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  • An Intimate Photo Essay of Ann Romney

    She said: ‘When I was first diagnosed with MS and my husband was taking care of me, he discovered rotisserie chicken.

    ‘Rotisserie chicken is every cooks best friend,’ she said. ‘You want to buy it at the end of your shopping so it doesn’t heat up the food that’s in the rest of your basket.’

    via Daily Mail Online.

    Again, the UK press.

    Why is no American journalist carrying this story or anything similar?

    Consider:

    When Ann wore a stunning red Oscar de la Renta to the RNC, there was not a peep from his PR team, while we received several notices about Michelle’s DNC wardrobe from Tracey Reese and Laura Smalls respectively. When Romney wore a printed Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress, DVF’s PR team not only ignored it, but effectively distanced themselves from her saying they were “not quite sure how she obtained the dress.

    The U.S. media is actively ignoring Ann Romney.

    Someone try to tell me there is no media bias.

  • Obama a Real Contributor to Subprime Loan Failures

    President Barack Obama was a pioneering contributor to the national subprime real estate bubble, and roughly half of the 186 African-American clients in his landmark 1995 mortgage discrimination lawsuit against Citibank have since gone bankrupt or received foreclosure notices.

    As few as 19 of those 186 clients still own homes with clean credit ratings, following a decade in which Obama and other progressives pushed banks to provide mortgages to poor African Americans.

    via The Daily Caller.

    Kudos to The Daily Caller for putting together this incredibly well researched piece about Obama being one of the lawyers who sued Citibank to make sub-prime loans.

    That this story is being written in 2012 and not 2008, and by a small independent website and not by any of the major media outlets is a complete indictment of our entire media system.

    I can remember when I stopped watching The Daily Show.  It was shortly before the 2008 election and Michelle Obama was the guest.  After she comes out, the first question John Stewart asks is something like, “Tell us something we don’t know about you?” and the crowed goes wild.  It was an sardonic arrow aimed at those who were screaming to anyone who would listen, ‘What do we really know about these people?’

    The truth Mr. Stewart, is we knew very little about these people.  We still know very little about these people.  It’s a same that the media didn’t do its job 4 years ago and any time since.  So because you ignored your responsibilities for the last 4 years someone has now produced some facts showing how:

    • Obama sued Citibank forcing it to make bad, sub-prime loans;
    • Many of those loans failed, including nearly half of those plaintiffs in the Obama case;
    • The sub-prime loan failures led to the collapse of the entire mortgage system causing the greatest economic crisis since the great depression.

    Mr. Obama help create the problem he inherited.

    That is what the press should be reporting.

  • Teen Loses Stomach After Drinking Liquid Nitrogen

    Gaby Scanlon, from Heysham, Lancashire, was celebrating her 18th birthday with friends at Oscar’s wine bar and bistro in Lancaster earlier this month when she drank two shots of the liqueur Jagermeister, which was laced with liquid nitrogen.  …

    It was made popular by celebrity chefs, including Heston Blumenthal, and is completely harmless as a gas.  But if the nitrogen has not burned away fully, as a liquid it has the power to freeze objects in a matter of seconds.  Touching the liquid can give you severe cryogenic, or cold, burns.

    Duh?

    Miss Scanlon said she felt fine after her first drink but suffered “excruciating pain” the moment she drank the second, offered to her by the bar man because it was her birthday.

    via Business Insider.

    From the UK.  But I’m still chalking this up to bad education.  Someone missed a very important lesson when she stayed home that day.  Had she seen the rose shatter maybe she would remember how dangerous this stuff really is.

  • Over $60,000 Spent Per Household in Poverty

    “According to the Census’s American Community Survey, the number of households with incomes below the poverty line in 2011 was 16,807,795,” the Senate Budget Committee notes. “If you divide total federal and state spending by the number of households with incomes below the poverty line, the average spending per household in poverty was $61,194 in 2011.”

    via The Weekly Standard.

    Yes, I know… it’s The Weekly Standard.  It’s biased.  But facts are facts.  It’s just math.  Someone crunch the numbers and prove this wrong.  One should note that the article points out that welfare spending includes money such as Pell Grants which are given to people in households above the poverty line.  So it’s honest that way.

