It's that time of year again - time to debunk Kwanzaa

It's that time of year again - time to debunk Kwanzaa | NJ.com:
"It's that time of year again - the time when lazy journalists go out and write puff pieces about a fake African holiday created by a psychopath who tortured black women."
...Imagine if a white man had tortured those women in that way and then tried to market himself as some sort of a paragon of racial pride. 
If some Ku Klux Klan leader set up a holiday to compete with Christmas, every editor in America would direct his reporters to research that leader's background before writing an article about how wonderful that holiday is.

...... If the journalists of America would only do their jobs and inform readers of the real nature of Kwanzaa, it would soon be a forgotten relic of a bad time in American history.

Cracker Barrel pulls select 'Duck Dynasty' items

Cracker Barrel pulls select 'Duck Dynasty' items | Detroit Free Press | freep.com:
"Cracker Barrel Old Country Store has removed select products from its stores tied to the stars of the cable hit "Duck Dynasty."

While the Lebanon, Tenn.-based restaurant company will continue to offer some products from Duck Commander, the business run by the Robertson family of the A&E show, they decided to remove certain products "which we were concerned might offend some of our guests.""

Wasteful Spending: Government Waste of Your Tax Dollars This Year

Wasteful Spending: Government Waste of Your Tax Dollars This Year
So it’s timely that the office of Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) released its 2013 “Wastebook” yesterday, listing 100 examples it deems wasteful spending this year. In our infographic below, we’ve picked just a few of the highlights of your tax dollars at work.

Pretty simple stuff... but pills are free!!! --------------------2,000 steps to a healthier heart: Walking that far every day for a year can reduce heart attack and stroke risk by 8%

2,000 steps to a healthier heart: Walking that far every day for a year can reduce heart attack and stroke risk by 8% | Mail Online:
"2,000 steps to a healthier heart: Walking that far every day for a year can reduce heart attack and stroke risk by 8%
Exercise is equivalent to walking 20 minutes a day at a moderate pace
Walking 40 minutes a day can reduce cardiovascular risk by up to 20%
Researchers at University of Leicester looked at 9,306 adults for study
Those with greater levels of activity had lower levels of risk"

And NONE of 'em are good----8 Ways The Taper Is Going To Affect You And Your Family

Guest Post: 8 Ways The Taper Is Going To Affect You And Your Family | Zero Hedge

5. Quantitative Easing Has Been Causing The Cost Of Living To Rise

The Federal Reserve insists that we are in a time of "low inflation", but anyone that goes to the grocery store or that pays bills on a regular basis knows what a lie that is. 
The truth is that if the inflation rate was still calculated the same way that it was back when Jimmy Carter was president, the official rate of inflation would be somewhere between 8 and 10 percent today.

Most of the new money created by quantitative easing has ended up in the hands of the very wealthy, and it is in the things that the very wealthy buy that we are seeing the most inflation.  As one CNBC article recently stated, we are seeing absolutely rampant inflation in "stocks and bonds and art and Ferraris and farmland".

6. Quantitative Easing Did Not Reduce Unemployment And Tapering Won't Either

The Federal Reserve actually first began engaging in quantitative easing back in late 2008.  As you can see from the chart below, the percentage of Americans that are actually working is lower today than it was back then...

The mainstream media continues to insist that quantitative easing was all about "stimulating the economy" and that it is now okay to cut back on quantitative easing because "unemployment has gone down".  Hopefully you can see that what the mainstream media has been telling you has been a massive lie.  According to the government's own numbers, the percentage of Americans with a job has stayed at a remarkably depressed level since the end of 2010.  Anyone that tries to tell you that we have had an "employment recovery" is either very ignorant or is flat out lying to you.

OMG! The NYT seems just tired of their guy and his "signature bla bla"-----Mixed Messages Add Anxiety as Deadline Nears in Health Act

OAS-"Obamacare Anxiety Syndrome".
Get diagnosed and ya get free Medicaid!
Mixed Messages Add Anxiety as Deadline Nears in Health Act - NYTimes.com:
"But as the date approaches, a series of decisions by the Obama administration to delay some of the law’s most important provisions and to extend some deadlines has caused uncertainty among insurers and confusion among consumers.

