Sleepless in Midland

Were the reporters at the White House Correspondents Dinner aware they were being played?

There is a campaign tactic team Obama used in 2008 and probably since then. It was developed by the experts in the college psychology departments, and it relies on the pattern they observed that if a person makes a public commitment to do something that person is likely to follow through with it. Here's the real life application. A rock star puts on a performance in front of adoring fans, and at some point in the performance he asks for a verbal commitment from audience members to vote for Barack Obama. Compliant audience members repeat the vow fed to them. On election day they vote for -- guess who?

I probably doesn't work 100% of the time, but it doesn't take 100% of the vote to win an election. And Obama won, not once, but twice.

Anyway, Cecily Strong tried to pull it off at the 2015 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. Watch it at C-span.org. Here's an excerpt from the transcript. Cecily Strong is speaking:

THIS NEXT PART IS A REPEAT AFTER ME. I WANT ALL THE MEDIA TO PUT THEIR HANDS UP AND SWEAR SOMETHING THIS ELECTION SEASON, OK? I SOLEMNLY SWEAR NOT TO TALK ABOUT HILLARY'S APPEARANCE BECAUSE THAT IS NOT JOURNALISM. [LAUGHTER] [APPLAUSE]

Did they repeat after her? Some probably did. Did they know they were being played? That's a tougher question. Instapundit observed in 2012 that Jimmy Kimmel had the reporters scratching their heads at that year's Correspondents Dinner when he joked about Fast and Furious.

So while the reporters probably score quite high on intelligence tests, and while they may be capable of being quite knowledgeable about whatever they happen to be reporting on at any given moment, they are not the best informed about anything else.

Store scam in Jersey sounds like something Slippin' Jimmy would do

Here's what the culprit did, according to NJ.com in 1 receipt, 2 shopping carts, nearly $500K in losses for Home Depot.

Prosecutors say it worked like this:
Chalet and his conspirators filled two Home Depot shopping carts with the identical items. They would then purchase the items in the one cart using cash, or a fraudulently obtained Home Depot store credit card and hide the other cart somewhere in the store.

A few minutes later, they'd return with the receipt for the first cart and retrieve the second cart.

They would then convince a store clerk that they had returned to purchase an additional inexpensive item while convincing them that they had a valid receipt for the items in the cart.

Maybe that's why some stores put stickers on purchased items that are to big to be bagged.

Oh, in case anyone doesn't know who Slippin' Jimmy is, here's a wiki for Saul Goodman, AKA Jimmy McGill and Slippin' Jimmy, the fictional character from "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul." In his early years as Slippin' Jimmy he practiced the low level con job before he upped his game to practice law.

Obama calls for soul searching, Ben Carson calls for grown ups to take charge

Today, President Obama gave a long, rambling answer without a teleprompter to a question about the situation in Baltimore. Watch it here starting at about the 32 minute mark.

The problem is that fatherless kids grow up in poverty in communities in which manufacturers have left, the illegal drug trade is the prevailing industry, and the kids get crappy educations. "This not new. And we should not pretend that it's new," Obama informs us.

Mr. Obama went on. "I'm under no illusion that out of this congress we're gonna get massive investment in urban communities." By "out of this congress" he must be referring to the new Republican majorities in both the House and Senate. Mr. Obama must have been aware of these problems since the time he was a community organizer. Democrats have been fighting the war on poverty for 50 years, and if this massive investment he referred to really was a solution, Democrats haven't done it. The war on poverty has served Democrats well.

He acknowledges that getting the kids educated is important. But "that's hard." He doesn't say this, but Baltimore may be a basket case of liberal good intentions prevailing over hard choices. And a reformed school system with school choice and without unionized teachers would be a good starting point.

Regarding police, Obama laments that local law enforcement agencies can't be nationalized, but if they would only implement his task force's recommendations, it would make a "concrete difference."

Meanwhile, Dr. Ben Carson calls for more direct action by responsible adults:

“I urge parents, grandparents and guardians to please take control of your children and do not allow them to be exposed to the dangers of uncontrolled agitators on the streets,” Carson said in a statement to the media.

Almost as if on cue, here's the mother of the day giving her rioting son an ear full of fist and foul language.

