Link of the day

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We don't want to get tunnel vision but, right now, is there anything more important than this?

Right now? How about ever?

Here's B-Daddy:

I thought the making of the film Innocence of the Muslims was badly done, in poor taste, mildly offensive and something I would never do. It was not and never should be considered a crime. Nakoula's rights as an American are being abridged by a President adored by the left; the same left that is always making a big stink about free speech. Where are the defenders of free speech on the left now? The DailyKos is in full throated defense of the actions of the administration; they have totally sold out to Obama's would be totalitarianism. The claim is that this was a probation violation because Nakoula can't use a computer or the internet without permission from his probation officer. Do we have any doubt that such provisions are routine and routinely ignored, except when convenient not to? Regardless, it is only the act of mocking the story of Mohammed that has this guy in trouble; how is that not a step towards repression. From moveon.org, crickets on this subject.

The events that have transpired this past week have confirmed what we've always suspected about the liberal-left in this country and that is their highly selective view of free speech.


Piss Christ? Hey, it's cocktails on the upper West Side, baby. A crappy Youtube video that outs Mohammed as queer? Uh, now we've got some problems.


Similar to how you don't hear a peep from these hypocrites about the President's ability to detain U.S. citizens indefinetely without cause via the American Defense Authorization Act he signed back in November of 2011, the liberal-left have bought into entirely the Dear Leader's police state.

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Blogging about bloggers and those blogger's commenters and those who opine upon those commenters

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Our blog bud Harrison over at Capitol Commentary was opining on the #Occupy Wall Street movement and its followers, here which prompted the following comment from "Jack":

I think they want the opposite of chaos and anarchy. They want a world in which “bad stuff” doesn’t happen to people. The idea of chaos and anarchy is frightening to them, which makes it all the more ironic because their actions lead to chaos and anarchy.

Sure, they want a world without consequences, but I think it’s a bit more nuanced than the way you’re looking at it. Instead of removing the consequences, they want to remove anything that would cause the consequences to happen.

I’m a pretty reasonable guy, but I whole heartedly believe that if they could, every one of those fools would prefer a world in which people were not able to make bad decisions. What they don’t understand about freedom and liberty, things that they say are important to them, is that you have to take the good with the bad. Liberty doesn’t exist if you’re rendered incapable of making bad decisions.

Jack makes a great point: a lot of the #OWS pose as anarchists or revolutionaries to establish street cred, we suppose, but at heart, they are collectivists who are clamoring for government redistribution schemes. Far from being revolutionaries or even reformers, they are clamoring for more of the statist status quo... more regulations that will only be gamed by the Wall Street "fat cats" that will only worsen the situation.

And as far as accomplishing some of the "demands" of #OWS such as forgiving student debt, banning foreclosures and making having a job a "right", how is that accomplished but through a totalitarian regime that involuntarily confiscates the wealth/private property of others?

We could be wrong but that seems to be the way things are trending out on the street with #OWS. And either they don't quite realize what it will take to accomplish their demands or they are down with the concept of a thuggish federal government that will "spread the wealth around".

Sarah sez

One in a series that takes a look at some of the zany and madcap things said by the former Governor of Alaska.



Here's Ms. Palin on wanting to know who's been naughty and who's been nice:

You know, I’ve been looking at these worldwide riots that are developing. They’re all a reflection of deep passion, deep resentment and fear. Now the question is “Where will this go? How can this be sort of concretized?” And one thought that has occurred to me — and let me sort of mention it here casually without having really thought it through systematically — I think it would be increasingly helpful if there was a movement to publish, worldwide, lists of who make, largely through speculation, enormous amounts of money almost instantly, and basically hide the fact from their social context. You know, how many Americans are really fully aware of how many other good people, let’s say like Warren Buffett and others, who really donate a lot of their earnings to charities, to philanthropy? But how many more are there in the hedge funds, in the banks, in a variety of other places, who, on the basis of speculation, literally make millions of dollars that would take a century or two for the average person ever to make? I’d like to see those lists. And they shouldn’t be that difficult to produce.

