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New Obama Slogan: Not Superman, Just A Dude!
Forget all of those Drudge Report headlines about the vacationing first lady’s $2,000 sun dress, the president’s six-plus hour golf outings, and their three-hour, $100-a-person dinner tasting at posh Alan Wong’s restaurant in Honolulu.
Because the president’s 2012 campaign has a new Joe Sixpack theme: “He’s just a dude!”
Softening his image and making him appear more approachable than his whining White House press corps — kept far from his Hawaii vacation stops — suggests, the campaign is distributing a short interview with one of President Obama’s donor dining guests who said his host was far from Superman.
“He’s just a dude!” says Casey Helbling, who attended Obama’s hot dog dinner with low-dollar donors in northern Virginia last October. “It was great to have a frank conversation with him, to realize that he’s not Superman,” he added.
The campaign is using Helbling’s interview, and emails from the president, first lady and even former presidential “body man” Reggie Love to promote his second donor dinner for the campaign. Aides say that the dinners are extremely successful in raising money and energizing supporters.
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by Thomas Sowell, Jewish World Review
No one seems to be really happy with this year’s field of Republican candidates for that party’s presidential nomination — except perhaps the Democrats.
The sudden rise, and equally sudden fall, of a succession of Republican front-runners is just one sign of the dissatisfaction of the Republican voters with this field of candidates.
In this, as in many other aspects of life, we can only make our choice among the options actually available. So Republican voters who want to be realistic need to understand that they are going to end up with qualms and nagging doubts about whomever they pick this time.
[snip]
Even some of those who believe that Gingrich would devastate Obama in head-to-head debates on substantive issues nevertheless claim that all Obama has to do is come back with questions about Newt’s work for failed mortgage finance giant Freddie Mac.
But, even at the personal, point-scoring level, Barack Obama can open up a can of worms by going that route, since Freddie Mac at least never planted bombs in public places, like some of Obama’s political allies.
There are no guarantees, no matter whom the Republicans vote for in the primaries. Why not vote for the candidate who has shown the best track record of accomplishments, both in office and in the debates? That is Newt Gingrich. With all his shortcomings, his record shows that he knows how to get the job done in Washington.
Read the article here.
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Bad science papers can have lasting effects. Consider the 1998 paper in the journal the Lancet that linked autism to the MMR vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella. That paper was fully retracted in 2010 upon evidence that senior author Andrew Wakefield had manipulated data and breached several proper ethical codes of conduct.
Nevertheless the erroneous paper continues to undermine public confidence in vaccines. After the Lancet article, MMR vaccination rates dipped sharply and haven’t fully rebounded. This decline in the MMR vaccine has been tied to a rise in measles cases resulting in permanent injury and death.
Each year hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific articles are retracted. Most involve no blatant malfeasance; the authors themselves often detect errors and retract the paper. Some retractions, however, as documented on the blog Retraction Watch, entail plagiarism, false authorship or cooked data.
No journal is safe from retractions, from the mighty “single-word-title” journals such as Nature, Science and Cell, to the myriad minor, esoteric ones.
Yet as astronomer Carl Sagan once said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Below are five science results retracted in 2011, pulled permanently off the books in part for falling far short of meeting the Sagan standard.
#5: Los Angeles marijuana dispensaries lead to drop in crime.
Keep smoking. The RAND Corporation retracted its own report in October after realizing its sloppy data collection.
Crime data compiled from neighborhoods with these highly contentious medical marijuana dispensaries supposedly revealed slightly lower crime rates. The authors attributed this decline not to marijuana itself but rather the presence of security cameras and guards in and around the dispensaries, having a positive effect on the neighborhood. [The History of 8 Hallucinogens]
#4 — Butterfly meets worm, falls in love, and has caterpillars.The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published a fantastic claim in 2009 by zoologist Donald Williamson, which was delightfully reported in the science news media. Williamson claimed that ancestors of modern butterflies mistakenly fertilized their eggs with sperm from velvet worms. The result was the necessity for the caterpillar stage of the butterfly life cycle.#3: Treat appendicitis with antibiotics, not surgery.
The Journal of Gastrointestinal Surgery published an article in 2009 by Indian researchers titled “Conservative management of acute appendicitis.” The gist was that antibiotics might be a safe alternative to an appendectomy, the surgical removal of the appendix.
Well, maybe not. The journal retracted the paper in October. Italian surgeons had raised a red flag with the study in a lengthy letter published in 2010 in the same journal, politely citing a multitude of problems with the study’s methodology.
