Bond ... James Bond

In a story that sounds like something straight out of a James Bond movie,

Sexpot spy Anna Chapman came close to snaring a member of President Obama's inner circle in a honey trap, a top U.S. intelligence official has claimed... In a documentary broadcast last night, FBI counter-intelligence chief Frank Figliuzzi claimed the glamorous Russian agent got close enough to 'disturb' U.S. spy catchers.

He said the fear that Miss Chapman was close to seducing a sitting member of the Obama administration spurred agents to swoop on the 10-strong spy ring of which she was a part... Mr Figliuzzi told the Channel 4 documentary the auburn-haired spy got 'closer and closer to higher and higher ranking leadership... she got close enough to disturb us'.

Jeez, I wish the FBI could have held off long enough to catch Ms. Chapman in flagrante delicto with whoever the administration horn-dog is. I'd love to know who is this administration's Bill Clinton or JFK.

Doug Ross speculates, hilariously, on who it might be.

Warning: don't drink liquids while viewing.

Wine - The New State Secret

I'm more of a beer guy then a wine aficionado. On occasion, however, I do like to indulge in a nice glass or two of vino. When I do, I usually seek out what I like to call 'value wines.' To me, that means reasonably palatable and priced around $20 per box bottle.

I realize that there are better vintages out there. And I certainly understand that when hosting the leaders of other nations it is appropriate to serve a high-quality selection of wines. But that doesn't mean those wines have to cost in the neighborhood of $400 per bottle.

When British Prime Minister David Cameron visits President Barack Obama this week, one detail may stay bottled up: the labels on the wines the White House pours at the state dinner tomorrow night.

For Obama’s first three state dinners, honoring the leaders of India, Mexico and China, the White House released the name, year and appellation of wines—all-American—paired with each course.

Part of a tradition observed by previous presidents, including George W. Bush, that disclosure stopped after Obama’s dinner last year for Chinese President Hu Jintao. One of the wines served on Jan. 19, 2011, was a top-rated 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon from Washington state that originally sold for $115 a bottle and went for as much as $399 by the time of the dinner.

Just another example of obama's belief that nothing's too good for him - especially when he's spending other people's money. (Remember that Hawaiian vacation? Or the one at Martha's Vineyard? Or the many others that he and/or Michelle have enjoyed at our expense?)

At the next state dinner, on June 7, 2011, for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the menu made public by the White House didn’t include details on the wines.

Another time-honored American tradition ignored and discarded by the Wino-in-Chief.

Quelle surprise!

Obama and Hu sharing a toast. At $400 per bottle, and about 5 glasses to the bottle, they're each holding $80 worth of wine.

This Message Brought To You Courtesy Of...

Due to time constraints, this post is shamelessly stolen borrowed linked to from Moonbattery:

In the race to achieve the status of America’s worst president, Barack Hussein Obama has left Jimmy Carter choking on his dust.

Obama has hit one more Carter benchmark – both saw gas prices double in their first term of office.

In fact, while just barely, Obama has seen an even higher gas price increase than Carter dealt with under his administration.

Under the Carter administration, gas prices increased by 103.77 percent. Gas prices since Obama took office have risen by 103.79 percent. No other presidents in recent years have struggled as much with soaring oil prices. Under the Reagan administration, gas prices actually dropped 66 percent.

The difference is that Obama has been causing gas prices to rise on purpose, as part of the insane, antihuman green ideology that animates his hard left base. This is why the Keystone XL pipeline was nixed, why drilling is not allowed off most of our coasts, why the BP spill was seized upon as a pretext to strangle the Gulf oil industry, why drilling on government-owned land is down, et cetera.

Thanks, guys.

Is There No End To This Clown's Ego?

I don't know how many readers of this blog are under forty -- my guess is probably not too many -- but for those of you who are, be advised that your generational designation has been changed.

President Obama has renamed the generation under 40 years of age

Rather than “millennials,” that generation has now been rebranded as "generation 44." The number 44 stands for 44th president. In other words, Obama has named the generation after himself.

Here's an excerpt from the official Gen44 web site.

As President Obama told us in 2008 and continues to remind us now, the work did not end on Election Day. We made commitments to each other about what we hope tomorrow looks like and what we believe our country can be and they are commitments we must fight for every day. From our commitment to these ideals, we created Generation Forty Four or Gen44 for short—a council to cultivate and empower a rising generation of leaders in the Democratic Party. Gen44 will work with this groundbreaking group, all under the age of 40, to serve as a platform for political mobilization and to ensure that President Obama and Democrats have the resources and infrastructure needed to implement the change we believe in.

