Commentarama: April 2012

Monday, April 30, 2012

White House Press Dinner Portends Doom

The end of the Obama Reign of Error is nigh. Yep. The signs are everywhere. And the latest evidence comes from the White House Correspondents Association dinner on Saturday. Oh yeah. Observe these mighty omens:

Omen One: I’ve pointed out several times now that Obama has no idea how to win back the public. Saturday proved that more than ever because Obama demonstrated that he and his staff have a tin ear for the things the public is upset about:

● Obama made jokes about the Secret Service scandal, as did Biden. Stupid. When a scandal is fresh, people want to know it’s being taken seriously. Making jokes about the scandal only shows that Obama is not taking it seriously. This also serve to highlight the question of whether or not Obama’s faked-outrage at the scandal was genuine or just for show. . . reinforcing the idea he doesn’t really care about anything.

Moreover, his joke on this topic rather nastily pulled in Hillary Clinton: “Four years ago, I was locked in a brutal primary battle with Hillary Clinton. Four years later, she won’t stop drunk-texting me from Cartagena.” Calling your Secretary of State a drunk, making her sound desperate and lonely, and suggesting she was connected to a hooker scandal is not a way to demonstrate class. To the contrary, it comes across as petty and vindictive, especially when this particular Secretary of State has already announced she won’t be attending the Democratic Convention. Start the “bad blood” talk again.

● For a President who spends his time on golf courses and lets his wife vacation at five star resorts with her entourage on our tax dollars while unemployment sits at 8-9% and real income is falling, the last thing said President should be doing is being seen hobnobbing with spoiled Hollywood celebrities. And then inviting Lindsay Lohan just made everything even worse. Talk about a poster child for spoiled, rich, undeserving, played-out, drug addicted tramps! Lohan has ruined every chance the public has given her and she is now a cultural icon for pathetic failure. . . not the kind of person a sitting President should associate with.

● Obama made a joke about eating a dog and combined it with a poke at moms: “what’s the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? A pit bull is delicious.” Whoops. Having launched a slimy attack against Romney on the dog front, and having been called on it by Romney, who point out Obama ate dog growing up, the last thing Obama should be doing is joking about eating dogs. That’s like an accused child molester making a joke about under-aged sex.

Further, this joke smells of yet another attack on moms. With Hilary Rosen making a broadside against stay-at-home mothers, the timing couldn’t have been worse for suggesting that mothers are vicious. And by the way, this was meant as a Sarah Palin joke, telling us that Obama is stuck in the past and that he still hasn’t found a way to excite his base about attacking Romney.

All of this tells us that Obama does not understand what has upset the public or how to win them back. He thinks the criticisms of him and the blowback he’s received are a joke. And one thing the public will not stand is its concerns being treated as a joke. His campaign is doomed.

Omen Two: More telling, perhaps, was the fact that Jimmy Kimmel attacked Obama in ways you never see liberals attack Democratic politicians. . . unless they think the Democrat is finished. Check out these jokes from Kimmel (none of which were denounced by the MSM):

● "Remember when the country rallied around you in hopes of a better tomorrow? That was hilarious."

Translation: The public’s hope in Obama was a sick joke, you have failed Mr. Obama. This is truly vicious and I can only see this as evidence that even the left sees Obama as no longer worthy of propping up. This is a demoralizing joke for Obama supporters.

● “You know, there’s a term for guys like President Obama. Probably not two terms.”

Translation: This is Kimmel saying point blank that it’s so hopeless for Obama that they should laugh about it. This joke will soften the support of all the frontrunners and bandwagoners, who only stick with winners.

● "Democrats would like you to stick to your guns. And if you don't have any guns, you can ask Eric Holder to get some for you."

Translation: Kimmel is striking directly at an Obama scandal. This is like a joke about Nixon breaking into the Watergate, it’s just not done to sitting Democratic Presidents. This is the kind of thing which will get millions of little liberals and moderates accepting the fact Obama is corrupt and tainted.

The fact Kimmel is so open about these issues is stunning. I simply cannot see this as anything other than a declaration that Obama is finished. I also expect this may open the late-night floodgates. And when those “opinion-makers” start mocking him, the center-left sheepulation will give up on him.

Omen Three: Finally, there have been an incredible number of articles written and tweets sent out about the propriety of this entire WHCA dinner. Journalists from all over the spectrum are attacking the WHCA dinner and the ethics of the journalists who attended:

● Gawker's Hamilton Nolan: "It is the single most revolting annual gathering of pseudojournalistic ****suckery in all the land. The White House Correspondents' Association Dinner is a shameful display of whoredom that makes the 'average American' vomit in disgust."

● Politico’s Ben Smith: "Is the fawning, sycophantic worship service to wealth, power and celebrity over? Or is there more crap today?"

Personally, I think these critics are right. This dinner shows that our modern press corps has no ethics whatsoever. They happily respond like Pavlov’s dogs to the opportunity to rub elbows with the people they are supposed to be viewing impartially and investigating. It makes the MSM appear incestuous. But that’s not the point.

The point here is that leftist journalists are openly attacking this shindig with a Democratic President sitting in the White House. Usually these kinds of diatribes are saved for the few celebrities and journalists who cozy up to Republicans. The fact that so many are making broadside attacks against journalists who cozy up to Obama (and in an election year) tells me that they think Obama is finished and they are determined to score points with their readers for purity. In other words, they see no reason to be team players anymore because the team has lost.

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Obama Sidesteps Congress—Again

Islamist-friendly Barack Obama has once again used his executive power to undo the work of Congress. Using his broad power to advance national security, Obama has restored a $192 million aid package to the Palestinian Authority. In one stroke of the pen he has further emboldened the Islamists and put an exclamation point on his hostility to Israel. Congress had frozen the funds in light of the PA’s attempt to gain official statehood at the United Nations.

The funds were also frozen because of internal actions within the Palestinian Authority. The PA authority president Mahmoud Abbas represents the Fatah faction, and was the almost automatic successor to Yasser Arafat. Given the hostility to the United States and Israel evidenced by both Arafat and Abbas, it would be expected that any American funds given to the PA would be done more as a bribe than anything else. And until the move for statehood at the UN, that was pretty much the pattern of both the Bush and Obama administrations.

