1)Obama has stated that the US and Iran have a “mutual interest” in fighting the Taliban, and that Iran “could be a constructive partner” with the US in creating a stable Afghanistan.
Reality: A State Department report, issued the day after Obama’s expression of his fantasy:
Iran’s Qods Force provided training to the Taliban in Afghanistan on small unit tactics, small arms, explosives, and indirect fire weapons. Since at least 2006, Iran has arranged arms shipments to select Taliban members, including small arms and associated ammunition, rocket propelled grenades, mortar rounds, 107mm rockets, and plastic explosives.
2)The United States government is paying for Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the man behind the so-called Ground Zero mosque, to go on a trip representing the US in Arab countries. Rauf has refused to denounce Hamas as a terrorist organization, and has stated that the US shares responsibility for the 9/11 terrorist attacks..indeed, that US policies made us “an accessory to” the attacks.
3)Nancy Pelosi has demanded an investigation of those opposing the Ground Zero mosque. (After the predictable and justified firestorm of outrage broke, she amended her statement to say that she also wanted an investigation of the funding of the mosque itself.)
4)Arne Duncan, Obama’s Secretary of Education, plans to speak at an August 28 rally being organized by Al Sharpton. One would think that after all the concerns raised about Obama’s 20 years as a congregant of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, his administration would be a little shy about associating with someone of Sharpton’s ilk. Evidently not.
Disconnection from reality, arrogance, unwillingness to accept criticism and to discuss other points of view, contempt for and hostility toward broad swaths of the American population–these have become the hallmarks of the Obama adminstration and its enablers in Congress. I expected that Obama would be a bad President, but the level of his awfulness continues to astound.
(Sharpton link via Common Sense & Wonder)
Also: the Democratic candidate for the governor of California, Jerry Brown, is tonight attending a fundraiser at the home of one of the leaders of Code Pink. If you don’t know about this organization, follow the link and prepare to feel nauseated.
I’m actually disappointed in this–I thought Brown had a little more intelligence, thoughtfulness, and class than the typical Democratic politician. But I guess if you associate with pigs for long enough, you eventually begin snorting and squealing.
If you have been visiting California any time in the past 20 years and have been caught in a traffic jam, you have encountered Jerry Brown’s legacy. He stopped building freeways back when the population was 2/3 of the present total. Of course, the illegal aliens periodically stage “A day without illegals” in order to show the intolerant native population what a terrible life it would be without all those willing workers doing jobs Americans won’t do. The first one held in Los Angeles was not a great success for those waving Mexican flags although LA residents have been trying to organize another one ever since. It did give one a brief taste of what California was like before Jerry Brown.
Another Brown legacy is the toilets that have to be flushed twice. “Small is beautiful” was once his slogan but I haven’t heard it much this year. Maybe it reminds people too much of their 401ks.
Brown and Code Pink, Duncan and Sharpton–why wouldn’t they? Go with the winners. Sharpton’s gone from triumph to triumph. Even “setbacks” like Brawley and Crown Heights proved his power. Those four represent the continuing majority of Americans. They’re not some corrupt minority oppressing a freedom-loving majority.
Obama is not unhinged. He knows who his friends and allies are in his presidency of change. The. American people voted for Obama in the hopes he would install a Muslim version of Chavez’ regime, and Obama is working hard every day to make that dream a reality.
Obama is accomplishing exactly what his supporters want. Stop thinking of themm as some kind of deluded version of real Americans. They are not. They are admirers of Mao, Castro, and Chavez and represent the majority of academics, politicians, entertainers, authors, intellectuals, and, yes, ordinary citizens of this country.
Some additional quotes from Rauf, here.
Tehag…I don’t think anything like a majority of Americans are admirers of Mao, Castro, and/or Chavez. Extreme left-wing attitudes are common among academics, writers, and entertainers; you will find them much less frequently among blue-collar workers or among engineers and salesmen in a corporation.
Even in academia and in Hollywood, truly-committed leftists are probably scarcer than they look: once things reach a tipping point, it’s easier for most people to go along with the crowd, as it avoids the effort of independent thought and, especially, it’s *safer* from a career standpoint. Old American saying: tell me where a man gets his corn pone, and I’ll tell you where he gets his opinions.
People in the above 3 industries are especially vulerable to political reprisals. A welder or an engineer or a salesman is unlikely to be fired or lose out on a promotion due to “political deviations”…for a professor or an actor or a screenwriter, the risk is considerably higher.
Not to get too biblical, but …. Pride come before the fall. Secular version: Karma say Ideologue too stupid to learn from experience.
http://libertyatstake.blogspot.com/
“Because the Only Good Progressive is a Failed Progressive”
If ordinary Americans won’t admit they are admirers of Chavez, they can prove it by changing how they vote: abolish the IRS, education department, affirmative action, etc.; otherwise America is taking the slow boat to the same destination: big man rule.
David Foster Says:
People in the above 3 industries are especially vulerable to political reprisals. A welder or an engineer or a salesman is unlikely to be fired or lose out on a promotion due to “political deviations””¦for a professor or an actor or a screenwriter, the risk is considerably higher.
Just to stir things up a tad, perhaps that needs to change. One of the drivers of the “unhinged” behaviour of our Political Class, which carries down to the Chiroptera Lunarii in the street is the detail that for all their ranting about the dark night of oppression descending upon them; it is fact that supporting or becoming TWANLOC [Those Who Are No Longer Our Countrymen] never has a negative effect on them that they can connect to their own behaviour.
There are now black lists and bars to various jobs and career fields based on the need to publicly avow the latest Leftist drivel. What if it became impossible for such Leftists to succeed in other fields that they want to because of their political choices?
What would happen if say being a graduate of Harvard, Yale, etc. became a public indicator of both being brainwashed by the Left and in the case of the attached Law Schools it being all but impossible to flunk out once admitted [and thus making a law degree indicative of dubious skills] became a resume item that hindered being hired? What if employers started including in their regular pre-employment background checks a check of the public voter registration, and being a Democrat was quietly used by employers as a disqualifying factor? [These days hiring anyone is a horrible risk for any employer due to increased taxes and employer mandates the Democrats are imposing, let alone someone who supports those taxes and mandates politically.] What if businesses owned by local leaders of the Democrat party suddenly had to survive only on the custom of those who continue to drink the Leftists’ Kool-Aid, because the rest of the community did not want to support the party that is defining “unhinged” as above?
Maybe turnabout is a necessary feedback mechanism.
Subotai Bahadur
Public sentiment has shifted noticeably against the Democrats in the past few weeks. Wayne Huizenga was interviewed on CNBC last Friday morning. They asked him about the political situation as it relates to the economy. He said we should change the President. This was a bold statement even allowing for the fact that he is a Republican. Would he have been so blunt a year ago? Maybe not.
Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, on the relationship between sharia law, the Muslim Brotherhood, and imam Rauf.
” A welder or an engineer or a salesman is unlikely to be fired or lose out on a promotion due to political deviations”
Not in the regimes that our self-proclaimed betters admire. No matter how ‘necessary’ one’s job was, a political error of speech, of birth, of thought still sent that unfortunate engineer, farmer, manager, welder, backhoe operator, etc. to the gulag. Our betters don’t care if the skill is valuable or necessary: valuable skills make their possessor a zek in a sharashka or the object of a struggle session. The collapse of the infrastructure will be blamed on capitalist deviationism; the privation makes the struggle meaningful.
Stop thinking of these people as economic men, as Americans with common sense: they hope for change, and that change is the gulag (as Ayers openly declared: 25 million Americans would have to die; now he’s an unofficial presidential advisor).