Strangely, in this report from the Associated Press, the names of the suspects are not revealed. We repeat, their names are Mohammad Mamdouh and Ahmed Serhani. Strange that AP did not mention this in the report.

Here is the entire report from the AP:

(more…)

Call us cynical but we wonder whether Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s passionate backing of the building of a controversial mosque near Ground Zero stems as much from Bloomberg’s belief in America’s “freedom of faith” as it might from the Mayor’s belief in the “virtues of Islamic finance?”

Does the Mayor’s unshakable support have anything to do with The Bloomberg (company) becoming a ‘single provider of information that caters to the Islamic business market’?  A Bloomberg five-year business plan for an Islamic finance portal via a Bloomberg hub at the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) is already a reality.

Michael Bloomberg, has become a staunch supporter of the Cordoba House (Park51) Ground Zero Mosque.  In the process, the Mayor has lectured opponents on “religious liberty” and, by extension, implied that opposition to the mosque is largely based on bigotry.

Lately, Bloomberg has become so insistent on the mosque’s being built at its planned location that The New York Post has labeled him Pro-Mosque Mike.”

A defiant Mayor Bloomberg, saying there should be no compromise, insisted last night that a mosque be built near Ground Zero, declaring, “We must do what is right, not what is easy.

While Bloomberg hasn’t been shy about questioning the motives of those opposed to the mosque’s location, the media has shied away from the Mayor‘s motivations.  But what of the Mayor’s motives? What might they be? Does a strong passion for religious liberty explain all?

Some of Bloomberg LP’s officials may hold some clues. (more…)

The FBI arrested fiery New York columnist, Vicky Pelaez in late June.  An editor and writer for the Spanish language newspaper El Diario/La Prensa, she was charged with being an unregistered agent of the Russian government.  Her far-left, anti-American columns won accolades from American progressives, and from the Hispanic diaspora in the U.S.  Released on bail to home detention during the Fourth of July long weekend, she was part of the spy swap in Vienna today that saw ten confessed Russian agents exchanged for four Russians accused of working for the U.S.

A sample from a Pelaez editorial in El Diario, translated from Spanish scorched the policies of her adopted country:  “…refusing to hear … the popular resistance and the opinion of the majority of countries in the world, the Big Boss [the United States] supported the putschists’ … illegal [Honduran] presidential elections…” Pelaez finished her Dec. 1, 2009 anti-American rant, written in her comfortable suburban house in Yonkers, N.Y., with a tired revolutionary screech, “as long as injustice and poverty remain dominant, the struggle will continue.”

Soviet intelligence operatives (the KGB and its successor, the SVR), starting in the 1920s, recruited agents in the press to influence American opinion.  The goal of the communist influence messages, as directed by Vladimir Lenin, was to destroy “the Main Enemy” from within.  Lenin used this tactic, learned in his own Revolution, because he knew the Soviet army was too weak to take on the American military.

The influence message, boiled down to its essence was, and is, “America is an irredeemably racist, sexist, foreigner-hating, imperialistic, war-mongering country that deserves to be destroyed.”  Repeating this message over and over, like an advertising campaign, rooted the message deep in the psyches of the past several generations.  The ultimate result of decades of propagating this message through the press, education and academia, and Hollywood has been the attitude known as Political Correctness. (more…)

According to a recent Quinnipiac poll, the majority of New Yorkers are opposed to the building of an Islamic supremacist mosque at Ground Zero — as are, not coincidentally, the majority of Americans.

In New York City, where all power is centralized, all roads lead to the Mayor’s office. And Mayor Bloomberg is covertly pushing the Ground Zero mega mosque forward. Bloomberg controls the calendar, so why would he suddenly, last week, schedule a landmarks committee meeting for tomorrow and a landmarks commission meeting for next week, in the middle of July, when no one is around?  Boss Bloomberg, is the fix in? And if so, why?

More troubling is the media has paid scant attention to Bloomberg’s pernicious display of megalomaniacal governance. It is corruption when our elected officials ignore the will of the people, but it is far worse when our media, who are supposed to give voice to the voiceless, work in tandem with such corruption. Why is Bloomberg given a free pass by the free press while Governor Paterson is eviscerated daily, for sport?

