What the?

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-OK) today released a new oversight report, “The National Science Foundation: Under the Microscope” that raises serious questions regarding the agency’s management and priorities. The report identifies more than $1.2 billion the National Science Foundation (NSF) has lost due to waste, fraud, duplication and mismanagement and an additional $1.7 billion in unspent funds.

Examples of the more than $3 billion in waste and duplication outlined in the report include:

• $80,000 study on why the same teams always dominate March Madness;

• $315,000 study suggesting playing FarmVille on Facebook helps adults develop and maintain relationships;

• $1 million for an analysis of how quickly parents respond to trendy baby names;

• $50,000 to produce and publicize amateur songs about science, including a rap called “Money 4 Drugz,” and a misleading song titled “Biogas is a Gas, Gas, Gas”;

• $2 million to figure out that people who often post pictures on the internet from the same location at the same time are usually friends; and

• $581,000 on whether online dating site users are racist.

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In Europe’s case he’s probably correct, America, not so much.

(PressTV) – Iranian Intelligence Minister Heidar Moslehi says the recent developments in the region are a prelude for Islam to prevail in the international arena.

“The recent events … show that the future of the world, including [that of] the US and Europe, belongs to Islam,” IRNA quoted Moslehi as saying at a conference in the central Iranian city of Karaj on Thursday.

The intelligence minister pointed to the recent popular revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen and other anti-government uprisings across the Arab world and argued that all of these movements are of Islamic nature, inspired by the Islamic Revolution in Iran.

Moslehi referred to the West’s “confusion” over the wave of the Islamic awakening, saying Western countries try to attribute the movements to “non-Islamic” roots.

The recent visits by US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to different parts of the world, particularly to the Middle Eastern countries, are aimed at “preventing further losses to the US interests in the region,” he added.

So if we called Randi Kaye a “slut” she’d be cool with it?

(Newsbusters) — Attempting to offer a defense of Ed Schultz, CNN’s Randi Kaye told guest Howard Kurtz Thursday that “there are mixed interpretations” of the term “slut,” which Schultz called conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham Thursday. Kaye also referred to Laura Ingraham’s response to Schultz as “biting,” proving that she possibly was harder on Ingraham than on tyrant Sadaam Hussein back in 2006.

“Yeah, but you know when you hear the word ‘slut’ – I mean I hate to even say it on our air, to be honest with you – but there are mixed interpretations about the word,” Kaye told Kurtz. The media critic didn’t buy it for a second.

Slightly taken aback by Kaye’s bizarre statement, Kurtz called the word “clearly a sexually-derogatory term,” when used in the context Schultz did, and added that “he realizes what he did.”

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No, not Michelle. The presidential limo.

(Evening Standard) — Barack Obama has been ordered to pay the congestion charge for his security vehicle “The Beast”, Boris Johnson revealed today.

The Mayor told the Standard each car in the President’s motorcade will be billed for £10 – including the bomb-proof Cadillac. Mr Johnson also said he had a discussion with Mr Obama about the US embassy’s refusal to pay £5.3 million in C-charge fines.

But the embassy said its position on not paying the C-charge was “wholly in accordance” with a convention on taxing diplomats. Mr Johnson said: “Our roads were not closed during the President’s visit so his motorcade will pay. The Beast will pay the charge, I’m delighted to say.

“We didn’t charge the Pope when he was here because all the roads were closed, so the Popemobile was exempt. But this was different.”

Mr Johnson raised the issue of the US embassy’s unpaid C-charge bill with the President during a state banquet at Buckingham Palace. He said: “We had a very friendly conversation. Suffice to say discussions will be ongoing.”

A spokesman for the Mayor later said: “They already owe £5.3 million so it is probable the bill for the motorcade will just go on top of that.”

How do you say “useful idiots” in Hebrew?

(JPost) — About 20 prominent Israeli figures from the Left have recently signed an open letter to European leaders urging them to support the Palestinian bid for independent statehood from the United Nations in September.

Led by the Israeli left-wing group Solidarity, signatories of the letter included former Knesset speaker Avraham Burg, former Foreign Ministry director-general Alon Liel, former head of the Civil Service Commission Itzhak Galnoor, and former Israeli ambassador to South Africa and the Philippines Ilan Baruch.

