from this morning
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Monday, May 14, 2012
The Spirit of Geert Wilders
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| Mark Steyn |
A foreword to Wilders’ Marked for Death.
When I was asked to write a foreword to Geert Wilders’ new book, my first reaction, to be honest, was to pass. Mr. Wilders lives under 24/7 armed guard because significant numbers of motivated people wish to kill him, and it seemed to me, as someone who’s attracted more than enough homicidal attention over the years, that sharing space in these pages was likely to lead to an uptick in my own death threats. Who needs it? Why not just plead too crowded a schedule and suggest the author try elsewhere? I would imagine Geert Wilders gets quite a lot of this.
And then I took a stroll in the woods, and felt vaguely ashamed at the ease with which I was willing to hand a small victory to his enemies. After I saw off the Islamic enforcers in my own country, their frontman crowed to The Canadian Arab News that, even though the Canadian Islamic Congress had struck out in three different jurisdictions in their attempt to criminalize my writing about Islam, the lawsuits had cost my magazine (he boasted) two million bucks, and thereby “attained our strategic objective — to increase the cost of publishing anti-Islamic material.” In the Netherlands, Mr. Wilders’ foes, whether murderous jihadists or the multicultural establishment, share the same “strategic objective” — to increase the cost of associating with him beyond that which most people are willing to bear. It is not easy to be Geert Wilders. He has spent almost a decade in a strange, claustrophobic, transient, and tenuous existence little different from kidnap victims or, in his words, a political prisoner. He is under round-the-clock guard because of explicit threats to murder him by Muslim extremists.
Yet he’s the one who gets put on trial for incitement.
In 21st-century Amsterdam, you’re free to smoke marijuana and pick out a half-naked sex partner from the front window of her shop. But you can be put on trial for holding the wrong opinion about a bloke who died in the seventh century.
And, although Mr. Wilders was eventually acquitted by his kangaroo court, the determination to place him beyond the pale is unceasing: “The far-right anti-immigration party of Geert Wilders” (The Financial Times) . . . “Far-right leader Geert Wilders” (The Guardian) . . . “Extreme right anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders” (Agence France-Presse) is “at the fringes of mainstream politics” (Time) . . . Mr. Wilders is so far out on the far-right extreme fringe that his party is the third biggest in parliament. Indeed, the present Dutch government governs only through the support of Wilders’ Party for Freedom. So he’s “extreme” and “far-right” and out on the “fringe,” but the seven parties that got far fewer votes than him are “mainstream”? That right there is a lot of what’s wrong with European political discourse and its media coverage: Maybe he only seems so “extreme” and “far-right” because they’re the ones out on the fringe.
And so a Dutch parliamentarian lands at Heathrow to fulfill a public appearance and is immediately deported by the government of a nation that was once the crucible of liberty. The British Home Office banned Mr. Wilders as a threat to “public security” — not because he was threatening any member of the public, but because prominent Muslims were threatening him: The Labour-party peer Lord Ahmed pledged to bring a 10,000-strong mob to lay siege to the House of Lords if Wilders went ahead with his speaking engagement there.
Yet it’s not enough to denormalize the man himself, you also have to make an example of those who decide to find out what he’s like for themselves. The South Australian senator Cory Bernardi met Mr. Wilders on a trip to the Netherlands and came home to headlines like “Senator Under Fire For Ties To Wilders” (The Sydney Morning Herald) and “Calls For Cory Bernardi’s Scalp Over Geert Wilders” (The Australian). Members not only of the opposing party but even of his own called for Senator Bernardi to be fired from his post as parliamentary secretary to the Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. And why stop there? A government spokesman “declined to say if he believed Mr Abbott should have Senator Bernardi expelled from the Liberal Party.” If only Bernardi had shot the breeze with more respectable figures — Hugo Chávez, say, or a spokesperson for Hamas. I’m pleased to report that, while sharing a platform with me in Adelaide some months later, Bernardi declared that, as a freeborn citizen, he wasn’t going to be told who he’s allowed to meet with.
Leading Egypt candidate calls 'racist' Israel a threat
As the world sits back and continues to allow maniacal Islam to grow and flourish, the entire world is put in jeopardy. Is this the ultimate desire of world leaders? I'm beginning to think it may be. - Reggie
A leading Islamist candidate in Egypt's presidential election has branded Israel a "racist state" and said a shared 1979 peace treaty was "a national security threat" that should be revised.
Abdel Moneim Abul Fotouh also denounced Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden's assassination by US special forces as an act of "state terrorism," in a late Saturday Egyptian television interview.
Abul Fotouh, a front runner in the May 23-24 election according to polls, had earlier described Israel as an "enemy" in a televised debate with his main contender, former foreign minister and Arab League chief Amr Mussa.
In Saturday's interview with the private Egyptian CBC satellite station, he said he had opposed the treaty since its implementation. "I still view the peace treaty as a national security threat to Egypt, and it must be revised."
The Decline of The Washington Post
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| Accuracy in Media |
But the worst may be yet to come. Kaplan, the Post subsidiary that has served as the cash cow for the paper that brought us the Watergate scandal that destroyed Republican Richard Nixon’s presidency, is going through scandal and financial turmoil.
In addition to growing concern over Kaplan, a for-profit educational institution, this year’s meeting featured questions about the paper’s controversial financial relationship with newspapers owned and controlled by the Russian and Chinese governments. Post Company chairman Donald E. Graham didn’t have any second thoughts over the paper being used, through paid advertisements, to promote Russian and Chinese propaganda to an American audience.
The meeting started at 9 a.m., before many people had probably seen what the Post was reporting in its print and online editions that day.
