Friday Afternoon Roundup - I See Red People

RADICAL RADISHES

Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan. The left has been looking for a narrative in the mess and it has fished out the usual suspects.

1. Wisconsin was really a victory because it could have possibly succeeded. Which is almost a win.

2. If we massage the numbers, we can make it look like Wisconsin voters strongly back Obama.

3. The DNC didn't do enough for Barrett.

4. Barrett lost because he wasn't liberal enough.

The last one is the most popular because it reinforces the belief that Barrett lost because he was a sellout who wasn't willing to go to the limit. He lost because he wasn't willing to publicly state that he would give the unions absolutely everything, no questions asked. He lost because he didn't lead an occupation of the polling booths.

When we get the technicalities out of the way, Barrett lost because he wasn't radical enough. We need someone more radical. Someone who has no common ground with conservative or moderate voters.

The media blathers on a lot about Republican radicalization, even while they feed their own radicalization.



IRRATIONAL LIBERAL MEDIA HEADLINE OF THE WEEK

FREE THE TERRORISTS

What do you get for being a terrorist fundraiser? If you’re Emadeddin Z. Muntasser, then you grin after walking away with six months of home confinement.  And if you’re, Samir Al-Monla, then you get off with eight months of home confinement.

Muntasser and Al-Monla had co-founded their group, Care International, together with Abdullah Azzam. Azzam was Bin Laden’s mentor and a co-founder of Al-Qaeda and Hamas. Care International had been started up after the World Trade Center bombing as a successor to Al-Kifah, which operated under the aegis of Maktab al-Khidamat, founded by Osama bin Laden and Abdullah Azzam as a precursor to Al-Qaeda. Al-Kifah had fed money to the Mujhadeen in Afghanistan and its operatives had been closely connected to the World Trade Center Bombing. Its assets were frozen after September 11, but those of Care International were not.

All that should have made the case against Al-Monla and Muntasser a simple affair; instead after nearly ten years of raids, investigations and trials— two terrorist fundraisers have, for all intents and purposes, gone free.

In my Front Page article, How Two Al-Qaeda Fundraisers Were Set Free. I cover the case in some detail.




INVEST IN EDUCATION

Report: More college graduates needed to boost California economy

The report, by California Competes, a group of independent business and civic leaders, projected that the state will need more than 5 million new students with bachelor’s degrees or technical credentials by 2025 to fill job needs.

Currently, the state is on track to have about 3 million such students in the next 13 years, the report said. To bridge that gap, the state’s higher education systems must increase their output of bachelor’s degrees and technical certifications by 4% each year, according to the report.

I have a great plan. California needs to pour more money into education. And raise taxes to cover the added costs. That should take care of everything... and by "everything" I mean the entire state.

California currently has an 11 percent unemployment rate. Nationally, one of two college graduates is unemployed.

By region, the Mountain West was most likely to have young college graduates jobless or underemployed—roughly 3 in 5. It was followed by the more rural southeastern U.S., including Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee. The Pacific region, including Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington, also was high on the list.

On the other end of the scale, the southern U.S., anchored by Texas, was most likely to have young college graduates in higher-skill jobs.

But no, it gets much much worse.

About 1.5 million, or 53.6 percent, of bachelor's degree-holders under the age of 25 last year were jobless or underemployed, the highest share in at least 11 years. In 2000, the share was at a low of 41 percent, before the dot-com bust erased job gains for college graduates in the telecommunications and IT fields.

Out of the 1.5 million who languished in the job market, about half were underemployed, an increase from the previous year.

Broken down by occupation, young college graduates were heavily represented in jobs that require a high school diploma or less.

In the last year, they were more likely to be employed as waiters, waitresses, bartenders and food-service helpers than as engineers, physicists, chemists and mathematicians combined (100,000 versus 90,000). There were more working in office-related jobs such as receptionists or payroll clerks than in all computer professional jobs (163,000 versus 100,000). More also were employed as cashiers, retail clerks and customer representatives than engineers (125,000 versus 80,000).

According to government projections released last month, only three of the 30 occupations with the largest projected number of job openings by 2020 will require a bachelor's degree or higher to fill the position—teachers, college professors and accountants. Most job openings are in professions such as retail sales, fast food and truck driving, jobs which aren't easily replaced by computers.

