Vocal Minority

Liberal Hypocrisy: Meet the Obama-Supporting Tax Evaders of the Year

From Michelle Malkin.

[W[hile millions of small-business owners, struggling entrepreneurs, inventors and investors brace for a double whammy of fiscal cliff tax hikes and new Obamacare taxes, the class-warrior in chief's richest pals are getting a pass.

It's a Golden Pass for liberal millionaires and billionaires who support higher Obama taxes for everyone but themselves. Meet the Democratic tax evaders of the year.

From Breitbart too. Hollywood TV and filmmakers getting sweet breaks. Cue the loopholes.

Articles: Let's Talk About Lies

This one's good too: Let's Talk About Lies:

Romney can say something to the effect of "let's talk about lies" and explain that breaking a promise is a definition for lying.  He can then rattle off five or six instances when Obama and his administration have broken promises to the American people.

Romney can say things like:

The president promised America that his $800-billion stimulus package wouldn't ship jobs overseas.  Instead, ABC News reported that 80% of stimulus money spent on wind power went to foreign firms...including some in China.

The president promised America that if his stimulus package passed, unemployment would never be over 8%.  Instead, since the president took office, we haven't seen the underside of 8% unemployment until several days ago when, after so many people have given up hope and stopped looking for work, the number dropped to 7.8%.

The president promised America that he would cut a $1.3-trillion deficit in half by his first term.  Instead, he has added $1 trillion to the deficit every year he has been in office.

The president promised America that ObamaCare would reduce health care costs.  Instead, ObamaCare has raised insurance premiums by $800 to $1,400, although some people have gotten a rebate from the insurance companies...of about $150.

The president promised that he wouldn't allow any tax increase of any kind on those making less than $250,000.  Instead, ObamaCare is the largest tax increase in U.S. history.  In fact, there are at least 20 new or higher taxes on American families and small businesses under ObamaCare.  These taxes will destroy -- not create, but destroy -- jobs.  That is yet another broken promise.

The president promised America that he would stop the influence of cronyism -- of "well-connected friends and high-priced lobbyists," as he put it.  Instead, in his first three years in office, we saw more than $1.5 billion more in spending by lobbyists than in the previous three years.

The president promised America he would and will invest revenue (which means he will spend your tax dollars or borrow money from China) to grow green companies.  Instead, 80% of the time, the green energy loans went to backers of the president.  This is simply cronyism.  And the companies he spends your money on don't even grow; they go bankrupt time and timeagain!  He loses jobs as fast as he "creates" them.  Two steps "Forward!" and three steps backward is not progress by any rational definition.

The president promised America to make the borders safe.  Instead, the DOJ oversaw Operation Fast and Furious, where thousands of guns went untracked to drug cartels in Mexico, killing Americans as well as Mexicans.

The president promised America transparency.  Instead, after months of congressional investigations being stonewalled by the DOJ and Attorney General Eric Holder, the president finally took action...and promptly covered it up.  He invoked executive privilege to keep the documents away from the light of Congress. ...

Obama's Jews telling critics to shut up, again

From Abby Schachter at the NY Post.

Obama's Jews are at it again. The Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee are once more advocating that the President's critics shut up. Last time it was about Israel, this time it is about religion.

According to a letter entitled "Religion in political campaigns -- An interfaith statement of principles" , signed by a variety of religious organizations, there should be less discussion of religion among those seeking political office. After allowing that those running for office are "free to worship as they choose" (well, thank you very much!) the letter warns as follows:

"There is a point, however, where an emphasis on religion in a political campaign becomes inappropriate and even unsettling in a religiously diverse society such as ours. Appealing to voters along religious lines is divisive. It is contrary to the American ideal of including all Americans in the political process, regardless of whether they are members of large and powerful religious groups, religious minorities, or subscribe to no faith tradition."

Signatories include the usual suspects in terms of Jewish Obama defenders -- the ADL, the AJC, and the Union of Reform Judaism. Funny. but these groups didn't see fit to warn against religiously-based Jewish endorsements of Candidiate Obama in 2008, for example the group Rabbis for Obama . Somehow advocating casting a vote for the Democratic presidential candidate for religious reasons wasn't "divisive" back then. ...

 

Despotism and Tyranny ... They're Heeere

Two great pieces at AT today address the continuing reckless and unconstitutional power grab of the Obama administration.

Citing other columnists and great patriots in American history, Lee DeCovnick writes:

Thomas Jefferson reaches out over the centuries to counsel us that,  "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes." The requirement for such forceful change will results from a cascade of bitter failures within our social and governmental institutions. We are not at that fork of history. However, thoughtful conservatives must look toward some uncomfortable duties, a start of redress, to stem our current slide into tyranny.

That initial redress starts today when each one of us begins to reach out, one on one, to our liberal neighbors, co-workers, friends and family. We must patiently discuss today's headlines within the context of the Declaration of Independence. By educating and reminding them of America's self-evident truths, unalienable rights, and that our government derives its powers from the consent of the governed, we open minds and give substance to the looming icebergs of tyranny, dead ahead.

Redress also means that Congress must start doing its job. Congress should follow the Constitution by actually writing the laws in public view, rather than fob them off on the Executive agencies. And Congress must de-fund and forever decertify the existence of the czars. Or else we must vote these damn Congressional monarchists out of power. These ideas are less radical then those written in the Declaration. To believe otherwise renders us all silent passengers on that "long train of abuses and usurpations."

Americans, Lincoln and Jefferson's people, may have but a single Constitutionally mandated opportunity to avoid a further "rupturing of the American conception of sovereignty, in which the president is our servant, not our ruler." November 6^th, 2012 will become a crucial day of national reckoning, not unlike that warm July day in Philadelphia, two hundred and thirty-six years ago.

Next, J. Robert Smith blows huge gaping holes in the left's defense of the "contraceptives for Catholics" mandate:

You've got to hand it to liberals.  They stick to a script.  On the contraception-Catholic Church flap, the script is that most Catholic women favor contraception (and, one guesses, abortion-inducers).  Ergo, the Catholic Church should buckle under and accept President Obama's mandate.  Conscience and religious liberty (and a little thing called the 1^st Amendment) just don't stack up against what a majority of Catholic women want -- or what liberals say they want.  You know, vox populi and all that.

