Nationalism Trumps Globalization in New IT Era

Robert Kaplan is one of the most accomplished foreign policy and historical analysts in the USA. Kaplan correctly skewers the self-referential boobies stateside and in Europe who interview each other and like-minded liberal elites in Egypt and India and elsewhere to give a false sense of kumbayeh peace and harmony breaking out everywhere. Here's Kaplan:

Western elites believe that universal values are trumping the forces of reaction. They wax eloquent about the triumph of human rights, women's liberation, social media, financial markets, international and regional organizations and all the other forces that are breaking down boundaries separating humanity.

Tragically, they are really observing a self-referential world of global cosmopolitans like themselves. In country after country, the Westerners identify like-minded, educated elites and mistake them for the population at large. They prefer not to see the regressive and exclusivist forces—such as nationalism and sectarianism—that are mightily reshaping the future.

Take Cairo's Tahrir Square in early 2011. Western journalists celebrated the gathering of relatively upper-income Arab liberals with whom they felt much in common, only to see these activists quickly retreat as post-autocratic Egypt became for many months a struggle among the military, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamist Salafists—with the Coptic Christians fearing for their communal survival.

Though secular liberals have resurfaced to challenge Egypt's Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi, do not be deceived. The military and the Muslim Brotherhood both have organized infrastructures. The liberals have only spontaneous emotion and ad hoc organizations. An Islamist-Nasserite regime-of-sorts is likely to emerge, as the military uses the current vulnerability of the Muslim Brotherhood to drive a harder bargain.

I have been to Egypt a dozen times while doing political risk assessments for Amoco and know that the Ikhwan & Army have gigantic networks of members comprising over 50% of the population. I saw the pathetic Mohammed El Baradei on a PBS interview last night downplay the size and importance of these two controlling influences on Egypt. El Baradei said to wait for the upcoming parliamentary elections to see.

Sadly, there is little prospect of a liberal majority, unless, as in the constitutional referendum polling last week, there is a very low turnout. [The referendum failed in Cairo and other large cities, by the way, but the large rural turnout, including many of the 30% of Egyptians who are illiterate, voted for the Islamist agenda.]

But wait, there's more bad news for the Boy Wonder to "lead from behind" on:

Egypt and the Middle East now offer a panorama of sectarianism and religious and ethnic divides. Freedom, at least in its initial stages, unleashes not only individual identity but, more crucially, the freedom to identify with a blood-based solidarity group. Beyond that group, feelings of love and humanity do not apply. That is a signal lesson of the Arab Spring.

An analogous process is at work in Asia. Nationalism there is young and vibrant—as it was in the West in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Asia is in the midst of a feverish arms race, featuring advanced diesel-electric submarines, the latest fighter jets and ballistic missiles. China, having consolidated its land borders following nearly two centuries of disorder, is projecting air and sea power into what it regards as the blue national soil of the South China and East China seas.

Japan and other countries are reacting in kind. Slipping out of its quasi-pacifistic shell, Japan is rediscovering nationalism as a default option. The Japanese navy boasts roughly four times as many major warships as the British Royal Navy. As for Vietnam and the Philippines, nobody who visits those countries and talks with their officials, as I have, about their territorial claims would imagine for a moment that we live in a post-national age.

The disputes in Asia are not about ideology or any uplifting moral philosophy; they are about who gets to control space on the map. The same drama is being played out in Syria where Alawites, Sunnis and Kurds are in a territorial contest over power and control as much as over ideas. Syria's writhing sectarianism—in which Bashar Assad is merely the leading warlord among many—is a far cruder, chaotic and primitive version of the primate game of king of the hill.

The US and Europe are introspective and distracted. America under this second-rate president is fast losing ANY leverage in foreign policy except that wielded by its overwhelming military advantage---which Obama will be loath to ever use, given the vociferous self-referential imbecility of his left-wing Demonrats.

But wait, there's more:

Nationalism is alive and thriving in India and Russia as well. India's navy and air force are in the process of becoming among the world's largest. Throughout most of history, India and China had little to do with each other, separated as they were by the Himalayas. But the collapse of distance by way of technology has created a new strategic geography for two big nations. Now Indian space satellites monitor Chinese military installations, even as Chinese fighter jets in Tibet have the possibility of including India within their arc of operations. This rivalry has further refined and invigorated nationalism in both countries.

In Russia, Vladimir Putin's nationalism is a large factor in his high popularity. President Putin's nationalism is geographical determinism: He wants to recreate buffer states in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia, like in the old Soviet Union. So he does everything he can to undermine the countries in these regions.

Western elites hope that if somehow there were truly free elections in Russia, then this foreign policy might change. The evidence is to the contrary. Race-hatred against Muslims is high among Russians, and just as there are large rallies by civil-society types, there are also marches and protests by skinheads and neo-Nazis, who are less well-covered by the Western media. Local elections in October returned a strong showing for Mr. Putin's party. Like it or not, he is representative of the society he governs.

Nor can Europe be left out of this larger Eurasian trend. A weakening European Union, coupled with onerous social and economic conditions for years to come, invites a resurgence of nationalism and extremism, as we have already seen in countries as diverse as Hungary, Finland, Ukraine and Greece. That is exactly the fear of the Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize committee, which gave this year's award to the European Union in order to make a statement against this trend.

Fascists are not about to regain power anywhere on the Continent, but the age of deepening European integration is likely behind us. Get ready to see more nasty and thoroughly frightening political groupings like Greece's Golden Dawn emerge across the Continent.

Putin is no less than a new incarnation of the Czars, or more frighteningly, Stalin. Russia has a huge demographic problem in that sparsely populated Siberia looks tempting to a China burgeoning with hundreds of millions of Malthusian manpower. Siberia's natural resources would tempt any powerful neighbor and Putin is acutely aware of the necessity of keeping China in the friendship column.

India is also frightening, as the nationalist parties appear poised to make electoral gains against the Congress Party's wobbly cobbled-together scrum of squabbling factions. India with the bomb and Pakistan also with the bomb in turmoil, a situation Kaplan leaves out of his excellent analysis, could flare up as easily as a Sino-Indian contretemps.

Kaplan sums up the battle between values and interests:

We truly are in a battle between two epic forces: Those of integration based on civil society and human rights, and those of exclusion based on race, blood and radicalized faith. It is the mistake of Western elites to grant primacy to the first force, for it is the second that causes the crises with which policy makers must deal—often by interacting with technology in a toxic fashion, as when a video transported virtually at the speed of light ignites a spate of anti-Americanism (if not specifically in Benghazi).

The second force can and must be overcome, but one must first admit how formidable it is. It is formidable because nations and other solidarity groups tend to be concerned with needs and interests more than with values. Just as the requirement to eat comes before contemplation of the soul, interests come before values.

Yet because values like minority rights are under attack the world over, the United States must put them right alongside its own exclusivist national interests, such as preserving a favorable balance of power. Without universal values in our foreign policy, we have no identity as a nation—and that is the only way we can lead with moral legitimacy in an increasingly disorderly world. Yet we should not be overturning existing orders overnight. For it is precisely weak democracies and collapsing autocracies that provide the chaotic breathing room with which nationalist and sectarian extremists can thrive.

The narcissist in the White House toppled Mubarak after the aged Egyptian leader, who was never the fascist ogre portrayed by the silly libtard US media, gave the arrogant Boy Wonder a short lecture on the phone about ancient societies and the hazards of rapid political or economic change [The Shah's "White Revolution" led to a massive exodus from countryside to cities and sparked the 1979 Iranian Republic and its subsequent mischief-making.].

The miffed Child Wonder threw a tantrum and promptly phoned the Egyptian military to threaten withdrawal of US security assistance if Mubarak stayed in power. Mubarak departed against the advice of seasoned senior diplomats like Frank Wisner and now women and Copts in Egypt are in the gunsights of the new Islamist ascendancy, while the idiot in the White House golfs the time away, heedless of the turmoil he caused in touting what he imagined was the "Arab Spring," now rife with Summer thunderstorms.

Syria is the best example and Obama's cowardly diffidence will again show that the US is "leading from behind," afraid to ruffle the feathers of Russia and China. Now Obama can talk to Medvedev, as he promised to when an open mike betrayed this pernicious double-talking politico's perfidious underhanded dishonesty for all the world to see. The US will pay dearly for re-electing a stooge for POTUS.

Merry & Blessed Christmas...!!!

Pope Benedict XVI admonished the world that life is moving too fast nowadays and that we should often pause to reflect on first and last things.

I was watching the Christmas Eve Mass at the Vatican on NBC [It wasn't Midnight Mass because of the Pope's failing health] and two deacons from the midwest USA [Duluth & Indianapolis] were assisting him at the High Mass. Slumber overtook me and I'm turning in early.

No more midnight Masses for this dude---I'm seventy now and gotta cut back on the night life...!!!

FBI Investigated 'Occupy' As Possible 'Terrorism' Threat, Internal Documents Show

Those "peaceful protestors" burnt paper bags filled with fecal material and hurled bags full of sh*t onto police vehicles parked near Zucotti Park, just for instances of its anarchic activities.

Wearing the "V" Guy Fawkes masks was a thinly-veiled reference to blowing up government and other public buildings. OWS was always a dud of a movement, consisting largely of what Marx called the "Lumpenproletariat" and what today is often called the "scum of the earth."

And the often-derided Tea Party actually elected about sixty Congressmen in 2010 whereas OWS fizzled out in apoplectic anarchism. OWS was always an astroturf media concoction by the largely hyperkinetic denizens of the Far Left TV, Hollyweird and academicide outposts trying to impose a Police State by taking away citizens' guns

In a Police State only the police have guns, plus the government. "Big Sister" Napolitano has been attempting a government coup d'etat against the Constitution ever since she began staining the Cabinet with her fascist Gestapo tactics.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Some Russians & Georgians Celebrate Stalin's Birthday

The hideous monster Stalin remains popular to a tiny minority of homines-Sovieticus who still regard Djugashvili as a great leader. The question remains:

Fooling FDR was not difficult. Often a fool is easily fooled. And Stalin was a beast who killed his own people on purpose---perhaps 50 million died because of his malignant malice and they were mostly citizens of the USSR. At least Hitler reserved his rage for citizens outside of Germany [except for German Jews]. Mao was the worst and may have killed up to 70mm Chinese citizens. Why do Communist revolutions kill their own citizens, ala Pol Pot?

