DYSPEPSIA GENERATION

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The Obama administration has gotten itself into a fix between its contradictory stories about the Benghazi incident, reports of the IRS targeting conservative groups, and the Justice Department’s grabbing of phone records from AP reporters. There are few things more fun to watch than arrogant political leaders — folks who spend their lives bossing everyone around — getting a comeuppance.

Not that the dimwitted among the electorate will pay any attention. They’re too busy signing up for their free Obama Money.

My favorite take wasn’t from any serious commentator but from comedian Jon Stewart, who noticed that the president routinely claims ignorance about embarrassing events by saying that he learned of them while watching the news: “I wouldn’t be surprised if President Obama learned Osama bin Laden had been killed when he saw himself announcing it on television.”

Wouldn’t surprise me.

I visited DC last week and was astounded at the booming economy, the endless new construction, the astronomical prices, and garish displays of wealth everywhere — not to mention the haughty attitudes of every pissant assistant to the whatever. That’s what Other People’s Money buys you. When Ronald Reagan talked about the Shining City on the Hill he was speaking metaphorically about America, but the new shining city is DC — funded on the backs of all those Americans who blithely vote for people who promise to solve their problems.

Your tax dollars at work.

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A criminal serving a five-year sentence “for supplying gadgets to an organized crime gang used to conceal ATM skimmers” has invented a device that prevents ATMs from being susceptible to such thefts, Reuters reported today.

Valentin Boanta, who is six months into his sentence in a Romanian prison, developed what he calls the SRS (Secure Revolving System) which changes the way ATM machines read bank cards to prevent the operation of skimming devices that criminals hide inside ATMs.

Book deal under negotiation, I assume.

    The main characteristic of the SRS device is highlighted by the insertion of the credit card on its width (not on its length like in present cases), with the magnetic tape facing down. Considering this innovation, the magnetic tape cannot be copied under any circumstance by skimming devices, devices which need to read the magnetic tape on its length in a sequential manner. SRS assumes the credit card and its mechanical and electronic devices rotate it, inserting it into the ATM (or any other device that uses plastic credit cards). After the transaction is completed the released credit card is again assumed by the SRS and with the same rotary motion, but in an opposite direction, it is returned back to the user in the same position as it was initially inserted (on its width and with the magnetic tape facing down). Using this manner of inserting the credit card, on its side, the translation motion of reading the tape is no longer possible, making it useless to install skimming devices on ATMs.

Let’s see how long it lasts….

Rockin’ Robin

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Things are heating up fast in the far north. The lands and sea of the Arctic — which have been ice-filled, inhospitable and treacherous for most of human history — are experiencing the effects of climate change more rapidly than anywhere else on Earth. All of the Arctic’s sea ice is expected to melt completely, every summer, beginning around 2050 or sooner, according to one recent study, clearing the way for unprecedented oil and gas drilling. But oil companies and world governments aren’t waiting until then to spur an oil boom in the Arctic — they’re starting now.

I’m guessing that ‘peak oil’ means ‘have a peak at all the oil we’re gaining access to’.

Human nature aside, I’m still waiting for someone to explain precisely why global warming (if it really exists) is such a bad thing.

And I’m still looking forward to seeing Manhattan, D.C., and L.A. under three feet of water.

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An Oscar Meyer wiener, serving as proxy for a finger, was pushed into the spinning blade of a table saw. The demonstration, at the International Woodworkers Fair in Atlanta, mimicked the way gruesome table saw injuries often occur. But this saw was equipped with a safety device called SawStop that allowed the blade to distinguish between wood and flesh, and to stop fast enough to prevent serious harm. Sure enough, the blade came to a dead stop in about three one-thousandths of a second, leaving the dog with only a minor nick.

We have the technology.

Wheeler thought: If only this had come along sooner. He took out his Visa card to order two of the saws, but was told none were available. As the SawStop guys explained, they had been seeking licensing deals with the big power tool makers, but had found no takers.

But apparently nobody is using it.

