cosmoscon

The New York Times published a high resolution picture of the crowd behind Obama as he was giving his 2^nd inauguration speech and the picture is shown below.

If you click on the NY Times link, you’ll see that you can zoom in to see the individual faces and many of the more popular people have already been tagged.  What you will notice is that about a third of the people in this picture are doing something other than listening/looking at Obama.  Granted this is but an instant in time during the speech but I think it is telling that people were easily occupied with other things when sitting behind the President of the United States as he gives his inauguration speech.

I’ve taken the liberty to find some humorous and telling pictures of the crowd and I’ll share them below.

I think this kid summed up the reaction that most people had to the Divider-In-Chief’s speech.

This group of youngsters seemed to be more interested in playing Angry Birds.

Was this guy yawning or doing his best Joe Wilson impersonation?  Either way, the guy to the right was not pleased.

Al Franken lives in Minnesota so you’d think he’d be acclimated to cold weather but it doesn’t appear so from this picture.

The following picture has many interesting items.  Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was busy taking pictures with her phone, Robert Gibbs looks like he’s in pain (understandable after spending years lying for Obama) and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan is looking for that Sandy relief package.

Here we see Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sitting next to former President Jimmy Carter.  This would not be my recommendation for someone who has a brain that is on the mend. God help her and I hope the peanut farmer from Georgia didn’t set back her recovery.

Someone should have woken up the economically challenged Jerrold Nadler (D-NY).

I see that Newt Gingrich is judging Obama during this speech.  Good!

I agree with the expression on the face of Carolyn Maloney (D-NY).

I feel sorry for the guy sitting behind Debbie Wasserman Schultz and I bet he couldn’t see a thing because of her hair.

I don’t know who this guy is but I feel his pain.

And finally, this picture sums it all up.  The heavy eyes and scowls on the faces tell us how we feel about 4 more years of Obama.  What was Barbara Milkulski wearing that got the guy in the red tie so excited?  Poor Patrick Toomey can’t even watch!

Sigh…..Four. More. Years.

In case you were at work today (like me) and missed the Whiner-In-Chief give another presser, let me encourage you to read the transcript because three very important facts were revealed about Obama.

Obama is Inconsistent

As predicted, there is another ‘crisis’ facing our country and this time it’s the raising of the Debt ceiling.  This will come as no shock to Conservatives but in February we will reach the point where the US Government won’t have enough money to pay our bills which include our normal out of control spending and the interest on our national debt.

So right on cue, Obama told reporters on Monday that the debt ceiling must be raised.  From the NPR story:

“Obama made the case that increasing the debt ceiling only lets the government pay its outstanding bills — and has nothing to do with future spending.”

Obama hoped that glossing over raising the debt ceiling would make us believe that this was something he has always been in favor of, even when our National Debt was less than $16 trillion.

But no…..

Obama voted against debt ceiling in 2006 and gave a rousing speech on the floor of the Senate that I’d agree with today:

“Here are some of the key parts of Obama’s speech:”

“Mr. OBAMA: Mr. President, I rise today to talk about America’s debt problem. The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies.”

“[…]
Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘‘the buck stops here.’’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt limit.”

But the low information voter doesn’t remember that so I’m sure they applauded the Short-Term-Memory-In-Chief today.

Obama is Financially Illiterate

In this press conference, Obama tried to make the case that increasing our debt limit (the amount of money we can borrow) is really just paying for current spending and not a real spending increase.

This kind of flawed logic is not a surprise when it comes from someone who has never had to run a company or meet a payroll or even balance his own personal budget.  But when that same person is the President of the United States, we need to worry.

I’d like to play out Obama’s financial ‘plan’ in the world of the average American citizen.

Let’s say that for the past 10 years you’ve been living way outside your means.  You’ve taken costly vacations, bought expensive cars and your credit cards are at their credit limit.  You are now at the point where you don’t have enough money to pay your monthly bills.  You can now choose 2 courses of action.

1 – Cut your spending, sell your expensive items and adopt a simpler life so that you can pay off your debt and start over.  You must prioritize your bills to pay the higher priority ones first (mortgage, food, utilities, minimum payments on credit cards, etc.) and then dump the rest (cable, cell phones, internet, club memberships, vacations, etc.).

