Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Monday, September 28, 2009
America: Mired In Sin Until Obama Came In.
“For those who question the character and cause of my nation,” the president pronounced Wednesday, “I ask you to look at the concrete actions we have taken in just nine months.”
During my "down time" I finished reading the biography of John Adams by David McCullough, and the shocking historical self aggrandized bombast that is found in Obama's utterances - especially when he occupies the same office as Washington and Adams did at the founding, makes me weep.
Jonah Goldberg comments:
It was the most Obamaesque address to date.
...
America is 233 years old. Some think that there are ample accomplishments speaking to our character and cause that predate Obama’s ascension to the presidency.
Feh, Obama seems to be saying. Look instead to our new greatness, for we have elected a man like him!
No, Jonah, America was in a a state of sin until Obama came in. It's why Michelle was never proud of America until HE was nominated.
Monday, September 21, 2009
... STUPID AND AGRESSIVE ...
As a retired Managing Director of a global firm, based in London, I evaluated people on a simple matrix. On one side you have "smart or stupid" on the other side you have "passive or aggressive."
There was only one possible combination that caused me undue heartache...stupid and aggressive! Good luck to the Americans, they have picked the chap with the worst possible combination going!!
The UK Telegraph headline tells the story:
President Barack Obama is beginning to look out of his depth
It is lovely to feature in other people's dreams. The problem comes when they wake up. Barack Obama is an eloquent, brainy and likeable man with a fascinating biography. He is not George Bush. Those are great qualities. But they are not enough to lead America, let alone the world.
Note how the foreign press still believes that Obama is all the things they said he was: brainy, eloquent, likeable, with a "fascinating" biography (now what would that be?). Yet ... yet ... they are beginning to think that he's not quite ... "the thing."
What interests me about this article is that the author approves of all of Obama's initiatives, yet somehow finds him wanting. He's all for scrapping the missile shield, for socialized medicine, for the climate change initiatives (capNtrade), Mid-East peace talks, "resetting" relations with Russia, and all the rest. He even thinks that Obama is "defanging" Korea and Iran! So what's the problem?
It seems that the millennium has not arrived. The lion is not lying down with the lamb. Universal peace has not broken out. And then there's this plaintive cry:
But for what? Mr Obama has tactics a plenty - calm and patient engagement with unpleasant regimes, finding common interests, appealing to shared values - but where is the strategy? What, exactly, did "Change you can believe in" – the hallmark slogan of his campaign – actually mean?
But wait; I thought that all of these initiatives were what "HopeNchange" were all about? What did you think that change meant? What do you mean that you're not sure what the strategy is? What in the world makes you uneasy? These are the things you approve of, but somehow when they come down the track and you see them take tangible shape, you don't like what you asked for?
Sunday, September 20, 2009
What if NPR is right?
It's also important to keep in mind that ACORN's workers are coming from the same low-income neighborhoods the organization serves, with all that entails -- poor schools, high crime and the sorts of social problems that have been documented for decades.
So the flaws conservatives are pointing out about ACORN are not so much problems associated with that organization per se but more about the problems of being poor and minority in urban America.
NPR has been accused of racism by Liberals (see comments on the NPR website) and conservatives alike who deny that this is what black culture is all about. Yet look at the videos. The ACORN personnel don’t bat an eye to these proposals. No “are you sure that you should be doing this?” Not “what you’re proposing is illegal.” No disgust at the open discussion of selling young children to sexual predators for profit.
To deny the fact that there is prostitution, that children are exploited, the banks are scammed and that there are tax cheats is to deny the obvious. The shocking thing about the videos is the casual way the ACORN workers set about helping these things get done. Looking in the tax code for euphemisms for prostitute, suggesting taking a tax benefit from employing teen aged sex workers, recommending ways to hide the dirty money, ways to lie on the bank loan application. The women look ordinary, yet they seem to have no qualms about telling people how to best to lie, cheat and create teen aged sex slaves. The phrase “the banality of evil” comes to mind because these people are so ordinary, yet stand ready to abet something not just criminal but truly evil.
Commentators, Left and Right, are reacting with outrage that an entire class of people should be demonized even as Frank James tries to give them an excuse. But that reaction to James could due to political correctness. Unless ACORN specifically chose its employees to be criminal facilitators (like the Mafia), or these employees chose to work for ACORN because of a “do anything” corporate culture, James may have a point. Black culture – or certain parts of it – may not see anything wrong with pimps, “Ho’s” and importing teen aged Central American children for sexual exploitation, not to mention cheating on your taxes and lying to the bank. It does explain a lot of black music videos on MTV.
So if the commentator from NPR is right, and these people are representative of a culture that finds nothing wrong with pimps, whores, and child prostitution, we have a problem.
We have to ask how this culture was created and what we can do about changing it. Liberals like to point to historic discrimination and deprivation of Blacks in American society. Pointing to historic discrimination does not answer the question because the activities shown in these videos seem to be worse than those engaged in by the Black underclass during Jim Crow days. We have a Black president thanks to the votes of millions of white people.
I have also been told by people, like Thomas Sowell, who is old enough to know, that the pathology demonstrated by the ACORN films was not a common feature of the days of Jim Crow. So what happened? What is causing this cancerous growth on American culture that seems to infect this group and will it metastasize? What is the cure?
The primary actors on Black society since segregation have been well meaning government programs like Affirmative Action and the War on Poverty. Could these be in part responsible for what we are witnessing?
If NPR is right, these are questions that must be asked …. and answered.
NY Times coverage of the ACORN scandal
Weekend Opinionator: Acorn Falls, the Web Rises
By Tobin Harshaw
“Work formerly done by reporters and producers is now routinely performed by political operatives and amateur ideologues of one stripe or another, whose goal is not to educate the public but to win. This is a trend not likely to change.”
There is literally nothing in this piece about ACORN that is not already known, and a great deal that is known that is not there. The entire focus is on the videos, the two who made them and the political fallout.
There seems to be no question that the Times, at least, is not investigating ACORN, but they are investigating the O'Keefe and Giles. If this were part of a series of reports on ACORN, it would be understandable. As it is, it's simply an smokescreen to avoid reporting on ACORN.
Can anyone refer me to any Times story that adds to our understanding of what happened?
While the American MSM is in cover-up mode, the ACORN videos are garnering international attention.
Members of a community organisation closely linked to US president Barack Obama have been secretly filmed advising a fake pimp and his prostitute on how to evade authorities.
The video is seen as a serious setback for Obama, who has previously worked for Acorn, America's largest community organisation representing minorities and the poor.
Acorn was also a major supporter of Obama's campaign to become president, even though it is a non-profit non-partisan government organisation that receives over $70 million in taxpayer money.
It should be noted that the US media is mininizing the connection between Obama and ACORN.
From the UK Times: Candid Camera pranks smoke out US liberals
But O’Keefe’s greatest triumph came last week after he teamed up with Hannah Giles, 20, a fellow-conservative, and they posed as a pimp and a prostitute seeking help from Acorn, a community activist group that is loathed by Republicans because it registered millions of poor voters for last year’s presidential election.
A succession of well-meaning Acorn workers were filmed advising the pair on how to smuggle South American girls into the country, how to apply for a loan to buy a house that could be used as a brothel and how to claim that underage prostitutes were their dependants for tax purposes.
O’Keefe told officials at Acorn’s Baltimore office he would employ 13-year-old girls as prostitutes “and they didn’t care at all”, he said. “No one was holding this organisation accountable,” he explained last week. “No one in the media is putting pressure on them. We wanted to do a stunt and see what we could find.”
ACORN: Journalists need to ask themselves, how did this happen?
Journalists need to ask themselves, how did this happen? How could they miss the corruption at ACORN? President Obama was once an ACORN lawyer, so the group is certainly significant enough to warrant media scrutiny. Then how did all the seasoned professionals get scooped by two students–James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles–one of whom isn’t old enough to legally drink? ...
