Daily news sites

I don't know about you, but I'm having a bit of trouble getting in gear today. So, I thought I would do what any responsible person would do in this situation - encourage others to procrastinate with me.

If you have some spare time today, or have a long list of things you don't want to tackle, here are three good reads. And really, reading is exercise for your brain and exercise is very important to your health. So this is actually rather important for you in order to lead a long and healthy life.

First up, the new (hand over your heart) domino. Have you read it yet?
My old friend Domino and I met for a date on the porch this weekend and we had a grand time. I love the Style Council layout, which gave a completely fresh view to photos we've all seen before. It goes without saying but I'll type it anyway, how I wish this was still a monthly publication!!

Then we've got the new issue of Ivy and Piper. Always a good read full of delicious pictures. This amazing house tour is right up my color obsessed alley.

Lady Chatterley's Affair hour tour - Ivy and Piper

Lady Chatterley's Affair hour tour - Ivy and Piper

Lady Chatterley's Affair hour tour - Ivy and Piper

And don't forget House of Fifty. Several great articles, a feature on local (to me) genius Amie Corley and jewelry I am putting on my Christmas list.

House of Fifty

Exercise regime for today complete. You're welcome.

How do you get thru a particularly slow Monday? Any other good magazines this month I shouldn't miss? Does anyone else get a contact high from Brasso?

Second round of photos from NYFW witnessed trough my lens features Taylor Tomasi Hill, Zanna Roberts Rassi, Kelly Framel, Blaire and many other incredible stylish people. I have to tell you that " all the pretty birds" were there at the Lincoln Center and I was happy to see them in person! More photos coming soon :)

by: Les Carpenter
Rational Nation USA
Liberty -vs- Tyranny

More Obama administration naivete? Or is Rice's narrative by design and crafted to fit Obama's broader agenda?

THE HILLThe Obama administration is sticking to its position that Tuesday's deadly attack in Benghazi wasn't premeditated, contradicting U.S. lawmakers and Libya's own president.

Speaking on several Sunday shows, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice placed the blame for violence that has spread to two dozen countries across the Muslim world squarely on a U.S.-made anti-Islam video.

Republicans and many others are dubious, with some lawmakers suggesting the attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi was a coordinated attack by a militant group.

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Libya's own leader, interim president Mohammed Magarief, has said that foreigners infiltrated Libya over the past few months and planned the attack that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

“The idea that this criminal and cowardly act was a spontaneous protest that just spun out of control is completely unfounded and preposterous,” Magarief told NPR in Benghazi on Sunday. “We firmly believe that this was a pre-calculated, pre-planned attack that was carried out specifically to attack the U.S. Consulate.

“The intention was there from the beginning, for it to take this ugly barbaric, criminal form,” he said.

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He told CBS that about 50 people have been arrested in conjunction with the attack on the U.S. consulate, which he said was “definitely planned by foreigners” who entered Libya several months ago and immediately started plotting the assault. He said “a few” of the perpetrators were from Mali and Algeria while others were Libyan “affiliates” and “sympathizers.”

“These ugly deeds, criminal deeds … do not represent in any way, in any sense, the aspirations and feelings of Libya toward the United States and its citizens.”

“The way these perpetrators acted and moved and their choosing the specific date [of Sept. 11] for this so-called demonstration, I think this leaves us with no doubt that this was pre-planned, pre-determined.”

Magarief said the security situation “is difficult, not only for Americans but for Libyans themselves.”

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Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told CBS he didn't buy the notion that the attack in Libya was spontaneous.

“Most people don't bring rocket-propelled grenades and heavy weapons to a demonstration,” McCain said. “That was an act of terror. And for anyone to disagree with that fundamental fact I think is really ignorant of the facts.”

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a former FBI official, told Fox News the violence in Libya had “all the hallmarks of an al-Qaeda-style attack.” {Read More}

... Oy Ve ...

Via: Memeorandum

My denim outfit is here and I had the pleasure to see it spotted in Elle.com HERE . I know that NYFW came to the end but I still have a few more posts with photos from there!
Have a wonderful Sunday everyone !



