Elena Kagan Nomination Approved by Senate Judiciary Committee

An interesting story from http://www.lifesitenews.com/ about Kagan passing the judiciary committee with some RINO support. This follows this previous post on reasons to filibuster the Kagan nomination. This follows this previous post about the Elena Kagan nomination. For more interesting stories like this click here to follow this blog.

Elena Kagan Nomination Approved by Senate Judiciary Committee

By Peter J. Smith
WASHINGTON, D.C., July 20, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee has approved the nomination of Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court by a vote of 13-6, after two hours of further debate. The full Senate will now have to take up the task of confirming Kagan, President Obama’s choice to succeed the retiring Associate Justice John Paul Stevens.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) broke ranks with fellow Republicans on the committee to cast the only GOP vote in favor of Kagan. Graham had sent signals that he would support Kagan, despite her leftist ideological leanings. Committee Democrats were unanimous in their support.
"What's in Elena Kagan's heart is that of a good person who adopts a philosophy I disagree with," Graham said. However, he said that Kagan showed him she was “qualified” to fill the vacancy on the court.
"She will serve this nation honorably, and it would not have been someone I would have chosen, but the person who did choose, President Obama, I think chose wisely," said Graham.
However, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) disagreed, and said to his colleagues that Kagan’s judicial philosophy was a serious issue, because it would inform how she interprets and respects the laws and Constitution of the United States.
“She has deeply held liberal, progressive views," said Sessions, explaining that Kagan’s record revealed an individual who would not be objective, “but someone who would use the opportunity to redefine words to advance an agenda that's not in the court's role to advance."
Kagan’s nomination has been opposed by pro-life advocates, who have expressed serious concern about revelations that Kagan is believed to have tampered with medical testimony in 1997 from the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists (ACOG) on partial-birth abortion.
The latest voice urging senators to oppose Kagan on that basis came yesterday from C. Everett Koop, President Ronald Reagan’s surgeon general, who blasted Kagan in an open letter to senators and the American people for her willingness “to replace a medical statement with a political statement that was not supported by any existing medical data.”
Koop was referring to Kagan’s role in changing ACOG's original statement, which declared that the group "could identify no circumstances under which this procedure ... would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman.” Kagan in a memo wrote that ACOG’s original testimony “would be a disaster” and so revised the statement to say that partial-birth abortion "may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman.”
Kagan, writing to Bruce Reed, Clinton's Chief Domestic Policy Advisor, later said that the statement "turned out a ton better than expected" – in hindsight, Kagan’s revision of ACOG’s testimony was key in swaying the opinion of federal courts, delaying the federal partial-birth abortion ban for over a decade.
“Medical science should not have been twisted in 1997 for political or legislative gains,” said Koop. He stated that neither back in 1997 nor today is there any medical evidence to suggest that partial birth abortion is ever medically necessary. He added that the procedure in fact, has risks of its own and could injure a woman.
“This is unethical, and it is disgraceful, especially for one who would be tasked with being a measured and fair-minded judge,” wrote Koop, urging the Senate to vote no because of Kagan’s “politization of medical science.”
Charmaine Yoest, President of Americans United for Life, also urged the Senate to examine AUL Action’s 54-page report detailing the evidence showing Kagan’s role not only in changing the ACOG statement, but also in trying to manipulate the American Medical Association into changing its statement denying any medical necessity for partial birth abortion.
“I strongly encourage Senators to closely examine our report and to formally investigate her role in the partial-birth abortion debate before bringing this nomination to a floor vote,” said Yoest. “Based on these concerns, I urge the full Senate to roundly reject her nomination."
So far just 16 GOP senators have committed “no” votes against Kagan. Twenty-five Democrats have said they will vote “yes” to confirm her.
With Democrats controlling the Senate 59-41, a filibuster is very unlikely, given that a few Republicans have indicated they will support her confirmation.

A full vote on the floor of the Senate is expected within the next few days.

See related USA Today opinion article on Elena Kagan by Sen. Jeff Sessions here.

See related coverage by LifeSiteNews.com: Kagan Partial-Birth Abortion Role 'Seriously Compromised' Federal Court Testimony: Report http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jul/10071607.html
Kagan Sought to Twist another Medical Statement on Partial-Birth Abortion: AUL http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jul/10071409.html
Kagan Proves ‘The Artful Dodger’ on Abortion, Same Sex ‘Marriage’ http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jun/10063008.html
Docs Reveal Kagan Undermined Key Testimony on Partial-Birth Abortion http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jun/10063007.html
Memos Show Kagan’s Hand in Clinton-Era Abortion, Assisted Suicide Policy Decisions http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jun/10060707.html

"It doesn’t matter what this sign says, you’ll call it racism anyway."

A timely post from www.VDare.com about the TEA Party. This follows this post analyzing so called Nazis in Arizona. This follows this post about the November 2010 elections and this post about the MURDER of ROBERT KRENTZ, who the protestors and boycotters won't give a solution for, but will call Americans racist for trying to prevent another MURDER, and this post which shows that there are 30,000 openly illegal immigrants in the border town of El Paso. For more interesting stories like this click here to follow this blog.