Faced with the prospect of never getting the invention to market, the little company, also known as SawStop, eventually started making its own saws. Since the first went on sale in 2004, SawStop says it has recorded 2,000 “finger saves”—customer reports of  accidents likely to have caused disfiguring injuries with conventional saws, but that resulted in minor cuts or a few stitches at most (SawStop also acknowledges two reports of amputations.).

That’s America for you.

The SawStop story is about an industry’s ability to resist a major safety advance that could, by now, have prevented countless disfiguring injuries, but might have been bad for business. It highlights the endless due process that makes it virtually impossible for regulators to enact safety measures over the unified objections of industry.

Unfortunately, that’s America too.

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The jailed doctor who helped the U.S. track down Usama bin Laden was convicted by a tribal court on bogus charges, according to a classified Pakistani government report.

Shameful. They ought to have given him free transportation for himself and his family, a green card, and a wheelbarrow full of money.

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Northwestern University’s Associated Student Government rejected the nomination of Stephen Piotrkowski for associate vice president of diversity and inclusion last week. The student-run committee “oversees diversity initiatives that stem from the undergraduate student body.”

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

“This university is not ready, in any capacity, for a heterosexual white male to be in charge in any way of diversity and inclusion,” said Ian Coley, a member of the diversity committee. “I don’t know if any university is.”

And that tells you all you need to know about modern education.

The outgoing vice president for diversity and inclusion had endorsed Piotrkowsi as the best candidate for the job – noting that he identifies with a religious minority and has a sister who is gay.

And Campus Reform reported that he had previously served as a member of the Northwestern Inclusion Task Force – created last year to help advocate for campus diversity.

“The fact that senators did not take Piotrkowski’s relevant experiences into consideration and rejected him on the basis of race, gender and sexual orientation symbolizes a step backward for our community in diversity conversations,” the newspaper noted.

No shit, Sherlock. But qualifications have nothing to do with Identity Politics, and that’s what rules in these degenerate modern times.

Vastrm Fit ID

Nap Pod

Beerviz

Keyprop

Smartkey   I want one of these – unfortunately, not designed for fob-type vehicle keys.

El Jefe, the Boss of Keychains

Dog Activated Outdoor Fountain

Single-Handed Barber

Existential Emergency Phone

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Of course. Who would dare poke fun at The Magic Negro.

It’s been obvious ever since Barack Obama appeared on the political scene that comedians rarely go beyond lame jokes about him. As far back as 2009, the Los Angeles Times noted that “TV’s leading political humorists have largely backed away from their ritual comic hazing of the president.”

He could change his name to Bush.

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Classmates complain that it has no lunch money to pillage. And stuffing it in a locker is totally no fun.

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And the Terms of Service are a bitch.

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My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

 The week after Republicans’ historic 2010 midterm election landslide, President Barack Obama appointed the union president that represents “tens of thousands in the IRS,” Colleen Kelley, to a key Administration post. Two years later, that union, the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), contributed $580,412 to federal candidates—94% of which were Democrats.

The position Obama appointed Kelley to: the Federal Salary Council, an advisory group charged with recommending federal employee raises.

Representing 150,000 members from 31 federal agencies and departments including the Internal Revenue Service, the NTEU bills itself as the nation’s largest independent federal union. Kelley, herself a former IRS Agent, commands her union brigade with partisan ferocity.

I’d be more inclined to credit hand-wringing on the part of union employees if it weren’t for the fact that most of them look to be sub-clinically obese. Have you ever seen the women in charge of the NEA? Pigs in space, every one of them.

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Well, it’s by Michael Pollan, but read it anyway. He can’t be a food snob all the time.

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Manufacturing has increasingly reduced man hours in tandem with productivity-increasing technological improvements. It wasn’t the internet that killed these jobs, though technology reduced some of them. The inability to plan for the necessary shift of jobs to other fields revealed the lack of comprehensive, forward-thinking manufacturing and labor policies.

