Could the U.S. give up Mount Rushmore? Iconic site is on list of 'sacred lands' UN says must be returned to Native Americans

UK Daily Mail  "James Anaya, the UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, unveiled his recommendations in Geneva on Friday after completing a 12-day visit to the U.S. where he met with representatives of indigenous peoples in six states.

"The fact-finder also had a chance to meet members of the Obama administration and briefed the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, but no member of Congress agreed to meet with him."   Here comes Alcatraz all over again.

"The U.S. is home to some two million Native Americans, nearly half of them living on 310 reservations. While some tribes have prospered thanks to the booming gambling business, others are trailing national averages in income and health."


Rick Moran: UN official says US should return land to the Indians  "This is only one of the problems with satisfying land claims of "indigenous" people. The tribes with which we are familiar with today may have arrived relatively recently in the New World (3-5,000 years), according to some linguistic studies. Before their arrival, a group of Native Americans known as the Clovis people occupied much of the US and Canada. What happened to them? No one knows, but it's a pretty good bet that the newcomers either killed them off or interbreeding gradually eliminated the Clovis culture.

"What part of a Native American land repatriation would go to the ancestors of the Clovis people - assuming any could be found?

"For that matter, there isn't a European culture that didn't displace another one somewhere along the line. Do we give England back to the Celts? Or the Anglo Saxons? The Normans conquered England and oppressed the indigenous people as much or more as we oppressed the Indians. Where do you draw the line? How far back can one go to satisfy "indigenous" rights?"

More Media Bias

http://www.conservativedailynews.com/2012/02/death-of-journalism-1/

Neal Boortz:  Blatant stupefying media bias .. but who's surprised?   "Last week we talked a bit about the Obama campaign spot ...  In that commercial here is what Bill Clinton said:

“That’s one thing George Bush said that was right:  the President is the Decider-in-Chief.  Nobody can make that decision for you.  Look, he knew what would happen.  Suppose the navy SEALs had gone in there and it hadn’t been bin Laden?  Suppose they’d been captured or killed?  The downside would have been horrible for him.  But he reasoned, ‘I cannot in good conscience do nothing.’  He took the harder and more honorable path, and one that produced, in my opinion, the best result.”

" Immediately the ad was criticized because Clinton mused about how horrible it would have been if the Navy SEALs had been killed … how horrible it would have been for OBAMA!"

.... “That’s one thing George Bush said that was right:  the President is the Decider-in-Chief.  Nobody can make that decision for you.  Look, he knew what would happen.  Suppose the navy SEALs had gone in there and it hadn’t been bin Laden?  Suppose they’d been captured or killed?  The downside would have been horrible.  But he reasoned, ‘I cannot in good conscience do nothing.’  He took the harder and more honorable path, and one that produced, in my opinion, the more honorable and best result.”

"OK … now tell me that there’s no media bias in support of Obama’s reelection.  Go ahead … I’m listening!"  More on this here.

greenberg-art.com/.

Cleveland Plain Dealer: One of Five Arrested in Bridge Blowup Plot Signed 'Occupy' Group's Warehouse Lease  "As to the Cleveland Occupy group's worries about a "disaster," that would seem to depend on whether the establishment press outside of Cleveland cares enough to do follow-up reports. I'll bet they won't. But if this story were about someone active in the Tea Party who had gone rogue, it would already have been widely headlined nationwide."
Via Newsbusters

Made you look, didn't I?

ABC’s ‘GCB’ Carves Own Twisted Version of 10 Commandments; Controversial show escalates agenda of mocking Christians with attack on Bible.  "Such a selfish and conceited painting of biblical holy words is clearly meant to scorn Christian beliefs, despite liberals’ wild defense of the show. So ABC, when are you releasing that salacious version of the Koran?"


CBS Aghast at Ted Nugent's Profanity, But Honored Bill Maher by Reading His Op-Ed
"So CBS took umbrage at conservative Ted Nugent's profane outburst, but gave Maher a microphone to tell people to calm down after he had showered women with the worst of insults. It reveals a double standard toward outspoken conservatives and liberals; CBS made sure to emphasize that Nugent is not a moderate, and yet treated the profane Maher like the voice of reason."

