Clay Waters of MRC’s Times Watch project noticed this week that the The New York Times was just as guilty as The Washington Post of jumping on the unsubstantiated adultery charges against female GOP gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley in South Carolina:
[Reporter Shaila] Dewan used the sex scandal of former South Carolina Republican Gov. Mark Sanford as an excuse to suggest, without substance like emails or phone messages, that the claims by blogger Will Folks fit a pattern of sexual bad behavior in the Palmetto State: “Scandal Rattles Politics In South Carolina, Again.” The text box to Wednesday’s print story worked in the party identification: “A blogger says he had an affair with a G.O.P. candidate for governor.”
The treatment of a fairly obscure Republican politician stands in sharp contrast to the paper’s blackout of the amply documented affair of former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards. The Times totally ignored the Edwards affair until the candidate himself confessed on ABC News, then, when its own public editor criticized the paper’s lack of coverage, editors made hypocritical excuses.
For more videos and discussion, seeHOTAIR’S POST on this. (UPDATED VIDEO)
Clip produced by official Israeli sources, describing the Israeli Navy’s interception of the Mavi Marmara of the Gaza Flotilla, which met with violence on the part of the IHH-sponsored protesters on board. As a result of the operation, nine assailants were killed, while seven Israeli personnel as well as about thirty protesters were injured.
More questions than answers came from the IDF video shots of the violent reception for Israeli naval commandos when they raided the Turkish ship early Monday, May 31 to prevent the pro-Palestinian flotilla from reaching Gaza Port and breaking the Israeli blockade on the Hamas-ruled territory.
Prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, who cancelled his trip to the United States and is flying straight home from Canada, will have to fill in the gaps left by his official spokesmen.
Released finally 12 hours after the event, the IDF shots failed to explain the big mystery of how soldiers armed with paint balls and pistols managed to kill 9 pro-Palestinian activists (Ankara claims 15 Turkish dead) and injure at least 34 aboard the Turkish Marmora.
Together with six injured soldiers – two in critical condition – the wounded activists are being treated in Israeli hospitals.
Israel’s chief of staff Lt. Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi, and Navy commander, Maj. Gen. Eliezer Marom, reported that a fierce clash developed aboard the ship as the soldiers dropped on deck from helicopters and were mobbed by passengers. The activists fired pistols, but it is not clear if the guns were in the peace activists’ luggage or snatched from the soldiers.
Neither is it clear how civilian protesters were able to disarm elite fighters of the Navy’s Shayetet 6 unit….
LAHORE, Pakistan — Gunmen stormed two Pakistani mosques belonging to a minority Muslim sect in Lahore on Friday, seizing hostages among worshippers, setting off grenades and sparking a bloody shootout with police.
Ahmadiyaa Theologically, Ahmadiyya is a cult of Islam. Their views about Jesus Christ, the Prophet Muhammad, and their own founder, whom they regard as the Messiah, have placed them at odds with the rest of the Muslim world.Ahmadiyyas and their mosques often come under terrorist attacks from extremist Muslims. The latter apparently believe that they present the world with a more accurate picture of Islam.
Gunfire and explosions rang out at the mosques — one in the upscale neighbourhood of Model Town, where a suicide car bomber struck in March, and the second in the heavily congested area of Garhi Shahu.
They are both mosques of the Ahmadis, also known as Qadiani, and have tens of thousands of members. Rights groups say the sect has long been persecuted in Pakistan and has remained an occasional target of sectarian attacks.
“Terrorists have attacked mosques. They are firing and using grenades. They have taken people inside the mosque hostage,” district civil defence official Muzhar Ahmed told AFP by telephone from the scene in Garhi Shahu.
[…]
Founded by Ghulam Ahmad, who was born in 1838, the Ahmadi sect has a number of unique views including that Ahmad himself was a prophet and that Jesus died aged 120 in Srinagar, capital of Indian-ruled Kashmir….
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently said that “the rich are not paying their fair share” of taxes in the United States and other developed countries.
Is she right? It depends on what you consider fair. Using 2006 data, The New York Times found that the richest 20 percent of households were paying 26 percent of their income to the federal government in the form of income, payroll, corporate, and excise taxes. The average for all familes? 21 percent.
