Here's the cover from Time magazine's "Person(s) Of The Year" award issue from 2003. Two corporate whistleblowers and a lady from the FBI who thought the Feds could've done more to prevent 9-11.
Flash forward ten years. Bradley Manning. Edward Snowden. Julian Assange. Now THOSE are some whistleblowers. All three have done incredibly important things for the cause of liberty, and at great personal risk. They make the three ladies shown above look like mid-level managers who finally had the courage to use the company Suggestion Box.
Manning will probably die in a cage and Snowden and Assange can't travel freely.
Here's to Time magazine going the way of Newsweek. Sooner, not later. Good riddance.
Die quickly, mainstream media. Die quickly.
Quick: What do Pat Robertson and Ron Paul have in common? Yep, that’s right — they both think marijuana should be as legal as alcohol. Robertson made waves on the issue in the past when he said he thought marijuana-possession convictions shouldn’t end in mandatory prison sentences. He’s making waves again with the outright call to legalize the controlled substance.
Mr. Robertson’s support for legalizing pot appeared in a New York Times article published Thursday. His spokesman confirmed to the Associated Press that Mr. Robertson supports legalization with regulation. Mr. Robertson was not made available for an interview.
“I really believe we should treat marijuana the way we treat beverage alcohol,” Mr. Robertson was quoted by the newspaper as saying. “If people can go into a liquor store and buy a bottle of alcohol and drink it at home legally, then why do we say that the use of this other substance is somehow criminal?” Mr. Robertson said he “absolutely” supports ballot measures in Colorado and Washington state that would allow people older than 21 to possess a small amount of marijuana and allow for commercial pot sales. Both measures, if passed by voters, would place the states at odds with federal law, which bans marijuana use of all kinds.
This debate seems to have no direction to go but in the direction of legalization; as Robertson said elsewhere in the article, “This war on drugs just hasn’t succeeded.”
The picture of Robertson having a psychedelic experience came from here.
There's been a minor media whirlwind for the last few days about the latest Newsweek cover. It features a piece by Andrew Sullivan about how freakin' stupid Obama's critics are.
The funniest part is the little slogan about "the man with a plan". Heh. I don't think he could plan a lunch for four at McDonald's, but that's just me.
Here's the best response I've seen to the Newsweek piece. It's from Conor Friedersdorf with the Atlantic Monthly. It hurts.Go here to read the whole thing.
How would you have reacted in 2008 if any Republican (or any other resident of this planet) had promised to do the following:
(1) Codify indefinite detention into law; (2) draw up a secret kill list of people, including American citizens, to assassinate without due process; (3) proceed with warrantless spying on American citizens; (4) prosecute Bush-era whistleblowers for violating state secrets; (5) reinterpret the War Powers Resolution such that entering a war of choice without a Congressional declaration is permissible; (6) enter and prosecute such a war; (7) institutionalize naked scanners and intrusive full body pat-downs in major American airports; (8) oversee a planned expansion of TSA so that its agents are already beginning to patrol American highways, train stations, and bus depots; (9) wage an undeclared drone war on numerous Muslim countries that delegates to the CIA the final call about some strikes that put civilians in jeopardy; (10) invoke the state-secrets privilege to dismiss lawsuits brought by civil-liberties organizations on dubious technicalities rather than litigating them on the merits; (11) preside over federal raids on medical marijuana dispensaries; (12) attempt to negotiate an extension of American troops in Iraq beyond 2011 (an effort that thankfully failed); (13) reauthorize the Patriot Act; (14) and select an economic team mostly made up of former and future financial executives from Wall Street firms that played major roles in the financial crisis.
In October 2007, Obama proclaimed, “I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank.” Speaking of Iraq in February 2008, candidate Barack Obama said, “I opposed this war in 2002. I will bring this war to an end in 2009. It is time to bring our troops home.” The following month, under fire from Hillary Clinton, he reiterated, “I was opposed to this war in 2002….I have been against it in 2002, 2003, 2004, 5, 6, 7, 8 and I will bring this war to an end in 2009. So don’t be confused.”
Indeed, in his famous “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow” speech on the night he clinched the Democratic nomination, he also proclaimed, “I am absolutely certain that generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that . . . this was the moment when we ended a war.”
