Vocal Minority

Clunker-Gate. Now We Know Why No Dems Would Sign On To ObamaCare

They couldn’t handle a &*^%ing $1 billion car trade-in program and you want them in charge of your health?!?!?!?

As reported at CBS News NYC:

Government Suspends ‘Clunkers’ Program
At Current Rate, Giving Out $3,500 Or $4,500 Per Vehicle Would Burn Through $1 Billion Allocated In No Time

Lou Young  NEW YORK (CBS) ― “Cash for Clunkers” came to a screeching halt Thursday, after only six days on the road.

In a shocker [to you, maybe – ed.], the government announced it would suspend the program at midnight because demand was too great.

It may have been the best $1 billion the government has spent so far this year.

Business was humming at Crestmont Toyota/Volkswagen Thursday night as salespeople rushed back to work on news that the government’s “Cash for Clunkers” program was being suspended.

It’s the deal where you get up to $4,500 for your older low mileage beast if you buy a new car with more efficient fuel consumption.

On Thursday night we learned the program was only good until midnight, all because of a backlog of red tape. So the salespeople were trying to get their deals through the government’s Web site.

“People are loving it. It’s wonderful. It’s a great stimulus package,” salesman Andy Beloff said.

But when asked if the government was running the program well, Beloff said, “No. No.” […]

For the economy it’s good news, but the government’s miscalculation has some a little nervous.

“These are just the deals we have to submit tonight,” Crestmont president Bill Strauss said while holding a stack of papers. He said the dealership has over $100,000 on the table.

“If they can’t administer a program like this, I’d be a little concerned about my health insurance,” car salesman Rob Bojaryn said.

The “Clunkers” program was being administered by the National Highway Safety Administration, which has seemed overwhelmed from the get-go. Some in Congress are expected to push for expansion of the $1 billion budget on Friday.

If you have a ”Clunkers” deal in the works, don’t worry. The government said Thursday any transactions already made between dealers and consumers will be honored.

Oh yeah, I’m not worried anymore. Thanks, “government.” This does not incite much confidence in the government, nor should it. Along the lines of health-care’s enormous complexity in contrast to this lil’ $1 billion program, James Taranto at WSJ’s Best of the Web was all over it:

Would You Buy a Used Kidney From This Man?
 They botched clunkfare. Hey, let’s let ’em run health care!

The government that can’t spend the $787 billion “stimulus” fast enough has the opposite problem as well: It’s spending money too quickly. “Four days after it launched, the popular cash-for-clunkers program has burned through its $950-million budget, sending the Obama administration scrambling to find additional money tonight and avoid a shutdown of the program,” reports the Detroit Free Press.

In a report filed late Thursday, the Freep reports both that “administration officials told Congress this evening that the plan would be suspended” and that “a White House official denied late today that the program was suspended.” The story today, as relayed by Bloomberg, seems to be that you can still get a subsidy if you trade in your old car for a new fueler-efficient one—but only if you act now:

The Obama administration is seeking ways to keep the $1 billion “cash for clunkers” program running after a burst of demand exhausted much of the money.

The program to encourage new car sales is still in operation, and the Obama administration will meet today with congressional leaders “to find and develop ways to continue to fund” the auto discounts, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters today.

“If you were planning on going to buy a car this weekend, using this program, this program continues to run,” Gibbs said. “If you meet the requirements of the program, the certificates will be honored.”

Seems like a bit of a hard sell, no? But then, that’s the Obama administration’s method. Pass the “stimulus” now to avoid economic catastrophe! Curb global warming and remake health care or we’re all gonna die!

But wait. What if you need a kidney transplant or a hip replacement and the same geniuses who’re administering clunkfare have taken over the medical system? “Sorry, we’re out of money, come back next October.” It sounds facetious, but this is what actually happens in Canada and Europe. Cash-for-clunkers was a silly idea, but perhaps a beneficial unintended consequence will be to promote a healthy skepticism about the government’s competence. And while $1 billion seems like a lot of money, it’s a bargain next to the stimulus—to say nothing of the monstrosities that haven’t (yet) made it through Congress.

And speaking of government-run health care, it’s soooo awesome that Democrats are on the verge of exempting themselves from it. Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) asked Democrats to put their money where their mouth (and heart, and liver, and kidneys, etc.) is by proposing H.R. 615. Mary Starrett at News With Views [h/t Revolution Radio] writes today:

Good Enough for You — Not Good Enough for Congress?

If the socialized healthcare plan President Obama has been pushing, and Congress seems close to passing, is good enough for all of America, why isn’t it good enough for members of Congress?

Why is it the “vastly improved,” “cost-effective” healthcare “reform” package the left has been trying to pry open our clenched teeth to deliver for years is something we should all buy into while our elected officials in D.C. get an opt out from the get-go?

It’s simple. Congress’ Cadillac plan provides them easy access to their choice of doctors, the full array of diagnostic tests, prescription coverage, and all the bells and whistles our system of medical care offers. In short, with the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHB) they get all the benefits that a fully comprehensive health insurance plan provides. In fact, the FEHB offers “Federal employees, retirees and their survivors ... the widest selection of health plans in the country. ”

Meanwhile, the liberals are salivating because they’re thinking they’re this close to passing the “Goodbye Grandpa” health plan they’ve been trying for years to force in an esophageal cramdown. Now they believe it will finally, finally happen.

But the lack of access, rationed, age-dependant bargain basement health insurance we’re being told is for our own good isn’t good enough for members of Congress.

That’s why Louisiana Congressman John Fleming is sponsoring a bill saying if the public health plan is so wonderful then members of Congress should sign up for the new plan they’re touting and forego their Cadillac plan.

H.R.615 says:

“... Members who vote in favor of the establishment of a public, federal government run health insurance option are urged to forgo their right to participate in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) and agree to enroll under that public option.

The Democrats’ current healthcare legislation provides for members of Congress to be exempt from the jalopy government-run health insurance plan we’d all be struggling to make work.

They must know something they think we don’t know about the reality versus the rhetoric surrounding the quality of care we’d all be forced, forced to utilize.

Maybe Congress has been reticent about opting out of their Cadillac plan because they know that, like any program or area the government gets involved in, (as this well-circulated diagram of how the plan would work shows, the quantity and quality of care could never equal what free market innovations can deliver.

Here’s a list of H.R. 615’s co-sponsors.

Are your Congressional representatives on the list? If not, call or email them and ask “Why isn’t the public health plan good enough for you, if you’re voting to make it good enough for me?”

Hmmmm, maybe ‘cuz they know, like us sentient Americans, exactly how such a program would run: Like a clunker.

Welcome to the future, suckers!

Around the Web in 80 Minutes (7/31/09): C. Feldman, M. Steyn, A. McCarthy

First, Clarice Feldman at Pajamas Media has this vital piece on the virtually ignored story of Black Panther voter intimidation and its suspicious dismissal by an Obama justice official:

Obama Justice Official Nixed Black Panther Prosecution

President Obama, post-racial? No. And with their silence, the NAACP and ACLU are complicit in voter intimidation. …

The U.S. Civil Rights Commission, charged with overseeing such matters, examined the evidence. In a letter to the Justice Department, they said that this act caused “great confusion, since the NBPP members were caught on video blocking access to the polls, and physically threatening and verbally harassing voters during the Nov. 4, 2008, general election. ”

The attorney general who engaged in this inexplicable act was appointed by President Barack Obama, who was sold to the voters as a post-racial figure and a constitutional law scholar.

