Tireless Dutch politician Geert Wilders who is by far the bravest politician in Europe is getting ready for his "next phase" in his war on Islam. He has announced that he will start working on Fitna Part II, which will focus on Muslim immigration in Europe and the USA. As I have stated in the past, Muslim immigration is the Trojan Horse to the West and it must be ended...
And now this morning, Obama was on the tube again, yapping about traffic jams. What the hell is going on here? The president of the freaking United States is talking about traffic jams? Then again, in grammar school we did all learn that part of George Washinton's Farewell Address where he warned against entangling alliances and the dread menace of highway jughandles and traffic circles. That Obama's big solution is, ta-da!, "high-speed rail" is simply one more sign that he is simply not serious about anything other than paying off 19th and 20th century legacy special interests. I look forward to tomorrow's press conference, when Obama trains his laser-beam brain on the question of whether Razzles is a candy or a gum. . . .
Question to the folks, including some of the libertarian persuasion (you fools!), who were bullish on Obama back when the alternative was John McCain, the Terri Schiavo of presidential candidates: When are you going to admit that Barry O stinks on ice? That for all his high-flying and studiously empty rhetoric he's got the biggest presidential vision deficit since George H.W. Bush puked on a Japanese prime minister (finally, revenge for that long run of Little League World Series losses in the '70s!). If you're the president of the United States and you're talking about goddamn traffic jams and you're proposing high-speed rail as anything other than an unapologetic boondoggle that will a) never get built and b) never get built to the gee-whiz specs it's supposed and c) be ridden by fewer people than commuted by zeppelin last year, you've got real problems, bub. And by extension, so do we all.
Transportation policy is important, for sure. . . . But to hear the president talking about traffic jams like he was.... Well, let's just I'd rather be watching Zardoz. Whatever else you can say about the nightmarish vision of the future, in which Sean Connery wears a cinematic diaper that makes Sting look good at the end of Dune, it solved the Gordian Knot of traffic snarls.
Posted by: Mike ||
04/17/2009 06:28 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Heh, I liked Zardoz...as an artwork not a movie.
#3
i have seen Obama on TV more in 120 days or less that Bush and his dad altogether. I have too keep a bucket beside my recliner just in case i don't make it to the bathroom too ouke every time
Ambassador Haqqani is obscuring the real nature of the TNSM. The group provided the ideological inspiration for the Afghan Taliban and is allied with Mullah Omar. The TNSM sent more than 10,000 fighters into Afghanistan to battle U.S. and Northern Alliance forces during 2001 and 2002. The forces were led by Sufi Mohammed, the leader of the TNSM. The Pakistani government banned the group, labeling it a terrorist organization, and Sufi was thrown in jail and stayed there until his release in 2007. The TNSM is still listed as a banned group. Yet the Pakistani government negotiates with this terror organization.
Here's the dirty secret the Pakistanis don't want you to know: they are using the TNSM and Sufi Mohammed as a front to negotiate with the Taliban. The government can't openly admit that it is caving to the Taliban, so it props up Sufi as a local, respected leader who claims to have eschewed violence, as a face-saving gesture. And Sufi and the Taliban are fine with that, they get what they want: control of an Islamic emirate. lots of background at link
In the April 4-5 NATO meetings in Europe, most European nations backed former Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen for the new head of NATO. Turkey, however, objected -- so strongly that it took President Obama's personal intervention with Turkey's President, Abdullah Gul, to have Rasmussen grudgingly accepted. Even then, Turkey said it would agree only if it were given concessions by the European Union in negotiations on Turkey's accession, the appointment of two Turks to senior NATO posts, and some sort of mea culpa by Rasmussen. It received all three.
These concessions were given not to overcome objections by Ankara to any NATO policy. Turkey objected to Rasmussen because, after the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published cartoons of Mohammed in 2005, Rasmussen, as prime minister, had robustly defended the rights of a free press. Thus, in partial recompense for cartoons published in a private newspaper over which Rasmussen had no control, and sought no control, Turkey succeeded in extracting concessions from the West's premier military alliance.
By demanding concessions from Western governments for what Western newspapers publish, and by actually receiving political recompense from those same governments, Turkey has made major steps in requiring Western governments to be held accountable for what their newspapers publish. From there, it is a short step to the need to control what those newspapers publish.
#2
I thought this was going to be about the 20 year campaign against freedom of speech in the Islamic world. Turns out, its about the campaign against freedom of speech in Europe.
Maybe there isn't any difference.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
04/17/2009 17:36 Comments ||
Top||
#3
It's a campaign against free speech in the entire West, not only in Europe!