Woops. Upon further review that wasn't Palin at all, rather Jimmy Carter's old National Security Advisor and currently one of President Obama's foreign policy advisors, Zbigniew Brzezinski, on MSNBC the other day.


Compiling people lists... Is it a hard-left authoritarian thing?

To what end does this achieve except for being a raw display of jack-bootled thuggery? What effectively does Brzezinski want to do with this list and why in god's name is how much people make and how much they give to charity any of his damn business? Perhaps Brzezinski can strike the first blow for transparency by volunteering his own W-2s but as the case with Warren Buffet calling for higher taxes on the rich, moral preening always seems to be a not so much for me sort of thing.

Sarah sez

One in a series that takes a look at some of the zany and madcap things said by the former governor of Alaska.



Here's Palin on the wealth inequality gap in America today and how she proposes to close it:

"Part of my platform is, of course, the guilty must be punished and that we no longer let our children see their guilty leaders getting away with murder. Because it teaches children, you know, that they don't have to have any morals as long as they have guns and are bullies and I don't think that's a good message," Barr told Russia Today (RT).

"I do say that I am in favor of the return of the guillotine and that is for the worst of the worst of the guilty.

"I first would allow the guilty bankers to pay, you know, the ability to pay back anything over $100 million [of] personal wealth because I believe in a maximum wage of $100 million. And if they are unable to live on that amount of that amount then they should, you know, go to the reeducation camps and if that doesn't help, then being beheaded,"

Oops. Sorry. Not Palin but rather that sage, Roseanne Barr.





Now, you may say, "C'mon, she's just a comedienne, she's not really serious" and you may be correct but she sure does hang with that theme for a while and she has been a leftist hack for years so it would not surprise us in the least if she was only half-joking about the whole guilotine thing because we guarantee you, she's serious as a heart attack about that taking of wealth thing.

Which brings us to our broader point: Out of the somewhat organized Occupy Wall Street crowd and the usual band of prominent statists and leftists, we are beginning to see a broader theme emerge and that is one of involuntary confiscation.

Recall the sign that was seen at the Washington D.C. rally:

The zeal for totalitarian government amongst some of the “protesters” is shocking. One sign being carried around read, “A government is an entity which holds the monopolistic right to initiate force,” which seems a little ironic when protesters complain about being physically assaulted by police in the same breath.

And Junior Deputy Accountant found this:

That there is no "cohesive set of demands" may be a good thing, if it's real. The problem is that I'm not sure this is the case. Among some of the "looney tunes" demands I've heard include:

•A $20/hour minimum wage.
•The right to receive it irrespective of whether you work.
•Cancellation of student loan debt (Note: Not bankruptcy discharge, which I support - just flat cancellation without consequence to the borrower.)
•Tariffs to stop wage and environmental arbitrage (good) and wide-open borders (horrifyingly bad and flatly impossible given the first two demands.)
•A right to a college education (not an aspiration, a right - which means irrespective of ability. How has this worked out for our High Schools when we forced everyone, including those who are on the lower end of the bell curve in intelligence, into "mainstream" classrooms? It's been an unqualified statistical disaster.)

From Roseanne Barr and all the way down, there appears to be a theme of confiscation of other people's property and wealth for the greater common good.

And about these rights: When you start inventing "rights" out of thin air, what is required to fulfill the obligations of those rights is a totalitarian state that unlawfully and forcefully confiscates the goods, services and wealth of others. Then again, the owner of the government has the right to initiate force wherever and whenever above seems to grasp that concept.

With the Left of this country falling all over themselves as apologists for totalitarian, redistributionist regimes in the 20th century, we see a new breed in this country that is not just apologizing but openly advocating for the state to confiscate the private property of others.

It would be unfair to broad-brush any political movement, particularly one that is generally as incoherent as the Occupy Wall Street movement before having the facts but we've seen enough to be able to come to this conclusion:

At best, they are calling for the same failed statist policies and solutions that did nothing to help and, in fact, forestalled the as-yet-arrived economic recovery. At worst, they are advocating a totalitarian-style goverment to seize, without consent, the property and wealth of others to be able to meet the obligations of their demands and "rights".

