11 Years Later, We’ve Learned to Cringe Before the Islamists

Mark Noonan39 Comments

As I said earlier, I had written a post to commemorate the 9/11 attacks but I got so bitter about how low we’ve fallen that I deleted it – the day is not fit for such things.  Until now.  Here’s the story from al Jazeera:

Thousands of Egyptian demonstrators have torn down the Stars and Stripes at the US embassy in Cairo and replaced it with an Islamic flag on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001,  attacks in the US.

Nearly 3,000 demonstrators, most of them Islamist supporters of the Salafist movement or football fans, gathered on Tuesday at the embassy in protest over an amateur film deemed offensive to the Prophet Muhammad which was produced by expatriate members of Egypt’s Christian minority resident in the US…

So, because a film was made by someone in the United States a mob of Islamists seized our embassy in Cairo – but that’s not all; a similar mob in Libya sacked our consulate and, it seems, killed one American official while doing it.  That, of course, is enough to outrage an American patriot – but it gets worse.  Here’s the official, US response to the taking of our Cairo embassy:

The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy. Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.

That is the whole thing.  Nothing about condemning the Islamists.  Oh, no.  We’re far too chickenshit to do that.  Our government under Obama knows precisely what it has to do – crawl on its knees to its Muslim masters!  We’re apologizing to these dirty-necked barbarians because they got mad over a film made in the one-time land of the free and home of the brave.  11 years after beasts massacred 3,000 of us we’ve learned our lesson.

I am just disgusted.  And, liberals, I entirely blame you.  Oh, don’t you try to weasel out of this – don’t you even dare.  It is your man Obama running the show.  He’s the one who apologized for all that we did from 2001 to 2009.  He was the one who was going to get these savages to love us by showing understanding and kindness.  And you cheered him on.  You liberals said we were wrong to fight them; wrong to rendition them; wrong to waterboard them.  We’re doing it your way, now – and look what it gets us.  You think the cringing, spineless apology from our embassy will stop them now?  Bloody fools – weakness to barbarians just encourages the barbarians to attack.

Oh, for just an hour of the spirit of Godfrey of Bouillon!  Someone who will do what needs to be done – drive a sword through these people as far as it will go until they learn that you don’t attack us, ever.

UPDATE:  Hopefully on January 20th we’ll be able to stop cringing.  Romney’s statement:

I’m outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi. It’s disgraceful that the Obama Administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.

Team Obama is now busily trying to walk back the craven statement from the embassy but its too late for that.  Everything Obama has done since 2009 is encapsulated in that statement – its his embassy under his direction and they clearly did what they thought was in line with Obama Administration policy.

UPDATE II:  Fury is growing over this disgraceful act by our government – especially as the linked article shows that its even worse than we thought, what with embassy officials apparently “tweeting” craven statements to Islamists over this incident.

UPDATE III:  Sarah Palin’s statement:

…It’s about time our president stood up for America and condemned these Islamic extremists. I realize there must be a lot on his mind these days – what with our economy’s abysmal jobless numbers and Moody’s new warning about yet another downgrade to our nation’s credit rating due to the current administration’s failure to come up with a credible deficit reduction plan. And, of course, he has a busy schedule – with all those rounds of golf, softball interviews with the “Pimp with the Limp,” and fundraising dinners with his corporate cronies. But our nation’s security should be of utmost importance to our Commander-in-chief. America can’t afford any more “leading from behind” in such a dangerous world. We already know that President Obama likes to “speak softly” to our enemies. If he doesn’t have a “big stick” to carry, maybe it’s time for him to grow one.

obAMATEUR’s Pathetic Economic Recovery

tiredoflibbs96 Comments

The unemployment report on Friday was absolute proof of obAMATEUR’s failure as pResident to help our nation recover.  Millions of people remain unemployed or under employed and millions more have simply given up.  Specifics?  This list breaks down how bad things truly are under the obAMATEUR’s “Recovery” (in name only).

