Jul 16 2009

Hondurans standing for freedom *against* the USA?!? Yes.

Category: appeasement,freedom,government,liberty,media,Obama — harmonicminer @ 8:32 am

It is bizarre that the official US position about Honduras’ current political situation is to condemn the people who resisted an illegal takeover of Honduras by a wanna-be dictator for life.

The way in which nearly all the world’s media portray the legal, Supreme Court-ordered ouster of President Manuel (Mel) Zelaya is one major reason for the universal opprobrium. Because military men took part in the deportation of the sitting president, it has been portrayed as a classic Latin American “military coup,” and who can support a military coup?

The lack of context in which this ouster took place has prevented the vast majority of the world’s news watchers and readers from understanding what has happened.

I wonder how many people who bother to read the news — as opposed to only listen to or watch news reports — know:

— Zelaya was plotting a long-term, possibly lifetime, takeover of the Honduran government through illegally changing the Honduran Constitution.

— Zelaya had personally led a mob attack on a military facility to steal phony “referendum” ballots that had been printed by the Venezuelan government.

— Weeks earlier, in an attempt to intimidate the Honduran attorney general — as reported by The Wall Street Journal’s Mary Anastasia O’Grady, one of the only journalists in the world who regularly reports the whole story about Honduras — “some 100 agitators, wielding machetes, descended on the attorney general’s office. ‘We have come to defend this country’s second founding,’ the group’s leader reportedly said. ‘If we are denied it, we will resort to national insurrection.'”

— No member of the military has assumed a position of power as a result of the “military coup.”

— Zelaya’s own party, the Liberal Party, supported his removal from office and deportation from Honduras.

— The Liberal Party still governs Honduras.

So, Dennis Prager has asked you, did you know those things? If you didn’t, and you’ve been watching/reading the news, you’ll have to ask yourself why didn’t you know them.  Hopefully you’ll come to the correct conclusion about the slant of US major media, which never saw a left-socialist South American dictator it didn’t like.

As we’ve commented here before, the actions of the Honduran military were legal, and supported by the Honduran Supreme Court AND by the political party of the Zelaya himself. 

I have absolutely no idea what’s behind Obama’s support of Zelaya…  except that maybe he recognizes a fellow traveler.

Jul 11 2009

Why we’re losing: we brought a knife to gun fight

Category: media,Palin,politics,Republican — harmonicminer @ 9:00 am

You really have to read this whole thing. But here’s a taste.

I Still Hate You, Sarah Palin

One of the most terrifying moments of my political life came last summer at the Republican convention in St. Paul. No, I don’t mean seeing John McCain careering around the Xcel Energy Center like Eyegore in Young Frankenstein, his face frozen in a Lon Chaney Sr. rictus grin as he reached across the aisle to his erstwhile friends in the media and got his hand bitten off. Rather, I’m referring to the aftermath of Sarah Palin’s outrageous acceptance speech, which whipped up the Rotary Club delegates into a frenzy of white-boy fury that not even heckling by a brave Code Pink embed could deter. Truly a fascist classic and one that sent shivers down our collectivist spines.

Even worse was the glaze of horror on the phizzes of the assembled heroes of the Mainstream Media. Andrea Mitchell, yes, the very same Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington, whose employer saw no conflict of interest at all when she married then Fed pooh-bah Alan Greenspan, stood there gaping like a frog while the rest of the assembled Finemans and Matthewses and Olbermanns scurried around like roaches when the light gets turned on: What the hell just hit us? For one horrible moment, it looked as if the carefully crafted plans of David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, George Soros, and the Second Chief Directorate, first department, of the old KGB were about to gang agley.

Really, read the whole thing at the link above. Then start planning something. Anything.

Jun 03 2009

Sadly, this won’t be the last American Jihadist

Category: Islam,media,military,sharia,society — harmonicminer @ 9:55 am

ARKANSAS’ LONE JIHADIST: HOW ALONE IS HE? (much more at the link)

Here we have a new case of an individual U.S. citizen who committed an act of terror in the name of his ideology (Government officials have called it inaccurately a “political and religious motive”) against U.S. military targets. Do we see a pattern here? Are we witnessing a repeat and copycats? In fact, as we review several previous cases, from the Miami cell case, to the Fort Dix Six, the Georgia two, the New York Four, the Virginia Paintball network, and many other cases, we’re witnessing the surge of a phenomenon we have been warning about. I have repeatedly coined it Mutant Jihad, including in my book Future Jihad. Two important elements are to be taken into consideration: One is the fact that in many of these cases, U.S. military personnel and targets have been on the short list of these “homegrown terrorists.” If you study the repeated targeting process of these urban Jihadists, they systematically focus on military deployment inside the United States. In a sense, even as the perpetrators are separate, dispersed, and not connected, their targeting seems war-like: attacking the enemy’s forces on the homeland. The second element to be taken into consideration is the clear fact that in all these cases, without exception, we’re seeing one ideology: Jihadism. Despite various levels of understanding and sophistication, the cells and lone wolves who were involved in the terror acts, legitimized their action under the label of “Jihad.”

