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Telegraph: 'Eurozone banking system on the edge of collapse'

But no amount of facts, history, logic and reason can convince the Democrat Party that their Utopia, the European social welfare state, is dead.

The eurozone banking system is on the edge of collapse as major lenders begin to run out of the assets they need to keep vital funding lines open.

10:01PM GMT 09 Dec 2011

Senior analysts and traders warned of impending bank failures as a summit intended to solve the European crisis failed to deliver a solution that eased concerns over bank funding.

The European Central Bank admitted it had held meetings about providing emergency funding to the region's struggling banks, however City figures said a "collateral crunch" was looming.

"If anyone thinks things are getting better then they simply don't understand how severe the problems are. I think a major bank could fail within weeks," said one London-based executive at a major global bank.

Many banks, including some French, Italian and Spanish lenders, have already run out of many of the acceptable forms of collateral such as US Treasuries and other liquid securities used to finance short-term loans and have been forced to resort to lending out their gold reserves to maintain access to dollar funding. [And] lenders are increasingly distrustful about funding one another.

... [Some] think the eurozone banks are heading for a catastrophe and the worry is growing that a major bank could collapse within weeks... Moody's on Friday downgraded France's three largest banks, BNP Paribas, Credit Agricole and Societe Generale in light of what the US rating agency said were "liquidity and funding constraints"... Two weeks ago, rumours abounded that it was the near failure of a major French lender that had been the trigger for a massive co-ordinated intervention by the world's largest central banks to shore up the banking system.

The delusional politiconomist Paul Krugman hardest hit.

The Two Funniest Quotes From Climategate 2.0

HAHHAHAHHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAH... HAHAHAHHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHA... HAHAHAHAHHAHAH *cough* HAHHAHAH *gasp* (need oxygen... can't breathe...)

Oh, my:

Tim Osborne 4007

Also we have applied a completely artificial adjustment to the data after 1960, so they look closer to observed temperatures than the tree-ring data actually were

Tim Osborne #2347

Also, we set all post-1960 values to missing in the MXD data set (due to decline), and the method will infill these, estimating them from the real temperatures – another way of “correcting” for the decline, though may be not defensible!

After these revelations, any member of the Leftist media that refers to a climate "denier" needs to do a mandatory, eight-hour documentary on the science of Alchemy.


Hat tip: Soylent Green (NSFW)

Tragedy for Legacy Media: 'Income Inequality' Straw-man Transformed Into Smoldering Pile of Ashes By Cato's Alan Reynolds

Over the past few months, you've probably read a series of propaganda pieces articles describing America's increased 'income inequality'. You know the template: the rich keep getting richer at the expense of everyone else; America has a static class structure in which no one moves up or down; and zero-sum economics idiocy promoted by the likes of the execrable Paul Krugman. A series of propagandists, including Krugman, have used this chart to illustrate how the top 1% are ripping everyone off.

But the Cato Institute's Alan Reynolds wondered, "Why did the report stop at 2007?"

A recent report from the Congressional Budget Office says, "The share of income received by the top 1% grew from about 8% in 1979 to over 17% in 2007."

This news caused quite a stir, feeding the left's obsession with inequality. Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson, for example, said this "jaw-dropping report" shows "why the Occupy Wall Street protests have struck such a nerve." The New York Times opined that the study is "likely to have a major impact on the debate in Congress over the fairness of federal tax and spending policies."

But here's a question: Why did the report stop at 2007? The CBO didn't say, although its report briefly acknowledged—in a footnote—that "high income taxpayers had especially large declines in adjusted gross income between 2007 and 2009."

No kidding. Once these two years are brought into the picture, the share of after-tax income of the top 1% by my estimate fell to 11.3% in 2009 from the 17.3% that the CBO reported for 2007.

The larger truth is that recessions always destroy wealth and small business incomes at the top. Perhaps those who obsess over income shares should welcome stock market crashes and deep recessions because such calamities invariably reduce "inequality." Of course, the same recessions also increase poverty and unemployment.

The only thing I can conclude is that crackpots like Paul Krugman want more stock market crashes and deep recessions. Which perhaps explains his affection for Barack Obama.

And why he must believe that countries with the least income inequality -- like North Korea -- are just swell.


Hat tips: TaxProf and Mark Levin.

It begins: bank runs break out in Greece, following the contours of the sovereign debt crisis

Following the path of the sovereign debt crisis, the Eurozone's bank runs have begun.

Anxious Greeks Emptying Their Bank Accounts

Many Greeks are draining their savings accounts because they are out of work, face rising taxes or are afraid the country will be forced to leave the euro zone. By withdrawing money, they are forcing banks to scale back their lending -- and are inadvertently making the recession even worse.