2 – Call your credit card companies and ask them to raise the limit on your credit cards so you can continue your lifestyle that is grossly outside of your means.

Most financially sane people would choose number 1 and even financially illiterate people who tried number 2 would be rejected by the credit card companies and then forced into option number 1.

Obama just said we need to adopt option number 2 and he is saying it in a manner that makes me believe he doesn’t understand the consequences of his actions.  He’s financially illiterate.

Obama is Despicable

During the press conference, the same guy that has been using the tragedy of the Sandy Hook school murders to push for legislation to prevent law abiding citizens from exercising their 2^nd amendment rights said this (emphasis mine):

“What I will not do is to have that negotiation with a gun at the head of the American people — the threat that “unless we get our way, unless you gut Medicare or Medicaid, or otherwise slash things that the American people don’t believe should be slashed, that we’re going to threaten to wreck the entire economy.” That is not how historically this has been done. That’s not how we’re going to do it this time.”

So it’s OK for Obama to talk about guns being part of the violent crime problem (when they really aren’t) but also use those same violent metaphors to further his socialistic agenda.

Despicable.

In case you missed it, over the weekend Todd Kincannon (@ToddKincannon) launched a follow-back hash tag #TGDN to help prevent voices from being silenced on Twitter by its auto suspension algorithms.

#TGDN stands for Twitter Gulag Defense Network and you can find out how it started and how it works by viewing the Twitchy post and @FoolishReporter wrote a great blog post describing how #TGDN can help thwart one of these Twitter algorithms.

#TGDN basically works by creating lists totaling 3,000 people and if each person follows everyone on that list then each person will have at least 3,000 Twitter followers (if you started from zero).  Having at least 3,000 twitter followers will supposedly make you immune to the Leftists tactic of blocking and reporting as spam those users who have low follower counts and causing the Twitter algorithms to automatically suspend those accounts – thus silencing their speech.  There are other ways to prevent this suspension trap like placing a period before any replies but having 3,000 followers seems to be more bullet proof.

That was a good enough reason for me to join Saturday afternoon but after I’ve had 48 hours of following back people on the lists (I’m only on list 4 and each list contains 500 people) I’ve realized there are other benefits to this program.

If we are to truly change the culture in the United States and return our government to its founding principles, we’ll need a grass roots movement to do it.  We can’t rely on the GOP to pick our candidates and run our campaigns when the Left has control of the media and in effect controls the message.  We have to think 21^st century here and use modern technology to mobilize the troops and bypass the Media.

So here are my reasons for joining #TGDN and encouraging others to do the same.

Expanding the Conversation

The main reason I jumped on Twitter and started this blog was to engage more people than I could meet in my normal life and have political conversations with them.  The culture in the US will never be truly changed by just publishing white papers at think tanks (although I love reading those) because only a small minority of the population reads those.  We also can’t rely on the popular Conservative pundits on TV and the Internet because again, the Left leaning media will drown out those voices.  We need real personal conversations to change people’s hearts and minds.

Blogging and Twitter are ways to have these conversations with people who are hundreds or thousands of miles away and this increases the collective knowledge of our country and in a sense, makes every keyboard, tablet or smart phone the equivalent of a coffee shop.

Adding thousands of followers to your twitter account and adding thousands of people you follow will increase your audience that you can converse with.  In just a few days I’ve found people on twitter that I didn’t know existed and have had meaningful conversations with on all topics.  In just 48 hours I’ve grown my followers from 1,100 to over 2,500 and the people I follow has grown by the same margin.   And I’m only half way through the process!

Think about this.  Three thousand people following back with the same three thousand people has created nine million communication paths that otherwise didn’t exist!

Amplifying the Grass Roots

I’ve already noticed really great ideas/tweets from people that I would not have normally come in contact with and this is another great part of #TGDN.  People who aren’t pundits and don’t have tens of thousands of followers rarely get their great ideas retweeted due to only a few people actually seeing their tweets.

