Juneteenth

Wikipedia photo, from whose front

 balcony the Emancipation Proclamation
 was read on June 19, 1865

The History of the Juneteenth Celebration  "The celebration of Juneteenth is not only a show-case event of the African American community's positive contributions to the American way of life, but it also makes a statement for all Americans that the United States is truly the "Land of the Free." Juneteenth is an expression and extension of American freedom and, like the Fourth of July, a time for all Americans to celebrate our independence, human rights, civil rights and freedom."  Photo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juneteenth

Junteenth: Emancipation Day! "Juneteenth was celebrated in Texas until the late 1960s and early 1970s. The civil rights movement seemed to overshadow the holiday. But in the late 1970s, Juneteenth became a popular holiday again, and the tradition began to spread beyond the borders of Texas."

There are many in this nation I admire, but there is a special place in my heart for one particular group. I think of older African-Americans who lived under the shameful Jim Crow laws and vile treatment by whites -especially in the South but certainly the North as well - yet still love America, see the best in her and staunchly defend our nation. We have published columns by some of those people in the Tunnel Wall and here are some more:  (TD)

Armstrong Williams : Memorial Day Remembrance  "Established in the 1860s during the American Civil War, Memorial Day tapped into the general human need to honor our dead who have done so much to serve this great country."


Thomas Sowell:  Dependency and Votes "To listen to some of the defenders of entitlement programs, which are at the heart of the present financial crisis, you might think that anything the government fails to provide is something that people will be deprived of."


 Ken Blackwell ; Indefensible: Israel’s 1967 Borders and Obama’s Policy "Mr. Obama delivered a major address calling for Israel to return to its pre-1967 borders. That would mean the West Bank and East Jerusalem are to evacuated and handed over to Israel’s mortal enemies. They would become, under Arabpressure, Jew-free zones. The German word for that is Judenrein."


Clifton B:   Another Black Conservative "I am a black conservative from a black conservative family.... Throughout my life I knew I did not share many of the common beliefs of other American blacks. For starters, I never took to the term African-American."...."My culture is distinctly American, from the way I speak, think, dress and act and you know what else? I love it! So for me, I will always be an American who just happens to be black."


Lloyd Marcus;  Liberal vs Conservative: A Spiritual Battle. "Christians believe that though we strive to do the right thing, the heart of man is critically flawed which is why we were in need of a savior, Jesus Christ....."Obama’s promise to “fundamentally transform America” is a spiritual attack on our freedom, liberty and culture."  ....
"Lloyd Marcus, Proud Unhyphenated American"

Walter E. Williams  ; Our Moral Dilemma;  "A related moral question is: Does one American have a moral right to live at the expense of another American?"

Star Parker;  Why 2012 looks like 1860; "The difference in presidential approval rates between Democrats and Republicans over the course of the Obama presidency and the last few years of the Bush presidency has been in the neighborhood of 70 points. This is the most polarized the nation has been in modern times.
"This deep division is driven, as was the case in the 1850’s, by fundamental differences in world view regarding what this country is about."

These are only a few examples of great African-American thinkers whose counsel we respect and whose love for our nation we admire. TD

Islam for Pols: a Primer;" We’re in favor of religious toleration for those religions that practice toleration."

Pajamas Media  ..."But here’s the rub: tolerance only works when practiced by all parties to the social contract. It’s one thing for a Unitarian and a Catholic to tolerate each other. They have some important doctrinal differences. But they do not endeavor to kill or enslave one another on account of those differences.

"The friction of difference works differently when you add Islam to the equation. Why? Because Islam does not — in principle as well as in practice — acknowledge a legitimate sphere of operation for the secular as distinct from the sacred realm. There is no “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s” in Islam because Islam — that’s mainstream, garden-variety Islam, not just its wacko Wahhabist allotropes — regards everything as subordinate to the will of Allah."

