Ken Berwitz

john evander couey was the monster who, in 2005 kidnapped and raped 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford, then buried her alive. 

He died in prison today of "natural causes", at the age of 51.

I don't have the words to express my feeling about couey, other than that I am ashamed to be of the same species.

May he rot in hell.

Ken Berwitz

Ok, I admit I'm anticipating that Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida will get a free pass for saying that Republicans want all of us to die quickly.

That is because a) Mr. Grayson has said other idiotic things in his short career in congress which have been ignored by our wonderful "neutral" media, and b) more generally, ignoring direct, viciously offensive comments against Republicans has become de rigueur for media, so why should this one be treated any differently?

Here are the particulars, from Tom Blumer of www.newsbusters.org:

Dem Congressman: 'Republicans Want You To Die Quickly'; What Will the 'Civility' Crowd Say?

 

By Tom Blumer (Bio | Archive)
September 30, 2009 - 09:29 ET

 

The Politico's Jonathan Allen reported last night that Democratic Congressment Alan Grayson of Florida let loose on the House floor. (UPDATE: Politico now has a YouTube video of Grayson's performance at the link.)

Hopefully, Allen himself was only being sloppy with his own wording:

 

Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., warned Americans that "Republicans want you to die quickly" during an after-hours House floor speech Tuesday night.

 

His remarks, which drew angry and immediate calls for an apology from Republicans, were highlighted by a sign reading "The Republican Health Care Plan: Die Quickly."

 

"Warned"? As if "Republicans want you to die quickly" is a fact?

 

What follows, via Politico's Glenn Thrush, is what you can't say about a President:

 

Especially useful: The section on how to properly insult the executive branch in the in the chamber.

 

"Disgrace" and "nitwits" -- okay.

 

"Liar" or "sexual misconduct" -- ixnay.

 

Under section 370 of the House Rules and Manual it has been held that a Member could:

• refer to the government as “something hated, something oppressive.”
• refer to the President as “using legislative or judicial pork.”
• refer to a Presidential message as a “disgrace to the country.”
• refer to unnamed officials as “our half-baked nitwits handling foreign affairs.”

 

Likewise, it has been held that a member could not:

• call the president a “liar.”
• call the president a “hypocrite.”
• describe the president’s veto of a bill as “cowardly.”
• charge that the president has been “intellectually dishonest.”
• refer to the president as “giving aid and comfort to the enemy.”
• refer to alleged “sexual misconduct on the president’s part.”

Yet saying that "Republicans want you to die quickly" is not a problem? 

 

In a November 2005 House floor speech, Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH) quoted a Buckeye State Representative who wished to remind Congressman John Murtha (D-PA) of something:

 

House Republicans maneuvered for swift rejection Friday of any notion of immediately pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq, sparking a nasty, sometimes personal debate over the war following a Democratic lawmaker’s own call for withdrawal.

 

….. At one point in the emotional debate, Rep. Jean Schmidt, R-Ohio, told of a phone call she received from a Marine colonel.

 

“He asked me to send Congress a message – stay the course. He also asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message – that cowards cut and run, Marines never do,” Schmidt said.

 

What Schmidt said supposedly violated a ruling against criticizing a fellow individual House member, even though Schmidt was only relaying a constituent's message that did not itself criticize Murtha personally; if the poor guy took it personally, that's his problem. Schmidt, under pressure from fellow party members, later apologized; I say she had nothing to apologize for.

 

Schmidt's statement got her saturation media coverage and a Saturday Night Live parody.

 

But I'm betting that asserting (not "warning," Mr. Allen) on the House floor that "Republicans want you to die quickly" -- in effect personally tarring each and every GOP House member -- will be seen as okey-dokey, or at a minimum won't generate a wave of outrage, if it's noted at all.

 

I can't wait to see all of the coverage of Grayson's smear in the supposedly civility-obsessed establishment media. Actually, I can, because I virtually know that I'll have to. I half-expect that the cop-out will be, "Well, our old buddies at the Politico covered it, and they did a fine job, so we don't have to mention it."

 

The real reason will be that civility is a one-way street.

Other than possibly Fox and the conservative talk shows, try looking for coverage of Mr. Grayson's idiocy on the network news tonight, tomorrow's morning shows and/or the major dailies.  Let me know what you find first:  A story on what he said or a map of where Judge Crater is buried.

========================================================================

UPDATE:  There was a story on Grayson during Neil Cavuto's "Your World" (which I watched a portion of while the repairman was trying to get my phones back up and running).  Does that make Fox biased to the right, or does it make Fox a network that covers news stories.   I'm sure you know which one I'd pick - how about you?

FURTHER UPDATE:  Apparently I am wrong about how media will treat Alan Grayson's idiotic comment.  Brian Williams of NBC news reported what he said and called it "incendiary".  He played the video clip and then told us that Grayson not only did not apologize, but doubled down and called our health care a "holocaust".

Grayson may well be the single most offensive, obnoxious person in congress.

===========================================================================

LAST UPDATE (MAYBE):  Grayson's idiotic comment is not reported in the New York Times.  And, unless I missed it (which I don't think I did) Grayson is not on this morning's Today show- at least not in the first half hour, which is when the key news stories are covered.  Maybe I wasn't so wrong afterwards.  Call it a tie.

Ken Berwitz

The term "asinine" was invented for this. 

Excerpted from an Associated Press article:

IRVING TOWNSHIP, Mich. – Each day before the school bus comes to pick up the neighborhood's children, Lisa Snyder did a favor for three of her fellow moms, welcoming their children into her home for about an hour before they left for school.

 

Regulators who oversee child care, however, don't see it as charity. Days after the start of the new school year, Snyder received a letter from the Michigan Department of Human Services warning her that if she continued, she'd be violating a law aimed at the operators of unlicensed day care centers.

 

"I was freaked out. I was blown away," she said. "I got on the phone immediately, called my husband, then I called all the girls" — that is, the mothers whose kids she watches — "every one of them."

 

Snyder's predicament has led to a debate in Michigan about whether a law that says no one may care for unrelated children in their home for more than four weeks each calendar year unless they are licensed day-care providers needs to be changed. It also has irked parents who say they depend on such friendly offers to help them balance work and family.

 

On Tuesday, agency Director Ismael Ahmed said good neighbors should be allowed to help each other ensure their children are safe. Gov. Jennifer Granholm instructed Ahmed to work with the state Legislature to change the law, he said.

 

"Being a good neighbor means helping your neighbors who are in need," Ahmed said in a written statement. "This could be as simple as providing a cup of sugar, monitoring their house while they're on vacation or making sure their children are safe while they wait for the school bus."

 

Granholm spokeswoman Liz Boyd said the agency was following standard procedure in its response. "But we feel this (law) really gets in the way of common sense," Boyd said.

 

"We want to protect kids, but the law needs to be reasonable," she said. "When the governor learned of this, she acted quickly and called the director personally to ask him to intervene."

 

Did you ever see anything as asinine in your life?

Based on this "logic" there are people all over the country, unknowingly running unlicensed day care centers.

To Governor Granholm's credit, when she heard about the situation she acted quickly.  Whether her celerity is due to personal outrage, a realization that she'd look ridiculous if she didn't, or some other reason, we will never know.

But, whatever the reason, Ms. Granholm is acting a lot quicker on this issue that President Obama is on another troop surge in Vietghanistan. 

And that's even more asinine than the unlicensed day care nonsense.

Ken Berwitz

I have written several blogs about how idiotic Brazil's head of state, luis inacio lula da silva, was to give deposed Honduran dictator wannabe manuel zelaya asylum in Brazil's embassy

Now it is coming back to bite him - not only in Honduras, but in his own country.  From Reuters:

UPDATE 1-Lula faces criticism in Brazil over Honduras role

Tue Sep 29, 2009 5:57pm EDT

By Raymond Colitt

BRASILIA, Sept 29 (Reuters) - Brazil's government is facing growing criticism at home over its handling of the Honduran crisis as senior lawmakers accuse it of allowing the ousted president to use its embassy as a political platform.

Manuel Zelaya, who was toppled as Honduran president by a coup on June 28, has set up camp in the Brazilian embassy with dozens of supporters and has given numerous interviews to foreign and domestic media.

His surprise return from exile a week ago triggered violent protests in the capital Tegucigalpa and placed Brazil at the center of the Honduran power struggle and an international diplomatic crisis.

Government and opposition legislators in Brazil's Congress have urged President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to stop Zelaya from using the embassy as a political theater.

"Zelaya's political activities are unacceptable. They weaken Brazil's position and international image," Eduardo Azeredo, head of the Senate foreign relations committee, told Reuters.

Brazil should formally grant Zelaya political asylum and take him out of Honduras, Azeredo said. Brazil would still be seen as defending a democratically-elected leader without being directly involved in the dispute, he said.

Honduras' de facto government gave Brazil 10 days to decide what to do with Zelaya, but Lula rejected the ultimatum.

Former president and current Senate chief Jose Sarney, one of Lula's most influential allies, also criticized the government's position.

"There's a certain exaggeration in transforming the embassy into a campaign headquarters. This excess is not good for Brazil or Manuel Zelaya," said Sarney, adding that the embassy must abide by international rules on nonintervention in a country's domestic affairs.

Foreign Minister Celso Amorim defended Brazil's position before a Senate foreign relations committee on Tuesday.

"What's at stake here is not only a small country but the future of democracy in Central America," Amorim said. "Tolerating this coup could stimulate others in the region."

Amorim said Brazil had not acted irresponsibly. The Lula government received Zelaya's request for refuge only 30 minutes before he arrived at the embassy, Amorim said.

Several weeks ago, Zelaya requested a plane from Brazil to return to Honduras and Amorim himself had denied it, he added.

Major Brazilian newspapers have run critical editorials and almost daily caricatures, mocking Lula's perceived leniency with Zelaya.

Conservatives are upset that Brazil may have been put into this bind by Venezuela's socialist President Hugo Chavez, with whom the more moderate Lula has friendly though sometimes uncomfortable relations.

Chavez had been fiercely advocating Zelaya's return and is rumored to have provided an airplane for the fellow leftist to fly to El Salvador for his overland return to Honduran.

A front-page caricature in Tuesday's O Globo newspaper showed Lula, Chavez and Amorim singing Zelaya a lullaby as he dozed under his signature cowboy hat, boots propped up on a chair in his embassy refuge.

In an editorial, O Globo said it was "deplorable that Brasilia allowed itself to be entangled in a Chavez trap." (Additional reporting by Natuza Nery; Editing by Todd Benson and Anthony Boadle)

Ken Berwitz

This second of the two articles I promised is by Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard:

Obama's Iran Formula
Speak timidly and don't carry a stick.
by Stephen F. Hayes
10/05/2009, Volume 015, Issue 03

When Barack Obama strode on stage to scold Iran for its failure to disclose the existence of a second uranium-enrichment facility in the country, his message was timid and at times almost apologetic. When the tough language came, it was because French president Nicolas Sarkozy had taken the podium. Sarkozy excoriated the Iranians for their deception, saying that the revelations have caused "a very severe confidence crisis" and issued a time-specific warning about oft-threatened (but never implemented) sanctions. "We cannot let the Iranian leaders gain time while the centrifuges are spinning," he declared. "If by December there is not an in-depth change by the Iranian leaders, sanctions will have to be imposed."   In fact, it was the third time in a week that Sarkozy had been tougher than the U.S. president on nuclear issues. Earlier in the week, the French president had insisted that the United States strengthen language in a non-proliferation resolution before the U.N. Security Council and admonished other world leaders for addressing nuclear issues without focusing their discussion on Iran and North Korea.   British prime minister Gordon Brown joined Obama and Sarkozy for the statement Friday. He, too, was stern. "The level of deception by the Iranian government, and the scale of what we believe is the breach of international commitments, will shock and anger the whole international community, and it will harden our resolve."   Obama should have been taking notes. Three times in his brief statement Obama used bizarre couplets to soften his already gentle critique of the Iranian regime:   As the international community knows, this is not the first time that Iran has concealed information about its nuclear program. Iran has a right to peaceful nuclear power that meets the energy needs of its people.   And:   It is time for Iran to act immediately to restore the confidence of the international community by fulfilling its international obligations. We remain committed to serious, meaningful engagement with Iran to address the nuclear issue through the P5+1 negotiations.   And:   To put it simply: Iran must comply with U.N. Security Council resolutions and make clear it is willing to meet its responsibilities as a member of the community of nations. We have offered Iran a clear path toward greater international integration if it lives up to its obligations, and that offer stands.   The offer stands? Iran has been caught lying about its nuclear program three times in the last decade. The mullahs fixed the June 12 election and violently suppressed the brave Iranians who had the audacity to say so. The Iranian regime is continuing to train, fund, and arm terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan whose primary purpose is the killing of American soldiers. And the U.S. State Department considers Iran the world's leading state sponsor of terror.   For another American president, any one of these things might be cause to seek the destabilization of the regime, and all of them together might be cause to seek its removal. Not for Obama. He is determined to pursue "engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect," as he has put it. On Friday, a senior administration official briefed reporters shortly after the statement. The official referred to the October 1 negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 negotiating group (made up of the permanent members of the Security Council and Germany) as an "opportunity" for Iran. "This is going to be a critical opportunity for Iran to demonstrate that it's willing to address the very serious concerns that have been raised about its intentions in the nuclear area." At one point, the official called the upcoming talks a "test" for Iran.   But of course Iran has failed this test before-and dozens of others. It failed this test repeatedly under the Bush administration, as it steadfastly refused to address any of the concerns that have been raised about its intentions with its nuclear program. And it failed it two weeks ago, when it submitted a defiant 10-page response to international community demands that it suspend uranium enrichment and return to the negotiating table.   The fundamental problem with the Obama administration's approach to Iran is that it treats the nature of the regime as an unknown. Back in June, after a week of mayhem and murder by the regime in the streets of Tehran, Obama said: "I'm very concerned, based on some of the tenor and tone of the statements that have been made, that the government of Iran recognize that the world is watching. And how they approach and deal with people who are, through peaceful means, trying to be heard will, I think, send a pretty clear signal to the international community about what Iran is-and is not."   He was right. And the signal was clear to everyone but those determined to ignore it: The Iranian regime is corrupt, despotic, and willing to use terror internally and externally to achieve its goals. And the lesson of its repeated lies about its nuclear program is equally clear: The Iranian regime will stop at nothing to acquire nuclear weapons.   In some respects, the news of the second Iranian facility makes it harder for Obama to pretend that the Iranian regime is something it's not. And one line in particular from his statement Friday would seem to complicate his engagement-at-all-costs strategy. "The size and configuration of this facility is inconsistent with a peaceful program."   It is a line that the U.S. intelligence community would not allow George W. Bush to use. Although Western intelligence services had been looking at this facility for years, they had been unable-or unwilling-to draw conclusions about its purpose. When Obama was first briefed on the facility-as president-elect-the CIA had not determined that the facility was for the production of highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon.   We are left with many questions. What, if anything, changed? Was there new intelligence? If so, what is it? If not, why did the CIA change its conclusion and allow the president to use this language? When did Obama learn that the benefit of the doubt he had been giving Iran on its nuclear program was, in effect, helping the Iranian regime perpetuate its lies?   Perhaps most important, will this public revelation of the facility create the political pressure necessary to persuade Obama to finally get tough with Iran?

To the people who actually believed that President Obama had even a scintilla of resolve to do anything about Iran:  Do you now know better, or are you still obamesmerized into not seeing and hearing what is dead-on in front of your eyes and ears?

And to the 78% of US Jews who voted for Mr. Obama:  Are you happy with what you got?  Because, speaking as one of the other 22%, I can assure you that I am not.

Ken Berwitz

Here is one of two articles I will be posting about President Obama's handling of the Iran crisis (NOTE:  if you don't think that the imminence of Iran's having long range missiles which can reach Israel, and nuclear capability in the short term, you might as well stop reading now).  It is by Scott Johnson of www.powerlineblog.com:

Tentative theses on Obama and Iran

September 30, 2009 Posted by Scott at 5:23 AM

 

If any sentient person had serious doubt, last week's news that Iran has a covert uranium enrichment facility under construction at a military base outside Qom should serve to clarify Iran's intent to obtain nuclear weapons. News that Obama had been briefed on the existence of this facility during the transition makes it difficult to understand what Obama has said and done about Iran since then. His statements and actions need to be reconsidered in light of the state of his knowledge. In the spirit of inquiry I offer the following premises and tentative theses:

 

1. In statements going back to the primary campaign, Obama repeatedly referred to Iran's prospective acquisition of nuclear weapons as unacceptable and stated that no option to prevent it should be taken off the table. Yet Obama accepts the legitimacy of Iran's nuclear program and will do nothing to retard it.

 

2. Obama has known about the second Iranian enrichment facility since the transition.

 

3. Obama has repeatedly demonstrated an eagerness to avoid confrontation with the Iranian regime -- to the point of fawning over the regime. He prides himself on accepting the legitimacy of the Iranian regime.

 

4. Obama made nuclear disarmament the theme of his speech before the UN Security Council last week and secured the passage of a related resolution. Although Obama called for "full compliance with Security Council resolutions on Iran and North Korea," he emphasized that the resolution (which named no country) was "not about singling out individual nations."

 

5. The U.S.-drafted resolution called for "further efforts in the sphere of nuclear disarmament" to achieve "a world without nuclear weapons" and urged all countries that have not signed the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to do so. What countries might he have in mind?

 

6. Obama needs political cover for doing nothing about Iran's nuclear weapons program and its imminent success.

 

7. Obama's statements and actions indicate antipathy to Israel and its security interests.

 

8. Obama can propose mutual nuclear disarmament to Iran and Israel.

 

9. Such a proposal would appear to be evenhanded.

 

10. When the Israelis refuse to give up their nuclear weapons, he can throw up his hands and blame the Israelis for the Iranian program.

 

11. It will not work, but Obama is the sort to think that it will, for he believes he has come to save the world.

 

12. Our enemies have come to take Obama for a fool. (So have our friends.) Conscious of his divinity, he does not understand that they take him for a fool, or that he has only confirmed them in their estimate of him.

 

For a good article that tends to undercut some of my tentative theses, I commend Stephen Hayes's "Obama's Iran formula."

Ken Berwitz

Remember Norman Hsu, the hugely prolific Democratic fundraiser?

You'll have to remember back, since our wonderful "neutral" media have decided to either not cover or dramatically under-report his conviction yesterday.

First let's look at excerpts from the Associated Press article on Hsu to see if he is newsworthy:

Ex-Dem fundraiser sentenced in NYC to 24 years

 

NEW YORK – Former Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu was sentenced Tuesday to more than 24 years in prison by a judge who accused him of funding his fraud by manipulating the political process in a way that "strikes at the very core of our democracy."

 

U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero sentenced the 58-year-old Hsu, who raised money for Hillary Rodham Clinton and others, to 20 years in prison for his guilty plea to fraud charges and another four years and four months in prison for his conviction at trial for breaking campaign finance laws.

 

In a lengthy criticism of Hsu's fraud, the judge said the former fundraiser used political contributions to win respect and impress investors as he committed campaign finance fraud.

 

"Mr. Hsu's disgraceful use of political campaigns to perpetuate his Ponzi schemes, as well as his acts of campaign finance fraud, strikes at the very core of our democracy," Marrero said.

 

The judge said Hsu stole more than $50 million from hundreds of investors in a 10-year Ponzi scheme by winning their confidence with his pristine reputation and friendly nature, a two-faced quality the judge noted was common among certain white collar criminals.

 

He described Hsu as a wolf in sheep's clothing. He said his "conniving use of the political process to fund his fraud" made his crimes much more sinister and reprehensible.

 

Before he was sentenced, Hsu apologized.

 

His donations became an embarrassment for Clinton's presidential campaign. His arrest led Clinton to return more than $800,000 to donors linked to him.

 

Seidler has said Hsu donated about $850,000 of his own money to political candidates and helped raise $1 million for Democratic candidates through about 75 people he knew who also made contributions. He said Hsu gave $3.5 million to charitable causes.

 

Marrero said he could not be lenient with someone who had performed "dozens, if not hundreds, of acts of dishonesty and fraud."

 

Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexander J. Willscher portrayed the Democratic candidates Hsu had helped as innocent victims of his devious ways. He said Hsu lied to some of the pre-eminent politicians in the country.

 

During the May trial, prosecutors played a voicemail recording of Clinton, then a senator, effusively praising Hsu for his support.

 

"I've never seen anybody who has been more loyal and more effective and really just having greater success supporting someone than you," she told him. "Everywhere I go, you're there. If you're not, you're sending people to be part of my events. You know, we're going to win this campaign, Norman, because you single-handedly are going to make that happen."