And another question remains; did Stalin who was half-Georgian & half-Ossetian really like ethnic Russians? Remember that Stalin got Lenin's attention originally by his study of the ethnic composition of the USSR in 1918, just after the revolution succeeded and while various parts of the USSR were independent republics, like Georgia & Azerbaijan.

"Koba" spoke Russian with a noticeable Georgian accent and his father was Ossetian [a Persian-related ethnic minority] in heritage. It was occasionally remarked that he hated Russians, but couldn't act on this primal urge. "Young Stalin" by Montefiori has much interesting info on how this political perv became perhaps the greatest monster of the twentieth century.

Despite Anne Applebaum's Pulitzer-winning Gulag, some Americans still regard Stalin in a favorable light---even Henry Wallace visited Vorkuta [especially cleaned up like a Potemkin village] up in Eastern Siberia---a camp which rivaled some of Hitler's Death Camps in its winter mortality rate..! Happily, Truman was chosen in 1944 as Veep or else America would have had the village idiot as POTUS, a totally gullible fan of Uncle Joe's. Wallace was sent on some junket after he was deposed as Vice President---good riddance to bad rubbish...!

Here's another version of how Georgians in particular are divided about this most famous offspring of their country.

Obama's Narcissism Starting to be Cringeworthy

Obama's eulogy at Sen. Inouye's funeral in the National Cathedral was so self-centered that even the Dems think it was cringeworthy. This isn't the first or second or third time that BHO has filled his speeches with egregious solecisms. His narcissistic and self-referential asides are practically a normal staple now of his speeches and political stances.

Bob Woodward's "Price of Power" demonstrates how little his Democratic colleagues on the hill think of him, including Pelosi & Reid. Obama makes little effort to work the House & Senate and his neglect of the personal touch and his remote aloof personality have made the Hill indifferent to him even though he has the bully pulpit & vast administrative power.

Skip Bayless Crucifies Rex Ryan

Skip doesn't mince words and has been a Tebow fan from the get-go.

Did Ringmaster Rex ever pull one over on us. Did he ever sell a bill of goods to a yes, sir/no, sir sucker named Tim Tebow and to the media and fans who bought into Rex Ryan's bombastic baloney.

Hurry, hurry, step right up and see Tim Tebow & half man, half wildcat & come to New York and revolutionize the way the Jets play offense!

In the end Tim Tebow's lost season appears to have been little more than a publicity stunt designed to steal media attention away from the defending champion New York Giants and feed it to the biggest coaching ego in sports -- Rex's. Did it ever work. While the Giants toiled in relative camp obscurity, the satellite trucks surrounded Rex's no-ring circus. Rex delighted in dropping bombshell hints about secret Tebow packages. Would Tebow and Mark Sanchez alternate series, or even starts? Would Rex sometimes play them together?

You won, Rex. You punk'd us.

And you just might have lost your job.

It's difficult to know who deserves the most blame for acquiring Tebow: GM Mike Tannenbaum, owner Woody Johnson or Rex. But that tabloid-rocking move wrecked the Jets' season because it soon shattered what was left of Sanchez's glass psyche. The last thing poor Sanchez needed after an 8-8 season in which he threw 18 interceptions and lost eight fumbles was Tebowmania looming on the sideline. After Sanchez hit bottom Monday night at Tennessee with four interceptions and a fate-sealing fumble, Rex announced he was benching Sanchez in favor of & Greg McElroy, the former seventh-round pick.

Not Tebow, the former first-round pick, for whom the Jets gave Denver a fourth and a sixth.

McElroy.

No way Rex wanted to give Tebow two full-game chances at season's end to make him look like a fool for not playing Tebow much earlier.

It was shameful the way Ryan and very offensive coordinator Tony Sparano used and misused Tebow. But the joke ultimately was on them. The Jets' season kept BEGGING for Tebow to save it, just like he turned around last year's Broncos from 1-4 to division champs who beat Pittsburgh and its No. 1-ranked defense in a playoff game. Yet by the week Ryan grew more stubbornly proud, began to resent the media monster he'd created by hyping Tebow and dug in with HIS quarterback, the one he called "The Sanchise." He kept treating Tebow like a publicity stunt instead of giving him a chance to save the job Rex might lose.

Playoff-missing justice finally prevailed.

That's Skip Bayless just getting started..!! Read the rest of the link above to see him utterly demolish Ryan as a total fool and mega-ASSHOLE...!!!

UPDATE ESPN Analyst Merrill Hoge called Tebow as "phony as a three-dollar bill." It should be remembered that this former RUNNING BACK retired because of a BRAIN INJURY that left Hoge having to learn to read again because he experienced memory loss, confusion and headaches.

Even Jaws, a great Super Bowl QB, defended Tebow.

A running back like Hoge knows little about the QB position. Former lineman ESPN analyst Mark Shlereth knows more about QB's than brainfart-susceptible Hoge.

Here's an article in ESPN, Hoge's employer, that makes him out to be a bigger POS than ever. Ryan all but denies that Tebow refused to play the wildcat. But Rex is crazier than Hoge, in the opinion of the other ESPN analysts.

Rich Cimini is ESPN's chief writer on the Jets. Here's his best take on the next QB for the Jets after ditching Sanchez, Tebow, and demoting McElroy:

Ryan Fitzpatrick, Bills -- His days in Buffalo appear numbered because of a $3 million roster bonus due in March. The Bills would take a $10 million cap hit by releasing him, but it appears they want to start over at quarterback. Fitzpatrick hasn't been the same since signing a six-year, $62 million contract in 2011 (he has received $26 millon of that amount), but he has an 82.9 passer rating this season, which isn't horrible on a bad team.

Potential fit with the Jets: He's still only 30 years old, knows the AFC East and could be serviceable in the right offense. Of course, he's a Harvard man, which means he's probably smart enough to stay away from the Jets.

Roger that, Rich. As long as Ryan is coach, the team is doomed.

Richard Trumka On Fiscal Cliff: Not Ready To Blow Up Deal Over Obama's Social Security Concession

Trumka is usually the Rex Ryan of the Democratic Left. He has lost a few fights recently over Right to Work in three states and is now indicating his willingness to at least postpone his opposition to the POTUS's plan.

Since the GOP couldn't muster enough votes for Plan B, it's dead in the water anyway.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Assault on Chuck Hagel from Left & Right

Jennifer Rubin says opposition to Hagel from both left and right presage an early end to his candidacy for SecDef.

Hagel’s fate was likely sealed today when the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, which raised loads of cash for President Obama, called Hagel’s remarks “unacceptable” and suggested he’d have a hard time serving in government with his negative views of gays.

Frankly this sounds like the Democrats are now trying to off-load Hagel with tips to sympathetic journalists about his anti-gay record.

Meanwhile, Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) makes a forceful statement in opposition to Hagel: “I have deep concerns about Sen. Hagel’s attitude toward Israel and his approach toward dealing with Iran. If President Obama nominates Sen. Hagel for Secretary of Defense, I intend to seek explanations regarding his opposition to sanctions, his support for negotiating with Hamas, and his view on America’s ongoing relationship with Israel.” It is no coincidence that in 2010 Hagel weighed in on Toomey’s Senate race in favor of Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.), whose Israel record was roundly criticized. Toomey, I am certain, owes no Senatorial courtesy to Hagel.

Then Sen. Marco Rubio’s spokesman almost, sort of said he’d consider a hold on Hagel over his pro-Cuba views. (“Promoting democracy in Latin America is a priority for Sen. Rubio, and he’s put holds on other administration nominees over the issue. If President Obama were to nominate Sen. Hagel for a cabinet position, I’m sure we would have questions about Cuba positions.”) Is there any Republican who does not have serious concerns and would welcome the opportunity to bloody him up in a confirmation fight?

Jennifer, the answer is no.

It gets worse when dozens of Senate aides have come forward telling tales out of school about Hagel's inability to treat staffers with even a minimal amount of human respect. One story has the noble Senator yelling into a terrified aide's face that he's "fvcking stupid."

This is sad, because when I was Scholar-in-Residence at the Middle East Institute back in the day, Hagel would visit the HQ on N St., NW, without much todo and go to our conferences. He seemed to be the only member of the government seen in such venues.

Now, many fear that if he were appointed to Secretary of Defense, he would not know how to be deferential to many civilian staff whose seniority and knowledge of the ways inside the Pentagon's rings would have to be respected by any appointment Obungler makes.

Sparano Defends Tebow

Tony Sparano is very unlike his black-Irish boss, the execrable Rex Ryan, in that he's a decent human being and a stand-up guy.

As the Jets prepare to host San Diego on Sunday with former third-stringer Greg McElroy as their starter, Sparano was asked why the Tebow package hasn't worked.

"It's combination of things but I wouldn't use the words 'didn't work' at all," Sparano said.

As Tebow quietly fumes and Sanchez looks into options outside New York, Sparano might be one of the few in New York to hold that opinion. But Sparano echoed coach Rex Ryan's unwillingness to critique the team's plans as it plays out the string.

"We had a plan going into this thing," Sparano said. "But obviously the plan always, at that particular time, was that Mark was the quarterback and Tim would have a role and to what degree the role was, if I remember correctly, it was one-to-20 plays in a game. Some days it was eight, some days it was one, some days it was none. Just predicated on what we saw out there. Tim has worked really hard out here, he's done a good job, he's worked hard on the practice field, but that's where we are."

Where the Jets are is ranked 30th in the NFL in total yards and passing yards and 31st in interceptions and yards per play. The offense's point of pride, the rushing game, is 10th in the league in yards per game.

