Calling Dr. Glenn

I noticed this comment at Dr. Sanity's blog--she's out ill.

For the past five years, researchers in a modest office overlooking the New Haven green have carefully documented cases of assassination and torture of democracy activists in Iran. With more than $3 million in grants from the US State Department, they have pored over thousands of documents and Persian-language press reports and interviewed scores of witnesses and survivors to build dossiers on those they say are Iran’s most infamous human-rights abusers. But just as the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center was ramping up to investigate abuses of protesters after this summer’s disputed presidential election, the group received word that - for the first time since it was formed -- its federal funding request has been denied.

You just never know the accuracy of these comments--God knows I get some weird people here! So I checked for the original news story and found it at the Boston Globe by Farah Stockman.

Many see the sudden, unexplained cutoff of funding as a shift by the Obama administration away from high-profile democracy promotion in Iran, which had become a signature issue for President Bush. But the timing has alarmed some on Capitol Hill. “The Iran Human Rights Documentation Center is at the forefront of pioneering and vitally important work,’’ said Senator Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, in a statement yesterday. “It is disturbing that the State Department would cut off funding at precisely the moment when these brave investigations are needed most.’’ Michael Rubin, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington-based think tank, said, “It is a shock that they did not get funding.’’ A reason, he asserted, may be that “the Obama administration is so focused on engaging Iran that they don’t want this information to get in the way.’’

When Joe Lieberman left the Democratic Party it not only lost its soul, but its conscience.

Who is Andrew Breitbart, MSM slayer and acorn crusher?

James Taranto looks at the man who scooped all the media with an ACORN story so outrageous, they finally had to take a look at its corruption, scamming of the poor, and links back to Obama.

Mr. Breitbart, 40, grew up in Hollywood, though his parents weren't in show business. (His father was a restaurateur, his mother a banker.) After graduating from Tulane University, he returned to Southern California, where he dabbled in film production and music journalism before finding his calling online in the mid-1990s. "I just like the Internet," he says. "I feel more natural in this environment, where I am part of the media and not a passive receptacle of the media." He worked for a time on the Drudge Report, and Matt Drudge introduced him to Arianna Huffington, now the doyenne of liberal bloggers. Mr. Breitbart designed a Web site for her back when she was still a Republican.  He held inchoate liberal views until 1991, when the Clarence Thomas hearings occasioned a conservative awakening. He came to loathe the left-wing show-biz culture, the subject of his 2004 book, "Hollywood, Interrupted," and of his group blog Big Hollywood, launched early this year. "These people believe that Christians and conservatives and Republicans and libertarians are all variations on the Nazi theme."

Read the whole story--there’s more to come.

I remember listening to the Thomas hearings on my lunch hour in the car. That's when I really started to catch on about the party of my choice. It took another 9 years, of gag reflexes, ignoring the problem, and then soul searching, but I finally fled. But it began with Alanon.

Dunn doesn't mind a double dip salary

For someone who finds Chairman Mao a man to be admired for his methods, results and goals, Anita Dunn doesn't mind burning the salary candle at both ends--from the White House as interim communications chief and at her own firm, Squier Knapp Dunn.

“From Anita Dunn—referred to in Time magazine as Obama's "mega-advisor" to Bill Knapp, one of the nation's savviest campaign strategists – we have helped countless Democratic candidates and campaigns navigate tough races and win.” No other firm had as far-reaching a role in President Obama's election than Squier Knapp Dunn, with Anita Dunn serving as one of the top officials of the campaign and the firm producing both television advertising and direct mail for the campaign.

From her position at the White House, Ms. Dunn attacked the right of dissent and free speech of every American with her attacks on Fox News, claiming it was an arm of the Republican party (as if the rest of the media hadn't helped elect Obama), then down played the video of her speech through the leftist Media Matters. She attacked the messenger for her own words which millions saw and understood, spoken at a high school graduation. SKD also helped elect Ohio's own Senator Sherrod Brown.

