This amount of arrogance, the sheer impardonable pretension, is bound to be popular.
I've come to the conclusion that Google de-searched this blog for political reasons. I don't care to really get to the bottom of it, even to the point of finding out if it happened or not.
Instead, I'm now blogging at Redstate.com and The Minority Report Blog. I do have a few thought pieces in the works that might go here, but look to Redstate and TMR for your daily fix of me.
Josh Marshall, for whom I've a bit of a troll crush lately, writes at TPM about a Senate Republican memo concerning the UAW giveaway. Ever the conspiracy-seeking projectionist, Marshal asserts that it is "very revealing -- though hardly surprising."
I think it's hardly revealing or surprising, excepting the headline which Marshall takes out of context from the memo (via MSLSDBC):
From: [redacted]
Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 9:12 AM
To: [redacted]
Subject: Action Alert -- Auto Bailout
Today at noon, Senators Ensign, Shelby, Coburn and DeMint will hold a press conference in the Senate Radio/TV Gallery. They would appreciate our support through messaging and attending the press conference, if possible. The message they want us to deliver is:
1. This is the democrats first opportunity to payoff organized labor after the election. This is a precursor to card check and other items. Republicans should stand firm and take their first shot against organized labor, instead of taking their first blow from it.
2. This rush to judgment is the same thing that happened with the TARP. Members did not have an opportunity to read or digest the legislation and therefore could not understand the consequences of it. We should not rush to pass this because Detroit says the sky is falling.
The sooner you can have press releases and documents like this in the hands of members and the press, the better. Please contact me if you need additional information. Again, the hardest thing for the democrats to do is get 60 votes. If we can hold the Republicans, we can beat this.
World Net Daily reports on Google's alleged sandboxing of Atlas Shrugs for its groundbreaking coverage of the Obama birth certificate fakery:
On July 4, Geller featured a story about a board-certified forensic expert who declared Obama's online birth certificate a "forgery" and an "obvious fake." She attributes most of her problems with Google to that report.
"I think that it's the birth certificate story," Geller said. "All of the sudden, my numbers were down by 10,000."
She has also featured reports on Obama's support of Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga and cases of alleged campaign finance fraud involving his campaign. Geller believes Google is censoring her stories because it objects to their content.
Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs trots out the free speech canard. No one is stopping you from speaking, Ms. Geller. Google is not the government but a private company, though I find it increasing difficult to fault people for not seeing the difference.
The Texas judge assigned the corruption case against Vice President Dick Cheney signalled that he may wish to try the case before agreeing with District Attorney Juan Guerra on the Vice President's guilt. The judge's position follows State of Texas tradition that no one, not even those in power outside of the State's jurisdiction, should be presumed guilty before their case is argued.
The judge actually went so far as to entertain motions from the defense, a decision about which Guerra hinted a certain lack of enthusiasm. Guerra also appeared to dissent over being removed as prosecutor from the indictments in the case for which he is also a victim, even though Texas allows pro se legal represention:
And now all of a sudden, there is urgency. 18 months we kept this indictment, past my election. And I asked this court [to say if it would be] dismissed on a technicality. You already decided! You refused.
Somehow managing to type wearing a helmet and drool bucket, David Sarota writes:
It wouldn't be the George W. Bush we all know if our shamed president didn't spend his remaining White House days in a final fit of polarization.Wha? Talk about paranoia! Mr. Bush wants the Columbia Free Trade deal to go through, and knows that it's union opposition which makes Obama also oppose it. And why are the Democrats so in favor of an auto maker bailout? The unions want it, to keep their fat, blood-sucking lifestyle going.
Therefore, if Bush successfully uses the economic emergency to hustle a faction of Wall Street Democrats into supporting the deal, he will have potentially engineered 1994 redux: Democratic infighting, a demoralized progressive base, and these newly elected fair-trade Democrats humiliated — and thus electorally endangered — by their own party's standard bearers.
If there was a moment that highlights to what extent the Democratic Party has become captive to its special interests, this might be it. Mrs. Pelosi and Harry Reid have spent this week demanding that Washington stave off a car-maker collapse. What makes this a little weird is that Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Reid are Washington. If they so desperately want a Detroit bailout they could always, you know, pass one.
Barack, the Magic Negro.