Georgios Provopoulos, the governor of the central bank of Greece, is a man of statistics, and they speak a clear language. "In September and October, savings and time deposits fell by a further 13 to 14 billion euros. In the first 10 days of November the decline continued on a large scale," he recently told the economic affairs committee of the Greek parliament... the outflow of funds from Greek bank accounts has been accelerating rapidly. At the start of 2010, savings and time deposits held by private households in Greece totalled €237.7 billion ... [but] the Greeks today only have €170 billion in savings -- almost 30 percent less than at the start of 2010.

...Nikoloudis has detected a further trend. At first, it was just a few people trying to withdraw large sums of money. Now it's large numbers of people moving small sums. Ypatia K., a 55-year-old bank worker from Athens, can confirm that. "The customers, especially small savers, have recently been withdrawing sums of €3,000, €4,000 or €5,000. That was panic," she said.

For those who insist it couldn't happen here, a word of caution: it can and it has, as recently as 2008.

The 2008 financial crisis displayed characteristics of a classic bank run, but people holding bank accounts weren't the ones scrambling to get their cash. It was lenders demanding their money from other financial institutions.

Indeed, today's panics are more likely to involve major financial institutions and are largely hidden from plain sight until they are severe enough to trigger plunging stock prices, bankruptcies, layoffs and rising unemployment. And the current European crisis is a reminder that some of the vulnerabilities exposed in 2008 still exist.

These panics often originate in the shadows of the banking system, where major financial institutions do business with one another... [and] the size of shadow-banking activities [are] roughly $60 trillion as of 2010—a sum that represents 25% to 30% of the total global financial system.

At best, shadow banking offers financial institutions a source of funding and liquidity on a day-to-day basis. At worst, it allows the buildup of leverage and systemic risk, as the 2008 financial crisis revealed. Gary Gorton, a Yale University professor and leading researcher in this field, has documented that the crisis was effectively "a run by banks and firms on other banks."

...Given the speed that Europe's debt crisis is unfolding, however, any measures that could help fend off future shadow-banking panics risk coming too late.

The propagand-conomist Paul Krugman -- a proponent of the debt-ridden European social welfare state -- hardest hit.

The only unemployment chart you need to see today

Courtesy of Calculated Risk -- via Business Insider -- comes a chart that helps illustrate the real unemployment situation.

This is why the situation seems so dire. Why people are walking around in a daze. Why your neighbors are worried and glum.

Forbes editor Vahan Janjigian explains

...the unemployment rate has been very high for quite some time. If you look at the U6 figure [Ed: now 15.6%], which includes people who are working part-time, the underemployed because they can’t find a full-time job, or people who have simply given up looking for work; that figure is always extremely high.

But there is another figure I like to focus on. It is called the participation rate. That figure has really been plummeting... Now this figure is never 100%, because, of course, there are some people who are capable of working who aren’t working. An 18-year-old who is in school, for example, is not going to be working. Someone who chooses to be a stay-at-home mom or dad is not going to be working, or somebody who is 65 years old and retired but is capable of working is not going to be working.

So in a healthy economy, we would expect this figure to be somewhere above 70%. It is currently down at 64%, which means that there are a lot of people who cannot find jobs—they want to be working, they can’t find jobs.

With that context in mind, please consider these headlines:

No matter how the dying, legacy media tries to spin it, no matter how the administration twists arms at the Bureau of Labor Statistics to make things look rosier, the facts are clear:

The American economy is dying under this President.

Report: Republican Presidential Candidate Is Closeted Gay Male Who Sexually Harassed a Male Actor and Frequented a Gay Bathhouse

Did I say "Republican candidate"? Because I meant to say "Barack Obama." Kevin DuJan reports:

If the operating assumption is that anything whispered about by anonymous sources is true about Herman Cain, then I guess everything people in Chicago have talked about for years related to Barack Obama being a closeted gay man into younger Pakistani guys must be true too, right?

During the 2008 election, I campaigned for Hillary Clinton in the Democrat primaries. Repeatedly, I heard over and over here in Chicago that Barack Obama is gay and that his marriage to Michelle is one of mutual convenience. In the black community, this is called “being on the down-low”, where a closeted gay male weds an often-times gruff and demanding woman (typically without other male suitors of her own) to take public scrutiny off them both and afford the pair a successful life they’d never achieve separately.

There are, apparently, a lot of such relationships forged at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago — where Barack Obama’s pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, oversaw the coupling of down-low gay black men with sour and caustic black women.

