The tyranny of political correctness

From Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III: "In a land of freedom we are held hostage by the tyranny of political correctness."

Did you realize that?

From Maetenloch at Ace of Spades: "there are more people in Britain today working in Indian restaurants than in the coal, steel, and railroad industries combined."

If only

"When my hair is snowy white, time's gonna prove I'm right.

I put a golden band on the right left hand this time."

And there is this letter from Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to George Jones: (Click on it to enlarge)

found here

Convenient excuses

William Saletan makes the case (at Slate) that the Tsaraevs were a family of petty criminals in general and Tamerlan already a violent thug. Then Islam gave him a purpose and a justification for indulging in all his dark impulses.

Maetenloch writes at Ace of Spades that

Tamerlan had a propensity to beat up anyone who upset him and the rest of his siblings were apparently pot dealers as well.

Islam also gave Tamarlan and the rest of the family convenient excuses for their failings. And a reason to strike out against the very country that had given him refugee status and his family over $100,000 in welfare benefits.

Paradise is always just one purge away

Maetenloch writes at Ace of Spades that

On the left paradise is somehow always just one more purge away.

According to Lee Siegel, writing in The Daily Beast, America would be better off if the southern states would secede.

When does He ever end?

Ann Voskamp reminds us that

All fear is but the notion that God’s love ends.

When does He ever end?

The only way to ever find the Comforter is outside of your comfort zones — no wonder being safe leaves you restless.

The next great depression has started...in Europe

Michael Snyder writes that

The next Great Depression is already happening - it just hasn't reached the United States yet.

In fact, both Greece and Spain already have levels of unemployment that are greater than anything the U.S. experienced during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The U.S. government is savagely destroying the future that our children and our grandchildren were supposed to have by stealing more than 100 million dollars from them every single hour of every single day.

Snyder details twenty signs that the next great depression has already started in Europe.

Don't let them die in vain

General Ham: "I was never ordered to engage and fight."

Representative Chaffetz: "That is very different than what the President of the United States has said."

found here

Let them eat cake!

"Are we just a group of narcissists who are mostly interested in elevating our own profile? We (the national press corps) are Versailles; let the rest of them eat cake!"

found here

This therapeutic and dishonest age

Victor Davis Hanson writes about immigration and gun violence here.

We know this much about this therapeutic and dishonest age: When the next horrific act occurs, one of two things will follow. Either we will rush to pass laws that will make us feel good but do nothing to address the existential crisis. Or we will be silent about enacting reforms of our existing flawed laws that might have prevented the horror, but would make us feel far too uncomfortable.

Our wide-open but prudish society

Victor Davis Hanson writes about our "wide-open but prudish society" that practices "schizophrenic morality." "Not since the late-19th-century juxtaposition of the Wild West with the Victorian East has popular morality been so unbridled and yet so uptight."

Any idea what explains the contradictions? Hanson doesn't.

Rights are inherent to freedom

Who is the final arbiter of what rights you should have? T.L. Davis writes

This is why one cannot look to the Supreme Court, or any court to determine what rights a person has. No matter how clearly it is said, how eloquently it is put, they will find what they want to find and discard what does not serve their purpose of the day.

The only true arbiter of one's rights is oneself. Though many feel the sting of oppression, they will not act. Only those who understand that rights are inherent to freedom and paid for in blood will ever be willing to shed blood for them. It is not a group or an organization that is capable of fighting for your rights, it is yourself, or no one.

Do you agree?

Who invited Jimmy Carter?

An exclamation, not an explanation

"What difference does it make?" That is what Hillary Clinton has given us in

response to a question about the State Department’s account of the attack on the Benghazi consulate where Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were murdered on Sept. 11, 2012.

Michael Barone writes that in addition,

as the Interim Report goes on to explain, the accounts given by the Obama administration at the time were misleading — deliberately so.

It noted that State immediately reported the attack to the White House Situation Room and two hours later noted an al-Qaida affiliate’s claim of responsibility. There was no mention of a spontaneous protest of an anti-Muslim video.

Yet Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and press secretary Jay Carney spoke repeatedly for days later of a video and a protest. Clinton assured one victim’s family member that the video-maker was being prosecuted.

In the meantime, a CIA draft of talking points for the House intelligence committee was edited at the behest of State Department officials. Omitted were references to previous Benghazi attacks, the al-Qaida affiliate in Benghazi and intelligence estimates of threats in Libya. Also struck, the Interim Report says, were “any and all suggestions that the State Department had been previously warned of threats in the region.”

“This process to alter the talking points,” concludes the Interim Report, “can only be construed as a deliberate effort to mislead the American people.

Benghazi threatened to undermine a central element of Obama’s appeal, that his presidency would reduce the threat of Islamist terrorism. He managed to obfuscate that during the rest of the campaign. But maybe not forever.

Maybe not.

What do you see?

I and other bloggers have called for American Muslims to stand up against Islamic supremacists. I don't see much of that happening, which is probably due to fear.

But, what about Jews and Christians? Shouldn't there be something about the ways Jews and Christians conduct themselves so that when you meet and talk with one you very quickly become aware that the Spirit of God is working in their lives?

Shouldn't there be kindness, warmth, humility and love that almost immediately becomes apparent?

Is that what you see?

Debate or Denunciation?

Debate, or denunciation? Which do you prefer? Thomas Sowell thinks the trend is in the direction of the latter. Do you check out the facts on both sides of an issue? Or, have you been indoctrinated by your educational institution to believe that the facts are all on one side? Sowell writes,

A moral monopoly is the antithesis of a marketplace of ideas. One sign of this sense of moral monopoly among the left intelligentsia is that the institutions most under their control — the schools, colleges and universities — have far less freedom of speech than the rest of American society.

While advocacy of homosexuality, for example, is common on college campuses, and listening to this advocacy is often obligatory during freshman orientation, criticism of homosexuality is called “hate speech” that is subject to punishment.

While spokesmen for various racial or ethnic groups are free to vehemently denounce whites as a group for their past or present sins, real or otherwise, any white student who similarly denounces the sins or shortcomings of non-white groups can be virtually guaranteed to be punished, if not expelled.

Protect the whistle blowers!

William Teach links to a Fox News story that reports that State Department and C.I.A. employees are hiring attorneys to protect themselves against threats from the Obama administration. These employees know things about Benghazi, and may be called to testify before Congress.

Backfiring

Dave Blount links to a large study that revealed that if you accuse a child of being racist because that child is not a member of a "victim" group, that child will develop racist feelings toward the victim group!

‘Pupils are being accused of things they haven’t thought or done. Multiculturalism attempts to manipulate children’s thoughts, beliefs and emotions, it amounts to indoctrination, and it doesn’t work. It is counter-productive.

‘This study shows that when people try to manipulate children’s minds, it bounces back on them.’

Get big or go home?

John Hawkins is a blogger whose style of writing is very clear. Stacy McCain linked to a piece Hawkins wrote in July of 2011. In it Hawkins pointed out that Obama's election as President in 2008 should have resulted in great growth in the conservative blogosphere, but it did not. Hawkins gives five persuasive reasons why it did not.

Hawkins ends his analysis with some advice for little bloggers like myself:

Get big or go home.

Find a way to dramatically increase the size of your blog, expand into multiple websites that together are big, hook up with someone who’s already big, or accept that there isn’t much of a future in a small, niche market for you. Maybe that sounds a little grim, but unless something changes, independent conservative bloggers who haven’t already made it big don’t have a bright future.

Yes, it is a little grim. Get big or go home? I am already home, John. From my home is where I write this determined little blog!

Portal or Destination?

Stacy McCain wrote a post the other day that I have been thinking about. Are we bloggers being collaborative? Why do people come to our blogs? Is it to find great truth that only can be found here? Or is it because the readers know we will direct them somewhere else where somebody very smart is sharing wisdom? McCain uses the words portal and destination to describe the two different kinds of blogs. A portal is a blog that collaborates, generously linking to other blogs. A destination blog is one where the reader comes to your blog strictly to see what you have to say. I want my blog to be both, but primarily one that directs readers to interesting ideas found elsewhere in the blogosphere. Before you know it, we've got a community or network of independent thinkers blogging away.

