We need ALL HANDS ON DECK, and ALL BOOTS on the Ground!! If you can take time off work, if you can leave your children or elderly parent with a sitter (or bring them)…if you can at all make this rally – DO IT!
This may be it! Pelosi is trying to bring this to the floor for a vote in the coming days…and is strong-arming all the moderate dems into voting for Obamacare Socialized Medicine – and Federally Funded Abortion. In a “nuclear option” procedure that was never intended for major social mandates, Nancy & Harry…and Leader Obama – clearly intend to disenfranchise well over half of the American People!
The Second Protest planned by the St. Louis Tea Party Coalition is planned for 5:30 on Wednesday night downtown in St. Louis across from the Renaissance Grand hotel. We are meeting at 5:00 PM on 9th and Delmar. WEAR BLACK!
Chief Justice Roberts responded this week to the unprecedented attack by Barack Obama on the Supreme Court at the State of the Union Address this year.
Via BreitbartTV:
Chief Justice Roberts: “The image of having the members of one branch of government standing up, literally surrounding the Supreme Court, cheering and hollering while the court — according the requirements of protocol — has to sit there expressionless, I think is very troubling. And, it does cause me to think if it makes sense for us to be there.”
Barack Obama attacked the Supreme Court during his State of the Union Address this year:
For the record… When Obama attacked the Supreme Court at his hyper-partisan State of the Union address he relied on an old Jim Crow law to make his point.
Via Rhymes With Right:
The Obama administration has proposed using United Nations-guided principles to expand a type of zoning to coastal and even some inland waters. That’s raising concerns among fishermen that their favorite fishing holes may soon be off-limits for bait-casting. In the battle of incremental change that epitomizes the American conservation movement, many weekend anglers fear that the Obama administration’s promise to “fundamentally change” water management in the US will erode what they call the public’s “right to fish,” in turn creating economic losses for the $82 billion recreational fishing industry and a further deterioration of the American outdoorsman’s legacy. Proponents say the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force established by President Obama last June will ultimately benefit the fishing public by managing ecosystems in their entirety rather than by individual uses such as fishing, shipping, or oil exploration.“It’s not an environmentalist manifesto,” says Larry Crowder, a marine biologist at Duke University in North Carolina. “It’s multiple-use planning for the environment, and making sure various uses … are sustainable.” (Amateur outdoorsmen have been fighting for their rights for years, as the Monitor reports here.)
Faced with the prospect of further industrialization along America’s coasts and the Great Lakes (wind turbines and natural-gas exploration, for example), the task force is charged with putting in place a new ecosystem management process called marine spatial planning. Marine spatial planning (MSP), according to the United Nations, is “a public process of analyzing and allocating the spatial and temporal distribution of human activities in marine areas to achieve ecological, economic, and social objectives that usually have been specified through a political process.” That kind of government-speak scares Phil Morlock, director of environmental affairs at the reel-and-rod maker Shimano. Mr. Morlock points to references by the ocean task force to “one global sea” as evidence that what’s really being proposed are broad changes to America’s user-funded conservation strategy, potentially affecting even inland waters. “I suggest that the task force recommend our model to the United Nations rather than us adopting the United Nations model,” he says in a phone interview. “The American model is the best in the world, so our question is: Why seek the lowest common denominator?”
Mr. Obama has said he will not override protections put in place by Presidents Clinton and Bush that established recreational fishermen as a special class.
But critics still worry about the Obama administration’s ties to environmental groups that espouse “anti-use” policies that put some habitats out of reach even for rod and reel fishermen, who take only 3 percent of America’s landed catch every year. “Angling advocates point out that senior policy officials on the task force seem inclined to ally themselves with preservationists and environmental extremists who want to create ‘no fishing’ preserves, with no scientific justification,” writes ESPN.com’s Robert Montgomery.
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) told Greta on Tuesday night that Obamacare is all about politics and has nothing to do with health care.
Rep. Paul Ryan:
“And, I really think it comes down to a political philosophy. And they believe in a political philosophy that is more like a cradle to grave, more of a social welfare state, kind of like you see in Europe versus the American ideal that we’ve known and loved and grown up with. And, so really what this is more about is ideology than health care policy. Because if this was about health care policy we could get a bi-partisan agreement tomorrow. It’s not about health care policy. They are trying to ram it through as fast as they can before their power slips away from them and that’s why they’re trying to create this brand new entitlement which really does have the government takeover 17% of our economy.”
The Obama State Department apologized to Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi for offending the dear tyrant with offensive language.
The BBC reported:
The US State Department has apologized for comments made about Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s call for jihad, or holy war, against Switzerland.
Department spokesman PJ Crowley, who made the dismissive comments, said they did not reflect US policy and were not intended to offend.
Col Gaddafi had criticised a Swiss vote against the building of minarets and urged Muslims to boycott the country.
Mr Crowley described it as “lots of words, not necessarily a lot of sense.”
Libya and Switzerland are embroiled in a long-running diplomatic row.
“I regret that my comments have become an obstacle to further progress in our bilateral relationship,” Mr Crowley said.
Last week, Libya’s National Oil Corporation warned US oil firms of possible “repercussions” over Mr Crowley’s reaction. The Libyan ambassador to the US sought to clarify Col Gaddafi’s remarks saying the Libyan leader meant an economic boycott not “an armed attack”.
“I should have focused solely on our concern about the term jihad, which has since been clarified by the Libyan government,” Mr Crowley added.
“I understand my personal comments were perceived as a personal attack on the president,” he said.
Hat Tip Dan Friedman
Libyan dictator Moamer Gaddafi warned the Swiss in December that their minaret ban invited attacks by Al-Qaeda on Europe.
In September it was reported that the Obama Administration planned to give$400,000 in funding to a Libyan charity run by the Gadhafi family.
One hour of your life– wasted.
After interviewing tickler Eric Massa (D-NY) for an hour Glenn Beck apologized to America.
“Sorry, I’ve wasted your time.”
Via BreitbartTV:
Massa told Fox News that, yes, he groped a male staffer — but not sexually.
“Not only did I grope him, I tickled him until he couldn’t breathe and then four guys jumped on top of me,” he said. “It was my 50th birthday. It was ‘kill the old guy.’ You can take anything out of context.”
Massa has previously claimed his misconduct was limited to using inappropriate language with staffers.
Massa’s interview came after the former New York Democrat alleged that party leaders conspired to force him out of office so they would have an easier time approving the health care reform bill.
In a radio interview Sunday, Massa described himself as the “deciding vote” on health care.
“The will of the people” be damned.
Democrats continue to ignore the will of the people and push forward with their “angry mob unpopular” socialist agenda.
Despite clear opposition from the American people, Democratic leaders in Congress are continuing with their efforts to ram through a bloated, trillion-dollar health care bill that will hike taxes, raise premiums, and cut Medicare. Republicans are urging Democrats to start over and work with Republicans to develop bipartisan health care legislation that will actually lower health care costs.
Nancy Pelosi pushed Obamacare today during her speech to the 2010 legislative conference of the National Association of Counties. She told the group, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”
You’ve heard about the controversies within the bill, the process about the bill, one or the other. But I don’t know if you have heard that it is legislation for the future, not just about health care for America, but about a healthier America, where preventive care is not something that you have to pay a deductible for or out of pocket. Prevention, prevention, prevention—it’s about diet, not diabetes. It’s going to be very, very exciting. But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.
Call me old-fashioned but how about we read it first, then vote on it?
Barack Obama’s HCAN (Health Care for America Now) organization and SEIU supporters held a joint rally today in Washington against the insurance industry. The groups bussed in their protesters from DE, CT, MD, MN, VA, NJ, NC, NY, OH, PA, and RI.
The police arrested the more violent protesters outside the Ritz Carlton. (Flickr)
If AHIP thinks they’ve been getting an incredible amount of heat lately for their stunning rate increases, they haven’t seen anything yet.
Today, we’re taking a stand together to show AHIP we’re not going to allow the big corporations and their lobbyists to bully Congress into inaction. We kicked off today’s rally this morning at around 10:30 a.m. Health care activists spilled off of buses that traveled from DE, CT, MD, MN, VA, NJ, NC, NY, OH, PA, RI to be here today.
They joined union members, health care supporters, politicians, progressive leaders and faith leaders, until there were several thousand of us packed into the Circle by the fountain. HCAN’s Richard Kirsch, SEIU’s Anna Burger, and Howard Dean all spoke briefly, energizing the crowd and reminding us all why we’re all out here: to hold the abusive health insurance industry accountable for its actions.
The leftists were arrested after breaking into the ballroom where insurance executives were holding a meeting. (Flickr)
Howard Dean fired up the crowd. Yeaaarahh! (Flickr)
“We need to rise above an ends justify the means mentality”
What a difference five years makes. Suddenly the ends justifying the means is the way to go. What a hypocrite.
Update: This is related since it also points to Obama’s hypocrisy.
From ABC’s The Note:
Obama, speaking at an event for health care reform in Pennsylvania:
“(Health Insurers) will [...]
If you were listening to Glenn Beck this morning you heard him and Michelle Malkin get into a rather heated argument about Beck having ex-Congressman Eric Massa on his show today.
Yes, it’s just delicious political theatre to listen to Massa talk about Rham Emanuel walking round naked in the House showers and intimidating House [...]
One thing is for sure… If you’re a leftist organization and you need a hand up, the state-run media is always there to help. CNN propped up the astroturfed coffee party movement this week. They include my critique at the 1:40 mark:
The coffee party was founded by top Obama Campaign official Anabelle Park. The group was formed in response to the tea party movement.
St. Louis had their first coffee party meeting last week. About 40 people turned out. The St. Louis Coffee Party is a branch of the national astroturfed group based out of Washington DC. Founding Bloggers wrote more about the local media bias in promoting the St. Louis coffee group.
David Brooks is always fun to kick around, so let the fun begin. Brooks is another one of these columnists who has run with this, “Tea Partiers are just wingnutty versions of hippies, why, they’re no conservatives at all!” idea. Oh, sure, there are some small similarities with the New Left, but the idea that [...]
David Brooks is always fun to kick around, so let the fun begin. Brooks is another one of these columnists who has run with this, “Tea Partiers are just wingnutty versions of hippies, why, they’re no conservatives at all!” idea. Oh, sure, there are some small similarities with the New Left, but the idea that [...]
This has been all over the net yesterday and today. Dan Rather is kind of known for his folkisms. Here is the transcript:
When you talk about a triumph though, part of the undertow in the coming election is going to be President Obama’s leadership and the Republicans are making a case, a lot of independents [...]
This has been all over the net yesterday and today. Dan Rather is kind of known for his folkisms. Here is the transcript:
When you talk about a triumph though, part of the undertow in the coming election is going to be President Obama’s leadership and the Republicans are making a case, a lot of independents [...]
The campaign against the IED threat in Iraq resembled in some respects the Battle of the Atlantic. Starting from nearly nothing in 2003 the “improvised explosive device” lurking under the roadbed, embedded in a concrete curb, in a dead dog or a garbage can — or sometimes taking the form of a long string of artillery shells wired to each other — became a major cause of Coalition casualties. Like the U-boats their success rose a crescendo and then faded away under a cocktail of countermeasures. The “Happy Time” for the IED bombers was the summer of 2007.
The conceptual similarities between the fight against the U-boat and the IED were that the victors evolved better detection technology, surveillance techniques and adaptive routing than their opponents, who were also evolving. The parallels between mine detection technology and sonar; electronic intelligence and Huff-duff, between road surveillance systems and long range air patrols are obvious. And the really killing blow in both cases — what spelled the end of the wolfpack and the road bombers was also identical: getting “left of the boom”. A Washington Post article from 2007 described how military analysts understood from the start the:
need to move “left of boom,” to use the vernacular developed by the Army in 2003: that is, to attack the bombmaking construct well before IEDs are emplaced. That involves understanding the financiers, bombmaker cells, and other aspects of this, long before a bomb appears at the roadside. Only in the past year has the Pentagon begun moving in a concerted, purposeful way to left of boom.
If the detonation of an IED represents the endpoint of its lifecycle, any actions taken by the defender in the vicinity of that event are disadvantageous from the point of view of physics. You are out of distance and time when in proximity to the bomb and the best electronic countermeasures and armor plating can only provide limited damage mitigation. Fundamentally speaking, if you have to wait until you are nearly on top of an explosive (or a U-boat) before you detect and react, you are screwed. You are playing a losing game.
But consider the area to the left of the boom, before an explosive device has been deployed. In this part of its lifecycle the weapon is still being funded, assembled, transported, fuzed and concealed. It is potentially lethal but only potentially. Like a serpent in an egg its malice is still prospective. In that space the IED is vulnerable; in that space it can be defeated. And in that space it was defeated.
While, as Wired notes, the movie “Hurt Locker” justly put the spotlight on the matchless bravery and skill of the EOD teams, it leaves out a very large part of the story. Beating the enemy meant going after him; busting the funding networks, killing or capturing the bombmakers, disrupting the supply of materiel and watching the environment the way B-24 Liberator crews once scanned the waves for submarines.
It’s tempting to ask what the counter-IED experience implies to the overall strategy of fighting terror. Is it ever possible to passively defend a country against attack? What role does converting the attitudes of the enemy’s own support base play in generating intelligence? And what good is intelligence without the willingness to use it to crack down on the equivalents of the ideology, leadership, funding, operational trainers and materiel supply line of the enemy? In other words, what does going “left of the boom” mean in the context of counterterrorist operations?
Roger Simon says that even in Hollywood and public opinion may be more open than it has ever been to themes and ideas that were conventionally regarded as uncool.
The 2010 Academy Awards may not have marked the end of “liberal Hollywood” as we know it, but they certainly put a solid dent in it. With the pro-military “The Hurt Locker” winning over the enviro-pabulum of “Avatar” and Sandra Bullock garnering the Best Actress Oscar for a Christian movie, the times are a-changin’ at least somewhat, maybe even a lot.
But one thing is now certain. It is time for conservative, center-right and libertarian filmmakers to stop feeling sorry for themselves and go out and just do it.
Maybe people are willing to listen to ideas and themes outside of their circle, now that the old order and the divisions which marked it are falling away. If so then now is the time for historians and authors to go back and take a fresh look at the remarkable successes of the recent past. Experience is perhaps the only thing with real shelf-life a world of rapid technological change. Though forms are transient, function endures.
All this talk about reconciliation is a distraction from the bigger picture: In one year Obama has lost his own party. He can’t get them to pass his signature bill. And now he has lost their trust. (Even though the media rarely mentions it, he had a filibuster proof majority in the senate and a super majority in the house and he STILL couldn’t get it done.)
