Category Archives: #shameful

Domestic implications of drone strikes and the ICC

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For background on the ICC, see Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Wikipedia).

Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution states:

[The President] shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur;

In practice, President signs UN treaties and submits them to Congress for ratification.  In some cases, the treaty can be left in limbo if the former happens but not the latter, such as the forty-year lag on the ratification of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.   The Rome Statute is an even stranger case because President Clinton signed it in 2000, but chose not to even submit it to the Senate for ratification, stating:

The United States should have the chance to observe and assess the functioning of the court, over time, before choosing to become subject to its jurisdiction. Given these concerns, I will not, and do not recommend that my successor, submit the treaty to the Senate for advice and consent until our fundamental concerns are satisfied.

Concerns about his successor proved unwarranted.  Section 9 of the 2002 National Security Strategy (NSS) went a step further:

We will take the actions necessary to ensure that…[“we”] are not impaired by the potential for investigations, inquiry, or prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC), whose jurisdiction does not extend to Americans and which we do not accept.

The curious thing about this is that numerous public opinion polls and surveys have shown that Americans support the ICC by wide margins.  In particular, a 2008 poll (pdf) by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found that

There is also bipartisan support for the International Criminal Court (ICC), with  68 percent of Americans saying the United States should participate in the agreement on the ICC that can try individuals for war crimes, genocide, or crimes against humanity if their own country won’t try them.

So while its jurisdiction may not extend to Americans, it’s certainly not accurate to say that Americans wouldn’t accept it if given the choice.  Nevertheless, the farcical American Service-Members Protection Act (Hague Invasion Act) was passed in 2002 as well.  The Act finds that

Any American prosecuted by the International Criminal Court will, under the Rome Statute, be denied procedural protections to which all Americans are entitled under the Bill of Rights to the United States Constitution, such as the right to trial by jury.

Which brings us to the drone strikes.  The drone strikes/assassinations are very illegal in Pakistan and the Obama administration has formally declared (the Bush administration did so implicitly) that it will use them on whoever they want, including American citizens without “impairing” itself with the whole procedural protection deal that was the rationale for obstructing the ICC.

Tea Party Express’s Mark Williams goes nuts

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Tea Party Express bigwig Mark Williams took the Teabagger/NAACP spat a bit further…to the INSANO ZONE! He upped this “letter” on his webpage! It is a fake letter from a black guy to President Lincoln.

Dear Mr. Lincoln
We Colored People have taken a vote and decided that we don’t cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop!
In fact we held a big meeting and took a vote in Kansas City this week. We voted to condemn a political revival of that old abolitionist spirit called the ‘tea party movement’.

The tea party position to “end the bailouts” for example is just silly. Bailouts are just big money welfare and isn’t that what we want all Colored People to strive for? What kind of racist would want to end big money welfare? What they need to do is start handing the bail outs directly to us Colored People! Of course, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is the only responsible party that should be granted the right to disperse the funds.

And the ridiculous idea of “reduce[ing] the size and intrusiveness of government.” What kind of massa would ever not want to control my life? As Colored People we must have somebody care for us otherwise we would be on our own, have to think for ourselves and make decisions and if you do not agree than there is not enough Colored in your People, as we labeled Ken Gladney [source]
The racist tea parties also demand that the government “stop the out of control spending.” Again, they directly target Colored People. That means we Colored People would have to compete for jobs like everybody else and that is just not right.

Perhaps the most racist point of all in the tea parties is their demand that government “stop raising our taxes.” That is outrageous! How will we Colored People ever get a wide screen TV in every room if non-coloreds get to keep what they earn? Totally racist! The tea party expects coloreds to be productive members of society?

Mr. Lincoln, you were the greatest racist ever. We had a great gig. Three squares, room and board, all our decisions made by the massa in the house. Please repeal the 13th and 14th Amendments and let us get back to where we belong.

Sincerely
Precious Ben Jealous, Tom’s Nephew National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Head Colored Person

I would just like to point out that Resistnet is best buddies with the Tea Party Express. The rest of this letter…I’ll just let it speak for itself.

Lots of good commentary about this here.

Also this ad on his site is hilarious:

An Important Public Service Announcement

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Today marks an important day in our nation’s historic fight against Islam and the creeping menace known as Sharia Law.  At this year’s Arab American festival, 4 Christian missionaries from  Acts 17 Apologetics were arrested for disorderly conduct and charged with misdemeanor disturbing the peace while trying to convert Muslims to Christianity at the festival.  Today they were arraigned.  A quote from the Dearborn police chief:

“We did make four arrests for disorderly conduct.  They did cause a stir.”

For most people this story would just  be something they read below the fold on the four page of the newspaper but for conservatives everywhere it was a wakeup call that Muslims were taking over the Unites States. (sidenote: my favorite name in those links is “the persecution times”.  How great of a name is that?)