Political correctness has been slowly rotting the establishment media to its core, to the point where few professional journalists would dare launch a serious investigation into the exalted Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now. Why? Simple: according to the tenets of political correctness, the racial makeup of the communities being “organized” automatically confers the presumption of moral superiority upon ACORN. So all those nasty rumors about ACORN must be no more than lies spread by racist propagandists.
To understand the mindset of the politically correct, there are a few rules of racial relations that you need to know. These rules establish the Hierarchy of Multiculturalism:1. If a person is a member of a group guilty of past racial oppression, that person has no moral standing in relation to anyone in any group that’s ever been a victim of that oppression.
2. A member of an oppressor group is always assumed to be guilty in relation to a member of a victim group.
3. An oppressor can only avoid presumed guilt by making a display of his or her sympathy for the oppressed.
4. Members of victim groups can lose their moral standing by expressing a preference for individual rights as opposed to group rights.
5. Advocating on behalf of a victim makes one almost as unassailable as being that victim.
6. Coming to the defense of an oppressor is even more repugnant than being that oppressor.
In the end, though, it doesn’t matter. The work of Giles and O’Keefe highlights the diminishing relevance of the establishment media. Despite the story getting no coverage on broadcast TV or in any major newspaper, it propagated online, then to talk radio and Fox News. And before any “mainstream” media outlet covered it, the political pressure grew to the point that the Census Bureau cut all ties to ACORN, and U.S. Senate voted by the overwhelming margin of 83-7 to cut off the group’s federal funding.
Even after these events, a vast majority of the media ignored the story. And yet the public kept getting the truth, which only made the media appear to be in the business of hiding news rather than reporting it. Realizing that this is not a winning business model for an ailing industry, a few of the more independent-minded reporters started covering the story, and now the White House Press Secretary is busy deflecting questions about the president’s former colleagues and fellow community organizers at ACORN. Despite the media’s best efforts.
James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles represent another massive power-shift in the age of Internet media. The first occurred when the Drudge Report broke Monica Lewinsky’s affair with President Clinton, a story that Newsweek got first but declined to run. The second was when CBS News got hoodwinked by documents that purported to impugn President Bush. After bloggers exposed them as forgeries, the documents ended up tarnishing CBS News instead. Long-time anchor Dan Rather was forced to retire in disgrace.
This is another huge embarrassment for Big Media–not so much because they look foolish, but because they’re beginning to look irrelevant.
If I were a racist...
I'd stop making racist comments so no one will know.
After abstaining from racist comments for ninety days, I would pronounce myself cured of racism.
Proud of my success, I would start condemning others for their racism.
After succeeding, for a time, at pointing out the racism of others, I would impress my like-minded friends by identifying new and subtle behaviours that characterize racists so that it will be even more difficult for those evil racists to hide behind their politically correct speech.
This is easily done, because I know what thoughts, feelings, and subtle behaviours I would have if I were a racist. They are very familiar to me.
I have to admit, though.... Some of you racists out there are so good at covering it up, the only way I can tell is when you do something I wouldn't dare do. -Like saying anything bad about a black liberal.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
The 75 Democrats who endorse the use of taxpayer funds to support human trafficking, child sex slavery, tax fraud...
Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisc.
Xavier Becerra, D-Calif.
Robert Brady D-Pa.
Corrine Brown, D-Fla.
G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C.
Mike Capuano, D-Mass.
Andre Carson, D-Ind.
Kathy Castor, D-Fla.
Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo.
James Clyburn, D-S.C.
Joseph Crowley, D-N.Y.
Elijah Cummings, D-Md.
Danny Davis, D-Ill.
Diane DeGette, D-Colo.
Bill Delahunt, D-Mass.
Mike Doyle, D-Pa.
Donna Edwards, D-Md.
Keith Ellison, D-Minn.
Eliot Engel, D-N.Y.
Chaka Fattah, D-Pa.
Bob Filner, D-Calif.
Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio
Al Green, D-Tex.
Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz.
Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y.
Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii
Rush Holt, D-N.J.
Mike Honda, D-Calif.
Jesse Jackson, Jr. D-Ill.
Sheila Jackson-Lee, D-Tex.
Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Tex.
Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, D-Mich.
Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio
Rick Larsen, D-Wash.
Barbara Lee, D-Calif.
John Lewis, D-Ga.
Stephen Lynch, D-Mass.
Markey, D-Mass.
Betty McCollum, D-Minn.
McDermott, D-Wash.
McGovern, D-Mass.
Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y.
Alan Mollohan, D-W.Va.
Gwen Moore, D-Wisc.
Jim Moran, D-Va.
Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y.
Richard Neal, D-Mass.
John Olver, D-Mass.
Frank Pallone, D-N.J.
Bill Pascrell, D-N.J.
Donald Payne, D-N.J.
Jared Polis, D-Colo.
David Price, D-N.C.
Nick Rahall, D-W.Va.
Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y.
Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Calif.
Bobby Rush, D-Ill.
Linda Sánchez, D-Calif.
Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill.
David Scott D-Ga.
Bobby Scott, D-Va.
Jose Serrano, D-N.Y.
Brad Sherman, D-Calif.
Albio Sires, D-N.J.
Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y.
Pete Stark, D-Calif.
Bennie Thompson, D-Miss.
Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y.
Niki Tsongas, D-Mass.
Nydia Velázquez, D-N.Y.
Maxine Waters, D-Calif.
Diane Watson, D-Calif.
Henry Waxman, D-Calif.
Robert Wexler, D-Fla.
Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif.
New York Times Company humiliates itself in public
Who taught you to lie, call people names, and accuse people of racism?
Dennis Prager: The False Logic of Those Using the Race Card over Obamacare
Dennis Pager gets a caller who claims that s substantial number of people on the Right oppose Obama’s health care proposals because they are racists and oppose anything he proposes. Pager asks if these people would support his health care proposals if Obama were white. The caller maintains that these people would not support health care reform if the President were white. Yet he maintains that the opposition is race based. Totally illogical.
Jimmy Carter's racist segregationist past
When Carter returned to Plains, Georgia, to become a peanut farmer after serving in the Navy, he became a member of the Sumter County School Board, which did not implement the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision handed down by the Supreme Court. Instead, the board continued to segregate school children on the streets of Carter’s hometown.
As Laughlin McDonald, director of the ACLU’s Voting Project, relates in his book A Voting Rights Odyssey: Black Enfranchisement in Georgia, Carter’s board tried to stop the construction of a new “Elementary Negro School” in 1956. Local white citizens had complained that the school would be “too close” to a white school. As a result, “the children, both colored and white, would have to travel the same streets and roads in order to reach their respective schools.” The prospect of black and white children commingling on the streets on their way to school was apparently so horrible to Carter that he requested that the state school board stop construction of the black school until a new site could be found. The state board turned down Carter’s request because of “the staggering cost.” Carter and the rest of the Sumter County School Board then reassured parents at a meeting on October 5, 1956, that the board “would do everything in its power to minimize simultaneous traffic between white and colored students in route to and from school.”
It seems that the CHICKENS are coming home to roost!
Barone reflects on the media's coverage of the ACORN story
I posted my analysis of the 345-75 vote in the House to defund ACORN yesterday, and Byron York provides an excellent analysis of the issue today. But I have to say that I am still stunned by the conduct that filmmaker James O'Keefe and his sidekick Hannah Giles documented at several ACORN offices. Of course I was familiar with the plentiful charges of vote fraud by ACORN affiliates, documented by John Fund of the Wall Street Journal over the years, and National Review’s Jim Geraghty helpfully collects some past stories about ACORN employees’ illegal behavior in Ohio, Wisconsin and New Mexico—all target states in the 2004 and 2008 elections....
