I don't mean outraged by how bad it was.

I mean outraged by propaganda depicted in the film, intended to look like found documentary footage, of a Muslim girl being raped by American soldiers. This sequence has been branded on YouTube as the real thing.

Now that we have two murders we can lay directly at the feet of Brian DePalma, will Hollywood change its tone of pumping out anti-American propaganda for the consumption of foreign audiences?

No, of course not; artistic expression is just too important to repress even if some lives might be saved.

But you, on the other hand, must continue not calling Obama a socialist, because that's dangerous.

Posted by: Ace at 02:41 PM | Comments (275)
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Yes, it's what you think it is. An attack on Christian woman who are in reality "bitches."

The just hate us, really.

The novel it's based on is about a divorced woman coming back to Dallas to be terrorized by Christian moralizers.

Posted by: Ace at 12:28 PM | Comments (393)
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As Townhall asks:

If even a subsidy for a cowboy poetry slam is considered essential and therefore sacrosanct spending, what on earth would constitute a non-essential spending item?

I've got nothing against cowboy poets. Or even gay cowboys eating pudding. But if such exemplars of flinty individualism and/or romantic determination to follow one's artistic muse can't get by without some state-coerced taxpayer subsidy then what the hell good are they?

Angle: Both sides are attempting to portray the other as dogmatic, partisan, ideological, and unwilling to compromise for the greater public good.

Obviously the media is attempting to weigh in on this argument on the Democrats' size.

But take Harry Reid's statement as case closed on the question of Democrats' willingness to compromise -- by Reid's own mouth, he announces he is unwilling to cut a single dollar of spending. He finds it all crucial and sacrosanct -- even some money for a little-noticed cowboy poetry jam that occurs in some forgotten corner of Nevada.

What is that but partisan, ideological, and inflexible?

Posted by: Ace at 11:03 AM | Comments (339)
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It's kabuki theater arranged by the Democrats -- their Senators in purple or red states must be allowed to pose, as they do every six years, as moderates, at least in the year and a half before an election.

Joe Manchin says Obama has failed to lead on the deficit and cost-cutting. That's nice. He will further vote against the Democrats' $10 billion in cuts as unserious.

And you know what else he'll vote against? The Republicans' plan to cut $61 billion. Which he says is "partisan" or something.

So he has a nice platform for the election in 2012 (he will have to stand again then, as he's filling out the end of KKK Kleagle Robert Byrd's term). He is both supposedly against Obama and the Democrats but also against the only plausible alternative to Obama and the Democrats.

Expect this kind of deception from a lot of the supposed "moderates" in the Senate.

Posted by: Ace at 10:44 AM | Comments (46)
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I stumbled across this on Beck's radio show (I think it was his but with a guest host or something). It's really something.

The "he" Jackson, Jr. refers to is FDR in a speech to Congress in 1944.

Jackson's large theme is that, well in all honesty I'm not entirely sure. As best as I can tell, he think all jobs come from the First Amendment.

I asked the Congressional Research Service the other day how many jobs are tied to the First Amendment, that amendment added to the Constitution in 1791 by the founders of our Republic. You know what they told me? Congressman, it is impossible to calculate how many jobs are tied to the First Amendment.

I said: Impossible to calculate? I said: Why?

He said because to be an American is tied to the First Amendment. He said: Congressman, you must understand--which I did--that all corporate activity in America is First Amendment activity.

Look at the jobs that come from the First Amendment: Washington Post, Washington Times; New York Post, New York Times; Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun Times; AM/FM, and all of the radio stations, First Amendment.

ABC, NBC, CBS, C-SPAN, all of the jobs, First Amendment.

Magazines, First Amendment.

iPods, iPhones, applications, First Amendment.

Time Square, First Amendment activity. Advertising, the Super Bowl, First Amendment activity.

All of these jobs--the original capitalists who came to the conclusion that this was worth protecting in our Constitution--established in the freedom system, the greatest jobs program in our Nation's history. They called it freedom of speech. And in that same amendment, they included freedom of religion.

Think about the jobs tied to 501(c)(3)s, 501(c)(4)s, 501(c)(5)s, all of that First Amendment activity. All charitable giving, all foundation activity, all tied to First Amendment activity.

This is just profoundly silly.

First, does Jackson think there was no commerce before the First Amendment was adopted?

More to the point, the First Amendment is not a grant of power to the government is a restriction of power against the government ("Congress shall make no law...."). Yet this genius' solution is to create a whole bunch of "rights" that would empower the government to do all sorts of things and thereby usher in a level of prosperity never before seen in the history of the world. In reality, it's the fact that the government is limited in power and scope (or was at one time) that the genius of free men and women was unleashed to provide goods and services their fellow citizens wanted at a price they agreed upon.

