"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler
by Smitty
May Fortune smile on this wonderful, courageous lady:
Mayor Bloomberg, this blog has no insight into who’s pulling your strings, but you need to pull your head out, mister. Hopefully New Yorkers resist this awful Cordoba Mosque, and metaphorically toss you into Hell’s Gate at the next election.
by Smitty (h/t just a conservative girl)
Just to be perfectly clear, this blog concurs with those in the right-o-sphere that would be happier without seeing this sort of thing.
Jonah, as you might expect, firmly put the kibosh to the idea, emphasis mine:
I don’t like this billboard either, and I don’t think the Iowa tea-party chapter behind it should have put it up. That said, it’s not as bad as Obama in a Hitler mustache, and it isn’t quite saying Obama is a Hitler. In an academic setting, one could defend at least some of the ideas captured in the billboard; Lord knows I’ve tried. But at the end of the day, I don’t know that the billboard helps advance the tea party’s mission or sways the persuadable (personally, I’ve given up trying to persuade or influence the un-persuadable — because they can’t be persuaded!). I do think Obama is in his heart a social democrat and that is a variant of socialism, as everybody who knows anything about social democracy openly concedes. And I certainly think that National Socialism is a variant of socialism as well (which fewer people concede, alas). But I don’t think people who look at that billboard will glean such distinctions. Rather, it reads: “Hey, look at these three murderous left-wing dictators!” And that’s unfair to Obama — and unfair to America.
There is copious room for dissent and disagreement. But BHO is merely the nadir of a century long descent from a Federalist government featuring separation of powers toward a lesser state where the capitol, not capital, is king.
The Godwin’s Law violations, which I had previously seen only undertaken by LaRouchies, actually help BHO by painting him a victim. So focus on policy, and cut out the cheap shots. Or at least go for the esoteric literary shots.
Update: Removed. Score one for civility.
by Smitty (h/t Fausta)
She has a couple of other reactions to this clip, too:
After a fascinating Triple Lindy at the Obama apologist diving competition, Press arrives at a correct conclusion about Obama’s tanking popularity:
I think this says more about the American people than it does about President Obama. I think it just shows once again that the American people are spoiled. Basically, spoiled– as a people,. . .
Well yes: yes, it does say that. If the majority of voters weren’t a pack of spoiled, spoon-fed, incurious, historically illiterate brats, BHO should not have been elected in the first place.
. . .we are too critical. We are quick to rush to judgment, we are too negative, we are too impatient. Especially impatient.
Not so fast. Insufficient numbers of those spoiled people are criticizing the economically suicidal notions and motions under which BHO feigns governing. That two in five still support these joker policies belies your point, Press.
The American people have, if anything, been too patient. Good nature and the Golden Rule have been interpreted as weakness by Press, his fellow travelers, and other sycophants.
This ain’t no spoiled tantrum, Press: this is your crappy bluff being called. Stand and deliver. You and your ilk have got nothing but snake oil and debt.
Press, you insulted the Tea Parties concerning Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor event last night. I’m willing to be proven wrong on the point, but, based upon the two fragments of your fulminating I’ve seen, you have no honor. This blog dares your scrawny butt, if it possesses hair #1, to attend Beck’s event next month and offer your audience an honest, propaganda-free report on what you see.
It ain’t Breitbart’s 100 large, but the truth is worth far more than that, Press.
by Smitty
Also, sexism.
‘Diversity’, in the Progressive Inverted Tongue (PIT)*, just means that some Affirmative Action mafia manages the raaaaacism, ‘white’ washing it with the magic squiggle (signature) of some bureaucrat.
La Shawn Barber points to a post at Minding the Campus, where Russell K. Nieli explores “How Diversity Punishes Asians, Poor Whites and Lots of Others” which is well worth your time.
We need to pressure our occasionally representative Congressmen with questions like:
Update: Megyn Kelly, the answer is no. Justice, while a concrete blond, knows that raaaaacism is merely a ageless variation on the theme of politics. Thanks for all you do, Megyn.
*I’ve been grasping for something short and descriptive of this counter-intuitive, superficially-English looking language, where words like ‘illegal’ seem to hold a meaning opposite to what you’d initially guess. Let’s see if this sticks.
Chris Bodenner at The Atlantic Monthly:
The link is to Jesse Griffin of the Immoral Minority blog, who perpetrated the Palin divorce hoax of August 2009, and who was forced to resign as a kindergarten aide at an Anchorage elementary school after his porn-blogging habits were exposed.
Griffin, Dennis Zaki, Jeanne Devon — when it comes to sliming the Palins, the Atlantic Monthly has no discernible journalistic standards. Any “source” is acceptable, so long as the source is anti-Palin.
