In this political ad, a variety of retired military and intelligence officers and special forces operatives go after Barack Obama and the Obama Administration for leaking sensitive national security information for political gain.
Mark Kitto studied in China, lived in China for many years, married in China, built two businesses in China, but he has now decided to leave.
Death and taxes. You know how the saying goes. I’d like to add a third certainty: you’ll never become Chinese, no matter how hard you try, or want to, or think you ought to. I wanted to be Chinese, once. I don’t mean I wanted to wear a silk jacket and cotton slippers, or a Mao suit and cap and dye my hair black and proclaim that blowing your nose in a handkerchief is disgusting. I wanted China to be the place where I made a career and lived my life. For the past 16 years it has been precisely that. But now I will be leaving. …
Deng had promised the Chinese people material wealth they hadn’t known for centuries on the condition that they never again asked for political change. The Party said: “Trust us and everything will be all right.â€
Twenty years later, everything is not all right.
I must stress that this indictment has nothing to do with the trajectory of my own China career, which went from metal trading to building a multi-million dollar magazine publishing business that was seized by the government in 2004, followed by retreat to this mountain hideaway of Moganshan where my Chinese wife and I have built a small business centred on a coffee shop and three guesthouses, which in turn has given me enough anecdotes and gossip to fill half a page of Prospect every month for several years. That our current business could suffer the same fate as my magazines if the local government decides not to renew our short-term leases (for which we have to beg every three years) does, however, contribute to my decision not to remain in China.
During the course of my magazine business, my state-owned competitor (enemy is more accurate) told me in private that they studied every issue I produced so they could learn from me. They appreciated my contribution to Chinese media. They proceeded to do everything in their power to destroy me. In Moganshan our local government masters send messages of private thanks for my contribution to the resurrection of the village as a tourist destination, but also clearly state that I am an exception to their unwritten rule that foreigners (who originally built the village in the early 1900s) are not welcome back to live in it, and are only allowed to stay for weekends.
Back in March, the Department of Homeland Security put in an order for 450 million rounds of .40-caliber ammunition. (UPI).
Then, this month, DHS ordered another 750 million rounds of miscellaneous ammunition, “including 357 mag rounds that are able to penetrate walls.” (Prison Planet)
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is looking for 46,000 rounds of ammunition for the National Weather Service.
The National Weather Service stations in Ellsworth, Maine, and New Bedford, Mass., are slated to receive 16,000 rounds of .40 S&W jacketed hollow point (JHP) bullets. …
6,000 rounds of S&W JHP will be sent to Wall, New Jersey and another 24,000 rounds of the same bullets will be handed over to the station in St. Petersburg, Florida.
St. Pete. is the only city that’s not receiving 100 or more paper targets to assist with training of agency issued sidearms.
Two hundred targets are going to Maine and Massachusetts, but only 100 to New Jersey. So, 46,000 rounds and 500 targets.
[N]ow the Social Security Administration is set to purchase 174,000 rounds of hollow point bullets that will be delivered to 41 locations across the country.
A solicitation posted by the SSA on the FedBizOpps website asks for contractors to supply 174,000 rounds of “.357 Sig 125 grain bonded jacketed hollow point pistol ammunition.†…
the ammunition is to be shipped to 41 locations within 60 days of purchase. A separate spreadsheet lists those locations, which include the Social Security headquarters in Baltimore, Maryland as well as major cities across the country including Los Angeles, Detroit, Oklahoma City, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Denver, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Seattle.
DHS clearly is planning to have enough ammo on hand to deal with the Zombie Apocalypse or an invasion from Mars, but what on earth is the Weather Service planning to do with so much ammunition, and Social Security, too?
Irate Senior Citizen: “My SS check was late!”
Social Security bureaucrat: “BOOOM!”
Since all these cartridges are being ordered with Hollow Point bullets, it is clear that they are not planning to shoot any foreign enemies. All such adversaries would be covered by the Geneva Convention, which bans the use of expanding bullets.
There’s been a great deal of positive female reaction to Mitt Romney selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate. On Facebook, I came across a couple of recent Yale grad chicks I know crushing over the photo of Paul Ryan with his compound bow. The liberal girl confessed: “I don’t like his policies, but I’m man enough to admit he’s pretty dreamy.”
Monica Crowley thinks the GOP has turned the tables on the democrats this time, by choosing the younger, hipper, more sexually attractive nominee, and the percentage of young people’s votes going each way will be very different this time from 2008.
