From Pravda, caught by Walter Russell Meade:

DonÂ’t be surprised with Americas manipulative prowess, itÂ’s in virtually all countries across the world. They support ruling governments and then create and sponsor one or more oppositions so they keep the balance of power within their controlÂ…

Sex is a big success tool in regards to AmericaÂ’s success so far in terms of dominating the world. For the last five decades, the American government has successfully created a world where sex is in control of virtually everything you can talk about. Using the media, they have successfully developed, grown and forced the act of sex worship in virtually every country across the world.

By creating sex symbols, who are sponsored and obedient to the American government, the world population has been controlled for decades and is still been controlled. Kim Khadashian [sic] is an example of a sex symbol, she became a big success so-called star after her sex tape was supposedly leaked to the world. It was all pre-planned, there were no leaks. She was been moulded into a sex symbol to serve the imperialistic aims of the US. I use the term ‘so-called’ because I never knew about her until a couple months back.

Meade comments:

Conspiracy theories give true believers the illusion of power by offering a “secret” and, to believers, a convincing account of how the world works; but they simultaneously disempower the believers because they buy into a narrative in which the Powers are so smart, so well-organized and so far-sighted that nothing short of an apocalyptic meltdown will ever bring them down. Belief in conspiracy theories is less a sign of organizing for social change than it is a psychological mechanism that helps people come to grips with their lack of control over the forces shaping their lives.

Stace McCain is thinking about conspiracy theories of late too. Chiefly about the wild theories spun off by the sad little Kimberlin crony Neal Rauhauser.

In a message posted in the comments of a blog in October 2011, Rauhauser explained that he and someone he describes as “a very big dog from the Anonymous [the hacker collective] pen” conspired to use Brett Kimberlin’s non-profit Velvet Revolution as a vehicle to exact vengeance on (a) his personal enemies, (b) the security firm HB Gary and (c) “Breitbart associates.”

...

By now the astute reader understands – and I don’t really have to point this out do I? — that Kimberlin and Rauhauser’s belief in an imaginary conspiracy of their enemies led them into creating an actual conspiracy of their own.

Matthew Vadum asks a simple question: Are tax-exempt charities permitted to engage in illegal activities, such as organized harassment, frauds on the court to silence critics, and attempts to enlist the hacker collective Anonymous in a private vengeance effort against enemies?

It turns out, the answer is no, and there's even an IRS complaint form to complain if a tax-exempt charity is using funding to pursue illegal aims.

Meanwhile, the charges against Aaron Walker have been dropped, but he remains under the gag-order of "outlaw judge" Vaughey, and while Maryland processes Kimberlin's abusive and perjurious "peace orders" lickety-split, they're in no hurry to provide relief to Walker.

I suppose his asking to have his First Amendment rights restored is "too much justice," as a Maryland prosecutor chided him when he sought perjury charges against Kimberlin for attempting to frame him for a 10 year assault felony.

Posted by: Ace at 10:26 AM | Comments (430)
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You'll never guess who made this racist statement about implementing the DREAM Act amnesty by executive fiat.

"There are enough laws on the books by Congress that are very clear in terms of how we have to enforce our immigration system that for me to simply, through executive order, ignore those congressional mandates would not conform with my appropriate role as President."

Nope, you'll never guess in a million years. (the link is hit and miss, I think they are getting slammed by traffic which is great)

Via @Gabrielmalor

ICYMI in all the DREAM Act fun- Mitch McConnell ripped into Obama as a "dangerous radical" and that was before Emperor Barack I acted today. I understand he really knocked Obama around in his speech today.

Posted by: DrewM at 08:48 AM | Comments (425)
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More details soon but it looks like "young" people who came here as kids will get work permits, no path to citizenship.

Stand by for details.

Constitution? Never heard of it.

Politically it's brilliant desperate. It will energize his base and force the GOP to talk about being anti-DREAM Act and anti-illegal immigrant. ("Brilliant was my insta-reax but it's not. To be clear, it shows how weak Obama is. He's blowing off white working class voters but he's going to lose them anyway. He needs to rally his base to hold what he has. This will do that. Of course like most base rallying moves, it will rally the other side's too.)

Added:

"Young" is now defined as "Under 30".

The Obama administration will stop deporting and begin granting work permits to younger illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and have since led law-abiding lives. The election-year initiative addresses a top priority of an influential Latino electorate that has been vocal in its opposition to administration deportation policies.

The policy change, described to The Associated Press by two senior administration officials, will affect as many as 800,000 immigrants who have lived in fear of deportation. It also bypasses Congress and partially achieves the goals of the so-called DREAM Act, a long-sought but never enacted plan to establish a path toward citizenship for young people who came to the United States illegally but who have attended college or served in the military.

Congress rejected the full on DREAM Act and this more modest proposal was basically the Rubio plan that was going to be introduced as legislation at some point. But who needs Congress, right? They just get in the way.

My reaction to this?

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

-Stuff Jefferson Actually Wrote, 3rd Edition, Revised.

