President Obama’s ‘fight’ problem, this time on tax cuts (**UPDATE: Labor calls for solo vote)
President Obama’s problem isn’t that most Americans hate his guts like the tea party movement does, or that people think he was born in Kenya, or that they’d really rather have Sarah Palin running the country. Obama’s problem is that Americans like him well enough, but don’t see him as a fighter. This is a […]
The Reid Report
This Is News?
That the U.S. State Department allowed former Nazis to resettle in the United States? According to Eric Lichtblau, although the U.S. government has “acknowledged the C.I.A.’s use of Nazis for postwar intelligence purposes[,] … this report goes further in documenting the level of American complicity and deception in such operations.”
Really? This is how Lichtblau describes the contents of this “damning” 600-page report, “which the Justice Department has tried to keep secret for four years”:
The Justice Department report, describing what it calls “the government’s collaboration with persecutors,” says that O.S.I investigators learned that some of the Nazis “were indeed knowingly granted entry” to the United States, even though government officials were aware of their pasts. “America, which prided itself on being a safe haven for the persecuted, became — in some small measure — a safe haven for persecutors as well,” it said.
Good grief. I remember my father (who died in 1978) talking about how the U.S. government used former Nazis in the Cold War, and how they gave many of them safe haven in this country when all during the war Jewish immigration quotas remained unfilled while Hitler was wiping the entire European continent free of us (including his mother and most of his extended family in The Netherlands).
The United States a safe haven for the persecuted? Not without plenty of qualifiers, and certainly not for the Jews of Europe during the Holocaust.
So how bad is quantitative easing? Palin and this great video explain
The one person that made news about quantitative easing and brought it to national attention is Sarah Palin. Anything she tweets or writes on Facebook becomes headlines.
Thankfully, she has brought to national spotlight Fed Chair Ben Bernanke’s plan to buy $ 600 billion in government securities. This will devalue our dollar and will heighten inflation.
Man, This Guy Can Write:
(David Post)
Though I’m not that much of an NFL football fan, I can’t help but noticing the extraordinarily good writing of Mike Tanier, who writes for FootballOutsiders.com (and the New York Times from time to time). Here are some examples, from his discussion of this week’s games:
On the Jets v Browns: “Eric Mangini is on a cross-country quest to silence his doubters, joined by a ragtag company of spunky rookie quarterbacks, castoff veterans, fleet-footed punters and other misfits. Having conquered the defending champion Saints and vanquished his mentor Bill Belichick, Mangini hosts the Jets, whom he coached through his metamorphosis from Boy Genius to baby-faced Machiavelli before being ripped apart by the tectonic forces of Big Apple expectations and Brett Favre egocentrism.”
And even better, Seahawks v. Cardinals: “The N.F.C. West stages one of its sad little round robins this week to see who gets to go 8–8 and lose, 31–7, to the Saints or Eagles in the playoffs. It’s like a college basketball-style play-in. In fact, don’t give the N.C.A.A. any ideas, or the winner of this game will face the winner of Canisius versus Towson University.”
And Eagles v. Redskins: “All of the campaign strategists who produced effectively virulent political smear advertisements went straight to Washington after the election and, with nothing else to do for 11 months, started writing the copy for Mike Shanahan’s news conferences. Shanahan & Son (you can picture the truck and junkyard in your head, can’t you?) stopped just short of accusing Donovan McNabb of shipping jobs overseas, but they effectively created a divisive, rancorous environment that will make it impossible to get anything done. In other words, our nation’s capital gets the football it deserves.”
Really terrific stuff.
WTF … 3 Year Old Treated Like Terrorist as She is Assaulted By TSA Airport Screener … “STOP TOUCHING ME” … This is Airport Security?
This is our War on Terror … a War on 3 Year Olds.
WTF is going on in the airports in the United States in the name of so-called TSA airport screening to protect us against terrorism. This is what it has come to, searching grandma in a wheelchair and accosting a child? This is absolute “POLITCAL CORRECTNESS MADNESS!!
Since when is a TSA airport screener allowed to accost and assault a 3 year old child in the name of airport screening? The VIDEO below is beyond unreal and crosses the line of TSA ignorance and what should be allowed. Do these fools have any common sense in how to deal with a child? The incident took place at the Chattanooga, TN Airport where the 3 year old little girl kept screaming. “DON’T TOUCH ME”!!!
Hat Tip: The Gateway Pundit
Did the Teddy Bear have a bomb in it … was this 3 year old little girl the next “underwear” bomber? Maybe Mandy’s name was on the “no-fly” list? IDIOTS, PURE AND SIMPLE IGNORANT IDIOTS.
Since when is a trip to the airport and through TSA screening for a child supposed to be followed up by years of therapy? The TSA search was so insensitive and over the line that is damn near bordered on molestation. Who in their right mind would continue in such a manner to search the child in the manner they were when it was obvious how upsetting and disturbing the behavior was? What was next TSA, a strip search?