It’s understandable that popular people on twitter who have so many followers and whose job is to be on TV or write for major blogs don’t have time to follow back everyone who follows them.  I’d rather they focus on their job of getting their message out via those large megaphone sources than spend time interacting with me.  But that doesn’t mean the grass roots Conservatives don’t have a voice in the political discussions and twitter/blogs are a great way to have them.  Now that thousands on twitter have increased their audience by thousands, we now have a better chance for grass roots ideas to become know to more of the Conservative populace after #TGDN.

Uniting Conservatives

If you are like me, sometimes I feel that the Conservative message is outdated and I’m in a very small minority that still advocates it.  But after following thousands on twitter and reading their profiles/tweets, I realize that there are many like us out there.  We just need to join forces and mobilize in our community to change the culture.

No, we aren’t all robots that have the same views on all issues but that’s the whole point of having conversations to either reinforce what you believe in or change your views after new data/viewpoints are expressed.

#TGDN is a great thing and was a genius move by Kincannon and I tip my hat to him.  We still have a long way to go and really decades before we disinfect US culture of Leftist beliefs but this is a great first step!

Follow Todd and the #TGDN hash tag to find out when the next lists will be generated and let’s keep this going!

Gun owners in New York’s Westchester and Rockland counties received lumps of coal in their Christmas stockings this year.

No, Santa didn’t punish them for being on the naughty list but The Journal News (@LoHud) published names and addresses of those citizens who are licensed to own pistols and revolvers.

I won’t publish the link to the Newspaper site since they don’t deserve anymore traffic but here is the CNN story and a few quotes from it:

“(CNN) — An interactive map showing the names and addresses of all handgun permit-holders in New York’s Westchester and Rockland counties has drawn a response from mostly disgruntled readers since it was posted Saturday on a newspaper’s website.”

“The interactive map published by the Journal News, prompting more than 1,300 comments as of Tuesday, allows readers to zoom in on red dots that indicate which residents are licensed to own pistols or revolvers.”

I don’t even know where to start.

The names and addresses of sex offenders are routinely published but that is in the interest of public safety since these individuals have been CONVICTED of crimes that make them a threat.  I have no problem with this or publishing names and addresses of public figures that are ‘in the news’ since these individuals signed up for this scrutiny by the nature of their chosen profession.  But the publishing of names and addresses of private citizens (without their permission I might add) who have not committed any crime is unconscionable.

Why was this done?

In an attempt to answer this question, I sent an email to The Journal News editor, CynDee Royle and here is a copy of this email with my email address redacted (As I’ll show below, Ms. Croyle’s email address is publicly available so I didn’t redact it):

This is public information, readily available to anyone who has a computer or access to one.

Sent from my iPhone

On Dec 24, 2012, at 3:10 PM, Cosmoscon <xxxxx@hotmail.com>> wrote:

Who gave permission to print this?

You should be fired.  Will you print the addresses to all the staff at LoHud?

I replied with this follow-up question:

“There is a lot of information available with a little searching (such as my home address) but why does a newspaper choose to publish information on people that aren’t “in the news” (i.e. they have not broken any laws, not famous, etc.).  What criteria do you use when contemplating publication of law abiding citizens’ home addresses?”

To my great surprise, I received no reply.

Knowing how Leftists think, I can only assume that the Journal News did this to give the public information about those who own pistols and revolvers so people can avoid danger.  Of course this is nonsense and the only outcome of this release of information is to give criminals information where they can obtain firearms through theft or, worse, target houses that DON’T have firearms.

So why does The Journal News stop here?  Will they publish the names and addresses of people who own large pickup trucks?  Traffic fatalities in New York occur at a rate of 6.3 per 100,000, deaths from firearms occur at a rate of 5.1 per 100,000 and from this study, large pickup trucks provide a higher risk of fatality to other drivers.  Will The Journal News publish names and addresses of people who drive large pickup trucks?  See the graph below:

If the Journal News was trying to raise awareness of a major threat in the US then murders from guns shouldn’t be at the top of their list.  From the latest Center for Disease Control (CDC) estimated cause of death data for 2010, Murders have dropped from the top 15 for the first time since 1965.   Diabetes and Heart Disease are listed in the top 10 so will the Journal News publish names and addresses of fast food restaurant owners?