Copies of the paper were distributed for free to shareholders. But a story about Mitt Romney supposedly bullying a gay classmate was not in the print edition of that day’s paper. The story was published in the print edition the next day, Friday, and included an old photo of a young Romney playing around by pointing a toy gun to his chin under the caption, “Give a guy enough rope and he’ll hang himself.”
These pranks and jokes happened around 1965, and conservative commentators are having fun mocking the paper for devoting so much attention to these “troubling incidents,” as the paper puts it.
What is more troubling is what has happened to the Post, which does a good job of covering local news through such papers as The Calvert Recorder in Calvert County, Maryland, but which is suffering circulation and revenue declines because of its national newspaper product. The Calvert Recorder is part of the Southern Maryland Newspapers group, which is owned by the Post.
Dana Loesch of Big Journalism points out that the Post has already corrected the Romney story, without acknowledging that a correction was made. The correction was of the paper’s report that a former Romney classmate had “long been bothered” by the Romney bullying incident, when in fact, he wasn’t witness to it and only recently heard about it. It is troubling that the Post would embellish the story and then retract the charge without comment or an apology.
Obama begged Jeremiah Wright to stay silent during 2008 election as ally offered bribe
This story, if true, is another example of how easily and flippantly our POTUS breaks the law. There is another very interesting part of this. The New York Post had an article about this bribe yesterday and they have pulled it. The tyrant, in chief, must have sent his thugs to New York to take care of the situation. - Reggie
An ally of then-Senator Barack Obama offered Rev. Jeremiah Wright $150,000 to keep his mouth shut until after the 2008 election, according to excerpts released today from the upcoming book “The Amateur” by Edward Klein.
Wright, Obama’s former Chicago pastor, had become a significant political liability in the 2008 presidential campaign because of his anti-American rhetoric. Just months before the election, networks were poring over months of Wright’s sermons, which suggested that the United States deserved the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Wright has also encouraged blacks to sing “God Damn America” instead of “God Bless America.”
“After the media went ballistic on me, I received an e-mail offering me money not to preach at all until the November presidential election,” Wright told Klein, according to the New York Post, which obtained the excerpts.
That’s when Obama himself got involved, Wright said, and made a personal plea to keep Wright out of the spotlight.
"Barack said he wanted to meet me in secret, in a secure place. And I said, ‘You’re used to coming to my home, you’ve been here countless times, so what’s wrong with coming to my home?’ So we met in the living room of the parsonage of Trinity United Church of Christ, at South Pleasant Avenue right off 95th Street, just Barack and me. I don’t know if he had a wire on him. His security was outside somewhere.”
Wright added that Obama seemed more concern about his political circumstances than Wright’s personal well-being.
Read the full story
Wright, Obama’s former Chicago pastor, had become a significant political liability in the 2008 presidential campaign because of his anti-American rhetoric. Just months before the election, networks were poring over months of Wright’s sermons, which suggested that the United States deserved the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Wright has also encouraged blacks to sing “God Damn America” instead of “God Bless America.”
“After the media went ballistic on me, I received an e-mail offering me money not to preach at all until the November presidential election,” Wright told Klein, according to the New York Post, which obtained the excerpts.
That’s when Obama himself got involved, Wright said, and made a personal plea to keep Wright out of the spotlight.
"Barack said he wanted to meet me in secret, in a secure place. And I said, ‘You’re used to coming to my home, you’ve been here countless times, so what’s wrong with coming to my home?’ So we met in the living room of the parsonage of Trinity United Church of Christ, at South Pleasant Avenue right off 95th Street, just Barack and me. I don’t know if he had a wire on him. His security was outside somewhere.”
Wright added that Obama seemed more concern about his political circumstances than Wright’s personal well-being.
Read the full story
Panel Plus: 5/13
Watch the ‘FOX News Sunday' panel, Brit Hume, Liz Marlantes, Paul Gigot and Juan Williams, as they discuss 2012 general election, in our web exclusive Panel Plus
Tea Party to Front Lines in Wisconsin
National and local tea party groups will coordinate efforts to help Wisconsin voters make a final push to stand up against the forces on the left and union power brokers who have besieged the state with perpetual recalls and disruptive tactics in an effort to thwart the will of a democratic majority that voted in favor of fiscal reforms.
Jenny Beth Martin, who heads Tea Party Patriots, told Breitbart News that Tea Party Patriots, with the help of local Tea Party groups, will set up command centers on Wednesday so people can volunteer and go door-to-door. They will also set up virtual call centers, so people from all around the country can make phone calls into Wisconsin.
“Wisconsin is pivotal, and it is ground zero for our political landscape,” Martin told Breitbart News. “The left is trying to use the recall to ... disrupt the representative democracy that makes our country great ... and we can’t let that happen in Wisconsin and the rest of the country.”
She said there will be an infrastructure in place so people from around the country can spend anywhere from 8 hours to 21 days on the ground in Wisconsin to help Tea Party groups in Wisconsin who reached out for help because they are exhausted from two years of non-stop campaigning, which they have been forced to do because of the left’s relentless tactics to thwart the will of the people.
Newsweek Finally Goes Where None Have Gone Before
Yes, it is obviously time for the press to ramp up their idol worship again. Until this man ran for office four years ago, I don't ever remember seeing pictures of anyone with a halo above their head except Jesus, the Savior of the World! Well, I must change a quote from some years ago... I serve Jesus, I know Jesus, Jesus is a friend of mine. Mr President, you're no Jesus Christ, Savior of the World! By the way, only Jesus is to be worshiped, not a man. Especially not a man that shakes his fist in the face of God. - Reggie
Are you kidding me? I get that Andrew Sullivan is a man with an agenda and I completely support his right to make his opinions heard. I also understand that Newsweek – like any other publication – is in business to make a profit and that frequently involves pushing the envelope in terms of catching the public’s attention. But at what point is too much simply too much? When is the shark definitively jumped and the daily bread burned past any reasonable definition of being toast? Ladies and gentlemen, this would be that point.
