What Leftist Anarchists Have Planned For The Republican Convention

Brandon Darby worked undercover for the FBI in 2008 and helped stop a bomb plot at that year's GOP convention. In this interview on Breitbart, he goes into some detail on what's being planned and we can likely expect - and it will not be peaceful:

Brandon Darby: The video I gave you is interesting because it’s a video surveillance I took of one section of the Republican National Convention welcoming committee. Several of the clips of video were used in the prosecution of David McKay and Bradley Neal Crowder.



What happened at the Republican National Convention in ’08 is that the overall liberal, Democratic protests were organized by a group called United for Peace and Justice. Now these were the mainstream liberal protesters, not the ones who would violate the law or violate a police order or anything crazy. Now what was interesting is that the same group of people organizing the mainstream liberal protests also organized a breakaway group called the RNC Welcoming Committee and it was 500 to 1,000 anarchists. And their goal was to shut down the Republican National Convention by any means necessary.

Now they had meetings for a long time before and what they ultimately decided to do—and it was folks like Lisa Fithian leading the training, and I know because I was in the training…undercover —but what they did is they mapped out the city, maps with corporate targets, business leaders home addresses, and Republican delegates home addresses, and also where the hotels were the delegates were going to be staying in. And they handed out these maps and then they showed people videos of Molotov cocktails and various other criminal behavior and asked everyone to be creative and feel free to use what they called a diversity of tactics and to make sure the Republican National Convention can’t occur, you know, can’t happen.

In a later planning session they mapped out the area around the convention center; they divided it into several sections. Then each group of anarchists of their RNC Welcoming Committee—which we now call Occupy—each group was responsible for a different sector. They had organized everyone into three groups of people. There was the red, the yellow, and the green. What they decided was that the yellow group was going be the group that would be arrestable. They were the ones who were going to get arrested. They were going to chain their arms and hands together in PVC pipe so that the cops couldn’t cut ‘em out without injuring them. But they were going to chain themselves across the major arteries so that the delegates could not get to the convention center.

Now, Lisa Fithian and the organizers, they realized that the police were not going to allow a group to set up and do that, allow the yellow group to do that. So they figured they could use the green group, the green group being the mainstream liberal and Democratic protesters who would never violate the law intentionally. So the organizers would manipulate the green group to get into the street and protest. The green group’s not realizing that they’re being used to cover illegal behavior that’s interfering with the rights of other Americans to assemble. And then when the police told the green group to get out they would slow the green group down and try to keep them from getting out of the road. Well eventually the green group would get out of the road. And if that didn’t give the yellow group enough time to finish locking down across the road, then the red group—which are the black mask wearing anarchists would come in—and the red group would actually begin to attack police.

Last time they made riot shields that they had made out of stolen traffic barrels and the riot shields had protruding sharpened deck screws from them. And they had their signs where, their protests signs were made out of heavy, heavy sticks so they could actually have a weapon against police but police couldn’t take them or else they were violating their rights to free speech.

And they would send the red group in to attack the police and then the red group would flee and then that would give the yellow group enough time to lock down and shut the RNC down. Well what was interesting about it, is that when the red group fled then the police would treat the protesters—because they’re all one protest—they would treat them as though they had just been attacked, because they had been. Well then the green group would look like they were innocent protesters who were getting attacked and in their minds they were because they didn’t realize that Lisa Fithian and the leaders were using them as part of this effort to violently attack police and attack conservatives.

So the buses that did get through when they were held up by the yellow group, then the red group would come back and the red group threw bricks and flagstones through the windows, they slashed the tires of the buses, they threw bleach and urine in the delegates faces and they attacked the buses and the people on the buses. And that’s what they’re going to do this time.

So that was…the red, yellow, green concept is very important for people to realize that that’s what’s occurring. So people have to remember, this isn’t a bunch of unorganized and disorganized kids. This is Lisa Fithian, she’s the one who led the unions and the anarchists to shut down Seattle at the ’99 World Trade Organization protest in Seattle. It’s not something to play around with because when this is all said and done the FBI informants will have stopped bomb plots just as they and I did last time.

These kinds of tactics were exactly what was used in Seattle, in Oakland, in Vancouver, and even in London as various groups swap strategy and techniques.

And according to Brian Darby, there's an aded twist planned for the GOP convention to shut it down:

The other thing that they’re trying to do is that they have a coms group—and this is breaking news you need to know this—they have a coms group that is trying to shut down the EMS communications structure for the city. That’s really happening. They’re trying to shut down the communications structure for the city for law enforcement and emergency medical personnel.

