Friday Afternoon Roundup - Control, Control, Control

It's a telling sign of political conformity that there is as much chance of the current version of Saturday Night Live doing something this biting about Obama as there is of the show moving to China.

That closing song seemed like a shame to waste so I turned it into Obama's new campaign song.






ROMNEY NOW MORE RIGHT-WING THAN BUSH II, REAGAN AND NIXON COMBINED

At least if you believe crazy liar Zero Hussein's latest crazy lies.

President Obama made one of his strongest pitches to date to rally the women’s vote that is crucial to his re-election, telling a mostly female crowd estimated at 4,000 in the swing state of Colorado on Wednesday that Republicans led by Mitt Romney would take them back to the policies of the 1950s

So if I understand this correctly, Obama is claiming that Mitt Romney would be the most right-wing Republican president in 60 years?

That's a pretty impressive claim. Romney is going to do what Bush II, Reagan and Nixon who are suddenly liberal moderates, didn't do. Romney, the most liberal nominee in decades, who was on record at one point as supporting abortion and who hardly mentions social issues, is going to take America back to the 1950's.

So there are two possibilities. Either Mitt Romney is more right-wing than Reagan, Bush II and Nixon... or Obama is just making up crazy lies and hope his supporters have the collective IQ of a turnip.



THE YOU BUILT IT CULTURE

To the left, success has become the Mark of Cain. Where success once used to be proof of good character, the balance has shifted and it is now proof of bad character. The left blames all disparities on injustice. If A has less than B, then B has somehow discriminated against A. All that’s left is for the sociologists and critical race theorists to plug in the variables, write their papers and explain the mechanism for the injustice and how it can be remedied through centralized redistribution.

This is the era of “You didn’t build that” where achievement is inherently unfair and an object of guilt. To succeed is to steal. Anyone who has achieved more than those around him has unfairly taken from them. And the more he succeeds, the more he has to feel guilty about and the more he must atone through social justice.

Mitt Romney didn’t build companies; he unfairly redistributed what should have been equal resources in an unequal way to create that success. America also didn’t build anything; it just looted the resources and markets that should have been divided equally among the nations of the world. And the same goes for Jews and the Jewish State. Individual success is not exceptionalism; it’s stealing from the collective.

...that's from my article, Israel's You Built It Culture



AND THE LATEST LIBERAL GUN CONTROL ADVOCATE IS.... A SERIAL KILLER

No seriously. The Daily News has a splashy positive profile on the Son of Sam.

 The “.44 Caliber Killer” lamented the recent spate of shootings that have claimed such innocents as a young boy in the Bronx, moviegoers in Aurora, Colo., and worshipers at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin.

“Society has to take the glory out of guns. Young people have no business carrying a gun. I would love to speak bluntly to those gangbanging teens and wanna-bes and tell them prison is nothing like what you think. If you’re packing a gun, you’re making a big mistake, and you’ll regret it.”

“I’m looking beyond gun control. That’s for the legislators to wrangle with,” he said. “My hope is just that young people would understand just how terrible this violence is. When they use a gun against someone else, they ruin their lives too,” he said. “It’s not worth it.”

If you're having trouble with your teen you can also go to the Son of Sam website (formerly called Forgiven for Life) and read his advice to Parents of Teens.

Fun fact. The Supreme Court decided that the Death Penalty was what the Founders meant by Cruel and Unusual Punishment 6 years before the Son of Sam went on his spree. The rationalization was that since not every murderer got the death penalty, the death penalty was capricious. By this same logic the entire criminal justice system could have been deemed Unconstitutional. But they stopped at the death penalty.

"These death sentences are cruel and unusual in the same way that being struck by lightning is cruel and unusual. For, of all the people convicted of rapes and murders in 1967 and 1968, many just as reprehensible as these, the petitioners are among a capriciously selected random handful upon whom the sentence of death has in fact been imposed."

In one of the more notably insane paragraphs in that decision, we have this basic misunderstanding of the English language.