I'm sure high unemployment swing state voters will be thrilled with millions of new workers now competing against them.

1:15 eastern Rose Garden announcement.

This will also step on Romney's bus tour a bit. It will be interesting to see how Mitt reacts. My guess? He won't very much. He'll stay focused on jobs and the economy.

Posted by: DrewM at 05:55 AM | Comments (746)
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I know lots of people think McConnell is among the Rinoeist of the RINOs but no one can deny he's outstanding on freedom of speech (remember McConnell was the lead plaintiff in the case that sought to overturn McCain-Feingold).

Today McConnell is going to speak at AEI (11:30 eastern, livestream here) and he gave Breitbart News a preview.

In short: Obama is a Stuttering Clusterfrak Of A Miserable Tyrant.

“This is a dangerous, radical administration,” said McConnell.

“I’m going to lay out a long litany of abuses pursued by the Obama Administration and its allies against its political opponents,” McConnell said. “It’s reminiscent of the Nixon administration. It’s much more pervasive than Clinton. They have their enemies list. They’re checking it twice. They’re going to go after those that have been naughty and not nice.”

...

McConnell is incensed over the administration’s use of government and nongovernmental resources to target its political enemies. “They’ve used the IRS, the FEC, the FCC, the SEC, their allies in the Obama campaign to go after people who disagree with them. The Obama campaign has rifled through the divorce records of a major donor to an opposing super PAC. The government itself is intimidating donors. Appointees at the IRS and other agencies are pursuing similar efforts to ferret out who is contributing to outside groups critical of the administration so that they can scare them off the playing field and shut them up.”

Much more at the link, including a recognition of leftwing attacks on conservatives like SWATing.

Game on, gloves off.

Posted by: DrewM at 05:40 AM | Comments (55)
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Yesterday the President claimed he would be reframing and rebooting his campaign's economic plans (I guess the old standby "pivot to jobs" is too worn out). But if you were unfortunate enough to have seen it, you'd have noticed that the speech was awfully familiar.

Why, it's just the same tired speech he always gives!!!

The RNC it's doing amazing fast response work with these ads. Kudos to Chairman Priebus and his team.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:43 AM | Comments (227)
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Happy Friday.

I got nuthin today. Have a great weekend.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:48 AM | Comments (123)
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Enjoy Rioting?

Then the US Army (Happy Birthday BTW) wants you...to help test out their less-than-lethal weapons:

That's right, if you are over 18 and live in the greater New Jersey area, you too can get $20/hour to be whacked with batons and shot with rubber balls! The testing takes place in a non-descript one-story building, known as the Target Behavioral Response Laboratory, located a few miles from Picatinny Arsenal, the Army's research and development center.

...To that end, the Army actively recruits volunteers from local colleges and libraries to pretend to be part of an angry mob, paying them $20 an hour with the small chance of permanent injury (though all tests are supervised by the Picatinny's Institutional Review Board).

On the plus side you do get bonuses based on how many rocks you can toss through the guards.

The Puppehs Are Back!

Yep the Shiba Inu Puppy Cam is back with a fresh new batch of puppies to keep you entertained and take care of that pesky too-much-free-time problem.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:50 PM | Comments (598)
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I'm sure all the answers will be included in the emails Holder hand-selects for disclosure.

Attorney General Eric Holder on Thursday agreed to make what he called "an extraordinary accommodation" to Republicans investigating the botched "Operation Fast and Furious" by turning over department emails he has long insisted deal with internal deliberations and should be protected.

...

Issa's office said in an early response that Holder's letter "only seems to indicate a willingness to offer a selective telling" of key events and that the chairman is still asking the Justice Department to explain "how it is prepared to alter its opposition to producing subpoenaed documents."

...

In recent days, Issa narrowed his demands to focus on correspondence between department officials after they sent a now-retracted letter to Congress on Feb. 4, 2011. In that letter, the department inaccurately insisted: "ATF makes every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally and prevent their transportation to Mexico."

Posted by: Ace at 04:07 PM | Comments (146)
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Allah digests it a bit.

The country’s historic parliamentary elections are now null and void, the newly chosen constitutional congress is likely also invalid, and the Muslim Brotherhood’s presidential candidate might end up being disqualified — conveniently leaving the military junta’s preferred candidate, Mubarak’s former prime minister Ahmed Shafik, as the only “choice” left on the ballot.

Oh, did I mention that parliamentÂ’s attempt to ban Shafik from running because he was a toady for Mubarak was also declared unconstitutional? And that the military coincidentally reimposed martial law over the country just 24 hours ago?

I'm not sure how workable the alternative proposition would have been -- a year-long rule by the military, as democracy was promoted and parties given time to organize. As it was, only the Muslim Brotherwood was organized when elections were held.

But as unworkable as that plan seemed, the results here seem no better.

Posted by: Ace at 03:41 PM | Comments (109)
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An aging woman recalls her more vibrant glory days; film at 11.

She's rather perturbed that the Obamas are not social people and don't dine at her table (and these gatherings, frankly, sound like terrible things). So good on the Obamas for that.