    But it’s just plain staggering to think about.  Where does all this money go?  Certainly a lot of bureaucrats pushing paper is part of the number.  But direct payments to the “poor” much be significant.  Now, I’m not suggesting that it’s fun to be poor… far from.  But we need to acknowledge that America has the richest poor people in the world.

    The following are facts about persons defined as “poor” by the Census Bureau as taken from various government reports:

    • 80 percent of poor households have air conditioning. In 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
    • 92 percent of poor households have a microwave.
    • Nearly three-fourths have a car or truck, and 31 percent have two or more cars or trucks.
    • Nearly two-thirds have cable or satellite TV.
    • Two-thirds have at least one DVD player, and 70 percent have a VCR.
    • Half have a personal computer, and one in seven have two or more computers.
    • More than half of poor families with children have a video game system, such as an Xbox or PlayStation.
    • 43 percent have Internet access.
    • One-third have a wide-screen plasma or LCD TV.
    • One-fourth have a digital video recorder system, such as a TiVo.

    via Heritage Foundation.
     

    In America the poor receive food, shelter, medical care, even a cell phone.  The reality is a far cry from the perception many on the left would like you to believe whereby tens-of-thousands of starving children are dying in dirty streets because no one would give them a morsel of bread.  That’s just simply not the case.

  • TSA PreCheck System Flawed – No One Surprised

    “Using a website I decoded my boarding pass for my upcoming trip.

    “It’s all there PNR [passenger name record], seat assignment, flight number, name, etc. But what is interesting is the bolded three on the end. This is the TSA PreCheck information. The number means the number of beeps. 1 beep no PreCheck, 3 beeps yes PreCheck.”

    The US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) did not respond to a BBC request for a statement, but has previously said: “TSA does not comment on specifics of the screening process, which contain measures both seen and unseen. In addition, TSA incorporates random and unpredictable security measures throughout the travelling process.”

    via BBC News.

    As usual the MSM is silent on the farce that is the TSA.

    It’s amazing what a complete and udder failure the TSA has become.  From the millimeter machines that pounded you with radiation and made pictures of your naughty bits to the number of TSA employees who have been busted for everything from child porn to stealing laptops it seems that TSA is the symbol for irresponsible government run amok.

    Perhaps the greater failure is that the Obama admin has done nothing to correct the issue.

    TSA provides nothing but the illusion of security by harassing and abusing law abiding citizens.  It’s a national embarrassment.

  • More Dem on GOP Violence in WI

    A story on the Daily Caller, a national conservative website, says Kyle Wood, a full-time volunteer for Lee, reported that he answered his door Wednesday morning and a man wrapped a ligature around his neck, slammed his head into the doorway, smashed his face into a mirror and kidney-punched him.

    via Madison.com.

    I wrote a little about this here.

    No mention of either of these stories in the MSM.

     

  • CPD Brass Wasting Money Trying to Track Gunshots

    The Police Department began using gunshot detection technology early last month in two 1.5-square-mile areas to try to better pinpoint the location of gunshots, Superintendent Garry McCarthy disclosed Thursday. The sensors sometimes give officers information before 911 calls are made, he said.

    In the past decade, the city twice installed the devices but ultimately removed them because of their high price tags and ineffectiveness. Since then the technology has improved “dramatically,” McCarthy said.

    “What we can do with this is overwhelming right now,” McCarthy said at a news conference. “It’s gotten a lot better, and obviously as it’s out there longer, it’s a lot cheaper also.”

    The one-year contract for the ShotSpotter system costs about $200,000 — money that will come from drug forfeitures and other property seized by police, authorities said.

    via Chicago Tribune.

    So it didn’t work before and was too expensive.  Boy, that’s not what we were told last time.