It would seem to be incontestable that the death penalty inflicted on one defendant is "unusual" if it discriminates against him by reason of his race, religion, wealth, social position, or class, or if it is imposed under a procedure that gives room for the play of such prejudices.

The "Unusual" in Cruel and Unusual refers to the nature of the punishment, not the process of deciding who should receive it and why. But this distortion opened the door to dismantling the death penalty. If you have some free time on your hands, you might enjoy this horror show which attempted to prove that the Eight Amendment was concerned with discrimination by going back to the Norman Conquest.

Death penalty executions resumed a year after Son of Sam's spree. But the Death Penalty became all but impossible on New York. Republican Governor George Pataki defeated Mario Cuomo largely on a death penalty platform. But the death penalty still wasn't used.

Judicial Activism by the Court of Appeals killed the death penalty in 2004. This was how that happened.

Stephen LaValle, who raped and murdered (stabbed seventy-three times with a screwdriver) high-school track coach Cynthia Quinn during her Sunday morning jog was convicted by a lower court of murder in the first degree and of rape. The Supreme Court of Suffolk County sentenced him to death. 

LaValle is white so judicial activists lost their biggest card in the deck. But the left, like all evil, never gives up. Here is the majesty of our judicial system in all its magnificent glory.

While the court upheld LaValle's conviction, citing "overwhelming evidence of guilt" to support it (largely based on LaValle's own confession as well as eyewitness testimony), the court did invalidate the death sentence, on the grounds that it violated Article 1, Section 6 of the New York Constitution.

The Court held that Section 400.27(10) [2] of the New York Criminal Procedure Law was unconstitutional. That section addressed what would happen if jury deadlocked–that is could not agree–on the penalty to be imposed: life without the possibility of parole, or death. In that circumstance the trial judge would be empowered to sentence the defendant to as little as 20 years to life or as much as life without parole. Moreover, the statute required the judge to instruct the jury as to what would occur if they deadlocked.

The Court found that such an instruction could have a coercive effect on jurors who believed life without parole was the appropriate sentence, but feared that if they stuck to their vote and a deadlock resulted the defendant could be eligible for parole in as little as twenty years. This potential for coercion violated the Due Process Clause of the New York State Constitution.

If we define a dissenting juror's fear that failure to reach a decision may set the defendant free, then every single criminal trial ever is coercion. Like the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeals had just thrown out every single criminal verdict ever as coercive.

In the aftermath...

The court remanded the case to the Supreme Court of Suffolk County with instructions that a new sentence be imposed: either 20 or 25 years to life, or life imprisonment without eligibility for parole. The death sentences of New York's other two death-row inmates were also invalidated.

So the Court of Appeals ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional because the prospect of a trial judge giving a defendant only 20 years would coerce jury members who wanted life without parole. And they then sent the case out with a mandated sentence of 20-25 years to life.

To cap the absurdity, here is the dissent in the 2007 Wendy's Massacre case, which also threw out the death penalty against the killer.

The crime in this case was horrific: apparently to eliminate the witnesses to a robbery, seven human beings were shot in the head at point-blank range; five of them died. After a textbook trial, defendant was convicted of six counts of capital murder and sentenced to death by the jury. Yet, a majority of the Court vacates the sentence of death. Why? Not because the deadlock instruction delivered by the trial judge was coercive — it was not, as the concurrence concedes and the plurality does not dispute. Instead, John Taylor's death sentence is vacated because the deadlock instruction delivered in the capital trial of Stephen LaValle was coercive.

Killers with guns aren't the problem. Judges are the problem. The Son of Sam is still around and lecturing us on gun control because of them. The next serial killers knows that he can kill and then spend the next few decades giving sympathetic interviews and running a prison ministry.

What the Son of Sam, what Stephen LaValle and the Wendy's Massacre killer did to their victims, the judges who protected them did to the rule of law and the rights of the people to control their own laws, rather than being imprisoned by the perverse and dishonest distortions of the law by judicial activists.