  • 5.1% – The current unemployment rate for government workers, which is the lowest unemployment rate for any of 17 different categories and subcategories of industries for which employment is tracked and published on a month-to-month basis by the Department of Labor.
  • 8.1% – The current national unemployment rate, which dropped .2% because 368,000 Americans dropped out of the labor force in August.  Do you understand what you just heard?  These people –368,000 of your neighbors and friends – just said the hell with it and gave up.
  • 8.4% – What the unemployment rate would be if the labor force participation rate had stayed the same as just last month – if those people had stayed in the job market and kept looking for work.
  • 11.2% – What the unemployment rate would be if we had the same number of people either working or looking for work now as we did when Obama took office.
  • 14.7% – The U-6 unemployment rate, which includes all of those who are unemployed and under-employed (part-time workers who want full-time work).
  • 39 – The average number of weeks that workers find themselves out of the jobs market (the long-term unemployed).
  • 43 – The number of consecutive months with joblessness above 8%.
  • 63.5% – The current labor participation rate, which is the lowest share of Americans over age 16 in the workforce since September 1981.
  • 2025 – If we continue to create jobs at a rate of just 96,000 per month, it will take until 2025 just to return to pre-recession unemployment levels.
  • 41,000 – The number of jobs created for the prior two months were revised lower by 41,000 jobs.
  • 96,000 – The total number of nonfarm jobs created in August.
  • 119,000 – There were 119,000 fewer Americans employed in August than there were in July.
  • 173,000 – The increase in the number of food stamp recipients for the last month for which we have data (June).  Compare that to the number of jobs being created …
  • 250,000 – The number of jobs per month needed to have significant job creation impact and bring down the unemployment rate.
  • 368,000 – The number of Americans who dropped out of the labor force in August.
  • 5 million – The number of jobs still needed to get back to the point where we were in the end of 2007.
  • 20 million – The number of unemployed, underemployed and discouraged workers who’ve left the labor force altogether.
  • 31 million – That’s the population growth since 2000, yet fewer Americans are working today than in April 2000.

UPDATE (since whiny proggy drones refuse to refute facts but nitpick at sources): Hat tip: Neal Boortz,  VERIFIED WITH: BLS, LA Times, ABC News, TIAA Cref, Census Bureau, Forbes – to name a few.  These pathetic facts along with raising taxes on all incomes for obAMACARE, increased food prices due to the drought and increased fuel costs (another obAMATEUR failure), faster rising (rising faster than it would have without obAMACARE) healthcare and premium costs due to obAMACARE and more people on Welfare and receiving food stamps than ever before.   obAMATEUR maintains that Americans are better off than they were four years ago (with little explanation).

It is no wonder obAMATEUR deflects the campaign to Romney’s tax records and other such attacks.  The man has no positive record on which to run.

These drones believe that I would put up FACTS that have not been verified?  They are in for extreme disappointment.  This is a DISCUSSION BLOG now refute the FACTS or STFU. – Rico you have used this cowardly dodge before.

 

Public Unions Must Go

Cluster18 Comments

Public unions are bankrupting our municipalities and they honestly don’t seem to care. The teachers union in Chicago are some of the highest paid teachers in the country at an average of $76,000 a year before benefits, and they just walked out on a a nearly 16% pay increase over 4 years, choosing to go on strike and leaving kids and parents in a bind. They don’t give a damn about educating our children, and I hope Rahm Emmanuel sticks to his position. If he doesn’t, Chicago and many other municipalities will wind up like San Bernardino, CA, which has had to declare bankruptcy largely due to a bloated government wherein an estimated 71% of the city’s budget goes toward servicing the public union pension. This is insane, and the entire nation needs to follow Gov. Scott Walker’s lead for the sake of the tax payer, because we can not count on Obama or the Democrats to take a responsible position on this issue. They have already abandoned FDR’s position on this issue.

And in keeping with the public union assault on tax payers, private unions are also on the march.  The Democrat line that Obama saved GM is a lie, which most rational people have known for a long time, and now the general public is starting to realize. Aside from the private bond holders, and the non union Delphi employees getting screwed, the bail out only served to support the UAW wages and pensions. We also now learn that tax payers were losing $47,000 on every Chevy Volt sold, which is now out of production completely, and  GM still owes tax payers an estimated $42 billion, so if this is what the Democrats and Obama consider to be “saving” GM, I would prefer that they stop saving any more industries.

We have to rein in union demands, both public and private, and that begins with voting their aiders and abettors out of office come November.

Don’t Buy the Lies

Mark Noonan80 Comments

Just in case any of you out there are getting skittish – a few words to the wise.  First off,  here’s a headline from September, 1980:

“Campaign Kickoff; Has Reagan Dropped the Ball?” – U.S. News and World Report, 9/9/1980

In what shapes up as a tight contest for the White House, even associates of Ronald Reagan conceded that the Republican nominee got off to a sputtering start in his attempt to replace President Jimmy Carter…

Reagan, of course, went on to win by 10.