People don’t realize that these demonstrations, they have a sophisticated communications structure. Like before they have one of these demonstrations, whether it’s this one or whether it’s WTO or whether it’s, whatever it is, whether it’s IMF…When these people when this global movement of anarchists that protests these things they have to rent space and have extra cooling systems and have massive cable networks and they have to have to have a lot of communications equipment, a lot of computer equipment. It’s not like a bunch of people are going to show up and talk on their cell phones. They have some massive computer equipment and their goal is to shut us down.

Needless to say, just as with the OWS movement, the leftist, pro-Obama media is going to defend these people to the death as 'harmless protesters' victimized by over zealous law enforcement. And the fact that Tampa has a Democrat mayor and Obama surrogate in Bob Buckhorn who has been quite vocal about wanting convention participants disarmed and being willing to call off the Republican convention at the least excuse just adds to the mix.

Be prepared to see the RNC shut down because of street violence.

A Matter Of Circumcision And Religious Freedom

A state court in Germany recently banned ritual circumcision after a botched Muslim circumcision of a teenaged boy who suffered medical complications after being circumcised.

Now things have revved up, with criminal charges being filed for the first time against a Jewish rabbi for performing circumcisions, the Jewish religious rite of brit millah:

A doctor from Hesse filed a criminal complaint against Rabbi David Goldberg, who serves in the community of Hof, in Upper Franconia (northern Bavaria), according to the Juedische Allgemeine weekly newspaper. The chief prosecutor of Hof confirmed that charges had been filed against the rabbi. {...}

“I am shocked,” said Cologne Rabbi Yaron Engelmayer, co-chairman of the national umbrella group of Orthodox rabbis in Germany, in a first reaction to the report. This marks the first time that a court in the Federal Republic of Germany is investigating a rabbi for performing a religious ritual, Engelmayer told the paper.

Goldberg, a qualified mohel (ritual circumciser) who says he has performed more than 3,000 circumcisions, was informed about the criminal charges against him by journalists, the paper said.

Born in Jerusalem, the 64-year-old has been the rabbi of Hof since 1997. Before World War II, about 3,000 Jews lived in Hof. Today, the community counts about 400 members.

“This latest development in Hof is yet another grave affront to religious freedom and underlines the urgent need for the German government to expedite the process of ensuring that the fundamental rights of minority communities are protected. We call upon the Minister of the Interior to take immediate action to secure those rights in the short term,” Conference of European Rabbis, Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt said.

In view of the uproar this is causing, it's worth addressing in some detail.

Since this is a state court in Germany, allusions and references to the Holocaust have been evoked, and frankly I think unjustly. As opposed to certain other perpetrators and defenders of genocide and ethnic cleansing, particularly in the Muslim world, the Germans have the virtue, if it can be called that, of being forthcoming about their role in the Holocaust. As a matter of fact, they are one of the few countries in Europe to do so. Hitler and the Nazis had many willing accomplices.

Nor are today's Germans, with the exception of some aged Nazi sympathizers running out the clock the same people who perpetrated that horrific stain on human history.

That said, let's look at the actual arguments for banning and criminalizing ritual Jewish circumcision.

I can't speak for Germany, but here in the United States the anti-circumcision lobby is largely populated by homosexual activists and garden variety anti-Semites. It's no accident that legislation to put in place city ordinances banning circumcision got on the ballot in San Francisco and in Santa Monica, both 'progressive' cities with active and powerful gay populations and lobbies. By the way, both proposed ordinances were removed from the ballot when the 'progressive' politicians in these cities realized that they were in clear violation of the First Amendment and would have subjected them to costly litigation and a hefty financial judgment.

The argument, as in Germany, was that male circumcision constitutes an 'assault' and 'bodily harm' to infants and thus interferes with their later sexual pleasure.

Actually there is significant scientific evidence that male circumcision does in fact act as a preventive in penile cancer, venereal disease and the transmission of AIDS.

This makes common sense, because the foreskin by design is a repository for germs and disease if not kept rigorously clean..and sometimes even if it is. And it's why 80% of American males, Jewish and gentile have had this procedure done as infants.

However, there are those whom deride the scientific evidence and come with studies of their own showing that it has no effect, but even these studies ( a number of them funded by fairly murky groups) admit that at worse it does no physical harm.