The cleanest option for Democrats would be for the House to pass the Senate’s Christmas Eve bill word for word, thereby bypassing a Senate filibuster under the normal rules and forwarding ObamaCare directly to the Rose Garden signing ceremony. But Speaker Nancy Pelosi has repeatedly said the votes simply don’t exist for the Senate bill as is…
Thus the convoluted scheme the White House has mapped out. The House would first pass the Senate bill, and then pass a reconciliation bill that addresses these objections—in effect converting the process into a makeshift and unprecedented vehicle for amendments…
Iron-clad promise—or double-cross? After all, the White House would much prefer the Senate bill, because by its lights the cost-control programs are tougher than what the House prefers…
In other words, perhaps Mr. Obama has embraced this reconciliation two-step only to renege as soon as the House gives him what he wants.
Add in Rep. Massa’s (D-NY) accusations that Obama’s boys booted him out because he voted against the “health care” bill and the allegations that Obama gave away a judicial appointment to Congressman Matheson (D-Utah) to get his vote for health care and the unbelievable has occurred. The bill looks sleazier than it did after the Cornhusker Kickback, The Louisiana Purchase and the Gator Aid.
Moderate Democrats can’t trust their own president. Getting ANY health care bill passed is now Obama’s top priority. He has convinced himself that it will be his legacy. He knows it’s very unpopular with the American people. (Even SNL knows that). But he believes the people just don’t know what’s good for them and they will eventually thank him for it. The lefties think you are too stupid to handle your own affairs – watch Robert Reich.
REICH: Yes, let them compete across state lines, fine. But not a race to the bottom. Set minimum federal standards because we’ve seen over and over again that the recipients of health insurance don’t know what they are buying very often. Until there are common standards, minimal standards, then people are going to be taken. And that is what’s happened over and over again.
WILL: There you have the premise of this legislation and the core of today’s liberalism: the American people are such dopes they can’t be counted upon to buy their own insurance.
See, they are smarter than you and you need to let them make the major decisions in your life. They want the government in charge of your retirement, your health care, your education, and even the amount of money you make.
I’m seriously worried how close they are to having their way. Thankfully, I think people are waking up.
Hey, Obama finally apologized for health care and I know how long Charlie Rangel’s “leave of absence” will be. Check it out.
The state-run media was sooooo desperate to find something to attack Sarah Palin on yesterday that they forgot to factcheck their latest smear.
On Monday, the leftist media was thrilled to report that Sarah Palin used the Canadian health care system when she was a child. The Huffington Post, the Washington Post and Matthew Yglesias were happy to report this line this line from her speech this past weekend in Calgary:
“We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada. And I think now, isn’t that ironic? ”
This, they suggested, proved she endorsed the Canadian and US democrat’s socialist health care system.
But, unfortunately they didn’t have all the facts. Ben Smith later in the day posted the corrections:
CORRECTION: Whitehorse is in Yukon, not Saskatchewan, and Palin, as a young child, lived closer to itthan earlier reported.
UPDATE: Here’s some more context: “My first five years of life we spent in Skagway, Alaska, right there by Whitehorse. Believe it or not – this was in the ’60s – we used to hustle on over the border for health care that we would receive in Whitehorse. I remember my brother, he burned his ankle in some little kid accident thing and my parents had to put him on a train and rush him over to Whitehorse and I think, isn’t that kind of ironic now. Zooming over the border, getting health care from Canada.”
ALSO: Socialized medicine apparently only kicked in in Yukon in 1972, post-Palin.
Barack Obama nominated a US ambassador to Syria in February after a 5 year absence. The US recalled its Ambassador in the wake of the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005 and speculation over Syrian involvement. The UN investigation is still ongoing.
Iranian regime President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Syrian dictator Assad and Hezbollah terror leader Hassan Nasrallah met for dinner last month in Damascus. Hassan Nasrallah (far right) has made few public appearances since 2006. This dinner was held right after US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns’s visit with Assad in Damascus.
Watching Barack Obama’s Middle East foreign policy is like watching a horror movie. Barry Rubin at The Jerusalem Post reported:
The stories of the US engagement with Syria and the sanctions issue regarding Iran’s nuclear program are fascinating. Each day there’s some new development showing how the Obama administration is acting like a deer standing in the middle of a busy highway admiring the pretty headlights of the automobiles.
It’s like watching the monster sneak up behind someone. Even though you know he won’t turn around, you can’t help but watch in fascinated horror and yell: “Look out!” But he pays no attention.
Briefly, the Syrian government keeps punching the US in the face as Washington ignores it.
On March 1, a new record was set. The place: State Department daily press conference; the star, spokesman Philip J. Crowley. A reporter asks how the administration views the fact that the moment a US delegation left after urging Syrian President Bashar Assad to move away from Iran and stop supporting Hizbullah, Syria’s dictator invited Iran’s dictator along with Hizbullah’s leader to visit.
In other words, the exact opposite of what the US requested. Is the government annoyed? Does it want to express some anger or issue a threat?
Let’s listen. Crowley: “Well, I would point it in a slightly different direction… We want to see Syria play a more constructive role in the region. We also want – to the extent that it has the ability to talk to Iran directly – we want to make sure that Syria’s communicating to Iran its concerns about its role in the region and the direction, the nature of its nuclear ambitions…”
In other words, I’m going to ignore the fact that the first thing that Assad did after Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns’s visit was a love fest with Iran and Hizbullah. But even more amazing, what Crowley said is that the US government thinks Syria, Iran’s partner and ally, may be upset that Iran is being aggressive and expansionist. And it actually expects the Syrians to urge Iran not to build nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, as the administration congratulates itself on explaining to Syria that it should reduce support for Hizbullah, IDF military intelligence releases an assessment that Syria is giving Hizbullah more and better arms than ever before…
…Is it too much to ask policy-makers to pay attention to what’s going on occasionally?
So let’s leave it to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to sum up how things seem to Iran, Syria, Hamas, Hizbullah and many others. The Americans, he said, “not only have failed to gain any power, but also are forced to leave the region. They are leaving their reputation, image and power behind in order to escape… The [American] government has no influence [to stop] the expansion of Iran-Syria ties, Syria-Turkey ties and Iran-Turkey ties – God willing, Iraq too will join the circle.”
The US will return an American ambassador to Syria after a hiatus of 5 years.
More Hope and Change…
Obama’s latest assault on your rights– He wants to ban sport fishing.
Barack Obama has a message for America’s 60,000,000 anglers– We don’t need you.
The American Sportfishing Association reported back in October about the sweeping changes proposed by the Obama Administration in regards to the sport fishing industry:
A sweeping oceans and Great Lakes management policy document proposed by the Obama Administration will have a significant impact on the sportfishing industry, America’s saltwater anglers and the nation’s coastal communities. The draft policy, the Interim Report of the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force, issued on September 17, will govern federal Pacific and Atlantic Ocean waters and Great Lakes resource conservation and management and will coordinate these efforts among federal, state and local agencies. This past June, President Obama created the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force, led by the Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), to develop a draft national policy and implementation strategy for conserving and managing the United States ocean territory and the Great Lakes.
Now it looks like the Obama Administration is going to move ahead with these restrictions. ESPN reported:
The Obama administration will accept no more public input for a federal strategy that could prohibit U.S. citizens from fishing the nation’s oceans, coastal areas, Great Lakes, and even inland waters…
“When the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) completed their successful campaign to convince the Ontario government to end one of the best scientifically managed big game hunts in North America (spring bear), the results of their agenda had severe economic impacts on small family businesses and the tourism economy of communities across northern and central Ontario,” said Phil Morlock, director of environmental affairs for Shimano.
“Now we see NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and the administration planning the future of recreational fishing access in America based on a similar agenda of these same groups and other Big Green anti-use organizations, through an Executive Order by the President. The current U.S. direction with fishing is a direct parallel to what happened in Canada with hunting: The negative economic impacts on hard working American families and small businesses are being ignored.
“In spite of what we hear daily in the press about the President’s concern for jobs and the economy and contrary to what he stated in the June order creating this process, we have seen no evidence from NOAA or the task force that recreational fishing and related jobs are receiving any priority.”
Consequently, unless anglers speak up and convince their Congressional representatives to stop this bureaucratic freight train, it appears that the task force will issue a final report for “marine spatial planning” by late March, with President Barack Obama then issuing an Executive Order to implement its recommendations — whatever they may be.
Led by NOAA’s Jane Lubchenco, the task force has shown no overt dislike of recreational angling, but its indifference to the economic, social and biological value of the sport has been deafening.
Additionally, Lubchenco and others in the administration have close ties to environmental groups who would like nothing better than to ban recreational angling. And evidence suggests that these organizations have been the engine behind the task force since before Obama issued a memo creating it last June.
Barack Obama Is Coming to St. Louis on Wednesday March 10, 2010.
He is going to hold a private rally in St. Charles on his Plan to Nationalize Health Care. He says he is “Closing the Deal.” But, his event is not open to the public because he knows you don’t want his “angry mob unpopular” socialist agenda.
We have 10 DAYS TO STOP THIS!
Barack Obama wants the deal done by March 18th. WE HAVE ONE DAY TO SHOW HIM HOW MISSOURI FEELS ABOUT HIS SOCIALIST AGENDA
We are urging you to join us.
Join us in opposing this tyranny.
Join us in opposing this socialism. Join us in support of Freedom!
This past year was a Great Year. We showed up and showed out in the Show Me State. 24th State produced this wonderful video:
But, our work is not done.
Please join us on Wednesday.
2 Protests Are Planned……….
–The first protest is at 9:45 AM at the St. Charles Convention Center
–The second protest is at 5:30 at the at the Renaissance Grand hotel in downtown St. Louis.
HELP WELCOME OBAMA TO MISSOURI ON WEDNESDAY—–
** Health Care Rally at St. Charles Convention Center (map, directions, parking) at 9:45 AM on Wednesday March 10, 2010.
We need ALL HANDS ON DECK, and ALL BOOTS on the Ground!! If you can take time off work, if you can leave your children or elderly parent with a sitter (or bring them)…if you can at all make this rally – DO IT!
This may be it! Pelosi is trying to bring this to the floor for a vote in the coming days…and is strong-arming all the moderate dems into voting for Obamacare Socialized Medicine – and Federally Funded Abortion. In a “nuclear option” procedure that was never intended for major social mandates, Nancy & Harry…and Leader Obama – clearly intend to disenfranchise well over half of the American People!
The Second Protest planned by the St. Louis Tea Party Coalition is planned for 5:30 on Wednesday night downtown in St. Louis across from the Renaissance Grand hotel. We are meeting at 5:00 PM on 9th and Delmar. WEAR BLACK!
Check back here or at the St. Louis Tea Party Coalition website for more details. We are tentatively planning on meeting at 5:00 PM and are asking protesters to wear black.
Florida Governor Charlie Crist was on with Greta Van Susteren on Monday March 8. During the interview he accused Marco Rubio of going to salons and getting a back wax.
The United Arab Emirates is banning Jews. The authorities recently made the unusual decision to refuse entry to anyone from Israel or anyone who looks like they might be from Israel. Pravda reported, via Atlas Shrugs:
The authorities of the United Arab Emirates made an unusual decision. Dubai police chief Dahi Khalfan al-Tamim said on March 1 that anyone who looks or sounds like a citizen of Israel will be blocked from entering the country, even if a suspected individual produces a passport of a different state.
“It is easy for us to identify [Israelis], through their face or when they speak any other language. We used to respect them when they would come holding European passports; we regarded them as Europeans and never treated them badly. But from now on, anyone we suspect to have a dual citizenship, they will be treated with great suspicion,” the police chief said.
The decision is directly linked with the assassination of a high-ranking official of Palestine’s Hamas movement in one of Dubai hotels on February 20. UAE officials believe that Mahmud al-Mabhuh, one of the founders of the military wing of Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, was killed by Israel’s Mossad. The secret agents most likely used passports of other countries to commit the crime.
It is not quite clear, though, how Arab officials are going to identify Israelis. They would obviously have no difficulty in identifying Orthodox bearded hasids for their side-locks, hats and glasses. It looks like a joke though: “Wearing a hat and a pair of glasses makes you a Jew.”
Such people would never think of traveling to Emirates. Will Emirates liken itself to the Third Reich and use rulers and protractors to measure the shape of the nose, earlaps and the skull structure? If it does, the UAE will lose all of its friends in the West.
The police of Dubai suspect 26 people in the killing of Mahmud al-Mabhuh. The suspects hold passports of Britain, Ireland, Germany, France and other countries.
Mossad’s participation in the plot to kill the high-ranking official of Hamas is just a theory.
How’s that hopey-changey stuff working out for ya?
Thanks Barack. The US is less respected today than during the Bush McHitlerburton days. HotAir and The Washington Times reported:
A majority of Americans say the United States is less respected in the world than it was two years ago and think President Obama and other Democrats fall short of Republicans on the issue of national security, a new poll finds.
The Democracy Corps-Third Way survey released Monday finds that by a 10-point margin — 51 percent to 41 percent — Americans think the standing of the U.S. dropped during the first 13 months of Mr. Obama’s presidency.
“This is surprising, given the global acclaim and Nobel peace prize that flowed to the new president after he took office,” said pollsters for the liberal-leaning organizations.
On the national security front, a massive gap has emerged, with 50 percent of likely voters saying Republicans would likely do a better job than Democrats, a 14-point swing since May. Thirty-three percent favored Democrats.
“The erosion since May is especially strong among women, and among independents, who now favor Republicans on this question by a 56 to 20 percent margin,” the pollsters said in their findings.
On early Sunday morning Muslim herders attacked Christian villagers in Nigeria with machetes. 500 Christians were slaughtered.
Villagers in central Nigeria buried dozens of bodies, including those of women and children, in a mass grave on Monday after attacks in which several hundred people were feared to have been killed. (Reuters)
ITN has video from the Jos, Nigeria.
(Warning: graphic)
Some of the bodies had been charred. Some had slash marks across their faces. One young victim was found to be scalped and few others were found with cut off hands and legs.
The Muslim hackers shouted “Allah Akhbar” (God is Great) before breaking into homes and hacking the Christians to death.
The AFP reported:
UN chief Ban Ki-moon and Washington led calls for restraint on Monday after the slaughter of more than 500 Christians in Nigeria, as survivors told how the killers chopped down their victims.
Funerals took place for victims of the three-hour orgy of violence on Sunday in three Christian villages close to the northern city of Jos, blamed on members of the mainly Muslim Fulani ethnic group.
