Idiocy Abounds On Cordoba House Controversy

The latest idiocy comes from none other than a former sports writer who fancies himself an opinionist, Mike Lupica.

He would much rather ignore the US Constitution and its guaranteed protections for free exercise of religion and put the decision of whether to build a mosque near Ground Zero in the hands of the families of victims of the 9/11 terror attacks.

Does Lupica know that there are few issues on which 9/11 families would agree?

Does he realize that some families wanted to see absolutely no construction of office space in Ground Zero?

Does he realize that some families wanted the 2 million tons of debris carted off to Fresh Kills returned to Ground Zero because of the possibility of remains of their loved ones being found pulverized among the debris and that they wanted their loved ones' final resting place to be at the site?

Does he realize that some families backed a proposal to rebuild the Twin Towers as they were - but up to modern building codes and the most advanced construction techniques?

Does Lupica realize that some of those murdered by the 9/11 terrorists were themselves Muslims?

Who exactly was Lupica going to have in charge of the families? Debra Burlingame, whose opposition to the mosque near Ground Zero is on the record, despite the fact that two other mosques are in close proximity to the Park Place site?

No, the final decision for building isn't up to Mayor Bloomberg or even President Obama. It was up to the local community who not only lived through the 9/11 terror attacks, but has ended up thriving and expanding in population significantly. It is the local community who felt that the benefits of a community center with all manner of amenities outweighed other possible detriments. It is the local community who wants to see the community center built, even as outsiders demand that no such construction take place because the backers of the project are Muslim.

Some of the same people who are complaining that a Muslim community center and mosque near Ground Zero would be an affront to the memory of the 9/11 victims or somehow violative of the sanctity of Ground Zero ignore that the community around Ground Zero includes all manner of salacious businesses.

Opponents of a proposed lower Manhattan mosque and community center speak in hushed tones about the sanctity of the "shadow of Ground Zero."

Tell that to the patrons of the Pussycat Lounge, a strip club where a photo of a nearly naked woman marks its location just two blocks from where the World Trade Center stood.

Or the Thunder Lingerie and peep show next door, where the marquee sports an American flag above a window display of sex toys and something called a "power pump."

Many come to the scene of the worst terrorist attack on American soil to pay tribute to pain and unspeakable tragedy. They're welcomed by solemn memorials and a visitors center amid the noise of reconstruction.

Heck, Park Place is home to a bar (the Dakota Roadhouse) next to where the Muslim community center and mosque would be built. Yet, there's nary a peep about that.

Here's a look at how the opposition to the mosque grew, and who was behind the opposition, including Pam Geller. Note too that many of the opponents purposefully conflate the location of the proposed mosque and community center with Ground Zero so as to make it appear that it is being built in Ground Zero, rather than merely near it. News reports continually make the same error even though it is all too clear that the site is nearby. It's laziness for the media, but mendacity for the opponents who are savvy enough to take advantage of that situation.

Is it any wonder that so many people oppose the proposal when they think that the construction will occur within Ground Zero and not near it? Is it any wonder that some people think that the mosque will overshadow Ground Zero and its construction, when it wont even be the tallest building on its own block?

Is it any wonder that some people are complaining bitterly about the choice of location for the community center and voicing their opposition despite the fact that two other mosques are nearby, and predate this proposal by decades?

Raving Lunatics On Parade

Sadly, both quotes are in relation to Israel and showcase a blatant disregard for history, facts, or logic.

For Ron Paul, this should be expected.



Paul's choice of words is quite deliberate. It's a purposeful means to undermine Israel's right to exist - to expropriate the terms relating to the Holocaust and demeans the very history of the Holocaust and the founding of Israel. He's far from the first and wont be the last to do so. But we should rightfully slam him for every utterance.

There are no concentration camps in Gaza or Israel. Israel is not acting like the Nazis, but that's the imagery that Paul hopes to invoke when he makes these asinine statements.

In doing so, he's feeding the pro-terrorist propagandists and plays right into the hands of the Islamists around the world.

If that level of insanity is insufficient, Helen Thomas tops him - if that's even possible.



She wants Jews to go back to Germany and Poland and give Palestine back to the Palestinians.

For Helen Thomas, well, this too should be expected, even as she's the leading luminary and senior correspondent on the White House watch. She's been out of touch with reality for so long that one has to suspect that the crypt keeper unwraps her from her coffin on a daily basis and wheels her into the WH conference room to appear.

The fact is that Israel was created because those Germans sought to eliminate the very existence of Jews from the planet - via concentration and death camps. Hamas now seeks to do the same thing and wishes it had the capability to finish the job started by the Nazis. So too do the Iranians. Islamists throughout the world do so as well.

Glenn Beck Goes Off the Rails Again

Glenn Beck is busy ranting that the cash for clunkers program website invites the government to hack into your personal computer. He cites a page on the cars.gov website that has the following disclaimer:

This application provides access to the DoT CARS system. When logged on to the CARS system, your computer is considered a Federal computer system and is the property of the United States Government. It is for authorized use only. Users (authorized or unauthorized) have no explicit or implicit expectation of privacy.

Any or all uses of this system and all files on this system may be intercepted, monitored, recorded, copied, audited, inspected, and disclosed to authorized CARS, DoT, and law enforcement personnel, as well as authorized officials of other agencies, both domestic and foreign. By using this system, the user consents to such interception, monitoring, recording, copying, auditing, inspection, and disclosure at the discretion CARS or the DoT personnel.

Unauthorized or improper use of this system may result in administrative disciplinary action and civil and criminal penalties.

Unauthorized attempts to defeat or circumvent security features, to use the system for other than intended purposes, to deny service to authorized users, to access, obtain, alter, damage, or destroy information, or otherwise to interfere with the system or its operation are prohibited. Evidence of such acts may be disclosed to law enforcement authorities and result in criminal prosecution under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 (Public Law 99-474) and the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act of 1996 (Public Law 104-294), (18 U.S.C. 1030), or other applicable criminal laws.

