WORD AROUND THE NET

“Being a Muslim girl whose role models are the wives of the Prophet, who were required to wear the hijab, is better than being a Christian girl, whose role models are whores,”

Ohio was the site of a union crime.  The police arrested four union men in a pickup belonging to the local sheetmetal worker’s union, filled with Ryan/Romney signs they’d stolen from businesses and private property.  These guys are so behind the times they think yard signs move an election.

Television channel G4 was launched as a young gamer geek paradise, intended to focus on gaming, movies, and general geek culture.  Its centerpiece shows were X-Play and Attack of the Show, which were pretty big shows for a while but have tailed off in popularity.  Now both shows are being canceled and the channel is claiming they want to be more like magazines such as Maxim.  Which is what Spike TV is already.

British schoolgirls have been given birth control implants at ages as young as 13 without any notification for their parents.  The school nurses were even banned from attempting to ask parents for permission.  Why?  Because sex!  Its great!  Shut up, you puritanical loser!

Reason magazine has been following a story where professional dieticians have been trying to shut down anyone but them from giving any dietary advice.  The trick they use is a law which prevents “practicing nutrition” without a license, which is a dubious law to begin with.  Thus, if a blogger posts some suggestions on a certain kind of diet (the odd “paleo” diet, apparently designed to get people to die at age 35 which was more typical in ancient times), they get nailed by the government for “practicing nutrition.”  Blatantly this is a free speech violation but its also the government protecting a certain sector of the economy from competition, which is simply absurd.

According to Kerry Picket at the Washington Times, the Obama administration has been using an old espionage law to silence whistleblowers.  If someone tries to point out misuse of power, funds, or personnel, the White House often claims that falls under the WWI era law and silences them.  Bloomberg News has reported that Attorney General Eric Holder has prosecuted more people under this act than every single one of his predecessors combined.

When the Obama administration bailed out the United Auto Workers Union by taking over GM and Chrysler, one of the things they did was cut back on workers.  But they did so by specifically firing only non-union workers, such as at the Delphi plant.  Now emails revealing this was at the specific behest of the White House and President Obama have surfaced, showing deliberate protection of unions.

Probably you saw this picture if you have Facebook:

That silly sorority girl, she misspelled Kenya and thinks Obama came from there, what a loser!  She’s obviously one of those radical racist southerner Tea Partiers who want to bring back slavery!  Except… she’s an Obama voting Democrat from Massachusetts.  Yet again, someone trying to make the Tea Party look bad ends up being a hard left twit.

Robert Reich was President Clinton’s economic adviser, and when it comes to economics, he’s almost always wrong.  A hardcore Keynsean he’s all in favor of huge government and a nation of serfs serving the feds.  He also thinks this, according to his twitter feed:

Will we comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable under President Obama, or do the exact opposite under President Romney?

He thinks the governments job is to afflict the comfortable.  That’s an old quote about ministers of the gospel, although some believe it applies to the news media as well, betraying a certain evangelical viewpoint about the job of reporting.

While Jews historically have been the world’s most persecuted religious group, right behind them are Christians (from Rome onward) and these days Christians are by far the most persecuted group.

Why is such a huge scourge chronically under-reported in the West? One result of this oversight is that the often inflated sense of victimhood felt by many Muslims has festered unchallenged. Take the fallout of last month’s protests around the world against the American film about the Prophet Mohammed. While most of the debate centred on the rule of law and the limits of free speech, almost nothing was said about how much more routinely Islamists insult Christians, almost always getting away with their provocations scot-free.

Typically the Persecution happens in Muslim countries, or those where Muslims desire to take over, such as Nigeria.

Long ago, Bill Maher used to be somewhat funny when he ran Politically Incorrect, but these days he’s just disgusting, obnoxious, and pathetic.  He recently declared that people who vote for Romney should be scared because “black people know where they live.”  In that he managed to threaten people for disagreeing with him, smear all blacks as brutes and violent, and show himself to be a ridiculous clown.  How this guy gets paid to talk in public I’ll never understand.

