Monday wrapup

For some, Apple’s brand is already losing its luster. George F. Colony, Chairman and CEO of Forrester Research, says Apple is a "charismatic organization" but lost that edge when the co-founder Steve Jobs died. Without Jobs, he believes the company’s momentum will only last for another 24 to 48 months. Russell Saint Cyr, a Montreal-based IT consultant, recently swapped his iPhone for a Samsung Nexus S. He says it allows him to back up his music without connecting his phone to his PC, it’s cheaper and has a bigger screen. That, and he didn’t want to follow the herd. Among techies, Saint Cyr says, the iPhone is already uncool: "It’s marketed towards simple folk who like shiny objects and dislike complexity, like Mac users who can’t handle two buttons on a mouse." Source

From the Wall Street Journal...The White House distanced itself Thursday from comments made in 2010 by the head of the Environmental Protection Agency's Dallas regional office, but didn't indicate the Obama appointee would be fired. In a video released this week, Al Armendariz, chief of the EPA office that oversees Texas, Oklahoma and three other states, compared his "philosophy of enforcement" to Roman conquerors who would "find the first five guys they saw and they'd crucify them. And that town was really easy to manage for the next few years."

Just as U.S. tax dollars have gone to subsidize electric cars made in Finland by Fisker Automotive, state-of-the-art technology developed by Ener1, which was also supposed to rejuvenate the American auto industry, is now owned outright by Boris Zingarevich, a Russian businessman with ties to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Story

Symptoms of the illness called Liberalism?...far lower levels of happiness by those on the left, much lower fertility by those without spiritual values, and outright national decline among nations that swallow leftism. Leftism is rebellion. It is by definition a counterpoint, defined by what it is against rather than being something itself. If it actually wins, it brings its own destruction.

Headline of the day..."Protestors Who Attended Second-Rate College Would Like People Who Only Finished Second-Rate High School To Pay Their Loans"

Runnerup headline of the day..."Has America been Crippled by Intellectual Idiots?"

Third best headline of the day..."Is Slow Growth Actually Good for the Economy?"

Yahoo had a poll of whether Michelle Obama would make a good president. 70% said no, she doesn't have what it takes.

A black man in suburban Chicago told police he jumped a white man last week because he was upset about the Trayvon Martin case, police said. Hayes was charged with committing a hate crime Wednesday, as well as attempted robbery and aggravated battery. Story

Woman kills man by squeezing his testicles over parking dispute

When the Spanish online voting company SCYTL bought the largest vote processing corporation in the United States, it also acquired the means of manufacturing the outcome of the 2012 election. For SOE, the Tampa based corporation purchased by SCYTL in January, supplies the election software which records, counts, and reports the votes of Americans in 26 states–900 total jurisdictions–across the nation. Story

Did you know?...It took from 1776 to 1982 to rack up the first trillion dollars in debt. Today we're looking at over $15 trillion in debt.

Bumper sticker..."Promise you'll vote in November. Don't renege"

Congressman Allen West (R-FLA)..."The American people … want a constitutional republic, not a socialist, egalitarian welfare nanny state ... The American people want an economic future so bright that they will have to wear sunglasses."

Donna Brazile, Al Gore's campaign director, said in 2000..."The Democratic Party is the party of blacks, women and gays."

Unemployment rate in Spain is at 24.4 percent, the highest rate in the EU.

Tropical diseases invading Texas...Houston scientists have launched an attack against little-known tropical diseases, scourges of the developing world, increasingly showing up in poor areas of Texas. Story

Chaperones for Secret Service agents? We need chaperones for all our congressmen and senators!

George W. Bush on a bike ride with wounded warriors. Fuck you, Leftists.

Tim McCarver said one of the stupidest things ever spoken on a television broadcast today, blaming global warming for "making the air thin" and thus leading to a rise in home runs. Story

The federal government has been investigating Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona's Maricopa County for three and a half years and still haven't charged him with anything. Sounds like a Keystone Kop witchhunt to me. Hang in there, Joe.

The EPA is supposed to protect the environment, not crucify industries that which it dislikes. But as the sensational video that recently surfaced shows, all too often the agency does the latter. Story

Attorney Pidgeon claims he found a record for a name change from "Barak Mounir Ubayd" to "Barack Hussein Obama" on October 14th, 1982 in Skookumchuck, British Columbia. Source

A $231 million public employee pension fund has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The assets on hand cannot pay the $931 million in claims the fund faces, and the trustees plan to "restructure" their obligations under bankruptcy law. In other words, they will be cutting the benefits they pay to a level the fund can afford. Story

Last year, a record 120 Americans were killed in Mexico, compared with just 35 in 2007. Most happened in areas bordering the U.S. But for the first time, a significant number of murders occurred in previously peaceful areas like Jalisco state, where 14 Americans were killed, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis of U.S. State Department data.