Rabid Moonbat of the Week:
Source: PIG News Wire [05/10/14]

Rabid Moonbat: Jackass Party Congressmoonbat Barbara Lee (CA)

Magic Moonbat Moment: California Democratic congresswoman Barbara Lee expressed support for a $26 minimum wage in her state — a move Republican congressman Andy Harris encouraged, assuming jobs would rapidly flee California to his state of Maryland.

Lee and Harris appeared Friday on CNN's "Crossfire," hosted by former Obama advisor Van Jones and former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. The panel discussed the proposed increase in the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 per hour.

"Let me ask you this question, you're a good advocate for this," Gingrich asked Lee. "The mayor of Seattle is proposing that the minimum wage ought to go up to $15 an hour."

"Good for him," Lee responded. "In California — more than likely, from what I remembered — a living wage where people could live and take care of their families and move toward achieving the American dream was about $25, $26 an hour."

"So would you support that as a minimum wage for California?" Gingrich asked.

"Absolutely I would support it for California. I think the regional factors –"

"And you don't think that'd have an effect on unemployment?" Gingrich interrupted.

"No, Newt, trust me, believe you me," Lee replied, "you'd have a more productive workforce, you'd have people who could afford to live in areas now where they cannot afford to live. You would increase diversity in certain communities where you don't have diversity anymore. You would have economic parity and the income gap would begin to close."

<snip>

If a $26-an-hour minimum wage was instituted in California, employees working 40 hours per week and taking no vacations would earn over $54,000 each year.

Understatement of the Week
Source: PIG News Wire [05/10/14]

; Embattled Los Angeles Clippers owner, Donald Sterling said a mouthful, when he told a minion of DuJour magazine:

"I wish I had just paid her off!"

No shit Sherlock.

Voices of Reason
Source: PIG News Wire [04/19/14]

John Bolton on Obama's Ideology

He doesn't think that Islamic extremism really exists. He thinks it's not a problem. He thinks the Muslim Brotherhood is just fine. He wishes they were still in control in Egypt. He thinks you can talk to these fanatics and reason with them and negotiate with them.

He's doing it not on the terrorist front but with the Ayatollahs in Tehran on the nuclear weapons program. and whether they're Shia or Sunni religious fanatics, they look at this guy and say "we're gonna take him to the cleaners" and they are.
Former Ambassador to the U.N., John Bolton

Safe Spaces
Universities are no longer institutions of inquiry but 'safe spaces' where delicate flowers of diversity of race, sex, orientation, 'gender fluidity' and everything else except diversity of thought have to be protected from exposure to any unsafe ideas.

As it happens, the biggest 'safe space' on the planet is the Muslim world. For a millennium, Islamic scholars have insisted, as firmly as a climate scientist or an American sophomore, that there's nothing to debate. And what happened? As the United Nations Human Development Programme's famous 2002 report blandly noted, more books are translated in Spain in a single year than have been translated into Arabic in the last 1,000 years. Free speech and a dynamic, innovative society are intimately connected: a culture that can't bear a dissenting word on race or religion or gender fluidity or carbon offsets is a society that will cease to innovate, and then stagnate, and then decline, very fast.

As American universities, British playwrights and Australian judges once understood, the 'safe space' is where cultures go to die."
– Mark Steyn

Quick Hits
Source: PIG News Wire [04/05/14]

Viva Las Vegas

This Fark Teaser gives you the big picture:

Las Vegas revenues down 14%, and winnings down 20%. Las Vegas workers unions: "This is a perfect time to strike."

Culinary Union Local 226 reports that 99% voted for a strike, if/when bargaining rolls 'craps'.

The strike would hit the following:

downtown Binion's, El Cortez, Four Queens, Fremont, Golden Gate, Golden Nugget, Las Vegas Club, Las Vegas Plaza, Main Street Station and The D properties, the Margaritaville bar on the Strip, and linen service workers at Brady Laundries in North Las Vegas.

Moo

If you think milk and beef prices are high now, prepare to be thrilled. Barry has declared war on bovine belches and cow farts, both of which release methane, a 'greenhouse gas'.

The Daily Caller spewed this journalistic gas:

The White House has proposed cutting methane emissions from the dairy industry by 25 percent by 2020. Although U.S. agriculture only accounts for about 9 percent of the country's greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, it makes up a sizeable portion of methane emissions — which is a very potent greenhouse gas.

Some of these methane emissions come from cow flatulence, exhaling and belching — other livestock animals release methane as well.

"Cows emit a massive amount of methane through belching, with a lesser amount through flatulence," according to How Stuff Works. "Statistics vary regarding how much methane the average dairy cow expels. Some experts say 100 liters to 200 liters a day… while others say it's up to 500 liters… a day. In any case, that's a lot of methane, an amount comparable to the pollution produced by a car in a day."

"Of all domestic animal types, beef and dairy cattle were by far the largest emitters of [methane]," according to an EPA analysis charting greenhouse gas emissions in 2012. Cows and other animals produce methane through digestion, which ferments the food of animals.

The only way this works, as far as I know is reducing the number of bovines. Fewer bovines means higher prices for beef and dairy products. Thanks, Barry.

Uncle Sam Admits It

I won't belabor this one. Instead, I'll let Fox News do the deed:

The Obama administration's top intelligence official says the government has conducted warrantless searches of Americans' communications as part of the National Security Agency's spy operations that target foreigners located outside of the U.S.

James Clapper acknowledged these searches in a letter to Congress, but he did not say how often they occur.

