For those of you who watch t.v., this is Fox News' new fall lineup beginning one week from today.
Monday, September 30, 2013
The science is conclusive
Women who drive risk damaging their ovaries and producing children with clinical problems, according to a Saudi cleric.The comment, made by Sheikh Saleh al-Lohaidan, came as activists step up their campaign for women in Saudi Arabia to be allowed to drive.
Women are being called upon to defy the ban and drive on 26 October.
I don't know about the ovaries, but the part about children with clinical problems might be true.
Brothers
Dan Miller in Panama posts this photo of Barack Obama and his brother Malik Obama who raises funds for the terrorists known as the Muslim Brotherhood. Malik Obama runs an African nonprofit closely linked to the Brotherhood as well as the genocidal terrorist of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir.
Why haven't we had the courage to ask the questions?
Frank Salvato of PA Pundits - International says we need to start by being honest with ourselves about who our enemy is.
It is indisputable that with precious few exceptions, the perpetrators of almost every terrorist act in the world today have a direct connection to Islamist jihadis; who, in turn, exist solely under the ideological umbrella of the religion of Islam. Those who argue to the contrary are either uninformed, deniers, fools or intellectually stunted. Yet our current leadership exists so crippled by their ideological dogma that they, purposefully, refuse to identify the obvious enemy; the enemy who has declared, in no uncertain terms, that Islam will reign supreme; that they intend to conquer the world in the name of their religion.Whether you believe President Obama and his team are inept in their foreign policy, unconcerned about anything but the “fundamental transformation” of the United States domestically, or sympathetic to the Islamist cause – or perhaps all three, the notion that there is a side to champion in the Syrian conflict is ignorant folly. Yes, Bashar al Assad is a tyrant, brutal to his own people in his quest to retain power in that country. And it is a distinct possibility that he or his field commanders may have used chemical weapons against civilians as well as rebel forces. But intervening in an effort to champion al Assad’s opposition literally places the United States in an alliance with those who support and fight in the name of al Qaeda, the very people who both slaughtered 2,996 people and injured over 6,000 more on September 11th, 2001, and viciously murdered four Americans, including a US ambassador on September 11th, 2012.
Further, why haven’t we had the courage – as a free people – to ask the questions that politically correct Progressives and the intellectually squeamish run from, like:
▪ Why isn’t the Islamist ideology held accountable for the violent actions of those who commit atrocities in the name of Islam?
▪ Why hasn’t Saudi Arabia – the protectors of the most holy locations in the Islamic religion, been held to account for not only the actions of their charge, but for literally exporting the most virulent strain of Islam (Wahhabism) to foreign shores?
▪ Why are our elected officials so adverse to recognizing – and then stating as their positions – that the tenets of Sharia law are not compatible with the freedoms and liberties enshrined in our Charters of Freedom and in Western ideology?
▪ Why – why – are our leaders so frightened of identifying an enemy who has declared war on the West – and the United States and Israel, specifically, for years and years and years…?
▪ Why – why – is the West so terrified of confronting the evil that exists in the Islamist ideology; the evil that cuts the heads of innocents, eats the organs of its foes, burns Christian churches to the ground as they execute priests and nuns; the evil that wants to finish what Adolf Hitler started with regard to the world’s Jewish population?
▪ And why, why, why, do we elect idiot politicians who make excuses for bloodthirsty jihadis, even to the points of denying that “Allahu Akbar!” is an Islamist battle cry and lobbying for weaponry and alliance?
That limp-wristed politicians, Progressives and sympathetic apologists from the West refuse to admit the obvious doesn’t make the fact any less real. It just makes the West – and the people of the West – subject to the dangers, subject to the murderous violence, that Islamism projects onto the world.
Pull off the mask, Santa
Are the Christmas trees (artificial) and lights on sale in your area? Here is a song you can sing as you peruse the merchandise.
found here
The “Obama Doctrine” — speak loudly, carry a small feather and get out of the way.
That's how Dan Miller characterizes our lead from behind president.
those who consider President Obama merely naive, inept and maladroit would do well to reconsider their views.
Miller links to an article in the Jerusalem Post by David Weinberg, who asserts that Obama actually wants to emasculate America.
Why has Obama so wantonly and care-freely allowed America’s international reputation and awesome global power to waste away? The answer is that Obama is clearly out to emasculate America; to doggedly drag it down, purposefully so. He seeks the weakening of the United States on the global stage as a good and necessary outcome. He has set this as one of the key goals of his presidency – and he is doing a very good, skillful job at hitting his target! In short, the nonchalance of Obama as America decays is doctrinaire. He ideologically intends it.From day one, Obama has not been comfortable with American leadership in world affairs. He explicitly views America’s past global performance to be arrogant and high-handed; to be militaristic and not completely moral.
His wife, during the first campaign, called America a “mean” country. Obama termed America “overbearing.” Dozens of times, he has made it clear that he views America not as the leader of the world or the free world, but at best as a partner in the community of nations. Obama himself prefers to preen as a “citizen of the world.”
Over the past month, Obama has granted Putin a gargantuan international victory, given Assad a new lease on life, emboldened Iran and its allies like Hezbollah, and reenergized the morally-bankrupt UN – while playing Hamlet about his own authority to strike Syria and trashing US credibility.
He leaves America’s reputation in the world “unbelievably small.”
Don’t assume that this erosion bothers Obama, or is the result of any failing. It is exactly where Obama is leading America, brilliantly so from his perspective – on principle, on target, and on plan.
The roadmap
Did you know that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is in Washington today meeting with President Obama? Tomorrow he will speak to the United Nations General Assembly. Netanyahu is expected to warn at the UN about Iran, which is working with North Korea to get the nuclear weapons of both coutries functional.
Dan Miller writes,
Financial and other sanctions have harmed nearly every aspect of Iranian life — except the development of the nuclear weaponry at which they have been directed. The results suggest a high a degree of naïveté on the part of the Western negotiators, and superior negotiating prowess on the part of the Iranians, who spring from long lines of Persian rug merchants. If negotiations had been held with starving Iranians instead, the results might well have been different; they were not and have not been. Neither, for that matter have our negotiations with North Korea over food and humanitarian relief for starving North Koreans involved starving North Koreans, who just conceivably might prefer a little more rice and perhaps even an occasional morsel of meat rather than the greater glory and deification of (the current) Dear Leader Kim and continued dominance of his regency.
John Bolton talks about Obama's moral equivalency. No mention of Islamic jihad or Muslim terrorism against non-Muslims and other Muslims in Obama's address to the United Nations.
Thanks to Dan Miller
Crimes against humanity
Seth Frantzman writes this about Islamic jihad:
It is time to stop hiding what connects Mumbai to Westgate and Khobar. It is a worldwide campaign of ethnic cleansing and murder, and the world community must define this as a crime against humanity and not just as “terrorism.”He goes on to give many details about the murders at the Westgate Mall.
When will we wake up?
I am not always impressed by Bill O'Reilly, but he is nailing the truth in this video.
Found here.No big deal
Dan Miller notes that the debt ceiling
has “only” been raised seven times during the Reign of Obama, and those increases have amounted cumulatively to “only” $43,000 per U.S. household. That must be no big deal, so why not do it again?
Why Obamacare should be opposed
Dan from Squirrel Hill lists and gives detailed explanations of 68 reasons Obamacare should be opposed.
