essential Q=>MT @RBPundit@MiriamGoderich! Read statement RE: Obama's bio. Where did you come up w/tidbit (in 1991) Obama was born in Kenya? sayeth Prudy15 hours ago
UPDATE: Ok, so Barack Obama has finally come out and told the world what we knew he has been hiding all along: he supports gay marriage. Guess his team did some flash polling and focus grouping over the past couple days to find he can apparently live without the homophobic black vote in November—or they will have no where else to go.
But according to an MSNBC contributor, you’re racist if you think blacks are homophobic. See her rant here.
On NBC political director Chuck Todd’s show, The Daily Rundown, his panel briefly discussed the oddity of having Joe Biden come out over the weekend in favor of gay marriage and then having the White House scramble to make it clear that is Biden’s opinion, not Obama’s position. (Todd and his panel didn’t mention the coming out of Obama’s Secretary of Education Arne Duncan this morning, thus setting up the Obama campaign strategy of surrounding himself with pro-gay marriage personnel while he can claim to be sympathetic to the issue but yet “still evolving.” What a coward!)
Todd asks his panelists (Celinda Lake, Democratic pollster; Michael Steele, former GOP Party Chairman; and Dan Balz, Washington Post liberal) why Obama won’t just come out in favor of gay marriage. The unified panel opinion may surprise you—or at least seem racist to you, even though they don’t blink an eye in saying it:
While these same people and their peers frequently deem anyone who opposes gay marriage to be “homophobic,” they apparently have absolutely no problem accepting the widespread opposition to gay marriage in the black community.
To not even elaborate on the reason why the black community is the primary cause for Obama’s phony posturing smacks of…paternalism. While they bash religious communities and redneck regions for disapproving of gay marriage, they give the black community a complete pass. It’s as if they think the black community is simply not ready to be held to the same standards as whites. Do they think the black community just doesn’t know any better, is incapable of meeting their elite requirements, so it’s okay to appease them? Better to pat them on the head and get their vote than to offend their homophobic sensitivities?
Why the double standard? Seems fairly racist to me.
NBC has begun running promos for its newest reality TV show, a dating game for the 1%, for the Buffett Rule eligible, called Ready for Love. And guess who is serving as the face of this slice of entertainment: none other than the National Co-Chair of the Obama 2012 Campaign, Eva Longoria.
How odd that just a couple of weeks ago when the Latina hottie appeared on Fox & Friends to promote her love of all things Obama, she made no mention that her campaign role would coincide with a high-profile run as a primetime reality game show executive producer and spokeswoman:
Longoria said that after Desperate Housewives ends, she plans to hit the road for the president’s reelection effort engaging in voter contact and outreach. “I’m one of the co-chairs for the Obama campaign,” Longoria told the Fox & Friends panel. “So I’m going to be really dedicating a large amount of my time going to the swing states.”
In previous interviews about the show, Longoria has claimed that she won’t be on-air, so it makes it a very odd choice that NBC’s entire promo for the show prominently features her.
Poor old Guilianna and Bill Rancic, the supposed real hosts of the show, are apparently too homely to feature on the show’s promo pictures and videos. People would probably run screaming if the couple popped up on the show’s Facebook page. Even the three rich guys being set up are but briefly flashed on screen in the advertisement. These promos are about one person: Obama 2012 co-chair Eva Longoria.
Longoria’s bio at the show’s site gives a full account of her entire resume, but just happens to neglect to mention that she is a co-chair of a presidential campaign, and thus putting NBC in an ultra biased position.
So the question is, when will NBC give a top Romney advisor his or her own primetime TV show as well? Wouldn’t that only be fair? Hello, FEC.
Earth Day has brought another round of indoctrination for minds of mush across the land, teaching that the mean ol’ human race should be sacrificed to nature. With a straight face, the deacons of the environmental movement declare that Republicans want to pollute all water and air and raze all trees and kill all animals. There’s no sense of proportion to the environmental lobby’s propaganda.
Earlier this week, Robert H. Nelson, a University of Maryland professor of environmental policy, wrote an excellent editorial providing some key points of evidence that environmentalism has become a religion. It has turned our schools into houses of Gaia worship, demanding our children serve as altar boys and girls.
Even as it adopts secular forms, environmentalism borrows to a surprising degree from Jewish and Christian history.