However, Stacy issues a warning:

This network/community concept seems to have been lost by (or, more likely, was never known to) newer arrivals in the ‘sphere. The idea that each of us is contributing to a common project is not just some kind of “Stone Soup” idealism, but is in fact the only way to build any genuinely meaningful alternative to that pathetic exercise in groupthink we call the Mainstream Media. Bloggers who don’t help build the alternative can complain about the MSM “borg” all they want; they aren’t really making a difference. There are two ways in which bloggers actually help sabotage the blogosphere:

Turn your blog into a series of lectures. “Here, let me tell you How to Save the World, because you pitiful mortals are obviously in need of my Superior Wisdom.” It’s one thing to go off on the occasional rant, but if that’s all your blog is about — sermons and lectures, as if you are the Oracle to whom readers turn in need of your delphic prophecies — then you’re doing the wrong thing. No one wants to read that crap.

Never link another blogger. It’s weird that some bloggers would rather link a story in the New York Times or the Washington Post than to link a fellow blogger. Why this is, I don’t know. Sometimes it seems like everybody has the same idea: Grab an MSM headline off Drudge, link it, include a brief blockquote and add some political snark. Not only does this effectively surrender content control to Drudge — so that bloggers are merely replicating the headline selection there — but nobody’s snark ever goes beyond their own readership, because no blogger ever quotes another blogger.

Ace of Spades once did a mini-rant — which I can’t find now — about whether your site is a portal or a destination. That is to say, is the reader coming to your site to find links to interesting material (portal) or strictly to read what you have to say (destination)?

The problem is that if every blogger starts thinking of his own site as a destination, then the site’s value as a portal — directing readers to interesting material elsewhere — is necessarily diminished or eliminated. And if this destination mentality takes hold at all the larger sites, then there will be few opportunities for new bloggers to join the community, and fewer incentives for smaller bloggers to participate in the conversation, because nobody with any significant readership will ever link them. What will eventually happen, in such a scenario, is that the independent blogosphere will wither and die from neglect, and be replaced by a corporate simulacrum.

A nose to smell, eyes to see

found here

Tebow no longer a Jet?

Has Tim Tebow made his last headline as a New York Jet? The New York Post reported that he has been let go. This column analyzes Tebow's history in New York. He still has a legion of fans here in Colorado.

Cravings

Yesterday I saw a woman driving one of those electric carts at the supermarket. Her bottom was maybe five times as wide as the seat she was sitting on, which is why she needed the cart. I am not exaggerating.

This post tells us that gluttony is not merely an addiction to food.

At its simplest, gluttony is the soul’s addiction to excess. It occurs when taste overrules hunger, when want outweighs need. And in America, where upsizing has always been part of the American dream, it’s often difficult to distinguish what is hard-earned achievement and what is indulgent excess. In this sense, even the most athletic and toned among us can be gluttons. Any of us can be.

So, what is the answer? Do we need to stifle our gluttonous cravings?

If only we would not stifle our gluttonous cravings, but turn them in the right direction. If only we would feast on an infinite God who offers fullness of life, rather than these lesser tables with the far milder flavors of money, sex, food and power.

Hat tip: A Holy Experience

Tiger found here

Islamists have many ways to kill

The Right Scoop links to this post:

The 2011 Somali famine killed an estimated 260,000 people, half of them age 5 and under, according to a new report to be published this week that more than doubles previous death toll estimates, officials told The Associated Press.

The aid community believes that tens of thousands of people died needlessly because the international community was slow to respond to early signs of approaching hunger in East Africa in late 2010 and early 2011.

The toll was also exacerbated by extremist militants from al-Shabab who banned food aid deliveries to the areas of south-central Somalia that they controlled.

Who is al-Shabab? Wikipedia says,

the Somalia-based cell of the militant Islamist group al-Qaeda, formally recognized in 2012.[3] As of 2012, the outfit controls large swathes of the southern parts of the country,[4] where it is said to have imposed its own strict form of Sharia law.

Introvert or extrovert?

Are you an introvert or an extrovert? Take a quiz here to find out.

Humor my sons would enjoy

Because I have friends in the blogosphere, I found this video.

Probably to make us safer

Stacy McCain reports that the U.S. Army plans to slash 72,000 soldiers from its force by fiscal 2017.

To slash its end strength by 72,000 soldiers, the Army will be forced to discharge up to 29,000 personnel involuntarily, Thomas Lamont, assistant secretary for manpower and reserve affairs, told the Senate Armed Services Personnel Subcommittee Wednesday. Between 23,000 and 24,000 enlisted personnel would be asked to leave involuntarily, and between 4,000 and 5,000 officers would be forced out, reported CQ Today.

Syria: a prediction

Syria. What is likely to happen there? Stacy McCain digests a long article in the New York Times, then gives us his prediction:

The Assad regime — backed by the Shi’ite fanatics in Iran — is likely to give way to a similarly fanatical regime dominated by Sunni extremists aligned with al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood.

"Still at large"

Catherine Herridge is reporting for Fox News that components from toy cars were used to trigger the bomb explosions in Boston.

Fox News has learned that the bulletin, sent Monday night to update local, state and federal law enforcement, is based on new forensic analysis of the bombs and reads in part, “each device likely incorporated an electric fusing system using components from remote controlled toy cars, such as a transmitter and receiver pair operating at 2.4 GigaHertz, and an electric speed controller used as a switch mechanism and sub-c rechargeable battery packs as power source."

House Homeland Security Committee Mike McCaul, who has been briefed on the bombing investigation, told Fox News the new information is further confirmation the two bombs were not made by amateurs.

“This transmitter that was used out of a toy car, that's a very sophisticated pressure cooker bomb that you don't see every day," McCaul said. "My judgment is they had training performed by either an individual or individuals who are still at large.”

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/04/24/toy-car-parts-likely-used-to-detonate-marathon-bombs-investigators-conclude/#ixzz2RsBsbH00

If you see one, say something!

One of my favorite satirical bloggers, Manhatten Infidel, has had gall bladder surgery, and he is recovering at home. He blogs about the experience, trying to figure out what caused his gall bladder to go bad. He looks at several possible causes, then finally arrives at a conclusion:

Finally we must come to perhaps the real reason for my gallbladder to go bad: America’s wild west gun culture. Since it has been been proven that strict gun laws prevent gun violence (as in Barack Obama’s home town of Chicago) the lack of any gall bladder control laws in America gave my gallbladder encouragement to go rogue. We need tough gallbladder laws in the United States!

Ban assault gallbladders!

I call upon all our elected congressmen and senators to stop the scourge of gallbladder violence!

It’s for the children!

And there you have it. Possible reasons my gallbladder went bad.

So I am at home now, resting up. I hope to be back in action full time on my blog by the beginning of next week.

And remember, if you see a gallbladder, say something. Don’t assume it was left behind by accident.

Judge Pirro speaks for me

Judge Jeannine Pirro in the smackdown of all smackdowns!

Really? America took your kids away from you? You came to steal from us and live off welfare while you drive your Mercedes Benz and your kids travel back and forth to Chechnya while unemployed. Now Obama steps in to protect your son even more. We should not be required to breathe the same air as you. We should not have to suffer the indignity of your presence.

Decoy habits

Do you have decoy habits?

Gretchen Rubin writes

that

Decoy habits are harmful, I think, because they allow us to pretend to have certain aims or values that we don’t really have. But by voicing the decoy, by saying, “I plan to start exercising,” he avoided acknowledging his true intentions.

A decoy habit is a habit that a person claims to want to adopt—but really doesn’t intend to do. Often, decoy habits reflect other people’s values or priorities.

