Friday, July 30, 2010
Update on Billy Idol...
Meanwhile, enjoy some Gen X:
The Only Exception
I've got a tight grip on reality,
but I can't let go of whats part of me here.
I know you're leaving in the morning, when you wake up,
leave me with some kind of proof it's not a dream.
Whooa..
You are the only exception (x8)
And I'm on my way to believing.. (x2)
Republicans React to Secret Democratic Amnesty Memorandum
Republicans are seizing on an internal memo they say is further evidence the Obama administration wants to bypass a gridlocked Congress and use its executive powers to grant “back-door amnesty” to thousands of illegal immigrants. But administration officials tried to downplay the significance of the draft memo Friday, reiterating that they have no plans to grant permanent residency to the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants living in the U.S.(Source.)
Written by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) officials to the agency’s director, the memo discusses ways the administration – facing the reality that immigration reform is all but dead this year – could grant illegal immigrants permanent status, including indefinitely delaying deportation or issuing green cards.
“This memorandum offers administrative relief options to promote family unity, foster economic growth, achieve significant process improvements and reduce the threat of removal for certain individuals present in the United States without authorization,” states the memo, which was addressed to Director Alejandro N. Mayorkas. “In the absence of comprehensive immigration reform, USCIS can extend benefits and/or protections to many individuals and groups by issuing new guidance and regulations.”
The 11-page memo provides fresh ammunition to Republican lawmakers who have been questioning the administration for the past month about rumors of a plan allowing illegal immigrants to remain in the country.
“The document provides an additional basis for our concerns that the administration will go to great lengths to circumvent Congress and unilaterally execute a back-door amnesty plan,” Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Finance Committee, said in a statement.
Communist ANSWER Coalition Spearheads Immigration Protests in Phoenix — Special Forum Edition, 'Moments With Fidel'
The ANSWER Coalition has been deeply involved in the organization of today’s and tomorrow’s demonstrations protesting SB 1070 in Phoenix, Arizona, and in all of the earlier demonstrations in Arizona and around the country.And once again, MSM outlets miss the key ingredients to the story, while downplaying the threats. See, " The 'Dangerous' Border: Actually One of America's Safest Places" (via Memeorandum). (Also, Doug Mataconis has more.)
Without the mobilization of people in the streets throughout the country, the reactionary and racist forces that pushed this law through in Arizona would have succeeded. Moreover, state legislatures throughout the country are watching Arizona with an eye to the outcome of this battle. If this clearly unconstitutional law could take effect in Arizona, racist bigots will eagerly try to pass similar measures in states throughout the country.
RELATED: "Protesters Raise Mexican Flag Outside Phoenix Jailhouse."
Update on The Post American Presidency
Pamela Geller's in the midst of a whirlwind promotional tour. She works hard at what she does, and she's got unshakable convictions. I'm learning a lot from the book too!
Check it out: The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America.
The 'Moderates' at Ground Zero
See Jeffrey Goldberg, "A Terrible Decision by the Anti-Defamation League":
1) The organization behind the project, the Cordoba Initiative, is a moderate group interested in advancing cross-cultural understanding. It is very far from being a Wahhabist organization;I'm still not convinced that the Mega Mosque builders are all that moderate.
2) This is a strange war we're fighting against Islamist terrorism. We must fight the terrorists with alacrity, but at the same time we must understand that what the terrorists seek is a clash of civilizations. We must do everything possible to avoid giving them propaganda victories in their attempt to create a cosmic war between Judeo-Christian civilization and Muslim civilization. The fight is not between the West and Islam; it is between modernists of all monotheist faiths, on the one hand, and the advocates of a specific strain of medievalist Islam, on the other. If we as a society punish Muslims of good faith, Muslims of good faith will join the other side. It's not that hard to understand. I'm disappointed that the ADL doesn't understand this.
That said, who's stoking whose pain here? The political debate on this is getting ridiculous. It is not racist to oppose the mosque. I have a hard time believing that supporters of the mosque are that quick to dismiss opponents as "racist." It just plays into the left's meme. Whenever a conservative stands up for what they believe they're attacked as bigots. But, hmm ... no such a big outcry when The Divider in Chief slurs blacks as mongrels, etc., etc. It all relates friends. Where's the consistency?
