White House sources confirmed that President Obama will deliver another back-to-school address aimed at all of the nation’s children. That’s right, the president will make September 14 the second-annual Obama Day at your local school!
You might recall last year’s Obama Day, for which the U.S. Department of Education put out teaching guides that gave parents across the country reasonable cause to fear a day of liberal politics and celebrating President Obama. You might also remember the divisive national uproar that precipitated, which ultimately culminated in a relatively staid — but nonetheless campaign-esque — speech, not to mention a fair amount of after-the-fact sneering at people who either didn’t want public-school kids exposed to left-wing politicking or just wanted their kids, you know, left alone by the president. Finally, you might recall the MayParade magazine graduation “address” the president wrote that offered just the kind of profit-denigrating, “service” extolling rhetoric that people feared eight months earlier:
Of course, each of you has the right to take your diploma and seek the quickest path to the biggest paycheck or the highest title possible. But remember: You can choose to broaden your concerns to include your fellow citizens and country instead. By tying your ambitions to America’s, you’ll hitch your wagon to a cause larger than yourself. You can choose a career in public service or the nonprofit sector, or teach in an underserved school. If you have medical training, you can work in an understaffed clinic. Love science? You can discover new sources of clean energy or launch a business that makes the most efficient and affordable solar panels or wind turbines.
So will this year’s Obama Day be as controversial as the last installment? Probably not.
For one thing, unless the White House is not just wearing blinders, but living in a full-on isolation tank, it won’t authorize the release of any lesson plans to go with the talk. And if it does, it will scrutinize them, put them before focus groups, and torture them until they give up any and all material that could be even minutely controversial.
Second, while there is plenty of anger to go around right now, there’s been no burning summer of discontent like last year’s spree of town-hall conflagrations. It seems the growing ranks of fuming Americans are now more focused on ballot boxes than soap boxes.
Finally, last year there was a sense that President Obama — who’d led the “stimulus” charge, driven the takeover of GM and Chrysler, was championing huge and incomprehensible health-care legislation, and had repeatedly been in Americans’ faces — was simply too much in our lives. Directing his near-ubiquity toward peoples’ kids only made matters worse. Oh, and some of the rather off-putting stuff from the “Cult of Obama,” as Gene Healy dubbed it, probably didn’t help.
This year, while certainly still a presence, it seems the president has made himself more scarce.
So the coming address is not likely to launch nearly the same seismic outrage as last year’s. But there’s still good reason to object to it.
“Islam did not attack the World Trade Center — Al Qaeda did,” Mayor Bloomberg
From a technical standpoint, Mayor Bloomberg is correct. In the sense that all of Islam did not get together in four airplanes and fly them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In that same sense, Japan did not attack Pearl Harbor, only a few hundred Japanese people did, under the command of the Japanese Air Force. So too, in that particular instance 19 Muslims, under the command of an international Muslim group hijacked the planes and killed over 3,000 people. But in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, the United States didn’t declare war on a few hundred Japanese pilots, or the Japanese air force. We declared war on Japan.
On 9/11, Al Qaeda did not act in the name of 19 people, or ten thousand or so followers. It acted in the name of Islam. And while anyone can claim to do anything in the name of Islam, Al Qaeda was not some random fringe group. Al Qaeda drew its ideological support from the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest Muslim political group in the world. It and its allies drew on financial support from the governments of some of the world’s largest and most influential Muslim countries in the world, including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. These are countries which compromise some 200 million Muslims.
Meanwhile the vast majority of Muslims in poll after poll agree with Al Qaeda’s goals, they only disagree with its methods. Since Al Qaeda’s methods are illegal, and support for them is a potentially prosecutable offense, it’s not surprising that this disjunction exists. But the fact that most Muslims support Al Qaeda’s goals, makes it impossible to argue that it is not representative of Muslims. Most Muslims see themselves as sharing Al Qaeda’s goals, they are just not prepared to openly say that they support its methods.
Those who dismiss Al Qaeda as unrepresentative of Islam, rarely like to talk about the support for its goals, only its methods. But the strong show of support for Al Qaeda’s goals, demonstrates why it is a popular organization in the Muslim world. And Al Qaeda’s goals are not non-violent, they involve the forcible application of Islamic law in Muslim countries that reduces non-Muslims and women to second class status. The vast majority of Muslims agree with Al Qaeda that America is the enemy and that the US should be forced out of Muslim countries. The majority agreed with pushing the US not to support Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Jordan… the endgame of which would be to allow Islamic groups to take them over. And finally the majority had positive or mixed feelings toward Bin Laden.