The language on that page can be broken down as follows:
Paragraph 1: You're accessing a government computer system, so when you're connected to the gov't system, you have to abide by government rules.
Paragraph 2: We reserve the right to check all information against law enforcement to prevent fraud (to a fault perhaps).
Paragraph 3: Penalites (well, what'd you expect if you violate 1 or 2)
Paragraph 4: If you try to circumvent existing security protocols or access the system illegally, you're subject to civil and criminal penalties.

Of all that's there, paragraph 2 is the one that would seemingly raise an eyebrow. It's overlawyered to a fault, but it's prevalent at nearly all government websites. In other words, it's the standard boilerplate used at government websites across the board. It isn't anything new, and it's not anything anyone has to worry about, unless they attempt to hack into the .gov website or computer systems.

For example, Los Alamos Natl Lab:

Any or all uses of this system and all files on this system may be intercepted, monitored, recorded, copied, audited, inspected, and disclosed to authorized site, Department of Energy, and law enforcement personnel, as well as authorized officials of other agencies, both domestic and foreign. By using this system, the user consents to such interception, monitoring, recording, copying, auditing, inspection, and disclosure at the discretion of authorized site or Department of Energy personnel.

Swap Cars.gov for that, and we're talking the same disclaimer.

Beck is an idiot who clearly hasn't done his research, and is more than willing to spew nonsensical conspiracies about the Obama Administration.

There's plenty of things to criticize about the cars for clunkers program, and I've detailed my concerns, but this isn't one of them.

UPDATE:
Sites that are peddling Beck's nonsense and claiming as Beck does that this somehow gives the government right to hack into your computer are just as off base. That includes Newsbusters' Jeff Poor and Jeff Wray.

Obama Derangement Syndrome Has No Place In US Military

Ah the nirthers have another one convinced of their lunacy. And it's going to end badly for this guy, who is a soldier in the US Armed Forces. He's going to be in for a rude awakening. I have no sympathy for him. At all.

U.S. Army Maj. Stefan Frederick Cook, set to deploy to Afghanistan, says he shouldn’t have to go.

His reason?

Barack Obama was never eligible to be president because he wasn’t born in the United States.

Actually, Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961, two years after it became a state.

Cook’s lawyer, Orly Taitz, who has also challenged the legitimacy of Obama’s presidency in other courts, filed a request last week in federal court seeking a temporary restraining order and status as a conscientious objector for his client.

In the 20-page document — filed July 8 with the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia — the California-based Taitz asks the court to consider granting his client’s request based upon Cook’s belief that Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the United States and is therefore ineligible to serve as commander-in-chief of the U.S. Armed Forces.

Cook further states he “would be acting in violation of international law by engaging in military actions outside the United States under this President’s command. ... simultaneously subjecting himself to possible prosecution as a war criminal by the faithful execution of these duties.”

President Obama is the Commander in Chief. He was duly sworn in and is our President. Period. End stop.

Disobeying an order to deploy? That's a direct violation of the UCMJ.

Just What's Needed?

Former Vice President Al Gore seems to think that cap'n tax (formerly known as the cap and trade energy bill) winding its way through the Congress is the best thing since sliced bread.

He was busy talking about how this is going to lead to global governance. Right, because all those third world countries are really going to appreciate the fact that they wont be able to raise their standard of living through the widespread application of electricity to power everything from refrigeration to communications, all of which makes the comfortable life in the West possible. In fact, it's so comfortable these days that the eco-left can't deal with it, and they're looking to hobble the economy through massive redistribution of wealth through cap and trade, which will do absolutely nothing to the global emissions that Gore and his acolytes are so concerned about. They see green instead - profit and political power.

Gore touted the Congressional climate bill, claiming it “will dramatically increase the prospects for success” in combating what he sees as the “crisis” of man-made global warming.

“But it is the awareness itself that will drive the change and one of the ways it will drive the change is through global governance and global agreements.” (Editor's Note: Gore makes the “global governance” comment at the 1min. 10 sec. mark in this UK Times video.)

Gore's call for “global governance” echoes former French President Jacques Chirac's call in 2000.

On November 20, 2000, then French President Chirac said during a speech at The Hague that the UN's Kyoto Protocol represented "the first component of an authentic global governance."

“For the first time, humanity is instituting a genuine instrument of global governance,” Chirac explained. “From the very earliest age, we should make environmental awareness a major theme of education and a major theme of political debate, until respect for the environment comes to be as fundamental as safeguarding our rights and freedoms. By acting together, by building this unprecedented instrument, the first component of an authentic global governance, we are working for dialogue and peace,” Chirac added.

Former EU Environment Minister Margot Wallstrom said, "Kyoto is about the economy, about leveling the playing field for big businesses worldwide." Canadian Prime Minster Stephen Harper once dismissed UN's Kyoto Protocol as a “socialist scheme.”

'Global Carbon Tax' Urged at UN Meeting

In addition, calls for a global carbon tax have been urged at recent UN global warming conferences. In December 2007, the UN climate conference in Bali, urged the adoption of a global carbon tax that would represent “a global burden sharing system, fair, with solidarity, and legally binding to all nations.”

“Finally someone will pay for these [climate related] costs,” Othmar Schwank, a global tax advocate, said at the 2007 UN conference after a panel titled “A Global CO2 Tax.”

Schwank noted that wealthy nations like the U.S. would bear the biggest burden based on the “polluters pay principle.” The U.S. and other wealthy nations need to “contribute significantly more to this global fund,” Schwank explained. He also added, “It is very essential to tax coal.”

China would never go for this since most of their power is generated from coal, even with a massive hydro, nuclear, and wind/solar power generation binge. The Chinese are building two new coal powered plants a week, and they can barely meet their burgeoning demand.

