Sunday, June 30, 2013

Catholic Priest Beheaded in Syria by Al-Qaeda-Linked Rebels as Men and Children

Catholic Priest Beheaded in Syria by Al-Qaeda-Linked Rebels as Men and Children Take Pictures and Cheer

Posted by Nicholas Stix

 

Thanks to reader-researcher RC for the sendalong.

 


Date: Sun, 30 Jun 2013 16:47:09 -0800
Subject: '0' armed 'em, '0' funded 'em, '0'team trained 'em, '0'did not retaliate for their killings in Benghazi

And Now They're Beheading Catholic Priests. When will '0'merica have '0n0m0'?

 

Catholic Priest Beheaded in Syria by Al-Qaeda-Linked Rebels as Men and Children Take Pictures and Cheer

 

 

 

They Must Still Be Upset By The Video



"When public virtue is gone, when the national spirit is fled…the republic is lost in essence, though it may still exist in form." ~ John Adams to Benjamin Rush, 1808.

Black Supremacist Leader John Lewis Rages Against Supreme Court’s Voting Rights

Black Supremacist Leader John Lewis Rages Against Supreme Court's Voting Rights Act Ruling; Fears End of Jim Snow is at Hand!

Posted by Nicholas Stix

 

Have no fear, Congressman. There is no danger of whites being emancipated, at least not by the Supreme Court, Congress, or the dictator calling himself "Barack Hussein Obama."

 

 

John Lewis on Voting Rights Act: Supreme Court 'Put A Dagger in the Heart' of the Law

By Melissa Jeltsen

June 25, 2013, 12:13 p.m. EDT | Updated 2:03 p.m. EDT

The Huffington Post

 

Civil rights hero and longtime congressman John Lewis (D-Ga.) reacted in dismay to the Supreme Court's ruling striking down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act on Tuesday.

Discussing the decision with ABC's Jeff Zeleny after it was announced, Lewis said the Supreme Court had "put a dagger in the heart of the Voting Rights Act."

In a 5-4 ruling, the court struck down the provision of the civil rights law that designates which parts of the country must have changes to their voting laws precleared by the Justice Department or a special federal court.

Lewis repeated his criticism of the court during an MSNBC appearance (video above), calling the decision a 'major step back."

"These men that voted to strip the Voting Rights Act of its power, they never stood in unmovable lines, they never had to pass a so-called literacy test," he said. "It took us almost 100 years to get where we are today. So will it take another 100 years to fix it, to change it?"

As a leader of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, Lewis played a key role in the push for voting rights protection. He revisited that history in an op-ed for The Washington Post:

On "Bloody Sunday," nearly 50 years ago, Hosea Williams and I led 600 peaceful, nonviolent protesters attempting to march from Selma to Montgomery to dramatize the need for voting rights protection in Alabama. As we crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, we were attacked by state troopers who tear-gassed, clubbed and whipped us and trampled us with horses. I was hit in the head with a nightstick and suffered a concussion on the bridge. Seventeen marchers were hospitalized that day.

In response, President Lyndon Johnson introduced [sic] the Voting Rights Act and later signed it into law. We have come a great distance since then, in large part thanks to the act, but efforts to undermine the voting power of minorities did not end after 1965. They still persist today.

Before Tuesday's ruling, Lewis had called the Supreme Court case "one of the most important cases in our generation."

Zeleny tweeted a photo of Lewis watching the coverage of the Supreme Court decision:

At The Nation, reporter Ari Berman digs into Lewis' long fight for voting rights:

Lewis, now a thirteen-term congressman from Atlanta, was a leading participant in nearly all of the pivotal events of the civil rights movement -- the Nashville sit-ins, the Freedom Rides, the March on Washington, the Mississippi Freedom Summer. But his signature achievement is the VRA. Of all the surviving leaders of the movement, Lewis is most responsible for its passage and its overwhelming reauthorization four times by Congress. He is the soul of the voting rights movement and its most eloquent advocate. So many of his comrades from the civil rights years have died or drifted away, but Lewis remains as committed as ever to the fight to protect the right to vote. "I feel like it's part of my calling," he says.

