A lone gunman spread terror in the Belgian city of Liege, opening fire and throwing hand grenades onto a square packed Christmas shoppers, killing five people and himself, and injuring scores.At Pamela's, "MORE ON MUSLIM GUNMEN IN BELGIUM," and "BELGIUM GRENADE ATTACK BY MUSLIM[S]: 4 DEAD, 75 WOUNDED."
Public spending on autistic children in California varies significantly by racial or ethnic group and socioeconomic status, according to data analyzed by the Los Angeles Times.RTWT.
For autistic children 3 to 6 — a critical period for treating the disorder — the state Department of Developmental Services last year spent an average of $11,723 per child on whites, compared with $11,063 on Asians, $7,634 on Latinos and $6,593 on blacks.
Data from public schools, though limited, shows that whites are more likely to receive basic services such as occupational therapy to help with coordination and motor skills.
The divide is even starker when it comes to the most coveted service — a behavioral aide from a private company to accompany a child throughout each school day, at a cost that often reaches $60,000 a year.
In the state's largest school district, Los Angeles Unified, white elementary school students on the city's affluent Westside have such aides at more than 10 times the rate of Latinos on the Eastside.
It might be tempting to blame such disparities on prejudice, but the explanation is more complicated.
“Part of what you're seeing here is the more educated and sophisticated you are, the louder you scream and the more you ask for,” said Soryl Markowitz, an autism specialist at the Westside Regional Center, which arranges state-funded services in West Los Angeles for people with developmental disabilities.
In both the developmental system and the schools, the process for determining what services a disabled child receives is in essence a negotiation with the parents.
Democrats want felons to vote, because an overwhelming majority of them will vote Democratic. They want illegal aliens to vote for the same reason. And they want loyal Democrats to vote more than once where they are able to do so. Where there is no voter security, these abuses will increase. So, either through legal rulings or through intimidation, the Democrats want to disable the states from protecting the integrity of the ballot box. It appears that Obama’s politicized Department of Justice will be in the forefront of this effort.
RELATED: At The Other McCain, "‘F– Michelle Fields!’ — Interview With Reporter Harassed at Occupy DC Protest."
COARSEGOLD, Calif. — The six-page, single-spaced letter that Nancy Dondero and about 50 of her relatives received last month was generously salted with legal citations and footnotes. But its meaning was brutally simple. “It is the decision by a majority of the Tribal Council,” the letter said, “that you are hereby disenrolled.”Continue reading.
And with that, Ms. Dondero’s official membership in the Picayune Rancheria of the Chukchansi Indians, the cultural identity card she had carried all her life, summarily ended.
“That’s it,” Ms. Dondero, 58, said. “We’re tribeless.”
Ms. Dondero and her clan have joined thousands of Indians in California who have been kicked out of their tribes in recent years for the crime of not being of the proper bloodline.
For centuries, American Indian tribes have banished people as punishment for serious offenses. But only in recent years, experts say, have they begun routinely disenrolling Indians deemed inauthentic members of a group. And California, with dozens of tiny tribes that were decimated, scattered and then reconstituted, often out of ethnically mixed Indians, is the national hotbed of the trend.
Clan rivalries and political squabbles are often triggers for disenrollment, but critics say one factor above all has driven the trend: casino gambling. The state has more than 60 Indian casinos that took in nearly $7 billion last year, the most of any state, according to the Indian Gaming Commission.
For Indians who lose membership in a tribe, the financial impact can be huge. Some small tribes with casinos pay members monthly checks of $15,000 or more out of gambling profits. Many provide housing allowances and college scholarships. Children who are disenrolled can lose access to tribal schools.
A Chick-fil-A restaurant in Irvine has fired a cashier who typed the names "Ching" and "Chong" onto the receipts of two Asian customers – an affront that has flashed through the blogosphere in recent days.Continue reading. Continue reading.
The company quickly issued a media statement distancing itself from the "inappropriate and unthinking behavior" of its employee. The woman, identified only as Lia on the undated receipts, was immediately dismissed, according to the statement.
A UC Irvine student posted a picture of the receipts on his tumblr blog late last week. He wrote that the cashier never asked for the names of the two men when she took their order, and instead typed "Ching" and "Chong" into the "Guest ID" field on their receipts.
"Racism is still alive these days, people," wrote the blogger, who identifies himself only as Kelvin on his tumblr page.
The "angry asian man" blog picked up the story. Then the OC Weekly did. By Tuesday, national media were reporting on the "Ching" and "Chong" receipts.
