Robert Spencer picks up on an important unreported detail from the horrifying story of the Christmas morning murders-suicide which left six relatives dead. The father and murderer, it seems, disliked that his daughter was dating a non-Muslim [Spencer's emphasis]:

Neighbors said the family was Muslim but had always hung Christmas lights on their home — except this year.

Terri Baum, who lives three homes down from Yazdanpanah, said she had seen him around the neighborhood in the last couple of weeks.

“They were pretty quiet, but kind, very kind,” Baum said. “They were sweet, good parents, and they loved their kids very much.”

Baum’s daughter, Allison, attended Colleyville Heritage High School with Nona, where the girls were part of an academic team focused on developing business leaders. They graduated together in May.

“Allison would take her to school from here, and then when they moved out she would pick her up from the apartments,” Baum said. “It’s unbelievable because of the people we knew them to be, and their children were good kids, very focused.”

Baum said she was horrified at the possibility the killings had been a murder-suicide.

“All I want to say is, it is so unbelievably shocking because they loved their kids,” Baum said.

“She couldn’t date at all until she was a certain age, but when he was going to let her date she couldn’t date anyone outside of their race or religion,” Reed said.

Yes, loved them to death.

But a more ominous portrait emerged of Yazdanpanah in interviews with some of his daughter’s other classmates.“She would come to school crying and telling us her dad was crazy,” said Lacie Reed, 18. “He wouldn’t let her wear certain things. He was always taking her phone away, checking her call history and checking her text messages.”

Friends said Nona’s father had installed cameras all around the home so he could watch the family’s comings and goings. Others said he nailed her bedroom window shut so she could not sneak out at night and see her boyfriend.

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Sometimes it astounds me the extent to which a progressive “journalist” will go to spin stories in their direction, thus putting politics before serving the readers. Sometimes it astounds me the extent to which a progressive Jew will go to promote their favorite politicians thus putting politics before either their home country, America or the Jewish people.

In his latest column in the paper he publishes, Gary Rosenblatt of the Jewish Week astounded me times two, as he talked about the disastrous ADL/Abe Foxman request for Jews to avoid criticizing the POTUS and warned that if American Jews upset President Obama, he might be really bad toward Israel in a second term.

Case in point: There are no more savvy experts on the mood and politics of the American Jewish community than Abe Foxman and David Harris, professional heads of the ADL and American Jewish Committee, respectively, our two leading mainstream national Jewish defense organizations.

But Foxman and Harris seem to have been caught off guard last month by the sharp criticism of their joint National Pledge for Unity on Israel, which they no doubt thought would be widely accepted in the Jewish community — a kind of motherhood-and-apple-pie affirmation of the ongoing power, and need, for bipartisan support in Washington for the Jewish state.

The outcries over the unity pledge, particularly on the right, have underscored just how fractured political activists in our community are over Israel. More specifically, the issue speaks to the debate over the wisdom of criticizing the Obama administration, and especially the president himself, as being Israel’s adversary as he seeks re-election.

Things need to be put in context. In this column a progressive publisher, is supporting a progressive advocate who is supporting a progressive president while not admitting to their political bias, which is a disservice to the readers, in the case of the Jewish Week and the donors in the case of the ADL.

As I pointed out when the “shut up pledge”  was first published, Abe Foxman has been running the ADL as his own personal progressive activist group. Indeed the organization spends as much time promoting progressive social issues such as abortion and illegal immigration as it does Jewish issues.  So of course Abe will do just about anything he can to get his progressive prophet re-elected.

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The liberal media has constantly found new ways to put down the tea party movement.  First came the sexual slurs; we were “tea baggers.” Then we were racists, we were stupid, and finally, we were stubborn extremists whose only wish was to close down the government and/or remove Barack Obama from office.

The media’s latest slander of the tea party puts all of the others to shame. They are calling the left-wing “Occupy Wall Street” protests in New York a “liberal tea party.”  Ladies and gentlemen, I know the tea party; I have been to some of their rallies, and some local groups’ leaders are friends of mine. It is with 100% certainty I can report that the only similarity between the tea party movement and the Occupy Wall Street protests is they are both comprised of Homo sapiens.

