is... wishing Americans would wake up before it is too late.
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I like the way he so obviously took great pain to spread out the paper before he laid down ...
Thank you. I don't know why that little bugger bothered me so much, but it sure did. Now, POOF!, it is gone!
You are da man!
(or da wo-man, whichever fits!)
We'll probably never know. They're still writing out ballots! LOL
signed, sealed and delivered.
I know the media has surely been pushing him hard over the rest of the pack .... did from the start, which raised my suspicions greatly.
So either they are sure he is already in their back pocket, or they know something on him and will spring a huge "October Surprise" that will basically forfeit any chance the Republicans had.
I know he seems to go out of his way to be nice to the media .... so whatever it is, he is in on it!
That's true. They sure kneecapped Cain in a hurry - another one they didn't want in the race. Guess they figured he had a better chance than Paul ..... which I agree with.
Whatever happens, it's beter than Zero.
I worry about that too, but moreso in the general election.
Will U.S. give Russia energy-rich Alaskan islands?
WorldNetDaily
Obama’s State Department is giving away seven strategic, resource-laden Alaskan islands to the Russians. Yes, to the Putin regime in the Kremlin. The seven endangered islands in the Arctic Ocean and Bering Sea include one the size of Rhode Island and Delaware combined, not to mention tens of thousands of square miles of oil-rich seabeds surrounding the islands.
http://us.mg5.mail.yahoo.com/neo/launch
Is this going to give Paul the horsepower he needs to overcome his opponents?
You would have been 100% correct then!
What is this going to do to the Republican primaries now?
Explains why Fox just suddenly 'fired' the Judge though ...
We should have seen through that one when it happened.
It was Obama I was speaking about .....
Yep - the word "racist" doesn't begin to describe it .... He's not only promoting class warfare, but also racial warfare, it seems.
K2 - the only thing Obama wants to land ... is his ass back in the Oval Office in 2013.
Other than that, he just wants to change the gretest country on earth.
You gotta go check this video out. Can you imagine if there were a "Caucasians for Romney" movement?
Ha Ha Ha ... no, you are lucky I was born ... someone has to be around to watch out for the interests of those incapable of doing it themselves.
Enjoyed an Astral Talanga Valley Selection pyramid a while ago, while out on my daily 'stroll'. Elegantly clad in a very dark, ebony shade maduro wrapper, with fillers and binder from three different countries, this 'Black Beauty' is chock full of espresso and chocolate flavors, as well as some leathery notes, along with a lingering sweet tobacco flavors. The construction is good and firm, and this stick has a good, firm feel to it.
Pre-light, the aromas of chocolate and coffee were obvious. The draw was just a shade tight, but not too much so. It lit easily, and I had to touch-it-up twice, possibly because of being outdoors in a slight breeze. After my walk, I finished it up sitting out on the deck, looking out over the lake and watching the early season bass fisherman out on the lake today soaking up the wonderful sunshine.
The finish was long and smooth, and the cigar never lost its flavors throughout, just had periods where one would dominate just a bit, then the others kicked back in. I 'nubbed" it, wishing it had lasted a while longer. This was a very satisfying smoke, full flavored but not at all harsh, and I am glad I have a few more left in the old humidor.
Personally, I would have liked a bit of some peppery spiciness that wasn't really present, but that absence in no way detracted from what is just a very good smoke. . Try one if you get the opportunity. For those who enjoy your smokes with a good complex mix of distinctly different flavors, you'll most probably find, as did I, this one is most definitely worth your while.
I'd have to give this one an 88 or 89. It is available from many of the internet sites. Mine had been sitting in the humidor for a good while, so I don't know how one might be 'right off the truck', but with that beautiful, delicious looking wrapper, I doubt you'll be able to resist this one very long after it arrives.
Obama needs to man up and either lead, follow or get the hell out of the way.
Well sure .... they need to cut somewhere to ensure they have their vacation fund!
Yep, all just a bunch of trumped up caca, but the kool aid slurpers will try to take it and run with it .... because they don't have enough sense to even stop and say .. "is this real?"
Such a pitiful bunch of lemmings.
Obama in hot water over shark fin soup
AFP – Fri, Feb 17, 2012...
