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Can the Working Class Be Saved?
CHARLES MURRAY’S “Coming Apart,” the book that’s launched a thousand arguments this winter, is a brilliant work with an exasperating conclusion. What’s brilliant is Murray’s portrait, rich in data and anecdote, of the steady breakdown of what he calls America’s “founding virtues” — thrift and industriousness, fidelity and parental responsibility, piety and civic engagement — within America’s working class, and the personal and communal wreckage that’s ensued.
What’s exasperating is what the author suggests policy makers can do about the social crisis: in essence, nothing.
Or at least nothing realistic. Instead, Murray argues that our leaders should embrace his own libertarian convictions, scrap all existing government programs (and the dependency and perverse incentives they create) and replace them with a universal guaranteed income. This is a fascinating idea; it’s also fantastically impractical, and entirely divorced from American political realities. Which means that it’s divorced from any possibility of actually addressing the crisis that Murray so vividly describes.
That said, much of the criticism that “Coming Apart” has received from liberals is exasperating as well. Murray’s critics accuse him of essentially blaming the victim: the social breakdown he described may be real enough, they allow, but it’s an inevitable consequence of an economic system that Republicans have rigged to benefit the rich. In the liberal view, there’s nothing wrong with America’s working class that can’t be solved by taxing the wealthy and using the revenue to weave a stronger safety net.
Read MORE.
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Franklin Graham: I “Assume” Obama is Christian
SCOTUS To Rule On Affirmative Action Might be nice if they said no more affirmative action, not just for colleges, but for everything in the USA.
Newt: Obama the most dangerous president in modern American history
NATO Commander Apologizes for Soldiers’ Handling of Korans in Afghanistan Why are we always apologizing to the freakng islamics? Screw them and the hell with their book! These are people who burn churches, crosses and bibles and NEVER apologize to anyone!
How To Become A Middle Eastern Nut Job Great take on the above story on koran burning and all.
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(Daily Mail) — It is the fear of every party guest, turning up in an outfit not suited to the dress code.
And unfortunately for Hillary Clinton, her slip up was witnessed by top government officials from across the globe.
Wearing a lime green shirt, the Secretary of State was placed in the middle of the foreign ministers – all dressed in crisp white shirts – for a G20 ‘family photo’ in Los Cabos, Mexico.
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The word RACISM has no meaning if this is NOT racist!
Can you imagine if George Bush, or some other white president, had created an ad like this asking all whites to join together to help him get elected. The left and blacks would have gone ballistic and screamed racism. This is certainly the same thing only in reverse. And this is from an individual that is supposed to be the president of everybody!! What a joke.
(again, the republican party should be ranting and raving and making damn sure this is kept in front of ALL people! IMHO)
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“Propulsion,” the nine-year-old says as he leads his dad through the gates of the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “I just want to see the propulsion stuff.”
A young woman guides their group toward a full-scale replica of the massive Saturn V rocket that brought America to the moon. As they duck under the exhaust nozzles, Kenneth Wilson glances at his awestruck boy and feels his burden beginning to lighten. For a few minutes, at least, someone else will feed his son’s boundless appetite for knowledge.
Then Taylor raises his hand, not with a question but an answer. He knows what makes this thing, the biggest rocket ever launched, go up. And he wants—no, he obviously needs—to tell everyone about it, about how speed relates to exhaust velocity and dynamic mass, about payload ratios, about the pros and cons of liquid versus solid fuel. The tour guide takes a step back, yielding the floor to this slender kid with a deep-Arkansas drawl, pouring out a torrent of Ph.D.-level concepts as if there might not be enough seconds in the day to blurt it all out. The other adults take a step back too, perhaps jolted off balance by the incongruities of age and audacity, intelligence and exuberance.
As the guide runs off to fetch the center’s director—You gotta see this kid!—Kenneth feels the weight coming down on him again. What he doesn’t understand just yet is that he will come to look back on these days as the uncomplicated ones, when his scary-smart son was into simple things, like rocket science.
MORE.
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15 Secrets the Emergency Room Staff Won’t Tell You
This insider information from doctors, nurses and paramedics will astonish you–and could save your life.
View the Slideshow
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She knows we are not the Land of the Free!
