“The American people voted to restore integrity and honesty in Washington, D.C., and the Democrats intend to lead the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history,”
Democratic members of Congress: Sanford Bishop of Georgia, Jesse Jackson of Illinois, Allan Mollohan of West Virginia, John Murtha of Pennsylvania, Charlie Rangel of New York, Linda Sanchez of California, Loretta Sanchez of California, Pete Visclosky of Indiana.
Democratic Senators: Roland Burris of Illinois, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Bob Menendez of New Jersey.
Republican Members of Congress: Jerry Lewis of California, Garry Miller of California, Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania, Don Young of Alaska.
Republican Senators: None.
Whoops.
Of course, now there’s Pelosi and Harry Reid tripping over their own tongues trying to CYA in the terrorist waterboarding debacle.
The Bush-hating Left has been very big on the victims of the War on “Terror.” The American involvement at least. When Saddam was killing thousands, the Left didn’t seem to care. When al Qaeda and the Taliban were waging jihad on the enemies of Islam, stoning or genitally mutilating women, there wasn’t much outcry. But with the death of every coalition troop in Iraq or Afghanistan, or the purposefully exaggerated numbers of civilian dead, the Left made it their goal to rub it in George W. Bush’s face.
While I certainly mourn the loss of every coalition troop and sympathize with their families, I, unlike the Left, try to put things in context. Nearly 5,000 brave Americans who volunteered to put their lives on the line for me and my family ended up paying the ultimate price. These are individuals to honor, not political pawns to use as fodder against the former administration in some sick self-important means to undermine the war effort. Yet, this is exactly how the Left uses our war dead. And it is sick.
We have a volunteer military and those who have gone into harm’s way have done it willingly and fully aware of the sacrifices involved. They are true heroes. Except for a small minority—whom the Left always seem to find so as to place them in the media spotlight or wrtie up as the protagonist in an anti-American Hollywood film—troops and their families do not place blame on George W. Bush or his past administration for any consequences.
If there are any troop deaths George W. Bush should be blamed for, it’s murders of troops committed by former detainees at Guantánamo Bay who, for whatever reason, were released when they should have not been.
Just this evening Thomas Joscelyn at the Weekly Standard blog reports that up through January 13 of this year, 61 released G’tmo detainees have returned to the battlefield to kill our brave troops. As far as I’m concerned, any killing committed by these scum were preventable.
To add insult to injury, George W. Bush never got credit from the unhinged anti-war Left for the G’tmo detainees he released. This is the same contingent who helped put into office a president who promised to release all G’tmo detainess, by closing the place down. That’s a promise our current president is planning to make good on.
Now we learn from the Department of Defense’s most recent report that, since that final week of the Bush presidency, the number has risen to 74. In other words, since right around the time Barack Obama was sworn in as president, an additional 13 terrorists released from G’tmo have returned to their jihad to harm our troops:
The June 13, 2008, report noted that 37 former detainees were “confirmed or suspected” of returning to terrorism. On January 13, 2009, seven months later, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said that number had climbed to 61. Now, according to the Times, the DOD has found that same metric has risen further to 74—exactly double the Pentagon’s estimate just 11 months ago.
At that rate, the Pentagon is identifying, on average, more than 3 former Gitmo detainees who are thought to have returned to terrorism each month.
That does not bode well.
Critics point out that even with 74 recidivists the total number of former detainees who have returned to terrorism is “only” 14 percent of the 534 total detainees who have been released from Guantanamo. But this ignores the fact, as explained above, that the recidivism rate is continuously increasing.
Moreover, the U.S. government does not have perfect information on former detainees. It is not clear what many former detainees, up and beyond those identified as likely recidivists, are doing. The number of current recidivists could easily be higher. And this does not even count the former detainees who aid our terrorist enemies’ propaganda efforts by making up tales, which are often repeated by eager media outlets, about their time in U.S. custody and America’s supposed evils.
As Sweetness & Light reports, the situation is so dire that even the NY Times is suddenly concerned, with an article Elizabeth Bumiller to be published in tomorrow morning's print version.
The clearly miffed Fire Andrea Mitchell blog focuses on the claim that the Pentagon had knowledge of the report, but chose to sit on it so as not to make the Obama administration look bad.
Now that Barack Obama is president, every one of our troops killed by a terrorist he willingly released from G’tmo is his fault. The blood is on Obama’s hands, not George W. Bush’s.
Wonder what will he tell their families. If he visits them at all.
First, a couple weeks ago I posted about a liberal co-worker who I caught bashing and insulting Rush Limbaugh. I wrote:
[A]n Obama-adoring coworker was gloating over the news of how the “narrow-minded” Republican Party was fizzling, and that it was the fault of Rush Limbaugh, whom she insulted as brash, unintelligent, hateful, and ignorant. (For those who actually understand, and most don’t, Rush Limbaugh is first and foremost a conservative. That the GOP is the (occasional) party conservatives give their vote is secondary.) I informed this coworker that I actually listen to Rush every day, to which she expressed genuine sober surprise, “Oh, I did not know that.” I then asked her if she ever listened to Rush Limbaugh. Of course she didn’t. All she needs to know is whatever the leftists in the media tell her. There’s no other place where she would have gotten this impression. So I bet her $100 in cash to listen to Rush every day for one week. She couldn’t do it. I kept pushing the bet for several minutes, but she kept refusing.
Well, since then this coworker has agreed, for a yet-to-be determined price (if any), to listen to one Rush show of my choosing. I’m thinking of giving her a recording of his CPAC speech. As the school year is quickly winding to a close, time is of the essence. Any thoughts?
On a similar topic, I’ve decided to use this summer as an opportunity to take a bold but necessary step in my personal edification. I say “bold” because it’s going to put me far outside my comfort zone. I say “necessary” because I realized if I’m going to maintain VM as an informative and authoritave blog, I need to be as informed as possible.
So what step am I talking about? I’m going to read the publications that have most influenced modern liberal/Democrat thinking. In fact, this past weekend I put my money where my mouth is by purchasing a copy of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals—the bible of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and other prominent Leftists.
Why did I start with Rules for Radicals? Mainly because for well over a year I have heard commentators like Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin cite this book. While these hosts recite selected passages whenever the latest Obamanation occurs, I realized it would be helpful to read the book in its entirety.
My question for readers is: What other books should I read? (And please, no Al Franken or Michael Moore. I want to be informed by somewhat quasi-sentient people, not mud-slinging lefty hacks.)
Thanks in advance. And if any of you would like to read certain books along with me over the summer and form a kind of “Liberal Book Club for Righties,” let me know. Not only would it be informative, but therapeutic as well!
In 1987 Thomas Sowell published his seminal book A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles. His thesis was that liberals and conservatives live in two different universes, i.e., they literally see the world in two conflicting ways. Over 20 years later, it remains ever true. This article from American Thinker is a nutshell version of this argument:
Seeing the new Star Trek movie last week got me to thinking about parallel universes.
