Bloodthirsty Liberal

Because we need more secularism, right?

The Catholic media is up in arms over comments President Obama made during a speech while in Northern Ireland for the G8 summit. Obama made what is described as “an alarming call for an end to Catholic education,” in spite of the fact that it is considered “a critical component of the Church.”

In front of an audience of about 2,000 young people, including many Catholics, Obama claimed that Catholic education divides people and blocks peace, according to the Scottish Catholic Observer.

“If towns remain divided—if Catholics have their schools and buildings and Protestants have theirs, if we can’t see ourselves in one another and fear or resentment are allowed to harden—that too encourages division and discourages cooperation,” Obama said.

I’ve never even visited Ireland, largely because they currently have far too much Jew hatred in their culture, but I believe that Catholicism is a force for good in the world and that Obama is way, way, way out of line. He has no reason to comment on the choice of the Catholic parents in Ireland. It is flat-out none of his business.

- Aggie

I’m so proud:

In the hallowed halls of Columbia University, a nest of ex-cons — who have served time for murder, attempted murder, robbery and assault — hold court on their unique brand of social justice for admiring students enrolled in the school’s social work program, a FoxNews.com investigation has found.

The ex-cons work for or with the Criminal Justice Initiative (CJI), co-founded in 2009 by former Weather Underground operative and Columbia adjunct professor Kathy Boudin, who pleaded guilty to felony murder for her role in an infamous 1981 armed robbery that left two police officers and a security guard dead. And while that case was well-publicized, the group is hardly upfront about the “practical experience” of Boudin and others associated with the CJI.

A description on the program’s website says it is “situated inside” Columbia, and a part of the school’s “Social Intervention Group,” a research center within the Columbia University School of Social Work. It lists among its goals helping to forge a solution for “a central social crisis of our time, mass incarceration.” The program holds events and conducts research as part of “an interdisciplinary project built around a model of community collaboration” that “seeks to increase the number of skilled practitioners, policy-makers and researchers who can advance the fields of re-entry and incarceration across all disciplines.”

…

Outside of a vague reference to Boudin and Cheryl Wilkins being “part of a community of people who have returned from prison,” there is no information about their criminal pasts. Boudin’s school directory bio, for example, makes no mention of her time in prison. Several other CJI faculty, program members and associates have similarly disturbing backgrounds.

Wilkins, co-director of the CJI, is listed in the Columbia School of Social Work adjunct faculty directory as a “research scientist” and “Associate Director for the Criminal Justice Initiative. She was convicted for her role in a 1996 gunpoint hijacking of a Federal Express truck in Harlem, in which she served as the getaway driver. Wilkins served a 12-year sentence for robbery and assault at Bayview Correctional Facility in Manhattan.

But Wilkins’ school biography page makes no mention of her time in jail.

…

Denise Blackwell, a “research assistant” under the Social Intervention Group, the parent/umbrella group of the Criminal Justice Initiative, was paroled in 2003 after serving 10 years in prison on an attempted second-degree murder conviction for her role in a Brooklyn holdup in which three drug dealers were killed. According to reports of her 1991 arrest, Blackwell knew the three men and “orchestrated” the robbery.

…

Blackwell’s son, Mack Moton, who was 15 at the time, was tried as an adult and convicted of second-degree murder. He was sentenced to 32 years to life, and is being held in Sing Sing Correctional Facility, in Ossining, N.Y.

…

Mika’il DeVeaux was one of the keynote speakers for the CJI’s “Removing the Bars” Conference in 2012. But his bio in the conference program failed to mention the 24-year stint he served in Westchester County for second-degree murder and his subsequent parole in 2003, or that he’s co-director of a non-profit with Boudin called Citizens Against Recidivism. Instead, the bio simply says DeVeaux “has more than three decades of experience working with men incarcerated in New York State maximum security prisons and many who have been released following periods of confinement.”

And of course:

Boudin was a member of radical leftist group the Weather Underground, which was responsible for numerous bombings in the 1960s and 1970s, including ones at the Pentagon, Capitol Building and New York’s police headquarters. The group was co-founded by William Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn, who themselves went on to long careers in academia in Chicago. The couple was appointed the legal guardians of Boudin’s son while she was in prison and has been linked to the early days of President Obama’s political career.

Give me neocons over ex-cons any day.

PS: And this doesn’t even mention the despicable antisemites lodged in Morningside Heights.

Congratulations, Mr. President, we know how much this meant to you:

Berlin wasn’t reached in a day, sir. Just ask General Eisenhower. Like a salmon swimming upstream to spawn, you have doggedly pursued this photo op (to mix metaphors).

Maybe now you can move on in your life. At least to other photogenic sites!

Glad to see you’re not hung up on that graven image neurosis, sir.

PS:

Okay, I’m done.

FBI Director, Mueller, acknowledges using drones to watch the US

Robert Mueller, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, confirmed to lawmakers that the FBI owns several unmanned aerial vehicles, but has not adopted any strict policies or guidelines yet to govern the use of the controversial aircraft.
“Does the FBI use drones for surveillance on US soil?” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) asked Mr Mueller during an oversight hearing on Capitol Hill Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“Yes,” Mueller responded bluntly, adding that the FBI’s operation of drones is “very seldom.”

Asked by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California) to elaborate, Mueller added, “It’s very seldom used and generally used in a particular incident where you need the capability.” Earlier in the morning, however, Mueller said that the agency was only now working to establish set rules for the drone program.

This country reminds me of one of those old movies where a character is in an imposing room in a large castle, and the portraits on the walls follow him with their eyeballs. Very, very creepy and oddly humorous.

- Aggie

I wondered why such a grizzled old hag of a has-been like Alice Walker was doing trying to clutch the stylish and fashionable coat-tails of the talented and lovely (and hot!) Alicia Keys. One choice would be envy.

But I should have known the true cause: pure greed.

American writer Alice Walker, who has long made clear her antipathy toward the state of Israel, “has taken her extreme and hostile views to a shocking new level” in her latest book of meditations on life and her personal activism, according to a review of the book by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

Walker’s “The Cushion in the Road” devotes 80 pages to fervently anti-Jewish ideas, explicit comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany.

The 12 essays of the section, titled “On Palestine,” which make up a quarter of the book, are rife with comparisons of Israelis to Nazis, denigrations of Judaism and Jews, and statements suggesting that Israel should cease to exist as a Jewish state. Walker’s book also attempts to justify terrorism against Israeli civilians, claiming that the “oppressed” Palestinians should not be blamed for carrying out suicide bombings.

…

Walker, a Pulitzer Prize-winning African-American writer, essayist and poet, has a long history of biased statements against the Jewish state. In June 2012 she refused to allow an Israeli company to publish a Hebrew edition of her classic novel, “The Color Purple,” in protest of what she described as Israel’s “apartheid” policies and “persecution of the Palestinian people.” Most recently, Walker wrote a letter calling on the singer-songwriter Alicia Keys to cancel her upcoming July 4th concert appearance in Tel Aviv in protest of Israel’s policies.

To think that we played into her avaricious hands, giving her pub for her hateful screed. All she wanted, like Goebbels before her, was to manage propaganda. No wonder she won a Pulitzer: that’s pretty shrewd. Isn’t it funny (?) how all of the Jew-hating tropes are actually practiced by the Jew-haters themselves?

LEst you think that language a little strong:

Speaking of Black churches whose leaders recount Biblical stories regarding Jewish triumphs, Walker writes, “It amazes me, in these churches, that there is no discussion of the fact that the other behavior we learned about in the Bible stories: the rapes, the murders, the pillaging, the enslavement of the conquered, the confiscation of land, the brutal domination and colonization of all ‘others’ is still front and center in Israel’s behavior today.”

…

On several occasions Walker seems to indicate that the purported evils of modern-day Israel are a direct result of Jewish values, alleging that Jews behave the way they do because they believe in their “supremacy.” She suggests that Israeli settlements are motivated by the concept that “possession is nine-tenths of the law,” which she claims is a lesson she “learned from my Jewish lawyer former husband. This belief might even be enshrined in the Torah.”

Ah yes, the “Jewish lawyer” figure. I wondered when he’d loom. It’s not just Israel, it’s the Jews and their religion. And it’s not just Jews, but “Jewish lawyers”—ex-husbands, no less! Her hatred is complete; it’s come full circle. There’s something almost Biblical in that. At least Satanical. And for her sake, let’s hope profitable.

It’s one thing to say that the NSA has broken up terror operations. I get it and believe it. Unconditionally. That’s their job, and I have no reason to believe they aren’t doing it well.

But what all these claims, however true, of tragedies avoided don’t answer is why the need to download the electronic communications of everyone—everyone, without discrimination—to some super secret site in Utah. Or wherever.

The issue is not the pursuit of the guilty—for which spooks should be given the broadest liberties—but the rounding up of the innocent. Unless and until the NSA and Obama and Congress and the courts can explain how mining my metadata, and yours, and yours, and yours [300 million-plus times] constitutes “probable cause”, they are out of compliance with the 4th Amendment of the Constitution. Period.

But then, this administration is pretty cavalier about the Bill of Rights, playing fast and loose with the 2nd (gun ownership), 1st (IRS targeting of conservative groups), 5th (Lois Lerner’s post-tirade claim of freedom against self-incrimination), and 10th (state’s sovereignty) amendments.

All the amendments in the Bill of Rights were intended to protect individual citizens against the abuses of government. If that’s not grounds for “probable cause” to this regime, I don’t know what is.

Aw, the poor thing:

Tony Blair’s Muslim convert sister-in-law Lauren Booth said today she is scared of being attacked by men on public transport following the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby.

Miss Booth said that after the soldier was brutally hacked to death in Woolwich she has seen ‘grown men looking like they want to hit Muslim women’ when she is travelling in London.

The 45-year-old half-sister of Cherie Blair ventures out in traditional Islamic dress and wears a hijab head-covering.

…

‘But honestly, in the last two weeks I’ve been getting public transport and there are grown men looking like they want to hit Muslim women, and I’m a tall, white woman, I’m not easily threatened, but I have felt scared at times, so there is a change unfortunately.’

Gosh, it must be awful to be her. The only thing worse would be to be Drummer Rigby himself, what’s left of him. I hope she doesn’t lose her head in all the fear and suspicion—over the family Sunday roast!

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair said there is a ‘problem within Islam’ which allows the seeds of extremism to be sown in the wake of the killing.

Asked if he was right, Miss Booth responded: ‘Absolutely not, and I think it’s very dangerous to take a summary of a religion from a man who’s overseen the invasion of several Muslim countries, and overseen a war where a million people whom are Muslim have been killed and millions displaced, so I wouldn’t take that as a kind of basis for any information on Islam.’

Since converting to Islam, Miss Booth said her life is ‘peaceful’.
She added: ‘We say it’s a clean life, no drinking, I don’t go out to pubs, you’re more spiritual and calmer, and hopefully kinder with people, that’s what it’s all about, doing good at a community level.’

“Spiritual and calmer”… after the blood lust has been sated.

But that’s a terrible image to leave you with. Let’s see the spiritual Ms. Booth (Mrs. Ahmed?) in her calmer days, calling for the slaughter of Jews:

One works up quite an appetite calling for genocide. Good thing the impoverished Gaza is so well provisioned!

Go ahead and take a swing at her, British men. Just say your prayers first. A woman of that size with that much hatred can kick your arse from Dulwich to Dorset.

Hey, don’t blame me:

Hillary Clinton’s return to the living was almost flawless. Almost.

She unveiled her Twitter account (young and with-it), and referred knowingly to the pantsuit (mature and self-aware). She didn’t look tan (that would be too “Real Housewives of New Jersey”) but seemed rested (that’s what almost six months of downtime will do for you) and ready (returning to her animating issues of girls and early childhood through her Too Small to Fail initiative). She picked a rocking photo (dark shades, in the bulkhead seat of her secretary of state airplane, thumbing her BlackBerry).

“Young and with it… rocking photo.” Yeah, she’s practically groovy. Nothing’s more young and with it, more rocking, than a clunky brooch.

But as big a fan as Margaret Carlson is, she does find fault with the sexy sexagenarian (65 to be exact). No, not BENGHAZI, which fatal snafu warrants not even a mention. The other B: Bill.

Her re-emergence had just one flaw. She didn’t keep her dog on the porch, a mistake so serious it could be disqualifying. She, of all people, knows how good Bill Clinton can be, and how bad. So why did she choose to revive her brand during the weeklong annual celebration of his Global Initiative, surrounded by his cast and on his turf?

…

It was inevitable that Bill Clinton was going to be heady with all the attention last week, and thus bound to make his own headlines. One of the former president’s weaknesses is to love the one he’s with. He got carried away: Appearing at an event with his wife’s nemesis, Senator John McCain of Arizona, the former president volunteered that President Barack Obama looked like a “wuss” and a “fool,” and was being “lame” with his inaction on Syria.

