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POPSSaul Akinsky & Obama must be related Alinsky studied criminology as a graduate student at the University of Chicago, during which time he became friendly with Al Capone and his mobsters. Ryan Lizza, senior editor of The New Republic, offers a glimpse into Alinsky’s personality: “Charming and self-absorbed, Alinsky would entertain friends with stories -- some true, many embellished -- from his mob days for decades afterward. He was profane, outspoken, and narcissistic, always the center of attention
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POPS "Truth to Power" by Mark Steyn
He came; he saw; he stimulated: “If you accept the premise, and I do, that the United States is the most powerful country in the world, then Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar. That has to be good for American artists.” I suppose so. He could invade somewhere and force the natives to accept degrading roles in NEA-funded performance art. He could take out the Iranian nuclear program by carpet-bombing it with unreadable literary novels. That is, if you “accept the premise” that the United States is the most powerful country in the world. Rocco Landesman may, but it’s not clear, from his actions (or inactions) in Eastern Europe, Iran, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, that the president does. But, even so, it seems an odd pitch to “American artists.” Rocco Landesman, Speaking Goof to Power, isn’t the first Obama groupie to enjoy the kinky frisson of groveling obsequiousness, but he’s set an impressive new standard in public revelation thereof.
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POPSDid Obama get an A for effort? Though the reasoning given for awarding Obama the Nobel Peace Prize is, well, noble, i kind of had the same reaction as expressed in this clip. Seems like he's getting the award for having good intentions. Hopefully the results will match the intentions. If so, then at that time i would think he'd be worthy of this award.
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POPS The Iran Attack Plan Israel would have to contend with the fact that it has consistently had a "red light" from both the Bush and Obama administrations opposing such strikes. Any strike that overflew Arab territory or attacked a fellow Islamic state would stir the ire of neighboring Arab states, as well as Russia, China and several European states. No one knows what specialized weapons Israel may have developed on its own, but Israeli intelligence has probably given Israel good access to U.S., European, and Russian designs for more advanced weapons than the GBU-28. Therefore, the odds are that Israel can have a serious impact on Iran's three most visible nuclear targets and possibly delay Iran's efforts for several years. The story is very different, however, when it comes to destroying the full range of Iranian capabilities. There are no meaningful unclassified estimates of Iran's total mix of nuclear facilities, but known unclassified research, reactor, and centrifuge facilities number . . .
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POPSChief faces sack after 'anti-Semitic' rant verdict Laxton also said “f***ing despicable” while watching the television report and admitted that it was an “unhelpful and gratuitous comment”. Laxton, whose salary after tax is £3,000 a month, was fined £350 at the City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court after District Judge Howard Riddle found him guilty of racially aggravated harassment, a charge he had denied. He was also ordered to pay £500 prosecution costs and a £15 victim surcharge. Mr Knowles told the court that Laxton had completed divorce proceedings that morning and added: “Whatever happens in court is secondary to the effect it will have on his career and his reputation.” The outburst was not premeditated, Mr Knowles said, adding: “It was extraordinarily out of character for Mr Laxton. He used utterly debase comments, but he is not an anti-Semite.” The man is entitled to voice his opinions. he is an expert on the Middle East.
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POPSInternal Treasury Memos: Cap & Tax Could Cost Americans $100 to $200 Billion Annually "This memo tells you it's a tax. Why else are they discussing hundreds of billions of revenue to be taken from the taxpayer?" This leaked memo must be immediately rebuked, people will don white robes and gallop across the countryside. Obama's black. We can't have leaks proving he's lying. It's racist. I condemn that piece of paper with its bigoted numbers for inciting racial hatred. Corrected: I wrote the figures were "far higher" than the numbers Obama admits, but I see now there is no reference to what numbers Obama admits, precisely. So I can't say they're "far" higher. I have corrected that to "higher." posted by Ace
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POPSBirds of a Feather 2 The Census Bureau notified ACORN on Friday in a letter that it is severing all ties with the group for all work having to do with the 2010 census. Since Acorn will get name change, look for a new left wing group called the "Apollo Alliance", to get Census Jobs. http://bit.ly/Apollo_conspiracy A Story of International Politics http://bit.ly/Manchurian_Canidate
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POPS Obama Bowing to the Global Tax Bullies The international bureaucrats who run the OECD’s Fiscal Affairs Committee managed to persuade a hotel to cancel Mr. Mitchell’s reservations and then tried to get him thrown out of the public lobby of the hotel where the meeting was held — as he was quietly meeting with delegations from lower-tax jurisdictions and the press. Fortunately, when Mr. Mitchell and members of the press objected to the bullying tactics of the OECD officials, he finally was allowed to stay. The OECD is supporting the double taxation of capital and trying to quash those jurisdictions that do not levy multiple taxes on savings and investment, i.e., productive capital. Without high levels of productive capital, countries will not grow and new and well-paying jobs will be created only rarely. Taxing capital is not only economically destructive but morally suspect. If the OECD ultimately gets its way, individuals and businesses trying to protect themselves from multiple taxation . . .