Read the full post
Read the full post
Sunday, May 13, 2012
HORROR: Euthanizing Disabled Kids
I posted a story similar to this a week or so ago but didn't post or link to the video below from May 2nd. This is beyond disturbing. I never dreamed I would see or hear something like this in America. What kind of people are we becoming? - Reggie
Horrifying Audio: American Daytime TV advocates euthanizing disabled children?
UPDATE: During the video above, the guys reference a clip of George Bernard Shaw that they play a little bit of, but I couldn't understand most of it so I found it on YouTube:
Part One — The Fiction and Non-Fiction of Obama
It could be argued that if then-presidential candidate John McCain had truly assailed his rival Barack Obama over his exhaustive collection of dubious dealings and less-than-scrupulous friends (think: Davis, Khalidi, Pflager, Wright, Ayers, Rezko, Said, etc.), he just might have taken the election. Instead, McCain chose to “keep above the fray” — although few are clear as to why bringing up substantive and valid concerns over the first-term senator’s past constituted otherwise to the Maverick-camp. Now, President Obama is three years into his first term as president, and his campaign for reelection has officially kicked off with a record-setting $15 million celebrity-fundraiser hosted by devotee George Clooney.
If the president’s true history continues to be replaced by the alternate narrative he has constructed for himself; if his fact, rather than fiction-based life is swept under the carpet again, he will likely retake the Oval Office.
With this in mind, Glenn Beck dedicated his Thursday evening broadcast to reviewing the staggering array of inconsistencies, embellishments and “manufactured lies” perpetuated by the president over the course of his political career.
“His life is complete fiction,” Beck said. Let’s review the non-fiction version before we go any further:
In Part II of this report, we will briefly profile some of the president’s more questionable deeds, but in order to provide proper context, consider the following cast of characters who helped to shape Obama’s life and mindset.
Dreams from an anti-colonialist father
It is difficult to understand what truly moves the president without understanding who his father was. In his book, “The Roots of Obama’s Rage,” Dinesh D’Souza described in painstaking detail, an unsavory character who womanized, abused, drank excessively (killing a man in one drunk-driving incident, losing both of his legs in another, and later killing himself in yet another), abandoned his eight children at various points in their lives, married thrice without ever divorcing his previous wives, and advocated taxing income at a 100% rate. Unbelievably, the man described is not a work of fiction. He was President Barack Obama’s father.
Barak Obama Sr. (spelled without the “c”) was a Harvard economics graduate student from Kenya and despite the president’s insistance that his paternal lineage comprised humble stock, Barak Sr. was actually from a prominent and wealthy farming family. His father, Hussein Onyango Obama, was also an observant Muslim who chose the Arabic name “Barak” because it means “blessed.”
In an article written for the East Africa Journal in 1965, “Problems Facing Our Socialism,” Barak Sr. explained that in the wake of colonialism, socialism was necessary to ensure national autonomy for Kenya. “The question,” he wrote, “is how are we going to remove the disparities in our country, such as the concentration of economic power in Asian and European hands . . .?” [emphasis added]
“We need to eliminate power structures that have been built through excessive accumulation so that not only a few individuals shall control a vast magnitude of resources as is the case now.”
Sound familiar?
Should critically discussing Islam be a form of hate speech?
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| American Thinker |
Several days ago, I noted with interest that Dutch journalist and historian Lars Hedegaard has been acquitted by a unanimous Dutch Supreme Court of charges that he violated Holland's notorious "hate speech" laws. His crime? He made a public utterance that state prosecutors concluded was "denigrating" of Islam.
Hedegaard dared say that Islam should be criticized for endorsing coerced child-bride marriages. The prosecutor never alleged that anything Hedegaard stated was untrue. Truth under the Dutch hate speech law is largely irrelevant.
The acquittal follows on the heels of the more widely publicized dismissal of charges against flamboyant Dutch politician Geert Wilders for violating the very same law. Wilders' crime was the production of the film Fitna, which had the audacity to draw a connection between certain passages of the Koran and Islamist jihad. Like the Hedegaard prosecution, Wilders' prosecutor never alleged that anything in the film was untrue.
While the ultimate acquittals were encouraging, the fact that these men were forced to spend years in court fighting such frivolous charges is more than a travesty. And this doesn't begin to take into account the small fortune such legal disputes cost both the state and the defendants.
The irresponsible willingness of governments to promulgate and encourage the prosecution of truthful but critical comments on Islam needs to be closely scrutinized.
In the U.S., voices have been heard calling for Muslim communities to circumvent the federal Constitution and govern themselves using the socio-political component of Islam called sharia. Sharia itself may fairly be characterized as hatching the monster of all "hate speech" laws. It calls for capital punishment of anyone who utters criticism of Muhammad or the religion he founded. The U.K. already is allowing several Islamic communities to govern themselves according to sharia.
Ex-Marine’s ‘Best Buy-cott’ gathers steam over radical Muslim ties
In April the Minnesota branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations announced that retail giant Best Buy had become a “Platinum Sponsor” for its fifth anniversary banquet. And former U.S. Marine James Canning decided to do something about it.
In a YouTube video, the Iraq and Beirut veteran demonstrated his frustration with “one of his favorite stores” by cutting his Best Buy “Reward Zone” card in half.
“Because of this support Best Buy has been giving the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR, I can no longer conduct business with Best Buy.”