So the story about Harry Reid getting pummeled was a hoax?

It's almost as if we can't believe anything anymore. This latest about Harry Reid's new year's eye injury is a story about how some fellow punked some people with a story about how Harry Reid's brother divulged that he beat up Harry on new year's eve. And the story caught on and got circulated.

Here are two reports about this latest: Man Claims He Concoted Story of Harry Reid Getting Beaten Up to Test Media Gullibility and The big lie: Las Vegas man watches as his Harry Reid tale takes off.

The guy's name is Larry Pfeifer, and here's a quote from him published at LasVegasSun.com:

“It was just so outrageous,” he said. “The fact that someone can say something completely false that can destroy somebody’s life, it’s just wrong. Where’s the moral compass?”

He's talking about his own story. But he could just as easily be talking about Harry Reid who boasted about how he was only concerned about helping Obama win the 2012 election when questioned about his lies about Mitt Romney.

Now we don't know who to believe on the topic. Harry Reid himself was so duplicitous as Senator that he may have encouraged similar behavior in others.

I stand by my earlier observation that the "tell" is whether or not Reid sues the equipment manufacturer.

If anyone doubted that Obama's immigration push was about something other than grabbing power here's more evidence

It was about a month ago that we learned that the NLRB might be giving some illegal immigrants get-out-of-deportation cards. That would come in the form of the NLRB's helping illegal immigrants obtain visas if they filed a complaint against their employer. Souce: More protection for illegal workers.

Then we learned about the memoranda of understanding the NLRB entered into with the countries of Mexico, Ecuador and the Philippines. Those agreements provided for education of residents of those countries about the Labor Relations Act and workers' right to unionize once they're in a job in the U.S. regardless of the workers' legal status. Source: U.S. signed agreement with Mexico to teach immigrants to unionize.

The arguments for these moves is that illegal immigrants should have some basic rights against exploitation by employers. On the other hand, it seems as though it also gives illegal immigrants ways to exploit the immigration process, especially in light of the NLRB's tendency to take the side against employers.

Now we learn that the Obama administration and immigration groups are pushing for a fast track to turn non-citizens into voters before the next presidential election. See The White House And Soros-Backed Open Borders Group Strategize About Bribing Immigrants To Naturalize Before 2016. We saw the same thing happen during the Clinton administration. And it worked.

Can they pull it off again? Ian Smith says this:

The current slate of presidential candidates (and their consultants) should take note: the American people care enormously about vote dilution and the demographic engineering that disenfranchises them. By pointing out the depths of the other side’s cynicism, the 2016 GOP candidate wouldn’t just win the swing states honestly, they’d win them easily.

We'll see.

Fox Friday 4-24-15 -- when the fox is away the cats will play

It was a bad week for fox watching at the Bone Yard. A fox visited the feeding station only one night. The food that night happened to be dry dog food, and the fox must have decided to just let the cats have the whole works for the rest of the week.

These photos have been cropped and gamma adjusted. All three were taken within a second of each other around 9:50pm last Saturday.

These were the only three photos of foxes all week. Hundreds more photos, but all the rest were of cats.

Primarily, this cat.

Hey, she would make someone a nice pet. She's young, cute, playful, won't come near you -- three out of four isn't bad. Any takers? Oh, I should mention that you'll have to catch her.

Careful what you wish for, Democrats, with your push for increased immigration

President Obama's zeal for more immigrants with voting rights can probably be attributed to a belief that they'll help Democrats get elected. But does the average Democrat go along with that? Some of the polls suggest that they don't.

In any event, this article at Washingtonexaminer.com is an eye opener: Census: Record 51 million immigrants in 8 years, will account for 82% of U.S. growth.

We can all sympathize with the plight of a South American family wanting to escape poverty. However, the U.S. can absorb only so many workers, especially when there is certainly no shortage of unskilled workers here already. That aside, what kind of economic system do the immigrants want?

The preference for a socialist economy seems to be strong among Democrats. However, their vision of that probably resembles some European country. If we look at current immigrants -- the people who will eventually be deciding our elections -- a more accurate vision might look more like Venezuela.