The resolutions against "Defamation of Religion" are demanding the repeal of the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution just as much as they are demanding the repeal of similar guarantees in other countries.
Liberated Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as NATO ally Turkey voted in favor of these resolutions. The OIC has officially rejected even the doctrine of "Peaceful Coexistence".
Its diplomatic posture is thus actually more hostile than that of the USSR post Stalin.
Given that a South Park episode was actually censored, and that the US press largely refrained from printing the motoons, it sure looks like islamofascist intimidation has made a difference in the US too.
#4
Get in line Abdul. It's a long one. We've outlasted/destroyed much stronger and competent ideologies than islam.
All totalitarian, and most not so totalitarian, ideologies suppress criticism. Kings, Queens, Sheiks, French Revolutionaries, Commies, Fascists, Socialists and Michael Jackson Wannabes all controlled speech, including in the US. The First Amendment really was/is revolutionary. What other society allows the common man to mouth off to the high and powerful?
Posted by: ed ||
04/17/2009 19:37 Comments ||
Top||
#5
WAFF > IIRC THE INABILITY TO PRESENT ISLAM AS A PEACEFUL RELIGION IS A GREAT COLLECTIVE FAILURE OF GLOBAL MUSLIM/ISLAMIC COMMUNITIES ["Political Islam" is now an OPPRESSOR of dedicated mainstream Muslims, and no longer a PROTECTOR/DEFENDER of same]???
* PAKISTANI DEFENSE FORUM > THE GREAT GAME IN PAKISTAN: TALIBAN VERSUS TALIBAN; + 1500 SIKH FAMILIES LEAVE AFTER PAKISTANI TALIBAN DEMAND PAYMENT OF "JIZIA" SPECIAL TAX??? The "jizia" was only a mere US$38.0-50.0MILYUHN RSD = minima US$20,000 and above; + ARMED MILITANTS [forcibly]OCCUPY SIKH HOMES IN PAKISTAN.
Our lesson today comes from the old British novelty song:
"I like A Nice Cup Of Tea in the morning
Just to start the day, you see
And at half-past-eleven
My idea of heaven
Is A Nice Cup Of Tea "
In other cultures, tea is a soothing beverage, a respite from the cares of the world. "A Nice Cup Of Tea And A Sit-Down" is a British best-seller offering advice on tea, biscuits (that's "cookies" in American) and comfy chairs by the husband-and-wife team of "Nicey" and "Wifey," which sobriquets suggest that these are not the folks to turn to for societal insurrection.
George Orwell the George Orwell of "Animal Farm" and "1984" wrote a famous essay called "A Nice Cup Of Tea," all about the best way to warm the pot, and the defects of shallow cups. Is it some sort of political allegory for impending civil war set in a household torn between those who put the milk in before the tea and those who do so after? No, Orwell liked a good cuppa (as they say in England) and was eager to pass on his advice for extracting maximum satisfaction from the experience.
But in America tea is not a soothing beverage to be served with McVitie's Digestive Biscuits. It's a raging stimulant. It's rabies in an Earl Grey bag. At America's tea parties, there's no McVitie's, just McVeighs as in Timothy of that ilk, as in angry white men twitching to go nuts. To Paul Krugman of The New York Times, the tea party is a movement of "crazy people" manipulated by sinister "right-wing billionaires."
To the briefly famous Susan Roesgen of CNN, who, when contacted, CNN reports is "On Vacation"
the parties are not safe for "family viewing." Which is presumably why the Boston Globe forbore to cover them last week. The original Boston Tea Party was so-called because it took place at Boston Harbor, which I gather is a harbor somewhere in the general vicinity of the Greater Boston area. So there would appear to be what I believe the journalism professors call a "local angle" to Wednesday's re-enactment. Might be useful for a publication losing a million bucks a week and threatened with closure by a parent company that, in one of the worst media acquisitions of all time, paid over $1 billion for a property that barely a decade later is all but worthless.
But I digress. Asked about the tea parties, President Barack Obama responded that he was not aware of them. As Marie Antoinette said, "Let them drink Lapsang Souchong." His Imperial Majesty at Barackingham Palace having declined to acknowledge the tea parties, his courtiers at the Globe and elsewhere fell into line. Talk-show host Michael Graham spoke to one attendee at the 2009 Boston Tea Party who remarked of the press embargo: "If Obama had been the king of England, the Globe wouldn't have covered the American Revolution."