But back to ACORN. What stuns me is that, for all my knowledge of ACORN employees’ illegal behavior, it never would have occurred to me that so many of them would blithely collaborate in encouraging prostitution—and child prostitution at that! One ACORN defender said, in effect, well, that’s what you get when you hire low-income people; but I refuse to believe that that’s standard operating procedure even in the most disadvantaged of demographics. What is it about the culture of ACORN that makes collaboration in prostitution standard operating procedure?
And reflects on the Drive-by Media's reaction:
The Washington Post news pages, curiously, look for explanations in other quarters. They’re less interested in the culture of ACORN than in the motivations of filmmaker James O’Keefe and his colleague Hannah Giles, who posed as pimp and prostitute in ACORN headquarters and provided the resulting videos to Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government website. The Post’s Thursday news story (headlined “ACORN to review incidents”) helpfully identifies Giles as “the eldest daughter of a conservative Christian minister in Miami.” (Questions for the reporter: Does it make any difference that she’s the eldest rather than, say, the second eldest? On what basis do you characterize the minister as conservative, and why is that relevant? You characterize the minister as “Christian,” but aren’t all ministers in the U.S. Christian, or are you just trying to distinguish him from a cabinet minister?)
The Post’s Friday story (“The $1,300 mission to fell ACORN”) reads as if the reporters were assigned to find out what nefarious right-wing outfit financed their operation and came up empty. They did manage to include two paragraphs on the beliefs on Giles’s father, apparently on the theory that it illuminates her motivation. Then it segues to an account by ACORN sources of how the two were thrown out of an ACORN office in Philadelphia when they mentioned 13-year-olds (but not when they mentioned prostitution?). I guess the idea is to discredit Giles and by inference O’Keefe as religious fanatics whose motivations should lead readers to disregard what’s on their videos.
Who do you believe, the newspaper or your lying eyes?
Prostitution: Do it for the Children. (An ACORN Public Service Announcement)
Hi-Ho, the Derry-O
Let's say you're preparing dinner and you realize with dismay that you don't have any certified organic Tuscan kale. What to do?
Here's how Michelle Obama handled this very predicament Thursday afternoon:
The Secret Service and the D.C. police brought in three dozen vehicles and shut down H Street, Vermont Avenue, two lanes of I Street and an entrance to the McPherson Square Metro station. They swept the area, in front of the Department of Veterans Affairs, with bomb-sniffing dogs and installed magnetometers in the middle of the street, put up barricades to keep pedestrians out, and took positions with binoculars atop trucks. Though the produce stand was only a block or so from the White House, the first lady hopped into her armored limousine and pulled into the market amid the wail of sirens.
Then, and only then, could Obama purchase her leafy greens. "Now it's time to buy some food," she told several hundred people who came to watch. "Let's shop!"
Cowbells were rung. Somebody put a lei of marigolds around Obama's neck. The first lady picked up a straw basket and headed for the "Farm at Sunnyside" tent, where she loaded up with organic Asian pears, cherry tomatoes, multicolored potatoes, free-range eggs and, yes, two bunches of Tuscan kale. She left the produce with an aide, who paid the cashier as Obama made her way back to the limousine.
There's nothing like the simple pleasures of a farm stand to return us to our agrarian roots.
...
The promotion of organic and locally grown food, though an admirable cause, is a risky one for the Obamas, because there's a fine line between promoting healthful eating and sounding like a snob. The president, when he was a candidate in 2007, got in trouble in Iowa when he asked a crowd, "Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?" Iowans didn't have a Whole Foods.
For that reason, it's probably just as well that the first lady didn't stop by the Endless Summer Harvest tent yesterday. The Virginia farm had a sign offering "tender baby arugula" -- hydroponically grown, pesticide free -- and $5 for four ounces, which is $20 a pound.
Obama, in her brief speech to the vendors and patrons, handled the affordability issue by pointing out that people who pay with food stamps would get double the coupon value at the market. Even then, though, it's hard to imagine somebody using food stamps to buy what the market offered: $19 bison steak from Gunpowder Bison, organic dandelion greens for $12 per pound from Blueberry Hill Vegetables, the Piedmont Reserve cheese from Everson Dairy at $29 a pound. Rounding out the potential shopping cart: $4 for a piece of "walnut dacquoise" from the Praline Bakery, $9 for a jumbo crab cake at Chris's Marketplace, $8 for a loaf of cranberry-walnut bread and $32 for a bolt of yarn.
The first lady said the market would particularly appeal to federal employees in nearby buildings to "pick up some good stuff for dinner." Yet even they might think twice about spending $3 for a pint of potatoes when potatoes are on sale for 40 cents a pound at Giant. They could get nearly five dozen eggs at Giant for the $5 Obama spent for her dozen.
...
And she spoke of her own culinary efforts: "There are times when putting together a healthy meal is harder than you might imagine."
Particularly when it involves a soundstage, an interpreter for the deaf, three TV satellite trucks and the closing of part of downtown Washington.
There's no way to improve on that except a recreation of the farm at Versailles.
The root cause of our turmoil
Why was this unrest we see today not manifest during the Bush administration? The auto companies were run by private entities out of Detroit, the financial institutions were run by private entities out of New York, and people’s individual wealth was found in their homes and savings plans. Today – in a few short months – the auto industry and the banks are given their marching orders by czars in Washington; individuals have seen their personal financial security blankets shredded. And now they see Washington reaching to control how and where they can get their health care. In short, they see the wealth and power in this country being sucked via a gigantic power grab into the hands of a small, insular elite in Washington run by a man in whom they have no confidence that he is up to the task of running their lives in the most intimate way.
Fernandez
A study of civil wars by two Oxford economists, Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler suggested that really intractable arguments are rooted in a competition for resources. The other talk — about ‘grievances’, ‘history’, ’slights’, etc — was less important than the brass tacks. In other words, in most cases conflicts were over power and resources. ...
This raises the possibility that, despite Nancy Pelosi’s fears, the real cause of increasing animosity isn’t heightened rhetoric: on the contrary, the heightened rhetoric may itself be the result an intensified competition for power. It’s a symptom and not the cause. My guess is that the effect of concentrating wealth and power in government hands has created a prize which is distorting civil relations, like some singularity which is warping the space around it and pulling everything into its maw. When the pot of gold is indivisibly concentrated in one place, a winner-take-all game ensues, or as Collier and Hoeffler put it, “a simple rational choice model of greed-rebellion” is enforced. The trash-talk follows.
If this power grab by Washington succeeds, America will begin to resemble those third world countries where the wealth and power are concentrated in the capital city, a place where the peasants trek for a better life in the ghettos surrounding the homes and palaces of the rich, powerful and well connected. In fact, this is already the case as documented in The strange case of the public sector wage premium.
As more power is concentrated in Washington, this trend will accelerate. The people outside of Washington see it and don’t like it, those inside the Beltway like it and will fight for it. The fight for concentrated power is on.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Audience Members Ask NBCer to Leave Values Voter Summit
NBC's Brian Mooar got quite an earful from audience members at the first day of the Values Voter Summit that started in Washington, D.C. Friday.
To be fair, it seems press members were staged inside the conference hall at the Omni Shoreham Hotel.
As such, as Mooar was giving his report to MSNBC's Norah O'Donnell, he was making it difficult for people in the back of the hall to hear whoever was on stage at the time.
Predictably, O'Donnell didn't understand what audience members were complaining about, and instead assumed the disturbance was because the attendees didn't want the press to know what was going on at the Summit (video embedded below the fold, h/t NBer TheSter and Jeff Poor)
Thursday, September 17, 2009
If you wonder who the protestors on 9/12 were protesting, look no further than HERE
A million or so people gathered on Washington to protest recently and were accused of
-being a small, insignificant yet dangerous group of
-racists,
-rednecks,
-and haters.
They came from all across the country, many driving themselves rather than being bused in. Most carried home-made signs protesting profligate government spending, government intrusion into their lives and the breakneck lurch to the left being led by Team Obama.
