Republicans Stronger Than Democrats for November Midterms

This is a "generic ballot" poll on party prospects for the November elections to the House of Representatives, at NYT, "G.O.P., Though Deeply Split, Has Election Edge, Poll Shows." (At Memeorandum.)

The poll finds that 42 percent say they'll support GOP candidates in November and 39 percent like the Democrats -- a statistically insignificant result since it's within the polls margin of error. But here's the findings on the ObamaCare clusterf-k: The nationwide poll was conducted Feb. 19 to 23 by landline and cellphone among 1,644 adults and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points for all adults and plus or minus 6 points for Republicans, Democrats and independents. The survey comes more than eight months before Election Day, and less than a quarter of those who responded said they were paying a lot of attention to the 2014 election, meaning that each party has ample opportunity to sway voters.

One issue, though — the Affordable Care Act — seems to have solidified some opposition to Democrats, and historical trends such as an older, whiter midterm electorate are also favorable to Republicans.

“It seems all the Democrats are for Obamacare, and I think this is a really bad deal,” Larry Walker, an independent voter from Torrance, Calif., said in a follow-up interview.

Mr. Obama’s approval rating is now at 41 percent, with 51 percent of Americans saying they disapprove of his performance, his worst standing in the past two years, with the exception of a CBS News survey last November in the midst of the troubled rollout of the new health care law. Such ratings amount to an early political alarm for Democrats on the ballot this year. When a party controls the White House, its performance in midterm congressional elections typically tracks closely to the popularity of the sitting president in the fall.

There's much in there that's unfavorable to the Republicans, but frankly 2014's looking to be a referendum on the Democrat Party's performance on the economy and healthcare, and they're not coming up roses.

Here's the raw survey questionnaire at the New York Times, "Complete Results: New York Times/CBS News February Poll." President Obama's job disapproval on the economy is 57 percent. And the level of dissatisfaction with the way things are going in Washington is nearly off the charts. Almost half of those polled said they were "dissatisfied but not angry" (49 percent), and then another 30 percent are "angry" (a total of 79 percent unhappy campers). Also, on another measure, 37 percent are "very disappointed" with the Obama presidency, while 22 percent are "disappointed" (a total of 59 percent who are "disappointed" with this administration). And in separate questions, voters said that both parties needed to do much more to address "the needs and concerns of middle class voters" (75 percent said Republicans should do more and 69 said Democrats should do more). Finally, exactly half thought Congress should make changes to ObamaCare "to make it work better" while 42 percent thought it should be "repealed entirely."

In sum, basic bread-and-butter issues are driving voter concerns this year, and neither party is seen well among respondents. But Democrats are most vulnerable on issues that rank front-and-center with the electorate, the economy, economic mobility, and healthcare. As I've reported many times, analysts don't expect much change in the House of Representatives, and in fact Democrats have little chance of retaking the chamber in the fall. But as I've said, it's the Senate where the real action is, and some experts suggest the Democrats could be looking at losses of close to 10 seats (the GOP needs 6 seats to capture the majority). I don't see anything at this poll that's likely to dislodge those expectations, and certainly vulnerable incumbents like Kay Hagan are literally running away from questions on the Democrats' once-marquee issue, ObamaCare. See United Liberty, "NC Senate: Kay Hagan runs away from reporters asking about Obamacare."

RELATED: My ideologically-addled antagonist Martin Longman, of BooMan Tribune, is having illusions of Democrat victory in November, "Curtis Gans Says the Dems Can Win in November." Gans (cited there) is a progressive political analyst who's got an interesting (if deeply flawed) piece up at the far-left Washington Monthly, "Midterm Signals and Noise: Why Democrats Could Do Better in November Than Everyone Thinks." After his discussion of the "signals and noise," here's what Gans says on the Democrats' surprisingly (fantastically) good chances for the fall:

Despite current conventional wisdom, such an election [Democrat wave election] is not only possible but probable, but only if three signals occur - if September polls, the polls taken when people are paying attention to the upcoming election, show a substantial improvement in Obama’s approval rating and an equally substantial increase in public support of the Affordable Care Act, and if the economy does not relapse into recession.

Gans has been smoking double-dipped Thai sticks until they're coming out his ears. None of these three things is going to happen. There is no miracle that will lift Obama's public opinion numbers into the plus-50 range (an approval level he'd need to change voters' electoral behavior). He may get back into the high-forties, but for him to gain majority approval again, we'd need robust economic growth with a substantial drop in the unemployment rate, which isn't likely. (It doesn't matter if the economy has a "relapse back into recession," since voters are already angry about the economy right now. They'll only be further enraged should the unemployment rate head north once again --- which is not a foregone conclusion considering Obama's record of economic mismanagement). And while the opinion trends on ObamaCare have probably bottomed out, recall, as Megan McArdle has pointed out, even worse news on the law's mangled roll-out may be yet to come.

Those are the key factors I'm expecting to influence the November results. All the rest is noise, hilariously so in the context of the predictive model of Curtis Gans, and apparently Martin Longman as well.

The Democrats are going to get hammered. I can't see any realistic scenario in which the factors highlighted at the Times poll, or those "three signals" cited by Gans, show a dramatic and politically significant turnaround. If it's going to be a "wave election," it's going to be a GOP wave. Screw the leftist bastards. Democrats rammed the ObamaCare monstrosity down the throats of the American public on a straight party-line vote. Now all they can do is lie about how the Republicans are exploiting ObamaCare "insurance losers" and inventing ObamaCare "horror stories."

It's not going to be pretty, but I'll have more later, as always.

Canadian Woman Gets Smacked in Face by Whale's Tail

You gotta love it. Apparently she was unhurt.

At BuzzFeed, "Watch a Girl Get Smacked In the Face By a Whale."



Also at CBC, "Hamilton woman gets slapped by a whale."

Emily Ratajkowski Sports Illustrated Body Paint 2014

Click around at the link to view Ms. Emily's SI photographs. She's lovely.

There's voting too, for Sports Illustrated's swimsuit "rookie of the year."

Religious-Freedom Bills Proliferate in Statehouses

Well, Jan Brewer couldn't take the heat, but a lot of these bills are being signed into law and will ultimately wind up in court for adjudication.

At the Wall Street Journal:

Arizona has become a major flashpoint in the national debate over the boundaries between religious freedom and discrimination, as legislators there push to enact a new law that would allow business owners to deny service to customers for religious reasons.

But the state is hardly alone in mulling more explicit protections for religious business owners and individuals, whose objections to same-sex marriage have come into increasing conflict with newer laws expanding the rights of gays and lesbians.

Here’s a roundup of various religious-liberty measures circulating in other statehouses. Most have yet to pass a single chamber and a number have been tabled. Some deal specifically with the rights of businesses or students, while others are more broadly worded. In at least two states, the issue may go before voters as a ballot initiative...

Keep reading.

And see TPNN, "Several Other States Follow AZ’s Lead, Propose Religious Rights Legislation."

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer Vetoes Controversial Religious Freedom Law SB 1062

At the Arizona Republic, "BREAKING: Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer vetoes Senate Bill 1062."

This morning's Los Angeles Times has a great piece on the enormous political backlash over the bill, which was obviously much too great for Brewer to withstand, "On gay issue, Arizona may heed national outcry this time":

TUCSON — When Arizona took controversial stands in the past — refusing to create a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and enacting a tough anti-illegal immigration law — state leaders shrugged off the criticism from out of state as the meddling of outsiders.

But now, after the Legislature passed a measure to bolster the rights of business owners to refuse service to gays and others on the basis of religion, Arizona leaders seem to be listening to a national outcry and are urging the governor to veto the bill.
So what's different this time?

Political insiders and observers say the change can be attributed to a number of forces at work: a growing acceptance of gay rights sweeping the nation, the power of social media and an economic backlash unleashed by the passage of the anti-illegal immigration law that is still fresh in the minds of those in the business community.

Republican Gov. Jan Brewer has said she has not made a decision on the bill, SB 1062, which the GOP-dominated Legislature approved last week. But some of her longtime advisors have said they believe she will veto the measure because of the negative reaction to the bill inside and outside the state.

Barrett Marson, who heads a public relations outfit in Phoenix, recalled that an uproar arose against Arizona in the 1990s when voters rejected a referendum to create a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. But there is a significant difference between then and now.

"That was pre-Internet," Marson said.