                                                                      Shirt : Levis/ similar Here
                                                                      Pants: Be Bop        
                                                                      Shoes:Daniblack/ another great pair Here
                                                                      Bag: Joe Fresh/ another great one Here
                                                                      Necklace: thanks to Oia Jules Here
                                                                      Sunglasses: Foster Grant/ another great version Here 

by: Les Carpenter
Rational Nation USA
Liberty -vs- Tyranny


Having watched the decidedly downward slide of the rEpublican party since the election of Richard Nixon (with the exception of Reagan), and the significant leftward shift of the dEmocrat party since LBJ, (with the exception of Clinton), it is understandable why the American electorate is disillusioned. Add to this the reality the two parties can't seem to hammer out workable long term solutions to our nations fiscal problems and the stage is set for a political shift.

The successful party of the future, think 2016 and beyond, will quite likely look little like the current dEmocrat or rEpublican party of today. The political views of the  younger voting block (ages 19 to 29) are socially liberal and fiscally conservative. A group that is comfortable with and supportive of candidates such as Rep. Ron Paul and Libertarian Presidential Candidate Gary Johnson.

As a supporter of both the Ron Paul Revolution and Gary Johnson I believe the future of our nation, if it is to remain solvent and retain it's liberty, rests with the Libertarian Party rather than the dEmocrat or the rEpublican party, both who have outlived their usefulness (in my never humble opinion) and now threaten our very liberty and constitutional freedoms. Bluntly stated they have stopped representing and working for the people. The government's march towards statism (democratic fascism/democratic socialism) has resulted in the government,  if not in words certainly  in deed, acting as though We the People work for the government rather than the government being our servant who works for us. .  But I digress.

The following article gives substance to the belief the younger voting block does not see everything through the same prism as did prior generations of 19 - 29 year olds. Hat Tip to the Griper  for giving me the heads up on the article.

USA Today - Many college students watching the party conventions were probably dissatisfied — neither party directly matched their beliefs. Partly this is an unfortunate effect of any two-party political system.

However, significant changes in our national political outlook create a growing segment of the population with beliefs that cut across the current conception of the conservative vs. liberal debate.

A growing number of people, particularly youth, identifies as socially liberal while being fiscally conservative. Earlier this year, a Reason poll showed that 61% of people aged 18-29 would be open to electing a president who is socially liberal and fiscally conservative.

This should have major implications — not just in this election, but also for the foreseeable future. A survey conducted late last month by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation showed that the “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” voting bloc was essentially the only persuadable group in 2012. While so-called independents make up about one-third of the electorate, most lean toward one party or the other.

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To many, creating a coalition catering to fiscal conservative/social liberals may appear illogical.

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The stirring visions that essentially founded both parties have cooled from their once white-hot magma, calcifying into the hard rock that characterizes today’s political paralysis.

The current political alignment produces stalemate after stalemate in Congress and the myth of an America split between two minds. But however toxic today’s polarization may be, it’s hard to imagine it’s any scarier than uniting a racially-divided party during segregation.

Both parties have chance to forge a coalition that re-shuffles the deck in a way that fiscal conservatives and social liberals can be a part of a big-tent coalition.

Whichever gets to it first is the party that will “win the future.”

It seems unlikely either major party will "reshuffle the deck", form a coalition, and miraculously become a winning party for the future of America and its people.

The Libertarian Party and Gary Johnson are already there. It is unfortunate that "money talks" in politics and therefore rules the day. Hopefully this election cycle will result in preparing and positing Gary Johnson and the Libertarian Party to be that party of the future the article talks about.

Braking old habits is hard. However breaking the stranglehold of the American duopoly political system is a must if our nation is to correct its course and take the actions necessarily to insure continued liberty and a return to stability and prosperity.

by: Les Carpenter
Rational Nation USA
Liberty -vs- Tyranny

I had to listen to the video twice, just to be sure I heard what I thought I heard.

MSNBC Video:


Talk about arrogance, hmm Bubblehead Matthews might be onto something. I'm sure he must have been looking into a mirror as he spoke.

As for not wanting to get “into his head on this.”, well again, I think Bubblehead is the real "head case" and needs to work on that.

All that aside what Bubblehead is really saying is "how dare Romney have the audacity to run again "The One". I really don't want to get into Bubblehead's head but I suspect his comment would have been made no matter who the rEpublican nominee was. The man carries a boat full of water for democrats in general, and Obama specifically.

MEDIAITE - MSNBC host Chris Matthews said on his program that he thought Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney was displaying a suspicious level of arrogance by thinking that he could run for president against Barack Obama. He said he “didn’t like the look” of what Romney could have been thinking, although he said he opted to refrain from getting “into his head on this.”