...You need to understand how much homosexuality is despised in the black community to appreciate both the need for gay black men to stay “down-low” and the willingness of some black women to become “beards” for these men when they think they can benefit from the arrangement in some way themselves (usually because these are difficult-to-deal-with women who were unable to find anyone willing to marry them otherwise).

Oprah Winfrey and her longtime “boyfriend” Stedman Graham were for many years also members of Trinity United Church of Christ, and you can read whatever you may like into that.

In Chicago’s Boystown gay community, older guys who frequented the little dive bars that have been around forever told tales back in the 2008 primaries about Barack Obama slipping out whenever he was in Chicago for romps at the local bathhouse “Man’s Country”. The details given in these accounts of his activities were substantial... According to the gossip, Barack Obama would never reciprocate in these encounters, but enjoyed being pleasured by older white guys

...This jibes with everything Larry Sinclair said about his own sexual encounter with Barack Obama in the back of a limo many years ago. You remember Larry Sinclair, right? He’s the man the agenda-driven media worked overtime to destroy and did its level best to silence because he posed a direct threat to the narrative the Left needed to push for Barack Obama to elect him president — and needless to say, that narrative didn’t include Barack Obama receiving oral sex from another man in the back of a limo in Chicago.

You need to appreciate that when a Democrat is accused of anything, the Democrat’s accusers are crucified with remarkable zeal in the press; but when someone whispers anything obscene about a Republican, that person is lauded by the “journalists” of the Left as the bravest and most credible person who ever lived…even if that person refuses to give her name, actually state on record what she claimed happened, or provide any sort of corroborating evidence that what she’s alleging is in any way remotely true.

To the media, it’s true just because it was said about a Republican. Meanwhile, Democrats can always get away with murder. Just ask the Kennedy family about that.

...So, why can’t we all talk about Barack Obama dating Hollywood actor Kal Penn during the 2008 presidential campaign, and Obama then inventing a strange, nebulous position for the actor in the early days of the Obama administration (just so Penn could abruptly leave his hit TV show and move to Washington to be close to Obama?). Apparently, since Penn then left the White House abruptly after just a few months of work (in a position that was created solely for him) the current President and his down-low boyfriend must have broken up.

...You know full well the “journalists” on sites like Politico would have spent the last three years digging relentlessly into a Republican president’s past, repeatedly asking why not a single former girlfriend has ever stepped forward to identify herself or speak on the record about her past with the man currently in the Oval Office.

Isn’t it strange that the public’s never been introduced to A SINGLE GIRLFRIEND that Barack Obama ever had in high school, college, law school, or the days before he met ... Michelle?

Don’t you wonder why the “journalists” of the Left have never done any in-depth profiles of Barack Obama’s male friends from his years at Occidental College in California, talked about his “roommate” while at Columbia, or wondered about any of his social activities through the years?

I know there are endless mysteries centered around a man whose college transcripts, vital records, and other important paperwork were apparently sealed away from the public in an impregnable vault somewhere cloaked in riddles and enigma — never to be seen by human eyes again — but if Barack Obama was a Republican he would have been outed as gay many years ago.

If Barack Obama was a Republican, the agenda-driven media would have hounded him about the nature of his relationship with his “bodyman” Reggie Love.

If Barack Obama was a Republican, the Left would have somehow gotten ahold of his lifetime membership at Chicago gay bathhouse Man’s Country and would have plastered those records across Politico to destroy his political career.

If Barack Obama was a Republican, the press would have quickly interpreted the dearth of girlfriends in his past as evidence of a surfeit of boyfriends and no one at the New York Times would have slept a wink until every Tom, Dick, or Larry in Barack Obama’s little black book was awarded his own reality show to gush about their down-low adventures.

...Because Barack Obama is a Democrat, the agenda-driven media is as committed to promoting a heterosexual, scandal-free image for him, because this is what “journalists” are apparently trained to do for Democrats in school…and it’s expected for them to do if they wish to keep being employed as “journalists” in the Democrat public relations machine we call the media in this country.

Someday, when the Left no longer needs Barack Obama to push the Left’s agenda, this protection will be gone and you’ll spend the last few decades of your life hearing all about Larry Sinclair, Kal Penn, Reggie Love, Man’s Country, Jeremiah Wright’s Down-Low Club, and the many men Barack Obama has been with through the years. I’m sure a great many books will be written on all of this and a great deal of money will be made by the media companies selling the scandal of it all to the public.