One person in particular who tried to warn us about this impending Muslim takeover of Dearborn, Michigan and subsequent Sharia Lawing of our freedoms  is Gadi Adelman. Gadi has been writing for a while trying to let us know about the evils of Islam and how it is trying to take over America and replace the constitution with Sharia law.  He is humble and doesn’t want to rub it in our faces though as he starts off his latest article “Welcome to Dearborn, Arabia” off:

“When I wrote about creeping Sharia in America back in January in my article “One Nation under Allah” I was called an “Islamophobe.” In March I co-wrote “Are we financing our own demise” with Joy Brighton, an expert in Sharia finance. For that, I was called an “alarmist.” Also in March I wrote an article in which I told the truth about the treatment of women who live under Sharia law and I was called a “racist”. In April I wrote about the amount of terror that stems from Islam.  I was called a “hate monger”. Last week in my article “You’re doin’ fine Oklahoma” I wrote about the ban of Sharia in Oklahoma and was told I was “crazy” to believe that Sharia could ever happen here in America.”

As you can see, Mr Adelman has written a lot about Islam and it’s sinister plot to take over America and institute Sharia Law.  Well we didn’t listen to him and now here we are, knee deep in Sharia law where 4 Christian missionaries can get arrested for disorderly conduct at a drop of a hat for something as innocent as trying to agitate a crowd of Muslims:

“They look for a mark. They look for someone they know is going to be agitated with, for someone who is going to be engaged in a very heated way, and use that to draw a crowd.”

That quote was from Jack O’Reilly, the mayor of Dearborn.  You might be saying “well that just sounds like a normal arrest” but there are things you don’t know.  Did you know the chief of police’s name in Dearborn Michigan is Ronald Haddad?  You didn’t did you and do you know what that means?  I’ll let Mr. Adelman explain:

“In case as you were reading this, you missed it… The Chief of Police of Dearborn is Ronald Haddad. Yes, we can assume that Chief Haddad is a Muslim. Those that I have spoken to involved in this case have confirmed this.”

That’s right, a Muslim.  And according to one of the people arrested, David Wood “Two thirds of Dearborn, Michigan is Muslim.” Think about that and what it means.  You’ll have to decide for yourself because Mr. Adelman never really explains what those two things are supposed to mean when you put them together. Mr. Adelman also never bothers to mention the non-Muslim mayor defending the arrest.

This story is only the latest in a long line of stories that Mr. Adelman has put together to show us how Sharia law is slowing taking over the U.S.

“Kansas City International Airport recently constructed four foot-washing benches to accommodate a growing number of Muslim drivers who requested the facilities to prepare for daily Islamic prayer. The University of Michigan-Dearborn plans to spend $25,000 to construct two foot-washing stations at the University of Michigan at Dearborn while 18 other universities, including a number of public institutions, have installed foot-washing facilities in Michigan and other states. Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix added airport user fees to install two faucets located two feet above the ground to help Muslim taxi and limo drivers meet their religious needs.”

“Workers at Tyson Foods’ poultry processing plant in Shelbyville, Tennessee will no longer have a paid day off on Labor Day, but will instead take the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr in the fall. A July 2008 press release from the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), said that a new contract at the Shelbyville facility “implements a new holiday to accommodate the … Muslim workers at the plant.” The union has also claimed that in addition to the observance of the Muslim holiday, “Two prayer rooms have been created to allow Muslim workers to pray twice a day and return to work without leaving the plant.”

So now thanks to Sharia law we have foot washing stations and prayer rooms in chicken plants and now innocent Christians getting arrested for disturbing the peace.  Who will stand up to fight the good fight against Sharia Law?

Rep. Rex Duncan of Oklahoma that’s who, Rep Duncan is introducing a bill to ban Sharia law in Oklahoma.  More precisely what he is trying to get passed is a amendment to the Oklahoma constitution that would forbid judges from using International law (including Sharia law) when considering cases.  Rep Duncan explains:

“wording on the state ballot would include the explanation of ‘law of nation’ and ‘Islamic law’ as well as ‘laws followed by Mohammed’ ”

So thank God there are men out there like Rep Duncan who want to ban ‘laws followed by Mohammed’ and stand up for the Christians in this country who are being persecuted daily by the Muslim Majority.  And will that final note of intolerance ringing in your ears,  I’ll leave you with Mr. Adelman’s closing argument from “Welcome to Dearborn, Arabia”:

“I have been warning and writing and speaking about this for years, I urged you all to speak up and speak out. I said that we in America only have to look at the U.K. or Europe to see where we are headed if something is not done soon and now it has happened.

I am not proud to say “I warned you”, it is here people, Sharia in America. Our Nation that was founded on Judeo-Christian values and principals has now seen the arrest of four people for exercising their rights at an Arab festival.

What are you going to do about it? Contact your Representatives, call the Mayor of Dearborn?

Hitler wrote:

“You see, it’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn’t we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have been more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?”

You choose which way you want to live, while you still can.”

You don’t agree with Hitler do you?

Appreciating Serious People

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David Weigel resigns from the Washington Post for his unprofessional behavior, making an apology on the way out.