Over half of college graduates are unemployed. Of the under 50 percent that are employed, another half are working base level jobs that don't require college degrees or the heavy burden of degree debt.

That means something like 1/4 of college graduates actually have any chance at all of working at a job based on their degree. And the actual numbers are probably even worse.

But fear not... there are three occupations with openings for college graduates. Two of them are in education. Which means that we are investing in education in order to create education jobs for the graduates we created.

We need more college graduates so they can get jobs teaching college graduates to get teaching jobs. This is an economic setup that is entirely self-contained. We could just as easily build a factory that makes boxes that are shipped to another factory that pulps the boxes and then ship the pulp back to the first factory to turn them into boxes. Except this is even more senseless.

But California's economy will perish unless there's a 4 percent growth in degree holders, when currently 75 percent of degree holders don't have degree produced jobs. The good news is most of the other 25 percent will work for the government. And if that doesn't save the economy, I don't know what will.

Oh wait, I know what will. Higher taxes to "invest" in education.



INCONCEIVABLE

"Master Sgt. Marc Maschhoff revels in the turns his life has taken in the last year. Last summer, Maschhoff had to keep his sexuality a secret or risk being kicked out of the Air Force.

On Monday, he was happily introducing his boyfriend to diplomats and politicians from around the world as the U.S. ambassador to Japan held a reception in honor of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Month."

That's not from the Advocate, that's from Stars and Stripes Magazine.

President Barack Obama wrote in his June 1 proclamation for LGBT Pride Month, the fourth he’s designated since taking office. “LGBT Americans and allies have achieved what once seemed inconceivable.”

Inconceivable is certainly a good word for it. This administration has achieved many inconceivable things. Its continued operations are clearly inconceivable. There is no limit to its inconceivable destructive tendencies.

I leave you with this inconceivable article from the Huffington Post. "Gay Pride: Contagious and Mainstreamed by Obama "




NIDAL HASAN, THE MILLION DOLLAR MAN

Remember that nice fella in Fort Hood who picked up secondhand PTSD and shot a bunch of people for reasons not in any way to do with him shouting, "Allah Akbar".

When is he going to go to trial? This August. Maybe. Meanwhile...

Every year the cost of keeping Hasan locked up runs about half a million dollars, payable by the army to the county. That’s over a million dollars in the last two years. Where does all that money go?

Nidal Hasan’s living quarters are not exactly those of the ordinary prisoner. He has a handicap accessible shower in his cell, along with his own bathroom, and a bed with an air mattress.  Those are better conditions than those of veterans in many VA hospitals, who describe everything from blood spills to fecal matter, and who would welcome the kind of facilities that a murderer of American soldiers enjoys.

The endgame of the defense is to keep Hasan from receiving the death penalty. That’s why a capital mitigation specialist has been digging into Nidal Hasan’s biography looking for a way to unbalance the scales of justice. The mitigation specialist has led to more delays and a quarter million dollar bill to the government for his services on Hasan’s behalf.

That's an except from my article, The Long-Delayed Trial of the Fort Hood Terrorist.




THAT MUSLIMS FIRST FOREIGN POLICY

The United States voiced concern Friday about the mob killing of Muslims in Myanmar and called for the country's reform-minded government to move forward in reconciling with minorities.

When was the last time that the United States expressed concern about the Muslim persecution of non-Muslims?

Muslim massacres of Christians in Nigeria hardly get this level of attention from the Hussein Administration. When Christians are killed by Muslims, the Nigerian government is told to make concessions to Muslims. When Muslims are killed, the government of Burma is told to make concessions to Muslims.

Is there any conceivable scenario in which the knee-jerk Hussein Administration response isn't to make concessions to Muslims?



IN UTTERLY SHOCKING NEWS...

A mob of hundreds of men assaulted women holding a march demanding an end to sexual harassment Friday, with the attackers overwhelming the male guardians and groping and molesting several of the female marchers in Cairo's Tahrir Square.

Friday's march was called to demand an end to sexual assaults. Around 50 women participated, surrounded by a larger group of male supporters who joined to hands to form a protective ring around them. 

Egypt... a civilized nation with a bright future. What comes out of Egypt is heavily massaged and filtered. Look at the following headline from a Reuters story.