I'd never read that March, 2008 article by David Ehrenstein before. I had assumed it was a mere puff piece on Obama. Instead, it was a patently offensive smear on all white people as closet racists. Speaking of the Magical Negro type in the movies and American culture:
He's there to assuage white "guilt" (i.e., the minimal discomfort they feel) over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American history, while replacing stereotypes of a dangerous, highly sexualized black man with a benign figure for whom interracial sexual congress holds no interest.Listing inoffensive black actors such as Sidney Poitier and Morgan Freeman, Ehrenstein concludes that this pattern and the popularity of the type must mean that whites hunger for such a type to ease their guilt.
Barack Obama knows ACORN from the inside. He trained them.
So now that ACORN is submitting fraudulent voter registration forms in over a dozen States, the reason his $800,000 campaign expense for front work went at least partially to ACORN is now clear.
The purpose of an Internet Denial of Service attack is usually not (just) to disable the particular computer or network under direct attack, but either to draw response resources (troubleshooters) to the attacked system, or to force secondary systems to be used. Sometimes the DOS attack is merely designed to create the appearance of poor performance, so that users of the system turn to competitors or in any case away from the service it provides.
And so it is with the ACORN attack.
Rather than merely registering new Democratic voters, ACORN so clogs the system with phony registrations that it becomes nearly non-functional.
This is a result of ACORN employing people of questionable character (e.g., felons) to strong-arm and wheedle ordinary citizens into registering -- whether or not they are already registered voters (in the same district or another). Further, ACORN assigns to these unvirtuous employees quotas, making it virtually certain that the employees will submit fake registrations, en masse.
So across the country in battleground States, voter registration has ground to a halt, or limps along with demoralized staff and tarnished public image. ACORN is doing direct damage to confidence in the sanctity of our electoral process, in an attempt to destroy its overall integrity. Rather than being content to register new voters, perhaps ACORN wants to make the registration process unnecessary. After all, if the system cannot be trusted, why use it?
And remember, Barack Obama trained them.
Obama denies being a Muslim. Who says Barack Obama is a Muslim? Who has any proof that Barack Obama is a Muslim?
What kind of Muslim is Obama, if Barack Obama is a Muslim? That's an important question, if the goal is finding out if Barack Obama is a Muslim. If we knew the kind of Muslim Barack Obama were, then we would certainly know for certain that without any doubt Barack Obama is a Muslim.
If Barack Obama is a Muslim, then so is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinijad.
From the evidence we have, it is not clear that Barack Obama is a Muslim. Barack Obama has never been proved to be a Muslim, and Barack Obama denies being a Muslim.
I think everyone who says Barack Obama is a Muslim should reconsider whether Barack Obama is a Muslim.
Oh, yeah, Barack Obama sucks.
I've been highly entertained by the Democratic primary over the past several months. Not caring a whit about political correctness, I've found the charges of racism and sexism to be great fun. But Hillary crossed a line.
She may not have meant to cross it, but cross it she did. It's a line we all have been aware of, even alluded to by Michelle Obama in her gas station quote. And I've been dreading what would happen if some (especially right-wing) kook crossed the line. I never imagined that the allegedly astute Hillary Clinton would give this as a reason not to drop out:
"My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it,"It's OK to talk about the significance of assassination, and assassination attempts, as they relate to American history. As Memorial Day approaches we do well to remember Lincoln, the Kennedys, King, and others.
Ted Kennedy is fighting for his life and she has the lack of judgment to invoke RFK's assasination to make a political point-- a point which also injects the idea of killing a presidential nominee. Do not even attempt to spin this for me. It's not gonna work.And having done so, you don't then try to put yourself in a position that would be benefit from an assassination.
This is a melt down. Things are out of control at her campaign. I think with this remark, she's taken herself out of contention for VP. Not just because I'm angry, but because she's too out of control to ever be President.
While Reverend Jeremiah Wright was preaching that the US got what it deserved on 9/11
for its "terrorism" around the world, Barack Obama just sat there.
While Jeremiah Wright preached that the government of which Barack Obama was official representative and would be chief executive created AIDS to kill black people, Barack Obama just sat there.
While Jeremiah Wright lauded and praised antisemite Louis Farrakan, Barack Obama just sat there.
While Oprah Winfrey left Trinity United Christian Church because of Jeremiah Wright's incendiary remarks, Barack Obama just sat there.
And he claimed later never to have heard all of this stuff. He affirmed his tolerance for Reverend Wright's preaching as much as for his own grandmother's racial nervousness.
And yet the videos are on the Web, in full context, showing the snippets to be not isolated remarks, but the central point of the sermons.
And still, he just sat there.
He cannot explain this one away. Because Oprah leaving Wright's church should have been a signal to Obama that there was something wrong with the Kool-aide. It shows that leaving the church was not a hypothetical action that only a typical white person would have taken, but a real option that Obama must have weighed and rejected.