Is that a reason to not only ignore a possible health benefit and ban a religiously sanctified ritual that goes back to the days of Abraham and discriminate against people who take their religion seriously? One wonders how the activists pushing for the ban would react if similar tolerance was practiced against them and their lifestyles.

A second argument, and a potent one in Germany because of its Muslim population has to do with the limits of religious tolerance. After all, if male circumcision is allowed for Jews and Muslims, shouldn't the female circumcision practiced in the Muslim world be allowed too?

Female circumcision, or to be more correct, clitorectomies and enfibrillation is also known quite rightly as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). It has none of the health benefits associated with male circumcision.

It is designed to help 'control' women's sexual urges and pleasure in the sexual act by removing all or part of the clitoris or even 'stitching' up a young girl's vagina as a form of domination.The process is also not done on infants, but on prepubescent girls, frequently without anesthesia.

This is quite in line with Islam's philosophy towards women and has been endorsed by a number of Muslim clerics and religious leaders, including Sheikh Qaradiwi, spiritual head of the Muslim Brotherhood and one of the most popular Muslim clerics in the world, thanks to his widely watched show on al-Jazeera.

This would certainly seem give weight to the argument that FGM is part of Muslim religious practice and should thus be protected.There are estimates that over 80% of Egypt's women have undergone this procedure, particularly in rural areas.

However, things like what amounts to felony animal torture,ritual prostitution and wife beating are also religiously sanctioned practices in some beliefs, with the last one also sanctioned by Islam...as is religiously sanctioned prostitution through the institution of 'temporary marriages' which allows wealthy Persian Gulf Arabs to go and and purchase adolescents girls in poorer countries like Egypt and India as temporary sex toys.

Germany, at least at this point, is a civilized western nation. Are the proponents of a ban on the Jewish practice of ritual circumcision of male infants saying that Germany and other countries should make no differentiation between that and practices like FGM, 'temporary marriages' and wife beating?

Perhaps they are, since the proponents of a ban on circumcision normally are distinguished by a raging hostility towards all religion for reasons I'm sure you can come up with on your own.

However, their arguments are noticeably flaccid when looked at clearly. And I'm sure the German government will see it the same way.

-selah-

(h/t, Greg)

The NYT Sloughs Off Criticism Of Bias - From Its Own Public Editor!

The New York Times public editor , Arthur S. Brisbane penned his final column today, and came up with a trenchant observation, diplomatically expressed though it is.. While he started his gig at Pravda-on-the-Hudson convinced that accusations of leftist bias and slanted coverage were totally unfounded, two years of working at the paper convinced him otherwise:

I also noted two years ago that I had taken up the public editor duties believing "there is no conspiracy" and that The Times's output was too vast and complex to be dictated by any Wizard of Oz-like individual or cabal. I still believe that, but also see that the hive on Eighth Avenue is powerfully shaped by a culture of like minds - a phenomenon, I believe, that is more easily recognized from without than from within.

When The Times covers a national presidential campaign, I have found that the lead editors and reporters are disciplined about enforcing fairness and balance, and usually succeed in doing so. Across the paper's many departments, though, so many share a kind of political and cultural progressivism - for lack of a better term - that this worldview virtually bleeds through the fabric of The Times.

As a result, developments like the Occupy movement and gay marriage seem almost to erupt in The Times, overloved and undermanaged, more like causes than news subjects.

Stepping back, I can see that as the digital transformation proceeds, as The Times disaggregates and as an empowered staff finds new ways to express itself, a kind of Times Nation has formed around the paper's political-cultural worldview, an audience unbound by geography (as distinct from the old days of print) and one that self-selects in digital space.

It's a huge success story - it is hard to argue with the enormous size of Times Nation - but one that carries risk as well. A just-released Pew Research Center survey found that The Times's "believability rating" had dropped drastically among Republicans compared with Democrats, and was an almost-perfect mirror opposite of Fox News's rating. Can that be good?

In other words, the Time's leftist bias is engrained, and it has now become like MSNBC - geared towards a select audience that shares that bias, rather than operating as a straight news outlet.

This is a major admission from the man whose job it's been for the last two years to comment on and address reader complaints, charges of bias and outright misstatements of fact and media criticism.

While I appreciate Mr. Brisbane's attempt to equate this with FOX, there are a couple of major differences. First, FOX goes to some lengths to include voices from different sides of the spectrum ( Juan Williams, Susan Estrich, Geraldo Rivera, Democrats Greta Van Sustern and Chris Wallace, etc.)while the Times, with very rare exceptions, does not.