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The Romeikes fled Germany in 2008 when they were subjected to criminal prosecution for homeschooling, which is largely illegal in their country. In 2010, however, the family was granted asylum by Immigration Judge Lawrence O. Burman, whose decision was overturned by the Board of Immigration Appeals in 2012. A three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit heard the Romeikes’ appeal on April 23rd and issued a unanimous decision against the family.

In its decision, the court said that the Romeikes had not made a sufficient case and that the United States has not opened its doors to every victim of unfair treatment.

Too bad they weren’t Muslim jihadists. Not only would they have been granted asylum, but citizenship and welfare benefits, like the Boston bombers.

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As the scandal involving the IRS’ targeting of Conservatives and Tea Party groups consumes the news cycle for the moment and Barack Obama (who, so far, has claimed ignorance of the targeting) has thrown a sacrificial lamb out to appease journalists, that IRS agents targeted certain small-government, anti-tax groups should really not come as a surprise.

What, you didn’t know the IRS had a union? Silly mortal….

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My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

If not for the activism of the California Democratic Party’s most prominent special-interest group, the state party convention last month would have been a humdrum affair. The party’s top officials, including governor Jerry Brown and attorney general Kamala Harris, took to the podium to urge action on their pet issues, including gun control and property-tax “reform.” Not much news there—until, that is, the California Teachers Association went on the warpath, sponsoring an inflammatory resolution that ripped into two Democratic-run organizations.

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‘Asian’ here being the standard British newspaper-speak for Muslim.

 Rochdale, Rotherham, Derby, Oxford. The towns change, but the pattern is always the same. Gangs of men, mainly of Pakistani Muslim heritage, lure white girls as young as 10 with gifts and displays of affection. Next, the girl is raped as a way of “breaking her in”. Once the child’s spirit is subdued, and her mind fogged with drugs, she is sold for sex to multiple men at £200 a time. If the girl tries to break away, a gang member might threaten to behead her or firebomb her home. Mohammed Karrar, who was found guilty in the Oxford sex-grooming case this week, took a scalding hairpin and branded an M on one girl’s bottom so she would know she was his property. Later, the gang gave the same girl a DIY abortion. She was 12 years old. And this, all this, is happening in Britain now.

In a particularly warped twist, the pimp will teach his victim that her parents are racist towards Asians, which is why they disapprove of their relationship – absolutely nothing, of course, to do with him being a violent, controlling thug. Gang members have grown wise to the wimpy ways of Western society. They exploit the fact that police, newly trained in “cultural sensitivity”, are terrified of being accused of racism. So the pimps operate with impunity until, years later, the slave girls find the courage to testify in court against their masters.

Maggie Gallagher wields the hairy eyeball.

This is the flaw in all centralized theory of governance: the gap between the law as intended and the law as implemented. But that simply underscores Diane Ravitch’s central complaint: These standards have not been field-tested to determine if adopting them improves education or not.

The first rule for reformers is “do no harm.” Hirsch relies on some tests of one curriculum that is common-core compliant and its success for some K–second graders. He is too good a scholar not to recognize the evidence gap here: Good results for a pilot curriculum in a small number of classrooms is not a good evidence base for sweeping national adoption of untested curriculum standards.

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The boxy, compact pickup can be disassembled in less than six hours and have all of its parts, including the four-cylinder diesel engine and independent suspension, stored within the confines of its chassis, allowing six of them to fit in a standard shipping container. Three people can then reassemble it in about 12 hours upon delivery. No special tools are required.

Shorter in length than most compact cars, the tough little front-wheel-drive truck can reportedly carry 4400 pounds and ford water two and a half feet deep. Configured for passengers, thirteen people will fit on board, including three in the front cabin. The driver sits in the middle allowing the vehicle to be used in right and left hand drive countries without requiring any extensive reengineering.

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A national labor board which has long been accused of making union-friendly decisions was dealt another blow Thursday, after a second federal appeals court found President Obama exceeded his power when he bypassed the Senate to appoint its members.

