Commentary and analysis on American politics, culture, and national identity, U.S. foreign policy and international relations, and the state of education
- from a neoconservative perspective! - Keeping an eye on the communist-left so you don't have to!
Like many other Latin American intellectuals, Vargas Llosa was initially a supporter of the Cuban revolutionary government of Fidel Castro. He studied Marxism in depth as a university student and was later persuaded by communist ideals after the success of the Cuban Revolution. Gradually, Vargas Llosa came to believe that Cuban socialism was incompatible with what he considered to be general liberties and freedoms. The official rupture between the writer and the policies of the Cuban government occurred with the so-called Padilla Affair, when Fidel Castro imprisoned the poet Herberto Padilla. Vargas Llosa, along with other intellectuals of the time, wrote to Castro protesting against the Cuban political system and the imprisonment of the artist. Vargas Llosa has identified himself with liberalism rather than extreme left-wing political ideologies ever since. Since he relinquished his earlier leftism, he has opposed both left- and right-wing authoritarian regimes.
It's time for our side to take it up a notch--and a lot more besides. Because there are two sides in this fight, and ours needs to be stronger.
There are two sides to the fight for better living standards for workers, to the struggle to defend Muslims, to the battle over anti-immigrant legislation like Arizona's SB 1070, to the struggle against the U.S. military's slaughters in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to the campaign against Israel's war crimes against the Palestinians.
Our side is stronger when we refuse to accept the compromises that the Democrats try to extort from us, and when we build our own independent struggles and organizations.
No compromise is acceptable when it comes to standing with Muslim brothers and sisters at the proposed site of an Islamic center in New York City, on the picket line of Mott's workers, on a freedom flotilla in solidarity with the people of Gaza, in a protest against cuts to public education, alongside LGBT people demanding a repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, and with undocumented immigrants demanding an end to deportations.
Of course, when activists refuse to compromise, they're denigrated for having "unrealistic" expectations and not understanding that real change comes only from accepting the limitations of the Democratic Party and working within it. But the unrealistic ones are those who think the Democrats will do the right thing if we just give them enough time and support.
They won't do the right thing. It's up to us to organize the struggles that can make a real difference in this society.
Frustration with the Democrats. Hmm? A little revolutionary violence might take it up a notch, eh?
Bottom line: if you like your current health care plan, too freaking bad, peon. The Democrats are on the way to single-payer with their top-down, Soviet-style health care 'law' passed during the dead of night in the form of a 2,600-page monstrosity that no one bothered to read.
I've picked up a quite a few nasty left-wing trolls since the flame war with the Sadly No! commies. One particularly despicable dickhead is the prick at "Thinking Meat", one of the more unbelievably messed up websites I've ever seen. Anyway, I've deleted his previous comments in the moderation queue, but like most nihilist trolls, he's persistent. He's attacking me as "racist" at his blog, but we naturally hear not one peep about Barack "Gangsta" Obama's endorsement of the most bigoted stereotypes of hip hop rappers. And for some whacked reason this Neanderthal thinks he's pwned me on my earlier remarks about Imam Rauf, where I noted: "No one's really digging down deep, which is that Imam Rauf has praised sharia and alleged that America deserved it on September 11." In a follow up comment, in the style of JBW, he writes:
I was right, of course. You don't have the guts to post Rauf's actual words.
No, much much easier to 'paraphrase' them, so that you can portray him as 'saying' anything you need him to 'say'.
"We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al Qaida has on its hands of innocent non-Muslims. You may remember that the US-led sanctions against Iraq led to the death of over half a million Iraqi children."
And Imam Rauf said the U.S. had it coming in September 2001, on "60 Minutes":
As for sharia, the Imam published [a defense of sharia] at Huffington Post last year: "What Shariah Law Is All About."
That's all the attention you get, Unthinking Freak. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Like Reppy, exDLB, Bonejob Keefe, Truth 101 and the rest you commie refuse. Stay the hell away from this blog. You are the scum of the earth.
*****
UPDATE: exDLB has responded, but he ignores the orginal criticism from Pinhead Thinking Meat. Here's my quote from the original post, with the key phrasing in bold: "No one's really digging down deep, which is that Imam Rauf has praised sharia and alleged that America deserved it on September 11." Note: exDLB is correct on my wording, and I have edited my statement above, because I was half asleep when I wrote it and that's not what I meant to write. So to recap: (1) Imam Rauf indeed "praised" sharia, the point Asswipe Thinking Meat claimed was a fabrication, and (2) exDLB ignores the YouTube clip I posted and the link to Discover the Networks --- and that's because exDLB is a liar and his post just spews more progressive anti-Americanism:
The crime perpetrated on the United States on 9/11 was heinous. Over 3000 US citizens and others lost their lives. The sanctions put in place and kept in place during the Bush I and Clinton administrations did lead to the deaths of over a half million Iraqi children. That was one of the reasons given by bin Laden for the 9/11 attacks. Rauf does not say the 9/11 attacks were justified. What he’s saying is no different than what Chalmers Johnson, Andrew Bacevich and many other conservatives have said. The attacks were blowback.