UPDATE: Hmmmm.
. . . maybe I can get the federal government to subsidize me:
Both the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission are undertaking studies of ways to ensure the steep economic decline faced by newspapers and broadcast news does not deprive Americans of the essential information they need as citizens. One idea under consideration is enhanced public funding for journalism. . . .
We may calculate the statistical probability that any of that “enhanced public funding” would end up in the hands of any honest journalist as exactly zero. “Honest journalist” and “government employee” are mutually exclusive categories, e.g., Bill Moyers.
If the specter of a taxpayer-subsidized army of propaganda stooges doesn’t inspire you to hit the tip jar, I don’t know what will.
Judith Reisman is about to publish Sexual Sabotage, her latest and most comprehensive book on Alfred Kinsey’s fraudulent research, which came to mind when I saw this Time magazine article:
Women ages 27 through 45 report not only having more sexual fantasies (and more intense sexual fantasies) than women ages 18 through 26 but also having more sex, period. And they are more willing than younger women to have casual sex, even one-night stands. In other words, despite the girls-gone-wild image of promiscuous college women, it is women in their middle years who are America’s most sexually industrious. . . .
[University of Texas psychology professor David] Buss and his students say evolution has encouraged women to be more sexually active as their fertility begins to decline and as menopause approaches. . . .
To test this theory, Buss and his students asked 827 women to complete questionnaires about their sexual habits.
Three words: Self-reported data. And two more words: Volunteer bias.
These were the basic errors of Kinsey’s research: Assuming that people can be relied on to accurately report their own sexual activities, and further assuming that there is no significant difference between people who agree to participate in such a survey and people who refuse to participate.
Inevitably, then, such a research methodology produces unverified data from a sample that is not random and cannot be presumed to be representative of the general population.
Of course, as Reisman has documented, Kinsey’s work went beyond these mere methodological errors into outright abuse (including coercive interrogation of students) and fraud. Kinsey included data survey derived from prisoners, among them sex offenders and prostitutes, that was included in a study purporting to present “normal” sexual behavior. Furthermore, as Reisman points out, the overwhelming majority of Kinsey’s male surveys were conducted among civilians during World War II, at a time when most healthy young men were serving in the military, so that the sample could not possibly have been representative.
What’s interesting is that Kinsey’s basic statistical errors (though not his more egregiously fraudulent methods) were identified and reported in leading social-science journals shortly after after publication of his reports — and no one in the major media seemed to care.
As Reisman has also documented, Kinsey’s work was promoted by a carefully orchestrated publicity campaign — a campaign funded, as was his “research,” by David Rockefeller’s foundations. Major media (notably including Time magazine) eagerly cooperated in this publicity effort, and Kinsey’s scientific critics were almost entirely ignored. Reisman has persistently led the effort to expose Kinsey’s fraud, but she has similarly been ignored by most journalists, who seem unwilling to reevaluate the methods and motives of Kinseyan sexual research.
So while I’m perfectly willing to believe that women in their 40s are super-hot — hey, my wife is 46 — I am skeptical of the basic validity of the University of Texas research cited by Time. I’m especially skeptical of the claim that such data can be usefully employed as a basis for Darwinian theorizing about women’s sexual nature, ignoring every other possible influence on the reported findings and asserting that one has scientifically isolated an evolutionary genetic factor.
Needless to say, Andrew Sullivan’s colleague Chris Bodener is enthusiastically credulous. Some people would swallow a porcupine if you told them it was “science.”
To what purpose will this sort of science be employed, if not as a sort of “Darwin made me do it” excuse? How many would-be Mary Kay LeTourneaus and Debra LaFaves will now claim that they are genetically programmed to jump the bones of jailbait boys? Are we prepared for genuinely degenerate consquences?
A Waterford mother will spend at least nine years in prison for having sex with the 14-year-old son she gave up for adoption when he was a few days old.
Aimee L. Sword, 36, apologized for her actions at her sentencing Monday in Oakland County Circuit Court, said her attorney Mitchell Ribitwer. . . .
“When she saw this boy, something just touched off in her — and it wasn’t a mother-son relationship, it was a boyfriend girlfriend relationship,” said Ribitwer, who added that Sword said she was sexually and physically abused as a child. . . .
If God doesn’t destroy America, Sodom and Gomorrah deserve an apology.
The relevant quote comes at about the three-minute mark. Everybody else has already blogged this — I got it at Ace of Spades HQ — and I agree it might well be the Most Awesome 10 Minutes in Fox News History:
Megyn’s one-upsmanship — “Have you read the testimony?” — is what sparks the fireworks. I’m sure King Samir Shabazz watched this and said to himself, “Crazy cracker bitches.”
The AOSQHQ commenters are in fine form, of course.