A fiercely left-wing leader to strike fear into the hearts of France's rich (Updated)

The Independent (UK) "France will be waking up today to its first Socialist President for 17 years – and bracing for radical change. There are all kinds of reasons why one might fear a François Hollande presidency, especially if you are a prosperous French person.
"The 57-year-old Socialist has openly admitted that he "does not like the rich" and declared that "my real enemy is the world of finance". This means taxing the wealthy by up to 75 per cent, curtailing the activities of Paris as a centre for financial dealing, and ploughing millions into creating more civil service jobs."


Update: French election results have implications for US economy, foreign policy  "While any talks between the two leaders will likely to focus on diplomatic and economic relations, Obama is probably taking a lesson from the outcome of the French election.Obama, like Sarkozy, is campaigning for re-election amid a faltering economy, high unemployment and voter discontent over spending and cuts."

http://townhall.com/political-cartoons/

Thomas Lifson and Rick Moran: Europe's Morning After  

"In view of his promise to tax millionaires at 75%, the wealthy of France are already making plans to relocate, as French income taxes stop at the border (unlike American income taxes -- we are the exception among major nations). Thanks to the EU, French plutocrats can live anywhere in the union, with no visa.

"Hollande also plans on reducing unemployment the old fashioned way -- drastically increasing the number of government workers, thus expanding the welfare state even beyond the generous cradle to grave cocoon in which the French state lovingly wraps its citizens. He has made vague promises that he won't add to the debt to realize his economic goals, but it is very difficult to see how he can avoid it."   Anything here sound familiar?

Neal Boortz: France elects a socialist  ...."He wants the rich taxed at 75% … and the voters think this will fund all of their government entitlements for generations to come.  If it doesn’t, just raise taxes some more.

"Sound familiar?  Only if you’ve been paying attention." ....

We’ll stick with three distinct economic models.  Capitalism, or free enterprise; Socialism … and that third one....

• Under that third economic system the means of production is privately owned,  but heavily controlled and regulated by government.  Government tells the businesses what and how much they can produce, what they can charge, who they must hire, what they must be paid … etc.  That type of economic system is called economic Fascism. 

"I’ll just leave it to you to figure out where our Dear Ruler comes down on all this."

Obama invites Hollande to White House  "In a telephone call, Obama "indicated that he looks forward to working closely with Mr Hollande and his government on a range of shared economic and security challenges," White House spokesman ."Jay Carney said in a statement.

President Obama called President-elect Francois Hollande of France to congratulate him after the results of the French election were announced today.  President Obama indicated that he looks forward to working closely with Mr. Hollande and his government on a range of shared economic and security challenges.  President Obama noted that he will welcome President-elect Hollande to Camp David for the G-8 Summit and to Chicago for the NATO Summit later this month, and proposed that they meet beforehand at the White House.  President Obama and President-elect Hollande each reaffirmed the important and enduring alliance between the people of the United States and France.

 An Uncommitted Socialist  "Hollande’s victory appears to be less an endorsement of him than a referendum on Sarkozy. The new president remains a broadly unknown, untested politician with no clear agenda. Based on Hollande’s campaign, French citizens understand only that he is no Sarkozy. It remains to be seen how he will govern and above all, how he will manage the looming sovereign-debt crisis."

The Very Short Life of Julia (Updated, 5/7/2012)

Hope 'n Change

For more on "Julia", read here.


Morning Bell: A Better Life for Julia  "There’s another vision — a conservative vision. The Heritage Foundation created its own version of the “Julia” cartoon and showed how individuals would benefit under conservative reforms like those in Heritage’s Saving the American Dream plan. Instead of growing government and increasing its involvement in our lives, conservative policies restrain government and give individuals more freedom to make their own choices and succeed on their own merits."
Click here to view the "Julia" slide show from Heritage.

Al-Qaida spokesman Adam Gadahn a fan of 60 Minutes but said Fox News 'lacks neutrality' and CBS is 'close to being unbiased'

Guardian  "Osama bin Laden pondered the merits of US television news channels as he considered how to extract the best propaganda benefit from the tenth anniversary of 9/11 last year, and concluded that CBS was "close to being unbiased".
"But an American-born media adviser for al-Qaeda warned Bin Laden to beware of the broadcasters' "cunning methods" as he described Fox News as a channel in the "abyss" that should "die in anger", CNN as too close to the US government and MSNBC as questionable after it fired one of its most prominent presenters, Keith Olbermann."

Speaking of the press and whom they serve: Brokaw: White House Correspondents' dinner hurting the press  "He said the annual black-tie affair, which features Washington reporters and editors drinking, joking and partying with Hollywood stars and the city's top lawmakers -- including the president -- is contributing to the public's mistrust of the media.

" "If there’s ever an event that separates the press from the people they’re supposed to be serving, symbolically, it is that one." he said."

Watch this bullying of President Bush by the toady* Stephen Colbert in 2006:

*The term "toady" I get from the movie "A Christmas Story". The little nobody intimidated the other kids fearlessly as long as he was standing with the big bully behind him. Likewise, there was Colbert in a room full of media people whom he knew did not like President Bush - Colbert had seen their scornful questions at White House press conferences- and knew they would broadcast his every snarky remark worldwide with praiseful glee. As with the little toady in the movie, Colbert bought his fame cheaply. TD

Rubio: “The president has become divisive, cynical, given to hyperbole on these issues, always looking to pit Americans against each other in some sort of political calculation”

Weasel Zippers   "Rubio’s far too nice. Obama has not “become” these things — they are in his DNA and have defined him from the beginning."
Quoting from The Hill:

“When this president ran for office in 2008, he said he was going to be different, he said he was going to be a post-partisan uniter that brings everyone together and three and a half years later the president, quite frankly, has become like everyone else in Washington D.C,” the freshman senator said on Fox News Sunday.
“This obsessive effort to win his reelection — he has lost himself and he has lost what makes him different and this issue of how they’ve used the bin Laden raid is one example about how his administration has become just like everybody else,” Rubio added. . . .
Rubio said that Obama’s time in Washington has made him more “cynical” and “divisive.”

Though I agree that Obama was always like this and has not  changed a bit, I think Sen. Marco Rubio worded it wisely and will be taken more seriously by some whose minds need to be changed. TD

Castro: Obama rips United States and compliments Cuba to visitors

Education Action Group Foundation:

“President Obama knows this only too well and has talked about it with some of his visitors. He candidly told one of them: ‘The problem is that the United States sends soldiers while Cuba, however, sends doctors.’” Really? That’s what our commander-in-chief said to visitors, presumably at the White House?
Is it any wonder our standing in the world continues to diminish?

Hat tip to Weasel Zippers

Interactive 2010 US Census Map

NY Times

You can zoom in and out to get the information on the places you know.Use your cursor and you can move around the map and zoom in on specific counties to get current stats. It is very interesting!Just glide your cursor over the map and it displays every county.Can't imagine how long it took to create this map!Amazzzzzing!

Hat tip to Chuck MacNab at The Missouri Patriot in Wentzville, Missouri

Elizabeth Warren's punchline problem (UPDATED)

Thomas Lifson  "The awful truth is dawning on many Democrats, possibly including Elizabeth Warren herself: her candidacy for "Teddy Kennedy's seat" has turned into a nightmare, raising all sorts of uncomfortable issues for public scrutiny. Even worse, Alinsky's  favorite tool, ridicule, is being deployed to make points that inflict lasting damage on sacred cows of the left like affirmative action and the transcendent wisdom of Harvard Law School progressives.
"It is starting to damage the Democratic brand."


UPDATE; Michael Barone: Comedic Counting by Race
"In the meantime, what may undermine racial quotas and preferences most effectively is ridicule. For isn’t the idea that the blond, blue-eyed Elizabeth Warren suffered some terrible disadvantage and is in need of special preference because she is one-thirty-second Cherokee just laugh-out-loud funny?"


Mark Steyn: Composite Americans  Shouldn't it be "Composite- hyphen- Americans"? But I digress.
"Then there’s “Elizabeth,” a 62-year-old Democratic Senate candidate from Massachusetts. Like Barack’s white girlfriend, she couldn’t be black. She would if she could, but she couldn’t. But she could be a composite — a white woman and an Indian woman, all mixed up in one! Not Indian in the sense of Ashton Kutcher putting on brownface make-up and a fake-Indian accent in his amusing new commercial for the hip lo-fat snack Popchips. But Indian in the sense of checking the “Are you Native American?” box on the Association of American Law Schools form, which Elizabeth Warren did for much of her adult life. According to her, she’s part Cherokee and part Delaware. Not in the Joe Biden sense, I hasten to add, but Delaware in the sense of the Indian tribe named in honor of the home state of Big F***kin’ Chief Dances with Plugs."  Mark, Mark, Mark. Sigh.
But wait! There's more!
...."George Zimmerman, redneck; Elizabeth Warren, redskin. Under the Third Reich’s Nuremberg Laws, Ms. Warren would have been classified as Aryan and Mr. Zimmerman as non-Aryan. Now it’s the other way round. Progress!"  Emphasis mine.

Obama’s Lil’ Pet

http://www.conservativedailynews.com/2012/05/obamas-lil-pet/

The ‘Crucify Them’ Presidency

Wall Street Journal: KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL  "The Armendariz story matters precisely because he is the model Obama regulator. Hamstrung by both public opinion and Congress, President Obama has turned to these types to enact his broader agenda."
...."In other words, he was a perfect general for Mr. Obama’s war against natural gas. The White House is hostile to fossil fuels, yet it has been unable to get Congress or the public to act. So it has unleashed the EPA to crack down on those industries.

The bonanza in natural gas has nonetheless been tricky for the feds, since hydraulic fracturing regulation is technically left to the states. The agency’s solution has been to invent enforcement actions out of existing federal law to harass drillers."

...."Mr. Armendariz apologized for his “words,” though you might wonder why. He was picked to do a job-to “crucify” industry-and he did it. His real mistake was admitting it."  H/T to Canada Free Press

American Enterprise Institute

What the Frack? More Regs for Domestic Production  "The congressman noted the hypocrisy of Obama touting a rise in energy production while casting a shadow over the extraction method responsible for that rise.

"“In just the last month we have seen new regulations placed on the production of clean coal and natural gas,” Bishop said. 

"“We can be responsible stewards of our natural resources while also encouraging and supporting clean safe energy production on our public lands. The two are not mutually exclusive.” 

http://scottthong.wordpress.com/2007/04/20/global-warming-editorial-cartoons-pt-3/

Obama’s Disgraceful Abandonment of Chen Guangcheng

Mona Charen: China has nothing to fear from a weak and cowardly U.S. State Department.


Heritage Insider: Chen Guangcheng’s Battle Against Forced Abortion  "When Chen stood up against the ostensibly illegal but widespread use of forced sterilization and forced abortions, however, he became a target for the provincial government in Linyi, a city of 10 million people.

"Local people described women who were eight months pregnant being forced to have abortions. One or both parents of two children were forcibly sterilized, and relatives were held hostage until they complied, Chen reported. All this happened even though the government had outlawed coercion to achieve its development and population goals. […]"

LA Times: Texas pastor a key player in Chen Guangcheng case  "During the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, Fu led a group of fellow students from Liaocheng University in Shandong. That same year, he became a Christian and held worship services at a secret "house church" with help from his wife, Heidi.

"Meanwhile, Fu taught English at a Communist Party school in Beijing. He called himself "God's double-agent." "


NY Times: The case is creating sharp new tensions in American relations with China
"It is no wonder that he took desperate measures. According to The Times, he scaled the wall around his house, gave his guards the slip and made a 300-plus-mile journey to Beijing where American diplomats are believed to be sheltering him. But there are serious concerns about what has since happened to his wife, daughter and others who aided his escape."

http://www.nationalreview.com/

Chen: From ‘Purported Diplomatic Triumph’ to ‘Diplomatic Fiasco’  "The activist against China's forced abortions calls a congressional hearing for help as new questions arise about Obama administration appeasement to the [People's Republic of China]."
....“It should have been obvious to U.S. officials all along that there is no way to guarantee Mr. Chen’s safety so long as he is within reach of the Chinese police state,” she said. “The U.S. should not have given in to Chinese pressure for Chen to be taken out of the safety of the U.S. embassy.”

Rick Moran:China might bail Obama out of dissident deal mess  "Hillary Clinton, no slouch politically, appears to be orchestrating the departure of Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng after the State Department botched his release from the US embassy on Wednesday.
"And the Chinese, eager for their own reasons to get the incident behind them, look like they're ready to allow Chen to leave China in order to "study" abroad."


The Foreign Policy Initiative: U.S. Must Hold China to its Promises in Chen Guangcheng Case  "The Obama administration must immediately clear up any doubt about Mr. Chen’s wishes.  Moreover, the deal the U.S. struck with China regarding Chen’s “humane treatment” in future appears not to have addressed the fate of the people who helped Chen in his flight.  U.S. officials simply “raised” the issue and urged that there be no retribution against them.  Much more needs to be done for them.