And second, while by Arthur S. Brisbane's own admission the Times is hemorrhaging money and its appeal is, in the classic line from Spinal Tap, becoming 'more selective', FOX is hugely profitable and its audience has the kind of numbers the suits at Pravda-on-the-Hudson would poison puppies and murder babies in their cribs for.

I'm not at all surprised, however, that the Times printed this. Editor Jill Abramson's response tells you why:

Times executive editor Jill Abramson says she disagrees with Brisbane’s “sweeping conclusions.”

“In our newsroom we are always conscious that the way we view an issue in New York is not necessarily the way it is viewed in the rest of the country or world. I disagree with Mr. Brisbane’s sweeping conclusions,” Abramson told POLITICO Saturday night.

“I agree with another past public editor, Dan Okrent, and my predecessor as executive editor, Bill Keller, that in covering some social and cultural issues, the Times sometimes reflects its urban and cosmopolitan base,” she continued. “But I also often quote, including in talks with Mr. Brisbane, another executive editor, Abe Rosenthal, who wanted to be remembered for keeping ‘the paper straight.’ That’s essential.”

Ah yes, that 'urban and cosmopolitan base' - as opposed to those knuckle dragging, neanderthal rubes in flyover country.

In essence, with those turgid comments Ms. Abramson just reaffirmed everything Arthur Brisbane wrote in his column..the Times is no longer a newspaper, but a proud organ for the left, who are of course smarter than everybody else.

I actually have no problem with that, but I do have one with promulgating the consistent myth that the paper is 'straight' or even a viable news source.

Contrary to what Ms. Abramson may want us to believe, Abe Rosenthal wouldn't recognize what the Times has become since Little Pinch Sulzberger took over.

It is the MSNBC of newspapers, shedding any semblance of balance or honesty in order to pander to its base audience.

Mitt Romney: What I Learned At Bain Capital

An interesting op-ed by Governor Romney in today's Wall Street Journal well worth reading. Here's a slice:

The back-to-school season is here, and as parents take their children to shop for school supplies, I suspect that many of them will be visiting a Staples store. I'm very familiar with those stores because Staples is one of many businesses we helped create and expand at Bain Capital, a firm that my colleagues and I built. The firm succeeded by growing and fixing companies.

The lessons I learned over my 15 years at Bain Capital were valuable in helping me turn around the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. They also helped me as governor of Massachusetts to turn a budget deficit into a surplus and reduce our unemployment rate to 4.7%. The lessons from that time would help me as president to fix our economy, create jobs and get things done in Washington.

A broad message emerges from my Bain Capital days: A good idea is not enough for a business to succeed. It requires a talented team, a good business plan and capital to execute it. That was true of companies we helped start, like Staples and the Bright Horizons child-care provider, and several of the struggling companies we helped turn around, like the Brookstone retailer and the contact-lens maker Wesley Jessen.

My presidency would make it easier for entrepreneurs and small businesses to get the investment dollars they need to grow, by reducing and simplifying taxes; replacing Obamacare with real health-care reform that contains costs and improves care; and by stemming the flood of new regulations that are tying small businesses in knots.

My business experience confirmed my belief in empowering people. For example, at Bain Capital we bought Accuride, a company that made truck rims and wheels, because we saw untapped potential there. We instituted performance bonuses for the management team, which had a dramatic impact. The managers made the plants more productive, and the company started growing, adding 300 jobs while Bain was involved. My faith in people, not government, is at the foundation of my plan to strengthen America's middle class.

I also saw firsthand through these investments how energy costs impact the ability of a business to grow. Today, energy costs are weighing on job creators across America because President Obama has limited energy exploration and restricted development in ways that sap economic performance, curtail growth, and kill jobs. I will take a sensible approach to tapping our energy resources, which will both create jobs and make energy more affordable for every sector of our economy.

In the 1990s, when the "old-technology" steel industry in the U.S. was failing, Bain Capital helped build a new steel company, Steel Dynamics, which has grown into one of the largest steel producers in America today, holding its own against Chinese producers. The key to its success? State-of-the-art new technology.

Here are two lessons from the Steel Dynamics story: First, innovation is essential to the competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing. We are the most innovative, entrepreneurial nation in the world. To maintain that lead, we must give people the skills to succeed. My plan for a stronger middle class includes policies to give every family access to great schools and quality teachers, to improve access to higher education, and to attract and retain the best talent from around the world.