See also, "Imam Feisal and the Ground Zero Mosque."
RELATED: "Anti-Defamation League Opposes Ground Zero Mosque."
RINO Watch — For Starters, Cross Gingrich Off List for 2012
At The Hill, "Gingrich expects Palin to run in 2012." (Via Memeorandum.)
And how many RINOs are among the bunch? ...
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said Friday that he expects former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) to be among the crowd of GOP presidential candidates in 2012.How about Pawlenty? He's no RINO, right? I like Romney, and Mitch Daniels is intriguing. Other than that, I'm pulling for Sarah ...
Gingrich, himself a potential candidate for president, sized up the field of would-be competitors, detailing which GOP politicians he expects to jump into the race.
The field Gingrich listed included: former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Palin, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Sen. John Thune (S.D.), and Rep. Ron Paul (Texas).
"There are going to be lots of Republicans running — Gov. Romney clearly, Gov. Palin, Gov. Huckabee, Gov. Mitch Daniels, Gov. Haley Barbour, Gov. Tim Pawlenty. I think John Thune, the senator from South Dakota, is probably going to get in. Ron Paul's probably going to run again," Gingrich said in an interview with Newsmax, a conservative magazine. "I think it's going to be a lively campaign, there'll be a lot of good candidates."
Image Credit: American Weasel.
Colin Hay Plays Las Vegas Monte Carlo Tonight
In any case, he's playing tonight at the Brew Pub at Vegas' Monte Carlo. Sounds fun. Turns out he's toured with Ringo Star's All Star Band, so what in the heck? (And I'm reminded of how enjoyable the flute is sometimes.) ...
Robert Stacy McCain to Slam GOP Congressional Candidate Rocky Raczkowski for Phyllis Schlafly Renunciation?
"Do you know what the second-biggest demographic group that voted for Obama -- obviously the blacks were the biggest demographic group. But do you all know what was the second-biggest? ... "Unmarried women, 70% of unmarried women, voted for Obama, and this is because when you kick your husband out, you've got to have big brother government to be your provider."This kind of commentary stirs the hackles among hard-lefties, for example, at Daily Kos:
Phyllis Schlafly bashing women is nothing new. After all, the woman made a career out of saying women shouldn't have careers. Or equal rights.These are stupid allegations, of course. Schlafly's right on, as Robert Stacy McCain points out, "When Phyllis Schlafly Speaks the Truth, Democrats Call It ‘Extremism’" (via Memeorandum):
Phyllis Schlafly is one of conservatism’s great heroines. Both Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter acknowledge Schlafly’s influence as a role model. Forty-six years after her rallying cry for Goldwater, A Choice Not an Echo, and three decades after she led the crusade to stop ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, she’s still driving liberals nuts ...Check the link. At the end there Robert announces:
I plan to renounce any Republican who renounces Phyllis Schlafly.Okay, Robert. Your first target should be Rocky Raczkowski, who renounced Schlafly after she spoke at his own campaign event!
The comments caused a furor with Progress Michigan, a liberal activist group that obtained a tape of the event. They called on Raczkowski to denounce Schlafly's words. One of Raczkowski's Republican opponents in the GOP primary -- Paul Welday of Farmington Hills -- echoed the sentiment.Hey Rocky ... Dede Scozzafava called. She's got some endorsements lined up from top GOP RINOs.
Raczkowski said he was taken aback by the comments, but noted that they didn't reflect his beliefs.
"I will fight vehemently for her to have her beliefs. That's what makes this country so great," he said. "I believe in equality for everyone. I'm color-blind and gender blind."
The Blog Prof, who's on the ground in Michigan, says Raczkowski's gettting worked over from the "feminazi" press. See, "Oakland Press launches liberal hatchet piece against Rocky Raczkowski days before the primary." Okay, but let's see a statement from Rocky clarifying his renunciation of Shlafly's remarks. (I don't see any sign of retraction, which according to The Blog Prof's reporting would be capitulation to the mob, "Women Want Apology from Candidate Rocky Raczkowski.")