Another reason to fear the Dept of Veterans Affairs -- they help gov take vets' guns away

The headline, VA Sends Veterans’ Medical Info To FBI To Get Their Guns Taken Away, might make one think it pertained to PTSD and fears that vets gone over the edge would go postal. That's partly right. But the things they look for are so mundane they rope in way too many veterans.

An example was a veteran who was only trying to make his life a little easier. When asked how he handled his finances, replied that his wife had suggested he use auto-debit to relieve him of the burden of paying bills the old fashioned way. The reason was simple enough. His hands had been injured, and he'd had 12 surgeries as a result. But the VA reported that he was unable to handle his own finances, and apparently that meant he couldn't handle guns, either.

Read the whole thing for more awful examples of our government hurting more than helping.

Back to PTSD. That's a fairly recent phenomenon. According to author David J. Morris the theory that traumatic stress could cause lasting injury was promoted by the anti-war movement in the 70s. And it caught on.

But the VA wants to use a one-size-fits-all solution for everyone who gets subjected to their help. That's a mistake. Instead of helping veterans, in some cases they're making them worse, and sometimes they're subjecting them to harassment from federal law enforcement.

To hear an enlightening conversation with Mr. Morris, watch/listen to the C-SPAN video found here.

Let's celebrate San Jacinto Day while we still can

Today, April 21, is known by most Texans as San Jacinto Day because it marks the date in 1836 when Sam Houston led the Texans against Santa Anna's troops. Yada, yada, yada -- Texas became a sovereign nation.

The Texas Historical Association has a nice description of the battle. To wit:

Houston disposed his forces in battle order about 3:30 in the afternoon while all was quiet on the Mexican side during the afternoon siesta. The Texans' movements were screened by trees and the rising ground, and evidently Santa Anna had no lookouts posted. The battle line was formed with Edward Burleson's regiment in the center, Sherman's on the left wing, the artillery under George W. Hockley on Burleson's right, the infantry under Henry Millard on the right of the artillery, and the cavalry under Lamar on the extreme right. The Twin Sisters were wheeled into position, and the whole line, led by Sherman's men, sprang forward on the run with the cry, "Remember the Alamo!" "Remember Goliad!" The battle lasted but eighteen minutes. According to Houston's official report, the casualties were 630 Mexicans killed and 730 taken prisoner. Against this, only nine of the 910 Texans were killed or mortally wounded and thirty were wounded less seriously. Houston's ankle was shattered by a rifle ball. The Texans captured a large supply of muskets, pistols, sabers, mules, horses, provisions, clothing, tents, and $12,000 in silver. Santa Anna disappeared during the battle and search parties were sent out on the morning of the 22. The party consisted of James A. Sylvester, Washington H. Secrest, Sion R. Bostick, and a Mr. Cole discovered Santa Anna hiding in the grass. He was dirty and wet and was dressed as a common soldier. The search party did not recognize him until he was addressed as "el presidente" by other Mexican prisoners.

And note this inscription at the San Jacinto Monument:

Measured by its results, San Jacinto was one of the decisive battles of the world. The freedom of Texas from Mexico won here led to annexation and to the Mexican War, resulting in the acquisition by the United States of the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California, Utah, and parts of Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, and Oklahoma. Almost one-third of the present area of the American nation, nearly a million square miles of territory, changed sovereignty.

There were some very heroic characters who helped win the independence, but you don't need me to retell the legends about them. Needless to say, Texans are very proud of those guys and what they accomplished.

Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!

P.S. There's a lesson in all this. How does that old saying go? Those who don't remember the past are condemned to repeat it? The Mexicans opened their borders and welcomed the North Americans. But then there were too many, and they wouldn't do what they were told. Along comes another old saying: Open your borders and welcome your future rulers.

Replace secret service with nightclub bouncers -- only problem is we can't fire the current job holders

Not my idea, but it's a good one. The concept came from the satire site outhousedaily.com last year, and while it's clever, it wouldn't work because there doesn't seem to be a way to fire government workers.

That part is real. Apparently, the head of an agency can't fire employees. So said DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart just last week as she explained that all she could do regarding DEA agents partying with hookers and drugs supplied by drug cartels was send a stern memo.

Can you envision a tough as nails and hungover DEA agent shivering in his jack-boots after seeing the memo? What I envision is a government worker saying, "Yeah? What are you gonna do about it, [expletive, rhymes with witch]?"