I was once a liberal. Now I am a libertarian-leaning conservative. Having transitioned from one orientation to the other, it occurs to me that liberals and conservatives perceive the world in completely different ways, and subsequently live their lives in different universes, each of which follows a different set of laws.
The laws of my perceptual universe are, to me, as obvious and irrepressible as the laws of physics. I have come to embrace them and in so doing have enjoyed some modicum of personal success. The laws of the liberal universe are no doubt as obvious to liberals, but I would argue that they are not irrepressible because they have failed every time in history that they have been applied. But then, perhaps I am biased.
Here, then, are the laws of my universe and the parallel (liberal) universe as best as I can enumerate them.
The Law of Human Behavior
MY UNIVERSE: People behave in rational, predictable ways. They seek pleasure and avoid pain. If someone perceives a stimulus, engages in a behavior and is rewarded, the next time the person is confronted with said stimulus, he will repeat the behavior. Conversely, if the person is punished, the behavior will not be repeated. In order to have an orderly and productive society, it is necessary that the system reward success and punish failure.
PARALLEL UNIVERSE: People do not behave rationally. They act on their emotional intuition, which is shaped by their attitudes. These attitudes, especially attitudes about the nature of the society in which they live, can be influenced via mass communication. In order to have an orderly and productive society, a central authority is therefore necessary to control attitude formation and maintenance. […]
Speaking of conflicting universes, at Pajamas Media, Mary Grabar discusses how Barack Obama’s America-hating, bomb-setting friends are on a book tour:
Today [a] famous couple, comrades-in-arms and former collaborators in Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Weatherman, and then Weather Underground — and now coauthors of the book Race Course Against White Supremacy — are bringing their show on the road.
I am talking about Bill Ayers, once-fugitive “peace activist,” whose photo of him defiling the American flag was used against his “pal” Barack Obama during the presidential campaign.
His wife, Bernardine Dohrn, praised mass murderer Charles Manson and was jailed for seven months for refusing to cooperate with a grand jury investigating the 1981 Brinks truck robbery by the Weather Underground and the Black Liberation Army that killed two policemen and a guard.
The peace and love couple, looking like the tenured professors of a postmodernist stripe that they are (earrings — on men — have replaced the love beads), are doing the book tour. Harlem is on their itinerary. They already visited a public library in Baltimore, a visit that, like Ayers’ other appearances, has drawn ire for his violent past and, conversely, a defense of his “free speech” rights, such as the one by the Baltimore Suneditorial board that claimed “[Ayers] is a distinguished education scholar, and he’s elevating the discourse about race relations in this country.” […]
Isn’t it nice that you can be a couple of hateful anti-American racists and tour around making money off the citizens of a country you so detest? You’d have to be an Obama supporter to miss the irony.
Finally, Steven Crowder, a wise-beyond-his-years pundit who has spent his young life in the trenches of Hollywood film and TV life, makes a bold statement:
I know, I know. It’s cliche and trust me, I hated the punks/celebrities who wore those slogan t-shirts throughout the Bush administration as much as the rest of you. The day Obama was elected, like many of you I told myself “Well, I didn’t vote for him, but he’s my President and I’ll support him.” A few months later, times have changed and I feel the need to officially declare that Barack Obama is “Not My President.” If you disagree, feel free to smack me around a little. If you feel the same way put your John Hancock down below and make your voice heard.
Seeing as the “Green Day Liberals/American Idiots” started the whole “Bush is not my President” schtick and their new album is dropping this week, I couldn’t think of a more appropriate time to issue a retort. Granted, the men of Green Day have had to overcome a lot to attain the success they enjoy today. It’s not every day that a group of legally-declared midgets can produce platinum-selling albums. Folks, I can give credit where credit is due. Rather than accept this success on behalf of the “little people” however, Green Day (along with other generic punk bands) had to start the “not my President” crusade against their commander in chief during a time of war. Punk bands even collectively put out the “Rock Against Bush” album which was eyebrow-raisingly sympathetic towards our enemies. Some would call it treason, I call it “a-bunch-of-uneducated-toolbags-playing-power-chords-in-an-attempt-to-brainwash-the-youth-of-America.” […]
Careful, Steven. Say any more and the Obamaniacs might make you the next recipient of the Rush Limbaugh award for treason!
The FEC has seeminly closed the case on the non-scandal scandal of Sarah Palin’s $150,000 wardrobe purchase: Their conclusion? Well, it was a non-scandal scandal.
You know the story. It was plastered on every liberal mainstream media front page and news report for a good week or so during the election season.
Yet, as Gateway Pundit informs us, the FEC has yet to even investigate that the Obama Campaign website accepts millions in fraudulent donation money to this day:
The FEC dismissed a complaint over the $150,000 designer wardrobe the Republican Party bought for VP candidate Sarah Palin and her family. The Far Left Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington had filed the complaint against the Alaska Governor.
The FEC has yet to conduct an audit of how Barack Obama raised and spent his presidential campaign’s record-shattering windfall, despite accusations of questionable donations and accounting methods.
GP looks back at the fall donation fraud, which the Obama campaign promised they would fix, but apparently never did, and no one—not the FEC and not the mainstream media—seems to not care less:
By turning off their Address Verification System, or AVS, at the Obama website, the Democratic candidate was able to raise a record $150 million in donations last month from millions of donors from all over the world.
Here's more proof that the Obama Camp is still cheating and accepting donations from anyone anywhere in the world!
Read the rest of the GP post to watch screenshots of Obama’s campaign site where bloggers try to make small ($5-10) donations with fraudulent information—and the site accepts them! […]
It’s clear to me that Obama has a sophisticated system that could easily flag and reject these donations if they wished to do so. The fact that only one of my donations showed up on my CC statement within the first 24-hrs initially gave me pause that they were screening for fraud (even though I gave a completely fake address that didn’t match my card). However, when the other three donations showed up three days later, it only confirmed my worst suspicions.
A major part of what I do is analyze and digest website traffic statistics on individual websites and sort thru in the most minuscule of detail; new visitors, browser type, sales transactions, email addresses etc. This is WebStuff 101. And even the most basic Web-Analytics and database tools would allow Obama to reject these phony donations before they occur, as the McCain site does.
Further, it’s laughable that the Obama camp claim it’s too complicated to make their under-$200 donor information available. Again, even the most basic Web-Analytics and database tools would allow the Obama camp to make this info available the way McCain does. […]
So, even today, with the election half a year behind us, fraud and crime is swept under the rug … if you’re a Democrat. If you have an R next your name, you better not sneeze wrong lest you be brought up on charges for destroying the environment.
Here’s a very fascinating article lamenting the callous murder of the American capitalist system and forceful imposition of unsustainable Marxism by a new power-hungry administration:
Where’s it from? Bill Buckley’s National Review? The Limbaugh Letter? Drudge Report? The Fox News website?
It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent [sic] into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.
True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.
Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.
First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy". Pride blind the foolish.
Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the "winning" side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.
The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.
These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?
These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American congress (parliament). Again, congress has put up little more then a whimper to their masters.
