Author: Papa Giorgio

Acuity Insurance Flagpole Is The Tallest Flagpole In North America

Published by Papa Giorgio

  Flagpole Facts:

  • 400-foot flagpole weighs approximately 420,000 pounds
  • There are two versions of the 60- by 120-foot flag:
    – 220 pound flag is flown during normal conditions
    – 350 pound flag is flown during harsher weather
  • Each star is 3 feet high and each stripe is 4 1/2 feet wide
  • 680 cubic yards of concrete used in foundation
  • Over 500 gallons of paint cover the pole
  • 11-foot diameter at base tapers to 5 1/2-foot diameter at top
  • Three pendulum-style tuned mass dampers reduce movement and vibration
  • Designed to withstand a low temperature of -42°F

For more videos, images, and information visit the Acuity Flagpole project page.

Jake Tapper Calls B.S. on White House — ISIS Graduated

Published by Papa Giorgio

Obama’s “JayVee” team has gone pro, at least according to the State Dept, via Conservative Hideout 2.0:

According to Obama and his advisors al-Qaeda went from being “on the path to defeat” to having a standing army.

Via CNS News:

A State Department official who just returned from a seven-week trip to Iraq, said the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) – or the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) – is no longer just a terrorist group.

“ISIL is no longer simply a terrorist organization,” Brett McGurk, deputy assistant secretary for Iraq and Iran at the U.S. Department of State, said at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Wednesday. “It is now a full-blown army seeking to establish a self-governing state through the Tigress and Euphrates Valley in what is now Syria and Iraq.”

ISIS continues to expand its hold on territory in Iraq, including overtaking the city of Mosul on June 10. Since then, the Sunni extremists have targeted Christians who are reportedly being told they have three choices: Convert to Islam, pay a fine or be killed. As a result, most, if not all, Christians have fled the city.

We would be in a much better place, today, if Mitt were President. Why? Because he understood the importance of the long-term threat. JayVeee, please!

Beethoven’s “Fur Elise,” With a Twist (End w/Music from Titanic)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Via The Blaze:

Hearing the same song over and over again can get grating. Add having to be in an airport on top of that and you might just get pushed over the edge.

But while this would likely prove to be an unpleasant experience in most cases, one musician tackled the situation in such a way that he actually provided entertainment for travelers waiting for a flight in Prague.

Maan Hamadeh might have tickled the ivories to the tune of Beethoven’s Fur Elise for more than two minutes, but he kept changing up the style, showing that the song doesn’t always have to carry its typically classic tune….

How Is Obama’s Economic Recession the Worst? Larry Elder Explains

Published by Papa Giorgio

Larry Elder weighs in with an older article from 2011: Economy: Reagan Gets No Credit, Obama Gets No Blame

Ronald Reagan did nothing. Barack Obama saved the nation from total collapse.

How else to explain the absence of jobless pitchfork-wielding Americans storming the White House? How else to explain the contrast between the explosive Reagan Recovery and the dud on our hands right now? Fortunately, the left is up to the task.
“The secret of the long climb after 1982 was the economic plunge that preceded it. By the end of 1982 the U.S. economy was deeply depressed, with the worst unemployment rate since the Great Depression. So there was plenty of room to grow before the economy returned to anything like full employment,” said left-wing economist, Nobel laureate and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman in 2004. Oh.

An economy that is “deeply depressed,” Krugman insists, or at least he did seven years ago, naturally comes back strong. To what principal factor did Krugman point to in calling the 1982 economy “deeply depressed”? Unemployment. It peaked in the early ’80s at 10.8 percent, even higher than during “The Great Recession” (aka the economy “inherited” by President Barack Obama). In 2010, the unemployment rate hit 10.2 percent, which means the early ’80s still holds the record for the “worst unemployment rate since the Great Depression.”

What most people care about are jobs. By that standard, Reagan faced an even tougher economy. Throw in a higher rate of inflation — 1980’s 13.5 percent average vs. 2011’s 2.6 percent — and much higher prime interest rates — 20 percent vs. 3.25 percent — and the early ’80s looked even grimmer than The Great Recession.

Krugman gives no credit to the Reagan policies of lower taxes, deregulation and a slowdown in the rate of government spending. He believes Reagan’s policies (SET ITAL) harmed (END ITAL) the economy. Krugman approvingly quotes Bill Clinton, who, as a presidential candidate, said: “The Reagan-Bush years have exalted private gain over public obligation, special interests over the common good, wealth and fame over work and family. The 1980s ushered in a Gilded Age of greed and selfishness, of irresponsibility and excess, and of neglect.”

Enter President Barack “Hope and Change” Obama, with a Democratic majority in the House and a supermajority filibuster-proof Senate. Out went policies like reductions in income taxes, corporate taxes, capital gains and dividends. In came transfers of money from one pocket to another to “spread the wealth.”

Under ObamaCare, the Democrats placed the entire health care system under the command and control of the federal government. Through a nearly $1 billion “stimulus” package, Democrats spent money on “shovel-ready” projects with a promise to “save or create” 3.5 million jobs. To rein in “greed” and to fight “climate change,” the Obama administration imposed billions of dollars’ worth of new regulations on businesses. Through “quantitative easting,” the Federal Reserve effectively printed money to keep interest rates low, a widely disputed policy designed to encourage banks to lend and businesses to borrow.

