Fire Hydrant of Freedom

I just checked the La Raza site and searched for "Fast and furious" and "ATF". Not one thing on "Gunwalker" it appears.

Imagine the outrage if Arizona cops checked 200 illegals for immigration status.

http://hotair.com/archives/2011/10/07/mark-steyn-why-the-lack-of-msm-outrage-at-dead-mexicans/

Mark Steyn: Why the lack of MSM outrage at “dead Mexicans”?
 

posted at 1:25 pm on October 7, 2011 by Tina Korbe

 
As I wrote yesterday, Fast and Furious should have been uppermost in the minds of every reporter at the president’s press conference — yet most of the journalists in the room gave BHO a bye. Today on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, columnist Mark Steyn memorably took the mainstream media to task for its lack of interest in the scandal, which has resulted in the murder of at least 200 people in Mexico and at least 11 violent crimes in the United States:
 

“Now real Mexicans are dead,” [Steyn said]. “Does the president of the United States, does his attorney general, does CNN, does The New York Times, does NPR — do they not care about dead Mexicans?
 
“I mean, forget the United States Border Patrol guys that were killed with these ‘Fast & Furious’ guns. Real-live, or previously live, citizens of third world countries — the kind of people that NPR, The New York Times claim to love — are dead because of this.”
 
“Why isn’t that a national scandal?” he pleaded. “This is absolutely a — Iran-Contra didn’t rack up that kind of body count. Watergate didn’t rack up a body count. Sarah Palin’s daughter’s boyfriend’s mother, or whatever stupid story they were chasing around Wasilla for months, that didn’t rack up a body count. There were hundreds of dead Mexicans from a gun running program run by the United States.”
 
The rate of revelation regarding Fast and Furious has been steady (and steadily serious), but Steyn’s right: That’s no thanks to either the Justice Department, which has resisted Congressional inquiry into the matter, or the mainstream media, which has studiously avoided the subject with just a few exceptions. Must be because MSM news outlets are so “reasonable.” What we know about F&F, then, is a testament to the conviction and persistence of Congressional lead investigators Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), to the conservative media (even though the DOJ has consistently refused document requests from our sister site Townhall.com, as well as CNSNews.com and other conservative sites) and to CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson. Watching this news unfold has at times seemed like a horror show — when I first heard the death count in Mexico, for example — and at other times has seemed like a hopeful reminder that “the truth will out.” Stories like this just can’t lie dormant forever — and, in the end, the MSM ignores the news at its own peril. As more and more media consumers recognize which news outlets deliver relevant information and which news outlets don’t, those that ignore truly newsworthy events or feign objectivity as a thin disguise for agenda advancement will become less and less, well, mainstream.

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/breakout/strong-dollar-careful-play-184447569.html


"Take a look at the dollar chart for the last year. It's been battered. It's been pummeled," notes Rich Ilczysyzn of MF Global. He believes that dollar weakness will come to an end and he's looking to profit from it.
 
Before we get into the whole "evil Fed debasing our currency" conversation it's important to note that all paper currency is relative. In the long run the dollar may be worthless, but more important is whether or not it's in better shape than the Euro right now. And, yes, it is more about the euro rather than other global currencies.

Might it serve the Republican efforts with the Latino vote to point out that Baraq, Holder, et al were perfectly willing to be accessories to the killing of Mexican citizens, innocent and otherwise, by sending thousands of guns to Mexico in order to increase US gun control laws?

If the grassroots really cared, there would already be an outcry. As it happened with Obozo-D, it's not an issue.

"L. Ron Hubbard’s Battlefield Earth"

The only thing worse than the book is the movie. I am really starting to wonder if Romney could pass a Voigt-Kampff test

Newt is right. Props to Obama.

If only he weren't equally as lethal to America's economy and military strength.

The situation in Europe is having great effect on the markets here.  I suggest taking a look at my two most recent posts in the Europe thread.

Just wait until Grecian state you reside in crashes. We ain't seen nothin' yet.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APZ3-Lcbwmc[/youtube]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APZ3-Lcbwmc

I once ate at a Crackerbarrel. 

That's very interesting and by all means pursue it, but IMO the question presented about Perry and "Niggerhead" remain.  I am quite surprised at how he is letting this story linger without a direct personal response from him.

Exactly what response would appease the critics? Did he name the place? How many rappers who write entire songs around that word have been invited to the white house in the last few years? Where is the outrage?

**Oooops, I mean Obama with the New Black Panther Party in 2007. My bad.

http://biggovernment.com/abreitbart/2011/10/03/shock-photos-barack-obama-with-new-black-panther-party-on-campaign-trail-in-2007/

Shock Photos: Candidate Obama Appeared And Marched With New Black Panther Party in 2007
by Andrew Breitbart

New photographs obtained exclusively by BigGovernment.com reveal that Barack Obama appeared and marched with members of the New Black Panther Party as he campaigned for president in Selma, Alabama in March 2007.
 
The photographs, captured from a Flickr photo-sharing account before it was scrubbed, are the latest evidence of the mainstream media’s failure to examine Obama’s extremist ties and radical roots.
 
In addition, the new images raise questions about the possible motives of the Obama administration in its infamous decision to drop the prosecution of the Panthers for voter intimidation.
 
The images, presented below, also renew doubts about the transparency of the White House’s guest logs–in particular, whether Panther National Chief Malik Zulu Shabazz is the same “Malik Shabazz” listed among the Obama administration’s early visitors.
 
Tomorrow, J. Christian Adams, the Department of Justice whistleblower in the New Black Panther Party case, will release his new book, Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department (Regnery).
 
The book exposes Obama administration corruption far beyond the Panther dismissal, and reveals how the institutional Left has turned the power of the DOJ into an ideological weapon.
 
Adams’s book also describes, in detail, the Selma march at which then-Senator Obama was joined by a group of Panthers who had come to support his candidacy.
 
Among those appearing with Obama was Shabazz, the Panther leader who was one of the defendants in the voter intimidation case that Attorney General Eric Holder dismissed. Also present was the Panthers’ “Minister of War,” Najee Muhammed, who had called for murdering Dekalb County, Georgia, police officers with AK-47’s and then mocking their widows in this video (7:20 – 8:29).
 
Injustice includes a disturbing photo of Shabazz and the Panthers marching behind Obama with raised fists in the “Black Power” salute.
 
There are even more photographs.
 
I have learned that Regnery initially received approval from a person who took pictures of the events in Selma to publish these additional photographs in Injustice.
 
After the photographer wrote Regnery reversing his permission to include the photographs in Injustice, the images were removed from the photographer’s Flickr account.  Yet we were able to capture them before they disappeared.
 
The photographs show Obama sharing the same podium at the event with the Panthers.
 
In the first image, Shabazz stands at the podium, surrounded by uniformed Panthers, including Muhammed. In the second photograph, Obama commands the same podium.
 
Here are the images:




The First Amendment allows photographs of such enormous public importance to see the light of day. Cases, including one involving skimpy photographs of Miss Puerto Rico, have established that fair use and the First Amendment allow publication of these photos.
 
It is true that then-Senator Hillary Clinton and Al Sharpton were also in Selma at the same event. But the Panthers explicitly came to Selma to support Obama, as Adams details in Injustice.
 
They spoke with Obama at the podium shown above, and departed together with Obama for the main march itself, as shown by this grainer image captured from YouTube:



Obama seems not to be reviled by the Panthers in any of the video or photographs. And Obama’s own campaign website would post an endorsement by the New Black Panther Party in March 2008.  As Adams writes in Injustice:
 

Somehow, the fact that the future President of the United States shared a podium with leaders of the New Black Panthers, marched with them, and received a public, formal greeting from their party has vanished from the history of Obama’s campaign. Apart from [Juan] Williams’ single dispatch, no other media outlets ever reported it.
 
After NPR initially reported that the Panthers were present at the event with Obama, subsequent reports from Selma omitted any mention of the hate group appearing with the future President.
 
Had any of Obama’s opponents appeared at an event with the KKK or Aryan Nation, The New York Times would have had to double its ink buy.
 
Obama’s appearance does much more than expose mainstream media hypocrisy. It also exposes an association between a vile racist organization and a future President of the United States. Only the degree of association is subject to debate.
 
And only a few voices outside the mainstream media have continued to press the Obama administration about its past and present ties to fringe groups.
 
I have been calling for the White House to disclose which Malik Shabazz visited the private White House residence on July 25, 2009, two months after the DOJ voter intimidation case was dismissed.  So far, the White House has refused to do so, leaving open the question of which “Malik Shabazz” appears in visitor logs released to the public.
 
To reiterate: nobody, including Adams, is suggesting that Obama is a secret member of the New Black Panther Party. At a minimum, however, the events in Selma expose the media double standard that has buried this story until this week.
 
The mainstream media should ask Obama a few questions before they rush to his defense:
 
What did he and Malik Zulu Shabazz say when they conversed that day–something that Shabazz has said happened?
 
Did the Obama campaign play any role in having the Panthers travel to support his presidential ambitions?
 
Who posted the Panthers’ endorsement on the Obama campaign’s website, and at whose instructions?
 
Who–finally–was the Malik Shabazz who visited the White House residence on July 25, 2009?

Good point, Doug.

Newt is a smart guy, but he is the guy to have in the cabinet, not at the oval office.

The insight in that piece is a good one to keep in mind.

What did you make of the bond vigilante piece I posted?

Doesn't gov't intervention in the economy always result in a distortion of some kind that eventually results in a negative outcome?

October 1, 2011 7:00 A.M.
‘Soft’ Nation
There’s nothing soft about a dead-parrot economy, a flatline jobs market, and regulatory sclerosis.





‘The way I think about it,” Barack Obama told a TV station in Orlando, “is, you know, this is a great, great country that had gotten a little soft.”

He has a point. This is a great, great country that got so soft that 53 percent of electors voted for a ludicrously unqualified chief executive who would be regarded as a joke candidate in any serious nation. One should not begrudge a man who seizes his opportunity. But one should certainly hold in contempt those who allow him to seize it on the basis of such flaccid generalities as “hope” and “change”: That’s more than “a little” soft. “He’s probably the smartest guy ever to become president,” declared presidential historian Michael Beschloss the day after the 2008 election. But you don’t have to be that smart to put one over on all the smart guys. “I’m a sap, a specific kind of sap. I’m an Obama Sap,” admits David Brooks, the softest touch at the New York Times. Tina Brown, editor of Newsweek, now says of the president: “He wasn’t ready, it turns out, really.”

If you’re a tenured columnist at the New York Times, you can just about afford the consequences of your sappiness. But out there among the hundreds of thousands of your readers who didn’t know you were a sap until you told them three years later, soft choices have hard consequences. If you’re one of Obama’s core constituencies, the ones who looked so photogenic at all the hopeychangey rallies, things are really hard: “Young Becoming ‘Lost Generation’    Amid Recession” (CBS News). Tough luck, rubes. You got a bumper sticker; he got to make things worse.

 But don’t worry, it’s not much better at the other end of the spectrum: “Obama’s Wall Street Donors Look Elsewhere” (UPI). Gee, aren’t you the fellows who, when you buy a company, do something called “due diligence”? But you sunk everything into stock in Obamania Inc. on the basis of his “perfectly creased pant leg” or whatever David Brooks was drooling about that day? You handed a multi-trillion-dollar economy to a community organizer and you’re surprised that it led to more taxes, more bureaucracy, more regulation, more barnacles on an already rusting hulk?

 Hard statism is usually murmured in soft, soothing, beguiling terms: Regulation is about cleaner air, healthier restaurants, safer children’s toys. Sounds so nice. But federal regulation alone sucks up 10 percent of GDP. That’s to say, Americans take the equivalent of the Canadian economy and toss it down the toilet just in complying with federal paperwork. Obama and the great toxic alphabet soup of federal regulation — EPA, OSHA, SEC, DHSS — want to take that 10 percent and crank it up to 12, 14, 15 percent.

 Who could have foreseen that? The most dismal thing about that David Brooks column conceding that “yes, I’m a sap . . . remember, I’m a sap . . . as you know, I’m a sap” was the headline his New York Times editors chose to append to it: “Obama Rejects Obamaism.”

In other words, even in a column remorselessly cataloguing how one of its smartest smart guys had been repeatedly suckered by Obama on jobs, on Medicare, on deficits, on tax reform, etc., the New York Times chose to insist that there is still something called “Obamaism” — prudent, centrist, responsible — that for some perverse reason the man for whom this political philosophy is named insists on betraying, 24/7, week in, month out, spring, summer, autumn, tax season. You can set your clock by Obama’s rejection of “Obamaism.”

That’s because there’s no such thing. There never was. “Obamaism” was the Emperor’s new centrism: To a fool such as your average talk-radio host, His Majesty appears to be a man of minimal accomplishments other than self-promotion marinated in a radical faculty-lounge view of the world and the role of government. But, to a wise man such as your average presidential historian or New York Times columnist, he is the smartest guy ever to become president.

 In part, this is a natural extension of an ever more conformist and unrepresentative establishment’s view of where “the center” is. On issues from abortion to climate change, a Times man or Hollywood activist or media professor’s notion of “centrism” is well to the left of where American opinion is. That’s one reason why a supposedly “center-right” nation has wound up regulated into sclerosis, drowning in debt, and embarking on its last decade as the world’s leading economy. But in the case of Obama the chasm between soft, seductive, politico-media “centrism” and hard, grim reality is too big to bridge, and getting wider all the time.

 You would think this might prompt some sober reflection from an American mainstream press dying in part because of its dreary ideological conformity. After all, a key reason why 53 percent voted for a man who was not, in Tina Brown’s word, “ready” is that Tina and all her pals assured us he was. Occidental, Columbia, Harvard Law, a little light community organizing, a couple of years timeserving in a state legislature: That’s what America’s elites regard as an impressive resume rather than a bleak indictment of contemporary notions of “accomplishment.” Obama would not have withstood scrutiny in any society with a healthy, skeptical press. Yet, like the high-rolling Wall Street moneybags, they failed to do due diligence.

 Three years on, nothing has changed. Obama is proposing to raise taxes because of some cockamamie yarn Warren Buffett has been peddling about his allegedly overtaxed secretary. Yet the court eunuchs of the media persist in taking Buffett seriously as an archetypal exemplar of the “American business community” rather than as an especially well-connected crony. Sometimes, Obama cronyism is merely fiscally wasteful, as in the still-underreported Solyndra “green jobs” scandal. One sympathizes with reporters assigned to the story: It’s hard to get all the public monies and Solyndra-exec White House visit logs lined up in digestible form for the casual reader. But sometimes Obama cronyism is murderous: Eric Holder, a man unfit to be attorney general of the United States, continues to stonewall the “Fast and Furious” investigation into taxpayer-funded government gun-running to Mexican drug cartels. It is alleged that the administration chose to facilitate the sale of American weapons to crime kingpins south of the border in order to support a case for gun control north of the border. Evidence keeps piling up: The other day, a letter emerged from ATF supervisor David Voth authorizing Special Agent John Dodson to buy Draco pistols to sell directly to known criminals. Over 200 Mexicans are believed to have been killed by “Fast and Furious” weapons — that’s to say, they were killed by a U.S.-government program.

 Doesn’t the New York Times care about dead Mexicans? Doesn’t Newsweek or CBS News? Isn’t Obamaism with a body count sufficiently eye-catching even for the U.S. press? Or, three years in, are the enablers of Obama still so cynical that they accept it as a necessary price to pay for “change you can believe in”? You can’t make a hopenchange omelette without breaking a couple hundred Mexican eggs?

 Obama says America has “gotten a little soft.” But there’s nothing soft about a dead-parrot economy, a flatline jobs market, regulatory sclerosis, “green jobs” multi-billion-dollar squandering — and a mountain of dead Mexicans. In a soft nation, “centrist” government is hard and cruel. Only the media coverage is soft-focus.

Woof,
 My point is that he wasn't just sitting around, he was actively having his plans carried out.
                     P.C.

Thank god he wasn't waterboarded!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/aulaqi-killing-reignites-debate-on-limits-of-executive-power/2011/09/30/gIQAx1bUAL_story.html?hpid=z1

The operation to kill Aulaqi involved CIA and military assets under CIA control. A former senior intelligence official said that the CIA would not have killed an American without such a written opinion.

A second American killed in Friday’s attack was Samir Khan, a driving force behind Inspire, the English-language magazine produced by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. An administration official said the CIA did not know Khan was with Aulaqi, but they also considered Khan a belligerent whose presence near the target would not have stopped the attack.

The circumstances of Khan’s death were reminiscent of a 2002 U.S. drone strike in Yemen that targeted Abu Ali al-Harithi, a Yemeni al-Qaeda operative accused of planning the 2000 attack on the USS Cole. That strike also killed a U.S. citizen who the CIA knew was in Harithi’s vehicle but who was a target of the attack.

The Obama administration has spoken in broad terms about its authority to use military and paramilitary force against al-Qaeda and associated forces beyond “hot,” or traditional, battlefields such as Iraq or Afghanistan. Officials said that certain belligerents aren’t shielded because of their citizenship.

“As a general matter, it would be entirely lawful for the United States to target high-level leaders of enemy forces, regardless of their nationality, who are plotting to kill Americans both under the authority provided by Congress in its use of military force in the armed conflict with al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces as well as established international law that recognizes our right of self-defense,” an administration official said in a statement Friday.

President Obama and various administration officials referred to Aulaqi publicly for the first time Friday as the “external operations” chief for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a label that may be intended to underscore his status as an operational leader who posed an imminent threat.

**Somewhere, John Yoo is smiling.

"PC - imagine some good old boys born and raised in America sitting around the campfire doing nothing more than coming up with ways to kill blacks down south."

Al-Alwaki was born and partially raised in America. Got his undergrad at Colorado State University, where he was president of the Muslim Student Association (Muslim Brotherhood front group) and got his M.A. at San Diego State. As Crafty posted elsewhere, he got gushing press as a voice of "moderate" islam and invites from the US gov't as part of our outreach to the muslim community.

They told me that if I voted for McCain, we'd be using Hellfire missiles to kill American citizens without due process. They were right!

I'll happily step up for my serving. I'd much prefer things get better rather than live through "The greatest depression".

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I know we banter a bit about Wesbury's relentless bullishness, but it cannot be said the man lacks the courage of his convictions.  By the way, some of the data he is citing are not without persuasive power , , , If he turns out to be right GM should be first in line for the humble pie 

Quote from: Crafty_Dog on September 28, 2011, 08:38:00 AM

Cain is definitely moving up in my estimation too.   I note that Dennis Miller has endorsed him btw , , , interesting.

Isn't Dennis Miller somewhat of a Liberal?

Used to be, until 9/11.

GM - Go to bed.  Fight another day.

This one's a a loser for you.... 

It's just stupid.

Good night.   

As usual, you got nothing.

"Maybe because rescue operations and planning and construction etc. are better today"

Gee, ya think? Because of technology and hydrocarbon based energy, yes?

I doubt it's a probe, but it's just a reminder how the left isn't real big on voters, especially when the political winds aren't blowing their way. They think of themselves as god-kings and are unhappy when their divinity is questioned.

First, catch the guy's performance here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yZZ710w6GXI

==============================

The Blog
US Video: Liberal law student chokes on silver spoon in (false) protest

**What a douche! As to be expected, it doesn't have to be true for the left, as long as it feeeeeels true to them. Facts are just a construct they choose to ignore.

DF,

All the hype about the PATRIOT act is unfounded. Do a search, it's been discussed in depth here.

Doug,

There are alcoholics that could pound down a 6 pack and show no visible signs of intoxication outside of HGN. They are still guilty of DUI despite their tolerance for alcohol.