Why buy a lottery ticket from Francis when you can get rich at home?

 

Cheese eating surrender monkeys lose to Germany, again

Cortana, Window phone’s answer to Sirri, has correctly predicted the winner of every match of the World Cup since playoffs began.

Business Insider, July 1st: The virtual assistant for Windows phones is six for six in predicting World Cup outcomes since the beginning of the elimination round, including the United States’ tragic loss to Belgium on Tuesday. Cortana’s predictions are coming from Bing’s Prediction Engine, which makes assessments based on each team’s previous record as well as a number of other factors like weather, type of grass, and home field advantage (for Brazil). If you’re into gambling, Cortana has Germany beating France and Brazil edging out Colombia in the quarterfinals on Friday.

Although I’ve already forgotten to care about soccer, I did check the results of yesterday’s matches – Germany won, 1-0, Brazil beat Colombia, 2-1. That would make 8 of 8 for Cortana.

The Zinn movement (it’s already entrenched in our schools) weighs in on fireworks

They don’t like ’em, naturally.

In Portland, Oregon, where I live, the 4th of July holiday offers an excuse for a wonderful annual blues festival in Waterfront Park downtown. Unfortunately, in my neighborhood, it also provides cover for people to blow off fireworks that terrify young children and animals, and that turn the air thick with smoke and errant projectiles. Last year, the fire department here reported 35 fires sparked by toy missiles, defective firecrackers, and other items of explosive revelry. The Washington State Department of Ecology warns that “Breathing fine particles in fireworks smoke can cause or contribute to serious short- or long-term health problems. They include: Risk of heart attack and stroke. Lung inflammation. Reduced lung function. Asthma-like symptoms. Asthma attacks.”

Apart from the noise pollution, air pollution, and flying debris pollution, there is something profoundly inappropriate about blowing off fireworks at a time when the United States is waging war with real fireworks around the world. To cite just one example, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London has estimated that since November 2001, U.S. drone attacks have killed at least 2,600 people in five countries, including as many as 247 children. And, of course, the Iraq war, which began with the deadly U.S. fireworks of “shock and awe” bombardment in 2003, has morphed into seemingly endless internecine fighting, and according to the United Nations, the creation of more than a million refugees just this year. The pretend war of celebratory fireworks thus becomes part of a propaganda campaign that inures us—especially the children among us—to current and future wars half a world away.

The author of this tripe – who taught social studies in Oregon for 30 years, influencing how many generations of impressionable children – devotes the rest of his article attacking Washington, Jefferson, America in general and of course, our genocidal extermination of the savages who once inhabited these lands. I’ll repeat: Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” is taught in our schools,by teachers who have been indoctrinated in Zinn’s avowedly communist ideology. Your tax dollars at work,your children in danger.

Obama opens our doors to the world

Obama has allowed 290,000 illegal immigrants to swarm into and across our country just since April. Fifty thousand of those are unaccompanied children, who, transported to the border and dumped by coyotes, are then taken to their parent by government workers.

Few of the illegal immigrants are high-school graduates, or have skills that would allow them to earn more than they cost to federal, state and local taxpayers.

Officials have not said where they’ve delivered the adults or youth illegals, but pro-American activists are keeping track of some locations, including San Diego, Calif.

Officials have defended the administration’s catch-and-release policy, which critics say is inviting more Central Americans to cross the border in the hope of being arrested by the border patrol.

“When you have a noncriminal [border-crossing ] mother, they are going to be released,” David Jennings, the head of the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency in southern California. “The most humane way to deal with this is to find out where they are going and get them there,” he said at a town meeting held in Murrieta, Calif., according to the New York Times.

The primary duty of the president of the United States is the defense of our country – that’s why he was made commander in chief of our military, for instance; opening our borders, issuing free birth control pills, bankrupting utilities, decapitating our military leadership, and golf are not among the office’s specified responsibilities. At home and abroad, Obama has proved a complete, abysmal failure. In fact, his actions border on treason.

Just saying.

In case you needed reminding

 

We’re all friends here, right?

Congress and its aides are exempt from, even “absolutely immune to”  insider trading rules, as the Congressional Ways and Means Committee lawyer reminded a federal judge. So no records will be forthcoming from aide Brian Sutter, or his bosses.

  The SEC sought the subpoenas in an investigation testing the limits of federal insider-trading laws on whether the committee or staff members illegally passed on non-public information about a change in U.S. health-care policy. In seeking compliance with the subpoena demand, the SEC cited a 2012 law that requires public officials to keep confidential any non-public information about government matters that could move stock prices.

The regulator is investigating a spike in trading of health-insurance companies, including Humana Inc., ahead of a government announcement last year that increased, rather than cut, payments to health insurers. The SEC says it has evidence that Sutter “may have been a source” used by a lobbyist at Greenberg Traurig LLP.

The lobbyist disclosed the health policy changes to an analyst at Height Securities LLC who sent out an alert ahead of the government announcement, according to the SEC.

(If you want the full story of what went on with Sutter and the congressmen, see the WSJ article here.)

The huge publicity accorded insider trading cases on Wall Street is, in my opinion, merely a device to make it appear that the government is going after crooks when in fact it’s Congress itself that has been using such privileged information to enrich itself, for decades. What a surprise. As professor Reynolds points out, “It’s just a criminal conspiracy with the power to tax.”