‘Destroy the idols,’ Egyptian jihadist calls for removal of Sphinx, Pyramids

Need another reason never to visit Egypt?

An Egyptian jihad leader, with self-professed links to the Taliban, called for the “destruction of the Sphinx and the Giza Pyramids in Egypt,” drawing ties between the Egyptian relics and Buddha statues, local media reported this week.

Murgan Salem al-Gohary, an Islamist leader twice-sentenced under former President Hosni Mubarak for advocating violence, called on Muslims to remove such “idols.”

“All Muslims are charged with applying the teachings of Islam to remove such idols, as we did in Afghanistan when we destroyed the Buddha statues,” he said on Saturday during a television interview on an Egyptian private channel, widely watched by Egyptian and Arab audiences.

“God ordered Prophet Mohammed to destroy idols,” he added. “When I was with the Taliban we destroyed the statue of Buddha, something the government failed to do.”

His comments came a day after thousands of ultraconservative Islamists gathered in Tahrir Square to call for the strict application of Sharia law in the new constitution. 

How's that Arab Spring working out for you?

 

What really triggered the FBI investigation?

Was an FBI agent obsessed with another woman?

However, supervisors soon became concerned that the initial agent might have grown obsessed with the matter, and prohibited him from any role in the investigation, according to the officials.

The FBI officials found that he had sent shirtless pictures of himself to Ms. Kelley, according to the people familiar with the probe.

At this point I don't know of anyone who looks good in this affair, but it's becoming clear that this story has more threads than a ball of twine.  Illicit sex meets Benghazi, secret prisons, dead CIA agents, Jihadis, obsessed shirtless FBI agents and a White House that claims to knows nothing.

The New York Daily News spoke with Broadwell's father, Paul Krantz, who told the paper: “This is about something else entirely, and the truth will come out."

“There is a lot more that is going to come out,” said Krantz, claiming he was not allowed to elaborate. “You wait and see. There’s a lot more here than meets the eye."

I'm beginning to be afraid that we won't know the truth because the media has become the Obama palace guard.  Can you imagine anyone at MSNBC or in the NY Times willing to investigate if the story leads to what Obama knew and when he knew it? 

There is a story on Spain in the Wall Street Journal, mostly about unemployment, but it includes this sentence that is beginning to apply to the US:

If they haven't already lost confidence in the government, many Spanish citizens are in the process of doing so.

The Left has been anti-US for a long, long time while the Right has been working tirelessly to shore up the structure of society including clean government and respect for the military and law enforcement.  We may have reached a tipping point where the Right no longer supports the structure that has been occupied by the Left.

In Spain, where unemployment is 25% according to government statistics, people don't show up for job interviews or refuse a job when offered.

Spain's 'lost' generation isn't really lost. They just prefer tweeting to working.

In the US you can get food stamps, public housing, welfare, 99 weeks of unemployment benefits and an ObamaPhone.   Would you rather tweet than work?

Top US commander in Afghanistan Gen. John Allen under investigation for alleged 'inappropriate communications'

The defense official confirmed the investigation was due to allegations of inappropriate emails between Allen and Jill Kelley, a close friend of the Petraeus family who reportedly led the FBI to investigate communications between Petraeus and his biographer Paula Broadwell.

The purging of the general staff? This does have a precedent, and it's not a good precedent.

Cannibals

Corporation for Public Broadcsting Star Has Sex With Underage Boy

Voice of Elmo on leave from Sesame Street after he was accused of having 'sexual relationship with underage boy'

Kevin Clash, 52, is on leave after the programme's lawyers were contacted by a 23-year-old man

Accuser claims he had a sexual relationship with the puppeteer seven years ago, when he was aged 16

Not that there's anything wrong with homosexuals attacking underage boys if they're Liberal. 

Catholic Church joined by BBC and PBS as serious sexual abuse perpetrators.

Don't touch that puppet, you don't know where it's been.

An Officer and a Gentleman

Gen. Douglas MacArthur, in a speech at West Point in 1962, quoted in his memoir "Reminiscences" (1964):

Duty-Honor-Country. Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points; to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn. Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of imagination, nor the brilliance of metaphor to tell you all what they mean. The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and, I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule.

But these are some of the things they do. They build your basic character; they mold you for your future roles as custodians of the nation's defense; they make you strong enough to know when you are weak, and brace enough to face yourself when you are afraid. They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success, not to substitute words for action, not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm but to have compassion on those who fail; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future yet never neglect the past; to be serious yet never take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.

They give you a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, and appetite for adventure and a love of ease. They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and the joy and inspiration of life. They teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentleman.

Higher Ed Corruption

Via TaxProf Blog:

George Washington University, ranked #51 in the latest U.S. News college rankings, admitted on Thursday that it has been inflating the percentage of its incoming freshman class ranked in the top 10% of their high school graduating class for at least a decade. Class rank accounts for 6% in the U.S. News rankings methodology. (In 2012, George Washington reported that 78% of its incoming freshmen ranked in the Top 10%; the correct figure was 58%.) Emory and Claremont McKenna announced earlier this year that they supplied incorrect data to U.S. News for many years.

Of course the biggest lie that the inhabitants of academia tell is that graduates are going to get good jobs in management.  All they have to do is pay $25,000 (at the low end) to $60,000 (at the high end) per year for four, five, six or seven years.  This allows professors and administrators to earn quarter-million dollar salaries while teaching useless, ideologically corrupt classes.  A rip-off from beginning to end, as recent graduates who are waiting tables or parking cars while living in their parents basement will testify.  These people are con artists, scammers.   If they were private industry they would be sued for false advertising or prosecuted for fraud. 

Heck of a job, Barry!

Veterans Deploy To Northeast After Superstorm Sandy...


More dead found nearly 2 weeks after storm...

Borough of Queens pushed to the brink...

'We are living like animals'...

