Politics
Rush Fights Back for Palin, O’Donnell and Other Conservatives
Well said, Rush!!!!! Read the transcript from Rush’s show below. He said what needed to be said and I couldn’t agree more!!
Rush Fights Back for Palin, O’Donnell and Other Conservatives
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Let me ask you a question, folks. Answer this question honestly: How many of you in this audience are embarrassed of Sarah Palin? How many of you are embarrassed of Carl Paladino? How many of you — or, how many of you know other conservatives, slash, Republicans who are, if maybe you’re not, how many of you are embarrassed of Sharron Angle? You know people, Snerdley, who are? So do I, is the point. I know people. I told you once, had a dinner party at my house, a couple people started railing against Palin, sounding just like they were Katie Couric, and I lost it. I literally, I never have lost it the way I lost it. I got kicked outta my own house. And I had to fly somewhere anyway, so I got a head start. I got kicked outta my own house. I got in the car and drove to the airport and got outta there, ’cause I was just flummoxed.
How many of you are embarrassed, or how many of you know people who are embarrassed, about Christine O’Donnell? You know people embarrassed by Christine O’Donnell? I do. I run into people all the time: “Can’t we do any better than that? I mean, gosh, these people don’t even know the issues, why, they really — you know, they’re nuts, these people are real kooks, I mean, they’re not even electable, they don’t come off well on TV, they don’t even know the issues.”
I mean, these people are embarrassed, responding to every criticism mounted from the Democrats in the media. I’m talking about conservatives. And I bet you know people who are embarrassed of the Tea Party in general. How many of you know people who, the Tea Party even makes ’em nervous? And Tea Party rallies and gatherings, that even makes you nervous? “It’s kind of embarrassing, it doesn’t look like the Tea Party people are political professionals, it’s just kind of embarrassing, really wish they’ve” — I don’t know. How many of you know people that way? How many of you are that way? Well, we have a lot of people that way, and any time I encounter ’em, I get in their faces and I throw some things back at them. I’ll give you some examples of what I throw back at them when we get back from this.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I want to speak to those of you who are embarrassed of Sarah Palin and Christine O’Donnell and the Tea Party in general, Sharron Angle, maybe Carl Paladino rubs you the wrong way. You think they’re nuts, they embarrass you. I mean they’re conservatives and they’re Republicans and so are you, but you think they’re a little kooky. You don’t even think they can win. They don’t come off well on TV. I hear from people who think this a lot. I’ll tell you what I’ve started doing when people start — because when they tell me they’re incredulous, “Are you just saying this on the radio or do you really think Sarah Palin’s got it all together? Are you really not bothered by Carl? I mean, Rush, this Paladino guy has a ten-year-old daughter from an illegitimate sexual relationship. Come on, Christine O’Donnell, Rush, I mean the IRS, you really –” the people come to me with this, wondering if I’m being genuine and serious here on the radio. What I’ve started doing, I’m going to do it right here, what would happen to you because this is the point that I was making yesterday talking about the dustup that Paladino had with Fred Dicker and Nathan Deal in Georgia and a number of others, Christine O’Donnell.
All of you — and I don’t know how many it is, but you know who you are — all of you who sit out there acting holier-than-thou, saying that these Tea Party people are kooks, how would you do if suddenly your life was uncovered and plastered all over television? How would you do if cameras were following you and the express purpose was to catch you in embarrassing moments? How would you do if the media was giving you an anal exam for the express purpose of making you look like an idiot? How many of you would look like Albert Einstein? How many of you would look like Winston Churchill? How many of you would look like paragons of virtue? How many of you would look like brilliant Mensa members? How would you feel if an army of motivated people looking to destroy you was following you every moment of the day examining everything you’ve ever done, trying to find every event in your life, from junior high to the present? How many of you could withstand what these people are having done to them? And then when it was happening to you, how many of you would say to yourself, “Well, I hope people understand everybody’s got skeletons in their closet? I hope people understand the media is trying to make us look bad.”
How many of you would be hoping and praying that normal people would understand that what’s going on is not quite fair? How about you? You’ve had a couple divorces. Do you want Katie Couric talking about that on TV? Do you want Katie Couric going to your ex-spouses, finding out why your ex-spouses don’t like you? You want it all over People magazine? You want it all over the New York Times; the New York Post; the Washington Post? How about all the speeding tickets you got? You ever knocked anybody up? You got any illegitimate kids running around that you know of or don’t know of? What’s going to happen if you don’t but some woman pops up and says that you do and the media following you around can’t wait to put that out there as a possibility? What if you happen to be somebody who had to get married 30 years ago, you’re living in a loveless marriage, you had to get married because you had some little accident take place, what happens if the media following you around found out about it and everybody in your neighborhood and everybody in your town and everybody in your church found out about it? Would you not be saying, “Come on, that’s a long time ago, doesn’t say who I am today, and look, I did the right thing back then anyway.”