The second lesson is that we must have a level playing field in international trade. As president, I will challenge unfair trade practices that are harming American workers. {...}

That will be my approach to our federal budget problem. I am committed to capping federal spending below 20% of GDP and reducing nondefense discretionary spending by 5%. This will surely result in much wailing and gnashing of teeth in Washington. But a failure of leadership has created our debt crisis, and ducking responsibility will only cripple the economy and smother opportunity for our children and grandchildren.

Worth reading it all...

DNC Head Wasserman-Schultz: 'I lied. What Of It?'

Contrary to popular belief, I think J-Street's own Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is an excellent head of the Democratic National committee, if we're talking truth in labeling.

In the above interview, CNN's Anderson Cooper shows unequivocally where the DNC outright lied in a fundraiser using the so-called 'war on women' theme to try and associate Mitt Romney with Todd Akin and blatantly misquoted the Los Angeles Times 180 degrees to assist in doing it.

If you think that fazes her, you're sadly mistaken. When she's unable to filibuster and talk over Cooper, she simply returns to the same dishonest talking points as though the lies and misrepresentations didn't exist.

Of course, people who applaud Ms. Wasserman-Schultz's take on this ought to consider a few things and think about which party is really engaging in a war on women.

True Colors Revealed; 'Anti-Zionist' Activists Named In Leadership Of Rabbis For Obama

It appears that President Obama's little charade of trying to convince America's Jews he's pro-Israel has ended.

First, it's been announced that ex-President Jimmy Carter will address the Democratic convention in Charlotte North Carolina via video hookup in prime time. And if providing a platform on national TV for the giddy little anti-Semite from Plains isn't enough of a clear signal, the release of the list of the leadership of Rabbis for Obama ought to end any speculation.

It contains some of the most rabid anti-Israel activists in America.

There are no less than eight prominent members of A Jewish Voice For Peace, a small group so virulently anti-Israel that even J-Street finds them inconvenient to have around:

Chava Bahle, Suttons Bay Michigan

Rachel Evelyne Barenblat, Lanesboro MA

Haim Beliak, Los Angeles

Lynn Gottlieb, Berkeley (Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, Co-founder of Shomer Shalom Network for Jewish Nonviolence, Stony Point, NY, JVP Advisory Board”

Linda J. Holtzman, Philadelphia

Rebecca Lillian, Chicago

David Mivasair, State College

Brant Rosen, Evanston, co-founder Taanit Tzedek-Jewish Fast for Gaza

There are no less than 9 from the misnamed Rabbis For Human Rights, another far left anti-Israel organization:

Charles M. Feinberg, Washington DC

Gerald Serotta, Chevy Chase MD

Simkha Y. Weintraub, Brooklyn

Sharon Brous, Los Angeles

Aryeh Cohen, Los Angeles

Ayelet S. Cohen, New York

Maurice D Harris, Eugene OR

Ellen Lippmann, Brooklyn

Sidney Schwarz, Rockville MD


A quick search on these people reveals not only the most pronounced anti-Israel views but participation and support for the boycott of Israel (all of Israel and not just Judea and Samaria), the Palestinian “right of return” and consistent opposition to Israel's right to defend itself to the point of lunacy.

The inclusion of these particular activists in Rabbis For Obama says a great deal about the president's real views on Israel. Th eEmergancy Committee on Israel's chairman Bill Kristol's open letter to President Obama on the subject is worth quoting:

Dear Mr. President:

This week, your campaign launched a group called “Rabbis for Obama.” The "Rabbis for Obama," your campaign says, are "committed to re-electing" you due to your “policy agenda that represents the values of the overwhelming majority of the American Jewish community" and your “deep commitment to the security of the state of Israel.”

Though we have differed with you on many policy matters, we at the Emergency Committee for Israel have taken you at your word as to your basic commitment to Israel's security. Thus it was particularly shocking to see that your campaign had recruited, and was touting the support of, rabbis who have no commitment to Israel’s security, and whose values are representative of a small and extreme group of anti-Israel activists – and certainly not of the pro-Israel community.


"Rabbis for Obama" includes many leaders of the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) Movement, a movement inimical to Israel's well-being. It includes founders of the pro-Hamas “Fast for Gaza” initiative. It even includes one person who was pleased to dine with Iranian President Ahmadinejad in 2008 and another who says the United States and Israel bring terrorism on themselves. Several members of “Rabbis for Obama” are officials of Jewish Voice for Peace, a radical group that the Anti-Defamation League featured in its list of the “Top 10 Anti-Israel Groups in America.”

