It’s been a little while since I had an update, but that doesn’t mean the incivility hasn’t been happening. John Nolte at BigJournalism.com chronicles "20 days worth of the death threats, vandalism, and intimidation practiced by pro-union thugs opposed to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s budget repair bill". None of which the MSM will ever hold the Left accountable for.
Last week was Spring Break for us, but that doesn’t mean I stopped reading the news.
The long arm of “Pastor” Terry Jones. Obama bombs a Muslim country, and all’s quiet, but one nut half a world away burns a Koran, and gets disproportional media coverage for it, and Afghans riot, killing at least a dozen people. Jones may be overreacting, but he’s got nothing on the angry mullahs in Afghanistan. And after all, according to NBC, burning the Koran is worse than burning the Bible because the Bible was written by men, not God. (Where do they get their religion experts?)
A new Broadway musical attacks Muslims! This could spawn more riots! Oh, wait. It attacks Mormons. Well then, never mind.
Say it isn’t so! The New York Times is getting its “facts” from left-wing websites and not checking said “facts” for accuracy. Oh, that liberal media.
The Obama Doctrine; looking more and more like the Bush Doctrine. (And the Bush Doctrine is really just common sense.)
Name the Senator who used to think that a war without congressional authority would be “monarchist”? Click here for the video.
Carbon emissions dropped 21% from 2000-2009, without cap-and-trade. Gee, wonder who the President was during that time.
Jimmy Carter equates Christianity with Islam in how both religions view women as inferior. Really, Jimmy? I guess if nations that are (or were) historically Christian would do things like, oh, allow women to vote, or hold jobs, or drive, or not have to cover their entire bodies with tents, then perhaps we can revisit this question.
And finally, two nuclear questions. (Click for a larger image.)
Six out of ten politicians in don’t think you know enough about the issues facing Washington to form a reasonable opinion. More telling to me is that, broken down by party, most Republicans trust you but way more Democrats don’t.
Another example of why it’s hard for government to cut spending (and why conservatives try to hard to hold back increases); Between 400,000 and 500,000 protest against government spending cuts in the UK.
Media Matters becomes a parody of itself, ignoring the media in general and concentrating solely on Fox News. James Taranto wonders:
Does a group that proclaims its purpose to be industrial sabotage qualify [for tax-exempt status]? It’s hard to imagine the answer is yes. Could, say, AT&T set up an organization to sabotage Sprint and do the whole thing free of taxes?
Did you know that opting out of Medicare (not asking for your tax money back, just not taking advantage of it and paying the tab yourself) will cause you to forfeit Social Security? Big, big government, anyone?
The European Union has an idea for clean air; ban all cars.
Irony Alert: President Obama accepted a transparency award from the open government community, in a closed, undisclosed meeting at the White House.
Barack Obama was against wars against brutal dictators that did not directly threaten the United State or its interests, before he was for them.
A salute to the men and women of Japan — the Fukushima 50 — who are putting their health and, indeed, lives on the line to bring the reactors under control.
Speaking tearfully through an interpreter by phone, the mother of a 32-year-old worker said: “My son and his colleagues have discussed it at length and they have committed themselves to die if necessary to save the nation.
“He told me they have accepted they will all probably die from radiation sickness in the short term or cancer in the long-term.
And finally, "regulating relationships". (Click for a larger image.)
At least if you judge by media coverage, or lack thereof, of rising gas prices. Funny how nobody mentions that gas prices have doubled since Obama took office. Gas prices rising while a Republican is president equals big news. Gas prices doubling while a Democrat is president equals nothing to report.
Count former NPR employee Juan Williams as the latest among intellectually honest liberals (yes, there are a few of those still around) calling on Congress to defund NPR:
Even after they fired me, called me a bigot and publicly advised me to only share my thoughts with a psychiatrist, I did not call for defunding NPR. I am a journalist, and NPR is an important platform for journalism.
But last week my line of defense for NPR ran into harsh political realities. Rep. Steve Israel (D- N.Y.) chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent out a fundraising letter with the following argument for maintaining public funding of NPR:
“They [Republicans] know NPR plays a vital role in providing quality news programming — from rural radio stations to in-depth coverage of foreign affairs. If the Republicans had their way, we’d only be left with the likes of Glenn Beck, Limbaugh and Sarah Palin to dominate the airwaves.”