...If you don’t see what’s really happening here and are someone who’s quick to believe the anonymous and sketchy sources the likes of Politico put forward when it comes to a Republican in the hot seat... then maybe you should spend today coming up with a valid reason for why you can’t name a single girlfriend Barack Obama had in his entire life before Michelle and why so much of Barack Obama’s past is so aggressively cloaked in perpetual and deliberate mystery.

...It’s an open secret in the political world that Barack Obama is gay, and that there are plenty of closeted gay Republicans too. But you won’t hear about any of this because members of the permanent political class on both sides of the aisle don’t want you to hear about it.

Making no judgment whatsoever on Kevin's assertions, I will observe the following:

• "Frank" in Obama's autobiography Dreams From My Father, who was young Barack's "father figure", is known to be the Communist Party organizer Frank Marshall Davis.

• Davis was also a reported pedophile: "The Telegraph UK [reports] that Davis, a close friend of Obama's mother and his maternal grandfather, published an autobiographical, pornographic book... and wrote about enjoying sex with teenagers."

• In Davis' ghost-authored book ("Black Sex Rebel") he "admits to seducing a thirteen year-old girl, voyeurism, exhibitionism, bisexuality, rape and sadomasochism. Barack, called 'Barry' as a child, was a mere ten year old when he first met the family friend who led a secret double life... Barack describes how Frank Davis had a lasting effect on him and became a father figure over the seven years they knew one another on the tropical island... Obama described being counseled by Frank often and recalled drinking whiskey with him."

In my view, these allegations deserve the full attention of the hacks fine reporters at Politico, who are more than willing to pillory Herman Cain using anonymous and/or scarcely credible accounts.

How guys like Corzine and Madoff get dealt with in China

When stories like this come down the pike, I get to thinkin' there are a couple o' things about Red China I actually like.

As reported today in the Suzhou evening news:

Former President Shen Changfu of China Mobile Telecom Chongjing Co, Ltd was sentenced to death on charges of taking bribes of over 36 million RMB. (Around $6 million U.S.D)

On 17Nov, 2011 his son Shen Juncheng was sentenced to ten years in prison for taking bribes valued at 13 million RMB ($2M USD) In this case, the son was using his father's connections to support getting new contracts for companies. He was then paid dividends by the companies.

The mentally challenged Thomas Fried-man hardest hit.

Stratfor Research: Italy has seven days to avoid an "immediate and catastrophic" financial meltdown

Uhm, Stratfor Research is well-known for avoiding alarmist views and overstatements. Which makes this missive all the more foreboding (emphases mine, Paul Krugman hardest hit):

The Italian government eked out a legislative victory today, but the victory was a hollow one. Only 308 of the parliament's 630 MPs voted for the government's budget, eight shy of a majority. The bill only passed because the opposition chose to abstain rather than defeat the budget. Italy has now taken the lead position in the contest of what can unravel the euro.

Greece, which has held that dubious honor for nearly two years, is actually now off the radar. Today the Greeks formed a national unity government that has the political authority to implement deep austerity while compartmentalizing political backlash against the system. It might not work, but it should last at least until the new year.

But today's Italian budget vote - or more specifically the decision of several previously pro-Berlusconi deputies to abstain with the opposition - puts Italy squarely in the crosshairs.

Italy, like Greece, faces an insurmountable debt mountain. Italy, like Greece, has problems with political unity. But Italy, unlike Greece, has a leader who refuses to step aside in favor of a national unity government. Berlusconi has been at or near the top of the Italian political scene for a generation, and his People of Freedom party is his own personal political machine.

Berlusconi now has seven days to repair that machine. If he cannot muster an additional eight votes by Nov. 15, his government will fall in a scheduled confidence vote. That would push Italy into an election at a time when markets are waking up to the fact that it is not Ireland or Spain or even Greece that is the biggest threat to the eurozone. It is Italy.

Even in the worst-case scenario Greece only has about 350 billion euro of debt outstanding, most of which now is held either internally or by the European Central Bank. Italy has nearly 2 trillion euro in outstanding debt. An Italian credit cutoff would trigger a financial meltdown across Europe that would both be immediate and catastrophic.

Avoiding that would require a new Italian government without going through one of Italy's famously destabilizing elections. In the aftermath of today's budget vote, Berlusconi claims that he will resign after a series of austerity laws are adopted, ushering in a new unity government. Votes on those laws, however, are scheduled to be held after the confidence vote, so it's not clear whether this is truly turning the page or simply stalling for time.

Can... meet kick.

And sometime -- in the very near future -- the road for can-kicking will have reached an end.