When someone issues a denial of their main point as a preface (both Imam Rauf and exDLB) that's a de facto acknowledgment that they're engaging in the exact allegations in which they've initially denied. So, listen carefully at the video. Imam Rauf indicates that Americans "have been accessory to a lot of innocent lives dying in the world," and that "in the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden is made in the USA."
"Made in the USA."
In other words, you made your bed now sleep in it.
Anti-Americans all of them, which is why I will resist their nihilism and destruction.
As our host Wanda mentioned, there is some march or other practically every weekend in DC and it has become old hat for the park police. Limiting access, choking off rebellion, smiting trouble-makers and controlling press coverage is now routine. Aided by a complicit corporate-owned media elite, ignoring and minimizing our protests has become a simple matter. While we once struck fear in their hearts, we barely raise an eyebrow now.
So is the answer to abandon street democracy? It might be ... if there were other realistic avenues. But there aren't many IMO. The electoral system is so corrupt that even those who still believe in it will admit that we have to win in overwhelming numbers to be assured our victory will be acknowledged. And even when we 'win' we don't get what we were promised. That was the entire rationale for the One Nation 'march'.
Republican-owned corporations electronically count our votes and our traitorous SCOTUS has opened the floodgates to unlimited corporate money flowing into the system. So our electoral democracy is every bit as compromised as our street democracy.
So what then is the answer?
I still support One Nation Working Together because we need a peoples coalition, and this seems a promising beginning. I am hopeful but not blindly optimistic. It's a fine thing to form a mighty peoples coalition, but I think we are going to have to go well beyond that. I think we are going to have to act up to get anywhere. Acting up is what the civil rights marchers did. Acting up is what the Vietnam protesters did. I see no way around it - this is what we are going to have to do too.
Teresa Heinz Kerry once told me that if we really wanted to get the government's attention, we should mass on the five bridges leading into DC and shut the city down. I think this is the sort of thing we're going to have to do if we want to have any real impact. Of course they'll freak if we do it and people will be beaten and arrested no doubt. But if we can't face that threat, take that risk and make that sacrifice then we are going to continue to lose. The deck is too thoroughly stacked against us. The only meaningful options left to us, it seems to me, are direct action and wide scale civil disobedience. Without it I fear that we are toast.
Fist images, in some form, were used in numerous political graphic genres, including the French and Soviet revolutions, the United States Communist Party, and the Black Panther Party for Self-defense. However, these all followed an iconographic convention. The fist was always part of something - holding a tool or other symbol, part of an arm or human figure, or shown in action (smashing, etc.). But graphic artists from the New Left changed that in 1968, with an entirely new treatment. This "new" fist stood out with its stark simplicity, coupled with a popularly understood meaning of rebellion and militance.
I'm not going to be surprised when the "militant rebellion" becomes reality in the near future. Folks like OPOL are becoming increasingly disillusioned with traditional protests. Consequently, the methods of left-wing terrorist groups will emerge as the tactic of choice for the growing militant movement. I hope I'm wrong, but should the GOP retake the Congress in November, angry activists may feel they have no choice but to go underground, don the balaclavas, and hoist the Molotovs and Kalashnikovs.
What's on President Obama's iPod? A wide range, he told Rolling Stone magazine last week, from the jazz of John Coltrane to the ballads of Maria Callas. And more: "My rap palate has greatly improved," Mr. Obama noted. "Jay-Z used to be sort of what predominated, but now I've got a little Nas and a little Lil Wayne and some other stuff, but I would not claim to be an expert."
Expert or not, that's the wrong message for the president to be sending black America.
Does Mr. Obama like Lil Wayne's "Lil Duffle Bag Boy"? In that song, the rapper implores young black men to "go and get their money" through round-the-clock drug hustling. And with Lil Wayne, it's not just an act: The rapper is currently serving a one-year term on Rikers Island after being caught in New York with drugs and guns stashed in his Louis Vuitton overnighter.
Lil Wayne is emblematic of a hip-hop culture that is ignorant, misogynistic, casually criminal and often violent. A self-described gangster, he is a modern-day minstrel who embodies the most virulent racist stereotypes that generations of blacks have fought to overcome. His music is a vigorous endorsement of the pathologies that still haunt and cripple far too many in the black underclass.
Thus President Obama has conveyed his taste for the rapper behind lyrics like:Put that white widow weed in the cigar and puff
look, ma, I'm trying to make a porno starring us
well not just us, a couple foreign sluts
Naming thuggish rappers might make Mr. Obama seem relatable and cool to a generation of Americans under the sway of hip-hop culture, but it sends a harmful message—especially when, in black America, some 70% of babies are born out of wedlock.
MOFO! Obama be boostin' de "most virulent racist stereotypes"!! That is messed up sucka!! No doubt some leftie bloggaz be preppin' fo' de epic POTUS smackdown! Or, wait crickets in Compton! NO!! Homies, you be doin' the hypocrite jam!
Democratic strategists are studying a California marijuana-legalization initiative to see if similar ballot measures could energize young, liberal voters in swing states for the 2012 presidential election.
Some pollsters and party officials say Democratic candidates in California are benefiting from a surge in enthusiasm among young voters eager to back Proposition 19, which would legalize marijuana in certain quantities and permit local governments to regulate and tax it.
