America is this blog’s first love.

Over two centuries ago, we took this great piece of real estate away from the Brits, who have since then become not only the cousins they were, but the friends they are.

What better tribute than a live video of a 1970s song from a British rock band, a version its original composer, American Paul Simon, complimented guitarist Steve Howe on this version of?

So,

AMERICA.

Who’d of thunk it?

James Taranto at Best of the Web Today has this to offer on the difference between lefty media coverage of liberal behavior vs that of conservative behavior in the course of protesting or otherwise putting across a conflicting political point of view:

The popular rebellion against ObamaCare–and the Democrats’ counterattack against the voters–has turned out to be the political story of the year. But of course it’s far from the first time that America has seen protests against a president’s policies. Writing at FoxNews.com, Bill Sammon faults the media for covering today’s protests differently than yesterdays–specifically, than a rowdy 2002 gathering outside a Portland, Ore., hotel where then-President Bush was speaking:

Protesters stalked his motorcade, assailed his limousine and stoned a car containing his advisers. Chanting “Bush is a terrorist!”, the demonstrators bullied passers-by, including gay softball players and a wheelchair-bound grandfather with multiple sclerosis.

One protester even brandished a sign that seemed to advocate Bush’s assassination. The man held a large photo of Bush that had been doctored to show a gun barrel pressed against his temple.

“BUSH: WANTED, DEAD OR ALIVE,” read the placard, which had an X over the word “ALIVE.” . . .

A third sign urged motorists to “HONK IF YOU HATE BUSH.” A fourth declared: “CHRISTIAN FASCISM,” with a swastika in place of the letter S in each word.

Although reporters from numerous national news organizations were traveling with Bush and witnessed the protest, none reported that protesters were shrieking at Republican donors epithets like “Slut!” “Whore!” and “Fascists!” . . .
angry demonstrators brandished signs with incendiary rhetoric, such as “9/11 - YOU LET IT HAPPEN, SHRUB,” and “BUSH: BASTARD CHILD OF THE SUPREME COURT.” One sign read: “IMPEACH THE COURT-APPOINTED JUNTA AND THE FASCIST, EGOMANIACAL, BLOOD-SWILLING BEAST!”

Yet none of these signs were cited in the national media’s coverage of the event. By contrast, the press focused extensively on over-the-top signs held by Obama critics at the president’s town hall event held Tuesday in New Hampshire.

Sammon was with the Washington Times at the time; part of his Aug. 25, 2002, report is here.

To some extent the discrepancies in coverage are defensible as a matter of news judgment. A left-wing protest is a dog-bites-man story; screaming, chanting and carrying obnoxious signs is simply what those people do. On the right, by contrast, there is no tradition of such demonstrations–with the notable exception of the antiabortion movement–so that when one (or many) materializes, it represents a genuine phenomenon.

To my way of thinking, the liberal media is doing the entire American public a disservice of massive proportion. They are, after all, the people whom the public trusts to give us fair and balanced news reporting so that we, as individuals and as voters, partners in the enterprise that is the United States of America, can possess well rounded information with which to build our own opinions on the state of our nation.

It certainly indicates a paucity of shame on the part of these so called “news” people that they are so easily able to twist their data, include, exclude and emphasize events and elements thereof as they do for the sole purpose of programming the public to believe whatever party line happens to best suit the propagandist needs of a given political agenda or the public image, truly or falsely depicted, of one major political party or the other.

What’s worse, the majority of those following the media for news apparently still believe that they can trust those people.

Read the entire edition of Best of the Web Today here.

Obama’s bosom buddies over in Israel, on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip have what they call a two party system.

One party is Hamas,

Judgment Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Muslims will kill them, and the Jews will hide behind stones and trees, and the stones and the trees will say: Oh Muslims, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him” – except for the gharqad tree, which is the tree of the Jews. [...]

2nd boy: The Zionist aggression continues its attacks on Gaza with warplanes. This war will never be over. It will continue until the day comes when the stones and the trees say: “Oh Muslims, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” [...]

and the other is the “moderate” party, Fatah

“Although we have chosen peace we reserve the right to return to armed resistance,” Abbas said in his keynote at Fatah’s sixth General Assembly.

Abbas’ remarks came as the Palestinian economy in the West Bank has improved substantially in the last two years, thanks to Israel’s efforts to grow the Palestinian market and provide greater freedom of movement by reducing the number of roadblocks and checkpoints.

During the conference, Fatah officials discussed a possible strategic alliance with Iran, which continues to defy the international community’s demands that it halt its nuclear program. Iran is also the world’s leading state sponsor of terror, providing hundreds of millions of dollars in training, arms and financing to terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah.

Yes, moderate.

Abbas and the Fatah charter demand the release of thousands of Fatah prisoners who are in Israel prisons. Many of these prisoners, such as Marwan Barghouti, have been convicted of multiple counts of murder and acts of terrorism against Israeli civilians. At the conference, Tayeb Abdel Rahim, a senior Fatah operative and aide to Abbas, said there would never be a permanent solution between the Palestinians and Israelis until Israel first releases all prisoners in Israeli jails.

…convicted of multiple counts of murder and acts of terrorism against Israeli civilians…..

there would never be a permanent solution between the Palestinians and Israelis until Israel first releases all prisoners in Israeli jails.

Of course, there’s also this, so what can I say?

My name is Chuck. Wolf and I go back to the early-mid 1970s and some time together in hell, which is about all I’ll say on that note, and Seth and I have been friends, having met through Wolf, for about 6 months.

I was asked recently to try and find some time to contribute to this august blog, and since then, Seth began going through some kind of weird depression thing that started on his birthday last week. I haven’t seen him since the day after, when he visited me briefly on the boat I call home. Whatever it is, I hope to hell he comes out of it, as it seems serious enough that I am concerned. Wolf is presently out of the country and Seth is not responsive to overtures to talk about the basis for his angst, so the best I can do at present is pray that he resolves things on his own.

So let’s get on with this.

While I’m not Jewish, I am an advocate of strong U.S./Israeli relations, favoring the Jewish State as a major U.S. ally.

Israel has been getting the proverbial shit end of the stick on behalf of the U.N., the U.S. and Europe in the course of Arab-favoring “peace initiatives” for decades, but never before has an American president been so transparently anti-Israel in his remarks, policies and attitude…Prior to the administration of Barack Hussein Obama, a man who for twenty years attended a church presided over by Reverend Wright a blatant, terrorist-loving anti-Jewish, race-baiting piece of gutter trash.

Do you get the impression that I don’t approve all that much of Obama’s religious mentor?

Obama’s recent speech in Egypt was pretty well indicative of where this POTUS stands on the Israel/Palestinian issue, as Road 90 describes it.

On June 4, 2009, President Barack H. Obama delivered a speech in Cairo, Egypt, that contained a distorted view of the Jewish people’s historical ties to the land of their forefathers, the land of Israel.

I recommend watching the entire video linked here, and taking a gander at a few of the comments below it.

All in all, I believe it tells the whole story.

Although I’ve read and own Unhinged and plan to read Culture of Corruption, I had never seen a Michelle Malkin interview (yes, sigh, it’s true), despite watching hundreds and hundreds of other interviews at FOX and all manner of other places, and then today, in an emailed edition today from Human Events, I had the opportunity to watch this one, in which Michelle is spot on with Matt Lauer, much to his apparent chagrin.

She is cool, eloquent and spot-on, and it’s easy to see why she’s considered a “threat” by various liberal loons.

…Organizations Liberals Love

The liberal activist organization ACORN filed a lawsuit Wednesday that aims to strike down a Pennsylvania law that authorities are currently using to prosecute several of the group’s former employees on charges related to voter-registration fraud.

That’s our left wingers for you. Break whatever laws they have to in order to bring about the political results they require, and when they get caught… Well, in this case, since they’re guilty as always hell, rather than try and mount a defense, they go for the gusto and try to change the law.

Imagine getting caught at and arrested for fraud and, rather than trying to prove you didn’t do it, trying to get the law changed so fraud becomes legal. That’s exactly what these G-dless liberal sleazeballs are doing. These are among the primary supporters of the Democratic Party, whom you’d assume, were they men and women of honor, would disassociate themselves from such blatant practitioners of the unctuous.

But whoever said, with a straight face, anyway, that today’s Democrats are any more honorable than the extremist liberals who pull their strings? Obviously, as incidents like this demonstrate, whatever honor was left in the Democratic Party before they allowed a Nancy Pelosi and a Harry Reid to head up the houses of Congress, or an Obama to be their nominee, is, as they say in Madagascar, long gone.

The suit, filed in federal court in Pennsylvania, seeks to have a state law known as solicitation of registration declared unconstitutional. The law makes it illegal to pay an employee for soliciting voter registrations based on the number of registrations the employee obtains.

Five former employees of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) were charged in May with various voter-registration-fraud crimes, including solicitation of donations. Those charges, which authorities say included ACORN employees submitting registration forms for “Mickey Mouse,” are still pending.

Is that a mockery of our electoral system, or what?

The episode in Pennsylvania was one of several in battleground states that saw ACORN come under fire during last year’s presidential election. At least 14 lawsuits have been filed against ACORN after the 2008 election, including a suit brought by former ACORN employees under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a law more commonly associated with mobsters than community organizations.

Emphasis mine.

Republicans on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform plan to release Thursday the results of an investigation that concluded ACORN “has repeatedly and deliberately engaged in systemic fraud.”

“Both structurally and operationally, ACORN hides behind a paper wall of nonprofit corporate protections to conceal a criminal conspiracy on the part of its directors, to launder federal money in order to pursue a partisan political agenda and to manipulate the American electorate,” according to the executive summary of the report obtained Wednesday by The Washington Times.

…to launder federal money in order to pursue a partisan political agenda and to manipulate the American electorate…

Long, long ago I grew up in a Democrat family, among honorable people. Even though I said “farewell” to that side of the aisle ‘way back in 1980, it makes me ashamed to see what our Democratic Party has come down to.

The report is unlikely to result in any action from a Democrat-controlled Congress that has shown little interest in investigating ACORN.

What do you expect? That would be like Hillary Clinton trying to prosecute the Communist Chinese for participating in bundling schemes.

If the Democrats still had even an iota of respect for America, for We, The People and for the Constitution, they would make like squirrels and bury that ACORN deep.

But I’ll bet they won’t…

… while I haven’t had very much time to visit the Blogosphere, one of my favorite places to be, and to post, one of my favorite things to do, I have had time on-line; What I generally do is read and respond to email first, then read the various emailed political news & opinion venues to which I subscribe and then… read the news, catching up with whatever I’ve missed in the days that I’ve been off-line and basically out of contact, up in “them thar hills”.

One thing that caught my eye today is this Washington Times article:

The unborn have memories, according to medical researchers who used sound and vibration stimulation, combined with sonography, to reveal that the human fetus displays short-term memory from at least 30 weeks gestation - or about two months before they are born.

“In addition, results indicated that 34-week-old fetuses are able to store information and retrieve it four weeks later,” said the research, which was released Wednesday.

If it has a memory, it’s life.

Naturally, as in all the other realities our current liberal government leadership ignores because the truth doesn’t fit their agendas, this will go unacknowledged in the halls of the White House, that other house and the Senate.

Go ahead and read the rest of the article.

****

The other day, I saved this column by one of my favorite and spot-on columnists, Walter Williams:

Cap and trade” is first a massive indirect tax on the American people and hence another source of revenue for Congress. More importantly “cap and trade” is just about the most effective tool for controlling most economic activity short of openly declaring ourselves a communist nation and it’s a radical environmentalist’s dream come true.

So why the rush and the press on the Senate? Increasing evidence is emerging that far from there being global warming, the Earth has been cooling and has been doing so for 10 years. Prominent atmospheric scientists have recently sent a letter to Congress saying, “You are being deceived about global warming. … The Earth has been cooling for ten years. … The present cooling was not predicted by the alarmists’ computer models.” Last March, more than 700 international scientists went on record dissenting over manmade global warming claims. About 31,500 American scientists, including 9,029 with Ph.D.s, have signed a petition, that in part reads, “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”

The Obama administration’s EPA sees the increasing evidence against global warming as a threat to their agenda and has taken desperate measures. About a week before the House vote on “cap and trade,” the Washington, D.C.-based Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) released some EPA e-mails, demonstrating that an internal report by Alan Carlin, a 35-year career EPA analyst, criticizing EPA’s position on global warming, had been squelched for political reasons (http://bit.ly/11XwoC). One of the e-mails is from Dr. Al McGartland, director of the EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics reads, “The administrator and administration has decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision. … I can see only one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office.”

Read the whole column here.

****

At any rate, every time I get into town and read of the latest antics of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid government, I wonder more and more what the sense is of anyone reporting the truth about anything or producing an opinion-based op-ed of same when veracity counts for absolutely nothing to the folks “governing” our nation if it doesn’t support their corresponding socialist, left wing agenda.

Cap-&-trade laws, government controlled healthcare, abortion-on-demand as a passing-into-law burden on the taxpayer, freedom-of-speech smothering “hate crimes” legislation, etc, etc, etc…

I’ve come to realize that it doesn’t matter what we, the taxpayers/voters want — I find it hard to believe that there aren’t a few million sane and sober Democrats out there protesting, in no uncertain terms, to their senators and representatives, of the excessiveness and potential destructiveness of the legislation that is passing or about to pass in Congress, about the appointment and confirmation of a destructive liberal force like Sotomayer en route to a seat on SCOTUS, about… well, suffice it to say that the Obama-Pelosi-Reid machine obviously answers to no-one, not even the Democrats who put them where they are, because they are now in the position to change America, irretrievably, into the socialist hell-hole they’ve long envisioned.

I receive emails almost daily from a wide variety of conservative, patriotic, right-thinking, politically involved organizations, ministries, associations and others who provide emails, links and contact info for politicians. I receive polls to participate in that show all 90+ % of the participants as agreeing with the conservative POV. I read about the GOP putting up a gallant fight as each piece of legislation arises. I read glaring intros like “STOP PELOSI AND REID FROM…!!!!” STOP OBAMA FROM…!!!!”

The bottom line is that I’ve finally realized how useless it all is. We all respond to these exhortations, send the emails, vote in the polls, shout the truth from the rooftops, yet in the final analysis it really doesn’t matter, because the liberals who are running Congress and the leftist president are finally in the position to do what they’ve wanted to do to our country and they’re not letting anyone blow their chance, not the voters, not the Republicans in Congress, not anybody.

No matter what is said, they have no interest in listening unless it complements their agendas.

Millions of irresponsible voters (remember what Jefferson said about it being the job of all Americans to look over the shoulders of the politicians and see what they’re doing on our behalf?) have placed us in this position, and now there’s no way out of it, short of an armed revolution, which isn’t very likely to happen, and by the time Obama’s completed this four year term in office, we will be worse off than we were under King George.

What I see here and what I perceive as the final product of this Obama-Pelosi-Reid trio is irreparable damage to America; To our economy, to the unique level of rights and freedoms we cherished for over two centuries and to our standing as the greatest nation in history.

This helpless frustration with which I watch these people dismantling the country I love right before my very eyes, knowing that no matter what any of us say or do is going to deter the people a lot of profoundly obtuse voters have screwed over the rest of us by electing from flushing America down the commode of failed socialism has caused me to come to the conclusion that posting is, in the final analysis, as effective in countering the agendas of the left as not posting at all.

I love my country with all my heart, but I haven’t seen fit to post much lately when I’ve had some time to do so, because I feel as if all I’m doing is stating the inevitable.

To once again repeat a quote from the Richard Harris musical film, Camelot:

Don’t let it be forgot
that once there was a spot
for one brief shining moment
that was known as America Camelot.

After what, about 2 years? I finally understand what they want!

Of course, of course.

They want us to give a few states back to Mexico because the Mexicans can run them in a more civilized, peaceful manner, right?

Viva La Raza, indeed…

…and as a result, I’m not all that surprised.

Here is how the press release reads : “The Department of Justice will work tirelessly to determine the full involvement of any and all actors in this horrible crime, and to ensure that anyone who played a role in the offense is prosecuted to the full extent of federal law,” said Loretta King, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. “We will conduct a thorough investigation that will complement and build upon the fine work of the Sedgwick County District Attorney and other state and local law enforcement agencies.”

The Justice department’s announcement also states ” The federal probe will consist of a thorough review of the evidence and an assessment of any potential violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE Act) or other federal statutes. The FACE Act was enacted by Congress in 1994 to establish federal criminal penalties and civil remedies for violent, obstructionist or damaging conduct affecting reproductive health care providers and recipients.”

In the wake of the Tiller murder, the U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, ordered the U.S. Marshals Service to “offer protection to appropriate people and facilities around the country.” The directive was given in the apparent belief that other violent incidents might take place.

Meanwhile,

Some conservatives have questioned the extent of the reaction to the Tiller killing by the Justice department. They have pointed to an incident in Little Rock, Arkansas, on Monday of this week when a Muslim convert opened fire at a military recruiting center, killing one young man and wounding another. The conservatives have noted that there was no indication from the Obama administration that it feared there might be similar incidents at other military recruiting facilities or any attempt to link the Muslim man’s actions to a possible larger Muslim campaign against U.S. military personnel or facilities.

And while President Barack Obama issued a statement saying he was “shocked and outraged” by the Tiller murder, he has made no public statements about the death of the young recruit in Little Rock.

Hmmm.

Not that it pertains to the above, but I was reading somewhere today that while the New York Times condemned, in no uncertain terms, references to Obama’s middle name during campaign season, they were more than happy to flaunt it while he was over there kissing up to the Egyptians.

Yes, Hmmm.

Wolf here.

First off, I just want to say that Seth is doing fine, he’s up in what he likes to call “them thar hills” for the moment, and has told me to pass on that when he comes back into town, he will resume posting, which he has missed doing terribly, as time permits.

The “publish” capability of Hard Astarboard was impaired for a long time, but Word Press herein has now been upgraded.

I just finished reading an interesting dramatized biography he gave me not long ago;

Citizen Tom Paine, by Howard Fast
1943 First Edition, Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York

Pretty good, interesting take on the life of one of the folks who helped get the colonists fired up enough to kick the Brits to hell out of here and let us get on with building the greatest country in the history of the planet — one that, I’m sorry to say, seems to be backsliding something fierce in that regard.

Oh, the title of this post?

It’s about The Honorable Barack Hussein’s pick to replace the retiring Justice Souter in the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, and her stance on the Second Amendment.

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor ruled in January 2009 that states do not have to obey the Second Amendment’s commandment that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

In Maloney v. Cuomo, Sotomayor signed an opinion of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that said the Second Amendment does not protect individuals from having their right to keep and bear arms restricted by state governments.

The opinion said that the Second Amendment only restricted the federal government from infringing on an individual’s right to keep and bear arms. As justification for this position, the opinion cited the 1886 Supreme Court case of Presser v. Illinois.

“It is settled law, however, that the Second Amendment applies only to limitations the federal government seeks to impose on this right,” said the opinion. Quoting Presser, the court said, “it is a limitation only upon the power of Congress and the national government, and not upon that of the state.”

Settled law?

Presser vs Illinois.

The excerpt from which Sotomayor milks her “precedent” reads,

The provision in the Second Amendment to the Constitution, that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed,” is a limitation only on the power of Congress and the national government, and not of the States. But in view of the fact that all citizens capable of bearing arms constitute the reserved military force of the national government as well as in view of its general powers, the States cannot prohibit the people from keeping and bearing arms, so as to deprive the United States of their rightful resource for maintaining the public security.

However,

The provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution that “no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States,” does not prevent a State from passing such laws to regulate the privileges and immunities of its own citizens as do not abridge their privileges and immunities as citizens of the United States.

Unless restrained by their own Constitutions, State legislatures may enact statutes to control and regulate all organizations, drilling, and parading of military bodies and associations, except those which are authorized by the militia laws of the United States.

This is a turnaround:

Usually, the Democrats make federal cases out of issues that should be up to states to decide. This time, they’re trying to make a state issue out of a federal case, unusual in that they could save time and hassle by simply letting the usual liberal judges legislate from the bench.

This could lead to some serious complications for all of us law abiding firearms owners. Imagine being in a state in which there was a liberal, anti-Second Amendment legislature and/or governor, and having a Supreme Court decision toss the fate of your right to keep and bear arms into the hands of that cabal of anti-Constitution, anti-freedom lefties!

All of us Americans who cherish our right to keep and bear arms need to be in contact with our representatives and our senators on Capital Hill to make damn sure that they know what to do when the confirmation vote for Sotomayor comes up.

On another Sonia Sotomayor note, regarding her now infamous verbal “gaff”, James Taranto at Best Of The Web Today had some fun yesterday.

…what about the substance of their criticism? Was the comment in question racist in character? That depends. Here is the quote in dispute:

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman, with the richness of her experiences, would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

We’ll discount the “I would hope” and assume what follows is a statement of belief, not just aspiration. Here is Merriam-Webster’s definition of racism:

1 : a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race

2 : racial prejudice or discrimination

By the first definition, Sotomayor’s statement is not racist, even assuming that “Latina” is a racial category. She is quite clear that her belief in the superior decision-making skills of “a wise Latina woman” as compared with “a white male” is contingent on culture and experience, not rooted in some essential racial difference.

Sotomayor’s statement is, however, an expression of prejudice, an exercise in stereotyping.

It reminds us of an exchange on an early episode of “All in the Family,” which we caught as part of a retrospective aired earlier this week on the TV Land cable network. Archie Bunker and the Meathead are arguing over a brochure advertising a slate of candidates for local office:

Archie: What’s the matter with this? I call this representative government. You’ve got Salvatori, Feldman, O’Reilly, Nelson–that’s an Italian, a Jew, an Irishman and a regular American there. That’s what I call a balanced ticket.

Meathead: Why do you always have to label people by nationality?

Archie: ‘Cause, how else are you going to get the right man for the right job? For instance, take Feldman there. He’s up for treasurer. Well, that’s perfect. All them people know how to handle money. Know what I mean?

Meathead: No, I don’t.

Archie: Well, then you got Salvatori running for D.A. He can keep an eye on Feldman. You know, I want to tell you something about the Italians. When you do get an honest one, you really got something there.

Meathead: Aw, c’mon, Arch.

Archie: Well, then here you got O’Reilly, the mick. He can see that the graft is equally spread around, you know. You got Nelson, the American guy. He’s good for TV appearances, to make the rest of them look respectable.

Like Sotomayor, Archie is not propounding a theory of racial or ethnic supremacy but describing the world in terms of culturally contingent stereotypes. He is engaging in identity politics.

What’s fascinating about this is that the Meathead (played by Rob Reiner) is a peer of La Jueza Empática: She was born in 1954; Reiner, in 1947. But the liberalism of “All in the Family” is not the liberalism of the baby boomers. It is that of an earlier generation–Archie Bunker’s generation. Series creator Norman Lear and Carroll O’Connor, who played Archie, were born in 1922 and 1924, respectively.
Today, you can easily imagine a conservative uttering the Meathead’s earnest query: “Why do you always have to label people by nationality?” But somewhere along the line, liberalism lost its ideals and adopted Archie Bunker’s theory of representative government.

Heh.

Wolf Out.