Egyptians protest against ex-premier before election

"Egyptians". All Egyptians? Regardless of creed or association have gathered to protest?

Some of those in the square supported Shafik's rival Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood, which already controls parliament, but others were frustrated that they face a choice between two of Egypt's most polarizing politicians.

Cut to paragraph two for a more honest view. I'm not blaming Patrick Werr here. The story is pretty decent and he didn't write the headline. The headline writer however has the same agenda as much of the media... which comes down to backing the Muslim Brotherhood.



CONCESSIONS AND CONFESSIONS

I wouldn't make too much of that Barrett slap. I can think of plenty of people who wanted to slap McCain for conceding the election before running. And the worst Republican concession may belong to Nixon, who conceded to JFK, rather than call a dirty Chicago election into question.

Just imagine a world without the Kennedy clan's death grip on politics or the constant traffic in new JFK's to run for the Democratic Party nomination. Imagine a world where Clinton, Edwards and Obama running for election in a party where being youthful, handsome and glib meant remembering the time that JFK lost to Nixon




WHY BOTHER?

Why bother? It's obvious why prominent magazines are now putting out hit pieces targeting Netanyahu. After the Kadima deal, he's hard to dislodge, which makes smearing him as a priority, because he's not going away.

So the Vanity Fair hit piece by David Margolick, side by side with articles on, "Kristen Stewart’s Growth as an Unlikely Fashion Icon" and "Kristen Stewart in Paris Couture" and "From The Price of Inequality: Joseph Stiglitz on the 1 Percent Problem", is about as unexpected as rain in Seattle.

The lead photo with a mug shot style photo of Netanyahu, front and back, that he apparently posed for, is tacky and unprofessional, but also unsurprising, if you remember what prominent magazines have done with McCain, Palin and Romney photos. The only question here is why Netanyahu is apparently cooperating with stories that in no conceivable state of affairs are going to be anything but hit pieces. Because that's what they're supposed to be.

Time and Vanity Fair are not paying for stories on Netanyahu as a human being or a nuanced figure, but as the bad guy. Unstable, untrustworthy, in league with secret billionaire tycoons (not cuddly Nazi collaborators like George Soros, but evil Jerusalem loving bad guys) -- not a guy American Jews or anyone else should be paying attention to. The kind of guy who needs to leave office soon... for Israel's own good.

It doesn't matter what set of events takes place between the assignment and the last keystroke, this is the article they will deliver. "Netanyahu: Bad Man." Right next to, "Romney: Bad Man" and "Obama: Unappreciated Savior of Mankind."

Just to get in its Two-for-One special, Margolick's article even compares Netanyahu to Romney. Two smear jobs. No waiting. So why cooperate with it? Why give a smear artist like David Margolick that added credibility?

To be fair to David Margolick, he has done his homework. And by that, I mean he's not just reciting American smears of Netanyahu, he's reciting Israeli smears of Netanyahu. But since the accusations made by the Israeli media and political establishment are so self-serving and silly, that just makes him article seem even more ridiculous than it ordinarily would.

That's what explains completely insane paragraphs like this,

The occasion was the shivah, or memorial observance, for a man named Shmuel Ben-Artzi, who had just died at the age of 97. Luminaries like this wouldn’t normally show up to honor a beloved but relatively obscure Israeli poet and educator like Ben-Artzi; few of the guests had even met him. They were there more for his son-in-law: Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel. They had come to the prime minister’s official residence less out of friendship and respect—for Netanyahu is something of a loner, someone who antagonizes even his allies—than for reasons of realpolitik: even back then, before the shakeup that has left him with one of the largest majorities in Israeli history, Netanyahu was all-powerful. Attention had to be paid.

But, as is often the case in Israeli politics, it was even more complicated than that: many of the guests had come primarily for Sara Netanyahu, Ben-Artzi’s daughter and Bibi’s wife. Here, too, it was not so much out of love or respect, but fear. Even Bibi couldn’t stray very far, though he had other pressing business—like a memorial service commemorating the 1995 assassination of the Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. So, there he was, at his wife’s insistence, sticking around for the whole week, periodically reading her late father’s poetry aloud to the mourners in a way that elicited pity even from his detractors. “I have no choice,” lamented one tycoon about his reasons for coming. “She’s running the show here in Israel. She can make or break anyone.”

