Missouri Voters Oppose Mandatory Health Insurance

At WSJ:

Voters in Missouri overwhelmingly opposed requiring people to buy health insurance, in a largely symbolic slap at the Obama administration's health overhaul.

The referendum was the first chance for voters to express a view on the overhaul, although turnout in the state was low and Republican voters significantly outnumbered Democrats.

With more than half of precincts reporting, 73% of voters supported Proposition C, establishing a state law that says Missouri cannot compel people to pay a penalty or fine if they fail to carry health coverage. Twenty-seven percent voted against the proposition.

Professor Kenneth Howell Reinstated at University of Illinois

At Fox News, "University of Illinois Reinstates Instructor Fired Over Catholic Beliefs":

A Catholicism instructor fired from the the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for saying he agrees with the church's teaching that homosexual sex is immoral has been reinstated.

Adjunct professor Kenneth Howell said he was fired at the end of the spring semester after sending an e-mail explaining Catholic beliefs on homosexuality to his students preparing for an exam.

Now the University of Illinois says Howell will return next semester.

"The department of religion will continue Kenneth Howell's adjunct appointment for the fall semester, and has offered him the opportunity to teach Religion 127, Introduction to Catholicism," school spokesman Robin Kaler said in a statement.

RTWT, and check the links, especially the letter in support of Howell from the Alliance Defense Fund. (Plus, more at the ADF blog.)

One Big Pile

That would be Brain Rage's argument for drug decriminalization, although Charles Johnson comes to mind as well:

While Not Quite Hate Mail...

...There's definitely a lot of anger in this anonymous comment from yesterday:

You are so active in degrading obama. Where were you when our last president ran our nation into the ground? In the next five years as we see our recovery, you will feel like a total idiot for being on the wrong side. Do you have political amnesia? Do you know what the Republicans have done to our economy? How can you sit there and hold your ignorant anti-obama sign knowing our actual history. Not the history that exists in the fantasy in your dreams, but the history that actually just happened in 8 years of national rape. Do you honestly choose this as your life battle? To deny the nation a new try at something people just like you have been F***** up for the past three decades????????????? You think our biggest problems are mexicans and affordable health care? SERIOUS??? What about the billions wasted on useless wars? What about the right wing ideas of a free-market that enabled the banking industry and wall street to bend us over and economically rape us for 8 years strait? How can you not recognize you're on the wrong side???? Are you just plain stupid???

Truly Madly Deeply

How about something more beautiful, compared to all the anti-demonology blogging yesterday? Enjoy Savage Garden:

Hot on the Trail: Immigration Enforcement in Arizona After SB 1070 Takes Effect

Readers can let me know if they find on the ground coverage at the other networks. But this one from Fox is pretty cool (Griff Jenkins is awesome):

And we're supposed to feel sorry for the lady here taken into detention?

And the mainstream press continues to make Arizona the bad guy. At LAT, "Arizona was once tolerant of illegal immigrants. What happened?", and NYT, "The Hunt for American Decency in the Arizona Quicksand."

Obama's Iraq Speech at Disabled American Veterans National Convention

That main story's at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "President draws mixed reaction during visit." But see Peter Feaver, at Foreign Policy, "Obama's Iraq speech: another missed opportunity":

President Obama's speech on Iraq was a disappointment. Not a surprise, but a disappointment.

It was disappointing because it was yet another missed opportunity. He could have shown real statesmanship by acknowledging he was wrong about the surge. He could have reached across the aisle and credited Republicans who backed the policy he vigorously opposed and tried to thwart, a policy that has made it possible (but by no means certain) to hope for a responsible end to the Iraq war. He could have have told the truth about his Iraq strategy, that what he has pursued thus far has not been what he was arguing for in the campaign -- that would have involved the departure of all U.S. troops by mid 2008 -- but rather he has followed, in a more or less desultory fashion, a script written in the status of forces agreement negotiated by President Bush and Prime Minister Maliki.

Instead of giving such a speech, Obama gave a campaign address trying to claim credit for anything that is going well in Iraq and trying to avoid blame for anything that is going poorly. That may be shrewd campaign politics, but it is not the statesmanship the occasion warranted. The commander-in-chief missed an opportunity, and I worry that it will come back to haunt us ....