But in a more general way they were protesting a mindset. They were tired of being abused verbally, emotionally, spiritually. They were protesting a group of people who believe they are the smartest, most enlightened people in the universe and who felt entitled to run the country and make the rules, no matter what anyone said. They were protesting the denizens if this particular thread of the Volokh Conspiracy who view them as bigoted, racist, religion ridden hicks who need to be kept down for their own good, because if the foot was ever removed from their necks, blacks, Jews and every other non-Christian group would be enslaved.
Here is the mindset they were protesting:
- Superiority: Jews are overwhelmingly liberal and progressive: Jews are highly educated and highly educated people tend to believe in progressive values
- Bias: Christian right's desire to base government policy, public school curricula, etc. on Christian religious doctrine.
- Hate: You have to realize that in the last couple decades, the GOP has been swallowed by the screaming nutcases we saw on display last Saturday
- Religious bigotry: Non-evangelicals who might blanch at hearing "jew him down" are perfectly comfortable with using "talmudic" or "pharisee" as an insult.I said that in my personal experience a greater percentage of evangelical Christians than non-evangelical Christians express anti-Semitic views. Not all evangelical Christians express those views, of course, and I never said otherwise. But based on personal experience, the percentage who do is not insubstantial.
- Historical illiteracy: Historically, Jews who convert have been at the forefront of turning back around and literally killing those who don't.
These are the people whose like-minded compatriots teach our children, man the courts, and in general populate the halls of governmental power. This is the disdain, the smug self-regard, the unexamined bigotry that the people who came to Washington were protesting. This is only the beginning, and could well be the second American Revolution.
UPDATE: This attitude was also perfectly encapsulated by Harvard educated Barack Obama when he called Sergeant James Crowley stupid for arresting Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates. Racial solidarity, cultural superiority, or a combination of both. That’s the mindset that’s bringing the people in “flyover country” into the streets.
American Jews, Liberalism, and … hatred of Christians
I may make a more detailed contribution to the debate soon, but for now I wanted to point out that Norman Podhoretz and others are conflating two separate issues: the first is why American Jews are generally more liberal than are other Americans, and the second is why American Jews are so attached to the Democratic Party, especially in presidential elections, such that even Jews who are moderate to moderately conservative are presumptive Democratic voters.
A more telling combination of moral preening and bigotry will be hard to find outside of the Liberal blogosphere. This one is Libertarian.
Jews are overwhelmingly liberal and progressive: Jews are highly educated and highly educated people tend to believe in progressive values (a strong state dedicated to caring for members of society least able to care for themselves; universal health coverage; respecting scientific consensus when it comes to things like global warming and other environmental concerns; and, general protection of minorities and minority rights whether it's homosexuals, Latinos, Blacks, etc.).
Of course, the fact that Jews are progressive must also be due to logical fallacy or irrational ignorance on their part, right, Bernstein? Truly, I am sorry that you are not accepted by the majority of Jewish political-types, but it's your fault, not theirs.
...
I would have thought that Jews' concerns about the Christian right as a political force has less to do with anti-semetism and more to do with the Christian right's desire to base government policy, public school curricula, etc. on Christian religious doctrine.
...
You're simply making this up. Give us some facts. In my experience, a substantial percentage of evangelical Christains (especially in the Deep South) dislike Jews. Some of them support Israel (for a variety of reasons) but still dislike American Jews. And that percentage is far higher than the percentage of Jew haters among non-evangelical Christians.
...
I don't know about anyone else but, as a jew, I would find philo-semetism almost as repulsive as anti-semetism. Anything that essentializes judaisism or jews or thinks about us as a monolith is at best creepy and at worst repugnant.
...
Jews are afraid of a strong central government handing "traditional" values down to the people. This tends to lead to scapegoating. And the scapegoats are the Jews.
Thus, Jews shy away from anything that imposes one group's value system on another. For better or worse, that is the Republican party of today.
...
I think focusing on the personal anti-semitism of Republicans and their supporters misses the point. As Prof. Bernstein has noted elsewhere, it has more to do with the affiliation between the GOP and people who want prayer in schools, official recognition of the US as a Christian nation, etc. A snarky person might refer to these folks as "objectively anti-semitic" since they seek to promote Christianity to the exclusion of other beliefs.
...
You have to realize that in the last couple decades, the GOP has been swallowed by the screaming nutcases we saw on display last Saturday, and moderates, economically conservative Republicans are an endangered, if not nearlly extinct, species. Lincoln Chafee and other former Republicans have talked about this on MSNBC.
I shouldn't complain, of course. This devolution of the Republican party may well make for a generation lost to "conservatism" if not more. But the spectacle is -- at times -- enough to produce projectile emesis of the popcorn we're munching.
...
The fact that I'm vociferous about this is that it is an opinion based on my experience. You state in your post that "in your experience" evangelical Christians are not more anti-Semitic than other Christians. My experience is otherwise. I dont have a surname usually associated with being Jewish (it sounds vaguely Irish) and don't have stereotypical Semitic features. As a result, when I am with a group of Christians it is often assumed I am one of them. I therefore often hear the casual slurs - "he tried to Jew me down" and "those Jews sure do stick together" - as well as the more vicious attacks. Its rare that I hear those type of comments when I'm with a group of Lutherans or Catholics. It's much more common to hear those type of comments when I'm with evangelicals.
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On the other hand, the anti-semitism of Bill Buckley was foundational to his conservative worldview of WASP supremacy.
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Non-evangelicals who might blanch at hearing "jew him down" are perfectly comfortable with using "talmudic" or "pharisee" as an insult.
I said that in my personal experience a greater percentage of evangelical Christians than non-evangelical Christians express anti-Semitic views. Not all evangelical Christians express those views, of course, and I never said otherwise. But based on personal experience, the percentage who do is not insubstantial.
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Say, which political party was it that ran a Creationist sympathizer for Vice President in 2008? Biblical-literalist Creationism doesn't come from the Jewish (or Roman Catholic) way of reading Genesis and bringing it into the public schools is about as clear an example of propagandizing evangelical belief where it doesn't belong as you could ask for. After that, I don't think many Jews (even conservatives) care much whether an individual Creationist likes wildcat settlements in the West Bank and eschews vulgar epithets for Jews.
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Is Dangermouse a real person or an elaborate parody?
I think that, as with Sarah Palin, this question can only be answered with "yes".
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1) The whole "America is a Christian Nation" thing is the fastest way to get Jews to vote for someone else. Inquisition-era Spain was very focused on being a "Christian nation" as well. Not to say that James Inhofe is bringing back the rack, but the phrase causes gut-level discomfort.
2) War on Christmas. A lot of conservative Republicans think that if you don't say "Merry Christmas" or have a nativity scene in front of City Hall, it's some sort of godless commie conspiracy. Not that most Jews get all worked up by one little manger, but the language tends toward extreme paranoia.
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I myself am turned off by Jews for Jesus because they seek through lies and misrepresentation to evangelize young impressionable Jews. They are Intelligent Designers suggesting evolution and religion are somehow compatible in ways they are not.
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I am turned off by evangelicals because my friends are usually gathering the popcorn to watch me and my family die in the holy war.
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I am for legal abortion (within limits) because I dislike ANY government telling me what I can do with my body, a dangerous slippery slope. I am for legal abortion because of coat hanger stories. Safe, legal, rare.
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Republicans were perceived by my family to have been behind the exclusionary immigration laws that kept Jews out of the United States during the 1920's and 1930's. I'm having trouble linking, but it's easy to find links to the Immigration Act of 1924, for example. Yes, many Democrats, especially Southern Democrats supported immigration. So did Samuel Gompers, a Jew. But this was largely a Republican program.
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It is mind boggling that any intelligent educated Jew can still vote for the repiblican party of the last 8-10 years even if they were loyal republicans before 2001.