When relatively perfunctory Christians are re-energized, they tend to give more money, act nicer towards their families, and maybe volunteer more. New converts to Christianity simply do not become violent. The exact opposite is true.  The comparison of Christian fundamentalism to Muslim fundamentalism is one of the most dishonest things done in our Left media.

But too many American and British mosques and imams preach ways of thinking and feeling about what it means to be a good Muslim that boil down to jihad. I wish it wasn’t true. But it has been pretty well documented, though not well covered in the major media.

A question: how many Muslim groups immediately issued unconditional condemnation of the murder of the soldier at the recruiting office, and denied that such actions are any part of being a good Muslim?  Google it.  See if you can find even one.

In contrast, pro-life groups around the USA immediately and unconditionally condemned the murder of Tiller the Kansas abortionist.

Maybe the imams will save their statements of condemnation of the murder for the mosque attendees.   Yeah, that’s it.

In the meantime, I guess our military recruiters had better start showing up for work in full battle-rattle.

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Jun 01 2009

Compassion test

Category: media,society — harmonicminer @ 11:51 am

Military recruiter killed in Ark shooting

LITTLE ROCK, Ark., A new soldier helping to attract others to the military was shot and killed outside an Army recruiting office Monday and a second soldier was wounded, and a suspect was arrested, police said.

For all those who are especially horrified by the murder of the abortionist in Kansas, how do you feel about the murder of this soldier? He seems to have been murdered “on the job.” We don’t know why, for sure, just yet… but he is as dead as the abortionist.

Suggested line of research: do a Lexis-Nexis search to find out how many editorials are written about the need to protect military recruiters. Compare to similar editorials on the need to protect abortionists. Then notice how many news stories and columns suggest a “pro-life group” connection to the murderer of the abortionist, compared to the number that suggest a “far Left peace-at-any-price group” connection to the murderer of the recruiter.

I wonder if there has been a “string of violent acts” against recruiters since, oh, 1980 or so.

Jun 01 2009

Violence against abortionists: incredibly rare

Category: abortion,media,society — harmonicminer @ 9:24 am

An abortionist who specializes in late-term abortion has been murdered in church.

Dr. George Tiller, one of the nation’s few providers of late-term abortions despite decades of protests and attacks, was shot and killed Sunday in a church where he was serving as an usher.

It was, of course, morally wrong to kill the abortionist. However, if there are so “few providers of late-term abortions,” they must be awfully busy to do the 10,000 or so abortions that are done each year after 21 weeks development in the womb.

Survival Rates

* Babies born at 23 weeks have a 17% chance of survival
* Babies born at 24 weeks have a 39% chance of survival
* Babies born at 25 weeks have a 50% chance of survival
* From 32 weeks onwards, most babies are able to survive with the help of medical Technology [EPICure data]

Continuing with the report:

……..

Police did not release a motive for the shooting. But the doctor’s violent death was the latest in a string of shootings and bombings over two decades directed against abortion clinics, doctors and staff.

I always thought a “string” meant something that happened often enough to have a pattern with some kind of frequency.  Can you remember the last time something like this happened?  Be honest now…  what year was it?  What happened?  Did you have to look it up on Wikipedia to remember?  I thought so.

Stolz said all indications were that the gunman acted alone, although authorities were investigating whether he had any connection to anti-abortion groups.

Well, of course.  Anti-abortion groups are full of well-known killers, aren’t they?

Tiller’s Women’s Health Care Services clinic is one of just three in the nation where abortions are performed after the 21st week of pregnancy.

This is a flat lie.  Open your telephone book.  Look up abortion providers in the Yellow Pages, in any reasonably large city.  You’ll find “clinics” advertising “procedures to 24 weeks” and some to 28 weeks.  In any case, most hospitals will do late abortions that are truly required to save the life of the mother.   These specialized late term clinics serve women who have some “reason” other than saving their lives.  And this glaring error alone should create doubt in your mind about the accuracy of the rest of the reporting.

“We are shocked at this morning’s disturbing news that Mr. Tiller was gunned down,” Troy Newman, Operation Rescue’s president, said in a statement. “Operation Rescue has worked for years through peaceful, legal means, and through the proper channels to see him brought to justice. We denounce vigilantism and the cowardly act that took place this morning.”