Roger Kimball

Romney’s Religion Problem /Sharia is not about private faith, but public institutions.   By Andrew McCarthy      (Linked to in the above article, TW wanted to make sure you saw it.)
"Mitt Romney is said to be the early frontrunner in the GOP presidential sweepstakes. One rival, Newt Gingrich, is perceived as floundering in a swirl of unforced errors and staff insurrection. Yet when it comes to Islam, which will continue to matter mightily in the next administration, the frontrunner could learn a thing or two from the flounderer. The issue is not religion. It is the seditious Islamist political program."....
"When the threat came from 20th-century totalitarian ideologies, Gingrich concluded, “we discovered after a while, well you know, there are some genuinely bad people who would like to infiltrate our country, and we have got to have the guts to stand up and say, ‘No.’” It is every bit as essential today to say “No” to Islamists who use the shield of American religious liberty as a sword in the service of a dark political program — one that has precious little to do with spirituality. It remains to be seen whether Republicans will offer a presidential candidate with the guts to do it. If Mitt Romney is to be that candidate, he’s got work to do."  (Emphasis added)

"...Steyn was accused of “flagrant Islamaphobia” after his bestselling book America Alone was excerpted in Canada’s oldest newsweekly magazine, Maclean’s, in 2006."  "Author and columnist Mark Steyn’s week-long trial for “hate speech” began in a British Columbia courtroom on June 2 [2008]"....
"Canadian Human Rights Tribunals boast a 100% conviction rate on such “hate speech” cases, and have already handed down lifetime bans against the likes of Rev. Scott Boision. That Christian preacher is now forbidden for life from ever citing Bible verses regarding homosexuality in his sermons, or “in newspapers, by email, on the radio, in public speeches, or on the Internet.”"

Free Speech vs. Muslim Sensibilities "Steyn repeatedly reminded readers that his opponent, Dr. Mohammed Elmasry, was a rather unlikely defender of "human rights":

"... he's the guy who said on Canadian TV [in 2004] that he thought all Israeli civilians over the age of 18 were legitimate targets for murder. In other words, he is an objective supporter of terrorism - I've got no complaint against that: he's entitled to his views, I just wish he thought I was entitled to mine.

"But it does show you how absurd this is, that a guy who is an active supporter of terrorism is suddenly the poster-boy for Canadian human rights."

Some wise words for fathers

Does my presence as a father really make a difference in my son's life?  "What a boy can use, and too often doesn't have, are the heart of his father and the fellowship of men. A boy needs at least one man who pays attention to him, spends time with him, and admires him. A boy needs a role model, a man whom he can regard as a mentor." Dennis and Barbara Rainey, Familylife.com; Via Point of View

Atheists and Their Fathers  "How does one become an atheist? Does a person's relationship with his earthly father affect his relationship with his heavenly Father? These are some of the questions we will explore in this article as we talk about the book Faith of the Fatherless by Paul Vitz."  Kerby Anderson, Probe Ministries

Fathers: The Greatest Influence  "...they have bought into modern cultural caricatures along with [radically] feminist psychology and its label of "hunter-gatherer" and thus assume this to be their primary and sometimes only contribution to the family. As a result too many men, including professing Christian men, express their role as "father" exclusively in terms of financial provider. The fact is children are not looking for financial provision; they are looking for love, guidance and a role model for what it means to be a man."


newyorker.com



Obama’s Full-Court Press on Israel

Netanyahu and Obama; back in the day

Pajamas Media  "Note also that Obama’s talk of “swaps” in no way mitigates the gravely anti-Israeli nature of that position, since it means that even for retaining a sacred site like the Western Wall — which is over the 1967 lines — Israel would have to give up something in return. Again, this is the Fatah and Hamas view: that Israel has no inherent right to any of the land that is supposed to be in dispute.
"Some say Netanyahu shouldn’t be fazed by the latest pressures since, with Congress opposed to Obama’s tack, they’re more bark than bite. Whether or not Congress can really contain Obama at this point, to think of what he could do in an unfettered second term is chilling." Emphasis added.

This economy is ready for the shovel

Gary Varvel; worldmag.com/

Tax dollars for La Raza skyrocket after Obama appoints one of its leaders to White House post

Washington Examiner  "The inter-governmental affairs job is among the most powerful in a presidential administration in terms of its occupant being able to direct or influence the awarding of hundreds of billions of dollars in federal grants in aid and contracts.
"Here's how Judicial Watch describes the significance of the Munoz appointment:"

Ignored by the mainstream media, Judicial Watch covered the appointment because the president issued a special “ethics waiver*” to bring Muñoz aboard since it violated his own lobbyist ban. At the pro illegal immigration NCLR, Muñoz supervised all legislative and advocacy activities on the state and local levels and she was heavily involved in the congressional immigration battles that took place in the George W. Bush Administration.

*More Obawaivers.

Related JW article from 2006:   And this post  from Kevin Jackson at The Black Sphere.

Where can I get this bumper sticker?

Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion

Governor Christie conducts a workshop for Republican candidates

We might not care for Gov Christie's policies; what we want is a conservative candidate that confronts liberals the way he does.

Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion "The most amazing thing to me is not that Christie tells the voter that it's none of her business where he sends his kids to school, but that he pays $38,000 per year in property taxes. Ouch."

Charles Krauthammer: The union-owned Democrats

Washington Post  ..."Delta Air Lines workers have voted four times to reject unionization. A federal agency, naturally, is investigating and, notes economist Irwin Stelzer, can order still another election in the hope that it yields the answer Obama’s campaign team wants.

"But Democratic fealty to unions does not stop there. Boeing has just completed a production facility in South Carolina for its new 787 Dreamliner. The National Labor Relations Board, stacked with Democrats — including one former union lawyer considered so partisan that he required a recess appointment after the Senate refused to confirm him — is trying to get the plant declared illegal. Why? Because by choosing right-to-work South Carolina, Boeing is accused of retaliating against its unionized Washington state workers for previous strikes."

San Francisco; why many do not wish California well

A Hollywood Republican  "They’ve banned Happy Meals, prohibited their citizens from sitting (or resting) on sidewalks during daylight hours, made it illegal to feed birds, fine residents who do not recycle their trash or compost their rotting food, and now they are voting on whether or not to strip parents of their religious and/or parental rights as it pertains to circumcising their sons."

....
Below is the contact information of San Francisco’s Mayor, Edwin M. Lee. Feel free to write him and make your voices and opinions heard!

Mayor Edwin M. Lee
City Hall, Room 200,
1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place
San Francisco, CA 94102
Telephone: (415) 444-6141
Fax: (415) 554-6160
Email: mayoredwinlee@sfgov.org

The Factory of Selective Moral Outrage

Victor Davis Hanson  "There is a vast machinery of selective liberal outrage, fueled and lubricated by the media, universities, and celebrity entertainment. When the redistributive welfare state starts to run out of money, the gears and pulleys are flipped on and shrill charges of greed, cruelty, nativism, and racism spew out of the production line. The machine sputters and shuts down when an aggrieved liberal suddenly must either make cuts or adapt the very policies that he used to damn."

Tony Branco at comicallyincorrect.com/

The cost of going green

Neal Boortz  "For a man who claims that his administration is focused on creating jobs, Barack Obama sure is doing his best to destroy them.  He is doing this by imposing more government regulations and placing impossible demands on industries to produce products, regardless of the law of supply and demand."

Fed standards may swell prices by $10K, cut 260K jobs by '25  "Sharply higher fuel efficiency standards by 2025 could force vehicle prices up by nearly $10,000, reduce sales by 5.5 million vehicles annually and eliminate more than 260,000 jobs, according to a study by the Ann Arbor-based Center for Automotive Research. "

Shocking! EPA cost benefit predictions based on “feelings”  "Well, it’s certainly hard to argue with that, isn’t it? The economy is in dire need of a boost of that magnitude and, just as obviously, we definitely need all the new jobs we can get, right? There’s just one little problem with this masterful plan. A recent independent study of the EPA’s cost benefit predictions shows that they are almost entirely vaporware."

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