Years ago I read a book called Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, which details the lives of three Chinese women: author, her mother and her grandmother. It has always stayed on my mind because, to start with, I was so amazed how people could turn against each other as they did during the Cultural Revolution. Peasant worship was in full force and while people were supposed to bow to the “wisdom” of peasants, they also destroyed the lives of educated and other citizens. You know, not unlike what Obama refers to as “robust debate.”
In one part of the book–and pardon me here as I am retrieving this as best I can from memory–Mao had declared some animal or insect a pest that must be destroyed, so the people, bowing to his cult of personality, follow through en masse on his request, until the country’s population of this creature is nearly obliterated. Unfortunately, whatever this animal was, it also happened to prey on a lesser creature who acted as pest to farmers, leaving the intellectually superior peasants in a jam because now their crops were being destroyed by vermin who no longer were kept in check by a larger predator. I don’t recall if this in turn was blamed on the intellectuals, but knowing Mao it probably was. China had fallen down a rabbit hole and all the world for them was turned upside down as chaos became the norm.
So it seems a similar effect is going on in all manner of events today. Global warming–oh sorry, climate change, is not debated today. The proponents of this religious ideology simply shout down the rest of the population. (Never mind they demand you radically alter your lifestyle while they charter planes and use up more fuel in a week than you could in a year.) A growing number of scientists are speaking against its validity, but still people are forced by laws to pay for a service to haul away their separated trash, at least some of which ends up in the local dump anyway. And then the U.S. Congress passes an asinine bill–without reading it– that Laura Ingraham refers to as Kneecap our Trade.
Before that we saw someone who mouths the words about how his primary job is to protect the country but then does his level best day in and day out to destroy it.
A soldier is shot at a recruiting station and gets mention when Obama is pretty much forced to, and even then I think the strongest word was…”dissapointed”? But Obama was outraged, I tell you, outraged when an abortion doctor died under similar circumstances. Oh wait–the barbarian in that case was a “Christian fanatic” (I know I saw those words in print) but the soldier killer was a mere jihadist.
If someone’s feelings get hurt because a special and exclusive prayer room is not set aside for members of his religion (just like one is not set aside for anyone else’s); if the smell of pork can be detected from the local factory; if Constitutionally protected words are uttered in criticism of, oh, say, a woman being slaughtered for wearing make-up; if this and many more things occur there is collective and manufactured outrage across the country (or world in some cases) and there is talk about the widespread need for “tolerance education.”
Christians are murdered and harassed in Egypt and elsewhere but nobody on any kind of platform seems to find this disturbing. Saudi Arabia certainly doesn’t provide prayer space–even shared–for any religion not Islam. Pork is routinely removed from Western menus because a lot of Muslims find it “offensive.”
A Dutch politician is harassed and prosecuted, has to maintain a schedule to see his wife, is denied entry to Britain and lives under protection from death threats because he has called on people to recognise the need for foreigners to respect his culture as much as they demand for their own–their own that they import and attempt to impose on native Dutch. Jordan has filed charges against him for a violating a regulation that as neither Jordanian nor Muslim is he subject to–and they are praised for doing it.
A firefighter who studied months for a promotion exam and passes with very good marks is denied his upgrade because he is white, a decision that comes from people who have made a career of screaming bloody murder over hiring, firing and promoting based on skin color.
If you are perturbed at my lack of linearity here, suck it up. That’s postmodernism and besides, the world is upside down. Why should anything be in order anymore? Nevertheless, I’ll bring you back to the present. Or at least to yesterday. We’ve heard much about people in Iran who simply want the right to choose their own leaders being slaughtered in the most horrific of ways. They are now being hunted down and just this morning I saw that the body of one had been located. Neda, perhaps the most famous because her death was the first to be caught on video and widely circulated (read: went viral), left behind parents who were kicked from their house, invoiced for the bullet that killed her and now her father is being made to go on state television to condemn protesters for her death, as opposed to the Basiji bastards who actually did it.
This is all “robust debate.” Didn’t you know this? *Smack* Get with the program! Don’t you know that in ObamaWorld “what is isn’t, and what isn’t, is”? And why are you reading this anyway? Not looking for news on Iran, are you? You have a dead pop star to worship and a place in line to wait for Obama’s next Maoist, asinine order. Don’t talk, please, there’s a moment of silence to observe.
Wow. I knew there are a few rather liberal people here in Alaska, but I really had no idea until now the true extent of the vile nature of some.
Via Gateway Pundit I got to know more than I really wanted to about Linda Biegel, one of the real haters whose presence tarnishes my beautiful state. She seems to think posting shopped pictures of Trig Palin–conveniently “excused” by claiming they actually represent local talk-show host Eddie Burke–is somehow something more than sniggering jabs at people her little clique doesn’t approve of. Take a look at her pathetic comment section to the post linked above.
If she has any shame at all she may change the pictures, and for now I haven’t decided whether or not to post the screenshots I made. Or I should say that now I am reluctant, because I’m not really interested in spreading around her juvenile ass hattery. On the other hand, people may need to see what a non-intellectual she really is, although she and others claim to be so much above it all as they trade insults about Sarah Palin and her supporters. Does she actually believe resorting to snide comments does anything for her position? Or that even her ridiculous picture is meant to be Eddie, that this is any better? What exactly is there to admire in anyone whose “debate” has to rest on insults, whether of a helpless infant or any adult?
What drives someone to be so bitter? Doesn’t Linda Biegel have a life? Look, I’m no fan of Barack Obama–in fact I downright dislike the creature, but I don’t waste any time attacking his children by creating (or having someone else create) distorted pictures of them. They have nothing to do with their father’s choices and it would be a mark of disrespect to all children in the world to act that way to any youngster. Does Linda Biegel have that much disrespect for children, or does she save such bile only for certain people with different opinions?
And, wow, the DNC actually used her blog as the official DNC Alaska blog? How sad is that? They must have been hurting for an Alaska liberal. Sorry, I thought their standards demanded some thought process and logic to govern their positions, but I guess they had to set the bar really low. Or maybe it was their idea for Biegel and others to file frivolous complaints against Palin in an attempt to make the governor’s legal debts soar beyond control. Whose idea was it to file one under the name of a soap star?
At the end of the day I feel really sorry for Linda Biegel, because she obviously is missing something in her life. I don’t have a dazzling social life, either, since I’m a student, but at least I periodically go to the cinema, spend family time, read books…you know, like a person with better things to do.
By the way, although it seems off topic, it’s actually related to mention that while Obama eats ice cream and talks about how outraged he is, Governor Palin spoke out months ago on the monster instrumental in the current acts of barbarism against innocent Iranians who want to have the same freedom to speak out as Biegel enjoys. What a tragedy she squanders her liberty so shamelessly whilst Iranians last night were thrown over a bridge and beaten to death for having an opinion.
It makes me wonder how far Biegel and others like her would take their anger and hatred for Palin and supporters if there were no limits imposed. We saw last winter a sampling of obscenity from that party, such as tolerance for “mock” abuse against women, heckling from a so-called comedian for Palin to be gang-raped, a pop star bragging on stage how she would kick Palin up–it goes on. I’m sorry to say this but when people give them permission to do this sort of thing and tolerate it from others, then it is questionable whether they actually have limits at all.
Update: The shopped picture has been removed–whether it’s because Biegel has any shame is unknown. Meanwhile, she stays classy along with her sycophants and a GB full of complaints about an echo chamber and personal insults, posted by an echo chamber full of people who seem to be in competition over who can come up with the most “witty” jib at Palin and Burke.
We get that you don’t like them, Biegel, and no one is trying to deny your right to talk about that. We’re just wondering why you have to resort to cheap shots that involve her child (special needs or not) and then slam people who question you with comments such as, “YOU FAIL AT LIFE!” Is that really all you have? What was that you wrote about other sites that slammed you? “Not very nice”? I did happen to see one with some shopped pictures that in my opinion were unnecessary to make a point about your classless “joke,” but for you to condemn that kind of thing is really rich, coming from someone who is what she condemns.
By the way, are you ever going to offer a response with some substance, or are you just going to continually yammer about how stupid and pathetic we are?
Oh dear, dear Neda, I am so sorry. I’m am sorry for your terrible suffering and that you had to lose your life, be separated from your family, friends, your piano, your travel. I am sorry that my words lack the dignity you deserve when being remembered, because they come from a soul filled with resentment, a person perhaps too small to rise above the anger at silence that nourished evil, and continues to do. I pray that soon I can find a better way to think about your life, and I can only hope my contemplations will be half as beautiful as you.
In the end it may turn out that you died for us as well as your own country, and one day perhaps I will shed tears of joy at the mention of your name. You did so much with what you were given; indeed, you reached out for more, with a fullness of life many people only dream of or imagine. Would that the inspiration to utilise the gifts we all are given be as strong in each of us. You are a martyr, a flower, an angel, a giant, a lifting of burdens that each one of us seeks out in the darkness of this long night. The sky is blue for you now, but one day may its sun shine down on gardens splendid with the brilliance you bring to our hearts.
When morning comes, I'll look for you, one of many whom I owe.
This isn’t new news, but it just doesn’t seem right to pass over it when it has been something I–and many people around the world–have followed since before it broke as a larger story.
As we know, Roxana Saberi has been released from Iran’s notorious Evin prison; upon her release she spent a few days in Iran and then proceeded to Vienna to relax. While there she declined to speak at length to the press. Understandably, she wanted to be alone with her family.
More recently Saberi has returned to her native United States and made a few remarks in the presence of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She thanked the American people and others around the world for their support, and noted how she gained strength when she learned of all those who spoke for her.
Roxana Saberi, of course, is the American journalist who was arrested in Iran, ostensibly because she had purchased a bottle of wine and was reported by the very person who sold it to her. Perhaps under duress, she had phoned her family and asked them not to contact news agencies, as she would be released in a couple of days.
On Thursday, February 26, nearly a month after the actual event, we learned that Roxana was detained by Iranian authorities in late January. Since then she has been denied contact with family, friends and associates. On February 10, briefly and under apparent duress, she contacted her family to inform them of her arrest and detention and requested their silence. On Sunday, March 1, her family revealed the story to their home town press in Fargo, ND, and to NPR, given their growing concern over the lack of contact from Roxana.
Iran could do itself a world of good by ceasing this business of arresting journalists, intellectuals and others on unspecified charges followed by imprisonment and punishment disproportionate to the “crimes” they commit.
If Iran is serious about wanting to raise their image in the eyes of the world, they will start respecting people’s efforts to report and write on aspects of the country that would prove to be of great interest to many people across the world. Iran has, for example, a rich culture to draw from, but the mullahs insist on stepping all over it in what is perhaps some misguided belief that people will respect their commitment to religious “ideals.”
Roxana Saberi could have been an ally in showing the world what there is to admire about Iran. Instead, she languishes in the notorious Evin Prison, although at least she has “she will be released soon” to hang onto. Then again, is she even aware of this statement released by Iranian authorities? They had previously cut her off from contact with her family and when her attorney finally met with her, she had no idea about the worldwide support she had. After similar repeated patterns of behavior from the Islamic Republic, it is not unreasonable to wonder if they have continued in their cruel and unusual treatment of the young journalist by depriving her of even this tiny light.
What I am also continually amazed at is the ongoing ability of some people to dig into ways they can find fault with people like me for talking about this issue; they excuse the Iranian authorities who hold someone for an unspecified time and deny her due process, but attack us as if we supported genocidal criminals. If someone actually did something wrong, then what is so unjustifiable about asking for charges to be formally brought or her to be released? But reason does not seem to be the forte of people whose only aim is to deny Americans and others any kind of support. The unexamined matters not to them; all they care about is determining where the American stands and then doing the opposite, no matter that it places them squarely in the shards of their own demented looking glass.
I won't stop speaking out for Roxana Saberi's freedom--not until she is home.
Update: I’ve come across a blog, Free Roxana Saberi, that appears to be keeping timely track of Roxana’s case and events as they unfold.
Well, there also might be the recent asthmatic bronchospasms to account for. It’s a bit cold in here and some virus apparently has gotten its claws wrapped around me. I’ve got my voice back—sort of—and my energy level has come up from the basement. Oh yeah, and I’m concerned about the math class I missed yesterday.
But I got some entertainment in the form of watching John Ziegler, documentary filmmaker and graduate of the Melvin Udall School of Dating, get dumped after drinks.
I wonder if Ziegler is any good at math? He doesn’t seem so skilled at addition, for example. “Someone who is informed and rational, which I realize is kind of an oxymoron for women” + “Ideally you find someone with a manageable degree of irrationality” = misogynistic, despite his claim to the contrary. And he actually appeared surprised that “she didn’t seem to like where I was coming from.”
Hey Ziegler, ya think?
And, like a predictable misogynist, it’s all about her. “I don’t know maybe she was threatened…” How about putting the mea culpa squarely where it belongs by just admitting he ought to stick to documentaries? The producer–provided it’s someone else–will tweak his bad math and if Ziegler ever feels like fast forwarding to the 21st century, maybe he can figure out how to multiply.
The real men of the future are in kindergarten about now learning things like disjoint sets and one-to-one correspondence. They’ll later know how to take a woman’s breath away without having to rely on some sort of viral attack.
Update: The link above quotes a HotAir commenter’s take:
It could be that Ziegler caught something – now edited out – that made him want to end this quickly. No sane guy – on a date with a chick who is pretty cute – is going into this unless his goal is to get out of the date. I’ve done something similar to this in the past, a bit more tactfully, but what guy (or girl) hasn’t pissed off the date on purpose, just to end it.
(Operative word: No sane guy.)
The update also says Ziegler, who hadn’t yet seen the video, suggested via e-mail something may have been edited out to misrepresent him.
I’m quite sure lots has been edited out, including what the girl might have said or done to make her date dislike her, or for her to come off as unsympathetic to us audience members. But apparently Ziegler dislikes us as well, enough to hint anything the show’s producer’s wiped could whitewash that crap.
I never would have thought the guy who interviewed Sarah Palin could be such a hypocrite.
A few days back I happened upon an online conversation about the most popular man in America. One poster argued that Sully was not a hero, as his actions did not go above and beyond the call of duty. “He was trained to do what he did.” Or something like that. (I’m paraphrasing here as even I don’t remember which forum I saw it in.)
U.S. News and World Report lays out a few reasons Flight 1549 landed as it did, not least of all being rational decision making in a cockpit buzzing with alerts and visuals that would have made my forehead sweat even just watching it in a movie. Which I’m pretty sure it will be.
Check out some of these details:
Thorough training. Sullenberger may be a model aviator, but it wasn’t heroism that brought Flight 1549 down safely. It was rigorous training that’s inbred in the U.S. aviation system. Pilots have to fly for years before they can command an airliner, and even experienced pilots must routinely train in simulators and pass “check rides” at least once a year under the supervision of Federal Aviation Administration inspectors. Pilots sometimes gripe about overzealous FAA inspectors, but the oversight contributes to a culture of accountability and fastidious attention to detail in the cockpit.
The emphasis within the paragraph is mine, and I highlighted it because I also want to have a word about the ferries. They wasted no time getting to the passengers and crew, actions and attitude I have come to consider as very New York. Before anybody gets their hackles raised about how good people exist elsewhere, I’ll say it first. Good people exist elsewhere. But say what you will about New Yorkers, their speed in talking, typing and multi-tasking is matched by the efficiency with which they set to the task in times of crisis. We’ve all heard the stories about how calmly and in an orderly fashion they exited the World Trade Center, even as they turned to see the horror behind them. How people stopped, wordlessly, to pick up someone who couldn’t make their own way and did without verbal collaboration. They just did it.
That’s what the ferries did. They just did it. Yes, this of course could happen elsewhere. Perhaps it might be better said as, “They might not come off as ‘Minnesota Nice’ but they won’t let you get hurt without putting up a fight against the crisis.” It seems to me a culture of accountability in which, no matter who you are, if you are in danger, they summon what they have and make their way to you. When the matter involves cöoperation with other agencies, even out-of-towners, they don’t seem afraid to act jointly.
Speaking of which:
A clear division of labor in the cockpit. From the time the engines stopped producing thrust – presumably because they ingested birds – Sullenberger and Skiles had about three minutes before the powerless plane glided back to earth. And the cockpit would suddenly have become an intense environment to work in. Other airplane systems would have been failing, since they’re powered by the engines….Once the pilots chose their course, they would have started to prepare for a water landing. All in three minutes.
Three minutes!
The water landing was obviously shocking to those on board – yet mild compared to what could have happened. “I believed the impact would be violent but survivable,” wrote one passenger, who happened to be a pilot for another airline. “It was much milder than I had anticipated. If the jolt had been turbulence, I would have described it as moderate.”
Wow. Just…wow.
OK, so maybe he is not a hero. But there is, as has been said, “reason enough to lionize.” The pilot, the co-pilot, flight attendants, ferries, the heavy-equipment operators who hauled that big bird from the water later. Even the passengers. I’ve heard no reports of fights breaking out or even frightened acts of spite. I even read about passengers who gave the clothes off their backs to a fellow passenger (who later was near-interrogated by reporters in warm coats). These passengers seemed to have themselves made a great team, and every single one of them survived.
Controversial as it is, white phosphorus is not illegal, at least in an open battlefield setting, where it is used to mask troop movements, or set on fire areas of high brush that need clearing.
But the international convention on the use of incendiary weapons says it should not be used where there is a possibility of hitting civilians.
It’s interesting to note how selectively they cite International Humanitarian Law when it assumes the shape of a square peg in their round hole. Courtesy Jawa Report, what the BBC left out:
The presence or movements of the civilian population or individual civilians shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield, favour or impede military operations. The Parties to the conflict shall not direct the movement of the civilian population or individual civilians in order to attempt to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield military operations.
So imagine my surprise when I read this from the same BBC:
Humanitarian aid chief Louis Michel called the destruction left by Israel’s offensive “abominable”, but said Hamas bore “overwhelming responsibility“.
He said there would be no dialogue with with the “terrorist” movement until it gave up violence and recognised Israel.
“It is abominable, indescribable,” Mr Michel told reporters after touring some of the worst-hit places of Israel’s 22-day assault which killed about 1,300 Palestinians, including 400 children. Thirteen Israelis were also killed in the conflict.
“At this time we have to also recall the overwhelming responsibility of Hamas,” he said.
“I intentionally say this here – Hamas is a terrorist movement and it has to be denounced as such.”
The former Belgian foreign minister insisted there would be no dialogue with Hamas, and its use of terrorism against Israeli civilians meant it was not a legitimate resistance movement.
Just when I was contemplating the undesirable need to wake up my small son for school–I had a late education class last night and we practically dove into bed right after we came home–I got a phone call reporting slick roads and school closures. I was kind of glad because it allowed me to escape having to wake up a tired boy who tends to need a lot of sleep…but I also felt a strange sense of awe. As in, “How odd.”
Alaska doesn’t seem to get many “snow days.” I know Washington, D.C. shuts down if there’s more than an inch of snow on the ground, but in here if we shut down schools or operations for bad weather we’d lose a functioning city. That said, “bad weather” is relative. To us, it just doesn’t happen all that often. Recently it was “quite cold” (we had minus 20 for an extended period of time) and as soon as it warmed up (true to Alaska fashion shooting up to the other end of the extreme as opposed to day by day warming) the first thing everybody knew to expect was a bunch of snow. I guess we didn’t expect it to be rainy, at least not yet, rainy enough to make driving conditions quite dangerous.
Well, the rest of the nation must expect it of us as well, as I never hear on the news of “mounds of snow in Alaska,” as opposed to places like Minnesota, where it somehow qualifies as news.
As I was musing the odds of this situation, the power went out. My newfangled phone, the cordless type with the digital answering machine attached to the main base (with two other smaller base locations around the house), went dead. After the initial, “Whoa,” I admit I got a bit serious because I thought about the woman whose story made the news recently. She had shot a would-be repeat rapist who returned to her home, this time cutting the power in her house. Between the pitch dark of winter mornings in Alaska and the loss of even the light from my laptop, it struck me how dark it really is with absolutely no light. And then I realised how handicapped I was because even though I’m equipped with plenty of candles and a couple of flashlights, the candles and matches are in my kitchen, flashlight in my laundry room.
Eventually I turned the laptop back on, since only the Internet was out, and used the light from it to make my way to the kitchen for candles to find my flashlight. (I couldn’t see what I was doing in the laundry room.) Once I had myself set up back in my room, little Walkman radio plugged into my ears, I thought, “What now?” I listened for awhile to news of brownouts through the city and thinning traffic slowed to a crawl.
About ten minutes later the power returned; my son had slept through all the “excitement.” Pity, I had been hoping to occupy some of our time with a few rounds of “Trouble,” a game he got for Christmas and one which even I find slightly addicting.
So what to do with our day? Well, I’ll probably do much of the same I had planned for myself: lots of classwork and a bit of cleaning up around the house–with slight alterations to account for the presence of my boy. As for the little guy, well, he sleeps still as I type this. But, given how cold it was over Christmas vacation (even too cold for us, who kept our children indoors much of the time) and how warm it is now, I hear the snowpants crinkling already.
Hopefully the Israel Defense Forces won’t have to deal with anything that seeks to shut this down. They still maintain a YouTube account, and provide a link to it in their “About” section; it can also be accessed via a short pathway from the top of the page. A day or so ago word was making the rounds that YouTube had deleted at least one of their videos, citing its graphic content as a poor excuse. Perhaps the negative publicity has made YouTube more wary of their blatant discriminatory practices?
One of the Democrats’ strategies in this election season is to turn the Presidential campaign into a referendum on the American people: we have to elect Barack Obama President, or else we’re racists.
Many pundits, politicians and celebrities have made this claim explicitly; a new AP/Yahoo News poll advances the same theory in a pseudo-scientific way. Here is how the AP reports the results of its survey:
Deep-seated racial misgivings could cost Barack Obama the White House if the election is close, according to an AP-Yahoo News poll that found one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks—many calling them “lazy,” “violent” or responsible for their own troubles. …[T]he effects of whites’ racial views are apparent in the polling.
Statistical models derived from the poll suggest that Obama’s support would be as much as 6 percentage points higher if there were no white racial prejudice.
Since John McCain, if he wins, will almost certainly win the popular vote by fewer than six points, this survey will be used to cast McCain as an illegitimate President, elected only by virtue of white racism.
The attitude toward the campaign of those who conducted the survey reveals their own bias:
The pollsters set out to determine why Obama is locked in a close race with McCain even as the political landscape seems to favor Democrats. President Bush’s unpopularity, the Iraq war and a national sense of economic hard times cut against GOP candidates, as does the fact that Democratic voters outnumber Republicans.
Others would say that the question requiring investigation is why John McCain is locked in a close race with Barack Obama, when Obama has no discernible qualifications for the office and (as the survey shows) holds views well to the left of the electorate. Occam’s razor would suggest that the fact that 47 percent of respondents describe Obama as “inexperienced” accounts more readily for the tight race than the divinations of “racism” derived from the poll.
You can find what Yahoo News describes as the “full poll results” here. Only they aren’t, in fact, the full results. As made public, the poll results are broken down only by “all respondents” and “whites only.” But the AP reporters had access to data, apparently not publicly available, that break responses down among Republicans, Democrats and independents. Thus, they report:
Given a choice of several positive and negative adjectives that might describe blacks, 20 percent of all whites said the word “violent” strongly applied. Among other words, 22 percent agreed with “boastful,” 29 percent “complaining,” 13 percent “lazy” and 11 percent “irresponsible.” When asked about positive adjectives, whites were more likely to stay on the fence than give a strongly positive assessment.Among white Democrats, one-third cited a negative adjective and, of those, 58 percent said they planned to back Obama. …
Among white independents, racial stereotyping is not uncommon. For example, while about 20 percent of independent voters called blacks “intelligent” or “smart,” more than one third latched on the adjective “complaining” and 24 percent said blacks were “violent.”
Nearly four in 10 white independents agreed that blacks would be better off if they “try harder.”
Whether those responses do or do not indicate racism, I find it interesting that the AP has data it interprets as apportioning racist attitudes among Republicans, Democrats and independents, but elects not to share it. Here is what the AP says about Republicans:
Lots of Republicans harbor prejudices, too, but the survey found they weren’t voting against Obama because of his race. Most Republicans wouldn’t vote for any Democrat for president—white, black or brown.
No data in the survey, as reported, support these statements. It’s interesting that while the AP cites statistics (albeit cryptic ones) to support the imputation of racism to Democrats and independents who don’t support Obama, it offers no such data about Republicans beyond the helpful assertion that “lots of Republicans harbor prejudices, too.” I suspect this is because this poll, like all other surveys I have seen on the subject, found that Republicans are less likely to express negative attitudes toward people of other races than Democrats and independents.
None of this, of course, will stop liberals from deriding McCain as a President elected by virtue of racism if he wins the election.
Back we go to this tedious subject about which few voters much care but which The One, lacking any compelling evidence that he’ll bring a new type of politics to Washington, loves to invoke as proof of his immaculate Change-iness. Unlike the insiders, you see, he doesn’t take money from federally registered lobbyists or special interests, and from now on neither will the Democratic Party. Except that he does sometimes take money from federally registered lobbyists; and so does the Democratic Party, per its congressional reelection committees; and he’s overflowing with cash from employees of special interests, including employees of those dastardly oil companies; oh, and needless to say, he misleads voters about all of this by choosing his words very, very carefully even while he’s busy tossing out zingers about McCain’s lobbyist “old boys network.” (Get it?)
But if none of those earlier posts penetrated and you’re looking for a concise, all-in-one recap of The One’s cynicism on this point, dive into Matthew Cooper’s piece for Portfolio:
He’d had no problem accepting contributions from registered Washington lobbyists in his previous races for the Illinois statehouse, the U.S. House of Representatives, and the U.S. Senate. So now that he’s scoring political points for the ban, what impact has it actually had?…
The campaign accepts money from lobbyists registered in state capitals. It accepts money from partners at law firms that engage in lobbying. It accepts money from the C.E.O.’s, chairs, and officers of corporations, but not their lobbyists. Obama has received more than $627,000 in contributions from employees of Goldman Sachs, including, for example, $2,300 (the maximum contribution allowed) from the likes of managing director George Butcher. But Michael Berman, a registered lobbyist (and a former adviser to Walter Mondale), cannot give money to Obama because his firm, the Duberstein Group, has lobbied on behalf of Goldman Sachs on energy and tax issues. Aren’t such policies a little inconsistent with the ban? “Maybe,” said the senior Obama official. “But it’s important symbolism.”