In 2004, the misnamed left-wing outfit People for the American Way (PFAW) put forth a report entitled “The Shadow of Jim Crow,” which risibly confused efforts to prevent obvious voter fraud with intimidation and suppression. It concluded on this pot-banging note:

Robbing voters of their right to vote and to have their vote counted undermines the very foundations of our democratic society. Politicians, political strategists, and party officials who may consider voter intimidation and suppression efforts as part of their tactical arsenal should prepare to be exposed and prosecuted. State and federal officials, including Justice Department and national political party officials, should publicly repudiate such tactics and make clear that those who engage in them will face severe punishment.

So when I read this story from the Washington Times yesterday, I checked to see if PFAW had anything about it at all. I could find not one word.

Next, British-born Mark Steyn adds no sugar to his bitter dose on ObamaCare:

The Nationalization of Your Body

[T]he acceptance of the principle that individual health is so complex its management can only be outsourced to the state is a concession no conservative should make. More than any other factor, it dramatically advances the statist logic for remorseless encroachments on self-determination. It’s incompatible with a republic of self-governing citizens. The state cannot guarantee against every adversity and, if it attempts to, it can only do so at an enormous cost to liberty. A society in which you’re free to choose your cable package, your iTunes downloads and who ululates the best on “American Idol” but in which the government takes care of peripheral stuff like your body is a society no longer truly free.

In a nanny state, big government becomes a kind of religion: the church as state. Tommy Douglas, the driving force between [sic – I think he meant “behind”] Canadian health care, tops polls of all-time greatest Canadians. In Britain, after the Tube bombings, Gordon Brown began mulling over the creation of what he called a “British equivalent of the US Fourth of July”, a new national holiday to bolster British identity. The Labour Party think-tank, the Fabian Society, and proposed that the new “British Day” should be July 5th, the day the National Health Service was created. Because the essence of contemporary British identity is waiting two years for a hip operation.

They can call it Dependence Day.

Finally, in this lengthy but important article, Andrew C. McCarthy at National Review Online makes an important point regarding the Obama birth certificate controversy:

Suborned in the U.S.A. 
The birth-certificate controversy is about Obama’s honesty, not where he was born.

There’s speculation out there from the former CIA officer Larry Johnson — who is no right-winger and is convinced the president was born in Hawaii — that the full state records would probably show Obama was adopted by the Indonesian Muslim Lolo Soetoro and became formally known as “Barry Soetoro.” Obama may have wanted that suppressed for a host of reasons: issues about his citizenship, questions about his name (it’s been claimed that Obama represented in his application to the Illinois bar that he had never been known by any name other than Barack Obama), and the undermining of his (false) claim of remoteness from Islam. Is that true? I don’t know and neither do you.

But we should know. The point has little to do with whether Obama was born in Hawaii. I’m quite confident that he was. The issue is: What is the true personal history of the man who has been sold to us based on nothing but his personal history? On that issue, Obama has demonstrated himself to be an unreliable source and, sadly, we can’t trust the media to get to the bottom of it. What’s wrong with saying, to a president who promised unprecedented “transparency”: Give us all the raw data and we’ll figure it out for ourselves?

Around the Web in 80 Minutes (7/30/09): L. Elder, C. Neefus, J. Lord

First out of the gate, Larry Elder at Jewish World Review delivers the bitter medicine on Obama’s approval numbers:

Palin’s Poll Numbers Falling! But What About Obama’s?!

Stop the presses (or the tweets)! Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s numbers are falling! Why not concern ourselves with that as 2012 nears. What about Obama’s numbers right now? They are tanking — big-time. A recent “news” article stated, “While the president remains personally popular …”

Is he?

Certainly the Gallup Poll — the go-to polls for most cable news shows — put Obama’s “favorability ratings” among “adults” fairly high. There is, however, another prominent and respected polling firm: the Rasmussen Reports.

Look at CNN, the organization that markets itself as real, nonpartisan news. In a recent three-month period, there were 26 instances in which a CNN newscast used the words “Obama” and “approval” and “Gallup.” But the words “Obama” and “approval” and “Rasmussen” appeared in only one CNN news show.

Next, Christopher Neefus at CNS News discusses Obama’s new science czar. My dear God, what the hell have we done?

In the 70s, Obama’s Science Adviser Endorsed Giving Trees Legal Standing to Sue in Court

Giving “natural objects”—like trees—standing to sue in a court of law would have a “most salubrious” effect on the environment, Holdren wrote the 1970s.

“One change in (legal) notions that would have a most salubrious effect on the quality of the environment has been proposed by law professor Christopher D. Stone in his celebrated monograph, ‘Should Trees Have Standing?’” Holdren said in a 1977 book that he co-wrote with Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich.

“In that tightly reasoned essay, Stone points out the obvious advantages of giving natural objects standing, just as such inanimate objects as corporations, trusts, and ships are now held to have legal rights and duties,” Holdren added.

According to Holdren and the Ehrlichs, the notion of legal standing for inanimate objects would not be as unprecedented as it might sound. ”The legal machinery and the basic legal notions needed to control pollution are already in existence,” they wrote.

“Slight changes in the legal notions and diligent application of the legal machinery are all that are necessary to induce a great reduction in pollution in the United States,” Holdren added.

Next, Jeffrey Lord at American Spectator asks a very pertinent question:

Who Will Tell Michael J. Fox He Needs to Die?

Sorry Mike. Say Goodbye to Hollywood. Close your Parkinson’s Foundation (waste of scarce resources, to wax Singeresque). Just go home to the wife and kids, cut off these expensive meds and please die. Quietly. And for heaven’s sake, get yourself buried in private. We don’t want any of this Michael Jackson type-hoopla disrupting our favorite programs. We have lives to get on with. […]

You see, the philosophy behind ObamaCare, as promoted just a week ago in the New York Times Sunday Magazine by Professor Singer, is the hard cold necessity Obama sees for government to ration health care for people like, well, Michael J. Fox. As Mr. Singer says: “Health care is a scarce resource, and all scarce resources are rationed in one way or another.” And quite obviously, with Mike Fox’s QALY [Quality-Adjusted Life Year] being what it is (and Singer is a big proponent of using QALY to judge the worth of a life), the time to cut his treatment off was... yesterday. Actually, a lot of yesterdays ago.

This is what President Obama believes when he says “there’s a whole bunch of care” that someone—this would be the government—will have to decide not to employ in treating someone like Mike Fox. What about the idea that Michael J. Fox—not to mention his wife and children, extended family and friends who might actually love the little lug—think Mike’s spirit should count for something here? After all, he did an entire documentary on The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist. In the President’s words: “I don’t think that we can make judgments based on peoples’ spirit. That would be a pretty subjective decision to be making. I think we have to have rules....” […]

For Fox, this issue now falls precariously close to the old caution about being careful what you wish for. Once upon a time in America the issue of “life” was about the death penalty for murderers. Then it was abortion. Next it was about stem cell research. Now, it’s about whether Michael J. Fox’s life has sufficient QALY points to justify letting him live.

Profiles in Liberal Ignorance, Hate, and Intolerance: The Smearers of Lucia Whelan

What a pathetic and embarrassing place Cambridge, Massachusetts is today.

As a consequence of being the one to have called Cambridge police on July 16 to prevent a possible break-in at the home of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, good Samaritan Lucia Whelan has been tarnished as a “racist” and has received physical threats by a number of hateful race-obsessed liberals.