Label: Anita Dunn

Teaching queerly--Kevin Jennings, the bullying czar

I've been out of school a few years, and my youngest graduated from highschool 22 years ago. I didn't know there was such a thing as "teaching queerly." Calling someone a "queer" used to be an insult, but that went out in the 70s--I knew that because I was a librarian. Not that librarians are queer, mind you, but I used to get all kinds of publications coming across my desk and kitchen table, including a newsletter from the Bay Area radical librarians for anarchy in the stacks (or something like that). Their newsletter was lavendar, I kid you not.

Fox News has been roundly criticized for even reporting this story, and of course, the opinion shows on Fox are running with it--you'd never see CNN or MSNBC even touch it. Jennings apparently wrote the introduction for this book, now 11 years old. So you would think someone would have figured out in the vetting (who? what? when?) process that this just might come up.

"Those who teach queerly refuse to participate in the great sexual sorting machine called schooling where diminutive GI Joes and Barbies become star quarterbacks and prom queens, while the Linuses and Tinky Winkies become wallflowers or human doormats. Queeering education means bracketing our simplest classroom activities in which we routinely equate sexual identities with sexual acts, privilege the heterosexual condition, and presume sexual destinies. Queer teachers are those who develop curriculum and pedagogy that afford every child dignity rooted in self-worth and esteem for others. In short, queering education happens when we look at schooling upside down and view childhood from the inside out. This groundbreaking volume demands we explore taken-for-granted assumptions about diversity, identities, childhood, and prejudice." From the Product information on the book at Amazon.

A review of the book in Washington Times: “Advocating the indoctrination of kindergarten children based on anecdotal evidence or flawed science isn't Mr. Jennings' worst offense. But it's certainly not what Americans expect from a White House "safe schools czar" who is responsible for making policy decisions that impact children's safety.”

But here's the incident that got Jennings in trouble with conservative law makers, and which the MSM is defending.

Jennings, the founder of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, has described in writings and speeches how a high-school student confided to him in 1988 that he was having a relationship with an older man.

The student has since spoken out in defense of Jennings, claiming he was 16 at the time, which was the legal age in Massachusetts, and that he was not sexually active.

But Jennings has described the relationship as sexual, and in 2000 he said the boy was 15 years old.

A Columbus principal was fired, her assistants put on leave, and she lost her license when she called the father first instead of the police when a mentally challenged girl was sexually assaulted in her school. (Dispatch story) So whether the liberal news agencies believe Jennings did the right thing to protect the boy, there are procedures and rules for these things.

Huffpo slinking away from the Limbaugh quotes

From NewsBusters.

"Earlier today, the Weekly Standard’s John McCormack reported that the Huffington Post had asked author Jack Huberman to document quotes allegedly from Rush Limbaugh declaring that slavery “had its merits” and that the assassin of Martin Luther King, Jr. deserved the Medal of Honor.

The quotes were widely cited as real by several sports writers and on CNN and MSNBC in the past week as proof that Limbaugh was a racist who did not deserve to own part of the St. Louis Rams football team. But the Huffington Post has now removed them, saying the author has not been able to substantiate them."

Oh, I so hope Rush sues! It's going to track back to Obama--you wait and see.

It has now been discovered by tracking IP addresses where the false quotes in Wikipedia (source of all the lies that no one checked) came from, and also that there are ties back to Attorney General Holder in the Obama Administration. NFL Players Association Executive Director DeMaurice Smith served as counsel to Attorney General Eric Holder and was a member of Barack Obama’s transition team.

Another Marxist in the White House

No wonder Anita Dunn won't call Glenn Beck to correct his errors.



She was already on schedule to leave--she's "interim."

Obama says he's not tired--critical of the "socialist mop" group.

Mr. President, I'm tired of this nonsense. Is there no one close to you who is not a radical, a socialist, a Marxist, a Communist, a tax cheat, a crook, or a National Socialist? Have you gone so far 'round the bend that no one can bring you back?

Label: Anita Dunn

Obama's not tired, he says, just getting started

Glenn Beck says he’s tired of socialism and the corruption in Washington; Obama says he’s not. Tired, that is. Someone at the White House is listening to Beck and mimicking him.

“When I’m busy, and Nancy’s busy, with a mop cleaning up somebody else’s mess, we don’t want somebody sitting back saying, ‘you’re not holding the mop the right way’ … ‘you’re not mopping fast enough’ … ‘that’s a socialist mop.’”

“Grab a mop. We need help.”

