“It’s time to be patriotic, time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut [by paying more taxes]”
- Vice President Joe Biden
Obama Appointments:
Tim Geithner – Secretary of the Treasury – owed $34,000 in back taxes.
Tom Daschle – Secretary of Health and Human Services – owed $128,203 in back taxes.
More to come? How many other Obama nominees will be found out to lack patriotism, by Joe Biden’s standards?
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I think I’m on to something here. Hang with me. First, some background to set the stage.
Google is to the internet what the MSM is to broadcasting. It’s an almost-monopolized media apparatus that can shape the public’s perception of things through what it chooses to include and what it chooses to omit. It can divert information seekers towards whatever information Google deems appropriate, and away from whatever it doesn’t. I might add that it’s also very confusing whether the appropriate pronoun for Google is an “it” or a “they”. As an entity Google is sort of part-man, part-machine, right? (I pray for all our sakes that the man-part is still in control.) For simplicity, I’ll stick with ”it” for now.
Recall, if you will, the “miserable failure” Google bomb. Google’s search algorithms were exploited by third parties so that any google searches for “miserable failure” were redirected to President Bush’s bio at the White House website.
Lest we forget, former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt called President Bush “a miserable failure” in a presidential debate on September 4, 2003.
This witticism was taken up by Michael Moore and other leftwing internet scamps, who did their best to make sure that any Google search for the phrase “miserable failure” would return a link to President Bush’s official White House biography as its top result.
But now that Mr. Obama’s official biography now resides on that same page, the Solons at Google have decided this is unacceptable.
It’s not like it was a secret what was going on. And being such good stewards of objectivity on the intertubes, it took only six brief years for google to fix the algorithm and correct the Bush google bomb attack. But from what I hear, when it was recently brought to their attention that failure searches similarly linked to Obama’s bio on the same White House site, they managed to reverse it in a matter of hours. An unbiased observer might interpret that as a sign of bias.
A few days ago I posted this unaltered photograph of Dear Leader wondering where the doorknob was:
Heh. That’s just never getting old.
It’s true that sometimes the cover up is worse than the crime. For me, the perp’s attempted breaking and entering through a white house window could be just a hilarious memory by now. Except for one thing – it seems like Google might be covering up the gaffe, maybe.
Remember that google runs algorithms to help information seekers find the information that Google thinks they’re looking for. And it’s usually pretty straightforward and useful. But as detailed above, they do have a track record of screening results if they feel it necessary.
I wanted to see if my little photo up there would show up in a Google Image Search. Other photos on this blog can be found by searching for them with the appropriate criteria. For example, this image from a recent post entitled A Tale of Two Inaugurations.
It is easily found through Google’s image search: a tale of two inaugurations conservative compendium. First result in fact. Clearly, the liberal leaning folks at Google would find nothing particularly undesirable about this photo.
It’s easy to find photos from a similar incident where Bush tried to open a locked door at a press conference - which became an instant internet sensation among lefty blogs. Google image search: bush door.
Page after page of Bush/door. Again, pretty straightforward.
Now, let’s find my picture – search for “obama window“:
How odd. No relevant images whatsoever. Maybe I just need to try some different search terms to narrow things down better. “Obama walks into window“. “Obama window not door“. “Obama thwarted by window” – the exact title of my original post. Nothing, nada, bupkus.
In fact, it seems there’s no combination of search terms that will ever result in finding a picture of Obama trying to walk into the window. Click “next page” all you want, you will never find the picture.
It’s not just my photo that doesn’t appear. I know that photos of this gaffe appear on other blogs and news sites. I also know for a fact that the google crawler has already been through CC since I posted the picture and has seen it. So why doesn’t Google allow these photos to appear in their image search?
If that’s not enough, here’s where Google really drop-kicks objectivity square in the nuts. A normal Google web search for “obama white house window“ produces not a picture of Obama, nor of the white house, nor of a window, but a picture of Bush at that godamn locked door. I am not kidding, see for yourself.
How does that even happen? And what do those other two top news results have to do with it? That’s not what I searched for, Googlebot!
Am I tilting at windmills, quixotically? (See what I did there???) Google isn’t above censorship. They have proven themselves capable of censoring search results to please the Chicoms (i.e. the great firewall of China). Even in this country, google is known to censor search results due to DMCA legal complaints. Google doesn’t deny it’s liberal leanings, in fact they proclaim it quite proudly. Is it at least a possibility that google has other algorithms at work to help screen out embarrassments to Obama and the ruling democrats? One would certainly hope not. That would be implementing mathematically what journalists and editors in newsrooms across the country do intuitively. One thing’s for sure, the bottom of this must be gotten to. And I intend to get it got. I’ll be keeping my eyes on Google like a hawk. You hear me Google webcrawler? Like a hawk! I know you’re reading this and I’m on you like white on rice you search-censoring soul-eating tin can.
In conclusion: screw you, Google, and your stupid online PC idea too. I’ll never trust my productivity to an internet connection. And from now on – I’m using YAHOO!
(Be calm, my liberal friends, this is indeed a humor piece which in text form isn’t always received as intended by those in an adversarial mindset. My conservative readers all got it, didn’t you? But seriously though, what the heck is going on here with google?)
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I have updated the Federal Budget projection to account for the outcome of the 2008 election.
Click to englarge:
No problem. The taxpayers have plenty of money.
Elections have consequences. Oink oink.
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For the record, this is why bailing out companies with taxpayer money is a bad idea.