In an interview with the Daily Caller, Canning explained how his protest video came about.
“I read a news article on it on my Facebook page,” Canning said. “So I made my video. It was kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing.”
“When you’ve got a company that supports an organization that supports terrorism,” Canning said of his boycott, “it’s kind of, in my opinion, asinine to do my business there.”
In an email, Best Buy spokesman Damon Gammon confirmed the company’s contribution to CAIR.
“Over the past two years,” Gammon said, “our Inter-Faith Employee Business Network, a group of employees focused on promoting diversity and inclusion at Best Buy, has supported CAIR-Minnesota with $1,450 in total contributions to support an annual banquet.”
Ryan Mauro, a national security analyst at the Clarion Fund, a group that “produces and distributes documentaries on the threats of Radical Islam,” told TheDC that the relationship between the electronics giant and the Muslim advocacy group is a dangerous one.
“It legitimizes an organization that shouldn’t be legitimized. It funds a group that shouldn’t be funded,” Mauro said.
“It helps CAIR parade as a moderate force and it helps the group claim to be the representative of the Muslim community. Best Buy has done a disservice to anti-Islamist Muslims who are tired of having groups like CAIR talk on their behalf.”
According to the Middle East Forum, Best Buy’s public relations department has declined to rule out future support for CAIR — despite reminders of CAIR’s relationship with terror groups like Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.
CAIR is one of only three prominent Islamic organizations to be named unindicted co-conspirators in a case alleging criminal conspiracy to support Hamas.
In 2009, the FBI severed its own institutional ties with CAIR when evidence pointed to the group being a front for radical organizations operating within the United States. In one case, CAIR executive director Nihad Awad was shown to have participated in planning meetings with officials who had been convicted of funneling $12.4 million to Hamas through the now-defunct Holy Land Foundation.
Canning says the link is unambiguous. “CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood are connected, and they’re both funding and supporting Muslim extremists.”
Al-Qaeda will expose double agent's identity, security chiefs fear
MI5 fear that militant Islamists will attempt to exact revenge on the British spy, who penetrated al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular (AQAP), by publishing his photograph on the internet – a move designed to incite extremists to hunt him down.
Sources have described the British spy as "gold dust", adding that he was one of just a handful of agents in the last ten years to have successfully penetrated one of the groups aligned to al-Qaeda's concept of global Jihad.
AQAP now represents the "greatest operational threat" to Britain and America, according to senior Whitehall sources.
The group is known for its use of modern communication techniques including the publication of an English-language magazine, Inspire, which is distributed to supporters over the internet.
The agent, a British passport holder of Saudi heritage, volunteered to take part in a suicide mission but instead escaped with an underwear bomb designed to blow up a US airliner.
He is understood to have been recruited and trained by MI5's G6 section – the ultra-secret part of the organisation responsible for agent handling – before being sent on his mission to penetrate the Yemeni-based terror group.
A former security official told The Sunday Telegraph that although the mission to penetrate AQAP was a success, the agent was now "burned" and would never be able to take part in covert operations again.
In all likelihood, the official said, the agent will have to be relocated outside of the Middle East and provided with a new identity.
California facing higher-than-expected $16 billion budget shortfall
As California continues to tax and spend, like all Progressives do, what is the incentive for the "rich" to remain in the state? If I were rich and lived in California, I would move out of there as quickly as possible just like the rich are leaving France since the socialist was elected. Why should I work hard, become successful and allow the government to confiscate my income in order to pay off their political allies? It would be idiotic of me to stay in California. Or I could renounce my U.S. citizenship to avoid the confiscatory taxes like the co-founder of Facebook just did.
What does California offer that I can't get elsewhere? Nice weather? Florida has nice weather, too without a state income tax. California has nothing to offer except oppressive, leftist policies that smother individual liberty, innovation and entrepreneurship. The rich should leave California and allow it to collapse under the weight of the totalitarian state. - Reggie
What does California offer that I can't get elsewhere? Nice weather? Florida has nice weather, too without a state income tax. California has nothing to offer except oppressive, leftist policies that smother individual liberty, innovation and entrepreneurship. The rich should leave California and allow it to collapse under the weight of the totalitarian state. - Reggie
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California’s budget deficit has swelled to a projected $16 billion — much larger than had been predicted just months ago — and will force severe cuts to schools and public safety if voters fail to approve tax increases in November, Gov. Jerry Brown said Saturday.
The Democratic governor said the shortfall grew from $9.2 billion in January in part because tax collections have not come in as high as expected and the economy isn’t growing as fast as hoped for. The deficit has also risen because lawsuits and federal requirements have blocked billions of dollars in state cuts.
“This means we will have to go much farther and make cuts far greater than I asked for at the beginning of the year,” Brown said in an online video. “But we can’t fill this hole with cuts alone without doing severe damage to our schools. That’s why I’m bypassing the gridlock and asking you, the people of California, to approve a plan that avoids cuts to schools and public safety.”
Brown did not release details of the newly calculated deficit Saturday, but he is expected to lay out a revised spending plan Monday. The new plan for the fiscal year that starts July 1 hinges in large part on voters approving higher taxes.
The governor has said those tax increases are needed to help pull the state out of a crippling decade shaped by the collapse of the housing market and recession. Without them, he warned, public schools and colleges, and public safety, will suffer deeper cuts.
Thomas Sowell on the Second Edition of Intellectuals and Society
YouTube description: On the occasion of the publication of a new edition of his book Intellectuals and Society, Thomas Sowell returns to Uncommon Knowledge for a wide-ranging interview.
New Media Shames MSM in Elizabeth Warren Saga
The inconsistency of the mainstream media's choices on newsworthiness is sometimes too absurd to fathom.
