CAIR Speaks Out Again.

Rick Moran, Redstate, has evidently had his fill of CAIR whiing and crying:

The sound is grating to the ears. Whenever there is the slightest opportunity to piggyback a grievance – either real or imagined – on a story that will guarantee a few precious lines of copy in newspapers or a few seconds of face time on television, the Council on American Islamic Relations will turn on the whine and, like a fingernail being drawn slowly across the surface of a blackboard, draw attention to themselves in the most excruciating manner possible

Between Rick and the picture, it pretty much says it all.

Update:   Pam, a.k.a. Atlas, as if she was reading my mind, notes  how CAIR plays the victim card, complete with a Bill O’Reilly video clip:

Watch how CAIR plays the victimology card, clubbing free speech and artistic freedom like a baby seal. Check out the code words like “desensitized,”  “torture freely,” “placing minority groups in detention centers,” “islamophobia” blah blah blah (islamophobia, islamoshmobia – Mark Steyn in his brilliant opus, America Alone, exposes how shrewdly the Islamists and their leftist enablers exploit the victimology behind “Islamophobia, ” click here.)

Bill Bennett, Morning in America, recenty held a contest for the best Sandy Berger parady song. The wiinner:

Sandy Berger Can
(to the tune of “Secret Agent Man”)

Bill and Hillary lookin’ for a legacy
But the national archives held a vast conspiracy
They thought about a plan
Asking who would be their man
Who can we now trust to crack this quandary?

Sandy Berger can
Sandy Berger can
He can stuff that troubling history into his socks and pants

Now Bill and Hillary met with Sandy Berger.
They talked about the plan…now it’s not murder.
They gave him all he’d need.
They thought he could succeed.
It simple, just go in and get those files.

Sandy Berger can
Sandy Berger can
He’ll stuff those troubling files into his socks and pants.

The day had come and it was time to do it.
If he is caught the press can misconstrue it.
It’s not that big a deal, it had a presidential seal.
And he said he’s sorry so that ends it.

Sandy Berger can
Sandy Berger can
He’ll get us eight more years
So we can implement our plan

Scott and John, Powerline, have the audio version. 

Give the recent reports to which Bit refered that Mrs. Clinton is aiming a long knife for the middle of Barak Obama back,  it is only appropriate to remind ourselves to the length the Clintons will go for power and vanity.

Plus, the song is great. 

I have withheld my commentary on Barack Obama, for quite some time; possibly longer than was necessary.  My reasoning was I wanted time for some of his history to come shaking out.  Most of the edge elation he’s been receiving, in my view, has been because he’s a blank slate more or less; He has no publicly known history to speak of.  It’s hard to argue a case against them and if you don’t know who he is.  That, however, has been changing these last few weeks. I am going to include some seriously long quotes here, in the hopes of generating a host that gives a fairly broad overview of what it is we’re dealing with.
It turns out, now that the curtain has been pulled back, that the man has enough of the socialist thing going to make Jimmy Carter look like Ronald Reagan. The Gateway Pundit and the other day noted:

This is what Obama had to say about capitalism and free enterprise back in March 2006:

“The reason they don’t believe that government has a role in solving national problems is because they think government is the problem,” Obama said to approximately 1,500 people at the Kansas Democratic Party Washington Days convention.

Obama, a Democrat from Illinois, said Bush’s political philosophy consists of giving tax breaks and encouraging “everyone to go buy your own health care, your own retirement and security, your own child care, your own schools, your own private security forces, your own roads, your own levees.

“It’s called the ownership society. In our past there has been another name for it; it’s called social Darwinism. Every man or woman for him or herself,” he said.

The Opinion Journal published an article on Obama back in August 2004:

Obama, an Illinois state senator representing the South Side of Chicago, is in fact a far-left politician who — as I’ll show in a future column — seeks to force ever more socialist and racist laws and programs on the American people…

“Alongside my own deep personal faith, I am a follower, as well, of our civic religion,” he says. “I am a big believer in the separation of church and state. I am a big believer in our constitutional structure. I mean, I’m a law professor at the University of Chicago teaching constitutional law. [Actually, Obama is not a law professor, but a “senior lecturer.” As Chicago Sun-Times columnist Lynn Sweet has pointed out, and I know from six-and-a-half years as a college adjunct lecturer, “In academia, there is a vast difference between the two titles.” As Sweet also notes, however, Obama’s misrepresentation of his academic position is the least of his credibility problems.]

