October 13, 2012

As immigration becomes more of a sacred civil right for foreigners, free speech becomes less of a one for Americans

From the NYT, a column that won't be terribly novel to iSteve readers, but it's good to see this kind of sensible analysis getting out there more broadly:
The Mystery of Benghazi 
By ROSS DOUTHAT 
TWENTY-FOUR hours after the American compound in Benghazi was attacked and our ambassador murdered, the tragedy seemed more likely to help President Obama’s re-election campaign than to damage it. 
... What happened instead was very strange. Having first repudiated the embassy’s apology to Muslims offended by a movie impugning their prophet, the Obama administration decided to embrace that apology’s premise, and insist that the movie was the crucial ingredient in the Sept. 11 anniversary violence. 
For days after the attack, as it became clearer that the Benghazi violence was a Qaeda operation rather than a protest, White House officials continued to stress the importance of the “hateful” and “disgusting” video, and its supposed role as a catalyst for what Susan Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations, insisted was a spontaneous attack. 
This narrative was pushed on Sunday morning programs, on late-night talk shows and at news conferences, by everyone from Rice to Hillary Clinton to the president himself. When Obama spoke at the United Nations shortly after the attacks, the video was referenced six times in the text; Al Qaeda was referenced only once. 
... What explains this self-defeating strategy? ... 
Perhaps, then, the real explanation for the White House’s anxiety about calling the embassy attack an act of terror has less to do with the “who” than with the “where.” This wasn’t Al Qaeda striking just anywhere: it was Al Qaeda striking in Libya, a country where the Obama White House launched a not-precisely-constitutional military intervention with a not-precisely-clear connection to the national interest. 
In a long profile of President Obama published last month by Vanity Fair, Michael Lewis suggested that the president feared the consequences of even a single casualty during the Libyan incursion, lest it create a narrative about how “a president elected to extract us from a war in one Arab country got Americans killed in another.” 
How much more, then, might the president fear a narrative about how our Libyan intervention helped create a power vacuum in which terrorists groups can operate with impunity? That’s clearly happened in nearby Mali, where the ripple effects from Muammar el-Qaddafi’s overthrow have helped empower a Qaeda affiliate. In this context, it’s easy to see why the administration would hope that the Benghazi attack were just spontaneous mob violence rather than a sign of Al Qaeda’s growing presence in postintervention Libya as well. The only good news for Obama in this mess is the fact that Romney, always intent on projecting toughness, hasn’t attacked the original decision to go to war in Libya, or tied the intervention itself to Al Qaeda’s North African advances. 
If the Republican nominee were less reflexively hawkish, the White House might be facing the more comprehensive critique that it deserves — and the story wouldn’t be about just the specifics of Benghazi, but also the possibility that Obama’s entire policy in the region has put American interests and lives at risk.

The Grand Strategy of the Obama Administration isn't much different from that of the Bush Administration: Invite the World, Invade the World, In Hock to the World. But, you won't hear that from Romney and Ryan.

I would add one more explanation. The Obama Administration is reflexively pro-multicultural and therefore anti-free speech in the advanced European and Canadian fashion. They see the First Amendment as all very fine for pornography, but, to be frank, more substantive free speech is outdated in a multi-ethnic age of empire when the government has to keep hot-under-the-collar newcomers, such as Muslims, and old grievance groups, such as blacks, from burning down cities over perceived slights. 

For example, the guy who posted this video on Youtube is an immigrant career criminal. Making a video is one of the few legal things he's done in recent years. But you don't hear anybody saying, "I disagree with what you say, but I shall defend to the death your right to say it, but not your right to live in my country, you crook."

So, now he's back in jail. Nominally, he's back inside for all the illegal stuff he has been doing, but we're not supposed to pay that much attention to immigrant conmen as long as they stay nonviolent. But we all know that he's really in jail for exercising his First Amendment right to wage his homeland's ethnic struggles on the Internet. 

Of course, nobody is talking about: Why is that crook in the United States? That's because immigration is increasingly become a sacred civil right for foreigners, which, in turn, means that freedom of speech is increasingly undermined for Americans.

