Political Digest September 21, 2009

Thanks to all who help feed the blog. It’s a hungry critter. Doesn’t like pork, though.

Competing Worldviews
"The Obama Inauguration left in its wake 100 tons of trash on the Mall that required herculean efforts by the District and the Park Service to clean up. And it devastated the grass surfaces of the Mall that necessitated budgeting millions of dollars to repair. September 12th's Teapartyers left behind a west lawn and Mall that could be used for the U.S. Open. The sparse trash that was left was neatly stashed in and closely around the too few receptacles provided. And police reported zero arrests." (William Campenni, "Human Events", Sept. 16, 2009)

Bob’s note: This is not because the Obama supporters are bad people, and the anti-Obama protesters are good. It’s simply a different world view. Obama supporters are statists, who expect that government is supposed to take care of things for them, like pick up their trash. So they left it where it fell, and, sure enough, they were right. The government did pick up their trash. That the taxpayers paid to do that worried them not at all, since so many of them fall into the lower 50% of incomes, who only pay 3% of the taxes. So taxes have a relatively smaller impact on them, certainly smaller than cleaning up their own trash.

The world view of the anti-Obama protesters is profoundly different. They believe in individual responsibility as well as individual rights, and see it as their responsibility to pick up their own trash.

How To Find Millions of Racists
http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/09/how_to_find_millions_of_racist.html
Excerpt: How do you create millions of white racists? I have a theory. I say you can do it by accusing a few million white folks who are not racists and just continue to accuse them of being racists on a daily basis. Keep doing it day after day and week after week, and pretty soon you might just have what you want. The human spirit cannot absorb but so much of this before the inclination to hate the accusers gains traction. What do you expect from just a bunch of "typical white people." What do you think will happen if you (the liberals) just keep on doing this? What will happen if you keep calling us this every time we object to the President's Marxist agenda? Or every time we dare show a little emotion or frustration? Or you keep inserting phantom words into our quotes to make your point? What are we to make of this if you do it every time "one of us" catches an ACORN office on tape promoting crime as standard operating procedures? Or when we catch some large males dressed up like Malcom X's personal jack booted nightstick carrying security guards in front of a polling place? It seems to me you used to call this journalism. You used to call it "60 Minutes." Now you call it racism.

Obama’s Regulatory Czar Cass Sunstein: Obama, Not Courts, Should Interpret Law, Beliefs of Nation’s Leader Should Supersede Judges
http://commonamericanjournal.com/?p=2514
Can’t recall the left saying this during the Bush years….

Unhappy with Congress?
http://flipthishouse2010.com/

Bosnia and Afghanistan
http://townhall.com/columnists/GeorgeWill/2009/09/20/been_there,_didnt_do_that
Excerpt: Between 1996 and 2007, Bosnia received $14 billion in international aid from 17 foreign governments, 18 U.N. agencies, 27 intergovernmental organizations and approximately 200 nongovernmental organizations, plus the presence of 60,000 troops from 36 countries. It was, McMahon and Western say, "arguably the most extensive and innovative democratization experiment in history." On a per capita basis, reconstruction of Bosnia -- population, fewer than 4 million -- "made the post-World War II rebuilding of Germany and Japan look modest." The $14 billion was $300 per Bosnian per year. Since 2002, international donors have pledged $65 per Afghan per year. Today, the centrifugal forces of the rival ethnic nationalisms of Bosnia's Muslims, Croats and Serbs have, McMahon and Western say, stalled reform and the economy -- unemployment is 27 percent, 25 percent of Bosnians live in poverty, and the public sector, with a ludicrous 160 ministers, swallows almost half the GDP. International organizations, suffering Balkan fatigue and eager to declare "mission accomplished,'' are withdrawing, leaving Muslims isolated and vulnerable, and, as Bosnia is, McMahon and Western say, "drifting toward chaos." (Note: Bosnia and Afghanistan have only one thing in common: Islam.)

Taking the Right Seriously
Conservatism is a tradition, not a pathology
http://chronicle.com/article/Taking-the-Right-Seriously/48333/
Excerpt: It's not even clear that the faculty members involved have figured out what terms like "right wing" and "conservative" might mean. The Web-site blurb introducing the center describes anti-Communism as the "transcendent" issue for the right for most of the 20th century, and says that since the end of the cold war, right-wing groups have "spun on to the political stage with centripetal energy," whatever that means. This statement does not inspire confidence. In fact, the right-wing political parties in Europe have much older pedigrees, going back to the 19th-century counterrevolution. So do American and British conservatism, which came onto the political scene at least a century before 1989. In his recent book, The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities Throughout American History (Yale University Press), Patrick Allitt, a professor of history at Emory University, explores the full range of conservative concerns: states' rights, religion, the corruptions of urban life, immigration, the League of Nations, mass democracy, creationism, the New Deal, free markets, race, and so on. It is a convenient left-wing dodge to reduce 20th-century American conservatism to cold-war politics, since it implies that conservative ideas are embedded in a world that no longer exists and never should have. In fact, in the 1930s American conservatives were far more obsessed with Franklin D. Roosevelt and his domestic legacy than with Joseph Stalin, and looked askance at all foreign entanglements, including the Second World War. The anti-Communist cause was first conceived by cold-war liberals, not by conservatives.

