Category Archives: Progressives

News trying to shape public opinion: Routine of submitting to additional scrutiny is now “comforting”

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If WaPo writers think I should take “comfort” in subjecting myself to additional “scrutiny” then I think WaPo writers should take comfort in submitting their stories to the “Ministry of Truth” before being published. Just to be sure they are accurate…

Expect to see more people in uniform, a greater display of law enforcement firepower, added security in places where it had been relaxed and increased efforts to poke into backpacks and purses.

A day after an attack on an unlikely Boston target, hardly any place in Washington felt safe from aggression. It was a day when the numbing routine of submitting to scrutiny took on a comforting urgency.

Watchful armed guards were out in great numbers Tuesday at all of the places long perceived as possible targets: airports, Metro, monuments, museums and the various institutions of governance.

By wasting time subjecting everyone to additional “comforting scrutiny” the real threats are going to go unnoticed.

Better late than never: College fires professor who forced students to sign pledge to vote for Obama

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Now that we are stuck with the guy for ANOTHER four years…

Brevard Community College (BCC) has fired a professor after a school investigation concluded she required students to sign a pledge to vote for President Obama in the run-up to the 2012 election.

Brevard Community College has fired Professor Sharon Sweet who forced her students to sign this pledge.

The school’s spokesman John Glisch, said the Board of Trustees voted Wednesday morning to terminate mathematics professor Sharon Sweet with an overwhelming vote.

“The board voted 3-1, with one member absent, to dismiss professor Sweet,” Glisch told Campus Reform Wednesday afternoon.

“The termination took effect immediately, ending pay and benefits for Sweet who had been suspended with pay under provisions of the United Faculty of Florida collective bargaining agreement with the college, pending the board’s decision,” the school added in a press release.

In all seriousness, I hope this makes other goofy teachers think twice before pulling a stunt like this in the future.

Elites awarding fellow elites for shaping public opinion…. I mean for news coverage

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Via all the news that’s fit to print…

The New York Times won four Pulitzer Prizes on Monday, including two awards for its reporting on the actions of companies like Apple and Wal-Mart overseas, and another for an examination of the hidden wealth of the Chinese premier’s family.

At home, our beloved MSM is working overtime “shaping” public opinion by ignoring the gruesome murder trial of the abortion “doctor” Kermit Gosnell. The elites are afraid the gory details might compromise abortion “rights”.

Wankery: Guardian UK accusing energy firms of “cold blooded profiteering”

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The left here in the US and abroad has dropped any pretense of sanity:

The escalating earnings were condemned by fuel poverty campaigners, rival energy companies and the shadow energy secretary, Caroline Flint.

They have led to further calls for the gas and electricity market to be reformed to break the stranglehold the big six have on supply, and will increase pressure on energy executives who are due to appear before parliament’s energy and climate change committee on Tuesday as part of an inquiry under the title “energy prices, profits and poverty”.

Sam Robertson, a campaigner with Fuel Poverty Action, said millions of UK households facing a choice of whether to heat or eat would be left wondering what difference an extra £95 could have made.

“This cold-blooded profiteering has to stop, but piecemeal market reforms will not go far enough, especially given the threat of a dash for gas that will send bills through the roof,” Robertson said.

If it weren’t for those “cold blooded profits” you wouldn’t face a choice of whether to heat or eat. The problem would be more do I, or my kids eat?

Furthermore, Timmy (my favorite economics writer) breaks down those cold blooded profits:

A 7% margin? People are complaining about this when Apple makes 40%? Seriously?

As to the generation profits:

Ofgem said average margins in generation across the big six increased from 18.4% in 2010 to 24.4% in 2011.

That number looks a little odd. If it were true then half the world would be lining up to invest.

He said the wholesale margin needed to be higher given that it funded power stations and forward contracts for up to £50bn of new gas supplies. “We believe it is a fair margin.”

What? You mean Ofgem is publishing figures showing gross margin, before capital costs? What the wankery are they doing?

Even though this has gone on for some time, look for the anti-freedom left;s rhetoric to ratchet up as natural gas and oil production here picks up steam.

State of Michigan wasting money on fantasies of kids who prefer riding bikes to work

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Bike racks… As if these will get a lot of use in Michigan:

Soon to be installed in Ferndale in what’s now a parking place in front of Howe’s Bayou restaurant, the rack is a symbol of even bigger changes due on Woodward. It’s also a signal that state highway engineers are changing the way they approach road designs and metro Detroiters are changing their transportation options.

The region’s signature cruising highway — home to the Woodward Dream Cruise — seems to be headed toward a broad range of transit options, including discussions of regional transit and light rail in Detroit. And Michigan’s big road-building bureaucracy is adapting to new modes of transit that include two-wheelers and pedestrians, Morosi said.

“People have a misimpression that we’re just about orange barrels and cars. We’re not anymore,” he said.

The state took a year to review the plan for installing the rack on the edge of a roadway that carries tens of thousands of cars a day. That would have been unthinkable a decade ago, when MDOT fought Ferndale’s plan to put the replica of the city’s historic traffic tower on Woodward’s wide grassy median, well out of the roadway, said Cristina Sheppard-Decius, executive director of the Ferndale Downtown Development Authority.