Politico's Top Secret Scandal Selector, by Jonathan Martin and Kenneth Vogel

Biff Spackle located the screening tool used by Politico journolists Jonathan Martin and Kenneth Vogel to determine whether a political scandal is newsworthy:

To assess the scandal factor, please check all that apply:



Did the politician emit spooge on a young intern's blue dress?



Did the politician drive drunk into a pond, leaving his passenger to helplessly drown, flee the scene, and fail to report the incident to authorities in time for a rescue?



Did the politician spend decades as a Ku Klux Klan member, rising to the level of Kleagle (recruiter) and Exalted Cyclops?



Did the politician have a three-decade history of sexual violence against women?



Did the politician accept sweetheart loans and donations from the very organizations he was supposed to be regulating?



Did the politician steer billions in contracts to companies controlled by her spouse?



Did the politician's gay lover run a bisexual prostitution ring out of the politician's apartment?



Did the politican use campaign funds to support a mistress and love child while his wife was dying of cancer?



Was the politican accused of inappropriate behavior by two unnamed persons several decades ago?



IMPORTANT: Please select the politician's party affiliation: Democrat       Republican



Press button to determine this story's scandal status:

Today's 'Paul Krugman Hoisted On His Own Petard', Self-Beclownment Edition

Is there a more hilarious propagand-conomist than Paul "The Problem with Keynesian Economics Is That We're Not Borrowing Enough" Krugman? I don't mean his looks. Ignore the elf-boy physique, concentrate on his record.

He's got enough face-plant-style failures to shame Milli Vanilli.

Today, Krugman is crying doom-and-gloom for the Euro, predicting bank runs, dogs and cats sleeping together, total fiscal apocalypse -- all thanks to the failed Eurosocialist welfare state. But it wasn't too long ago that Elf-Boy was championing the Eurozone...

• In "The Comeback Continent" (Jan. 2008), Krugman told us that the Eurozone was a bulwark of the world economy, worthy of emulation by the U.S.:

The G.D.P. of the European Union is roughly comparable to that of the United States; the euro is almost as important a global currency as the dollar; and the governance of the world financial system is, for practical purposes, equally shared by the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve.

But there’s another thing: it’s important to get the facts about Europe’s economy right because the alleged woes of that economy play an important role in American political discourse, usually as an excuse for the insecurities and injustices of our own society...

...What European countries definitely haven’t done is dismantle their strong social safety nets. Universal health care is a given. So are a variety of programs that support families in trouble, helping protect Europeans from the extreme poverty all too common in this country. All of this costs money — even though European countries spend far less on health care than we do — and European taxes are very high by U.S. standards.

In short, Europe continues to be a big-government sort of place. And that’s why it’s important to get the real story of the European economy out there.

According to the anti-government ideology that dominates much U.S. political discussion, low taxes and a weak social safety net are essential to prosperity. Try to make the lives of Americans even slightly more secure, we’re told, and the economy will shrivel up — the same way it supposedly has in Europe.

But the next time a politician tries to scare you with the European bogeyman, bear this in mind: Europe’s economy is actually doing O.K. these days, despite a level of taxing and spending beyond the wildest ambitions of American progressives.

• In "Why Oil Isn't Gold" (May 2008), Krugman told us how useless gold is as a store of value and, in "Wingnuts, wingnuts everywhere", he openly mocked gold-bugs.

Based on my analysis, a Ouija Board would do a far better job at predicting macroeconomic events than the embarrassment known as Krugman.

James O'Keefe Strips The New York Times Bare Naked, and It Ain't a Pretty Site

Even a casual news consumer knows the long and ugly history of The New York Times. Its wanton dismissal of the Holocaust, for instance, was among the most despicable actions of a free press in American history.

...at the end of [World War II] and for decades afterward, Americans claimed they did not know about the Holocaust as it was happening. How was it possible for so much information to be available in the mass media and yet simultaneously for the public to be ignorant?

The reason is that the American media in general and the New York Times in particular never treated the Holocaust as an important news story. From the start of the war in Europe to its end nearly six years later, the story of the Holocaust made the Times front page only 26 times out of 24,000 front-page stories, and most of those stories referred to the victims as “refugees” or “persecuted minorities.” In only six of those stories were Jews identified on page one as the primary victims.

One of the more vexing questions of recent vintage relates to the treatment of Barack Obama by journalists during the run-up to the 2008 election. How did an unknown community organizer -- with minimal experience and documented connections to Marxists, virulent racists, domestic terrorists and antisemites -- rise to the presidency?