Weak, unskilled, indecisive: Go home!
Iran has twice fired on our unmanned drones. 1979 Iran declared war on us. Iran has committed a long list of aggressions against the United States. They have committed acts of war conducted with utter impunity. Bill Whittle has some ideas about who should go home.
Found here
Who decides?
Andrew Amedee warns that all the discussion about mental health could give the gun controllers ammunition for new legislation.
However, there is an ever increasing chorus on the right calling for a conversation on mental health. Caution should be taken when advocating for this. That conversation could very well lead to legislation.And therein lies the problem; who decides? The same doctors that donned their clinical white coats and stood with Obama to vouch for the Affordable Care Act? The AMA? Is it inconceivable that cherry picked doctors could be used to testify in front of Congress to justify de facto gun control? Also, what constitutes mental illness? Could guns be taken away from a mother suffering from postpartum depression? What about, say, if a person were 16 and the love of their life broke their heart? Let’s say, as 16-year-olds do, that they think their life is over and threatened suicide. Out of concern for the child, said child’s parents place that person in psychiatric care on a 72 hour hold for observation and counseling. Could that be used 20 years later to deny that person purchase of a firearm?
George Will has an idea
George Will worries that Ted Cruz is at risk for sterility. Really! Will recommends that the
Republicans should vote, more in sorrow than in anger, to fund the government (at sequester levels, a significant victory) and to increase the debt ceiling.
Wait, that's not all he recommends.
Republicans can give Democrats a ruinous opportunity to insist upon unpopular things. House Republicans can attach to the continuing resolution that funds the government, and then to the increase in the debt ceiling, two provisions: Preservation of the ACA requirement — lawlessly disregarded by the administration — that members of Congress and their staffs must experience the full enjoyment of the ACA without special, ameliorating subsidies. And a one-year delay of the ACA’s individual mandate.By vetoing legislation because of these provisions, and by having his vetoes sustained by congressional Democrats, Obama will underscore Democrats’ devotion: Devotion to self-dealing by the political class, and to the principle that only powerful interests (businesses), not mere citizens, can delay the privilege of complying with the ACA.
C'mon folks, sign up!
Saturday Night Live does its best to poke fun at Obamacare.
Laughter also breaks out in a congressional hearing when someone asks Democrat Jim McGovern of Massachusets if President Obama is drawing a red line on the House's continuing resolution postponing Obamacare and raising the debt ceiling.
Thanks to Town Hall and CNS News for the links to the videos.
"Completely and utterly false:" The media gets it wrong again
Audrey Hudson writes a piece about how the media jumped on lies about oil and gas spills in Colorado during the recent floods.
Stories of massive oil spills and fracking fluid saturating the raging floodwaters that devastated Colorado are now seeping into national media accounts of the disaster and painting pictures of environmental destruction.The problem is, it’s not true, said Doug Flanders, director of policy and external affairs for the Colorado Oil and Gas Association.
There were no hydraulic fracturing operations functioning when the floods hit the region, no fracking equipment at the well sites, no fracking chemicals on any site, Flanders said.
There were no wellbore incidents, 1,900 oil and gas wells were shut-in, or capped in real time, and the integrity of tanks remained intact. The 12 notable oil spills that did occur could fill five percent of an Olympic size swimming pool and were the result of cracks in flowlines that connected to equipment, Flanders said.
“So, the fact people were saying we were having this fracking disaster is just completely and utterly false,” Flanders said.
Rep. Jared Polis added his voice Friday to the anti-fracking narrative by calling for a congressional hearing on the oil leaks from Colorado’s historic flooding.
Salon, CNN, The Denver Post, television stations, Rolling Stone, The New York Times, were among the media outlets who got the story completely wrong. But, hey, it fit the narrative, right?
A front page Denver Post story with the headline “Oil spilling into mix” featured a dramatic photo of an “oil spill,” only the scene it depicted was not actually an oil spill. Flanders asked for a correction, which took the paper seven days to issue after it was published on Sept. 20, and stated that the substance was standing water left behind after the floodwaters receded.However, the flood waters did contain pollution from millions of gallons of sewage from septic systems, damaged sewer lines, and flooded waste treatment plants, and E. coli was discovered in the city of Lyon’s drinking water.
Filthy!!
Jeremy Meyer reports in the Denver Post that the Denver City council will be voting tonight on a 5 cent per bag charge at grocery stores. What his story does not include is this awful fact: the bags people reuse are often bacteria-laden. One week they put meat in the bag, the next week fresh produce. In the meantime, between shopping trips, the bags are in the car and make a fine pillow for the dog. Or they are left at home, where they make a fine pillow for the cat. One thing they are not is clean! Denver's Mayor is threatening to veto the measure. Good for him! I think I will give him a call.
Overcoming despair
Ann Voskamp writes today about overcoming despair, trusting God, and the broken reaching out to the broken.
Why does a mind find despair so much easier to hold on to than hope?It’s either take captive every thought or be taken captive. When you realize life is war, you make prayer a shield and Christ your general and the victory is found in grace.
God doesn’t allow pain unless He’s allowing something new to be born. And there are a thousand ways births can happen unseen to the naked eye but it’s the eyes of the heart that see the delivering mercies of God. Every breath is always one breath closer to birthing into eternity.
In the Body of Christ, a mind can break just like a leg and if we don’t hide the shattering of our bones, why be ashamed of the shattering of our hearts?
And if the broken would just love the broken — we’d all be closer to whole.
Sunday, September 29, 2013
No coddling at this house!
9 News in Denver has a story about a six-year-old who has climbed, with his dad, all 58 of the Colorado peaks that are above 14,000 feet.
Thanks to Complete Colorado for providing the link to 9 News.
Risk-taking
David Frum writes in his book What's Right
Our children are soaked with the cult of safety the way they would once have imbibed religion or patriotism. At school, teachers ‘street-proof’ children—that is, they teach them that kidnappers and child molesters lurk in every playground. Television excites children with environmentalist fears that the air and water they breathe and drink teem with toxins, that the food they eat is saturated with deadly pesticides, and that the juice bottles they discard will soon cover the entire surface of the earth.
Mollie Hemingway adds,
When everything is a safety crisis, nothing is. So it should be little surprise that older children are less likely to heed warnings against smoking, drinking and having, in the parlance of modern educators, “unsafe” sex.Letting your child take risks allows them to conquer fear and develop “a sense of mastery.” Irrationally shielding them from risk creates phobias and psychopaths.
When my brother and I got out of the house to do yard work, we were in what you’d call a trade-off situation. We risked our safety, however modestly. But we gained money, work ethic, communication skills, and knowledge. We also got to actually know and interact with our neighbors.
Will we survive?
Mollie Hemingway writes,
If you’re teaching your kids more about safety than you are about honesty, kindness, respect for others, responsibility, gratitude, integrity, cooperation, determination, social skills, enthusiasm, compassion and manners, you’re doing it wrong.Mollie had just received some emails from her Obama-voting neighbors warning her that some children ages 9-11 were, unsupervised by parents, trying to earn money by mowing lawns.