Then came Barack Obama's command that GM's (General Motor) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of "pure" free markets, the American president now has the power, the self given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.
So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a "bold" move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK's Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our "wise" Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.
Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper...but a "freeman" whimper.
So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set "fair" maximum salaries, evaluate performance and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses? Senator Barney Franks, a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort. He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it is retroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive.
The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.
The proud American will go down into his slavery with out a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.
When even the Russians say we’re screwed, we’re screwed.
Welcome to the future, suckers.
And to all you Obama voters out there, thanks for nothing.
While probably not at the very top of their lists, whether or not a president is Israel-friendly is almost guaranteed to be part of a political discussion among Jewish Americans. From where I stand, in November 2008, 78% of America’s Jews did what Thomas Franks accuses conservatives of doing in his book “What’s the Matter with Kansas?”, namely, they voted against their own best interest.
There’s a reason why Israel is one of the U.S.’s biggest allies—and it’s not a “Zionist plot” or “Israel lobby.” It’s because Israel is one of the most democratic and free societies in the world, let alone in the entire Middle East. To Jewish Americans Israel is also important because it is our biblical (and for some, cultural) homeland.
This is why I say that, by voting for Barack Obama, over three-quarters of American Jews voted against their best interest—because they voted against Israel’s as well.
Only 31 percent of Israelis consider the views of American president Barack Obama's administration pro-Israel, according to a Smith Research poll released Sunday, on the eve of the meeting between Obama and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at the White House.
The poll of 500 Israelis, representing a statistical model of the Israeli population, was conducted last week following a string of reports in the Israeli media about condemnations of Israeli policies by US Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and other senior Obama administration officials.
Besides the 31% who labeled Obama pro-Israel, 14% considered him pro-Palestinian and 40% felt he was neutral. The other 15% declined to provide an opinion for the poll, which had a 4.5% margin of error.
Obama's numbers contrast sharply with those of his predecessor, George W. Bush, whose administration, according to the poll, was considered pro-Israel by 88% of the respondents. Seven percent said Bush was neutral and just 2% labeled him pro-Palestinian. […]
This is not a new development. All through 2008 Israelis were much more supportive of a McCain presidency.
Even with Bibi Netanyahu coming to America to meet with President Obama, Israelis seem to be no more confident about Obama than they were before the election.
But don’t tell that to America’s Jews, the lion’s share of whom are politically liberal/Democrat.
The more I hear stories like this, the more I am convinced journalists should be able to be sued for malpractice.
If doctors can get sued for malpractice (the vast majority of which is surely unintentional), then shouldn’t journalists be punished for the deliberate manipulation of the news? At least when a doctor screws up, one unfortunate individual suffers the consequences. But when a reporter screws up, its repercussions adversely affect thousands, even millions of people. If a hospital has an alarming number of doctors being sued, its reputation suffers. So should it be with newspapers and other media outlets whose journalists and editors distort, manipulate, and conceal the news.
A case in point was first commented upon at the Power Line blog, and then written about at American Spectator / NewsBusters:
Acknowledging what the blogosphere has known for weeks, the New York Times finally went on record to admit that just before last Election Day it killed a politically sensitive news story involving corruption allegations that might have made the Obama campaign look bad.
But the admission on Sunday, which came seven months after NYT staff reporter Stephanie Strom’s reporting about possibly illegal coordination between the Obama campaign and ACORN last year, took the form of a snarky column from Clark Hoyt, the Old Gray Lady’s “public editor.” Hoyt used the word “nonsense” to describe the allegations of impropriety leveled against ACORN and the Obama campaign.
Hoyt writes in the Sunday New York Times
On March 17, a Republican lawyer, quoting a confidential source for a Times reporter, testified to Congress that the newspaper killed a story last fall because it would have been “a game-changer” in the presidential election.
The charge, amplified by Bill O’Reilly on Fox News in April [read: evil liars, and therefore illegitimate] and reverberating around the conservative blogosphere [read: more evil liars, and therefore illegitimate], is about the most damning allegation that can be made against a news organization. If true, it would mean that Times editors, whose job is to report the facts without fear or favor, were so lacking in integrity that they withheld an important story in order to influence the election. [Umm, yeaaah!]
I have spent several weeks looking into this issue—interviewing and e-mailing those involved, reading transcripts, looking at campaign finance records and conferring with legal experts. In a nutshell, I think the charge is nonsense.
In his very first sentence Hoyt makes a careless mistake: it was March 19, not March 17 (St. Patrick’s Day), that the “Republican lawyer,” Heather Heidelbaugh, testified before the House Judiciary Committee.
Then Hoyt gets caught up in minutiae, agonizing about whether the story would have been “a game-changer in the presidential election.” He downplays the illegalities, calling them “technical violations of campaign finance law.”
Hoyt writes
The story involved allegations that Barack Obama’s campaign, in league with Acorn, a left-leaning community activist group, was guilty of technical violations of campaign finance law. Evidence supplied by the source could not be verified. Even if the story had panned out, it is hard to see how any editor could have regarded it as momentous enough to change an election in which the Republicans were saddled with an unpopular war and an economic meltdown.
On the surface if one doesn’t think through Hoyt’s explanation carefully, it may seem quite reasonable. But spend a few minutes thinking about it and holes begin to appear in the house ombudsman’s reasoning. […]
… PowerLine’s John Hinderaker skillfully dissects Hoyt’s sophistry, writing:
Hoyt also argues that the story about Obama and ACORN would not have been a "game-changer" in that it would not have swung the election to John McCain. I agree. But since when is that the standard? Is Hoyt telling us that the Times' policy is only to print stories that have the potential to change the result of a Presidential election? Of course, if the story did have the potential to change the outcome of the election, that, too, would have been offered as a reason not to print it.
Hinderaker also argues that "the facts as related by Hoyt don't rebut the charge; they support it."
Read Hinderaker’s commentary on the case and decide for yourself if the New York Times was right to end its probe.
If you have the time, read the full Spectator article, as well as the Power Line account as Vadum recommends. There are a lot of names, dates, and e-mail exchanges to keep track of. But at the end, the truth willed out.
Would the story have affected the 2008 election? No one will ever know for sure, but one thing we do know is that Hoyt thought so, otherwise he wouldn't have had the story killed. As Hinderaker quips: For the New York Times, Republicans are simply the enemy. By October 2008, it was time to circle the wagons.
A couple years ago I attended a work-related retreat. As I walked into the dining room on Sunday morning for breakfast, I noticed a bunch of them at a round table each reading a different section of the New York Times. I joked, saying something along the lines of, “What are you reading that left-wing rag for!?” One of them turned to me and yelled back, “Hey, your Karl Rove Times is over there!”
Well, at least this person was admitting that were there such a thing as a “Karl Rove Times,” i.e., a propaganda paper for the Republican Party, its Democrat analogue would be—nay, is— the New York Times.
No example makes that point better than the one just presented.