It was the sort of visit made for cameras, but President Barack Obama's stop at a Chinese restaurant came under scrutiny on Friday after the menu showed that it served shark fin.
Obama, in San Francisco for fund-raisers, on Thursday surprised and delighted lunch-time diners with a surprise stop at a restaurant in Chinatown. He posed for pictures and paid in cash for two bags of take-out food.
But a look at the menu of the restaurant, Great Eastern, showed that it offered soup from shark fin, a Chinese delicacy that environmentalists say is pushing the ancient fish to the point of extinction.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said that no one on the staff had been aware of the issue until seeing media reports on Friday and that Obama had not ordered shark.
"The president enjoyed his visit to Chinatown, and, as you know, ordered a lot of dim sum takeout. No soup," Carney told reporters on Air Force One.
Environmentalists say that tens of millions of sharks are killed each year as fishermen slice off their fins for dinner tables, leaving them to die in the water. Sharks have few offspring, compounding risks to their survival.
The United States banned finning in its waters in 2000. Obama in January 2011 signed the Shark Conservation Act that toughened regulations by banning imports of fins that are not attached to corresponding shark carcasses.
While the federal law did not ban shark fins themselves, California Governor Jerry Brown in October signed a bill that barred the sale, trade and possession of shark fins. However, restaurants in San Francisco and elsewhere in California can still sell existing stocks of shark fin until July 2013.
Rebecca Regnery, deputy director of wildlife for Humane Society International, said that shark fin was still on offer at a majority of large Chinese restaurants in cities with large Asian populations.
She said that her group had special cards which it encouraged diners to fill out and send to restaurants if they find shark fin.
"Usually the restaurants say we're happy not to serve it, but then everyone is going to go to our competitor and because of demand we're obligated to serve it," she said.
"If it's the opposite, and people go to a competitor that does not serve shark fin, then it starts making economic sense to take it off the menu," she said.
http://news.yahoo.com/obama-hot-water-over-shark-fin-soup-224053506.html
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OK FOLKS - REMEMBER THIS ARTICLE!
This is the sort of 'softball' coverage we'll be getting on Obama from the vast majority of the media between now and the election. No mentions will be made of his massive increases to the national debt, the jobless rates, the higher prices on everything, the failures in foreign policy, the massive failures to support our allies overseas .... Nope, instead we'll be getting this sort of coverage about "Uh OH, the president ordered food in a restaurant where they serve shark fin soup! Oh, golly gee - wink, wink, nod, nod" while they twist, turn, wiggle and squiggle, and report, or just simply make up every negative thing possible about Republican candidate(s).
This is the type coverage we got on Obama in 2008, and it's what we'll see again. Get ready for it, and remember that for every article like this, the media is hiding three or four important NEGATIVE stories we should be hearing about the administration, which will never come to light because they will be covered up and hidden.
Get ready for it ........... and find yourself some sources for the real news .... not this cream-puff, softball stuff the MSM will be spreading around. This is what got Obama elected in '08, and will again if we aren't attentive and awake and alert.
The Great Obama Kowtow
By Mona Charen | Mona Charen – Fri, Feb 17, 2012...
Wikipedia defines "kowtow" as "kneeling and bowing so low as to have one's head touching the ground. ... (Chinese history scholar) Immanuel (Hsu) describes the 'full kowtow' as 'three kneelings and nine knockings of the head on the ground.'" Wikipedia adds that, "In modern times, usage of the kowtow has become much reduced."
Have they been watching the Obama administration?
This week, the U.S. welcomed Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping — widely assumed to be the next leader of the Communist Party, the army and accordingly, of China. Xi will officially take power in the autumn of this year, just about the time that we have a free election to determine our next leader.
There were the usual brass bands and honor guards to welcome the next Chinese strongman. Xi lunched with Vice President Biden and posed for pictures in the Oval Office with President Obama.
But the Obama administration offered more than flag-snapping visuals to ingratiate itself with Xi. It sacrificed American principles.
As the Washington Post reported, Suzan Johnson Cook, the U.S. ambassador at large for international religious freedom, had been scheduled to travel to China on Feb. 8. Her planned visit ran into trouble when Chinese officials declined her requests for meetings. They then cited the paucity of meetings on her calendar as the reason to deny her a visa.