Academics who penned the letter included Nobel Prize winner Professor Daniel Kahneman, former president of the Israel Academy of Sciences Menahem Yaari, Israel Prize winners Yuval Yermiahu and Avishai Margalit and authors Nir Baram, Lea Eini, and Ronit Matalon.

Given the “mutual suspicions and foot-dragging” by both the Israelis and Palestinians, declaring Palestinian independence is “not only a right, but also a positive and constructive step in favor of both nations,” the signatories said.

“As Israeli citizens, we declare that if and when the Palestinian nation will declare an independent, sovereign state which will exist alongside Israel with peace and security, we will support this declaration and we will recognize a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders, with requested and agreed upon land swaps,” they added.

Joooo-lover!

(Ynet) — Unprecedented accusation against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: A Muslim cleric accused the Iranian president of wanting “friendship with Israel,” an Iranian website associated with the opposition reported on Thursday.

According to religious scholar Mahmoud Nubian, Ahmadinejad’s top adviser Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei stated three years ago that Iran should have “friendly ties” with the Jewish State, but Ahmadinejad has refrained from reiterating this position in public because of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s fierce objection.

Nubian further claimed that the Iranian president personally told him that he supported Mashaei’s statement, but couldn’t say anything out of respect to the leader.

The report came after several stormy weeks in the Iranian political apparatus over the unprecedented feud between Ahmadinejad and Khamenei. The latter, who is known as having the final say on all state matters, has been increasingly worried about Mashaei’s influence over the president, which is reinforced by their family relations, as Ahmadinejad’s daughter is married to Mashaei’s son.

(Haaretz) – Nearly half of the public felt “pride” at seeing Netanyahu address the joint session of Congress on Tuesday, while only 5 percent deemed it a “missed opportunity.” The rest expressed no opinion, while 20 percent of those questioned said they hadn’t watched the speech.

Israelis also don’t believe that U.S.-Israel relations have been harmed by the visit despite its attendant problems, tensions and disputes.

Some 27 percent of those polled said they believe relations between the two countries will actually improve as a result of the visit, while only 13 percent thought relations would deteriorate. Nearly half of those questioned don’t think there will be any change.

From the poll, it emerged that Netanyahu’s trip not only put a brake on the drop in his popularity ratings, but actually reversed the trend.

While in a Haaretz poll five weeks ago Netanyahu seemed to be in hot water with the public, with 38 percent expressing satisfaction with his performance and 53 percent disappointed with it, in yesterday’s poll the results were essentially reversed: 51 percent were satisfied, while 36 percent were not.

It’s doubtful that U.S. President Barack Obama enjoyed such a spike in his popularity after the assassination of Osama bin Laden.

As if we really needed it, here’s another example why the MSM can never be trusted. From the NY Times last week:

As Obama has claimed in the past, it’s because his middle name is “Hussein.”

(JPost) — US President Barack Obama’s attempt to portray himself as pro-Israel in a high-profile speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on Sunday did not succeed, according to a Smith Research poll sponsored by The Jerusalem Post.

The speech was intended to correct impressions that he was hostile toward Israel, which may have been reinforced by a landmark address about the Middle East that he delivered at the State Department last Thursday, and by a tense press conference at the White House on Friday with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

When asked in the poll whether they saw Obama’s administration as more pro-Israel, more pro-Palestinian or neutral, just 12 percent of Israeli Jews surveyed said more pro-Israel, while 40% said more pro-Palestinian, 34% said neutral and 13% did not express an opinion.

In one of their endless threads twisting Congressman West’s words and smearing his heroic military record (3 combat tours of duty), we have this especially vicious comment:

Drum roll please . . . A Japanese-owned Nissan Infinity.

(The Hill) – The chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) appears to drive a foreign car, despite criticizing Republican presidential candidates for supposedly favoring foreign auto manufacturers.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), the chairwoman of the DNC, ripped into Republican presidential contenders who opposed President Obama’s 2009 bailouts for General Motors and Chrysler.

