First Came The Marxist, title and sleuthing from SDA. For comments click on the link.

President Obama is expected to announce late this week that he will create a “cyber czar,” a senior White House official who will have broad authority to develop strategy to protect the nation’s government-run and private computer networks, according to people who have been briefed on the plan.

The adviser will have the most comprehensive mandate granted to such an official to date and will probably be a member of the National Security Council but will report to the national security adviser as well as the senior White House economic adviser, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the deliberations are not final.

….more here from the Washington Post

Bad optics for Michael Ignatieff’s visit

I should know by now to carry my camera with me everywhere.
Yesterday, national Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff spoke at the Dartmouth Sportsplex arena to shore up support for provincial Liberal Party leader Stephen McNeil. I was downstairs in the gym.

When I left, there was the Liberal Party van parked sideways across six handicap parking spaces, with cones and ribbons around it lest any handicapped driver get any ideas.

The Sportsplex blocks these spaces with uncomfortable regularity, but you gotta wonder why none of the Liberal handlers or pols didn’t say, “Hey, the optics are all wrong here, let’s park on the other side of the door and block the non-restricted parking instead.”

It could, I suppose, be argued that there is a surplus of handicap parking spaces at the Sportsplex—there are four immediately in front of the door, with the six across the lane from the door; I rarely see more than three or four in use, but on the other hand, if they’re all going to be used it’ll be for some high-profile event like, say, the appearance of the national leader of a political party.

Arguments about what’s the right number of handicap parking spaces aside, they evidently were felt necessary (or were required by law) when the Sportsplex was built, and the spaces should be sacrosanct regardless.

Lorne Gunter: The Liberal way with hypocrisy

What hypocrites the Liberals are. For more than four decades, the Liberal Party of Canada has deliberately confused its policies with our national interest, then labelled as “un-Canadian” anyone who disagreed with them.

Not a fan of government monopoly health care? You’re un-Canadian. Not big on easy unemployment benefits, official bilingualism, dismantling our military, beggaring our economy in the name of environmentalism, coddling criminals, huge public debts, activist judges, multiculturalism, foreign investment reviews, national energy policies and so on? Shame on you for being so un-Canadian.

Now the Tories are using the Liberals’ own tactic against them and the Grits are sputtering with indignation…..

….full story HERE.

My conservative, libertarian and other capitalists friends still seem unable at times to come to grips with how precisely Barack Obama got elected. And while I try to explain to them that the American public is more interested in American Idol or “how the Twins are doing” than they are things like the federal budget, constitutional law, etc., they still don’t seem to understand, that yes, a critical mass of the population is hopelessly ignorant and it is a hopeless situation.

HERE

paleontologist Jorn Hurum, who led the team that analyzed the 47-million-year-old fossil…

…full article and photos HERE.

“Now California’s mostly Democratic political class will petition Washington for a bailout to nourish the public sector that is suffocating the state’s dwindling — and departing — private sector. The Obama administration, which rewarded the United Auto Workers by giving it considerable control over two companies it helped reduce to commercial rubble, will serve the interests of California’s unionized public employees and others largely responsible for reducing the state to mendicancy. … “

California, the sunny incubator of America’s future, has relished its role as a leading indicator of political trends. Tuesday it became what it thinks it should be, the center of attention, but not in the way it wants to be.

….read full article HERE