From Byron York’s article on the Gore sex scandal:

…Finally she got away. Later, she talked to friends, liberals like herself, who advised against telling police. One asked her “to just suck it up; otherwise, the world’s going to be destroyed from global warming.”…

For liberals, advancing the agenda is all that matters – and if part of the price to be paid is that a person must be sexually violated by a liberal leader, then its ok. A bit of a grope is to be set against the possibility that Gore will save us all from global warming…

The thing to draw out of this is that everything is political with them. The only time it ceases to be so is when one of them comes to his or her senses and ceases to be a liberal. Take nothing they say at face value unless it is confirmed elsewhere by impeccable sources – you’ll never know when they are trying to snow you in the name of the Cause.

This exchange at the hearings is pretty much all we need to know about her:

Senator Coburn asks if Congress passes a law mandating we all eat our vegetables, would that go beyond the scope of the “commerce clause” – Kagan essentially declines to answer. We can only presume this is because she can’t think of anything which would not be covered by the “commerce clause” – that she can’t think of a power Congress doesn’t have, as long as they can dress it up as affecting inter-State commerce.

Kagan may be lots of things, but she has no business on America’s highest court.

From from the horse’s as..errmm, I mean from the horse’s mouth:

…We contracted with Research 2000 to conduct polling and to provide us with the results of their surveys. Based on the report of the statisticians, it’s clear that we did not get what we paid for. We were defrauded by Research 2000, and while we don’t know if some or all of the data was fabricated or manipulated beyond recognition, we know we can’t trust it…(Ed. Note: we normally do not link to hate sites, such as Daily Kos, but as the left believes Kos’ polls, this is an important bit of news worthy of an exception.)

I’m willing to give Kos the benefit of the doubt on this – the polls consistently came out the way he would have liked them to come out, and in the true fashion of the left, little or no effort will ever be made questioning the pro-left data (global warming was built up just like this). Kos is the victim here – but the victim of that leftist worldview which builds up barriers to free inquiry.

Research 2000 may have just seen an easy mark – I long ago figured out how I could become quite wealthy: just start feeding the left whatever it wants to hear. And if I did it as a conservative who saw the light and was trying to make amends for my previous wickedness, it would have been that much fatter a paycheck. The left doesn’t think, doesn’t question – lacks real world knowledge and is ill equipped to figure out a scam (thus Frank and Dodd, who largely created the financial crisis, are charged by the left with fixing it).

Given the level of suckerness (as it were) on the left, I could have carried off such a scam quite easily – but while I’m no saint, I’m not someone who can run a con like that. Kos was taken in – and will be, again. As sure as night follows day, the next person or entity who will tell Kos what he wants to hear will be believed by him without question…if it ever winds up differently, it will only be because Kos figures it out, and becomes a conservative.

UPDATE: Research 2000 is counter-suing Daily Kos?

…Ali’s attorney, Richard Beckler of Howrey LLP in Washington, told TPMmuckraker in an interview, “This guy is completely all wet. This allegation of fraud is absurd.” He added, “These guys are basically ruining Mr. Ali’s business.”

Beckler promised to take “some kind of action soon against all of them” — referring to Kos and the three authors of the analysis calling R2K’s data into question. He declined to elaborate…

I love it when lefties start ripping in to each other.

Alex Daley over at Casey Research lays out the very depressing case:

…For the first time in a long time, developed governments in Europe and the U.S. face the specter of sub-AAA credit ratings and rapidly rising costs of borrowing more (ratings that, frankly, had they been put in place by the inept agencies years ago when they were initially deserved may have had repercussions that would have helped us avoid many of today’s problems). Between rising borrowing costs, the already hefty budgetary burden of paying prior debt interest, and the ever-expanding rolls of government employees, legislators can hardly keep up on the bills these days, let alone inject any more into the economy.

The irony, of course, is that by unloading a full clip from the assault rifle when trying to “save” the economy, the governments of the OECD nations have actually created a catch-22 situation. One wherein they not only have no tools left to manipulate the markets against a further slowdown, but also where they have created monetary policy so extreme that undoing it would be more disastrous than the fallout would have been had they not stepped in in the first place….

As I’ve said before, there isn’t any way to avoid the next part of the crash. I don’t think there ever was, as Keynesian pump-priming has never worked. Oh, I know it is a matter of liberal religious faith that such policies cured the Great Depression, but that is just utter nonsense, as can be seen with a cursory glance at the relevant data. Be that as it may, even if such things do work, there’s no way to do it any longer – we’re simply out of money. Even if you whistle up a couple trillion more dollars at the Federal Reserve, all you’ll do is move the crisis from one set of bankrupt entities to another – you might buy yourself a few weeks, if you do that…and just make matters worse, in the long run.

We are going to be forced to balance our budget by simple fact of not being able to borrow any more money. Initially upon the crash, no one will have any to lend – later, anyone who has rebuilt a bit of wealth will stay away from government issued debt as too risky. It will be very, very painful – but, bankruptcy always is. The good news is that once we’re out of it, we’re done – we can start rebuilding again…and, hopefully, learn our lesson and pass relevant laws forbidding both the issuance of government debt as well as government backing for any private, financial transaction. Government debt, in the sense we know it, was invented almost by accident in the 18th century (and was created largely to bail out idiots who got themselves wrapped up in a stock market bubble…sound familiar?) – taking the long view of things (as I like to do), we can see that the three century experiment in this has failed. We should not try it, again.

