One of their most effective campaigns is putting advertising posters on buses and in transit centers in metropolitan areas.  Needless to say Islamic groups like CAIR and their terrorist supporting ilk are having fits because Geller isn’t afraid of them, will not be bullied by them and uses what anybody would recognize as completely unfair tactics against them.

Here’s the poster AFDI is putting in buses in San Francisco:

Note that Geller is quoting a well respected Islamic cleric.  “Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to Allah”

It’s an excellent job of highlighting just how hateful and murderous Islamists like Hamas are.  They live to murder Jews.  I think the poster is a real public service because the major media outlets and our elected officials are scared to death to point out the truth about Islam.

Speaking of elected officials [drum roll please] let’s bring in San Francisco’s political and thought leaders.  Remember please that San Francisco is the heart and soul of progressive thought and ideals as you read this from San Francisco’s District Attorney David Gascon…

“San Francisco won’t tolerate Islamophobic bigotry,” said Gascon. “The only thing necessary for evil to prevail is for good people to look the other way and do nothing.”

And Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, commenting on the AFDI…

“[AFDI are] well-known hate extremists” and [Chiu] said he is introducing a resolution at Tuesday’s board meeting to denounce the ads.

So let me get this straight.

• ·        Quoting a Muslim cleric is “evil”
• ·        Pointing out that Muslims consider murdering Jews an act of worship is “Islamophobia”

Got it.  And, if you are hearing a spinning, grinding sound that would be Edmund Burke rolling over in his grave.

While I like the ad, I think Geller blew it in San Francisco.  She didn’t do a very good job of targeting her audience.  I doubt there’s 100 people in San Francisco who give a tinker’s dam about the Jooooooooooos.  After all, they’re always doing bad things to the Peaceful Palestinians who lob rockets of friendship from Gaza into Israel and they bring it on themselves.

I would have preferred something like this:

I’m not saying that the Progressive Punditry wouldn’t still have a fit, after all, it is Pam Geller.  She’s, like, a non-woman to progressives which makes her fair game. 

Off topic, but it occurs to me that black progressives have the handy Uncle Tom epithet for those black conservatives who’ve found their way off the Progressive Plantation.  They really need to find an equally smarmy epithet for conservative women.  And they can’t use any form of the words ugly or fake or plastic.  Those adjectives are reserved for Progressive Women.

Anyway, I would pay to see the Progressive Paparazzi selling “Islamophobia” to their overwhelmingly gay constituents.  It would be fun to watch.

Oh, and is there a more disgusting bunch than the Progressives who parrot this crap.  They are biggest bunch of hypocrites on the planet.

Originally Posted at Joe for America

Cross Posted at Inkredulous Basterds

The Department of “Justice” is a prime example with the Attorney General’s refusal to comply with a Congressional subpoena related to Fast and Furious among other things. Second on list would be the Department of Labor where the President stacked the deck with “recess appointments” that the court tossed out because there was no recess.

Today, thanks to just released report from the Office of the Inspector General catches both DOJ and the man nominated to take of DOL, Tom Perez.

The OIG looked into the New Black Panther voter intimidation dismissal from 2008. As Adams notes “…every rock the investigators turned over resulted in more creatures fleeing the sunshine.” I’m sure we’ll never see a full accounting of the damage that this President and his leftist flacks have done and will continue to do, but the OIG’s report is a start.

– “Numerous witnesses told us that there was widespread opposition to the Noxubee case among the Voting Section career staff.” Noxubee was a case in which white voters were victimized.

– DOJ employees opposed the bringing of a case against a black defendant to help white victims in Noxubee County, Mississippi.

The report: “Coates and other career attorneys told the OIG that they were aware of comments by some Voting Section attorneys indicating that the Noxubee case should have never been brought because White citizens were not historical victims of discrimination or could fend for themselves. Indeed, two career Voting Section attorneys told us that, even if the Department had infinite resources, they still would not have supported the filing of the Noxubee case because it was contrary to the purpose of the Voting Rights Act, which was to ensure that minorities who had historically been the victims of discrimination could exercise the right to vote.”

– “Many of those individuals told the OIG that they believed that the reason the voting rights laws were enacted was to protect historic victims of discrimination and therefore the Section should prioritize its resources accordingly. Additionally, some of these individuals, including one current manager, admitted to us that, while they believed that the text of the Voting Rights Act is race-neutral and applied to all races, they did not believe the Voting Section should pursue cases on behalf of White victims.”

– Threats were made to African American employees by other Justice Department staff.

