Allegedly unlicensed driver charged in fatal March 2012 rollover crash at Muskegon River flats

Allegedly unlicensed driver charged in fatal March 2012 rollover crash at Muskegon River flats | MLive.com:
"Timothy Maat, chief Muskegon County assistant prosecutor, said the reasons for the long time lag between the accident and the charging were a lengthy investigation of what caused the accident, including an examination of the car for any mechanical failures, and an investigation of whether Balderas was licensed to drive in any other state or in Mexico.
No license turned up, Maat said."

Feds suggest anti-Muslim speech can be punished

Feds suggest anti-Muslim speech can be punished - POLITICO.com:
"A U.S. attorney in Tennessee is reportedly vowing to use federal civil rights statutes to clamp down on offensive and inflammatory speech about Islam.
Bill Killian, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee, was quoted by the Tullahoma News this week suggesting that some inflammatory material on Islam might run afoul of federal civil rights laws.
"We need to educate people about Muslims and their civil rights, and as long as we’re here, they’re going to be protected," Killian told the newspaper."

25,000 Muslims March in England Calling for Laws to Silence Critics of Islam

25,000 Muslims March in England Calling for Laws to Silence Critics of Islam:

5-year-old Interrogated By School Over Toy Cap Gun Until He Wet Himself With Fear Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!

Burger King's Hands-Free Whopper Commercial Debuts

Burger King's Hands-Free Whopper Commercial Debuts | Fox News Insider:
"In case we humans weren't already in danger of becoming the laziest species on the planet, Burger King is here to help us accelerate our journey in that southerly direction.
The fast-food giant just created the "hands-free Whopper," and it is exactly what it sounds like: a device that makes it possible for you do almost anything while eating a Whopper burger."

Is It Fixable?

Guest Post: Is It Fixable? | Zero Hedge:
"Nations typically enter this vicious cycle once they start having to borrow money just to pay interest on what they already owe. 
The US is already way past this point.
If you study US financial conditions, you’ll see that mandatory entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare soak up over 75% of all federal tax revenue collected.
That’s before paying a penny in interest on the debt. The rest of the budget constitutes several trillion dollars in other expenses like genital-groping TSA agents."

PulteGroup plans to move headquarters to Atlanta

PulteGroup plans to move headquarters to Atlanta | www.ajc.com:
"PulteGroup, based in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., suffered a major blow during the housing downturn, but its financial picture has brightened more recently."

Military Vet Faces Charges For Firing Warning Shot At Suspect Trying To Break Into Home

Military Vet Faces Charges For Firing Warning Shot At Suspect Trying To Break Into Home « CBS Seattle

How Washington Ruined Your Washing Machine

Sam Kazman: How Washington Ruined Your Washing Machine - WSJ.com:
"In 1996, top-loaders were pretty much the only type of washer around, and they were uniformly high quality. When Consumer Reports tested 18 models, 13 were "excellent" and five were "very good."
By 2007, though, not one was excellent and seven out of 21 were "fair" or "poor." 
This month came the death knell: Consumer Reports simply dismissed all conventional top-loaders as "often mediocre or worse.""

'Complete Streets' found in Muskegon County but more can be done for health and safety

'Complete Streets' found in Muskegon County but more can be done for health and safety | MLive.com:
"The Complete Street experts in Muskegon this week praised the community for bringing together a partnership on public infrastructure engineering with community health that is going on with the One in 21 initiative that aims at making Muskegon County the healthiest county in the state by 2021.
“The collaboration and partnership is just awesome,” Buchtel said of embracing Complete Streets as a way of getting citizens out and walking and biking for improved health."

Petitions seek millage election for Muskegon County school technology

Petitions seek millage election for Muskegon County school technology | MLive.com

Administrators of the 11 traditional public school districts operating in the MAISD originally considered holding the election on Aug. 6. 

However, they decided it would be better to hold the election when families are back from summer vacations and students are back in school, said MAISD Superintendent David Sipka. It will be easier for schools to communicate to school families information about the election when school is in session, he said.

..Proceeds of the millage would be divided among the 11 school districts according to enrollment, Sipka said. Muskegon Heights Public Schools Academy System currently is not included, though that could change, he said. 

If approved, it is estimated the millage would collect $4.3 million in 2014, its first year in effect.

...Area superintendents have been considering a regional enhancement millage for about the last year and a half, Sipka said. With state per-pupil operating funds in many instances barely covering day-to-day expenses, districts do not have money left over to keep technology updated, Sipka said.

