Friday Afternoon Roundup - Cashing In

CASHING IN ON THE DEAD

The left's plan has always been very simple. Find a grievance or create a crisis, in whatever order, and then cash in on it. Whether it's the economy or the murder of children, the left's response to any tragedy is to find a way to shamelessly try and cash in.

Recently a woman was charged with falsely raising money by claiming to be setting up a fund for some of the dead children of Newtown. This is the sort of thing that's illegal if you're an ordinary person, but perfectly acceptable if you happen to run the American Red Cross which raised a ton of money on the backs of hurricane victims, another fund that raised money for the victims of the Batman shootings and then decided not to give it to them, and Bill Clinton who has claimed another success in Haiti.

In April 2010, Mr. Clinton was named co-president of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission, referred to as the I.H.R.C. Two months later, at a luxury hotel in the hills above Port-au-Prince, the commission held its first meeting. It would hold only six more, though, before the Haitian Parliament declined to renew its mandate and it faded into history, its Web site decommissioned and its public records erased with it.

“As a tool for Bill Clinton, the commission was good; it helped him attract attention to Haiti,” said Dr. Boulos, a commission member. “As a tool to effectively coordinate assistance and manage the reconstruction, it was a failure.”

Bill Clinton, the United Nations special envoy for Haiti, invoked the “build back better” mantra he had imported from his similar role in South Asia after the tsunami. And Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton cautioned donors to stop working around the government and instead work with it, and to stop financing “a scattered array of well-meaning projects” rather than making “deeper, long-term investments.”

“One area where the reconstruction money didn’t go is into actual reconstruction,” said Jessica Faieta, senior country director of the United Nations Development Program in Haiti from 2010 through this fall.

Moreover, while at least $7.5 billion in official aid and private contributions have indeed been disbursed — as calculated by Mr. Clinton’s United Nations office and by The Times — disbursed does not necessarily meant spent. Sometimes, it simply means the money has been shifted from one bank account to another as projects have gotten bogged down.

That is the case for nearly half the money for housing.

Cashing in. That is what it's all about. Pile up the dead and make your money and grab your power. And then wait to do the same thing to the next crisis and the one after that.




JUST WAIT ANOTHER 180 YEARS AND YOU'LL SEE

In Commentary, Max Boot has written yet another defense of the Arab Spring, now deep in its Islamist Winter.

"France, after all, transitioned from absolute monarchy by way of the French Revolution and its Reign of Terror… and, finally, in 1958 the overthrow of the Fourth Republic and the birth of the Fifth Republic which has lasted to this day."

So all we have to is wait around a mere 160 years and the Arab Spring will yield a bounty of productive and civil democracies.

.... No, Don’t Have Patience With the Arab Spring




UNIONIZED DIRT COOKIE MAKERS COME TO HAITI

Haitian villagers have resorted to eating dirt. “In places like Cite Soleil, the oceanside slum where Charlene shares a two-room house with her baby, five siblings and two unemployed parents, cookies made of dirt, salt and vegetable shortening have become a regular meal.

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis on Thursday announced a $2.2 million grant that will be used to strengthen budding labor unions in Haiti and Peru.

Who needs food when you've got unions?



WHO'S UP FOR SOME SERIOUS COLLEGE DEBT?

And for once we're not talking about students, but the Ivy League institutions that run our country.

While Harvard is the wealthiest university in the country, it also has $6 billion in debt, the most of any private college

Overall debt levels more than doubled from 2000 to 2011 at the more than 500 institutions rated by Moody’s

The pile of debt — $205 billion outstanding in 2011 at the colleges rated by Moody’s — comes at a time of increasing uncertainty in academia.

Any more questions about our national debt? If we really were governed by a dozen random people from the Boston phone book instead of the faculty of Harvard, this would not be happening.




SO MANY FLIPS, SO MANY FLOPS

Before the original Gulf War, Kerry urged Bush I to give Saddam Hussein room to back off, negotiating an Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait in exchange for allowing Iraq to make a claim on some Kuwaiti territory and proposing some Israeli concessions as well. He claimed that threatening Saddam “stiffened Iraq’s resolve and weakened America’s.”

After the war, Kerry turned into a hawk, saying of Bush that, “The administration has basically sided with Saddam Hussein” and demanded that Saddam be tried for environmental terrorism. During the Clinton Administration, Kerry called for using ground troops to force Saddam out of power. It was no surprise at all when during the Bush Administration, Kerry flipped in reverse, going from a strong supporter of the war to a strong opponent of it.

Ladies and Gentlemen, your next Secretary of State.




PROGRESS IS AT HAND! FORWARD!

This is what I love about progressives. They’re such moral people that they are opposed to the death penalty, but will begin drawing up lists of who should be killed at the drop of a hat.