For the full text of the Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act, click here.

Saturday, June 29, 2013

Glaivester on Election Fraud in Colorado: Fight Fire with Fire!

Reposted by Nicholas Stix

If the Democrats want to make election fraud a civil right, then Republicans should commit as much election fraud as they can get away with.


They Fight Dirty, You Fight Dirty
By Glaivester

Note: Please, if you like this idea, re-post it. A message to Republicans in Colorado:

Democratic Governor Hickenlooper just signed a bill that would facilitate election fraud, despite the protest of every Republican in the legislature, and the Secretary of State.

These bills tend to discourage Republicans, because they see the allowance of massive voter fraud as benefiting Democrats and worry that the Democrats will no longer have to listen to voters because they can manufacture votes.

I say, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

In any future election, if you have an opportunity to cast extra ballots, or if you have an opportunity to get an out-of-state relative to cast a ballot, or any other chance to get fraudulent votes for Republicans, take it.

If the Democrats want to make election fraud a civil right, then Republicans should commit as much election fraud as they can get away with.

It's like publishing the names of the newspaper employees of that paper that was publishing the names of gun owners. Fight fire with fire.

Any time that there is a Democrat-supported law facilitating voter fraud that Republicans can use to their benefit, they should. After they get in power, they can restore integrity to the process.

That is all.

Don Boudreaux Admits That Open Borders Will Bring about the Death of Liberty,

Don Boudreaux Admits That Open Borders Will Bring about the Death of Liberty, but is Still Willing to Enter into a Suicide Pact

 

 

Immigration: The Practice of the Principle

By Don Boudreaux on June 22, 2013

Café Hayek

 

From the time of the Founders, there was never a time when immigration was not debated in political terms, with an eye to how the new arrivals would vote.

- Frank H. Buckley, "An Exceptional Nation?" (2013) (p. 50 in chapter 2, here)

A few friends whose opinions I hold in the highest regard have challenged me recently to reconsider my support for open immigration. Their challenge springs neither from the economically uninformed Luddite view that immigrants will steal 'American jobs' (or lower Americans' wages) nor the worry that more immigrants will be a net drain, through their direct use of the existing welfare state, on the public fisc. Their challenge springs instead from the more plausible concern that immigrants will use their growing political power to vote for government policies that are more interventionist and less respectful of individual freedoms.

This concern isn't absurd (especially to those of us who believe that culture and rhetoric play a leading role in determining the actual law and policy of society and the performance of the economy). If too many people from countries less free and economies less dynamic than America come to the U.S. and then vote for the same policies that condemn their native countries to second- or third-world status – policies based chiefly on envy, zero-sum thinking, hostility to bourgeois pursuits, belief in secular salvation by Great Leaders, and mountains of plain old economic ignorance* – then the very commitment to freedom that leads me to support open immigration might be inconsistent with the long-run maintenance of freedom.

There is, of course, the chief empirical question: Will immigrants under a more welcoming and open regime - one in which they can more easily find employment outside of the black- or gray-market – generally vote as my concerned friends fear they will vote? This empirical question is layered atop another: Because immigrants to America will themselves be influenced by the American political culture that my concerned friends (like me) are keen to protect from further deterioration into dirigiste-ism, might American political culture be strong enough to protect itself by altering over time – and in time – immigrants' attitudes toward the state and markets?

As Frank Buckley's quotation above reveals, concern over the likely voting patterns of immigrants is nothing new. Past fears seem, from the perspective of 2013, to have been unjustified. [N.S.: Wrong: No mass European immigration, no New Deal, Fair Deal, or War on Poverty.] Or, at the very least, the benefits immigrants from 1789-2013 have brought to America almost surely overwhelm whatever costs immigrants might have inflicted via the ballot box on the economy.

[Wrong again: Possibly 1789-1920; certainly not, if you count the past 48 years.]

Of course, the fact that past fears have proven unjustified or overblown doesn't prove that current fears are unjustified or overblown. But our American experience with immigration over the first 224 years of this nation's existence should at least give pause to those who worry that something utterly new is afoot today.