For example, it says in Deuteronomy that, for those who worship false idols, God “will send disease among you … fever, infections, plague and war. … (and) will blight your crops.” In 2010, Al Gore similarly foresaw environmental sinners headed toward calamity on a biblical scale, facing rising seas, “stronger and more destructive” hurricanes and droughts “getting longer and deeper.”
In contemporary environmentalism, the largest religious debts are owed to Calvinism. It was John Calvin who wrote that God has “revealed himself and daily discloses himself in the whole workmanship of the universe.” For both Calvin and environmentalism, the natural world is the artwork of God.
Man’s role is to conserve God’s work. Thus, the rituals of environmentalism celebrate reduced consumption — lowering the heat, driving fewer miles, using less water, living in smaller houses, having fewer children. Limiting human appetites, rather than satisfying ever-growing demands, is the environmental command.
It’s time that conservatives, Republicans, Christians and like-minded individuals refuse to permit themselves to be pushed further from the public square while environmentalists turn our classrooms into Druid seminaries.
Even President Obama declared himself to be the high priest, if not the messiah, of the environmental church when he declared his coming to be the start of the waters receding and the planet healing—intoning this as if it were scripture, dictating their gospel.
It’s time that we call a religion a religion and refuse to be required to attend its state-sanctioned church services.
The financing period for the upcoming documentary FrackNation is coming to a rapid end. Tomorrow morning at 9:00am EDT, the filmmakers will get to collect their funding obtained at the crowdfunding site, Kickstarter.com. (That’s 6 am Pacific time.) They have almost reached $200,000 in pledges. We need to get them over that line…and beyond.
This FrackNation billboard reads: "THE WATER WAS ON FIRE IN 1669. Burning Springs, NY." Yahoo's Photo of the Day caption reads, in part: The feature-length film looks at the process of fracking for natural gas, demolishing much of the scaremongering surrounding the process and featuring the millions whose lives have been positively transformed by this emerging industry. “FrackNation will feature small farmers, the working class and others who are benefitting from this economic boom. We will also look at the backgrounds and motives of those opposing fracking," said McElhinney.
Hurry! This is your chance to be a producer of a movie. (Yes, a producer! Anyone donating at least $1—before the funding cut-off time—will be listed in the movie credits as an Executive Producer. Increase your contribution to a mere $20, and you will also receive a DVD copy of the documentary. There’s more goodies available for those with deeper pockets, too.)
The filmmakers wanted to nip in the bud any lefty, environmentally deranged accusations that they are just dopey tools of the oil and gas industry, so they have asked anyone working in the industry to withdraw any contributions the Kickstarter campaign. They want this movie to be 100% by ordinary citizens wanting the truth about fracking to be known.
This documentary could not be coming at a better time, just as the Left and the environmental fearmongers are kicking into high gear to put an end to a key to solving America’s energy problems and making us self-sufficient. (Don’t know much about what fracking is and why it is crucial to the economic success of this country? For some fracking facts, check out FracFocus.org, a Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and a pro-and-foe panel discussion transcribed at the Wall Street Journal.)
First, there was the lefty documentary Gasland claiming fracking makes people’s water flammable—but neglects to mention what the filmmakers wrote in a project update:
First, there are centuries old documents that state the water in many places across US was flammable because of naturally occurring methane. Second, hundreds and hundreds of people living in the places Josh Fox says were affected by fracking have told us how they always had methane in their wells they even used to bring the water to schools for science class experiments and sometimes set it on fire at parties (please DO NOT attempt doing that yourself). We decided this was very important information that the rest of the public should know about, so we put up a big billboard in New York State, where bans and moratoriums on fracking have put many families’ dreams and hopes on hold.
Joe Biden is out on the campaign trail, spreading misinformation and scaremongering, claiming fracking causes earthquakes.
Next comes a Gasland sequel (don’t hold your breath that it will correct any of the misinformation and hyperbole of the first one). And yesterday, we learned that Matt Damon will soon star in an anti-fracking Hollywood blockbuster that his fevered liberal brain has co-written. According to FrackNation filmmakers Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer:
PROMISED LAND will be directed by Gus Van Sant and co-star John Krasinski, who plays Jim in NBC’s The Office. This will be a huge movie – with a big budget and a lot of promotion and advertising and sources tell us it will be portraying fracking in a very negative light.