President Barack Obama issued a withering critique Thursday of Wall Street corporate behavior, calling it “the height of irresponsibility” for employees to be paid more than $18 billion in bonuses last year while their crumbling financial sector received a bailout from taxpayers. “It is shameful,” Obama said from the Oval Office. “And part of what we’re going to need is for the folks on Wall Street who are asking for help to show some restraint, and show some discipline, and show some sense of responsibility.“
Yes, and meanwhile President “I won” Obama’s party passes a $1.1 trillion bonus bill rewarding their liberal support groups for 40 years of loyalty.
Leave a commentIt’s awful when the financial sector gives its employees $18.4 billion in bonuses. It’s inexcusable when Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain spends $1 million to redecorate his office. And when CitiGroup wants to buy a $50 million corporate jet, they must be stopped.
But …
$400 million for HIV and chlamydia testing, $20 million for off-road trail maintenance and restoration, $600 million for new Federal government cars, $527 million to the Coast Guard to create 1235 new construction and acquisition jobs (that’s $460,000 per job), $75 million for smoking cessation programs (how will we pay for SCHIP then?), $7 billion to modernize Federal buildings and other facilities … that’s all perfectly okay. Just your tax dollars at work.
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The capital flew into a bit of a tizzy when, on his first full day in the White House, President Obama was photographed in the Oval Office without his suit jacket. There was, however, a logical explanation: Mr. Obama, who hates the cold, had cranked up the thermostat.
“He’s from Hawaii, O.K.?” said Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but strategically located office next door to his boss. “He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there.”
But wait! Isn’t the planet in peril? Isn’t it incumbent on all of us to minimize our carbon footprints by turning down our heat and air conditioning? And how about this Obama quote from the campaign:
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.
I guess he meant your home, sucker, not his.
Via Power Line
That goes double for your SUVs, suckers.
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Blatantly stolen from Ms. Michelle Malkin – because sometimes you just have to admit someone else has already said it best.
Leave a commentCan the Obama administration be anymore tone deaf? After pushing his $1.1 trillion Generational Theft Act of 2009 through the House last night, the White House apparently decided to throw itself a swank cocktail party. According to ABC’s Jake Tapper, the menu included alcoholic beverages (vodka martinis are an Obama favorite, reportedly) and wagyu steak.
Yeah, “wagyu steak.” $100 per serving delicacy. I had to look it up, too.
On the heels of the most expensive inaugural celebration in American history and passage of a trillion-dollar spending binge that will saddle future generations with unprecedented debt, perhaps President Obama might consider cutting back on such indulgences.
Or is the White House exempt from “shared sacrifice,” Mr. President?
“New era of responsibility?”
Not so much.
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The Washington Post reports on some regulatory parting shots the Bush administration took on free trade.
In its final days, the Bush administration imposed a 300 percent duty on Roquefort, in effect closing off the U.S. market. Americans, it declared, will no longer get to taste the creamy concoction that, in its authentic, most glorious form, comes with an odor of wet sheep and veins of blue mold that go perfectly with rye bread and coarse red wine.
The measure, announced Jan. 13 by U.S. Trade Representative Susan C. Schwab as she headed out the door, was designed as retaliation for a European Union ban on imports of U.S. beef containing hormones. Tit for tat, and all perfectly legal under World Trade Organization rules, U.S. officials explained.
ad_iconBesides, they said, Roquefort is only one of dozens of European luxury products that were attacked with high tariffs. The list includes, among other things, French truffles, Irish oatmeal, Italian sparkling water and “fatty livers of ducks and geese,” which apparently is how Washington trade bureaucrats say foie gras.
While none of these particularly barriers are going to have significant economic impact in America, this is simply bad policy.
Playing tit for tat with trade barriers may have emotional appeal, but it makes little sense practically, as we’re hurting ourselves almost as much as them when we do it. Moreover, we’re just encouraging others when they play these games. There’s little chance these tarrifs will get Europe to rethink their beef policy, and cutting off our nose to spite our face does not constitute good policy.
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Question: Anytime a skeptic speaks out against the concept of man-made global warming, the immediate reaction is a superficial test of his/her credibility and therefore believability and therefore relevance to the discussion hinging on their academic qualifications in the field of climatology. This of course is merely a tool of convenience for the anthropogenic climate change (AGW) proponent to pigeonhole and discount any contributions this person might bring to the debate. But why is the same test not applied to those who speak in support of draconian government power grabs in the name of combating AGW?
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It’s no surprise that the “stimulus” bill, which contains a bunch of pork that won’t be spent soon enough to be stimulating even if Keynesian economics were true, was passed yesterday. What is a surprise is that Republicans didn’t cave to Obama’s desire for political cover. Not a single House Republican voted for the bill. Let me say that again: not a single Republican voted yes. The Democrats, by themselves, own the porkulus and all its problems.
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Remember how President Bush was skewered by left-wing humorists when he tried to open a locked door at a press conference some while back?
I wonder what those same people will say about Obama’s attempt walk through a White House window? Looks like someone’s in need of an entrance strategy! Hardy har har.
When asked for comment, White House aides insisted this was not an error in judgment on the part of the President.
“The President asked me to swap out that window with a door just yesterday,” said a nervous aide, as Rahm Emmanuel sat cracking his knuckles just feet away. “I just hadn’t gotten around to it yet. My bad.” Rahm nods his head approvingly.
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I am a libertarian-conservative blogger living in the DC area. I have a Master's degree in Political Science and work in public policy, but please don't hold that against me.