Sparano, who by many accounts could be one of several Jets looking for a new job after the season, seemed like a coach highlighting the positives in his weekly news conference Thursday. Asked about the decision to bench Sanchez and start McElroy, Sparano complimented his boss, saying Ryan asked him and others for advice "like any outstanding head coach does."

He said the Wildcat was efficient with Tebow when he could get a first down, but that there weren't many high-yardage packages built in.

Beefhead Coach Ryan was flummoxed on Monday when he tried to explain why he wasn't starting Tebow.

Smart money has it that Rex the Ridiculous was afraid Timmy would pull off a couple of wins and make Ryan look like even a bigger fool than he appears to be at the moment---admittedly a genuine feat.

Chinese Communists Demand Disarming US Citizens

Brandon Darby has an article on Xinhua's insistence that US gun laws become tightened drastically.

The official Chinese government news agency, Xinhua, has demanded the US immediately adopt stricter gun control measures to reduce the number of firearms the US populace is permitted to possess.

The Chinese state-controlled media’s statement, titled “Innocent Blood Demands No Delay for US Gun Control,” is primarily focused on the Newtown tragedy in which 26 Americans were killed by a mad gunman. Twenty of the victims were young children. The Chinese government stated, “Their blood and tears demand no delay for the U.S. gun control.”

In an apparent effort to restrict information to their populace, the Chinese government wrote of a number of US mass shootings but failed to mention they were either stopped by a citizen legally carrying a firearm or otherwise only occurred in the controversial gun-free zones that critics say make prime targets for madmen.

The Chinese government states:

The past six months have seen enough shooting rampages in the United States. Just three days ago, three people were shot dead at a shopping mall in Oregon. Two weeks ago, a football player shot his girlfriend dead and then committed suicide. Five months ago, 12 people were killed and 58 wounded in a shooting spree at a midnight screening of a Batman film in Colorado.

The government went on to express a strong dislike of the National Rifle Association while also attacking the Republican Party as somehow complicit in the violence. Conversely, the article heaps praise on the Democratic Party:

The Clinton government launched a series of gun control policies at the end of last century. And the Democrats lost the Congressional election in 1994 and the presidential election in 2000, with the shadow of the NRA present in both defeats.

The current Chinese government, the communist People’s Republic of China, was established in a revolution led by Mao Zedong, who killed an estimated 40-70 million people with starvation, executions, and re-education camps.

Infowars has more on the interest of the Chinese to see America adopt the Communist policy that prevents ALL civilians from owning or possessing firearms.

Bath Township School Bombing in 1927--38 kids dead, 7 adults

Newtown is a terrible horrific disaster for every American, but read this:

Bath Township was the scene of the May 18, 1927, Bath School Disaster, named for the bombing of an elementary school; related bombings occurred at the perpetrator's farm and house, and with his truck near the school. The bombings killed 45 people and injured an additional 58; 38 of the dead were children in the second through sixth grades. The Bath School Disaster is the deadliest act of mass murder in a school in United States history, claiming more than three times as many victims as the Columbine High School massacre, and half-again as many victims as the Virginia Tech shootings. It has been described as the worst act of domestic terrorism in the United States until the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

Andrew Kehoe, the perpetrator, was described as seeking "murderous revenge" for having lost an election for town clerk in the spring 1926 after briefly holding the position as an appointee. In addition, he was under personal and financial stress; his wife had tuberculosis, and he had stopped making mortgage payments and been notified of foreclosure. He claimed it was valued too high and he had paid too much for it, but was unable to negotiate changes. Over months, he bought and set explosives at his farm and the community school. On May 18, he achieved revenge by destroying both. He began with murdering his wife and committed suicide in the last explosion.

Sad and meaningless acts of madmen should not guide adjustments to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Death Panels for Alzheimer's Sufferers?

Belgium is considering a death panel for killing elderly people suffering from Alzheimer's.

France is chugging along just behind her northern neighbor.

Seems Sarah Palin was right, more or less, about ObamaCare's death panels. It's only a matter of time. The Netherlands already makes euthanasia legal.

And in France, those greedy heirs to fortunes may now petition to "accelerate" the death of the family patriarch/matriarch to get their hands on those Napoleon d'Or that the French love to hoard.

Rex Delendum Est, Et Sanchez certiter.

Rex Ryan should revert to what he does best, build a defense as a superb defensive coordinator like his brother in Dallas Rob.

Sanchez generated five turnovers, against a Titan team with a QB making his tenth start because of severe injuries over the last two years who didn't produce ONE turnover. The Jets should have coasted past the injury-riddled Titans, but instead made the hapless Tennessee team look good compared to the Jets' zany play-calling and pitiful execution.

Tebow should finally get his big chance to start next week, shouldn't he? Not in the cloud-cuckoo world of Rex Ryan, who is full of grudges for Tebow's Broncos beating the Jets last season & keeping them out of the playoffs.

So third-stringer McElroy will start, his first start ever, and Tebow is now looking for another place to peddle his talents---now that the nasty incompetent Ryan has pole-axed his professional standing.

ESPN has the most biting commentary of the major sports sites on the internet, although the NY Post should have a field day with Rex's stupendously silly antics.

New York Jets coach Rex Ryan made the first part of his quarterback decision late Monday night, informing Mark Sanchez he was benched. Part two -- the bombshell -- came Tuesday.

Instead of promoting backup Tim Tebow, Ryan named third-string quarterback Greg McElroy -- inactive in all but one game -- as the starter Sunday against the San Diego Chargers.

Leave it to the Jets to turn a quarterback change into a multiple-choice controversy.

“In dealing with it, I told Mark, 'I think we need to make a change,' and he respected my decision. That's not easy, that's for sure.” -- Rex Ryan on benching Mark Sanchez

To make it worse, Ryan muddied an already complicated situation by refusing to cite his reason for bypassing Tebow, whose NFL resume is far superior to that of McElroy.

The hotheaded Ryan is setting himself up for close scrutiny as the Jets are shedding fans by the Stadium-load through his zany, off-the-wall silliness & tantrum-prone idiocy. Rex may be the first to go.

It was the biggest decision of his head-coaching tenure, raising questions about the futures of Sanchez and Tebow, who are signed through 2016 and 2014, respectively. It also could impact Ryan's own future.

Ryan insisted it was his call, and that owner Woody Johnson didn't force him into it. As recently as late last season, Ryan said Sanchez would be his quarterback for as long as he was the coach. The Jets (6-8), eliminated from playoff contention with Monday night's 14-10 loss to the Tennessee Titans, could face major changes in the offseason.

Sanchez played horribly in the game, throwing four interceptions. In fact, the Jets' last three possessions ended with a Sanchez turnover inside the Tennessee 26-yard line -- two interceptions and a fumbled snap in the shotgun. He leads the league with 24 turnovers -- an NFL-high 50 over the past two seasons.

Things got worse after the game for Sanchez, who received a series of death threats from one disgruntled fan on Twitter. League spokesman Greg Aiello said the NFL's security staff was aware of the man's threats and was working with the Jets to assist on the matter. The team declined comment through a spokesman.

Ryan was seething after the game, according to players. He didn't even wait until they got home from Nashville before breaking the news to Sanchez, who was benched for the first time in his career.

A lot of gainsayers are already saying that the decision to start a totally untested QB like Greg McElroy might be to avoid having Timmy Tebow winning the last two games and making Ryan look even more stupid than he appears now.

Ian O'Connor of ESPN has the ultimate tribute to the spurned Tebow.

Remember when the Jets left him alone at the introductory news conference, feeding him to the news media wolves at their Florham Park, N.J., training facility while they cowered behind a palm tree at the league meetings in Florida?

That was the first sign, and it was as big as the one his sponsor, Jockey, had posted over the Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel. "We Support Tebow & New York," it read. Well, at least somebody did.

Choosing Greg McElroy to replace Mark Sanchez as the Jets' starting quarterback is a monumental slap in the face for Tim Tebow.

Nine months later, the Jets stuck it to Tebow in a way few New York franchises have ever stuck it to a big-name athlete. The day after Mark Sanchez played his way to the bench for keeps, Rex Ryan announced that his third-stringer, Greg McElroy, had made a Bob Beamon leap off the inactive list and over the second-stringer, Tebow, smack into Sanchez's spot.

And you thought the Mets stuck it to R.A. Dickey by whispering nasty things about his alleged devotion to his three favorite teammates -- Me, Myself and I (Note to Toronto: Any self-promoter who wins a Cy Young Award and speaks out against sexual abuse and human trafficking is a self-promoter worth hiring).

The Jets used Tebow, and then abused him. They used him to sell tickets and PSLs and to steal a few more headlines from the local big-boy franchise that had just won another Super Bowl title.

They abused him Tuesday by declaring that a seventh-round pick who has been inactive for 13 out of 14 games gives the Jets a better chance to do something they often fail to do: win.

"A gut feeling," said the coach who no longer has much of a gut.

Ryan no longer has much of a clue, either. He needs to go with whatever postseason purge Woody Johnson orders up after his 6-8 Jets are done with their final two Sundays. If it's Mike Tannenbaum or Tony Sparano or Sanchez or all of the above, Ryan should be right there with them, as he's no longer fit to lead.

Rex mismanaged the quarterback position like he's mismanaged so many things over the last two seasons, and Johnson needs to call him on it. Of course, Johnson needs to call himself on his most controversial player acquisition, one that made the Brett Favre deal look like a garden-variety move.

Now it turns out that gutless Rex Ryan, for all his bellowing and BS, is just a garden-variety coach---one that kills the plants, not grows them.

Newtown Shooter Had Bizarre Weird Condition

Lanza only participated in one extracurricular activity in high school before his mother yanked him for home schooling and that was the "Tech Club." The advisor there took an interest in him because he was very bright and very unusual, to say the least.