Speaking of supporting free speech, have I mentioned lately that speech isn't free? It turns out to be expensive to keep your family going. So, if you'd like to help support my work:

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46 comments:

  1. Hunsdon, channeling Franklin10/13/12, 5:44 PM

    A republic, madam. If you can keep it.

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  2. The scheming by the Obama and Clinton camps to ensure that they are not held to account for the unfortunate death of an ambassador is amusing.

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  3. Places with no significant military at all have Muslims raging: Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Germany. Places that are out of the way and outside any real interaction with Muslims: Argentina for example, get bombed by Hezbollah. Meanwhile Putin slaughters 40K Chechens and ... Muslims avoid picking fights because they fear him.

    Steve even without significant Muslim immigration, a wired world connects Muslims to the West and vice versa. No one cared about the movie, no one saw it anyway, it was planned by AQ which is very much alive and part of the Muslim Brotherhood which runs Egypt courtesy of Obama. Who longs for a "peace treaty" with AQ which just guarantees more aggression by them.

    Our counsalate was not sacked over a movie that got only 6K hits on Youtube. It was sacked by AQ's planned, deliberate attack to over-run the place and get all the files on our operatives there so they can conduct operations without the CIA knowing it (the raiders seized the files and are hunting down our agents there now).

    The whole point was to use Libya as a staging base for something big. The attack was well organized, with military planning. Likely Hezbollah/Iran had a hand in, for now they and AQ/Muslim Brotherhood are cooperating. Later they'll fight each other.

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  4. Israel has had nukes since 1965. They've never used them. Iran wants nukes to wipe out Israel -- a tiny nation of 5 million Jews over a thousand miles from Iran. Why does Iran hate Israel so much? They're not anywhere near Israel. Israel has nothing to do with Iran. Saddam was a mutual enemy. Israel's small size and democracy makes it a poor candidate for any sustained military action anywhere.

    You're better off asking why Shia Persians hate Israeli Jews so much they continually boast about how they want to kill them all. Over and over again.

    Much of it is due to an insane, debased, debauched religion predicated on polygamy (and thus inherently violent and dangerous to others, predatory in nature).

    The rest is Iran's plan with Russian help (and also China's) to use nukes to turf out the US Navy of the Gulf and pressure the Saudis to say, cut production by 50% so oil is at least $150 a barrel as Iran has suggested is the current floor. So they and Putin can pay off their goon squad.

    Once you model Iran on gangsters for Allah, with insane religious beliefs mixed simple gangsterism, their behavior and actions are entirely predictable.

    Shia Persians don't give a damn about Sunni Arabs in Gaza or the West Bank -- they want to nuke Israel out of existence to show what will happen to Saudi Arabia if they don't play ball, and make the Gulf Arab kingdoms satellite states. Since the US and global economy runs on cheap oil, this is catastrophic for the US.

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  5. Isn't it kind of striking how everyone we elect these days wants to explain to us that the constitution and individual rights and all are quaint ideas that don't really apply in the modern world. Hell, even the idea we shouldn't torture prisoners or assassinate our own citizens is quaint and old-fashioned.

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  6. Five Daarstens10/13/12, 7:59 PM

    What happened to the old liberal free speech warriors like Nat Henoff? They disappeared entirely in the new PC/Globalization/Multiculturalism philosophy we are all supposed to believe. I suspect they saw where the wind was blowing and kept silent to save their reputations.

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  7. ...won't be terribly novel to iSteve readers...

    NOT from The Onion:

    Florida Passes Plan For Racially-Based Academic Goals
    October 12, 2012 11:32 AM
    tampa.cbslocal.com

    Palm Beach, Fla. (CBS TAMPA) – The Florida State Board of Education passed a plan that sets goals for students in math and reading based upon their race.

    On Tuesday, the board passed a revised strategic plan that says that by 2018, it wants 90 percent of Asian students, 88 percent of white students, 81 percent of Hispanics and 74 percent of black students to be reading at or above grade level. For math, the goals are 92 percent of Asian kids to be proficient, whites at 86 percent, Hispanics at 80 percent and blacks at 74 percent. It also measures by other groupings, such as poverty and disabilities, reported the Palm Beach Post.

    The plan has infuriated many community activists in Palm Beach County and across the state.

    “To expect less from one demographic and more from another is just a little off-base,” Juan Lopez, magnet coordinator at John F. Kennedy Middle School in Riviera Beach, told the Palm Beach Post.

    JFK Middle has a black student population of about 88 percent.

    “Our kids, although they come from different socioeconomic backgrounds, they still have the ability to learn,” Lopez said. “To dumb down the expectations for one group, that seems a little unfair.”

    Others in the community agreed with Lopez’s assessment. But the Florida Department of Education said the goals recognize that not every group is starting from the same point and are meant to be ambitious but realistic...

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  8. Wow, this whiskey cat is a total shill for Israel.

    I'm no friend of the Muslims, but that doesn't mean that their enemy is my friend.

    I think we should just air drop weapons of all sorts over the region and, really, let God sort 'em out.

    I could give a rip about Israel (or Iran or Islam or...) and I wish the U.S. would spend a lot more time creating an environment where this crap is far off and irrelevant than immersing our entire society in the ageless feuds of goat herders and money lenders.

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  9. Douthat has been reading you- no doubt in my mind.

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  10. Harry Baldwin10/13/12, 8:36 PM

    "Invite the World, Invade the World, In Hock to the World."

    Isn't it "In Hock to the Fed" these days?

    Also, if Obama was so concerned about the trouble stirred up by the anti-Muslim YouTube video, shouldn't he beg his Hollywood friends not to release that upcoming movie about how he killed Bin Laden? Won't that stir up Muslims too?

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  11. On Tuesday, the board passed a revised strategic plan that says that by 2018, it wants 90 percent of Asian students, 88 percent of white students, 81 percent of Hispanics and 74 percent of black students to be reading at or above grade level. For math, the goals are 92 percent of Asian kids to be proficient, whites at 86 percent, Hispanics at 80 percent and blacks at 74 percent. It also measures by other groupings, such as poverty and disabilities, reported the Palm Beach Post.


    I expect the administration to send in the marines to kill those racist poop heads!

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  12. When you say Europe has given up on free speech, you are so right. In Britain, people can be and are arrested and jailed for saying very little - if they are white - while physical violence goes unpunished. That certainly was NOT the case in the England of my childhood. One man got 56 days in jail for a racist tweet.

    In New Zealand, freedom of speech survives for now. There is even a politician and former mayor of Wanganui called Michael Laws who makes very HBD comments, has a national following and his own newspaper column. He was a member of New Zealand First, which, interestingly, is headed by a Maori. I fear another Labour Administration will put paid to freedom of expression. We already have an official Race Relations Czar who publicly excoriates academics who do not toe the party line, but his powers to punish, so far, are limited.

    There is also a highly unpleasant new Maori nationalist party called Mana, led by a fanatic called Hone Harawira (formerly John Hatfield), who is adopting US style grievance terminology and called the Head of the Maori Party, John Key's house n*gg*r. Maori were never slaves, they, so the term is silly. On the contrary, they enslaved the Moriori and those they didn't enslave, they ate. The Race Relations conciliator always goes to ground when Hone exercises his right to free speech.

    Philosophical diseases in one zone of the Angloshere have a habit of infecting the rest of it.

    I am in a transitional phase at the moment and look forward to contributing to the Steve Sailer benevolent fund in the near future. Unfortunatley, the Kiwi dollar doesn't go very far in the States.

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  13. Our next series of wars around the world will involve promoting not only democracy but, gay rights and feminism as well.

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  14. "In this context, it’s easy to see why the administration would hope that the Benghazi attack were just spontaneous mob violence rather than a sign of Al Qaeda’s growing presence in postintervention Libya as well."

    Is Douthat putting us on? "Easy to see why the administration would hope" the ambassador and the others were attacked by an unthinking mob?

    HUH? Did he not watch the testimony? The lady from State testified she was communicating with those in Benghazi during the attack, YESin REAL TIME:

    In testimony before Issa's committee, Charlene Lamb admitted that she, which means the Obama administration, knew what was happening in_ real_ time. In other words, the Obama administration knew in real time what was happening in Benghazi.

    Damn!


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  15. "Okay... I just hope Muslims riot and burn US Embassies in protest of 'gay rights'. Maybe that will make Obama clamp down on the gay agenda, gay speech, gay parades, gay art, and etc. I mean we mustn't offend immigrant Muslims."

    Funny you should say that for today I was thinking how ironic it was that the guy gays love is soft on a culture that absolutely detests them and wouldn't hesitate to do any and all things to them.

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  16. Whiskey ... for the love of God.

    Whatever it is your smoking... please show a little kindness and let the rest of us know where we can get some.

    Come on guy ... sharing is cool.

    It's not cool to keep a source like the one you have all to yourself.

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  17. Putin slaughters 40K Chechens and ... Muslims avoid picking fights because they fear him.

    Tell that to the victims of Beslan

    You're better off asking why Shia Persians hate Israeli Jews so much they continually boast about how they want to kill them all. Over and over again.

    Apparently they don't hate Iranian Jews and have the largest Jewish population of any muslim majority nation.

    As for killing Israelis, when have they said this? They have expressed a desire to see regime change in which the Zionists are ousted. They don't believe the Zionist regime is legitimate and want it changed. But how does this equate to killing them all?

    The US wanted regime change in Iraq and Afghanistan. We wanted it in Egypt and Libya too. Did that mean we wanted to exterminate those populations? The US desires regime change in Syria and Iran. Does this mean we intend to exterminate those populations?

    Supposedly the Iranians would support a new regime in Israel/Palestine that would allow both religions/ethnicities to reside. Now are the Iranians full of it and not to be trusted? Possibly. But it was the US that forcibly took Kosovo away from the Serbs and then sat back while those Serbs where ethnically cleansed. I haven't seen the Iranians express any desire to do to the Jews what we did to the Serbs.

    Shia Persians ...want to show what will happen to Saudi Arabia if they don't play ball, and make the Gulf Arab kingdoms satellite states.

    Have Iranians even started a war in the last 200 years? Of course it doesn't surprise me that you are so deluded. After all, you are the guy who wrote that Steven Spielberg doesn't want Israel to exist. Should we take him out too?

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  18. Aaron in Israel10/13/12, 10:27 PM

    Making and distributing a video is one of the few legal things he's done in recent years.

    Is that true? I thought that his distributing a video or anything else on the Internet was illegal, a violation of his parole conditions. But I haven't been following it too closely, corrections welcome.

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  19. I think Whiskey has a good point.

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  20. More of the world's losers arrive in Cali:

    "Bhutanese refugees celebrate fall festival as they assess ongoing challenges

    In a survey of 91 Bhutanese immigrants in Oakland and Alameda, about 68 percent had incomes below the federal poverty line, more than half reported stress-related ailments, 42 percent are unemployed and many say they struggle with the English language, which makes it harder for them to find good jobs."

    http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_21767644/bhutanese-refugees-celebrate-fall-festival-they-assess-ongoing

    What about Californians fluent in English who can't find jobs.

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  21. I think the "right" is more "sacred" for non-white immigrants than white immigrants. Since this is the only way those who support it can demonstrate that they're our politically correct more betters.

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  22. Anon 9:29

    I think it was clear pretty quickly that there was a planned attack. Certainly that was clear once the survivors trying to retreat to some prearranged safe location were ambushed en route. I heard this within a day or so of the original attack, I think on NPR.

    The attacks coincided with embassy attacks elsewhere that were whipped up by the story that there was this offensive movie, and the attackers may have started out mixed in with some of that kind of protester, but even in Libya, most people don't being rocket launchers and mortars to.a protest.

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  23. I've never met a Scots-Irishmen who talked so much about Israeli security.

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  24. Per my previous posts on the subject, the film-maker's first known alias in the US was a Muslim name. Other evidence seems to be accumulating that he was not a real Copt, but who knows for sure.

    My new conspiracy theory on the subject, which seems to be mine alone at this point, is that the government knows that he is in fact Muslim. However, that would mess up the administration's narrative and cluelessness about the whole incident, which is one reason why he is in solitary confinement in federal prison. Or something.

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  25. Mark Steyn nails this one today:

    "The entire reason that this has become the political topic it is, is because of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan."

    Thus, Stephanie Cutter, President Obama's deputy campaign manager, speaking on CNN about an armed attack on the 9/11 anniversary that left a U.S. consulate a smoking ruin and killed four diplomatic staff, including the first American ambassador to be murdered in a third of a century. To discuss this event is apparently to "politicize" it and to distract from the real issues the American people are concerned about. For example, Obama spokesperson Jen Psaki, speaking on board Air Force One on Thursday:

    "There's only one candidate in this race who is going to continue to fight for Big Bird and Elmo, and he is riding on this plane."

    She's right! The United States is the first nation in history whose democracy has evolved to the point where its leader is provided with a wide-body transatlantic jet in order to campaign on the vital issue of public funding for sock puppets. Sure, Caligula put his horse in the Senate, but it was a real horse. At Ohio State University, the rapper will.i.am introduced the President by playing the Sesame Street theme tune, which, oddly enough, seems more apt presidential walk-on music for the Obama era than "Hail To The Chief.

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  26. It was George Orwell, all those years ago, who best articulated the contempt the political lasses have for genuine free speech (ie 'free speech' means exactly that). Orwell, of course, worked for the BBC, the British state broadcaster, so he had first hand experience of the way the political/propaganda complex operates.

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  27. As another poster mentioned, there is absolutely no right of 'free speech' in England, there never has been - and this is one of the reasons the revolting colonies broke free of the mother country.
    The doctrine of 'parliamentary supremacy' in England means that, effectively, any government can do damn well what it likes - there are absolutely no framed inalienable rights in England.
    The idea is that MPs being jolly good chaps, they would allow the plebs to do as much as they damn well please, as long as the plebs don't make complete arses of themselves.
    But, alas, recently any semblance of free expression has been stamped on and stamped on hard. The elites are all in a tizzy about the internet (10 years too late), and Twitter in particular. Recently a black African pro-soccer player collapsed and neary died on the pitch. Some arse sent an 'offensive' Twitter message - you know the kind of thing arses have scrawled onto toilet walls or carved on school desks since time immemorial. One of those national 'soul-searching' frenzies abetted by the mega-arses of the Daily Mail ensued with much hot-air about 'cyber-bullying' and 'racism' being passed.
    The result was that the offender was slung into jail, summarially for several months by a magistrate under a little known clause of a 2005 'Telecommunications Act' for 'malicious use of electronics' or some such.
    A whole spate of arses who've done 'unworthy, unacceptable' things like mocking gays, the disabled or blacks have since been slung in jail for sending arsehole Twitter messages.Arses will be arses. The political classes have to show how 'moral, worthy and good' they are you see.
    Only one potential hiccup, Britain was a founder member and full signatory to the European Convention of Human Rights and accepts the supremacy of the European Court of Justice over UK law. The ECHR absolutely gurantees the 'right to free expression'.
    A legal challenge by an offended, smacked arse to the ECHR would be successful - and highly embarrassing to the British government.

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  28. Black Label, following your -ethyl-induced?- garbled diatribe against Iran, will you set aside some of your scorn for this guy?

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  29. Meanwhile Putin slaughters 40K Chechens and ... Muslims avoid picking fights because they fear him.

    Wait, Putin hasn't invaded any country outside the former USSR, but Muslims fear him? Hey, let's do that then. Let's make Muslims fear us without invading any countries outside North America.

    Israel has had nukes since 1965. They've never used them. Iran wants nukes to wipe out Israel -- a tiny nation of 5 million Jews over a thousand miles from Iran. Why does Iran hate Israel so much? They're not anywhere near Israel. Israel has nothing to do with Iran. Saddam was a mutual enemy. Israel's small size and democracy makes it a poor candidate for any sustained military action anywhere.

    Hmmm, let's see here. The guy who passionately champions Israel and the idea of the US invading every other country in the region can't figure out why Iran hates Israel. Okay, yeah, I can see where you'd be confused...

    Much of it is due to an insane, debased, debauched religion predicated on polygamy (and thus inherently violent and dangerous to others, predatory in nature).

    Can you defend the idea that Islam is "predicated" on polygamy? 'Cuz I don't think you can. The vast majority of Muslims are not polygamists, and the vast majority of Muslim marriages are not polygamous. Polygamy is a tiny niche within Islamic populations, and the vast majority of Muslims are not polygamists, or less Muslim for the fact.

    The rest is Iran's plan with Russian help (and also China's) to use nukes to turf out the US Navy

    Why would Islamic Iran take help from Russia - shouldn't they be too busy quaking at Putin to work with him?

    I could give a rip about Israel (or Iran or Islam or...) and I wish the U.S. would spend a lot more time creating an environment where this crap is far off and irrelevant than immersing our entire society in the ageless feuds of goat herders and money lenders.

    :D

    Apparently they don't hate Iranian Jews and have the largest Jewish population of any muslim majority nation.

    Haha, yeah, I forgot that one, even though Steve's always bringing it up; Iran is such an existential threat to Jews that they still haven't touched a hair on the heads of the thousands of Jews living in Iran.

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  30. someone wrote:
    "Hunsdon, channeling Franklin said...
    A republic, madam. If you can keep it."

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

    a republic is why we have the elites cramming mass immigration in the first place. Look at the other western nations, all of which are NOT republics. I refer here to western europe, canada, australia, etc.

    These other western nations are now beginning to dial back mass immigration. If you had bothered to follow the news in other nations, you would know. The prime minister of australia has already publicly rejected 'big australia.' She HAD TO. The public there and in many other western nations is now enforcing its will on their own govt. But we in america cannot do so. Because we in america live in a 'republic.' A republic is a democracy-dampening governmental structure. That sentence is the primary paraphrase from federalist paper 10, written by madison, aka the father of the constitution.
    The other western nations have real democracies--aka parliamentarian govts.

    That is why the swiss were able to vote to ban mosque minarets. That is why the Danes were able to almost shut mass immigration entirely. These nations are NOT republics. They are free white nations with DEMOCRATIC parliamentarian govts.

    Why is it that so many people who say they are against immigration and rail against the elites and the out of control govt also at the same time worship the word republic and worship the constitution that established this same republic????

    It's like cattle praising and worshiping the hammer that slams into their head at the slaughterhouse! It's absolutely surreal!

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  31. open societies are usually homogenous and white.
    Multiculturalism requires a strong central authority.

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  32. i'm more impressed by how the media turned libya into romney's screw up.

    "Wow, this Romney guy really messed up on Libya. We definitely can't trust this guy to be president."

    that was about all i heard for a week after the embassy attacks. almost no blame or criticism was aimed at the actual sitting president or his administration, who not only caused the whole episode, but then lied about it.

    when most of the television, newspaper, magazine, and internet journalism is THAT in the tank for you, it's VERY hard to lose elections.

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  33. So the anti-Cerritos-goldychainer inquisition was a concealed sideways sortie against a character of low-status social element (i.e. sleazy scammer) just using free-speech-busting as a fig leaf? That explanation is far more depressing

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  34. Whiskey, instability and war in the Middle East will cause Oil prices to rise. Once bombs start dropping in Iran I will place a BUY order on OIL. I suggest you do the same.

    YOU ARE FULL OF S**T!

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  35. "I think Whiskey has a good point."

    Yeah, I do too.

    Still, if he parts his hair just right or wears a hat, maybe no one will notice.

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  36. Wait, Putin hasn't invaded any country outside the former USSR, but Muslims fear him? Hey, let's do that then. Let's make Muslims fear us without invading any countries outside North America.

    It made sense to me after I read this article from Whiskey:

    http://whiskeysplace.wordpress.com/2012/09/16/why-muslims-hate-hate-hate-us-they-are-failures-we-are-weak/

    Let me illustrate that, taking Germany and France as an example:

    Germany:
    - A german officer in afghanistan is almost charged with manslaughter after he decides to attack a Taliban-controlled fuel truck on its way to kabul. After an airstrike a lot of civilians from a nearby village die because they try to steal fuel from the remainings of the truck.
    Cause: Rules of engagement only allow him to respond to attacks.

    - A german anti-islam party ("Die Freiheit") wants to show the danish muhammad caricatures. The party is considered evil (right-wing) by press and mainstream parties, show caricatures is "not constructive".

    - "The innocence of muslims" is universally criticized for its anti-muslim content. Several influential politicians want to ban it.

    - The ministry of the interior wants to start a campaign against radicalization of teenagers after a rapid growth of the salafist movements. The campaign is "temporarily stopped" after islamic organizations were offended.

    Result:
    - A muslim is killed in self-defense. 3000 muslims "bury" him. General mob opinion (some journalists interviewed people): If the guy who did it comes here we do unpleasant things to him. There are different rules in this district. [By that time, the attorney had determined self-defense.]

    - The police tries to separate demonstrations of an anti-muslim party (see above) from a salafist counter-demonstration. 29 injured policemen, one salafist tries to attack policemen with a knife. He is aiming for unprotected body parts.

    - There are multiple muslim demonstrations against "innocence of the muslims".

    - After the release of "innocence of muslims" German embassies were threatened and closed for several days.



    France:
    - French intelligence sank the rainbow warrior, killing a dutch

    - "Innocence of muslims" was considered legal and demonstrations were forbidden. The french president is from the socialist party and nominally left of the german chancellor.

    - Military intervention in Marseille is proposed. There are too many violent crimes in the city. 25% of the population is muslim. Most french immigrants arrive in Marseille.

    - Former french president Sarkozy declares "zero tolerance" policy during the 2005 civil unrests.

    - A french magazine (charlie hebdo) releases two issues with muhammad caricatures.

    Results:
    - After the release of "innocence of muslims" French embassies were threatened and closed for several days.

    Deaths, injured? Can't recall any.
    Salafists? 1250 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_France#Islamist_movements, second to last paragraph), much less than in germany

    - from germany

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  37. "Wow, this whiskey cat is a total shill for Israel."

    you'd be too if you're running from the hollywood controling wasp-harvard mafia.

    "Our next series of wars around the world will involve promoting not only democracy but, gay rights and feminism as well"

    next?

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  38. "These other western nations are now beginning to dial back mass immigration. " - Thats due to muslims, they are breaking the "all cultures are equal" nonsense wide open. Even here in America with relatively few of them, the percentage of people who think that islam is absolutely incompatible with our way of life has risen from about 50%(in 2001), to about 70% today.

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  39. playing early tomorrow10/14/12, 2:26 PM

    corrections welcome

    C'mon Aaron, you're smarter than that. Probation commonly involves prosriptions on conduct that would be lawful in itself but for the background of the probationer, e.g. possession of spray paint by a convicted tagger. Steve's point is valid. More broadly, I've never understood why courts impose conditions that effectively prevent the probationer from making a living. If the guy's going to be in L.A., of course his next project is going to be a video, and of course he's going to need the web to find financing. So what? Our elites are constantly showing they lack imagination in applying their power.

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  40. Whiskey of topic, but why is your Disqus avatar Donal Lougue.

    Put him down for the least likely Harvard grads.

    ReplyDelete
  41. A german officer in afghanistan is almost charged with manslaughter after he decides to attack a Taliban-controlled fuel truck on its way to kabul. After an airstrike a lot of civilians from a nearby village die because they try to steal fuel from the remainings of the truck.
    Cause: Rules of engagement only allow him to respond to attacks.


    Oh, the hypocrisy!

    Manslaughter: attacking a truck controlled by known ENEMY COMBATANTS. But dropping bombs on civilians is perfectly right.

    ReplyDelete
  42. Liberty, security, diversity: pick two.

    ReplyDelete
  43. The only good news for Obama in this mess is the fact that Romney, always intent on projecting toughness, hasn’t attacked the original decision to go to war in Libya



    Uh ... Romney did attack the original decision to go to war in Libya, back when it happened. He was about the only prominent Republican to do so.

    It seems that there is no statement about Romney so counter-factual that it won't be accepted.

    ReplyDelete
  44. Oh, the hypocrisy!

    Manslaughter: attacking a truck controlled by known ENEMY COMBATANTS. But dropping bombs on civilians is perfectly right.


    Oops, the text was not clear there.

    The dead civilians were the cause of why this incident made it into german press in the first place. Some people were convinced that the RoE violation may be the only way he can be charged.

    ReplyDelete
  45. Since when do Egyptian copts have it so good only a total nut bag felon would criticize Islam?

    ReplyDelete

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