Much of the outrage about SB 1062 spread via social media, especially Twitter. Republican leaders, such as former presidential candidate Mitt Romney and Arizona's U.S. senators, John McCain and Jeff Flake, have taken to Twitter to urge Brewer to veto the bill.

They have joined a loud chorus on social media — including celebrities such as Judd Apatow as well as Arizona business owners and residents — that has tweeted against the measure.

The tweets opposing the legislation are so numerous they have overshadowed the few who have taken to Twitter in support of the bill. Proponents say the measure is not discriminatory but intended to protect religious freedom. "Would you force a Muslim butcher to slaughter pigs b/c you want bacon?" read one tweet.

Arizona also became a target of criticism after Brewer signed the anti-illegal immigration measure, SB 1070, into law in 2010. But the outcry then wasn't as  great as the current controversy, partly because the immigrant rights lobby wasn't as powerful as today's gay community and its supporters, Marson said.

"Certainly there was a short-term economic hit from 1070 … but there aren't many illegal immigrants who are CEOs or management of Fortune 500 companies," he said.

The "economic hit" Marson referred to was boycotts of Arizona businesses following SB 1070. Shortly after SB 1062's passage last week, businesses and companies took to the Internet, saying they still welcomed gay, lesbian and transgender customers.

Marriott, American Airlines and Apple are among the companies and businesses that have come out against the bill.

Some of the same foes of the legislation have threatened to boycott Arizona if the bill becomes law, and that possibility worries these businesses — some remembering the sting of the SB 1070 boycotts.

More at Memeorandum.

'The vast majority of uninsured Americans do not know they must sign up for health insurance by March 31 or pay a fine, according to a new poll...'

That would be the Kaiser Family Foundation "Health Tracking Poll" for February 2014, blogged at Jammie Wearing Fools, "Kaiser Poll: 76% of Uninsured Unaware of ObamaCare Sign-Up Deadline."

Click through for the survey, aggregated at Memeorandum. Among the findings:

While most Americans (54 percent) continue to say they haven’t been impacted by the law one way or another, the share saying they’ve been negatively affected has inched up in recent months (29 percent in February, up from 23 percent last October) and continues to outpace the share saying they’ve personally benefited from the law (17 percent)....

When it comes to next steps on the law, a majority say it should be kept in place, including 48 percent who want Congress to work to improve it and 8 percent who say it should be kept as is. Fewer say Congress should repeal the law and replace it with a Republican-sponsored alternative (12 percent) or repeal it and not replace it (19 percent). Like opinions on the law overall, views about next steps are deeply divided by political party identification, with most Democrats preferring to keep the law in place and a majority of Republicans wanting to see it repealed. Among independents, more than half want Congress to keep the law as is or work to improve it, while a third prefer to see it repealed.

Keep reading.

The main takeaway for me is the enormous uncertainty that still surrounds this legislation. Opinion on ObamaCare is still very much in flux, and it's especially interesting that the majority have no personal experience with the law, which means as more costs are spread around, and quality of care deteriorates as people are shuffled into those narrow-networks (which people oppose), support is likely to decline. Also especially interesting is the number of those uninsured who oppose the law. Young Americans are especially unhappy about ObamaCare. Indeed, the Harvard Institute of Politics poll last December saw younger Millennials jonesing to recall President Obama from office (although we can't do that through the ballot box).

In any case, political campaigns have a way of shaping public opinion on the issues and it's obvious that most Democrats running for reelection would rather not talk about ObamaCare. So, overall the ball's in the GOP's court. The public's not all that big on ObamaCare repeal. But key demographics don't like it and thus overall numbers could shift in the GOP's direction as implementation proceeds (disastrously).

Very fluid all around --- and you gotta love the level of ignorance on the individual mandate! We'll be getting a lot more horror stories throughout the year on the tax penalties, although the hilarious big meme among idiot Democrats claims that Republicans are pushing "fake" horror stories for the November run-up. Progressives, heh. They're so stupid it almost hurts, lol.

Mercedes-Benz to Base Its Regional Office in Long Beach

I saw this in the news rack for the Long Beach Register while out to lunch the other day, and now here it is at the parent newspaper, the O.C. Register:

Since Mercedes-Benz USA announced plans to lease a 1.1 million-square foot Boeing plane factory in July, the luxury automaker has kept its plans for the former Long Beach facility a tightly guarded secret.

But an executive with Irvine-based Sares-Regis Group, which is the landlord for the 52.2 acres at 4501 E. Conant St., said that Mercedes-Benz plans to use the facility as its vehicle preparation facility and regional office for the western United States, and as a training center.

With the exception of the main airplane hangar, the fenced-in plant has been mostly turned into a huge parking lot with fresh concrete laid along Conant.

Larry Lukanish, a senior vice president with Sares-Regis, also says Mercedes-Benz will test, inspect, customize and prepare new cars for transfer to dealerships.

Sares-Regis, which bought the property in July 2012, plans to turn the property over to Mercedes-Benz USA on March 1 to begin a 15-year lease, Lukanish said.

Chicago-based Boeing Co. shuttered the facilities at the corner of Conant and Lakewood Boulevard in 2006, when the last 717 commercial jet rolled off the line. Boeing inherited the plane when it acquired McDonnell Douglas Corp. in 1997. The plane was originally called the MD-95 but never caught on with major airlines. The hangar is still on the property, which has a large “Fly DC Jets” sign on top. The factory, which employed thousands for decades, once built some of the world's most popular airlines, including the DC-3, DC-8 and MD-80.

Several outbuildings were demolished and tunnels under Lakewood Boulevard were filled, Lukanish said. The hangar interiors remain unchanged with the exception of painting, removal of old cranes and a mezzanine structure.

Mariella Kapsaskis, a spokeswoman with Mercedes-Benz USA's corporate headquarters in Montvale, N.J., confirmed portions of Lukanish's disclosure. She said in a statement that the car manufacturer would be consolidating its Western regional offices, its training and performance center and vehicle preparation center under a single roof in Long Beach as a means of improving overall efficiency. This includes its regional office in Irvine and its vehicle preparation center in Carson.

She couldn't comment on whether those two offices would be closed or how many employees would be affected.

Beyond California, the other regional offices are located in Jacksonville, Fla.; Parsippany, N.J.; and Rosemont, Ill.

Well, I drive by the facility everday, which is right next to my campus. I've been meaning to take some pictures but I just never stop and make the time. (Besides, it's been a demolition site mostly, since part of the facility included an old hanger that was torn down to make way for the huge concrete lot they've created on the grounds.) It'll be opening soon though, so I'll update when I get the chance to take some pics.

More here.

RELATED: From last summer at LAT, "Mercedes-Benz leases old Boeing jet factory in Long Beach."

Bitcoin Virtual Currency Market Crashes

Funniest thing, but a student on Monday said that he'd invested in Bitcoin. I forgot exactly how this came up during discussion. Mostly we were talking about state sovereignty and one of my students got on the topic of a "cashless economy," and then the young guy in the back started in with Bitcoin. We talked about it for five minutes or so, heh.

And then here comes the news from yesterday morning, "Shutdown of Mt. Gox Rattles Bitcoin Market: Closure Raises Concern About the Future of Unregulated Virtual Currency."

And at LAT, "Bitcoin virtual currency is on the verge of collapse":

It was supposed to revolutionize the global monetary system. Instead, the bitcoin virtual currency that has captured the imagination of investors and financiers is on the verge of collapse.

In a stunning blow to a novel way to buy products and services, the world's largest exchange for trading bitcoin currency shut down Tuesday, triggering a massive sell-off and sending many prospective investors away — perhaps for good.

"This is extremely destructive," said Mark Williams, a risk-management expert and former Federal Reserve Bank examiner. "What we're seeing is a lot of the flaws. It's not only fragile, it's fragile as eggshells."

The mysterious circumstances that triggered the failure of the exchange, Mt. Gox in Tokyo, is only adding to the renewed anxiety over the virtual currency, which just a month earlier had been gaining momentum and supporters.

After saying users could not withdraw their funds, Mt. Gox suddenly ceased all operations, including shutting down its website. Mt. Gox users may have lost more than $300 million worth of bitcoins in what was the latest and biggest in a series of recent setbacks for the virtual currency.

The currency exists only online, and its value is based on an algorithm. Investors buy bitcoins with dollars, euros and other real currency. A purchase with bitcoins typically involves transferring an amount from the buyer's bitcoin "digital wallet" to the seller's wallet on the Internet.