The link above shows the advisor recounting that Adam was UNABLE TO FEEL PHYSICAL PAIN & apparently EMOTIONAL pain or empathy as well. The parallels between this freak who lit his arm with lighters to see if he could feel anything and the crazed idiot in Aurora who shot up a movie theater are not striking, but they're there. Very intelligent but emotionally remote and very nerdy.

However, the young man in Newtown was going to be a complete washout, spending his time figuratively in his mom's basement playing video games, which glorify violence and death.

I spent several minutes last night watching that disgusting pompous pile of BS named Piers Morgan, who spouted inaccuracies at a guest who was cool as a cucumber. The creep from the UK wants to turn the US into another clone of the European slave states where the individual is subsumed into the anthill of state slavery.

I want an assault rifle to defend my individual rights against tyrannical government such as freaks like Morgan and other misbegotten media automatons would have me give up.

Rep Tim Scott Newest Black GOP Senator

Senator Scott was appointed by Nikki Haley, the Indian American governor of South Carolina, a sign of how the GOP is falsely accused of being an old white man's club---from the JackAss Party & its racist louts and degenerates. You know, Marx's Lumpenproletariat that Lenin characterized as "useful idiots."

Here is more on Scott from the National Journal.

You can bet the racist Democrats will do anything to get rid of Scott like they did Allen West---the JackAss Party wants all the political blacks to be from their plantations---Chicago, LA, NYC, Philly, Baltimore & other urban blight locations [St Louis is one example].

Bye bye Jets & Rex Ryan [Hopefully]

The New York Jets seem to be imitating the New York Mets in managing to turn a silk purse into a sow's ear. I watched in fascination as Mark Sanchez self-destructed again on national TV---as badly as the Fabulous Thanksgiving Butt-Fumble Circus...!

My daughter dated Middle Linebacker Colin McCarthy her Junior year at U. of Miami, but Colin couldn't play because of a concussion. In fact, the Titans were so banged up, it was a miracle that the Jets couldn't beat a team with half its offense on injured reserve. Mike Turico mentioned when Sanchez completed a pass for a touchdown over Colin's replacement, #59 Shaw, that McCarthy woulda/coulda handled it better than Shaw, who missed getting to the TD reception.

The Jets needed a miracle and even Tebow couldn't supply one on the series of downs he played.

The sensation I had while watching the hapless Titans outplay the pitiful Jets was the old adage of Napoleon: "When your opponent is in the process of destroying himself, it's best not to interfere in the process."

The cantankerous blowhard Rex & his incompetent Offensive Coordinator simply are out of touch with the concept of winning Methinks it's time for Rex & Mark Sanchez [with his $8 million guaranteed contract next year] to go.

Obama Makes Third Fiscal Cliff Offer

Why not tax rates rising to the level of $1 trillion versus the savings and reduction of useless & redundant government programs plus health care adjustments which also equal $1 trillion?

The US already has the highest corporate tax rates in the world at 40+%. 39.5% rate for those earning $500k+? Debt ceiling out one year moratorium?

The numbers should roughly coincide, and Boehner did Obama a big favor last year by agreeing to put the fiscal negotiations AFTER the presidential elections.

Read all about it in "The Price of Power" by Bob Woodward, who describes the players in the debt ceiling negotiations warts and all. Interestingly, Boehner had Pelosi & Reid & McConnell on board for his plan, but Obama scotched the whole deal & went for the 'fiscal cliff' scenario.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

When Will China [& US] Restrain N. Korea?

US policy toward the obnoxious international criminal state of North Korea has been strongly restrictive until an imbecile named Jimmy Carter broke the Logan Act in 1994 & went to Pyongyang to great fanfare. This perverted creep got Bill Clinton, barely better in his personal conduct than Carter's zany mishaps abroad, to succumb to his worse instincts and send incompetent SecState Albright to Pyongyang looking like the proverbial little old lady in tennis shoes.

Of course, N. Korea's people at the time of Albright's visit were starving at the rate of a million deaths per year of simple malnutrition. Clinton arranged what he naively believed was a "deal" whereby N. Korea would terminate its nuke reactors in exchange for food. The US delivered on its end---Kim Jung Il did not on his.

GWB held the fort against the N. Korean polymorphous perversity when it became obvious that Pyongyang was building a bomb & missiles with money from the food it received from the US & China.

A recent CBS 60 Minutes program outlined how NK prison camps still starve their inmates for the non-crime of being related to relatives who defected [over 50 years ago!!!]. And Americans are not immune from the pervasive paranoia and parochialism of the moronic mindset of Pyongyang---as Mr Kenneth Bae, still a prisoner of the NK fascists, can attest.

And realists have been telling Hillary, the latest moronic Clinton to succumb to kumbayeh BS on NK aid, that her aid is killing people in the NK Gulag Archipelago where prisoners are shot, hanged and flayed alive while Hillary travels the world with her female entourage attending to her every need.

As long as China treats Pyongyang as a spoiled child and gives the rat-regime of Kim Jung Un just enough to get by, the NK will make money peddling nuke & missile technology to rogue regimes around the world. And the Boy Wonder will not raise a finger to stop it.

It's obvious that the so-called "civilized" world doesn't give a rat's ass about Commie crazy states like Cuba & NKorea because the belief that the forces of "progress" will lead to generational change. Ditto for Mullah-ridden Iran & the newest theocratic monstrosity, Egypt.

Iraq is now "free" to jail its Sunni Vice President on a technicality and the rump of Iraqi Kurdistan may declare a Kurdish state with the Kurdish parts of Syria & Turkey & Iran wanting to join tout de suite.

I hope John Kerry is up for all this diversity in perversity, because Hillary Clinton and the Boy Wonder who "leads from behind" sure didn't.

Although I really can't forgive Kerry for his ridiculous and treasonous remarks back in the day when he accused US soldiers of war crimes that he claimed to have witnessed.

The clown was only in Vietnam for 3 1/2 months, and accumulated THREE [3] purple hearts without a scar to show for them... What a hoax...! But then, he's a Democrat.

Is The Pack Really Back?

Seifert is ESPN's writer for the NFC North & thus would presumably be biased in favor of the winner of its championship with two games left:

The Packers have won eight of nine games since starting 2-3, and their newfound expertise in winning "ugly" has girded them for the type of competition they'll face in the NFC playoffs.

At the moment, the Packers are the conference's third seed. When you look at the Atlanta Falcons (No. 1) and the San Francisco 49ers (No. 2), do you see a team fundamentally better than the Packers? I don't, and some of the Packers' most important figures are coming around to the same conclusion.

"Not to diminish anything," McCarthy said, "but we are just getting started. We feel that way as a football team. Not trying to be arrogant, [but] we feel that a lot better football is in front of us. It was an extremely important game for everybody involved today, but we fully expected to come in here and win this thing."

McCarthy's strong talk was reminiscent of his message during the Packers' run to Super Bowl XLV two years ago. The Packers' confidence was illustrated Sunday in the decision to hold out defensive back Charles Woodson because, Woodson said, "we felt like they could come down here and get a 'W' whether I played or not."

The Packers have some issues to work through, including the continued struggles of place-kicker Mason Crosby, who missed from 42 and 43 yards Sunday. McCarthy's own hubris helped the Bears keep Sunday's game close; afterward McCarthy admitted that his ill-fated decision to approve a trick play on a fourth-quarter punt return was "clearly not the highlight of my coaching career."

Check current playoff seedings and figure scenarios through the end of the season. Playoff Machine But as we've discussed multiple times this season, the Packers have morphed into a team that grinds out imperfectly played games. An interloper might have watched Sunday's affair and concluded the Packers aren't championship material because they couldn't put away a depleted opponent. Those of us who have watched the Packers all season know they have demonstrated their skill in manufacturing victories.

I know Green Bay plays the Vikings next week & I believe the Titans later, or perhaps it's vice versa. The Vikes are starting to pick up momentum and who knows how Adrian Peterson is going to perform on his way to attempting to beat Eric Dickerson's NFL rushing record?

I just don't want to see another pitiful loss to the Giants as happened last year and several years before that in the playoffs.

Louie Gohmert Says More Guns Are Answer To Preventing Mass Killings

Rep Gohmert is correct, although he hardly argues his case well or even grammatically. Chicago has the strictest gun laws and the highest murder rate per capita in the USA. NYC has brought its homocide rate down, but still has a high murder rate, as does Wash., DC, where guns are strictly forbidden, but come into DC from across Key Bridge and the Beltway from VA, where gun laws are more in compliance with the Second Amendment. Baltimore in MD & Philly have high restrictions on firearms & high murder rates---criminals act less fearfully in robbing civilians if they know they're not armed.

Bernie Goetz of NYC is still my hero... He was prosecuted for shooting five vicious criminal gun-toting freaks on an NYC subway... That's what liberals do, prosecute the innocent & let the criminals run free. Thank God for Giuliani, who cleaned out NYC of a lot of its riffraff.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Noonan on Republican Need to Talk to Each Other

Peggy Noonan is usually very sober, though living on the Upper East Side of Meanhattan [sic] means she sometimes drifts into unconscious tropes of liberal-brainfart BS. Here she voices some uncomfortable truths:

If Mitt Romney had won this year, he would have had a very tough presidency, with the left revived and the coffers empty and the president having to move deftly, brilliantly, to summon and keep support. And while there were many things in Mr. Romney's toolbox, deft political brilliance wasn't one of them. Meanwhile, demographic and cultural changes would have proceeded apace. So 2016 and after would have been brutal for the party.

Yes, much as I admired the tall, dark & handsome Mitt, he was an atavism from the fifties in many respects, and his stubbornness in keeping Stuart Spencer churning out strange stuff on his behalf showed that as POTUS, he would have been susceptible to frequent faux pas. But Noonan falls into nitpicking and non sequiturs in her caustic and silly complaints about Ryan & Rubios' recent speeches at the Jack Kemp dinner in NYC.