These are the Drudge headlines, but let's make something clear: Sandy was not a "Superstorm."  It was big but not that violent.  It just happend to hit an area that's not used to hurricanes, even very low level hurricanes and is totally unprepared for it.  Combine that with local, state and federal government officials who did absolutley nothing to prepare for the storm like stockpiling water and gasoline, like preparing the NY subway system for flooding, like failing to prepare the power grid for storm damage, like turning back volunteer crews from out of state because they were not union crews, like FEMA still housing peope in tents in freezing weather.  Read a very good summary HERE. But will the ObamaMedia blame President Golfer like they did Bush after Katrina?  Don't make me laugh.   

Florida officials order partial recount in tight House race between Rep. West and Democratic challenger Murphy

Election officials in St. Lucie County will recount early votes cast in the hotly contested race for Florida's 18th district's House seat between Tea Party favorite Rep. Allen West and his challenger, Democrat Patrick Murphy.

The St. Lucie County Canvassing Board announced late Saturday it had set an “emergency meeting” to start at 7 a.m. Sunday at its headquarters, to “recount all ballots cast during early voting.” The number of early ballots is estimated by officials to be roughly 37,000.

West, who has refused to concede the race, is currently trailing Murphy by 2,442 votes, according to the latest results from Florida Division of Elections. On its website, the agency says West has garnered 164,448 votes to Murphy’s 166,890.

"There are possible irregularities in St. Lucie County," claims Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, a Florida lawyer volunteering for the West campaign who has been quoted on the issue. "On Sunday we'll have a chance to recount the early votes and that's a good start to preserving the integrity of the democratic process."

...

West's campaign had said earlier Saturday that issues with the voting in St. Lucie County meant the race was still undecided.

"Late on Election Night, Congressman West led by 1,700 votes," West for Congress said in a statement. "Following the St. Lucie County Supervisor of Elections’ decision to recount thousands of early ballots after a technical glitch, the margin shifted by 4,000. In order to ensure that votes were not doubled counted, we have requested that the St. Lucie Supervisor of Elections make public the poll check-in books to ensure the numbers of ballots cast matches the numbers of voters checked-in at the polls."

BBC needs 'radical overhaul'

Mr Entwistle lasted just 54 days on the job, but Lord Patten praised him as "a very, very good man, cerebral, decent, honourable, brave".

 

And also a bit of a pansy, fitting right in with the rest of the BBC staff.

Another inquiry has begun into the culture and practices at the BBC in the era of alleged sexual abuse by Savile. Another review is to examine sexual harassment policies at the BBC.

At the BBC, "sexual harassment" doesn't mean what it usually means.

 

No mention of the bias exhibited by BBC reports, just some rather unsavory sexual deviancy that's encouraged by their staff.

Denmark reverses itself on "fat tax."

Via the Pedophiles at the BBC.

The Danish government has said it intends to abolish a tax on foods which are high in saturated fats.

The measure, introduced a little over a year ago, was believed to be the world's first so-called "fat tax".

But authorities said the tax had inflated food prices and put Danish jobs at risk.

The Danish tax ministry said it was also cancelling its plans to introduce a tax on sugar, the AFP news agency reports.

The ministry said one of the effects of the fat tax was that some Danes had begun crossing the border into Germany to stock up on food there.

According to the Danish National Health and Medicines Authority, 47% of Danes are overweight and 13% are obese.

The tax was introduced in October 2011, in an attempt to limit the population's intake of fatty foods.

The measure added 16 kroner ($2.70; £1.50) per kilo (2.2lbs) of saturated fats in a product, increasing the price of a 250g pack of butter by 2.20 kroner.

Fordham University Pres. Scolds Students for Inviting Ann Coulter to Speak

Major American Universities like free speech as long as it's approved speech.

American universities are often criticized for their left-leaning biases, but the president of Fordham University in New York appeared to take it a step further when he singled out the young Republicans on campus.

The group “College Republicans” had invited well-known author and columnist Ann Coulter to speak, and President Joseph M. McShane expressed his thoughts in a university-wide email, according to Young America’s Foundation (YAF).

It should be noted that Coulter’s appearance was to be paid for by the school’s student activity fees, but the president still made it seem as though the school deserved tremendous praise for allowing free speech by a conservative firebrand. In the end, though, Coulter’s invitation was still rescinded, the university’s website says.

The more open minded members of the left said this:

The human pollution known as Ann Coulter booked, then booted from Fordham College Republican gig

The less constrained expressed themselves this way:

A whore in a pencil skirt with a $400 haircut is still a whore.

Oakland robbers attack TV cameraman - no reference to race.

Reporter Anne Makovec and cameraman Gregg Welk were on the air shortly after noon Wednesday outside Oakland Technical High School near the corner of 42nd Street and Broadway. They were at the school to do a story on the passage of Proposition 30, the tax measure preventing deep cuts to education.

As Makovec was finishing her report, police said, five men rushed up and grabbed a $6,000 camera from the tripod. Viewers saw the live picture being jarred and turned sideways for about two seconds.
One of the assailants punched Welk in the mouth before the group fled in a Mercedes-Benz, which apparently was accompanied by a Lexus, police said. Welk declined treatment by paramedics but saw his doctor.

The BBC covers up in-house sexual abuse by one of their stars -- wrongly accuses Conservative politician of pedophelia prompting soul-searching at the "trusted broadcaster."

That's the story and they're sticking to it.

The BBC's top executive resigned Saturday night after the prestigious broadcaster's marquee news magazine wrongly implicated a British politician in a child sex-abuse scandal, deepening the crisis that exploded after it decided not to air similar allegations against one of its own stars who police now say was one of the nation's worst pedophiles....

A month into Entwistle's leadership, the BBC was thrown into crisis with the revelation that its "Newsnight" program had shelved an investigation into allegations that Jimmy Savile, the renowned BBC TV host who died last year, had sexually abused several hundred children -- cajoling some into having sex with him in his car, his camper van, and even in dingy dressing rooms on BBC premises.

