During her fake Congressional testimony (she was not testifying before an official Congressional hearing, just a pretend one arranged by Democrats for the press), political activist Sandra Fluke spoke of the "financial hardship" that she has witnessed among women studying at Georgetown University with her. Fluke and her fellow law students are apparently incapable of shopping around for better prices and she alleged that the total cost of contraception during the course of study came to $3,000.
In actual fact, birth control pills can be purchased for as little as $324 for a three year supply, almost a tenth of the cost that Fluke told her fake Congressional hearing. It seems that some of the brightest legal minds in modern day America, attending a school costing $46,865 per year, are oblivious to making the most of their personal budgets.
When challenged on this fact, Fluke retorted that for some women these pills are medically required and that cheap, generic brands just won't do. What Fluke- and the mainstream media- won't tell you is that the average salary for a Georgetown graduate upon leaving school is $160,000- which means that even if one of her fellow students did have to pay the full $3,000, that cost is equal to one week's pay. And remember, that's just the average starting salary.
Do Democrats really want to make wealthy lawyers the poster children for their contraception mandate assault on religious freedom? If Republicans tried a stunt like this then the media would make a huge deal out of the fact that a group of some of the country's more wealthy citizens were demanding to be given free stuff.
As Mark Steyn points out, would it really be so hard for one of these law students to go to their bank and take out a $3,000 loan for three year's contraception and then pay it back with that first week's pay?
The UK is not only involved in the no-fly campaign against Libya but PM Cameron seems to be desperately pushing to specifically topple the regime and kill Gaddafi. Just the other day a specific attack against him was called off at the last minute because of the presence of the press at the site. In fact, the government is now involved in a public spat with their top General on whether or not such a thing is even permissible.
The fact that the UK is even involved in Libya is of major concern to me, and not only because it seems to be a badly conceived, poorly defined mission with no clear objectives or command structure. My main concern is with the men and women of the UK military and the effects that another war will have on them, especially since the government has recently taken a machete to the military budget. Under the auspices of the Strategic Defence Review, the government has slashed spending, slashed jobs and slashed our nation's capability to wage war. The Independent described the spending review as meaning that the UK would be 'unable to launch major military operations overseas'. Which, let's face it, is precisely where you want to launch military operations.
The problem with this is that the SDR was not driven by the needs of the military nor based on the realities of the dangerous world we live in, it was driven by a need to cut spending and damn the results. Not only did the recent Strategic Defence Review not mention N. Africa once- no hint of turmoil anywhere in what is now one of the most volatile areas of the world- it takes no account of having to wage an air war in the Mediterranean or of having ground forces in the desert kingdom of Libya. In short, the paper upon which we're basing our future defence needs did not even have the foresight to predict major unrest a handful of months after its publication. Given that the military procurement process and training process moves at an almost glacial pace, it's important that our future needs are carefully considered. Skill sets do not appear overnight. If we lose a skill or a capability due to redundancies, we cannot simply regain it overnight when needed- it can take months or even years for the skill to be re-acquired and then for trainers to pass that skill on to the men who will take it into battle with them. And re-learning skills during a war is a sure way to get people killed. If we scrap a particular piece of equipment now, we not only lose it but the men with the ability to use it, plus the skills of those who maintain it. If at some later date we discover that actually we do need it, we not only need to re-purchase it but we need to re-learn and re-train a whole new generation of soldiers in its care and use. Not to mention the integration of the equipment/skill with the wider military.
Right now, 800 Royal Marines are on stand by to go to Libya, as the air war threatens to expand to the ground, and the SAS & SBS are already in country. But the UK has no aircraft carrier to stand off the coast and no Harrier jump jets to provide ground support- our new aircraft carriers won't be ready until 2016 and won't be able to carry planes until 2019. Incidentally of the two we're buying, only one will ever be operational- that's right, we're buying two but can only afford to run one.