And you can be pretty sure they mean it, since these people tend to take the ten commandments reasonably seriously.
……..

The last killing of an abortion doctor was in October 1998 when Dr. Barnett Slepian was fatally shot in his home in a suburb of Buffalo, N.Y. A militant abortion opponent was convicted of the murder.

Wait… didn’t someone say there was a “string” of this sort of thing? From where I sit, it seems to be safer to be an abortionist than a university professor. Several have been murdered on campus in pretty recent times.  And it’s LOTS more dangerous to do research on animal subjects than to do abortions….  those animal rights people are SERIOUS.

……
Federal marshals protected Tiller during the 1991 Summer of Mercy protests, and he was protected again between 1994 and 1998 after another abortion provider was assassinated and federal authorities reported finding Tiller’s name on an assassination list.

Another flat lie. The “assassination list” was merely a list of late-term abortion providers, and the text accompanying the list specifically “accused them of ‘crimes against humanity’ and offered a $5,000 reward for the ‘arrest, conviction and revocation of license to practice medicine’ of these physicians.”   If it was an “assassination” list, why have there been no murders of abortionists since 1998?  If abortion foes have ANY significant percentage of people in their ranks who are capable of doing an act like this, how is it that the last one was 1998?  Calling that list an “assassination list” is a capitulation  to the PR strategy of the abortionists…  of course, that’s exactly what the media have done, isn’t it?

So don’t look for reason or balance in the coverage of this murder.  Look for over-heated rhetoric, fulminating with barely concealed hatred for anyone who simply wants to save the lives of the most innocent and vulnerable among us.  Look for an attempt to connect pro-life groups to incitement to murder, without any factual predicate.

While you’re at it, consider this: because of the confluence of political issues, and the fact that anti-abortion people tend to hold traditional values on a range of issues, a larger percentage of them than the general population are also gun owners.  Does anyone think, if any measurable percentage of pro-lifers were willing to kill abortionists, that there would be very many abortionists left?

I am guessing that more abortionists and abortion mill employees have died in car accidents driving to work, since 1998, than this single murder.  There are a LOT of them (abortion providers, that is).   I don’t expect any news coverage of that fact, however.

But that’s the measure of the actual risk of what they do (risk to themselves, that is).  They’re in more danger from tailgaters than rabid pro-lifers.

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May 25 2009

Incoherency defined

Category: humor,media — harmonicminer @ 9:41 am

Olbermann Responds to Limbaugh

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann says he’ll stop talking about Rush Limbaugh for 30 days on one condition: That Limbaugh not talk about himself for a month.

It’s the latest fun media feud. It started earlier this week when Limbaugh said MSNBC was building its ratings by constantly criticizing him. He challenged MSNBC to a 30-day “Rush withdrawal.”

Olbermann responded Wednesday night by saying it appeared MSNBC’s criticisms had finally struck bone. Limbaugh, he said, “has suddenly gone all Greta Garbo on us.”

He said Limbaugh has no right to control who comments about him. But he said he’ll stop talking about Limbaugh provided Limbaugh stop talking about himself.

Limbaugh responded by saying Olbermann’s statement was incoherent.

That’s like saying a particular bark from a dog is incoherent.  Has Olbermann ever barked coherently?

Come to think of it, the big dog here is Rush….  and Olbermann is an annoying flea.

UPDATE:  Based on a critical comment, suggesting that comparing Olbermann and a flea is an insult to the flea, let me just say that he’s really a flea hoping someday to be promoted to full-fledged tick.  He is, after all, a giant intake device for oxygen bearing hemoglobin.

May 24 2009

Harvey Milk Day?

Category: government,media,society,Uncategorized — harmonicminer @ 9:00 am

The myth of Harvey Milk, “martyr for gay rights” (not), and his relationship to mass murderer Jim Jones, are detailed in Drinking Harvey Milk’s Kool-Aid

Sean Penn’s Harvey Milk is as real as Toby Maguire’s Spider-Man. Who has time for the sordid details of purportedly staged hate crimes and boosterism of America’s most prolific mass murderer when there is a gay Martin Luther King to be mythologized? Even the fervent atheist Milk understood the need for patron saints. When confronted by a jaded supporter over his fabricated tale that the Navy had booted him out because of his sex life, Milk responded: “Symbols. Symbols. Symbols.” He understood his movement better than his movement did. When the facts didn’t fit the script, both Milk and his present-day admirers adjusted the facts. As the elected sponsors of Harvey Milk Day realize, Californians are more likely to remember the celluloid hero they saw depicted by Sean Penn earlier this year than the obscure city official who walked largely unnoticed in their midst three decades ago.

The advocates of a Harvey Milk Day know box office. They don’t know the real Harvey Milk.