I recently spoke with a very successful registered Washington lobbyist, a Democrat who asked not to be named in this piece for fear of diminishing his influence with a possible Obama administration. Even though the Obama campaign wouldn’t accept a check from the lobbyist personally, he says, Obama aides asked him to help them raise money in other ways. “They wanted my list,” the lobbyist says, referring to the many donors the lobbyist has solicited for other campaigns. “Since then, they’ve asked if I could organize fundraisers but said that I couldn’t donate.”…
For all the hand-wringing over lobbyists, it’s worth noting that since there are few restrictions on donations to political conventions, the nominating conventions for both candidates were paid for by a slew of direct corporate donors, including AT&T, Qwest, and others. Bill Allison, a senior fellow with the Sunlight Foundation, which promotes transparency in government, notes that the campaigns are “all running around lifting their skirts like there’s a mouse, saying ‘Eek, there’s a lobbyist!’ But they’re raising tons of money” from corporate interests.
He takes money from lobbyists’ spouses too, and even has federally registered lobbyists working for his campaign — but as volunteers, not paid employees, so that’s cool. The worst part is, his stance on this isn’t even the most glaring example of his opportunistic hypocrisy on “reform” issues, so since we’re dredging up old posts to revisit, go ahead and re-read this one too. The guy’s a poseur. Case closed.
Well, with 60k people around you I suppose it’s bound to be.
60,000?
Didn’t this article say there are 70,000 people in the village? (Did they say village?) So that means only 10,000 people were at home or at work? OK, I’m doing more than showing off my superior math skills. I’m just trying to work my way through, “That’s a shitload of people” and “Is that considered a lot for a rally?” Give me a break here, I’m from Alaska. We do have more than 20 people, but 60,000 really is a lot.
OK, OK, so many probably came from the surrounding area and I’m sure there are some similarities between Alaska and Florida. But those 27 votes…
Florida will be pretty hot in November. I don’t know how much longer I can stand the suspense.
Who says nobody Outside knows about Lance Mackey!? Winner of the grueling Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race and Yukon Quest champion in 2007, Mackey did what many people said he could never do: repeat those back-to-back victories in 2008.
And now he has been named “Toughest Athlete” in a contest conducted by Versus, a cable channel I uh…never heard of.
Even most kindergartners can get it when way too much has been said. And often the teacher’s silence that follows, momentary as it may be, seals the message. But no, not with Joe Biden. Not only does he keep his mouth open, he relentlessly smashes both feet into it.
What’s this we are hearing this time? Eh? Obama better not touch my guns? Oh yeah? What is Biden gonna do about it, tell on him? They both have already told everybody in National Circle Time what his plans are and none of the kids are fooled. Obama would probably say anyway, “He started it!”
“Barack Obama ain’t taking my shotguns, so don’t buy that malarkey,” he said. “If he tries to fool with my Beretta, he’s got a problem.”
Ha! When I heard this I laughed in a way not unlike how I did when my three-year-old told me: “Oh, mom, don’t be so existential.” Like a small child, Biden tries to copy those around him in order to seek their approval. Trouble is, even the libs often wince at his verbal dings.
Biden spoke to a few hundred friendly bodies at the United Mine Workers Fish Fry, an annual tradition that started decades ago when the union wanted to show solidarity with striking workers. Deep in coal country, Biden said he and Obama would invest money in clean coal technology, and pay for it by taking away tax breaks for oil companies.
“John McCain and Sarah Palin, I understand why they’re oil people,” he said.
And, he continued, he understands the need to drill for more oil, though he expected oil companies to use existing areas first before expanding. “Why haven’t they done that when we’re told there’s 50 billion barrels of oil out there? You think maybe they kind of like the price the way it is?”
“Imagine … what Barack and I can do, taking that four billion dollars and investing it in coal gasification,” he said. “That’s within our capacity to do it. If you give me four billion dollars, I promise you, I promise you, we will find the answer.”
The kindergartners I see all the time also make promises they never keep, but to date none of them has ever asked me for four billion dollars to do it. I mean, really, does Joe Biden have any idea how patently ridiculous he sounds? Snake oil salesman doesn’t begin to cover it and a lot of kindergartners, I’m slightly embarrassed to admit, are way smoother at that game than he is.
Perhaps there is some truth to what he says. Maybe Obama isn’t going to go after the guns Biden allegedly owns–only ours. Not only is it a typical example of the liberal viewpoint being touted at the expense of others’ as they simultaneously pay lip service to “diversity”–oops sorry, that doesn’t apply to perspectives–but they put ordinary Americans in danger while arming and strengthening criminals.
In Alaska hunting is a way of life and for some, a complete lifestyle. Guns are tools in here, not accessories, and people’s livelihoods and their families’ dinner tables depend upon them. It also would be another slap in the face to Native groups who practise subsistence lifestyles because they already have been effectively told, time and again, that because they hunt with guns (as opposed to what, spears?) it is less authentic, not “real” subsistence living, and they are not entitled to their tools.
In the instance of self-defense, criminals under an Obama/Biden watch will remain armed because they don’t follow laws: mandates that guns be turned in will be ignored, applications for permits filled with lies and ordinary citizens will be placed at risk. So when glitches in the system happen, as documented here, or people never get a chance to make it to the phone because a gun is pointed in their face, what will they do since they no longer can defend themselves? Is Joe Biden’s Secret Service detail going to moonlight as the neighborhood watch? In a nation of + 300 million people?
Read here and here for more on the people who would render Americans defenseless against enemies foreign and domestic, deny some their lifestyles and start the campaign to chip away at the constitutional rights of American citizens.
All this carrying on by Poser Joe who imitates language of the people he despises and thinks are too stupid to notice his insults and bald-faced lies; it’s not endearing like it is when a child says he beat up the Green Goblin or repeats what you say in a “nah nah nah nah boo boo” tone of voice. He thinks he is ingratiating the people whose votes he wants as he simultaneously tries to talk them out of their money, not realising he is as transparent a liar as he is a gaffe machine.
Maybe we should just put up with it for another month or so. No, he won’t mature at the rate of a kindergartner; he will continue to flap his jaws as the idiocy spews out of it nonstop. Maybe it will tick people off enough to put him on a permanent time out.
Governor Palin, the Republican nominee for vice president, was scheduled to speak today at a rally in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza to protest the appearance here of President Ahmadinejad of Iran. Her appearance was canceled by rally organizers who sought a nonpolitical event. Following are the remarks Mrs. Palin would have given:
I am honored to be with you and with leaders from across this great country — leaders from different faiths and political parties united in a single voice of outrage.
Tomorrow, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will come to New York — to the heart of what he calls the Great Satan — and speak freely in this, a country whose demise he has called for.
Ahmadinejad may choose his words carefully, but underneath all of the rhetoric is an agenda that threatens all who seek a safer and freer world. We gather here today to highlight the Iranian dictator’s intentions and to call for action to thwart him.
He must be stopped.
The world must awake to the threat this man poses to all of us. Ahmadinejad denies that the Holocaust ever took place. He dreams of being an agent in a “Final Solution” — the elimination of the Jewish people. He has called Israel a “stinking corpse” that is “on its way to annihilation.” Such talk cannot be dismissed as the ravings of a madman — not when Iran just this summer tested long-range Shahab-3 missiles capable of striking Tel Aviv, not when the Iranian nuclear program is nearing completion, and not when Iran sponsors terrorists that threaten and kill innocent people around the world.
The Iranian government wants nuclear weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency reports that Iran is running at least 3,800 centrifuges and that its uranium enrichment capacity is rapidly improving. According to news reports, U.S. intelligence agencies believe the Iranians may have enough nuclear material to produce a bomb within a year.
The world has condemned these activities. The United Nations Security Council has demanded that Iran suspend its illegal nuclear enrichment activities. It has levied three rounds of sanctions. How has Ahmadinejad responded? With the declaration that the “Iranian nation would not retreat one iota” from its nuclear program.
So, what should we do about this growing threat? First, we must succeed in Iraq. If we fail there, it will jeopardize the democracy the Iraqis have worked so hard to build, and empower the extremists in neighboring Iran. Iran has armed and trained terrorists who have killed our soldiers in Iraq, and it is Iran that would benefit from an American defeat in Iraq.
If we retreat without leaving a stable Iraq, Iran’s nuclear ambitions will be bolstered. If Iran acquires nuclear weapons — they could share them tomorrow with the terrorists they finance, arm, and train today. Iranian nuclear weapons would set off a dangerous regional nuclear arms race that would make all of us less safe.
But Iran is not only a regional threat; it threatens the entire world. It is the no. 1 state sponsor of terrorism. It sponsors the world’s most vicious terrorist groups, Hamas and Hezbollah. Together, Iran and its terrorists are responsible for the deaths of Americans in Lebanon in the 1980s, in Saudi Arabia in the 1990s, and in Iraq today. They have murdered Iraqis, Lebanese, Palestinians, and other Muslims who have resisted Iran’s desire to dominate the region. They have persecuted countless people simply because they are Jewish.
Iran is responsible for attacks not only on Israelis, but on Jews living as far away as Argentina. Anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial are part of Iran’s official ideology and murder is part of its official policy. Not even Iranian citizens are safe from their government’s threat to those who want to live, work, and worship in peace. Politically-motivated abductions, torture, death by stoning, flogging, and amputations are just some of its state-sanctioned punishments.
It is said that the measure of a country is the treatment of its most vulnerable citizens. By that standard, the Iranian government is both oppressive and barbaric. Under Ahmadinejad’s rule, Iranian women are some of the most vulnerable citizens.
If an Iranian woman shows too much hair in public, she risks being beaten or killed.
If she walks down a public street in clothing that violates the state dress code, she could be arrested.
But in the face of this harsh regime, the Iranian women have shown courage. Despite threats to their lives and their families, Iranian women have sought better treatment through the “One Million Signatures Campaign Demanding Changes to Discriminatory Laws.” The authorities have reacted with predictable barbarism. Last year, women’s rights activist Delaram Ali was sentenced to 20 lashes and 10 months in prison for committing the crime of “propaganda against the system.” After international protests, the judiciary reduced her sentence to “only” 10 lashes and 36 months in prison and then temporarily suspended her sentence. She still faces the threat of imprisonment.
Earlier this year, Senator Clinton said that “Iran is seeking nuclear weapons, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is in the forefront of that” effort. Senator Clinton argued that part of our response must include stronger sanctions, including the designation of the IRGC as a terrorist organization. John McCain and I could not agree more.
Senator Clinton understands the nature of this threat and what we must do to confront it. This is an issue that should unite all Americans. Iran should not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. Period. And in a single voice, we must be loud enough for the whole world to hear: Stop Iran!
Only by working together, across national, religious, and political differences, can we alter this regime’s dangerous behavior. Iran has many vulnerabilities, including a regime weakened by sanctions and a population eager to embrace opportunities with the West. We must increase economic pressure to change Iran’s behavior.
Tomorrow, Ahmadinejad will come to New York. On our soil, he will exercise the right of freedom of speech — a right he denies his own people. He will share his hateful agenda with the world. Our task is to focus the world on what can be done to stop him.
We must rally the world to press for truly tough sanctions at the U.N. or with our allies if Iran’s allies continue to block action in the U.N. We must start with restrictions on Iran’s refined petroleum imports.
We must reduce our dependency on foreign oil to weaken Iran’s economic influence.
We must target the regime’s assets abroad; bank accounts, investments, and trading partners.
President Ahmadinejad should be held accountable for inciting genocide, a crime under international law.
We must sanction Iran’s Central Bank and the Revolutionary Guard Corps — which no one should doubt is a terrorist organization.
Together, we can stop Iran’s nuclear program.
Senator McCain has made a solemn commitment that I strongly endorse: Never again will we risk another Holocaust. And this is not a wish, a request, or a plea to Israel’s enemies. This is a promise that the United States and Israel will honor, against any enemy who cares to test us. It is John McCain’s promise and it is my promise.
I discovered why the Barack Obama campaign fears this book. Last week they staged what can only be described as a mob action intended to silence Freddoso, the same as they did with Stanley Kurtz, who hadn’t even yet written about the Chicago Annenberg Challenge papers he fought to open. It’s not that Freddoso has written an “extremist” or “hate”-filled book, as their hyperbolic message to their mindless thugs accused. Instead, Freddoso has written a reasonable, rational look at Obama’s record and has concluded that he is the first reformer to have never actually reformed anything, or even attempted it.
Barack Obama never rocked the boat. He became Daley’s Senator at both the state and federal levels, and Obama returned the favor by endorsing Daley in 2007 — despite the years-long federal investigation into his famously-corrupt administration.
The Economist approvingly reviews Freddoso’s book and comes to the same conclusion:
If Mr Obama really were the miracle-working, aisle-jumping, consensus-seeking new breed of politician his spin-doctors make him out to be, you would expect to see the evidence in these eight years. But there isn’t very much. Instead, as Mr Freddoso rather depressingly finds, Mr Obama spent the whole period without any visible sign of rocking the Democratic boat.
He was a staunch backer of Richard Daley, who as mayor failed to stem the corruption that has made Chicago one of America’s most notorious cities. Nor did he lift a finger against John Stroger and his son Todd, who succeeded his father as president of Cook County’s Board of Commissioners shortly before Stroger senior died last January. Cook County, where Chicago is located, has been extensively criticised for corrupt practices by a federally appointed judge, Julia Nowicki.
Why the hysterical reaction to Freddoso (which failed, as an aside, because his interview with Milt Rosenberg had been pre-taped)? Why doesn’t Team Obama reserve their thuggery for Jerome Corsi instead? Precisely because Corsi’s book has little credibility — his embrace of 9/11 Trutherism undoubtedly helped ensure that. Freddoso, on the other hand, is much more dangerous, because he has written the truth, and documented it well.
Most of us already knew it was stalling, but it seems like every day brings more information that will lead to its sputtering, hacking demise.
As of now (1330 Monday 22nd September), it appears that Hollis French and Lyda Green are laying down their fangs, knowing the subpoenas their committee issued was an illegal one to begin with. Only the Senate, it seems, has the authority to issue this and the motion to quash said to be required, is necessary when a legal authority exists.
Radio discussions are now sorting through information/speculation that “independent” investigator Steve Branchflower was busy asking Hollis French what to ask. Also, that Monegan has some other skeletons in his closet (which may explain why he never said anything negative to the press about his former boss) re: his job with the Anchorage Police Department, which he feared losing; if Palin knew about them he would never have been hired.
Updates to follow.
What I have so far (21.30): Well my friends, I don’t get TV so I’m a bit stuck there. And I am not hearing anything on the radio yet. The Anchorage Daily News, however, says
Less than a week after balking at the Legislature’s investigation into her alleged abuse of power, Gov. Sarah Palin on Monday indicated she will cooperate with a separate probe run by people she can fire. 7:35 PM
It’s been a long time since I first heard people say the ADN has long since given up even pretending to be objective. Still, I admit I did a bit of a double take when I saw such a blatant statement.
The link is here, but the words will be gone as updates roll over.
Senate President Lyda Green has taken her fight against Governor Sarah Palin one step too far – she violated the law, breached her oath of office, violated ethic rules, and tried to unconstitutionally delegate the Judiciary Council’s subpoena power to a private non-elected party. This warrants serious and immediate investigation in to Senate President Lyda Green’s unlawful actions against the State’s highest office, Governor Palin.
–and goes on to give more detail, including an Alaska Statute, which expands on what I wrote earlier. Although Hollis French has interpreted this statute much differently.
I ignored the advice of Allahpundit, whose blog entry advocated skipping ahead in this video. I have to finish reading A User’s Guide to the Brain and needed some serious humor to get me going. So I watched even the advert (that someone else complained about); following that Katie Couric’s voice over reminded me of Dan Rather’s ominous intonation at a Famous Person’s funeral: “In the distance, a dog barks.” (Or was it “A dog barks in the distance”?)
Now that I’ve watched, I have a couple of questions:
Did Katie Couric accuse Joe Biden of being “über careful”? Well, he denied it straight away, so I suppose no harm done.
Why is Biden still trying to promote his mythical blue collar roots? Or was it just directed at the echo chamber he panders to?
Doesn’t know much about Sarah Palin? Doesn’t he know how to use Google? Does this mean he doesn’t know she bagged a Bigfoot?
Hang on…Biden didn’t think there was anything intentional about making fun of McCain for not being able to use a computer? Didn’t know about sex ed for kindergartners? Or was he trying to decide if he should say kindergartners could easily fit into those content standards?
This might have been the time for him to pick up an ice cream to distract the viewer, but they were on a train…and all I saw were a lot of teeth.
Not only does he shamelessly refuse to apologise for the mockery his campaign lobbed against a former POW who can’t use a computer because he had been tortured, but also he projects his rationale onto McCain in a most infantile manner: “My ad sucks because he’s mean to me!”
I wonder if this will be the Obama/Biden MO when dealing with people like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? “No, no, no we thought some more about what you said, you know we were only reacting to what other people said you said. Back at the Oval office we reviewed the transcripts for ourselves and you know, I really didn’t know haboob could do that to helicopter engines, so no, no, we assure you we will not be asking for any sort of apology, or explanations, or, no, in fact it is disgraceful the way they treat guests in New York, we will be looking forward from now on, and in fact we are very sorry for what we have done to the Iranian people. Um, what was the question?”
Yeah. That’s nuance.
Update: Yap it was all over the place alright: Biden’s expert grasp on history and confident statement that, “Part of what a leader does is to instill confidence and demonstrate that he or she knows what they’re talking about[.]”
To wit:
“When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed,” Biden told Couric. “He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.’”
How ignorant is this statement? Let me count the ways:
1. Franklin Roosevelt didn’t become president in 1929 during the crash. He won the 1932 election and took office in 1933, largely because of the 1929 crash and the incompetent protectionist policies that transformed it into a Great Depression.
2. If FDR and President Herbert Hoover didn’t talk about the “princes of greed” in 1929, by the time FDR took over, that kind of populist rhetoric had certainly taken root. FDR greatly escalated the scope of federal government to institute the kind of redistributionism that Obama and Biden now champion.
3. If Hoover or FDR appeared on television in 1929 or even 1933, only a few hundred people would have seen it. Television was still an experimental medium and wouldn’t be introduced to the public for at least another decade.
I reckon offices all over the United States are taking bets on when the next gaffe will come. And in a place like Alaska, where right after earthquakes people shout things like “Two!” or “Talkeetna!” to wager the Richter and epicenter, Americans will be assessing level of damage and what state he’ll be in when he says it.
I have to admit to mixed feelings about putting campaign buttons, t-shirts, etc. of any stripe on children. A fifth grader might fall into the age range I have in mind of minors who aren’t mature enough in mind, emotion and intellect to be able to come to some sort of reasonable conclusion, but then again I might be recalling too closely me at that age. Like my classmates, I was exceedingly immature. Or maybe engaging in escapism.
There’s a succinct analysis of the legality behind this issue here, so I won’t get into that (at least not yet). Suffice to say the person who commented that the school should break out their checkbook probably is spot on.
If girls can come to school wearing jeans that have the word “Angel” embroidered across their bottoms, or kids with t-shirts that joke about (even advocate?) drug use, what gives with this? At most this kid is probably guilty of sloppiness so my advice would be to go buy a smaller shirt, re-do the message and get back to class. The message being political, and that being a reason to silence it, strikes me as hypocritical and biased. And if the students there get worked up enough from such a t-shirt that they lose control in a big way, then there are higher-order problems at that school than difference of opinion.
This reminds me of a headline I saw recently re: a professor who assigned an anti-Palin essay, which was later “broadened” to include all candidates. While many are so critical of people who allow their children to wear political slogans, I have to ask: Why we are allowing schools and teachers of being in the business of political indoctrination?
A New York City bus driver has dropped a five-year-old child off, despite it being the end of the line, two miles from his home and without an adult to collect him.
The New York Daily News reports an unnamed bus driver, who now is said elsewhere to have been suspended, “ordered” the child off the bus he wasn’t supposed to be on to begin with as he lives across the street from his school.
It all started when someone–unidentified at this point–placed the child on a school bus instead of walking him to his after-school program, as per his usual routine. At the end of the line the driver, who according to DOE regulations should have brought the little boy back to his school, instructed the child to get off the bus. The first grader wandered around and then asked someone for help.
“A DOE spokeswoman said this could be a case of driver misconduct.”
Could be?
Sure, most of us are aware that we don’t want to jump on someone’s case without adequately investigating what happened. We also know that young children’s hyperbolic accounts–the boy said he was made to get off the bus–ought to be looked into before either side is dismissed. In this instance, especially given some of the snarly blog comments aimed at the mother, it is my opinion that we also need to re-examine our critical thinking skills.
It’s painfully easy to jump onto the race issue. At least one comment I saw implied the driver was negligent and uncaring because the child is a minority. Another ranted about the mother’s use of the word “replace” in her response to the school’s standard issue apology. Still another wanted to blame the mother for not being there to collect her son.
At the time this story was released no one knew who the driver was (although I agree I find it hard to believe the school district could be included in this general population), let alone race. Even if that fact was known, what does that imply? Does knowing the driver’s race even change anything regarding how he or she ought to be disciplined? The suggestion is racist itself, in my opinion, no matter what skin color the person has.
And all this blaming the mother hatefulness indicates that some people didn’t read the story quite carefully enough, lack critical reading skills, or are unfamiliar with after-school programs. All of these possibilities are good reasons to ask questions, but not to attack the child’s mother.
Since after-school programs generally exist to care for children whose parents work or are travelling from work after school lets out, I would guess the mother was pretty much where she was supposed to be–at work. Her expectations were reasonable: that the school program act in a responsible manner towards her child and keep him from harm until she can reach him. When she responded to the school district with a sentiment I think most of us would agree is the first fearful possibility that came to our minds as well, I think it is reasonable to excuse her less-than-perfect word choice given that she was probably pretty shocked and distraught. Moreover, as a “literature type,” I could probably make an argument that compares the implication of her word with the shoddy treatment her son received at the hands of a complete moron. And that’s being nice.
If any dear reader gets the idea I’m taking this personally: I am. I am at a complete loss as to how someone could possibly believe that it was OK to drop a kid off two miles from his home. OK, I get that he or she may not have known that. But signing on the dotted line after the statement “I understand and will abide by all rules and regulations that govern the serious business of transporting children to and from school” means that the person was fully aware he or she was not to leave a child off the bus without an adult there to receive him. End of the line or not. Whether the child was asked nicely to get off or not.
I have a five-year-old child myself, and the thought of him wandering the streets here makes me absolutely nauseous. I would probably be spitting with rage if this had happened to him; improper word choice might be the least of the school district’s worries. Given that this–from what I have seen online today–is not as rare as one would hope, the school districts need to get their acts together. I realise mistakes happen, but when we say that, we mean things like “the newspaper didn’t get dropped off in the classroom” or “I forgot to run some extra copies.” Not, “I misplaced your child.”
Why did Bear Stearns fail, and how does that relate to AIG? It all seems so complex.
But really, it isn’t. Enough cards on this table have been turned over that the story is now clear. The economic history books will describe this episode in simple and understandable terms: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac exploded, and many bystanders were injured in the blast, some fatally.
Fannie and Freddie did this by becoming a key enabler of the mortgage crisis. They fueled Wall Street’s efforts to securitize subprime loans by becoming the primary customer of all AAA-rated subprime-mortgage pools. In addition, they held an enormous portfolio of mortgages themselves.
In the times that Fannie and Freddie couldn’t make the market, they became the market. Over the years, it added up to an enormous obligation. As of last June, Fannie alone owned or guaranteed more than $388 billion in high-risk mortgage investments. Their large presence created an environment within which even mortgage-backed securities assembled by others could find a ready home.
The problem was that the trillions of dollars in play were only low-risk investments if real estate prices continued to rise. Once they began to fall, the entire house of cards came down with them.
Turning Point
Take away Fannie and Freddie, or regulate them more wisely, and it’s hard to imagine how these highly liquid markets would ever have emerged. This whole mess would never have happened.
It is easy to identify the historical turning point that marked the beginning of the end.
Back in 2005, Fannie and Freddie were, after years of dominating Washington, on the ropes. They were enmeshed in accounting scandals that led to turnover at the top. At one telling moment in late 2004, captured in an article by my American Enterprise Institute colleague Peter Wallison, the Securities and Exchange Comiission’s chief accountant told disgraced Fannie Mae chief Franklin Raines that Fannie’s position on the relevant accounting issue was not even “on the page” of allowable interpretations.
Then legislative momentum emerged for an attempt to create a “world-class regulator” that would oversee the pair more like banks, imposing strict requirements on their ability to take excessive risks. Politicians who previously had associated themselves proudly with the two accounting miscreants were less eager to be associated with them. The time was ripe.
Greenspan’s Warning
The clear gravity of the situation pushed the legislation forward. Some might say the current mess couldn’t be foreseen, yet in 2005 Alan Greenspan told Congress how urgent it was for it to act in the clearest possible terms: If Fannie and Freddie “continue to grow, continue to have the low capital that they have, continue to engage in the dynamic hedging of their portfolios, which they need to do for interest rate risk aversion, they potentially create ever-growing potential systemic risk down the road,” he said. “We are placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk.”
What happened next was extraordinary. For the first time in history, a serious Fannie and Freddie reform bill was passed by the Senate Banking Committee. The bill gave a regulator power to crack down, and would have required the companies to eliminate their investments in risky assets.
Different World
If that bill had become law, then the world today would be different. In 2005, 2006 and 2007, a blizzard of terrible mortgage paper fluttered out of the Fannie and Freddie clouds, burying many of our oldest and most venerable institutions. Without their checkbooks keeping the market liquid and buying up excess supply, the market would likely have not existed.