As you probably know, Matt Damon is just the latest Hollywood superstar to come out against fracking. Robert Redford, Debra Winger and Mark Ruffallo have also campaigned against the process.
We want to make FrackNation because we want the truth about fracking to b e told. But it will not be easy getting the message out with a sequel to Gasland in the works and now a big budget Hollywood movie concentrating on scare stories rather than true stories. Now, we recognize Hollywood movies don’t have to be truthful – they just have to be entertaining, but it’s likely thatPROMISED LAND will increase unfounded concerns about fracking.
Ann and Phelim need our help. (Yesterday was Phelim’s birthday. Contributions make excellent belated gifts.)
Want to learn more about the exciting new, factual documentary FrackNation? Go HERE and watch the short video from the filmmakers. Then go make a contribution to the movie before 9 o’clock Eastern tomorrow morning. (That’s 6am crack-of-dawn for you West Coasters.)
Still want more information before you’ll part with your Executive Producer money? FrackNation has been getting lots of press coverage. Here’s a sampling:
Now go punch Hollywood in the gut. Become a producer. There’s only a few hours left to be part of it. I contributed. How about you?
NOTE: FrackNation has raised $200,000 from an army of citizens like you. But the sequel to frack-fearmonger Gasland has raised $750,000 through HBO and other corporate sources. Give all you’ve got. Let the truth prevail.
Malia Obama is 13 years old, and yet the American taxpayer is currently paying for her to jetset around Mexico with 12 friends and 25 Secret Service nannies—and no Mom and Dad. It’s bad enough that Michelle Obama seems to think her position as First Lady is so grueling that she deserves luxurious vacations every quarter—with at least one a year without her husband. But now we are forced to pay for a teenager to galavant around?
But what’s worse, the White House or someone with extreme power is attempting to scrub the entire news media of any mention of this outrageous expense.
At Google News, there are supposedly 26 “news articles” left online at this moment regarding Malia Obama’s vacation from her arduous life as a pampered teen attending an elite private school. But many of those articles have vanished:
President Obama’s 13-year-old daughter Malia Ann joined thousands of American students as they crossed the border to Mexico for spring break this weekend.
The first article at the Huffington Post links to this URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/19/malia-obama-mexico-spring-break_n_1364063.html Go ahead. Click on it all you want. HuffPo has ripped the story from their site. You’ll just get redirected to their front HuffingtonPost.com page, where you will find absolutely no mention of your tax dollars footing the bill for a teen to lounge around south of the border. (Funnily, HuffPo may have thought they scrubbed their whole site, but I found a little remnant:
(click the image to see it full size)
The next link at the UK’s Daily Mail took great effort to get in good with the White House by putting part of their headline in ALL CAPS. They can holler that Malia was on a SCHOOL TRIP all they want, but no other remaining story on the internet says that. And the Daily Mail has since ripped their entire twisted story from their website as well. Go to their link (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2117288/Malia-Obama-heads-Mexico-SCHOOL-TRIP–brings-25-Secret-Service-agents-her.html) and you’ll get a lovely:
Sorry…
The page you have requested does not exist or is no longer available.
I was late to the story, so I did not see the very original AFP story, but I believe I have found a copy of the original story at the Canadian Edmonton Journal:
Obama’s daughter spends spring break in Mexico
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSEMARCH 19, 2012
OAXACA, Mexico - The elder daughter of U.S. President Barack Obama is spending her spring break in the historic Mexican city of Oaxaca in the company of 12 friends, a state police official said.
The young tourists, including 13-year-old Malia Ann Obama, are staying at a downtown hotel in this city famous for its colonial architecture and well-preserved native American traditions, the official said.
“We are here to block access to the hotel by other people and escort the vehicles that are carrying the visitors to tourism sites,” the police official told AFP under the condition of anonymity.
Malia Obama and her friend are guarded by 25 U.S. Secret Service agents as well as Mexican police, the official noted.
The group, which arrived in Oaxaca Saturday, has already visited the architectural zone of Mitla and the tree of El Tule believed to have one thousand years.
The sightseeing plan also includes visits to Monte Alban known for its archeological research sites and Oaxaca’s famous artisan quarters.
TurkishPress printed a shortened version of the AFP story (and at this moment still remains online). Nigeria’s This Day Live also carries the same AFP story. Note how both sites are well outside of the typical American’s reading list. So persons in Europe/Middle East and Africa will be privy to information that our own White House wishes to keep from US citizens.