The truth is that Obama is running out of pages in the Bush playbook on Iraq and so increasingly it will fall to Obama to forge his own Iraq policy. Once the playbook is entirely his, he will bear full responsibility for the consequences. The only real change he made to the Iraq playbook he inherited was to signal to the Iraqi leaders that he was, in Charles Krauthammer's words, "washing his hands of Iraq." Where President Bush signaled a commitment to succeed regardless of the political cost, President Obama has signaled, perhaps unintentionally, a commitment to abandon Iraq regardless of the national security costs.

It is a commitment I don't think he can really stick to unless the Bush surge really has produced irreversible progress in Iraq -- something that no Bush alum would ever claim. If Iraq spirals into chaos, Obama will encounter the very same national interest calculation Bush encountered: What happens in Iraq matters greatly for U.S. national security, even more than what happens in Afghanistan (this is why Bush prioritized Iraq over Afghanistan in 2006-2008 when both were in trouble).

Adverse developments in Iraq will be (and will look to be) increasingly a function of the Obama Team taking their eye off of the ball and rushing to declare mission accomplished. Yes, in such a scenario the Iraqis should bear most of the blame, but the part that is due to U.S. action or inaction will be Obama's responsibility. And it will matter. Iraq is at the center of a region that every president since Jimmy Carter has identified as vital to our national security. Iraq is next door to, and the playground for mischief from, the most thorny national security challenge the United States faces: a nuclear-weapons-seeking Iranian regime. These inconvenient facts mean that if the Iraqi situation demands more focused and costly U.S. attention, it will likely get it. At that point, what sort of domestic coalition will be available for President Obama's Iraq policy?

Democrats Getting Clobbered

New clip from the Senate Republican Conference:

Hat Tip: Sean Hackbarth.

RELATED: Michael Barone, "Democrats Are Poised for Big Loss."

Plus, at Ruby Slippers, "Democratic Mass Hypnosis Continues."

BONUS: From Mark Blumenthal, "Democratic Surge In Polls Is Just Noise."

Afghanistan War a Mistake?

"Another of our country's children, giving his life for our freedom from terrorism. God bless you, soldier, thank you for your ultimate sacrifice. You will never be forgotten." --- From the comments at the Orange County Register.

The photo shows U.S. Marine Michael Chang grieving at the memorial for his best friend, Army Sgt. Daniel Lim. The Orange County Register has the front-page story and slideshow, "O.C. soldier's love for family and friends ran deep." A picture of Chang is also on the front-page of the hardcopy edition of today's Wall Street Journal. Looking at the images from the Sgt. Lim ceremonies, can we really believe the war was a mistake? Have the lives of those who've sacrificed been for naught? I don't believe so. But at almost 9 years, the war in Afghanistan may be stretching the limits of America's patience.

The partisan political splits have been longstanding. The Democratic Party used the war for cheap political purposes during the Bush administration. Democrats argued that America was fighting the wrong war in Iraq, that Afghanistan was the "good war" in the post-9/11 era. But as soon as it looked like the U.S. has secured a lasting stability --- if not all-out victory --- in Iraq, the Democrats' political calculus turned to antiwar mobilization against the Afghanistan deployment. Sober analysts are correct to contrast and justify the commitment of U.S. resources with the war aims in Afghanistan. They've suggested that U.S. goals have not always been well-defined and that nation-building seems supported more by U.S. contingents on the ground than the Afghan political officials being propped up by American power. Then you have the neo-communist leftists, who have two political cards against the modern capitalist system: "racism" and "neo-imperialism." Some of these folks have in fact given direct support to our enemies, treasonous behavior that sadly reaches to the Obama administration itself. Not far behind the left are the "realist" paleocons, who for my money are not much better than the neo-communists in their wild conspiracies of alleged U.S. neo-colonial adventures. Such talk ultimately aids and abets our enemies. It places such a narrow desideratum on our interests that basically the U.S. would never intervene abroad unless a couple of our largest cities were incinerated by nuclear mushroom clouds.

In any case, I'm prompted to this discussion by today's front-page report at USA Today, "Poll: Waning Support for Obama On Wars," and more specifically, the Gallup Poll behind it, "In U.S., New High of 43% Call Afghanistan War a 'Mistake'." Ed Morrissey focuses on the political angle, and the likihood the USA Today buried the lede on Obama's collapsing numbers. That's important, although it's the Gallup entry that's more interesting to me, since the poll cites WikiLeaks as a reason for the declining support:

After the Internet publication of tens of thousands of leaked classified documents on the war in Afghanistan, 43% of Americans now say the United States made a mistake in sending troops there, up slightly from just before the release (38%). While Americans are still more likely to support than oppose the war, the percentage who say it was a mistake to get involved is at a new high ....