The Mark Williams Fiasco—A Silly Surrender By Tea Party "Leadership"
By A.W. Morgan
"It doesn’t matter what this sign says, you’ll call it racism anyway."

That’s a popular sign at Tea Party rallies. But it’s a firm sentiment among those who understand The National Question and have experienced its truth when discussing, no matter how innocently, any issue involving race or ethnicity.
If you’re white, and refuse to accept President Barack Hussein Obama’s rhetorical usurpation of your country, you’re a racist. If you’re white, and you refuse to accept Mexican immigration’s destruction of your neighborhood, you’re a racist. If you’re white, you oppose the Islamification of America because you believe the United States is at least historically a nation built upon the foundation of Christianity, you are, again, a racist.
So the "Conservative" Establishment which ought to oppose this, has long learned to shut up and keep to their talking points about "fiscal responsibility," "constitutionally limited government" and "free markets." Now the national Tea Party movement has followed suit. Those slogans, along with a fierce-looking Paul Revere in silhouette, emblazon the internet banderole of the National Tea Party Federation—which has recently, amid much publicity, banished talk show host Mark Williams , leader of the based Tea Party Express, to the outer darkness.
Williams, you see, dared ridicule the NAACP—that group of black professional shakedown artists who see a racist under every bed.
That Mark Williams has been purged suggests that he understands what is stake in this country. It isn’t just about free enterprise and our constitutional freedoms, or whether Ben Stein gets a great reception at a college campus. In short, Williams gets it.
After the NAACP passed its now infamous resolution calling on the Tea Party to expel its racist members, Williams unbosomed himself of an piece of satire poking fun at "colored people" It was a letter to the Great Emancipator, Father Abraham himself.
"Dear Mr. Lincoln:

"We Coloreds have taken a vote and decided that we don't cotton to that whole emancipation thing. …

"In fact we held a big meeting and took a vote in Kansas City this week. We voted to condemn a political revival of that old abolitionist spirit called the ‘tea party movement.’

"The tea party position to ‘end the bailouts’ for example is just silly. Bailouts are just big money welfare and isn’t that what we want all Coloreds to strive for? What kind of racist would want to end big money welfare? …

"And the ridiculous idea of ‘reduce[ing] the size and intrusiveness of government.’ What kind of massa would ever not want to control my life? As Coloreds we must have somebody care for us otherwise we would be on our own, have to think for ourselves and make decisions!

"The racist tea parties also demand that the government ‘stop the out of control spending.’ Again, they directly target coloreds. That means we Coloreds would have to compete for jobs like everybody else and that is just not right.

"Perhaps the most racist point of all in the tea parties is their demand that government ‘stop raising our taxes.’ That is outrageous! How will we coloreds ever get a wide screen TV in every room if non-coloreds get to keep what they earn? Totally racist! "
And so went the satirical letter from "Precious Ben Jealous, Tom’s Nephew" and "NAACP Head Colored Person."
Juvenile, of course—although the idea that welfare has become a form of slavery has long been a standard conceit among house-broken conservatives like Jack Kemp. But a firing offense? Do we believe in free speech or what?
Nevertheless, the National Tea Party Federation reacted as quickly as the colonial American pictured on its home page: "The Racists Are Coming! The Racists Are Coming!" It demanded that the Tea Party Express "publicly rebuke" Williams. Said rebuke must "take the following form"—or else:
"1. Mark Williams must be officially removed from the ranks of the Tea Party Express.

"2. Notice of Mark Williams' removal must be placed prominently on the official Tea Party Express website.