Legislation to extend the payroll-tax holiday, reduce and extend unemployment benefits, and avoid a 27 percent cut to Medicare doctor reimbursement passed the House on Tuesday by a vote of 234 to 193.Also at New York Times, "House Passes Extension of Cut to Payroll Taxes" (via Memorandum).
The legislation, which passed with just 10 Democratic votes, will head to the Senate where a vote is expected later this week. Leadership aides in the Senate said they expect the GOP-drafted legislation to fail when it reaches the Senate floor.
Leaders in both the House and the Senate have agreed to extend the programs in the GOP legislation, but the fight still continues over the size of the unemployment program, the future of the Keystone XL pipeline, and how to pay for the package. Democratic objection to the House-passed bill led to an official veto threat from President Obama on Tuesday.
nominee, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, but it also found deep unease with Mr. Gingrich among independents and swing voters who normally decide presidential elections.Check that Google link for the full report.
With less than three weeks before the first votes are cast in Iowa, Republicans give the former House speaker the most commanding lead of any candidate this year: He has 40% support among likely GOP voters, compared to 23% for Mr. Romney. All of the other Republican candidates fell short of 10% support in the poll.
Further showing Mr. Gingrich's advantage, his lead over Mr. Romney appears set to grow if other candidates drop out of the race. In a two-man contest, Mr. Gingrich leads Mr. Romney by 23 points, winning the support of nearly six of 10 Republicans.
The Gingrich surge comes after he drew support from only 13% of likely GOP voters in last month's Journal poll, which Mr. Romney led with 28%. Herman Cain drew 27% of the support in November, but he has since suspended his campaign.
The survey also offered stark illustration of the challenge Republicans face as they lean toward two candidates who have yet to generate much spark among the wider electorate.
Nineteen years oldRichard Campbell's death is discussed by Richard Smith, "The State of the Prisons," British Medical Journal (January 1984):
What an age to die
Ashford is a prison
where they hide a lie
Richard Campbell
Were you mad?
Or just a bit insane?
Was it being a Rasta
cause you so much pain
white nigger
black nigger
Bleed the same
white nigger
black nigger
Rasta boy in prison
white nigger
black nigger
they made sure,
He'd never
see his twentieth year
when you're a number
you're never a name
they took away his faith
...a candle
...without a flame
the law of animals
destroy what you don't understand...
Campbell's family were unhappy with this verdict ["dehydration due to schizophrenia"] and arranged for the Battersea and Wandsworth Trade Council to hold a public inquiry. Many individuals and groups, but not the Home Office, gave evidence to this two day inquiry, which concluded: (a) that there had been no good evidence that Campbell was schizophrenic; (b) that he had been failed by the legal profession, by the probation service, and by the authorities at Ashford Remand Centre; and (c) that he died "because of the negligence of the authorities."
The divisions between left and right are fundamental and unbridgeable. A frequent trope of political rhetoric is that everyone agrees about the ends; we merely disagree about the means. Although this is often true at the level of a discrete policy issue (for example, how to broaden access to health care), it is wrong at the deeper level of what might be called the “tectonic plates” that drive the individual political battles. Reducing left-right differences to disagreements only over means has a numbing effect on clear thinking, and is an obstacle to grappling with some of the larger problems that now need reform that goes far beyond the business-as-usual tinkering around the edges, such as entitlement spending. Liberals tend to believe in old-fashioned leveling egalitarianism; conservatives do not. (Much more on this point in due course.) Rather than evade or gloss over fundamental differences, highlighting them is the vital pre-condition to finding any middle ground for possible compromise.That's one hefty essay, and I'm looking forward to the next installment in the series ---although the main problem right now is that "liberalism" really isn't a left-wing ideology. It's an invention of American progressives to mask their socialist ideological foundations. This guy gets closer to the real American left, but also continues to call them "liberals" when they are not. See "Utopian Folly: Liberalism’s Philosophical Problem."
Mitt Romney is seen as a boring and risk-averse candidate by many voters, so this latest nugget of information might turn a few heads.More at that link.
The GOP presidential candidate has revealed he defecated into a bucket while serving as a Mormon missionary in France in the 1960s.
Mr Romney spent two and half years knocking on doors as he was greeted by locals with guns, or their barking dogs chasing at his heels.
‘A number of the apartments I lived in when I was there didn’t have toilets,’ he said in Hudson, New Hampshire, reported the New York Times.
