Hobby Lobby and “rights” and Obamacare

Legal Insurrection   "Earlier this year, I covered the story of the buycott is support of Hobby Lobby.
"Over 60,000 Americans including myself bought items in support of an important legal case initiated by owner David Green."

....

"Some of the commentary to Green’s stance show a complete ignorance of free market principles blended with a heady doses of progressive condescension.  This Comment is a perfect example:"

I am sad to hear you don’t care about your employees. You are willing to close your business for this instead of offering your employees health care benefits? Do your employees know you make business decisions based on your religion in that you want to control their life? Don’t you have health care that offers the morning pill/contraception? Is this more because you don’t want your profit margins to be reduce?

.... "It turns out that Hobby Lobby provides generous health care benefits to its employees, including birth control."....

Diary bombshell: RFK Jr.’s secret slams against Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Gov. Cuomo

Via Drudge  "The Post exclusively reported Sunday how Robert F. Kennedy Jr. grappled with what he called his “lust demons” and kept a scorecard of more than two dozen conquests in a secret diary. Below are more sensational details from the journal, in which RFK Jr., a member of the political elite, bashes everyone from then-brother-in-law Andrew Cuomo to the Rev. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson."
....

“ 'Al Sharpton has done more damage to the black cause than [segregationist Alabama Gov.] George Wallace. He has suffocated the decent black leaders in New York,” he says. “His transparent venal blackmail and extortion schemes taint all black leadership.”
"Rev. Al Sharpton gave Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “the creeps,” he wrote in his diary.
"He goes on to call Sharpton a “buffoon” who has never escaped the “stench” of his advocacy for Tawana Brawley, the black Dutchess County teen who fabricated a story about six white men raping her in 1987."
...
"He writes that Jesse Jackson has “a desperate and destructive addiction to publicity.”W
"He recalls that Jackson, at labor leader Cesar Chavez’s funeral, pushed “Cesar’s friends and family out of the way to make himself lead pall bearer.”


Kennedy Jr. also blasted Andrew Cuomo and president G.W. Bush, but later groveled over his words about Jackson, Sharpton and Cuomo.

 I have nothing but respect for Governor Cuomo, Rev. Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, all of whom have distinguished themselves as extraordinary national leaders over the past decade.”

Leaked U.N. Report Confirms Global Warming Is Nonexistent, Planet Actually Cooling…

I repeat: Leaked U.N. Report Confirms Global Warming Is Nonexistent, Planet Actually Cooling…

Weasel Zippers   "Well, this is awkward. A leaked report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that the world is not warming but is actually cooling, and will continue to get colder until the middle of the century.
....
...." In fact, the Arctic ice caps have grown by 60 percent since 2012."

Full article here: About that whole global warming thing

Remember this lib effort to name hurricanes after global warming, um, climate change deniers?

Petition to the WMO to name extreme storms after climate change deniers.
 

Here Are The 3 Dumbest Things That Obama Administration Officials Said About Syria Just Today!

Downtrend  "Jeepers! It’s not even 3PM on the East Coast and the Obama Administration has already given us a full news day of dumb statements made about the looming conflict in Syria. We can’t wait for the President’s round of interviews tonight. That should be the icing on the cake!
"Here are the 3 dumbest things that have been said (or arguably, could ever be said) about Syria just today."

 

How Thomas Sowell Long Ago Predicted Obamacare's Looming Failure

Forbes   "Thomas Sowell wrote a fabulous book, The Quest for Cosmic

Sowell

Justice, which everybody who wishes to understand the essential impossibility of creating a world of “fair” outcomes should read. The essential problems with trying to correct inequities of this sort are the enormous knowledge required to pull it off and the fact that the act of addressing the problem creates new inequities for other people. Using the situation of health care reform, we can examine this issue in depth and see why the Affordable Care Act will not create cosmic justice."
....

All the thousands of pages of the Affordable Care Act serve the purpose of forcing some people to pay the costs for others in ways that they won’t notice.

 The Quest for Cosmic Justice   ..." It shows how "peace" movements have led to war and to needless casualties in those wars. It argues that "equality" is neither right nor wrong, but meaningless.
The Quest for Cosmic Justice shows how confused conceptions of justice end up promoting injustice, how confused conceptions of equality end up promoting inequality, and how the tyranny of social visions prevents many people from confronting the actual consequences of their own beliefs and policies. Those consequences include the steady and dangerous erosion of the fundamental principles of freedom -- and the quiet repeal of the American revolution.

Ick! How the 'Aliens' chestburster was created

CNET  "The Stan Winston School of Character Arts takes the gory wrappings off the chestburster puppet used in "Aliens.""

"Few images in film are as startling as that moment in "Alien" when the baby chestburster comes crawling out of of John Hurt's torso in a spray of gore. It was so gripping, the slimy little parasite was brought back for the sequel, "Aliens." Even better, it was created without the assistance of CGI."
 

On Syria, Sept 9th

Fox’s Chris Wallace Lands Interview with President Obama in White House on Monday   "According to a media source, Wallace was one of a few anchors Obama personally chose for a sit-down interview."
President Obama has chosen six interviewers. 
He "will be sitting down with Brian Williams for NBC Nightly News and Diane Sawyer for ABC World News. Additional discussions will be conducted with Wolf Blitzer for CNN, Scott Pelley for CBS Evening News and Gwen Ifill for PBS NewsHour" says DigitalSpy

Tune in to Special Report at 6p ET Monday night!

GOP rep supports Syria strike but can't get the White House to call him back  "Just how serious is Barack Obama about getting authorization from Congress to launch a strike on Syria?

"A Republican representative from Illinois...wants to help round up votes for the war resolution but no one at the White House has bothered to get back to him."

The writer posits that Obama has given up on this and expects the Senate to approve his request and the House to say no. Then he can blame Republicans for not letting him do what he did not really want to do. This is entirely in character with the Obama we have come to know, while attacking Syria's war-making capacity is not.

Syria and the Russians know whom they are dealing with here; they can merely suggest how bad the consequences will be and their words set millions around the world kneeling in peace prayers. TD

 Can you find Russia and Syria in this video?

Too bad there isn't a third evil character in this video to represent the Syrian rebels. A plague on both their houses.
 

You want me to what?

Susan Rice Will Brief Congress on Syria on Anniversary of Benghazi  "...House Intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers ... pointed to the administration's decision to have Rice brief members of Congress about this issue on the anniversary of the Benghazi attacks as emblematic of the administration's bumbling approach to making its case..."

 

 Obama’s “Credibility”: Much Ado About Nothing!   "Still, brain-dead Democrats should take solace in a simple, but profound truth: When it comes to credibility, Barack Obama has none to lose!"  John W Lillpop                               

John Kerry under fire for 'unbelievably small' comment  Video: Bill Kristol's thoughts

Four Big Questions for Obama Before the War Vote  ...."Given the perfidy of the administration on Benghazi, asking for direct proof is more than justified."....

 

One resident said the rebels — many of them wearing beards and shouting, “God is great!” — attacked Christian homes and churches shortly after seizing the village.

"If these reports are true, why wouldn’t we bomb these groups as well?"

 

Syrian chemical weapons may shed light on Saddam's missing WMDs  ..."Georges Sada, a former general of Saddam’s air force, detailed in his book, “Saddam’s Secrets,” how Saddam had secretly moved much of his WMD material to Syria before the U.S.-led invasion under the cover of providing relief to Syrian earthquake victims."

 

Yes, but...A no vote on Syria may cripple Obama’s domestic agenda too

"None of this is as important as America’s global credibility, when the U.S. must not stand back and let rogue dictators use weapons of mass destruction. That said, Obama’s foreign-policy blunders may end his domestic policy, too."

 

Hillary to speak on Syria today  "If she’s speaking from the White House, that means Hillary will come down all in on the side of American intervention, which is deeply unpopular across all political aggregations.  That will raise a lot of questions about Hillary’s own stewardship of American diplomacy during the “Assad the Reformer” period in which the US refused to demand Assad’s resignation for months while he conducted military attacks on demonstrators — after demanding Hosni Mubarak’s after just eight days of mostly peaceful protests in Tahrir Square."

 

Obama shrinkage hastened by Syria opposition   " “I do not think his presidency is shrinking, just struggling as second termers tend to do,” Geer said. “If we start to get better and better job numbers, he will start looking better and better too.' ”

  

Obama's Successful Foreign Failure; The president may look incompetent on Syria. But his behavior fits his strategy to weaken America abroad.

I need to get this published before Rush Limbaugh brings it up when his Monday show goes on. TD

NORMAN PODHORETZ  "The key to understanding what Mr. Obama has pulled off is the astonishing statement he made in the week before being elected president: "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America." To those of us who took this declaration seriously, it meant that Mr. Obama really was the left-wing radical he seemed to be, given his associations with the likes of the anti-American preacher Jeremiah Wright and the unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers, not to mention the intellectual influence over him of Saul Alinsky, the original "community organizer.' "
....
Mr. Podhoretz drives home his point with this:
"But foreign policy was another matter. As a left-wing radical, Mr. Obama believed that the United States had almost always been a retrograde and destructive force in world affairs. Accordingly, the fundamental transformation he wished to achieve here was to reduce the country's power and influence."

The Historic Christian Town Of Maaloula, Syria, Now Under Control Of Islamists

Syria: Christian Towns Are Being Emptied By Islamist Savagery

Weasel Zippers  "Here is a video and pictures of some of the beauty and special nature of Maaloula, a town where Christians and Muslims have lived in piece for hundreds of years-until al-Qaeda arrived."  

 

 

Now we only wait to see what the Islamists will do to this beautiful statue of Mary.

Syrian Christian towns emptied by jihad violence "The headline over at The Telegraph blares, "Syrian Christian towns emptied by sectarian violence." Sharia-compliant headlines. Muslims are slaughtering Christians. That is what is happening.  It is not sectarian violence. It is jihad. It is Islamic supremacism."

 

Syrian Rebels Retake Christian Village  "Breitbart News has previously reported that the Free Syrian Army posted videos of themselves attacking the city just one day after Sec. of State Kerry called them 'moderate' in a Senate hearing. One video shows the FSA shouting 'Allahu Akbar!’ as they open fire in the Christian village." 

 

Benghazi Whistleblower: I’ve Been ‘Punished’ for Speaking Out

NRO  

"Gregory Hicks, the former deputy chief of mission in Libya who testified before Congress about the 9/11 attacks on an American diplomatic facility earlier this year, believes he has been “punished” for speaking out about the Obama administration’s response the night of the attack. He said he believes at least two of the Americans lost that night could have been saved if the United States had responded in time."

Collapse of American Influence Recalls Dis-Integration of Soviet Union, Fall of France

We have noted the failure of Jimmy Carter, but Mr. Black sees much more significant negative consequences coming from the Obama administration.
But a silly electorate will choose inferior leaders and one has only to look at the parade of mediocrity among Democrat supporters such as those interviewed by man-in-the-street reporters about the recent elections.
From Hollywood, we have counsel from the likes of Russell Brand,( who was applauded by his peers) as well as a horde of other celebrities, David Letterman being one such. Political figures in the Democrat support base include-but are not limited to - Al Sharpton, Nancy Pelosi, any "#occupier" and, well, you can name many others.
All this to speak of the fact that a nation gets the government it deserves. The Tunnel Dweller

Conrad Black;  "Not since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, and prior to that the fall of France in 1940, has there been so swift an erosion of the world influence of a Great Power as we are witnessing with the United States."
....
The problem as Mr. Black sees it:
What we are witnessing now in the United States, by contrast, is just the backwash of inept policy-making in Washington, and nothing that could not eventually be put right. But for this administration to redeem its credibility now would require a change of direction and method so radical it would be the national equivalent of the comeback of Lazarus: a miraculous revolution in the condition of an individual (President Obama), and a comparable metamorphosis (or a comprehensive replacement) of the astonishingly implausible claque around him.
....
And part of the solution, according to Black:
"What American will need in 2016 is a new president who enunciates a clear policy: foreign intervention only to prevent genocide, to avenge extreme provocations, or to preserve world peace, and in accord with constitutional and international law."
 Via Drudge.

Related: When Will Samantha Power Take Responsibility for Syria?   "One of the luxuries of being a new administration appointee is being able to duck blame, politely or otherwise, for the mistakes of your predecessor. On Syria, new UN Ambassador Samantha Power does not have that luxury. Yet she continues to act as if she bears none of the responsibility for the acute crisis now facing the Obama administration and the world in Syria."

Follow-up: Two enemies discover a 'higher call' in battle

The following is a follow-up to this Tunnel Wall post on March 14, 2013:
German pilot in WWII spared an American B-17 pilot over Germany only to reunite 40 years later and become fishing buddies

German pilot in WWII spared an American B-17 pilot over Germany only to reunite 40 years later and become fishing buddies

Charles Brown, with his wife, Jackie (left),
 found peace after his reunion with
Franz Stigler, with his wife, Hiya.

Two enemies discover a 'higher call' in battle   "Five days before Christmas 1943, a helpless American bomber pilot locked eyes with a German fighter pilot over the frozen skies of Europe. The German pilot spared the life of the American, and both men would reunite and become friends 50 years later. Franz Stigler and Charles Brown started the war as enemies, but during a tense wartime encounter, both men discovered a higher call."....

From the UK Mail; Honour in the skies: The day a chivalrous German flying ace saluted a crippled US bomber and let them fly to safety instead of shooting them down

 

THE CREW SAVED BY FRANZ STIGLER'S HONOUR

Back Row (l-r)  S/Sgt Bertrand O.Coulombe - Engineer/Top Turret Gunner; Sgt Alex Yelesanko - Left

 Waist; Sgt Richard A. Pechout - Radio Operator; Sgt Lloyd H. Jennings - Right Waist; S/Sgt Hugh S. Eckenrode - Tail Gunner(killed); Sgt Samuel W. Blackford - Ball Turret
(Kneeling) 2nd Lt Charles L. Brown - Pilot; 2nd Lt Spencer G. Luke - Co-Pilot; 2nd Lt Albert Sadok - Navigator;   2nd Lt Robert M. Andrews - Bombardier