Wednesday, May 22, 2013

It Can Happen Here

Political Cartoons by Robert Ariail
Victor Davis Hanson  "Shortly before the second-term inauguration of Barack Obama this January, I wrote the following of my worries over the Obama way of doing business:
But the untruths and hypocrisy hover in the partisan atmosphere and incrementally and insidiously undermine each new assertion that we hear from the president — some of them perhaps necessary and logical. Indeed, the more emphatically he adds “make no mistake about it,” “let me be perfectly clear,” “I’m not kidding,” or the ubiquitous “me,” “my,” and “I” to each new assertion, the more a growing number of people will come to know from the past that what follows simply is not true. Does this matter? Yes, because when the reckoning comes, it will be seen as logical rather than aberrant — and long overdue.
"I ended my prognostications with the warning, “And so a reckoning is on the near horizon. Let us pray it does not take us all down with his administration.”

Hanson then concludes that it almost has in several ways...
Political Cartoons by Ken Catalino

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Alan Caruba; Silencing Free Speech on College Campuses

Warning Signs   "The most fundamental fear of the Founders was a central government grown too large and acquiring powers to itself not delineated or prohibited by the Constitution. That document is devoted to limitations on the federal government and the states at the time it was introduced demanded that a Bill of Rights be included before they would ratify it.
"It is a precious legacy for all Americans, but it has also been the target for all manner of individuals and groups that want to impose their own interpretation on it and to expand it in ways that actually undermine it."
 
.... "Silencing free speech on our nation’s campuses is the official policy of the Obama administration. The mandate must be overturned before countless students find themselves expelled from colleges and universities for the flimsiest reasons. It affects what can be taught and discussed on those campuses. It is in direct contempt of the freedom of speech embedded in the First Amendment."

I'm from the IRS and I'm here to help you

A smoking gun in IRS scandal?  "Via Ed Morrissey, Jeffrey Lord at the American Spectator has tracked down either a fascinating coincidence or a smoking gun that puts Obama right in the middle of the IRS scandal."
 
"On Sunday, "The Washington Post" tried to argue that one reason the IRS might have singled out Tea Party for paralyzing harassment in 2010 was due to a sudden surge in applications for a tax-exempt status. Monday, the "Post's" own factchecker said there was no surge."
Political Cartoons by Henry Payne 

Monday, May 20, 2013

Arabs Fly Nazi Flag near Hevron

Arutz Sheva   "Hundreds of residents of Gush Etzion, south of Jerusalem, were astounded Monday morning to see an oversized Nazi flag flying next to a mosque in the Arab town of Beit Omar.
....
.... "I felt we were going back 75 years, losing our hold on the land. The Arabs no longer feel the need to hide their murderous tendencies, announcing out loud that they wish to annihilate us."
"An IDF spokesman said that the flag was hung on an electrical line, and that they were waiting to professionals to come and remove it."
 

Only one word changed

Alan Caruba; The Morally Straight Boy Scouts of America

Warning Signs  "On May 23rd, the BSA board of directors will vote on whether to change its policies to allow openly homosexual scouts as members and/or gay scout leaders. A survey of its members released in early May demonstrated that a majority support keeping the current, longtime policy of exclusion in place, prohibiting homosexuals from joining or leading the organization. Fully 61% favored keeping the current policy while 34% opposed it."....
"As attacks mounted against the BSA, the Supreme Court in 2000 ruled in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale that it and all other private organizations are constitutionally protected under the First Amendment of freedom of association to set membership standards. In 2004, the BSA issued a statement that “Boy Scouts of America believes that homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the obligations of the Scout Oath and Scout law to be morally straight and clean in thought, word and deed.” "

Next on the agenda: to force Girl Scouts to accept men as leaders. Can you honestly say it will not happen?

Mark Steyn; Once government is ensnared in every aspect of life, a bureaucracy grows increasingly capricious.