“I thought the decision by Romney to run for president, even as this president had not yet even been inaugurated, Mayor, showed a certain kind of disdain,” said Matthews. “I don’t want to get into his head on this – I don’t like the look of it – but he seemed to think, ‘Well, this guy could be beat by me.’”

Matthews said that Romney’s suspicion that he could defeat President Obama in 2012, even though he knew that he was not “a first-rate politician,” was an “arrogant point of view.”

“I’ve got a message for Mitt Romney – I wouldn’t do any head games with Barack Obama,” said former San Francisco Mayor Willy Brown. “He’s not smart enough, I don’t think he’s clever enough and he clearly has no street about him at all.”

Via: Memeorandum

My second look from NYFW was featured in Elle.com and you will get to see more photos with this outfit tomorrow, here on my blog !
 If you want to see more photos from NYFW also check my INSTAGRAM page . Enjoy !

My first outfit at NYFW is all about digital print, burgundy and volume. A first was also the Fashion show Bogdan and I attended in N.Y. it felt amazing to part of such great atmosphere. You can see more photos from the fashion showHERE  .
You can also see a photo with this look featured on Quip Magazine HERE . More NYFW photos  coming soon!




                                                                     Pants: H&M/ another great pair Here and Here
                                                                     Sweater: BCBG Max Azria
                                                                     Sandals: Marc by Marc Jacobs/ similar Here
                                                                     Bracelet: Kate Spade/ different color Here 
                                                                     Bag: Innue/ different color Here
                                                                     Sunglasses: Betsey Johnson/ similar Here

by: Les Carpenter
Rational Nation USA
Liberty -vs- Tyranny

Following is an interesting article. From the Washington Post opinion pages Marc A. Thiessen points out President Obama is not a regular attendee of his daily intelligence meetings. Hm...

How long had it been since President Obama attended his daily intelligence meeting in the lead-up to the Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Egypt and Libya? After all, our adversaries are known to use the anniversary of 9/11 to target the United States.

According to the public schedule of the president, the last time the Obama attended his daily intelligence meeting was Sept. 5 — a week before Islamist radicals stormed our embassy in Cairo and terrorists killed our ambassador to Tripoli. The president was scheduled to hold the intelligence meeting at 10:50 a.m. Wednesday, the day after the attacks, but it was canceled so that he could comfort grieving employees at the State Department — as well he should. But instead of rescheduling the intelligence briefing for later in the day, Obama apparently chose to skip it altogether and attend a Las Vegas fundraiser for his re-election campaign. One day after a terrorist attack.

When I asked National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor if the president had attended any meetings to discuss the Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) since Sept. 5, he repeatedly refused to answer. He noted that Obama had attended a principals meeting of the National Security Council on Sept. 10 and reiterated that he reads the PDB. “As I’ve told you every time you ask, the President gets his PDB every day,” Vietor told me by e-mail, adding this swipe at Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush: “Unlike your former boss, he has it delivered to his residence in the morning and not briefed to him.” (This new line of defense was echoed this morning by my Post colleague, Dana Milbank, who writes that Bush was briefed every day by his intelligence advisers because he “decided he would prefer to read less.”)

Vietor’s reply is quite revealing. It is apparently a point of pride in the White House that Obama’s PDB is “not briefed to him.” In the eyes of this administration, it is a virtue that the president does not meet every day with senior intelligence officials. This president, you see, does not need briefers. He can forgo his daily intelligence meeting because he is, in Vietor’s words, “among the most sophisticated consumers of intelligence on the planet.”

Truly sophisticated consumers of intelligence don’t see it as a sign of weakness to “be briefed” by the experts. Most of us, if we subscribed to a daily report on, say, astrophysics, would probably need some help interpreting it. But when it comes to intelligence, Obama is apparently so brilliant he can absorb the most complicated topics by himself in his study. He does not need to sit down for up to an hour a day with top intelligence officials, or hold more than 100 “deep dives” in which he invites CIA analysts into the Oval Office and gives them direct access to the commander in chief to discuss their areas of expertise. Such meetings are crutches this president does not need.{Read More}

It is not accurate to say the terrorist events of September 11th in Benghazi that took the American Ambassador's life, along with three others, or the violence in Egypt or Yemen would have been avoided had the President chose to attend his scheduled meetings. But it is a reasonable concern that he doesn't. Some meetings are considered so important that the CEO attend them all for the purpose of discussion and clarification. The meetings to discuss the Presidential Daily Brief (PDB)would seem, at least to this writer to be one of those meetings.