Mollie wrote them back an email of her own:
“My brother and I did lawn mowing jobs—completely unsupervised by our parents, though with their encouragement—from a young age. There are, as with all things, health and safety risks. But we learned how money and business worked. We developed a work ethic. We interacted with our neighbors and honed our yard work skills. We gained independence and confidence. And we made money! It’s all about trade-offs. In our case, the positive far outweighed the negative. Also, as it happens, I could use some lawn mowing as our lawn mower broke down. So if anyone sees these young entrepreneurs, perhaps they could be pointed our way.”
What will happen if there is a government shutdown?
Do you have ay idea of what will happen if and when there is a government shutdown? Mike at Cold Fury thinks he knows what to expect:
All true enough, certainly. But there’s one problem: we all already know well enough that the very first thing Ogabe’s thuggish regime will be stopping under any “shutdown” will be Social Security checks, unemployment checks, food stamps, military pay, and any and everything else they can think of to ensure that the pain of a shutdown will be most acutely felt by those least able to bear it, while working diligently with Court Media to see to it that the blame for all this trauma–and trauma it will be–is placed where they want it.That pain will be real, immediate, and urgent, affecting the least-powerful Americans the Progressivist swine constantly lie about caring the most for. Those people will be damaged severely by Ogabe’s icy, calculating heartlessness. He won’t care a whit. He will do what he must to consolidate absolute power for the Almighty State and lie shamelessly about it, just as he always has. And he’ll sleep like a baby at night, and get in as many holes of golf as he likes during the day, the whole time it’s going on–just as he did while Americans were being slaughtered in Benghazi.
Thus, the clamor will be not for the renunciation of Ogabacare, but for the heads of the congresscritters who made it the hinge on which a federal shutdown swings. Think it’s any accident that Ogabe and Pals want such a huge proportion of us on the welfare rolls in one way or another? It’s the same strategy they used to steercot the formerly sovereign states: get ‘em on the federal teat and addicted to it, then you can do whatever you like and they can offer nothing more than the occasional feeble moo of half-hearted protest before reattaching themselves and sucking harder.
So it will be here. I know people–I have family members, in fact–who are entirely dependent on federal assistance for their very survival, which survival is a meager one indeed for most of them. Most of them are no fans of Obama or Obamacare, but once they begin to starve, they’ll be no fans of anyone else in government either, including conservatives. They may be all for reducing the size and scope of government in the abstract, but as a practical matter, they, like urban blacks, illegal immigrants, and other perpetual-victim groups so skillfully exploited and rendered helpless by the Democrat Socialists, are going to swing the way their empty wallets (and stomachs) tell them to.
It’s a pretty seamless web the Progressivists have spent the last hundred years a-weaving, and dependency on FederalGovCo is one of the strongest threads in it. Not saying I’m opposed to what guys like Cruz and Lee are attempting here, or that I disagree with what Bill says; far from it. But it’s going to be a damned rocky path, fighting as they and we are against an enemy that is devious, cunning, and that has spent a century building and fortifying the edifice we are sworn to deconstruct.
In the end, the GOPers will cave, just as we all already know they will; they’re as heavily invested in that edifice as anyone else in Mordor on the Potomac, and when the Dark Tower falls, they’ll be crushed under it just as surely as the army of orcs around them will be. Don’t look to me for answers; I ain’t got any. But gruesome as it all is, that’s the way it looks from here.
Gangster government
Mike at Cold Fury notes that some observers say that
there are more questions than answers about what exactly happened at the IRS.Mike replies,
No, there aren’t. “What happened at the IRS” could not possibly be more obvious: a too-powerful bureaucracy in a left-wing, Progressivist government illegally and unconstitutionally suppressed the voting and free speech rights of organizations that were attempting to work within a corrupt and rotten system to advocate for their idea of proper governance. The IRS also worked to promote organizations that were ideologically acceptable. They did so in an effort to swing an election in favor of their preferred candidate–an effort that was successful.
Where we are in 2013 America
Mike at Cold Fury releases some of his writing fury at a Virginia neighbor who called the police to report two boys who were shooting airsoft guns at a target attached to a tree on one of the boys' front yard (a net was attached to the tree in back of the target to catch any errant plastic pellets). In one of his milder expressions of fury, Mike writes,
Instead of seeking professional help for her own mental-health issues, she sics the gendarmerie on a few mildly rowdy boys to deal with them for her instead.When I was a mere stripling, some kids sometimes brought rifles to school because they were going squirrel hunting after class. It was just kind of expected that sometime around his ninth or tenth birthday, Dad was going to take Sonnyboy out in the backyard or some other place with a dirt-hill backstop and teach him how to shoot the trusty old family .22 and handle it properly. Mine did.
Now, the mere sight of a handful of teenagers playing with pellet guns in their own yard is enough to get them booted out of school, on the say-so of some juiceless freak cowering behind the curtains peeping out her front window to make sure nothing untoward is going on, phone in hand, the first two digits of 9-1-1 already dialed so she can SPRING INTO ACTION at the first sight of someone having some sort of fun that scares her or that she otherwise doesn’t approve of.
Mike reminds us that this occurred in Virginia, the "once noble state that produced George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Robert E. Lee."
Although they were not on school property, the "union protected" school administrator suspended the boys from school until June, 2014.
The age of statist mythology
Victor Davis Hanson writes that in the wake of Aaron Alexis's slaughter of unarmed people at the Navy Yard, some questions might have been asked:
Unfortunately, few of our elites dared to question the mental-health industry’s approach to treating the unstable, especially its resistance to properly monitoring whether those being treated as outpatients are taking their medications. Few faulted the entertainment industry for the savage genre of the modern video game. Should we also blame the incompetence of the agencies that conducted the background checks? Was the Pentagon to blame for not allowing military personnel and contractors to carry weapons while on their own federal military facilities?
Hanson shows how false narratives propagated by the media become the memes:
what was false has served noble purposes in a way that what was true will not. If the truth doesn’t serve social justice — well, tell a noble lie.Like Orwell’s dead souls, we live in an age of statist mythology, in which unpleasant facts are replaced by socially useful lies. So we print the legend that better serves our fantasies.
Journalism: Truth-telling, or merely the rapid dissemination of political talking points?
Jerry Curry notes that
Once, journalism meant collecting and truthfully refining information until it could be honestly presented to the public as fact. If a story could not be substantiated beyond a reasonable doubt by at least two witnesses it was not offered up by the news media for public distribution. Unfortunately, now the profession of journalism has become so corrupted and dishonest that its practice is little more than the rapid dissemination of political talking points.That is why Seymour Hersh is so angry and upset, because he is convinced that his comrades, America’s journalists, aren’t doing their jobs. They are refusing to challenge the lies and untruths of an Administration that he believes is nothing but one big lie. He maintains that, “Our job is to go beyond the debate and find out who’s right and who’s wrong about issues … it’s like you don’t dare be an outsider anymore.”
Regurgitating talking points is not the same as truth telling, especially when journalists are speaking truth to power.
Just as only “We the People” can take back our government, only We the People can redefine and recapture the practice of truth telling in journalism.
Eurocentrist, freedom-strangling, debt-addled, national security deficient, secularist crap pie
This may be the best sentence I have read today:
What you must understand, kind soul, is that when Obama and his boys hand out an artificial olive branch and request that we conservatives meet them in the “middle,” the “middle” that they bid thee toward is the big fat center of their eurosocialist, freedom-strangling, debt-addled, national security deficient, secularist crap pie.