In 2008, the Democrats did something ingenious. They found their first 21st century candidate for the presidency.
No more Al Gores or John Kerrys. No more Clintons. No more Cold War-era fossils. In fact, one of the biggest reasons Barack Obama was able to beat Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democrat primaries was because he created a new brand based on the future. The Obama brand was able to smash the once-omnipotent Clinton brand because the Clinton brand was yesterday’s
newspaper while the Obama brand was tomorrow’s.
Obama was the quintessential 21st century candidate: a young, hip, and biracial man with a glamorous wife, adorable young children, and friendships with pop culture icons like Jay-Z. Obama’s campaign was equally 21st century: they used social media to great effect before most people even knew what it was. They were tweeting their followers at Kanye West concerts
while John McCain, God love him, was campaigning with smoke signals.
This time, the tables have turned. While Mitt Romney sort of straddles the 20th and 21st centuries, his running mate is most decidedly 21st century. Paul Ryan is 42 years old, making him almost a decade younger than the young whipper-snapper of the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama. He sleeps in his Capitol Hill office like it’s a dorm room. He does the insanely tough
workout P90X. He walks around wearing headphones, like NBA stars and Olympic athletes. He is cool.
This matters in a nation that has always been forward-looking, pioneering, innovative, and geared toward the future. Negativity and the past don’t win the big battles for the future. Obama knew that when he crushed the Clinton machine and later, the 20th century GOP machine. This time, the Republicans get it, and they’ve found a dynamic, fearless 21st century guy in Paul Ryan.
Even Mitt Romney has become cooler, tougher, looser, and more forward-looking since Ryan joined him on the trail.
If anyone wonders why the Obama team is so unhappy about Mitt Romney’s Vice Presidential pick, just watch Obama’s face as Paul Ryan dissects the Obamacare bill. Obama looks like he’s about to turn into a giant snake, the same way Thulsa Doom (James Earl Jones) did in “Conan the Barbarian” (1982).
This young tech blogger dude sits down in a coffee shop in Portland to catch up on his email and do a little blogging on his Macbook Air, when an incredibly ancient geezer comes along and starts up a conversation about Apple computers.
The old guy doesn’t approve of Apple’s iPad approach: all consuming, no programming, no creating, no doing anything which hasn’t ever been done before. The young guy asks the old geezer what he ever did that hadn’t been done before, and the old guy replies: “I invented the first computer.”
These days Barack Obama looks like he’s channeling Herbert Hoover, but Arnold Goldstein thinks he may really have more in common with Grover Cleveland.
[L]et’s say Obama loses in November. He has a ready made excuse for his defeat. Obama can say that the forces of darkness (i.e. opponents of gay marriage) are to blame for his defeat while patting himself on the back for his “courage” in supporting same sex marriage. It also helps to position him for a comeback in 2016 or 2020. Make no mistake. If Obama loses this fall it won’t be the last we see of him. By that time with a greater presence of voters born after 1980 chances are there will be more voters in favor of gay marriage which would give Obama an opportunity to claim he was ahead of the curve.
So while Obama might have come out in favor of gay marriage far sooner than he wanted to do so. But now that he has come out of the closet on the issue it could work to his advantage if not in this election then perhaps in the next one or the one after that.
Might Obama try to grab the nomination in 2016 and take another crack at Romney?
1. Obama, always trim and fit, would be only 55 on Election Day 2016.
2. Obama would likely still have a deep reservoir of support among key Democratic interest groups including (most importantly) African Americans, gays, young voters, and the educated elite.
3. Many Democrats might be inclined to give an historic president a second chance, reasoning he was dealt an impossibly bad economic hand by George W. Bush. “Bush got two terms, and Obama just one? Please.â€
4. While there could potentially be some big name rivals in 2016, including Hillary Clinton and Andrew Cuomo, none seem as formidable as Ronald Reagan was to Ford in 1980.
5. The economy the next four years could be pretty rough thanks to high levels of U.S. debt and a possible eurozone implosion. The Obama years might be subject to some positive revisionist history by a friendly media. And as one gloomy economic analyst told me recently, “Whichever party wins the White House in 2012 won’t win again for 20 years.â€
I can see that 2016 Obama-Warren ticket already …
The bad news is that they’re right: he could very possibly come back and try running again. The good news is: we’re already sitting around contemplating Obama losing in November as the most probable outcome.
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