I’m a member of an off-the-record list-serv called “Journolist,” founded by my colleague Ezra Klein. Last Monday, I was deluged with angry e-mail after posting a story about Rep. Bob Etheridge (D-N.C.) that was linked by the Drudge Report with a headline intimating that I defended his roughing-up of a young man with a camera; after this, the Washington Examiner posted a gossip item about my dancing at a friend’s wedding. Unwisely, I lashed out to Journolist, which I’ve come to view as a place to talk bluntly to friends.

The WaPo ombudsman explains that Weigel, “bears responsibility for sarcastic and scornful comments he made,” on Journolist, which he describes as “supposedly private” and that this raises questions about the role of Serious bloggers.

With bloggers such as Weigel, “I think The Post needs to decide what it wants to be online,” said Dan Gainor, a vice president at the conservative Media Research Center. “Does it want to be opinion? Or, does it want to be news? The problem here was that it was never clear.”

“If it’s going to be opinion, it ought to have somebody on the conservative side — something Dave Weigel never was,” he said.

If The Post wants to assign a “good neutral reporter” to cover conservatives, “we’d be thrilled,” said Gainor. But quickly added, Weigel “wasn’t one. He looked at the conservative movement as if he was visiting a zoo. We’re more than that.”

Gainor raises valid points. Klein’s blog posts clearly pass through a liberal prism. For that reason, liberals have a comfort level with what he writes, and conservatives know where he’s coming from, even if they disagree. In contrast, Weigel’s blog seemed to confuse many conservatives who contacted me. Was he supposed to be a neutral reporter, some wondered? Others complained that he was a liberal trying to write about conservatives he disdained.

Which brings me to the Serious “liberal” Ezra Klein, who made some very revealing comments on this and what he sees as related.

I was on all sorts of e-mail lists, but none that quite got at the daily work of my job: Following policy and political trends in both the expert community and the media. But I always knew how much I was missing. There were only so many phone calls I could make in a day. There were only so many times when I knew the right question to ask. By not thinking of the right person to interview, or not asking the right question when I got them on the phone, or not intuiting that an economist would have a terrific take on the election, I was leaving insights on the table.

That was the theory behind Journolist: An insulated space where the lure of a smart, ongoing conversation would encourage journalists, policy experts and assorted other observers to share their insights with one another.

Suddenly, he brings in the Rolling Stone profile that got McChrystal fired and reporting on Afghanistan generally.

In a column about Stanley McChrystal today, David Brooks talks about the union of electronic text, unheralded transparency, 24/7 media and a culture that has not yet settled on new rules for what is, and isn’t, private, and what is, and isn’t, newsworthy. “The exposure ethos, with its relentless emphasis on destroying privacy and exposing impurities, has chased good people from public life, undermined public faith in institutions and elevated the trivial over the important,” he writes.

….

Broadly speaking, neither journalism nor the public has quite decided on how to handle this explosion of information about people we’re interested in. A newspaper reporter opposing the Afghanistan war in a news story is doing something improper. A newspaper reporter telling his wife he opposes the war is being perfectly proper. If someone had been surreptitiously taping that reporter’s conversations with his wife, there’d be no doubt that was a violation of privacy, and the gathered remarks and observations were illegitimate. If a batch of that reporter’s e-mails were obtained and forwarded along? People are less sure what to do about it. So, for now, they use it.

So is he implying that being critical of the war in Afghanistan is grounds for being fired?  This is pretty interesting because the public is split over Afghanistan:

You would think that a roughly even split would merit commentary “opposing the Afghanistan war” occasionally, especially through the “liberal prism” (a majority of Democrats oppose the war), but no, it’s the job of Serious People to determine the range of acceptable opinion.  If they were serious (as opposed to Serious) about reporting, they might raise some of the following points:

First, this argument tends to lump the various groups we are contending with together, and it suggests that all of them are equally committed to attacking the United States. In fact, most of the people we are fighting in Afghanistan aren’t dedicated jihadis seeking to overthrow Arab monarchies, establish a Muslim caliphate, or mount attacks on U.S. soil. Their agenda is focused on local affairs, such as what they regard as the political disempowerment of Pashtuns and illegitimate foreign interference in their country. Moreover, the Taliban itself is more of a loose coalition of different groups than a tightly unified and hierarchical organization, which is why some experts believe we ought to be doing more to divide the movement and “flip” the moderate elements to our side. Unfortunately, the “safe haven” argument wrongly suggests that the Taliban care as much about attacking America as bin Laden does.

Second, while it is true that Mullah Omar gave Osama bin Laden a sanctuary both before and after 9/11, it is by no means clear that they would give him free rein to attack the United States again. Protecting al Qaeda back in 2001 brought no end of trouble to Mullah Omar and his associates, and if they were lucky enough to regain power, it is hard to believe they would give us a reason to come back in force.