Rep. Ryan's speech was OK but insufficient. He didn't say anything terrible but he didn't stake out new ground or take chances. Actually, the part where he said Mitt Romney made "a big election about big ideas and offering serious solutions to serious problems" was slightly terrible because it isn't in a general way true, and it forestalls analysis that might actually be helpful in the long term. Mr. Ryan got points for loyalty but no one doubts he's loyal, and it undercut his central message, which is that the Republican Party needs "new thinking," "fresh ideas and serious leadership," and must find "new ways to apply our timeless principles to the challenges of today."

Well, yes, that's true. But what thinking do you suggest? In what area? Which fresh ideas? Do you have one?

The thrust of Mr. Ryan's remarks seemed to suggest the party has to show its economic stands are aligned with the views of the working and middle classes. Fine. But how, exactly? What changes should be made, not just to message, but to content?

If conservatives are going to appeal to the nonrich, perhaps we want to be talking about—I don't know, let's float an idea—breaking up the banks? Too big to fail is too big to live, didn't we learn that in 2008? Why aren't we debating this? How about doing away with the carried interest deduction? Would billionaire hedge-fund contributors not like that? Isn't that just kind of . . . too bad?

Those are two ideas that, while politically difficult, would have broad populist appeal and are conservative in essence.

This is not the time to be describing the problem—we need "new thinking"—it's the time to start coming up with the new thinking.

And the splendid orator and spellbinding narrator Sen. Rubio doesn't get better marks than Cong. Ryan... Watch the spinster aunt cackle at Marco for not giving an inaugural address manqué at the Kemp affair...

Sen. Rubio had a better speech in that it was deeper, more broadly philosophical and less prescriptive. He told of how he'd spoken, at the August convention, of his father, a bartender in banquet halls. Recently he spoke in a "fancy" hotel in New York—that was rather Sarah Palin, the "fancy"—and the ballroom workers gave him a badge that said "Rubio, Banquet Bartender." He should wear that badge on his suit every day. It's better symbolism than Mr. Romney's car elevator.

But Mr. Rubio also indulged a rhetorical tic that we hear a lot and that is deeply obnoxious. He said the words "middle class" 12 times on the first page alone. Repeating that phrase mantra-like will not make people think you're concerned about the middle class, it will only make them think you're concerned about winning the middle class. It is important to remember in politics that people aren't stupid.

I find both Mr. Ryan's and Mr. Rubio's media expertise mildly harrowing—look at the prompter here, shake your head here, lower your voice there, raise it here, pick up your pace in this section. An entire generation of politicians in both parties has been too trained in media, and to their detriment. They are very smooth but it doesn't make them seem more convincing, it makes them seem phonier. My old boss had actually been an actor, but he didn't seem like a phony. He talked like a normal person at a podium, with a nice voice, and occasionally stumbling. It's not bad to be human when you're trying to appeal to humans.

These speeches were lauded, but they didn't scour, Abe Lincoln's term for a speech that says what needs saying. We know we need "new thinking." Let's hear it.

Yadda, Yadda, Yadda, und so weiter und so fort. But Noonan is not done with the hectoring tone, although the last paras do offer some good advice...

A final note, connected to an earlier point.

Republicans are now in the habit of editing their views, and they've been in it for 10 years. The Bush White House suppressed dissent; talk-radio stars functioned as enforcers; the angrier parts of the base, on the Internet, attempted to silence critical thinkers. Orthodoxy was everything, or orthodoxy as some defined it.

This isn't loyalty, it's lockstep. It has harmed the party's creativity, its ability to think, when now more than ever it has to. Enough. A final note, connected to an earlier point.

Republicans are now in the habit of editing their views, and they've been in it for 10 years. The Bush White House suppressed dissent; talk-radio stars functioned as enforcers; the angrier parts of the base, on the Internet, attempted to silence critical thinkers. Orthodoxy was everything, or orthodoxy as some defined it.

This isn't loyalty, it's lockstep. It has harmed the party's creativity, its ability to think, when now more than ever it has to. Enough.

I hope she doesn't mean Rush when she's talking about Rush, the "Show Me" state's contribution to truth in advertising---even if Limbaugh does get more Catholic than the Pope sometimes.

That would be Upper East Side arrogance pushed to its ne plus ultra. .

Christie Too Hefty for POTUS Job?

Baba Wawa doesn't think her speech defect disqualifies her from being an on-air journalist, but muses to Gov. Christie, who fascinates her, about his weight. Read the rest at the link above.

Susan Rice Withdrawal: How Obama's Likely Secretary Of State Pick Fell Apart

Rice might have been the scapegoat that would erase POTUS BHO's embarrassing address to the UNGA after Rice's TV appearances. Obama was lying through his teeth in the UN, but Rice certainly had the sense to know when she was being rolled by bad talking points for the TV Sunday gamut.

WH Press Sec'y Carney's limp dick defense of Rice indicated that the vibes were going the other way in the WH. Vietor knows that Rice has to have strong Senate support to get a higher job in State or elsewhere---she is somewhat 'damaged goods' in that now people know she can be rolled.

In the end, Rice showed poor political judgment in going out to appease McCain, Lindsay & Ayotte. Susan Collins delivered the coup de grace after the GOP triad had bloodied Rice after her confab. Better to keep her in the UN where she can stand up to the Russians and Chinese.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Exit Susan Rice

As a former State Dept FSO & trained Arabist at the Foreign Service Institute, I was almost screaming at my TV set while Rice made her preposterous exaggerations of the effect of a film that almost no one had actually seen for the first six months it was on YouTube. I knew from the outset after the descriptions by the Libyans, who certainly know their country better than we and who are on our side & have no real reason to lie, that it was some sort of terrorist operation----9/11 was an elephant in the room that Ms. Rice obviously chose to overlook.

As did the half-wit POTUS in his address to the UNGA almost two weeks later where the word terrorist & terrorism didn't sully his mouth, so insistent was he that the attack was simply a protest demonstration which got "out of control." He knew he was lying and Rice should have known better---had she not, she didn't have the chops to be SecState in the first place. Hillary wisely kept inventing reasons not to testify, while Rice raced into the fray with flags flying.

Even with Kerry's shortcomings, he'll be a better SecState than Rice would have been. Over thirty years on the Senate Foreign Relations Cte. has to rub off. [Though Biden, with his remarks that Hezbollah had been driven out of Lebanon, one example of Joe's egregious solecisms, means that extended tenure in the SFRC doesn't confer expertise on foreign policy.]

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

No Dice For Rice

Susan Rice sent a letter to Obama requesting not to be considered for the job of SecState. Here's the NYT descending into bathos:

Ms. Rice has cut a wide swath at the United Nations, where she is currently trying to marshal international sanctions in response to North Korea’s launching of a long-range missile this week.

But Ms. Rice became the focal point of criticism for the administration’s handling of the Benghazi attack, and that proved to be only the beginning of her problems. The more Mr. Obama appeared to be leaning toward appointing Ms. Rice, the more critics appeared ready to pile on.

Perhaps the most damaging critique came from Senator Susan Collins, a moderate Republican from Maine. After meeting with Ms. Rice, Ms. Collins said, “I continue to be troubled by the fact that the United Nations ambassador decided to play what was essentially a political role at the height of a contentious presidential election campaign.”

She also raised a new concern: Ms. Rice’s role in protecting embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that were bombed by terrorists in 1998. While allegations that she did not respond to requests by the embassies for additional security proved groundless, they also echoed decades-old questions that were suddenly being raised about Ms. Rice’s role as an aide on Africa policy during the Clinton administration.

Reporters dug up old anecdotes, like when Ms. Rice, as a young aide in the Clinton White House, once questioned whether the United States should embrace the term “genocide” in Rwanda because it could put President Bill Clinton in an awkward position in midterm elections. For all that, friends of Ms. Rice said she believed she could win nomination and be a successful secretary of state. The hardest part, they said, was explaining to her two children why she had decided to bow out.

Let's see if the usual imbeciles on the left ascribe this to "racism," as they wear that term right out of any meaning whatsoever.

Fed Quantitative Easing = Printing Money = Failure

Inflation used to be the bugaboo of the Federal Reserve. Now it appears to be Fed policy. Bernanke is a failure and nobody in DC is providing leadership on the economy or on anything else. Unless you call "leadership from behind" what it really is, pulling something out of the presidential ass in reaction to things going wrong.

Fab Photos

Sea of Brightness off Korea
This photo and Others were taken by a Russian cosmonaut in the orbiting space station---- the one of Everest is a classic...!

St Louis at night on November 15

Here's Tokyo's Center at Night

Criminal Union Thugs Attack Right-to-Work Advocates

James Taranto has another little pastiche of the moron unionists showing their illiterate criminal mindset. After vivid instances Taranto describes of union leaders threatening violence, he ends the article in the WSJ online:

The unions arguably brought right-to-work on themselves. Michigan's Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican who was elected in the wave of 2010, long resisted the measure, reports Tom Walsh of the Detroit Free Press:

Too divisive, he'd say. Why go to war with unions when there was a tax code to fix and a budget to balance to begin his reinvention of Michigan? And what did Snyder's stance get him? Headaches, mostly. . . .

Public employee unions opposed Snyder's moves to put more teeth into emergency manager laws that would enable swifter action to rescue cities and school districts that bungled themselves into insolvency.

In Detroit, Mayor Dave Bing and a spineless City Council were stonewalled by employee unions at every turn, slow-walking needed reforms and cost-cutting while the city burned through cash at a frightening rate.

As a result, Snyder's patient attempt to help fix Detroit via consent agreement instead of imposing an emergency manager has failed.

To top it off, Snyder found himself having to fight off Proposal 2, the ill-advised November ballot attempt to stuff a bag of goodies for organized labor into the Michigan Constitution.

This is the third major state-level victory against Big Labor in the past two years, after Wisconsin's triumph over greedy government unions and Indiana's lower-profile right-to-work effort. "People always say this is a really tough battle, you can't win," Mark Mix of National Right to Work tells the Washington Examiner's Byron York. "Then one morning we woke up and guess what? We found out it wasn't nearly as strong as we thought." The violent rhetoric looks like a sign of weakness, not strength.