Already the enrollment of young adults appears to be lagging behind the expectations of federal officials and insurers.
And insurers, struggling with problems caused by the chaotic debut of the federal insurance exchange in October, have criticized the administration’s last-minute changes, saying they could cause instability in the market."

Sadistic bullies on a PC jihaad-Why Did BuzzFeed & Co. Target Justine Sacco for Online Assassination

Why Did BuzzFeed & Co. Target Justine Sacco for Online Assassination

Why did BuzzFeed and others gin up a journalistic assassination squad to hit some nobody named Justine Sacco?

If you'll pardon the mixing of metaphors, why was this private citizen plucked from obscurity by The Online Statsi for a trip to Room 101?

What we have seen happen to public figures, like "Duck Dynasty's" Phil Robertson, who dare offend the political/media left-wing elite is frightening enough. Is this group now so addicted to the taste of bloody scalps that no one is safe -- that any obscure citizen with only 174 Twitter followers can have their social media door broken into and lives ruined by the likes of BuzzFeed: Speech Detectives?

Or maybe it is something else.

Any time, day or night, you can use  the search feature to look up "N*gger, AIDS, gay, homosexual, f*g," and literally find hundreds of thousands of tweets filled with unquestionable venom and hate.

So why Justine Sacco?

How did this nobody living in a social media world buried in tens of thousands of truly racist and homophobic nobodies, find herself in the crosshairs?

If BuzzFeed and Co.  wanted to feel self-righteous about themselves, there are literally millions of tweets out there that are unquestionably indefensible and that are not written by some defenseless, unsuspecting woman about to step off a plane and into social media Hell.

Maybe BuzzFeed and its sorry band of elite media minions chose Sacco to send an intimidating message that says no one is safe from their speech rules, even nobodies with 174 Twitter followers. Randomly pulling people from their online homes as an example to the rest of us, is certainly going to have a chilling effect.

But maybe it was a targeted hit based on a personal grudge or agenda we will never know about.

Either way… Good God.

Barry's "possible sons" don't interfere with Hawaii vacation-----Four arrested for killing lawyer, 30, shot dead protecting his wife in carjacking at New Jersey mall

Al Sharpton silent.
Is Al dead?
The nation ponders.
Four arrested for killing lawyer, 30, shot dead protecting his wife in carjacking at New Jersey mall | Mail Online:
"Four men have been arrested over the death of a lawyer shot in front of his wife during a carjacking outside a New Jersey mall last week, authorities said on Saturday.

The suspects in the fatal carjacking on Sunday last week, in which Dustin Friedland was killed at The Mall, Short Hills, were arrested in a series of raids overnight.

Three of the men were arrested in their homes in New Jersey and the fourth was arrested in a Pennsylvania hotel, between 9pm on Friday and 3am Saturday.

The suspects were identified as Hanif Thompson, 29, Karif Ford, 31, Basim Henry, 32, and Kevin Roberts, 33."

Remember, this is little Barry's "signature legislative success----- Morning Joe Can't Stop Laughing at Obamacare's 'Pajama Boy' - YouTube

Link works
▶ Morning Joe Can't Stop Laughing at Obamacare's 'Pajama Boy' - YouTube: "

History for December 22 -Four Heroes

History for December 22 - On-This-Day.com:
1895 - German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen made the first X-ray, of his wife's hand. 











1961 - James Davis became the first U.S. soldier to die in Vietnam, while U.S. involvement was still limited to the provision of military advisers. 










1984 - New York City resident Bernhard Goetz shot four black youths on a Manhattan subway. Goetz claimed they were about to rob him. 







1990 - Lech Walesa was sworn in as Poland's first popularly elected president. 