Political Cartoons by Michael Ramirez
Mark Steyn  "...Barack Obama urged students to pay no attention to those paranoid types who “incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity.” Oddly enough, in recent days the most compelling testimony for this view of government has come from the president himself, who insists with a straight face that he had no idea that the Internal Revenue Service had spent two years targeting his political enemies until he “learned about it from the same news reports that I think most people learned about this.” Like you, all he knows is what he reads in the papers. Which is odd, because his Justice Department is bugging those same papers, so you’d think he’d at least get a bit of a heads-up. 
Political Cartoons by Chip Bok
"....That week, Kimberley Strassel began her Wall Street Journal column thus:
Try this thought experiment: You decide to donate money to Mitt Romney. You want change in the Oval Office, so you engage in your democratic right to send a check.
Several days later, President Barack Obama, the most powerful man on the planet, singles you out by name. . . . The message from the man who controls the Justice Department (which can indict you), the SEC (which can fine you), and the IRS (which can audit you), is clear: You made a mistake donating that money.

BREAKING: Nationwide TEA PARTY PROTESTS Set for Tuesday at IRS Offices (Pass It On!)

The Gateway Pundit:
PROTEST THE CORRUPTION – PROTEST THE CRIMINAL OBAMA IRS 
Thanks to Barack Obama the Tea Party is once again outraged and motivated.
The Tea Party Patriots on behalf of Tea Party, Patriot groups, 9/12, liberty activists, and the American people, we are calling for anyone and everyone to protest the IRS’ complete abuse of power on Tuesday, May 21, 2013 at noon local time.
irs protest
NOW IS THE TIME TO STAND UP AGAINST THIS HORRIBLE ABUSE OF POWER!
Tuesday – May 21 – Noon – at Your Local IRS Office.

The true reason behind the IRS scandal was control of political activity by grass roots populist conservative organizations.

I'd say the author posits that Obama comes from third-world roots and mentors, turning America into a third-world banana republic, aided by a banana republic press with voters to match. Shame on us.
Political Cartoons by Ken Catalino
Intellectual Conservatives "Virtually all of the past abuses were in furtherance of political agendas, consolidation of power and restriction of the opposition.  The current scandal is no exception excepting that the surrounding circumstances illustrate an administration hell bent on achieving absolute power if possible, and destroying the social and cultural foundations of American society.  That’s what “change” was all about." 
Political Cartoons by Glenn McCoy
"Obama loves to portray himself as a force for good and right in the world, all the while maintaining an under the radar interest in transforming our nation into a third world, banana republic style country which the could govern in the tradition of Juan Peron, Hugo Chavez, or better still, Fidel Castro." 

Krauthammer; Redacted truth, subjunctive outrage

Charles Krauthammer  "Note to GOP re Benghazi: Stop calling it Watergate, Iran-contra, bigger than both, etc. First, it might well be, but we don’t know. History will judge. Second, overhyping will only diminish the importance of the scandal if it doesn’t meet presidency-breaking standards. Third, focusing on the political effects simply plays into the hands of Democrats desperately claiming that this is nothing but partisan politics.
Political Cartoons by Bob Gorrell
"Let the facts speak for themselves. They are damning enough. Let Gregory Hicks, the honorable, apolitical second-in-command that night in Libya, movingly and grippingly demolish the president’s Benghazi mantra that “what I have always tried to do is just get all the facts” and “every piece of information that we got, as we got it, we laid it out for the American people”.
"On the contrary. Far from assiduously gathering and releasing information, the administration was assiduously trying to control and suppress it.".....  (Emphasis added)
Political Cartoons by Gary Varvel

Sunday, May 12, 2013

Reading list for you in Tunnel Dweller's absence

The Dweller family departs on the Holland America Oosterdam for an Alaska cruise and likely no access to the internet at that time since it costs mega bucks a minute. Perhaps this will entertain you, but news has a short shelf life.

Islamic Jew-hatred: 'Mounting evidence' that Boston Jihad Bombers Slit Throats, Murdered 3 Jewish Boys

CBS Anchor: 'We Are Getting Big Stories Wrong, Over and Over Again'
"And Pelley said the republic relies on the quality of the news business. "Democracies succeed or fail based on their journalism," said Pelley. "America is strong because its journalism is strong. That's how democracies work. They're only as good as the quality of the information that the public possesses. And that is where we come in." "

'Obama's America' Producer Requests Michael Moore Be Removed From Motion Picture Academy Board   "Many conservatives were disgusted this year when "2016: Obama's America" didn't receive an Oscar nomination for best documentary."

Sen. Collins: Obama should condemn IRS for targeting Tea Party groups

The Liberal Wall of Benghazi Denial Cracks  "In discussing the revelations of the last week, [Maureen] Dowd must, of course, try to depict Republican attempts to bring accountability to the scandal as equally reprehensible as the administration’s failures and lies. But her framing the current debate as a contest between “Hillaryland” and “Foxworld” has at least the virtue of acknowledging the fact that what we are discussing is a disgraceful dereliction of duty by the administration:"...

ABC: Petraeus called final Benghazi talking points “useless” the day before Rice’s full Ginsburg; Update: Transcript added

 

Crazy Nancy Attacks GOP Over Benghazi

 "That's the point, Nancy! When you liberals demand that the subject is changed, we better dig deeper into the issue you don't want to talk about. "

Benghazi Coverup Uncovered  "Here are the relevant timeline features from Doug Ross (time is local D.C. time)"

Covering for Obama  "After all, the whole saga of Benghazi — before, during and after the terror attack — reflects nothing so much as the ultimate expression of Barack Obama’s politics. His preference for showing weakness abroad and contempt at home reached its full flowering in the massacre and its aftermath."

 Victoria Toensing: Administration Relying on Shoddy Benghazi Report to Absolve Itself of Blame "The White House has touted the Accountability Review Board (ARB) investigation of the Benghazi massacre as a review “led by two men of unimpeachable expertise and credibility that oversaw a process that was rigorous and unsparing.” In fact, the report was purposefully incomplete and willfully misleading."

Two by Stephen Hayes: Carney Keeps on Digging  ...."But in his attempts to protect himself and his administration colleagues, Carney offered a series of highly misleading answers that seem likely to do additional damage to his cause and White House credibility."
The Benghazi Scandal Grows  'One day earlier, analysts with the CIA’s Office of Terrorism Analysis had drafted a set of unclassified talking points policymakers could use to discuss the attacks in Benghazi, Libya. But this new version​—​produced with input from senior Obama administration policymakers​—​was a shadow of the original.'


 

IRS reaped hatred of Tea Party sown by Democrats and the media

Legal Insurrection   "Since the rise of the Tea Party movement in the spring of 2009, the movement has been the target of Democratic politicians and supportive media.
"The Tea Party was called un-American and terrorists for showing up at health care town halls and voicing an opinion.
....
"The Tea Party movement was called racist without basis, often based on false and misleading videos put out by groups like Think Progress, and even as non-white leaders in the Republican Party rose from and with the support of the Tea Party movement.
"MSNBC and particularly Chris Matthews have devoted endless hours to inventing “dog whistles” supposedly blown by the Tea Party movement.
With every violent act in the news, the media search began for a Tea Party connection to confirm the now-failed ”eliminationist narrative.”  Sometimes the connection was invented out of thin air, and then amplified by the media, as in the cases of the Gabby Giffords and Aurora movie theater shootings.
"There has been an unrelenting assault on the Tea Party movement by Democrats and the media.  Sometimes establishment Republicans piled on, but they were the tail on the Tea Party-hating Democratic-media dog.
Is it any wonder that “low level” IRS employees took it on themselves to target Tea Party-related groups?  And is it any wonder that senior level officials knew about it?
....
"Those IRS employees simply reaped the hatred of the Tea Party sown by Democrats and the media."

Here is an example of how the media creates hatred of conservatives:

"Law and Order": another TV show that sucker-punches half the American population I wrote at that time:
We began watching a 2009 episode of "Law and Order" entitled "Fed" last night and I had to shut it off at the start. We saw people like ourselves - TEA partiers, portrayed as rifle-toting, hateful bigots. Only Hollywood is capable of inspiring dislike and outrage by the simple means of the skillful acting of those who portray people like you and me as despicable and violent. They give us the same treatment they give to pharmaceutical  and insurance companies.
May God bless all courageous conservatives in our country trying to stem the socialist tide sweeping America because the left has such massive force to bring against them. And the propaganda is being spoon-fed to the American public. How do we stand a chance?


If you watched last night's episode of Law and Order Criminal Intent, you might have noticed the show's most recent dig at conservatives.