“If it were up to the candidates for president on the Republican side, we would be driving foreign cars; they would have let the auto industry in America go down the tubes,” she said at a breakfast for reporters organized by The Christian Science Monitor.

But according to Florida motor vehicle records, the Wasserman Schultz household owns a 2010 Infiniti FX35, a Japanese car whose parent company is Nissan, another Japanese company. The car appears to be hers, since its license plate includes her initials.

The Infiniti FX35, sticker price roughly $38,000.

Update: MPG for the FX35 is a paltry 16 city/23 hwy. Not exactly “green” friendly.

Palin puts the fear of God in Tingles.

She isn’t out to win the presidency, but to lead a rebellion. Losing will only build her strength. It’s not the country she wants to lead, it’s the cause. Her cohorts don’t even expect her to want to run the government, they want someone out there leading the fight against it.

HT: Story Balloon

That’s right, ban websites because they write about conservative politics. You know, like the one you’re reading right now.

(MRC) — After hearing news the other day that the Obama administration had appointed a new position to monitor and push back against negative online press we thought some liberals in DC might think it wasn’t enough. So we sent Joe Schoffstall out to see just how far liberals would go to silence conservative speech. Joe went around Georgetown in DC with a petition to “Ban Conservative Hate Sites”. Here is what went down.

Stay strong my friends, we’ll get through this together.

(Politico) — President Barack Obama was leaving a Senate Republican meeting on the budget earlier this month when he unexpectedly bumped into Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) as they both came off the White House elevators.

It wasn’t a friendly chat.

Lugar voiced his objections directly to Obama about the U.S. military policy in Libya, raising concerns about its scope and cost and the lack of deliberation within Congress about the NATO bombing campaign.

It was the latest in a steady stream of criticisms Lugar has voiced about Obama’s policies and agenda. During the past several weeks, Lugar has blasted Obama in stark terms for lacking a “vision” in Afghanistan and for delivering an “over-the-top” partisan speech on immigration policy. Protesting Obama’s speech, Lugar has withdrawn his co-sponsorship of the DREAM Act, an immigration-reform measure. On Monday, Lugar sent a lengthy letter to the president about his administration’s “failure” to consult with Congress on the Libya campaign — even as a bipartisan group of seven other senators introduced a resolution backing the military conflict.

Lugar’s overt criticism points to a divorce of sorts between the elder statesman from Indiana and the young president, who regularly touted his relationship with Lugar during Obama’s 3½ years as a senator and throughout his presidential campaign.

The breakup comes as Lugar faces a tough primary from the right in his home state — his first such challenge since 1976.

…Lugar — a six-term Senate veteran — voted for McCain in the 2008 race, even though he stayed away from attacking Obama during the campaign and at times said positive things about the Democratic candidate.

Lugar now says Obama hasn’t called him on the phone to chat one on one about his thoughts and feelings — even though some Cabinet officials have solicited the 79-year-old Republican’s advice. Lugar says he attends meetings when invited by the White House, but the perception that he has frequent sessions with Obama has been vastly “overestimated,” as is any closeness with the president.

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CHRIS MATTHEWS: “Even when it is to fighting public employees, we have championed their cause on this network. They’re popular. Someone says get rid of bureaucrats. Chris [Cillizza] even get rid of bureaucrats in city hall. The drones in city hall, the drones down there hanging around drinking coffee all day or booze or whatever. Now that it comes to them, now the public roots for those guys and women.”

Not exactly shocking news, Galloway has always been at the forefront of the leftist-Islamist alliance.

(Newsmax) – George Galloway, the leader and founder of the U.K.-based group Viva Palestina, met with leaders of Palestinian Islamic Jihad while in Beirut, Lebanon this week, according to an article that ran in Arabic in the news outlet Palestine Today on Tuesday.

Galloway, a former member of parliament, flew to Beirut to accept the Takreem Award for Exceptional Contribution to Arab Society.

The Investigative Project on Terrorism’s translation of the Arabic article reveals that Galloway visited the office of Abu Imad Rifai, the representative of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in Lebanon.

Three others accompanied Galloway, including Viva Palestina leader Kevin Ovenden, and Rov Hoveman, a Viva Palestina spokesman and former assistant to Galloway when he served as a British MP. Several other leaders of PIJ in Lebanon received Galloway and his delegation.