A survey conducted by an outside research group in February found that 68 percent of 400 respondents were supportive of the 10-year, 1-mill tax increase, Sipka said.

Schools need to provide students with the ability to take standardized testing online by 2015. The enhancement millage could be used to pay for computers, netbooks, mobile devices and infrastructure.

It also could be used for surveillance cameras, electronic entry systems and security alarms. It would be up to each school district, not the MAISD, on how the funds would be spent.

This Chart Shows Dow Should Be Lower...a Lot Lower

This Chart Shows Dow Should Be Lower...a Lot Lower:
"The Dow industrials, in particular, have seen a 17 percent jump in 2013 alone even as earnings in the past two quarters have grown little.
That trend disrupted a formerly symbiotic relationship between earnings and stock prices and is indicating that the bluechip average is in for a substantial pullback, "

Jim Rogers: "Nobody Gets Out Of This Situation Until There’s A Crisis"

Jim Rogers: "Nobody Gets Out Of This Situation Until There’s A Crisis" | Zero Hedge:

On Bernanke: "He doesn’t want to be around for the consequences of what he’s doing."

On Fiat: "Paper money doesn’t have a very glorious history, but again, nothing imposed by the government has a very long and glorious history."

On Europe's Crisis: "You can postpone it all you want, but the problems just mount."

On Capitalism: "You are not supposed to take money away from the competent people and give it to the incompetent so that the incompetent can compete with the competent people with their own money. That’s not the way capitalism is supposed to work."

Windows 8.1 preview: many small tweaks make for a significant update

Windows 8.1 preview: many small tweaks make for a significant update | The Verge

The best way to win an argument? Shout louder than everyone else and people will simply assume you're right

The best way to win an argument? Shout louder than everyone else and people will simply assume you're right | Mail Online:
"Researchers analysed more than a billion tweets from pundits during American sporting events
Found that being confident makes you more popular than being right
The pundits and amateurs studied made a similar number of correct predictions, yet those who were 'louder' and more confident were seen to be more trustworthy and popular"

10+ Useful System Tools Hidden in Windows

10+ Useful System Tools Hidden in Windows:
"Whether you’re using Windows 7, Windows 8, or an older version of Windows, Windows contains a variety of system utilities that are well-hidden.
Some are buried deep in the Start menu, while others can only be accessed via a command."

Government Goes Too Far When It Requires Paid Vacations For Workers

Government Goes Too Far When It Requires Paid Vacations For Workers - Investors.com:
"The Center for Economic and Policy Research has just followed up its 2007 report with "No-Vacation Nation Revisited," a study that suggests the U.S. is a backward country that doesn't measure up to European and Japanese standards because government here doesn't mandate paid vacations."

Michigan Now Considering Anti-Sharia Bill - CAIR Files Suit in Oklahoma

Michigan Now Considering Anti-Sharia Bill - CAIR Files Suit in Oklahoma | DCXposed:
"Lawmakers in Michigan are considering a bill that would ban Sharia law in that states courts, but the measure is being opposed fervently by The Council on American-Islamic Relations(CAIR), a Muslim activist group, and in some states that have already approved anti-Sharia legislation, such as Oklahoma, CAIR has actually filed suit in an attempt to reverse the anti-Sharia law. "

Kindergartener gets detention for Lego gun size of quarter

Kindergartener gets detention for Lego gun size of quarter | The Daily Caller:
 "This time, the perpetrator was a six-year-old boy.
The menacing weapon in question was a plastic Lego G.I. Joe gun roughly the size of a quarter, reports WGGB-TV.
The incident unfolded Friday morning on a school bus headed to Old Mill Pond Elementary School in Palmer, Mass.
Another student on the bus spotted the Lego piece and promptly shouted to the driver."

Eyelid lifts for Medicare patients cost taxpayers millions

Eyelid lifts for Medicare patients cost taxpayers millions - Florida - MiamiHerald.com:
"Aging Americans worried about their droopy upper eyelids often rely on the plastic surgeon’s scalpel to turn back the hands of time. Increasingly, Medicare is footing the bill.

Yes, Medicare. The public health insurance program for people over 65 typically does not cover cosmetic surgery, but for cases in which a patient’s sagging eyelids significantly hinder their vision, it does pay to have them lifted. In recent years, though, a rapid rise in the number of so-called functional eyelid lifts, or blepharoplasty, has led some to question whether Medicare is letting procedures that are really cosmetic slip through the cracks — at a cost of millions of dollars."

