The family of Mike Brown, an eighteen-year-old Ferguson teenager shot and killed by police on Saturday, August 9, has said that the young man recently took up a passion for music, with an interest in sound engineering and plans to study at Vatterott College next week. According to his grandmother, Desuirea Harris, “All he wanted to do is make music.”
“Everyday he made one or two more records,” she explains. “He rapped about life in general — about what he went through and people went through. Just life.” Brown rapped under the name “Big Mike.” If his SoundCloud page is any indication, his musical fascination was a recent one — according to his family, he had become obsessed with making it as a rapper after graduating high school this spring. His first upload on the music-streaming service is dated July 24, only eighteen days ago. While Brown has been described as a “gentle giant” and “a big teddy bear,” his tracks are filled with the usual guns-and-money bluster one might expect from a trap-rap artist.
Howard Kurtz ... "What is striking now is a growing sense, fairly or unfairly, that Obama is not capable of rising to the occasion, that he just doesn’t like politics, that he’s disengaged, that despite his soaring rhetoric in 2008 he has a passion deficit.
"All the criticism about him playing golf and being at Martha’s Vineyard is kind of a code for his supposedly being unplugged from the job." ...
When Barry gets blue ... "Today Peter Baker and Julie Hirschfeld Davis give us the perspective of the New York Times crowd in “A terrorist horror, then golf: Incongruity fuels Obama critics.” Baker and Davis report that (despite appearances created by the incongruity of his joyous golf game) Obama was “unusually emotional” as a result of Foley’s beheading. The joyous photos of Obama’s golf outing — how to put it? — tend to belie the description of Obama’s state of mind as presented by Baker and Davis. Funny, he doesn’t look bluish." ...
Contempt ... "The same trend is under way internationally. Thus, from Israel’s liberal Haaretz, formerly a staunch Obama backer: “Will the Middle East ruin Barack Obama’s summer vacation?”
It isn’t very hard to pretend to be president: Obama did it for five years or so. But now, he can’t be bothered. He leaves his allies with no ammunition with which to defend him, thereby showing, one might argue, even more contempt for them than for his enemies. There is an adage, Hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned. If that is true, Obama is in for a long two years."
From Maureen Dowd in the New York Times:Alone Again, Naturally ... "Almost everything else — from an all-out push on gun control after the Newtown massacre to going to see firsthand the Hispanic children thronging at the border to using his special status to defuse racial tensions in Ferguson — just seems like too much trouble.
"The 2004 speech that vaulted Obama into the White House soon after he breezed into town turned out to be wrong. He misdescribed the country he wanted to lead. There is a liberal America and a conservative America. And the red-blue divide has only gotten worse in the last six years.
"The man whose singular qualification was as a uniter turns out to be singularly unequipped to operate in a polarized environment." Continue reading the main story
This is the candidate who stood alone on the stage at his acceptance speech in Colorado, a stage far removed from the Greek columns behind, and with nobody else in sight.
A Vacation is All Obama Ever Wanted"Apparently, after seeing a British subject execute an American citizen, David Cameron couldn’t, with a clear conscience, have spent another minute at the Surfside Cafe in Polzeath, Cornwall sipping tea and enjoying the balmy weather.
"Meanwhile, Barack Obama had zero compunction about returning to Martha’s Vineyard after coming home for a couple of days toting oldest daughter Malia. "The president couldn’t break away from his golf game to attend Major General Greene’s funeral, with full military honors, at Arlington Cemetery on Friday, but was able to land at the White House early Monday morning and hang around for less than 48 hours." ...
Charles Krauthammer "Baghdad called President Obama’s bluff and he came through. He had refused to provide air support to Iraqi government forces until the Iraqis got rid of their divisive sectarian prime minister.
"They did. He responded."
A Kurdish peshmerga fighter looks at smoke rising in the horizon following US airstrikes targeting Islamic State (IS) militants at Mosul Dam.
"With the support of U.S. airstrikes, Iraqi and Kurdish forces have retaken the Mosul dam. Previous strikes had relieved the siege of Mount Sinjar and helped the Kurds retake two strategic towns that had opened the road to a possible Islamic State assault on Irbil, the capital of Kurdistan.
"In following through, Obama demonstrated three things: the effectiveness of even limited U.S. power, the vulnerability of the Islamic State and, crucially, his own seriousness, however tentative.
...
"Obama was slow to bring American power to bear. And slower still to arm the Kurds. But he was right to wait until Baghdad had gotten rid of Nouri al-Maliki, lest the U.S. serve as a Shiite air force. We don’t know how successful Haider al-Abadi will be in forming a more national government. But Obama has for now wisely taken advantage of the Abadi opening."
...
We have now seen what air cover for Kurdish/Iraqi boots on the ground can achieve. But for a serious rollback campaign, Obama will need public support. He has to explain the stakes and the larger strategy. His weak and passive rhetorical reaction to the beheading of American journalist James Foley was a discouragingly missed opportunity.
...
Writing of Obama's claim that these animals will ultimately fail, Krauthammer reminds us that the "role of a great power, as Churchill and Roosevelt understood, is to bring that day closer."