War hysteria and propaganda ,
nasty lies,
racism,
Utopian Ayn Randism for teenagers which almost brought this country down on it's knees economically.
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Look at belligerent ignorance espoused and promoted by the GOP.
And many many more reasons.
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I know, I know, some will argue that just because the evangelicals believe (or at least claim to believe) that all Jews are damned to eternal hell for failure to accept the story of Jesus Christ as the exclusive path to salvation, and therefore believe that Jews' religious beliefs will damn them forever (with a side of 'we'll nonetheless support you temporarily because that will mean it's time for the Rapture that will condemn Jews to perpetual suffering'), that just because of that, some Jews perceive anti-Semitism in evangelical thought.
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Day to day, there's a big difference between anti-Israel sentiment, however nasty, and the sort of antisemitism one might see in your daily life. In terms of the latter, I have a whole lot less to fear from Matt Yglesias (Jewish) or Kos than from some guy who thinks we're living in a "Christian Nation" and wants my kid to recite their prayers in schools I pay for in part.
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This is actually what I find strange. Perfectly normal, law-abiding lawyers and bankers of my acquaintance start talking about how they would like to "kill" the members of Jews for Jesus. In contrast, no one I know ever expresses anything but mild disdain for Scientologists, or Hare Krishna members, or whatever. It's really weird for a group to arouse such hostility among otherwise cultured, urbane, pacific people.
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Historically, Jews who convert have been at the forefront of turning back around and literally killing those who don't. Often armed with the theological claim that Christianity is the true fulfillment of Judaism, making the rest of us "false Jews." The foundations for this go back to the New Testament and it keeps leading to Jewish bloodshed one way or another.
More 9/12 Crowd Data: Yeah, It Was Big
On Monday, PJM published my piece titled “March on Washington: How Big Was the Crowd.” It contained several estimates of the actual number of people who attended the mach on the Capitol on September 12.
The legacy media seems to have converged on an estimate of 60,000 to 70,000 people. This appears to be sourced to the D.C. Fire Department, although as several people have pointed out, no one seems to recall any other estimates coming from the D.C. Fire Department. On investigation, it turns out to be Pete Piringer, public affairs officer for the D.C. Fire and Emergency Department, as quoted at Politifact:
[Piringer] said the local government no longer provides official crowd estimates because they can become politicized. But the day of the rally, Piringer unofficially told one reporter that he thought between 60,000 and 75,000 people had shown up.
“It was in no way an official estimate,” he said.
We asked Piringer whether there were enough protesters to fill the National Mall, as depicted in the photograph.
“It was an impressive crowd,” he said. But after marching down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol, the crowd “only filled the Capitol grounds, maybe up to Third Street,” he said.
Emphasis mine. Remember those points: “in no way an official estimate” and “filled the Capitol grounds, maybe up to Third Street.”
Some others:
The Daily Mail first reported 2 million, then scaled it back to 1.2 million.
Barbara Espinosa reported that actual traffic counters from the march organizers reported about 450,000 crossing Pennsylvania at 11th after about an hour of the march, and nearly 1.5 million total.
There was also the time-lapse photoset from the traffic camera over the Freedom Plaza, which is where 14th St NW crosses Pennsylvania Avenue at E street.
Our own estimate of more than 850,000.
The Noble and Ancient Order of the Gormogons, with an estimate of about 1 million.
Another estimate by Henry Vanderbilt, reported at Transterrestrial Musings. Using two different methods, Vanderbilt arrived at one estimate of up to 320,000 in the march down Pennsylvania alone, and 350,000 to 500,000 on the Mall and Capitol grounds.
The estimate of 350,000 from Political Gumbo — and let me just mention: this is the way it’s done, kiddies. Ken Vaughn looked at my computation, made his own, documented his assumptions, and came out with a different number for the number marching on Pennsylvania Ave. Frankly, from his argument, I probably trust this estimate over my original one; remember that it’s only the marchers, though, so it’s certainly a lower bound number as well.
“Please! Smart people! Lead us and tell us what to do!”
I think a number of conservatives were secretly looking forward to the Obama presidency in hopes that liberals might just calm down a little. Maybe they’d even consider supporting the troops in their war efforts for a change. At least, maybe they would be a bit less angry.
Big miscalculation.
Now conservatives have more reason to be angry these days, with liberals in charge and all the spending and government takeovers. But with Democrats having complete control of the government, you’d think liberals could be dismissive of conservatives and be calm themselves. But no, they’re still crazy angry. Maybe even angrier than before. Biting-fingers-off angry. They’re screeching about how all the people opposed to Obama are racists and neo-Nazis and stupid, and they’re using sexual slurs against protesters and boycotting everyone who disagrees with them. They’re still nuts, but why?
See things from their point of view. The most fundamental principle liberals have is that they are all very, very smart, and everyone should listen to them. Nothing angers them more than something that challenges them to reexamine that core tenet. And that’s why they were so delighted by the election of President Obama and further wins in the House and Senate. For a moment they thought the American people had recognized liberals as their superiors and said to them: “Please! Smart people! Lead us and tell us what to do!”
Of course, it is quite obvious right now that that’s not at all what the election was about.
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While conservatives can still openly call themselves conservatives and argue directly for things they like (such as gun rights and free markets), liberals still have to run from their label and never dare say out loud the things they want, such as socialism and single-payer health care. How could liberals not see this coming? Are they not as smart as they think?
Having to even contemplate such a horrible possibility is enough to drive a liberal mad.
So they lash out. Since they are obviously so smart (obviously!), the only reason anyone could oppose them is that the person is stupid and evil. Thus everyone protesting must be a stupid racist. It’s the only conclusion possible without having to reexamine the central tenet that liberals are super smart and should totally run everything. And if you were under the delusion that you were surrounded by stupid racists who won’t listen to your obviously smart ideas, wouldn’t you be pretty angry all the time?
Liberal Lies on National Health Care: Joe Wilson Edition!
I'm trying to get to the next installment of my Pulitzer Prize-deserving series on liberal lies about national health care, but apparently liberals have decided to torture us by neurotically fixating on one lie.
After President Barack Obama gave a speech to a joint session of Congress last week passionately defending his national health care plan, the Democrats were agog at the brilliance of the speech. Nancy Pelosi was so thrilled, her expression almost changed.
But as Obama ticked off one demonstrably false claim after another -- eliciting 37 standing ovations from the Democrats in the audience -- America's greatest living statesman, Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., yelled out, "You lie!" in response to Obama's claim that the bill will not cover illegal aliens.
There are a number of theories about why America's greatest living statesman shouted "You lie!" at that juncture, but mine is that Wilson said it because Obama told a big, fat stinking lie.
Every single American knows it's a lie. But liberals take pleasure in repeating it -- and then condescendingly accusing anyone who doesn't accept their lie of being a toothless, illiterate racist.
Read the whole thing...
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Imagine the Tea Parties being directed at the GOP and Prez McC
AP: "Patriots Embrace Principles, Demand End to Republican Fiscal Waste"
Reuters: "20,000,000(,000) Crowd Washington to Force Return to Clinton-Era Economic Prosperity"
NYT: "More offensive than the canard that this crisis would have been inevitable even under the deft hand of the sadly defeated Barack Obama is the ludicrous notion trotted out by the administration's chief spokesbimbo "Womb" Palin that opposition to this dumb slut has any connection to sexism. Economics is hard, ok, sweetie?"
Truthers vs. birthers.
Scenario A: The supposedly inept president of the United States carefully planned and orchestrated the worst terrorist attack on American soil in our history. Though “only” 3,000 people died, the plan was to kill many more by simultaneously attacking the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and either the U.S. Capitol or the White House itself on Sept. 11, 2001.
Or
Then there’s Scenario B: An ambitious and extremely clever politician, who has at best been selectively forthcoming about large chunks of his youth, lied about his place of birth so he could be eligible for the presidency.