The blow to bitcoin's credibility has highlighted all the fears critics have been trying to raise. Because it is unregulated and anonymous, there is probably no way for users to know who may have seized the thousands of missing bitcoins — and no way to recover them.

This sudden reversal of fortune is particularly painful for enthusiasts who believed just a few weeks ago that bitcoin was on the cusp of mainstream acceptance because of growing support from venture capitalists, banks and regulators.

Instead of triumph, the bitcoin community is now focused on repairing the damage. Mt. Gox is nothing more than a "collapsed tower of toxic sludge," said Williams, who is also a finance professor at Boston University School of Management...

Well, I described Bitcoin as a "fad" on Monday, and that might be the perfect word for it in the end.

Still more here.

So, I watched 'The Bachelor' With the Wife Last Night...

Haven't been watching it this season, with the Olympics and who knows what else has been on.

But last night's show was pretty good, especially the location at Saint Lucia.

Here's a recap, at the Kansas City Star, "The ‘Bachelor’ dumped again, but not by KC’s Nikki Ferrell." And at People, "Chris Harrison on The Bachelor: 'Essentially, Juan Pablo Was Dumped'."

My wife and I like Clare, and no doubt she's in love with him. He should give her the final rose and propose, but well see. (Video from earlier on the show, "The Bachelor - Juan Pablo Has a Serious Talk with Clare.")

Harriet Harman and British Labour's Ties to Criminal Paedophile Information Exchange

Well, I promised an update Sunday when I posted on this, "Britain's Leftist Apologists for Pedophilia."

Yesterday, while checking Louise Mensch's feed on Twitter, it looked like all hell was breaking loose with Britain's Labor Party, with all kinds of calls for the resignation of Shadow Deputy Prime Minister Harriet Harman.

And here's the story at London's Daily Mail, which has broken this investigation wide open, "But they still won't say sorry: Labour's Harman and Dromey finally break their silence over links to paedophile group," and "Labour's deputy leader Harriet Harman expresses 'regret' over links to paedophile lobby – but STILL won’t apologise."

As usual, I tweeted a piece to Robert Stacy McCain, and then later he had this, "The UK Left’s Pro-Pedophile Past."

'Saddle Ridge Hoard' — California Couple Finds Buried Treasure Worth $10 Million in Their Backyard

What a story.

At the San Francisco Chronicle, "Gold Country couple discovers $10 million in buried coins."

Read it at the link, with photos. The coins were in mint condition. It's a tale straight out of the Old West.

Former CNN Correspondent Miles O'Brien Left Arm Amputated After Accident

Well, thank God he's alive. I always liked him. He had (has) a love for his craft, as well as science, that I always appreciated.

Saw this first at London's Daily Mail, "Former CNN journalist's arm amputated after minor injury caused by falling TV equipment developed rare complications."

And also at CNN, "Former CNN correspondent Miles O'Brien has arm amputated after accident."

And go straight to O'Brien's blog, "'Just a Flesh Wound'":

I wish I had a better story to tell you about why I am typing this with one hand (and some help from Dragon Dictate).

A shark attack would be interesting. An assassination attempt would be intriguing. Skydiving mishaps always make for good copy. An out-of-control quad copter that turns on its master would be entertaining (and would come complete with a grim, potentially viral, video).

No, the reason I am now one-handed is a little more prosaic than those scenarios.

Keep reading.

Smokin' Nina Agdal in New Accessorize Campaign

At London's Daily Mail, "EXCLUSIVE: So THAT'S what Leo DiCaprio sees in her! Nina Agdal looks incredible in new Accessorize campaign... but reveals she's partial to a burger."

She did the hot Carls Jr. ad last year, so it makes sense.

And of course, she's on the cover of the new Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, "Nina Agdal, Lily Aldridge, Chrissy Teigen Land Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Cover."

Comcast and Netflix Get Together and Solve Their Own Problem

I didn't quite fully understand the big deal about his story earlier, at WSJ, "Netflix to Pay Comcast for Smoother Streaming: Deal Ends Standoff, Might Serve as Precedent for Relations With Other Broadband Suppliers" (via Google). Also at the Verge, "Netflix is paying off Comcast for direct traffic access."

But Holman Jenkins has an excellent primer on the (significance of the) deal, "How the Internet Was Meant to Be":

Netflix's NFLX +1.35%  Reed Hastings routinely touted their ideal to gain leverage over downstream carriers like Comcast. CMCSA -0.74%  Then a federal court in January invalidated Washington's net-neut rules and he rushed out a statement of the obvious to reassure shareholders, saying in essence: Never mind! Comcast et. al. don't really have an economic or political incentive to block our service. Just the opposite. Consumer expectations of the Internet are set. Carriers must supply unimpeded access to every kind of web content or else.

The net-neut zealots would have been wise at this point to declare victory, if not admit they had been praying to a false god all along. Now they've been thrown into fresh confusion by Mr. Hastings's deal this week with the ultimate devil symbol, cable giant Comcast.

Mr. Hastings's agreement with Comcast does not actually violate the letter of net neutrality, but it does violate the big hazy ideal of a single vast pipe through which anonymous ones and zeros democratically and communally flow. In essence, Netflix will pay to dump its bits directly into Comcast's last-mile network, rather than by way of an Internet backbone supplier. But let's wipe away our tears. The deal is a triumph of the Internet's nonideological adaptability and flexibility.

Netflix faced a problem: stuttering video performance because of upstream bottlenecks that belied the high-speed downstream service customers are paying for. Why? At bottom, the happy equilibrium of the old two-way Internet has gone bye-bye thanks to a one-way video deluge stemming mainly from YouTube and Netflix.

Now in other newspapers you can read experts fretting that the cost of Netflix's solution will be "passed along" to Netflix's customers. This is idiotic. All businesses collect their costs from their customers or they aren't long in business. But the real question here wasn't who bears the cost. It was who bears the incentive to handle traffic efficiently.

Cogent Communications, CCOI -5.57%  a content delivery network, was getting paid by Netflix to deliver loads of content to Comcast, without any incentive to care about Comcast's capacity to receive it.

So Comcast could either accept an unlimited obligation to accommodate whatever traffic Netflix and its intermediate partners wanted to send, however inefficiently they wanted to send it—as, in fact, happened after Mr. Hastings in September decided every Netflix customer would get its new "SuperHD" feed.

Or Comcast could resist a blank check being drawn on its network in the only way available to it—by letting traffic back up at its interconnection point until Cogent and Netflix cried uncle.

A better solution was shriekingly obvious: Let Comcast and Netflix transact directly. Because Netflix would be helping to pay for the costs it imposes on Comcast, Netflix would have proper incentive to deliver its services efficiently. This would benefit Netflix customers and everybody else trying to send traffic through the backbone.

But if the net-neut crazies are flummoxed, the media are desperately confused about what just happened, saying it amounts to proof of Comcast's overweening power...

Keep reading.

RELATED: At LAT, "Comcast strikes deal to buy Time Warner Cable for $45 billion."

George Harrison's Birthday — 'Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)'

George Harrison would have been 71 today.

Check the Wikipedia entry for "Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)," which I listened to on the way home at the Sound L.A.



RELATED: At Rolling Stone, "Beach Boys' Mike Love Honors George Harrison With Unreleased Track."

How the Founding Father Used to Pound Back the Booze

This is great, at Reason, "George Washington: Boozehound":

Reason TV's Meredith Bragg informed us of George Washington’s whiskey production. He didn’t tell us, however, about Washington’s alcohol consumption, which was, at times, prodigious. That consumption by Washington and his fellow founding fathers has been whitewashed—sometimes literally—from American history by the intervening Temperance movement, whose effects still drive us. For instance, the classic picture of Washington taking his farewell from his troops at Fraunces Tavern in New York—which, of course, involved a toast—was painted with a serving flask clearly visible. This container was painted out of these same pictures later, in the nineteenth century, reminiscent of Soviet photos with purged former leaders excised.

It is impossible for Americans to accept the extent to which the Colonial period—including our most sacred political events—was suffused with alcohol. Protestant churches had wine with communion, the standard beverage at meals was beer or cider, and alcohol was served even at political gatherings. Alcohol was consumed at meetings of the Virginian and other state legislatures and, most of all, at the Constitutional Convention.