Coming out of the convention what Obama wants – and thus the MSM will do – is play up every negative aspect for the GOP and every positive aspect for Obama (even if they have to make up things to fit both narratives).  Remember, 90% of the MSM is in the tank for Obama – always has been, always will be.  They will not tell the truth.  Now, readers here know that I’ve been confident of a Romney victory:  I remain confident.  Can Obama win?  Sure he can.  Lots of things can happen in an election – maybe the American people in a majority will want to continue Obama’s destructive rule.  So be it.

But I don’t think it will happen – if it does happen it just means that we’ve allowed socialism to go too far and it will have to get massively worse before a majority are fully awake to the necessary revolution.  Fortunately – if I may use that word – the re-election of Obama will make things rapidly get massively worse so we’ll have a good shot of winning in 2016 if not in 2012.  But I don’t believe a majority of my fellow Americans are that far gone – at least 40% of them are (and thus that is the ultimate floor for the Obama vote – when he shouldn’t get more than 10%, representing the people who really profit of our corrupt system) – but not a majority.  November 6th will either prove or disprove my view – but my view of where the majority is doesn’t depend on polls (hasn’t at all this election cycle) because the polls are simply over-sampling Democrats.  My view is based upon cold, hard, facts on the ground – and all of those (such as, for instance, Romney’s 22 campaign offices in Michigan – a State Obama won by more than 16 percentage points) show, at a minimum, that Romney is even with Obama, and I think he’s actually ahead.

UPDATE:  Hot Air reports on a new poll showing Obama up by 7 over Romney in New Jersey.  Yes, New Jersey.  The State Obama won by 15 points in 2008.

Does it stand to reason that Obama can lose that much support in heavily blue New Jersey and yet not lose it in purple Ohio and Florida?  I’m telling ya – any State that Obama won by less than 5 is gone, any State won by less than 10 is “tossup”.

What is Wrong With America? We Don’t Like “Dirty” Jobs

Mark Noonan192 Comments

This could be Part 1 of a 10,000 part series, but one of the problems I’m always yammering on about it is our failure to understand that prosperity only comes when you make, mine or grow things.  Keep in mind that I consider my own work pretty much useless as compared to what any plumber, auto mechanic, doctor or drywall installer does in the course of the day.  There is some point in what I do, but I don’t kid myself in to thinking that the world would be worse off, fundamentally, if my entire job title was scrubbed from the books.  The trouble we have is that people who are government bureaucrats, college gender studies professors, lawyers, think tank employees, etc believing they are doing something as important (or even more important) than those people who grow our food and make our clothes.

As we look for ways to fix our nation, one of the most important tasks will be to re-invigorate the concept that work – real work – is honorable.  That the man or woman getting dirty day by day to ensure we have the necessities is doing something 2nd in importantce only to raising children (the fact that we don’t consider raising children to be that important – as we can see in the liberal attitudes towards stay-at-home-mom Mrs. Romney – is an article for another day).  As it turns out, Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs fame from television has written a letter to Romney on this very subject.  To quote:

…I shared my theory that most of these “problems” were in fact symptoms of something more fundamental – a change in the way Americans viewed hard work and skilled labor. That’s the essence of what I’ve heard from the hundreds of men and women I’ve worked with on Dirty Jobs.Pig farmers, electricians, plumbers, bridge painters, jam makers, blacksmiths, brewers, coal miners, carpenters, crab fisherman, oil drillers…they all tell me the same thing over and over, again and again – our country has become emotionally disconnected from an essential part of our workforce.  We are no longer impressed with cheap electricity, paved roads, and indoor plumbing. We take our infrastructure for granted, and the people who build it.