Party strategists and marijuana-legalization advocates are discussing whether to push for similar ballot questions in 2012 in Colorado and Nevada—both expected to be crucial to President Barack Obama's re-election—and Washington state, which will have races for governor and seats in both houses of Congress.
Already, a coalition of Democratic-leaning groups has conducted a poll in Colorado and Washington to test the power of marijuana measures to drive voter turnout.
Ballot measures typically don't increase turnout on a mass scale. Still, strategists in both parties argue certain ballot measures can help activate targeted groups of voters and campaign volunteers in numbers that can be significant in close elections.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday in a case that sorely tests the principle, articulated by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. nearly a century ago, that "we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe."
The case involves the Westboro Baptist Church, a deranged anti-gay religious group that routinely shows up at the funerals of American soldiers to express its bizarre belief that U.S. combat deaths are divine retribution for America's tolerance of homosexuality. In 2006, the group picketed the funeral of Lance Cpl. Matthew A. Snyder, a Marine killed in Iraq. The protesters held signs reading "Thank God for Dead Soldiers," "You're Going to Hell' and "Semper fi Fags."
Snyder's father sued the church for "intentional infliction of emotional distress" and other civil wrongs, but a lower court held that the picketers were protected under the 1st Amendment. The Supreme Court is now being asked to reverse that decision.
The justices may be tempted to rule against the protesters out of understandable sympathy for Snyder's father. They should resist the temptation. Allowing even private figures to recover damages for distress caused by the political or religious speech of others would be a dramatic departure from the court's protection of free expression no matter how offensive. And it would have reverberations in settings far removed from military funerals.
I ... appreciate your stand for the truth during a very perverse time in our nation. I am sure it will become more unpopular to speak the truth as time goes on and we need people like you who are not afraid of the menace confronting us. Keep up the good work and fighting the good fight.
I've been getting a number of supportive e-mails lately, and also requests for blogroll updates. I don't always have time for additions, but I especially try to add those regulars who participate in the American Power community, in the comments or by sending tips and links by e-mail. So step it up, readers.The left is so bigoted and hateful and hypocritical. But I'm energized by the feedback. I'll keep up the good fight.
Shortly after 1 a.m. on Oct. 1, 1910, 100 years ago Friday, a time bomb constructed of 16 sticks of 80% dynamite connected to a cheap windup alarm clock exploded in an alley next to the Los Angeles Times. It detonated with such violence that for blocks around, people ran panic-stricken into the streets, believing that an intense earthquake had hit the city.
The explosion destroyed the Times building, taking the lives of 20 employees, including the night city editor and the principal telegraph operator, and maiming dozens of others. Two other time bombs — intended to kill Gen. Harrison Gray Otis, the publisher of the newspaper, and Felix J. Zeehandelaar, the head of a Los Angeles business organization — were discovered later that morning hidden in the bushes next to their homes. Their mechanisms had jammed.
Eventually, two brothers, J.B. McNamara, who planted the bombs, and J.J. McNamara, an official of the International Assn. of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers union who ordered the attacks, were arrested, convicted and imprisoned.
In its day, the Times bombing was equivalent to the 2001 destruction of the World Trade Center. It was called "the crime of the century," and it remains the deadliest crime to go to trial in California history. It would lead to investigations, arrests and trials of union leaders across the country who, it turned out, funded hundreds of terrorist bombings at mostly nonunion construction projects between 1907 and 1911. They included officials of the California Building Trades Council in San Francisco, the ironworkers union and the United Brotherhood of Carpenters in Indianapolis, the Machinists Union in Syracuse, N.Y., and the Building Trades Council in Detroit. Hirelings of the union involved in executing the bombings were also brought to trial — 46 members of the ironworkers union alone. In addition to the McNamaras, who were sentenced in 1911, 39 men were convicted and sent to prison in 1912; five others received suspended sentences.
The testimony during their trials and their convictions devastated the American labor movement, virtually paralyzing it until the New Deal. The McNamaras' case in particular wrecked the career and tainted the reputation of the most prominent defender of labor of the day, Clarence Darrow, who was hired by the American Federation of Labor to defend the brothers.
To save the lives of his clients, Darrow negotiated a deal with the district attorney and the brothers pleaded guilty. Afterward, Darrow was arrested and was twice forced to defend himself against charges of attempting to bribe two prospective jurors. He was acquitted in the first trial; the second ended in a hung jury. Darrow would not return to the public spotlight until 1924, when he rescued his reputation as the defender of thrill-killers Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb and as the hero of the Scopes "monkey trial" the next year.
The terrorism that gripped America 100 years ago is barely mentioned in California history books today. The Times long ago resigned itself to making at least a modicum of peace with the unions. The attack on the newspaper is now regarded as an embarrassment to organized labor, which has never gotten around to an unequivocal denunciation of it. A 1996 history of the Ironworkers Union says that "the dynamite conspiracy and the bombings are neither a point of pride nor a reason for guilt. The Iron Worker leadership had no real option other than to succumb in the open shop battle, which was unacceptable to them.... And despite other consequences of the dynamite campaign, they did save the union. The international officers stretched the limits of zeal in a righteous cause."
