Haiti needs our help with donations. You’ve probably seen a lot of news, emails, tweets, and other messages about helping Haiti after a devastating earthquake. But to avoid the sad likelihood of fake charity scams I suggest you go through the American Red Cross.
About the American Red Cross:
The American Red Cross shelters, feeds and provides emotional support to victims of disasters; supplies nearly half of the nation’s blood; teaches lifesaving skills; provides international humanitarian aid; and supports military members and their families. The Red Cross is a charitable organization — not a government agency — and depends on volunteers and the generosity of the American public to perform its mission. For more information, please visit www.redcross.org.
You can make a donation by calling 1-800-REDCROSS or 1-800-257-7575 (Spanish) or click on the Red Cross logo button below.
I never have paid any attention to Jack Cafferty. In fact, this is the first clip I’ve ever seen. When I saw this clip, my first thought was “Hooray!” but later, I saw other clips of his. Some were confusing and left me wondering just where on the scale of conservatism vs. liberalism he might be. Any one know?
Isolated extremists? This “war” is about the intersection of Islam and the West.
By Mark Steyn
Not long after the Ayatollah Khomeini announced his fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the British novelist suddenly turned up on a Muslim radio station in West London late one night and told his interviewer he’d converted to Islam. Marvelous religion, couldn’t be happier, Allahu Akbar and all that.
And the Ayatollah said hey, that’s terrific news, glad to hear it. But we’re still gonna kill you.
Well, even a leftie novelist wises up under those circumstances.
Evidently, the president of the United States takes a little longer. Barack Obama has spent the last year doing bigtime Islamoschmoozing, from his announcement of Gitmo’s closure and his investigation of Bush officials to his bow before the Saudi King and a speech in Cairo to “the Muslim world” with far too many rhetorical concessions and equivocations. And at the end of it, the jihad sent America a thank-you note by way of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s underwear: Hey, thanks for all the outreach! But we’re still gonna kill you.
According to one poll, 58 percent of Americans are in favor of waterboarding young Umar Farouk. Well, you should have thought about that before you made a community organizer president of the world’s superpower. The election of Barack Obama was a fundamentally unserious act by the U.S. electorate, and you can’t blame the world’s mischief-makers, from Putin to Ahmadinejad to the many Gitmo recidivists now running around Yemen, from drawing the correct conclusion.
For two weeks, the government of the United States has made itself a global laughingstock. Don’t worry, “the system worked,” said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Incompetano. Don’t worry, he was an “isolated extremist,” said the president. Don’t worry, we’re banning bathroom breaks for the last hour of the flight, said the TSA. Don’t worry, “U.S. border-security officials” told the Los Angeles Times, we knew he was on the plane and we “had decided to question him when he landed.” Don’t worry, Obama’s chief counterterrorism John Brennan assured the Sunday talk shows, sure, we read him his rights and he’s lawyered up but he’ll soon see that “there is advantage to talking to us in terms of plea agreements.”
Oh, that’s grand. Try to kill hundreds of people in an act of war and it’s the starting point for a plea deal. In his Cairo speech, the president bragged that the United States would “punish” those in America who would “deny” the “right of women and girls to wear the hijab.” If he’s so keen on it, maybe he should consider putting the entire federal government into full-body burkas and zipping up the eye slit so that henceforth every public utterance by John Brennan will be entirely inaudible. Americans should be ashamed by this all-fools’ fortnight.
On Thursday, having renounced over the preceding days “the system worked,” the “isolated extremist,” the more obviously risible TSA responses, the Gitmo-Yemen express checkout, and various other follies, the president finally spoke the words: “We are at war.” As NATIONAL REVIEW’s Rich Lowry noted, they were more or less dragged from the presidential gullet by Dick Cheney, who’d accused the commander-in-chief of failing to grasp this basic point. Again, to be fair, it isn’t just Obama. Last November, the electorate voted in effect to repudiate the previous eight years and seemed genuinely under the delusion that wars end when one side decides it’s all a bit of a bore and they’d rather the government spend the next eight years doing to health care and the economy what they were previously doing to jihadist camps in Waziristan.
On the other hand, if we are now at war, as Obama belatedly concedes, against whom are we warring? “We are at war against al-Qaeda,” says the president.
Really? But what does that mean? Was the previous month’s “isolated extremist” — the Fort Hood killer — part of al-Qaeda? When it came to spiritual advice, he turned to the same Yemeni-based American-born imam as the Pantybomber, but he didn’t have a fully paid-up membership card. Nor did young Umar Farouk, come to that. Granted the general over-credentialization of American life, the notion that it doesn’t count as terrorism unless you’re a member of Local #437 of the Amalgamated Union of Isolated Extremists seems perverse and reductive. What did the Pantybomber have a membership card in? Well, he was president of the Islamic Society of University College, London. Kafeel Ahmed, who died after driving a burning jeep into the concourse of Glasgow Airport, had been president of the Islamic Society of Queen’s University, Belfast. Yassin Nassari, serving three years in jail for terrorism, was president of the Islamic Society of the University of Westminster. Waheed Arafat Khan, arrested in the 2006 Heathrow terror plots that led to Americans having to put their liquids and gels in those little plastic bags, was president of the Islamic Society of London Metropolitan University.
