Video: "It Ain't [America] No More, OK?"

(Hat tip to Gateway Pundit)

If the following video, taken at the August 25, 2009 town hall with U.S. House Representative James Moran and Howard Dean at South Lakes High School in Northern Virginia, doesn't make your blood boil, what does? Please note that Wesley Cheeks, Jr., is not a Fairfax County Police officer; his paycheck is funded by the local taxpayers, however.


The unedited text from the YouTube posting is below the fold (emphases mine).

This video was taken on Tuesday, August 25th, 2009, at Rep. Jim Moran's (D-VA) Town Hall meeting on Obama Deathcare (Howie Dean was there too) held at South Lakes High School in Reston, VA.

Many people were left outside when the school filled to capacity. School security officer Wesley Cheeks, Jr. did not like my anti-Obamacare poster which used one of the gone-viral "Joker" graphics.

When I said to Officer Cheeks, "This used to be America!" his response was: "It ain't no more, OK?"

I feel sorry for Officer Cheeks. He, like many African-Americans are being played by the racist Obama administration. Wake up people. They used to want you only for your votes, but now with the huge hispanic illegals pouring in they won't even need you for that. Watch those inner city abortion clinics get stimulated though. Democrat and church leaders sure seem to have time and money to build those.

Google "margaret sangar black children eugenics" (no quotes) and find out what's REALLY behind those Democrat abortuariums run by Planned Parenthood. Democrat eugenicists like Rahm Emanuel and his brother Zeke "Dr. Mengele" Emanuel and John Holdren and George Soros and Mr. Abortion himself, Barack Obama can't kill enough black babies. The ovens are fired up. Wake up people.

Satan is in da house.

Comments to the posting already number well over 1000.

Over at Gateway Pundit's posting, I noted the following comment:

I don't think we're Republicans and Democrats any longer. Now we can be divided up between people who believe in free speech and those who don't.
leftlogic 08.29.09 - 12:07 am

Yes, this choice is the point to which BHO and this Democratic Congress have brought us.

More information about the Northern Virginia town hall at Radio Free Dar Al Harb. One excerpt:

We were told by a black Fairfax County School Security officer that we would have to keep the sign face down on the lawn or be thrown off for trespassing. So we took it directly to the a FXPD Captain and asked about the legality of this. Shame on us for not knowing the law, but now we know to do some research. The FXPD Captain didn't want to get in the middle of it, said there were different rules for schools. So, look for more events to take place at schools where the crowd can be more restricted in their free speech.

Read it all and watch the videos HERE.

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Weekend Video: Men In Film

Note to readers: If you must read a political post, please scroll down to the two posts below this one.

Hat tip to Maggie's Notebook for the video below:



I got most of the early film idols correct. One of the advantages of age!

Answers below the fold. No cheating, please.
Answers:

Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Rudolph Valentino, Charlie Chaplin, James Cagney, Spencer Tracy, Fredric March, Errol Flynn, Fred Astaire, Clark Gable, Laurence Olivier, Gary Cooper, Humphrey Bogart, James Stewart, Tyrone Power, Cary Grant, Henry Fonda, Robert Mitchum, John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, Gene Kelly, Burt Lancaster, William Holden, Marlon Brando, James Dean, Rock Hudson, Montgomery Clift, Anthony Quinn, Gregory Peck, Richard Burton, Jack Lemmon, Sean Connery, Sidney Poitier, Charlton Heston, Steve McQueen, Peter O'Toole, Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Roy Scheider, Warren Beatty, Dennis Hopper, Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro, Gene Hackman, Jon Voight, Harrison Ford, Kevin Kline, Kevin Costner, Michael Douglas, Christopher Walken, Mel Gibson, Sean Penn, John Travolta, Antonio Banderas, Tim Robbins, Samuel L. Jackson, Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Russell Crowe, Kevin Spacey, Will Smith, Jamie Foxx, Leonardo DiCaprio, Johnny Depp, Matt Damon, George Clooney

Too bad that Dean Martin and Raul Julia weren't included, however.

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BHO's Desire To Curb Free Speech

Video, with Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, below the fold (hat tip to Brenda Bowers). Worth your time and consideration.



The video's transcript, if you prefer reading to watching, is HERE.

Read more about FCC "Diversity" Czar Mark Lloyd HERE.

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Psyching Up The Hopey Changers For Failure

But failure is success!



From "If Obama Fails, It's Not His Fault" at Right Klik:

It looks like the Demokrat MSM are preparing for what might be the inevitable failure of their Messiah's health care plan. Some amazing damage control memes are beginning to emerge:

1. Failure is good!

[...]

2. Obama's failure is really a failure of the national press corps, the left wing and the Demokratic party.

[...]

3. Obama is bogged down because he has been working so hard to accommodate Republicans.

[...]

4. Obama is failing because he's too nice.

To support those four points, Right Klik cites various sources. For example, Slate states as follows with regard to Point One above:

It's easy to forget that, even if Obama's health care effort is bogging down, the effort itself still serves his presidency as a crucial time-waster, tying up Congress and giving him a reason to postpone (or the public a reason to ignore) those other divisive, presidency-killers. If he keeps failing to pass health care until spring, that might not be such a bad outcome. In fact, even quick passage was maybe never in his interest. There are things more unpopular than struggling...

On August 25, 2009, the Washington Post ran this lead editorial, which basically advocates dumping ObamaKare:

NO ONE LIKES to be the bearer of bad news -- especially when it could threaten your multibillion-dollar health-care reform bill. And so the Obama administration did not exactly rush to publish yesterday's required mid-session update to its federal budget estimates of last February. Still, once the numbers finally emerged in the dog days of August, they retained the power to stun: Instead of a cumulative $7.1 trillion deficit over the next decade, the White House now projects a $9 trillion deficit. These figures imply average annual budget deficits greater than 4 percent of gross domestic product through fiscal 2019, a rate of debt accumulation faster than projected GDP growth. This is not a sustainable fiscal path.

[...]

[T]he Bush administration's irresponsibility notwithstanding, it is time to stop crying "we inherited it." The Obama administration needs its own clear, credible plan for restoring fiscal sustainability once the worst of the recession has run its course.

[...]

The new deficit numbers make it even more urgent that any health-care reform not only be fully paid for and certifiably budget-neutral in the eyes of independent analysts such as the CBO but also promise meaningful reductions in the cost growth of health care. So far, none of the plans under discussion measure up....

Another Washington Post commentary, this one by Richard Cohen, also indicates a failed Obama administration:

...More and more Obama is being likened to Lyndon Johnson, with Afghanistan becoming his Vietnam. Maybe. But the better analogy is to Jimmy Carter, particularly the president analyzed by James Fallows in a 1979 Atlantic magazine article, "The Passionless Presidency." "The central idea of the Carter administration is Jimmy Carter himself," Fallows wrote. And what is the central idea of the Obama presidency? It is change. And what is that? It is Obama himself.

...[H]e seems lost. The country needs health-care reform and success in Afghanistan, and both efforts are going in the wrong direction....

[...]

This is because of an insufficiency I have noted previously -- his distinct coolness, an above-the-fray mien that does not communicate empathy.

Thus, we see that even some BHO supporters realize that this administration is a failure. Consequently, that failure must be (1) success and (2) not BHO's fault. Don't you just love the logic?

In my view, the reality of BHO's failure will not set in for a long time yet. And watch for the Orwellian spin! Giving up on the Obama Church will be difficult for the members thereof.

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Summer Break (Addendum, 8/23)

I haven't gone anywhere, and I'm not abandoning this site. I still plan to make a few blog rounds, keep up with current events on a limited basis, and perhaps occasionally post at Infidel Bloggers Alliance and THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS. In addition, you can watch the top of my sidebar for my "Tweets."

Of course, I will still be co-hosting The Gathering Storm Radio Show, even if am not posting weekly promos for the show.

And who knows? Maybe I'll find time to update my photos site.

I'm taking some time off simply need to accomplish some outside-the-blogsophere tasks: lesson plans, doctors' appointments, swimming, practice the piano, catching up on housekeeping, tend to some pressing personal matters, do some pleasure reading, etc. See Shelfari on my sidebar to see what I'm currently reading.

Some listening and view pleasure below the fold. Not political!
Spotted at Social Sense, below is George Gershwin's "Summertime" to accompany masterful photographs:



A much needed break to soothe the body and soul.

Addendum, 8/23: I'm fighting a nasty case of strep. Today is the sixth day of antibiotics and only now do I have even the slightest bit of energy and stamina. I will resume posting when I feel better.

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Health Insurance Nightmare

Short video of particular interest to me (hat tip to Hard To Swallow):



As of this past spring, after long months of searching options and filing applications, this household of two has two individual, high-deductible policies.

Indeed, such catastrophic-coverage policies are the only kinds of policies that Mr. AOW and I can afford. Specifically, the monthly premium for Mr. AOW is nearly $500, mine nearly $200. Mr. AOW and I are close in age. Why the difference in premiums?

Mr. AOW has the dreaded pre-existing conditions, all under control and being treated successfully for well over ten years; he has never been hospitalized for any of his pre-existing conditions. Furthermore, because of the economy and Mr. AOW's age, he is unable to work enough to pay the monthly premium for his policy right now.

ObamaCare would force us into a higher priced policy! UNACCEPTABLE!

Mr. AOW lost his job of some twelve years in January 2008 because the employer-based policy was costing a business suffering a downturn which required cutting back on expenses. Said employer, therefore, laid off Mr. AOW and several others. The company then hired younger workers who opted out of the health insurance plan offered by the company.

My income and assets, pitiful as they are, precludes my husband's option of going onto Medicaid. We are faced with the situation that a divorce would solve the health-insurance problem for Mr. AOW and our financial future. Disclaimer: no divorce proceedings have been investigated or initiated.

Should ObamaCare as outlined in the above short video become law, I wonder how many others will face a situation similar to this household's.

Your comments on this post are welcome.

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Weekend Musical Interlude

I can't wait for Christmastime to post this one, emailed to me by a friend.

The little boy who's so into the music is Tennessee Ernie's son Brian.



And just for good measure, here is Tennessee Ernie's son Dick performing this political version of "Sixteen Tons":

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Exactly How Are Dissed, Disdained Citizens And Taxpayers Supposed To React?

(Two posts will appear today. Please scroll down. You will also find posts from yesterday to check as I've had a bit of a posting frenzy)

Recently, Sarah Palin told ObamaCare critics at town halls to use restraint.

According to this at Politico:

Palin's comments, posted on her Facebook page, come after weeks of raucous town halls in which conservatives have shouted down members of Congress.

"There are many disturbing details in the current bill that Washington is trying to rush through Congress, but we must stick to a discussion of the issues and not get sidetracked by tactics that can be accused of leading to intimidation or harassment," Palin wrote. "Such tactics diminish our nation’s civil discourse which we need now more than ever because the fine print in this outrageous health care proposal must be understood clearly and not get lost in conscientious voters’ passion to want to make elected officials hear what we are saying. Let’s not give the proponents of nationalized health care any reason to criticize us."

Let's think about Palin's statement for a minute. Common folk are going to town halls and have one chance to have a face-to-face with their so-called "elected public servants." And those public servants are lying to and dissing the very people who pay their salaries after voting these "public servants" into office. These common folk, many of them looking to the so-called "experts" for answers, come, for the most part, respectful of the office and perhaps even a bit intimidated by the "experts," many of whom are lawyers or, at the least, have many years in public office. Then the common folk learn that these relied-upon "experts" don't have answers and/or are spouting the BHO party line.

Analogy: I recently bought a new car. The first dealer I visited for over three hours lied to me as to the trade-in amount for my clunker (the manager saying "$3500" when the government web site clearly stated $4500). We cut a tentative deal at $11,000, and when I returned to that car dealer later in the day with my checkbook in hand and the printout from the government web site, I got all sorts of run-around and a new price of $14,000.

So what did I do? Kick the furniture around? Start yelling? No. I went to another car dealer and yet another until I found one willing to strike a deal with me. I wasn't trapped, I had options.

But what if there had been no other car dealer to go to? I think that my reaction would have been much like the common folk at the town halls. I certainly wouldn't have left quietly as I really needed a new car.

In a sense, these common folk at the town halls are trapped. They have only one dealer with which to strike a deal, that dealer being their so-called "public servant" of the moment. And the common folk are seeing so-called "public servant" after so-called "public servant" acting the ass and lying.

These so-called "public servants" deserve to be hooted at, yelled at, and laughed at. They've earned such reactions. They also need to be voted out of office - perhaps even recalled from office before their current term has ended.

In my view, Sarah Palin is coming off like some kind of elitist with her statement about telling the common folk to tone down their anger. Furthermore, the people - the common folk, untrained in public relations and policy debate, which training all these politicians have - are showing anger in the face of disdain and lies, and are responding in the tradition of the Spirit of 1776.

It is the so-called "public servants" who have turned public discourse into a farce. They deserve the reaction they are getting from the people.


Click directly on the image to your left to enlarge it and to see what these so-called "public servants" actually deserve!

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The Growth Of Conversion To Islam

Hat tip to Ekawaaz, who emailed me the link for the following video:



I referred the above video to my friend Dr. Paul L. Williams, expert on terrorism and author of numerous books, including The Al Qaeda Connection, Day of Islam, and The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Crusades. Dr. Williams posted this related information at his web site The Last Crusade. The full article is below the fold (emphases mine).

AMERICAN PRISONS NOW HOTHOUSES FOR ISLAM

Jumping Jailhouse Jihad!!!

90% of U. S. Converts Are African Americans – - 60% Converted in Prison Cells


CNN reports that more than 25% of the Muslims in America are converts who have embraced Islam in the wake of 9/11.

The report conveys the impression that Islam now attracts adherents from all religious, social, economic and racial backgrounds through interviews with recent converts – - both white women – - Allison Poole, formerly a Southern Baptist, and Barbara Cartokuke, a lapsed Roman Catholic.

Ms. Poole claims that Islam has heightened her religious awareness since she now prays five times a day, and Barbara Cartokuke says that Islam has brought her a “one-on-one relationship with God” that she was unable to establish by reciting Hail Marys.

While it is true that Islam is the fastest growing religion in America with over 1.5 million new converts, the development is far from multicultural or multiracial.

The CNN news clip fails to point out that 90% of the 1.5 million new converts are African Americans, and that 60% become Muslims while serving time in prison.

Prison – - not the college campus, the workplace, or the neighborhood mosque – - has become the breeding ground for wholesale conversions of blacks.

The appeal of Islam to inmates is not difficult to explain.

Muslim prisoners demand and receive the right to observe congregational salat not only in the mosque but also the exercise yard, to a separate kitchen for the preparation of separate halal meals, to separate hours for showers and toilets to ensure their privacy, and to sadaqa (financial autonomy for their prison business endeavors, including the sale of incense, aromatic oils, and personal toiletries). They refuse to submit to strip-searching and frisking, claiming that such practices violated the Islamic code of wuduzu. These concessions grant Muslims the ability to corner the drug trade within the prison system.

As a privileged class within the system, Muslims also offer new black inmates offer protection to other black inmates from Hispanic street gangs and white supremacists.

By 2005, approximately 350,000 Muslims occupied prison cells, and 80% of inmates who found faith in prison converted to Islam. By 2008, such conversions were taking place at the astonishing clip of 40,000 a year. African Americans were being converted by the cellblock, causing FBI officials to speculate that this segment of the population represents the force from which the next 9/11 will originate.

The Muslim prison ministry is funded by the Saudi government through the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), an influential front for the promotion of the Wahhabi political, ideological, and theological infrastructure in the United States and Canada. This finding is supported by Abdel al-Jubeir, foreign policy spokesman for Saudi King Abdullah, who told the Wall Street Journal: “The Saudi government pays for prison chaplains, along with many other American Muslims, to travel to Saudi Arabia for worship and study during the hajj. . . The trips typically cost $3,000 a person and last several weeks.”

Warith Deen Umar, founder of the National Association of Muslim Chaplains, serves as a prototype for his fellow clerics. In one of his sermons at the Otisville Federal Facility, Umar informed his prison flock that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were justified, and that the 19 hijackers should be remembered as Allah’s “martyrs.”

The situation within the prison system cries out for attention. Edward Caden, a retired prison administrator in California, recently told ABC News: “Prisons are a prime, prime target for terror recruiting. It is a ripe population.”

Proof of the problem with the new converts comes from the following incidents in the wake of 9/11:

* A group of black Muslim converts in Miami who allegedly conspired to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago (some had rap sheets).

* A Chicago black Muslim, Derrick Shareef, who allegedly plotted to blow up a local shopping mall.

* A black U.S. soldier, Hassan Abujihaad, who allegedly fed terrorists classified information about U.S. battleship movements in the Strait of Hormuz.

* Jose Padilla (a.k.a. Abdullah al-Muhajir), who planned to set off a dirty bomb in midtown Manhattan, became an Islamist during one of his many stints in the slammer.

* Aqil Collins converted to Islam while serving time in a California detention facility. He went on to an Afghan training camp with one of the jihadis accused of killing Wall Street correspondent Daniel Pearl.

* Black ex-con Muslims at the New Folson State Prison, a maximum security facility near Sacramento, California, who planned to attack military recruiting stations, the Israeli consulate, and several synagogues in the state on the fourth anniversary of 9/11. The plot was hatched on the cellblock.

* In February 2009, Rasheed Scrugs (a.k.a. Rasheed Abdulahaffer) murdered Philadelphia Police Officer John Pawloski, 25, with a .367 Magnum. Scrugs had converted to Islam while serving time for armed robbery.

* In May 2009, four Muslim prison converts were collared while plotting to bomb synagogues to shoot down a military transport.

* Pakistani religious leaders Sami ul-Haq and Fazrul Rehman predict that “in the next 10 years, Americans will wake up to the existence of an Islamic army in their midst—an army of jihadis who will force America to abandon imperialism and listen to the voice of Allah.”

That army is being formed within the prison system.

Also of interest along these same lines is this posting by Dr. Williams: "U.S. LATINOS MELD INTO MUSLIMS." Brief excerpt:

Islam represents the fastest-growing religion in the United States and Latinos represent one of the fastest-growing minorities. Increasingly, the two trends are coinciding in the form of Hispanic converts to Islam.

In 2004, the Christian Science Monitor placed the number of Muslim Latinos in the U.S. at 15,000.

Five years later, New York University and Newsweek sets this figure at 200,000. Seven percent of the Latinos in America are now Muslims. No other religion has shown such dramatic gains within a short span of time....

Read the rest HERE.

I suppose that the up side of all this conversion to Islam is that CAIR won't be able to whine so much about Arab profiling as more and more non-Arabs are converting to Islam. Furthermore, many mosques all over America and Europe are filling up with blue-eyed blondes as well as blacks while, at the same time, the pews of the churches are emptying.

As cited earlier in this posting, Dr. Williams has explained why the prisons are breeding grounds for conversion to Islam. But why do we see conversions to Islam in free societies? I have some ideas as to the reasons, but I want to hear your ideas first in the comments section to this post.

Note: If you haven't read my post about Rifka Bary, please do so!

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Video: Rifqa Bary — And A Personal Story

(Two posts today. Please scroll down)



Please read the story over at Infidel Bloggers Alliance. Take time to read it all, including the comments.

My personal story alluded to in the title of this post is below the fold.
-----------
I have worked in Christian education for over two decades. After watching the above video, I thought back to the mid 1980s, to one of the Pakistani girls in my sixth-grade class. She wrote in her end-of-year essay that (1) she was a secret Christian and (2) she could never tell her parents about her conversion. She further stated that the reason she never learned her Bible verses during the school year was that her parents didn't allow her to have a Bible in the house. Back then, I didn't know the truth about Islam. Back then, I was one of those fools who believed "Islam is just another religion."

I often think of this girl now. I wonder where she is and what's happened to her. Grapevine news this past spring has it that she was sent back to Pakistan and married off to an old man, one of the family cousins. Nobody has heard from her in a long, long time. Her older sisters, college material while the girl in my class was not, stayed here in the United States.

My point....Lest any reader of this post think that Rifka's story is automatically false, think again.

Additional material: gallery of honor killings in the West

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The Idiocy Continues

You might ask, "Which idiocy?" After all, there are SO MANY IDIOCIES to choose for discussion these days.

Well, instead of posting about BHO (several of those posts below this one), I've chosen the following short video, one about the new euphemisms in our nation's textbooks (hat tip to Weasel Zippers):



The book The Trouble with Textbooks is available at Amazon. If you have children or grandchildren still in school or if you are a teacher, you might want to buy your own copy and start checking the, ahem, new terminology.

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Dissenters Are "Political Terrorists"

This is one of my longer posts, so settle in for a lengthy read as I connect the dots. This post will stay here several days as I have a busy week ahead.

(graphic courtesy of GM's Place - disseminate freely)
According to business columnist Steven Pearlstein, who wrote the following August 7, 2009 essay in the Washington Post:

Republicans Propagating Falsehoods in Attacks on Health-Care Reform

As a columnist who regularly dishes out sharp criticism, I try not to question the motives of people with whom I don't agree. Today, I'm going to step over that line.

The recent attacks by Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers on the effort to reform the health-care system have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage. By poisoning the political well, they've given up any pretense of being the loyal opposition. They've become political terrorists, willing to say or do anything to prevent the country from reaching a consensus on one of its most serious domestic problems.

[...]

Health reform is a test of whether this country can function once again as a civil society -- whether we can trust ourselves to embrace the big, important changes that require everyone to give up something in order to make everyone better off. Republican leaders are eager to see us fail that test. We need to show them that no matter how many lies they tell or how many scare tactics they concoct, Americans will come together and get this done.

If health reform is to be anyone's Waterloo, let it be theirs.

As one who always reads Pearlstein's columns, which typically often sound financial advice, I have to say that I'm astounded as the position he has taken in this essay.

Those with concerns about ObamaCare are "political terrorists"? Perhaps Pearlstein is a covert disciple of Cass Suntein and Zephyr Teachout.
---------
On July 12, 2009, I posted the following about Cass Sunstein:

Based on his own words and statements of intent, Cass Sunstein, appointed to the shadowy post of White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, will likely have his eye on the Internet, particularly on us bloggers:

When it comes to the First Amendment, Team Obama believes in Global Chilling.

Cass Sunstein, a Harvard Law professor who has been appointed to a shadowy post that will grant him powers that are merely mind-boggling, explicitly supports using the courts to impose a "chilling effect" on speech that might hurt someone's feelings. He thinks that the bloggers have been rampaging out of control and that new laws need to be written to corral them.

[...]

Sunstein questions the current libel standard - which requires proving "actual malice" against those who write about public figures, including celebrities. Mere "negligence" isn't libelous, but Sunstein wonders, "Is it so important to provide breathing space for damaging falsehoods about entertainers?" Celeb rags, get ready to hire more lawyers.

Sunstein also believes that - whether you're a blogger, The New York Times or a Web hosting service - you should be held responsible even for what your commenters say. Currently you're immune under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. "Reasonable people," he says, "might object that this is not the right rule," though he admits that imposing liability for commenters on service providers would be "a considerable burden."

[...]

"As we have seen," Sunstein writes, having shown us no such thing, "falsehoods can undermine democracy itself." What Sunstein means by that sentence is pretty clear: He doesn't like so-called false rumors about his longtime University of Chicago friend and colleague, Barack Obama.

He alludes on page 3 (and on page 13, and 14, and 45, and 54 - the book is only 87 pages) to the supposedly insidious lie that "Barack Obama pals around with terrorists." Since Sunstein intends to impose his Big Chill on such talk, I'd better get this in while I can. The "rumor," i.e., "fact," about the palsy-walsiness of Obama and unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers (Ayers referred to Obama as a "family friend" in a memoir) did not "undermine democracy," i.e., prevent Obama's election. The facts got out, voters weighed them and ruled that they weren't disqualifying.

Sunstein calls for a "notice and take down" law that would require bloggers and service providers to "take down falsehoods upon notice," even those made by commenters - but without apparent penalty.

Consider how well this nudge would work. You blog about Obama-Ayers. You get a letter claiming that your facts are wrong so you should remove your post. You refuse. If, after a court proceeding proves simply that you are wrong (but not that you committed libel, which when a public figure is the target is almost impossible), you lose, the penalty is . . . you must take down your post.

Such suppression of First Amendment rights would be challenged in courts of law, of course. However, the article points out the following disturbing reality:

How long would it take for a court to sort out the truth? Sasha and Malia will be running for president by then. Nobody will care anymore. But it will give politicians the ability to tie up their online critics in court....

Please take time to read the entire article.

If Suntein's proposal become reality, America as the beacon of freedom is finished!

-------------------------------------------------------------
Here is a some additional information about Cass Sunstein:



At the time of my July 2009 posting about Cass Suntein's plans, RaDena commented as follows:

They won't be able to do it, Always, because it will backfire on the far left. They spew more vitriol than anyone...They can't suppress only conservatives and as they can't do anything else except throw around insults they'd be affected by this much worse than you or I would. Americans are not going to tolerate that much of a double standard... at least I hope not!

Hmmmm.... And now we have the White House snitch program and all sorts of trouble at town halls (See recent posts at Gateway Pundit). How things have changed in less than a month from that posting about Sunstein! We shouldn't be surprised at change, of course: the Whitehouse.gov video, which supposedly "debunked" the idea that Obama is pro single-payer, came of out the White House Office of Information, headed by Cass Sunstein. How many of the other videos and documents coming out of the White House bear the mark of Sunstein? A lot of them, I'm sure.

Now, about Zephyr Teachout.

Back on May 31, 2009, I published a post entitled "Are BHO and Company Keeping a List?" at Infidel Bloggers Alliance:

How long do we have before we lose the Internet?

I direct you to this column by George F. Will. Complete essay, which is quite long but important for us to discuss, I think:

End Run on Free Speech

By George F. Will
Sunday, May 24, 2009

For several decades, most of the ingenuity that liberal academics have invested in First Amendment analysis has aimed to justify limiting the core activity that the amendment was written to protect -- political speech. These analyses treat free speech as not an inherent good but as a merely instrumental good, something justified by serving other ends -- therefore something to be balanced against, and abridged to advance, other goods.

The good for which Zephyr Teachout would regulate speech is combating corruption, which, as she understands it, encompasses most of contemporary politics. A visiting law professor at Duke, writing in the Cornell Law Review ("The Anti-Corruption Principle"), she makes an astonishingly far-reaching argument for emancipating government from First Amendment restrictions on its powers to regulate political speech -- speech about the government's composition and conduct.

Hitherto, most arguments for such emancipation -- for McCain-Feingold and other measures regulating the quantity, content and timing of political speech -- have rested on the supposed need to curb corruption or the "appearance" thereof, with corruption understood as quid pro quo transactions, political favors exchanged for financial favors. But bribery has long been criminalized, and courts are wary about allowing the criminalizing of the constant transactions of mutual support between politicians and factions.

Teachout's capacious definition of corruption includes even an unseemly "attitude" of citizens as well as officeholders "toward public service." She says that the Framers thought limiting corruption was their "primary task." Therefore the "anti-corruption principle" should have "as much weight" as the First Amendment, giving Congress considerable "leeway" to regulate the political "process," which is mostly speech. What Teachout disparagingly calls "the apotheosis of speech" and "the sanctified meme of 'free speech' " is, she says, "a serious problem" requiring a rethinking of "the proper relationship of speech to self-serving public actors."

She advocates, as proponents of an elastic Constitution often do, an "evolving standard," this time a standard about how we define, measure and condemn "self-serving" behavior, aka corruption. This standard might license Congress to restrict speech in order to combat:

"Unequal access" to the political process; "unfair deployment of wealth"; "undue influence" by this or that group; speech that is "distorting" or lacks "proportionality" or results in "drowned voices" or a "passive" or "dispirited" public or that causes a "loss of political integrity" or creates "moral failings for members of Congress." Such speech might not be constitutionally protected if we properly "refine the meaning of the privilege of political speech."

So, political speech is not a right but a privilege, something granted by government when government deems it consistent with what Teachout calls the "equally important" anti-corruption principle. Imagine the "self-serving" uses incumbent legislators might have for the terms in the paragraph above as reasons for restricting political speech.

The word "corruption" or some permutation of it occurs 58 times in the 85 essays that are the Federalist Papers. James Madison wrote not only many of the papers but also this: "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech." He saw no conflict between that proscription and efforts to minimize corruption. He and other Framers considered corruption a vice requiring constant vigilance precisely because it is inextricably entwined with a virtue, America's vast scope -- constitutionally protected scope -- for self-interested behavior, including political speech.

Congressional Democrats want to kill a small voucher program that gave some mostly poor and minority students alternatives to the District of Columbia's failing public schools, and the Obama administration spent additional billions to avoid a declaration of bankruptcy by General Motors. Some people think both decisions represented disinterested assessments of the public good. Others think the decisions represented obeisance by Democrats to the teachers and autoworkers unions, respectively. If the decisions were such obeisance, they were, by Teachout's standards, corrupt.

If corruption is as ubiquitous as Teachout's standard ("self-serving" behavior) says, then reasons for restricting political speech also are ubiquitous. Under today's regulatory and redistributionist government, which is busily allocating wealth and opportunity, politics frequently "appears" to many people "self-serving." It will not, however, be prettified by regulating speech.

If Teachout considers the politics produced by today's gargantuan government unlovely, she should not try to further enlarge the government by empowering it to comprehensively regulate speech about government. Instead, she should join the movement to restrain government's incessant regulating and redistributing transactions on behalf of myriad factions -- transactions that create more and more clamorous factions. The movement is called conservatism.

If political speech becomes a privilege, we are doomed!

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Are you connecting the dots in the same way that I am?

Right now, with union thugs moving in on town hall meetings, we are seeing political speech becoming a privilege.

Right now, the Democratic Party and the mainstream media are painting constituents voicing questions and dissent as "extremists." Watch a few broadcasts on MSNBC to get the drift, but be sure to take your antacids or a stiff drink first. We even have Nancy Pelosi saying that dissenters to ObamaCare are carrying swastikas and deceptive photos circulating. How long before we hear that portrayal as "Angry town hall attendees are political terrorists"? And remember the ideology which drives this administration; Sunstein and Teachout make that ideology clear even though we don't hear their names front and center.

Losing our freedom of speech and even our ability to freely communicate with our elected public servants can't happen in America? Think again.

After all, who would have said a year ago that we'd be seeing these town halls, overt and covert, erupting as they have?

And could you get away with putting this sign in your yard and have your home still remain safe? Could you put this bumper-sticker version on your car and not have your car vandalized? I think that we've already lost those freedoms.

I submit that WE THE PEOPLE are being terrorized by this arrogant, power-grabbing administration and its maniacal devotees, who want us to become WE THE SHEEPLE:



Of course, not all the people are willing to be sheeple (hat tip to Reliapundit of THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS):

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Weekend Humor: The Lie Clock

Text below the fold (hat tip to The Merry Widow, who emailed me the joke):

The Lie Clock

A man died and went to heaven. As he stood in front of St. Peter at the Pearly Gates, he saw a huge wall of clocks behind the gatekeeper.

He asked, "What are all those clocks?"

St. Peter answered, "Those are Lie Clocks. Everyone on Earth has a Lie Clock. Every time you lie, the hands on your clock will move."

"Oh," said the man, "whose clock is that?"

"That's Mother Teresa's. The hands have never moved, indicating that she never told a lie."

"Incredible," said the man. "And whose clock is that one?"

St. Peter responded, "That's Abraham Lincoln's clock. The hands have moved twice, telling us that Abe told only two lies in his entire life."

"Where's President Obama's clock?" asked the man.

"Obama's clock is in Jesus' office. He's using it as a ceiling fan."

In terms of this world (hat tip to Woman Honor Thyself):



And one more, just for good measure (hat tip to Reliapundit of THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS):

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The Washington Post Plays The Race Card

(Two posts today. Please scroll down)

Likely, you've heard about this poster cropping up all over Los Angeles:


From this article in the Washington Post, about the above poster:

...[T]he poster is ultimately a racially charged image. By using the "urban" makeup of the Heath Ledger Joker, instead of the urbane makeup of the Jack Nicholson character, the poster connects Obama to something many of his detractors fear but can't openly discuss. He is black and he is identified with the inner city, a source of political instability in the 1960s and '70s, and a lingering bogeyman in political consciousness...

The Joker's makeup in "Dark Knight" -- the latest film in a long franchise that dramatizes fear of the urban world -- emphasized the wounded nature of the villain, the sense that he was both a product and source of violence. Although Ledger was white, and the Joker is white, this equation of the wounded and the wounding mirrors basic racial typology in America. Urban blacks -- the thinking goes -- don't just live in dangerous neighborhoods, they carry that danger with them like a virus. Scientific studies, which demonstrate the social consequences of living in neighborhoods with high rates of crime, get processed and misinterpreted in the popular unconscious, underscoring the idea....

It is an ugly idea, operating covertly in that gray area that is always supposed to be opened up to honest examination whenever America has one of its "we need to talk this through" episodes. But it lingers, unspoken but powerful, leaving all too many people with the sense that exposure to crime creates an ineluctable propensity to crime.

Superimpose that idea, through the Joker's makeup, onto Obama's face, and you have subtly coded, highly effective racial and political argument. Forget socialism, this poster is another attempt to accomplish an association between Obama and the unpredictable, seeming danger of urban life. It is another effort to establish what failed to jell in the debate about Obama's association with Chicago radical William Ayers and the controversy over the racially charged sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Obama, like the Joker and like the racial stereotype of the black man, carries within him an unknowable, volatile and dangerous marker of urban violence, which could erupt at any time. The charge of socialism is secondary to the basic message that Obama can't be trusted, not because he is a politician, but because he's black.

I call BS on the above article!

The idea that we cannot criticize BHO's policies because any such criticism is racism is pure nonsense. Dangerous nonsense.

Comments at the WaPo web site can be found HERE. Last time I checked, comments totaled over 1600.

And the author of the article, Philip Kennicott, defends his article HERE.

A bit of dust rolling, I'd say.

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BHO's Dangerous-Dissent Database

From this essay by Byron York in the Washington Examiner:

Obama's dissident database could be secret -- and permanent

The White House request that members of the public report anyone who is spreading "disinformation" about the proposed national health care makeover could lead to a White House database of political opponents that will be both secret and permanent, according to Republican lawyers on the Senate Judiciary Committee who are examining the plan's possible implementation.

[...]

Senate Judiciary Committee lawyers studying the proposal say that although there is no absolutely settled law on the matter, the White House plan is likely not covered by the Privacy Act, which prohibits government agencies from keeping any records "describing how any individual exercises rights guaranteed by the First Amendment unless expressly authorized by statute or by the individual about whom the record is maintained." Therefore, it appears the White House can legally keep records of the emails and other communications it receives in response to Phillips' request. [Macon Phillips is the White House director of new media]

Those lawyers also point out that the White House is not covered by the Freedom of Information Act, which means it would not have to release any information on the plan to members of the public who make a request.

In addition, the lawyers say the collected emails likely will be covered by the Presidential Records Act, which requires the White House to preserve and maintain its records for permanent storage in a government database. Phillips' request suggests that whatever information the White House receives on health-care reform "disinformation" will be used to further the goal of passing a national health-care makeover, which is, of course, one of the president's main policy initiatives. Such material, and whatever the White House does with it, would qualify as presidential records. Only after more than a decade would such records be publicly available....

Read the rest HERE. Please read it all!

Something very, very slimy is going on with the BHO administration.

In less than seven months, January 20, 2009 being the point at which BHO and this Democratic Party Congress took office, gone is the leftists' cry of "Dissent is patriotic."

And, if you have not already done so, please read yesterday's post here at my blog site: "America, Welcome to the Gulag!" The screen shot of the White House web site's promotion of silencing voices is in that posting. After all, one never knows when the White House web site will be scrubbed.

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America, Welcome To The Gulag!

This topic of this posting is everywhere today, I know. But something as significant and anti-American as what the White House posted on its official web site cannot be ignored by a blog called "Always On Watch."

The screen shot (hat tip to Karen of Eastern Right):


The infamous paragraph is below the fold:

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

The left believes that dissent is fine and dandy when the left is doing the dissenting. Another standard evidently applies when the right dissents.

And the White House is now promoting snitching, even extending to "casual conversation," because some Americans are wary of BHO's health-care reform. Daring to defy BHO makes targets of any who won't toe his line.

[sarcasm] Charming, simply charming. [sarcasm off]

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The Truth About Islam And African Slavery

From Ahmad's Quran 3:



So, who should be making the reparations for slavery, if indeed any reparations should be made at all?

It seems to me that calls for reparations have been shouted out in the wrong direction. After all, Islam institutionalized slavery, and Saudi has big bucks.

Note: WC and I also interviewed IQ al Rassooli about this topic on the July 31, 2009 edition of The Gathering Storm Radio Show. You can listen to that show HERE.

I wonder how BHO feels about his being an abid, by dint of his African ancestry. Indeed, if he had lived in a different era, he might well have been swept up in a Moslem slave-trading wave and castrated. Makes his bow to the Saudi king all the more ironic, don't you think?

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Approval Given For The Expansion Of The Islamic Saudi Academy

Post below the fold so as not to distract too much from my Lizzie Borden Post!

At the madrassah's Popes Head Road location in southern Fairfax County. The narrow country lane is a deathtrap.

The site of this branch of the Islamic Saudi Academy was previously that of Fairfax Christian School, which was always denied any requests for expansion and even for rebuilding a small structure which had burned to the ground.

Atlas Shrugs has the videos.

Jihad Watch also has coverage, and the comments section is quite lively. I contributed to the fray at Jihad Watch, of course.

If the topic of this madrassah interests you, you'll want to check out the above links!

At least the vote for approval wasn't unanimous this time. And a couple of the Board members did go on record with their objections. Previous approvals at the local-government level have always been unanimous.

Last week, Radio Free Dar Al Harb dedicated this edition of the radio show on BTR to discussion of the Islamic Saudi Academy. Yeah, I was there as one of the interviewees.

Regular readers of my posts know that I've been watching the Islamic Saudi Academy for years. In fact, this April 2005 bus accident caused by ISA bus driver Abdelrazeg Abdalla is one of the reaons I jumped into the blogosphere with both feet.

I doubt that this post will be my last regarding the Islamic Saudi Academy. Furthermore, I've heard the law suits against the school are in the works, but I don't know the details.

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Lizzie Borden: Did She Or Didn't She?

Note to readers: I am one of those fascinated by the Lizzie Borden case. Settle in for a long read, possibly my longest post ever! And may you find the case as fascinating as I do.

You may have heard the sing-song jump-rope ditty:

Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks.
And when she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.
Certainly, Lizzie herself heard that tune and was taunted, possibly even tormented, by it for the rest of her life.

Common knowledge at the end of the Nineteenth Century held her guilty. Many believe the same today, particularly if they've seen the 1975 made-for-television film The Legend of Lizzie Borden. Turn up the volume, and view the ending sequence of the film:


But what are the facts of the case?
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On the morning of August 4, 1892, Andrew Borden (age 70) and his wife Abby Borden (age 63), the latter the stepmother of Lizzie and Emma Borden, were found brutally slaughtered in their home on Second Street in Fall River, Massachusetts. View the crime-scene photos HERE. Although the Borden sisters Emma and Lizzie and their stepmother had been close for many years, both sisters ceased calling Abby "mother" and taking meals with the parents in 1887 because of a financial dispute with Andrew Borden.

Andrew Borden, previous to his success as a businessman, had been a funiture maker and coffin maker. He was infamous as a miser and married Abby Borden after the death of his first wife, who had given him two living daughters. Revealingly, when news of the crime spread throughout Fall River, one gentleman stated, "Well, somebody did a good job."

Although the Bordens were among the wealthiest families in the town, the family didn't live on "the hill," but rather in the working-class section of town, in a crackerbox of a house only twenty feet wide, with no running water, no gas, no hallways, and virtually no privacy because of the lack of hallways and flimsy structure of the house. Once word of the murders got out on the morning of August 4, nearly the entire town stopped work. Some 2000 people gathered outside the small house.

Today the house is the Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast/Museum and available for tours, as well as the site for August 4 re-eneactments of the crime. The bed and breakfast, renovated, restored, and upgraded for creature comforts, is listed as number one on the Top 10 Scariest Travel Destinations in the World!


On the morning of August 4, 1892, Andrew Borden's body was discovered sprawled on the sofa in the sitting room:



Floor plan of the first floor:


Abby Borden's body was discovered in the upstairs guest room. She was murdered some two hours before her husband. Floor plan of the second floor:


Because of the August heat, the funerals were held quickly. Autopsies were conducted a week later, on August 11, 1892. Photos of the victims are below. The rest of the autopsy photos can be viewed HERE and HERE.



The skull of Abby Borden. She received more blows than her husband, and her customary braid was completely severed from her head.





The skull of Andrew Borden. Notice the near obliteration of the eye socket on one side.



At the trial, Lizzie Borden fainted in the courtroom when the above skulls were brought in as evidence.

Aside from the murder victims, only two other people have been confirmed as present in the house the morning of the murders — Lizzie and the maid Bridget Sullivan. Emma was visiting friends in the nearby town of Fairhaven. The front door of the Borden home was triple-locked from the inside.

At the inquest, Lizzie gave conflicting response to police inquiries and conflicting testimony at investigative hearings as to her whereabouts that morning: in the kitchen reading, out in the yard eating pears, searching in the barn for fishing sinkers . Her conflicting testimony was thown out during trial because she was under morphine sedation administered by her doctor immediately following the murders.

Lizzie Borden, age 32, was arrested on August 11, 1892 and stood trial a year later. She faced three counts of murder: one for the murder of Andrew Borden, one for the murder of Abby Borden, and one for the murder of both elder Bordens. Her trial was a sensation and dubbed "The Trial of the Century" and has been compared to the trial of O.J. Simpson. The trial of Lizzie Borden was covered in depth, and numerous drawings such as the one to your right abound.

Even in the Twenty-first Century, the Lizzie Borden case still occasionally makes front-page news:


The case against Lizzie was purely circumstantial, partly because of limited investigative technology at the time, and lacked any physical evidence whatsoever — no proven murder weapon, no blood on Lizzie's person or clothing, no convincing motive. One particular circumstance played in her favor: the abhorrence of administering death by hanging to a woman. Furthermore, she was an upstanding citizen of Fall River and known for her religious piety, her church being her only social outlet.

Recent Discovery Channel video about the physical evidence:

At trial, Lizzie Borden had a dream team for her defense, and the prosecution team was a dream team as well. According to Wikipedia:

She was tried for the murders, defended by former Massachusetts Governor George D. Robinson and Andrew V. Jennings. One of the prosecutors in the trial was William H. Moody, future United States Attorney General and Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Lizzie Borden's closing words at trial were "I am innocent. I leave it to my counsel to speak for me."

Justice Dewey's instructions to the jury amounted to a resetatement of the defense's case and encouragement to acquit. Indeed, the jury acquitted Lizzie after a mere one and one-half hours of deliberation. Crowds cheered in the street upon the acquittal as her case had been a celebrated cause by virtue of the fact that she was a woman and an upstanding citizen of Fall River.

Following acquittal, Lizzie Borden later took the name "Lizbeth A. Borden." Very shortly after the trial, she and her sister Emma moved to Maplecroft, a fourteen-room mansion on "The Hill" of Fall River. The house had summer and winter bedrooms and baths, a library, indoor plumbing, hand-painted porcelain fixtures for the bathrooms, as well as other luxuries, and required a full staff of servants and maids. In 1905, the two sisters had a falling out, and Emma vacated the house. Neither of the Borden sisters ever married.

Upon her death in 1927, Lizzie Borden was buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Fall River and left a sizeable portion of her estate to the Fall River Animal Rescue League. She also aportioned some funds for the perpetual care of her father's grave. Her grave still draws visitors, mostly aficionados of the case.

Today, the entire family of Andrew Borden rests near this marker in Oak Grove Cemetery in Fall River, Massachusetts:


This Scottish poem was carved into the mantel at Maplecroft and sung at Lizzie's request at her funeral:
The green leaf of loyalty's beginning to fall.
The bonnie White Rose it is withering an' all.
But I'll water it with the blood of usurping tyranny,
And green it will grow in my ain countree.
Conjecture as to who murdered Andrew and Abby Borden and why continue, with numerous books written about every conceivable possibility. But there is no way to know the definitive answers. All who might have known the answer to who perpetrated the crimes on August 4, 1892, are long dead.

So, what do I think? Did Lizzie commit parricide?

As one interested in the case, still officially unsolved, I've visited Fall River several times. I even attended the Lizzie Borden Conference at Bristol Community College in 1992!

On my first visit in 1985, before the town of Fall River officially acknowledged outsiders' interest in the Borden murders, I conversed at length with Florence C. Brigham, past curator emeritus of the Fall River Historical Society and one who had met Lizzie when Ms. Brigham was a child. She told me, "Oh, Lizzie did it." She spoke of Lizzie fondly and said that Lizzie was a kind lady. I asked Ms. Brigham about the incest theory, which opines that Lizzie murdered her father because she was furious that he had so taken advantage of her and held her prisoner in the house. Ms. Brigham replied, "We didn't speak of such things in those days."

I also asked, "Was Lizzie Borden a lesbian?" because, according to one theory, Lizzie committed the crime because Andrew and Abby Borden had recently discovered her affair with the maid Bridget Sullivan; this theory likely hatched because Emma's falling out with Lizzie in 1905 resulted from Lizzie's friendship with Nance O'Neil, also reportedly a lesbian. Ms. Brigham's response was the same as her previous response. Unfortunately, I didn't discuss with Ms. Brigham the story of retired nurse Ruby Cameron, who tended Lizbeth Borden in her later years. Ruby Cameron stated, "Lizzie Borden's boyfriend did it." I'd have liked to have heard Ms. Bingham's response to that question!

More recently, once the house on Second Street was opened to the public, I took a tour of the house. My conclusion: no way could Lizze have done those murders without the maid Bridget Sullivan hearing and knowing of the crime, particularly the fall of Abby Borden, a portly woman, to the floor. That fall would have shaken the entire structure! Please see the floor plans earlier in this post, and keep in mind that the house is only twenty feet wide. I also believe that the maid assisted Lizzie to some extent although the maid may not have committed the actual murders. I can't say that I blame the two women, however. That breakfast served on the morning of August 4, 1892, may well have provided the reason for justifiable homicide:

On the morning of the 4th, the family sat down to a breakfast of 5-day-old mutton, mutton broth, rotten bananas, johnnycake, bread, cookies, and coffee.

As I mentioned earlier in this posting, Andrew Borden was quite the penny pincher, so refrigeration in the Borden household was primitive, to say the least. The mutton and mutton broth may well have "gone off."

Of course, my conclusions about the case are merely my opinions. The oft-cited explanation of "Who else could have committed the crimes?" does not a legal case make.

The details of the murders of Andrew and Abby Borden continues to hold its fascination, as evidenced by the following video, much of which was filmed in the house on Second Street:


Additional reading

For those interested in the case, I do recommend this documentary, available at NetFlix and released in 2005 by The History Channel.

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