Blogs For Victory

This article from the Wall Street Journal details some of the insane, dangerous actions taken by US attorneys who were claiming to represent enemy combatants at Gitmo:

On the evening of Jan. 26, 2006, military guards at Guantanamo Bay made an alarming discovery during a routine cell check. Lying on the bed of a Saudi detainee was an 18-page color brochure. The cover consisted of the now famous photograph of newly-arrived detainees dressed in orange jumpsuits—masked, bound and kneeling on the ground at Camp X-Ray—just four months after 9/11. Written entirely in Arabic, it also included pictures of what appeared to be detainee operations in Iraq. Major General Jay W. Hood, then the commander of Joint Task Force-Guantanamo, concurred with the guards that this represented a serious breach of security.

Maj. Gen. Hood asked his Islamic cultural adviser to translate. The cover read: “Cruel. Inhuman. Degrades Us All: Stop Torture and Ill-Treatment in the ‘War on Terror.'” It was published by Amnesty International in the United Kingdom and portrayed America and its allies as waging a campaign of torture against Muslims around the globe.

“One thread that runs through many of the testimonies from prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq, and from Guantanamo,” the brochure read, “is that of anti-Arab, anti-Islamic, and other racist abuse.”…

…Maj. Gen. Hood’s immediate concern about the magazine’s “propaganda and misinformation” was the strong potential that it would incite detainees to act out against U.S. personnel in his facility. The Islamic cultural adviser agreed, telling Maj. Gen. Hood that “the tone of the magazine was highly inflammatory” and “would cause a negative reaction, especially amongst the more hard-core terrorist factions within the camp.”

This Amnesty International slander piece was sent to Gitmo by lawyers working for Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, a firm which was claiming to represent Gitmo detainees. Here’s the nutshell of it: these attorneys sent a document in to Gitmo which could incite acts of violence which would endanger both prisoners and guards as well as provide a blueprint for how to claim abuse where none existed. In order to make some sort of stupid, anti-American point, these lawyers endangered lives.

And now that some of these attorneys are working for the Obama Administration, there are claims that such actions are in the finest traditions of American legal practice! Dimwits who play with human blood are being congratulated for their “courage” in defending “unpopular” clients…as if their clients were actually unpopular in the social circles the attorneys lived and worked in.

This is just insane. The men in Gitmo are dedicated killers – merciless men who will kill anyone, anywhere, if they think it advances their sick cause, These aren’t people who need lawyers – they need psychiatrists. This is akin to trying to defend Charles Manson – except, worse, because Manson doesn’t have anyone on the outside to commit hideous acts in his name.

Its time we started looking at the world as it is, not through the eyes of ivory-tower, ignorant liberals. There are some people who have put themselves outside the protections of the law – they are called terrorists. When we capture them, they are to count their lucky stars if we don’t kill them – they are not to get attorneys to try and twist American law in to knots for the benefits of the enemies of all that is decent in the world.

Liberals brought us rampant drug use and global warming – now these two hallmarks of liberal progress are on a collision course:

Cocaine users were last night accused of helping to make global warming worse.

MPs on the home affairs select committee said the drug was devastating Colombian rainforests because trees are knocked down to grow coca plants.

Group chairman Keith Vaz said: “We were horrified to learn for every few lines of cocaine snorted in a London club, four square metres of rainforest is destroyed.”

Who knew that personal irresponsibility could cause problems? Some day liberals might even figure that extra-marital sex can be a tricky business, too. A whole bunch of liberalism gets called in to question here.

Unless, of course, liberals want to drop the whole global warming thing?

Ed Morrisey links to a new Ramirez cartoon sure to cause a lot of liberal heart ache.

But its just the truth.