Does anyone think that the Chinese are going to limit their economy to "save" the planet? They could care less, because the economic development is the perhaps the one thing standing between the Communist control over the government and a revolution of the working classes because of the exploitation by the government for so long.

India isn't going to hobble its economy either.

Nor should the US, and the current recession throws these plans into stark relief. It is a massive tax on production, and people will be forced to pay far more for every good and service in the country because all those costs will be passed on to the end user. That's money that comes out of the economy and goes into the maw of government that has failed to have an energy policy for decades other than to hobble domestic production and transmission.

Instead of making it easier to transmit power from areas with a surplus to those that don't, regulations and eco-leftists make it virtually impossible to do. Nuclear power is all but off limits despite the zero-emissions and constant power supply, something that simply is impossible with wind or solar.

Once again, if the problems of climate change are so dire, where is Al Gore's immediate changes to his lifestyle as a sign of leadership? Has he chosen to telecommute to these various gatherings, or is he continuing to fly around the planet at a rate that pumps out far more COx than average Americans would produce in years.

After all, Gore made these statements at Oxford University, which is thousands of miles from his home in the US (4,136 miles to be exact). Based on an output of .20kg per passenger mile (between the short haul and long haul figures), he pumped out 1654.4kg of CO2 for a round trip between Nashville and Oxford. Imagine how much he could have saved the environment had he chosen to telecommute. But that isn't Gore's way. He'd much rather tell other people how to live their life than to infringe on his way of life.

Palin Insanity Reaches New Lows, Courtesy of Al Sharpton?

Just when you think you've heard it all, Al "Slim Shady" Sharpton comes along and finds a way to surprise. He's got a talk show and one of his callers decided to float a loony conspiracy theory that soon to be former Governor Sarah Palin was behind Michael Jackson's death.

Sharpton's response? He said it was interesting.

FEMALE CALLER (31:50): He (Michael Jackson) is truly the soundtrack of my life. I also have a theory about Sarah Palin as well and I'm going to put it out there on radio, hopefully someone can investigate.

But, I think maybe she did something to Michael Jackson. Maybe there's a scandal there. Maybe she's stepping down because something's about to come out. I don't know, but I'm gonna just put it out there on your show so we'll see.

SHARPTON: All right, thank you for your call, Ashley. That's interesting. I'll put it out, we'll see. I don't know.

Interesting?

As a case study for delusional thinking?

Sharpton should have cut off the phone call, or denounced such nonsense precisely for what it is. Instead, he gives it currency on his show.

Classy.

The Alex Jones Troofer Train Continues

Who else wants to throw their hat into the 9/11 conspiracy pages?

Spenser Pratt and Heidi Montag, come on down. You're the next contestants on the troofer train.

Spiedi appeared on the show Monday, which was apparently all about the New World Order agenda, which they got into after seeing Jones' latest opus, The Obama Deception. In addition to endorsing Jones's views on 9/11, Fleshbeard aired his concerns about Bohemian Grove, the famous old-boys' private club where, Jones asserts, the rich Republicans go in for "mock child sacrifice" in the presence of 40-foot stone owls. Spencer was troubled by these reports.

He brought them on his show, Jones explains on his website, because "Heidi and Spence are acting as though they have woken up to the New World Order and are plugging away to their combined 800,000 followers on twitter endlessly about the 'New World Order Global Elite.'" Even Miley Cyrus is intrigued!

Words Have Meaning; A Short Discourse On Civility In Politics

This has been something that's been brewing for some time. Coarse language in politics is nothing new. It's been around as long as there has been politics. Vulgarity, personal attacks, and smears are part and parcel of American politics, and yet there is something fundamentally distasteful about all of it.

It was awful when the left smeared President Bush and clamored for his impeachment and claimed the 2000 election rendered him an illegitimate president. They have called him a chimp, fascist, and all other manner of epitaph.

It's little different now that the right is spewing nonsense about President Obama's lack of birth certificate somehow proves he shouldn't be President since he's not a US citizen, calling eight House GOPers traitors for voting to approve the cap and trade in the House, or clamoring for a nuclear attack on the United States.

That latter bit is from Glenn Beck on FoxNews. He was busy interviewing Michael Scheuer and the bit about hoping for a mass casualty attack came out and that the nation was slipping into a pre 9/11 mindset that will have deadly consequences. Beck nodded approvingly.



Ah, the joys of free speech and the freedom to make complete asses of themselves.

Sorry, but that goes beyond the pale. I was in NYC on 9/11. I smelled, saw, and viscerally felt the terror in NYC on that day when the murderous Islamic terrorists killed thousands of people in a matter of minutes. No one knew how many people were murdered - it could have been 10,000 or more, and the entire city panicked into wondering whether there were more attacks on the way.

That's not an experience I'd want anyone else here in the US have to experience (or again, since NYC remains a top terrorist target).

The nation is rushing headlong into a pre-9/11 mindset courtesy of this Administration, particularly its inept attempt to shutter Guantanamo Bay, tightening up rules of engagement for airstrikes against terrorists that tie the hands of those on the battlefield, and hoping that lawfare will protect the nation when it should be abundantly clear that it takes a focused and dedicated effort from military and intel assets abroad to disrupt plots and groups before they can strike all the way to domestic law enforcement to thwart attacks by groups inside the US. Forsaking the overseas component to claim some mythical improvement in how others view the US undermines the US national security, which should be a President's paramount concern.

Meanwhile, Mark Tapscott was excoriated by the right for noting that calling the eight House GOPers who voted for cap and trade traitors is an assault on the English language. Words have meanings:

Sorry, folks, but, as much as I agree this bill is a disaster for America, calling these eight RINOs "traitors" is beyond the line. Here's why: The word "traitor" has specific reference to national loyalty. Benedict Arnold was a traitor, as were spies like John Walker, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and Aldrich Hazen Ames. The traditional penalty for treason is death, though in recent decades that sentence has been all but forgotten in the U.S., though not in other nations.