Let's see:  Hsu bilked people out of tens of millions of dollars, generated almost $2 million of his own and others' money for Democratic candidates, was a major contributor to, and got effusive praise from, the current Secretary of State, and was sentenced to 24 years in jail. 

Yep, I'd say that was news.

But guess what:  It either was not on this morning's Today show or was barely mentioned in passing (it is not even on Today's web site).  And the New York Times put it on page A28.  How fitting that A28 also has obituaries.  I guess the Times figured that, since it was burying the story, that would be the logical place to put it.

It is not on the Washington Post's web page either.  Or the LA Times' site.

Then they wonder why people call them biased?  Wow.

Ken Berwitz

Roman Polanski has some very interesting people demanding that the 32 year old charges against him be dropped.

From Steve Gilbert at www.sweetness-light.com:

Woody Allen, Almodovar: Free Polanski!

September 30th, 2009

From the Celebrity News Service [sic]:

 

Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Pedro Almodovar And More Sign Petition To Release Roman Polanski

September 30, 2009

Anne Lu – Celebrity News Service News Writer

 

Los Angeles, CA (CNS) – Some of the biggest names in Hollywood are backing Roman Polanski up. Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, David Lynch, Pedro Almodovar, and John Landis are among those who have signed a petition objecting to the fugitive filmmaker’s arrest.

Polanski was taken into custody in Zurich on Saturday while he was on his way to the Zurich Film Festival in Switzerland to receive a lifetime achievement award. His arrest stems from his 1978 statutory rape conviction for having sex with a 13-year-old girl.

 

He is set to be extradited to the U.S.

 

More than 100 filmmakers and actors signed a letter demanding the 76-year-old Polanski’s release. Stars and filmmakers who signed include Darren Aronofsky, Monica Belluci, Tilda Swinton, and Terry Gilliam.

 

Meanwhile, Polanski is facing more jail time after his legal team asked a Swiss court to release him. The decision could take weeks, which would mean the director would wait behind bars until such time.

Now those are some great character witnesses.

 

Mr. Allen’s credentials regarding the subject are fairly well known.

 

‘Openly gay’ Pedro Almodóvar’s breakthrough movie, the 1984 ‘What Have I Done To Deserve This?,’ was a comedy in which a mother sells her 12 year old son to a homosexual dentist as a sex slave.

 

Mr. Almodóvar’s first film in 1978 was entitled, ‘Folle, folle, fólleme, Tim’ (‘F**k Me, F**k Me, F**k Me, Tim’).

 

Maybe these two moral exemplars can serve on Mr. Polanski’s jury, that is if he is going to get a jury of his peers.

Interesting. 

I consider Woody Allen a great genius (and, movie-wise, Polanski isn't far behind).  But, sadly, they have more than directorial talent in common. 

Woody Allen's relationship with Mia Farrow ended in 1992, when she found out that he was taking nude pictures of, and having a sexual relationship with, her adopted daughter, Soon-Yi, who he first knew as Ms. Farrow's adopted pre-teen child (Soon-Yi and Woody Allen married in 1997)..  Allen was also accused of molesting another child, his and Ms. Farrow's adopted 7 year old daughter.  Because of this, Allen was allowed only limited, supervised access to their biological child, Satchel (now known as Ronan

Steve has already shown you Pedro Almodovar's "credentials".  As noted, Almodovar has featured pedophilia and various sexual exotica in his movies

I love that line about them serving on Polanski's jury so he'll be judged by a jury of his peers.

Regarding Polanski himself?  I have mixed feelings:

-On the one hand his crimes occurred 32 years ago and - to my knowledge, which admittedly is almost nil - he has not broken the law since.  Plus, the girl he drugged and raped, who is now a 45 year old mother of three, says she forgives him and wishes the charges were dropped.  After all this time it maybe fair to concede that he is no longer a danger to underage girls and let it go. 

-On the other hand, he committed those crimes -- i.e. he drugged and raped a 13 year old girl, then skipped out of the country (you try doing that and see if it's forgotten years later).  By what logic does Polanski get a free pass?  The fact that his victim now says we should forget the whole thing is immaterial.  Whether she cares about it or not, she was drugged and raped.  Will Polanski do it again?  Has he done it again?  The recidivism rate for pedophiles is extremely high.  Leaving him free, it can be argued, not only subverts justice, but puts other girls in harm's way. 

I don't know where I come out on this.  How about you?

Ken Berwitz

This post, from John Hinderaker of www.powerlineblog.com shows, as clearly as it is possible to do so, just how completely President Obama is on the wrong side of the Honduras issue. 

Backing An Insane Horse, Illegally

September 28, 2009 Posted by John at 7:41 PM

 

As Scott noted here, President Obama's insistent support for deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya is bizarre, in view of the fact that Zelaya is a) virulently anti-American, and 2) apparently insane. The Obama administration's demand that Zelaya be returned to power is based on the claim that he was removed "illegally" by a "military coup."

 

Many observers, however, have pointed out that the deposition of Zelaya was entirely legal under the Honduran Constitution, and that constitutional formalities were followed by both the National Congress and the Supreme Court of Honduras. Now, the Law Library of Congress's Directorate of Legal Research has reviewed the legal issues under Honduran law and concluded that the deposition of Zelaya was entirely legal:

As stated in the answer to question II(a), above, the Supreme Court, based on its constitutional powers, heard the case against Zelaya and applied the appropriate procedure mandated by the Code of Criminal Procedure. ... Available sources indicate that the judicial and legislative branches applied constitutional and statutory law in the case against President Zelaya in a manner that was judged by the Honduran authorities from both branches of the government to be in accordance with the Honduran legal system.

What was going on, of course, was that Zelaya was trying to set himself up as an anti-American dictator for life, along the lines of his heroes Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez. Why an American administration would want to lend support to such a usurpation of power is inexplicable, assuming that the administration is not itself anti-American.

What a blunderer.  How wrong can he be.  Even our country's own legal research apparatus shows as much.

But a man with an ego this big is not about to change his position.  So count on us staying on the wrong side of the Honduras issue.

And count on our wonderful "neutral" media not to inform the general public of the Library of Congress' legal findings.  After all, we can't sully Saint Barack, can we?

Ken Berwitz

There's a holdup in the Bronx, Brooklyn's broken out in fights,

There's a traffic jam in Harlem that's backed up to Jackson Heights,

There's a scout troop short a child, Khrushchev's due at Idlewild.....

Car 54 where are yoooooooooooouuuuu

That was a very funny theme song, from the very funny early 1960's show "Car 54, Where Are You".

But in real life, situations like this are not always as funny.

-There's a war in Afghanistan and the commander of US forces says he needs 45,000 more troops or we can lose it;

-There is a military presence in Iraq that used to be a war, which could go right back to being one if the wrong decisions are made;

-Iran, whose head of state makes in 100% clear that he intends to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, has lied to us about his country's nuclear capability and has ignored UN resolutions right and left.  Israel may be on the brink of attacking, as a matter of literally protecting its survival;

-Honduras may explode into civil war any day;

-There's a health care debate that is getting uglier by the minute;

-There is cap and trade legislation that could stop any realistic chance of economic recovery for years.

President Obama, where are yooooooooooooooooooouuuuu?

The answer, incredibly?  President Obama is traipsing off to Copenhagen, to see if he can get the Olympic games for Chicago (which probably has already been decided in Chicago's favor, since Mr. Obama wouldn't go anywhere without being handed center stage and the appropriate level of glory to take credit for).

Meanwhile, if General McChrystal - appointed by the Obama administration itself, let's remember - is right, then OUR SOLDIERS IN AFGHANISTAN ARE, AND REMAIN AT, INCREASED, UNNECESSARY RISK. 

General McChrystal asked for these troops weeks ago.  And it will be weeks more before his commander in chief gets around to deciding whether to send them.  That can wait.  A moment of personal glory awaits in wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen, which apparently is far more important than the safety and well being of our military.

We deserve this.  We elected this man to the presidency. 

But do our soldiers deserve this? 

Do they deserve to have a commander in chief who puts off making a decision which could mean their life or death, so that he can go to Denmark and bask in his own glory?

Mr. Obama:  How about staying  the hell home and DOING something about Afghanistan, along with the other issues that require a President instead of a rock star?

God what a mistake this country made.

Ken Berwitz

I'm a sucker for stories like this.  Maybe you are too.  It comes to us from www.ohmidog.com, via www.freerepublic.com:

A loyal dog on a lonely stretch of highway

When Kathy Wilkes-Myers of Love Me Tender Animal Rescue found a Rottweiler on the side of a highway in Tennessee, she immediately got the feeling the dog belonged to somebody — she wasn’t as timid and untrusting as most abandoned dogs.

“I could just tell right away she was somebody’s baby. She just didn’t act like a stray dog to me,” said Wilkes-Myers, who found the dog a few months ago, emaciated and drinking from a drainage ditch along the road.

Wilkes-Myers suspected there was more to the dog’s story, and began doing some detective work.

She returned to where she found the dog, and found the first clues - broken glass and tail lights. Not far away she found a pile of personal items — a toothbrush, comb, razor, and a candle with “Michelle” written on it — that had been gathered, apparently by the dog.

“It was like she was sleeping with them – or waiting with them,” Wilkes-Myers told Steve Hartman of CBS News.

It was then she remembered driving by a bad accident on the same stretch of highway, two weeks earlier.  A car had flipped over and landed on the side of the road, crunched up so badly she was sure there were no survivors.

But it led her to wonder — might the dog have been in the car?

When the highway patrol told her the names of the victims — including a mother named Michelle, the pieces came together.

Ella apparently spent  13 days scavenging for food along the highway – and 13 nights bedding down with whatever she could find that smelled like her lost family, Hartman reported.

Wilkes-Myers also found out that all five members of the family survived the crash. After two weeks believing that their dog, Ella, had died, the Kellys got the good news and were reunited with their dog.

Because of their medical expenses, the Kelly family has had to relocate to temporary housing that doesn’t allow dogs, but Wilkes-Myers has promised to keep Ella for as long as they need.

And that's what so many dogs give us.  Unconditional love.

We can learn a lot from them.

Ken Berwitz

A great many people know the line that was most associated with President Harry S. Truman:  "Give em hell, Harry".  But not many people know where it came from, and fewer know what his response was.

Truman, who had succeeded to the presidency when FDR died, was running for election to a full term in 1948.  That memorable line was yelled out by one of his supporters during a campaign speech in Harrisburg, Illinois. 

Mr. Truman's spontaneous answer, which brought down the house, was:  "I don't give them hell, I just tell the truth about them and they think it's hell" 

With this in mind, please read www.newsbuster.org writer Noel Sheppard's superb takedown of the Obama-loving columnists who are, just now, starting to realize what their fawning helped to inflict on us.  Please pay special attention to the last part, which I have put in bold print:

WaPo Columnist: Time for Obama to Act Like a President

 

By Noel Sheppard (Bio | Archive)
September 29, 2009 - 10:09 ET

 

On Monday, NewsBusters asked, "How do you know when an extraordinarily liberal politician is failing badly?"

Tuesday's answer is: When an extraordinarily liberal journalist like the Washington Post's Richard Cohen not only notices, but is willing to write about it AND get his critique published.

As if coordinated, Cohen followed Newsweek columnist Howard Fineman's "The Limits of Charisma: Mr. President, Please Stay Off TV" with a well-timed smackdown of his own called "Time to Act Like a President":

Sooner or later it is going to occur to Barack Obama that he is the president of the United States. As of yet, though, he does not act that way, appearing promiscuously on television and granting interviews like the presidential candidate he no longer is. The election has been held, but the campaign goes on and on. The candidate has yet to become commander in chief.  [...]

The trouble with Obama is that he gets into the moment and means what he says for that moment only. He meant what he said when he called Afghanistan a "war of necessity" -- and now is not necessarily so sure. He meant what he said about the public option in his health-care plan -- and then again maybe not. He would not prosecute CIA agents for getting rough with detainees -- and then again maybe he would.

Most tellingly, he gave Congress an August deadline for passage of health-care legislation -- "Now, if there are no deadlines, nothing gets done in this town . . . " -- and then let it pass. It seemed not to occur to Obama that a deadline comes with a consequence -- meet it or else.

Obama lost credibility with his deadline-that-never-was, and now he threatens to lose some more with his posturing toward Iran. He has gotten into a demeaning dialogue with Ahmadinejad, an accomplished liar. (The next day, the Iranian used a news conference to counter Obama and, days later, Iran tested some intermediate-range missiles.) Obama is our version of a Supreme Leader, not given to making idle threats, setting idle deadlines, reversing course on momentous issues, creating a TV crisis where none existed or, unbelievably, pitching Chicago for the 2016 Olympics. Obama's the president. Time he understood that.

Actually, Richard, the time to understand someone's qualifications is during the campaign NOT after you aided and abetted his march to the White House.

For instance, on Election Day 2008, Cohen wrote:

Barack Obama is often called a transformational figure, and this election, it then follows, is a transformational one. I beg to quibble. Barack Obama is a confirmational figure, and this election confirms what has been gradually occurring in American society ever since that July day when Johnson virtually outlawed most forms of racial segregation in America. We've been transforming ever since. 

My colleague David Broder dates to Dec. 8, 2007, the moment he knew "this presidential campaign was going to be the best" he'd ever covered. That was when about 18,000 people crammed into Hy-Vee Hall in Des Moines to see Obama and Oprah Winfrey, and you knew, if you were there -- and I was -- that something momentous was happening. There, on the stage, were Obama, his wife, Michelle, and Winfrey. I turned to my friend Joe Klein of Time magazine and said we were immeasurably lucky. We were witnessing history being made. 

Maybe if so-called journalists like Broder, Cohen, and Klein were less concerned with the color of candidate Obama's skin than what his qualifications were to be the most powerful political figure in the world, we wouldn't now have in the White House a man that is still campaigning because he doesn't know HOW to be president.

Alas, that didn't matter to folks like Cohen then who concluded his November 3, 2008, column: "My fellow Americans, we have overcome."

Have we, Richard? Are race relations better in America today as a result of what happened the last election?

More importantly, given the empty suit now residing in the Oval Office -- an emptiness you finally are starting to notice!!! -- was your complicity in getting him elected worth it?

It is one of the more dispiriting anomalies of Barack Obama's ascension to the presidency that, to a great extent, the problem his election was supposed to help resolve, racism, was one of the key reasons he was elected in the first place. 

As Sheppard implies, if they paid attention to the man instead of the melanin content, they would have noticed how unqualified he was for this office.   

But that is done.  And they can whimper all they want about it without a thing changing --- until we vote again, first for the house and one-third of the senate in 2010 and then for the presidency in 2012. 

Maybe Broder, Fineman and Cohen will come to their senses by then - along with enough of John Q. Public, to make things better.  Let's hope it won't be too late.

Ken Berwitz

To read and/or watch our wonderful "neutral" media, you would swear that Barack Obama is an international sensation.

The reality, however, is a bit harder to chew on.

Here is an excellent example of what I'm talking about, in the form of a devastating column from Jack Kelly, writing for www.realclearpolitics.com:

September 29, 2009

Sarkozy's Contempt for Obama

By Jack Kelly

The contempt with which the president of France regards the president of the United States was displayed in public last week.

Nicolas Sarkozy was furious with Barack Obama for his adolescent warbling about a world without nuclear weapons at a meeting Mr. Obama chaired of the United Nations Security Council last Thursday (9/24).

“We must never stop until we see the day when nuclear arms have been banished from the face of the earth," President Obama said.

What infuriated President Sarkozy was that at the time Mr. Obama said those words, Mr. Obama knew the mullahs in Iran had a secret nuclear weapons development site, and he didn't call them on it.

‘President Obama dreams of a world without weapons...but right in front of us two countries are doing the exact opposite," Mr. Sarkozy said.

"Iran since 2005 has flouted five Security Council resolutions," Mr. Sarkozy said. "North Korea has been defying Council resolutions since 1993."

"What good has proposals for dialogue brought the international community?" he asked rhetorically. "More uranium enrichment and declarations by the leaders of Iran to wipe out a UN member state off the map."

If the Security Council had imposed serious sanctions on the regimes which are flouting UN resolutions, the resolution Mr. Obama proposed about working toward nuclear disarmament wouldn't have been so meaningless, Mr. Sarkozy implied.

"If we have courage to impose sanctions together it will lend viability to our commitment to reduce or own weapons and to making a world without nuke weapons," he said.

The extent of President Obama's naivete - or duplicity - was on display Friday at the G20 summit when the president, flanked by Mr. Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, revealed to the American public that Iran had a second nuclear weapons site on a military base near the holy city of Qom.

News reports indicated Mr. Obama had been briefed on the site before his inauguration. But he's been conducting his foreign policy as if the mullahs could be trusted.

"Iran has been put on notice," President Obama said in Pittsburgh.

Iran responded to being "put on notice" by testing Monday two ballistic missiles that could carry a nuclear warhead 1,200 miles.

It was to protect Europe from such missiles that the ABM system President Obama abruptly cancelled earlier this month was designed.

Obama administration officials said the ABM cancellation - regarded as a betrayal by Poland and the Czech Republic, where the missiles and radars were to be located - actually improved U.S. security, because it has made Russia more amenable to sanctions against Iran.

The UN Security Council has never passed strong sanctions against Iran because Russia and China have vetoed them. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said he still doesn't like economic sanctions, but will support them if diplomacy fails. China remains opposed.

President Obama shouldn't count on Russian support, said Soviet expert David Satter.

"Words are cheap for the Kremlin and the Iranians are aware of this," he said. "The Russians, having endorsed sanctions, will now find hundreds of reasons why any specific sanctions package is unfair...The reason is that support for Iran is Russia's most important trump card in foreign relations and there is little likelihood they will give it up."

Iran has been put on notice before. At the G8 meeting in Italy in July, Mr. Obama and other leaders set a "firm deadline" of Sep. 10 for the Iranians to make a serious offer to negotiate about their nuclear program. When the mullahs blew him off, Mr. Obama quietly extended the deadline until December.

December could be too late. "Tehran soon could have humankind's most frightening weapon if substantial diplomatic progress is not made in the coming days," Rep. Howard Berman (D-Cal), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee said Saturday (9/26).

If severe economic sanctions are not imposed immediately, in months if not in weeks, only a military strike will b e able to prevent an Iranian bomb.

But after sternly lecturing Iran on its international obligations Friday, President Obama didn't call for sanctions. He called for more negotiations. And then, as the Iranians were spitting in his eye with the missile test, he jetted off to Copenhagen to lobby to have the 2016 Olympics held in Chicago.

No wonder Nicolas Sarkozy holds him in contempt.

An arrogant mien, a thrust-out chin and the ability to read beautifully off of a teleprompter is not foreign policy expertise, or even a foreign policy at all.

We have elected a Chicago machine politician who is eminently unqualified for the presidency, along with a lopsided majority in the congress which is perfectly willing to second his ineptitude in both foreign and domestic policy.  It takes Nicolas Sarkozy (among other heads of state who actually display competence) to show us what dangerous, amateurish nonsense we have perpetrated on ourselves. 

That's right.  On ourselves.  We did this.  It is our fault.  Enough of us were seduced by Barak Obama's teleprompter reading skills, and/or how good he looked in a suit, and/or the unconditional love-fest our media substituted for serious coverage of him, to make Mr. Obama the President of the United States.

The next time we can do something about it is the national elections in 2010, then the presidential election of 2012.  They cannot come soon enough.

Ken Berwitz

Things were not fine in Honduras, but they were stable. 

The rogue dictator wannabe, manuel zelaya, had legally been removed from office.  He was out of the country.  His supporters seemed not to be able to mount major demonstrations in Tegucigalpa, the country's capital.  The national elections remained scheduled for November, at which time President Obama and the hard-left-leaning OAS, both having made fools of themselves by supporting zelaya, could save face by saying the people had spoken. 

So what did Brazil do?  When zelaya snuck back into Honduras (quite possibly with Brazil's help) it gave him refuge at the Brazilian embassy.  

How could that not have destabilized the country?  Now Honduran authorities demand he be turned over, which Brazil will not do.  The demonstrations are getting more strident (after all, their guy is in the capital) and interim head of state, Roberto Micheletti, has declared what amounts to martial law.

From the Financial Times of London:

Honduras clamps down on dissenters

By Adam Thomson in Mexico City

Published: September 28 2009 04:16 | Last updated: September 29 2009 00:35

The de facto government of Honduras on Monday frustrated attempts by supporters of Manuel Zelaya, the ousted president, to hold mass protests in Tegucigalpa as it posted troops throughout the nation’s capital and closed down two opposition media outlets.