This differentiates them from most people who support the death penalty for murderers, but don’t aspire to be murderers themselves and do not have lists of people they think should be killed. Particularly not people whose only crime is having different beliefs than them.

But this is why we should let progressives run our societies. It worked in Russia. It worked in China. It worked in Cambodia. It worked in Cuba.

How can it not work out here? What’s the worst that could happen? A few million dead at the hands of cretins who think that the death penalty is immoral unless they get to draw up the lists of who should be killed.

Progressive Professor Demands Death Penalty for Global Warming Skeptics and the Pope






THE LEFT KILLED SATIRE

A team from West Middlesex University Hospital said violent crime is on the increase – and kitchen knives are used in as many as half of all stabbings

They consulted 10 top chefs from around the UK, and found such knives have little practical value in the kitchen.

None of the chefs felt such knives were essential, since the point of a short blade was just as useful when a sharp end was needed.

The researchers say legislation to ban the sale of long pointed knives would be a key step in the fight against violent crime.

Satire is dead. Anything you can think of has already been proposed.





WHO'S UP FOR A GREATER SYRIA?

1. Al Nusra has stopped trying to pretend that it’s not Al Qaeda. They are now openly calling themselves the soldiers of Osama.

2. Al Qaeda wants Obama to intervene in Syria.

3.  This isn’t just about Syria, it’s about Greater Syria, a territory that includes Syria, Israel, Lebanon, a piece of Turkey, and Iraq.

What that means is when Assad falls the conflict moves into its next stage. Our “good Syrian rebels” already have a deal with the Salafi militias. The Muslim Brotherhood will set up its government in Damascus and suck up Western aid. The Salafis will hold a number of cities and towns, and will continue killing Christians, enforcing Islamic law, etc, but will begin focusing on the next phase of a Greater Syria program.

So phase 2 is likely to be Jordan, Lebanon or Iraq.

Well that's just great.




READ THAT LAST SENTENCE CAREFULLY

On March 21, 2003 his arrest was ordered by Økokrim, the Norwegian law enforcement agency for financial crime, to ensure he did not leave the country while accusations that he had financed terrorist attacks using Norway as a base were investigated. Court proceedings against Krekar were however dropped when it proved impossible to prove his connections with the terrorist attacks staged in Iraq by Ansar al-Islam during his leadership.

Any day now...

Krekar told the Kurdish magazine Awene that he wants to return to Iraq to fight openly against the Iraqi government and the coalition, but that he lacked travel documents from the Norwegian government. He confirmed to a Norwegian newspaper that he had been correctly quoted. The Norwegian minister of labour and migration, Bjarne Håkon Hanssen, responded that Krekar could leave at any time and that he would be given “travel documents within the day. He’ll also get money for airline tickets, taxi cab, and the whole deal. If he really wants to go, that is.” Krekar is still living in Norway.

Norwegian Court Strikes Down Terror Charges for Founder of Iraqi Al-Qaeda Affiliate







A BROKEN THING WILL NEVER WORK

 We are not at a point in history where conservatives enforce traditional morality, but where we resist the enforcement of progressive morality.

Social mores are a political vehicle for the left. Neutrality is not an option. The left is not interested in some kind of libertarian sexual revolution based on the values of individual choice. The left uses revolutions in all spheres of human activity as a means of destroying existing institutions and replacing them with its own totalitarian approaches to doing things.

"Should Conservatives become Competent Liberals?"



IT'S OBAMA'S WORLD, WE JUST LIVE IN IT

New Poll Shows Hamas Will Win Presidential Elections

Former Al Qaeda in Mali Member Accuses Terrorist Group of Racism

This is a serious subject and if Islamic terrorists fail to take immediate action they risk losing the support of the left which could impact the number of pro bono lawyers available to them and the number of media columnists willing to write flattering profiles of them

US Government Paying for Birth Control, Abortion and Sex Changes for Illegal Aliens

Saudi Arabia Arrests 41 People for “Plotting to Celebrate Christmas”

EPA Chief Steps Down After Secret Email Account is Exposed

Mubarak Lawyer Claims Hamas Broke Morsi Out of Prison

Benghazigate Officials Fake Resignations, Go On Working Anyway

Obama Hijacks 500 Million from National Health Research Budget to Promote Diversity

UN Increases Budget by 5 Percent

Egypt Credit Rating Downgraded to “Junk” Status


Sudanese Islamists Financing Genocide by Wiping Out Africa’s Elephants

Cameroon’s Special Forces have been deployed to foil an imminent raid by Sudanese poachers who for eight weeks earlier this year slaughtered half the population of elephants for their ivory at one of the country’s wildlife reserves.

The heavily armed and well coordinated poachers, who had told local villagers of their plans to kill as many elephants as possible, claimed they had killed as much as 650 out of some 1,000 that roamed the park.

Several Somali elders said that the Shabab, the militant Islamist group that has pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda, recently began training fighters to infiltrate neighboring Kenya and kill elephants for ivory to raise money.