The threats were made because the black employees were willing to work on cases like the New Black Panther voter intimidation case and a case in Mississippi involving a black wrongdoer and a white victim. I testified about this disgusting hostility toward race-neutral enforcement of the law, and today’s report confirms it took place.

– Attorney General Eric Holder was approached by Acting Assistant Attorney General Loretta King: King complained about cases that Voting Section Chief Chris Coates was bringing. Coates had brought and managed the New Black Panther voter intimidation case.

Holder greenlighted King: do what was necessary to take care of Coates.

– Attorney General Holder told us that he understood from what others told him that Coates was a divisive and controversial person in the Voting Section and that one concern about Coates was that he “wanted to expand the use of the power of the Civil Rights Division in such a way that it would take us into areas that, though justified, would come at a cost of that which the Department traditionally had done, at the cost of people [that the] Civil Rights Division had traditionally protected. ”

In other words, the Attorney General took steps to insure that enforcement of Voting Rights laws was NOT done on a race-neutral basis and took no action to protect minorities within the department who were willing to actually follow the law.

This administration is the most divisive group of hate mongers ever seen in Washington DC. Will Congress act? No. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) will make some noise about it but nothing will happen.

The worst part of this mess is that the head of the DOJ Voting Section during this time was Tom Perez. He is President Obama’s nominee to take of the Department of Labor. Any bets on whether this will come up at his hearing or if he will be blocked from being able to ignore labor laws as he’s shown he can ignore voting rights laws? I seriously doubt it.

Where is Rand Paul and his filibuster machine when you need him?

Redstate blogger Loren Heal once made the excellent point that “everyone knows something that isn’t true”. In other words, everyone has, at at least one point in their lives, believed–nay, knew–something to be true that was actually 100% false. In fact, throughout history, it has not at all been uncommon for large swaths of certain populations to “know” something to be true that was really false. For example, in the Middle Ages, everyone knew that the earth was flat and that the sun revolved around the earth until Christopher Columbus and Galileo set them straight. Puritans knew that if you dunked a woman in a pond and she floated, then she wasn’t a witch. Most small children believe in Santa Claus, and a lot of political activists act like children and petulantly hold on to ridiculous beliefs long after they’ve been debunked (see birthers and 9/11 truthers as exhibit A).

And now, most importantly, everyone in the MSM and most supporters of President Obama believed in two universally known truths: that Obama is a “great debater” and that “Mitt Romney is a bumbling idiot who hates poor people”. However, both of these “known truths” turned out to be egregiously false.

Let’s take the first “known truth” that President Obama is a “great debater”. As Jonah Goldberg recently pointed out, “Obama is the single most overrated politician of my lifetime”. Yes, Obama is a good orator, but he has never been a good debater.

Did any of you watch the 2008 Democratic primary debates? I watched all of them (I know, it sounds a little embarrassing). Obama consistently lost to Hillary Clinton in debate after debate; but, predictably after every debate, Obama’s lackeys on CNN and MSNBC would declare Obama the winner even though Hillary had just cleaned his clock. (It was as if black was white and up was down to those people–ironically, only Fox News covered the Democratic debates honestly and would declare Hillary the winner.) Now, even though Hillary would usually defeat Obama in the primary debates, she never really went for the jugular in most of the debates because she was probably terrified that the liberal media would call her a “racist”, just like they did her husband and anyone else who dared to criticize Obama.

However, by April of 2008–after twenty debates–Hillary finally realized that the liberal MSM was NEVER going to give her a fair shake and that they clearly wanted Obama to win. (As Robert Stacy McCain succinctly put it, their basic attitude towards her was, “Hey, lady, why don’t you quit already?”) So therefore, Hillary decided to unleash hell on Obama in the Pennsylvania debate (which was the twenty first debate). Also, Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos finally–after twenty debates–got up the nerve to ask Obama about Reverend Wright and Bill Ayers (you know, two real truths, not “known truths”). In response, Obama got a “You can’t ask me that!” look on his face, and then took his ball and went home by flat-out refusing to participate in anymore debates. Oh, but not before his buddies from the MSM and the JounoList (a group of 400 or so “objective journalists” who were secretly using their columns to campaign for Obama) wrote a strongly worded letter to ABC complaining about Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, and implied that their questions were racist.

Now, I ask you, would a truly great debater feel that he needed that much protection and shielding by his lackeys in the press? Highly doubtful.

Furthermore, many conservatives feel that John McCain (who was a decent debater during the Republican primaries) basically threw Obama softballs during their debates because, after the financial meltdown, McCain knew that he was going to lose the election so he figured that it wasn’t worth having the media hate him as well, or label him as a “racist” on his way out the door.

So, in a nutshell, there you have it. A false “known truth” that Obama is “a great debater” was created by a press that was colluding for him–all the while, Mitt Romney has had the press, literally, colluding against him. Since April of 2008, President Obama hasn’t really faced a truly assertive and engaged debate partner, or had his assertions strongly challenged in any way….that was until he walked onto the stage with Mitt Romney and had no JournoList members or liberal MSM lackeys to bail him out. However, liberals on cable news have already started blaming Jim Lehrer and his relaxed format for Obama’s defeat. (See a pattern here?) However, I seriously doubt that any of them will actually write Jim Lehrer a letter calling him a racist….that’s a card you can only play once, if at all.

Now, onto debunking the second “known truth” that “Mitt Romney is a bumbling idiot who hates poor people”.

It is a clear fact that the MSM has gone out of their way to portray Mitt Romney as a bumbling idiot who hates poor people. Don’t believe me? Well, just watch any cable news show that isn’t on Fox (and even some on Fox), or read any column about Romney written by a liberal pundit and you will see what I’m talking about. In fact, SNL recently had a cold opening where the actor playing President Obama basically said “things are really bad and I should lose, but look at this moron I’m running against.” (See the embed below.) Oh, and if SNL runs with a particular theme, that means that it is now part of the zeitgeist and is officially and accepted as a “known truth”.

Click Here to Watch the Video.

Furthermore, SNL even had a skit where an actor playing Mitt Romney was singing in the shower about how much he hated poor people and how “poor people hate getting jobs”.

Well, people are entitled to their opinions–or “known truths” if you will–but not their own facts. So, without much ado, here are some real facts about Mitt Romney: he is a successful businessman who is worth around a quarter of a billion dollars, he was a successful governor of MA (and had the number one education rate in the country), he rescued the Salt Lake City Olympics, and he is WAY more accomplished than Barack Obama was when he first ran for president. In other words, it would be close to impossible for a stupid person/bumbling idiot to accomplish what Mitt Romney has throughout his life.

Second of all, did any of you watch the Republican primary debates this past spring? I watched all of them (I know, another kind of embarrassing admission) and I found Mitt Romney’s debate performances to be extremely impressive. In fact, most pundits freely admitted that Romney usually won most of the debates–and even when he didn’t out-right win, he never gave a weak performance. Not to mention, Romney was able to give consistently strong debate performances with seven or eight people on the stage going after him at once, whereas Obama wasn’t even able to consistently hold his own against just Hillary. Therefore, this assumption that Obama was destined to beat Romney in the first Presidential debate was totally detached from reality.

And lastly, John Hawkins wrote an excellent, well-researched article that demonstrated the fact that Mitt Romney has given a great amount of money–and most importantly, a lot of his time–trying to help poor or needy people. So, again, this “known truth” that “Mitt Romney is a bumbling idiot who hates poor people” was created in fantasy land.

Now, here’s the rub with regard to Obama and his campaign believing the “known truths” that Obama is “a brilliant debater” and “Mitt Romney is a bumbling idiot who hates poor people” (Obama once told a reporter, “You know, I actually believe my own bulls**t.”)–eventually you run into a wall called “reality”. And, that’s exactly what happened to Barack Obama when he walked out on that stage with Mitt Romney last Wednesday night. Charles Krauthammer sums up the problem with Obama’s strategy of demonizing Romney perfectly when he wrote the following:

He pulled off a tactical coup by coming right out of the box to undo millions of dollars’ worth of negative ads that painted him, personally, as Gordon Gekko — rapacious vulture capitalist who doesn’t just lay off steelworkers but kills their wives — and, politically, as intent on raising taxes on the middle class while lowering them for the rich.

The Romney campaign had let these ads go largely unanswered. But a “kill Romney” strategy can only work until people get to see Romney themselves. On Wednesday night, they did. Regarding the character assassination, all Romney really had to do was walk out with no horns on his head. Confident, smiling and nonthreatening, he didn’t look like a man who enjoys killing the wives of laid-off steelworkers.

Yes, reality….well she is indeed a harsh mistress. She will pop your faulty preconceived notions/”known truths” just like a needle does to a balloon. Every pundit and their mother has been on TV the last couple of days whining about how “unprepared” Obama was. But hey, who would take the time to prepare to debate a “bumbling idiot”–especially if everyone you know tells you what a “great debater” you are (whether you really are or not)?

The real problem isn’t that Obama “didn’t prepare enough”, or that “Romney cheated” (rolls eyes)–the real problem is that Obama believed his own press. That, and reality finally caught up to him (she will catch up to you eventually). Michael Barone hit it out of the park when he wrote the following:

The mainstream media has been playing protective guard around him for the last five or six years. He has seldom faced tough questioning, having managed to avoid open press conferences (as I recall) since last June. And of course mainstream media is extremely unanxious to ask him embarrassing questions about a whole host of issues. To his credit, moderator Jim Lehrer didn’t zero in on these things but didn’t prevent the interaction between the candidates from raising such questions.

Obama suffered tonight from his lack of scrutiny from mainstream media. As I like to say, there is nothing free in politics, but there is some question about when you pay the price. In this first debate Obama paid the price for the hands-off treatment he has received from mainstream media. His talking points, advanced by his spokesmen in the confidence that they will not be seriously challenged, were refuted by an energized and articulated and well-informed Mitt Romney. He stood there petulantly and pathetically, nonplussed by the fact that his flimsy talking points were effectively challenged.

Last Wednesday night, Obama and his campaign finally “paid the price” for believing in falsehoods that had no actual basis in reality.

In conclusion, please allow me to put it this way–no one still believes that the earth is flat, no one still believes that the sun revolves around the earth, and no one with half a brain still believes that Mitt Romney is a “bumbling idiot” or that Barack Obama is a “great debater”….not anymore.

During the past decade we have witnessed the collapse of Arab socialism and nationalism, which were the domnant forces in the Middle East apart from the traditional monarchies of the Arabian peninsula. A highly fundamentalist type of Islam has rushed in to fill the void. Although it has a dedicated following and purports to be a return to the ancient roots of the faith, one could argue that this radicalized version of Islam is more of a modern creation.

In this episode of Italian Tomatoes on Blog Talk Radio, we take a look at the distant past of the Middle East, starting with the late Roman empire, and ponder whether ancient patterns of belief and behavior are resurfacing now in new forms. It is an endlessly fascinating subject!

In addition to the Middle East, we also discuss other current events in our always lively after-show!

Fox Business -

Dear Dr. Don,
In six weeks I will be losing my unemployment benefits. I own a home that has a mortgage of $170,000. My monthly payments are $1,300 for the mortgage and taxes. I owe $38,000 in credit card debt. I have $10,000 in medical debt. I have $60,000 in an individual retirement account and have no other savings. I do get $793.25 from a pension from my deceased husband.

I am 57 ½ and worked at my former employer for 14 years, but now no one will hire me. Where do I go to find out what I should do? I want to keep my home and pay my bills. I hear you can take out an amount every month from your IRA and not trigger the 10% early withdrawal penalty. I can’t find anything out there that is in plain English on how you do this. Please help me try to figure this out.

Thanks,
– Justine Juncture

Dear Justine,
You’re in a frustrating situation: still willing to work, but unable to find a job. And you want to stay in the family home but are overwhelmed by bills and the anticipated loss of your unemployment benefits.

I’m not sure that tapping your IRA is the answer, but you can take “substantially equal” periodic payments out of your traditional IRA before age 59 ½ and avoid the 10% early withdrawal penalty tax. This is called a 72(t)/(q) distribution, named for the section of the Internal Revenue Code that defines it.

In the film classic The Wizard of Oz, the munchkins of the mythical kingdom were enthralled by the mysterious origins of the wizard and allowed him to rule over them. And, of course, he commanded the hapless Dorothy and her crew to do all sorts of impossible deeds. The wizard knew the magic of media, and used staged interview sessions, with bells and whistles galore, to enhance his air of authority and to disguise his actual lack of competence.

When it comes to today’s economy, We are living in a similarly bizarre world. The credentialed elites of Washington DC, led by President Obama, treat us like munchkins and command impossible deeds. We will do regulation on steroids, and, you, Dorothy, are to get everything done. We will break up the health care system and rearrange it in our wizardly wisdom. We will spend and borrow massively to implement our grand vision of society. You will persevere in the impossible circumstances we have created and if by some miracle you achieve the goals we have imposed on you, well, we can give you…nothing.

People wonder if there is any way out of the economic trap we are living through, with its high unemployment, low growth and spiraling sense of malaise. Ever the optimist, I think there is. Our situation today looks a lot like the immediate post-World War II environment, where an exhausted public faced an uncertain future after more than a decade of extreme government interventionism, first the New Deal and then the wartime command economy. There was a tremendous hunger for normalcy- to do things, make things, get a decent job, spend one’s money without government interference, to pursue happiness in accord with the vision laid out in the great Declaration that launched this American experiment. Once the voters, haltingly under Truman and decisively under Eisenhower, insisted that the dead hand of government overreach be removed, the resulting prosperity took everyone by surprise.

Opportunity is knocking again. Look at the choice being offered in this election. Think about it. Hard. And vote!

Is it possible that the U.S. is in worse fiscal shape than Greece, France, and Italy? According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), that is the case. If the OECD data is to be believed, the US has already surpassed Greece in terms of fiscal decline.

The OECD is not alone in its assertions.  Daniel J. Mitchell, writing for The Commentator, has put together an argument in support of the OECD:

In 2011, I posted some charts from a study by the Bank for International Settlements, revealing that the long-run fiscal outlook for the United States is worse than the outlook for European nations.

In other words, US politicians to date haven’t over-spent as much as their counterparts in Europe, but it appears that – if government is left on auto-pilot – America will suffer more from excessive government than European nations in the future.

Here’s some new evidence about the perilous long-term state of public finances in America. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States has to do more than almost every other nation to avoid becoming another Greece.”

More

EFF reports:

The ID card project is part of the integration of Mexico’s National Population Register (RENAPO), which is intended to provide a unique identity system to conclusively prove identities of all Mexican citizens. Under the program, the Ministry of the Interior will issue Citizen Identity Cards and Personal Identity Cards containing biometric information, first to youth, and later extending to Mexico’s entire adult population.

Since July of 2009, when President Felipe Calderón officially announced the creation of RENAPO, numerous observers have sounded the alarm that the endeavor violates individuals’ privacy rights. Despite serious concerns raised by a governmental accountability agency and a special commission tasked with studying the program, in January of 2011 Mexico nevertheless became the first country in the world to use iris scans as a component of ID cards.”

Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been expanding its biometrics source from fingerprint to iris and facial recognition for identity verification. In addition to collecting iris and facial images on suspected illegal immigrants or immigrants arrested at border patrol stations,the DHS is also developing a program called Future Attribute Screening Technology.  The purpose of the program is to “detect cues indicative of mal-intent” based on factors including ethnicity, gender, breathing, and heart rate.

More

Winners- The One Per Cent!

Stock prices and interest rates are highly correlated.  And the equity markets have been reborn in the wake of the various phases of Quantitative Easing.  The major indices have regained most of the losses incurred during the 2008-2009 meltdown, and the technology-laden NASDAQ Composite has reached new heights.  So if you belong to the infamous “One Per Cent”, or at least to, say, the top 2/5 of households in terms of wealth, there is very little to complain about regarding QE: 

Losers- Retirees and Other Savers

For people on fixed incomes,  QE has meant a tremendous drop in disposable income and living standards.  They tend to be risk adverse investors, concentrating their assets in vehicles with low default rates.  Alas, these are closely tied to short-term treasury securities, so they are getting almost a zero return on their investment, and possibly a negative one after inflation.  Take a look at the ongoing drop in one year CD rates, a popular investment choice for seniors.

Let’s try some numbers to complete drawing this picture.  Assume a senior retired at the start of 2007, and receives $15,000 per year from Social Security.  He or she also sold a home and was able to put $250,000 into CD’s, with a conservative tenor of one year or less.  (If you go longer, you get higher yield but face a penalty on early withdrawal.)  In 2006 the 3.25% rate on the CD’s would produce about $8,125 in interest income, for a total income of $23,125.  In 2012, the .25% rate on similar CD’s would produce $625 in interest income.  Assuming modest increases in Social Security checks, that still leaves our hypothetical senior with a 20% drop in income, before taking inflation into account.   Seniors in this situation must either reduce consumption, start spending their capital or move into riskier investments that yield more income.

Winner – the Banks (Sort of)

At first glance banks and other financial institutions would appear to be big winners in the QE sweepstakes.  Banks fund themselves through their depositor base or short-term credit instruments such as commercial paper.   By pushing short rates down sharply, the monetary authorities have restored financial industry profit margins, which were under great pressure during the meltdown.  The chart below shows the restoration of the 300 basis point pre-recession spread between CP rates and prime, the rate banks charge to their best customers.  When you consider the astronomical rates banks still charge for consumer debt, especially credit card debt, you get an idea of the money machine QE can be.

This was part of the plan, of course.   The financial sector needs to recapitalize after the beating it took in the 2008-9 meltdown.  I have no problem with that.  But the manipulation of the short end of the yield curve may prove to have been excessive,  damaging savers more than it is helping bankers.  The sector remains plagued by asset quality and regulatory issues, and these are factors in our lackluster “recovery”.  In the third part of this series, we will take a look at that.