With that statement, Congressman Israel made the case better than any Republican critic that NPR is radio by and for liberal Democrats. He is openly asking liberal Democrats to give money to liberal Democrats in Congress so they can funnel federal dollars into news radio programs designed to counter and defeat conservative Republican voices.
Well said.
Hat tip: Hot Air
Rep. Israel has unintentionally endorsed every conservative complaint about NPR as a liberal mouthpiece. And to me, as a journalist, it is also a statement of why NPR’s troubled management team has turned its fundraising efforts into a weapon to be used against its essential product — top quality, balanced reporting. No journalist should have to work with one finger in the political winds, anxiously waiting to see if Democrats continue to be pleased with what they hear on NPR as a counter to what they don’t like hearing from Rush Limbaugh.
Hunter Baker, writing at "First Things", responds to Jim Wallis’ question "What Would Jesus Cut", referring to government spending. (Which begs the question, would Jesus borrow us into prosperity?)
Obama’s HHS Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, admits to double counting some savings that ObamaCare™ would bring. Not really news, except for those who haven’t been paying attention.
Media Matters, an allegedly non-partisan press watchdog group, has a Transparency project that lists major donors to conservative and libertarian organizations. "The Agitator" notes that, while a number of those conservative organizations themselves already provide this transparency, Media Matters itself does not.
Who’s going to clean up this mess in Wisconsin?
It could cost as much as $7.5 million to repair damage protesters have done to the Capitol Building marble say officials in Madison. Fixing posters to the marble with tape and glue appears to have done the bulk of the damage.
During testimony Thursday, a representative from the Attorney General’s office said a contractor estimated it would cost $500,000 to remove all of the posters and garbage. He says it would cost $6 million to restore the marble inside of the Capitol building and another $1 million to touch up the marble outside of the building.
Guess who came to the rescue? The Tea Party. Liberals trashed it, conservatives will care for it.
Mark Steyn notes a very odd way to say, "Thank you.". A young Kosovar is who killed 2 US servicemen in a Frankfurt airport. I mean, we didn’t even wait for UN resolutions before helping Kosovo get its independence. That’s gratitude?
Remember how upset the Left was about indefinite detentions and military tribunals at Guantanamo, and how much the press covered it? Yeah, well, all that is back on again and now they’re rather quiet about it. Wonder what changed.
Michael Moore and Rachel Maddow say, no, we’re not broke as a nation. Reality begs to differ.
Bummer. A set-back for reprogrammed adult stem cells. Undisturbed adult stem cells continue to be extremely useful, but trying to reprogram them into what are essentially embryonic stem cells is having problems.
Look, if you’re going to be biased in what you say, I have no problem with that. Just be honest about it. NPR isn’t. James O’Keefe strikes again at the heart of liberal bias at the network. NPR tries some damage control, but Patterico calls their ombudsman on it. Predictably, liberals now deplore gotcha’ journalism. (Though calling up a governor and misrepresenting who you are is just fine. Wonder what changed.) And apparently O’Keefe isn’t done with the revelations.
The UK’s CEO of the national power grid is predicting that blackouts will be just a part of the new normal once wind turbines become more prominent and supplant other means of electricity generation. How long before paying to not get blacked out becomes popular, and the politization of energy begins?
Civility Watch: Credible death threats against the Palins.
And finally, the Society of Centurions is named after the Centurion who was at the cross when Jesus died, and ultimately admitted, "Surely he was the Son of God". It is an organization for former abortion providers. Changing one’s view on abortion is one thing. Considering it wrong after you’ve provided them is another thing entirely. Priests for Life admonishes, "Let’s pray for the Centurions, and may their numbers increase!" Amen.
Muammar Gaddafi, like any good magician, is employing misdirection to try to avoid happening to him what is happening in other Arab countries. “Hey Palestinians, let’s you and him fight!”
Is the Obama White House turning social media into State Run Media 2.0? There’s a bit of media sour grapes in that charge, but it’s also true that the more the White House does an end-run around the media, the more they can paint with whatever rose-colored paintbrush they want.
Really, is Israel the main problem in the Middle East? Even those who are protesting in Arab countries are protesting their own governments, not Israel.
And if Obama has lost Bill Maher, he’s lost liberal America.