‘We had instead the little pads on the ground. OK, you know how that works. There was a chain behind you. It was kind of a bucket affair.’
They used to bathe by using a hose in a sink. ‘I said to myself: “Wow, I’m sure lucky to be born in the United States of America”,’ Mr Romney said.
If you can get past the attacks on President Obama, the disregard for actual economic conditions, and the assertion of “philosophical decreptitude” in American liberalism, you’ll find a smart point about the GOP presidential debates in Fred Barnes’s latest op-ed for The Weekly Standard. For your sake, I’ll just post it here:Oh, Fred Barnes. So what? He's a reliable establishment conservative. And that's just it: He is establishment. The debates have been at times boring and excessive, but they've been the best thing for the nomination campaigns I can remember in a long time. And they're making a difference.Besides aiding Obama, Republicans have hurt themselves in numerous ways by letting the debates be the organizing events of the campaign. The stronger candidates have been diminished by appearing, debate after debate, on equal footing with also-rans whose chances of winning the party’s presidential nomination are nil.Given the extent to which Barnes is a solid member of the conservative establishment, I wouldn’t be surprised if he were echoing the thoughts of many other conservative elites. The debates have had an astonishing and unprecedented impact on how conservative voters view and evaluate the Republican presidential candidates, and it’s hard to say that this has been a positive development.
Palestinian identity is just so much gibberish. The official definition of that identity encompasses only those parts of the Palestine Mandate which Israel holds today.But RTWT.
The people who live on the parts of the Palestine Mandate that were turned into the Kingdom of Jordan in 1921 are not Palestinians. There is no call to incorporate them into a Palestinian state. The people who lived in the parts of Israel that were captured by Jordan and Egypt in 1948 weren't Palestinians, and there was no call to turn the land that today comprises the so-called "Occupied Territories" into a state. But in 1967 when Israel liberated those areas-- only then did they magically turn into Palestinians.
How is anyone supposed to take this nonsense seriously?
US presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich ... has recently demonstrated yet again Melanie’s First Rule of Modern Political Discourse – the more obvious the truth that you utter, the more explosive and abusive the reaction.More at the link (with additional sources at the discussion).
For Gingrich said the Palestinian Arabs were ‘an invented people’ – and the world promptly started hurling execrations at him, as if such a statement proved beyond doubt that Gingrich was indeed a dangerously extreme individual who, when it came to political positioning, was just off the graph altogether.
In an interview on Saturday, Newt Gingrich put some reality into the surreal discussion of the Middle East conflict and (as he put it) the delusional nature of the current “peace process.” The Palestinians are indeed an “invented people” — invented by the Nasser dictatorship and KGB by the way — and the Hitlerian lie that Israel occupies one square inch of “Arab” let alone “Palestinian” land needs to be buried for any clarity on what the conflict is about, let alone progress towards peace.And another essay from Horowitz, "An Invented People Despite Some Doubters":
Of course there is no peace in the Middle East and there can be no peace so long as the Muslim Arabs want to kill the Jews and destroy the Jewish state. That is the explicit goal of the enemies of Israel in the terrorist entities of Gaza and the West Bank, and also of Israel’s principal enemy the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Some conservatives, most notably Elliot Abrams, have criticized Newt Gingrich’s observation that the Palestinians are an invented people by saying that even if they are — (and there is no real question but that they are) — they’ve been around long enough (50 years, or since the creation of the PLO in 1964) so that we need to deal with that fact — not. What makes anyone think this is a people even today? Last spring I spoke at Brooklyn College. My speech was attended and then obstructed by a sizeable contingent from the Brooklyn College “Palestinian Club” — at least fifty people, all ethnic Arabs claiming to be Palestinians. During my talk I referred to the Palestinian death cult, its admiration for Hitler, its determination to wipe the Jewish state from the face of the earth, its eagerness to kill any Jew and to blow up its own children in the process. I said it was a “sick, sick culture.” But when the members of the so-called Palestinian Club erupted at me, what they said was “Why do you want to lynch all Muslims?” (This is on video available on YouTube or on our site — under “Videos” — for anyone who wants to check. It comes in the Q&A period.) This does not sound like a nationalist movement.See also Bruce Thornton, "Newt Challenges the Myth of Palestinian Nationalism," and Ryan Mauro, "History of ‘Palestine’ Becomes Center of GOP Debate."