So, as a consequence of the Times burying this story, we have a Marxist-socialist in the White House who harbors a white-hot hate for his own country and the productive citizens which made it great. One involved with a law-breaking partisan organization who is slated to be involved in the 2010 Census for goodness sake.
Words have consequences. And with one utterance, Barack Obama may single-handedly have destroyed the tourism business of one of the nation’s most popular tourist destinations.
On February 10, just weeks after being inaugurated and at the start of the AIG bonus “scandal,” the Marxist-in-Chief announced his diktat to corporate America:
“You can't get corporate jets. You can't go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayer's dime.”
True, his statement was directed first and foremost to companies who accepted (or who were forced to accept) stimulus money. But you try convincing any American corporation who heard those words that he wasn’t also admonishing them.
The mayor of Las Vegas immediately responded to Obama’s statement. On February 11, AP reported:
“That's outrageous, and he owes us an apology,” [mayor Oscar Goodman] said. “He owes us a retraction.”
Las Vegas tourism officials worry that increased scrutiny on business travel will discourage meetings and conventions—business that would be crucial for the city already suffering economically. The number of visitors to Las Vegas was down 4.4 percent in 2008 compared with a year earlier, and visits in December alone declined nearly 11 percent.
Goodman apparently had a lot to worry about, because even before Obama made this edict, his overt antagonistic attitude toward corporate executives was already having a deleterious effect on Vegas tourism. AP continued:
Late Monday, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said it had moved a three-day conference from the Las Vegas Strip to San Francisco amid what the bank called a broad review of its activities. Goldman Sachs has accepted $10 billion in federal bailout funds.
Last week, Wells Fargo & Co., which received a $25 billion infusion, canceled a planned employee recognition conference in Las Vegas after an AP story reported on the trip and the bank received criticism from Capitol Hill that it was misusing the funds.
Well, of course Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo cancelled their plans to Vegas. Why would they want to find themselves in Obama’s crosshairs and end up being another AIG? Who wants angry Obama-worshiping socialists harrassing them on their driveways like what happened to AIG execs?
But this just the beginning. Obama’s February 10 statement was just the nuclear blast. More than three months later we can still see the fallout:
El Rushbo, doing the job that the mainstream media no longer does, tracked the damage he knew Obama was about to do to Las Vegas. On April 28, he informed the 1,500+ tycoons attending the Milken Institute Global Forum:
Look at what President Obama has done to the hospitality business. Talk to anybody in Las Vegas. He's urging people not to go! CEOs are afraid to fly their planes 'cause they're going to be tattled on. So if you have this class envy that is so popular—that all we're here to do in America is get even with those who have achieved—then this administration is for you.
Sure enough, on May 5 was this update:
They’ve already scared CEOs into parking their jets. The private jet industry is in trouble. They’ve already scared people into not going to Las Vegas. Obama said the days of corporate execs getting on airplanes and flying to Vegas are over. Steve Wynn, Wynn Resorts, reported a first quarter loss. Occupancy rates, money in the casino all throughout Vegas are down. The hospitality business is in the tank. One word from Obama could fix this. “I think we need to revive the hospitality business. If you have a jet, if you want to go to Las Vegas I think you should go.” No, the last word on Obama was, days of people who have money flying to Vegas for a good time are over.
And now, lo and behold, Las Vegas tourism has tanked so badly that the governor of Nevada, Jim Gibbons, has called for Obama to meet with him and business leaders from the state. Obama has refused. Local News station KTNV [h/t Drudge] reported today:
Carson City - The Office of Governor Jim Gibbons was notified today that President Barack Obama has refused to meet with the Governor and key business leaders from Nevada. Governor Gibbons requested the meeting in a letter to President Obama so the President could address statements he made that were critical to Nevada and have caused economic damage to convention business and tourism business in the Silver State. Earlier this year, the President told an audience in Elkhart, Indiana, “You can’t get corporate jets. You can’t go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayer’s dime.” That quote was seen by many as an insult to Las Vegas and as a message to companies across the Nation to stay away from Las Vegas for corporate meetings and conventions.
The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority reports over 400 conventions and business meetings scheduled to take place in Las Vegas recently have cancelled. These cancelled events translate into 111,800 guests in Las Vegas and over 250,000 “room-nights”. The cancelled conventions and meetings have cost the Las Vegas economy over $100-million, not including gaming revenue.
“I am disappointed at the hypocrisy shown by this Administration,” Gibbons said, “President Obama is coming to Las Vegas later this month for a political fundraiser, but he will not help the struggling families in Las Vegas and Nevada who are out of work because of his reckless comments.” Governor Gibbons noted, “President Obama is coming to Las Vegas to raise campaign cash for Senator Harry Reid, apparently our money is good enough for the President, but our tourism, jobs, and economic future are not.” Gibbons added, “This is politics, pure and simple, President Obama stood for change, but all he has done is brought negative economic change to Nevada.”
Governor Gibbons is calling upon Senator Reid to use any influence he might have to ask President Obama to encourage Americans to visit America during their summer vacations this year. “Sometimes Washington politicians forget that the people of Nevada are Americans,” Governor Gibbons said, “This President needs to repair the damage he has done.”
And damage it is. Our Marxist-socialist in the White House has marked corporate America as Public Enemy #1. He doesn’t want to meet with the governor of Nevada because he doesn’t care, and probably even enjoys the hole he’s shot into the tourist industry of Las Vegas.
But wait! Now the plot thickens: On May 12 it was announced that Barack Obama himself was planning to jet to Las Vegas … to attend a fundraiser for Harry “The War Is Lost” Reid!
Even the liberal L.A. Times smelled something rotten with that action. On May 12, Ashley Powers, from LAT’s Politics blog “Top of the Ticket,” quipped sarcastically:
[W]hat better way for a new Democratic administration to symbolize cutting out excess in a time of hardship for millions of Americans than to hold a mega-fundraiser in Las Vegas, that urban personification of understatement, for a guy with millions in hand already and no one to spend it against?
I totally agree. But interestingly, Powers seems to have changed her position. In a blog post today, Powers criticizes the Nevada governor for “pouting” about Obama’s trip for Reid and his refusal to meet with him. She dismissed the governor’s press release was simply one of his “weapons of choice” (which I guess is Liberal-speak for “calling out a Democrat with the cold hard truth”). I get the impression that some time between last week and today, someone at the White House warned her to mind her tone ... I have just sent a comment to Ms. Powers expressing regarding this inconsistency. Let’s see if she posts it; comments are author-moderated.
Granted, being in NJ, I know very little about Nevada politics and from what little I know, the current Republican governor does not seem very popular and will probably not be re-elected. Be that as it may, Obama’s jaunt to Vegas to fundraise for a Democrat millionaire while having already succeeded in frightening corporate executives—private citizens who have done nothing other than commit the mortal Marxist sin of making a few bucks—into not traveling to Vegas.
This is the president of our own country who has done this. He’s a Democrat King Midas: Everything he touches turns to crap.
Seriously, if you voted for this guy, how do you look yourself in the mirror?