And there’s this: “In 2006, the top quintile of households earned 55.7 percent of pretax income and paid 69.3 percent of federal taxes, while the top 1 percent of households earned 18.8 percent of income and paid 28.3 percent of taxes.”
Paying in a lot more than you get out? That doesn’t seem fair.
The rich are different than you and me; they’ve got more money. And they pay more taxes.
Politicians are different too–they rarely say what they really mean. Perhaps what Secretary Clinton means is that the rich can always pay more than they’re already paying.
That would explain why she and the president are lobbying to let the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of the year, a policy that would raise all sorts of taxes on all sorts of people.
TULTITLN, Mexico — Arizona’s new law forcing local police to take a greater role in enforcing immigration law has caused a lot of criticism from Mexico, the largest single source of illegal immigrants in the United States.
But in Mexico, illegal immigrants receive terrible treatment from corrupt Mexican authorities, say people involved in the system.
And Mexico has a law that is no different from Arizona’s that empowers local police to check the immigration documents of people suspected of not being in the country legally.
“There (in the United States), they’ll deport you,” Hector Vázquez, an illegal immigrant from Honduras, said as he rested in a makeshift camp with other migrants under a highway bridge in Tultitlán. “In Mexico they’ll probably let you go, but they’ll beat you up and steal everything you’ve got first.”
Mexican authorities have harshly criticized Arizona’s SB1070, a law that requires local police to check the status of persons suspected of being illegal immigrants. The law provides that a check be done in connection with another law enforcement event, such as a traffic stop, and also permits Arizona citizens to file lawsuits against local authorities for not fully enforcing immigration laws.
Mexico’s Foreign Ministry said the law “violates inalienable human rights” and Democrats in Congress applauded Mexican President Felipe Calderón’s criticisms of the law in a speech he gave on Capitol Hill last week.
Yet Mexico’s Arizona-style law requires local police to check IDs. And Mexican police freely engage in racial profiling and routinely harass Central American migrants, say immigration activists.
“The Mexican government should probably clean up its own house before looking at someone else’s,” said Melissa Vertíz, spokeswoman for the Fray Matías de Córdova Human Rights Center in Tapachula, Mexico.
In one six-month period from September 2008 through February 2009, at least 9,758 migrants were kidnapped and held for ransom in Mexico – 91 of them with the direct participation of Mexican police, a report by the National Human Rights Commission said. Other migrants are routinely stopped and shaken down for bribes, it said.
A separate survey conducted during one month in 2008 at 10 migrant shelters showed Mexican authorities were behind migrant attacks in 35 of 240 cases, or 15%.
Most migrants in Mexico are Central Americans who are simply passing through on their way to the United States, human rights groups say. Others are Guatemalans who live and work along Mexico’s southern border, mainly as farm workers, as maids, or in bars and restaurants.
The Central American migrants headed to the United States travel mainly on freight trains, stopping to rest and beg for food at rail crossings like the one in Tultitlán, an industrial suburb of Mexico City.
On a recent afternoon, Victor Manuel Beltrán Rodríguez of Managua, Nicaragua, trudged between the cars at a stop light, his hand outstretched.
“Can you give me a peso? I’m from Nicaragua,” he said. Every 10 cars or so, a motorist would roll down the window and hand him a few coins. In a half-hour he had collected 10 pesos, about 80 U.S. cents, enough for a taco.
Beltrán Rodríguez had arrived in Mexico with 950 pesos, about $76, enough to last him to the U.S. border. But near Tierra Blanca, Veracruz, he says municipal police had detained him, driven him to a deserted road and taken his money. He had been surviving since then by begging.
Abuses by Mexican authorities have persisted even as Mexico has relaxed its rules against illegal immigrants in recent years, according to the National Human Rights Commission.
In 2008, Mexico softened the punishment for illegal immigrants, from a maximum 10 years in prison to a maximum fine of $461. Most detainees are taken to detention centers and put on buses for home.
Mexican law calls for six to 12 years of prison and up to $46,000 in fines for anyone who shelters or transports illegal immigrants. The Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that the law applies only to people who do it for money.
For years, the Mexican government has allowed charity groups to openly operate migrant shelters, where travelers can rest for a few days on their journey north. The government also has a special unit of immigration agents, known as Grupo Beta, who patrol the countryside in orange pickups, helping immigrants who are in trouble.