There's a job for our next president -- reform the civil service law to give directors some power over their employees. Democrats wouldn't dare take the risk of angering the federal bureaucracy, so it will have to be a Republican.

James Durbin's airborne athletes

There's a very talented photographer working for the morning paper named James Durbin. The newspaper probably makes sure he's supplied with the very best equipment. But it takes more that a good camera to get the pictures he gets. It takes a good eye and superior skill. A little patience pays off, too.

Anyway, he has a knack for catching athletes in midair. And the results are phenomenal. Here are a few that appeared in the print edition.

Look for the air between the athletes and the earth.

Amazing.

You really have to see his photos in a quality format for yourself. Check out this display of the MRT.com's editors' picks here.

Oklahoma now has nitrogen as alternative for executions

Oklahoma governor Mary Fallin signed the bill into law yesterday (4/17/2015) which will allow another alternative for death penalty executions -- nitrogen.

Squeamish drug makers are reluctant to sell drugs intended for lethal injections, and there is always the possibility of a claim that a particular style of executing someone is cruel and unusual. So they came up with the nitrogen alternative. That would actually be the first alternative behind the lethal injection. The next alternatives in order are electrocution and the firing squad.

All of this comes to us by way of NewsOK.com.

My own suggestion, which no executioner has yet to adopt, is carbon monoxide. It's very easy to produce -- all it takes is a lawn mower motor -- and according to survivors of accidental exposure, a person subjected to it simply goes to sleep completely unaware of what's happening. And if no one comes along to save them, they die. It seems perfectly suited for a painless execution.

Meanwhile, the hand wringing over these peaceful means of execution seems quaint when we recall that there are those abroad and probably among us who would like nothing better than to slice off our heads in front of a video camera.

Fox Friday 4-17-15 -- fox pulls rope-a-dope on yellow cat

Welcome to Fox Friday, the weekly display of the best photos of urban foxes from the previous seven days taken at the Bone Yard, a feeding station in the heart of Midland, Texas.

Unfortunately for the foxes, cats dominate the premises and steal the food meant for the foxes. One feral feline, Yellow Cat, thinks she owns the place. And a fox has to be stealthy to get food and avoid those sharp cat claws. Let's get started.

All of the photos in this set were taken one week ago. As usual, Yellow Cat tried to claim all the food -- two chicken drumsticks.

Fox plots while cat scratches.

Fox moves in, faces off with cat, cat goes ballistic.

Fox doubles around, grabs the stash, and is off like a flash.  Good girl!

What a scene. This was just one story that played out in the dark of night out of sight of humans. Dramas like this are probably playing out all over town.

Anyway, see ya next Fox Friday!

The dog that didn't bark -- if Harry Reid doesn't sue the equipment manufacturer in his eye injury case we'll know his story was fishy

Plaintiffs' lawyers are big Democrat party donors. And elected Democrats return the favor with laws favoring big lawsuits and big judgments.

And we know that Democrats love to sue. Remember Dennis Kucinich's olive-pit-in-the-sandwich injury? His reaction: Sue the bastards!

So when a big time Democrat gets injured by faulty equipment you just know that personal injury lawyers will be hammering down his door to get the case.

Harry Reid's eye injury story is coming under scrutiny, But we've got a "tell" to watch for. If Reid doesn't sue or settle with the equipment manufacturer then we've got a pretty good clue that the equipment didn't cause the injury.

Listen for the dog to bark.

Boom town man camps are dwindling away

Midland, Texas, one of the country's many oil boom towns, saw it population rise and unemployment rate drop over the past few years as the fracking boom brought workers in from around the country.

Inevitably, housing became short in supply as apartments filled and hotels and motels hung out their modern day equivalents of "No vacancy" signs.

So the oil companies moved into residential neighborhoods by leasing homes in which to house their workers. The city code enforcement office was probably flooded with complaints from long time residents seeking ways to rid their neighborhoods of these transient workers. And the police probably got their share of complaints about noisy shift workers letting off steam with tail gate parties in the driveways.

But the party's over. Now that the price of oil is half what it was at the peak and oil and gas exploration is declining, the workers are no longer needed. So the boom town man camps are drying up.