Our armoured vehicles and artillery have been slashed (we've lost 40% of our tanks alone) - because when will Britain ever be involved in the flat, open expanses of desert where they are essential? Given that tanks not only provide the ability to project power against the enemy but also provide ground forces with a great deal of protection this makes no sense to me. Especially since other nations, for example Canada, are currently using them to good effect in Afghanistan.
Our number of soldiers has been drastically cut too so that we could not even mount another conflict like the Falklands without the help of other nations. Given that Argentina recently made noises about reclaiming the islands because of the oil there one has to ask who in government thought it was a good idea to make our future defence of the islands dependent on other nations. Who precisely? The US remained essentially neutral in the last conflict and the French, our current allies, supplied the Argentinians with Exocet missiles to attack our Navy. If Argentina moves to take the islands again, who specifically does the government see as helping us protect them? Who is going to lend us a fully functioning aircraft carrier? Perhaps this is a question someone, say an elected representative, should have asked before now. As it stands the new cuts mean that not only are we unable to launch a major offensive we will not be able to fight wars in more than one country at a time- only 30,000 men are available for a major conflict while 45,000 were needed for the initial invasion of Iraq for example. In a smaller conflict like Afghanistan we will only have a pool of 6,500 men- down from 9,500. If the no-fly zone fails to topple Gaddafi, how many troops will be needed and/or available to go in? What will that mean for the mission in Afghanistan? It bears mentioning here too that of all the foreign fighters in Iraq, the majority were from Libya- will they turn their guns on Allied troops once Gaddafi is gone?
At the time that Cameron was still threatening his intervention in Libya 170 nearly fully trained RAF pilots were made redundant, in addition to two whole Tornado squadrons (and all of our Harrier jump jets)- because when will Britain need pilots to enforce a no-fly zone or provide ground support to troops facing tanks?
Cameron has not only crippled the military with short-sighted cuts, his intervention in Libya now threatens to put servicemen at greater risk than they would have been only a year ago- in fact, the SDR specifically stated that there would be no wars of "liberal intervention" in the near future. The whole basis of the review was that Britain's future conflicts would look an awful lot like Afghanistan- it did not once take into account an action like Libya or any other potential hotspot around the world- back in October the thought of going to war against Libya was not even a possibility and yet here we are today on the verge of getting sucked into another ground war.
Basing future military needs on the actions we're currently involved in is not only short-sighted but it puts the lives of servicemen and women in danger- have they forgotten already how many died because British troops had Land Rovers and not armoured vehicles in Iraq? How many were killed because they had no body armour? In Afghanistan, troops have even needlessly been killed or maimed because they aren't even issued portable ladders so that they can enter walled compounds safely. Ladders for goodness sake- we can't provide troops with a simple item like that in the war that's already been going on for almost ten years and here we are starting another one.
Why is it always that the politicians who slash the military's capabilities are the same ones who so eagerly send them to war?
Two headlines that say it all about how the UK's National Health Service is run- and why, despite seeing massive increases in its funding under the Labour government, actual improvements in service were still not seen.
It's amazing that Obama isn't laughed at whenever he opens his mouth to talk about his new budget.
Add $2 trillion in new taxes, then add another $1 trillion in new spending and, presto, you’ve got $1 trillion of debt reduction.
And where have we heard this before?
It’s the same kind of mad deficit accounting in Obamacare: It reduces debt by adding $540 billion in new spending, then adding $770 billion in new taxes. Presto: $230 billion of “debt reduction.”
The big news today is the continuing turmoil in, of all places, Wisconsin. To briefly sum up, the newly elected Governor and Republican majority there are attempting to dig the state out of it's budget black hole (a projected $3.6 billion deficit over the next two years)- and their first target is the unions. Michelle Malkin is is covering the story. Democrat law-makers have responded by actually running away, fleeing across state lines to hide out in Illinois: it takes the presence of a single Democrat to allow the budgeting process to continue you see.
While the brave Democrats have fled, the unions and their supporters are protesting, phoning in sick to shut down schools and intimidating Republican lawmakers to such an extent that they are coordinating with law enforcement-
I ask whether he is going home tonight, to sleep. He says, “We’re not disclosing that. My colleagues and I are not talking about that. We’re working with law enforcement” on the matter.