That doesn’t stop the liberal media, though. Take NBC News, for example; on Saturday night’s evening news program, correspondent Michelle Franzen quoted Columbia University’s Dorian Warren, who asserted the Wall Street protests were “a liberal version of the tea party.” He added, “I think this could potentially carry over into the 2012 elections and get people to the polls.”

On Sunday’s ”Meet the Press,” host David Gregory, speaking with Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne about the movement, mentioned, “your column out tomorrow talks about the equivalent tea party movement on the left [emphasis mine].” (more…)

Here’s an interesting back story to MSNBC’s hiring of racial riot instigator Al Sharpton as their latest evening host.  Back in March of 2000, MSNBC morning host Joe Scarborough was Congressman Joe Scarborough  and he introduced House Resolution 270  condemning Al Sharpton as a racist and a bigot. Read the text of the bill which was dug up by Legal Insurrection:

106th CONGRESS 2d Session H. CON. RES. 270

Condemning the racist and anti-Semitic views of the Reverend Al Sharpton

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

March 8, 2000

Mr. SCARBOROUGH submitted the following concurrent resolution; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

---

CONCURRENT RESOLUTION Condemning the racist and anti-Semitic views of the Reverend Al Sharpton

Whereas the Congress strongly rejects the racist and incendiary actions of the Reverend Al Sharpton;

Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton has referred to members of the Jewish faith as `bloodsucking [J]ews’, and `Jew bastards’;

Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton has referred to members of the Jewish faith as `white interlopers’ and `diamond merchants’;

Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton was found guilty of defamation by a jury in a New York court arising from the false accusation that former Assistant District Attorney Steven Pagones, who is white, raped and assaulted a fifteen year-old black girl;

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The “gridlock” of which Zakaria speaks is due to and extreme socialist faction which has hijacked the formerly liberal party in this country, a faction whose policies seek to reshape the Constitution which is, in their view, an anachronistic document. It is this similarity to a parliamentary system which has tanked the American economy, and Zakaria, either from deliberate obtuseness born of bias or genuine ignorance, fails to see this.

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There was an interesting exchange between Jake Tapper and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney earlier this week. Just a short while after Carney proclaimed that the President would “not rest until everyone in America who wants a job has a job,” the White House announced that the President will be taking a nine-day August rest in Cape Cod.  This means that Obama plans to have unemployment fixed within the next two weeks or his “not to rest” promise dropped very quickly even for this President.

Tapper decided to ask Carney about the contradiction.

Jake Tapper from ABC News asked Carney if the vacation was appropriate.

Jake Tapper, ABC News: “You said the President will not rest until the joblessness and the economy are worked out, but the President is obviously going on vacation…. Is there any concern about the impression that the President going to Martha’s Vineyard for 9 or 10 days might leave on the American people? And also, if this is such an important issue for Speaker Boehner, for Harry Reid, for President Obama, why the R&R?”

Jay Carney, WH press secretary:... I don’t think Americans out there would begrudge that notion that the President would spend some time with his family. It is also, as I think anyone who has covered in the past, either in this administration or others, there is no such thing as a presidential vacation. The Presidency travels with you. He will be in constant communication and get regular briefings from his national security team as well as his economic team. And he will of course be fully capable, if necessary, of traveling back if that were required. It is not very far.”

I don’t begrudge the President from taking a vacation either, except the timing does seem to be a bit inappropriate. Also the man who defended the President’s vacation, Jay Carney, bashed President Bush for taking one ten years ago. (more…)

On the evening of Aug. 8th, Jews across the world begin their observance of the fast of Tisha B’Av, mourning the loss of the two Jerusalem Temples (and many more calamities to the Jewish people). The Talmud tells us the cause of the Second Temple’s destruction was senseless hatred and political insults.