HAT TIP: Mish’s

From Reuters via ABC News – the “unexpected” news:

…The group’s index of consumer attitudes fell to 52.9 in June from a downwardly revised 62.7 in May. The June figure was sharply below the median of forecasts from analysts polled by Reuters…

Happy talk from banksters and bureaucrats only goes so far…and then people see their home values continue to drop, unemployment remains high and essentially everything going to economic heck in a hand basket. Reality is just setting in.

Sorry for the light blogging, everyone – I’m on a “stay-cation” this week and thus am spending time with the Mrs and friends getting as much fun as you can in a town like Las Vegas…which is, of course, quite a lot.

I’ll try to have something good for you later today.

They seem rather upset the people of Chicago may obtain the means of self defense – from the Associated Press:

A Supreme Court ruling finding that Americans have the right to bear arms anywhere they live almost certainly means the end of Chicago’s decades-old handgun ban but may not make handgun ownership there much easier.

Mayor Richard M. Daley says city officials have been looking at various measures they could implement to make owning a handgun difficult and that he plans to quickly put the measures before the City Council…

Translation: “But we don’t want an armed population.” Armed populations tend to irk big government types as there may yet come a point where government has become so big and corrupt that a pistol shot might prove necessary as a corrective. Daley doesn’t want any of that – that could just open up the door for more demands on matters of personal liberty, and no liberal ever want to be in the position of helping liberty. Just too difficult.

Tyler Durden over at Zero Hedge reports the bad news from China:

The debate of China’s double dip may have just been sealed after the “Conference Board corrected its April gauge for the outlook of China’s economy, saying its leading index for the country rose the least since November, rather than registering the biggest gain in 14 months. The gauge compiled by the New York-based research group rose 0.3 percent, less than the 1.7 percent gain reported on June 15.” Ignoring for a second the fact that such massive swings in amplitude imply either a malicious data misrepresentation intent or weapons grade stupidity, the second derivative in Chinese growth has now peaked, just at the time when the country for whatever optically political reason decided to unpeg its currency. We are now looking forward to the official rescinding of that decision, and a resumption of the peg…

That is rather amazing, isn’t it? Not just a small adjustment, that – its like a night and day difference in the data. Normally, I’d like to think this represents weapons grade stupidity, but I’m concerned that economic data might be manipulated these days. At any rate, manipulated or not this news beat the heck out of Asian stocks in Tuesday trading, while at this time (2:34 am EDT), US stock futures are in the dumpster. Might be a long day on Wall Street.

But even if this is shrugged off or masked by happy talk from other areas, its going to be a long year or two for everyone.

…might have the power to kill the internet for all of us?

Obama will be handed the power to shut down the Internet for at least four months without Congressional oversight if the Senate votes for the infamous Internet ‘kill switch’ bill, which was approved by a key Senate committee yesterday and now moves to the floor.

The Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, which is being pushed hard by Senator Joe Lieberman, would hand absolute power to the federal government to close down networks, and block incoming Internet traffic from certain countries under a declared national emergency.

Despite the Center for Democracy and Technology and 23 other privacy and technology organizations sending letters to Lieberman and other backers of the bill expressing concerns that the legislation could be used to stifle free speech, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee passed in the bill in advance of a vote on the Senate floor.

So, what are your thoughts?

So says this story:

As unconfirmed reports of an imminent Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities pick up steam in the Middle Eastern media, a US-based strategic intelligence company has released a chart showing US naval carriers massing near Iranian waters.

The chart, published by Stratfor and obtained by the Zero Hedge financial blog, shows that over the last few weeks a naval carrier — the USS Harry S Truman — has been positioned in the north Indian Ocean, not far from the Strait of Hormuz, which leads into the Persian Gulf. The carrier joins the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, which was already located in the area. The chart is dated June 23, 2010…

I’m not so sure about this – Obama has proven so incredibly weak about Iran that I find it hard to believe he’s suddenly found the back bone to act. On the other hand, a successful military strike against Iran could repair some of his public image, thus helping him and his Democrats heading in to the fall (hate to think he’s use a strike for such political purposes…but we have precedent in the form of Clinton’s egregiously deflective military action in 1998 at the time of th Lewinsky/impeachment scandal).

An alternate view is that Obama has actually stationed assets in the area to discourage Israeli action – you know, make it look like we’re going to act so the IDF stands down, and then do nothing while Iran feverishly completes its first nuclear weapon.

Finally, I think that an outright military offensive, unless we’re convinced that Iran is literal days or weeks from an operational weapon (and “operational” doesn’t mean just having one – but having one, plus the swift ability to make more coupled with a proven delivery system) is not the way to go. If we’ve got any time, at all, we should first rather quietly impose a blockade against gasoline shipments to Iran – Iran imports a very large percentage of its gasoline. If that doesn’t get their attention, then we go for a full blockade, destruction of Iran’s limited refining capacity and only as a last resort bomb the known and suspected nuclear sites.

We’ll have to see how this comes out.