Entwistle took over as head of the BBC two months ago from Mark Thompson, who will become chief executive of The New York Times Co. this month. We can be totally confident that this scandal is not limited to England. Thompson will fit right in to the New York Times culture of corruption.

It's Not The Votes That Count, It's Who Counts the Votes

Kate at Small Dead Animals

It's who counts the votes.


In total, there are 21 districts in Cleveland where Mr. Romney received precisely 0 votes. In 23 districts, he received precisely 1 vote. And naturally, in one of the districts where Obama won 100% of the vote, there was 100% turnout. What a coincidence!

From Pundit Press:

President Obama must have run a great campaign considering the tremendous numbers he put up in numerous big cities. Over in Philadelphia, he was lucky enough to get 90% percent turnout in some districts with over 99% of the vote.

In Cleveland, in some districts he did even better with an astounding 100% of the vote in dozens of locations.

It appears that the Obama campaign was even more effective in Florida.

St. Lucie County, Florida Had 141.1% Turnout; Obama Won County. Out of 175,554 registered voters, 247,713 vote cards were cast in St. Lucie County, Florida on Tuesday. Barack Obama won the county.

A major disaster occurs on the outskirts of one of the most advanced civilizations on earth, and 10 days later there are victims walking 6 miles to find food?

Small dead animals

Blue State

So, let's get this straight.

"A lot of us out here are fighting for our lives,” said Feliciano, 51. “A lot of people are desperate. They don't know where they are getting their next meal."We are fighting amongst ourselves here because we are tired. And we are frustrated."

A major disaster occurs on the outskirts of one of the most advanced civilizations on earth, and 10 days later there are victims walking 6 miles to find food?
They should have voted for Republicans. This might be a scandal by now.

A response to a previous comment:

Davenport said: "I'm going to head off The Phantom here, who doubtless will show up shortly with some rant about how this is all FEMA's fault."

You really are DENSE woman. FEMA, while it is a clusterfrig of titanic proportions, could not cause this much misery on its own. Although they FAILED to have emergency generators at key fuel distribution points (read gas stations) and although they FAILED to have any kind of plan to move food and fuel to the affected areas, and although they FAILED to even have a forward based supply of bottled water and ran out last Friday, even these gold plated MORONS couldn't have frigged things up this badly alone.

Do you want to know why the power is STILL off on Long Island, Davenport? Read this here: http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Sandy-LIPA-Outages-Power-Long-Island-Defense-Military-178115341.html

In it you will find reference to a report from 2006, SIX YEARS AGO, which found that Long Island Power Authority had not done the basic maintenance required to secure the power grid from weather damage. The maintenance they're talking about here is tree cutting mostly, and replacing bad power poles.

I lived in New York in the 1990's. I could have written that report. The f-ing power went off every time it snowed because they didn't cut trees and the trees ripped the lines down. They also didn't plow the roads, but that's a story for another day.

You want to know why they don't cut the f-ing trees Davenport? It isn't because they are stupid, it isn't because they don't know, it isn't because private enterprise is inherently corrupt, it isn't even because union workers are a bunch of rent-seeking layabouts. Its because every time they go to cut down a tree, some local Greenies get up a petition or a court order to make them stop. So they stop. So the trees break and knock down the power lines. Same thing all over the North East until you get up into snow country, where even the f-ing tree huggers know better.

Well -this- time it all came home to roost the same day, and every overhanging branch from New Jersey to Connecticut took out a line.

But don't get me wrong, there's a ton of corruption and scamming going on too. Paying off inspectors, hockey tickets for town council, that sort of thing. That's why all those flooded switching stations were within reach of a flood in the first place, because the money to move them was skimmed off by graft. That's why FEMA didn't have any forward located stuff, because it all either vanished or was never there to start with except on paper.

But now that there's been a disaster the LIPA wankers are screaming for crews. And they aren't getting them. You know why Davenport? Because volunteer crews from as far away as Florida showed up Monday -before- the storm and cooled their heels until Friday, didn't get any assignments because they WERE NOT UNION, and then those volunteer crews went the hell back home.

And FEMA didn't say jack about it, did they? Nor did anyone else. One phone call from Barack "The Golfer" Obama to the head of the union could have fixed that. Just one, single phone call. Didn't get made, did it? He made a speech on Wednesday and then flew to Vegas.

Some of the people displaced by the flooding are still in tents. FEMA is supposed to find or make housing for these people, its been a week and a half now, and they are in tents. Looked out the window today? Its cold. People are going to -die- in tents this time of year. It is reported today that some of these cold tent dwelling people started calling the news media, and the FEMA types running the camps started confiscating cameras and refusing to charge up cell phones. No power, they said.

The only organizations in this whole farce that showed up like they meant it have been churches. Not seeing much of that covered in the MSM are we?

But the crowning touch Davenport, the cherry on top of it all that just makes it all the more outrageous and mind numbing is that New Yorkers voted for MORE of it on Tuesday. More graft. More incompetence. More better and bigger Big Government. Gimme my Obama phone.

Say, d'ya think LIPA and ConEd will be laying off because of Obamacare? I bet they will. I bet they lay of a thousand guys right before January first.

I prophesy this: until people like YOU, Davenport, stop actively sabotaging everyone who's trying to make our civilization work, there's going to be ever-increasing numbers of people dying of exposure in tents waiting for help from Big Brother that never comes. I also predict that the ones who survive are going to be p1ssed.

As my parting shot, I want you to think about Toronto for a second.

Did you know that thanks to the Liberal Party of Ontario and -decades- of stunning stupidity, there are two (2) main power lines that come in to downtown? Yep. Both running at the edge of melting most of the time. And did you know that most of your power comes from far away places like Nanticoke, Darlington and Bruce? Did you know that outside of Pickering there is no generation in the GTA at all?