Investigative journalist James O'Keefe -- who helped take down ACORN with a stunning expose of its support of criminal activity -- decided to find out. He secretly recorded a class led by NYU Journalism professors and New York Times consultants Jay Rosen and Clay Shirky.

What he discovered was a complete disregard for journalistic ethics and a primer on how to disguise a political agenda as news coverage.

How, for example, could the Times help market the viability of an unknown like Barack Obama as a presidential canddiate?

...even if the Times says, OK, secretly we’re liberals and now publicly, we’re liberals, and there it is, they still have the dilemma of not wanting to create the news they cover. And it’s a difficult problem...

...They got around it in a really interesting way with Obama, their obvious second favorite candidate after Clinton. Clinton, the liberal consensus candidate, would have been their, I think probably was their candidate on the inside for a while. But the Obama story was the huge dilemma for horse race political coverage because no one would have given you even hundred-to-one odds in 2006, no one would have given you hundred-to-one odds on an African-American president...

...But they ended up covering Obama because of the newsworthy things that were happening around the Obama campaign. So you could not say, “Oh my goodness, for the first time there’s a viable African American candidate.” Because by the act of saying that, you would be creating the story you were nominally covering. So they, they hung up on it. But they could say: “Oh my goodness, Obama Girl, isn’t this funny? This funny video that this young woman did about now our future president, or about now our current president. Or Will.I.Am did a video, a huge breakout video on YouTube. And so they covered it, they covered Obama from the Internet culture angle. And, a bit at a time, it became acceptable to consider that he might be president. But they needed someone else to make the first move.

Rosen and Shirky also discuss how the Times helped the Occupy Wall Street movement and how the media could help defeat Perry and Bachmann, who they specifically tarred as "crazy".

Having been stripped bare by O'Keefe, the defenders of legacy media have circled the wagons, claiming Shirky was not a consultant to the Times (Rosen is a regular contributor).

Whether Shirky is a paid consultant or not, he is clearly influential by dint of the heavy references and links to his work in the Times. According to Google's search engine, he has been referenced by the Times more than 5,300 times with a copious numbers of links to his work.

On his blog, Rosen offers a rambling set of explanations for his obvious and dishonest bias masquerading as "journalism".

And how did Rosen publicly react to this particular instance of classic investigative journalism? As you might have expected: he called O'Keefe a terrorist.

Which is about how you'd figure someone who writes for the Times to spin being caught red-handed. And I do mean red.

Whatever these pencil-necked twits are teaching, it ain't journalism.

Say, how's that 'multi-cultural integration' of Sharia law working out in Europe?

Poland: "Polish fans of Legia Warsaw piggybacked on extreme Islamic rhetoric on Thursday night in the Europa League, as they displayed a ginormous “Jihad Legia” banner in the match with Israeli outfit Hapoel Tel Aviv... To many the unfurling of the giant banner was a distasteful act which stunk of antisemitism. Written in Arabic-style letters, the green banner was construed by many as a thumb in the eye to Hapoel and moreover the Jewish people at large."

London: "This is what London has come to. Halal food in all schools. No eating in front of your Muslim colleagues during Ramadan. Special accommodations for Muslims in public buildings. Officially sanctioned sharia courts.

And above all, no “racist” speech. Muslims may gather and scream “Death to those who insult Islam!” with impunity. But a non-Muslim who objects to the spread of sharia may be arrested, charged, convicted, fined, and slapped with an Anti-Social Behavior Order (ASBO) forbidding him from taking part in any activist events for several years.

This is the reality of 21st century Britain. This is not creeping sharia, it is galloping sharia."

'The Islamization of British Police': "While sounding friendly, [its mission of 'assistance' of 'minorities'] implies that the working environment for “cultural minorities” is not fair or just at present, a subtle accusation of what would be called 'racism' – so subtly worded that few would identify it and yet fewer object to it.

The 'assisting' would constitute of advice on how to change the police force in order not to offend “cultural minorities”, also known as “sensitivity training”. This, unfortunately, tends to render the police force ineffective in cases where normal police procedure – like the use of sniffer dogs – violates religious law stating that dogs are 'unclean', and the like. Whenever there is a clash between secular and religious law, it is easy to make a qualified guess as to which side AMP will be on.

Before writing this off as 'speculative', it is instructive to see this conflict of interest play out in practice. The National Association of Muslim Police in 2010 rejected the claim that Islam can be blamed for terror attacks."

Denmark: "Five men planning to shoot as many people as possible in a building housing the newsroom of a paper that published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad were arrested Wednesday in an operation that halted an imminent attack, intelligence officials said."