JON HUNTSMAN GOING DEM?

There's a denial of sorts, but it's very easy to see where the reports would have come from.

Item 1. Huntsman will speak at No Labels, which is exactly the kind of post-partisan outfit he would be hooking up with if he were preparing to join Bloomberg and Arnold in the Non-Republican camp.

Item 2. “I feel very badly that Mitt won’t release his taxes and won’t be fair with the American people,” Huntsman told me.

This is not just a conventional criticism, it's very close to official Dem talking points.

Item 3. Huntsman said he longed for the party of Lincoln, who elevated "the notion of individual liberty," of Roosevelt (Teddy, not Franklin), who stood up to too-large corporations "in the name of fairness and equality" and Eisenhower "who built our infrastructure."

This sounds exactly like what a pseudo-Republican pitch for Obama would be. Huntsman's Twitter feed is bland, but Abby Huntsman's twitter feed, where the denial appeared, is a slew of Romney bashing and liberal talking points and has come out as a Democrat. More troublingly she co-wrote a HuffPo smear piece quoting supposed Bain insiders on Romney's taxes.

Item 4. Huntsman is skipping the Republican National Convention and gave the following quote. He has called for the rise of a Third Party.

Despite all this I don't think that Huntsman will cross that line and their Republican catches will be some moldy Reagan era officials. But you never know.

In unrelated news.  "Eyeless Species of Huntsman Spider Found in Laos" (CNN)




LEFTIST RACE POLITICS NOW OPERATING IN STRANGE POST-REASON WORLD

The woman on the left is Bess Price. She is an Aboriginal activist in Australia.

The man on the right is Rodney Dillon. He's an Aboriginal rights activist with Amnesty International. He also claims to be Aboriginal.

It is currently a crime in Australia to point out that these two people are members of different races. Or that Rodney Dillon is about as aboriginal as Elizabeth Warren is Cherokee. Andrew Bolt got into trouble for pointing out that a bunch of the aboriginal rights profiteers were white. And was silenced for it. I wrote about that a while back in "The Curse of the White Aborigine".

Now Bess Price is being threatened with racism charges for pointing out the same thing.

Lawyer Greg Barns, national president of the Australian Lawyers Alliance, said Ms Price's attack "might well" constitute race discrimination under section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.

The Aussie left has reached an insane place where a white man can sue a black woman for saying that he's not a black man. (Then again in the US of A a man can put on a dress and successfully sue a college for access to the ladies room.)

What is this case really about? It's about the left being the left.

Aboriginal society has a high rate of domestic abuse. Bess Price is trying to do something about it. Amnesty International is trying to sabotage those efforts while promoting separatism.

But Ms Price remained unrepentant last night and kept up her attack on Amnesty, saying the human rights agency was outspoken on the Northern Territory intervention, but was silent when women and children were abused.

When a 13-year-old girl was anally raped in Arnhem Land by her middle-aged promised husband aided by her own grandmother, there was "silence from Amnesty", she told The Australian.

There was also "nothing from Amnesty on the death and sexual abuse of children resulting from a refusal to take them away from 'culture'."

She said Amnesty was "not dispassionate and neutral", but was dominated by Greens supporters.

...and

"You turn a deaf ear to those who are most vulnerable, to the most marginalised, to the women and children who are suffering so much in our communities and town camps," she said. "You take no notice of the NPY Women's Council although they speak for the women who have 60 times the chance of dying from domestic violence than those in mainstream Australia. You go out of your way to deny their voice a hearing. So much for human rights.

"When Aboriginal women in Central Australia ask for help, when they are killed, raped and beaten, when they cry for their abused children, you ignore them and you support those who are oppressing them. When the government tries to do something for them you call them racist and you blather on about the UN."