How many of you could withstand the Democrat Party from the White House on down going through all of your tax returns, every job that you’ve ever had? How many of you would look clean and pure as the wind-driven snow if the start looking into everything your kids have gotten into and have done? How many of you took seven years or eight years to pay off a $10,000 medical bill? How many of you have been audited by the IRS? How many of you have had it said that you tried to cheat the government? How many of you could withstand this kind of treatment yourselves? I mean it’s one thing to sit here and say that all these people are embarrassing and they’re kooks and they don’t come off well on TV and they’re unelectable. Well, how about you? ‘Cause these people are just like you, they’re just like us. How many of you have had the electricity turned off at your house because you didn’t make a payment or how many of you had the phone turned off? How many of you have gone to psychics to have your future predicted? How many of you have done any kind of thing that if anybody found out about it you’d be embarrassed as hell?
How many of you can sit there and say that not one thing has ever gone wrong in your life? How many of you can say you never wrecked a car? I don’t mean all of you. I’m talking about those of you or the people that you know who are sitting there from their lofty perch of perfection saying they’re embarrassed by Sarah Palin. And why, by the way, are you embarrassed about Sarah Palin? What do you actually know about her? And then at the end of the day, even with all that, would you say, “Yeah, I’d rather have Obama for four more years. I really would rather have Harry Reid. I really would rather have Pelosi, yeah, because I’m so embarrassed of Palin and O’Donnell and Carl Paladino. I can’t vote for ’em, they embarrass me, if anybody found out I voted for ’em, I couldn’t live with myself. People would be laughing at me. I’d have to say how stupid they are so people think I’m not stupid.” Okay, fine. Then I assume this means you want four more years of an assault on the American private sector and the economy. You want four or six more years of wild spending, dooming your own kids and grandkids to having any opportunity for prosperity, all because Paladino or Palin or somebody embarrasses you, they’re not electable, they’re kooks?
How many of you would even have the guts to run for office? How many of you would have the guts to go do what they’re doing rather than sit on the sideline and complain about how those who are doing it aren’t doing it the right way? You can tell I’m getting a little ticked off more and more each time I describe it because I run into these people. I don’t know what they expect my reaction to be when they tell me this. I’m supposed to agree, yeah, privately, “I know they’re a little kooky but they’re all we’ve got.” I mean I don’t like arrogance wherever I find it. Is it not the professional politician that has created this mess? Is it not the people who look good on TV and who sound good on TV and sound smart on TV and look like Ken dolls and buy hair spray and Botox by the case, is it not those people that have created the problems that we’re in? So when average, ordinary life happens people decide they don’t want to put up with the pros anymore and they want to roll their sleeves up and get involved and try to fix it, why do we demand of them standards that we do not demand of even Obama or Dingy Harry or Robert Byrd? I mean can somebody tell me what Ku Klux Klan group Carl Paladino ever belonged to? Can somebody tell me what shifty land deal Harry Reid made gazillions of dollars on exists in the Republican Party? Somebody give one.
Can you tell me where the equivalent to Harry Reid is in the Tea Party? Where is it? Where is the equivalent to Pelosi? Where is the equivalent to Barack Obama? Where is it? See, what doesn’t compute for me is the vitriol I hear from people describing Democrats destroying the country. People say this to me: “Rush, they’re ruining the country, they’re destroying the country.” Right, but we prefer that to Sarah Palin or Christine O’Donnell ’cause they just embarrass us, they’re kooky. Where’s the equivalent to either of the Clintons in the Tea Party? I thought we wanted people in Washington who look like everybody else in America. I thought we want people in Washington who have had negative encounters with the government, the bureaucracy, the oppressive elements of this regime so they can relate to it and stop it. I thought we want people in Washington who really want a flat tax or a FairTax and are not concerned with the power they’d be giving up in getting rid of the current progressive tax. I thought that’s what we wanted. If you couple this, what I’m saying now, with the monologue of yesterday, folks, it’s serious.
If you think the Republicans winning the House in November ends Obama, I beg you, think again. It only just begins. The real battle just begins. Because if you think the things they’re saying about Christine O’Donnell and Sarah Palin and Carl Paladino, et al, if you think the things they’re saying about ’em now embarrass you, you wait until they’re elected, if they are, see what they say about them and then see how touch it’s going to be for you and your perfection, your flawless life to sit there and continue to stand with them and support them. People who have never made wrong decisions have never made a decision. People who have never made mistakes have not lived. I want people who have lived lives, who have made mistakes, don’t care who knows it, they’ve learned from them, they’ve made amends, and they have moved on with their lives. I’m tired, frankly, of Republicans throwing candidates under the bus for not being the political equivalent of Mother Teresa or not being professional enough to get elected. I really lose my patience with abject neophytes who don’t understand the first thing about politics, criticizing people for getting involved and trying to improve what is a terrible situation in this country, people who wouldn’t lift a finger to do it themselves.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: To Springfield, Illinois, Kathy, great to have you on the program. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. This is a real pleasure and honor. I just wanted to tell you that I’ve been listening to you for the past many years. My mother got us turned on to you, all of us kids, but I just think you’re brilliant and I think that the tirade or whatever you want to call it that you’re on right now is just absolutely wonderful. And I just want to tell you real quick why I think I’m qualified to call you brilliant. I have a Ph.D. in humanities, and —
RUSH: Wow.
