Monday, 30 January 2012
News.............
Parading Vets: St Louis Vs. New York
A riderless horse is passing by...
The untold story of the battle against the ‘Soldiers of Heaven’
Occupy Oakland turns violent. Again.
IRAN, NUKES, & OIL: THE GULF CONFRONTATION (PDF File)
Syria: Even al-Dabi complained!
Movie Review - Red Tails
Syrian opposition council accuses Iran of role in bloody crackdown
Holder informed of Fast & Furious five months before testimony?
Iraqi officials outraged by use of US drones: report
BLACKFIVE: Obama's call for an Army of the Proletariat
NYC teacher making $100K in rubber room refuses to retire
Syria: 100 killed in a day
Iranians were armed with sniper rifles - Deputy FSA commander
Awesome: Calif. To Pay For High Speed Rail With Extortion « SOYLENT GREEN
No, taxes shouldn’t be a “fairness” issue
Navy reassigns head of troubled Littoral Combat Ship program
Allen West to Obama, Reid, Pelosi: ‘Get the Hell Out of the United States of America’
Reuters Acknowledges Rubio Hit Piece is a 'Fiasco' and a 'Disgrace'
Military relics get new life as weapons of the future Pentagon's new strategy includes B-52, U-2 planes
Obama Georgia Ballot Eligibility Hearing
Mr. Obama's Enemies
Mach 3 missiles for Royal Navy
At least it will float! Retired seaman creates remarkable replica of Titanic using 120,000 matchsticks
Churchill wouldn't recognise modern Britain
Army cuts creating 'gaps' and leaving soldiers unsettled and frustrated, says chief
We’re on the brink, warns Greece ahead of summit
Chippinghurst closed off after chemical suicide attempt
Chinese media blames the West over Tibetan unrest
North Korea 'planning big military parade'
Japan's population to shrink two thirds by 2110
Notebook: if we spare the odd spanking, we really do spoil the child
Another EU summit on the road to nowhere
Hamas leader visits Jordan for first time in 13 years
Chinese workers captured by Sudan South Kordofan rebels
US aid for security budget will be cut, Afghans warned
Night vision goggles being used in dog fouling crackdown
Obama likened to disgraced ship captain
Afghan family guilty in 'honour killings'
The police have lost their way but the answer isn't to let them be run by meddlers like Prescott
Once Greek debt is dealt with, which of the PIIGS will be next?
Israeli Calculus & Muslim Blowhards...........by Dan Friedman
Remember Saddam’s “mother of all battles?” We rolled over him in a matter of days.
'Iranian threat nothing more than bluff'
Jamie Oliver - McDonald's.............from Rico
Well, I NEVER would have dreamt that I'd get to use Jamie Oliver and McDonald's together in the same sentence, but thanks to his efforts I can!
Like many, I didn't 'know' about the disinfectant (ammonium hydroxide) being used in their burgers, but Jamie sure did.
- He has done everyone a great service with his efforts.
I'ts been a while now since I completely gave up eating 'fast food' (I'd rather be hungry than eat that crap), but the many that still eat Big Mac's etc. will be a little better for this in future.
Bravo Jamie!
McDonald's Is Changing Its Burger Recipe To Take The 'Pink Slime' Out Of Its Meat
Sunday, 29 January 2012
Dude! The Go Daddy Superbowl Ads Are Here!
Smokin'!
See: "Hot GoDaddy Super Bowl Ads 2012!"
See more sizzling advertisements at the link.
Sizzling Supermodel Adriana Lima to Star in Two Super Bowl Commercials (VIDEOS)
Oh my!
Victoria's Secret model Adriana Lima melts the Super Bowl!
See: "Adriana Lima Super Bowl Commercials."
Occupy Protesters Deploy IEDs in Oakland
These mofos are freakin' terrorists!
See: "Hundreds Arrested in Oakland as Occupy Protesters Storm Barricades With Rocks, Bottles, and Improvised Explosive Devices."
The New American Elite
By Alan Caruba
The only constant in the life of individuals and nations is change. Since the beginning of the last century, the process or rate of change has accelerated with the invention and availability of a myriad of machines, technologies that have altered the lifestyle of Americans as well as of millions around the world.
Let me put it in personal terms. When I was born in the late 1930s, my Mother washed the family laundry by hand and hung it out to dry on sunny days or in the basement of our home if it was raining. We were not poor. We were middle class. My Father was a Certified Public Accountant and we lived in a spacious suburban home in an upscale New Jersey community. Mass produced washers and dryers would arrive after the end of World War Two.
The differences between lower economic classes, the middle class, and upper classes were well defined back then. All, however, generally held the same values regarding societal institutions such as marriage, religion, national pride. Those values have eroded since the 1960s and Charles Murray, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, whose new book, “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010” ($27.00, Crown Forum) tells you how and why.
Murray takes the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22,, 1963 as the starting point, noting, for example, that “Not only were Americans almost always married, mothers normally stayed at home to raise their children. More than 80 percent of married women with children were not working outside the home in 1963.”