But there is more involved than just the failed UN action. Like so many Middle East “governments,” the Palestinian Authority plays fast and loose with its foundational documents and veneer of democracy. When the Palestine Liberation Organization nominated its chairman Abbas to be president of the Palestinian National Authority, he ran as the Fatah candidate and won. The officially-recognized governmental organization is the Palestinian Authority, and as head of the Palestinian National Authority, Abbas became the official spokesman and negotiator for Palestine and the Palestinian Authority. Confusing enough?

In 2011, Abbas’s term as head of the government expired, but there was extreme unrest and dissension throughout the area, so he extended his authority for a year with very little political or legal authority to do so. In order to preserve his position, Abbas made a move which changed the entire formula. Abbas didn’t want to risk a civil war involving his main opposition, so he simply held out an olive branch and got the cooperation (and participation) of Hamas. And that’s where the trouble really begins.

Hamas is an official terrorist organization as defined by the United States Department of State. Combined with the move for statehood at the UN, this political arrangement was simply too much for Congress to accept, and the $192 million package was frozen. The language of the Congressional resolution (the Palestinian Accountability Act) states that “No funds available to any United States Government department or agency may be obligated or expended with respect to providing funds to the Palestinian Authority.”

Fatah was naturally opposed to Israel, wants it own nationhood to include significant land within Israel, and demands the right to share Jerusalem. But Hamas goes much farther than that. Hamas’s core political stance is that Israel must cease to exist entirely and become part of the Islamic nation of Palestine. Any supporter of Israel’s existence is an enemy of Hamas and therefore subject to attack by Hamas (and by implication now, by the Palestinian Authority). Even with the weak-spined Obama in office, the official position of America is that Israel is a legitimate nation and an ally of the United States. Both logically and rhetorically, that makes America and Americans subject to Hamas/PA attack.

Obama did another one of his “get it lost in the weekend news slump” maneuvers. He announced the waiver for the PA on Friday night at the end of the news cycle and just as Vice President Joe Biden was announcing that if Mitt Romney had been president, he wouldn’t have ordered the capture and/or death of Osama bin Laden. Put a big lie on top of another executive order, and the public will be too busy noticing the lie to notice the order.

Obama gave no details or explanation of his dismissal of Congress’s clear will except to invoke “national security.” And sadly, he is on fairly solid constitutional grounds. He, not Congress, is charged with conducting foreign policy. Most presidents will show due respect for the wishes of Congress, particularly the funding provided by the House of Representatives. But Obama is not “most presidents.” He enjoys ruling by fiat and using the Constitution against itself. He may not owe Congress an explanation, but he does owe an explanation to the American people and our ally Israel.

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Sunday, April 29, 2012

San Fran Nan Explains The Parties

I just got my weekly e-mail from Rep. Nancy Pelosi (former Queen of the House of Representatives). I look forward to her missals each week because she is a genius at clarifying and elucidating the important issues of the day while explaining why Republicans are evil and Democrats are the Good Samaritans. This week she explained the difference between the parties in simple terms, comprehensible to even the most ignorant of voters.

You see, Republicans are only concerned with subsidies for big oil, while Democrats only wish to prevent breast cancer. It’s as clear as earlier Democratic slogans such as “food, not bombs” and “make love, not war.” Says Nancy: “Their priority is to protect the subsidies for Big Oil (capital letters are hers), while our priority is to prevent breast cancer, cervical cancer, to immunize children, so that they are healthy. It’s survival to women. And that just goes to show you what a luxury Speaker Boehner thinks it is to have good health care for women.”

Pelosi is of course doing a head fake to keep the public from noticing that the House Republicans had just passed a paid-for student debt relief bill which the Senate won’t even take up and which the president has vowed to veto if it ever reaches him. Bring the topic back to the “war on women” and the public will miss another Democratic stall tactic to prevent any worthwhile legislation from being passed.

She also muddied the facts by giving credit to Obama for the proposed legislation while blaming the Republicans for ruining it by proposing spending cuts to pay for the cost of buoying up the student loans—all in the name of the war on women. “Thankfully, our president went out, made the pitch to the American people with such clarity that the Republicans are now changing their mind and coming back and saying ‘okay we won’t have it (the loan interest rate) go from 3.4% to 6.8%, but in order to pay for it we’re going to make an assault on women’s health—make another assault on women’s health, continue our assault on women’s health.’” (Just in case you didn’t get it—it’s an assault on women’s health.)

And then came one of those brilliant Pelosi stream of consciousness clarifications of her beliefs: “We will not support a bill that robs Peter to pay Paul, which ostensibly supports a middle-class initiative on making those very same people pay for it. I don’t know what it is that the Republicans have against the idea that there’s a positive role that we can do in a public-private way to make America healthier. That a women’s [sic.]health is central to the health of her family, they consider it a slush fund to pay for women’s health. We consider it an absolute necessity and that’s the difference here.” Ah, now I understand. Don’t you?

What the genius from Sodom by the Bay was talking about (at least I think it’s what she was talking about) is the Republican plan to pay for the lower student government-insured loan rates with $17 billion saved in cuts to the prevention and public health fund portions of the Obamacare monstrosity. That would save $5.9 billion on the loans rates with the rest of the savings going to other needed government functions..

When asked about her “war on women” rhetoric and side-stepping of the issue of Obama multi-trillion dollar deficits, Pelosi insisted that it was not political posturing to go ballistic over $6 billion. “I don’t see it as any posturing. $6 billion is $6 billion.” In fact, it was so important that she already has the answer to the problem: “We say, okay, we want to pay for it (that would be a refreshing departure for Democrats), and we can pay for it by going to subsidies for big oil and gas. And what we see here is what are the priorities of the parties in Washington DC?”

She continues the stream-of-consciousness with: “We say big oil (small letters this time) and gas get subsidies to have incentives to drill so that they can make probably $1 trillion over the next ten years. Certainly, we could spare some of that money for the student loan—reducing the student loan interest. But the Republicans say No! Leave the subsidies for big oil intact and let’s take it out of our old favorite target: women’s health. And that’s just wrong.”

I haven’t heard that kind of clarity of thought since a college sophomore friend of mine got roaring-drunk and tried to explain quantum physics to me in five minutes. It’s easy to dismiss the ramblings of this botoxed beauty as insignificant. But we must remember that she is still the majority leader of the House Democrats, and speaks for the powers-that-be in that party.

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The Great (film) Debates vol. 36

There ain’t no such thing as the mob. But there are movies about the mob!

What is your favorite gangster film?

Click Here To Read Article/Comments at CommentaramaFilms

Saturday, April 28, 2012

A Good Day In New York City

Yesterday was a pretty cool day in NYC. We had the flyover of the space shuttle trainer that will be permanently housed at the Intrepid Museum along the Hudson River in New York City. Watching the Shuttle piggybacked onto a NASA 747 swoop through lower Manhattan glistening in the sunshine made me giddy as a schoolgirl and proud to be an American.

Yes, I am a child of the "Space Age". I remember watching with silent anticipation as numerous astronauts blasted off into space and being giddy at the final countdown as we all shouted "Blast Off" as the giant thrusters hurled these brave men into orbit. Knowing how important these events were to our young American minds, my elementary teachers brought small black and white televisions into the classroom, the lights were turned off, and we were allowed to watch the events unfold live before our very eyes. All other broadcasting ceased while these brave men risked their lives hurling themselves atop a giant Saturn V rocket. These men were our heroes - real heroes. President Kennedy, President Johnson, and, yes, President Nixon encouraged us to reach for the stars and every little boy wanted to be an astronaut (and even little girls too!). We were told that we were in a race for the future of the world and whoever wins would dominate. Who would win this race - the evil Russians or the Good Americans? These men and their rocketships were the key to a secure world for freedom loving people everywhere.

Twelve years after watching Neil Armstrong step on the Moon, once again I was sitting in a darkened room watching a small black and white television with the same child-like anticipation waiting for the Space Shuttle Columbia to make its first touchdown ushering a new era of space flight. It was still breathtaking. Since then we have had SkyLab, the International Space Station, unmanned flights to Mars, and the Hubble telescope which have all allowed us to see further into space with each new achievement and the benefits to mankind have been numerous.

We were indoctrinated as young children of the '60's to believe that we were the greatest nation on Earth and that we could achieve great things if we worked together. What our country has achieved though the space program with all the astronauts, scientists, engineers, and medical personnel is something that no head of state or politician has ever achieved without a war - global cooperation for the benefit of all mankind. It may be the indoctrination talking, but that makes me pretty darn proud to be an American. [+] Read More...

Friday, April 27, 2012

I Got Nothing (Plus Bonus Round)

Folks, I got nothing for ya today. So sad. The old brain-thingy just couldn’t get it focused. So instead, let’s turn the floor over to you. Tell us about some of the movies you’ve seen lately, old or new. What’s been good? What’s been bad? What did you like? What didn’t you?

Click Here To Read Article/Comments at CommentaramaFilms

Marine Jackass Poster Gets The Boot

This past Wednesday, Brigadier General Daniel Yoo accepted the recommendation of the Marine Discharge Board and ordered that Sgt. Gary Stein receive an other-than-honorable discharge for posting an unfavorable picture depicting Barack Obama on a doctored Jackass movie poster. I’ve been having mixed feelings about the discharge during the entire course of the proceedings.

Sgt. Stein was first demoted to lance corporal as a result of his activities on Facebook. That seemed like sufficient punishment to me. But General Yoo and the Board decided that was not sufficient. Even a Commander-in-Chief who is in a permanent Jackass hole has a right to expect that his own men won’t attempt to embarrass him publicly. It also seems to me that anyone using Facebook should know by now that there is no such thing as a “private comment” on a site which is the epitome of the very public social network.

Nobody is more of a First Amendment believer than I. But Sgt. Stein forgot that he is a member of the Armed Forces, and the rules are different for them. The Uniform Code of Military Justice restricts the rights of active-duty service personnel from making disparaging public remarks about their commanding officers, and Supreme Court decisions have upheld those restrictions. The First Amendment doesn’t even protect employees who publicly criticize their companies and their bosses in the private sector. You’re free to say whatever you want, but you can’t say it while you’re working for the person or company you’re criticizing.

Which brings me to the point of truly admiring Sgt. Stein while at the same time wondering what his motivation was. Oh, I know the obvious part. He thinks Barack Obama is a dangerous, weak-spined, dishonest politician who shouldn’t be the commander-in-chief of a boy scout troop. But why now? The sergeant was months away from having his full military pension kick in. With an other-than-honorable discharge, he loses those benefits. That seemed foolhardy to me. Discretion is the better part of valor, after all, and nobody knows that better than a Marine for whom honor is a basic belief.

But I kept thinking about it, and began to wonder if rather than foolhardy, his actions were actually a high form of valor. The presidential election is mere months away, and when we elect a president, we elect a commander-in-chief. Perhaps Sgt. Stein had the same thought as Obama—“we can’t wait.” The safe course would have been to wait, collect his pension, and then go public after retirement. But the safe course would have meant that Sgt. Stein’s views wouldn’t have been heard until after the elections. Surely he must have known that his actions were not going to go unnoticed and unpunished.

The rules about making disparaging remarks are sufficiently vague such that the Department of Defense will be revising the rules to clarify what can be said and what can’t. That does seem to mitigate in Sgt. Stein’s favor. But long-standing civil and military legal precedent says that making a correction after the fact does not prove that those who made the corrections were wrong in the first place. The law favors improvement, and therefore doesn’t allow it as evidence of wrongdoing.

Sgt. Stein has received support from many sources, some obvious, others less so. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-California), who is a Marine Corps reservist, says that “there’s only one upside to this whole thing which is that the Marine Corps recognizes its guidelines are out of date and that they need to be updated.” But Sgt. Stein has also received legal advice and support from the ACLU, which believes that the First Amendment does apply to Sgt. Stein’s actions.

In the words of Yogi Berra, “it ain’t over till it’s over.” I have no doubt that Sgt. Stein will not go quietly. There are still procedures for having the decision overturned. It also seems unlikely to me that a man brave enough (or foolhardy enough) to call Obama a “domestic enemy” on a site he created (while on active duty) called The Armed Forces Tea Party is suddenly going to go mum. After all, Obama is a disaster both as president and as commander-in-chief, and as a civilian Stein will have access to an even larger audience to address with that obvious truth.

Moreover, whether Obama and the political generals like it or not, Stein will now have the full protection of the First Amendment as to political speech which he lacked as an active duty Marine. Whether he comes off as a man who risked his career to point out that the government is rotting from the head down or simply an angry dissident is up to Stein himself.

Thoughts, anyone?

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Thursday, April 26, 2012

Electoral Math

Ok, let’s talk about the election so you don’t have to waste your time worrying about things like national polls or how 48 states might vote. Sadly, this election comes down to two states. That's right, two states -- unless something unexpected happens, in which event four whole states could become relevant. Get ready to have your mind blown. . . [+] Read More...

No Pulitzer For Commentarama--Again

For the third year in a row the brilliant publishers, editors, staff and commentators at Commentarama were denied the prize we so richly deserve. We didn't get it the first year because we were just starting up and they had no record to base the prize on (although that didn't keep Barack Obama from getting a Nobel Prize). What's their excuse this time? [+] Read More...

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Scott's Links April 2012

Scott roams the internet far and wide. Because of this, he supplies interesting links to Big Hollywood every day. I've asked Scott to give us a list of the best links he finds each month and a quick synopsis of what's behind each one. Check these out. . . share your thoughts! And away we go. . .

Click Here To Read Article/Comments at CommentaramaFilms

Republicans Reforming Education

For years, the Democrats have held the edge with the public on the issue of education. This has been for a variety of reasons. But now that’s fading because GOP governors are actually changing the world of education with stunning success. And strangely, the credit belongs to Jeb Bush.

Between 1999 and 2007, Jeb Bush was governor of Florida. When he was elected, Florida’s schools were the worst in the nation. Against the total opposition of the Florida teachers unions, Bush instituted the following reforms:

● First, Florida began grading schools -- A through F -- based on student progress on proficiency tests. Students at schools which failed were allowed to transfer away.

● Secondly, they stopped “social promotion,” i.e. graduating kids to the next grade even though they were failing. (i.e. incentives for students)

● Third, they created a merit-pay system where teachers got bonuses if their students passed certain exams. (i.e. incentives for teachers)

● Fourth, parents got greater choice. They could use state vouchers to choose from public, private, charter and even on-line schools. (i.e. incentives for schools)

● Fifth, they changed the certification requirements to allow other professionals to become teachers even without having the noxious and useless “education” degree.

Each of these are things the teachers unions all over the country have been fighting for decades with the most ridiculous claims. Like how in Michigan, for example, the Michigan Education Association is whining how new reforms they are fighting would mean a 44-year-old teach who was hoping to retire in three years now would not be able to retire until she turns all of 60! The horror. They've also screamed racism, classism, and all the usual crappola.

So how did Bush’s plan work? Florida’s schools are now statistically among the best in the nation. That’s right, worst to near first in eight years. And black and Hispanic students have made the biggest gains. Moreover, Bush did all of this without massive increases in spending -- per pupil spending rose slightly, but not as much as in other states.

You would think this would open some eyes on the left, right? Hardly. Republican governors are now doing the exact same things in Nevada, New Mexico, Michigan, Indiana, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arizona, and a host of other Republican leaning states with Republican governors. And guess what? The unions and the Democrats continue to fight tooth and nail to stop these proven reforms. Isn’t it amazing that they simply don’t want things to get better?

Well, according to researchers at Stanford University, voters increasingly see the Democrats as servants of the teachers unions and the failing status quo. So maybe things are changing?

Of course, that won’t change any Democratic minds. I’ve mentioned before how it’s being proven that liberals are stupider than conservatives, are less well-informed, and are more likely to avoid people who disagree with them (LINK, LINK). Well, it also turns out that liberals distort their beliefs to help their own side. Indeed, consider this fact from the liberal Washington Post: while 73% of liberals said the White House could control gas prices when Bush was in office, only 33% claimed to believe that with Obama in the White House. That means two out of three liberals either changed their beliefs or lied about their beliefs to help the Democrats. Imagine that! So don’t expect them to recognize the improvements in the world of education.

But others are waking up. And little by little, the Democrats are losing their association with being the party of education. And that will benefit the nation's children.

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Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Media Finally Spots Flaw In Democrat's Hispanic Strategy. . . Sort Of

We at Commentarama like to keep you ahead of the curve. So while others are worrying about things that will never happen or missing both forest and trees, we’re busy trying to let you know exactly what is going on and what the world will look like in the near future. And that brings me to the issue of immigration. It turns out, the Mexican invasion is over. And while you knew this already two years ago (Link), the public is only now getting hints of this. Perhaps it’s time for the Democrats to panic? [+] Read More...

Hail And Farewell, Chuck Colson

Last Saturday, Charles (Chuck) Colson passed away at age eighty. I remember very well how much I despised him and the whole Nixon political tricks gang. To me, he was the face of political evil, the architect of Nixon's enemies list. My view of Colson altered radically over the years. From master political trickster, he became a man with a good and valuable mission.

My road to Damascus only involved a mere political conversion. Colson’s road was far more Pauline. Colson was tried, convicted and sentenced to federal prison on charges of obstruction of justice for trying to derail the investigation of Nixonian activities against Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg. Colson was released on parole after serving a year of his five year sentence. Part of the reason for his early release was his claim that he had found Jesus while serving his term and now wished to redeem himself by establishing a ministry.

My reaction to his release was the same as that of many lawyers and Nixon despisers—“where have we heard that before?” These “come to Jesus” moments are repeated on a near daily basis at parole hearings, and when the prisoner is released, there’s a 90% chance he will immediately revert to his old habits. I fully expected Colson to go temporarily underground and re-emerge as a political operative who left Jesus at the altar. Colson had been the chief political adviser and special counsel to a President. His fall from the pinnacle of power was great, and lesser men would have sought reaffirmation and a return to power. Not Chuck.

Obituaries on the left and right have covered Colson’s career and death. Some have been more unfavorable than others, and many expressed admiration for Colson’s genuine love for his newfound evangelical Christian faith, even when they did not hold the same views. Colson never wavered from that faith, and even wrote a book about his prison time and conversion entitled Born Again.

All the obituaries mentioned to a greater or lesser extent Colson’s founding of Prison Fellowship Ministries. Jim Liske, CEO of Prison Fellowship Ministries described it this way: “Prison Fellowship stated because Mr. Colson would not forget the men he did time with. He did time with them and wanted to make sure the message of true freedom in Jesus came to them.” Colson truly understood that stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage. It is the imprisonment of the soul that the Tempter seeks.

My particular praise for Colson and grief at his loss goes deeper than the obituaries. Colson’s motives were pure. Mine are not as pure. Oh, I am very much a believer in Colson’s message to the imprisoned and the recently freed. But I see it in that light as well as another light that I consider equally important. Colson preached Christ’s message of love and redemption, of the “God of the second chance in the Nation of the second chance.” But he didn’t burden his sermon with comparisons or caveats. He leaves that to people like me.

Colson taught the way of forgiveness, and living the upright life after having lived an irresponsible or dangerous life. Many hardcore criminals listened, and have emerged into their communities to carry Colson’s message to those who are headed toward the same cycle of crime and imprisonment from which they themselves have now escaped thanks to Colson’s message.

But the fastest growing religion in the prisons today is Islam. And worse, the majority of those converting to Islam are becoming disciples of the most perverted version of Islamist thought—the Nation of Islam (aka the Black Muslims). While Colson taught the message of confession, forgiveness, redemption, and conversion to an upright life, the Islamists are preaching the message of hate, resentment, excuses and justification of their former lives by doing a better job of it after release.

Colson admitted that he deserved his punishment and would spend the rest of his life attempting to change his own life and that of his fellow prisoners. The Islamists blame the convict’s imprisonment on the system or the man, particularly the oppressive white man who is most likely a Christian or a Jew. No consciousness of guilt, no need for redemption, accompanied with a message of “next time you win. Colson preached that with God’s grace, the released convict could live the upright life. The Islamist preaches that upon release, the convict should seek revenge. Jesus forgives and cleanses the heart. Allah grants excuses and recruits his army of believers to game the system.

The Colson convert emerges clean of body and soul, ready to take responsibility for his own wrongdoing, seek forgiveness, and to become a valuable member of the society which he used to attack. The Islamist convert emerges clean of body, but dirty of soul, ready to destroy the society that wouldn’t tolerate his criminal activity previously, and now filled with both hatred and resentment toward the society which wronged him. At this point, the Islamist convert has been handed an excuse for his past crimes and a justification for ignoring the rules of an oppressive Judeo-Christian society and a secular government.

The true convert to Colson’s beliefs will abandon his evil ways and try to get others to do the same. The convert to Islamic radicalism may clean up his act and speak in religious style phrases, but he will represent what Christ warned us of—the wolf in sheep’s clothing. And for those reasons, I worry about the loss of Chuck Colson more than the average guy or gal. We need a thousand Chuck Colsons to counter the influence of the Louis Farrakhans. But I fear we are falling behind, and his guidance will be sorely missed.
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Monday, April 23, 2012

Obama Knew Youthful Poverty (?)

Last week our po' boy President let us know how tough life was when he was a child of poverty. Unlike Mitt Romney, he says, "I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth." There wouldn't have been room in there for a silver spoon because he always seems to have his foot in his mouth.

Not only did poor little Barry Soetoro Obama have to settle for a gold spoon, but when they took that away from him, he had to improvise tiny spoons for his college drug use. And it just gets sadder. He remembers that as a child he had to take subways and buses to get to a place where he could buy fresh fruit (Michelle’s big on fixing that modern problem, ya know). I didn’t even know they had subways in Indonesia and Kenya, but I’ll take his word for it. And if he wanted fresh fruit at grandma’s, couldn’t he just walk out into the fields and grab a nice fresh pineapple? I keep waiting for him to steal Oprah Winfrey's story of eating mashed potato sandwiches.

Mitt Romney had the misfortune of being born into a family that did have money, a great deal of it by the time Mitt was a youngster. But papa George taught his son frugality, which grew out of his own experience of hunger and want during FDR’s Great Depression. And contrary to popular belief, Mitt didn’t have the chauffeur pull the Rolls Royce around to the grand portico to pick him up and take him to the fresh fruit stand for guavas and mangoes (or pineapple, for that matter). During Mitt’s younger years they were more likely to hop into the family Nash Rambler (George was moving up in the company at the time).

Said Obama: “In this country prosperity does not trickle down, prosperity grows from the bottom up. That’s why I’m always confused when we keep having the same argument with folks who don’t seem to remember how America was built.” Obviously he got his history from Howard Zinn and his politics from Marx. How does Obama build that bottom-up wealth? Well, not by trickling. He literally pours federal largess on his poor and oppressed acolytes. He’s like a manic Robin Hood. He robs from everybody who works so he can give their money to people who don’t like to work. He’s confused, all right.

Obama’s idea of how to encourage growth from the bottom up is not particularly new. It was invented by the late Lyndon B. Johnson, President and creator of welfare dependency on a massive scale. He called it the Great Society which has evolved into the Bankrupt Society. Nearly a half-century later, and after flooding them with a few trillion no-strings dollars, the poor are poorer than ever. Obama goes Johnson one step better. He redefines the middle class as “rich,” and steals from them. If this bottom-up plan continues much longer, we’ll run out of rich people to pay the bills for the non-working poor.

As somebody recently said, “I don’t know a single poor person who was able to hire other people.” Well, according to Obama, that’s because the poor person has to pay for his two cars, giant screen TV, filet mignon, six illegitimate children and instant slum dwelling before he can hire anybody to help him spend the taxpayers money. The solution is to take even more money from the “rich” and hand it to the poor so the poor can hire others to spend the taxpayers money. It’s hard work getting into your new SUV to go to the grocery store to use your EBT “free food” card to buy those steaks. And it’s also a hard intellectual exercise to get that quart of Johnnie Walker and those Winston 100s classified as food.