The ruling by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia once again threatened to upend the National Labor Relations Board’s decisions. And it has the potential to stall the board entirely, as well as challenge other federal agencies that have similar appointees.

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The IRS official who led the tax-exempt organizations unit when Tea Party groups were targeted is now in charge of the IRS office responsible for ObamaCare, two Capitol Hill sources told Fox News.
…
The ObamaCare official in question, Sarah Hall Ingram, had been serving as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations from 2009 to 2012 — the division included the group that targeted Tea Partiers — and has since left to serve as director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act division. That unit is responsible for enforcing parts of the health care law, including the fines associated with the so-called individual mandate — the requirement to buy health insurance.

Seems appropriate, somehow.

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What peaceful, friendly people! Wouldn’t you just love to have some for neighbors?
That’s some fine Religion o’ Peace™ you got there, Mohammed.
Of course, as we all know, the real problem is Islamophobia.

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We have the technology.

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Once you accept the government’s coin, you must dance to the government’s tune.

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From the Daily Mail: ”Men who are physically strong are more likely to take a right wing political stance, while weaker men are inclined to support the welfare state, according to a new study.”

There it is! The science is in!

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We have the technology.

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The Department of Defense announced Thursday that it had successfully conducted a flight test of the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD), intercepting a separating ballistic missile target over the Pacific Ocean.

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When there aren’t any Jews or Americans handy, Muslims will cheerfully murder each other.

“There’s really no such thing as just Sharia, it’s not one monolithic Continuum – Sharia is understood in thousands of different ways over the 1,500 years in which multiple and competing schools of law have tried to construct some kind of civic penal and family law code that would abide by Islamic values and principles, it’s understood in many different ways…” — Reza Aslan

Not really: Muhammad said: “Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him” (Bukhari 9.84.57). The death penalty for apostasy is part of Islamic law according to all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence.

Some might arguing that fighting for Assad doesn’t make these soldiers apostates according to Islamic law, but since Assad is an Alawite, the jihadists have a strong case: Islamic law forbids a Muslim to obey an Infidel ruler who is supposedly impeding Islam in some way. In any case, not in dispute is the death penalty for apostasy itself, however much Islamic spokemen in the West disingenuously deny it.

What peaceful, friendly people! Wouldn’t you just love to have some for neighbors?
That’s some fine Religion o’ Peace™ you got there, Mohammed.
Of course, as we all know, the real problem is Islamophobia.

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My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

He says it is because they preach contempt for women and the concept of women as chattel, which (pace Hargey) is certainly found in Islam, with its polygamy (Qur’an 4:3), wife-beating (Qur’an 4:34), devaluing of a woman’s testimony (Qur’an 2:282), etc. This is compounded, he says, by the further contempt of and hatred for Infidels, which is also certainly Islamic (cf. Qur’an 48:29, 98:6, etc.). He doesn’t mention the permissibility in Islamic law of taking Infidel women as sex slaves, which is also a key motivating factor for these sex slavery gangs.

What peaceful, friendly people! Wouldn’t you just love to have some for neighbors?
That’s some fine Religion o’ Peace™ you got there, Mohammed.
Of course, as we all know, the real problem is Islamophobia.

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As a Chicago parent discovered, city officials can’t hand over records if they’ve already destroyed them.

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Cook is expected to appear in front of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations to explain why Apple has failed to repatriate up to $100bn in cash stashed in foreign countries.

Uh, so that they don’t lose 35% of it to the IRS? That’s just a guess, you understand….

Had Cupertino returned its money to the US, it would have been hit with a punitive 35 per cent tax rate, meaning it was cheaper in the long run to issue bonds and pay interest at market rates.

The technical financial term for that is ‘DUH’.

The investigations committee has also grilled other companies that use slick methods to keep their tax bills down, including Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard.

‘Slick methods’ meaning ‘perfectly legal methods that the all-your-money-is-ours crowd don’t like and so have made up a derogatory term for’. (Unfortunately, they can’t be called ‘tax cheats’, legitimately, because they aren’t cheating; they’re following the law. Although that doesn’t prevent some of the all-for-the-state crowd doing it anyway. You know how they are.)