J.B. McNamara, his guilty plea notwithstanding, remained unrepentant for the rest of his life. In a letter sent from his San Quentin prison cell to his mother, he wrote that in all great battles, men must sometimes be sacrificed for the greater good.
There's more at the link.
This is frustrating since Irwin is so unhappy that the bombing was a "setback" for organized labor. I see it for what it was: typical of the left's inherent impulse toward destruction and death. And like we saw in the late-60s with the Weather Underground, and later in Germany with Baader-Meinhof, the cycle turns and political violence becomes respectable. Violent provocateurs are gearing up now. We saw the potential in Toronto last summer. The left's own frustration will stay capped for only so long.
It’s hard to recall the precise moment when I realized I’d been hoodwinked by my US Airways pilot. Instead of taking me to Detroit, as my ticket promised, it seemed he had deposited me on the set of Weeds, the Showtime program about a workaday upper-middle class mother who decides to become a pot dealer.
That moment might have come after leaving the airport in my rental car, when I saw a clinic sign beckoning motorists to get an exam for their state-certified medical marijuana card. Or it might have come when I saw the multiple billboards for hydroponic gardening equipment (no, they’re not growing hothouse tomatoes here). Or maybe it was seeing the oversized highway sign heralding the season premiere of Weeds itself, the show that plunges you into California cannabis culture, from clandestine grow-rooms to “dispensaries”—the quasi-legal pot shops that one character on the show described as making Los Angeles like Amsterdam, except “you don’t have to visit the Anne Frank house and pretend to be all sad and s—.”
Then I opened Detroit’s alternative weekly Metro Times, which instead of being chock-full of ads for used futons and anonymous sex, as is the custom with such papers, was lousy with medical marijuana ads: for marijuana gardening academies; for pot doctors from places with names like Green Medicine (“No medical records? No problem.”); for the Medical Marijuana Extravaganja, a two-day jamboree of stand-up comics and horseshoe tournaments and centerfold contests which feature women like the one in the ad, who is holding a snake in one hand and an apple in the other, her ample gifts blossoming from a green bud bikini. You know, to pull in the chemo sufferers.
But the final dawning that I’d landed in the autumnal mists of a land called Honah Lee—as the poets Peter, Paul and Mary used to put it—probably came the day I went back to college. Not journalism school, mind you. What would be the point? Journalism—like making cars—is a dying industry around these parts. But there is a growth industry emerging in Michigan, the first one for decades: state-sanctioned pot dealing. And here in colorless, odorless Southfield, a white-bread suburb of Detroit, is one of the best places to learn how to do it, Med Grow Cannabis College.
Modeled partly on Oaksterdam University in Oakland, which became a weed-education hub after California legalized the medical use of marijuana in 1996, Med Grow is the brainchild of 24-year-old Nick Tennant. As Tennant’s auto-detailing business tanked in the Great Recession, Michigan followed California’s lead and became one of 14 states to legalize medical marijuana, with 63 percent of the vote in 2008. Technically, it’s still against federal law. Marijuana—even when it’s called medical—remains classified by the Feds as a forbidden Schedule 1 substance, meaning surly DEA agents can make trouble for its users. But the Obama Justice Department issued a 2009 memo directing U.S. attorneys not to target those “in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws” that permit the use of medical marijuana.
The state of Michigan now approves medical marijuana, but doesn’t provide it. So somebody needs to grow all this medicinal herb. The act allows a certified patient to grow up to 12 plants for himself, or to choose a certified caregiver who can grow for up to five patients (for a total of 60 plants, or 72, if the caregiver is also his own patient, as is often the case). And that’s why Med Grow is here—to teach people the ins and outs of the weed business, from growing it, to writing it off on their taxes. As they say in their mission statement—and you know weed has become serious business when a pot school has a mission statement—Med Grow is “dedicated to your success in the Medical Marijuana Industry, and your reputation is reliant upon it.”
About 9% of adults who use marijuana develop an addiction to it. Among people who begin smoking before the age of 18, this number is as high as 17%. Although addiction to marijuana does not cause dramatic physical dependence, it can lead to substantial problems in education, work and relationships. In fact, addiction to marijuana is defined by the inability to stop using despite recognition of harmful consequences. Without harmful consequences, there is no diagnosis of addiction.
The short-term effects of marijuana intoxication are well established. As part of the high produced by marijuana, intoxication impairs memory and learning. Marijuana use also impairs driving, causing a twofold to threefold increase in accidents. Though not as dramatic as the fifteenfold increase in accidents caused by alcohol intoxication, marijuana's impact on traffic safety does have significance.
The long-term effects of marijuana are not often recognized because they are subtle, but they can have a cumulative impact over time. In people with preexisting vulnerabilities, marijuana use can unmask psychiatric problems such as schizophrenia. Many people with anxiety and depression use marijuana to soothe their symptoms; however, there is evidence that over time it may actually make these problems worse.
Smoked marijuana irritates the linings of the respiratory passages and can lead to inflammation and bronchitis. Although marijuana has not been definitively shown to cause cancer, smoked marijuana has been linked to precancerous changes in the lungs.
These long-term effects of marijuana are not as dramatic as those seen in other, "harder" drugs of abuse, but they do take a toll, and that toll appears to be greatest among people who begin smoking marijuana during adolescence, before the brain and body are finished maturing.