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POPSAmish Romance Novels Are A Hot New Genre The explosion of Amish fiction has drawn mixed reactions within Amish communities. Emma Smoker, 39, who was selling homemade pies -- apple, blueberry and shoofly -- in front of Rachel's, said the books don't interest her. "I live the Amish life -- I don't need to read about it," said Mrs. Smoker, who is the sister of store owner Rachel Esh. From what her friends tell her, she added, the books "aren't quite true to life." While there are no religious strictures against contemporary novels, the church has traditionally viewed fiction as distracting and deceitful, says Donald Kraybill, a senior fellow at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies, a religious studies center at Elizabethtown College. Some Amish have nevertheless become avid fans. An Amish woman in Lancaster told Ms. Lewis that "all the women in our church district are reading your books under the covers, literally," Ms. Lewis said. Ms. Brunstetter, who lives in Tacoma, Wash., said several Amish families
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POPSCan Game Theory Predict When Iran Will Get the Bomb? Is Iran going to build a bomb? With the help of his undergraduate class at N.Y.U., he researched the primary power brokers inside and outside the country " anyone with a stake in Iran’s nuclear future. Once he had the information he needed, he fed it into his computer model and had an answer in a few minutes. A tall man with a slab of gray hair, Bueno de Mesquita, who is 62, welcomed me with painstakingly prepared cups of espresso. Then he pulled out his beat-up I.B.M. laptop " so old that the lettering on the A, S, D and E keys was worn off " and showed me a spreadsheet that summarized Iran’s future.The spreadsheet included almost 90 players. Some were people, like the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei; others were groups, like the U.N. Security Council and Iran’s “religious radicals.” Next to each player, a number represented one variable in Bueno de Mesquita’s model: the extent to which a player wanted Iran to have the ability
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POPS Eric Holder's Hidden Agenda Recall that the president chose to install former Yale Law School dean Harold Koh as his State Department's legal adviser. Koh is the country's leading proponent of transnationalism. He is now a major player in the administration's deliberations over international law and cooperation. Naturally, membership in the International Criminal Court, which the United States has resisted joining, is high on Koh's agenda. The ICC claims worldwide jurisdiction, even over nations that do not ratify its enabling treaty, notwithstanding that sovereign consent to jurisdiction is a bedrock principle of international law. As a result, there have always been serious concerns that the ICC could investigate and try to indict American political, military, and intelligence officials for actions taken in defense of our country. Here it's crucial to bear in mind that the United States (or at least the pre-Obama United States) has not seen eye-to-eye with Europe on significant . . .
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POPSWhy won't opponents of same-sex marriage make predictions on the record?
More: You would think they would react like Albert Pujols when presented with a hanging curveball. Yet none was prepared to forecast what would happen in same-sex marriage states versus other states. Maggie Gallagher, president of the Virginia-based Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, has declared that losing this battle "means losing American civilization." But she politely declined my invitation. Stanley Kurtz, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, has been equally dire… When it came time to offer more specific predictions, Kurtz was missing in action. I e-mailed him twice and left a message on his office voicemail. After two weeks, I'm beginning to lose hope. The only person willing to talk was David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values…When I talked with him, though, he declined to predict what tangible bad things will occur in same-sex marriage states.
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POPSObama Joker Artist Unmasked: A Fellow Chicagoan On Jan. 18, Alkhateeb uploaded the image to photo-sharing site Flickr (shown at right). Over the next two months, he amassed just a couple thousand hits, he said. Then the counter exploded after a still-anonymous rogue famously found his image, digitally removed the references to Time Magazine, captioned the picture with the word "socialism" and hung printed copies around L.A., making headlines. Alkhateeb says he wasn't actively trying to cover his tracks, but he did want to lay low. He initially had concerns about ... ... connecting his name with anything critical of the president -- especially living in Chicago, where people are "very, very liberal," he said. "After Obama was elected, you had all of these people who basically saw him as the second coming of Christ," Alkhateeb said. "From my perspective, there wasn't much substance to him." "I abstained from voting in November," he wrote in an e-mail. "Living in Illinois, my vote means close to nothing . . .
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POPSGOP sees California as locus for party revival - but is this realistic? More: But veteran political observers say grassroots firepower and funding - even with a millionaire candidate - won't transform California into a Republican Party comeback engine in 2010. "Of all the places one could imagine ... if there is going to be a Republican renaissance, it's not going to be in California," Rosenberg said. "California's demographics have changed a great deal since the days of Ronald Reagan and Pat Brown," he noted, particularly with fast-growing Asian and Latino electorates both trending Democratic. "That shift has been a brand shift, ... and it will be difficult for any individual to reverse that tide," he said. In the previous gubernatorial election, "it took the Terminator for (the GOP) to win it - and this will be a harder climate."