“Part of these widely shared values lay in the religiosity of America in 1963” and Murray compares this to a 1963 Gallup poll in which “Only one percent of respondents said they did not have a religious preference, and half said they had attended a worship service in the previous seven days. These answers showed almost no variations across classes.”
“The racial differences in income, education, and occupations were all huge, noted Murray. “The civil rights movement was the biggest domestic issue of the early 1960s…” By 1963, “Poverty had been dropping so rapidly for so many years that Americans thought things were going well.”
The changes in values that many Americans deplore today were coming. “The first oral contraceptive pill had gone on the market in 1960 and its use was spreading widely.” Murray points out that “The leading cohorts of the baby boomers were in their teens by November 21, 1963, and, for better or worse, they were going to be who they were going to be. No one understood at the time what a big difference it could make if one age group of a population is abnormally large. Everyone was about to find out.”
“This book,” wrote Murray, “is about the evolution in American society that has taken place since November 21, 1963, leading to the formation of classes that are different in kind and in their degree of separation from anything that the nation has ever known.”
The culture that Americans shared uniquely and in contrast to much of the world, warns Murray “is unraveling” as “America is coming apart at the seams—not the seams of race or ethnicity, but of class.”
Murray defines the new upper class “as the most successful five percent of adults ages 25 and older who are working in managerial positions, in the professions (medicine, the law, engineering and architecture, the sciences, and university faculty), and in content-production jobs in the media.”
“As of 2010, about 23 percent of all employed persons aged 25 or older were in these occupations, which means that about 1,427,000 persons constituted the top 5 percent. Since 69 percent of adults in these occupations who were ages 25 and older were married in 2010, about 2.4 million adults were in new-upper-class families as heads of households or spouse.” That’s a very small slice of 330 million Americans.
They are not the “millionaires and billionaires” that President Obama is always blathering about. They are the new “establishment” that determine much about the nation’s culture, economy, and future.
To boil down Murray’s extensive research and reporting, that top 5 percent are largely isolated from the rest of the population because they tend to live where their counterparts live and interact mostly with one another in all aspects of their lives. They are the new “elite.”
“Rolling back income inequality won’t make any difference in the isolation of the new upper class from the rest of America.” They are wealthy by most standards and Murray expects them to become wealthier over time. Thus, all the talk of “fairness” and “a fair share” is meaningless.
“Fairness” as many point out, is just another word for “class warfare.” It has always been the siren call of communism.
Efforts in America and in Europe to create “fairness” in the form of our “entitlement” programs and the extensive European socialism have reached a point where they threaten to collapse our own and the economies of many European nations.
Murray says “We have been the product of the cultural capital bequeathed to us by the system the founders laid down; a system that says people must be free to live life as they see fit and to be responsible for the consequences of their actions; that it is not the government’s job to protect people from themselves; that it is not the government’s job to stage-manage how people interact with one another. Discard the system that created the cultural capital, and the qualities we have loved about Americans will go away.”
The system, of course, is free-market capitalism, deregulation, and lower marginal income tax rates, all within the context of the U.S. Constitution. It is under attack by the President of the United States and a cohort of civil service and industrial unions, along with liberal members of Congress.
It is why the Republican primaries have been, in part, a desperate effort to educate Americans to the reason America is in peril and why Americans must strive to restore the values that were shared on November 22, 1963.
© Alan Caruba, 2012
Sunday Humour............
The wife told me to go to the doctors and get some of those tablets
that “help” get an erection.
You should have seen her face when I came back and tossed her some diet pills !
I am still looking for a place to live.
H/T Steve M
The Sunday Best..........
Why world governance won’t. hasn’t. cannot.
http://themellowjihadi.com/2012/01/29/uss-ponce-mothballs-seal-mothership/
Worth Getting Angry About
Rule 5 - Elsa Benitez
In a debate, would John King ask President Obama about this...? (Video)
Former ‘Sons of Iraq’ targeted by insurgents after U.S. pullout
Super. California votes to mandate more electric cars
Kate Beckinsale - Rule 5
Inauspicious Start to the “Naval Century”
Your witness: The handwritten letter AZ Gov. Jan Brewer handed the president
No, taxes shouldn’t be a “fairness” issue
Pentagon call for US base closures a political move, lawmakers say
Syria's crisis: It looks like civil war
Global warming’s ‘dirty laundry’
Tantrums on the Tarmac
Forget global warming - it's Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again)
'Half of Damascus falls to rebels' as breakaway army slowly seize control of capital from Assad regime
The remarkable moment the BBC were forced to pull plug on World War II birdsong broadcast as bombers flew overhead
Pakistan knew where Bin Laden was all along, Leon Panetta admits as he reveals intelligence source for Osama raid
Barack Obama is trying to make the US a more socialist state
Brussels takes control of taxation and spending in eurozone countries
Britain could not reclaim the Falklands if Argentina invades, warns General Sir Michael Jackson
How I woke up to the untruths of Barack Obama
Mexico's drug war has brought terrifying violence to the streets and taken a dreadful toll of lives
The Falkland Islands await the Duke of Cambridge as British commander says they are safe from Argentina
Militia chaos in Bani Walid raises danger of civil war in post-Gaddafi Libya
UK riots: paratroopers are trained in riot control
Israel's most advanced drone crashes during test flight
Assad's forces kill at least 38 in Syria
and finally........