The Chinese have much to hide from an ambassador for religious freedom. On Feb. 13, as Xi was heading to the U.S., a 19-year-old Tibetan monk set himself ablaze in Aba County to protest the persecution of his faith by China. His is the 24th self-immolation in the past 11 months. The Chinese regime has responded to the Tibetans' protests with even more brutal repression than usual. Ngawang Sandrol, a Tibetan nun, suffered torture in jail for secretly recording songs about the Dalai Lama. Chinese troops patrol every block in Tibet and neighboring provinces where exiled Tibetans live.
Dissidents, including Muslim, Christian and Buddhist human rights advocates, have recently received long prison sentences. Gao Zhisheng, a lawyer who attempts to take the Chinese constitution's guarantees of religious liberty seriously, has been repeatedly imprisoned and tortured.
In December, a group of Uighurs was attacked while attempting to escape China across the western border. Seven were killed; several others, including five children, have been indefinitely detained. The government claims that the Uighurs were "resisting arrest."
The Chinese have long attempted to thwart U.S. and international support for religious minorities and other freedom-seeking people inside China. But denying a visa to a U.S. ambassador is a rare display of contempt.
How did the Obama administration respond? According to the Post, Cook and her staff were advised by "superiors in the Obama administration to avoid talking publicly about her canceled trip in the days before Xi's visit."
So the Chinese kick sand in America's face and the Obama administration is at pains to cover up for them?
In another signal of American meekness on human rights and religious liberty, the administration hosted a meeting on human rights the week before Xi's visit. Absent were representatives of the Uighurs, Tibetans or Chinese Christians. As Ellen Bork of the Foreign Policy Initiative noted, "Their reception in the White House would have sent a powerful signal of solidarity to the people of China, and especially human rights and democracy activists. We know from former political prisoners that such news has an impact, boosting their morale as well as improving their treatment."
Is it surprising that the Chinese disdain this White House?
In the course of his meeting with Xi, Vice President Biden made only the most anodyne and glancing references to human rights and religious persecution in China. As they clinked champagne flutes, Biden offered that he had mentioned the plight of "several very prominent individuals" to the Chinese leader and pronounced himself "appreciative" of Xi's response.
That is feeble. The greatest asset that the U.S. possesses in international relations is moral prestige. Whether they like us or not, the nations of the world acknowledge, sometimes only implicitly, that our democracy is genuine and our commitment to human freedom unmatched. Our capacity to confer legitimacy upon others is also unique. By kowtowing to China, the Obama administration has squandered that precious asset.
http://news.yahoo.com/great-obama-kowtow-080000754.html;_ylt=Agfs6HFoXFcW3gl3irToYxzzWed_;_ylu=X3oDMTRvMzU5OGZhBGNjb2RlA2dtcHRvcDEwMDBwb29sd2lraXVwcmVzdARtaXQDTmV3cyBmb3IgeW91BHBrZwM4NjkxODY4Yy0yMjE2LTMxMzktOWEwNS05ZmExOTNmYWVmN2QEcG9zAzUEc2VjA25ld3NfZm9yX3lvdQR2ZXIDMTA3ZThkYzAtNTk1Zi0xMWUxLWJlYmEtODQwYjBhZTgzMzkx;_ylg=X3oDMTNhM245YTdxBGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3RhaWQDNGJiNzk3OTktY2ZiOS0zMDcwLWFiMmEtZTIzNGI2Y2VmYTNlBHBzdGNhdANwb2xpdGljc3xjb25ncmVzcwRwdANzdG9yeXBhZ2UEdGVzdAM-;_ylv=3
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Yep, that's the way to stand up for human rights, and let the Chinese know we mean business. Of course, if it was Muslims being tortured ... the story might be different..
This poor excuse for a president has cost this country more damage than we'll ever be able to repair, all around the world.
You won't be reading this on the "Huffington Post" pro se!
It's a hell of a lot closer to truth than Huffington Post!
No bicycle ... and I don't qualify for the food stamps.
Wasted away again in Obamaville,
searching for my lost shaker of salt!
the liberals all say it's Bush who is to blame,
but I know, It's really Obama's fault!
The noodles are cheaper!
Good for Christie for honoring his (NJ's) fallen miliary men and women, and LEO's.
I applaud him for that!
The rest, I'll just accept and move on. Thanks for the article.
