This past weekend was one of the most exciting experiences I’ve had in quite some time. I had the honor of attending David Horowitz’s Restoration Weekend in Palm Beach, Florida, which included inspirational speeches from Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann as well as a delightfully sarcastic Ann Coulter.
While the program was held at the most beautiful resort I’ve ever seen (The Breakers,) there was little time to enjoy the surroundings. The Freedom Center put together an impressive group of people, which provided an excellent networking experience that kept relaxation at a minimum. I am still having trouble believing the number of wonderful people I met from filmmakers and screenwriters to political junkies of all kinds including all of the great people from the Freedom Center. read more…
Saira Liaqat, 26, poses for the camera as she holds a portrait of herself before being burnt, at her home in Lahore, Pakistan, Wednesday, July 9, 2008. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
From Phyllis Chesler today at Pajamas Media:
These photos show what happens to real women who wear the Islamic Veil. The photos depict horrifying hate and the unbearable suffering it inflicts upon female innocents. The photos were taken by Emilio Morenatti of the Associated Press. The text is based on work done by Nicholas Kristof—one of the few people at the New York Times whose work I am proud to quote. You may find them HERE. (Thanks to Yehuda for calling this to my attention).
What are we seeing?
The Arabization or the Saudi-ization of Muslims in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan is the hidden hand behind these acid attacks upon women. These poor girls and women have had their lives ruined; some have been forced to undergo surgery 20-30 times in order that they may see a little, or breathe a bit, hear something, perhaps in order to eat or make themselves understood. They look like…monsters. That was what their attackers wanted to accomplish. To render their faces into self-portraits of their attackers. read more…
In an interview today with WTOP-FM in Washington, DC, former CNN host Lou Dobbs hinted at a future in politics – maybe all the way to the White House.
The website loudobbsforpresident.org, launched in January 2009 to draft Lou Dobbs for a presidential bid and Dobbs, post-CNN, seems to be warming up to the idea.
Lunch Break is NewsReal’s daily apolitical post. (We all need a break from this political stuff every now and then!) When commenting on Lunch Break posts do not start political, religious, or philosophical debates. In fact from now on any serious debating comments on Lunch Break posts will be deleted. You’ve got all of NewsReal’s other posts to get argumentative, lets keep this one pure. (Humorous debates about meaningless subjects are permitted.)
I’m generally pretty strict about enforcing Lunch Break as apolitical but given that this editorial cartoon is lunch themed I thought I’d bend the rule. Credit to David Forsmark for suggesting this amusing image. read more…
Adopting the snottiest tone imaginable, the New York Times pronounces with an almost audible sniff:
The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.
What documents? Revelations about Stalin’s famines? Classified information about wiretapping terrorists? The Pentagon Papers? That ultra-leftist Unibomber Manifesto?
Associated Press
The Associated Press offered a superficial glance at a complex and alarming update in the upcoming trial of the five 9/11 defendants, leaving me to wonder where is their thoughtful, penetrating examination of this judicial travesty about to take place in New York City. There is certainly no shortage of critical questions in want of answers.
The AP reported Sunday that the five 9/11 defendants to be tried in New York City will not deny their role in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but will nonetheless be pleading “not guilty.” This, to me, initially seemed a sure sign that the defense attorney feels compelled to observe no ethical responsibilities to the American judicial system as his clients attempt to put U.S. foreign policy on trial.
In retrospect, the anti-war movement to oppose American policy in Iraq had actually been launched on an international scale within weeks of the attack on 9/11, long before the lead-up to the Iraq war itself. This anti-war movement was a product of the same forces and organizations that had assembled to riot against the World Trade Organization in Seattle and against the World Bank in Prague and to promote the anti-capitalist agendas of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre. It was spurred not so much by the actual events – either the attacks of 9/11 or the war against Saddam Hussein, as by the opportunities these events afforded to a radical movement whose permanent agenda was opposition to America and its perceived global “domination.”