Sweden: "[Sweden's] daily Metro said it had obtained classified documents that showed the prosecutor believes three men arrested on September 10 had planned to kill cartoonist Lars Vilks...

...An elite counter-terrorism unit arrested four people in Gothenburg and shortly afterward evacuated hundreds of people from a building hosting an art fair "after concluding that there was a threat that could endanger lives or health or cause serious damage."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The orthodox practice of Islam is inseparable from its legal system, sharia.

And Sharia is incompatible with the United States Constitution.

Odd: NYT reports that NYT Forced to Reduce Staff Due to its Extreme, Unpopular Liberal Positions

Here's an interesting, if not outright recursive, mathematical problem: who will report on the final layoff at The New York Times when it finally collapses?

In the midst of a deteriorating advertising climate, The New York Times plans to eliminate up to 20 newsroom positions and seek additional savings in the business units, the company said Thursday.

The reductions, described by the New York Times Company as a rebalancing [sic], were announced to employees on Thursday morning. The company will seek volunteers for buyouts in The Times newsroom, Jill Abramson, the paper’s executive editor, said in a memo to the staff, adding that no newsroom employee would be laid off. She said there would be “fewer than 20” buyouts.

The Times will also seek to cut costs on the business side by eliminating positions that are vacant and by offering a limited number of buyouts, said an executive who insisted on anonymity because the company was not commenting publicly on the details or scale of the reductions.

Analysts are likely to link the cuts to the Times Company’s third-quarter earnings, which will be reported on Oct. 20 and which are expected to be relatively weak. Late last month, the company’s chief executive, Janet Robinson, told analysts, “Economic conditions have been getting more difficult since the second quarter.”

Gee, it's so... weird that the economy continues to suffer after their dream candidate was elected three years ago.

By the way, I have an idea that could, by itself, resurrect the Times: hire the world's smartest pundit -- Mark Levin -- to write a weekly column.

Hey, Pinch: want to wager what that would do for circulation?

Priceless: Krugman's Island

Uncle Ben:

James Taranto talking about the Occupy Wall Street movement and Paul Krugman's offer to "accept 'the job of helping to translate' incoherent and hateful nonsense 'into more fleshed-out proposals' for what one organizer has labeled 'Krugman's Army'":

"If these people were stripped of the order imposed by the society they are rebelling against--if they were on a deserted island rather than in a public park in an affluent city with a strong police presence--surely it would not take long to degenerate into 'Lord of the Flies.' Krugman would be Piggy.

Oh, and then there's this:

"Obama has failed, and his supporters are turning to nihilism."

Guess the Missing Word. "Bankers," Wall Street," "....."

Dan from New York:

Watch these two videos. It didn’t take long before “Occupy Wall St.” got around to the Jews.

http://youtu.be/l3Y9CARUwio
http://youtu.be/NWwK5TBcoUY

Considering it was allegedly one racist sign (never photographed) that got the MSM to paint the whole Tea Party 'racist,' you can bet our enquiring reporters will be all over this like bears on honey.

Actually, Dan, if memory serves, the only racist sign I ever saw at a Tea Party was brought in by an SEIU member hoping to get away with a 'false flag' operation.

But your point is a good one: I'll bet ABC, CBS and NBC will be leading off coverage of the #OWS kooks with this angle.

The Mainstream Media Terrorist Translation Guide [Irony Curtain]

Irony Curtain forwards his latest artwork, which is featured at the peerless iOwnTheWorld:

Be sure and forward it to any of the pro journalists on your email lists.

Mark Levin: I've Finally Found the Statist's Utopia

Mark Levin:

Ladies and gentlemen, I want to present to you the ultimate in Statism. Where almost everybody pays exactly the same in taxes. Almost everybody is not obese. They're very, very thin. I think I have found the place!

I think I have found the place where the Statists -- although they'll deny it! -- have achieved something memorable. The Daily Mail, England:

'Hell on earth': Detailed satellite photos show death camps North Korea still deny even exist... More than 200,000 men, women and children are held in the camps

No, I'm not saying this is America. Are you out of your mind?

I'm saying this is the reason why the Statists never tell us exactly what their philosophy is.

They always claim to be "for the people". But they hate individual liberty. They hate private property. They hate the Constitution and the rule of law.

I have quotes! Sure, challenge me on it! I have quotes from Thomas Friedman [Ed: pronounced Fry-d-man]. And Richard Stempel [Ed: pronounced Stimpy]. And Richard Cohen [Ed: pronounced Rube]. And all the rest of them. 'Get away from the Constitution and the rule of law. What we need is a more centralized, unitary, concentrated government! Yes, can't have those states' rights!'