In Jackson's World, simply let the government guarantee what your wants are and magically they will appear.

Let me diagram it out...

Step 1: Pass new amendments to the Constitution

Step 2: ???

Step 3: Profit!

Let me just save Congressman Jackson some time and offer up a proposal for the 28th Amendment to the US Constitution.

Section 1: Each citizen or resident (legal or otherwise) of the United States shall have at all times a net financial worth of no less than One Million US Dollars (to be adjusted annually for inflation).

Section 2: Congress shall be deemed to have the power to pass any law necessary to bring this Amendment into force".

It's fun to mock an idiot like Jackson, Jr. but let's be honest, his "understanding" of what rights are and how the economy works is shared by a lot of people.

Posted by: DrewM at 10:11 AM | Comments (191)
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That seems to be the case.

Project Gunrunner" deployed new teams of agents to the southwest border. The idea: to stop the flow of weapons from the US to Mexico's drug cartels. But in practice, sources tell CBS News, ATF's actions had the opposite result: they allegedly facilitated the delivery of thousands of guns into criminal hands.

...

Jaime Avila was one of the suspicious buyers [at American gun stores]. ATF put him in its suspect database in January of 2010. For the next year, ATF watched as Avila and other suspects bought huge quantities of weapons supposedly for "personal use." They included 575 AK-47 type semi-automatic rifles.

ATF managers allegedly made a controversial decision: allow most of the weapons on the streets. The idea, they said, was to gather intelligence and see where the guns ended up. Insiders say it's a dangerous tactic called letting the guns, "walk."

One agent called the strategy "insane." Another said: "We were fully aware the guns would probably be moved across the border to drug cartels where they could be used to kill."

2,500 such weapons flowed to Mexican gangs while being "watched" by this program. The weapons were used in gun-battles against Mexican government agents as well as against US border patrol -- one agent in a special border squad, Brian Terry, was killed with a weapon traced back to a US shop.

Interestingly, some of the shops actually asked the ATF to intervene; the ATF told them to keep selling to the suspicious buyers.

Supposedly this is part of some sting. Supposedly the ATF is "watching" to see where the guns end up. Supposedly, then, this will involve, at some point, a massive bust, the impact of which exceeds the costs accrued along the way, like dead Mexican cops and dead American border patrol officers.

I'm having trouble imagining how the moving parts work together in this case. I know that drug cases are often made by allowing drug sales and tracking them (or even being part of the drug sale, as a buyer or seller). But I don't see how you keep your eyes on guns, given that they're going to be widely distributed in a large number of hands. (Drugs are too, when large bulk quantities are broken up for individual sale, but usually the DEA doesn't care about that last step; they're looking at making busts at the higher levels when the narcotics are in bulk and in fewer hands.) Usually in these sorts of stings, the drugs are seized (and all of the conspirators arrested) before the drugs are sold on the street. That's the point.

But here, the guns are all on the street, so if there's a big bust coming -- what's the hold-up?

There is always a good chance that we don't know enough to understand this program, that there is some information we're missing so that we don't see how the ultimate payoff will come about. Who knows, maybe each gun has some kind of tracking bug hidden in the stock or something. Well, not that. That seems technologically un-doable. But something.

Based on the information we have, though, this seems crazy.

Senator Chuck Grassley is requesting documents from the ATF explaining and justifying this supposed sting. He has agents screaming about the craziness of this program, effectively ending their careers to act as whistleblowers. But the ATF is not complying with these requests.

Sources and Methods: I understand if the agency is running a covert mission and wants to keep its methods secret. Perhaps there's a technological component which is secret. Perhaps their plan is sophisticated and novel and they don't want to tip their hand to the targets.

But that's a reason to keep the information from the public, not from a senator with a high security clearance.

It's okay if this information is kept from me, as there is no way to get the information to me while keeping it away from the narcotics gangs. But you can get the information to Grassley.

I'd like to know from an outside, independent authority that this whole scheme s not in some way corrupt, is, in the full plan, plausible, and has a fair chance of actually working. I don't want to just hear from the ATF that, in their conclusion (and Eric Holder's) we shouldn't worry about it.

One scenario hits me: Maybe this is being done to curry favor with some narco-criminals in order to develop a relationship with them, so they are incentivized to rat on jihadist terrorists attempting to buy passage from Mexico into the US.

Maybe that's it. Maybe we're trading guns for tips.

But if that's the case, it seems to me that we are trading an awful lot for these tips, and further, this would just be a way to avoid the need for just sealing the border. That is, the Obama Administration may have decided for political reasons it doesn't want to seal the border, but they also want to have some control of the border as far as terrorists (any terrorist coming into the US from Mexico would almost doom Obama's chances of reelection). So this may be their corrupt method of having it both ways, with the occasional dead cop as the cost.

If that's the case, I want to know. I think that's a corrupt, self-serving, politically-motived plan in that case.

Posted by: Ace at 08:38 AM | Comments (266)
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Jammie Wearing Fool notes that the left is freaking out about these hearings -- swearing on a stack of Korans that there is no reason to suspect that American-born Muslims are becoming extremist -- just as the news comes that one of 20 American jihadists fighting to overthrow the American-backed Somali government has been killed.

The New York Times previously reported:

Some 8,500 miles from Alabama, on the eastern edge of Africa, he has become a key figure in one of the worldÂ’s most ruthless Islamist insurgencies. That guerrilla army, known as the Shabab, is fighting to overthrow the fragile American-backed Somali government. The rebels are known for beheading political enemies, chopping off the hands of thieves and stoning women accused of adultery. With help from Al Qaeda, they have managed to turn Somalia into an ever more popular destination for jihadis from around the world.

More than 20 of those fighters have come from the United States, many of them young Somali-Americans from a gritty part of Minneapolis. But it is Hammami who has put a contemporary face on the ShababÂ’s medieval tactics. In a recent propaganda video viewed by thousands on YouTube, he is shown leading a platoon of gun-toting rebels as a soundtrack of jihadi rap plays in the background.

He is identified by his nom de guerre, Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki, “the American,” and speaks to the camera with a cool, almost eerie confidence. “We’re waiting for the enemy to come,” Hammami whispers, a smile crossing his face. Later he vows, “We’re going to kill all of them.”

...

Not long ago, the threat of American-bred terrorists seemed a distant one....

America is now at a watershed. In the last year, at least two dozen men in the United States have been charged with terrorism-related offenses.

That New York Times article is just over one year old. Apparently the left has shifted even further left since then, as liberal mouthpieces like the Eugene Robinson now claim that none of what you just read is true.

Posted by: Ace at 08:03 AM | Comments (75)
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Via Byron York, the OÂ’Keefe gang is back at it. This time they posed as two Muslims with an organization they say is connected to the Muslim Brotherhood who want to help NPR survive de-funding efforts by evil Republicans.

A man identified as Ron Schiller, NPR's Sr. VP for Development and President of NPR Foundation, wants to make sure these prospective donors know exactly whose side he's on.

On the tapes, Schiller wastes little time before attacking conservatives. The Republican Party, Schiller says, has been “hijacked by this group.” The man posing as Malik finishes the sentence by adding, “the radical, racist, Islamaphobic, Tea Party people.” Schiller agrees and intensifies the criticism, saying that the Tea Party people aren’t “just Islamaphobic, but really xenophobic, I mean basically they are, they believe in sort of white, middle-America gun-toting. I mean, it’s scary. They’re seriously racist, racist people.”

Schiller goes on to describe liberals as more intelligent and informed than conservatives. “In my personal opinion, liberals today might be more educated, fair and balanced than conservatives,” he said.

...When O’Keefe’s two associates pressed him into the topic, Schiller decried U.S. media coverage of Egypt’s uprising against former dictator Hosni Mubarak, especially talk of the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence on the protests and future of Egypt. Schiller said that is what he is “most disappointed by in this country, which is that the educated, so-called elite in this country is too small a percentage of the population, so that you have this very large un-educated part of the population that carries these ideas.”

There's much more, including the video at the link.

This will take the normal pattern with these things...NPR will claim it's all edited to make them look bad, the O'Keefe may have broken some laws, they'll also say it was just lunch and they would have vetted these guys before taking their money (yeah right) and hey...look over there, it's Elmo!

Will this get as much play in the MFM, as say the guy who called Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and pretended to be one of the Koch Brothers? Of course not. It will get the same amount of coverage that the story of how the guy who made that call wrote a piece celebrating the death of American troops...none.

Best part? Just yesterday NPR CEO Vivian Schiller (no relation to Ron) said there's no way NPR is liberal or biased at all. Now, they'll say this guy is a fundraiser and not involved in editorial but that's simply not going to wash. Saving NPR some trouble, they had already announced Ron Schiller is leaving NPR in a few weeks.

On the upside, there is some common ground here for conservatives and Schiller, he says that NPR and public radio stations could survive without public funding. Let's make that happen.

