Friday Afternoon Roundup - Another Time We'll Go to Mars

EDWARD I. KOCH

Six days ago, Ed Koch described the tombstone that he had arranged for himself. "On my tombstone, which awaits me at the Trinity Church nondenominational cemetery at 155th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, I had inscribed the last words of Daniel Pearl — uttered at his publicly viewed murder — which were, “My father is Jewish. My mother is Jewish. I am Jewish.”

After the latest September 11 attacks, he had written, "Will we have the resolve to stand up and protect the lifestyles and mores of western civilization now under attack by the Islamists in a war that can and will probably last for decades or will we ultimately surrender? I believe we will fight for our freedoms as we did in World War II and once again prevail.”




ANOTHER TIME, WE'LL GO TO MARS

Apparently the last Mars mission determined once and for all that there are no Muslims on Mars making further visits there unnecessary. Also deeply disappointing to Obama was that despite its name of the”Red Planet”, what looked like a giant image of Marx’s head, turned out to just be a volcanic formation.

We could have paid for the entire Mars mission with the money that Obama gave to the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt. But Obama has his priorities.

Obama Kills Next Mars Rover, Russia to Take It Over





ANOTHER TIME, OUR MEN WILL EAT

The Army has stopped serving cooked breakfasts to some of the U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan as part of its drawdown, a move that prompted troops to write home asking their families and friends to send care packages with cereal, breakfast bars and other foods.

Meanwhile here is what Obama and his corrupt cronies had for their inaugural lunch. Steamed Lobster with New England Clam Chowder Sauce, Sautéed Spinach, Sweet Potato Hay Second Course: Hickory-Grilled Bison with Red Potato Horseradish Cake, Butternut Squash Purée, Baby Golden Beets.

If only American soldiers in Afghanistan were unemployed Democratic voters in Chicago, then they might be getting three square meals a day from the government.

Obama Eliminates Breakfast for US Troops in Afghanistan, Stuffs Own Face







TWO THOUSAND AND FORTY

Before you get depressed about the state of your finances, spare a thought for the nation of Zimbabwe, which as of Tuesday had exactly $217 in the bank. That’s 217 dollars, not $217 million or $217 billion.

This is what happens when your Debt to GDP ratio is at 220% and your government’s economic plans consists of seizing land from farmers and handing it out to your cronies while trying to borrow even more money to keep the entire disastrous thing going.

“If you owe someone US$7 billion and your GDP is US$7 billion then you do not have any money,” deputy premier Arthur Mutambara said, “We are heavily borrowed and we do not have a GDP to talk about.”

That’s a bit of common sense. Unfortunately the United States owes a trillion more than its GDP. So we don’t have a GDP to talk about either.

How far away are we from Zimbabwe’s 220% GDP Debt ratio? By 2040, the nanny state may also be down to $217 in the bank.

Zimbabwe Government Down to $217, America May Be Next




WHAT DOES CONCENTRATED BERKELEY SMELL LIKE?

According to a new study from sociologists at the City University of New York, 76 percent of Occupy Wall Streets respondents had a four-year college degree and 39 percent had graduate degrees. Among college graduates, more than a quarter went to top-ranked schools, which might help explain why the majority of graduates under 30 had some student debt.

39 percent had graduate degrees. Graduate degrees. That’s a higher percentage than Berkeley. OWS was actually concentrated Berkeley. It was a one-block Cambridge. It was a smellier Ann Arbor.

 Study Shows Occupy Wall Street was the 1 Percent




THEIR GOD IS A HUNGARIAN NAZI COLLABORATOR

All of Obama’s inauguration rabbis were members of the same radical leftist groups opposed to Israel and funded by George Soros. Obama deliberately picked three extremist left-wing clergy, “Rabbi” Rick Jacobs, “Rabbi” Julie Schonfeld and “Rabbi” Sharon Brous.

Jacobs and Brous are or were members of the J Street Rabbinic Cabinet, an Anti-Israel organization funded by George Soros. Rick Jacobs was involved in the New Israel Fund, another extremist left-wing group which funds groups that boycott Israel. Julie Schonfeld was also involved with the NIF and was on the advisory committee for Jewish Funds for Justice. Rick Jacobs was on that same advisory committee.