If it was guaranteed to work, I would gladly do it. I would eat ramen noodles 3 times a day if I had to, just to afford the gas I needed. (yeah, there's weak attempt at a joke in there!)
Anyone who accepts and treats Huffington Post as anything other than a totally partisan, completely liberal leaning propaganda rag, is trying to hide from the truth, rather than seeking it.
If that is where you get your information to use in reaching decisions concerning anything political in this country then you are avoiding truth.
I gather from our post you are doing both.
Don't read that crap. It rots your brain cells faster than listening to Pelosi and Reid.
The democrats are on record as wanting our gas prices to reach European levels.
The 'attack dogs' in this case, have 'sniffed out' the truth. And once again, the "blame Bush' game continues, and the line of fools waiting to believe this rot doesn't appear to have learned a damn thing in the past three years. That, my friend, is the result of a learning disorder and mental affliction, called liberalism.
K2 - Gotta disagree with you on this one. Not that it wasn't 'nice', but the lowering of the national flag is an honor that should be reserved for those who served the nation in some capacity. It doesn't matter one bit if someone did drugs or not .... IMO what matters is - "did that person serve the nation in some sort of service capacity?" If they did, then fine, lower the flags. If not, then no, the flags don't get lowered.
As much as I have always liked Christie, I think he erred this time. I don't live there, so I have to ask ... Does he order the flag lowered for every New Jersey military man or woman who dies in war, or every veteran who dies after serving their country? If not, then there is certainy no justification at all for lowering the flag to honor a singer/entertainer .... whether she was as pure as the driven snow or a hard core druggie, or anywhere in between. Singing and acting do not, in my opinion, count as serving the nation.
But it won't be the first time we have agreed to disagree, so it's fine.
Well, now. ol' Tex is getting a little long in the tooth, come to think of it!
Well THAT is good to know .... So I guess Target won't be sending you any diaper coupons!
Obama is a cancer in this country's heart. That narcissistic dummy has got to go come November.
I can not believe there are any Americans still supporting this great pretender. Even Reid and Pelosi must have a limit somewhere to what they will permit this idiot to get away with.
But then there are some who prefer that delusional OBOY world.
It's all part of the overall Grand O'bama Plan.
Why do think Cain got kneecapped so quickly? He wanted to do away with the IRS ...
Sometimes, you are the Drama Queen, for sure.
Just one more of many ......
How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did
By Kashmir Hill, Forbes.com
Every time you go shopping, you share intimate details about your consumption patterns with retailers. And many of those retailers are studying those details to figure out what you like, what you need, and which coupons are most likely to make you happy. Target, for example, has figured out how to data-mine its way into your womb, to figure out whether you have a baby on the way long before you need to start buying diapers. From the New York Times:
Target has got you in its aim
Charles Duhigg outlines in the New York Times how Target tries to hook parents-to-be at that crucial moment before they turn into rampant — and loyal — buyers of all things pastel, plastic, and miniature. He talked to Target statistician Andrew Pole — before Target freaked out and cut off all communications — about the clues to a customer’s impending bundle of joy. Target assigns every customer a Guest ID number, tied to their credit card, name, or email address that becomes a bucket that stores a history of everything they’ve bought and any demographic information Target has collected from them or bought from other sources. Using that, Pole looked at historical buying data for all the ladies who had signed up for Target baby registries in the past.
[Pole] ran test after test, analyzing the data, and before long some useful patterns emerged. Lotions, for example. Lots of people buy lotion, but one of Pole’s colleagues noticed that women on the baby registry were buying larger quantities of unscented lotion around the beginning of their second trimester. Another analyst noted that sometime in the first 20 weeks, pregnant women loaded up on supplements like calcium, magnesium and zinc. Many shoppers purchase soap and cotton balls, but when someone suddenly starts buying lots of scent-free soap and extra-big bags of cotton balls, in addition to hand sanitizers and washcloths, it signals they could be getting close to their delivery date.
Or have a rather nasty infection…
As Pole’s computers crawled through the data, he was able to identify about 25 products that, when analyzed together, allowed him to assign each shopper a “pregnancy prediction” score. More important, he could also estimate her due date to within a small window, so Target could send coupons timed to very specific stages of her pregnancy.