CALLER: — I’ve taught at Florida State, Florida A&M and some other universities and I’m married to a football coach, who was Emmitt Smith’s head coach, and I just love the way that you do not excuse the patriotic behavior of the Tea Party people, that you aren’t embarrassed by their enthusiasm and that you stand by your principles, and I love the way that you are able to analyze a political situation, you kind of distill it and hone into the heart of the matter, and that is why I keep listening to you, because you are the best at doing that.
RUSH: Well, thank you.
CALLER: I think you’re great.
RUSH: Thank you very much. I really appreciate it and I am passionate about it. I run into it all the time and it gets more and more frustrating each time I run into this. And then I look at John Edwards. The Democrats, the media: This man was flawless, two Americas, he had the compassion. Why, his wife, even though she had cancer, they were willing to put their family concerns aside for the country. They’re a couple of frauds. But, boy, he looked good on TV, and he didn’t embarrass anybody until the truth came out. This has been delectable. I can’t tell you the number of people I knew that thought Edwards was it and now they’ve read that book out there by Andrew Young and they find out what a total fraud this guy is. I say, “Okay, there’s one Democrat down. Now, if you can think about all of them the way you’ve learned about John Edwards, then we’ll be making progress. Think about it.”
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You know, the kind of people that we have running for office now are the exact kind of people the Founding Fathers had in mind. I’d rather have somebody who speaks his mind, not talking points, and I certainly don’t want some hypocritical crook or some destructive liberal in charge of this country any longer than necessary. It’s not complicated at all to me.
LINK: http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/content/home/daily/site_100110/content/01125108.guest.html
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )LA Uses $111 Million in Stimulus Money and Only Creates 55 Jobs
Not surprising! This is why Obama’s stimulus plan is NOT working- the money is not being used wisely!!!!!
CITY CONTROLLER RELEASES AUDITS OF HOW LOS ANGELES HAS USED FEDERAL STIMULUS MONEY
$111 Million in ARRA Funds Has Only Created 55 Jobs So Far
Los Angeles City Controller Press Release
Excerpt:
More than a year after Congress approved $800 billion in stimulus funds, the Los Angeles city controller has released a 40-page report on how the city spent its share, and the results are not living up to expectations.
“I’m disappointed that we’ve only created or retained 55 jobs after receiving $111 million,” said Wendy Greuel, the city’s controller. “With our local unemployment rate over 12 percent we need to do a better job cutting red tape and putting Angelenos back to work.”
According to the audit, the Los Angeles Department of Public Works spent $70 million in stimulus funds — in return, it created seven private sector jobs and saved seven workers from layoffs. Taxpayer cost per job: $1.5 million.
The Los Angeles Department of Transportation created even fewer jobs per dollar, spending $40 million but netting just nine jobs. Taxpayer cost per job: $4.4 million.
Greuel blamed the dismal numbers on several factors:
1. Bureaucratic red tape: Four highway projects did not even go out to bid until seven months after they were authorized.
2. Projects that were supposed to be competitively bid in the private sector went instead went to city workers.
3. Stimulus money was not properly tracked within departments
4. Both departments could not report the jobs created and retained in a timely fashion..
“I would say maybe in a grade, a B- in creating the jobs,” Greuel told Fox News. “They have started to spend those dollars but it took seven months to get some of those contracts out. We think in the city that we should move quickly and not in the same usual bureaucratic ways.”
Overall, the Departments have received $111 million in federal stimulus funds out of the $594 million the City has been awarded so far and created or retained 54.46 jobs.
LINK to Press Release: http://controller.lacity.org/stellent/groups/electedofficials/@ctr_contributor/documents/contributor_web_content/lacityp_011644.pdf
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )The Costs of Birthright Citizenship
How can people honestly say that birthright citizenship is a good thing for this country?
The Costs of Birthright Citizenship
Hans A. Von Spakovsky
There have been numerous debates about “birthright” citizenship in recent weeks. As the Heritage Foundation has pointed out, the claim that the 14th Amendment confers citizenship on the children of visitors or illegal aliens is mistaken. Neither the text nor the legislative history supports such an interpretation.
Perspective is needed. How many other countries have birthright citizenship? How many such children are there in the United States, and how much is this costing us? The Center for Immigration Studies has just released a study by Jon Feere that gives some answers. The report didn’t get the attention it should have — perhaps because it has some very inconvenient truths.
Feere’s research found that the “overwhelmingly majority of the world’s countries do not offer automatic citizenship to everyone born within their borders.” Only 30 countries out of 194 offer automatic citizenship, CIS confirmed. Of the 31 counties listed on the International Monetary Fund’s list of advanced economies, only the United States and Canada grant automatic birthright citizenship.
No country in Europe, a continent many liberals often cite for its supposedly superior views on everything from government health care to high tax rates, grants automatic citizenship. The trend has been toward eliminating it in the few countries that grant it. Australia, Ireland, India, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom have all jettisoned this policy.
CIS estimates there are 300,000 to 400,000 children born to illegal immigrants in the U.S. each year. There were 2.3 million such children in 2003; there were four million in 2008 – and that number doesn’t include children who are older than 18 or who are married. Texas says that between 60,000 to 65,000 of the children born in Texas every year have parents who are not citizens or 16% of the total births in the state — 542,152 from 2001 to 2009.