“I am a great admirer of our founding charter and its resolve to prevent theocracies from forming and its resolve to prevent disruptive strains of fundamentalism from taking root in this country.

Newsmax is one source that reported on his connections to controversial billionaire George Soros back in 2004:

“A lot of his policies have the government taking care of people. Instead of giving people a leg up, he would rather give them a leg.”

Soros initially was attracted to Obama because of his vision on education and health care, Vachon said. But Santos said if Obama got his way, the U.S. health care system would be worse than what Hillary Clinton proposed after her husband was elected president. She said voters should be wary of Obama’s “any time, anywhere” stance on abortion.

But, his socialist foundation was probably shaped most during those early days at the Socialist (Marxist) conferences he attended in New York City:

Obama wrote that the wealth and stark racial divisions of Manhattan in the early 1980s had a profound effect on him…

He went to socialist conferences at Cooper Union and African cultural fairs in Brooklyn and started lecturing his relatives until they worried he’d become “one of those freaks you see on the streets around here.”

Mychal Massie calls Obama “the extreme socialist liberal version of former Vice-President Dan Quayle, but without the substance.”

He goes on to suggest:

Many believe, myself included, that ultimately Obama will become the running mate of Hillary Clinton in her quest for the presidency. How will that ticket signal a new beginning for America? How can we expect him to support our Constitution, when he purports to be a Muslim converted to Christianity, yet denies significant portions of the Bible?

if only from a cultural perspective this is an important question because it raises the question about where his loyalties lie.  As Debbie Schlusell points out:

**** UPDATE, 01/19/07: Looks like Hillary Clinton’s camp agrees with me and has dug up more info that confirms my suspicions about Obama and his Muslim background, including his attendance at a Wahabbi (ie., extremist Sunni) Madrassa (Islamic religious academy). Hillary’s camp says Obama is covering up his Muslim past. Why? ****

Many months ago, readers began asking me whether Barack Obama is Muslim. Since he identifies as a Christian, I said, “no,” and responded that he was not raised by his Kenyan father.

But, then, I decided to look further into Obama’s background. His full name–as by now you have probably heard–is Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. Hussein is a Muslim name, which comes from the name of Ali’s son–Hussein Ibn Ali. And Obama is named after his late Kenyan father, the late Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., apparently a Muslim.

And while Obama may not identify as a Muslim, that’s not how the Arab and Muslim Streets see it. In Arab culture and under Islamic law, if your father is a Muslim, so are you. And once a Muslim, always a Muslim. You cannot go back. In Islamic eyes, Obama is certainly a Muslim. He may think he’s a Christian, but they do not.

Then, there are the other items in his background.  As best-selling author Scott Turow wrote in Salon, Obama went to a Muslim school for two years in Indonesia. His mother, Anna, married an Indonesian man (likely another Muslim, as Indonesia is Muslim-dominated and has the largest Islamic population in the world).

And Obama has a “born-again” affinity for the nation of his Muslim father, Kenya, and his Kenyan sister. (Although Kenya is largely Christian, it has a fast-growing Muslim population that has engaged in a good deal of religious violence and riots against Christians. And Kenyan courts will apply Sharia law, when the participants are Muslim.) Wrote Turow:

Obama’s father died in a traffic accident in Nairobi in 1982, but while Obama was working in Chicago, he met his Kenyan sister, Auma, a linguist educated in Germany who was visiting the United States. When she returned to Kenya in 1986 to teach for a year at the University of Nairobi, Obama finally made the trip to his father’s homeland he had long promised himself. There, he managed to fully embrace a heritage and a family he’d never fully known and come to terms with his father, whom he’d long regarded as an august foreign prince, but now realized was a human being burdened by his own illusions and vulnerabilities.