The American media, having run their own business into the ground, are certainly qualified to run everybody else's into the same abyss. Which is why they've decided that hundreds of thousands of citizens protesting taxes and out-of-control spending and government vaporization of Americans' wealth and their children's future is no story. Nothing to see here. As Nancy Pelosi says, it's AstroTurf fake grass-roots, not the real thing.
Besides, what are these whiners so uptight about? CNN's Susan Roesgen interviewed a guy in the crowd and asked why he was here:
"Because," said the Tea Partier, "I hear a president say that he believed in what Lincoln stood for. Lincoln's primary thing was he believed that people had the right to liberty, and had the right "
But Roesgen had heard enough: "What does this have to do with your taxes? Do you realize that you're eligible for a $400 credit?"
Had the Tea Party animal been as angry as these Angry White Men are supposed to be, he'd have said, "Oh, push off, you condescending tick. Taxes are a liberty issue. I don't want a $400 'credit' for agreeing to live my life in government-approved ways." Had he been of a more literary bent, he might have adapted Sir Thomas More's line from "A Man For All Seasons": "Why, Susan, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world but for a $400 tax credit?"
But Roesgen wasn't done with her "You may already have won!" commercial:
"Did you know," she sneered, "that the state of Lincoln gets $50 billion out of this stimulus? That's $50 billion for this state, sir."
Really? Who knew it was that easy? $50 billion! Did those Navy SEALs find it just off the Somali coast in the wreckage of a pirate skiff in a half-submerged treasure chest, all in convertible pieces of eight or Zanzibari doubloons?
Or is it perhaps the case that that $50 billion has to be raised from the same limited pool of 300 million Americans and their as yet unborn descendants? And, if so, is giving it to "the state of Lincoln" latterly, the state of Blagojevich likely to be of much benefit to the citizens?
Amid his scattershot pronouncements on everything from global nuclear disarmament to high-speed rail, President Obama said something almost interesting the other day. Decrying a "monstrous tax code that is far too complicated for most Americans to understand," the Tax-Collector-in-Chief pledged: "I want every American to know that we will rewrite the tax code so that it puts your interests over any special interests."
That shouldn't be hard. A tax code that put my interests over any special interests would read: "How much did you earn last year? [Insert number here]thousand dollars? Hey, feel free to keep it. You know your interests better than we do!"
OK, to be less absolutist about it, my interests include finding a road at the end of my drive every morning, and modern equipment for the (volunteer) fire department and a functioning military to deter the many predators out there, and maybe one or two other things. But 95 percent of the rest is not just "special interests" but social engineering a $400 tax credit for falling into line with Barack Obama and Susan Roesgen. That's why these are Tea Parties because the heart of the matter is the same question posed two-and-a-third centuries ago: Are Americans subjects or citizens? Finally, Steyn gives us the right words and thought
If the latter, then a benign sovereign should not be determining "your interests" and then announcing that he's giving you a "tax credit" as your pocket money.
Doing the job the Boston Globe won't do, Glenn Reynolds, the Internet's Instapundit, has been posting many photographs of tea parties. For a movement of mean, angry old white men, there seem to be a lot of hot-looking young chicks among them. Perhaps they're just kinky gerontophiliacs. Or perhaps they understand that their generation will be the principal victim of this grotesque government profligacy. Like the original tea party, it is, in the end, about freedom. Live Tea or die!
Our lesson today comes from the old British novelty song:
"I like A Nice Cup Of Tea in the morning
Just to start the day, you see
And at half-past-eleven
My idea of heaven
Is A Nice Cup Of Tea "
In other cultures, tea is a soothing beverage, a respite from the cares of the world. "A Nice Cup Of Tea And A Sit-Down" is a British best-seller offering advice on tea, biscuits (that's "cookies" in American) and comfy chairs by the husband-and-wife team of "Nicey" and "Wifey," which sobriquets suggest that these are not the folks to turn to for societal insurrection.
George Orwell the George Orwell of "Animal Farm" and "1984" wrote a famous essay called "A Nice Cup Of Tea," all about the best way to warm the pot, and the defects of shallow cups. Is it some sort of political allegory for impending civil war set in a household torn between those who put the milk in before the tea and those who do so after? No, Orwell liked a good cuppa (as they say in England) and was eager to pass on his advice for extracting maximum satisfaction from the experience.
But in America tea is not a soothing beverage to be served with McVitie's Digestive Biscuits. It's a raging stimulant. It's rabies in an Earl Grey bag. At America's tea parties, there's no McVitie's, just McVeighs as in Timothy of that ilk, as in angry white men twitching to go nuts. To Paul Krugman of The New York Times, the tea party is a movement of "crazy people" manipulated by sinister "right-wing billionaires."