The 43% of Americans calling the decision to send U.S. military forces into Afghanistan a mistake marks the high point in the nearly nine-year war, although a slight majority continue to support the decision. Public support persists even though for most of the last several years Americans have generally thought the war has been going badly for the United States, and many more currently disapprove than approve of President Obama's handling of the situation.

Thus, the leaking of the documents may not be providing new information to the general public about the progress of the war. And given Americans' subdued attention to the story, it's also not clear that Americans are highly familiar with what information those documents reveal.

But the documents do remind Americans of the challenges the United States is facing in Afghanistan, and they may have caused an increasing number to question whether the efforts there are worth it. Last week, Congress approved President Obama's request for continued funding of the war, though by a narrower margin than last year.

That sounds like a decent assessment. I'd simply add that most MSM outlets are in the tank for WikiLeaks, and this despite the fact that Julian Assange is almost certainly running a criminal enterprise. I think at this point the U.S. is now to a point of winding down the Bush-era wars. President Obama has never embraced them as his own. Of course he campaigned vociferously against Iraq in 2007-08 and is today claiming credit for victory there; and on Afghanistan he's been at most lukewarm in his support, while some of his decision-making has in fact put U.S. troops in greater danger. But there's more to the WikiLeaks story than meets the eye. American interests remain great in Afghanistan. Despite the increasing drumbeats for a precipitous withdrawal, AfPAK will remain a top global security threat for years to come. We'd be foolish to cut and run. On that score, I'll give the last word to Thomas Jocelyn at Weekly Standard. See, "The Taliban's Savagery: The Documents Released by WikiLeaks Say Much About the Evil of Our Enemies":

When WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange announced the massive leak of more than 90,000 classified documents, he claimed that he was exposing “thousands” of possible American war crimes. The documents show nothing of the sort. Some of the documents do detail the brutality of war, and the unsurprising fact that mistakes are made. Assange’s anti-American myopia prevented him from seeing what the documents really demonstrate: American-led forces face an especially savage enemy.

Of course, we didn’t need the WikiLeaks cache of documents to tell us this. There is plenty of evidence for the whole world to see. Still, the documents demonstrate just how pervasive the Taliban’s brutality is in this fight. The Taliban and its jihadist allies have an unparalleled lust for blood, beheading their enemies (both real and imagined) on a regular basis. It is difficult to think of a more savage act.

Here are just some examples, chosen from many, found in the documents released by WikiLeaks ....

RTWT.

Impact: United Airlines Flight 175 September 11, 2001

At Israel Matzav, "Why There Shouldn't Be a Mosque at Ground Zero."

More on Flight 175 here.

RELATED: "'WE HAVE SOME PLANES'."

BREAKING: Dan Senor, at WSJ, "An Open Letter on the Ground Zero Mosque" (via Memeorandum):

Our deeper concern is what effect Cordoba House would have on the families of 9/11 victims, survivors of and first responders to the attacks, New Yorkers in general, and all Americans. As you have seen in the public reaction to the Cordoba House, 9/11 remains a deep wound for Americans—especially those who experienced it directly in some way. They understandably see the area as sacred ground. Nearly all of them also reject the equation of Islam with terrorism and do not blame the attacks on Muslims generally or on the Muslim faith. But many believe that Ground Zero should be reserved for memorials to the event itself and to its victims. They do not understand why of all possible locations in the city, Cordoba House must be sited so near to there.

And the contrary opinion from Wordsmith at Flopping Aces, "Refudiating the Islamophobes." And Jennifer Rubin, "The Left Defends Ground Zero Mosque."

The Pacific and Adjacent Theaters in WWII

I think I've linked this before, but Blazing Cat Fur reminds us of a Denver Post photo-essay from March, "Captured." My dad had a bunch of Life Magazine books on World War Two. This photo always struck me as a boy, especially how the bodies washed into the sand:

Losers Welcome...

Heh ...

Yo, JBW, 'nuff said:

Is There a Death Threat E-Mail Address?

Another reason why some folks prefer anonymity, from JennQPublic:

JennQ's blog is here.

It's hard out there ...

Your Generation

Circa 1978, Generation X:

Old Spice 'Smell Like a Man' Campaign Cleans Up

I guess there's a market for unhindered masculinity, "Old Spice Campaign Smells Like a Sales Success, Too":

HAT TIP: Snark and Boobs.