When somebody promises you they will take a certain course of action not involving national loyalty, but then does another, they are a rat, a double-crosser, or a jerk, but they are not a traitor because national security is not jeopardized by their failure to do what they promised to do. The Obama-Waxman-Markey bill will certainly burden the U.S. economy, but it won't destroy it. Thus, referring to the eight GOP members who voted for the bill is unjustified.

But isn't "cap and traitor" simply an acceptable rhetorical device whereas "General Betrayus" is self-evidently character assassination? "Rules for Radicals" author Saul Alinsky, President Obama's inspiration, would see both terms as illustrations of his principle of isolating opponents, discrediting them and making them objects of disgust, hatred and villification.

Obama's economic policies are socialist in intent, and redistribution of wealth through the tax system is socialist. It is an objective fact that President Obama is spectacularly inexperienced having held no executive positions prior to being elected President. That's not attacking Obama as a person, but his policies and experience. Express all the disgust you want at the policies, but attacking the person does little to stop them. It is a diversion.

The cap and trade and health care policies are going to be particularly destructive to the economy in ways that its proponents can hardly imagine. Far from improving the quality of health care, it will have the opposite effect, and people will be worse off for it.

Westboro Goes To West Village; Target Of Scorn Scores!

Westboro Baptist Church has a long history of odious statements and pronouncements, including anti-gay and anti-Semitic slurs, and protesting the funerals of US service members killed in service in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fred Phelps runs this church, and has at various times called American combat deaths God’s punishment for the nation’s tolerance of homosexuality.

They came to New York City over the weekend and protested outside a West Village synagogue which counts a significant gay and lesbian following.

Instead of buckling, the synagogue turned the protests in to a fundraising opportunity. Counterprotesters outnumbered the Westboro nuts by a significant margin. I don't think the Westboro protesters quite knew what was in store for them:

Leaders of Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, a West Village synagogue that caters to gays and lesbians, didn't want to ignore a planned visit by members of the rabidly anti-gay and anti-Semitic Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church.

Instead, they asked supporters to pledge a dollar or more for every minute that six protesters stood near their synagogue hurling epithets and holding signs that read "God Hates Fags" and "Jews Stole the Land."

The final haul after 50 minutes: $10,000.

"Their very presence will actually raise money for the mission of this community," said Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum of the synagogue, which now holds services in rented space. "The synagogue wants a building so we're hoping this will help us get a building."

The Kansas church, known for picketing soldiers' funerals to say their deaths are God's punishment for Americans' tolerance of gays, has ramped up its demonstrations against Jews, who they say are sinners.

The group visited several New York synagogues and Jewish institutions over the weekend and planned to hit a Central Park celebration marking the 100th anniversary of the founding of Tel Aviv.

When they arrived at Beth Simchat Torah, they found about 150 congregants from several synagogues and a nearby church as well as other supporters on the sidewalk singing Jewish songs and prayers.

I don't think the Westboro protesters quite knew what was in store for them, and the synagogue made out like bandits - raising $10,000 in just under an hour.

Krugman: Conservative Media Caused Holocaust Museum Shooting

Hey Paul Krugman.

But with the murder of Dr. George Tiller by an anti-abortion fanatic, closely followed by a shooting by a white supremacist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the analysis looks prescient.

There is, however, one important thing that the D.H.S. report didn’t say: Today, as in the early years of the Clinton administration but to an even greater extent, right-wing extremism is being systematically fed by the conservative media and political establishment.

Now, for the most part, the likes of Fox News and the R.N.C. haven’t directly incited violence, despite Bill O’Reilly’s declarations that “some” called Dr. Tiller “Tiller the Baby Killer,” that he had “blood on his hands,” and that he was a “guy operating a death mill.” But they have gone out of their way to provide a platform for conspiracy theories and apocalyptic rhetoric, just as they did the last time a Democrat held the White House.

And at this point, whatever dividing line there was between mainstream conservatism and the black-helicopter crowd seems to have been virtually erased.

Exhibit A for the mainstreaming of right-wing extremism is Fox News’s new star, Glenn Beck. Here we have a network where, like it or not, millions of Americans get their news — and it gives daily airtime to a commentator who, among other things, warned viewers that the Federal Emergency Management Agency might be building concentration camps as part of the Obama administration’s “totalitarian” agenda (although he eventually conceded that nothing of the kind was happening).

But let’s not neglect the print news media. In the Bush years, The Washington Times became an important media player because it was widely regarded as the Bush administration’s house organ. Earlier this week, the newspaper saw fit to run an opinion piece declaring that President Obama “not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself,” and that in any case he has “aligned himself” with the radical Muslim Brotherhood.

What exactly has Krugman been smoking over there at the New York Times building? Have you not been paying attention to the news, as reported by your own paper? Heck, have you even bothered to do a Google search of James Von Brunn. You'd be disabused of the notion that somehow conservative media is to blame for the murder of security guard Stephen T. Johns.

Let me do the research that Krugman clearly refuses to do since it would severely undermine his thesis. Brunn was previously imprisoned for attempting to take over the Federal Reserve. He's a convicted felon who spent six years in prison and who needed a psych evaluation as well. He believes in more conspiracy theories than one can possibly imagine. He's anti government, anti Semitic, anti Christian, and a conspiracy kook that thinks that the Jews run the government, were somehow responsible for 9/11 (which was also a government conspiracy), Christianity is a hoax, and most recently believed that Obama was hiding his true background.

That doesn't quite fit with Krugman's narrative about conservative media. After all, he's been espousing anti Semitic claptrap for decades. He's been anti government for decades. The one overriding issue with Brunn is his hatred of Jews.