An Apple spokesman insisted the firm paid all its taxes. “We’ve been working with the subcommittee to answer their questions about Apple, and we welcome any further questions they might have,” Apple said in a statement. “Apple is one of the largest taxpayers in the United States, having paid $6 billion in federal corporate income tax in fiscal 2012.”

It’s not enough, of course; it’s never enough. As long as you have money left after the taxman gets done with you, you are somehow a ‘dodger’.

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In 1771, the young Spanish painter Francisco Goya travelled to Rome to learn and be inspired by the many great artists there. In that year, he is thought to have painted “The Sacrifice to Vesta” depicting a sacrifice to the goddess of fire. The work is important because it shows how Goya was developing artistically at a formative stage in his career.

There is little dispute that Goya is the author of this work– the artist’s skill and style are clear and various experts have confirmed the attribution. However, the painting lacks a signature, a feature that would leave nothing to debate.

Today, Cristina Seco-Martorell at the University of Barcelona in Spain and a few buddies say they have discovered Goya’s signature hidden behind a layer of varnish in the picture. And the trick they used to make this discovery is an entirely type of analysis using terahertz

We have the technology.

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My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

The Copts have to know their place: as dhimmis, subservient to the Muslims. That is their place in the new, Obama-endorsed Muslim Brotherhood Egypt. If they don’t accept it, the mobs will come.

What peaceful, friendly people! Wouldn’t you just love to have some for neighbors?
That’s some fine Religion o’ Peace™ you got there, Mohammed.
Of course, as we all know, the real problem is Islamophobia.

John Derbyshire, Patron Saint of Dyspepsia, is especially dyspeptic today.

The Jason Richwine business has illustrated all over again for those who needed the reminder that even a society as technically sophisticated as ours is a great dark slough of ignorance and passion in which the small voices of reason and calm empirical inquiry must struggle to be heard above the bellowing of the night beasts.

This is why it is important to SUPPORT JOHN DERBYSHIRE (see top right).

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Surveying the crimes that were eagerly devoured by the public in papers such as News of the World, Orwell said the elegant middle-class criminals of the past, often involving sex triangles or desperate murderous attempts to stop sliding down the class ladder, had gone forever.

Well, if he were alive today Orwell would look around him and conclude that whatever else you can say about modern Britain, the art of murder is in vigorous good health.

And we have our diverse new immigrant population to thank for its modern-day flowering.

Whether it’s the polonium poisoning of a Russian dissident, the honor killings of errant Muslim daughters, or the voodoo dismemberment of “possessed” African children at the urging of unhinged witch doctors, murder has never been so varied.

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The events of May helped solidify national sentiment in favor of civil rights for blacks. President Kennedy reportedly said at the time that Connor had done as much for the civil rights movement as Abraham Lincoln. That’s a gross exaggeration. But by June 1963, Connor had done more than Kennedy for civil rights.

And, of course, Bull Connor — and all of his subordinates — were Democrats, something that has gone down the Memory Hole.

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A group of scientists from the University of Alberta have created a process that makes graphene-like nanomaterials out of hemp waste, suitable for use in supercapacitors.

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The parents of Gurkiren Kaur Loyal, 8, say their daughter was being treated for dehydration during a trip to India when staff reportedly gave her a mystery injection.

“I asked what was the injection for, but he gave me a blank look and injected the liquid into her,” Gurkiren’s mother Amrit Kaur Loyal told the Birmingham Mail. “Within a split second, Gurkiren’s head flipped back, her eyes rolled in her head, and the color completely drained from her. I knew they had killed her on the spot.”

The family guarded Gurkiren’s body after her death so her organs could not be harvested right away, but when her body was flown home to the UK, the family discovered all of Gurkiren’s organs had been removed and only her eyes remained, the Birmingham Mail reports.