But the bill didn’t become law, for a simple reason: Democrats opposed it on a party-line vote in the committee, signaling that this would be a partisan issue. Republicans, tied in knots by the tight Democratic opposition, couldn’t even get the Senate to vote on the matter.
That such a reckless political stand could have been taken by the Democrats was obscene even then. Wallison wrote at the time: “It is a classic case of socializing the risk while privatizing the profit. The Democrats and the few Republicans who oppose portfolio limitations could not possibly do so if their constituents understood what they were doing.”
Mounds of Materials
Now that the collapse has occurred, the roadblock built by Senate Democrats in 2005 is unforgivable. Many who opposed the bill doubtlessly did so for honorable reasons. Fannie and Freddie provided mounds of materials defending their practices. Perhaps some found their propaganda convincing.
But we now know that many of the senators who protected Fannie and Freddie, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Christopher Dodd, have received mind-boggling levels of financial support from them over the years.
Throughout his political career, Obama has gotten more than $125,000 in campaign contributions from employees and political action committees of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, second only to Dodd, the Senate Banking Committee chairman, who received more than $165,000.
Clinton, the 12th-ranked recipient of Fannie and Freddie PAC and employee contributions, has received more than $75,000 from the two enterprises and their employees. The private profit found its way back to the senators who killed the fix.
There has been a lot of talk about who is to blame for this crisis. A look back at the story of 2005 makes the answer pretty clear.
Oh, and there is one little footnote to the story that’s worth keeping in mind while Democrats point fingers between now and Nov. 4: Senator John McCain was one of the three cosponsors of S.190, the bill that would have averted this mess.
*********
“The Democrats and the few Republicans who oppose portfolio limitations could not possibly do so if their constituents understood what they were doing.”
First we’ve got liberals who stop buying their wine fav-or-eet, Palin Syrah, because the name is too close to that of She-Whose-Name-Must-Not-Be-Spoken.
Now we’ve got death threats against a a Maine news anchor because she looks too much like our ‘cuda to forgive.
I must admit, I did give a mighty hoot at this reply to the ‘pundit post:
Considering that the libs would like nothing better than to see all of us wearing identical North Korean-style quilted suits and trudging off in unison to work the collective-farm paddies, this anger of theirs towards someone who resembles Palin is quite extraordinary.
Apparantly, despite his frequent blasts of Sarah Palin for her one-time support of the so-called “Bridge to Nowhere,” Delaware Senator Joe Biden has a bridge issue of his own. And an opera house one… And a children’s museum one…
Although Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden routinely mocks his Republican counterpart, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, for her onetime support of the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere,” Biden and his running mate voted to keep the project alive twice.
Both Biden and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama voted to kill a Senate amendment that would have diverted federal funding for the bridge to repair a Louisiana span badly damaged by Hurricane Katrina, Senate records show.
And both voted for the final transportation bill that included the $223 million earmark for the Alaska project.
An amendment offered by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma, would have stripped the money appropriated to connect the Alaskan coastal city of Ketchikan to its airport on sparsely populated Gravina Island and diverted the money to Louisiana.
But Biden and Obama and 80 of their colleagues rejected the measure, an amendment to a massive 2005 transportation bill that funded thousands of projects across the country.
“That is probably the most disturbing element of this and the campaigning on the Bridge to Nowhere,” said Bill Allison of the Sunlight Foundation, a taxpayer watchdog group. “Because, yes, they had a chance to vote specifically against the Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska to redirect the money to people, to bridges and infrastructure damaged by Hurricane Katrina going in to New Orleans, and they chose not to.”
The final version passed the Senate 93-1. Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who has made his opposition to congressional “pork-barrel” spending a cornerstone of his campaign, did not vote on either the Coburn amendment or the final bill.
Palin, whom McCain chose as his running mate in August, has regaled crowds at the Republican convention and on the campaign trail with her declaration of “Thanks, but no thanks” for the bridge. But her conversion came after she became Alaska’s governor in 2006 and after the bridge became a national symbol of congressional waste.
The record shows that she supported the bridge as a gubernatorial candidate, and Democrats have seized on the flip-flop, perhaps no one with as much relish as Biden.
“I got also a bridge I got to sell you here, and guess what, it’s in Alaska, and it goes nowhere,” Biden mocked Palin on the campaign trail last week in Maumee, Ohio. And in Canton, Ohio, he tied it to McCain.
“If you look at it John McCain’s answers for the economy, and we’re in such desperate shape, is the ultimate bridge to nowhere. It’s nowhere,” Biden said. “It takes you nowhere.”
But while the applause line appealed to the Democratic faithful, it could come back to bite the Delaware senator.
This year, Delaware has requested 116 congressional earmarks through Biden, its longtime senator, at a cost to taxpayers of $342 million. In an appearance on CNN’s “American Morning” with anchor John Roberts, Biden said that he had been open about those requests and that they all can be justified.
“Everyone has seen them, and we have no Lawrence Welk Museums and have no bridges to nowhere in Delaware. It’s all straight up,” Biden said.
Among his requests: $1 million for renovation of an opera house in Wilmington, another million for the construction of a children’s museum and thousands of dollars for a water park renovation in Lewes.
“I think opera patrons generally can afford to — you can raise money for an opera house; you can refurbish things a lot of different ways,” Allison said.
“To have federal taxpaying dollars — which is coming from people all over the country; low-income, middle-income people, as well as the wealthy — to go to pay for the renovation of something that is really a luxury for Wilmington … There are far more vital projects that anyone could think of that needs money. You got health care. You got education. You got all other types of things. Instead, we are redirecting money to refurbish an opera house in Wilmington or to build a children’s museum.”
And Biden’s request includes a bridge that even the head of the Rehoboth Beach-Dewey Beach Chamber of Commerce says is not crucial at this juncture.
The Indian River Inlet Bridge is a vital link between two popular beachfront towns: Dewey and Bethany. Without it, the estimated 30,000 summer visitors would have to travel an additional 35 minutes to get to the towns.
“We need a new bridge, and we are fortunate to be at a place where it is finally going to happen,” said Carol Everhart, the chief of the Chamber of Commerce.
The existing bridge has some erosion problems, and if it ever collapsed, Everhart said, it would cause an economic disaster in the community. But it’s safe for now.
“The bridge, as it is, is perfectly safe,” she said.
Still, Biden asked for $13 million to help shore up the existing bridge and begin construction of a new one. And that’s what troubles the Sunlight Foundation’s Allison.
“This bridge is not in any danger of collapse, and essentially what Sen. Biden is doing is saying, ‘My state bridge gets the priority dollar even though it is not a priority project,’ ” Allison said.
He said the Department of Transportation, rather than U.S. senators, should be deciding which bridges get priority funding in the country. That way, the bridges in the U.S. that need immediate repair would be first in line for the dollars needed to do the work.
As he embarked on his presidential bid in 2007, Obama said he would no longer ask for earmark projects. McCain, who has been a longtime critic of the process, does not seek any for his home state of Arizona.
CNN asked Biden’s campaign whether it could ask the senator about his earmark requests and his votes on the Bridge to Nowhere.
In response, a staffer e-mailed, “You’ve interviewed Gov. Palin re: her completely made up position on the Bridge to Nowhere right?”
I especially love that non-answer, an Obama/Biden specialty that the mainstream media never call them on.
Tony Blankley
OP-ED:
The mainstream media have gone over the line and are now straight out propagandists for the Obama campaign. While they have been liberal and blinkered in their worldview for decades, in 2007-08 for the first time, the major media are consciously covering for one candidate for president and consciously knifing the other. This is no longer journalism — it is simply propaganda. (The American left-wing version of the Volkischer Beobachter cannot be far behind.) And as a result, we are less than seven weeks away from possibly electing a president who has not been thoroughly and even half way honestly presented to the country by our watchdogs — the press.
The image of Barack Obama that the press has presented is not a fair approximation of the real man. They have consciously ignored whole years in his life, and showed a lack of curiosity about such gaps that bespeaks a lack of journalistic instinct. Thus, the public image of Mr. Obama is of a “Man who never was.” I take that phrase from a 1956 movie about a real life WWII British intelligence operation to trick the Germans into thinking the Allies were going to invade Greece, rather than Italy, in 1943. Operation “Mincemeat” involved the acquisition of a human corpse dressed as a Maj. William Martin, R.M. and put into the sea near Spain. Attached to the corpse was a brief-case containing fake letters suggesting that the Allied attack would be against Sardinia and Greece.
To make the operation credible, British intelligence created a fictional life for the corpse — a letter from a lover, tickets to a London theater, all the details of a life — but not the actual life of the dead young man whose corpse was being used. So, too, the man the media has presented to the nation as Mr. Obama is not the real man.
The mainstream media ruthlessly and endlessly repeats any McCain gaffes, while ignoring Obama gaffes. You have to go to weird little Internet sites to see all the stammering and stuttering that Mr. Obama needs before getting out a sentence fragment or two. But all you see on the networks is an eventual one or two clear sentences from Mr. Obama. Nor do you see Mr. Obama’s ludicrous gaffe that Iran is a tiny country and no threat to us. Nor his 57 American states gaffe. Nor his forgetting, if he ever knew, that Russia has a veto in the United Nations. Nor his whining and puerile “come on” when he is being challenged. This is the kind of editing one would expect from Goebbels’ disciples, not Cronkite’s.
More appalling, NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” suggested that Gov. Sarah Palin’s husband had sex with his own daughters. That scene was written with the assistance of Al Franken, Democratic Party candidate for Senate in Minnesota. Talk about incest.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen.Barack Obama, D-Ill., greets supporters before his speech in downtown Charlotte, North Carolina on September 21, 2008. (UPI Photo/Nell Redmond)
But worse than all the unfair and distorted reporting and image projecting, is the shocking gaps in Mr. Obama’s life that are not reported at all. The major media simply has not reported on Mr. Obama’s two years at Columbia University in New York, where, among other things, he lived a mere quarter mile from former terrorist Bill Ayers— after which they both ended up as neighbors and associates in Chicago. Mr. Obama denies more than a passing relationship with Mr. Ayers. Should the media be curious? In only two weeks the media has focused on all the colleges Mrs. Palin has attended, her husband’s driving habits 20 years ago and the close criticism of Mrs. Palin’s mayoral political opponents. But in two years they haven’t bothered to see how close Mr. Obama was with the terrorist Ayers.
Nor have the media paid any serious attention to Mr. Obama’s rise in Chicago politics — how did honest Obama rise in the famously sordid Chicago political machine with the full support of Boss Daley? Despite the great — and unflattering details on Mr. Obama’s Chicago years presented in David Freddoso’s new book, the mainstream media continues to ignore both the facts and the book. It took a British publication, the Economist, to give Mr. Freddoso’s book a review with fair comment.
The public image of Mr. Obama as an idealistic, post-race, post-partisan, well-spoken and honest young man with the wisdom and courage befitting a great national leader is a confection spun by a willing conspiracy of Mr. Obama, his publicist David Axelrod and most of the senior editors, producers and reporters of the national media.
Perhaps that is why the National Journal’s respected correspondent Stuart Taylor has written that “the media can no longer be trusted to provide accurate and fair campaign reporting and analysis.” That conspiracy has not only photo-shopped out all of Mr. Obama’s imperfections (and dirtied up his opponent Mr. McCain’s image), but it has put most of his questionable history down the memory hole.
The public will be voting based on the idealized image of the man who never was. If he wins, however, we will be governed by the sunken, cynical man Mr. Obama really is. One can only hope that the senior journalists will be judged as harshly for their professional misconduct as Wall Street’s leaders currently are for their failings.
John McCain didn’t want to respond in kind to Barack Obama’s silly and ignorant attack on McCain’s inability to e-mail, but a 527 group has decided to fill the vacuum on their own. In a 30-second spot called “Wounded Veterans”, Lt. Col. Mike Fairhead asks Obama why he attacks McCain’s war wounds:
I’m certain that this will once again start the hysteria about 527s, “swift boating”, and unfair personal attacks among Obama’s defenders. Well, I’d say that Lt. Col. Fairhead may go a little far in claiming that Obama attacked McCain’s war injuries, since it looks more like a case of incompetence than anything else. That certainly was the net effect, if not the intent.
I’d also say too bad. Their original ad itself was, even without the easily-researchable cause of McCain’s disability, pointless and misleading. McCain has led on technology issues (although he did not, as McCain himself laughingly noted, invent the Blackberry). The fate of the Western world does not hinge on the ability to personally send an e-mail, especially when the White House has been known to hire an aide or two for those kinds of purposes. On the other hand, the false logic of “How can McCain understand the tech world if he can’t send an e-mail” certainly opens Obama to the more substantial logic of “How can Obama understand the military if he’s never served,” or “How can Obama handle the biggest executive job in the Free World without any executive experience at all,” and so on.
Let the whiners gripe about the marginal overreach in this ad. Call it an idiot tax for Team Obama and their failure to do basic research on the original spot. Joe Biden’s original verdict on that spot being included in this ad is priceless as well.
From a man who’s no stranger to abject disgrace comes one of the purest examples of racial demagoguery we’ve seen from either side during this very long campaign, duly laughed at and applauded by the same group that worked so hard last week to get Palin disinvited from the anti-Iran rally. His party will love him for it, I assure you.
Rep. Alcee Hastings told an audience of Jewish Democrats Wednesday that they should be wary of Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin because “anybody toting guns and stripping moose don’t care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks.”
“If Sarah Palin isn’t enough of a reason for you to get over whatever your problem is with Barack Obama, then you damn well had better pay attention,” Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida said at a panel about the shared agenda of Jewish and African-American Democrats Wednesday. Hastings, who is African-American, was explaining what he intended to tell his Jewish constituents about the presidential race. “Anybody toting guns and stripping moose don’t care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks. So, you just think this through,” Hastings added as the room erupted in laughter and applause.
Also on the panel: Steve Cohen, who was himself viciously demagogued by a fellow “progressive” not long ago yet who apparently couldn’t open his mouth to say anything here except to muse very stupidly about Jesus’s political leanings. Which isn’t even the stupidest thing he’s had to say about Jesus this month.
So this joker has no idea, does he, that he has just mocked and offended the values of many people in this country, including Native Alaskans, many of whom indeed hunt moose as part of a subsistence lifestyle. So Natives hate Jews and blacks? Hunters are racists?
Is this Hastings’ sick way of supporting Biden by establishing a race to utter the most ludicrous, offensive, idiotic and absurd statements ever? Does the Democratic party have to work this hard to appear so stupid, or does it just come naturally?
I’m also kind of curious: Does Hastings buy his meat in a supermarket or is he a vegetarian?
By now everybody knows that Senator John McCain has suspended his presidential campaign to attend to business in Washington surrounding the nation’s economic woes.
Barack Obama rebuffed McCain [and McCain's request to postpone the scheduled debate], saying it’s “more important than ever” for the candidates to tell voters how they would deal with the crisis. He said they can work with Congress while campaigning. “It is going to be part of the president’s job to deal with more than one thing at once,” Obama said.
Then there’s also this pesky Internet rumor that Barry is planning to drop Biden as vice presidential nominee–the Gaffe Master will fall ill, naturally–and replace him with Hillary Clinton.
Biden may very possibly be unaware of campaign history–who can tell anymore–but hopefully Obama is aware that:
Dropping Biden from the ticket would be a throwback to George McGovern’s shocker in 1972, when he replaced running mate Thomas Eagleton after it was learned that Eagleton had undergone electro-shock therapy for depression.
McGovern lost to President Nixon in a landslide, suggesting that seventh-inning lineup changes are not the best strategy for presidential candidates who want to shake things up.
Judson Berger points out that it may be a moot point, given that absentee ballots have already been sent out with all the–dare I say it–”current” nominee names included, and in some states deadlines for doing so have come and gone.
Still, I feel like Barry isn’t above trying to do something radical such as getting dates tweaked, given the state of the nation and crisis currently raging. In that instance my thought is that, as Obama was on about the need for presidential multi-tasking, he needs also to remember that difficult circumstances cannot be tweaked to escape them. Will he be able to change shirts to get out of crisis mode with Ahmadinejad? North Korea?
Certainly the story would be that Biden is too ill to go on, but everybody will know what fakery that really is, and I believe Obama knows it.
[H]e wants to let everyone know that this is a “sufficiently important problem”. Sufficiently important how? Apparently, “sufficiently important” to issue press statements, but not “sufficiently important” to get back to work for a few days. What would constitute a problem “sufficiently important” enough for him to do that? Congress needs to address a $700 billion bailout that Obama has already stated will severely restrict his policy options if he wins the elections. Doesn’t he have a “sufficiently important” interest in that, either?
Obama has another problem with returning to Washington, one that received little attention in the analysis of McCain’s challenge yesterday. Obama has to raise $3 million each day in order to hit his target of $100 million a month. He needs to conduct fundraisers constantly in order to make that goal. Taking three or four days off the campaign trail means a potential loss of revenue for Obama, one he can ill afford at the moment. That’s a “sufficiently important problem” that would keep Obama out of Washington.
McCain won this round. He understood that the next leader of the nation had to put himself in a position of leadership in this crisis in order to have credibility. McCain took the initiative, while Obama had to return after being summoned like a recalcitrant student.
Obama prefers to be on the trail making money than doing the job he was elected to do. What else is new? Certainly not his sputtering attempt to make himself look good after his “call me if you need me” gaffe:
As I said before, I think that one of the things we have to determine is how we can be most helpful. It’s my sense that the most helpful thing we can do right now is, uh, to let everyone know this is a sufficiently important problem. I can be helpful, and I am prepared to be anywhere, anytime. So, uh, I think the message is, if I can be helpful, I am prepared to be there at any point.
Redundant, selfish, narcissistic. What other qualities in a president would the liberals like to see besides these?
President Bush’s speech is already being characterised as “too long” and his explanations “too complicated.” In my opinion it is too soon to have said such a thing, especially given that there are so many more details–this is not a simplistic situation–and the balance of our debts to other nations and Chinese participation in our economy…well you get the idea. His explanation summary was not verbose.
But what about the “doom and gloom”? I’m still trying to decide if the picture painted was overly noir, or if he needed to speak of “hometown banks failing” to drive the point home. (Nevermind the FDIC insures deposits up to 100K$, and that is a government function.)
From another angle: the president has “invited” the two presidential nominee senators to Washington for an emergency meeting tomorrow.
In other words: Obama, get your arse to Washington!
An “oh yeah”: McCain had the foresight to act like a leader and get to Washington to do the job he was elected to do. Barack Obama, on the other hand, cares only about Barack Obama. He has demonstrated today to the nation that he is concerned more about getting ahead in the polls, raising more money, and throwing out yet more snarly ads, than he does about the state of the American nation.
Obama’s response to McCain’s initiative is lame. As with his initial reaction to Sarah Palin, Obama has miscalculated. While he tries to spin McCain’s move as a mere response to his initiative, it was the Republican who first issued the call for a suspension of the campaigns.
Both McCain and Obama will now go to Washington. McCain on his own initiative. Obama as a result of the president’s call for an economic summit.
But it is McCain who will play the proactive role. Obama will come to Washington, but will keep one foot outside the Beltway.
Even though the president has called both candidates to Washington to save the country, Obama continues to campaign. Politics as usual.
He doesn’t want to cancel the debate. He would debate while the markets burn.
McCain is going to work while Obama is phoning it in.
I’m going to have to disagree with Patterico, who was bothered by Sarah Palin’s response to the Pakistani president’s moronic fumbling for words once he set eyes on her.
“A little gravitas, please,” Patterico wrote. “I think Palin is bright, but she should model herself after Margaret Thatcher. In the unlikely event that some sexist jerk from Pakistan had praised her looks, Maggie wouldn’t have said “Tee hee.” Even if she had been pretty, she still would have found a way to cut the guy off at the knees.”
Ehem…excuse me? Cut him off at the knees? Sarah Palin seemed to know full well that such a reaction (as opposed to response) really would have served no purpose. I sense Zardari is in for some bit of mockery for having lost his focus in front of the world, and publicly shaming him would have done Palin no good. She knows when not to shoot herself in the foot.
I’m not suggesting that Sarah should engage in prostituting her charm or allow herself to be insulted in order to get her way. It’s practicality I’m talking about here. And for the record, “tee hee” is most definitely not the way I interpret her replies. Her body language and tone of voice convey a sort of respectful dismissiveness–but again, not too dismissive. At one point she waved him away with her hand, but the gesture was soft enough not to offend. And he appeared not to be put off by it because it looked to me like he wanted her to be comfortable–you can see how she sort of fumbled with her hands and tried to sit down but then realised she shouldn’t until invited–and gestured quickly for her to sit down.
And I hate to be the bearer of bad news but to some people a statement such as, “Now I know why all of America is crazy about you” is a compliment and nothing more. I’m sure some would see it as lacking the “deep” thought and I won’t be able to convince them otherwise, even when they find time to be critical of Margaret Thatcher’s looks. But I’m also not going to buy the line that the Iron Lady would have dressed him down. I think she too would have been bright enough to play it down as Palin did.
Feminism isn’t always about jumping down people’s throats. There’s a time for diplomacy and allowing people to realise their mistakes and cultural gaffes in private. Sarah has proven yet again she is one step ahead of those who are so eager, as are some in the media, to preserve offended antagonism over reaching mutual understanding.
An Egyptian Muslim scholar has called for an end to risible religious edicts after a Saudi cleric said Mickey Mouse was an agent of Satan who should die, local media reported on Wednesday.
Sheikh Mohamed al-Munajid, a cleric who often appears on Saudi television and who is also a former Saudi diplomat in the United States, said last week that mice were “agents of Satan” and should be killed.
“Sharia (Islamic law) calls for the extermination of all mice. That includes the rodents as well as ‘the famous cartoon mouse’,” he said.
He blamed Mickey Mouse for causing people to become soft on mice.
However, Suad Saleh, a woman preacher who hosts a popular television programme on fatwas, or religious edicts, told the English-language daily Egyptian Gazette that Munajid’s ruling “tarnishes Islam’s image.”
“An edict should be based on knowledge, logic and reason,” she said. “Yes, mice should be killed when seen according to Islam’s teachings. But it is illogical to deal with a cartoon character as a live mouse and kill it.”
So are we going to see a rush of mouse killers outside as well as inside KSA? And what about bonfires fed by Disney memorabilia? Does anybody remember the picture of Mickey Mouse flipping the bird and saying, “Hey, Ayatollah!”? These are a few of the flashes that went through my mind when I read this absurdity, but it all settled on the dim memory of one passage in Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China in which Jung Chang mentions Mao’s call to kill all vermin (I think it was a species of birds?). It resulted in overpopulation of their natural prey because citizens had been all too happy to oblige the Mao madness.
I do realise all groups have their nutjobs. What I’m disturbed at is how many people actually follow their advice. No word yet on how the general public is responding to this fatwa, which might be overshadowed by the news that British plumbers and purveyors of bathroom fixtures seem set to have a lot of new business.
And she’s bragging about it, too. Apparently without “preparations”, Code Pink founders Jodie Evans and Medea Benjamin met with Iranian president and raging anti-Semite Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in New York. Evans wears another hat in this election as well; she has pledged to raise over $50,000 for Barack Obama as one of his main bundlers:
Calling it a “major step forward” in relations between Iran and the United States, leading activists Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans of CODEPINK Women for Peace — along with more than 150 other U.S. peace group representatives — met Wednesday afternoon with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad here following his appearance at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday.
They had some interesting ideas for promoting peace with the man who has threatened to wipe Israel off the map, who funds terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, whose munitions kill American soldiers in Iraq, and whose nation currently wants to build nukes. Their solutions? Peace parks and investing in Iranian businesses:
The CODEPINK women proposed inviting American and Iranian artists to build a “peace park” in Tehran, a memorial dedicated to people-to-people commitment to peace and diplomacy between our two countries.
They also proposed a plan to invest funds in an Iranian business, one that produces green and sustainable products, such as bicycles. This grassroots investment would be the opposite of efforts by the Bush administration and Congress to tighten sanctions, a move which CODEPINK thinks would only hurt ordinary, everyday Iranians. Such a symbolic CODEPINK investment in a green, sustainable business would challenge U.S. regulations blocking trade with Iran and would show how diplomacy and trade are preferable to war and sanctions.
Most people want to stop investing in an Iranian system that needs cash for its nuclear aspirations. Congress has considered a divestment bill this year, for instance, attempting to use leverage . In fact, both John McCain and Barack Obama support divesture. Maybe that message got lost in the shuffle at Team O.
That brings us to the bigger question: why is a bundler for Obama’s campaign meeting with the head of the biggest terror-sponsoring regime in the world? Let’s skip over all of the hypocrisy of a supposed “peace” group sucking up to a man who funds terrorists, murders, and violence all over the world. (They like Castro, too, so that’s old news.) Here we have someone actively working to raise funds for Obama meeting with the explicitly avowed enemy of one of our closest allies. What does that say about Obama and his campaign?
Obama should disavow Evans and return the money she has bundled for him. If not, we can consider that agreement with Evans’ actions and judge Obama’s foreign-policy instincts by it. (via Melanie Morgan and Free Republic’s Kristin Taylor)
It’s worth repeating Melanie Morgan re: how closely Obama embraces this group:
“Obama recently put his seal of approval on Evans’ attempt to storm the stage during the acceptance speech of Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska when he welcomed her to his two Hollywood fundraisers last week, the exclusive $28,500 per person event and the $2500 per person event Barbra Streisand sang at the same evening.”
Interestingly, this link, Evans’s statement of the meeting with Ahmadinejad (toward the bottom of Kristinn Taylor’s entry) led to a very pink, but inaccessible page. (This is as of Friday 25 September 2008, 06.30 AKDT)
Why, Code Pink, is this a major step forward? You don’t represent the United States in any official capacity and you have no power to set policy. And rare as it may be for a “world leader” to meet with an activist group, you seem to be forgetting that it isn’t because he admires your principles. You are useful and nothing else.