Indeed, we still have available the bar tab from a 1787 farewell party in Philadelphia for George Washington just days before the framers signed off on the Constitution. According to the bill preserved from the evening, the 55 attendees drank 54 bottles of Madeira, 60 bottles of claret, eight of whiskey, 22 of porter, eight of hard cider, 12 of beer, and seven bowls of alcoholic punch.

That's more than two bottles of fruit of the vine, plus a number of shots and a lot of punch and beer, for every delegate. That seems humanly impossible to modern Americans. But, you see, across the country during the Colonial era, the average American consumed many times as much beverage alcohol as contemporary Americans do. Getting drunk—but not losing control—was simply socially accepted...

RTWT (via Instapundit).

Extreme Sports Boost USA at #Sochi

Must admit I was getting a kick out of the slopestyle.

At USA Today, "Extreme sports mark changing of U.S. Olympic guard":

SOCHI - For the U.S. team, the Sochi Games signified an end of an era. Goodbye, ice queens. Hello, flippie hippies. See you later, pucks and sticks. Nice to meet you, slopes and rails.

As 17 days of competition came to a close Sunday, this much was clear: The face of the Winter Olympics no longer wears skates. Twelve of the USA's 28 medals came from freestyle skiing and snowboarding, including six of nine gold.

The U.S. Olympic team had never won a medal on every day one was awarded in the Winter Games, and through 14 days in Sochi, the Americans were poised to do that. But the men's hockey team failed to show up in Saturday's bronze medal game, losing to Finland 5-0.

If only the kids in baggy pants with a language all their own had competed in the Games' final days, perhaps the USA could have gone out with more of a bang. Instead, Russia ended this cold war with a flourish — sweeping the podium in the men's 50-kilometer cross-country ski race Sunday and winning gold in four-man bobsled to secure the top spot with 33 overall medals and 13 golds.

For decades, figure skating was the marquee event of the Games. In Sochi, the U.S. men and women figure skaters had their worst collective finish since 1936. Speedskating has been the USA's most successful winter sport. But the short-track team left with one medal and the long-track team exited empty-handed, complaining about their suits.

In contrast, the Americans dominated the action sports events — slopestyle skiing and snowboarding and halfpipe skiing — that made their debut. When the next Winter Games is held in Pyeongchang, South Korea, in 2018, Americans are again expected to be strong in the extreme sports. If more events are added to the program — perhaps big air and a team snowboard cross event — the U.S. medal haul likely will grow as well.

"When you look at the impact that adding the sports has had on the Winter Games, it's made the Games more popular from a broadcast standpoint and for the people who are here," U.S. Olympic Committee CEO Scott Blackmun said.

Keep reading.

The Truth About the U.N.

From Danny Ayalon. It's starts out a little unfocused at the beginning, but it's good.

Rousing the Americans from their slumber

From Caroline Glick:

In an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times Wednesday, former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton warned his countrymen of the disaster that awaits them if President Barack Obama does not change the course of US Middle East policy.

Bolton warned that Obama’s three-pronged policy, based on three negotiation tracks with Iran, Syria, and the Palestinians and Israel, will almost certainly fail in its entirety.

In his words, “Iran will emerge more powerful, verging on deliverable nuclear weapons, while still financing and arming terrorists worldwide. [Syrian President Bashar] Assad seems likely to survive, which is bad enough by itself, but it will be compounded by the affirmation it affords Iranian and Russian strength. Israel will trust Wash – ington even less than now, and ironically, Palestinians will be even more anti-American, because Obama will not be able to deliver to them the Israeli concessions he predicted.”

Bolton concluded mournfully, “[T]he increasing danger is that only another 9/11, another disaster, will produce the necessary awakening. There is tragedy ahead for our country if we continue on this course.”

Writing for Strafor the same day, strategic analyst George Friedman explained why Bolton’s warning will be ignored by the public.

Friedman noted that in previous years, recent events in  Venezuela, Ukraine, Russia and beyond would have been the subject to intense public concern. But, he wrote, “This week, Americans seemed to be indifferent to all of them.”

Friedman argued that this popular indifference to foreign policy is not driven by ideological attachment to isolationism, as was the case in the 1930s. “It is an instrumental position,” not a systematic one, he explained. Because he sees no deep-seated attachment to isolationism among the American public, Friedman argued that their current indifference will likely end when circumstances change.

Friedman’s analysis of the American mood is probably right. And Bolton is certainly right about the dangers inherent to that mood.

Every day the US is subject to greater humiliations and challenges to its power and prestige.

Declarations from Iranian leaders rejecting the dismantling of their nuclear installations, coupled with threats to attack US installations and Israel, bespeak contempt for American power and convey a catastrophic erosion of US deterrent capabilities against Tehran.

As subjects of intense US appeasement efforts, the Palestinians are second only to Iran. And as is the case with Iran, those efforts come at the direct expense of Israel, the US’s most important ally in the Middle East.

Yet like the Iranians, the Palestinians greet US efforts with scorn. Every day Palestinian leaders pile on their incitement against Israel and Jews and their derisive condemnations of the Obama administration’s efforts to force Israel to cater to their every whim.

Since 1979, Egypt served as the anchor of the US alliance structure in the Arab world. It shared the US’s opposition to Islamic terrorism, and waged a continuous campaign to defeat the forc – es of jihad in Egypt, while remaining outside the circle of war against Israel.

When protests began in Egypt three years ago, rather than stand with its ally, Obama dumped Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and sided with the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood.

After winning a popular election, the Brotherhood immediately set about transforming Egypt into an Islamic, pro-jihadist state. And yet, the administration opposed the military’s decision to oust the Brotherhood from power last summer even though the move prevented the most strategically vital Arab state from becoming the cen – ter of the global jihad. It then cut US military aid to Egypt.

So now the military regime is renewing its ties with Russia, after ditching Moscow for Washing – ton in 1974.

AND SO it goes, throughout the world...

Continue reading.

Venezuelan Media Ignores Protests

At WSJ, "Venezuela Media Largely Ignored Protests: Free-Speech Advocates Say Black Out Points to State Intimidation (via Google):

CARACAS—As some of the biggest anti-government protests in months gathered momentum across the country earlier this week, Venezuela's largest private television networks largely broadcast soap operas and entertainment shows.

When the demonstrations turned violent in Caracas and three people died, the coverage was largely blacked out, press-freedom organizations and journalists said Friday. Government officials appeared on state television to accuse opposition leaders of instigating violence to topple the state.

One private television station offering live coverage, NTN24, based in Colombia but widely seen on cable here, was taken off the air in the midst of covering the bedlam on Wednesday. President Nicolas Maduro on Thursday explained that the plug was pulled "to defend the right to tranquility, and no one is going to come here from abroad to ruffle the psychological condition of Venezuela."

Some TV networks, among them Televen and Venevision, did offer reports later in the day. But many locals said they turned to social media during the day to fill the void and remain informed. Officials at Televen and Venevision didn't return calls seeking comment.

Free-speech advocates say that the lack of news coverage demonstrates that privately owned media outlets, particularly the country's biggest TV networks, are being intimidated by the state. Restrictions on what can be covered, coupled with the recent purchases of once-critical news outlets by buyers allied with the government, have resulted in coverage either friendly to Mr. Maduro or indifferent to his governing style, said Marianela Balbi, director of the Press and Society Institute of Venezuela, a press freedom group.

"We think that day was a point of no return for the press," said Ms. Balbi. "Quite simply what happened was that there was no information about the violence, no video images, no live coverage when this was happening in other cities, when people were being hurt, killed."

More.

Obama Consciously Engineering America's Decline

An essay at Commmentary (via Blazing Cat Fur).

And check out Megyn Kelly's interview last night with Rep. Buck McKeon, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee:


Background at NYT, "Pentagon Plans to Shrink Army to Pre-World War II Level."

Phyllis 'Sally' Carter Killed by Rolling Car in Horrific Parking Garage Accident

What a tragedy.

I saw Instapundit's brief post, "A BIT OF ADVICE."

Glenn doesn't link it, but here's the story at Knoxville News, "Maryville woman identified in garage fatality caused by rolling car."

It happens. Last semester I completely forgot to put my van in park AND to set the brake. I don't know what I was thinking, but the department secretary ran over to my office to ask if I owned a Honda Odyssey. I said yes and she said "You better get out to the parking lot. Your van's rolling away."