While troops were deployed to the villages to prevent new attacks, security forces detained 95 suspects but faced bitter criticism over how the killers were able to go on the rampage at a time when a curfew was meant to be in force.
Media reported that Muslim residents of the villages in Plateau state had been warned by phone text message, two days prior to the attack, so they could make good their escape before the exit points were sealed off.
Survivors said the attackers were able to separate the Fulanis from members of the rival Berom group by chanting ‘nagge’, the Fulani word for cattle. Those who failed to respond in the same language were hacked to death.
One local paper said the gangs shouted Allah Akhbar (God is Great) before breaking into homes and setting them alight in the early hours of Sunday. Churches were among the buildings that were burned down.
ACORN is the largest radical leftist group in America today.
This radical group worked closely with the Obama camp during the election but, the community organizing group was not open about the relationship. The photo below was scrubbed from the ACORN website before the election:
One of Barack Obama’s first big “community organizer” jobs involved ACORN in 1992. He worked along side ACORN before he became an elected official. Obama also trained ACORN employees. He represented ACORN in court. Obama worked with and protested with ACORN. His campaign donated $800,000 to ACORN in 2008 for voter registration efforts.
And, ACORN even canvassed for Obama in 2008.
In 2009 Obama promoted a top ACORN operative, Patrick Gaspard, who’s organization was fined $775,000 for election violations, to a top post in the White House. Gespard is helping shape domestic policy today.
Barack Obamawas not honest about his relationship with ACORN.
Obama’s ACORN group was banned from receiving federal funds in September after the group was busted on tape promoting the child sex slave trade.
Today two Wisconsin ACORN employees were charged with voter fraud. FOX News reported:
Five Wisconsin residents, including two who worked for community organizing group ACORN, were charged Monday with election fraud relating to the 2008 presidential election.
State Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen announced felony charges against Maria Miles, Kevin Clancy, Michael Henderson, Herbert Gunka and Suzanne Gunka.
Miles and Clancy worked for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now and are accused of submitting multiple voter registration applications for the same individuals, including each other, to meet voter registration quotes imposed by the community organizing group.
Henderson is charged with one count of voting by a disqualified person and providing false information to election officials. The allegation claims he was on a felony probation and prohibited from voting at the time.
Herbert and Suzanne Gunka are each charged with double voting — a felony — by allegedly absentee voting and then going to the polls to vote.
At the Los Angeles Times, “‘Hurt’ Locks it Up“:
“The Hurt Locker,” a gritty, challenging and little-seen drama about bomb disposal in the Iraq war, was the leading winner with six Academy Awards on Sunday night, including best picture and the first directing honor for a female filmmaker.
Academy Award organizers had doubled this year’s best-picture contest [...]
Last week Spanish and French officials captured 3 top ETA terrorists in France. One of the ETA terrorists had returned from Venezuela where he trained with the communist FARC terror group in the jungle. Also last week the it was reported that the Chavez government assisted Marxist FARC and ETA terrorist groups in a plot to murder popular Columbian President Alvaro Uribe.
Today Hollywood kook and hero Sean Penn spoke out is support of Hugo Chavez. Penn wants journalists jailed for calling Chavez a dictator.
This photo released by the Venezuelan Presidency show Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (L) during a meeting with US actor Sean Penn (R), at the presidential palace in Caracas, on October 28. He said he would pass a message from Chavez to Obama when he returned to the US. (AFP/PRESIDENCIA)
First Amendment be damned . . . If Oscar-winning actor Sean Penn had his way, any journalist who called Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez a dictator would quickly find himself behind bars.
Penn, appearing on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” on Friday, defended Chavez during a segment in which he detailed his work with the JP Haitian Relief Organization, which he co-founded.
“Every day, this elected leader is called a dictator here, and we just accept it, and accept it” said Penn, winner of two Best Actor Academy Awards. “And this is mainstream media, who should — truly, there should be a bar by which one goes to prison for these kinds of lies.”
It was just the beginning of a busy weekend for Penn. When asked on CBS’ “Sunday Morning” about those who question his motives for his humanitarian work in Haiti, he said:
“Do I hope that those people die screaming of rectal cancer? Yeah. You know, but I’m not going to spend a lot of energy on it.”
Closing argument?… He’s yet to make his case.
Over 200 Tea Party Patriots protested Obama’s health care speech today in Philly. FOX News reported:
Mr. Obama said there isn’t time to scrap the Democrats’ health reform plan and start over, as polls suggest many if not most Americans want. He said “we need to pass health reform…not next year…not five years from now…but now.”
There are serious protests going on in Albuquerque by a local Carpenters union. But one company is fighting back and the story is starting to get interesting. It turns out things aren’t exactly as they seem:
So temp employees without benefits are being hired by a union to protest a company that offers good wages and benefits? As Tony The Tiger would say, GRRREEEEEAAAAT.
Best part: the union watchman suddenly forgets English. Obviously, this is nothing new but it’s so easy to confuse people in the community who aren’t used to hearing about these kinds of campaigns.
“Would socialized medicine lead to socialization of other phases of life? Lenin thought so. He declared socialized medicine is the keystone to the arch of the socialist state.”
1945 AMA Pamphlet Warning
The Communist Workers Party published an article recently in defense of state-run medicine like the proposal that democrats are wanting to ram through in the next 10 days.
(Quipster)
From the Socialists Workers Party–
When the administration of John F. Kennedy discussed a plan for government health care that would cover people of Social Security age, the American Medical Association (AMA) fought back, along with the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, with a well-funded campaign–complete with a commercial featuring actor Ronald Reagan, who was determined to talk to America about an “imminent threat”:
Now, back in 1927, an American socialist, Norman Thomas, six times candidate for president on the Socialist Party ticket, said the American people would never vote for socialism. But he said under the name of liberalism, the American people would adopt every fragment of the socialist program…
One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It’s very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project…Now, the American people, if you put it to them about socialized medicine and gave them a chance to choose, would unhesitatingly vote against it.
…Of course, the danger of creeping socialism is a much less compelling argument today among ordinary people than it was during the Cold War. If anything, socialism is becoming a preferred alternative to the mess that capitalism has made of working-class living standards…
…According to the Physicians for a National Health Program’s (PNHP) Karen Palmer, the AMA assessed its members an extra $25 each to resist national health insurance, and in 1945, it spent $1.5 million on lobbying efforts, which at the time was the most expensive lobbying effort in American history. An AMA pamphlet warned, “Would socialized medicine lead to socialization of other phases of life? Lenin thought so. He declared socialized medicine is the keystone to the arch of the socialist state.”
We are only 10 days away (or less!) from the final vote on ObamaCare. If the House votes yes on the Senate bill that is now before it, THE GAME IS OVER. Since the Senate already passed it, once the House passes it on March 18, Obama’s signature on it (which will be immediate) MAKES IT LAW.
We are about to become a Socialist country. For if this passes, it will be virtually unrepealable. Health entitlement programs, once enacted, have proven to be permanent.
Think about it. Ten days from now: Permanent taxpayer funding of abortion. Permanent death panels (yes, those are in the bill), with no appeal of their decisions. Permanent forcing of pro-life doctors to refer for abortions, under penalty of loss of their license to practice. Within five years, no more freedom to buy private policies of your choice (only policies approved by the federal government). Small insurance companies, such as the one that took such incredibly good care of my husband during his illness, will very quickly be permanently out of business.
The Democrats KNOW that nationalizing health care is the single most effective step in making the USA a socialist country. Lenin said it first:
WE MUST DO WHATEVER IT TAKES IN THE NEXT TEN DAYS TO STOP THIS FROM HAPPENING!
Now is the time to act. Hat Tip Kathy
“Overall, federal workers earned an average salary of $67,691 in 2008 for occupations that exist both in government and the private sector, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The average pay for the same mix of jobs in the private sector was $60,046 in 2008, the most recent data available.”
And let’s just add insult to injury:
“These salary figures do not include the value of health, pension and other benefits, which averaged $40,785 per federal employee in 2008 vs. $9,882 per private worker, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.”
So now when you put your kids to bed and they tell you that when they grow up they want to be a doctor and a veterinarian, your answer should be: “Honey, these are all great choices, but what you really want to be is a bureaucrat.”
Here and here are more arguments to convince your little ones.
Paul Krugman, an op-ed columnist for the The New York Times, truly illustrates the warped thinking of many liberals. In his latest piece he states that Republicans and Democrats live in different universes. That part is undeniably true. But his universe is clearly the “Alice In Wonderland” type of universe. Nothing quite makes sense when [...]
See update below
In an interesting turn of events this week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was forced by her caucus to pry Rep. Charlie Rangel’s (D-NY) Ways and Means gavel out of his hands and throw Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) under the bus. Then, she cut Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) loose late Friday afternoon, pressuring [...]
This Is Your Last Best Chance to Show the President You Don’t Want Obamacare—
2 Protests Are Planned……….
–The first protest is at 9:45 AM at the St. Charles Convention Center
–The second protest is at 5:30 at the at the Renaissance Grand hotel in downtown St. Louis.
HELP WELCOME OBAMA TO MISSOURI ON WEDNESDAY—–
** Health Care Rally at St. Charles Convention Center (map, directions, parking) at 9:45 AM on Wednesday March 10, 2010.
We need ALL HANDS ON DECK, and ALL BOOTS on the Ground!! If you can take time off work, if you can leave your children or elderly parent with a sitter (or bring them)…if you can at all make this rally – DO IT!
This may be it! Pelosi is trying to bring this to the floor for a vote in the coming days…and is strong-arming all the moderate dems into voting for Obamacare Socialized Medicine – and Federally Funded Abortion. In a “nuclear option” procedure that was never intended for major social mandates, Nancy & Harry…and Leader Obama – clearly intend to disenfranchise well over half of the American People!
The Second Protest planned by the St. Louis Tea Party Coalition is planned for 5:30 on Wednesday night downtown in St. Louis across from the Renaissance Grand hotel.
Check back here or at the St. Louis Tea Party Coalition website for more details. We are tentatively planning on meeting at 5:00 PM and are asking protesters to wear black.
Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) told reporters that Rahm Emanuel is the “son of devil’s spawn.” The New York democrat also slammed the current government saying, “This administration and this this House leadership has said they will stop at nothing to pass this healthcare bill.”
Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) is taking some harsh parting shots at the White House on his way out of office.
Massa, who is stepping down amid allegations of sexual harrassment, said that Emanuel is a ruthless tactician who would “sell his mother” for a vote.
“Rahm Emanuel is son of the devil’s spawn,” Massa said in a radio interview. “He is an individual who would sell his mother to get a vote. He would strap his children to the front end of a steam locomotive.”
Massa also accused Democratic leaders of forcing him out of office because he had voted against healthcare reform.
“This administration and this House leadership has said, quote-unquote, they will stop at nothing to pass this healthcare bill,” he said. “And now they’ve gotten rid of me and it will pass. You connect the dots.”
Hey, times are tough. You gotta pick up odd jobs every now and then.
The Bingo protesters sang “We Shall Overcome” as they marched to the state capitol.
Jesse Jackson (center) marches up Dexter Ave. toward the capitol. The Rev. Jesse Jackson marched with bingo supporters to the State Capitol steps in Montgomery Alabama Saturday March 6, 2010 to supports their efforts to get bingo establishments legal and open. (The Birmingham News / Joe Songer)
Here’s the video:
Jesse Jackson led a march of 200 protesters singing “We Shall Overcome” as they protested for Bingo rights in Alabama. AL.com reported, via Free Republic.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson led a march of about 200 people down Dexter Avenue to the Alabama Capitol to rally supporting bingo jobs in the state.
Jackson said the bingo debate ongoing in Alabama is a voting rights issue and a matter of economic justice. Counties voted for bingo, Jackson said, and the vote should be respected.
“We demand jobs and justice and voting rights,” Jackson said on the steps of the Alabama Capitol.
Jackson said before the march that when a person loses a job, it doesn’t just hurt that person’s household.
“It’s like an economic earthquake that affects a lot of people from the grocery store to the cleaners to the car shop,” Jackson said.
Rally leaders evoked Civil Rights era imagery during the march.Marchers sang, “We shall overcome” and the demonstration paused to pray in front of Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, the church once led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Sean Fitzgerald, 19, (left) and Zachary Tucker, 21, (right) face felony charges for spreading cotton balls on the lawn of the Black Culture Center on campus.
The two students issued an apology for spreading the cotton balls on the lawn of the Black Culture Center on campus. They have not yet been formally charged. KOMU reported:
The two students arrested for scattering cotton balls in front of the MU Black Culture Center offered their apologies to the campus and community in a statement released by their lawyers.
Sean Fitzgerald, 19, and Zachary Tucker, 21, “cited inconsiderate and inappropriate judgment” for their involvement in the incident on Feb. 26. Fitzgerald and Tucker have no prior criminal records.
The same night of the incident, the statement states the students participated in a series of activities that included riding the tiger in the quad, climbing on the statue at Faurot Field and hoisting a pirate flag at the ROTC building. The statement says Fitzgerald and Tucker regret the pain their actions caused others and the negative attention the incident attracted to the campus and community.
Both students were suspended from the University of Missouri.
Pakistani Dawn news reported yesterday that an American terrorist was captured in Pakistan: Dawn added: “Pennsylvania-born Abu Yahya is a US citizen and assumed to be a commander of foreign militants fighting in Afghanistan against the US.”
Today Pakistani officials announced that the captured American terrorist was not most wanted Adam Gadahn.
Pakistani Dawn News reported:
Pakistani security agents denied on Monday that an American al Qaeda spokesman wanted in the United States for treason had been arrested, saying there had been confusion over the identity of a detained suspect.
Some Pakistani officials had said on Sunday that Adam Gadahn, a California-born convert to Islam with a $1 million US bounty on his head, had been arrested on the outskirts of the city of Karachi.
But a senior government official and two security agents said on Monday the suspected al Qaeda operative picked up in Karachi was not Gadahn.
“Our initial impression was that the guy was Adam Gadahn but that information now looks incorrect,” said one security official, who declined to be identified.
The arrested man was believed to be an American who goes by the alias Abu Yahya, the officials said. Gadahn is known to have used a similar alias.
“Probably the name and his origin caused the confusion,” the first official said.
He declined to speculate about the identity of the arrested man except to say he was apparently an American al Qaeda operative.
“We don’t know yet how big a catch he is,” he said.
The Pakistani Daily Times is still reporting that it was Adam Gadahn who was captured.
Pakistani Dawn news reported yesterday that an American terrorist was captured in Pakistan: Dawn added: “Pennsylvania-born Abu Yahya is a US citizen and assumed to be a commander of foreign militants fighting in Afghanistan against the US.”
