Meathead? No, more like Dickhead

Tax and spend proponents are bad...whether they're an elephant or a donkey....but rich liberal entertainment industry wannabe political meddlers are the worst. Rob Reiner, aka Dickhead, is a perfect example of intellectualism created by fame and money. He has no clue, and he also seems to be following the typical time honored political horse play that those like him give critical lip service to! Tax the rich and give it, ah, not so much to the poor but to your pals in the form of business. What's worse, is that in the process Reiner is hurting the very tax base his programs try to bilk and thus they disappear. Arnold you better grow a pair and start doing what we thought you were capable of!!!! And I realize Dickhead is a bit crass...but geez, look at that melon...ok, give me at least FATHEAD!

Yale's diversity includes the Taliban

Just yesterday I had a conversation with a friend who sends her kids to the same private Catholic K-8 my son attends. I asked if her daughter, who would be moving onto high school in a few years, would attend the all girls Catholic high school in our neighbor. Her response was that she wanted her daughter to experience more diversity. In this case she meant that families who couldn't afford this high school and, surprisingly, boys were the source of some diversity that would benefit her daughter! Her husband is fortunately more on my page and said that's exactly why he wants his daughter to go to that school...for the lack of diversity. Not all diversity is good. But apparently Yale thinks its good to mingle with those who would kill you for simply where you were born or what God you worshiped. In fact so much so that a former (or is he?) Taliban envoy with a fourth-grade education and a high-school equivalency degree is admitted to Yale! Why do liberal elitists feel they have a duty to embrace death row murders and (supposedly) former terrorists or terrorist sympathizers? We can learn from everyone, but that doesn't mean we have to embrace those with, past or present, sinful ideologies or offer them the benefit of a first class education to do so.

Update (2/28): Malkin make a good point....bash Yale she says, but why did the State Department approve his student visa? And was he truthful on his application?

Update (3/1): A nice description of the typical liberal hypocrisy so prevelant on university campuses as noted by Yales own Daily News columnist James Kirchick:

Don't expect a word of protest from our feminist and gay groups, who now have in their midst a live remnant of one of the most misogynistic and homophobic regimes ever. They're busy hunting bogeymen like frat parties and single-sex bathrooms. The answer Hashemi gave five years ago when asked about the lack of women's rights in Afghanistan, "American women don't have the right not to find images of themselves in swimsuits on the side of a bus," is the sort of sophistry likely to curry favor among Yale's feminist activists, who make every effort to paint American society as chauvinistic while refraining from criticizing non-Western cultures. To do so would be "cultural imperialism," and we cannot have that at an enlightened place like Yale.

First things first!

While I agree that the UAE port terminal deal needs a better review and should have also been reviewed by the White House sooner than a few days before being completed, why is this suddenly a big story? Why hasn't there been complaints about airport security being a joke? Why no complaints about the UAE's airline and air cargo company's presence and access at JFK? Blogger Varifrank (whose head hurts from banging on the desk at all the insanity around us) asks that very question. We have all been thru the airport since 9/11, what a joke...the screeners are morons who couldn't spot a suspicious character if they wearing a "death to the Infidel" t-shirt. As the WSJ's Peggy Noonan pointed out they barely speak English so couldn't do a proper interview even if they stumbled on a such a person. They don't profile which is the biggest joke of all.

German Anti-Americanism

I guess at least some Germans, like those on the staff at the German magazine Der Spiegel, have forgotten the American role in WW2 and that they don't have to march straight legged to Third Reich marching music! Or maybe they're still mad at the portrayal of German's in the TV show Hogan's Hereos! (a favorite of mine). Whatever the reason, the Stumme Esel of Der Spiegel printed unmatched English and German versions of an interview with US Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Karen Hughes. Karen answered questions from the magazine in a very respectful and diplomatic way. But Der Spiegel-ista's omitted key words in the German version of Karen's responses changing the tone and meaning altogether. Isn't it interesting that the press all over the world attempts to sway their audience by altering the truth, by in effect censoring select words to truly do a 180 on the intended meaning of the speaker. So fearful are the Schwache Männer of the press to allow the public to not judge people and ideas at their face value!

Stand Up For Denmark

The MSM ignores the real story here...the squelching of free press and free expression by evil. I presume they either cower under the umbrella of political correctness, or maybe they don't have the twins in their pants to actually stand up for what's right. Today in our capital was a gathering, inspired by Chritopher Hitchens, outside the Embassy of Denmark to show their support. Cindy Sheehan would get widespread MSM coverage anywhere she was with a dozen friends holding up anti-American and anti-Bush signs. What this manufactured Muslim uproar can become is very profound and the silence of those that should oppose it is deafening and heart breaking.

Hillary NutJob Clinton

I watched Hannity & Colmes last night and they had video of Hillary speaking at a breakfast at the South Bronx Overall Economic Development Corp. Good God! On the subject of school vouchers she makes the argument that with vouchers some parents may choose to send their kids to White Supremacist or Jihad focused schools. Hey Hill....ah, can you tell us where one of these scary schools is located? And I suppose since there are voucher programs already in place you must have some examples where this has happened? This stand by your man freak is a lunatic. She either is a wack job, if she believes what she spews, or she is the worst kind of pandering charlatan politics has ever seen. Either way she is scary and bad for America. I of course checked the blogsphere this morning to see reaction and sure enough what should be front page news is only really covered in blogland. Michelle Malkin has a nice round up of opinion and a link to the unhinged portion of her speech.

Dumb Ass Award

If gays weren't so hell bent on being treated not as equal, but as special, there wouldn't be a so called "plight" for acceptance by society. The dumb ass award has to go to Tom Gregory who bought the shirts worn by the gay Brokeback Mountain actors, who think they're straight, in the movie for just over $100,000. No straight man could do what those guys did on film (so I hear) let alone even watch what they did without serious discomfort. While its great his money will benefit a charity, for what are probably $30 Lands End shirts, Gregory apparently thinks this is symbolic of some historic struggle. Of the shirts he says "They really are the ruby slippers of our time" and that the he plans to keep the shirts "as they were, on the hanger, entwined." and probably teary eyed adds "I would never wear them, put them on, or separate them".

I think I'm going to be sick!

Life with a possibility of death

The death penalty in California, and elsewhere, has become a joke....why pray tell do these scum sit on death row for 20 and 30 years, or more, before all their appeals, the "new" DNA evidence, and celebrity sympathizers either present a compelling case for an injustice or not? So now we people, like literally maybe a handful, trying to suggest that lethal injection is cruel or that someone might suffer. Well good, these scum should suffer you peacenik bastards. The always bias press of course doesn't like snuffing out these vile criminals as they imply that the public at large has issues with the death penalty. That's just not so. Take for example the local papers headline of Case speaks to rising scrutiny of lethal injection procedure. Ah, no not really!!! Rising scrutiny? You mean the several doctors and idiots at the prison or the 30 protestors who don't have a day job so stood outside with signs? Which of those would qualify as "rising"? And of course California has no shortage of bleeding heart law ignoring judges as in this case where Michael Morales should already be dead the Mercury News says "Questions of whether some inmates may have suffered excruciating pain while appearing sedate persuaded federal District Judge Jeremy Fogel last week to craft an unprecedented order that legal experts say is bound to have implications beyond Morales." Really? Whose questions? Who said some inmates MAY have suffered? And which inmates exactly? Who witnessed their injections and viewed some signs of EXCRUCIATING pain? And for Christ sake, just give them a horse injection of morphine and they won't feel a damn thing. Arnold you girly man...arrest the F'ing warden at San Quentin for not carrying out the execution!!!!!

A book, a rumor and machetes

Leave it to the religion of peace to take a rumor of the miss treatment of a book to encourage some of its angry illiterate sheep to take to the streets with machetes and people die! The MSM is barely covering the continued spiral of the Muslim anger over nothing. The chicken-shit media picks and chooses its stories that suit its political ideology. In a world were an obviously innocent hunting accident involving the Vice President dominates the news and the daily large Muslim protests around the world go ignored. If they didn't include America as a target for their calls of death and if nearly every protests didn't include deaths (and probably those of fellow Muslims) I could understand it. But at this point its clear that a dangerously large portion of the Muslim faithful are misguided, illiterate, hateful and evil. The supposedly peaceful Muslims stand too idle when minute by minute many of us are close to universal condemnation.

What extreme Muslims and Democrats have in common

We see it all the time. A group or a government whose position, or ideology, hangs by a thread and so they attempt to stifle those who expose the thickness of that thread. So weak is their belief in their cause that they abandon their own basic beliefs (e.g. free speech) in an attempt to stop others from hearing compelling thoughts and opinions that expose the thin thread! On the heels of the Muhammad cartoon example (and the MSM's duplicity) we have the Minnesota Democratic Party trying to stop pro Iraq war tv ads by vets and family of the fallen in Iraq -a group called MidwestHeroes. The Democrats calls these ads un-American! If nothing shows just how unhinged these people are nothing else does. Powerline blog and others in the blogsphere are making noise over this incredible situation that goes silent in the MSM and national news. Why? See the ads for yourself. Doesn't matter if you believe some of those in the ads state something you believe to be false, that's free speech! If you see something like this and believe it shouldn't be shown to the public you obviously question the veracity of your beliefs. Its amazing the never ending examples of the party that thinks it has cornered the market on free speech and civil rights is in fact closely aligned with the ideology of radical Muslims.

ABC softens Saddam's words?

While I'm glad ABC Nightline reported on the tapes of Saddam and his band of evil lemmings talking about WMD's, building them, using them, hiding them, etc....it appears they made edits in the translation of Saddam's words to soften their meaning. The FBI translator who made transcripts of the tapes for ABC says they gave a translation where Saddam predicts D.C. would be hit by terrorists but that Iraq would have nothing to do with the attack. However, the translator says, what Saddam actually was discussing his intent to use chemical weapons against the United States and use proxies so it could not be traced back to Iraq. Apparently there are a mountain of tapes and documents not yet translated or available to the public. But rest assured if they in any way make Bush's decision to go into Iraq look good the press will either ignore it or modify it!

Along these same lines the MSM didn't cover, with any earnest, the stories that came from various sources (from a former Iraqi general, from a relative of Syrian President Bashar Assad, former US security exec) that Iraq's WMDs where moved into Syria in the months prior to our latest invasion into Iraq.

Bounty on Muslims!

So now those wonderful friendly misunderstood Muslim clerics have put a bounty of $1M (and a car) on the heads of those who drew the now infamous cartoons! The MSM has been for the most part ignoring the continued protesting, destruction and deaths related to the fabricated uproar over the benign cartoons. We should be promoting our current most wanted list more and should add a bounty for each cleric or Muslim leader who is inciting their illiterate following to murder. Gee, since several of the cartoons originated from the cleric in Denmark who started this, is his name on their hit list?

The Ultimate in Moral Equivalence

"The quote of the day from Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the Secretary General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, on the Danish Cartoon publications:

"Unfortunately, people in the Muslim world feel that this is a new 9/11 against themselves."

Hmmm...flying planes into buildings...publishing cartoons. Yep, that's about the same."

I stole this post from my friend Evan Coyne Maloney over at http://brain-terminal.com/.

Evan has been coined as the "Conservative Michael Moore" for his film "Brainwashing 101" about the liberal bias on college campii (sp?). However, I would say that he's much, much better than Michael Moore as his observations are actually rooted in fact.

Black Racists

I always enjoy pointing out those blacks who want you to believe that equality is their mission in life who are in fact racists. While I have only watched Bryant Gumbel's HBO show (Real Sports) a few times I liked the in-depth personal stories of great athletes. I never detected anything that made me think Bryant was a bitter black man, in fact I never saw a black man when I watched him, just a man. Now though, I will see something different. At the end of each Real Sports episode Bryant does a closing monologue and here's the most recent:

"Finally, tonight, the Winter Games. Count me among those who don't like them and won't watch them ... Because they're so trying, maybe over the next three weeks we should all try too. Like, try not to be incredulous when someone attempts to link these games to those of the ancient Greeks who never heard of skating or skiing. So try not to laugh when someone says these are the world's greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention. Try not to point out that something's not really a sport if a pseudo-athlete waits in what's called a kiss-and-cry area, while some panel of subjective judges decides who won ... So if only to hasten the arrival of the day they're done, when we can move on to March Madness, for God's sake, let the games begin."

Update (2/17): Was listening to a local talk radio show driving into work and they were talking about Bryant's racist monologue. One of the hosts said he also saw a segment on Bryant's show that gives some insight to the man. He apparently did a 20 minute long tribute to himself where he setup stools and had the reporters from his show face him and tell of their favorite experiences or memories of him. Are you kidding me? What an ass!

The Media's Patriotism

This week has seen an unusual amount of idiotic reporting by the MSM. While the various Cheney hunting accident story lines are insanely stupid, the coverage that bothers me the most is of the new Abu Ghraib photos. This story makes it very clear where the MSM puts their allegiance. The very news outlets who either obscured the Muhammad cartoons, or didn't show them at all, do show these Abu Ghraib photos including those that show explicit nudity. Hundreds of news outlets who didn't show bogusly controversial cartoons have the new Abu Ghraib photos in spades. They protect the fake sensibilities of Muslim extremist but are happy to make the U.S. Military and our country look bad to these very same people. These photos don't add to the old story, that's done and gone...all these do is inflame the hatred of those who would kill us. This helps rally that hatred, it helps recruit new terrorists, it may in fact endanger the lives of the American's in the photo...no excuse, no shame, damn treasonous MSM bastards!

Happy to show the photos but not the cartoons: ABC, NBC, CBS (see the Abu Ghraib Interactive link), and CNN

21% of American's are terror suspects!

If you didn't already know that opinion polls are about as useless as a looking for a conservative on the UW campus, then maybe this will prove it to you. A CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll released today found that 21% of those polled said it very likely or somewhat likely their conversations had been wiretapped. So you ask yourself, why does this 21% think they have been wired tapped? They are in fact terror suspects? They're on an FBI or Homeland Security watch list? They have broken the law before or partake in legally questionable activities? Or 210 of 1000 randomly called adults across the US actually believe the government taps every single phone line and cell transmission in the country, all the time every day! Pretty much any one of these reasons these 210 would have for their answer is scary, but lets assume its the last one!

According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), there are 190 million main telephone lines in the United States as of 2002. In 2003 the FCC estimated that those lines accounted for about 80 billion hours of phone calls. Of course, cell phones usage minutes have surpassed land lines by a wide margin but I couldn't find an exact number. There is around 200 million cell subscribers in the US, with around 400 million individual cell phones. Worldwide the total is around 1.5 Billion cells phones. We will just assume the cell phone usage, in terms of minutes, is equal to the land lines...so another 80 Billion hours. We won't even consider foreign cell phones used within the US. Then you need some compute intensive software that can evaluate voice transmissions of land line and cell quality audio (meaning not so good, so it must have enhancement algorithms which are also compute intensive). The software must also account for accents and different pronunciations of words. You must store all the audio you haven't yet scanned for hits. And keep in mind you can't just search for a word at a time. Finding just the word "bomb" in a conversation would give too many false positives (like "she was the bomb" or "I had the chocolate bomb for desert") so you need to search for phrases and combinations of words. And all this "listening" to be useful must alert someone to a HIT fairly quickly else its meaningless. How quick? You could argue and hour, a day, of the conversation happening. But a week, or a month, or longer and it becomes useless. Take 160 Billion yearly hours of audio and the amount of audio you must scan this way daily is 438,000,000 hours! Keep in mind you are going to execute something between a few hundreds thousand and a million lines of software code against this audio. It can't possibly run real time because the same audion snippet might branch to other parts of code and be run again as the pattern matching is done. This of course assumes that you have every carrier (land and cell) working with the government so as to push all this audio to the computers that do this work. The other option would be that the government has a 2nd wire for all 190 land lines going to their own equipment, as well as hundreds of thousands of cell antennas around the US along with special equipment to capture all the cell transmissions. In either case you couldn't involve that many people (govt or private people), or that much equipment, without a lot of people spilling the beans on this vast conspiracy! My 24 years of computer industry experience says the US government couldn't do this if they used every piece of hardware from every government agency together let alone just the NSA or all security related agencies...Nope, sorry, just not possible.

Jihad sympathizer Gore

Tarranto of the WSJ points us to a great post by blogger TigerHawk on Gore's seditious anti-American speech on foreign sole to mostly Muslim Arabs. I couldn't do better than TigerHawk's prose on the man who could have been president so I include much of them here following some of Gore's more destructive comments:

Former Vice President Al Gore told a mainly Saudi audience on Sunday that the U.S. government committed "terrible abuses" against Arabs after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and that most Americans did not support such treatment. Gore said Arabs had been "indiscriminately rounded up" and held in "unforgivable" conditions. The former vice president said the Bush administration was playing into al-Qaida's hands by routinely blocking Saudi visa applications."The thoughtless way in which visas are now handled, that is a mistake," Gore said during the Jiddah Economic Forum.

TigerHawk:

This is asinine both substantively and procedurally.

Substantively, the idea that cracking down on Saudi visa applications is "playing into al Qaeda's hands" is laughable. Had we scrutinized Saudi visas a little more carefully in 2001, thousands of Americans who died on September 11 that year might well have lived. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on that day were Saudi nationals. If we had denied some or all of them visas, exactly how would that have "played into al Qaeda's hands"?

Perhaps Gore is suggesting that notwithstanding the obvious benefits of our tough visa policies, if they irritate the House of Saud, or just the average wealthy Saudi, the Saudis will abandon the fight against al Qaeda out of pique. If so, his point is absurd. The House of Saud and al Qaeda are at war, and have been going at each other with hammer and tongs since May 2003. Whether or not some Saudis are offended by American visa policies, that inconvenience -- or indignity, even -- is nothing compared to the mortal threat of the jihadis.

Procedurally, Gore's speech is repugnant. It is one thing to say such things to an American audience in an effort to change our policy. Whether or not one agrees with Gore on the substance, if he wants to change American policy to let in more Saudis the only way he can do that it is to campaign for that change among influential Americans. It is, however, another thing entirely to travel to a foreign country that features pivotally in the war of our generation for the purpose of denouncing American policies in front of the affected foreign audience. It is especially problematic to mess with Saudi political opinions, which are subject to intensive influence and coercion by internal actors and the United States, al Qaeda, and Iran, among other powers. Supposing that some Saudis were inclined to be angry over the American visa policy, won't they be more angry after Al Gore has told them that they're being humiliated? How is that helpful?

Finally, Gore's outrage at the American treatment of Arab and Muslim captives may be genuine, and it may even be worthy of expression in the United States, where we aspire to do better than press accounts suggest we have done. But whatever nasty things we have done in exceptional cases in time of war, they pale in comparison to the standard operating procedure in Saudi Arabia. So this is what Gore has done: he has traveled to Jiddah to explain to the elites of an ugly and tyrannical regime that the big problem in the world isn't the oppression of Arabs by Arabs throughout the Middle East and North Africa, but the mistreatment of a few hundred Arabs in the United States. This is like visiting Moscow in 1970 and denouncing the United States in front of a bunch of Communist Party deputies for the killings at Kent State. Indeed, the differences in that comparison reflect badly on Gore.

There is simply no defense for what Gore has done here, for he is deliberately undermining the United States during a time of war, in a part of the world crucial to our success in that war, in front of an audience that does not vote in American elections. Gore's speech is both destructive and disloyal, not because of its content -- which is as silly as it is subversive -- but because of its location and its intended audience. He should be ashamed. But he won't be. The leadership of the Democratic party should disavow Gore's Jiddah speech. But it won't.

An accident or something more?

I could only laugh at the various supposed news stories about Vice President Cheney's hunting accident. Do these reporters, who try to make this sound like anything else other than an accident, really think they are serious journalists? Michelle Malkin has a nice collection of right thinking comments on this story. All I can say is what a joke the MSM is. The coverage, or lack of accurate coverage, of the Muslim cartoon idiocy followed by trying to turn this hunting story into something telling is proof of modern inbreeding. Get the shown bumper stick from ExposeTheLeft.com

Thin skinned masqueraders

Did you know that CNN displayed one (or some) of the oh so awful cartoons but blurred out what are suppose to be Mohammed's head? So this chicken shit PC move by CNN got one political cartoonist to poke fun at CNN. The Beacon Journal's Chip Bok in Akron Ohio drew and printed the cartoon you see here...only to draw criticism from local Muslim groups along with we-pretend-not-to-support-jihadist CAIR. You have to be kidding me? At its best this is a laughable example of being thin skinned. What this instead shows is that supposedly upstanding "normal" Muslims support the fake and manufactured uproar created by extremist Muslims. Since its clear that images of Mohammed have existed for centuries without issue, and that Mohammed's own words allow for non-Muslims to not follow Islam and that Muslims peacefully accept that....anyone not supporting the freedoms, of those who have it, to express criticism of some Muslims is supporting the extremist and terror.

Until a majority of Muslims denounce the hate, the calls for death and destruction, and proclaim that Islam and those who follow Mohammed can and should peacefully coexist with those who do not...until then you're with those who would behead me and I know who will win that war.

Press complicit in cartoon uproar

No doubt if you read my blog you also have read somewhere the true origin of this manufactured uproar over the Mohammed cartoons. While I don't know much about the Muslim religion, or the teachings of Islam, it seems pretty clear that groups like Hamas, Islamic Jihad and al Qaeda are not true followers of the religion but political groups run by power hungry hate mongers. A piece (Bonfire of the Pieties: Islam prohibits neither images of Muhammad nor jokes about religion.) in today's WSJ outlines the two falsehoods this fake uproar is based on, that: It is against Islamic principles to represent by imagery not only Muhammad but all the prophets of Islam; and the Muslim world is not used to laughing at religion. Both claims, however, are false.

Amir Taheri gives the background to dispel both claims. It's understandable how the unemployed, and uneducated, Muslims in these countries where the protests primarily have taken place are easily coaxed into believing completely bogus claims. But what can't be explained is why the press isn't reporting on the how this uproar was in fact manufactured, and staged, and that the reasons for the furor is based on false claims of Islamic teachings.

More on the lying Danish Imams (from Malkin) that manufactured cartoons of their own that were not published. They added these to those that were published and I'm sure they let the other Imams believe these cartoons were produced by infadels and published.

The Fakes

Knowing Your Audience

The blatant demagoguery of the liberal left over seemingly every topic is beyond ridiculous at this point. The latest being the aforementioned funeral for Coretta Scott King.

I will give the democrats one thing, they always know their audience and yesterday was a great example. Jimmy Carter made this remark during his bloviating speech: “difficult for them then personally with the civil liberties of both husband and wife violated as they became the target of secret government wiretaps.” Of course that drew a hearty round of applause and then strangely enough Ted Kennedy came up to speak and he too drew applause.

Perhaps it was lost on the crowd that Ted is the brother of Robert who was the Attorney General who authorized those very wiretaps on the Kings.

As to the good Dr. Lowery he’s on record saying (in 1996): “We have never stopped believing for a moment that there was some government complicity in the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.” At the same conference, Lowery claimed the CIA was selling cocaine in black neighborhoods. “This is a new and worse form of slavery: chemical warfare in the form of drugs. It’s worse than anything Saddam Hussein has done.”

So again, if he thinks the government was in on King’s assassination that would mean it was the Kennedy administration behind it and if the CIA was selling coke to black kids that would be the Clinton administrations doing. Yet he took no shots at the Kennedy’s or the Clinton’s yesterday.

How odd.

How Low Can You Go?

Hot off the press on the Drudgereport we find that several turned the memorial for Coretta Scott King, billed a celebration of her life (as any funeral/memorial would be), into a political Bush bash opportunity. Rev. Joseph Lowery gave a lovely diatribe honoring Mrs. King weaving in smart bombs in missions afar and non-existent WMD's. While I seriously doubt this guy every talked to Mrs. King about this stuff could you imagine going to a friends funeral and one of the speakers, to honor the departed's life, talks about anything negative at all? Honoring someone's life is not a political opportunity for anybody with a grain of class and decency. The fact that these inappropriate comments got a two minute standing ovation speaks to the class of those in attendance...again such a display at a memorial is truly strange to me. Then Jimmy "corn" Carter wove in a NSA eavesdrop Bush bash by mentioning the Kings were once the target of a secret wiretapping to again cheers! Carter also threw in the racist hurricane connection. Hmmm, did Mrs. King make public statements that the aftermath of Katrina was evidence that we are all not equal? Even if she did a political stump doesn't belong in a memorial service in my opinion...Unbelievable.

The full first Drudge post on this:

KING FUNERAL TURNS POLITICAL: BUSH BASHED BY FORMER PRESIDENT, REVEREND Tue Feb 07 2006 15:49:48 ETToday's memorial service for civil rights activist Coretta Scott King -- billed as a "celebration" of her life -- turned suddenly political as one former president took a swipe at the current president, who was also lashed by an outspoken black pastor!The outspoken Rev. Joseph Lowery, co-founder of Southern Christian Leadership Conference, ripped into President Bush during his short speech, ostensibly about the wife of Martin Luther King Jr."She extended Martin's message against poverty, racism and war. She deplored the terror inflicted by our smart bombs on missions way afar. We know now that there were no weapons of mass destruction over there," Lowery said. The mostly black crowd applauded, then rose to its feet and cheered in a two-minute-long standing ovation.A closed-circuit television in the mega-church outside Atlanta showed the president smiling uncomfortably."But Coretta knew, and we know," Lowery continued, "That there are weapons of misdirection right down here," he said, nodding his head toward the row of presidents past and present. "For war, billions more, but no more for the poor!" The crowd again cheered wildly.Former President Jimmy Carter later swung at Bush as well, not once but twice. As he talked about the Kings, he said: "It was difficult for them then personally with the civil liberties of both husband and wife violated as they became the target of secret government wiretaps." The crowd cheered as Bush, under fire for a secret wiretapping program he ordered after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, again smiled weakly. Later, Carter said Hurricane Katrina showed that all are not yet equal in America. Some black leaders have blamed Bush for the poor federal response, and rapper Kayne West said that Bush "hates" black people.Developing...

Michelle Malkin also posts on the "unhinged" at the Scott King funeral.

Manufactured Outrage!

Similar to my earlier post (Muslims stoked this fire) this one is about the phony nature of the cartoon outrage by Muslim wack-jobs. Michelle Malkin's blog has a nice offering on of all things the use of an image of Mohammed for centuries in paintings, drawings, etc. some being flattering and some not. And yet now against the actual words of Mohammed the supposedly devote Muslims call for violence and murder! As Michelle's post asks, will the SCOTUS be next since the image in this post is of Mohammed in the form of a marble frieze inside the SCOTUS building!

Democracy in a Cartoon

This is the title of a great piece by a best selling author and Muslim Dissident published by Germany's Spiegel on Friday last week. Ibn Warraq gives a perspective on this idiotic cartoon controversy that sums it up better than any I have seen. The entire thing is full of perls so read it, but this passage aligns with my feelings on the topic:

The cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten raise the most important question of our times: freedom of expression. Are we in the west going to cave into pressure from societies with a medieval mindset, or are we going to defend our most precious freedom -- freedom of expression, a freedom for which thousands of people sacrificed their lives?

A democracy cannot survive long without freedom of expression, the freedom to argue, to dissent, even to insult and offend. It is a freedom sorely lacking in the Islamic world, and without it Islam will remain unassailed in its dogmatic, fanatical, medieval fortress; ossified, totalitarian and intolerant. Without this fundamental freedom, Islam will continue to stifle thought, human rights, individuality; originality and truth.

Unless, we show some solidarity, unashamed, noisy, public solidarity with the Danish cartoonists, then the forces that are trying to impose on the Free West a totalitarian ideology will have won; the Islamization of Europe will have begun in earnest. Do not apologize.

Muslims stoked this fire!

In a UK based online news rag called The Daily Telegraph an opinion piece by Charles Moore titled If you get rid of the Danes, you'll have to keep paying the Danegeld has an interesting new twist to the cartoon story. Just a portion:

Why were those Danish flags to hand? Who built up the stockpile so that they could be quickly dragged out right across the Muslim world and burnt where television cameras would come and look? The more you study this story of "spontaneous" Muslim rage, the odder it seems.

The complained-of cartoons first appeared in October; they have provoked such fury only now. As reported in this newspaper yesterday, it turns out that a group of Danish imams circulated the images to brethren in Muslim countries. When they did so, they included in their package three other, much more offensive cartoons which had not appeared in Jyllands-Posten but were lumped together so that many thought they had.

It rather looks as if the anger with which all Muslims are said to be burning needed some pretty determined stoking. Peter Mandelson, who seems to think that his job as European Trade Commissioner entitles him to pronounce on matters of faith and morals, accuses the papers that republished the cartoons of "adding fuel to the flames"; but those flames were lit (literally, as well as figuratively) by well-organized, radical Muslims who wanted other Muslims to get furious. How this network has operated would make a cracking piece of investigative journalism.

Now the BBC announces that the head of the International Association of Muslim Scholars has called for an "international day of anger" about the cartoons.....

So, it seems this could be an internally stoked fire that regardless of motivation. Separatism is a cancer in any group and in the end leads to disdain the group has for outsiders and visa versa. That sound familiar? And will you see this in the MSM? And how does the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) way in on this issue? From their website: “You do not do evil to those who do evil to you, but you deal with them with forgiveness and kindness.” So, apparently the cartoonist, and the entire country where the cartoonist hail from, have done evil to all Muslims? And of course CAIR implies Islam is kind and forgiving? Then why doesn't CAIR denounce the message on the signs of their protesting brothers. One thing these Muslims have in common with the left is they suffer from do as I say, not as I do syndrome.

The evil among us

You should read Todd Bensman's Hamas's Rock Star piece in the latest Weekly Standard. It's scary for two reasons. I think it's but one example that the evil is among us and the governments inability to do good police work is troubling. In Palestine the election put Hamas in power and with it's supreme political leader being one Khaled Meshal this story is of more interest. You see Meshal's half brother has been living in Dallas for many years...and apparently helping raise some $60M for Hamas terrorist activities (namely focused on killing Jews) since 1989. The half brother, Mufid Abdulqader, was a city of Dallas civil engineer by day and an entertainer at Hamas money raising events the rest of the time. We need to realize that it's unlikely this is an isolated case and Muslims living in our communities are attending similar meetings. And as you would suspect they brainwash their children with their hatred. From FBI evidence of Abdulqader's singing and skits at a meeting put on by his group (the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development) it is noted:

In the videos, masked jihadists in camouflage uniforms march menacingly to the band's drumbeats. Children take the stage to perform pantomime stabbing and shooting motions to the beat. One child points a toy gun at the sky, marching in place on stage. During brief intermissions, speakers take the stage to recite old Jewish-conspiracy canards.

The Face of ISLAM

THIS




CAUSED: protests in Denmark, UK, SUdan, Indonesia, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, and more...and they're spreading...many of the protests are thousands strong....and look at the message of these protests!



While there very well maybe good people who are Muslim the most prevalent world wide evil are followers of Islam. The level of reaction to such trivial things as a rumored mistreatment of a Koran, or cartoons considered insulting to the prophet Mohammed, is indicative of a naive and backward group of sheep. The world has passed much of the Muslim world by. While many countries, and religious groups, have kicked and screamed into the modern world most make concessions in order to get along with those more progressive than them. Muslim leaders around the world interpret portions of the Koran as promoting either violence or elimination of others. As some countries in the middle east begin to embrace forms of democracy, elevating the status of women and allowing freedoms not previously enjoyed, the hard line Muslims promote an extreme stance. It's also interesting that the arm of this evil (the terrorists, the suicide bomber, the jihadist) hypocritically embrace practices and freedoms in the locations they are deployed in to execute their evil. I don't care that there are good Muslims in the world.....the evil within, I believe, has metastasized and so it is terminal.

Update: Powerline has a post called Religion of Peace update that's got some examples of what apparently much of the Muslim world feels is a proportionate response to the mild (at best) cartoons. One imam at the Omari Mosque in Gaza City told 9,000 worshippers that those behind the drawings should have their heads cut off.

Upadate 2, Feb 4th: Hugh Hewitt at first offers a more reserved and maybe more appropriate view than me, but I'm still pissed, then as events unfold gets a bit more heated towards Syria.

Playing the Nazi card

The vitriol spewing left is amazingly consistent in trying to associate conservatives with unrelated negative imagery. On the heals of Hillary's plantation I found this item on Drudge regarding the NAACP's chairman saying "The Republican Party would have the American flag and the swastika flying side by side", and referred to Condoleezza Rice and her predecessor, Colin Powell, as "tokens". There is no defense...there is no excuse and if leaders on the left (and the MSM) do not take offense to Mr. Bond's inappropriate rhetoric then as far as I'm concerned they condone and agree with it.

Homodisdain

I'm inventing a new word...homodisdain! It's defined as "disdain for homosexuality, especially any open display of it". To be clear, this is because I don't fear(the definition of phobia) homosexuals and so don't have homophobia. That's why I would never see Brokeback Mountain. Aside from the story line being uninteresting (to me) the thought of even simulated homosexual sex disgusts me. What's amazing to me is that liberals and many (but not all!!!!) in the entertainment industry think you're being homophobic, or that your "easily offended", if you don't WANT to accept, tolerate or embrace homosexuality. They can't fathom that many people just find it sick, gross, wrong, reprehensible, etc. I found an interesting parallel in this entertainment writers piece called How Gay Will Oscar Go? to the criticisms of Judge Alito. The basic argument against Alito was that he is a conservative person and therefore will not judge a case on its legal merits but instead on his personal ideology. In the case of Brokeback Mountain Nikki Finke wants the academy members who don't want to even view the film to do so else how can they judge it? But judging performance, or art, is all about personal interpretation or ideology. No sensible person would expect me to acknowledge an artist as a good one if I find the material disgusting. If the basic theme of a 2 hour movie really bothered you it's not clear to me you would take note of someone's fantastic performance in delivering that bothersome theme. In fact I think it's valid if you find the story of a movie offensive you don't need to see it to decide not to vote for the movie in any category. But the Oscars isn't really the story of interest here...it's the lack of understanding by the left of why someone doesn't approve of, or want to embrace in anyway, the gay lifestyle. They believe that I must be accepting or be tolerant...ah, NO actually I don't.

Agh, Give Me A Freaking Break!

So Cindy Sheehan has a few words for everyone today. Mostly she's bitching and moaning about how roughly she was treated last night and how the police are lying and the press is distorting what happened.

You can read the whole pathetic bit here, it's on Michael Moore's blog so I guess pathetic whiners like to congregate toghether even in cyberspace.

There's a picture of her being "roughed up" and you'll notice that the security guy is in the row above her and has her by the arm but he doesn't even have a firm grip (if he did his thumb would be on top of her arm so that he could grip it) on her so I can't see how he's being rough with her.

She also says "He then ran over to me, hauled me out of my seat", right he ran down the narrow little aisle and lifted your fat ass out of your chair.

Then there's this bit: "What did Casey die for? What did the 2,244 other brave young Americans die for? What are tens of thousands of them over there in harm's way for still? For this? I can't even wear a shirt that has the number of troops on it that George Bush and his arrogant and ignorant policies are responsible for killing. "

Let me clear this up for you, you dipshit. Casey died defending the national interests of his country. He took an oath saying that he would do so and to his credit he lived up to that oath. I honor him and his service.

Tens of thousands of his brothers and sisters in arms are there for the same reason.

George Bush didn't start that war, Saddam Hussein did. George Bush doesn't kill our troops, Islamo-facist terrorists do. They do it in the most cowardly way possible and yet you, Cindy Sheehan honor them for that.

You're a particularly loathsome human being.

Update from Tiny: I added a blow up photo from an AP photo that shows a little smile on Cindy's face as she is being handled roughly by the capital police!

Never trust off kilter eyebrows!

I watched the SOTU address by President Bush last night with my brother-in-law. Bush did ok, wish he was more harsh on Iran and the sudden green approach on energy is new. He did a nice job taking jabs at the moonbats across the isle. Cindy Sheehan proved what an idiot she is with her t-shirt stunt. Doesn't matter what the shirt said and it's interesting there's different accounts of that. Anyway, the MSM isn't running the Sheehan arrest front and center...maybe she's lost he media darling status?

My brother-in-law and I started laughing pretty much simultaneously as Virginia governor Tim Kaine was less than a minute into this Democrat response. His left eyebrow would frequently move a good 2" higher than the right one. This would happen on making certain points. Kaine's response was the same old the Bush administration is responsible for everything that's messed up (and there is nothing that is ever going well). Throw in repeated "there's a better way" but as usual for Democrats they never detail the "better way". I suspect Mr. Kaine probably would be a bad poker player as my guess is that eyebrow maneuver is tide to his discomfort with what he's saying (or in this case not saying)...too funny!