Many of the people who speak out against what Code Pink are doing are reviled and mocked for being “uneducated” and “ignorant” but the truth is we are the ones who understand better than they do what pawns they are. We also understand they are a giant liability for Obama, who himself has already stated he would meet with Ahmadinejad without having established any prior conditions. This is against the interests of the United States, the desires of most Americans, and offensive to those whose families have suffered as a result of the actions of the revolutionary Iranian government.
Moreover, they seem to be mixing up the Iranian people with their leader, who by the way has to be approved by an unelected body, even to run for office. Wishing to establish some sort of dialogue with private Iranian citizens is noteworthy and probably even more advantageous because, depending on the circumstances, you might come closer to getting some insight into what ordinary Iranians have to say. Given the chance, probably one of the first things many Iranians would inform these women of is that many Iranian women are not even permitted to ride bicycles because it is deemed as “immodest.” Evans and Benjamin also need to be reminded that in his own country Ahmadinejad routinely jails and otherwise punishes women, whose rights are denied daily.
The notorious disinviting of Sarah Palin from an anti-Ahmedinejad rally in New York is a product of the secret war Hillary Clinton is waging against the Obama presidential campaign.
The catalyst that set the disastrous events in motion was Hillary Clinton’s withdrawal.
Many weak and nonsensical excuses were made for Clinton’s withdrawal. It was said she pulled out because she thought the event was partisan, or because she did not want to appear with Palin. She was unhappy that the organizers did not tell her that Palin also was going to attend.
Actually, what Clinton signaled was her chances of seizing the nomination and the White House in 2012 were more important than presenting a united front against Ahmadinejad.
So what happened to set the ball rolling? Hillary’s pull out had nothing to do with Palin. It was an implicit hit at Obama. Hillary did not want to be the one to represent Obama. Obama’s position on Iran is sophomoric, idiotic and dangerous. Hillary has been more responsible and she was not going to clean up his mess.
In plain terms, Hillary Clinton was not going to be the face of Obama’s Iranian foreign policy. Obama has said he would meet with Ahmedinejad without condition — essentially rewarding him for his nuclear arsenal and genocidal threats. No way was Hillary going to pave that road for him, so she pulled out forcing Obama to face the jihad music. In withdrawing she forced him send someone in his stead — but who?
Clinton could not have known that Jewish lay leadership would cave to their left wing activists, but that was of little import to her. Her action was taken to shine the spotlight on Obama’s complete failure on Iran, and she accomplished this. Claiming that by inviting Palin (and Clinton, Biden and Wexler), the organizers were in danger of losing their tax-exempt status was ridiculous. It was not a political rally and Hillary attended and spoke in 2006 when she was running for the Senate. Was that political? Those who make that argument insult our intelligence.
I do not forgive Malcolm Hoenlein for caving to the leftist Jews. The buck stops with him and he blew it. Israel is in Iran’s nuclear cross hairs. Full weaponization is either here or imminent. American Jews need real leadership and that is why Malcolm Hoinlein must resign. He is tired and gutless. As executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations since June 1986, it was his decision to make. Hoenlein has demonstrated he is not capable of leading the Jewish people as the world prepares for a second holocaust. The left wing politics of yesterday cause irreparable harm.
The real issue is why Obama didn’t send anyone to represent him at the Anti-Ahmedinejad rally? Having no one there for Obama makes it seem he did not want to upset the Hitler wannabe, or that he was pandering to his widespread support in the Muslim world or his 22% lead over McCain among Muslim Americans.
Hillary wanted these question raised in the subconscious of Jewish and other pro-Israel/anti-Iran voters.
In this Presidential race, Hillary is a McCain operative even if he doesn’t know it.
A $100,000 state grant for a botanic garden in Englewood that then-state Sen. Barack Obama awarded in 2001 to a group headed by a onetime campaign volunteer is now under investigation by the Illinois attorney general amid new questions, prompted by Chicago Sun-Times reports, about whether the money might have been misspent.
The garden was never built. And now state records obtained by the Sun-Times show $65,000 of the grant money went to the wife of Kenny B. Smith, the Obama 2000 congressional campaign volunteer who heads the Chicago Better Housing Association, which was in charge of the project for the blighted South Side neighborhood.
Smith wrote another $20,000 in grant-related checks to K.D. Contractors, a construction company that his wife, Karen D. Smith, created five months after work on the garden was supposed to have begun, records show. K.D. is no longer in business.
Attorney General Lisa Madigan — a Democrat who is supporting Obama’s presidential bid — is investigating “whether this charitable organization properly used its charitable assets, including the state funds it received,” Cara Smith, Madigan’s deputy chief of staff, said Wednesday.
In addition to the 2001 grant that Obama directed to the housing association as a “member initiative,” the not-for-profit group got a separate $20,000 state grant in 2006.
But of course the person investigating the crime is a Obama supporter, so we shouldn’t be surprised that others will go under the bus as Obama skates:
Madigan’s office has notified Obama’s presidential campaign of the probe, which was launched this week. But Obama’s actions in awarding the money are not a focus of the investigation, Smith said.
Come on. The spouse of a campaign aide gets a grant for a garden that never gets built and Obama isn’t suspected of any wrongdoing?
How about his judgment?
The relationship between Smith and Obama dates to at least 1997, when Obama wrote a letter that Smith used to help the housing association win city funding for an affordable-housing development near the garden site. Plans called for more than 50 homes; a dozen ultimately were built.
So he helped the aide get funding for 50 homes, most of which were never built. Then a few years later he gives that same aide some MORE money for a garden that was never built.
A company in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter is making commemorative coins for American presidential hopeful Barack Obama.
Windsor, Elizabeth & Windsor has already sold more than 300 limited edition commemorative silver coins to the Democratic Party to hand out to key members of the campaign to elect Obama.
The coins already sold to the Democrats will be presented to the senators, congressmen, governors and other politicians they are being given to within the next two weeks.
The company directors got the idea of producing the coins after seeing actress Meryl Streep talking about Barack Obama on a television programme.
When they got in touch with the Democrats the party jumped at the chance. And the coins have proved such a hit that locally produced versions have already been launched to compete with the UK originals.
The coins show Senator Obama’s face, along with a picture of the White House and the legend “President of the United States of America”.
So there you have it folks, please make sure you hurry up and get yours, as supply is very limited. Make sure you place it next to your President Kerry and President Gore commemorative coins, oh, wait, Gore and Kerry had a bit more humility and didn’t actually make presidential coins…
Either way, I am glad the Obama campaign has decided that the November election is a mere formality, as he is already the President-elect. I guess I don’t need to go to the polls on that day after all…
But in reality, PUMA pundit, I’m sure you will be going with as much glee as I will, with the prospect of NObama straight ahead.
This comes as both a stunning and ridiculous development; Americans are still coping with high energy prices and coming to grips with a plan to bailout Wall Street, and Senator Reid is denying access to potentially one of America’s most abundant energy reserves. Just how much energy you ask?
Dr. Daniel Fine of MIT reported that 750 billion barrels worth of oil shale have been discovered in Colorado alone. That amount is enough to potentially power the U.S. economy for many decades. Furthermore, if full-scale production begins within five years, the U.S. could completely end its dependence on OPEC by 2020…
In essence, Senator Reid is stripping the decision rights away from his colleagues in other states.
Here’s a fact sheet from Gingrich’s American Solutions group noting that America’s oil shale deposits are fully three times the size of Saudi Arabia’s proven oil reserves, and here’s the contact information for all 100 senators. Go rattle some cages. Exit question: How about a hastily arranged presser for the Barracuda to stress her outrageous outrage at this development?
Update: A reader e-mailed Reid’s spokesman for comment and got this reply. I’m not kidding about rattling cages.
There is a possibility the Senate will be asked to vote on reestablishing the moratorium on oil shale extraction. Although Senate Democrats support measures to increase this nation’s energy supply, oil shale extraction has not been proven to be economically viable, will produce more greenhouse gases, and will significantly decrease the West’s water supply.
A Sarah Palin impersonator hired by the New York Daily News was charged with walking around the city as a test to see how locals and tourists respond.
People waved and cheered at her, some even asking for autographs. A gaggle of tourists gathered round and others aimed their cameras from tour buses. A Lehman Brothers employee stopped to chat and a passer-by shouted, “You’re hot! But I hope you lose!”
One man out for a stroll allowed his granddaughter’s photo to be made, but only after an opposition button was prominently placed on the child. “If her parents see her with anyone who even looks like Palin,” he said, “they’ll strangle me.”
So, does this mean New Yorkers have switched to milk from their favorite wine?
Not quite. Somehow New Yorkers never struck me as mean-spirited or absurd enough to boycott something for a resemblance. They bicker with each other when trying to give out-of-towners proper directions (I’m speaking from personal experience here) and old ladies pass out hard candies to people who give up their seats for them. (With the looks people get when they try to ignore them, you might be hard pressed to find someone unwilling to relinquish that seat!)
But let’s be realistic. I am sure the Daily News, whose rag factor remains unknown to me, thought they were having a spot of fun, but a few random passersby a survey does not make. And the “‘Palin’ by Comparison” table they inserted in the article’s center is designed to bias. I know, I know, to some it might seem I have no sense of humor. But the truth is bias trickled into society, in deliberately small amounts, has a real effect. Such entries as “countries visited”–which recalls the outlandish assertion that somehow having obtained a passport only last year is practically a personal deficiency–combined with the table’s title disregards the fact that millions of Americans are not in possession of a passport.
And, shocking as it may seem to lots of New Yorkers, some Alaskans have never been Outside. So what? They would be able to spot Kristy Webb as a fakester from opposite ends of Manhattan, as she in reality looks nothing like the real Sarah.
Fairfax, VA-Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign has sent threatening letters to news agencies in Pennsylvania and Ohio to stop airing ads exposing his anti-gun record sponsored by the National Rifle Association Political Victory Fund (NRA-PVF).
The kicker? NRA-PVF’s Ohio’s ads have not yet begun running.
“Barack Obama and his campaign are terrified of the truth,” declared Chris W. Cox, Chairman of NRA-PVF. “Sen. Obama’s statements and support for restricting access to firearms, raising taxes on guns and ammunition and voting against the use of firearms for self-defense in the home are a matter of public record. NRA-PVF will make sure that everyone knows of Obama’s abysmal record on guns and hunting.”
The Obama campaign sent cease and desist letters to news outlets in Pennsylvania and Ohio, denouncing the ads and demanding their removal from the airwaves. All stations where NRA-PVF has purchased or plans to purchase ads have been provided with documented evidence of Sen. Obama’s anti-gun record.
“Barack Obama would be the most anti-gun president in our nation’s history. That’s the truth,” concluded Cox. “NRA-PVF has the facts on our side. No amount of running from or lying about his record and then intimidating news outlets in the hope of deceiving American gun owners and hunters is going to work. Those strong arm tactics may work in Chicago, but not in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and not as long as NRA-PVF has anything to say about it.”
I understand some people reading this might not be interested in guns, or believe in gun control. In that case I would urge you to consider the erasure of rights we have been hearing about over the past few years include the right to information–what the Obama campaign here seeks to quash. Whether you agree with gun control or not, no campaign has the right to keep information from the public, or use insidious methods to intimidate others into doing the same.
If you believe this to be a small or insignificant matter, consider the consequences of government violation of any other of our constitutionally guaranteed rights and protections? Would you tolerate it? It is not the nature of a responsible citizen to pick and choose which guaranteed rights may apply to fellow citizens, but this is what the Obama campaign seeks to do.
The Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy had as its key findings:
* that secrecy is a form of government regulation
* that excessive secrecy has significant consequences for the national interest when policy makers
are not fully informed
* the government is not held accountable for its actions
* the public cannot engage fully in informed debate
The people of the United States are entitled to and demand better than such insidious forms of public control.
Jack Cashill believes that Bill Ayers, unrepentant terrorist, Weatherman and current professor of education (!), wrote Barack Obama’s memoir Dreams of My Father, and has written a three-part article to outline his theory. As I write this it has been about an hour since I heard parts of a radio interview by Rusty Humphries of Jack Cashill, who discussed some of the technical aspects of making this determination. He also spoke of qsum, an authorship attribution program that is key to proving his assertions. He does not, however, have the skills to run the program and is appealing to an unbiased audience member who can aid him in the process of going through to compare/contrast the two books. Such a person should contact Cashill at this address.
“I picture the street coming alive, awakening from the fury of winter, stirred from the chilly spring night by cold glimmers of sunlight angling through the city.” Bill Ayers, Fugitive Days.
“Night now fell in midafternoon, especially when the snowstorms rolled in, boundless prairie storms that set the sky close to the ground, the city lights reflected against the clouds.” Barack Obama, Dreams From My Father.
Prior to 1990, when Barack Obama contracted to write Dreams From My Father, he had written very close to nothing.
As an undergraduate, Obama had written what he justifiably calls some “very bad poetry.” He published nothing under his own name in The Harvard Law Review, where he served as an editor and as president. And after leaving Harvard, he published nothing in its review or in any law journal.
Then, in 1995, this untested 33 year-old produced what Time Magazine has called–with a straight face– “the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician.”
The public is asked to believe Obama wrote this on his own. I do not buy this canard for a minute, not at all. In writing a book on intellectual fraud, Hoodwinked, I developed an eye for literary humbug, and Dreams serves up an eyeful.
In writing an earlier article about Dreams’ dubious authorship, I had questioned whether the influential Muslim crackpot who paved Obama’s way into Harvard, Khalid al Mansour, might have greased his way into the world of publishing as well. If so, he remains well behind the scenes.
On closer examination, the path to publication appears more straightforward than I anticipated. There are two sources here to consider.
One, a surprising 2006 article by liberal publisher Peter Osnos for the American Century Foundation, offers some hard evidence on what Osnos describes as the “ruthlessness” of Obama’s literary ascent.
The second, more speculative source–Bill Ayers’ 2001 memoir Fugitive Days—may very well answer the questions that Osnos cannot.
As Osnos relates, a 1990 New York Times profile on Harvard’s first black editor caught the eye of a hustling young literary agent named Jane Dystel.
Dystel persuaded Obama to put a book proposal together, and she submitted it. Poseidon, a small imprint of Simon & Schuster, signed on and authorized a roughly $125,000 advance for Obama’s proposed memoir.
With advance in hand, Obama repaired to Chicago where the University of Chicago offered him an office and stipend to help him write. Obama dithered.
At one point, in order to finish without interruption, he and wife Michelle decamped to Bali. Obama was supposed to have finished the book within a year. Bali or not, advance or no, he could not. He was surely in way over his head.
According to Osnos, Simon & Schuster canceled the contract and likely asked that Obama return at least some of the advance.
Dystel did not give up. She solicited Times Book, the division of Random House at which Osnos was publisher. He met with Obama, took his word that he could finish the book, and authorized a new advance of $40,000.
Then suddenly, somehow, the muse descended on Obama and transformed him from a struggling, unschooled wannabe into a literary superstar.
As the New York Times gushed, again with a straight face,Obama was “that rare politician who can write . . . and write movingly and genuinely about himself.”
Osnos offhandedly notes that the writing of Dreams was “all Obama’s,” which means only that someone had fixed the book before he had seen it. Two questions demand answers: who and why.
I have attempted to contact Dystel without success, but it is highly unlikely she re-wrote the book. Whoever did almost assuredly shared many of Obama’s sentiments, spoke his language and spent considerable time reworking the text.
I had never even thought of Bill Ayers as a likely ghostwriter until I ordered his memoir, Fugitive Days, and began to read it. He writes very well and very much like “Obama.”
Unlike Dreams, however, where the high style is intermittent, Fugitive Days is infused with the authorial voice in every sentence. That voice is surely Ayers’.
“What makes Fugitive Days unique is its unsparing detail and its marvelous human coherence and integrity,” writes left wing literary guru and Obama pal, Edward Said.
Said adds that Ayers’ “family background, his education, his political awakening, his anger and involvement . . . all these are rendered in their truth without a trace of nostalgia.” He could have said very much the same about Dreams From My Father.
Obama’s memoir was published in June 1995. In January 1995, Ayers had chosen Obama, then a junior lawyer at a minor law firm, to chair the multi-million dollar Chicago Annenberg Challenge grants.
In the fall of that same year, 1995, Ayers and his wife, Weatherwoman Bernardine Dohrn, launched Obama’s ascent to political stardom with a fundraiser in their Chicago home.
In short, Ayers had the means, the motive, the time, the place and the literary ability to jumpstart Obama’s career. And, as Ayers had to know, a lovely memoir under Obama’s belt made for a much better resume than an unfulfilled contract over his head.
Lars Larson, conservative radio talk show host, interviewed NYT columnist Roger Cohen, who mocked Sarah Palin for not having had a passport until last year, not enough credentials for being “a heartbeat away from the presidency,” and “overuse” of the word exceptional.
Larson asked Cohen what Obama has done that could be considered significant and Cohen, after an uncertain pause, had to know he was hard pressed. Eventually he stammered, “He’s a guy who was born into pretty simple circumstances in Hawaii…and in 47 years he’s achieved a fair amount.”
Larson pushed Cohen on this: “What has he achieved? Name a significant achievement of Barack Hussein Obama”
“A significant achievement?”
“Just one.”
“Well, I think he’s put himself in very close range of, uh, of the White House.”
“So his achievement has been–”
“He’s spoken out on issues…”
Dear readers, I cannot go on. It pains me that someone who is supposed to have some intellectual base can only come up with these “qualifications” for handing someone the keys to the White House. Oh there was something about two bills he has passed, bills that, as Larson says, “don’t require a lot of heavy lifting” because everyone agrees on it.
But there you have it, the same thing time after time after time after time after time…ad nauseum. Someone is asked what Obama has ever done that is worthy and if they can come up with anything at all, it is something as lame and insignificant as, “He spoke out.” If they can stop stammering and acting like they are trying to convince their mother they were at the library and not smoking under the railway bridge.
The Obama campaign is circulating a YouTube clip of Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo. — the No. 2 House Republican — talking about the role of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., at the disastrous White House meeting, on MSNBC today.
In the Obama campaign clip, Blunt says of McCain: “Clearly, yesterday, his position on that discussion yesterday was one that stopped a deal from finalizing.”
Said Obama spox Bill Burton: “Congressman Blunt just confirmed what’s been clear since John McCain rode into Washington at the eleventh hour -– Sen. McCain’s political theatrics succeeded only in stopping a bipartisan deal. During the most serious economic crisis of our time, we don’t need erratic posturing, we need steady leadership to protect American taxpayers and put our economy back on track.”
But that’s not the full quote. What Blunt actually said is quite different.
REP. ROY BLUNT: I do think that John McCain was very helpful in what he did. I saw him this morning, we’ve been talking with his staff. Clearly, yesterday, his position on that discussion yesterday was one that stopped a deal from finalizing that no House Republican in my view would have been for, which means it wouldn’t have probably passed the House. Now, Democrats are in the majority. They can pass anything they want to without a singe Republican vote, but they don’t seem to be willing to do that. I’m please we can have negotiations now that get us back towards things that we think can protect the taxpayers better, create more options, and frankly be better understood in the country than the plan—the path we were on a couple of days ago.
Not having TV (by choice) I’ve had to rely on the radio for this debate–the feed was about a minute off real time and the break up was slightly annoying, so I chose to forego that as well. It was a bit of a disadvantage since I’m a very visual person, but I was trying to pay close attention for audible squirms, and Obama provided me with many.
First of all, as Ed Morrissey points out below, what’s with this “John” business? Senator McCain is many years Obama’s senior in age as well as experience and the reference by first name really put me off. I am aware this doesn’t matter to some people who don’t believe being an elder can actually mean something, so I will grant that and move on.
Next, Obama was at a clear disadvantage when it came to Georgia–which he wouldn’t be if knew what he was talking about…or maybe if he hadn’t spoken first. He spoke in very general terms about Aggressor Russia with phrases and logic any high schooler could have posted on a chat forum. (No offense to high schoolers.) I wasn’t really sure what to expect from McCain, but when the hits came they were sure and swift. Point after point he hammered into Obama’s holes and I could practically hear the sweat poring from the Obama pores. When the Illinois senator began to speak, he seemed to borrow some of his newfound knowledge to make some talking points. If he thinks he gained any momentum it’s because he used what McCain had said to do a quick study.
Obama also seemed in the attack mode with his frequent interruptions, which McCain was tactful enough to indulge. Perhaps he knew he didn’t need to win the “I can talk louder than you” game because his victory would come later when people talked about how insecure Obama was with all that jumping into McCain’s points. It’s a bit of a shame I couldn’t see what the facial expressions were that each wore, but I did hear how secure and authoritative were the words of McCain, whereas Obama–especially in the latter half of the debate–stammered relentlessly. Clearly he had lost his cool. It seemed perhaps most apparent when he couldn’t remember the name of the serviceman whose mother had given him a bracelet, and I believe this will not be forgotten by the American people. There simply are too many who have contact with the military, whether they be families and friends, or neighbors, civilian-military contacts or even passing encounters in stores, fairs, parent-teacher meetings and so on. Over a year ago a Fort Richardson soldier tore a patch right off his shoulder and gave it to my son (now five). Children remember lots, of course–parents complain about it all the time. But at that age they also prioritise their memories, just as we do. Nevertheless, even more than one year later my son still recalls the soldier’s name and rank, as well as many of the details about that night at the airport. And he is not a United States senator. In my estimation it is shameful, degrading and disrespectful that of all names Senator Obama could not remember off the top of his head, it would be this one.
I also was incensed that Barack Obama claimed to have all along been saying Iran is a danger. (Note the date references in upper left corner of video below.)
This is an appalling claim to make given not only what he said, but also what he didn’t say. He didn’t bother to show up at the New York rally to demonstrate against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and said nothing about how Sarah Palin was so shamelessly disinvited because the left considers partisan politics more important that defending the United States against a madman who can stand on our own soil and plan our destruction. Melanie Morgan wrote about how Obama has campaign connections as well to a group who brags about having met with Ahmadinejad, thinking they are actually achieving somethings besides putting this country at risk.
“Obama recently put his seal of approval on Evans’ attempt to storm the stage during the acceptance speech of Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska when he welcomed her to his two Hollywood fundraisers last week, the exclusive $28,500 per person event and the $2500 per person event Barbra Streisand sang at the same evening.”
I’m sure others will have many more things to say about this than I did, and I await them all. Now on to Debate # 1 wrap up.
Given the uncertainty surrounding the presidential debate tonight, I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect. Both Barack Obama and John McCain have had to fly more than they expected in the last couple of days, and neither got a chance to focus on preparation, at least not to the extent they planned. I figured we’d see at least one major gaffe or breakdown from one of the candidates, and honestly, I wasn’t looking forward to seeing it.
However, I think both men did better than I expected. Neither seemed to show any effects from the hectic pace of the past week, and both appeared ready and relaxed at the start of tonight’s debate. I’d also include Jim Lehrer in that description, even though he had to rewrite part of his script to accommodate the economic crisis. Lehrer gave the debate a light touch as moderator, allowing the candidates plenty of space to talk and encouraging dialogue rather than speechmaking. It was perhaps one of the best presidential debates I’ve seen in this cycle, maybe the best.
With that said, McCain clearly got the best of Obama tonight. After a shaky couple of minutes to start the first question, McCain jabbed at Obama all night long — and he got Obama obviously flustered. While McCain kept his equanimity and never raised his tone or pitch, Obama got visibly upset, his voice pitched higher when responding to McCain, and Obama interrupted more. Obama also kept calling McCain “John” while McCain used the more proper “Senator Obama”, a difference that grated as the evening wore on.
Substantially, McCain also bested Obama on both economics and foreign policy. On the former, it was most apparent when Lehrer asked both candidates what they would cut as President after the bailout package passes. Obama could not bring himself to commit to one single cut, and instead talked about all of the funding he wanted to create for pet programs. McCain noted that he has long championed spending reductions and proposed a spending freeze on all but the most vital programs. When challenged on this point, Obama refused to say whether he would accept a freeze.
I did have a moment of frustration with McCain on the first question, a round I think Obama won. He never challenged Obama’s assumptions that the current credit crisis came from too little regulation. I kept expecting McCain to talk about the disaster of the Community Reinvestment Act, and the mandates from Congress that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac encourage bad lending by buying up bad paper. Instead, he tried to out-populist Obama, and Obama sounds more authentic as a populist.
On foreign policy, Obama did better than expected, but still fell short. I think his response on the decision to go into Iraq was quite good (even if I disagree with it), but he kept trying to argue that he didn’t demand a precipitous withdrawal in 2007 when the record clearly shows he did — and he beat Hillary to death with it in the primaries. McCain drew blood when he pointed out that for all of Obama’s talk about the priority of Afghanistan, he never once bothered to visit that front until last July, even though his Senate subcommittee has jurisdiction on NATO issues. Obama spluttered in response but never did explain why such an important theater wasn’t worth a single visit from him.
On Georgia, Russia, and eastern Europe, McCain proved himself the master of detailed foreign-policy thinking. While Obama talked briefly about the potential for NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine and pledged to “rebuild Georgia’s economy”, McCain explained the geopolitical realities of the entire region, and Russia’s intentions for it.
If Obama expected the old man to be too tired to debate properly, he is surely disappointed tonight. McCain kept Obama on defense all night long, made Obama lose his composure, and maintained his own in a very presidential performance. This one is a clear win for McCain.
We have seen time and again how Barack Obama ridicules John McCain’s policies and tries to duck when people ask him questions. In fact, he never really answers, but instead maneuvers the conversation over to what he thinks his opponent is doing wrong.
In the 2008 presidential debate aired Friday, Senator Obama checked off a series of proposals to protect taxpayers, including his assertion that “we’ve got to make sure we’re helping homeowners because the root problem here has to do with foreclosures that are taking place all across the country.” He went on to blame the current crisis on “eight years of economic policies promoted by George Bush and supported by Senator McCain, a theory that basically says we can shred regulations and consumer protections.”
Now I have a couple of questions about this. Exactly which homeowners is Senator Obama trying to help? The ones who can’t afford houses they should have never been approved to buy in the first place? Or are we talking here about the homeowners whose tax dollars may go to covering the cost of illegal immigrant and other homeowners whose subprime loans went into foreclosure?