It's not just Midland. Bloomberg.com says it's happening throughout the oil producing areas. See The Oil Industry’s ‘Man Camps’ Are Dying. Excerpt:

America’s oilfield “man camps”—as the industry calls them—are turning into ghost towns as drillers cut back the free housing, food, and air travel once used to lure shale boom workers. The mini-settlements that sprang up throughout drilling regions in Texas, North Dakota, and Colorado are fading away as energy companies look to slash as much as $114 billion in spending this year, says a Cowen Group survey, and lay off tens of thousands of employees.

Post Script: The oil industry goes through periodic booms and busts. The cycle has repeated numerous times, and it will be repeated again. You can bank on it. In the next up cycle someone will inevitably say, "It's different this time." Don't you believe them.

Postal worker lands gyrocopter on white house lawn -- NEWMAN!

Postal worker lands small helicopter on white house lawn.

Why? Because because the mail never stops!

Correction: It was the lawn of the Capitol Building, not the White House. DOH!

A tax day thank you to high income people for shouldering the tax burden for the rest of us

An April 15 thank you.

Few will say it, so let me join Mark J. Perry in expressing a heartfelt "Thank you" to the people who are paying a disproportionate share of the federal burden.

Here's his thank you:

I’m probably in the minority, but as Tax Day approaches and as we analyze and compare tax burdens, I would like to personally express my sincere gratitude to: a) the 3 million Americans in the top 1% with incomes above $615,000 for shouldering almost half of the total US income tax burden with only 17% of the total income, b) the 16 million Americans in the top 5% with incomes above $261,000 for bearing almost two-thirds of the income tax burden with only 29% of the total income, and c) the 65 million Americans in the top 20% with incomes above $134,000 for shouldering almost the entire tax burden (84%) with only about half (51%) of total US income. Thank you entrepreneurial, hard-working, successful Americans in the top 20% for shouldering such a disproportionate share of the total federal income tax relative to your income – you’ve helped to ease the tax burden on the rest of us in the bottom four quintiles.

Even with a flat tax the high income people would still be responsible for a big portion of the federal revenue. The progressive tax system insures that they pay an even bigger portion. Anyone who really desires fairness should take a hard look at that. But then, a desire for fairness isn't the true motive. "Fairness" is just a rationale for income redistribution.

Seemed like a good idea -- make food stamp recipients do 6 hours volunteer work a week -- nope

A blogger called Newsmachete tells us about it at Americanthinker.com in Foodstamps for able bodied childless adults down 80% in Maine following 6 hr/week work requirement.

The article is actually a Fisking of a bleeding heart New York Times article about how the food pantries in Maine are overrun because of a harsh law limiting food stamp availability to able-bodied adults without minor dependents (abawds). Here's the kicker. They don't get the food stamps "unless they work 20 hours per week, take state job-training courses or volunteer for about six hours per week."

No one likes to work for free, and as someone who actually does volunteer work, I can say that sometimes it is a little bit frustrating. So maybe we can throw in a little free market to mix it up a bit. Allow real volunteers to sell their volunteer hours to the abawds. Problem solved.

What if the abawds don't have money to buy volunteer hours? Well, let them work if off, say mow a lawn for three hours in exchange for three hours of volunteer credits. Wait. We're right back where we started. Never mind.

Citizens bypassing banks to avoid government scrutiny

I'm sure the readers of this blog have dutifully completed their 1040s far ahead of the April 15 deadline for tax filing. And as honest, law abiding citizens, we've paid up each year as we are required by law to do.

Nonetheless, it's interesting to see what others are doing with their income. The burdens put upon us by the government have driven some income underground. And in fact, Rosslyn Smith at AmericanThinker.com credits Obama for that. See Stiffing the Tax Man: The part of the economy that has grown under Obama. She says there about 30 million households in the U.S. that are **unbanked or **underbanked.

Alternative Financial Services include currency exchanges and other non bank check cashing services, money order, pay day loans, rent-to-own plans, pawnshops, tax refund anticipation loans and other non traditional money lending.