If The Journal News is making a habit of publishing data that is “readily available to anyone who has a computer or access to one” then we can expect them to publish names and addresses of people who own a home worth, say, a million dollars or more.  That data is also readily available from country tax records so what is preventing them from publishing this data as well?

What criteria does The Journal News use when they are deciding whether or not to publish names and addresses of private citizens?  The citizens of Westchester and Rockland counties deserve to know this.

It appears that the Journal News is just another typical Leftist organization hell bent on demonizing the tens of millions of law abiding gun owners in the US because of the few evil people who make the news when they use an illegally obtained firearms to murder innocent people.  Call me crazy but I think the resources at The Journal News would be better served in trying to identify the criminals that have illegal firearms instead of attempting to vilify law abiding gun owners.

If The Journal News is comfortable publishing names and addresses that are “readily available to anyone who has a computer or access to one” then I’d like to follow their lead.

Here is the LinkedIn site for CynDee Royle:

Ms. Royle’s twitter account is @Croyle1 and her account is protected (you can’t see her tweets) but you can still tweet to her.

Here are the names, phone numbers and email addresses of the staff of The Journal News.

Tell them how you feel about this!

Remember when Obama said this about leaders taking responsibility for the actions of their employees (emphasis mine)?

“Well, here’s what I know, we were just talking about responsibility and as president of the United States, it’s pretty clear to me that I’m responsible for folks who are working in the federal government and you know, Harry Truman said the buck stops with you.”

So who will take responsibility for this (emphasis mine)?

“An independent inquiry into the attack on the United States diplomatic mission in Libya that killed four Americans on Sept. 11 sharply criticized the State Department for a lack of seasoned security personnel and for relying on untested local militias to safeguard the compound, according to the panel’s report made public on Tuesday night.”

“The panel also blamed the government for over-relying on specific warnings of imminent attacks or other threats to take action rather than adapting security procedures and protocols to a deteriorating security environment. By this spring, Benghazi, a hotbed of militant activity in eastern Libya, had experienced a string of assassinations, an attack on a British envoy’s motorcade and the explosion of a bomb outside the American mission.”

“Finally, the report also blamed two major State Department bureaus — Diplomatic Security and Near Eastern Affairs — for failing to coordinate and plan adequate security at the mission. The panel also determined that a number of officials had shown poor leadership.”

“Systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus,” the report said, “resulted in special mission security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place.”

Did our Government move military support into the area to protect the US citizens who were working in this volatile region? No.

“On the night of the attack, the Pentagon was able to divert an unarmed Predator drone operating 90 miles away to Benghazi, and the C.I.A. later used it to help plan an escape route for the surviving Americans. But other military forces were too far away or could not be mobilized in time.”

“The closest AC-130 gunship, a devastating and accurate weapon against insurgents in urban areas, was in Afghanistan. There are no armed drones within range of Libya. There was no Marine expeditionary unit — a large seaborne force with its own helicopters — in the Mediterranean Sea.”

Notice how the inquiry panel report didn’t mention anything about a YouTube video inciting a riot at the embassy?

It’ll be interesting to see how the Main Stream Media provides cover for Obama on this one.  Expect them to invoke the Ezra Klein Rule early and often.  “Rules for Thee and not for Me!”

In case you missed it, there is a new Leftist rule that Conservatives should understand and invoke at appropriate times.

New Leftist Rule – You are NOT accountable for the actions of a company, network or other entity unless you are an official full time employee.

New Leftist Corollary – If you are just a ‘contributor’ to a company, network or other entity then you have ZERO accountability for the actions of that particular company, network or other entity.

And this new law has been validated by suuuuuuper genius Ezra Klein.

Ezra Klein has been blogging and tweeting links over the past few days telling us how unions are great and Right-To-Work Legislation is bad (here, here, here and here) and when he’s asked if one of the businesses that contributes to his income has union workers, he replies that he has no idea because, after all, he’s just a ‘contributor’ or something.

So the next time a Leftist takes a jab at a Fox News ‘contributor’ over something Fox News or their parent News Corporation does, refer them to the Ezra Klein Rule.