Did you know that gas stations almost never have an emergency generator, even around Toronto?

I want you to think about Toronto after two solid weeks with no power. In November. Nice eh? Now try February. Hope you stocked up. On insulin. 'Cause there won't be any.

And remember. YOU voted for this. You did. Not me. I voted to fix it, you voted for the stupid short sighted @ssh0les who broke it.

You don't even know how close to the edge you are, yet you argue with me for telling you. Wake the hell up and LEARN something before Bad Things happen.

The Petraeus Resignation - What It Means (and Ken Starr)

Jim Treacher has a post on this:  Petraeus resigns, and it definitely has nothing to do with Benghazi and of course it has everything to do with Benghazi. He was scheduled to testify before congress about Benghazi.

Guess Petraeus didn’t have any sealed divorce records for Obama to wave around. But this’ll do in a pinch. The important thing is to remove the obstacle.

Not only doesn’t it matter that everybody can see what Obama is doing, it’s actually better for him that way. What good is abusing your power if you can’t laugh at your enemy’s futility

Glenn Reynolds I would say “heh,” but it’s not exactly funny.

 

I commented on the strange actions of Petraeus last month It's Time for Petraeus to Testify. The information the FBI gathered on him may have been used by Obama to blackmail Petraeus into backing the lie that Benghazi was a movie-inspired demonstration that got out of hand.

So was Petraeus told to resign, as many most have suggested, or did he do so voluntarily?  Does the Obama administration strike anyone as particularly prudish?  With congressional testimony coming up, Petraeus' position became untenable and he could either resign or commit perjury. So he resigned.  If his resignation was voluntary, it actually raises my opinion of him as a flawed but honorable man.  If his resignation was forced, the timing was convenient for Obama.  And why is the FBI leaking a torrent of information about Petraeus designed to make him out to be a love-struck teen, or a Bill Clinton clone?  I mean, come on, who has the time to send an ex-lover "thousands of e-mails in the last several months."   Who does he think he is, Glenn Reynolds?

 

But resignation does not get him off the hook.  He can still be forced to testify.  If he appears before the House Intelligence committee as a private citizen he will undoubtedly "lawyer up" and then it's doubtful if we will get any useful information from him.

 

Does this help or hinder the Obama/Media-Mob in the Benghazi cover-up?  Some of it depends on the willingness of whistle-blowers in the military, CIA and the State Department to leak to the House Intelligence committee.   A lot depends on the willingness of the Republicans in the House to pursue this issue now that the election is over and Obama is in power another four years.  You can be sure that if they proceed with an investigation, they will be vilified and smeared.  Who wants to be the next Ken Starr? 

Bill Whittle on a Virtuous People - "The Common Sense Resistance"

Some insight into that Obama ground game.

Pundit Press reports on that turnout in Pennsylvania:

Across Philadelphia, GOP poll inspectors were forcibly (and illegally) removed from polling locations. Coincidentally (or not), Mr. Obama received "astronomical" numbers in those very same regions, including locations where he received "over 99%" of the vote.

Ward 4, which also had a poll watcher dressed in Obama attire, went massively for Obama. Mr. Obama received 99.5% of the vote, defeating Mr. Romney 9,955 to 55.

Another problem: "Voter turnout in Philadelphia was around 60 percent, according to state election figures." In these precincts it was well over 90% according to House Speaker Sam Smith of Pennsylvania. Considering all of the other "coincidences" going on, it doesn't seem kosher.

And in the swing state of Ohio?

President Obama must have run a great campaign considering the tremendous numbers he put up in numerous big cities. Over in Philadelphia, he was lucky enough to get 90% percent turnout in some districts with over 99% of the vote.

In Cleveland, in some districts he did even better with an astounding 100% of the vote in dozens of locations. For example, in Cleveland's Fifth Ward, Mr. Obama won districts E, F, and G 1,337 to Mitt Romney's... 0. And in case you're wondering, Gary Johnson received more votes than Mr. Romney.

Well, maybe that's just a fluke. In the Ninth Ward, Mr. Obama won districts D-G with a paltry total of 1,740 to... 3. Hey, at least Romney got .2% of the vote!

Okay, what if we look at an entire Ward? No way this trend continues, right? An entire ward. Why not do the First Ward? Obama won that one 12,857 to... 94. This time Romney got .7% of the vote. He's moving up in the world!

In total, there are 21 districts in Cleveland where Mr. Romney received precisely 0 votes. In 23 districts, he received precisely 1 vote. And naturally, in one of the districts where Obama won 100% of the vote, there was 100% turnout. What a coincidence!

By the way, in case you are thinking that Romney did so poorly because maybe those districts were not very populated: Nope. In those 44 districts, Mr. Obama won 14,686 to 23. That's .16% of the vote for Romney.

In many communist socialist countries voting is mandatory and the dear leader always gets over 99% of the vote. Is this the Chicago Way?  Is there a pattern here or are we just being paranoid? 

How Reality-Based are Libertarians?

One Derek Lowe (the baseball player?  the blogging chemist?) e-mails Glenn Reynolds about the recent election, saying that

“I can’t picture myself voting for him [Obama]”

... but also putting down the other candidates who ran in the Republican primary.

He’s a self-described libertarian:

“I think America is a great country. But I’m not religious, and my political beliefs don’t rest on a religious foundation. Gay marriage (to pick one example) doesn’t bother me much. I did, though, find the various bizarre comments about rape from Republican candidates to be stupid and offensive, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they helped to cost enough potential Republican votes to sway the election.”

Here’s what he says about a few of the other Republicans:

“But I can’t picture myself voting for someone like Rick Santorum, either, or a Sarah Palin, or a Mike Huckabee, just to pick some well-known types. I’m sure that there are people out there who think that if we could just get some more candidates like these, that enough people would flock to their banner. I don’t see it happening; too many voters find something “off” about them. The streak of anti-intellectualism in the Republican party is in danger of making it a caricature of itself, and such a party would leave a lot of potential voters shaking their heads in the polling booth. I’d be one of them.”