Union Hypocrisy: Media Adores Trashbag Politics

Nutjob Granholm and a bunch of other Dimmocrat hacks have controlled the State House and legislatures and have tried to shove Prop 2 & other legal obscenities down the voters' throats. But now the shoe is on the other foot and one creep yells out:

"It's pretty disgusting when one party controls the whole state"

And other protesters in the State Capitol yell:

"This is what democracy looks like"

Except that these freaks are actually practicing mobocracy.

When I got my MA in history at Ann Arbor, the U. of Michigan required that I read outside my specialty of Modern European History, so I read up on Gibbons' "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." I read again and again how mobs had destroyed any semblance of popular rule in Rome, but even in the birthplace of democracy, Athens, hundreds of years before the period which Gibbons was describing.

While at U. of Michigan, I worked for COPE, the political action arm of the UAW. While not the stinking sewers that many unions on the East Coast have become, the UAW did practice the moral equivalent of strong-arm tactics with the Big Three auto companies.

The reason today that you see a good plurality if not, like here in Boca, a majority of foreign-brand cars is that these makes have decided to build their plants in right-to-work states where unions are not allowed to practice their chicanery and other dubious practices.

Thank God for Gov. Walker from my native state of Wisconsin, who dared to confront a crooked Teachers' union's monopoly on hiring and dismissing personnel. The WI teachers mafia had loaded up each school district with unnecessary administrators and faineants who basically were what railroad unions practiced back in the days of "featherbedding" when a whole caboose was required to hold three or four superfluous flunkies required by the union contracts.

Rick Snyder Meets With Michigan Democratic Congressional Delegation On Right To Work

The previous Governor, the manifestly insane Ms. Granholm, presided over a state that was being drained of its lifeblood by grasping unions. Now that the Michigan voters have opted for a sane chief executive and legislatures, the manifest racket that are the unions insist on continuing to drain Michigan of its economic vitality. Captive plantations like Detroit have let the Dimmocrats and their union nutjobs systemically suck the life out of the host organisms through their exorbitant demands----states other than Michigan that have right-to-work laws have thriving auto industries from overseas with ZERO bloodsucking unions.

BMW in South Carolina & Honda in Alabama have brought prosperity to their local neighborhoods. GM & Chrysler have had to get US government help to bail them out and GM is back at the trough begging for more monies from Uncle Sam to keep the tapeworm unions well fed. I once worked for COPE, the UAW action arm and saw the belly of the beast. I got my MA at the U. of Michigan on a Fellowship---in history, so I know what the unions are all about from the inside and the outside.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

HHS Sebelius Awards Huge Contract to "Friend"

That giant sucking sound are American insurance company United Health Care's lips around the private parts of the Highest Levels of the criminal administration of ObaMao.

If you think I'm exaggerating, read how ObaMaoCare is becoming a cash cow for Dimmocrat grafters, grifters and assorted ne'er-do-wells "connected" to Boy Wonder ObaMao and The Wicked Bitch of the West who runs HHS.

Obama Expected To Weigh In On Michigan Right-To-Work Battle In Detroit Speech

The fight is not between "the governor and the labor community" as the left-wing author of this polemic says, but between the citizens of Michigan who elected a Republican governor & legislature and a grasping collection of unions dedicated to being parasites on their host organism.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Amb Christopher Stevens on YouTube

H/t Laura Mangan McAfee comes this video full of hope from the newly-appointed Amb to Libya last Spring. What a shame and how fast did the squalid pimps and whores in the WH & Foggy Bottom throw this young idealist dead for his ideals under the bus?

Obama & Hillarious & S. Rice can all go to hell in a hand basket, for all I care.

Cal Tax Income 10% Below Disbursements

One Commenter noted that the state should have toll booths at roads leaving the state to inspect residents with money leaving---noting also that the former German Democratic Republic should have a lot of equipment & barbed wire sufficient to the task.

How the Mainstream Press Bungled the Single Biggest Story of the 2012 Campaign

Froomkin is a marxist freak when he writes "the party's most central campaign principles -- that federal spending doesn't create jobs, that reducing taxes on the rich could create jobs and lower the deficit -- willfully disregarded the truth" as Ornstein's strongly held belief. Froomkin was kicked off WaPo because of his garbage & lies, plus Ornstein is AEI's house marxist----who lurches farther left each year. Mann aptly represents The Brookings Institution---a think tank at the mid-left of the spectrum. Froomkin is edging towards negating the First & Second Amendments & other parts of the Constitution he doesn't abide. This article represents a slide towards actions not sanctioned by the Constitution and is trying to posit that the Federal Government should expand into every nook and cranny of the individual's life, supplanting precedents and traditions in order to put direct action as the chief agent of change. Sort of Obama imitating Morsi before the Brotherhood C of State had a mini-revolt on his hands.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Five second rule for Food on the Floor---Kinda True

50% of men will eat food dropped on the floor if picked up within five seconds---70% of women will, bet you didn't expect that!

Check the YouTube Vsauce video for more than you ever wanted to know about the rule---hint: a minute means 10X the bacteria than after 5 seconds.

Was Young King Tut a Celt?

Intriguing evidence that the R1b1a SNP [single nucleotide polymorphism] was part of not only the Celts of tradition western Europe, but also in the Tarim basin of western China & Cameroon in west Africa. Perhaps more evidence for King Tut might be found here

Anna Wintour As Ambassadress to Syria!?! Springtime for Assad?

Anna wants London or Paris, but perhaps her broad understanding mind might best be employed in Damascus, if the Amateur-in-Chief is looking for the perfect fit.

I for one believe that James Taranto, emcee of the Walter Duranty Awards which are named in dishonorable memory of the NYT's wonderfully whacky chief Moscow correspondent who was awarded the Pulitzer in 1932 for calling the Ukrainian Holodomor an exaggeration and malignant propaganda. Wonder what this NYT stalwart thought about the Holocaust a decade-plus later...

James brings his characteristic light touch to the fore about Wintour and her famous infamous article in the spring of 2011 on the wonderful First Lady of Syria, Asma al Assad.

We are beginning to doubt whether Bashar Assad is a genuine reformer. Our latest clue comes from NBC News, which reported yesterday that "the Syrian military is prepared to use chemical weapons against its own people and is awaiting final orders from [dictator] Assad."

As of yesterday, "the nerve agents were locked and loaded inside the bombs," which "could be dropped onto the Syrian people from dozens of fighter-bombers," according to the NBC report. "U.S. officials stressed that as of now, the sarin bombs hadn't been loaded onto planes and that Assad hadn't issued a final order to use them." Well, that's a relief. Or not: "If he does [give the order], one of the officials said, 'there's little the outside world can do to stop it.' "

The international community is responding. "U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has written to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad urging him not to use chemical weapons," Reuters reports. Ban told the head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that "any use of such weapons would be an outrageous crime with dire consequences." Who knows, Moon may get angry enough to write a second letter. [!!!]

Here's Claudia Rosette's summary of the article on the beauteous Asma:

Ms. Buck, for whom Vogue obtained extraordinary access to the Assads, gushed about Asma as "the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies . . . breezy, conspiratorial, and fun . . . a thin long-limbed beauty with a trained analytic mind who dresses with cunning understatement." Ms. Buck treated her readers to visions of Asma waking at dawn to begin her charitable rounds, including her campaign urging millions of young Syrians to engage in "active citizenship." There were vignettes of Asma flying around Syria in a French-built corporate jet, or careening through traffic behind the wheel of a plain SUV, en route to museums, schools, and orphanages, a study in "energetic grace," deftly accessorized with little more than a necklace of Chanel agates; shoes and Syrian silk tote bag by French designer Christian Louboutin.

The exercise in hypergush was entitled "Asma al Assad: A Rose In The Desert" Read it in full HERE and I guarantee that in the light of ensuing slaughter and outright terror Asma's hubby has rained down on his people, your flesh may crawl.

Wintour has muttered a half-hearted apologia and Taranto added:

Further investigation suggested there was a dark side to the Assad family's activities.

This LINK will give you the rest of Taranto's withering commentary on the Wintour phenomenon that is probably unrivaled in its possibilities for satire if Anna actually is picked for Ambassadress to some unlucky polity.

Between Susan Rice and Ms Wintour's bony charm, the State Department will shine---although Kerry, with all his hatred for America sapped out, might possibly represent our country better from Foggy Bottom.

Eric Hobsbawm Passes Two Months Ago

Theodore Dalrymple notes the death of the "Last of the Sentimental Stalinists."

Hobsbawm died in October around the time I was reading a chapter on him in Tony Judt's wonderful brilliant book Reappraisals, Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century, one that convinced me that a cosmopolitan "man of the left" like Judt [or Christopher Hitchens on Israel late in his life] could repudiate, all the while fully understanding Hobsbawm's genius as an historian, his whacked-out gullibility in swallowing the Stalinist brutal crimes against humanity hook, line & sinker.

Dalrymple is scathing in his contempt for Hobsbawm:

A writer of my acquaintance once turned down an invitation to dinner with Hobsbawm (who rarely refused any honor or privilege that the unjust capitalist state could offer him) on the grounds that if Hobsbawm’s political wishes had come to fruition, he would have had his proposed guest shot in short order. A man who could think until late in his life, as Hobsbawn did, that the murder of 20 million people would be justified if it brought about a socialist utopia, would hardly balk at the death of a single bourgeois guest.

I wonder if this twisted twit regarded the Hermit Kingdom of North Korea or Castro's murderous police state or Pol Pot's experiment in genocide or Monster Mao of the Cultural Revolution & Great Leap Forward, two exercises in murderous imbecility that killed dozens of millions, with the same reverence he regarded Stalin, the man who took the "Dark Enlightenment" to a new level of cruelty and contempt for humanity.

Here's another short gem from Dalrymple:

...a man of his intelligence had to admit that things had turned out not quite as hoped in the Soviet Union, but he was never able to draw the most obvious lesson or conclusion from the failure. Photographs frequently show his mouth as contorted as his reasoning, as if he were unable to bring himself to speak straightforwardly from both sides of his mouth at the same time, as it were.

