Bloodthirsty Liberal

“I said Going Rogue, not Vogue. No, not Michael Palin, Sarah Palin, the ex-governor of Alaska. Alaska.”

Surprise: Many San Francisco booksellers refusing to carry Palin’s book

“Our customers are thinking people,” said Nathan Embretson, a bookseller at Pendragon Books in Oakland. “They’re not into reading drivel.”

…

“I would expect to take a bath on it,” she said. “The job of a book buyer is to be something of a psychic. You have to know your community. I don’t want to waste a lot of money and shelf space on a book nobody wants.’

Also:

“Anything like that we wouldn’t carry,” said clerk Emily Stackhouse. “We’re a small store and it would probably gross us all out. Some things you carry because of freedom of speech, but a book like that is just gross.”

“Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press”—except in the case of stuff that is just gross.

Out of curiosity, I found the website of Pendragon Books in Oakland (dba Pegasus Books, it seems) to see what their customers do read. Here’s one of the staff picks:

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance-Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem

…

As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she’s soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead.

Yes, one sees why they have no time for “drivel”.

Hanukkah, according to Wikipedia:

“commemorates the ‘miracle of the container of oil’. According to the Talmud, at the re-dedication following the victory of the Maccabees over the Seleucid Empire, there was only enough consecrated olive oil to fuel the eternal flame in the Temple for one day. Miraculously, the oil burned for eight days, which was the length of time it took to press, prepare and consecrate fresh olive oil.”

At the White House this year, the oil isn’t going to last quite that long [Hat Tip reader Judi]:

The White House’s forthcoming state dinner with the Prime Minister of India is expected to be larger than those of President Barack Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush. But another upcoming White House event will be smaller than in years past: The White House’s annual Hanukkah party.

The guest list is expected to be shrunk by more than half, according to the Jerusalem Post. “Though several Jewish leaders expressed understanding for the economic and other reasons behind the cut, they acknowledged that it would likely help feed feelings in some quarters of the American Jewish community that the White House is giving them the cold shoulder.”

The move comes on the heels of Obama’s cancellation of an appearance before the General Assembly of North American Jewish Federations last week.

The White House’s decision is likely a response to tough economic times and a desire to keep the holiday festivities reasonable.

Hey, we understand. Everybody’s playing less golf these days, going out on fewer “date nights”. Well, almost everybody.

I wonder who this was intended to offend more, Jews or oil drilling advocates. If Sarah Palin were president, we’d have enough oil to light a billion menorahs for eight, nine, ten days—however long you want. And our policy toward Israel would be a whole lot friendlier.

How low can he go?

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows that 27% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-one percent (41%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -14 (see trends).

Today’s results match the lowest Approval Index rating yet recorded for this President and it’s the third straight day at -14. Prior to these three days, Obama’s ratings had fallen to -14 on only one day since taking office.

The Presidential Approval Index is calculated by subtracting the number who Strongly Disapprove from the number who Strongly Approve. It is updated daily at 9:30 a.m. Eastern (sign up for free daily e-mail update). Updates are also available on Twitter and Facebook.

Overall, 47% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President’s performance. Fifty-two percent (52%) now disapprove.

Pelosi can go lower:

Congressional leaders don’t fare so well. Most voters have an unfavorable opinion of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and 47% say the same about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Republican leaders have lower unfavorable ratings because they are not as well known.

Let’s all pitch in and buy Obama some scuba gear for Christmas.

- Aggie

Wow

California has the second highest tax rate in the nation, next to NY, making them the poster child for why high taxes and liberal programs fail.

Angry students at the Davis, California, branch of the University of California refused to vacate the school’s administration building Thursday evening in a show of defiance and protest over a 32-percent undergraduate tuition hike instituted by the California Board of Regents earlier in the day.

About 50 students remained in the building, which was supposed to close by 5 p.m. PT (8 p.m. ET), UC Davis spokeswoman Claudia Morain told CNN. At one point, as many as 150 students were at the building protesting the tuition increase, she said. She said she hopes campus police can resolve the issue without the need to make arrests.

CNN affiliate KCRA captured footage of students outside the building shouting, “Who’s university? Our university!”

Nearly 400 miles south and hours earlier, hundreds of students marched and chanted against the increase while outside the UCLA building in Los Angeles where regents met to vote on the hike.

Protesting students and others say the increased tuition will hurt working and middle-class students who benefit from state-funded education. But officials argue that a fee increase and deep cuts in school spending are necessary because of a persistent budget crisis that has forced reductions across California’s state government.

“We’re fired up. Can’t take it no more,” students chanted as they marched and waved signs at UCLA. “Education only for the rich,” one sign read. [They seem to need remedial English. - Aggie]

After the vote, students rushed to the parking decks to stage a sit-in to block regents’ vehicles from leaving. Campus police and California Highway Patrol officers in riot gear stood nearby.