THE ZIONIST SUPERDOGS ARE COMING

The source, who is a retired security official from a Gulf country, made the claims while referring to one of his junior comrades who was tasked with undercover information gathering in the illegitimate state more than 7 years ago.

“He described a large, underground laboratory adjacent to the Negev desert where a highly-secured bunker was located, guarded by about two dozen troops of the elite Sayaret Matkal commandos and Military Intelligence units”.

“He recalls those Zionists (Israelis) talking of ‘super beasts’ equipped with improvised weapons”.

“Once, he shared details of a group of bizarre rhinoceroses and canines but never spoke on the subject again." 

Muslim Intelligence Source Accuses Israel of Building Army of Mutant SuperDogs




THE FINAL WORD

The reason the Second Amendment was included in the founding documents was to ensure that the people could meet the threat of a standing army. Its writers knew from history that a standing army serves only the government, not the people. Since the form of government they provided rested the ultimate authority with the people, it was only fitting and proper that the people had a means to ensure their power was not usurped.

,,,from Ebben Raves' article, You're In the Army Now



A NATION OF LOST FATHERS

In every state, the portion of families where children have two parents, rather than one, has dropped significantly over the past decade. Even as the country added 160,000 families with children, the number of two-parent households decreased by 1.2 million. Fifteen million U.S. children, or 1 in 3, live without a father, and nearly 5 million live without a mother. In 1960, just 11 percent of American children lived in homes without fathers...

This is what the left's version of utopia looks like. And here's a brief video of Allen West replying to a question about the perpetual search for role models in the black community.





BUT I DON'T WANT THEM FORBIDDEN TO ME

The following is in a way the final word on the entire ridiculous gun debate

These failures of a minority of bad apples to get with the program invite the state to step in in an effort to provide controls and supports externally. Thus we all lose a bit of freedom each time some jerk, idiot, sociopath, addict, or lunatic abrogates his American dignity and fails at running his own life in the manner of an honest, free, law-abiding and upstanding citizen. It's a shame - and wrong - that the least moral and worse-behaving of our population should have the power to deprive freedoms from the vast majority of decent citizens who aim to construct honorable, dignified, and independent lives by following their consciences or God's will as best they can.

Go ahead and ask me why I might want a 30-clip magazine, or a Big Gulp Coke. Well, I don't really want those things, but I don't want them forbidden me. I have a handgun carry permit, but I don't walk around armed all the time. Rarely, in fact. I might as well ask why you need a car that goes 110 mph, when car deaths in the US are far higher than gun deaths (32,000, vs 600 deaths by rifle - half of them suicides and others accidents).

Leftist control freaks often try to find signs of "market failure" to justify government intrusion into the free and voluntary exchange of goods and services. Similarly, they seek signs of "freedom failure" with the same goals. 

from Bird Dog at Maggie's Farm



HOW POOR THE EYE OF MAN

During the day, Jerusalem’s appearance was completely different.

From morning until the afternoon the colours change and alternate, forming surprising shades. About one hour before sunset the symphony of colours reaches the highest point. I can promise you that even the selection of colours by the most perfect computer could not produce even one shade from the many shades of the interweaving of colours created at the moment of the setting of the sun!

I looked around and asked myself, how is it possible that the human eye can feel and differentiate every single shade in the clearest way, but words are not able to express them? I thought how poor man’s ability is to express the exaltedness of Creation:

...from Joseph Rosen's book, "Why a Jew..."




I'M ON THIS LIST I SUPPOSE

The Golda Meir Award for Best Anti-Jihad Blogger: Atlas Shrugs, Gates of Vienna, JihadWatch, Sultan Knish and The Astute Blogger (tie)



BRAND RECOGNITION

All it took was a collar and a name and Fatso was never beaten up again and certainly never went hungry ever again. In time his saunter became a strut. You couldn’t help but like Fatso since liking him was what Fatso was all about.

....from Fatso the Cat, and a reminder of why Gerard was named Best Essayist




TWO NOTHINGS FOR THE PRICE OF ONE

As the dreaded date approached, the media downplayed the Doomsday prediction as some authentic New Age gibberish propagated by people using medical marijuana for non-medicinal purposes. Such moral and intellectual guidance helped to stave off panic among the middle class working families, which could lead to a scarcity of wait staff at bistros that media personalities patronize. Privately, however, they realized that the prophecy was true and that we were all doomed.

But, as members of the fourth estate heroically passed their final hours feasting on wine and cheese while cursing people who disagreed with them on Twitter, something wonderful happened: NOTHING! It was like the fiscal cliff negotiations writ large.

Suddenly, as if by magic, all top-shelf, professional, state-accredited journalists across the nation knew the truth: the reason for both nothings were the actions of president Obama.

....from The People's Cube