... we can now see the broad outlines of a post-American order in Iraq. The withdrawal of the Americans is already "baked into the cake," a senior Iraqi politician recently told me. This is "the East," and in the East people have an unerring instinct for the intentions and the staying power of strangers. Iraqis needn't rush to the pages of Bob Woodward's "Obama's Wars" to know of the disinterest of the president in the affairs of Iraq. There's little doubt that he'll carry out his promise to withdraw U.S. troops by Dec. 31, 2011. But it would make a great difference to Iraqis were he to signal that Washington has a strategic doctrine for the region, and for Iraq's place in it, that goes beyond that date.
The Iraqis have a fetish about their sovereignty, but they also understand their dependence. They will need American help, cover for their air space, protection for their oil commerce in the sea lanes of the Persian Gulf. This Iraqi government will remain, for the foreseeable future, a Shiite-led government anxious about the intentions of the Sunni Arab states; about the Turks now pushing deeper into Iraq's affairs, armed with Neo-Ottomanist ideas about Turkey as a patron of the Sunnis of Iraq. And there will always play upon Iraqis—Shiites in particular—a healthy fear of Iran and a desire to keep the Persian power at bay. There will be plenty of room for America in Iraq even after our soldiers have packed up their gear and left.
The question posed in the phase to come will be about the willingness of Pax Americana to craft a workable order in the Persian Gulf, and to make room for this new Iraq. It is a peculiarity of the American presence in the Arab- Islamic world, as contrasted to our work in East Asia, that we have always harbored deep reservations about democracy's viability there and have cast our lot with the autocracies. For a fleeting moment, George W. Bush broke with that history. But that older history, the resigned acceptance of autocracies, is the order of the day in Washington again.
It isn't perfect, this Iraqi polity midwifed by American power. But were we to acknowledge and accept that Iraqis and Americans have prevailed in that difficult land, in the face of such forbidding odds, we and the Iraqis shall be better for it. We have not labored in vain.
I'm not seeing much exciting political news, other than the latest polling showing the forthcoming Democrat train wreck. Well, there's also the leaked e-mails showing that Sarah Palin's indeedplanninga White House run for 2012 (and this is news?). And this is interesting --- an update on the Zionist media cabal, at NY Post:
Former CNN anchor Rick Sanchez apologized to comedian Jon Stewart for calling him a "bigot" in radio interview last week, Sanchez's wife revealed Monday.
"Rick apologized to jon stewart today," Sanchez's wife, Suzanne, wrote on her Facebook page Monday -- adding that her husband's tough work schedule caused him to "mangle his thought process" and make explosive remarks during the now infamous Thursday radio interview.
"They had a good talk. jon was gracious and called rick, 'thin-skinned,'" she wrote.
"His exhaustion from working 14 hr days for 2 mo. straight, caused him to mangle his thought process inartfully. he got caught up in the banter and deeply apologizes to anyone who was offended by his unintended comments," added the stay-at-home mom -- who has four children with Sanchez.
My daughter is looking through college-recruitment materials, and pretty much all of them go on at great length about "diversity." To judge from the brochures -- not only the text but also the relentless photos of ethnically diverse students in various settings -- it's apparently the single most important thing that any institution of higher learning can offer.
But though the photos contain representatives of almost every group imaginable, I don't see any students in military uniform.
That's because most of the "high-end" schools mailing us bulletins don't offer ROTC -- a failure of diversity that just attracted comment from Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
In a recent speech at Duke University, Gates noted that, since the end of the draft and the growth of the volunteer army, America's military has grown increasingly distinct from those who view themselves as our nation's intellectual leaders.
Gates chose Duke for his speech, presumably, because it's one of the very few top schools to offer multiple ROTC programs. Elsewhere -- at Harvard, for example -- ROTC has been banished for decades.
Although Harvard expelled ROTC over the Vietnam War four decades ago (after antiwar students burned down the ROTC center), it now gives as a reason for not reinstating the program the military's adherence to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" -- though that program was instituted under President Bill Clinton, who has not been similarly barred from the Harvard campus.
Nor has Harvard Law alumnus Barack Obama, who has maintained the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," policy -- and who has urged Harvard to end the ROTC ban.
President Obama's other alma mater, Columbia University, booted ROTC from its campus in 1969 and also hasn't reinstated it. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who tortures and imprisons bloggers and other critics, is welcome at Columbia but not a program to train officers for the US military.
Yet the campus ROTC bans aren't just a reminder of the political pettiness that still plagues America's "top tier" universities; they also have serious costs for the nation.
This video was posted at a hate site dedicated to threatening and smearing Pamela Geller. I did not want to link to the hate site, so I am reposting this video here for reference. I believe that it is vitally important to document and bring to public attention the viciousness and hatefulness of Islamic supremacists and their allies in the U.S., and the danger they pose to free citizens. This video illustrates all of that with revolting and chilling vividness.