▶ TWO DOGS DINING - YouTube

▶ TWO DOGS DINING - YouTube: "

"Silence in the face of evil, is evil itself"

Olivet Michigan team of teenage football players does something unexpected. - YouTube

▶ An entire team of teenage football players does something unexpected. - YouTube: "

Lots of depressing stuff here------Straight talk about Detroit and Illinois pensions

Yes, it's fixable.
But it will take strong, articulate, honest leaders.
.....we're doomed.....
Straight talk about Detroit and Illinois pensions - Encore - MarketWatch:
"The financial problems facing Illinois and Detroit are among the worst in the country, and have few implications for the nation as a whole.  
Illinois has systematically not funded its pensions – nor paid any other bills, to my understanding!
Detroit’s financial crisis reflects the large outmigration of people and industry, as well as fiscal mismanagement.
It does not make sense to extrapolate from the nation’s most dire situations to the rest of the country.

Pensions play a major role in the Illinois situation, but are less important in Detroit.
Although one can always argue about the appropriate interest rate to use in discounting future benefits, Illinois state plans (with the exception of the Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund) vie for last place in terms of funded status.
Both of Detroit’s pensions, in contrast, are funded at roughly the national average.
The funded status does reflect the transfer of proceeds from pension obligation bonds issued in 2005 and 2006, which increased the city’s non-pension debt.
But pensions are not driving Detroit’s problems."

Megyn Kelly Responds to Santa Claus Critics: Get a Sense of Humor

Megyn Kelly Responds to Santa Claus Critics: Get a Sense of Humor | NewsBusters:

After playing several clips of various television shows reacting to her remarks, Kelly commented further on the response: “This would be funny if it were not so telling about our society. In particular, the knee-jerk instinct by so many to race bait and to assume the worst in people, especially people employed by the very powerful Fox News channel.”

Indeed. As we noted yesterday, it seems that many leftists in this country seem to be psychologically disturbed that there is one television channel which is not controlled by Democratic partisans and therefore they seek to turn even the tiniest molehills into mountains when it comes to Fox News. The entire segment was a joke and for people to pretend otherwise speaks negatively of their intelligence or their honesty.

Kelly summarized the kerfuffle well when she added at the end: “The fact that an offhand jest that I made during a segment about whether Santa should be replaced by a penguin has now become a national firestorm says two things: race is still an incredibly volatile issue in this country and Fox News and yours truly are big targets for many people.”

A complete transcript of the segment which appeared on the December 13, 2013 edition of “The Kelly File” follows.

Political Correctness-It is not about tolerance. It is about power.

We are subsidizing our own destruction-The Year the Monarch Didn’t Appear

The Year the Monarch Didn’t Appear | Cornucopia Institute:
"“There’s no question that the loss of habitat is huge,” said Douglas Tallamy, a professor of entomology at the University of Delaware, who has long warned of the perils of disappearing insects.
“We notice the monarch and bees because they are iconic insects,” he said.
“But what do you think is happening to everything else?”

A big part of it is the way the United States farms.
As the price of corn has soared in recent years, driven by federal subsidies for biofuels, farmers have expanded their fields. 
That has meant plowing every scrap of earth that can grow a corn plant, including millions of acres of land once reserved in a federal program for conservation purposes."

It's the culture, stupid-----Woman, Just Out Of Prison, Arrested For 397th Time

And more money ain't gonna fix it-------
Woman, Just Out Of Prison, Arrested For 397th Time « CBS Chicago:
"Last month on the train ride home from prison, Shermaine Miles said she was done with booze — done with the old life of petty crime, the Chicago Sun-Times is reporting.
Old habits apparently die hard.
The woman who has racked up a near-record 396 arrests picked up one more this week when she was hauled off an Edgewater street for a host of alleged offenses, including misdemeanor battery, theft, reckless conduct and drinking in public."

Even with the press, it's ALWAYS how it affects "Dear Leader"------Weary Obama seeks Hawaii sun's waking touch

Weary Obama seeks Hawaii sun's waking touch - Yahoo News:
"He ended it with a ponderous press conference, deflecting dire assessments of his prospects and gingerly testing an optimistic message for 2014: "We are poised to do really good things."
Second term presidencies are always tough, as exhaustion, unmet promises and fading political zeal humble exhausted administrations.
But Obama's prospects look especially cloudy."