Luckily it's a flat parking lot and the van just rolled back out from the parking stall and was blocking the drive. A colleague of mine said hello to me as I was walking in the building and she realized it was my van. She called the department. What a blessing.

Weird that, especially since I always set the parking brake, but it happens.

Be careful out there. And prayers for Mrs. Carter's family.

Behind the Turmoil in #Venezuela

From Mary O'Grady, at the Wall Street Journal (via Google):

The bloodshed in Caracas over the past 12 days brings to mind the 2009 Summit of the Americas in Port of Spain, where President Obama greeted Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez with a huge grin and a warm handshake. A couple of months later the State Department attempted to force Honduras to reinstall pro-Chávez president Manuel Zelaya, who had been deposed for violating the constitution.

Brows were knitted throughout the Americas. Why did the U.S. president favor the Venezuelan dictator, protégé of Fidel Castro, over Honduras, which still had a rule of law, press freedom and pluralism?

Fast forward to last Wednesday, after four peaceful student-protesters had been confirmed as having been killed by the government's armed minions. Mr. Obama took notice, pronouncing the brutality "unacceptable." That must have been comforting to hear amid the gun shots and pummeling on the streets of Caracas.

That same night the government of Nicolás Maduro —Chávez's handpicked successor—unleashed a wave of terror across the country. According to Venezuelan blogs and Twitter posts, the National Guard and police went on a tear, firing their weapons indiscriminately, beating civilians, raiding suspected student hide-outs, destroying private property and launching tear-gas canisters. Civilian militia on motor bikes added to the mayhem. The reports came from Valencia, Mérida, San Cristóbal, Maracaibo, Puerto Ordaz and elsewhere, as well as the capital.

Venezuela has promised 100,000 barrels of oil per day to Cuba, and in exchange Cuban intelligence runs the Venezuelan state security apparatus. The Cubans clearly are worried about losing the oil if their man in Caracas falls. Opposition leader Leopoldo López, who heads the Popular Will political party, spent several years building a network of young recruits around the country. Last week's unrest is a testament to that organization, and it is why the 42-year-old Mr. López is now behind bars.

In Ukraine, the European Union has pressured the government to reach a compromise with the opposition. Venezuelans are getting no such help from the neighbors. Only Colombia, Chile and Panama have objected to the crackdown. The rest of the hemisphere doesn't have even a passing interest in human rights when the violations come from the left. The Organization of American States is supposed to defend civil liberties, but since Chilean Socialist José Miguel Insulza took the OAS helm in 2005, it has earned a disgraceful record as a shill for Cuba.

Venezuelans seeking change face daunting odds. The crowds in the streets of Caracas in recent days have not been significantly bigger than in many prior-year protests, including 2002, when a march in Caracas almost unseated Chávez.

This time the repression has been fierce. Besides injuries and death, hundreds have been detained and it would not be surprising if many are given long sentences. Mr. Maduro needs scapegoats for the violence he unleashed. Iván Simonovis, the former head of the Caracas Metropolitan Police, has been a political prisoner since 2004. Chávez made him take the fall for the 17 people killed in the April 2002 uprising even though video evidence points to chavista snipers. Photos of the once-fit policeman, frail and gravely ill from the inhuman circumstances of his long incarceration, are chilling.

Another problem is the division within the opposition. The governor of the state of Miranda, Henrique Capriles, represented a broad coalition of anti-chavista parties when he ran for president in 2013. But when he conceded to Mr. Maduro amid strong evidence that the election had been stolen, Mr. López and other members of the opposition broke with Capriles supporters.

Students have also been hamstrung by a communications blockade. The government controls all Venezuelan television and radio airwaves. When the violence broke out, it forced satellite providers to drop the Colombian NTN channel. Internet service has been cut in many places.

Getting the very poor on board for a regime change is a challenge. Some still see chavismo as their government, even if they have no love for Mr. Maduro and suffer from high inflation. Others don't dare speak out, for fear of losing state jobs or their lives. The barrios are terrorized by the chavista militia...

More.

Ukraine Seeks Arrest of Ousted Leader Yanukovych

At WSJ, "Ukraine Issues Arrest Warrant for Ousted President Yanukovych: Acting Government to Open Criminal Case Into 'Mass Murder' of Civilians":

BALAKLAVA, Ukraine—Ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was on the run Monday from a new government, which issued an arrest warrant for him on allegations of ordering the "mass murder" of protesters on the streets of Kiev last week.

Opposition parties—who over the weekend gained control of parliament and voted to dismiss Mr. Yanukovych—now want the toppled leader held accountable for deadly clashes in Kiev that left more than 80 protesters and police dead. Ukraine's acting interior minister, Arsen Avakov, used his Facebook page Monday to deem Mr. Yanukovych an officially wanted man.

"As of this morning, a criminal case has been opened based on the mass murder of civilians," Mr. Avakov wrote in his post. "Yanukovych and some other officials have been put on the wanted persons list."

The transformation of Mr. Yanukovych from the country's elected leader to a hounded runaway has been stunning in its speed. Within four days, he has gone from an embattled Ukrainian leader negotiating with foreign diplomats to a full-fledged man on the run, the subject of swirling rumors about fanciful escape attempts via helicopter, private jet and boat.

The 63-year-old deposed president dropped out of sight after he was last publicly seen Saturday in a video, in which he denounced his removal from power as a coup and declared himself Ukraine's legitimately elected president.

Amid the hunt for the ousted leader, opposition protesters fresh from their experience in a veritable war zone on the streets of Kiev have been thrust into the task of putting together a government in the wake of Mr. Yanukovych's departure.

More.

Spanish Leftist Alba González Camacho Convicted for Threatening Political Leaders on Twitter

Well, if she was a Nazi you'd never hear the end of this.

At the New York Times, "In a First for Spain, a Woman Is Convicted of Inciting Terror Over Twitter":

 

MADRID — The line between youthful rebelliousness and something more dangerous is not always clear. But in her angry musings on Twitter, Alba González Camacho, 21, who describes herself as a “very normal girl,” sailed across it. After she posted messages calling for a far-left terrorist organization to return to arms and kill politicians, Spain’s national court convicted her of inciting terrorism using a social media network.

It was the first verdict of its kind involving Twitter posts in Spain, and the case has touched on issues of where precisely the cultural, political and legal red lines lie in a country that not long ago lived under both the grip of Fascist dictatorship and the threat of leftist terrorism.

The case is also one of a recent handful that have pushed social media into courtrooms worldwide and raised issues of the limits of speech in the ether of the Internet. In January, two people received prison sentences in Britain for posting threatening messages against a feminist campaigner. The same month, a federal judge in the United States sentenced a man to 16 months in prison for threatening on Twitter to kill President Obama.

Ms. González Camacho, a student in southern Spain, says she is unaffiliated with any political organization. But she had invoked a group known as the Grapo, which killed more than 80 people, mostly in the late 1970s and 1980s, when Spain was returning to democracy after the lengthy Franco dictatorship. Although the Grapo never officially disbanded, security officials here consider it to have long lost its operative capability.

The group’s dormancy did not matter to the judge, who accepted the prosecution’s argument, which said that Ms. González Camacho had posted “messages with an ideological content that was highly radicalized and violent,” violating an article in the Spanish Constitution that prohibits any apology for or glorification of terrorism.

One of the messages called for the murder of the conservative prime minister, Mariano Rajoy. “I promise to tattoo myself with the face of the person who shoots Rajoy in the neck,” she wrote. Another singled out Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, the justice minister, comparing him to a Nazi.

Eduardo Serra, a former Spanish defense minister, said that while far-left groups like the Grapo no longer presented any threat to Spanish society, “Terrorism is terrorism, and it just can’t be glorified.”

With no past criminal record, Ms. González Camacho was sentenced to one year in prison but will avoid jail time under a plea bargain.

She is studying to become a social worker in Jaén, in southern Spain, and declined to be interviewed, saying the case had brought her and her family enough trouble. But in an email exchange, she said that the intention of her Twitter posts was to fight “a system in which a minority lives on the back of the death, misery and exploitation of a majority,” in a country where the euro crisis has sown widespread economic despair.

“The truth is that I’m a very normal girl, who has never landed herself in any kind of problem,” Ms. González Camacho said by email. “But if I tell you everything that I’m fed up with, I would never stop.”