Third, it is hardly obvious that Afghan territory provides an ideal “safe haven” for mounting attacks on the United States. The 9/11 plot was organized out of Hamburg, not Kabul or Kandahar, but nobody is proposing that we send troops to Germany to make sure there aren’t “safe havens” operating there. In fact, if al Qaeda has to hide out somewhere, I’d rather they were in a remote, impoverished, land-locked and isolated area from which it is hard to do almost anything. The “bases” or “training camps” they could organize in Pakistan or Afghanistan might be useful for organizing a Mumbai-style attack, but they would not be particularly valuable if you were trying to do a replay of 9/11 (not many flight schools there), or if you were trying to build a weapon of mass destruction. And in a post-9/11 environment, it wouldn’t be easy for a group of al Qaeda operatives bent on a Mumbia-style operation get all the way to the United States. One cannot rule this sort of thing out, of course, but does that unlikely danger justify an open-ended commitment that is going to cost us more than $60 billion next year?

Fourth, in the unlikely event that a new Taliban government did give al Qaeda carte blanche to prepare attacks on the United States or its allies, the United States isn’t going to sit around and allow them to go about their business undisturbed. The Clinton administration wasn’t sure it was a good idea to go after al Qaeda’s training camps back in the 1990s (though they eventually did, albeit somewhat half-heartedly), but that was before 9/11.   We know more now and the U.S. government is hardly going to be bashful about attacking such camps in the future.  (Remember: we are already doing that in Pakistan, with the tacit approval of the Pakistani government). Put differently, having a Taliban government in Kabul would hardly make Afghanistan a “safe haven” today or in the future, because the United States has lots of weapons it can use against al Qaeda that don’t require a large U.S. military presence on the ground.

Fifth, as well-informed critics have already observed, the primary motivation for extremist organizations like the Taliban and Al Qaeda is their opposition to what they regard as unwarranted outside interference in their own societies. Increasing the U.S. military presence and engaging in various forms of social engineering is as likely to reinforce such motivations as it is to eliminate them. Obama is hoping that a different strategy will eventually undercut support for the Taliban and strengthen the central government, but it is still an open question whether more American involvement will have positive or negative effects. If we are in fact making things worse, then we may be encouraging precisely the outcome we are trying to avoid.

The humanitarian purpose?  The State Department was alright with the situation in the 90’s.  From a 1997 State Department cable:

But it’s the guy that reports on tea partiers that gets fired for a lack of objectivity.

Compassionate Conservatism at work

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Robert Byrd (D-WV) died recently, leaving behind a distinguished political career that included many achievements among them being the longest serving senator, the President pro tempore of the United States Senate four times, United States Senate Majority Leader twice, and Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.  Byrd was a powerful socially conservative democrat who you would think that most conservatives would like.  He opposed letting gays serve openly in the military, he endorsed the Defense of Marriage Act, He opposed affirmative action and voted for the partial birth abortion ban.  So why does Freep hate a person that holds many of the same views as them?  The answer is simple: he is a democrat which means he is the enemy.

BTW: To those who say we should be respectful of the dead, I say: Not those who have murdered millions of babies, shredded the Constitution, and stolen trillions of dollars. I would no more think of saying nice things about Kennedy, or Byrd, than I would think it my duty to think of something nice to say about Mao, Stalin, Hitler, or Pol Pot. Democrats are not part of the American body politic. They are alien combatants.

Since he is an “alien combatant” they are allowed to say bad things about him and once they were informed by Fox News that Byrd was once part of the KKK, Freep was off to the races.

Starting out in the House of Representatives, he was elected to the Senate in 1958 by defeating his incumbent republican opponent, who supported civil rights. Therefore, Byrd did not support civil rights. I wish current liberals could hear some of those firey speeches!

This Freeper loves the thought of God purging the senate of people who he disagree with him politically.

Senator Kennedy, Now Byrd, seems there is someone, that can clean house without a vote. There are a few more that need to feel the call of the Lord.

The reason the news didn’t report this “fact” is that it isn’t true

Of course, when driving into work listening to the national news they failed to mention he was a Grand Wizard.

Today is a good day, someone I disagree with politically died

This lifted my spirits! What a good day, we have another good democrat.

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I respected neither. The sun is shining a little brighter. The birds are singing a little louder. It’s a beautiful day. I haven’t smiled this much since Ted Kennedy died.

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Well jeez, I was taught that you shouldn’t say anything bad about the dying….that being said, I did just put champagne on ice – just in case…..

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It’ll be hard to top the warm fuzziness I felt at Ted Kennedy’s demise.

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Honestly, that is the best news I have heard in a month!!!!!!! Come on Nov 2. We need the power to stop all the mischief that will be going on in the lame duck session commencing Nov 3.

Disagree with me politically? Well I hope he suffered horribly in the last moments on earth.

I hope he was terrified and in great pain. This miserable human scum stayed too long and used far too much oxygen.

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Good riddance, I hope they turn the heat up for him where he now lives.

This crazy post just crops up in the middle of everyone making KKK jokes.  It is actually kinda refreshing to see a pure crazy post complete with bad Obama nicknames

Too many American Warriors unnecessarily have fallen on Byrd’s watch. Everyday lately we get the news of more of those warriors falling in Afghanistan in large part because of the ROEs that dictate that they can’t bring full force against suspected terrorist filth. Those ROEs exist at the behest of the CIC Maobama who had the full support of Robert C. Byrd and the rest of the human refuse that is the democrat party. Maobamacare, tax increases, decreases in our Constitutional Rights and on and on are all in place or are strongly contemplated by the democrat party of Robert C. Byrd and Akbar Hussein Maobama.

I hope the evil old bastard rots in hell.

Why do we need to be respectful to dead people?  Screw that!

Well as the saying goes, we should not speak evil of the recently departed, therefore, I’ll wait a respectful period–maybe a week or so?–before offering my opinion!

I have never understood this prohibition. Ted Kennedy was a despicable pig and a traitor, and I reveled in his death on this forum, as I would have any other criminal or traitor, the moment it was announced. Robert Byrd wasn’t nearly as bad, but was a KKK leader and racist, and later one of the most corrupt Senators in the history of the union. I do not mourn his passing, and wretch in expectation of Manchin appointing yet another sleazebag to replace him.

Second chances are for wimps and losers.  I am a fine upstanding Christian, I don’t give no second chances.

The guy was a KKK leader. None the less he served the longest term in the history of the United States Senate.

And he served as a Democrat.

No, I won’t be allowing this POS to drift off into some dream state as Democrats will be want to do.

This man could not have served as a Republican in the Senate of the United States. The Democrats would have torn him to shreds.

Everyone is a racist, but a Democrat. That’s what they have been pounding into our brains in the 59 years I have been alive.

So no, I won’t be letting this racist prick off the hook.

If you’ve served as a leader in the KKK, you’re done. That’s something I don’t give second chances to get right.

Read about his record. He can go straight to hell, and not pass Go or collect his $200 dollars.

I’m going to pray for the democrat part of Byrd’s soul just to balance this dude’s prayers out.

I’ll pray for his eternal soul that he finds the Lord.

Other than that…as a Democrat, he’s responsible for all sorts of heinious laws and other things that have hurt, harmed, caused pain, and otherwise damaged good peoples’ lives.

I cannot and will not pray for that part of him. He has to answer for that. In the position he was in, he had mega-chances to do good for people, to help his nation and his people. But he chose to be a Democrat.

If he goes, he goes. Bye-bye, Bob. Don’t let the door hit you on the *ss on the way out.

Felt the same way about Teddy and Murtha, and will feel the same way about Lautenberg or any other of these POS.

Sorry; I’m all out of compassion for these cretins. It’s just the way it is.

Mods, delete if you feel it necessary, but it doesn’t change the sentiment.

The mods over at Freep really had to earn their keep yesterday.  They had to delete so many comments people were commenting on the removed comments.

Wow look at all the comments removed..

Byrd has since written on his association with the KKK and has apologized for the intolerant views he held early in life and stating that joining the KKK was “the greatest mistake I ever made”:

I know now I was wrong. Intolerance had no place in America. I apologized a thousand times… and I don’t mind apologizing over and over again. I can’t erase what happened.” Byrd, 2005

Proving that people can change, in the Congressional Report Card released by the NAACP for the 108th Congress (2003-2004), Byrd received a 100 percent approval rating. In June 2005, Byrd proposed an additional $10 million in federal funding for the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial in Washington, D.C., remarking that “With the passage of time, we have come to learn that his Dream was the American Dream, and few ever expressed it more eloquently.”

Let us not forget though that the same people who are so quick to point out Byrd’s past also brought us these wonderful comments about Malia Obama and still actively spell Muslim as mooslim and mudslime and call Mexicans “savages”.

And finally I will be kind and answer one Freeper’s question about Byrd.

Is he dead yet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

yes he is.

Conservative Think Tank Angry About Big Business, Uses Comic Sans to Avoid “Communist” Allegations

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This is a little old by internet standards, but:

Something no one cares about called the “National Center for Public Policy Research” has something called the “Free Enterprise Project,” both of which can be distinguished by the fact that they are run by a handsome man with a mustache and have names that mean nothing at all.  The Free Enterprise Project recently called for the resignation of the CEO of GE, Jeffery Immelt.

Why? Because he is lobbying to get government money.  According to the press release, because “‘We the people’ have had enough of Obama’s government gone wild spending programs and CEOs such as Immelt that are seeking to profit from taxpayers,” said Deneen Borelli, full-time fellow with the National Center’s Project 21.””

Did you get that?  Its “we the people,” because this is a DEMOCRACY and we deserve to have a SAY in how BUSINESS ARE RUN says the “Free Enterprise Project.”  What?

“When you think of it, Immelt poses more risk to liberty than a progressive Senator. Immelt’s ability to affect public policy has no checks and balances and he is using the vast resources of GE to promote Obama’s agenda. It’s time ‘we the people’ hold Immelt accountable for undermining America’s economic sustainability and our free enterprise system,” added Tom Borelli.

Now, I agree 100% with this.  If corporations are allowed unlimited use of their “vast resources” to promote a political agenda, it is “more risk to liberty than a progressive Senator.”  But the problem is that The National Center for Public Policy Research basically signed away any right they had to complain about corporations using these “vast resources” to promote a political agenda when they signed this adorable amicus curiae where they said, basically, it is unconstitutional and discriminatory to tell corporations exactly what they’re asking Immelt to do.

Not only is this contradictory, but frankly, assuming that “we the people” have the right to demand anything of a corporation, even when coming from something called the Free Enterprise Project, sounds just a little socialist.  Just a little.  Which I’m fine with, but I wonder why they chose to take this risk right now?  Maybe the petition will help us understand:

Jeffrey Immelt
Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer
General Electric Company
3135 Easton Turnpike
Fairfield, CT 06828

June 22, 2010

Dear Mr. Immelt,

In the new world order of “too big to fail,” the responsibility for holding corporate leaders accountable now resides with “we the people.”  On that basis, I am urging you to resign as Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of General Electric because you have abandoned the tenets of free enterprise to profit from President Obama’s progressive political agenda.

Specifically:

  • You were a leading proponent of President Obama’s $ 787 billion economic stimulus bill, which failed to curb unemployment but added billions of dollars to our crushing national debt.
  • You are a leading advocate of President Obama’s cap-and-trade policy, which will raise the cost of gasoline, electricity, consumer products and export jobs overseas.
  • You allowed the MSNBC cable TV network to repeatedly hurl demeaning insults, often of a racial or sexual nature, at patriotic Americans who are peacefully challenging President Obama’s big-government policies.

Your work is a risk to the founding American values of liberty and free enterprise.  “We the people” urge you to resign.
Sincerely,

The Free Enterprise Project

Oh.  They’re sick of being called white racist teabaggers.  HILARIOUS.

And the grudge against GE is longstanding.  In fact, if you look at the amicus curiae, they inexplicably say

“Contrary to Austin and McConnell, freedom of the press belongs not just to corporations like General
Electric, but rather to “the people.””

And I guess they put “the people” in quotes because they’re actually talking about corporations that are not GE.

If you search the phrase “general electric” on their site you get at least 100 hits going back to 1997.  Most of the ones I read seemed pretty angry with the company, except one from 2001, which, based on their claim that PCBs, some of the most poisonous compounds on earth, are not harmful, and that GE should not be held responsible for dumping them in the Hudson River.  I mean, I guess insisting that poor people get slowly poisoned by denying that the poison exists trumps everything.

The terrorist flotilla

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I happened to have been following this story closely for several days before the attack, so watching the response has been one of the most absurd spectacles I’ve ever seen the media go through–not a statement I make lightly.  This is actually the ninth, and by far the largest, attempt by the group that organized this.  This story necessarily starts long before the passengers were killed by Israeli commandos.  The website for the Free Gaza Movement has details on all of their trips (the first was in August 2008). On May 24th, as some of the ships were preparing to depart from Cyprus, the Sydney Morning Herald wrote a long story describing the groups latest trip that provides good background.

By May 27th, the Israeli navy was preparing to send commandos after several boats filled with unarmed human rights activists from around the world, including a Nobel peace laureate and a former UN Assistant Secretary General from Ireland, three German MPs, an Israeli Arab MK, a Swedish author, a former Prime Minister of Malaysia, a former diplomat and a retired Colonel (who, in his service, survived a previous run-in with the Israeli military) from the United States, a Holocaust survivor, and six to seven hundred others from over twenty countries.

It’s worth noting that there wasn’t exactly unanimous support for attacking the ships carrying aid to Israel,  nor is there unanimous support for the policies necessitating the aid in the first place.  Israeli organizations petitioned the government to allow the ships through, and a minority in the government held the same position, but the government’s insane right-wing majority was convinced that breaking the blockade was somehow a threat to Israel.  Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy wrote a damning column about the decision:

The Israeli propaganda machine has reached new highs its hopeless frenzy. It has distributed menus from Gaza restaurants, along with false information. It embarrassed itself by entering a futile public relations battle, which it might have been better off never starting. They want to maintain the ineffective, illegal and unethical siege on Gaza and not let the “peace flotilla” dock off the Gaza coast? There is nothing to explain, certainly not to a world that will never buy the web of explanations, lies and tactics.

Only in Israel do people still accept these tainted goods. Reminiscent of a pre-battle ritual from ancient times, the chorus cheered without asking questions. White uniformed soldiers got ready in our name. Spokesmen delivered their deceptive explanations in our name. The grotesque scene is at our expense. And virtually none of us have disturbed the performance.

The chorus has been singing songs of falsehood and lies. We are all in the chorus saying there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza. We are all part of the chorus claiming the occupation of Gaza has ended, and that the flotilla is a violent attack on Israeli sovereignty – the cement is for building bunkers and the convoy is being funded by the Turkish Muslim Brotherhood. The Israeli siege of Gaza will topple Hamas and free Gilad Shalit. Foreign Ministry spokesman Yossi Levy, one of the most ridiculous of the propagandists, outdid himself when he unblinkingly proclaimed that the aid convoy headed toward Gaza was a violation of international law. Right. Exactly.

The following day, a still unknown number of civilians were dead (likely somewhere between ten and twenty) and dozens more were wounded.  There was no turning back now.  The government and the military began a public relations campaign to try to minimize the fallout by selectively censoring the domestic media, severely restricting the foreign media, and feeding lies to the US media to be relayed more or less uncritically.  This is the point where the absurdity really begins.

It seems that the problem isn’t what happened, but how it will be perceived which is itself a very confusing issue (with overt racial overtones).

A columnist at the Jerusalem Post, where Wolf Blitzer began his career, fumes:

As expected, the provocation mounted by Muslim organizations in association with “peace activists” was successful beyond their wildest dreams: There were casualties. They can now continue pointing the finger at Israel and blaming it for everything under the sun. The organizers of the flotilla, a fanatic Turkish organization known under the initials IHH and its European partners, had repeatedly and explicitly declared before setting out that their purpose was to break the Gaza siege and embarrass Israel.

The humanitarian supplies brought on board were just a ploy to hide their avowed objective. Israel did all it could to stop it. Appeals to Turkey went unheeded and that country let the flotilla sail and gave its assistance. Israel offered to have all humanitarian supplies brought to the Ashdod port where they could then be sent to Gaza through our crossings. Israel also asked the “peace militants” to transmit a letter to captured IDF soldier Gilad Schalit, who has been in Hamas custody for almost four years. The militants were not interested in any humanitarian operation. They wanted to carry out their joint Arab-European propaganda offensive against Israel in order to delegitimize the Jewish state, deepen its isolation and provoke an international outcry.

….

Unfortunately we are the target of an Arab and international propaganda offensive characterized by the deliberate refusal to present the Israeli positions and indeed anything positive about that country. This is “political correctness” in its starkest expression. The organizers of the so-called humanitarian operation understood only too well that they could go on with their plans secure in the support of the Arab and European media.

A Haaretz story details how some Israelis (who probably haven’t been told the truth),  “brandished their keyboards and went to war, fighting to save Israel’s image” on Facebook and Twitter.

On the floor of Israel’s legislative body, the Knesset, a legislator who was aboard one of the ships (and treated the wounded) is denounced by a member of the governing party:

MK Miri Regev (Likud) said Zoabi is “responsible for a double crime: Joining terrorists, and a moral crime against the state of Israel.” Regev then called at her in Arabic: “Go to Gaza, you traitor.”

“She sat here over a year ago and pledged allegiance to the state of Israel and its laws,” Regev claimed. “I have no intention of stifling free speech, but in the case of MK Zoabi – it is not freedom of speech. The Gaza flotilla was a terrorist flotilla and MK Zoabi needs to be punished. We don’t need Trojan horses in the Knesset.”

This narrative is extremely familiar to our own right-wing nuts and they’ve carried this narrative over to the United States seamlessly. Michelle Malkin has dubbed it the “thug flotilla” and hopes the Israelis kill the passengers on the remaining boat carrying the thuggish 1976 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire.

Former Reagan Assistant Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts explains the mentality of his estranged ideological allies:

Many Christian evangelicals, brainwashed by their pastors that it is God’s will for Americans to protect Israel, will believe the Israeli story, especially when it is unlikely they will ever hear any other. Conservative Americans, especially on Memorial Day when they are celebrating feats of American arms, will admire Israel for its toughness.   Here in north Georgia where I am at the moment, I have heard several say, admiringly,  “Them, Israelis, they don’t put up with nuthin.”

Conservative Americans want the US to be like Israel. They do not understand why  the US doesn’t stop pissing around after nine years and just go ahead and defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan.  They don’t understand why the US didn’t defeat whoever was  opposing American forces in Iraq. Conservatives are incensed that America had to “win”  the war by buying off the Iraqis and putting them on the US payroll. Israel murders people and then blames its victims. This appeals to American conservatives, who want the US to do the same.

Coincidentally, another former Reagan official was on one of the boats and has been interviewed by NPR:

“We awakened to have the commandos already on board. They’d come up very quietly in their little boats, their Zodiacs. There was just enough time to get a small passive resistance effort started — tried to keep them out of the wheelhouse and away from the engine room. Some people got roughed up, punched and kicked, and you know, arms twisted, and some cuts and bruises and things along that line. Nothing critical at that point.”

“We had talked about what to do and how to be non-violent because the last thing you want to do is provoke armed soldiers. I’ve seen three newspapers since the plane landed in New Jersey, and several times the Israelis have been quoted as saying that their guys were armed with paint guns. Well, indeed they were, as well as pistols and automatic rifles and stun(?) grenades and pepper spray.”

“It was a humanitarian aid mission. And I cannot speak for anybody on that trip except me and the people that I was associated with in going over there. And our hope was that the Israelis come to the conclusion that what they should do, which would avoid the kinds of things that have happened now, was to let the materials come in.”

“Well, you now, nobody wants anything bad to happen to Israel, understand, and I’m certainly in that category. But I fear that bad things are going to happen if they keep doing what they’re doing. And not just to Israel, bad things are going to happen to Palestinians and to Americans, because of what is happening in Palestine and also because of what is NOT happening in Palestine. All three groups are going to suffer.”

I never imagined I’d be wanting people to listen to a former Reagan diplomat so badly.

Caleb Howe is a cancer.

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We’ve all met that guy. Maybe he went to your high school, sat next to you on an airplane that one time, has a nationally syndicated talk-radio and television show, or even attended one of those Tea Party protest and ended spouting off with his misspelled protest sign while someone interviewed him for a video you saw on YouTube. This type of individual is what I like to refer to as the “taint hair” of society.

“Taint hairs” serve no purpose in life but to irritate and annoy the whole of society. Their shit-eating grin of an attitude and toxic personalities, while giving the individual mysterious origins (probably the product of sexual abuse, universal rejection throughout their existance, or the deep-seeded idea that their lives are worthless unless they’re making other people miserable), make their infected rash of “character” stand out like the sore polyp on the asshole of the country. Caleb Howe is exactly this kind of asshole infection.

That episode of South Park, the clip in particular, put perfectly into words that attitude of why you can let guys like Caleb Howe or Eric Cartman, kids of a similar mind who believe they can never be taken down a notch since they’re always willing to shamelessly up the ante with their words (no matter how awful or retarded those words make them sound) when there’s no real or immediate perceived threat to them (it’s the internet after all!). The more defenseless, disabled, or weak the target is the better for them. People like that will not let up with their demeanor, no matter what’s said to them or who calls them out on their clear and universally repugnant behavior. What’s left to do when you’ve exhausted every other ration option you know of to satisfy their hunger for attention? You can’t just give up or forget about the problem and hope things will get better.

Instead physical action needs to be taken against them, to have them be beaten into a pulp, to be physically incapacitated, to be destroyed in order to understand that what they do and say to others in life has actual repercussions in the civilized world, where civilized people with even the remotest bit of compassion will stand against the entirety of everything they take pride in and build their repulsive characters on. How else can a disease change itself unless you put every ounce of effort into eradicating it?

And we’re not talking about a horrible and ruthless condition such as cancer here. Caleb Howe is like polio. He is god-awful scourge on the world, a blight of intelligence and moral character in every sense of the word, but with the right people working against him, attacking every vector of his words and callous opinion, he can eventually be eradicated from the face of the world. People will throw parades, celebrate across the globe, and cheer in unison when a personality like Caleb Howe’s is eliminated from the face of the earth. After all, Caleb Howe and his ilk are the weakest kind of disease, a condition that didn’t even deserve to exist, a condition that can instantaneously be stopped with the proper treatment and right attitude, due to how inherently weak and void of a backbone the core of the virus is.

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RedState blogger mocks Roger Ebert’s lack of USA respect, cancer

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Caleb Howe loves to push buttons (it comes with the Conservative wingnut territory I suppose). As a member of the site RedState.com Caleb has his own little chunk of internet to report on whatever he feels like, and we know Caleb is the real deal and not some fly-by-night Tea Bag because he’s been registered on RedState for five years plus now.

Anyhow, on Cinco De Mayo of this year (May 5th for those of you who don’t live in California, Arizona, Texas, or believe in Spanish) five school kids from California, in a pretty clear cut case of trying to start some shit, decided to wear American Flag t-shirts and bandannas to school and boast about their love of nationalism (in true Wingnut fashion). The students were sent home for the day as a result. A high school with a “rich ethnic and socioeconomic diversity”, oppressive immigration laws getting passed in the state next door, instigating and breaking the school’s dress code (by wearing bandannas, flag shirts are not mentioned in the policy) to make a smug point, what was their liberal America-hateing principal thinking anyway?

Roger Ebert had something to say on the topic, specifically on Twitter:

@ebertchicago Kids who wear American Flag t-shirts on 5 May should have to share a lunchroom table with those who wear a hammer and sickle on 4 July.

But like any sane or objective opinion on the internet, the intellectual Mr. Ebert caught some nasty responses for his comment. Despite all of the challenges Mr. Ebert has faced in recent years, especially the removal of his lower jaw due to cancer treatment last month, the famous Chicago Sun-Times writer has continued to remain an eloquent and vocal voice both in print and online (and with a talent like his it’d be a shame to have it any other way).

Responding to his Twitter critics on his Chicago Sun-Times blog, Mr. Ebert pointed out the sensitivities surrounding the US and Cinco De Mayo celebrations while also drawing comparisons to similar instances where one might get curb-stomped for trying to instigate something along the lines of that American Flag shirt flap. This includes, among other examples, wearing symbols of British colonialism (Union Jack) in Boston during the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade, or an even more relevant example, wearing anything related to the NY Yankees ANYWHERE in Boston in the spring (man what’s it with Boston and all the unchecked aggression anyway?).

However Caleb Howe, in his infinite wisdom, felt it was necessary to go even further past Ebert’s well written response and counter it by deconstructing the esteemed film critic’s argument and analyzing some of the fallacies contained in Mr. Ebert’s piece. Mr. Howe did this by making fun of Roger Ebert for having cancer:

Image and inset picture of Caleb Howe courtesy of Gawker.

Way to go, Caleb Howe. Remember when that Tea Party protester threw some Monopoly money at an Alzheimer’s patient who was silently petitioning for Health Care Reform? This is kind of like that. Haters gonna hate!

Gawker has the a full rundown of the shaming details.