Why isn’t the New York Times, the Daily News or the Post demanding to know why Mayor Bloomberg is trying to expedite the building of the Ground Zero mega mosque, when the majority of New Yorkers do not want it? Why isn’t the media demanding to know why the World Trade Center has not yet been rebuilt and why its reconstruction or replacement is not being given the same priority as the mega mosque? (more…)

“How’m I doin?’” he used to shout at all and sundry during his three terms as Mayor of the City of New York in the late seventies and the eighties. Ed Koch was a media favorite back in those days, the scourge of dog poop and a scrappy battler for decency back in the bad old “French Connection” era of graffiti and misery in the Big Apple.

Now, like the cranky old uncle at Thanksgiving, he just embarrasses them. Here’s his Hizzoner with a few characteristically Kochian words about Sarah Palin (ka-boom!) and our current POTUS:

(more…)

Let’s face it. From the 2004 New York Yankees to that statue of Saddam Hussein, most of us get a kick out of seeing the mighty fall. And that’s essentially what’s happening to teachers’ unions all over this nation. For all the good they did when they were first formed 50 to 75 years ago, teachers’ unions have devolved into opponents of meaningful educational reform.

Teaching is steady work and in most states the pay is now about the same as a mid-level manager in business, but the profession requires substantially fewer days of work per year. And sure, there have been recent layoffs, but even in bad economic times, those who remain in the classroom manage to secure substantial raises and maintain their Cadillac health care plans while most of the rest of us in the private sector must beg our employers for a paltry increase and hope we don’t get sick. Still, good teachers themselves remain largely popular in their respective communities — and justifiably so.

So why are teachers’ unions losing clout? One big reason is that after decades of reflexive support, the news media are finally starting to turn against them. That’s right. Journalists and editors, many of whom belong to labor unions themselves, are finally waking up to the plain fact that taking courses and simply showing up to work every day — the standard measures that the unions demand in determining wages — are poor incentives to improve performance.

A story in yesterday’s Washington Post on the recent ratification of a new D.C. teachers contract, which calls for using student improvement as a measure of teacher evaluations, was as balanced a piece as you will ever see. In addition, the Post’s progressive editorial board has been remarkably supportive of D.C. school Superintendent Michelle Rhee’s plans to make it easier to remove chronically underperforming teachers from the classroom. Commendably, the Post’s editorial page has also been a proponent of nationwide school reform in general. (more…)

Just weeks after Comedy Central executives censored a program because of its depiction of Muhammad, the network has announced it has a new cartoon series in development that could not be more disrespectful of Christianity. Entitled “JC”, the show will depict Jesus living in contemporary New York City trying to “escape his father’s enormous shadow.”

Comedy Central’s long history of defaming Christianity.

Putting aside  Comedy Central’s religious insensitivity, it takes a lot of guts to attack Christians and wimp out to violent Muslim fanatics. (more…)

In the 19th century, the heyday of vicious political cartoons and biting satire, Thomas Nast stood above all other editorial cartoonists, attacking the corruption, venality and breathtaking dishonesty of New York’s Tammany Hall with unflinching disdain. The “Wigwam” controlled Democrat Party politics in the metropolis for nearly a century and established the template for the Democrats’ unique combination of thuggery, racism and elitism in the service of “the little guy” that remains their hallmark to this day.

Be sure to watch every minute of this excerpt from Ric Burns’ extraordinary 1999 documentary, New York, to get a sense of the rapacious extent of the Democrats’ malfeasance, and Nast’s role in bringing them down:

“People begin to tire of holding their noses.” So where are the Thomas Nasts of today? To judge from this brilliant video, PolitiZoid is a good place to start looking: (more…)

Thirty little buses in New York City…my, how they roll. Through our organization Stop Islamization of America, Robert Spencer and I have placed ads on New York City buses, offering help to Muslims wishing to leave Islam. Our ads ran previously on buses in Miami, but in New York they’ve received international notice. The religious liberty bus ad campaign was covered in the last few days by every major network: ABC, NBC, CBS (New York), CNN and FOX, as well by Associated Press, Reuters, the Los Angeles Times, Britain’s Daily Mail, Russian television, and many more–too many news outlets to list here.

It’s no surprise that most mainstream media outlets that have covered the story have just repeated talking points from the unindicted co-conspirator, Hamas-linked Muslim Brotherhood front, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). AP said: “some Muslims are calling the ads a smoke screen for an anti-Muslim agenda.” Which Muslims are saying that? Farther down in the article we find out: (more…)

You really can’t make this stuff up. From the Washington Post on Friday, your tax dollars at work and play:

High school students and college-age adults have been complaining to District officials that the free condoms the city has been offering are not of good enough quality and are too small and that getting them from school nurses is “just like asking grandma or auntie.”

So D.C. officials have decided to stock up on Trojan condoms, including the company’s super-size Magnum variety, and they have begun to authorize teachers or counselors, preferably male, to distribute condoms to students if the teachers complete a 30-minute online training course called “WrapMC” — for Master of Condoms.

“If people get what they don’t want, they are just going to trash them,” said T. Squalls, 30, who attends the University of the District of Columbia. “So why not spend a few extra dollars and get what people want?”

In you were wondering: (more…)

KATIE COURIC:  Thank you, Mayor Bloomberg, for sitting down with us.  The other day, sir, you guessed that the Times Square bomber was “homegrown,” and now authorities have arrested a Connecticut man in connection with the case.  Can you tell us anything about this naturalized American citizen person, whose identity we won’t mention because we don’t want our audience to think “Muslim,” even though part of his last name is “Shah” and his first name is “Faisal?”

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  He’s from Connecticut.  I’m from Boston.  How am I supposed to know?  Especially since the Feds never tell me anything.  After all, I’m a Republican… right?

COURIC: Yes, sir, but you’re also the Mayor of the City of New York.  So let me get to the most important question: Yankees or Red Sox?

BLOOMBERG: As you know, Katie, I’m the mayor of all the people of this great city, including the ones in boroughs I’ve never been to.  So that question’s above my pay grade, even though I’m a billionaire.  Ha ha. Therefore, let me address your first question. Several of Mr. What’s-his-name’s neighbors in Bridgeport say he often complained that property taxes were too high — and, what’s worse, that he might have been recently foreclosed on.  In Bridgeport, where you can buy a house for less than the price of a loaf of bread! (more…)

How would the New York Times report a claim by numerous independent scientists that an influential corporation had repeatedly committed research fraud? When the corporation is a liberal research and lobbying group that Ralph Nader co-founded, the answer is that the paper would ignore the report of fraud, frequently cite the group as an expert in research and ethics, and occasionally perform joint research projects with it.

The organization in question is the New York Public Interest Research Group(NYPIRG), one of a fleet of state-based PIRGs. Unsurprisingly in light of its origins, the group promotes liberal positions. It is also the Times’ favorite source on a variety of issues, as evidenced by how the paper portrays the organization and by its degree of reliance on it. To illustrate: the Times has cited the group (or its mass transit lobbying arm, the Straphangers Campaign) with stunning frequency over the last decade, once every four or five days. the Times routinely reports on the group’s research studies and occasionally notes that it has helped the paper in researching issues (e.g., in this article and this editorial).  Further, the lobbying group is the paper’s “go to” expert on ethics in New York State and City government.

A detailed look at the group’s history, however, would make the Times’ faith in it impossible to justify. In 1997, 58 scientists at the City University of New York, after examining evidence that I discovered, signed a statement citing the group for committing research misconduct. A press release by two science departments at Brooklyn College identified fabricated conclusions and falsified data as the more serious violations found among five of the organization’s studies. The release also noted that the group had engaged in a dishonest cover-up. (See these articles for a more detailed description of the fraud, and for references to my publications about it: article-1, article-2.) (more…)

Along with the usual cable suspects, ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC were sporting so much green yesterday that I thought I it was St. Patrick’s Day and that I had awakened from a Rip Van Winkle-like coma after sleeping for almost eleven months.  Nope, it was Earth Day 2010.

All day we were blanketed with stories and information about our responsibilities to the planet and how we could change our lives to pollute less.  And I wondered what the leaders of this great nation were doing today.  How were they leading by example?

Well, as it turns out, our leaders did some big things for the planet on Earth Day:

• President Obama flew Air Force One to New York City so he could address the Wall Street people and the country about plans to clean up the financial industries.
• Vice President Joe “BFD” Biden fired up Air Force Two and also came to New York so he could be a guest on “The View” and finally address the issue of his profane outburst at the signing of the Health Care Bill (a month ago).
• The U.S. Air Force launched a “secret space plane” last night as well.

(more…)

The tragedy of the unprovoked attack on Allee Bautsch and Joe Brown in New Orleans recently is intensified by the media’s near-silence on the matter. In another example of its no-enemies-to-the-left mentality, the MSM has gone to ground. Not a word is issued in print condemning the attacks. No reporters are calling members of Congress, the White House or the head of the DNC for comment. No talking heads on television are pulling their chins and wondering if there’s a “climate of hate” loose in the French Quarter.

What we have here is effective MSM news blackout on a vicious, and most likely politically motivated attack. Has the fourth estate falling into such a swoon with the progressive talking points, that they too believe like the attackers that Ms. Bautsch was a “lil blond b*tch” and thus deserved the beating she got?

Does the local press in New Orleans not want to dig into the works of local progressives and their propensity for violence? Does the complete lack of fitting the narrative of “right-wing violence” keep the press far from watchdog mode and squarely in lapdog mode?

Here we have a beautiful 26-year-old woman who has pins and screws keeping her leg together. We have her boyfriend with a broken jaw and nose. At what point does the media become a willing accomplice, through its silence and utter lack of curiosity, in these crimes? (more…)

The U.S. is the great enemy of mankind! Against those hyenas there is no option but extermination!… If the nuclear missiles had remained (in Cuba) we would have fired them against the heart of the U.S. including New York City!…. We will bring the war to the (U.S.) imperialists enemies’ very home,   to his places of work and recreation. The imperialist enemy (the U.S.) must feel like a hunted animal wherever he moves! Thus we’ll destroy (the U.S.!)  The solutions to the world’s problems lie behind the Iron Curtain. The victory of socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims! We must keep our hatred against them (the U.S.) alive and fan it to paroxysms!

That was Ernesto “Che” Guevara , in his message to the Tri-Continental Conference, Havana 1966.

“I’m like Che Guevara with a bling on!”

That was Rapper Jay-Z,  whom President  Obama  recently invited to sit under the U.S. Presidential Seal in the same White House that Jay-Z’s hero  craved to incinerate with nuclear missiles.

OK, fine, Obamabots and MSM……? Perhaps you don’t object to having, as an honored guest of our White House, and sitting under your nation’s very Presidential Seal, a sympathizer with a Stalinist who craved to incinerate your nation? That’s one thing.

But how about having, by special invitation to the White House by your president, and sitting under your presidential seal — a “useful idiot?” (more…)

Steven Greenhut has an interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal about how public employees unions are destroying California’s budget and economy.

Greenhut begins by noting that with one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, California is losing its “productive citizens” to other states but is still saddled with an economy killing surfeit of public employees unions that “drive costs up and fight to block spending cuts.”

Greenhut goes on to report that the unfunded pensions that California is stuck with has increased by 2,000% in the last decade because of the overweening power of the unions.

Approximately 85% of the state’s 235,000 employees (not including higher education employees) are unionized. As the governor noted during his $83 billion budget roll-out, over the past decade pension costs for public employees increased 2,000%. State revenues increased only 24% over the same period. A Schwarzenegger adviser wrote in the San Jose Mercury News in the past few days that, “This year alone, $3 billion was diverted to pension costs from other programs.” There are now more than 15,000 government retirees statewide who receive pensions that exceed $100,000 a year, according to the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility.

That is absurd!

Greenhut goes on to offer some hope that some Californians are beginning to learn how bad the unions really are, but I am not so sanguine. And even if California is just starting to “get it,” the problem isn’t just in California but in every state in the union, as the following chart shows: (more…)

ARF!

Bo here, the conservative dog in the White House. I’m in the Oval Office with Barry and the boys while they decide on a strategy for the State of the Union speech. They can’t make up their minds. Big surprise, huh?

It’s been quite a week here since the Massachusetts senate race, all of them whining and moaning like a litter of pitbulls finding out they’ve just been sold to Michael Vick. Barry, of course, has been hardest hit. A retiree in Pompano Beach, Florida, gets bit by a sand flea, and Barry is hardest hit.

Still, the Scott Brown victory was a genuine blow to the faithful. Barry thrives on self-delusion, so the team here firehoses him with flattery non-stop. The One. The Lightbringer. Captain Smooth. Except for Rahm, the only guy who can tell Barry the truth. The only one who actually enjoys telling Barry the truth. Teleprompter Jesus. President Fist Bump. Harry Reid’s Immaculate Negro. Barry doesn’t appreciate it, but Rahm doesn’t care. Anyway, Scott Brown’s election really shook the place up. I was there. I smelt the fear…

“Now what?” Barry kept saying as he flipped through the channels looking for good news. “Now what?”

On CNBC, Norah O’Donnell woodenly read the latest vote tallies, mascara running down her cheeks like Chuckie the killer klown. Keith Olbermann was in the background, loudly vomiting into a waste basket. (more…)

Who knew that George W. Bush had such powers over the natural world? According to some pundits, Hurricane Katrina was Bush’s fault, as was the tsunami in Indonesia and now – if you believe James Ridgeway in Mother Jones – that Bush’s policy is responsible for the devastating effects of the 7.5 earthquake that decimated the poor country of Haiti.

But during the eight years of George W. Bush’s presidency, we could depend on such ridiculous musings as Mr. Ridgeway displayed. I haven’t done enough research to determine if Bush was the most reviled president in our nation’s history – that might well have been Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican President — but it’s not that hard to figure out that his coverage by the media was historically the most relentlessly hostile.

I first started writing my op-ed columns during the Clinton administration and while I may have disagreed with most of his policies I never stooped to the insulting, vitriolic language routinely leveled at President Bush. What also amazed me was the lack of outrage by the president and his administration officials. There is always the possibility that I might have missed their fury because the mainstream media was unlikely to report anything other than leftist propaganda. But I was a columnist for the only New York newspaper that covered Bush honestly and without bias from 2002 to 2008, when we died as a print publication. (more…)

In case you’ve ever wondered why you never got the straight story on Islam directly after Sept. 11, and still haven’t, and why the media seems in the tank for jihad, here’s a clue.

The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) issued this directive a couple of weeks after 9/11; for sheer propaganda, their “Diversity Guidelines” are hard to beat.  In fact, the enemy who attacked our country in an attempt to bring it down may just as well have been writing the narrative.

The “guidelines,” adopted at the Society’s national convention on October 6, 2001, urges journalists to “take steps against racial profiling in their coverage of the war on terrorism and to reaffirm their commitment to use language that is informative and not inflammatory.”

How?  Among other things: (more…)

While the mainstream media swarmed all over Bernie Madoff, AIG and corporate billionaires, the gentlemen of the press, who are so proud of fighting for the Little Guy, were mostly out to an expense-account lunch when Melissa King allegedly made off with $42 million rightfully belonging to members of the Laborers International Union of North American (LIUNA).

In what is being called the largest union embezzlement in American history, the LIUNA Local 147 (New York) office administration was apparently unsatisfied with her meager $500,000 a year paycheck.

According to watchdog Carl Horowitz:

LIUNA Local 147 is an elite underground construction unit known as the “Sandhogs.” With roots going back well over 100 years, the heavily Irish-ethnic 1,000-member union represents the workers who dig New York City’s subway, sewer and water tunnels, often at hundreds of feet beneath the ground. It was the sandhogs who did the excavation work for such engineering marvels as the Lincoln, Holland, Queens-Midtown and Brooklyn-Battery Tunnels. Their massive ongoing main project, the Third Water Tunnel, when completed in 2020 at a projected cost of roughly $6 billion, will carry 1.3 billion gallons of water per day for 9 million area residents and ensure that water keeps running should either of the first two tunnels fails. It’s grueling and dangerous work. And the workers are paid well. They also expect to collect their full retirement benefits. But thanks to the alleged actions of Melissa King, there’s a distinct possibility they won’t.

(more…)