Well, it’s Sunday evening and by now President Hope&Change has delivered his commencement speech at Notre Dame and received his honorary law degree from the Catholic university.
Also by this time, several dozen individuals, including clergy and “Roe” herself, Norma McCorvey, have been arrested for protesting Obama’s invitation.
Does anybody find it the least bit ironic that the same weekend the most radical left-wing president in U.S. history addresses Notre Dame graduates about the need for “vigorous debate,” people are arrested for exercising their patiotic right to peacefully protest?
The NoBamaNation blog notes the double standard between this and the supposed state of fear that was fostered during the Bush administration:
We’d heard for eight years that American’s were losing their rights under the Bush Administration on a daily basis. Yet, I couldn’t find a single example of those claims. (The closest the Bush haters could come is to point to Guantanamo Bay, however not a single American is held there.)
Nowhere in the public record could I find a single instance of a Bush hater being arrested for … protesting. In fact, quite the opposite was true.
Cindy Sheehan camped out at “Camp Casey” with a number of other anti-war protesters directly outside the prairie Chapel Ranch in Crawford Texas, as President Bush vacationed at his Crawford Ranch in 2005.
Not a single arrest was recorded as a result, and in fact a local property owner with closer proximity to the Bush family ranch allowed Sheehan and her merry band of miscreants to move onto his property to conduct their protests in an attempt to disrupt the Bush family’s vacation – on their own property.
Now, we know that not a single protester was ever arrested on a College Campus while Bush gave a commencement address for if there was one, media accounts of the arrests would be readily available on the internet! Considering the ‘mainstream media’ was not exactly friendly to the Bush administration, a single arrest would’ve been subject of media scrutiny for weeks had one happened. Clearly one did not.
Yet, here we have the ‘mainstream media’ once again demonstrating their complicity in not reporting the Obama Administration’s egregious violations of basic Constitutional protections: FREE SPEECH in having civil, non-violent protesters who simply disagree with the current President’s stance on abortion arrested.
This is FASCISM in America, where dissent is no longer tolerated. Apparently when Hillary Clinton declared “dissent is patriotic!” she meant free speech only for thee, and not for ME.
Can’t disagree with that. Unless the protests actually thwarted Obama’s arrival into Notre Dame or disrupted his speech--neither of which apparently is the case--there’s no reason why these protesters should have been arrested. By contrast, protesters who try to disrupt Obama's speech should be apprehended. (Gateway Pundit has video of such an occurrence.) I stated this point yesterday.
The entire text of Obama’s is here, but I want to look particularly at a line about embryonic stem-cell research:
Those who speak out against stem cell research may be rooted in admirable conviction about the sacredness of life, but so are the parents of a child with juvenile diabetes who are convinced that their son’s or daughter’s hardships can be relieved.
Oh, wait a minute. Obama did not include the extremely important qualifier “embryonic.” An innocent omission? Meaningless oversight? Sure, right. As K. Ryan James writes at his blog:
I would submit to the good doctor that, in order to “engage in vigorous debate,” one would do well to use the proper language in description of your point. I am not aware of those who speak out against “stem cell research,” but I do know of many who take issue with the destruction of life that comes with “embryonic stem cell research.”
In a setting where the truthful exchange of ideas, or today’s buzzword of “dialogue,” is to be engaged, it would seem a bit disingenuous for President Obama to omit the word “embryonic” from his teleprompter in order to use liberal talking points instead of the “fair-minded words” he spoke of today.
It gets better. Then President Golden Calf laid out this whopper:
The question, then, is how do we work through these conflicts? Is it possible for us to join hands in common effort? As citizens of a vibrant and varied democracy, how do we engage in vigorous debate? How does each of us remain firm in our principles, and fight for what we consider right, without demonizing those with just as strongly held convictions on the other side?
I find these words extremely offensive and insulting. Obama is a guest on someone else’s “turf” and he’s basically telling them that their point of view is wrong. He is slapping the Catholic ND community in the face for the sin of opposing his anti-Catholic views—while on Catholic turf. It’s no different from Obama delivering an address at Jewish Theological Seminary during which he tells his hosts they are refusing to debate and dialogue about believing in Jesus.
Secondly, I find Obama’s words higly hypocritical and insincere. Because our current president is not looking for debate or dialogue. His answer is the only answer, and whether it’s using embryonic stem-cells or unrestricted abortion or unsustainable national economic engineering. To quote another open-minded liberal, the debate is over. And he’s spending your tax dollars to do it all.
You want to talk demonization, Mr. Obama? It is you who has been doing the demonizing ever since your campaign. Your opponents are either narrow-minded conservatives, narrow-minded religious people, narrow-minded gun-owners, narrow-minded abortion-opponents, narrow-minded believers in free-market capitalism, narrow-minded believers in winning the War on “Terror.” Commentators in the TV and print media might be driving the point home, but don’t be fooled, it’s coming from the top, i.e., the White House itself. Your arrogant, holier-than-thou attitude—which Bush’s detractors said he had, yet with no substantiation—has fostered a culture in which your ideological opponents have been deemed “narrow-minded,” even “extremist” by your own administration.
[I]t was Obama who suggested that those who opposed his “economic stimulus” spending spree were unpatriotic. It was Obama who called rural Americans as “bitter” people who “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
Obama wants things to be “fair” as long as they’re “fair” to him.
Bingo. Whenever someone actually wants to have vigorous debate, Mr. Obama, you not-so-kindly remind them, “I won.”
You want to talk about dialogue and debate, Mr. Obama? How about practicing what you preach. You are so narrow-minded on the issue of “torture” of terrorist scum, that you’ve just started releasing them from Guantánamo Bay, even though quite a number of them have rejoined their brethren in the act of killing our brave troops on the battlefield. Even if you are so adamantly against enhanced interrogation techniques, are you so narrow-minded that you can’t consider a single scenario where EIT’s aren’t applicable? If a terrorist knew where a hidden nuke was ticking and your wife and daughters were about to be vaporized along with a few hundred thousand Washingtonians, you still wouldn’t apply EIT’s? No debate. No dialogue.
You are so narrow-minded on the issue of abortion that you are the most pro-abortion president in U.S. history. Are you so narrow-minded that you can’t consider a single scenario where abortion should be wrong? Apparently not, because as a Senator you voted four times to allow the murder of a infant born alive due to a botched abortion. No debate. No dialogue. Regardless of the empty, meaningless lip service you paid to it in your ND speech.
You are so narrow-minded on the economy that you won’t even listen to your own Congressional Budget office about the unsustainability of your socialist overhaul of our economic system. No dialogue. No debate. Are you so narrow-minded that you can’t consider that the hundreds of thousands of Tea Partiers on tax day might have had a legitimate grievance? Of course not. To you, we’re just a bunch of angry, selfish, greedy old white men who don’t want to “sacrifice” for your socialist dystopia. You sic your Department of National Security on American citizens, whom you’ve labelled as “right-wing extremists,” while at the same time responding saying you’d be willing to have a “serious discussion” whenever we were ready.