These folks may want to (re-)familiarize themselves with the letter and spirit of the 4th amendment of the Constitution.


P.S. Oh, and about those attending the Occupy Wall Street rallies? Damn, they're white.



H/T: W.C. Varones

Follower blog post of the day

Gettin' out and about and bringing it all back home.




“Part of the wisdom of the Elders is to remind the world that we actually have universal values that are accepted by every government in the world and yet they are not being implemented.”




The Khmer Rouge totally approves of this message.




A carefully ethnic and gender-balanced group of international and U.N.-style hacks, has-beens and smartest-person-in-the-room types having about as much success and making about as much sense as you would expect.

KT has the details here.

Hey, teachers, leave those lunches alone!

First, they came for the Happy Meals.


There was a time in this country when schools were worried about kids bringing knives and guns to school from home. Now it appears there is a new threat, not on the horizon but afflicting our dear school children even as we speak. What is this new danger that can only be dealt with via the tried and true zero tolerance policies that schools use to deal with weaponry?

Mom's PB&Js?

Fernando Dominguez cut the figure of a young revolutionary leader during a recent lunch period at his elementary school.

"Who thinks the lunch is not good enough?" the seventh-grader shouted to his lunch mates in Spanish and English.

Dozens of hands flew in the air and fellow students shouted along: "We should bring our own lunch! We should bring our own lunch! We should bring our own lunch!"

Fernando waved his hand over the crowd and asked a visiting reporter: "Do you see the situation?"

At his public school, Little Village Academy on Chicago's West Side, students are not allowed to pack lunches from home. Unless they have a medical excuse, they must eat the food served in the cafeteria.

Principal Elsa Carmona said her intention is to protect students from their own unhealthful food choices.

"Nutrition wise, it is better for the children to eat at the school," Carmona said. "It's about the nutrition and the excellent quality food that they are able to serve (in the lunchroom). It's milk versus a Coke. But with allergies and any medical issue, of course, we would make an exception."

Of course, it's not really about nutrition now is it?

Any school that bans homemade lunches also puts more money in the pockets of the district's food provider, Chartwells-Thompson. The federal government pays the district for each free or reduced-price lunch taken, and the caterer receives a set fee from the district per lunch

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Yes, we're being quite cynical in wanting you to believe its just about pocket-lining and the potential for graft but as the budding young revolutionaries at the top of the article have been too quick to figure out, it's also about power and control and in this case, the power wielded by the state to control the kids' eating habits to what the state sees as correct diets.


Unfortunately, for the statist authoritarians in Chicago, kids don't like crappy institutional food anymore than prisoners adults do.

At Little Village, most students must take the meals served in the cafeteria or go hungry or both. During a recent visit to the school, dozens of students took the lunch but threw most of it in the garbage uneaten. Though CPS has improved the nutritional quality of its meals this year, it also has seen a drop-off in meal participation among students, many of whom say the food tastes bad.

"Some of the kids don't like the food they give at our school for lunch or breakfast," said Little Village parent Erica Martinez. "So it would be a good idea if they could bring their lunch so they could at least eat something."

Do you know what else would be a good idea? For schools to get the hell out of the meals program, altogether.


Alas, this statism via the cafeteria has addled the minds of some nanny-state parents.

But parent Miguel Medina said he thinks the "no home lunch policy" is a good one. "The school food is very healthy," he said, "and when they bring the food from home, there is no control over the food."

What were we saying again about control? Why an apparently well-meaning Mr. Medina should care what any other parent is putting in his kid's lunch is completely beyond us.

Oh, and to top it all off, this mandatory lunch program runs $2.25/day which in many cases exceeds the cost families pay for their childrens' lunches, healthy or not. And what if parents are sending their children to school with healthier lunches than the crap slung over the sneeze guard by the school? Who gets screwed then?


Then again, maybe we're not giving the schools the credit they deserve. Maybe it's actually a brilliant plan to get the kids to eat healthier by making them eat the crap they are providing.