The author is Doug Giles, and his blog is Clash Daily. Mr. Giles reads and loves The Declaration of Independence, which he believes should not be compromised.
The age of innocence is over
Martin Daubney, who for many years edited a magazine called Loaded, is now a father of a four-year-old boy. He writes at Mail Online about what thirteen-year-olds know about sex.
It seemed as if the children's entire expectation of sex had been defined by what they see in online porn. He has produced a documentary which will air in Britain beginning tomorrow.A girl added, 'On Facebook, you just scroll down and it's there. If any of your friends like it, it comes up on your home page.'
'I find it dirty and disturbing,' said one 15-year-old boy. 'I try not to look at it, but people just keep sending it to each other. They email disgusting links to each other's mobile phones to shock.' One girl put her head in her hands and said, 'It's just gross'.
It's horrifying enough for parents to know that children can get porn via the internet. But to think they get it from Facebook - the social media currency that has become a universal must-have for teenagers globally - will strike terror into their hearts.
I asked the teenagers: 'On a scale of one to ten, how likely would you say it is that boys and girls your age are watching porn online?'
The reply was a chorus of tens, nines and one eight.
When I asked the children if there were parental controls on the internet at home, they all said no, their parents trusted them. They all admitted their parents had no idea what they were watching, and would be shocked if they did know.
According to the survey, the boys appear largely happy about watching porn - and were twice as likely as girls to do so - but the girls are significantly more confused, angry and frightened by online sexual imagery. The more they see, the stronger they feel.
I feel as if an entire generation's sexuality has been hijacked by grotesque online porn.
Daubney set out to find out what porn is doing to the brains of people eho are addicted to it. He enlisted the help of Dr Valerie Voon, a neuroscientist at Cambridge University and a global authority on addiction. She was interested in a particular brain region called the ventral striatum - the 'reward centre' - where our sense of pleasure is produced. This is one of the areas where an addict will show a heightened response to visual representations of their addiction - whether it's a syringe or a bottle of vodka.
What we discovered was a revelation. When shown porn, the reward centre of normal volunteers barely reacted, but that of the compulsive porn users lit up like a Christmas tree.
If porn does have the insidious power to be addictive, then letting our children consume it freely via the internet is like leaving heroin lying around the house, or handing out vodka at the school gates. And this toxic effect is filtering down directly into young girls' lives.
We learned that the teenage brain is especially vulnerable to addiction.
The brain's reward centre is fully developed by the time we're teenagers, but the part of the brain that regulates our urges - the pre-frontal cortex - isn't fully developed until our mid-20s. The brains of teenagers are not wired to say 'stop', they are wired to want more. The implications of this study are profoundly troubling.
So who is going to take on the responsibility for protecting our children until they are old enough to do it for themselves?
If we stick our head in the sand, we are fooling only ourselves.
Rights come from freedom; freedom does not come from rights
T. Greer writes that
Only when power is decentralized – so that families and communities can solve their own problems without relying on their betters and can successfully resist actions imposed on them by others – is real liberty possible. Rights come from freedom; freedom does not come from rights.Absent the power to defend and define one’s own freedom, rights and liberties are simply gifts from the machine. One should expect them to change with the whims of those manning the control panel.
Are you worried that what you say on the Internet may harm your livelihood?
Has the electronic village to some extent re-created the social pressures of the traditional village? David Foster notes,
Certainly, the ability of the Internet to facilitate the distribution of information and opinion, beyond the control of the media gatekeepers, has been and is of tremendous value in preserving liberty. Without it, we as a society would be in even more trouble than we currently are. But the erosion of privacy, and the resultant fear of expressing oneself or acting in “unapproved” ways that might “harm your permanent record” are factors whose influence in undeniable.The widespread distribution and sharing of information enabled by technology becomes particularly dangerous when the national government is in the hands of people who lack respect for individual liberties–and the United States is currently in the hands of exactly such a group of people, in the form of the Obama administration and its Congressional allies–and when the administrative discretion granted to individual bureaucrats is high. Can anyone doubt the high likelihood that information from the Electronic Medical Records being implemented as part of Obamacare will at some point be used to destroy political opponents of the Administration? Can anyone doubt that, as the ideology of “progressivism” becomes increasingly intolerant, large numbers of people will be denied jobs, promotions, college admissions, based on opinions that they have expressed in a Facebook post or a blog post at some point in their lives?…and that expressions of opinion will–unless the climate changes markedly away from one of “political correctness”–tend to become much more guarded, just as a village merchant might be reluctant to say anything to offend the small group of people on whose goodwill he is permanently dependent for his livelihood?
How the wealthy control governments
Carl from Chicago quotes this passage from a Wall Street Journal article on the wealth of Chines politicians:
According to the Hurun Report, as cited by Bloomberg, the 70 richest delegates in China’s National People’s Congress have a combined net worth of 565.8 billion yuan or $89.8 billion. That’s more than 10 times the combined net worths of all the members of Congress, the Supreme Court and the President. (Their collective riches are only $7.5 billion.)Then Carl makes this comment:
Thus I can only imagine the rage I’d have over the same type of rich trappings if I were Chinese. Unfortunately, they can’t vote, and protests tend to go down badly with authorities. As bad as our system is, in terms of being captured by the interests of the wealthy, it is a comparatively egalitarian route compared to our largest economic competitor.
Obama's policies: Good for Iran, bad for America
Former UN Ambassador John Bolton says that Obama has implemented a P.T. Barnum theory of international diplomacy: "there's a sucker born every minute."
He’s sitting in the White House right now, and they’re going to take advantage of it,”Who are the beneficiaries of this Obama doctrine? Russia, Syria, and Iran.
Islamic penetrtion of the F.B.I.
Do you know about Ikhwan? According to Wikipedia, Ikhwan
was an Islamic religious militia which formed the main military force of the Arab ruler Ibn Saud and played a key role in establishing him as ruler of most of the Arabian Peninsula, in his new state of Saudi Arabia. After being crushed at the Battle of Sabilla, and their rebel leaders killed, the Ikhwan were eliminated as an organized military force in early 1930. The remnants of the irregular Ikhwanis were incorporated into Ibn Saud's regular security forces.
Do you know about Dawa? It is a term which
denotes proselytizing of Islam
Clare M. Lopez uses both terms in a piece at the Center for Security Policy about how Islamists have penetrated the F.B.I.
Engaging in the war of ideas requires first studying the enemy’s ideas, not purging them from all consideration. Enemy jihadis whose terrorist-supporting activities, ideology and identities have been exposed in a court of law can never be suitable “outreach” partners for law enforcement agencies—especially agencies like the FBI that have been duped and penetrated for far too long by their Ikhwan comrades.
Does Obama have an infatuation with Islamists?
Christopher Holton writes,
America’s Hard Left Begins its Latest Love Affair with Our Enemies.The uber-left-wing publication Mother Jones and the George Soros-funded organization Think Progress, both of which have attacked the Center for Security Policy relentlessly, are now reportedly about to embark upon a shameful media “outreach” campaign to the genocidal maniac rulers of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
This comes on the heels of President Obama’s ill-advised telephone call with the president of Iran, which the administration is crowing about as if it was the greatest breakthrough in diplomacy since the fall of the Soviet Union.
The Left’s continued infatuation with the Islamists is not only odd and irresponsible, it is hazardous to US national security. The basis of ignorance upon which these initiatives are founded is beyond inexcusable.