You are so narrow-minded on issues that you won’t meet with Rush Limbaugh or other conservatives who have not only described why your direction for this country is unsustainable, but who have laid out solutions that you have had your White House announce you are not willing to hear.
It’s not hard to tell why you don’t want dialogue and debate. You’ve proven several times over these 100+ days that your are a totalitarian. You’ve shown it by traveling around the globe bowing to and giving power-handshakes to totalitarians. You’ve shown it by threatening people not to listen to people who oppose your views. You’ve shown it by convincing people that corporate CEO’s and Wall Street executives are enemies of the state, in order that you can overstep your constitutional authority and take their companies over like a mob boss.
Dialogue and debate is the last thing you want, Barack Hussein Obama.
So stop pissing on my leg and telling me it’s raining.
Way back in 1964 Ronald Reagan said “The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn’t so.”
Almost nowhere does this statement better apply than the economy, income taxes, and wealth in America.
This site is a must-read for anyone who is still of the mindset that "the rich" aren't paying their fair share.
As they say, there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.
And the class-warfare Democrats are really good at those lies. If they weren't, there wouldn't be one in the White House right now, nor would there be a Democrat-majority House and Senate.
When Democrats tell you that "the rich" aren't paying their fair share, they are lying to you.
When Democrats tell you that our society is one dominated by "selfishness" and "greed," they are lying to you.
When Democrats tell you that the tax policies of George W. Bush's unfairly favored "the rich" and penalized the poor, they are lying to you. (It was quite the opposite.)
The Marxist-socialist who currently occupies the White House, thanks in part to a liberal media who supported him, rode a wave of economic lies that all Americans will wind up paying for in the end.
Let's look at a real-life example of the liberal/Democrat lie.
Submitted for your consideration is this clip from “Real Time with Bill Maher” that aired shortly after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans. [h/t White Sake]
The panel was Maher; the late comedian George Carlin; Cynthia Tucker, a black female editorial editor for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution; and James Glassman, a conservative-libertarian commentator whom George W. Bush appointed to a position in the State Department in late 2007.
So you have this poor Glassman (whom I never heard of before, but whom I generally liked), one lone conservative against three stark-raving mad loony leftists. (I wonder when President Hope&Change shoves the “Fairness” Doctrine through if Maher is going to be forced to have an equal number of righties vs. lefties. Anyone else wanna hold their breath?)
The discussion, naturally, centered around George W. Bush, class, and race. And being the 3:1 odds, guess what the consensus was: George W. Bush and his government has proven once and for all their hatred for black people, and rich American white people don’t care about poor black people.
What nearly made me fall of my chair was when, while discussing looting in New Orleans, Carlin said:
The real looting in this country takes place in the transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. I’m sorry you don’t like class and truth …, and the poor have been systematically looted in this country. The rich have been made richer by this criminal, fascist president and his government.
Maher, not satisfied with Carlin merely calling George W. Bush a fascist, tried to clarify:
Fascism is when corporations become the government. And that is sort of what we have.
Huh???
I loved George Carlin as a comedian. But when it comes to this topic, George Carlin is one dead freaking idiot. And Bill Maher is one live freaking idiot.
Carlin is wrong because for decades it's the poor who have been looting from the rich! 40% of Americans don’t pay income taxes, George! As the Heritage statistics clearly show, the top 10% pay over 70% of the taxes. Under the “criminal, fascist” Bush, the bottom 50% were paying about 4% of taxes in 2001, which went down to 3% in 2006. By stark contrast, the top 1% were paying 32% in 2001, which went up to nearly 40% in 2006. Who’s looting whom, you dead moron? You got it totally bass-ackwards.
Lies, damn lies, and statistics ...
And Maher? “Fascism is when corporations become the government”??? I guess that means, to this mental midget, that the opposite of fascism is when government becomes corporations. Which is exactly what Barack Obama is doing right now!!!
If you just got blood on your computer screen, it’s because my head just exploded.
There has been quite a hulabaloo about Barack Obama being the commencement speaker at Notre Dame. The sides are clear enough: On the one hand, Notre Dame is a Catholic and thus abortion-opposing, institution, and so having Obama—unequivocally the country’s most pro-abortion U.S. president ever—is at the very least inappropriate. On the other side, if a university is to be open to all points of view, then ND shouldn’t have a problem with an abortion advocate as commencement speaker.
The problem is compounded by ND’s decision to give Obama an honorary law degree (Something even Arizona State, where Obama has already delivered his speech, decided not to do). As for me, who is not even Catholic, I would side with Catholic League president Bill Donohue. Yesterday he told Tom Marr, subbing for “The Great One” Mark Levin, that he supports Obama speaking, but opposes the honorary degree. This makes the most sense to me. Inviting an abortion advocate to a Catholic school indicates open-mindedness to opposing views. Giving him an honorary degree, however, legitimizes this position.
The media has been all over this Obama-ND story, with nearly 2,100 internet news articles as of this writing. But here’s an interesting line. The South Bend Tribune casually reports:
Norma McCorvey, a primary figure in the controversial court case Roe v. Wade, threw her support Friday behind those protesting President Barack Obama's invitation to speak at Notre Dame.
Did anyone catch that? Norma McCorvey is simply “a primary figure”? McCorvey is the “Roe” in Roe v. Wade! You don’t get more “primary” than that!
Why an appearance by McCorvey, whose abortion launched a taxpayer-funded death industry rivaling Stalin’s purges (almost 50 million since ‘73)? Because since that fateful SCOTUS decision, she has become a Born Again and is adamantly anti-abortion.
Incidentally, the protest mentioned in the South Bend Tribune piece, refers to an attempt by pro-lifers to shut down Obama’s speech [h/t Gateway Pundit]. This is one facet of the story that disturbs me, and I am in complete agreement with a number of GP commenters, who warn these protesters not to do this tactic, which is typically left-wing. Hold up your signs if you want, but do not make the university look even worse by shouting down speech. This is what liberals do to conservatives. Let them be the intolerant ones. (FYI: Today, black ultra-conservative Alan Keyes and 21 other protesters have already been arrested for protesting Obama's invitation.)
Which is a perfect segue to our second story [h/t again to GP). Protesters at UC Berkeley have forced the cancellation of an invitation to Israel PM Netanyahu. For those of you keeping track, the fine institution has had A’jad as guest speaker. On this instance of speech suppression and double standards from the Left Coast university, Edward Olshaker writes in today's American Thinker:
Imagine it's 1940, and picture Adolf Hitler speaking at a US university, receiving a polite reception, while Winston Churchill is barred from speaking because his safety cannot be guaranteed.
It's unthinkable, yet the very same pro-fascist dynamic is a reality in 21st Century America.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu comes to America knowing he is a second-class citizen who is denied the free-speech rights enjoyed even by prominent jihadists, having been violently prevented from speaking on campuses in the US and Canada in recent years.