This morning Ms. Whelan, on the verge of tears, went on nationwide television and delivered a public statement defending herself against what is nothing other than a modern-day tarring and feathering [h/t Freedom's Lighthouse]:

Only in “post-racial” America does a woman who did absolutely nothing wrong have to do this. Whoever has leveled such charges against her no doubt adopted their sick ideology from hate-Whitey liberals like the Harvard professor. And it is of no small significance that Gates is a friend of our pathetic hate-Whitey president.

I am embarrassed for Cambridge, for Harvard, and for the president of the United States, who I consider personally responsible for flaring this story up into a national debacle.

The transcript of Whelan’s 911 call is right here and there is not a single racist remark made in the whole thing. Whoever has done this to her should be ashamed of themselves. They are no different from the 88 loathsome Duke professors who wrote and still for the most part defend their letter smearing the Duke lacrosse players.

They say that conservatives are the hateful, narrow-minded, ignorant, uneducated, fear-mongers? Conservatives don’t pull this crap. That this public appearance had to even take place—and at the home of Harvard freaking University no less—reflects poorly on the center of politically correct liberalism. Look in the mirror, those of you who have attacked Lucia Whelan. It is you who are the hateful, narrow-minded, ignorant, uneducated, fear-mongers. How inexcusably disgusting.

And make no mistake: It is the destructive nature of liberalism and left-wing politically correct ideology that caused this all to go down as it did. From the immature tantrum that Henry Louis Gates gave at his home that night of July 16 to the unfair smearing of Cambridge police and all police in this nation, and now the hate that spewed out against an innocent Cambridge citizen.

Imagine if there actually had been a break-in into HLG’s house and Lucia Whelan didn’t call police, she’d probably be on TV defending charges she didn’t act like a “good Samaritan”! Welcome to the left-wing PC World: Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Lucia Whelan deserves a public apology—and not a beer—from these cowardly race-obsessed individuals, from Henry Louis Gates, and most of all from President Hope&Change himself.

Related reading: "Who's the Real Racist?" by John Perazzo, Front Page Mag

Michelle Malkin Takes on Matt Lauer on NBC's "Today" Show

My head is spinning. A conservative author on a network news show one day after her anti-Democrat book is released!? 

But it's true. Michelle Malkin's new book Culture of Corruption is only a day old and there she is on the Today show with Matt Lauer! [h/t Freedom's Lighthouse]

Michelle was fantastic. No matter how often Matt Lauer tried to trap or embarrass her for any of her positions taken in the book, she was forthright and unapologetic. Lauer seemed so shocked and offended that she would go after poow poow Michelle Obama. But Malkin had the goods, and she wasn't afraid to use it. That's what our movement needs.

Every inch of this administration is rife with corruption and cronyism and it's about time they look in the mirror and admit it.
- Michelle Malkin

Will Malkin's 3 minutes of fame change any minds? Probably not. But you have to give props to NBC for giving her a forum.

Maybe after a million copies of Liberty and Tyranny are sold they'll finally get Mark Levin on. Crazier things have happened ...

Tisha B'Av, Israel, and Barack Obama

As is well-known, the Jewish people have a long history of persecution. Various days of the year, we recall certain points on our historical and spiritual journey so as never to forget the pain our ancestors suffered or to allow them to happen again. One such day begins tonight at sundown, Tisha B’Av, which initially marked the destruction of the First Temple in 586 B.C.E.

This year Tisha B’Av has a very special significance because it is the first one following the election of the most anti-Israel president since James Earl Carter - thanks in part to 78% of the Jewish American electorate! 

On the eve of this somber day of commemoration, Sammy at Yid With Lid sticks in his two shekels:

When Moses sent twelve spies into Canaan, ten of them came back with a report that the land was unconquerable. The fledgling Israeli nation could never defeat those Canaanite Giants, they claimed There were cries throughout the Children of Israel asking Moses to take them back to Egypt. They forgot all about God, and his promise to help us conquer the land. That was the first Tisha B’Av. God’s response was not only the generation that knew slavery would die out in the desert, but Tisha B’Av will be a horrible day for the Jews, until the coming of the Messiah. In other words,like my mom God would give us something real to cry about.

From that day on horrible things have happened to the Jewish people on or around Tisha B’Av. Some of them include:

• The First [Temple] was destroyed
  

• The Second Temple was destroyed
  

• Bar Kokhba’s revolt against Rome failed
  

• In 1290 King Edward I expelled the Jews from England
  

• In 1492 the deadline for Jews to leave Spain, Convert or Die
  

• The beginning of WWI —which lead directly to the rise of Hitler
  

• 1941 Hermann Göring ordered SS general Reinhard Heydrich to make all the necessary preparations for the Final Solution.
  

• The first transports reached Treblinka and the extermination of the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto began on July 23, 1942, Tisha B’Av
  

• In 1955 El Al Flight 402 was shot down over Bulgarian airspace on the 8th of Av.
  

• The AMIA Bombing (Asociación Mutua Israelita Argentina) by terrorists in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which killed 86 and wounded more than 120, was on July 18, 1994, the 10th of Av.
  

• In 2004, Barack Obama Gave the Keynote speech at the Democratic Convention on Tisha B’Av and was crowned the heir apparent of the Democratic Party. He just might might prove to be the most anti-Israel President ever.
  

• The Disengagement from Gaza began on the 10th of Av, leading to years of rocket bombardment from Hamas
  

• On the 17th of Tammuz in 2009 (the day the walls of Jerusalem were breached leading to the destruction of the Temple) US President Barack Obama called on Israel to give up its claims to the most holy part of the City.

• The Week of Tisha B’Av in 2009 President Obama sent four representatives to Israel, pressuring her to stop settlement construction, and not to attack a country dedicated to destroy her, before it becomes a nuclear power.

That first Tisha B’Av occurred because we didn’t trust God and his promise to give us the land of Israel. In a way our collective ego’s were too big, even if we felt that we were unworthy of God’s reward, it was still an ego issue. We felt that we knew better than God. That he wouldn’t keep his promise.

Thirty-five hundred years later we are still weighted down by our large egos. Many American Jewish leaders seek to gain favor from an anti-Israel President. Other psuedo leaders such as J-Street, are selling-out their people funded by someone who was born Jewish but rejects its precepts and beliefs (George Soros).

Thirty-Five hundred years ago, Israel said they could not conquer the land and were punished. Today many Jews still show no faith in God and God’s promise, and even worse, support a United States President, who fittingly has his own ties to Tisha B’Av On this Tisha B’Av, because he would have the Jewish State destroyed. Tonight, tomorrow as well as every other day, I will pray that we wake up before it is too late.

Amen.

I still get headaches trying to figure out why the hell my Jewish brethren voted in droves for this despicable and dangerous man.

FNC Middle East Map Typo Has Media Matters Jumping for Joy

Whoops. Apparently the graphics folks at Fox News weren't awake Monday. On a map of the Middle East, Iraq was accidentally labelled "Egypt":

This oversight - like it's never happened on any other channel, regardless of alleged political leaning - has sent the lefty media "watchdog" site Media Matters into a bacchanalia of Fox News bashing, complete with comments maligning Fox News employees' educational level and even a supposition that Sarah Palin must now be working there.

At least FNC realizes this is a typo and can fix it. But what does one make of such jabs from folks who will interminably support such backward concepts such as raising taxes and hiking minimum wage helps the economy? We know who the uneducated ones in this scenario are.

Keep it classy, folks.