Within hours, maybe minutes, of the shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords, Liberal pundits began to point fingers at right wing extremists which, apparently, applied to Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican candidate for Vice President. Of particular concern was the “cross-hairs” image, used by Palin to establish which Democrats to target in upcoming elections. Evidently and, coincidentally after-the-fact, such violent imagery and rhetoric was said to have led to the carnage in Tucson. The cross-hairs image was referenced by Barbara Walters (on The View) when she stated,
“…and certainly cross-hairs are very scary…”
I wonder how scary Ms. Walters thinks a depiction of the President getting assassinated is?
Back in 2006 I wrote a blog post, for RedBlueChristian.com, about a docudrama depiction of the assassination of President George W. Bush. Note that the TV movie was produced in the U.K. Per The London Standard,
Held up by a secret service bodyguard in his dying moments after being shot in the stomach, this is President Bush being assassinated.
Surrounded by a crowd of panicking onlookers, the American leader is pictured just seconds after being gunned down by a sniper following an anti-war demonstration.
Of course, this 2006 docudrama is just a drop in the bucket of violent left-wing rhetoric – rhetoric which typically goes unreported by the mainstream media.
Regardless of the political affiliation of our elected officials, let us remember to treat them all with the respect and dignity they deserve, especially when they are maligned by those who truly would hope to do them harm.
The eeevil rich, aren’t just rich; they’re Nazis.
Showing no concern for the new civility push that followed the Arizona massacre, a group of leftist activists from groups including Code Pink, Common Cause and jewel of liberal think tanks, the Center for American Progress, turned into a loud mob complete with Nazi imagery outside a conservative gathering in Rancho Mirage, California.
But the media only ever really complain about it from the Right.
If you didn’t hear anything, or very little, about thousands who attended the March for Life last weekend in DC, that’s understandable. The media routinely ignores it.
And speaking of a liberal media, Jay Carney, who used to write for Time magazine, is now Obama’s new press secretary. His new job description — putting Obama in the most positive light possible — is very much like his old job description.
And still speaking of a liberal media, they’re getting rather disappointed that Obama is not doing what he said he would. Well, they’ve just joined those of us who have been paying attention for 2 years.
Headline from USA Today: “When unwed births hit 41%, it’s just not right”. But it’s OK at 40%? Seriously though, look at the graph showing how fast the out-of-wedlock births have jumped since the notorious “Sexual Revolution” of the 1960s.
Civil Discourse Watch:
“They’re going to hang themselves,” said Belknap [New Hampshire] Democratic Chair Ed Allard of Republicans. “And we’re going to help them.”
Allard’s threat came during a meeting of despondent Democrats in Belknap County on Thursday evening. The meeting was hosted by President Obama’s Organizing for America.
The IPCC said that the glaciers in the Karakoram mountain range would be gone by 2035 due to climate change. The latest word? “Researchers have discovered that contrary to popular belief half of the ice flows in the Karakoram range of the mountains are actually growing rather than shrinking.” Um, who’s popular belief are they talking about?
And finally, a shorter version of the State of the Union speech, from Rick McKee:
A verse I found highlighted by a friend on Facebook:
Proverbs 26:18-19 (New International Version 1984, ©1984)
18 Like a madman shooting
firebrands or deadly arrows
19 is a man who deceives his neighbor
and says, “I was only joking!”
The Left seems to forget their own hateful rhetoric when they start to point fingers at Sarah Palin. “…a big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it.” “I’m just saying if he did die, other people, more people would live. That’s a fact.” “Somebody’s going to jam a CO2 pellet into his head and he’s going to explode like a giant blimp.” Indeed. These and other gems at Q&O.
On the (much) lighter side, I have finally been convinced that you should only put 1 space after a period, not two. I’m endeavoring to do so in this post, but it’s a hard habit to break.
Living up their promises, the Republicans have put forth a proposal for $2.5 trillion of spending cuts. Since it’s that amount over 10 years, it’s still only a drop in the bucket. But it’s more than they have suggested in the past (as far as I know) and certainly more than Democrats ever have. If the Dems want to criticize the choices of where to cut, let’s just see them propose their own.
I grew up in the Salvation Army denomination. (Yes, it’s a denomination.) Representatives from around the world are currently meeting to elect the next General, the administrative head of the Salvation Army. You can follow events on their web page, get e-mail updates, or even follow them on Twitter.
Cutting sugar, sodium and trans fats. Buying more produce locally. Cutting price premiums for healthier food options. That’s Wal-Mart for you. (Yeah, that Wal-Mart).
In Houston, it’s apparently safer for the homeless to go hungry than to get a meal that hasn’t been government certified.
Reason TV asks, what happened to the antiwar movement? It gives a serious look at the disappearance of a group that was so huge while Bush was President. Glenn Reynolds notes, they were useful idiots until they stopped being useful.
Suppose someone – say, the president of United States – proposed the following: We are drowning in debt. More than $14 trillion right now. I’ve got a great idea for deficit reduction. It will yield a savings of $230 billion over the next 10 years: We increase spending by $540 billion while we increase taxes by $770 billion.
He’d be laughed out of town. And yet, this is precisely what the Democrats are claiming as a virtue of Obamacare.
Some say that if spending $X saves us $Y down the road(where Y is greater than X), then the government should spend it. But ObamaCare is much more a behemoth than simply judicious spending on road repairs before they get much worse. The claim that repealing ObamaCare will cost us money is ridiculous for Krauthammer’s reason. Amazing.
And finally:
CNN apologized yesterday when a guest used the word "crosshairs" in a sentence. Is this what the Left considers the way to civil discourse; censorship?
And didn’t CNN used to have a long-running, argument show called … "Crossfire"? Whew, glad that’s gone. We really dodged a bullet there.
Human nature was displayed this past week, since the catalyst event of the mass shooting in Tucson. Initiated by the heinous act of a crazed individual, we’ve seen both the good – and the bad – in humanity since. Following are a few quick links and thoughts:
Palin breaks silence on Tucson
So reads the title to a post in the New Mexico Independent. Following the herd of liberals who immediately began blaming the Right for the shooting, the title of this post leads us to believe that Sarah Palin had some obligation to respond to, due to her implicit responsibility for, the attempted assassination of Rep. Giffords.
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The New MSM Mantra: Publish first, check later
Initial reports, from “trusted” news organizations, indicated that Rep. Giffords had, in fact, been killed. From a Reuters report (via Malkin),
Representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona died after being shot in the head while meeting constituents at a grocery store in Tucson, NPR reported on Saturday.
As we saw, beginning at least back at 9/11, and continuing through major events such as Hurricane Katrina, the instantaneous response time of 21st century technology does not negate the need for real time (and, sometimes slow time) fact checking.
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“It was crazy. A photographer with a [telephoto] lens was outside and he yells ‘Shooter! Shooter! Get down! And I didn’t,”
You may have heard about Rep. Giffords intern Daniel Hernandez, indeed, the President referenced him, and his heroic acts, in his memorial speech. Or perhaps you heard about the 74 year-old veteran, Bill Badger, who helped tackle the shooting suspect. But how many of you heard about Joe Zamudio, who happened to be buying cigarettes as the shooter commenced his mayhem? Zamudio heard the gunshots (and he recognized them as gunshots – something most people have a difficult time doing), and instead of running away from the sound, he ran towards it. Why? Zamudio was armed, legally, with his own handgun, and was ready to use it on the shooter.
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Boxer’s lack of common sense
Senator Barbara Boxer (D – Calif) thinks that part of the cause for the mass shooting in Tucson, other than a deranged individual deciding to shoot other human beings, is that laws on concealed carry are too lax. From Boxer,
I am particularly interested in California’s concealed weapons law, which requires someone who wants to carry a concealed weapon to first receive a permit from their local sheriff or police chief.
In California, you need to be at least 21 years old, show good cause for carrying and show good moral character to carry a concealed weapon. There is a check – an important check – on who is carrying a concealed weapon.
Perhaps someone should educate M’am Boxer that: 1) the Tucson mass shooting had nothing to do with concealed carry and, 2) concealed carry laws, whether strict or lenient, have no bearing on whether a criminal chooses to conceal his weapon.
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Twisted Thinking
In A Right to Bear Glocks?, we read,
If Loughner had gone to the Safeway carrying a regular pistol, the kind most Americans think of when they think of the right to bear arms, Giffords would probably still have been shot and we would still be having that conversation about whether it was a sane idea to put her Congressional district in the cross hairs of a rifle on the Internet.
…
Loughner’s gun, a 9-millimeter Glock, is extremely easy to fire over and over, and it can carry a 30-bullet clip. It is “not suited for hunting or personal protection,” said Paul Helmke, the president of the Brady Campaign. “What it’s good for is killing and injuring a lot of people quickly.”