So, even if he identifies strongly as a Christian, and even if he despised the behavior of his father (as Obama said on Oprah); is a man who Muslims think is a Muslim, who feels some sort of psychological need to prove himself to his absent Muslim father, and who is now moving in the direction of his father’s heritage, a man we want as President when we are fighting the war of our lives against Islam? Where will his loyalties be?

Debbie doesn’t say as much, but the fact remains that one cannot by any stretch of imagination be called a Christian and deny the godhead of Christ.  It simply doesn’t work that way.  Thus, is his very perception of reality called into question.  I guess we can put that alongside his calling himself black, but in reality is half white. Doug Giles observes:

Barack Obama is to Christianity what Michael Jackson is to heterosexuality. He might be one, but he’s not the poster child for the cause. You know, when I watch Obama and the other overtly ideological southpaw’s queue up to play the Christ card, it takes me back to Kerry in ’04 when he tried to convince gun owners and hunters that he’s a Nimrod.

Yeah, as of late, Obama has been telling his compadres that they need to cease and desist with the anti-Christ blather and dial down when it comes to:

1. dissing the role faith plays in the American collective,
2. going Rosie whenever “God” or “Christ” or “Moses” is mentioned in public,
3. trying to butcher the Pledge of Allegiance because it contains the phrase “under God” and because of their fear that “it could, if repeated often enough, morph a child into Jerry Falwell—slick hair, big belly, bible and all.”

This is cool, and I appreciate BO throwing us conservative bible thumpers a bone in trying to relax his party’s violent knee jerks to our religious liberties; however, the aforementioned props that Barack is currently (and possibly temporarily) parsing out are really no consolation when it comes to the strident, anti-biblical views this young hopeful holds. Y’know, like the stuff my colleague Kevin McCullough recently pointed out:

1. As a state legislator he actively worked to preserve availability of abortion in all nine months of pregnancy.
2. He opposed parental notification for abortion.
3. He opposed any and all bans on partial birth abortion (an act that includes delivery of the baby up to the head, the crushing of the baby’s brain, the suctioning of the brain matter and then completed delivery of the child’s deflated cranium).
4. In his run for the U.S. Senate, Obama asked his wife to pen a letter to Illinois voters that reassured them of his commitment to fighting for the right to butcher children in the womb.
5. His long support of the advance of the radical homosexual activist lobby in their pursuit to destroy traditional marriage.
6. His support of the creation of “special rights” for people who engage in homosexuality for the sole purpose of putting them at the front of the line on issues of employment, housing and litigation.
7. His solid backing of the advancement of all “hate crimes” legislation, which ultimately may be used to silence clergy who believe, according to their own convictions, that homosexual behavior is wrong and preach the same from biblical texts.
8. His perfect voting record against the defense of marriage.
9. He advocates continued funding for Planned Parenthood clinics in our nation’s inner cities, which are performing genocide against the populations of African Americans living there.
10. And most damnable of all, when a brave nurse named Jill Stanek brought about national awareness to a practice at a local hospital in suburban Chicago that allowed the starvation and neglect of newly born children who had survived abortion procedures, Obama—”the Christian”—opposed her. He opposed the rights of those children to be given the chance to live, and he advocated against a ban on such procedures—then known as “born alive abortions.”

One thing about Obama you can depend of with him is that he’s not as he projects himself. He is supposedly the hot new property in the democratic party, but the fact of the matter is is he’s offering nothing more than warmed over socialism… ice ice Lee the same nonsense that the democratic party has been offering for the last 40 years… is a far left monetary policy and no comprehension whatsoever about what constitutes private property.  As an example, Thomas Lifson posts in the fine Blog, The American Thinker:

Barack Obama, the handsome, well—spoken first term Senator, who seems to be the Democratic Party’s Great Black Hope, is offering policy prescriptions, and they seem to be uninpressive warmed—over discredited leftist boilerplate. Subsidies for corporations to induce them to do what the market will not. Chicago Business reports an AP dispatch:

Obama said the government should provide tax breaks and loan guarantees to show the way toward greater use of environmentally friendlier energy sources.