Check the whole thing. It turns out that Daisy Kahn has allegedly received one death threat, by phone, and the New York media has been all over the story with front-page news. Pamela, on the other hand, is the target of an endless campaign of eliminationist threats, and media coverage? Not so much.
you will burn in hell and suffer a painful torment for making Islam (the religion of God All Mighty) seem as tho it is an evil religion when in fact it is a religion of peace. I pray you see your torment in this life your next life is for certain fire. and it is a painful abode
salaam alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh
*****
YOU LYING SACK OF SHIT CUNT FOR REINFORCING THE PERCEPTION OF AMERICA AS A TERRORIST NATION BY YOUR FUCKING LIES ABOUT THE "GROUND ZERO MOSQUE." YOU ARE THE BIGGEST ASSHOLE I HAVE SEEN AT WORK IN A LONG TIME. ARE YOU PROUD OF YOURSELF????? YOUR ACTIONS HAVE PUT OUR TROOPS ABROAD IN MORE DANGER AND OUR CIVILIAN POPULATION AS WELL -- ONCE THEY READ WHAT YOU SAY AND THE SHITSTORM YOU CREATED, THEY WILL ADD MORE FUEL TO THE FIRE IN THEIR WAR AGAINST AMERICA.
YOU ARE A FUCKING CANCER!!!!!!
BITCH!!!!! CUNT!!!!!!!! ASSHOLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
*****
GRAND JEW KILLER (kill-the-jews@hotmail.com) has left you a comment :
kill all the jew asswipes. bomb entire israel. they dont have a place on earth, they should live in hell. all supporters of the jews all u motherfuckers go to hell!!!
Less than a month before the midterm elections, the political landscape remains strongly tilted toward Republicans, although Democrats have made modest improvements with voters since their late-summer low point, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Democrats have cut in half the GOP's early-September advantage on the question of which party's candidates voters say they will support on Nov. 2. They have also made small gains on the question of which party people trust to handle big issues, such as the economy and health care.
Voters give Democrats a significant edge as the party that would do a better job in helping the middle class, which has been a key campaign message from the White House in recent weeks.
President Obama's approval rating has rebounded to where it was in July after hitting an all-time low a month ago. Also, in some state races, Democratic candidates have taken the lead over their Republican opponents or narrowed GOP advantages.
Despite these apparent signs of improvement, the new Post-ABC poll suggests that Democrats remain at a significant disadvantage. Their hopes of holding down losses depend more on the performance of individual candidates than on dramatic changes in the overall climate.
That's Repsac3 (banned at American Power, although he continues to harass this blog in the comments), calling me a racist and a liar. Yeah. That's all they got --- again!
And no, despite Repsac3's protests, not to mention Roy Edroso's, the photoshop is not RAAAAACIST. It's hilarious. And yes, I'm paraphrasing Fox Nation, despite Reppy's claim that there's "nothing at Fox Nation ..." Blah. Blah. For example:
Meanwhile, this excerpt has quickly made its way to one of the GOP's terror dungeons, Fox Nation, which posts it under the headline, "President of the United States Loves Gangsta Rap." It makes for a lively discussion in the comments, with what we'd imagine to be constant scrubbing from moderators. Here's "eagletimberwolf," however.
SINCE HE AIN'T IN THE ALOHA STATE ANYMORE, HE HAD TO TRADE IN THE COOL BREEZE, TASTY WAVES, AND FATTY BLUNTS FOR MENTHOL CIGARETTES, A CRACK PIPE AND GANGSTA RAP TO GET THROUGH THE HEAVY DAYS. HOPE HIS GIRLS DON'T TURN INTO RUMP SHAKIN' BACKUP DANCERS...
And personally, I don't care if these commie freaks wanna holla RAAAAACISM!! and LIAR!! It's paraphrased. Funny too. Now blow chunks down your failcommie stinkhole.
I was about to post David Bowie but found Bauhaus' interesting "Ziggy Stardust" cover. I saw the band in about 1982, shortly after the release of their LP "The Sky's Gone Out." The show was memorable for the band's intense audience-unfriendliness, especially that of singer Peter Murphy. He mocked the L.A. crowd and the band refused to play their biggest hits. They never played "Ziggy Stardust," which I thought was a flat out bummer. Either way, good or bad, I'm glad I saw them. At the time their music made me think, a lot, about philosophy and existence, especially on their earlier album, "In the Flat Field."
Reading this endorsement is one long trail of cobblestone steps to the Democrat-Socialist utopian nightmare:
Boxer supported the healthcare reform enacted into law over hysterical Republican objections about the evils of Obamacare, and helped secure a compromise in a dispute over abortion coverage that threatened to derail the legislation. Fiorina would repeal the reform. Though far from perfect, the new law lays the groundwork for improvements in the quality of care and its availability, while promising at least some cost savings ....
Boxer believes that women have a right to choose abortion. Fiorina describes herself as pro-life and opposes the landmark Roe vs. Wade decision. She says she doesn't support the criminalization of abortion, but at least in some states that would be the likely consequence of repeal. Even if Roe vs. Wade weren't overturned, Congress could continue trying to put obstacles in the way of women seeking to exercise their rights. Boxer can be trusted to resist such legislation.
Boxer believes that same-sex couples should be able to enter into civil marriage and supports repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman and allows states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. Fiorina opposes same-sex marriage while supporting civil unions.