But the evidence is that Palestinians are a political fiction for a movement whose organizing desire is the destruction of the Jewish state and expulsion of the Jews is far stronger than this small incident. In 1948, 80% of the so-called “Palestine Mandate” had been given to the Hashemite minority in control of Jordan. The Jews were given half of the remaining 20% and the Arabs the other half. A nationalist movement would surely have accepted the partition and then laid claim to the 80% controlled by the Hashemites in Jordan. No such thing happened. Instead the Arab states including Jordan attacked the Jewish state with the intention of destroying it.
The upshot of that war was a Jewish victory in 1949. Whereupon Egypt annexed Gaza and Jordan annexed the West Bank — all the territory that had been offered to the so-called Palestinians and rejected by them. There was not a peep out of the Arab world — or out of the so-called Palestinians — over this rejection. Why? Because a Palestinian state was never their agenda. Their agenda was and is the destruction of the Jewish state and the expulsion of the Jews from the Middle East — or failing that, their absolute subjection as a hated minority without access to state power.
Hey, these are some of those folks who "can choose to express their sexual desires freely, partnering in whatever ways make sense to them."
Freaks.
As voting for the Republican presidential nomination rapidly nears, Mitt Romney is facing a troubling truth: This is not the race he signed up for.Continue reading.
The former Massachusetts governor, who has spent most of the year as a shaky front-runner, may still be the most salable GOP candidate in a general election, given his comparative moderation and buttoned-down persona.
The favorite of the moment, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, remains in danger of spontaneously combusting, given his long record of doing just that.
But right now it is Romney who is struggling, and the reason is clear: For most Republican voters, this contest has ceased to be about jobs and the economy, and instead rests on which candidate can shove a fist the furthest down President Obama's throat.
Romney came into the GOP contest figuring his blue-chip business background would make him the strongest contender at a time when pocketbook issues seemed like voters' overwhelming concern. For a while, it worked. Though Romney has never enjoyed the support of much more than a quarter of the Republican electorate, he remained at or near the top of voter surveys as several would-be alternatives rose and then imploded.
But as Saturday night's boisterous debate in Des Moines demonstrated, the fight for the GOP nomination has become just that: a test of pugilistic skills.
In much of my recent work — books and articles — I have addressed the issue of antisemitism in the contemporary world. That the beast is once again slouching, not only towards Bethlehem as in the Yeats poem, but towards Oslo, Paris, London, Stockholm, Malmo, Copenhagen, Vienna, Berlin, Warsaw, Washington, Toronto, Sydney, Caracas, Brussels, Amsterdam, and many other cities and regions around the globe, should come as no surprise. From biblical times to the present moment, in their own homeland or “scattered among the peoples,” Jews have never been safe. This is precisely what distinguishes the Jewish people from the rest of humanity, the specific nature of their “chosenness.” Wherever they may find themselves they are always at risk, whether actively or potentially, targeted for slander, exclusion, or extinction.God, that sounds awful, and worse because it's so objectively true.
In developing this argument in such books as The Big Lie (2007) and Hear, O Israel! (2009), I have been condemned by a number of my critics, who accuse me of exaggeration, self-pity, or a sort of obsolescence, as if my gaze were fixed on the past at the expense of a more amenable or complex present. The fact that many of these detractors are themselves Jewish is only to be expected, for Jews have a long history of wilfully ignoring the signs and rejecting the self-evident. It is not only the JINOs (Jews in Name Only), the “non-Jewish Jews” flagged by Isaac Deutscher, or the apikorsim (“wicked sons” of Jewish public life) enamored of their enemies who are blind to the historical fatwa against them. It is also those whom I refer to as the “good Jews” and whom author and Sun Media columnist Ezra Levant calls the “official Jews” — that is, a significant number of Jewish communicants, as well as their secular counterparts — who refuse to read the writing on the wall even when it is in their own language, inscribed in block letters, and blazoned on every street corner.
These Jewish critics — I have in mind people like Richard Just, editor of The New Republic, éminence grise Clifford Orwin of the Hoover Institution, and Canadian poet Harold Heft, among others who share their inveterate myopia — assailed my analysis as, variously, hyper-inflated, unfair to Islam, scare-mongering, one-dimensional, and so on, as if I refused to align my perspective with the mores of the enlightened and democratic West.