The problem with suicide bombers is when they blow themselves up in your home--------- Obamacare Initiates Self-Destruction Sequence

Obamacare Initiates Self-Destruction Sequence - Bloomberg:

Arnold Kling put it more pithily: “Obama Repeals Obamacare.”

I’d ask this: 

What do you do for an encore? 

Will the administration force these folks to buy insurance next year? 

Or will they keep allowing special exceptions rather than take the political heat for changing health insurance that people liked?

I’m not sure the administration is thinking that far ahead. 

The White House is focused on winning the news cycle, day by day, not the kind of detached technocratic policymaking that they, and the law’s other supporters, hoped this law would embody. 

Does your fix create problems later, cause costs to spiral or people to drop out of the insurance market, or lead to political pressure to expand the fixes in ways that critically undermine the law? 

Well, that’s preferable to sudden death right now.

9 Crazy Stories about People Being Unfriended on Facebook

9 Crazy Stories about People Being Unfriended on Facebook - Oddee.com:
"The Transgender Woman Who Attacked Her Boyfriend Because He Unfriended Her and Changed His Status to "Single"
In February 2012, a transgender woman attacked her boyfriend with a knife, a pair of scissors, and a fork after he "unfriended" her on Facebook and changed his status to "single." William Hanz De Veyra Arriesgado, a 25-year-old Filipino who had a sex change but could not change her name under her country's laws, was then sentenced to two years in jail for causing her Australian lover grievous harm."

Hug the one you love-----Unique Story of Love and Loss is Told Through Cute Couple's Photos

Unique Story of Love and Loss is Told Through Cute Couple's Photos:
"The saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” for a reason.
Explaining how we feel is one way of getting a message across.
Another is simply showing each other how we feel.
During each season, this couple took a photo together in front of their house.
In the resulting series of images below, without saying anything at all, a love story is being told.
It’s full of hope, joy, fear and loss, but it’s told in the most unique way.
You’ll see what we mean – and then you’ll be moved by it."

Throwing off the chains of thuggery------100,000 Government Workers Choose Freedom from Unions in Wisconsin

100,000 Government Workers Choose Freedom from Unions in Wisconsin - Matt Batzel - Page full:
"Less than 3 years after Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed his collective bargaining reforms (Act 10), more than 100,000 union members have left Big Labor.
The Left has fought these reforms at every step, but when workers are given the choice, they have overwhelmingly voted to leave government unions. "

Perhaps the best LTE written in 2013-MUST READ-Letter to the Editor: Rome

Please read it all.
And understand this patriot lost his Muskegon county commission seat in the last election.
I suspect EVERY currently elected commissioner disagrees with Mr. Jager's thoughts.
At least none have publicly commented in support of ANY of these observations.
We have choices in life.
And elections DO matter!
READ THE ENTIRE COLUMN.
Please.



Letter to the Editor: Rome:
"So I go back to the Romans.

How do we change this? 
I don't know that it is possible. 
Yesterday at a local store a person bought $115.00 worth of Monster Energy drinks on food stamps. 
Why give money in donations when our government does it for us? 
Why own a business when the government hates us?

Why work when the government takes the money away, why save when the rich wall street fat cats take it away.
It pays so much better to be a taker.

You can grow $20,000.00 dollars worth of marijuana tax free and get government aid. 
Like the Roman Empire it may be inevitable. 
So many of my friends think we are headed for war from within.
People are buying guns and ammunition, which is getting scarcer.
The amount of people prepping with food and shelter is astounding and you wonder why the government thru NSA is spying on all of us?"

Santa don't do bonds-Don't buy mom Illinois bonds for Christmas

Merry Christmas!
Our towns, cities, counties and country are all broke.
Oh God, help us!