This agenda was summarized by the leading intellectual of the movement, Noam Chomsky, in a book titled, Hegemony or Survival. The title was itself a calculated echo of Rosa Luxemburg’s apocalyptic claim that the world faced a choice between “socialism or barbarism,” which had been issued almost a century earlier. Chomsky’s book was an attempt to make the identical case in contemporary terms. read more…
Glenn Beck’s concerns about the lack of constitutional authority for federal government spending and federal programs are always well-intentioned and often well-founded, but uncharacteristically Beck slipped up last week.
On his TV show he asked, “What’s in the House and Senate health care bills that is not in the Constitution? The redistribution of wealth.” Actually, Beck’s wrong on this one. Unfortunately, the redistribution of wealth –at least of income– is enshrined in the Constitution as the 16th Amendment. If Congress wants to use income taxes to fund a socialized healthcare system, there is nothing in the Constitution to stop it from doing so. read more…
Are Christians using Bible verses to wish death on President Barack Obama? Even worse, are Christians using Bible verses to convince people to kill President Obama? MSNBC host Rachel Maddow and the Huffington Post’s Frank Schaeffer seem to think so.
After church last Sunday, a conservative church member came up to me. He told me a friend of his showed him a verse his church has been praying for Barack Obama. It was Psalm 109:8.
May his days be few; may another take his place of leadership. Psalm 109:8
What was my initial reaction? My hope was that the people praying it meant they wanted Obama voted out of office and not dead. My church member assured me the prayer was only for Obama to lose the 2012 election. He then added that they specifically only pray verse 8 and not verse 9. Why not verse 9? read more…
Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is much more than a politician: she’s a rockstar. Her memoirs, “Going Rogue: An American Life,” sold 300,000 copies on the first day of its release. It tops every best seller’s list in the country. Her book tour is already an astounding success, with tens of thousands of supporters waiting for her in the freezing cold and / or rain for hours.
Her popularity reminds me of Barack Obama’s popularity last year. Millions were inspired by him and supported his candidacy because of the power of his personality and his charisma. The same can be said for Palin now. The enthusiasm she invokes in her supporters is not caused by her political views as much as by her independent, inspiring and charismatic character. And by her folksy behavior, of course. read more…
Always without desire we must be found,
If its deep mystery we would sound;
But if desire always within us be,
Its outer fringe is all that we shall see.
Under these two aspects, it is really the same; but as development
takes place, it receives the different names. Together we call them
the Mystery. Where the Mystery is the deepest is the gate of all that
is subtle and wonderful.
Toymaker Mattel Inc. has given its best-selling Barbie doll a makeover in honor of her 50th anniversary.
Meet Burkha Barbie, garbed in traditional Islamic Dress. On sale now.
Sadly, this is no joke.
Have no fear! Organizing for America’s got your back. They’ve spotted the greatest danger threatening the Republic today, and they’re ready to fight it!
What is this great danger, you ask? An Army full of Major Hansans (and his cowardly careerist enablers)? Obamacare’s “death panels”?
Don’t be ridiculous. read more…
Editor’s Note: To read part 1 of this series, click here.
One thing I’ve learned after years in the collection industry is that once the Government gets involved in your business, it grows ever more intrusive.
And the bureaucrats that craft laws are also not above throwing in sanctions to force their dream on the rest of us.
The recent battle over Obamacare illustrates this belief. Take a look at this House session from C-Span: read more…
Isn’t that just like you, to think you can psych out death by treating it as an aesthetic device? This could be my father’s voice, but it is my friend Peter’s. Years earlier he had become a devout Catholic. When he read this text and made this comment, it was Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, the last suffering days of his Savior’s time on earth. My answer to Peter is this: I understand the finality of death, and do not make light of the end. But my journey has led me to these conclusions, which I cannot deny so late in its course. I have no faith in a life hereafter. But I will not be desperate over my own disappearance. If there is nothing further, what of it? Why should I waste my time left in misery over what I cannot change?
The voice I could not answer was April’s. “You’re so arrogant,” she rebuked me. “Think of what God has done for you. Look at the times He has looked after you, how He saved you from cancer. You need to show some gratitude. I need you to do this for me. If you don’t believe, you won’t be there when I come for you and I’ll be alone. And I don’t want to be without you.” read more…
While Janet Napolitano and other members of the administration of Barack Obama are spearheading efforts in this country to confer full rights to illegal aliens and make our southern border as secure as the Maginot line, it may be illuminating to see how other countries are dealing with the problem of illegal immigration, and failing.