But the enlightened and democratic West is no longer what it very intermittently was — or rather, it is certainly not what it presents itself as being. The legacy media, academia, the political class, and an alarming proportion of the public have made common cause with the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish campaign of the growing Islamic hegemony in the realms of ideology and practice. This is especially true of Europe whose Jewish population is increasingly under threat. As French philosopher Guy Milliere observes in his new manuscript Dissident: Why Europe Is Dead and What It Means for America and the World (not yet published), “Almost everywhere in Europe, it is now dangerous for a practicing Jew to wear a yarmulke,” a development that he regards as a visible and repellant symptom “of a wider and more disquieting decay.” There is no doubt, he continues, “that there is something rotten in today’s Europe.”
Amber Dias couldn't be sure what was wrong with her little boy.She had to hint about a lawsuit? God, that is awful.
Chase was a bright, loving 2 1/2-year-old. But he didn't talk much and rarely responded to his own name. He hated crowds and had a strange fascination with the underside of the family tractor.
Searching the Internet, Amber found stories about other children like Chase — on websites devoted to autism.
“He wasn't the kid rocking in the corner, but it was just enough to scare me,” recalled Dias, who lives with her husband and three children on a dairy farm in the Central Valley town of Kingsburg.
She took Chase to a psychologist in Los Angeles, who said the boy indeed had autism and urged the family to seek immediate treatment.
But a team at the Fresno agency that arranges state-funded services for autism said Chase didn't have the disorder. His problems, staff members said, were nothing more than common developmental delays that he would eventually outgrow.
Unconvinced, Dias imagined the worst — that Chase would never have a girlfriend, a job, a place of his own. She pressed the agency to reconsider and hinted at a lawsuit. Finally, officials relented, and her son began receiving 40 hours a week of one-on-one behaviorial therapy.
This morning’s SF Chronicle has the requisite Occupy concern-troll stories spread throughout several sections, including a lead story headlined “Opposition growing to shutdown of Port.” In addition to interviews with union members and truckers who are conflicted about supporting the shutdown, the story says that “some activists” have concluded that a port blockade is “too extreme” and so strongly disagree with confrontational tactics that they now call themselves “99 Percenters” instead of “Occupiers.” Various groups affiliated with Occupy Oakland have been holding trainings on diversity of tactics and non-violence strategies in anticipation of tomorrow’s events. On several Facebook forums there are very heated discussions involving rumors of peacekeepers who may be planning to “kettle” any comrades who do not comport themselves in whatever they deem to be an acceptable fashion.Check that link. This lady's a freakin' communist. Sheesh. (Also at Lonely Conservative and Memeorandum.)
As I read this, as always, I think: What the Fuck Would Mario Do?
A detailed examination of more than 20 million Tweets about the race for president finds that the political discussion on Twitter is measurably different than the one found in the blogosphere-more voluminous, more fluid and even less neutral.No surprise there, but RTWT.
People like Ron Paul have taken the valuable libertarian creed of opposition to intrusive government and support for individual freedom and twisted it into a belief system that doesn’t view U.S. security abroad or the life of a besieged democratic Jewish state as something Americans should care about. Far from respecting Israel’s sovereignty, Paul is willing to watch with complacence as its very existence is called into question without the U.S. feeling obligated to lift a finger. His “respect” for Israel is little different from the sentiments voiced by an earlier generation of isolationists — the “America First” group — whose admiration of Nazi Germany and indifference to the fate of the Jews restrained the country’s initial response to both Hitler and the Holocaust.And that is why I wrote two posts hammering Doug Mataconis at Outside the Beltway. We went around on Twitter for a while and he was unable to defend his opposition to Israel. Faced with the fact that "Palestinians" repeatedly call for Israel's destruction, Mataconis was relegated to calling me names like "nutjob" and "Pamela Geller loon."
At Gentlemen's Quarterly, "GQ's Model Behavior Body of the Year: Kate Upton."
And at The Other McCain, "Rule 5 Sunday: Obsolete."Somebody oughta have the courage to tell the truth: These people are terrorists. They teach terrorism in their schools...Previously: "Newt Gingrich Attacked By Weasels," and "Newt's Backtracking on Palestinians as 'Invented People'?"