That has nothing to do with the conservative media. It has nothing to do with the media at all. He's an anti-Semite to the core, and that's been his driving force for decades.

And that core belief was there well before the so-called conservative media even existed.

As to the whole nonsense about the DHS report, Krugman again hasn't been reading his own paper. The leaked DHS report on right wing extremism (and it was entitled as much so left wing terrorist groups were not included) was ambiguous and vague and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano expressed regret at its publication, but on the aspect of former military somehow linking up with right wing extremists, the concern was that former Gulf War, Iraq, and Afghanistan veterans would be ones to profile for, not veterans from World War II. After all, who could see an 89 year old geezer as the profile of a terrorist?

Instead, Krugman is basically attacking individuals like Glenn Beck. I can't say that I've ever watched or listened to Beck, but various clips of him show that he's unhinged, but no more so than someone like Keith Olbermann, who is a leftist who gets a fraction of Beck's audience.

As to the Washington Times, might I remind Krugman that the New York Times has repeatedly been kissing the ass of President Obama, and did everything possible to see that Obama was elected, including running nonsensical stories about GOP candidate John McCain and a supposed liason with a lobbyist that existed nowhere except in the demented minds of the reporters who got the editors at the Times to run with the story.

I might even remind Krugman that CBS once tried to throw the 2004 election for John Kerry with the bogus Rathergate documents. It took bloggers to not only uncover the deception, but those media outlets did all they could to push the fake but accurate meme, despite the overwhelming evidence that they were concocted and Dan Rather and his producer Mary Mapes purposefully overlooked the questionable circumstances of the documents and ran with the incendiary story because of overwhelming Bush-hatred.

That the Bush Administration sought a solitary mouthpiece to get its own opinion out there in the face of an overwhelming liberal media doesn't show malfeasance on their part, only that the media isn't doing its job.

Krugman is merely playing his own part - one hit wonder.

Perhaps he should stick to the economics, because his grasp of the facts, particularly in this instance is sorely lacking.

UPDATE:
Here's a copy of Brunn's criminal complaint, which notes that Brunn was charged under 18 USC 1111 (first degree murder) and 18 USC 930 (murder at federal facility), both of which are punishable by the death penalty. The crime was also videotaped, which means that the incident will be available for the jury to view.

New Jersey's Motley Crew of Democratic Challengers To Corzine

If you think that the New Jersey GOP is in bad shape, consider the situation for the Democrats. Yes, they have Gov. Jon Corzine who's run the state's fiscal ship aground. But, they have a bunch of challengers who are even more out of touch than Corzine is. Of the three others seeking the nomination, only one is even reasonably in touch with reality and not engaging in conspiracy mongering or pushing crazy theories.

First, we meet with Jeff Boss of Guttenberg, who says the government plotted the 9/11 terrorist attacks and vows that legalized sports betting is the key to solving New Jersey's budget woes. Then, we travel to Glen Ridge to speak with Carl Bergmanson, former mayor of Glen Ridge, who blasts Corzine for failing to deliver on the promises he made four years ago. Finally, we head out Route 78 to meet with Phillipsburg factory worker Roger Bacon, who says he's running to lead a march on Washington against NAFTA.

This is such a motley crew of people.

There's the good, bad, and just plain ugly.

First the good: Former Glen Ridge Mayor Carl Bergmanson thinks he's got a shot. His platform makes sense, and he says many of the right things, including calls for the elimination of all toll roads, noting the costs in traffic and pollution and the nickle and diming of taxpayers. He also calls for a constitutional convention to eliminate the Supreme Court's involvement in property taxes and school funding. Specifically, he's looking to eliminate COAH, which is the affordable housing requirement, which is anything but affordable.

His biggest problem is that he doesn't have the bankroll that Corzine does.

The bad: Roger Bacon is a perpetual gadfly and candidate for office with no chance for winning. He's attempted runs for Congress and now Governor. He has no chance of winning, but he's going to make a show of it. What is his platform? He wants to march on Washington to repeal NAFTA.

Here's the flat-out ugly: I actually met Jeff Boss the other day as he was handing out fliers announcing his positions in Hoboken. I didn't realize that at the time, but with the photo accompanying the Star Ledger story, I've now made that connection. I wish I had known who this guy was because I felt like I needed to take a shower afterwards.

His flier reads more like a manifesto than a clear and lucid approach to governance. As the Star Ledger reports, Boss thinks that the solution to the state's fiscal mess is to jump on the sports betting bandwagon, but that's just a tip of this iceberg. Boss also thinks that New Jersey residents should get a total pass on having to pay NJ Turnpike or GSP tolls. It should be imposed on out of state drivers, as though that would ever pass constitutional muster, let alone represents even a modicum of fiscal responsibility.

Worse still is that he's a 9/11 conspiracy monger. He thinks that the US government was behind the 9/11 attacks. If there's a reason to send Boss packing, that's it. More to the point, the other candidates should be running this kook out of the room.

With opponents like this, it's no wonder that Corzine does so well.

Sen. Chris Dodd's Moral Muddle

Let's set aside all his many problems with being the focal point of the financial meltdown and various other ethical flaps.

Let's just focus on this nastiness courtesy of Connecticut Democrat Chris Dodd:



Dodd takes Godwin's law, throttles it, waterboards it, throws it into a plastic shredder, and still finds that what Bush authorized in harsh interrogations is worse than what the Nazis did to murder six million Jews during the Holocaust.

These people have no clue. They are destroying the meaning of the English language with these kinds of pronouncements, and dishonor the memories of those murdered at the hands of the Nazis (who regularly engaged in torture, medical experimentation, rape, and other nastiness and pure unadulterated evil, which in no way shape or form could even remotely be compared to allowing harsh interrogations of three self-admitted terror masters, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who helped plan and instigate the 9/11 attacks.

Dodd also misstates the facts surrounding the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in claiming that he was waterboarded 180+ times. He was in fact waterboarded a grand total of five sessions, and the 180+ times refers to the individual instances water was sprinkled on his face.

This was done to obtain information of a critical nature to prevent further terrorist attacks, and KSM was no saint. He was behind multiple terrorist attacks and planned dozens of major bombings and high profile attacks, including assassinations, hijacking and destroying multiple airliners, flying hijacked airlines into other buildings, mass casualty attacks, destroying key infrastructure, and causing all manner of mayhem around the world, and focused specifically on US interests worldwide.

Dodd's attempted equivocation between what the Administration did to obtain needed intel and what the Nazis did is reprehensible.

Pelosi's Inane Rant of the Day

Well, this should get your blood boiling. Apparently birth control is good for the economy.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Hundreds of millions of dollars to expand family planning services. How is that stimulus?

PELOSI: Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children's health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those - one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So no apologies for that?

PELOSI: No apologies. No. we have to deal with the consequences of the downturn in our economy.

She's attempting to justify porkbarrel spending on a pet program - contraceptives and birth control - by claiming that birth control will reduce the need for education, health care, and everything else.

If these leftists are so interested in saving the economy and environment, how about doing it themselves by not procreating. You don't need the government to do that, just self-control. That would save everyone from all the hot air we're exposed to incessantly by the radical leftists.

Pelosi is basically telling people to do as I say, but not as I have done, as she's a mother of 5 children and has 6 grandchildren. I don't see her telling her kids to stop having kids.

It is without a doubt expensive to have kids. There's production costs for all the stuff that growing kids need, from baby formula, strollers, clothes, to costs of education. That's money that goes to school districts, teachers, and all the related industries that support school operations (publishers, manufacturers, maintenance, construction, etc.) All that money goes somewhere, and that includes corporations that pay taxes on that income, wages earned by all the people working for those stores, businesses, schools, and ancillary activities that people rely on.

It costs $190,000 to raise a child to the age of 18, and that's a conservative figure at best. Throw in college, which can cost another $100,000, and you're talking real money.

That's real income earned by all those people, and Pelosi is telling us to throw that all away because it costs money, but contraceptives will save us money in the long run?

Expect to hear lots more of this claptrap in the years to come.

UPDATE:
Here's the video, courtesy of Ms. Underestimated:



Note too that contraceptives and birth control will also include abortions, which is one of the pet causes of the left. Nice. The Democrats now think that the way to stimulate the economy is to encourage abortions and birth control.

Econut of the Day

A New York City MTA bus driver was assaulted by a woman who complained that the bus she eventually got on was not a hybrid bus.

The frantic passenger who bit a veteran driver's arm was upset that his bus wasn't a hybrid, he said Thursday.

"She came on the bus, and she said she waited more than an hour for a hybrid," said MTA driver Peter Williams, 42. "I said, 'I'm not in control of what bus is assigned to me.'"

Williams, a dad of two who is in the Navy Reserves, plans to take a little time off after Wednesday's bizarre attack on an uptown M104 bus.

The woman, Shelia Bolar, 49, started hollering at Williams soon after she boarded the Broadway bus on the upper West Side.

When her rant was done, she she grabbed his arm.

"Miss, don't touch me while I'm operating the bus," Williams warned Bolar.

At W. 79th St., Williams let passengers off and gestured to a dispatcher he called for help.

"That's when she bit me. ... I couldn't believe it."

Bolar chomped through a jacket, a sweater and a thick shirt, causing a bruise and swelling but not breaking skin.

"She bit through all that," said Williams, still shocked.

And then she fled - but cops nabbed her blocks away. Bolar, who faces assault charges was held without bail, pending a psychiatric exam.

If you are so concerned about the environment, walk. It beats taking the bus for carbon emissions. It would do your body good, and it would avoid entanglements with law enforcement.

The MTA is currently operating about 850 hybrid buses and should have 1,700 hybrid buses by 2010, the largest such fleet in the world. The MTA operates 4,578 buses in 2007.

Foolish Evil Anti-Semite Rant of the Day: Jimmy Carter

Once again, former President Jimmy Carter chooses evil over good. He sides with terrorism over a state's right to defend itself from terrorism.

“I know from personal involvement that the devastating invasion of Gaza by Israel could easily have been avoided.

After visiting Sderot last April and seeing the serious psychological damage caused by the rockets that had fallen in that area, my wife, Rosalynn, and I declared their launching from Gaza to be inexcusable and an act of terrorism. Although casualties were rare (three deaths in seven years), the town was traumatized by the unpredictable explosions. About 3,000 residents had moved to other communities, and the streets, playgrounds and shopping centers were almost empty. Mayor Eli Moyal assembled a group of citizens in his office to meet us and complained that the government of Israel was not stopping the rockets, either through diplomacy or military action.

Knowing that we would soon be seeing Hamas leaders from Gaza and also in Damascus, we promised to assess prospects for a cease-fire. From Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, who was negotiating between the Israelis and Hamas, we learned that there was a fundamental difference between the two sides. Hamas wanted a comprehensive cease-fire in both the West Bank and Gaza, and the Israelis refused to discuss anything other than Gaza.

We knew that the 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza were being starved, as the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food had found that acute malnutrition in Gaza was on the same scale as in the poorest nations in the southern Sahara, with more than half of all Palestinian families eating only one meal a day.”

There was one way this Gaza campaign could have been avoided: Hamas could have chosen not to repeatedly and incessantly attack Israel with kassams. But for the kassam attacks, Israel would not have launched Operation Cast Lead. The problem of course is that but for Israel's existence, Hamas would not be firing those kassams at Israel. Therein lies the rub. Hamas cannot tolerate Israel's existence. Israel just wants to be left alone and to do so, Israel must stop Hamas from attacking. The world, and Carter, seem more interested in stopping Israel's ability to protect itself than getting Hamas to quit its genocidal campaign.

If Carter truly seeks peace, he should be demanding nothing less than the unconditional surrender of Hamas, but he refuses to make such a case.

Hamas is a terrorist group. Carter speaks up for Hamas and against Israel, which is doing what it can to stop the thousands of rockets fired against Israel since 2000, the hundreds fired during the last ceasefire (6-month hudna that didn’t even make it 5 days before Hamas started firing kassams again), and which has never made a humanitarian gesture of its own unilaterally.

Israel is forced to make concessions in the name of a peace process. Hamas demands concessions while doing nothing.

You want a humanitarian gesture that Hamas should do - release Gilad Shalit unconditionally. That wont happen because Hamas needs him in order to press Israel to release hundreds of Palestinian terrorists held in Israeli jails.

Where was Carter to denounce Hamas when it violated the hudna over the summer by firing rockets just six days into the truce? Where was Carter to denounce Hamas for continuing to hold Gilad Shalit for more than two years? Where was Carter to demand Shalit's release as a good faith gesture to Israel? Carter has repeatedly met with Hamas over the past year, and has come away with nothing but egg over his face.

And Carter has the temerity to blame Israel for the current fight in Gaza?

Israel unilaterally left Gaza in 2005; Hamas and Fatah could have built a state using the greenhouses and other infrastructure left by Israel and/or donated by Israeli and Jewish groups seeking peace. Instead, they razed the greenhouses, turned the former Israeli communities into terror training camps and launch facilities for the kassams. Hamas ousted Fatah from Gaza because Fatah wasn't fighting Israel enough. Hamas gave Gazans the war they wanted, and Israel has obliged by going after the Hamas that controls all that happens there.

Jimmy Carter is supporting evil and opposing the good. That makes him evil.

Others slamming Carter include: Jules Crittenden, Don Surber, Macranger, Stop the ACLU, Dan Collins at Protein Wisdom, and Soccer Dad at Meryl Yourish.

Chavez Cuts Off Cheap Heating Oil Program Stunt Because He Can't Afford It

[T]hugo Chavez, the socialist leader of Venezuela is having to scale back his socialist operations and among the first to go is his attempts to lure Americans to believe his socialist claptrap.

He's had to stop the low cost oil program in the US. Crashing oil prices meant that Chavez didn't have the money on hand to run the program. Of course, Chavez doesn't have the money to expand his military either, so it's a win-win proposition for those who see Chavez's bellicose statements and his repeated efforts to undermine the Venezuelan democracy by granting himself greater powers at the expense of the people.

Chavez is an economics nitwit, peddling his socialist visions, and Venezuela's economy was already reeling from Chavez's economic programs, so that the worldwide slowdown and lowered demand for oil has meant that Chavez doesn't have the money to spend on his socialist cause.

Hardest hit aren't the people who had been taking advantage of the free oil program, but the useful idiot Joe Kennedy, who had been shilling for Chavez for years. Jammie notes that Kennedy is getting the cold shoulder not only from Americans, but Chavez isn't exactly reaching out to him either.

Seattle Stupidity Revisited

It seems that the Mayor of Seattle has had second thoughts about the no-salt added policy pursued by the City while claiming that the ecological effects of adding salt to the roads would harm the salt-water of Puget Sound.

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels announced this morning that the city will reverse its decade-old policy and use road salt to melt ice in future storms.

The mayor set certain conditions for using salt: on hills, arterials or snow bus routes, and on routes to hospitals and other emergency facilities when at least 4 inches of snow is predicted, if ice is predicted, or if extreme cold is expected to last more than three days.

The city earlier refused to use salt, saying it's bad for the environment, and instead spread sand over the roads.

"In normal Seattle winters, this practice has served us well," Nickels said in a City Hall news conference today. "This time, liquid de-icers were not enough. People were frustrated, and so was I."

Nickels has faced criticism over the city's reaction to back-to-back snowstorms over the past two weeks. Buses could not run in many parts of the city and roads remained icy and rutted days after snow had fallen.

I guess the Mayor probably saw the bad public relations nightmare that ensued, to say nothing of the possible serious hit from lawsuits as a result of law enforcement being unable to reach people during emergencies in a timely fashion or the numerous auto accidents that resulted from roads that were worse than ice skating rinks because they were on hills.

Nothing is so clarifying as watching the potential for lawsuits pile up, and the city grind to a halt because of a snowstorm.

Of course, there are limitations to common sense:

The mayor set certain conditions for using salt: on hills, arterials or snow bus routes, and on routes to hospitals and other emergency facilities when at least 4 inches of snow is predicted, if ice is predicted, or if extreme cold is expected to last more than three days.

Making sure that hills are treated along with arterials and snow-bus routes is common sense, but requiring that four inches of snow fall before salt is used makes no sense. It doesn't take four inches of snow to cause problems. It can be as little as an inch - because it's the freezing of water that causes ice and turns roads into hazardous ice skating rinks.

HT: Ace

Palestinian Sympathizers Boat Rammed Attempting To Run Israeli Blockade

The boat, chartered by a bunch of Palestinian supporters and useful idiots, including former Rep. Cynthia McKinney, was involved in a collision with an Israeli navy vessel off the coast of Gaza.

The people on board were attempting to run a blockade imposed by Israel to prevent weapons and terrorists from being resupplied by sea.

Of course, look for the media to play up the fact that there were civilians, especially McKinney, on board or somehow blame Israel for this incident. The people on board the boat were entering an active war zone and refused to stop when demanded by the Israeli navy. International law permits such actions, and the ship refused to comply.

The groups behind the incident? It's a coalition under the banner Free Gaza including the detestable International Solidarity Movement (ISM), Israel Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) and Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR). All of those groups are financed by European governments. The ISM is responsible for sending useful idiots into Gaza and the West Bank to protect smuggling tunnels and terrorists. It's also important to keep in mind that the Palestinian Center for Human Rights doesn't bother cataloging the human rights abuses heaped upon Gazans by their fellow Gazans- Hamas. Instead, their focus is solely on Israel's rights to defend itself and prevent terrorists from infiltrating Israel through the use of checkpoints and other security measures.

Israel gave her and her cohorts the warm welcome she deserves for propagandizing on behalf of the Islamic terror group Hamas.

Michelle Malkin notes that McKinney's sponsors and donors help explain her anti-Semitism and pro-Palestinian statements.

UPDATE:
Here's some more context on this stunt by the anti-Semites courtesy of Elder of Ziyon:

Just for context: The Free Gaza boat was supposed to have 3 tons of medical aid. During the past three days, Israel has sent 186 trucks filled with aid to Gaza - plus ten ambulances. Each truck, from past experience, holds between 10 and 20 tons of material.

Which means that for all the noise the FGM makes about how necessary their trip is to help Gazans, their "aid" equates to roughly 0.1% of what the hated, lying Zionist enemy has given while under direct attack from Gaza. Proving yet again that the off-key moonbats' purpose is not to help Gazans (they could coordinate sending aid through Israel, as Jordan does, or through Egypt, which sent 72 trucks of its own) but to hurt Israel through PR.

Seattle Stupidity

Seattle has chosen to let nature determine when the police will respond to emergencies. The City has, in its infinite wisdom, opted to not throw salt down on the roads in the hilly city and will allow the "snow-packed" roads persist until warmer weather ensues.

To hear the city's spin, Seattle's road crews are making "great progress" in clearing the ice-caked streets.

But it turns out "plowed streets" in Seattle actually means "snow-packed," as in there's snow and ice left on major arterials by design.

"We're trying to create a hard-packed surface," said Alex Wiggins, chief of staff for the Seattle Department of Transportation. "It doesn't look like anything you'd find in Chicago or New York."

The city's approach means crews clear the roads enough for all-wheel and four-wheel-drive vehicles, or those with front-wheel drive cars as long as they are using chains, Wiggins said.

The icy streets are the result of Seattle's refusal to use salt, an effective ice-buster used by the state Department of Transportation and cities accustomed to dealing with heavy winter snows.

"If we were using salt, you'd see patches of bare road because salt is very effective," Wiggins said. "We decided not to utilize salt because it's not a healthy addition to Puget Sound."

By ruling out salt and some of the chemicals routinely used by snowbound cities, Seattle has embraced a less-effective strategy for clearing roads, namely sand sprinkled on top of snowpack along major arterials, and a chemical de-icer that is effective when temperatures are below 32 degrees.

Seattle also equips its plows with rubber-edged blades. That minimizes the damage to roads and manhole covers, but it doesn't scrape off the ice, Wiggins said.

That leaves many drivers, including Seattle police, pretty much on their own until nature does to the snow what the sand can't: melt it.

The city's patrol cars are rear-wheel drive. And even with tire chains, officers are avoiding hills and responding on foot, according to a West Precinct officer.

Snow packed roads? You mean ice-packed.

Police have rear wheel drive vehicles and can't navigate in some areas of the city because they simply don't have the traction up and down the hills. If you don't have one of those dreaded four wheel drive vehicles aka SUVs, you're out of luck.

Why did Seattle do this instead of doing what practically every other major city in the US does? They don't want the salt to get into the Puget Sound.

That's right. The possibility of salt runoff into Puget Sound - a salty body of water connected with the Pacific Ocean (itself salty) trumps common sense.

It means that if you're in a life-threatening situation, you're at the mercy of law enforcement of possibly being incapable of navigating to your location or delaying in getting to your location. It means that the incidence of car accidents are going to be higher.

Most importantly to the eco-nuts, it means that the evil SUV reigns supreme. How exactly does that work?

Then again, it's Seattle. Stupid.

Memo to Leftist Elitists: Look at Hatred Within

Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd, two of the columnists who grace the op-ed pages of the New York Times would like you to think that McCain campaign is stoking the fires of hatred and racism against Sen. Barack Obama.

Right. Never mind that McCain repeatedly tries to calm crowds and talk down those who say hateful things. It's reported as the right's anger out of control.

More to the point, I can't ever seem to recall anyone at the New York Times who was forceful in countering all the assassination fantasies (including feature films) against President Bush, who happens to get all the ire because he's a Republican. Jammie has the details on who has done what, including the incessant equivocation between Bush and being a terrorist. Some of those same people on the left who were wishing for a Bush assassination are now calling for the same with Obama. Bill Mahrer tries to use assassinations of VP Cheney and others as a punch line. I just call these people sick and deranged, but that they're out there and in numbers is quite troubling.

It's been nearly eight straight years of unending hatred against Bush - to the point of derangement. There are some who think that Bush wont relinquish the Presidency at the end of his term, even though it's now less than 100 days away.

These leftist talking points are universal; not only are members of Congress claiming that McCain is sowing the seeds of hatred but even Castro is getting in on the act.

At the same time, you've got the Obama campaign engaging in thuggish activities that drove Hillary's supporters nuts, and those same Obama supporters are now trying to do the same thing to McCain. Vandals continue to attack GOP offices around the nation. They're hoping to smear McCain as a racist even though McCain has not taken the bait - Obama's skin color is irrelevant; his heritage is irrelevant; and his religion is irrelevant.

Obama's policies are nothing more than more of the tax and spend entitlement culture that pushes the nation ever more towards socialism. Refusing to vote for Obama isn't because of his race, but because when you distill his positions to its essence, there's nothing there to actually support them.

UPDATE:
Michelle Malkin has a lengthy list of those leftists who have engaged in insane hateful rage against the GOP.