So if vox populi is good enough for the Catholic Church, why not for liberals and the Democratic Party -- or more exactly, for policies favored by both?  Like ObamaCare.  ...  

Liberal talking heads, like little wind-up toy soldiers, have been all over the airwaves, yakking about the supremacy of "women's health" and what a majority of Catholic women are supposed to want.  (Isn't it nice how liberals always appoint themselves spokesmen for others?  Call it the Jesse Jackson syndrome.  The Reverend Jackson has an unerring talent for showing up and speaking on behalf of people who never asked him to.)

If liberals are all fired up about majority rule, why shouldn't they apply that principle to ObamaCare? ...

But that's not how majoritarianism works, evidently.  See, where liberals can use majority sentiment to justify and advance their statist polices, well, by all means.  Hence, efforts to bulldoze the Catholic Church and mangle the 1^st Amendment are cloaked in a concern for what a majority of Catholic women desire.

When a liberal policy aim fails to muster a majority, tough luck.  ObamaCare is what Americans need, whether they want it or not.  Liberals insist on it.  And what could average Americans possibly know about what's good for their welfare?  If liberals and government can't run other people's lives, what purpose is there for either?

Take another issue: federal spending.  According to Gallup, a lopsided majority believes that Washington spends too much.  No need for more or higher taxes, either. 

November 6, 2012 cannot come soon enough.

 

Article of Note: Thomas Sowell on the Progressive 'Legacy'

Sowell completes the third part of a series of articles on Progressivism, now and today:

From Part I:

Theodore Roosevelt interpreted the Constitution to mean that the President of the United States could exercise any powers not explicitly forbidden to him. This stood the 10th Amendment on its head, for that Amendment explicitly gave the federal government only the powers specifically spelled out, and reserved all other powers to the states or to the people.

Woodrow Wilson attacked the Constitution in his writings as an academic before he became president. Once in power, his administration so restricted freedom of speech that this led to landmark Supreme Court decisions restoring that fundamental right. ...

Whatever the vision or rhetoric of the Progressive era, its practice was a never-ending expansion of the arbitrary powers of the federal government. The problems they created so discredited Progressives that they started calling themselves "liberals" -- and after they discredited themselves again, they went back to calling themselves "Progressives," now that people no longer remembered how Progressives had discredited themselves before.

Barack Obama's rhetoric of "change" is in fact a restoration of discredited ideas that originated a hundred years ago.

From Part II:

The rhetorical transformation of government into "society" is a verbal sleight-of-hand trick that endures to this day. So is the notion that money earned in the form of profits requires politicians' benediction to be legitimate, while money earned under other names apparently does not.

Thus Woodrow Wilson declared: "If private profits are to be legitimized, private fortunes made honorable, these great forces which play upon the modern field must, both individually and collectively, be accommodated to a common purpose."

And just who will decide what this common purpose is and how it is to be achieved? "Politics," according to Wilson, "has to deal with and harmonize" these various forces.

In other words, the government -- politicians, bureaucrats and judges -- are to intervene, second-guess and pick winners and losers, in a complex economic process of which they are often uninformed, if not misinformed, and a process in which they pay no price for being wrong, regardless of how high a price will be paid by the economy.

If this headstrong, busybody approach seems familiar because it is similar to what is happening today, that is because it is based on fundamentally the same vision, the same presumptions of superior wisdom, and the same kind of lofty rhetoric we hear today about "fairness." Wilson even used the phrase "social justice."

Woodrow Wilson also won a Nobel Prize for peace, like the current president -- and it was just as undeserved. Wilson's "war to end wars" in fact set the stage for an even bigger, bloodier and more devastating Second World War.

From Part III:

Consistent with President Wilson's belief in racial superiority as a basis for intervening in other countries, he launched military interventions in various Latin American countries, before his intervention in the First World War.

Woodrow Wilson was also a precursor of later Progressives in assuming that the overthrow of an autocratic and despotic government means an advance toward democracy. In 1917, President Wilson spoke of "heartening things that have been happening within the last few weeks in Russia."

What was "heartening" to Wilson was the overthrow of the czars. What it led to in fact was the rise of a totalitarian tyranny that killed more political prisoners in a year than the czars had killed in more than 90 years.

Although Wilson proclaimed that the First World War was being fought because "The world must be made safe for democracy," in reality the overthrow of autocratic rule in Germany and Italy also led to totalitarian regimes that were far worse. Those today who assume that the overthrow of authoritarian governments in Egypt and Libya is a movement toward democracy are following in Wilson's footsteps.

The ultimate hubris of Woodrow Wilson was in promoting the carving up of whole empires after the First World War, in the name of "the self-determination of peoples." But, in reality, it was not the peoples who did the carving but Wilson, French Premier Georges Clemenceau and British Prime Minister David Lloyd George. Walter Lippmann saw what a reckless undertaking this was. He said, "We are feeding on maps, talking of populations as if they were abstract lumps." He was struck by the ignorance of those who were reshaping whole nations and the lives of millions of people.

 

 

Liberal Hypocrisy: Hypocrisy, Thy Name is Obama

Victor Davis Hanson's latest article is so good, I've reposted it here in its entirety. This one deserves to go viral. It sums up the presidency of Barack Hussein Obama perfectly: Everything Obama believes is 180 out of phase with reality. And everything Obama does is 180 degrees out of phase with would he should do to fix problems he purports to want to fix.

The presidency of Barack Obama is full of funny things that need not follow any sort of logic. Images and ideas just pop in and out, without worry of inconsistency, contradiction, or hypocrisy. It’s a fascinating mish-mash of strange heroes and bogeymen, this imaginarium of our president.

In the imaginarium there are no revolving doors, earmarks, or lobbyists. So Peter Orszag did not go from being OMB director to a Citigroup fat-cat. Once chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel did not make $16 million for his well-known banking expertise.