More old-fashioned Democrat-Socialism at the link. And the Times' editors claim they like Boxer because she stands for the " values promoted by this editorial page ..." And that's why I rarely read "this editorial page" any more.
For its next governor, California is in dire need of a dynamic and optimistic grownup, one with the personality, perspective and presence to remind voters that theirs is a fabulously wealthy state and not the downward-spiraling mess that national media reports delight in comparing to Greece or Portugal. We need someone with a Reaganesque talent for revealing to ourselves our own exceptionalism and dismissing the self-doubt of the last decade. We need a Pat Brown or Earl Warren-style focus on our future, with investment in education and infrastructure. And we need a leader deft and clever enough to move Californians away from a three-decade pattern of undermining our own government, checking and counterchecking ourselves with selfish initiatives to lock up special program spending, lock out political decision-making and accountability and lock in a perpetual and destructive budget standoff, year after year.
Fate presents the state instead with two candidates who fall well short of our current needs. They come to us from the partisan political version of Central Casting. Republican Meg Whitman, utterly devoid of background or experience in state government or policymaking, rarely deigning to cast a vote, moves toward the Nov. 2 election on the power of millions of dollars of personal wealth. Whitman argues that her role as chief executive of the online auction website EBay somehow makes her the right person to govern the nation's most populous state, yet her slate of policy positions is seemingly more calculated to win the approval of angry voters and profit-seeking business leaders than to address the actual problems facing the state. Then we have Democrat Jerry Brown, the governor of California's baby-boom youth, now seeking the office again more than 30 years after his first run, having advanced on a personal and public journey that made him at times a gadfly outsider, a stolid party leader, a spiritual seeker, a presidential candidate, a nuts-and-bolts mayor of a troubled city and the senior statesman of Sacramento.
We will have to wait for the governor with the talent and courage to shake the state loose from the structural dead-ends into which voters continue to push it. In the meantime, we must choose between Whitman, with her disappointing and empty policy approaches and her assertion that having no experience in government is the best experience, and Brown, whose nonlinear, unscripted style sometimes leaves his listeners wondering what exactly they're going to get. Again, Brown is not the ideal candidate for California, but what he does bring is the reality-based, seen-it-all-before wisdom of a political veteran, and of the two candidates before voters in November, The Times endorses him without hesitation.
More at the link. I'm still not sure if I'll vote in the governor's race. I don't like Meg Whitman, although she's hammered Jerry Brown for months with a string of killer ad buys:
It's unfortunate that this will be Christine O'Donnell'sfirst ad buy. But it could be a smart move. She looks a little too vulnerable, but maybe that will play well with the voters. Doug Mataconis lays it plain out: "Will it work?" There's a good chance it will, but there's not much time. And if leftists keep digging up new oddities about her background, well, at some point it's hard to rebound. And rest assured, the left will keep digging until they can destroy her. Mark Leibovich reports that he confirmed, back in 2006, that O'Donnell's father once worked as Philadelphia's Bozo the Clown. But some crazed Democrat refused to believe it and demanded "proof":
The Bozo bombshell was first reported by The News Journal of Wilmington in November 2006, during one of Ms. O’Donnell’s previous Senate campaigns. The detail was included in a profile of Ms. O’Donnell that I wrote for Saturday’s Times. Ms. O’Donnell’s older brother, Daniel, confirmed in a phone call that indeed his father had played Bozo.
“Bozo the Clown is a franchise, and back then, every major city had their own Bozo,” said Daniel O’Donnell, the brother, who is a business manager at a car dealership in Trenton. “He was Philly’s Bozo for a time.” Daniel O’Donnell, the father, declined to comment for that article.
On Saturday morning, I received e-mail from a reader questioning whether this claim was true based on the absence of any “Daniel O’Donnell” listed on the ultimate authority on all things, Wikipedia. The reader demanded proof about Mr. O’Donnell’s Bozo bona fides and a level of specificity and documentation that I was not prepared to provide. My answer – that I had verified the Bozo fact with the O’Donnell family – was woefully unacceptable to her, a position that she laid out in a way that soon convinced me that devoting more time on the subject was not how I wanted to spend my Saturday.
There are much stranger things in life than for one's father to have worked as a circus-style entertainer. But for the left, the tiniest eccentricity is fuel for the "oddities" campaign they're waging in the absence of any credible public policy record to run on. This is what's become of American politics under the Democrats. It's pretty sad. But at least we know that yes, no matter what happens, Christine O'Donnell is me. She's you. She's a regular American.
If you ask me, and I don't claim any particular expertise on Islam, I'd say that Christiane Amanpour seems to have a crowd full of jihadi-enabling Muslims, and between Daisy Kahn and the Muslim cleric down front, all you're going get is the "we're moderate, were so American, blah, blah ..." No one's really digging down deep, which is that Imam Rauf has praised sharia and alleged that America deserved it on September 11. Frankly, Rauf is not much different than Anjem Choudary, the unapologetic jihadi and Islamist activist (at about 11:00 minutes). He says U.S. bombings of Sudan, etc., are to blame for 9/11, as well as American support for the "pariah state" of Israel. Daisy Kahn offers a half-hearted rebuttal. But that's the standard line among "moderate Muslims: Deny the radical agenda while simultaneously funnelling money to Hamas, global jihad, etc., through terrorist front organizations like Holy Land. And here's this from Choudary's Wikipedia page:
Choudary is a vocal critic of the UK's involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and has praised the terrorists involved in the attacks of 11 September 2001, and 7 July 2005. He believes in the implementation of Sharia Law throughout the UK, and marched in protest at the Jyllands-Posten cartoons controversy, following which he was prosecuted for organising an unlawful demonstration. He was also investigated, but not charged, for his 2006 comments regarding Pope Benedict XVI. Choudary has received little support from the mainstream UK Muslim population, and has been largely criticised in the media.