Today, however, he has tripled President Bush’s troop levels in Afghanistan, and we have been fighting there for more than nine years. The Pentagon has declared “the official end to Operation Iraqi Freedom and combat operations by United States forces in Iraq,” but we still have 50,000 troops there, hardly what Senator Obama promised.
Yeah, and we've got 9 more months to go in 2011. Who will bomb next, Iran or Pakistan? I'm voting Pakistan.
It's the opposite of the Code Pink idea that women bring the peace. How long have I heard this feminist plaint: If only women had the power, we would have peace, not phallocratic war.
Well, Ms. Althouse doesn't agree to let an interesting theory get in the way of some cold hard facts:
In a Paris hotel room on Monday night, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton... changed course, forming an unlikely alliance with a handful of top administration aides who had been arguing for intervention.
Within hours, Mrs. Clinton and the aides had convinced Mr. Obama that the United States had to act...
... Mrs. Clinton joined Samantha Power, a senior aide at the National Security Council, and Susan Rice, Mr. Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, who had been pressing the case for military action, according to senior administration officials speaking only on condition of anonymity. Ms. Power is a former journalist and human rights advocate; Ms. Rice was an Africa adviser to President Clinton when the United States failed to intervene to stop the Rwanda genocide, which Mr. Clinton has called his biggest regret.
Now, the three women were pushing for American intervention....
Is this kinda like Bush being led into war by Rumsfeld and Cheney? I'm sure that the facts will come out later.
Here's the latest zinger from Ms. Althouse:
To ally with Power and Rice, Clinton had to make "an unusual break with Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, who, along with the national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, and the counterterrorism chief, John O. Brennan, had urged caution." Oh, timid men. Step aside! Yield to the boldness of women.
Ouch.
She Whose Name Is Not Spoken has already announced that she doesn't want to be Secretary Of State any longer. I'll bet dollars to donuts that she's going to run against The Teleprompter next year.
To the eternal credit of the Code Pink group, they did design this little gem of a poster:
That was before we opened a 3rd front in the Middle East.
Code Pink doesn't have anything condemning this latest "intervention" on their website yet. We'll see.
They do have a bookmark that you can slip into copies of Don Rumsfeld's biography that accuses him of being a war criminal.
Here's the bookmark that stealth shoppers can slip into unsold copies of George Bush's "Decision Points".
And here's a handy link telling readers how to execute a citizen's arrest, just in case they want to detain one of the warmongers from the Bush administration.
I'm looking forward to seeing the bookmark they design to slip into copies of "Dreams From My Father", by Barack Obama.
I'm looking foward to seeing these ladies take to the streets in protests next week.
Or not.
President Barack Obama named Jeffrey Immelt, General Electric Co.’s chief executive officer, to head his outside panel of economic advisers, replacing former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker.
In announcing Immelt’s appointment to take the helm of the newly renamed President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, Obama said the economy is “in a different place” from where it was during the financial crisis when Volcker was brought on, and new ideas are needed to keep the momentum going.
Go here to read about all the mischief that G.E. can get into with Immelt having access to The Teleprompter's screen. Worth the read.
“The past two years was about moving our economy back from the brink,” Obama said alongside Immelt during an event in Schenectady, New York, home to the birthplace of GE’s energy business. “Our job now is putting our economy into overdrive.”
And now for something completely different....From the TaxProf Blog:
During his State of the Union address, President Obama said the current tax system is broken. "Those with accountants or lawyers to work the system can end up paying no taxes at all," he said. "But all the rest are hit with one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world. It makes no sense, and it has to change."
Just how broken is the corporate tax system? Consider the tax rate paid by two of America's biggest companies — Wal-Mart and General Electric. Wal-Mart paid 34 cents in taxes for every dollar of profit it made in the past three years. General Electric paid just 3.6 cents on the dollar.
Welcome to the mysterious world of the corporate income tax, says tax expert Len Burman at Syracuse University. "There are big companies that consider their tax departments to be profit centers," he says.
That's right; instead of concentrating on making light bulbs, power plants or whatnot, companies use the tax system to boost their profits.
Here's what's funny about this....G.E., the ultra-wholesome, greenie, in bed with the Statists company, (and manufacturers of The ObamaBulbs) only paid 3.6 % of its income in taxes.
Wal-Mart, the great Satan, the destroyer of America, exploiter of the people, torturer of kittens, etc., Wal-Mart graciously allows Obama to have 33.6 % of their income.
I have an acquaintance named James who just got sent to jail for four months.