The United States named the Palestinian Islamic Jihad a foreign terrorist organization in 1995. The European Union has a similar designation.

The group is responsible for dozens of large-scale suicide bombings against Israeli civilians, resulting in the death of American citizens as well. With financial backing from Iran, the terrorist group seeks to destroy Israel and create an Islamic state through the use of jihad.

For some bizarre reason unknown to anyone with an IQ over 75, Wasserman Shultz has decided being against the slaughter of the unborn means you hate women or something.

(US News) — In an emotional assault on the Republicans, new Democratic Party Chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Shultz today called the GOP agenda “anti-women” and “a war on women” that will backfire on Republicans in the 2012 election and provide a cushion for President Obama’s re-election bid.

“It’s just so hard for me to grasp how they could be so anti-women as they are,” she said at a breakfast roundtable with reporters.

“The pushback and the guttural reaction from women against the Republican’s agenda out of the gate, the war on women that the Republicans have been waging since they took over the House, I think is going to not only restore but possibly helps us exceed the president’s margin of victory in the next election,” added the popular Florida congresswoman.

The basis of her charge was the recent vote to defund Planned Parenthood and Title 10 funding for clinics that perform abortions.

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So they wouldn’t have a problem with a conservative man calling Michelle Obama a “slut?”

(RCP) — The heavy-hitters on “The View,” Barbara Walters, Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar were all okay with MSNBC’s Ed Schultz using the word “slut.”

…Behar explained why she is okay with the word being used and how she, her colleagues and female friends use the term ‘slut’ very loosely. Whoopi Goldberg, who educated us on the difference between ‘rape’ and ‘rape-rape,’ is absolutely okay with a man referring to a woman as a slut too.

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There’s irony in here somewhere.

(Politico) – With Vermont moving toward a single-payer health-care plan today, the single-payer advocacy groups whose voices went mostly unheard in the health care fight are launching a move to press the Department of Health and Human Services to grant the state key Medicare and Medicaid waivers.

Physicians for a National Health Program and the blog Firedoglake are launching a petition to Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that calls the Vermont plan “an important model for our nation.

“The people of Vermont, including the state’s doctors, nurses and other health professionals, have inspired the entire nation by their unflagging dedication to winning a publicly financed, comprehensive and equitable health care system based on the principle that health care is a human right,” said the physicians’ group’s president, Dr. Garrett Adams.

Hold on, we’re already bankrupt.

(Rasmussen) — Voters clearly aren’t confident that their elected officials will wrestle federal spending under control. In fact, many now think the government’s more likely to go belly up.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 50% of Likely U.S. Voters  think it’s more likely that the government will go bankrupt and be unable to pay its debt before the federal budget is balanced. Thirty-three percent (33%) believe the budget is more likely to be balanced first. Sixteen percent (16%) are undecided.

Sixty-four percent (64%) of Republicans and 59% of voters not affiliated with either major political party think a government bankruptcy is more likely than a balanced budget. Fifty-three percent (53%) of Democrats are less pessimistic and expect a balanced budget first.

Just 30% of voters believe it’s even somewhat likely that  the federal budget will be balanced again for a single year during their lifetimes. That includes only nine percent (9%) who feel it’s Very Likely.

Because the Koran says so.

…Elsewhere in Khartoum, a Christian mother of a 2-month-old baby was recovering of her injuries Wednesday, May 25, and remained destitute after she and her husband were attacked for leaving Islam for Christianity.

Omar Hassan and Amouna Ahamdi, both 27, said knife-wielding, masked assailants on May 4 attacked them after relatives learned that they had converted from Islam to Christianity.

Hassan told Compass Direct News agency that he and his wife were renting a house from her uncle in Khartoum, but he ordered them to leave after learning they had left Islam.

They earlier fled Nyala, 120 kilometers (75 miles) southwest of El-Fashir, for Khartoum in June 2010.  In the latest attack, a knife pierced the palm of Ahamdi, who said her brother had already stabbed her three times in the stomach nine months ago, seriously injuring her spleen, after she told him she had become a Christian.

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