The Poor in Spirit

Rick comments at Fungle Jungle,

My father-in-law passed away this Jan. And his wife misses him so much. Weeps daily - sometimes in private, sometime she can't help it when with us and she apologizes for it. All around her see this and suffer a little with her. We try to comfort her but there is also something else at work. In her loss it is difficult to not notice the great love that was there (that remains). We could see it before when they were together but not like this. There is something beautiful in seeing it. Being a witness to it. Perhaps this is the gift of tears. To know there is great love here between these two people. What a great love this was! And we see it in her pain and SHE was blessed to know such love. And WE are blessed to be able to see this invisible thing and know it is real. That love is real. That it may be real. We can't bring him back, but there is much that can be done: we can KNOW.

Required: every residence to be equipped with assault-style weapon

The town of Craig, Colorado is considering a proposal presented to it by a local citizen. The plan would require all residents of the town to have at least one sporting rifle equipped to hold a high-capacity magazine.

Craig is in the northwest corner of Colorado, not far from Vernal, Utah. It depends on hunting for much of its livelihood.

I went there once to be a spectator at a unique event. Thousands of people watched in silence as sheep dogs guided sheep down a hill through a series of gates. The crowd was silent because the dogs needed to heed the call or whistle of their human master, who stood near the base of the hill at the end of the last gate. It was an awesome experience.

Speak up!

Avik Roy writes,

If our response to terrorism is to place all Muslim immigrants under suspicion, then, in at least one way, the terrorists have won.

He is right, but let us hear much more from Americanized Muslims in the fight against Islamic supremacists!

Congress trying to exempt itself from Obamacare!

Did you know that Congress is trying to exempt itself from Obamacare? National Review has a petition demanding that those who voted for it not be granted an exemption.

The Fraud Is On

Did you know that

Unlike you, federal government officials are immune from charges of fraud. The executive branch, vested with all of the government’s prosecutorial authority and discretion, is not going to investigate its own operatives for carrying out its own mendacious policies.

Andrew McCarthy writes at The Corner

Steered by its Gitmo Bar veterans and Lawyer Left compass, the Obama administration is executing a massive national-security fraud: the farce that the jihad against America can be judicialized, that civilian-court processes are a better answer to enemy warfare than are combat protocols.

No more looking away

Kathyrn Jean Lopez thinks that abortion clinics should be at least as interesting to regulators as dogs or restaurants.

And, my goodness, we can at least start by agreeing that moving, living, breathing babies ought not be killed as a matter of routine, under the guise of women’s rights.

The Kingdom Way

Cliff Stewart is back blogging at Kingdom Triangle Network News. He took time out to write a book entitled The Kingdom Way, which I recommend. Read more about his book here.

Horowitz plays Schubert

I love the close up on his hands.

found here

Just chillin'

found here

On tyranny

Bob Belvedere at Camp of the Saints has apparently coined a term I have not seen elsewhere: Planned Non-Parenthood. Bob also links to a blog I had not heard of: The Necropolitan Sentinel, where I learned that,

Liberty means humans have the right to order pizza, not take a slice of another's order while self-righteously citing how lacking in compassion it is to let another starve.

At the Necropolitan Sentinel I also learned that Iraq this week carried out its first election without U.S. troops. Did you see that story anywhere in the U.S. media?

Are you following the story of West Virginia teenager Jared Marcum, who wore an NRA shirt to school and was suspended and arrested? Apparently his suspension has ended. He is back in school wearing the same shirt. Fox News reports that

Other students across Logan County wore similar shirts, which display the NRA logo and a hunting rifle, to school in a show of support for 14-year-old Jared Marcum, said his lawyer Ben White.

Back to Bob Belvedere. He writes a rousing post urging us to resist tyranny.

In The American Republic, all power is held by it’s citizens. They are the Sovereignty. All power rests with them collectively and is under their control. ‘[I]n Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity’, the Sovereign People agreed to cede certain powers to a central, national government. These they enumerated in The Constitution Of The United States Of America. Those powers not granted to the national government, the Sovereign People reserved to themselves or to the governments of the Several States, but they always retained ultimate control over all the powers of the earth.

Those who are elected or are appointed to offices in the national government act as agents of the Sovereign People and agree, when they assume their positions in said government, to preserve, protect, and defend The Constitution Of The United States Of America — this they swear before God.

When these officials promulgate laws, regulations, and policies that are repugnant to The Constitution, the Sovereign People have a duty to see that such actions are reversed. The normal means for this is through their elected representatives and/or through the Federal Court System.

When such avenues of redress are not available or made too difficult to obtain, the Sovereign People have a right and a duty to:

to alter [the government] or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Show us what you've got!

"It's about covering up the ties to terror in our own country." So says Glenn Beck, who promotes, promotes, and promotes The Blaze. "If it's true, it will be printed," says Glenn.

Okay, Glenn. We are waiting.

Glenn says we will see impeachment of the President and jail for Napolitano. Okay, Glenn. Show us what you've got.

Sometimes we fail to realize the gifts God has given us

On April 16, 2013 Stephen Hawking spoke at Cal Tech. He said,

many people still seek a divine solution to counter the theories of curious physicists, and at one point, he quipped, “What was God doing before the divine creation? Was he preparing hell for people who asked such questions?”

Hawking says that physicists now believe that the age of the universe is about 13.8 billion years.

Hawking believes the beginning of the universe was at the moment of singularity. He also likes the M-theory.

M-theory posits that multiple universes are created out of nothing, Hawking explained, with many possible histories and many possible states of existence. In only a few of these states would life be possible, and in fewer still could something like humanity exist.

I don't believe God is preparing Hell for people who ask questions about the origin of the universe. Sometimes we fail to realize gifts God has given us. Stephen Hawking's gift from God is his brilliant mind.

Instead of praising God for the gift of his mind, Hawking ridicules God.

Hat tip The Atheist conservative

Why are Israelis happy?

Caroline Glick writes,

Happiness and success are about what you accomplish.

She goes on to write at Town Hall about why Israelis are among the happiest people in the world. They average three children per family, and they have embraced the free market. Most importantly, they intend to remain secure, and not rely on peace processes that sell them down the river.

Hat tip The Atheist Conservative

Will America win this war?

The Atheist Conservative links to an article by Bruce Thornton in which Thornton lists some of the things America has done for Muslims:

The U.S. armed the Afghans and helped them drive out the Soviets, rescued Kuwait and Saudi Arabia from the psychopathic sadist Saddam Hussein, bombed Christian Serbs to rescue Muslim Kosovars and Bosnians, liberated Shiite Iraqis from Hussein, liberated Afghans from the brutal Taliban, poured billions of dollars of aid to terrorist Palestinian regimes, used our jets to help the Muslims in Libya free themselves from the psychotic Gaddafi, and supported in word and coin the jihadist, America-hating, anti-Semitic Muslim Brothers in Egypt so that Muslims can enjoy “freedom and democracy.” And that’s not all.

We have incessantly protested our respect for the wonderful Islamic faith, censored our official communications and training programs to remove any references to jihadism or the Islamic theology that justifies holy war, euphemized jihadist attacks like the Fort Hood murders as “workplace violence,” invited imams to pray in the White House, filled our schools with curricula praising Islam and its contributions to civilization, scolded and prosecuted writers or cartoonists who exercise their First Amendment right to criticize Islam, abandoned “profiling” as a technique for identifying possible terrorists trying to board a plane or enter the country, hired as advisors to the FBI, the Pentagon, and the CIA Muslim apologists who recycle blatant lies and distortions – we have done all this liberating of Muslims and flattering of them and their faith, and they still don’t like us, and they still want to kill us.

The Atheist Conservative writes,

America should not have done any of those things. (With the exception of destroying Saddam Hussein; a worthwhile achievement not because Kuwait and Saudi Arabia were “rescued” from him, but because the destruction of a monstrous tyrant is not a thing to be regretted.)