“I never imagined something like that could happen to me because you find a lot of nonsense on the Internet, including worse than mine,” she wrote about her conviction. “But it seems that here that the prosecution is only for those from one side — the Fascists can say whatever they want, and nothing will ever happen to them.”

Oh yeah, she's "very normal." No doubt millions of 21-year-old European sweeties would love to tattoo leftist revolutionary murderers on their faces.

But hey, crickets. She'll spend not a day in jail for her terrorist escapades. It's all just stuff on the Internet, ha!

Michelle Fields Interviews Glenn Reynolds

And they talk about the professor's recent book, The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself.



And at Instapundit, "THE LEARNING CURVE: In the Weekly Standard, Jonathan Marks reviews my The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself."

Australian Television Star Charlotte Dawson Commits Suicide After Years of Abortion-Related Depression

Sad.

At the Australian, "Celebrities and friends pay tribute to Charlotte Dawson, dead at 47":

News.com.au reported that Ms Dawson’s failure to attend a lunch appointment, and a 19-hour silence from her Twitter account, alerted a friend to contact the manager of Ms Dawson’s apartment building. A security guard discovered her body, the report said.

Ms Dawson gave an insight into her life — both her troubles and the highlights — in her autobiography, released late 2012.

In the book, Air Kiss and Tell, she revealed she had had an abortion with her former husband, Olympic swimmer Scott Miller, so that he would not have any distractions in the lead up to the Sydney Olympics.

She had been looking forward to having a baby but sensed “hesitation” in Miller.

”Everything Scott had done was leading up to this moment and nothing could stand in his way, so it was decided that we would terminate the child and try again later. Who needed a developing foetus when a gold medal was on offer, eh?”

Ms Dawson wrote that she was alone when she had the termination.

In he book she wrote that this was her first experience with depression — a battle she continued to fight for the next 14 years.

Of course, baby-killing leftists won't shed a tear for this woman, and any intimation that her death was abortion-related will bring out the left's murderous daggers. See, "Fred Nile under fire for Facebook post about Charlotte Dawson abortion."

Nothing will stand in the way of the totalitarian left. No contrarian thought. No deviation from the party line. I swear they'll kill you if they could. This woman's dead now from the guilt she suffered alone for over a decade. So much for leftist compassion.

Senator Kelly Ayotte: 'It's Time to Reset the Reset' Policy With Russia

Yeah, Obama needs to "up his game," big time.

At Politico, "Ayotte: Russia reset has failed."

Yahoo Aims to More Deftly Blend Ads With Content

I think we should start a Marissa Meyer termination countdown. I can't remember any good news about Yahoo since she took over as CEO.

In any case, at NYT:

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — To Marissa Mayer, the chief executive of Yahoo, fashion magazines like Vogue and InStyle have achieved the holy grail of advertising.

“The ads in those magazines are as interesting as the photo shoots and the articles,” she said in an interview last week at the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters. “I miss the ads when they are not there. I feel less fulfilled.”

This year, her goal is to start making the ads on Yahoo just as compelling and just as integrated with the news and information people seek on her company’s websites and mobile applications.

One early example: Recipes from Knorr, the soup brand owned by Unilever, are sprinkled around regular articles from Yahoo writers, food magazines and blogs on Yahoo Food, the digital magazine the company started about six weeks ago.

Ms. Mayer, who oversaw Google’s signature search products for several years, also hopes to develop new search tools and ads geared to mobile users — the company’s first steps to innovate in its original business since 2010, when it began a 10-year deal to outsource search to Microsoft.

“We’re not sure that a list of links that people have to pick through is the right experience on the phone, and we’re going to start to play with context, applications, other ways to address those search needs,” she said.

Better, more useful ads would certainly make Yahoo’s 800 million monthly users and its legions of advertisers happier all around.

But for Yahoo, much more is at stake. New ad formats that go beyond the company’s traditional banner and search ads are its best hope of finding fresh sources of revenue, which it badly needs after years of decline.

Yeah, badly.

See AdAge, "Yahoo Slips Behind Google, Facebook and Even Microsoft In Online Ad Share."

Lying Scumbag Susan Rice Has No Regrets on Benghazi Statements

She's such a scumbag liar.

At LAT, "Susan Rice defends 2012 Benghazi comments, warns Russia on Ukraine."

Geopolitical Implications of Conflict in Ukraine

At Der Spiegel, "Chess in a Minefield: The Global Implications of the Ukraine Conflict":

The bloody conflict in Ukraine could trigger yet another confrontation between the West and Russia. Dominance in Europe is at stake on the geopolitical chess board. While Ukraine itself could descend into civil war.

The quote printed in SPIEGEL 33 years ago was a noteworthy one, and still sounds remarkably topical: "We have to ensure that this Soviet empire, when it breaks apart due to its internal contradictions, does so with a whimper rather than a bang." The sentence was spoken by US Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger during an interview conducted in September of 1981.

This week in Ukraine, one of the core regions of that former empire, it is looking very much like a "bang." Thursday in Kiev has seen bloody violence that has cost the lives of dozens amid gunfire and brutal clashes on Independence Square. Hundreds have been wounded, many seriously. The violence comes on the heels of similar battles on Tuesday -- and mark the beginning of what could become an extended and dramatic conflict over the country's future.

Some of those who have traveled to Kiev to view the situation first hand in recent weeks are fully aware of what a "bang" looks like -- US Senator John McCain, 77, for example, a veteran of Vietnam who was shot down in 1967 and spent over two years as a prisoner of war. In December, he stood on the Independence Square stage in Kiev and called out: "People of Ukraine, this is your moment! The free world is with you! America is with you!"
In other words, the Cold War has returned and Moscow is once again the adversary. The only difference is that the weapons have changed.

It is no longer just the association agreement with the European Union that is at stake. Nor is the future of President Viktor Yanukovych, a man surrounded by rumors of corruption, the focus anymore. Rather, geopolitics has taken center stage and the question as to which power centers in Europe and the Eurasia region will be dominant in the future has become paramount. Former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski once compared the region to a chess board. The players, as always, include the US, Russia, the EU and NATO.

Moscow in Checkmate

It's a chess game in a minefield. Just how explosive the country called Ukraine really is became clear from a background interview given by former Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar -- a liberal reformer and friendly to the West -- in 2008, one year before his death. Those wishing to make Ukraine a member of NATO, as was the intention of then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, overlook the fact that it would put Russia in an untenable defensive position, he said. The effort, he added, should be abandoned.

Brzezinski would love to have put Moscow in checkmate. In his book "The Grand Chessboard," he writes that without Ukraine, Russia "would become predominantly an Asian imperial state" at risk of being drawn into conflicts in Central Asia. But if Moscow were able to gain control of Ukraine and its resources, Brzezinski wrote, the Russian Federation would be a "powerful imperial state." He saw danger in a potential "German-Russian collusion" and in the possibility of an agreement between Europe and Russia with the goal of pushing America out of the region.

Essentially, Brzezinski's point of view is one that guides American strategy to this day: The US wants to keep Russia as far away as possible. If the Europeans get involved in Ukraine and harm their relations with Moscow, that is fine with Washington.

Indeed, US Deputy Foreign Minister Victoria Nuland's infamous "Fuck the EU" gaffe, can hardly be seen as a mistake. Rather it is a logical, if somewhat vulgar, expression of America's geopolitical stance.

Continue reading.

U.S. Medal Haul Disappoints in #Sochi

At WSJ, "Medal Tally Lags Behind Winter Games High of 37 in 2010."

Man, these Sochi games were pretty much a downer all around. I didn't watch much after the first few days. Was busy with school, although I wasn't that pumped up to turn on NBC in the evenings. I wonder why?

Ralston College President Stephen Blackwood: Mom's Sandostatin Cancer Treatment Cancelled by #ObamaCare

Well, sadly, my prediction of the left's attack on Julie Boonstra turned out to be all-too-accurate.

So let's hope the vile leftists cut just a tiny bit of slack for Catherine Blackwood, who's been fighting carcinoid cancer since the summer of 2005.

See Stephen Blackwood, at the Wall Street Journal, "ObamaCare and My Mother's Cancer Medicine":

When my mother was diagnosed with carcinoid cancer in 2005, when she was 49, it came as a lightning shock. Her mother, at 76, had yet to go gray, and her mother's mother, at 95, was still playing bingo in her nursing home. My mother had always been, despite her diminutive frame, a titanic and irrepressible force of vitality and love. She had given birth to me and my nine younger siblings, and juggled kids, home and my father's medical practice with humor and grace for three decades. She swam three times a week in the early mornings, ate healthily and never smoked.