And which regulations and consumer protections is he talking about when he accuses Bush and McCain of shredding them? Perhaps those of the Community Re-investment Act, which triggered lawsuits against banks that didn’t loan to people with bad credit or too-low income? And did the “consumer protections” he referenced include the charges of racism levelled at those who did not meet the CRA standards and quotas for loans to guarantee “affordable housing”?
It’s not that difficult to see a lack of substance in the speeches and panderings of Barack Obama, and in this reply he did not answer the question at all. His points (which were stretched to create more of them, by the way) were mere echoes of what the public has been critisising and not at all close to what he has been calling for in the past. His call for “oversight,” for example, is nothing more than posturing. Where was he when McCain was speaking out against these practises? The Democrats struck down McCain’s proposal in favor of “affordable housing,” but all Obama can do is repeat ad nauseum “Wall Street and Main Street” while he attacks the alleged “shredding” by Senator McCain.
The following video goes into great detail about how this current crisis came to pass. Please note it moves a bit fast and you should hover over the pause button to click when you want to read something before it moves to the next frame.
Reverse Spin has a lot more about how the MSM has essentially become Barack Obama’s press agent.
“For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”–John F. Kennedy
Jennifer Joyce, a high-profile prosecuting attorney, is one of two who will be “reminding voters that Barack Obama is a Christian who wants to cut taxes for anyone making less than 250K$ a year.”
The video above repeats what I have previously said: this is impossible given the fact that not everyone even pays income taxes.
Aside from that, I want to know why people in Missouri or any state should tolerate prosecuters proseletysing for the Barack Obama campaign or go after ads that are “misleading”–subjective to begin with–or false, especially when Obama himself not only has lied but been caught at it.
Joyce says, “[W]e’re here to respond to any character attacks, to set the record straight,” and prosecutor Bob McColloch declares: “If they’re not going to tell the truth, then somebody’s got to step up and say, ‘Wait a minute, that’s not true, this is the truth.’” So what happens when Obama’s own campaign lies? Is this the kind of oppressive rule he intends to force of the American people?
The people of the United States have the right to hear from both parties and make determinations on their own. Not only is Obama’s technique another step towards a nanny state–deciding what is good for us–but also is a reprehensible and flagrant violation of our right to information, free speech and freedom to assemble.
Is this the beginning of the “national security force” he proposes to establish?
More and more every day, each time Barack Obama opens his mouth I am reminded of two scary words: Cultural Revolution. Mao had people getting in the faces and business of those he didn’t like and going after people who made critical discussions on the actions of the state. He had bands of people running around engaging in “keeping order” as well. Now Obama is advocating that his minions get in people’s faces and form a group called the “truth squad” to silence his opponents by shouting them down and attempting to deprive Americans of their constitutional rights.
So how long until he asks for criticisms and recommendations and then gulags those who respond? When comes the day in which some of us will be required to publicly account for our sins and beg for the holy status of rehabilitated?
I’d like to believe all of this is as absurd as it sounds. Fear mongering is never an effective strategy, nor is a hyperventilating kind of activism. However, questions as addressed above, extreme as they appear on the surface, should give pause to those who like or dislike Obama and consider the effects of such behavior on the part of the Illinois senator, even if no one actually is jailed or prosecuted for their dissenting views.
[N]o one actually has to be prosecuted for this to work. Prosecution will be impossible anyway in most cases thanks to the First Amendment. The point isn’t to jail critics but merely to price the cost of prospective litigation into their decision on whether to publicly criticize The One. Add this to the threatening letters his lawyers sent to station managers over the NRA ads, the flash-mob smearingof David Freddoso, and the appeal to the Justice Department to prosecute the American Issues Project for its perfectly factual yet devastating Ayers ad. Oh, the fun we’ll have with a deep blue Congress and an Obama-run DOJ and FCC. He promised you a “new type of politics,” didn’t he?
It’s stated well and I agree, but there also should be the caution to those who will silence or be silenced on the basis of fear.
Do you believe you know Barack Obama well enough to vote for him because you have heard his speeches?
Are you apolitical? Do you not care about politics? Do you wish to stay neutral? Are you planning to vote Independent? If so, what do you think will happen to that vote? What do you think will happen if you don’t vote, or cast your vote for him thinking it’s just one of millions?
Barack Obama’s connections and ideology are not in line with the traditions and standards that have made this great nation successful and a sought-after destination, for immigrants as well as visitors and investors. His economic plans are fiscally unsound, he wants to meet with a dangerous Holocaust denier (and lies about Henry Kissinger giving him the thumbs up on this), and the ways he campaigns are reminiscent of Hitler Youth and Cultural Revolution-era thugs.
Please click here and here and here for more, including links within these articles.
If you don’t know Barack Obama, get to know him. Neither party is going to have all the right answers, but Barack Obama’s is the only one that seeks to impose his “solutions” on others, whether they are willing or not.
While I have been busy learning about the brain’s language map and all the things any six-month old knows about communication, the blogging world has gone on merrily without me and I’ve missed some of the best and funniest blog entries of All Time. Although I probably needed the break anyway–my brain is oversoaked with Ayers these last days, uffff–I was planning to read a few more entries before I fell on the floor. I couldn’t do any writing tonight.
And then I saw one entry that made my spine stiffen:
There has been a nasty rumor going on that during Palin’s tenure as mayor of Wassila, female rape victims were required to pay for their own rape kits. It was supposed to be another example on how Palin was really a man and hated women and wanted them all to stay home barefoot and pregnant.
Imagine my surprise when you find out that this is not true.
In reality, and had any journalist in the MSM outlets bothered to do their job instead of working for the Obama campaign 24/7, there was a state law forbidding charging victims of rape for their rape kits since 2000. As for where it all came from, the chief of Police( chief of police, not Palin) in Wasilla wanted to have the Insurance companies(Insurance companies, not the victims) to pay for them, with the intention of billing it ultimately to the rapists eventually. However, there isn’t a single piece of record that shows that a single victim’s insurance was ever billed for it. If this practice still seems creepy or exclusive to macho,
rough-and-tumble Alaska, well, it happens to be the practice in other
states, too, like North Carolina (until recently) and … Illinois.
And can you guess who co-sponsored that bill in Illinois?
Can you say Barack Obama?
Have a nice day!
I realise this is an old story, so far as the whole rape kit thingie goes. But the Illinois statute is news to me. My only consolation for the fact that an Egyptian blogger had the better sense than me to find this is that I know I’m not alone. (OK, cold comfort, but I haven’t seen this exactly sprung all over the blogs here either.) I wonder how many citizens of Illinois are aware of this?
To be honest, this is also an example of how numbers bandied about in debates sway people, regardless of how accurate they are or are not. For example, Joe “Come with me to Katie’s” Biden frequently pulls numbers from the air that only a few people know off the tops of their heads are outright fabrications. But how many average citizens will actually have the wherewithal not only to question the assertions–how would they reckon he is lying about McCain’s votes?–but to go look all these up? They are like statistics in a way: people have a feeling for them that is a combination of reverence and fear, and they think the ones who can spout the best must know the most.
So it is here: although rape is more common than reported, there still are people who are untouched by the experience and if they are not presented with the fact that Obama is more dirtied by the accusations than Sarah Palin ever could come close to being, they may always go on erroneously believing she is bad for women. And that is the real point, not that Sandmonkey failed in his reading of the Frontiersman article. At worst he may have failed to tell us that he knows what any (truthful) Alaskan will concede: that the practice in fact happened in other cities besides Wasilla. Not to mention other US cities.
Moreover:
If current Police Chief Long’s information is correct, then Mayor Palin didn’t know that rape victims were charged for rape kits, because none were.
and that person who commented in reply to Sandmonkey’s post never bothered to read this, even when it was provided to him by said Sandmonkey via direct link.
It’s more astroturfing to get the Internet dish out in the same way MSM and other goons have been up here in Alaska rifling through people’s trash in their desperate attempts to have some new and dirty scandal to spin on CNN to get their Oprah moment. If any of them had a shred of intellectual honesty they would stop yammering about Palin’s lipstick and start looking for the truth. Really, if this is this is all trained journalists can find on Palin and much of this can be caught by bloggers of all levels (including yours truly, a newcomer), then maybe I’m studying language awareness of the wrong group of people. The sandbox set are as forthright as you can get and the media have built the Tower of Babble.
First reports coming from the Eddie Burke Show say the legislative report from the Tasergate investigation shows Sarah Palin was within her rights to fire Monegan and did not abuse her power, although she did violate an ethics law. This may refer to what appears to be Monegan’s statements that Palin started to speak to him about Trooper Wooten; Monegan warned her against this and she never spoke of it again.
There was, however, also criticism re: her lack of acting upon her husband’s failure to stop speaking about the incident.
Fox news is also reporting this incorrectly as saying the council found her to have abused her powers; currently it is being discussed on Eddie Burke’s show at KBYR, a locally-owned Alaska radio station.
Update to follow.
Update: AP is hyperventilating in their crusade against Palin and they have reported incorrectly of her guilt.
Glen Biegel of KBYR is having a conniption fit over Hollis French who is the one who is guilty of abuse of power and anybody telling Todd Palin he is not entitled to utilise his First Amendment rights. Steve Branchflower, it should be noted, made his recommendations in his report and Biegel is enraged, accusing Branchflower of being “judge, jury and executioner.”
Local Anchorage news is also reporting she abused her power, despite a state senator having just discussed this on live radio.
Whatever the case may be, there’s something seriously amiss when an Alaska resident can’t get straight news about the Alaska governor.
OK, freak out moment over when someone here finally admits to self that reading and listening [add: and type] can’t be done simultaneously. At least not by her.
Steve Branchflower, as I’m sure you know by now, has released his report saying that, as Allahpundit sums it up, “Palin abused power but had the right to fire Monegan.” That’s very reassuring. Um, no.
You know what’s going to get gobbled up by the country starting tomorrow? Three big, fat, phat for Obama, words:
Palin abused power.
As you can see here, “independent and unbiased” Steve Branchflower, who was paid $100,000 to perform this investigation, writes:
Governor Palin’s firing of Commissioner Monegan was a proper and lawful exercise of her constitutional and statutory authority to hire and fire executive branch department heads.
The AP was so delirious with joy they could hardly write:
A legislative committee investigating Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has found she unlawfully abused her authority in firing the state’s public safety commissioner.
You could have put the winning lottery numbers in at any point after that but none of the other 49 states would have any winners because nobody would see past that, the first sentence in their minuscule piece that acts as a ginormous shout of triumph. Alaska would have no winners because we have no lottery. But Alaska has no winners anyway, because Branchflower was paid to act as a judge, jury and executioner–just as Biegel states–and even he didn’t have to wear the black bag over his head. Sarah Palin didn’t get to face her accusers; what she did experience is people such as Hollis French foaming at the mouth about how there may be an “October surprise” (oh that’s very subtle, isn’t it) and Todd Palin was basically put on notice that because he occupies an unusual position in the state–husband of the governor–he is supposed to keep his mouth shut. He is not allowed to register any kind of complaint. As far as whether Sarah aided him by allowing access to government–that’s been viewed and ruled upon by Branchflower, the multi-tasker. Exactly what kind of government do we have here in Alaska?
And what kind of police do we have on this land? Officer Wooten still has his job, after five days lost work for tasering a child, drinking in his patrol car and poaching moose. And a radio host who gave out phone numbers on a press release received the same suspension–five days. I realise these are different agencies administering the punishments, but it still stands as a major disgrace that a radio show host is held to a higher standard than a state trooper.
How many people will come to know the crucial details of this farce? That Monegan wasn’t even fired, for starters? That he was re-assigned, declined the offer and quit? That Wooten threatened to kill Chuck Heath, Palin’s father? That even this started before Palin became governor? That not a few Alaskans wouldn’t stop for Wooten if he tried to pull them over? Will people across the country ever know these and other details and, especially if they are pathetic sufferers of Palin Derangement Syndrome, will they ever care that Wooten is still walking around Alaska with a gun? While Barack Obama has tea with terrorists and plays semantics to excuse his proposed visits to the rogue leader of a nation whose government is intent on destroying us? Maybe they won’t have to because if this crap keeps piling higher every day, as it seems to be, pretty soon we will bury ourselves.
Oh yeah: I should add this very important part of Branchflower’s report, which is buried on pages 80-81. This I don’t really fault him for, but rather the MSM who are too lazy to look any further than the first sentence that “confirms” the answers they want to hear, and can’t be bothered to read on:
In this case there has been much said about the level of frustration that existed on the part of Sarah Palin’s father Chuck Heath who filed the original complaint against Trooper Michael Wooten, and on the part of Sarah and Todd Palin, who attempted to learn the status of the investigation only to be told by Colonel Grimes that the matter was confidential by reason of AS 39.25.080. I believe their frustration was real as was their skepticism about whether their complaints were being zealously investigated…[T]he law prevented the troopers from giving them any feedback whatsoever.
When a citizen files a complaint against a peace officer, there should be a balance in our law that on the one hand seeks to protect the confidentiality of the investigative process, but on the other recognizes that someone may have been aggrieved. At the very least, the law should provide for the release of some information to the complainant regarding the status of the case. When citizens are told no information can be released, it has the potential of engendering skepticism about whether the complaint was taken seriously. There is likewise a great potential that the confidence we need to have in our law enforcement agencies will be undermined, and respect for those institutions will be eroded. This is especially so because in most instances, as was the case here, the officer is an employee of the very same agency that was conducts [sic] the investigation.
What do you suppose the chances are the MSM will admit Todd Palin had a right to doubt the claims were being investigated and felt he had to pursue it as strongly as he did?
I’ll probably win the Alaska State Lottery before that happens.
Could it really be true? Or is it just such an out there fantasy that knowing it is pierces my eye sockets with a dull beam like the one that will be in my interrogation room when I get arrested for writing this shit?
Is it really a possibility that Obama might be days away from an indictment? When it happens, just remember you read it here…second. I’m still trying to digest exactly what it is PUMA is talking about. I don’t know most of these thugs and if the time line isn’t set up in particular rows on paper, it’s hard for me to grasp. So while you read that (and don’t forget the comment) I’m going to engage in some escapism and recall a time when my biggest worry was how someone with such an awesome voice could wear such a horrid shirt.
If you’ve already read it, feel free to watch above, and I wouldn’t mind an explanation and reassurance that Rezko can sing half as good.
The multi-tasking bastard who is attempting in Alaska to dismantle the Constitution got me really worked up the other day. Well, in reality it wasn’t just him, but also my knowledge of the next day’s headlines screaming, “Palin abused power.”
I’m pretty new at this so I am not giving myself a lot of credit when I say I think the bloggers have made a huge difference in this campaign. Often we think of other countries when we talk about how hard it is to contain the Internet and getting the word out there: think Saudi blogger. (He has since been released.)
But now our very own MSM has tried and remains trying to disguise their cult-like adoration of all things Obama, despite the unimaginable damage he seems set to do to this country. It’s so unreal I often stop myself, thinking I am acting like a conspiracy theorist. But it’s all there, at first buried under the layers of cable, now coming out and being exposed more and more each day. I can only hope the citizens of this great nation, who stand on the shoulders of giants, I hope they have gotten the message in time.
While we wait–in my opinion it will be a nail-biting few weeks–we keep blogging and chatting and talking and praying and arguing, screaming at radios and shaking fists at televisions. In the midst of all that are some absolutely wonderful bloggers whose sense of humor is absolutely capital, humor that at times has helped me keep some perspective.
Over at Ace’s page there’s an entry where a few people have been letting off some steam in a creative way: haiku. There’s at least one troller as well (and working pretty hard at it) but they’re taking it with humor. It’s perhaps the funniest entry I’ve seen ever, and my favorite post within it I think is this one:
If Obama wins
I will buy guns and hide them
for posterity
Posted by: Scott
Don’t let the bastards get you down…VOTE on 4 November!
Sarah Palin doesn’t know enough about constitutional law or Supreme Court cases to suit some people, who seem to think this dearth of knowledge comes from her having failed to travel to as many countries as they believe she ought to have done.
Perhaps Chris Matthews should have been required to travel to Rangoon before being awarded his degree in journalism, or even his job. If he had, surely he would not soon forget it is the capital of Burma, aka Myanmar. Sure, Rangoon is now known, thanks to the thugs who run this southeast Asian country, as Yangon, but who cares about details?
I do! If Chris Mathews is going to go around posing as a journalist, a person whose job it is to say the news, then I expect him to know the news and where the places he is talking about actually are. I mean really, he did know there was a big storm there, didn’t he?
And perhaps actually what the new is. Matthews, who could barely keep his moaning in check, trilled, “An African-American, someone whose father came from Kenya, has been chosen by the American voters to succeed George W. Bush”? Um, excuse me? When did this happen and where was I on voting day?
A moment later the “journalist” compares this news to the opening of the Berlin Wall and the all-race voting in South Africa, “and it could be just as positive,” he croons, “depending on your politics.”
Ah, now I see. He has one for “Barack Hussein Obama,” which by the way is now virtually illegal to say. But I guess Matthews could get away with it back then, and maybe now too if Obama saw him standing up. “An un-Bush. David, he is the un-Bush! [Spittle flies out.] He’s sort of a gift from the world to us in so many ways.”
Ah, another insight. A gift from the world to us? Well, yeah, it must be true after all. *Sigh* The world hates us.
I’m so relieved the chance of me getting a j-o-b-s next summer seems a bit more realistic now that Joe the Plumber has done a little eye-opening for the nation. That is to say, if McCain gets elected, taxes won’t go up, businesses won’t go down, bosses will still be hiring.
And as always that bit of relief was provided by the Gaffemeister Joe Biden, whose experimental-level invented spelling gives us new reason to trust our own instincts against a guy whose knowledge of television history is apparently no better than Katie Couric’s. (Reminder: Couric is a televison anchor who doesn’t seem to know when the medium was invented.)
OK, let’s give credit where credit due. Biden at least tries to know when to keep his mouth shut.
I’ve been able to perk up thanks to Dr. Jim. Of course his job was made easier by the fact that I don’t have TV, but the advice to “get outta here” was well heeded. I fell asleep and when I came to there was no Joe anywhere. In fact, thinking back on it, I hadn’t heard about him for days. Was it because he is hidden away, or has the debate simply taken over the waves? Whatever the reason, he’s gone. And I sort of miss him.
Remember the days when Teresa Heinz Kerry used to say things like “shove it” and pass judgments about what constitutes a “real” job? Now we have Michelle Obama providing the entertainment as she reminds us how her husband will rescue us from our pathetic lives–although she, too, has been kept under wraps for a while. And the Obama campaign has been relying on the media toxicity Treacher references to do us in while we have nothing to diffuse it–no Teresa, no Joe, no Michelle. For awhile we had Alaskan weaponry that kept the infection at bay, but then it renewed its attack with every bit of determined-to-decimate power it had, and the one by one went inhabitants of the blogosphere and real life in some sort of Malthusian population control probably viewed by those on the left as providential. Not only were they ruthless, but also delighted.
Biden had been providing the standup to get us through those trying moments, but they may have realized he was the unwitting antidote because then suddenly he was gone. We were left flailing and sinking until someone finally said, “Get a grip.” And enter Joe the Plumber, who questioned the Dear Leader without flinching an eye; he may be the subject of folk songs currently being written, and things seem to be looking up. Ace seems to be making a nice recovery (while not getting giddy) and although I had my doubts about Allah, he appears to be trying.
Of course, the real answer will come 4 November and until then Joe’s cape design will be on hold since the left will be obliged to go through his trash, but I can safely say that even if the polls don’t read as I’d like them to, I have good reasons to believe they won’t result in the onset of buboes: 1) lies anyway; 2) PUMAs; and 3) that cold turkey bit was a godsend.
In the meantime, I’m hoping they’ll slip up and send the Gaffemeister out again, perhaps deluded by some idea they usually have that the debate for them was a smashing success and nationwide recognition of the racism inherent in every single word coming from our mouths (fingertips) only discredits us. Since they perceive ordinary Americans to be very stupid, they probably don’t believe that “95% of taxpayers” eventually starts to ring bells with these people, sort of in the same way as when an agency claims “100%” results. Even a five year old recognizes on some level that homogenous thought is not natural: a few days ago, while engaging in gross exaggeration I said something about “everybody” parading around in love with Obama; overhearing me my son replied, “Well, not everybody.”
Well, if McCain wins, I suppose we have liberal rage to look forward to–you know, Susan Sarandon-type attacks, more whinging about “stolen” states and of course there probably will always be those only too willing to disgrace themselves in public via their intellectual “wit.” (Think black shirts with neon green letters.) I wonder if Joe will be toddling along for the ride or still chasing after people with his idiotic, fomenting spit. Och well, no worries. It was medicinal while it was needed, but hopefully I can move on to missing his charm about as much as I miss what-I-probably-am-not-allowed-to-say-because-it-is-racist.
“McCain seems to not really know what he’s doing right now.”
“Are you more for Obama’s policies because he’s pro-life or because he thinks our troops should stay in Iraq and finish this war?”
“I think our troops should stay in Iraq and finish this war. I’m really firm with that, definitely.”
“OK. Now how about as far as him being pro life? Do you support Obama in that case?”
“Yeah. I do. I do support him in that case.”
“And if he wins, would you have any problem with Sarah Palin being vice president?”
“No I wouldn’t, not at all. Not at all.”
“So you think he made the right choice in that?”
“I definitely do.”
*********
This is one example of three people interviewed on this tape, and while I understand that there are going to be supporters on both sides who confuse or don’t even understand policies, I don’t dismiss the considerations of those people who wonder that some Obama supporters–black or white–don’t even seem to care what he supports. It’s all over the place and the race card is being played hard and strong by Obama supporters, including the MSM, in reference to virtually anything said by McCain/Palin or anyone who supports them.
I’m wondering if I should be more nervous, though, that some people hold voting cards and seem to think Obama’s running mate is Sarah Palin.
So had Joe Wurzelbacher been a doctor, would Obama still be mocking him? Probably, but I’m wondering what excuse he would have used since elitism couldn’t be his base. I’m also curious about those in his audience, those cultish followers and mindless automatons who laughed when Dear Leader derisively said, “A plumber!” As if he is incredulous and absolutely floored that anyone could possibly want even to associate with a plumber, let alone support one. Are every single one of those polished beings employed in professions that float above the dirtiness that is life? Is not a single one of them thinking to him or herself that perhaps their own paychecks or contacts just might come from suspect associations?
*********
Yeah, let’s talk about associations, Führer. Since you seem to think yours are so much better than McCain’s, and by extension ours, tell us what it is that makes that so. What is it we are missing? Could it be that we peasants simply are not intellectually equipped to make judgments as to what is going to engage us in a life worth living? Maybe our origins automatically bar us from having a say in who we should be listening to? Isn’t your party supposed to be the one that stands for respecting other people’s realities and experiences? Or does that just count when they are given your stamp of approval?
*********
“Snob” is too weak a word for this anti-American creep. I’m not sure there is a word strong enough for the thoughts I am having, but I’m not going to waste my time right now searching for it. I’ll say instead I’d rather be friends and associate with an honest plumber any day of the week before I would even want to be in the presence of a lying, thieving, infanticide-supporting shite like Barack Hussein Obama. It so totally doesn’t matter that Wurzenbacher is unlicensed, owes back taxes, or that his potential company can in no way ever project to make 250K$ annually. The question was asked, it deserved–nay, was required–to be asked, and the enquirer is now being punished. This is not what is meant to represent the United States of America and my greatest wish at this moment is for the people of this great nation to see Obama for the fraudster that he really is.
Oh yeah: Sorry, Allah, it all amounts to the same, no matter how you dress it.
This blog of mine is fairly new and very small compared to so many others. I’m OK with this, especially because I know that if even a few people read it and talked to others in their real-life environment about the topics, it could make a real difference. And this is one topic that really needs to be spread around as much as is possible to spread. What has transpired–that someone ask for some accounting and been attacked for it–is repulsive and not at all representative of our nation. These are the tactics of National Socialists and have no place in our society. The following is taken from the Sundries Shack and worth spreading far and wide.
Pay attention, folks. This lesson is important.
The progressives have made a very definitive statement today. They have said that if you dare to speak out against their Chosen One, they will not only smear you and broadcast the details of your life to the world but they’ll also deprive you of your livelihood.
A couple of days ago, Joe Wurzelbacher was just a regular guy with a house and a son and a dream of one day seeing his hard work pay off with a better life. Then Barack Obama showed up in his front yard. Now, thanks to the Obamessiah’s brownshirts, he is likely to lose his job as a plumber.
Wurzelbacher registered as an apprentice with the Ohio State Apprenticeship Council in November 2003, according to Dennis Evans, spokesman with the Department of Job and Family Services. Records show his training, which was sponsored by A & W Newell Co. of Toledo, should have been wrapped last year.
“We don’t have a record of completion,” Evans said. “All we know is that he registered in the program and has gone through to the point where we should have record of completion, but we don’t.”
And that’s not the only record that’s missing from Wurzelbacher’s file. He doesn’t have a plumbing license required by the city of Toledo to practice, according to a staffer with the Toledo Division of Building Inspection. Wurzelbacher, who now works for Newell Plumbing & Heating Co., said the owner, Al Newell, has a plumbing license and that “because he works for someone else, he doesn’t need a license.”
But even that’s not true, according to the Toledo Division of Building Inspection. Wurzelbacher can’t legally do plumbing work without a license, regardless of his boss’s certification.
A staff person with the Toledo Division of Building Inspection told On Call this afternoon that her division will contact Wurzelbacher to notify him that he can’t work without a license.
“We’re trying to track him down,” she said.
Ace says this is the doing of “Toledo officials” but it isn’t. They’re just doing their jobs. They would have had no reason at all to look into Wurzelbacher if someone hadn’t dropped the dime on him. It could have been one of those self-important union jerks quoted in the article. It could have been one of Obama’s blogger mob. Heck, it could even have been a journalist. But someone squealed and demanded that Plumber Joe be investigated.