VP of Most Open Administration Evahhh Goes into Secret Meetings

A hand-clap to Andrew Malcolm at the L.A. Times politics blog "Top of the Ticket." Today Malcolm has a not-so-flattering post on Veep Biden holding secret closed-door meetings on the Recovery Act. (What for? Didn't his boss tell us not too long ago that the stimulus is working exactly as intended? So what's there to discuss?)

Malcom writes:

While the president hops down to North Carolina and back to Virginia today, selling more healthcare plans whose billions of dollars will absolutely positively not add one Chicago dime to the deficit [Do I detect a hint of sarcasm there?], Vice President Joe Biden has another full day of secret closed meetings in Washington.

Also mentioned is the fact that, while Biden enjoys a 55% favorability rating, it is still lower than the reviled Dick Cheney at a comparable point of Bush's first term.

Better watch your back, Mr. Malcolm. If the Obamites know you're writing not so favorably about the administration, your days at the L.A. Times blog could be numbered. 'M just sayin'.

Around the Web in 80 Minutes (7/29/09): Stossel, Kobusingye, Radosh, Coulter

It’s still July, folks, and summer school is open!

First, this Townhall piece is by a woman named Fiona Kobusingye, according to whose bio is coordinator of Congress of Racial Equality Uganda and the Kill Malarial Mosquitoes Now Brigade. It is a must-read!

Africa’s real climate crisis

[T]he real problem isn’t questionable or fake science, hysterical claims and worthless computer models that predict global warming disasters. It’s that they’re being used to justify telling Africans that we shouldn’t build coal or natural gas electrical power plants. It’s the almost total absence of electricity keeping us from creating jobs and becoming modern societies. It’s that these policies KILL.

The average African life span is lower than it was in the United States and Europe 100 years ago. But Africans are being told we shouldn’t develop, or have electricity or cars because, now that those countries are rich beyond anything Africans can imagine, they’re worried about global warming.

Al Gore and UN climate boss Yvo de Boer tell us the world needs to go on an energy diet. Well, I have news for them. Africans are already on an energy diet. We’re starving!

Al Gore uses more electricity in a week than 28 million Ugandans together use in a year. And those anti-electricity policies are keeping us impoverished.

Next, from John Stossel at Jewish World Review:

A minimum wage = minimum jobs

Politicians have tried to defy the market process with minimum-wage and living-wage laws for years. The consequences are never good for the people they claim to want to help. When will we learn what workers need is not meddling politicians but free and competitive markets?

Anyone who truly wants to help workers achieve higher living standards will work to remove all government barriers to peaceful, consensual economic activity.

At Front Page Mag, Ronald Radosh covers the latest instances of anti-Semitism disguised as anti-Zionism on the Left Coast:

Rachel Corrie: Endless Martyr for Anti-Israel Hatred

It is one thing to voice criticism of Israeli policy in Israel. All one has to do is read Haaretz on a regular basis and one will see many examples of this. But when Jews in America feature what is essentially Hamas propaganda as art, and show it at a yearly Jewish film festival, it is an altogether different thing. As writer Jamie Glazov asked: “Why is a Jewish film festival giving a platform to a documentary and to an individual that serve the cause of anti-Jewish hate?”

The latest example recently took place at San Francisco’s annual Jewish Film Festival, which featured a screening of the new anti-Israeli documentary, “Rachel,” a documentary that seems to be a film version of the three year old play “My Name is Rachel Corrie,” written by Katharine Viner and Alan Rickman, and based on editing of the late activist’s diaries. The film was directed by Simone Bitton, and featured interviews with activists from The International Solidarity Movement that Corrie had joined. As with the play, The Forward correspondent wrote, “what really moved the story forward was the narration courtesy of Corrie’s idealistic and heartfelt journal entries and correspondence read by her fellow ISM activists.” To make it simple: the film reflects Corrie’s point of view, and was meant to depict her as a martyr to Israeli oppression of the Palestinians.

For more on this event, see this article by Abraham Miller at Pajamas Media.

Finally, although this Human Events piece is a week old, here’s my girl Ann [Coulter] doing what we love best on the topic of government-run health (s)care:

Take Two Aspirin And Call Me When Your Cancer is Stage 4

All the problems with the American health care system come from government intervention, so naturally the Democrats’ idea for fixing it is more government intervention. This is like trying to sober up by having another drink.

The reason seeing a doctor is already more like going to the DMV, and less like going to the Apple “Genius Bar,” is that the government decided health care was too important to be left to the free market. Yes -- the same free market that has produced such a cornucopia of inexpensive goods and services that, today, even poor people have cell phones and flat-screen TVs.

As a result, it’s easier to get your computer fixed than your health. Thanks, government!

Thanks, government, indeed.

Have a super duper day!

Diversity Lane (7/29/09): Turning the Fables; Rope-a-Dope

The latest from Zack R. at the incorrigible Diversity Lane:

Rebutting the Rumblings (Defending Rush Limbaugh, Day 1)

Well, better late than never. It’s been over two weeks since liberal guest blogger Leah submitted her “rumblings” after listening to Rush Limbaugh. I’ve finally finished my rebuttal to her comments on his Monday, July 13 show. Her original post is here. It is repeated here below, with my own retorts interspersed. While I applaud Leah for taking up the challenge to tolerate a few days of Rush—my end of the bargain was to watch Rachel Maddow, and boy was that insufferable!—I feel that many of her arguments were baseless or unfair. 

So here ya go:

1:20 One half of a sentence from Obama’s Weekly Address from July 11th. In said clip, as played by Limbaugh, Obama states that “the Recovery Act has worked as intended.” This is a completely out of context quote. The full text of the address can be found here: The full quote, with Limbaugh’s clip in italics, is:

“The Recovery Act wasn’t designed to restore the economy to full health on its own, but to provide the boost necessary to stop the free fall. It was designed to spur demand and get people spending again and cushion those who had borne the brunt of the crisis. And it was designed to save jobs and create new ones. In a little over one hundred days, this Recovery Act has worked as intended. It has already extended unemployment insurance and health insurance to those who have lost their jobs in this recession. It has delivered $43 billion in tax relief to American working families and businesses. Without the help the Recovery Act has provided to struggling states, its estimated that state deficits would be nearly twice as large as they are now, resulting in tens of thousands of additional layoffs – layoffs that would affect police officers, teachers, and firefighters. ”

The rest of Obama’s address underlines Americans’ frustrations that the plan is not working faster, and states that the plan was designed to work over 2 years and has only just begun. Acknowledging this would have completely undermined Limbaugh’s characterization of what Obama was saying. So, I suppose it would have been inconvenient to present the quote in a context that was, oh, I don’t know… truthful?

One minute and twenty seconds in, and we already have a biased quote, taken out of context and out of time line. Amazing. And I thought Limbaugh’s propensity for doing that was just a myth.

Actually, the quote Rush played was, “In a little over one hundred days, this Recovery Act has worked as intended. I don’t know what other “context” you think Rush is taking that out of. That’s all one needs to know. Rush isn’t being biased. He’s just picking the kernel inside the layers of Obamaspeak. Which is a bold faced lie, at least from Americans’ point of view.

If you want to talk about being untruthful, your claim (or Obama’s) that the stimulus package was designed to work over 2 years is a flat out lie. Obama looked the American people in the eye and said that to avoid a catastrophe—his exact word, the crap sandwich commonly called the Stimulus Package had to be passed immediately and that we’d be seeing jobs created and saved within a matter of a few months. When it didn’t happen, which any sane human being knew it wouldn’t, Obama back-pedaled and made up the excuse it wasn’t supposed to work for a couple years.

1:30 Back to July 5th and Joe Biden speaking on “This week” with George Stephanopoulos. We once again have a quote without relevant context, let along time line. I’m confused about how this paraphrasing of Stephanopoulos’s lead in, which reinforces the argument Limbaugh just made against the last Obama quote, goes along with Limbaugh’s regular complaints of Liberal Media Bias in the mainstream media.

Full text of the interview can be found here. Relevant quote and response, with Limbaugh’s cut off point in italics:

BIDEN: And so the truth is, there was a misreading of just how bad an economy we inherited. Now, that doesn’t—I’m not—it’s now our responsibility. So the second question becomes, did the economic package we put in place, including the Recovery Act, is it the right package given the circumstances we’re in? And we believe it is the right package given the circumstances we’re in. We misread how bad the economy was, but we are now only about 120 days into the recovery package. The truth of the matter was, no one anticipated, no one expected that that recovery package would in fact be in a position at this point of having to distribute the bulk of money.

Excuse me, but Rush did play more than you say he did. What you omitted was a full minute between Biden and Stephanopoulos, concluding with your italicized statement. Rush didn’t play the remainder of that paragraph, but he played several preceding paragraphs:

STEPHANOPOULOS: While we’ve been here, some pretty grim job numbers back at home—9.5 percent unemployment in June, the worst numbers in 26 years.

How do you explain that? Because when the president and you all were selling the stimulus package, you predicted at the beginning that, to get this package in place, unemployment will peak at about 8 percent. So, either you misread the economy, or the stimulus package is too slow and to small.

BIDEN: The truth is, we and everyone else misread the economy. The figures we worked off of in January were the consensus figures and most of the blue chip indexes out there.

Everyone thought at that stage—everyone—the bulk of...

STEPHANOPOULOS: CBO would say a little bit higher.

BIDEN: A little bit, but they’re all in the same range. No one was talking about that we would be moving towards—we’re worried about 10.5 percent, it will be 9.5 percent at this point.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But we’re looking at 10 now, aren’t we?

BIDEN: No. Well, look, we’re much too high. We’re at 9—what, 9.5 right now?

STEPHANOPOULOS: 9.5.

BIDEN: And so the truth is, there was a misreading of just how bad an economy we inherited.

That’s all the information we needed to know. Rush wasn’t taking anything out of context so I don’t know what you’re talking about. So, who’s doing the playing-clips-out-of-context game here?

So, Biden is not contradicting his boss, a week before Obama’s July 11th statement though it may be. And both are saying the stimulus is working and citing the ways in which it is working. Which is the exact opposite of what Limbaugh says they’re saying. Huh.

4:02 Limbaugh is deliberately distorting a point here. Neither nor Obama and Biden are both saying the unemployment numbers are anything but a travesty and a disappointment, neither planned for nor intended. They’re simply saying that the numbers would be much worse if the Recovery Act hadn’t been instituted and backing up their argument with statistical facts. So far, Limbaugh has backed up his point with out of context quotes and outrage.

Again, there are no out-of-context quotes, and I’m not sure what you mean by outrage other than a completely understandable extra slowing down and articulation of Rush’s speaking pattern in this section.

Obama and Biden’s claim (if you’re right in that’s what they’re saying) that the economy and employment would be worse without the Act is preposterous. Nowhere in world history has such a plan worked on any economy anywhere. The only place it works is the protected pages of Marxist literature, in which Obama is well-steeped, and in the sheltered halls of Marxist college classrooms, in which Obama is well experienced.

If/when the economy gets better at all, it’s despite, not because of the Recovery Act. The Recovery Act is a failure by every measurable standard which is going to keep the economy from bouncing back as well as it could. It’s just like when FDR imposed the New Deal, which historians and economist agree kept the Great Depression running longer and harder than it needed to had the federal government just gotten out of the way and let the free market do what it does best.

And don’t kid yourself. Obama and Biden aren’t disappointed by the unemployment numbers. If they were, they’d do something about it, which they’re not.

4:32 Let me see if I have Limbaugh’s theory straight: Obama wants America to have 10% unemployment and American citizens to be suffering. Limbaugh said a minute back that the Obama administration is continuing the failed policies of the previous administration, but now he is stating that these policies are why he wanted him to fail? So, Limbaugh wanted the Bush administration to fail? And if another Republican administration had come in and had been continuing these policies as one Republican administration to another, Limbaugh would have wanted them to fail, too? Do I have this right?

Partially. Rush did want Bush to fail—in passing the first stimulus package and TARP. No conservative truly agreed with Bush on this. Indeed, it was these decisions—with the complete cooperation of the Democrat House and Senate—that set the stage for the economic crisis Obama says he inherited. Rush is exactly right that Obama is continuing the same failed Bush policy because from pretty shortly after we got our footing back after 9/11 up until 2007 this economy was superb. Then the housing market crashed and Bush, by his own admission, abandoned free market principles to save the economy. So Rush’s comment here is easy to explain. What you need to explain is why Obama is bitching and moaning about an economic crisis he “inherited,” when he is imposing the exact same policies that caused the crisis in the first place times a hundred!

Now, in terms of Rush thinking Obama is doing this to the economy on purpose: This is where we move from facts on to analysis/opinion. It is Rush’s opinion that Obama is purposely destroying the economy for reasons he’ll be discussing later. From my own standpoint, I think that claim has merit. Whether or not you agree with that position and why, I’d be interested in hearing.

5:17 Ah, conspiracy theories and misrepresented statistics. Limbaugh cites the Rasmussen Report poll that states more Americans are against national health care than for. First off, he’s leaving out that 75% of Americans are for health care REFORM. Second, as of now, the bills in Congress are not going to institute a mandatory one payer system and the Obama administration is not strongly advocating for one. So, what is he railing against exactly?

First, what conspiracy theories? That Obama wants to create chaos so that more Americans will be more and more dependent on big nanny government to fix all their problems? You call it a conspiracy theory. The rest of us call it page 1 of the Democrat Party playbook.

You didn’t address this point and I’d like to know why:

RUSH: Folks, they are depleting the private sector of capital. They are taking money away. Everybody knows that to stimulate job growth you have to provide incentives in the private sector for that growth to take place. There are no incentives. There are no incentives for anyone to invest, there are no incentives for anybody to hire, I mean in great numbers. You have pockets here where there may be some upticks in performance, but overall when you're up at nine-and-a-half percent unemployment and heading higher, it's not possible to revive the private sector. You need more people working.

This analysis is 100% correct, yet it is the opposite of what the Obama administration is doing. Like he said, no one can be this stupid. How else can one explain it other than they are collapsing the economy on purpose?

Second, what misrepresented statistics are you referring to? Where are you getting this 75%? The Rasmussen report Rush cites clearly states that 49% are opposed to Obama’s plan and 46% are in support of it. Granted, Rush said “national health care” and didn’t specify Obama’s plan in particular and unfortunately the Rasmussen pollers didn’t ask if people were against health care reform in general.

But even if your the 75% figure is correct (and please provide the link to the poll that shows this), it’s irrelevant because it’s Obama’s plan that would get implemented. And if 49% are against it on July 13, then as Rush said, that’s bad for Obama.

7:20 Limbaugh re: Obama: "This is a man with a chip on his shoulder. This is a man who seeks to get even." For what exactly?

The “chip on his shoulder” and “get even” thing is a common theme for Rush. Never has Obama said anything good about the United States, either domestically or abroad. When he’s in the U.S. he’s accusing his own citizens of greed, selfishness, not to mention racism. And when he’s galivanting around the world he’s apologizing for America being arrogant, for talking too much and not listening enough, for stoking hatred by poor innocent Islamofascist regimes, for “not living up to its moral responsibilities,” and for emitting too much carbon emissions in proportion to its population.

Here’s another case of Limbaugh’s quoting a debunked misquote/splicing.What’s this, the third in seven minutes? Obama flat out did not say we had nothing to do with the cold war in the interview I presume he’s citing.

But I understand. It’s worth not telling the truth if it helps his listeners to see that Obama and the Democrats have a secret plan to destroy America.

First of all, it wasn’t the Major Garrett interview Rush was referring to, it was the speech Obama made in Moscow, in which he said this:

OBAMA: The American and Soviet armies were still massed in Europe, trained and ready to fight. The ideological trenches of the last century were roughly in place. Competition in everything from astrophysics to athletics was treated as a zero-sum game. If one person won, then the other person had to lose. And then within a few short years, the world as it was ceased to be. Make no mistake: This change did not come from any one nation. The Cold War reached a conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years, and because the people of Russia and Eastern Europe stood up and decided that its end would be peaceful.

This is one of the most disgraceful rewritings of history by an American, and a president no less. Russia and Eastern Europe didn’t stand up to squat. Reagan, having rightly branding them an “Evil Empire” years prior, put the squeeze on them using tactics not coincidentally criticized and mocked by the Democrats of the time, until the Soviets cracked. The U.S. won. The U.S.S.R. lost. Obama totally rewrote history to make it looked everyone just decided to get together and sing kum-ba-ya.

As a subsequent Wall Street Journal editorial correctly states:

The truth, of course, is that the Soviets ran a brutal, authoritarian regime. The KGB killed their opponents or dragged them off to the Gulag. There was no free press, no freedom of speech, no freedom of worship, no freedom of any kind. The basis of the Cold War was not “competition in astrophysics and athletics.” It was a global battle between tyranny and freedom. The Soviet “sphere of influence” was delineated by walls and barbed wire and tanks and secret police to prevent people from escaping. America was an unmatched force for good in the world during the Cold War. The Soviets were not. The Cold War ended not because the Soviets decided it should but because they were no match for the forces of freedom and the commitment of free nations to defend liberty and defeat Communism.

Now, the interview you cite comes from an interview that occurred several days later after Obama’s speech, in which Major Garrett grills Obama over his comment, “The Cold War reached a conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years, and because the people of Russia and Eastern Europe stood up and decided that its end would be peaceful.” To which Obama replied:

OBAMA: Well, listen, the—I think that you just cut out Lech Walesa and the Poles.You just cut out Havel and the Czechs. There were a whole bunch of people throughout Eastern Europe who showed enormous courage.

And I think that it is very important in this part of the world to acknowledge the degree to which people struggled for their own freedom. I’m very proud of the traditions of Democratic and Republican presidents to lift the Iron Curtain.

But, you know, we don’t have to diminish other people in order to recognize our role in that history.

So here’s the funny thing: The link you provide is from Media Matters, who accuses Sean Hannity of cropping parts of the Garrett interview (the parts in bold) on his July 7 FNC show, in order to somehow misrepresent Obama’s comments. But if you read those cropped comments, you will see Obama still knocking the U.S. down a few pegs by mentioning the supposed contributions of other parties, like the Poles and Czechs. But even the Poles and Czechs acknowledge that it was the U.S. (and also the U.K. under Thatcher) that was responsible for our winning the Cold War. So if Sean Hannity included the parts of the Garrett interview that Media Matters accuses him of cropping, it would actually have made Rush’s case against Obama stronger! He even tries to change domestic history: There weren’t “traditions of Democrat and Republican presidents to lift the Iron Curtan.” Hell, Jimmy Carter, easily Obama’s closest historic analogue, wanted us to just accept the reality of Soviet Communism on the world stage, thereby legitimizing it even more. It was Reagan and Reagan alone who acted to get the Iron Curtain lifted. And Democrats mocked and criticized him all the way. Some of those Democrats still occupy seats of the House and Senate to this day.

So, Rush is telling the truth all right. Lots of ‘em. They’re just inconvenient truths, that’s all.

So … Obama wants America to fail, so that the government has more things to fix? Or Obama wants to cut us down to size because he’s one of those people like “Sonia Sotomayor?” Ah, Senator Boxer and your fight to be called by your earned title, where are you when I need you. Limbaugh must mean they both went to Ivy League colleges. No? They’re both lawyers? No? They both have brown skin and therefore are mad at America and can’t love it the same way a white person can? They both come from races of people who are obviously all poor with no wealth that needs redistributing?

Not even going to respond to that rant.

9:19 Tax cuts. Tax cuts will stimulate the economy. Limbaugh’s grand plan and alternative to the Recovery Act emerges. You mean like the ones in the stimulus plan for 90% of Americans? And tax incentives. He wants those, too. You mean like the ones for home buyers? But, wait. I though he said that those things would get the economy “moving,” and didn’t he just say that the economy is failing because of the Recovery Act?

First and foremost, tax cuts, which the president is planning to let expire in 2010, always have and always will stimulate the economy. The supposed tax cuts that Obama claims to have in store for “90% of Americans” (I think he said 95%) does not exist. There is no way the stimulus money will ever be paid back unless everyone, and their children, and their grandchildren, are taxed. And what home buyers? Obama and that totalitarian Barney Frank has declared war on mortgage lenders and banks. Houses aren’t being bought very much because no company want s to lend for fear of the wrath of the Marxists now running Washington.

10:27 Chuck Todd interview with Obama on July 7th. Should we look for the transcript, or just assume we have yet another quote cut and spliced to make Limbaugh’s point? Full transcript here, containing no apologies or disowning of the Cold war, by the by:

Looking over the transcript, I can assure you we’ve been deliciously spliced from bits of the interview here and there. Here’s part of it. This quote includes the ‘c’ of Obama’s three part answer at the end of the clip. It would have completely undermined Limbaugh’s argument. I guess misquoting someone is a small price to pay for making your point. Parts played are once again in italics:

OBAMA: Well what I would say is that in some areas you are seeing the economic engine turn. But what we always knew was that a. this recession was going to be deep b. it was going to last for a while and c. even when the economy pulls out of recession that you are going to see jobs emerging only at the end of that process rather than the beginning.

11:39 If Republicans are not going to grow by bringing in moderates and independents how ARE they going to grow? Where will the new Republican voting demographic come from?

Yeah, I know. Bringing in those “independents” and “moderates” helped John McCain. Really worked well for Bob Dole in 1996. Won George H.W. “Read my lips: no new taxes” Bush that second term, didn’t it? You know who really brought in the moderates? Two-time-landslide unapologetic conservative Ronald Reagan, that’s who. Who got John McCain more votes than he would have had he picked a “moderate” running mate. The electrifying unapologetic conservative Sarah Palin. And why should Republicans heed advice from a Democrat on how to attract voters???

13:36 We’re back to the July 7th interview, in which “Obama disagrees with his idiot Vice President Biden.” The funny thing is this interview shows more than any other that Obama and Biden are saying the exact same thing. If you LOOK AT THE TRANSCRIPTS this can very plainly be seen. Limbaugh must know this, right? He wouldn’t deliberately be misleading his listeners in order to make his point, would he?

Oh, sorry. I forgot. Obama wants America to fail. Right. Silly me. And we must convince our listeners that this terrifying idea is true, even if it means stretching the truth. And you know, hearing one sentence here, one sentence there, I just might believe it was true if I didn’t have the common sense to LOOK AT THE TRANSCRIPTS.

I already did LOOK AT THE TRANSCRIPTS, and you’re wrong. The only way Obama and Biden are in sync is by making excuses for an economic plan that has already failed miserably—by design Rush contends, and so do I. It’s just their excuses that are different. Obama is saying we’re not supposed to see progress for another couple years (bullsh*t) and Biden is saying they seriously misread the situation (much, much closer to the truth)

Anyway, there’s more of this but it’s basically the same charge: Rush is cutting and splicing audio tape to fit into his feverish conspiracy theories and to make Obama look bad by playing statements out of context. I on the other hand see Rush playing everything he needs to play, nothing more, nothing less, and that his “conspiracy theories” are actual, observable realities which becomes clear as the nose on one’s face once one take the hope&change-colored glasses off.

And so, after listening to pundits of opposing political persuasions, Leah and I will have to continue agreeing to disagree ...

Why Does the NY Times Waste Space on the Likes of Dash Snow?

Quote of the day—On Dash Snow, 27-year-old rebel/artist who was found dead in a hotel in the East Village a couple weeks ago [h/t Ann Althouse]:

Dash Snow was, in no particular order, a jokester, a jailbird, a thief, a freak, a successful art-brut savage, a doting father, a connoisseur of various cocaine bathrooms, a retired writer of graffiti and the latest incarnation of that timeless New York species, the downtown Baudelaire.
— New York Times, July 24, 2009

Yes, you read that right: a doting father. Such a doting father that he was never even married to the mother of the poor 2 year-old, whom they named—God help her—Secret.

Oh, and this is from the same article:

For such a feral presence, though, Mr. Snow understood how to turn criticism into opportunity. New York Magazine derided him for making art by ejaculating on copies of The New York Post; he blew up that section of the article, ejaculated on the copy and displayed it at an art show in Los Angeles.

Good for New York magazine. At least someone had some sense in this situation.

Is this all it takes these days to be considered an artiste? Oh yeah, this guy had talent. Maybe if I took a piss on a copy of a newspaper, I’d be an one too. Like this:

Look, ma. I’m an artist now. Where’s my glowing NY Times tribute?

Only in the New York Times can stalwart defenders of our nation such as George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, and General David Patraeus be crapped upon, yet talentless, perpetually drugged up insignificant waste of space like this guy get a glowing obit. Rush Limbaugh they’ll mock as a drug addict, but this drug addict they’ll write with about sympathy Why is such trash elevated to some respectable level?

I don’t know, maybe that’s too mean-spirited, not compassionate enough. I’m not trying to make light of this guy’s drug problems, but please. There are a lot of guys with drug problems who end up killing themselves from it. But why does this Dash Snow guy get a page in the New York Times for such ingenious pieces of “art” like splooging on a newspaper?

No wonder the Times is losing readers left and right. Someone should tell Al Gore they actually wasted trees writing about such a person.

Obama the Post-Racial President Loses (At Least) One Black Voter in '12

Oy boy ... This Henry Louis Gates situation hole President Obama's dug keeps getting deeper and deeper.

Verum Serum has posted the following clip of a CNN (!) interview with members of the Cambridge, Mass. police department. In it were two officers of color who stand proudly behind officer James Crowley, who was accused of racism when apprehending Henry Louis Gates at his home. One of the officers said she wouldn't vote for Obama again, or for African-American Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick.

As Allahpundit at Hot Air simply puts it: If you’re looking for postracial America, you’ve found it.

Hope and change, my friends. Hope and change.

One 911 Call, Two Interpretations [Full Transcript]

How the Henry Louis Gates 911 call really went:

OPERATOR: 911 [unintelligible] the exact location of your emergency?

CALLER: Hi I’m [cell phone cut out] in Cambridge and the house number is 17 Ware St.

OPERATOR: OK, ma’am, the cell phone cut out. What’s the address again?

CALLER: Sorry. It’s says 7 Ware, that’s W-A-R-E Street …

OPERATOR: The emergency’s at 7 Ware St., right?

CALLER: No it’s 17, I’m sorry. Some other woman’s talking next to me but it’s 17 one-seven Ware St.

OPERATOR: What’s the phone number you’re calling me from?

CALLER: I’m calling you from my cell phone number.

OPERATOR: All right [unintelligible] tell me exactly what’s happened?

CALLER: Well, I don’t know what’s happening. I’m just having an older women standing here and she had noticed two gentlemen trying to get in a house at that number, 17 Ware St., and they kind of had to barge in and thety broke the screen door and they finally got in and when I had looked I went further closer to the house a little bit after the gentlemen were already in the house, I noticed two suitcases. So I’m not sure if these are two individuals who actually work there, I mean who live there.

OPERATOR: You think they might have been breaking in?

CALLER: I don’t know ‘cause I have no idea. I just noticed …

OPERATOR: You think the possibility might have been there? What do you mean by “barged in”? Did they kick the door in?

CALLER: No, they were pushing the door in, like, um, like the screen part of the front door was kind of like cut …

OPERATOR: How about the door itself with the lock?

CALLER: The … I didn’t see a key or anything, ‘cause I was a little bit away from the door. But I did notice that they pushed their …

OPERATOR: Now what do these suitcases have to do with anything?

CALLER: I don’t know. I’m just saying that’s what I saw.

OPERATOR: [Unintelligble] apartment they broke into?

CALLER: No, it’s just the first floor. I don’t think it’s an apartment. It’s 17 Ware St. It’s a house. It’s a yellow house, number 17. I don’t know if they live there and they just had a hard time with their key but I did notice that they kinda used their shoulder to try to barge in and they got in. I don’t know if they had a key or not, and I couldn’t see from my angle. But, you know, when I looked a little closely that’s what I saw.

OPERATOR: Are they white, black, or Hispanic?

CALLER: Um.

OPERATOR: Are they still in the house?

CALLER: They’re still in the house I believe. Yeah.

OPERATOR: Are they white, black, or Hispanic?

CALLER: Um, well there were two larger men. One looked kind of Hispanic but I’m not really sure and the other one entered and I didn’t see what he looked like at all. I just saw it from a distance and this older woman was worried thinking someone’s breaking in someone’s house, they’ve been barging in and she interrupted me and that’s when I noticed. Otherwise I probably wouldn’t have noticed it at all, to be honest with you. So I was just calling ‘cause she was a concerned neighbor, I guess.

OPERATOR: OK. Are you standing outside?

CALLER: I’m standing outside, yes.

OPERATOR: All right, police are on the way. You can meet them when they get there, what’s your name?

CALLER: Yeah, my name is ……

OPERATOR: All right, they’re on their way.

CALLER: OK, I guess I’ll wait. Thanks.

OPERATOR: Bye.

How Professor Gates, our Commander-in-Chief, Al Sharpton, and the rest of the misery merchants heard it: 

WARNING: Not for the politically correct or easily offended

OPERATOR: 911 [unintelligible] the exact location of your emergency?

CALLER: Help! Some n****rs are breaking into the house next door!

OPERATOR: OK. Are you standing outside?

CALLER: I’m standing outside, yes.

OPERATOR: All right, police are on the way. And don’t worry, ma’am. We’ll get those n****rs.

CALLER: OK, thanks.

OPERATOR: Bye.

Welcome to the post-racial era.

Michael Graham, in his latest Boston Herald article [h/t Wizbang]: It appears that the only racist that day was Gates. 