While social justice warriors look at the unbanked and wring their hands about the negligence of financial institutions in under serving the poor, economists use the above numbers as one way to estimate the size of the "gray market" or the "shadow economy"  For those who participate in the shadow economy using a bank means leaving a paper trail for the government to follow.  If such people have to accept checks, it is likely that they make a habit of not cashing such checks into any bank account they may own.

Emphasis added by me. Smith continues:

Some of this shadow activity involves serious crimes such as drug dealing, stolen goods, hiring illegal immigrants, etc., but a lot of it is simply using only cash transactions in order to scam the tax man. Cash transactions are also used to stymie other government agencies that either dispense goodies based upon reported income or to avoid the onerous regulatory burdens placed on some activities.  There is even a technical term for it: legal source unreported income.

By the way, unbanked means the person doesn't have an account at a bank or other financial institution. And underbanked means the person has poor access to mainstream financial services normally offered by retail banks.

Coming in a future post: Breaking up a large bank deposit into smaller ones can make you a felon.

Don't know much about history -- If it happened before Obama was born, it doesn't matter any more

I watched a part of Obama's presser last night on Fox News and heard him say that the problems with Cuba occurred before he was born. So it doesn't matter. He's made it clear that his knowledge of history is probably "C." And that's with grade inflation.

It makes me wonder what John F. Kennedy would say. JFK was an ardent anti-communist, and he was very much anti-Castro to boot. But his thinking then is out of step with the current Democrat Party line, at least according to Obama. Now communism is the game, and Obama is ready to play.

Obama's mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, must have taught him well in his formative years. Bill Ayers took over at a later point in Obama's life. Heck, Ayers wrote the book on Obama.

But aside from sticking it to "the man," a satisfying moment for some, communism would be no better for the U.S. than is has been for Cuba, Venezuela, or any other country where it's been tried. Surely American voters are smart enough to figure that out, even if they don't know history.

Get corn out of our gasoline

Energy news has been dominated lately by the Keystone XL pipeline, the sharp decline in the price of oil, and the oil export ban. But there's another issue that should get some attention. That's the government's requirement that corn be put in our gasoline.

Environmental groups and the petroleum industry both oppose it. But corn farmers had the clout to get it placed into law. A re-do is long overdue.

Senators Toomey, Feinstein and Flake have co-sponsored Senate bill 577 to eliminate the Clean Air Act's mandate for corn in the gasoline we buy at the pump. Will they be successful? We have to hope so.

See: Corn, Scorn and Policy Porn -- Trigger warning -- there's no porn there,
Bill 577 status,
Toomey's press release,
Feinstein's press release.

Fox Friday 4-10-15

The objective is to lure the foxes with food and get their photos. However, feral cats compete with them -- whichever species gets there first gets supper. Most of the time it's a cat, especially since one in particular seems to have made the feeding station her home. She eats first and the foxes are left with leftovers.

The photos I prize most are ones in which a fox takes a majestic pose, but those are rare. Second place goes to the photos showing a fox confronting a cat. Since they've gotten used to each other and have established their pecking order, that doesn't happen often. Third place is a fox grabbing some food.

These photos came from Monday night around 11:30pm. We see a fox approaching.  Then she grabs the remnants of a chicken drumstick.

Notice the tail makes a question mark.

Five minutes later the fox and cat give each other the eye. (Cropped.)

That's it for this Fox Friday. See ya next time.

Lost pet locating service makes the leap from phone pole sign to phone call

We've all seen those poignant posters on utility poles asking for help locating a lost dog. And most of us have probably cruised the streets at one time or another trying to help someone find a lost dog.

There's an online company that has figured out a way to jump the gap from the sign on the pole to an actual phone call. It's findtoto.com. I learned about this first hand around Christmastime last year when a robocall came into my landline asking me to be on the lookout for an orange and white Brittany. I drove around for a while looking, but the dog was not to be seen.

A few days later I phoned the number of the dog owner to ask how it went. She said she began receiving calls immediately after the robocalls went out. And the dog was back home within four hours. Not bad.

At the time I went through the online questionnaire for a hypothetical lost pet, and the service quoted a fee of around $300 for a robocall to each landline in my zip code. However, anyone wondering about current pricing should contact the company.

Maybe the Russians could give us Hillary's hard drive contents

This is another example of how easy it must be for determined hackers to get into a secure computer system. In this case, Russia is the suspect. CNN tells us about it in How the U.S. thinks Russians hacked the White House.