This is the equivalent of a combined media/diplomatic outreach campaign aimed at Goebbels, Himmler and Hitler in 1936. But in this case, it could very well be enabling the surpassing of the nuclear threshold by the world’s most active terrorist-sponsoring nation, which has also been waging a clandestine war against America for over 30 years.
Times have really changed
I don't watch t.v. unless I am at the gym, where t.v.s are everywhere you look, or in a restaurant or doctor's office. Therefore, I did not know about the Showtime series entitled "Masters of Sex," which is reviewed today in the Denver Post by Joanne Ostrow.
Growing up in the 1940s and 1950s, there were no x-Rated movies or cable television or internet. I guess there were Playboy and Penthouse, but I don't remember how old I was when I first looked at the women therein. Some time in my high school years, I believe. Nowadays even to watch a You Tube video of their favorite Taylor Swift or Selena Gomez songs, third graders see a bombardment of sluttily undressed women. And Miley Cirus: wasn't she the star of the Disney Channel series Hannah Montana? So now little girls think that you graduate from Hannah Montana to become a twerker?
Funny thing is, I didn't need the extra stimulation to be attracted to girls. All I had to do was look at them, and my male physiology did the rest!
Joanne Ostrow writes about those days here,
Sure, Americans trusted Dr. Spock to tell them how to raise babies, but they had little information about what was involved in actually making them.That totally describes me at the time my wife somehow managed to become pregnant with our first child! I knew nothing about those hidden areas of female anatomy. The parts that I saw, though, were more than enough to turn me on!
Looking for your soul?
Howard Mansfield writes about clutter.
The storage shed is a symptom of our cluttered lives. Clutter is the cholesterol of the home; it's clogging the hearth. The "Clean Sweep" team from the television show of that name usually hauls away about half a ton of trash from each house that it rescues from clutter. (Which may explain why 23% of Americans admit to paying bills late because they can't find them, and why 25% of people with two-car garages have to park their cars outside.)"We have too much. We're over-housed, over-clothed, overfed and over-entertained," said Don Aslett, getting right to the point. Aslett would know; he's been poking around houses for 50 years. In college, Aslett started what has become one of the country's largest cleaning companies, and his books on clutter helped to establish the genre. People call Aslett, saying, "We don't know how all this stuff got here." Think of it as a whodunit. He solves the mystery and gently interrogates the guilty. Ask yourself: "Does this item enhance your life?" If not, get rid of it.
Television sprawls out to 120 or 240 channels or more. There are more TV sets than people in the average home. Adults are looking at screens — televisions, computers, cellphones, even GPS devices — about 8.5 hours a day, according to a study by the Council for Research Excellence. TV ads claim about an hour of each day. And the time spent watching television — 72 days out of each year — continues to increase, alongside the rapid rise of watching online videos.
Somewhere in there, between the physical and virtual clutter, we are losing the ordinary qualities of home — the solitude to recollect, the time for families to talk. (Yet another study has clocked only 14.5 minutes a day of actual conversation between parents and children.) We are losing the "nothing much" that is home. The room for tumult and quiet, for passing the time with friends, for the ordinary pleasures of a day well lived.
The Federal Reserve: our allocater of credit, wealth, and opportunity
Is there a better wordsmith than George Will? Not many. That is why it is notable that Will writes today about how journalists write about the Federal Reserve. Will's opening sentence:
Because Ben Bernanke's public persona is as mild as milk, the transformation in American governance in which he has participated is imperfectly understood and hence insufficiently deplored.
Later in his column he notes,
Slowing the Fed’s bond purchases is called “tapering,” which means more modest “quantitative easing.” This is how governments talk when trying not to be understood. By continuing the pace of “easing” — printing money — the Fed has acknowledged that its fine-tuning has failed.To assume that a few government officials can and should steer America’s vast, globally connected economy — hundreds of millions of people making trillions of decisions a day — is a kind of confidence peculiar to the progressive temperament.
I don't think I have ever read one of Will's columns without needing to look up the meaning of a word. In this week's column, for example, he writes,
The Fed has become the model of applied progressivism, under which power flows to clever regulators who operate independent of political control. The Fed is, however, a creation of Congress, which may not forever refrain from putting a bridle and snaffle on a Fed that increasingly allocates credit, wealth and opportunity.
Snaffle? I Googled it:
noun:
1. (on a bridle) a simple bit, typically a jointed one, used with a single set of reins. a bridle with a snaffle bit. noun: snaffle bridle; plural noun: snaffle bridles
verb
1. take (something) for oneself, typically quickly or without permission. "shall we snaffle some of Bernard's sherry?"
Advertisers: Ignore boomers at your peril!
Each year when the Super Bowl becomes the Olympics of TV commercials, most of the ads are trying to sell cars and trucks, colas and beers, detergents and deodorants, and more cars and trucks. Baby boomers use that stuff, too. All of it. Yet less than 5 percent of advertising is geared toward my generation.Advertisers have always defined their ideal demographic from the age of 18 (when you start to make some money) to 49 (when they think you're still flexible enough to spend it on something new). My message to those advertisers is, the numbers have shifted. My generation's flexibility lasts longer. Ignore that at your peril.
The trouble is, they think we're set in our ways. Their mistake, again. Our parents, from the Greatest Generation, were like that. Once they bought an appliance from Sears, they bought all their appliances from Sears. Once they drove a Buick, they always drove a Buick.
But baby boomers, which is anyone born between 1946 and 1964, have long since turned that practice on its end. Tell me about a better car and I might buy it. Convince me there's a better beer and I might drink it. So before dismissing us, remember that it was baby boomers who invented everything from smartphones to the Big Bertha golf club to the Internet. Maybe our hair has changed, but our appetite for innovation hasn't.
Fracking poverty
In 2008, only 4 percent 0f U.S. natural gas production came from "fracked" shale wells. That number grew to 40 percent by 2012. If you compared average natural gas prices from 2003 to 2008 against 2012 prices, you would see a staggering 62 percent decline. That meant an energy savings of more than $110 billion to the U.S. economy, all thanks to fracking shale formations full of natural gas.In 2012, LIHEAP (the federal Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program) provided $3.5 billion in cash assistance. That same year, the comparative decrease in natural gas costs for low-income households (heating and electricity) was more than $10 billion.
The next time someone asks you to sign a petition to ban fracking, consider the lack of science behind their claims and the costly financial impact on low-income households if a moratorium succeeds.
Even left-winger Lisa Jackson, former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, says she is
unaware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water.
What are the numbers?
What are the numbers? How much debt do we have? As of May 19, the debt ceiling was 16.7 trillion dollars. The amount that the United States will have borrowed just in the year 2013 is 4 trillion dollars. The federal government is spending 60 billion dollars this year.
The Treasury Secretary days Oct 17 will be the date in which the United States will be unable to pay its expenses, if the debt ceiling is not raised. Its cash on had on that date will be 30 billion dollars. You can't pay your bills with 30 billion dollars?
How many times has Congress raised the debt ceiling since 1960? 78 times.
Information found at the United States Department of the Treasury and David Thompson of The Atlantic.
Bias of the old dying dinosaur media
Do you read "the paper" every day? I don't. It is such an unpleasant experience to read the biased coverage. I do it a few times each week just to see how the various items are being presented to the American people, who pick up the paper to see if there are any coupons or deals on items they don't need.