We know liberal reporters are obsessed with race, the most recent example being their reporting on Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman. The mainstream press has also shown, in the face of falling opinion polls and revenue, they still will expend the resources to find ancient details on Mitt Romney’s high school classmates or, when they want to, track down former President Barack Obama’s composite ex-girlfriends. And when it comes to politicians, when the mainstream press smells any hint of an inconsistency or a cover-up, they usually pounce on and circle the politician like a gang of sharks ready to chomp into its helpless prey.
So when Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat running for Scott Brown’s Senate seat, seemed like she was caught red-handed (no pun intended) lying about her “Native American” heritage at best, and at worst, perpetuating the falsehood so she or her employers could reap the benefits from it, it seemed like a tailor-made for the mainstream media to pounce on.
There was race. There were inconsistencies. There were walkbacks. There was a mystery -- whether Warren really had any Native American ancestors -- to be solved.
But because Warren is a darling of the liberal mainstream media, particularly among those in the D.C.-New York-Boston axis, they just ignored it. And in the old days, the story would have been swept under the rug.
But things are different now, as new media like Breitbart News flourishes while mainstream media organizations sink toward bankruptcy.
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Mitt Romney Addresses Liberty University Class of 2012
Mitt Romney gave the commencement speech to the Liberty University Class of 2012 this morning. - Reggie
Equivocating or Evolving, President Obama is Wrong Either Way
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| Dr. Michael Brown |
We know the story well: Barack Obama was for same-sex “marriage” (1996) before he was against it (2004) before he was for it (2012), although in 2008, he was apparently for it and against it (although mainly against it). Based, however, on his strong support for gay activism during his “against” years, it seems clear that he was equivocating in his public opposition to same-sex “marriage.”
But let’s say his views really were evolving, as he claims. Either way, whether equivocating or evolving, he has proven himself to be untrustworthy in this very important matter.
Let’s first consider what appears obvious to many, namely that Mr. Obama has been anything but straightforward when expressing his views on same-sex “marriage.”
It is now common knowledge that he responded to questions posed by the Outline newspaper in 1996 by stating plainly that, “I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages.” Flip-flopping in 2004, he explained, “My religious faith dictates marriage is between a man and a woman, gay marriage is not a civil right.”
In 2008, in the presidential debate hosted by Rick Warren, he stated, “I believe marriage is the union between a man and a woman. As a Christian it’s also a sacred union.” That same year, in a letter to San Francisco’s Alice B. Toklas Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Democratic Club, Obama wrote that he opposed “the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California constitution” with regard to marriage – quite an odd position for someone who could state that “marriage is the union between a man and a woman.” Why, then, would it be “divisive and discriminatory” to amend a state constitution to protect that sacred union?
Since 2008, Obama has aggressively supported the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, decided to stop defending DOMA, appointed men like gay educational activist Kevin Jennings as his Safe School Czar, and appeared at fundraisers for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), even stating at their dinner in October, 2011 that progress comes when “a father realizes he doesn’t just love his daughter, but also her wife.” Yet it is only now that he can tell us that he endorses same-sex “marriage”? No wonder that Joe Solmonese, outgoing president of the HRC, said earlier this week that there was “no doubt in my mind that the president shares these values.” In other words, the president has not been forthcoming in his true position.
Gay Marriage is Not Welcome by Majority of Americans
There are six states that allow same sex marriage: Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, New York, and New Hampshire along with the District of Columbia. If I am not mistaken, all of these states have legalized gay marriage by statute, not by the will of the people. As a matter of fact, every time the people have been given the chance to decide on this issue they overwhelmingly vote against same sex marriage.
This past week, President Obama gave his rousing endorsement of same sex marriage but also said he believes the states should decide for themselves. Well, Mr. President, the states have been deciding for themselves since 1998 and they continue to do so. The North Carolina vote this past Tuesday was just the latest.
These are the facts: Hawaii granted legislative authority to ban same-sex marriage in 1998. The following states have State Constitutional Amendments that ban same-sex marriage: Alaska, Nevada, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Oregon, Colorado Tennessee and Arizona. California has passed a state amendment against gay marriage twice (in 2000 and 2008) but each time a judge has struck it down! How can anyone believe Americans want to legalize same sex marriage when one of the most leftist states in the union has voted against it two times?
These states have State Constitutional Amendments that ban same-sex marriage and civil unions, but not other contracts: Nebraska, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Utah, Kansas, Texas, Alabama, Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Wisconsin (!), Florida and North Carolina.
Only Michigan and Virginia have amendments that ban same-sex marriage, civil unions, and other contracts.
By my count that's 31 opposed, 6 in support along with the District of Columbia.
Why do we continually allow a minority of the population tell us what to think, what to do and what we want? It is past the time for us to do a little thinking and research instead of believing the constant propaganda and lies from the government and the media.
If it is true that Americans want to legalize same sex marriage, please tell me the reason we overwhelmingly vote against it every time. Obviously, we don't want it and those votes are the polls that count.
Reggie
5/12/2012
White House Lied, Jobs Died
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| Michelle Malkin |
The story behind the drilling moratorium
While the White House and its media water-carriers try to distract the American public with gay-marriage talk and half-century-old tales of Mitt Romney’s prep-school pranks, the inconvenient truth remains: President Obama is responsible for perpetrating jaw-dropping, job-killing scientific fraud. And his minions are still trying to cover it up.
New internal e-mails disclosed by the House Natural Resources Committee this week show that a supposedly exculpatory report on the administration’s doctored drilling moratorium analysis — issued by the Department of Interior’s inspector general’s office — was itself incomplete, misleading, and unsubstantiated. Even more damning, the documents reveal that the White House actively blocked investigators and refuses to comply with subpoenas.