So where is it? When do we see the massive bounce-back from this “deeply depressed” economy, at minimum the kind of bounce-back that occurred in the ’80s in spite of the allegedly harmful policies of Reagan?

Krugman’s analysis of the Reagan recovery — a deep recession equals sharp recovery — tells us that the economy should be storming ahead, especially given Obama’s enlightened leadership. But in the seven quarters following the end of this recession, gross domestic product growth has averaged 2.8 percent. In the seven quarters following the Reagan recession, GDP growth averaged 7.1 percent.

…read more…

(Below) The C.A.T.O. Institute has been proven correct in their warning!

Breaking News: Acts 29 Asks Driscoll To Step-Aside (h/t ~ Warren Cole)

Published by Papa Giorgio

This is breaking news coming via a h/t from Warren Cole Smith, and more can be read of the article at World Magazine, entitled:

The church-planting network that Seattle megachurch pastor Mark Driscoll helped found has asked him to “step down from ministry for an extended time and seek help.”

The board of directors of Acts 29 sent Driscoll a letter expressing gratitude for the “leadership, courage, and generosity of both you and Mars Hill in not only founding the network but also sustaining it.” But the letter went on to say the board could no longer support Driscoll because of what its members consider “ungodly and disqualifying behavior.”

The letter was signed by Matt Chandler, Acts 29’s chairman of the board and the pastor of a large Dallas church, as well as Darrin Patrick, Steve Timmis, Eric Mason, John Bryson, Bruce Wesley, and Leonce Crump.

The board said it wrote the letter “in sadness and hope” and only after waiting to see what Driscoll and the Mars Hill Board of Advisors and Accountability (BOAA) would do to resolve what the letter called “countless shots and dozens of fires directly linked to you.”

But the Acts 29 board’s letter added, “We no longer believe the BOAA is able to execute the plan of reconciliation originally laid out. Ample time has been given for repentance, change, and restitution, with none forthcoming. We now have to take another course of action.”

In addition to asking Driscoll to step aside from ministry, the board also said it has “no alternative but to remove you and Mars Hill from membership in Acts 29….

…read more…

Remember Driscoll’s wild interview from a while back:

(It’s a Gay World) Government Boot Backfires Against Gay Left

Published by Papa Giorgio

Gay Patriot writes about a recent logical conclusion of the Gay Left and their wanting to force private businesses to participate in gay wedding celebrations. With all the BIG government laws their is surely an aspect of backfire involved… I mean, the BIGGER government gets, the smaller the individual is:

…But, you know, once you let that sort of idea… that the Government can force a business to labor for others against their will… you never know where that sort of thing is going to end up.

A Denver bar has been cited by the state’s Division of Civil Rights for discrimination because it refused to let a gay man dressed in drag enter. The bar is the Denver Wrangler, and despite what its name might suggest, it is not some Country Western joint. It is, in fact, a gay bar. So the state has determined that a gay bar has discriminated against a gay person

Wha-a-a-a-a-a….?

Gay Patriot proceeds to explain the bars target audience, what in the gay lifestyle apparently are called “bears”?

… [the bar] caters to a gay subculture known as “Bears,” which are bisexual or gay males which tend to place importance on presenting a hypermasculine image and often shun interaction with men who exhibit effeminacy. This is evident from the pictures and statements made by employees regarding the “Bear” culture of the club and several links on the Respondent’s webpage referencing “Bear” clubs … .”

That’s right… a taxpayer-paid Government employee investigated and found out about the Bear subculture and interviewed bar patrons to find out what that was.

So, Gay Fascist Left, you wanted the Government in the business of policing businesses and their clientele, and now a bear bar is being cited for twink-discrimination.

Well done.

Indeed, if wanting to strip one’s self of individual rights and freedoms… well done. But some gays “GET IT” and fight for freedom!

Record Lows in Death Valley ~ Global Warming Fails

Published by Papa Giorgio

THIS WAS ALSO ONLY THE 7TH TIME SINCE 1911 THAT HIGH TEMPERATURES IN AUGUST REMAINED IN THE 80S.

The Washington Post reports:

Death Valley, Calif., which is known for being the world’s hottest location, maxed out at a relatively chilly 89 degrees on Sunday. This temperature – nearly 30 degrees below average – was its coolest high temperature on record for the date by a whopping 15 degrees. The previous record of 104 was set in 1945.

This was only the eighth time that a high in the 80s has occurred in Death Valley in July or August, and there hasn’t been a high less than 90 since 1984. Weather records in Death Valley go back to 1911.

Locations that were hotter than Death Valley yesterday include Spokane Wash. (93), Missoula, Mont. (91),  Casper, Wy. (92), and Boise, Idaho (99).

The average June high in Death Valley is 110 degrees, July is 117 degrees, and August is 115. This makes Sunday’s high temperature a ridiculous 26 degrees below normal.