So, now we have to spend more money installing bike racks for the five people who want to ride their bikes rather than drive their cars. In Michigan.

When you think Michigan, you think tropical climate, right? Weather where you would prefer riding your bike rather than driving.

weather michigan april 11 2013

According to our nerdy governor, we need to raise taxes to repair our roads while they waste money catering to the fantasies of maybe five kids who prefer riding their bikes to work.

The Tolerant Left: School District Requires Permission Slips To Hear Santorum Speak

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Grosse Pointe (Michigan) Public School System is in an uproar over Rick Santorum’s upcoming speech at Grosse Pointe South High School.

Rick Santorum’s speaking engagement at Grosse Pointe South High School is back on, after school officials say they reached a compromise to allow parents to choose whether to send their child to the April 24 event.

School officials on Monday had canceled the former presidential candidate’s scheduled speech to students, sparking a community uproar. The district announced at 1:45 p.m. Wednesday that parents will be sent an in-school permission form if they want their student to hear Santorum speak during an assembly at the school.

The reaction by the school district is unbelievable. By requiring parents OPT IN to allow their children attend Santorum’s appearance, they are treating his appearance in the same manner as having high school kids watch an “R” rated movie in class .

What is so objectionable about having a former United States Congressman, Senator and Presidential candidate speak at your school that would require a permission slip?

One of the two students responsible for arranging Santorum’s appearance said school officials cited Santorum’s conservative social views and concerns over student safety during the event.

Langston Bowens, an 18-year-old senior at Grosse Pointe South High School, said some teachers became angry Monday when Santorum’s appearance was announced. He said they sent video clips from Santorum’s speeches to the school’s principal and the district’s superintendent.

“The teachers called Santorum a bigot and a racist,” Bowens said. “They said he is controversial and shouldn’t speak in front of students.”

Those dreaded ‘conservative’ social views.

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Heaven forbid kids be allowed to hear someone stand up for traditional values…

District Judge Korman orders morning-after pill to go over the counter for girls of all ages

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U.S. District Judge Edward Korman passed down his edict that the “morning-after” pill be available over the counter without ID checks – and, for teens younger than 17.

“We are thrilled whenever there is further access to ensure women can have a baby when they want one and reduce the unintended pregnancy rate,” said Lori Lamerand, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Mid and South Michigan.

But others said they worry the ruling could expose girls to sexually transmitted diseases and erode parents’ abilities to protect their daughters.

In a tweet late in the day, the Michigan Catholic Conference called the opinion of U.S. District Judge Edward Korman in New York “complete disregard for children’s safety and parental rights.”

And earlier in the day, Deirdre McQuade, spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Secretariat for Pro Life Activities, said in a written statement that the pill “makes young adolescent girls more available to sexual predators.”

“The court’s action,” the statement continued, “undermines parents’ ability to protect their daughters from such exploitation and from the adverse effects of the drug itself.”

Truly frightening. A minor can’t purchase DayQuil yet purchasing abortion pills without question is perfectly fine?

This is social engineering at its worst. And people wonder why our society is swirling in an ever tighter circle around the drain.

NYT Columnist thinks Second Amendment needs ‘clarification’

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nyt ugly gun photoshop

This would not end well:

Most Americans are committed to the Constitution and rely on the courts to adapt our antique highest law to modern technological and cultural developments. Many of us trust the judiciary to balance rights against the inevitable restrictions on them. But we are left with the awkward, irresolvable phrasing of the Second Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Only anti-freedom Democrats rely on the courts to modify the Constitution. Conservatives understand that the Constitution is the framework for our government. furthermore, we understand the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution comprise our “Bill of Rights” that expressly limit what the Federal Government can do to a narrow focus and, in the process, protect our freedom.

Apparently super genius Zachary Elkins, author of the op-ed in question never read the Federalist Papers, where the Founders explain (in great detail) their reasoning behind every detail of the Constitution . For example, James Madison explains the reasoning behind the Second Amendment:

Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.

The Founders believed armed American Citizens need the ability to protect themselves from a tyrannical government. What is so hard about that to understand?

Roughly 129 years after the US Constitution was ratified another revolutionary, Vladimir Lenin, said this:

“One man with a gun can control 100 without one. ”

And most of us know how the Russian revolution and the subsequent Stalin regime worked out for the average Russian.

*h/t TTAG

Obama proposes budget limiting how much wealthy individuals can keep in IRAs

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Remember, anti-freedom Democrats consider anyone who has a job “the rich.”

The senior administration official said that wealthy taxpayers can currently “accumulate many millions of dollars in these accounts, substantially more than is needed to fund reasonable levels of retirement saving.”

Under the plan, a taxpayer’s tax-preferred retirement account, like an IRA, could not finance more than $205,000 per year of retirement – or right around $3 million this year.

Unreal. And who decides what a “reasonable” level of retirement saving is anyway.

Don’t think your 401k isn’t next.