#2: Litter breeds crime and discrimination.
It sounded so reasonable: Graffiti and litter in urban settings can trigger changes in the brain that can lead to crime, hatred and discrimination. Alas, the senior author of this April 2011 paper in Science, Dutch social psychologist Diederik Stapel, might have fabricated much of the data.
The journal Science retracted the paper in November upon realization that Stapel, a media darling whose name frequented the New York Times, may have faked data in at least 30 papers, according to a report from Stapel’s university, Tilburg University in the Netherlands. Stapel has since been suspended from Tilburg pending further investigation.
And the Number One Retraction?
From the Looking Spoon. Do go there and view all the cartoons, etc. This person is sharp!
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Planned Parenthood is an evil organization and should be not only defunded by all, but closed down by law!
As the new parental involvement law takes effect in New Hampshire, the nation’s biggest abortion business is pushing teenagers into secret abortions that have them using a portion of the law to avoid informing their parents.
Under the new law, an abortion practitioner must provide written notice to a parent of a minor seeking an abortion 48 hours prior to doing the abortion. The law, as required by the U.S. Supreme Court, contains a judicial bypass provisions meant to protect teenagers in abusive home situations who worry about the consequences they face if divulging their pregnancy to their parents or guardian. [...]
Although meant for extraordinarily rare circumstances, Dave Andrusko of the National Right to Life Committee notes the New Hampshire affiliate if Planned Parenthood has created a legal project designed to connect teenagers with attorneys who will walk them through the bypass procedure and into secret abortions without the knowledge of their parents.
“Jennifer Frizzell, senior policy adviser for Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, has created the “Judicial Bypass Advocacy Project” to assist under-age girls to negate as much as possible New Hampshire’s new parental notification law,” he notes.
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Can you imagine the freaking gall of this president? Now we taxpayers are paying (funding) a new service to help (HELP) illegal aliens!!!!!
As states across the nation ramp up their efforts to catch illegal immigrants, the Obama administration on Thursday launched a new free hotline for people busted on violations to get help.
The hotline, run by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, is available 24/7 for detained individuals to phone if they think they “may be U.S. citizens or victims of a crime.”
The hotline will have translation services available in several different languages. ICE personnel will gather the caller’s information and send it to a field office for immediate action, according to the press release.
The purpose of the hotline and other measures, including a new detainer form, are “to ensure that individuals being held by state or local law enforcement on immigration detainers are properly notified about their potential removal from the country and are made aware of their rights.”
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Egypt’s Forces Raid Offices of U.S. and Other Civil Groups
Egyptian security forces stormed the offices of 17 nonprofit groups around the country on Thursday, including at least three democracy-promotion groups financed by the United States, as part of an investigation that the military rulers say will reveal foreign hands in the recent outbreak of protests.
In Cairo, heavily armed men wearing the black uniforms of the central security police tore through boxes, hauled away files and computers and prevented employees from leaving the offices of the two American groups, the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute, which are affiliated with American political parties and financed by the United States government. The security forces also raided the offices of Washington-based Freedom House.
The raids were a stark escalation in what has appeared to be a campaign by the country’s military rulers to rally support by playing to nationalist and anti-American sentiment here.
“General prosecutor & central security stormed N.D.I. office in Cairo & Assiut,” an employee of the National Democratic Institute wrote in a text message from inside its offices. “We are confined here as they’re searching and clearing out office.”
A man, who identified himself as an official with the public prosecutor’s office but declined to give his name, stood outside the offices of the International Republican Institute in the Dokki neighborhood. He refused to answer questions about the raids but said, “Don’t worry, we’re not going to arrest them.”
The raids come of the heels of an investigation by the Egyptian government into foreign financing for nonprofit organizations operating in the country. The military has suggested that such funding has played a role in fomenting protests with goal of bringing down the Egyptian government.
The American Embassy did not immediately respond to email messages seeking comment.
(wonder if Obama the muslim will praise the egyptians for this act or condemn them? Methinks, more the first but couched in terms that may sound like the second)
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Ron Paul Praises Occupy Wall Street Reason number 197 this man is senile and should not be running for any office. Way I look at it, anyone who votes for this man is also senile.
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Inside Look at Congressional Briefing on Islamization of America
Victoria Jackson gives an account of the briefing she attended at the House Office Longworth Building. The briefing was given by an ex-FBI agent. He showed pictures, names, dates, Islamic law books, Korans and Surahs. Victoria shares how the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated our highest positions in government and how they are working with Hilary Clinton to get ‘Islamophobia’ punishable by law.