Most liberals would say that people who agree with the goals of the KKK, but disagree with some of its methods, are still KKK supporters.
As Palestinian and Israeli leaders meet in peace negotiations just a few miles away, the speakers called for a rejectionist line on Israel.
“The time has come that we must stir up our ‘religious leaders’ in this country to speak the truth about Israel,” said Kaukab Siddiqi. “They must put their hands on the Quran and say that they do not recognize Israel as a legitimate entity. If they cannot do that, they must be branded as kaffirs [infidels]. It’s as simple as that. Because the Quran says — drive them out from where they drove you out.”
As was the case at last year’s demonstration, speakers spewed hate speech to a crowd dotted with Hizballah flags. Among the speakers was retired ambassador Edward Peck, and Mauri Saalakhan,
Salaakhan peddled copies of his book, The Palestinians’ Holocaust, at the 2009 ISNA convention. It’s a collection of essays including his claim that Israel was responsible for the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and includes a defense of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
And listen carefully to Siddiqi at about 1:20 minutes: “Each one of us is their target and we must stand united to defeat, to destroy, to dismantle Israel if possible by peaceful means.” Yeah “peaceful,” if possible. Professor Siddiqi is on the faculty at Lincoln University, Baltimore Pike, Pennsylvania. Just the thought of taking a course with this man, and people just like him, makes me sick to my stomach.
Medea Benjamin (co-founder of Code Pink and Global Exchange)
Edward Peck (Retired U.S. Diplomat/ survivor from the Gaza flotilla)
Rabbi Yisoroel Dovid Weiss (Neturei Karta International)
Chuck Carlson (founder of We Hold These Truths)
Hajj Mauri Saalakhan (Director of the Peace and Justice Foundation)
Imam Abdul Alim Musa (Masjid al-Islam, DC)
Imam Abolfazl Nahidian (Manassas Mosque, Manassas, VA)
Safiyyah Abdullah (spoken word artist)
Ebrahim Mohseni (spoken word artist)
It is beginning! The death of the system of warm water currents in the Atlantic Ocean is already having a icy effect in Europe. It will get much worse!
Russia has seen it’s first snow accumulation of the season.
Much of The UK and Ireland are expecting cold weather during the next week, as is Moscow. Temperatures on the Greenland ice sheet will be dipping down to near -25C. Nice August weather!
Never before so much rain in Germany ~ link ~Germany received more rain in August than in any August since records began in 1881, the German Weather Service (DWD) announced Monday.
“We have measured more than double the amount of rain as the long-term average for August,” said DWD spokesman Uwe Kirsche.
About 157 litres per square metre had fallen on average across the nation, a new record. The previous record, set in August 1960, brought “only” 134 liter / sq m. That compares with the average over many years of just 77 litres / m.
The sun shone in August 2010, approximately 143 hours, some 27 percent below its normal target of 197 hours. Many weather stations reported new records in the lack of sunshine, for which records have been kept since 1951.
It has been especially frustrating for farmers. The spring barley harvest was cut off right at the beginning of the month, then in the second half of August were the oats.
Snow in Alps a month earlier than normal ~ link ~ Snow in Voralberg, a month earlier than “normal”. Many farmers still had their cattle in the fields! Global warming seems far removed from these regions.
August turns to November in Germany ~ link ~ My calendar tells me its still August, well at least for another day, but here in Southern Germany it is like November!!! Cold rainy, windy weather the whole day! A raw day to just stay inside and hope and wait for the return of warmer weather! Only7 degrees Celsius during the day for the end of August!! I think we are going to see some record low high temps broken today!
There is Snow falling in the middle Alps turning the landscape into a winter wonderland!
The weather pattern across western and eastern Europe has been consistent with global cooling! Reports that the grain harvest is in jeopardy because it’s been too cold and wet and the corn fields are not looking all that great either for this time of year! The outlook for September is cooler and wetter than average!
0 and 50 centimeters ” says Wangen It is many years since there has been snow so early in“It has happened that there has been so much snow in August but it is many years since the last time It is not normal anyway and there was no ndication of a time ” sa
Just who in the hell is kidding who about global warming?
On August 9th, the San Francisco Giants hosted the Chicago Cubs at the AT&T yard in China Basin. At game time, the temperature was a torrid 60 degrees.
Sixty whole degrees on the 9th day of Freaking August, for heavens sake!
Quite a shock from the debilitating heat and humidity that the Giants faced in Atlanta, Georgia over the week end. Conditions there had Giants’ broadcasters openly yearning for fog and cold!
Yes, it is true that the weather in the Bay Area is more moderate then elsewhere in America. And yes,weather is the only moderate thing about this liberal-infested community.
Still, 60 degrees is a damn crime.
About two fortnights ago, San Jose experienced our only “heat wave” of the year.
It was hell in paradise as we suffered through four days in which the thermometer scaled to 95 at the top, only to drop like a rock to 60 or 70 degrees at night.
Perfect for sleeping, though, once the sun got the hell out of the way.
Yes, it is true that September is usually our warmest month. However, it is also true that, to date, this is the coolest summer anyone can remember.
After buying a portable AC during the heat wave to keep my bedroom comfortable, I have since resuscitated that heavy blanket from storage in order to fight off the evening and morning chills.
That pitcher I bought for iced tea is for lease or sale; five pounds of free ice included!
Meanwhile, the dim wits at our electric utility company are issuing an urgent message: Electricity rates to skyrocket in September!
How can this be? Its as though that huge chunk of ice that separated from the glacier has landed in downtown San Jose and they want to INCREASE my electric rates?
The official explanation: Sharply reduced usage has led to reduced profits for the energy moguls. A rate increase is needed for balance!
Balance? Like, who in bloody hell needs “balance” ?
Islam doesn’t just hijack planes, it hijacks the things that mean something to people. The great cities of the world are littered with relics of the Muslim occupation of their sacred places. Jerusalem, Delhi, Constantinople and Alexandria all testify to the Muslim predilection for taking over other people’s sacred places, and turning them into mosques. It wasn’t enough for Muslims to conquer Jerusalem and subjugate its inhabitants. No, they also had to take the holiest place in Judaism and build a mosque on top of it. Similarly it wasn’t enough for them to conquer and rename Constantinople, they also had to turn the Hagia Sophia into a mosque. These are not exceptions to the rule. In Asia, the Middle East and Europe, there are numberless examples of the same thing.
To this day, Muslims continue seizing other people’s places of worship and turning them into mosques. It’s going on in Egypt today. It’s going on in Yugoslavia where churches are being destroyed and turned into mosques, day by day. It’s went on in Israel, in Joseph’s Tomb, burial spot of the biblical Joseph, which was seized by Muslims in September of 2000, a year before 9/11.
Why do Muslims this? It’s not just about seizing territory, though that is part of it. It’s also about hijacking something more vital, identity. By Islamizing sacred sites, they also take control of other people’s history and culture. As they have done throughout the world. Hijacking the Temple Mount, has allowed Muslims to claim Jerusalem as a holy city of theirs. Hijacking churches in Egypt and Yugoslavia, eliminates the religious history of non-Muslims from the area. Hijacking the Hagia Sophia, was part of the recreation of Constantinople, into Istanbul.
The common denominator is that Muslims do not just make war on lands or bodies– but on memory itself. Their goal is to make people forget what came before their colonization. To distort the history and traditions that are meaningful to them, and replace them with a distorted Islamized version of history. The Muslim “tolerance” in Spain, the Palestinian Arab “refugees” and the Muslim “contributions” to science, are all examples of that revisionist history, in which oppression becomes tolerance, repression becomes knowledge, and the oppressors become the victims.
Ground Zero is not only the central point of the Muslim massacre of 3000 people. It is also the central point of the memory of that massacre. The area is the place where people come to remember what happened. To see, to hear and to pay tribute to the dead. Which is exactly why Muslims are determined to hijack it for their own purposes, with a highly visible mosque and their own 9/11 museum that will feature a radically altered version of history. What they are after is the equivalent of putting up a Holocaust Revisionism museum outside the Holocaust museum.
Is this really shocking? CNBC is reporting that consumers are not spending money:
Sales at U.S. retailers unexpectedly fell in May for the first time since September following a record slump in purchases of building materials, adding to fears the economic recovery was losing some steam.
The Commerce Department said total retail sales dropped 1.2 percent, the largest decline since September, after rising by an upwardly revised 0.6 percent in April. Sales in April were previously reported to have increased 0.4 percent.
Well no kidding. People aren’t employed. People are scared of tax increases and government spending. Folks are tightening down their budgets unlike the government who continues to spend and wants to raise taxes. The cost of gasoline remains high. Local utilities and governments are raising fees and taxes. And the consumer is not getting a raise. What the hell else are people to do?
The government and media outlets like CNBC want you to believe everything is alright in the economy. Perma-bulls. But the people know what is going on. The government policies are not giving anyone a reason to spend.
Democratic Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff, who is challenging incumbent Sen. Michael Bennet in Colorado, confirmed late Wednesday that deputy White House chief of staff Jim Messina said he could be given one of three high-ranking federal jobs if he gave up his candidacy.
Romanoff said he was told by Messina that two high-ranking positions at USAID and the director’s position at the U.S. Trade and Development Agency “might be available to me were I not pursuing the Senate race.”
The U.S. Trade and Development Agency director’s position would have been a post in charge of a $55 million budget and a staff of 78 people, which requires Senate confirmation.
It is now the second confirmed Senate race in which the Obama administration has tried to lure challengers to Democratic incumbents out of their races with offers or potential government jobs, flirting with ethical and possibly even legal violations that have besmirched a president who based much of his candidacy on changing the way Washington operates.
Romanoff’s bombshell comes days after White House counsel Bob Bauer confirmed last Friday that White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel went through former President Bill Clinton in an attempt to move Rep. Joe Sestak out of the Pennsylvania Democratic Senate primary.
Bauer and Sestak have said that the congressman was offered only a slot on a presidential advisory board, which would likely have not broken the law, but the official account has been plagued by questions and inconsistencies that have fueled suspicions that Sestak was offered a more weighty position such as Secretary of the Navy.
And in fact, the Romanoff revelation amplified questions about the credibility of the White House account of what they offered Sestak.
“It’s difficult to imagine that the Obama White House offered multiple paid positions to a former state legislator in Mr. Romanoff, but simply offered an unpaid, advisory board position to Joe Sestak, a sitting United States Congressman,” said Brian Walsh, spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Rep. Darrell Issa, the California Republican whose persistence has played a big part in keeping the Sestak story alive, renewed calls for an outside investigation by the FBI or a special prosecutor.
“This White House has lost all credibility and the American people can no longer rely on the word of the White House when it tried to deflect and deny allegations of questionable and potentially illegal conduct,” Issa said.
“These incidents underscore the need for some independent agent, whether it is a special prosecutor or the FBI, to launch an investigation and determine once and for all the extent of the White House’s efforts to manipulate elections and if those actions resulted in the violations of any laws,” he said.
Sestak first admitted back in February that he was offered some kind of position in the administration, answering “yes” when asked if it was a “high-ranking” post. His win in the May 18 primary over incumbent Sen. Arlen Specter, however, fueled the story and gave it oxygen to the point where the White House was forced to come forward with information.
That led to renewed questions of Romanoff, who was first reported by the Denver Post back in September to have received offers from Messina. At the time a White House spokesman said that “Mr.
The facts on whether Democrat’s want to use taxpayer money to fund union pensions
A fiery debate erupted this week in Washington over whether Congress is about to slip a massive taxpayer-funded bailout for failing union pension plans, to the tune of $165 billion, into an already bloated emergency spending bill.
Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) is sponsoring a bill that may end up using taxpayer money to support failing union pension funds.
What is certain is that no such move is imminent. Legislation sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Bob Casey, Pennsylvania Democrat, and by Rep. Earl Pomeroy, North Dakota Democrat, is not attached to the bill moving through the House and to the Senate for a vote later this week.
But a close examination of the Casey/Pomeroy bill by The Daily Caller suggests that it does in fact create “the framework for a taxpayer funded bailout for failing pension plans,” as a letter from anti-tax and business groups that will be sent to Congressional leaders and the White House Thursday morning characterizes it.
Here are the facts:
The Casey and Pomeroy bills, say the two lawmakers and their staffs, are aimed at fixing a complicated problem. Many employers are withdrawing from pension funds as they face higher costs in paying for funds where mostly union beneficiaries outnumber payees and where the fund’s performance has been lackluster.
So, Democrats and some Republicans argue, businesses should not have to pay into a pension fund to support their own employees plus “orphan employees” of firms who have left the fund (the withdrawing firms do have to pay penalties and fees in order to exit a fund).
Casey staff used the example of YRC Worldwide Inc., a U.S. trucking company. About 40 percent of YRC’s pension costs “are to pay the pensions of people who never worked for the company,” said Casey spokesman Larry Smar.
“These costs threaten the company and its 40,000 employees,” he said.
But to take care of these “orphan employees,” the Casey/Pomeroy bill would create a new fund within the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation that would not be funded by premiums from business, which is the PBGC’s normal source of revenue. Instead, all pension benefits paid by this “fifth fund” would be “obligations of the United States,” according to the bill as currentlywritten.
In addition, the PBGC is already in the red, with a deficit of $21 billion as of last fall. That shortfall is expected to increase to $34 billion by 2019, according to a report released earlier this month.
So if the already overwhelmed PBGC took on new obligations and said they were the responsibility of the government, that leaves little option other than using taxpayer funds.
Smar, Casey’s spokesman, said that “any cost to taxpayers” would be “offset” under the Senate pay-as-you-go rules, but those rules have been repeatedly flouted. Smar also said the senator’s bill targets only a handful of pension plans.
Felipe Calderon’s understanding of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban is no more accurate than it is about Arizona’s new immigration law.
During his trip to the United States Mexico’s President Felipe Calderón received a lot of attention for falsely claiming that Arizona’s new immigration law uses “racial profiling.” Calderon’s attacks on U.S. policies continued during his address to Congress on Thursday. Immigration wasn’t his only topic. He spent over four minutes of his address lecturing Americans and calling them on to renew the Federal Assault Weapons Ban that sunset in September 2004.
Calderon’s message was simple: the reason that Mexicans are losing the drug war is because the U.S. assault weapons ban expired. Yet, Calderon’s understanding of what the Federal Assault Weapons Ban is no more accurate than it is about Arizona’s new immigration law. Let’s review the assertions he made to Congress:
– Calderon claimed that these were “powerful weapons.” It is a common misunderstanding as the “assault weapons” ban conjures up images of machine guns used by militaries. Yet the 1994 federal assault weapons ban had nothing to do with machine guns, only semiautomatics, which fire one bullet per pull of the trigger. The AK-47s banned by the assaults weapons ban were civilian, semiautomatic versions of the gun. The banned guns fired the same type of bullets, with the same rapidity, and doing the same damage as deer hunting rifles. Their inside guts are essentially the same as deer hunting rifles — some people just like to own these “military-style” weapons because of the way they look on the outside. The firing mechanisms in semiautomatics and machine guns are completely different. The entire firing mechanism of a semi-automatic gun has to be gutted and replaced to turn it into a military AK-47.
Just as Mexican drug cartels are able to bring drugs into their country, they are also able to bring in really powerful weapons from around the world to defend both their valuable drugs as well their turf against competing drug dealers. Reports indicate that grenades and rocket launchers are not even available for sale in the United States and come from countries such as South Korea, Israel, and Spain. Two thousand two hundred thirty nine grenades were seized by the Mexican government from 2007 to 2009. Similarly, machine guns in Mexico originate from China, Israel, and South Africa.
It is hard to believe that Mexican drug cartels would want to get look-alike “military-style” weapons from the U.S., when they can get the real military weapons elsewhere.
Calderon also asserted: “And if you look carefully you will notice that the violence in Mexico started to grow a couple of years before I took office in 2006. This coincides, at least, with the lifting of the assault weapons ban in 2004.”
Calderon took office on December 1, 2006. And it is understandable that he would want to claim that the increase in murder rates started before he became president.
On 9/11, Al Qaeda did not act in the name of 19 people, or ten thousand or so followers. It acted in the name of Islam. And while anyone can claim to do anything in the name of Islam, Al Qaeda was not some random fringe group. Al Qaeda drew its ideological support from the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest Muslim political group in the world. It and its allies drew on financial support from the governments of some of the world’s largest and most influential Muslim countries in the world, including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. These are countries which compromise some 200 million Muslims. 
Democratic Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff, who is challenging incumbent Sen. Michael Bennet in Colorado, confirmed late Wednesday that deputy White House chief of staff Jim Messina said he could be given one of three high-ranking federal jobs if he gave up his candidacy. 