How in the hell is this crap allowed in this country? We have liberal do-gooder groups protecting the rights of sex offenders in allowing them to live near schools, yet when it comes to children, they are fair game to be treatedlike terrorists. I am trying to figure out why the mother or father did not crack the TSA official in the mouth for manhandling their child like this.
EXIT QUESTION: What are the odds that the TSA does not have the balls to treat a Muslim adult o child in the same manner that they treated this three year old? Hmm?
IF THIS IS NOT APARTHEID, THEN WHAT IS?
“Apartheid is a crime against humanity. Israel has deprived millions of Palestinians of their liberty and property. It has perpetuated a system of gross racial discrimination and Inequality” Nelson Mandela.
by Allan Boesak and Farid Esack*
In the opening lines of an open letter to Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, Rabbi Warren Goldstein, leader of the South Africa’s Orthodox Jews, makes a plea that: ”Without truth there can be no justice, and without justice there can be no peace.” If ever there was a case of a single swallow not heralding summer, alas, this is it. The rest of his article bears little relationship to the truth:
1. “Jew and Arab – are equal before the law.”
Goldstein conflates life inside Israel and life in the occupied territories. Jews and Palestinian citizens in Israel are certainly not equal before the law: one set of laws does provide for equal rights, but another equally formidable set provides for separate and superior rights for Jews. Presently Israel has several Basic Laws that confirm this inequality, so the system is codified and formal: discrimination within Israel is official. A state founded for any ethnic or religious community cannot but be one that must necessarily discriminate against others. In the occupied Palestinian territories, Jews enjoy special protections and rights to settle and conduct business, and Palestinian civilians as non-Jews are denied those rights.
In both areas, there is certainly a “Population Registration Act”: everyone in Israel and the occupied territories is identified by ethnicity – Jewish, Arab, Druze or whatever — and this is listed on their ID cards. All rights and privileges in Israel follow from these distinctions. Hence there is a Group Areas Act, too – people who are Jewish can live in certain areas (actually, 93 percent of Israel is reserved exclusively for Jews) and people who are not Jewish are banned from living in those areas. If there is no “Mixed Marriages Act” per se, there are still laws that prohibit Palestinian spouses from the occupied territories from living with Israeli spouses, a prohibition of civil marriage (it is impossible to marry in Israel except in religious courts,) and a host of laws, rules and codes that keep the populations strictly apart. Petty apartheid is hardly required where segregation is absolute.
Israel indeed has no “Separate Representation of Voters Act” but for two unpleasant reasons. First, half of the entire population under Israel’s control (the 5 million Palestinians living under Israeli military rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip) are not allowed to vote at all. Every one of the five million people living here can attest plenty to Israel’s draconian pass laws, which constrict and destroy their life chances every single day. Second, twenty percent of Israeli citizens are Palestinians and can vote, but are not allowed to vote for any party or law that alters Jewish national supremacy and special privileges. That is like giving the vote to slaves but preventing them from voting against slavery.
2. “Israel accords full political, religious and other human rights to all its people, including its … Arab citizens.”
Goldstein need only ring up any Palestinian mayor, public figure or Knesset representative to be corrected on this. The poverty and isolation of Palestinian Arab communities in Israel is notorious. Of course, there are Arab parties that do provide some Palestinian representation in Israeli politics. But this representation is akin to Apartheid’s Tricameral Parliament of the 1980s: they operate in highly constrained conditions and have been unable in those roles to relieve the endemic poverty and isolation of their communities, or to alter the edifice of racism that suffocates their communities. And again, some five million Palestinians under Israeli rule remain entirely excluded from the political system solely because they are not Jews and have no rights whatsoever except what Israeli military law provides them.
Apartheid Wall
3. “The other untruth is the accusation of illegal occupation of Arab land.”
According to Goldstein, Israel is not “occupying” the West Bank and Gaza Strip but reclaiming these areas for ancient Jewish sentiment dating to antiquity. Only religious fundamentalists insist on their own religious texts as the only arbiter between them and others. God is reduced to a dishonest estate agent who parcels out land to His Favorites, land with borders clearly demarcated as if these were registered in a 20th century title deeds office – all at a time thousands of years ago when national boundaries were rather unknown. This sort of thinking is simply outdated – it belongs to a time of colonial conquest and racial domination.
Remember Uitgegee op gesag van die Hoogste se Hand! (“Given to us on the authority of God” While this is a phrase of Apartheid South Africa’s, Song of the Flag, it may just as well have been an excerpt from Goldstein’s article!)