For example, The Denver Post today carries a piece from three Washington Post reporters about the possible shutdown of the government. Why does it take three big time Washington Post reporters to write such an uninformative piece loaded with biased adjectives? The reporters use words to describe Republicans that they would never use to describe Islamic terrorist killers. Additionally, creatures like Harry Reid and White House Press Secretary Carney give them additional extreme epithets they can quote. "Relentless assault," Boehner "bowed again" to the GOP "right wing hardliners," under "pressure" from Texas Senator Ted Cruz and other GOP "hardliners," "after weeks of futile political games," "reckless and irresponsible." Boehner's decision to appease his right wing keeps an uneasy peace in his "fractious" caucus. But it "bodes ill," "bad for the economy," and a default would be potentially "catastrophic."
I guess I'll move onto the next catastrophic story.
Saturday, September 28, 2013
Sarah Palin on politicians fulfilling election promises
Americans are getting slammed by Obamacare right now. Workforces are decimated as health care prices rise. Public opinion is on our side. If now was not the time to unite and fight it, when was? Those who are attacking Cruz and Lee’s efforts have forgotten how negotiations are won.Ted Cruz and Mike Lee fought to fulfill the campaign promises every Republican made, and their actions have been revelatory for all of us.
Hunters know what flushing dogs do. Cruz and Lee were acting as the grassroots’ flushing dogs. Their actions showed us who was willing to stand up for hard working Americans and who wasn’t. We thank Senators Vitter, Paul, Crapo, Enzi, Fischer, Roberts, Scott, Heller, Grassley, Toomey, Moran, Rubio, Shelby, Risch, Inhofe, Portman, and Sessions for standing with Cruz and Lee.
In 2010, a galvanized grassroots rallied against Obamacare to carry Republicans to victory. But in 2012, many in the grassroots stayed home, and we saw how that turned out for the GOP.
Unfortunately, the message of some politicians today seems to be: “Whoopsie, seems I can’t fulfill my election promises, but vote for me again and I promise to do what I promised last time.”
Sorry, that doesn’t cut it. America, you deserve better. If they can’t do anything with the power you gave them through their elected office, then you deserve someone else to give it a try.
2014 is just around the corner, and we’re ready for it. Support those who do us a favor by flushing out politicians wanting to hide. Retrieving liberty must be the point in all this.
First-world problems
Did you know that there is a web site called Middle Class Problems? It is a Twitter account that re-tweets problems being expressed by first-world inhabitants. Bored Panda has some examples. Here is their introduction to the post:
I was going to write a good introduction to this article, but my fingers hurt from eating too much sushi with chopsticks. Statements like these are a hallmark of the first-world problems meme, which features the complaints of entitled people complaining about everyday occurrences. Now the Middle Class Problems Twitter account has taken to re-tweeting real-life comments from people who have had it up to here with their iPhones, house cleaners and grass-fed organic fair-trade hot dogs. Their cleaners are late, their massages are all wrong, their bechamel is runny, and they‘re not going to take the injustice anymore.Some of us love to hate first-world problem memes because they’re an example of the first world’s decadence and sense of entitlement. Some of us like them because we sometimes find ourselves guilty of complaining about the same inconsequential problems. Whatever’s the case for you, we’re sure that you will enjoy reading these tweets from people struggling with the difficulties and stresses of first-world life.
Some history in black and white photos
Bored Panda has some historic photos. Here are a few of them.
Elvis in the Army.
Testing bullet proof vests
The Hindenberg disaster 1936
Annette Kellerman promotes women’s right to wear a fitted one-piece bathing suit, 1907. She was arrested for indecency.
Annie Edison Taylor, the first person to survive going over Niagara Falls in a barrel, 1901
Suntan vending machine, 1949
Measuring bathing suits – if they were too short, women would be fined, 1920′s
Martin Luther King with his son removing a burnt cross from their front yard, 1960
A space chimp posing to camera after a successful mission to space, 1961
Cat texting
If your cat could text you, what would he say? Here are some possible examples, with appropriate replies.
We can spin, too!
PJ Media's Zombie posted the best of the best photoshopped captions of Nakoula being arrested by L.A. Sheriff Deputies a year ago. If you, like me, had not seen them, I urge you to click on the above link and go see them all.
I learned about the photoshopping presentation by reading this post about Benghazi at The Bookworm Room:
Within just a day or two, administration flunkies discovered that Nakoula had violated his parole (nobody says Nakoula is the most savory character in the world), had him arrested, and kept him hidden away in the bowels of the American prison system. Now, over a year later, he is finally to be free.
In that intervening year, of course, we’ve learned that everything the administration said about Nakoula’s little video was a lie. The rioting in Egypt took place because of the September 11 anniversary, while the attack on the Benghazi consulate was a carefully planned attack by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. To the extent the jihadists talked about the video, it was an ex post facto cover for their terrorist activities — and the Obama administration knew this from the minute the riots in Egypt and the attack in Benghazi came into being. After all, Ambassador Christopher Stevens had seen the attack coming for some time and had begged for increased security in Benghazi. Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, however, turned a deaf ear to his pleas.
When the attack finally came, barring Hillary’s single phone call and Obama’s quick visit to the situation room, both Hillary and Obama were AWOL. We don’t know what Hillary was doing, but we know that Obama was getting some rest before campaigning in Las Vegas.
With those facts in mind, how does the Associated Press report on the fact that Nakoula, the Obama administration’s designated scapegoat, is finally being set free? This way:
A California man behind an anti-Muslim film that led to violence in parts of the Middle East is due to be released from federal custody this week.
Wow! That the AP can say that when we know with certainty that Nakoula’s film did not lead to violence is a breathtaking example of pro-administration spin. In the year since the attack, AP, which is supposed to track actual news, must have known that Al Qaeda used the film as a cover for a coordinated, planned attack against American outposts in the Middle East, and a sleazy, dishonest, incompetent administration seized on that cover in an effort to hide its own gross culpability. Pravda couldn’t have done a better job of covering its government master than AP did in that single, dishonest sentence.
The Patsy of Benghazi is free at last
Remember Nakoula Basseley Nakoula? Yes, that Nakoula, the one who produced a video entitled The Innocence of Muslims? Yeah, he is the one who Obama and Clinton blamed for the massacre in Benghazi. As Rich Lowry wrote, he is the first person in America to be jailed for violating Islamic blasphemy laws. He is the Patsy of Benghazi. Well, one year later, he is now out of jail, having been released Thursday into the custody of Pastor Wiley Drake of the First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park, California. More on Pastor Drake later.
Nakoula's underlying offense is that he exercised his First Amendment rights. He produced a stupid, offensive video (I was one of about fourteen people who viewed the video before it was taken off You tube). He had previously been placed on parole, and had been court ordered not to use any more aliases. He plead guilty to four charges, and was sentenced to one year in prison and four years of supervised release. He had previously been convicted of a charge of intent to manufacture Meth, spent a year in jail, violated probation, spent another year in jail, was later sentenced to 21 months in prison for bank fraud (which is when he had time to write the script for his movie), and was out on probation when he produced the film lampooning the prophet Mohammed. He was also sentenced to death by a Muslim Brotherhood court in Egypt last year for defaming Islam by producing the stupid movie.
