Thanks for Your Civility, Charles Blow of the New York Times……..

even though you still are wrong about your assertions.

The American Leftwing and the culture it has created for 2011  America, both yours and mine,  is an overwhelmingly powerful antiAmerican collection of   antidemocratic, foul thinking often foul mouthed and foul speaking and writing, collection of misfit thugs who defend some kind of  Maginot line of Marxist autocracy and intolerance to save its political winnings against the traditional American Christians, the scourges of private enterprise, and against the America they have created.

These misfit thugs see themselves as protectors of the unprotected…….anyone who joins the victimhood clans of the American Leftwing Democrat Party……a Party whose entire philosophy is based on suspicion and hate……caused, curiously enough, by Christians and folks in private enterprise…….the folks who gave the world the government and culture devoted to ‘Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” and had set aside a listing of certain Right for mankind who reside within its borders.

These misfit thugs sell hysteria rather than support clarity of ideas.   They call the Christian-free enterprise American, homophobe, sexist, xenophobe, anti-unionist, racist, antimuslim, uneducated and  any other name which helps them avoid discussing issues.

Whether they are aware of it or not, this is the decades-old, actually a couple centuries old political path of the Marxists who have sabotaged any and all governments where Marxism has developed its priests and priestesses and the local population goes on with its daily business not realizing what has happened to their hardening, more befulddled culture of disunity.  PEACE is always the word to screen Marxist disorder.   Always….even in nations  after the order of Marxist dictatorship has been established.

I have read and quoted writings of Charles Blow of the New York Times in the past.  I have considered him one of the countless HACK leftwing writers who dominate the American world of mass media communication today, certainly of those at the New York Times, repeating what has been memorized, not what is or actually has been.

A “Hack”  writer has meaning.  It is a writer who has memorized certain political cliches of life which trigger his emotions, but not his mind, to attack and destroy the messenger rather than analyze the truths and assumptions (or lack of them)  of the message.   The hack   values feelings.  Reason becomes valuable only when usable.  Lefties  will react in writing and speech based on feelings.   It’s difficult in a free sociey  to defend Marxism.  Therefore, the Marxists pretend the democratic society is tyrannical.

Mr. Blow believes  “that the preponderance of it (violent rhetoric)  comes from the right, and that it has the potential to manifest in massacres like the one in Tucson.”    The ‘preponderance idea is an outrage.   Where was Mr. Blow been during the GW Bush years.   Where have been the bombings, the killings, the riots , the arsons  endemic to the Left during the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s or at the Peace demonstrations or in Seattle when the World’s economists met some years age…..?  Who is the rightwing Bill Maher on televison?

Dennis Prager is passionate about his conservative views for  America.  He seeks the best view based on his story in life…. He encourages clarity….(which should have  been taught in the American classroom) in order to compare ideas so one can measure the validity or truth of  one  idea versus another, trumping the emotuional with the mind.   Let the better idea win….

Charles Blow wrote:

“Immediately after the news broke, the air became thick with conjecture, speculation and innuendo. There was a giddy, almost punch-drunk excitement on the left. The prophecy had been fulfilled: “words have consequences.” And now, the right’s rhetorical chickens had finally come home to roost.

The dots were too close and the temptation to connect them too strong. The target was a Democratic congresswoman. There was the map of her district in the cross hairs. There were her own prescient worries about overheated rhetoric.

Within hours of the shooting, there was a full-fledged witch hunt to link the shooter to the right.

“I saw Goody Proctor with the devil! Oh, I mean Jared Lee Loughner! Yes him. With the devil!”

The only problem is that there was no evidence then, and even now, that overheated rhetoric from the right had anything to do with the shooting. (In fact, a couple of people who said they knew him have described him as either apolitical or “quite liberal.”) The picture emerging is of a sad and lonely soul slowly, and publicly, slipping into insanity.

I have written about violent rhetoric before, and I’m convinced that it’s poisonous to our politics, that the preponderance of it comes from the right, and that it has the potential to manifest in massacres like the one in Tucson.

But I also know that potential, possibility and even plausibility are not proof.

The American people know it, too. According to a USA Today/Gallup poll released Wednesday, 42 percent of those asked said that political rhetoric was not a factor at all in the shooting, 22 percent said that it was a minor factor and 20 percent said that it was a major factor. Furthermore, most agreed that focusing on conservative rhetoric as a link in the shooting was “not a legitimate point but mostly an attempt to use the tragedy to make conservatives look bad.” And nearly an equal number of people said that Republicans, the Tea Party and Democrats had all “gone too far in using inflammatory language” to criticize their opponents.

Great. So the left overreacts and overreaches and it only accomplishes two things: fostering sympathy for its opponents and nurturing a false equivalence within the body politic. Well done, Democrats.

Now we’ve settled into the by-any-means-necessary argument: anything that gets us to focus on the rhetoric and tamp it down is a good thing. But a wrong in the service of righteousness is no less wrong, no less corrosive, no less a menace to the very righteousness it’s meant to support.

You can’t claim the higher ground in a pit of quicksand.

Concocting connections to advance an argument actually weakens it. The argument for tonal moderation has been done a tremendous disservice by those who sought to score political points in the absence of proof.

