Sunday, February 17, 2013

Upworthy — or, How we are losing the internet to lowest of low information young liberals

Legal Insurrection  With a hat tip to Christy Waters at Conservative Bloggers on Facebook.
"I previously wrote about how BuzzFeed Politics has combined “the culture” and savvy crafting into a highly effective tool for undermining Republicans with subtle and not-so-subtle mockery.  “Look at the goofy cat, look at the goofy celeb, look at the goofy Republican” is more dangerous to us than a 5000-word article in The New York Times Sunday Magazine.
"To follow up on that theme, I happened upon a website called Upworthy, which had one its posts run at HuffPo, Elizabeth Warren Asks The Most Obvious Question Ever, Stumps A Bunch Of Bank Regulators.
"The post was so wrong on substance, I just had to click over to the source."
....
Here is where the site has appeal to Obama voters:
"Upworthy is the fastest growing website and already receives millions of visits a month despite being less than one year old, and has over 55 thousand Twitter followers.  It recently received $4 million in venture capital funding.
"Upworthy is not interested in deep thinking, or you:"

Next comes the mention of a "push-poll", which I find irritating even when they come from conservatives:
...."The first thing to note is that when you click on the homepage link to the post, an anti-NRA poll pops up.  It’s the equivalent of a push poll, delivering a political message in the form of a poll.  The “I Agree” button already is highlighted, so that the reader does not even need to think through the already biased question.  How long before Upworthy runs a post about the overwhelming demand that Congress “stand up to the NRA”?"
(Emphasis added)
"There is nothing like Upworthy or BuzzFeed on the right.  The closest we have come is Twitchy, Michelle Malkin’s brilliant website.
"Are you surprised that Obama won the youth vote even though his policies are a complete disaster for the young?
"We are losing the fight to the lowest of low information voters, who are pushed toward a liberal agenda by very smart and talented people who understand the power of social media in a way we don’t."

Good News: Delay Of ObamaCare’s Launch More Likely

Solid Principles Blog "Health Care: Now that ObamaCare appears unstoppable, the question is can it be delayed?
"Thanks to bureaucratic bumbling combined with the law’s massive complexity, delay appears to be increasingly inevitable.
....
"But the result will be utter chaos if the administration tries to get it started with a bunch of half-baked exchanges run by incompetent bureaucrats.
"No wonder Democrats — who stand to lose the most if this thing blows up — are growing increasingly agitated as the ObamaCare clock rapidly ticks down.
"Republicans need to seize on this and start pushing to scrub the launch. ObamaCare is unworkable."

 

Dozens of pro-Dorner protesters rally at LAPD HQ

We have not yet seen a poll of whom these people voted for in the November elections.
Yahoo! News  The 33-year-old has already inspired a burgeoning subculture of followers. While most don't condone killing, they see him as an outlaw hero who raged against powerful forces of authority, and some even question whether he really died.
"Tributes include a ballad titled "El Matapolicias," or "The Police Killer," penned by a Mexican crooner with lyrics paying homage to Dorner, and a YouTube clip showing excerpts from a video game titled "Christopher Dorner's Last Stand Survival Game" whose opening frame declares him "A True American Hero." "

Fugitive’s final hours retraced  I deleted the video because I got tired of hearing the ad play every time the Tunnel Wall opened up.

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Our national press doing what we know they will do

Instapundit  STACY MCCAIN: “Times change. Back in the day, the Washington Post exposed corrupt cover-ups. Nowadays, they’re active participants in the cover-up. Meanwhile, the guy who originally broke the story, Matthew Boyle continues covering the Menendez scandal at Breitbart.com.”
Plus, an illustration.
Watergate: Media Desperate to Destroy Rubio  "There's a longer game at work here, as well. This is also about the media inflicting as much damage as possible on Rubio before 2016. He's almost certain to run for president, and the sooner the media can take him out, the more they can relax and start writing their Historical First Woman President pieces."
The MSM is fertilizing the soil for Hillary?

Cal Thomas: 'It’s Not About Rubio Drinking Water, It’s About the Media Drinking the Kool-Aid for Obama'   "Earlier when the subject of the discussion was the media's reaction to President Obama's State of the Union address, Thomas said, "As I wrote in a column this week thinking of no higher authority than myself to quote, the president’s contribution to climate change apparently is recycling old ideas. I mean, the media are so deep in the tank for this guy that if they came up they'd suffer from the bends.""


CNN Anchor Asks If Incoming Asteroid Caused By 'Global Warming'... Seriously?   Neal Boortz is positive this lady is an Obama voter
If Deb Feyerick isn’t an ObamaVoter I’m a pickled Peking Duck.


 

Scalia calls State of the Union speech ‘a childish spectacle’

American Bar Association  "This year, Scalia explained his decision to stay away in a speech Tuesday evening sponsored by the Smithsonian Associates, the Associated Press reports. “It has turned into a childish spectacle. I don’t want to be there to lend dignity to it,” he said."
....
"The other justices who stayed away were Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., according to The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times."

Hat tip to Althouse, which contained this comment:
Mogget said...
The comparison between Justice Scalia and Mr. Biden, who tends to applaud like a seal hoping for fish, is especially instructive.