Soldiers and anti-riot police descended on the Globo de Tegucigalpa radio station on Monday morning and stopped it from broadcasting. Cholusat, a television satellite channel, was also taken off the air.

The media crackdown follows a decree passed on Sunday by the de facto government that strips Hondurans of constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties, including the right to hold unauthorised protests.

Critics saw the move as a direct response to calls by Mr Zelaya to mark the three-month anniversary of his removal from office by holding mass demonstrations as part of what he dubbed the “final offensive” in his bid to regain office.

There were media reports on Monday that only a few hundred Zelaya supporters gathered at the capital’s Pedagogica University, fazed by the decree and unsure of their next move. Many wore tape across their mouths, alluding to the media crackdown.

Mr Zelaya was removed from power on June 28 at gunpoint and forced to leave the country. Last week, however, he returned and is now in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa.

Honduras’ de facto government has invited a commission from the Organization of American States to visit next week, the Foreign Ministry said on Monday according to Reuters.

At an extraordinary meeting of the OAS earlier on Monday, Lewis Amselem, US representative to the international body, criticised the de facto government headed by Roberto Micheletti, and its actions as “deplorable and foolish”. However, he also criticised the unexpected return of Mr Zelaya, a theatrical figure known for his trademark oversized white cowboy hat. In particular, he said that Mr Zelaya should “desist from making wild allegations and from acting as though he were starring in an old movie”.

International organisations said on Monday that the suspension of liberties and media crackdown signalled a deterioration in the crisis.

José Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch told the Financial Times: “Things are getting out of hand.”

Is this what the meddling fool of a Brazilian head of state, luis inacio lula da silva, had in mind?   Is this what he wanted to happen?

The answer is either no, which makes him a major-league idiot for not understanding the problem he would create, or yes, which makes him a fomenter of national turmoil in another country and will make the two countries enemies.  Which of those choices is the good one?

If da silva has a brain (which, at this point, is very questionable) he will immediately turn zelaya over to the Honduran authorities and apologize for his actions.  But since his actions pretty much guarantee that he does not have a brain, you can expect this debacle to continue. 

If there is bloodshed, it is on da silva's hands -- and the hands of the Obama administration and the OAS, which supported a rogue dictator over the legal, democratic actions of Honduras' supreme court.

Oh, and a big fat "thank you" to the United States - for remaining at the forefront of supporting zelaya over micheletti, despite the fact that zelaya's removal was entirely legal and constitutional.  Does the Obama administration ever get on the correct side of anything?

=======================================================================

UPDATE:   Interim head of state Michiletti has apparently reversed himself and Honduras is not under the decrees mentioned in the Financial Times article above (rethinking those measures was probably a very good idea)

Ken Berwitz

General Stanley McChrystal is in command of our forces in Afghanistan.  He was appointed to that position by Robert Gates, President Obama's Secretary of defense.

General McChrystal says that the 21,000 soldier troop surge handed to him by President Obama is not enough, and he needs 45,000 more - otherwise we can lose this war.

A few points to be made: 

-Where is the media outrage about a troop surge in Afghanistan - the 21,000 OR the possible additional 45,000?  Did they not express outrage when President Bush signed off on the troop surge in Iraq - the one that eventually turned the war around? 

-If the answer to the previous point is there is no outrage because President Obama is right and troop surges are necessary, then a) how come they were not demanding them during the Bush administration and b) how come they aren't going wild over the fact that Mr. Obama is diddling and doodling and dawdling instead of providing the additional 45,000?  

-On this morning's Today show, senior White House correspondent Chuck Todd (yeah, the guy with that annoying, arrogant manner and the pretentious facial hair) told us that it will be weeks before President Obama makes his decision about the troop surge.  According to Todd, Mr. Obama will meet with Gates, and Hillary Clinton, and Biden, and combinations of them, and maybe your accountant and dry cleaner too, who knows?  Then aaa-a-a-n-n-n-n-n-y-y-y day afterwards he'll decide. 

Doesn't that hit you as a case of letting our troops get tagged for too long before something is done?  The commanding general told President Obama more troops were needed in August, and warned of significant consequences if this were not acted on.  If But if Todd is right, Mr. Obama's decision will come at least a month afterwards. 

That is untenable.  Either send them or don't. 

-Last Friday, Charles Krauthammer, speaking on Fox News, speculated that McChrystal will resign over this.  He may well be right.

What will Mr. Obama and his flaks do if McChrystal resigns and/or if the war in Afghanistan continues degenerating into the high-casualty mess it has become under his "leadership"?  Try to lay it off on President Bush, like every other of the mounting number of this administration's failures?

Remember:  President Obama said that Afghanistan was a war of necessity.  President Obama signed off on the first troop surge.  President Obama's administration appointed the commanding general who is telling him it wasn't anywhere near enough - and whose troops are being denied the new surge by Mr. Obama.  It would take a convention of the brain-dead to blame this on anyone but Barack Obama.

One last point, which comes in the form of a suggestion for President Obama:  How about getting the eff off TV long enough to DO something about this?  How about giving up the Sunday shows (other than the ones on Fox, of course), and the late night joke-fests with Letterman, and taking care of your responsibilities as commander in chief? 

What a refreshing change that would be.

Ken Berwitz

The truth?  It just isn't that hard, not even for someone who likes to eat as much as I do.

Back to politics.

Ken Berwitz

L'shanah Tovah is Hebrew for "have a good year".

At sundown (momentarily) Yom Kippur starts.  Yom Kippur is the highest holy day of the Jewish calendar - a day of fasting, atonement and prayer.

I am not a religious person.  But I observe Yom Kippur by fasting for the day. 

I do so out of respect for the millions and millions of observant Jews who died for their beliefs.  In my small way I hope this honors their memory --- and reaffirms to our enemies that, even after everything they've done to annihilate us, we are still here and still free to be Jews.

I will resume blogging no earlier than Monday night;  probably Tuesday morning.

To all my friends:  l'shanah tovah.

Ken Berwitz

Why does Barack Obama crap on our allies?

From Byron York at the Washington Examiner:

Why does Obama keep snubbing the British?

By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
09/26/09 8:23 AM EDT

At the G20 summit in Pittsburgh, and at the UN Security Council meeting before that, Barack Obama continued his administration's new policy toward Great Britain: declare that the "special relationship" between the U.S. and the U.K. is as strong as ever, and then act as if there is no such relationship at all.

The British papers were filled with the news that the president would not grant Prime Minister Gordon Brown a one-on-one meeting. "Mr. Obama had refused five separate requests from the prime minister for a private meeting during his U.S. trip for the UN summit in New York," reported the Daily Mail.

The White House downplayed the reports. "Stop reading those London tabloids," spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters aboard Air Force One Thursday. But Gibbs did not deny reports that the White House had turned down Brown's requests for a meeting.

"Gordon Brown, are we snubbing him?" asked a reporter. "And if not, why did we turn down five requests for bilaterals?"

"The notion that there remains anything other than a special relationship between the two countries is silly and absurd," Gibbs answered. "The President spoke with Prime Minister Brown on the phone in the lead-up to G20 just two weeks ago. They spent time after the climate change dinner on Monday. They spent time after the Security Council today, and obviously went into the Friends of Pakistan meeting together, on an issue that's of great concern to both countries. So I think this is a media-generated bunch of silliness."

"Bunch of silliness?"

"Bunch of silliness."

"But why did we turn down the request for a bilateral?" the reporter pressed.

"Because we're talking to them constantly," Gibbs answered. "The notion that you can only do this in one meeting I think would -- doesn’t make any sense. Because of the special relationship we have, we're in constant communication."

That's not how the British saw it. A columnist in the Telegraph noted that last Monday's paper carried a picture of a British soldier who had been killed in Afghanistan. Alongside the picture was a report "that the prime minister was forced to dash through the kitchens of the UN in New York to secure a few minutes 'face time' with President Obama after five requests for a sit-down meeting were rejected by the White House."  The headline for the column: "Barack Obama's churlishness is unforgivable."

Still the White House didn't budge. And then, in an unexpected development, Obama was forced to make a statement regarding the revelation of the secret Iranian nuclear enrichment plant. At an early-morning appearance Friday, Obama demanded Iran comply with UN Security Council resolutions on its nuclear program. And who was standing behind president as he spoke? Gordon Brown, along with French president Nicolas Sarkozy.

Shortly after that, Gibbs' office sent out a press release: "President Obama to hold a bilateral meeting with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown today." At long last, Brown, whose appearance with Obama at the Iran statement helped convey a sense of unity and resolution among the allies, got his meeting. The two leaders discussed mostly Iran and Afghanistan, a statement said. But whatever was discussed seemed to take a back seat to the fact that the meeting nearly didn't happen. "The get-together at the end of the Pittsburgh summit will be seen as a scant consolation for the earlier refusal to meet," reported the Telegraph.

It's clear to everyone that Brown is on his last political legs. Perhaps that has something to do with the White House's behavior, although no one in the administration can say that publicly. But it won't be long before there is a new British prime minister. Will Obama, in need of allied support on Iran and Afghanistan, give him the same treatment?

 The President's treatment of Israel has been well documented here.  But it is clear that Israel is not alone in being treated badly, even childishly, by Barack Obama.

What will he do when we need them (as we do over and over again?).  Apologize?  I don't think that is within Mr. Obama, who comes across as the single most arrogant, self-involved President of my (63 year) lifetime.

Maybe he can make amends by giving the Prime Minister a set of those Movie CDs he gave the queen.  That went over so well, why not do it again?

========================================================================

UPDATE:  Commenter Zeke reminds me that the Czech Republic and Poland should be included in this blog.  My only excuse for excluding them on my first pass, is that I didn't mean it to be a complete list.  But, given how recently Mr. Obama crapped on these two valued allies by rescinding the missile shield, that is a weak excuse and I was wrong not to.  So they're here now.

Thanks Zeke.

Ken Berwitz

Here is a "simple" color test my sister just sent me.

Give it a try, and see how "simple" this actually is.  You might have a lot of fun....or you might want to bust me in the nose for posting it.

Click here to start

Ken Berwitz

This story, from the New York Post, is for anyone who thinks ACORN only uses our taxpayer money for fraudulent voter registration and to facilitate houses of prostitution for underage illegals:

Hey, big spender!

Lavish life of ACORN 'thief'

By GINGER ADAMS OTIS

Last Updated: 6:16 AM, September 27, 2009

 

Former ACORN bigwig Dale Rathke racked up a $157,000 American Express bill that he couldn't repay around the time he was caught embezzling from the group founded by his brother Wade, The Post has learned.

Rathke was a big spender with multiple credit cards who rang up purchases at luxury shops, traveled by limo and frequented five-star hotels and restaurants, court papers show.

American Express filed a claim against Rathke in 2003 in Louisiana civil district court.

Among the court papers is a partial credit history that indicates Rathke had several different cards from different companies. He used them to shop at places like Gucci and Neiman Marcus, where he spent $1,003 and $1,742 respectively on July 6, 2000.

He visited Gucci at least three other times that year, spending $968, $3,631 and $718, the credit report shows.

In November, he traveled to New York, renting a limo and plunking down $2,000 for a stay at the Waldorf-Astoria and $700 for a gourmet dinner at La Cote Basque.

The brothers were booted from the group last year after the national board discovered Dale had embezzled $948,607 between 1999 and 2000 -- and that the two Rathkes covered up his crime with the help of a few ACORN execs.

Dale, who was in charge of ACORN's financial arm, continued to make $46,000 a year on the community-activity group's payroll until 2008.

ACORN, which has received $53 million in federal funds since 1994, hasn't revealed the details of Dale's fraud except to say it was related to improper use of company credit cards.

"It's still unclear if any taxpayer money was stolen when Dale embezzled, and I hope the matter is investigated," said Matthew Vadum, of the conservative Capital Research Center, which has been tracking ACORN's financial history.

In a statement to The Post, ACORN said an anonymous donor had repaid the money.

"The greatest debt that Dale Rathke owes is to the hundreds of thousands of ACORN members from whom he stole. Their organization has been made financially whole, but the very real harm will remain for time immemorial," the statement said.

So there.  Now you know that the money was not only used for those terrible things.  It was also used for the head of the organization to live like a king on the taxpayers' backs.

Feel better about that funding?

Ken Berwitz

Here is a short excerpt from an article at the Wall Street Journal online.  If it doesn't make your blood boil, nothing will:

Gore-Backed Car Firm Gets Large U.S. Loan

By JOSH MITCHELL and STEPHEN POWER

 

WASHINGTON -- A tiny car company backed by former Vice President Al Gore has just gotten a $529 million U.S. government loan to help build a hybrid sports car in Finland that will sell for about $89,000.

 

The award this week to California startup Fisker Automotive Inc. follows a $465 million government loan to Tesla Motors Inc., purveyors of a $109,000 British-built electric Roadster. Tesla is a California startup focusing on all-electric vehicles, with a number of celebrity endorsements that is backed by investors that have contributed to Democratic campaigns.

Got that?  A half -billion dollars of taxpayer money for Al Gore's business, so that he can build hybrid cars using foreign (Finnish) workers that will sell for multiples of what the average US carbuyer pays. 

This is OUR FAULT.  Because it is what is what happens when we elect what amounts to one-party government.  The party in power thinks of taxpayer money as some kind of piggybank that they can break open for their pals.

It is disgraceful.  It is scandalous.  And if this were for a high-profile Republican, say Dick Cheney, it would have lead story status everywhere in broadcast and print media.

But it isn't for Dick Cheney, it is for Al Gore.  So, although I found it at the Wall Street Journal site, let's see if it is anywhere else in our wonderful "neutral" media. 

Want to take bets?

The 2010 elections cannot come fast enough.

Ken Berwitz

When I grew up in Queens, NY during the 1950's, baseball talk consisted of which team was going to win the penant, who was a better hitter or pitcher, and each player's statistics (a hitter's batting average, home runs, etc., a pitcher's wins, earned run average, etc.).

Today, a baseball (or football, basketball, etc) conversation is at least as likely to include how much money the players make, whether they are worth it (almost always, the answer is no) and who took, and/or is currently taking, steroids or other drugs.  It also can be about what various memorabilia are worth.

This brings me to the following story, which I picked up from www.yahoo.com:

Matt Carson will not pay $10,000 for his first big league homer

By 'Duk

You thought that Milwaukee's Happy Youngster drove an unreasonable bargain for Chris Coghlan's(notes) first home run ball earlier this season?

Well, then be prepared to be even more disgusted after reading about the jerk who caught Matt Carson's(notes) first big league home run in Oakland on Monday and then said he'd only return it to the rookie in exchange for some cold, hard cash.

The fan's rumored demand for the ball?

Try $10,000, an outrageous amount that the career minor leaguer simply wouldn't — and most likely, couldn't — pay.

From the SF Chronicle: 

"Kind of a bummer," Carson said. "They authenticated the bat I used, though, so I'll do something with that.

"It would have been nice to have the ball, and I would have been happy to give him a bat and signed it — that's more than a baseball, anyway. But that's OK, I have a souvenir, I'm happy."

I don't begrudge fans going for the dollars when we're talking about big amounts of money — say, Bonds' 756th or McGwire's 70th — but Carson is a 28-year-old right fielder who took seven years to reach the bigs and probably isn't headed to the Hall of Fame.

Honestly, the ball isn't worth $10,000 to anyone and, heck, it probably isn't worth $1,000. Really, the keepsake's only value comes in any sentiment Carson might have toward it and after working so hard to reach his dream of making the big leagues, it's a ball he certainly deserved to have after giving its recipient the traditional payment of some other memorabilia, an autograph and a handshake.

Here's hoping that "fan" comes to his senses and realizes the ball means a lot more to Carson than to his money-minded self.

My first impulse (and, I suspect, yours) was to be furious at the fan's demand.  I still am -- to some degree.  But I have to admit that my fury is considerably mitigated by the fact that this is what we have come to understand about today's major league baseball.  Yeah, it's a game...sort of.  But it is also a business.  And the business part often supersedes the game part.

I hope the fan, whomever he/she is, settles for that signed bat and maybe a ball signed by the players.  If not, all he/she is going to wind up with is a ball that a rookie - one who is unlikely to become a major star - hit in the seats. 

Whoopie.  Instead of a signed bat and maybe signed ball, the fan will be able to regale his/her grandchildren with the fact that "I got the ball, demanded $10,000 from the rookie who hit it, and he didn't pay.  So I kept it". 

Maybe it's just me, but talking about which team is going to win the penant, who is a better hitter or pitcher, and each player's statistics (a hitter's batting average, home runs, a pitcher's wins and earned run average, etc.) seems like more fun.

I guess I'm just getting old.

Ken Berwitz

Over the past year, I have written a number of blogs warning that if the world (led by -who else - the United States) does not choose to do something about Iran's march toward nuclear weaponry, Israel will have to do something about it.

I have pointed out that Iran's "leader", mahmoud ahmadinejad, has repeatedly told us in so many words that he intends to vaporize Israel the first chance he gets.  

I have concluded that, as a matter of survival and in the absence of anyone else doing it, Israel will be forced to pre-emptively attack Iran's nuclear capabilities.  If/when it happens, the world runs a major risk of nuclear war.

Although there are a number of blogs to choose from which are entirely in my own words, the best of the bunch features a column by Dick Morris and (his co-writer and wife) Eileen McGann.  They lay the facts out just about perfectly.  It was published in May, and (as you might expect) completely unheeded by the geniuses in DC.

I am reprinting their column below so you can see just how completely accurate it was, and just what kind of a risk we run now by dithering ineffectively while this potentially cataclysmic event becomes more and more likely:

==================================================================================

Monday, 25 May 2009

THE DEATH OF ISRAEL?

Ken Berwitz Dick Morris and Eileen McGann (his wife FYI) have written a column about the possible demise of Israel.  Are they exaggerating?  Overstating for dramatic effect?  Misrepresenting the current administration? Here is the column.  Decide for yourself:   The Death of Israel   Sunday, May 24, 2009 5:31 PM By: Dick Morris & Eileen McGann     From Caroline Glick, deputy editor and op-ed writer for the Jerusalem Post, comes alarming news. An expert on Arab-Israeli relations with excellent sources deep inside Netanyahu's government, she reports that CIA chief Leon Panetta recently took time out from his day job (feuding with Nancy Pelosi) to travel to Israel to "read the riot act" to the government warning against an attack on Iran.   More ominously, Glick reports (likely from sources high up in the Israeli government) that the Obama administration has all but accepted as irreversible and unavoidable fact that Iran will soon develop nuclear weapons. She writes, "...we have learned that the [Obama] administration has made its peace with Iran's nuclear aspirations. Senior administration officials acknowledge as much in off-record briefings. It is true, they say, that Iran may exploit its future talks with the US to run down the clock before they test a nuclear weapon. But, they add, if that happens, the U.S. will simply have to live with a nuclear-armed mullocracy."   She goes on to write that the Obama administration is desperate to stop Israel from attacking Iran writing that "as far as the [Obama] administration is concerned, if Israel could just leave Iran's nuclear installations alone, Iran would behave itself." She notes that American officials would regard any harm to American interests that flowed from an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities as Israel's doing, not Iran's.   In classic Stockholm Syndrome fashion, the Obama administration is empathizing more with the Iranian leaders who are holding Israel hostage than with the nation that may be wiped off the map if Iran acquires the bomb.   Obama's end-of-the-year deadline for Iranian talks aimed at stopping its progress toward nuclear weapons is just window dressing without the threat of military action. As Metternich wrote, "diplomacy without force is like music without instruments." By warning only of possible strengthening of economic sanctions if the talks do not progress, Obama is making an empty threat. The sanctions will likely have no effect because Russia and China will not let the United Nations act as it must if it is to deter Iranian nuclear weapons.   All this means is that Israel's life is in danger. If Iran gets the bomb, it will use it to kill six million Jews. No threat of retaliation will make the slightest difference. One cannot deter a suicide bomber with the threat of death. Nor can one deter a theocracy bent on meriting admission to heaven and its virgins by one glorious act of violence. Iran would probably not launch the bomb itself, anyway, but would give it to its puppet terrorists to send to Israel so it could deny responsibility. Obama, bent on appeasement, would likely not retaliate with nuclear weapons. And Israel will be dead and gone.   Those sunshine Jewish patriots who voted for Obama must realize that we, as Jews, are witnessing the possible end of Israel. We are in the same moral position as our ancestors were as they watched Hitler’s rise but did nothing to pressure their favorite liberal Democratic president, FDR, to take any real action to save them or even to let Jewish refugees into the country. If we remain complacent, we will have the same anguish at watching the destruction of Israel that our forebears had in witnessing the Holocaust.   Because one thing is increasingly clear: Barack Obama is not about to lift a finger to stop Iran from developing the bomb. And neither is Hillary Clinton.   Obama may have held the first White House seder, but he's not planning to spend next year in Jerusalem.     There is the column.  What do you think?   Before making a judgement, please consider whether the facts Morris and McGann use are accurate.  Then consider whether their concerns over how Mr. Obama and Ms. Clinton would act are realistic - i.e. would Obama and Clinton stand back, decline to act decisively, and let this happen?  Gauge your answer on what they have done so far.   Now what do you think?   That's a pretty disturbing picture, isn't it?