I’ve never tried putting Kool-Aid in milk.  Sounds yucky.  California doesn’t need another holiday, even one where people still have to go to work.  We don’t need to commemorate anyone else this year.  Or next year.

May 23 2009

Seeing with one eye — the LEFT one

Category: media — harmonicminer @ 9:13 am

Cheney’s speech contained omissions, misstatements

And Obama’s didn’t? This is just the very model of selective reporting.

In any case, when was the last time you saw ANY report in the major media that simply went down a list of Obama’s statements in a speech, and then quoted someone else contradicting each one with contrary information and perspectives, without then giving Obama’s side a chance to rebut THOSE positions?  What, you say you can’t remember that EVER happening?

I can’t either.

The media could start with fair reporting on what he’s doing to the economy, and plans to do to health care.

But that would be in some alternate universe where the major media wasn’t made up of Obama groupies.

In any case, note that most of the “contradictory evidence” reported by the article comes from people now in Obama’s pay or sphere of influence.

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May 09 2009

Altered States

Category: church,left,media — harmonicminer @ 9:36 am

At this place, on the front page:


You get this ad for “church,” United Methodist style.


And this one for sex toys, hookups, and pornography.  Don’t bother to click it, I didn’t link it.


I’m trying to remember the last time I saw an ad for church and an ad for sex services in the same place.  Oh, yeah.  The LA Times.  Craigslist.  The Yellow Pages.

But really:  wouldn’t you think ONE of these groups would think this wasn’t the place to advertise?

Oh well.  Welcome to the modern Christian Left.  Crackpot politics, sexual liberty, and a feeling of moral superiority, all in one.

It would seem that the United Methodists really know where to advertise to find like-minded folk.

So I went to “RethinkChurch” (just click the graphic above and you can, too).  In the search engine on the site, I typed in the word “Jesus.”

Here’s what I got:


I typed in “salvation,” and got even less.  So, let’s see.  This is a United Methodist Church website, with no mention of “salvation”, and almost none of “Jesus.”  I wonder if that “Carnal Nation” website links to a seminary.

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May 03 2009

Putting a smiley face on carbon taxes

Category: environment,funny but sad,global warming,Group-think,media,Uncategorized — harmonicminer @ 9:26 am

As most of us know, half the battle is controlling the terms of the debate. And sometimes, it seems, if you want to sell something that few are buying, you need to consult a thesaurus.

Environmental issues consistently rate near the bottom of public worry, according to many public opinion polls. A Pew Research Center poll released in January found global warming last among 20 voter concerns; it trailed issues like addressing moral decline and decreasing the influence of lobbyists. “We know why it’s lowest,” said Mr. Perkowitz, a marketer of outdoor clothing and home furnishings before he started ecoAmerica, whose activities are financed by corporations, foundations and individuals. “When someone thinks of global warming, they think of a politicized, polarized argument. When you say ‘global warming,’ a certain group of Americans think that’s a code word for progressive liberals, gay marriage and other such issues.”

The answer, Mr. Perkowitz said in his presentation at the briefing, is to reframe the issue using different language. “Energy efficiency” makes people think of shivering in the dark. Instead, it is more effective to speak of “saving money for a more prosperous future.” In fact, the group’s surveys and focus groups found, it is time to drop the term “the environment” and talk about “the air we breathe, the water our children drink.”

“Another key finding: remember to speak in TALKING POINTS aspirational language about shared American ideals, like freedom, prosperity, independence and self-sufficiency while avoiding jargon and details about policy, science, economics or technology,” said the e-mail account of the group’s study.

Are Americans really this stupid?

Well, yes.  They elected Obama hoping for unspecified change.  Any old direction will do, it would seem.  They bought Clinton’s “contributions” for taxes, radical feminism’s “pro-choice” for anti-unborn child and pro-abortion, “gun control” for “guns for criminals only”, and “hate speech” for telling the truth, or at least exercising your First Amendment right to speak your mind.

One of the best ways to lie is just to pretend not to hear anyone who’s telling the truth, and keep right on as if they never spoke.  That’s exactly what’s happening in our national conversation, as the Left rules all the media but talk radio, and is gunning for that, too.  So “global warming” has morphed into “climate change” and “carbon taxes” is going to be “anti-pollution fees”, and so on.

In the meantime, if you had to bet, the smart money is that the earth is cooling, overall.  And the smarter money knows that even if it isn’t, the change is very gradual, probably has little to do with human activity, and it isn’t even clear that it will be a bad thing.

And by the way:  there were polar bears around when the earth was so warm that Greenland was verdant farm land, with nary a glacier in sight.  (That’s why it’s called GREENLAND.)   Somehow, the bears survived.

I suspect they will again.

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