The North Korean government may deny their existence, but photos taken from space have revealed in unprecedented detail the concentration camps that are used imprison more than 200,000 citizens.

Men, women and children are forced to work seven days a week as slaves and eat 'rats, frogs, snakes, insects' and even faeces to battle starvation in the camps.

Previously there have been blurred images taken by satellite but new detailed pictures from South Korea's Unification Ministry allow a closer look at the sites - and also prove they have grown.

No, I'm not saying America's headed for this.

What I am saying, ladies and gentlemen, is Statism in its purest form is hell on Earth.

And there it is, in North Korea: Hell on Earth.

And liberty in its purest form... it's a beautiful thing.

I only need one paragraph of Bill Keller's "writing" to fisk an entire op-ed

A little career advice for failed New York Times editor -- and current columnist -- Bill Keller: apply to SNL. They're always looking for comedy writers.

Just forward the lede on your latest brain secretion in the cover letter:

Just a few winters ago my wife and I took our daughters to witness the inauguration of a man who had campaigned on hope and embodied possibility. We are pretty immune to political euphoria, but, circulating among the footsore pilgrims, we could imagine our country had embraced the idea that we were all in this together. When the newly sworn-in president congratulated us all on choosing unity of purpose over recriminations and worn-out dogmas, we wanted to believe that we had done exactly that...

Recriminations and worn-out dogmas?

BWHAHHWHAHAHAHAHAHHA HA HA AHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHWHHWAHHAHAHAHHA HWHHAWAHHWAHHWAHHHAHWHAHHA HAWHAHWHAHWHHAHWHAHWHAWHAHNAMAHWHAHWHAHW AHWHAHWHAWHH *gasp* AHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA *cough* KAJHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHA *choke* HAHAHHWHWHAHAHA *wheeze*

Hold on. Gotta. Catch breath.

Wow. I think I just wrenched my clavicle.

How are these for 'Recriminations'?

• Obama Blames Arab Spring and Japan's Earthquake on Struggling Economy and Job Situation, 8/5/11.
• Obama Blames Messy Democracy for His Failed Policies, 8/3/11; the president at a DNC event.
• Obama Blames Congress for US Debt Mess; Obama news conference, 6/29/11.

• Obama Blames Republicans for Slow Pace on Immigration Reform, 7/25/11.
• Obama Blames Media for Lack of Compromise in Washington; Obama at a town hall meeting 7/22/11.
• Obama Blames Technology for Struggling Economy; 7/14/11, NBC Today interview.

• Obama Blames Oil Spectators for High Oil Prices; 4/19/11, Obama at a town hall meeting.
• Obama Blames Reagan for America's Out of Control Debt and Spending; President Obama 4/13/11, FNS.
• Obama Blames Bush and Congress for Lack of Fiscal Discipline, 4/13/11; Obama, FNS.

• Obama Blames Bush-Congress for Putting Off Tough Decisions, 8/17/10; remarks at a fundraiser for Patty Murray.
• Obama Blames Bush for Tax Cuts, Deficits; Obama town hall on the economy in Racine, WI, 6/30/10.
• Obama Blames Bush for Deficits, 6/8/10; Obama at Boxer fundraiser.

• Obama Blames GOP for Events that Led to Gulf Oil Spill; President Obama 6/3/10, FNS.
• Obama Blames Republicans for America Not Being Able to Solve Problems; President Obama 6/3/10, FNS.
• Obama Blames Corporations for Everybody's Problems, 6/3/10, FNS.

• Obama Blames Bush for Overall Standing of American Economy, 4/19/10, at Boxer fundraiser.
• Obama Blames Bush, Congress for Deficits, 2/1/10, delivering remarks on the budget.
• Obama Blames Bush for Regulatory Policies; 1/17/10, the president at Coakley event in MA.

I could continue, but I won't. There's plenty more here.

And how are these for 'Worn-Out Dogmas'?

• "I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money."
• "I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody."
• "Our individual salvation depends on our collective salvation."

• "Well, Charlie, what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness."
• "I don't oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war."
• "My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody."

• "And it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them."
• "So we're going to provide a $4,000 tuition credit, every student, every year, but, students, you're going to have to give back something in return."
• "We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK."

Don't bother reading the rest of Keller's vomitus. The first paragraph is the Cliff's Notes version, a digest of evil and stupidity. Oblivious to history, economics, facts, logic and human experience, Keller and his progressive ilk are perfectly willing to lead America into hell.

And it's our job to stop these malevolent schmucks at the ballot box before it's too late.