The more you damn the pernicious role of lobbyists and the polluting role of big money, the more you must hire and seek out both. Public financing of campaigns is wonderful for everyone else who lacks the integrity of Barack Obama who understandably must renounce such unfair impositions.

Those who now vote against raising the large Obama debt ceiling are political hucksters and opportunists; those who not long ago voted against raising the smaller Bush debt ceiling were principled statesmen. “Unpatriotic” presidents borrow $4 trillion in eight years; patriotic ones we’ve been waiting for can trump that in three.

Catching known terrorists and putting them in Guantanamo is very bad; killing suspected ones by drone assassinations — and anyone unlucky enough to be in their general vicinity — is exceptionally good. Tribunals, renditions, preventative detention, and all that were bad ideas under Bush-Cheney, but could become good ideas under Barack Obama, the law professor who often sees no need to follow the law when an immigration or marriage statute is deemed regressive.

A million Iranians protesting a soon-to-be-nuclear theocracy is false revolutionary consciousness and to be left alone; a few thousand Israelis wanting to buy apartments in the Jerusalem suburbs is subversive and worthy of presidential condemnation. And when atoning for supposed American lapses, what better place to begin apologizing than in Turkey, the incubator of the Armenian, Greek, and Kurdish mass killings? We need to deny history to make the case that America is not exceptional, and to invent it to persuade us that the Muslim world is extraordinary.

Twenty-four months of a Democratic Congress, and over $4 trillion in spending, resulted in 9.1% unemployment and near nonexistent growth. Yet the culprit for the current situation is ten months of a Republican-controlled House that has yet to approve another $500 million of borrowing. In the imaginarium, just a little more of the massive amount that has failed will not fail. But if the Republicans are to be blamed for not wanting to waste the last half-trillion, are the Democrats to be praised for borrowing the first wasted $4 trillion?

In the imaginarium, all sorts of demons and devils can unite to derail the brilliance of Barack Obama’s economic recovery plan. ATMs have for the first time after 2009 begun to eliminate jobs. But then so did the Japanese tsunami and the EU meltdown. The DC earthquake did its part, but then so did climbing oil prices and the Arab Spring. Of course, the ghost of George Bush floats over all the present mess. Economic gurus like Austan Goolsbee, Peter Orszag, Christina Romer, and Larry Summers used to write brilliant essays of what would work if they were to be in charge, and now write brilliant essays about why it did not work when they were in charge.

There are lots of ways to bring Americans together across class and racial lines. One in the imaginarium is to focus on the “teabag, anti-government people.” Another is to encourage Hispanics to “punish our enemies” — or have the attorney general lambaste Americans as racial “cowards” and to defend “my people.” Joining foreign governments to sue a fellow American state is no more red/no more blue state unity. Still another is to divide up the people between the suspect who make over $200,000 and the noble who make less, or yet again target the dubious “1%” at “the very top” who do not pay “their fair share,” a mere 40% of the aggregate income tax.

Inside the imaginarium, the way to demonize the “1%” is to vacation among them — whether at Martha’s Vineyard or Costa del Sol. Buying a corporate jet is a waste of the people’s money — unlike daily flying on a much bigger private jet paid by the people.

To encourage energy self-sufficiency, the administration lent a half-billion dollars to campaign donor insiders and got unsellable solar panels in return — as it prevents a huge pipeline from Canada that will bring “shovel-ready” jobs and fuel to the United States far more cheaply than from the volatile Middle East. We have a brilliantly obtuse energy secretary who is a Nobel laureate but who thinks California farms — a record $15 billion in exports this year — will soon blow away and that gas should climb to European levels of about $9 a gallon. In the imaginarium, the purpose of Dr. Chu’s Department of Energy is not to encourage energy production and lower prices, but to find ways to prevent its development in search of raising its cost. The attorney general must be entirely conversant in small matters like a Black Panther voting intimidation case, but was completely ignorant of large ones like Fast and Furious that saw his subordinates sell automatic weapons to Mexican drug cartels.

The president regrets that we are not innovative any more, and have gone “soft” and “lazy.” You see, his efforts at ensuring cradle-to-grave health care entitlements, of granting 99 weeks of unemployment insurance, and of extending food stamps to nearly 50 million are apparently incentives that should have led to a “hard” and “industrious” populace that was more self-reliant and willing to take risks on their own. “Spread the wealth” is a time-honored way of galvanizing people to become more self-disciplined and sufficient.

Business has failed us as well. And the way to get Las Vegas and Super Bowl junketeering CEOs profitable enough again to fund the growing redistributive state, is for them to take risks that result in the sort of massive projects that used to be an American trademark — things like the Hoover Dam, which changed the environmental landscape far more than would the apparently cancelled gargantuan pipeline from Canada to Texas. Business can be encouraged not to be lazy by a prod now and then — either by trying to shut down a big aircraft plant or a small guitar factory. And in the imaginarium, the way to gently chide the private sector is with words of encouragement like “millionaires and billionaires,” and “corporate jet owners,” along with grandfatherly advice to clueless capitalists about realizing the point at which they should cease making money.

In the imaginarium of Barack Obama there is no contradiction between smearing and shaking down Wall Street, a bunch that needs both to be told when and when not to profit, and to whom and to whom not to give tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions. Barney Frank, who helped pressure Wall Street and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to issue billions in unsound loans, and Chris Dodd, who shook down fat cats for below-market interest rates for his vacation home, logically are the eponymous heroes of the Dodd-Frank fiscal reform act to ensure others do not do as did they. Former liberal governor, senator, and Goldman Sachs CEO Jon Corzine, who both wrecked MF Global and can’t account for $600 million in lost investments, is, in George Soros-like fashion, the best emblem of the contradictory desire to be the worst pirate on Wall Street in order to make the most money in order to be its most liberal critic. In the imaginarium we receive advice about the need for higher income taxes from multibillionaires Warren Buffett and Bill Gates who have always sought to avoid them. Big government and big inheritance taxes, both magnates swear are good, and therefore the administration of their own postmortem fortunes will forever avoid both.