We are taught that during the first century CE,  a man threw a party and intended to invite his good friend Kamtza. His servant screwed up and mistakenly invited the host’s enemy, Bar Kamtza. This led to the insulting of Bar Kamtza, his slandering of the Jewish people to Caesar, and Bar Kamtza’s purposeful wounding of an animal Caesar sent to the Holy Temple to be sacrificed as a peace offering making it unfit to be used.

The offering was rejected by the Great Sanhedrin (think of the Sanhedrin as a Rabbinical Supreme Court whose 71  Judges were some of the wisest  scholars who ever lived.) The Sanhedrin met at the Holy Temple in Jerusalem until it was destroyed, after which they moved to Tiberius where today sits the Holy Land’s greatest Kosher Chinese restaurant, Pagoda (personally I do not believe that is a coincidence, from this we learned that the wise Rabbis of the Great Sanhedrin enjoyed take out now and then).

Anyway, Caesar took  the fact that his animals were rejected as a political insult and rebellious move  so he invaded, resulting in the destruction of the Holy Temple.

The public insulting of one man by one other man steamrolled out of control with the ultimate consequence of the destruction of the Holy Temple, and the exile of the Jewish people from Israel (and the ultimate Kosher Chinese place)  for almost 1900 years.

The story of the Kamtzas is apropos for the solemn day of Tisha B’Av,  but is also be a warning for America following two months of a debt ceiling debate riddled with personal insult and hateful rhetoric.

Despite the insults within and between both political parties, the compromise deal gives a political victory for some and though impotent in a cost cutting way,  it does provide an opening for our leadership to take use this “starting point” as a platform for the additional change necessary so the United States may avoid the Greece scenario and return to fiscal heath.

Although many in the movement would vehemently deny it, the big winner in the debate is the tea party movement. As recently as June 22nd the progressive Democratic Party were talking about a new stimulus package as part of a debt ceiling bill … but thanks to the tea party movement that scenario is long dead. The tea party movement switched the debate from “spending vs. cutting” to how “much should be cut and/or from where,” a huge accomplishment.

Major tea party demands going into the talks were achieved; no new taxes and cuts to the deficit larger than any increase in the debt ceiling. The biggest demand not achieved through the negotiation was the passage of the Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA). The bill passed by the House required that the Senate pass the Amendment, while the final compromise merely requires a vote. The difference is a huge one.  Since almost all of the states have a balanced budget requirement of some sort, and polls report that somewhere between 70-75% of voters want a BBA, once passed by two-thirds of each house of Congress this amendment is likely to “speed” its way thorough the state approval process (75% of the States must approve for it to be added to the constitution). A BBA would most certainly pass the house, house but will be rejected by the progressive-controlled Senate whose members are reluctant to give up their unlimited credit card.

Speaker Boehner and Minority Leader McConnell were also winners. They held to the “no new taxes” pledge despite rumors they had folded. Boehner gets more credit as he was the face of the opposition, took most of the heat, and showed himself willing to compromise not only with Democrats but with his own coalition to make a deal happen.

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When CNN hired Elliot Spitzer many complained hiring the disgraced former governor was a new low in cable news. Allow me to submit to you that with the hiring of “Reverend” Al Sharpton to be their 6pm host, MSNBC has smashed through CNN’s record and established a record for finding a new host in the sewer of society that may never be topped. While CNN and others have hired people disgraced by political or sexual scandals, in hiring Sharpton MSNBC has contracted with a “Reverend” who bears false witness and a racial arsonist who is responsible for the deaths of at least eight innocent people.

Let’s look at the Sharpton track record. Sharpton is the man who, in 1987, helped to make the Tawana Brawley false rape charge big news and to this day refuses to admit that it was proved a hoax.