Within two paragraphs, Margolick turns a memorial service for Netanyahu's father-in-law, who isn't quite obscure a figure as David Margolick tries to make him out to be, into proof that Netanyahu is an evil all-powerful warlord... who forces people to come to a memorial service... because he's controlled by his wife.

If you need proof that Israeli leftist media operators are dumb and tacky enough to make their American counterparts seem well-grounded, this paragraph is required reading. What it really reflects is a whiny conspiratorial political elite, filled with venom and bile, and a media corps that repeats their entitled whining because they are two heads of the same body. And then David Margolick takes all that garbage and turns a memorial service for Netanyahu's father-in-law into a scene from The Godfather.



DROWNING IN THE RED SEA

 "Even when he saw the condition of his uncle, once a wealthy manufacturer who was now expiring in a dank cellar, his cry "tore my heart—but did not embitter me, and did not turn me against the greatness, the greatness that is transpiring in the land of the Soviets."

...from Drowning in the Red Sea, a nuanced look at Jewish leftists and Communism.





HOW TO WIN AN ELECTION...

...when everyone is losing their shirt.

Good night and good luck.



GOT AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH SECTION?

... just get rid of it.

The U.S. State Department removed the sections covering religious freedom from the Country Reports on Human Rights that it released on May 24, three months past the statutory deadline Congress set for the release of these reports.

With Hussein Administration bleach, religious freedom in the Muslim world is no longer an issue because it no longer exists. Just one wipe and it's gone.



GUESS WHAT CHINA CONSIDERS A HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATION?

No, not running people over with tanks or forcibly aborting babies? Gun ownership.

The photo at the bottom is of a poster that was part of a marketing campaign for the Red Dawn remake. Wonder why you haven't seen that movie yet?

In March 2011, the Los Angeles Times reported that MGM is changing the villains in its Red Dawn remake from Chinese to North Korean in order to maintain access to China's lucrative box office. The changes reportedly cost less than $1 million and involve changing an opening sequence summarizing the story's fictional backdrop, re-editing two scenes and using digital technology to transform many Chinese symbols to Korean. The changes will not eliminate all references to China though will give North Korea a much larger role in the coalition that invades the U.S. Producer Trip Vinson stated, "We were initially very reluctant to make any changes, but after careful consideration we constructed a way to make a scarier, smarter and more dangerous 'Red Dawn' that we believe improves the movie."

Smarter, scarier and more dangerous.



OF COURSE HE IGNORES IT, IT WASN'T ABOUT HIM

Obama Ignores D-Day Anniversary 

But once they figure out how to add in the Muslim\LGBT Higher Taxes Gun Control angle, they'll be all over it.

The event will climax with a speech in which Obama explains that the ability of something like him to make it to the White House is what those men truly fought and died for.



STOP ME BEFORE I EAT AGAIN

But let’s look at what we’re saying here. We’re saying that adults are incapable of deciding what size of soda to buy? Why are we letting them decide elections?

We’re not talking nicotine or crack here. If we’re saying that the average American adult is incapable of not buying a too large soda, then why have a Bill of Rights? Seriously. Toss out that puppy. We can’t trust people who can’t put down a soda with freedom of speech or the press or any of the rest of them.

Seems shocking that's exactly what they're doing.




WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AT WAR WITH REASON, SANITY AND FACTS

The Economy Has Always Been Good.. We Have Always Been At War With Oceania

Now Barack Obama is accusing Republicans of playing politics for using his own words against him.

Well come on, using his own words against him is unfair. He is a historical figure who transcends words and factors and numbers.



WHAT BUILDING WOULD YOU NAME AFTER NANCY PELOSI?

How about the Nancy Pelosi Memorial Cliffside Tollbooth?



FINALLY...

At last let us visit our nation's capital, where its highest and truest ideas find expression in the wanton criminality of its leaders.

In the past four years half of D.C.'s top government officials, including D.C. councilmembers and the mayor, have been under investigation by either federal authorities or the D.C. board of elections. Two have resigned and two have served prison time.

Another name was added to the ever-growing list of indicted district leaders this week when D.C.'s council chairman resigned and pled guilty charges of bank fraud.