Booman Tribune Blood Libels Pamela Geller

I had to stop. I had to stop blogging for a minute to wait for my stomach to calm down, and for the sinking feeling in my heart to go away. I write about evil a lot. I tell my readers that not only is leftist ideology collectivist and destructive, it is also evil, in the most reprehensible way fathomable. I'm not sure who takes my comments seriously, outside of my regular readership and a number of other prominent bloggers and writers with whom I communicate. (Obviously, leftists dismiss their own frequent cases of diabolical hatred as aberrations.) It's just something that I know inside my heart, and it strengthens me — thank God — to have a strong sense of righteousness. I know progressivism is the Devil's work. As an ideology perhaps at one point there was some utility in it, say, in Theodore Roosevelt's brand of progressivism. Yeah, maybe at one time real social progress was the goal. But over these last few decades, at least since the 1960s — but especially in the last 9 years since September 11 — a fundamental metastasis has occurred, and its roots are in human evil.

In any case, I'm just writing my feelings upon reading Booman Tribune's post on Pamela Geller, "Casual Suggestion." Screencaps are below. Here's the full quote from the main body of the post, by BooMan:

Apparently, Pam Geller wrote a book and someone actually reviewed it. I'm not sure which is more disturbing. Here's an idea. I promise to write a book about how right-wing lunatics are destroying the fabric of our country. I can do this with facts and citations or, if you prefer, I can just accuse them all of committing acts of bestiality, ritual Satanism, and drinking the blood of gentile babies. It's really up to the publisher. Whatever they want, I can supply. Making stuff up is easier though, so if you want the manuscript in time for a Christmas roll out, I advise we go with some bestiality. Just let me know and I'll get right to work.

The reference to the book review is for Elon Green at the communist webzine AlterNet, "Why Is Simon & Schuster Spreading the Wild Conspiracy Theories of an Unhinged Islamophobic Blogger?" Check the link. Nowhere does Elon Green actually engage the arguments in Pamela Geller's book. The "review" is frankly nothing more than a diatribe against the right-wing. What BooMan does is take it to the next step in leftist demonology, anti-Semitic blood libel. Sure, the post is formed as a hypothetical. BooMan suggests that he "can just accuse them all of committing acts of bestiality, ritual Satanism, and drinking the blood of gentile babies."

Plausible deniability then? Perhaps. Except that BooMan's first commenter picks up on the dog whistle:

Did they use ink, or the dripping blood of the Muslim babies she was eating at the time?

The blog post and comment were posted earlier this evening, and there's a new post at top (excoriating Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio). No one seems to object to this blood libel. In fact, looking at post after post after post of Booman Tribune, it's practically one long hit list against conservatives and Republicans. There is a lot of hatred there, and these are people who are already in power.

Blood libel accusations are a central manifestation of historical anti-Semitism. BooMan's deliberately vague remarks about how he "could accuse" people like Pamela Geller of "committing acts of bestiality, ritual Satanism, and drinking the blood of gentile babies" are drawn right out the ancient books of eliminationist Jew-hatred. Just to imply such abominations among conservatives is pretty sick. To make them in the context of attacking a prominent Jewish conservative woman and self-proclaimed anti-jihad blogger leaves little room for evasion. And the comments at the post simply seal the deal.

It was sickening reading this entry. And BooMan is not just a 9th tier blogger, unread and insignificant. RealClearPolitics links frequently to BooMan Tribune and the blog appears well respected around the left-wing 'sphere. That's because this is just how these folks roll. Meanwhile, the conservative-right is constantly defending itself against bogus allegations of racism. This reminds me of two key points raised about the progressive-left in Melanie Phillips' new book, The World Turned Upside Down, both of which are illustrated by BooMan: (1) anti-intellectualism and (2) Jew-hatred. And again, while this is just one case, such episodes are quite frequent and regularly renounced among conservative blogs such as NewsReal. But hopefully this kind of leftist blood libel and hatred will start getting more attention among MSM outlets. Even there it's possible to cross the red line. And BooMan's achieved that.

Janet 'The System Worked' Napolitano on Aviation Security at Foreign Affairs!!

Yep. Check it out, "Securing the Skies: A Global Push for Aviation Security":

Since its emergence in the waning days of World War II, the international civil aviation system has served as an engine of progress and prosperity -- both in the United States and in many nations around the world ....

But the international aviation system has its weak links, as illustrated by the attempted terrorist attack on a Detroit-bound flight on December 25, 2009.