Today Pakistani officials announced that the captured American terrorist was not most wanted Adam Gadahn.
Pakistani Dawn News reported:
Pakistani security agents denied on Monday that an American al Qaeda spokesman wanted in the United States for treason had been arrested, saying there had been confusion over the identity of a detained suspect.
Some Pakistani officials had said on Sunday that Adam Gadahn, a California-born convert to Islam with a $1 million US bounty on his head, had been arrested on the outskirts of the city of Karachi.
But a senior government official and two security agents said on Monday the suspected al Qaeda operative picked up in Karachi was not Gadahn.
“Our initial impression was that the guy was Adam Gadahn but that information now looks incorrect,” said one security official, who declined to be identified.
The arrested man was believed to be an American who goes by the alias Abu Yahya, the officials said. Gadahn is known to have used a similar alias.
“Probably the name and his origin caused the confusion,” the first official said.
He declined to speculate about the identity of the arrested man except to say he was apparently an American al Qaeda operative.
“We don’t know yet how big a catch he is,” he said.
Pakistani Dawn news reported yesterday that an American terrorist was captured in Pakistan: Dawn added: “Pennsylvania-born Abu Yahya is a US citizen and assumed to be a commander of foreign militants fighting in Afghanistan against the US.”
Today Pakistani officials announced that the captured American terrorist was not most wanted Adam Gadahn.
Pakistani Dawn News reported:
Pakistani security agents denied on Monday that an American al Qaeda spokesman wanted in the United States for treason had been arrested, saying there had been confusion over the identity of a detained suspect.
Some Pakistani officials had said on Sunday that Adam Gadahn, a California-born convert to Islam with a $1 million US bounty on his head, had been arrested on the outskirts of the city of Karachi.
But a senior government official and two security agents said on Monday the suspected al Qaeda operative picked up in Karachi was not Gadahn.
“Our initial impression was that the guy was Adam Gadahn but that information now looks incorrect,” said one security official, who declined to be identified.
The arrested man was believed to be an American who goes by the alias Abu Yahya, the officials said. Gadahn is known to have used a similar alias.
“Probably the name and his origin caused the confusion,” the first official said.
He declined to speculate about the identity of the arrested man except to say he was apparently an American al Qaeda operative.
“We don’t know yet how big a catch he is,” he said.
Spent the weekend totally unplugged with family and friends. How about you? Feel free to talk Oscars, Adam Gadahn, and gearing up for the week ahead in comments/e-mail.
Nigerian Muslim herders attacked Christian villages with machetes at 3 in the morning. The Muslims hacked the Christians as they fled out of their homes. Up to 300 are feared dead.
File photo shows workers closing mass graves in Jos in central Nigeria where dozens of people killed during violent religious clashes near the city have been buried. Security forces in the country have been placed on red alert after a new outburst of sectarian violence left at least 100 people dead, mainly women and children, as machete wielding gangs burned down villages. (AFP/Pius Utomi Ekpei)
Nigeria’s acting president Sunday ordered the security forces to hunt down those behind clashes involving Muslim herders and Christian villagers in which more than 300 people may have been killed.
The latest unrest in Nigeria’s central Plateau state comes at a difficult time, with acting leader Goodluck Jonathan trying to assert his authority while ailing President Umaru Yar’Adua remains too sick to govern the oil-producing nation.
Villagers in Dogo Nahawa, just south of the state capital Jos, said Hausa-Fulani herders from surrounding hills attacked at about 3 a.m. (10 p.m. EST), shooting into the air before cutting those who came out of their homes with machetes.
A Red Cross official said at least two other nearby communities were also targeted, in an area close to where sectarian clashes killed hundreds of people in January, but that it was too early to give an overall death toll.
A Reuters witness counted more than 120 bodies — most lying in Dogo Nahawa, others taken to mortuaries in Jos — but Plateau State Commissioner for Information Gregory Yenlong said more than 300 people, including women and children, had died.
“The attack, yet another jihad and provocation of the Christians, started at about 1.30 a.m. last night. We are in touch with the survivors though many of them are still in trauma.
“Dogo Nahawa is a Christian community. The eye-witnesses say the Hausa-Fulani Muslim militants came chanting ‘Allahukabar’ and broke into homes, cutting human beings, including children and women with their knives and cutlasses.
Victims of the latest disturbance in Jos (The Sun)
The Daily Mail tells the story of how a far flung bunch of strangers, including Michael Yon, created a temporary, self-organized network to get a British soldier an artificial lung he needed to survive until he could be flown to a specialist facility for treatment. The soldier was shot accidentally on his own base. What happened next shows when “can do” meets modern comms.
The respected American journalist Michael Yon, himself a former US special forces soldier, reported on his blog that he heard the shot and saw a flurry of activity and a medical evacuation helicopter taking Soldier X away. … Soldier X had been shot in the abdomen and chest, losing his right lung and damaging his liver … He was alive – but only just. … He needed a portable, low-pressure artificial lung and the Americans offered to help. But the bureaucracy of moving from the British to the American military system meant that valuable time was being lost. … Contacted by a quick-thinking British doctor at Camp Bastion, Mr Yon sent an urgent email to a group of American civilian volunteers called Soldiers’ Angels near Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where most American casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan are initially sent.
The volunteers, founded by the great-niece of General George S. Patton, alerted the US Army’s nearby Landstuhl Regional Medical Center’s Acute Lung Rescue Team, which specialises in going straight to the aid of soldiers with severe lung problems.
From then events moved rapidly. The “Soldier’s Angels” found a suitable artificial lung at the University of Regensberg. Now the race began to get it to him. A call went out to US units in Qatar to fly the specialists to the British casualty. Tanker support was required and that was arranged. Meanwhile, a C-17 was sent to pick up the patient; when that aircraft could not continue due to safety regulations and required downtime, a second C-17 was brought in. Like some kind of science-fiction machine that simply conjured resources to get the job done, US Air assets moved pieces around over two continents to get the soldier to the lung machine while doctors ran ten times a normal human’s blood supply through him to keep him going. He lived.
His mother eventually met the recovering soldier in Germany where she thanked the Soldier’s Angels, who were a key link in the chain of events that led to his recovery. They passed the word in turn to Michael Yon, still somewhere in Afghanistan. “She had no idea of the extraordinary lengths hundreds of people had gone to save him. I told her about some of this,” MaryAnn wrote to Yon. “She broke down and couldn’t believe ‘all of those people would do all that for my son’. It was a very, very moving moment.”
One of the key factors in the success of this effort was the powerful use of online reputation. Online reputation plus comms can result in magic. Michael Yon and the Soldier’s Angels knew of each other and knew enough to understand that they were all of them serious people. They were well-connected nodes in a network — not a formal network mind you — but an informal collection of nodes with roughly known reputational values that could make connections between them at need. And they did and made things happen. Even when the effort crossed into the formal domain of the USAF and the British Armed Forces it’s a fair bet that emails, IM or telephone calls were made to keep the wheels turning, not necessarily corresponding to any chain of command. Along the way paperwork was doubtless filed and things done to square events with the regs. But as someone told me once, there’s the way things are supposed to be done and the way things are really done. And that vitally depends on the power of reputation in informal networks.
The only official response from the MoD about the case has come in a statement from Surgeon Rear Admiral Lionel Jarvis, assistant chief of defence staff (health), which said: ‘The current Coalition operation in Afghanistan allows flexibility in the selection of the best casualty transfer system available at the time.
None of that should obscure the fact that things didn’t happen by themselves. They occurred because individual men and women took the initiative and acted. The vast ocean of connectivity bears no spark but for the fire embarked on it. And the great wonder of life is that we should find it where we never even sought to look.
The Daily Mail tells the story of how a far flung bunch of strangers, including Michael Yon, created a temporary, self-organized network to get a British soldier an artificial lung he needed to survive until he could be flown to a specialist facility for treatment. The soldier was shot accidentally on his own base. What happened next shows when “can do” meets modern comms.
The respected American journalist Michael Yon, himself a former US special forces soldier, reported on his blog that he heard the shot and saw a flurry of activity and a medical evacuation helicopter taking Soldier X away. … Soldier X had been shot in the abdomen and chest, losing his right lung and damaging his liver … He was alive – but only just. … He needed a portable, low-pressure artificial lung and the Americans offered to help. But the bureaucracy of moving from the British to the American military system meant that valuable time was being lost. … Contacted by a quick-thinking British doctor at Camp Bastion, Mr Yon sent an urgent email to a group of American civilian volunteers called Soldiers’ Angels near Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where most American casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan are initially sent.
The volunteers, founded by the great-niece of General George S. Patton, alerted the US Army’s nearby Landstuhl Regional Medical Center’s Acute Lung Rescue Team, which specialises in going straight to the aid of soldiers with severe lung problems.
From then events moved rapidly. The “Soldier’s Angels” found a suitable artificial lung at the University of Regensberg. Now the race began to get it to him. A call went out to US units in Qatar to fly the specialists to the British casualty. Tanker support was required and that was arranged. Meanwhile, a C-17 was sent to pick up the patient; when that aircraft could not continue due to safety regulations and required downtime, a second C-17 was brought in. Like some kind of science-fiction machine that simply conjured resources to get the job done, US Air assets moved pieces around over two continents to get the soldier to the lung machine while doctors ran ten times a normal human’s blood supply through him to keep him going. He lived.
His mother eventually met the recovering soldier in Germany where she thanked the Soldier’s Angels, who were a key link in the chain of events that led to his recovery. They passed the word in turn to Michael Yon, still somewhere in Afghanistan. “She had no idea of the extraordinary lengths hundreds of people had gone to save him. I told her about some of this,” MaryAnn wrote to Yon. “She broke down and couldn’t believe ‘all of those people would do all that for my son’. It was a very, very moving moment.”
One of the key factors in the success of this effort was the powerful use of online reputation. Online reputation plus comms can result in magic. Michael Yon and the Soldier’s Angels knew of each other and knew enough to understand that they were all of them serious people. They were well-connected nodes in a network — not a formal network mind you — but an informal collection of nodes with roughly known reputational values that could make connections between them at need. And they did and made things happen. Even when the effort crossed into the formal domain of the USAF and the British Armed Forces it’s a fair bet that emails, IM or telephone calls were made to keep the wheels turning, not necessarily corresponding to any chain of command. Along the way paperwork was doubtless filed and things done to square events with the regs. But as someone told me once, there’s the way things are supposed to be done and the way things are really done. And that vitally depends on the power of reputation in informal networks.
The only official response from the MoD about the case has come in a statement from Surgeon Rear Admiral Lionel Jarvis, assistant chief of defence staff (health), which said: ‘The current Coalition operation in Afghanistan allows flexibility in the selection of the best casualty transfer system available at the time.
None of that should obscure the fact that things didn’t happen by themselves. They occurred because individual men and women took the initiative and acted. The vast ocean of connectivity bears no spark but for the fire embarked on it. And the great wonder of life is that we should find it where we never even sought to look.
(ISNA)
The Iranian regime started mass-production of the Nasr cruise missile.
Iranian Fars News reported:
The Iranian Defense Ministry started mass-production of Nasr 1 (Victory 1) cruise missiles on Sunday.
“Nasr 1 missile is a cruise missile capable of destroying 3-ton weighted vessels,” Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi said at a ceremony to inaugurate Nasr 1 production line at the defense ministry’s Aerospace Industries Organization.
Vahidi also said that Nasr 1 is a short-range coast-to-sea and sea-to-sea missile which could be fired from coasts and all types of vessels.
He announced that his ministry plans to enhance tactical capabilities of the missile, saying the missile will soon be equipped with the capability to be fired from choppers and submarines.
The minister stressed that once the Army’s Navy and the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) naval forces come in possession of these mass-produced cruise missiles, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s naval defense capability would experience an outstanding jump forward.
While I agree most of the time with Byron York, there is a clarification needed in his article correcting left-wing writer Ezra Klein’s piece today.
This December article by RedState’s Dan Perrin explains:
Now, because of Senator DeMint’s objection, unless the House votes for the Senate bill unchanged — which is highly unlikely (see below) — then [...]
While I agree most of the time with Byron York, there is a clarification in his article correcting left-wing writer Erza Klein’s piece today.
This past December article by RedState’s Dan Perrin explains:
Now, because of the Senator DeMint’s objection, unless the House votes for the Senate bill unchanged — which is highly unlikely (see below) — [...]
On Friday leftist comedian Bill Maher called for the murder of Glenn Beck.
Also on Friday, lewd jokester Kathy Griffin performed at a club in Anchorage, Alaska. The potty-mouthed comedian said Sarah Palin gave John McCain a blowj*b to gain her spot on the Republican ticket in 2008. This is comedy?
By the way, deadbeat dad Levi Johnstonescorted her to the stage. He is the father of Sarah Palin’s grandson.
At least, as long as you don’t read too far past the first few paragraphs of this story, they’re wise.
GENEVA – The result was emphatic: Swiss voters don’t think abused animals need to have their own lawyers.
It’s a proposal that would never even come near a referendum in other countries…
Interjection: depends on which [...]
As anyone who has any recollection of the aftermath of the 2008 election cycle knows, the GOP is hopelessly behind on the internet, cannot possibly marshal any web resources on its behalf because it’s stuck in the 19th century politically and will be eclipsed by the forces of Web 2.0 as surely as Democrats were eclipsed by talk radio.
Or at least, that’s what the Mainstream Media force-fed to people after the 2008 election cycle. Naturally, like most Mainstream Media memes, it was an abject lie, but still, somehow the fear worked its way around establishment GOP circles to the point that a veritable avalanche of hysteria crashed down on party activists. “Why, if the internet swings to the Left,” many supposedly “concerned conservative” commentators opined, “then surely our restrictive, overly ideological makeup will make it impossible for us to attract anyone!”
One can’t blame them for buying an argument which was made with such nauseating frequency. Yet, as recent events since the Obama election have shown, the idea that conservatism cannot capture the internet is not at all accurate. What few people may realize, however, is why this argument was so inaccurate, and more importantly, why it took a Messianic bumbler like Obama to expose its falsehood. With respect, therefore, I must disagree with my fellow contributor’s rejection of youth culture as something irrevocably tainted by liberalism, though I understand his frustration entirely.
However, as I mean to prove, the current youth ethos embodied by internet subculture is fundamentally conservative in character, even if its denizens have not yet caught on to that fact. In order to prove this, I will draw on knowledge that I have gained both as an avid internet user and as a member of a generation for whom digital communication is a second language – knowledge which would require investigating not only the harmless environs of Youtube, Facebook and Twitter, but also the darkest, least talked about nether-regions of the internet – websites which produce 90% of the internet’s cultural references, and yet are so riddled with perversity that their own patrons take it as an unspoken rule never to talk about them.