Many Little Village students claim that, given the opportunity, they would make sound choices.

"They're afraid that we'll all bring in greasy food instead of healthy food and it won't be as good as what they give us at school," said student Yesenia Gutierrez. "It's really lame. If we could bring in our own lunches, everyone knows what they'd bring. For example, the vegetarians could bring in their own veggie food."

"I would bring a sandwich or a Subway and maybe a juice," said seventh-grader Ashley Valdez.

Second-grader Gerardo Ramos said, "I would bring a banana, orange and some grapes."

"I would bring a juice and like a sandwich," said fourth-grader Eric Sanchez.

"Sometimes I would bring the healthy stuff," second-grader Julian Ruiz said, "but sometimes I would bring Lunchables."

You can almost sense the fear in their words. It's like the "Scared Straight" of healthy diets.

No matter - because of stuff like this, schools need to get out of the school lunch program. We can see in this case alone of no better reason why.

Link of the day

Coming to terms with sadism

An orphan of the Killing Fields of the Khmer Rouge struggles to overcome his anguish.





We may perhaps be nitpicking* but one particular word in this paragraph stood out:

Bo Uce was 4 in 1975 when the Khmer Rouge, with its deranged vision of communism, took power. It purged the country of teachers, doctors, lawyers and writers and forced the population into hard labor on farming collectives.

Forced starvations, political prisoners, Kulaks, Killing Fields, imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winners, forced abortions, The Great Leap Forward, gulags, general soul-crushing authoritarianism.... in an otherwise outstanding article by the L.A. Times, we question the use of the word "deranged" as it suggests some sort of outlier phenomena in the wonderful tapestry wove by 20th-century Communism.





* As minor league Birchers in high school, we can't help ourselves and will pounce upon any perceived softness.

Of clown boots, unicycles and the Empire

KT demonstrates the natural arbitrariness and lawlessness inherent to handing over too much individual freedom to the government.


Go here.



The Secretary shall determine.... at the discretion of the Secretary....

ObamaCare in the courts (UPDATED)

(Please scroll down for update)



A little more on the ObamaCare decision made by federal district court Judge, Henry Hudson. Here are a couple of money quotes from his decision yesterday:

Hudson rejected the government’s argument that it has the power under the Constitution to require individuals to buy health insurance, a provision that was set to take effect in 2014.

“Of course, the same reasoning could apply to transportation, housing or nutritional decisions,” Hudson wrote. “This broad definition of the economic activity subject to congressional regulation lacks logical limitation” and is unsupported by previous legal cases around the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.

and

U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson wrote that no court had expanded the Commerce Clause of the Constitution to allow the government to regulate a person's decision not to buy a product.

"At its core, this dispute is not simply about regulating the business of insurance — or crafting a scheme of universal health insurance coverage — it's about an individual's right to choose to participate," Hudson wrote.

(italics, ours)

ObamaCare advocates will say that Congress has the right to regulate interstate activity. First, health insurance activity does not cross state lines but more importantly, how is choosing not to participate in an economic activity like purchasing health insurance an economic activity?

Given this logic, what is it that the government cannot force you to purchase?

In these few short paragraphs, Judge Hudson gives a nice, neat summation of the progressive agenda: power and the freedom to choose taken from the individual and given to the collective or the state.




(UPDATE #1): Please click on over to The Liberator Today which has a round up of opinions both agreeing and disagreeing with Judge Hudson's decision, here.

As we were reading through the opinions, a couple of things kept going through our mind: 1) how badly did Congress screw themselves by referring to the penalty (for not purchasing health insurance) as a "penalty" and not a "tax"?

4. Is the penalty defensible under the tax power? No. First, it is a penalty, not a tax. The distinction between penalties and taxes is still viable. Kahriger. Congress chose to characterize the penalty as a “penalty,” and changed earlier drafts which had called it a “tax.”

If we remember correctly, it was termed a "tax" in earlier versions of the bill to make it more palatable. Because being penalized for not participating in commerce is so much more acceptable than being taxed for the same offense?