Union president chows down and snoozes on the job

Union president chows down and snoozes on the job - NYPOST.com:
"Union fat cat Mark Rosenthal spends more time sleeping at his desk than organizing labor, a series of damning photos reveals.
The 400-pound president of Local 983 of District Council 37 — the city’s largest blue-collar municipal-workers union — often downs a huge meal, then drops into dreamland in the early afternoon, members of the union’s executive board told The Post."

Is Gang Of Eight's $3,000 Bonus To Hire New Immigrants Constitutional?

Is Gang Of Eight's $3,000 Bonus To Hire New Immigrants Constitutional? by Andrew Malcolm - Investors.com:
"As IBD has explained, employers who offer insurance that is deemed either too pricey or too skimpy will have to pay an annual $3,000 fine for each full-time worker who takes advantage of ObamaCare's subsidies to buy coverage.
Since legalized immigrants wouldn't be eligible for ObamaCare subsidies for a decade or more, their employers could avoid an ObamaCare fine for years to come for each legalized immigrant on the payroll. What is more, because the fine is nondeductible, it would be the equivalent of $5,000 in annual wages for a profit-making firm facing a combined 40% federal and state tax rate.
It's easy to imagine a scenario in which an employer, faced with a choice between shifting a legalized immigrant or U.S. citizen to part-time status, would be persuaded by government incentives to tilt against the citizen."

Report: One Out of Every Five Registered Ohio Voters Is Bogus

Report: One Out of Every Five Registered Ohio Voters Is Bogus | The Gateway Pundit

A new report found that one out of every five Ohio voters was probably ineligible to vote.
Human Events reported:

Vote fraud is no big deal, right? It hardly ever happens. It’s so rare that it’s not even worth discussing. Anyone who claims to take the integrity of our ballots seriously is cynically exploiting phantom fears for the purpose of suppressing the Democrat-loving minority vote.

To keep that silly narrative alive, it’s important not to read the Sunday edition of theColumbus Dispatch, in which readers were informed that “more than one out of every five registered Ohio voters is probably ineligible to vote.”

Furthermore, “in two counties, the number of registered voters actually exceeds the voting age population: Northwestern Ohio’s Wood County shows 109 registered voters for every 100 eligible, while in Lawrence County along the Ohio River it’s a mere 104 registered per 100 eligible.”

31 more counties report over 90 percent voter registration, which is a good 20 percent higher than the national average. The Buckeye State sure is civic-minded! Well, except that 1.6 million of the 7.8 million registered voters in the state haven’t voted in at least four years. So I guess they were civic minded, once upon a time. Never fear – I’m sure plenty of those “inactive” voters will reactivate themselves just in time for Barack Obama’s re-election.

Student Loan Bubble? Just Discharge It

Student Loan Bubble? Just Discharge It | Zero Hedge:
"Meet Mike Hedlund.
This Klamath Falls native may have just made legal history by winning a 10 year battle to have the bulk of his $85,000 in federal student loans, which he accumulated as a law student at Willamette University in Salem, discharged.
The result of this legal decision will likely have epic implications for an entire generation drowning in debt, as it has now "opened the flood gates" for all those in Mike's position to challenge their massive debt encumbrance."

Venezuelans bishops warn government that there is a shortage of mass wine and hosts

Venezuelans bishops warn government that there is a shortage of mass wine and hosts — MercoPress:
"Officials in Venezuela are warning that the situation will not improve in the short term, she added."

Audit finds 1,164 dead among Mass. welfare recipients

Audit finds 1,164 dead among Mass. welfare recipients | Boston Herald:
 "A stunning $2 million in benefits were paid out to more than 1,160 people who were listed as dead, according to a scathing new audit of the Department of Transitional Assistance"

Immigration Bill Swells to Over One Thousand Pages

Immigration Bill Swells to Over One Thousand Pages

Stupid

P.J. O’Rourke

May 27, 2013 9:01 AM

“You’re stupid,” is not something even his most severe critics usually say to President Barack Obama. But on Friday morning I picked up the Wall Street Journal and learned that the president had given a speech about the war on terror saying, “This war, like all wars, must end.”

That story was at the top of the front page. Immediately below was a photograph of flowers being laid at a makeshift memorial near the Woolwich Royal Arsenal where machine gunner Lee Rigby was hacked to death by terrorists.