He cited several pieces of legislation he has introduced in Congress, including one to help defray the auto industry’s costs of investment in more fuel—efficient cars. It calls for the federal government to pick up a portion of the costs automakers pay for retiree health care, so long as companies use some of the savings to retool their factories.

Obama said the Big Three domestic automakers spent $6.7 billion on retiree health care costs in 2004.

“It’s a win—win proposal for the industry — their retirees will be taken care of, they’ll save money on health care and they’ll be free to invest in the kind of fuel—efficient cars that are the key to their competitive future,” he said of the legislation.

This amounts to taxing average Americans to underwrite the lavish health care benefits enjoyed by semi—skilled assembly line workers, whose unions managed to destroy the competitiveness of their employers.

The more one reads about this guy, the more it becomes clear; What we have, here, it is someone who will give you pandering to Muslims, and a Jimmy Carter- like hostility toward Israel, and a big government socialism… All of them delivered in an egocentric style that matches the likes of John Kerry very nicely.
There’s a lot more out there.  I’ve taken some serious liberties, with a heavy quotes in this article.  I trust that the people I’ve quoted won’t mind, given what we’re up against.  I would strongly encourage you, to do some research on the man yourself.  I think you’ll find that is precisely what America does not need, particularly now.

Yes everybody know liberalism damages the brain.   However it still fun to examine the evidence every so often.  This peach comes from the blogospheric Mecca of liberalism, via Memeorandum,  [M]cjoan of the Daily Kos,   This brain dead liberal thinks he has the smoking gun to impeach Attorney General Alberto Gonzales:

A reader transcribed this exchange concerning habeas corpus from today’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearings (no official transcript yet):  

Specter: Now wait a minute, wait a minute. The Constitution says you can’t take it away except in the case of invasion or rebellion. Doesn’t that mean you have the right of habeas corpus?

Gonzales: I meant by that comment that the Constitution doesn’t say that every individual in the United States or every citizen has or is assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn’t say that. It simply says that the right of habeas corpus shall not be suspended.

Article I, Section 9:

The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

Alberto Gonzales should not only be impeached for his willfully obtuse interpretations of the Constitution, he should be disbarred.

Well I quess that liberals have spent so much time and effort attempting reduce the Right to Keep and Bear Arms from a right to mere priviledge, that some can no longer discern the difference.

Now I grant that Arlen Spector isn’t exactlly a ball of fire on the actual language of the Constitution, but noboby calling Spector a conservative either.

Do you know who Frank D. Hargrove is?   Well neither did I.  Hargrove is a delegate to the Virginia Legislature and Mr. Hargrave has riled up a nest of yellow jackets.   It seems in debating resolution on an apology for slavery, Hargrove noted that slavery ended one hundred forty years ago and “our black citizens should get over it.”

Well black leaders are up in arms and are asking for Hargrove “to be censured ”

One, what Hargrove expressed was an opinion.  In a free country, we are all entitled to our opinions, even  if they offend  you.

Two, had Hargrove expressed the exact opposite opinion that blacks should continue to bear a grudge for what happened over one hundred forty year ago, black leaders would have condemned him as “insensitive.”

Three. O.J. Simpson murdered Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman  and was let off by a largely black jury dumber than a sack of potatos.   Yet I hear no demands that either Simpson or the Simpson jury apologize.  Unlike slavery, both the victimizer, Simpson and and the victims’ family are alive to recieve the apology.

Four, black leader seem apolectic about history slavery over hundred forty years ago, but so indifferent to contemporary black slavery today. 

Should we censure this blog?

 The Associated Press has reported:

WASHINGTON – Columnist Art Buchwald, who chronicled the life and times of Washington with an infectious wit for over four decades and endeared himself to many with his never-say-die battle with failing kidneys, is dead at 81.

We all gotta go.  I like the way that Art went, smiling.

*Jest in Peace

(H/T photo:  Washington Post )

Addendum:(Bit)

David and I must have been posting at the same time, we both had a post on this topic up within seconds of each other. I’ll invoke editor’s right, and combine the two posts;

Here’s a man who was sent to a hospice to die, finally got tired of waiting, and checked himself out, and wrote a book about the experience.