When this president gets an attaboy from Mr. Krauthammer, you know he has done well.
" 'Every day we find new evidence that he’d rather be on the golf course than he would be dealing with a crisis that’s developing rapidly in the Middle East," Cheney declared during an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity." ... "I noticed the reaction of David Cameron, the British prime minister, when he found out that the individual who apparently did the beheading was speaking with a British accent. He wanted to immediately leave his vacation," Cheney said. "Of course, our president headed to the golf course as soon as he made his relatively, I thought, ineffective statement." Read more:
Media Stop Defending Obama's Serial-GolfingVideo "We all remember the media endlessly hectoring George W. Bush about his golfing, fundraising, and vacations at his ranch in Texas. We also remember this very same objective, unbiased, not-at-all-liberal media excusing and even defending (with false reporting) President Obama's seemingly serial vacations, golf outings, and fundraisers (even the day after an American ambassador was brutally murdered in Libya.)"
"He had just hung up the telephone with the devastated parents before heading in front of the cameras. Unusually emotional, President Obama declared himself “heartbroken” by the brutal murder of an American journalist, James Foley, and vowed to “be relentless” against Islamic radicals threatening to kill another American.
"But as soon as the cameras went off, Mr. Obama headed to his favorite golf course on Martha’s Vineyard, where he is on vacation, seemingly able to put the savagery out of his mind. He spent the rest of the afternoon on the links even as a firestorm of criticism erupted over what many saw as a callous indifference to the slaughter he had just condemned."
I think the video of Michael Brown robbing that store was what dishonored his name by showing us what he was like.
"But his sharpest criticism was aimed at Sharpton. At one point in the program, O'Reilly played a clip of Sharpton declaring "we have had enough" of police violence.
" 'Enough of what Al? Enough what? Police efficiency?" O'Reilly asked, citing statistics to show police shootings are rare compared to the total number of arrests. "Sharpton has the nerve to insult the American police community — men and women risking their lives to protect us. This charlatan has the gall to do that and NBC News is paying him. My God, why is that acceptable?' " Read more:
"Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union," network contributor LZ Granderson and political analyst Tara Wall hammered activists like Al Sharpton for being a "charlatans" who come into situations like Ferguson to "make names for themselves.' "
Momdot. About 5 minutes ago one of my very good blogger friends shared that a family member of hers was allegedly sent to in school suspension for saying ‘Bless You’ in a high school class today.
"Bless you.
"As in someone sneezed and she said “Bless You.' ”
(Photo of the criminal below.)
... "I am blown away that in a society that claims itself to be so progressive and free, we have stripped away our religion so far down to the roots that our kids cannot say Bless You without fear of retribution.
"I was so shocked about this situation that I asked Kendra to reach out to me and she did.
"Here are her words on what happened [then]:" Full article.
Hat tip to Walt Stier; Santa Maria, CA. Post from American Family Association
"It's important to remember that, in police shooting cases like the one in Ferguson, Missouri, the initial facts are often wrong. You don't want to end up looking like Rich Lowry, National Review editor, whose March 23, 2012, column on the Trayvon Martin shooting was titled, "Al Sharpton Is Right."
"Early accounts are especially unreliable when reporters think they have a white racism story. Stirring up racial hatred is how journalists make up for sending their own kids to lily-white private schools.
"As detailed in my book Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama, the old media's standard for any police shooting of a black person is: "Racist until proved innocent.' " ... ... "In less than two weeks, the original version of the racist police execution of Michael Brown -- or "Big Mike" -- has already undergone major revisions. We were told:
"-- Big Mike was the sweetest kid, he'd never hurt a flea.
"Then we got the store surveillance video of him robbing a liquor store and manhandling the clerk.
"Perhaps Big Mike committed his first-ever crime 11 minutes before his encounter with Officer Darren Wilson, but it doesn't look good.
"-- He was shot in the back.
"At least two autopsies now establish Big Mike was not shot in the back.
"-- He didn't touch the police officer.
"This week, we saw the X-ray of Officer Wilson's fractured eye socket." .
Walter Hudson "Imagine, if you will, a young white unarmed man shot to death by police under ambiguous circumstances like those which have sparked riots in Ferguson, Missouri. Imagine that, in response to that white man’s death, white militia men, white Tea Partiers, and white professing Christians rallied to the town where it occurred. Imagine they began burning buildings, looting businesses, and defying measures by local law enforcement to maintain order. Then imagine that a charismatic political celebrity, say – Ted Nugent, showed up with an army of conservative activists leading a voter registration drive and said:
Five thousand new voters will transform the city from top to bottom…. Nobody can go to the White House until they stop by our house.… Elected officials don’t have to care about white citizens as long as they don’t fear us at the ballot box.
"How would the media and the government respond? Would Attorney General Eric Holder be traveling to the town to personally oversee a civil rights investigation unprecedented in scope? Would reporters wring their hands, pleading for understanding?
... "Folks like Eric Holder, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and other agitators racing to forge political capital from the unrest in Ferguson have no interest whatsoever in equality under the law. Indeed, they have made it clear on several occasions that they advocate for and actively pursue a public policy which treats individuals differently based upon their racial identity and ethnic background. In a word, they seek injustice." Emphasis added, TD
Syrian rebels from the town of Kafranbel honor James Foley and slam Obama.
"Less than six minutes. That’s all the time Barack Obama has for an American who died in the middle of a desert because a disgusting, barbaric animal sawed off his head with a knife.
Islamic State beheads American journalist ... " No doubt there will be many earnest statements of shock and horror at the tactics and actions of IS. But when it comes down to the nuts and bolts of destroying them, nothing will be done. We're much too civilized to destroy what has now become a nation state, a terrorist enclave in our midst. That may be our undoing in the end. Rick Moran
Obama Is Wired All the Wrong Way ... "That is, I think, the operative question. I dearly hope Mr. Obama will do what’s necessary, and go as far as he needs to, given the stakes involved. I will admit I’m quite skeptical. That skepticism is based on the entire arc of the Obama presidency, which is itself the manifestation of Mr. Obama’s deepest convictions. All of his training and education, all his political and moral reflexes, all his actions as president, indicate he won’t do what is needed at this moment in time. He is simply not up to the challenge." ...
"We’re asking him to do what I don’t think he is emotionally able to do. He’s wired all the wrong way.
"I hope I’m proved wrong. I rather doubt I will be." Peter Wehner
Obama heads back to vacation after unexplained DC trip "President Obama went back to his vacation on Martha’s Vineyard Tuesday evening after spending less than 48 hours in Washington, leaving people puzzled over why he came back in the first place.
... “ 'The other way you could interpret this,” offered Krauthammer, “is to say, it is a message to the bad guys that we tried, we didn’t succeed, but we’re coming after you.” But this would hardly be effective, the panelist argued. “The major response, and the proper response — the one ISIS would worry about the most — is not a rescue mission, it’s the continuation of the air strikes. So it’s encouraging that we redoubled the air strikes today.' ”
Victor Davis Hanson "Elia Kazan’s classic A Face in the Crowdis a good primer on Barack Obama’s rise and fall. Lonesome Rhodes arises out of nowhere in the 1957 film, romancing the nation as a phony populist who serially spins yarns in the most folksy ways — confident that he should never be held to account. Kazan’s point (in the film Rhodes is a patsy for conservative business interests) is that the “folks” are fickle and prefer to be charmed rather than informed and told the truth. Rhodes’s new first name, Lonesome, resonates in the film in a way that Barack does now. Finally, an open mic captures Rhodes’s true disdain for the people he champions, and his career crashes.
...
"We could go on, but you get the picture that it was all of the above that finally became too much, as Americans turned Obama off because they were all lied out. In all of these scandals a charismatic Barack wheeled out the teleprompter, smiled, dropped his g’s, soared with “make no mistake about it” and “let me perfectly clear,” and then, like Lonesome Rhodes, told the “folks” things that could not be true or at least were the exact opposite of what he himself had earlier asserted. "
Avi Davis Yet why, when Israelis have repeatedly peeled back the mask on the face of this monster, are our Western leaders so slow to react and unwilling to call it for what it is? As we watched film last week of desperate Yazhidis on Singal Mountain in Northern Iraq fighting for their lives and heard the gruesome tales of their tormentors' atrocities, Cameron at least doubled down and declared that "if we do not act to stem the onslaught of this exceptionally dangerous terrorist movement, it will only grow stronger until it can target us on the streets of Britain." And yet both he and Obama continue to equivocate on connecting the dots linking what is happening there to the battles in Gaza, the disappearance of the kidnapped girls in Nigeria and the slaughter three years ago in Mumbai. Avi Davis is the President of the American Freedom Alliance in Los Angeles. He can be reached at adavis@americanfreedomalliance.org
Big Peace "MSNBC host Rev. Al Sharpton has been scheduled to keynote the 20th annual Council on American-Islamic Relations fundraising banquet, scheduled for September 27th in the Washington, D.C., area."
"Sharpton's critics have described him as a “race-hustler,” while his supporters have profiled him as a civil rights leader. Rev. Sharpton is President Barack Obama’s “go-to black leader,” according to a 60 Minutes report. Their relationship is so close that “not only does Sharpton travel to see the president, the president travels to see him,” the report said." ...
... "CAIR is seen by many as an arm of the global Muslim Brotherhood movement--an organization that seeks a global Caliphate governed by the barbaric Shariah Koranic laws system. Some point to the motto of the Muslim Brotherhood to highlight the nature of its radicalism: “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Quran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope. Allahu Akbar!”
Speaking of CAIR, have you heard about their real war on women?
The family of Mike Brown, an eighteen-year-old Ferguson teenager shot and killed by police on Saturday, August 9, has said that the young man recently took up a passion for music, with an interest in sound engineering and plans to study at Vatterott College next week. According to his grandmother, Desuirea Harris, “All he wanted to do is make music.”
, the old media's standard for any police shooting of a black person is: "Racist until proved innocent.' " ...