I’m going to lay this at Barack Obama’s feet. He’s not oblivious to what the left-wing blogs nor the MSM are doing. At any point he could have contacted a reporter or two, maybe a couple or three bloggers, and told them to lay off. He could have called off most of the dogs in a hot second and it would have taken him no real effort at all. Heck, he could have had one of his people – David Axelrod, say – make the calls and it would have taken him mo more effort than a short conversation.
But he didn’t. He let this continue. In a day or so someone will ask him about it and he’ll feign ignorance or innocence or whatever ploy happens to be getting him out of the spotlight that day. In the meantime, Joe Wurzelbacher’s going to end up without a job. And he didn’t do a damned thing but disagree with Barack Obama.
Doesn’t this make you even a little angry? It makes me bloody furious.
The Anchoress says that Obama has told the entire country “…don’t dream too big. Don’t dare to dream too big, because if you do, we’re just going to chop you down to size, so that everyone is the same” It would have been bad enough if he had stopped there. But he let the mob rage and plot.
And now…this.
I wonder if he’s proud of what has been done in his name? I wonder if he’s smiling right now?
(via Hot Air)
UPDATE: You want to know what Barack Obama was doing instead of calling off his rabid mob? He was making fun of Plumber Joe.
Click here for some facts about this disgrace perpetuated by Barack Obama.
First we have one reporter claiming he heard a supporter at a McCain/Palin rally shout out, “Kill him!” when Obama’s name came up. Based on only that word, newspapers around the US reported the story and hyperventilated about how concerned they are supporters of the right are “gripped by insane rage.” There were accusations and statements about Sarah Palin whipping supporters into a frenzy and crowds getting out of control.
Nevermind that for the past eight years threats, calls of death wished on Bush and others, and all manner of insults and extreme statements have been openly uttered without any whinging from the MSM.
If that wasn’t bad enough, it turns out this whole “Kill him!” story may have been a mere fabrication. The Secret Service could find no evidence the incident ever occurred. (Via Ace)
OK, let’s review for a moment: One reporter claims he heard something, newspapers and commentators across the country pick it up with no questions asked, and the left is “outraged.” When questions are asked and no evidence is found, the left remains “outraged” and the editor only has something to say about “facts reported [being] true.” My question is this: What facts?
But that’s not the end of it. While the hypocritical left stand by and watch all this, and watch their messiah all but advocate tearing down the life of a man who dared to complain about his tax policies–
–they make sure the world knows about an incident in which a pair of young men at a Palin rally were “beaten up” by a couple of 65-year-old women a few days ago.
I would be included in those who normally condemn such, ehem, atrocities given I don’t condone violent actions to get a point across. Truth be told, however, I’m not having a great deal of sympathy with people who seem to be “ignorant” to the facts regarding repeated attacks, physical and verbal, on McCain/Palin supporters and their property. Property? Some may find it absurd I am making a case out of this, but the truth is that for many this sort of thing too often has been the precursor for what is yet to come: worse. Sarah Bernhardt on gleefully about Sarah Palin being gang raped, Madonna telling a concert audience she would kick Sarah Palin’s person; it’s not surprising their fans and leftie supporters, who tend to be one and the same, follow their despicable examples, or take it upon themselves to show the world their own insane rage:
*Obama supporters in Philadelphia sported “Sarah Parah is a [disgusting vulgarism referring to female genitalia]” t-shirts and yelled “Let’s stone her, old school” over the weekend.
*An Internet artist has designated Palin an “M.I.L.P” – “Mother I’d Like to Punch” – and published a drawing of a man’s fist knocking a tooth out of the Alaska governor’s mouth and the glasses off her face.
*“ABORT Palin” grafitti has sprouted on the sidewalks of Seattle and “Abort Sarah Palin” bumper stickers are spreading on Web stores.
*Sarah Palin-bashing Madonna performs before an audience of thousands, screeching and threatening to “kick her a**.”
*Getty Images publishes a photo of a man pointing a fake gun at the head of a cardboard cutout of Palin on display at the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition building.
And no one blinks. Not a peep from the Obamedia.
But when Sarah Palin simply spotlights Obama’s longtime relationship with Weather Underground bombing terrorist Bill “We Didn’t Do Enough” Ayers?
“Inciting violence,” frets NBC reporter Ron Allen. “Concerned…for Senator Obama’s safety,” agonizes ABC reporter Terry Moran. “Beyond the pale,” cries Obama campaign manager David Plouffe. As if the no-holds-barred Obama campaign has ever had a rhetorical pale to stake.
All the world’s a Kabuki stage for the selectively outraged over rage.
So where were they all this time when this was going on?
And how about a month ago when a female McCain supporter was beaten over the head with the stick from a sign by a leftie who had this to say of his actions:
“It’s just those signs, and this election, it has me so upset.”
What has happened to a country in which the most powerful newspapers look completely the other way when women are beaten up by the supporters of their candidate, the one they are so in the tank for that they fail the people of the United States by neglecting to report the most important details about Barack Obama but send out the cavalry and get the vapors because a plumber in Ohio, who dared ask The One a question, goes by his middle name? (Breathlessly they report, “And his name isn’t even Joe, it’s Samuel! Joe is his middle name!”)
About two months ago I thought I was being chicken shit and not living up to my duties as a responsible citizen by proclaiming my support not only for McCain, but also Palin, of whom I am a constituent and supporter. I was concerned my car would get keyed or broken into, neither of which I can afford as the single parent of a small child. But now, though they remain concerns, they appear to be the least of them. With such escalation of violent acts that go unpunished–nay even unreported–I can’t help but wonder: Will I be hurt? Will my child? These people seem to have no reservations about doctoring pictures of an eleven-year-old, spreading nastiness about an infant and his mother, mutilating property and drawing obscene scenes of abject violence–it’s so commonplace and accepted by so many on the left that I can no longer use ordinarily reliable measurements of decency to predict where it will end.
That was really funny, Terry Tate, did you think that up all by yourself? Or did you have to have Sandra Bernhardt in on a brainstorming session with you?
Well, Allah gives some background on this joker who apparently has some fans, although I personally can’t imagine what sort of humans could find this remotely amusing. “Unfunny” doesn’t even begin to describe how vile and disturbing not only this piece is, but anyone who could like it.
So let me review this again: there’s Madonna telling an audience of thousands how she is going to kick Sarah Palin’s person, Sarah Bernhardt raging-fantasising about Palin being gang raped, an artist’s depiction of Sarah Palin’s faced being punched so hard a tooth is knocked out and the glasses fly right off her face, and a mock up of someone pointing a gun at Palin’s head. And now this joker with his own twisted damp dream acted out to the framework of an already perverted Reebok commercial spot. How long ’til this becomes mainstream?
It’s not an unreasonable question given how there has been such a small amount of outroar coming from the press–if any at all. And why? Because they don’t like Palin’s political positions? Isn’t this supposed to be a country in which people can openly speak and tell their ideas–protected by the First Amendment? Since when do we go around perpetuating violence against those we disagree with? Of course there have always been “hits” on political figures, i.e. assassinations and attempts, and while not getting into any discussion on the merits of those, what I’m looking at here is the alarming phenomenon of public and private figures promoting and almost advocating physical aggression and violence–because they don’t like what someone said.
What happened to the days when you just didn’t vote for them?
We all know about schoolyard bullies and the routine theories re: how insecure they are, etc. Could these otherwise ordinary (word use relatively in some cases) beings be so threatened that killing or severely harming Palin makes them feel better about themselves and their insecurities? There’s an imbalance in this description, because “insecurity” seems too small a word to stand parallel and in partnership with the violence being promoted these days.
I also have to wonder: “Why Palin?” No, I’m not saying that in consideration of why Hillary wasn’t the object of such attacks. (Although Clinton did endure some abuse coming from self-hating idiots.) No, what I’m thinking about is that surely some of these people dislike John McCain as much as they do Sarah Palin. So how come nobody’s making the moves against McCain? Not that I am asking for it to happen, of course; it would be just as despicable. But the fact that he is a man can’t stop itself from crossing my mind, and the horrible consideration that even amongst the female population, violence against women not only is still acceptable, but also can be considered funny, especially when the intended target is someone who disagrees with them.
This is perhaps nowhere better reflected than in some of the video responses at the YouTube site itself, such as:
montalvomachado
Maaan, she deserved that! Hilarious.
or
jaeastman
pretty sure dr. king would find this pretty lol-worthy
or
MudkipRex
Get used to having a black president, you racist moron. Obama is going to win. And he’s the better candidate too.
Not only were there few comments that directly objected to the depiction of a large man crashing into a small female (what in real would have killed her), but there were ones such as the last (above) that justified it with the implication that she had it coming because of the alleged racism inherent in the McCain campaign and its supporters. In fact, the first reply I quoted above comes out and says, “[S]he deserved that!” And in failing to recognise their own out-of-control behavior and irrational ways of, erm, thinking, there even is the assertion that Martin Luther King would have approved.
By the way, the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) was Joe Biden’s baby. Why isn’t he speaking up against this monstrous trend?
With the Obama scare measures against freedom of speech already happening, a bunch of pre-pubes dressing up in fatigues to worship their candidate, children being indoctrinated to sing love songs to him, the proposal of some sort of civilian gang (funding same as the actual military’s) and now tacit approval of violence against Obama critics, I’m not only still wondering how far this will go, as I wrote last time, but also when the American Cultural Revolution starts.
Oh yeah: The media are spreading fears about “Republican anger” on election night. Snort.
You get to hand over your cash, and they get to distribute it.
Now don’t you feel better knowing your money will be going to subsidise such a noble lifestyle?
Filed under the “Must be nice” category next to “Is that where my donation went?” Later to be transferred to “That was part of my child’s uni fund.” Potential cross reference to “Depression planning” and “Faux potato famine.”
“Stuck in between the tip of Bethesda and Mazza Gallerie?” I was asked. No, no, no, wrong Chevy Chase. Although I could understand that person’s confusion, since that part of Wisconsin Avenue is probably more well-known than the washed-up actor who now is trying to backpedal for his alma mater, Saturday Night Live, in the wake of an apparent Palin popularity surge.
Sarah Palin appeared on SNL last weekend after much speculation and received a respectable welcome from the audience. Alec Baldwin, perhaps best known these days for breaking his promise to leave the country, stood alongside her but his most noticeable trait that night was his seeming inability to read his lines without a teleprompter. And at some moments, even with. He also looked, if you don’t mind the bluntness, rather skanky.
As for Sarah, well she was her usual classy self. She stood alongside the great buffoon as he insulted her up and down, playing his role of pretending not to realise she was the real Palin (knows his great friend Tina really well, hey?). Meanwhile Palin just let it all bounce off of her–don’t let the role playing fool you, she knows these are not merely “scripted insults,” and is sure-footed in her ability to blow them off–knowing, probably, Baldwin was the one who would appear the fool, in and outside of his persona of the night.
In the second skit with Palin, “Weekend Update,” Amy Poehler, about 15 months pregnant God bless her and keep her, said she thought she could perform Palin’s rap routine. According to the script, the governor had been doing some thinking and decided that her role in such a routine would not bode well for the dignity of the presidential campaign. (In “real life” not a few silly people believed Palin was actually supposed to do it and really refused.) Instead she grooved to the music with arm gesticulations and facial expressions that…well, I better leave that alone. Let’s just say she is really attractive and knows how to dance.
So back to Chevy Chase. (I know, I know.) Here he is via Hot Air trying to say it was a “mistake” to allow the popular Palin to appear on SNL:
“Quite frankly, it’s a big mistake to let her go on,” Chevy told Access Hollywood at the Give Food a Chance benefit in New York. “What was brilliant about [‘SNL’ chief] Lorne [Michaels] was that he had nothing written for Sarah and that apparently she cannot improvise herself out of a paper bag!”
“On ‘Weekend Update,’ that was her big chance,” he said. “Nothing.”
What a dork. (There’s a word I learned over at Ace’s blog that seems so fitting for Chase at this moment, but I’m not ready to make that leap.) Palin is not a comedian and that’s why there’s a script, you knuckle dragger. What’s more, she didn’t have to say anything for people to love her, which is more than can be said for him. Imagine that: someone can receive such positive attention for being herself. It should be noted the nation has been abuzz about the appearance and ratings for SNL went up higher than what they had been in 14 years. Lorne Michaels admits to some gratitude for Palin:
“I think the gods smiled on us with the Palin thing. Like if he [John McCain] had chosen Romney, I think it would be completely different,” “SNL’s” executive producer Lorne Michaels told The New York Times.
Personally I think Chase is sincere when he says it was a “mistake,” but disingenuous as to why: he can’t stand Palin, obviously, and his preference is that she do something stupid to make herself look bad. Not only did she not fulfill his dream during the Saturday appearance, but also she came off as very likable and didn’t put much effort into it. She was just herself, had fun, and was loved for it. Even many who don’t care for her have expressed appreciation for her appearance and carriage, and complimented her ability to be a good sport. Chase tries to pass off his “concern” as being for the show’s creative integrity (or some such crap), but it is painfully obvious he is concerned not only about the ratings boost, but a potential rise in popularity amongst those who didn’t like her before. Or maybe that they got a glimpse of the real Sarah, as opposed to the caricature he and his ilk try so desperately to pass off, and may start to think for themselves.
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear –
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.’
It was just a few days ago I woke up in my own bed to the news that a young Arkansas news anchor had been found in her bed, beaten nearly to death.
I never heard of Pressly before, and my only contact with Arkansas was that I drove through it twice, but my first instinct was that she had been targetted.
I could always use the excuse that I was still half asleep, but at the moment I feel like it’s closer to: even in that border between the waking world and sleep, some messages hit you like a ton of bricks. I’m not some sort of genius to think this way, and I certainly admit I could be wrong. I hope I am, because if I’m not it means the line between where we have been and where I’ve been concerned we are going has been crossed.
I have written here a couple of times about the disturbing pattern of violent messages and depictions against Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, messages and images not only ignored by people in positions to stifle them, but also perpetuated by them. The contorted face of Sandra Bernhardt as she swears up a storm in her verbal assault on Palin, and talking about how Palin should be gang raped. Madonna is going to kick Palin’s person, an artist draws an image of a fist slamming so hard against Palin’s face that a tooth is knocked into the air and the glasses fly off her face. And that’s just the beginning.
So to tell you the truth, whatever it may say about me and my willingness to think it, for better or worse, when I heard about Anne Pressly being beaten in her own home, in her own bed for God’s sake, my mind went straight to what I consider the obvious consideration, although it seems to be some question that hangs in the air waiting with baited breath for someone to ask it. It’s so in plain view that the question itself is confused a to why it hasn’t been summoned, and the worry it carries burdens it all the more.
I don’t think I’m being unreasonable. Especially given my initial reaction following the hoax perpetuated by some Munchhausen inflicted student, who claimed to have been attacked for her political beliefs. “Oh my God,” I said aloud, and then went silent as the radio announcer’s voice told of her report that it had been a “big black guy.” Now I know the statistics about black on black crime, and although the hoaxer is white (what I didn’t know at the time), the statistics still speak on a high enough level that a crime perpetuated by a black against a white isn’t far fetched. Still. There’s something about “a big black guy” that just sat within me in a wrong way, although it didn’t really register it at the time, at least not openly. I think it comes from the Samantha Smith days, when the mother of two babies drowned them and claimed her car had been jacked by a black guy. Following exposure of her lie, blacks were rightly angry, as their race seemed to be a convenient tag for crime.
I don’t believe I am doing the same to left leaners or Democrats because as I said above: I could easily be wrong. But I also feel sure my concerns are vindicated by their abject failure in condemning these images and discussions of violence against someone they disagree with politically. Moreover I place a lot of blame on Barack Obama, who with just a few words could, if not put a complete stop to it, apply some serious brakeage. He who has complained about a violent shout that probably didn’t even happen, as it turns out, won’t comply on his side the demands he made of John McCain–and at a debate no less. And all we hear is the rousing and gleeful whoops of how funny it was or how clever that person is to do that, and a big shout out to those who watch as it happens: the MSM. They were right to be critical of Smith and any others who tried to scapegoat blacks, many (probably most, like any other group) of whom absolutely condemn criminal behavior.
Democrats, on the other hand, don’t have a history of being scapegoated in a similar manner and they aren’t even bothering to complain about being blamed. They are too busy finding it all so amusing.
And so now here is Anne Pressly, or rather there was Anne Pressly. She was a reporter for an Arkansas station and had once done an impromptu interview of Dick Cheney in a local store’s ammunition aisle. Just a week ago went to take in W, a film she made a cameo appearance in and now, dead. In between she battled for her life and the police said it was “probably” a robber who got surprised. Speaking in practical terms here, can a robber reasonably be surprised at 04.00 in someone else’s home when that owner is asleep in their bed and could possibly wake up and hear the intruder? I’m not a criminologist, nor a detective or police officer, but I’ve read enough about crime to know that sometimes, dear readers, sometimes criminals do things to make the motive appear to be what it really was not.
I really hope I’m wrong about this feeling I am having. But even if I am, this needs to be a warning to those out there who think all the “jokes” about violence against Palin are so funny. We are at a point in which people are worshipping Obama with such fervor it’s loathsome and frightening at the same time, and such a horrifying act is no longer something that would come as a complete surprise to any of us, whether perpetrated against Palin or any of her supporters. Those of us on the right can talk about it until we are blue in the faces but the ones with real power to stop it can take this seriously, and they damn well better do it soon.
Perhaps some of you may recognise the words that follow, some not. In that instance they are the words as written by a WWII-era resistance group known as the White Rose. Led by brother-sister Hans and Sophie Scholl, the group wrote, printed and distributed this and other leaflets at unimaginable risk to themselves. In the end they were caught and the Scholls, amongst others, were executed for their “crimes.” However, the ideals for which they fought, amongst them the right to live ordinary lives of happiness and seeking growth and prosperity, won out in the end, even if the Scholls did not live to see their hard-won victory.
I myself happened upon a book about the group about twenty years ago and have never forgotten them. I learned that Sophie, especially, with her determined expression and flowered jumper, struck a note with many other young girls, here in the United States, in her native Germany and in many countries around the world. Sophie Scholl was robbed of her family, her education, her freedom, and ultimately her life. But she never stopped fighting for freedom. Her brother, as well, was determined to resist and become a doctor after the war. Of course, we know, reading these words, waht they did not know, could only suspect or wonder about, as they wrote them.
Currently we are wondering not only about the outcome of the upcoming election, but not how much of a reality all our fears about an Obama presidency, how much of a reality these fears really are. Examining the nature of them, an honest person cannot dismiss what it all points to, and must resist allowing freedom to be bargained for, must stand up and declare unwillingness to allow freedom to be treated as if it were an historic and collective dismissal of the natural right of one person or group to mandate how all others should live. We the American people are unwilling to surrender the freedoms that have been fought for by those before us, many of whom gave their lives so that we may decide individually how to pursue the course of our lives, to decide which path will best take us to the road to prosperity–to operate under the principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. “We the People” are the first words of the preamble to our great Constitution, not a mistake or cöincidence, but a deliberately placed phrase that speaks to the reality of how our government works: for us, and not we for them. The privileged position of this phrase is a testament to the knowledge and reason that the people, who are to be informed and not denied information, are to make decisions that benefit the country and not support the few through forced disbursal of private property. We are a nation of people who work to create who we are, and thus far American ingenuity has made progress never before seen on Earth in such a short period of time. No nation has been so free, and the ongoing caveat that always accompanies this knowledge is that such freedom must always be jealously guarded, as there will always be those who, for their reason, seek to strip it from us.
With that in mind it is worth re-reading the words written by The White Rose over 60 years ago. Emphasis mine; you may very well find your own.
Nothing is so unworthy of a civilized nation as allowing itself to be “governed” without opposition by an irresponsible clique that has yielded to base instinct. It is certain that today every honest German is ashamed of his government. Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible of crimes -crimes that infinitely outdistance every human measure – reach the light of day?
If the German people are already so corrupted and spiritually crushed that they do not raise a hand, frivolously trusting in a questionable faith in lawful order in history; if they surrender man’s highest principle, that which raises him above all other God’s creatures, his free will; if they abandon the will to take decisive action and turn the wheel of history and thus subject it to their own rational decision; if they are so devoid of all individuality, have already gone so far along the road toward turning into a spiritless and cowardly mass – then, yes, they deserve their downfall.
Goethe speaks of the Germans as a tragic people, like the Jews and the Greeks, but today it would appear rather that they are a spineless, will-less herd of hangers-on, who now – the marrow sucked out of their bones, robbed of their center of stability – are waiting to be hounded to their destruction. So it seems- but it is not so. Rather, by means of a gradual, treacherous, systematic abuse, the system has put every man into a spiritual prison. Only now, finding himself lying in fetters, has he become aware of his fate.
Only a few recognized the threat of ruin, and the reward for their heroic warning was death. We will have more to say about the fate of these persons. If everyone waits until the other man makes a start, the messengers of avenging Nemesis will come steadily closer; then even the last victim will have been cast senselessly into the maw of the insatiable demon.
Therefore every individual, conscious of his responsibility as a member of Christian and Western civilization, must defend himself against the scourges of mankind, against fascism and any similar system of totalitarianism. Offer passive resistance – resistance – wherever you may be, forestall the spread of this atheistic war machine before it is too late, before the last cities, like Cologne, have been reduced to rubble, and before the nation’s last young man has given his blood on some battlefield for the hubris of a sub-human. Do not forget that every people deserves the regime it is willing to endure.
From Friedrich Schiller’s “The Lawgiving of Lycurgus and Solon”:
Viewed in relation to its purposes, the law code of Lycurgus is a masterpiece of political science and knowledge of human nature. He desired a powerful, unassailable state, firmly established on its own principles. Political effectiveness and permanence were the goal towards which he strove, and he attained this goal to the full extent possible under the circumstances. But if one compares the purpose Lycurgus had in view with the purposes of mankind, then a deep abhorrence takes the place of the approbation which we felt at first glance. Anything may be sacrificed to the good of the state except that end for which the State serves as a means. The state is never an end in itself; it is important only as a condition under which the purpose of mankind can be attained, and this purpose is none other than the development of all of man’s powers, his progress and improvement. If a state prevents the development of the capacities which reside in man, if it interferes with the progress of the human spirit, then it is reprehensible and injurious, no matter how excellently devised, how perfect in its own way. Its very permanence in that case amounts more to a reproach than to a basis for fame; it becomes a prolonged evil, and the longer it endures, the more harmful it is…
At the price of all moral feeling a political system was set up, and the resources of the state were mobilized to that end. In Sparta there was no conjugal love, no mother love, no filial devotion, no friendship; all men were citizens only, and all virtue was civic virtue.
A law of the state made it the duty of Spartans to be inhumane to their slaves; in these unhappy victims of war humanity itself was insulted and mistreated. In the Spartan code of law the dangerous principle was promulgated that men are to be looked upon as means and not as ends – and the foundations of natural law and of morality were destroyed by that law…
What an admirable sight is afforded, by contrast, by the rough soldier Gaius Marcius in his camp before Rome, when he renounced vengeance and victory because he could not endure to see a mother’s tears!…
The state [of Lycurgus] could endure only under the one condition: that the spirit of the people remained quiescent. Hence it could be maintained only if it failed to achieve the highest, the sole purpose of a state.
From Goethe’s “The Awakening of Epimenides, Act II, Scene 4:
SPIRITS: Though he who has boldly risen from the abyss Through an iron will and cunning May conquer half the world, Yet to the abyss he must return. Already a terrible fear has seized him; In vain he will resist! And all who still stand with him Must perish in his fall
HOPE: Now I find my good men Are gathered in the night, To wait in silence, not to sleep. And the glorious word of liberty They whisper and murmur, Till in unaccustomed strangeness, On the steps of our temple Once again in delight they cry: Freedom! Freedom!
Please make as many copies of this leaflet as you can and distribute them.
This comes from the folks at Hillbuzz who are dedicating their weekend (and sacrificing Christmas presents) to canvassing for Mccain/Palin in Ohio by volunteers who live in Chicago. They are doing it for free, but the materials they need cost some bucks: buses, accommodations, kits (buttons, stickers, etc.) and they need all the help they can get. They are asking for donations to help fund this trip in a mission to help get Ohio secured for McCain and Palin. I’ve donated a small amount myself and wouldn’t ask a single one of you to do the same if that weren’t the case. It’s easy as pie to do and completely secure as you can do it through PayPal, just like some of you may have done before. Please don’t feel that small amounts are too insignificant to bother: even $5 raised from a bunch of people adds up. If they get enough money they might be able to rent a car or two instead of relying on volunteers on the ground there in Ohio.
So please, folks, help out in any way you can! $1, $5, $10, $20—anything at all! I know these are tough times for everybody–I’m a single mom myself who is working through a post bacc program, I totally feel your pain! But in the long term this will pay out great dividends because the folks at Hillbuzz are committed to the belief that McCain/Palin are good for our country, and I agree. They will preserve our rights and take us in the direction we want to go–not in small part because they listen to our voices! That’s the kind of leadership that is good for our and our children’s futures, and is totally worth the small amount now. I hope you will think of it as a small price to pay for liberty.
To get to the link for PayPal and the original post, please click here; the original post is also copied below:
We need to ask for your help. We’re putting together a canvassing trip into Ohio this coming weekend to bring what we hope will be about 70 DeMcCrats for McCain and Young Republican supporters into Ohio to canvass for McCain/Palin in the Buckeye state. We’re still short of what we need to rent buses for this trip, and cover the accommodations and costs for our volunteers while there. We’re also buying as many DeMcCrats for McCain and other McCain/Palin buttons and stickers to hand out in Ohio as we can. This is a bipartisan effort here in Chicago — and the biggest push we’ve ever made for canvassing. It’s a long ride from Illinois to Ohio, and the bus is expensive. We’ve all scraped together what we can, but need help covering the rest.