Immediately after the news broke, the air became thick with conjecture, speculation and innuendo. There was a giddy, almost punch-drunk excitement on the left. The prophecy had been fulfilled: “words have consequences.” And now, the right’s rhetorical chickens had finally come home to roost.

The dots were too close and the temptation to connect them too strong. The target was a Democratic congresswoman. There was the map of her district in the cross hairs. There were her own prescient worries about overheated rhetoric.

Within hours of the shooting, there was a full-fledged witch hunt to link the shooter to the right.

“I saw Goody Proctor with the devil! Oh, I mean Jared Lee Loughner! Yes him. With the devil!”

The only problem is that there was no evidence then, and even now, that overheated rhetoric from the right had anything to do with the shooting. (In fact, a couple of people who said they knew him have described him as either apolitical or “quite liberal.”) The picture emerging is of a sad and lonely soul slowly, and publicly, slipping into insanity.

I have written about violent rhetoric before, and I’m convinced that it’s poisonous to our politics, that the preponderance of it comes from the right, and that it has the potential to manifest in massacres like the one in Tucson.

But I also know that potential, possibility and even plausibility are not proof.

The American people know it, too. According to a USA Today/Gallup poll released Wednesday, 42 percent of those asked said that political rhetoric was not a factor at all in the shooting, 22 percent said that it was a minor factor and 20 percent said that it was a major factor. Furthermore, most agreed that focusing on conservative rhetoric as a link in the shooting was “not a legitimate point but mostly an attempt to use the tragedy to make conservatives look bad.” And nearly an equal number of people said that Republicans, the Tea Party and Democrats had all “gone too far in using inflammatory language” to criticize their opponents.

Great. So the left overreacts and overreaches and it only accomplishes two things: fostering sympathy for its opponents and nurturing a false equivalence within the body politic. Well done, Democrats.

Now we’ve settled into the by-any-means-necessary argument: anything that gets us to focus on the rhetoric and tamp it down is a good thing. But a wrong in the service of righteousness is no less wrong, no less corrosive, no less a menace to the very righteousness it’s meant to support.

You can’t claim the higher ground in a pit of quicksand.

Concocting connections to advance an argument actually weakens it. The argument for tonal moderation has been done a tremendous disservice by those who sought to score political points in the absence of proof.

“Immediately after the news broke, the air became thick with conjecture, speculation and innuendo. There was a giddy, almost punch-drunk excitement on the left. The prophecy had been fulfilled: “words have consequences.” And now, the right’s rhetorical chickens had finally come home to roost.

The dots were too close and the temptation to connect them too strong. The target was a Democratic congresswoman. There was the map of her district in the cross hairs. There were her own prescient worries about overheated rhetoric.

Within hours of the shooting, there was a full-fledged witch hunt to link the shooter to the right.

“I saw Goody Proctor with the devil! Oh, I mean Jared Lee Loughner! Yes him. With the devil!”

The only problem is that there was no evidence then, and even now, that overheated rhetoric from the right had anything to do with the shooting. (In fact, a couple of people who said they knew him have described him as either apolitical or “quite liberal.”) The picture emerging is of a sad and lonely soul slowly, and publicly, slipping into insanity.

I have written about violent rhetoric before, and I’m convinced that it’s poisonous to our politics, that the preponderance of it comes from the right, and that it has the potential to manifest in massacres like the one in Tucson.

But I also know that potential, possibility and even plausibility are not proof.

The American people know it, too. According to a USA Today/Gallup poll released Wednesday, 42 percent of those asked said that political rhetoric was not a factor at all in the shooting, 22 percent said that it was a minor factor and 20 percent said that it was a major factor. Furthermore, most agreed that focusing on conservative rhetoric as a link in the shooting was “not a legitimate point but mostly an attempt to use the tragedy to make conservatives look bad.” And nearly an equal number of people said that Republicans, the Tea Party and Democrats had all “gone too far in using inflammatory language” to criticize their opponents.

Great. So the left overreacts and overreaches and it only accomplishes two things: fostering sympathy for its opponents and nurturing a false equivalence within the body politic. Well done, Democrats.

Now we’ve settled into the by-any-means-necessary argument: anything that gets us to focus on the rhetoric and tamp it down is a good thing. But a wrong in the service of righteousness is no less wrong, no less corrosive, no less a menace to the very righteousness it’s meant to support.

You can’t claim the higher ground in a pit of quicksand.

Concocting connections to advance an argument actually weakens it. The argument for tonal moderation has been done a tremendous disservice by those who sought to score political points in the absence of proof.”

Further comment:   Keep your eyes and ears open, Mr. Blow.   Start amassing evidence to prove your guesses and assumptions are as accurate as they should be.   Maybe then you can begin to wonder what is it in Marxism which so appeals to you.

Obama Printing More Monopoly Money Aiding the Cheaper Dollar to become Cheaper

Scott W. Johnson at Powerline seems to be worrying about Obama’s printing press.  We should too, so read further:

“Under the rubric of QE2, the Federal Reserve Bank is engaged in the venture of increasing the money supply with the goal of moderately increasing inflation. I fear that this venture is misguided and destructive. I believe it will result in inflation exceeding the Fed’s goal, if it has not done so already, and that the Fed will apply the brakes well after the damage has been done, as is its style.

David Malpass recently observed:

The Fed’s rationale for buying a stunning $75 billion per month of Treasury notes and bonds (almost the entire issuance) has been its fear that the economy was slowing and its hope that Fed bond purchases would lower Treasury and corporate bond yields in a stimulative manner. Neither part of this logic is working.

This past November Reuters raised a concern about QE2 leading to a commodity bubble. The article observes that the Reuters-Jefferies CRB index, a global commodities benchmark, had hit a two-year high as part of an 18 percent gain since the start of September when markets began to anticipate the Fed’s action.

The powers-that-be at the Fed discount the commodity inflation that appears to be rampant. Diane Chu cites the comments of St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard. “What struck me as totally self-contradictory,” Chu wrote, “were Bullard’s statements regarding the QE2, treasury yield, inflation expectations, and inflation[.]” Chu takes a look at commodity prices:

[B]asically Bullard touts QE2 as building up inflation expectations, driving up treasury yields (thus averting a potential deflationary cycle), which was the goal of the Fed QE2 initiative. Furthermore, Bullard contends that global demand and supply factors are behind the record high prices across almost all commodities, which he believes is unrelated to QE2. . . .

Since the Fed hinted at QE2, commodity price inflation has surged at a record pace during the past six months (Fig. 4) The manifestation of inflation is a combination of many factors including but not limited to expectations, which drives behavior, as well as supply and demand factors.

So, for Bullard to “take credit” for driving up inflation expectations, but ignore its inflationary effect on commodity prices is illogical as well as self-contradictory.

Taming the inflation of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s was a painful process. It seems incredible that the Fed is seeking to spur inflation secure in the confidence it can contain it. By the time it becomes undeniable, it seems to me, the time will have passed when the Fed can shift the gears to reverse without the infliction of substantial pain.

Smarter people than I have the same view. At Zero Hedge, guest poster Bo Peng sarcastically comments on the Fed’s sense of humor, amazing foresight and inflation risk. Peng reviews the latest release of 2005 Fed meeting minutes and concludes: “No matter how confident Bernanke is about his ability to fight inflation in time, I’m exactly as confident that he’ll be too late.”

Malpasss puts it this way (if I understand him correctly): “Since inflation is a deeply lagging data series – the Fed was able to claim throughout the 2003-2007 monetary bubble fiasco that inflation was ‘moderating’ even as the core PCE deflator, upon revision, was rising and always exceeded the Fed’s 2% ceiling — it’s unlikely that inflation will ride to the rescue in time, nor does anyone other than commodity buyers really want that outcome.”

Can this really be the end? Bob Dylan’s lyrics run through my mind: “An’ here I sit so patiently/Waiting to find out what price/You have to pay to get out of/Going through all these things twice.”

UPDATE: Reader Carl Pham takes my concerns a step further:

if you’ve lived long enough, you’ll notice the *order* in which inflation picks up is always the same, or at least it has been for the past 50 years or so: first gas and heating oil prices go up steeply (oil is priced in dollars, after all), then food (lots of transportation in its price), then durable goods and rents, and only last wages and real estate. . . .

I think the mistake many commenters make is assuming that these facts are not already well known to the policymakers, e.g., the Fed or the administration, or even older media talking heads, and that they need to have these facts pointed out to them.

I think that unlikely. I think they know exactly what they are doing, and they rely on muddling the connection between, say, rising gas and food prices on the one hand and what they are doing on the other.

In this particular case, I think both the administration and the Fed feel the inevitable pain is worth it for their goals, which are dominated by the urgent wish to get investors — potential homebuyers, or potential employers — to stop cautiously hoarding their cash and start forking it out, buying houses or employing people.

They have (probably correctly) deduced that Democratic re-election prospects in 2012-14 are tied to the unemployment rate and the price of houses, and they will do anything to move those numbers, regardless of future damage. (Besides, a roaring inflation later is just another crisis that cannot be allowed to go to waste! Wage and price controls are lovely avenues for centralized power.)

It’s little different than FDR in 1934-35 observing that businesses were sitting on cash instead of hiring people (because of the insane regulatory environment, among other things), and determining to pry that cash out of them. In those days he took the blatant approach — the undistributed profits tax of 1936. Nowadays a more subtle approach is called for: in this case, inflation, which is essentially a massive tax on savings and retained profits.

It probably doesn’t hurt that in addition the one party that does well in a strongly inflationary environment is he who owes loads of money (the debt is rapidly eroded by inflation) and who has an income that is fully indexed to inflation, meaning it automatically rises in lockstep with nominal prices and wages. That of course describes state and federal governments today.

These comments aren’t helping with my anger management therapy, but they add an important component to the discussion.”

---

“Progressives on Their Way to Marxism, Politicize Everything

“THE ISSUE IS NEVER THE ISSUE……THE ISSUE IS THE REVOLUTION”   

          (A Progressive Slogan)

“Last week’s mass murder at Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’s meet-up with her Arizona constituents was immediately politicized by progressive politicians and media figures. But it’s wrong to see this as an unusual event. It’s the way things are always done when progressives have any power to reach the public: everything is political. And President Obama is doing his very best to take advantage of the situation.

The politicization of all things is a tactic derived from the foundations of the progressive mentality and in fact necessitated by it. Progressivism assumes that all things should be made fully subject to the rule of experts. In the present case, an atrocity has been used as the pretext for arguing that progressives should be given even greater and more explicit control over what people can say in public, by giving the federal government additional power over the media.

That’s what this really has been about. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman started the ball rolling by asserting that “violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate. And it’s long past time for the GOP’s leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers.”

This is in fact a notion that the progressives have offered with increasing boldness, indeed shamelessness, over the past few decades, and not only in op-eds and editorials but also in allegedly scientific studies (frequently, in fact) and in movies and TV shows. Soon after Krugman made his fatuous and contemptible assertion, the deluge came.

The hypocrisy of this campaign of vilification is obvious. One remembers the explicit calls among progressives for the assassination of President George W. Bush, and this very week countless people tweeted their desire that conservative political figure Sarah Palin be murdered. This sort of demonization of one’s enemies is not the exclusive property of any political position, but as the present instance demonstrates with charming vividness, it is the progressive movement that practices it most shamelessly.

Most sensible people surely saw from the start that the killer, Jared Lee Loughner, was not just a Rush Limbaugh listener, if at all. In the days since the attack, the evidence has mounted, suggesting he was likely suffering from a serious mental illness, probably schizophrenia. On Tuesday, in a poignant story from the Associated Press, a neighbor of Loughner was quoted as observing strange behavior by him as a child:

Linda McKinley, 62, has lived down the street from the Loughner family for decades and said the parents could not be nicer — but that she had misgivings about Jared as he got older.

“As a parent, my heart aches for them,” she said.

She added that when she was outside watering her plants she would see Jared riding down the street on his bike, often talking to himself or yelling out randomly to no one.

McKinley recalled that once he yelled to some children on the street: “I’m coming to get you!”

At that point, at least, the media attacks by the progressive left should have abated. They did not, because the actual cause of the attacks was never the point. Muzzling all opposition to the progressive agenda was the sole intent of the crusade. Thus the assault against the right intensified even as more evidence arose to characterize the attack as motivated by Loughner’s personal demons, such as the observations of the prominent psychiatrist Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, who pointed out that the particular type of mass killing Loughner committed is characteristic of certain kinds of schizophrenia and typically has nothing to do with the political climate.

Additional direct evidence of instability on Loughner’s part was provided by revelations of his scary postings on online gamer sites and the fears expressed by students and faculty at Pima Community College when he attended classes on the campus last year. Yet the progressive commentariat and its political satraps were unwilling to allow this crisis to go to waste, intensifying their campaign to turn it to their political advantage.

Indeed, one of the few really slick and skillful uses of the murders to tar the right was that of President Obama, in his speech at Wednesday night’s memorial service and political pep rally. Obama merits praise for injecting some much-needed dignity into the proceedings and explicitly calling for an end to the political blame game:

Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy.

The main thrust of his speech, however, confirmed the progressives’ take on the situation: that it was about what people can and should be allowed to say in public. “If this tragedy prompts reflection and debate, as it should,” the president said, “let’s make sure it’s worthy of those we have lost. Let’s make sure it’s not on the usual plane of politics and point scoring and pettiness that drifts away with the next news cycle.”

One presumes that he was not referring to his own widely documented use of martial metaphors and gangster talk when referring to his political opponents, and given that the whole “climate of hate” bugbear is a progressive trope, it’s clear enough to whom he was referring. In the context of the past week’s unjustified, blanket attacks against the political right, the president’s statement that “what we can’t do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another” was in fact darkly comic.

By positing a moral equivalence between the original, completely unjustified attacks against the right and the conservatives’ dismayed and defensive response, Obama placed his presidential stamp of approval on the progressives’ hate campaign. The very point of their assault on free speech rights, after all, has been that the political right is uniquely responsible for the creation of a “climate of hate” that leads to violence and murder. That is indeed a libel, and a contemptible one, yet Obama affirmed it by refusing to distinguish between the progressives’ unjustified attacks of the past week and the rhetoric of the right over the past several years. There is a huge and obvious difference between the two, and eliding that difference lets the real offenders, the progressives, off scot-free. It’s exactly what schools do when they punish a peace-loving kid for fighting back against a bully.

Thus in loftily adjuring the public to “make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds,” Obama confirmed the essential purpose of the progressives’ hate campaign: regardless of who may be engaging in hate, we can’t live this way any longer. “Only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation,” he said. Translation: something must be done. Meaning: more power for the federal government.

Thus Obama’s ostensibly irreproachable rhetoric set the agenda for what the progressives really want, and which was the real purpose behind this entire brouhaha: a campaign for even more unconstitutional federal government power over what people can say and write.

When Obama said, “only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation,” the direct meaning of his words was politically neutral, but the only side of the debate that the mainstream media characterize as uncivil and dishonest is everybody to Obama’s right.

That’s the real purpose behind all this concern about hate: an effort to suppress opposition to the progressive agenda, through calculated media attacks and more government regulation. As Fox News and others have reported, numerous progressives are taking advantage of the Arizona attacks to press for federal government regulation of public communications (which just happens to be unconstitutional). According to Fox News:

In the wake of the shooting, the National Hispanic Media Coalition used the incident to reiterate its call for the FCC to update its definitions of hate speech in media. It also asked the FCC to “examine the extent and effects of hate speech in media, and non-regulatory options for counteracting the violence that extreme rhetoric breeds.”

Rep. Robert Brady, D-Pa., said he has no knowledge about what motivated Loughner to attack Giffords and the others, but he still wants legislation that bans the use of certain imagery when talking about congressional targets.

“I want to eliminate what may have been,” Brady told Fox News. “I’m not a psychologist…. All I’m saying is you can’t put a bull’s eye or a crosshair on a member of Congress.”

…

[Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY)] said that while she’s not up to speed on current regulations, the Federal Communications Commission should work to sanction broadcasts that could incite people to violence.

“No one owns the airwaves,” Slaughter said. “They are owned by the people.”

If lawmakers were to seek remedies to quiet distasteful discussion, the so-called Fairness Doctrine is at the top of lists inspiring supporters and alarming opponents.

Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., told National Public Radio said he “came up in a time that the Fairness Doctrine did not allow media outlets to say things about a candidate or a person in public office without giving that person equal time to respond. And I really believe that everybody needs to take a look at where we are pushing things, and may need to take a serious step back and evaluate what’s going on here.”

Meanwhile, Obama’s Federal Communications Commission, led by Julius Genachowski, has been greedily lusting after control of the internet through an illegal imposition of net neutrality and by extracting concessions from Comcast and NBC/Universal in trade for FCC approval of the firms’ merger.

What has happened in the past week has been about one thing and one thing only: politics, pure and simple, in pursuit of even greater power for the federal government. There’s nothing the slightest bit unusual about that.”  

the above article was written by S. T. Karnick at Pajamas Media

Comment:  A Progressive is a Marxist on the way tto Marxism.

Tunisia in the News…..Leader Flees…..Sharia Not an Issue

 Article   written by David D. Kirkpatrick at the New York Times….

TUNIS — Tunisia’s president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, fled his country on Friday night, capitulating after a month of mounting protests calling for an end to his 23 years of authoritarian rule. The official Saudi Arabian news agency said he arrived in the country early Saturday.

“What happened here is going to affect the whole Arab world,” said Zied Mhirsi, a 33-year-old doctor protesting outside the Interior Ministry on Friday. He carried a sign highlighting how he believed Tunisia’s protests could embolden the swelling numbers of young people around the Arab world to emulate the so-called Jasmine Revolution.

Because the protests came together largely through informal online networks, their success has also raised questions about whether a new opposition movement has formed that could challenge whatever new government takes shape. Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi, a close ally from the president’s hometown, announced on state television that he was taking power as interim president. But that step violated the Tunisian Constitution, which provides for a succession by the head of Parliament, something that Mr. Ghannouchi tried to gloss over by describing Mr. Ben Ali as “temporarily” unable to serve.

Yet by late Friday night, Tunisian Facebook pages previously emblazoned with the revolt’s slogan, “Ben Ali, Out,” had made way for the name of the interim president. “Ghannouchi Out,” they declared.

News of the president’s departure followed, by just hours, the biggest battle yet between the protesters and security forces. Emboldened by a last-minute pledge from Mr. Ben Ali to stop shooting demonstrators, as many as 10,000 people poured into the streets. But when they paraded the body of a person said to have been shot elsewhere in the city, the waiting rows of police officers stormed the crowd, filling the streets with a thick cloud of tear gas and hammering fleeing demonstrators with clubs.

In a final bid to placate the protesters, Mr. Ben Ali had already pledged to hold parliamentary elections in six months. Those elections are now expected to include a presidential contest as well. But fair and open elections would be a first for Tunisia. Mr. Ben Ali, a former prime minister who took power in a bloodless coup, was only the second president of the country, which won independence from France in 1956.

On Friday night the capital remained under a tight curfew. Groups of more than two people were forbidden on the streets after 5 p.m., and no one was allowed out after 8 p.m. State news media warned that the police would shoot curfew violators on sight. Tanks and other security forces were deployed around the city, and the airport was shut down.

As night fell, gangs of security forces armed with machine guns and clubs could be seen chasing down stragglers. Dozens have died in clashes with the police over the last week, and continued gunshots were reported well after curfew on Friday night from several neighborhoods around the capital as sporadic riots continued.

The United States had counted Tunisia under Mr. Ben Ali as an important ally in battling terrorism. But on Friday, President Obama said in a statement that he applauded “the courage and dignity of the Tunisian people.”

“The United States stands with the entire international community in bearing witness to this brave and determined struggle for the universal rights,” he said, adding, “We will long remember the images of the Tunisian people seeking to make their voices heard.”

The antigovernment protests began a month ago when a college-educated street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi in the small town of Sidi Bouzid burned himself to death in despair at the frustration and joblessness confronting many educated young people here. But the protests he inspired quickly evolved from bread-and-butter issues to demands for an assault on the perceived corruption and self-enrichment of the ruling family.

The protesters, led at first by unemployed college graduates like Mr. Bouazizi and later joined by workers and young professionals, found grist for the complaints in leaked cables from the United States Embassy in Tunisia, released by WikiLeaks, that detailed the self-dealing and excess of the president’s family. And the protesters relied heavily on social media Web sites like Facebook and Twitter to circulate videos of each demonstration and issue calls for the next one.

David Horowitz’s Battle Against America’s Marxism…..Have You Been Listening?

The social science departments of the American University today are overwhelmed by Marxist authoritarians.  No matter the department a new religion, Marxism,  is advanced, propagandized to become an alternative to the democratic traditions and our Christian heritage.    The priests and priestesses of the new religion are themsevles bigots and racists arising from Marxist teachings in Women Studies, Black Studies, Gay and Lesbian Studies programs at these universities and colleges.

Thugs interrupt conservative meetings.  Campuses ban speakers who proscribe to traditional American values claiming they aren’t broad enough in there tolerance for diversity.

Instead of the American university encouraging tolerance, a basic American value, it has become one of the most bigotted institutions in the country  along with the NAACP.

It is at college students learn their Marxism and become teachers of Marxism to the next generations.

This is the core of activists which energized the Obama victorious campaign for the presidency in 2008, his campaign for (Marxist) change for America….the change we have been waiting for.    Consequent to the election  admitted Communists were chosen to work in the Barack Obama  administration.

The following is a collection of videos which will give you some idea of the bigotry organized by the left and the muslim groups, gay groups, feminists and other extremists thriving at these campuses.  David Horowitz has long been an evangelist for American democracy and private enterprise.  He has written much about his cause…..”One Party Classroom”  is a collection of class descriptions exposing the bigotries which pass as learnings by these  Marxists and their friends.

Please find time to view them all as soon as you can.  It will help you become better aware of the dangers threatening our nation’s democracy and your freedoms.

Protestors at David Horowitz’s speech at the University of Texas at Austin:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTbTs_It0u0

Marxist Professors Radicalizing Students at the American University

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_DgBBwE3G4

The Shadow Party, Part 1……David reviews his background as a child of  parents devoted to the  American Communist Party and sympathizers of the Soviet Union during the Cold War.   This site has a listing of a dozen or so very important videos re viewing the netword of Marxists involved in Barack Obama’s education….and other networks of  organized Communist activity in the United States.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_DgBBwE3G4

This video covers a brief dialog between David and a Palestinian girl wearing terrorist symbols who is confronted with the question would she support the  rounding up of Jews into Israel so it would be easier for Hezbollah to exterminate them…..Her answer was she was for Hezbollahs policy.

http://www.wikio.com/video/david-horowitz-ucsd-avi-3230939

David Horowitz and Democrat Pat Cadell discuss the Communist-Marxist connections in the Democrat Party

http://www.freedomslighthouse.com/2009/12/democrat-pollster-pat-caddell-and-david.html

Glenn Beck interview with David Horowitz during Islamofascism Recognition Week

http://noolmusic.com/youtube_videos/glen_beck_interviews_david_horowitz.php

Why Liberals Hate the Constitution

Since there are many more conservatives than liberals, and conservatives have so many guns, people often wonder why conservatives don’t just round up all the liberals and ship them to Antarctica to be forced to mine for jewels and gold. Well, there is a very good reason for that: by a strict constructionist interpretation of the American Constitution, there is no support for being able to deport liberals to a mining camp.

Now, if conservatives were a bit more flexible with their view of the Constitution, they would say things like, “Well, we have to remember it’s a living document, and the Founding Fathers hadn’t even thought of the threat of hippies running around free when they wrote it.” And then they’d look to the Commerce Clause and say, “Well, keeping liberals from meddling in America and forcing them do something useful like mining sure would help the economy, so it’s within the government’s power.” And then it’d just be a manner of scheduling all the boats to get liberals to Antarctica.

But that would violate the spirit of the Constitution since, by plain English interpretations of the government’s powers, we can’t forcefully ship liberals to Antarctica no matter how much people may think that would help the country. And that’s the point of the Constitution: people are constantly changing their ideas of what is good and bad, but the Constitution is much harder to change. It puts limits on what the government can do, and those limits can only be changed when huge majorities agree to it through the amendment process. And even after ObamaCare, there inexplicably isn’t enough support for a “Liberals Are to Be Sent to Mines in Antarctica” amendment.

After the hysterical way liberals reacted to the reading of the Constitution by Republicans to open Congress, with Democrats objecting to it, left-wing newspaper editorials denouncing it, and liberals online freaking out over it, no reasonable person would argue that liberals don’t hate the Constitution, but the reasons why aren’t as obvious. So the question becomes, why do liberals hate the Constitution so much — especially when it’s the only thing protecting them from freezing to death with pickaxes in their hands?

We are all aware that liberals want the Constitution to be a living document, like if Geppetto wanted Pinocchio to become a real boy so it would be easier to strangle him to death. They want it living so they can render its words meaningless. To them, the Constitution is this cryptic document only the most educated Ivy Leaguers are able to interpret. Recently, the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein even stated that “the text is confusing because it was written more than 100 years ago.” And then we have all these court decisions — much longer than the document itself – that find all these hidden rights not mentioned in the Constitution and explain away the ones that are clearly stated. And don’t argue with liberals on the subject, because they’re really smart and the only ones able to understand what they’re talking about.

Thus the freakout over the Constitution being read aloud. No matter how much liberals try to mystify the Constitution and obscure its meaning, hearing the actual text of the document quickly destroys that fiction. It almost reads like a direct condemnation of all the government expansion and power grabs liberals have been up to lately. You can’t hear its words without imagining the ghost of George Washington punching hippies. So you can see why they’d rather it not be brought to the public’s attention.

A big way gun rights proponents won their war was by putting the text of the 2^nd Amendment everywhere. While “scholars” liked to pretend there was some debate on whether there is an individual right to bear arms, there wasn’t among the general public because anyone literate could read the amendment and quickly identify that the only operative part is “the right to bear arms shall not be infringed.” Words mean things to most people, so asking the average American whether there is a right to bear arms is like asking what two plus two equals. Ask a liberal judge, though, and he’ll say, “Two and two of what? And ‘equals’ can mean so many things. It’s a very complicated question.” So when people see the long, rambling reasons from someone like Justice Breyer on why the 2^nd Amendment doesn’t mean what it says versus the simple language of the Constitution, they start to realize they’d be much better served by having a twelve-year-old with basic reading comprehension as a justice.

The Constitution meaning what it says is only part of the problem liberals have with it, though. In the Constitution are the means to change the Constitution, and liberals are perfectly capable of proposing amendments to force people to buy health care or to get haters like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck off the air. Of course, they’d need to get a huge majority of the country to go along with them. And there is the problem. If the Constitution puts strict limits on government power and the only way for liberals to increase that power is to get a huge majority of the public to agree with them, then liberals would have to govern with the consent of the governed! Think of the indecency; liberals could barely do anything unless those nasty Tea Party people and fans of Sarah Palin said it was okay!

And while liberals do like certain freedoms, in their hearts they don’t really like this whole democracy thing. If liberals were only voting amongst each other, that would be great, but you can’t actually let everyone — some who only went to community college — have a say in what the government can and can’t do. Much better to have only the elites deciding themselves what they can do, based on their best intentions. It’s like what now ex-Representative Phil Hare said when questioned on the constitutionality of ObamaCare: He didn’t worry about the Constitution. If liberals are trying to change things for the better, why should there be any limits on them… especially ones enforced by the ignorant masses?

And so liberals hope that no one reads the Constitution and that everyone leaves all the questions of what the government can do to left-wing judges who will make decisions based on what they feel is right. Then liberals will be freed from having to get the consent of the unenlightened American public who give their kids Happy Meals and eat trans-fats. They will then have the ability to force people to do what’s best and give the government all the power it needs for a better, more ordered, peaceful society.

Until they’re shipped off to the mines.

Writtten by Frank J. Fleming at PajamasMedia

Obama Government Endangers U.S. Credit Rating!

The following article was written by Graham Bowley at the New York Times:

“Two major credit ratings agencies warned Thursday that the United States might tarnish its triple-A credit rating if its national debt kept growing.

It was not the first time the agencies, Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s Investors Service, warned that the nation’s gilt-edged rating might fall into jeopardy.

But the two statements, made within hours of each other, were seized on by deficit hawks as further evidence that the government must reduce spending and debt to avert disaster. That is just what many Tea Party supporters insist.

But many economists say the reckoning, if it comes, is still years or even decades away.

The bond market shrugged at Thursday’s news. Indeed, even some experts who want to see the deficit reduced said now is not the time to cut federal spending drastically, given the weakness in the economy and high unemployment.

But others see the mounting national debt as a potential danger. What once seemed unthinkable — that one day the United States government would no longer be accorded the highest credit rating — is now not only thinkable, but increasingly probable.

“I am concerned about the unsustainability of our long-term situation,” said Peter G. Peterson, a co-founder of the Blackstone Group and a prominent deficit critic.

In a quarterly report on the nation’s credit risk, Moody’s said there was an increasing probability of revising its outlook on its Aaa rating for the United States to negative from stable within the next two years if no action were taken.

That stops well short of actually reducing the rating. But even a small revision, if it comes, would probably rattle the financial markets and might even hamper America’s ability to borrow the money it needs to finance its deficit.

Moody’s has been rating United States government debt since 1917, and has always rated it Aaa.

Only once, in 1996, did the agency put some United States debt on review for possible downgrade — a much stronger step than a negative outlook. That was after Republicans refused to vote to increase the debt ceiling.

That debate is being repeated now in Washington, where the Obama administration is warning that the government could reach its legal borrowing limit within a few months. The administration is urging Congress to raise the debt ceiling to avoid a default.

Moody’s statement on Thursday was a repeat of a warning it had issued for the first time in December, after the Obama administration’s $858 billion deal with Congressional Republicans to extend the Bush-era tax cuts.