Pastor Drake grew up in Magnolia, Arkansas. He spent much of his time with his grandfather, Hamp Smead Beasley, a horse trader, who took Wiley to revival meetings. Drake ran in California for Vice President of the United States on the Independent Party ticket with Alan Keyes as the Presidential candidate in 2008. He was a busy guy in 2008. He was also party to a lawsuit claiming that the "evil illegal alien" Barack Obama was ineligible to be President, because he was not born in the United States.
This is only going to get better.
Friday, September 27, 2013
Lie about your credentials? No problem: John McCain will hire you!
The Cable at Foreign Policy Magazine says that John McCain has hired disgraced liar Elizabeth O'Bagy, and she will start work in his office Monday. She is the person who claimed to have a PhD, as she wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal on the Middle East recently.
More information about The Reliigion of Peace in Kenya Shopping Mall Attack
Kenya shopping mall attack: Nairobi hostages were tortured before they were killed, says police doctor. Rumours of rapes, disfigurement and beheadings are rife in Kenya’s capital, according to the British newspaper The Independent.
A police doctor scouring Nairobi’s Westgate mall for bodies after a four-day siege by Islamist gunmen that claimed dozens of lives has said victims were tortured before they died, according to a Kenyan newspaper.“Those are not allegations. Those are f****** truths,” the doctor, a forensics expert, told The Star newspaper. “They removed balls, eyes, ears, nose. They get your hand and sharpen it like a pencil then they tell you to write your name with the blood. They drive knives inside a child’s body. Actually, if you look at all the bodies, unless those ones that were escaping, fingers are cut by pliers, the noses are ripped by pliers.”
'Eyes gouged out, bodies hanging from hooks, and fingers removed with pliers': Horrific claims of torture emerge as soldiers reveal gory Kenyan mall massacre details Kenyan soldiers claim to find scenes of torture by mall terrorists They say children found dead in food fridges with knives still in bodies. Men were said to have been castrated and had fingers removed...
Waste of time? I don't think so, Harry
Guest post by Suzie Darnall
"For lack of a better way of describing this, it has been a big waste of time."
This is what Harry Reid said on the Senate floor after Ted Cruz's more than 21 hour "filibuster". Of course, I believe Harry Reid does find the legislative process of our form of representative government to be a waste of time. I am quite sure he would much prefer that our Democrat overlords could merely make their demands known, point their fingers, and say, "So let it be written, so let it be done". Much like Pharaoh in the movie, "Ten Commandments". In fact, this is kinda what The-Man-Who-Would-Be-King (AKA: Obama) does with his executive orders, ain't it? And, what he can't get done that way, he and his cohorts sneak through various backdoor methods such as late night votes, regulations, "czar" appointments, or other schemes that bypass the checks and balances of our government process.
Well, I do not agree that it was a waste of time. I think it was a worthwhile effort to get as much of the ObamaCare fiasco into the news cycle as possible. If reading "Green Eggs and Ham" or imitating Darth Vader kept public interest on Ted Cruz a little bit more, I am all for it! Sometimes you gotta think and speak outside the box to get some folks to wake up and see the train wreck coming down the track. And, I think most sensible people agree that ObamaCare is just a disaster waiting to happen . . . the parts of it that haven't already crashed down upon us like two-tons of rusty and useless steel.
I applaud Senator Ted Cruz and his loyal companions for their efforts at waving the danger flags along the track, trying to save people from the derailing train that is Obama's signature legislation. It is going to potentially devastate or destroy the 40-hour work week, our ability to get adequate medical care, a large portion of the economy, and most family incomes. Not to mention more as yet unseen problems that seem to crop up exponentially with regard to this law.
Obama and his minions call it the "Affordable Care Act". Well, everything thus far is proving it to be entirely unaffordable! In fact, it is so costly that Congress has even voted in exemptions or subsidies for themselves and their staffs. Obama has granted waivers all over the place to big business and union cronies. Of course, there is no relief in sight for the man-on-the-street taxpaying citizen. Even though the healthcare that was supposed to save the average American family $2500 per year is now projected to cost that same family more than $7500 over what they pay now. Meaning Obama and his number-crunchers got it wrong by $10,000!!! That's a pretty big "OOPS!" in most family budgets.
I do agree with "Prince" Harry to a small degree about there being waste in DC. But, it is a waste of time and money that goes on pert near all the time. If I had my way we would not pay more than minimum wage to anyone in government and we would require them to clock in-and-out with no options for over-time. I'd also cut their staffs to a minimum, so the legislators actually had to do their own work. Maybe if it was a little less cushy and a whole lot harder we'd get a little more competent people applying for the privilege. And, above all, at this time, I'd require them to use the same healthcare plans that are available to the average citizen across America. No so-called Cadillac plan, subsidies, waivers, exemptions, or special treatment of any kind. If it can't be had by John Smith or Mary Jones, it shouldn't be in place for Senator Harry Reid or President Obama. See how long they thought ObamaCare was wonderful then!
I thank Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Paul Rand, Marco Rubio, and those who stood with the American citizens during this recent "filibuster". I know it was merely symbolic, but then again, so is our flag and it is revered across the continent by true patriots. Sometimes symbols are among the most important things we have. A wedding band. A ribbon for valor. The sacrament. All symbols. All important. A waste of time? I don't think so, Harry. Not at all.
© Suzann C. Darnall, SEPTEMBER 2013
The winning Obamacare video. Pay up Sebelius!
My vote goes to Reason t.v. to be winner of the Sebelius online video contest.
Kids would love it!
Okay. Tokyo gets the 2020 Olympic Games. A Japanese professor is now pushing hard for "Hide and Seek" to be considered a sport worthy of inclusion in the 2020 games. Read about it here.
Thanks to American Digest
Weird, but fascinating
I’d like to ask John Kerry when he decided to put away his torn blue jeans, his faded military jacket, the peace sign necklace and beads and stop pretending to be the benevolent hippy he claimed to be when he was young. And I would like to ask that because that young, seemingly idealistic John Kerry would have no clue who is the botoxed, face lifted, designer clothing wearing member of the establishment he became. A cynic might ask would he?You can tell they are frauds just through the last ten years of history. If George W. Bush was inclined to take out Saddam Hussein over very obvious national security risks, these aging hipsters lost their minds. Bashar al Assad poses no security threat to the United States and is, in fact, holding down the truly dangerous Islamists in his own country – and these same peacenik hipsters suddenly sound trumpets like Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. One would think, if one was truly a peaceful person and believed all of the tired clichés like “Make Love Not War” and the fatigued chants like “Hey Hey LBJ how many kids have you killed today”, that they’d be consistently against war. Apparently they are not. And people wonder why the word phony gets tossed at them.
I also hate to break it to aging hipster John Kerry, but Bashar al Assad is keeping the lid on the real enemy here and that’s the Islamists. Apparently, a secular Pan Arab nationalist like Assad is awful but an Allahu Ackbar screaming nut throwing grenades into a Syrian Christian church is an ally to the former “Flower Children”. Fascinating. Weird, but fascinating.