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Japanese fart scrolls prove that human art peaked centuries ago
Approximately 200-400 years ago during Japan’s Edo period, an unknown artist created what is easily the most profound demonstration of human aesthetics ever committed to parchment. I am referring to He-Gassen a.k.a. ??? a.k.a. “the fart war.” In this centuries-old scroll, women and men blow each other off the page with typhoon-like flatulence. Toss this in the face of any philistine who claims that art history is boring.
Gassy competitions weren’t limited to the scenes of He-Gassen (which is hilariously named in retrospect). Fart wars were also used to express displeasure at the encroaching European influence in Edo Japan — artists would depict Westerners being blown home on thunderous toots.
Know that the below scenes contain more than a few disrobed body parts, but it’s nothing worse than what you see in your average art museum (save for the roiling cyclones of rump mist, that is). You can read the full He-Gassen at Waseda University. And for more old-school blue humor, see these examples of ancient graffiti.
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Breitbart:’The most sinister screenwriter could not invent “Fast & Furious”
Please support Kansans in their efforts to ban Sharia (Islamic) Law
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“Today I’m pledging to cut the deficit that we inherited by half by the end of my first term in office.” — President Barack Obama, February 23, 2009
Three years ago, Barack Obama promised to cut the deficit by half. He has failed. Not only has he failed, he has made it worse.
First, let’s address Obama’s claim that he “inherited” the deficit. As you can see in the numbers provided by the Office of Management and Budget, the deficits under President Bush peaked in 2004, and than began to decline. The budget deficit in 2007 – the last budget approved by the Republican Congress before Nancy Pelosi became speaker – was $160 billion. When the Democrats took over, the deficit exploded. So, yes, Barack Obama inherited a huge deficit from the Democrats in Congress.
Show them this: When those lefties say it is Bush’s Fault!
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One thing I’ve learned in the year I have spent tracking General Motors cum Government Motors (GM) – and all its Crony Socialist, green non-energy “energy”, flammable absurdities – is the fact that the car media are every bit the Leftist open-channel steno pool as are the political media.
And with President Barack Obama running for reelection in large part on the utterly failed “success” of the $85 billion auto bailout, the car and political media have by now achieved fully melded fusion.
The examples are myriad.
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The press in parrot-unison hail Obama for having “saved” the auto industry.
But always somehow fail to report that we have lost (at least) $23.6 billion on the (mis-ad)venture.
Or that Obama handed an additional $68 billion of our coin – to two companies with a combined market value of around $8 billion. How’s that for new math?
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The press in parrot-unison back Obama’s excoriation of Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney for suggesting GM and Chrysler file for bankruptcy.
But always somehow fail to report that Obama…had GM and Chrysler file for bankruptcy. Just as Romney recommended. But Obama did so only after handing them an additional $68 billion of our money. Which is not at all like what Romney suggested.
Correct me if I (and Romney) are wrong, but GM and Chrysler could have gone bankrupt – for free. Companies and people do it all the time – with especial frequency here in the Age of Obama.
Read the article here.
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Yes, CATS do rule the internet!
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The UK woman who has two vaginas has attracted the attention of a Los Angeles-based film production company. Hazel Jones, 27, has the condition uterus didelphys, where she has two wombs and two cervixes.
Vivid Entertainment CEO Steven Hirsch, wrote to Miss Jones offering her $1 million and a flight to Los Angeles with first class accommodation if she decided to star in one of Hirsch’s movies. The blonde High Wycombe woman told ITV’s This Morning programme she was comfortable with having the condition, despite the fact she had to effectively lose her virginity twice.
Mr Hirsch’s Californian-based company became the first studio to introduce celebrity sex films, showing footage of Pamela Anderson and then-husband Tommy Lee and Kim Kardashian. They have even offered reprieved Amanda Knox a career in the porn industry as well as Casey Anthony a part in the industry almost as soon as she was found not guilty in the murder trial of her daughter Caylee Anthony.
MORE.
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Some interesting events have been transpiring in Georgia over the last few weeks. At least, that is, in the right wing blogosphere’s view — the mainstream media orchestrated a complete blackout. And it wasn’t because big media missed the show, since I personally saw them holding the spotlights and cameras. The footage was simply left on the cutting room floor.