And the hundreds of thousands of such children are no accident. Many of them are the result of a deliberate effort by illegal aliens and foreign tourists to exploit our law and use these children to keep themselves in the country. Such children provide access to welfare benefits that would otherwise be off-limit to the parents and can “ultimately initiate chain migration of the child’s extended family and in-laws,” the CIS study notes.
Take federal welfare programs. Although illegal aliens normally are barred from accessing them, they can obtain benefits such as Medicaid, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, and food stamps on behalf of their U.S.-born children. Since cash welfare benefits and food stamps are fungible within a household, there is no question that welfare spending directed at the children of illegal immigrants will also benefit the parents. It is also quite likely that a substantial portion of the medical costs of births to illegal aliens are funded through the Medicaid program.
CIS estimates that 40% of illegal alien households nationwide receive some type of welfare despite federal prohibitions. That rate is even higher in states with larger numbers of illegal aliens such as New York (49%), California (48%), and Texas (44%).
Contrast that very high rate with the fact that only 19% of households headed by a native-born citizen receive welfare benefits. CIS cites data released by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services showing that the children of illegal aliens in the county received $50 million in welfare benefits just in February 2010. So much for federal efforts to bar illegal aliens from receiving taxpayer-funded public assistance.
As for chain migration, CIS points out that when a child becomes an adult, he can “legalize his parents, and also to bring into the United States his foreign-born spouse and any foreign-born siblings. The sponsored spouse can, in turn, sponsor her own foreign-born parents and siblings, and the siblings can, in turn sponsor their own foreign–born spouses, and so on, generating a virtually never-ending and always-expanding migration chain.” This type of immigration is almost uncontrollable. It “accounts for most of the nation’s growth in immigration levels,” and it continues to grow every year “because of the ever-expanding migration chains that operate independently of any economic downturns or labor needs.”
According to CIS, America’s citizenship policy has also led to the growth of a “birth tourism” industry since the State Department is “not permitted to deny a woman a temporary visitor visa simply because she is pregnant.” This may be a relatively minor problem relative to the hundreds of thousands of children born to illegal immigrants who reside in the country. But it illustrates how some foreigners who don’t even live in the U.S. are taking advantage of this policy. The fact that it can exist at all even on a limited scale is very troubling.
The Tucson Medical Center in Arizona, for example, “actively recruits in Mexico” for expectant mothers and offers them a “birth package.” Three California Chinese-owned “baby care centers” recruit foreign mothers to give them the ability to have their babies in the United States and “take advantage” of the law according to the owners (who started the business after coming to the U.S. to have their own child). Turkish doctors and hotel owners (including the Marmara Hotel in Manhattan) have set up a birth tourism business that has “reportedly arrang[ed] the U.S. birth of 12,000 Turkish children since 2003” in order to obtain U.S. citizenship because, as one of the Turkish mothers said, “American citizenship has so many advantages.”
Birthright citizenship is not mandated by the 14th Amendment and the Supreme Court has never held that children born of individuals who are in the United States illegally are citizens — only that the children of individuals who are born to legal permanent residents are citizens. Conferring citizenship on those whose parents are here illegally is a policy that has developed almost by default by the executive branch, with no deliberation by Congress through the normal legislative process used to decide important public policy issues.
“Americans are justifiably upset with a policy that has become standard practice without their approval,” CIS notes. Small wonder, since not only are our laws being taken advantage of by those who are seeking to evade our normal immigration rules, but the economic costs to the country and the average citizen-taxpayer are enormous.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Education Secretary Urged His Employees To Go To Sharpton’s Rally
Imagine what would have happened if the Education Secretary had urged his employees to attend the Glenn Beck rally. People would have been up in arms saying that the gov’t should NOT be partisan and has no business promoting a conservative event. But when it’s a liberal event, they can shove it down our throats. I wish someone would sue over this. I am so sick of liberalism being shoved down our throats through official channels such as schools, colleges, gov’t agencies, etc. I want it stopped!
Education Secretary Urged His Employees To Go To Sharpton’s Rally
washingtonexaminer.com
By: Lisa Gartner
Examiner Staff Writer
August 30, 2010
Excerpt:
President Obama’s top education official urged government employees to attend a rally that the Rev. Al Sharpton organized to counter a larger conservative event on the Mall.
“ED staff are invited to join Secretary Arne Duncan, the Reverend Al Sharpton, and other leaders on Saturday, Aug. 28, for the ‘Reclaim the Dream’ rally and march,” began an internal e-mail sent to more than 4,000 employees of the Department of Education on Wednesday.
Sharpton created the event after Glenn Beck announced a massive Tea Party “Restoring Honor” rally at the Lincoln Memorial, where King spoke in 1963.
The Washington Examiner learned of the e-mail from a Department of Education employee who felt uncomfortable with Duncan’s request.
Although the e-mail does not violate the Hatch Act, which forbids federal employees from participating in political campaigns, Education Department workers should feel uneasy, said David Boaz, executive vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute.
“It sends a signal that activity on behalf of one side of a political debate is expected within a department. It’s highly inappropriate … even in the absence of a direct threat,” Boaz said. “If we think of a Bush cabinet official sending an e-mail to civil servants asking them to attend a Glenn Beck rally, there would be a lot of outrage over that.”