Islam is the self-declared enemy of the West, of America and what America stands for: liberty, tolerance, equality before the law.

Until Islam is treated as the enemy and not as a victim needing rescue and largesse, it will continue to kill and maim Americans, disrupt their lives, deprive them of their nearest and dearest, and constitute an ever intensifying menace.

But will America stop playing Lady Bountiful and St. George to its mortal enemy, and act like the great power it is? Will the present Islam-loving administration be got rid of and sane pro-American leadership take over? Will America win this war?

Ending in disaster

The Atheist Conservative writes about three women: Katherine Russell, the widow of Boston bomb suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Anne Smedinghoff, a State Department aide to John Kerry who lost her life this week in Afghanistan when a suicidal Islamic terrorist blew her up, and Stanley Ann Dunham, mother of Barack Obama.

Should we have a President about whom we say "maybe?"

Ben Stein gives his observations about the Bush library event, then turns on the television and learns of events in Syria.

I came inside and watched the news. Chemical weapons in Syria. But the rebels are worse than Assad. He’s a killer and a butcher, but not totally out of control like the fanatical Islamists. What a nightmare Arab Spring has become. IT WAS SO AMAZINGLY EASY TO SEE IT COMING. Who did we think would replace Mubarak? Mohammed Thomas Jefferson and Ahmed James Madison? And the media was praising the rebels as if they were John Adams and Tom Paine. THE REBELS SAID THEY WANTED TO KILL ISRAEL AND AMERICA! What did we think they would be like in office?

Have we ever had a more pusillanimous foreign policy? Have we ever shown ourselves to be weaker?

When in history did weakness win the day? What kind of dream world does Mr. Obama live in?

“Nothing matters now but Obama’s subconscious,” said Phil DeMuth in 2008. What is the subconscious of a man abandoned by both father and mother? Actually, maybe that was a good thing given who they were. And this country has turned itself inside out for Mr. Obama for his whole life. Maybe he likes America. But should we have a President about whom we say “maybe”?

Freedom and George W. Bush

President Bush said at the opening of his huge new library at S.M.U. this week that he hopes the United States will expand the reach of freedom. How about expanding it right here in our own country?

William Murchison writes in The American Spectator that

The Man Who Wasn’t Clinton in 2000 is for quite a few now The Man Who Isn’t Obama: maybe not the finest figure of a president you could ever imagine and maybe not the worst either. Maybe far from the worst.

What might have deterred the Tsarnaevs?

Ross Kaminsky writes today in The American Spectator about the murders in Boston, what effect they might have on policy debates, and what might have deterred them from their murderous spree.

And then there’s cultural decline. Judging from Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s Twitter page, he was — outside of his willingness to kill for some combination of his religion and his brother — what seems to pass in 2013 for an ordinary urban teenager. Which is to say that his biggest troubles were finding the TV remote control and trying to figure out how to sound clever to online “friends.”

[There were, in retrospect, some possible clues as to Tsarnaev’s true potential for violence sprinkled in among hundreds of mind-numbingly banal “tweets.” An example from February 1 of this year: “Do I look like that much of a softy I got these frail ass kids tryin to come at my neck, little do these dogs know they’re barking at a lion.” And then there’s this: “when we consider prophet Muhammad (s.a.a.w) as our role model that’s when we achieve true success & a path to Jannah.” (Jannah is the Muslim conception of paradise in which males — though emphasis among Islamic radicals is on martyrs — will receive 72 virgins.)]

But the idea that the Boston bombings are a major wakeup call for cultural decline ignores the depressingly common claxons of the coarsening of American society (which may itself be overstated, as most generations probably have the same complaint: “Kids these days…” Rap music denigrates women and policemen while glorifying violent crime. Magazines at every supermarket checkout stand wonder breathlessly whether one of the Kardashian sisters got paid to get fat. Schools emphasize self-esteem and political correctness over excellence and playing cops-and-robbers. In other words, for at least a generation, little has changed except for the names of the famous-for-being-famous. If last week’s events woke you up to cultural decline, you were in a deep slumber indeed.

THERE IS ONE AREA, however, where the issues raised are not grossly overstated: The one truly new and interesting debate to come out of the terrorist attack at the Boston marathon surrounds the imposition of what, especially in Watertown, must be called martial law. Eyewitness accounts and photographs show the police forcing citizens out of homes, hands raised, at gunpoint.

This is not just about “I’m not afraid” chest-thumping or the overused maxim “if we act this way, then the terrorists have won.” Lockdowns and martial law have real consequences ranging from economic impact to changing the perceived, and perhaps the real, relationship between citizens and government.

While I disagree with those who say that the Boston events represent the coming imposition of martial law across the country anytime there is an even vaguely similar situation, the images of empty Boston streets and SWAT teams in battle gear in Watertown pose serious questions. Among them: Would a better-armed citizenry have been much less afraid, and would knowledge of a better-armed citizenry have deterred the Islamists from any of their heinous, murderous actions?

Read the whole essay here

A war of two religions: Islam versus Freedom

Gerard Vanderleun wrote in 2003 an absolutely brilliant essay on the war we are in. He reprises it today. Here are a few excerpts. The essay is divided into seven sections. The first is Calling the War By the Right Name.

Foggy thinking, attractive in politics, means defeat in war. War requires "a mind of winter;" a mind that is precise, cold, and unrelenting. War requires that we call things what they are and cease to skirt issues that make us, "uncomfortable." Vague names create fluffy policies, hamstrung strategies, and wishful thinking. This is where we are drifting.

To say we are "involved" in a "war on terror" extends our infatuation with euphemism and obfuscation into dangerous territory. The phrase lulls us into a state where all dangers seem unclear and distant. The "war on terror" joins an expanding list of "wars on..." such as drugs, poverty, or profuse paperwork in government. The "war on terror" implies a "process" rather than a campaign; an indeterminate series of unresolved encounters rather than decisive actions that lead to an end, to peace.

Our enemies commitment to our destruction is adamantine. It is no accident that many of their spiritual leaders speaking from the centers of their faith call for the death of the "Crusaders." Obfuscation has no place in their plans except as if creates confusion and doubt among us. Our enemies' goals are the same goals they have held for more than 500 years. They are the goals announced several times a week in tens of thousands of mosques throughout the world. For our enemies, the wars of the Crusades and the wars surrounding the rise and fall of the Ottoman Empire were merely prologues to this war.

Vanderleun calls it The First Terrorist War. He prefers that to The War On Terror, for the reasons outlined above. Why not call it The War Against Islamic Supremacism?

His second section is Not Process But Victory Restores Freedom.

His third section is Playing for Time is Playing to Lose.

Our enemies (many of whom have studied and lived or now live among us) know us better than we are prepared to know either them or ourselves.

They depend upon us being lulled back into the state of slumber we enjoyed on September 10th. And we grant their wishes.

If they are as wise as they are ruthless, our enemies will continue with their strategies of constant attrition and small, distant attacks. They will, for the present, avoid large shocks to the nation in hopes that the ambitions of our political factions and the intellectual lassitude of our major media will result in the defeat of the present administration in the coming elections.[Check... ] The goal of this strategy is the expectation of a more somnambulant administration less invested in war and more inclined towards the failed policies of appeasement, negotiation and payoff. [... and double check.]

In effect we shall find ourselves, as we have so often in the past under liberal guidance, trying to buy out way out of the "war on terror." Our error will be believing that we are dealing with reasonable extortionists rather than blood enemies. And the measure of our leaders’ cowardice will be how deeply they promote this belief and the false hope it engenders.

Vanderleun's fourth section is entitled The Goal of Radical Islam is Our Destruction

Section Five is The War of Two Religions.

Through the violent attacks of a Radical Islam, two religions have been brought into conflict. The first is that of Islam, a faith that at its core requires absolute submission from its adherents, and looks towards the subjugation of the world as its ultimate apotheosis. As the youngest of the monotheistic religions, Islam is at a point in its development that Christianity passed through centuries ago. And it is not with Christianity that Islam is currently at war. Islam is saving that for the mopping up phase of its current campaign. The religion that Islam has engaged is a much younger one, the religion of Freedom.