The fact that today, a Palestinian people does exist doesn’t give the Palestinians a right to invent history, of course. ABC News didn’t point out that they regularly claim a history of two thousand years or more. And Golda Meir was pointing to the fact that the dominant politics of the Palestinian movement certainly as late as 1945 was a pan-Arab nationalist one.And despite Gingrich's decisive confirmation of his initial comments, Doug "Weasel" Mataconis doubles-down in his attacks, alleging that:
As I said yesterday, imagine if Gingrich had made these statements as President. The outrage would have been amplified a thousand fold, and any hope that the United States would be able to serve any useful purpose in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be out the window for the foreseeable future...What Doug "Weasel" Mataconis does not do is cite Gingrich's full statements, which reaffirms his initial point about an "invented" Palestinian nation. From the transcript:
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: 22:04:00:00 --- Speaker Gingrich, as I've said, this has caused quite a reaction in-- in the Middle East. The chief Palestinian negotiator, Sa-- Saeb Erekat, said, "Mark my words: These statements of Gingrich will be the ammunition and weapons of the bin Ladens and the extremists for a long, long time."Yes, folks should stop lying, especially Doug "Weasel" Mataconis, the paleocon Israel-basher who couldn't argue his way out of a paper bag.
SPEAKER NEWT GINGRICH: 22:04:13:00 --- How would he know the difference? Look from historic, George, simply. Is-- is what I said factually correct? Yes. Is it historically true? Yes. Are we in a situation where every day, rockets are fired into Israel while the United States, the current administration, tries to pressure the Israelis into a peace process?
22:04:33:00 --- Hamas does not admit the-- the right of Israel to exist, and says publicly, "Not a single Jew will remain." The Palestinian Authority ambassador to India said last month, "There is no difference between Fatah and Hamas. We both agree Israel has no right to exist."
22:04:50:00 --- Somebody oughta have the courage to tell the truth: These people are terrorists. They teach terrorism in their schools. They have textbooks that say, "If there are 13 Jews and nine Jews are killed, how many Jews are left?" We pay for those textbooks through our aid money. It's fundamentally-- time for somebody to have the guts to stand up and say, "Enough lying about the Middle East."
The Palestinian nation was invented as a tool of the jihad against Israel.Image Credit: The People's Cube.
The court has already agreed to decide whether the Obama healthcare law is constitutional. If it takes the immigration case as well, both decisions probably would come down by late June, just months before the presidential nominating conventions.
And from Reaganite Republican, "Reaganite's Sunday Funnies," and Theo Spark, "Cartoon Round Up..."
I'll have more on this later.
Check Robert Stacy McCain, "ABC Iowa Debate Reaction Roundup UPDATE: Jennifer Rubin, WTF?"
And at Los Angeles Times, "Gingrich is favorite target at latest GOP debate"; New York Times, "Race Reshaped, Rivals Target Gingrich in G.O.P. Debate"; and Washington Post, "Gingrich comes under attack in GOP debate."
My name is Paul Derengowski, and I was hired by Tarrant County College in 2008 to teach Great World Religions, Bible History I & II, and Introduction to Philosophy.Continue reading.
On November 8, 2011, I gave the second of a two-part lecture on Islam, as I've been doing Spring, Fall, and sometimes twice in the Summer, dealing with Islamic history and doctrine, and more particularly Muhammad's move to Medina. A question had been raised by two Muslim students in the previous the lecture concerning the sources I used to discuss the raid at Nakhlah. At the start of the second lecture I provided my sources (The Life of Muhammad by Haykal and the Qur'an), which included reading Sura 2:216-217. That is when all hell broke loose.
Both Muslim students, for an hour, berated me, my sources, and my credentials. When other students in the class attempted to ask questions or make comments, then the Muslim students would interrupt them as well. Finally, toward the end of the class period, a student made a comment on how "scary" the person of Muhammad seemed to be. That's when the male Muslim blurted out "you ought to be scared," and then bolted for the door in a fit of outrage. I subsequently filed a campus police report on him out of concern for the safety of students and myself. The female followed suit as well, claiming later in a libelous email she passed around unbeknownst to me—that is, until one of the students forwarded the diatribe to me later—that she was not going to sit there and listen to me slander her religion, even though all I did was quote from Islamic sources.
It was the libelous email that really started the wheels in motion leading up to my resignation. The female Muslim student not only stealthily sent around the email to all the rest of the students in the class to (1) defame me behind my back, but also to (2) try and gather support for her reckless behavior.
This week Senate Republicans blocked President Obama's nomination of former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Only two Republicans broke ranks -- Olympia Snowe of Maine and Scott Brown of Massachusetts -- and both senators are up for re-election next year.Continue reading.
Ms. Snowe should win handily if she isn't toppled by a primary challenger. Mr. Brown's re-election prospects, by contrast, are shakier. Two new polls show the GOP freshman trailing Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor who helped establish the CFPB and is expected to be the Democratic nominee. The University of Massachusetts-Amherst gives Ms. Warren a four-point lead and a University of Massachusetts-Lowell/Boston Herald poll has her up by seven points. Three months ago, most polls showed Mr. Brown slightly ahead. The senator's approval rating has also fallen by eight points to 45%, though his favorables are still in positive territory and exceed Ms. Warren's.
