Wednesday, June 12, 2013

If the GOP is this stupid, it deserves to die

If the GOP is this stupid, it deserves to die | The Daily Caller
If the GOP is this stupid, it deserves to die
Posted By Ann Coulter On 6:27 PM 06/12/2013 In Opinion | No Comments
Democrats terrify Hispanics into thinking they’ll be lynched if they vote for Republicans, and then turn around and taunt Republicans for not winning a majority of the Hispanic vote.
This line of attack has real resonance with our stupidest Republicans. (Proposed Republican primary targets: Sens. Kelly Ayotte, Jeff Flake, Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio.) Which explains why Republicans are devoting all their energy to slightly increasing their share of the Hispanic vote while alienating everyone else in America.
It must be fun for liberals to manipulate Republicans into focusing on hopeless causes. Why don’t Democrats waste their time trying to win the votes of gun owners?
As journalist Steve Sailer recently pointed out, the Hispanic vote terrifying Republicans isn’t that big. It actually declined in 2012. The Census Bureau finally released the real voter turnout numbers from the last election, and the Hispanic vote came in at only 8.4 percent of the electorate — not the 10 percent claimed by the pro-amnesty crowd.
The sleeping giant of the last election wasn’t Hispanics; it was elderly black women, terrified of media claims that Republicans were trying to suppress the black vote and determined to keep the first African-American president in the White House.
Contrary to everyone’s expectations, 10 percent more blacks voted in 2012 compared to 2008, even beating white voters, the usual turnout champions. Eligible black voters turned out at rate of 66.2 percent, compared to 64.1 percent of eligible white voters. Only 48 percent of all eligible Hispanic voters went to the polls.
No one saw this coming, which is probably why Gallup had Romney up by 5 points before Hurricane Sandy hit, and up by 1 point in its last pre-election poll after the hurricane.
Only two groups voted in larger numbers in 2012 compared to 2008: blacks aged 45-64, and blacks over the age of 65 — mostly elderly black women.
In raw numbers, nearly twice as many blacks voted as Hispanics, and nine times as many whites voted as Hispanics. (Ninety-eight million whites, 18 million blacks and 11 million Hispanics.)
So, naturally, the Republican Party’s entire battle plan going forward is to win slightly more votes from 8.4 percent of the electorate by giving them something they don’t want.
As Byron York has shown, even if Mitt Romney had won 70 percent of the Hispanic vote, he still would have lost. No Republican presidential candidate in at least 50 years has won even half of the Hispanic vote.
In the presidential election immediately after Reagan signed an amnesty bill in 1986, the Republican share of the Hispanic vote actually declined from 37 percent to 30 percent — and that was in a landslide election for the GOP. Combined, the two Bush presidents averaged 32.5 percent of the Hispanic vote — and they have Hispanics in their family Christmas cards.
John McCain, the nation’s leading amnesty proponent, won only 31 percent of the Hispanic vote, not much more than anti-amnesty Romney’s 27 percent.
Amnesty is a gift to employers, not employees.
The (pro-amnesty) Pew Research Hispanic Center has produced poll after poll showing that Hispanics don’t care about amnesty. In a poll last fall, Hispanic voters said they cared more about education, jobs and health care than immigration. They even care more about the federal budget deficit than immigration! (To put that in perspective, the next item on their list of concerns was “scratchy towels.”)
Also, note that Pew asked about “immigration,” not “amnesty.” Those Hispanics who said they cared about immigration might care about it the way I care about it — by supporting a fence and E-Verify.
Who convinced Republicans that Hispanic wages aren’t low enough and what they really need is an influx of low-wage workers competing for their jobs?
Maybe the greedy businessmen now running the Republican Party should talk with their Hispanic maids sometime. Ask Juanita if she’d like to have seven new immigrants competing with her for the opportunity to clean other people’s houses, so that her wages can be dropped from $20 an hour to $10 an hour.
A wise Latina, A.J. Delgado, recently explained on Mediaite.com why amnesty won’t win Republicans the Hispanic vote — even if they get credit for it. Her very first argument was: “Latinos will resent the added competition for jobs.”
But rich businessmen don’t care. Big Republican donors — and their campaign consultants — just want to make money. They don’t care about Hispanics, and they certainly don’t care what happens to the country. If the country is hurt, I don’t care, as long as I am doing better! This is the very definition of treason.
Hispanic voters are a small portion of the electorate. They don’t want amnesty, and they’re hopeless Democrats. So Republicans have decided the path to victory is to flood the country with lots more of them!
It’s as if Republicans convinced Democrats to fixate on banning birth control to win more pro-life voters. This would be great for Republicans because Democrats will never win a majority of pro-life voters, and about as many pro-lifers care about birth control as Hispanics care about amnesty.
But that still wouldn’t be as idiotic as what Republicans are doing because, according to Gallup, pro-lifers are nearly half of the electorate. Hispanics are only 8.4 percent of the electorate.
And it still wouldn’t be as stupid as the GOP pushing amnesty, because banning birth control wouldn’t create millions more voters who consistently vote against the Democrats.
Listening to Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus burble a few weeks ago on “Fox News Sunday” about how amnesty is going to push the Republicans to new electoral heights, one is reminded of Democratic pollster Pat Caddell’s reason for refusing to become a Republican: No matter how enraged he gets at Democratic corruption, he says he can’t bear to join such a stupid party as the GOP.
Ann Coulter is an author and political commentator.