And now, cancer? Anyone who's been there knows that a cancer diagnosis is terrifying....

Carcinoid, a form of neuroendocrine cancer, is a terminal disease but generally responds well to treatment by Sandostatin, a drug that slows tumor growth and reduces (but does not eliminate) the symptoms of fatigue, nausea and gastrointestinal dysfunction. My mother received a painful shot twice a month and often couldn't sit comfortably for days afterward.

As with most cancers, one thing led to another. There have been several more surgeries, metastases, bone deterioration, a terrible bout of thyroiditis (an inflammation of the thyroid gland), and much more. But my mother has kept fighting, determined to make the most of life, no matter what it brings. She has an indomitable will and is by far the toughest person I've ever met. But she wouldn't still be here without that semimonthly Sandostatin shot that slows the onslaught of her disease.

And then in November, along with millions of other Americans, she lost her health insurance. She'd had a Blue Cross/Blue Shield plan for nearly 20 years. It was expensive, but given that it covered her very expensive treatment, it was a terrific plan. It gave her access to any specialist or surgeon, and to the Sandostatin and other medications that were keeping her alive.

And then, because our lawmakers and president thought they could do better, she had nothing. Her old plan, now considered illegal under the new health law, had been canceled.

Because the exchange website in her state (Virginia) was not working, she went directly to insurers' websites and telephoned them, one by one, over dozens of hours. As a medical-office manager, she had decades of experience navigating the enormous problems of even our pre-ObamaCare system. But nothing could have prepared her for the bureaucratic morass she now had to traverse.

The repeated and prolonged phone waits were Sisyphean, the competence and customer service abysmal. When finally she found a plan that looked like it would cover her Sandostatin and other cancer treatments, she called the insurer, Humana, HUM +0.57% to confirm that it would do so. The enrollment agent said that after she met her deductible, all treatments and medications—including those for her cancer—would be covered at 100%. Because, however, the enrollment agents did not—unbelievable though this may seem—have access to the "coverage formularies" for the plans they were selling, they said the only way to find out in detail what was in the plan was to buy the plan. (Does that remind you of anyone?)

With no other options, she bought the plan and was approved on Nov. 22. Because by January the plan was still not showing up on her online Humana account, however, she repeatedly called to confirm that it was active. The agents told her not to worry, she was definitely covered.

Then on Feb. 12, just before going into (yet another) surgery, she was informed by Humana that it would not, in fact, cover her Sandostatin, or other cancer-related medications. The cost of the Sandostatin alone, since Jan. 1, was $14,000, and the company was refusing to pay.

The news was dumbfounding. This is a woman who had an affordable health plan that covered her condition. Our lawmakers weren't happy with that because . . . they wanted plans that were affordable and covered her condition. So they gave her a new one. It doesn't cover her condition and it's completely unaffordable...

There's still more at the link.

I think we should all say a prayer for Mrs. Blackwood. It's hard enough fighting a deadly disease like this, but on top of that you've got leftist collectivists and Democrat Party statists who think they know what's best for you, and damned if they won't make your life hell proving it. As President Blackwood remarks at the essay:

Though I'm no expert on ObamaCare (at 10,000 pages, who could be?), I understand that the intention—or at least the rhetorical justification—of this legislation was to provide coverage for those who didn't have it. But there is something deeply and incontestably perverse about a law that so distorts and undermines the free activity of individuals that they can no longer buy and sell the goods and services that keep them alive. ObamaCare made my mother's old plan illegal, and it forced her to buy a new plan that would accelerate her disease and death. She awaits an appeal with her insurer.

Will this injustice be remedied, for her and for millions of others? Or is my mother to die because she can no longer afford the treatment that keeps her alive?

Democrats don't care if she dies. Indeed, the story told here will be waved away by regressive leftists, and President Blackwood and his mother will be demonized as liars and "privileged" sponges who should be paying for their own care (which is how depraved leftists attacked cancer survivor Edie Sundby when she dared speak out against the ObamaCare monstrosity).

This is our world in America today, a grim totalitarian world of Democrat Party repression and inhuman leftist indifference and demonization. God willing the people will rise up against the Obama tyranny soon enough, at the ballot box in November, and by the bullet if that's what it takes in the end. A free people will not long tolerate the jackboot of dictatorship. Americans proved that to the world once over 200 years ago. Perhaps will see the Spirit of '76 rekindled here again soon, not unlike the protesters in Venezuela and Ukraine are doing at this very moment.

Sunday Cartoons

At Flopping Aces, "Sunday Funnies."



Also at Randy's Roundtable, "Friday Nite Funnies," and Reaganite Republican, "Reaganite's SUNDAY FUNNIES."

Cartoon Credit: Legal Insurrection, "Branco Cartoon – Deja vu."

Alice Herz-Sommer, World's Oldest Holocaust Survivor, Dead at 110

An amazing life, living to 110 years. That's something else.

At the Chicago Tribune, "World's oldest Holocaust survivor, Alice Herz-Sommer, dies in UK."

And at London's Daily Mail, "World's oldest known holocaust survivor dies aged 110: Alice, who played piano in concentration camp, appeared in Oscar-nominated short film about her life."

Britain's Leftist Apologists for Pedophilia

On Twitter just now:

DAILY MAIL FRONT PAGE: How much longer can paedophilia apologists stay silent? #skypapers pic.twitter.com/F2k5LRxPJF

— Sky News (@SkyNews) February 23, 2014

And at London's Daily Mail, "The truth about Labour's apologists for paedophilia: Police probe child sex campaign group linked to three top party officials in wake of Savile scandal," and "Apologists for paedophilia: As the Mail exposes more links between senior Labour figures and a vile paedophile group, one man who was abused as a child asks them: why won't you admit you were wrong?"

Another day, another report of criminal leftist depravity. I'll update when Daily Mail has more.

BuzzFeed Alleges Breitbart/Pajamas Media Payola on Ukraine Politics

Naturally, deranged lizard blogger Charles Johnson would pick this up, via Memeorandum.

But let's go right to Rosie Gray at BuzzFeed, "Exclusive: How Ukraine Wooed Conservative Websites":

WASHINGTON — Several conservative bloggers repeated talking points given to them by a proxy group for the Ukrainian government — and at least one writer was paid by a representative of the Ukrainian group, according to documents and emails obtained by BuzzFeed.

The Ukrainian campaign began in the run-up to high-stakes Ukrainian parliamentary elections last year, and sought to convince skeptical American conservatives that the pro-Russian Party of Regions, led by President Viktor Yanukovych, deserved American support. During that period, articles echoing Ukrainian government talking points appeared on leading conservative online outlets, including RedState, Breitbart, and Pajamas Media.

The emails and documents, which include prepackaged quotes from election officials and talking points that some writers copied nearly word-for-word, offer a glimpse into how foreign governments dodge tight Justice Department regulations on foreign propaganda to covertly lobby in the United States: The payments were routed through a front group in Belgium to an American consultant, who has urged writers not to cooperate with a reporter investigating the campaign.

The model resembles a recent stealth campaign in which bloggers were paid by the Malaysian government to write favorable stories, though the Ukraine campaign appears to have involved smaller sums of money.

One of the writers who participated in the campaign, who spoke on the condition of anonymity and because of lingering qualms about the arrangement, they said, described being offered $500 for a blog post praising Ukraine’s ruling Party of Regions. The payment was arranged by George Scoville, a libertarian media strategist, and Scoville’s name was on the check, the source said.

An email from October 26, 2012 shows Scoville inviting writers to join a conference with Mikhail Okhendovskyy of Ukraine’s Central Election Commission. The call was organized by the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine, a Brussels-based group headed by Leonid Khazara, a former senior member of parliament from the pro-Russian Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions. According to its website, it is a “a unique ‘Modern Ukraine’ organisation based in Brussels and operating internationally as an advocate for enhancing EU-Ukraine relations.”

In practical terms, the ECFMU exists to promote Yanukovych and the party — but its nominal independence means that its representatives in Washington do not need to register as foreign agents and make the extensive disclosures required under that program. Instead, the only evidence of its activity comes in the far more relaxed domestic lobbying disclosure law, which shows that the Brussels-based group employs two well-connected Washington lobbying firms, The Podesta Group and Mercury/Clark and Weinstock.

