Political Digest September 27, 2009

I post articles because I think they are of interest. Doing so doesn’t mean that I necessarily agree with every—or any—opinion in the posted article.

Sonnet
http://newsrealblog.com/2009/09/25/lunch-break-27/
Cool: One of my poems used in David Horowitz’s News Real Blog.

Sowell on Welfare
http://newsrealblog.com/2009/09/25/conversation-with-a-conservative-icon-thomas-sowell/
Good, old clip of Sowell.

Obama and ACORN
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/09/obama_and_acorn.html
Excerpt: Barack Obama gave five interviews last Sunday, and only one interviewer bothered to ask him about the ACORN scandal. ACORN is the leftist activist organization that lost its federal funds last week in a Congressional vote that was not even close. Obama's answer to his lone ACORN question was amazing. He brazened it out: "Frankly," said the President, "it's not something I've followed closely. This is not the biggest issue facing the country. It's not something I'm paying a lot of attention to." Not something he's paying a lot of attention to. This is the same Barack Obama who said, in an address to ACORN in 2007, "I have been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career." One of Barack Obama's jobs out of college was with ACORN as a community organizer. Obama hired ACORN affiliates for voter registration. Obama was a speaker at ACORN seminars. Obama was their lawyer. And now he says that the enormous and growing ACORN scandal is not something he is "paying a lot of attention to"? And that the ACORN scandal is "not the biggest issue facing the country"?

Massachusetts to forcefully quarantine H1N1 victims?
http://commonamericanjournal.com/?p=2827

Palin presses White House on Afghanistan
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0909/Palin_presses_White_House_on_Afghanistan.html
Excerpt: During the election campaign in the U.S. last year, you might have noticed we had some differences over Iraq. John McCain and I believed in the strength of the surge strategy – because of its success, Iraq is no longer the central front in the war on terrorism. Afghanistan is. Afghanistan is where the 9/11 attacks were planned and if we are not successful in Afghanistan, al Qaeda will once again find safe haven there. As a candidate and in office, President Obama called Afghanistan the “necessary war” and pledged to provide the resources needed to prevail. However, prominent voices in the Democratic Party are opposing the additional U.S. ground forces that are clearly needed.

Gay Conservative Website
http://www.gaypatriot.net/category/gay-pc-silliness/

Hospitals making millions from parking charges
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/hospitals-making-millions-from-parking-charges-1793627.html
Don’t tell BO—funding healthcare.

New precision missile takes out the Taliban while leaving civilians unharmed
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1216149/VIDEO-New-precision-missile-takes-Taliban-leaving-civilians-unharmed.html
Excerpt: The Ministry of Defence has released the first cockpit footage of a new precision missile which can kill a Taliban fighter with such a small explosion that nearby civilians are unharmed. The Dual Mode Brimstone guided missile is shown blasting a gunman who has dug himself a firing position or 'murder hole' in the base of a thick mud walled compound in the heart of a village in Afghanistan's Helmand Province. Whereas the 1,000lb bombs commonly used in such air strikes would have flattened the settlement and could have killed dozens of people, the Brimstone's warhead kills the enemy gunman while barely damaging the rest of the compound, and the surrounding streets are untouched. (Nice. But you can’t win a war where the enemy can tolerate endless casualties and you can’t tolerate any.)

Virtue and Courage – What America Could Use Now
http://www.alliancealert.org/2009/09/25/virtue-and-courage-%e2%80%93-what-america-could-use-now/
Excerpt: Ordinarily, when a 21 year-old man thinks about what he will do with the rest of his life, he thinks in terms of years. But the tall, handsome, athletic and well-educated young man being led to his date with the executioner could have only been thinking of the minutes he had left to live. It is certain that he thought of his family because just before he was executed, he hastily wrote a letter to his mother. But family members were not the only people on his mind. He also had a message for those who gathered to witness his death that day and for every American who desired to live in freedom when he spoke in defense of the cause for which he and his comrades were fighting and for which he was about to give his life. Nathan Hale said, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” Denied a military trial, denied a Bible and denied a visit by a clergyman, Captain Nathan Hale was hanged as a spy by the British on September 22, 1776 in an artillery park near the East River in New York City. The story of Nathan Hale and his last words, which was once well-known by every school-age child in America, is about much more than just his inspiring utterance to the crowd which gathered to watch him hang. Like other school children of the 60s, I learned the story of Nathan Hale and memorized his last words without ever knowing the full story. Much to my surprise, I learned that Hale’s last words were not entirely his own. (Wait, aren’t “virtue and courage” racist? I mean, practically everything else about America is. Guess it’s a good things kids don’t learn history anymore.)

Suspected flag burner pilloried
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=846181
Excerpt: VALLEY FALLS -- The young man was given three choices: get turned over to the police, go one-on-one in a fight with a seasoned war veteran, or be duct-taped to a flagpole for six hours with a sign around his neck identifying his alleged crime: flag burning. Itwas the third option that would still have the small town buzzing a week after a 21-year-old was hunted down and forced to endure a public humiliation with its roots dating to the Middle Ages. Members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1938 were incensed enough to tie up the man last Sunday after they accused him of setting the flag in front of their building on fire. Post Commander Nick Normile, a Vietnam War veteran, said the man came into the post's bar Sept. 18 on Poplar Avenue and was eventually turned away for not having a proper ID. Apparently angered, the young man, who Normile did not want to name, cut the rope of the American flag flying overhead and used a cigarette lighter to set it on fire, Normile and others said.