The story:

… in his brief appearances in the 336-page report, Geithner’s main concern seems to be with preventing a panic over the diseased state of Lehman. Geithner not only acknowledges his efforts at concealment, but seems to believe they were the right thing to do:

In addition to the losses Lehman would incur by selling “sticky” assets at firesale prices, deleveraging also raised the additional problems of market perception and valuation.3187 As Secretary Timothy Geithner explained to the Examiner, selling “sticky” assets at discounts could hurt Lehman by revealing to the market that Lehman “had a lot of air in [its] marks” and thereby further draining confidence in the valuation of the assets that remained on Lehman’s balance sheet.3188

The first sentence is drawn from a November interview between Geithner and Valukas, the second from “Reducing Systemic Risk In A Dynamic Financial System,” a speech Geithner delivered in June 2008. To say dressing up Lehman’s bleeding sores was wrong, you need to acknowledge that a central bank should not engage in the suppression of information, and I’m pretty sure we lost that argument a long time ago.

Smith suspects (not without reason) that this mission to regulate the market’s feelings toward Lehman led Geithner to connive at what certainly looks to have been a fraud: the erroneous counting of “501 Repos” — assets Lehman sold with an agreement to repurchase — as straightforward sales. That is, the outside world thought these toxic assets were gone from Lehman’s books, when in fact they were merely festering. Smith has some interesting words about whether, and why, Lehman counterparties went along with this charade. (Likeliest answer: They were all betting on the come like the rest of America.) Geithner, typically, says he would have caught the problem if only we’d given him more power…

Enough to send Geithner to jail? No. Enough to warrant intense further investigation? Yes. Sufficient cause for Obama to fire him. Certainly. Will Geithner get fired?

Are you kidding? He was appointed after it was known he was a tax cheat. In a Chicago Administration, what Geithner did is just par for the course – he was protecting the big money men from their own, stupid mistakes. If he hadn’t protected them, they wouldn’t have any money, you see? If these banksters were now poor, they couldn’t donate to the Democrat party, fund various leftist causes and, of course, provide sinecures for retired Treasury Secretaries in the by and by. Asking Obama to get rid of Geithner is to ask him to go against business as usual…it’d be to ask him to be an agent of real change we could really believe in.

Ain’t gonna happen – unless Geithner becomes a direct, political liability for the mid-terms. Absent a risk to Democrat political power, there’s no chance he’ll be fired.

UNLV loses, but still looks to have a spot in March Madness.

The government monster just grows and grows – thanks to unionized government employees and politicians who can’t think of anything but spending.

In West Hollywood, only leftist women matter.

Texas schools, in a radical departure from accepted practice, might try to teach a bit of truth about American history. Liberals are furious. (H/T: Black and Right).

Michael Yon talks about the sheer difficulty in getting supplies to our forces in Afghanistan. Don’t forget to hit Yon’s tip jar – he’s entirely reader supported and one of the few we can rely upon for honest reporting about the war.

Anti-Defamation League is “shocked and stunned” at Obama’s actions against Israel. I’m “shocked and stunned” that the ADL is “shocked and stunned”. The guy attended a pro-PLO church for 20 years – you expected something different? That Emanuel, all by himself, would keep Obama’s Administration on an even keel?

The other day when I had that flat tire and all those people kindly offered to help me out? It was great and I’m touched by it, still…but, ya know, it could have been that my hair is nearly all white and I have veteran plates on my car…which means that I’m now the old guy that young guys offer to help…which is sort of a bummer, ya know?

If you live within a three hour’s drive of Washington, it is your duty – as a patriot – to get there on March 16th. If you’re one of our rich, capitalist exploiters of the masses/rapists of the environment, then you haven no excuse no matter where you are – fire up the private jet and get in there…and take a selection of bitter gun and Bible-clingers with you.

Take the day off from work, if you have to. The more people there, the better. As Dan Riehl puts it, “be heard or be herded”.

This is the People’s Surge against ObamaCare – and against the attempted leftist take over of America. Here is where we stop them cold – November is when we start to roll them back.

The news:

…Revised data from the Texas Workforce Commission now show that the Austin metro area was losing jobs from the very beginning of 2009, and that the job losses were deeper than experts thought.