James and I have a mutual friend named Judy, who called me yesterday, absolutely frantic. James had already gone to be an Involuntary Guest Of The State, he had no way to prepay four months’ rent on his small garage apartment, and unless Judy could find a way to get the rest of his possessions to a storage facility, everything James owned would either be dumped out on the curb or sold for back-payment of rent.
I was able to help Judy get the remainder of James’s furniture moved to a 10’x10’ storage space that she and another friend had rented. Had those two ladies not been willing to do this, James would have been released from prison owning absolutely nothing.
Think about that for a minute….starting over with a criminal record, and owning nothing. Then think of having to face a plague of counselors, probation officers, parole officers and other leeches, all with their hands in your pockets, trying to collect their Oversight Fees, payments for counseling sessions, payments for drug tests, and other legal rip-offs.
James will probably spend the rest of his life as food for this vile machine, ensuring that some Civil Service lifer is able to collect a good pension at the age of 50.
So what did James do to deserve such treatment?
Did he injure someone with his vehicle, the way Ted Kennedy did, and then leave his victim to drown?
Did he try and fail to blow up some buildings, like Bill Ayers?
Or did he drug and rape a 13-year old, like Roman Polanski?
James didn’t do anything to harm anyone else, the way those three guys did. He's only guilty of doing something that our last three presidents have done.
James was pulled over because of his license plate or inspection sticker was expired. The cops used that as an excuse to rip his car open from bumper to bumper. They finally found an ounce of marijuana and hauled James to jail.
Unlike presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, or contenders like John Kerry, Al Gore, and Sarah Palin, all of whom have smoked weed, James is in jail.
Unlike Barack Obama, who did cocaine as a teenager, James is in jail.
Chances are, you have voted for at least two of the politicians listed above. Why is it that you don’t hold drug use against presidential candidates and will support them in their efforts to be Leaders Of The Free World, but if a night-shift welder is caught with 4 joints’ worth of marijuana, you believe he should go to prison and then have to spend years explaining himself to, and being monitored by, government munchkins?
We have a higher percentage and a higher raw number of prisoners than any other country on earth. We are devastating the male African-American population for the sole purpose of “saving and creating jobs” in the counseling, drug-testing, prison-building and law enforcement industries.
Mexican drug lords are destroying their country - all for the right to be monopoly drug suppliers for the United States. The parallels between 2010 and our failed 1920's alcohol prohibition experiment are too obvious for even the most dense politician to ignore. Al Capone and a plethora of other gangsters grew wealthy supplying something that everyone wanted. Grandmothers started making their own bathtub gin. Lawlessness erupted around the border – but in this case, it was our border with Canada!
In places where we legalized alcohol, the bootlegger violence stopped. Alcohol usage didn’t skyrocket, it merely moved out into the open again, and there was no sudden increase in alcoholism.
There are only two politicians of note who are willing to go on record stating that they favor marijuana legalization – Republican Ron Paul (TX) and Democrat Jim Webb (VA).
The other politicians no longer have ignorance as an excuse. They aren’t misguided or misinformed, and they aren’t looking out For The Children®.
saw on Instapundit that a dorm named after William Stewart Simkins is being renamed. It seems that Simkins was an organizer for the Ku Klux Klan.
Good for them. But let's not stop there. Another KKK Kommunity Organizer recently passed away, and it would benefit our nation to rename the following facilities, also known as Byrd Droppings:
Robert C. Byrd Academic and Technology Center
Robert C. Byrd addition to the lodge at Oglebay Park, Wheeling
Byrd Aerospace Technology Center
Robert C. Byrd Bridge between Huntington and Chesapeake, Ohio
Robert C. Byrd Cancer Research Center
Robert C. Byrd Clinical Addition to the veteran's hospital in Huntington
Robert C. Byrd Community Center, Pine Grove
Robert C. Byrd Community Center in the naval station, Sugar Grove
Robert C. Byrd Drive, from Beckley to Sophia (Byrd's hometown)
Robert C. Byrd Expressway, U.S. 22 near Weirton
Robert C. Byrd Federal Building
Robert C. Byrd Federal Courthouse
Robert C. Byrd Freeway
Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope
Robert C. Byrd Hardwood Technologies Center, near Princeton
Robert C. Byrd Health Sciences Center of West Virginia
Robert C. Byrd High school in Bridgeport
Robert C. Byrd Highway
Robert C. Byrd Hilltop Office Complex, Mineral County
Robert C. Byrd Honors Scholarships
Robert C. Byrd Industrial Park, Hardy County
Robert C. Byrd Institute in Charleston
Robert C. Byrd Institute for Advanced Flexible Manufacturing
Robert C. Byrd Library and Robert C. Byrd Learning Resource Center
Robert C. Byrd Life Long Learning Center
Robert C. Byrd Locks and Dam
Robert C. Byrd National Technology Transfer Center
Robert C. Byrd Rural Health Center
Robert C. Byrd Scholastic Recognition Award
Byrd Science Center, Shepherd University
Robert C. Byrd Technology Center at Alderson-Broaddus College
Robert C. Byrd United Technical Center
Robert C. Byrd Visitor Center at Harpers Ferry National Historic Park
The cost of new signage for these facilities could be covered with Porkulus funds. This would be appropriate, since it was Pork that built all of 'em.