But Quinn just can't let it go.

Interest groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,Citizens United and American Crossroads have become more and more powerful, beating out everyone else in the game.

...

There you have it. Money is power. The fundraiser has replaced the Washington dinner party.

She means that her dinner parties used to afford her a certain amount of Social Status/Networking Power, power which has now ebbed to other groups.

Even if that's true -- why should we prefer Sally Quinn's Social Status unelected, undemocratic power lever over any other unelected, undemocratic power lever?

Neither is fair, of course. Neither is voted on. Neither involves, much, the vaunted "Common Man." (Although you can come to a fundraiser, well-born or not, by forking over the required amount.)

Indeed, the whole point of a party like Sally Quinn's is that it's exclusive and reserved to the elite (or the elite as chosen by Sally Quinn). Her decisions as to who is and who is not club-worthy invest her -- or, at least once invested her -- with a certain amount of leverage and power.

But who voted for Sally Quinn? As far as I know, only her husband Ben Bradlee did, and given how annoying she is, I'd imagine he's chagrined about that vote.

Her bleat seems to have the subtext that her exercise of undemocratic (and unearned) authority was done for for the public good. But these other exercises? Those we ought to doubt.

Well I have no particular reason to trust Sally Quinn and, in fact, a great many reasons to distrust her, such as her ridiculous claim to speak "On Faith" while constantly denigrating faith.

Washington has become a community of small groups of people, mostly staying within their circles, occasionally making a foray out into the bigger world to large events, only to be turned off by the endless corporate “fundraiserness” of it all. How special can you feel when you know you have to pay to go to an event and then get a bad seat on top of that?

Not as special as being hand-selected by the Grand Dame Sally Quinn for dinner, of course. But I can pony up money and go to a fundraiser, and so can you; and this is why Sally Quinn objects. She doesn't get to construct the invitation list.

How crude! Don't they know she's a lively hostess? Don't they know that she once had Henry Kissinger at her home all the time?

Maybe people stopped coming to her parties because they got sick of hearing about Henry Kissinger coming to her parties in the seventies.

Update, Ms. Quinn. Even your anecdotes need a facelift.

Could it be that the Obamas, not knowing Washington, think thatÂ’s all there is to the social life here? Who wouldnÂ’t want to stay away? On the other hand, he is the president of the United States and, whether he likes it or not, the leader of social as well as political Washington.

Unemployment is over 10% but we ought to grieve for Sally Quinn's diminished social prominence, and her great upset that Obama won't flatter her self-appointed position as the Social Queen Be of Washington, DC.

Bravo, Mr. President.

But maybe this small-group trend is not such a bad thing. Maybe, as in one of those post-apocalyptic movies where the planet has been destroyed by war, people will begin to make their own lives.

What? What does she imagine the non-invited persons have been doing for 60 years?

Quinn could not possibly have a revolving guest list of more than, say, 2000, tops. Based on these 2000 people, most of whom she barely knows at all, she thinks that people, generally, are getting on with "their own lives" simply because her social position is diminished?

Even among that 2000 -- does she really imagine her parties were so central to their lives that they were interfering with their lives? Such that freedom from her parties is now a kind of liberation?

Really?

I think freedom from her parties is, probably, a liberation. Because if people stop coming when they don't have to come anymore, that probably means they weren't enjoying themselves previously.

Now here comes the most revealing part of this already Too Much Information piece.

She now bleats that without her fake friends flattering her by pretending she's a player, she must now dine... with actual friends.

ThatÂ’s what Ben and I have done. In the past, we might have attended five-course dinners a couple of nights a week, with a different wine for each course, served in a power-filled room of politicians, diplomats, White House officials and well-known journalists. Those gatherings donÂ’t exist anymore. Now, we host and go to small dinners with close friends, dinners with some meaning to them, dinners that are celebrations of something. These evenings are sacred to me. They are filled with love and respect and caring. People are never looking over their shoulders to see who is more powerful, or, more likely, richer.

This piece is so dreadful, and so evincing of a deeply-felt sense of entitlement, that archliberals like Jonathan Chait are ripping it too, and I'm not even sure Chait said a single thing I'd disagree with.

Then again, I was really just reading the Quinn quotes with my mouth open in horror at the terrible social faux pas. The only thing more socially embarrassing than a diminishment of social status is a published whine about that that diminishment of social status, combined with a passive-aggressive attempt to guilt people into taking you seriously again.

Based on Quinn's essay, I think the Market Forces of Social Valuation have chosen correctly.

And, for the first time in my life, I am proud of President Obama.

Sally Quinn

There's nothing wrong with this country that my Fondue & Flan can't fix.

Unfortunate Choice of Which Age To Denigrate: I didn't quote it, but she expressed her frustration that "25 year old bloggers" were now afforded more social status than she.

That's an especially bad age to mention, because William Holden mentions that precise age while lecturing the delusional, deranged Norma Desmond (video below).

more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:49 PM | Comments (214)
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