One country currently experiencing its own public debate over illegal border crossings is Australia. In fact, that country has been occupied of late with an embarrassing incident that can only be described as an imbroglio. read more…
It has been decided: Sarah Palin is a stupid liar. Case closed and its time we all moved on.
Leftist elites across the board have weighed in on Sarah Palin’s IQ and have reached a consensus – which means its now an accepted fact: Sarah Palin is just too dumb to ever be taken seriously.
HLN host and “The View” panelist Joy Behar, who we know speaks for all Americans, calls Palin “incoherent.” Behar gave the masses the benefit of her insightful views on Palin’s recent interviews, proclaiming
“It wasn’t just one interview. It was a series of incoherent sentences and lack of any kind of — it was, I’m sorry, Ann,” Behar said. “She’d never — her syntax alone would drive you crazy.”
So there you have it – either Sarah Palin is too stupid to live or Behar is suffering from waxy yellow build-up. Which, by the way, will be covered under Obama’s proposed health care bill. Whew.
Besides being too stupid to live, comedian George Lopez tells us that Palin is also a Hispanic. On his HBO special, Lopez stated,
“There are a lot of politicians that would be Latinos and a lot now who are Latino. Sarah Palin, Latina. Believe me. She’s got all the signs. She works and her husband don’t.”
Lopez’s faulty grammar, by the way, isn’t stupid – its cutting edge. And in case you haven’t heard, Lopez knows for a fact that Palin’s husband Todd is a bum and Behar agrees with her. Who knew? read more…
When my family lived in West Berlin, some of the simple personal freedoms Germans enjoyed — freedoms that we here in the US don’t have — amazed me. They were small things, really – like no speed limit on the autobahn (highway), and no legal restrictions on the drinking age. Such restrictions have become so commonplace for us, that we can scarcely imagine life without them.
I told a German friend of mine that I found it odd that her fellow countrymen had so many more personal freedoms than we do in America. She shrugged her shoulders and said, with a sly smile, “We know first hand what socialism is, and constantly fight it. You don’t know it when you see it.”
Until recently, I didn’t realize the depth of the truth that statement held. Throughout the 2008 presidential campaign, John McCain refused to label Barack Obama a socialist, probably because he didn’t want to be accused of mud-slinging. On Friday, Chris Matthews, host of Hardball on MSNBC, brought the S-word out into the open for just few brief moments. read more…
“Contrary to media hype, Sarah Palin is very unpopular,” reports Media Matters from the Magical World of Upside Down this morning.
Which would explain why she sold 300,000 copies of her book the first day, and why her publisher just added an extra million copies to the already huge print run, and why hundreds of fans line up outside Sarah Palin book signings and…
Oh wait. Never mind. Media Matters bases its counterintuitive “Palin gots cooties” report on… polls. Polls commissioned by those paragons of impartiality ABC, NBC and CNN.
Nevermind what we all know to be true: that many polls tend to oversample registered Democrats or self-described liberals.
I keep thinking of something Dennis Miller said on the air last week. I’m paraphrasing: “After what they did to Joe the Plumber — a guy standing on his own front lawn who asked an innocent question — do you really think the average American trusts that their answers to these poll questions won’t be used against them some day?”
Just a thought.
From earlier this season: Brett Favre led an 80 yard drive in 90 seconds with no timeouts ending with a TD pass to Greg Lewis for the win. read more…
Chambers was right, however, in the sense that Communists and Fascists betrayed the actual institutions they lived under in the name of an abstraction, whereas the others had not. Benedict Arnold and other loyalists to the Crown acted to preserve the system they lived under. So did the American founders who fought to defend what they considered “the rights of Englishmen,” which they believed the Crown had denied them. They fought for a reality they knew, while invoking abstract ideals to justify their rebellion and to articulate the principles they for the most part lived by. But Communists and Fascists were not defending any reality. Like contemporary radicals, they were motivated by an abstraction – the vision of a future that did not exist and had never existed, but which they were convinced they could create. read more…
How on earth did Democracy Now end up grouped in search results with these folks? Hmmm (tapping my chin with index finger), I do wonder…
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