Russ Whitehurst, director of the liberal-leaning Brookings Institution’s Brown Center of Education Policy, said nothing like this happened when he was a Department of Education program director from 2001 to 2008: “Only political appointees would have been made aware of such an event and encouraged to attend.”
Officially, Sharpton’s event commemorated the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
“[Conservatives] think we showed up [to vote for Barack Obama] in 2008 and that we won’t show up again. But we know how to sucker-punch, and we’re coming out again in 2010,” Sharpton said.
Obama avoided comment on Saturday’s dueling rallies, but Duncan took the podium alongside Sharpton and 30 other speakers on the football field of Dunbar High School. Thousands of mostly blacks listened — and a lone man booed — as Duncan called education “the civil rights issue of our generation.”
“Educators, we have to stop thinking of [poor-performing children] as other people’s children,” he said.
Speakers at the Sharpton rally praised Obama and took jabs at the Tea Party.
“Dr. King gave us a miracle in 2008. He gave us the first African-American president, and we must let them know today that we support [Obama],” said John Boyd, Jr., president of the National Black Farmers Association.
D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton said Beck’s rally “would change nothing. … We will move right over you.”
Education Department spokeswoman Sandra Abrevaya defended Duncan’s decision. “This was a back-to-school event,” she said.
Duncan was chief executive officer of Chicago Public Schools for seven years before Obama nominated him in December 2008.
LINK: http://video.ap.org/?f=VAAJN&PID=liTnsiLWiv1cREL8JM6iSc_YK00F0BCc
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 2 so far )Feds Sue Sheriff Arpaio in Civil Rights Probe
We are in a sad, scary place in this country when a Sheriff can be sued for enforcing the law. Impeach Obama!!!!!!!!
Feds Sue Sheriff Arpaio in Civil Rights Probe
02 Sep 2010
newsmax.com/AFP
Excerpt
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Justice Department sued Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Thursday, saying the Arizona lawman refused for more than a year to turn over records in an investigation into allegations his department discriminates against Hispanics.
The lawsuit calls Arpaio and his Maricopa County office’s defiance “unprecedented,” and said the federal government has been trying since March 2009 to get officials to comply with its probe of alleged discrimination, unconstitutional searches and seizures, and jail policies that discriminate against people with limited English skills.
Arpaio, who had been given until Aug. 17 to hand over documents the federal government asked for 15 months ago, called the Justice Department actions harassment.
His office has said it won’t hand over additional documents because federal authorities haven’t said exactly what they were investigating.
“They have hundreds of thousands of reports, hundreds of thousands,” Arpaio said at a news conference Thursday morning in downtown Phoenix. “They’re so broad, we’re trying to narrow it down. We’re trying to work with them.”
The lawsuit is a ruse, Arpaio said.
“I think they know we have not been racial profiling, so what’s the next step — camouflage the situation, go to the courts, and make it look like I’m not cooperating?” he said.
Arizona Republican Sen. Russell Pearce described the Justice Department’s actions as a “witch hunt.”
“This is the game that’s played,” he said. “They couldn’t find any violations . . . that’s why it’s broad, that’s why they’re very vague about what they want. It doesn’t take a very high IQ to figure out what’s going on with these folks.”
The lawsuit is the latest action against Arizona by the federal government, which earlier sued the state to stop its strict new immigration law that requires police officers to question people about their immigration status if there is reason to suspect they are in the country illegally.
“The actions of the sheriff’s office are unprecedented,” said Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for the department’s civil rights division. “It is unfortunate that the department was forced to resort to litigation to gain access to public documents and facilities.”
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Phoenix, names Arpaio, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, and the county. It says the department is investigating police practices and jail policies but did not specify the documents sought in its dozens of requests.
Xochitl Hinojosa, a Justice Department spokeswoman in Washington, said she could not release information on the documents sought. “It is an ongoing investigation,” she said.
Arpaio also declined to specify what documents the department is seeking.
Arizona’s new law, most of which a federal judge has put on hold, mirrors many of the policies Arpaio has put into place in the greater Phoenix area.
Arpaio believes the inquiry is focused on his immigration sweeps, patrols where deputies flood an area of a city — in some cases, heavily Latino areas — to seek out traffic violators and arrest other offenders.
Critics say his deputies pull people over for minor traffic infractions because of the color of their skin so they can ask them for proof of citizenship.
Arpaio denies allegations of racial profiling, saying people are stopped if deputies have probable cause to believe they’ve committed crimes — and only later do deputies find that many of them are illegal immigrants.
The sheriff’s office has said half of the 1,032 people arrested in the sweeps have been illegal immigrants.
Last year, the federal government stripped Arpaio of his special power to enforce federal immigration law. The sheriff continued his sweeps through the enforcement of state immigration laws.
The department’s lawsuit said Arpaio’s office signed agreements promising to cooperate with civil-rights investigations and other reviews when it accepted federal law enforcement grants.
Last year, the nearly $113 million that the county government received from the federal government accounted for about 5 percent of the county’s $2 billion budget. The lawsuit listed $16.5 million of funding provided Arpaio’s office through several programs.
In a separate investigation, a federal grand jury in Phoenix is examining allegations that Arpaio has abused his powers with actions such as intimidating county workers by showing up at their homes at nights and on weekends.
A Hispanic activist said a federal judge might have to threaten jail time to get Arpaio to cooperate in the lawsuit filed Thursday.