Obama Restricts Spying In Mosques While Spying Everywhere Else

Obama Restricts Spying In Mosques While Spying Everywhere Else - Investors.com:
"Homeland Insecurity:
The White House assures that tracking our every phone call and keystroke is to stop terrorists, and yet it won't snoop in mosques, where the terrorists are.
That's right, the government's sweeping surveillance of our most private communications excludes the jihad factories where homegrown terrorists are radicalized.
Since October 2011, mosques have been off-limits to FBI agents. 
No more surveillance or undercover string operations without high-level approval from a special oversight body at the Justice Department dubbed the Sensitive Operations Review Committee.
Who makes up this body, and how do they decide requests?
Nobody knows; the names of the chairman, members and staff are kept secret."

High Diving Giraffes

Fake savings: The 2013 House farm bill

Fake savings: The 2013 House farm bill
As reported in the AEI paper, “Field of Schemes Mark II: The Taxpayer and Economic Welfare Costs of PriceLoss Coverage and Supplementary Insurance Coverage Programs,” authored by Bruce Babcock, Barry Goodwin, and myself, the PLC program would provide farmers raising major crops such as wheat, corn, peanuts, rice, barley, and soybeans with very substantial subsidies if crop prices move from their current record (or near record) levels towards relatively recent historical levels

Orr tells crowd: 'We have to break our addiction to debt'

Orr tells crowd: 'We have to break our addiction to debt' | Crain's Detroit Business:
"Leasing the park is just one step proposed by Orr to help the city deal with a budget deficit nearing $386 million and to restructure $9.4 billion in long-term debt. "

Foot doctor sentenced for videotaping naked wrestlers at Muskegon Community College

Foot doctor sentenced for videotaping naked wrestlers at Muskegon Community College | MLive.com:
Great headline!

What 'direct access' means

What 'direct access' means:
The term 'direct access' seems to be the central issue when it comes to the coordinated PR campaign from Silicon Valley, and a new article from The Washington Post seems to clarify it all quite a bit. "Intelligence community sources said that this description [i.e., direct access], although inaccurate from a technical perspective, matches the experience of analysts at the NSA. 
From their workstations anywhere in the world, government employees cleared for PRISM access may 'task' the system and receive results from an Internet company without further interaction with the company's staff." 
This seems to explain why the leaked official documents speak of 'direct access' even though the companies themselves deny it. 
The leaked documentation probably wasn't written by a technical expert, so he simply used a term that describes the end result (i.e., access whenever, wherever, whatever), but not the actual technical workings (i.e., the system does not directly tap into the companies' own servers). 
Update: The Guardian has released a new slide from the NSA slide deck: it speaks of "collection directly from the servers" of several US companies, like Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and so on. 
It also mentions directly tapping into the very cables that carry data to and from the US. 
I wonder how long Silicon Valley will continue to lie and/or legalese around the issue. 
Man up for once.