While Winfrey was leading, Obama was not even following. The winds of Change were blowing. The evidence was clear, and the course of action outlined, political cover given by one of the most powerful and influential people in media.
Barack Obama just sat there.
w/t: Robert A. Hahn
In a dull repetition of melodramatic echo, never quite dying out but never fully explained, we hear the phrase "illegal war" applied to the conflict in Iraq.
"Illegal war" means that by the very existence of the war a law has been broken. But whose law has been broken? Is it a law of the United States, or some other law, say perhaps of France or Sweden, or more likely, of the United Nations?
The United Nations doesn't have laws, despite what some power-grabbing third worlder might think. It's an organization, not a nation or sovereign entity. At most, its leadership can say that a member country is in violation of its treaty obligations, which is a different thing from being "illegal".But even so, the United Nations authorized the use of force against Iraq (not just against the government of Saddam Hussein, but of Iraq), though such authorization is not necessary for the United States, sovereign nation that it is, to go to war against some other sovereign nation. We are subject to United Nations edicts only by our own consent. And yet, in this instance and every other of which I'm aware, we have complied with U.N. dictates.
If a law of the United States, then which United States law is it that has been broken? It can only be that the very Constitution has been "shredded" by the use of the armed forces without a formal declaration of war, And yet the Constitution gives the President the authority as Commander in Chief, and to the Congress to declare war and to establish funding and regulations for the armed forces.
Of course in the United States our laws come to be laws when the Congress passes bills and the President signs them, or when a Court decides something (which is then subject to review by higher courts). Congress can change a law made either by itself or by judicial decision at any time, with or without the President's approval.
Now, Congress has issued several bills authorizing the use of force against Iraq (not only against the government of Sadaam Hussein, but of Iraq) which the President duly signed into law, both six months before and several times after the President followed through on that authorization. Congress can, at any time, rescind its authorization. Congress can defund the war at any time also, without the President's approval.
According to WhatReallyHappened.com, the war is illegal because there were no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) found, but of course, the authorization says no such thing, and there were WMD found. They also claim that the authorization is only valid against the people involved in 9/11. But here is the text they claim says this:
... acting pursuant to this joint resolution is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorist and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.
But that says terrorist organizations including those responsible for 9/11, not only those responsible for it. That authorization included Saddam Hussein as a supporter of international terrorism, whether he was directly involved in 9/11 or not, and it includes our current enemies in Iraq, many of whom do belong to the Al Qaeda organization responsible for 9/11. It also includes Iran, when they operate in Iraq.
It therefore must be that the war is illegal despite Congress having authorized it, and having voted several times to continue its authorization; and despite the fact that the President has certainly given his authority for the work in Iraq; and that the Supreme Court has allowed these actions to continue in the numerous attempts which have been made to bring suit to stop it.
There must then be some other branch of the government which is violating the law.
My money's on Haliburton.
The Washington Post is aghast that the President should assert the power, in time of war, not to allow the use of torture to defend us against foreign enemies. They point to a declassied memo, the text of which they may or may not have in full, justifying such methods as do not "shock the conscience".
There's a problem with that, of course, in that consciences differ.
But neither was the author of the memo writing a tutorial.
No sane person likes torture. No patriot wants to see his country defeated. So if we can avoid techniques which "shock the conscience", as the memo insists we must, we can avoid both torture and defeat.
And that is everyone's goal.
The response to Barack Obama's speech yesterday responding to criticism of his pastor and mentor Rev. Jeremiah Wright has fallen in to a pattern as predictable as the speech itself. White Liberals fawned, black liberals swooned, and conservatives (who, unlike liberals, mostly don't care about skin color) pointed out that the whole thing was a Big Lie:
TalkingPointsMemo wets its collective pants:
Obama went big, consciously presenting his personal story -- and candidacy -- as both symbol and realization of American history, addressing race, Wright, and more.
I just finished watching Barack Obama's "race" speech. Obviously I'm not a supporter, but I thought it was flatter than last night's Jolt Cola. And Obama needed a jolt to overcome the inflammatory comments made by his longtime pastor and spiritual advisor.
Do you believe that acknowledging the very real legacy of discrimination--racism, sexism, bigotry, whatever-phobia--is best addressed by investing in the health, welfare and education of all children in the ways that Barack Obama supports? Does he support, for example, school choice and/or private school vouchers? Does he support, for example, a flatter, fairer tax system, which undeniably allows the disadvantaged poor to keep more of their own money? Or does he believe that we must "take care of" the disadvantaged by spending more on failing schools and raising taxes on those who provide jobs ("reverse the tax cuts") to Americans AND middle-class Americans (what about that "renounce the middle class" thing?) so we can fund more government programs?