Today, we can see the consequences of this disconnect in any number of areas, but none is more obvious than the growing skills gap. Even as unemployment remains sky high, a whole category of vital occupations has fallen out of favor, and companies struggle to find workers with the necessary skills. The causes seem clear. We have embraced a ridiculously narrow view of education. Any kind of training or study that does not come with a four-year degree is now deemed “alternative.” Many viable careers once aspired to are now seen as “vocational consolation prizes,” and many of the jobs this current administration has tried to “create” over the last four years are the same jobs that parents and teachers actively discourage kids from pursuing. (I always thought there something ill-fated about the promise of three million “shovel ready jobs” made to a society that no longer encourages people to pick up a shovel.)…

Precisely – now, what does Mr. Rowe want?  He continues…

…Certainly, we need more jobs, and you were clear about that in Tampa. But the Skills Gap proves that we need something else too.  We need people who see opportunity where opportunity exists. We need enthusiasm for careers that have been overlooked and underappreciated by society at large. We need to have a really big national conversation about what we value in the workforce, and if I can be of help to you in that regard, I am at your service – assuming of course, you find yourself in a new address early next year…

Rowe goes on to note that he wrote Obama the same sort of letter four years ago and never heard back…but it appears that Romney has now read the letter.  Romney is unlikely as a man to lead us on a revolution – but curiously enough he is more likely than Obama (for all the “fundamental transformation of America” that Obama is on about, all he’s really doing is consolidating something that Chesterton predicted more than 100 years ago – that the Ruling Class would call itself “socialist”, put us all in property-less economic straightjackets and, straight faced, tell us they care about the little guy).  I hope that Romney really ponders the letter and starts to talk about he issues raised.  Cutting taxes and spending; very important.  Reforming our regulatory system; vital.  But unless we become an America of working people doing the dirty job of building civilization brick by brick and girder by girder, then we’re ultimately doomed.

Prayer Works

Mark Noonan12 Comments

From Fox News:

Iranian Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, who was originally sentenced to death in his native country for his Christian faith, was acquitted of apostasy charges and released from custody.

Nadarkhani, 32, was imprisoned for three years and waiting execution for refusing to renounce his Christian faith. His charges were lowered to evangelizing to Muslims, which carried a three-year sentence. He was released with time served, according to the American Center for Law and Justice, a Washington-based watchdog group that had been campaigning for the pastor’s release.

“Today our sources in Iran reported that Pastor Youcef was acquitted of apostasy and released from prison. After languishing in prison for almost three years, he has been reunited with his family,” Jordan Sekulow, executive director of ACLJ said in a statement to FoxNews.com…

Iran executed 600 people in 2011 and had 143 children on death row – under Sharia law, girls as young as 9 and boys as young as 15 are considered fully liable for their actions.  Iran is also a place where you can be stoned to death.  To nutshell it, “draconian” doesn’t begin to describe Iran’s judicial system.  And here was a man who renounced the Muslim heresy and was sentenced to death for it…and who suddenly gets his “crime” changed from apostasy to evangelizing and is hit with “time served”.  I don’t believe in mercy existing in Iran’s judicial system – something entirely outside of the barbarian brains running that show caused this to happen.

Anyone can say what they want, but I believe the prayers of millions were heard.

Time To Spell This Out For The Liberals – Again

Cluster92 Comments

Since I have read many recent posts from our resident liberals who are obviously clueless, apologies for the redundancy, as to what caused the collapse in 2008, I thought it might be a good idea to revisit that. Many of the liberals are of course still in the blame Bush, blame republican mode and pointing to, and ridiculing the absence of Bush at the RNC convention as further proof of that. The first thing I want to point out is that Bush is a very private man which is in complete contrast to the media hound that Clinton is. Furthermore, when he told us that he was retired, he meant it, another concept liberals have trouble understanding so the only surprise to conservatives would be if in fact he did show up. Secondly, the GOP has a very young and deep bench, so I am sure Bush had no desire to take time away from them, again unlike Clinton but of course the DNC bench is pretty thin anyway.

Now onto the cause of the collapse, which of course was the housing bubble. It is estimated that 1 in 7 jobs are connected with housing industry, so it was no surprise that the collapse of that industry sent shocks wave across the entire country and adversely impacted nearly every other industry. Liberals want desperately to blame Bush and deregulation for the collapse, but unfortunately for them, Bush did not enact one piece of financial deregulation legislation during his eight year term. Not one. The last piece of financial deregulation was enacted in 1999 under President Bill Clinton. Furthermore, Bush started ringing the alarm bells on the GSE’s as early as 2001, and then again in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007, and finally in 2008. Now to be fair, those warnings were ignored by Republicans and Democrats alike in all of those years, but most recently were mocked by Rep. Barney Framk and Rep. Maxine Waters when she stated that “there is nothing wrong with Fannie and Freddie” in September of 2008:

Maxine Waters: Through nearly a dozen hearings, we were frankly trying to fix something that wasn’t broke.  Mr. Chairman, we do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac, and particularly at Fannie Mae, under the outstanding leadership of Franklin Raines.  