Interesting that James at OTB quotes him as remarking…

 “Every time you think television has hit its lowest ebb, a new program comes along to make you wonder where you thought the ebb was.”

… given my comments this morning on “American Idol”, you may gather we were of like mind, here.

Fortune smiles on us that we still have his printed and recorded wit.

The Perky One, a.k.a, Katie Couric asks:

Don’t more women deserve a place at the table too?

Oops wrong picture! 

H/T John Hawkins, :  Right Wing News 

H/T photo:  Michele Borba

I see that Chris Hedges, the long-time NY Times journalist, has come out with a book entitled American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, in which he in essence says that the likes of Falwell and Robertson are Christian fascists.  

I wonder if all those people who hammered Bush and Santorum for talking about Islamic fascism will similarly excoriate Hedges for unfairly branding an entire religion (that would be Christianity in this case) with a scarlet “f”.

That’s Mike Ledeen today over at the Corner, pointing out yet another glaring double standard of the left. 

Know what? He’s right.

And why is it that when these double standards come up, it invariably ends up with America being on the fuzzy end of the stick?  Hedges, of course, has it exactly backwards… it’s not the right that’s decared war on America… it’s the left and their fellow travelers in Hizzbolah, and AlQueida.

And need I point out that Hedges is a fine example of the press bias he goes to great lengths to claim doesn’t exist? Of course, he works for the New York Times. Big shock, huh?

Appendum: (David L)   I freely confess that do not understand these demented liberals who seem hellbent on equating Islamofascists, with Quakers.  Non judgementalism gone amuk.

The far left wing strategy of false equation consists of pretending that Islamofascist activity is benign while proclaiming sheer panic of the thought of a Quaker revival meeting.

Robert Spencer, Jihad Watch, has a video up which illustrates this absurdity.

Let me put in a word about “American Idol”.

The word is “No”.

Part of my distaste for the show does not rest on the talentless hacks that get paraded through, though that certainly accounts for most of it.

Rather, it rests on the producers of the show who are, dare I say it… explioting these people. I’ll guarantee you that there is enough emotional baggage in that crowd to start an airport. Baggage which will surely be added to by their experience on that show. I wonder if the show will be paying for the shrinks these folks are going to need later, most of ’em.

 At some point, the transition from entertainment to just being downright mean to these people has gotten by nearly everyone involved. I suspect the show plays to the mean streak in all of us.   But just because it’s on, and it’s pulling ratings, doesn’t mean I have to be involved, particularly. I just paid around a kilobuck for a new  wide sreeen TV and surround sound system. All this costly technology to watch this dreck?

Bottom line; if I wanted see maladjusted, downright ugly people with illusions of talent, who in reality couldn’t carry a tune on their best day, all I need to do is turn on the nearest pop station, anymore.  Life’s too short to sit and deal with such nonsense in either venue.

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* Cold here in Rochester… didn’t get above 25 today, which is about correct for this time of year, but it’s the first really cold day we’ve seen this season.

* I see California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is asking for federal disaster aid, due to 3/4 of the orange crop being wiped out. Now, I heard about this as I was pumping gas into BitsBox. So, I naturally tied the two things together. Now, we’re being told citrus will get quite expensive because of the misfortunes of the orange growers. We see this as a natural consequence of the ebbs and flows of business, particularly those involving some natural commodity.

So, the question:, If the Oil companies had a complete wipe out of their supply due to some sort of natural happening, would they get federal aid?

* There was a derailment around these parts last night, which is causing an awful lot of chatter in our immediate neighborhood today. I won’t bother linking to it because most of you couldn’t care less. But the CSX railroad is having a down week, by any stretch of imagination. Just for the last several days that had three different major derailments, one of them, in Kentucky, was a chemical spill, next to an elementary school. I’ve got to believe that the weather is playing a serious role in this.

* I’d like you to check out a discussion on currently having with Steve over at OTB, as regards no-knock warrants. Specifically, I’d like you to pay attention to the comments of that thread. I think Steve , hard as he’s trying, is in fact, doing his argument a disservice by mislabeling the problem.