The revised data also show that Texas as a whole had a tougher job market last year than thought. The state lost 354,000 jobs in 2009, which is 78,000 more than the 276,000 previously estimated, according to the updated data…

…The California Employment Development Department on March 1 reported the state had lost 292,000 more jobs in 2009 than officials had thought; the new estimate is 871,000 jobs cut, compared with the earlier estimate of 579,000. Oregon reported losing 28,000 more jobs in 2009 than previously estimated.

Why the difference? Because when you get a number in, say, March of 2010 for February, its an estimate. A bunch of data is collected but its not really hard data – the hard data is the actual tax rolls. If a business had to send tax money in to the government for an employee, then we know there was certainly an employee working. The new numbers are based upon comparing those tax-roll numbers with previous tax-roll numbers.

The happy-talk numbers we’re getting now on employment and retail sales are, just like the initial employment numbers of 2009, a guess. A guess with some validity to it, but still just a guess. It’ll be months before we know the full story. But we can assume that whatever numbers are being given to us now will be revised downwards as time goes on – so the supposedly rosy picture of March, 2010 will become a much cloudier figure in, say, June. Keep that in mind as you hear economics stories.

My contention is that the private, productive economy continues to shrink. I base this upon the fact that employment in things like construction continues to decline while sale tax revenues are still going down rapidly. If we were on the verge of a recovery, we’d see at least stability or only minor drops in those two things. We’re not – not yet, and thus my assertion of a contracting economy.

Its not a matter of if we’ll have a double-dip recession, but how long the government and the bankers can mask its existence. The banks, their books still filled with worthless assets, simply cannot afford another down turn – many of them would simply go out of business. The Federal Reserve and the Treasury, naturally, don’t want another crash – especially at Treasury where the primary goal is to get some sort of good economy in the public mind by 2012.

The entities which pull the financial strings will do everything they can to keep the fiscal ball in the air. They’ll print, they’ll borrow, they’ll use financial hocus-pocus. Their hope is that some how, some way the economy will genuinely recover, thus allowing them to cover the bad assets on the books. How long will they be able to keep it up? Beats all heck out of me – but the longer they hold it off, the worse it will be.

HAT TIP: Mish’s

Seems they won’t really have that new ObamaCare bill up for 72 hours before a vote:

House Democrats appear to be softening their pledge to allow the public 72 hours to review the health care reform package online before a House vote. “We will certainly give as much notice as possible, but I’m not going to say that 72 hours is going to be the litmus test,” said Majority Leader Steny Hoyer on Friday.

“The House bill or Senate bill, as proposed, has been online for some two-and-a-half months, otherwise known about 75 days,” Hoyer added, referring to the November and December dates each chamber passed its version of health care legislation.

But Democrats could vote as soon as next week on a series of changes to the health care package – called a reconciliation bill – and the number two House Republican criticized Hoyer directly on House floor.

“I’m a little bit taken aback that now that 72-hour rule has been completely cast aside, since nobody in the House has seen what’s in the reconciliation bill,” said Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Virginia.

Its because they don’t know what legislative bribes they’ll need to get it passed and it might end up being that the last bribe or two comes in less than 72 hours before a vote. Plus, if you really had it up there for three days people would have a chance to read it and react to its provisions – and Democrats are not about to let public concerns get in the way of passing a bill.

But it is also just one more lie – one more broken promise. One more clear indicator that they don’t care about the people of the United States.

Interesting and must-read article about the clash between Islam and Christianity – in Africa, where Christianity surges towards a majority of the population:

Philip Jenkins, a professor of history and religious studies at Pennsylvania State University says the remarkable thing about the recent clashes between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria is that they are not remarkable. In a process largely unnoticed in the West, billions of people in Asia and Africa have swapped out their indigenous faiths for either Christianity or Islam. And to an even greater astonishment of Western intellectuals most have chosen Christianity. Now the equalization of numbers has caused a fault line to appear through the Third World at about the tenth degree of latitude where the two aggregations face each other “at daggers drawn”…

…With the numbers between Christians and Muslims equalizing in the region of the 10th degree of latitude, many places formerly dominated by Islam are now doubtful ground. It’s upsetting the equilibrium…

This being something I’ve been aware of for something like a decade now – perhaps longer. Probably because I don’t have a bias against Christianity, I was able notice that while Christianity has largely died out in Europe, it is surging in Africa and Asia – and undergoing a remarkable revival in South and central America (the United States, itself, is a bit of a special case – Christianity has largely died out among the elite, but not among the majority). Of course, as the linked article notes, Islam has grown as well. But not nearly as much as Christianity. Thus in places where there has never really been sectarian violence, we’re seeing it more and more often (and in spite of what might be said, it all stems from Islamist militancy).

The battles of life – the real ones, which people will actually sacrifice for – are all moral battles. Fights between right and wrong. The world is choosing up sides and Islam, losing the battle, is lashing out. Lashing out at us, of course – but also lashing out at Third World Christians. Not for anything the inoffensive Christians of Nigeria and elsewhere have done, but for what they are. Do you understand that, liberals?

There is intense hatred and fear in Islam – needless to say, its among the ruling elite and those who aspire to become the rulers, but the hatred and fear is there and it is the main motivator. They hate the west for its immorality and decadence – for its cowardice and sloth. They hate the United States for those reasons, but also for our Believers who will not back down. They hate Third World Christianity because it beckons their own people – it threatens to turn the hearts and minds of the “hewers of wood and drawers of water” of Islam…freed from Islam’s stagnation, such people would no longer tolerate their subordinate position.

It’ll be interesting to see how it all comes out. Right now, we have a parish priest here in Las Vegas who is from West Africa – hearing him recite the Stations of the Cross is wonderful, given his accent. Yes, we refer to him as “Father”, and the very whitest of American Christians meekly accept instruction from him. He is one of many such in America – Christians from the Third World come to restore Christian faith in the West; and expand Christian faith in the Third World.

The only thing certain is that the week kneed who refuse to believe in any religion will have just about nothing to say in what happens.

Profiled in the MSM as just a bunch of really sweet guys and gals with no particular axe to grind – they just want government to work. Well, not quite:

CNN put more focus on Stacey Hopkins…, so I will start out by dissecting her information trail on the net. CNN paints a very nice picture of her as essentially someone that thinks the nation’s ‘work is not being done’ because of a ‘stifling’ Congress (whatever that means) among other things. She doesn’t even sound overtly political – pleasant, nice, unassuming. Perhaps like a neighbor that you may have.

C-Gen and I did some digging however and you might be surprised with what we found (actually, if you read this blog regularly, you will not be surprised). As was the case with Annabel Park, a few simple google queries (that CNN didn’t seem able to do) provided some amazing information. I hit the treasure-trove of Obama Astroturfing from her blog…

If you click the link, you’ll see all the wonderful Obama stuff. So, we’ve got an Obama activist setting up a Coffee Party to just get things moving? No, we’ve got an astro-turf movement designed to confuse the issues and take a bit of sting out of the TEA Party. It won’t work – they would have gotten away with it ten years ago, but the New Media has exposed it right out the gate.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – the left never has a ground-up movement. They are incapable of doing other than following orders on the left…someone has to tell them to get together and then tell them what to talk about and what actions to take.

The phrase “community organizer” nutshells the entire leftist mindset – Obama had to go in and get the community organized because the people who would follow Obama’s ideology simply will not do it on their own. This sort of thing can be done hard or soft – hard in leftist dictatorships like Cuba, soft in the United States states and other free nations – but the fundamental thing is an unwillingness to think and act independently on the part of rank-and-file leftwingers.

Keep this in mind – any group claiming to be grass roots which is not of the right simply will be astro-turf. It can’t be anything but – if it really comes from the people, it will be libertarian or conservative.