Archive for September, 2009
ACORN LOL — UPDATED
Wednesday, September 16th, 2009This video is so ridiculously funny, it should be a movie. But it’s real. Still, life is funny. And I’d be laughing harder if my taxes weren’t paying this woman’s salary.
More at The Anchoress.
Has Charlie Gibson reported on this yet? Ed Morrissey examines why not:
All that being said, the ACORN story is not just a Kanye West celebrity dust-up. It involves tens of millions of taxpayer dollars, and potentially billions in upcoming legislation. ACORN has worked tirelessly on behalf of the Democratic Party in the last election cycle and beyond, helping to organize in communities on behalf of Obama’s domestic policy agenda. It’s a story worthy of national coverage, and leaving it to the cable news outlets may explain why people don’t bother to tune into the broadcast networks any longer to get informed.
Let’s pose the question this way. If the Federalist Society, which got a heaping helping of demonization during the John Roberts and Samuel Alito confirmation hearings, started giving advice to prospective pimps and hookers on tax evasion and hiding child-prostitution rings, does anyone think that the Charlie Gibsons and the Papers of Record in the US would let that slide to the cable networks? Or would it headline their outlets, complete with a dissection of Federalist Society support for Republicans?
And now, Michelle Malkin reports that a group of robbers posed as Obama health care workers to gain entry to a home. They robbed, pistol-whipped and shot the people. Nice.
Have you heard about these stories? No? Hmmm….
Anyway, the video is classic. And the girl posing as a prostitute and the guy as pimp are like caricatures out of a movie. It’s so ridiculous, it’s crazy. I don’t know if the ACORN worker actually murdered her husband, but all this publicity can’t be good for ACORN.
The Anchoress is saying that Google and the Obama website has been scrubbed. This is probably the most concerning to me. The Google part. When the government has such cozy ties to a company that the company will do a political operative’s business, one wonders what they’ll do to work against a candidate they don’t like.
What a mess. A hot mess.
Update:
Ed Morrissey reports that the ex-husband is alive after all. He just wishes he was dead. [I made up the last part.]
Updated again:
Gateway Pundit has the Jon Stewart clip from last night making fun of the Media for not getting the story. But Jon is missing the point. The Media don’t WANT to get the story. They are HELPING the president anyway they can.
Human Right’s Watch Worker Nazi Memorabilia-Collecting Wierdo
Tuesday, September 15th, 2009He’s not the only antisemitic HRW worker, so, take their blabbing about Israel’s human rights “violations” for the nonsense it is. Bookworm has the whole story:
Omri Ceren, who blogs at Mere Rhetoric, is a member of the Watcher of Weasels Council. He is as good a blogger as one can get, and someone with a real gift for ferreting out the truth behind the story. So it was no surprise that Omri, using what he describes as simple due diligence, discovered that yet another high level member of Human Rights Watch, an ostensibly objective organization that is in fact fiercely hostile to Israel, has a distinctly unsavory past, and one with strong ties to antisemitism. Omri’s discovery concerned Marc Garlasco, who happens to have an obsessive interesting in Nazi uniforms. Garlasco’s interest transcends mere hobbyism. As Omri details, Garlasco exhibits what veers into a libidinous excitement about Nazi uniforms, something that makes an ugly package when combined with his slobbering servility to Palestinians, his hostility to Israel, and his regular lies about the Jewish state.
Slasher Flicks, Horrifying 9/12 Numbers, & Actual Terrorism
Tuesday, September 15th, 2009This podcast we hit everything from slasher films affect on the culture to the historic 9/12 march (interviewing the woman behind the 2 million rumor) to rules of engagement with Afghanistan, Iran’s nuclear time table and a trade war with China.
My guests include Tabitha Hale, John Hawkins, Lorie Byrd and Steve Schippert of Threatswatch. It’s a fun podcast–full of information you won’t get anywhere else.
To subscribe on iTunes, just click here!
When Melissa isn’t on the radio, you can find her at melissaclouthier.com and on Twitter. Her username is MelissaTweets.
Blood Tests By Cops? No. Twitter By Surgeons? Yes.
Monday, September 14th, 2009A tale of two technologies. I don’t care that blood draws by cops help stop drunk driving, I don’t want a cop near a needle, period. Too many things can go wrong.
What about surgeons giving updates from the surgery? Coolness. Doctors take turns, nurses help open and close, and in between a surgeon can update on progress. Since I’ve been in the waiting room too many times to note, I must say that the waiting…often hours…is just so stress inducing. Being told that the first phase is done and went well or there has been some trouble as the tumor was more invasive than expected, might or might not be welcome news, but the worst part is not knowing.
Press: Give Up The Pretense, Wait You Kinda Have…
Monday, September 14th, 2009I’m waiting for the public announcement by CNN saying that they want to clarify their editorial perspective and that they’re biased to the left. Wouldn’t that be freeing for everyone? Stop the pretending to be objective and just clearly state a bias. It’s not like they’re even attempting to report unfavorable Obama news.