Don't buy mom Illinois bonds for Christmas:
"Would you invest your mother’s money in municipal bonds?
In a recent interview on Fox Business News, host Gerri Willis asked me that very question.
It didn’t take me long to say I’d certainly do my homework first.
Based on the growing number of city bankruptcies from Alabama to Rhode Island to California, it’s clear to me I’d keep my mother’s retirement money, and mine, far from those governments running the risk of bankruptcy.
Many cities are collapsing due to out-of-control pension costs, but it’s only the demise of Detroit that’s awoken retail investors like my mom to those risks."

Look out taxpayers, they're comin' again! National consultants sought to study feasibility of downtown Muskegon convention center

Soooo, the "search" will be for a consultant?
And the one they hire will get $25,000?
And what do they want the $25,000 "consultant" to report back to them?
Anyone wanna bet what the candidates for the consultant job will tell the guys with the extra $25,000?

National consultants sought to study feasibility of downtown Muskegon convention center | MLive.com

MUSKEGON, MI – The Muskegon County Accommodation Tax Committee is preparing to ask the county board of commissioners to support a study of a downtown convention center.

A special ATAC working group has helped county Community Development Director Bob Lukens prepare a “request for proposals” looking at the feasibility of a downtown Muskegon convention center and other issues related to a series of downtown facilities.

The nationwide search for consultants includes the county’s wish to look at the potential renovation or expansion of the L.C. Walker Arena, pedestrian connections to downtown facilities and the potential for using those facilities for expanded meetings and events.

The county outline for potential consultants points to the L.C. Walker Arena, Frauenthal Center for the Performing Arts and the two downtown hotels – the Holiday Inn Muskegon Harbor and the Shoreline Inn and Conference Center.

As the potential for a downtown convention center is explored, the consultant will be asked to evaluate specific downtown sites, most likely in close proximity to the Holiday Inn, L.C. Walker Arena and Frauenthal Center which are all close enough to be easily linked by enclosed walkways.

They've been doing this for DECADES? ----Bill Would Prohibit Asset Forfeiture In Michigan Without Criminal Conviction

Our government at war with us!
And we're paying for THEIR army!
Bill Would Prohibit Asset Forfeiture In Michigan Without Criminal Conviction [Michigan Capitol Confidential]:
"Jacque Sutton didn’t commit any crime but police impounded his 1989 Mustang GT and charged him $900 to get it back.
His offense was attending a party in 2009 at an art gallery in Detroit which didn't have a permit to hold an event with dancing and DJs. 
Police raided the place and gave everyone tickets for illegal occupation, which were later waived.
But Sutton's car was seized and he couldn't get his property back until he paid the money as a result of Michigan's asset forfeiture law.

He's not alone.
Since 2001, Michigan agencies have seized at least $250 million worth of property and money from citizens. While much of what's seized comes from criminals, a significant amount of assets and a number of cases involve people like Sutton."

Pretty cool as they add some background on the video-WSJ's 2013 Photos of the Year

Video - WSJ's 2013 Photos of the Year - Usain Bolt Crosses Finish Line As Lightning Lights Up Moscow's Sky - WSJ.com:
"WSJ's 2013 Photos of the Year
From the floodwaters of the Ganges to the gravity defying bubbles inside the International Space Station, WSJ photo director Jack Van Antwerp looks back at some of the best images of 2013."

At some point, will we ever get it?

Wonderful news for the world that totally bums out the MSM------Seven global warming alarmist setbacks in 2013

Read 'em all.
As whiny, overpaid/underworked university professors prepare their lawsuits for "income insecurity".
Seven global warming alarmist setbacks in 2013 | The Daily Caller:
"Hold your champagne glasses high this holiday season, because the end of 2013 marks the 17th year without global warming."
...7) The Senate testimony of Dr. Roger Pielke of the University of Colorado completely undercut environmentalists and Democrats trying to claim that global warming was causing “extreme weather.”

“It is misleading and just plain incorrect to claim that disasters associated with hurricanes, tornadoes, floods or droughts have increased on climate timescales either in the United States or globally,” Pielke said. “It is further incorrect to associate the increasing costs of disasters with the emission of greenhouse gases.”

The other witnesses on the panel did not refute Pielke’s data.