Thursday, May 23, 2013

Oklahoma Needs Help, Not Ideology

Political Cartoons by Gary Varvel
Real Clear Politics  "Rep. Tom Cole, a Republican who lives in the very neighborhood that was overwhelmed, was talking about a call he received from President Obama. Hearing Cole, I realized how strange it is these days for politicians to speak in human terms about someone in the other political party -- especially if that someone is named Barack Obama. "He was very kind," Cole said.
....
"Imagine: a solid conservative Republican declaring that Obama did something "kind, thoughtful and gracious." This takes courage in the GOP these days. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie learned as much last fall. He was ostracized by large parts of the right (and pronounced unwelcome at March's Conservative Political Action Conference) because he praised Obama's response to Hurricane Sandy.
"I hope Cole escapes this fate."

 

Jay Leno Unloads on Obama in Devastating 'Tonight Show' Monologue

Big Hollywood  "President Barack Obama is a nightmare for political comedians. He's too cool, too smart, too ... good at this whole leadership thing." 

"That was the bill of goods comedians sold us five years ago, an excuse which prevented them from mocking Obama as they did every previous Commander in Chief.
"Jay Leno wasn't buying that pile of horse manure.
"Leno has consistently tweaked Obama in his Tonight Show monologues since the early days of the president's administration, the same way Leno handled President George W. Bush and President Bill Clinton."
....
"And wouldn't you know it, Leno's ratings are on the rise these days."
The ratings leader in his time slot, Leno positively crushed Letterman and ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel in the just-released early May sweeps ratings.
 This Leno bit is from Newsbusters  "Jay Leno on Tuesday continued his humorous attacks on the current White House resident.
"The NBC Tonight Show host concluded a series of opening monologue jokes targeting the administration saying, “That's why President Obama holds press conferences: not to explain what's going on, to find out what's going on” "

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Why atheists have no fixed moral points — and why that’s a problem (even if they’re really sweet people)

Bookworm Room  "The Phoenix New Times reports that Mendez, who is an atheist, changed the course of the event held prior to the House of Representatives’ afternoon session. He asked lawmakers to refrain from bowing their heads and instead to view their surroundings."
....
"That’s all well and good — cute and “kum-bye-yah” — but it reveals that dangerous moral vacuum at atheism’s center.  Everyone in the room is a moral authority.
"Okay, then, I’m a moral authority too.  And by the way, my morality says that I get to take everything in your house and put it in mine.  The reason?  I don’t need to give you a reason.".... 

'It made him look like a butler': Retired general blasts President Obama for ordering U.S. Marine to break military rules by holding an umbrella

UK Daily Mail


That's these guys' job
"The President caused a stir when he summoned over two marines to keep him dry at a press conference in the Rose Garden.
"The marines held an umbrella over the President and the Turkish Prime Minister individually as Obama made jokes about the weather.
However, for some the move was not a laughing matter particularly as it is a breach of protocol for marines to hold umbrellas while in uniform. "Lt Gen McInerney told MailOnline that he found it particularly insulting how the President at one point his his hand under the marine’s arm ‘like he wasn’t doing a good job or something’."
Political Cartoons by Gary Varvel
Hat tip to Val Brose, Santa Maria, CA

IRS Tyrant Lois Lerner was former FEC Tyrant Terrorizing Conservative and Christian Groups while Refusing to Pursue Obama's Illegal and Foreign Contributions

Atlas Shrugs
Lois Lerner, IRS official and director of IRS's Exempt Organizations Division is at the center of the IRS scandal. Lerner was formerly head of the Enforcement Office at the Federal Election Commission (FEC) where there are reports of her politically motivated harassment of conservative groups, according to a May 20 report on "The Weekly Standard."

"Lerner brought her skulduggery and utter disregard for the law to her new job with the IRS. Another Obama socialist and lawbreaker on the warpath using the full authority and power of the US government to terrorize and bully American citizens. Has any other person so singlehandedly influenced not just one, but two elections? Obama always rewards his lieutenants. Think Jarrett, Axlerod, Emanuel, Holder, ad nauseum."

Obama's campaign contributions from Gaza
 

Teacher Admits She ‘Prayed Out Loud’ During Violent Tornado: ‘I Did the Teacher Thing that We’re Probably Not Supposed to Do’

The Blaze  "Considering her situation at the time of the invocation, it’s understandable why Crosswhite risked facing criticism and potential claims that she violated the separation of church and state. Her life — and the lives of the children she was protecting — hung in the balance.
"As the violent storm raged, the teacher found herself in a bathroom stall with six children. With the kids crying and appealing to her for protection, she openly addressed the Lord, saying, “God please don’t take these kids today.”
"Previously, The Blaze reported that Crosswhite had draped her body over the students inside of the stall, comforting them during their time of need. In addition to assuring the children that they would be fine, she also exhibited courage and bravery, telling reporters that, throughout the experience, she never thought she was going to die."

Islamic fanatics wielding meat cleavers butcher a British soldier, taking their war on the West to a new level of horror

UK Daily Mail  "Throughout the frenzied attack they shouted ‘Allah Akbar’ – Arabic for ‘God is great’ – then demanded horrified witnesses film them as they ranted over the  crumpled body.
The two black men in their 20s, waited calmly for armed police to arrive before charging at officers brandishing a rusty revolver, knives and meat cleavers." Read more..
 

"It is thought the two fundamentalists had spent weeks watching the barracks, which the Queen is due to visit next week, prior to the attack. The ambush and stabbing of a soldier close to an army barracks is an unprecedented Islamic attack on mainland Britain. It immediately prompted widespread revulsion. David Cameron said Britain ‘will not be cowed, will never buckle’ in the face of terrorism last night as he urged people to go about their lives as normal in defiance of the ‘absolutely sickening’ killing in London."

English Defence League leader Tommy Robinson said: “They’re chopping our soldiers’ heads off. This IS Islam. That’s what we’ve seen today. They’ve cut off one of our soldier’s heads in the streets of London.
 "British soldier wearing ‘Help for Heroes’  shirt hacked to death and beheaded in broad daylight by two Muslim savages shouting “Allahu Akbar” "

 
He was butchered with knives and meat cleavers after a car mounted the pavement and ploughed into him  "Mr. Mohammed Shafiq, Chief Executive of the Ramadhan Foundation comments: “I wish to condemn the evil and barbaric crime carried out today in Woolwich.
" "Our immediate thoughts are with the family and friends of the victims. From whatever angle you see today’s attack it was at every level evil.” "

Looking more and more like a DOJ war on Fox News, not just James Rosen

Legal Insurrection  "First it was James Rosen’s personal email and phone records.
"Then it was Rosen’s parents’ phone records.
"Shannon Bream just reported on Hannity that court records appear to reflect phone records were obtained for multiple Fox News lines at multiple locations. The records were partially redacted, but the area codes and exchanges match up."
....
"Ryan Lizza at The New Yorker reports:
The Obama Justice Department has seized the phone records of numbers that are associated with White House staffers and, apparently, with Fox News reporters, according to a document filed in the case of Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, on October 13, 2011. Kim is a former State Department contractor accused of violating the Espionage Act for allegedly leaking classified information to James Rosen, a Fox News reporter. Ronald C. Machen, Jr., the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, who is prosecuting the case, has seized records associated with two phone numbers at the White House, at least five numbers associated with Fox News, and one that has the same area code and exchange as Rosen’s personal-cell-phone number (the last four numbers are redacted).

Obama's War on Fox News Reporters/ The DOJ targets a news corp. that won't obey the Party Line.   That reality raises an extremely important question: who's going to stop the Obama administration?"
This petulant juvenile president cannot tolerate dissent in any form.

How Hope And Change Gave Way To Spying On The Press

Kirsten Powers  Full article:
First they came for Fox News, and they did not speak out—because they were not Fox News. Then they came for government whistleblowers, and they did not speak out—because they were not government whistleblowers. Then they came for the maker of a YouTube video, and—okay, we know how this story ends. But how did we get here?
Turns out it’s a fairly swift sojourn from a president pushing to “delegitimize” a news organization to threatening criminal prosecution for journalistic activity by a Fox News reporter, James Rosen, to spying on Associated Press reporters. In between, the Obama administration found time to relentlessly persecute government whistleblowers and publicly harass and condemn a private American citizen for expressing his constitutionally protected speech in the form of an anti-Islam YouTube video.
Where were the media when all this began happening? With a few exceptions, they were acting as quiet enablers.
It’s instructive to go back to the dawn of Hope and Change. It was 2009, and the new administration decided it was appropriate to use the prestige of the White House to viciously attack a news organization—Fox News—and the journalists who work there. Remember, President Obama had barely been in office and had enjoyed the most laudatory press of any new president in modern history. Yet even one outlet that allowed dissent or criticism of the president was one too many. This should have been a red flag to everyone, regardless of what they thought of Fox News. The math was simple: if the administration would abuse its power to try and intimidate one media outlet, what made anyone think they weren’t next?
President Obama went after Fox News in this 2009 interview with CNBC.  
"What I think is fair to say about Fox … is that it really is more a wing of the Republican Party," said Anita Dunn, White House communications director, on CNN. “[L]et's not pretend they're a news network the way CNN is." On ABC’s “This Week” White House senior adviser David Axelrod said Fox is "not really a news station." It wasn’t just that Fox News was “not a news organization,” White House chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel told CNN’s John King, but, “more [important], is [to] not have the CNNs and the others in the world basically be led in following Fox, as if what they’re trying to do is a legitimate news organization …”
These series of “warnings” to the Fourth Estate were what you might expect to hear from some third-rate dictator, not from the senior staff of Hope and Change, Inc.
Yet only one mainstream media reporter—Jake Tapper, then of ABC News—ever raised a serious objection to the White House’s egregious and chilling behavior. Tapper asked future MSNBC commentator and then White House press secretary Robert Gibbs: “[W]hy is [it] appropriate for the White House to say” that “thousands of individuals who work for a media organization, do not work for a ‘news organization’?” The spokesman for the president of the United States was unrepentant, saying: “That's our opinion.”

Trashing reporters comes easy in Obama-land. Behind the scenes, Obama-centric Democratic operatives brand any reporter who questions the administration as a closet conservative, because what other explanation could there be for a reporter critically reporting on the government?

Now, the Democratic advocacy group Media Matters—which is always mysteriously in sync with the administration despite ostensibly operating independently—has launched a smear campaign against ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl for his reporting on Benghazi. It’s the kind of character assassination that would make Joseph McCarthy blush. The main page of the Media Matters website has six stories attacking Karl for a single mistake in an otherwise correct report about the State Department's myriad changes to talking points they previously claimed to have barely touched. See, the problem isn’t the repeated obfuscating from the administration about the Benghazi attack; the problem is Jonathan Karl. Hence, the now-familiar campaign of de-legitimization. This gross media intimidation is courtesy of tax-deductable donations from the Democratic Party’s liberal donor base, which provides a whopping $20 million a year for Media Matters to harass reporters who won’t fall in line.
Political Cartoons by Nate Beeler
In what is surely just a huge coincidence, the liberal media monitoring organization Fairness and Accuracy in the Media (FAIR) is also on a quest to delegitimize Karl. It dug through his past and discovered that in college he allegedly—horrors!—associated with conservatives. Because of this, FAIR declared Karl “a right wing mole at ABC News.” Setting aside the veracity of FAIR’s crazy claim, isn’t the fact that it was made in the first place vindication for those who assert a liberal media bias in the mainstream media? If the existence of a person who allegedly associates with conservatives is a “mole,” then what does that tell us about the rest of the media?

What all of us in the media need to remember—whatever our politics—is that we need to hold government actions to the same standard, whether they’re aimed at friends or foes. If not, there’s no one but ourselves to blame when the administration takes aim at us. 

With more clarity, White House adds to confusion on IRS

WaPo  "It is never good for an administration when a front-page newspaper article about an ongoing controversy begins as follows: “The White House offered a new account Monday of how and when it learned . . . ” That’s what readers of The Post awoke to on Tuesday. In trying to contain the controversy and protect President Obama, White House officials have only added to questions about what happened."
Political Cartoons by Glenn Foden
 
Political Cartoons by Steve Breen

Liberal Ghouls Exploit Deaths

American Thinker  1975 : Tornado Outbreaks Blamed On Global Cooling | Real Science
"Notice what's missing in the above article?"

"No politician is using the death of over 300 people to try and score cheap political points of the floor of the Senate as [much as]the feckless Senator from Rhode Island, Democrat Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse did yesterday with the 91 who died in Oklahoma."

Democratic senator apologizes for citing Okla. tornadoes in climate change speech  "Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse has apologized for remarks Monday in which he linked Oklahoma "cyclones" to climate change while berating Republicans for their stance on the issue -- around the time a massive tornado killed dozens in that state."

Oversight from Washington, All Along

Political Cartoons by Michael Ramirez
NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE "This level of involvement from Washington confirms what many have suspected all along. “Those questions could not have been originated by a few rogue agents,” says Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, which is suing the IRS on behalf of 17 tea-party groups whose applications were allegedly singled out by the IRS. Sekulow tells me he received a letter from a D.C.-based Tax Law Specialist in connection with his tea-party cases."
Lois Lerner to plead the Fifth Wednesday before Issa Committee "We can now officially call the Obama administration besieged.  One of President Obama's underlings is set to plead her Fifth Amendment Right against self-incrimination in the burgeoning IRS scandal."