After that, no more pork projects named for racist Democrats. Ever.
No more pork projects named for racist Republicans. Ever. Or left-handed people. Or right-handed people. Or anyone else.
No more freebies.
That would solve the problem, wouldn't it?
This video has now been seen by more than 1.2 million people.
Go here for my thoughts on why we continue to put up with government employees breaking down a door in the middle of the night, shooting two of the family dogs in front of a 7-year-old boy, finding a misdemeanor amount of marijuana, and then charging the homeowner with "child endangerment".
(It's because we're sheep.)
Here's an email to Radley Balko from an army officer serving someplace in Afghanistan:
I am a US Army officer, currently serving in Afghanistan. My first thought on reading this story is this: Most American police SWAT teams probably have fewer restrictions on conducting forced entry raids than do US forces in Afghanistan.
For our troops over here to conduct any kind of forced entry, day or night, they have to meet one of two conditions: have a bad guy (or guys) inside actively shooting at them; or obtain permission from a 2-star general, who must be convinced by available intelligence (evidence) that the person or persons they're after is present at the location, and that it's too dangerous to try less coercive methods. The general can be pretty tough to convince, too. (I'm a staff liason, and one of my jobs is to present these briefings to obtain the required permission.)
Generally, our troops, including the special ops guys, use what we call "cordon and knock": they set up a perimeter around the target location to keep people from moving in or out,and then announce their presence and give the target an opportunity to surrender. In the majority of cases, even if the perimeter is established at night, the call out or knock on the gate doesn't happen until after the sun comes up.
Oh, and all of the bad guys we're going after are closely tied to killing and maiming people.
What might be amazing to American cops is that the vast majority of our targets surrender when called out.
I don't have a clear picture of the resources available to most police departments, but even so, I don't see any reason why they can't use similar methods.
Quite different from using door-busting tactics to serve warrants on nonviolent drug offenders. Of course, one difference is that we care about winning the hearts and minds of people in Afghanistan . . . .
I saw The Lives Of Others last night.
If you haven't seen it, the film tells the story of an East German couple (prior to The Wall coming down), a member of the Stazi (the notorious secret police), and how the experience of spying on the couple leads the policeman to his redemption.
It's probably one of the 10 best movies I've ever seen.
One of the saddest things about watching a film like this?
1) Not just the Socialist Body Count, which is a staggering number....
2) Or understanding the diminished lives of everyone who had to live in the Communist system, but....
3) Realizing that very few people in the U.S. understand the magnitude of the crimes committed by the Socialist regimes that were in power for most of the previous century. I'd bet that typical college graduates can tell you more about the anti-Communist witch hunts of the McCarthy era than can tell you about the body counts achieved by the socialist governments that prompted the witch hunts.
(In the U.S. during the McCarthy era, somewhere around 10,000 people lost their jobs or had to take less than desirable employment because of their previous association with the Communist party. An army dentist who was promoted despite being unwilling to answer questions about his political loyalties became the subject of a media whirlwind. 93 people were convicted of belonging to organizations that advocated the overthrow of the U.S. government. Around 300 actors and screenwriters were blacklisted and were unable to write for Leave It To Beaver.)