While the poll results may be disconcerting for Mr. Brown and Senate Republicans, they're not unexpected. Ms. Warren's campaign has spent $1.5 million on an ad that portrays her as a defender of the middle class. And the League of Conservation Voters has dumped $2 million on spots that tar Mr. Brown as a Washington insider. The real surprise is that Mr. Brown still leads Ms. Warren, 53-37, with independents. Because Republicans constitute less than 15% of the Massachusetts electorate, Mr. Brown will probably have to win more than two-thirds of the independent vote and probably pick up some Democrats as well.
According to the AP, Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi said that Mr. Gingrich had “lost touch with reality” and that his comments were “a cheap way to win (the) pro-Israel vote.”The Romney people are extremely annoying. And I'm with Pamela on this whole affair:
A pair of Mr. Romney’s surrogates said Mr. Gingrich’s comments were evidence that the former House speaker is a loose cannon who struggles to stay on message.
“I’m not sure that statement gets us any closer to accomplishing an agenda,” former Ambassador Mary Kramer, a Romney supporter, said Friday on a conference call with reporters. “That’s one of the things that makes me a little nervous about Speaker Gingrich.”
Mr. Romney has adopted a choreographed approach to campaigning. “Gov. Romney is much more disciplined in his approach and much more thoughtful about the things he says,” said Renee Schulte, an Iowa State Representative and one of the Romney campaign’s Iowa co-chairs. “This comment is just another example of the difference between the two.”
Finally, the biggest lie of the late twentieth century has been called just that, a lie. And while I have many issues with New Gingrich (Bachmann or Santorum would be infinitely better), Gingrich must be heralded for speaking the truth about Yaser Arafat's enduring annihilationist narrative, the "Palestinian".And of course, I'm not with Doug Mataconis, who's a leading paleocon member of the Israel annihilation industry: "Newt Gingrich Calls Palestinians an “Invented People”."
For peace to be achieved, the belligerent has to stop making war. The Arabs have made war on the Jews in their ancient homeland since Israel became a state and indeed for three decades before that. For a solution to be arrived at, it’s necessary correctly to state the problem. The problem is not the absence of a state of Palestine. The problem is that the Arabs want to get rid of Israel.You got that, Doug?
As the prospect of Newt Gingrich landing the Republican nomination for president started feeling intensely real last week, the former House speaker placed a call to a man in a position to cause major damage.More at the link.
Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina once led a band of GOP rebels who tried to oust Gingrich, and hadn't spoken to him about those days of internecine warfare in the 14 years since.
The two men talked for more than an hour, Graham said, and the senator came away hopeful that the man who once "drove us all crazy" had changed. "The question has to be, 'Is the Newt today different than the Newt then?' " Graham said this week. "Seems to me that he is, but time will tell."
Others who had a close-up view of Gingrich's leadership remain skeptical.
"Some people are willing to reconsider him. I'm not," said Rep. Steven C. LaTourette (R-Ohio), one of the remaining members of the Class of '94, whose arrival in the House made Gingrich the first Republican speaker in 40 years. "His leadership skills back in the '90s were not consistent with what I would want to see in the president of the United States."
As Gingrich continues to surge in polls, Republicans on Capitol Hill are grappling with their attitude toward their former leader. Few in Washington have more baggage than Gingrich, and most in Washington know what's in it. The question of whether Gingrich can convince his party that he's evolved may determine whether his support grows or falls back.
VAN SUSTEREN: Now Kristi LaCroix said there is even an online campaign to get her fired. Law enforcement says there's been dangerous behavior from both sides of the recall effort. Governor Scott Walker joins us. Good evening, sir.These are not normal people --- they're progressives, and they don't accept legitimate difference. They seek to demonize and destroy, nothing less --- and I can attest to that first hand.
WIS. GOV. SCOTT WALKER: Good evening, Greta.
VAN SUSTEREN: Governor, do you have anything or would anyone within your close circle have anything to do with this ad or did the teacher come up with the ad herself?
WALKER: Actually it's our campaign that did the ad, but this teacher literally sat down in front of a camera like I am right now and just talked. She had no script. She just talked what was on her heart. We have another teacher starting with a similar ad today and we will have workers in the private sector and parents and grandparents.