Wish I'd said that...!!!

Dialogue Between Barry Rubin & a Journalist

Barry is an old friend who worked in CSIS while I was a fellow for a book coming out on Saudi Arabia back in 1980. The book never panned out, but Barry married a nice Muslim Turkish/American girl named Jennifer Noyon which ended up a train wreck a few years later. He then married a nice Jewish girl and moved to Jerusalem where he started the GLORIA institute. I kept vaguely in touch with Barry for about ten years and my wife is still tight with Jennifer, who wrote an excellent book about the Arab world a few years ago.

Here's some of Barry's riposte to the journalist's probing "question:"

In 2000, the Palestinian Authority (PA) rejected the offer of a Palestinian state with its capital in east Jerusalem living in peace alongside Israel.

Instead it launched a war against Israel whose main feature was terrorist attacks on Israel civilians.

A few months later, it rejected an even better offer of peace with a Palestinian state having its capital in east Jerusalem on the exact amount of territory that constituted the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and east Jerusalem before 1967.

Ever since then, for 12 years now, Palestinian leaders have repeatedly said they no longer accepted a two-state solution or at least would soon stop doing so.

Israel withdrew from the entire Gaza Strip and dismantled all the settlements there in order to encourage the Palestinians to move toward a two-state solution by developing that area and showing they were willing to live in peace. Instead, Hamas took over, openly declared its rejection of all previous agreements, that it would never accepted the two-state solution, fired rockets and missiles at Israel, put on television programs teaching children that they should grow up to be suicide bombers, and that all Jews in the world be murdered.

Despite these positions of Hamas, the Palestinian Authority has tried endlessly to make a deal bringing Hamas into the government, a government that would have to be based on a platform rejecting any real, lasting two-state solution.

This policy was continued after the 2008-2009 and 2012 Hamas escalations to war with Israel.

Admittedly, the offers by Israeli PM Ehud Barak were generous, but even had Fatah accepted the conditions, it's doubtful the Knesset would have ratified a divided Jerusalem. Or vice versa, Arafat might have demanded even more afterwards just to scuttle the deal. Clinton was desperate to get a Nobel Peace Prize for orchestrating the negotiation & promising a big payday for both, had things been settled.

The Scorpion & the Frog won out again.

Climate Nazis Escort Lord Monckton from UN Meeting

Lord Monckton may have been referring to UK reports below:

UK Daily Mail: 'Global warming stopped 16 years ago' according to UK Met Office 'quietly released' report -- 'Pause' in warming lasted about same time as when temps rose, 1980 to 1996' -- 'The new data, compiled from more than 3,000 measuring points on land & sea, was issued quietly on internet, without any media fanfare, & , until today, it has not been reported. This stands in sharp contrast to release of previous figures 6 months ago, which went only to end of 2010 – a very warm year...From beginning of 1997 until August 2012 there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temps.'

UK Daily Mail: 'Claim that there has been any statistically significant warming for past 16 years is therefore unsustainable' -- Reaffirms 'a 16-year 'pause' in rising temps' -- 'Two new separate peer-reviewed studies, published in prestigious academic journals last week [challenged 'Hockey Stick'] -- 'The level of warmth during the peak of the MWP in the second half of the 10th Century, equaled or slightly exceeded the mid-20th Century warming.' There was also a pronounced warming period in Roman times'

Isn't it bizarre that the UK meteorological office's report is "issued quietly on the internet, without any media fanfare" and major newspapers didn't report it nor was it released to TV stations.

I can understand that those trendy Brits don't wish to be out of step with the other lemmings preparing to leap off the cliff of worldwide climate control based on squalid pseudo-science which one of America's Greatest Nobel Laureates, Theoretical Physicist Richard Feynman, accurately predicted as being "Cargo-Cult Science" in his Cal Tech commencement address in the seventies.

In another venue in a speech about The Physics Teacher, “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts” is how the great Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman defined science in his article “What is Science?” Feynman emphasized this definition by repeating it in a stand-alone sentence in extra large typeface in his article. [!!!]

If you want some comic relief, read the transcript or watch the video of knuckle-walking mouth-breathing BritPiers Morgan siding with Bill Nye in trying to defend Anthropogenic Global Warming against ClimateDepot founder Mark Moreno, who spanks the pathetic Piers shamelessly while a bemused Nye looks on.

Human Rights Watch Hates Israel??

Self-hating Jews Soros & Roth at Human Rights Watch quibble concerning Iran's multiple threats to "annihilate" and "wipe Israel off the face of the Earth." Read the link above to see how Roth tries every type of legal legerdemain to justify HRW's cowardly inaction.

Why Wintour wouldn't Make a Good US Amb to UK

Wintour is a shallow second-rate ditz whose experience in foreign policy can be summed up in one article in Vogue, one which will come out if the ogress is named to London or Paris. As an FSO who served in France when the brother of the head of IBM was Ambassador, I know she would stink.

Kid Rock To Obama: 'No Hard Feelings' Over Election Victory

Letterman had Robert Plant, Jimmy Page & John Paul Jones on his show tonight and evidently knew absolutely zip about them, except that it was "Vikings, Vikings having sex, and Sex." Yeah, DL, when JPJ mentioned Sex with Hobbits, you didn't have a clue what Jones was talking about. Not that that's surprising, since Letterboy got his Kennedy sash for sucking up to Dem biggies, not that there are that many impressive biggies to suck on.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Led Zeppelin Get Kennedy Honors

Led Zeppelin along with The Who are my two favorite groups of all time. I have only seen The Zeppelin live once, in Baltimore. I've seen The Who five times, including twice in France, BION...!!

Last night, the Zeppelin succeeded The Who in getting Kennedy Center honors and then was on David Letterman's show. Sadly, Letterman didn't know much at all, evidently, about LZ's background and career. He described them as "Vikings, Vikings have sex, and Sex." To which John Paul Jones remarked with a bit of a smirk, "sex with Hobbits."

Of course, if Letterboy the undeserving ever did his homework, he'd have found out about the dozen or more references to LOTR in their music, including a couple about "Gollum, the Evil One."

But that would have been work, and this rape-room devotee [he does it above his stage, thus endearing him to Democrats] has been skating for more than two decades, living off the leftist frauds who infest his guest list each evening.

Leno is funnier, works harder, and doesn't suck up to Oblunderer and the rest of the Dark Enlightenment's shoddy pretenders and impostors.

DSM-5 Being Rolled Out For Shrink Diagnosis & Fee BS

Asberger's is out in the DSM-5, published today and dyslexia stays, say a WaPo article, which includes nonsense like the following:

—A new diagnosis for severe recurrent temper tantrums — disruptive mood dysregulation disorder. Critics say it will medicalize kids’ who have normal tantrums. Supporters say it will address concerns about too many kids being misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder and treated with powerful psychiatric drugs. Bipolar disorder involves sharp mood swings and affected children are sometimes very irritable or have explosive tantrums.

—Eliminating the term “gender identity disorder.” It has been used for children or adults who strongly believe that they were born the wrong gender. But many activists believe the condition isn’t a disorder and say calling it one is stigmatizing. The term would be replaced with “gender dysphoria,” which means emotional distress over one’s gender. Supporters equated the change with removing homosexuality as a mental illness in the diagnostic manual, which happened decades ago.

The first symptoms above go under an acronym of DMDD, which isn't identified in the article. My spouse has this and she's over fifty years old---sharp mood swings and frequent explosive tantrums. Maybe it stands for DON"T MAKE DUMB DECISIONS. Who knows?

UPDATE: Here's the DSM website.

How Dumb Are DC Notable Dunces?

Bernie Sanders is a Senator, not a Congressman, but otherwise, the stuff below is so funny that you can't make it up! CAVEAT: In my experience, these high-ranking morons usually don't do stuff as mundane flight-planning chores, but leave them to their high-ranking serfs & lackeys:

DCA Airport Ticket Agent RATS OUT CAPITOL PASSENGERS Politicos That Is: Its not that they are DUMB. They are…. DEMSWashington DC Airport Ticket Agent reported his interaction with politicians

1. I had a New Hampshire Congresswoman (Carol Shea-Porter) ask for an aisle seat so that her hair wouldn't get messed up by being near the window. (On an airplane!)

2. I got a call from a Kansas Congressman's (Moore) staffer (Howard Bauleke), who wanted to go to Cape Town. I started to explain the length of the flight and the passport information, and ''I'm not trying to make you look stupid, but Cape Town is in Massachusetts ...'' Without trying to make him look stupid, I calmly explained, ''Cape Cod is in Massachusetts, Cape Town is in South Africa ..'' His response -- click..

3. A senior Vermont Congressman (Bernie Sanders) called, furious about a Florida package we did. I asked what was wrong with the vacation in Orlando. He said he was expecting an ocean-view room. I tried to explain that's not possible, since Orlando is in the middle of the state. He replied, 'Don't lie to me!, I looked on the map, and Florida is a very THIN state!!'' (OMG)

4. I got a call from a lawmaker's wife (Landra Reid) who asked, ''Is it possible to see England from Canada ?'' I said, ''No.'' She said, ''But they look so close on the map'' (OMG, again!)

5. An aide for a cabinet member (Janet Napolitano) once called and asked if he could rent a car in Dallas .. I pulled up the reservation and noticed he had only a 1-hour layover in Dallas ... When I asked him why he wanted to rent a car, he said, ''I heard Dallas was a big airport, and we will need a car to drive between gates to save time.'' (Aghhhh)

6. An Illinois Congresswoman (Jan Schakowsky) called last week. She needed to know how it was possible that her flight from Detroit left at 8:30 a.m. and got to Chicago at 8:33 a.m. I explained that Michigan was an hour ahead of Illinois , but she couldn't understand the concept of time zones. Finally, I told her the plane went fast, and she bought that.