Now, as one senior IG agent warned his bosses, “the chickens may be coming home to roost.”
A quick refresher: After the BP oil spill in 2010, the White House imposed a radical six-month moratorium on America’s entire deepwater-drilling industry. The overbroad ban — inserted into a technical safety document in the middle of the night by Obama’s green extremists — cost an estimated 19,000 jobs and $1.1 billion in lost wages.
The anti-drilling administration based its draconian order on recommendations from an expert oil-spill panel. But that panel’s own members (along with the federal judiciary) called out then–eco czar Carol Browner for misleading the public about the scientific evidence and “contributing to the perception that the government’s findings were more exact than they actually were.” Browner and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar oversaw the rewriting of the drilling-ban report to completely misrepresent the Obama-appointed panel’s own overwhelming scientific objections to the job-killing edict.
Federal judge Martin Feldman in Louisiana blasted the Obama Interior Department for defying his May 2010 order to lift its fraudulent ban on offshore oil and gas drilling in the Gulf. He called out the administration’s culture of contempt and “determined disregard” for the law.
Romney donor speaking out; claims personal info targeted
Melaleuca CEO Frank Vandersloot on investigation
Also read this about Mr. VanderSloot - Kim Strassel: Trolling for Dirt on the President's List
Also read this about Mr. VanderSloot - Kim Strassel: Trolling for Dirt on the President's List
He’s No Pragmatist
Obama doesn’t play well with Republicans.
The White House, Democrats, and sympathetic elements of the media have been remarkably successful in establishing this idea: that President Obama, a pragmatist at heart, has sought to accommodate congressional Republicans time after time, only to be spurned by a party bent on rejecting his policies across the board. There’s a problem with this notion. It’s not true.
For sure, Obama and Republicans are far apart ideologically, so much so there probably was no chance of reaching a compromise on health care legislation. But they might have cooperated on the economic stimulus package enacted in 2009 and on a number of smaller issues. Except then and now, Obama has shown little or no interest in taking GOP proposals, alternatives, or tweaks seriously, or even considering them at all.
Since announcing his bid for reelection, Obama has adopted the practice of unveiling a set of proposals ostensibly to create jobs and demanding it be passed pronto, without Republicans having been consulted or informed. He did this last September with a “jobs bill” and last week in Albany, New York, with what he called a “to-do list” of hiring and housing initiatives.
The first opportunity for a bipartisan compromise between the White House and Republicans involved the stimulus. House GOP leaders John Boehner and Eric Cantor met twice with Obama in January 2009, once when he was president-elect, then shortly after he was inaugurated. Republicans had suffered two straight landslide defeats, putting Boehner and Cantor in a weakened position.
But they gave Obama a one-page “House Republican Economic Recovery Plan” at the second session with five suggestions: a tax rate cut for lower income families, another for small businesses, spending cuts to pay for stimulus, an end to taxation of unemployment benefits, and a homebuyers credit. The president said none of the suggestions looked “crazy.”
That was the last the Republican leaders heard from Obama until after House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Dave Obey, the since-retired chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, had drafted the official Democratic stimulus bill—without a smidgen of Republican input. Meanwhile, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell sent three “alternatives” to Obama, including loans rather than grants to states in fiscal trouble and a reduction in the tax rate on individual income from 25 percent to 15 percent. McConnell got no response.
The day after Pelosi and Obey finalized their bill, Obama appeared before a gathering of all House Republicans, urging them to consider his ideas for reviving the economy. A few days later, he attacked Republicans for rejecting those ideas by opposing the stimulus. But his ideas were part of a partisan bill that was already a done deal when he offered it to them. It passed the House with no Republican votes.
From this experience, GOP congressional leaders concluded their relationship with the president was going to be “difficult,” a Republican leadership aide said. And it has been. The only breakthrough occurred when Obama agreed to spending cuts last year at a time when blocking them would have been politically risky.
On stiffening regulation of the financial industry, the White House made no overtures to the House. But in 2010, Chris Dodd, then chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, conducted weeks of negotiations over a bipartisan bill with freshman Republican senator Bob Corker of Tennessee. “Dodd and Corker eventually found middle ground on nearly every issue,” the Washington Post reported.
Both the White House and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner worried the bill wouldn’t attract Republicans besides Corker—a not entirely unreasonable fear. But after Obama’s health care bill was enacted with no Republican votes, the president and his advisers decided against courting Republican support for Wall Street reform. So the White House pulled the plug on the Dodd-Corker talks. Corker, by the way, had kept McConnell and other Republican leaders apprised of how the talks had gone. He was not told to back off. Dodd was.
On health care, Obama did summon Republican senators to the White House. One group consisted of four senators—Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Corker. Obama listened but didn’t offer concessions or discuss possible terms of a compromise. Before they’d departed the White House grounds, the senators discovered a wire service was already reporting that Obama had met with Republicans. They realized Obama had used them to create an impression of serious consultations with Republicans and nothing more.
Warren's Cherokee Claim Based on Family Newsletter; No Marriage License Application to Be Found
The slender thread upon which Elizabeth Warren’s claim that she is 1/32 Cherokee rests—a purported 1894 marriage license application—has been exposed as non-existent. Based on a review of the original marriage records found in the files of the Logan County, Oklahoma Court Clerk’s office in Guthrie, Oklahoma, and the statements of ReJeania Zmek, the Court Clerk of Logan County, Oklahoma, it is likely that the ephemeral 1894 marriage license application never existed.
"In modern times we keep marriage license applications,” she said. “The way they’re issued now, you do the application, then you do the license. We currently do keep records of marriage license applications,” she said, explaining that this practice didn’t begin until around 1950.