At the same time he was making his Ohio silver spoon speech, he also visited several Cleveland suburbs where unemployment has been very high for a long time. He continued his class-warfare tactics throughout the state. Ohio is a battleground state, and Obama is spending a lot of the taxes from the “rich” to convince out-of-work industrial workers that he is looking out for their interests. In other words, he isn’t campaigning on the public dime, he’s “finding solutions.”

This President is the stiffest, most insincere and uptight man in the office since Richard Nixon was photographed walking along the beach at surf’s edge in a suit and tie, but carrying his shoes and socks to exhibit that he had the common touch. I don’t care if a President was born poor or rich. That tells you nothing about the candidate’s actual capacity for understanding, empathizing and finding solutions other than handouts. I’ve known very wealthy people who were poor in their youth and grew up to simply hate poor people. And I’ve known very wealthy people who were very well-off in their youth as well who truly had a sense of the plight of the poor and how (as the United Negro College Fund used to say) the poor need a “hand, not a handout.”

When a business owner has to pay $50,000 a year for a simple clerical employee as salary, benefits and payroll taxes, he always has to be cautious about hiring new personnel. In bad economic times made worse by the government’s hostility toward business, crippling regulations, and love of taxes on the “rich,” that same business owner is simply unlikely to hire anybody new and may have to lay off or terminate valued longtime employees. He can pay more in taxes, or he can hire new employees and retain older ones. But he can’t do both when the future has been rendered dangerously uncertain by leftist social engineering schemes.

Silver spoon or not, Obama simply doesn’t understand that poor people almost never create wealth. Poor people who get jobs because wealthier people with money and businesses are anxious to hire them or invest in them then have the opportunity to create wealth themselves. But wealth doesn’t spring up from the bottom by spontaneous generation. Romney does understand that, so if he was actually silver spoon fed, I’ll forgive him.
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Burning Down The House

If there’s one thing liberals/leftists just can’t get out of their systems, it’s the desire to act like Nazis. They just love the idea of imprisoning and killing those who disagree with them. And no, I’m not kidding. Every single socialist movement the world over has rounded up opponents and even here there are those who openly wish such things. . . people like global warming enthusiast Steve Zwick.

Steve Zwick, for those who don’t know, is a “climate change” alarmist who periodically writes for Forbes magazine. In his most recent article, he pulled a Hitler. Specifically, he said this:

“We know who the active denialists are – not the people who buy the lies, mind you, but the people who create the lies. Let’s start keeping track of them now, and when the famines come, let’s make them pay. Let’s let their houses burn. Let’s swap their safe land for submerged islands. . . They broke the climate. Why should the rest of us have to pay for it?”

Stick in the word “Jews” and this thing comes right out of any speech by Hitler. Note how Zwick suggest the creation of an enemies list. Those people need to be marked, perhaps with a yellow sun on their lapels. They are to be considered subhuman. And when Zwick decides it’s time for his final solution, we are to burn their houses and drown them. They must pay for their treachery, these climate Jews.

And don’t think this is an isolated incident. Earlier this month, University of Oregon “Professor” Kari Norgaard (right) said climate change skeptics are akin to “racists” and should be “treated” (medically) as if they had a mental disorder. Norgaard also wrote a letter to Obama in which she called on Obama to suspend democracy to satisfy her climate-fetish. Norgaard, by the way, is a big supporter of Obama climate advisor John P. Holdren who wrote in 1977 that we should carry out forced abortions, mandatory sterilization procedures and drugging of the water supply to weed out the surplus supply of humans. She has also praised NASA global warming alarmist Dr. James Hansen, who has advocated eco-terrorism, including blowing up damns and demolishing cities in the hopes of returning the planet to an agrarian age.

She’s not alone either in advocating dictatorship. Environmental James Lovelock asserted that “democracy must be put on hold to combat global warming.” (Maybe that’s where Dem. Gov. Bev Perdue got the idea that we should suspend elections until Obama can fix the economy?)

In 2006, environmentalist magazine Grist Magazine wrote that there should be “Nuremberg- style war crimes trials” for the “bastards” who are part of the “denial industry” who oppose the global warming enthusiasts. . . both Al Gore and Bill Moyer have endorsed that magazine.

Nice huh?

Anyway, back to Zwick. Besides advocating the murder of people with whom he disagrees, Zwick also became the point man for trying to defend the climategate scandal. In that defense, he actually argued that the Freedom of Information Act should not apply to requests made by right-wingers.

So there you have it:

● Right wingers should not be allowed information on what the government is doing. The law should only work for liberals.

● Climate change critics should be tracked and their homes burned.

● Obama should suspend democracy to enforce global warming enthusiasts' goals.

● And murder, forced abortion, forced sterilization and eco-terrorism are all valid tools for the government to use in helping the global warming enthusiasts achieve their fetishistic goals.

So much for it only happening in Nazi Germany. Now that I think about it. . . maybe we should start burning their houses down?

[+] Read More...

Sunday, April 22, 2012

The Great (film) Debates vol. 35

In the pantheon of film heroes, there is nobody cooler than the action hero. They blow all the rest away. (See what I did there?) But modern action heroes come in all shapes and sizes and some just aren’t that tough.

Who is the toughest/coolest action hero of the modern era?

Click Here To Read Article/Comments at CommentaramaFilms

Saturday, April 21, 2012

A Rant: What Were They Thinking???

Seriously, what were they thinking? We all know what the Secret Service did in Columbia last week. The United States Secret Service advance team, that Service under the guidance of the Office of Homeland Security, that has been tasked with the protection and security of our President for over 100 years, were discovered to have been cavorting with prostitutes while on duty in a foreign country. They were caught quite literally with their collective pants down because our Secret Agent-men refused to pay the tab for their women of ill-repute. Fortunately, nothing happened, but the potential just boggles the mind.

Yeah, okay, "men will be men", but let's think about this for a minute. These are agents whose sole job it is to protect and defend the life and security of our President. These agents who have THE highest security clearance in the country (if not the world), pre-booked a team of playful prostitutes for which they could cavort while they executed the protection and security protocols in advance of our President's attendance at an important summit meeting with other foreign heads of state in a foreign country. Yes, that is "pre-booked" as in "made a reservation in advance" as part of their advance security team protocol.

This was not a GSA-type convention in Las Vegas where all of our Secret Service Agents were meeting to exchange security protocol ideas, swap funny Secret Service Agent stories with fellow agents, or give "The Best Secret Service Agent Of The Year" Award. These men, while executing their sworn duties, were knowingly cavorting with women who possibly had NO security clearance at all. And not only did these highest security level Secret Service Agents brag to these women about who they were and why they were visiting their country, but they compromised the security of our President by entertaining these women within range of information on the security protocols and travel plans that are top secret for a reason. I have read enough spy novels to know that woman, even an innocent-looking prostitute, can use her feminine wiles to obtain top secret information to perpetrate a grave harm.

Is it sinking in that this is not just a scandal about sex and prostitutes, but a grave breach of security that compromised the life of The President of the United States? Is it also sinking in that this was paid for by the US taxpayers?

Oh, I know, these things have been happening for years and these particular Agents just got caught. Well, I do not care who has done this in the past. This kind of behavior is unacceptable and should forthwith never happen again.

So, I propose a new rule to be inserted into the next edition of the Secret Service Agent Handbook. A rule that I think should have gone without saying, but here you are in bold type and ALL CAPS so that there is no misunderstanding:

NEW RULE NUMBER ONE

WHEN ON OFFICIAL BUSINESS TO SECURE THE SAFETY OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES FOR ANY REASON FOREIGN OR DOMESTIC, YOU WILL NOT HIRE, ENGAGE IN ADVANCE, OR BE IN THE COMPANY OF PROSTITUTES, WOMEN OF THE EVENING, OR ANY OTHER LIKE PERSONS EVEN IF THE LAWS AND/OR STATUTES OF THE HOST CITY, COUNTY, STATE, OR COUNTRY DEEM IT LEGAL. IT WILL BE CONSIDERED AN EMBARRASSMENT TO YOUR COUNTRY, A GRAVE DERELICTION OF DUTY AND BREACH OF SECURITY THAT WILL BE PUNISHABLE BY THE MANDATORY DISMEMBERMENT AND/OR SEPARATION OF THAT BODY PART OR PARTS FOR WHICH WERE DIRECTLY ENGAGED AT THE TIME OF SAID DERELICTION.

Maybe it's a little harsh, but it gets the point across. [+] Read More...

Hangin’ Out In Jihadistan

Two items from the mainstream media this past week have turned me from my normal, placid, tolerant, loving self into a sputtering troglodyte (you do believe me, don’t you?). The first was the publication in the Los Angeles Times of some rather gruesome photos taken of US troops holding Taliban body parts (taken in 2010). [+] Read More...

Friday, April 20, 2012

Film Friday: Horrible Bosses (2011)

Lately, we’ve been talking about the dearth of good comedies in the modern era. It seems that most modern comedies are gross rather than funny, dull rather than clever, and generally generic. I had little hope for Horrible Bosses. Imagine my surprise to find a truly enjoyable film.

Click Here To Read Article/Comments at CommentaramaFilms

Could You Repeat My Job Description?

At a forum conducted at the Newseum in the nation’s capital, Justice Elena Kagan confirmed that she doesn’t have a clue about what the difference is between being a lawyer/advocate and being a judge/neutral referee. Said the former Solicitor General: “Sometimes I think that the job doesn’t really change at all.” That’s like a baseball umpire saying his job is the same as his former job as coach of one of the teams.

In fact, Kagan explained why the job as Supreme Court Justice is even easier than being an advocate for a particular case or client: “As Solicitor General, my life was spent trying to persuade nine people and now it’s just trying to persuade eight people.” This probably explains why she sees no problem with having been an active partisan participant in the early Obamacare court cases, and then refusing to recuse herself when the cases came before the Supreme Court on which she now sits.

She wouldn’t have to do much convincing of three of her fellow Newseum panelists. They included Red Sonia Sotomayor (a wise Latina) and Ruth Bader Ginsburg (former ACLU attorney and extreme critic of the out-of-date Constitution). The third was the guest of honor—former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. The occasion was the celebration of the thirtieth anniversary of O’Connor’s appointment to the Supreme Court, making her the first woman to sit on the court.

O’Connor was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, but this was before the Republican war one women. Just as President Dwight Eisenhower once said that appointing Earl Warren to the Supreme Court was his biggest mistake in office, President Reagan proved that even great presidents make mistakes. O’Connor voted in favor of radically altering the constitutional principle of the government taking property for public use by converting it to taking of property for a public purpose. That isn’t a minor difference in wording, but a complete perversion of the clear words of the Constitution.

O’Connor actually wrote an opinion in an affirmative action case which stated that she “didn’t know if the law was constitutional or not.” Guess she didn’t quite comprehend her job description either. If a Supreme Court Justice can’t articulate her understanding of the law and the Constitution, who can? O’Connor went all touch-feely in an opinion overturning a state sodomy statute by saying that everyone “should be free to determine his or her place in the cosmos.” Yes, Madam Justice, but what about our place in America and the role of the Constitution’s Tenth Amendment?

Kagan’s deep involvement as Solicitor General in the politics and legal maneuvering surrounding the early phases of state challenges to Obamacare is well documented. E-mails to her subordinates about how to litigate the Obamacare cases abound. In one case, her e-mail after a dismissal of one of the challenges was “we won.” Considerable testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee expanded on those e-mails and the use of Kagan’s considerable resources and staff to defend Obamacare. All of that is perfectly acceptable and even good work for a Solicitor General. But a fair, knowledgeable and ethical Supreme Court Justice would see the clear conflict of interest and incompatibility of office in hearing cases she was deeply involved in.

Perhaps this will explain her confusion. When asked at the forum if sitting on the Supreme Court bench is still challenging for her, Kagan replied: “Oh, every day is a challenge. But, you know, for me, I had never been a judge before, and just figuring out the mechanics of the job—you know, I have these four clerks, what do I do with them? What is the best process for drafting an opinion? When do I read the briefs? Do I read them the day before, the week before?”

My answer to that is “why bother reading them at all since you were instrumental in writing briefs which are merely being rehashed in the consolidated Obamacare cases pending before your high court?” Many great Supreme Court Justices had no prior judicial experience. Lack of judicial experience is certainly not a disqualifier for a seat on the high bench if all the other positive indicators are there.

I know a great many very fine trial attorneys who would be terrible judges simply because they can't shift gears from advocate to neutral referee. Likewise, I appeared before many excellent appellate court judges who had never set foot inside a trial court and had never sat on a bench previously. And sadly, I also appeared before several trial and appellate judges who never should have been on the bench in the first place, let alone elevated to a higher court. It's called "judicial temperament." But lack of ethics should be a disqualifier at every stage.

Kagan outright lied and obfuscated when she was asked by the Senate Judiciary Committee about her personal involvement in the early Obamacare cases as well as the drafting of the original legislation. Even first year law students are taught the very distinct differences between the role of the advocate and the role of the judge (unless they took their courses from Kagan when she was a law professor at the University of Chicago or Harvard Law). It’s simple. If you were actively involved in the cases at an earlier stage as an attorney/advocate, you must not be involved in hearing and determining those same cases when they come before you as a judge.

Kagan’s refusal to recuse herself on the Obamacare cases at the Supreme Court is doubly-damnable, since she knows full well that there is no higher court to reverse her decision. That said, it is a rather routine lapse of ethics for a former member of the most corrupt administration in recent memory.
[+] Read More...

Thursday, April 19, 2012

The White House Becomes Tammany Hall

It is both common practice and good insider politics to favor friends and leave opponents out in the cold. It becomes a scandal when the favoritism drifts into favoring friends who are using huge taxpayer “gifts” to damage an already sick economy. Even George Washington Plunkitt, sage of Tammany, knew where to draw the line. “There’s good graft, and there’s bad graft, and the successful politician knows the difference.”

Mr. Clean, aka Barack Hussein Obama, has apparently never heard of Plunkitt. Andrew Price and I have been discussing the culture of corruption surrounding The One. Here, I want to focus on just one aspect of that corruption. The graft, cronyism and official criminal actions of his despicable administration make Boss Tweed’s activities look like a church social. Only a Chicago politician could compete with New York’s Boss Tweed for blatant self-aggrandizement and public-be-damned arrogance. But at least Tweed cooked up most of his nefarious deeds behind closed doors and through surrogates. B-HO does it openly and calls it “progressivism” and “fairness.” There’s a special level in hell for such liars and hypocrites.

Stanford’s Hoover Institution Fellow Peter Schweitzer is trying to get the word out. He calculates that about 80% of all green-weenie pie-in-the-sky funds from the Department of Energy have gone to firms whose major executives, board members or chief investors were big contributors to Obama’s 2008 campaign and are expected to do the same in 2012. Schweitzer says that the Solyndra disaster was only the tip of the iceberg, and that the Obamacrats are finding it increasingly difficult to cover up the billions of dollars tossed at unworkable schemes piloted by Obama supporters.

Here’s how G.W. Plunkitt explained it. “If two companies come to me to get a big city contract to build a bridge, and one is Democratic and one is Republican, I look to the bids. If I know that both of the bidders use high-quality materials and experienced workers, and both have bid the same price, I will give the contract to the Democrat. He’s my friend, and there might even be something extra in it for me. But if the Democrat bids low because he’s going to use inferior materials and bad workers, I will not give him the contract and if the bid by the Republican is affordable, I’ll give it to him. Who knows? Maybe he will become a friend later. But that’s the difference between good graft and bad graft.”

Now I happen to think that Obama’s green schemes are dangerous to the national health and perhaps even to national security. As of today, I don’t think his intention is to reward friends who purposely endanger public health. But it is abundantly clear that he’s perfectly willing to squelch traditional energy production and punish his non-green “enemies” while throwing good money after bad at silly, unworkable, financially irresponsible projects that are unlikely to be viable in twenty years, let alone now.

On the other hand, endangering Americans with exploding and self-immolating electric vehicles is at least gross negligence. Risking leaving huge swaths of America without energy during freezing weather because the solar panels aren’t getting enough sunlight, the wind turbines have frozen in place, and coal and oil energy have been effectively banned could easily result in negligent homicide.

Throwing billions and perhaps trillions of taxpayer dollars at unproven schemes in a poor economy is bad enough. Doing it by throwing it only at friends and contributors who have no realistic hope of succeeding is at best unethical, at worst criminal We still haven’t received a clear answer on why DOE allowed Solyndra exec and Obama contributor George Kaiser to subordinate the taxpayers’ interest in bankruptcy to Kaiser’s own interest—a violation of federal rules.

Obama not only used his influence to push DOE into approving the Solyndra, Ener1, Solar Trust for America, Beacon Power and LightSquared loans, but financial experts inside and outside the government had warned him that those companies were not viable, regardless of the federal funds thrown at them. It is also hard to explain how pouring money into an outrageously expensive all-electric sports car made in Finland helps the American economy or creates American jobs.

But friends are friends, after all. For all the Obama talk of “renewable green energy” it quickly became apparent to anyone with eyes to see that the real motivator was (and is) rewarding campaign contributors. So take notice: Obama has instructed his Department of Energy to double-down and find more future bankrupt green energy companies with sleazy, incompetent boards and executives to spend taxpayers’ money on. There must be a wealth of flim-flam men out there, ready to take federal green energy money and kick it back to the President’s campaign before filing for bankruptcy protection.

Even Plunkitt of Tammany Hall would turn red with shame at this kind of cronyism.

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Obama's Campaign Strategy Talking Points

It’s interesting when you notice Democratic talking point being passed around. The other day, The Economist put out an article which reeks of Obama re-election talking points. Almost instantly, I saw similar points being made at other websites. We even had a troll visit us with a cut-and-paste job of these. Without further adieu, here is how Obama apparently plans to sell himself for re-election. [+] Read More...