Thanks to American Digest
Goldberg on liberalism
Jonah Goldberg writes about liberalism:
Seriously, who else do people think are behind efforts to ban big sodas or sue hairdressers for charging women more than men? Who harasses little kids for making toy guns out of sticks, Pop Tarts, or their own fingers? Who wants to regulate the air you breathe, the food you eat, and the beverages you drink? Who wants to control your thermostat? Take your guns? Your cigarettes? Heck, your candy cigarettes? Who’s in favor of speech codes on campuses and “hate crime” laws everywhere? Who’s in favor of free speech when it comes to taxpayer-subsidized “art” and pornography (so long as you use a condom, if liberals get their way) but then bang their spoons on their high chairs for strict regulations when it comes to political speech? Who loves meddling, finger-wagging billionaires like Michael Bloomberg when they use state power and taxpayer money to herd, bully, and nudge people but thinks billionaires like the Koch brothers who want to shrink government are the root of all tyranny?At the national level, who bypassed Congress to empower the EPA to regulate the atmosphere? Oh, and who pushed Obamacare on a country that didn’t want it? Who defends bending the entire country — including religious institutions — into a national health-care scheme dedicated to the proposition of live and let live so long as you live the way the Department of Health and Human Services says you should?
Social liberalism — better understood as progressivism — is a worldview that seeks to use the state to support its preferred values and culture. That isn’t libertarianism. Support for abortion rights does not make you a libertarian; it makes you someone who wants very lax regulations on abortion for ideological reasons. Which is why socially liberal bureaucrats in D.C. want to make you wait 24 hours to get a tattoo of a baby on your arm, but there’s no waiting to have an abortion.
It was about meth
Remember Matthew Shepard? He was the Wyoming gay man allegedly killed by homophobes. Turns out he was killed by his gay lover. It was about meth, which Shepard dealt.
According to author
Stephen Jiminez, Shepard was a meth dealer himself and he was friends and sex partners with the man who led in his killing. Indeed, his killer may have killed him because Shepard allegedly came into possession of a large amount of methamphetamine and refused to give it up.The book also shows that Shepard’s killer was on a five-day meth binge at the time of the killing.
Geniuses
Pauline Wolak asks about Navy Yard shooter Aaron Alexis,
What the hell did anyone do to stop this jerk from ruining the lives of innocent people again and again?Two incidents with guns and treatment for serious mental illness tell me this guy was a walking time bomb. How the hell did those closest to him not see it?
When he shot out the tires of a car owned by men he felt “disrespected him”, were you surprised? When he shot into the ceiling of his apartment because his upstairs neighbor was too loud for his taste, were you shocked? When he was booted from the Navy for a “history of misconduct”, were you confused? Were you completely unaware of his arrest record?
About as unaware as the geniuses that gave this guy a government security clearance, apparently.
Betraying friends, promoting enemies, despised by both
Mark Steyn has some observations about the current state of Obama's America:
Alas, in the world beyond the penthouse of the Waldorf Towers, it's harder to tell whom the A-list invites should go to: From Afghanistan to Egypt, a debt-ridden America bankrolls its own eclipse, betraying friends, promoting enemies, despised by both. In the dog days of summer, the new national-security adviser tweets it in from her pad in the Hamptons or wherever, even as the hyperpower readies for its next unwon war: After America's slo-mo defeat in the Hindu Kush, and its ineffectual leading-from-behind in Libya, and its thwarted Muslim Brotherhood outreach in Cairo, Obama is confidently dispatching the gunboats to Syria. If you're Bashar Assad, you must be as befuddled as that Zurich handbag clerk: Hillary hailed you as a "reformer"; no senatorial frequent flyer courted you more assiduously than John Kerry; the guys trying to depose you hate the Great Satan far more than you do, and are the local branch office of the fellows who turned lower Manhattan into a big smoking hole. Yet Washington is readying to take you out — or at any rate, in George W. Bush's unimprovable summation of desultory Clinton-style warmongering, readying to fire a $2 million cruise missile through a tent and hit a camel in the butt. The only novelty with this latest of ineptly rattled sabers is whether Tsar Putin will stand by and let Obama knock off a Russian client.*
Observations and questions
Suzanne Olden looks at what happens in Gun-Free zones:
Dec. 14, 2012: Adam Lanza fatally shot 20 children and six adult staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. SCHOOL-GUN FREE– Aug. 5, 2012: Six Sikh temple members were killed when Wade Michael Page opened fire in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. TEMPLE/CHURCH-GUN FREE
– July 20, 2012: During the midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colo., James Holmes killed 12 people and wounded 58. THEATER/MALL-GUN FREE
– January 8, 2011, Gabrielle Giffords and eighteen others were shot during a constituent meeting held in a supermarket parking lot in Tuscon, AZ. NOT GUN FREE, OUTDOOR PUBLIC PLACE
– Nov. 5, 2009: Forty-three people were shot by Nidal Malik Hasan at the Fort Hood army base in Texas. Thirteen were killed and 29 were wounded. MILITARY BASE-GUN FREE
– April 16, 2007: Virginia Tech, Seung-Hui Choi, gunned down 56 people. Thirty-two people died. SCHOOL-GUN FREE
– Oct. 2, 2006: An Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster, Penn. five girls were killed by Charles Carl Roberts.SCHOOL-GUN FREE (not to mention a religious sect that is non-violent and an easy target)
– March 21, 2005: Jeffrey Weise opened fire on Red Lake Senior High School, killing nine people on campus. SCHOOL-GUN FREE
– April 20, 1999: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold shot up Columbine High School in Colorado. They killed 13 people and wounded 21 others. SCHOOL-GUN FREE
Then he asks a series of questions:
First question: Why are our military bases “gun free zones?” Does anyone else see the utter ridiculousness of that statement? A military base being GUN FREE??? They should be one of the safest places to be. Our soldiers, seamen and airmen are trained in the use and care of weapons. So why in God’s name would a military base be a “gun free” zone? If Tuesday morning and the Ft. Hood incident showed us anything, it’s that our soldiers should be allowed to defend themselves on base with the weapons they are trained to use. How much faster and how many lives would have been saved if those on the Navy Yard had weapons available to them?
Is anyone else seeing a theme here? Eight of nine of the shootings listed above were in a gun-free zone. Which brings up the serious question of: why do we have them when they do nothing more than make people targets?
Next question: Why are people clamoring for more background checks when they obviously don’t stop shootings like this? Looking at the history of the shooter will make it abundantly clear why it’s obvious. First, he was a former member of the military and passed those background checks. Second, he has a concealed carry permit, and made it through those checks. He had just recently gotten clearance to be on the Navy Yard as a civilian contractor. As with enlisted, civilian contractors also have to be background checked. Just LAST WEEK he purchased a shot gun in Virginia and passed the Federal background checks for that purchase. This man was background checked to the nth degree. Even after his arrests for gun issues, and psychiatric issues, he was given the civilian contractor clearance and gun permit. More stringent background checks would have made zero difference.
Next question: Why wasn’t the shooter Tuesday prosecuted for the gun incidents for which he had been arrested? More laws don’t work because most laws aren’t enforced. The shooter Tuesday was arrested twice and not prosecuted. He should have been. That decision not to prosecute shouldn’t penalize the rest of us for doing something we are legally allowed to do – own a firearm.
Fetch his thank you note
Kiev man finds a dog that looks just like Putin.
And Gerard from American Digest adds,
"Sit. Stay. Good dog. Now shit on the president of the United States and fetch his Thank You Note. Gooooood boy!"
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