Protestors at Berkeley, the campus once synonymous with the term "free speech," forced the cancellation of Netanyahu's speech there, as well as two subsequent speeches, in November 2000. The Jewish Bulletin of Northern California reported:
Hundreds of protesters shouting “Support the Palestinians, choose a side” and “No free speech for war criminals” blocked the gate leading to the Berkeley Community Theatre Tuesday evening, forcing the cancellation of a scheduled speech by former Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
Additional talks by Netanyahu that were scheduled Wednesday and Thursday in San Mateo and San Rafael were subsequently cancelled.
Waving banners reading “Zionism=Nazism” and “End U.S. aid to Israel,” the crowd was estimated at more than 500 by the Berkeley Police Department and at 200 to 250 by observers …
The vitriol that greeted Netanyahu at Berkeley only worsened in the ensuing years. Anneli Rufus of the East Bay Express recalled that in 2001:
...Students for Justice in Palestine had become large enough to stage a high-profile sit-in at UC’s Wheeler Hall. The group had demanded that the regents divest from companies with significant holdings in Israel. When the regents failed to respond, dozens of group members chained shut nine of the building’s twelve doors. They formed human chains to block two of the remaining doors and ushered students out of the building through the last door. Professor Gordon, who had an important class scheduled that day in Wheeler, burst through the chain of students only to be showered with spit and hit by a student...
Later that year, 23-year-old Aaron Schwartz was walking toward the Hillel building as part of an obviously Jewish group celebrating the annual holiday Simchas Torah. According to accounts in The Daily Californian and the Jewish Bulletin of Northern California, one onlooker mocked the procession by goose-stepping in place, chanting “Heil Hitler,” and performing the Nazi salute. After punching Schwartz in the face and knocking him to the ground, the man and his two companions strolled away.
But many remember spring 2002 as the season the screaming really started. On spring break, someone hurled the cinderblock through the front door of Berkeley’s Hillel Center, scrawling the words F--- JEWS nearby...
The same mentality was on display in spring 2002 at San Francisco State University, where pro-Israel students and elderly Holocaust survivors trying to hold a rally were stopped by violent protestors screaming “F-- the Jews,” “Jews, go back to Russia,” “Too bad Hitler didn’t finish the job,” and “Get out or we’ll kill you.”
Threats of “we’ll kill you” appear to have led to the logical next step in the recent violent death of 38-year-old pro-Israel activist Daniel J. Kliman in San Francisco. [Holy crap. I did not know about this story. Was this reported anywhere but locally?]
It appears that present-day northern California is to Jews what Mississippi in the early 20th Century was to African-Americans-the epicenter of explosive hate-although the same bigotry permeates much of the academic world. […]
Very well said.
I have Jewish friends who graduated from—and even work at—Berkeley. I wonder how they feel about this.
Bottom line is this: Those “narrow-minded right-wingers” at Notre Dame are waaaaay more open-minded and tolerant than that so-called bastion of tolerance, love, and free speech, UC Berkeley.
Some of us find this revelation not surprising in the least.
So far the answer seems obvious. You know how they say a picture is worth a thousand words? Mike at the Politics and Finance Blog has the following picture:
Yeah. I'd say that sums it up about right.
Here's a video clip from her press conference yesterday:
Why do I suddenly hear the Eagles singing, "You can't hiiiiiiide your lyin' eyes ..."?
Tom Marr, subbing for "The Great One" Mark Levin last night, seconds my statement from yesterday for this woman to resign already. He must have been reading my blog ;-)
WASHINGTON (AP) - The United States on Friday released the Guantanamo Bay prisoner who was at the center of a Supreme Court battle giving detainees the right to challenge their confinement, an Obama administration official said.
Lakhdar Boumediene left the U.S. naval facility in Cuba Friday headed to relatives in France, said the official, who spoke on a condition of anonymity because the release was not yet cleared for announcement.
Boumediene was arrested along with five other Algerians in 2001 in Bosnia, suspected in a bomb plot against the U.S. embassy in Sarajevo. He arrived in Guantanamo in January 2002.
President Barack Obama has promised to close the prison at Guantanamo and has urged allies to help take prisoners from there. France promised to take one Guantanamo prisoner when Obama attended the NATO summit in April and said last week it would accept Boumediene.
In June 2008, the Supreme Court ruled in a case called Boumediene v. Bush that foreign Guantanamo Bay detainees have rights under the Constitution to challenge their detention in civilian courts. On a 5-4 split, the majority said the U.S. government was violating the rights of prisoners there and that the system the Bush administration put in place to classify suspects as enemy combatants and review those decisions is inadequate.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court, said, "The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times."
Boumediene was released as Obama announced that he is reviving Bush-era military tribunals for a small number of Guantanamo detainees, with several new legal protections for terror suspects. The system is expected to try fewer than 20 of the 241 detainees now being held at the detention center.
So Anthony Kennedy and four other misguided judges (not hard to guess who) have turned our Constitution into the literal suicide pact: Unlawful enemy combatants have been captured and detained for plotting to destroy the lives and liberty of every American citizen. And five lawyers in robes have decided they have rights under the very document that protects the lives and liberty of American citizens.
This, as well as Obama’s decision to close Club G’tmo and spring these “worst of the worst,” is the death knell of the republic. It says loud and clear to all enemies of the U.S.: Come and try to kill us. If you destroy our nation, you win. If you get captured in the process, you will be protected by the full Constitutional rights of the very nation you’re trying to tear down.
Enjoy this week’s installment of the “Weekly Roar” from reader LoudLion:
I want to believe that my government is out there trying to help me. I am trying to believe that they are looking out for my best interests. But I can’t. I cannot believe in government officials anymore, because, well, they are from the government. It used to be that you went into government after a successful career and then held an office, and then retired. It used to be that you did not campaign for office; you were chosen and summoned to office. Not anymore. Today our political leaders are suckled on the government teat their whole careers. Let’s look at the ranking leaders we have now.
Senator Harry Reid has held a political office since 1967 … 1967, people. He has been earning a living off tax dollars for 42 years.
The Honorable (I am choking on that) Nancy Pelosi has been in political office since 1987. She has been earning a living off your tax dollars for 22 years.
Senator Edward Kennedy has been in the United States Senate since 1962. Forty-seven years, people, 47 years.
Congressman Steny Hoyer has held political office since 1966, 43 years in office.
Congressman Charles Rangel has been in office since 1970. He has lived off the tax payers’ hard honest working money for 39 years.
And the person holding office the longest presently is Congressman John Dingell, incoming class of 1955. That’s 54 years.
All of these people have one thing in common: they all think—nay, they know—they are smarter then you. These are the people who have accepted bribe money from convicted felons (Harry Reid Abramoff land deals), presided over the lowest thought of Congress (Nancy Pelosi), allowed a young girl to drown (Chappaquiddick Ted), may or may not have protected a rapist (House Page Sex Scandal), stripped a sitting governor of his appointment powers (Blago), failed to pay taxes on rental property income, and so on.