RELATED: Taylor Marsh claims to know Phyllis Schlafly intimately: "Phyllis Schlafly, What the Republican Tea Party Really Thinks About Women."
Elisabeth Hasselbeck on Barack Obama
She says she separates personality and politics to get along with everyone. A classy lady all around:
Christiane Amanpour Debuts This Sunday at ABC's 'This Week'
Note as well that's she's been criticized for compromising her objectivity in the past. As it notes at her Wikipedia entry:
Following Iraq's occupation of Kuwait in 1990, Amanpour's reports of the Persian Gulf War brought her wide notice while also taking the network to a new level of news coverage. Thereafter, she reported from the Bosnian war and many other conflict zones. Her emotional delivery from Sarajevo during the Siege of Sarajevo led some viewers and critics to question her professional objectivity, claiming that many of her reports were unjustified and favoured the Bosnian Muslims, to which she replied, "There are some situations one simply cannot be neutral about, because when you are neutral you are an accomplice. Objectivity doesn't mean treating all sides equally. It means giving each side a hearing."Amanpour is also married to top Democratic foreign policy insider Jamie Rubin, who was Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and is a current advisor to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
No surprise then that Amanpour's first broadcast will give top Democrats a platform for their spin. See, "Coming up: TWO EXCLUSIVES: Christiane Amanpour interviews House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Defense Secretary Robert Gates."
Plus, "Christiane Amanpour's 'This Week' Preview":
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Protesters Raise Mexican Flag Outside Phoenix Jailhouse
See also, "Arizona immigration protesters hit the streets," and "Hundreds protest Ariz. immigration law in Phoenix."
Obama Slurs Blacks as 'Mongrels' on 'The View'
And rightfully, this is the kind of thing that makes folks angry, for example, Bruce at Gay Patriot, "Was Obama Channeling Robert Byrd on The View?"(via Memeorandum):
I initially was going to resist posting on this because I really despise racial politics. But since we are getting some new readership from the Left (and they have no clue about American history), I thought it was important.Does President Obama have any idea what he just put out there on the table? Perhaps the most incendiary language in American history.
From the article ‘D. W. Griffith and “The Birth of A Monster“‘: [Reference: Who Is D. W. Griffith?]
D.W. Griffith’s 1915 motion picture The Birth of a Nation — originally titled The Clansman — a film which presented a re-writing of the actual history of post Civil War Reconstruction by the same Confederate traitors aginst whom the war had to be fought. It portrayed African-Americans in the post-Civil War South as depraved, lascivious beasts whose rampant lawlessness and alleged domination of the South — through military force and control of the state legislatures — threatened to destroy “Southern civilization” and “mongrelize the races”. The film asserts that this could only be stopped by the glorified lynchings and reign of terror carried out by the “honorable” new, secret order of the “chivalrous” Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
<…>
In most of the Northern cities where the The Birth of a Nation was scheduled to be shown, political fights exploded, and some small riots did occur in Philadelphia and elsewhere where the film was shown. The NAACP and others attempted to seek either a banning of the film completely, or to force the editing-out of the most egregious racist scenes. For the most part, those attempts were futile. Endless hearings were held before mayors, state legislatures, city councils, and state and city censorship boards across the country. The Illinois legislature voted 111-2 to ban the showing in that state, but eventually lost on judicial appeals filed by the film’s promoters.
Those hearings became platforms for the pro-Griffith lobby to pronounce the alleged virtues of eugenics. In New York City, Griffith’s lawyer Martin W. Littleton told Mayor Mitchell that the film was a “protest against the mongrel mixture of black and white.”
It is disgusting and putrid that a President of the United States bring this kind of filth language into the public discourse when our nation has moved so far past it. Laura Ingraham is correct, Obama is not “post-racial” — he is the most racial and divisive President we have ever had.
Scott Eric Kaufman — An English Professor Who Doesn't Know Sh*t About English
But now I'm glad I held off. It turns out SEK's initial review didn't go over so well with some like-minded effete types, and he's written an update, "Bit more on Inception." And while I might be persuaded that one of SEK's critics is on the money when he implies that Scott's an unsympathetic childless asshole, I'm content to simply indicate SEK's non-typo completely FUBAR ignorance of the word "flak."
