Win the AI Race. Then Face What Comes Next.
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Politics And One Mother With A Keyboard. Because in front of every informed voter is a frightened politician.
I met Andrew Breitbart in 2005 when I was asked to write for the Huffingtpon Post. He was running the show. Everyone who knew him - left and right - said he was brilliant, eccentric, one of a kind. I instantly fell in love with the guy. To this day, i've never met anyone as fearless. He was my first guest on Redeye, a show I got largely because he told people about me. He became a cheerleader for my work, but more important, a dear close friend I could confide in, about anything. My wife called him the wizard, for he could conjure up anything at any time with limitless energy. He's the only person I know who operated without a safety net. He always knew things would turn out the way they were supposed to - so he didn't worry about money or, i guess, his health, too much. He was the spiritual leader of the modern conservative, libertarian cause. He was immersed in pop culture and wished to drag the right into the modern world - knowing this is how America speaks to the world. He was the heart of the matter. The fighter. Losing him is like a fiery planet going dark. My heart felt condolences go out to Susie and the kids.
People's Daily cites several examples of "harsh slogans," including those "which sometimes even threaten criminal acts." The newly instituted program, slugged the "face-washing project," will offer more proactive slogans to help enforce the policy, which has been in place since 1979. China claims the policy, which applies to those living in urban areas, affects approximately 35.9 percent of the population and has resulted in an estimated 400 million fewer births since first being implemented. Some examples of the more offensive slogans currently in use include: "If you don't receive the tubal ligation surgery by the deadline, your house will be demolished!" "We would rather scrape your womb than allow you to have a second child!" "Kill all your family members if you don't follow the rule!" And… "Once you get captured, an immediate tubal ligation will be done; Should you escape, we'll hunt you down; If you attempt a suicide, we'll offer you either the rope or a bottle of poison." The new less offensive slogans replacing the more callous ones will reportedly seek to "avoid offending the public and stoking social tensions."
Dear Cathy, You are wonderful. Thank you so much for your help and over-the-top assistance with my order. Please pass this message on to your supervisor or send me their email and I will tell them directly how thoughtful and kind you have been to me. That you are a credit to the company. And that I am a very loudmouthed broad who is delighted to tell all and sundry what great customer service wine.com has provided me via YOU. I look forward to visiting (and purchasing from) wine.com repeatedly in the future.Being a gal of my word, I'm posting this consumer-company exchange. I hope wine.com keeps Cathy because she is going to be the reason I purchase wine from them in the future.
According to its latest annual report, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) received $487.4 million in tax dollars over a twelve-month period and performed 329,455 abortions. Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Cecile Richards and President Barack Obama. (AP Photo) In addition, the number of adoption referrals made by the organization continued to decline.
"The White House sent new signals Sunday that President Barack Obama may be forced to kill TransCanada Corp.'s Keystone XL oilsands pipeline if his administration is forced to make a decision on the project within 60 days. Gene Sperling, a senior economic adviser to Obama, told CNN that legislation requiring a final ruling on Keystone XL within two months could doom the pipeline because there's not enough time to complete a new environmental review."
Hat Tip: Small Dead Animals The frantic refusal to even consider the pipeline which could help businesses from all industries and create many jobs is puzzling. One assumes it is because pipelines are so unusual and need special environmental studies since they are so rare. ... Oh Really?
A quick google and you can see that nearly all the inhabited areas of the United States of America are riddled with pipelines. We need this energy. It is from a friendly neighbor and ally rather than a middle eastern dictatorship and as my husband explains in this article - Create wealth, not jobs. Keystone XL pipeline would boost prosperity, not government -
TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline is a massive job- and wealth-creation project. The pipeline will snake its way 1,700 miles from Alberta to the Gulf coast with stops in Oklahoma and Illinois. Keystone will create $7 billion in investment without any additional congressional spending. It is exactly the sort of massive construction project Mr. Obama demanded from Republicans in September, with one important exception: It’s private.Read the whole article, it's very good in my completely biased opinion. The long and short of it is, the Keystone Pipeline would be a huge help to the American economy and her people. That Obama wishes to stop it from helping us is unforgivable and hopefully makes him unelectable next year.
The young father stood in line at the Kmart layaway counter, wearing dirty clothes and worn-out boots. With him were three small children. He asked to pay something on his bill because he knew he wouldn't be able to afford it all before Christmas. Then a mysterious woman stepped up to the counter. "She told him, 'No, I'm paying for it,'" recalled Edna Deppe, assistant manager at the store in Indianapolis. "He just stood there and looked at her and then looked at me and asked if it was a joke. I told him it wasn't, and that she was going to pay for him. And he just busted out in tears." At Kmart stores across the country, Santa seems to be getting some help: Anonymous donors are paying off strangers' layaway accounts, buying the Christmas gifts other families couldn't afford, especially toys and children's clothes set aside by impoverished parents. Before she left the store Tuesday evening, the Indianapolis woman in her mid-40s had paid the layaway orders for as many as 50 people. On the way out, she handed out $50 bills and paid for two carts of toys for a woman in line at the cash register. "She was doing it in the memory of her husband who had just died, and she said she wasn't going to be able to spend it and wanted to make people happy with it," Deppe said. The woman did not identify herself and only asked people to "remember Ben," an apparent reference to her husband.Simply wonderful but what got me crying was this.