This war, like all wars, must end when someone wins it. The president—speaking at the National Defense University, of all places—said, “the core of al Qaeda . . . is on the path to defeat.” And so it may be. But meanwhile, the core of al Qaeda, its aims and its beliefs, is also on the path to Boston and London and any number of other places.

On page 7 of Friday’s Journal was the headline, “Suicide Bombings in Niger Linked to Mali Islamist Group.” On page 9 was a report of terrorist Hezbollah militias aiding the terrorist Assad regime in attacking the rebel-held Syrian city of Qusayr where the rebels themselves are allied with yet more Islamic terrorists. And on pages 4 and 8 were more bad tidings from that perpetrator, abettor, and friend of terrorism, Iran. Iranian fundamentalists, in the chokehold they have on the country’s political system, are improving their grip. And, “according to current and former U.S. officials,” Iran has “escalated a campaign of cyberassaults against U.S. corporations. . . . The hackers were able to gain access to control-system software that could allow them to manipulate oil or gas pipelines.”

All that on a slow news day.

In 2001 Congress passed the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, a declaration of war on terrorists and nations that harbor them. In his speech the president said, “I look forward to engaging . . . in efforts to refine and ultimately repeal the AUMF’s mandate.”

I like the president’s use of the word “efforts” here, as though he’s merely trying to be stupid. He doesn’t need to try. Earlier in the week he signed new policy guidance for drone strikes. In the future we will use lethal drones only on terrorists who are a “continuing and imminent threat to the American people” and not on terrorists who are a “significant threat to U.S. interests.” Although, assuming tremendously stupid efforts will be made to tell the two kinds of terrorists apart, maybe I’m wrong about the president not needing to try. The policy guidance also stipulates that there “must be a near certainty” that civilians won’t be killed or injured in a drone strike. Imagine how stupid a WWII Army Air Corps briefing officer would have had to be to say that to his B-17 pilots.

Maybe we pundits don’t tell President Obama, “You’re stupid,” because we are proudly showing off our sensitivity to the negative stereotypes that hurtful language engenders in a way that we didn’t feel was necessary when we were telling Ronald Reagan, George Bush and George W. Bush, “You’re stupid,” even though actors, WASPs, and Texans are burdened with their fair share of negative lamebrain stereotypes.

More likely it’s because we pundits prize signs of intelligence. We take every opportunity to display our own signs, and President Obama exhibits the same wordy, wonky, academic intelligence indicators that we do, so we don’t call him stupid.

As if the two things were mutually exclusive. I know quite a few fellow members of the news analysis and commentary business, and I have it from the highest-placed sources, on the record, that each and every one of our children is a genius. And yet, if we pundits were to gather together our sons and daughters, during their teenage years, and close them for a night in a dimly lit room full of beer and drugs and comfy futons, I can assure you that evidence of stupidity would be found the next morning.

But the most likely reason that we don’t call President Obama stupid is that it’s such a cul-de-sac of a word. Stupid gives the pundit nothing to perform punditry upon. Call a man ignorant and you have license to show the world your vast fund of knowledge and wise him up. Call a man misguided and you transform your column or blog post or TV appearance into a valuable and beneficent German shepherd with a handle on its back and you lead the poor soul in his blindness. Call a man, best of all, wicked and you get to don the sacramental vestments, climb into the pulpit and thunder forth with such a sermon as to bring him weeping to the font of righteousness or cause the Lord God Almighty to strike him with a thunderbolt in his pew or something fun like that. But call a man stupid and . . . there it is.

And there it is: Dopey stimulus, obtuse bailout, noodle-headed Obamacare, half-wit Dodd-Frank, damfool IRS Tea Party crashers, AP and Fox News beset by oafish peeping Toms and the Benghazi tale told by an idiot. One could go on. Stupid is a great force in human affairs. And the great force has a commander in chief.

P.J. O'Rourke is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard.

IRS Tea Party Intimidation An Echo Of Raids On Gibson Guitar

IRS Tea Party Intimidation An Echo Of Raids On Gibson Guitar - Investors.com

Mystery Contribution Kept ‘Dues Skim’ Alive

Mystery Contribution Kept ‘Dues Skim’ Alive [Michigan Capitol Confidential]:
"That's significant because the MQC3, the dummy employer used by the union to keep its forced unionization of home-based caregivers alive, had been previously defunded by the state government and thus would have been unable to keep facilitating the union's scheme."