When asked specifically if marriage license application documents were created in Logan County in 1894, she said she is almost certain they were not. She added that, when looking at the records of marriages in Logan County, Oklahoma in the 1890s, “if there’s a license and then a certificate I would think the license would be the application as well. That would be my thought. I’m thinking they came in, got a license, got married.”
Ms. Zmek also confirmed that no other news organization had contacted her to date on any national topic or to inquire about the validity of this purported 1894 Logan County, Oklahoma marriage license application or anything related to the 1894 marriage of William J. Crawford.
On May 10, 2012, the Logan County Court Clerk’s offices made a copy of the original May 12, 1894 marriage license and the corresponding May 13, 1894 certificate of marriage of William J Crawford, great-great-grand uncle of Elizabeth Warren, and Mary E. (Long) Wolford (found on Book 2, pages 157 and 158 of the records of 1894 marriages).
The original marriage license does contain a column for the race of the bride and the groom, but both groom William J. Crawford and bride Mary E. (Long) Wolford left the column blank. You can see both the license and the certificate of marriage here, along with the County Court Clerk stamp of ReJeania Zmek, signed by a deputy in her office:
It Will Be Hot in Texas This Summer
There is no mistaking it - our own government is purposely destroying the United States of America. - Reggie
And thanks to federal policies the state likely will run out of electricity.
Texas, the most energy-intensive state in the nation, could be facing a severe electrical shortage this summer. How could such a thing happen? Mainly, it's the result of a long series of federal interventions that have finally left the state turning in circles about what to do next.
First, the gory details. Last summer the state was hit with a heat wave in which the temperature was over 100 degrees for almost a month. Since most cities are barely habitable without air conditioning, electrical consumption rose to record levels. Whereas the state normally consumes around 40,000 megawatts of electricity, demand rose briefly to 60,000 (1,000 MW is the size of a large coal or nuclear plant). On several days the state came within about 300 MW of a statewide brownout.
Aggravating all this was the state's new complex of windmills with 10,000 MW of "nameplate" capacity, nearly all of which proved virtually useless during the crisis period. Windmills have the unfortunate habit of going limp during summer doldrums when the wind doesn't blow. The state's entire wind capacity -- largest in the nation and celebrated by environmentalists all over the country -- operated at less than 10 percent of capacity during the summer heat wave.
Now after another year things are not much better. Not much new capacity has been built and with the state's economy humming, things could get much hotter. In late April, the state hit a warm spell at a time when many generators are shut down for maintenance work to prepare for the coming summer. Day-ahead prices spiked to $500 per megawatt-hour -- more than ten times their usual price of around $30 per mwh-h. Yet that was just a taste of things to come. Last summer prices soared briefly to $5000 per mwh-h -- prompting state regulators to take the unfortunate step of putting a cap of $3,500 on electrical prices. Although it might seem inconsequential, in fact it may be those few hours a year that makes building a new power plant worthwhile. Power plants are like The Christmas Store. They may stay open all year waiting for that one rush of business that makes their entire season. Texas has a completely deregulated market that pays power companies only for electricity delivered, not for capacity built. By taking away those few days when power companies can cash in, the regulators are making a bad situation much worse.
The root of Texas' electrical problems goes back to the bad old days of federal price controls of natural gas and the years Texas and Louisiana spent being exploited by the rest of the nation.
Censoring Naomi Riley
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| John Fund |
Oslo — The Oslo Freedom Forum is an annual event sponsored by the New York–based Human Rights Foundation, which brings together dissidents and journalists from all over the world to show that people of good will can promote basic freedoms without an overlay of ideology.
Censorship, both official and self-imposed, is an important theme here. We have heard stories from brave journalists such as Ecuador’s Nicolas Perez and Kosovo’s Jeta Xharra of efforts to silence them for expressing views unpopular with officials or special interests. So it was strange to be here and read that one of my friends and former journalistic colleagues back home in the U.S. has been fired merely for speaking her mind.
Earlier this week, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the trade paper for faculty members and administrators in universities, fired Naomi Schaefer Riley, a paid blogger for its website. Her crime? She had the courage to respond to a Chronicle story called “Black Studies: ‘Swaggering Into the Future,’” which stated that “young black-studies scholars . . . are less consumed than their predecessors with the need to validate the field or explain why they are pursuing doctorates in their discipline.” The article used five Ph.D. candidates as examples of those “rewriting the history of race.” Riley looked at the subject areas of the five proposed dissertations and concluded that they were “obscure at best . . . a collection of left-wing victimization claptrap at worst.” One dissertation dealt with the failure of the natural-childbirth literature to include the experiences of non-white women, another blamed the housing crisis on institutional racism, and still another attacked Thomas Sowell and Clarence Thomas for leading an “assault on the civil-rights legacy that benefited them.”
Many academics I know agree that black-studies programs are often slipshod, academically non-rigorous, and repositories for “grievance” politics. But they won’t say so publicly, for fear of being branded as “racists.” Naomi Riley had the courage to state the obvious. The author of two substantive books on higher education, she has worked with me as an editor on such topics at the Wall Street Journal. She knows her stuff. Certainly in a 500-word blog post she oversimplified, but that’s the nature of the blog that the Chronicle hired her to write for — it consists of quick opinion takes on issues of the day. It is even called “Brainstorm” to make clear it doesn’t publish the definitive word on any issue.
Her lone blog post brought a torrent of criticism, attacks by MSNBC, and finally a petition demanding that the Chronicle “dismiss” her. It was signed by 6,500 professors and graduate students.