…

Clearly, before returning to prime time, Hillary Clinton needs not only to manage expectations but also to show she can manage her husband, a manipulation that makes dealing with Vladimir Putin look easy by comparison. On balance, Bill Clinton has been very good for Hillary. Sexist though it may be to say, he did bring her to the party. She might have become governor of Arkansas and president in a fairer world, but fair politics is not.

Why would she have been governor of Arkansas? She never would have set foot in that God-forsaken state (in her view) were it not for Bill. She never won office (or even ran for one) until after gaining fame standing by her man. Politically, she was born on third base (US Senator from New York, followed by US Secretary of State); what’s unfair about that?

But did you know that Bill called Barack lame? A wuss and a fool? He didn’t, exactly, but he sure did:

Clinton said a president must look beyond public and congressional reluctance to military intervention for the sake of national security and to save lives.

“You just think how lame you’d be … suppose I had let a million people, two million people be refugees out of Kosovo, a couple hundred thousand people die, and they say, ‘You could have stopped this by dropping a few bombs. Why didn’t you do it?’ And I say, ‘because the House of Representatives voted 75 percent against it?’” Clinton said. “You look like a total wuss, and you would be.”

Responding to a question from McCain about how he views Obama’s Syria policy, Clinton said that any president who avoids a military intervention in order to satisfy short-term political objectives would come to regret it in the end.

“If you refuse to act and you cause a calamity, the one thing you cannot say when all the eggs have been broken is, ‘Oh my god, two years ago there was a poll that said 80 percent of you were against it.’ You look like a total fool,” Clinton said.

We don’t have to rehash 2008, PUMA, and all that stuff—much as we’d like to. Let Bill Clinton do it for us.

But Hillary ’16? Seriously?

Bill Clinton didn’t help her become president in 2008, and he won’t be much help in 2016, except as a warm, supportive presence who, in our imagination, will inhabit the East Wing as a benign elder statesman, giving gentle advice only when prodded.

Alas, there’s no sign he would go along with the script, and any ad-libbing would hurt. We elect one person, not two, Nancy Reagan and Hillary Clinton’s high White House profiles notwithstanding. Bill Clinton is now beloved — achieving a comeback no one thought possible. If he meddles in his wife’s 2016 campaign the way he did in 2008, he could lose his hard-won halo. If she lets him meddle, she will go down with him.

He will always loom. What didn’t drive them apart made their marriage stronger. But one thing he hasn’t learned is how to stand by his woman without standing in her way, blocking our view.

So thank you, Bill, for all you’ve done. Now for all womankind, and for the sake of the TBD at the end of Hillary’s Twitter profile, could you go where no man has gone before, except perhaps Denis Thatcher, and take one step back and to the side?

She can’t do this with you.

Their marriage is “stronger”? Oh, brother. Carlson imagines a Hillary that never was and asks “why not?” We look at a Hillary that really was and ask “why Chris, why Sean, why Glen, why Tyrone?”

President Obama (then Candidate Obama) in 2008.

So, if somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can — it’s just that it will bankrupt them, because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.

President Obama today:

Yes, technologically unlocked oil and gas has created an energy revolution and industrial bright spot in the otherwise dim Obama era. By 2020, according to Yergin, shale gas alone is expected to support 4 million jobs (versus 1.7 million today). And the United States is expected to surpass Saudi Arabia as the world’s leading oil exporter, according to the International Energy Agency. Natural gas, meanwhile, is on course to overtake coal as the second largest source of energy worldwide by 2025. …

That’s why the surging supply of natural gas, the least carbon-intensive of traditional energy sources, is welcomed by all except a deep-ecology fringe. Natural gas produces half as much carbon as coal and a third the quantity of nitrogen oxides. The more prevalent the use of natural gas, the cleaner the air across America.

Expanded oil and gas production benefits state and local government as well. North Dakota, which welcomed the industry’s new technologies, saw its taxable sales and purchases jump nearly one-third in 2012 compared to the year before. Oil and gas tax receipts for the current biennium came in at $3.8 billion, leaving the Roughrider State with a budget surplus of $1.6 billion.

Under this brave man’s leadership, America stands poised to depose Saudi Arabia as world’s leading producer of greenhouse fuels. And we produce more natural gas than Congress does on three-bean chili day at the Capitol commissary. Good jobs for American workers have followed—all at the expense of coal, as he promised.

Today, for the first time in my adult life, I am proud of this president.

PS: Can you believe the ingrates in North Dakota voted for Romney over Obama by 58%-38%? Racist bastards.

This appeared over the Father’s Day weekend, and almost passed by without my notice.

But you’ll thank me for bringing it to yours:

My father died three years ago. For months after his death, I had a recurring dream in which my entire family, my mother, siblings, aunts and uncles were together for a crawfish boil, Cajun and Vietnamese style. Amid the revelry and drone of the back-porch fans, I would see my father. But my euphoria would vanish as I realized that he, looking lost and out of place, was dead and should not be there.

Born in 1927 in Hue, Vietnam, my father took part in the nationalist resistance against the French occupation, serving in a reconnaissance unit. During one mission a bomb exploded, killing many. My father was taken prisoner and his parents were informed that he was MIA. For a while he was even mistakenly declared dead, and a sheet of paper commemorating his ultimate sacrifice for the country is one of the few possessions that have followed us over the years.

After he was released, my father moved to Saigon. He pursued many avenues to earn a living, and eventually founded a successful import and export company, trading auto parts. During the late 1950s and 1960s, he traveled to France, Holland and around Asia for work and pleasure.

I have pictures of him from this period—white shirt, sleeves rolled up, standing next to the Eiffel Tower; or in a business suit, leaning against a car, trench coat over one arm, a cigarette casually dangling from his lips. Upon my arrival, his fifth daughter, in the early 1970s, my father was at the peak of his career, happily married with six children, a generous sponsor to many friends and relatives.

In 1975, the civil war in Vietnam ended. Under the new regime, my parents were classified as capitalists. Overnight, the auto-parts company was shut down. The government confiscated my parents’ home and properties, save for some personal belongings. With unconcealed bitterness, my father reminded us that he had once been lauded for his selfless dedication to the country.

I’ll let you decide whether to read the rest. It’s beautifully written, and a fascinating look back at a time we barely remember. It’s also a moral tale: the bone-crushing inhumanity of collectivism and communism versus the celebration of human liberty under capitalism. (After finally reaching America, her father relaunched his life—for the umpteenth time—and ultimately put her through college.)

But in the end, it’s a love letter from a daughter to her father. It’s best read as that.

duh.

Media outlets lately have emphasized the challenge of enticing healthy young adults to sign up for ObamaCare, “exactly the type of person insurance plans, states and the federal government are counting on to make health reform work,” as the L.A. Times put it. These pieces are useful as far as they go, but miss a key point that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito managed to convey in many fewer words during last year’s Supreme Court argument on ObamaCare.

Mr. Alito pointed out that young, healthy adults today spend an average of $854 a year on health care. ObamaCare would require them to buy insurance policies expected to cost roughly $5,800. The law, then, isn’t just asking them to pay for “the services that they are going to consume,” he added. “The mandate is forcing these people to provide a huge subsidy to the insurance companies . . . to subsidize services that will be received by somebody else.”

Since he puts it that way, why would they sign up for ObamaCare, especially since the alleged penalties will be negligible and likely unenforced?

The writer then explains how his colleagues refuse to understand this – exactly how. It is but another peek into the “mind” of “the profession of journalism”. Have coffee first.

- Aggie

Just ask the MSM

They’re still a minority, but an increasing number of Americans say economic conditions right now are good, according to a new national poll.

But a CNN/ORC International survey released Wednesday morning also indicates that a plurality of the public says they are personally worse off than they were a year ago.

Thirty-five percent of those questioned in the poll say that economic conditions in the country right now are “very” or “somewhat” good. There has been a slow, steady rise in CNN polling on the percentage who say things are good right now, from 26% in December to 31% in March, 33% in May and 35% now.

But nearly two-thirds say they currently rate the economy as poor. And that may help explain, on a personal level, why 44% of Americans say their financial situation is worse today than it was a year ago. Thirty-six percent say they are better off and one in five say their personal finances are about the same. The numbers are little changed from a CNN poll from May of last year.

If you read that, you’ll notice that the poll indicates that the economy sucks for 2/3rds of the public. But, if you read that header on the front page of cnn, you’ll read this:
CNN Poll: A growing number of Americans – now more than one in three – say economy is good today

Isn’t that fabulous! Wait, it’s early in the morning, but I must dance!! Will you dance with me?

- Aggie