Jewish Funds for Justice is an extreme left-wing group very closely tied to the Soros family. Soros’ son sits on the board of the merged organization of JFJ and the Progressive Jewish Alliance.

Obama’s Inauguration Prayers Featured Three of Soros’ Anti-Israel Rabbis




THE WEEK OF MANY THINGS

This was a week of many things. This was the week when the wheels came off the amnesty bus as Senator McCain announced that it was actually basically the same as the reviled 2006 Reid-Kennedy bill.

“If we do succeed, and I think we will, it will be a testimonial to Ted Kennedy’s effort years ago that laid the groundwork for this agreement,” McCain said. “You will find that this agreement has very little difference from that of the legislation that was led by Sen. Kennedy some years go.”

And weeks of work by Rubio promoting the new agreement as a conservative immigration reform proposal went up in smoke.

It was also the week that the wheels came off the Hagel bus leading to video compilations of his worst moments and bizarre quotes. Lindsey Graham clearly enjoyed using Hagel as a chew toy, for reasons that are probably personal, but it's Hagel's ineptness, his rambling inability to get to a point or even understand the question, his multiple corrections that are baffling when coming from a man who had once been a Senator.

This may not stop Hagel from being confirmed, but it's an inauspicious start for the man who was only being brought in as a fall guy for slashing national defense to the bone.




IT'S GUN CONTROL PARADE TIME

And it was the week that the gun control push continued stumbling along, often in a completely clumsy manner.

Million Moms for Gun Control tried to launch a march in Washington D.C. organized by two lesbian theater directors. The march barely attracted 6,000 people and even those numbers are generous. The march reportedly cost $49,000 which comes out to about $8 per participation.

Molly Smith, the artistic director of Arena Stage, remembers exactly how she felt when she first heard news of the shootings in Newtown, Conn.: “It was as if the unthinkable had happened.” Her partner, American Indian activist Suzanne Blue Star Boy, said, “Somebody needs to do a march,” and Smith realized who those somebodies needed to be. “Within the next day, we decided that we needed to lead a march, to get people together to make this happen.”

It happened. Badly. But not as badly as it did in Ohio where the "community leader" protesting about how it is easy to buy guns outside a gun show turned out to be a rapist.

“We know that guns are being sold on the floor inside Hara Arena illegally” said Jerome McCorry. “No background checks no identification of any kind.”

McCorry said “AK-47s and M16s are not gonna be used for hunting, they’re not going to be used to protect anybody. These are the weapons that are coming back and being used in mass murders and mass killings.”

And Jerome is an expert on what kind of guns can be used to protect someone, since he is the kind of guy that people buy guns to protect against.

Senator Feinstein needs to bring Jerome down to D.C. as an expert witness so he can testify on just how much firepower a woman needs to defend herself from him.

And Joe Biden, who puts the cherry on every cake, then helpfully explained that the big gun ban won't actually stop mass shootings or well do much of anything at all.

Vice President Joe Biden was perhaps a little too candid on the subject of new gun control laws when talking to reporters Thursday after a meeting with Senate Democrats in the Capitol.

“Nothing we’re going to do is going to fundamentally alter or eliminate the possibility of another mass shooting or guarantee that we will bring gun deaths down to a thousand a year from what we’re at now,” Biden said, according to a Politico report.

The reporter also noted, “a [White House] staffer tried unsuccessfully to cut Biden off repeatedly” as he was making the remarks.

The administration might want to consider a shock collar.




ALL DOWNHILL FROM HERE

Chicago teachers have the highest average salary of any city, $75,000 a year, while administrators make $120,000, even though only 20 percent of their 8th grade students are grade-proficient in math. Chicago schools have an annual budget of $5.11 billion for a student body that is 87% low-income and likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future.

In 1985, the budget for all of Chicago was $2.1 billion or less than half of the current school budget. But that doesn’t work too well now when Chicago teacher pensions alone account for $1 billion a year. Arne Duncan tried and failed to reform the system, and as a reward got kicked upstairs to become Obama’s Secretary of Education. Rahm Emanuel tried to buy off the teachers with a pay hike in exchange for evaluations and had his teeth handed to him.