Schumer: 'Illegal Immigration Will Be a Thing of the Past'

Schumer: 'Illegal Immigration Will Be a Thing of the Past'

Dorothy Dugger, Ex-BART General Manager, Made $330,000 While No Longer Working For Agency

Dorothy Dugger, Ex-BART General Manager, Made $330,000 While No Longer Working For Agency:
"A top official for the agency that manages the San Francisco Bay Area's BART system earned more than $330,000 last year – even though she didn't work a single day for the public transit agency, a newspaper reported Sunday.
Bay Area Rapid Transit general manager Dorothy Dugger resigned under pressure in May 2011, but stayed on the payroll for another 19 months and was BART's highest-paid employee in 2012, the Bay Area News Group (http://bit.ly/102JORG) reported."

Muskegon County Jail architect: Planning process to ‘accelerate from this point forward’

Muskegon County Jail architect: Planning process to ‘accelerate from this point forward’ | MLive.com
"The total cost of the new jail and juvenile transition center is estimated to be $35 million to $41 million.
County officials have said construction could start before the end of 2013 if everything goes as scheduled and county commissioners give their approval."

Western Promises

Western Promises | National Review Online:
"And if all of America were absorbed by the Sacramento Commissariat, all of America would have A.B. 32, the Golden State’s ambitious carbon-curbing initiative, and all Americans would be wearing dumb smiles as we marched over the edge into an economic abyss."

The Education Bubble Has Burst

Articles: The Education Bubble Has Burst:
"Concurrently, Moody's in 2013 gave a negative financial outlook for all universities.
Recent studies have indicated that over 50% of all colleges and universities are projected to close, merge, or shut down in the next 50 years"

University of Chicago Removes Pews from 88 Year-Old Chapel to Accommodate Muslim Prayers

University of Chicago Removes Pews from 88 Year-Old Chapel to Accommodate Muslim Prayers | The Gateway Pundit:
“The pews were recently removed from the chapel in order to offer Muslim students a place to pray, a symbolic gesture of religious tolerance,” according to an official description of the exhibit which includes a “set of repurposed pews from the University of Chicago’s campus church.”

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Obama's EPA conducted Nazi-like experiments on human subjects

Lawsuit: Obama's EPA conducted Nazi-like experiments on human subjects:
"You have the story, documented by links to numerous credible sources, to fully document what is a shocking story.
I just found this story, and it's been out there a while and equally shocking is how the mainstream media have completely ignored this story and failed to report it to the public who clearly has a right to know that taxpayer dollars at the federal level are being spent to carry out sick Nazi-like experiments like this."

'Pasha' Dingell and the rise of Washington power

'Pasha' Dingell and the rise of Washington power | The Detroit News:
"Democrats like Dingell position themselves as populist protectors of the common man.
But in truth, the massive regulatory bills that they write inside the D.C. beltway have reduced consumer choice and marginalized small business — while favoring big corporations that can afford the lobbyists necessary to navigate the capital’s thicket of rules."

Allen West Responds to Cosby

Allen West Responds to Cosby: "Cosby had written this:
I’m a Christian. But Muslims are misunderstood. Intentionally misunderstood. We should all be more like them. They make sense, especially with their children. There is no other group like the Black Muslims, who put so much effort into teaching children the right things, they don’t smoke, they don’t drink or overindulge in alcohol, they protect their women, they command respect. And what do these other people do?
They complain about them, they criticize them. We’d be a better world if we emulated them. We don’t have to become black Muslims, but we can embrace the things that work."

Bridging the male education gap

Bridging the male education gap - latimes.com:
"The underinvestment in education by adolescent boys and young men stems in part from out-of-date masculine stereotypes.
Such things as a strong attachment to school, a feeling of closeness to teachers, an excessive interest in high academic achievement or a fondness for art or music are viewed by many young men as unmasculine."

Vitamins: Good or Bad?