Considering Goldstein’s misleading analysis for a moment. How then are the indigenous people to express their own ancient claims to the land and their present political, social and cultural rights? This is the heart of Israel’s apartheid doctrine: that, in the same territory, one group – Jews – has superior rights to another. And if the native people protest, or resist this disenfranchisement, this is seen as outrageous, backward, racism against Jews, an irrational blow against the unquestionable right of a hardworking settler society to fulfill its God-given Covenant and right to self-determination. All rather familiar stuff.
4. “… until the National Party was prepared to accept that black South Africans had a place in their own country, there could be no peace. And so too, until the Arab/Muslim world accepts that Jews have a right to a state of their own on their ancestral land, there will be no peace.”
Goldstein had best draw the lesson from his own example: until the Israeli and Zionist movement is prepared to accept that Palestinians have a place in their (own!) country as equal citizens, there can be no peace – there should be no peace! The solution in South Africa was precisely NOT to accept separate black states, but to reject that “solution” for the lie that it was. Israel must give up the premise of separation – apartheid. Only then will the country be able to join the rest of the world (not just the Arab world) as a “normal” country.
The South African story is simple: states founded on ethnicity are unworkable and evil – it is reprehensible to synonimize your God, religion and your ethnicity and culture with an ideological state. The separation of people from people on the basis of religious or ethnic identity – apartheid – and the privileging of that identity over that of others is simply incompatible with the ideas of universal human rights.
It is in this context that we salute our dear friend and comrade, the Archbishop, for consistently carrying through the prophetic vision. This time, in actively responding to the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions of Israel until, in the least, Israel abides by international law and the universal principles of human rights.
*Allan Boesak is Professor Extraordinaire at the University of Stellenbosch and Farid Esack is a Professor at the University of Johannesburg.
A briefer version was published on 10 November 2010 by the Johannesburg based newspaper, The Star
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*Allan Boesak is Professor Extraordinaire at the University of Stellenbosch and Farid Esack is a Professor at the University of Johannesburg.
A briefer version was published on 10 November 2010 by the Johannesburg based newspaper, The Star
Source: pacbi.org
Sarah Palin Makes More Mistakes This Time About Economics
Image via Wikipedia
Sarah Palin Tries to Appear Intelligent Rather Than Stupid
The idea was to make a speech addressing economics. This way Sarah Palin could steal the limelight from Barack Obama who was, as she spoke, in South Korea attending a G20 meeting where the “competitive devaluation” of currencies was being addressed.
Obama, of course, has proved to be conversant with macro and micro economics and the need to ensure that big cats and bankers pay a fair share. Conversely Palin, in addition to looking stupid when relatively simple questions have been posed to her (as in the video below), has not apportionedblame to big cats and bankers (her natural supporters and financiers) and has not shown any aptitude for macro or micro economics.
Sarah Palin’s Economics Speech
Palin’s major complaint was on something that any “hockey mom” who believes in baking brownies to serve with a glass of milk should know about. This, of course, is the rising price of food. What an excellent and intelligent idea!
It is only a pity that Palin nor any of her spoon feeding advisers bothered to check the veracity of this complaint. It is more of a pity (for Palin et al) that the Wall Street Journal knows that the cost of grocery has not gone up “significantly over the last year” as Palin stated in her Phoenix speech.
Image via Wikipedia Barack Obama is in South Korea attending the G20 meeting where the competitive devaluation of currencies is being discussed. Going on Sarah Palin’s performance in Phoenix at the same time most realistic economists are glad Palin is not representing US interests.
Is this Socialism?
Bloomberg: “Investors around the world say President Barack Obama is bad for the bottom line, even though U.S. corporations are on track for the biggest earnings growth in 22 years and the stock market is headed for its best back-to- back annual gains since 2004.”
Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire
Is this Socialism?
Bloomberg: “Investors around the world say President Barack Obama is bad for the bottom line, even though U.S. corporations are on track for the biggest earnings growth in 22 years and the stock market is headed for its best back-to- back annual gains since 2004.”
Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire
This Week in Government Failure
By Tad DeHaven
Over at Downsizing Government, we focused on the following issues this week:
- The Washington Post argues that both tax hikes and spending cuts will be needed to fix the government’s budget problem, but the Post’s conclusion is based on faulty one-sided accounting, only considering the recipients of government largesse.
- Federal hiring of the best and brightest imposes an “opportunity cost” on the economy by drawing talented people away from higher-valued activities in the private sector.
- Republicans were elected, in part, to help put the private sector back in the economic driver’s seat. To do so, Republicans need to be much more ambitious than trimming just $ 100 billion off of the president’s three-year $ 853 billion spending increase.
- The confused U.S. Department of Agriculture spends taxpayer money subsidizing fatty foods while at the same time setting nutritional guidelines with the purported aim of getting Americans to eat healthier.
- Downsizing the Department of Defense is up.
- The good and the bad in the draft report released by the co-chairs of President Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.
This Week in Government Failure is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