Friday, February 15, 2013

Krauthammer; In defense of Obama’s drone war

Charles Krauthammer   His main point: this is not a law-enforcement issue; it is war against those who take up arms against the US and - in case anyone cares - I fully support Mr. Obama in this regard.  But this makes one abhor all the more Obama and Holder's attempts to criminalize the Bush administration for their interrogation methods of terrorists  TD

"The nation’s vexation over the morality and legality of President Obama’s drone war has produced a salutary but hopelessly confused debate. Three categories of questions are being asked. They must be separated to be clearly understood.
Mr. Krauthammer proceeds to discuss each of the following questions in turn:
1. By what right does the president order the killing by drone of enemies abroad? What criteria justify assassination? ....
2. But Awlaki was no ordinary enemy. He was a U.S. citizen. By what right does the president order the killing by drone of an American? Where’s the due process? ....
3. Who has the authority to decide life-and-death targeting?
....
"Now, for those who believe that the war on terror is not war but law enforcement, (a) I concede that they will find the foregoing analysis to be useless and (b) I assert that they are living on a different and distant planet.
"For us earthlings, on the other hand, the case for Obama’s drone war is strong. Pity that his Justice Department couldn’t make it."

Remember who the president considers the real enemies:
 

Diming us to death

D.L. Hammack  "During the State of the Union address, as well as many other speeches he's given over the past four years, this President emphatically continues to state that his programs - his investments in America - "should not add one single dime to the deficit".
"Through tears, I watched the SOTU speech and when I heard this statement repeated once again, I was reminded of the scene in the movie Blazing Saddles during which, a posse was riding out after their man.  Coming upon a makeshift toll bridge, the posse stops.  The sheriff then yells out for "someone to go back to town and get a  $#!+  load of dimes.["]
"That, in a nutshell, is America today.  This country, and all of its spending issues, is merely a posse looking for a whole lot of dimes to get across Obama's toll bridge!"

What “medical research” will look like in the age of Obamacare

More reasons to fear today's Democrats and Obama.

Your cancer research funding at work (attacking the Tea Party)
"It is so stupid, and such an abuse of taxpayer funding, that one would have hoped it would die in the laboratory, but it was just the sort of crackpot theory to which the left-blogosphere inevitably would be drawn.  And it has.
"But since I don’t have world enough and time, I’ll quote from the post by Hans Bader (a sometimes guest contributor to Legal Insurrection and College Insurrection) at Openmarket.org, Shades Of McCarthyism: Federal Government Funds Smear Campaigns On Tea Party, Kochs:

"But Al Gore trumpets the study, relying on its taxpayer-funded status to buttress its credibility:
A new study by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institute of Medicine reveals that the Tea Party Movement was planned over a decade ago by groups with ties to the tobacco and fossil fuel industries. The movement was not a spontaneous populist uprising, but rather a long-term strategy to promote the anti-science, anti-government agenda of powerful corporate interests.

 See the demagoguery aimed at the Koch Brothers and conservatives
Political Cartoons by Glenn Foden

Some Friday Obatoons

H2Obama   ..."All of which makes us think that simply taking a sip of water during a brilliant speech isn't much of a crime.
 Maybe the mainstream media should actually try it sometime. It could make a nice break from the president's Kool-Aid.
Political Cartoons by Jerry Holbert
 Political Cartoons by Michael Ramirez
 
 

How Obama's SOTU Hid His Foreign Policy Disasters

By Barry Rubin in Yid with Lid 
“From the coalitions we’ve built to secure nuclear materials, to the missions we’ve led against hunger and disease, from the blows we’ve dealt our enemies, to the enduring power of our moral example, America is back. Anyone who tells you otherwise, anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”
"Think about the kind of mental construct that could produce this paragraph, which is unintentionally revealing. It shows Obama’s pattern of either refusing to acknowledge legitimate dissent (all the experts agree with me) and that he knows best (Israel doesn’t know what’s good for itself).

"Yes, Mr. President, a lot of people around the world don’t think that America is back or that it still protects their back. And they do know what they are talking about and can cite many specific examples from your administration." 
Political Cartoons by Chip Bok
Can you tell convince us that this man is not a liar of the first magnitude? How can a press with integrity not question this man. After all, didn't they tell us during the Bush administration that it was the job of the press to be skeptical of those running the country?
I have a left-wing relative who can say only this of Obama's presidency:
It's a tired discussion. He was elected and will serve his time in office. You have you(sp) opinions. I have no interest in changing them. Thankfully for this country it is a minority opinion.
Lest Obama claim the US is respected around the world:
From Iran: Iranian Speaker: Era of US Hegemony Over 
Larijani added that today the world Muslims are standing on the threshold of great changes. He said that United States and the Zionist regime have run out of their tricks to weaken the Muslim world.
In relevant remarks in May 2012, Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei said that developments in the West display that the world's arrogant powers are definitely on the verge of collapse.

Just because we're paranoid since 2008 doesn't mean Obama isn't out to get us.

UPDATED: Meteor explodes over Russian Urals, injuring 950 – live updates

Global climate change suspected as the cause.

UK Guardian  Regional governor reports more than 950 injured
• Dramatic pictures show meteor streaking through sky
• Unclear whether it was a single meteor or shower
Read our latest news story on the meteor
Read the latest blog summary
Video here. Sorry that the commercial you have to first endure is longer than the clip, but I thought it was worth the wait.

JAWA Report has several videos 

There is an asteroid passing near earth soon and this may be a part of that which broke off. 
"Given that many asteroids have large boulders held by weak gravity and also these events close proximity, I'm speculating that 2012-DA14 could have many companion objects in its orbit, possibly from a prior collision. Obviously the public statements of no danger at all were less than accurate, although we know the large asteroid will not strike Earth. Its possible there are other unknown objects."
This article says it was not related to the asteroid

MSNBC said this is caused by old, tired Republican policies. President Obama will respond to the incident as soon as his work day begins.

UPDATE: Sonic boom caused by meteorite hurtling above Russian town at 33,000mph smashes buildings and injures 1,000 people before the space rock crashes into frozen lake 
Unexpected sight: A terrifying meteorite shower left a thousand people injured, buildings devastated and the mobile network wiped out when it hit Russia this morning
More here.  And here.