So here’s a question for my non-religious Libertarian friends: all three of these people have political records; what is there in their records do you find objectionable? Were either Palin or Huckabee bad governors imposing their religious beliefs over the objections of the voters of their states? Was Santorum a bad Senator, and if so why?

You profess to be non-religious. Did these three propose or enact laws that made your views on religion more difficult for you? Did they do something in office that would have given any advantage to any religion that would have impacted atheists or violated the constitution?

Regarding the indiscriminate use of the term “anti-intellectualism,” I don’t think it means what you think it means. Certainly the moral and ethical basis for religious and non-religious people differs, but the presumption among atheists is that their prime moral and ethical bedrock is intellectually based while religious people wallow in some stupid superstitious mire. This is pure hubris and nothing could be further from the truth. Every one of us is a creature of our environment, shaped and molded by the culture in which we are immersed.  Modern atheists live in a culture and a moral environment that was shaped and molded by a religious people, specifically by Christianity.  They may rebel against it to some extent, but to suppose that they can invent their own truth is analogous to imagining that a fish can decide one day to leave the water, walk on land and breathe air.   

What you find “off” about them is the sort of thing I find “off” about many Libertarians: a sort of supercilious smugness that is as earned as Barack Obama’s Nobel Prize.

And to be perfectly clear, the Republican Party without religious people is the Libertarian Party which surpassed all its previous records and garnered an astounding 1% of the vote in 2012. I believe that the Republican Party can get along without the backbiting of people like Derek Lowe who view most of the others in the party as superstitious hicks who would impose the Christian version of sharia if they got the power. For some reason when they have the power that never happens, but in the fertile imagination of Derek Lowe a Christian like Sarah Palin is simply an ayatollah without the beard.  Reality-baseds not how I would describe Mr. Lowe.

Bill Whittle has a few words on this:

 

Chris Matthews thanks Hurricane Sandy

But take heart, victims of Hurricane Sandy. Your lives may be ruined, but try to see the bigger picture: At least President Obama didn’t have to give a concession speech.

Is it possible for Chris Matthews to become a bigger cretin?

Two Americas

Michael Barone

The culturally cohesive America of the 1950s that some of us remember, usually glossing over racial segregation and the civil-rights movement, is no longer with us and hasn’t been for some time.

That was an America of universal media, in which everyone watched one of three similar TV channels and newscasts every night. Radio, 1930s and 1940s movies, and 1950s and early-1960s television painted a reasonably true picture of what was typically American.

That’s not the America we live in now. Niche media has replaced universal media.

One America listens to Rush Limbaugh, the other to NPR. Each America has its favorite cable news channel. As for entertainment, Americans have 100-plus cable channels to choose from, and the Internet provides many more options.

...

Americans have faced this before. This has been a culturally diverse land from its colonial beginnings. The mid-20th-century cultural cohesiveness was the exception, not the rule.

We used to get along by leaving each other alone. The Founders established a limited government, neutral on religion, allowing states, localities, and voluntary associations to do much of society’s work. Even that didn’t always work: We had a Civil War.

An enlarged federal government didn’t divide mid-20th-century Americans, except on civil-rights issues. Otherwise, there was general agreement about the values government should foster.

Now the two Americas disagree, sharply. Government decisions enthuse one and enrage the other. The election may be over, but the two Americas are still not on speaking terms.

The problem today is that we are not leaving each other alone. When that happens, bad things can follow.

If Obama wins, I’ll be as gracious and generous as the Democrats were in 2000 and 2004.

A recurring theme at Glenn Reynolds' "Instapundit."

"Put not your trust in princes"

Psalm 146

Praise ye the LORD. Praise the LORD, O my soul.

While I live will I praise the LORD: I will sing praises unto my God while I have any being.
Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. 

His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish. 

Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the LORD his God

Standing in line to vote yesterday, contemplating.

I, as well as the other people in the line, were concerned about the outcome of the presidential election. I recalled a comment that I read recently that it is too bad that we should care so much about the person who’s going to be the next president.

 

In a country called America a few generations ago, the president was a guy in the White House many miles away from us who had almost no impact on our daily lives. He was in charge of the federal bureaucracy; he picked his department heads and talked with members of congress. He was an administrator, the “commander in chief” during wartime, not a “leader” in the style of the dictators of the 20th century. The president knew his place and left the people to run their lives the way they saw fit. Today we look to the president to dispense birth control pills, pass out free cell phones and decide what’s on school lunch menus. On some days he picks a name out of a stack of cards and orders drones to kill specific people around the world. And when he’s not busy doing that his appointees tells your doctor how to treat you aching joints.

 

All with borrowed money.

That’s when the verse from the Bible bubbled its way to the top of my head. I’m sorry that Romney lost. But it isn’t because I wanted Romney to be my leader. It’s because I reasoned that Romney would be less likely than Obama to want to run my life. I had hope that some of the tentacles of the creature called “The Presidency” would slither back and leave me alone.

I went to bed early last night because the process of watching the election returns is not something that entertains me. The only things that count are the results. This morning I found out and I am temporarily gloomy. But this mood will pass because life goes on. My parents and most of my family experienced much worse that this in Nazi occupied Europe when death surrounded them like a blanket. They survived, persevered and thrived.

There is a spirit in America that has been all but extinguished in Europe; the spirit of free men who escaped Europe, the province of kings, princes and “leaders” for centuries. It will take more than 8 years of Obama to quench that spirit as long as we remind ourselves that we should not put our trust in princes.

Obama Blames Obama

James Taranto arguing yesterday that if Obama is re-elected he will be able to blame his predecessor ... himself.