So, if you’ve been a regular here and have enjoyed what we do — if we’ve made you laugh, smile, or helped you stay informed about this election — please contribute whatever you can to make this weekend of canvassing happen. If we raise enough, we can even rent cars when we get to Ohio so we can cover much more ground canvassing, and not have to rely on other volunteers already there. For many of us here at HillBuzz, Ohio is our home state, so we’re especialy committed to winning this state for McCain/Palin…just like we did in the primaries for Hillary Clinton.
Every little bit adds up towards our goal — and puts another 70 or so people on the ground for McCain/Palin in Ohio, where we’ll make a big difference. We’re putting everything we’ve got into this effort — there literally will be no Chirstmas presents for anyone we know this year because it’s all going to winning this election. We believe in McCain/Palin and think they are what’s best for America, so we’re doing all we can to win on November 4th. But, we do truly need your help.
$1, $5, $10, whatever you can give will make a huge difference. Without your help, we won’t be able to pull this off. If we find 900 people who read this blog who can give us $5, we can make this happen.
Let’s close out this election together with a big win for McCain/Palin, by sending as many of us from Chicago into Ohio to fight hard on the ground!
Please help us!
Thank you in advance to all; your time and donations will be appreciated immensely!
It is impossible to engage in intellectual discourse with National Socialism because it is not an intellectually defensible program. It is false to speak of a National Socialist philosophy, for if there were such an entity, one would have to try by means of analysis and discussion either to prove its validity or to combat it. In actuality, however, we face a totally different situation.
At its very inception this movement depended on the deception and betrayal of one’s fellow man; even at that time it was inwardly corrupt and could support itself only by constant lies. After all, Hitler states in an early edition of “his” book (a book written in the worst German I have ever read, in spite of the fact that it has been elevated to the position of the Bible in this nation of poets and thinkers): “It is unbelievable, to what extent one must betray a people in order to rule it.”
If at the start this cancerous growth in the nation was not particularly noticeable, it was only because there were still enough forces at work that operated for the good, so that it was kept under control. As it grew larger, however, and finally in an ultimate spurt of growth attained ruling power, the tumor broke open, as it were, and infected the whole body. The greater part of its former opponents went into hiding. The German intellectuals fled to their cellars, there, like plants struggling in the dark, away from light and sun, gradually to choke to death.
Now the end is at hand. Now it is our task to find one another again, to spread information from person to person, to keep a steady purpose, and to allow ourselves no rest until the last man in persuaded of the urgent need of his struggle against this system. When thus a wave of unrest goes through the land, when “it is in the air”, when many join the cause, then in a great final effort this system can be shaken off. After all, and [sic] end in terror is preferable to terror without end.
We are not in a position to draw up a final judgment about the meaning of our history. But if this catastrophe can be used to further the public welfare, it will be only by virtue of the fact that we are cleansed by suffering; that we yearn for the light in the midst of deepest night, summon our strength, and finally help in shaking off the yoke which weighs on our world.
We do not want to discuss here the question of the Jews, nor do we want in this leaflet to compose a defense or apology. No, only by way of example do we want to cite the fact that since the conquest of Poland three hundred thousand Jews have been murdered in this country in the most bestial way. Here we see the most frightful crime against human dignity, a crime that is unparalleled in the whole of history. For Jews, too, are human beings – no matter what position we take with respect to the Jewish question – and a crime of this dimension has been perpetrated against human beings.
Someone may say that the Jews deserved their fate. This assertion would be a monstrous impertinence; but let us assume that someone said this – what position has he then taken toward the fact that the entire Polish aristocratic youth is being annihilated? (May God grant that this program has not fully achieved its aim as yet!) All male offspring of the houses of the nobility between the ages of fifteen and twenty were transported to concentration camps in Germany and sentenced to forced labor, and the girls of this age group were sent to Norway, into the bordellos of the SS!
Why tell you these things, since you are fully aware of them – or if not of these, then of other equally grave crimes committed by this frightful sub-humanity? Because here we touch on a problem which involves us deeply and forces us all to take thought. Why do the German people behave so apathetically in the face of all these abominable crimes, crimes so unworthy of the human race? Hardly anyone thinks about that. It is accepted as fact and put out of mind. The German people slumber on in their dull, stupid sleep and encourage these fascist criminals; they give them the opportunity to carry on their depredations; and of course they do so. Is this a sign that the Germans are brutalized in their simplest human feelings, that no chord within them cried out at the sight of such deeds, that they have sunk into a fatal consciencelessness from which they will never, never awake?
It seems to be so, and will certainly be so, if the German does not at least start up out of his stupor, if he does not protest wherever and whenever he can against this clique of criminals, if he shows no sympathy for these hundreds of thousands of victims. He must evidence not only sympathy; no, much more: a sense of complicity in guilt. For through his apathetic behavior he gives these evil men the opportunity to act as they do; he tolerates this “government” which has taken upon itself such an infinitely great burden of guilt; indeed, he himself is to blame for the fact that it came about at all! Each man wants to be exonerated of a guilt of this kind, each one continues on his way with the most placid, the calmest conscience. But he cannot be exonerated; he is guilty, guilty, guilty!
It is not too late, however, to do away with this most reprehensible of all miscarriages of government, so as to avoid being burdened with even greater guilt. Now, when in recent years our eyes have been opened, when we know exactly who our adversary is, it is high time to root out this brown horde. Up until the outbreak of the war the larger part of the German people were blinded; the Nazis did not show themselves in their true aspect. But now, now that we have recognized them for what they are, it must be the sole and first duty, the holiest duty of every German to destroy these beasts.
“If the people are barely aware that the government exists, they are happy. When the government is felt to be oppressive, they are broken. ” “Good fortune, alas! builds itself upon misery. Good fortune, alas! is the mask of misery. What will come of this? We cannot foresee the end. Order is upset and turns to disorder, good becomes evil. The people are confused. Is it not so, day in, day out, from the beginning? ” “The wise man is therefore angular, though he does not injure others: he has sharp corners, though he does not harm; he is upright but not gruff. He is clear-minded, but he does not try to be brilliant.” – Lao Tzu
“Whoever undertakes to rule the kingdom and to shape it according to his whim – I foresee that he will fail to reach his goal. That is all. ” “The kingdom is a living being. It cannot be constructed, in truth! He who tries to manipulate it will spoil it, he who tries to put it under his power will lose it. “
“Therefore: Some creatures go out in front, others follow, some have warm breath, others cold, some are strong, some weak, some attain abundance, other succumb. ” “The wise man will accordingly forswear excess, he will avoid arrogance and not overreach.” – Lao Tzu
Please make as many copies as possible of this leaflet and distribute them.
All ideal forms of government are utopias. A state cannot be constructed on a purely theoretical basis; rather, it must grow and ripen in the way an individual human being matures. But we must not forget that at the starting point of every civilization the state was already there in rudimentary form. The family is as old as man himself, and out of this initial bond man, endowed with reason, created for himself a state founded on justice, whose highest law was the common good. The state should exist as a parallel to the divine order, and the highest of all utopias, the civitas dei, is the model which in the end it should approximate.
Here we will not pass judgment on the many possible forms of the state – democracy, constitutional monarchy, and so on. But one matter needs to be brought out clearly and unambiguously. Every individual human being has a claim to a useful and just state, a state which secures the freedom of the individual as well as the good of the whole. For, according to God’s will, man is intended to pursue his natural goal, his earthly happiness, in self-reliance and self-chosen activity, freely and independently within the community of life and work of the nation.
But our present “state” is the dictatorship of evil. “Oh, we’ve known that for a long time,” I hear you object, “and it isn’t necessary to bring that to our attention again.” But, I ask you, if you know that, why do you not bestir yourselves, why do you allow these men who are in power to rob you step by step, openly and in secret, of one domain of your rights after another, until one day nothing, nothing at all will be left but a mechanized state system presided over by criminals and drunks? Is your spirit already so crushed by abuse that you forget it is your right – or rather, your moral duty – to eliminate this system?
But if a man no longer can summon the strength to demand his right, then it is absolutely certain that he will perish. We would deserve to be dispersed through the earth like dust before the wind if we do not muster our powers at this late hour and finally find the courage which up to now we have lacked. Do not hide your cowardice behind a cloak of expediency, for with every new day that you hesitate, failing to oppose this offspring of Hell, your guilt, as in a parabolic curve, grows higher and higher.
Many, perhaps most, of the readers of these leaflets do not see clearly how they can practice an effective opposition. They do not see any avenues open to them. We want to try to show them that everyone is in a position to contribute to the overthrow of this system. It is not possible through solitary withdrawal, in the manner of embittered hermits, to prepare the ground for the overturn of this “government” or bring about the revolution at the earliest possible moment. No, it can be done only by the cooperation of many convinced, energetic people – people who are agreed as to the means they must use to attain their goal.
We have no great number of choices as to these means. The only one available is passive resistance. The meaning and the goal of passive resistance is to topple National Socialism, and in this struggle we must not recoil from any course, any action, whatever its nature. At all points we must oppose National Socialism, wherever it is open to attack. We must soon bring this monster of a state to an end. A victory of fascist Germany in this war would have immeasurable, frightful consequences. The military victory over Bolshevism dare not become the primary concern of the Germans. The defeat of the Nazis must unconditionally be the first order of business. The greater necessity of this latter requirement will be discussed in one of our forthcoming leaflets.
And now every convinced opponent of National Socialism must ask himself how he can fight against the present “state” in the most effective way, how he can strike it the most telling blows. Through passive resistance, without a doubt. We cannot provide each man with the blueprint for his acts, we can only suggest them in general terms, and he alone will find the way of achieving this end:
Sabotage in armament plants and war industries, sabotage at all gatherings, rallies, public ceremonies, and organizations of the National Socialist Party. Obstruction of the smooth functioning of the war machine (a machine for war that goes on solely to shore up and perpetuate the National Socialist Party and its dictatorship). Sabotage in all the areas of science and scholarship which further the continuation of the war – whether in universities, technical schools, laboratories, research institutions, or technical bureaus. Sabotage in all cultural institutions which could potentially enhance the “prestige” of the fascists among the people. Sabotage in all branches of the arts which have even the slightest dependence on National Socialism or render it service. Sabotage in all publications, all newspapers, that are in the pay of the “government” and that defend its ideology and aid in disseminating the brown lie.
Do not give a penny to the public drives (even when they are conducted under the pretense of charity). For this is only a disguise. In reality the proceeds aid neither the Red Cross nor the needy. The government does not need this money; it is not financially interested in these money drives. After all, the presses run continuously to manufacture any desired amount of paper currency. But the populace must be kept constantly under tension, the pressure of the bit must not be allowed to slacken! Do not contribute to the collections of metal, textiles and the like. Try to convince all your acquaintances, including those in the lower social classes, of the senselessness of continuing, of the hopelessness of this war; of our spiritual and economic enslavement at the hands of the National Socialists; of the destruction of all moral and religious values; and urge them to passive resistance!
Aristotle: Politic: “… and further, it is part [of the nature of tyranny] to strive to see to it that nothing is kept hidden of that which any subject says or does, but that everywhere he will be spied upon,… and further, to set man against man and friend against friend, and the common people against the privileged and the wealthy. Also it is part of these tyrannical measures, to keep the subjects poor, in order to pay the guards and the soldiers, and so that they will be occupied with earning their livelihood and will have neither leisure nor opportunity to engage in conspiratorial acts… Further, [to levy] such taxes on income as were imposed in Syracuse, for under Dionysius the citizens gladly paid out their whole fortunes in taxes within five years. Also, the tyrant is inclined constantly to foment wars”
It shouldn’t have had to come to this, but apparently a majority of Americans are determined to learn the hard way. May God only grant that it not be the same hard way millions of others have had to endure this lesson.
There is an ancient maxim that we repeat to our children: “He who won’t listen will have to feel.” But a wise child will not burn his fingers the second time on a hot stove. In the past weeks Hitler has chalked up successes in Africa and in Russia. In consequence, optimism on the one hand and distress and pessimism on the other have grown within the German people with a rapidity quite inconsistent with traditional German apathy. On all sides, one hears among Hitler’s opponents – the better segments of the population – exclamations of despair, words of disappointment and discouragement, often ending with the question: “Will Hitler now, after all…?”
Meanwhile, the German offensive against Egypt has ground to a halt. Rommel has to bide his time in a dangerously exposed position. But the push into the East proceeds. This apparent success has been purchased at the most horrible expense of human life, and so it can no longer be counted an advantage. Therefore we must warn against all optimism.
Neither Hitler nor Goebbels can have counted the dead. In Russia, thousands are lost daily. It is the time of the harvest, and the reaper cuts into the ripe grain with wide strokes. Mourning takes up her abode in the country cottages, and there is no one to dry the tears of the mothers. Yet Hitler feeds with lies those people whose most precious belongings he has stolen and whom he has driven to a meaningless death.
Every word that comes from Hitler’s mouth is a lie. When he says peace, he means war, and when he blasphemously uses the name of the Almighty, he means the power of evil, the fallen angel, Satan. His mouth is the foul-smelling maw of Hell, and his might is at bottom accursed. True, we must consider the struggle against the National Socialist state with rational means; but whoever today still doubts the reality, the existence of demonic powers, has failed by a wide margin to understand the metaphysical background of this war. Behind the concrete, the visible events, behind all objective, logical considerations, we find the irrational element: the struggle against the demon, against the servants of the Antichrist. Everywhere and at all times demons have been lurking in the dark, waiting for the moment when man is weak; when of his own volition he leaves his place in the order of Creation as founded for him by God in freedom; when he yields to the force of evil, separates himself from the powers of a higher order; and, after voluntarily taking the first step, he is driven on to the next and the next at a furiously accelerating rate. Everywhere and at all times of greatest trial men have appeared, prophets and saints who cherished their freedom, who preached the One God and who with His help brought the people to a reversal of their downward course. Man is free, to be sure, but without the true God he is defenseless against the principle of evil. He is like a rudderless ship, at the mercy of the storm, an infant without his mother, a cloud dissolving into thin air.
I ask you, you as a Christian wrestling for the preservation of your greatest treasure, whether you hesitate, whether you incline toward intrigue, calculation, or procrastination in the hope that someone else will raise his arm in your defense? Has God not given you the strength, the will to fight? We must attack evil where it is strongest, and it is strongest in the power of Hitler.
So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors was power; but they had no comforter. Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive – ECCLESASTES 4
True anarchy is the generative element of religion. Out of the annihilation of every positive element she lifts her gloriously radiant countenance as the founder of a new world… If Europe were about to awaken again, if a state of states, a teaching of political science were at hand! Should hierarchy then… be the principle of the union of states?
Blood will stream over Europe until the nations become aware of the frightful madness which drives them in circles. And then, struck by celestial music and made gentle, they approach their former alters all together, hear about the works of peace, and hold a great celebration of peace with fervent tears before the smoking alters. Only religion can reawaken Europe, establish the rights of the peoples, and install Christianity in new splendor visibly on earth in its office as guarantor of peace. – NOVALIS
We wish expressly to point out that the White Rose is not in the pay of any foreign power. Though we know that National Socialist power must be broken by military means, we are trying to achieve a renewal from within of the severely wounded German spirit. This rebirth must be preceeded, however, by the clear recognition of all the guilt with which the German people have burdened themselves, and by an uncompromising battle against Hitler and his all too many minions, party members, Quislings, and the like. With total brutality the chasm that separates the better portion of the nation from everything that is identified with National Socialism must be opened wide. For Hitler and his followers there is no punishment on this earth commensurate with their crimes. But out of love for coming generations we must make an example after the conclusion of the war, so that no one will ever again have the slightest urge to try a similar action. And do not forget the petty scoundrels in this regime; note their names, so that none will go free! They should not find it possible, having had their part in these abominable crimes, at the last minute to rally to another flag and then act as if nothing has happened!
To set you at rest, we add that the addresses of the readers of the White Rose are not recorded in writing. They were picked at random from directories.
We will not be silent. We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave you in peace!
Not all of this, of course, should be taken as literal parallels. As I said in the beginning of this “series,” there are eerie similarities and now it seems some children indeed are determined to burn their hands twice. They, in their blind belief that rivers will suddenly flow with wine and money will grow on trees (or be delivered to them, perhaps), people who want everything done for them have voted in a government that has promised to rise them above their world degradation and every person can at last afford a simple glass of beer.
When you were in grade school, did you get 100% with that many spelling, grammar and punctuation errors?
Where shall I start? Let’s see:
*Is this the polite public discourse this kid is being taught? (“…some stupid person will not get in ofice.” [sic]) (emphasis mine)
*Already being indoctrinated to despise the wealthy. (“Obama is not an oil tycoon yay.” No he’s just a kickback king.)
*This youngster is learning the art of ageism. They start ‘em young nowadays, I guess. (“Some other advantiges [sic] are that he is young and not senile.” OK, what are the other advantages? And is it acceptable these days to define something by what it is not?)
*Selective observation. (“He is a good sport because he didn’t sue the Daily Show for that funny Obama thing.” Did his teacher forget to show them all the Tina Fey swipes at Governor Palin?)
*Listen, Pablo, this is how it works: Free passes for Dems. (“Why I don’t want Mccain [sic] is because he bombed Vietnom [sic].” Oh, it must be acceptable to have dubious connections to unrepentant domestic terrorists, then.)
*Conservatives are the big, bad wolf. (“…we are all DOOMED EVEN MORE.” Way to go with the scare tactics.)
*Being taught to hate instead of disagree. (“Why I hate Sara [sic] Paline [sic] is because she hunts animals.” They must all be vegetarians at that school.)
*Name-calling is an acceptable discourse when directed at Republicans, but racist when used to describe Democrats. (“Sara [sic] and Mccain [sic] are both oil monkeys or tycoons.” I guess they don’t have any problem with the George Sorros wealth, though.)
*If it comes from the mouth of a Hollywood star, it must be true! (“Sara [sic] Paline [sic] belives [sic] in the bible [sic] but it says they’re [sic] was [sic] no dinosaurs so. [sic] WHERE IS THE STUPID OIl COMING from?” Someone tell Pablo: Not from here.)
It’s not this kid’s fault he is being taught to say these things. But I can tell you there are a lot of educators who seem to be forgetting what they learned in teacher training about Horace Mann, John Dewey and freedom of thought. I am disturbed and disgusted, and as the mother of a kindergartner myself it scares the shit out of me that Barack Obama’s plans may include doing away with home-schooling, one of the only options we have against the brainwashing of our children, which takes place every day in our government schools.
We should also be concerned that regarding certain lessons we as parents may not have the “right” to remove our children from class. If you are a conservative parent out there and inclined to dismiss this as something that surely can’t happen, my advice to you as a teacher and a parent would be to watch and listen very carefully to what your children bring home with them.
I always want to know what happened before the camera started rolling, so I’m not going to jump on this with fervor (note this restraint was not in evidence before attacks against Sarah Palin). However, I find it shocking and disturbing to say the least, and I don’t think it is unreasonable for people to wonder if this is the way things are going to be.
Before anybody starts asking, “Why was he wearing a McCain/Palin shirt near an Obama rally anyway? please remind yourself that we are in the United States. People are allowed to walk along the streets and there are no laws about what style of clothing adults must wear. In the realm of anything being possible, it could be the guy went there with the intent purpose of antagonizing people. But it doesn’t look like it to me: he was asked to leave (which might have been for his own safety) and, according to the cameraman, he “refused.” If you listen closely you can hear the man trying to tell the officers he needed to get to his car (which was away from where they were pushing him). He’s not trying to hit or otherwise harm the officers (or anybody else) and didn’t even try to get on any kind of soapbox. It appears he happened upon the group of Obama supporters and attracted police attention because the crowd, civilized as they are, started booing and jeering him.
I’m trying to give the police the benefit of the doubt here. If they were just trying to get the guy away from a possible bad scene, why not just tell him that? Maybe they were intimidated by the camera; maybe they thought he was too drunk to comprehend their reasoning. He looked pretty sensible to me, though, and responded appropriately by trying to explain why he wanted to go the other way. At one point he had even put his hands behind his back.
And then one cop starting shoving and roughing him up. What the hell is that all about? He didn’t deserve that and there is no justifiable reason for doing that to him. He was no threat to those officers and putting up no kind of physical fight. Fortunately at least one of those cops had the good sense to stop the other one from hurting the guy, but then he was cuffed and put into the squad car.
You know what disturbs me just as much–or maybe even more? The Obama supporters whipped up into a crowd mentality in which they simply had to jeer the guy and shouting out in a way that would likely intimidate anybody. (And this had started before he was arrested and the crowd appeared to be egging the police on.) I’m sure there are some who are more than happy to call me racist for writing that, but it’s all there on the tape. Whatever their individual thoughts and beliefs on the whole situation, it is clear to see their frenzied hatred as they mock him and then cheer when he is cuffed. I really couldn’t make out much of what else they were saying, but it’s not difficult to imagine what it might be.
Is this what we are headed for? That freedom of speech and expression will be questioned and we will have to justify why we were in a certain place or wearing a certain slogan? Will we be penalized for being the individual amongst a mob mentality that seeks some sort of spoils, whether it be racially or politically motivated? Are we going to have to fight back against a system in which we are in the wrong because of the opinions we hold?
I want answers for this. I want to know what was going on before the camera started rolling, why he was arrested and what happened to him afterward. And I want to know why there was tolerance and support for mob intimidation and threatening behavior but no protections for that man’s First Amendment rights. Whether you Obama supporters like it or not, this smacks of 1939. I wonder what “52″ has to say about this? Are you guys going to support this man’s (and our) right to free speech now that you are all so keen to be “united”?
I’ll try to find out more as (if) the story gets some coverage. If anyone else gets details, I would sure appreciate knowing them.
And I bet you thought “Office of the President-Elect” was rich.
Every time I hear one absurdity I think it can’t get any more ridiculous. “What will they think of next?” I ask myself. And yet they always manage to outdo themselves. Via Michelle Malkin, to wit:
Plans are being made to promote a national holiday for Barack Obama, who will become the nation’s 44th president when he takes the oath of office Jan. 20.
“Yes We Can” planning rallies will be at 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. every Tuesday at the downtown McDonald’s restaurant, 1100 Kansas Ave., until Jan. 13. The goals are to secure a national holiday in Obama’s honor, to organize celebrations around his inauguration and to celebrate the 200th birthday of President Abraham Lincoln, who was born on Feb. 12 1809.
At 7:30 a.m. on Inauguration Day, Obama Cake will be served at the downtown McDonald’s, and a celebration is scheduled for 8 p.m. to midnight Jan. 20 at the Ramada Hotel and Convention Center, 420 S.E. 6th.
For more information, contact Sonny Scroggins, (785) 232-3761, 845-6148 or at biasbustersofkansas@yahoo.com; Lamont Lassiter, McDonald’s general manager, 608-2739; Ava Chander-Beard, (785) 234-9138, ava.beard@sbcglobal.net; or Rhoda Carr, (785) 220-5883.
So what’s next, then? It will be a national holiday and we all have to go do some community service in the spirit of unity? We’ll all have to contribute various foodstuffs and picnic supplies for a giant, block potluck? Should I start anticipating the enormous murals and paintings of him (a la Ruhollah Khomeini) at intersections and on the sides of buildings? And when do we stop throwing newspapers that might have his name printed on them into such filthy receptacles as recycling or trash bins? (God Obama help me if the acolytes ever find out I used them to clean my windows.) Will there be a new, national religion in which canonisation means no less than twelve pilgramages a year to his shrine–long before he ever dies? Hell, if they can make a holiday for a president before he ever becomes one, why wait until he dies for the memorials?
Not to mention seeing his face in the wood on a park fence or tears dripping from the eyes of one of his millions of soon-to-be statues. (Wonder if they can be made to weep before they are created?) In fact, I’m waiting for the sightings to start and will be busy tonight trying to accurately predict which geographical locale will be lucky enough to be the first to experience the phenomenon.
You know what is perhaps the most interesting part of all? That despite this possibly being a prank, it’s so believable! And the idea has had its defenders.
Where and when will this insane, obsessive, cultish and hyperventilating worship of this man, who has yet done nothing for the United States, end? We’ll be taxed to fund the massive de-programming efforts, I’m sure, but by that time I will probably be so grateful the national nightmare is over that I’ll be canvassing for contributions myself.
In the meantime, American Pundit wants to know if everyone has practiced their goose-stepping. I guess for the parades.
“I feel like we got a righteous wind at our backs here, but we’re going to have to work. We’re going to have to struggle. We’re going to have to fight.”–Barack Obama
“The ill wind of opportunism is falling, the righteous wind of socialism is on the rise.
By the end of this year the victory of socialism will be greatly assured. Naturally there will be many struggles ahead and we must struggle hard.”–Chairman Mao
That was the last step towards change before the election; the sheeple looked it in the face and said, “Yes.” Ah, devotees of the Ministry of Love.
Whoever you are reading this, have you seen this? It’s a website called “From 52 to 48/48 to 52 with love.” I saw it a couple of days ago and resisted writing about it here because it brought such strong feelings in me, which I suppose is true of everything else I write about, but this was not the sort of strong I’m used to sharing with people, especially anonymous Internet surfers.
So why write now? Well, because I am a big believer in free speech and being heard, and I want what I have to say to be out there, even if it means I’m repeating the same things others have already said–and said much more eloquently than I’m about to. I haven’t exactly let go of one of my initial responses, which was:
Fuck. You.
but I do have other things to say. I might not have been inclined to say any of it because I’m generally not in the habit of talking to people who aren’t listening to me, and I also often perceive these types of lovey-dovey websites as too “feelgood” to bother with. I’m a very emotional and sentimental person, to be honest, and yet I’m not at all. I keep my emotions to myself and those very close to me and don’t have a lot of patience for stickiness. So while I currently am willing to continue through the list of all these pictures (what I wasn’t willing to finish two days ago), you can be sure it’s with my guard up.
