The Whoopi cushion speaks . . . on "rape-rape"

Roman Polanski: backlash as Whoopi Goldberg says director didn't commit 'rape-rape' - Telegraph:

Whoopi Goldberg is facing a fierce backlash after saying that film director Roman Polanski didn't commit 'rape-rape' when he had unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl.

And her flatulent ignorance on the facts of the case are astonishing.

Whose pro-life priorities?

Adam Kleinheider pronounces Tennessee Right to Life unwise in endorsing the more pro-life candidate (Post Politics: Right to Life makes wrong choice endorsing Democrat):

So why, on the cusp of victory for the political party that carries it's legislative portfolio, would the premier pro-life organization in Tennessee endorse the Democratic candidate? Why did TNRTL endorse Cobb?

The TNRTL endorsed him for the same reason a child defies a parent or a wife cheats on an emotionally distant husband. They wanted to be noticed. If the TNRTL had simply gone along and endorsed the Republican candidate, it would have been expected. But, by endorsing the Democrat, the TNRTL got to make a splash. They sent a message.

Yeah, and what is the message? That after 36 years of abortion on demand--an overwhelmingly minority position (here--and btw, ACK is relying on old polling data), Tennessee Right to Life expects more than lip service on their issue.

At least the sex predators are safe . . .

Washington Times - EDITORIAL: At the president's pleasure

A teacher was told by a 15-year-old high school sophomore that he was having homosexual sex with an "older man." At the very least, statutory rape occurred. Fox News reported that the teacher violated a state law requiring that he report the abuse. That former teacher, Kevin Jennings, is President Obama's "safe school czar.

McCarthyism motivates the Hondurans!

The AP (here)nicely slants this story against those supporting Rule of Law in Honduras with this nice characterization of what happened there . . . they were skeered of them Commies!!!

In June, the country's Congress and courts, alarmed by Zelaya's political shift into a close alliance with leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Cuba, backed the president's removal.

Vols make us proud

I liked this sentence from CBS' Dennis Dodd (While Vols stand tall, Gators at a loss after win):

Oh, you haven't heard? Tennessee defeated Florida 13-23.

A legal but perverse stimulant

I've always heard (and believed, for the most part) that aggressive tax-avoidance measures (aka "availing oneself of tax benefits") were justified because we were doing what the government wanted us to do. Well, it was interesting to find that exact line of reasoning in this blog post about how citizens are spending their stimulus-sourced monies.

“We did exactly what the government wanted us to do,” said Ms. Myers, a third grade teacher. “We stimulated the economy.”

Sorry, but no. All of these Cash for ________ programs do not "stimulate the economy." They encourage people to spend instead of save and buy this instead of that. Tax rate cuts, on the other hand, encourage people to work harder, increase productivity and grow the economy. Under Obama, we're getting more redistribution and higher tax rates — exactly the opposite of economic stimulus.

I find it hard to fault the couple in this article, but I have to concur with NR's Stephen Spruiell that no matter how innocuous the stimulus' intentions, it very often would qualify as a perverse incentive.

Racism behind every tree (UPDATE)

I was disturbed by the headline on Drudge that mentioned the race of a victim in a "beat[ing]": "WHITE STUDENT BEATEN ON SCHOOL BUS; CROWD CHEERS." I am bothered by racism, wishing that we could somehow move beyond or through our country's (and our world's) troubled history on the subject. Indeed, a flippant accusation of racism by Mike Lupica today gave me a similar feeling (criticizing Conservative protestors thusly: "Or maybe this all just comes out of a fury that there weren't enough screamers to keep the black guy from getting elected.") Accordingly, I am always concerned that race be injected into--or hastily raised as a factor in, a given situation.

So I followed Drudge's link ("Tape shows beating on bus of Belleville West student" - STLtoday.com), and from reading the story, it appears that this is an example of a bully or bullies (or in a more modern articulation, "thugs") who perpetrated on a harmless victim--a guy who had the audacity to sit where a thug told him he couldn't.

I don't know anything about Belleville, Illinois, but a police spokesman seemed to jump to a racist conclusion:

"In my estimation, it's racially motivated," said Capt. Don Sax of the Belleville Police Department. He said one reason he had formed this opinion was that many of the students, most of whom were black, yelled their support for the beating.

"There was absolutely no justification for the beating either time," Sax said.

The still picture of the incident seems to reflect that a majority of the kids close to the incident were non-caucasians, yet the article says that, "students intervened to help the victim both times" (though "the crowd's" reactions generally reflect a disturbing moral poverty, too).

I won't deny that our society is coarsening, in general, but it is counter-productive in a variety of ways to summarily categorize such problems as motivated by race.

UPDATE: Ex-President (yes, picture the "Ex" who could never get the message) Jimmy Carter weighs in on the racial aspects of socializing healthcare . . . maybe Carter reads Mike Lupica.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

UPDATE II: It gets worse . . . from RealClearPolitics.com:RealClearPolitics - Why Can't We All Just Get Along?:

"'Surrounded by middle-aged white guys -- a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men's club -- Joe Wilson yelled 'You lie!' at a president who didn't,' declared Maureen Dowd in her Saturday New York Times column. 'But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!'

Of course, it's fair. If inserting a racial epithet into a quote is wrong, I don't wanna know what's right. It is, moreover, common knowledge that middle-aged white men are bigots. If there's a problem with Dowd's premise, it's that Wilson likely lacks the intellect to string together more than two words per sentence. He is from South Carolina, after all."

Joe Wilson and there's safety in numbers

This op/ed from Mike Lupica, "whoever he is," inspired me (way to go Mike Lupica!!) to revisit the subject of Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC). ("Shrill shouters betray post-9/11 promises to be best we can be")

While I do not condone what Wilson did, I also didn't condone what other joint sessions of Congress have done during presidential addresses. The same could not be said of many from the Left who are attempting to make hay from the Wilson incident. As I've pointed out previously, it appears that the key in avoiding Lefty fire and brimstone for such a thing is to (a) be a Democrat, (b) make sure you have a crowd of other hecklers on your side, or (c) make sure you have the MSM on your side (that's kind of redundant with (a), isn't it?)

Marriage should be honored by all

Here's a great op/ed from NR's K-Lo on the state of marriage (and adultery) in America.

Wilson was rude, but "precedented"

I posted earlier this week (here) about Joe Wilson's outburst during the Obama's healthcare homile, in sum, I thought his heckling was not cool even if his assertion was correct. But it appears that he may have gotten the wrong idea about how to conduct oneself during a presidential address from . . . (drumroll) . . . Democrats:



From this video, it is fair to conclude that Wilson's problem was that his rudeness wasn't lost in a sea of rudeness from his fellow party members.

Update: Franken party trick

This is impressive. Al Franken freehands a surprisingly accurate map of the U.S.



I'm kind of interested to hear the audio of his running commentary . . . (UPDATE: here's an example of it--not flattering to Franken, candidly).


UPDATE II: While I still think it's cool, its sheen was a little diminished when I realized that he has been doing this for more than 20 years.

Re. healthcare reform lies and distortions . . .

You've likely heard the Dems' focus-grouped talking points about "lies and distortions" from opponents of socializing medical insurance. Well, in this week's column, Ann Coulter addresses the following Liberal lies about (Liberal) healthcare reform proposals: (Liberal Lies About National Healthcare: Fourth in a Series)

(12) Only national health care can provide "coverage that will stay with you whether you move, change your job or lose your job"

(13) The "public option" trigger is something other than a national takeover of health care.

(14) National health care will not cover abortions or illegal immigrants.

Republican Joe Wilson's heckling not cool

The outburst by Joe Wilson (Wilson the congressman, not the one who outed his CIA agent wife) during Obama's umpteenth national address last night was not cool. ("Obama heckled by GOP during speech: 'You lie!'" It was a breach of decorum and it was unprofessional.

That being said, I've always admired and kind of enjoyed the Brits' practice of Prime Minister's Questions.

Obama's speech: loco parents or in loco parentis?

One last thing (maybe) about Obama's homeroom assembly for public school kids K-12. The Left's response to criticism about the speech and accompanying lesson plans has been intriguing. Sure, some of the outrage was from people who see a socialist plot behind every Obama-era tree. But a lot of the outcry is/was from parents because the Obama Adminstration's strategy (yes, "strategy") upset, in my estimation, the delicate relationship parents have with schools. Parents rely on teachers and schools to exercise discretion in how they influence our kids, and the intent of this campaign (based on the pre-public-outcry lesson plans, really) was unsettling to many. Charles Krauthammer said something along these lines late last week:

Look, this was never about content. We were not going to have the president urging eight-year-olds to come out in favor of high taxes as patriotic. And anything he said would be perfectly OK, it will be “tie your shoelaces and be nice to your neighbor.”

What is odd and creepy is the conception of government that underlay whoever it was in the Education Department — and it could have been a plural — to have a question [for the kids to write about]: 'How can you help your president?'

That is not innocuous. Look, it is not going to do any real damage. We're not going to have people chanting poems about their Dear Leader. The question is that that kind of thing — about a relationship between the child and the president — is extremely odd. A child has a relationship with a parent or with a teacher, later a mentor or a coach, but not a president.

A child swears allegiance to the flag and the republic for which it stands, but not the man who happens to be sitting in the White House. That's the difference between a 'popular democracy' (which is really a dictatorship) and a constitutional democracy.

And the idea that you would want a child to have any relationship with a president is odd. He shouldn't have any at all.

Update: NBC says (here), "A lot of the parents complaining aren't smart enough to raise them very effectively." I'm just sayin' . . .

Re. Van Jones: "lies"? "distortions"?

Of course Van Jones would shamelessly would flat-out deceive about his critics, but what is Dr. Dean, M.D.'s excuse?Van Jones decries 'lies and distortions,'quits as Obama's environmental advisor -- latimes.com:

The only person Sunday to offer a defense of Jones was former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, who has emerged as a titular leader of the country's liberal movement.

Dean told 'Fox News Sunday' that Jones was "brought down," and he called it a "loss for the country."

He said that he had spoken with Jones, and that Jones should not be held responsible for signing the Sept. 11 petition.

"He was told by the people waving those clipboards around that he was signing something else," Dean said. "I think that's too bad."

Well, I think it's too bad that you have such contempt for Americans' intelligence. And it is interesting to see that Democrats aren't apologizing for Jones' Commie-ness.



For the record, I don't ever recall demanding or calling for Van Jones' resignation . . . I just think it's valuable to tar and feather a Marxist, though not run him out of town on a rail. Maybe people like me are who Jones was thinking of when he stated he had, "received encouragement from across the political spectrum to 'stay and fight.'"

Elementary principles of Obama's cookie jarred hand

Well, Liberals and Obama supporters are mocking concerns about plans by the Obama administration to speak directly to every school-aged child in America. But even though Democrats are flooding the media with fresh claims that the message was "to be about the need to work hard and stay in school," the facts are that this is their revised message. From reports:

"The Obama administration is rethinking its course recommendations for students ahead of President Obama's address to the the nation's schoolchildren next week, rewriting its suggestions to teachers for student assignments on how to 'help the president.'
. . . .
Among the activities initially suggested for pre-K to 6th grade students was to 'write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president.'

Another assignment for students after hearing the speech was to discuss what 'the president wants us to do.'
. . . .
Presidential aides also acknowledged to [the Washington Times] that they helped the U.S. Education Department write the suggested assignments, which stirred criticism by many who say Obama is trying to indoctrinate the education system."

In light of the creepy Pledge of Allegiance (to Obama) video (here), and the original lesson plans disseminated by Obama's Department of Education (and "presidential aides") non-koolaid-drinking parents legitimately questioned the motives and intent of this virtually unprecedented maneuver.

UPDATE: Libs (in this case blogger Mark Brown) are pulling out all the Soros-funded tools to defend the Obama administration's blatant political overreach. Holding up a Q&A by Reagan with four groups of middle school-aged visitors to the White House (here) and history teaching mat'ls available at the Reagan Library. Come on, just admit that you got busted Libs and we can all move on.

Ferrier's flagellation and flailing

Lindsay Ferrier waxes nostalgic about the heyday of divorce and career-obsessed parents in today's City Paper. (Suburban Turmoil: "Blame Bellevue’s zombies," Nashville City Paper). Speaking about how children of That 70s Single Mom are screwing up, Ferrier writes:

Now, their children quietly go about the business of undoing all their work. We will give our kids the happy playground, the landscaped flowers, the cookie-cutter house, the neighborhood pool. We will fight harder to stay married, and beat ourselves up more if we fail. We will haunt our children’s schools and recitals and sporting events. We will be there, dammit, when they get home from school.

We will stumble through parenthood together, a generational mob with only one thing on what remains of our minds: giving our kids the childhood we think we should have had. And in true horror tradition, we will do far more damage than mere mortals could.

Look, I typically enjoy Ferrier's writing, and she is understandably troubled by quasi obsessive-compulsive parenting and living. But this essay constitutes a non-curative combo of self-flagellation and flailing at all the wrong culprits.

Lindsay, go buy your mother an afternoon at the spa or communicate your appreciation in a keepsake letter on nice stationery. I'd bet that she wouldn't take up arms for either side in the Mommy Wars. Ultimately, life/parenting/marriage are simple, though they're rarely easy. But please spare us any paeans to the mythical Enjoli ethic.

Classless and stupid

Not only is the statement--by Obama czar Van Jones, that "Republicans are a**holes," offensive, the premise of it is laughable: that Republicans were able to ram through unpopular legislation while "bi-partisan" Obama and the Democrats have been stymied these past eight months:

Ouch, that's gonna leave a mark

"Republicans are the ones really pulling the plug on grandma."

Lefty partisan hackery (from Jacob Weisberg writing in Slate) takes one on the glass chin: Weisberg Unplugs the Logic Machine - Ramesh Ponnuru - The Corner on National Review Online. Hopefully Weisberg is embarrassed, but hey, whatever it takes to socialize medicine, right?

Following the science indeed . . . on "global warming"

"Global Warming and the Sun" by Jonah Goldberg. From the op/ed:

I applaud [Climatologist Gerald] Meehl’s reluctance to go beyond where the science takes him. For all I know, he’s right. But such humility and skepticism seem to manifest themselves only when the data point to something other than the mainstream narrative about global warming. For instance, when we have terribly hot weather, or bad hurricanes, the media see portentous proof of climate change. When we don’t, it’s a moment to teach the masses how weather and climate are very different things.

A different kind of Kennedy

Ross Douthat writing in the NYTimes . . . "A Different Kind of Liberal":

Only 13 days separated the passing of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the founder of the Special Olympics, from the death of her brother Ted last week. But amid the wall-to-wall coverage and the stream of retrospectives for the senior senator from Massachusetts, it was easy to forget that he wasn’t the only famous Kennedy sibling to enter eternity this month.
. . . .
Along with her husband, Sargent Shriver, Eunice belonged to America’s dwindling population of outspoken pro-life liberals. Like her church, she saw a continuity, rather than a contradiction, between championing the poor, the marginalized and the oppressed and protecting unborn human life.