Georgia is home to some brave citizens who dared to challenge, under state law, President Obama’s constitutional eligibility to run for a second term. The three cases stipulated that Obama was not qualified as a “natural born” citizen because his father was not a US citizen. As reported here on American Thinker in a series of columns, the administrative judge found for the defendant, and last week, Georgia’s Secretary of State Brian Kemp upheld the ruling — that Obama’s name should appear on Georgia’s 2012 ballot.
That decision was rendered even though Obama and his attorney, Michael Jablonski, failed to respond to a valid subpoena, and neither appeared at the January 26 hearings. In the initial stages of the challenges, Jablonski filed motions to dismiss, which were denied. The day before the hearings, Jablonski delivered a defiant letter, over Judge Michael Malihi’s head, to the secretary of state, warning that neither he nor Obama would attend. Neither the judge nor Kemp seemed to mind, however. Nor did the media.
As a witness to the hearings, I fully expected the mainstream media to report on the events with the usual “birther” ridicule, but I was astonished to find virtually no coverage at all. Perhaps because the challenges highlighted the less sensational points of statutory construction, judicial precedent, and constitutional law — aspects of “birtherism” that do not fit the mainstream narrative of crazy “birthers” and conspiratorial theories of a Kenyan birthplace.
Or maybe — the media did not want to draw attention to the disconcerting fact that Obama and his defense team turned their backs on legal procedure and the judiciary of a state.
Read the article here.
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Author: barenakedislam
FBI Director Mueller secretly met on February 8 at FBI headquarters with a coalition of groups including various IslamoFascist and militant Arabic groups who in the past have defended Hamas and Hizballah. At this meeting, the FBI revealed that it had removed more than 1000 presentations and curricula on Islam from FBI offices around the country that was deemed “offensive to Muslims.”
Investigative Project The FBI did not reveal what criteria was used to determine why material was considered “offensive” but knowledgeable law enforcement sources have told the IPT that it was these radical groups who made that determination. Moreover, numerous FBI agents have confirmed that from now on, FBI headquarters has banned all FBI offices from inviting any counter-terrorist specialists who are considered “anti-Islam” by Muslim Brotherhood front groups.
Read the article here.
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Does Michelle Obama really over-satiate herself on adipose-inducing feasts while lecturing kids to clean up their diets?
Yes, according to the most scientific study to date.
Obviously intending to counter Michelle’s critics, food writer Marian Burros, working for POLITICO, treated herself to lunch and/or dinner at “the 33 or more restaurants in the Washington area” where Michelle has grazed in Washington since her husband took office.
Can you imagine? Such diligence and sacrifice.
The result is a classic unintended scientific finding. Burros appears to have set out to prove that Mrs. Obama eats like an undernourished wild rabbit, citing the “vitriol” poured on her concerning her food habits by “anti-Obama blogs.”
In fact, Burros finds – though she doesn’t acknowledge it – that the excess weight Michelle is usually carrying around was not put there by a mysterious and unwelcome Act of God.
She eats poorly.
Burros discovers and celebrates that Michelle does eat vegetables. But that’s like saying a murderer sometimes commits burglaries. The problem is with Michelle’s core diet, much of which seems to be fried, sitting on a bone, or infested with sucrose.
Here at White House Dossier, we have a little fun with Michelle’s marked proclivity to overeat and overeat and serve unhealthy food to guests again and again, while pointing out the hypocrisy of her simultaneously telling others how to eat.
Not since Richard Simmons’s paunch protruded over his skimpy shorts has a worse Apostle of the path to health presented themselves to the public.
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Here is something that the republican party should run, replacing the phrase “the Bush Administration” with the “Obama Administration.”
Go HERE.
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Went to the gym this morning (that is now a normal thing for myself and my wife, go each morning, excepting sundays) and I will tell you, there is nothing at that gym remotely like the following:
Affirmative Action has to go!