At first, the Chronicle defended Riley’s right to speak out and invited people to debate her on the subject. But within days, its editor caved to the mob, fired her, and wrote the following craven apology:
We’ve heard you. And we have taken to heart what you said. We now agree that Ms. Riley’s blog posting did not meet The Chronicle’s basic editorial standards for reporting and fairness in opinion articles.
The publication has not commented on the appropriateness of the other bloggers on its site who ridiculed Riley, engaged in name-calling, or otherwise smeared her. The authors of the petition celebrated their victory with the ironic statement “Viva Civility!”
Though it was far away, this hubbub attracted attention from some of the speakers at the Oslo conference. A couple noted how surprising it is that political correctness in academia is now shutting off debate in the U.S., the country where academics supposedly prize vigorous discussion and vigilantly guard against any sign of McCarthyism.
Nick Cohen is an atheist and former leftist who writes for the Observer and Guardian newspapers in Britain. His most recent book, entitled “You Can’t Read This Book,” examines the new forms of censorship that are emerging in the 21st century. He warned those at the Oslo Freedom Forum that many in the West now “surround taboo subjects with a bodyguard of politically correct humbug. This form of self-censorship has had a profound effect on liberalism.” He noted that “censorship is at its most effective when no one admits that it exists. ‘No one else is complaining, so move along now,’ becomes the mantra.”
Western Sharia
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| Andrew McCarthy |
Muslim supremacists partner with the Lawyer Left.
Ismail Belghar, a 36-year-old Muslim man living in Australia, assaulted, abducted, and nearly killed his sister-in-law. The victim, a 25-year-old Moroccan named Canan Kokden, had dared to take her older sister, Mrs. B, to the beach without Belghar’s permission. This heinous effrontery was amplified, Belghar later recounted for police, when Mrs. B thereupon “displayed her body,” sustaining the shoulder sunburn that tipped him off.
To Australians, this may have been, well, just a day at the beach. For Belghar, though, it was an “abhorrent” offense against sharia, Islam’s legal code and comprehensive societal framework.
The telltale burn is also starting to show on the West’s shoulders, our courts of law. Australia has not changed Belghar, but the Belghars are changing Australia.
Innately, Islam is not moderate — just ask Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, who rejects as “ugly and offensive” the very term “moderate Islam.” Instead, Islam can be moderated, but only by a culture that is self-confident and self-assertive. Alas, that is no longer Western culture. So, the more Muslims immigrate, the less the West is moderating Islam. It is Islam that leaves its mark.
In the usual endearing family way, Belghar telephoned his sister-in-law to convey that he was a tad rankled: “You slut, how dare you take my wife to the beach!” Afterwards, happening upon Ms. Kokden at a shopping mall in New South Wales, he angrily confronted her, slapped her face, and dragged her to the railing of an over-ground parking lot. As he seemed ready to hurl her to the traffic below, her brother (Kokden’s chaperone at the mall) finally stirred himself to intervene, tackling the assailant. Belghar was charged with attempted murder, among other crimes.
As night follows day, Belghar’s defense counsel argued that his client could not get a fair trial because Australians are too Islamophobic: Once informed about the nature of the allegations and the fact that he is a Muslim, jurors would surely leap to the crazy, bigoted conclusion that Belghar was probably guilty of this “honor beating” — which, in fact, he was. Just as he was, precisely, motivated by his Islamic beliefs.
Enter the jurist assigned to the case, the pitch-perfectly named Ronald Solomon. He ruled that, yes, Belghar would be compelled to stand trial, but also that the case would have to be decided by a factfinder Judge Solomon could trust. No doubt you’ll be stunned to learn that this reasonable, objective, and culturally sensitive factfinder turned out to be . . . Judge Solomon himself. After all, ordinary citizens with nothing but their common sense to fall back on lack the juridical acumen needed to weigh what Solomon gently called Belghar’s “attitude,” “based on a religious or cultural bias,” that he had absolute authority over his wife.
This Solomon was splitting not just the baby but the country. As the Australian government contended on appeal, if the judge were correct, an entirely separate system of due process would be required just for Muslims. Every Islamic defendant would be entitled to evade the judgment of the community — that judgment being the whole point of having a judicial system. Muslims would instead get their own system, bringing to bear not the judgment of the community but that of trained lawyers, specially attuned to Islam’s various eccentricities.
‘Money Primary’
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| Jonah Goldberg |
His fundraising campaign pushes Obama to the left.
For most of 2012, President Obama has been running in the Democratic primary. I know that seems odd, given that he’s essentially running unopposed — though don’t tell that to West Virginia Democrats, who cast nearly half of their votes for Keith Judd, an inmate currently serving time in a Texarkana, Texas, prison. Judd received 41 percent of the vote; in 1968, Eugene McCarthy received 42 percent of the vote in New Hampshire and forced incumbent Lyndon Johnson from the race.
But that’s not what I’m talking about. It’s important to remember that primaries serve other functions than just picking the nominee. Primaries force party bosses, activists, and strategists to test their messaging, update their databases, and, most especially, get the party’s fundraising apparatus going.
During the real Republican primary, all of that stuff was going on behind the curtain while everyone was busy watching the actual contest. The Republicans didn’t need to fake anything in order to switch on the party machinery. They had a primary season that made a wacky Mexican soap opera seem like Masterpiece Theatre by comparison. Republicans, for good and ill, were paying a lot of attention. And so was the press corps. There were enough GOP debates alone to program a new cable network.
Meanwhile, Obama was politically sidelined. Sure, he got attention; presidents always do. But the rank and file wasn’t engaging in the contest enough.
Nearly everything we’ve seen from Obama in the last five months has been an attempt to re-create the institutional benefits of a primary season without having an actual opponent.
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