Obama, at the Westin St. Francis Hotel here after visiting New Orleans earlier in the day, addressed a small group of donors at an intimate dinner for 160, and then moved several floors downstairs to a larger ballroom, where he addressed a sold-out crowd of about 900 attendees. The singer Tracy Chapman warmed up the ballroom crowd with her 1988 hit, “Talkin’ ‘Bout a Revolution.”

Guests at the dinner contributed $34,000 per couple, and tickets for the main event ranged between $500 and $1,000. The DNC expects to have raised about $3 million in total.

. . . “I hope that all of you guys understand that we’re just getting started.”

“Some of our opponents think that they can wear us down,” he said. “I’m not tired. I’m refreshed. We are not going to stop.” Politico

The WSJ Washington Wire didn’t mention the “socialist mop” statement, maybe because they know that’s the only one he’s got?

Remember, folks, he said he intended to fundamentally change the United States of America. He said he was going to redistribute wealth. He was going to raise energy costs with cap and trade. He was going to take over the health care system. He told us. Think back a year ago, two years ago. Was your life so awful before he began the run for the White House? Are you better off now with all this "change?"

Rotten sausage is being made in Congress

This is a really excellent summary of the mess in Congress prepared by the Arkansas Republican Assembly (ARRA). Includes

2010 Energy and Water appropriations bill, H.R. 3183

2010 Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations bill, H.R. 2847

McConnell and Boehner joint press conference on the biggest tax increase ever (health care)

Henry Reid's closed door meetings

Republicans prepare for floor debate

"Making a new law that takes away individual freedom, choice and even property through mandatory taxes is anathema. The intended final sausage - the health care bill - is already rotting. It stinks not only in the halls of Congress and Washington, D.C., but the stench has reached the heartland of America."

Snooping on Joe the Plumber

And still insulting Sarah Palin. My goodness. Don't these guys ever give up?

"A former contractor for the Ohio Association of Chiefs of Police has been charged with rummaging through state computers to retrieve confidential information about "Joe the Plumber."

Brett A. Gerke, 52, of 2329 Woodcreek Place on the Far North Side, is charged with attempted unauthorized use of property.

Gerke entered a diversion program on Oct. 2, which typically results in the dismissal of a criminal charge. He has not entered a plea. The charge is a first-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail.

The State Highway Patrol says that Gerke used a law-enforcement computer network on Oct. 16, 2008 to access personal information about Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher."

Columbus Dispatch

No word yet if Gerke is a Democrat operative. Or whether Dave Letterman is a jerke.

Obama's war against Fox

"This weekend, after White House communications director Anita Dunn forthrightly declared war on Fox News, some people thought she might have gone a little too far in explaining a tacit understanding in the Obama administration that they didn't deal directly with the right-leaning network. One almost expected to see a clarification of the remarks afterward, as Fox anchors like Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck gleefully ran with the story. But of course, Dunn's statements had been carefully scripted by the Obama team — as is pretty much everything you hear from them, except things that are supposed to be off the record. And what's more, Dunn herself was selected to fire off the opening salvo for a specific reason: On a strategy team largely dominated by men, she's acknowledged to be the toughest member."

The rest of the story at New York Magazine.

Hint: She's expendable, she's female, she's interim.

Update: Anita Dunn is also an ardent admirer of Chairman Mao. Glenn Beck showed a very long clip of a speech she gave, apparently to a graduating class in June, about how much she admired Chairman Mao, a man who killed 70,000,000 of his own subjects/citizens. And folks, these were not easy deaths. My college roommate's family fled China for their lives to Brazil. Heads chopped off. Brains blown out. Starvation. Worked to death in labor camps. Go to your library and get out an old Look or Life Magazine. These are the people our President surrounds himself with now, and with whom he grew up and went to college, and schmoozed with in Chicago's fancy Hyde Park. The people who saw real possibilities in his acceptable appearance and speeches, and tapped him on the shoulder to be their front man.

The formerly Main Stream Media, now increasingly the Irrelevant by-stander media, can't find John Kerry's military records; can't find John Edward's mistress' baby; can't find Van Jones' prison record; can't read Ezekiel Emanual's article about rationing health care for the elderly; can't figure out polar bears aren't dying; can't find Valerie Jarrett's Communist background; and certainly couldn't find out Anita Dunn's admiration and love for Mao Tse Tung.

Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings

"Fifty-three House Republicans have written President Barack Obama asking him to remove "safe schools czar" Kevin Jennings from that position.

The lawmakers accused Jennings of "pushing a pro-homosexual agenda" and said that Jennings's past writings exhibit a record that makes him unfit for the position.

"We respectfully request that you remove Kevin Jennings, the Assistant Deputy Secretary for the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, from your Administration," the Republicans wrote. "It is clear that Mr. Jennings lacks the appropriate qualifications and ethical standards to serve in this capacity." " The Hill

I hope that the people who signed this have actually read the publication in question instead of relying on gossip they way the media did with Rush Limbaugh. Just because liberals depend on smears, doesn't mean conservatives need to.

Let's have that conversation about racism

Today I've been browsing some left of left blogs--they are very angry at Obama. Are people calling them racists or realists? You know the answer. Progressives and Socialists never call themselves racists. (But conservatives do.)

So here's a piece from City Journal by Harry Stein about the Boys who cry racism.

"That conversation is long overdue, so let’s have at it. Let’s talk, for starters, about the shocking double standard in the way liberals and conservatives are allowed to deal with race and racism. Why is it okay for liberals to belittle Clarence Thomas endlessly as an Uncle Tom? And how does liberal cartoonist Ted Rall get away with calling Condoleezza Rice a “house nigga,” and his colleague Jeff Danziger with drawing her as a mammy in a caricature as cruelly demeaning as anything in Julius Streicher’s Der Stürmer?

Let’s talk, too, about racial profiling—and start paying appropriate attention to the statistical evidence cited by Heather Mac Donald establishing that the disproportionate arrest and incarceration rates of minorities are explained not by racism but by disproportionate rates of criminality. Let’s talk about how American business has long been subject to blackmail by Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton in the name of social justice, and about the many other ways in which the regime of racial preferences has sowed division and corruption in this country. Let’s talk about how even after the Duke rape fiasco, the media continue to give credence to every racism charge; indeed, how just this week, vicious (and transparently phony) statements about race attributed to Rush Limbaugh uncritically disseminated by mainstream outlets helped sink Limbaugh’s bid for NFL ownership. And yes, let’s talk about white liberal bigotry, the bigotry of low expectations, and how it cripples and demeans those it supposedly aims to help. Exhibit A might be the recent call by the Tucson Unified School District to revamp its disciplinary system to cut down on the suspensions and expulsions of minority students (but not white ones) so that the numbers reveal “no ethnic/racial disparities.”

Are such conversations possible in contemporary America? With the liberals’ racism charge losing its power to intimidate and silence, there is at least some hope. Because finally, more and more of us are getting the message that it’s the fear of having these conversations that is truly racist."

I've also been listening to Robert Reich's speech at Berkeley Sept. 26, 2007 explaining what presidential candidates won't tell you. It's very enlightening, and I'm surprised how much he sounds like Glenn Beck, about corruption in government, in corporations, and in politicians, crazy foreign policy, why cap and trade will cost a lot of money, etc.--the villains just change. He also reminds listeners that Ben Bernanke has more power over the economy than Obama--I think Glenn has said that too. He urges the listeners to overcome cynicism and organize--the same plea that Beck leads with. But I don't think the Bush White House ever went on TV and condemned him.

What an honest President would say

This clip baffles me. Here is a Democrat actually describing Obamacare (before the fact, 2007, but after Hillarycare, 1993)--what someone would say if he were honest and honored the citizens. He seems to be joking as though it could never happen, and the audience is clapping--particularly when he said old people would need to die without treatment. What is going on here?



HT Roger's Rules

Reich is speaking at a Colloquium on Political Science at UC Berkeley on Sept. 26, 2007. You can listen to the entire speech at http://webcast.berkeley.edu/course_details.php?seriesid=1906978463. "What are the candidates not going to tell you" was the assigned topic.

Noonan used to think he talked so purty

I never could understand why Peggy Noonan ignored his words and was enamored by his style instead. She was a speech writer--words were her trade--although one with hurt feelings. But she's apparently catching on. She never looked into the Marxist beliefs that gave birth to his fuzzy words. And now that she can't understand any of it, it's like a light bulb has gone off on.