Before I get into the subject at hand, I have to mention just ONE instance of this blog getting a backlink from another blog. I do not go out and actively find blogs and say, want to exchange links? Nor do I buy links. I have found that when I write up something or post a good link, if I link directly back to the source blog, I get at the least a ping back, but more and more often I get a nice backlink. As in this blog I just put up a picture of the finished product and a link back to the blog for the recipe. You can see the original post here, http://iowadawg.com/will-this-come-to-past-in-the-usa/. In that post is a picture of: Ready-to-mix portable hot-chocolate sticks, complete with mini-marshmallows. Just dip in hot milk and stir! And if you go to the link, you will see at the bottom a nice link back to my post! Kudos to blogs who do this!!
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With all the talk about “disparities” in innumerable contexts, there is one very important disparity that gets remarkably little attention — disparities in the ability to create wealth. People who are preoccupied, or even obsessed, with disparities in income are seldom interested much, or at all, in the disparities in the ability to create wealth, which are often the reasons for the disparities in income.
In a market economy, people pay us for benefiting them in some way — whether we are sweeping their floors, selling them diamonds or anything in between. Disparities in our ability to create benefits for which others will pay us are huge, and the skills required can develop early — or sometimes not at all.
[snip]
Gross inequalities in skills and achievements have been the rule, not the exception, on every inhabited continent and for centuries on end. Yet our laws and government policies act as if any significant statistical difference between racial or ethnic groups in employment or income can only be a result of their being treated differently by others.
Nor is this simply an opinion. Businesses have been sued by the government when the representation of different groups among their employees differs substantially from their proportions in the population at large. But, no matter how the human race is broken down into its components — whether by race, sex, geographic region or whatever — glaring disparities in achievements have been the rule, not the exception.
Anyone who watches professional basketball games knows that the star players are by no means a representative sample of the population at large.
[snip]
Yet these and numerous other disparities in achievement are resolutely ignored by those whose shrill voices denounce disparities in rewards, as if these disparities are somehow suspicious at best and sinister at worst.
Higher achieving groups — whether classes, races or whatever — are often blamed for the failure of other groups to achieve. Politicians and intellectuals, especially, tend to conceive of social questions in terms that allow them to take on the role of being on the side of the angels against the forces of evil.
Read the article here.
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Then we have this raving liberal nut, Chris Matthews, otherwise known as Christine for the way he bends over for Obama. Must of been not enough news to get him excited about, so he makes up (as usual) his own brand of liberal shit. This time coming down on Newt Gingrich for the way he said JUAN. hahahahah,,,listen to the idiot…
See, this is what the liberals love to do, take something and make something out of it and then lie like hell!
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Newt: Palestinians must give up ‘right of return’ before negotiating peac…
This is an excellent clip! Herman Cain should watch this and take note of how Newt answers these two questions so….well, awesomely.
Newt is asked two questions, the first being if he would ever support a Muslim for president in the future and the second on what he believes should be done with the ‘invented’ Palestinian people . Quite frankly, he nails them both.
Go HERE for the video.
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TURKEY and U.S. STATE DEPT seething over Rick Perry’s call to kick Turkey out of NATO for its increasingly IslamoFascist government
Can’t you just see it? Hillary Clinton prostrating herself in front of the Turkish Ambassador, trying to pretend that Rick Perry’s remarks about Turkey were something other than a statement of fact.
Read MORE.
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Pelosi Begins Backing Away From Occupy Wall Street Fanatics…..
by sundancecracker, The Conservative Treehouse
Last week Debbie Wasserman Schultz (DNC Chair) made a ridiculous charge about the tone and discourse of incivility being created by the Tea Party. No one challenged her with the fact that almost 6,000 Occupy Wall Street people have been arrested for Rape, assault, Murder, Arson, Sexual assault, Terrorism, Use of explosives, Child sexual assault, Child prostitution, Drug abuses, and dozen more horrific acts of violence. 6,000 arrests.
With that fact based understanding, it really did seem silly that Debbie W Schultz would label the Tea Party as “uncivil”. Schultz was actually laughed at for her rabid stupidity, and the progs put her back into her kennel for a while to stop her from providing more ammunition for people to rightfully ridicule Democrats.
Read the article here.
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Via Defcon Hill:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Israel’s parliament Monday that the current sanctions against Iran were not going to stop its nuclear program.
Speaking to the Israeli Knesset’s Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee, Netanyahu said stronger sanctions against Iran’s central bank and oil exports were needed to halt its nuclear ambitions.