=======================================================================================

How scary is that?  It was published in May, but could have been written yesterday.

When do Obama, Clinton and the rest of what passes as our "leadership" wake up and decide that we better do more than issue smoothly worded proclamations? 

Ever?

Ken Berwitz

From the Washington Times:

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Democrats don't want lawmakers to know what's in health care legislation before Congress votes on it. President Obama and Democratic leaders apparently recognize their chances of ramming through a vote are hurt if members of Congress actually have a chance to read the bills.

On Wednesday, Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee killed a Republican amendment to Chairman Max Baucus' health care proposal that would require a three-day waiting period between when the bill is completed and a committee vote could be held. This short waiting period would allow panel members time to examine the actual legislative language and full cost of the Baucus bill before voting on it. This is important for a tax-heavy bill that - when combined with other existing legislation - could nationalize as much as 10 percent of the U.S. economy.

House Republicans have introduced a measure that would require the final version of all nonemergency legislation to be posted online 72 hours prior to any floor vote. This would be a valuable reform, but few Democrats will have the courage to buck House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and provide the support needed to ensure members actually have the chance to know what they are voting on. Mrs. Pelosi promised a 48-hour waiting period before a vote on the $787 billion stimulus package but didn't deliver. We wouldn't be surprised to see similar shenanigans this time around.

When major legislation is completed, it is the result of negotiations that can be years in the making, with many last-minute changes. Hundreds of pages can get jammed into bills in the middle of the night with only a few staffers knowing what's in them. Having a few days to digest the information should be mandatory.

The president and the Democratic majority in Congress have put their prestige on the line with the government health care proposals. Back in 2004, then-Sen. Barack Obama complained about the federal budget and the Patriot Act not being read before passage. That's an inconvenient truth for the president now that he is in charge and his party can benefit from laws being passed unseen.

Is there any doubt that the Democratic majority is shooting down a 72 hour window of availability because there are things in the health care legislation they do not want congress - or you and me - to see?

Gee, isn't that just like what President Obama has done with his birth certificate -- the real one that has the name of a hospital and attending physician, not the "certification of live birth" which conveniently omits this information, thereby eliminating any way of actually validating that he was born in Hawaii?

Ken Berwitz

The New York Post and the New York Times.  Quality-wise, a great many people would not put them in the same sentence. 

I agree that there are good reasons to separate the Post and the Times qualitatively.  But I'm less and less sure of which is the senior partner. 

Case in point:  Here, from today's papers, are two columnists writing about the same subject.  First we have Charles Hurt of the New York Post:

World's cowards exposed

 

Last Updated: 5:38 AM, September 25, 2009

Posted: 3:48 AM, September 25, 2009

Charles Hurt

 

WASHINGTON -- It's amazing how simple moral clarity slices through the toxic drivel that has come to define the United Nations.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu strode into the world's billion-dollar debating society yesterday and, in calm, deliberate tones, reminded us all of the real purpose for the UN's existence -- so long forgotten.

The day before, the UN hosted the leech from Libya, Moammar Khadafy. His rambling rant would have made him a laughingstock, except that he remains one of the world's greatest terror enthusiasts.

Then came Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- the Iranian leader's second marquee speech at the UN in as many years. Top of Form

 Yes, this is the very same one who insists the Holocaust is a myth and has made clear his desire to see Israel wiped off the map.

Oh, and he's developing nuclear weapons. But, no worries, the UN has told him to stop.

This is what has become of the United Nations that you -- the struggling taxpayer -- foot the bill for.

Dozens of world leaders spoke this week, but only Netanyahu, looking down the barrel of an Iranian nuclear missile silo, stood up and said, "Enough!"

Holding up the building plans for the Auschwitz death camps, he asked those who hosted Ahmadinejad if the plans were "a lie."

The debaters answered with quivering silence.

He reminded them that the UN formed to prevent such atrocities from ever happening again. But nothing has impeded those efforts more, Netanyahu said, "than the systematic assault on the truth."

Generously, Netanyahu commended those who rose and walked out during Ahmadinejad's speech.

It tells you all you need to know about the UN these days that walking out when a lunatic takes the podium passes for courage.

The only thing more criminal than sitting there listening to the lies and pure hate of these lunatics is standing there idly by watching history repeat itself. 

Next we have Gail Collins, the much-vaunted New York Times columnist, also writing about the UN.  Since her piece is a lot longer, I am cutting an elongated anecdote of several paragraphs that does not bear on the point I'm making...but you can read it all by clicking here:

Score One for the Diplomats

By GAIL COLLINS

Published: September 25, 2009

We are gathered here today to praise the United Nations, not to make fun of it.

About the United Nations: For eight years, the Bush White House regarded the U.N. mainly as an annoyance, a mole in the garden of the new American world order. Now we are in the age of the Obama, and trying to once again play well with others.

Qaddafi’s weird performance before the General Assembly on opening day was a bit of a blow to the American plan to deal with the U.N. seriously, although the 96-minute speech may have suffered from the fact that his translator collapsed somewhere into the second hour. But things improved a lot when Obama got the Security Council to pass a resolution on nuclear proliferation, just before he and the leaders of Britain and France dramatically blew the whistle on Iran for hiding a second uranium-enrichment plant from U.N. nuclear inspectors.

The resolution encourages member nations to consider whether the folks who buy their nuclear technology are allowing the U.N. to keep track of what they’re doing with it. It also encourages nations to get their nuclear materials secure within four years.

There has never been so much encouragement this side of elementary school tee-ball leagues. Basically, the Security Council resolved that it would be really keen if members refrained from selling nuclear bomb kits to just anybody who happened to show up at the door.

There are two ways to look at this. One is that it just goes to show that the U.N. can’t really step up to the plate. “Fluff and stuff,” grumbled John Bolton, the U.N.-hating U.N. ambassador during the Bush administration.

The other is to feel that while the United Nations can be feckless and frustrating, it’s not any more so than, say, the United States Senate, which has been busy this week trying to make sure that health reform does not involve anything that might really work.

Legislative bodies are maddening, even when they’re made up of people from the same country. In fact, if the United Nations was the New York State Senate, instead of passing a semi-toothless resolution, the Security Council members would have started locking the doors on each other and arguing about whether France could be counted as part of a quorum if its delegate just walked across the room to get a cup of coffee.

If it was the Connecticut House of Representatives, China and Russia would have been too busy playing solitaire on their computers to pay attention. The State Legislature in Hartford was recently embarrassed by pictures of two lawmakers playing card games on their state-issued laptops during a late-night budget debate. However, if the U.N. had handed out similar equipment to the General Assembly, there might have been a lot more people hanging around through that Qaddafi speech.

Anyhow, I’m thinking — good work, Security Council. At least it wasn’t a study commission.

To review: 

-Charles Hurt simply and directly shows us what a moral cesspool the UN has degenerated into, and how a bravado, Churchillian speech by Benjamin Netanyahu exposes just how far it has fallen.

-Gail Collins, combining reflexive Timesian left/liberality and cutesy-poo prose, tells us that allowing the rantings of two mass-murdering lunatics - exactly the kind of "leaders" the UN was created NOT to tolerate - is wonderful, because it "encourages" the real purpose of the organization, which is to go along to get along.  Collins proudly compares Bush, who stood up for the USA against this depravity, with Obama, who is willing, even begging, to jump right in and swim in it.  She ends by telling us what a good job she thinks the security council is doing. 

A good job doing what?  Peacekeeping in Sudan?  Somalia?  Rwanda?  Kosovo?  Gaza and Judea/Samaria (the west bank)?  The issuance of countless condemnations against Israel for fighting to survive, while ignoring genocides elsewhere in the world?  The issuance of countless resolutions against freedomless hellholes like Iraq, and now Iran, which its leaders summarily toss in the garbage pail after they are finished laughing at them?

If you want to compare New York Post and the New York Times, I suggest you juxtapose the two commentaries shown above (you can find similar examples almost every day).  You'll see why this went from a slam dunk in favor of the Times, to a toss-up - if that.

Ken Berwitz

From Lorrie Goldstein of the Toronto Sun:

Harper exposes the Jew haters

By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN

Last Updated: 24th September 2009, 3:22am

Jews around the world are currently marking a period of reflection in their religious lives. It's the time between Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, when the Almighty opens the Book of Life to decide who will live and who will die in the coming year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when that book will be sealed.

One of the things I'm reflecting upon is how lucky I am to live in a country which believes in religious freedom and whose prime minister, Stephen Harper, is arguably the most outspoken national leader on Earth when it comes to denouncing "Judenhass."

It means "Jew hatred" -- that ancient, malignant disease that has lasted for thousands of years, constantly mutating from century to century, from generation to generation. No, not "anti-Semitism" -- another word derived from the German, but imprecise and inaccurate, because Arabs can be Semites and not all Jews are Semitic.

Rather it's "Judenhass" that best describes not the obsessive hatred of "Semites" or for that matter of "Israel," or "Zionists," but rather, of Jews.

A hatred that, even in an enlightened country like our own, results in more and more synagogues these days hiring off-duty police officers to watch over their congregations during the Jewish High Holidays -- just to be safe.

In that context, Canada's boycott yesterday of the UN General Assembly as it was being addressed by one of the world's leading practitioners of Judenhass -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- is something every Canadian Jew, or at least every Jew free from the disease of self-loathing, should applaud.

"There are times when things are being said in this world," Harper noted yesterday, "that it is important that countries that have a moral compass stand up, make their views known -- and our absence there will speak volumes about how Canada feels about the declarations of President Ahmadinejad."

Such displays of moral clarity by a national leader in denouncing Judenhass and supporting the Jewish people (and for that matter, the Iranian people, who are imprisoned in a concentration camp called Iran, with Ahmadinejad as its commandant) are rare these days. You won't find them, for example, in the U.S. under Barack Obama.

Yet in Canada, they are commonplace -- for example, last April when Harper led the boycott of the so-called Durban II conference in Geneva, Switzerland, another UN-inspired festival of Jew hatred, the evil offspring of a similar event in 2001 in Durban, South Africa.

Or in 2006, when Harper knowingly brought down the wrath of all the usual suspects on his head -- who prefer their Jews as victims, as in the Holocaust, as opposed to warriors, who fight back -- when he described Israel's military response to Hezbollah's aggression in Lebanon as "measured" -- noting peace wouldn't be possible until Hezbollah and Hamas accepted Israel's right to exist.

Israel

True, not all criticism of Israel is Jew hatred. But as my Sun Media colleague Michael Coren has observed, all Jew haters, hate Israel.

In an age when Israel (translation, Jews) is forever being singled out for morally selective condemnation by so-called artists, celebrities, intellectuals, academics, union leaders, politicians, former U.S. presidents, journalists and even some churches who should know better, and whose goal is to delegitimize the Jewish state, Canadian Jews should remember who their friends are.

Harper is one of them.

In  reading this excellent column, I am struck by two things: 

1) The moral clarity and decisiveness of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper;

2) By contrast, the weakness, moral equivocation and indecisiveness of President Obama.

Harper stands strong and acts morally, ethically and unambiguously.  Obama makes a series of meaningless platitudinous statements, and begs the hitler wannabe ahmadinejad to have talks.  On what, and for what reason?  Nobody knows. 

How I envy Canada.  And how I wish we could trade heads of state.

Ken Berwitz

This is for anyone who still believes that the the health care offered by President Obama, and his majority-Democratic congress, offers people real choices.

From Carrie Budoff Brown at www.politico.com:

September 25, 2009
Categories: Senate

Ensign receives handwritten confirmation

This doesn't happen often enough.

Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) received a handwritten note Thursday from Joint Committee on Taxation Chief of Staft Tom Barthold confirming the penalty for failing to pay the up to $1,900 fee for not buying health insurance.

Violators could be charged with a misdemeanor and could face up to a year in jail or a $25,000 penalty, Barthold wrote on JCT letterhead. He signed it "Sincerely, Thomas A. Barthold."

The note was a follow-up to Ensign's questioning at the markup.

There you go.  You don' t HAVE to buy insurance, just pay almost $2,000 for the privilege --- or wind up in jail.

And they wonder why people are turning away from Obamacare in droves?

Ken Berwitz

From today's New York Daily News:

President Obama blasts Iran for secret nuclear facility, joins Britain, France demanding inspections

By Richard Sisk
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

Updated Friday, September 25th 2009, 10:36 AM

 

WASHINGTON -- President Obama accused Iran of running a secret uranium enrichment plant for years in a "direct challenge" to the international community.

"It is time for Iran to act immediately to restore the confidence of the international community by fulfilling its international obligations" to shut down the weapons programs, Obama said Friday at the Group of 20 economic summit in Pittsburgh.

"Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow," added Obama, who was flanked by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Brown said "it's time to draw a line in the sand," against Iran's nuclear programs, and Sarkozy warned that Tehran was going down a "dangerous path."

The U.S. and its allies have warned of tighter economic sanctions on Iran by December unless the enrichment programs are halted, but Sarkozy hinted at a military option.

"Everything, everything must now be on the table," he said.

Iran belatedly claimed that the International Atomic Energy Agency had been told about the existence of the plant, believed to be about 100 miles southwest of Tehran.

An Iranian official at the United Nations also said that the plant was enriching uranium for nuclear power - not for weapons.

The dramatic disclosure by Obama transformed "engagement" talks with Iran scheduled to begin in Geneva next Thursday from a feeling-out session into a showdown.

Assistant Secretary of State for Political Affairs Will Burns will lead the delegation for the U.S. and will be joined by China, Russia, France, Britain and Germany.

In New York, Secretary of State Clinton said the existence of the secret Iranian nuclear facility "sharpens our sense of urgency and underscores Iran's absolute need to engage seriously with us on October 1 and take immediate steps to demonstrate the exclusively peaceful nature of their nuclear program."

Brown says it's time to draw a line in the sand. 

Sarkozy implies a military response. 

And Obama?  He tells Iran that it is "breaking all the rules", while Sec. of State Hillary Clinton adds that this "sharpens our sense of urgency and underscores Iran's absolute need to engage seriously with us..."

Can't you just picture ahmadinejad and the mullahs in Tehran quaking at the sound of those words?

I only wish Mr. Obama had capped it off by following his homeland security secretary's lead and calling Iran "A man-made disasterist nation".  I bet that would have them crawling to us on their knees in no time at all.

If there is anything that could make you wish to god Bush was still President, this would be high up on the list.

At the very least, it is proof that there are things are more important than being able to smile broadly and put across a speech.

Ken Berwitz

The idea turned out not to be very good.....but at least the apparatus was well named.

This finalist for the Darwin Award comes to us via a story in California's Orange County Register:

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Man's penis saved after getting stuck in dumbbell ring

Apparent incident of at-home enlargement gone wrong.

By JEFF OVERLEY

In a case of do-it-yourself male enhancement gone awry, a local man had to be hospitalized after a metal dumbbell ring became stuck on his penis and caused the organ to swell to five times its normal size, authorities report.

The incident, first reported by the Daily Pilot, began with the man’s ill-conceived attempt to enlarge his penis and ended Tuesday in a Newport Beach hospital room, where rescuers sawed the ring away and spared the man’s member.

Keith Jones, deputy fire chief in Costa Mesa, said the ring had been stuck below the belt for as many as three days, and that the man initially resisted treatment. “This was a patient that was obviously having some other issues,” Jones said.

The man, described as middle-aged, eventually relented and allowed city urban rescue experts to remove the ring in a two-hour, ultra-delicate procedure involving a pneumatic chisel that sent sparks flying around the operating room, Jones said.

The man’s condition isn’t known, but Jones said it appeared he remained fully intact. “I know (rescuers) felt that what they had to do, they did it effectively,” he said.

A dumbbell ring.  Perfect.

Did this help his press or his jerk?  I know which one I'd be betting on.

The owner of the gym could have said "I don't remember the guy, but his penis had a familiar ring to it"

They had to downsize the penis in order to remove the ring.  They used a pneumatic chisel....and pictures of Madeleine Albright in a thong bikini.  It was off in less than 30 seconds.

Lucky his wife wasn't into breast enhancement. 

Ok, your turn.....

Ken Berwitz

About that video I showed yesterday, in which 15-20 of what I now have been told are kindergarten children from the B. Bernice Young Elementary School in Burlington, NJ were taught to sing their praises for Barack Obama:

The school neither answered when I called, nor called me back when I tried to validate that the video was of their students.  It no longer matters from a research standpoint, since I now now it is, from a number of different sources.  But that does not mitigate the cowardly hiding by the powers that be at B. Bernice Young Elementary School;

-This morning's Today show did not, so far as I know, mention a word about the video - at least not for its first half hour.  So the folks who watch Today while getting ready for work, and rely on it for news, do not have a clue that it even exists.

-Ditto for the New York Times, which did not cover it at all in today's paper.  Not one word.

-But, on MSNBC, at least one commentator (Norah O'Donnell) and, I believe, a second, both reported it - and defended it. 

Incredible. 

Here, from Scott Whitlock at www.newsbusters.org, is a segment of the transcript, with O'Donnell and Tim Carney:

O’DONNELL: No, Tim, I just wanted to get your take on that. I mean, this is children. They're singing a song. And I'm not clear myself. If you can make your point again about why this is indoctrination, political indoctrination to praise your president. I remember certainly in elementary school when Ronald Reagan was President and we sent him jelly beans. We designed all of these things about Ronald Reagan. We sent them to him. And I don't think everybody in the class ended up a Republican because of that.

CARNEY: Did you sing a song praising the 1981 Kemp/Roth tax cuts? ‘Cause we sure didn't. I mean, I know I had history teachers who were very biased. This is very biased. No- it’s policies.

O’DONNELL: I don't actually see anything about tax cuts it’s policy. I see this more nationalistic than I do political.

CARNEY: There are specific policies and specific accomplishments.

O’DONNELL: Because, it's about praising the President and making our country great again. I don't see anything as- anything about, you know, let’s give health care to everybody. Or, you know, no more tax cuts. I mean, there’s really nothing in there that’s that actually that controversial.

CARNEY: They talk about all his great accomplishments, which-That’s a reference to his policies.

O’DONNELL: Well, he’s the President of the United States. Why can't we respect our leaders, whether they're Democrat or Republican?

In the happy horsemanure world of MSNBC, sending a President some jellybeans is equivalent to having teachers feed the children songs of praise to him.  If you didn't read this incredibly mindless crap you wouldn't believe she said it.  But she did. 

For the record, here, from Fox News, are the two songs that these impressionable kindergarten children (5 years old) were taught:  

Song 1:
Mm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama

He said that all must lend a hand
To make this country strong again
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama

He said we must be fair today
Equal work means equal pay
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama

He said that we must take a stand
To make sure everyone gets a chance
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama

He said red, yellow, black or white
All are equal in his sight
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama

Yes!
Mmm, mmm, mm
Barack Hussein Obama

Song 2:
Hello, Mr. President we honor you today!
For all your great accomplishments, we all doth say "hooray!"

Hooray, Mr. President! You're number one!
The first black American to lead this great nation!

Hooray, Mr. President we honor your great plans
To make this country's economy number one again!

Hooray Mr. President, we're really proud of you!
And we stand for all Americans under the great Red, White, and Blue!

So continue ---- Mr. President we know you'll do the trick
So here's a hearty hip-hooray ----

Hip, hip hooray!
Hip, hip hooray!
Hip, hip hooray!

Five year olds being told, by their teachers/authority figures, to sing those lyrics.

Gee, I guess O'Donnell is right.  Who could find any indoctrination there......

=========================================================================

UPDATE:  Michelle Malkin checks in with her take on this disgraceful incident:

Acknowledging the historic nature of Obama’s presidency (“the first black American”) is one thing. Deifying him with creepy spiritual references (“red, yellow, black and white, all are equal in his sight” is cribbed from the famous hymn “Jesus Loves the Little Children;” cheering “you are No. 1”) is quite another. Burlington Township (NJ) school officials said Thursday the recording and dissemination of the video was “unauthorized,” but acknowledged that the Obama praise session was part of the students’ official curriculum.