... and b) at the end of the day, this is still going to boil down to what are the Constitutional limits to what Congress can compel you to do. And we might add, this will forever blur the distinction between your modern-day liberal who is in favor of ObamaCare and a good ol' fashioned authoritarian.



Ladies and Gentelmen, once again.... Pete Stark (D - CCCP)

Winning friends and er, influencing people

As you will find out at the end of the clip, this video was made by the faith-based AGW set in support of their carbon-reduction initiative.




Charmed, we're sure, because nothing garners support for your cause like absolute intolerance of dissent of your cause especially in such a grotesquely violent nature.

If you're asking yourself, "what were they thinking?", don't bother because thought had nothing to do with it as this represented, rather, the logical if extreme conclusion to Al Gore's shrill "The time for debate is over".

When they told us that indifference or inaction to faith-based AGW would bring dire consequences, they weren't lying.

And as much as moderate greenies out there will denounce this ad, we sense that much like moderate Muslims with respect to speaking out against terrorism, there will be the "yes, but..." rationalizations that follow.

When lying about and fudging the facts won't do, simply fast forward to totalitarian threats and intimidation to impose your agenda.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences.” –C.S. Lewis

H/T: Hot Air

Go with what you know

The Chi-comms take a page out of The Great Leap Forward playbook for their comprehensive macro-economic industrial base strategy:

Chinese steel mills and mobile phone factories are being idled and thousands of homes in one area are doing without electricity as local governments order power cuts to meet energy-saving targets set by Beijing.

Rolling blackouts and enforced power cuts are affecting key industrial areas. The prosperous eastern city of Taizhou turned off street lights and ordered hotels and shopping malls to cut power use. In Anping County southwest of Beijing, an area known as China's wire-manufacturing capital, thousands of factories and homes have endured daylong blackouts over the past two weeks.

"We can't meet deadlines for some orders and will have to pay penalties," said Han Hongmai, general manager of Anping's Jintai Metal Wire Co. "At home we can't use the toilet" on blackout days due to lack of power for water pumps, he said.

The reason for these shut-downs is mandatory energy efficiency goals dictated by the central government that are not being met.

Some industrious plants/factories still wishing to fulfill production goals while their power is cut, resort to firing up older on-site diesel generators which, of course, is not what you would consider environmentally friendly.

And dig this:

"You could say local governments are trying to blackmail the central government: If you order me to do something I can't deliver, I will pass on the pressure to ordinary people," said Yang Ailun, a spokeswoman for Greenpeace China.

An autocratic central government dictating terms of business to semi-nationalized industries who simply promise to pass along the pain to their costumers...? Over here we call that ObamaCare.

Reading the article, one gets the impression that the Chinese economy is one where an action or series of top-down decrees causes a spastic reaction that is responded to in turn by yet more top-down decrees by the Chi-comms. From our vantage point the Chinese economy is one massive back and forth flail.

Thomas Friedman likes this.

The obligatory Pete Stark video post

This does qualify for Nancy's Nuances: a journey of discovery (things we're finding out about ObamaCare after ObamaCare has passed (Letting the Mask Slip sub-set)) not only based upon chronology but also on the merits of Stark's justification for passage of ObamaCare: We won.



Great points all, made by this young lady as it's readily apparent that she is talking at a level way above Stark's pay grade as he has no concept nor interest in understanding how the 5th, 10th and 14th amendments would prevent you from being compelled to sign up for health care just as it would prohibit the confiscation of goods and services from others as is the case when you declare particular goods and services a right.

Stark is a thug. There is simply no other way to put it.

Another memo to our goo-goo (good government) liberal friends: Sure, you would like to see the government play an active role for good in society but does Pete Stark's vision of a Thomas Friedman-esque totalitarianism look like your view of liberalism? Does what Pete Stark is saying sound anything remotely like, "Keep your laws off my body?"

The Democratic Party, which has for years been informed by notions of the limitless power of government dared not actually say it, until now. The passage of ObamaCare has proved to be truth serum to its authoritarian acolytes who now attend town hall meetings and impassively tell their constituents:

I think that there are very few constitutional limits that would prevent the federal government from (making) rules that could affect your private life.