As part of this bold new initiative, the obama campaign has created the twitter tag #gen44. Like so much of what this gang-that-can’t-shoot-straight touches, it immediately became a total fiasco.

We aren’t sure why, but for some reason President Obama and the Democrats keep creating and promoting hashtags despite the fact that conservatives inevitably take over the hashtags in order to mock them. This time the hashtag is #Gen44, and was meant to be a place where young Obama supporters expressed their admiration for him. Instead, conservatives are dominating the hashtag with tweets that criticize the President and some of his most naive supporters.

Some of the better ones:

I'm not #gen44, I work for a living.

I'm #gen1040

Whining beats working. #Gen44

#gen44 We don't stand for anything so we'll fall for everything!

#Gen44 Being told what to do is much easier than thinking for yourself.

#Gen44 because I'm too lazy to succeed on my own talents. Now hand over my free stuff!

#gen44: Because this time I want Obama to win all 57 States

#Gen44 Because I believe the largest economy the world has ever known can be run on solar panels, windmills and algae.

#Gen44 A Chevy Volt in every garage.

The mocking of Gen44 doesn't stop there.

(Gen44 Magnum image from here).

The only thing that comes close to rivaling obama's ego is the national debt.

I'll agree that he deserves the lion's share of the credit for that.

Don't Confuse Revenge With Justice

I was going to stay out of the whole Trayvon Martin controversy. After all, there’s been so much written and said about that sad incident. What do I have to add that hasn’t already been said by others? But the uproar not only continued, but intensified. The cries for George Zimmerman’s head on a pike got louder, while at the same time more details leaked out that indicated perhaps we haven’t heard the whole story.

So I thought maybe I’d just toss out a little reminder to withhold judgment until all the facts are in. Didn’t we see the folly of leaping to conclusions in the Richard Jewell affair (he was the security guard at the Atlanta Olympics who was first hailed as a hero for finding a bomb in the Olympic Park, then accused and convicted by the media as the bomber, only to be later exonerated)?

Or the rape accusations against the Duke lacrosse team? (A black woman claimed to have been raped by three white Duke students. The media took the story and ran with it, proclaiming it a hate crime. Later, of course, it turned out that the woman falsely accused the students, and the prosecutor ended up being disbarred for legal and ethical violations in his zeal to convict the students.)

Or, more recently, the Jared Loughner case? (Loughner shot former U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and several others at a rally in Arizona. The media immediately linked the shooting to ‘uncivil’ conservative rhetoric. Once again, after further investigation, the facts indicated otherwise. Loughner was a mentally troubled person who, if anything, had liberal leanings.)

So I figured I could be a voice of reason, suggesting that we sit back and let cooler heads prevail. Politicians and special interest groups would stand back and let the investigation proceed. The truth will come out and justice will prevail.

Yeah, right … and unicorns will jump over the rainbow.

Just as in the Duke and Loughner cases, the leftists and their allies in the media have no interest in justice. All they care about is politicizing this whole tragic affair for their own gain.

Don’t believe that last statement? Check out the following.

An obama stooge masquerading as an alleged MSNBC journalist blamed the shooting on the Koch brothers, the NRA, and other assorted conservative groups.

And speaking of MSNBC, we all know they are to obama as Monica was to Bill Clinton. But this time, they’ve outdone themselves. MSNBC altered the 911 call George Zimmerman made. Here’s MSNBC’s version:

"This guy looks like he’s up to no good … He looks black."

Here’s the actual full quote.

ZIMMERMAN: This guy looks like he’s up to no good, or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.

911 DISPATCHER: Okay, is this guy, is he white, black, or Hispanic?

ZIMMERMAN: He looks black.

Makes a big difference, doesn't it. It goes from making it sound like Zimmerman is biased or profiling blacks to showing that he was simply responding to a question from the police dispatcher. That goes way beyond journalistic license and ventures into deliberately twisting a quote to misrepresent the truth.

Finally, we have the obama campaign peddling official “obama 2012” hoodies. They hit the market on March 26, just days after the shooting.

Despicable? Certainly. Coincidence? I think not.

So if I did have something to add to this whole mess, it would be this one simple statement: Revenge and Justice are not the same thing.

Everyone wants (or should want) justice in this case. But so many people are out for revenge that it is frightening – especially when they don’t even know all the facts.

That sounds an awful lot like a lynching. Given the racial circumstances of this case, the irony is obvious.

It's been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Here's a few pictures that speak volumes, along with links to sites that have commentary worthy of your attention.

(H/T Day by Day)

(H/T Peter)

(H/T Hope-N-Change)

Shocking News

Would the government mislead us?