Now the question is, why were the GSE’s so over leveraged? Well it was because of a misguided Washington DC policy that said that everyone, including the poor should have a shot at the American Dream and at home ownership. So banks were encouraged, in fact even threatened with Fed support, if they didn’t lower their mortgage standards and start giving more loans to more home buyers. Now, knowing that much of this paper was worthless, the banks started bundling these securities and started selling them to anyone who would buy them in an effort to rid themselves of the toxic assets. And the game continued, fueled even more by rising home values and higher valued loans, in addition to HELOC’s to home owners who saw their equity grow rapidly.  When the house of cards fell, no pun intended, all that money evaporated and the economy is still suffering. Now there is no question that financial sector greed played a role, but the real culprit is the federal government, so the real question you need to ask your self is – is handing out millions of mortgages to people who have little means to pay them back, a liberal policy? Or a conservative policy? As Walter Cronkite would say, “And that’s the way it is”.

obAMATEUR’s Speech? BORING! Nothing New. Just Stale Recycled Ideas ….. Failed Ideas.

tiredoflibbs69 Comments

When you are in a tight race with your political opponent, you should not recycle a Jobs Act speech that failed to even persuade Democrats in Congress to pass your signature re-election initiative.

But that’s what the obAMATEUR did. After Bill Clinton filled the delegates with what they wanted to hear.  obAMATEUR took to the stage and reduced, reused, and recycled old states of the union speeches that have failed him for four years.

It was boring. It was unoriginal. And it was filled with more empty promises. Remember, he promised to cut the deficit in half  or he would be a one term pResident.  Clint Eastwood’s empty chair could have given a better speech than what obAMATEUR read from the teleprompter last night. And to think he wanted to give that in a 80,000 seat stadium!

This was a safe speech you give when you have a lead. This was not a speech you give in a tight race. Don’t believe me? Here are excerpts from his past States of the Union and Jobs Act speech. Lots of platitude, lots of rhetoric, little in detail, and a lot of worn out lines that have failed him before.

Listen to these lines. This speech was unoriginal. He stacked it with straw men and ignored his own two major initiatives from the first term: Obamacare and the Stimulus.

This was a failure and you know it was because he failed to even bring up his own major initiatives. On Obamacare, he mentioned parts of it, but never defended it or referenced the “Affordable Care Act” (Affordable? Rates have risen more dramatically than they would have without obAMACARE).

His only “accomplishment”, his gold ring (at least it was a couple of years ago) and he does not mention it?  He does not tout it?

As I have said before, he is fulfilling his own statement.  When you have no accomplishments, no record on which to run, there is nothing to do in a campaign but attack, obfuscate and LIE! (and please velma do not write AGAIN, “you would not acknowledge the President’s accomplishments” – LIST AND DEFEND THEM).

In short, the speech was PATHETIC.

The DNC – Unforced Errors Edition

Cluster10 Comments

Well, the convention is over and it was a spectacle to be sure. Along with buttons that read “Once you vote black, you never go back”, we were witness to the following dysfunction:

– Delegates booing the forced inclusion of God back into the platform along with recognition of Jerusalem, which not only enraged the Jews but the Palestinians as well.

– DWS lying through her teeth which did not please Israel

– Health Sec. Kathleen Sebelius stating that prior to Obamacare, being a woman was a pre existing condition and that motherhood was a liability. I am sure that warms the hearts of many great mothers out there.

– Sandra Fluke stating that prior to forcing religious institutions to pay for abortifacients, women were lost in the wilderness of an oppressive society.

– Gov. Jennifer Granholm auditioning for Glee

– Joe Biden forgetting to speak in the past tense with respect to his father.

– And Mr. Obama hitting the replay button on his 2008 nomination speech absent the Greek columns and reverberation.

The convention truly did have all the elements of an NBC mini series complete with the maniacal red headed step sister, the crazy uncle, the drunk aunt, and the arrogant cousin, which was all set up by the MSNBC crew who began the morning celebrating alcohol from a bar. They really have coined a new definition for the term political “party”.