Hispanics alleging racial profiling by Arpaio’s deputies in a lawsuit already pending in federal court have met with resistance in their own document demands, said Lydia Guzman of the Phoenix-based civil rights group Somos America.
“It’s going to take the hard hand of the judge to order some sanctions against the sheriff’s office,” Guzman said.
LINK: http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/US-Arizona-Sheriff-Lawsuit/2010/09/02/id/369097
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )A Boy Named Sue: Passive Christians Are Allowing Religious Freedoms to Be Taken Away
Another great article by Mike Adams!! I totally agree and I’ve mentioned this type of thing before. Where have all the men gone? Where have the warriors gone? Unfortunately, today we have more pansies in Christian circles than we used to. It used to be that men would stand up for what they believe, but now it’s the ‘in’ thing to let non-believers trample all over our religious freedom without challenging them at all. In fact, not only will we NOT challenge them, but we see it as “loving” to actually help them with their anti-Christian agenda!! I guess that’s being a ‘good, loving’ friend?? It’s unbelievable and unacceptable! It honestly sickens me and just as Mike Adams mentions below, if we lose our religious freedoms its because we willingly gave it away!! Just as the Jews were led to the concentration camps very easily, so will we be led to our demise. I have read a lot about the holocaust and one of the main themes throught out all of these stories is the fact that they were warned ahead of time, but they just didn’t believe these horrible things would happen to them. They willingly gave up their homes, got on trains, were separated from their families, and were sent to concentration camps because they kept thinking if they just reacted civilly and calmly, surely things would work out. It wasn’t until they saw friends being led to the gas chambers that they thought, “What have we allowed to happen and why did we willingly walk to our doom?” Wake up Christians, before we have to say that ourselves!!
A Boy Named Sue
Mike Adams
If Christianity dies in America it will not be for a lack of evidence of its truthfulness. It will be for a lack of dissemination of the evidence of its truthfulness. And the blame for the lack dissemination of that evidence will fall squarely on the shoulders of Christian men who are simply too weak and passive to deserve to be called “Christian” or “men.”
In the last few months, I have been in no less than one dozen arguments with “Christian men” who have attempted to persuade me to stop my advocacy of, and direct involvement in, litigation against public universities. This is despite the fact that the universities are seeking to curtail the rights of Christian students and professors.
Three common arguments I have heard, and my brief responses to them, follow:
Argument for passivity: In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek to whoever slaps us on our right cheek. How do you reconcile that with your assertion that “a lawsuit a day keeps the atheists at bay”?
Response: This one is easy. A slap on the face is a personal insult. Jesus is clearly admonishing us to ignore such personal insults; He isn’t saying we can’t aggressively call out evil. Jesus Himself aggressively called out evil as recorded later in the same Gospel (Matthew 23).
This coming year I am planning a series of legal challenges to universities that have launched “Queer Resource Centers” and “LGBTQIA Centers” on campus. The goal is not to shut the centers down but, instead, to force them to present issues in a more balanced fashion.
For example, those centers using mandatory student activity fees to bolster the case for gay marriage will be pressured (legally) to invite speakers like Frank Turek who will argue the other side of the issue. We will rely on the ten-year old Southworth case in our efforts to ensure that student fees are spent in a viewpoint neutral manner.
When I launch these challenges the “liberal” blogs will say I am secretly gay. That is the way they always respond. It’s a silly personal insult revealing nothing more than the unfortunate fact that many gays secretly hate themselves. I will simply ignore such insults and proceed with the lawsuits.
I would urge everyone – especially those who trumpet the importance of “context” – to read the entire Sermon on the Mount. When they do, they will realize that Jesus also said that those who are persecuted in His name will be richly blessed. The tallest blade of grass is the one that gets cut first. Similarly, the Christian who stands tallest is the one that gets persecuted first.
Therefore, those who stand tall and do not roll over will be the first to be blessed.
Argument for passivity: In Luke 6:29, Jesus urges that one who has his coat taken from him to should also hand over his tunic. Doesn’t that suggest that we should not resist campus efforts to take away Christian rights?
Response: The coat and tunic are material things. We would do well to hand over material things to those in need. If we were more generous on the front end, people would be less inclined to steal. But religious liberty is not a material thing. It is a non-material thing that is the principal basis for this nation’s founding. It belongs to everyone and, therefore, cannot be handed over by any one individual to any other individual.
Put simply, we have a right to hand over our own tunic. But we cannot hand over someone else’s tunic as well. When we give away our rights we give away the rights of others without their consent. That is not a requirement of Christianity. It is a hallmark of cowardice.
Argument for passivity: Doesn’t the Bible tell us to abide by laws and submit to the authority of government?
Response: It sure does. And the First Amendment is the law of the land. When it is violated, we should protest by using the First Amendment. If our protests are ignored we should use civil litigation to uphold the laws that lawless secular humanists seek to destroy. The key word here is “civil.” Christians should not hurl stones in the streets. They should remain civil by filing civil suits.
The Apostle Paul tells Christians they should not sue one another. But he did not say we should not sue heathens. Let us never forget that a large proportion of what is written in the New Testament was written by Paul from inside prison. He was boldly asserting his rights as a Roman citizen. He was not cowering in the face of abject evil, as so many man-boy “Christians” are today.
LINK: http://townhall.com/columnists/MikeAdams/2010/08/19/a_boy_named_sue
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )ThoughtCrime: DC Reporter Suspended for Accurate Report on BP’s Donations to Obama
Unbelievable!!! They called his reporting the facts ‘partisan’ because it wasn’t kissing up to Obama. Think of all the horrible, negative things that were said about Bush (whether they were the truth or not) and no one seemed to care if the reporting was biased against Bush. This drives me crazy!! I’ve never seen a president get more of a pass than this one! The MSM is disgusting!
Thoughtcrime: D.C. Reporter Suspended for Accurate Report on BP’s Donations to Obama
Posted by Robert Bluey
WJLA-TV, a Washington, D.C. ABC affiliate, suspended reporter Doug McKelway following his alleged “partisan” comments at a liberal rally on Capitol Hill marking the three-month anniversary of the Gulf oil spill. Video of the broadcast tells a different story.
Apparently facts are now “partisan.”
McKelway stuck to the truth about BP’s political contributions and pending cap-and-trade legislation, newsworthy subjects given that the event’s organizers were lobbying to “pass legislation to end America’s addiction to oil and urged lawmakers to donate campaign money raised from the oil industry to the clean-up efforts in the Gulf.”
According to the Washington Post, it was McKelway’s supposedly controversial comments on July 20 that led to his suspension. Anonymous sources at the station are now accusing him of “insubordination” in an apparent attempt to fire him.
McKelway’s live report began with a factually correct statement about BP’s donations to President Obama. McKelway accurately noted that Obama received $77,051 from the BP employees, information verified by the Center for Responsive Politics.
When McKelway asked one of the event’s participants to comment on it, Ted Glick of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network acknowledged it was a problem for Obama. The rally was organized by left-wing groups Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and Public Citizen.
At the end of the live segment, McKelway talked about the prospect of cap-and-trade legislation in the Senate, a topic related to the rally, which urged lawmakers to “take immediate action to pass climate and energy legislation.”
Nevertheless, the Washington Post, quoting anonymous sources, indicated McKelway’s report crossed the line. The newspaper reported:
According to several of McKelway’s colleagues, the newsman’s reporting may have lapsed into partisan territory when he commented live on the air about the oil industry’s influence in Washington, particularly its contributions to Democratic politicians and legislators.
This is absolutely absurd. The Post’s decision to use anonymous sources to smear McKelway was bad enough, but reporter Paul Farhi also wrote a subjective description of the broadcast instead of simply stating the facts. The newspaper’s own reporters engage in flagrant partisan behavior on a daily basis.
WJLA’s station manager and news director declined to comment on the personnel matter. McKelway isn’t talking either.
Based on what we know — and discounting the questionable and anonymous sources in Farhi’s story — it appears this is a classic case of the mainstream media silencing those who report inconvenient truths about this administration. McKelway is a veteran newsman who has consistently strived for balance in reporting. Unfortunately, in a news environment like Washington, D.C, liberals don’t always like the facts. In this case, McKelway appears to have suffered the consequences.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 2 so far )Manufacturing Liberals: Why are Liberals liberal?
Interesting article.
Manufacturing Liberals
By Larrey Anderson
American Thinker
Liberals are not insane, as many conservatives believe. Most liberals (I am not speaking here of the political or intellectual class) are ordinary human beings pursuing everyday human lives — just like the rest of us. Here is a brief summary of why most liberals are liberal and what we can do to help at least some of them understand conservative thought:
1) Indoctrination, not education
Polls consistently find that over 70% of college professors identify themselves as liberal. The percentage of liberal faculty members is even higher if one removes responses from those teaching the “hard” sciences. In our prestigious universities, the figure approaches 90%. Both of these reported percentages are probably lower than the real figures [i].
The fact is that America’s universities and colleges are no longer institutions that offer their students various political, social, and economic perspectives. There is no exploration of competing concepts, no real debate. Students are not taught how to think, but what to think. Our universities are indoctrination camps (and our public primary and secondary education systems are not much better) — not campuses for learning and critical discussion.
Almost all of the students who emerge from these indoctrination camps have attended, for years, classes based upon moral, scientific, and epistemological relativism [ii]. Many of those students have never seriously considered, or even been exposed to, alternatives to the propaganda they receive during school. A person cannot change from position L to position C if that person doesn’t know that position C is an alternative — or if the student has been brainwashed into thinking that “C” stands for greed, racism, homophobia, etc.
Yet the hard truth is that conservatives far outnumber liberals in America. It is our fault that we have allowed our educational systems to become indoctrination camps run by the left.
2) Imagination, not intelligence (or possibility, not probability)
One of the most egregious errors that our educational systems dish out, and that the students ingest, is that the imagination is more important than the intellect (or, from a slightly different angle, that possibility is more important than probability). In The Passions of the Soul, Descartes contended that the passion of imagination should be used to employ newly discovered mathematical principles (essentially what is now the calculus) and the scientific method to rule the intellect [iii].
Today’s intellectual elites agree with Descartes that the imagination (and, thus, the possible) is more important than reason (and the probable). For instance, a favorite philosopher of intellectual left, Friedrich Nietzsche, claimed, “Art is worth more than truth” [iv].
Here is an extreme (but typical) example of how far out of hand this thinking has gotten in our culture: Many programs that deal with absurd legends on the Discovery, History, and various “science” channels will close the episode by playing spooky music while the narrator says something like this:
Even though we still lack hard evidence, the search for Bigfoot goes on. [Narrator’s sonorous voice becomes deadly serious.] Too many questions remain unanswered. And no one can deny that the existence of Sasquatch is … [momentary pause during musical crescendo] … possible. [End scary music. Roll credits.]
This approach is banal, but it keeps the viewers coming back to see the next production on Bigfoot that, once again, proves nothing. These programs demonstrate that in our popular culture, imagination is more important than rational thought and possibility is held higher than probability.
Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth is the prime example of (bad) art masquerading as the truth. The movie is filled with factual errors and outright lies. But these distortions count for little in a society where “art is worth more than truth.” (Commence creepy music. Roll credits. Stay tuned [v]!)
In making real-life decisions, probability is much more important than possibility. It is possible that I might win the lottery if I buy a ticket. It is more than 99.999% probable that I will not. Life tutors us in this truth — this is one of the reasons why people tend to become more conservative as they grow older.
Because of our educational system, most liberals are never taught this basic fact of life. It is part of our job to help our liberal friends understand the simple and crucial truth: Just because something is possible does not make it probable.
3) Sympathy, not empathy
Liberals tend to be sympathetic. But sympathy is not empathy. Sympathy is a product of the imagination. Empathy is a result of knowledge acquired through personal experience. Because liberals tend to be sympathetic rather than empathetic, they see other people from two distorted (and imaginary) points of view:
First, liberals tend to see those for whom they have sympathy as victims. This is a natural (though irrational) way of perceiving those who are less fortunate — or have an unconventional lifestyle. If I have not had the experience of being poor, then I cannot understand the causes of any particular poor person’s poverty. I can imagine some causes, pity those who are destitute, desire to act to end my imaginary causes, and quell my sympathetic feelings of guilt. Since sympathy comes from what I imagine to be true (not from what I know to be true), I could be wrong. My “cure” for poverty could be worse than the disease.
Second, liberals tend to view people as groups or causes — not as individuals. Because sympathy is based in the imagination instead of on experience, the poor are not seen as distinctive human beings — rather the poor are viewed as a class. The same is true of other categories like homosexuals, women, illegal immigrants, etc. Imaginative sympathy distracts us from seeing the other (any other) person as a unique human being.
Empathy develops as a person matures. It is a visceral and legitimate emotion. We empathize with the individual (not with a make-believe category of people). Empathy drives us to specifically address a problem in the life of someone who needs our help. And we address the problem knowing something about it.
Many liberals are empathetic. But most of them do not or, because of their education and ideology, cannot differentiate between sympathy and empathy. A man who was born in poverty and later becomes successful has some idea of when a particular needy individual requires practical advice or a loan — rather than a gift of money. The successful man is able to use his accumulated knowledge and/or wealth to specifically address a poor person’s problems. The empathetic person knows the difference between a handout and a hand up.
If liberals were consistent in their ideology, they would voluntarily give their extra income to the government. Liberals, who really believe government can eliminate poverty, manage health care, save peoples’ houses, etc., should be putting their money where their sympathy is.
But overwhelmingly they don’t. Deep down, some liberals get it. The extra ten bucks in a liberal’s wallet is better-spent on a friend who needs gasoline to get to work than donated to the DOE’s green energy programs. Another of our tasks as conservatives is to explain to our liberal acquaintances what some of them already understand: Sympathy is not empathy.
4) Control, not freedom
As I have discussed at length in a couple of other articles, liberals generally prefer an outside power (the government) to fix those difficulties in life that they cannot personally control. I have used the desire of liberals to establish universal health care — but not universal lawn care — as an example.
When we put these four principles together, we begin to see a familiar pattern. The mindset of ordinary liberals begins with indoctrination. The world is primarily viewed through the imagination. Liberals favor sympathy over empathy and embrace possibility rather than probability. Liberals long for a utopia, or perfect world, and believe that some greater power (the government) can solve problems outside of their personal control.
Notice how similar the liberal mindset is to the belief systems of the pious — with a crucial difference: Members of the various religions accept the fact that many of their theological principles are based upon belief. Knowledgeable practitioners of most religious sects willingly admit that the acceptance of a particular dogma is, in the final analysis, a matter of faith. This is why the catechism and the various professions of many denominations feature the words “We [or “I”] believe …”
Liberal thought parallels religious belief — except liberals do not understand (or are loath to admit) that their thought processes are, in effect, grounded in faith.
Let’s reconsider an example given above. Instead of offering a friend ten dollars for gasoline, the liberal gives his “friend” a lecture on the evils of carbon dioxide, tells his associate to walk or ride a bike the thirty miles to work, and (being consistent in approach) donates the ten dollars to the Department of Energy. The danger for liberals, and for the rest of us, should be obvious: by avoiding close scrutiny of their Weltanschauung, liberals are is getting perilously close to sliding past liberalism’s religious orientation and into the nightmare of…the cult.
LINK: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/08/manufacturing_liberals.html
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