[I guess he's never heard of the racial socialist welfare state, or anarcho-tyranny.]

But let's assume for the moment that today's immigrants – those immigrants recently arrived and those who would arrive under a more liberalized immigration regime – are indeed as likely as my concerned friends fear to vote overwhelmingly to move American economic policy in a much more dirigiste direction. Such a move would, I emphatically and unconditionally agree, be very bad. Very. Bad. Indeed.

I still support open immigration. I cannot bring myself to abandon support of my foundational principles just because following those principles might prove fatal. [But how is open borders a "foundational principle"?] I cannot tolerate state power to interfere with my and others' freedom of association, and with people's freedom of migration, on the grounds that scaling back such state power might lead to more state power wielded in other dimensions. [He fails to distinguish between means and ends, or between justified and unjustified forms of state power. No borders, no nation. No nation, no political freedom. The form of state power that protects and enforces borders is a pre-requisite to all of the other forms of liberty he cherishes. Political liberty has pre-requisites.]

Consider freedom of speech. Suppose that I looked around only to discover to my horror that the overwhelming number of people with something to say publicly are people with whom I profoundly disagree. I might worry – with justification – that if these people keep speaking unobstructed by the state, they will so change the ideas and culture of my fellow Americans that the freedoms that I cherish (including freedom of speech) will likely be destroyed. Should I qualify my commitment to freedom of speech? Should I make an exception in this case because the facts as they appear today suggest that the continued exercise of freedom of speech will lead to outcomes hostile to freedom?

No way. There is no way I would ever say "Well, in this case we should deny or modify freedom of speech. It's the practical course to take."

Freedom isn't valuable because it is guaranteed never to fail; it's not so guaranteed and it never has been. Freedom may well destroy itself. That's a risk I'm willing to take, especially if the proposed means of saving freedom is to restrict it.

I have no illusions (I really and truly do not) that anything that I write here, or that I might write in follow-up posts or essays, will convince my concerned friends that the greater danger to the freedom that they cherish lies in excusing pragmatic-seeming exceptions to freedom rather than in a principled commitment to maintain freedom – to maintain it on all fronts, as full-throttled as possible, and with optimism that freedom supported with principle and as a matter of principle is very likely to prove to be stronger and more enduring than they think.

Finally here, I ask my concerned friends to consider that the very same government – the very same set of politicians and bureaucrats – that they (my friends) rightly and wisely distrust to wield the power to tax and regulate is the government and set of politicians and bureaucrats that my friends are willing to trust with the power to regulate and restrict immigration. That's a tactic that strikes me as being suspect in principle and highly dubious in practice.

….

* I'm aware that, although I didn't intend the result, my list here of the feared faults with immigrants' economic thinking is a very good description of the thinking of the editorialists at the New York Times and of a huge number of other American intellectual elites – very few of whom are recent immigrants to America, and many of whom look as though, or were schooled as though, their ancestors sailed to these shores on the Mayflower.

[Yes, but the communists at the Times are banking on exploiting the power that Mexican communists will provide them with. The fact that most Hispanic immigrants agree with the politics of the Times is not an argument for letting them in.]

With Too Many Posters Talking Sense on the George Zimmerman Trial Against the Trayvonistas, Crime Web Site Websleuths Shuts Down All Discussions of the Case!

By Nicholas Stix

My partner in crime, David in TN, had just recommended the place to me, because the sane posters were getting the edge, but the thread Nazis had no intention of tolerating that!

Remember when the Web was the new frontier of freedom of opinion? Me, too.

Should We Hang Edward Snowden, or Replace Our Present Dictator with Him?

Posted by Nicholas Stix

 

 

Edward Snowden Says He Sought Booz Allen Hamilton Job to Gather NSA Surveillance Evidence

The Huffington Post | By Mollie Reilly Posted: 06/24/2013 12:54 pm EDT | Updated: 06/24/2013 7:21 pm EDT

Edward Snowden, the former government contractor who leaked information on the National Security Agency's surveillance programs, says he sought the job with Booz Allen Hamilton to gather evidence on the agency's data collection networks.