To the briefly famous Susan Roesgen of CNN, who, when contacted, CNN reports is "On Vacation"
the parties are not safe for "family viewing." Which is presumably why the Boston Globe forbore to cover them last week. The original Boston Tea Party was so-called because it took place at Boston Harbor, which I gather is a harbor somewhere in the general vicinity of the Greater Boston area. So there would appear to be what I believe the journalism professors call a "local angle" to Wednesday's re-enactment. Might be useful for a publication losing a million bucks a week and threatened with closure by a parent company that, in one of the worst media acquisitions of all time, paid over $1 billion for a property that barely a decade later is all but worthless.
But I digress. Asked about the tea parties, President Barack Obama responded that he was not aware of them. As Marie Antoinette said, "Let them drink Lapsang Souchong." His Imperial Majesty at Barackingham Palace having declined to acknowledge the tea parties, his courtiers at the Globe and elsewhere fell into line. Talk-show host Michael Graham spoke to one attendee at the 2009 Boston Tea Party who remarked of the press embargo: "If Obama had been the king of England, the Globe wouldn't have covered the American Revolution."
The American media, having run their own business into the ground, are certainly qualified to run everybody else's into the same abyss. Which is why they've decided that hundreds of thousands of citizens protesting taxes and out-of-control spending and government vaporization of Americans' wealth and their children's future is no story. Nothing to see here. As Nancy Pelosi says, it's AstroTurf fake grass-roots, not the real thing.
Besides, what are these whiners so uptight about? CNN's Susan Roesgen interviewed a guy in the crowd and asked why he was here:
"Because," said the Tea Partier, "I hear a president say that he believed in what Lincoln stood for. Lincoln's primary thing was he believed that people had the right to liberty, and had the right "
But Roesgen had heard enough: "What does this have to do with your taxes? Do you realize that you're eligible for a $400 credit?"
Had the Tea Party animal been as angry as these Angry White Men are supposed to be, he'd have said, "Oh, push off, you condescending tick. Taxes are a liberty issue. I don't want a $400 'credit' for agreeing to live my life in government-approved ways." Had he been of a more literary bent, he might have adapted Sir Thomas More's line from "A Man For All Seasons": "Why, Susan, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world but for a $400 tax credit?"
But Roesgen wasn't done with her "You may already have won!" commercial:
"Did you know," she sneered, "that the state of Lincoln gets $50 billion out of this stimulus? That's $50 billion for this state, sir."
Really? Who knew it was that easy? $50 billion! Did those Navy SEALs find it just off the Somali coast in the wreckage of a pirate skiff in a half-submerged treasure chest, all in convertible pieces of eight or Zanzibari doubloons?
Or is it perhaps the case that that $50 billion has to be raised from the same limited pool of 300 million Americans and their as yet unborn descendants? And, if so, is giving it to "the state of Lincoln" latterly, the state of Blagojevich likely to be of much benefit to the citizens?
Amid his scattershot pronouncements on everything from global nuclear disarmament to high-speed rail, President Obama said something almost interesting the other day. Decrying a "monstrous tax code that is far too complicated for most Americans to understand," the Tax-Collector-in-Chief pledged: "I want every American to know that we will rewrite the tax code so that it puts your interests over any special interests."
That shouldn't be hard. A tax code that put my interests over any special interests would read: "How much did you earn last year? [Insert number here]thousand dollars? Hey, feel free to keep it. You know your interests better than we do!"
OK, to be less absolutist about it, my interests include finding a road at the end of my drive every morning, and modern equipment for the (volunteer) fire department and a functioning military to deter the many predators out there, and maybe one or two other things. But 95 percent of the rest is not just "special interests" but social engineering a $400 tax credit for falling into line with Barack Obama and Susan Roesgen. That's why these are Tea Parties because the heart of the matter is the same question posed two-and-a-third centuries ago: Are Americans subjects or citizens? Finally, Steyn gives us the right words and thought
If the latter, then a benign sovereign should not be determining "your interests" and then announcing that he's giving you a "tax credit" as your pocket money.
Doing the job the Boston Globe won't do, Glenn Reynolds, the Internet's Instapundit, has been posting many photographs of tea parties. For a movement of mean, angry old white men, there seem to be a lot of hot-looking young chicks among them. Perhaps they're just kinky gerontophiliacs. Or perhaps they understand that their generation will be the principal victim of this grotesque government profligacy. Like the original tea party, it is, in the end, about freedom. Live Tea or die!
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