In the imaginarium, community organizer Barack Obama never lived in a small mansion. John “two Americas” Edwards never lived in a big one. “Earth in the balance” Al Gore never lived in a few of them, and yacht owning John Kerry never lived in lots of them. You see in the imaginarium of Barack Obama you can be whatever you wish to be. Just wishing and saying something can wonderfully make it so.

 

Listen & Learn: Mark Levin Destroys Time's Stengel on Constitution Article (6/23/11)

Meant to post this one sooner but, you know, summer, kids, family, etc.

Anyway, I had hoped that The Great One would deconstruct the disastrously flawed main article from the upcoming issue of Time magazine. Sure enough, he spent last Thursday addressing it part by part.

The article in question was about whether the Constitution is relevant anymore and was written by Time's managing editor who, despite his having been the CEO of something called the National Constitution Center, is amazingly ignorant of one of the nation's seminal documents. I posted about it too on Friday, after it appeared on-line

These 24 minutes are crucial to absorb for those who are battling clueless Constitution-hating leftists who use it only to enslave, not liberate, Americans from the yoke of big government. There is a war out there, my friends. We need to be properly armed.*

[Edited for commercials, long pauses, and other extraneous content]

Download clip here

Download clip here

* It's a metaphor, brain-dead liberals. Get over yourselves.

10 Leftists Who Need Condolences on the Death of their Hero Osama bin Laden

This compilation from Megan Fox at the News Real blog is great!

Attorney General Mark Levin: Won't Enforce Roe v. Wade (J. Lord)

A clever "what if" by Jeffrey Lord at American Thinker:

Hat tip: The Huffington Post 

WASHINGTON
January 21, 2013

Barely twenty-four hours after her inauguration as America's first woman chief executive, President Sarah Palin announced today that Attorney General Mark Levin has been instructed to stop defendingRoe v. Wade and abortion in a wave of fresh lawsuits filed in federal courts around the country.

Said the Attorney General:

"Roe v. Wade contains numerous expressions reflecting moral disapproval of unborn children and their potential intimate and family relationships -- precisely the kind of stereotype-based thinking and animus the (Constitution's) Equal Protection Clause is designed to guard against."

"Much of the legal landscape has changed in the 40 years since the Supreme Court created a so-called 'right to privacy,' which has no constitutional basis and no tangible form," Levin said in a statement. He noted that various Supreme Court justices have previously ruled that laws authorizing the taking of the life of an unborn child are unconstitutional and that Congress has forbidden the federal government from paying for abortions.

At the White House, a spokesman said Palin herself was never one to be "grappling" with her personal view of abortion, and has always personally opposed Roe v. Wade as "unnecessary and unfair."

Levin wrote to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, that Palin has concluded Roe v. Wade fails to meet a rigorous standard under which courts view with suspicion any laws targeting minority groups who have suffered a history of discrimination. "The unborn, perhaps the most vulnerable minority group in history, have a severe history of discrimination," added the new attorney general.

The attorney general also said the Justice Department had defended the law in court until now because the government was able to advance reasonable arguments for the law based on a less strict standard.

On Wednesday, Levin said the president has concluded that, given a documented history of discrimination against the unborn, classifications that include genetic detection of sexual orientation should be subject to a more heightened standard of scrutiny than the department had been applying in legal challenges to the act up to now.

The attorney general said the department will immediately bring the policy change to the attention of two federal courts now hearing separate lawsuits targeting Roe v. Wade.

The decision brought an angry response from Planned Parenthood. In what sources say was a heated phone conversation with the head of the pro-abortion group, one shocked Justice Department career attorney said the Attorney General was heard to say:

"Get off the phone you big dope."

 

The Rich Who Laid the Golden Eggs

from Bill Costello at American Thinker.

... Who are the so-called rich? For the last two years, they have been defined by an arbitrary annual income of $250,000 and up.

But is annual income a good measure of how rich someone is? If Bill Gates earned zero income this year, would he still be rich? Of course. Because he has accumulated billions over the years.

Just because a family earns an annual income over $250,000 does not mean that its members are rich. It means just that they did well during a particular year. Income levels vary from year to year. Some people work for decades in the lower brackets until their hard work pays off and they get to enjoy a few years in the upper brackets. Most are not millionaires or billionaires. That these people have to pay extra taxes at the point when their higher incomes compensate them for years of sacrifice is despotic.

The real millionaires and billionaires are not very concerned about income tax rates because income taxes cannot touch their accumulated wealth. It is protected by tax shelters.

Despite the facts, the government still typically views the reduction of income tax rates as "tax cuts for the rich" instead of what it really is: tax cuts for the economy. It's a concept the government repeatedly fails to grasp. ...

 

Why Are Voters Only 'Angry' When They're Tossing Dems Out? (B. Goldberg)

Excellent question! As Bernie Goldberg handily demonstrates in his latest article, it's called hypocrisy, or double standards. Either way, it's insidious and it's the liberal/Democrat MO to dealing with almost anything.

It's also called liberal media bias, because it's the mainstream media that is helping their liberal/Democrat heroes perpetuate this myth that when Democrats are being booted out, it's because voters are angry, afraid, or irrational. But when Republicans are getting the heave-ho, it's because voters are enlightened, hopeful, and compassionate. What. Ever.

Here's a key quote from the article:

Interesting, isn't it, that if you listen to liberal journalists, the voters are always angry and stupid when they're tossing Democrats out. But they're high-minded and caring when they're giving Republicans the heave-ho.

You may recall that in 2006 and 2008, when Democrats took over both Houses of Congress, it was those high-minded, caring "soccer moms," looking out for the welfare of their families, who went to the polls to vote for Democrats. They were never described as "angry" or "irrational" or "throwing a temper tantrum" -- even though they were cleaning house just as the voters did Tuesday.

So let's review: As far as liberal journalists are concerned, when the American people vote for Democrats, it's because they're full of hope and want positive change and care about their little kiddies. And when they vote for Republicans, it's because they're angry, stupid and irrational.

Good thing there's no such thing as liberal bias in the media.

A Convenient Excuse - Article - National Review Online

The latest from Jonah Goldberg:

SEPTEMBER 17, 2010 | National Review Online
A Convenient Excuse

… [Terry Jones’] plan to burn the Koran was stupid, irresponsible, and repugnant, but it’s not his fault that there are a significant number of Muslim men who are not only ready but eager to riot and kill in response to insults to Islam.

If you deny this, you are basically denying the humanity of Muslims. We take it as a given in this country that not only are all men created equal, but that each individual is responsible for his own actions. Each man and woman is a captain of his or her own self.

To say that Muslims have no choice in the matter, that they must act like animals, is to say that they are animals. If you tease a bear and he kills you, your stupidity is to blame. If you tease a man and he kills you, the murderer is to blame.

Again, I think burning the Koran is reprehensible. And I could live with a local law that banned Koran-burning (and flag-burning, Bible-burning, Torah-burning, etc.) because I think communities should be able to set standards of decency. But that hardly settles things. It’s easy to condemn Koran-burning. What about those Danish cartoons of Mohammed (that Yale University won’t even reproduce in a book on the controversy)? What about highbrow novels like The Satanic Verses? When Pope Benedict XVI delivered his Regensburg address in 2006, he suggested that Islam had a link to violence. In response, many Muslims rioted. It’d be funny if it weren’t so sad.

When Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer was asked in an interview about Koran-burning, he brought up former Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’s famous comment that the First Amendment “doesn’t mean you can shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theater. …” Why? Because people will be trampled to death. And what is the crowded theater today? What is the being trampled to death?”

There are a number of grave problems with the crowded-theater cliché. First, you can — even must — yell “fire” in a crowded theater. It just has to be the truth.

But more to the point, fires are not human beings. Fire has no choice but to burn because that is what fire does. Humans have choices. Yet in this formulation (from which Breyer has somewhat retreated), Muslims are akin to soulless, unthinking flames. Taken seriously, this comparison suggests rational people have every reason to fear Muslims in much the same way they fear fire.

There are complex issues here. But the simple truth is the Islamist extremists who behead and riot do have a choice. They want to murder. What they want is an excuse, and they’ll find one no matter what.

Two Pieces on GZ Mosque - P. Geller, A. McCarthy

Happy New Year to my Jewish readers! 

Yes, it's been a while. Work and family continue to keep me too busy to blog.

For those who need verbal ammunition against your lockstep lib GZ mosque supporters, this Human Events piece by Pamela Geller is a must-read:

Victimizers Play the Victim

... Muslims in the U.S. are not the ones living under death threat. People who are standing up to jihad activity and Islamic supremacism are. They are not the ones targeted. We are. They are not getting death threats. We are. They don’t have to live with 24/7/365 heavy duty security, Geert Wilders does. Wafa Sultan, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Robert Spencer, Ibn Warraq, Salman Rushdie, the producers from Comedy Central, and accidental counter-jihad tourists like Molly Norris live under death threat. As do I.

Good, decent souls speaking out against a radical ideology, gender apartheid and supremacism are demonized and marginalized.

But the media blacks that out. They never report on that. Their narrative of Muslims “living in fear,” and worse still, living in fear on the anniversary of 9/11, is the ultimate insult.

The AP is alleging that Muslims are in fear of 911. Why? We were attacked by Muslim terrorists. What has the Muslim community, the ummah, done to eradicate the ideology that inspired those attacks? Or the Fort Hood jihad, the Fort Dix Six, the Christmas day bomber, the Times Square bomber?

We have waited patiently, have we not? What efforts, in the past nine years, have been made to expunge the Koran of its genocidal prescriptions? With the exception of dawah (proselytizing) camouflaged as “interfaith dialogue,” nothing has been done. The West, meanwhile, has bent over backwards in “outreach,” “mutual understanding,” and “mutual respect.” Where is the reciprocity? And where has it gotten us, except further down the rabbit hole?

Real fear is living as a non-Muslim in Muslim countries under the Sharia. Real fear is living as a Coptic Christian in Egypt. Real fear is living as a Christian in Indonesia. Real fear is a girl going to school in Afghanistan, real fear is being an Israeli awaiting the Islamic nuke, real fear is being a Jew in Europe, or a pro-Israel Jew on many U.S. college campuses. And on and on and on. ...

Then there's this piece by Andrew McCarthy at National Review Online:

This Is Where We Begin to Say No
On the Ground Zero mosque, Americans reject the opinion elites that empower the Islamists.

... For the better part of two decades, Americans have been murdered by Islamists and then lectured that they are to blame for what has befallen them. We have been instructed in the need for special sensitivity to the unceasing demands of Islamic culture and falsely accused of intolerance by the people who wrote the book on intolerance. Americans have sacrificed blood and bottomless treasure for Islamic peoples who despise Americans — and despise us even more as our sacrifices and gestures of self-loathing intensify. Americans have watched as apologists for terrorists and sharia were made the face of an American Muslim community that we were simultaneously assured was the very picture of pro-American moderation.

Americans have had our fill. We are willing to live many lies. This one, though, strikes too close to home, arousing our heretofore dormant sense of decency. Americans have now heard Barack Obama’s shtick enough times to know that when he talks about “our values,” he’s really talking about his values, which most of us don’t share. And after ten years of CAIR’s tired tirades, we’re immune to Feisal Rauf, too.

We look around us and we see our country unrivaled by anything in the history of human tolerance. We see thousands of thriving mosques, permitted to operate freely even though we know for a fact that mosques have been used against us, repeatedly, to urge terrorism, recruit terrorists, raise money for terrorists, store and transfer firearms, and inflame Muslims against America and the West. As Islamists rage against us, we see Islam celebrated in official Washington. As we reach out for the umpty-umpth time, we find Muslim leaders taking what we offer, but always with complaint and never with reciprocation. We’re weary, and we don’t really care if that means that Time magazine, Michael Bloomberg, Katie Couric, Fareed Zakaria, and the rest think we’re bad people — they think we’re bad people, anyway. ...

I really hope those sanctimonious self-appointed stalwarts of tolerance wake the hell up real soon. Before it's really too late.

Stupid Lies Democrats Believe / Left's Culture of Hate

I haven't been in hiding, dear readers. Just been away this week on business. But this article compelled me to come out of the woodwork with this piece from Larry Elder, and one from Dennis Prager. It's in response to the Democrat-media complex's insistence that there's something wrong with the 70% of Americans who oppose the Ground Zero mosque, rather than with them:

What About the Stupid Lies Democrats Believe?
By Larry Elder

… Liberals should be sympathetic. They are quite adept at willfully refusing to face facts, if necessary, to support wrongheaded views. Here are some examples:

“The rich don’t pay taxes.” False. For the 2007 tax year (the latest income tax data year released by the IRS), the top 1 percent of income earners, those making over $410,000 a year, paid 40 percent of all federal income taxes. The top 5 percent, those making about $160,000 a year or more, paid 60 percent of all federal income taxes. Yet according to a 2008 IBD/TIPP poll, only 12 percent of Americans knew what the rich, in fact, paid in taxes. And liberals are likelier to get it wrong.

“The rich exclusively benefited from the Bush tax cuts.” MSNBC’s insufferable lefty Ed Schultz said: “Ninety-eight percent of you, it (the Bush tax cuts) doesn’t even affect you.” False. In a recent New York Times editorial, the liberal paper said extending the cuts to the non-rich—a policy it favors—would “cost” about $140 billion next year. Extending the cuts to the rich—a policy it opposes—would “cost” about $40 billion next year. If the tax cuts only benefit the rich, why would the Treasury “lose” more money from the non-rich than it would “lose” from the rich?

“The Bush tax cuts caused the deficit.” CNN’s liberal host Fareed Zakaria said, “The Bush tax cuts are the single largest part of the black hole that is the federal budget deficit.” False. In 2002, tax revenues were $1.85 trillion. In 2007, revenues had grown to $2.57 trillion—a 39 percent increase. Unfortunately, outlays increased almost as much. In 2002, outlays were $2.01 trillion. In 2007—the last year before the recession and before TARP, the various “stimulus” programs, bailouts and ObamaCare—outlays were $2.73 trillion, a 36 percent increase.

“Bush had prior knowledge of 9/11.” Thirty-five percent of Democrats, according to a 2007 Rasmussen poll, believe President Bush had prior knowledge of 9/11, and 26 percent are “not sure.” False. This was investigated years earlier and refuted by the 2004 bipartisan 9/11 Commission Report.

“George W. Bush ‘stole’ the 2000 election.” False. In November 2001, The New York Times wrote: “A comprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots from last year’s presidential election reveals that George W. Bush would have won even if the United States Supreme Court had allowed the statewide manual recount of the votes that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered to go forward. Contrary to what many partisans of former Vice President Al Gore have charged, the United States Supreme Court did not award an election to Mr. Bush that otherwise would have been won by Mr. Gore.” …

*      *     *      *      *

The Left’s Culture of Hate
By Dennis Prager

… In the left’s worldview, conservative opponents of affirmative action cannot be driven by concern for blacks — opposition is animated by racists; conservative opponents of illegal immigration are animated by racism and xenophobia; opposition to abortion is a function of sexism; President Bush went to war for oil and American imperialism; and conservative supporters of retaining man-woman marriage hate gays.

This is not true of elite conservatives. Leading conservative columnists, leading Republicans, etc., rarely depict liberals as motivated by evil. Conservatives can say “There are good people on both sides of the issue” because we actually believe it.

Almost any contentious issue would provide proof of the left’s need to attack motives, but the proposed Islamic center and mosque near ground zero provides a particularly excellent example.

I have not come across a mainstream leftist description of opponents of the mosque/Islamic center being built near ground zero that has not ascribed hate-filled, intolerant, bigoted, “Islamophobic” or xenophobic motives to those who oppose the mosque. Contrast this with how mainstream opponents of the mosque describe the proponents of the mosque and you will see an immense divide between right and left in the way they talk about each other. …

Why does the left attribute only nefarious motives to those who believe that the Islamic center does not belong near ground zero?

Because leftism holds these beliefs:

1. Those who hold leftist positions are, by definition, better people than their opponents.

2. Those who hold leftist positions have, by definition, pure motives; therefore, the motives of their opponents must be impure. …

Ain't it the truth.

Be back next week.

Ground Zero Mosque and Tolerance

Good points here:

Ground Zero on the Tolerance Issue
Debra Saunders

… First, the right opposes the mosque. Conservative figures like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich don't like a mosque near ground zero. They say as much.

Then, in a Pavlovian response, the left embraces the mosque and proclaims itself more tolerant of religious freedom. But the left is not more tolerant of religious freedom. Only the left, you see, has the sagacity to recognize that, as New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd put it, Rauf is "the moderate Muslim we have allegedly been yearning for."

What you're seeing is the culture-war equivalent of "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

Quoth House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: "There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some." Translation: This issue is poison for Democrats.

And: "I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded." That's Bay Area tolerance for you — a well-placed Democratic politician wants an investigation into the funding of conservative dissenters. …

So it's more than ironic to watch the same folks who jump all over devout Christians now rush to Muslims' defense. This isn't about the left being more tolerant, as much as it is about the left disdaining the right. …

Bingo.

The Propaganda Of Incompetents - Investors.com

The Propaganda Of Incompetents - Investors.com.

As the "recovery summer" turns into a nightmare, one thing has become painfully clear: This is the most economically incompetent administration since the Great Depression.

Two years into the Obama era, when the U.S. should be enjoying a booming recovery from the 2007-08 meltdown, with millions of new jobs and higher incomes for all, all we see is economic wreckage from the unbelievably foolish policies pursued by the White House and the Democrat-controlled Congress.

Whether it's the $862 billion "stimulus" that turned into a welfare program for bankrupt states and public unions, or the $700 billion TARP program that became a giant dish of pork for Democrats and their supporters, or the job-killing duo of health care and financial reform, Obama, Pelosi, Reid et al. seem oblivious to the deep and lasting damage they're doing to America's economy. ...

What Are Obama's Critics For? Plenty

One thing we’ve heard a lot since President Golden Calf took office is that his opposition represents the “Party of No.” There’s no principled reason (as one liberal friend phrased it last year) for this stubborn opposition. As long as Obama is in power, the GOP is mainly going to say “No” on everything. Even as recently as last week, Obama accused nay-voting Republicans of obstructing change. This was as he signed into law the Dodd-Frank bill—named after the two crooks who were directly responsible for the housing crash and who, as is the rule in the Democrat Party, were rewarded by given the privilege of spearheading the wreck-tifying 2,400-page piece of cr@p.

And when Obama’s critics (a.k.a. regular Americans) aren’t being called “the Party of No,” they’re being accused of not being for anything. “They’re not for anything, these tea-bagging racist Republicans! They’re just against everything! Against hope! Against change! Against little cute kittens and puppies!” Etc.

Don’t believe the hype. For one thing, I’ll be the first to admit the “Party of No” moniker is essentially accurate. But the reasons are hardly unprincipled, or even racially charged as we’ve heard ad nauseam. The GOP for the most part says “No” and even “Hell, no!” for very principled reasons: Because it’s the right thing to do. Plain and simple. The failed “stimulus” bill? Hell no! The disastrous liberty-sucking health (s)care bill? Hell no! And now the economy-squeezing financial de-form bill? Hell no again.

As long as this human wrecking ball of a president is in office, and as long as the Democrat Party controls Congress, I am proud to be a member of the Party of No.

Now let’s get to that “We’re not for anything” meme. That’s a lie. We are for lots of things. And it’s not—as Obama’s sycophants will have you believe—putting blacks at the back of the bus and women back in the kitchen blah blah blah. What we conservatives/Republicans/tea partiers are for is restoring America to be closer to its founding principles. Why? Because they worked! Not perfectly, naturally; nothing human-made is perfect. But light years better than this Marxist utopia the Obamaniacs in power have in store for us, that’s for sure.

If you have been wondering what us on the right are actually for, or you are on the right and have had a frustrating time explaining it to a lefty, this piece ought to help you out. This conservative manifesto as it were was written back in February:

Why I am a Conservative
February 22, 1:32 PM | Philadelphia County Conservative Examiner

I am a Conservative because I believe in American Exceptionalism; I believe that Democracy and the rule of law is man’s best hope on Earth and that our way of life must be defended. … I believe that in the absence of American as the defender of Freedom, the world would dissolve into chaos, leaving Totalitarianism to rule the day and enslave the people.

I am a Conservative because I believe in Open and Free Market Capitalism, and that Capitalism is the engine for economic growth and a nation’s prosperity, not wealth redistribution. …

I’m a Conservative because I believe in the 2nd amendment. I believe that the 2nd amendment is essential if we are to protect the First. …

I’m a Conservative because I am a Citizen of the United States of America, not the world. I believe America is a sovereign nation and that our national security decisions should reflect our interests, not the United Nations. …

I’m a Conservative because I believe in the US Constitution and that it is the Ultimate and Supreme authority on all laws enacted to govern the country. I believe that when a Judiciary becomes rogue and forgets it constitutional role as a Reviewer of Law, and not an Author, that court should be brought under control by the Congress or Abolished …

I am a Conservative because I believe in the provisions of the 10th amendment. I believe that all powers not specifically enumerated by the Constitution to the Federal government belong to the states and thereby to “We the People”.

I am a Conservative because I believe in America. America is a place where anything is possible if you work hard and apply your natural gifts and talents. America is a place where a child can grow up on welfare to become the Leader of the Free World. America is country where your place in society is not cemented at birth because of a less than desirable socio-economic status. In America, the “Dream” is still possible.

I am a Conservative because I understand that 2+2=4, no matter what the State says.

I am a Conservative because I believe it is immoral to steal from one man and give to another. I consider it theft for the government to seize the assets, through taxation and regulation, of private business ventures and use the funds as a piggy bank for social experiments. …

I am a Conservative because I believe in fiscal sanity and a mandated balanced federal budget; if everyday people must cut expenses to balance their home budgets, the federal government must be required to do the same.

I’m a Conservative because I believe in the freedom of choice in education. I’m a proponent of merit pay for teachers that produced results and penalties for ineffective teachers who don’t. I believe parents should have the choice to remove their children from failing public schools, and with State and Federal assistance be able to send their children to private institutions. …

I am a Conservative because I believe America’s greatness is ahead of us, not behind. I believe that if the federal government would get out of the way of the American spirit of Ingenuity, Americans will pull the nation out of this recession and into a real recovery. …

I am a Conservative because I understand that the only way to save the bankrupt system of social security is to privatize it.

I am a Conservative most of all because I believe in individual liberty and the natural right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Click on the link at top to read it in full. It really is a great piece.

By the way, the author of this manifesto? His name is Jamal Greene. “Jamal”? That’s not a typical name for an Obama-opposing tea-partying racist white cracker.

That’s because this Obama-opposing tea partier is in fact a black man. Well slap me on the @$$ and call me Sally!

Stick that in your hash pipes and smoke it, you pathetic race-baiters at NAALCP, MSNBC, and NYT.

Listen & Learn: Four Segments of El Rushbo Broadcast Excellence (7/13/10)

El Rushbo was on a roll yesterday. The first hour was just a series of monologue after brilliant monologue. The audio clip below contains four of those segments, edited, as usual, for long silences, commercial breaks, and other extraneous parts.

In the first segment, Rush wonders out loud why liberals are perpetually unhappy. And rightly so. Here we have a black president, a Democrat House and Senate, the eeeeevil private sector being tarnished and torn while the government gets bigger and bigger, government-run health (s)care passed, plus all of their favorite countries are being coddled, and hated countries being scorned. We are living in a virtual liberal utopia, so why are they still unhappy? Listen to the clip to find out.

The second segment, beginning at around 5:20, is my favorite: a Limbaugh-esque reply to Obama advisor David Axelrod. Axelrod recently made the oft-repeated Democrat claim that the GOP wants to “turn our country backward.” In response, Rush does the unexpected: He agrees with him!

The transcript of the response is here, for anyone who wants to copy it and share it online or by email. It’s that good:

“Recently, Obama advisor David Axelrod stated that America would be going ‘backwards’ if they allowed the GOP to take the majority in 2010”? Well, let me tell you something: I don’t know about you, folks, but I would love to go backwards! I would love to go back about a year and a half.

I’d love to go back when people’s houses had value, and the expectation was that the value would increase every year.

I’d love to go backwards to when we had a 4.7% unemployment rate.

I would love to go backwards to where our taxes were lower.

I would love to go backwards where our health care was affordable and excellent.

I would love to go backwards when our investments had a good chance of growing.

I would love to go backwards when people’s children could get jobs with their expensive college educations.

I would love to go backwards when we had leaders motivating and inspiring young people to seek the world, to seek their dreams.

I would love to go back to that period of time. It’s just a year and a half ago and beyond. Who wants to live in an era where the president and the first lady tell college graduates to screw it? Don’t get into the money making professions. Oh, yes, Mr. Axelrod, I would love to go back!

I would love to go back to a period of time when my president actually liked my country.

I would love to go back to a period of time when my president respected my country and my president was proud of it.

I would love to go back to a period of time where my president was not trying to destroy things that he thinks have been unfair for 20 or 30 years or 230 years.

I would love to go back to a period of time where my president did not look at the United States as the problem in the world.

I would love to go back, Mr. Axelrod, to a period of time where we had leaders who could the United States was exceptional and could indeed be the economic engine and the freedom engine of the world.

I would love to go back, and we don’t have to go back very few, Mr. Axelrod. Just 18, 19 months. Oh yes, I would love to go backwards, Mr. Axelrod.

And speaking of going backwards, isn’t that what Axelrod wants to do? Doesn’t Axelrod want to go back to the sixties? Aren’t he and his buddies perpetually trapped in the idealism and the promise of the 1960s? Perhaps we could say they would love to go back even further, to the time of Marx. Anita Dunn might like to go back to the time of Mao Tse-tung in the 30’s and 40’s! Some of the great dictators of all time are the professed inspiration for many members of the regime. So, yeah, we’re not the only ones that want to go backwards.

Told you it was classic.

Next, at around the 8:24 point, Rush talks about the death of longtime N.Y. Yankees owner George Steinbrenner in a way that he himself admitted was going to drive the liberati into apoplexy, mainly (1) As a capitalist, Steinbrenner knew when to die: before the death tax is reinstated in 2011, and (2) For a “cracker,” Steinbrenner sure made a lot of African-Americans wealthy.

Finally, at around the 10:00 mark, Rush discusses some polls—including a couple in the Washington Post of all places—that reports on the growing disillusionment with President Obama among voting blocks which are very important to the Democrats, including independents, environmentalists, the young college-educated, Hispanics, and Jews.

Enjoy these 14 minutes of brilliant broadcast excellence!

[Edited for long silences, commercial breaks, and extraneous talking]

(Download clip here)

Liberal Hypocrisy / Media Bias: NY Times on Byrd vs. Thurmond

Aaron Goldstein at American Spectator can’t help but notice the two blatantly distinct tones of two obituaries in the New York Times:

Of Senators and Segregation
By Aaron Goldstein on 6.30.10 @ 6:08AM

Shortly after I had learned of the passing of Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia I came across his obituary in the New York Times. The headline read:

Robert Byrd, Respected Voice of the Senate, Dies at 92

It is worth noting that Byrd died almost seven years to the day when Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina passed away. Naturally, I was curious as to what the headline in the New York Times read when he left this mortal coil:

Strom Thurmond, Foe of Integration, Dies at 100

It is also worth noting that both obituaries were written by Adam Clymer. Now in fairness to Mr. Clymer, it was very likely not he who chose those headlines. But the fact that Byrd and Thurmond were described so very differently in death strongly reflects the liberal bias of the Times. Had Thurmond remained a Democrat, would the Times have summed him up as a foe of integration?

Now there is no dispute that Thurmond was a foe of integration. Indeed, Thurmond once spoke on the floor of the Senate for more than 24 hours in opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957 late in August of that year. Among many other things, Thurmond railed against Brown v. Board of Education; the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision which desegregated public schools. Thurmond described Brown as “the outstanding judicial blunder of all time.” Understandably, this would deservedly earn Thurmond the enmity of African Americans.

Yet Robert Byrd could equally be described as a foe of integration. During the early 1940s, Byrd was not only a member of the Ku Klux Klan he recruited others to join their cause. Say what you will about Thurmond, but he never joined the Klan. In 1938, when Thurmond served in the South Carolina State Senate, he spoke out against lynching and said that the Klan stood for “the most abominable type of lawlessness.”

Byrd would later oppose President Truman’s integration of the Armed Forces. He made it clear he would not fight for his country “with a Negro by my side.” But there was more:

Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.

Although it was the integration of the Armed Forces that would in part prompt Thurmond to run against Truman in the 1948 Presidential election, he was never known to have uttered the vicious kind of language Byrd used to describe African Americans.

Seven years after Thurmond’s filibuster, Byrd stood up and spoke on the Senate floor for fourteen straight hours against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Now Byrd might not have gone on the whole day like Thurmond did, but it was a filibuster against civil rights just the same. …

Read the rest at American Spectator.

Henry Percy at American Thinker comments on Arizona Republic’s fawning whitewashed Byrd obit.

Don’t misunderstand. I'm not apologizing for Strom Thurmond. I’m simply pointing out, as Goldstein is, that if Robert Byrd were held up to the same standard as Thurmond, his obit in the lefty MSM would be far from glowing.

Article of Note: Hey NJ Teachers, Was It Worth It?

Recommended by a friend and VM reader:

Big blunder cost New Jersey teachers years of goodwill
By Kevin Manahan, May 27, 2010

Read article here.