Wednesday Wrap-Up (and Open Thread)

Victorian posy of pansiesThis is what community organizers do: they go into a struggling community that anxiously awaits a high-quality, low-priced store that community members believe will help lift up their neighborhood and, shouting racial epithets, they shut the initiative down.

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Democracy?  Who needs democracy, even a watered-down representative democracy?  Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee has announced that she will enthusiastically bypass the Congress to which she belongs and simply draft orders for His Imperial Majesty Barack Hussein Sotero Obama to sign.

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Labeling as “criminals” people who commit illegal acts is somehow insulting.  I wonder if Justice Sotomayor, who made this Orwellian statement, has the same standard when it comes to pedophiles.  (Maybe Woody Allen can help her answer that question.  And yes, I think he’s guilty, if only because so many of his movies reflect an old man’s obsession with young, female flesh.)

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John Kerry lies, and lies, and lies — this time about Israel.  And he lies precisely in the same way Barack Obama does:  blatantly and unashamedly, secure in the knowledge that a compliant media (and, in this regard, that includes Fox) will not call him out.

Speaking of Fox and Israel, I’m wondering something. Al Waleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz al Saud, a member of the Saudi royal family and one of the richest men in the world, is the second largest holder of shares in Fox. In the past, he’s claimed to have put pressure on Fox to tilt the news his (and Saudi Arabia’s) way.  That meant that Fox, while reliably conservative in most ways, was more Muslim-friendly and less-Israel friendly than one would expect.  Now, though, Saudi Arabia and Israel suddenly have similar interests:  keeping the bomb out of Iran and preventing Iran from becoming the true power broker in the Middle East.  I wonder if this will change Fox’s tilt.  I don’t have an answer, because I don’t watch TV news.  Has anyone noticed a change in Fox News’ coverage?

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And speaking of Muslim-friendly news, CAIR is advertising a “walk against Islamophobia.”  I love Drew’s comment at Weasel Zipper’s:  “If CAIR really think so-called ‘Islamophobia’ is a problem then why don’t they hold a ‘walk against Islamic terrorism?’ Wait, that means they would have to condemn their co-religionists, never mind.”  That statement really nails the problem with CAIR, doesn’t it?

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Oh, and while I’m piling up on Islam, Daniel Greenburg wrote a Groundhog Day post looking at the fact that Islam never breaks free of its endless day of winter.

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And while I’m on the subject of Daniel Greenburg, he’s got another superb post (he’s always got superb posts), this one about the utopian Universalists, who speak the language of universal love while spreading antisemitic hate.

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Salon has sunk to new lows by openly promoting communism (and no, I won’t link to that drek).  It does so, of course, through lies.  Tom Toth calls out Salon on its latest pro-Communist grotesqueries.

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As an aside, looking at the posts above about Islamism, antisemitism, Universalism, and communism, I can only say that it’s not true that man is the most dangerous animal of all.  The truth is that there are certain subsets of man who deny morality, individual freedom, and the worth of the individual — they are the most dangerous animals of all.  And now back to our regularly scheduled linkfest.

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The more I hear about Scott Walker, the more I like what I hear.  He’s courageous, tenacious, and highly effective.  Unlike Rand Paul, Mike Lee, or Ted Cruz, all of whom are dynamos for conservativism, he hasn’t spun his wheels in the toxic environment of Congress.  Instead, despite enormous obstacles in Wisconsin, he’s wrought huge changes in that most Left of Left states.  As with other young conservatives who have appeared on the horizon, I’m not yet willing to give him my heart but, if he stays true to what he seems to be at this moment in time, he might well be my guy.

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And finally, I was not charmed or moved by Budweiser’s “Welcome home, soldier” Super Bowl commercial.  This was not a community’s spontaneous outpouring for a returned soldier; it was a corporate event.  As best as I could tell, it was the commercial equivalent of astroturf, rather than grass-roots, organization.  I was therefore completely unsurprised to read that Budweiser wasn’t the only self-promoting corporation involved.  Lt. Chuck Nadd also makes a career out of self-promotion.  As the post to which I linked said, this is the American way.  But it doesn’t mean you have to be moved or manipulated by it.