The FBI, Secret Service and U.S. intelligence agencies are all involved in investigating the breach, which they consider among the most sophisticated attacks ever launched against U.S. government systems. ​The intrusion was routed through computers around the world, as hackers often do to hide their tracks, but investigators found tell-tale codes and other markers that they believe point to hackers working for the Russian government. ...

To get to the White House, the hackers first broke into the State Department, investigators believe.

The State Department computer system has been bedeviled by signs that despite efforts to lock them out, the Russian hackers have been able to reenter the system. One official says the Russian hackers have "owned" the State Department system for months and it is not clear the hackers have been fully eradicated from the system.

As in many hacks, investigators believe the White House intrusion began with a phishing email that was launched using a State Department email account that the hackers had taken over, according to the U.S. officials.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, in a speech at an FBI cyberconference in January, warned government officials and private businesses to teach employees what "spear phishing" looks like.

If the Russians have tapped into the State Department and the White House, why would they have stopped there? If Hillary Clinton was using the insecure private system we've been told about then penetrating it was probably easy.

In that case, the Russians could probably produce all those emails she deleted. Of course, expecting the Russians to cooperate with Republicans is nonsense. If they had anything on Hillary they would most certainly hold onto it for strategic use if she became president. And in the meantime, they'll be doing what they can to see that she does get elected.

Lefty comedians make fun of guy -- guy commits suicide

It wasn't too long ago that the talking heads were in an uproar over some bullying incident in which a young gay man ended up killing himself. Actually, it happened more than once. See, for example, here, here, and here. Activists were crying, "Won't someone stop this madness?"

So now we hear that some popular lefty comedians ridiculed aging dermatologist Dr. Fredric Brandt. And the guy hanged himself. The bullying took place on a Martin Short skit on Tina Fey's Netflix TV show. The old guy was depressed already, and this couldn't have helped his state of mind.

But don't expect much of an outcry from the left. After all, Tina Fey was among time.com's "top 100" in 2009, most likely because of her ridiculing caricature of Sarah Palin.

There will be no backlash. The guy was an old baby boomer -- a member of an unprotected class. Besides, influential lefties seldom get rebuked by members of their own tribe.

How many ways does Obama's Iran deal fall short -- Israel counts them

When one side to a negotiation wants a deal as badly as President Obama does then the other side will take him to the cleaners. Having watched Obama over the past several years, the public is distrustful of almost everything he says. The main stream media may eventually snap out of the hypnotic spell he has on them, but until them, the best authority on the Iranian peace deal is the Israelis.

And herewith are six gaps in the deal retold in Expert: Still ‘Very Serious Gaps’ Between U.S., Iran:

1. Sanctions: Ya’ari said the US has made clear that economic sanctions will be lifted in phases, whereas the Iranian fact sheet provides for the immediate lifting of all sanctions as soon as a final agreement is signed, which is set for June 30. (In fact, the US parameters state that sanctions will be suspended only after Iran has fulfilled all its obligations: “US and EU nuclear-related sanctions will be suspended after the IAEA has verified that Iran has taken all of its key nuclear-related steps.” By contrast, the Iranian fact sheet states: “all of the sanctions will be immediately removed after reaching a comprehensive agreement.”)

2. Enrichment: The American parameters provide for restrictions on enrichment for 15 years, while the Iranian fact sheet speaks of 10 years.

3. Development of advanced centrifuges at Fordo: The US says the framework rules out such development, said Ya’ari, while the Iranians say they are free to continue this work.

4. Inspections: The US says that Iran has agreed to surprise inspections, while the Iranians say that such consent is only temporary, Ya’ari said.

5. Stockpile of already enriched uranium: Contrary to the US account, Iran is making clear that its stockpile of already enriched uranium — “enough for seven bombs” if sufficiently enriched, Ya’ari said — will not be shipped out of the country, although it may be converted.

6. PMD: The issue of the Possible Military Dimensions of the Iranian program, central to the effort to thwart Iran, has not been resolved, Ya’ari said.