Chipping Away at Free Speech
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/14/AR2009091402705.html
Excerpt: Item Two: Pick up a copy of the September issue of GQ magazine. Buried deep inside is an article titled "Vladimir Putin's Dark Rise to Power," by Scott Anderson. The article, based on extensive reporting, argues that Russian security services helped create a series of bomb explosions in Moscow in 2000 -- explosions that were blamed on Chechen terrorists at the time. But you will not find this article in GQ's Russian edition. As of this writing, you will not find this article on GQ's Web site either: Conde Nast, the media company that owns GQ, has ordered its magazines and affiliates around the world to refrain from mentioning or promoting this article in any way.

Gays Murdered
The Week newsmagazine (which I recommend) for September 25 carries a report from the London Observer that more than 130 Gay men have been murdered in Iraq this year by hard line Islamic Groups. Why no outcry here? There’s certainly not the rage that came down on a beauty pageant winner when she said that she, personally, didn’t believe in Gay marriage. While I, personally, think that Gays getting married doesn’t hurt me, my marriage or traditional marriage at all, the effort to silence her, because of her Christian beliefs, while ignoring the extensive persecution of Gays in Muslim countries under Shari’a law says something ugly about the left’s willingness to tolerate any outrage in the name of their religious dogma of multiculturalism. Search for “Hanging Gays” or “Stoning Women” on Google images and review the pictures of the efforts of the regime the administration is talking to without pre-conditions. You won’t find any pictures of the much-dreaded Christian fundamentalists. Will Obama raise the question of human rights with Iran?

These links might work:

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=Stoning+women&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

http://images.google.com/images?gbv=2&hl=en&sa=1&q=hanging+gays&btnG=Search+images&aq=f&oq=&aqi=&start=0

In most Islamic countries, gay men and women are ostracized, persecuted and in some cases even murdered
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2009/09/in-most-islamic-countries-gay-men-and-women-are-ostracized-persecuted-and-in-some-cases-even-murdere.html
Excerpt: Repressive regimes are often fanning the flames of hatred in a bid to outdo Islamists when it comes to spreading "moral panic." Bearded men kidnapped him in the center of Baghdad, threw him into a dark hole, chained him down, urinated on him, and beat him with an iron pipe. But the worst moment for Hisham, 40, came on the fourth day of his ordeal when the kidnappers called his family. He was terrified they would tell his mother that he is gay and that this was the reason they had kidnapped him. If they did he would never be able to see his family again. The shame would be unbearable for them.

Sowing the seeds of destruction
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/sowing_the_seeds_of_destruction_rhxjpV4D6z3WEgITKiPxrL/0
Excerpt: Just how nutty is ACORN?
Very, say longtime watchers of the extreme leftwing group that sprouted out of a radical 60s anti-government movement. For decades ACORN has presented itself as a grassroots network dedicated to improving the lives of the poor. But there's more to ACORN than its do-gooder veneer. Just ask the banks, corporations and politicians who've been the target of ACORN's shameless shenanigans over the past 40 years. Here's how the tiny seed of 1960s radicalism blossomed into a well-funded, national organization with political connections reaching all the way to the White House:

Obama to Peterson: Don’t run
http://commonamericanjournal.com/?p=2650
Say, isn’t Peterson black? Then isn’t asking him hot to run, well racist?

Obama’s Blame Game Reveals True Character
http://www.newsmax.com/kessler/obama_bush_wright/2009/09/17/261269.html
Excerpt: As we see with Obama’s finger-pointing at the Bush administration, the politics of victimhood requires concocting misinformation. In his speech on race, for example, Obama excused the Reverend Wright’s world view—including his claim that America created the AIDS virus to kill off blacks—by saying that for the “men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years.” In fact, while Wright no doubt had brushes with discrimination growing up in Philadelphia, he lived in an integrated neighborhood, and his parents had good jobs. Wright attended the elite Central High, comparable to the Bronx High School of Science and Boston Latin School. Ninety percent of the students were white. Condi Rice, in contrast, grew up in segregated Birmingham, Ala. Rice had to sit at the back of buses. When more whites got on, the driver would move a “Colored” sign farther back in the bus, making less room for blacks. Rice could not eat at the same restaurants as whites unless the restaurant had a separate room with a separate entrance for blacks. But Condi Rice never carried a chip on her shoulder.