One email from October 29, the day after the election, shows Scoville sending out documents full of exit poll results and prepackaged statements from election observers.

“I just wanted to share the attached documents with you in case you were interested,” Scoville writes. “You’re under no obligation to write anything, but I wanted you to have this info in case you were feeling nostalgic and/or entrepreneurial :)”.

“But in all seriousness, if you could spend a few minutes today tweeting about the results using #ukrainevotes and promoting some of the pieces you wrote, that would be very helpful to us,” Scoville writes.

So far it's just the crazed lizard dolt at Memeorandum, although Boing Boing had the story a couple of days ago, so it's not like the idiot Johnson "broke" the story or anything, the f-king moron.

And hey, I'll believe this story when BuzzFeed posts all the email evidence and the name of the so-called anonymous "writer" making the allegations.

Libel-Free Adolescent Bill Schmalfeldt: 'CEASE AND DESIST'!

You gotta read this post over at the Other McCain, "Bill Schmalfeldt: ‘CEASE and DESIST’!"

The epic loser troll Schmalfeldt posted an open letter demanding that he not be libeled by WJJ Hoge or any of his commenters at Hogewash, to which I responded on Twitter, with apologies to X-Ray Spex, lol.

.@RSMcCain, Lol, Schmalfeldt's a "libel free" adolescent. http://t.co/OjjiQfKJEp

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) February 23, 2014

Professor Lisa Duggan and the Academic Boycott of Israel

I'm getting a kick out of this posting at Israel Matzav, "American Studies Association President-elect holding 'secret' anti-Israel conference at NYU." And following the links takes us to Elder of Ziyon, "ASA's president-elect hosting SECRET anti-Israel conference at NYU (Zionists not welcome)."

Again, it's pretty hilarious. It turns out that Lisa Duggan, who is a Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU's Department of Social and Cultural Analysis (which means its a department of whatever the f-k its professors want to drone on about), has advertised an NYU American Studies Program titled "Circuits of Influence: U.S., Israel, & Palestine." (Clicking around we find Professor Duggan's also affiliated with NYU's Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, which "encourages students to question the meanings of 'male' and 'female,' as well as of sexual norms, in both Western and non-Western societies." Lulz.)

In any case, there's an Eventbrite page where you can buy tickets for the conference, although Professor Duggan's trying to keep the conference on the down low, as can be seen from her Facebook posting:



As noted at Edler of Ziyon:

The conference will have the usual obscene Israel-bashing that one would expect from the ASA,with speakers from Adalah-NY, Students for Justice in Palestine, and "Jewish Voice for Peace."

Indeed, the entire conference seems to be made up to justify the unjustifiable boycott of Israel voted on by the ASA and condemned by hundreds of colleges and universities.

Yeah, well. The same old story, blah blah.

More at Algemeiner, "NYU Prof to Head ASA, Supports Israel Boycott; NY Lawmakers Threaten to Withdraw State Aid," and "Forbes Investigative Journalist Rips NYU President Over ‘Vanilla’ Response to ASA Boycott." No surprise, but it turns out Professor Duggan's a terror-coddler. (And go right to the piece at Forbes, from NYU alumnus and Forbes Contributing Editor Richard Behar, "Open Letter to NYU's President: Why The American Studies Assn.'s Israel Boycott Makes Me Ashamed to Be An Alumnus."

Plus, at Cathy Young argued in November at Newsday:

The boycott’s agenda is to make Israel a pariah state. There has been much debate on whether the blatant double standard of such ostracism is rooted in anti-Jewish bias. The bias here is anti-Western: the Israel-hating left sees Israel as an outpost of Western and American imperialism oppressing a Third World people. However, anti-Israel animus often does overlap with anti-Semitism, as the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights recently noted.

Whatever its motive, the anti-Israel boycott is an affront to the true spirit of both political and intellectual liberalism. This movement should be opposed not only by Israel’s supporters, but also by anyone concerned with the state of the American academy.

As readers know, the public outrage and pushback over the ASA's academic boycott of Israel is ongoing, although this attempt to hold a secret "Circuits of Influence" conference is a new, troubling development. So, folks can go to NYU's page for Leadership and University Administration and follow the page links for the college president and other administrators. I'm going to send them an email in the morning and I'm encouraging readers to do so as well. Let's see if we can shine a spotlight on this secret conference the university is hosting, obviously in violation of the public trust, if not New York state law.

Added: Don't miss William Jacobson, at Legal Insurrection, "Vicious and Deceptive anti-Israel Propaganda Hate Week starts."

Hustler Magazine v. Falwell Turns 26

From Kathy Shaidle, at Pajamas:

When it comes to even the most basic conceptions of free speech and robust public debate, 1988 might as well be 260 years ago, never mind twenty-six.

Kathy's talking about Mark Steyn's ridiculous defense against the morally (and financially) bankrupt climate hoax-ster Michael Mann. Her comparison is to Hustler Magazine's Larry Flint, who prevailed in court over the obviously hapless Jerry Falwell, and she writes:

A lot has changed since 1988.

Before Mark Steyn’s first brushes with the speech-chillers in 2008, I’d naively presumed — having come of age in the seventies and eighties created by Flynt and his fellow liberals (and seen the movie version of his case win great acclaim) — that every smart, right-thinking individual still felt that way.

Instead, I heard an endless stream of idiots — some of them in positions of authority, God help us — drag out today’s cliche of choice, that “you can’t yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.”

I had the pleasure of watching Steyn using his rapier wit and knowledge of American history to crush a Toronto politico who foolishly employed that tired “argument.”

Yet what struck me was how unaffected this moron was by Steyn’s evisceration; he just droned on brainlessly for another minute or so.

(Amusingly, Oliver Wendell Holmes, who coined that idiotic “crowded theater” line, also famously wrote in a pro-eugenics argument that “three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Having watched David Zimmer sputter impotently and ignorantly while he questioned Steyn, I’m reluctantly inclined to agree that there really are altogether too many morons cluttering up the joint…)

Now, back to the Mann situation: one is supposedly guaranteed a jury of one’s peers, which in Steyn’s case is cause enough for pessimism.

But bear in mind that Steyn’s first judge was so stupid that she got the defendants mixed up.

In 1988, Flynt was the “liberal”/good guy and Falwell the “conservative” bad guy.

Today, in brain-dead, conformist, politically correct America, I fear Steyn will be viewed as the “Falwell” of the case even though he’s (technically) the “Flynt.”

Plus it was easy for Larry Flynt to play the outrageous, courageous “free speech” hero, and not just because he was, temperamentally, a daredevil and a brat.

In the first place, he was a millionaire many times over.

More at the link.

F-king leftist morons.

Cuba Sends Troops to Venezuela to Crush Democratic Uprising

This is fascinating, from Ezra Levant on Twitter.

While the world watches the Olympics, Cuba sends troops to put down #Venezuelan democracy uprising: https://t.co/LndgctzADI

— Ezra Levant (@ezralevant) February 23, 2014

And also at Babalú, "Turmoil in Venezuela: Violent repression continues as Cuban troops arrive to aid dictatorship."

Arribo de 4 aviones a terminal auxiliar de Maiquetía procedentes de Cuba. Imagen confiable hoy pic.twitter.com/sDHUqw3cak

— DeivisRamírezMiranda (@deivisramirez) February 22, 2014

And following the links, see Caracas Chronicles, "Gocho Uprising Update."

The Regnerus New Family Structures Study Goes to Court

Folks might remember Professor Mark Regnerus of the University of Texas. A couple of years back he was in the news with his large-N research study finding that children of homosexuals parents did less well socially and educationally than children raised by their parents in intact biological families (IBFs). The left's reaction to this wasn't just to dispute the findings. Monstrous far-left academics and their associations (professional and media) sought to utterly destroy him with professional and criminal penalties. It was a vicious spectacle. See, "Progressives Attack Professor Mark Regnerus Over Same-Sex Parenting Research."

In any case, the Regnerus study is having its day in court. See the New York Times, "Opponents of Same-Sex Marriage Take Bad-for-Children Argument to Court."

Remember, the left's response to criticism, facts, and logic is to destroy any and all opposition. They are vile, vindictive people. You're lucky if you don't have to spend time around them.