Other voter intimidation news includes an Oregon mailer from the AFL-CIO, suggesting how they think people ought to vote.  The front of the mailer includes the words “your voting history is a matter of public record.”

Last week a big story about hate crimes and a Republican man being attacked for his politics surfaced.  A homosexual working for a Republican campaign claimed he got threatening emails from the opponent of his boss, and like almost all “hate crimes” being reported ended up being false.  Maybe if we junked this idiotic false category people would stop crying wolf for attention using it.

While I think the Gangman Style video is weirdly funny, it was a single-watch distraction to me.  For some reason its become a huge internet sensation (mostly because of people who also think the Emperor has a really great new outfit, I suspect) and Youtube has been hammered with people watching the nonsense.  Amar Prabhu at Forbes did the math and while its very hard to be exact, estimates that it has cost Youtube around $70,000 thus far, and earned them over $300,000 in ad revenue (a number I’m skeptical about, since I personally ignore all ads online and block 90% of them with addons).

Virginia’s sitting Democrat congressman Gerry Connolly is running for reelection to the House of Representatives against a man who served 24 years in the Green Berets.  Connolly is having a tough fight to keep his job, and recently said that vets are “unqualified to serve in Congress” because their service overseas prevents them from putting “sweat equity” into their districts.  Now, personally I find that a lot more shocking than anything Akin ever said, but more importantly I doubt Connolly has sweated a moment in his life working for his community.

According to data from the Senate Budget Committee, last year the United States Federal Government spent almost $60,000 per household under the poverty line in the United States in the form of various welfare payments.  Since the median income for the USA is just over $50,000 you’d think that would be pretty solid life for poor people.  In fact, if you look at this chart you can see that spending on welfare has skyrocketed to an astounding rate over the years:

However, if you listen to the rhetoric of the left, America is a miserable place where the 1% are greedy bastards who don’t pay their fair share, despite it being about 50% of the total tax burden.

Hurricane Sandy caused a lot of destruction, including many toppled trees.  And one, in New Haven Connecticut, revealed a human skeleton.  Apparently buried long ago, it was left when the graveyard was moved and new construction built over it. There’s been no word on poltergeists so far.

Also during the Hurricane, President Obama’s campaign emailed voters telling them to tie up the phone lines during the emergency calling people and telling them to vote for Obama.  I get 5-6 Obama emails a day begging for funds and telling me to get others to vote for him.  It doesn’t stink of desperation and failure at all.

Saudi Arabia was the scene of a wedding, with traditional automatic weapons fire into the air to celebrate.  The fire cut a power line, which fell on the wedding party and killed 23 people.

For decades now the United Kingdom has been pushing for “alternative energy” sources such as wind turbines, and finally they are giving up on the plan at least in part.  The government of the UK has announced a moritorium on all wind farm construction, possibly because the things are failing, produce tiny amounts of power, and cost the taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars the government just doesn’t have.

Facebook tends to avoid public political statements but they really stepped in it recently.  A group of vets against President Obama recently posted this image:

Facebook immediately ordered that they take it down.  The group refused, so Facebook took it down and shut down their Facebook page.  Then, after being told this was asinine and possibly actionable, they restored the page and tried to apologize.  The only policy this image violated was the “reelect Obama” policy.

Hurricane Sandy also has revealed a serious flaw with the government of Northeastern States: while they’re real keen on things like limiting transfats and the size of drinks, they haven’t been very vigorous about emergency preparation, preventing floods, and so on.  When people talk about how they want a government that is involved in peoples’ lives, they tend to mean one that helps when they need help, not one that continually interferes with how they live.  Don’t expect that to change how they vote, though. Seriously though, New York City is about 3 feet above sea level, did they really think it would never crest over that level?

One of the most powerful condemnations of Nevada voters and politics is the reelection of Harry Reid to the Senate.  A despicable, pathetic wretch, Reid should have been shown the door in 2010, but managed to hold on to his position anyway.  And he can partly thank President Obama, who illegally used Department of Energy funds to help pay for Reid’s reelection campaign, according to newly released emails.  Ends, means, justify, etc.

Pastor Joseph Lowery gave the prayer at Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration, calling for peace and cooperation among all peoples.  And recently, this week, he declared all white people are going to hell.  This isn’t an especially new perspective among blacks – its doctrine for the Muslim Brotherhood, for example – but it is new for a presidential pastor and Medal of Freedom recipient to spew.  Of course, “this isn’t the Pastor Lowery that President Obama knew”, just like all the other radicals and monsters he’s called friends, allies, and mentors in the past, then had to distance himself from when their true colors are revealed.  Meanwhile, the Bible makes it clear that color, ethnicity, country of origin, gender, etc have nothing whatsoever to do with salvation.

Meanwhile at the National Health Service in the UK, more allegations that doctors are killing off patients they declare terminally ill and unsavable to clear out beds and reduce costs.  According to documents obtained through Freedom of Information requests, 85% of trusts have adopted a system called “pathway to death” in which dying patients have water and nutrition removed to hasten their demise.

Typically any group in Europe which is nationalistic, dislikes immigrants, and loves socialism are called “right wing.”  Americans just call them ethnocentric leftists, because their politics are clearly left leaning.  But the group Golden Dawn in Greece is one of those nationalist groups that take it a bit further than fervent patriotism into fascism.  However, the group is gaining power and followers in Greece as its government continues to prove it is completely unwilling to cut costs and save the nation’s finances.  And that’s one of the serious dangers of socialism: eventually the money runs out and when that happens, people panic and start gravitating to a strong leader who promises them everything they want, for the small price of their liberty.

Most cars do poorly when immersed in salt water, but only the Fisker Karma has been proven to catch fire and explode when that happens.  Sixteen of them in a lot did so after being inundated with seawater by Hurricane Sandy.  The New Jersey lot is a scene of burnt out carnage with over a dozen of the charred $100,000 electric sports cars ruined.

Buckyballs are one of those executive desk toys, the kind you can shape into various odd structures by using magnetic spheres.  They look interesting and give you something to do while you wait for a meeting, but now they’ve been pulled off the market.  Why?  Because of continual harassment by the US Consumer Product and Safety Commission.

[the CPSC] estimated 1,700 people have been hospitalized in the past three years after ingesting parts from these kinds of magnet toys. As a result, the CPSC filed a lawsuit in July against Maxfield & Oberton, calling Buckyballs “hazardous” because the strong magnets “contain a defect in the design, packaging, warnings and instructions, which pose a substantial risk of injury to the public.”
In the lawsuit, the CPSC demanded that Buckyballs and several high-power magnetic toys from other companies be recalled immediately.
“In response to a request from CPSC staff, a number of retailers have voluntarily agreed to stop selling Buckyballs, Buckycubes and similar products manufactured by other companies.

This is why we can’t have anything nice.

One of my favorite books is The Thin Man by one of my favorite authors, Dashiell Hammett.  The series of movies based on that book were entertaining, and now a series of novellas based on the books is being written which is good news.  Almost all of the films were partly written and overseen by Hammett before he got tossed out of Hollywood for his radical politics and heavy drinking.

Finally, Michael “Piltdown” Mann’s absurd lawsuit against National Review Online for saying things about him that he didn’t like has hit a few snags.  One for instance, was his claim to have won the Nobel Prize (which was a lie) in his statement to the judge.  Mark Steyn has been having a lot of fun with this nonsense, and he’s an old hand at being sued for saying something the PC crowd didn’t like.

And that’s the Word Around the Net.  Next time I do this, we should have a new president-elect, God willing.