As one regent member walked out, students surrounded his path shouted, “Shame on you, shame on you.”

If you go to the link and watch the video, the numbers don’t seem to add up. Perhaps the journalists have it wrong? In any case, the students are very upset. They want a low cost or free tuition but the state is falling apart. Interestingly, the students interviewed were either first or second generation Americans.

On the one hand, the citizens of California wanted to provide free or low cost in-state tuition. On the other hand, they also wanted to provide a myriad of other programs, and jacked up taxes into the stratosphere to do so. They have created perks that residents of other states can only dream of. For example, if you purchase a home in the Golden State, your taxes are tied to the value of the home at the time of purchase. This is a great deal for the elderly, but it means that the state can’t collect as much on real estate taxes as most homes are worth. If you two people live in identical, side-by-side homes, one purchased in 1985, the other in 2007, the tax bills are radically different. This is a perk for some people, but others pay disproportionately. What’s a middle-class tax payer to do?

Dumb political decisions have consequences. It doesn’t matter if the decisions were voted in primarily by Democrats or Republicans, they play out over the years. California decided to control the growth of real estate taxes, and it contributed to the school crisis, although there are other factors at play. Now they have the entertaining sit-ins and student rallies. Buy some popcorn and enjoy.

- Aggie

Poor US

Charles Krauthammer tries to explain reality to the Obama White House regarding terrorism. The government is almost biblical in its failure to bring honesty to the situation. Let’s cover the basics.

Propaganda:

For late-19th-century anarchists, terrorism was the “propaganda of the deed.” And the most successful propaganda-by-deed in history was 9/11 — not just the most destructive, but the most spectacular and telegenic.

And now its self-proclaimed architect, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, has been given by the Obama administration a civilian trial in New York. Just as the memory fades, 9/11 has been granted a second life — and KSM, a second act: “9/11, The Director’s Cut,” narration by KSM.

Hypocrisy:

So why is Attorney General Eric Holder doing this? Ostensibly, to demonstrate to the world the superiority of our system where the rule of law and the fair trial reign.

Really? What happens if KSM (and his co-defendants) “do not get convicted,” asked Senate Judiciary Committee member Herb Kohl. “Failure is not an option,” replied Holder. Not an option? Doesn’t the presumption of innocence, er, presume that prosecutorial failure — acquittal, hung jury — is an option? By undermining that presumption, Holder is undermining the fairness of the trial, the demonstration of which is the alleged rationale for putting on this show in the first place.

Moreover, everyone knows that whatever the outcome of the trial, KSM will never walk free. He will spend the rest of his natural life in U.S. custody. Which makes the proceedings a farcical show trial from the very beginning.

Reckless:

Apart from the fact that any such trial will be a security nightmare and a terror threat to New York — what better propaganda-by-deed than blowing up the entire courtroom, making KSM a martyr and making the judge, jury and spectators into fresh victims? — it will endanger U.S. security. Civilian courts with broad rights of cross-examination and discovery give terrorists access to crucial information about intelligence sources and methods.

That’s precisely what happened during the civilian New York trial of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers. The prosecution was forced to turn over to the defense a list of two hundred unindicted co-conspirators, including the name Osama bin Laden. “Within ten days, a copy of that list reached bin Laden in Khartoum,” wrote former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, the presiding judge at that trial, “letting him know that his connection to that case had been discovered.”

Unethical:

Finally, there’s the moral logic. It’s not as if Holder opposes military commissions on principle. On the same day he sent KSM to a civilian trial in New York, Holder announced he was sending Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, mastermind of the attack on the USS Cole, to a military tribunal.

Bearing False Witness:

…Holder tried to make the case that he chose a civilian New York trial as a more likely venue for securing a conviction. An absurdity: By the time Obama came to office, KSM was ready to go before a military commission, plead guilty and be executed. It’s Obama who blocked a process that would have yielded the swiftest and most certain justice.

Indeed, the perfect justice. Whenever a jihadist volunteers for martyrdom, we should grant his wish. Instead, this one, the most murderous and unrepentant of all, gets to dance and declaim at the scene of his crime.

Holder himself told The Washington Post that the coming New York trial will be “the trial of the century.” The last such was the trial of O.J. Simpson.

As every young student eventually discovers, failure to study and learn from past mistakes leads to more failure. This is the most arrogant administration of my lifetime. They seem to have a flat learning curve. They are obsessed with world opinion, with “what will the neighbors think?” I wonder if Mr. Holder asked himself this question: What will world opinion be if KSM is acquitted but remains in US custody? Imagine the headlines in Europe!