Just curious:  What do you figure Norah O'Donnell would have said if a school in a Republican state had kindergarten children singing the identical songs in praise of President Bush?  What do you figure she'd have said if the school used a Christian hymn -- and substituted Mr. Bush's name for Jesus Christ?

Do you think it would have been: "Well, he’s the President of the United States. Why can't we respect our leaders, whether they're Democrat or Republican?"

You're welcome for the belly laugh.

Ken Berwitz

You hand this man a microphone and you run the risk of him saying something he - and you - will regret.

From today's Los Angeles Times:

Joe Biden update: He calls some fellow Democrats "turkeys"

September 25, 2009 |  2:52 am

Vice President Joe Biden did not need Air Force Two Thursday night to travel across the Potomac River to McLean, Virginia to the home of former Democratic Virginia governor and senator Chuck Robb.

It was, of course, a fundraiser, designed to help finance three freshman Democratic House candidates -- Glenn Nye, Gerry Connelly and Tom Perriello -- in their challenging re-election races 13 months from now in what once was a predictably GOP state.

Robb himself did not speak at the event. His wife Lynda, daughter of President Lyndon B. Johnson, introduced the trio of representatives.

But it looks like Joltin' Joe stepped in something again, rhetorically speaking.

About 100 supporters had paid $1,000 each to gather in the open-air pool house where Biden spoke. 

"I don’t have to tell you that you’re in a very competitive state,” the vice president said, according to the press pool notes. “You got some tough votes coming up.”

Biden called the three men “independent minded” and “damn competent,” adding, however, that they were all united on core Democratic Party themes, including energy policy and health care. 

“These guys are smart, "Biden asserted. "Some of the guys Chuck (Robb) and I have campaigned for are turkeys. Not all Democrats are created equal, while most Republicans are.”

Not for nothing do I call him Jackass Joe.

And not for nothing has the Obama administration largely kept him under wraps for the last several months.    But I guess you can't do that forever.

This, folks, is a heartbeat away from the presidency.  Sleep well tonight.

Ken Berwitz

susan atkins, part of the charles manson cult and the confessed murderer of pregnant actress Sharon Tate, has died at the age of 61.  The cause was brain cancer.

From ABC News' account of her 1969 trial:

One night in August 1969, Manson dispatched Atkins and others to a wealthy residential section of Los Angeles, telling them, as they recalled, to "do something witchy."

They went to the home of Tate and her husband. He was not home, but Tate, who was 8 1/2 months pregnant, and four others were killed. "Pigs" was scrawled on a door in blood.

The next night, a wealthy grocer and his wife were found stabbed to death in their home across town. "Helter Skelter" was written in blood on the refrigerator.Top of Form

 “I was stoned, man, stoned on acid," Atkins testified during the trial's penalty phase.

"I don't know how many times I stabbed (Tate) and I don't know why I stabbed her," she said. "She kept begging and pleading and begging and pleading and I got sick of listening to it, so I stabbed her."

She said she felt "no guilt for what I've done. It was right then and I still believe it was right." Asked how it could be right to kill, she replied in a dreamy voice, "How can it not be right when it's done with love?"

susan atkins may have died of what, physically, was brain cancer.  But there was a cancer in her brain long before the physical part kicked in.

May she rot in hell.

Ken Berwitz

If you're wondering if Harry Reid is vulnerable in the 2010 elections, the answer is yes.

And if you're wondering why, here, from the editorial page of the Las Vegas Sun, is the latest reason (among many others).  The bold print is mine:

EDITORIAL: Reid blocks ACORN probe

Tracking abuse by political allies could be 'distracting'

 

ACORN -- the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now -- is stinking up Washington.

 

And this is far more significant than if a suspiciously large number of operatives for a purely "private" outfit had been found systematically bending and breaking the law, because ACORN receives and spends taxpayer money -- lots of it -- and had carried the imprimatur of official partnerships with the IRS, the Census Bureau ... the kind of "cred" that in the political world comes only from "who you know."

 

Yes, ACORN has friends in high places -- friends who are still stonewalling attempts to trace where all that tax money went ... perhaps because they know who still has cookie crumbs all over their hands.

 

It didn't start with those undercover videos made by a couple of independent filmmakers posing as a prostitute and her pimp, visiting various ACORN offices around the country and getting helpful advice on how to hide their income and "qualify" for a tax-subsidized mortgage to set up a house of ill repute, declaring three of their dozen (albeit imaginary) underage illegal immigrant prostitutes as "dependents."

 

That was just a final shoe dropping loudly enough that the problem could no longer be ignored.

 

Here in Clark County, Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax said last year he saw "rampant fraud in the 2,000 to 3,000 registrations ACORN turns in every week," with some 48 percent of those forms being "clearly fraudulent."

 

The Las Vegas headquarters of ACORN, "a Democrat-allied organization," was raided after being "accused of submitting multiple voter registrations with duplicate and false names," the Washington Times reported last fall. The outfit claimed it had registered to vote in Nevada, among others, the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys.

The raid "set off a skirmish over efforts to expand the electorate on behalf of Sen. Barack Obama," the Times reported.

 

Mr. Lomax noted ACORN had hired 59 inmates from a work-release program at a nearby prison and that some inmates who had been convicted of identity theft had been made supervisors. "That led some local wags to joke that at least ACORN was hiring specialists to do their work," reported John Fund at The Politico, last November.

ACORN's 2008 Las Vegas field director, Christopher Edwards, pleased guilty last spring to two gross misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to commit compensation for registration of voters, in a deal that saw him agree to testify against fellow defendants.

 

Fox News' Eric Shawn reported there were at least 11 investigations across the country involving thousands of potentially fraudulent ACORN forms. Yet none of this was sufficient to block President Obama and his congressional minions from upping federal subsidies to outfits such as Mr. Obama's former associates at ACORN from the mere millions to the billions of dollars in their "economic stimulus" bill last winter.

 

Only when presented with the undeniable evidence of the "pimp and ho" videotape did the IRS last week announce it would terminate ACORN's participation in the agency's Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program -- shortly after the Census Bureau advised ACORN it could forget about helping with its decennial head count.

 

Smoke? Fire? Washington Democratic leaders have opted to just lay low and not smell nothin'.

 

Despite all this evidence and a request in writing by 28 GOP senators -- and despite the fact the U.S. Senate voted 83-7 on Sept. 14 to block ACORN from bidding for any more federal grant money -- "Senate Democrat Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is refusing to hold a Senate hearing on ACORN's activities," the National Republican Senatorial Committee complained Wednesday.

 

Mr. Reid replied additional investigations might distract lawmakers from addressing more important matters, including health care and economic recovery.

 

"It's become increasingly clear that ACORN may have manipulated tens of thousands of ballots in last year's federal election -- an area where Congress has clear oversight responsibilities -- yet Harry Reid won't lift a finger," said NRSC spokesman Brian Walsh. "It's hard to see his latest roadblock as anything but another example of Harry Reid protecting his liberal allies in Washington while remaining out of touch with his constituents in Nevada."

 

That's a politically motivated shot, of course. Stripped of the gratuitous elbowing, however, the question does remain: Do Sen. Reid and congressional Democrats really believe that if they just ignore the big mess their pet bear has dumped in the middle of the room, it'll somehow stop stinking?

Reid's attitude appears to be "Investigation?  We don't need no steenking investigation.  Just leave ACORN alone, to do its noble work."

Maybe next time around the citizens of Nevada will add this to the increasingly voluminous list of reasons to rid themselves of Harry Reid, and do it.  If so, good for them.

Ken Berwitz

From Fox News:

Under pressure from the White House, arguing separation of powers, Senate Democrats on Thursday employed a procedural tactic to kill an amendment that would have imposed congressional oversight on some 18 czars appointed by the Obama Administration, though not confirmed by the U.S. Senate. 

The amendment to a spending bill that funds the Interior Department was sponsored by moderate Maine Sen. Susan Collins, top Republican on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee,who took to the floor to decry the move, saying she was "deeply disappointed" that her colleagues would do this. 

The measure would have withheld federal funds for the creation of any new, unconfirmed czar positions until the Administration agreed to allow the individuals to testify before Congress, if a "reasonable request" was made, and every czar to produce a detailed "public, written report" biannually of their actions and involvement in the creation of policy, rules, and regulations. 

"My amendment has been carefully tailored to cover officials that the President has unilaterally designated for significant policy matters. It would not have covered the President's chief of staff, for example, and it would not cover less senior White House officials, despite some misinformation to the contrary," Collins said, noting that her staff had worked with White House officials Wednesday night without agreement.

Translation:  "We are fine with President Obama appointing people who you do not know and will not have an opportunity to learn a thing about.  These people will have the run of the house in their areas.  They will be in charge of untold billions of dollars and some will oversee areas of government that are vital to national security.  What's your problem with that?"

The 2010 elections cannot come fast enough.

Ken Berwitz

From yesterday's "Ed Show" on MSNBC, we have this brilliant commentary from Ed Schultz:

“The Republicans lie. They want to see you dead. They‘d rather make money off your dead corpse. They kind of like it when that woman has cancer and they don’t have anything for her. That‘s how the insurance companies make money, by denying the coverage.”

Somehow, the terms "idiot" and "lunatic" seem inadequate....

Ken Berwitz

moamar qadaffi ranted for over an hour and a half and said exactly nothing intelligible.

mahmoud amadinejad spewed hatred and lies for about a half hour and said nothing worthwhile, .

Benjamin Netanyahu spoke for ten minutes and made more sense than both of them put together, times 1,000. 

Here is a segment of his speech:

A mere six decades after the Holocaust, you give legitimacy to a man who denies that the murder of six million Jews took place and pledges to wipe out the Jewish state.

What a disgrace! What a mockery of the charter of the United Nations!

Perhaps some of you think that this man and his odious regime threaten only the Jews. You're wrong.

History has shown us time and again that what starts with attacks on the Jews eventually ends up engulfing many others.

This Iranian regime is fueled by an extreme fundamentalism that burst onto the world scene three decades ago after lying dormant for centuries.

In the past thirty years, this fanaticism has swept the globe with a murderous violence and cold-blooded impartiality in its choice of victims. It has callously slaughtered Moslems and Christians, Jews and Hindus, and many others. Though it is comprised of different offshoots, the adherents of this unforgiving creed seek to return humanity to medieval times.

Wherever they can, they impose a backward regimented society where women, minorities, gays or anyone not deemed to be a true believer is brutally subjugated. The struggle against this fanaticism does not pit faith against faith nor civilization against civilization.

It pits civilization against barbarism, the 21st century against the 9th century, those who sanctify life against those who glorify death.

The primitivism of the 9th century ought to be no match for the progress of the 21st century. The allure of freedom, the power of technology, the reach of communications should surely win the day. Ultimately, the past cannot triumph over the future. And the future offers all nations magnificent bounties of hope. The pace of progress is growing exponentially.

It took us centuries to get from the printing press to the telephone, decades to get from the telephone to the personal computer, and only a few years to get from the personal computer to the internet.

What seemed impossible a few years ago is already outdated, and we can scarcely fathom the changes that are yet to come. We will crack the genetic code. We will cure the incurable. We will lengthen our lives. We will find a cheap alternative to fossil fuels and clean up the planet.

I am proud that my country Israel is at the forefront of these advances ? by leading innovations in science and technology, medicine and biology, agriculture and water, energy and the environment. These innovations the world over offer humanity a sunlit future of unimagined promise.

But if the most primitive fanaticism can acquire the most deadly weapons, the march of history could be reversed for a time. And like the belated victory over the Nazis, the forces of progress and freedom will prevail only after an horrific toll of blood and fortune has been exacted from mankind. That is why the greatest threat facing the world today is the marriage between religious fanaticism and the weapons of mass destruction.

The most urgent challenge facing this body is to prevent the tyrants of Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Are the member states of the United Nations up to that challenge? Will the international community confront a despotism that terrorizes its own people as they bravely stand up for freedom?

Will it take action against the dictators who stole an election in broad daylight and gunned down Iranian protesters who died in the streets choking in their own blood? Will the international community thwart the world's most pernicious sponsors and practitioners of terrorism?

Above all, will the international community stop the terrorist regime of Iran from developing atomic weapons, thereby endangering the peace of the entire world?

The people of Iran are courageously standing up to this regime. People of goodwill around the world stand with them, as do the thousands who have been protesting outside this hall. Will the United Nations stand by their side?

Clear.  Direct.  Intelligent.  Thoughtful.  Decisive.  Moral.  Unapologetic.  And 100% correct..

Too bad he can't run for President here.

Ken Berwitz

As expected, what passes for a legislature in Massachusetts has changed the law regarding senatorial succession again. 

In 2004, when John Kerry was running for President and, if he made it, Republican Governor Mitt Romney would pick his replacement, Ted Kennedy prevailed upon Massachusetts lawmakers to change the rules and require a special election instead.

In 2009, when Ted Kennedy was dying and the Governor was Democrat Deval Patrick, Massachusetts lawmakers reversed that change, thus allowing the Governor to pick Kennedy's Replaement.

And who did he pick?  Kennedy favorite Paul Kirk.

Massachusetts, in other words, has made a complete mockery of integrity and fairness.  It has devolved (or is that Devalved) into a bad joke .

Ken Berwitz

Hugo Chavez, speaking before the UN General Assembly today, has joined moamar qadaffi in his praise of Barack Obama:

"….I think President Obama is an intelligent man, and I hope God will protect Obama….it doesn't smell  of sulfur here any more.  It doesn't smell of sulfur. It's gone.  No, it smells of something else.  It smells of hope"

Why do our enemies love Barack Obama so much?

I'll bet you can figure that out.

Ken Berwitz

This request comes to us from the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

Please read it, and I hope that if you agree with me about the importance of this you will give what you can. 

Dear DHFC Supporter, Radical Muslims are using our court system to try to silence those who expose their terrorist connections. They've done it in Europe and Canada - and now they're trying it here in America. In the case of investigative reporter Joe Kaufman, they're not giving up - even though their case is completely bogus. After two years of defending Joe, we are now facing yet another challenge. I'm writing to you as a member of the Freedom Center to ask you to help pay for Jo e's defense. Seven Muslim groups claim that Joe is a threat. They convinced a court that Joe "intends to threaten to take unlawful action...cause bodily injury...or threaten Plaintiffs or their members with immediate bodily injury." On those grounds the court imposed a restraining order on him. And they sued Joe for defamation to stop him from writing about Muslims in the future and to close down his websites. Joe reports and writes for my website FrontPage Magazine and for his own websites. He has never threatened a Muslim in his life. But he has exposed facts they want to hide. The reason Joe Kaufman is being targeted by these Muslim groups is that he monitors web sites run by Muslim charitable organizations, and he has identified money trails leading from some of these groups to terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah. We have been defending Joe from this lawsuit since 2007 - thanks to the financial support we've received fro m our members. And we thought we'd won when in June the Texas Court of Appeals finally threw out the lawsuit, ruling that the case had no merit to continue. But our victory celebration didn't last long. The Islamic groups involved have petitioned the Texas Supreme Court to review the case! Why do they keep this absurd case going? For one reason: If they can defeat Joe Kaufman in court, radical Muslims will know they can stop anyone from investigating and writing about any Muslim groups and individuals. This is a case of national importance. Radical Muslims are watching it carefully. They have seemingly unlimited funds to keep fighting as long as they have a hope. We need to keep fighting back. We cannot let these groups succeed. This is why I am urgently asking you to help the Freedom Center pay for the legal bills incurred in Joe's defense and to cover this latest development. Joe Kaufman has no mon ey to spend on his defense. He has made a career of investigative journalism focusing on terrorism - something the mainstream media doesn't want to touch with a ten-foot pole, and therefore not a high-paying profession. He needs our help. A victory by the Muslim groups would be the first step in silencing all of us. This is a free speech issue and nothing more: Joe has not lied about, threatened, or touched any of the Muslims who are suing him, or any other Muslims for that matter. He simply reported the truth, and for that these groups are doing their best to silence him - and to intimidate the rest of us. The lawsuit against Joe Kaufman is part of a strategy by these Muslim groups to bully us into silence. That's why we cannot let them win. I am asking you to make a contribution of $25, $50, $100 or even more if you can, to help us raise the $25,000 we need right away to pay for Joe Kaufman's defense. Any amount you can send will help. Just click here to give. It's urgent! Thanks in advance for your help. Sincerely, David Horowitz President & Founder P.S. Our lawyers believe we have a strong case, but the outcome of this case is by no means predictable. Too many judges have shown themselves to care more about not offending Muslims than about free speech. We must raise the money to fight this case to the end! Please help us fight back.

The David Horowitz Freedom Center P.O. Box 55089 Sherman Oaks, CA 91499-1964 www.HorowitzFreedomCenter.org

Ken Berwitz

Before you attack me for that title, I have two videos for you to watch. 

The first shows a group of schoolchildren, apparently from the B. Bernice Young Elementary School in Burlington New Jersey (I called to validate this, but they didn't bother to respond), being indoctrinated on behalf of President Obama by being taught to sing songs of praise to him: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zrsl8o4ZPo

The second, which I just picked up at www.freerepublic.com, is 4:24 long.  About 3:30 of it is another group of children who were taught to sing songs of praise to Barack Obama.  Most of the rest is actual footage from a meeting of hitler youth, with schoolchildren who were taught to sing songs of praise to Adolf Hitler.

Other than the quality of the film, try and find a difference:    

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdPSqL9_mfM

Is that bone-chilling enough for you? 

Are you comfortable with this? 

And if you are, I have a one-word question:  WHY?

Ken Berwitz

I just looked at the Drudge Report (www.drudgereport.com) and saw a video that, I hope, disturbs, even scares you.

It is a group of elementary schoolchildren - in the neighborhood of 5-7 years old to look at them.  Here is what they do:

-First, one child "sings" a rap lyric that extols and praises "Barack Hussein Obama", after which one of the two adults I can hear off-screen (both, presumably, teachers) says "Allright.  I like that";

-Then the entire group of children does the rap lyric.

-And then the entire group of children sings a song, to the melody of "the Battle Hymn of the Republic", with these words:

"Hello Mr. President, we honor you today

For all the great accomplishments, we all must say hurray

Hurray Mr. President, you are number one

The first Black American to lead this great nation...."

The song continues.  But if you want more, you'll have to click on the link below, because my stomach is turning.

VIDEO OF SCHOOLCHILDREN BEING INDOCTRINATED ON BEHALF OF BARACK OBAMA

This is political indoctrination of children for Barack Obama.  No more and no less.

The teachers who perpetrated this incredibly disgusting display should be severely reprimanded, maybe even fired.  The Principal of the school should be made to explain how this could happen under his/her authority and, if he/she was agreeable to what we saw on the video, should also be severely reprimanded, maybe even fired.

Some rudimentary research has determined that the school where this took place is the B. Bernice Young Elementary School in Burlington, New Jersey, on or about June 19th - three months ago.

I have called the school in an effort to validate, or invalidate, that it happened there.  I did so about 15 minutes ago, and had to leave a message because no one was answering the phone...which, in itself, is pretty interesting, this being the middle of the school day. 

Maybe they're not answering because others are making the same call and they are tired of answering.  Or, maybe it is because this is absolutely, unequivocally inexcusable and they are too cowardly to admit, and take responsibility for the fact that, it took place there.

I will advise you of whether I am called back and, if so, what I am told.

=======================================================================

UPDATE:  No word from the B. Bernice Young Elementary School yet (I'll be surprised if I ever get a callback), but we have this from Fox News:

Elementary School Students Reportedly Taught Songs Praising President Obama

Nearly 20 young children are captured in an online video as they sing songs that overflow with campaign slogans and praise for "Barack Hussein Obama," as they repeatedly chant the president's name and celebrate his accomplishments.

FOXNews.com

Thursday, September 24, 2009

A video posted on YouTube appears to show a New Jersey elementary school class being taught to sing praises of the "great accomplishments" of President Obama.

The video shows nearly 20 young children taught a song overflowing with campaign slogans and praise for "Barack Hussein Obama," repeatedly chanting the president's name and celebrating his accomplishments, including his "great plans" to "make this country's economy No. 1 again.

The video identifies the kids as students at the B. Bernice Young Elementary School in Burlington, N.J., with taping taking place last June.

The song quotes directly from the spiritual "Jesus Loves the Little Children," though Jesus' name is replaced with Obama's: "He said red, yellow, black or white/All are equal in his sight. Barack Hussein Obama."