In Missoula, Mont., a man spent more than $1,200 to pay down the balances of six customers whose layaway orders were about to be returned to a Kmart store's inventory because of late payments. Store employees reached one beneficiary on her cellphone at Seattle Children's Hospital, where her son was being treated for an undisclosed illness. "She was yelling at the nurses, 'We're going to have Christmas after all!'" store manager Josine Murrin said.Read the whole article, it is filled with Christmas goodness.
Murray's book focuses largely on the bureaucracy and why they have become an increasing threat to our freedom and our pocketbooks. Bureaucrats have a huge incentive to increase costs. In government, a bureaucrat's success -- his pay raises and promotions -- is determined not by solving problems but by finding more problems to justify ever larger budgets and staff. Murray, a Brit by birth, saw this first hand when he went to work for the Department of Transport. "In government, performance is judged by increases in funding. The cost-cutting boss is viewed with suspicion, even outright hostility, by his peers, as letting his side down," Murray, who works at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, writes. The success that the political class has had is evidenced by the fact that the wealthiest Congressional District in America is not in Manhattan or Beverly Hills, but in Northern Virginia. It is Virginia's 11th District, a suburb of Washington, D.C. that is home to many top-level federal workers. The district has a median household income of $80,397, nearly double the national average of almost $42,000. Bureaucrats are now paid, on average, more than the private sector, have top-notch health and retirement benefits, and virtually iron-clad job security. The justification for this is that such people are in "public service" and good wages and benefits are needed to attract good people. But it is a myth that so-called public servants are any less self-interested than anyone else. Indeed, they often serve themselves at the expense of the public. Murray provides numerous examples, from the federal down to the local level. One agency that looks like a disaster waiting to happen is the Transportation Safety Administration. "TSA is a reactive security operation, always fighting the last battle. Yet it doesn't even fight those battles particularly well," Murray writes. Post 9/11, TSA failed to detect Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, and Umar Farouk, the underwear bomber, both of whom were fortunately subdued by passengers on their planes. But TSA's failure means more inconvenience for passengers, as we now have to take off our shoes and go through either body-scan machines or pat downs on our private areas. Despite this, testing has found that TSA screeners may miss up to 60%-75% of simulated explosives. Testing at airports that employ private security companies perform much better, with a failure rate of 20 percent. The reason is that screeners from private companies "know they will be picked on with constant covert tests and are therefore 'more suspicious.'" TSA has grown into a 67,000-employee bureaucracy, and in February of this year the Obama administration gave TSA the right to unionize. A unionized TSA could mean even more headaches for travelers as unionized government employees are nearly impossible to fire and union contracts tend to favor pay scales based on seniority rather than performance. Some members of Congress have urged airports to take their "opt-out" option and hire private security firms. But that requires TSA approval, and like any bureaucracy protecting its turf, the agency has declared that "unless a clear and substantial advantage to do so emerges in the future, the requests will be denied." TSA Administrator John Pistole has said that he doesn't think there's any advantage to private security firms. On the local level, there is no better example in Murray's book of the lengths to which a union will go to get its way than the Uniformed Sanitationmen's Association in New York City. A major blizzard hit New York in December 2010. Wanting to send a message to the mayor about staff cutbacks and reduction in the ranks of supervisors, union heads told snow crews go slow in snow cleanup. Several neighborhoods such as Borough Park and Middle Village were targeted for poor snow removal since the residents there are wealthier and have more influence with their politicians. This may have led to the death of one three-year-old boy as the ambulance could not get to him in time. However, priority cleanup was given to the neighborhoods of agency heads and other city bigwigs.Full Disclosure - This is actually another shameless attempt on my part to promote my husband's book (which makes an EXCELLENT Christmas present by the way) in order to boost sales so I can finally replace my 25-year-old stove and carpeting.
Corey Feldman [made] eye-opening remarks in August to ABC’s “Primetime Nightline” that “the No. 1 problem in Hollywood was and is and always will be pedophilia. That’s the biggest problem for children in this industry … It’s the big secret.” Alison Arngrim, the veteran Hollywood actress best known for her role decades ago as Nellie on “Little House on the Prairie,” has said, “This (the abuse of children) has been going on for a very long time. “If a child actor is being sexually abused by someone on the show, is the family, agents or managers – the people who are getting money out of this – going to say, ‘OK, let’s press charges’? No, because it’s going to bring the whole show to a grinding halt, and stop all the checks,” says Arngrim. “So, the pressure is there not to say anything.”Read the whole thing but make sure it is on an empty stomach. I guess Hollywood's love of pedophilia explains that bastard Polanski: Nobody is applauding as Hollywood premieres Polanski defense