Doesn’t this sound like a bigger problem than “al-Qaeda” — whatever that is? The president has now put citizens of Nigeria on the secondary-screening list. Which is tough on Nigerian Christians, who have no desire to blow up your flight to Detroit. Aside from the highly localized Tamil terrorism of India and Sri Lanka, suicide bombing is a phenomenon entirely of Islam. The broader psychosis that manifested itself only the other day in an axe murderer breaking into a Danish cartoonist’s home to kill him because he objects to his cartoon is likewise a phenomenon of Islam. This is not to say (to go wearily through the motions) that all Muslims are potential suicide bombers and axe murderers, but it is to state the obvious — that this “war” is about the intersection of Islam and the West, and its warriors are recruited in the large pool of young Muslim manpower, not in Yemen and Afghanistan so much as in Copenhagen and London.
But the president of the United States cannot say that because he is over-invested in a fantasy — that, if only that Texan moron Bush had read Khalid Sheikh Mohammed his Miranda rights and bowed as low as he did to the Saudi king, we wouldn’t have all these problems. So now Obama says, “We are at war.” But he cannot articulate any war aims or strategy because they would conflict with his illusions. And so we will stagger on, playing defense, pulling more and more items out of our luggage — tweezers, shoes, shampoo, snowglobes, suppositories — and reacting to every new provocation with greater impositions upon the citizenry. You can’t win by putting octogenarian nuns through full-body scanners. All you can do is lose slowly. After all, if you can’t even address what you’re up against with any honesty, you can’t blame the other side for drawing entirely reasonable conclusions about your faintheartedness in taking them on.
After that cringe-making radio interview, Salman Rushdie subsequently told the Times of London that trying to appease his would-be killers and calling for his own book to be withdrawn was the biggest mistake of his life. If only the president of the United States were such a quick study.
Reid health care bill fails to deliver on President Obama’s “solemn promises” to the American people
Dec 06 2009
WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, spoke on the Senate floor today and outlined how the 2,074 page Reid health care bill fails to deliver on President Obama’s “solemn promises” to the American people. Below is a summary of his remarks.
PROMISE #1
“I’m going to have all the negotiations around a big table. We’ll have negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies.” August 2008
• Reid Bill Reality
“The first big fight over the Senate Finance Committee’s health care legislation erupted Tuesday night: a rollicking brawl over a deal that the Obama administration cut with the pharmaceutical industry…” The New York Times, September 23, 2009
• Reid Bill Reality
“But now, as a Senate vote on health-care legislation nears, those negotiations are occurring in a setting that is anything but revolutionary in Washington: Three senators are working on the bill behind closed doors.” The Washington Post, October 18, 2009
“One thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach… all the damn vampires.” – Grandpa in ‘The Lost Boys”
To paraphrase the grandfather in the movie, ‘The Lost Boys’, one thing about living in America I never could stomach … all the damn Liberals! Just as in the fictional movie town of Santa Carla, so it is in the United States. There is a small, but deadly enclave of Liberals who terrorize and intimidate the peaceful law biding citizenry of our nation. The Leftist Progressive activists that haunt our country practice a perverse religion of totalitarianism and self-loathing that preaches the total aberration of America and the American way of life. Much in the way that Vampires lure and seduce innocent and trusting victims to their fate, so does the American Left attempt to lure and seduce the average American voter to the fate of socialism. Only twenty percent of Americans classify themselves as Liberal, yet this twenty percent has beguiled and manipulated the machinery of public policy and public opinion to an extent that we are no longer able to see the reflection in the mirror of an America founded on the Constitution.
I have to marvel at the similarities between Vampires and Liberals.
Just as Vampires recoil at the sign of the Cross, Liberals recoil at any mention of God and church and religion. And just as Vampires recoil from the light of day, Liberals recoil when the policies they pursue are brought into the light of day.
As with the bloodsucking, cadaver consuming characteristics of the Vampire, Liberals suck the blood of creativity and motivation out of the free market society as a means of destroying the system from within. Through the masquerade of promising Hope and Change , the modern Progressive Left promises an era of bipartisan, post-racial politics that is the Vampires promise of eternal life. It is the truth of history that the promise of eternal life is only available at the price of liberty and the promise of eternal life is a promise forever beyond the reach of mortals.