"Every big idea that works is marked by simplicity, by clarity. You can understand it when you hear it, and you can explain it to people. Social Security: Retired workers receive a public pension to help them through old age. Medicare: People over 65 can receive taxpayer-funded health care. Welfare: If you have no money and cannot support yourself, we will help as you get back on your feet.

These things are clear. I understand them. You understand them. The president's health-care plan is not clear, and I mean that not only in the sense of "he hasn't told us his plan." I mean it in terms of the voodoo phrases, this gobbledygook, this secret language of government that no one understands—"single payer," "public option," "insurance marketplace exchange." No one understands what this stuff means, nobody normal.

And when normal people don't know what the words mean, they don't say to themselves, "I may not understand, but my trusty government surely does, and will treat me and mine with respect." They think, "I can't get what these people are talking about. They must be trying to get one past me. So I'll vote no." " Pull the plug on Obamacare

You know Peggy, you can be called a racist if you disagree with his plans, policies and politics. But words are your business, and you know that isn't the definition.

Worst recession since. . . Carter

But they don't say it that way, do they? Sometimes you hear, twenty-six years, or even "the 1930s." FDR is never blamed for the Great Depression even though it dragged out another 10 years after he took office. Presidents Obama and Reagan both inherited a recession. Reagan's was much worse because he also got inflation in the deal.

"At the end of World War II, from 1945 to 1946, there was a very sharp drop in U.S. output (12.1 percent) as the war economy began its transition to a civilian economy. The deepest and longest-lasting recession the United States has experienced since then began in 1980, when Jimmy Carter was president (the gross domestic product dropped 9.6 percent in the second quarter of that year) and did not end until fourth-quarter 1982, almost two years into the Reagan presidency. There were positive quarters during this almost three-year period, resulting in what is known as a double-dip recession, but GDP did not return to the 1979 level until well into 2003. Unemployment peaked at 10.6 percent in the fall of 1982.

As can be seen in the accompanying chart, both President Reagan and President Obama inherited an economy suffering from a year of no growth, along with rising unemployment. (The numbers are almost identical.) But Mr. Reagan faced a far direr situation in that inflation was in the double digits and the prime interest rate was at 20 percent. In contrast, Mr. Obama inherited an economy in which inflation was falling (in fact, inflation has been close to zero for this year) and interest rates were very low.

A situation in which the number of jobs available is falling is bad enough, but if inflation is also destroying purchasing power, the misery is compounded. In the 1960s, economist Arthur M. Okun created the Misery Index by adding the unemployment rate to the inflation rate. In the 1976 presidential race, Jimmy Carter frequently attacked President Ford for allowing the Misery Index to reach 13.57, even though it was lower when Mr. Ford left office than what he had inherited from the Nixon years. Ironically, four years later, when President Carter was running against Ronald Reagan, the Misery Index reached a record high of 21.98. Mr. Carter had no defense and lost the election. The Misery Index dropped by more than 10 points during the Reagan presidency, the single largest improvement during any president's tenure in the last half-century." Richard W. Rahn, Cato Institute

However, if you are the one unemployed, it's 100% not 10%, and if your retirement funds have been decimated, a 10,000 Dow will take a lot of years to make up what you've lost. And whether or not you voted for the current president, in your heart you know that raising taxes is not the way to grow the economy because it's never worked before. And if you know that, and still support him, then you really don't care that people are suffering.

Hate crimes legislation added to military appropriations bill

Devious. If it's held up, then the Dems can say the opposition was against adequate defense, or against gays. If it's worthy of consideration, why sneak it into an unrelated bill? Why does the politically correct definition of "hate" only cover certain groups? I think we know. Politics and power. Did it look like love when the Chicago teen was beaten to death with a railroad tie? Most blacks are killed and assaulted by blacks; most Mexicans by Mexicans; most Chinese by Chinese; most gays by gays; and most women--by men. Assault and murder are always crimes of the mind.