That compromise was likely to act as a stimulus on economic growth — indeed Moody’s raised its forecast for growth this year — but on balance it worsened the nation’s finances, the agency said.

Moody’s also cited the failure to adopt the ambitious measures proposed last year by President Obama’s bipartisan commission on debt reduction to shave $4 trillion from projected deficits over the coming decade.

“The U.S. is going in exactly the opposite direction from fiscal consolidation,” said Steven Hess, one of the authors of the Moody’s report. “In fact, they are going for more stimulus to the economy.”

Separately, S.& P. analysts, speaking at a conference for financial reporters in Paris, said that America’s fiscal condition had worsened in recent months.

“We can’t rule out the possibility that maybe one day we might have to change the outlook,” Carol Sirou, head of the agency’s French office, was quoted by Dow Jones Newswires as saying.

An S.& P. spokesman in New York confirmed the statement but backtracked slightly, saying that Ms. Sirou’s view had been nothing new. She was referring to comments made by another Standard & Poor’s official last year, John B. Chambers, chairman of the agency’s sovereign ratings committee, when he had warned that no triple-A rating was forever.

The spokesman, David Wargin, said it was “merely coincidental” that Standard & Poor’s pronounced on United States debt on the same day the Moody’s report came out.

In one of its own recent reports, S.& P. emphasized the “growing economic, fiscal, and protectionism risks” of the United States but said it was maintaining its strong AAA rating on the country.

The Moody’s report also raised worries about other countries, like Britain, Germany and France.

But though those countries were taking steps in various degree to improve their fiscal positions, the United States had so far failed to do so. “We therefore retain stable outlooks on these countries ratings, although there are questions about the willingness of the U.S. to take the necessary steps,” Moody’s said in its report.

It said “the medium-term trajectory for the deficit and debt ratios continues to present a worsening picture.”

For some economists, the failure to rein in the deficit now could spell trouble, not immediately but in 10 or 20 years.

Mr. Peterson said aggressive government spending was warranted in the short run to stimulate the economy. But once growth returns, spending must be cut drastically, he said. Otherwise the nation’s debt will explode in coming decades, as an aging population reduces the number of taxpayers and increases public costs on services like health care.

For other critics, however, the dangers seem more imminent.

“There is a significant risk that we can lose the confidence of our foreign investors within the next two years,” said David M. Walker, former United States comptroller general and founder and chief executive of Comeback America Initiative, an organization devoted to improving the country’s financial standing.

He criticized the rating agencies for underplaying the threat.

“Unless we make some tough choices sooner rather than later, then it’s only a matter of time before interest rates go up significantly and the dollar takes a significant hit.”

Reuters Reports Rome Fell When The Temperatures Fell

I am all for a horticultural zone #5 for the Twin Cities.   The central cities are almost there, but I live near Hopkins west of the cities and alas the horticultural zone where I live is more like  zone 4.5. 

There are quite a number of Japanese Maples which can grow in zone 5.

I like to read reports of yesteryear’s climates.  I know that the North Sea froze over sometime around the 17th Century and that Greenland was very green during the earlier years of Viking plunder.

Vikings were not known for automobile traffic in those days to cause much extra CO2.    Leftiy charlatons in the Global Warmng fraud industry don’t like climate hitotry….or geologic history either for that matter.

Actually, Marxists aren’t interested in history of any kind.

John Hinderaker at PowerLine let it slip that he likes a bit more warmth around his Twin City residence as well.

He wrote:

This Reuters article and the study on which it is based may qualify as this year’s coyest news story. Once again, we are warned against the dangers of “climate change.” Yet, if you read between the lines, the message is not what a casual reader might think:

Climate change seems a factor in the rise and fall of the Roman empire, according to a study of ancient tree growth that urges greater awareness of the risks of global warming in the 21st century.

A skeptical reader might ask, really? So, what sort of climate was associated with the rise of the Empire, and what climate was associated with its fall?

Good growth by oak and pine trees in central Europe in the past 2,500 years signaled warm and wet summers and coincided with periods of wealth among farming societies, for instance around the height of the Roman empire or in medieval times.

Periods of climate instability overlapped with political turmoil, such as during the decline of the Roman empire, and might even have made Europeans vulnerable to the Black Death or help explain migration to America during the chill 17th century.

Reuters implicitly acknowledges one of the points that global warming skeptics have been making for a very long time–that is, that warm periods in human history have generally been good for people, while cold periods have been bad. The Roman Empire flourished during a warm period; the climate cooled, and the result was the Dark Ages. When the Earth warmed up again, in “medieval times,” as Reuters says–this is the Medieval Warm Period–civilization once again leaped ahead. When Reuters refers to “climate instability,” what it really means is “cooling temperatures.” Black Death, anyone?

The study said the evidence, helping back up written records that are sparse in Europe more than 500 years ago, “may challenge recent political and fiscal reluctance” to slow projected climate change in the 21st century.

Why? Shouldn’t we rather conclude that a little global warming would be a terrific thing for humanity? Currently, the Earth’s temperatures are colder than they have been for roughly 98% of the time, during the last 10,000 years. Let’s hope they get a little warmer.

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