One Target employee I spoke to provided a hypothetical example. Take a fictional Target shopper named Jenny Ward, who is 23, lives in Atlanta and in March bought cocoa-butter lotion, a purse large enough to double as a diaper bag, zinc and magnesium supplements and a bright blue rug. There’s, say, an 87 percent chance that she’s pregnant and that her delivery date is sometime in late August.
And perhaps that it’s a boy based on the color of that rug?
So Target started sending coupons for baby items to customers according to their pregnancy scores. Duhigg shares an anecdote — so good that it sounds made up — that conveys how eerily accurate the targeting is. An angry man went into a Target outside of Minneapolis, demanding to talk to a manager:
“My daughter got this in the mail!” he said. “She’s still in high school, and you’re sending her coupons for baby clothes and cribs? Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?”
The manager didn’t have any idea what the man was talking about. He looked at the mailer. Sure enough, it was addressed to the man’s daughter and contained advertisements for maternity clothing, nursery furniture and pictures of smiling infants. The manager apologized and then called a few days later to apologize again.
(Nice customer service, Target.)
On the phone, though, the father was somewhat abashed. “I had a talk with my daughter,” he said. “It turns out there’s been some activities in my house I haven’t been completely aware of. She’s due in August. I owe you an apology.”
What Target discovered fairly quickly is that it creeped people out that the company knew about their pregnancies in advance.
“If we send someone a catalog and say, ‘Congratulations on your first child!’ and they’ve never told us they’re pregnant, that’s going to make some people uncomfortable,” Pole told me. “We are very conservative about compliance with all privacy laws. But even if you’re following the law, you can do things where people get queasy.”
Bold is mine. That’s a quote for our times.
So Target got sneakier about sending the coupons. The company can create personalized booklets; instead of sending people with high pregnancy scores books o’ coupons solely for diapers, rattles, strollers, and the “Go the F*** to Bed” book, they more subtly spread them about:
“Then we started mixing in all these ads for things we knew pregnant women would never buy, so the baby ads looked random. We’d put an ad for a lawn mower next to diapers. We’d put a coupon for wineglasses next to infant clothes. That way, it looked like all the products were chosen by chance.
“And we found out that as long as a pregnant woman thinks she hasn’t been spied on, she’ll use the coupons. She just assumes that everyone else on her block got the same mailer for diapers and cribs. As long as we don’t spook her, it works.”
So the Target philosophy towards expecting parents is similar to the first date philosophy? Even if you’ve fully stalked the person on Facebook and Google beforehand, pretend like you know less than you do so as not to creep the person out.
Duhigg suggests that Target’s gangbusters revenue growth — $44 billion in 2002, when Pole was hired, to $67 billion in 2010 — is attributable to Pole’s helping the retail giant corner the baby-on-board market, citing company president Gregg Steinhafel boasting to investors about the company’s “heightened focus on items and categories that appeal to specific guest segments such as mom and baby.”
Target was none too happy about Duhigg's plans to write this story (and forthcoming book, The Power of Habit). They refused to let him go to Target headquarters. When he flew out anyway, he discovered he was on a list of prohibited visitors.
I think most readers of the excellent piece will find it both unsettling and unsurprising. With all the talk these days about the data grab most companies are engaged in, Target’s collection and analysis seem as expected as its customers’ babies. But with their analysis moving into areas as sensitive as pregnancy, and so accurately, who knows how else they might start profiling Target shoppers? The store’s bulls-eye logo may now send a little shiver of fear down the closely-watched spines of some, though I can promise you that Target is not the only store doing this. Those people chilled by stores’ tracking and profiling them may want to consider going the way of the common criminal — and paying for far more of their purchases in cash.
http://shopping.yahoo.com/articles/yshoppingarticles/818/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/
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NOTHING is safe any more. Another reason to pay in cash. There's no end to what's being 'collected' on each of us.
Well what the fuck did you expect would happen? Did you envision that we'd come to South America and fly you back to NYC for a tickertape parade in honor of your vast prophetic wisdom? An appreciation night at the Kennedy Center?
You're your own worst enemy. No one on these boards has to say or do anything against you.
Have a good one. Don't do anything I wouldn't do ...
ZMG
OMG
Not me ... my lawn mower refuses to start until late March or April. I think the damn thing belongs to a union!