Cuba is neither a free nor open society.   Yet Cuba is home to the left’s most adored healthcare system.   A healthcare system which seems to killing its revered leader.   If Fidel Castro is actually still alive, and dies, I for one will not be less than heartbroken.  On the other hand, Jimmy Carter may be inconsolable.

Count Sister Toldjah as among those who is less than impressed  by Cuba “free” heathcare system.  She say that Cuba’s heathcare system medical treatment of Castro, “apparently only made him sicker:”.

Well, the Commie lovers who talked up Cuba’s healthcare system in glowing terms won’t be pleased to read this about Castro nor the medical treatment he received for intestinal illness, treatment which appears to have made his condition worse:

More: Gaius, Blue Crab Boulevard

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Well, behind the ice storm came the snow, which stuck to the ice.

So, trees around here now look like this one in my front yard, this morning.

The first law of holes is to stop digging.   Well it seems eighty-seven professors at Duke have failed to grasp that lesson.   Last spring a group of eighty-eight Duke professors can an adverstisement condemning the social climate at Duke.

 Well not content to lie mistake by bygones or to better yet atone for them, a group of eighty-seven, largely the same, professors have issued a letter, not to apologize, but rather to attack the blogger who “misinterperted” their ad.

The priceless K.C. Johnsn, Durham-in-Wonderland, explains the “Rump:”

Two hundred ninety-five days after issuing their statement, the Group of 88 has re-emerged, in a defiant statement posted yesterday.

It appear that not only is Durham a socially sick city,  Duke is socially sick institution.

So now, I see that the ACLU has decided to get involved in the case of about 40 Muslim individuals from Detroit who were not allowed to board a plane in Frankfurt, Germany.  The Muslims, of course, charge racial profiling.  As we have discussed here before, race has nothing to do with it.

In any event, I see that there is some talk of Muslims mounting some kind of boycott action against Northwest.  Well, let’s consider the ramifications of that happening, shall we?

First, and foremost, is the idea that Northwest’s insurance rates will subsequent to that action, plummet.  Insurance, after all, is a game of statistics.  As Ann Coulter and several others have famously pointed out, recently, there have been no suicide bombings involving American planes, within the last twenty years, that did not involve radical Muslims.  None.

On that point alone, statistically speaking, their chances of being blown out of the sky has just been cut on an order of scale.  Their insurance payments will likely follow suit.
Travelers, similarly, play the odds.  When they see this self imposed Muslim ban on Northwest flights, they will, unquestionably, make it a point to fly in Northwest, if for no other reason than their own safety. As such, the increase in ridership from people seeking their own safety, and who are tired of the PC nonsense involving “profiling” will more than make up for any losses incurred by Muslims finding other airlines.

There are many other reasons, I suppose, but I think it can be fairly said that northwest airlines is not wringing its hands and sweating over the threat of a Muslim boycott of their airplanes.

Finally, let’s discuss the ACLU, shall we?  I asked a while ago a question; “whose side are they on ?”

I suspect that for most Americans, that question has been answered.  The nice part is, I didn’t have to say word one about it. and the upshot of that action, I suspect, will be a dramatic drop in the rolls of ACLU contributors. Which to my mind, can’t happen fast enough.

* Last night, As I was coming out of work, I notice that the trees were still covered from the days freezing rain fall.  I was taken with the way the light played with the ice.  So… here’s a couple. They’re fairly high res, so drill to get the full size.

Now, the camera itself is a fair enough unit, but I never expected it to produce stuff like this. I got home and proceeded to take a pic of Molly. Molly, is our most recent owner. (Everyone knows you don’t own a cat, they own YOU.)

When I got done, I found several pictures I’d taken since the day I got the thing, most at lower resolution. This one however, stood out, from the day trip Donna and I took last November, on our annual anniversary day trip This is Taughannock Falls, which is the highest free waterfall in NY, beating out Niagara by several feet. The mist you see is actually cloud cover; it was a very rainy day. I loved the effect.

Here’s another pic, taken on a drier day from the same angle, with Taughannock looking a lot less mysterious: