I ended up omitting a few. For example, Obama is back to whining, this time at the Left. Well, the bloom wore off that Nobel Prize real quick. So much for the statesman.
Sorry I don’t have the link, but I read somewhere that Bill Clinton is, shall we say, annoyed at being passed over for The Prize. I think Escapade Monica will eternally keep him out of Paradise. Hilllary is no doubt enjoying the tantrum she gets to watch.
Blogger ate my list of names to thank. Y’all know who you are, though.
Whew. Only one more day of this…then you get the professional back.
Criminalizing everyone
Needed: A ‘clean line’ to determine lawfulness
You don’t need to know. You can’t know.” That’s what Kathy Norris, a 60-year-old grandmother of eight, was told when she tried to ask court officials why, the day before, federal agents had subjected her home to a furious search.
The agents who spent half a day ransacking Mrs. Norris’ longtime home in Spring, Texas, answered no questions while they emptied file cabinets, pulled books off shelves, rifled through drawers and closets, and threw the contents on the floor.
The six agents, wearing SWAT gear and carrying weapons, were with - get this- the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Kathy and George Norris lived under the specter of a covert government investigation for almost six months before the government unsealed a secret indictment and revealed why the Fish and Wildlife Service had treated their family home as if it were a training base for suspected terrorists. Orchids.
That’s right. Orchids.
A full discussion of this insane story is here.
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HISTORIAN DISSES BUNCHE TO BUILD UP OBAMA
Channel surfing I came upon this exchange between Greta Van Sustern and Rice history professor Douglas Brinkley:
VAN SUSTEREN: But is it something that -- in theory, is the award for something that you have done, something that you’ve accomplished, or is it something for sort of an extraordinary background and inspiring hope because those are two very different concepts?…
BRINKLEY: I think most of them are for something very concrete, more of a Camp David-like peace accord, when you know, Begin and Sadat won, for example. That would be classic. . . . Ralph Bunch won, a U.N. diplomat. He won in 1950, an African-American. Many people thought Ralph Bunch got it because he was a leading African-American in the diplomatic world. . . .
I could not believe my ears. In truth, Ralph Bunche won the Nobel prize precisely for a very specific achievement - a precursor to the Camp David accords - the 1949 armistice agreement between Israel and the Arab states. Amazingly, Douglas Brinkley did not know that and implied that he got it for the color of his skin…
if you’re not familiar with Ralph Bunche, by all means remedy that. I hadn’t realized they’d made a stamp in Bunche’s honor. She has the image up on that post.
It speaks volumes about today’s professoriate that they don’t even know what they don’t know…
Muslim councillor faces protests as she takes prayer break at Tower Hamlets
A Muslim Labour councillor faced a backlash when a Town Hall meeting was adjourning while she went to pray.
The development committee at Tower Hamlets stopped after five minutes to allow Muslim councillors a prayer break during its last meeting.
Cllr Rania Khan faced shouts of “disgusting” from the public gallery as she left to pray and on her return said she had been disturbed by the “abuse hurled at her”.
A former Labour councillor, Ronald Osborne, sitting in the gallery, said: “We weren’t hurling abuse at her. But you don’t stop a meeting to pray, that should be done beforehand. Are they paying her to pray? People rushed home from work to get to this meeting and it’s not fair to keep them waiting.”
Cllr Khan later explained that as many other Muslim she tries to pray at set times five times a day.
She said: “I’m a politician but my religion is also important to me. I had been in meetings from 2-7 pm and I’m entitled to a 15 minute break in any job.
“I had already missed earlier prayers and the important thing was to try and pray before the sun came down.
Key words here: “I’m entitled”
An Immigration Tipping Point
by Michael Barone
It did not make the headlines last week, but the U.S. Census Bureau made an announcement this month that may prove to be a landmark in American demographic history: for the first time since the 1970 census, the nation’s foreign-born percentage of the population has declined.
On their face, the numbers do not sound stunning. The Census Bureau’s American Community Survey reported that the foreign-born percentage of the nation’s population was 12.6 percent on July 1, 2007, and 12.5 percent on July 1, 2008, and there is some margin of error in ACS data. Nonetheless, this 0.1 percent refers to a large number of people. The foreign-born population was 38,048,456 according to the 2007 ACS and (by my calculation) about 38,007,466 (12.5 percent of 304,059,728) according to the 2008 ACS. That’s a decline of about 40,000 people-and a sharp reversal of trend.
The foreign-born percentage of the U.S. population rose from 9.7 percent in 1850 to 14.7 percent in 1890, subsided slightly to 13.6 percent in 1900 and then rose to 14.7 percent again in 1910.1 Immigration was cut off during the war years 1914 to 1918 and then by restrictive immigration laws passed in 1921 and 1924, and as immigrants died off the foreign-born percentage fell to a post-1850 low of 4.7 percent in 1970. It has risen relentlessly since then, as Latin and Asian immigration has surged, contrary to the expectations of the framers of the 1965 immigration act, to 12.6 percent in 2007, a figure almost as high as those recorded in decennial censuses from 1860 to 1920.
[my emphasis]
Barack Obama adviser says Sharia Law is misunderstood
President Barack Obama’s adviser on Muslim affairs, Dalia Mogahed, has provoked controversy by appearing on a British television show hosted by a member of an extremist group to talk about Sharia Law.
Miss Mogahed, appointed to the President’s Council on Faith-Based and Neighbourhood Partnerships, said the Western view of Sharia was “oversimplified” and the majority of women around the world associate it with “gender justice”.
The White House adviser made the remarks on a London-based TV discussion programme hosted by Ibtihal Bsis, a member of the extremist Hizb ut Tahrir party
The group believes in the non-violent destruction of Western democracy and the creation of an Islamic state under Sharia Law across the world.
Miss Mogahed appeared alongside Hizb ut Tahrir’s national women’s officer, Nazreen Nawaz.
During the 45-minute discussion, on the Islam Channel programme Muslimah Dilemma earlier this week, the two members of the group made repeated attacks on secular “man-made law” and the West’s “lethal cocktail of liberty and capitalism”.
They called for Sharia Law to be “the source of legislation” and said that women should not be “permitted to hold a position of leadership in government”.
How’s that cognitive dissonance working for ya, Ms. Mogahed?
Fake “Hymen” Sparks Outrage in Egypt
From new noses to luscious lips modern technology means anything can be bought, and now a Chinese-made “hymen” aims to give women back their virginity, which MPs in Egypt have slammed as a deceitful tool that promotes vice and corruption.
The hymen, called the Virginity Hymen, consists of a tiny pouch that is inserted inside a woman’s vagina and contains a red substance, simulating blood, which leaks when the pouch is broken during sexual intercourse.
Egyptian scholar The devise, which costs $15, has kicked off mass debates amongst Egypt’s MPs and religious scholars about ways to stop it from being imported to Egypt as they fear it may encourage promiscuous behavior.
A fatwa sanctioning the harshest of punishments on those who import the hymen was issued by Dr. Abdel-Moati Bayoumi, a member of the Center for Islamic Research (CIR), which has been slammed as unnecessary.
“People who bring the artificial hymen into the country should be severely penalized,” Bayoumi, who is also a former Deputy Chairman of the Religious Affairs Committee in parliament, stated in his fatwa.
“They spread vice and encourage girls to engage in illicit relationships as they know they can restore their virginity,” he warned.
I had meant to post on this back when it was in the China News (in English). Those clever Chinese know how to fill a niche market. The Muslims have met their match because China will shrug off their rage. A Gallic shrug?
Pope canonises five new saints
Pope Benedict canonised five new saints on Sunday, including a 19th-century priest whose work with leprosy patients on a Hawaiian island has been hailed by US President Barack Obama as inspiring those helping Aids sufferers in today’s world.
Among the pilgrims packing St Peter’s Basilica was Hawaii resident Audrey Toguchi, an 80-year-old retired teacher whose recovery from lung cancer a decade ago was called miraculous by the Vatican.
She had prayed to Belgium-born Jozef De Veuster, more commonly known as Father Damien, who himself died from leprosy in 1889 after contracting the disease while working with leprosy patients who were living in isolation on Molokai island.
Ms Toguchi and her doctor, Walter Chang, joined a procession of faithful bringing relics of the new saints to the Pope at the central altar of the basilica.
The pontiff said the newly canonised had given of themselves totally without “calculation or personal gain”.
“Their perfection, in the logic of a faith that is humanly incomprehensible at times, consists in no longer placing themselves at the centre, but choosing to go against the flow and live according to the Gospel,” the pontiff said in his homily.
Official delegations for Saint Damien included King Albert II and Queen Paolo of Belgium and, for the United States, Mr Obama’s new envoy to the Vatican, Miguel H. Diaz, and Hawaii Sen. Daniel Kahikina Akaka.
The Pope also canonised Zygmunt Szcezesny Felinski, a 19th-century Polish bishop who defended the Catholic faith during the years of the Russian annexation, which had led to the shutdown of Polish churches.
Two Spaniards were also honoured - Francisco Coll y Guitart, who founded an order of Dominicans in the 19th century, and Rafael Arniaz Baron, who renounced an affluent lifestyle at age 22 to live a humble life in a strict monastery and dedicate himself to prayer.
The fifth new saint is Jeanne Jugan, a French woman described by Vatican Radio as an “authentic Mother Teresa ahead of her time”. A nun, she helped found the Little Sisters of the Poor, which today runs homes for indigent elderly worldwide. She died in 1879.
All Catholic school children of a certain age knew about Father Damien. The island where he lived, worked and died is a tourist attraction now. I thought this event was to have taken place this past July.
MoD ‘putting troops at risk’ by letting Al Jazeera report from Afghanistan front line
…last night Tory MP David Davies warned that British soldiers’ lives could be put at risk by allowing Al Jazeera’s journalists to study UK military tactics.
Mr Davies said: ‘I would be wary of this idea. The MoD should be aware that Al Jazeera has tended to be strongly biased towards Islamic causes.[Ya think???] There is a danger that if they learn anything about the way the British Army operates it could put our soldiers’ lives at risk.
‘But if Al Jazeera is prepared to put across our message from Afghanistan in the impartial way it is presented by Western broadcasters, then there is just a chance it is an
Five years ago, Al Jazeera broadcast a gruesome video showing British hostage Ken Bigley being murdered by his militant Iraqi captors near Baghdad.
In March, 2003, just after the invasion, Al Jazeera broadcast footage of dead British soldiers in Iraq when their Land Rover was attacked.
Later the same year, the US military banned the station from filming its operations after an Al Jazeera crew filmed an American soldier dying in the street in Baghdad and broadcast it before his family had been informed.
Al Jazeera gained worldwide attention after the Twin Towers terrorist outrage on September 11, 2001, when it was the only channel to cover the war in Afghanistan live from the country and broadcast video statements by Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders.
I’ll have to see what, if anything, Michael Yon has to say about this.
Greenpeace activists clamber on to Houses of Parliament in climate change protest
In yet another embarrassing breach of Westminster security, around 50 Greenpeace demonstrators managed to climb onto the roof of the Houses of Parliament yesterday, unfurling banners which read: ‘Change the politics, save the climate.
Police were last night talking to the group, but there was no sign officers were trying to talk them down.
The security breach is hugely embarrassing for parliamentary authorities. Last year, activists occupied the roof in protest against Heathrow’s expansion.
Greenpeace executive director John Sauven said: ‘We’ve got to raise the temperature of the debate because we are really running out of time. We are at a minute to midnight and there is so little time left but so much to do.’
A police helicopter circled overhead in the drizzle and bemused tourists looked on.
After a while police cleared the pavement directly in front of parliament on St Margaret Street and a fire engine arrived at the scene and entered the grounds of parliament.
Mr Sauven said: ‘The idea behind this is that we’ve been through three party political conferences but when you look at what needs to happen in terms of building a low carbon economy, creating green jobs and helping to save the world from climate change, the fact is that George Osborne didn’t spend one word talking about it and Alistair Darling spent just one sentence.
‘This should be at the core of what they are talking about.
‘If we want to get people back to work and fill new industries that can be competitive and solve the problems of climate change the political parties have got to get on message not just in terms of their words but also with their deeds.’
He said that activists plan to stay on the roof surrounding Westminster Hall overnight and in the morning MPs arriving for the start of Parliament would be asked to sign up to a 12-point manifesto.
So who cares if they ever climb down? I hope those slopey dope MPs have the good sense to make paper airplanes out of their bloomin’ “manifesto”. MANIFESTO?? How 20th century can you get?
Oh…wait a minute. They’re okay as long as they don’t litter. I forgot the new draconian laws for littering. How about the police pick up any trash these professional protestors drop and then nail them for littering when they come down? Should I hold my breath waiting for this?
KGB-style, The Guardian removes Israelis from Nobel Prize winners list
[Tom Gross]
The British paper The Guardian - which one would just dismiss as an irrelevant left-wing rag, except that it is the overwhelming paper of choice for British teachers and for news staff at the BBC, the world’s largest broadcasting network, who are “inspired” by Guardian stories on a daily basis in their broadcasts - is no friend of Israel and the Jews, as I have noted before.
But now it has wiped Israel off the Nobel Prize map, much as Iranian despot Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would like to wipe Israel off the real map.
To accompany their story about Barack Obama winning the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, The Guardian posted on their website what they claimed was “every peace prize winner ever,” stating that the information came from the website Nobelprize.org. But guess whose names The Guardian took off the list, KGB-style, hoping no-one would notice? All three Israelis who have won the peace prize: Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres.
Following outrage in Britain, including online articles on the websites of the conservative-leaning Daily Telegraph and Spectator (why are most anti-Semites on the Left these days?), The Guardian slipped the Israeli names back on to their list.
The Guardian had no trouble keeping FW De Klerk, the last president of Apartheid South Africa, on their original list. It is only the Jews - and their achievements - which they tried to wipe off the map.
And this from a paper whose motto is “Facts are sacred”. Of course The Guardian - like several other prominent European papers - misleads readers about Israel on a regular basis by omitting crucial information that portrays Israelis in a positive light.[American newspapers don’t?]
This time it was caught red-handed, as the (London) Jewish Chronicle and the Harry’s Place blog managed to upload The Guardian’s Israel-free Nobel list before The Guardian slipped the names back in.
Below, The Guardian omitted Israeli political leaders Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, who won the peace prize jointly with Yasser Arafat in 1994. (Incidentally The Guardian forgot to remove the word “Israel” when removing the names of the Israeli winners):
And there he puts up the damning evidence as an image. The problem with this guy’s post is that he links to one of his own previous posts but not to The Telegraph, The Spectator, or even to the original Guardian essay that drew his ire. But particularly, he ought to have put in an link to Harry’s Place blog. We need Bill Quick to give him a short netiquette course. Do you think he might be a journalist? Just asking…
Sunstein: Americans too racist for socialism
Defends communism, welfare state but says ‘white majority’ oppose programs aiding blacks, Hispanics
The U.S. should move in the direction of socialism but the country’s “white majority” opposes welfare since such programs largely would benefit minorities, especially blacks and Hispanics, argued President Obama’s newly confirmed regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein.
“The absence of a European-style social welfare state is certainly connected with the widespread perception among the white majority that the relevant programs would disproportionately benefit African Americans (and more recently Hispanics),” wrote Sunstein.
The Obama czar’s controversial comments were made in his 2004 book “The Second Bill of Rights,” which was obtained and reviewed by WND.
In the book, Sunstein openly argues for bringing socialism to the U.S. and even lends support to communism.
“During the Cold War, the debate about [social welfare] guarantees took the form of pervasive disagreement between the United States and its communist adversaries. Americans emphasized the importance of civil and political liberties, above all free speech and freedom of religion, while communist nations stressed the right to a job, health care, and a social minimum.
Those were great jobs under communism, too. The ones where they pretended to pay you while you pretended to work and everyone stood in long lines for scarce goods…except for the nomenklatura, of course.
News flash, Mr. Leftie: a lot of black people and Hispanics are opposed to money for nothing, too. Thank heavens we’re not evolved enough for socialism. Look at what it did covertly in the US with the “houses for nothing” subprime mortgages that our government forced on lenders.
Barack Obama ready to pay Afghan fighters to ditch the Taliban
The Obama administration is considering outbidding the Taliban to persuade Afghan villagers to lay down arms as it struggles to find a new approach to a war that is fast losing public and congressional support.
Despite five war councils in two weeks, President Barack Obama has so far failed to come up with a strategy for the conflict that may define his presidency. Fierce infighting continues between his own generals and advisers.
Obama has been handed three options by General Stanley McChrystal, commander of the US forces in Afghanistan. These range from 20,000 to 60,000 more troops, which would almost double the US military presence. McChrystal is said to favour an increase of 40,000 men, without which he warns the mission will fail.
The White House is uneasy about sending so many on top of an extra 21,000 already dispatched this year, fearing this could escalate the war which has already claimed the lives of 241 American soldiers this year.
Obama’s delay in coming to a decision has led generals to warn that the Taliban will see it as lack of resolve and take advantage. The Taliban stepped up attacks last week with a bomb in Kabul, which killed 17 people, and an onslaught against a US military post in which eight Americans died.
Anthony Zinni is one of a number of retired generals who have taken to the airwaves insisting more troops should be sent. “The risk if you take too much time is you look like you’re dithering and both our allies and enemies will wonder if we’re really committed,” he warned…
With all due respect, General Zinni, you’re dealing with a president from the Cook County machine in Chicago. It’s crony politics all the way down.
Obama understands “pay-to-play” so that’s what he’s offering Afghanistan. Can members of the Taliban ROTFLMAO or is that un-Muslim?. Obama is a naif. Our poor military, the whole coalition of Obama victims.
Daughter saves mother, 80, left by doctors to starve
AN 80-year-old grandmother who doctors identified as terminally ill and left to starve to death has recovered after her outraged daughter intervened.
Hazel Fenton, from East Sussex, is alive nine months after medics ruled she had only days to live, withdrew her antibiotics and denied her artificial feeding. The former school matron had been placed on a controversial care plan intended to ease the last days of dying patients.
Doctors say Fenton is an example of patients who have been condemned to death on the Liverpool care pathway plan. They argue that while it is suitable for patients who do have only days to live, it is being used more widely in the NHS, denying treatment to elderly patients who are not dying.
Fenton’s daughter, Christine Ball, who had been looking after her mother before she was admitted to the Conquest hospital in Hastings, East Sussex, on January 11, says she had to fight hospital staff for weeks before her mother was taken off the plan and given artificial feeding.
Ball, 42, from Robertsbridge, East Sussex, said: “My mother was going to be left to starve and dehydrate to death. It really is a subterfuge for legalised euthanasia of the elderly on the NHS. “
Fenton was admitted to hospital suffering from pneumonia. Although Ball acknowledged that her mother was very ill she was astonished when a junior doctor told her she was going to be placed on the plan to “make her more comfortable” in her last days.
Ball insisted that her mother was not dying but her objections were ignored. A nurse even approached her to say: “What do you want done with your mother’s body?”
On January 19, Fenton’s 80th birthday, Ball says her mother was feeling better and chatting to her family, but it took another four days to persuade doctors to give her artificial feeding.
Fenton is now being looked after in a nursing home five minutes from where her daughter lives.
Peter Hargreaves, a consultant in palliative medicine, is concerned that other patients who could recover are left to die. He said: “As they are spreading out across the country, the training is getting probably more and more diluted.”
That’s what’s coming to America, folks. Get your coffins ready. Oregon and a few other states have already approved euthanasia for cases like this. Fortunately this British daughter wouldn’t give up in the face of the NHS Doctor Strangelove approach to medical care.
7 comments:
I have had my own encounter with the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
We were hunting during early Teal season in Florida. As we were packing up and getting ready to wade back to our cars, a guy approached us in the marsh and accused us of shooting a Florida Mottled duck (you're only allowed to shoot Teal during that season). He claimed he had the duck shoved down his waders.
He said he was an officer of the USFWS and demanded our hunting licenses. We gave them to him and he wrote down our information then put them in his pocket.
We denied shooting the Florida Mottled duck (I don't think there was one shot at all). He finally had to let us go and gave us back our licenses.
About one week later he called me at home. He claimed he found a dead moorhen near our hunting spot. I denied shooting it and denied seeing my hunting partners shoot it. He threatened to have me arrested if I didn't confess to shooting the moorhen.
I refused to be intimidaed by that clown and he finally gave up. I have heard many other hunters tell similar stories.
My brother refuses to believe me when I point to stories like that of the 80 year-old left to die. He's enamoured with the NHS and, ironically, accused me of swallowing propaganda whilst praising the Cuban (!!) healthcare system as the best in the world. Everyone here seems to think The NHS is the best thing to have ever happened to this country despite the terrible state it's leaving us in. The issue has nearly broken governments before now. Two things you don't ever touch on the political stage are the NHS and the social security system.
I could show him people dying in front of him and he'd refuse to see it. Not even my telling him the French do it better phased him and I almost never have anything nice to say about the French.
The fact that the Communist-lite NHS is administered by an inept government bureaucracy is not in itself sufficient to explain why an old woman was left to starve to death in her hospital bad. Melanie Phillips, whose mother received very bad care in a British hospital, wrote an article for the Daily Mail two years ago which helps to fill in the gaps. Here are some key excerpts:
But that is far from the full explanation. Much more important is what has happened to the nursing profession, where there has simply been a collapse of that ethic of caring first promulgated by the inventor of modern nursing, Florence Nightingale.
[...]
In the 1980s, nursing underwent a revolution. Under the influence of feminist thinking, its leaders decided that nurses were treated like skivvies by doctors, who were mostly men. To achieve equality for women, therefore, nursing had to gain equal status with medicine. So nurse training was taken away from the hospitals and turned into an academic subject taught in universities.
This directly contradicted an explicit warning given by Florence Nightingale herself, that her ’sisters’ should steer clear of the ‘jargon’ about the ‘rights’ of women, ‘which urges women to do all that men do, including the medical and other professions, merely because men do it, and without regard to whether this is the best that women can do.’
That, however, was exactly what the nursing establishment proceeded to do. Since caring for patients was demeaning to women, it could no longer be the cardinal principle of nursing. Instead, the primary goal became to realise the potential of the nurse, to deliver equality with the male-dominated medical profession.
In her book The Project 2000 Nurse, Ann Bradshaw, a specialist in palliative care, described how this agenda removed caring, kindness, compassion and dedication from nurse training. Student nurses now studied courses such as sociology, gender studies, politics, psychology, microbiology and management. They were assessed for their communication, management, problem- solving and analytical skills. ‘Specific clinical nursing skills were not mentioned,’ she wrote.
In short, nursing ditched its core vocation to care.
[...]
That’s why we starve and dehydrate some elderly people to death. That’s why we turn a blind eye to the dreadful conditions in so many old people’s homes. And that’s why nurses become managers, and preen themselves as expert professionals in meetings and seminars and conferences and away-days while patients in their hospitals are left to die in their own filth.
I dread to think what the EU has cooked up for us, as no one knows what is going on over there in Brussels.
Healthcare is devolved in the UK. England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each has its own health system. This happened in England.
The English have far less money spent on them per person than in the rest of the laughably named UK.
English cancer patients are denied 15 cancer treating drugs that are freely available to Scottish patients, for example.
Wales gives free drugs prescriptions, whereas the English are the only ones paying full prescription charges.
On every measure the English are screwed over, not only healthcare which is why I want England to be independent.
In Sweden illegal aliens get health- and dental care for free. Real swedes on the othe hand has aside from already having paid for it via taxation pay for it a second time when they actually are seeking health care. We all know why this scam is going on. They have to take money from somewhere to pay for their utopian visions and the multiculti project. We too have scandals with elderly people rotting away in their care home beds. Getting poor food, forced to have diapers that is seldom changed. Maybe they get a shower once or twice a week. Getting outdoors once or twice a year. I'm dreading getting old.
We where once known as one of the best welfare countries in the world and not that long ago either. Perhaps just some 20 years ago it was true. But I might also add that according to our politicians and the MSM we are still on the top. Give me a barf bag, please!
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