In a June 12 interview with the South China Morning Post published Monday, Snowden, who previously worked as a CIA technician, said he took the position with the intention of collecting information on the NSA.

"My position with Booz Allen Hamilton granted me access to lists of machines all over the world the NSA hacked," he said. "That is why I accepted that position about three months ago."

SCMP reports:

Asked if he specifically went to Booz Allen Hamilton to gather evidence of surveillance, he replied: "Correct on Booz."

His intention was to collect information about the NSA hacking into "the whole world" and "not specifically Hong Kong and China".

The documents he divulged to the Post were obtained during his tenure at Booz Allen Hamilton in April, he said.

Snowden also told the Hong Kong newspaper that he intends to leak more documents on the NSA's programs.

Last week, Reuters reported that Booz Allen Hamilton hired Snowden despite finding possible discrepancies in his resume. The Senate has also launched an investigation into USIS, the government contractor that vetted Snowden in 2011.

"We are limited in what we can say about this investigation because it is an ongoing criminal matter," Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said of the investigation. "But it is a reminder that background investigations can have real consequences for our national security."

According to the latest reports, Snowden has left Hong Kong and is believed to be in Russia. Snowden reportedly did not make a Monday flight to Cuba as planned.

During a Monday conference call with reporters, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said Snowden is "safe and healthy," but would not give further details on his whereabouts.

Friday, June 28, 2013

Watch Hurricane Sandy Hit Palmiero’s Wall, in Belle Harbor (the Rockaways), in New York City

Posted by Nicholas Stix





Thanks to Michael G. Palmiero for the upload. Sorry for your losses, neighbor.


This brings back memories. Based on the light, it couldn’t have been more than 20 minutes after Sandy made landfall (i.e., 5:55 p.m.) and almost killed my 12-year-old on that same 100-year-old boardwalk, and but a few hours before she would sweep it away, at least the sections in Belle Harbor (including the section depicted here) and much of Rockaway Park.

That Harvey! The Mets’ Matt Harvey Had 11 Strikeouts, No Walks, and a 3-1 Lead Over the Nats After Seven

By Nicholas Stix

How about this as a poster for Matt Harvey’s Ks, as a game unfolds?
 

At this point, unfortunately, the Nats are ahead, 6-4, with two outs in the top of the ninth. That’s yet another win that Harvey won’t get, and that the Mets are in danger of losing, in spite of a brilliant performance from their young ace.

Reuters Works to Railroad George Zimmerman

Posted, with running commentary, by Nicholas Stix

Trayvon Martin Friend, Rachel, to Testify at George Zimmerman Trial

Reuters | Posted: 06/25/2013 6:00 am EDT | Updated: 06/25/2013 2:14 pm EDT

 

George Zimmerman waits for his defense counsel to arrive in Seminole circuit court for his trial, in Sanford, Fla., Monday, June 24, 2013. Zimmerman has been charged with second-degree murder for the 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin. (AP Photo/Orlando Sentinel, Joe Burbank/Pool)




By Barbara Liston

SANFORD, Fla., June 25 (Reuters) - Prosecutors in the Florida murder trial of neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman will reveal a star witness for the first time on Tuesday, the girl Trayvon Martin was talking with in the last minutes of his life.

[The so-called star witness was first revealed by the Martin family attorney Benjamin Crump in March, 2012.]

The teenage girl, known as Witness #8 until now, was due to testify about what Martin, the unarmed black 17-year-old shot and killed by Zimmerman last year, told her what he saw that night.

[Actually, she's 19, an age at which the MSM typically refer to a female as a "woman," not as a "girl." Note that Trayvon Martin was not unarmed. He was armed with his fists and the sidewalk.]

Identified in court on Monday only as Rachel, a friend of Martin from Miami, she received a running account about what was happening, starting when he noticed a man, Zimmerman, watching him in the gated central Florida community he was visiting.

Zimmerman, 29 and part Hispanic, was a neighborhood watch volunteer in the Retreat at Twin Lakes community in Sanford at the time of the Feb. 26, 2012, killing. He has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder and could face life imprisonment if convicted.

[Reuters alleged reporter Barbara Liston knew at this point that the witness was named Rachel Jeantel. Jeantel's name had already been published elsewhere. Liston was acting as if Jeantel were a child, and needed to be protected, a strategy pioneered by Benjamin Crump, who demanded "privacy" for Jeantel in March, 2012. However, even if Jeantel had been under age, she would have had no right to have her identity hidden. One does not have the right to take a man's liberty form behind a veil of secrecy. What about alleged rape victims? That rule applies to them, as well.]

The racially charged case triggered civil rights protests and debates [sic] about the treatment of black Americans in the U.S. justice system, since police did not arrest Zimmerman for 44 days.

[There were no "debates" about "the treatment of black Americans in the U.S. justice system"; rather, there were one-sided, racist rants and dishonest reporting by the MSM.]

To win a conviction for second-degree murder, the prosecution must convince jurors that Zimmerman acted with "ill will, hatred, spite or an evil intent," and "an indifference to human life," according to Florida jury instructions.

In previous written testimony, Rachel described Martin as scared and trying to get away from the man. She was urging him to run. She last heard Martin say, "why are you following me" after which she said she heard what sounded like Martin falling. Then the phone line went dead.

The Martin family lawyer, Ben Crump, has said her testimony helps destroy Zimmerman's claim that he acted in self-defense.

[No real reporter would rely on Benjamin Crump; that's like taking Al Sharpton's word for anything.]

Zimmerman placed a four-minute phone call to police when he first spotted Martin, telling a dispatcher that the Miami teen looked "real suspicious."

Martin was a student at a Miami-area high school and a guest of one of the homeowners. He was walking back to the house after buying snacks at a nearby convenience store when he was shot in the chest during a confrontation [sic] with Zimmerman.

[This is the phony, neutral-sounding language of moral equivalence. Barbara Liston knew at the time of this "report" that Zimmerman had shot Martin, but also that Martin had inflicted terrible wounds on Zimmerman. That she would mention the one without the other constitutes a lie of omission, and putting her thumb on the scales of justice.]

Also on Tuesday, lawyers will continue to dissect witness testimony about Zimmerman's call to police. Jurors heard the "suspicious person" call three times on Monday, twice during the opening statements and again during witness testimony.

In opening statements Monday, the prosecution portrayed Zimmerman as a man with a concealed weapon who committed a vigilante-style killing. The defense suggested that Martin was the aggressor, and Zimmerman acted to protect his own life.

Six jurors, all women, were selected last week to hear the case. Florida law requires a minimum of six jurors except in cases where the death penalty is sought.

Under Florida's Stand Your Ground law, which was approved in 2005 and has since been copied by about 30 other states, people fearing for their lives can use deadly force without having to retreat from a confrontation, even when it is possible. (Editing by David Adams and Doina Chiacu)

[Florida's Stand Your Ground law is completely irrelevant to this story. Months ago, the defense announced in court that it was not pursuing an SYG defense, and was instead arguing self-defense. Thus, <EM>Reuters</EM> is still recycling the racist MSM lynch mob's March, 2012 talking points. The MSM seized on SYG at the time, because they sought to have it repealed.]

Screw Non-Partisanship: The League of Women Voters Supports Vote Fraud (i.e., the Democratic Party), and Uses Such Support as a Fundraising Point!

 

 

Dear …….,


This week the Supreme Court gutted Section 4 of the landmark Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965. This decision erases fundamental protections against racial discrimination in voting that have been effective for more than 40 years.

Until Congress acts to restore the critical protections provided by this crucial legislation, the rights of some of the most vulnerable and underrepresented groups of voters are at stake. All states, including those that have a history of blatant voter discrimination are now free to wreak havoc on the rights of voters whose voices are often the least heard.

The League urgently needs your help today to fight back. Will you help us protect the rights of voters by making a generous gift right now of $, $, or more?

During the 2012 Presidential election, partisan politicians and special interests waged a war against voters — working to overturn voting rights laws, limiting voter registration by groups like the League and using tactics that blocked access to the polls.

The League fought back then and we are fighting back now.

We need to act immediately by going to Congress to fix the VRA and by fighting restrictions on the right to vote in the states.

This decision will only embolden those who seek to create barriers to voters' rights. Without a strong VRA, our ability to fight off anti-voter legislation and keep our elections free, fair and accessible is significantly weakened. We need your strongest support today to help tell Congress that it must restore the Voting Rights Act.

The League has been tirelessly working for over 90 years to protect the rights of all eligible voters. We won't sit on the sidelines while the voting rights of millions of Americans are threatened.

No one does this work like the League — and it has never been more important.

That's why I hope I can count on you to help us protect the right to vote and keep our elections free, fair and accessible.

We need YOUR help to combat the pernicious discrimination that is less visible than what occurred decades ago but no less harmful to the right to vote. Please help the League stand up to these direct threats to you and your fellow voters today.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Elisabeth MacNamara
President, LWVUS

PS: American democracy is built on free, fair, and accessible elections. That's what's at stake right now. Please support the League today and help us defend everyone's right to vote.

Copyright © 2013 League of Women Voters, 1730 M Street NW, Suite 1000, Washington, DC 20036-4508. All Rights Reserved.

Unsubscribe from all fundraising national League emails

Ann Coulter: If Not for Open Borders, GOP Would Be Demographically Burying Dems

Posted by Nicholas Stix

A tip 'o the hate to James Fulford.


New GOP Strategy: Give Democrats a Big Head Start!
By Ann Coulter
June 26, 2013
[N.S.: Links are by Miss Coulter’s assistant.]

After the bad news on gay marriage out of the Supreme Court this week, here's some good news for conservatives: Demographics are on our side!

As M. Stanton Evans has recently pointed out, "Believers in religious doctrine, the traditional family and pro-life attitudes on abortion are systematically outperforming their secular-liberal opponents in the demographic sweepstakes -- having appreciably more children per couple -- resulting in a fertility gap that works against the liberals."

Republican states, such as Utah and Kentucky, have been steadily gaining population, while liberal states, such as New York and Vermont, are consistent demographic losers. It should not come as a surprise, though it always does, that people opposed to abortion are out-populating those who consider abortion a right.

Jewish publications have repeatedly observed that the declining fertility rate among all American Jews except the Orthodox -- the group that votes 86 percent Republican -- means that, in another generation or two, Jews could be majority Republican. (What a wonderful world it would be if Marco Rubio had half of Chuck Schumer's IQ!)

But liberals always have a workaround. For decades, their solution to the left's demographic collapse has been immigration. Idiot Republicans being buffaloed into supporting Rubio's amnesty bill are not merely throwing Democrats a lifeline -- they're allowing Democrats to flip an imminent conservative victory into a permanent liberal majority.

With native-born liberals unwilling to reproduce themselves, liberals need a constant influx of new Democratic voters from other countries -- and there happen to be 11 million of them living here right now! Contrary to Rubio-Republicans who think "they all look alike," the vast majority of Hispanics are not "social conservatives." (That's blacks, Marco.) [?; no, you’re not the only one wondering.]

In addition to being the one ethnic group most opposed to capitalism -- even more than Occupy Wall Street protesters! -- polls show that Hispanics are more pro-abortion than other Americans (66 percent of Hispanics versus 50 percent of other voters) and favor gay marriage more than other Americans (59 percent compared to 48 percent of all voters). They also support big government by an astronomical 75 percent and Obamacare, in particular, by 62 percent. (Polls: Pew, ABC, ABC, Pew, Fox)

Of course the Democrats want these illegals voting!

It is of no concern to the Democratic Party that illegal aliens are lawbreakers and overwhelmingly minimum-wage workers. Liberals don't care about the working class having millions more low-skilled workers competing with them, and they certainly don't care about the country. They just want to win elections. (If only it would occur to Republicans that they need to win elections, too.)

Next, Democrats will be demanding that we set up polling booths in the prisons and sending Marco Rubio out to argue that we already have "de facto" prison-voting.

As happens with so much mischievous legislation, Republicans are being told, "We have got to do this yesterday!" If we don't produce a global warming bill, the American people will have our heads! If we don't pass campaign finance reform tomorrow, the voters will punish us! You're not seriously thinking of blocking a new gun control bill, are you?

Then, it always turns out: No, there's not going to be a backlash. The only politicians ever punished for a gun vote were the entire House Democratic caucus in the Republican sweep of 1994. The only politician who was ever punished for his position on global warming is Al Gore.

But Democrats love to act like everything's a crisis, so Republicans don't have time to think and can be stampeded into doing something stupid. When it comes to government, doing nothing is often the best course.

Republicans have to understand: You are not going to be punished by Hispanics for voting against this Obamacare-like monstrosity of an amnesty bill. If you have Hispanics in your district, they're already voting against you.

The Lindsey Graham argument is: Now when they vote against you, they'll really hate you.

Hispanics are 8.4 percent of the electorate, so we're talking about the 80 percent of 8.4 percent of voters who will never vote Republican, anyway. They will allegedly hold this one anti-amnesty vote against Republicans -- despite polls showing Hispanics don't care about amnesty. Those are the voters Republicans are determined to make hate them less, while enraging every American who doesn't benefit from cheap labor or Democratic votes.

Meanwhile, don't imagine, Republicans, that you can buy off your anti-amnesty constituents with another meaningless vote to repeal Obamacare.

Does it occur to these brainless wonders in the GOP that the Democrats wouldn't be agitating for amnesty if it didn't get them votes? That's all it's about. Liberals want the rest of the world's poor to come here not only to raise their children, clean their houses, manicure their lawns and cook their meals, but to give birth to the Democratic children that liberals aren't having.

National Review Reprints Solid Victor Davis Hanson Column

Posted by Nicholas Stix

 

I'm guessing this one is from sometime between 2001 and 2003.

 

June 27, 2013 12:00 AM

The Glue Holding America Together
As it fragments into various camps, the country is being held together by a common popular culture.

ByVictor Davis Hanson

 

Comments

779

Victor Davis Hanson

 

By a.d. 200, the Roman Republic was a distant memory. Few citizens of the global Roman Empire even knew of their illustrious ancestors like Scipio or Cicero. Millions no longer spoke Latin. Italian emperors were a rarity. There were no national elections.

Yet Rome endured as a global power for three more centuries. What held it together?

A stubborn common popular culture and the prosperity of Mediterranean-wide standardization kept things going. The Egyptian, the Numidian, the Iberian, and the Greek assumed that everything from Roman clay lamps and glass to good roads and plentiful grain was available to millions throughout the Mediterranean world.

[Already by the time Hanson wrote those words, residents of the American empire were buying few American-made products.]

As long as the sea was free of pirates, thieves were cleared from the roads, and merchants were allowed to profit, few cared whether the lawless Caracalla or the unhinged Elagabalus was emperor in distant Rome.

[Bad analogy; we are plagued by "pirates" and thieves, and our corporations are too often profitable through using the government to pick productive citizens' pockets.]

Something likewise both depressing and encouraging is happening to the United States. Few Americans seem to worry that our present leaders have lied to or misled Congress and the American people without consequences.

Most young people cannot distinguish the First Amendment from the Fourth Amendment — and do not worry about the fact that they cannot. Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln are mere names of grammar schools, otherwise unidentifiable to most.

[Actually, already in 2001, those names were increasingly being removed from grammar schools.]

Separatism is believed to bring dividends. Here in California, universities conduct separate graduation ceremonies predicated on race — sometimes difficult given the increasingly mixed ancestry of Americans.

As in Rome, there is a vast disconnect between the elites and the people. Almost half of Americans receive some sort of public assistance, and almost half pay no federal income tax. About one-seventh of Americans are on food stamps.

Yet housing prices in elite enclaves — Manhattan, Cambridge, Santa Monica, Palo Alto — are soaring. The wealthy like to cocoon themselves in Roman-like villas, safe from the real-life ramifications of their own utopian ideology.

The government and the media do their best to spread the ideals of radical egalitarianism while avoiding offense to anyone. [Already in 2001, they were obsessively giving offense to white, heterosexual American patriots, especially Christian.] There is no official War on Terror or against radical Islamism. Instead, in "overseas contingency operations," we fight "man-caused disasters," while at home, we deal with "workplace violence."

In news stories that involve crimes with divisive racial themes, the media frequently paper over information about the perpetrators. [That would be virtually all violent crime in urban areas.] But that noble restraint only seems to incite readers. In reckless fashion they often post the most inflammatory online comments about such liberal censorship. [Actually, fewer and fewer outlets permit any reader comments, or lock dissidents. Indeed, I can't comment on this column, because I was permablocked months ago by National Review's thread Nazis.]  Officially, America celebrates diversity; privately, America is fragmenting into racial, political, and ideological camps.

So why is the United States not experiencing something like the rioting in Turkey or Brazil, or the murder of thousands in Mexico? [Actually we suffer daily riots by racist blacks. But then, I can't criticize Hanson for not knowing that. After all, we weren't suffering daily black race riots in 2001-2003.]

How are we able to avoid the bloody chaos of Syria, the harsh dictatorships of Russia and China, the implosion of Egypt, or the economic hopelessness now endemic in southern Europe? [Actually, we are living in a dictatorship.]

About half of America and many of its institutions operate as they always have. Caltech and MIT are still serious. Neither interjects race, class, and gender studies into its engineering or physics curricula. [Yet.] Most [whites] in the IRS, unlike some of their bosses, are not corrupt. For the [white] well driller, the [white] power-plant operator, and the [white] wheat farmer, the lies in Washington are still mostly an abstraction.

Get up at 5:30 a.m. and you'll see that your local freeways are jammed with hard-working [white] commuters. They go to work every day, support their families, pay their taxes, and avoid arrest — so that millions of others [blacks and Hispanics] do not have to do the same. The U.S. military still more closely resembles our [white] heroes from World War II than it resembles the culture of the Kardashians.

Like diverse citizens of imperial Rome, we are united in some fashion by shared popular tastes and mass consumerism. The cell phones and cars of the poor offer more computing power and better transportation than the rich enjoyed just 20 years ago. [Popular culture, rather than being glue, is a solvent that inculcates hatred of everything great about America.]

Youth of all races and backgrounds in lockstep fiddle with their cell phones as they walk about. Jeans are an unspoken American uniform — both for Wall Street grandees and for the homeless on the sidewalks. Left, right, liberal, conservative, professor, and ditch digger have similar-looking Facebook accounts.

If Rome quieted the people with public spectacles and cheap grain from the provinces, so too Americans of all classes keep glued to favorite video games and reality-TV shows. Fast food is both cheap [not so cheap, anymore] and tasty [?]. All that for now is preferable to rioting and revolt.

Like Rome, America apparently can coast for a long time on the fumes of its wonderful political heritage and economic dynamism — even if both are little understood or appreciated by most who still benefit from them.

[There's no way such a deep, brilliant thinker would have still written that last paragraph in 2013.]

— Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His new book, The Savior Generals, is just out from Bloomsbury Press. You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com.©2013 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

Thursday, June 27, 2013

Have You Heard Mark Zuckerberg’s Bold, New Amnesty Commercial on the Radio?

 

Starving Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg

By Nicholas Stix

It’s 100 percent pure, unadulterated lies!

If You Read One Blog on the Trayvon Martin Hoax, This is the One!

 


Posted by Nicholas Stix

Trayvon and the Miami-Dade School Police Department – Redacted FOIA Newly Released – Former Police Chief Charles Hurley”
By Sundance
June 27, 2013
The Last Refuge

Sundance and his co-conspirators are guilty of having committed serial journalism. They have been doing without pay what the MSM are paid to do, but have refused to do: Making Freedom of Information Act requests, and unearthing a criminal conspiracy within the Miami-Dade School Police Department, which covered up some of Trayvon Martin’s crimes, which is a large reason why he had no criminal record. The criminal conspiracy of the school police cost the chief, Charles Hurley, his job.

In a sane world, Sundance would win a Pulitzer. Of course, in a sane world, Pulitzers would be awarded for journalistic exposés like those of Sundance, not for journalistic cover-ups.