Well, shoot-howdy, that doesn't sound like the bra and draft card burning Democratic Party of dear old Mom and Dad, now does it, gang?



If they can do this, what can't they do?


P.S. We have no idea who the young woman in the video is, however, her identity along with other private details of her life will no doubt be exposed by the Wasilla Dumpster Diving Posse.



Follower Update: Rational Nation USA who also blogs at fellow SLOB site, Left Coast Rebel is in the house.

Bringing something to the party

He became very serious. Deadly serious. He looked at me and said something like this: “Americans know nothing. Nothing!” And went on to describe the horrors of Soviet slavery in the most graphic and chilling terms. Scales fell from my eyes.

Some Americans may not appreciate this, but people like Gabe are critical components in the spine of America. Because they remember. They remember. Despite all the lies, and spin, and apologetics for all the left-wing tyrants and dictators in the world, despite the ideological excuse-making, they remember. They were there.

Lost in the illegal immigration debate is a function immigrants serve that we normally don't think about. Secular Apostate reminds us of why we need (legal) immigrants.

With apologies to Uncle Joe...

Check out Irvine, California city councilman, Steven Choi protesting headline speaker Nancy Pelosi at the Democratic Party of Orange County’s 15th Annual Harry Truman Awards last Friday.



That’s Pelosi on Choi’s cocktail napkin, hoisting aloft a young fair-headed commie enthusiast which is a photo-chop of the iconic Joseph Stalin image below.



The San Francisco Chronicle duly notes in reporting this that Stalin was a Soviet dictator “who killed millions under his Great Terror campaign.”

And local area blogger Dan Chmielewski in a post at The LiberalOC had this to say:

To portray Pelosi as Stalin, a mass murderer of millions during his reign of power, is nothing short of outrageous. Choi owes the Speaker an apology. He owes his fellow city council members an apology. He owes the residents of this city an apology for his embarassing antics.

Resign your position Dr. Choi; you are not fit to serve as an elected official in Irvine. Your offensive behavior is a black eye on Irvine’s place as a city of tolerance and influence.

(italics, ours)

We're just marveling at the fact that it takes a Republican congressman and his ham-fisted "protest" to cause some people to suddenly snap out of decades-long Murderous Tyrant Denial Syndrome.

Hey, it's a start and we'll take it!

Whither Berlin

We’re following up some unfinished business from our post, here.

So, if the President has time to go over to Europe to make a pitch for the Olympics (no problem) and to pick up the hardware and cash for his Nobel prize (still, no problem) then why is he not swinging by Berlin to celebrate the toppling of the Berlin Wall which also represented the demise of the flagship franchise of the most brutal, deadly, freedom-loathing and totalitarian political ideology of all time (problem?).

In short: it’s just not his trip, dig?

Again, this all goes back to the man’s associations and bona fides. Precisely what is it about Obama’s educational, organizing and political careers that would suggest that he would think this is a big deal… an instance to celebrate? Now, intellectually, we’re sure the President thinks that all that killing in the name of or as a direct result of statist policy was pretty icky and even, at times, unseemly but there is absolutely nothing to the man of which we are aware that holds a principled revulsion to communism.

How could there be?

The man has spent his entire adult life surrounded by those who if not actively campaigning for collectivist ideals were at least apologizing for their agonizing results. There is nothing that we see in him either emotionally or intellectually that would view the 20th anniversary of the fall of this wall as cause for the supremely joyous, knock down – drag out, drunken bacchanal that it should be.

Which is giving us a few ideas for the evening of November 9.

Roger Cohen would like you to know that while Iran still sucks, it doesn’t suck as much as you have been led to believe.

Every once in a while we read an article and ponder: What the heck was the point of that?

Cohen provides an example of this in his article in the New York Times by taking umbrage that Iran has somehow been tagged as a totalitarian state.