Among other lyrics, touting a fair-pay bill Obama signed in January: "He said we must be clear today/Equal work means equal pay."

Click here to see the video.

The author of the full lyrics is unknown, but a woman -- possibly a teacher -- can be heard in the beginning of the video correcting and helping a student who has forgotten the words.

The office of the superintendent of Burlington Township School District did not provide comment or confirmation to FOXNews.com that the songs were recorded at B. Bernice Young Elementary when contacted by phone Thursday.

The video was originally posted Sept. 6, two days before Obama made an address to the nation's schoolchildren in which he praised the American education system as the best in the world and urged students to stay in school.

"At the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world," Obama said.

.=====================================================================

FURTHER UPDATE:  No word from the school, and I don't expect there ever will be.  But it turns out that Michelle Malkin had this story yesterday, and provides more details than what I've posted so far.  You can read her piece by clicking here.

One other note:  I have never callled Barack Obama a "hitler", and have no reason to do so.  But this indoctrination has got to be the kind of thing they did with hitler youth. 

If the B. Bernice Young Elementary School allowed this to take place, then they damn well better start answering for it.

Ken Berwitz

I was going to write about President Obama's disheartening, dispiriting, jimmy-carteresque speech to the United Nations yesterday.  But the New York Post has an editorial that says pretty much everything I would have, so why re-invent the wheel?

Here it is:

The naïf-in-chief

Last Updated: 1:06 AM, September 24, 2009

Posted: September 24, 2009

Who wrote President Obama's speech for the start of the UN General As sembly yesterday -- Rodney King? You know, the guy whose videotaped run-in with cops sparked the 1992 LA riots, leading King to ask: "Can't we all just get along?"

 Today that question is used derisively, to mock naive "solutions" for social ills. But it essentially sums up Obama's 38-minute UN plea, as Washington's former UN envoy John Bolton noted.

 

Except that Obama is supposed to be the wise leader of the Free World.

What a truly pathetic performance.

 

Not only because of the president's stunning cluelessness about the world's nature. But also because of his repeated insults to America. And his back-stabbing of Washington's top Mideast ally, Israel.

 

Obama, yet again, focused on the world's "distrust" of this nation, thanks to the "belief . . . that America has acted unilaterally, without regard for the interest of others" -- presumably, under George W. Bush's presidency.

Not to fear, though; Obama's here: He's closing Gitmo, he said, banning torture, quitting Iraq, scrapping nukes ...

 

What about protecting America?

 

Obama believes "deeply," he said, that "the interests of nations and peoples are shared." (Cue the Kumbaya singers.)

 

Indeed, he practically begged world leaders to take their "share of responsibility" in responding to global challenges.

 

Did no one brief him about who'd be at the event? Like lunatic Libyan murderer-in-chief Moammar Khadafy (who ranted for 95 minutes)? And Holocaust-denying, terror-sponsoring, nuke-building, election-stealing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

 

Obama can't truly believe these guys will do their "share" to make the world safe, however much he pleads.

And what's up with those gratuitous slams at Jerusalem? "America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements," Obama hissed. He insisted that "Israel respect the legitimate claims . . . of the Palestinians."

 

Memo to POTUS: Israel has always respected legitimate Palestinian claims.

 

Indeed, it is neither Israeli disrespect nor settlements that stand in the way of peace there -- but the Palestinian fantasy (fueled by folks like Ahmadinejad) of wiping the Jewish state off the map.

 

Obama can wish all he wants for everyone to "just get along."

 

But wishing won't make it happen.

 

He's got some serious learning to do.

What a cesspool of moral equivalency, ridiculous tra-la-la perceptions about the rest of the world....and, not incidentally, gratuitous attacks on Israel.

President Obama brings us right back to the naive, puerile mindset that somehow the United Nations is going to provide peace and safety for us all, and the United States overreaches if it operates outside of the UN's parameters.

Is this ludicrous and dangerous?  Yes, and yes.

But we deserve it.  We elected this horror show, and a huge Democratic majority in congress to back him up. 

Come 2010, we'll see if enough of us realize what a mistake this was to do something about it.

===================================================================

UPDATE:  Here is additional commentary by Paul Mirengoff of www.powerlineblog.com.  Like the Post, Paul hits the nail on the head:

Conservative commentary on President Obama's U.N. speech has correctly taken note of the extent to which Obama once again has apologized for America. What struck me as new, though, was extent to which he begged his audience to award the U.S. brownie points for his good acts. The one form of supplication follows from the other. Obama isn't just saying that the U.S. has been a bad boy in the past; he's also saying that we're a good boy now:

We know the future will be forged by deeds and not simply words. Speeches alone will not solve our problems -- it will take persistent action. For those who question the character and cause of my nation, I ask you to look at the concrete actions we have taken in just nine months.

Obama then listed a series of decisions that he hoped might placate the assembled thugs, dictators, and hypcrites -- a crowd from which he feels compelled to seek approval on behalf of the United States. Obama noted that he has banned torture, closed Gitmo, moved to end the war in Iraq, moved towards disarmament, attempted to advance the ball on creating a Palestinian state, "re-engaged the United Nations, paid our bills, joined the Human Rights Council."

So here was the president of the United States doing everything but getting down on his hands and knees before the representatives of every wretched regime in the world to plead that the U.S. has turned over a new leaf and, in effect, become harmless.

Does Obama believe that anything positive will come of this stomach-turning spectacle. Or does he just like to bask in the glow of applause for the proposition that the U.S. was a pretty rotten place until he assumed control, without worrying about who it is that's applauding?

Ken Berwitz

Pamela Geller of American Thinker is angry about President Obama's dishonesty in describing his association with/knowledge of ACORN.  And she is especially strident in denouncing the acquiescent media, which gave President Obama a virtual free pass on his association with ACORN this past Sunday.

Is she right?

Read her column and decide for yourself.  The bold print is mine.

Ken Berwitz

This morning, I was told about a friend who is of the opinion that "Democrats have not learned to fight dirty, like the Republicans".

Was I shocked, or even surprised?  Nope.  Growing up with, and constantly being among, hardline liberal/leftists, I know too many people who would have said the same thing.  It's standard-issue stuff. 

With that in mind, I would like to post a terrific column by Larry Elder, which addresses how Democrats "play".  I've already sent it on to my sister, but you should see it too:

The Letter Joe Wilson Should Write

by Larry Elder Dear Madame Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi,

I apologized to President Obama for my "you lie" outburst during his recent speech. The President immediately accepted my apology. Yet you and nearly all members of your party in the House of Representatives demanded that I make yet another apology from the floor of the House. I refused and then received an admonishment by resolution -- passed almost completely down party lines.

Now it's your turn, Madame Speaker. I invite you and others in your party to apologize publicly to former President George W. Bush for vicious, personal and frequently race-based attacks.

"Bush is an incompetent leader," you said of the then-sitting president. "In fact, he's not a leader. He's a person who has no judgment, no experience and no knowledge of the subjects that he has to decide upon." If a Republican --especially a Southerner -- attacked Obama that way, former President Jimmy Carter would call him or her a racist. Apologize, Madame Speaker.

Sen. Ted Kennedy died never having apologized. Kennedy accused the Bush administration of lying about the intelligence leading up to the Iraq War. "Week after week after week," Kennedy said from the Senate floor, "we were told lie after lie after lie." Please check the rules for a posthumous resolution of admonition.

How about an apology from now-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton? She played the race card. Before a predominately black audience, Clinton said, "When you look at the way the House of Representatives has been run, it has been run like a plantation. And you know what I'm talking about."

Imagine attacking Obama's intelligence the way members of your party did to that of President Bush. "I sometimes feel that Alfred E. Neuman is in charge in Washington," said Clinton, referring to the dimwitted icon of Mad magazine. She even used Neuman's catchphrase, "What, me worry?" to describe how Bush handled tough issues.

What about an apology from Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.? Like his colleague, the late senior senator from the Bay State, Kerry also accused Bush of lying. "Their plan," Kerry said on Don Imus' show in 2006, "is lie and die. And that's what they're doing. They lie to America about what's happening on the ground; they lie about why we're there; they lie about what's happening." Kerry, too, questioned Bush's intelligence. As the returns for the 2004 presidential race came in, Kerry said, "I can't believe I'm losing to this idiot." Imagine someone in my party -- based on the current standard of "civility" -- saying something like that about President Obama.

What about Democratic Sen. (and then-minority leader) Harry Reid of Nevada? He called Bush a "loser" and a "liar." Reid apologized for the "loser" comment but let stand "liar."

What about Democratic Rep. John Dingell of Michigan? On ABC's "Nightline," he compared the then-GOP-controlled House to "the Duma and the Reichstag" -- referring to the legislature set up by Czar Nicholas II of Russia and the German Weimar Republic's parliament, which brought Adolf Hitler to power. (Of course, "Bush equals Hitler" posters, swastikas and calls for assassination were commonplace at anti-Bush rallies.)

What about the use of the race card by now-chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Democrat Charlie Rangel of New York? He called President George W. Bush "our Bull Connor." Who was Bull Connor? He was the racist Birmingham, Ala., public safety commissioner who sicced dogs and turned fire hoses on civil rights marchers in the 1960s.

What about the use of the race card against Bush by then-candidate and now-Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri? About the administration's response to Hurricane Katrina, she said, "George Bush let people die on rooftops in New Orleans because they were poor and because they were black."

What about Democratic Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, who also accused Bush of racism in responding to Hurricane Katrina? Incredibly, he offered this conspiracy theory: Bush (SET ITAL) wanted (END ITAL) blacks to leave Louisiana to make it a more solidly Republican red state. Frank called this "ethnic cleansing by inaction."

Neither then-presidential campaign manager Donna Brazile nor her boss, Al Gore, ever apologized for Brazile's assertion that the Republican Party possesses a "white-boy attitude." This means, she explained, "(the GOP) must exclude, denigrate and leave behind."

What about former governor/presidential candidate/Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean? He characterized the contest between Democrats and Republicans as "a struggle of good and evil. And," Dean said, "we're the good." Dean also told a National Public Radio audience, "The most interesting theory that I've heard so far -- which is nothing more than a theory, it can't be proved -- is that (Bush) was warned (about the 9/11 attacks) ahead of time by the Saudis."

And finally, what about "the tone" of President Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel? In a 2006 Chicago Tribune article, Emanuel succinctly expressed his feelings toward my party. "(Republicans)," he said, "can go f--- themselves."

I await your response.

Sincerely,

Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C.

Nah, Democrats don't ever play dirty......

Ken Berwitz

There are now reports that Honduras has cut off electricity, water and telephone service to the Brazilian embassy - the embassy which illegally has given refuge to deposed President manuel zelaya after he snuck back into the country.

What will Brazil do about it? 

Will Brazil stand by helplessly and accept this humiliating situation?

Will Brazil invade Honduras, and fight to reinstall zelaya - who was legally removed by Honduras' supreme court because he was flouting the country's constitution?  What would that make Brazil?  And what would happen to the peace and safety of the entire central and south American region?  Is that what Brazil wants?

Maybe, just maybe, Brazil's head of state, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, should have thought about these things before acting like a horse's ass and facilitating zelaya's return.

Ken Berwitz

Michael Moore is coming out with another USA-bashing "documentary.  This one is called "Capitalism:  A Love Story"

At least the name is appropriate, since Michael Moore has made a fabulous fortune by bashing exactly what he is;  a hugely successful capitalist.

Here, from www.newsbusters.org, is Julia A. Seymour's piece on this consummate hypocrite, and the equally hypocritical media which suck up to him every chance they get:

Media Embrace Millionaire Moore's Vendetta Against Capitalism, Leave Out Critics

 

By Julia A. Seymour (Bio | Archive)
September 23, 2009 - 17:22 ET

Millionaire Michael Moore says capitalism is evil and that the entire system should be thrown out for one that is "democratic" and "fair."

That's the overarching message of Moore's new documentary, "Capitalism: A Love Story," which will be widely released Oct. 2. The film won two prizes at the Venice Film Festival and was lauded by critics there and at the Toronto Film Festival. Now Moore is being warmly greeting in softball interviews by television anchors and reporters - particularly on ABC.

ABC's "Nightline" ran an 8-minute long segment Sept. 22 interviewing Moore and showing clips of his film, an it received an additional five minutes on "Good Morning America" Sept. 23. ABC didn't include a single critic of Moore in those 13 minutes, and neither segment rebuked Moore for past lies in his movies.

The film has generated uncritical buzz among many other news outlets including MSNBC, The New York Times, Associated Press and "The Jay Leno Show." He is also scheduled to be a guest of "Larry King Live," "The Situation Room," and "The View" Sept. 23 and 24. Four networks, a wire service and three out of five major newspapers will have covered the movie in the span of a week.

Many of the media descriptions of the "fascinating filmmaker" were flattering. ABC's Terry Moran said, "Michael Moore hates capitalism. He hates it with a savagely funny and surprisingly religious passion."

Picking up on that religious theme, The New York Times' Bruce Headlam said that in private conversation Moore "could pass for a kindly Jesuit. Headlam wrote a 2,133 word feature the filmmaker and political activity on Sept. 20 that also left out Moore's critics entirely.  

MSNBC's Alex Witt praised the movie in a Sept. 20 discussion, but at least she mentioned that people have been critical of Moore as hypocritical - making millions from his movies why campaigning for the end of capitalism. Witt told viewers Moore has made $172 million from his documentaries.

But hypocrisy isn't the only criticism of Moore. Moore is a documented liar and, according to the USA Today, his movie "Sicko" used "omission, exaggeration and cinematic sleight of hand to make its points." One exaggeration Moore used in "Sicko" was the claim that 50 million Americans are uninsured. The Business & Media Institute has exposed this falsehood time and time again, pointing out that the census figure of roughly 46 million people includes almost 10 million non-citizens.

Despite that, much of the news media gushed over "Sicko" and Moore. Reports said he shows "compassion" and "generosity." The same ABC reporter, Moran, gushed in 2007 that Moore was "taking on America's deeply flawed health care system" because "fixing health care is a moral, even a religious obligation."

Moran even suggested Moore might make a good political candidate in that interview. Many reporters, including Moran were impressed by Moore's charisma.

‘Radical' Ideas and Lies

ABC gave Michael Moore plenty of time to spread his "radical" anti-capitalist notions to its millions of viewers.

In his "Nightline" interview with Terry Moran, Moore called Goldman Sachs "public enemy No. 1" and declared that Wall Street was literally "a crime scene." Video showed Moore stretching yellow, crime scene tape around banks like Chase. He also declared capitalism to be "anti-Christian" and claimed that he's "embarrassed" by the fact that his movies enable him to make a "decent" living.

Moran indicated that Moore was rich, but didn't call him a millionaire or let viewers know the shock filmmaker's movies have made him $172 million dollars according to MSNBC. His mostly fawning segment with Moore did include one surprisingly harsh comment near the end: "So he shambles on. Like some angry overweight prophet of our times, either crazy or brilliant. Traitorous or patriotic, depending on your point of view, but always laughing."

The very next morning Chris Cuomo interviewed Moore for "Good Morning America." He began by showing a clip of the movie in which Moore tells a Goldman Sachs security guard, "You can trust me."

"You can trust me," Cuomo repeated as he welcomed Moore to the show. But the fact is Moore is not trustworthy. He has lied with his films beginning with "Roger & Me" in 1989 in which he tried to chase down then General Motors CEO Roger Smith. His entire film depicts a failed attempt to get an interview with Smith.

But as Steve Finefrock reported, Smith had "granted a lengthy interview" on-camera while that movie was being made.

Cuomo didn't ask about that misrepresentation or others including Moore's claim not to own stocks. Instead, Moore was given five minutes to rail against the unfairness of capitalism.

When asked for a solution, Moore said part of it was to "get money out of our politics." But according to OpenSecrets.org a filmmaker or film producer with addresses in Michigan or New York named Michael Moore has donated to many Democratic candidates, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Added together those contributions totaled more than $16,000, and four other Michael Moores listed might have been his contributions.

Cuomo didn't ask Moore about his political contributions, but the AP reported that screenings of "Capitalism: A Love Story" in Bellaire, Mich. along with three parties raised $25,000 for the Democratic party in Antrim county.

Now there's some hard-hitting journalism:  give a USA hater free reign to bash us to his heart's content, without a word of disagreement.

These are the same media who won't give conservatives Mark Levin (his book was #1 for 12 weeks and has sold a million copies) or Michelle Malkin (#1 for 4 weeks) the time of day.  But the outer-fringe leftist Michael Moore, a liar and hypocrite supreme?  Love and kisses.

Then they wonder why so many people are running, not walking, to the internet for their information.

Ken Berwitz

“No, no!” said the Queen. “Sentence first—verdict afterward.”

“Stuff and nonsense!” said Alice loudly. “The idea of having the sentence first!”

“Hold your tongue!” said the Queen, turning purple.

“I won’t!” said Alice.

“Off with her head!” the Queen shouted at the top of her voice. Nobody moved.

“Who cares for you?” said Alice (she had grown to her full size by this time). “You’re nothing but a pack of cards!”

That passage, of course, is from Lewis Carroll's classic "Alice In Wonderland".  Who could have anticipated that it would become the policy of a political party?

From Michelle Malkin:

Dems lied, transparency died: Senate Finance Committee nixes Obamacare online disclosure

By Michelle Malkin  •  September 23, 2009 12:35 PM

 

The Senate majority’s contempt for the American people rears its ugly head again. The Senate Finance Committee just voted down a GOP amendment requiring that Obamacare legislation be available online 72 hours before the panel votes. Instead, the Democrats offered to make “conceptual language” available.

 

Dems lied, transparency died:

 

Senate Finance Committee Democrats have rejected a GOP amendment that would have required a health overhaul bill to be available online for 72 hours before the committee votes.

 

Republicans argued that transparency is an Obama administration goal. They also noted that their constituents are demanding that they read bills before voting.

 

Democrats said it was a delay tactic that could have postponed a vote for weeks.

 

The Democrats noted that unlike other committees, the Finance Committee works off conceptual language that describes policies — instead of legislative language that ultimately becomes law, and which the GOP amendment would have required.

 

Democrats accepted an alternate amendment to make conceptual language available online before a vote.

 

Philip Klein has more:

 

Currently, the only version of Chairman Max Baucus’s proposal we have is a 223-page draft (PDF) that is written in plain English and explains the bill in conceptual terms. Republicans argued that until the bill is written in legislative language it will be impossible for the CBO to provide an accurate cost estimate.

 

The Bunning ammendment would have required the committee to have the legislative language of the bill, along with the CBO cost estimate, posted on the internet for 72 hours before a vote.

 

Democrats argued that waiting for the legislative languange to be written, and for the CBO to evaluate it, would needlessly delay the process by weeks.

 

“Let’s be honest about it, most people don’t read the legislative language,” Sen. John Kerry said.

 

The Bunning amendment was defeated by a 12 to 11 vote, with Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln the only Democrat

Must be the new math. 

If we get all of three days to read the bill, we are holding the bill up for weeks.  Try that on your calculator and see if it computes.

The lopsided Democratic majority has quite a plan. First we vote, then we see what we voted for.  The verdict before the trial.

And if you consider it "stuff and nonsense" (which I hope, for your sake, that you do), remember:  the pack of cards pushing it has the numbers to trump you until the 2010 elections.

They can't come soon enough.

Ken Berwitz

Here is an endorsement President Obama probably wishes he didn't have.  It comes from the madman, and mass murdering lunatic, moamar qadaffi, and is translated from his insane rant at the United Nations today:

“We are content and happy if Obama can forever stay forever as the President of America”

He had a lot more nice things to say about Mr. Obama as well, but you get the idea. 

Now, why would someone like moamar qadaffi be so taken with President Obama?  Maybe it has something to do with Mr. Obama's speech, earlier today, in which he said:

"We continue to emphasize that America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements (in the West Bank)"

Is it any wonder that Barack Obama is liked by qadaffi?  That he is far more popular in Arab countries than in Israel? 

Are his words today what you would expect from a friend of Israel?  An ally?

To the 78% of US Jews who voted for Barack Obama - most of whom, presumably, support Israel - I hope you're happy with what you got.

As one of the other 22%, I can assure you I am not.

Ken Berwitz

Time out from politics, to tell you about a really terrific vacation - and business - opportunity.

For a year or so I have been scouring the various online businesses to see if there is anything that looks worthwhile.

I have gone through countless scams and phony get-rich-quick schemes and rejected them all.  How many times have we seen the $29.95 books that are going to make you a millionaire by next Tuesday, or the day-trading "techniques" that will allow you to work for about 10 minutes each day and make untold sums of money. 