Following a second attack at a level equal to or exceeding September 11, any political opposition to pursuing our enemies with all means at our disposal will be swept off the table. The First Terrorist War will begin in earnest and it will not be a series of small wars with long lead times and a careful consultation of allies. The war will become, virtually overnight, a global war of violent preemption and merciless attack towards the spiritual and geographic centers of our enemy. Arguments revolving around the true meaning of ‘imminent’ will be seen as they are -- so much factional prattle. Due to the nature of the enemy, the First Terrorist War will be fought here and there and everywhere. It does not matter when or where the second serious strike on the American homeland takes place, it only matters that on the day after this country will be at war far beyond the current level of conflict.

Section six is The Unspoken Role of the Ballistic Missile Submarines

Section seven is Avoiding the Islamic War by Winning the Terrorist War

Still, as surely as the next attack will come, so will the unity that it creates in its wake and at that point the full power of Freedom’s Arsenal will at last be used to defend it. This is the social and political conundrum that confronts us in the First Terrorist War. And this is why the war must be divorced from ‘process’ and the goal of victory be cut into the stone of the American soul.

Read Gerard's whole essay here

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found here:

Israelis shoot down drone from Lebanon

An Israeli jet like this one shot down a drone coming from Lebanon today. Read the story here:

The older Tsarnaev had an intimate knowledge of clandestine Islamist leaders

"Jihad mom and jihad aunt." "Political correctness has always been the handmaiden of terrorism." You can always count on Michelle Malkin to tell it like it is.

Denying the Islamic motive for terror

Daniel Greenfield writes today,

Federal law enforcement was repeatedly warned by the Russians that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was dangerous, but operating under the influence of a political culture that refused to see Islam as a motive for terrorism, it failed to connect the dots between Chechen violence in Russia and potential terrorism in the United States, and because it could not see Islam as a motive, as a causal factor rather than a casual factor, it could find no reason why Tamerlan was a threat not just to Russia, but also to the United States.

Crime is personal. War is impersonal. The murderer has personal motives for his actions, but the motives of the soldier are irrelevant. In war, it is the organization that matters more than the individual. Wasting time predicting the movements of individual soldiers instead of armies is not productive. Attempting to understand terrorists as individuals, rather than members of a mass movement is equally a waste of time.

Islamic terrorism is a collective motive. There is limited variation in the tactics and the thinking of terrorists. Whatever they may have been before they fully committed themselves to the war against civilization is an incidental matter. And the only piece of individual identity that matters is still the collective one of their Islamic background. That is still the greatest predictive factor of terrorism.

The Islamic terrorist abandons his individuality and takes on an identity that asks him to love death more than life. His motives are no longer personal, but collective. He is a soldier in the Islamic war against civilization. His marching orders may come from Jihadi videos and magazines, but they provide him with training and an esprit de corps sufficient to the purposes of his campaign of terror. To strive to understand him as a father or a son, as a boxer or a doctor, is a waste of time. These biographical footnotes no longer represent him. They are the things he has discarded to become a messenger of death in obedience to a faith that values death more than life.

Focus!

Are you able to focus? Or, do you get distracted? Ann Voskamp writes about the art of focusing:

The virus of distraction is cured by the art of subtraction.

Yeah — that. It’s the modern day equivalency of Charles Dickens‘ words: “He did each single thing, as if he did nothing else.“

Intellectual honesty is not a requirement, but a choice.

David Steinberg poses a question,

Is there any proof — or even evidence — that the passage through the birth canal transforms the unborn from something not in possession of an inalienable right to life to someone who does possess it? Manmade laws are irrelevant here: in the state of nature, does this transformation actually occur?

Then, he makes an assertion,

After Gosnell, the intellectually honest and inquisitive must accept that abortion necessarily involves the taking of life, which means pro-abortion arguments must necessarily collapse upon themselves and disappear. Of course, intellectual honesty is not a requirement, but a choice.

No belief system???

John Kerry said in Brussels that the Boston bombers had no belief system. Bryan Preston takes issue with that statement.

People having “no belief system” isn’t the problem. It’s what they do believe that becomes the problem. Osama bin Laden and Pol Pot both had strong and easily identifiable belief systems. They were also mass killers. Hitler, Mao, Mussolini, Stalin…they all had belief systems. The Iranian mullahs, Hizballah, Hamas…they all have belief systems. Whatever Kerry is trying to say there, he isn’t making a lick of sense. None of those people or the Tsarnaevs kill just “because they don’t like what they see.” They kill, at least in part, as a means to bring about the kind of change that they do believe in.

That phrase — “people who have no belief system” — is a means of absolving groups that preach killing, and the PR groups that aid them, and the people who voluntarily fund them, and the governments that still won’t put a stop to it.

Immigration Snake Oil

Have you read the immigration bill being put forward by the Gang of Eight? Neither have I. One person who has read the bill is J. Christian Adams. He gives seven reasons why the bill should be defeated.

1. Legalization and Border Insecurity

The bill provides for legalization in six months as soon as the secretary of Department of Homeland Security does another worthless Washington, D.C., review of border security. Almost anyone who has been in the United States illegally since as recently as December 2011 is eligible to legalize. This exposes the public- relations lie of rewarding only those who have put down “roots” in the United States.

Even the last mass amnesty in 1986 required applicants to have been in the United States almost five years.

2. A False Sense of Security

Naturally, DHS has already failed to implement current biometric requirements. The bill builds on DHS failures and does not require the entry-exit system to be biometric.

Once the secretary of DHS says these easy triggers have been “substantially” met, the bill’s legalization opens a path to citizenship for illegals. With that comes massive government benefits, including food stamps, Social Security, Obamacare, medicare, and other entitlement programs for aliens and their dependents.

3. Undermining Immigration Enforcement

When it comes to interfering with front-line immigration officers, the bill goes from bad to worse. It ties the hands of law enforcement and prevents them from doing their jobs. It infers that the men in uniform aren’t to be trusted. That’s why the federal immigration officers’ union strongly opposes it.

4. Helping Criminal Aliens

Current immigration laws are strict toward aliens who commit crimes in the United States. The bill changes that by making it easier for criminal aliens to get bond and permanently remain in the United States. For example, it gives immigration judges and DHS broad new powers to waive actions which result in automatic ejection from the United States, such as for drug crimes, firearms offenses, domestic violence, stalking, marriage fraud, false claims to citizenship, and crimes involving moral turpitude (page 328).

The bill also makes it easier for criminal aliens to be released back onto the streets and to disappear without a trace. For example, it requires aliens to receive immediate bond hearings within 7 days or be released, even if DHS is still collecting their criminal records (page 653). For any aliens who are detained, even aggravated felons, immigration judges must hold bond hearings every 90 days even if nothing has changed to warrant another bond hearing (page 654).

The overriding theme of the bill is that what it takes with the one hand it gives with the other. The bill pretends to be tough on domestic violence and criminal gangs by allowing them to be deported for these crimes. Yet to be deported for domestic violence the alien must have served at least one year in jail (page 635).

5. Expanding Visas

Proponents falsely claim the bill would end chain immigration by stopping the grant of visas to extended family members. But like the phony border security we hear about, this is also all about the talking points.

The bill moves very slowly away from family entitlement visas and protects everyone in the queue now or who applies 18 months into the future so the current backlogs will multiply. It will be many, many years after enactment before family entitlement visas are reduced at all.

Businesses have also been hoodwinked by the politicians. The employment visas the bill creates will mostly be unworkable for average businesses because of the mandates and exceptions that were put in to satisfy leftists and unions. The agricultural visas will benefit connected agribusiness special interests, not small farms.