Now, which one is more believable? For the record, I don’t believe either. But it seems to me the “birther” hypothesis is vastly more plausible than the “truther” hypothesis. Politicians lie to advance their careers. You can look it up. Whole governments rarely orchestrate incredibly complex acts of physics, logistics, and mass murder all the while pinning guilt on others (who boast that they acted alone).
Just for clarification: “Truthers” believe Scenario A. “Birthers” believe Scenario B.
...In July, the popular left-wing website FiredogLake couldn’t let go of the birther bit. One post — titled “The Republican Party is the Birther Party, and it’s dragging them down” — made much of the fact that 28 percent of Republicans, according to one poll, do not believe that Obama is a natural-born citizen. This week, the site’s founder, Jane Hamsher, was disgusted that Jones was “thrown under the bus,” even though he subscribed to trutherism, a view that “35 (percent) of Democrats believed as of 2007.”
Got that? Belief in an implausible conspiracy is a cancer on the GOP. Even greater belief in an even more implausible conspiracy is proof that it’s mainstream.
Media demand the Right quit being active .. it's a Left Thing.
It's very easy to be outraged by the way our "objective" media greeted the massive Sept. 12 rally against Big Government in Washington and across the country. They treated it as a menacing surge of white anger, meanness, and racism. But all the media bias against this rally clearly illustrates one nagging truth for media liberals: They really don't think conservatives should be allowed to protest. It's somehow like a copyright violation.
While Michelle Malkin exposes Liberal support of child-sex slavery when they want to shut down exposure of ACORN's methods. If they have to choose between forcing Honduran children to work as prostitutes in bothels or being outraged at videos showing ACORN advisors aiding and abetting these activities, guess which approach they'll take?
Undercover journalism is only acceptable when it fits a liberal agenda. That is the message from "professional" reporters and left-wing activists outraged about three successful video stings targeting President Obama's old friends at the left-wing tax-subsidized outfit ACORN.
Conservative documentarian James O'Keefe and writer Hannah Giles, working for the BigGovernment.com website, posed as a pimp and prostitute during visits to ACORN offices in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Brooklyn. ACORN housing officials and tax advisers offered them brazen suggestions on how to lie on their applications, disguise their income, obscure their child sex-ring business and hide cash from abusive johns. ("When you buy the house with the backyard, you get a tin," an ACORN counselor in New York told Giles, "and you bury it down in there, cover it and put the grass over it.")
Summing up the ACORN Housing Corporation philosophy, another Brooklyn ACORN official told the undercover pair bluntly: "Honesty is not going to get you the house."
ACORN spokesman Scott Levenson blasted the investigation as "gotcha journalism." Echoing ACORN's defenders, MSNBC anchor Norah O'Donnell fretted on Tuesday that Giles and O'Keefe's methods "might be viewed as entrapment. That some conservative activists used hidden cameras to get this stuff on camera."
O'Donnell has apparently forgotten the inglorious history of news "entrapment" by her betters at NBC News.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
“Is It Really Bias If Most Of The MSM Is This Stupid?”
While the press was out digging up the shocking fact that [Rep. Joe] Wilson has taken No-Doz in the past, “crazy” bloggers were uncovering an actual loon in the House of Czars. 9/11 Truthers are so universally deemed insane that it’s the one issue that conservatives and Bill Maher agree on. That one of them had his hands on $80 billion of stimulus cash seemed like a story to many.
Not NBC Chief White House Correspondent Chuck Todd. To be fair, reporting on anything negative in the Obama White House is grounds for immediate dismissal at NBC.
On to the ACORN story. The president’s pet group of community organizers (”Just like Jesus!”) has been getting into some trouble recently. Nothing as egregious as Joe Wilson’s shouting, of course, just pondering some teenage prostitution and stuff. Knowing that this is probably merely the tip of the sleaze iceberg, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to cut off federal bucks for ACORN yesterday. I found out about it while being online for ninety seconds to check my email last night. ABC News anchor Charlie Gibson cackled proudly about his ignorance of the story this morning.
Perhaps Charlie was busy perching his glasses on the end of his nose for an interview with Mark Levin, whose book Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto has dominated the New York Times best seller list this year (1 million copies sold as of today).
Or not. If you need to reach Mark, rest assured that he’s not on the phone with any of the network morning show bookers. However, if you’re dying to know what Elizabeth Edwards is up to she’ll be back on in an hour to pimp her book again. When books like Levin’s and Michelle Malkin’s Culture of Corruption shoot to the top of the NYT best seller list, the MSM employs a “if we ignore them they might go away” strategy. Good luck with that.
ACORN Story Grows But Mainstream Media Refuse to Cover It
Bruce Springsteen once wrote: “From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come).” I doubt he expected that story of love gone wrong would become ideal political commentary for the group known as ACORN.
The small scandal showing an embarrassing video of Baltimore ACORN staffers looking like they were giving tax advice on how to set up a brothel, is now national news. -- This story has everything you could ever want – corruption, sleazy actions at tax-funded organizations, firings, government ties, sex, hookers. It is a network news director’s dream. Imagine the ratings!
Only almost no one is covering it.
This is the news media in the era of Van Jones and President Obama. The major outlets cover what they want and create the themes they want. When they find something inconvenient, they let it pass. They didn’t like the Van Jones story, so they ignored it. The network news media liked the financial entity known as Fannie Mae, so they ignored that scandalous organization for years. ACORN is getting the same treatment.
But it isn’t working any more. The ACORN fiasco has now impacted three offices – Baltimore, Washington and New York – with laugh-out-loud videos reminiscent of the hookers and pimps from the 1970s “Starsky and Hutch” show. Huggy Bear returns! Four employees have been fired, with more likely to come. And the controversy was so laughably bad that the Census Bureau cut off all ties to the group known formally as the "Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now." -- They called it the “tipping point” to shed themselves of ACORN. More nuts for someone else, I guess.
And yet. And yet it’s still been ignored by the network news. Nothing on ABC, CBS or NBC. The only thing any one of the three broadcast networks has done appeared in a blog post by ABC’s Jake Tapper. It's hardly worth noting except to show that the networks know about what’s going on. They just don’t care to report it. Only FOX News has bothered to report on the controversy.
Read the whole thing...
As the truth about ObamaCare emerges, the spin changes.
OLD SPIN: Nobody’s Talking About Killing Granny! (Huffington Post)
New Spin: What’s Wrong With Killing Granny? (Newsweek)
Old Spin: Nobody’s Talking about Health Care for Illegals!
(NY Times)
New Spin: What’s Wrong With Health Care for Illegals?
(Washington Post)
Monday, September 14, 2009
What we saw at the September 12 March On Washington.
Three Times is Slavery and Treason
Back when I did computer tech support, we had a rule of thumb for evaluating the significance of reports of unusual and previously unreported failures .
One report of a failure is a fluke.
Two reports of a failure is a coincidence. It might just be two users making the same error.
Three reports indicates a pattern of failure that arises from the hardware or software itself.
This rule of thumb evolved after observing the failures of millions of computers. We learned that three separate computers would only suffer the same failure if the failure arose from a common source in the computers themselves. Just three machines out of millions told us we most likely had a systemic problem.
This brings me to the Acorn child prostitution scandal.This degree of organizational systemic rot has to come from the head. I think that much is obvious. Something in Acorn’s organizational culture made these people feel that it was okay and expected for them to give the criminal advice that they did. Certainly, if Acorn had been a private for-profit company, three separate and wholly unrelated incidents would have been enough for leftists to demand the heads of the corporate officers.One report from an Acorn office was a fluke. Any large organization, public or private of any creed can be infected by amoral individuals who will try to use the organization to commit illegal or unethical acts. No organization larger than a few dozen people can police the actions of every member, all the time.