As to inspection, Saddam Hussein demonstrated that a regime can put them off indefinitely unless there's an American president willing to take action. Such an action seems unlikely against Iran regardless of who is elected president in 2016, especially if Obama and his minions in the media are harping from the sidelines.

Fox Friday 4-3-15 -- Good Friday edition

Welcome to Fox Friday.

As usual, the cats got their fill before the foxes arrived. So after four days of one single drumstick as bait, the last three nights the bait was one frozen drumstick and one frozen drumstick. It worked. On each night the cats gnawed the thawed one, and foxes got the frozen one, or at least part of it.

This was last night.

150403 fox 104 116 Black Cat chews on the frozen one. Then Old Crooked Tail claims the remnants.

This is one of Old Crooked Tail all by herself.  She's so cute!

That's it for this Fox Friday. Happy Easter everyone!

Jack Cashill removes any doubt that the Trayvon Martin and Micheal Brown cases were all about politics

Timing was everything. Democrats needed a cause to get black voters to turn out in 2012, and the Trayvon Martin case was a gift from heaven. Then in 2014 the Micheal Brown case did the same thing. But there were other, similar, cases that didn't get anywhere near the attention. It's as if those other stories were downplayed by the msm because they wouldn't complement the narrative.

That brings us to a recent article by Jack Cashill. Mr. Cashill, you'll recall, did the excellent detective work of compiling the evidence that Bill Ayers wrote Barack Obama's autobiography. I think of Cashill as a forensic bibliographer.

Now he's connecting the dots on recent cases of police killing citizens in Why No Riots for Ricky Shawatza Hall?

Mr. Cashill recalls the deaths of Ricky Shawatza Hall and Miriam Carey at the hands of law enforcement in Washington DC. Both of these two individuals breached a security perimeter and were shot to death. Both of these two individuals were black, one was a woman, and the other was dressed as a woman. Why no outrage? Mr. Cashill helps us out here with this:

What demands explanation is why the media and the Department of Justice have applied such disparate standards in the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown on one hand and Miriam Carey and Ricky Shawatza Hall on the other.

The answer is fairly obvious. “Black lives matter” or “LGBTQ lives matter” only when those deaths advance the agenda of the Democrat-media complex. With Obama in the White House, the shooting death of a black person and/or a gay person by federal officers scores no political points.

The heads of America’s major newsrooms sense this instinctively. They don’t need to be told. The minor newsrooms follow the major ones. Activists, black and gay, are reading the same tea leaves.

It's all about partisan politics and gaining power.

It's their Selma -- the most plausible explanation for the ferocity of the gay-marriage movement

Hans Fiene provides the best explanation so far for the fervor with which the social justice seek to demonizing Christians over the gay marriage thing. See Gay Marriage Isn’t About Justice, It’s About Selma Envy. Excerpt:

Why do so many young adults paint absurd caricatures of Christians who request government protection of their religious freedoms, arguing their true goal is to ban gay men from sitting at the local lunch counter? Why do they spread falsehoods about legislation, insisting that bills like the one recently signed by Indiana Gov. Mike Pence will unleash a Republican-led Jim Crow revival aimed at the LGBT community? Why do so many people, Gen Xers and younger, invent a monster of anti-gay bigotry and keep screaming the monster is real despite a mountain of contrary facts standing before them?

The answer is “social studies.” My generation engages in straw men, misinformation, and lies because, in every year of social studies class, we studied the civil-rights movement not as history, but as hagiography. We didn’t just learn what events happened on American soil, we were encouraged to mimic the segregation-defeating holy ones and merit for ourselves a place alongside them in glory. Combining that admonition with our general aversion to hard work, we concluded that the only thing necessary to be as righteous as the saints who fought racial injustice was to decry an injustice that no one else was. And we became so desperate to find that injustice, we lost our minds in the process. ...

More than we wanted to find the perfect prom date, we wanted to find our own bigotry to eradicate. After years of hearing those saints sing “We Shall Overcome,” we were overcome with jealousy. We coveted Selma. We envied that march. We looked at that footage and hungered for our own cause to devour.

Then along came the gay marriage movement along with a religious opposition, and a ready made cause fell right into their laps.

Mr. Fiene's theory is a little bit demeaning to the social justice warriors, but maybe they deserve it. And the theory makes perfect sense. Read the whole thing.