There is no excuse for violence. It is intolerable in all its forms and for all its reasons. Hate and bigotry are personal perceptions that are bred by ignorance and intolerance but they are not combated by somehow claiming that the murder of one person because you hate their religion, orientation, gender, color, accent or maybe even their politics, is any less heinous than the murder of another person for any other reason. Why should someone who kills a homosexual because of their orientation be punished with any less severity than someone who kills a homosexual for their money? Why should the killer of a married mother of two receive a softer sentence because someone killed her for her car, than someone who killed her because she was a lesbian?

Square pegs into round holes

What's more hateful than killing a born-alive child intended for the abortion slop bucket? But our own President who has promised to sign off on this hate legislation, believes that sort of hate is justified.

Obama labor appointee needs a hearing

Time to e-mail your senator. Here’s an appointment that needs some old fashioned, Obama-promised transparency. Craig Becker, Associate General Counsel to both the Service Employees International Union, the joined at the hip ACORN twin, and the American Federation of Labor & Congress of Industrial Organizations. Obama has appointed him to the 5 member National Labor Relations Board. According to an op ed in today’s WSJ, in a 1993 Minnesota Law Review article, written when he was a UCLA professor, Mr. Becker argued for rewriting current union-election rules in favor of labor. And he suggested the NLRB could do this by regulatory fiat, without a vote of Congress. So it’s clear what he plans to do, and why Obama wants him on that board. More power for the executive branch, less for our elected Congress.

Acorn's Ally at the NLRB; Obama appoints an SEIU man with ties to Blago.

Mr. Labor Lobby Becker is very evasive about his role on Obama’s transition team and just which parts of executive orders he researched and authored while still in the employ of SEIU. He also has ties to Blagojevich. His open mindedness on labor issues will be about as wide and deep as Obama’s transparency--zilch, nada, zip.

We, Those People, Need to be Informed

Heritage Foundation assessment of HR 3200

Liberty Counsel assessment of HR 3200

Family Research Council Fellow Ken Blackwell Commentary

Cato Institute Analysis of Massachusetts’ Universal Health Care

God > life > choice > sex

As John C. Rankin explains "Genesis and the Declaration of Independence." If new ideas or challenging concepts fail to take root when the seeds are dropped among the weeds, don't bother to go there. He says Thomas Jefferson was a rationalist, a biblically literate man, and surrounded by biblically literate and orthodox Protestant Christians, who followed exactly the order of Genesis in writing the Declaration of Independence.

God = "Creator;"
life = "Life;"
choice = "Liberty;" and
sex = "the pursuit of happiness."

The Declaration begins with God as our Creator who endows us with unalienable rights. The first right is that of life, followed by liberty, which equals the language of choice or freedom. Then the language of the pursuit of happiness, along with that of "property" as set forth in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, equals the domain of sex.

Human sexuality in the order of creation is based on the joining of man and woman in marriage, whereupon they establish a new household. The Greek word for "household" is oikonomos, our root for the English word "economics" (same concept as the Hebrew word bayith). The household is the basis for property rights and economic productivity, which in total yields society’s power for the pursuit of happiness.

Rankin at his website, The Theological Education Institute (TEI) promotes his "vision for "first the Gospel, then politics..." and a passion for "the love of hard questions" is always in place; where "the biblical nature of a level playing field" for all debated issues to be equally heard is in place, confident that the truth will rise to the top."

In today's charged political climate, he is indeed refreshing.

Bullying, smearing and lying work

ESPN:

"Rush Limbaugh is expected to be dropped from a group bidding to buy the St. Louis Rams, according to three NFL sources.

Dave Checketts, chairman of the NHL's St. Louis Blues and the point man in the Limbaugh group attempting to buy the Rams, realizes he must remove the controversial conservative radio host from his potential role as a minority member in the group in order to get approval from other NFL owners, the sources said.

Three-quarters of the league's 32 owners would have to approve any sale to Limbaugh and his group. Earlier this week, Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay predicted that Limbaugh's potential bid would be met by significant opposition. Several players have also voiced their displeasure with Limbaugh's potential ownership position, and NFL Players Association head DeMaurice Smith, who is black, urged players to speak out against Limbaugh's bid.

Ultimately, the sources said, Checketts must reconfigure his group and find another investor to make his bid more viable."

I wonder what the political slant is of the other owners.