Totalitarian regimes require the complete subservience of the individual to the state and tolerate only one party to which all institutions are subordinated. Iran is an un-free society with a keen, intermittently brutal apparatus of repression, but it’s far from meeting these criteria. Significant margins of liberty, even democracy, exist. Anything but mad, the mullahs have proved malleable.

Now, don’t you feel just a tad chagrined that you’ve been saying all those nasty things about Iran over the years?

Cohen even goes the “they can’t get stuff to work – just like us” route to prove some rationalizing similarities between Iran and the West.

If you’re thinking trains-on-time Fascist efficiency, think again. Tehran’s new telecommunications tower took 20 years to build. I was told its restaurant would open “soon.” So, it is said, will the Bushehr nuclear power plant, a project in the works for a mere 30 years. A Persian Chernobyl is more likely than some Middle Eastern nuclear Armageddon, if that’s any comfort.

This logic, of course, depends fully on the belief that the degree of government intervention is directly proportional to infrastructure effectiveness – a failed notion as we all know.

Cohen saves his best for last though:

But the equating of Iran with terror today is simplistic. Hamas and Hezbollah have evolved into broad political movements widely seen as resisting an Israel over-ready to use crushing force. It is essential to think again about them, just as it is essential to toss out Iran caricatures.

You know, broad political movements that still employ terror techniques at the drop of hat and which are sponsored in part by Iran.

Actually, having some time now to reflect on what we just read, we do know what the point of the article was: Cohen demonstrating through his writing what a nitwit and a journalistic incompetent he is.

The Optimism is contagious

My bigger fear is that the bailouts will "work" in preventing a total meltdown by ensuring that future generations of Americans will come to know the grinding pain of a system that will give us permanent and almost total government control and responsibility for nearly everything in America.

More here from Riehl World View.

Totalitarian enough

Its comforting to know that we’re not the only country with some eminent domain issues. You see, China has them also.

A couple of poor old Chinese ladies have been sentenced by the Beijing police to “re-education through labor” for having the temerity to apply for a legal protest in a designated area there in the city. They are doing so because they are none too pleased about what they feel is the government reneging on a deal that would’ve put them up in tonier digs as their former homes had been razed to facilitate Olympic-themed development near Tiananmen Square.

Unfortunately, they are living in a ramshackle apartment on the outskirts of the city and their demands for compensation have gone unanswered.

Well, not unanswered entirely, of course. Both Ms. Wu, 79 and Ms. Wang, 77 have been allowed to return to their “home” but have been warned they could be sent to a detention center at any moment. Keep that overnight bag packed and by the door, ladies.

Officials say that they received 77 protest applications but that nearly all of them were dropped after the complaints were “properly addressed by relevant authorities or departments through consultations.”

If by “properly addressed” one means threats, intimidation, arrests, strong-arming and jail time, then, yes, all 77 applicants have been “properly addressed.”

And as an example of not quite grasping the realities of one’s surroundings, the authors of linked article from the New York Times ponder,
“It is unclear why the police have detained people who sought permission to protest.”

Perhaps Li Fangpin, a lawyer who has been arrested and beaten for fighting for representation of rights advocates can help out the authors: “For Chinese petitioners, if their protest applications were approved, it would lead to a chain reaction of others seeking to voice their problems as well,”

We always find it charming when people in the thick of the struggle find it necessary to break things down to the most elementary of levels for their more obtuse Western observers.

To be as charitable to the Chicomms, our hosts this past fortnight, as we can be, no government wants their dirty laundry aired… its just that constitutionally-based democracies appear to have a higher threshold of pain when it comes to this sort of thing.

P.S. B-Daddy noted in a comment in an earlier post that the term “Arbeit macht frei” is a German phrase meaning “work brings freedom” and which graced the entrances of Nazi Germany’s most infamous concentration camps and whose philosophical underpinnings parallel that of the “re-education through labor” of the Chinese.

We mention this because there are great similarities in the philosophies and ideological execution of all the great totalitarian strains of faith be it fascism, Stalinism or Maoism.

P.P.S. The title of this post is in reference to Nicolas Kristof’s equivocating over the term “totalitarian” which we took to task, here.

H/T: B-Daddy and Hedgecock