What a bunch of BS.

But now I have found one that is real.  It is a real company with a real, tangible, desirable product - one that I would be proud to sell to anyone.  So I have become part of it, and am now selling memberships.

The company is Global Resorts Network (GRN). 

GRN is an inexpensive, highly flexible alternative to purchasing time shares.  And it is terrific.

In simplest terms:

-Membership cost:  $3,095 one time.  End of membership payment. (FYI, membership is fully transferable if at some time in the future you want to pass it along to someone else - either a relative, a friend or someone else.  The only charge is a $75 transfer fee);

-What you get:  Access to the entire Global Resorts Network hotels/condos/apartments around the world at prices that are ridiculously below retail or even wholesale (match them up against the bargain sites like Travelocity, Priceline, Expedia, etc. and see for yourself);

-You can book a week or more at mostly four-star properties (with a smattering of 3 star and 5 star properties as well), for between $298 and $699 (subject to availability, of course).  THAT IS THE ENTIRE COST FOR A FULL WEEK!  Try getting prices like that, or anywhere remotely near them, on your own.  And you can book additional condos for friends and/or family to come along with you at the same rates.

IMPORTANT:  In the interests of being 100% truthful, I acknowledge that there are people who would not like this program, because they know they want to be at a specific place at a specific time of year.  Illustratively, my wife and I have good friends who always go to Aruba in mid-December.  They own a time share there and, given that this is their once-a-year vacation and they don't want to go anywhere else, it makes all the sense in the world for them.  If that is the way you travel (and lots of people do), then GRN is probably not for you.

But if you are not fully settled on one place for the same time each year, GRN may not only be good for you, it may be nothing short of spectacular.

Here are two actual conversations I have had in the past 24 hours that might bring the value of GRN home better than my ranting about it:

1)  Yesterday I spoke to the accountant for one of my marketing research businesses.  I told him about GRN - partly as general conversation and partly to a money professional's opinion of it.  IHe told me that he, and his sister, own time shares at a resort facility in the San Diego area.  He paid $12,000 for his week and also must come up with $600 a year maintenance.  It turns out that the same facility is available at GRN.  For what he pays in maintenance alone. 

2)  This morning, my partner in a Chicago business reminded me that, during a business trip several years ago, we had stayed at a condo/time share location in Pompano Beach, Florida.  I checked and that one is also in the GRN -- and appears to cost something like $100 less per day than what we paid those years ago.

So help me, both examples are real. 

Simply stated, I loved this concept when I saw it.  And now that I've joined and am going public with it, I'm finding out it may be even better than what I thought.

If this interests you and you want to learn more -- maybe even make me some $$$ by becoming a member under my name, go to http://www.globalresortsnetwork.com/kenberwitz and see, first-hand, what it is all about. 

Once you are there, if you want to look at the entire registry of properties (which can change day to day because GRN is constantly securing new inventory), click on "BROWSE THE GLOBAL RESORTS REGISTRY" at the bottom right.  When the registry screen pops up, use the ID "resorts" and the password "lookfor" -- it will enable you to see every property in every location around country and the world.

Then, please comment to me about what you think.  I value every opinion (seriously).

I think you'll be as impressed as I am.  And maybe you'll even want to not only become a member, but sell memberships to others as well.

Ken Berwitz

Are we, as a country, hungering for an overhaul of our health care system?  Not if you read the latest Gallup polling data:

September 23, 2009

 

Cost Is Foremost Healthcare Issue for Americans

But public largely skeptical that healthcare reform will bring relief

by Lydia Saad

                 

PRINCETON, NJ -- Americans are broadly satisfied with the quality of their own medical care and healthcare costs, but of the two, satisfaction with costs lags. Overall, 80% are satisfied with the quality of medical care available to them, including 39% who are very satisfied. Sixty-one percent are satisfied with the cost of their medical care, including 20% who are very satisfied.

"Close to 4 in 10 Americans (38%) -- by far the largest percentage mentioned for any issue -- cite the cost or affordability of healthcare as the nation's biggest healthcare problem."

If Gallup's data are accurate it means that, for the most part, the only people clamoring for health care reform are people who don't have it now.  And since most of those people cannot pay for health care, what they are really supporting is "free" health care for themselves, paid for by others. 

Wait.  Y'mean people like getting something for nothing?  What a shock.

Maybe this explains the huge number of people who became involved with those tea parties the media tried so hard to defame.

Ken Berwitz

Insane.  Mass murderer.  Ranting out lunacy. 

And the head of state of a valued member of the United Nations - one which has as much of a vote in the general assembly as the United States.

End of blog.

==========================================================

UPDATE:  I didn't think I needed any more than what is written above.  But this wild-eyed lunatic just implicated Israel in John F. Kennedy's assassination.  His "evidence"?  jack ruby, who killed JFK's assassin, lee harvey oswald, is "an Israeli" and died under suspicious circumstances afterwards.

Reality:  ruby was Jewish.  He was not Israeli.  He was born in Chicago (1911) raised there and moved to Dallas in 1947.

ruby was known to love JFK.  After assassinating lee harvey oswald he said it was to redeem Dallas in the world's eyes and to spare Jacqueline Kennedy having to endure Oswald's trial. 

jack ruby died in jail, in 1967.  The cause of death was cancer, which had spread throughout his body. 

Evidently, the madman qaddafi equates being Jewish with being Israeli, and being Israeli with being a part of every Israeli conspiracy he can dream up.

Sadly, qaddafi is far from the only one who "thinks" this way.  And they're not all at the UN either.

===========================================================================

While I was writing the facts about jack ruby, qaddafi actually said:  "Arabs have no animosity or hostility toward Israel" 

Where's a straitjacket when you need one?

Ken Berwitz

I am still listening to President Obama's speech.  At least a half dozen times, so far, he has made what he evidently thought was a dramatic statement, stopped and waited for applause.  The applause did not come.

Yes, there have been other lines he spoke that did get the desired response.  But they mostly fall into the "The United States is wrong or deficient and we pledge to not be as bad as we have been until now" category. 

Heck, Benjamin Netanyahu could apologize for Israel holding all of Jerusalem and get a round of applause from the Arab countries too......

==================================================================

UPDATE:  The single biggest applause line of President Obama's speech was his criticism of Israeli settlements in the west bank (Judea and Samaria). 

What does this prove?  It proves that, at the United Nations, you can get applause by attacking the United States and/or Israel.

What a surprise.

Ken Berwitz

I am listening to Barack Obama's speech to the UN.  He just referred to  "two states, Israel and Palestine".

Did I miss something this morning?  Was a state of Palestine declared and approved by the UN?

Add this to the demand by Mr. Obama that Israel build no more homes in existing west bank settlements (we're not talking about new settlements, only new homes as their populations grow), and maybe you'll have a bead on why Mr. Obama is disliked, even despised in Israel....but beloved among Palestinian Arabs.

To the 78% of US Jews, most of whom support Israel, and about 78% of whom, according to exit polls, voted for Barack Obama:  I hope you're happy with what you got.

As one of the other 22%, I assure you I am not.

Ken Berwitz

The American Associationof Retired People (AARP) is a huge,and hugely profitable, enterprise.  Its mission is supposed to be advocating for older people.

So why is it so wholeheartedly supporting the health care legislation offered by President Obama and his Democratic congress?  Doesn't "Obamacare" gut Medicare?  Aren't elderly people among its most vocal and animated critics?  What gives?

Well, the Republican party thinks it know the reason.  And Phillip Klein at American Spectator agrees.  

Here is his column.  See what you think of it. (The bold print is mine):

GOP Report Charges AARP Getting "Kickbacks" In Dem Health Care Bills

By Philip Klein on 9.22.09 @ 4:15PM

One of the subplots to the health care debate I've been following is the cozy relationship between AARP and the Obama administration, as the group has thrown its full-throated support behind the Democrats' health care push even though their membership comes from the age group most opposed to Democratic health care proposals. Today, House Republicans have issued a report providing evidence that AARP is in a position to recieve tens of millions of dollars in "kickbacks" if Democratic health care legislation becomes law.

President Obama and Democrats have proposed saving money to pay for health care legislation, in part, by cutting $162 billion in payments to Medicare Advantage, which allows Medicare recipients to choose privately-administered coverage. If these changes go through, millions of seniors who have chosen Medicare Advantage would lose their current coverage, forcing them into government-administered plans with less generous benefits. As a result, many of them would have to purchase policies to supplement traditional Medicare. Enter AARP.

In 2008, AARP generated $652.7 million in revenue by selling products like Medigap supplemental Medicare insurance, accounting for over 60 percent of the group's revenue, according to an analysis of its financial statements cited in the report released by the House Republican Conference.

If the House Democrats health care bill becomes law, the report argues, it would be a boon to AARP, because while Medicare Advantage plans will be required to pay out 85 percent of the money collected in premiums to claims made by policy holders, the requirement would only be 65 percent for the kind of Medigap policies sold by AARP.

"In other words, under the Democrat bill, seniors could pay as much as 20 cents more out of every premium dollar to fund 'kickbacks' to AARP-sponsored Medigap plans than Medicare Advantage plans," the GOP report charges.

But this isn't the only way that AARP is getting special favors, according to the report.

Earlier this month insurer Humana Inc. sent customers who enrolled in the company's Medicare Advantage plan a letter warning them that their benefits would be in danger if the Democratic health care legislation passed. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus complained to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which not only ordered Humana to stop sending the letters to its customers, but prohibited any other private insurers from doing the same. Except, that is, AARP -- which sponsors a Medicare Advantage program in addition to the Medigap policies it offers, but was exempt from the Obama administration's gag order.

I have a call into AARP, and will update the post once I get a response.

UPDATE: AARP emailed this statement from its executive vice president, Nancy LeaMond, as a response, though it doesn't address any of the specific charges raised in the report:

"Any effort to derail AARP’s commitment to reform will not succeed.  Similar to “death panels” and other scare tactics, this latest effort is a misguided attempt to talk about anything other than the health care reform this country needs.  AARP will continue to work on reform for our members that prohibits insurers from discriminating based on health status or pre-existing conditions, strengthens Medicare by improving quality of care, cutting out fraud and abuse, and closing the so-called ‘doughnut hole’ for prescription drugs.

"AARP was started more than 50 years ago to fight for older Americans and their need for health care – our fight continues today.  Over those 50 years our public policies have always dictated every decision we have made.

"The only benefit AARP is looking for in health reform is relief for the millions of Americans who are crushed by soaring prescription drug prices, relief for the millions of Americans who are told they can’t get coverage because they’re too old or too sick, and relief for the millions of Americans who need Medicare strengthened. Period."

Is this true?  It certainly reads that way.

If the answer is yes, then AARP's relationship with the Obama administration is disgusting, maybe even outright illegal.

We should be demanding answers here.  Loudly and strongly.

I'd say that our media should be, but I have pretty much given up hope that they will go after Barack Obama and his congress in any meaningful way. 

How I hope to be proven wrong.

Ken Berwitz

Here, without comment from me, is John Stossel's explanation (as you can see, it is Part II.  You can read Part I by clicking here). 

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

 Going to Fox II

by John Stossel

 

When I announced last week that I was leaving ABC for Fox, some readers complained about my "bias." I replied: "Every reporter has political beliefs. The difference is that I am upfront about mine."

 

Look at today's burning issue: President Obama's pledge to redesign 15 percent of the economy. Virtually every reporter calls his health care plan "reform." But dictionaries define reform as "improvement." So before they present any evidence, reporters pronounce Obama's plan an improvement. Isn't that bias?

The New York Times took its bias to an absurd length. Its page-one story on the big anti-big-government rally in Washington, D.C., referred to "protests that began with an opposition to health care. ..."

 

Apparently, in the Times reporter's and editors' view, opponents of the Obama health care plan oppose health care itself. (The online article was later changed.

 

Economic-policy reporters usually present the views of supporters of new regulations as objective and public-spirited. For a contrary view, at best they'll ask a Republican or a representative of the regulated business, who is portrayed as self-serving. (Republicans tend to offer a watered-down version of the Democrats' proposals.)

A recent Bloomberg report on President Obama's plans to rewrite financial regulations is typical: "Obama has proposed new regulations overseeing the systemic risk posed by large financial institutions." The reporter quoted White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers in support of the plan. Although there are plenty of reasons to doubt that regulators are competent at judging systemic risk, no skeptical economist was quoted. Readers are led to believe the program is perfectly feasible.

 

Most reporting on the "stimulus" package has the same flaw. Just to call it "stimulus" is to editorialize, since the idea that government spending can truly stimulate an economy is at best doubtful. Many good economists say it can't be done. After all, the money is taken from somewhere else. But the economists rarely are quoted.

In addition, reporters seem to think they've done their job if they merely describe the intentions behind the proposed "reform." But the burden of proof should be on the sponsors of regulation and spending. They should have to make a convincing case that their new rules are superior to the free market. Who cares about intentions?

Fuel-efficiency standards, intended to save gasoline, give us less crashworthy cars, so more people die. Subsidies to American farmers destroy Third World markets. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac encouraged shaky subprime mortgages and helped cause the housing and financial turmoil.

 

The long list of bad results that have emerged from well-intended regulation ought to dim reporters' enthusiasm. But it hasn't.

I admit that my guiding political and economic philosophy -- libertarianism -- now shapes my reporting, in this way: It prompts me to ask questions that others don't ask.

I don't claim to be the expert. But some of my colleagues who write about business know nothing about economics. Many are comically hostile to profit -- they dismiss it as "greed" (although they bargain for the highest salaries possible).

On my former ABC blog, some people called me a biased "conservative."

 

"Your (sic) a shill anyways John. dont (sic) let the door hit you in the you know what."

I'm surprised that the self-described enemies of intolerance can't tolerate even one MSM reporter who doesn't share their statist premises. The interventionist state has been the status quo for generations, so I must be something other than "conservative." "Liberal" is what my philosophy used to be called. It's the statists who are the reactionaries.

Not all the blog comments were hostile:

"Congratulations. The mind boggles at the thought of giving free reign on air to someone who actually understands economics."

"Stossel challenges conventional wisdom, so I hope Fox lets him do that."

I assume Fox will. My points of view on things like immigration, nation-building and the war on drugs differ from those of many at Fox, but libertarians like Judge Andrew Napolitano (http://tinyurl.com/lm2mpy) still seem to thrive there. The alleged "conservatives" are pretty tolerant.

I think they'll tolerate me. See you there next month.

Ken Berwitz

My pal, Publisher Perry, sent me the following video. 

I don't know if it is real or fake.  But if you don't laugh you're missing a humor chip.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zse4LJK8OZ0

(Incidentally, I'm sorry that my first link, put up last night, did not work.  This one seems to work just fine, though.)

Ken Berwitz

Well, ACORN has selected the person that will conduct a hard-hitting, scrupulously nonpartisan investigation of the organization's activities.

It's Scott Harshbarger, a former Attorney General of Massachusetts, hardline Democrat of the first order and the man who prosecuted a child daycare center sex abuse case that just about everyone thinks was a travesty of justice.

That, folks, is what ACORN thinks of your intelligence.

Here are the particulars, from of Tom Blumer of www.newsbusters.org:

ACORN Selects 'Investigator' Instead of the 'Auditor' It Promised; AP Cooperates With the Water-down

 

By Tom Blumer (Bio | Archive)
September 22, 2009 - 17:09 ET

 

Last Wednesday, ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis promised that her organization would conduct a "total audit," and would name an independent auditor by Friday ("within 48 hours"). Later, it said it would do so yesterday. 

 

The group finally acted today, in totally underwhelming fashion. We're not going to get a "total audit" after all. Instead, there's going to be an "internal investigation," and it will be conducted by former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger. 

 

If this were a Republican group, or if the press were doing its job, this change in mission would be correctly labeled a watered-down cop-out. Instead, the Associated Press's Sharon Theimer played along with it and made no reference to ACORN's high-minded promises last week.

 

Here are key paragraphs from Theimer's report:

 

ACORN names former Mass AG its investigator

 

The community activist group ACORN said Tuesday it has selected a former Massachusetts attorney general to investigate its housing program and other public service projects after employees were caught on video giving advice to a couple posing as a prostitute and pimp and Congress moved to cut off its federal funding.

 

Democrat Scott Harshbarger, a lawyer whose specialties include corporate governance, will conduct the internal investigation. ACORN said the review would be "aggressive, thorough and far-reaching."

 

"I took over this organization in the summer of 2008 with a mandate to modernize and reform the nation's largest community organizing network," ACORN chief executive Bertha Lewis said in a written statement. "We have strengthened our systems on a number of fronts. But that process is ongoing."

 

Theimer "cleverly" left out the words "several times" in reference to the undercover videotapings done by James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles in her first paragraph. Though she mentioned "other cities" in her fifth paragraph, she compounded her "cleverness" by only specifically referring to the pair's Brooklyn work, not naming Baltimore, Washington, San Bernardino, or San Diego. Finally, she allowed ACORN to dispute the veracity of the Brooklyn video when it has presented no concrete contrary evidence that I am aware of in the eight or days since that video first appeared.

 

All of this will give newcomers to the story the incorrect impressions that Brooklyn remains a "he said, she said situation," and that the others have similar problems (which they don't). I do not believe this pathetic treatment by Theimer is an accident.

 

As to Harshbarger, here is how Theimer describes him in later paragraphs:

 

Harshbarger's inquiry will include ACORN's housing program, tax preparation program and other public service work such as screening for benefits like food stamps.

 

Harshbarger was Massachusetts attorney general in the 1990s. He later ran unsuccessfully for governor before becoming head of the government watchdog group Common Cause, where he pushed for tougher campaign finance laws.

 

Harshbarger currently is an attorney in Boston with the law firm Proskauer Rose LLP, where his specialties include corporate governance and corporate defense and investigations. He was a fundraiser for former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards' 2008 presidential campaign, and donated $2,800 to Obama's campaign after Edwards left the race.

Not bad, but as I noted at BizzyBlog earlier today, there's a major oversight in what Theimer chose to tell us about Harshbarger. You see, he is the attorney general who put away the Amiraults.

 

Here's a memory refresher:

 

Harshbarger found public prominence and political success, like Janet Reno, by prosecuting cases in the day care sex abuse hysteria of the 1980s. He obtained the conviction of Gerald Amirault and other employees of the Fells Acres Day Care Center in Malden, Massachusetts. The Amirault conviction has been widely criticized as a gross miscarriage of justice by publications as politically diverse as The Wall Street Journal (e.g., April 30, 2004) and The Nation (e.g., Feb. 28, 2002).

 

The Wikipedia excerpt understates the heinous nature of the Amirault case. No one other than those in the case who were brainwashed at the time by clever shrinks seriously believes the Amiraults were guilty. Harshbarger's sham prosecution can perhaps be excused given the hysteria at the time, but his refusal to back down when it became obvious after their conviction that he had railroaded the family is unforgivable, and should have kept him out of consideration for the job he accepted.

 

In terms of the task at hand, ACORN's Lewis either deceived everyone last week, or subsequently learned the hard way that no auditor worth having was willing take on the business and reputational risk of attempting a "total audit" of an organization with well-known sordid history, a pervasive lack of internal controls, and, apparently, serious tax problems.

That Theimer played along with the mission change to a mere "internal investigation" without questioning what happened is disgraceful. Despite last week's promise of an "audit," that word appears nowhere in her report.

Sadly, this is all too typical for what has become the Apparatchik Press.

 

Exit question: Where will Harshbarger's staff, whose numbers will have to be substantial if anything resembling a decent "investigation" is to occur, going to come from? 

That is ACORN's "investigation";  sure to leave no stone unturned.  Just like, say, keith olbermann being investigated by chris matthews. 

In short, it is a sick joke.

But let's see how our wonderful "neutral" media treat this sick joke.  Somehow I doubt that they'll talk about it the same way you or I would.

Ken Berwitz

In case there is someone left out there who has any respect or regard for jimmy carter, we have this column by Dick Yarbrough, which reminds us of who the real racist was (and probably still is).  Please pay special attention to the segment I've put in bold print:

YARBROUGH: Jimmy Carter is poster boy for racism

I don’t know how Jimmy Carter can look himself in the mirror. He has made hypocrisy an art form.

 

When asked recently about the actions of South Carolina Republican Rep. Joe Wilson, who stunned the crowd during President Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress on health-care reform a couple of weeks ago by yelling, “You lie!” at the president’s assertion that reforms would not be made available to illegal immigrants, Carter opined that Wilson’s remarks were “an act based on racism.” He should know. He is poster boy for acts based on racism. That is how he became governor of Georgia.