We had a good look, but couldn’t find the page you requested.
This is either because:
* There’s an error in the address or link you have entered in your browser;
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Of all the various original links to a story regarding Malia’s spring break, very few publications were brave enough to let them remain online for more than a few hours. Once such location, with an original story is International Business Times(they have since chickened out as well and deleted their story before I could even publish this post):
Amid Travel Warnings, Obama’s Daughter, Malia, Spring Breaks In Mexico With 25 Secret Service Agents
By MICHAEL BILLERA
March 19, 2012 12:33 PM EDT
President Barack Obama’s 13-year-old daughter, Malia Ann Obama, will be spending her spring break in the Mexican city of Oaxaca with 12 friends and 25 Secret Service agents.
The young tourists will be in a downtown hotel in the city known for its colonial architecture and native traditions, reported a state police official.
“We are here to block access to the hotel by other people and escort the vehicles that are carrying the visitors to tourism sites,” the police official told AFP under the condition of anonymity.
Along with the 25 Secret Service agents, Obama and her friends will protected by a slew of Mexican police officers, according to the AFP.
The group arrived in Oaxaca on Saturday and reportedly visited the architectural site of Mitla. They also visited the tree of El Tule, believed to be approximately 1000 years old. The group also plans to travel to Monte Alban, which is known for its archaeological research as well as the artisan sections of the city.
On Feb. 8, 2012, the State Department issued a travel warning to all potential tourists to the Mexican region.
“U.S. travelers should be aware that the Mexican government has been engaged in an extensive effort to counter TCOs, which engage in narcotics trafficking and other unlawful activities throughout Mexico,” wrote the State Department in a statement. “The TCOs themselves are engaged in a violent struggle to control drug trafficking routes and other criminal activity. As a result, crime and violence are serious problems throughout the country and can occur anywhere.”
However, while the State Department has issued travel warnings throughout the country, there is no warning in the Oaxaca region of Mexico.
To report problems or to leave feedback about this article, e-mail: m.billera@ibtimes.com
To contact the editor, e-mail: editor@ibtimes.com
In the time I was working on this piece, Essence removed their story at http://www.essence.com/2012/03/19/malia-obama-travels-to-mexico-for-spring-break/, even though they are renown for chronicling the activities of the First Daughters. (Just search their site for the keyword of Malia to see a galore of stories.) Clearly, someone told them to remove this one:
Sorry. This page was not found.
Please use the search above or view the sitemap below to find what you’re looking for
Mexico Today did not get the notice yet, apparently, as their Flickr account still has four photos of Malia (although one appears to be a stock photo taken by Annie Lebowitz for the White House, unless she has traveled to Mexico to photograph the trip too):
Malia In Mexico---from Mexico Today Flickr Account. If you don't see the photo, the White House has gotten them to scrub it.
Mexico Today’s caption:
Malia Ann Obama Vacations in Oaxaca, Mexico
Source: NOTIMEX/FOTO/HUGO ALBERTO VELASCO/HAV/POL/
Malia Obama and Middle School Friends Enjoy Mexico on US Taxpayer Dime. (If you don't see an image, the White House has gotten Mexico Today to scrub it. Let me know.)
Mexico Today’s caption:
Malia Ann Obama Vacations in Oaxaca, Mexico
Source: El Imparcial, Mexico
More of 13-Year-Old Malia Obama Jetsetting in Mexico Without Parents But 25 Secret Service Nannies and 12 Friends, Courtesy of Your Paycheck.
Mexico Today’s caption:
Malia Ann Obama Vacations in Oaxaca, Mexico
Source: Century21 Sun &Sand | C21Cancun
Some small blogs are also scrubbing their sites, such as:
One of the original reporting resources, the Mexican site Milenio.com, still has their full story running: http://www.milenio.com/cdb/doc/noticias2011/215cf5be355aeb0b371d1f895d6db57d It was published on March 16, three full days ago, and tells where the group is staying and what they are visiting, providing further evidence that the scrubbing of the story from US and English-language websites is not for security concerns as the information is widely available outside of the US.