To that add our post-racial Commander-in-Chief.

Diversity Lane (7/27/09): Hell Care Provider; Crime Waive

The latest from Zack R. at the inimitable Diversity Lane:

Michelle Malkin "Culture of Corruption" Out Today!

It’s here, baby!

On the heels of Obama’s lowest Presidential Approval Index since taking office comes Michelle Malkin’s long-awaited new book Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies gets released today! See her blog post regarding the release, which also includes an exclusive New York Post article about it.

One thing I don’t like about exposé books about sitting presidents is that there really isn’t anything much you can do about it, s

ave the extreme and unlikely measure of impeachment. Plus, since she is a conservative—and a minority one at that—Malkin’s book will get as much coverage as Mark Levin’s or Ann Coulters: virtually none, and what little coverage there it gets will be negative.

It's the price one pays for exposing the truth.

Off a Couple Days

Due to a crazy little thing called work and some time on the Jersey shore with family, I haven't been able to blog for a couple days. Come back Monday. I hope the dozens of you waiting with bated breath for my two remaining El Rushbo retorts can make it that long!

NJ Politician Corruption Ring Busted ... with a Side of Rabbis. Huh?

What the heck? Corrupt N.J. politicians one can understand. But rabbis too? Oy vey!

N.J. officials, N.Y. rabbis caught in federal money laundering, corruption sweep
by Joe Ryan/The Star-Ledger | Thursday July 23, 2009, 9:00 AM

NEWARK - A New Jersey assemblyman and the mayors of Hoboken and Secaucus were among public officials arrested this morning by FBI agents in an international money laundering and corruption probe that includes rabbis in the Syrian Jewish communities of Deal [which is N.J., not N.Y.] and Brooklyn.

Assemblyman Daniel Van Pelt (R-Ocean), Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano, Secaucus Mayor Dennis Elwell and Jersey City Council President Mariano Vega are among those already brought to the FBI building in Newark. Jersey City Deputy Mayor Leona Beldini has also been arrested. […]

Cammarano has only been mayor of Hoboken for a month, having been elected in June. This has to be some sort of record, at least for the Garden State.

It also says later in the article that Assemblymen Van Pelt has also been the mayor of Ocean Twp. since 1988. That means, presumably, he’s drawing two state salaries, receiving two sets of state benefits, and will be enjoying two state pensions.

Isn’t New Jersey politics grand?

Would You Like a Little Racism with Your Gov't Health Care Plan?

Here’s a nightmare for you: You’re on an airplane. A storm front approaches. The aircraft starts pitching around violently. You grab on to the seat in front of you, bare-knucked. The winds get stronger. The pilots cannot seem to get this plane under control. You and the screaming passengers realize you are going down and down and down … But as you plunge to your death, you are comforted by the fact that although there were other, more qualified, pilots out there who would have known how to avert this catastrophe, at least the ones currently at the helm are underrepresented minorities.

Now here’s the more frightening reality: The president of your country is about to let political correctness and an insatiable appetite for getting even with Whitey determine that unqualified individuals receive special treatment in getting health care jobs solely because of their race. It’s a diversity-obsessed leftist’s dream come true.

Those who have actually read the bill known comedically as “America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009” would be shocked out of their shorts to find all the “Waldos” strategically hidden in this 1,018-page tome. A member of the black conservative organization Project 21, having actually reached the 900-page mark, has discovered unconstitutional race-based preferences in the form of grant money being earmarked specifically for “underrepresented minorities.” That’s right, losers. If ObamaCare passes, your very life and the lives of your loved ones will literally be at the hands of people who got their positions not because they were qualified, but because they are an “underrepresented minority.” Here’s the press release about this finding, released by the National Center for Public Policy Research:

Obama Health Care Bill Contains Race Preferences

Black Activist Speaks Out Against Proposed Unequal Allocation of Health Resources

Washington D.C.: An examination of the 1018-page “America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009” (H.R. 3200)—the official Obama health care bill - finds several cases in which grant money for medical training can be awarded solely on factors of race and class.

Project 21 member Bishop Council Nedd II, an Anglican bishop and director of the Ecumenical Institute for Health Policy Research based at Valley Forge Christian College, is condemning the addition of racial preferences to the President’s legislation.

“The U.S. Supreme Court just struck down racial preferences. So why does a newly-introduced bill want to perpetuate something that has just been declared unconstitutional?” asked Project 21’s Nedd. “Racial preferences will not improve health care. They will increase tensions when some people are being unfairly put at the front of the line.”

Between pages 878 and 909 of H.R. 3200, in an area related to grants for medical training, the Secretary of Health and Human Services is empowered to grant preference in awarding training grants. For the specialties of “family medicine, general internal medicine, general pediatrics, geriatrics and physician assistantship” (pages 878-882); “medical residents on community-based settings” (pages 883-886) and “general, pediatric and public health dentists and dental hygienists” (pages 887-891), it is written that “the Secretary shall give preference to... entities that have a demonstrated record of... training individuals who are from underrepresented minority groups or disadvantaged backgrounds.”

Further, the bill amends the Public Health Service Act to give preferences in “advanced education nursing grants” to programs that “increase diversity among advanced education nurses” (pages 892-895). Grants for “enhancing the public health workforce” similarly give preference to “entities that have a demonstrated record of... training individuals who are from underrepresented minority groups or disadvantaged backgrounds” (pages 907-909).

A PDF version of H.R. 3200 can be found at http://tw8.us/qW.

Nedd added: “By making racial preferences a shortcut to federal funding, schools will reduce their quest for the best and turn it into a hunt for the right racial numbers. This, in the long run, will hurt the quality of our nation’s health care. We need to stop the social experimentation and focus on cost and performance.”

Lovely. So not only is President Hope&Change planning to control your life by funneling every one of your health decisions through a centralized bureaucracy, he’s going to make sure that crappy doctors get to operate on your sorry self because they’re an “underrepresented minority,” not because they’re a qualified physician. 

Who else, I wonder, will notice these provisions in this monster of a bill? Who, having even reached page 878, will even care? A couple weeks ago, it was reported that President Hope&Change considered appointing a “fine print czar,” asking Congress “to create a new agency to police the fine print onconsumer products like credit cards and mortgages and determine what fees, penalties and interest rates are fair … Those ridiculous contracts with pages of fine print that no one can figure out—those things will be a thing of the past, and enforcement will be the rule, not the exception.” (Yes, it’s all about fairness for this Marxist-in-Chief.)

If Obama’s sooo concerned about fine print supposedly intended to screw unsuspecting consumers, you would need ten fine-print czars for the 1000+ page behemoth. The irony would be hysterical if it weren’t so depressingly sad.

Make no mistake. This bill is not about enhancing health care, increasing choices, or even keeping you alive. It’s about getting back at Whitey and at capitalism, which for some reason are intertwined in the minds of Marxists like our current president. Barack Hussein Obama has ascended to the presidency for one thing and one thing only: to stick it to America. And his intended victim is you. How’s that for a nightmare?

If you support the ObamaCare bill, may you be killed on the operating table by such a doctor.

Ouch! Too vitriolic? Too effing bad. What’s it going to take for you to wake the hell up already?

[Graphic from RushLimbaugh.com]

This Won't Hurt a Bit! Steve Crowder Vid on Canadian Health Care

OK, you Obamacare supporters. Here's a video created by righto-comedian Steve Crowder for PJTV on the Canadian health care system. [h/t RightGirl] Have fun!