There is a great scene at the end of ‘The Lost Boys’ when the kids mom makes a conscious choice to become a Vampire. She decides it is easier to go along with the most obvious sentiment instead of fighting for herself and her family. How reminiscent of the voter who shrugs their shoulders at higher fuel taxes, higher sales taxes, higher property taxes and eventually more government control of our lives. How much easier it is to accept the smooth, well-spoken image of the Vampire rather than risk your name and your position fighting against the perceived popular tide. How much easier it is to accept the smooth, well-spoken media package of Barack Obama than risk being called a racist or a hater or even un-cool or not hip.
Easier would seem to be the common denominator here.
Easier to go along with the crowd.
Easier to not think about it.
Easier to surrender.
Edgar and Alan Frog are the ‘The Lost Boys’ outspoken yet committed Vampire hunters. Treated as a barely tolerable nuisance by a populace lulled into confused complacency by the Vampires song, the Frog brothers refuse to refute their beliefs or their faith in what they are doing. Isn’t it the irony of modern America that the anti-American theology of the radical Progressive Left is merchandised in a highly polished package of mainstream normalcy. Yet in the same fit of ironic outrage the Conservative movement, which promotes and defends ‘Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness’, is maligned as a bunch of out of touch crackpots and haters. Vampires always get good press, it seems.
The Conservative movement is fortunate to have Vampire hunters in Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal, Jim DeMint, John Boehner and company. Just as the Frog brothers refused to give up their crusade to rid Santa Carla of the plague and terror of Vampires, so does the Conservative movement and it’s own elite league of Vampire hunters refuse to renounce our beliefs, our faith and our willingness to fight for our America. From the professional politicians to the New Media Vampire hunters of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, we are poised to drive the stake of truth through the corrupt heart of Liberalism.
Barack Obama was successfully packaged, marketed and sold by an evil genius team of Leftist millionaires and political deviants. George Soros, David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrett, David Plouffe and the SEIU’s Andy Stern were overwhelmingly successful in pushing forth a novice and naïve Chicago Black Liberation proponent as the embodiment of Change and Hope. Vampires should never be accused of being dumb…. or bad at marketing. Every Vampire movie ultimately ends with the climatic stake through the heart scene. So, our current plague of Liberal Vampires will meet their fate. Ronald Reagan was the stake through the heart of a recalcitrant Seventies-era Liberal hangover and so will the next Republican President drive the stake of Conservatism through the empty soul of Liberalism. The days of the Vampires have always been numbered, as are the days of Obama and his ‘Lost Boys.’
Mexico City, MX – Mexican lawmakers today proposed a 700 mile border fence to keep Americans from illegally entering the country. Recent economic conditions in the US have sent tens of thousands of Americans over the border seeking employment.
Home Depots in Guadalajara and Tijuana reported shiny, pale objects on the periphery of their parking lots – later determined to be illegal Caucasians looking for work.
Mexican farmers protest
Mary Consuela, a futbol mom from a suburb of Cancun was quick to endorse the fence. “They come to work to support their families in America – I understand that,” said Consuela. “But they drive our highways without insurance, sleep 9 people in a studio apartment and are mostly employed under-the-table to avoid taxes. What happens when they need health care or other services? It comes out of my pocket.”
Small protests have popped-up across the country as people waving American flags demanded amnesty. Those without bribe money were taken into the desert and shot by authorities.
A group calling itself “The Conquistadors” has begun patrolling the border area. When asked for comment, a man identifying himself as their leader said something in Spanish.
Legislators representing states adjacent to the US were careful to balance their constituents’ needs with the inevitability of a Caucasian voting presence in the very near future.
“These guys need to follow the process that’s in place for legal immigration,” commented Hector Vasquez who owns a small elementary school and Chicklet distribution franchise in Puerto Vallarta. “We can’t just grant them all citizenship because the problem has become too big. That’s just stupid.”
No Caucasians could be reached for comment because their phones wouldn’t accept incoming calls.
Reid health care bill fails to deliver on President Obama’s “solemn promises” to the American people
To paraphrase the grandfather in the movie, ‘The Lost Boys’, one thing about living in America I never could stomach … all the damn Liberals! Just as in the fictional movie town of Santa Carla, so it is in the United States. There is a small, but deadly enclave of Liberals who terrorize and intimidate the peaceful law biding citizenry of our nation. The Leftist Progressive activists that haunt our country practice a perverse religion of totalitarianism and self-loathing that preaches the total aberration of America and the American way of life. Much in the way that Vampires lure and seduce innocent and trusting victims to their fate, so does the American Left attempt to lure and seduce the average American voter to the fate of socialism. Only twenty percent of Americans classify themselves as Liberal, yet this twenty percent has beguiled and manipulated the machinery of public policy and public opinion to an extent that we are no longer able to see the reflection in the mirror of an America founded on the Constitution.