“As long as there will not be effective sanctions on Iran’s central bank and oil industry, there won’t be any effect on its nuclear program,” Netanyahu said, according to Israeli media.
His comments come while tensions between Iran and the U.S. remain high, and the same week that U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Martin Dempsey is visiting Israel. The U.S. and Israel also said Sunday they were delaying a joint military exercise.
Israel’s vice prime minister accused President Obama of being hesitant to impose harsh sanctions because of “election-year considerations,” during an interview with Israel Radio Sunday.
As Tehran continues to pursue its nuclear program, the U.S. is concerned that Israel will launch a strike against Iran. Tensions between Iran and the U.S. have continued to rise in past weeks in response to sanctions, and analysts say the chance for military conflict is at its highest point in two decades.
(Of course they won’t, Obama has no intention of stopping Iran)
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President Obama’s White House spokesman dismissed as “crazy” Newt Gingrich’s claim that Obama has “put” people on food stamps, citing the ailing economy as the cause for the expanded use of welfare programs.
“Well, you know as well as I do that that’s crazy,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said when pressed on the issue. “The fact of the matter is this, country is emerging from the worst rec since the great depression,” he said initially. “When this president took the oath of office in January 2009 this economy was in free fall . . . [resulting in] a dramatic increase in the number of people who needed assistance.”
(this is like a fact. number of Americans receiving food stamps has skyrocketed since Obama took office)
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House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said that Democrats lost control of the House in 2010 because of superPACs, and by extension the Supreme Court, which caught Democrats by surprise when they started spending money in the 2010 cycle.
“Once those major special interests knew that they could contribute endlessly, secretly, without anybody knowing where the money came from, then the floodgates opened,” Pelosi said during the Politico Playbook breakfast. “May of last year — Easter, say, Passover of last year — not many people thought we would lose the house. By the time the [DISCLOSE campaign finance legislation] failed in the Senate, it was all over because it was going to be endless, endless money coming up on 9.5 percent unemployment.”
Pelosi explained that superPACs came about through a “miserable decision by the Supreme Court to allow any and all funding — secret, large, special interest contributions into campaign.” She dismissed the Supreme Court decision as “ridiculous.”
(princess pelosi is actually the queen of denial. if this did anything it leveled the playing field with the unions, who still spent the most money in the midterms)
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All the more reason states, if not the federal government, should have VOTER ID!! Now the democrats want to get another clueless class as their voters.
(The Hill) — Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) said late last week that the United States should lower the voting age by two years, to 16.
“Why shouldn’t 16-year-old vote?” Ellison tweeted last week, according to Minnesota’s Fridley Patch. “They can drive. Some have jobs. Let’s empower our youth.”
The Patch said Ellison’s message started a Twitter debate on the subject, in which some said teens that young are not informed enough to vote. But Ellison rejected that.
“Oh come on! 16-year-olds are pretty sharp,” Ellison wrote. “When is last time you talked to teens? They have their own views on things.”
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America’s taxpayers, already on the hook for watching over the Occupy movement’s three-month seizure of Washington’s downtown McPherson Square, are getting stuck with another bill to cover the police protection and port-a-potty rentals at today’s Capitol protest.
For today’s protest, where several hundred Occupiers toting signs lingered in the muddy grass of the Capitol Grounds, over two dozen U.S. Capitol Police were assigned to ring the lawn, most on foot, some on bikes, and others in 18 cars, buses, and trucks counted by Whispers.
Plus, the government rented 17 bright blue potties from Don’s Johns, which were parked across from the Capitol Grounds and in the shadow of the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial.
The Architect of the Capitol’s office wouldn’t comment on the costs or protection.
But Don’s Johns told Whispers that renting 17 potties costs about $2,100.
A miffed Capitol Police officer told us, “I can’t believe we’re paying for this. But they have no money. They were complaining about parking prices.”
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Navy SEAL: US ignoring soldiers killed in combat, focused on urinating Marines
Gingrich on Obama: “I Don’t Want to Bloody His Nose, I Want to Knock Him Out”
Jarrett Remarks May Violate Church-State Rules
Gingrich: Obama Has “Failed” Blacks