Remember, this is not some Third World nation we're talking about- it's Wisconsin, USA and the year is 2011. Yet we have elected representatives feeling so threatened that they cannot discuss if they are going to their own homes. We have other elected representatives who have just been voted into the minority throwing a hissy fit and refusing to show up for the work they were elected to do in order to sabotage the will of the people of their own state. Can you imagine the media furore if a Republican minority subverted the political process in such a way?
And where's the President on all of this? Is he calling for calm debate, for cooler heads to prevail? Is he roundly condemning the threats aimed at Republicans? Of course not- in fact, his own campaign apparatus is coordinating the protests.
Here's what one state employee wrote to Michelle Malkin, explaining that for the unions this fight is not just about pay and contributions but their stranglehold on employees-
The unions are scared to death they will lose their gravy train, you are forced to join the union upon state employment as a condition of employment, what is more tyrannical than that? So, now, the workers would be able to CHOOSE to join the union or not, and many will leave it. The rest will have to cut an actual check to the union each month, instead of having it garnished from their check, and the union knows people will get tired of that. THAT is what this is really about.
Doug Ross describes the situation in his own inimitable way-
The Democrats and the public sector union bosses created untenable compensation, pension and benefit packages... and then promptly destroyed them by making them so outrageous that the taxpayers simply can't afford them anymore. And instead of saving up the union members' dues money for tough times -- like these -- they spent all of that money electing Democrats and funding ever more untenable spending programs. Get it? There's no freaking money!
And yet Democrats and the unions are refusing to abide by the will of the people- in fact, they are demonstrating, just weeks after the attempted murder of Rep Giffords, with placards that deliberately echo what happened in Tucson - see the second and thirteenth image in this post in particular. Thus far only nine protesters have been arrested- but given the heated rhetoric being aimed at Republicans and the fact that law enforcement are involved we can only hope that the representatives and their families remain safe from harm.
The economy as a whole is suffering, unemployment is high, the USA as a whole is running trillion dollar deficits and the state budgets are on the verge of collapse- and yet the unions are refusing to give up one iota of their bloated compensation packages. The Democrats they helped get elected have abdicated their duty to the people of the state they represent (seems they've forgotten that they don't work just for the unions) and Republican lawmakers have had to work with police to ensure that they and their loved ones remain safe. And to top it all off the President's own campaign organisation is right in the thick of it.
It's not Greece, it's not some corrupt Banana Republic, it's the United States of America in the 21st century.
And this could just be the beginning of much worse to come.
I think it was Clayton Cramer who once said that you could have freedom of speech or gay rights- but not both. It's not just freedom of speech that's at risk though. Here in the UK civil partnerships were made legal some years ago but even that is not enough for some gay rights activists- so the law has now been changed so that marriage is no longer defined as the union of a man and a woman.
Gays and lesbians will be able to 'marry' in church under new laws to be unveiled this week. The historic decision by Liberal Democrat Equalities Minister LynneFeatherstone will end the legal definition of marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman. A gay couple will be able to refer to one of the partners as a 'husband', and a lesbian couple will be able to refer to one of the partners as a 'wife'. A key part of the reform will bring an end to the ban that prevents civil partnerships being conducted in places of worship.
Gay marriage in places of worship? Yeah, exactly- since the law now says gay couples can get married in such places you know what's coming next-
The change could also lead to legal action by gay couples denied the right to marry in church.
I'd change that 'could' to 'will'. Never mind the rights of the churches to have their own beliefs, in politically correct Britain gay right trump those of everyone else. Pretty soon a gay couple will try to 'marry' in a church and be refused, they'll sue and the judge will rule that the law says they can be married there and to refuse them will be to discriminate against them, to infringe their human rights. In our new, PC world the religious apparently have no rights.
President Reagan would have been 100 years old today.
Listening to this speech a few things are apparent. First of all, Obama is no great shakes as an orator compared to the Gipper. Reagan was a powerful speaker and a superlative spokesman for liberty. Second, the problems Reagan speaks of facing America in 1964 are not far removed from the problems facing it in 2011- a liberal caste intent on overturning the constraints of the Constitution and of expanding government intrusion into every facet of Americans' private lives.
There's been much discussion on the internet recently about Rep Carolyn McCarthy's bill which would place a limit on the number of rounds a handgun can hold in its magazine. The argument goes that because the deranged lunatic who shot (and mercifully only wounded) Rep Giffords in Tucson, Arizona used a 33-round high capacity magazine in the commission of his crime, then these magazines, and many others holding much less, should now be banned. If he had only had a 10 round magazine, they say, then nowhere near as many people would have been shot and either wounded or killed. I guess these people have little problem with the fatalities and injuries caused by the first 10 shots of any rampage, or any further injury caused by the shooter reloading his government-approved 10-round magazines.
The argument then goes on to state that no one really needs high capacity magazines carrying 33 rounds (and this is where they neglect to mention the 13 round magazines for the Browning High Power, 15 round magazines for the Beretta 92 or 17 round magazines for the Glock 17 that will also be banned- amongst many others). These, let it be made clear, are NOT "high capacity magazines". They are standard capacity magazines.
You see, according to the hoplophobes in Washington- whose familiarity with handguns and their defensive uses seems to extend as far as seeing them in the holsters of the police protecting them- there is no reasonable use for a high capacity magazine other than for mass-murderers to go on killing sprees.
Really? There's no other use for them? No, we're told, no one needs them. Which is interesting because the current bill carries an exemption not only for police officers but also retired police officers.
In other words, McCarthy and the other politicians who co-sponsored this bill believe that there is not only a use for 10-plus magazines but a need. Otherwise, the police would not be allowed to own them either. And there must also be a valid reason why a retired cop would need a 10-plus magazine. Quite why a retired police officer should be afforded extra rights not granted to his fellow citizens is unclear.
So, why would the police need magazines that hold more than 10-rounds? The police, after all, respond to crimes. If a violent criminal breaks into your home with the intent of causing you and your family harm why is it that the police you call to respond to the crime- who will most likely arrive after the criminal has done what he intends to do or has been stopped- need more than 10-rounds but you, the person who has to deal with the criminal face-to-face, on-your-own, need only 10? The police have access to pistols and often shotguns and carbines in their patrol cars. They often travel in pairs. They have access to armed back-up who will go out of their way to protect a fellow officer from harm. They even have access to specialist units specifically trained and armed to deal with highly dangerous situations.
I don't know about you but I've lost count of how many bullets all that adds up to. But the home-owner or woman walking to her car at night confronted by a gang with malicious intent- the person who has to face that threat ALONE is to be restricted to 10 rounds only?
I'm sorry but I fail to see the logic at work here. If a police officer needs more than 10-rounds then so too does the average law-abiding citizen. In fact, I'd argue that they are more in need of standard capacity magazines than the average police officer who has armed colleagues to support him. The person forced to draw a gun to defend themselves is faced with imminent danger at close range. Under these circumstances, and perhaps faced with more than one threat, the citizen needs every available shot they have.
The Tueller Drill established that the average man can cover 21 feet in 1.5 seconds. That time- 1.5 seconds- is the time it takes a practised police officer to draw and fire his holstered weapon twice. If faced with an attacker with a knife that means that the cop who can successfully draw and shoot- and score those two hits- could still be stabbed. Even fatal gunshot wounds do not put an attacker down immediately- he can often continue to operate after receiving those fatal wounds and inflict wounds of his own. Police officers are trained in conflict- and yet even when most of their confrontations occur at a range of less than six feet (one study examining this put a terrifying 81% of shooting confrontations at less than six feet) many of their shots fired miss the target.
These misses occur for a number of reasons, not least of which is stress- but also involved are bad lighting (many shootings occur at night in dimly lit areas) and the fact that the officer and armed bad guy can both be moving and that the officer could be receiving fire from the bad guy. These sudden, violent confrontations can occur with little warning (just watch some of those police dashboard-mounted camera video shows for proof) and are confusing, dangerous, stressful situations.
Let's now consider a young woman who carries a gun in her purse to protect herself as she walks to her car at night. She is confronted by a group of young men, in their late teens or early twenties. She is not only outnumbered but overpowered. If they choose to attack her, she cannot physically defend herself. Neither can she call the police for help- by the time she takes her phone out of her bag the men will be on her. When the men advance on her, perhaps even telling her of what lies in store for her, she draws her gun. The men respond in kind and the woman is forced to shoot. She fires her government-mandated 10 round magazine and hits two of the men more than once before the 10 shots are done. As with the highly trained police officer, some of her shots even at this close range miss the target. Only one of the men is totally incapacitated. The other wounded man and his untouched companion are now free to do what they wish to the now-defenceless young woman. They have weapons drawn already so she cannot reach for a reload.
And consider for a moment an elderly woman living alone. She owns a gun with a standard capacity 17 round magazine because she not only finds it hard to rack the slide but also because she finds it a slow and time-consuming task to remove one magazine and replace it with another. Her fingers are not as nimble and as strong as they used to be. Because she spent her working life as a nurse she is now banned from owning this magazine. Her ex-cop neighbour, who has no such problems with reloading, owns a 33 round magazine for his gun. When drug addicts decide to raid her home she shoots to defend herself. When the gun runs out of ammo the survivors come out of hiding and, as she struggles to reload, beat her to death with a crow bar.
If only she had her weapon loaded with a standard 17 round magazine she might have survived to see another dawn.
Or how about this-
This is a real video of an attempted home invasion. The gang of men, one of them armed with an AR-15 rifle, raced into an older man's home in an attempt to rob and, perhaps, attack him. Luckily, the home-owner was able to retrieve his handgun and shoot at the men. The gang turned and fled the determined, armed home-owner. But suppose for one moment that this gang had decided to use the weapons they had with them that day? Four men, one of them with a rifle, against a single man. If they had stood their ground, and if Rep McCarthy's bill had been passed, the home-owner would have had only ten rounds with which to defend himself.
Up against these armed home-invaders, do you suppose that you would have been able to successfully defend yourself with a government-approved 10-round magazine? Or would your chances of survival increase with 17?
This bill- which will not only ban high capacity magazines but also standard size magazines despite its name- will prevent law abiding citizens from utilising a tool that is not only currently legal but which has been around for decades. The Browning High Power, which holds 13 rounds in its standard size magazine, has been around since 1935. Even before then it was recognised that there was a need for handguns to hold as many rounds as possible.
Rep McCarthy might think that 10-rounds is sufficient for the average person to defend themselves from violence and death under all circumstances but the fact is that she is wrong. If police officers need more than 10 rounds to respond to crimes which have already been committed (and retired cops need them for their own defence and amusement), then the people on the front line, those actually facing criminals without body armour and armed partners and armed back-up have just as much, if not more, need.
And that doesn't even begin to tackle the question of how McCarthy reads the Second Amendment to mean that a person must prove a need to the government to own a certain type of magazine or weapon (some firearms will be banned under the 'magazine ban') rather than 'the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed'. It's perfectly clear to me that banning an integral part of a firearm and replacing it with a less satisfactory part- one which increases the owner's chances of being killed in a violent confrontation- is certainly infringing that right.
Here's video of the person at the core of the voter intimidation case- you know, the one the Obama Department of Justice had already won, but then dismissed, allowing this person to walk free.
Of course, it goes without saying that this is a classic "what if Bush did it" moment- can you imagine the uproar, the media attention, that a similar case would get if Bush's DoJ had allowed a white man with a history of saying these same things about black people to go free- after winning the case against him?
Britain's Lord Tebbitt slams Obama's continual blame-shifting and finger-pointing-
‘The whole might of American wealth and technology is displayed as utterly unable to deal with the disastrous spill – so what more natural than a crude, bigoted, xenophobic display of partisan political Presidential petulance against a multinational company?’
London mayor Boris Johnson also joined in-
'I do think there's something slightly worrying about the anti-British rhetoric that seems to be permeating from America.
'I would like to see a bit of cool heads rather than endlessly buck-passing and name-calling. When you consider the huge exposure of British pension funds to BP it starts to become a matter of national concern if a great British company is being continually beaten up on the airwaves.
'It was an accident that took place and BP is paying a very, very heavy price indeed.'
BP provides income for millions of pension savers- Obama's constant demagoguing of the company might in the short term deflect blame from his rudderless "leadership" but in the long run it could have a ruinous effect on the pension plans of many retirees dependent on those funds.
Opening paragraphs to political articles don't come much more brutal than this one-
Who the hell does Barack Obama, this morally preening, arrogant hypocrite, think he is? His vacuous, demagogic shtick about helping the "people" fight "the powerful" is getting so old from his lips, and already was so hackneyed even before he expropriated it, that it's a miracle that even he himself can say it anymore without getting nauseated by his own oleaginous triteness.
Makes you want to read the rest of the article, doesn't it?
Looks like I blogged too soon. In a previous post I quoted Mark Steyn's most recent column in which he postulated that the very last thing another terrorist attack on the USA would result in would be stricter controls on Muslim immigration or more thorough vetting of Muslim immigrants.
Thankfully we don't have to go through the horrors of another attack to have his point proved. Byron York has a piece up in which he details what former Clinton and Bush intel chief Richard Clarke thinks the US should do in the event of a terrorist attack-
In the raw aftermath of a successful attack, it will be very hard for an American president to shift the debate in a more productive and honest direction. Imagine if, after a fatal attack, President Obama responded by proposing greater outreach to Muslim communities domestically and around the world, in an effort to undercut radicalization. That is precisely what we and other nations should be doing, but it would undoubtedly be decried as a weak, starry-eyed reaction by our commander in chief, especially after an attack that revealed deficiencies in our counterterrorism system.
Yep, according to Clarke the US shouldn't respond to a terrorist attack which murders American citizens with retaliatory strikes or with silly things like strengthening the homeland security system- all the President needs to do to undermine a centuries old theological imperative to wage war against infidels is to try and be nicer to the Muslim world.
This from a guy who used to be the head counter-terrorism chap in the White House. Doesn't build confidence does it?
This hasn't gotten much play in the media or on the blogs- though you can be sure that if we were talking about Bush's DoJ doing the same it would be running 27/4 on the TV news and be on the front pages of the papers.
It appears that the Department of Justice is playing politics with the Times Square bombing plot by refusing to brief Senator Kit Bond (R-MO), the Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. During a classified briefing on Thursday members of the intelligence community refused to answer one of Senator Bond's questions, according to Bond "We called the agency of the intelligence community that should have that information, and they advised us that the Department of Justice is running it and they told us they should not share it with the Intelligence Committee."
As is made clear in the article this is a stunning overreach of the powers of the Department of Justice- and the response of the intelligence community to Holder's crowd should not have been, "sure thing" but "get bent"- they are legally required to keep the Senate Intel Committee fully and currently informed.
Been away from blogging for a while. Tried that Twitter whatsit- really great for passing on an interesting story when you don't have time to blog about it- and then took a break from the whole thing for a short time. When the whole world is going to hell having a ringside seat- and being constantly informed of the minutiae of the destruction of Western civilisation from within and without- can be more than a little depressing.
Anyway, saw this story and just had to blog about it-
Women with suntans are violating Islamic law and will be arrested in Iran, the capital city's police chief was reported by The Daily Telegraph as saying Wednesday.
"In some areas of north Tehran we can see many suntanned women and young girls who look like walking mannequins," he continued. "We are not going to tolerate this situation and will first warn those found in this manner and then arrest and imprison them."
You may have heard of this far-off place, Iran, in the news recently. In actual fact, they've just been elected to serve on the United Nation's Commission on the Status of Women. This is a body which is "dedicated exclusively to gender equality and advancement of women."
Yep, the same country which thinks that it's just fine and dandy to imprison women for having a bit of a fake tan is now a member of the UN's premier body on women's rights issues.
In response, American "women's leaders" (that they have leaders may come as a surprise to many American women) have sprung into action- and written an open letter to Hillary Clinton in protest.
Well, well, well, look what we have here. Buried late on a Friday night the White House releases a statement that, let's not beat around the bush, proves that Joe Wilson was right to declare that Obama was lying when he said Obamacare would not provide cover to illegal aliens.
The question, as we all know, arises from the Wilson “You lie” outburst, and the core claim that notwithstanding specific bill language barring illegal immigrants from participating in the “exchange,” as a practical matter, there is no way of verifying the citizenship of applicants — which is the current state of play. Republicans say that then means illegal immigrants would end up being enrolled in plans — bill language or no bill language.
Today, for the first time as far as we know, the administration is backing a provision that would require proof of citizenship before someone could enroll in a plan selected on the exchange.
In other words, Obama was either just plain ignorant-wrong when he made his no illegal cover statement or else he knew what the bill said and he was, in fact, lying to Congress and the American people. So which was it smartest-president-ever? Were you lying or did you just not know what you were talking about in your carefully prepared big speech?
A moronic so-called comedian who goes by the name "DantetheComic"was so incensed by Joe Wilson's daring to call out Obama's lies to Congress that he goes off the deep-end. First off, he send this tweet to me (after I congratulated Wilson's stand)-
you are a f**ktard and need to read a book and a newspaper and not comic books and neo nazi books
Yeah, apparently Monster Hunter International (the only book I can remember referencing on Twitter) is a neo-Nazi book. As for comics, I'm not sure what he's talking about because I'm not much of a comic fan any more and don't think I've ever referred to reading one on Twitter. Incredibly he missed the many links to newspapers there. Well, I say incredibly but given his own output it's perhaps not too surprising. He went on to spew the following bile on Twitter-
Joe Wilson you are a good example why there should be a white christian Rebublican holocost
JOE WILSON...........You are like the 5th person to screw up from S. Carolina in the past year. We may have to blow that state up.
luciferiscoming and his name is JOE WILSON
President Obama is our president. I believe in him and our country and Joe Wilson SPIT on our flag tonight (To another Twitter user who agreed with Wilson) are you nuts, you c*nt, please go kill yourself
JOE WILSON is alive and well and Kennedy is dead. Shame.
JOE WILSON......if a demacrat yelled out durring a BUSH speech he would have been arested. (Note - not exactly true.)
Joe Wilson thank you since I have ranted about what a piece of crap you are I have gained 30 followers
Joe Wilson eat my nuts
Joe Wilson should resin (Note- I believe he means that Wilson should resign, not turn into resin)
Joe Wilson needs to be punished
(To a Joe Wilson supporter) are you nuts? F**k Joe Wilson and you. That was our president he heckled not Carrot Top
I had Obamas speech on DVR and just watched it. Brilliant. That man is going to change the world. Screw Joe Wilson and other whackjobs
As a comic I hate Hecklers! JOE WILSON is the top piece of sh*t heckler in the world. You f**ktard. (This delicate blossom should never watch Prime Minister's Question Time)
Hey to all the pussys that were following me until I spoke my mind about Oboma and Joe Wilson go f**k yourselves and dont follow me anymore
Go Oboma. Fuck those peice of sh*t republicans who sat there and heckled you and acted like children
Joe Wilson resign now you f**ktard
Joe Wilson if you were a dem durring a Bush speech, you would have been escorted out. How dare you (See above)
F**k you Joe Wilson you piece of sh*t, who the f**k do you think you are yelling at our president.
There needs to be a white christian republican holocost
All the white christian rebublicansneed to all move to Alabama and start thier own country, then left bomb the shit out of those dumb fucks
White christian republicans annoy the sh*t out of me.
I am so sick of dumb f**ks who can not read bashing our president. Show us proof of any thing he has done wrong.
(To another Wilson supporter) Fred let me guess....you love Joe Wilson....you are a white, republican christian. Your level of education and respect are low.