FoxNews.com (quoting the now scrubbed Telegraph story)
DeathBy1000PaperCuts.com (which notes the scrubbing began one full day after the Mexican news reported the information, so the cat’s already out of the bag as far as any security concerns would be addressed by covering up the trip. DBKP also found a Mexican site, Quien, with additional information, albeit en español, but with extra photos.)
If there are others refusing to let this story be covered up, let me know and I’ll add them to the list. Freedom of information must not be suppressed. The White House has no business forcing citizens to erase stories it finds inconvenient when the story has nothing to do with national security.
war on wo•men \ ‘wȯ(ə)r ‘än ‘wim-ən \ n phrase : an armed conflict against adult female persons
As the 2012 election draws closer, Democrats desperately want to divert the public’s attention away from President Obama’s abysmal record on the economy and jobs. It seems no attack on Republicans is too absurd or too low to make toward that effort. Case in point: The Democrats now preposterously claim that the GOP is waging a “War on Women,” and the media is shamelessly going along with that fact-free propaganda slogan. With a straight face, they insist that Americans should be gullible enough to believe that Republicans truly hate women and want to enact laws to prevent them from getting any birth control.
The truth is, Republicans simply don’t want to have to pay for someone else’s birth control—or use government force to require a religious institution to violate its sacred beliefs. The GOP wants to stay out of bedrooms and churches. (To nip the standard liberal red herring in the bud: no, being pro-life is not being in your bedroom; it’s being pro-pre-natal care. Using the Democrat playbook, Republicans could easily, disingenuously ask: Why do Democrats hate pre-natal care?)
Women writers from across the political spectrum have documented the fact that when it comes to making vicious attacks on female political opponents, the Democrats take the cake…and then deny they ate it. Democratic strategist Kirsten Powers bravely penned a piece for the Daily Beast (“Rush Limbaugh Isn’t the Only Media Misogynist”), calling out liberally abusive commentators:
Did you know there is a war on women? Yes, it’s true. Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Bill Maher, Matt Taibbi, and Ed Schultz have been waging it for years with their misogynist outbursts.
Right-wing author Michelle Malkin’s most recent syndicated column, “The War on Conservative Women,” chronicled the ugly side of being a conservative woman in the public eye from her own personal experience. In it, she also pointed out that it’s not just liberal men doing the name-calling and slandering:
Self-serving opponents argue that such attacks do not represent “respectable,” “mainstream” liberal opinion about their conservative female counterparts. But it was feminist godmother Gloria Steinem who called Texas Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison a “female impersonator.” It was NOW leader Patricia Ireland who commanded her flock to only vote for “authentic” female political candidates. It was Al Gore consultant Naomi Wolf who accused the late Jeane Kirkpatrick of being “uninflected by the experiences of the female body.”
Conservative blogger Nice Deb has dug through the internet to compile another collection of left-wing venom and hypocrisy in her post “The Left’s War On Conservative Women.”
The Real War on Women
It all seems so important, proving our side is the truly aggrieved party—and it is, in terms of not letting a false narrative take root in the minds of the voting public. But when it comes to the phrase “War on Women,” it is utterly ridiculous for that phrase to be used in relation to any Western women. On this International Women’s Day, we need to turn our eyes to the true assaults on women.
One such assault was launched yesterday by the Afghanistan government and clerics. The US-sanctioned appeasement of the Taliban has begun blossoming in full, with women getting pushed back into the burqa and isolated in the home. As reported in the back pages of American newspapers (and on FoxNews.com):
Afghanistan’s president on Tuesday endorsed a “code of conduct” issued by an influential council of clerics that activists say represents a giant step backward for women’s rights in the country.
President Hamid Karzai’s Tuesday endorsement of the Ulema Council’s document, which allows husbands to beat wives under certain circumstances and encourages segregation of the sexes, is seen as part of his outreach to insurgents like the Taliban.
Both the U.S. and Karzai hope that the Taliban can be brought into negotiations to end the country’s decade-long war. But activists say they’re worried that gains made by women since 2001 may be lost in the process.
While the Democrats and their leader, Barack Obama, have taken to the microphones to phonily decry their ginned-up “GOP war on women” since this declaration was made, they have uttered no disapproval of the Afghan move. After all, if they were to complain, they might hinder the negotiations to turn the country over to the Taliban (ok, perhaps not officially, but does anyone doubt that will be the end result?) so our military can hurriedly leave by Obama’s political timetable.