At the same time, Article 67 of Mexico’s immigration law requires that all authorities “whether federal, local or municipal” demand to see visas if approached by a foreigner and to hand over migrants to immigration authorities.
“In effect, this means that migrants who suffer crimes, including kidnapping, prefer not to report them to avoid … being detained by immigration authorities and returned to their country,” the National Human Rights Commission said in a report last year.
As a result, the clause has strengthened gangs who abuse migrants, rights activists say.
“That Article 67 is an obstacle that urgently has to be removed,” said Alberto Herrera, executive director of Amnesty International Mexico. “It has worsened this vicious cycle of abuse and impunity, and the same thing could happen (in Arizona).”
(FLASHBACK: MAY 2010) Jay Beeber of FREEDOM MINUTE and SAFER STREETS LA does a bang-up job once-again on the seemingly hypocritical stance of L.A. Cit Councilman Paul Koretz’s “flip-flop” on what constitutes a “blood-curling analogy.” This audio is via JOHN & KEN’s radio show. At any rate, you will find some great stuff over at Jay’s sites, enjoy his funny interview above… reality is always more comical that fiction! (Jay Beeber’s TWITTER)
This video is recently uploaded to my RUMBLE to save it from disappearing,
as, the original was uploaded in 2008
Some say we throw terms around too much, like: socialistic, Marxist, fascist, and the like. I tend to agree with some commentators that we need to find one term and stick with it. Like statist. the Oxford Concise Dictionary of Politics defines statism as:
STATISM
In development studies, statism means the direction and control of economic and social affairs by the state. The practices included: investment in public enterprises; centralized economic planning; the regulation of employment; and other price-distorting interventions in the market.
The American Heritage Dictionary simply states it as:
The practice or doctrine of giving a centralized government control over economic planning and policy.
So you could call Obama a statist to sum up all the differing factors of his statements, his acquaintances, and his goals via political-philosophy in growing government. The case against Obama and that he is at the minimum a statist is air tight. So the idea of people who get upset with us conservatives about using terms like socialist, Marxist, and the like, should know the facts before making such (in their mind’s eye) counter attacks. I will only deal with a few of the facts that today’s Left is more radical than anything one could find on the mainstream political opposite. For instance, is there an equivalent to the Socialist Democrats of America organization (The Progressive Caucus):
As of June 2006, the following Members of Congress belonged to the Progressive Caucus: Neil Abercrombie; Tammy Baldwin; Xavier Becerra; Madeleine Z. Bordallo; Corrine Brown; Sherrod Brown; Michael Capuano; Julia Carson; Donna Christensen; William “Lacy” Clay; Emanuel Cleaver; John Conyers; Elijah Cummings; Danny Davis; Peter DeFazio; Rosa DeLauro; Lane Evans; Sam Farr; Chaka Fattah; Bob Filner; Barney Frank; Raul Grijalva; Luis Gutierrez; Maurice Hinchey; Jesse Jackson, Jr.; Sheila Jackson-Lee; Stephanie Tubbs Jones; Marcy Kaptur; Carolyn Kilpatrick; Dennis Kucinich; Tom Lantos; Barbara Lee; John Lewis; Ed Markey; Jim McDermott; James P. McGovern; Cynthia McKinney; George Miller; Gwen Moore; Jerrold Nadler; Eleanor Holmes Norton; John Olver; Major Owens; Ed Pastor; Donald Payne; Nancy Pelosi; Charles Rangel; Bobby Rush; Bernie Sanders; Jan Schakowsky; Jose Serrano; Louise Slaughter; Hilda Solis; Pete Stark; Bennie Thompson; John Tierney; Tom Udall; Nydia Velazquez; Maxine Waters; Diane Watson; Mel Watt; Henry Waxman; and Lynn Woolsey.
Remember, the Socialist Democrats have a history of totalitarianism. That is not the point however, does the “right” have something as radical as that where mainstream politicians are active parts or members of? Obama, for instance, ran under the New Party, which can roughly be said to be a Communist political party (CONSERVAPEDIA):
In 1995 Obama accepted the nomination, signed a contract,[285] and ran as a candidate of the openly Marxist New Party.[286][287] The New Party was an electoral alliance that worked alongside ACORN, formed by members of the Democratic Socialists for America (SPUSA and DSAUSA) and leaders of an offshoot of the Community Party USA (CPUSA).[288] The New Party was funded by literally hundreds of leftist front-groups operating as special interest 527 organizations.[289]
HOTAIRpointed to the many radical positions within this New Party a while ago as well:
In any case, the New Party was clearly far to the left of mainstream Democrats, and according to Sifry, the party explicitly thought of itself as made up of committed “progressives,” rather than conventional “liberals.” That is entirely consistent with a famous 1995 profile of Obama by Hank De Zutter, which portrays him as closely tied to ACORN, and holding a world-view well “beyond” his mother’s conventional liberalism.
To get a sense of where the New Party stood politically, consider some of its early supporters: Barbara Dudley of Greenpeace, Steve Cobble political director of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coaltion, and prominent academics like Frances Fox Piven coauthor of the “Cloward-Piven strategy” and a leader of the drive for the “motor-voter” legislation Obama later defended in court on behalf of ACORN, economist Juliet Schor, black historian, Manning Marable, historian Howard Zinn, linguist Noam Chomsky, Todd Gitlin, and writers like Gloria Steinem, and Barbara Ehrenreich…. In any case, the New Party clearly stands substantially to the left of the mainstream Democratic party.
Obama has even mentioned he has read and been influenced by Marxists. For example, in this Accuracy in Media article, this fact is pointed out:
In his books, Obama admits attending “socialist conferences” and coming into contact with Marxist literature. But he ridicules the charge of being a “hard-core academic Marxist,” which was made by his colorful and outspoken 2004 U.S. Senate opponent, Republican Alan Keyes.
However, through Frank Marshall Davis, Obama had an admitted relationship with someone who was publicly identified as a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). The record shows that Obama was in Hawaii from 1971-1979, where, at some point in time, he developed a close relationship, almost like a son, with Davis, listening to his “poetry” and getting advice on his career path. But Obama, in his book, Dreams From My Father, refers to him repeatedly as just “Frank.”
The reason is apparent: Davis was a known communist who belonged to a party subservient to the Soviet Union. In fact, the 1951 report of the Commission on Subversive Activities to the Legislature of the Territory of Hawaii identified him as a CPUSA member. What’s more, anti-communist congressional committees, including the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), accused Davis of involvement in several communist-front organizations.
BERTHA LEWISis a name in infamy, thanks to a “pimp and ho” undercover job. But her and Obama’s ties are well-known as illustrated in the above video. However, many do not search out the ties some of these people have. Not only that, but often times one need only go to the “horses mouth” to find this radicalism:
This is one reason that Arizona has canceled radical ethnic classes that go under the guise as multiculturalism but in fact want to create racist separatism in its place. One candidate for office rightly calls some of these people terrorists. Navy veteran, patriot and fierce Obama critic, Les Philip, is running for Republican candidate for Congress, Alabama. He makes the point that the person whom Obama started his political career in the home of is really a terrorist:
As one can see from the following video, Obama was closer to Ayers that at first imagined, not to mention that this was a great political ad that failed to reach the hearts of enough people:
ZOMBLOG got his hands on a photo of Barack Obama reviewing a Bill Ayers book:
From this we can surmise that Obama was aware of Ayers. Further more, Ayers mentions Obama on page 82 of that book reviewed by Obama (FLOPPING ACES):
Ayers omits any discussion of his famous 1970 statement, “Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that’s where it’s really at.” He also omits any discussion of his wife Bernardine Dohrn’s famous reaction to the Manson killings, as conveyed by journalist Peter Collier: “Dig it. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they even shoved a fork into a victim’s stomach! Wild!” (In a 1993 Chicago Magazine profile, Dohrn claimed, implausibly, that she’d been trying to convey that “Americans love to read about violence.”)(REASON)
So we know that some of Obama’s closest political ties are radical socialist, communists, or Marxists. But let’s not try to differentiate between all the minutia between them, let’s just call them statists. Statists want a government similar to the below:
Obama, then, and the left, would speak in terms similar — or at least more at home in — a camp of statist terms and understanding. Let’s see how these few examples fair after this quote:
“From Each According To His Ability, To Each According To His Need (Or Needs)”
Karl Marx, In His 1875 Critique Of The Gotha Program