- Aggie

Well, maybe not, but that’s next:

Following are excerpts from an interview with Tawfiq Tirawi, member of the Fatah Central Committee, which aired on Abu Dhabi TV on November 15, 2009.

…

I want to make one thing known to the whole world: Israel is doing one of the most dangerous things possible. It seeks to lead Palestinian society to [sexual] harassment, in order to turn it into a social phenomenon that will destroy Palestinian society.

Interviewer: What exactly do you mean? Could you clarify this?

Tawfiz Tirawi: What I mean is that [Israel] recruits some lowlife, and sends him with instructions to harass his sister or his mother. This is not done in order to obtain information, but in order to destroy the infrastructure of Palestinian society.

From my observations about Palestinian society, this nefarious plan is working to perfection. Well done, Israel!

Have at it, boys.

Ann Bayevsky of UN Watch thrown out; UN lies about it to media

What a weird, weird organization.

The United Nations detained an outspoken critic and booted her from its New York headquarters in what the woman, a human rights watchdog, is calling an effort to silence her opposition to the world body.

Anne Bayefsky claims that as retaliation for giving a two-minute impromptu speech defending Israel, her 25-year career of monitoring the U.N. is now in jeopardy — likely to be placed in the hands of a committee chaired by the genocidal regime in Sudan.

Bayefsky gets special access to U.N. meetings in her capacity as the director of a non-governmental organization, the Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust at New York’s Touro College.

But the longtime U.N. observer has found herself in what she calls a “Kafkaesque” gray zone, where the U.N. confiscated her credentials, then denied to reporters that her access had been blocked.

“This is no accident,” she told FoxNews.com, arguing that she is being denied access to vital meetings concerning her prime focus: defending Israel. “This is keeping [the U.N.’s] major critic absent during the heart of the year.”

Following a vote Nov. 5 at the U.N. General Assembly, a microphone was set up outside the UNGA chamber for delegates to tout their endorsement of the controversial Goldstone Report, which accuses Israel of committing war crimes during its invasion of Gaza last winter.

Without an invitation, Bayefsky approached the empty podium to offer what she thought would be a counter-balance to speeches from the Libyan president of the UNGA and the Palestinian observer, who both supported the resolution.

“I didn’t expect that there would be a problem at all,” said Bayefsky, who noted that she and other NGOs have spoken there in the past without incident. (Archived U.N. video shows an official from the NGO Human Rights Watch speaking in praise of the U.N. at the same podium in May 2007.)

Bayefsky blasted the Goldstone Report and called the U.N. a “laughingstock” for singling out Israel and ignoring human rights violations committed by the terrorist organization Hamas against Israeli and Palestinian civilians during the three-week campaign in December and January.

“This is a resolution that purports to be evenhanded; it is anything but,” she said of the document approved by the UNGA. “It is a travesty — it calls for accountability, and in fact what we see instead is impunity for the Palestinian side.”

Soon after she finished speaking, Bayefsky was swarmed by four U.N. security guards, who brought her to their security office, confiscated her NGO pass and kicked her out of the building, she said.

But the U.N. told reporters a different story at a press conference Tuesday — claiming that there has been no change in status for Bayefsky, even as she continues to sit in limbo.

“The credentials of her organization are not changed at this stage,” said Farhan Haq, spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. “It’s possible in the future that there could be a review, but at this stage there’s been no removal of credentials from that NGO or from Ms. Bayefsky.”

U.N. security officials became angered with Bayefsky after they realized she had brought an assistant to the U.N. proceedings without getting him a personal pass — a breach of protocol that led to a full-fledged investigation by the security office.

But Bayefsky says that the content of her speech is what rubbed U.N. officials the wrong way. She says supporters of the Goldstone report “are going to do everything in their power to silence anyone who gets in their way.”

Following her speech, the Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, was informed that a pro-Israel NGO had spoken after him, and reportedly asked a member of the press, “Did we capture them?”

Later, as she pleaded her case before being forcibly removed from the General Assembly building, a security official told Bayefsky that “the Palestinian ambassador is very upset at the statement you made,” she told FoxNews.com.

U.N. officials denied that politics had anything to do with their handling of Bayefsky, and said it was purely an issue of protocol.

“She came to the microphone unannounced, unauthorized and unwarranted. It’s so simple,” said Jean-Victor Nkolo, a spokesman for the president of the General Assembly. “It’s nothing personal against Ms. Bayefsky at all. But it’s just that this cannot be allowed.”

Though her speech was broadcast live online, the footage was removed from the main proceedings made available by the U.N. on its Web site. Video of Bayefsky’s two-minute talk, which first streamed live, has been posted online on YouTube.

I deeply resent my tax dollars going to fund that wacko organization.

- Aggie

He’s losing his popularity or they wouldn’t be reporting this

As experts debate the potential speed of the US recovery, one figure looms large but is often overlooked: nearly 1 in 5 Americans is either out of work or under-employed.

According to the government’s broadest measure of unemployment, some 17.5 percent are either without a job entirely or underemployed. The so-called U-6 number is at the highest rate since becoming an official labor statistic in 1994.

The number dwarfs the statistic most people pay attention to-the U-3 rate-which most recently showed unemployment at 10.2 percent for March, the highest it has been since June 1983.

The difference is that what is traditionally referred to as the “unemployment rate” only measures those out of work who are still looking for jobs. Discouraged workers who have quit trying to find a job, as well as those working part-time but looking for full-time work or who are otherwise underemployed, count in the U-6 rate.

With such a large portion of Americans experiencing employment struggles, economists worry that an extended period of slow or flat growth lies ahead.

“To me there’s no easy solution here,” says Michael Pento, chief economist at Delta Global Advisors. “Unless you create another bubble in which the economy can create jobs, then you’re not going to have growth. That’s the sad truth.”

Pento warns that forecasts of a double-dip (”W”) or a straight up (”V”) recovery both could be too optimistic given the jobs situation.

Instead, he believes the economy could flatline (or “L”) for an extended period as small businesses struggle to grow and consequently rehire the workers that have been furloughed as the U-3 unemployment rate has doubled since March 2008.

Hey! I know what we can do! Let’s raise taxes on businesses! Let’s particularly go after small businesses. I’m sure that will help.

Elections have consequences kidz. When you all lined up to vote for the Messiah, you were voting to make your future career, whatever it is you dreamt about as you slogged through college, a non-starter. Unless you dreamt of working for ACORN, that is.

- Aggie

What if they held a summit on world hunger—and nobody brought refreshments?

It would be a UN operation, you can bet on that:

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, blamed for plunging his people into starvation, used his platform as Tuesday’s opening speaker at the U.N. anti-hunger summit to decry what he called his neocolonialist foes.

Another longtime African strongman, Moammar Gadhafi, held another nightly soiree at a villa in the Italian capital in the company of hundreds of young ladies selected by a “hostess” agency.

Tunisia’s first lady and her bodyguards blocked traffic on roads leading to Via Condotti, a glamorous street of designer boutiques near the Spanish Steps. Rome daily Il Messaggero ran a photo of Leila Zine in front of luxury jewelry store Bulgari.

The images bolstered criticism that the summit called by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization is long on rhetoric and extravagance and short on solutions for the world’s 1 billion hungry.

The meeting was branded a failure within a couple of hours of its start after the 192 participating countries unanimously rebuffed the United Nations’ appeal for commitments of billions of dollars in yearly aid to develop agriculture in poor nations.

None of the leaders of the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations attended except for Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi.

So the UN organized an anti-hunger summit where one dictator wasted time blaming colonialism, despite 30 years of independence and iron-fisted rule, and another dictator partied with hookers.

And nobody bothered to see if the sugar daddies were going to attend, and no money was committed to feed the hungry.

Yep, sounds like a UN fustercluck to me.

How come global warming went away?

There’s a general rule of life, the KISS rule: Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Liberals never follow it. So, to them the fact that the earth is refusing to comply with their demented notion of global-warming-climate-change! means that the earth is wrong. Because the default position is that they are right. Always. If you disagree, you’re stupid, Stupid.

Global warming appears to have stalled. Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years. Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others explain it through ocean currents.

At least the weather in Copenhagen is likely to be cooperating. The Danish Meteorological Institute predicts that temperatures in December, when the city will host the United Nations Climate Change Conference, will be one degree above the long-term average.

Otherwise, however, not much is happening with global warming at the moment. The Earth’s average temperatures have stopped climbing since the beginning of the millennium, and it even looks as though global warming could come to a standstill this year.

Ironically, climate change appears to have stalled in the run-up to the upcoming world summit in the Danish capital, where thousands of politicians, bureaucrats, scientists, business leaders and environmental activists plan to negotiate a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Billions of euros are at stake in the negotiations.

Reached a Plateau

The planet’s temperature curve rose sharply for almost 30 years, as global temperatures increased by an average of 0.7 degrees Celsius (1.25 degrees Fahrenheit) from the 1970s to the late 1990s. “At present, however, the warming is taking a break,” confirms meteorologist Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in the northern German city of Kiel. Latif, one of Germany’s best-known climatologists, says that the temperature curve has reached a plateau. “There can be no argument about that,” he says. “We have to face that fact.”

Bummer. I love a good catastrophe. I love pouring money down the toilet to avert a most excellent catastrophe. What will happen if the public decides that global warming is nonsense?

- Aggie