3. Tea Party Express must issue a press release articulating points 1 and 2 above."
The Tea Party Express, greatly to its credit, refused—whereupon the Federation sent expelled Williams and his organization.
Williams has published something of an apology at his Web site, but for all intents and purposes, he stuck to his guns. Good for him.
Of course, Williams uttered the usual platitudes in his apology. Conceding that he went too far, he wrote, "I reiterate what I and every tea partier have said repeatedly: We denounce racists of any color and all those who seek to divide the American People along any lines."
(In a late-breaking development, the NAACP’s Jealous may be reaching out to Williams in the wake of Obama Administration official Shirley Sherrod’s forced resignation after the revelation of her speech to an NAACP group apparently gloating about denying aid to a white farmer).
Despite the obligatory cant, Williams knows very well who "seek[s] to divide the American People", and it isn’t the whites who opposes or in many cases voted for the son of an alcoholic Kenyan bigamist and radical white mother as president of the United States.
Indeed, when necessary, Williams jettisons the tea party line that touts the virtues of a race-blind society governed by men (and women, of course), who understand the rule of law, free markets, limited government, and the Constitution et etc.
That might be one reason he denounced the Ground Zero mosque. The Cordoba Initiative’s principal backer is an imam who supported the unsuccessful and Hamas-backed Gaza flotilla and seeks to impose Sharia law in the United States. He wants to build The Cordoba House at the site of the now missing World Trade Center towers, which are missing precisely because that imam’s co-religionists (even if incensed by America’s misguided imperial policies in the Middle East) knocked them down with two passenger jets on Sept. 11, 2001.
The Cordoba Initiative, Williams wrote at his blog, "would consist of a Mosque for the worship of the terrorists’ monkey-god".
For good measure, Williams rightly described Islam as a "7th-century death cult coughed up by psychotic pedophile," referring to Mohammed's marriage to 6-year-old Aisha.
Naturally, the spokesman for Islam demanded an apology, and they got one — sort of: "I was wrong and that was offensive. I owe an apology to millions of Hindus who worship Lord Hanuman, an actual Monkey God."
Indeed. As conservative and former Capitol Hill staffer Jim Jatras observed in an article in 1989, Muslims actually worship "the former chief deity of the polytheistic Arab pantheon — a variation on the moon god common throughout the ancient Middle East, among the Babylonians known as Sin (the Sinai peninsula is probably named after him) and among the Sumerians as Nanna — stripped of his consorts and offspring. … In short, Islam is a self-evident outgrowth not of the Old and New Covenants but of the darkness of heathen Araby.")
That article sent Muslims into a rage. They demanded, unsuccessfully, Jatras’ ouster as a key Republican staffer. (He's now in the private sector.) To paraphrase H.L. Mencken, it isn’t lies that hurt; it’s the truth.
Williams may have misspoken about the Muslim deity. But he was right to puncture the myth, widely accepted by gullible dim bulbs including some tea party Americans no doubt, that Islam is merely an amalgam of Judaism and Christianity. That said, Williams was likely as incensed about this as Americans would have been in 1946 if the government had allowed the Japanese to build a shrine at Pearl Harbor.
Anyhow, Williams’ "expulsion" as a leader within the Federation—if one can be expelled from a movement that has no real membership list or list of officers, shows just what is at stake in the debate over President Obama’s policies and what they mean for the future of this country.
Conservatives and even liberals, including Geraldine Ferraro, have rightly complained that any criticism of Obama brings on the accusation of "racism". The inevitable result of Williams’ ouster is that Obama’s supporters will now utter that charge even more frequently.
Undoubtedly, the tea party movement contains a contingent of such people, just as Obama’s movement contains Communists, murderers and child molesters. Yet most Tea Partiers clearly aren’t "racists," at least in the sense the Southern Poverty Law Center and NAACP use that hackneyed term. Anyway, the question is how long it will be before any criticism of Obama or any other black person is simply not allowed.
Williams understands this. And he clearly knows that the United States of America is more than an "idea"—that the liberties Americans enjoy depend more upon what kind people live here and govern, pace the National Tea Party Federation, than upon merely defending abstract libertarian ideological tenets traveling under the names of "fiscal responsibility", "constitutionally limited government" and "free markets".
Indeed, because these ideas, particularly the latter two — and let’s include the rule of and respect for the law — are rooted in the Christian conception of human nature and political liberty, they depend upon citizens imbued and educated in a Christian cultural milieu.
Asian, African and Mexican or Central American (Aztec or Mesoamerican) immigrants don’t understand them because they come from cultures in which raw power, corruption and superstition control their lives.
That zoning ordinance limits a single-family dwelling to one family, meaning parents and children? Ignore it. Pack in the in-laws and cousins, too!
The law respects a woman’s place in society. Ignore it. If she disobeys, beat her to a pulp or chop off her head.
The law forbids drinking and driving? Bah. Macho men swizzle a 12-pack and put the pedal to the metal.
Williams gets all this—and so do many if not most tea-party Americans, despite brainwashing by the media and government schools.
Problem is, the tea-party leadership either don’t get it or don’t care to get it.
And as long they speak for "conservatives" and other real Americans, Obama and his janissaries have nothing to stop them from dispossessing those upon whom this country’s prosperity and political liberty ultimately depends: people who look like Mark Williams.
A.W. Morgan [Email him] is fully recovered from prolonged contact with the Beltway Right. He now lives in America.

Neo Nazis in Arizona?

A timely post from www.VDare.com analyzing so called Nazis in Arizona. This follows this post about the November 2010 elections and this post about the MURDER of ROBERT KRENTZ, who the protestors and boycotters won't give a solution for, but will call Americans racist for trying to prevent another MURDER, and this post which shows that there are 30,000 openly illegal immigrants in the border town of El Paso. For more interesting stories like this click here to follow this blog.


Brown Herring: J.T. Ready And His “Neo-Nazi” Border Patrol
By James Ryan
The Main Stream Media has found a new star: J.T. Ready. J.T. Ready and a handful of his buddies have launched a border patrol operation, one which should be unremarkable amongst the numerous other border patrol operations, most of which are larger, more sophisticated, and more established.
What makes J.T. Ready different: he has also proclaimed himself a National Socialist and been photographed alongside a handful of costumed characters at a Nazi rally.
This makes him a perfect excuse for our political elite to continue its smear campaign of Arizona as a "Nazi state."
The Southern Poverty Law Center, along with its media allies, is hyping this small operation by a handful of obscure individuals to smear all critics of open-borders immigration policy as Nazis.
This is in line the standard modus operandi of the SPLC:
Step one: find an obscure individual or group which is openly racist, makes intentionally incendiary statements, and preferably dresses like a weirdo.
Step two: treat a fringe movement as a key force on the American Right.
Step three: make tenuous, hypothetical, or even entirely fictional connections between the obscure characters and mainstream figures and groups in the immigration control and conservative movements.
Step four: profit by fundraising on the dire warning that a Nazi takeover of America is imminent.
The Arizona = Nazism meme has quickly taken root throughout the entire Main Stream Media.
For example, Radio Bilingüe frantically covers J.T. Ready’s border patrol group and shrieks "the Arizona law that makes it a crime to be in the state without documents, as well as the rhetoric that promotes the idea that immigrants are coming to the United States to commit crimes, has emboldened the [Nazi] groups."[Arizona Law Encourages Hate Groups, July 4, 2010]
Rodolfo F. Acuña in the San Fernando Valley Sun [Email him] also casually links Arizona’s law to the Third Reich:
"The fact that [Arizona Governor Jan] Brewer equates an undocumented immigrant to organized criminals and members of the violent drug cartels is disturbing. With this type of misinformation by a public official, it is no wonder that over 70 percent of Americans support the repression of undocumented immigrants believing that laws similar to those of Arizona will keep them safe.
“History informs us that the Third Reich came to power as a consequence of half-truths and blatant lies that gradually made most Germans passively receptive to Nazi racial theories. The parallels between Germany in the 1920s and Arizona in 2010 are striking. Then and now intentional lies have spread fear and hatred."
It’s obvious, isn’t it? Hitler’s master plan, after all, was to restrict illegal immigration.
Acuña goes on to describe the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) as a "white supremacist group". Where would he get such an idea? Why, from the SPLC, which lists FAIR on its "hate map" alongside a wide variety of groups ranging from Ku Klux Klan groups to the "anti-gay" Traditional Values Coalition (and even VDARE.COM!)
Acuña continues:
"Enter the almost all white Tea Party movement. They have given a shot of adrenaline to the right and ironically respectability to the nativist movement through the creation of mass hysteria. A mob without a center, they are easily manipulated by the zealots who have been stoking these fires for four decades. Minutemen, vigilantes, Tea Partiers all stem from the same root."
Acuña then makes more Hitler comparisons, and declares that "Undocumented workers are not drug dealers, criminals or a drag on society. La Raza Studies are not about hate." [The Big Lie - The Rise of the Extreme Right, July 7, 2010. Links added]
One wonders why Acuña considers a blandly nonracial immigration reform group such as FAIR to be a "white supremacist group", but considers an openly racial group such as La Raza (the race) to be "not about hate."
Explicit race consciousness is acceptable and praiseworthy for non-whites. But even implicit race consciousness is not permitted for whites.
Even Iran's PressTV gets into the act—with an article expressing the exact same views as the American MSM! It talks about the "neo-Nazi border patrol", quotes the SPLC, and tries to link the "neo-Nazis" to mainstream immigration control groups:
"Ready's militia is an outgrowth of border watch groups that have been part of the immigration debate in Arizona…the legislation, which takes effect July 29, is deemed racist as it would allow law enforcement officers to single out individuals by the color of their skin." [Neo-Nazis take on immigrants in AZ, Presstv.ir, July 18, 2010]
Contrary to the claims of this official Iranian media organ, and its odd bedfellows in the American MSM, Arizona’s SB 1070 does no such thing. In fact, the law explicitly mandates that "prosecutors would not investigate complaints based on race, color or national origin.
The Associated Press article uses language nearly identical to that used by Ahmadinejad's media organ.
"Ready is a reflection of the anger over illegal immigration in Arizona. Gov. Jan Brewer signed a controversial new immigration law in April.
The militia is an outgrowth of border watch groups that have been part of the immigration debate in Arizona. Patrols in the Arizona desert by Minutemen organizations brought national attention to illegal immigration in 2004 and 2005. Such groups continue to operate in Arizona, and law enforcement officials generally don't take issue with them as long as they don't take matters into their own hands."[Man with neo-Nazi ties leading patrols in AZ, By Michelle Price, July 17, 2010]
The AP article goes on to list several larger groups that patrol the border, such as the Patriot's Coalition which has over 500 members and Glenn Spencer's American Patrol, which operates three spotter airplanes.
So why is the group with over 500 members not being depicted all over the media as an example of citizen border patrol groups? Why not the group that operates three airplanes?
Why is this one group consisting of less than a half dozen members put front and center?
Because the MSM is undertaking a concerted effort to paint all supporters of Arizona's 1070 law, and immigration patriots in general, as "Nazis."
The AP article was reposted on the Salon.com website under the headline "Neo-Nazi Minuteman hunts Arizona immigrants"—despite the fact that J.T. Ready and his group are not in any of the Minuteman groups, are not endorsed by them, and do not have any relationship with them whatsoever.
Similarly, liberal activist Amy McMullen used the guilt by association tactic in a Tucson Sentinel column entitled Arizona’s SB 1070 isn’t racist... is it?
"[P]erhaps a look at the people who wrote and sponsored SB 1070 as well as those who enforce it will provide some clues of its racial motivations.
“Nobody wants to be labeled a racist, unless of course they are J.T. Ready, the self-proclaimed hater of all non-white people, who also happens to be a huge supporter of SB 1070."
There is actually no evidence whatsoever that J. T. Ready had anything to do with the writing or enactment of SB 1070. Nor does McMullen provide any evidence that this obscure individual had anything to do with the writing or passage of the bill, other than noting that FAIR "is identified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center." Her argument is simply: J.T. Ready is a Nazi and is opposed to immigration; therefore anyone who opposes open borders must be a Nazi as well. The SPLC identifies J.T. Ready as a Nazi and lumps FAIR in with him, so they must all be part of a vast, racist, conspiracy.
McMullen labels Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio as "the person who some view as the Heinrich Himmler of Arizona law enforcement." She gives no details of who exactly says this, so presumably it must be a source with even less credibility than the SPLC. She finally declares that supporters of SB 1070 "will be on the side of history occupied by the likes of J.T. Ready or the KKK."
In fact, even the true nature of this "neo-Nazi border patrol" is in doubt.
A typical article in the New York Daily News warns of an "armed militia to patrol the border and kill or capture immigrants." [Neo-Nazi groups take up arms in Arizona to combat illegal immigration, by Joe Tacopino, July 18th 2010] But the "action reports" from the purported "neo-Nazi death squad" seem less sinister.
For example, this recent blog post by J.T. Ready's friend Harry Hughes:
"Eventually, we came across an abandoned cattle watering area. Sitting under a water tank, were 11 suspected illegal aliens. They quickly gave themselves up and asked for water. We provided them with water and asked them if anyone needed medical attention.
“We notified the Pinal County Sheriff’s office and the Border Patrol. Being in a remote area, we expected an extend ETA for a response. During the wait, we must have handed out 30-40 20 oz. bottles of water. They drank it all." (Link and emphasis added)
The uproar over J.T. Ready is a red (or brown) herring. The authors of Arizona's SB 1070 have nothing to do with Nazism. The 61% of Americans who want a similar law in their own state are not Nazis—unless you seriously believe that 61% of Americans have converted to Nazism in the past few months.
This hysteria should be seen for what it is: just the latest manifestation of the ongoing campaign by the SPLC and their media allies to suppress honest debate on immigration policy.
What’s remarkable is not the rise of National Socialism in the American Southwest—but the unmatched capacity of the Treason Lobby to set the elite media agenda.

James Ryan (email him) is an intelligence analyst who lives and works in the Washington, D.C. metro area.

Barack Obama—After Two Rough Years, An Even Bigger Wake-Up Call Is Coming

A timely post from www.VDare.com about the November 2010 elections. This follows this post about getting the Senate to override the lawsuit against Arizona and this post about the MURDER of ROBERT KRENTZ, who the protestors and boycotters won't give a solution for, but will call Americans racist for trying to prevent another MURDER, and this post which shows that there are 30,000 openly illegal immigrants in the border town of El Paso. For more interesting stories like this click here to follow this blog.

Barack Obama—After Two Rough Years, An Even Bigger Wake-Up Call Is Coming
By Steve Sailer
President Barack Obama was marketed to America as the magic cure for its racial divisions. But in my book America’s Half-Blood Prince Barack Obama’s "Story Of Race And Inheritance", based on a close study of Obama’s own much-purchased, little-read autobiography Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, I argued that Obama was in fact fundamentally motivated by race and that some people, probably his credulous white supporters, were in for a big surprise.
This is exactly what has happened. Obama has proved racially divisive both for implicit and explicit reasons. Eighteen months into his Presidency, the races are farther apart in their views of him than when he came to office.
Here are Obama’s Gallup Poll approval ratings every week since his Inauguration:
Black support for the black President remains almost rock solid, standing at 89 percent through the week ending July 11, 2010—slightly higher than in his first week in office.
But Obama’s approval rating among whites is now only 38 percent—51 points below the black level. The white approval rating has fallen 25 points since January 2009.
It’s important to note that the white approval rating was as high as 60 percent as late as the week of May 10, 2009. The subsequent sharp fall-off is usually blamed on the economy.
But an alternative explanation is that white disenchantment with Obama appears to have set in during the warm weather months of 2009—about the time of Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court (May 26, 2009); the Supreme Court’s rebuke of Sotomayor’s ruling in the Ricci case (June 29, 2009); and the ludicrous damage-controlling “Beer Summit” featuring Professor Henry Louis Gates and an Obama-dissed Cambridge, MA police officer, James Crowley (July 22-30, 2009).
Since the end of summer 2009, Obama’s staffers, such as the cynical Chicagoan Rahm Emanuel, have worked diligently to keep their boss from alarming whites with obvious racial gaffes—as when he responded frankly to the Henry Louis Gates question at one of his rare press conferences. Obama’s rating among whites has continued to trickle downward, but at a less catastrophic rate.
On the other hand, his staff’s perceived need to prevent “Obama from being Obama” has likely contributed to Obama’s current guarded, depressive affect.
For a man proclaimed an inspirational political genius in 2008, he strikes many people in 2010 as a downer, a bit of a buzzkill.
And Obama’s allies continue to provoke racial squabbles. For example, the NAACP is trying to “concern troll” [=undermine] the Tea Party movement into dropping all that stuff about endless deficits and conduct purges of purported racists in its ranks. And the public is just waking up to the fact that Congresswoman Maxine Waters has larded the new financial reform bill with racial quotas.
Hispanics’ feelings toward Obama lie in between those of blacks and whites, as is so common in American racial patterns. The President’s Hispanic ratings have fallen roughly in parallel with white opinion, with the big drop starting a little later in 2009. This also follows a long tradition: Hispanic voters generally follow changes in white opinion, just more erratically, and stay significantly to the left of whites for perfectly understandable reasons of self-interest: they are much more enthusiastic about racial / ethnic preferences and tax-and-spend policies from which they hope to benefit at white expense.
Over the last decade, the Main Stream Media has carried countless credulous articles about the Hispanic vote. Most are based on self-serving talking points fed to journalists by so-called Hispanic leaders.
But there is a dirty little secret in all this: Hispanic voters seldom pay much attention to whatever the press proclaims to be their burning issues, such as Sotomayor or Arizona’s SB1070.
For example, Hispanic warmth toward Obama hit its peak (85 percent) a few weeks before he nominated Sonia Sotomayor on May 26, 2009. By August, he was down in the 60s with Hispanics.
One high school teacher told me that, throughout June 2009, he repeatedly brought up the Puerto Rican judge’s name to inspire his mostly Mexican-American classes. One youth responded that he’d heard she was Cuban. But the rest never had any idea (even an incorrect one) about who she was or why anybody would think they’d care about her.
Similarly, in the weeks before Obama went to war against the citizens of Arizona in late April 2010 over SB1070, his Hispanic approval rating had been in the 60s. Now, it’s at 55.
The fact is that Hispanics, on average, don’t pay all that much attention to the news. They tend to be younger, less literate, less interested in America, and less interested in public affairs in general.
The decline of the Los Angeles Times would be a sad reminder of this—it has long tried to compete with the New York Times for the title of the Most Serious Newspaper in the country, but its circulation area has become increasingly Hispanic—if the paper hadn’t been such an enthusiastic backer of the cause of its own destruction.
The conventional wisdom that says that the GOP must submit to the rising tide of Latinos. I have repeatedly argued that this is simply overblown. Despite their numbers, Hispanics are not the most formidable challenge any political party has ever confronted. They don’t have terribly charismatic leaders, they don’t have a determined and focused rank and file, and they don’t have much of a claim on the conscience of America. Their main political advantage so far has been that they’ve bored whites and blacks into inattention regarding illegal immigration.
In contrast to Hispanics, however, black opinion tends to swing (to the extent that this rather monolithic bloc swings at all) in the opposite direction to white opinion. For example, Ronald Reagan increased his share of the white vote from 56 percent in 1980 to 64 percent in 1984. But his share of the black vote dropped from 11 percent to 9 percent.
This tendency for Hispanics to follow broad white political trends (while remaining consistently to the left of whites) has shown up throughout the history of exit polling. Journalists always label Hispanics a crucial "swing vote". But in fact they are more of a "flow vote" that fluctuates with the overall tide.
For example, the GOP candidates for the House did their best among Hispanics in Newt Gingrich’s big year of 1994, gaining 39 percent of the vote—which was also the same year they did their best among whites.
There may be an even dirtier secret reason for this behavior: Hispanics don’t particularly like blacks. In fact, nobody likes blacks as much as whites do. Everybody else around the world has certain prejudices against blacks—and they don’t feel terribly guilty about having them, either. Hispanics, for example, come from cultures in which people of 100 percent African descent are at the bottom of the social ladder, and everybody else tries to be perceived as whiter, or marry somebody whiter. Even a race warrior like President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela traded in his dark-skinned first wife for an Eastern European-looking blonde.
So the “Rainbow Coalition” may not be as formidable as its advocates imagine.
Nevertheless, the Obama Administration’s first two years make it even more unmistakable than ever that American politics are Balkanizing racially.
As I wrote in VDARE.com in 2002:
“… I am uncomfortable with the idea of the two major parties splitting into racial blocs.
“But there's a simple solution. If you don't want whites to act like a minority group—e.g. racially-conscious, bloc-voting, biased, prickly, led by racial racketeers constantly proclaiming their group's victimization—then the government should stop making whites a minority through mass immigration.”
Needless to say, the Bush Administration ignored my advice and pursued the opposite policy. And probably that is still the GOP Establishment’s instinct, given the rumors that it intends to respond to the surging immigration issue, not by supporting a moratorium, but by urging a guest worker program.
What does the rest of Obama’s term hold for his party—and America?
Recently, the pragmatic domestic policy influence on Obama of Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, a ferocious competitor dedicated to winning victories today, seems to be waning. It’s not that Emanuel wouldn’t mind putting millions of illegal immigrants on the path to voting Democratic, it’s just that he can’t see how to get away with it over the next few years.
Yet, the lawsuit against Arizona filed by Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder, a descendant of the mulatto elite of Barbados, represents the ascendancy of the Elect-a-New-People-to-Rule-the-Future side of Obama’s otherwise cautious personality.
A Time article of July 14 by Jay Newton-Small "Will Obama’s Immigration Focus Hurt Democrats?" reports:
"Back in 2007, when Rahm Emanuel was in charge of electing Democrats to the House, he famously marveled at how immigration reform had overtaken Social Security as ‘the third rail of American politics.’ … Instead, western Democrats—egged on by rather large swaths of their moderate white base—are growing increasingly nervous at the Administration's twin push on immigration …"
The article quotes a "senior Democratic aide" as saying "The White House’s infatuation with immigration reform is a lose-lose proposal for Democrats this election year."
I wonder if that "senior Democratic aide’s" initials are R.E.? Will we be seeing President Obama announcing that his Chief of Staff has decided to move on to spend more time with his family?
In part, the Obama-Holder strategy of attacking Arizona and pushing amnesty is based on old-fashioned Karl Rovian delusions about the Hispanic vote. Greg Sargent noted in the Washington Post:
"Obama's immigration speech was partly driven by serious White House concern about the impact of softening Latino support for the president in major swing states like Nevada, Colorado and Florida."
In other words, Obama realizes no more than George W. Bush did that he’s being lied to by self-interested Hispanic politicians and consultants about the size and motivations of the Hispanic vote. They are all prisoners of "the dominant interpretation of reality." The repeated failures of its predictions simply mean that its nostrums have not been tried hard enough yet.
Obama has lived almost his entire life in a bubble of entitlement and theory divorced from reality. My prediction: he will get an even bigger wake-up call than we’ve seen to date.

[Steve Sailer (email him) is movie critic for The American Conservative. His website www.iSteve.blogspot.com features his daily blog. His new book, AMERICA’S HALF-BLOOD PRINCE: BARACK OBAMA’S "STORY OF RACE AND INHERITANCE", is available here.]

Dutch government helping pay for Islamic supremacist mega-mosque at Ground Zero -- with Dutch taxpayer money

A very interesting post from www.jihadwatch.org about the Dutch government giving money to the Ground Zero mosque. This follows this post about a domestic link to al-Qaedaand this article about the recent news about the ban offshore drilling which would encourage American energy independence This is a key issue to prevent money from going to hostile countries such as Iran and Venezuela. For more posts like this click here.


Dutch government helping pay for Islamic supremacist mega-mosque at Ground Zero -- with Dutch taxpayer money
Yes, you read that right. And Wilders, only Wilders, is standing up to this breathtaking short-sighted idiocy: "'Netherlands Subsidising Mosque by Ground Zero,'" from NIS News, July 21 (thanks to Fjordman):
AMSTERDAM, 21/07/10 - The Party for Freedom (PVV) is demanding clarification by the Dutch government regarding reports that the Netherlands is co-financing the construction of a mosque a stone's throw away from Ground Zero in New York with 1 million dollars of Dutch taxpayers' money.
On the foreign ministry's website, it says that a subsidy of 1 million dollars has been awarded to the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA). This organisation is, in partnership with the Islamic organisation Cordoba Initiative, responsible for the Islamic centre including a mosque, costing 100 million dollars, to be built near Ground Zero.
The PVV is demanding an explanation and terms the plans to build a mosque right next to Ground Zero absurd and an insult to relatives of the thousands of victims who lost their lives on 11 September 2001. The party wants the subsidy to ASMA to be withdrawn immediately.
Posted by Robert

Tisha B'Av: Fall of the Temples

An interesting article from www.ucg.org/brp about the readings during the Fall of the Temples. This follows this post analyzing the Ten Commandments. This follows this post about Liberty. For more interesting stories like this click here to follow this blog.

Introduction to Lamentations (Lamentations )
The author of Lamentations is not named in the book, but it is traditionally attributed to the prophet Jeremiah. "In fact, some copies of the ancient Greek Septuagint translation begin the book with these words: 'And it came to pass, after Israel [i.e., the remnant of Israel—Judah] had been carried captive, and Jerusalem became desolate, that Jeremiah sat weeping, and lamented this lamentation over Jerusalem.' Crediting Lamentations to Jeremiah is based on the following considerations: (1) Jeremiah was known as a composer of laments (see 2 Chr. 35:25). (2) Jeremiah was the prophet who mourned, 'Oh, that my head were waters, and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!' (see Jer. 9:1). (3) In [Lamentations] 3:1, the author seems to identify himself with Jeremiah when he says, 'I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of His wrath.' (4) There are many linguistic similarities between Lamentations and Jeremiah" (The Nelson Study Bible, introductory notes on Lamentations.)
"In the Talmud (Baba Bathra 15a), this book is called qinot ('Lamentations')... The name commonly used in Hebrew, however, is ekah ('How'), the first word of the first, second, and fourth laments [that is, chapters 1, 2 and 4]. In the Hebrew canon it stands in the Writings as the third of the Megilloth, or Scrolls, between Ruth and Ecclesiastes" (Expositor's Bible Commentary, introductory notes on Lamentations). We are reading it now to keep it in the context of its writing in the wake of the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple.
"The five chapters of Lamentations are five poems with ch[apter] 3 as the midpoint or climax. Accordingly, the first two chapters build an 'ascent,' or crescendo, to the climax, the grand confession of 3:23, 24: 'Great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion.' The last two chapters are a 'descent,' or decrescendo, from the pinnacle of ch[apter] 3... The poetry of the book enhances its purpose and structure. Chapters 1 through 4 are composed as acrostics of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Each verse or group of verses begins with a word whose initial letter carries on the sequence of letters in the Hebrew alphabet. This would be similar to an English poem in which the first line begins with A; the second begins with B, and so on. One purpose of this device was probably to aid in memorization of the passage. The acrostic also suggests that the writer has thought things through and is giving a complete account of the subject" (Nelson Study Bible, introductory notes on Lamentations).
While chapter 1 is a perfect acrostic, chapters 2-4 are slightly imperfect, and oddly enough for the same reason. In each case the 16th and 17th letters of the Hebrew alphabet (ayin and pe) are swapped—for what significance we don't know. The acrostic in chapter 3 comes in groups of three—that is, each of the first three verses begins with the first Hebrew letter aleph, each of the second three with the second letter beth, etc. (see Expositor's, introductory notes on Lamentations). And then there is the mysterious chapter 5, intriguingly not an acrostic even though it still seems to divide up into 22 verses. "That chapter 5 has twenty-two verses has caused some to suggest that the laments were first written in normal verse and then rewritten to include the acrostic. This idea is ingenious but unprovable" (same note).
Other laments are written in various books like the book of Psalms, but this is the only book solely devoted to lamenting. Orthodox Jewish custom requires that this book be read aloud on the fast of Tisha b'Av, the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Ab—the traditional day on which the temple of Solomon was destroyed in 586 B.C. and on which the second temple was destroyed by the Roman army in A.D. 70. Jeremiah was present at the destruction of Solomon's temple as Jerusalem was overrun and sacked by the Babylonian armies. He saw the horrifying imagery described in the book. And yet the terrible suffering portrayed seems to reflect even more than what occurred at that time. It evidently anticipates suffering that was, and still is, yet to come—for the judgment described here is what is to befall "all the dwelling places of Jacob...every horn of Israel" (Lamentations 2:2-3), not just Judah. The book, as we will see, calls for the coming of the Day of the Lord and the final judgment on Israel's enemies. Yet there is no question that the ancient anguish and suffering of Judah is also vividly revealed in the pages of this deeply emotional account.
In its introductory notes on the book, The Bible Reader's Companion (Lawrence Richards, 1991) states: "Lamentations does maintain a consistent theological outlook: Judah's [and later all Israel's] loss can be traced to God's sovereignty, His justice, and His commitment to a morality which His people abandoned. Yet Lamentations is primarily a book that plumbs the depths of human sorrow, not from an individual's perspective, but from the perspective of an entire people. Reading the book we experience something of the overwhelming sense of despair that can grip communities and even whole nations. Even the prayers recorded in Lamentations are desperate prayers; cries of anguish rather than affirmations of hope. It is terrible as well as wonderful to be human. It is terrible indeed if we surrender to our human bent to sin. The day must come when we will look back on our lost opportunities, and realize that the misery we endure now is a consequence of our own chronic craving for sin. If nothing else, reading the Book of Lamentations reminds us the pleasures of sin are at best momentary, the painful consequences lasting and deep."

Coninued here

North Carolina-based jihad propagandist "InshallahShaheed" believed behind new al-Qaeda web magazine

A very interesting post from www.jihadwatch.org about a domestic link to al-Qaeda. This follows this post about CAIR and NAACP and this article about the recent news about the ban offshore drilling which would encourage American energy independence This is a key issue to prevent money from going to hostile countries such as Iran and Venezuela. For more posts like this click here.


North Carolina-based jihad propagandist "InshallahShaheed" believed behind new al-Qaeda web magazine
He's in Yemen now, having not "yet" returned to slacking off at his parents' house after buying a round-trip ticket. If there were ever a case for being bumped from a flight... An update on this story. "U.S. citizen believed to be writing for al Qaeda website, source says," by Paul Cruickshank for CNN, July 19:
(CNN) -- A senior U.S. law enforcement official has told CNN that U.S. intelligence believes the principal author of the new online al Qaeda magazine is an American citizen who left for Yemen in October 2009.
The magazine -- called "Inspire" -- appeared last week. Running to nearly 70 pages online, it included articles on bomb-making and encrypting electronic messages, as well as an interview with fugitive Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al Awlaki.
The source has identified the driving force behind "Inspire" as 23-year-old Samir Khan, who previously lived in North Carolina and was involved in radical Islamist blogs, including one he ran called "Jihad Recollections." The source says Khan traveled to Yemen on a round-trip ticket but has not come back to the United States.
Before moving to North Carolina, Khan lived in the New York area. U.S. law enforcement officials say he attended meetings of the Islamic Thinkers Society, but was not a central figure in the group. The Islamic Thinkers Society says its mission is to achieve the ideal Islamic society. On its website, it says: "Our struggle is always intellectual [and] political non-violent means."
Surrrrre. They just incite others to do the rest.
Khan's online name was inshaAllhashaheed (Arabic for "God willing a martyr"). On his various blogs he distributed English translations of al Qaeda propaganda and links to videos produced by Iraqi insurgent groups and others. In a profile in 2007, the New York Times described him as "a kind of Western relay station for the multimedia productions of violent Islamic groups."
Khan was born in Saudi Arabia, and moved to Queens, New York, with his family when he was 7. The family later moved to Charlotte, North Carolina.
Posted by Marisol