Apparently Obama knew, wasn’t telling us about Iran’s secret nukes
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/appease_does_apocalypse_for_weak_9HzomoUqSd9gZJINIwtJlL
Excerpt: DID it surprise a single Post reader that Iran's been hiding a big nu clear weapons development fa cility? It stunned our president when he learned about it months ago. Then he kept it secret from you. Obama didn't want you to know how much progress Iran had made. It's an embarrassment. And it raises the pressure on the White House to act -- something this president's squirming to avoid. But the Iranians have now realized we know, so they tipped it themselves. Obama had no choice but to come clean. Yesterday, he interrupted the G-20 summit to go public -- before Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did. Flanked by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Britain's dead man walking, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, our president offered more uselessly vague rhetoric in response to proof of a major "covert Iranian enrichment facility" and its implications.

Obama Flunks the Diplomacy Test
http://blogsforvictory.com/2009/09/26/obama-flunks-the-diplomacy-test/
Excerpt: President Obama knew that if the magnitude of the Iranian threat were revealed yesterday, the emptiness of his resolution would have been embarrassingly obvious and his cover blown. In public, at the highest levels of the U.N, he heralded generalities as significant. In private, he was petitioning lower levels of the U.N. to act on startling specifics of the Iranian threat. Why did the president not present this same evidence to the Security Council, the body with “the authority and the responsibility to respond”? Why did he not challenge world leaders to deal with the same Iranian threat that he privately was pressing upon U.N. bureaucrats? There is only one possible answer: President Obama does not have the political will to do what it takes to prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb.

How to Lose Friends
http://townhall.com/Common/PrintPage.aspx?g=24e7ead6-edbc-44ff-bc4e-8673f80e3f25&t=c
Excerpt: The United States does not negotiate with terrorists -- but we insist that Israel do so without preconditions. We will not get entangled in the distasteful internal politics of Iran -- but we define Israel's borders. We will remove missile defense systems in Europe so we do not needlessly provoke our good friends in Russia -- but we have no compunction nudging Israel to hand over territory with nothing in return. This week, President Barack Obama spoke to the United Nations General Assembly and insisted that Israel and the Palestinians negotiate "without preconditions" (well, excluding the effective precondition that Israeli settlements are "illegitimate," according to the administration -- so no preconditions means feel free to rocket Israel while you talk). This tact, Obama hopes, will lead to "two states living side by side in peace and security -- a Jewish state of Israel with true security for all Israelis and a viable, independent Palestinian state with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967 and realizes the potential of the Palestinian people." Hate to break the news to you, but there already exists a Jewish state of Israel with true security for all Israelis. This security is attained through a perpetual war against terrorism and Arab aggression. And the most recent time Israel withdrew from disputed lands without preconditions to allow the potential of the Palestinian people to shine through was in Gaza. The Arabs, hungering for the light of freedom, used the gift to elect Hamas -- now an Iranian proxy and always a terror organization -- to rain rockets down on the civilians who voted to allow the first democratic Arab entity in history.

Commencement Speech every student should hear
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1983276/posts
Great stuff. Don’t believe this was actually given, but it should be.

Agents shoot Obama supporters seeking health care
http://news.aol.com/article/california-border-agents-fire-at-van/682472
Excerpt: U.S. authorities shut down the nation's busiest border crossing for about four hours Tuesday afternoon after federal agents fired shots at three vans filled with illegal immigrants whose drivers tried to storm past inspectors, officials said. Three people were shot and injured in the vans crammed with dozens of illegal immigrants, authorities said, and one of the vans smashed into another vehicle as it tried to bypass border inspectors, injuring a fourth person.

Does America Need Health Care Reform?
http://townhall.com/columnists/JaniceShawCrouse/2009/09/25/does_america_need_health_care_reform
Excerpt: Numerous polls indicate that most Americans are very happy with the health care that they receive. Specifically, nearly 90 percent of Americans responded to a poll sponsored by ABC News, USA Today and the Kaiser Family Foundation saying that they were satisfied with the health care coverage that they already have. Such solid information stands in stark contrast to the media hype about the necessity for health care reform and the hysteria promoted by the White House about the dire health care circumstances facing Americans.

NBC Producer to Americans For Limited Govt: “BITE ME JEWBOY !!!”
http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com/2009/09/nbc-producer-to-americans-for-limited.html
Excerpt: Yesterday the Folks at Americans for Limited Government emailed a mass press release to media folks all over the country it was entitled ALG Calls on Congress to "Put Up or Shut Up" on Defunding ACORN. it was nothing frothing crazy, it was a simple case of reviewing the latest scandal news about ACORN and calling on both houses of congress to follow through on their recent votes to cut all of federal funds to the criminal enterprise disguised as a charity. Like all standard press releases, this one ended with contact information, Interview Availability: Please contact Alex Rosenwald to arrange an interview with ALG President Bill Wilson. One of those press releases crossed the desk of Jane Stone a producer for NBC’s Dateline. This is the email that was returned back to Alex Rosenwald, the ALG Director of Media Outreach. She replied with a simple phrase, "Bite Me Jew Boy!" (They deny it. Can’t prove either way, since either party may have altered the e-mails provided.)