None of these things should have happened. It was a bad time. But let's look at what prompted the Red Scare:
According to The Black Book Of Communisim, originally published in France, english translation published in 1999, these are the civilian lives claimed by Communism:
U.S.S.R. - 20 million deaths
China - 65 million deaths
Vietnam - 1 million deaths
North Korea - 2 million deaths
Cambodia - 2 million deaths
Eastern Europe - 1 million deaths
Latin American - 150,000 deaths
Africa - 1.7 million deaths
Afghanistan - 1.5 million deaths
The international Communist movement and Communist parties not in power: 10,000 deaths
The total approaches 100 million people killed. I don't think that the crimes of the Socialists and the crimes of the United States can be seen as moral equivalents.
Here's Claire Berlinski, writing for City Journal:
In the world’s collective consciousness, the word “Nazi” is synonymous with evil. It is widely understood that the Nazis’ ideology—nationalism, anti-Semitism, the autarkic ethnic state, the Führer principle—led directly to the furnaces of Auschwitz. It is not nearly as well understood that Communism led just as inexorably, everywhere on the globe where it was applied, to starvation, torture, and slave-labor camps. Nor is it widely acknowledged that Communism was responsible for the deaths of some 150 million human beings during the twentieth century. The world remains inexplicably indifferent and uncurious about the deadliest ideology in history.
For evidence of this indifference, consider the unread Soviet archives. Pavel Stroilov, a Russian exile in London, has on his computer 50,000 unpublished, untranslated, top-secret Kremlin documents, mostly dating from the close of the Cold War. He stole them in 2003 and fled Russia. Within living memory, they would have been worth millions to the CIA; they surely tell a story about Communism and its collapse that the world needs to know. Yet he can’t get anyone to house them in a reputable library, publish them, or fund their translation. In fact, he can’t get anyone to take much interest in them at all.
Then there’s Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, who once spent 12 years in the USSR’s prisons, labor camps, and psikhushkas—political psychiatric hospitals—after being convicted of copying anti-Soviet literature. He, too, possesses a massive collection of stolen and smuggled papers from the archives of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, which, as he writes, “contain the beginnings and the ends of all the tragedies of our bloodstained century.” These documents are available online at bukovsky-archives.net, but most are not translated. They are unorganized; there are no summaries; there is no search or index function. “I offer them free of charge to the most influential newspapers and journals in the world, but nobody wants to print them,” Bukovsky writes. “Editors shrug indifferently: So what? Who cares?”
The question is not so much "Who cares?" as "Why do we feel this way?"
For reasons that I'll never understand, a lot of intelligent people are able to give Socialism a free pass because the goals of Socialism are so "humane" and "egalitarian". The death camps, which you have to have for the people who decline to be Socialized, are overlooked as a fluke, or the unfortunate products of Socialism veering from the true path. (The Black Book Of Communism, which I'm only 1/10th of the way into, puts that myth to rest nicely. The tragedy in Russia wasn't caused by Stalin corrupting the ideals laid down by Lenin. Both of those jokers operated from the same playbook.)
Remember the 1960's era hippies, with their copies of Chairman Mao's Little Red Book?
How many Fidel Castro apologists have you met in your life? I've known about a dozen, and read pieces by dozens of others.
Look at Sean Penn, praising Socialist nutcase Hugo Chavez.
Now....what would happen to Sean Penn's career if he praised a Nazi? What if Penn defended someone really horrible like Joseph Goebbels, but whose policies, if you look at the death count, were less harmful than those of Karl Marx ? Would Sean Penn ever be in another movie? But for some reason, the Chavez crimes against humanity and property are more wholesome and his defenders are more politically "aware".
If someone praised Auschwitz "Doctor" Josef Mengele, invited him to speak at a church in New York City, and then crowed online about Mengele's greatness and wisdom, do you think that person would deserved to be shunned for the rest of his life?
But why do we accept this with a shrug, when the guest of honor is mass-murderer Fidel Castro?
Free-market capitalism isn't perfect either. However, if capitalism is left alone (and if it's participants aren't declared Too Big To Fail), it has some self-correcting aspects that provide an incredible amount of wealth and prosperity to a massive number of people. Here's Jonah Goldberg on the strengths and weaknesses of Capitalism vs. Socialism:
If by “capitalist” you mean someone who cares more about his own profit than yours; if you mean someone who cares more about providing for his family than providing for yours; if you mean someone who trusts that he is a better caretaker of his own interests and desires than a bureaucrat he’s never met, often in a city he’s never been to: then we are all capitalists. Because, by that standard, capitalism isn’t some far-off theory about the allocation of capital; it is a commonsense description of what motivates pretty much all human beings everywhere.