But this woman just said what was on her mind. It's amazing to see how outrageous it is. That's what happens when you see so much influence coming in from outside of Wisconsin. That's not the way we do it in Wisconsin. We don't attack people because it's a difference of opinion. People came out to my home and attacked -- not attacked but harassed not only my family but my neighbors. They have been point to go people on Facebook and pointing to folks on my kids' Facebook site and they have said outrageous things about my family again today.
Again, it's one thing to inform a debate or another to distract or distort it. And nobody, whether they are for or against me, including those who oppose our recall, nobody should be doing things that cross the line like that.
VAN SUSTEREN: Explain something to me. When you ran for office you had a certain platform. When you got into office did you carry out that platform so that it was no particular surprise to the voters, or did you change and thus all of a sudden everyone gotten enraged and said Walker went much farther than he of told us? Or explain how that worked.
WALKER: No. And in fact, I talked very explicitly about the fact that I was going to balance the budget, one of the largest deficits we had of had, a $3.6 billion, and do it without raising taxes, do it without cutting core services. In fact a billion dollars more was added to the budget for Medicaid for needy families and children and seniors, and put resources more effectively like in the classroom to help the kids. We did all those things. Unlike states that raised taxes, laid off employees and did other things that damaged their states, we avoided that because we put reforms in that empowered our state and our local government to balance our budgets.
The national and state polls are pretty clear: Newt Gingrich has moved into the top position for the Republican presidential nomination. Other candidates have surged in the past several months, first Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, then Texas Gov. Rick Perry, and, more recently, former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain. But over the past week or so, even some Republican operatives who do not support Gingrich are starting to take seriously the possibility that his lead will last. Holding a 15-point advantage in the new Gallup national tracking poll, as well as leads in multiple polls in Iowa, South Carolina, and other key states, Gingrich has clearly become a force.Oh boy, that does present some problems, doesn't it. I think that Ron Paul ad from last week is just the tip of the iceberg. But continue reading here.
Even after stipulating that the former House speaker is a very smart guy with more ideas than any three politicians you will ever find, I’m still having trouble wrapping my brain around the possibility that he will be the GOP nominee. To accept that scenario, you have to buy the idea that the laws of political gravity have been suspended this year, that things that normally matter a lot aren’t going to matter this year—or, to borrow a title from a popular book, This Time Is Different.
We are asked to believe that having campaign money isn’t important. That campaign organization and infrastructure don’t matter, even in a fight for delegates spread across 50 states. That it’s OK for the entire campaign brain trust of the apparent front-runner to reside under one head of hair and between one set of ears. That it’s feasible for one person to not only devise but also implement a national strategy and tactical plans for every state.
Then we are asked to believe that Republicans, specifically conservatives, are going to ignore some of the more problematic aspects of Gingrich’s background and policy positions. I personally like and respect Gingrich a great deal, and he has always been nice to me and generous with his time, so I won’t rehash all of his potential problems among conservatives. Let’s just take one—sitting on a love seat with the reviled Nancy Pelosi talking about climate change, in a 2008 ad that he was asked to do by former Vice President Al Gore, another Democrat not held in exceedingly high regard among Republicans. How is that appearance going to look when an opponent cuts it up and puts it into an ad aired on Fox? A large closet, if not a whole warehouse, of opposition research on Gingrich is being readied and is just now starting to be unloaded. This material is arguably much richer than anything ever assembled against any other candidate. After all, Gingrich has been in the political arena for a very long time and has had far more than his share of detractors willing to share their grievances...
And from Rush Limbaugh, "President Obama's Osawatomie Speech was a Marxist Attack on America."
Plus, from Serr8d's Cutting Edge, "More on Barack Obama's Osawatomie Campaign Speech."
PREVIOUSLY: "Charles Krauthammer: Obama's Class Resentment."
PREVIOUSLY: "Maxim's 2011 Hometown Hotties: Windy City's Jelena."
And the dude was a jihadi? See Astute Blogger, "Hollywood Shooter Repeatedly Shouted 'Allahu Akbar' During Rampage?" And at Pamela's, "HOLLYWOOD JIHAD: SHOOTOUT, GUNMAN CALMLY TARGETED DRIVERS AND PEOPLE WHILE SHOUTING ALLAHU AKBAR!"
I was just pulled into police car here in Sitra, #Bahrain, but not sure if I'm being detained or protected.Later tweets indicate that his cameraman was hit by rubber bullets, so I imagine being detained might also have afforded protection.