Two reports from two separate Acorn offices was just a disturbing coincidence. The same reasoning as above applies, because in a large organizations, just as in a large installed base of computers, it’s possible for two separate bad eggs carrying out the same acts to show up in the same organization.
Three identical reports of the same failure from three separate offices indicates the criminality arises from the organization itself. It is highly unlikely that, out of the hundreds of Acorn offices around the nation, the journalist just happened to wander into the three offices whose managers wouldn’t blink an eye at helping to set up a brothel using children.
The really disturbing part is how in all three cases the managers of the Acorn offices don’t even bat an eye when the journalist asks about setting up a brothel. Further, they seem to have the logistics and legal tangles of using a brothel to fund a political career already well thought out. I don’t know about you, but if someone ask me how to run a brothel using minors and how to funnel that money into the a political campaign, I would have to stop and think about it for while. The fact that they have the answers already queued up and ready to go tells us one thing…
… this is far from the first time they have provided this kind of “assistance”. They know the answers because they’ve been asked them before and they’ve answered them. Repeatedly.
We might also note that in most cases illegal immigrants are forced into prostitution against their will. Alone in a foreign country they have to serve their pimp’s pleasure or risk being killed or having their family members killed back in their home country. This is doubly true for minors. There is a nifty term for holding people against their will and forcing them to work for you:
Acorn was promoting slavery. Sexual slavery. The sexual slavery of children.
Is that overwrought? Well, it isn’t in my book but then I have a low tolerance for the sexual enslavement of children. If someone had seriously asked me the same questions the journalist asked the Acorn managers, I would still be cleaning the blood splatter off the ceiling. Perhaps in leftist circles the involuntary prostitution of minor illegal aliens is not considered a big deal.
I do know for certain how horrible Acorn’s acts would be viewed as if they had been a non-leftist organization.
But this is what I really don’t understand:
This systemic criminality is an act of treason against both Acorn’s supporters and the people they were supposed to help! There is no other word for this level of betrayal. Honestly, what greater crime could an organization commit against the sensibilities and trust of leftists than to support criminal activities that degrade the communities of our nation’s most poor and helpless? What greater sin is there in the leftists’ lexicon than the literal sexual enslavement of children?
Where is the blind rage from the left? Why aren’t they mobbing the offices of Acorn and dragging the corporate officers out into the street? How bad do things have to become within a leftist organization before the rest of the left says, “Enough! You are no longer part of us!” How long will it take for the left to cast Acorn from the fold? How long before they stop making excuses and condemning those who brought this evil to light and instead clean their own house?
ACORN advice on a house of prostitution in New York
Running against the people.
Today Barack Obama is campaigning again, and this time his opponent is the American people.
The polls prove it:
That's It? That's the Bounce?
WaPo reports that in the days after Obama's speech, the Dem health care plan was opposed by a 48 to 46 margin--versus a 50-45 margin in mid-August. ... From five points down to two points down. That's all he got for playing the joint-session-prime-time-address card? Does that seem like enough to you? ... P.S.: "[S]eniors remain solidly opposed to health-care reform, and the number who think government involvement would do more harm than good continues to rise ... "
The focus of news stories from the MSM and even the blogosphere is on the issue of the political fight in Washington. But the fight is not in Washington, it never was. The fight is between Washington and the rest of the country. That's what the rally in Washington on 9/12 was all about. That's why there is so much controversy about the number of people that turned out. That's why the Left insists on portraying the people who went to Tea Parties as ignorant racist rednecks. Team Obama and his NSBers are campaigning against the people of this country.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
The Tea Party Movement - Past & Future
...conservatives are bypassing mainstream media. Conservatives blogs are on the rise and media is loathe to admit that we’re dominating social media networks and the best sellers’ lists.
The collective consciousness of half the country’s population has changed: we stopped measuring our validity and successes by the media and by our enemies’ criticisms. We embraced the spirit of the underdog. We realized that GOP is not synonymous with conservatism. Some of us are preparing to run for offices ourselves, we’re launching our own conservative groups and organizing petitions, rallies, and lobbyist efforts all around the country.
The tea party movement has challenged the GOP to get back on track or risk losing its grip on the right wing. It’s reminded Democrats that a slick marketing campaign coupled with paid activism isn’t the same as a groundswell of real change and the reason that Democrats are so hostile towards it is because they’ve never before encountered it.
This movement celebrates its last big hurrah of 2009 before marching headlong into a midterm year. The tea party is far from over and for the sake of checks and balances, I hope it never ends.
An Eloquent Report on the March on Washington
Sept. 13, 2009
On a cloudy overcast low 70s day in our nations capital, they came. A million plus Americans and their guests, (some estimates from news sources put the crowd at 1.5 million) to protest what they see as an out of control Congress, Administration and government. A wasteful, corrupt, insidious Congress. A lying, tale spinning Administration and a bloated federal bureaucracy.
In strollers and wheel chairs, on crutches and canes, by foot and bicycle, with their dogs and their kids, they peacefully marched. With flags, banners and signs, hand painted and printed, they let their feelings be known. All races were represented.
From sea to shining sea they were present. Suckling infants, to WW11 vets in their late 80s and all ages in between. Laughing, Smiling, Cheering, Yelling, Singing, Praying and some with tears in their eyes. From the Capital steps as far as the eye could see, they let freedoms call be heard. The sun shone down on America's greatest on this overcast day, Sept 12, 2009, in Washington DC.
The noble, honorable, hard working, greatest silent majority, let their voices ring out. "We will not be Enslaved, Government”! “Socialism is Slavery”! “Czars Czuck”!
Over a 7 hour span I walked with the crowd, waving my sign, with an hour in the Porta Potty line, and personally spoke to people from California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Montana, Colorado, New Mexico, North Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, DC, West Virginia, and Virginia plus some newer Americans from Communist Cuba, The Soviet Union, Pol Pots Cambodia, East Germany and jolly old England.
They were smiling and laughing and slapping each other on the back and shaking hands. They thanked the Capital Police, the volunteers and they thanked each other for coming. This was the noble America who has been so silent for so long. Not any longer.
Take heed Government! Take Heed Congress! Take heed! We are coming. We are awakened. You will be held accountable. Liberty and Freedom will be the order of the day, or else. The Constitution will be obeyed. Or Else! Missing in action? The creepy crawly, slithering from under a rock, corrupt criminal class, elitist cowards from Congress and of course, The President. Thank You Americans. Your voice will be heard.
Peter Courtenay
Stephens, Virginia
Well said.
Estimates of up to Two Million at the "March on Washington" Tea Party
Via the UK Mail:
Up to two million people marched to the U.S. Capitol today, carrying signs with slogans such as "Obamacare makes me sick" as they protested the president's health care plan and what they say is out-of-control spending.
The line of protesters spread across Pennsylvania Avenue for blocks, all the way to the capitol, according to the Washington Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency.
People were chanting "enough, enough" and "We the People." Others yelled "You lie, you lie!" and "Pelosi has to go," referring to California congresswoman Nancy Pelosi.
Yesterday, CNN reported that at the Tea Party protest in Washington DC, Nazi imagery and a poster of President Obama as an African witch doctor were popular images. A friend and former law firm colleague who spent hours at the protest says this isn't true. He tells me: "I saw a couple of signs out of thousands that said 'Hitler gave good speeches too' and a few of the Obama zombie like images that have been around the internet." But CNN is "simply making [it] up" when it claims that Nazi imagery and a post of Obama as a witch doctor were popular images at the protest.
It was a very civil crowd, and a very large one. We probably talked with 100 people, plus or minus. From all over the country. I recall talking with folks from California, Oregon, Montana, Texas, Missouri, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Maine, North Carolina, South Carolina, Connecticut, and New Jersey, not to mention assorted "locals" from Virginia, Maryland, and DC.