Obama has spent the past four years explaining away his failings by essentially arguing he is the best of all possible presidents--that he has done as well as any man could given the "mess" he "inherited" from his predecessor. It is certainly true that he took office under adverse circumstances. But so will whoever takes office Jan. 20. In fact, things are about to get a lot worse because of decisions taken but deferred during the Obama years.

.

The mess today's winner will inherit includes not only high unemployment and slow growth but impending policy changes that threaten to make those problems worse. On Jan. 1, unless Congress acts, the Bush tax cuts expire--or, to put it another way, "massive, job-killing tax increases" are about to take effect (that quote is from President Obama). If Obama gets his way--which he likely would if re-elected--Congress will forestall the hike only for taxpayers making under $200,000 or $250,000 a year. That would be good for those fortunate enough to have jobs, but it would not change the tax increase's job-killing nature, as it would hit investors and small businesses hard....

If Obama is re-elected, he will inherit this mess from himself. There will be no blaming George W. Bush for a two-term Obama presidency. History will hold Obama accountable for the results, and the electorate will hold his party accountable in 2014 and 2016. As H.L. Mencken observed: "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard."

A CBS News Obama-Libya scandal? Certainly.

In a passionate post today, Bret Baier of Fox News hammers CBS News for waiting till Nov. 4 to post a bit of video quite relevant to all of this. In it, Steve Kroft of “60 Minutes” asks the president about Benghazi. The question was posed on Sept. 12, the same day of the Rose Garden address:

KROFT: Mr. President, this morning you went out of your way to avoid the use of the word terrorism in connection with the Libya Attack, do you believe that this was a terrorist attack?
OBAMA: Well it’s too early to know exactly how this came about, what group was involved, but obviously it was an attack on Americans. And we are going to be working with the Libyan government to make sure that we bring these folks to justice, one way or the other.

The president’s response packs it all: 1) Avoidance of the question; 2) refusal to use the term “terrorism”; 3) reliance on talking points about bringing people to justice. In other words, big news.

Had this clip embedded itself in the news cycle after the town-hall debate, the following would have happened:

1) CBS News would have reaped millions of page views;

2) Mitt Romney’s slip-up in the town-hall debate over this issue would no longer look like as a slip-up; it’d look like a quest for accountability;

3) Team Obama would have had to spend days responding to questions about the discrepancy between what he said in the town-hall debate and what he’d told Kroft; and

4) After that town-hall debate, Romney pretty much dropped Libya as a talking point. In a strategic move much observed by pundits, he declined to pound away on the topic in the final presidential debate, which centered on foreign policy. Had CBS News released what it had on hand, perhaps Romney would have had charged ahead with a Libya message.

Intimidation in Detroit: Report of GOP vote observer chased by man claiming to have gun, Obama supporter punches woman in face

Via Twitchy

Talk about voter suppression RT @electionjournal: GOP observer chased from poll in Detroit by a man claiming to have a gun. Police called.

 Detroit: Voter objected to Obama supporter actively campaigning in a polling place. The supporter punched the woman in the face. Cops called

Election Judge Wears Obama Cap While Checking in Voters in Obama's Chicago Ward

The voter who took the photo says: "Woman in front of me also given an extra ballot."

It Was the Best of Notch, It Was the Worst of Notch

Mark Steyn

Here’s one for the psephological experts. Last time round, first-in-the-nation Dixville Notch, NH voted:


Obama 15, McCain 6

The 2012 results, announced moments ago, are:


Obama 5, Romney 5

So Obama’s vote has fallen by two-thirds. Alternatively, Romney is doing worse than McCain – and turnout is way down.

(On that last point, I gather it’s actually because the two biggest families in town moved out. Still…)

30,000+ Rally for Romney in Pennsylvania

An enormous rally for Mitt Romney in Bucks County, PA had people incredulous and tweeting like fury:

@robertcostaNRO my mother is at the Bucks County Romney rally. Says she has never seen a crowd like this. Dwarfs the Bush '04 rally crowd at the same farm.
@robertcostaNRO "The rally doesn't even start for hours, but it feels like a Republican Woodstock." -- my mom, calling from Yardley, PA, a swing area.
@itabramg Traffic backup at Edgewood Shopping Cntr, 1.5 miles to Romney's rally at Shady Brook Farm, Yardley, PA #election2012

@dgjackson WOW! One of the biggest crowds I have ever seen. This is quite the welcome in Pennsylvania. pic.twitter.com/g452PGXz

28 papers have quit Obama to endorse Romney

Newspaper endorsements don't mean as much any more.  Still, I'll take it.  To paraphrase Lyndon Johnson: "When you've lost the editorial boards, you've lost middle America." 

According to Editor & Publisher, Republican Mitt Romney is stunning the newspaper world, earning 112 endorsements from editorial boards around the country compared to the President’s 84. Most large market newspapers like the The New York Times and The Washington Post have stuck with Obama, but have run less than glowing assessments of his accomplishments. So while a newspaper endorsement may not mean what it once did, these conversions could be telling of a national trend.

Romney Gains 3 to Tie Obama in CNN's D+11 Poll

Via Breitbart

The latest CNN national poll of likely voters, which shows a 49%-49% tie between Republican challenger Mitt Romney and incumbent President Barack Obama, is either absurd, or very good news for the GOP--or both.

Romney has gained 3 points since the last time CNN ran its poll, in late September, when Obama led 50%-47%. That is good news for the Republican ticket, especially since the poll was conducted after Hurricane Sandy.

Yet there is something odd--and even ridiculous--in the poll's sample: of the 693 likely voters in the total sample of 1,010 adults polled, "41% described themselves as Democrats, 29% described themselves as Independents, and 30% described themselves as Republicans."

In other words, the poll is a D+11 outlier. It presents a picture of an electorate that is far more pro-Obama than it was in the historic 2008 election. That is extremely unlikely.

Moreover, the polls's crosstabs indicate that Romney is winning self-described independent voters by a giant 59%-37% margin. A 22-point lead among independents virtually guarantees victory for Romney. Yet Democrats are so heavily over-represented in the CNN poll that Romney's 22-point lead becomes a mere 49%-49% tie.

 

It's going to be a blowout, but to quote Glenn Reynolds, "Don't get cocky."

If you look at the poll's internals (p. 20)you will get even more enthusiastic about Romney's chances.  The economy is by far the biggest issue according to the people polled.  Likely voters believe the economy will get better if Romney is elected by a 43% to 34% margin.  Even among registered voters Romney beats Obama 39% to 32%. 

Last Dance

Mark Steyn

Yesterday was apparently National Dance For Obama Day. In Manhattan it attracted all of twelve dancers . Of course, New York has been devastated by Hurricane Bloomberg, but the attendance in undevastated cities was not much better. Still, I was sorry to miss it, having spent the last six weeks working on my interpretative dance of the Benghazi attack including an extended seven-hour coolly sensuous samba of the President deciding not to decide to do anything.

500 Admirals, Generals to Endorse Romney

Nearly 500 former military admirals and generals are poised to endorse Mitt Romney, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.
 

The ad ran in the Virginian Pilot.  Full page.

Obama's Sandy

Obama seeks votes as complaints mount over storm response...
Devastated residents lash out at Bloomberg during unannounced visit...

'I feel like a victim of Hurricane Katrina'...
Chaos reigns at free gas fiasco...
Frenzy...
Fear of the Dark...

FEMA Out Of Water, No Delivery Until Monday...

Residents arm up: Bats, machetes, shotguns...

'It's Like The Wild West'...

'Anarchy in Queens'...

Coal barge on the Ohio River flying the Gadsden flag

The Saudis are bulldozing Islam's heritage. Why the silence from the Muslim world?

Via the Telegraph

The long-cherished ambition of Saudi Arabia’s ruling Wahhabi sect to smash up the ancient buildings of Mecca and Medina is nearing fruition.

In Mecca, the house of one of Mohammed’s wives has been demolished to make space for public lavatories. His birthplace may disappear, too, as part of King Abdullah’s scheme to complement the skyscrapers and shopping malls with a Grand Mosque fashioned from the same materials as a multi-storey car park in Wolverhampton.

As for Islam’s second holiest place, the city of Medina, a recent article by Jerome Taylor in the Independent revealed a megalomaniac plan to pull down three 7th-century mosques. Taylor added: “Ten years ago, a mosque which belonged to the Prophet’s grandson was dynamited. Pictures of the demolition that were secretly taken and smuggled out of the kingdom showed the religious police celebrating.”

Father of American killed in Libya demands truth from WH

Make college relevant, not a resort vacation

A great column that everfy perfson with young kids should read.  Read the whole things.

Whenever we have toured a center of learning (and I won’t name them specifically) my wife and I have heard great things about the way our son will mature, will be exposed to opportunities, will ‘develop as a human being.’ (Which I thought was kind of a given, being a human and all.)

We’ve been assured that kids who attend those schools make great progress, and become fully actualized, able to impact the world in a diverse, cutting edge, technologically savvy, multi-cultural, sustainable, tolerant and environmentally friendly manner that would be the envy of anyone in the world.

I had no idea that college was all of that! You see, silly old person that I am, I thought that our colleges and universities were supposed to help students learn to think clearly, accumulate knowledge and enter useful graduate programs or find meaningful, gainful employment in the world. I didn’t know it was all about ‘development.’

...

We need to stop marketing college as a four year resort vacation and start having compassion for the kids we send off in the tired old belief that college guarantees a good future.

For some reason, I don't know when and why, college became not about developing the skills necessary to find a good job; it turned into an experience for its own sake. If you are a wealthy trust fund baby, that may be what you want to do before you join the family firm. But for millions of others, college has become a holiday from reality, a waste of money and a broken dream.

Romney: Obama said to vote for revenge, I ask the American people to vote for love of country

Two Videos: Romney and Obama

Via Hugh Hewitt

Here is a summary of the Obama years



And Romney in Wisconsin

Journalist

The Obama Economy

OCTOBER UNEMPLOYMENT UP: 7.9%...

RATE HIGHER THAN WHEN OBAMA TOOK OFFICE...

President Faces Voters With Highest Unemployment Of Any Incumbent Since FDR...

ROMNEY: 'Sad reminder economy at virtual standstill'...

Incomes Continue to Decline...

Long-Term Rate Rises to 40.6%...

Blacks to 14.3%...

Food Stamp Growth 75X Greater than Job Creation...

OCTOBER UNEMPLOYMENT UP: 7.9%...

RATE HIGHER THAN WHEN OBAMA TOOK OFFICE...

President Faces Voters With Highest Unemployment Of Any Incumbent Since FDR...

ROMNEY: 'Sad reminder economy at virtual standstill'...

Incomes Continue to Decline...

Long-Term Rate Rises to 40.6%...

Blacks to 14.3%...

Food Stamp Growth 75X Greater than Job Creation...

Imagine of Ray Nagin Held Madi Gras after New Orleans Floods

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and organizers of New York City Marathon cancelled the race Friday amid growing concerns that holding the event would divert resources from cleanup efforts in the wake of superstorm Sandy.

Well, Duh!

Heck of a Job Barry

Drivers Waiting 6 Hours For Gas in NYC...
Tempers Rise in Wake of Storm...
'Finding bodies left and right'...
Restaurant, hotel prices skyrocket...
CHUCK SCHUMER CONFRONTED: 'We Are Gonna Die!'
CRAIGSLIST: $15 a gallon...
Utility workers pelted with eggs...
Misery...
'We have nothing'...
Residents Furious RED CROSS Offering Cookies & Hot Chocolate, Not Blankets Or Clothes...
Jet Fuel Supply Fast Becoming Concern At Airports...
Staten Islanders Plead for Help: 'We Need Food'...
'Please don't leave us'...
VIDEO: Stranded New Yorkers Defecating in Apartment Buildings...
DIRE...
NJ counties enact 70s style gas rationing... Developing...

HUNGRY NEW YORKERS EATING OUT OF DUMPSTERS

Big government to the rescue.  For some reason, the MSM considers this a big success.

Good going Barry, and you too Bloomie!

Meanwhile the Beautiful Democrats are partying while the poor are dumpster diving.  Remember, these are the people who claim to care more than you do for the poor.

It was definitely a scary 48 hours for the inhabitants of New York.
But now that Hurricane Sandy has moved away from the East Coast, it's back to business for most New Yorkers, including Bette Midler.
The veteran actress and singer continued her life as usual and celebrated her yearly extravagant celebrity 'Hulaween' bash on Wednesday night in the storm-struck city.

If you're a student of history this may remind you of French aristocracy before the Revolution. Keep in mind that our King and Queen uh ... President and First Lady spent over 1.4 billion dollars on personal expenses just in the last year of their reign.  For comparison, the British spent less than $60 million on their royal family.

Democrat Senator (Under)Paid for Sex

Via Patterico's Pontifications has a funny take on Bob Menendez' hooker scandal.

THE REAL OUTRAGE: I’m less offended by the payment for sex than I am by his breaking his word. Why, if he can’t keep a promise made to a hot prostitute from the Dominican Republic (there are no pictures, but we all have our mental images from the Secret Service incident), how, I ask you, can he be expected to keep his promises to the voters, with whom he doesn’t even want to have sexual relations (with the admitted exception of a handful of housewives in Trenton)?

Again: I ask you.

These Senators. They woo you with compliments (you’re “beautiful”; I need your vote), get you to compromise yourself, and then you get only 20% of what you were promised.

And then he short-changes you to boot! (Rim shot.)

Andrew Klavan

Democrats always screw you twice. First by working their will on you and second by delivering a lot less than they promised they would. The women in the story are complaining about this but that’s because they’re foreigners and don’t understand that this is actually standard Democrat operating procedure in this country. ... Indeed, Senator Bob’s approach to sex could even be considered the Democrats’ central philosophy: “You will bend over for us and in return we will promise to give you money and stuff… and then will give you a lot less than we promised.”...

It’s Democrat, not Republican, programs that send jobs out of the country. I mean, come on, are you going to tell me there are no prostitutes in America who can be screwed and then screwed again?

Obama is the master of big promises and meager results.  "Five more Days." 

Nanny government Getting the Important Things Done

In New York City you are protected from the hazards of 32 oz soft drinks, second hand smoke at the beach and in the park and trans-fats in your food, but the possibility of the tunnels and subways flooding during a storm does not seem to have been a concern of Mayor Bloomberg.

It's not as if the possibility has never been mentioned.  Via Meadia

The New York Times notes that scientists and flood experts have been warning about the risks of flooding in New York for years and have suggested everything from levees to floodgates in New York Harbor to minimize potential damage. Yet neither the city nor the state government has taken serious steps to act on these suggestions...

 Here in New York we have a very busy government. It’s worried about the kinds of fats we eat and the size of the soft drinks we buy, and there is no shortage of regulations affecting businesses, street vendors, and individuals. But in all this exciting fine tuning, nobody seems to have bothered to think about the much greater task of keeping floodwaters out of the subway system. Admittedly, getting public support and finding the money for flood protection would be hard, but it is exactly that kind of hard job that governments are supposed to do. Leadership is getting the important things done, not looking busy on secondary tasks while the real needs of the city go quietly unmet.

The problem with nanny state governance isn’t just that it’s intrusive. It isn’t just that it stifles business with over-regulation, and it isn’t just that it empowers busybodies and costs money. It’s that it distracts government from the really big jobs that it ought to be doing.

The problem is that people in government are NOT the best and the brightest.  That's why they always tackle the easy tasks and ignore the hard ones.  It really is easier to ban large sodas than to protect the subways and tunnels from flooding.  This is especially true in Liberal cities like New York where The People Who Matter would not be caught dead drinking soda pop, in either large containers or small. There is no opportunity for grandstanding in front of a flood gate that may not be used for decades.  So the residents of Gotham had a chance to see pictures of flood waters gushing into the subways and trucks submerged at the entrance of the tunnels leading into and out of the island.  Safe in Nanny Bloomer's embrace.

Could this be the progressives’ secret love of totalitarianism peeking through once again?

This well-known 1934 Fascist painting of Mussolini is housed in London’s Imperial War Museum.

Whoever made it, the Mussolini/Fascist/dictator vibe is undeniable. And even if you were entirely unfamiliar with the famous Mussolini scowl replicated in the 2012 campaign sign, why would any Democrat voter find this particular Obama portrait appealing or impressive? It reeks of Big Brother-ish totalitarianism all on its own, even without an historical precedent. Why depict your lovable candidate as a menacing, frowning tyrant?

Could this be the progressives’ secret love of totalitarianism peeking through once again? Many have already demonstrated the progressive/totalitarian connection. In fact, our own Ed Driscoll previously noted back in the 2008 campaign some extremely disturbing graphic parallels between Obama campaign/cult posters and those of earlier, uh, shall we say movements.

If you are a progressive reading this, you likely imagine yourself the polar opposite of the Fascists, but I ask you to stop and ponder a moment how you, your belief system and your behavior are viewed by others. When we see people demanding greater government power and expressing unquestioned devotion to a charismatic leader, we think “incipient totalitarianism.” You only exacerbate that impression by imitating the very design philosophy of previous totalitarian movements.

Romney Ad About Obama at the Gas Pump

"Crazy Barry's" Car Lot