Surely our Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—who used to tout her daring to lecture China on women’s rights during her stint as First Lady—would feel compelled to speak out and issue a statement. But no, she didn’t, even though she, and Obama, had to have seen this coming.
Two years ago, she authorized $500 million to go to Karzai to grease the wheels in negotiating with the women-hating people killing our soldiers: the Taliban and other “insurgents.” Then, in May 2010 when Karzai visited DC and the public expressed concern over his Taliban negotiations, she vowed to a group of visiting Afghan women, “We will not abandon you, we will stand with you always.”
But feminist-hero Clinton’s State Department has been waffling and weakening on Afghan women’s rights ever since. Now, in the wake of this new and worrisome development, instead of taking Karzai to task, they have stuck their head in the sand and made not a peep about this reignition of a true War on Women.
Here’s a few things with which Clinton and the Obama State Department have no problem, as reported in the FoxNews.com story:
Among the rules: Women should not travel without a male guardian and women should not mingle with strange men in places like schools, markets or offices. Beating one’s wife is prohibited only if there is no “Shariah-compliant reason,” it said, referring to the principles of Islamic law.
Asked about the code of conduct at a press conference in the capital, Karzai said it was in line with Islamic law and was written in consultation with Afghan women’s groups. He did not name the groups that were consulted.
“The clerics’ council of Afghanistan did not put any limitations on women,” Karzai said, adding: “It is the Shariah law of all Muslims and all Afghans.”
According to the Guardian, Karzai’s Taliban appeasement could lead to the expulsion of women from the Afghan government and the loss of 10 years of hard-won gains:
The clerics renounced the equality of men and women enshrined in the Afghan constitution, suggesting they consider the document that forms the basis of the Afghan state to be flawed from a religious perspective.
“Men are fundamental and women are secondary,” the statement says, according to a translation by Afghan analyst Ahmad Shuja. “Also, lineage is derived from the man. Therefore, the use of words and expressions that contradict the sacred verses must be strictly avoided.”
The statement drew criticism in parliament, where some politicians took it as a direct assault on the constitution and the wider government. If a ban on men and women working and studying together were implemented, it would in effect dissolve the legislature. (emphasis added)
How ironic that just last week, Obama issued his annual proclamation declaring March as Women’s History Month, with today March 8 as International Women’s Day. What a history we have developing in Afghanistan.
Likewise, the UN issued an International Women’s Day statement from their United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan calling on the Karzai government to finally get around to implementing its anti-violence against women act:
Enacted in August 2009, the landmark Elimination of Violence against Women (EVAW) law criminalises child marriage, forced marriage, selling and buying women for the purpose or under the pretext of marriage, baad (giving away a woman or girl to settle a dispute), forced self-immolation and 17 other acts of violence against women including rape and beating. It also specifies punishment for perpetrators.
In spite of these legal protections under the EVAW law and other constitutional safeguards for women, violence against women and girls remains pervasive in Afghanistan with an inconsistent response from Afghan authorities.
UNAMA found that judicial and law enforcement officials were implementing sporadically the two-year-old law and were not yet applying the law to the majority of cases of violence against women. The report determined that many cases of violence against Afghan women were withdrawn or mediated including serious crimes that would require prosecution with a low number of cases prosecuted.
“I have knocked all doors to get rid of violence but all my complaints had fallen on deaf ears. Instead, the prosecutor accused me of lying and warned me of dire consequence,” 15-year-old Sadat said while undergoing treatment in a Herat hospital. She had set herself on fire due to repeated and unaddressed domestic violence. Sadat later died in a hospital in Turkey where she was taken for further treatment.
They can quote a 15-year-old girl’s words from her deathbed, but the UN can’t bother to note the deal Karzai had just approved days before that will make life brutal again for all the other women and girls of Afghanistan.
China: “If the brave woman still refuses to submit [to aborting babies to conform with the one-child government], she may be held in a punishment cell, or, if she flees, her relatives may be held and, very often, beaten”
North Korea: “Pregnant women are forced to undergo abortions, even in their third trimester, for the crime of carrying ‘Chinese seed.’”
Saudi Arabia: Among the laundry list of outrages and horrors against women, “Women are also at risk of being charged with putting spells on men under laws against witchcraft, a capital crime. A Sudanese woman was beheaded in December for sorcery.”