7. A New York lawmaker, (Jerrold Nadler) called and asked, ''Do airlines put your physical description on your bag so they know whose luggage belongs to whom?'' I said, 'No, why do you ask?'

He replied, ''Well, when I checked in with the airline, they put a tag on my luggage that said (FAT), and I'm overweight. I think that's very rude!'' After putting him on hold for a minute, while I looked into it. (I was dying laughing). I came back and explained the city code for Fresno , Ca. is (FAT - Fresno Air Terminal), and the airline was just putting a destination tag on his luggage..

8. A Senator John Kerry aide (Lindsay Ross) called to inquire about a trip package to Hawaii . After going over all the cost info, she asked, ''Would it be cheaper to fly to California and then take the train to Hawaii ?''

9. I just got off the phone with a freshman Congressman, Bobby Bright from Ala. who asked, ''How do I know which plane to get on?'' I asked him what exactly he meant, to which he replied, ''I was told my flight number is 823, but none of these planes have numbers on them.''

10. Senator Dianne Feinstein called and said, ''I need to fly to Pepsi-Cola , Florida . Do I have to get on one of those little computer planes?'' I asked if she meant fly to Pensacola and fly on a commuter plane. She said, ''Yeah, whatever, smarty!''

11. Mary Landrieu, La. Senator, called and had a question about the documents she needed in order to fly to China . After a lengthy discussion about passports, I reminded her that she needed a visa. "Oh, no I don't. I've been to China many times and never had to have one of those.'' I double checked and sure enough, her stay required a visa. When I told her this she said, ''Look, I've been to China four times and every time they have accepted my American Express!''

12. A New Jersey Congressman (John Adler) called to make reservations, ''I want to go from Chicago to Rhino, New York .'' I was at a loss for words. Finally, I said, ''Are you sure that's the name of the town?'' 'Yes, what flights do you have?'' replied the man. After some searching, I came back with, ''I'm sorry, sir, I've looked up every airport code in the country and can't find a rhino anywhere." ''The man retorted, ''Oh, don't be silly! Everyone knows where it is. Check your map!'' So I scoured a map of the state of New York and finally offered, ''You don't mean Buffalo , do you?'' The reply? ''Whatever! I knew it was a big animal.''

Yes, the Dems ARE stupid, but we knew that already.

Gramsci Invented the Idea of Media over "Marketplace of Ideas"

Gramsci and his Marxist bait/switch after the proletariat failed to be as revolting as he wished:

Culture war is a loan translation (calque) from the German Kulturkampf. The German term, Kulturkampf, was coined to describe the clash between cultural and religious groups in the campaign from 1871 to 1878 under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck of the German Empire against the influence of the Roman Catholic Church.[ The term cultural war has been in English use almost as long as the original Kulturkampf and generalizes the idea of these kinds of struggle. It is related then to the theory of cultural hegemony.

Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci presented in the 1920s a theory of cultural hegemony to explain the slower advance, compared to many Marxists' expectations, of proletarian revolution in Europe. He stated that a culturally diverse society can be dominated by one class who has a monopoly over the mass media and popular culture, and Gramsci argued for a culture war in which anti-capitalist elements seek to gain a dominant voice in the mass media, education, and other mass institutions.

Alinsky & Chomsky & the ivory tower morons with tenure might be cited for sedition, but the Hollyweirdos are simply swimming in circles like a one-legged duck.

Wisconsin Routs Nebraska, 70-31: Montee Ball Helps Badgers Win Big Ten Title

As a native Wisconsinite who grew up five miles east of Waukesha, I was an ardent Badger fan since I can remember. My parents got me a W red-and-white helmet & I can remember Badger grad Alan Ameche making the winning touchdown in The Greatest Game back in '58, I believe. Now I can ask my brothers for another Rose Bowl sweatshirt to match my '96 & 2000 sweats that have a giant Rose on them. The 2000 sweat was the game when the Badgers beat the Cardinal. May it happen on Jan. 1, 2013 one more time...!

ESPN has a nice summary of how badly the Badgers crushed the Huskers.

Montee Ball ran for 202 yards and three touchdowns and the Badgers scored seven touchdowns on their first nine possessions, blowing out No. 14 Nebraska 70-31 to win their third straight, and most improbable, Big Ten title on Saturday night.

More From ESPN.com

Looking for more information on this game? Check out our blogs for Instant Analysis.

• Big Ten blog

Wisconsin will be the first five-loss team to play in the Rose Bowl and is the first school to represent the league in three consecutive Rose Bowls since Michigan in the late 1970s.

It was a milestone night for the Badgers.

For the first time in school history, the Badgers had two 200-yard rushers. They finished with the fourth-highest rushing total in school history (539) and tied a conference championship game scoring record. Texas also scored 70 points in the 2005 Big 12 championship game.

And it was a fitting end to a wacky Big Ten season. Wisconsin (8-5, 4-4) only reached this year's because Leaders Division champion Ohio State (12-0) and division runner-up Penn State (8-4) were both ineligible for postseason play.

The Badgers didn't care. Instead, they took advantage of their good fortune with a night to remember.

Ball broke the Football Bowl Subdivision career rushing touchdowns record.

Melvin Gordon opened the scoring with a 56-yard TD run and closed the first half with a 60-yard run to set up another TD, rushing for a career-high 217 yards on nine carries. Three different Badgers threw passes, including running back James White who also ran for four TDs.

The defense was dominant, too. In the first half alone, Martinez was sacked three times, fumbled twice, losing one and having the early pick-six.

The Ball Is Rolling

Wisconsin's Montee Ball has scored more touchdowns than any other FBS player in history. Ball scored three touchdowns in Wisconsin's rout of Nebraska, and now has 82 for his career, four more than Travis Prentice.

Player Career TDs

Montee Ball, Wisconsin (2009-current) 82 Travis Prentice, Miami, Ohio (1996-99) 78 Ricky Williams, Texas (1995-98) 75 Taurean Henderson, Texas Tech (2002-05) 69 Brock Forsey, Boise State (1999-02) 68 Cedric Benson, Texas (2001-04) 67 DeMarco Murray, Oklahoma (2007-10) 65 Anthony Thompson, Indiana (1986-89) 65 Ron Dayne, Wisconsin (1996-99) 63 Marshall Faulk, San Diego St. (1991-93) 62 -- Through Dec. 1

Ball matched Travis Prentice's FBS record for most career games with multiple TDs (25), topped the 5,000-yard mark and was named the game's MVP. He also broke Prentice's record for rushing TDs in a career (73) and now has 76.

White added 108 yards.

Wisconsin piled up 639 total yards, and after blowing a 17-point lead against the Cornhuskers in a 30-27 September loss, Badgers coach Bret Bielema refused to let up.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Jovan Belcher Commits Suicide At Chiefs' Facility After Fatally Shooting Girlfriend: REPORTS

This is so sad. The troubled linebacker had a history of anger management issues. Perhaps we should get some sort of treatment for a fellow who almost lost his thumb punching through a glass window in college. Now his girl friend is dead & he is a suicide who killed himself in a flamboyant manner. How sad.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Thomas Jefferson was a Racist Monster

Jon Meacham wrote a book about American religious history about ten years ago which I bought at a discount. The dunce never mentioned any of the Great Religious Revivals called The Great Awakenings. The book was so thin on anything except Parson Weems level silliness, I regretted spending any money on it at all. Now the dunce has, after driving Newsweek into bankruptcy & terminal dissolution during a laughable period as leftist moron, Meacham has written a silly superficial book on Jefferson. I have read Malone & half-a-dozen other bios of Jefferson & understand how David McCullough started a book on both Adams & Jefferson and then peeled off to write solely about Adams, Jefferson being a moral sewer of opinions---The Declaration of Independence was solely for show.

I personally would rank Jefferson below Eisenhower & Reagan & Teddy Roosevelt among other second-tier First Execs. So evidently would Henry Wiencek, who unlike the cliche-monger Meacham, digs in closely to the contradictions in Jefferson's character. Read the linked NYT article & judge for yourself.

GOP Sen. Peter Fitzgerald & What Might Have Been

Fitzgerald was the Illinois GOP Senator who decided not to run again after one term and opened the door to the criminal malfeasance of his successor, a ne'er-do-well named Obama.

As on synchronistic event in my life, I looked across a filling station to see that Peter was gassing up his car in the western Illinois suburbs back in around 2000. I recognized him & introduced him to my wife, who was an LA for Paul Sarbanes, who at that time was still a member in the world's most exclusive club. We chatted for about ten minutes as I remember. He mentioned how dirty Illinois politics is and I notice he attended the elite Catholic boarding school Portsmouth Abbey in Rhode Island

So sad that a Senator who left the Senate because of his high standard of ethics made way for a sleaze-ball narcissist who now inflicts himself on the entire USA.

Fiscal Cliff Talks: Behind Obama's Opening Bid

Bob Woodward's book The Price of Politics contends that there is a huge leadership vacuum in Washington precisely because Obama is unable or unwilling to put his shoulder to the wheel and do the little Congressional tete-a-tetes and schmoozing that other POTUS's, like Reagan & Clinton, did so well to get their way.

In the debt ceiling standoff last summer, Boehner had actually corralled Reid, Pelosi & along with McConnell presented a united front to Obama, according to Woodward's book. But Obama refused the deal & the country was forced into a showdown on the fiscal cliff.

It is becoming clear that Obama doesn't have the ability to compromise---that it is all or nothing for him. His narcissistic ego shows that he is an amateur at the game of politics good only because a pliant media showers him with praise even when he screws up mightily in debacles like Benghazi or the debt ceiling last summer. He was re-elected by playing Santa to the lumpenproletariat who are allowed to vote & shepherded to the polls by their minders. The sheeple have spoken and Obama thinks now that his political gamesmanship with the economy will be acceptable & even rewarded by this collection of slackers, layabouts & elitist statists that want the amateur to usher in a huge government take-over of all aspects of the economy.

Europe has been trying this for decades and has failed both economically & politically. Looks like the First-Amateur doesn't know his history or worse, doesn't care.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost