Stones Cry Out

The community organizer group that our current President used to work for has been found guilty in yet another illegal scheme.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) was fined the maximum of $5,000 in Las Vegas today for its role in a massive voter fraud conspiracy.

Judge Donald Mosley said if an individual, as opposed to a corporation, had been before him, he would have handed down a 10-year prison sentence. “And I wouldn’t have thought twice about it,” he said, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

However, this is not just another case against former ACORN employees.

Significantly, this is the first time ACORN itself, as opposed to its individual employees, has been convicted of a crime.

But this is not the first time that ACORN has found itself in legal hot water.

The idea that every one of the convictions enumerated in the article were done by rogue employees is now swept aside. The corruption was systemic, going all the way to the top.

But they’re not done yet.

Despite the bankruptcy filing, ACORN continues to operate. Project Vote and ACORN’s mortgage bubble generator ACORN Housing (renamed Affordable Housing Centers of America) are still is business. ACORN’s state chapters now operate under assumed names such as Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, New York Communities for Change, Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment, and Action United (Pennsylvania).

ACORN officials openly acknowledge the network is restructuring and will re-emerge soon to help reelect President Obama in 2012.

Be on guard.

Things have been extremely quite from the supposedly "anti-war" Left ever since Obama sat down in the Oval Office. Protests over Afghanistan and Iraq evaporated. One could say that they were already too far under way to stop quickly, and thus it’s of little use now to protest. OK, but that doesn’t explain the silence over Libya. One person exhibiting what seems really to have been an anti-Bush sentiment, rather than some moral concern over war, is Harold Koh.

HAROLD HONGJU KOH, the former dean of the Yale Law School, has been one of the country’s foremost defenders of the notion that the president of the United States can’t wage wars without the approval of Congress. During the Bush administration, he was legendary for his piercing criticisms of “executive muscle flexing” in the White House’s pursuit of the so-called war on terror.

Even more, he was described by those who knew him as the inspiration for a generation of human rights activists and lawyers passionately committed to a vision of a post-imperial America as a model of constitutional restraint. His colleagues viewed him as not only a brilliant scholar but a “liberal icon.”

Suddenly, though, Mr. Koh seems to be a different person.

Just over two years ago, he became legal adviser to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s State Department, and in that job, he has become the administration’s defender of the right to stay engaged in a conflict against Libya without Congressional approval. He argues that the president can proceed because the country is not actually engaging in “hostilities.” Because “hostilities” is “an ambiguous standard,” he has argued, the president need not withdraw forces to meet the resolution’s requirement of an automatic pull-out, 60 days after “hostilities” begin, absent express Congressional approval for the war. The conflict is in its fourth month, and no such consent has been given.

Mr. Koh’s allies, speaking more in sorrow than in anger, are mystified and disheartened to see their hero engaging in legalistic “word play.” To them, it’s as if he has torn off his team jersey, midgame, and put on the other side’s. Mary Ellen O’Connell, a Notre Dame law professor who has known Mr. Koh for a quarter-century, is seeking an answer to this question: “Where is the Harold Koh I worked with to ensure that international law, human rights and the Constitution were honored during the Bush years?”

He’s probably in the same place he always was; playing partisan politics to his party’s advantage, and making use of anyone blind enough to believe what he’s selling.

But Mr. Koh surely doesn’t run the anti-war movement. They could be out in the streets at any time of their own accord, being true to principle over politics. That they are not speaks volumes about their real intentions.

While the riots in London and its environs may have started as a peaceful vigil to protest the shooting of an alleged drug dealer, a certain sort of folk were glad to join in and ramp it up for their own purposes. Let’s ask a few of these concerned citizens why they are rampaging and looting, shall we?

You sir, why are you stealing electronics from the local shop?

And you, ma’am, what is the purpose of all this?

Now, the first fellow, who’s trying to get his taxes back, as he says, might sound to you like some Tea Partier here in the States. However, no Tea Partier thinks that those taxes should be extracted directly from the shelves of local businesses. It’s local businesses that Tea Partiers are trying to support as the real source of economic growth. So no, this is not really a conservative position being taken. It’s more of a narcissistic opportunism at work.

At least the ladies in the second video are being more honest about their motivations. They’re getting back at the rich, "showing the rich we do what we want". Ah, well this will show ’em, eh? And their definition of "rich" seems to mean anyone who owns a business, hence the open season on any business anywhere; national chain or local shop.

Going after evil corporations, getting back at the rich… Hmm, which political philosophy have I heard these sentiments from? And further, can we blame those who put forth that political philosophy for these riots, much like a shooting a few months ago was also blamed on some political philosophy? There’s actually a real, spoken connection this time, as opposed to an assumed connection before. I expect Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz to castigate the Left, er, whatever that political philosophy might be. If, that is, they want to be taken seriously.

After supposedly "resetting" relations between the US and Russia, the Russians seem to not have gotten the message.

In the past four years, Russia’s intelligence services have stepped up a campaign of intimidation and dirty tricks against U.S. officials and diplomats in Russia and the countries that used to form the Soviet Union.

U.S. diplomats and officials have found their homes broken into and vandalized, or altered in ways as trivial as bathroom use; faced anonymous or veiled threats; and in some cases found themselves set up in compromising photos or videos that are later leaked to the local press and presented as a sex scandal.

“The point was to show that ‘we can get to you where you sleep,’ ” one U.S. intelligence officer told The Washington Times. “It’s a psychological kind of attack.”

Despite a stated policy from President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev of warm U.S.-Russian ties, the campaign of intelligence intimidation – or what the CIA calls “direct action” – has persisted throughout what both sides have called a “reset” in the relations.

They have become worse in just the past year, some U.S. officials said. Also, their targets are broadening to include human rights workers and nongovernmental organizations as well as embassy staff.

Presenting a toy "reset button" is no diplomacy. Understanding who America’s enemies are, is. Indeed, we must try to get them to understand a mutual benefit, but the promise of the Obama administration has fallen flat.

Democrats  are falling all over themselves trying to paint the Tea Party as terrorists (civility watch!) and blaming them for the downgrade from Standard & Poors.

That’s like blaming Paul Revere for the British invasion.

John Hinderaker over at Powerline doesn’t think the administration can pin this on the Tea Party. In addition to noting that Obama never once provide his own version of a compromise, prior to that, when they had their chance, they did nothing.

What is most ludicrous is the Democrats’ effort to distract attention from the fact that they controlled Congress from January 2007 until January 2011. The first Congress that had any ability to be influenced by the Tea Party movement has been in office for only six months. Do the Democrats seriously expect anyone to believe that S&P’s downgrade of U.S. debt arises out of something that Republican Congressmen have done in the last six months? We expect the Democrats to appeal to ignorance at all times, but this is ridiculous.

[…]

Of the $14.5 trillion national debt, nearly $4.8 trillion–one-third of the total–was incurred during that four-year period when the Congress was exclusively controlled by the Democrats. Moreover, and equally important, during that time the Democrats did nothing to assure the markets that they have a long-term plan to deal with the country’s burgeoning debt. On the contrary, for more than two years the Congressional Democrats have refused to adopt or even to propose a budget! If you are looking for the reason why rating agencies have lost faith in the ability of our government to get its spending and debt under control, you need look no farther.

The Tea Party has whatever power it has in Washington precisely because of this. To call them terrorists is to say that of those Americans sincerely concerned over this unsustainable cycle of debt. Is that the way to woo voters? Is that compromise? Gary Kaltbaum, an investment author, echoes this.

Last I looked, the Tea Party has never spent a dime of taxpayer money. Last I looked, the Tea Party has not spent this country into a $16 trillion deficit. Last I looked, these average Americans are only interested in a better, more efficient, and taxpayer-concerned government. How terrible they are! It is disgusting to see these political hacks continue with their talking points. The good news is that it is backfiring on them. And by the way, John Kerry voted for all this deficit spending.

I have still not seen the most important question asked of the culprits. And it is simple:

"In the year 2000, federal spending was $1.788 trillion. Why are you and on what are you now spending double that amount this year — just a decade later? Please be specific!" Wouldn’t that be a simple question?

But Janet Daley, writing for the London Telegraph, asks what may be the most foundational question, "The truly fundamental question that is at the heart of the disaster toward which we are racing is being debated only in America: is it possible for a free market economy to support a democratic socialist society?" Ms. Daley thinks this question should be debated in Europe, where cradle-to-grave government guarantees are bleeding the Eurozone dry.

We have arrived at the endgame of what was an untenable doctrine: to pay for the kind of entitlements that populations have been led to expect by their politicians, the wealth-creating sector has to be taxed to a degree that makes it almost impossible for it to create the wealth that is needed to pay for the entitlements that populations have been led to expect, etc, etc.

The only way that state benefit programmes could be extended in the ways that are forecast for Europe’s ageing population would be by government seizing all the levers of the economy and producing as much (externally) worthless currency as was needed – in the manner of the old Soviet Union.

And this is what the Left, and even (and especially) the Christian Left wants to turn our country into. Daley’s article is brilliant, coming as it does from inside the mire that socialism has made of Europe, so please read the whole thing. She finishes with an observation that needs to be made known far and wide.

The hardest obstacle to overcome will be the idea that anyone who challenges the prevailing consensus of the past 50 years is irrational and irresponsible. That is what is being said about the Tea Partiers. In fact, what is irrational and irresponsible is the assumption that we can go on as we are.

A new experiment suggests that the Sun may play a bigger part than first though in climate change. But since this challenges the current orthodoxy, "The chief of the world’s leading physics lab at CERN in Geneva has prohibited scientists from drawing conclusions" from that experiment. Further, a peer-reviewed study using NASA satellite data shows that the Earth is releasing more heat into space than climate computer models assumed.

Anders Breivik, the madman who was responsible for the recent massacre in Norway, is often referred to as a "Christian terrorist". Granted, he called himself "Christian", but his aims were political. But the Left really, really wants to use him to equate radical Islamic terrorism and so-called "Christian terrorism". The Blaze asks,

Have any churches or clergymen openly celebrated Breivik’s slaughter of innocents? Are young Christian children dancing in the streets anywhere in Europe, as young Muslims did in Gaza on September 11, 2001? Could any honest observer of the world over the past 30 years believe that Christianity and Islam have played equal parts in terrorist attacks?

And Chuck Colson notes, the secularization of Europe, with its refusing to understand the problem of evil and sin inherent in human nature, is not helping Norway work through this or prevent it happening again.

More rationing of health care in England. This will happen here under ObamaCare. History has already spoken.

What G. K. Chesterton had to say about the Tea Party. (Sort of.)

Obama may have inherited a mess from Bush, but y’know Reagan inherited a similar mess (in some cases, a worse mess) from Carter. And he did far better with it.

The US accuses Iran of aiding Al Qaeda. Are pitiful sanctions really helping things out here? AQ would love to get its hand on a nuke, and so would Iran.

Government, apparently in the pocket of Big Agriculture, bringing more red tape and expense to the family farm.

The Obama administration admits "the White House doesn’t create jobs". It’s about time you realized that, guys. Congress doesn’t either. Government can get out of the way (or get in the way) of business, which does create jobs.

When Sarah Palin came onto the scene, with her history of speaking truth to power, even within her own political party, I noted that the Democrats, who purport to love that sort of thing, went on the attack instead. Like watching "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" and rooting against Jimmy Stewart. Now, the same Dems who purport to want grass-roots groups to help fix Washington ask the media to ignore the biggest grass-roots effort in a long time. True colors: Shown!

And speaking of "terrorists" (click for a larger version):

Good morning.

1. That (or A if you missed it) public prayer at NASCAR defended.
2. Our commercial regulation is out of control, eh?
3. Finding God at the Puffington Host. (HT)
4. A debt milestone reached.
5. Our President in response to crises … follows Ms Palin’s lead?
6. Java and Oracle. Grump.
7. Recession or Contraction? (HT)
8. A climbing wall for real.
9. If you build it, they will come … or something like that.
10. Western perceptions and the anti-hero. 
11. College and cost. (HT)
12. That Arctic “tipping point”.
13. I too have had difficulty with poetry as an art form. Baudelaire was the first poet I read voluntarily. I’ve come to like Homer (and the Psalms) as well. 

In what has been described as "the largest one-day bump in history", US debt jumped $239 billion in a single day. That’s 60% of the debt ceiling increase just passed the day before.

Again, revenue is not the issue; spending is. The federal government is showing signs of an addict acting out, and we just gave it its next fix. Brilliant.

Good morning.

1. Summing up the debt/cap thing.
2. The next fight.
3. I’m not sure what to say about that photo … but it’s affecting.
4. eCars not booming … and one reason why, heck those batteries cost as much as 2 normal cars.
5. The Biden TP=Terrorist theme is not a solo. Why? What point is being made here by the left? I don’t get it.
6. But, if you can’t beat it, join?
7. And why, if food isn’t expensive enough … let’s make the family farm illegal, eh? 
8. Let’s see, three or so months ago, the President made a odd speech in which he touted his “new programs” to expand drasticly increase domestic oil production, a claim I noted as highly dishonest. Hmm, waddya think now?
9. Contra America-as-evil. 
10. More than a little odd (or truth, stranger than fiction).
11. Life and love, before the age of almost-free data exchange.

The Greek conception of deity and eternity from the golden age of Greece through the coming of Christianity was one rooted in Eternity. Platonic notions of the Ideals, abstracted but concrete (in an idealic realm) and atomic these anchor reality. The Universe was (in their view) eternal and any creator or originator had too be as well unchanging and eternal as those ideals.  The truths of these claims were established by the inexorable logic of a philosophical framework on which their civilization/culture was based. Modern deism is very close to these notions with the exception that creation is not, as the Greeks apprehended, eternal but has a beginning (and likely an end). It might be noted I’m unaware of how modern deists deal with the conflict between a God which creates a universe and is at the same time unchanging and eternal (or perhaps the unchanging part is dropped).

The Jewish concepts of deity was concrete by comparison. Rooted in history, prophecy, promise and compact. If not personal it was apprended and comprehended by persons. The history and its narrative validated its truth. A God which speaks to a people or persons in an individual way was seen as incompatible and very different in character from the Greek Ideal for God (or gods).

Modern arguments as they appear between deists, atheists and Christians bring up notions of deity that can be  brought into sympathy with both of these two very different notions. That this is impossible is a common mistake that is made in the modern discussion that surround these notions which the following might be viewed as an attempt to bring the Christian viewpoint on the nature of deity into relief (and to contrast with the above). Read the rest of this entry

Timothy Dalrymple starts out by noting that the Budget Control Act just signed by the President really only shaves off a bit of the manic growth of the federal budget; it doesn’t really cut anything. Instead, we continue to mortgage our childrens’ futures. He continues:

One of the great difficulties of this issue, for Christians, is that the morality of spending and debt has been so thoroughly demagogued that it’s impossible to advocate cuts in government spending without being accused of hatred for the poor and needy.  A group calling itself the “Circle of Protection” recently promoted a statement on “Why We Need to Protect Programs for the Poor.”  But we don’t need to protect the programs.  We need to protect the poor.  Indeed, sometimes we need to protect the poor from the programs.  Too many anti-poverty programs are beneficial for the politicians that pass them, and veritable boondoggles for the government bureaucracy that administers them, but they actually serve to rob the poor of their dignity and their initiative, they undermine the family structures that help the poor build prosperous lives, and ultimately mire the poor in poverty for generations.  Does anyone actually believe that the welfare state has served the poor well?

Read the whole thing. Seems some Christians see any attempt to reign in entitlements or reform these program ergo an un-Christian attack on the poor. It isn’t.

Good morning.

1. “Real people” as opposed to the plastic people in the Beltway? What is that?
2. Those lines are in the wrong order. 
3. And here’s why. More on that here.
4. Remember the left wingers went nuts after Ms Giffords was shot claiming the shooter was a right wing nut and politcal rhetoric was to blame? And then cooler heads prevailed showing that all to be false. The left wingers have short memories it seems.
5. Racism in the (liberal) media.
6. A wrap up of the Presidents negotiating strategy of demonizing the other side.
7. Offence taken for the decorum at a gay pride parade picture.
8. An interview, the short story of two boys at the end was interesting.
9. Top automaker that you didn’t realize was out there.
10. Actually “La Brea Tar Pits” is better … seeing as “la brea” means “the tar”.
11. How far do you drive instead of fly? Although the length of the stay is an important factor for me at least.
12. False economy in computer science?

Ah, the civil discourse of the Left.

Vice President Joe Biden joined House Democrats in lashing tea party Republicans Monday, accusing them of having “acted like terrorists” in the fight over raising the nation’s debt limit, according to several sources in the room.

Biden was agreeing with a line of argument made by Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) at a two-hour, closed-door Democratic Caucus meeting.

“We have negotiated with terrorists,” an angry Doyle said, according to sources in the room. “This small group of terrorists have made it impossible to spend any money.”

Biden, driven by his Democratic allies’ misgivings about the debt-limit deal, responded: “They have acted like terrorists.”

This is the very type of rhetoric that conservatives were accused of, supposedly leading to the shooting of Gabriel Giffords. Ironically, while Biden was describing Republicans has having a "gun to their heads", Giffords showed up for the first time since the shooting. A rather foolish turn of a phrase, especially on that day.

The Left would rather point the finger at entertainers like Rush Limbaugh and be willfully ignorant of eliminationist rhetoric at the highest levels of government, especially when it’s their guys holding those positions. Hopefully, the public will remember this the next time liberals try to portray conservatives as the sole owner of uncivil discourse.

On Sunday evening, I was following the hashtag "#compromise" on Twitter. Folks who were begging, pleading, pontificating and yelling at their elected representatives for a debt ceiling compromise used that tag on their posts. "Get it done!", some whined. "#compromise #compromise #compromise #compromise", some less articulate folks said, trying to bring the point home. Last night, after a compromise was reached, the hashtagged messaged now complained loudly about the particular deal that was worked out, some following VP Biden’s "terrorist" rhetoric. So the true colors came out. "Compromise", to the Left, means "do it my way, or you’re a terrorist!"

You may want to bookmark this link to my "Civility Watch" entries for the future. The Left has often leveled the "hate speech" charge at conservatives to blame them for some event that has happened. It’ll happen again.

Good morning.

1. Some advice for a young man.
2. So … the bin Laden thing was an assasination. I wonder how that might go over in the land of moral war theorists and liberal hand wringers over war and method? Besides, of course denial of the obvious.
3. Welcome to the Tea Party dude, didn’t Biden just call that sort “terrorists?“
4. And what the heck did he mean “cracked head club?” Seriously, when you think back to the last election … how can anybody criticize Mr McCain’s choice of Ms Palin in the face of the abilities and public figure we have in the VP slot right now. 
5. It’s worse than you think y’know. Who do you know that gets the mileage the EPA says your car gets. OK, well I do … but I drive like a dork.
6. Well that’s how you keep bike lanes clear in cities, eh?
7. Libertarians amused that they are now labeled as “far right wing.” 
8. Unbiased media … hah!
9. It’s actually much worse than that. The reason it’s hard to take Keyensians like Mr Krugman seriously is that their prescription in good times and bad is the same .. increase government is the constant recommendation, the only difference is they’d prefer to lower taxes in a recession and raise them when it’s gone.
10. A really bad argument offered. “demonstrating among other things that the failure to buy insurance (on the private market) is hardly an instance of inactivity, but rather a choice to self-insure. Replace insurance in that sentence with clothing. Is a mandate for government requirements that you purchase clothing (and not privately sew) … is Constitutional?
11. For your gustatory enjoyment.
12. And the presentation of the same.

Israel’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Danny Ayalon explains the historical facts relating to the Israeli Palestinian conflict. The video explains where the terms "West Bank", "occupied territories" and "67 Borders" originated and how they are incorrectly used and applied. Before you can have a reasonable discussion about the Middle East and the Israel/Palestinian issue, you need to know your history. This is a good summary in 6 minutes.