Imagine biased press conferences. On the one side, the conservative press people. On the other side, the liberal. The President could go back and forth between the sides and people could see the difference between the questions. They could decide who to listen to. They could decide who is fair.
They would also see 80% of the press line up on one side which is why the press has numbers like what Don Surber reports: Only 19% of people believe the press is fair.
So, they’re already considered biased. Why not make the covert overt and be done with it?
9/12 And The Numbers Fight
Saturday, September 12th, 2009Michelle Malkin notes that the pictures of the thousands upon thousands (which eventually make a million) of people is from today.
Here’s a couple thoughts:
1. The libs must be completely freaked out. They are obsessing over the details.
2. If they obsess over the details they can ignore the big picture–which is that a lot of Americans are unhappy at the intrusion and scope of the government.
3. If the Left had organically amassed this many people it would have been called…oh, the Civil Rights movement.
And of course, the left is screaming racism. Where are the black people, they ask? Well, interestingly, that 15% of the U.S. population is overwhelming still please with the President’s work. Also, black voters voted almost exclusively for Barack Obama.
If 3% of blacks voted against Barack Obama and say .5% of them are outraged at the President’s policies, what would that be in real numbers? Not too big. And actually, I can think of a bunch of unhappy black anti-Obama folks right off the top of my head. Are they racist?
Are the white Independents and Democrats who voted for President Obama but are now disaffected, racists? There were those sorts of people at the DC march. Are they racist?
The racist card is utter balderdash. Barack Obama ran as a moderate and is governing like a hard core liberal bent on creating a soft socialist American state. That’s his whole “remake America” and “change” rhetoric. That’s how he wanted to change America.
Most Americans who voted for him, thought he meant it when he was talking about “bringing responsibility back”. They thought wrong. They feel duped. Now, they’re angry.
When black people were angry at President Bush, were they racist? When white liberals were angry at President Bush were they racist? When President Bush lost the middle and a chunks of the right, were those people racist? I mean, they hated the policies of a white guy.
The racist argument needs to stop. And the numbers fight is hilarious. There were a lot of people in DC and around the country making it known that America is going the wrong direction. How much is a lot? Well, enough to scare the liberals senseless. But that doesn’t take much.
It’s All Academic: Does President Obama Even Care?
Saturday, September 12th, 2009FDR passed socialistic programs through as a caring alternative to the misery people were experiencing. It was wrong-headed and resulted in the exact opposite consequences–as nearly all government interventions do–but his motivation was perceived as caring deeply and so people gave him a lot of rope.
Barack Obama’s words ring hollow. They do ring. The sound just doesn’t resonate. His smooth baritone vibrates and when the noise is gone the substance is forgotten.
Why is this?
It seems that people don’t believe that he cares. His words and deeds don’t match up. So people are starting to ignore the words in favor of what their eyes are telling them. This is what they see [from my Pajama's Media column today]:
Barack Obama seemed right. Processing his words through the frontal lobe, they sounded good. Since he wasn’t pressed or questioned, since even Bill O’Reilly seemed beguiled by Barack Obama’s verbal deftness, he rarely had to prove or defend. He was always given enough rhetorical wiggle room. He still is given that room, by the the press anyway. But something always felt wrong. It wasn’t a primal reaction to the “other,” like Olbermann and Garafalo like to claim. It was something ethereal, because Senator Obama had no concrete policies or past accomplishments besides community organizing upon which to stand. His associations aroused some suspicion, but to most they seemed trivial and the press was uninterested.
His associations seem more important these days — at least to the voters. And they’re providing concrete evidence of why some voters felt discomfort before.
The intangibles manifest now because the rhetorical rubber is meeting the policy road. President Obama still tries to have it all ways, but the constraints of legislation do not let that happen. His words matter now and his actions have consequences.
While the unemployment rate continues to rise, the president extends his indulgent Martha’s Vineyard vacation. Worse, when he returns to work, he promptly goes golfing. Forget the optics of such actions. The actions themselves are callous.
Now 9/11 is here. Who can forget it? Evidently, President Barack Obama can. It’s not just that he seems to want to diminish it with a National Day of Service — turning attention away from those lost and the new era we live in — it’s that he seems to not think the day matters all that much. It was cruel to send Air Force One through Manhattan with a military escort plane over the Statue of Liberty. The people were terrified, and this fear was wrought by their own president’s administration.
Anyway, I write more over there and I’d appreciate your thoughts and comments. The comments there, already, are very thoughtful and thought-provoking. Someone called Backwards Boy says:
Obama’s aloofness is a result of two things: the refusal to acknowledge reality in order to guard a large but fragile ego, and a lack of empathy toward his fellow man.
Obama’s ego drove him to seek approval in the first place he could find it: among those with politically radical ideas. Since radicals were prominent in his family structure at an early age, it’s not surprising that he sought to surround himself with like-minded people in college and later in professional life. His crippling need to be accepted prohibited him from questioning any of the tenets of radicalism, lest he be rejected by the accepting group.
His lack of empathy prevents him from seeing the other side of any argument. He cannot place himself in anothers’ position, for to do so threatens the position of the ego as always being correct in each and every little thing. The concept of the ego being wrong is devastating, and the psychological machinations that the ego uses to protect itself are endless, even to the point of actively rejecting reality.
Mind you, these faults don’t reduce you to the level of drooling or prevent you from holding down a job, but they serve as subtle barriers to healthy relationships. If you’ve ever tried to be friends with someone whose guard is always up even when it doesn’t need to be, you know what I mean.
This detachment means 3 and 1/2 more years of instability, I’m afraid. I’ve written before that President Obama also seems a man conflicted within himself, or rather, has no sense of self. So his person makes it difficult to determine who you are in relation to him. That makes it very difficult for Americans to settle down and relax with his leadership.
Breaking: Pro Life Advocate Gunned Down In Michigan
Friday, September 11th, 2009A pro-life advocate was killed this morning. From the Flint Journal via Catholic Online:
“State police at the Corunna post have confirmed a well-known anti-abortion activist was shot multiple times and killed this morning in front of Owosso High School. The victim’s identity has not yet been released but the shooting occurred around 7:30 a.m., after most students were off the buses and safely inside the building, said Owosso schools transportation supervisor Jayne Campbell.
State police also confirmed that a suspect was taken into custody about 8:15 a.m. at the suspect’s home.
Owosso High School secretary Wendy Smith said the students remain in lockdown this morning and confirmed that no students were involved and all are safe with classes going on as normal. The shooting did not occur on school property, Smith said. Meanwhile, police have completely ringed with police tape a section of North Street in front of the school.
A black car can be seen parked at the corner of North and Whitehaven streets, where a portable oxygen tank is lying in a front yard next to a large sign bearing the image of a baby and the word “Life.”
9/11: The Injustice Still Grates–UPDATED
Friday, September 11th, 2009Eight years later, I’m still angry. Decent Americans, going about their business–going to work on a gorgeous Indian summer day got the shock of their lives. Buildings crashed down around them and nothing would be the same.
A new friend in Texas moved from the New York a couple years ago, finally. She worked in the Twin Towers and happened to be late for work. She just couldn’t get over it. She still shakes.
My sister’s friend best friend completely lost it. He worked for a business in the Towers and came undone. He quit working. Now, his friend, who also worked in the Towers has managed to cope and move on and live.
And then there are those, like HotAir’s Allahpundit who lived through it. I’m not sure he knew what he was doing when he started, but it’s the first time I’ve ever seen it on Twitter. Allah remembered from beginning to end his experience of 9/11. It is so moving, I decided to screen capture it all and save it for posterity. Please go read it all.
Eight years later, I still sob watching this:
Flashes of memories stay with me. In 2007, I asked, “Would it kill the Left to cry just a little?” Bookworm says:
The current administration seems bound and determined to forget 9/11. To this end, it grovels before those who wish to kill us, disarms those who wish to protect us (our military, our CIA), frees those who have raised their hands against us, and tries to turn 9/11 into a socialist worker’s holiday. That may be the current administration, but that’s not me. I will never forget those who died that day, nor will I ever forgive either the people or the ideology that gave rise to the attack. With the government as it is now, we must, more vigilantly than ever before, remember that we are vulnerable if we let our guard down.
The only thing to do is to continue to fight and to rid the earth of this human plague. An immune system kills every cancer cell, and when they get too many, the whole body is overwhelmed. So we must continue to fight and defend, ever vigilant. We must also live. The body doesn’t stop to fight. It fights and lives.
America must continue to fight and live. That’s the only way for our beloved culture and country and people to survive.
UPDATED:
The Anchoress feels ambivalent, it seems. Every year, I take the day and mourn. It is a circumscribed mourning.
When my son died, for years I felt a diffuse pain that never left. And even now, there’s a naggy ache that is always just on the edge of my experience twelve years later. At a certain point, though, to survive, the mourning had to be more enclosed. For too long, it seeped into all parts of my life and was everywhere. It was depression–a helpless pain that invaded my whole being. The solution was to make it more intense but less diffuse. And so, on the anniversary of his death, I mourn.
The same goes for 9/11. The horror of it all was everywhere for a long time. But life cannot be lead feeling paralyzed with grief and fear. And so, each 9/11, I watch a video like I linked to here and I sob. And I don’t do it in a forced way. There has yet to be an anniversary of this event that doesn’t touch me somewhere deep. I feel the wound on America’s soul as my own. I feel the violation of America’s cheery, optimistic openness as a personal assault.
Like the rapist waiting in the dark ally for the first happy woman to walk by, or the thieves sneaking into someone’s house they envy, or the serial killing murderer blinded by hate and sadism, the terrorists spent time plotting against America. They want us to feel pain and hoped the pain would have been greater. They hated life so much they were willing to take their own in order to steal the joy of others. They were and are evil. There are those plotting against us this moment. And they would take delight in repeating, or exceeding, the destruction of 9/11.
And even still, America has returned to her optimistic self. Of course, there are more banal foes–the economic cycle expands and contracts and that can cause pain, too. And right now, the pain of being out of work and trying desperately to keep a home or feed a family outweighs a theoretical threat. The threat still exists. But people move on to more pressing problems.
Remembering for a day, though, honors the lost. It honors our own personal loss. America after 9/11 just isn’t the same. How can it be? Pretending otherwise is nonsense, psychobabble b.s.
The worst thing for the victim of a crime is to pretend it didn’t happen. To be told, “you should be over this by now” or worse, “it really didn’t happen that way.” Maybe that’s why I’m not interested in a national day of service. Not on this day. Sure, it’s important to use the negative energy and harness it and use if for good, but that can be done tomorrow. And the next day.
Today, we remember.
Michelle Malkin says,”Remembrance is worthless without resolve. Resolve is useless without action.”
She also reminds us that there is only two ways to go, because the enemy will only accept this outcome: Lan astaslem which is Arabic for “I will not submit.” I won’t submit. Today, I take the opportunity to remember that and remind the enemy, too.
In Memorium: Angela Susan Perez, 9/11 Victim
Thursday, September 10th, 2009
Eight years have passed since Al Qaeda terrorists used airplanes as weapons of mass destruction. Nearly 3,000 people died at the Twin Towers in New York City. Angela Susan Perez was one of those people.
Angela was the “cool aunt and baby sister.” She was a mother of three. Last year, her son wrote this:
Mom, I miss you so much. My graduation is just around the corner, and it’s going to be tough to walk down that aisle without you in the crowd, but I know you’ll be watching me. You will always be in my heart. Love u an’ miss u.
*** Posted by your little boy all grown up on 2008-02-28 ***
Angela was a best friend:
6 years later … the tears still flow … missing you never gets easier … cherished friend forever … few friends leave such an impression … you are truly one of the best friends I ever had! You will never be one of many victims to me … that day was one of the worst days for our country, a tragedy for New York, but it was the day that my best friend’s passing left a pain in my heart that will never go away…. Susan, I will always miss you and love you…. Keep laughing, my friend…. It’s smiles like yours that make the world go around…. May god walk beside you for eternity….
Love ya lots, girl,
Anna
She was 35. She was living her life, doing her job, raising her children, being a friend. Her life mattered. She deserves to be remembered and honored.
Angela Perez worked for Cantor Fitzgerald. Here is what Wikipedia says about the fate of those in the towers on that day:
Cantor Fitzgerald’s New York City office, on the 101st-105th floors of One World Trade Center (2-6 floors above the impact zone of a hijacked airliner), was destroyed during the September 11, 2001 attacks. Cantor Fitzgerald lost 658 employees (all of the employees in the office that day), or about two-thirds of its workforce, considerably more than any other of the World Trade Center tenants or the New York City Police Department and New York City Fire Department. The company was able to bring its trading markets back online within a week, and CEO and chairman Howard Lutnick, whose brother was among those killed, vowed to keep the company alive.
On September 19, Cantor Fitzgerald made a pledge to distribute 25 percent of the firm’s profits for the next five years, and committed to paying for ten years of health care, for the benefit of the families of its 658 former Cantor Fitzgerald, eSpeed, and TradeSpark employees (profits which would otherwise have been distributed to the Cantor Fitzgerald partners).[citation needed] In 2006 the company completed its promise, having paid a total of $180 million (and an additional $17 million from a relief fund run by Lutnick’s sister, Edie).[citation needed]
Time goes by, memories, especially bad memories, get shelved and put away. But for some people, they cannot forget their loss. Nor do they want to. For families and friends of those lost on 9/11, forgetting is more awful than remembering. And so they look at the picture, they see the holes where the buildings were and they remember. They get married and their mother cannot see the day of joy. They have children who have no grandma. They need a shoulder to cry on, but mom is gone.
Angela Susan Perez, like the hundreds with her in the top of that Tower, were innocent. They were walking, not fully realized, potential. They had a future that was taken away through no fault of their own.
On this day, it’s a privilege to honor Angela Perez. Her life mattered. It still matters. She leaves a legacy of family and friends who love and miss her. Thank you for honoring the lost by remembering. It’s the least we can do.
More.
Dale Challener Roe: The 2996 Project