The show's a setup. And as far as "moderate Islam" goes, I don't believe a word from Daisy's mouth. I've been busy over the weekend blogging the socialist rally in D.C., and I missed the Sunday morning screening of This Week. But Pamela's been all over this, here and here, for example. And she's got an interesting piece at Big Journalism as well: "My War Against the Mosquestream Media."
This is guerrilla warfare in the information battlespace, in the war of ideas. These media opportunities were hardly perfect, but they were something. Why make perfect the enemy of the good? They were better than the traditional blackout on our freedom- defense initiatives. It was a shot, and I was taking it and running with it, no matter how disgusting it all was.
From the media’s perspective, the Ground Zero mosque was an historical phenomenon. For the first time, a major news story became the most important national and international news story without the media. Think about that. Unlike the fringe pastor in Florida, who tweeted a Qur’an threat and the media descended like locusts to a Florida backwater to create a news story, a narrative, the Ground Zero mosque was not shaped by the media, not covered by the media — not at first anyway.
It’s hard to know what to make of a serious short film in which a teacher blows up children as young as ten for disagreeing with climate change activism, with their blood and guts splattered over terrified class mates. It’s not a question I ever expected to have, until the “10:10” campaign released just such a video this week.
The video consists of four scenes. In each, a teacher, a company manager, a soccer coach, and a sound producer breezily intone an audience to reduce their carbon emissions. The target is a ten per cent reduction over twelve months beginning in 2010, which is the thrust of the 10:10 global campaign. They close with what turns out to be a menacingly sarcastic caveat “no pressure,” which is also the title of the film. In each scene the majority of the audience enthusiastically pledges to reduce their emissions, but one or two refuse or are indifferent. The scenes end with the authority figure pushing a red button that detonates the dissenters to a puree. Their blood covers the hysterical survivors.
After less than a day, the campaign took the movie off their website and issued an apology. The film is still available elsewhere.
I’d like to think that the film’s makers are fringe players in the global community of climate change activists or that they didn’t really believe it would help their cause, or that they just have a better sense of humour than I do. Let us test some of these possible escape hatches from the charge that this is actually the rotten core of the whole climate change activist movement.
For a fringe campaign, 10:10 has been remarkably successful. Around 100,000 people from 152 countries have signed up. Prime Minister David Cameron has pledged the entire British government to participate. Large companies are associated with 10:10, including Britain’s Royal Mail, the electronics giant Sony, and Facebook. The United Nations backed Climate Neutral Network is one of its many “partner” organisations. The World Wildlife Fund for Nature and Greenpeace are supporters through their proxy the Global Campaign for Climate Action.
So 10:10 is not a fringe organization. They’re widely trusted in the global climate activist community. Whether these adherents will now denounce the campaign for its tasteless exercise in arrogance and sadism remains to be seen. Let’s hope so, but it seems unlikely for the following reason ...
I haven't had time to follow this too closely, but a mighty unit of Canadian bloggers has forced a cancellation of an Islamist mainstreaming event at Canada's Department of National Defence.
Through the mighty Blazing Catfur™ and others, an IslamoFascist brainwashing Muslim cultural event will NOT be happening at the Canadian Department of National Defence (DND)– also thanks to the cojones-enabled Minister of National Defence, Nova Scotian MP Peter MacKay (here’s his e-mail).
The Elmasry-created CIC (Sue Mark Steyn!™, All stinking dog-ape Jews Israelis over 18 are great for target-practice!™) a.k.a. the Canadian Islamic Congress (a big name for a small but influential pro-terror stealth-jihad group) was to hold a special food & dance & hate-imam event by the CIC-created ‘You Will Be Our SlavesIslamic Heritage Month‘ observances at the Department of National Defence headquarters in Ottawa.
Oh NO You Don’t!
Some attentive & quietly heroical member of the forces got the official e-mail regarding said event, and fired it along to several bloggers. That got online, which got to the Minister in charge by various routes, and that, dear readers, got the CIC dumped & the event cancelled ASAP. Victory dance ensues!
I regret to say that the Government of Canada has chosen to reward the Canadian Islamic Congress for its attempt to constrain what freeborn peoples can say. This year the Department of National Defence is celebrating "Islamic Heritage Month" with the very group that tried to criminalize my writing in the Dominion and force Canadian liberties to submit to the strictures of Islam. There is barely any point in complaining about this. You can measure the state of Her Majesty's northern dominion by asking yourself this: Who's more likely to wind up in the Order of Canada - Ezra Levant or Imam Zijad Delic? Come to that, who's more likely to end up as Governor-General?
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