Ms Price said the best that could be said of Amnesty activists "from rich families in southern cities" was that they were well-meaning, but young, idealistic and naive. She ended by demanding some answers from the Amnesty activists, including: "Who are you and how long have you been in our country?"

So in response, this happened...

Aboriginal leader Warren Mundine has slammed Bess Price for describing Amnesty campaigner Rodney Dillon as "a white blackfella", saying the comment was "stupid and bigoted".

He said describing Mr Dillon as a "white blackfella" and a "physically white English-speaking Tasmanian", and describing Ms Morgan as "a woman from Victoria claiming to be indigenous" was "stupid and bigoted", "quite insulting" and "quite ignorant".

"People who were raped and pillaged are now being raped and pillaged again with insults," he said.

Who exactly is raping and pillaging who? Is Bess Price raping and pillaging Rodney Dillon? Is Warren Mundine just defaulting to his usual line without even thinking about what he's saying first?

In case you were wondering, here's a pic of Warren Mundine.

MORAL BANKRUPTCY

 The Prime Minister was taking part in a phone-in on LBC radio when a caller who identified herself only as "Anna" accused him of sending money abroad which should be spent on treating sick patients in this country.

The Government currently spends £12 billion on overseas aid, an increase of 37 per cent at a time when most departmental budgets are being cut.

Anna told Mr Cameron that she suffered from non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and that a drug she needs is available in Germany but not in Britain.

 Mr Cameron said that he would look at Anna's individual case, but insisted that Britain had a "moral obligation" to abide by its promises on foreign aide.

He said: "Breaking promises to the poorest people in the world would not be the right thing to do."

He added that if Third World countries were not given help to feed their poorest people, then the result could be warfare or mass migration, which could affect the United Kingdom.

Later, Anna said that she was unsatisfied with Mr Cameron's answer. She told the Mail: "I understand what he is saying, but I would say to him if your family is starving you wouldn't go and feed your neighbours. He should be looking after people here. 

In Cam's worldview, the UK is obligated to spend that 19 billion dollars on foreigners to avoid having them come to the UK, where they would cost even more money.



THE SOUL OF A JIMMY CARTER AND THE BODY OF A BARACK OBAMA

Nostalgie pour la défaite is that state of the soul when an American, who either came of age in the Vietnam era, or who was taught and mentored by many leftists or liberals of that vintage, yearns for the defeat of America, and acts accordingly in word and deed. This compulsion is not only required to keep their residency in their subcultures, but to keep their status as well. The more virulent their articulations of hate, the higher their regard by their peers. Neither children nor even infants are safe from their depravities.

....from American Digest






THE WIT AND WISDOM OF THE FOREMOTHER OF WORKPLACE DIVERSITY TRAINING

"No white group has founded a major religion on this planet. The major religions were started in the Orient and the Middle East, not in Greece and Rome."

That brilliant quote comes from Jane Elliot, the foremother of diversity training, mainly a crazy white leftist teacher who tried to fight racism against black people by promoting racism against white people. Speaking as a member of a group which created two of the world's major religions and influenced a third, it would seem to me to that the foremother of diversity training could have used some history training.

Jane Elliot's style of "education" had a good deal in common with cult programming and brainwashing sessions. Like them her methods involved a vicious attack on the cult member's identity through criticism and insults to break down their identity and rebuild a new cult identity.





I'M SHOCKED THERE'S GAMBLING GOING ON HERE

Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul thrust herself into the spotlight today by making a super lame argument against Burton’s outrageous “Romney killed my wife” ad by arguing that if the wife had been in Massachusetts, she would have had Romneycare for insurance. This has enraged Ann Coulter and she rips Saul to shreds, saying that Romney donors should demand Saul is fired or they won’t give another dime.

This deserves a long eye roll. The argument isn't lame. It's actually a very good defense. The problem is that we have a candidate who is capable of making that defense. And Ann Coulter had a lot to do with that. Her feigned outrage at a Romney spokesman defending Romney by using Romneycare makes no sense. Coulter insisted that we choose Romney. Now we have Romney. The End.




ROMNEY REMAINS UNPOPULAR WITH JEWS

Upon arrival in Lakewood, some unusual things happened. First, the motorcade passed a man dressed in American flag shorts running down the street toward the venue here while waving an American flag. “Whooooo!” he exclaimed, as your pooler’s van passed. Then, as we turned into Lake Terrace, the motorcade drove past an Orthodox Jewish wedding party that had been posing for pictures outside. Immediately, the family abandoned the bride and groom and began chasing Romney’s car in the parking lot, waving cameras. The candidate’s SUV drove around a corner to a back entrance, followed by at least 10 members of the wedding party who tried to run up to Romney’s car by were halted first, by a wood fence, which one man tried to scale, and then by Secret Service agents, who did not look pleased. “Oh you’re Secret Service,” one woman said, as she was asked by an agent to move back. “We just want to see Romney.”

Romney spokesman Rick Gorka, who took a brief hiatus from the campaign after he told reporters covering Romney in Poland to “shove it,” relayed that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee would pose for photos with the wedding party.

...it's a cute story though a local magazine takes issue with it.

They were told by Lake Terrace and Lakewood Police personnel that Romney would be entering through the front gate.   When the motorcade sped past, it was this group, and not a wedding party that ran around the corner to get a glimpse of a man some in the group told me the admired and were excited.  One even brought his two year old daughter for a chance to see Romney.

The wedding party, which had been taking some pictures in front of the establishment, did not chase Romney.   You can see this by looking at the photos I took prior while the bride and groom were taking pictures out front.

The New York Times blog states that Romney did pose for photos with the couple.

 Mr. Romney ultimately fulfilled that wish. A campaign spokesman said the candidate posed with the bride and groom, who told him they were supporters.

...and Orthodox Jewish protesters showed up complaining that Romney wasn't conservative enough.

 In Lakewood, there were few Barack Obama supporters involved in the protest of his appearance.  In fact, those protesting Romney claimed the candidate is not conservative enough.

When asked why local Republicans are protesting Romney’s visit, one man spoke out.  “The point here is, Mr Romney is not conservative enough when it comes to moral values,” said Moshie Dresler, a Lakewood resident and member of the Orthodox Jewish Community.  “He’s not conservative.  If the conservatives should support him they should demand he do more on conservative values.  He really didn’t do anything on that.”

But no story about Jews would be complete without a racist headline from the Huffington Post. "Mitt Romney's Motorcade Chased By Pack Of Orthodox Jews"

Stay classy HuffPo.




EXTREMIST EXTREMISTS OFFER TO HELP FIGHT EXTREMISM

Salafis are ready to help Egyptian authorities fight terrorism by raising youth awareness, a leading Salafi intellectual in Gaza said Tuesday. He said Salafis were ready to help Egypt in its fight against terrorism by educating the youth against extremism. Salafism preaches a moderate approach and forbids killing, al-Shami said, but some Salafis who lack education in the faith have adopted perverted beliefs which accept killing and theft.

Can we get Al-Qaeda in on this. I bet they also want to raise youth awareness against extremism. It reminds of this Latma sketch.




EVEN MUSLIM EXTREMISTS ARE MODERATE

Study: Muslim extremists not looking for world domination (CNN)

The study concludes that extremists, at least based on how they quote from the Quran, do not reflect "an aggressive offensive foe seeking domination and conquest of unbelievers, as is commonly assumed. Instead they deal with themes of victimization, dishonor and retribution."

"The verses frequently utilized by extremists from this surah address subjects such as enduring hardships and the importance of fighting against the unjust unbelievers who oppress men, women and children," the researchers wrote about the most cited chapter (called a "surah").

In stunningly excellent news, a recent study of Mein Kampf and Hitler's speeches has concluded that Nazi Germany has no intention of threatening its neighbors. Instead the texts address subjects such as German economic recovery, resisting foreign occupation of the Rhineland and the importance of fighting for a just settlement of grievances.




THIS SEEMS LIKE GOOD NEWS

Seventy members of an Islamist sect in Russia have been found living in an underground bunker without heat or sunlight on the outskirts of the city of Kazan, according to Russian media.

The sect members – including 20 children, the youngest of whom was 18 months old – are thought to have been underground for nearly a decade.

Many of the children were born underground and had never seen daylight until the prosecutors discovered them on 1 August. After health checks, a 17-year-old girl turned out to be pregnant.

The group, known as the Fayzarahmanist sect, was named after its 83-year-old organiser Fayzrahman Satarov, who declared himself a prophet and his house an independent Islamic state

Will the Islamophobes never stop with this stuff?




OLD SOLDIERS AND OLD WARS

Jacob, then chief of staff of the Indian Eastern command, knew that a protracted war, of which he was the Indian commander, would claim countless more lives. As the war began, trudging through swamp terrain, his troops enacted a daring plan to capture Dhaka, the capital of East Pakistan.

Two weeks into the war, Pakistan’s commander in East Pakistan, Gen. A.A.K. Niazi, invited Jacob to lunch to discuss a cease-fire. Jacob wrote up an “instrument of surrender” document for his counterpart and flew with it across enemy lines, unarmed and accompanied only by one staff officer.

Niazi was given a stark choice: Surrender unconditionally and publicly, and receive the protection of the Indian Army for all minorities and retreating troops, or face an Indian military onslaught. Jacob gave Niazi 30 minutes to decide.

Jacob, as he retells it, went out to the veranda, pacing for the full half hour. Exhibiting his legendary self-control, the general appeared relatively calm while puffing his pipe and asking the Pakistani sentry about his wife and children. But knowing that he had been bluffing, “I appealed to God for help and said the Shema Yisrael,” he told JTA.

Niazi agreed to the terms. The next day, 93,000 Pakistani soldiers surrendered. Jacob had but 3,000 Indian troops, 30 miles away, behind him.

Multitudes were likely saved by this surrender, still studied by military students. Recognizing his role, last month the Islamic Republic of Bangladesh awarded Jacob a certificate of appreciation for his “unique role” in the formation of the nation. 

... some of the most unusual stories are also unusually true.






IN PUBLIC PEDAGOGY TODAY

Title:Rediscovering "Race Traitor": Towards a Critical Race Theory Informed Public Pedagogy

This article attempts to politically resituate Ignatiev and Garvey's conception of the "Race Traitor" within contemporary notions of Critical Race Theory and Public Pedagogy. The article concludes by considering how CRT and public pedagogy may produce new political praxis for Race Traitors in the twenty-first century.

..if that's not your thing, how about some redistributionary theater in schools?

Positive moments of recognition were limited when placed against macro discourses of race and power. The paper argues for the reframing of applied theatre practice that resists conformity to individualised and moral ideologies of inclusion to consider instead Nancy Fraser and Ruth Lister's arguments for new paradigms of justice that consider recognition, respect and redistribution. 

Okay then how about a paper on "Effects of Teacher Ethnicity in the Teaching of Critical Whiteness"

Explanations are viewed through a sociological framework which seeks to deconstruct normalized practices; in tandem with understandings of how whiteness operates to reinforce such normalization in order that inequitable power relations are reified.

There's about a million more of these where that came from. Here's a mostly serious question. Are we absolutely certain that the Soviet Union didn't win the Cold War?



THE ROUNDUP

The Atheist Conservative discussed my article on the Muslim Middle East and Israel Thrives discusses my article on the Victim Value Index.

I review Colin Flaherty's book on Black on White violence at Front Page Magazine.

Boker Tov Boulder takes us on a trip back through time and Professor Jacobson looks at Operation Counterweight in New York.

The truth slips through about Gaza and Romney's Nazi cult is exposed at The People's Cube.

And a cheerful Vladimir Putin wishes you good night.