"naked, man, driving"
"There has not been a nominee in several generations who has brought the depth of judicial experience to this job that she offers," Obama says.Yeah...I can't remember the last time a President nominated a racist for the position...
French oarsman Charlie Girard failed for a third time yesterday in his quixotic quest to row to France from Cape Cod. And US taxpayers are $80,000 poorer.So, to summarize...the frog gave up for the third time. The US came to his rescue for the third time...and we taxpayers foot the bill every time Frenchman, Charlie Girard wants a little attention...(hmmm...sounds familiar).
That's the cost of dispatching a Coast Guard jet and helicopter to a 21-foot, custom-designed rowboat bobbing 150 miles off Cape Cod, where Girard called it quits 10 days into his latest aborted adventure.
Fearful and cold in a menacing fog, Girard used a satellite phone to place an 8:25 a.m. distress call to the Coast Guard in Boston.
"I can't do anything," Girard, 28, said in a weak, breaking voice. "I'm cold, and I don't know what to do."
"He is well," his website chronicler reported that day. "He becomes used more and more to the life on Caliste. He sleeps better now. A bird accompanied some hours on Saturday. He saw two boats."Who else is a cynic and thinks ole' Chuck is cashing in by taking in donations, starting a journey, and then calling it off after a short period to pocket the proceeds? Maybe...maybe not...but:
The site appealed, in awkwardly translated English, for donations to help Girard "beat the record of the world of the crossing by rows the North Atlantic ocean."
By making a contribution, the appeal continued, "you will allow Charlie to close the budget and you will participate in an exceptional adventure."
On his website, where he says he comes from the Deux-Sèvres region in the west of France, he describes himself as "not a sea man . . . contrary to the previous adventurers, he has only coastal navigation experiences."
Girard will not be billed for the $80,000 expense, which includes six hours of total air time for the jet and helicopter, and the cost of support crews. Petty Officer Etta Smith, a Coast Guard spokeswoman in Boston, said policy is to use taxpayer money to pay for rescues.Effin' French...
Pure Liberals first define "fairness" for the rest of us, and refuse to consider alternatives. This is why just about every issue comes down to identity politics with them. There is no subjective value accepted by a Liberal despite the fact it is purely subjective. They merely pronounce it objective. Facts, figures, statistics and the law are their worst enemy.Now...let's see what's happening in today's news:
Justice Department political appointees overruled career lawyers and ended a civil complaint accusing three members of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense of wielding a nightstick and intimidating voters at a Philadelphia polling place last Election Day, according to documents and interviews.That's Eric Holder's Justice Department. You know...the guy who called us all cowards for not taking a blunt dialogue on racism and bigotry.
(...)
Career lawyers pursued the case for months, including obtaining an affidavit from a prominent 1960s civil rights activist who witnessed the confrontation and described it as "the most blatant form of voter intimidation" that he had seen, even during the voting rights crisis in Mississippi a half-century ago.
The lawyers also had ascertained that one of the three men had gained access to the polling place by securing a credential as a Democratic poll watcher, according to interviews and documents reviewed by The Washington Times.
The career Justice lawyers were on the verge of securing sanctions against the men earlier this month when their superiors ordered them to reverse course, according to interviews and documents. The court had already entered a default judgment against the men on April 20.
The larger point is that liberals and conservatives often form judgments through flash intuitions that aren’t a result of a deliberative process. The crucial part of the brain for these judgments is the medial prefrontal cortex, which has more to do with moralizing than with rationality. If you damage your prefrontal cortex, your I.Q. may be unaffected, but you’ll have trouble harrumphing.Crap by the bucketload...
One of the main divides between left and right is the dependence on different moral values. For liberals, morality derives mostly from fairness and prevention of harm. For conservatives, morality also involves upholding authority and loyalty — and revulsion at disgust.
UNITED NATIONS — With their boundless vistas of turquoise water framed by swaying coconut palms, the Carteret Islands northeast of the Papua New Guinea mainland might seem the idyllic spot to be a castaway.Uhhh...no...thanks to tectonic shift, the islands are sinking. Rising sea levels are not the cause.