Via: Memeorandum

by: Les Carpenter
Rational Nation USA
Liberty -vs- Tyranny

(AP Photo/Hani Mohammed)

As the protests and violence spreads.

Yahoo News - SANAA, Yemen (AP) — Chanting "death to America," hundreds of protesters angered by an anti-Islam film stormed the U.S. Embassy compound in Yemen's capital and burned the American flag on Thursday, the latest in a series of attacks on American diplomatic missions in the Middle East.

American missions have been attacked this week in three Arab nations — Yemen, Egypt and Libya — that have faced persistent unrest and are struggling to restore law and order after last year's revolts deposed their authoritarian regimes.

The protests in Yemen and Egypt point to an increased boldness among Islamists who have become more powerful amid the turmoil since the revolts. In the past, protests have broken out over perceived insults to Islam from the West, but in Arab countries they never escalated to the degree of breaching embassies, suggesting now Islamists feel they can act with impunity.

The violence this week in Libya was of a different degree altogether. While protesters in other countries were unarmed, a crowd bristling with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades overwhelmed the American Consulate in Benghazi late Tuesday, killing the ambassador and three other Americans and ransacking the building. U.S. officials suspect the assault may have been a planned operation rather than a spontaneous mob assault.

In the Yemeni capital on Thursday, protesters smashed windows as they breached the embassy perimeter and reached the compound grounds, although they did not enter the main building housing the offices.

Angry young men brought down the U.S. flag in the courtyard, burned it and replaced it with a black banner bearing Islam's declaration of faith — "There is no God but Allah."

Yemeni security forces who rushed to the scene fired in the air and used tear gas to disperse the demonstrators, driving them out of the compound after about 45 minutes and sealing off the surrounding streets. It was not immediately clear whether anyone was inside the embassy at the time of the attack.

Demonstrators removed the embassy's sign on the outer wall, set tires ablaze and pelted the compound with rocks.

The Yemeni Embassy in Washington condemned the attack and vowed to ensure the safety of foreign diplomats and to step up security measures around their missions in the country.

It was similar to an attack on the U.S. Embassy in the Egyptian capital on Tuesday night. A mob of Libyans also attacked the U.S. consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi on Tuesday, killing American Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Yemen is home to al-Qaida's most active branch and the United States is the main foreign supporter of the Yemeni government's counterterrorism campaign. The government on Tuesday announced that al-Qaida's No. 2 leader in Yemen was killed in an apparent U.S. airstrike, a major blow to the terror network.

The spreading violence comes as outrage grows over a movie called "Innocence of Muslims" that mocked Islam's Prophet Muhammad. The amateurish video was produced in the U.S. and excerpted on YouTube. {Read More}

As protests and violence over the America low budget film depicting the Prophet Mohammad in an unsavory light spreads to Yemen I find myself thinking we ought to pack up, bring out people home, and stop fueling the barbarians with American foreign aid.

America has lost four of our countrymen at the American Embassy in Benghazi and the insanity continues in Egypt. We can only hope it doesn't spread further, causing more loss of American life at he hands of barbarians. Barbarians lead by a religion its faithful would have us believe is founded on pillars of peace.

So lets bring our people home, cut all aid, every single penny of it, and let the barbarians fend for their own sorry as*es. Frankly my inner rage tells me we ought to incinerate the entire region. However, while the rage may be justified, and the desire to retaliate understandable, not all people in the region support the actions of the barbarians who live amongst then.

Getting the hell out of the "hell hole" and leaving the region to support and fend for itself may be the best thing for all concerned. We save billions upon billions in wasted foreign aid over time. The barbarians get what they want, the opportunity to slide back into the 7th century.

Of course doing this will require American security forces and the military to be even more nimble and battle ready so we can squash every attempt that will be made on our home soil by those barbarians that have managed to infiltrate our country along with those Muslims who mean us no harm and came here to find a better life in a freer country.

I am reminded of an old saying; "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." American foreign policy with respect to the Middle East highlights the wisdom of the quote quite well, don't you agree?

Via: Memeorandum

My first time at NYFW was an excellent experience and it would have been even more exciting if I could have honored the Polyvore invitation 3 nights in N.Y at Fashion Night Out... unfortunately I wasn't able to go then.
So Bogdan and I we went to N.Y to see and snap photos with fashionable people :)
Here are a few examples of our first day and tomorrow you will see my outfit and also photos from the first show that Bogdan and I attended !