Cui bono?
Silver. COMEX.................from Rico
There are a LOT of 'paper' Silver contracts out there right now.
- The 'physical' Silver vaults are almost empty though.
There are 49,436 contracts with COMEX currently open for the next delivery month for Silver (March 2012). Each contract represents 5,000 ounces. That = 247.18 million ounces of Silver being traded for March delivery against a COMEX registered warehouse of 36.56 million ounces. Huh?
This is a leverage of almost 7:1.
- Ooooops.
Since most contracts are speculative and get 'settled' for cash, this 'works' (as long as you do not stand for delivery of physical). COMEX (aka CRIMEX) is NOT where you go for large deliveries of physical Silver these days...but, wheel barrows of paper cash? No problemo!
- But, if you get on the wrong side of this trade, you won't be shopping for Fwench Chateau's like John Corzine recently did.
The 'failure' of Corzine's MF Global and the blatant cheating of the customers (before and after the fact) will now only accelerate the process of failure and the increasing irrelevancy of the CME/COMEX in the marketplace that has already begun.
While "got Gold?' is a good question to ask today, it may be even MORE important to ask "got Silver?"
Video: Feminists Take It Off in Topless Protest at Davos, Switzerland
These women know how it's done!
See: "More Topless Ukrainian Protest Ladies!"
Saturday, 28 January 2012
Quote for the Day................
"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessing; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries"
Winston Churchill
H/T Amnon
WoW!!
Every week these cats hook up each other with hot hits and big phazed cookies to peruse and then vote on their individual fancy catchers.
Without further adieu - (or a don't) here are this weeks winners
Council Winners
- *First place with 3 2/3 votes! The Mellow Jihadi – Lance Corporal Donald Hogan, Marine Hero
- Second place with 3 1/3 votes – The Right Planet- Are We a Democracy?
- Third place with 1 2/3 votes – Joshuapundit- Obama’s State Of The Union – The Hollow Man
- Fourth place *t* with 1 vote – The Colossus of Rhodey-What the Gingrich South Carolina victory could mean
- Fourth place *t* with 1 vote – The Glittering Eye-You Be the Judge
- Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Noisy Room-Revolution Moves Into The Overton Window
- Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Razor-A Tale of Two Disasters: The Titanic and the Costa Concordia
- Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote – Bookworm Room –War is not, and should not be, sporting
- Sith place *t* with 1/3 vote – GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – Going All The Way
- Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote –Simply Jews – Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey vs FUKUS
- Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote – Rhymes With Right – Am I Wrong To Be Troubled Here?
- Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote – The Political Commentator – Doing away with the Electoral College! One man, one vote and majority wins!
Non-Council Winners
- First place with 2 2/3 votes! –Family Security Matters- Muslim Children in America are Being Taught to Hate submitted by The Political Commentator
- Second place with 2 votes – Mark Steyn – The Sinking Of The West submitted by Joshuapundit
- Third place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – Sultan Knish So You Want a Revolution… submitted by The Noisy Room
- Third place *t* with 1 1/3 votes - Yourish.Com–TANSTAAFL submitted by Simply Jews
- Third place *t* with 1 1/3 votes - Right Wing News –The Worst People In Politics Aren’t Racists submitted by The Mellow Jihadi
- Fourth place *t* with 1 vote - The Foundry –1,000 Days Without a Budget: Facts on the Senate’s Failure submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey
- Fourth place *t* with 1 vote -The Compass – An Iran Attack Would Succeed, Then What? submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
- Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -Gay Patriot –SOTU: Obama’s last chance to change tone submitted by Right Truth
- Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -The New Atlantis –The Global War Against Baby Girls submitted by The Watcher
- Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -James Taranto/Best of the Web–The Genetic Fallacy submitted by The Glittering Eye
- Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote -Zero Hedge –Obama Puppetmaster Warren Buffett Biggest Winner From Keystone Pipeline Rejectionsubmitted by The Razor
- Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote -Cabinet –The Behavioral Sink submitted by The Watcher
- Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote -Polipundit –Why Newt should not be the nominee submitted by Rhymes With Right
- Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote - Accuracy In Media –The FOX News Feminists submitted by New Zeal
Not my Father's market or economy anymore..............from Rico
There are still two market days left for January 2012, so don't close the books just yet.
And, be mindful of the absolute beating Gold and Silver endured in December 2011 while you're at it.
- There's still enough time for JPM & Co. to create an algorithm-driven "raid" by issuing massive paper naked 'shorts' on the precious metals (Gold-Silver). Not like they haven't done this before.....
That said, YTD...January to date....Gold is +10.8% and Silver +22%.
- Your average Joe Shmukatelli (or pension fund for that matter) can't say the same thing for his portfolio. Not even close, and this surely ain't horse shoes!
Bonds? Federal Reserve Notes? hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha......
- In case you didn't 'notice' Barry and Benny and Timmy have declared war on savers (anyone left with a pocket worth 'picking'). It's not my Father's 'market' or 'economy' anymore. The 'game' has changed.....
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