Would a large corporation mislead us?

Would a hybrid government/corporate organization mislead us?

** Snort **

I speak, of course, of that unholy alliance between obama and General Motors, and its bastard offspring - the Chevy Volt. (H/T Doug Ross for the link.)

About eight months ago some owners of Chevy Volts complained that charging cords were overheating, sometimes to the point of melting. At the time, GM blamed owners, saying the wall outlets were the culprits. We now finally have GM addressing the safety concerns and agreeing to replace charging cords for all 9,500 Volts that have been sold since production began. But in what is becoming a new public relations precedent, the move is not being called a "recall."

The non-recall recall is instead referred to as a customer satisfaction action which is designed to "offer a more consistent charging experience."

"More consistent charging experience" - as in your garage doesn't burn down.

The political strategy is becoming more and more evident at GM as Chevy Volt sales continue to struggle and the 2012 presidential election nears. Excuses have been made for low sales of the Volt, starting with supply constraints and more recently involving a Republican conspiracy to hurt sales. GM refuses to admit the real reason that the Volt doesn't sell well is that the car is too expensive for most consumers and the savings from gas usage do not justify the high cost.

That's what happens when the government takes an ownership position in a private-sector business. If you think this is bad, just wait and see what happens if obamacare is ever implemented.

This is the second recall customer satisfaction action for the Volt.

The first non-recall was for reinforcements to the battery pack after test vehicles at NHTSA ignited days after crash tests. In both cases, GM was adamant that there is absolutely nothing wrong with the Volt; it is either the fault of owners with faulty wiring or right-wing media sources.

In a scary combination of corporate and government bullying, "GM has stepped up ad spending for the Volt on those TV networks that are accused of criticizing the car. The spending seems to be quieting the criticism."

As always, politics is trumping reason, logic, and facts.

The main subject for debate regarding the Chevy Volt and cars like it, is the taxpayer costs versus benefits, not how popular the car is or isn't. Let's summarize once again what the proposed goal of President Obama to have a million electric vehicles on the road within a few years does and what it costs. If Obama gets his way, each car gets a $10,000 tax credit. This goes to the wealthy buyers of the cars or to the dealers if the cars are sold to the government. Disregarding state credits, infrastructure costs and other subsidies for the industry we have a cost to taxpayers of $10 billion. Given the assumption that there will be about 250 million passenger vehicles on the US roads that account for less than 50% of the nation's oil consumption, we get a reduction in oil dependence of less than 0.2 percent. That's $10,000,000,000 for a 0.2 percent reduction in oil usage.

And that's ignoring the fact that electric cars are ridiculously impractical for anything but short trips (short being defined as a round trip of 50 miles or less), for two reasons. One, there are very few charging stations in this country, meaning that electric car drivers must charge them at home. Two, it takes a long time to fully charge an electric car.

The good news for Volt-heads is that Electric Highways are spreading like wildfire molasses.

First big piece of ‘Electric Highway’ gets juice

Electric car owners riding along Oregon’s Interstate 5 don’t have to worry about running out of juice on the open road.

The first major stretch of what’s been dubbed an “Electric Highway” on the West Coast from Canada to Mexico went operational Friday with the opening of a series of fast-charging stations along 160 miles of the interstate.

They are spaced about every 25 miles, so a Nissan Leaf with a range of about 70 miles can miss one station and still make it to the next. Electric car drivers will be able to recharge in about 20 minutes. The charge is free for now.

“I would say range-anxiety with these fast chargers will be nearly a non-issue for me,” said Justin Denley, who owns a Nissan Leaf. Inspired by the stations, his family is planning a trip from Medford to Portland, a distance of about 280 miles.

Last summer, he took the family on a 120-mile trip to the coast and had to include an overnight stop at an RV park to charge up.

Now, thanks to the benefits of the Electric Highway, Denley "expects the trip to Portland to take perhaps three hours longer than in a gas car."

Adding three hours to a 280 mile trip means a trip that would ordinarily take between 4 - 5 hours will now take around eight: almost a 50% increase.

The tradeoff, of course, is time for money. The trip will take longer but cost less - at least on an energy-per-mile basis. But when you factor the sticker price differential (a Nissan leaf sticker price is around $38K while a conventional Nissan Versa goes for around $11K), well, $27K buys a lot of gas, even at $4.00 per gallon.

Something to think about: Interstate 5 stretches 1,350 miles from British Columbia to Baja, Calif.

So it seems pretty clear that the electric car won't be replacing gasoline-powered ones at any time in the near future.

That is, assuming the government let's the free market do its job...