You’ll pardon me if I remain largely unimpressed with these pictures. I’ve read of some who give lots of credit for people having the “courage” to plaster their own pictures on the Internet; I don’t see it that way. Depending on the tilt or the message, facial expression or aura I sense in the picture, I see it on a continuum that goes from somewhere like juvenile exhibitionism to blatant condescension. Sure, somewhere in there probably are people who really mean what they say, and my reply is: I’ll believe it when I see and hear about it. In large doses. Well yeah, thanks a lot for patting me on the head and saying, “I’ll stick up for you,” but my first question when I see those messages is: Where were you a week ago? Where were you when Sarah Palin, who is my governor, was ravaged and accused and insulted and blamed nonstop by a media and bloggers who never let facts get in the way of their insistence to dislike and hate her? They (you?), with gleeful malice, jaunted their way through the Internet and other media, on about accusations that were later proven false, evidence they either ignored or replaced with the downright despicable. I mean really. Incest? Lies about who is whose mother? Where was your sense of decency then? Had it been one or two instances it might have been easily forgotten, but it was instead a constant, hate-filled assault, doodlebugs that caught us with their shrapnel.
Did you ever stop to think in the last year (with increasing ferocity in the last few months) how awful it is to try a rational discussion with someone who cuts me off, as soon as it is known I didn’t support Obama, with accusations of racism? What it does when time after time after time after time it happens, the names and expletives getting worse and far more frequent, and the faces twisted with anger started to make me wonder if this person really was shifting into a frightening lack of rationality? And then when the pictures started–guns at Sarah Palin’s head, fist slamming into her face–and celebrity endorsements of violence–Madonna saying she will “kick her ass” and Sarah Bernhardt ranting about Palin being gang raped? And, just like people repeat comedians’ lines or copy pop stars’ clothing styles, sure enough started the acts of aggression and violence against 48s from the camp of the 52s. Some neighborhoods couldn’t keep a McCain/Palin sign on their lawns–and they were the lucky ones, along with people such as one right here in Alaska whose sign on an overpass (we do that here) was ripped down by someone who didn’t like it, altered and replaced it. (And the person who did it bragged in her blog and was cheered for it.) Graffiti’d houses and cars, a small parade making its way through Manhattan being all but tarred and feathered, and for God’s sake a woman being beaten on the face with her own sign.
How do you think it feels when people say that I ought to be put into a mental institution for having religious ideas and beliefs? That because I dislike abortion I am against women? (Oh yeah, and after the treatment by mainstream feminists of Sarah Palin, that was really credible. But inconsistencies they selectively ignore.) And if I don’t support gay marriage–for reasons none of these people ever bothered to ask–I am automatically labelled a “hater.” A “Nazi supporter.”
How do you think it feels to have a guy twice my size get in my face and spit at me “O-BAH-MAH!!” while my five-year-old child stands right next to me?
Well just in case you never thought about it in a deeper level than, “Oh, that’s not cool,” let me tell you: It’s frightening, demoralizing, degrading, oppressive and humiliating. I’m pretty sure some of you had nothing to do with it, but where I come from silence = assent, and that assent was served in heaping spoonfuls. There was blanket nodding going on when the mainstream media twisted words and events, and in fact fabricated at least one in order to get their guy in the White House. And when that was proven to have likely been dreamed up by that vile “journalist,” who reported on it? Not the MSM, that’s for sure.
And none of this is even taking into consideration the differences we have re: how this country should be run. I won’t get into it in great detail here, partly because we will never agree 100% on all the issues. I expect this even in better times and to a certain degree even I almost prefer it that way. But some of the things this guy is proposing–how can you even tolerate this? How can you support diminishing our military and replacing it with some “civilian force” that is “just as well funded as the military”? No offense, but were you awake in history class the day–nay the weeks–they talked about the Gestapo, Stasi or any other brand of secret police?
Did any of you ever consider the potential consequences of such a force combined with the de-arming of a population along with forcing their silence by enacting the so-called Fairness Doctrine? Most people who own guns tend to be conservative and disagree with the main stream media, and talk radio gives them a place to get information and exchange it. I realise talk radio hasn’t been very successful for liberals, but it’s not because anyone has shut you down–it’s because the market simply doesn’t have the demand for it you would prefer. If it did, you would be free to establish a radio station and say what you want. And if listeners didn’t like it, they could put their finger on the dial and move it to one that talks about what they want to hear. Why is is OK to eliminate that option for us? Our “side” has largely been driven out of newspapers and television; is it not enough that Obama and Pelosi et al. have to take away from us what is left?
As far as weapons go, I know there are some, probably many of you who don’t like guns and don’t want one. And that’s your right. Nobody says you have to have one. But our constitution guarantees our right to disagree and choose to own one (or more) if we feel the need, which many of us do. The arguments like, “Why can’t you just use a baseball bat?” or “What do people need guns for anyway?” are not acceptable reasons to deny someone their constitutional protection simply because you are disinterested. We may have different mentalities about gun ownership, but I thought your party appreciated diversity? If for some reason I thought it was OK (and had the power) to shut down your right to free speech (the First Amendment being something I’m certain you value), I’m pretty sure you’d have something to say about that. As far as crime goes, I can’t urge you strongly enough to take an actual look at numbers: cities with bans have higher rates of gun crime and seizing weapons from citizens who follow the law will do nothing about getting guns out of the hands of those who don’t.
And so that brings me to a couple of other questions. To the young lady who wrote early on:
Dear 48,
I promise to listen to you
to fight for you
to respect you always
Love,
52
and another young lady a few pics down from that:
I may not agree
with what you have to
say…but I will fight
for your right to say it.
(REALLY)
[heart] 52
Really? Are you going to stand outside city halls and go to town meetings and write letters to Pelosi et al. and phone in liberal talk shows, pen editorials or letters to editors, and all manner of other places with the power and arenas who will pay attention, will you go or write or call to these places and fight for our right not only to say and hear views different from your own but also declare that shutting off media outlets only because they are conservative, or imposing limitations or extra requirements on them is unconstitutional and wrong? Will you vote against politicians who do that to us? Will you march with us to show support for our right to speak and be heard? Will you make a point to tell people–such as one blogger whose joy at the possibility of filibuster-proof Houses was exceeded only by her great hope it really happened–will you explain to these people that they have so much power already it is frightening and that this kind of majority was most definitely something our founding fathers despised and worked so it wouldn’t happen? Will you explain to them that this kind of joy doesn’t inspire confidence in others no matter the party, and that this kind of power is exceedingly dangerous and lack of checks and balances most often brings about oppression for a certain segment of the population? Will you do that and more?
To the grown up(s) who posed a little boy with these words:
To: 48
Will you play
with me?
Circle–yes no
[heart] — 52
Will you please consider the thought many of us 48ers hold that children should not be brought into this arena? I say this not because I want to dictate what your child should learn, but because I want to believe you will extend to me the same respect. There are far too many schools that allow or do nothing about teachers who subtly and over time pass the message to children (who respect their teachers and will often tell their parents, “But that’s what my teacher said!” and continue to do it teacher’s way) that what they are taught by their parents is irresponsible, backwards, foolish, wrong, stupid, something to be ashamed of, and slowly indoctrinate them into a belief system inconsistent with their families’ values.
Are you at all like some others who say they will fight for us? if so, will you pay attention to what your children bring home and even if you agree, get involved with the schools on behalf of the parents who don’t? Will you respect the values of those different from you enough to help delineate the distinction between forming awareness and crafting ideology? Will you speak out against this and this? After you watch the video with the teacher, you may have a better understanding of why I feel doubt and lack of confidence in your claims to support us. The teacher in the video asserted she said “Good” when people voiced their support for John McCain, when in fact she had clearly done the opposite, by muttering, “Oh Jesus” (as an expletive, something offensive to many people in itself) and berating a young girl who did no differently than what any of the other kids in that class did by repeating what she heard at home. And that teacher shouldn’t even be presenting that “lesson” in the first place. It takes a certain type of educator to talk politics without violation, and I can tell you most teachers don’t fit the bill.
And will you oppose assignments as in the link above? Will you recognise and point out to those in positions to do something that this child is being taught what to think and learning nothing at all about the mechanics of writing? Educators, social scientists and psychologists (amongst other researchers) are now aware that what children learn, and the way they are taught to learn, influences not just what they absorb but also how they interact with others and what skills they develop, such as ability to collaborate and make compromises with, say, a team of co-workers with whom they disagree on some aspects of a project. But what I see in this child’s paper–the fault of his teacher, not him–is an inclination to hate someone for beliefs he never investigated or found to be true, lack of critical observational and thinking skills, and condemnation for those whose lifestyles are different than his. That was just a bit of what I saw in that assignment; I wrote about it in a bit more length and you can read it here.
And by the way, will you speak up to save home schooling if it becomes a target in Barack Obama’s desire to “better” our school system? Will you support parents’ rights to put to use their expert knowledge of their own children and the right to choose not to send them to schools that are either failing or inconsistent with what parents want for them?
I am aware this post is very long and if you have gotten to this point I must say I really appreciate it, especially if you have read and watched all the links. I’ll never know if you did, really, but God or the universe or whoever or whatever you put your faith in I want to believe will somehow smile upon or reward you for making the attempt. I just hope you won’t forget about all this when you’ve turned your computer off.
I really don’t want to keep thinking that I have so little trust or belief in you. As I went into some detail above, it’s been rather rough and I believe I am truthful and accurate when I say the party I’ve supported for this election cycle has never put you through what we have been subjected to–never. Yes there are stupid people on both sides and dumb things have been said and done in both corners. (Can you say corner when you’re only talking about two?) But in my lifetime it’s fair to say you have not been vilified, verbally harassed or degraded in the way we and our children have–children who have absolutely nothing to do with and know nothing about politics. Maybe not you in particular, but so many in your party or who supported your candidate behaved badly–that’s putting it lightly–and all of you need to take a serious look at all of this and contemplate why putting up these signs on a website comes off as condescending, patronising, superficial and shallow. Many of us equate you with abusers who pat their abused on the head and croon about how it will be alright from here on out; is it really going to be true after watching it happen time and time again?
Some reading this may even believe I or others are going overboard with posts as long as this or that our perspectives are exaggerated. Well, that’s your right, I suppose. But you should also remember that this country is seriously damaged at the moment: a financial meltdown, racism that doesn’t disappear because a black president is elected–and in fact was stoked during the course of his candidacy-and half the population strongly opposed to the radical and fearful changes Obama proposes, seemingly without care for what we say, based on other plans he states. And, after all, you are reaching out to us with your slogans and banners and signs and pictures. Forgive us if we are angry that you think making up is that easy after all that has happened, but if you want us to take your sentiments seriously, you are going to have to go beyond the blogs and show us in a big way that you mean what you say. Actions speak louder than words–and little signs on the Internet.
Read what other people have to say about it here and here.
I’m feeling a bit angry right now, and called my five-year-old in for a hug. I also feel really lucky because as high maintenance as he is, his hugs also have a healing power to them, something I needed in this moment of sheer dumbfoundedness.
Nebraska law since the summer has allowed for parents to drop off their child in a “safe haven,” a hospital, e.g., and there has been no shortage of people willing to take the state up on its offer. Intended, like other laws in other states, to stop the flow of babies left in Dumpsters, people have been leaving children of all ages owing to a “loophole” in the law.
Idiocy is more like it. Who drafted this law and who approved it? I feel like taking names and kicking arse at the moment, because even in my lack of knowing when it comes to lawmaking, I find it hard to believe that not only the law’s drafters, but also those who voted for it, could possibly miss that it was so broad. That it was meant to cover little babies, not a five-year-old boy and not a 17-year-old girl, two of the children deposited by parents who wanted them no more. The last I heard 34 children have been abandoned in Nebraska hospitals. One Florida father was willing to make the drive to take advantage of Nebraska’s “generosity.”
This is one of the hardest things I’ve written because I’m still reeling from the five-year-old boy. When I heard it on the radio I thought of my own boy, face still slightly chubby, missing a bottom tooth, feet not the tiny ones of his infancy but still so sleek, so perfectly formed, so astonishing to look at in the immediacy of them. It’s a word I ordinarily wouldn’t pair with feet–it makes no sense, really. But somehow those feet, whether they are pushing against the bottom of my own, or darting across the floor, or idly laying around while their owner reads a book, none of them aware they are being admired–those feet keep me in awe and I still, even five and a half years into this deal, I still rub them and kiss them. They are so there.
What really makes no sense to me is how someone can give that up. No, that’s not quite true. I don’t understand it, but I am aware of what can lead a person to that state of mind. I don’t know what a person needs to be equipped with–or what they are not equipped with–to push them over the line where they actually do what they contemplated, but I know that when they don’t get some sort of supplemental something, it happens. Five year old boys are separated from their mothers because the mother, who perhaps didn’t have the skills to navigate through society, agencies, triplicate forms, appointments, overburdened social workers, don’t have anyone else who can support or guide them.
I’m not making excuses for parents. I just know, from having a special needs child and enduring the ignorance of people who were clueless as to what he needed but willing to label and throw him to the dust heap of problem children, how difficult it can be. My state is imperfect (they probably all are) but does a fairly decent job of connecting families with resources. And I know a thing or two about research. But what about Nebraska? What on earth is happening there? Is something so broken in the system that when parents are given the chance to slip away they are so desperate they do it? What kind of place do you have to be in–literally and figuratively–to be able to drop a child off and never come back?
That five year old haunts me, and I can’t help but wonder if he or his family have problems they could no longer face together and the state seemed oblivious or uninterested. Not that I think the state is there to solve all people’s problems–I think it’s been discussed enough recently to know it’s absurd to believe that. Still, society ought to have some supports, some type of community outreaches that can enable parents to get information from people who know about the difficulties they have–even if it is “simply” lack of parental experience and coping skills. My own state, owner of the dismal statistic of highest child-abuse rates in the nation, has parenting classes scheduled for day and night, workweek and weekend, with leaflets, flyers, literature of all types displayed in many different places. From what I understand most are free, but there also are ones that award grants to be able to pay for materials. Attendance is both voluntary and court-ordered.
It’s not my intention to pick on Nebraskans. God help us maybe the same would happen here if the law allowed it. I want to say it wouldn’t, but it’s really hard to ever know what can happen in our own homes if breakdown occurred. But it’s there in Nebraska and fixing the disgraceful hole in the law is not the last stop for them. Now they know so many amongst them would–and have–abandon their own children given half the chance, they need to look at why this is. What are the common denominators between these children and what should they be doing to help parents and families position themselves for success.
I’ve been taking some time off, for Thanksgiving and before, so I wrote no posts about the horrific events these past days in India. For an excellent summary of developments as they occurred, click here. As usual, most recent is at top.
But what I wanted to highlight here is a favorite current video of mine, a journalist describing the operation and one of the Bravehearts telling a bit about how events went down.
This is Operation Black Tornado: It’s a top-down approach, flushing out the terrorists floor by floor, starting at the top, working their way down. Away from Nariman House NSG commandos storming the Taj, the strategy deliberate operation. Sanitizing the hotel corridor by corridor, room by room, over three hundred in all. Wait. Observe. And then, shoot.
“There were only three to four terrorists at the time when we entered the hotel. But the firing and the grenades were being dropped from different places. So probably they were going from one place to the other…These people were very familiar with the hotel layout and it appeared that they had carried out observing it before.”
India’s National Security Guards, the men in the line of fire, the Bravehearts who put their lives on the line, fighting for you.
Brought to my attention by an Egyptian who refers to this tool as a “terrorist.” Video sans volume lacks for nothing except a lot of screaming.
“Leader of the world”–bet Obama really enjoyed that part.
OK, so a “three-fold message”:
You are invited to join Islam
You will be bestowed with glory and honor for your conversion and that of your followers
Remove infidel armies from Muslim lands or prepare to meet those who seek death
Well, OK then.
There are actually a number of people who believe Obama already is a Muslim, and the topic has sort of been done to death. Occasionally it putters through my mind as well, although not for the religious factor. In my opinion Barack Obama is a liar–beyond the margins of already-established political practice–and his radical leanings do not inspire confidence in me that he will even make an effort to persuade the ACLU, Freedom from Religion and other groups of the same bent to stop their tyrannical assault on religion in the US, particularly Christianity.
Obama himself doesn’t seem to care all that much for his own alleged Christianity. He sat in the church of a racist American hater, but never heard what the guy was saying? Did he bring a pillow along with him to church every week?
Early in November I managed to catch a bit on the radio that Obama, who left this church to avoid being slammed for associating with Jeremiah Wright, America hater in question, has “for now” ceased his search for a new church during this transition time. (So much for multi-tasking.) Must be really important to him.
Around the same time I read an article in Wide Awake Cafe about the lack of Christmas in the Obama household:
During the unending presidential campaign one item that stood out in plain sight but was never questioned by any American reporter was the fact that the daughters of Barack Obama were not given Christmas gifts by their parents.
Not one gift.
Does that mean there was no tree in the home of Barack and Michelle Obama? After all, one would think that if there were a tree in the home that it would have been incredibly cruel to the children if there were not at least two gifts under the tree on Christmas morn for the daughters.
No stockings at least? No lumps of coal?
What does this portend for our nations’ celebration of Christmas?
Will Christmas still be a National Holiday?
Will the next four years be an era of four seasons but never Christmas?
Although People Magazine let slip the news about the Obama’s cultural lifestyle in their lovingly portrayed puff piece the national news media ignored it.
However, the Brits noticed and ran with it.
In a magazine interview Obama and his wife Michelle revealed that one of their steadfast house rules is not giving Christmas or birthday presents to Malia, 10, and Sasha, seven.
The couple explained that they spend “hundreds” on birthday slumber parties and want to “teach some limits”. Santa Claus is still permitted to deliver seasonal gifts however.
The girls are also given an allowance of just $1 (50p) a week for performing household chores, according to People magazine. Those chores include making their own bed, setting and clearing the dinner table and putting themselves to bed by 8.30pm.
So Santa is still in the mix. Gives us some hope I suppose. But only seasonally. Not at Christmas.
Still unsettling, given the slip of the tongue a nervous Obama had in a George Stephanopoulos interview earlier this summer while speaking about his “Muslim faith.” The ever helpful George immediately corrected him and of course, everyone in the media gave Obama a pass.
So, yes, Virginia there may still be some hope. But not so for many of the adults in this country who could see beyond the slogans of hope and change.
No Christmas, eh. OK. Not my problem. It’s their household. I’ll just file it in a folder close to the one that houses the information on how Obama stripped the US flag off his plane, refused to put his hand on his heart for the pledge, and couldn’t be bothered to go see our brave soldiers on an overseas visit because he had to go work out. It’s a different folder, of course, because the Christmas issue truly is their business, whereas the other discrepancies are offensive instances. It’s weird to me that he claims to be a Christian but doesn’t do Christmas, but hey, it’s his life, right?
How much of this respect does anybody think will be reciprocated? His bright ideas about what he thinks we ought to be teaching our children, threatening to effectively abolish Catholic hospitals if they won’t be forced to act against their religious principles, previous assaults on the First and Second Amendments–the man has demonstrated an intolerance and plain disregard for what Americans care or worry about. Yet the type of people he schmoozes (or announces his aim to) are those such as this raving cleric who talks about any religion other than Islam being a “life of humiliation”; “fabricated” and “null and void”; “religions that were abrogated by the sharia of Mohammad.”
So we have a choice of trying to figure out if he acts this way because he is secretly a Muslim or just an asshole. If he goes for the toaster–say, by about January 15th or so, enough time to make a poignant announcement and allow some collective freaking out–I suppose he will show himself to be both. Of course said freak out will be accompanied by cries of racism and bigotry–everything’s racist and bigoted when you don’t agree with the anointed one–by those who simply don’t or won’t recognise deceit in any form.
We don’t need the whole “Is he Muslim?” distraction. His established predilection for intolerance of attitudes not his own is enough to make us wonder if Christmas will be practically illegal by December 2010, and if he will reach out for the love al-Ashbal offers.
I wonder how long it will take Obama to “revert” to Islam. If he keeps up with his heavy thinking and important soul searching, he’ll have done it by about January 15th, just in time to find the need for an Inaugural copy of the Koran.
Update: Check out Atlas Shrugs and Pamela Geller’s analysis of an “article” called…well, I can’t name the title. It contains words I despise when put together, and I won’t utter or type them. So you’ll have to look yourself. I’ll say, though, that I am still deciding about AGH. I read her book American Muslims and still recall her rejection of the argument that women wear hijab by choice. Is Pamela right that Asma engages in taqiyya?
OT, but I’m thinking about a line from the piece re: supporting other Muslims being the reason the religion has “survived.” I’ve heard many times people insist that charity should only go to other Muslims, and disapproved of my insistence to donate things to a local women’s shelter. (They’ve been my focus for many years.) I disapprove of such hypocrisy. All people deserve aid, not just Muslims.
I saw the following Moonbattery article via Tammy Bruce’s website; it’s the first I’ve heard of this topic and will be looking into it more. If this is true, it is simply a disgrace and Americans ought to register their displeasure in large numbers. If anyone has any related info or links, please feel free to leave in comments section. Thanks.
The U.S. government’s bailout of the American International Group is helping promote Shariah law, a lawsuit filed in federal court in Michigan alleges.
The suit — brought with the support of the Thomas More Law Center, a non-profit law firm that promotes conservative Christian values — claims that making U.S. taxpayers comply with Shariah, the Islamic legal framework based on the Koran, is unconstitutional.
This month, AIG announced that it would offer Shariah-compliant homeowner insurance policies, known as takaful, to U.S. customers through one of its subsidiaries. To be Shariah compliant, companies cannot earn interest and must agree to send a percentage of their revenue to Islamic charitable groups.
“Islamic charitable groups” often finance terrorism.
The lawsuit — by Iraq war veteran Kevin Murray, on behalf of U.S. taxpayers, against Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and the Federal Reserve — claims that by subsidizing AIG, the federal government is conveying “…a message of endorsement and promotion of Shariah-based Islam … and [a] message of disfavor of and hostility toward Christianity and Judaism.”
In September, the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve took a nearly 80-percent stake in AIG when it injected $150 billion to help prop up the troubled company.
But what’s $150 billion of someone else’s money? Apparently it’s not enough to keep AIG afloat; some expect it to sink within the year despite the mountains of our money the government shovels at it. Bailing Out Sharia
Here’s another one to file under Your Tax Dollar at Work:
The U.S. government’s bailout of the American International Group is helping promote Shariah law, a lawsuit filed in federal court in Michigan alleges.
The suit — brought with the support of the Thomas More Law Center, a non-profit law firm that promotes conservative Christian values — claims that making U.S. taxpayers comply with Shariah, the Islamic legal framework based on the Koran, is unconstitutional.
This month, AIG announced that it would offer Shariah-compliant homeowner insurance policies, known as takaful, to U.S. customers through one of its subsidiaries. To be Shariah compliant, companies cannot earn interest and must agree to send a percentage of their revenue to Islamic charitable groups.
“Islamic charitable groups” often finance terrorism.
The lawsuit — by Iraq war veteran Kevin Murray, on behalf of U.S. taxpayers, against Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and the Federal Reserve — claims that by subsidizing AIG, the federal government is conveying “…a message of endorsement and promotion of Shariah-based Islam … and [a] message of disfavor of and hostility toward Christianity and Judaism.”
In September, the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve took a nearly 80-percent stake in AIG when it injected $150 billion to help prop up the troubled company.
But what’s $150 billion of someone else’s money? Apparently it’s not enough to keep AIG afloat; some expect it to sink within the year despite the mountains of our money the government shovels at it.
See the original article here and Tammy’s site here.
I still never cease to be amased at the great lengths, the winding and circuitous explanations, the idiosyncrasies and contradictions people try to wind their way around in condemning Israeli defense while propping up Gazan (and other) terroristic rage.
Just from curiosity, I wonder what it would take for Arabs and Muslims in large scale to admit that Israel was justified in military action against Gaza? That pounding Israeli civilian facilities, such as apartment buildings, hospitals and synagogues is not the honorable action so many make it out to be (while condemning the same of Israel when there are Hamas weapons stored in such facilities). I am sometimes torn between throwing up my hands in disgust and continuing the debate when I see forum “discussions” and when I know there is no way we can ever, ever allow Israel to be left to their own devices.
Is “amasement” the right word to use? It just doesn’t seem strong enough for the disgust and contempt I feel when people who watch Hamas attack, say, apartment buildings, demonstrate when an Israeli bomb falls on a Palestinian home. One could tell these people until one was blue in the face that the Palis were warned by the Israelis hours ahead of time, that weapons were being stored in that home–one could talk until Armageddon and still the justification just gets more intense until it finally ends with accusations about how one-sided and Islamophobic one is. Why do these people have nothing to say about how Hamas hides weaponry behind women and children, in schools, even ambulances? Where is the rage over that? Where is the anger over children slaughtered because they were deliberately placed in harm’s way by the government that claims to represent them?
Or: [As] Danny Gillerman, outgoing Ambassador to the United Nations [said, "]When Christians kill Muslims, it’s the Crusades. When Jews kill Muslims it’s murder, and when Muslims kill Muslims, it’s like talking about the weather. Nobody really cares about it[.]“
The killing by Taliban of 14 Afghan children is yet the latest in a a years-long series of travesties committed against Muslims that few seem to take notice of. A commenter at Jihad Watch had it right when remarking, “[N]o one cares about murdered children unless Israel or the USA can be blamed.” After all there are political connections to be made, strategic manueuvers to pull off and newspapers to be sold.
And now, with the current Israeli aerial assault on Hamas, it naturally is a “Holocaust.”
I’ve been telling my son’s school for years this stuff was no good. All sukkar, no fiber. But some are deluded into thinking it’s actually the right drink for a healthy body, especially if it’s 100%. What bunch of nuts!
Thanks for stopping by my blog. if you like what you see, please pass on the link. If you’ve a link you think I might appreciate, please drop it to me. I am a big comment reader–in my own blog as well as in others, and generally try to approve all comments to my entries even if I don’t agree with them. However, the presence of a comment here does not indicate agreement with it. Advertisements and spam are deleted.
I like to read, listen to music, play around with my iPhoto and I’m into swordfighting. Currently I’m studying language and literacy learning in early childhood and also have an interest in special ed.
In a perfect world Nutella would be considered necessary for a healthy diet, flowers would bloom all year, and there’d be no such thing as long distance phone bills.
