Reported Outbreak of Journalism at CNN

A.C. 180 Profiles Obama Stimulus "High-Speed Rail"  

High-speed rail is a lovely idea. The thought of being able to speedily go where one wants while watching the lovely countryside pass by is an appealing one. Maybe on trains we will get seats that accommodate us better than coach class on a plane could ever hope to. We ought to applaud the Obama Administration’s efforts to make high-speed rail a reality, right?

Well, maybe not. You see, the folks at CNN decided to be journalists, and exposed the $12 Billion high-speed rail stimulus spending as a boondoggle that it is:



Kudos to CNN for their reporting. I suppose there is no reason why we couldn’t have had this brand of reporting last year, when there was a presidential election going on. For the moment, however, I will suspend my rancor and instead encourage more such reporting from the network. After all, I am sure that there are a great many other administration boondoggles worthy of excoriation on prime-time television.  

Anyone Seeen Joe Lately?

Hump Day Musical Interlude

Luna Lee performs Jimi Hendrix's "Voodoo Chile" on a Gayageum, 

a "traditional Korean zither-like string instrument"  

h/t Blur Brain

Dorkus Maximus and His Adoring Media Flying Monkeys

 "Throughout the 2008 and 2012 campaigns, President Obama promised to transform America into something better, a land filled with hope and change. It appears, however, that the man who vacations in Martha's Vineyard, golfs with Tiger Woods, and sends the Secret Service to accompany his wife and daughters on international vacations to Spain, Mexico, and now the Bahamas has another agenda in mind. He seeks to transform constitutional presidential authority into royal prerogative. Judging by the failure of any media source other than Breitbart, Drudge, and Instapundit to cover this story, it is also quite clear that the mainstream media has decided to play the role of dutiful courtiers to this expansion of presidential powers....." -  Big Journalism

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Before They Were Famous - Nancy D'Alesandro - Miss Lube Rack 1959
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More Brady Campaign Bullsh*t

The statistics in this graphic are correct, I assume, though they are incomplete. I’m not disputing their correctness. I am disputing the intent of those who created this graphic & the fact that it implies, which is that the USA is a far more murderous nation than any other simply because of the fact that we can personally own guns.

I Googled the 2011 population of each of these nations and divided it by the numbers of murders by gun given in the graphic. Below are the percentages, per capita, of murders by gun for each nation:

Finland: 0003%

Australia: 0002%

England: 00007%

Spain: 0001%

Germany: 0002%

Canada: 0005%

And …

USA: 003%

Yes, the USA has more deaths by gun, per capita, than all these other industrialized nations. But the difference is in the thousandths of a percentage point. Statistically, the USA simply does not experience a significantly greater number of murders by gun than these other nations. At all. Why? Because our population is significantly greater than all these other nations. Do you hear that Piers Morgan?

See what knowing the facts, actual empirical evidence, does? Kinda changes the way you look at this graphic, doesn’t it?  

And if the Brady Bunch and their minions were to get their way, you can be sure there would be a lot more tragedies like THIS. 

A Racist in a Blanket is Worth Two in the Bush

The current round of identity-politics hysteria was launched about a year ago (conveniently enough for the Obama reelection campaign) with the news that an angelic black baby named Trayvon Martin had been gunned down by white racist George Zimmerman.

In the latest brouhaha, Oberlin College of Arts and Sciences, a liberal arts college outside of Cleveland Ohio, immediately shut down all classes recently to hold a frenzied, Cultural Revolution-style rally against the rising tide of racism because one student claimed to have spied a one-man Ku Klux Klan rally on campus in the wee hours of the morning. Oberlin’s ghostly KKKer is reminiscent of scores of campus hate fiasco of recent years. But who can remember anything? 

While the college administration's story of the campus Klansman has excited the national media, only two newspapers so far have bothered to call up the local cops to find out what really happened. One was the local North Coast Chronicle-Telegram of Lorain County, Ohio, which reported:

Oberlin College's “Day of Solidarity” was sparked by a student who reported seeing a person wearing what appeared to be a Ku Klux Klan hood and robe near the college's African Heritage House while driving through campus between 1 and 2 a.m.

College security officers responded to the area, but weren’t able to find a person wearing the infamous KKK garb.

Oberlin police Lt. Mike McCloskey said that authorities did find a pedestrian wrapped in a blanket. He said police interviewed another witness later in the day and that person also saw a female walking with a blanket.

Oddly enough, the other is the leftist Guardian U.K. of London, which noted:

Lt Mike McCloskey of Oberlin police told the Guardian on Monday that officers were still following up the KKK sighting, but suggested that the only witness may have been mistaken.
 

After the 1950s, the press slowly figured out that it shouldn't get too worked-up over things like flying-saucer sightings. But Klansman on the campus of what is perhaps the most frenetically liberal college in America?  Nobody much cares whether this horrifying hate crime went through the formality of actually taking place. This non-event has received enormous publicity ( Matt Lauer talked it up on NBC's Today Show), just like all the other campus hate hoaxes and hysterias, because so many people want it to be true.

Example of Possible Racist Suspect and Member of Hate Group

The racial atmosphere in America is starting to resemble that bizarre 1980s-1990s frenzy over Satan worshipers purportedly molesting preschoolers. We live in an era in which hate-porn movies such as Django Unchained and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo win Oscars.  There is such a hunger in 2013 to sniff out racists and punish them that the actual shortage of racists is leading people to imagine that a girl in a blanket is a lone lynch mob.

h/t Taki