The bill is larded with special-interest provisions, such as one for cruise ship repairmen and another to give out free phones at the border. The bill also creates a special speedy path to citizenship for agricultural workers. Remember that one of the 1993 World Trade Center terrorists was a taxi driver who legalized his status through the agricultural program in the 1986 amnesty.

6. Expanding Asylum

The terrorists who committed the Boston bombings got permanent legal status in the United States from their parents being granted asylum after fleeing Dagestan, Russia. Even after gaining this permanent legal status, they simply moved back to Russia voluntarily to do heaven knows what.

The bill would make it easier for aliens to get asylum. It eliminates the one-year window to ask for asylum (page 551). Someone should know they are refugees on the first day they arrive in the United States. The bill even allows aliens denied refugee status in the past to reopen it and start all over (page 552). It also empowers the president to grant refugee status to entire classes of immigrants, not just individuals.

7. Creating Endless Waivers, Exceptions, and Exclusions

The 844-page bill has over 400 waivers, exceptions, and exclusions. It gives enormous power to the secretary of DHS to waive almost any requirements that the bill imposes.

Adams concludes,

Also, the bill guts most state laws that prohibit the employment of illegal aliens. The anti-Arizona crowd stuck that into the bill.

The bill says an alien can be deported for willfully refusing to comply with law enforcement and security background checks. But then it gives DHS the power to waive these checks, and allows DHS to do so not only for individual aliens but for broad classes of aliens (page 634).

Over and over and over the bill provides tough talking points – border security, background checks, and more. But hidden next to those talking points are off-switches that bureaucrats can flip to satisfy the leftist open-borders constituencies who wrote the bill.

The bill makes America less safe, not more. It does nothing to fix our immigration system. It makes it much worse.

American Left and Islam: masochist and sadist; the perfect Suicide Cult meets the Death Cult of its dreams.

Michael Walsh writes in PJ Media

“shelter in place” (what an odious, bloodless phrase for enforced institutional cowardice) I’ve long said that the relationship between the American Left and Islam is that of masochist and sadist; the perfect Suicide Cult meets the Death Cult of its dreams.

Government-by-Gitmo-Bar

Andrew McCarthy got lots of criticism when he coined the term Government-by-Gitmo-Bar. He was referring to

the commonsense point that we oughtn’t want counterterrorism policy to be made by members of the Lawyer Left who had volunteered to work for the enemy and had labored assiduously to erode the law-of-war approach to counterterrorism (i.e., the Bush approach) – such lawyers having by then been recruited to serve in top policymaking posts in the Justice Department and throughout the Obama administration.

We have been seeing the wages of government-by-Gitmo Bar for over four years now, but maybe never as starkly as in the last few days.

It has now been reported by Fox’s Megyn Kelly that the FBI’s interrogation of accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was short-circuited when the Justice Department arranged for him to be given a presentment hearing in the hospital.

From a national security standpoint, there was no good reason to file a criminal charge so soon and thus trigger procedures that, as everyone involved in the decision well knew, would stop the interrogation. The only reason to do it is political: The Obama administration is philosophically hostile to the law-of-war counterterrorism paradigm. It is determined to regard every terrorist as a criminal defendant rather than an enemy combatant – even if there may be evidence connecting the detained terrorist to our wartime enemies and thus justifying, at least temporarily, an enemy-combatant designation that would allow interrogation to continue for intelligence purposes.

Read all of McCarthy's piece if you think it may not be a good idea to put our security in the hands of lawyers who volunteer their services to our terrorist enemies in wartime.

Why are Muslims Killing?

Who do you know more about, the Tsarnaev brothers, or their victims?

Daniel Greenfield writes today that the murderer is the new celebrity.

He emerges out of nowhere with a rags to mass murder story, and is swiftly accorded all the trappings of fame. Reporters track down anyone who knew him to learn about his childhood and his main influences. Relatives and friends both contribute fuzzy anecdotes, mostly indistinguishable from the ones they would present if he were competing on American Idol or running for president.

The disaffected form fan clubs around him. The experts discuss what his rise to fame means. Books are written about him and then perhaps a movie. And then it ends and begins all over again.

The Tsarnaev brothers, the living one and the dead one, are already receiving that treatment. Like most murderers they have already become more famous than their victims. More famous than the rescuers. The original Tamerlane is better known than any of his countless victims. The new one is already eclipsing his victims. Before long one of those Chechen bards whose videos he tagged into his playlist on YouTube will write a ballad about the Boston massacre and the circle will be complete.

Greenfield also writes about avoiding the difficult question of why they killed, and using convenient terms that are little more than meaningless jargon.

But when the body count gets high enough, dismissing it as extremism or radicalism doesn't hold up. The question must be discussed.

The Taliban just poisoned a girls school as part of their campaign to defend Afghanistan from women who can read and write. Hamas fired an anti-tank missile at an Israeli school bus in defense of Palestine. Tamerlan Tsarnaev put down a bomb next to an 8-year-old boy in defense of Islam.

What is this thing called Islam? We can call it a religion, but that doesn't tell us much. Defining religion is a famously tricky affair. The bombmaking instructions in Al Qaeda's Inspire magazine begin by telling the would-be defender of Islam that the key ingredient in building a pressure cooker bomb, like the one used at the Boston Marathon, is trust in Allah. There is a kind of faith in that, but it's more like the kind of prayer you expect to hear Jeffrey Dahmer or Charles Manson utter to a god that they made in their own murderous image. Serial killers praying to a patron deity of serial killers to help them murder little boys in defense of a religion whose faith is in the murder of little boys.

Despite the morbid fantasies of the real Islamophobia industry, practiced by CAIR and the left, no one was holding down either of the brothers and shoving pork in their mouths or forbidding them from reading the Koran. The government has carved out broad swaths of entitlements for Islamic religion in a country where Iftar is celebrated in the White House and the Department of Justice sues any store that thinks twice of frowning at a Hijab.

Greenfield distinguishes between the private Islam and the public Islam.

It's the public Islam that Tamerlan and Dzhokhar were defending. The private Islam forbids Muslims to eat pork or drink liquor The public Islam bars pork or liquor from being sold. The private Islam tells women to cover their hair. The public Islam establishes an entire system of police and judges to compel them to cover their hair.

The private Islam need not be defended with bombs. The public Islam must be. And as with so many totalitarian systems, when it speaks of freedom, it means slavery, when it talks of peace, it means war, and when it claims defense, it means attack.

The Tsarnaevs are not the first terrorists to kill Americans in the name of a political idea. If they are radicals and extremists, than so are the likes of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. What difference is there between the radicals who detonated bombs to impose the rule of the left and those who detonate bombs to impose the rule of Islam?

If we are going to discuss Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, let us spend a little less time on their endless parade of relatives and former friends, and a little more time on the idea in whose defense they chose to kill and maim so many. Let us discuss Islam, not just as an abstract idea, but as a concrete political system. Let us discuss it the way that we discuss the plans and platforms of the Republican and Democratic parties. Let us look at Saudi Arabia, at Pakistan and at the new Egypt to see what this thing that the terrorists would like to impose on us is.

Despite thousands dead, a searching examination of that sort is exactly what the media would like to avoid. It does not want another "Better Red than Dead" or "Better Dead than Red" debate. It wants us to speak of foreign policy as an isolated American act and of random violence as arising from thin air. It does not want us to understand the nature of the struggle. It does not want us to know why we die. It is determined to keep from us the reason why Muslims kill.

A writer who tells it like it is

Victor Davis Hanson writes today in National Review about our immigration policies:

The idea of life-saving asylum doesn’t make any sense when supposed refugees, like both of the Tsarnaev parents, can return to live safely in Russia. The elder of the suspected bombers, Tamerlan, himself had likewise just spent six months in a supposedly deadly homeland — for what exact reasons we can only speculate. Do our immigration authorities really believe that Russia is so dangerous for Muslims that they must be allowed unquestioned admission to the United States, but not so dangerous that they cannot from time to time choose to revisit their deadly place of birth?

Can a resident alien no longer be summarily deported for breaking the laws of his host country — in the case of the skilled boxer Tamerlan, for domestic violence against his non-boxing wife, or, in the case of his mother, for shoplifting over $1,600 in merchandise?

Does being on public assistance years after arrival in this country, like the Tsarnaev family, no longer qualify a resident alien for deportation?

Does being investigated by the FBI for apparently loud and public expressions of support for anti-American radical jihadists not mean much?

In short, if a Tamerlan Tsarnaev cannot be deported, then perhaps no resident alien can be under any circumstances.

I am sure that in theory there are all sorts of laws to the effect that asylum seekers must prove that they would be in constant peril in their homelands (cf. Obama’s Aunt Zeituni and Uncle Onyango), that they must become self-sufficient residents of the United States (cf. Aunt Zeituni and Uncle Onyango), that they must not break American laws (cf. Aunt Zeituni and Uncle Onyango), and that they must not promote anti-American activity. But what do such theoreticals matter if, for reasons of laxity or political correctness or connectedness, these statutes are ignored — and, in the Boston case, ignored to a degree that led to murder and mayhem on a vast scale?

These paradoxes will resonate with those skeptical of comprehensive immigration reform. We expect boilerplate and loud administration assertions of border security, well-publicized benchmarks for self-sufficiency, grand talk of the avoidance of crime, and continued emphasis on long-term residence, but — once de facto amnesty is conceded — all these requirements, like most of current immigration law, will not be worth the paper they are written on.

One final thought about the political use and abuse of contemporary horror. This generation of Americans has a propensity to prefer the showy and dramatic — but ultimately irrelevant — response to crises as psychosocial compensation for the fear or inability to embrace a useful, but difficult or controversial, remedy. We don’t dare deal with the felony, so we strut about addressing the misdemeanor. When deranged shooters strike, go after the NRA, but do not get near Hollywood, the mental-health industry, or the illegally obtained handguns of the inner city.

When a hurricane strikes, provide more borrowed money for failed wind and solar programs, but do not dare promote fracking on public lands, which might radically reduce carbon emissions. Talk loudly of immigration reform, but only in the therapeutic sense of granting amnesties to the deserving, and never in the tragic sense of deporting the undeserving. As with the parents of wayward adolescents, saying yes wins smiles and saying no does not.

We know this much about this therapeutic and dishonest age: When the next horrific act occurs, one of two things will follow. Either we will rush to pass laws that will make us feel good but do nothing to address the existential crisis. Or we will be silent about enacting reforms of our existing flawed laws that might have prevented the horror, but would make us feel far too uncomfortable.

Brrr!

How has 2013 been doing so far on the global warming front here in the U.S.?

Source

hat tip Real Science

A man who knows his Constitutional rights

Todd Starnes reports at Town Hall about a decorated Iraq and Afghanistan veteran with a concealed carry permit who was arrested for "rudely displaying a weapon," while doing a ten mile hike for his son's Eagle Scout project in an area of Texas populated by wild boars and cougars. He hands off his camera to his son, and directs the son to keep the camera trained on him and the arresting officer. The veteran plans to sue the police department.

Police later reduced the charges to interfering with a peace officer while performing a duty - a class B misdemeanor, but he was still thrown in jail.

Hat tip Real Science

Don't worry officers, the taxpayers have got your back!

Have you read the story in the LA Times about the LA Cops mistook a 71 year old Hispanic woman for a 270 pound black man, and shot her twice in the back?

Steven Goddard has the links.

Goddard says the moral to the story is that "When seconds count, incompetent, violent policemen are only 20 minutes away."

Busy killers

Click on the image below to see some of the murders committed this week by Islamic terrorists.

found here:

Real Science

From Steven Goddard's Real Science blog:

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts"

– Richard Feynman.

90% of the students being forced-fed the global warming religion in public schools, have never actually experienced any global warming.

Temperatures were about ten degrees below normal for January in Colorado. The only problem is that this is April 23.

The week that was

David Burge has written a poem at IowaHawk about last week's events.

This was a one week cycle

It started Monday

And drug on to Sunday

This was a one week cycle

No I didn't need it

But I tried to tweet it

Please visit the link above to read the poem, in which he covers the Boston bombers, the Gosnell trial, the explosion in Texas, the North Korea sabre rattling, the Ricin perpetrator, the mess in journalism, the Euro meltdown, and much more.

Fertile breeding ground for the global jihad!

"The concept of armed jihad should be condemned. Let's not thwart our own freedoms!" Finally, a Muslim stands up against armed jihad!

"We have a problem within our midst! Connect the dots. Who are the recruiters? Those are the people we need to find! How many of them out there that we haven't caught?"

hat tip small dead animals

Go Nuggets!

Here is just one more reason why our Denver Nuggets must get their act together and beat the Golden State Warriors in the NBA playoffs.

The San Francisco Public Health Department has dusted off The Healthy Penis it brought out first in 2002, then again in 2009.

The six foot tall penis is aimed at encouraging gay and bisexual men to get tested for sexually transmitted diseases. He is brought out for parades and other city events.

Susan Philip, director of STD prevention and control services for the health department, said estimates of HIV incidents in San Francisco are declining – but that gonorrhea, syphilis and chlamydia are on the rise. That’s in large part, she said, because many men choose to have sex with people of the same HIV status as themselves to forgo using condoms. It means they’re not protecting themselves against a host of other STDs.

Hat tip small dead animals

The Black Eagles

Have you heard of South Korea's Black Eagles? Kim Jong-un might want to pay attention to this video.

Sent to me by my friend Col. Curt Dale

Four lessons from Boston

Ralph Peters writes at The New York Post,

don’t underestimate the appeal of butchering female athletes, who are almost as terrifying to Islamists as girls in bikinis.

My suggestion to the feds, if they want to understand why Tamerlan Tsarnaev turned to jihad? Check out this wife-beater’s love life. Scratch a terrorist, find a lonesome perv.

Last week, Islamist fanaticism scored a resounding victory on the cheap. The effectiveness of our manhunt didn’t change that.

Peters points out four lessons learned from Boston:

Lesson No. 1: Two amateur terrorists can paralyze a major American city for days.

Lesson No. 2: The best weapons against targets in the US are disaffected legal immigrants or radicalized native-born converts to jihad. Political correctness — a pathetic fanaticism of our own — and legal paralysis make it virtually impossible to stop legal residents such as the Tsarnaev brothers before they commit a crime.

Lesson No. 3: Our immigration system is one of terrorism’s best allies.

Lesson No. 4: The more open a society, the more targets it presents.

"I think better days are going to come"

Found here

Cupcakes and diets

Sippican Cottage notes that Woman's World has over a million subscribers. They are also the number two top-selling selling magazine. They do not have a website. They have a lot of useful information, including cupcakes and diets. Read more here:

Fearless and arrogant will get you a long way in a world full of the meek.

Sippican Cottage reprises a 2009 post about Al Capone.

Hollywood likes to show gangsters being Machiavellian, but they're usually just willing to use force to get what they want, and are willing to take chances. Fearless and arrogant will get you a long way in a world full of the meek. Gangsters are in a state of nature, red in tooth and claw, while John Q. Public thinks meat comes in little packages from a deli.

Here is a picture found at Sippican Cottage. It is the cell Capone stayed in while he was serving eight months for carrying a concealed weapon.

Sippican makes furniture. He comments on his blog about the furniture in the photo below.

Some guys just know how to make things happen.

Obama: When I want your opinion, I'll give it to you!

Neil Munro writes at The Daily Caller that President Obama is warning that

Americans should not decide their opinions about the Boston terror attacks until the government decides its own opinion, President Barack Obama told the nation late Friday night.

Or, as Donald Sensing writes at Sense of Events, Obama: When I want your opinion, I'll give it to you.

Gun laws, driving laws, financial laws, anti-theft laws

Donald Sensing writes,

Terrorists don’t observe gun laws, notes AP

And in other news, drunk drivers don't obey driving laws, embezzlers don't obey financial laws and shoplifters don't obey anti-theft laws.

However, that the two accused Boston terrorists did not legally possess or use their weapons will never be relevant to the gun-control crowd. They will push anew to further restrict law-abiding gun owners' rights.

As a cop told me, it's like trying to reduce drunk driving by making it harder for sober people to get driver's licenses.

"Why not just shoot up the boat?" (If we are not going to question him)

Ann Coulter wants to know: Who is assimilating whom? How about an immigration policy that makes America better? Hannity and Coulter talk over each other as they try to make their points in a short time frame.

Negligent and impotent

Jeff Goldstein writes at Protein Wisdom

Somehow, both brothers managed to register to vote. They also managed to get firearms, despite the very stringent gun-control laws in Massachusetts.

In the first case, the state was negligent — and what should stand as an example of the need to protect our franchise as American citizens will go largely ignored, or even defended, by those whose political power is dependent upon electoral laxity. In the second case, the state wasn’t negligent, but rather impotent — because had the laws requiring such monsters to undergo background checks before obtaining firearms been at all effective, as the President and many Democrats would have us believe (and if we happen not to believe it, we hate children and want to see them slaughtered, naturally), the brothers wouldn’t have had firearms. Couldn’t have had them. And yet they did. Somehow. As if by magic!

All in all, not a great week to be pushing gun control or comprehensive immigration reform

An indictment of mainstream "journalism"

Do you agree with Jeff Goldstein that

the mainstream press, with its institutional collusion and its collaboration with statist government, may be the single largest threat to our democratic republic.

Our contemporary mainstream national “journalism” is nothing more than an exercise is narrative creation and management, manufactured consent, and ideological indoctrination posing as information dissemination.

Which is precisely why they are now hurrying to bracket the fact of Islamism that attaches itself via YouTube channels and FBI and DHS intelligence at least one of the brothers, in order to deflect, to dismiss, and to change the subject, turning their sense of phony self-righteous indignation on the right, who they laughably maintain are trying to profit politically off the terror attacks in Boston — even as they remain caked in the blood of the Newtown children.

I don’t know how to end the real existential threat to our country that the mainstream press poses — and I am not overstating this at all, regardless of who may sneer and say that I am — but I do know that it must be done.

Or else every political battle will be an uphill one.

There’s a reason a center-right country often finds itself in the grip of hard left demagogues. And it ain’t because the vast majority of American are screaming for soda bans, amnesty for illegals, and single-payer health care.

Idolatry's ongoing revival

Leszek Kolakowski, a Pole who died in 2009, wrote this about Marxism:

“the greatest fantasy of the 20th century,” which began in an attempt to create a perfect society, and ended up as the foundation for “a monstrous edifice of lies, exploitation and oppression.”

Joseph Shattan writes about him in a post entitled Up from Totalitarianism in the American Spectator.

He would be beheaded in a Muslim nation

The militant leftist homosexual who fired shots at The Family Research Council in D.C. last August, wounding a security guard who saved others from being shot, faces the beginning of his trial next week. He has already entered guilty pleas. The government is asking that he serve 45 years in prison. John Hinderaker has the story here

1968

Ed Driscoll writes at PJ Media about the pivotal year of 1968. He links to an article written in January of this year by Peter Dreier in The Huffington Post. Dreier shows how Martin Luther King began his civil rights career focusing on the plight of "Negroes," but evolved into a person who wanted to build a coaliton between blacks and low income whites, and also became very much anti-war. He wanted a "better distribution of wealth within this country for all God's children."

Of course, 1968 is remembered for the murders of Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy, the riots at the Democratic Convention, and Richard Nixon's election. But, what about the Apollo 8 flight in December of that year, when men left Earth's gravitational field for the first time? Apollo 8 culminated with the Christmas Eve reading from Genesis by the crew

“And God said, Let the waters under the Heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear, and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas, and God saw that it was good.” Borman paused, then concluded: “And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with goodnight, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you—all of you on the good Earth.

Read all of Driscoll's post here."

"Four years were poorly invested in a failed alternate paradigm"

Victor Davis Hansonwarns that we need to look more carefully at immigration policy, as we look to defend ourselves against radical Islam.

Would not more frequent denial into the U.S. prompt more respect for America than does near pro forma entry? Would not the free use of words like “terrorism” and “Islamist” again convey better the image of a confident society that cares not what jihadists or their supporters think than does worry over offending those who hate us?

And where did Tamerlan Tsarnaev learn the art of bomb-making?

Tamerlan Tsarnaev needed to be taught the do’s and don’t’s of assembling even a so-called crude bomb. Most likely, he obtained that expertise firsthand. He required some practice in letting a device off, if the two pressure cookers were to work at the marathon. Tamerlan Tsarnaev acquired such information either during his return home or from an experienced terrorist inside the U.S.

How about all those media reports from friends of the younger Tsarnaev who just cannot believe he would be capable of such monstrous actions? Hanson writes,

I am not so struck by the glowing testimonials from fellow teenagers and twenty-somethings about the two monstrous Tsarnaevs, to the effect that they seemed great guys. Such is the power of anecdote and emotion over reasoned empiricism in the young untrained mind.

The stranger fact is the adult media’s gullible reporting of these impressions as if they were somehow significant, as if superficial impression is the key to understanding an ideology that drives behavior. The following caricature reflects how one of the present therapeutic society might remark on the death of Adolf Hitler. “I don’t quite understand his violent side. He was a man who simply loved children — certainly he fawned upon the Goebbels kids. He inquired about the health and welfare of his chauffer and valet, and no boss was more considerate of his secretaries. Hitler’s dogs were his pride and joy; I never saw a kinder and more gentler master. Eva Braun simply lit up at his presence. His conversations at dinner were witty, lively, and polite. He gave up almost everything for Germany. And while he seemed troubled at times, I always attributed it to the horrors of the trenches. None of us can quite judge him, or even know what it was like for a young man to be subject to what Hitler endured — only to be unemployed, shamed, and ignored upon returning to a defeated Austria and Germany. It just makes no sense that such a seemingly kind person could commit such horrors. I still can’t quite believe it.”

Do we care whether a man who placed a bomb full of ball bearings next to an eight-year-old boy and blew apart dozens of innocents was nice to his peers? Let us at least hope that the killer Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is not to be known as “unduly influenced by his brother,” “fully American,” “coerced to become violent,” “brain-washed,” and “young and impressionable.”

Four years were poorly invested in a failed alternate paradigm — “overseas contingency operations,” “workplace violence,” “man-caused disasters,” worries over losing the Army “diversity program,” and restrictions on the use of “terror,” or “jihadist,” or “Islamic terror,” or “Islamist.”

I don’t think we are going to hear as much that the Muslim Brotherhood is largely a secular organization, that Benghazi was just a spontaneous demonstration, or that jihad is a holy struggle and a legitimate tenet of Islam. Not euphemism, not “George Bush did it,” not the president’s middle name or his Nobel Peace Prize, not “leading from behind” will endear the United States to radical Islam. These were the luxury of a complacency achieved by earlier vigilance. The effect of multicultural euphemism will be either nugatory or counterproductive, in sending the message that a therapeutic society prefers to be liked rather than feared, a prescription for endangering the innocent at the expense of elites’ self-satisfied morality.

Both we and our enemies have changed strategies since 9/11. I fear that radical Islamists are becoming more insidious and we more complacent and predictable. After this horrid week, I don’t think the residents of Boston worried that we were too illiberal in our asylum policies, that the FBI is over-zealous in tracking suspected Islamists, that Bostonians needed more gun-control laws to keep them safe in their individual homes as killers roamed a city under lockdown, that jihad is simply a legitimate tenet of Islam, that America is too brutalizing of immigrants, or that we need to curb promiscuous use of hurtful words like “terrorism.”