You’ve heard it before, but it bears repeating: In 1970, Carter ran one of the nastiest, most racist campaigns imaginable against former Gov. Carl Sanders, who unlike his counterparts in neighboring states, had taken the high road on race relations during the turbulent mid-’60s.

He slandered Sanders every way possible from calling him a (shudder) “liberal” to looking the other way when his integrity-impaired lackeys showered Klan meetings with photos of Sanders with his arm around a black basketball player.

Sanders had rejected an effort by the Legislature to bring race-baiting Alabama Gov. George Wallace to Atlanta, but Carter pledged that if elected he would invite Wallace to address the General Assembly.

Carter also refused to attend the funeral of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968, while his campaign staff noted ominously that Sanders had paid tribute to King.

Carter then had the unmitigated gall in 2006 to appear at Coretta Scott King’s funeral and use his time to trash President Bush, who was seated behind him, instead of apologizing for the disrespect he had shown Dr. King and his followers after the civil rights leader’s assassination.

The black opportunists who gave him his soapbox showed an equal lack of class. If they had a shred of decency, they would have remembered those days when Carter was treating them like second-class citizens. Sanders had too much integrity to demean blacks just to get elected. Carter did not.

Keep your fingers crossed, but since Barack Obama became president, you have not seen Jimmy Carter traipsing around the world, criticizing sitting presidents and trying to make his own foreign policy. I would be sorely disappointed if our current president allowed this egomaniac to jeopardize our national security in order feed his craving for the limelight. Let him write his pontificating op-ed pieces for The New York Times. They deserve each other.

Georgia has produced some great public figures in my lifetime: Senators like Richard Russell, Walter George and Sam Nunn; representatives like Carl Vinson, Phil Landrum and Charles Weltner. Jimmy Carter is not in that group. He is an accident of history and would still be shelling peanuts in Plains had President Gerald Ford not pardoned Richard Nixon and enraged a nation. In 1976, voters would have elected Elmer Fudd president. Instead, they elected Jimmy Carter. Same difference.

This is the "man" who calls YOU racist if you don't like President Obama's policies.

God how I wish he would just shut up, go back to Plains, Georgia, sit on his porch and chew on boiled peanuts for the rest of his life.

Ken Berwitz

This absolute insanity comes to us from the San Francisco Chronicle:

Are bath-time photos child pornography?

Last fall A.J. and Lisa Demaree took a memory stick with family photos to the printing center at the Wal-Mart store in Peoria, Ariz. Some of the photos showed their three young girls, all under 5 years old, partially nude in the bathtub. The Demarees say these were innocent pictures that all families take. But a Wal-Mart employee felt otherwise and contacted the police who agreed that this was a child pornography situation.

The Demaree's lawyer released this photo to show the pictures of the girls are innocent. (TO SEE THE PHOTO, CLICK HERE)

The police report read, "The young girl appeared to be posed in a provocative manner." A report issued by Peoria authorities described the photos as "child erotica" and "sex exploitation."

Child Protective Services searched the Demaree home and took custody of the children for a month while the state investigated. The watched family videotapes and found a few in which the children were playing unclothed. Lisa was suspended from her school job for a year, and both of their names were placed on the sex offender registry. The couple spent $75,000 on legal bills.

The Demarees were eventually cleared of any charges and their daughters returned, but they are now suing the state and Wal-Mart for what they call unfair accusations.

This morning the Demarees appeared on "Good Morning America." "I don't' understand it at all," A.J. told "GMA." "Ninety-nine percent of the families in America have these exact same photos."

"It took us a long time to take a picture [again]," Lisa told "GMA." "I even worry about them in their bathing suits now, if I get a shot of them in their bathing suits and they're tilting their heads a certain way or their hips are sticking out a little bit, all I think of is 'Does someone think that it was posed? Or how is that going to be perceived?'"

"Honestly we've missed a year of our children's lives as far as our memories go," Lisa added, "As crazy as it may seem, what you may think are the most beautiful innocent pictures of your children may be seen as something completely different and completely perverted."

Are these people nuts?

My wife and I took pictures of our children in the bathtub too.  Were they naked?  Yes, of course;  they were taking a bath.  So what?  We even have a couple of pictures of our grandson in the bathtub.  And when our granddaughter is born (November is when she's due) I have no doubt we will take pictures of her in the bathtub too.

Are we perverts? No, we're parents and grandparents.

Try to find families that DON'T take pictures of their children splashing around in a bathtub.

What a strange country we live in.  We are told that it is ok for schools to teach sex education to grade schoolers, and for schools to make condoms available to the children who attend them.  In case that doesn't work, impregnated girls can seek abortions without their parents' knowledge or consent.

But take a picture of your children in a bathtub, apropos of nothing, and you can lose those children for a month -- then go through your savings to prove you aren't a child pornographer.

And what if the judge ruled against the Demarees, and they had to continue on through the legal system which had already separated them from their children? 

I hope the Demarees win a judgment - a big one.  And I hope the lion's share of that judgment is from the state.  An anal-retentive Walmart employee is one thing.  But that employee didn't take away the Demarees' children.  The state did.

Then, for god sake, fire the idiots who took away those children.  That might make their replacements think twice before doing the same thing and destroying another family in the process.

Ken Berwitz

As you know, James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles went to a number of ACORN offices posing as a pimp and a prostitute, who needed help in procuring a house so that they could have underage El Salvadoran girls engage in prostitution. 

Every ACORN office agreed to help and gave them advice, even on how to lie so that the authorities would not know the purpose for which the house would be used (my favorite was one of the ACORN employees telling Giles, who she believes is a prostitute, to call herself a "performing artist"). 

You would think that the media would be skewering ACORN over this.  But it appears that at least as much effort is being expended in an effort to demonize and destroy O'Keefe and Giles as there is in giving ACORN the serious scrutiny it so richly deserves.

The Washington Post in particular published a story about O'Keefe and Giles which indicated that they scammed ACORN because they felt it was getting Black people elected to office.  The story's lead writer, Darryl Fears, even quoted O'Keefe as saying this in a roundabout way.

The problem?  A very simple one.  He didn't.

And now the Washington Post has had to, humiliatingly, retract that part of the story. 

Here, from Scott Johnson of www.powerlineblog.com, are the particulars:

Nothing to fear but Fears himself

September 22, 2009 Posted by Scott at 6:33 AM

We have not heard anything from Washington Post reporters Darryl Fears and Carol Leonnig in response to "Sliming James O'Keefe: A case study." I think it's fair to conclude that Fears and Leonnig have no quote from O'Keefe to support their imputation of racial motives to him, and that what the Post has done to O'Keefe is disgusting.

John Rosenberg of the Discriminations site writes to point out that he has frequently commented on Fears. Rosenberg cites several posts inspired by Fears. "Sliming ACORN's exposers is not his first transgression," Rosenberg writes. "Each one of these is an individual post...responding to a different outrage in one of his Post articles. I've never tried to amalgamate them into one post specifically about Fears. Or, for that matter, about the Post: the fact that these articles keep coming obviously
says as much, or more, about the Post as Fears himself:" Below are Rosenberg's posts in reverse chronological order:

Fears no evil

More Fears mongering

Fears some evil

More Fears

At the Washington Post, more Fears mongering

At the Washington Post, Fears for minorities as victims

At the Washington Post, Fears for affirmative action

Downside of diversity, cont.

Need I add that I have borrowed the heading of this post from Rosenberg's message to me?

UPDATE: The Post runs a correction of the Fears/Leonnig story today:

Correction to This Article
This article about the community organizing group ACORN incorrectly said that a conservative journalist targeted the organization for hidden-camera videos partly because its voter-registration drives bring Latinos and African Americans to the polls. Although ACORN registers people mostly from those groups, the maker of the videos, James E. O'Keefe, did not specifically mention them.

In other words, Post reporters Fears and Leonnig fabricated the existence of an O'Keefe quotation indicating a racial animus for O'Keefe's reportage. The race angle existed only in the minds of the Washington Post itself. Thanks for clearing that up.

We hope later today to have Joel Mowbray reporting for us regarding the Post's drive-by on O'Keefe.

Wouldn't it be nice if they cared less about O'Keefe and Giles' motives and more about what ACORN did as a matter of course in every one of those offices?  I would think so.

But if they are going to care more about O'Keefe and Giles, maybe it would be a good idea not to invent a racist quote that does not exist.

And maybe it would be an especially good idea to reconsider anything that Darryl Fears writes, since the links Scott provides seem to show he has a nasty little habit of "creating" facts over and over again.

Ken Berwitz

Here is today's edition of Barack Obama BSpeak, provided by today's editorial in the Washington Times.  Please pay special attention to the all-too-telling passage I've put in bold print:

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

EDITORIAL: Depends on what the meaning of 'tax' is

President Obama seemed to be channeling President Clinton's disquisition on the meaning of "is" during his weekend media blitz. On ABC's "This Week" on Sunday, Mr. Obama told George Stephanopoulos that the dictionary definition of the word "tax" isn't reliable. If the president doesn't like the dictionary, perhaps he ought to consult the very bill he was favorably discussing when he said a tax isn't a tax.

The mandate in question is the financial penalty that Democrats want to impose on healthy citizens who don't have health insurance. One of the main health care bills under consideration calls the proposal a "tax."

As for the negative effect the tax would have on hard-working Americans, the president ought to consult himself. Last year, he said the same proposal would be punitive and unfair. In other words, Mr. Obama was against this tax before he was for it.

On "This Week," Mr. Obama argued with the host about whether a government fee of up to $3,800 for a family of four is a tax. The repartee follows:

Obama: "[Suppose] you get hit by a bus, and you and I have to pay for the emergency room care, that's ..."

Stephanopoulos: "That may be, but it's still a tax increase."

Obama: "No. That's not true, George. The - for us to say that you've got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase. What it's saying is, is that we're not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore than the fact that right now everybody in America, just about, has to get auto insurance. Nobody considers that a tax increase."

Stephanopoulos: "I - I don't think I'm making it up. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary: Tax - 'a charge, usually of money, imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes.' "

Obama: "George, the fact that you looked up Merriam's Dictionary, the definition of tax increase, indicates to me that you're stretching a little bit right now."

That's the first time we've ever heard a dictionary accused of "stretching" a word's definition. But no matter. Mr. Obama explicitly was discussing the bill put forth by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, Montana Democrat. Philip Klein of the American Spectator highlighted the relevant language from page 29 of Mr. Baucus' bill: "The consequence for not maintaining insurance would be an excise tax. ... The excise tax would be assessed through the tax code and applied as an additional amount of Federal tax owed."

The tax that the president says isn't a tax would, of course, be punitive. That's what Mr. Obama himself said in a primary debate last year with opponent Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Back then, he argued against the same sort of mandate he is now supporting. He said: "If, in fact, you are going to mandate the purchase of insurance and it's not affordable, then there's going to have to be some enforcement mechanism that the government uses. And they may charge people who already don't have health care fines, or have to take it out of their paychecks. And that, I don't think, is helping those without health insurance. ... I think we can anticipate that there would also be people potentially who are not covered and are actually hurt if they have a mandate imposed on them."

It doesn't tax our judgment much to conclude that Candidate Obama was right about this in 2008 but President Obama is wrong today.

The classic Death of a Salesman character, Willy Loman, was described as "a smile and a shoeshine". 

That may work for salesmen.  But not for Presidents.

Telling the truth would be a refreshing change.  How I wish Mr. Obama would try it sometime.

Ken Berwitz

Arthur Ferrante, who, with Louis Teicher, gave us a tidal wave of beautiful, listenable music from their twin pianos, died on Saturday in Longboat Key, Florida at the age of 88.  No specific cause of death was listed. (Mr. Teicher died last year).

Ferrante and Teicher met when they were students at the Julliard School of music in the 1930's.  Their partnership began a good many years later. 

They had their biggest successes when recording movie themes.  Their two biggest hits (among a good many) were the theme from "The Apartment", which sold over 1,000,000 redords and the theme from "Exodus" which sold over 6,000,000 records.  Fascinatingly, both were recorded in the early 1960's, when Rock and Roll was king and what they did was disdainfully referred to as "elevator music.

In all, Ferrante and Teicher had 22 gold or platinum records and claimed to have played over 5,000 concerts for delighted music fans.

You can call their music whatever you want.  But it was a pleasure to listen to.  Even today.

May ArthurFerrante rest in peace. 

Or, even better, may he reunite with Louis Teicher and continue the beautiful music for eternity.

Ken Berwitz

Want another major scandal for President Obama (and Bill Clinton) that media are dilligently overlooking? 

Try this one on for size.  It comes to us from Reuters (the bold print is mine):

U.S. charges Obama fund-raiser in $290 million fraud

Mon Sep 21, 2009 6:25pm EDT

 

By Grant McCool

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hassan Nemazee, a fund-raiser for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other Democrats, has been indicted for defrauding Bank of America, HSBC and Citigroup Inc out of more than $290 million in loan proceeds, U.S. prosecutors said on Monday.

The announcement follows last month's indictment of Nemazee, head of a private equity firm and an Iranian American Political Action Committee board member, on one count of defrauding Citigroup's Citibank.

The new indictment adds allegations that he defrauded two other banks, Bank of America and HSBC Bank USA, in a similar fashion by falsifying documents and signatures to purportedly show he had hundreds of millions worth of collateral.

The office of the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan and the FBI said he used the proceeds of his scheme to make donations to election campaigns of federal, state and local candidates, donations to political action committees and charities.

He bought property in Italy and paid for maintenance on two properties in New York.

His lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment.

As of August 2009 Nemazee owed Bank of America about $142 million and owed Citibank about $74.9 million, the indictment said. He drew on a line of credit he fraudulently obtained from HSBC to pay the Citibank loan.

Nemazee, 59, typically donates more than $100,000 annually to Democratic political candidates. He is listed as one of the top "bundlers" of contributions to Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, according to OpenSecrets.org, a website run by the Center for Responsive Politics research group.

"For more than 10 years, Hassan Nemazee projected the illusion of wealth, stealing more than $290 million so that he could lead a lavish lifestyle and play the part of heavyweight political fundraiser," United States Attorney Preet Bharara in Manhattan said in a statement.

Nemazee was arrested at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey on August 23 as he was checking in for a flight to Italy, according to court papers. He was released on bail.

If convicted on three counts of bank fraud, Nemazee faces up to 30 years in prison and millions of dollars in fines. He is also charged with identity theft.

The case is: U.S. v. Nemazee, 09-mj-1927 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (Manhattan)

If you have heard and/or read the name hassan nemazee at all, you have heard and/or read it just barely.

Yet this "fundraiser" is accused of dramatically more fraud than Jack Abramoff ever came up with in his wildest dreams.

The difference?  nemazee can only be pinned on Democrats.  Not Republicans.  And, as President Obama continues to make an oafish dupe of himself by trying to appease the unappeasable Iran, nemazee is Iranian to boot.  By contrast Abramoff, who worked for both parties could be pinned on Republicans (media decided to forget the Democrats, like Harry Reid for example, because they, of course, didn't count).

Jack Abramoff was first-page story material for months.  But what about hassan nemazee?

Illustratively, did you look for the story about nemazee in today's New York Times?  If so, you are still looking.  Because it isn't there.  Not one word.  There is, however a story that someone in the Letterman show's audience gave President Obama a potato in the shape of a heart (how envious Cliff Claven would have been).  That, obviously, is far more newsworthy than a $290 million dollar fraud who raised untold amounts of money for Democrats.

Then they wonder why people call them biased......

Ken Berwitz

If you have ever heard of Gerald Walpin at all, it's a good bet you heard of him here. 

Because if you rely on our wonderful "neutral" media to tell you about Gerald Walpin, you probably have not heard of him at all.

For those who do not know, Gerald Walpin was (not is, was) the Inspector General who was onto a large, fraudulent use of taxpayer money in Sacramento.  Over $800,000 worth, and who knows how much more if the investigation had continued.

But there was a problem.  The mayor of Sacramento is former NBA star Kevin Johnson - a big Barack Obama supporter. 

So what happened?  I'll let Byron York of the Washington Examiner tell you (but I've put the last paragraph in bold print):

Walpin scandal update: Grassley blocks nomination, accuses administration of stonewalling

By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
09/21/09 6:39 PM EDT

Republican Sen. Charles Grassley has blocked the ambassadorial nomination of Alan Solomont, currently chairman of the board of the government agency that oversees AmeriCorps, in retaliation for what Grassley says is the administration's stonewalling of Congress over documents relating to the firing of AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin. Specifically, Grassley has sought, and been denied, information relating to the White House's role in the decision to fire Walpin.

Solomont, a major Democratic donor, is chairman of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which includes AmeriCorps. His term ends in October, and President Obama has nominated him to be U.S. ambassador to Spain. The nomination was approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week and now moves to the Senate floor -- except that Grassley has placed a hold on it, meaning it will go nowhere until the senator's objections are resolved.

On June 12 of this year, shortly after Walpin was summarily fired, Grassley wrote to the Corporation demanding "all records, email, memoranda, documents, communications, or other information, whether in draft or final form" related to the firing. Among other things, Grassley asked for any contacts between the Corporation and the White House and between the Corporation and the United States Attorney's Office. Although the Corporation has provided information requested in other areas -- mostly internal documents involving Walpin -- Grassley says the Corporation has not responded at all to the request for information relating to the White House and U.S. Attorney's Office.

"The public’s business ought to be public, especially when there are serious questions about whether an inspector general was fired for political reasons," Grassley said in a statement. "The leaders of the Corporation for National and Community Service have been far from transparent about the dismissal of the inspector general. Until the Senate receives the documents we need for a complete picture of what happened, this nominee will have to wait before his confirmation is considered with my consent."

Grassley also points out that not only has the Corporation not provided the requested information, it has also not complied with the common practice of providing a list of the withheld documents along with the reason for withholding them.

Any senator may place an anonymous hold on a nomination. Grassley is not shy about using his power to block a nomination, but always acts in full public view; when he places a hold, he also issues a public announcement and explanation for his action.

Walpin was fired without warning June 10, when he received a call from the White House telling him he had an hour either to resign or be terminated -- an apparent violation of a law giving special job protections to inspectors general. When Walpin refused to quit, he was fired. At the time, Walpin was involved in a contentious investigation of corruption allegations involving a prominent Obama supporter, Mayor Kevin Johnson of Sacramento, California.

This, folks, is a genuine scandal.  Not a concocted one, a real one. 

Gerald Walpin was forced out because he was uncovering a taxpayer fraud that would have embarrassed a major supporter of President Obama and, by implication, Mr. Obama himself.

That is why I wish Senator Grassley well in  trying to force a public airing of what went on in Sacramento. 

And our wonderful "neutral" media?  They're too busy trying to defame James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles to bother with a corruption and coverup case like this, not to mention the illegality of Walpin's firing and the probability that it was ordered by the White House.

But listen to them squeal like stuck pigs if you call them biased.

Ken Berwitz

Glenn Garvin, writing for today's Miami Herald, has a mostly excellent piece on how blatantly nancy pelosi (and others on the left, including the perpetual dire-threat machine Frank Rich and the loudmouthed fraud, Chris Matthews) turns even political violence into partisan garbage.  Here it is:

Left's been out for blood, too

ggarvin@MiamiHerald.com

 

For one, brief shining moment last week, I thought Nancy Pelosi must be the bravest American politician of the century, standing up to her own nutball constituency in the interest of American political politesse. After all, when she tearfully told a press conference that the partisan bombast should be dialed down several notches lest it turn bloody -- ``I saw this myself in the late '70s in San Francisco, this kind of rhetoric . . . it created an environment in which violence took place'' -- she had to be talking about left-wing violence, right?

Because when you talk about political murder and mayhem in San Francisco 30 years ago, the trigger was almost always pulled or the cyanide Kool-Aid poured by a leftist. There were the revolutionary nihilists of the Symbionese Liberation Army, assassinating an Oakland school superintendent, kidnapping Patty Hearst and finally shotgunning an innocent bystander during a bank robbery.

There were the cop-killing drug dealers of the Black Panthers, who began murdering their own sympathizers to keep them quiet. And of course the Black Liberation Army, a Panther offshoot that bombed a church where a policeman's funeral was being held. We think it was the BLA, anyway; in San Francisco those days, you couldn't tell your bombers without a scorecard. The Weather Underground, the New World Liberation Front, the Revolutionary Army, they were all blowing something up on practically a weekly basis.

And who can forget Jim Jones and his communal cult that ended in an orgy of murder and mass suicide in 1978? Well, most Democrats can; otherwise, they have to explain why people like Rosalynn Carter, Walter Mondale and Jerr