There were many, many signs, and I'd say that 95% + were hand made. The slogans ran the gamut, but most were on the general theme of spending and government intervention is out of control, we can't afford it, we're scared by where Obama is trying to take the country, and the like.
Read the rest.
On the other hand, ABC claims that attendance at the rally made the number "thousands"
Carrying signs depicting President Obama as Adolf Hitler and the Joker, and chanting slogans such as "'No big government" and "Obamacare makes me sick," approximately 60,000 to 70,000 people flooded Pennsylvania Ave, according to the Washington DC Fire Department.
And this from a participant:
This was the first protest I've ever attended. And to be completely honest when coming upon 60-70 thousand people (or however many it was) I expected there to be a few racist signs as well as a few racist comments (there's thousands of people and some are bound to have these horrible flaws about them). I was there for 6 or 7 hours and I came across NONE. Zero. Not one racist sign or comment. And in fact, 1/3 of the speakers I heard were black.
Who is the DC Fire Department spokesperson who gave the estimate? I tried called them and got a recording asking me to leave a message. Below is a time lapse video of the crowd and that was closer to millions than thousands.
Image of crowd from Michelle Malkin
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Obama's Crowd
A few Steyn classics from "Where is Obama's Center":
Three stories bubbled up in the last week, although if you read the New York Times and the administration’s other airbrushers you’ll be blissfully unaware of them; the resignation of Van Jones — former (?) Communist and current 9/11 “truther” — from his post as Obama’s “Green Jobs Czar”; the “re-assignment” of Yosi Sergant at the National Endowment for the Arts after he was found to be urging government-funded arts groups to produce “art” in support of Obama policy positions; and, finally, the extraordinary undercover tape from Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government website in which officials from ACORN (the Obama chums who’ll be “helping” with the next census) offer advice on how pimps can get government housing loans for brothels employing underage girls from El Salvador.
What do all these Obama associates have in common? I mean, aside from the fact that Glenn Beck played a key role in exposing them. We are assured by the airbrushing media and “moderate” conservatives that Beck is crazy, a frothing spokesnut for the lunatic fringe. By contrast, Van Jones, Yosi Sergant, and ACORN are all members of the lunatic mainstream, embedded philosophically and actually in the heart of Obamaland.
What all these individuals share is a supersized view of the state, from a makework gig coordinating the invention of phony-baloney “green jobs” to Soviet-style government-licensed art in support of heroic government programs to government-funded “community organizers” organizing government funding for jailbait bordellos. Okay, government-funded child prostitution’s a bit of an outlier even for this crowd — for the moment. But you get the general idea.
The New York Times’s in-house conservative David Brooks was an early champion of Obama and is profiled in the current edition of The New Republic cooing paeans to the then-senator”s “pant leg and perfectly creased pant.” Alas, for David Brooks, the bottom has dropped out of Obama’s perfectly creased pants. The other day he was tutting that the Obama administration is in trouble because “it joined itself at the hip to the liberal leadership in Congress.” My National Review colleague Jay Nordlinger was reminded of an old observation by the great Theodore Dalrymple. During his time as an English prison doctor, Dalrymple frequently met ne’er-do-wells who said they’d “fallen in with the wrong crowd,” but, oddly enough, in all those years, he never met the wrong crowd.
Likewise, Obama didn’t “join” himself to the liberal leadership; he is the liberal leadership. The administration didn’t fall in with the wrong crowd; they are the wrong crowd. Van Jones, Yosi Sergant, and ACORN are where Barack Obama has chosen to live all his adult life. Even if he wanted to be the bipartisan centrist of David Brooks’s fantasies, look at his Rolodex and then figure out just where such a man would estimate the “center” to be.
Liberal Killers and Bombers
Authorities have charged an Owosso, Michigan, man with two counts of first-degree premeditated murder in the Friday shooting deaths of an anti-abortion activist and another man, a prosecutor's office said.
Activist Jim Pouillon was shot and killed Friday while protesting outside Owosso High School.
Operation Save America, the anti-abortion group of which Pouillon was a member, said in a written statement that he was "well known for his love of Christ and unborn children."
Authorities say the suspect, Harlan James Drake, was offended by anti-abortion material that the activist had displayed across from the school all week.
On the eve of what organizers call a 'Big Ol' TEA Party', the Washington, D.C., offices of FreedomWorks were evacuated by DC Metro police on Friday afternoon after the conservative organization reported to authorities at 3:42 pm ET that it had received a bomb threat.
Friday, September 11, 2009
ACORN, the MSM, Sex and Race
There are so many facets of this expose that want exploration. For example, the legal system seeking to destroy the people who have brought this to light. As another example the readiness of ACORN staff to teach a whore and her pimp how to set up a bordello, as if it’s something they do every day. They never turn a hair! They never suggest that it’s wrong. Importing children from Central America to be sex slaves? No problem! Their primary concern is for the pimp’s reputation when he tells them he plans to run for office. Their advice? Keep his involvement a secret.
But what is also fascinating is the MSM’s total avoidance of a story that has all the ingredients of a blockbuster: sex, criminality, child exploitation – all on videotape. How often have your heard the media accused of being drawn to sensationalism? “If it bleeds it leads?” Well, that’s Barbra Streisand, and this is exhibit “A.”
The problem with the story? The miscreants are Black, they are female and they are Liberal. Not only that, they are part of Liberal group closely identified with Barack “Community Organizer” Obama. How can the MSM possibly cover this? How can they make it fit the Liberal template? It’s going to take some ingenuity to turn lying, tax fraud, pimping, prostitution and turning poor immigrant children into sex slaves into a good way of organizing the community.
In the meantime, ACORN screams:”racism.” And the MSM is the Victorian Gent averting its eyes from a sight that cannot exist in its universe.
How many lives is a journalist worth?
Bill Keller, the NY Times editor called the criticism “simplistic.”
"That Sultan and the soldier lost their lives in this episode is heartbreaking, and it's human nature to look for someone to blame, but to blame the journalist is simplistic at best."
“Simplistic” is one of those words beloved of the press, who use it as a catch-all phrase of criticism to anyone who disagrees with them, when they are not characterizing their ideological opponents as crazies.
For ordinary mortals not living at the Olympian Heights, we have to ask orselves to what extent lives should be risked for people who decide to deliberately put themselves at obvious risk.
Soldiers, police and firemen go to each other’s rescue all the time, it's part of the "code." Their job is to go where civilians are told to stay away. They go with the understanding that they, or their bodies, will be recovered as they go about jobs that – by definition – put them at risk of life and limb.
But what of reporters? Reporters may claim that they have to put themselves in danger from time to time. But their jobs are not – by definition – physically risky.
Then there is their self-described position as being above the fray. Unlike soldiers who rescue their comrades, reporters point with pride that they have distanced themselves from their country by claiming the mantle of impartiality and shunning allegiance to a particular society or culture. They have set themselves apart and yet – demand that when it comes to rescue they are suddenly part of us.
And when their search for a story puts them into an obvious place of physical danger, despite the fact that their story line was that “our side” are wanton, reckless killers, they whine when lives are lost and fingers are pointed that it was all a tragic episode and blaming the people who created the situation is “simplistic.”
Just how many lives of ordinary mortals is a “reporter’s” life worth? Perhaps Bill Keller will tell us.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Chaos for Glory: ACORN
Chaos for Glory: My Time With ACORNby James O'Keefe
A famous community organizer once said, “The only way to upset the power structure in your communities is to goad them, confuse them, irritate them and, most of all, make them live by their own rules. If you make them live by their own rules, you destroy them.” Impossible demands can irritate modern leftists in ways nothing else can, whether it’s by banning Lucky Charms cereal because it’s racist against Irish people, calling Planned Parenthood saying you want to donate money for black abortions in the name of Margaret Sanger, or making Sen. Snowe sign an oversized bailout check for a billion dollars to Amtrak, in her own office.