As you can see at the first sentence of the post: "I’ve taken a lot of interesting flack for my non-review of Inception ..."
Actually, SEK means to say, "flak." It's a word that leftists apparently have a hard time using, which is easy to explain, given the left's ideological hostility to the military. In context, you might say I'm "giving him a lot of flak" for his stupidity — and boomerang smears, since he likes to attack opponents as "functionally illiterate." It's too good, really, for nearly every time SEK's trolled my site for some jollies, he's ended up making himself look lame with massive errors at the original post. And like clockwork he always comes back with some lame excuse for why an English professor shouldn't actually be required to write proper English, but in the case of "flack" I imagine he'll just have to take his lumps. And since Ann Althouse is a frequent target of SEK's idiotic trolling, I'll let her take him to the woodshed.
See, "Flak" (where Ann hammers Josh Marshall, another Ph.D. know-it-all, who misused "flack" in 2007):
From me, you're going to first catch flak for writing "catch flack."Gotta love it. A law professor schooling a history Ph.D.“Flak” is WW II airman’s slang for shells being fired at you in the air, so to catch a lot of flak is to feel in danger of being shot down. However, most civilians these days have never heard of “flak,” so they use “flack” instead, which originally meant “salesman” or “huckster.” You need to worry about this only if you’re among old-time veterans.When you're showing off your expertise about fighting a war, you ought to get your war imagery right. A flack is a press agent. Hacks -- "writer[s] hired to produce routine or commercial writing" -- know more about flacks and not so much about flak, but they need to try not to let it show.
But even better is schooling an alleged professor of English on English language usage. Can you say epic fail? And the references to teaching "English" are quite loose, since SEK's apparently teaching courses on "Manga" and the literary origins of films like The Last Airbender. My kids could probably lecture on that stuff, although they aren't stuffy Ph.D.s who write half-baked movie reviews on films on which they've walked out on.
Well, at least SEK's no longer claiming to have a "Doctorate of Philosophy of English."
RELATED: "Scott Eric Kaufman, Self-Hating Skankwad, Does It Again!"
Eyes Without a Face
I saw Idol in concert twice at The Roxy in Hollywood, circa 1981. In any case, Triple Play Thursday played Idol this morning, so enjoy "Eyes Without a Face":
I'm all out of hope
One more bad break
could bring a fall
When I'm far from home
Don't call me on the phone
To tell me your alone
It's easy to deceive
It's easy to tease
But hard to get release
Les yeux sans visage eyes without a face
Les yeux sans visage eyes without a face
Les yeux sans visage eyes without a face
Got no human grace your eyes without a face.
I spend so much time
Believing all the lies
To keep the dream alive
Now it makes me sad
It makes me mad at truth
For lovin' what was you.
Les yeux sans visage eyes without a face
Les yeux sans visage eyes without a face
Les yeux sans visage eyes without a face
Got no human grace your eyes without a face ...
Erin Andrews Vanity Fair Photo Shoot
PREVIOUSLY: "Erin Andrews in the News."
BONUS: Looking forward to some FMRA at The Other McCain this weekend. Bob Belvedere wasn't waiting, however: "A Little Hump Day Rule 5: Margaret Nolan." And at Washington Rebel: "Irreverent?"
True/Slant Shuts Down — Charles Johnson, E.D. Kain Looking for New Digital Media Bones to Suck Dry
Both of these bozos were sucking the guts out of the digital media beta site True/Slant, cross-posting material from their own digs for an extra couple of bucks in slimeball blogging.
Background at Neil Ungerleider, "Last post on True/Slant."
This is probably no big deal for most readers, although it's interesting to me that the Internet publishing gods weren't smiling down on these two libel-blogging bloviators. Maybe they'll actually hafta get jobs, you know, like most people of good moral standing. That said, Barret Brown is on True/Slant and I've found him to be a fairly decent guy after going a few rounds in the flamewars (and Barret's at Vanity Fair, so he has something of a viable inside thing going already). And I hope Kashmir Hill's social networking blog lands quickly on its feet at another location, and I'm confident it will (she's good).