Bloomberg came into office as the education mayor and during his time in office the city’s debt doubled to $110 billion. In 1975, New York City almost went bankrupt over $14 billion of debt. In Chicago, in Daley’s last ten years, its debt rose 96.9 percent and almost a quarter of the city budget goes to servicing that debt

from my article, The American City is Dying





BUT SOME THINGS NEVER DIE

Over this confused juxtaposition of history, the narration goes on to inform us that the same forces that spawned the Nazi Party and the McCarthyites, a group that included Robert F. Kennedy, also created the Tea Party. It’s a reminder that the difference between Oliver Stone’s “Untold History of the United States” and a YouTube conspiracy video about the Freemasons is that the latter doesn’t have a slot on Showtime. Yet.

6 minutes in and the vast right-wing conspiracy is on the table. “Nixon’s rage had become their own,” the narrator whispers. This rage was apparently expressed by creating think-tanks like Heritage and AEI promoting deregulation and privatization; probably the least angry example of rage in the entire history of anger.

“The moneyed class,” the narrator hisses, like a low-rent Marxist, “were back.” They had apparently gone off to vacation on Martha’s Vineyard and hobnob with the Kennedys, but now they were back and angrily creating think-tanks.

from my review of Episode 8 of Oliver Stone’s “Untold History of the United States”

Every Anti-American country and group, whether it’s the USSR invading Afghanistan or the Iranians taking American hostages, is depicted as careful and forbearing. On the other side of the ocean however, Uncle Sam stomps around in cowboy boots guzzling the blood of the oppressed like cheap whiskey.

NOR DO SOME OTHER THINGS

Margaret Brown earned her moniker as “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” by surviving the sinking of the Titanic. Hillary Clinton earned hers by surviving multiple scandals, the last of them claiming four lives. During the Clinton Administration, Hillary Clinton was followed around by the phantom corpses of conspiracy theories, but now four real corpses trail in her wake without ever slowing her down.

Hillary’s departure into the lifeboat is another escape from a ship that is too big to sink. Obama hasn’t been very popular in a while and if she’s going to make her run in 2016, she will need some distance from the shambling disaster that the S.S. Hussein is likely to be three years from now. After being cheated out of her captain’s hat in 2008, she’s determined to be the first in line to receive it in 2016.

Like Molly Brown, Hillary Clinton has picked the perfect time to exit the sinking wreck. The Arab Spring is starting to take on tones so ugly that even the most sheltered liberal warding off the real world with unfurled copies of the New York Times and the Washington Post cannot deny that something appears to have gone wrong. As Egypt burns, Hillary passes the baton to John Kerry, who has never met a dictator that he didn’t fall in love with, and leaves him with the responsibility of dealing with the disaster.

from my article, The Unsinkable Hillary







MOHAMMED WAS THE ORIGINAL FEMINIST

Several days after French special forces parachuted in and liberated this storied city, there is a growing sense of freedom. Though in the houses immediately facing the Islamic tribunal, many of the 8- and 9-year-old girls are still wearing the head covering.

“It is out of fear of the Islamists that they still wear this, says Diahara Adjanga, the mother of one girl said Thursday.”They hit everyone — even children.”

Fatouma Traore, 21, said that there was one commander who was especially brutal to the women in Timbuktu.

“We don’t want the army to catch him. It’s the women who want to arrest him so that we can kill him ourselves. … Even if you’re talking to your own blood brother on the stoop of your house, they hit you. Even if you are wearing the veil, and it happens to slip off, they hit you. This man, Ahmed Moussa, he made life miserable for women. Even an old grandmother if she’s not covered up, he would hit her.”

She picks up her 1-year-old niece and hoists her on one hip, saying: “We even bought a veil for this baby.”

That's the word from Mali, where Islamophobia is becoming a serious problem.

Hamchat Dicko, who has only one eye, told me that she was not allowed to buy a replacement pair. “They didn’t want women to see the world,” she said.




MOHAMMEDAN FEMINISM SPREADING TO THE WEST

Sweden now has the second highest number of rapes in the world, after South Africa, which at 53.2 per 100,000 is six times higher than the United States. Statistics now suggest that 1 out of every 4 Swedish women will be raped.

Sweden, like the rest of the West, will have to come to terms with the fact that it can either have female equality or Muslim immigration. It cannot have both.

It really, really cannot. Not unless it also gives every woman an AR-15.

 A 17-year-old Iraqi Kurd in Landskrona sentenced to eight years in prison for the murder of his sister Maria. According to the court was the motive for the act to restore family honor.

The 19-year-old woman was killed by 107 wounds with two knives and scissors to different parts of the body. According to a legal medical report, it took several minutes to inflict her injuries. The district court wrote that damages therefore caused her great suffering and high death anxiety.

Maria told them: “I was born and raised in Stockholm. Before I turned twelve, I was kidnapped to Kurdistan with my brothers … When I was 15, I was raped and married off.

Arranged marriage is a business arrangement between Mary’s father and 30-year-old Majed. The price of Maria – so reads the marriage certificate from the 5 May 2009 – is 90 grams of 21 carat gold.

Fortunately the Swedish justice system sprang into action and sentenced him to eight years in prison.

“I thought the sentence was very strong, it was a very tough punishment. I do not share at all the district court’s perception of the seriousness of the offense,” says the 17-year-old’s  defense attorney, Mr. Jansson.

It would have been more serious if he had stabbed her 108 times.






IGNORANCE OF INFIDEL LAW IS AN EXCELLENT EXCUSE

A muslim who raped a 13-year-old girl he groomed on Facebook has been spared a prison sentence after a judge heard he went to an Islamic faith school where he  was taught that women are worthless.

Adil Rashid, 18, claimed he was not aware that it was illegal for him to have sex with the girl because his education left him ignorant of British law.

Well he didn’t know it was wrong. That means it’s not a crime. But good luck for anyone who leaves a pig’s head in front of a mosque and claims not to know it was wrong.

Muslim Who Raped 13 Year Old UK Girl Spared Jail Because “He Didn’t Know It Was Wrong”




MADE IN TURKEY

Bishop Luigi Padovese was the Apostolic Vicar of Anatolia and President of the Turkish Bishops’ Conference. The Bishop’s driver and murderer, Murat Altun, had claimed to be Catholic, but prior to a trip to Cyprus, the Turkish government warned the Bishop that his driver was an Islamist and potentially dangerous. The Turkish government was worried about the murder of the Pope resulting in a major international incident.

The Bishop chose to stay home to protect the Pope from an assassination attempt and instead Murat Altun beheaded Bishop Luigi Padovese while shouting Allah Akbar.

The authorities claimed that Altun’s motive was personal and not political, but Altun claimed that Allah had inspired him to commit his crime and recited Islamic verses during the trial. The Turkish authorities tried to claim insanity on his behalf. When that failed, they came up with an even nastier tactic.

Turkish Muslim Who Murdered Catholic Bishop While Shouting “Allah Akbar” Gets Reduced Sentence




THE POLYGAMOUS ISLAMISTS OF THE APARTHEID STATE

Taleb Abu Arar, the new Bedouin Knesset Member from the Raam-Taal party, is facing an unusual dilemma, according to this morning’s Maariv: which of his two wives to bring to the ceremonial plenum next week, when he swears allegiance to the Knesset and the state.

What is not mentioned in the bio is that Taleb Abu Arar appears to be a member of the Islamic Movement, which is short for the Islamic Movement in 48 Palestine which is the Muslim Brotherhood’s franchise in Israel

Muslim Brotherhood Member Elected to Israeli Parliament Can’t Decide Which Wife to Take Along




50 SHADES OF PINK

The inherent admission in Gross’ argument is that gay rights, like feminism or civil rights for any group, is not an end in and of itself, but part of an indivisible collective project whose end is not the fulfillment of any set of rights, but the success of the left.

Thus gay rights can be subtracted for Hamas, but they cannot be added for Israel. Gay rights are only of value when they serve the program of the left, and the left, as Judith Butler says, views Hamas and Hezbollah as “part of the global left” but with problematic dimensions, such as wanting to take away the civil rights of women, gays, non-Muslims, etc. But these dimensions do not detract from their place on the left. On the other hand Israel’s rejection of Islamic terrorism does.

It speaks volumes about the real agenda of the left that fighting Islamic terrorism is a dealbreaker but killing gay people isn’t.

Israel, Hamas and Gay Rights: Who Are the Real “Pinkwashers”?





IT'S LIARS ALL THE WAY DOWN

Even in Kerry’s version of events leading up up to his nomination, though, he was still Obama’s second choice. His claim is that Obama offered him the job about a week before Rice withdrew. Until then, Obama wanted Rice to be his Secretary of State. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have put her name out, causing her to twist in the wind generated by severe criticism over her statements pertaining to the Benghazi killings.

Assuming Kerry is telling the truth, one wonders why Obama left Rice twisting for an additional week. Did Obama share with Rice the news that he wanted Kerry, or did he leave it to her to see the writing on the wall?

Or is Kerry once again embellishing the facts?

from Powerline's Paul tackling the impossible task of who figuring out who in Obama Inc. is lying about what.




THE TIDES OF MEN

The Democrats even have a plan to turn Texas blue.  What a ghastly thought.

Alas, those who promise free stuff will always win over the masses, it seems.  Keep charging up the federal credit card to buy free stuff in exchange for votes from people who can't see beyond next week, nor are smart enough to balance their own checkbooks.

Perhaps the tides of history are against us.  No, let's reword that.  The tides of human nature are against us.  In general, people will always take the easy way out, or at least what they perceive to be the easy way out.  Instant gratification will always win out over delayed gratification.  Live for today and let tomorrow take care of itself. 

That's from Saberpoint. There's certainly an argument to be made for that. Socialism can seem inevitable from that angle, but most people really want an answer to the question of how they will take care of themselves and their families.

The Socialists have an easy and seductive answer. But the standard American answer used to work pretty well. The problem is that the Republicans have gotten bad at selling it.




WE ARE THE POLICE

If we are the police and the police is us then it stands to reason that we are not only responsible for doing our duty to the whole, that is the nation state, by defending it and those weaker citizens who can't defend themselves but also to defend ourselves. It's not just a right, it's the duty of every citizen...

The courts, including the Supreme Court, have recognized that the police have no duty to protect the individual. Go back to the police mission as outlined by Peel. The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder. The conclusion is both inescapable and obvious. We are individually responsible for our own safety.

What then of guns, the tools of personal protection. If we are indeed the police and the military it stands to reason that the tools available to them are the very tools that must be available to us. We cannot separate the citizen from the cop or soldier because we are them and they are us.

from Warrior Class, "We Are The Police And The Police Is Us"




AMERICA'S NEW MOST WANTED

A reader of Scarborough’s article who posted a comment remarked that “West Point’s Perliger anti-Terror Center’s Most Wanted List would include: Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, George Washington, James Madison, Ronald Reagan, John Jay, Sam Adams.”

from the Selous Foundation



UP IN THE SKY

Monbiot admits that there is a difference in that American drones are not deliberately targeting children, although he calls the deaths "Obama's murders" as if they were, but he is right to say that the death of innocents is an almost certain consequence of the attacks. The problem is that he doesn't trouble himself too much with who the Americans are targeting, the various Pakistani Taliban groups. And they too kill children, not as an act of individual derangement, nor, to use that disgusting phrase, as 'collateral damage', but as a deliberate policy.

This isn't a case of 'yes buttery' but a plea to see the event as a whole. American actions are actually aimed at killing child killers, yet in doing so they can miss their targets and kill children themselves.

Fat Man on a Keyboard's critique of Al Guardian




THE GREAT AMERICAN PRISON

Years ago, I spent a few weeks visiting Sing-Sing Prison conducting research for a TV series. It was a grueling and depressing experience. I interviewed drug dealers, murderers, rapists—human monsters one and all. Each night, I’d go to bed thankful for prisons and wishing for even more prisons to lock away the evil.

But, every once in a while, some small bit of black humor would emerge that spoke volumes.

There was one prisoner, a small-time thief, who told me that:

…prison was kind of a relief. Look, I get clothing, three squares a day, and a roof over my head. I get medical and dental free of charge. I can even go to a shrink, a social worker, whatever. I can take college courses if I want—all for free. Outside, I gotta hustle day and night for stuff like that.


“What about freedom?” I asked.

“You know what we call prison?”

I shrugged. I had no idea.

“Home, we call it home.”

As I listened to Barack Obama’s inaugural speech yesterday, the memory of Sing-Sing and that particular prisoner floated into my memory.

Obama’s vision of America is Sing-Sing.

.
from Robert at Seraphic Secret