Bring Back DDT!
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/summ02/DDT.html
Excerpt: Sixty million people have died needlessly of malaria, since the imposition of the 1972 ban on DDT, and hundreds of millions more have suffered from this debilitating disease. The majority of those affected are children. Of the 300 to 500 million new cases of malaria each year, 200 to 300 million are children, and malaria now kills one child every 30 seconds. Ninety percent of the reported cases of malaria are in Africa, and 40 percent of the world’s population, inhabitants of tropical countries, are threatened by the increasing incidence of malaria. (Thank you Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring, and the liberal environmentalists. But if liberals get to feel warm and fuzzy for saving birds, who cares about a few million dead black kids?)

Normandy then and now
http://acidcow.com/pics/3772-normandy_1944_then_and_now_204_pics.html
Great pictures, and a reminder of what statism, the doctrine that the individual must be subsumed for the “common good”—as defined by the all knowing leaders—can do to the world. The statist doctrine is called many things: fascism, communism, National Socialism and other gentler names. It can be seductive and mild at first, until the silken threads become steel chains. The major requirement is to obey, obey the Fuehrer, Allah, the Party, the Leader. And criticism of the Fuehrer, the Party, the ones who interpret Allah’s will or the leader becomes first socially unacceptable and, when the majority accept that, a crime for the minority.

Good collection of 9/12 pictures
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PF70cjfjAg&feature=related
Boy, that’s a lot of Astroturf & insurance company stooges!

Hi-Ho, the Derry-O
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/17/AR2009091703679_pf.html
Excerpt: Let's say you're preparing dinner and you realize with dismay that you don't have any certified organic Tuscan kale. What to do? Here's how Michelle Obama handled this very predicament Thursday afternoon: The Secret Service and the D.C. police brought in three dozen vehicles and shut down H Street, Vermont Avenue, two lanes of I Street and an entrance to the McPherson Square Metro station. They swept the area, in front of the Department of Veterans Affairs, with bomb-sniffing dogs and installed magnetometers in the middle of the street, put up barricades to keep pedestrians out, and took positions with binoculars atop trucks. Though the produce stand was only a block or so from the White House, the first lady hopped into her armored limousine and pulled into the market amid the wail of sirens. Then, and only then, could Obama purchase her leafy greens.

Obama feeds allies to bear
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/obama_feeds_allies_to_bear_PMpzvTatl7WiRqyYL3ZtvJ
Excerpt: STILL determined to "push the reset button with Russia," President Obama hit the delete key on our allies in Eastern Europe.
Obama's decision to abandon missile defense as we know it, cutting the throats of Poland and the Czech Republic, handed Moscow's hard-liners their biggest win since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russian strongman Vladimir Putin insisted all along that we'd never be permitted to deploy an anti-ballistic missile system in the former Soviet empire. He was right. And Obama got nothing in return. No Russian commitments on Iran's nuclear program. No sovereignty guarantees for Georgia. No restrictions on arms sales to Venezuela. Not even a bear hug.

Toppling Terrorism
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=338167089209530
Excerpt: Noordin Mohammed Top, diabolical mastermind behind every major terror attack on Indonesia since 2002, got the death he deserved — cowering in a toilet as the edifice around him exploded and burned.

Federal court: Arguments of L.A. Community College District ‘scattershot and disjointed’
http://www.adfmedia.org/News/PRDetail/3080
Excerpt: “Christian students shouldn’t be penalized for expressing their beliefs at a public college,” said ADF Litigation Staff Counsel David Hacker. “The college has failed to make any convincing arguments that a policy which clearly violates the constitutional rights of students should be allowed to continue. If they truly care about the free speech rights of their students, they should not desire to pursue enforcement of such a bad policy.”… ADF attorneys filed the lawsuit Lopez v. Candaele with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California after a professor censored and threatened to expel student Jonathan Lopez following a speech he gave about his Christian faith during an open-ended assignment in a public speaking class. The professor interrupted and ended Lopez’s presentation mid-speech, calling him a “fascist bastard” in front of the class. Refusing to grade the assigned speech, the professor wrote on Lopez’s speech evaluation form, “Ask God what your grade is,” and later threatened to expel the student.

Weather Underground
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZkXM4jqJpg&feature=fvwl
Here’s what they still think. BO supporters all.

Are the News Media Scared of ACORN
http://townhall.com/columnists/FloydBrown/2009/09/18/are_the_news_media_scared_of_acorn
Excerpt: Is ACORN Intentionally Structured As a Criminal Enterprise?" is the title of a July 2009 U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform report by Congressman Darrell Issa. The report draws some shocking conclusions: "The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now has repeatedly and deliberately engaged in systemic fraud. Both structurally and operationally, ACORN hides behind a paper wall of nonprofit corporate protections to conceal a criminal conspiracy on the part of its directors..." It is a shocking statement to absorb: "to conceal a criminal conspiracy." Yet you won't see this on your TV unless you happen to be watching Fox News. Others are refusing to report this corruption.