Take that in contrast to our early political leaders. President George Washington served only two terms as president, and was only on the government payroll for a total of 24 years (this includes while Commander of the Continental Army and after leaving office); President John Adams: 27 years (this includes his time as a representative of the Continental Congress and Ambassador); President Thomas Jefferson: 30 years. The father of our Constitution, James Madison, was in politics for 24 years.
I know looking at these two lists might show a sense of hypocrisy, and I can accept that. But, these earlier men did not have life time annuities granted to them the minute they took office. These earlier men did not have medical insurance paid for them by the government. They did not, and would not, put themselves before the people. There is a very good reason why these men are called our Founding Fathers, and why the men and woman listed above them would never, ever, be confused for them.
Our country is ruled by mediocrity by a bureaucracy, and will continue to do so unless we the people remember that these United States fail to listen to the words of President Lincoln.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
We can take a lot out of that famous speech about the way our world and country are changing. Read it and let me know how you see it, I’d like to know.
I’m presuming the topic of LoudLion’s post was inspired by a conversation we had last weekend. It involved the question of whether there should be term limits for Congressmen and Senators. Your thoughts?
Pelosi admits waterboard briefing
Accuses CIA of lying to her—‘They mislead us all the time’
By Eli Lake and S.A. Miller | Friday, May 15, 2009
Under pressure to explain conflicting stories, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday acknowledged for the first time that in 2003 she was told waterboarding and other tough tactics were being used on suspected terrorists and did not object to them, even as she defiantly accused the CIA of lying to her and Congress about the use of such controversial techniques during 2002 briefings. […]
“In February 2003, a member of my staff informed me that the Republican chairman and the Democratic ranking member of the intelligence committee had been briefed about the use of certain techniques which had been the subject of earlier legal opinions,” she said.
She offered multiple explanations about why she didn’t object at that time. She said objecting was useless - “By the time we were told, we were finding out that it had been used before. You know, in other words, that was beyond the point”—but also said it was no longer her role, since by 2003 she had become House minority leader.
Her successor as the top Democrat on the intelligence committee, Rep. Jane Harman, California Democrat, did write a letter after the 2003 briefing objecting to the tactics.
The CIA said it stood by its record of the 2002 briefing that showed, based on recollections of agency employees, that Mrs. Pelosi was briefed that techniques had been used on terrorist suspect Abu Zubaydah.
The way this woman twists and squirms like a worm on a hook, pointing fingers at everyone but herself, charging the CIA with lying when she has no proof. What a disgrace.
Accuse me of schadenfraude, but I am enjoying how this self-serving political hack is hoisting herself by her own petard.
Still want that Truth Commission, Nancy? It was never a “Truth” Commission anyway; it was a “Get Bush and Cheney” Commission. Now she (and who knows, maybe other Democrats too) are about to get caught in their own web.
... sitting at the table next to you are two 20-somethings talking global politics? There's a young guy with a scruffy goatee and wearing a wool hat indoors in May, and he's talking to someone about his trip to several countries in Africa and to India. The conversation turns to how crime is very low in India, compared to the U.S. (I don't know this for sure, but let's take his word for it.) He concludes it's because the people in India have better values and morals ("considering it's 44C degrees all the time").
This is in contrast to the U.S.,where he explains the only thing preventing us all from killing each other is our laws. (Because, you know, we just happen to have laws against murder and theft and other things just by coincidence. It wouldn't be because maybe 230+ years ago a bunch of mostly Christians who possessed values rooted in a Judeo-Christian moral code guided them to make these laws. What an ignoramus this guy is.)
He then ties our lack of morals with "torture" (of course) and then cites the dropping of the two atomic bombs on Japan. He apparently never realized that had we not dropped those bombs, Japan could have developed the bomb themselves, dropped them on some U.S. city his grandparents lived, and he wouldn't be sitting here.
The conversation then turned to recent problems growing rice in Asia and how global warming (a 2-degree increase he said) was responsible for a surge in rice prices. "All this is tied together!" he insisted.
Then they started talking about the global oil supply and Hugo Chavez got mentioned. Chavez, my goateed neighbor said, has "good and bad." His interlocutor agreed, "Yeah, he's arguable ..."
Castro, he added, did do some horrible things, but nothing worse than the mafia here in the U.S. But Castro does have his health care system and environmental policies, so he's OK.
Gee, I wonder what this guy studied in college ... Somewhere some radical left-wing professor is really proud of herself.
I can't believe this guy! I've traveled to several foreign countries, mostly Central and Eastern Europe. Every time I returned to the U.S., I fell in love with my country all over again. But this guy has just gotten back from spending time in places like Zimbabwe (he was explaining how he needed a heavy bag of money just to buy some bread); however, he has yet to utter one good thing about his country.
Oh great. Now he's talking about Che!
Time to leave the cafe before I have a conniption.
The Conservative Xpress deconstructs Barack Obama’s Arizona State commencement speech. And pretty much hits the nail on the head: America Sucks, Capitalism Sucks, Our Military Sucks.
Communism is a socioeconomic structure and political ideology that promotes the establishment of an egalitarian, classless, stateless society based on common ownership and control of the means of production and property in general.
1. A theory or system of social organization based on the holding of all property in common, actual ownership being ascribed to the community as a whole or to the state.
2. A system of social organization in which all economic and social activity is controlled by a totalitarian state dominated by a single and self-perpetuating political party.
President Barack Obama gave the Commencement Address at Arizona State Wednesday night.
And he proved yet again his view of America: in our current capitalistic state, we suck. We all must strive to be socialists and communists.
This person isn’t even worthy of vacuuming the floors in the Oval Office, let alone being occupying it.
Next, Blue Lori discusses a George Mason University study which verifies “what we already knew”: the states that are the most overregulated, most taxing, most repressive, and most, well … fascist, are deep blue states. The top 10 are, in order from 1 to 10: NY, NJ, RI, CA, MD, HI, WA, MA, IL, CT, VT.
The Founding Fathers valued personal freedom above all else and it clearly shows in their writings and if one reads the Federalist Papers, it is shot through with that theme. Economic freedom, personal freedom, and small government interference ALL LEAD TO NET PLUS migrations to these states. Indeed, the liberal states all have experienced MASSIVE amounts of people FLEEING the lib-nazis. Again, gee, go figure.
Finally, Michael at Start Thinking Right comments on an AP article which has revealed that President Golden Calf much touted “stimulus package” short-changes the nation’s neediest counties.
Remember that woman at one of Obama’s rallies saying Obama was going to pay her mortgage and fill her gas tank? No, she won’t.
Remember that woman who beseeched Obama to give her a kitchen? After a momentary freebie, she’s still on the down and outs, too.
“Little people” believe Obama is the ticket to “finally getting their slice of the pie.” But that is only because they are naive and frankly ignorant.
The reality is that Obama will take from the haves and piss it away rather than perform the usual Robin Hood function. Just like all the liberals promising their liberal utopias before him. And the poor will actually end up worse off rather than better off as the overall economy shrinks due to Obama’s policies.
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