Barry had to come out and endorse Wright's message of racial hatred while claiming not to do so, and that's just what he did. "White folks do it, too" is not only irrelevant to the question at hand, but is false. White folks do not preach idiotic conspiracy theories from the pulpit Sunday after Sunday -- at least not if they want to stay in the preacher business.True, we must learn from and remember our past. The echoes of racism and slavery are here; they are in our every day. The echoes of the past ripple through these United States, they stain our conscience, they strain our unity. However, they are echoes. By their very nature, they come from the past. Echoes weaken over time and distance. They diminish. They die.
Those who, with courage and honesty, look at the great American landscape and see those echoes are right, and they are just. But they who take those echoes, who reinforce them, and give them greater amplitude ... they are wrong. Reverend Wright is wrong.
To contrast itself with the "faith-based community", the online left adopted the label "reality-based community". It's a blasphemous jab at religion in general and those who believe things without persaonally seeing them in particular.
The trouble is, everone believes things without seeing them. We read history, and believe it. We watch the news, and believe it. Our kids tell us they don't drink, and we believe them. We follow the most likely set of assumptions given what we have actually seen. We deduce and induce from the known to the unknown and back again to verify that our world-view is correct.
So how does the "reality-based community" deduce that 9/11 was the result of a giant conspiracy, or even a tiny one, composed of American officials?
How does the reality-based community back the surreal idiocy which forms the backdrop for the campaign of Barack Obama? He called a racist conspiracy theorist his "mentor". That's not guilt by association, it's guilt by admission.
How does the online Left become convinced that the President of the United States is more interested in personal gain than in defending his country against all enemies, foreign and domestic?
And as for domestic enemies, thinking about that problem for two seconds reveals how difficult must be the balance between finding domestic enemies and fulfilling the primary mission of any President, defending freedom. President Bush has spent American money and the blood of her patriots on his faith-base belief that democracy and the rights of free citizens are paramount. How the "reality-based community" collectively concludes that he has turned the country into a police state, on no evidence that anyone has actually been harmed, makes a beggar of credulity.
Haven't we been over this?
A "think tank" called the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation is due to release a report on Tuesday, September 18, with the counterintuitive conclusion that a paper trail does not add to the security of electronic voting systems. The briefing hould be hilarious.
Read more at Modern Sourcery.
In what can only be described as lunactivism, the 88 faculty members at Duke University who signed a letter assigning guilt to the Lacrosse team have refused to retract it, or even to issue an apology for their excessive zeal. It's a wonderful example of idealistic fervor trumping good sense.
At The Minority Report blog, Daveinboca has a piece up about the Duke Lacrosse case. I don't call it the "Duke Rape Case", because the only people raped in that case were, figuratively speaking, the accused.
Why don't the Duke faculty need to apologize and issue a retraction of their infamous letter assigning guilt to the Lacrosse team? In a comment there, I said:
In their minds, they were right. It's the facts that were wrong, but only because this case was either A) an aberration or B) proof that rich White kids can do what they want.
Some of them in B) have it figured that the rich and powerful pulled strings and got the case to turn out how they wanted.
Others in A) are unhinged in a slightly different direction: they think that even though these particular rich White kids were put through the ringer this time, the justice system is still lopsided in their favor and it's only fair, because the academics just know this kind of thing happens to poor Blacks all the time.
No, it doesn't. While it may be true that the system is rigged against the poor, politicians don't pin their reelection hopes on prosecuting a particular set of poor Black defendants, or at least not on the basis that they're poor and Black.
Our legal system is biased in favor of the rich and powerful, but the bias is more heavily against the passive. Those who will fight the system, make noise, and do whatever they can to protest an injustice against them (whether justice is actually on their side or not) often will be rewarded, while those who roll over and accept their fate (deserved or not) will be punished.
Frank, you rule.
We must stop the Democrats from impeaching the president or vice president! That would bring great despair to my dark Republican heart! I can't imagine anything as terrible as that; it's even worse than poor people being able to vote!
There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
Liberals (and that means you who run about calling yourselves "Progressives", as if a name changed a thing) are fond of promising a free lunch. They never call it a Free Lunch, but use terms like "compassion" and "fairness", for who is against compassion and fairness? But a Free Lunch is always promised, and a Free Lunch never is.