    Given the success of the pilot program, in September 2003, Mayor Daley announced that a new phase of PODs would be deployed throughout the City. Subsequently, the number of PODs increased from 30 to 80 by December 2003. Some of the new second generation PODs were also equipped with technology to detect gunfire. Using wireless technology, these units transmitted gunshot alerts, as well as the usual video images, directly to the City’s Emergency Management and Communications Center, thereby providing crucial intelligence on criminal incidents involving guns. Several of the 30 existing PODs were also upgraded with the same technology during that time period.
    — CPD Website, dated June 15, 2003

    and

    Chicago police plan to add 50 new remote-controlled cameras in city … The new cameras will be equipped with gunshot detectors….
    — Herald & Review, dated April 7, 2004

    and

    Chicago police have installed 30 surveillance units in high-crime locales. The system uses four microphones to zero in on firearm discharges.
    — USA Today, dated June 6, 2005

    The USA Today article ends with:

    Adding SENTRI to an existing surveillance camera is not cheap, however. The system costs between $4,000 and $10,000 per unit. In Chicago, money forfeited by criminals is used to pay for both it and the accompanying cameras.

    As a result, Police Superintendent Phil Cline told a recent U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting, “the drug dealers are actually paying to surveil themselves.”

    I guess everything old is new again.

     

  • Pension’s Rate of Return Plummets to 0.76%

    This sounds like a problem:

    The pension fund for most public school teachers in Illinois generated just 0.76 percent in fiscal 2012, a big drop from the 23.6 percent rate of return in the previous fiscal year, the Teachers’ Retirement System reported on Thursday.  …

    It is the long-term results that matter and the system’s 20-year investment return at the end of June was 7.73 percent.”  …

    Last month, the pension fund for teachers in all Illinois school districts with the exception of the Chicago Public Schools, lowered its long-term assumed investment rate of return to 8 percent from 8.5 percent.The move will depress TRS’ funded ratio to 42.5 percent and increase Illinois’ fiscal 2014 payment to the fund to $3.36 billion instead of $3.07 billion under the previous return rate.

    via Crain’s Chicago Business.

    Indeed a problem.  Consider …

    A drop in the assumed rate of return from 8.5% to 8.0% meant that the state (that’s you and me, a/k/a the taxpayers) owed an extra $300,000,000.  Hummm….

    TRS’s board members, appointed by The Machine, like to quote the 20-year ROR because it’s a respectable 7.73%.  That’s true.  But as I wrote about this before, the 10-year ROR is a pathetic 5.7%.

    The fact remains that TRS is in some real trouble.  Everyone knows it.  And the longer we keep our head in the sand the more painful it’s going to be to fix.

  • CPD Brass Wants Tighter Gun Tracking

    Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy said today that he would like to see gun owners in Illinois have to report when their weapons are stolen, lost or sold – steps he said would lower the number of firearms in the hands of criminals.  …

    “We keep trying to pass comprehensive gun legislation,” he added. “And my recommendation is to really start small. The fact is that if there was a requirement to report the loss, transfer or theft of a firearm in the state of Illinois, that would significantly limit the number of firearms in the city of Chicago.”

    via Chicago Tribune.

    Media simply reports what the man says as gospel and doesn’t ask any questions.

    Please tell us Mr. McCarthy how part one, a “requirement to report the loss, transfer or theft of a firearm” leads to part two, and “significantly limit the number of firearms in the city of Chicago?”

    Person A has a gun.  Person A goes on vacation and while gone Gang-Banger B breaks into Person A’s house and steals Person A’s gun.  Person A reports to the police that the gun has been stolen.

    First, Person A is going to file a report b/c guns are expensive and he or she is going to want to make the insurance claim that the gun was stolen.

    Second, Person A is going to file a report b/c they don’t want the police knocking at their door when the gun is used in a crime.

    But just in case that’s not enough…  let’s just say we do create a new law to force Person A to notify the police that the gun was stolen.  Now just exactly what is the police going to do with that information to keep the stolen firearm out of the city of Chicago?

    I would really like to know.  Where is the nexus between knowledge of a stolen gun and action that keeps that gun out of the city?

    Can someone please explain?

  • Illinois Tollway Netting $Billion per Year

    To help pay for these projects, the tollway anticipates raking in $977 million from tolls in 2013 – thanks to the 87.5 percent increase that went into effect Jan. 1.

    via Chicago Tribune.

    Doh!