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 The Woolworth Building’s neo-Gothic tower, one of New York City’s most recognizable landmarks, is about to be turned into luxury condominiums, a transformation that would be second only to placing penthouses atop the Chrysler Building or the Empire State Building.

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I’ve long rejected the term “Islamist” for reasons I explained in that piece: “…the distinction is artificial and imposed from without. There are not, in other words, Islamist mosques and non-Islamist mosques, distinguishable from one another by the sign outside each, like Baptist and Methodist churches. On the contrary, ‘Islamists’ move among non-political, non-supremacist Muslims with no difficulty; no Islamic authorities are putting them out of mosques, or setting up separate institutions to distinguish themselves from the ‘Islamists.’ Mevlid Jasarevic [a jihadist in Sarajevo] could and did visit mosques in Austria, Serbia, and Bosnia without impediment before he started shooting on Friday; no one stopped him from entering because he was an ‘Islamist.’”

And so to say we must work with ordinary Muslims while eschewing collaboration with Islamists is not precisely a distinction without a difference, but a distinction that is practically imperceptible and, in many cases, in fact not there at all.

Hear, hear.

My name is Tarah Wheeler Van Vlack. My name matters, and no, you cannot just leave some of it out if you don’t feel like using all of it, spelling part of it wrong, or if your system doesn’t handle names as long as mine. I have the same number of letters and one syllable less in my name than Hillary Rodham Clinton. She doesn’t hyphenate either.

Give ‘em hell, girl.

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New Hampshire may soon shake off the shackles of Taxachussettsism.

In 2001 a Yale doctoral student named Jason Sorens published an essay in the small webzine The Libertarian Enterprise, lamenting the failure of libertarian efforts at the ballot box. “Nothing’s working,” he wrote, because libertarians are scattered. The only way to have a real impact, he argued, would be to concentrate thousands of libertarian activists in a state with a small population and an easily accessible government. Sorens settled on an ideal target of 20,000 people, an imaginary cluster of libertarians he christened the Free State Project.

Twelve years later, against all odds, Sorens’ peculiar dream is coming true. At press time, nearly 14,000 liberty lovers had pledged to move to New Hampshire once the Free State Project reaches its goal of 20,000 signatories. More than 1,100 of them, known as “pre-staters,” have already moved to Manchester, Concord, Nashua, and even the state’s rural northern region to prepare the ground for the coming influx of libertarians. These activists are penetrating New Hampshire’s political and judicial establishment, joining community organizations, befriending (and antagonizing) the locals, and generally making themselves at home in New England.

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It’s in the New York Times, so it must be true.

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There are plenty of examples of structures built from recycled materials—even Buddhist temples have been made from them. In Sima Valley, California, an entire village known as Grandma Prisbey’s Bottle Village was constructed from reused glass. But this is no new concept—back in 1960, executives at the Heineken brewery drew up a plan for a “brick that holds beer,” a rectangular beer bottle that could also be used to build homes.

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What peaceful, friendly people! Wouldn’t you just love to have some for neighbors?
That’s some fine Religion o’ Peace™ you got there, Mohammed.
Of course, as we all know, the real problem is Islamophobia.

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I am not making this up.

If you want to boycott rich liberals, however, that’s not an option — they own the government, and you can’t boycott the government.

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Internal cost estimates from 17 of the nation’s largest insurance companies indicate that health insurance premiums will grow an average of 100 percent under Obamacare, and that some will soar more than 400 percent, crushing the administration’s goal of affordability.

New regulations, policies, taxes, fees and mandates are the reason for the unexpected “rate shock,” according to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which released a report Monday based on internal documents provided by the insurance companies. The 17 companies include Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Kaiser Foundation.

And this is the Affordable Health Care Act. I’d hate to see what the Unaffordable Health Care Act is like….

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What peaceful, friendly people! Wouldn’t you just love to have some for neighbors?
That’s some fine Religion o’ Peace™ you got there, Mohammed.
Of course, as we all know, the real problem is Islamophobia.