"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler
From a public-health perspective, someone ill with whooping cough could spread this potentially deadly disease to anyone who encounters them, however casually — in the hallways of a public school, for example. So requiring young children to be vaccinated for whooping cough just makes common sense.
Human papilloma virus? Not so much.
Because I’m thinking . . . not so much.
So if Reaganite Republican was hoping to get Instalanched for Elena Gheorghe, he’s probably . . . how do you say “S.O.L” in Romanian?
“Tinder-box of Europe,” IYKWIMAITYD.
by Smitty
From The Hill:
“I think it’s a bad idea. Just printing more money and throwing it out there is devaluing the money we already have,” said Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) in an interview. “Over the long term it’s inflationary. It sends the wrong message.”
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) said he doesn’t think another round of easing is a good idea.
“QE is flooding the market with more money and it’s unacceptable,” he said.
Stocks look up as I write, with Helicopter Ben having not said publicly he’ll do QE3.
My question to the GOP, given the recent revelations about the Fed, is: What makes you think Bernanke won’t just do QE3 anyway, and not bother telling you? We are, at best, in a ‘trust but verify’ situation with the Federal Reserve. We need a full audit. Nothing less will do. I’m not quite sure which rubes are the intended audience for this bit of GOP bleating, but nobody who has been paying attention is impressed.
via Memeorandum
Hisham Elzanaty
A story you will never see covered on the nightly network news:
Allstate has become the latest insurance company to accuse Hisham Elzanaty, one of the money men behind the so-called Ground Zero mosque development, of orchestrating a “highly developed and sophisticated kickback scheme” that allegedly reaped more than $5 million for Elzanaty and others. State Farm and Geico have also lodged similar allegations against Elzanaty.
You never would have heard of this story if I Own the World hadn’t picked it up from an insurance industry news site, and if it hadn’t been sent to me as an e-mail tip by Linda in Tennessee.
BTW, Linda is a tip-jar hitter — are you?
In response to my constant reminders about rising gold prices — You Should Have Listened To Glenn Beck! — Steve in Tennessee sent me a link to this story by Bill Gunderson at Seeking Alpha:
Scared investors have been flocking to gold as our economy, political system, and financial system continue in turmoil. It seems that every other commercial these days on TV or radio is a gold commercial. Gold is not the only investment that is currently seeing panic-like buying, however. Sturm, Ruger (RGR) has been hitting new highs for the last several years. This guns and ammunition stock has outperformed gold by a wide margin, and it currently is not as crowded and as highly publicized as the gold trade.
Consider the following facts. Sturm, Ruger has outperformed Gold over the last 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 12 months, 3 years, and 5 years! . . .
It is also important to note that Sturm, Ruger was even up in 2008, when the market was down 38.5%.
Read the whole thing — he’s got charts and stuff.
UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!
Hurricane Irene has inspired non-stop TV fear-mongering. The cable news networks are giving us around-the-clock disaster and 24/7 catastrophe — apocalyptic forecasts worthy of Dr. Peter Venkman:
This city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions! Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes! The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!
Question: If this hurricane hits New York City, will liberals blame Bush or global warming, or both?
UPDATE: “New York Hurricane Could Be Multibillion-Dollar Catastrophe” — or it “could be” basically some heavy thunderstorms. But why miss a perfectly good opportunity to fear-monger, eh?
Let me remind you of this Aug. 9 article in Politico:
Obama plan: Destroy Romney
Barack Obama’s aides and advisers are preparing to center the president’s reelection campaign on a ferocious personal assault on Mitt Romney’s character and business background, a strategy grounded in the early-stage expectation that the former Massachusetts governor is the likely GOP nominee. . . .
[T]he candidate who ran on “hope” in 2008 has little choice four years later but to run a slashing, personal campaign aimed at disqualifying his likeliest opponent. . . .
Obama’s high command has even studied former President George W. Bush’s 2004 takedown of Sen. John Kerry, a senior campaign adviser told POLITICO, for clues on how a president with middling approval ratings can defeat a challenger.
“Unless things change and Obama can run on accomplishments, he will have to kill Romney,” said a prominent Democratic strategist aligned with the White House. . . .
So the entire political world was warned, more than two weeks ago, that Team Obama was going to go negative, specifically targeting Romney. You would therefore think that when these orchestrated attacks were made, the news media would identify them as such. But look at this disingenuous headline on a Tommy Christopher article at Mediaite:
‘Angry’ Mitt Romney ‘Loses His Cool’
With Voter At New Hampshire Town Hall
Didn’t Tommy Christopher read that Politico story two weeks ago? Or is Tommy Christopher so profoundly stupid as not to realize that the “voter” hectoring Romney at the town hall is a Democrat participating in “Operation Destroy Romney”?
OK, so let’s go to the video and watch as this woman goes on for nearly a minute, using the word “shameful” to describe Romney’s rhetoric, which she characterizes as “platitudes,” not “speaking to the truth.” And it is only after she has lectured him at great length that Romney attempts to have his say:
Like most conservatives this year, I oppose Romney in the GOP primaries, but it is ridiculous to pretend that this is a spontaneous expression by a typical “voter” when, in actuality, this “voter” is a Democrat doing her part in Operation Destroy Romney. And I’m glad to see Romney pushing back against such tactics. Ace of Spades:
I don’t know for sure this woman is a liberal, but her question seems to be Kos-like, in claiming that government spending of all types must be defended at any cost to keep… emergency services during hurricanes.
And she does what the previous hecklers did — she won’t let Romney answer her alleged question.
If it’s a question, why isn’t Romney permitted to speak three words before she begins to re-harangue him again?
What she is doing is filibustering, and there are ways to deal with such tactics, one of which Ace suggests: “People really need to turn on their cell phones and cameras and [get] pictures of these people. Would be fun to ID them as plants.”
A robust public exchange of views is certainly to be encouraged. However, it is not a “robust public exchange” when operatives of the incumbent President of the United States orchestrate the personal destruction of the leading opponent to his re-election and employ, as one of their weapons, partisan stooges assigned to hijack and disrupt that opponent’s campaign events.
We ought to be calling this what it is — Alinsky tactics straight out of Rules for Radicals — and we must further insist that news organizations correctly identify such efforts as part of Operation Destroy Romney.
UPDATE: Linked by Bill Quick at Daily Pundit — thanks!