieves — was via a long list of all kinds of financial chicanery up to and including…wait for it…accepting secret, illegal foreign campaign contributions. You were supposed to have forgotten all about that by now, assuming you’re among those who penetrated the Zombie Media blackout and knew of it at all. But Doug remembers, presenting a recounting of the shocking jiggery-pokery that helped put this swindler in the office he’s so manifestly unfit for. Glenn hasn’t forgotten, either.

Time to do more than just pay Democrat Socialist-style lip service to draining that swamp. Too bad this November we won’t have the opportunity to give it the good, thorough, top-down scrubbing it so desperately needs.

And there's an update at the blog, "The Bottom of the Barrel":

I could’ve attached this as an update to the “New low” post below, but it’s just too delicious to languish away down there. Come for the exposure of the sleazy lie, stay for the groveling-coward backpedaling:

White House officials acknowledged Friday that they had no specific evidence to indicate that the chamber had used money from foreign entities to finance political attack ads.

“The president was not suggesting any illegality,” Bob Bauer, the White House counsel, said. Instead, he said Mr. Obama’s reference to the chamber was meant to draw attention to the inadequacies of campaign disclosure laws in allowing groups to spend large amounts of money on politics without disclosing their donors.

Yeah, right. Spoken like a truly greasy, squirming lawyer trying to defend a most un-presidential president, who just stepped in a pile of his own deceitful bullshit and fell in right up to his scrawny neck.

Dirtbags.

And typical leftists.

Obama's Hypocrisy, Obama's Fraud

Just before the 2008 election I published an essay on campaign finance at Pajamas Media, "Obama’s Fundraising Fraud." No candidate in American history has raised more money for a presidential bid than Barack Obama. Great story, but what's normally stuffed under the rug is the massive amounts of money that were funneled to the campaign through illegal sources. This was widely documented at the time, but the MFM largely ignored the scandal (WaPo was the major exception). But now there's the new convenient outrage on the left over alleged foreign sources of campaign influence. Michelle has been reporting on this, "Newly nativist Democrats and their own foreign funny money." And also William Jacobson, "Obama Was Right About Xenophobic Bitter Clingers."

And Sister Toldjah caps it off with more on the left's blatant hypocrisy: "Barack Obama: so hypocritical, it’s almost grotesque."

Forget whether the charge is correct or not. Ignore the fact that this is a desperate, xenophobic smear job by a party facing a massacre at the polls.

It’s the hypocrisy that’s jaw-dropping, given that Obama’s own presidential campaign winked at foreign money. Michael Barone explains:

Glenn Reynolds nails this one: the Obama Democrats’ campaign riff against foreign donations to Democrats is bogus—and according to the New York Times, no less. This looks like a matter of projection, since it’s well documented that the 2008 Obama campaign did not put in place address verification software that would have routinely prevented most foreign donations. In effect they were encouraging donations by foreign nationals. Here’s the Washington Post on this back in October 2008: Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is allowing donors to use largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor’s identity, campaign officials confirmed. Faced with a huge influx of donations over the Internet, the campaign has also chosen not to use basic security measures to prevent potentially illegal or anonymous contributions from flowing into its accounts, aides acknowledged.”

Go read the rest of the article and follow the other links back to reports from 2008 on the Obama campaign and odd donations. Here’s another. Obama and the Democrats engaged in rampant cheating regarding foreign donations, and now they have the gall to falsely accuse the Chamber of Commerce of doing what they themselves did?

More: "Axelrod: Chamber must prove foreign money allegations false." (Via Memeorandum.)

Book Thrown at Obama at Philadelphia Rally: Crickets Chirp on the Left

Jim Hoft has the video:

And don't you love it. Not a single leftie blog posting on this right now, at Memeorandum.

But in December 2008, the left was all over the shoe attack on President Bush in Iraq:

Folks can hate President Obama, or President Bush, but throwing things at them is unacceptable. I don't condone it, and one might think that leftist bloggers would draw the line at this kind of stuff. But no one wants to talk about it, apparently, because it would open them up to criticism of their own rank hypocrisy.

And, yeah, and that's all around us: "Leftist Hypocrisy All the Way Down."

RELATED: From Doug Powers, "Great Moments in Product Placement History." (Streakers too!)

Franchise

By Chris Muir, at Day by Day Cartoons:

Democrat Dabbling

Great post from Warner Todd Huston, at Right Wing News, "Which is Worse?"

Well? Is it worse that a teenaged girl played around with the idea of the occult or are the others here a bit worse? What do you think?

Check the link. Other Democrat Dabblers: Robert "KKK" Byrd, Edward "Chappaquiddick" Kennedy, Jesse "Love Child" Jackson, Eliot "Call Girl" Spitzer, and Bill "I Never Had Sex With That Woman" Clinton. (And no doubt we could come up with some more.)

Men's Style

I've lost a little weight. Not much, about 4 pounds. I've been exercising and eating fruits and veggies (especially carrots). I'm making no predictions, but if I can keep going I'd like to go down a couple of belt sizes and buy a new suit or two and get back in the practice of dressing up for lectures.

Anyway, via Paco Enterprises, here's an interesting piece on men's fashion, from William M. Briggs, "Men’s Fashion Advice":

If you’re wearing a jacket (and you should) that has a breast pocket, that pocket should be filled to overflowing with a pocket “square”. The material of this object must only be cotton, linen, or silk. Polyester or any blend is forbidden because it looks cheesy.

Why wear one? Several reasons. The pocket square, like the tie, breaks up the monotony caused by draping one’s chest entirely in one fabric. Nobody now has the fortitude to wear a boutonniere, but these provide the same effect. The more the jacket angles towards one color and lack of pattern, the more the pocket square is needed. And if a jacket is loudly patterned, again, the pocket square can bring relief to the eye.

Ancient advice recommends a pocket square not be cut from the same bot as the tie. This advice is ancient because it is true. If the tie and pocket square match, the eye is strongly drawn to them, and you risk looking studied or goofy: worse, nobody will look at your face. Matching a pocket square to tie can be done, but the probability of a pleasing result is so low that it should not be attempted by the amateur.

More at the link.

The Left's Continued Campaign Against American Power

Scott Eric Kaufman's not obsessing much. No, not at all:

...until The Donalde proves that his appreciation is for the human form by posting artistic photographs of naked men on a regular basis, I’ll continue to think the man is a menace and do all I can to warn future students away from him.

Look, I'm straight. If I'm going to appreciate the human form sans des vêtements, then it's going to be with the ladies. And here's the point: Scott Eric Kaufman has no business "warning" future students away from my classes. This is just one more leftist campaign of harassment and intimidation. I haven't written about it, since it was an official legal matter where outside attorneys were involved, but the controversy surrounding my bulletin board --- and the campus progressives' screening of Michael Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story" --- resulted in an embarrassing black eye for those who made hate-crime allegations against me. The First Amendment prevailed. And I'm sure that pissed off the nihilists even more, which is why these assholes continue the attempts to shut me down by bullying and coercion. So word to SEK: Back the fuck off. My college doesn't want anything to do with you. It's leftists like you who are damaging whole generations of young people. Talk about danger. I FEEL BAD FOR YOUR STUDENTS. But they'll have to suffer through the abuse without any attempted warning from me --- it's none of my business. No doubt, though, your obsessive campaign of effete elitism and puerile hatred is truly sick. And you're having no effect other than to perpetuate the hatred at LGM. And I know that pisses you off. But you keep coming back. And me, I have the constant affirmation of my students, who repeatedly praise my teaching, and many of my political science majors remain in close contact, often providing tips on upcoming events of interest to American Power readers. (I met one of my former students, now at UCLA, at last month's David Horowitz event in Beverly Hills.) Oh, and what's particularly interesting is how the mentally-challenged trolls at Lawyers, Gays and Money seem to have lost interest in SEK's constant but mindless drivel. It's an attack blog, sure, but even rodents need something fresh to gnaw on now and again. Oh well, all in a day's work at American Power. Moral clarity, you know? Can't touch that.

RELATED: "It's Hard Out There: The Radical Assault on American Power," and "It's Come to This: Progressives Reduced to Racist Slurs Against American Power."

Leftist Hypocrisy All the Way Down

The great bulk of recent blogging has covered the virtually unlimited examples of radical left-wing hypocrisy.

Last week's "One Nation" showcased not only the widespread radicalism at the base of the Democrat Party, but also the longstanding official party ties between top Democrat Party organizers and key left-wing movement activists who put together the October 2nd event. But of course neo-commies continue to whine: "But there's no such thing as the monolithic 'left'." We've also had the news of Barack Obama's gangsta rap playlist, which shows how the president has endorsed the racial stereotypes and "pathologies that still haunt and cripple far too many in the black underclass." Where's the outrage against President Obama's racist iPod? We've also had yet another round of classic leftist misogyny with Jerry Brown's "whore" slur of Meg Whitman, but not only has the response been muted (or even buried, in the case of MSNBC), but a purported "women's rights" umbrella group came out to endorse the Democrat candidate within 24 hours of alienating any woman who resents being called a whore. And as I reported today, we saw that Ted Rall, the well-known and award-winning leftist editorial cartoonist, openly proclaimed his call for a revolution against the United States and the installment of a communist dictatorship of the proletariat in its place. On top of that we've got the New York Times and its leftist minions once again distorting the record on Pamela Geller and the opposition to the Ground Zero Cordoba Center. Of course, the great majority of Americans see the mosque project as an affront to the families of the fallen, but the leftists have pushed a false "anti-Muslim" meme that has done nothing except further polarize that nation. (And the left's endorsement of the "Muslim backlash" myth is understandable, since from the academy to the mainstream press and beyond, there's been an open embrace of romanticism and self-denial surrounding radical jihad).

It's all of a piece, as I've said many times. Another one of the hypocrisies of modern times is the deification of Che Guevara to communist sainthood. Humberto Fontova has more on that, "Che Guevara: Guerrilla Doofus and Murdering Coward":

Forty three years ago this week, Ernesto "Che" Guevara got a major dose of his own medicine. Without trial he was declared a murderer, stood against a wall and shot. Historically speaking, justice has rarely been better served. If the saying "What goes around comes around" ever fit, it's here.

"When you saw the beaming look on Che's face as the victims were tied to the stake and blasted apart by the firing squad," said a former Cuban political prisoner Roberto Martin-Perez, to your humble servant here, "you saw there was something seriously, seriously wrong with Che Guevara." As commander of the La Cabana execution yard, Che often shattered the skull of the condemned man (or boy) by firing the coup de grace himself. When other duties tore him away from his beloved execution yard, he consoled himself by viewing the slaughter. Che's second-story office in Havana’s La Cabana prison had a section of wall torn out so he could watch his darling firing-squads at work.

Even as a youth, Ernesto Guevara's writings revealed a serious mental illness. "My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood. Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any vencido that falls in my hands!” This passage is from Ernesto Guevara's famous Motorcycle Diaries, though Robert Redford somehow overlooked it while directing his heart-warming movie.

More at the link.

I'll have more on all of this later. No doubt much of the electorate's repudiation of the Democrats lies in the party's rank dishonesty and hypocrisy, from the president all the way down to the lowest neo-commie netroots bloggers. Meanwhile, previously at American Power: "Progressives Are Communists (If You Didn't Know)."

Fixing Our Schools

I'm heading out to see "Waiting for Superman." The film trailer is here. I'll have more on this later, but I'm reading Diane Ravitch's The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. She makes the interesting argument that a genuinely conservative approach to education reform is to be wary of "speculative" and "uncertain" educational fads. She's particularly worn out on the decades-long push for market-oriented reforms focusing on choice and business-driven "total quality management," which she says basically deteriorated into the raw accountability movement. I'm not near ready to jettison potential reforms focusing on school choice. Still, Ravitch also points out that what all schools need is a coherent curriculum grounded in the liberal arts and sciences, as well as expectations that schools and students should together be working harder, in terms of hours of teaching and homework, than has become the norm today.

I'll have more on these issues in an upcoming post. Here's President Obama's weekly address below. I simply don't trust this administration on education reform, so more on that later. For now check WaPo's forum, "How to fix our schools: A manifesto by Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee and other education leaders."