Posted by: DrewM at 05:59 AM | Comments (221)
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I'm almost 99% certain he's referring to Eminem and Snoop Dogg. Whatever, former Republican senator and current Obama debt commission co-chair Alan Simpson has got the gift for epic ranting:

“This is a fakery,” Simpson said on Fox News. “If they care at all about their children or grandchildren, and sometimes I doubt that – I think, you know, grandchildren now don’t write a thank-you for the Christmas presents, they’re walking on their pants with the cap on backwards listening to the enema man and Snoopy Snoopy Poop Dogg, and they don’t like them!”

The former Republican senator of Wyoming, who apologized in the summer for comparing Social Security with “a milk cow with 310 million tits,” also denied that his panel had proposed privatizing Social Security. “It is fakery,” he repeated. “We never suggested that!”

“The sinful nature of the discourse is ‘cutting’ Social Security,” he said. “We’re not cutting Social Security – we’re trying to make the stuff solvent for 75 years! And young people say, ‘Well, I know there won’t be anything there for me; I’m not worried about it.’ Well, I tell ya, when you waddle up to the window at 65 and you put 6.2 percent of all your jack in that thing, you’re gonna want something back!”

Awesome. Video at the link.

And it's true. People look at Social Security as an entitlement and if we change nothing about the system, my own Millenial generation will too. The one solid uncompromising feature of every single Social Security reform proposal is that current benefits are abso-freaking-lutely sacrosanct and not to be touched for anything. Seniors and the soon-to-be eligible Baby Boomers cry bloody murder if you even nod in the direction of means testing or raising the retirement age. And don't think for a second that they don't have an interest in foot-dragging just a biiiiiit longer -- just long enough to start suckin down those checks they think they're entitled to -- before the hammer comes down.

"That's my money!" they scream, even though (1) no, that's not their money and (2) this is the system they wanted. I say it's not their money because their money got spent on their parents' generation. The Social Security "trust fund" isn't a trust fund as such; its a slush fund used to pay for other people's benefits and sometimes other government spending. The Baby Boomer's money is gone. It got spent almost as fast as it was taken out of their paychecks.

The expectation is and always has been that productive youngsters will keep coming along behind to pay for the current beneficiaries just like those beneficiaries paid for the beneficiaries in front of them. That was a nice expectation, but it's proven to be a futile one. There are a damn lot of Baby Boomers and they're going to live a damn long time and there aren't enough folks coming along behind to pay for them.

So that's problem number one up there: it's not your money; your money was already spent. But the second point is even more important. The first point just describes reality. The second point describes morality: the Baby Boomers and their predecessors wanted it this way and, as a result of the way they wanted it, the whole scheme is crashing down. That's on them.

It's not like the Social Security funding crisis just materialized yesterday. This has been on the radar for decades. This structural flaw -- and it is a structural flaw, integral to the whole scheme -- has been evident for a very long time. It didn't just happen, as if it were an uncontrollable, unpredictable, and unfathomable Act of God. You did this; you were there and have been in the best position to do something about it for decades. But the only question was how far you thought you could kick that can down the road. And the Usual Answer was: who the fuck cares, as long as it's until after I'm dead.

Well, it just couldn't last that long. The Baby Boomers are now going to have to deal with structural flaw in the program that they've been a part of for decades. Hell, as a group only the oldest have even started getting benefits. And the whole bunch aren't going to make it in before the program is either totally reformed or collapses.

Look at all the reform proposals. It's always about keeping Social Security solvent for just so many more years. They throw out these dates -- fully solvent until 2045 or 75% solvent until 2075 or whatever and on and on. Fully aware that this is going to have to be fundamentally changed at some point because it will come crashing down at some point. Hey, guess what happens in 2045? That's the first year Millenials, my generation, start turning 65.

So now it's time for some frank conversations between the entitled generation -- the Baby Boomers -- and the Gen Xers and the Millenials who are going to have to pay the bills. For one thing, I don't like the communist set-up you got going here. If I've got to give money to the government to pay for my own retirement (and I don't really think I should have to, but that's apparently not up for negotiation either), I'd like to have my own individual account, thankyouverymuch. And while we're at it, I notice that a great many Baby Boomers are substantially wealthier than me and the other folks in my cohort. I'm wondering a bit why these people are "entitled" to age-related welfare at all.

So I appreciate that Alan Simpson wants to make Social Security solvent for 75 more years. That's nice, but that's not long enough. Any proposal that just kicks the can down the road perpetuates an ultimately unsustainable scheme and I'm going to end up paying, not just for the irresponsible, entitled Baby Boomers who spent their adult lives propping up this Ponzi scheme, but also for myself when the whole damn thing comes crashing down.

It's a tough conversation, but it's time to talk about just what the Baby Boomers are really entitled to.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:47 AM | Comments (347)
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From what I gather, something went down in the tent.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:49 AM | Comments (81)
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