Setting aside the silly notion of a “regular pistol” that is somehow connected to “the right to bear arms”, I would agree with Helmke – the 30 round magazine is not suited for hunting or personal protection. I would imagine that the extended length of the magazine, combined with the added weight of the cartridges, would affect the shooter’s accuracy and, when one is interested in personal protection, one is also interested in accuracy. Understand that while the 30 round magazine, for a handgun, is a cumbersome oddity, the use of standard capacity magazines (in the range of 10 – 19 rounds) would not appreciably alter the situation. If a shooter knows how to exchange magazines, a magazine replacement can be accomplished very quickly.
Suzanna Hupp, whose parents were murdered in the Luby’s Cafeteria mass shooting, explained to lawmakers this very point (around the 1:50 mark).
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Oh my… Did he really say that?
Per the WSJ, a quote from Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter (HT: Ron’s Bloviaing),
Conservatives like to argue that these are isolated incidents carried out by lunatics and therefore carry no big lessons (unless the perpetrator is Muslim, in which case it’s terrorism); liberals view them as opportunities to address various social ills. Obama is in the latter category and should act accordingly. “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” Rahm Emanuel famously said in 2008. The same goes for a shooting spree that gravely wounds a beloved congresswoman.
Like a lot of folks, I’ve been watching a lot of news coverage of this past weekend’s shooting in Tuscon. My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families.
A couple of thoughts about the tragedy and its aftermath:
1. I never fail to be surprised at the lengths people will go to score political points from such a tragedy. I think most voters see such politicians for what they really are and they’ll get their just desserts the next time an election rolls around.
2. A Predictable Tragedy in Tuscon in today’s Wall Street Journal is a worthwhile read. And no, it doesn’t have anything to do with political speech. Instead, it focuses on one of the most underreported aspects of the story: the fact that the shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, had untreated mental illnesses. As long as we continue to ignore the problem of how we as a society deal with treatment of the mentally ill we’ll see these type of events continue to occur. All you have to do is look back at similar events and see how many of the perpetrators had a history of mental illness.
3. A related point to #2 above: Tuscon police missed the warning signs about Loughner’s behavior?
4. Another question that is begging to be asked and answered: why weren’t the police at Congresswoman Giffords’ event? If the political rhetoric is as dangerous as Sheriff Dupnik says then why didn’t he have any deputies there to provide security?
5. A natural response in the aftermath of a tragedy such as this is to talk about passing tougher gun control laws. But consider this quote:
Laws that forbid the carrying of arms… disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes… Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.” –Cesare Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishment, quoted by Thomas Jefferson in Commonplace Book
6. Leave it to Michael Ramirez to provide astute media analysis.
A longer list this time. I took a vacation from blogging during — if you’ll forgive the expression — Christmas vacation, and this video comes out. Nina Totenberg apologizes for using the term "Christmas party". Is this really a taboo among liberals? Or are liberals in the press really this out of touch with the rest of America?
Here are six good reasons why embryonic stem cells will never make it out of the lab and into the bodies of sick people. But money will still pour into it because, hey, it’s money!
Palestinians fired a Qassam rocket at a kindergarten, hurting one teen passing by. I didn’t watch much news over vacation, but I’m sure this was all over it. Right? I mean, it would have been if Israel had done it, so I’m just supposing.
It’s amazing how stark the double standards are regarding leaks. Julian Assange didn’t mind dumping data that is life-or-death to some of our Afghani informers, but hated it when leaks about his own legal troubles came out. Really? And there are other news reporter groups that hate it when they get leaked.
Iran is shipping missiles to Venezuela. Hey Hollywood, this is just fine, right? (Chavez blames all the failures of socialism on others, and so this paranoia is bound to give him cause to use such weapons. So, no, it’s not al right.)
No, the polar bear is not endangered. So says the Obama administration. Really. And Bruce McQuain notes that, really, endangered status is more about power than it is about the environment.
The (Democrat-controlled) Congress blocked the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the US. I guess Obama has no one to blame for this other than … Bush.
Twenty years ago, and continuing as recently as 2009, it was predicted that global warming would bring much milder winters with less snow because of the temperatures. Ski slopes would be barren and snow would vanish from places as far north as Scotland. Now, however, they’re saying that all that snow we got, even in the deep south, is because of global warming. The link has a good round-up of weather vs predictions.
More power to this guy, who quit his job, got some legal education, and started suing e-mail spammers.
Why do atheists whine about not being invited to a prayer event? Hey, you don’t like an inauguration that includes a prayer service? Go out and win an election, and run your inauguration any way you want.