Iran: Another laundry list that reads like an upgrade to a club membership (in addition to the Saudi Arabia-level benefits, you will also receive…), which includes “The law permits a man to kill his adulterous wife and women convicted of adultery can be sentenced to stoning.”
Pakistan: Even as a supposedly more enlightened Muslim society, Shea notes Pakistan’s “persistent practice of forcing rape victims to marry their rapists, a situation that becomes compounded by forcible conversion to Islam [when the woman or young girl is Christian].”
Shea didn’t have room to mention hundreds of other unspeakable offenses, including ones that occur outside the Muslim world, such as India’s pervasive problem with selectively aborting female babies, creating extreme societal problems that are also seen in China where they abide a similar practice as a result of the one-child policy.
The point is, those are the places that are conducting a real War on Women, not here in Chicago, El Paso and San Francisco. It is an insult to those women fighting real threats in distant lands to apply that phrase to a hyperbolic political argument between the Left and the Right in the United States, where we women have it cushier than anywhere else in the world.
Barack Obama has apparently forgotten in what category he was awarded a Nobel Prize. His was in Peacefully Waging War From Behind. His Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, received one in Physics. Neither of them received one in Economics, though that is the field both are trying to claim an expertise in as they try to choke off America from her below-ground energy resources.
“That’s the only solution to the challenge because as we start using less,” Obama says. “That lowers the demand, prices come down.”
That may true in Obama’s fantasy land, but here in the real world, it is increased supply that lowers prices. A highly probable result of decreased demand is…increased prices. [Watch Jim Angle's excellent Special Report segment at the link above, if you missed it, because amazingly, all but a few non-business media outlets have little interest in challenging Obama on his math.]
Is there a real world example that proves Obamanomics wrong? Why, yes, there is:
Take the town of Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina, a quiet suburb of Charleston. The citizens there are civic-minded, anxious to do their part in the world. So when the water department told them that if they could reduce their consumption of water, they would not only save the environment, but would save money, too, they dutifully conserved.
Ample rainfall helped keep the lawns green without having to use town water for the sprinklers. The town was booming with development as the housing frenzy of the mid-2000s brought the water company extra money in connection fees and new customers. The waterworks was rolling in revenue.
Then came the housing crash. Building stopped, along with the new connection fees. Water usage further declined with fewer homeowners.
That’s when all the good unsuspecting conservationists got smacked with a nine percent increase in their water rates—about $50 per household a year—to make up the lost revenue from the decrease in water consumption.
Even then, the Mt. Pleasant Waterworks couldn’t make ends meet. They had a minimum amount of revenue they needed to make. The MPW director Clay Duffie said:
We took drastic action to lower our expenses. We laid off nine employees, froze salaries with no raises, reduced health benefits, cut travel and education by 70-percent, and paid off debt to reduce our debt coverage requirements. These actions helped us avoid a rate increase in FY 2010.
The same scenario has been repeated all across the country. Demand for water goes down, due to conservation and loss of customer base, then prices have to go up on the conservers to cover the shortfall.
Substitute the commodity of oil for water and an oil company for the waterworks, and little in the equation changes.
So while Obama expected his mere presence to cause the waters to recede and the Earth to “heal,” he apparently also has expected to be immune to the laws of supply and demand. Yeah, that’s worked out about as well as his other megalomaniacal expectations.
Jenny Sanford, who divorced former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford when his affair with an Argentinian woman became public during his second term in office, has been fined $1,040 by the beach town of Sullivan’s Island because one of her dogs broke loose while she was away at a yoga class.
Former South Carolina first lady Jenny Sanford says there’s no doubt her dog is guilty of running loose. But she plans to contest the $1,040 ticket the town’s police wrote, calling it way too steep.
“I’m not knocking the police,” she said Thursday. “But isn’t this being a bit over the top?”
Sanford has an April 3 court date for a ticket she received after her 8-year-old black Labrador, Julius, broke free the morning of Feb. 22.
The dog got out when she went to a yoga class. The property’s buried electronic fencing, meant to contain the animal’s movements to inside her Atlantic Avenue homesite, was broken. It was the first time he’d ever bolted, she said.
“He is guilty,” she said. “The dog wandered, and I know it is against the rules.”
The bigger issue, she contends, is whether Sullivan’s Island is being heavy-handed in its dog enforcement. “The punishment doesn’t fit the crime,” she said.
It turns out that Sanford and her pooches are repeat offenders, too.
Sanford conceded she’s had runaway dog issues before, including another pet Lab, Jeep, that got out twice before and finally was ticketed about $500.
For Julius, this was a first-time offense, she said. Her question remains: Is the town “putting (its) fines where they should be?”
Sanford does have a point. Sullivan’s Island seems to be hounding her. It’s not as if she hasn’t made a dogged effort to control her Labs. To fine someone a thousand dollars due to a temporary electronic fence malfunction is extremely excessive. So much for living in a small town where everyone knows your name.
At CPAC, the trailer to the upcoming movie Hating Breitbart was previewed, and it looked awesome. Condolences to the filmmakers who must write an ending now that they never could have anticipated, and certainly never wanted.
I look forward to seeing it as a tribute to Andrew Breitbart’s life and impact on America and continued inspiration to carry on under his banner.
I meant to do this award long ago, back when I first read Andrew Breitbart’s book Righteous Indignation last year. But something else seemed to have higher priority at the time. Then new stories popped up, new headlines stole the show, and slowly time buried the best intentions under it all, just like a once-urgent memo sinks to the bottom of the heap on a cluttered desk. Out of sight, out of mind.
Except for Andrew. He was rarely out of sight. And that was reassuring. I knew there was plenty of time to give him an award. I’d research it a little more to make it a bigger and better post to make up for its lack of timeliness. So I ordered his book Hollywood, Interrupted: Insanity Chic in Babylon–The Case Against Celebrity to get a bigger picture of his transformation into a conservative standard bearer.
This morning, upon hearing the awful news of his untimely death, I went to look for that book—and found it at the very bottom of a tall stack of books I’ve been meaning to get to as well. How sad, for me.
It’s sad, because it runs contrary to the exhortations in Breitbart’s book, whose subtitle is “Excuse Me While I Save the World!” That should be the motto for all of us. (Or at least “save the town” or “save my neighborhood,” if we can’t match his energy, drive and ability.) My subtitle has been “Excuse Me While I Put This Off to the Side Until I Have More Time.” And my to-do list and to-read stack grew in proportion.
Breitbart didn’t seem like much of a procrastinator, didn’t squander opportunities by putting things off. While the book chronicles his meandering route to embracing and promoting conservativism, it also serves as the operations manual and tactical guide for what is now being called his Army of Breitbarts.
Breitbart got it. To bring down corrupt big government, we have to bring down and expose the big media that protects and promotes it. In Righteous Indignation, he summarizes the key points of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals and Sun-Tzu’s The Art of War. Then in his chapter “Pragmatic Primer,” he lays out what I’ll call Andrew Breitbart’s Rules for the Righteous. Among the 13 lessons for combating the Democrat-Media Complex are essential instructions for all conservative bloggers:
Don’t be afraid to go into enemy territory.
Expose the left for who they are—in their own words.
Don’t let the Complex use its PC lexicon to characterize you and shape the narrative.
Control your own story—don’t let the Complex do it.
The truth isn’t mean. It’s the truth.
Breitbart lived these rules every day…and proved they can work. Though he is now gone and can no longer lead the troops, he left behind the map to victory and page after page of rally cries in his book.
For this, I give Andrew Breitbart the long-overdue Prudence Prize for Best Book.
Thank you for all you did, for truly making a difference on a national scale, not once, not twice, but over and over. You have left footprints of a giant behind that seem impossible to fill. At this dark hour, it seems incomprehensible that we can succeed without you. But with your inspiration and the words you left behind, we can pick up your banner and forge ahead—even if it takes 100 of us united to fill just one of your shoes.
Rest in peace. Deepest sympathies to your wife and children, friends, family and all your associates at the Big sites.
, 
last year. But something else seemed to have higher priority at the time. Then new stories popped up, new headlines stole the show, and slowly time buried the best intentions under it all, just like a once-urgent memo sinks to the bottom of the heap on a cluttered desk. Out of sight, out of mind.
to get a bigger picture of his transformation into a conservative standard bearer. 
and Sun-Tzu’s 
Then in his chapter “Pragmatic Primer,” he lays out what I’ll call Andrew Breitbart’s Rules for the Righteous. Among the 13 lessons for combating the Democrat-Media Complex are essential instructions for all conservative bloggers: