Saturday, December 5, 2009

Save the planet by banning ice cream



americanthinker.com
December 05, 2009
By Chris W. Bel

There's a lot of talk going around about reducing greenhouse gasses that may contribute to global warming. The latest fad is to replace incandescent bulbs with new energy-saving florescent bulbs. People are being told that they can help the environment with minimal disruption to their lives. But how much support would the global warming movement have if the sacrifices that they will eventually ask for were known today?


Practically everything we do uses energy. The leaders of the modern environmental movement say that using energy-saving light bulbs, driving smaller cars, and recycling refuse, along with similar efforts, are all that we need to do to protect our environment. This new environmental movement is asking us to sacrifice very little.
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Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Massachusetts Man Says He Was Fired for Telling Colleague Her Gay Marriage Is Wrong


Monday, November 09, 2009

foxnews.com

By Joshua Rhett Miller


A manager at a Massachusetts retail store claims he was unjustly fired after he told a colleague he thought her impending marriage to another woman was wrong.

Peter Vadala, 24, told FoxNews.com he was terminated in August from his position as second deputy manager at a Brookstone store at Boston's Logan Airport after a conversation he had with a manager from another Brookstone store who was visiting the location.

Vadala claims the woman, whom he declined to identify, mentioned four times that she had married her partner. He said he then left the store briefly to visit the airport's chapel before returning.

"I found it offensive that she repeatedly brought it up," Vadala said. "By the fourth time she mentioned it, I felt God wanted me to express how I felt about the matter, so I did. But my tone was downright apologetic. I said, 'Regarding your homosexuality, I think that's bad stuff.'"
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Friday, October 23, 2009

Obama College Thesis: 'Constitution is Inherently Flawed'

Obama Thesis Raises Doubts


Brian Lancaster
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Jumpinginpools.blogspot.com

UPDATE: Rush Limbaugh said that this article is satire.

President Barack Obama's college record has officially been under strict secrecy since his run for the White House began in 2007. This record includes two years at Occidental College in Los Angeles, two years at Columbia University, and finally at Harvard Law School.

During his time at these colleges, Obama gained notoriety for being an especially bright and hardworking student. At Harvard, he was later elected as the editor of the Harvard Law Review, which many observers see as the beginning of his political career.

However, many things regarding the future President's time at these colleges have remained private. Under order of the Obama campaign, all information not directly allowed published by Obama himself, is not to be disclosed to any media. These included grades, attendance records, rewards received, and papers submitted................

.................However, the President also singled out the American Constitution:
"... the Constitution allows for many things, but what it does not allow is the most revealing. The so-called Founders did not allow for economic freedom. While political freedom is supposedly a cornerstone of the document, the distribution of wealth is not even mentioned. While many believed that the new Constitution gave them liberty, it instead fitted them with the shackles of hypocrisy."


It is yet unknown if more of this thesis will be released. It was also noted that the President received an A- for the paper, which later led to his graduation.

read more

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Rush Limbaugh Bad, Fergie and J-Lo 'Cool NFL Owners'




newsbusters.org
By Noel Sheppard
October 17, 2009 - 11:00 ET

If the National Football League is really concerned about the behavior of its owners away from the field, maybe it should take a close at the Miami Dolphins.

As Big Hollywood reported Friday, pop artists Fergie and Jennifer Lopez both have minority interests in the NFL team in Southern Florida.

Despite being labeled as "Cool NFL Owners" in a Kansas City Star piece Wednesday -- coincidentally the same day Rush Limbaugh was thrown out of the prospective ownership group bidding on the St. Louis Rams -- Fergie and J-Lo have some incidents in their respective pasts that are far worse than anything Limbaugh was falsely accused of saying.

For instance, these are lyrics from a J-Lo song performed with rapper Ja Rule a few years ago (extreme vulgarity alert):
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Friday, October 9, 2009

When Will Feminists Stand Up for Afghan Women?


weeklystandard.com
Posted by Rachel Hoff 
October 8, 2009

The Afghan women who risked their lives to go to the polls this summer are not afraid of much. But one thing we need not doubt is their terror at the notion that America might abandon Afghanistan and return them to the hands of the Taliban. Eviction from school and work at the least, rape and murder at the worst, were the fate of Afghanistan’s women under that backward Islamist regime.

As the debate over U.S. military commitments in Afghanistan continues to roil Washington, some uncommon alliances are emerging. With Democrats abandoning support for President Obama’s own “good war,” the president’s putative new strategy in Afghanistan has been buttressed primarily by Republicans on the Hill and serious military leaders. A burgeoning coalition of politicians, policy wonks, retired generals, and former administration officials has emerged to express support for the president, his new commander, General Stanley McChrystal, and the troops on the ground to achieve the mission in Afghanistan. It’s these kinds of strange bedfellow alliances that our country needs when it comes to facing the challenge of the Long War.

But one uncommon alliance that has yet to emerge is between women’s rights groups in America and those calling for a renewed military commitment to the war in Afghanistan. Understanding the plight of Afghan women, women’s groups in America have timidly stood for the cause of Afghan women’s rights, supporting for example the “civilian surge” to help improve the situation of women and girls in Afghanistan. But where are the voices of American women’s organizations in the current debate about supporting President Obama’s new strategy and his new commander’s request for more troops?
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Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Swimming Upstream: The Life of a Conservative Professor in Academia




October 06, 2009
americanthinker.com
By Ron Lipsman

I have been a faculty member at a major State University for 40 years. Several years after my arrival, I voted for George McGovern. Eight years later, I voted for Ronald Reagan. In those eight years, my family and I experienced several traumas that caused me to reevaluate -- and ultimately, drastically alter -- the political, cultural and economic axioms that had governed my life.

Within months of buying my first home in an excellent neighborhood, within walking distance to the University and, most importantly, located in a district with an outstanding local public elementary school, my five year old son was forcibly bussed to an inferior school, many miles away, in a horrible neighborhood in order to satisfy the utopian vision of a myopic federal judge. This betrayal of my fundamental rights was undoubtedly the greatest shock to my political psyche.

Another was a Sabbatical year spent living and working in Jerusalem, during which time the UN issued time the infamous "Zionism is racism" resolution. I was able to observe firsthand that the standard propaganda about Israel and Zionism that was promulgated in America and elsewhere -- almost exclusively by those on the Left that I had formerly supported -- was nothing more than bald-faced, hateful lies. This and other events in the 1970s caused me to rethink everything that I had taken for granted since adolescence about how the world worked.

I emerged from the exercise as an enthusiastic conservative. Thus I was no longer your average faculty member who adhered to the liberal party line, but instead one of a tiny cadre who completely disagreed with the leftist mentality that dominated the thought of campus faculty and administrators.
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Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Black Leaders Ignore Black-on-Black Crime



By E.W. Jackson Sr.
October 06, 2009
americanthinker.com

On Thursday, September 24th, after an apparently productive day at Fengler High School in Chicago, Derrion Albert, a black 16 year old honor student was knocked to the ground by a blow to the head with a railroad tie. He was then punched, kicked and stomped. Those who responded to rescue him were too late.

Derrion had walked into the middle of a fight between two rival black gangs. He attempted to help one of the victims in the melee and was killed for his trouble. This took place in Barack Obama's Chicago. All his work for "social justice" did a great deal for Obama, but it did nothing for Derrion Albert. Of course the President is not responsible for this tragedy, but it does expose the fatuous claim that such occurrences are the result of social injustice rather than the personal choice to engage in lawless behavior. The ghettos, drugs, gangs and violence are on display for all to see in spite of Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, Acorn and all the community organizing.

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Saturday, October 3, 2009

Media Malpractice: Ayers 'Dreams authorship suppressed



By James Simpson
americanthinker.com
October 03, 2009

Perhaps one of the biggest political stories of the year is being completely overlooked by the Obama-struck mass media. A new biography by veteran author Christopher Andersen, "Barack and Michelle: Portrait of a Marriage," reveals that former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers wrote most, if not all of President Obama's book "Dreams From My Father."

In a series of American Thinker articles over the past year, PhD author and columnist, Jack Cashill has been asserting just that. But while he found striking similarities between the two men's writing styles he could never conclusively prove Ayers' ghost authorship. Andersen's book does.
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Saturday, September 19, 2009

A Political Gadfly Lampoons the Left via YouTube




nytimes.com
By SCOTT SHANE
Published: September 18, 2009

WASHINGTON — James E. O’Keefe III, the 25-year-old video provocateur whose hidden camera galvanized Congress this week against the advocacy group Acorn, began his filmmaking career with a more modest target: Lucky Charms.

In 2004, at a buddy’s suggestion, he and a few fellow Rutgers students set out to satirize what they saw as a pious sensitivity to ethnicity on campus. The result is still there to see on YouTube: Mr. O’Keefe protesting to a slightly befuddled university dining official that the leprechaun on the cereal box “appears to be an Irish-American.”

“As you can see, we’re not short and green — we have our differences of height — and we think this is stereotypical of all Irish-Americans,” Mr. O’Keefe deadpans, as the official earnestly scribbles notes.
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Thursday, September 17, 2009

Waters: Protesters should be probed for “racist” thoughts

hotair.com posted at 5:12 pm on September 16, 2009
by Ed Morrissey



To be fair, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) suggested that the media probe Obama critics for their latent racism, not the government, but in the end she’s sure it’s there. The Hill reports that Waters identifies racists by their use of the term “ObamaCare”, which would apparently include me. Gee, when I called it HillaryCare in 1993, was that racist too?
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Sunday, September 6, 2009

What Van Jones signifies


powerlineblog.com
September 5, 2009
Posted by Scott at 6:46 AM

Not that we're inclined to do so, but it would be a mistake to write off Van Jones as a one-off nutjob in the Obama administration. He signifies. The Obama team sought him out and signed him up for his job as green jobs commissar precisely because he is who he is.

Listen, for example, to Obama alter ego Valerie Jarrett pay tribute to Jones before a friendly audience earlier this year: "Oooh. Van Jones, alright! So, Van Jones. We were so delighted to be able to recruit him into the White House. We were watching him, uh, really, he's not that old, for as long as he's been active out in Oakland. And all the creative ideas he has. And so now, we have captured that. And we have all that energy in the White House."

Who do they have in the White House? A self-proclaimed Communist. A vulgar Marxist twice over. A supporter of cold-blooded cop killer Mumia Abu Jamal. A 9/11 Truther . A racist hater, whose hatred extends to the United States. And insofar as his current job is concerned, we have a man who sees the "green jobs" con as a tool for overthrowing capitalism. We have, in short, the complete left-wing nightmare package.
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Friday, September 4, 2009

Medical Care is a Successful and Growing Industry, not a Liability


americanthinker.com
By Wesley Clark, MD
September 03, 2009

The people of the United States find themselves in the midst of a severe recession, with unemployment higher than it has been in many years, housing prices cratering, retirement plans collapsing, and their lifestyles constricting.

The financial industry collapsed. We had to come to the rescue, pouring our own futures into saving the banks, brokerages, and insurance companies from their own greedy foolishness. The stagnant American automobile industry was imploding, and the people had to bail them out too, further mortgaging the future of their children.

Our politicians responded to this catastrophe by spending our future for us, and then by voting a $787 billion dollar "stimulus" bill that has so far produced no discernible improvement, but has flung pork into every corner of the nation, while funding their community organizer and special-interest groups. The government -- the State -- now effectively owns several giant banks, investment bankers, AIG, and two out the three domestic auto companies that were failing dismally.

There is still an industry that is growing and successful, that produces 17% of the Gross Domestic Product, and that employs over 10% of all American workers. The medical industry incorporates more than 820,000 businesses: hospitals, physician's offices, dentist's offices, home healthcare services, kidney dialysis centers, medical laboratories, X-Ray imaging centers, radiotherapy facilities, mental hospitals, physical therapy centers, nursing homes, outpatient surgical centers, dental laboratories, rehabilitation facilities and ambulance services with combined annual revenue of over $1 trillion. It immediately plows most its growing income right back into the economy for wages, and directs additional business to satellite industries such as pharmaceuticals, drugstores, and insurance companies. It even produces billions of dollars in revenues for the medical malpractice trial lawyers. Americans medical care costs more than government programs elsewhere, but it provides better care and better results, the best in the world. American patients, even the destitute, do not give birth in hallways, or wait months for essential diagnostic tests and treatments.

Suddenly, it seems that brisk industrial growth, creation of new technologies, expansion of employment, healing of once-fatal illnesses, prolongation of life, and prevention of pain are not even success, but a just terrible fiscal burden that our overlords deeply resent. They want that money to spend elsewhere, for monuments to their narcissistic prowess.
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Thursday, September 3, 2009

Sentenced to death on the NHS

Patients with terminal illnesses are being made to die prematurely under an NHS scheme to help end their lives, leading doctors have warned.


By Kate Devlin, Medical Correspondent

Published: 10:00PM BST 02 Sep 2009
telegraph.co.uk

In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, a group of experts who care for the terminally ill claim that some patients are being wrongly judged as close to death.

Under NHS guidance introduced across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away.

As a result the scheme is causing a “national crisis” in patient care, the letter states. It has been signed palliative care experts including Professor Peter Millard, Emeritus Professor of Geriatrics, University of London, Dr Peter Hargreaves, a consultant in Palliative Medicine at St Luke’s cancer centre in Guildford, and four others.

“Forecasting death is an inexact science,”they say. Patients are being diagnosed as being close to death “without regard to the fact that the diagnosis could be wrong.

“As a result a national wave of discontent is building up, as family and friends witness the denial of fluids and food to patients."

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Saturday, August 29, 2009

Native Americans and the Public Option


After decades of government-run care, some Indians are finally saying enough.

wsj.com
By TERRY ANDERSON

Bozeman, Mont.

Montana Sen. Max Baucus, a leading architect of national health-care reform, visited the Flathead Indian Reservation near Pablo, Mont., in May, and he was confronted with a surprising critique. "I hope any [new health-care] plan does not forget the nation's first people," Dr. LeAnne Muzquiz told the senator. Another person in the audience, according to the newspaper the Missoulian, followed up by telling the senator that the legislation pending in Congress would in fact do just that.


Native Americans have received federally funded health care for decades. A series of treaties, court cases and acts passed by Congress requires that the government provide low-cost and, in many cases, free care to American Indians. The Indian Health Service (IHS) is charged with delivering that care.

The IHS attempts to provide health care to American Indians and Alaska Natives in one of two ways. It runs 48 hospitals and 230 clinics for which it hires doctors, nurses, and staff and decides what services will be provided. Or it contracts with tribes under the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act passed in 1975. In this case, the IHS provides funding for the tribe, which delivers health care to tribal members and makes its own decisions about what services to provide
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Thursday, August 20, 2009

Death Threats Against Bush at Protests Ignored for Years

zomblog
Aug 19, 2009


On Wednesday, August 12, a man holding a sign that said “Death to Obama” at a town hall meeting in Maryland was arrested and turned over to the Secret Service, which is pursuing an investigation into charging him with threatening the president.

As well they should. I fully and absolutely agree with this arrest, since anyone who threatens the president is breaking the law and should be prosecuted. It doesn’t matter that Obama was not at the meeting nor that the man was unarmed: the threat all on its own is a federal crime, according to the United States Code.

I support the arrest and prosecution of any person who threatens Obama or any president of the United States.


Bush was threatened frequently — but no arrests

But the story of this arrest got me to thinking: Why was no one ever arrested for threatening President Bush at protests, when they displayed signs in public that called for his death?

Many readers may naively think, “The answer is obvious: no protester was ever arrested for threatening Bush at a protest because no one ever threatened him at a protest. Who would be that stupid? I certainly never heard of any such threats.”

Alas, if only it were that simple. Because the bald fact is that people threatened Bush at protests all the time by displaying menacing signs and messages — exactly as the anti-Obama protester just did in Maryland. Yet for reasons that are not entirely clear, not a single one of those Bush-threateners at protests was ever arrested, questioned, or investigated.

Don’t believe me? Then keep reading. Because this essay exists for one reason only: To prove beyond any doubt that explicit and implicit threats to Bush’s life were commonly displayed at public protests throughout his term as president. Below this introduction you will find dozens of examples of such threats — unaltered photographs from a wide variety of sources, along with links verifying their authenticity.

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Saturday, August 8, 2009

Nancy and the Astroturfers

lookingattheleft.com
Denver
August 6 2009



This was the scene when I arrived at Stout Street Clinic in downtown Denver. Nancy Pelosi is to pay a visit to the clinic within the hour. About 200 people opposed to Obama’s healthcare agenda braved the mile high Denver sun and high temperatures to show their opposition. Their signs indicate that they are well aware that they have been vilified and targeted in an Oval Office astroturfing campaign designed to discredit their opposition.




“When asked by a reporter whether the protests at various town-hall meetings represented legitimate grassroots opposition or were manufactured “AstroTurf” stunts, Nancy Pelosi replied, ‘I think they’re AstroTurf. You be the judge. They’re carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care.’” - Jonah Goldberg

Commonly at the tea parties and anti-big government protests hammers and sickles are used to protest democrat policies. The Democrat Party doesn’t seem to have a problem with wall to wall hammers and sickles and has never complained publicly. Maybe they think it’s a compliment? I find that interesting and very telling.





This clinic is adjacent to Denver’s day laborer pickup street, Park Avenue. Being fluent in Spanish, El Marco asked these guys “¿hablan ingles?” “casi nada” was the reply from our amigo on the left. I asked him if he could tell me what the signs said. “¿Quien sabe?” (who knows?) was all he said to me, with a big grin. I’m kicking myself for not asking them how much they were getting paid to support the grassroots.

The irony of their lack of comprehension of the signs they were holding was heightened by the fact that they were the most elaborate and detailed signs of either group.

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Wednesday, August 5, 2009

This is what mob rule looks like



michellemalkin.com
By Michelle Malkin
August 4, 2009 10:52 PM


I’ve noted the irony of the unhinged Left moaning about the “insane rage” of the Right many, many, many, many, many times.

Allahpundit reports tonight that the DNC is now decrying “mob rule.” Lefty bloggers are comparing grass-roots conservatives to Holocaust deniers and waving around the moral equivalence card to smear peaceful Tea Party activists as dangers to democracy and civility (check that link and you’ll get a chuckle out of Media Matters pointing to my archive exposing anti-war fraudsters, Code Pink thieves and home stalkers, and rock-throwing moonbats as some sort of proof that supporting the law-abiding Tea Party movement is hypocritical).
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Tuesday, August 4, 2009

The Folly of Hate-Crime Laws


washingtonpost.com
By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, August 4, 2009

James von Brunn, who is alleged to have opened fire and killed a guard at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, is apparently a consummate bigot. His former wife said that his hatred of blacks and Jews "ate him alive like a cancer," so it might seem appropriate that in addition to having been indicted last week for murder and gun-law violations, he was also charged with hate crimes. At age 89, he proves that you are never too old to hate.

He also proves the stupidity of hate-crime laws. A prime justification for such laws is that some crimes really affect a class of people. The hate-crimes bill recently passed by the Senate puts it this way: "A prominent characteristic of a violent crime motivated by bias is that it devastates not just the actual victim . . . but frequently savages the community sharing the traits that caused the victim to be selected." No doubt. But how is this crime different from most other crimes?

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Legalizing Deception: Why “Gender Identity” Should Not be Added to Anti-discrimination Legislation


Catholic Exchange
June 25th, 2009
by Dale O'Leary


Certain national and international groups are pushing for the addition of “gender identity” and “gender expression” to anti-discrimination laws. According to activists, gender identity is defined as: “An individual’s self–perception or inner sense of being a man, a male, a woman, a female, both, neither, butch, femme, two-spirit, bigender, or another configuration of gender. Gender identity often matches the gender typically associated with the person’s anatomy but sometimes does not” and gender expression refers to: “Any combination of how someone outwardly presents external characteristics behaviors that are socially defined as masculine or feminine, including dress, mannerisms speech patterns and social interactions.”[1]

For example, a bill introduced in the Maryland legislature reads as follows: “An owner or operator of a place of public accommodation …may not refuse, withhold from, or deny to any person any of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, or privileges of the place of public accommodation because of the person’s … gender identity.” This would mean that males dressed as females could use women’s restrooms and locker rooms.
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Ten reasons why America’s health care system is in better condition than you might suppose


August, 2009
Hoover Digest
By Scott W. Atlas





Medical care in the United States is derided as miserable compared to health care systems in the rest of the developed world. Economists, government officials, insurers, and academics beat the drum for a far larger government role in health care. Much of the public assumes that their arguments are sound because the calls for change are so ubiquitous and the topic so complex. Before we turn to government as the solution, however, we should consider some unheralded facts about America’s health care system.

1. Americans have better survival rates than Europeans for common cancers. Breast cancer mortality is 52 percent higher in Germany than in the United States and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom. Prostate cancer mortality is 604 percent higher in the United Kingdom and 457 percent higher in Norway. The mortality rate for colorectal cancer among British men and women is about 40 percent higher.


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Saturday, August 1, 2009

Homosexual Activists Intimidate American Psychiatric Association into Removing Homosexuality from List of Disorders


Conservative Colloquium
Posted by foospro86 on October 1, 2007
BY RYAN SORBA

“It was never a medical decision—and that’s why I think the action came so fast…It was a political move.”

“That’s how far we’ve come in ten years. Now we even have the American Psychiatric Association running scared.”
-Barbara Gittings, Same-gender sex activist

Let us, for a moment, rewind to the year1970. In this year, same-gender sex activists began a program of intimidation aimed at the American Psychiatric Association (APA). Activist Frank Kameny states the movement’s objective clearly, “I feel that the entire homophile movement…is going to stand or fall upon the question of whether or not homosexuality is a sickness, and upon our taking a firm stand on it…” (The Gay Crusaders, by Kay Tobin and Randy Wicker, p. 98)


In 1970, psychiatrists generally considered sexual desires toward members of one’s own gender to be disordered. Karoly Maria Kertbeny’s term, “homosexual” was the official descriptor for those inflicted by this mental-physical disassociative disorder. Psychiatry’s authoritative voice influenced public opinion, which at the time was negative toward same-gender sex. Of course, public sexual activity in parks and public restrooms contributed to societies negative views about the types of people that did such things, but “scientific opinion” was crucial in the public attitude.

Led by radicals like Frank Kameny, same-gender sex activists attacked many psychiatrists publicly, as Newsweek describes, “But even more than the government, it is the psychiatrists who have experienced the full rage of the homosexual activists. Over the past two years, gay-lib organizations have repeatedly disrupted medical meetings, and three months ago—in the movements most aggressive demonstration so far—a group of 30 militants broke into a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in Washington, where they turned the staid proceedings into near chaos for twenty minutes. ‘We are here to denounce your authority to call us sick or mentally disordered,’ shouted the group’s leader, Dr. Franklin Kameny, while the 2,000 shocked psychiatrists looked on in disbelief. ‘For us, as homosexuals, your profession is the enemy incarnate. We demand that psychiatrists treat us as human beings, not as patients to be cured!’” (Newsweek, 8-23-71, p.47)

Monday, July 27, 2009

Impersonating a Victim


American Thinker
July 27, 2009
By W. R. Wansley



This past March 29th, Professor Henry Louis Gates was being interviewed in front of a small group by Walter Isaacson on C-SPAN's Book TV. Thirty-three minutes into the discussion about his new book on Lincoln, Professor Gates began a detailed account of his own genealogy. He said that in doing so he had discovered he was about "50% white". He said that this was quote, "To my astonishment and horror...".


He continued by saying that he had subsequently sent his DNA off to be tested. This time, upon finding out he was "57% white", he said again, "to my horror .... I was becoming more white by the minute". To this Gates, Isaacson and everyone else there chuckled.


Something tells me that if Mr. Isaacson had said that he also had sent his DNA off and found that to his "astonishment and horror" he was 57% black, no one would chuckle, least of all the Professor of African American Studies at Harvard, Dr. Gates.

CZAR WARS: THE PHANTOM MENACES


THE REAL POWER IN THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION IS UNCONFIRMED AND UNACCOUNTABLE

New York Post
By MICHELLE MALKIN
July 26, 2009

If you can't beat 'em, czar 'em. This is the standard operating procedure in Obama World. The time-honored Senate confirmation process proved to be a dangerous landmine for one too many of the president's picks. But the White House found the perfect cure for Obama Nominee Withdrawal Syndrome: Avoid future debacles by circumventing the nomination process altogether.

So far, czars have been installed in at least 35 posts through presidential executive orders that require no Senate approval. No Senate review, no questions. No questions, no problems.

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Waterboarding, Torture, and Me


By Dennis Bartlett
Wednesday, 20 May 2009
thecatholicthing.org

During the Vietnam Era, I received a commission as a U.S. Naval intelligence officer. Part of my training involved a SERE (survival, evasion, resistance, and escape) episode at the euphemistically named Resistance Training Laboratory (RTL), then located at Warner Springs in the mountains east of San Diego. The RTL was basically a simulated POW camp to prep its pupils on what to expect if downed over North Vietnam and captured. As Yogi Berra says, "In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is." A case in point: We received about a week of instruction in the class room about what to do if captured, and took it all in like other class material. Then, when we were exposed to the real thing, it all went to hell in about a nanosecond. But that was part of the training, too. There is no substitute for experience.

Monday, June 15, 2009

The Left Cries ‘Racist’ in a Crowded Country


By Andrew Breitbart Monday, June 15, 2009
The Washington Times

In its obvious zeal to create a one-party state, the Democrat-Media Complex (the natural coalition of the Democratic Party and the mainstream media) last week seized upon the horrific murder of a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington as an opportunity to ascribe blame to the American conservative movement and to further marginalize the Republican Party.

In record time, the media's blind partisans and their feral friends in the left-wing blogosphere used the alleged "lone wolf" act of James W. von Brunn - an 88-year old self-avowed racist and anti-Semite - to try to affirm the controversial Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report that posited " right-wing extremists have capitalized on the election of the first African American president" and are a becoming a growing domestic terror threat.

read more

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Video: Economic reporting, then and nowposted

June 9, 2009 by Ed Morrissey hotair.com
Ed Frank finds something amiss in today’s media environment when it comes to economic trends and analyses. Frank notices that the media today seem willing and even eager to parrot the White House and Barack Obama in his sunny optimism, despite unemployment shooting up higher and faster than anytime in the last 70 years. Back in 2003-4, when the American economy recovered from what looks in comparison to a speed bump, Frank recalls a much different media environment:




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Monday, June 8, 2009

The End Of England?


By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted Monday, June 02, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Culture: Two Christian preachers in Britain have been told that trying to spread the gospel to Muslims is a hate crime. It's another sign that much of England has given up on being England.


British media are reporting that Arthur Cunningham and Joseph Abraham, American evangelical ministers who've been living in Great Britain for years, were told by a police community support officer to "stop handing out gospel leaflets in a predominantly Muslim area of Birmingham."

Cunningham said the officer told him and Abraham in February that they "were in a Muslim area and were not allowed to spread our Christian message. He said we were committing a hate crime by telling the youths to leave Islam and said that he was going to take us to the police station."




Thursday, June 4, 2009

Mapping the “climate of hate”


by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2009
June 3, 2009 09:45 AM


When a right-wing Christian vigilante kills, millions of fingers pull the trigger. When a left-wing Muslim vigilante kills, he kills alone. These are the instantly ossifying narratives in the Sunday shooting death of Kansas late-term abortionist George Tiller versus the Monday shootings of two Arkansas military recruiters.

Tiller’s suspected murderer, Scott Roeder, was white, Christian, anti-government, and anti-abortion. The gunman in the military recruiting center attack, Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad, was black, a Muslim convert, anti-military, and anti-American. Both crimes are despicable, cowardly acts of domestic terrorism. But the disparate treatment of the two brutal cases by both the White House and the media is striking.


Thursday, May 14, 2009

Another Example of Deranged Public Behavior by Liberal Activists



This is the latest, in a long line of examples of bad public behavior by liberal activists. I have posted about 8 examples of liberal activists who attempt to discredit, ridicule, insult, bully, intimidate and demonize their opposition publicly in an effort to discredit, silence and marginalize them.

I challenge anyone to provide equally bad behavior on the part of conservatives in recent history. So far, you have a lot of catching up to do.

This bad behavior is straight out of Saul Alinsky's book: "Rules for Radicals". The following article illustrates how Barack Obama also follows the 5 basic rules outlined in Alinsky's book: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MTY5ZTA5NmEwMGY4MTFhNDg2ZDg4NjU2MDkxOGYyYTE=&w=MA==

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Comparing the Lifestyles of Homosexual Couples to Married Couples


Website © 2009 Family Research Council

"Married and Gay Couples Not All that Different," proclaimed the headline of a news article portraying homosexual households as remarkably similar to married couples. "We're the couple next door," claimed one partnered homosexual. "We have a dog and a cat. I drive a Volvo. I'm boring."[1] Such down-home portrayals of homosexual couples are meant to provoke the question: Since gay couples really differ only in that both partners are of the same sex, what rational basis exists for denying them full marriage rights?

Are homosexual households, as the article suggests, simply another variant of human relationships that should be considered, along with marriage, as "part of mainstream American society"?

On the contrary, the evidence indicates that "committed" homosexual relationships are radically different from married couples in several key respects:

· relationship duration
· monogamy vs. promiscuity
· relationship commitment
· number of children being raised
· health risks
· rates of intimate partner violence
Finally, this paper will present evidence from gay activists themselves indicating that behind the push for gay marriage lies a political agenda to radically change the institution of marriage itself.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Mystery:Why Do Non-Conservatives Exist?



From Conservapedia

Conservative principles are based on reason. So why do non-conservatives still exist? Here are some reasons:

Statistical Analysis
(Estimates)

30%: did not hear about conservative principles, their logic and full benefits until after they made up their mind and, perhaps due to pervasive societal bias, refuse to reconsider

15%: lack of desire to find the truth, and a greater desire in gaining attention, praise by liberal teachers, getting along by going along, and not standing up to liberal bullies

15%: refuse to let go of their past, especially their past mistakes and image

10%: fooled by the demonizing of conservatives and mistakenly feel that conservative benefits are available only to those who are from an intact family or privileged background

10%: refuse to rise above their personal temptations, often self-destructive, and hate conservatives who criticize their self-indulgent behavior

10%: bitterly unemployed, or having a salary or benefits that conservatives would reduce, such as public school teachers, and a refusal to rise above self-interest

5%: were told off or disciplined once by a conservative, often a parent or ex-spouse, and harbor a grudge or refuse to rise above the animosity

5%: like an anarchist, genuinely want to believe in and propagate destructive ideas

What Triggers Reconsideration of Liberal Beliefs?
What triggers reconsideration of liberal beliefs? Here are some estimates:

25%: raising or teaching children, and realizing how destructive liberal values are to many of them

20%: a religious conversion followed by taking the Bible to heart

15%: a loss of a loved one that resulted from accepting or promoting liberal values, as in losing a loved one to crime caused by pornography, drug addiction, gambling, etc.

10%: a new friendship with someone who is conservative, and realizing how much good flows from the conservative values[1]

10%: simply by maturing and seeing liberalism's impact around them, and realizing what they were taught as youth was wrong

10%: a desire to learn the truth, and a dislike for those who mislead

5%: using conservative values to overcome an addiction, and then realizing the benefits of conservative values in many other ways

5%: taking a truthful course in economics, or learning it in the workforce[2]
Read more

Friday, February 27, 2009

Why Liberals Fear Global Warming More Than Conservatives Do


June 20, 2006
By Dennis Prager


Observers of contemporary society will surely have noted that a liberal is far more likely to fear global warming than a conservative. Why is this?

After all, if the science is as conclusive as Al Gore, Time, Newsweek, The New York Times and virtually every other spokesman of the Left says it is, conservatives are just as likely to be scorched and drowned and otherwise done in by global warming as liberals will. So why aren't non-leftists nearly as exercised as leftists are? Do conservatives handle heat better? Are libertarians better swimmers? Do religious people love their children less?

The usual liberal responses -- to label a conservative position racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic or the like -- obviously don't apply here. So, liberals would have to fall back on the one remaining all-purpose liberal explanation: "big business." They might therefore explain the conservative-liberal divide over global warming thus: Conservatives don't care about global warming because they prefer corporate profits to saving the planet.

But such an explanation could not explain the vast majority of conservatives who are not in any way tied into the corporate world (like this writer, who has no stocks and who, moreover, regards big business as amoral as leftists do).

No, the usual liberal dismissals of conservatives and their positions just don't explain this particularly illuminating difference between liberals and conservatives.

Here are six more likely explanations:
Read more:

Friday, February 13, 2009

The meltdown and the bailout - why, how, and what they mean

February 13, 2009
Backwoods Home Magazine
By John Silveira


To understand how the recent meltdown and bailout came about, you have to know what brought them on. According to some, there are PhDs who have problems grasping what happened. I don't know if that's true, but I don't think it has to be made that difficult.

.......This has been described as a failure of the free-market system and leaders from both parties, including John McCain and Barack Obama, made the charge that the meltdown came about because of corporate greed. Both refused to acknowledge that the seeds of the meltdown began in Washington, D.C., and, when measures could have been implemented that would have started undoing the bad government decision, members of Congress got in the way.

Many congressmen have proclaimed the meltdown occurred because there wasn't enough oversight and that it was preventable—but they had fought against any changes for years.

read more

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Pacifists versus Peace


RealClearPolitics.com
July 21, 2006
By Thomas Sowell


One of the many failings of our educational system is that it sends out into the world people who cannot tell rhetoric from reality. They have learned no systematic way to analyze ideas, derive their implications and test those implications against hard facts.

"Peace" movements are among those who take advantage of this widespread inability to see beyond rhetoric to realities. Few people even seem interested in the actual track record of so-called "peace" movements -- that is, whether such movements actually produce peace or war.

Take the Middle East. People are calling for a cease-fire in the interests of peace. But there have been more cease-fires in the Middle East than anywhere else. If cease-fires actually promoted peace, the Middle East would be the most peaceful region on the face of the earth instead of the most violent.

Was World War II ended by cease-fires or by annihilating much of Germany and Japan? Make no mistake about it, innocent civilians died in the process. Indeed, American prisoners of war died when we bombed Germany.

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Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Hiding the Truth About the Pay Gap Between Men and Women


A study on the gender wage gap has been removed from the website of the Labor Department — and the timing is suspicious.

February 3, 2009 - by Michael J. Eastman -Pajamas Media

The argument that the pay gap must be closed rests on the assumption that the pay gap is largely attributable to employer discrimination. However, if the pay gap is to be used to justify such significant changes in the law, it seems entirely appropriate to examine the pay gap itself. Does it really measure employer discrimination? Do other factors play a greater or lesser role?

Economists who have studied the pay gap have observed that numerous factors other than discrimination contribute to the wage gap, such as hours worked, experience, and education. For example, Professor June O’Neil has written extensively about how time out of the workforce, or years spent working part-time, can reduce future pay. Likewise, economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth, in her book Women’s Figures, has written about the decisions that women are more likely to make to choose flexibility, a friendly workplace environment, and other nonmonetary factors as compared to men.

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Monday, January 26, 2009

Professors Indoctrinating Students? Not in Our University


· 08 December 2008
By Mary Grabar - PajamasMedia.com


A New York Times [1] article reporting on studies that purportedly show that professors’ ideological views — overwhelmingly [2] liberal — have no or negligible impact on students’ opinions has been plastered triumphantly on college bulletin boards across the land.

Conservatives’ worries about political indoctrination, according to reporter Patricia Cohen, are “overwrought,” indeed “fantasies.” The reactionary Don Quixotes have instigated a culture war, going so far as introducing “intellectual diversity” legislation and recruiting volunteers to monitor classrooms. At my community college, the headline, “Professors’ Liberalism Contagious? Maybe Not,” was circled in red magic marker, as if to suggest that those who still believe that our educational system harms young people might be ready for the meds.

I wonder which of my colleagues posted this article. Was it the one who wears the yin-yang ring, who one day during election season pulled a MoveOn.org email blast about Palin’s “[3] Troopergate scandal” from the department printer, asking if I had seen this “news” item? Or was it the instructor who posted next to her office door a photo of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, signed by Biden with, “Thanks for your help!”? Or was it the instructor who shows Michael Moore and Al Gore movies as “documentaries”?


Saturday, January 17, 2009

Relics of the good old days

Dog gyms, hedge funds, stainless steel. What were we thinking?
Joel Stein
January 16, 2009 LA Times

In the clear recessionary morning, all that stuff we've been binge buying suddenly looks gaudy and ridiculous. It's been a 25-year blur of fluorescent Frankie Sez shirts, logo handbags, Hummers and ring tones. We need to have one giant national garage sale and invite the world.

If there are pictures of you with any of the things listed below on Facebook, immediately remove them. Replace them with one of those stately, unsmiling group portraits our grandparents and great-grandparents took that made us feel like we came from important stock. You don't want your descendants to lose all hope when they realize that Great-Grandpa Jaden was flashing fake gang signs at Treasure Island while downing a Grey Goose and Red Bull before his "American Idol" audition.

Opinion L.A.: Your list of indulgencesTasting menus: The idea that an appetizer, entree and dessert wasn't enough -- that you had to taste everything -- was a pretty clear sign we were on our way toward being a fat, indebted nation. If Morgan Spurlock had tried to follow up "Super Size Me" with a movie in which he had to go 30 days eating only tasting menus -- and accept the wine pairings if they were offered -- he would have died by Week 2. I went with four people to Per Se in New York, and two of them barfed as soon as we got home. To be fair, it was the most delicious barf they'd ever had.

read more

Immigrants ravage U.S. infrastructure


Financial analyst: $1.6 trillion required to repair devastation

Posted: January 15, 2009, 11:50 pm Eastern By Chelsea Schilling © 2009 WorldNetDaily

The United States will need $1.6 trillion to repair damage to its infrastructure from a massive influx of immigrants, a new report reveals.

In his report titled, "The Twin Crises: Immigration and Infrastructure," prominent researcher Edwin S. Rubenstein examines 15 categories of infrastructure: airports, border security, bridges, dams and levees, electricity (the power grids), hazardous waste removal, hospitals, mass transit, parks and recreation facilities, ports and navigable waterways, public schools, railroads, roads and highways, solid waste and trash, and water and sewer systems.

Rubenstein, a financial analyst and former contributing editor of Forbes and economics editor of National Review, claims the nation is facing a crisis – with immigration responsible for at least 80 percent of spending needed to expand the U.S. infrastructure before the middle of this century.

"If the infrastructure crisis could be fixed by spending money, there would be no crisis," Mr. Rubenstein explained in a statement. "Since 1987, capital spending on transportation infrastructure has increased by 2.1 percent per year above the inflation rate. At $233 billion (2004 dollars), infrastructure is already one of the largest categories of government spending. Our infrastructure is 'crumbling' because population growth has overwhelmed the ability of even these vast sums to expand capacity."

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Thursday, January 15, 2009

Homosexual Men Account for 65 Percent of Syphilis Cases, CDC Study Finds


Thursday, January 15, 2009, By Pete Winn, Senior Writer/Editor(CNSNews.com)

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says homosexual men accounted for 65 percent of the nearly 12,000 cases of syphilis in the United States in 2007, making them the “primary driver” of increased syphilis rates overall.

In a report on sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) issued Tuesday, the government said syphilis, a disease that was almost eliminated as a public health threat less than 10 years ago, is on the rise -- with cases increasing each year since 2000.

It remained a serious health threat in the United States in 2007, the latest year for which statistics are available, largely because of increased transmission among “men who have sex with men” (MSM) in the United States, according to the CDC.

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Thursday, January 1, 2009

PC Campus: Academia’s Top 10 Abuses of 2008


Banned conservative speakers, stolen votes, assaults on religious liberty, gay English classes, and forbidden Thanksgiving & Christmas celebrations

By Jason Mattera
Young America’s Foundation Spokesman
December 2008


Political correctness ran amuck in our nation’s school system this past year, and Young America’s Foundation has once again compiled our “best of the worst” academic abuses for 2008. From “free speech zones” to transgendered speakers at military academies, the following list may make you both laugh and cry in the same breath. That probably isn’t too surprising, however, since we are talking about academia after all…
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