All of the spellings are his originals. Ironic, isn't it, that he slanders someone else's level of education when he can't even spell Democrat? And calling for respect when he's insulted others and called for a holocaust of Christian Republicans? Wow.
No doubt Dante's off to name-call all the liberals and Democrats who attacked Bush, calling him a liar, a murderer and even Hitler over the past eight years...
Mary Katherine Ham notes an important change in the language Obama is using to sell his health care reforms. He's gone from this-
If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor under the reform proposals that we've put forward. If you like your private health insurance plan, you can keep it.
To this-
First, if you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have. Let me repeat this: nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.
In short, Obamacare won't force you to lose your current health insurance or doctor, but when the government mandates exactly what each policy will be required to cover (and remember, if you don't have a government approved plan you will be forced to pay a punitive tax) and so on, the chances are that you will lose your current plan and/or doctor. The government might not require it- but then again, why should they when the end result is the same? Also, if you aren't paying particularly close attention to the debate you might just be fooled into thinking that what Obama's saying is that even after Obamacare you'll be able to keep your current insurance and doctor.
For Obama, success is not the delivery of watertight nuclear security for America; it is a feel-good news conference and photo opportunity that will create huge approval ratings on liberal campuses where the delusions of 1968 and the anti-Vietnam war movement still linger on in these isolated Jurassic Parks.
There appears to have been a mini-blog storm about Debbie Schlussel's column which argues that the climate of tolerance for Islamic anti-Semitism essentially motivated the Holocaust Museum shooter to carry out his crime. I think she has a definite case to make about the shocking rise of anti-Semitism and its link to the politically correct climate around not offending Muslims, but it's a stretch to go from there to "he committed the shooting solely because of it". Perhaps he did feel more comfortable in his hate but there were other factors at play too.
Having said that, the links between white supremiscists and Muslims have been summarily dismissed or ridiculed by Schlussel's critics. She does bring up Hitler's links to the Grand Mufti and also to the Muslim SS Divisions in response. More pertinent to the argument I think would be this more recent news from 2005-
A couple of hours up the road from where some September 11 hijackers learned to fly, the new head of Aryan Nation is praising them -- and trying to create an unholy alliance between his white supremacist group and al Qaeda.
"You say they're terrorists, I say they're freedom fighters. And I want to instill the same jihadic feeling in our peoples' heart, in the Aryan race, that they have for their father, who they call Allah."
That's right - the head of the Aryan Nation wants to join forces with Al Qaeda, reasoning that they two disparate groups have common enemies- the American government and Jews. There's also this report from 2003-
"Western-made terrorists motivated by Marxist, anarchist and neo-Nazi ideology are forming alliances with jihadists and are planning copycat-style attacks and others utilizing funding from Islamists, according to intelligence sources."
Schlussel may have overstated her argument but there is no denying increased anti-Semitism nor is there the "common cause" that white supremiscists feel they have with jihadists.
While Obama panders to the "Muslim world", shakes his finger at the US for having the temerity to worry about a genocidal thug obtaining nuclear weapons, he makes demands of Israel unheard of from any previous American administration- to cease even the natural growth of settlements.
Now, apart from his weekly dinner-and-chats with former PLO spokesman Rashid al-Khalidi and his attending a dinner with Edward Said, his anti-Israel foreign policy team during the campaign, was there any clue as to his apparent animus to Israel? You know, apart from attending a church that printed Hamas propaganda in its newsletter.
Maybe this new comment from Obama's "crazy uncle" Rev Wright will shed some light on matters.
Asked if he had spoken to the President, Wright said: “Them Jews aren’t going to let him talk to me. I told my baby daughter, that he’ll talk to me in five years when he’s a lame duck, or in eight years when he’s out of office…
Wright also said Obama should have sent a U.S. delegation to the World Conference on Racism held recently in Geneva, Switzerland, but that the president did not do so for fear of offending Jews and Israel.
What was the phrase I was looking for? Oh yeah, now I remember- told you so.