But sea levels have risen so much that during the annual king tide season, November to March, the roiling ocean blocks the view from one island to the next, and residents stash their possessions in fishing nets strung between the palm trees.
Now if you ask just about anyone living on the islands why this is happening, they will immediately shout "global warming." I was surprised they even knew this term, but they will point north and describe the melting of the ice in Greenland to make their case for climate change. Other people we interviewed described the tumultuous history of the islands, where at one time they used dynamite to fish with resulting damage to the protective coral. They also remind us that the islands are actually part of an old volcano that has a natural history of sinking back into the sea.I wouldn't be surprised that they knew the term. The United Nations has been force feeding it to them.
Louis B. Susman, Ambassador to the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern IrelandImagine that...the likely new ambassador to the UK is a campaign bundler for Obama and the Democrat Party who was also the vice-chairman of Citigroup before resigning back in February. That's, of course, the same Citigroup which was gifted like $45 Billion of our tax dollars due to their ineptness (and by association, Susman's ineptness). Oh...and he's from Chicago.
The effort to buttress the appeals court judge's nomination from behind a curtain of anonymity highlights the administration's determination to frame the narrative, even as cable news pundits and bloggers were alternately praising and criticizing Sotomayor.This is from a Howard Kurtz piece in the Washington Post today on the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. I found it amusing because Jennifer Loven is the AP reporter who filed her observations on the President's Inaugural address many hours ahead of the delivery. It was one of the examples we use on this site to point out that the Associated Press possesses a Time Machine.
"We protest in the strongest terms the Obama administration's frequent use of briefings done on a background basis . . . especially when the same officials briefing often appear ubiquitously on television shows with similar information," said Jennifer Loven of the Associated Press, president of the White House Correspondents' Association. She said this was particularly true on a Supreme Court nomination, "when the issue does not involve sensitive material such as national security information."
Asked for a response, Gibbs said it was "interesting" that the AP had no qualms about relying on unnamed "officials" in breaking the news of Sotomayor's nomination. "I'm not sure today is the day I'd make that argument," he said.
A media debate over Sotomayor erupted immediately after the AP reported her selection at 8:25 a.m., nearly two hours before Obama's announcement. There had been earlier skirmishes because Sotomayor was high on every media organization's list of possible appointees, unlike in some previous instances where the nominee -- Harriet Miers, for instance -- came as a surprise.Damn Time Machine...
• "It seems that the California Supreme Court justices decided to be indecisive," said Takei, who married Altman Sept. 14, 2008. "Our marriage is intact, but this issue is not settled. Inequality is still the rule of the land."This is the celebrity response to the Prop 8 nonsense over in California. Again, I'll confirm that I could care less about the gay marriage issue. It is of little importance, and I would not have had a problem with the result of the Court Decision one way or the other. Similarly, I had no problem with a majority of California voters deciding that they didn't want gay marriage in their part of the Republic.
• "I'm sure you heard the prop 8 news," DeGeneres wrote on Twitter. "One day when everyone is treated with full equality, we'll look back and realize how wrong this was."
• "Those full of hate and fear will surely be disappointed that 18,000 same sex couples will be living in wedded bliss, kissing their spouses goodnight, checking off those little 'married' boxes on all those forms we fill out nowadays. That's really going to drive them crazy," Melissa Etheridge, who exchanged vows with her longtime partner in a 2003 ceremony, said in a statement. "I am hopeful as I see more and more states turn to the inevitable future of equality, California will get there. Change takes time."
• "I blame miss california," Margaret Cho wrote on Twitter.
• "That's just awful," Elton John said in an interview on AccessHollywood.com. "When you see places like Iowa saying yes, there's now five states in America (where same-sex marriage is legal). California is supposed to be a progressive state. It defies logic to me. I'm very disappointed."
• "This really makes me sad," Kim Kardashian wrote on her blog. "I thought we were more forward thinking than this, and I'm disappointed in the Supreme Court for being so closed minded. Everyone... gay, straight, bisexual, transgendered, EVERYONE should have equal rights to marry who they want to."
• "Gay and lesbian residents of this state are being denied the same rights, privileges and protections that heterosexual couples have when they marry civilly," Hilton blogged. "That is NOT right! That is not fair! That is wrong wrong wrong! This is about equality!"