A grand jury noted many problems with Brawley’s story. Among these were that the rape kit results did not indicate sexual assault. Also, despite her claim of having been held captive for days, Brawley was not suffering from exposure, was well-nourished, and appeared to have brushed her teeth recently. Despite her clothing being charred, there were no burns on her body. Although a shoe she was wearing was cut through, Brawley had no injuries to her foot. The racial epithets written on her were upside down, which led to suspicion that Brawley had written the words. Testimony from her schoolmates indicated she had attended a local party during the time of her supposed abduction. One witness claimed to have observed Brawley’s climbing into the garbage bag which she claimed to be her prison.

The worst part of that incident was when Sharpton falsely named Steven Pagones, an Assistant District Attorney in Dutchess County, as one of the rapists, and a racist, among other accusations. Sharpton and Brawley’s lawyers asserted “on 33 separate occasions” that Steven Pagones “had kidnapped, abused and raped” Brawley. He also accused district attorney William Grady of trying to cover up Pagones’ involvement in the crime, and he demanded Governor Cuomo immediately arrest the two “suspects.” Sharpton refused to provide evidence, saying only that they would reveal the facts when the time was right. There was no evidence, and Pagones was soon cleared.

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There it was in bold Gallup-type headlines.

Solid Majority of Jewish Americans Still Approve of Obama Changes in approval among Jews continues to reflect broader U.S. patterns.

The problem with the headline is that it is Dishonest.

Assuming  the overall Jewish American approval numbers are correct, they gave President Barack Obama a 60% job approval rating in June, down from 68% in May, but statistically unchanged from 64% in April and drastically below the 83% at the beginning of 2009, but its the comparison to the general population that is disingenuous.

Gallup’s monthly trend in Jewish approval of Obama continues to roughly follow the path of all Americans’ approval of the president, more generally, as it has since Obama took office in January 2009. The 14-percentage-point difference in the two groups’ approval ratings in June — 60% among U.S. Jews vs. 46% among all U.S. adults — is identical to the average gap seen over the past two and a half years. However, the monthly graph is somewhat variable due to the lower monthly sample size of Jewish respondents (around 350).

The problem with the comparison is that Jews can’t be compared with the total US Population, they are far more liberal-Democratic than the average voter.  According to Gallup US Party affiliation as of May, broke down as follows.

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Whenever there is an unusual weather pattern, members of the Holy Church of Global Warming Moonbats start spreading new scare-tactics. Usually it sounds something like:

This planet is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions. Old Testament real wrath of God type stuff.  Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!  Forty years of Gilligan’s Island Re-runs! Earthquakes, volcanoes, another Rocky Movie rising from the grave. Human sacrifice, Elliot Spitzer and Anthony Weiner living together… mass hysteria!

And just as common is the fact that scientists dispute their contention.  It happened when both Time and Newsweek blamed this spring’s tornado activity on Global Warming (contradicting earlier claims by the Magazines which blamed tornadoes on Global Cooling) and it’s happening now when Salon is blaming the extremely hot temperatures in the American West:

Arizona is burning. Texas, too. New Mexico is next. If you need a grim reminder that an already arid West is burning up and blowing away, here it is. As I write this, more than 700 square miles of Arizona and more than 4,300 square miles of Texas have been swept by monster wildfires. Consider those massive columns of acrid smoke drifting eastward as a kind of smoke signal warning us that a globally warming world is not a matter of some future worst-case scenario. It’s happening right here, right now.

…Nonetheless, we have been experiencing a historic drought for about a decade in significant parts of the region. As topsoil dries out, microbial dynamics change and native plants either die or move uphill toward cooler temperatures and more moisture. Wildlife that depends on the seeds, nuts, leaves, shade, and shelter follows the plants — if it can.

….Global warming, global weirding, climate change — whatever you prefer to call it — is not just happening in some distant, melting Arctic land out of a storybook. It is not just burning up far-away Russia. It’s here now.

The seas have warmed, ice caps are melting, and the old reliable ocean currents and atmospheric jet streams are jumping their tracks. The harbingers of a warming planet and the abruptly shifting weather patterns that result vary across the American landscape. Along the vast Mississippi River drainage in the heartland of America, epic floods, like our wildfires in the West, are becoming more frequent. In the Gulf states, it’s monster hurricanes and in the Midwest, swarms of killer tornadoes signal that things have changed. In the East it’s those killer heat waves and record-breaking blizzards.

Gee, they left out the Giligan’s Island runs and the New Rocky movie. Maybe its because what Salon is saying above is totally fraudulent.

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Judicial Watch has obtained documents that show that Free Press, a progressive group funded by George Soros and other leftist benefactors was colluding with the FCC to push through its plan for the government control of the internet known also known as net neutrality.

In December 2010, the FCC voted 3-2 to pass its net neutrality program, despite the fact just seven months earlier a federal appeals court ruled that the FCC had exceeded its authority in seeking to regulate the Internet and enforce “net neutrality” rules.

For those of you who are not familiar with Free Press, it is a group dedicated to the exact opposite of its name.  The group not only sees access to all media (including high speed Internet) as a civil right, it also believes the the Government should have control of the message to “guarantee” that all sides are fairly represented. Of course its their definition of “all sides” and “fairly represented.”

This is no hyperbole.  For example one of the groups founders Robert McChesney is the former editor and current board member of the Marxist magazine Monthly Review, which has a fifty-year history of supporting Communist movements and regimes.

McChesney strongly believes in government control of the medium and the message. (more…)

Those who only read the NY Times would get the impression that last week’s trip to the United States by  Bibi Netanyahu was an absolute political disaster for the Israeli Prime Minister.

The Progressive newspaper of record, the New York Times headline proclaimed:

“Israelis See Netanyahu Trip as Diplomatic Failure.”

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel returned from Washington on Wednesday to a nearly unanimous assessment among Israelis that despite his forceful defense of Israel’s security interests, hopes were dashed that his visit might advance peace negotiations with the Palestinians.”

As my friend Dr. Barry Rubin explains, Israelis have very little hope for peace because unlike the progressive media, they understand that the Palestinians because even though it makes them unhappy they know that the Palestinians don’t want to advance peace negotiations. But that theme–the Palestinian leadership doesn’t want peace–is not permitted in virtually all of the American mass media.

Two new polls prove the NY Times report about Israeli reaction was totally biased.

A poll conduced by the liberal Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz which reported the positive Israeli reaction to Netanyahu’s trip.

“Ha’aretz Poll: Netanyahu’s Popularity Soaring Following Washington Trip”

“A new poll conducted by Dialog, under the supervision of Prof. Camil Fuchs of the Tel Aviv University Statistics Department, showed that 47% of the Israeli public believes Netanyahu’s U.S. trip was a success, while only 10% viewed it as a failure.”

In fact the poll seems to indicate the D.C. trip reversed Netanyahu’s decline in approval:

While in a Haaretz poll five weeks ago Netanyahu seemed to be in hot water with the public, with 38 percent expressing satisfaction with his performance and 53 percent disappointed with it, in yesterday’s poll the results were essentially reversed: 51 percent were satisfied, while 36 percent were not.

The moderate Jerusalem Post conducted its own poll conducted after Obama’s Speech to AIPAC:

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Sometimes it gets comical when writers try to find deep meaning in things.  Sure its an appropriate exercise in the cases of biblical writings, or great literature such as Shakespeare.  But when they try to find the meaning of life in the latest episode of South Park, or Archie Comics writers have fallen into the ridiculous.

A  May 5th article posted on the CNN website  took this practice to a new low. They came up with something so ridiculous, that it makes one wonder if the network intends to replace the rich deep voice of James Earl Jones in their (This is CNN) tag to the high squeak of Pee Wee Herman.

The article in question was based in the now famous picture of the White House situation room during the raid on bin Laden’s compound.

The writer (John Blake) took this picture and decided that it had a powerful subliminal message about the history of race relations in America, while showering so much praise on the President that the reader will wonder why the Pope hasn’t yet granted him Sainthood (must be a racist!).

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Columnist Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a 2007 Pulitzer Prize winner, has found the enemy and he is us. During a recent episode of the Chris Matthews show, Tucker decided that because we are “addicted to petroleum” we are our own enemy just as much as communism was our enemy during the Cold War.

Tucker characterizes our “addiction” to oil as an “external threat” — just like communism was — and presents oil as an enemy that we should defeat. Tucker also makes excuses for Obama saying that it’s “harder” for him to call on Americans to sacrifice because of this addiction.

Leave it to a member of the Old Media to construe capitalism, progress, a growing standard of living, and even our own fellow citizens to be as great an enemy as an antithetical foreign system that was sponsored by those who once promised to bury us. Leave it to a member of the Old Media to pinpoint our own system as the enemy. (more…)

Is the Obama administration trying to ban sport fishing? Not at this time. Is the Obama administration setting up structures and processes that could, and probably will, eventually result in more regulatory restrictions on sport fishing? You betcha. But, with all due respect to anglers, that’s not the biggest problem with the “Interim Framework For Effective Coastal and Marine Spatial Planning” issued by the Interagency Ocean Policy Taskforce (latest version dated December 9, 2009). Government goes after industry long before it dares to subtly, oh-so-subtly, impose new restrictions on individuals. The framework, which we will now shorthand as “CMSP,” will affect off-shore drilling operations, commercial fishing and commercial shipping first and foremost.

Some conservative bloggers erupted in outrage when the report came to light, saying that – as Gateway Pundit put it – “Obama’s latest assault on your rights – he wants to ban sport fishing.” That was an overreaction, but an understandable one given the aggressive nature of this administration when it comes to environmental issues and the fact that the CMSP report specifically lists “recreational fishing” as an activity that needs to be “better managed” (page two of the report). Perhaps “better managed” translates into “leave them alone,” but one may be forgiven for thinking not.

On the other end of the spectrum, George Soros’ steno pool declared that worries about a sport fishing ban were “absurd,” as though nothing in the CMSP report could possibly have an impact on recreational fishing, even though the report itself kicked that particular door wide open. That is not to say that a ban on recreational fishing is in our immediate future, but it’s terribly naïve to believe that the CMSP framework won’t create the regulatory environment that will result in painful restrictions on the sport in the future. What does it all mean? Sit back, relax and let Dr. Environment break it down for you kids. (OK, so I don’t have an actual PhD, but seeing as how the University of Tennessee is awarding Al Gore an honorary doctorate, I’m sure that my degree just has to be in the mail).

The CMSP framework is another classic, benevolent big-government gambit. It sounds great, appears to encompass everyone’s concerns and the end results of the exhaustive process proposed are supposedly the epitome of noble. Consider a few features of the program: (more…)

Two years ago today, William F. Buckley moved on to the great Firing Line in the Sky where he is, no doubt, still debating the wisdom of turning over the Panama Canal with the Gipper. Buckley’s legacy lives on, not only in the remarkable generation of writers that he spawned after he first dared to stand athwart history and yell stop but, in an odd sort of way, in the manner in which some of the liberals he defied over the course of five decades seem to pine for the great man’s genteel ways.

On a personal note, Buckley was one of the two great influences in the creative life of this particular – not particularly humble – correspondent. The other was that irascible Chicago newspaperman/Everyman: Mike Royko. It’s difficult to imagine an odder couple, but Buckley and Royko shared at least a couple of common characteristics. One took them on at one’s peril (and very few ever successfully did so) and neither could be neatly constrained within an ideological box. Royko was classically liberal, but he openly scorned the liberal elite. Buckley became the symbol of the conservative movement, but he refused to let the movement define him, cutting his own path through the ideological jungle when necessary, most famously when he argued for the legalization of many illegal drugs. Agree or disagree, both Royko and Buckley were thinkers, and honest thinkers to boot, who had a knack for expressing their thoughts with the kind of panache that left their readers breathless in awe. (more…)

In the wake of yesterday’s tragedy in Austin, it’s certainly worthwhile to ask what caused troubled software engineer Joe Stack to crash a plane into an office building that housed 200 Internal Revenue Service employees. But will the media get the story right? Perhaps, just perhaps, I’ll be blessedly wrong about this, but I don’t think so.

We know how these stories seem to go. The “unbiased” journalists from the old media working in the field first develop the story, establish the “factual record” and – once that job is done – the would-be opinion makers move on, using that “factual” docket to make their pious cases. The narrative has begun, as this AP story demonstrates. Joe Stack hated the IRS, felt that this oft-criticized agency had done him wrong and – the conclusion is easy to see – was therefore another right-wing nut job who went over the edge. He was a victim, if you will, of the hatred and fury that festers within the conservative and libertarian movements. His friends, the AP tells us, never saw it coming:

They never heard Stack talk about politics, about taxes, about the government — the sources of pain that Stack claims drove him to his death.

But, nowhere in this story does the AP drill down any further. If you read Stack’s 3,000+ word on-line suicide note, it’s clear that he didn’t hate the IRS because he despised big-government per se. He hated the IRS because he believed that the agency was in collusion with the ultimate enemy: big business. A few telling examples from Stack’s manifesto: (more…)

We finally have proof that life exists beyond the confines of planet earth, although not necessarily intelligent life. How else can one explain Joe Biden other than to postulate that he comes from another planet, if not an alternate universe? The Vice President’s stunning observation about Iraq last certainly defied any form of earthly logic:

“I am very optimistic about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration.”

Of which administration? Of the administration led by the fellow who, as the junior Senator from Illinois, opposed the surge that turned the war around? That administration? Let us time travel back to 2007, when then-Senator Barack Obama offered his sage opinion about the surge:

We can send 15,000 more troops, 20,000 more troops, 30,000 more troops – I don’t know any expert on the region or any military officer that I’ve spoken to privately that believes that is going to make a substantial difference on the situation on the ground.

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A few weeks ago, Lord Christopher Monckton told me a distressing story about a visit to Haiti. He said that poverty in that troubled nation is so pervasive that many of its inhabitants have been reduced to eating mud pies. The term “mud pies” is not slang for a local staple made from locally-grown cereal crops. We’re talking about people reduced to eating actual dirt. Monckton watched Haitians form mud into the shape of pies, mixing in a sprinkling of whatever nutritional foodstuffs might be available (like oil and salt) and then “cooking” the mud pies in the sun.

Sounds like further evidence of the devastating effects that the January 12 earthquake had on Haiti, right? Not really. Oh, did I forget to mention? This was the situation in Haiti before the earthquake hit, as this 2008 story that appeared in National Geographic documents.

Between 2000 and 2010 the World Food Price Index, the inflation-adjusted measure of how expensive food is across the globe, almost doubled. In 2000 the index sat at a value of 90. As of January 2010, the index had risen to a value of 172. That a 91% increase in the cost of food over the course of a decade.

While Americans and citizens of other industrialized nations may be able to absorb that kind of price increase, the poor living in the Third World cannot. Tragic cases of starvation like the ones Monckton witnessed in pre-earthquake Haiti are hardly unique. Dwindling, more expensive food supplies have led to an increasing number of food riots around the world. More and more people are dying, simply because they can not afford basic sustenance. How could this happen? (more…)

California has long had the reputation of being trend-setter to the nation. The Golden State was practicing Obamanomics back when Barack was still called Barry. And now its ways are catching up to it like a hard partier who looks in the mirror one day and sees the portrait of Dorian Gray staring back at him.

Get ready America: California’s unsustainable path is echoed by the federal government. One will crash before the other, giving us all a preview of things to come.

Part of what is slowly destroying California is its move from a land of plenty to a land of locusts. The state taxes and regulates resident companies to such an extreme extent it has driven many of them, and many tax-paying citizens, to other states. For decades California was a place to migrate to. Now it’s suffering an exodus. The fault lies in a political shift from being a conservative, low- tax state to a statist, high-tax nanny state. Californians used to be the freest people in the United States and the world, and now? Not so much. (more…)