Death Valley set the world’s record hottest temperature of 134 degrees on July 10, 1913.

…read more…

Myron Magnet Notes the the Founders Constitutional Intentions vs. Progressives

Published by Papa Giorgio

Here is a clip of a larger article I thoroughly enjoyed via Myron Magnet’s insight into the Constitutions history. I recommend reading the entire piece linked at the end of this clip:

…Much of what the Progressive Era had only hoped for, the New Deal brought into being, transforming America’s constitutional structure in ways that such Pro­gressives as Woodrow Wilson, with his belief that the Founders were antique, bewigged fig­ures with views un­suited to modernity’s more informed and ef­fective age of science, statistics, and profes­sionalism, had urged. –‑

Wilson, argues author Freedman, saw “the Found­ers’ checks and balances as an unnecessary drag on the efficiency of government,” which should be a vast mechanism in which expert bureaucrats with advanced degrees—working altruistically in nonpolitical agencies like the Interstate Commerce Commission, formed in 1887, or the Federal Trade Commission, founded during Wilson’s presi-dency—would smoothly institute what advances in economics and social science would reveal as the common good. In 1908, Wilson swept the Founders and their cobweb-covered Constitution into the dustbin of history. “No doubt a great deal of nonsense has been talked about the inalien­able rights of the individual, and a great deal that was mere vague sentiment and pleasing specula­tion has been put forward as fundamental prin­ciple,” he wrote. By contrast with the Founders’ musty parchment, he continued, “Living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and practice.” Can’t get much more up-to-date and sci­entific than evolution.

And so arose the doctrine of the Living Con­stitution, which has now infringed nearly every guarantee of the Bill of Rights, from free speech to federalism. “The chief instrumentality by which the law of the Constitution has been extended to cover the facts of national development has of course been judicial interpretations—the de­cisions of courts,” Wilson wrote. “The process of formal amendment of the Constitution was made so difficult by the . . . Constitution itself that it has seldom been feasible to use it.” So the doughty courts have stepped in and taken over the “whole business of adaptation . . . with open minds, sometimes even with boldness and a touch of audacity,” becoming “more liberal, not to say more lax, in their interpretation than they otherwise would have been.” As Wilson saw it, writes Levin, “the federal judiciary was to be­have as a permanent constitutional convention,” making up the laws as it went along. Of course, at that point, as Lincoln had warned almost half a century earlier, “the people will have ceased to be their own rulers.”

And indeed, it was this magic elixir of judicial constitution-making and rule by administrative agencies that Franklin D. Roosevelt employed to transmute the American political system into one that resembled George III’s system of rulers and subjects as much as it did George Washington’s government….

Myron Magnet, It’s Not Your Founding Fathers’ Republic Any More, City Journal (Summer 2014), 47-48.

See also Myron’s article, Constitution Party, as well as his C-SPAN Book Discussion.

FEC Chair Warns of Democrats “Banning” Conservative Media/Books

Published by Papa Giorgio

I say “ban” in that the Democrat on the Commission seem concerned apparently with conservative media (um, because it rocks the hizznouse… Drudge pulls down mass visits!), so publishing news stories and books may be prohibited during election cycles. The saying goes, there is a little dictator waiting to get out of every Democrat. Here is the Washington Examiner’s story on this:

The chairman of the Federal Election Commission today blasted Democratic colleagues opposed to his effort to protect conservative media after they imposed rules on the publisher of Rep. Paul Ryan‘s new book, opening the door to future book regulations — or even a ban.

“By failing to affirm this publisher’s constitutional right, statutory right, to disseminate a political book free from FEC conditions and regulations, we have effectively asserted regulatory jurisdiction over a book publisher,” warned Chairman Lee E. Goodman, one of three Republicans on the six-person FEC.

“That failure reveals a festering legal uncertainty and chill for the free press rights of books and book publishers to publish and disseminate political books free from government regulation,” he added.

His comments after the FEC OK’d Republican Ryan’s request to promote his new book, The Way Forward, were immediately and sharply rebuked by Democratic Commissioner Ellen L. Weintraub. “No one is banning books,” she said.

Weintraub also hit Goodman for suggesting “that we are motivated by partisan bias, which is really not appreciated and untrue. I want to categorically deny that.”

The hard feelings continued after the morning session when Democrats on the commission refused to attend subsequent meetings, according to an insider.

And Goodman and the two other Republicans on the commission issued a six-page critique [below] of the commission’s vote on the Ryan book that slapped the constraints imposed on the publisher and on how Ryan’s re-election campaign and leadership political action committee, Prosperity Action, can promote the book on websites.

Since becoming chairman, Goodman has been pushing to expand protections for all media and has noted how Democrats on the panel have been eager to nick at freedoms for conservative media while Republicans have been voting for broader protections even for liberals like Democratic financier George Soros.

He recently warned that conservative online media, like the Drudge Report, could face regulation as Democrats move to tighten the so-called “media exemption” that lets the press cover politics any way they want.

…read more…

White Rose [below] and the Night of the Broken Glass were events that didn’t happen over-night. There were small, incremental steps that led to these events/resistance.