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POPSInsidious Form of Thought Control a la 1984 In Near Future . . . lines when critics of Barack Obama appeared on radio call in shows. The "authoritarian tactics being employed by the Obama campaign to stifle and intimidate its critics" were on full display. Of course, the specter of the Fairness Doctrine being passed by Congress is also another card in the deck meant to chill criticism of Barack Obama and his fellow travelers. Now comes a more insidious form of thought control a la 1984 Cass Sunstein, a Harvard Law professor who has been appointed to a shadowy post that will grant him powers that are merely mind-boggling, explicitly supports using the courts to impose a "chilling effect" on speech that might hurt someone's feelings. He thinks that the bloggers have been rampaging out of control and that new laws need to be written to corral them. Advance copies of Sunstein's new book, "On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done," have gone out to reviewers ahead of its September . . .
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POPSThe EPA Report Obama Didn't Want You To Know About On March 12, Carlin’s director, Al McGartland, forbade him from having “any direct communication” with anyone outside his office about his study. “There should be no meetings, emails, written statements, phone calls, etc.” On March 16, Carlin urged his superiors to forward his work to EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, which runs the agency’s climate change program. A day later, McGartland dismissed Carlin and showed his true, politicized colors: “The time for such discussion of fundamental issues has passed for this round. The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision… I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office.” Contrary comments, in other words, would interfere with the “process” of ramming the EPA’s endangerment finding through.
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POPSIf You Can Afford A Cell Phone, You Can Afford Health Insurance Related, from today's Investor's Business Daily: "Many Americans are uninsured by choice," wrote Dr. David Gratzer in his book "The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care." Gratzer cited a study of the "non-poor uninsured" from the California HealthCare Foundation. "Why the lack of insurance (among people who own homes and computers)?" Gratzer asks. "One clue is that 60% reported being in excellent health or very good health." The uninsured are not always the same people, and many are without coverage only for a relatively short time. Devon Herrick, senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis, notes that "Being uninsured is a transitory state, since most uninsured Americans are only without coverage for a short time." http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=479724
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POPSRight-wing media and the fringe: A growing history of violence (and denial)
While right-wing media are certainly not legally culpable for any recent attacks, they are responsible for promoting a culture of fear, paranoia, and violence that is anti-government in the extreme -- a culture in which extremists, including von Brunn and Richard Poplawski, who fatally shot three Pittsburgh police officers, were apparently immersed. Poplawski was convinced that the Obama administration was going to take away his guns. Even though no evidence of such a policy exists, right-wing commentators and news organizations made the claim repeatedly before the shooting and have continued to do so since. Predictably, conservative media figures responded to the museum shooting by attempting to shift attention away from themselves and onto political liberals and even President Obama himself. On June 10, the day of the museum shooting, financial analyst and radio host Jim Lacamp said on Fox News that "we have an administration that's really done a lot of class warfare, a lot of cla
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POPSCharles Krauthammer Wins Breindel Award for Excellence in Journalism Breindel, a former editorial page editor of the New York Post and senior vice president of the News Corporation, died of liver complications in 1998. Past winners of the award created in his honor include Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal and Max Boot, now a senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations. "If we look at the past winners, it's for years now honored people are swimming upstream rather than taking the easy way down, politically and ideologically speaking," Krauthammer said. "It's a special award."
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POPS Thomas Sowell Thomas, I said two years ago, I said look, they're going to go for the car companies and the airlines and for the energy industry. They're going to go for the financial industry. There was like four of them that I lined up, and I said we're going down this fascist road. I don't know why people aren't marching in front of the Capitol or surrounding the Capitol with their lawn chairs and just saying you ain't leaving until you change all this nonsense. What's it going to take? SOWELL: Well to do that, they would have to sink. And this whole personality cult has caught on in such a way that it is going to be a while before people start thinking. It is a question of how big of a calamity is it going to take before they snap out of it.
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POPSGovernment's Current Role in Business is 'Route' to Fascism Sowell argued it would take a “calamity” for people to realize that fascism is taking place – the issue being just how big it would be before the public could connect the dots. “Well to do that, they would have to think,” Sowell explained. “And this whole personality cult has caught on in such a way that it is going to be a while before people start thinking. It is a question of how big of a calamity is it gonna take before they snap out of it.” It didn't start with Obama.
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POPSAmerican kills 5 fellow Soldiers The suspect had been disarmed after an incident at the center but returned with another weapon, according to a senior military official in Washington, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation into the shootings was ongoing.
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