The searches were authorized by a secret surveillance court in 2011, but it had been unclear whether any such searches on Americans had been conducted.

Rejection

It was a memorable moment for 43 year old Benito Flores, who was standing in the water at a Santa Barbara (Mexifornia) beach as a witness to a baptism. Old Ka-Boom seemed ready to accept the nipper, but his attitude about Benito was hostile, to say the least.

Out of nowhere, a large wave sucked up Benito and swept him out to sea, to a watery grave. Somebody up there really didn't like him.

Quotes
Source: PIG News Wire [03/29/14

Being offended is what happens when you have your deepest beliefs challenged. And if you make it through four years of college without having your deepest beliefs challenged, you should demand your money back.

I have been saying that line in speeches on campus for more than a decade. Even though it often gets a laugh, the idea that students have an overarching "right not to be offended" seems more entrenched on campus than ever.

Americans should be alarmed that students and even faculty members (who should know better) are turning away from critical thinking and reasoned debate, and instead learning to think like censors. It's bad enough that 59% of universities maintain unconstitutional speech codes; it's also unacceptable that so many students meekly accept when they are told they need to limit their protests to the tiny free speech zone on campus. But it's far, far worse when students come to believe that censorship is what good and noble people just do.

Censorship has always been the easy way out, the way of imposing one's view against the challenge of pluralism, but if a generation of students comes to see the well intentioned censor as a romantic hero, it will have terrible consequences for us all.

Greg Lukianoff

Guest Commentary
Source: PIG News Wire [03/07/14]

The Post's View
President Obama's foreign policy is based on fantasy

By Editorial Board, Published: March 2

FOR FIVE YEARS, President Obama has led a foreign policy based more on how he thinks the world should operate than on reality. It was a world in which "the tide of war is receding" and the United States could, without much risk, radically reduce the size of its armed forces. Other leaders, in this vision, would behave rationally and in the interest of their people and the world. Invasions, brute force, great-power games and shifting alliances — these were things of the past. Secretary of State John F. Kerry displayed this mindset on ABC's "This Week" Sunday when he said, of Russia's invasion of neighboring Ukraine, "It's a 19th century act in the 21st century."

That's a nice thought, and we all know what he means. A country's standing is no longer measured in throw-weight or battalions. The world is too interconnected to break into blocs. A small country that plugs into cyberspace can deliver more prosperity to its people (think Singapore or Estonia) than a giant with natural resources and standing armies.

Unfortunately, Russian President Vladimir Putin has not received the memo on 21st-century behavior. Neither has China's president, Xi Jinping, who is engaging in gunboat diplomacy against Japan and the weaker nations of Southeast Asia. Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is waging a very 20th-century war against his own people, sending helicopters to drop exploding barrels full of screws, nails and other shrapnel onto apartment buildings where families cower in basements. These men will not be deterred by the disapproval of their peers, the weight of world opinion or even disinvestment by Silicon Valley companies. They are concerned primarily with maintaining their holds on power.

Mr. Obama is not responsible for their misbehavior. But he does, or could, play a leading role in structuring the costs and benefits they must consider before acting. The model for Mr. Putin's occupation of Crimea was his incursion into Georgia in 2008, when George W. Bush was president. Mr. Putin paid no price for that action; in fact, with parts of Georgia still under Russia's control, he was permitted to host a Winter Olympics just around the corner. China has bullied the Philippines and unilaterally staked claims to wide swaths of international air space and sea lanes as it continues a rapid and technologically impressive military buildup. Arguably, it has paid a price in the nervousness of its neighbors, who are desperate for the United States to play a balancing role in the region. But none of those neighbors feel confident that the United States can be counted on. Since the Syrian dictator crossed Mr. Obama's red line with a chemical weapons attack that killed 1,400 civilians, the dictator's military and diplomatic position has steadily strengthened.

The urge to pull back — to concentrate on what Mr. Obama calls "nation-building at home" — is nothing new, as former ambassador Stephen Sestanovich recounts in his illuminating history of U.S. foreign policy, "Maximalist." There were similar retrenchments after the Korea and Vietnam wars and when the Soviet Union crumbled. But the United States discovered each time that the world became a more dangerous place without its leadership and that disorder in the world could threaten U.S. prosperity. Each period of retrenchment was followed by more active (though not always wiser) policy. Today Mr. Obama has plenty of company in his impulse, within both parties and as reflected by public opinion. But he's also in part responsible for the national mood: If a president doesn't make the case for global engagement, no one else effectively can.

The White House often responds by accusing critics of being warmongers who want American "boots on the ground" all over the world and have yet to learn the lessons of Iraq. So let's stipulate: We don't want U.S. troops in Syria, and we don't want U.S. troops in Crimea. A great power can become overextended, and if its economy falters, so will its ability to lead. None of this is simple.

But it's also true that, as long as some leaders play by what Mr. Kerry dismisses as 19th-century rules, the United States can't pretend that the only game is in another arena altogether. Military strength, trustworthiness as an ally, staying power in difficult corners of the world such as Afghanistan — these still matter, much as we might wish they did not. While the United States has been retrenching, the tide of democracy in the world, which once seemed inexorable, has been receding. In the long run, that's harmful to U.S. national security, too.

As Mr. Putin ponders whether to advance further — into eastern Ukraine, say — he will measure the seriousness of U.S. and allied actions, not their statements. China, pondering its next steps in the East China Sea, will do the same. Sadly, that's the nature of the century we're living in.