Although that incident involved a U.S. plane flying into a U.S. city, it was an international terror plot that endangered individuals from at least 17 foreign countries. The alleged attacker, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was a Nigerian citizen educated in the United Kingdom. He received training in terrorist tactics in Yemen, purchased his ticket in Ghana, and flew from Nigeria to Amsterdam before departing for Detroit. In other words, the Christmas Day plot exploited the global aviation network -- and it underscored the reality that, despite decades of advances in screening and significant reforms following 9/11, the network still faces vulnerabilities.

Aviation security, much like other international security challenges, blurs the line between foreign and domestic. Because every airport offers a potential entry point into the global system, every nation faces the threat from gaps in aviation security throughout the world.

The international dimensions of the attempted terrorist attack on December 25 brought new urgency to the need for an international reform agenda. And over the last six months, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has worked with international partners on an unprecedented campaign to strengthen the international aviation system against the evolving threats posed by terrorism.

More at the link.

Kinda funny too, how most of the rest of it attempts to assuage fears of invasion of privacy. Border invasion's not that big of a deal, though, it turns out. I guess that deemphasis helps with the unprecedented "international" effort the Obama clowns are putting out to handle all those "evolving threats to terrorism." (Clue to Janet: Those evolving threats are evolving right over our Southern border as I write this, although publishing at CFA looks good for global elite consumption, yo!).

RELATED: "Terrorist Threat On Border With Mexico."

PHOTOSHOP CREDIT: Another Black Conservative.

Stand For Borders! Stand With Arizona! Stand Against Communists! — Phoenix, July 31, 2010

I've got a couple of reports coming in from the latest Stand With Arizona event over the weekend.

Van Helsing at Moonbattery was on the scene, and here's a couple of shots from his blog post:

More at the link.

**********

Also, my good friend Nicole in Phoenix gave me the heads up at my Facebook profile. Some great pics from her album, and she writes: "A peaceful rally. The racist revolutionary communist party bused in and attempting to cause trouble."

Ha! I don't recall bumping into folks from revcom.us (Revolution Online) on May 29th, although the message is pretty familiar. Yet another reconquista photo album the MSM won't show you:

Christiane Amanpour (Tanks?) in Debut at ABC's 'This Week'

Folks are wiggin' over Christian Amanpour's debut as host at "This Week." I've commented on this a couple of times now, in March when Amanpour was announced as the new anchor and over the weekend as well. I doubt she'll have problems. She's an experienced journalist and it's not like ABC News is hostile to lefties. She'd have to flop numerous times before she'd get the boot. It's too bad though, since Jake Tapper was totally cool in the seat. He seemed like a good fit and was clearly pegged into the happenings with new media, blogs, etc.

In any case, Eric Boehlert can scream until he's blue in the face. The JournoList scandal pulled back the curtains on our corrupt lefty press for good. What more could they ask for? (Well, net neutrality comes to mind, but we'll save that for later.)

That said, how'd the show go itself? I'll post Speaker Pelosi's clip here (more at ABC's home), where she indicates that she's ready to "turn out the lights" on the Afghan deployment, and is bummed out that the public's not there yet:

Remember, this is the face of today's Democratic Party, whose leaders would have given up on World War II in 1942. Disgraceful.

Lady Gaga Slams Arizona's SB 1070 During Monster Ball Performance in Phoenix

She's a freak, what can I say? I still trip on her fashion and outrageousness, but at this point she's totally FUBAR on politics.

At Rolling Stone, "Lady Gaga Protests Arizona Immigration Law in Phoenix":

Lady Gaga loudly contested Arizona's controversial new immigration law SB 1070 during her Monster Ball tour stop in Phoenix Saturday night. With "Stop SB 1070" written prominently on her left forearm, Gaga told the approving crowd, "Tonight, I want you to reject any person or any thing or any law that has made you feel like you don't belong. I got a phone call from a couple really big rock and rollers, big pop stars, big rappers, and they said, 'We'd like you to boycott Arizona because of SB 1070.' And I said, 'Do you really think that us dumb fucking pop stars are going to collapse the economy of Arizona?'"

Instead of avoiding the state, Lady Gaga said she wanted to take the fight straight to the heart of Arizona. "I'll tell you what we have to do about SB 1070: We have to be active," she said. "We have to protest... I will not cancel my show. I will yell and I will scream louder and I will hold you, and we will hold each other, and we will peaceably protest this state. Because if it wasn't for all you immigrants, this country wouldn't have shit."

Related: At The Other McCain, "Stupid Things Lady Gaga Says."