Vitamins: Good or Bad? - James Hamblin - The Atlantic:
"Bottom line, we understand the majority of people to be best off without any vitamin supplements.
Just because they are non-prescription and still live inside a "health halo," vitamins are not harmless.
They could shorten or extend your life; at this point, taking vitamins randomly is metabolic roulette. "

Majority Views NSA Phone Tracking as Acceptable Anti-terror Tactic

Majority Views NSA Phone Tracking as Acceptable Anti-terror Tactic | Pew Research Center for the People and the Press:
 "A majority of Americans – 56% – say the National Security Agency’s (NSA) program tracking the telephone records of millions of Americans is an acceptable way for the government to investigate terrorism, though a substantial minority – 41% – say it is unacceptable."

"My Son Almost Drowned"

Weekend Pundit:
"My Son Almost Drowned"

1955 Le Mans Disaster

1955 Le Mans Disaster

Social Security and Medicare Programs Remain on Unsustainable Paths

Social Security and Medicare Programs Remain on Unsustainable Paths | Mercatus:

Clapper: I Gave 'The Least Untruthful Answer' To Wyden's 'Beating Your Wife' Question On Data Surveillance

Clapper: I Gave 'The Least Untruthful Answer' To Wyden's 'Beating Your Wife' Question On Data Surveillance | Techdirt:
AMES CLAPPER:

First-- as I said, I have great respect for Senator Wyden. I thought, though in retrospect, I was asked-- "When are you going to start-- stop beating your wife" kind of question, which is meaning not-- answerable necessarily by a simple yes or no. So I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful manner by saying no.
That's quite an answer. 
First, let's go with the big one: Least untruthful manner? 
In other words, it was a lie, but I could have told bigger lies. 
But he's still admitting that it was a lie. 
Lying to Congress is generally not a good idea. 
Second: in what possible way is "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" a loaded question of the "when did you stop beating your wife?" variety? 
There doesn't seem to be any unjustified assumption within the question at all. 
It's a pretty basic question, in which a truthful answer ("yes, we do") does not lead to a fallacious admission. 

So, now we have the Director of National Intelligence lying, admitting to lying, and then blaming the questioner by making two separate false claims about his question ("it was about email" and "it was a loaded question"). Why is he still in this job?

Oregon high school has 29 graduating valedictorians; Welcome to today’s ‘Lake Wobegon’ educational system

Oregon high school has 29 graduating valedictorians; Welcome to today’s ‘Lake Wobegon’ educational system | AEIdeas:

Timelapse: Landsat Satellite Images of Climate Change, via Google Earth Engine

Timelapse: Landsat Satellite Images of Climate Change, via Google Earth Engine

7 Ways to Ensure Your Loved Ones' PC Will Never Need Fixing

7 Ways to Ensure Your Loved Ones' PC Will Never Need Fixing:

State Dept. Inspector General: U.S. Ambassador to Belgium 'Solicited Prostitutes, Including Minors'

State Dept. Inspector General: U.S. Ambassador to Belgium 'Solicited Prostitutes, Including Minors' | The Weekly Standard:
"Undersecretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy ordered the investigation ceased, and the ambassador remains in place, according to the memo.
Gutman was a big Democratic donor before taking the post, having raised $500,000 for President Obama’s 2008 campaign and helping finance his inaugural."

Plan B: Obama allows morning-after pill for under-17s

Plan B: Obama allows morning-after pill for under-17s | World news | guardian.co.uk:
"Annie Tummino, lead plaintiff and co-ordinator of the National Women's Liberation, said: "This decision by the administration affirms what feminists have been fighting for all along: the morning-after pill should be available to females of all ages, on the shelf at any convenience store, just like aspirin or condoms."
Plan B has been a political lightning rod. In 2011, after the FDA decided to approve over-the-counter sales with no age limits, US health and human services secretary Kathleen Sebelius had ordered it to reverse course, barring girls under 17 from buying the pills without a prescription.
Barack Obama supported that restriction, invoking his daughters.
But the timing, 11 months ahead of the presidential election, sparked criticism that he was trying to placate social conservatives."

IRS to pro-life group (audio): 'Know your boundaries'

Politics: IRS to pro-life group (audio): 'Know your boundaries' | CainTV

Dallas CAIR Director: “Muslims Are Above the Law of the Land.”

Dallas CAIR Director: “Muslims Are Above the Law of the Land.” | FrontPage Magazine