And that was one of the reasons why the hard socialism of the Soviet Union failed, and it is why the soft socialism of Western Europe is so anemic. At the end of the day, it is entirely natural for humans to work the system — any system — for their own betterment, whatever kind of system that may be. That’s why the black-market economy of the Soviet Union might have in fact been bigger than the official socialist economy. That is why devoted socialists worked the bureaucracy to get the best homes, get their kids into the best schools, (see: Obama, Sasha and Malia) and provide their families with the best food, clothes, and amenities they could. Just like people in capitalist countries.
It’s why labor unions demanded exemptions and “carve-outs” from Obamacare for their own health-care plans. And why very rich liberals still try their best to minimize their taxes. (see: Hypocrisy Awards: The Whiteys)
The problem with socialism is socialism, because there are no socialists. Socialism is a system based upon an assumption about human nature that simply isn’t true. I can design a perfect canine community in which dogs never chase squirrels or groom their nether regions in an indelicate manner. But the moment I take that idea from the drawing board to the real world, I will discover that I cannot get dogs to behave against their nature — at least not without inflicting a terrible amount of punishment. Likewise, it’s easy to design a society that rewards each according to his need instead of his ability. The hard part is getting the crooked timber of humanity to yield to your vision.
"The hard part is getting the crooked timber of humanity to yield to your vision." What a great sentence. That's why the Socialists had to have the death camps, the thousands of torture rooms, the firing squads, the Gulags, and the re-education centers to straighten out the dissenters.
It's also why the Stazi officer in The Lives Of Others was camped out above the German couple's apartment, listening in with a set of headphones. There was always someone, somewhere, who wasn't loyal to the vision.
I hope you'll rent the movie.
I've begged and begged, numerous times over the last few weeks.....
The politically motivated violence associated with anti-Obama sentiment has GOT TO STOP ! But it got out of hand again yesterday.
Dial it back, people, dial it back. The mainstream media groups are watching.
They are watching, aren't they?
Hello, media ??? Are you there? Anybody reporting on this?
Oh. Sorry. This incident doesn't fit the preferred narrative.
This troubled times require civility, not violence.
What can we expect if those who are so passionate about Obamacare are misguided by all the harsh, shrill rhetoric from their leaders.
Tea Party protesters have thrown eggs at Harry Reid's bus.
Go to Moonbattery to read more about this unfortunate.............
........incident. (Sorry about the sentence break. All of this overwhelming nastiness from the Tea Party Movement, people throwing eggs at Harry Reid's bus, well, it caught me by surprise. I passed out on the floor of Starbucks just thinking about what it could lead to, and my smelling salts and ammonia capsules were in the truck, and Starbucks employees have no idea how to revive someone suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Like much of the American news media, I have an unfortunate tendency to pass out from The Vapors when exposed to partisan conflicts.)
Remember, get the kids out of the room, brace yourself, and go to Moonbattery for details on the vandalism. Will keep everyone posted when Harry holds a press conference to denounce partisan violence.
Update from Monday morning.....Once again, a commenter has been punked. Hit the links to Moonbattery. Hit the links. Hit the links.
Like many of you, I am troubled. Deeply, deeply troubled.
Other people find it troubling also, and that's why we should dial it back a bit.
Our extremist rhetoric is causing a violent ripple across America.
Political party headquarters have been vandalized, and the President and a senator have been burned in effigy. Police called it "a planned and orchestrated event".
Drive-by shooters have attacked a campaign headquarters. Thank God no one was inside.
Dial it back, people. Dial it back. It's just a new law requiring you to spend your money with certain favored healthcare compnies, nothing more. Maybe we can find a way to get past it.
Remember: If the American news media ever start giving these violent incidents a lot of attention, it will hurt the cause.
Update from Friday, March 26th.....It amazes me when I look at my hit-counter, and see that there are SO many people out there looking at this post but not hitting the links. Maybe I shoulda made the links sexier in some way. Hit the links above for some hot, steamy, anti-Statist violence, people ! Get outraged ! Hit the links to see the scorn that the people now have for their superiors !
Even later, a few words from the company that made the stents that are keeping the non-inhaler alive:
Boston Scientific Corp (BSX.N) warned on Tuesday that a proposed tax in the U.S. health care reform bill that cleared the Senate Finance Committee last week could have serious consequences for the company, including job losses.....(CEO Bill) Elliott said that the company’s tax liability would be doubled, adding $150 million to $200 million a year, and it would be forced to make substantial cuts in research and development spending, which could result in 1,000 to 2,000 jobs being lost at Boston Scientific…
No, those stents don't grow on trees, do they? Evil capitalists invent them. Here's one last link, from the U.K.'s Daily Mail Online, about an action proposed by Britain's National Health Service, one of the many "civilized" socialist medical schemes that we're supposed to emulate if we're to ever join the ranks of the truly evolved and humane nations:
A treatment which has saved the lives of tens of thousands of heart patients could be banned on the Health Service because it is too expensive.
Last year, around 40,000 patients were fitted with drugcoated stents - special tubes which are inserted into arteries to prevent them from narrowing.
The system is more expensive than stents that don't include drugs, but are more effective at keeping people out of hospital.
They also avoid the need for heart bypass operations.
Now the National Institute for health and Clinical Excellence has recommended that the devices be banned on the basis of cost.
A treatment which has saved the lives of tens of thousands of heart patients could be banned on the Health Service because it is too expensive.
Last year, around 40,000 patients were fitted with drugcoated stents - special tubes which are inserted into arteries to prevent them from narrowing.
The system is more expensive than stents that don't include drugs, but are more effective at keeping people out of hospital.
They also avoid the need for heart bypass operations.
Now the National Institute for health and Clinical Excellence has recommended that the devices be banned on the basis of cost.
Good thing for Clinton that Obamacare hasn't passed yet.
But seriously.... is there anyone out there who believes that this socialized medicine scheme will apply to anyone who gets to vote on it?
Vanderbilt University Issues Statement On Muslim Speaker's Remark:
By E. Thomas Wood Vanderbilt University last night moved to distance itself from the controversy over a statement made by its Muslim chaplain last week at a campus event. At a forum entitled "Common Ground: Being Muslim in the Military" on Jan. 25, Chaplain Awadh A. Binhazim responded to a question from student Devin Saucier, vice president of the V.U. chapter of conservative group Youth for Western Civilization, by saying he would have to "go with what Islam teaches" regarding the imposition of capital punishment on practicing homosexuals.
For those of you who are fans of Saul Alinsky's "Rules For Radicals", Mr. Saucier employed Rules # 4, 5, and 6. 4. Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. 5. Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. 6. A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.
Several Islamic countries, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, are known to have put people to death for homosexual activity.
After accounts of the event and YouTube footage of Binhazim's comment led to widespread criticism on both conservative and gay-oriented blogs, the university put out a statement Monday evening noting that the event was part of its "Project Dialogue," a series meant to bring "diverse viewpoints" to campus.
Well, if diversity was the goal, they met it.
"No view expressed at a Project Dialogue or similar campus forum should be construed as being endorsed by Vanderbilt," the statement said. "The university is dedicated to the free exchange of ideas. It is the belief of the university community that free discussion of ideas can lead to resolution and reconciliation." The statement went on to reaffirm V.U.'s commitment both to free speech and to non-discrimination.
In the words of Glenn Reynolds, "Luckily, he (Binzahim) was Muslim, not Baptist, so it won’t be a big national scandal." Seriously. This statement was made on January 25th. The Nashville paper published this account of the frenzied back-pedaling on February 1st. At times like this, I wish Keith Olbermann had been there.
"There has been some confusion as to Binhazim's role at Vanderbilt," the statement concluded. "He is the Muslim chaplain at Vanderbilt, a volunteer position. He is not a professor of Islam and is not associated with Vanderbilt University Divinity School. He has adjunct associate professor status at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in pathology. This position, which carries no teaching or research responsibilities, is also unpaid."
It sounds like they just let him hang out at Vanderbilt, doesn't it?
Binhazim is employed as a professor of pathology at Meharry Medical College.
A busy man, Mr. Binhazim. Back to Glenn Reynold's point about the harsh and savage criticism (justly) leveled against Baptists, vs. the free pass given to Muslims on this issue..... If a political, military, or celebrity spokesperson of the fundamentalist Protestant persuasion held these beliefs, he would be unable to speak in public on any issue without having to take questions about his belief that gays and lesbians should be executed. And yet with the Muslim faith, we agree to accept it as part of their culture. Why do our newspaper and TV journalists give them a free pass on this?
Picture of the execution of two gay Iranian teenagers came from here.