Not that these sites have gone unnoticed – indeed, some of their less savory exploits are infamous. For instance, on September 22, 2008, National Review blogger Andrew Grossman named one such website in an article dealing with the hacking of Governor Sarah Palin’s email account: “According to reports, one of a group of online delinquents who hang out on a message board called ‘/b/’ on a site called 4chan — they’re known as ‘b-tards’ — discovered that Governor Palin uses Yahoo! for her e-mail. He was able to reset the account’s password using information gleaned from Google searches: Palin’s zip code, her birthdate, and where she met her spouse…After he posted the details of his exploit on 4chan, a slew of forum denizens accessed the account to root through Palin’s correspondence.”
Now, to be sure, there are those among the “b-tards” whom Grossman describes who would no doubt fit the description of “delinquent,” but what no one out there seems to realize is that, were it not for websites like the aforementioned /b/, not only would countless recognizable internet memes not exist, but also, at least one influential political figure would arguably not have nearly the level of recognition he currently enjoys.
I refer to the truest example of an internet mobilizing politician, Dr. Ron Paul of Texas. Though many people only know Paul as a vaguely conspiracy-minded, neo-isolationist anti-Federal Reserve crusader, what they may not know is that one of Paul’s many titles is “President of the Internets,” (WARNING!!! EXTREMELY NSFW) a title which was bestowed on him early in the 2008 election cycle by the 4chan-affiliated wiki website, Encyclopedia Dramatica. As a result, according to Encyclopedia Dramatica (or ED, as its frequent patrons know it), “Paul placed FIRST (37%) in the MySpace primary, ahead of Huckabee (18%) and Giuliani (16%).” And though 90% of what gets posted on Encyclopedia Dramatica is freely acknowledged by its readers as ironic, intentionally offensive nonsense, when it comes to meticulously documenting the evolution of internet phenomena, it is one of the most reliable sources available, if you can stomach the NSFW images and extremely offensive language.
Alright, you may be wondering, but so what? Even if a bunch of rabid anarchy-mongering internet crazies turned out for Paul, what does that have to do with the GOP’s power on the internet? The answer is that, even if you accept the framing of such sites as hotbeds of craziness and rabid disorder, there is a method to their madness. As for what that madness is, once you get past the persistent ironic glorifications of perversity and take a look at how the people who frequent these sites actually behave, and more importantly, who they target, it becomes abundantly clear that not only are the values of such sites fundamentally conservative, but that their communications strategies, even if toned down for a mainstream audience, are nothing less than the perfect weapons for disassembling the Obama Presidency.
If this seems strange, it shouldn’t. In fact, much as the highly controversial and obscene Comedy Central show South Park gave rise to a populist, pro-National Security, anti-political correctness breed of young Republican in the early 2000s, I would argue that the new decade could see a similar rise of iconoclastic, libertarian, anti-political correctness sentiment among what I would term “4chan Republicans.” There are three reasons why this could easily happen, which I will explore in detail below.
Firstly, as already alluded, the current administration embodies everything internet subculture hates. For instance, some of the most common targets for internet backlash are people suffering from cases of what is termed “unwarranted self-importance.” There is perhaps no term which has been better coined to describe the current President’s outlook on life and governance. Billing oneself as the sole causal factor in reducing climate change and expecting one’s personal preferences to constitute a compelling reason to move the Olympics are hardly signs of humility. Moreover, one element of internet subculture which is persistently invoked is the drive for free expression (often of the most politically incorrect variety possible), unhampered by restrictions of either an economic or governmental variety, and certainly without regard for offended parties.
The Democratic party, dominated as it is by multiculturally-minded quasi-socialists, many of whom have arguably been long since emasculated by sensitivity training, speech codes and other cornerstones of “progressive” victim-mongering, could not possibly provide a satisfactory home to such people. In fact, judging by the actions of internet goons, some of the Democrats’ most treasured constituencies have already fallen afoul of them.
And who are these targets? Besides the one conservative/mainstream example of Sarah Palin (who has not been pestered since), the answer is that the targets for repeated attacks are, by and large, people who most of wider society considers undesirable, many of whom are shielded from more official criticism by the wall of political correctness. These targets include such revolting examples as feminist bloggers who muse openly about aborting their teenage sons because all men are “potential rapists,” stalking vloggers who draw terrifying cartoon pornography of themselves with female friends, open white supremacists and, perhaps most infamously, the Church of Scientology. While one can disapprove of the tactics used against these institutions/individuals (some of which make the much vilified “enhanced interrogation techniques” look positively benign by comparison), it is worth noting that ultimately, the power of internet goons lies in their ability to enforce social norms against the most flagrantly vile members of society through private sanction – something which conservatives from Russell Kirk and Irving Kristol to Tom Coburn and Dick Cheney have endorsed. What’s more, at the point where their targets/members actually run afoul of the law, these users have historically turned the relevant information over to law enforcement, suggesting a desire to be hard on crime.
In short, unlike previous generations, when all the forms of counterculture have swung to the Left and emboldened the forces of chaos and social subversion, the darkest, most countercultural corners of the internet are possessed of a singular desire for spontaneous and brutally enforced social order. What’s more, their allergy to self-importance and the authoritarianism of victimhood marks them as prime targets for liberalism’s self-appointed multicultural targets, and as potential sleeper cells in the culture war. Given the power of these sites to define internet subculture, rally donations, win polls and crown previous third tier candidates as prophets of an insurgent movement, it seems indisputable that the conservative movement has much to gain if it only learns to speak in their language.
The AP published a lengthy article today on the “sudden parade of predjudice” witnessed on campuses across California.
But, the writer forgot to mention that a minority student admitted to hanging the noose at the UCSD campus. It’s a slight detail.
From propagandist Christina Hoag at the Associated Press:
LOS ANGELES – Swastikas, nooses, a KKK hood, graffiti, epithets and jeers.
An ugly spate of bias incidents has crossed several University of California campuses over the past month, causing consternation, outcry and fear that bigotry is alive among the young and educated.
Students have protested and administrators have condemned, but the question remains of what lies behind the sudden parade of prejudice — a growing climate of insensitivity on campuses or a bunch of immature kids yearning for peer acceptance and attention.
“My guess is some of all of those things,” said interim UC Provost Lawrence H. Pitts. “I’d like to believe it’s really an extreme minority. It does suggest there’s some underlying feeling of intolerance in our community.”
The incidents have roiled several campuses in the 175,000-student state university system, which is one of the nation’s most respected and diverse.
At UC San Diego, black students were offended by an off-campus “Compton Cookout” party that mocked ghetto stereotypes, a noose and KKK-style hood found on campus and a student making racially derogatory remarks on a student-run TV station.
At UC Davis, swastikas cropped up and the gay and lesbian center was vandalized with graffiti. At UC Santa Cruz, a picture of a noose was scrawled. On the Irvine campus, the Israeli ambassador was heckled to the extent that he was forced to end a speech early.
The acts were particularly shocking because they occurred on university campuses — usually considered centers of intellectual enlightenment above acts commonly associated with ignorance.
But experts note that universities are microcosms of society at large, and that includes hatemongers. Upticks in hate crimes are often seen in times of economic malaise as people seek scapegoats, noted Jack Levin, a Northeastern University sociologist who has studied hate.
Still, surveys show that prejudice among today’s young people is at a low and interracial and interethnic marriages are at an all-time high, said Tom Smith, director of the general social survey at the National Opinion Research Center. Studies have also long found that education increases tolerance of different groups, he added.
“College students, as a group, are quite liberal on this issue,” Smith said.
Minority students said that’s why they’re galled that fellow students today would even think that something like hanging a noose in a library is funny or acceptable. The school paper later published a letter of apology from a female student who wrote that she had only been playing with a rope, accidentally left in the library and did not mean to offend.
“Part of the problem is that people don’t realize it’s insensitive,” said Joelle Gamble, a student at the University of California, Los Angeles. “They see it as free speech.”
Here’s Reed Johnson, discussing “Hurt Locker” director Kathryn Bigelow, in a February 28th piece at the Los Angeles Times:
In the old-boys club that is modern Hollywood, there are few surer ways to kill off a promising film career than by getting yourself labeled a “feminist” director.
Over the years, Kathryn Bigelow has quietly steered clear of [...]
UPDATE: Via Bloomberg, “FBI Says U.S. Hasn’t Confirmed Arrest of Adam Gadahn, and at CBS News, “U.S.-Born al Qaeda Arrest News Incorrect: Confusion Over Militant’s Identity Sparked Reports of Gadahn Arrest; Some Media Say It is Another U.S.-Born Terrorist.”
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A tweet from Adam Housley of Fox News:
This is flaming-skull material at AOSHQ, “Report: Fatass Adam Gadahn [...]
Militant socialists were out in full force Thursday, March 4th, for a “Day of Action to Defend Public Education.” The nationwide event was organized by fringe, left-wing groups like Michigan’s “By Any Means Necessary,” Ohio-organized “Community Organizing Center for Mother Earth,” Los Angeles-based “County Peace and Freedom Party,” the “League for the Revolutionary Party” of New York, and North Carolina’s “Destroy Industry.”
In Detroit, a chap representing the Che Guevara-loving, Mumia Abu-Jamal-supporting “FIST Youth” educated a crowd of about two dozen about the virtues of socialism. He also lectured on the Soviet Union, its roots and the glory days when the “people’s council” made all of the important decisions.
Strangely, that’s not the Soviet Union I learned about in public school. I was taught about a ruthless nation that annihilated the United States. I learned about a Soviet Union that starved its people and constructed drab buildings while its leaders lived the high life. (Well, that last part I had to find out on my own.)
But that’s enough of my take on the socialist rally in Detroit. You can enjoy the history lesson for yourself.
I respect this guy - he represents the strain of socialism that lays it all out for America to ponder. That’s more than I can say for our current leaders, who couch their true beliefss in poll-tested phrases and flowery language.
Perhaps the most humorous part of the rally was the SEIU jacket-wearing lefty holding the banner. That’s what really makes SEIU’s influence so scary. Its members stand “in solidarity” with these radical windbags, while its leaders and former staffers roam the White House.
Pakistani Dawn news posted this photo with the story of Gadahn’s capture: Dawn added: “Pennsylvania-born Abu Yahya is a US citizen and assumed to be a commander of foreign militants fighting in Afghanistan against the US. He was living with Osama Bin Ladin after 9/11 attacks in New York. His name is included in the top ten wanted on the CIA list.”
American traitor Adam Gadahn was captured in Pakistan.
Here’s one of Gadahn’s earlier releases for Al-Qaeda.
The reported capture of Gadahn comes the same day as As Sahab, al Qaeda’s propaganda arm, released a video of him praising Major Nidal Hasan, the Muslim US Army officer who murdered 13 soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, on Nov. 5, 2009.
Pity.
Up to 60 Islamists were killed today in Afghanistan as rival militant groups, the Taliban and Hesb-i-Islami, battled in northern Afghanistan.
The fighting in Baghlan province erupted on Saturday morning. (BBC)
The Pakistani Nation reported:
Up to 60 militants and 19 civilians may have been killed in bloody clashes between rival Islamist militant groups in northern Afghanistan, a police official said Sunday. The fighting between Taliban rebels and militants loyal to the Hezb-i-Islami insurgent group erupted early Saturday in Baghlan province where both factions are active, said provincial police chief Mohammad Kabir Andarabi. Citing local sources in the region, police officials said the battles continued on Sunday in the Jangal Bagh area. The interior ministry on Saturday confirmed the clashes, but was not able to give casualty figures. “We have intelligence reports that 60 fighters — 40 (from) Hezb-i-Islami and 20 Taliban — have died so far. Our reports indicate that up to 19 civilians were also killed,” Andarabi told a foreign news agency. The Taliban are the main militant group behind an increasingly deadly insurgency aimed at toppling the Western-backed government of President Hamid Karzai and forcing out about 121,000 US and NATO troops stationed in Afghanistan.
From Powerline:
One of the key arguments of Barack Obama’s Presidential campaign was that he would improve America’s image around the world. This idea was based on the false assumption that anti-Americanism was due to factors peculiar to the Bush administration, as opposed to the basic realities of America’s role in the world and the hostility [...]
John Patrick Bedell, the man who went on a shooting spree outside the Pentagon this week, was a Bush-hating, pot smoking, registered democrat.
Although, officials said he did not have any suspected links to terrorist groups it was discovered this weekend that Bedell used the Arabic term “inshallah” or “God willing,” using Arabic font – “إن شاء الله” – on more than one on his internet postings. Creeping Shariah reported:
A Twitter post revealed that John Patrick Bedell had an account on SourceForge containing “Jihad code.” Looking at the account of jpbedell – he used the Arabic term “inshallah” or “God willing,” using Arabic font – “إن شاء الله” – on more than one page. Here are screenshots from the website and project named “openinsurgent.”
This wasn’t the only time John Patrick Bedell used Arabic writing in his posts. Creeping Shariah has more. Hat Tip Bob Grant
You won’t see this reported by the state-run media. In fact, they still haven’t reported that Bedell was a registered democrat.
No tragedy is beyond exploitation by the left. When census worker Bill Sparkman was found dead and it was leaked that “Fed” was scrawled across his chest, the entirety of the conservative and Tea Party movements were immediately convicted by the online left. They were wrong, and we now know that Sparkman committed suicide. Despite significant evidence to the contrary, the left also tried to hang Joseph Stack around the neck of the Tea Party. Again they failed.
They are now doing the same song and dance with Pentagon shooter John Patrick Bedell. Despite the fact that he’s a registered Democrat and 9/11 Truther, the left and their media sycophants are stretching to tie him to the Tea Party movement, though the best that they can honestly come up with is that he distrusted government.
That’s what it really boils down to. At the end of the day, they know none of these guys will hold up as right-wingers. Their real objective is simply to shame anyone who thinks government should be smaller, rather than bigger. Anyone who thinks that the IRS is often used to bully Americans isn’t simply wrong, you see, but is also dangerous. Anyone who thinks that a limited government would better promote prosperity and ensure individual liberty isn’t merely antiquated, but also a potential shooter of government employees.
They are essentially trying to use the acts of these lone nutjobs – which were despicable in every way – to make big government into the victim. The magnitude of this Orwellian endeavor is so unbelievable that it’s hard to describe in a manner that doesn’t sound over-the-top. It’s better just to remind you of some of big government’s greatest hits.
The 2005 Kelo decision ruled that government can take property from one private person or group and give it to another in order to raise tax revenues. Such abuse didn’t just start with Kelo, however. In the 4 year period from 1998 to 2002, over 10,000 properties faced at least the threat of condemnation in order to benefit another private party, according to a report by the Institute for Justice. These are individuals being threatened and bullied by a massive government to give up their fundamental human right to administer their lawfully owned property as they see fit.
Despite the immediate backlash to Kelo, and the commendable efforts of many states to toughen their eminent domain protections, outrageous abuses continue to this day. One such fight is taking place in New York as the government pulls out all the stops to take away private property and hand it over to a collection of billionaires so that they can build a new, taxpayer-subsidized home for the New Jersey Nets.
Some citizens are fighting back and pledge to chain themselves to a popular bar to prevent its destruction. One courageous State Senator even pledged to lay down in front of the bulldozers. Does big government sound like a victim here? Does anyone honestly believe that the side with the bulldozers is an underdog?
Eminent domain is a frequent avenue by which government abuses its power, but it’s hardly the only one. The militarization of our domestic police forces, and the frequent deployment of SWAT teams to target nonviolent drug offenders, results in hundreds of raids on innocent targets every year, some of them resulting in death.
The raid on Berwyn Heights, Maryland, Mayor Cheye Calvo helped bring to light the extent to which anyone can be a victim of these abuses. Unknown to Mayor Calvo, a package of marijuana was delivered to his home as part of a drug trafficking operation. The smugglers would ship the packages to random houses and then have a man on the inside – a deliveryman – intercept them before they reached their destination. Only this one was intercepted by police first.
They raided the Mayor’s home, shot and killed his two dogs, and proceeded to harass and terrorize his family for hours. After four hours he was finally able to convince them of his identity and they uncuffed him, but the lasting effects of brutal state tyranny would not be so easily removed. Long after the incident, the Prince George’s County Sheriff’s office continues to cover-up and lie about the incident, and refuses to admit any wrongdoing.
This is not an isolated incident. It is part of a pattern of abusive state behavior. Such raids happen all the time across the country, but most other victims lack the stature and resources to fight back against an often oppressive state.
These are just two of the ways that big government victimizes people with little-to-no cause. And now the radical left and their enablers in the media want to use two high-profile, but uncommon incidents to invalidate all who question the power of the state. They want us to believe that the wolf is falling victim to the sheep.
The Founders understood that a small government to secure the rights of the people was preferable to anarchy. They also understood that such a government would quickly become the biggest threat to those rights, and so must be carefully limited. Now, it is those who seek to reapply those limits who are being berated by the supporters of big government, and whose ideas are being tarred as radical and dangerous. We must not let them lie about and exploit these high-profile crimes to cow us into submission.
A birther article posted at Free Republic within the last 12 hours was blamed for shutting the website down this morning. Free Republic is still down. Citizen Wells reposted this supposed confession from Free Republic:
This is from Citizen Wells as Free Republic is currently down. The article posted this morning. “HUGE NEWS AT FREEREPUBLIC!!!
“My name is Chanise Foxx. I work at a office supply store in Kenwood, IL. After nearly 3 years of silence and death threats to me and my family to stay quiet, I am compelled to come forward and tell the world my secret.
“I helped Obama campaign staffer Divorah Adler create a fake birth certificate for use in the famous Fact Check story to prove the world of Obama’s birth in the 2008 election. Divorah approached me in early 2007 and held onto the birth certificate until she released it in August 2008.
“As I’ve been making fake IDs part-time for local college students for about eight years now, faking a birth certificate was actually quite easy. Our first step was to get our hands on someone else’s birth certificate from Hawaii. We then created the stationary to match.
“Next, we had to create an embossed stamp and rubber signature stamp for Hawaiian officials. With the help of a high-resolution scanner at the store, I did most of my work at night when the place was vacant…””
Thank you, George W. Bush. Thank you, US Military. Thank you, Republicans in Congress.
Iraqi men wave thir national flag as they ride at the back of a truck during an election campaign rally in Baghdad. Iraq’s politicians, fearing that voters have wearied of speech-making that often proves to be little more than hot air, have hired a slew of singers to woo them. (AFP/Ahmad al-Rubaye)
Iraq just held its largest democratic election in history today. Aswat Aliraq reported:
Voting centers closed their doors at 05:00 p.m. on Sunday, capping the largest election ever in the history of Iraq, where nearly 19 million voters from the nation’s 18 provinces picked their favorites amongst 6200 candidates to occupy the new parliament’s 325 seats.
Nearly 10,000 voting centers comprising 52,000 stations closed their doors amidst acts of violence that claimed the lives of more than 24 Iraqis and wounded 10 others who have been casting their votes since 07:00 a.m. today (March 7).
The new parliament is comprised of 325 seats: 68 from Baghdad, 31 from Ninewa, 24 Basra, 18 Thi-Qar, 17 Sulaimaniya, 16 Babel, 14 Arbil, 14 Anbar, 13 Diala and 12 seats for each of Kirkuk, Salah al-Din and Najaf and 11 for Wassit and Diwaniya while Missan, Duhuk, Karbala and Missan will get 10 seats and Muthanna only 7.
Iraqi Police officers in Tikrit show their ink-stained index fingers after an early-voting session for election support personnel, March 4, 2010. (U.S. Navy photo by Chief Petty Officer Michael Heckman)
Barack Obama’s job’s deficit currently stands at 8.3 million. After losing 4 million jobs in his first year in office Barack Obama vowed in his 2010 State of the Union Address he would not rest until U.S. businesses were hiring again.
That lasted for about a week.
Once again President Obama has pushed job creation to the background as he continues to focus on nationalizing health care.
The AP reported:
President Barack Obama’s furious, final push to get a health care bill passed threatens to shove aside the message he promised would top his list this year: creating jobs.
Even as the White House juggles several enormous issues at once, the public takes its cues about the president’s chief concern from how he spends his time, energy and capital. As Obama himself put it on Wednesday, from now until Congress takes a final vote on a health care overhaul, “I will do everything in my power to make the case for reform.”
That kind of now-or-never campaign means America can expect a debate consumed by health care, again, for weeks.
The White House is trying mightily to focus it on real people and the human cost of inaction. But there will be no escaping the same slog that turned off so many people in 2009 — congressional process, arm-twisting and doomsday rhetoric.
So what unfolds over the next few weeks will affect millions of Americans and alter the course of Obama’s presidency. He has a shrinking window in which to find enough votes within his party to pass health care legislation so he can free himself to spend more bully pulpit time on the single issue that has stoked the public ire since he became president — disappearing jobs.
Polling shows the economy remains a bigger personal worry to people than the cost, access and coverage problems endemic to the health care system.
Mark Steyn explained Obama’s insistence on passing his unpopular nationalized health care bill:
Why is he doing this? Why let “health” “care” “reform” stagger on like the rotting husk in a low-grade creature feature who refuses to stay dead no matter how many stakes you pound through his chest?
Because it’s worth it. Big time. I’ve been saying in this space for two years that the governmentalization of health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture. It redefines the relationship between the citizen and the state in fundamental ways that make limited government all but impossible. In most of the rest of the Western world, there are still nominally “conservative” parties, and they even win elections occasionally, but not to any great effect (Let’s not forget that Jacques Chirac was, in French terms, a “conservative”).
If health care passes Obama may lose some representatives and senators in 2010 and America may lose a couple more million jobs, but the left gains control of another one-sixth of the economy and guarantees the existence of a permanent big government nanny state. It would be a huge win for the radical left.
Related…Glenn Reynolds wrote today in The Washington Examiner about the dangers of a rogue government pushing radical changes without the consent of the people.
A nation whose government does not rest on the consent of the governed is a nation whose government holds sway only by inertia, or by force.
It is a nation vulnerable to political shocks, usurpation, or perhaps even political collapse or civil war. It is a body politic suffering from a serious illness. Those who care about America should be very worried.
News that a son of the founder of Hamas, a 32 year old man named Mosab Hassan Yousef, has denounced his father’s cause and converted to Christianity is bound to received with disbelief in sophisticated circles, especially since Mosab spent years fighting the shadow war alongside his sire. The WSJ has the basic story.
Throughout the last decade, from the second Intifada to the current stalemate, he worked alongside his father in the West Bank. During that time the younger Mr. Yousef also secretly embraced Christianity. And as he reveals in his book “Son of Hamas,” out this week, he became one of the top spies for Israel’s internal security arm, the Shin Bet.
The news of this double conversion has sent ripples through the Middle East. One of Mr. Yousef’s handlers at the Shin Bet confirmed his account to the Israeli daily Haaretz. Hamas—already reeling from the assassination of a senior military chief in Dubai in January—calls his claims Zionist propaganda. From the Israeli prison he has occupied since 2005, Sheikh Yousef on Monday issued a statement that he and his family “have completely disowned the man who was our oldest son and who is called Mosab.”
If Mosab had been a US Army Major who converted to Islamism and shot his fellows, or a West Point Chaplain who has found Allah, or a Cambridge Apostle who became a KGB agent the literate public would have no problem lionizing him. But going the other way? A Western cafe leftist is often psychologically incapable of accepting any that any form of religious belief can be genuine, unless it suits his prejudices. Ironically Sheikh Yousef himself is probably more aware of the of the central role that belief plays in a revolutionary organization and hence not only the possibility of converting to another cause but the impossibility of living without it. Among the terror operators there always exists a leaven of dreamers for whom the point of life is faith. When a true believer becomes unable to adhere to one cause he generally finds another. This may have happened to Mosab who discovered in prison not that the Jews were perfect, but more subversively, that Muslims were no better. The WSJ takes up the story.
Mr. Yousef traces his awakening to his first sustained exposure to Hamas cruelty. In 1996, he was arrested by the Israelis for buying weapons. He says he was beaten and tortured badly in custody. It was then that the Shin Bet approached him. He says he thought about becoming a double agent. “I wanted revenge on Israel,” he writes. But when he was sent to serve his term at the Megiddo prison in northern Israel, he says he was more shocked by the way the maj’d, Hamas’s security wing, dealt with other prisoners.
“Every day, there was screaming; every night, torture. Hamas was torturing its own people!” he writes. The Muslims he met in jail “bore no resemblance to my father” and “were mean and petty . . . bigots and hypocrites.”
That hypocrisy shattered his world and probably made him want to strike out at the duplicity that he saw there. It was then that he turned to Shin Bet which cannily, asked him to do nothing. “Though he took money from Shin Bet and stayed on their payroll for a decade, his handlers in the early years didn’t ask much of him. They encouraged him to study and be a model son. His code name was the Green Prince: green as in the color of the Islamist Hamas flag, and prince as the offspring to Hamas royalty.” This was a psychological masterstroke. The Shin Bet probably understood that the mere awareness of working for Israel was a burden that could break him. And when they finally asked him to act they made sure it was on terms he could accept. Even in betrayal they would give him a measure of meaning.
He says he used his influence at Shin Bet to get the Israelis to try to arrest Hamas and other Palestinian figures rather than blow them up with missile strikes. He says he saved his father from the fate of Sheikh Yassin and other Hamas leaders whom the Israelis killed by secretly arranging to have him arrested. “I know for sure that my father is alive today, he still breathes, because I was involved in this thing,” he says.
But after the first thing he did for Israel, it was inevitable that Mosab would conclude that he could neither hold himself above the men he now worked for or the cause he had betrayed. There was no balm in his Gilead. He had reached the most dangerous conclusion that any activist can ever attain: the knowledge that he cannot be righteous. A true believer can be deprived of almost everything, except certainty. Time and again we read in history about Old Bolsheviks who would submit to any degradation except expulsion from the Party. Prison they can bear; expulsion from the road to paradise they cannot. A world so formerly comprehensible, stark in blacks and whites, with ready answers ever to hand cannot become one of relative grays without precipitating a crisis. All bolsheviks, environmentalists, and firebrands of all descriptions who lose their righteousness know they are living a lie. And then they must either get out of the game or go crazy.
It was probably fortunate that a cabbie in Jerusalem handed Mosab a copy of the New Testament. In the galaxy of faiths the one optimized for people who are lost and despairing is Christianity. Christianity is not for the righteous, it is for those who have fallen. It must intuitively appealed to the young man. Mosab said:
“I found that I was really drawn to the grace, love and humility that Jesus talked about,” he says in “Son of Hamas.” … [The WSJ says] Mr. Yousef has some of the evangelist in him, even as he insists he is not a particularly devoted Christian and is still learning about his new religion. He wants Palestinians and Israelis to learn what he did from the Christian God.
“I converted to Christianity because I was convinced by Jesus Christ as a character, as a personality. I loved him, his wisdom, his love, his unconditional love. I didn’t leave [the Islamic] religion to put myself in another box of religion. At the same time it’s a beautiful thing to see my God exist in my life and see the change in my life. I see that when he does exist in other Middle Easterners there will be a change.
Frederick Forsyth wrote about a meaning in a way that even die-hard secularists can understand. His character, Shannon, a mercenary in the novel The Dogs of War, reflected on why he needed to remain in the Life instead of pulling out and getting a job as a clerk in London. There are men who live for other things and he was one of them. It’s an explanation that both Sheikh Yousef and Mosab — and the Shin Bet controller — would understand in their own ways. The only ones who might have trouble comprehending are those who find no need to believe in anything more than getting laid, getting drunk and getting ahead: that mass of people television thinks it is talking to. And which maybe it does talk to. Shannon mused:
The real problem was being able to stick it out, to sit in an office under the orders of a wee man in a dark gray suit and look out of the window and recall the bush country, the waving palms, the smell of sweat and cordite, the grunts of men hauling the jeeps over the river crossings, the copper-tasting fears just before the attack, and the wild cruel joy of being alive afterward. To remember, and then to go back to the ledgers and the commuter train, that was what was impossible. He knew he would eat his heart out if it ever came to that. For Africa bites like a tse-tse fly, and once the drug is in the blood it can never be wholly exorcized.
St. Augustine of Hippo spoke for many when he wrote “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.”” Whether or not we find, we are born to seek.
Wow… Saturday Night Live ripped the “deeply, deeply angry mob unpopular” Obamacare, sleazy backroom deals, and unpopular Harry Reid.
Click on Photo for Video–
Health care is “angry mob” unpopular in Nevada…
Obama: “Now Senator Reid I’ll admit is in a different situation, he’s up for re-election this fall where health care is especially unpopular,I’m not sure why but it is, really, really unpopular, angry mob unpopular. Lets be frank, Harry Reid could lose this November but let me make something clear, I don’t think he will or at least it won’t be because this unpopular bill.
Health care could poll at 100% and Harry Reid would still have problems, I think even Harry would agree he is not the most intelligenic or charismatic guy around. Plus he has been hurt by some of the sleazy deals he cut with other Senators in order to get health care passed, I mean you have to acknowledge they were sleazy, I mean the cornhusker kickback, it just smelled bad”
For the record…Rasmussen reported today that two of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s Republican challengers have again crossed the 50% threshold and now hold double-digit leads in Nevada’s U.S. Senate race. Sue Lowden, ex-chairman of the Nevada Republican Party, holds a 51% to 38% lead on Reid. Republican Danny Tarkanian posts a similar 50% to 37% lead over the embattled Dem Majority leader.
A former Gitmo detainee is leading the insurgency in southern Afghanistan. Mullah Abdul Qayyum or Mullah Zakir was released by Afghani officials in a botched attempt at reconciliation with tribes. The Daily Times reported:
The insurgency in the most violent part of Afghanistan is being led by a former Guantanamo Bay detainee, set free by the Afghan government in a botched attempt at reconciliation with tribes, a NATO official said on Saturday.
The man, known by the names Mullah Abdul Qayyum and Mullah Zakir, was arrested in 2001 and held in the US prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, until 2007, when the administration of President George W Bush turned him over to Afghan custody. He is now the commander of Taliban forces in southern Afghanistan – including the Helmand province, where US and British forces launched the war’s biggest offensive last month – and a leading candidate to take over as Taliban number two and overall military commander, said the NATO official.
Qayyum was transferred to a prison in Kabul in 2007. Afghan Deputy Attorney General Fazel Ahmad Faqiryar confirmed that the Afghan authorities freed him in 2008 under a reconciliation programme.
“Qayyum’s key aide in plotting attacks on Afghan and international forces is another former Guantanamo prisoner, said the Afghan intelligence officials as well as a former Helmand governor, Sher Mohammed Akundzada. Abdul Rauf, who told his U.S. interrogators he had only loose connections to the Taliban, spent time in an Afghan jail before being freed last year.”
Barack Obama admitted in 2008 that cap and trade legislation would cause electricity prices to skyrocket.
The senator also admitted that cap and trade would likely cost $700 to $1,400 dollars per US family per year:
Obama also promised that cap and trade would decimate the coal industry. But, did not stop Barack Obama and democrats from pushing their expensive plan. Since that time reports have shown that cap-and-trade would be far more expensive than advertised.
But that’s not all…
Now, a FOIA request revealed that the Obama administration scrambled to respond last year to strong evidence that “green jobs” are a massive economic drain, costing 570,000 Euros apiece. The FOIA documents also show that the Obama Administration asked George Soros and wind energy lobbyists to hide European wind energy program failures. Chris Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute broke this news earlier this week at Pajamas Media:
As candidate and president, on eight separate occasions Barack Obama instructed Americans to “think about what’s happening in countries like Spain [and] Germany” if they wanted to know what successful “green jobs” policies look like, and if they wanted to know what we should expect here in the U.S. from his agenda.
Some European economists took a look. In March, a research team from Madrid’s King Juan Carlos University produced a detailed, substantive, heavily sourced, two-method paper: “Study of the Effects on Employment of Public Aid to Renewable Energy Sources.” The paper concluded that Spain’s “green jobs” program was an economic failure, in fact costing Spain many jobs.
…[T]he Spanish study embarrassed the White House, prompting substantial media attention and even questioning at a press conference, Obama swapped out Denmark for Spain for later references to an enacted “green jobs” program.
Soon, Denmark produced a study (“Wind Energy: The Case of Denmark“) through the think-tank CEPOS. This paper also revealed tremendous costs, and that Obama’s claim about Denmark’s “renewables” experience was also steeped in mythology.
…Back in the U.S., the American Wind Energy Association — the lobby for “Big Wind” in Washington, D.C., which includes a few Spanish wind giants — also attacked the publication of the Spanish paper. Soon, the Obama administration published a five-page talking points memo assailing the economic assessment — written by two young, non-economist, pro-wind activists from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Boulder, Colorado…drafted in often personal terms.
It’s well worth reading the whole thing to understand the relationship between the Left in government and the rent-seeking corporations who make their money not by producing anything, but by putting their hands in the next guy’s pocket.
NREL is an extension of the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). EERE is run by Assistant Secretary of Energy Cathy Zoi, who, until assuming this post, served as CEO to Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection. Zoi is responsible for many millions of the “green jobs” stimulus dollars pushed for and designed by Van Jones (this according to Jones himself).
So, the Obama Administration was hiding information and concocting their own reports with help from George Soros and wind lobbyists to support their expensive green energy programs. And, in the end, you the taxpayer would end up paying for it. This Obama scam would end up costing each American family $700 to $1,400 a year. Do you suppose the state-run media will report on this?
Christopher Horn is planning on releasing more details on this scandal in the days ahead.
Barack Obama admitted in 2008 that cap and trade legislation would cause electricity prices to skyrocket.
The senator also admitted that cap and trade would likely cost $700 to $1,400 dollars per US family per year:
Obama also promised that cap and trade would decimate the coal industry. But, did not stop Barack Obama and democrats from pushing their expensive plan. Since that time reports have shown that cap-and-trade would be far more expensive than advertised.
But that’s not all…
Now, a FOIA request revealed that the Obama administration scrambled to respond last year to strong evidence that “green jobs” are a massive economic drain, costing 570,000 Euros apiece. The FOIA documents also show that the Obama Administration asked George Soros and wind energy lobbyists to hide European wind energy program failures. Chris Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute broke this news earlier this week at Pajamas Media:
As candidate and president, on eight separate occasions Barack Obama instructed Americans to “think about what’s happening in countries like Spain [and] Germany” if they wanted to know what successful “green jobs” policies look like, and if they wanted to know what we should expect here in the U.S. from his agenda.
Some European economists took a look. In March, a research team from Madrid’s King Juan Carlos University produced a detailed, substantive, heavily sourced, two-method paper: “Study of the Effects on Employment of Public Aid to Renewable Energy Sources.” The paper concluded that Spain’s “green jobs” program was an economic failure, in fact costing Spain many jobs.
…[T]he Spanish study embarrassed the White House, prompting substantial media attention and even questioning at a press conference, Obama swapped out Denmark for Spain for later references to an enacted “green jobs” program.
Soon, Denmark produced a study (“Wind Energy: The Case of Denmark“) through the think-tank CEPOS. This paper also revealed tremendous costs, and that Obama’s claim about Denmark’s “renewables” experience was also steeped in mythology.
…Back in the U.S., the American Wind Energy Association — the lobby for “Big Wind” in Washington, D.C., which includes a few Spanish wind giants — also attacked the publication of the Spanish paper. Soon, the Obama administration published a five-page talking points memo assailing the economic assessment — written by two young, non-economist, pro-wind activists from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Boulder, Colorado…drafted in often personal terms.
It’s well worth reading the whole thing to understand the relationship between the Left in government and the rent-seeking corporations who make their money not by producing anything, but by putting their hands in the next guy’s pocket.
NREL is an extension of the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). EERE is run by Assistant Secretary of Energy Cathy Zoi, who, until assuming this post, served as CEO to Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection. Zoi is responsible for many millions of the “green jobs” stimulus dollars pushed for and designed by Van Jones (this according to Jones himself).
So, the Obama Administration was hiding information and concocting their own reports with help from George Soros and wind lobbyists to support their expensive green energy programs. And, in the end, you the taxpayer would end up paying for it. This Obama scam would end up costing each American family $700 to $1,400 a year. Do you suppose the state-run media will report on this?
Christopher Horn is planning on releasing more details on this scandal in the days ahead.
Barack Obama admitted in 2008 that cap and trade legislation would cause electricity prices to skyrocket.
The senator also admitted that cap and trade would likely cost $700 to $1,400 dollars per US family per year:
Obama also promised that cap and trade would decimate the coal industry. But, did not stop Barack Obama and democrats from pushing their expensive plan. Since that time reports have shown that cap-and-trade would be far more expensive than advertised.
But that’s not all…
Now, a FOIA request revealed that the Obama administration scrambled to respond last year to strong evidence that “green jobs” are a massive economic drain, costing 570,000 Euros apiece. The FOIA documents also show that the Obama Administration asked George Soros and wind energy lobbyists to hide European wind energy program failures. Chris Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute broke this news earlier this week at Pajamas Media:
As candidate and president, on eight separate occasions Barack Obama instructed Americans to “think about what’s happening in countries like Spain [and] Germany” if they wanted to know what successful “green jobs” policies look like, and if they wanted to know what we should expect here in the U.S. from his agenda.
Some European economists took a look. In March, a research team from Madrid’s King Juan Carlos University produced a detailed, substantive, heavily sourced, two-method paper: “Study of the Effects on Employment of Public Aid to Renewable Energy Sources.” The paper concluded that Spain’s “green jobs” program was an economic failure, in fact costing Spain many jobs.
…[T]he Spanish study embarrassed the White House, prompting substantial media attention and even questioning at a press conference, Obama swapped out Denmark for Spain for later references to an enacted “green jobs” program.
Soon, Denmark produced a study (“Wind Energy: The Case of Denmark“) through the think-tank CEPOS. This paper also revealed tremendous costs, and that Obama’s claim about Denmark’s “renewables” experience was also steeped in mythology.
…Back in the U.S., the American Wind Energy Association — the lobby for “Big Wind” in Washington, D.C., which includes a few Spanish wind giants — also attacked the publication of the Spanish paper. Soon, the Obama administration published a five-page talking points memo assailing the economic assessment — written by two young, non-economist, pro-wind activists from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Boulder, Colorado…drafted in often personal terms.
It’s well worth reading the whole thing to understand the relationship between the Left in government and the rent-seeking corporations who make their money not by producing anything, but by putting their hands in the next guy’s pocket.
NREL is an extension of the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). EERE is run by Assistant Secretary of Energy Cathy Zoi, who, until assuming this post, served as CEO to Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection. Zoi is responsible for many millions of the “green jobs” stimulus dollars pushed for and designed by Van Jones (this according to Jones himself).
So, the Obama Administration was hiding information and concocting their own reports with help from George Soros and wind lobbyists to support their expensive green energy programs. And, in the end, you the taxpayer would end up paying for it. This Obama scam would end up costing each American family $700 to $1,400 a year. Do you suppose the state-run media will report on this?
Christopher Horn is planning on releasing more details on this scandal in the days ahead.
THIS IS IT– THE TIME IS NOW– DEMOCRATS WANT TO RAM THIS THROUGH IN NEXT TWO WEEKS
Now is your chance to let Barack Obama, Claire McCaskill, the Carnahans and Democrats know how you feel about their socialized health care plan.
HELP WELCOME OBAMA TO MISSOURI ON WEDNESDAY—–
** Health Care Rally at St. Charles Convention Center (map, directions, parking) at 9:45 AM on Wednesday March 10, 2010.
We need ALL HANDS ON DECK, and ALL BOOTS on the Ground!! If you can take time off work, if you can leave your children or elderly parent with a sitter (or bring them)…if you can at all make this rally – DO IT!
This may be it! Pelosi is trying to bring this to the floor for a vote in the coming days…and is strong-arming all the moderate dems into voting for Obamacare Socialized Medicine – and Federally Funded Abortion. In a “nuclear option” procedure that was never intended for major social mandates, Nancy & Harry…and Leader Obama – clearly intend to disenfranchise well over half of the American People!
Teenagers who looked for work last summer were out of luck. The teen unemployment rate rose to a record high of 25.5 percent in August of 2009, up from 23.8 percent in July. This was more than ten points higher than the record 9.7 percent national unemployment rate announced in September of 2009. The teenage unemployment rate last year was at its highest level since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began keeping track of such data in 1948.
There was another factor that may be hurting teens, the disastrously timed minimum wage increases. Economist David Neumark wrote in The Wall Street Journal last fall that the minimum wage increase in July 2009 would destroy an additional 300,000 jobs nationwide, concentrated among the most vulnerable and least skilled employee populations. Neumark added that with the aggregate unemployment rate at 9.4 percent in May 2008, the teen unemployment rate exceeding 22 percent, and the unemployment rate for black teens nearing 40 percent, July’s minimum wage increase seemed like the worst thing possible. He was right. The teen unemployment rate jumped 3.5 percentage points in one month.
Since last summer after the minimum wage was increased the job situation for teens has became even worse. The Wall Street Journal reported:
There’s plenty of competition, but our vote for the recent act of Congress that has caused the most economic hardship goes to the May 2007 law raising the minimum wage in three stages to $7.25 an hour from $5.15. Rarely has a law hurt more vulnerable people more quickly.
A higher minimum wage has the biggest impact on those with the least experience or the fewest skills. That means in particular those looking for entry-level jobs, especially teenagers. And sure enough, as nearly all economic models predict, the higher minimum has wreaked havoc with teenage job seekers, well beyond what you would expect even in a recession…
…But as the minimum wage increased even as the overall job market began to worsen, the damage to teen job seekers became more severe. By the time the third increase to $7.25 from $6.55 took effect in July 2009, the teen jobless rate was 24.3%, and by October it peaked at 27.6% before dropping to 26.4% in January.
The story is even worse for black teens, who often have lower than average education levels or live in areas with fewer job prospects. Their jobless rate climbed from 38.5% before the third wage hike to 49.8% in November 2009, before falling back to 43.8% in January. For black male teens, the rate climbed to 52.2% in December from 39.2% in July. The difference between the jobless rates for black teens and the entire population widened by six percentage points from June 2007 to January 2010. Even assuming those rates fall as the job market improves this year, they will remain destructively high.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, met with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah last week in Damsascus. Hassan Nasrallah (far right) has made few public appearances since 2006.
Truther Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today told an audience in Iran that 9-11 was a big lie and just an excuse to invade Iraq and Afghanistan.
The AP reported:
Iran’s hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has again questioned the official version of the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S., calling it a “big lie” used as an excuse to invade Afghanistan and Iraq.
Iranian state television quoted Ahmadinejad on Saturday as saying the 2001 attacks were an “intelligence scenario and act.”
Ahmadinejad has questioned the official U.S. version several times about who was behind the attacks and how it happened.
(This story was first reported in March 2006.) “I made a mixture of drugs and injected them. They were dead in three hours.”
A young doctor in Kirkuk, Iraq killed at least 43 injured soldiers by lethal injection after they were brought to his hospital for treatment. Dr. Louay belonged to a terrorist cell and gave his victims drugs that would cause them to bleed to death. He was arrested in 2006. The Independent reported:
When policemen, soldiers and officials in Kirkuk who were injured in insurgent attacks arrived in the emergency room of the hospital, they hoped their chances of surviving had gone up as doctors tended their wounds.
In fact, many of the wounded were almost certain to die because one of the doctors at the Republic Hospital was a member of an insurgent cell. Pretending to treat the injured men, he killed 43 of them by secretly administering lethal injections, a police inquiry has revealed.
“He was called Dr Louay and when the terrorists had failed to kill a policeman or a soldier he would finish them off,” Colonel Yadgar Shukir Abdullah Jaff, a senior Kirkuk police chief, told The Independent. “He gave them a high dosage of a medicine which increased their bleeding so they died from loss of blood.”
Dr Louay carried out his murder campaign over an eight to nine-month period, say police. He appeared to be a hard working assistant doctor who selflessly made himself available for work in any part of the hospital, which is the largest in Kirkuk.
He was particularly willing to assist in the emergency room. With 272 soldiers, policemen and civilians killed and 1,220 injured in insurgent attacks in Kirkuk in 2005, the doctors were rushed off their feet and glad of any help they could get. Nobody noticed how many patients were dying soon after being tended by their enthusiastic young colleague.
Dr Louay was finally arrested only after the leader of the cell to which he belonged, named Malla Yassin, was captured and confessed. “I was really shocked that a doctor and an educated men should do such a thing,” said Col Jaff.
Writing at Reason, the outstandingly named economist Veronique de Rugy included this sentence in a column about the Value Added Tax, and why it won’t work:
Take President Obama’s first budget, released last year. In it, he assumed that most of the $600 billion coming from proposed cap-and-trade fees would be allocated to deficit reduction. A [...]
Apparently, calling for the murder of conservatives is now acceptable speech for the Far Left and Hollywood.
Via BreitbartTV:
And yet despite this, the state-run media wants you to believe that the grandmothers and business owners at the tea party protests are the dangerous ones.
Barack Obama continued his all-out assault on the American private sector in his Weekly Address today. This week he decided to attack the evil insurance industry once again.
But not all private industry is bad. The president called for a Muslim summit on entrepreneurship on Friday. Breitbart reported:
The White House on Friday announced a “summit on entrepreneurship” to build economic ties with the Islamic world, part of President Barack Obama’s outreach to Muslims.
The White House said it has invited participants from more than 40 countries over five continents for the April 26-27 conference in Washington.
“The summit will highlight the role entrepreneurship can play in addressing common challenges while building partnerships that will lead to greater opportunity abroad and at home,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
Obama first spoke of the entrepreneurship conference in his signature June 4 speech in Cairo to the Islamic world.
Classy.
(Popeater) Foul-mouthed comedienne Kathy Griffin took her Palin-bashing show to Anchorage, Alaska this week. Deadbeat dad Levi Johnston escorted her while she was in town.
The AP reported:
Comedian Kathy Griffin brought her “Life on the D-List” show to Sarah Palin’s home state Friday, skewering the former Alaska governor at a raucous show in Anchorage.
Griffin was escorted on stage by Playgirl model Levi Johnston, who fathered a child with Palin’s oldest daughter and is involved in a child support battle with Bristol Palin.
Earlier in the day in Palin’s hometown of Wasilla, Griffin said she went to her house and left a note inviting the Republican leader to the show.
She asked the crowd to look around and see if anyone was doing a pageant wave.
My new Talk Radio Watch column is now up at WND.
Check out the FREE audio and webcast highlights from the week in conservative talk radio: Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Mark Levin and more!
PLUS:
Sarah Palin and Michael Reagan will do guest appearances along Salem’s 12-city “America Unplugged” tour. The first stop on the barnstorming tour is [...]
In the next 10 days democrats plan on ramming Obamacare through Congress…
Rep. Parker Griffith, a former democrat, urged Congress to reject Obama’s toxic health care plan today, “It’s not too late: we can, and we must, stop this government takeover of health care.”
Rep. Griffith, via GOP.gov: “In the next 10 days, Democrats in Washington will try and jam through a massive government takeover of health care. It would raise taxes, slash Medicare benefits and destroy American jobs. It would put federal bureaucrats in charge of medical decisions that should be made by patients and doctors. And it must be stopped.”
Americans need to understand the devastating significance of the House vote on the Senate health care bill set for March 18th. The Democrats have–by design–created the perfect storm to take over the US healthcare system, while providing an ideal distraction–reconciliation.
First, let’s examine exactly how we got here. In late December, while Americans were arguing that [...]
Imagine a Chechen whose leadership of secret GRU units earned had earned him the highest award the Russian government could bestow; then double crossing the Kremlin and going over to the other side. What might happen? That man, Sulim Yamadayev, was shot in a luxury hotel in Dubai according to the New York Times as part of a campaign of assassination that is being waged against Chechen insurgents wherever they might be, their deaths coming with the full approval of Russia. Those who have recently died include Yamadayev’s two brothers. Sulim himself ran, but as events in the Gulf proved he did not run far enough.
Sulim B. Yamadayev was a former general in Chechnya and foe of the republic’s Kremlin-backed president. He was killed in the Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai on March 30, 2009, in what appeared to be an assassination, the police said. He was 36.
The attack evoked others on Chechens, in Russia and abroad, who ran afoul of President Ramzan A. Kadyrov. The Kremlin has invested Mr. Kadyrov with almost unchecked authority in a bid to return stability to Chechnya after nearly a decade of bloody war and political turmoil. With Moscow’s blessing, Mr. Kadyrov has created a personality cult and imposed his own interpretation of Islamic morality in Chechnya, whose population is predominately Muslim.
Although Kadyrov might concern himself with the correct interpretation of Islam in Chechnya, the message sent to Yamadayev was From Russia With Love. The parallels with fiction don’t end there. The AFP reports that Yamadayev was shot by a Man With a Golden Gun.
The killer fired three bullets from a gold-plated gun at the victim’s chest as Sulim Yamadayev climbed from his car in the private car park beneath his luxury residence in Dubai. … The March 28 murder was the latest apparent contract-killing in an extraordinary trail of blood leading from Chechnya that already stretched to Istanbul, Moscow and Vienna. And now the bustling emirate.
Yamadayev was the fifth person to be murdered in recent months seen as an opponent of Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-appointed president of Chechnya, a mainly Muslim region of Russia’s southern fringe that fought two wars with Moscow.
President Ramzan Kadyrov is himself a former Chechen rebel and rose to power shortly after he had turned 30. He’s a colorful sort of gentleman who runs horses in the Melbourne cup and owns a stable of thoroughbreds in Dubai when he’s not ruling on Islamic morality. Kadyrov wears a million dollar wristwatch and his personal sidearm, perhaps not so coincidentally, is a gold plated automatic pistol. Despite these refinements some Australian academics feel a little uneasy about letting the Chechen President run his horses a proper club, observing that it constitutes a “moral dilemma. If Kim Jong-il applies to have a horse run next time, what should we do?”
Why, approve it. So long as the applicants aren’t from Israel or America, it’s all right. But if anyone who killed Yamadayev were suspected to hail from from the Jewish state or America oceans of ink would be spilled and the international human rights crowd would be howling for blood. Since the suspects are not it’s hardly likely to cause a ripple. In fact, the AFP notes that it’s like Yamadayev didn’t die at all. “Bizarrely, the Russian foreign ministry said that the Dubai authorities have still not informed them of Yamadayev’s death, although the press has reported Tamin saying he was buried earlier this month.” But why tell them, since they already know?
The Washington Post notes the absence of publicity surrounding these hits. Jackson Diehl writes that while the Dubai police have been even handed, stories of hits by Russia on Islamic rebels just have no legs. They’re below the fold.
To his credit, police chief Tamim tried to subject Russia to the same treatment he has given Israel. At a press conference last April, he named the author of the crime as Adam Delimkhanov, a Kadyrov associate who is a member of the Russian parliament, and said he would ask Interpol for his arrest. It is, he said, “Russia’s responsibility in front of the world to control these killers from Chechnya.”
The difference, of course, is that the audience for a story about a Russian-sponsored assassination in Dubai is nothing like that for an Israeli hit. Relatively few stories were written about the Yamadayev case; there were no angry editorials in the Financial Times. Perhaps it’s needless to say that Delimkhanov and the other suspects identified by Dubai have not been arrested or extradited. As Shmuel Rosner summed it up in a dispatch for Slate: “The consequences for the assassins? None at all. For the Chechen government? None. For the deputy prime minister? None. For Dubai-Russian relations? None.”
It’s a fact that Western armies and intelligences agencies are held to different standards than those of the rest of the world. This means that for the foreseeable future, the use proxies will be increasingly necessary to carry out operations. Caught between the Scylla of preventing attacks on their constituents and the Charybdis of maintaining their carefully manicured images, politicians may simply opt for cut-outs to perform electorally impermissible acts at acceptable PR costs. Political correctness has made decency an operational burden. Israel is a democracy it simply can’t do for reasons of frank military necessity what Chechnya might do on a whim. America’s laws mean that terrorists who recognize no law must given the the benefit of every due process, and more so to remove every suspicion they’re not getting their “rights”. There are some things they can’t do which their opponents can.
Political correctness, which has already driven open debate on subjects like race, education and healthcare underground and substituted coded speech in its place, will increasingly substitute hypocrisy for morality in international affairs without reducing the brutality of the battlefield by one whit. But perhaps its purpose is to craft an asymmetric battlefield, not reduce its savagery. The terrible struggle will continue, each side playing by a different set of behavioral rules. To even things up, a reliance on proxies and combat drones plus the increasing use of euphemism and subterfuge are likely to be used to meet the touchy-feely requirements of the 21st century. The other side, with fewer material resources, will retain the advantage of being able to operate unapologetically. Ian Fleming who created the character of James Bond, described his first mission of his fictional hero as that of discrediting an enemy agent protected by the Press by the Rube Goldberg method of bankrupting him at the Casino Royale. James Bond may have had his Bentley, wholewheat toast, Tiptree “Little Scarlet” strawberry jam and china egg cups, but he could never do anything directly; and it was always his foes who had the advantage of terror, useful in the hard places of the world. And 007 would have lost too, even at the Casino Royale simply because things had to be just so. Strangely enough, one reason why the intellectuals of the West find their enemies so attractive is that they are so brutal. It’s the audacity that bewitches them.
It was extraordinary to hear the third voice. The hour’s ritual had only demanded a duologue against the horrible noise of the torture. Bond’s dimmed senses hardly took it in. Then suddenly he was half-way back to consciousness. He found he could see and hear again. He could hear the dead silence after the one quiet word from the doorway. He could see Le Chiffre’s head slowly come up and the expression of blank astonishment, of innocent amazement, slowly give way to fear. ‘Shtop,’ had said the voice, quietly. Bond heard slow steps approaching behind his chair. ‘Dhrop it,’ said the voice. Bond saw Le Chiffre’s hand open obediently and the knife fall with a clatter to the floor. He tried desperately to read into Le Chiffre’s face what was happening behind him, but all he saw was blind incomprehension and terror. Le Chiffre’s mouth worked, but only a high-pitched ‘eek’ came from it. His heavy cheeks trembled as he tried to collect enough saliva in his mouth to say something, ask something. His hands fluttered vaguely in his lap. One of them made a slight movement towards his pocket, but instantly fell back. His round staring eyes had lowered for a split second and Bond guessed there was a gun trained on him. There was a moment’s silence. ‘SMERSH.’ The word came almost with a sigh. It came with a downward cadence as if nothing else had to be said. It was the final explanation. The last word of all.
Leftist comedian Steven Colbert attacked Michelle Malkin, Sean Hannity and James O’Keefe over the ACORN underage prostitute scandal.
Colbert says, “Michelle Malkin is made from 100% snakeskin.”
Nice.
The School Board President from Detroit can’t write. The Blog Prof reported this unbelievable news.
It’s bad enough that Detroit Public Schools (DPS) graduates a pathetic 1 in 4 students, the worst in the nation. That obscene graduation rate is only that high because DPS commits ’social promotion’ – the practice of passing students onto the next grade who are not ready, a practice that DPS emergency financial manager Robert Bobb has just ended (Detroit Public Schools Finally Ends “Social Promotion” – Passing Students That Can’t Read Their Diplomas). That same Robert Bobb has been fighting with the teachers union and with the Detroit school board for academic control of the district. The school board is led by Otis Mathis, who wrote a mass email last August:
Do DPS control the Foundation or outside group? If an outside group control the foundation, then what is DPS Board row with selection of is director? Our we mixing DPS and None DPS row’s, and who is the watch dog?
And here’s the beginning of an email to supporters a few days ago that started with this:
If you saw Sunday’s Free Press that shown Robert Bobb the emergency financial manager for Detroit Public Schools, move Mark Twain to Boynton which have three times the number seats then students and was one of the reason’s he gave for closing school to many empty seats.
Majority Leader Harry Reid (Dem- NV) complained today on the Senate floor that Republicans were rooting for failure. This was after Reid announced earlier today that it was a good day because the nation only lost36,000 jobs. Republicans took him to the woodshed for this ridiculous statement.
In this episode, “NewsBusted” covers: President Obama’s Approval Rating, Space Shuttle Program, Iran Sanctions, Israel, Russia, Chris Matthews, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill Ayers,...
The US budget deficit will be $1.2 trillion more than predicted by the administration. CBO Deficit Estimate
But, don’t worry. Team Obama was only off by a mere $600 billion in 2020, give or take $50 billion.
The CBO announced today that the US longterm deficit picture is even worse than originally predicted.
The AP reported:
A new congressional report released Friday says the United States’ long-term fiscal woes are even worse than predicted by President Barack Obama’s grim budget submission last month.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts that Obama’s budget plans would generate deficits over the upcoming decade that would total $9.8 trillion. That’s $1.2 trillion more than predicted by the administration.
The agency says its future-year predictions of tax revenues are more pessimistic than the administration’s. That’s because CBO projects slightly slower economic growth than the White House.
The CBO predicted that the federal deficit would hit $1.5 trillion in 2010 under President Barack Obama’s proposals. This tops last year’s record deficit and is more than three times the deficit during George W. Bush’s last year in office.
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What is Conservative Blog Watch?
The purpose of this site is to have a quick snapshot of news coming from the conservative blogosphere. We are hoping to save you the time it takes to find where the pulse of conservatism is at.
Most users scan this front page and the headlines until they find something of interest. Each post also has related article links to help you find out more about each topic.
If there is a site you want added or you want to add your site, please use the contact us page. Our goal is to plug in to the top 100+ viewed conservative websites and keep the latest 100 headlines on this homepage.
We encourage you to visit all of the sites that this news comes from but when you need a quick summary of the latest conservative headlines head on back to www.conservativeblogwatch.com.