Far from demonstrating a “deep commitment to the security of the state of Israel,” these figures have demonstrated a deep hostility to the state of Israel and a deep commitment to demonizing the Jewish state and undermining the U.S.-Israel alliance. We are sure that you will be distressed to discover that your own campaign has included so many of them on the list of “Rabbis for Obama.” We cannot imagine their endorsements are ones you welcome.

This is, as you have pointed out, a particularly perilous time for the people of Israel. We trust you do not want, however inadvertently, to signal in any way a lack of commitment to Israel's security or a lack of concern for Israel's well-being. So we look forward to your repudiation of the anti-Israel figures among the "Rabbis for Obama." And we respectfully suggest that you have an urgent and serious conversation with whoever in your campaign thought it appropriate to trumpet their support as a way of making your case to the pro-Israel community.

Sincerely,

William Kristol

Actually, I'm pretty sure the President does welcome the endorsements of these particular rabbis. There's been little in his past associations or in his administration's relationship with Israel to indicate otherwise.

Nor can this president or his campaign engage in the sophistry of saying that these are merely some rabbis that happen to support Obama. If Mitt Romney had members of the Klan or the White Aryan Nation listed as prominent supporters on his official campaign website, people would be justified in questioning his commitment to racial tolerance.

Again, I understand that there are some Jews who simply cannot pull the lever for a Republican, even a pro-Israel one.

In those cases, all I ask is that you don't vote to put an anti-Israel president back in the White House, with no fear of facing re-election.

Just don't vote for president..skip that particular box.

US Commander Uses Ramadan As Excuse For Afghan Murders Of Our Troops

I can still barely believe this one, even after hearing it with my own ears.

The U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General John Allen was queried about the huge increase in U.S. troops being murdered by their supposed Afghan 'allies.'

He actually blamed the spike in the murders of U.S. troops on the stress of fasting and in his words, sacrifice associated with Ramadan!

It's not the stress of fasting, which normally promotes inactivity. For many jihadis, Ramadan is the prime time for holy war against the infidels and the enemies of Allah.General Allen surely knows that, but instead makes up this...this nonsense. And I'm being polite.

And it's not the first time General Allen has spouted this kind of dhimmified, cringing attempt to cover for what we're really facing in AfPak and elsewhere.

General Allen is far from a stupid man. So he's obviously decided to follow orders from above and kow tow to jihad in an effort to pretend Islam's inherent violence is not a factor in what we're fighting.

This is an absolute disgrace.

Video: 40 Clint Eastwood Quotes Illustrating The Obama Years In 3 Minutes

'Nuff said.

By the way, FWIW, Clint Eastwood has endorsed Mitt Romney.

"Independent WatchDog" On Obama's Energy Loans Turns Out To Be A big Obama Donor!

Now there's a coincidence for you.

When Congress expressed concern (to put it mildly) about over $23 billion in government backed loans to troubled green energy companies that - surprise- were owned or had major investment by well connected Obama donors, the Administration responded by appointing a man who was termed ' an independent watchdog', a Wall Street executive named Herbert M. Allison Jr. to examine the loans and allay their fears.

Allison examined the loans, and testified to Congress back in March that the loans were legitimate and there was nothing much to worry about.

In his report, Allison acknowledged that the Energy Department could lose as much as $3 billion in loans, but it concluded that was far less than the $10 billion set aside by Congress for high-risk companies. Allison also decided not to take into account the losses from loans to two firms, Solyndra and Beacon Power that had already gone bankrupt because those loans weren't on the books any longer and that money was already lost. Allison also told Congress that " the DOE (Department of Energy) has negotiated protections in the loan agreements that enable it to cut off further funding and to demand more credit protection if projects do not meet targets."

Two weeks after he testified to Congress, he began donating heavily to the Obama Campaign and the Democratic National Committee, a total of over $52,000.

Meanwhile, a whole slew of the green energy loans he gave a clean bill of health to just happen to have gone underwater.

Just a coincidence, of course.

Of course.

Speaking Of Rape - Democrats Oppose Mandatory Sentences For Child Rapists

Even though almost every major figure in the Republican party and the Conservative movement has condemned him and called for him to leave the race, Democrats are now accusing Republicans of condoning rape and a 'war on women' because of Missouri GOP Senate nominee Todd Akin's clueless comments on the subject.

So it's worth looking at how many Democrats treat the crime of rape in the real world.

As anyone with direct experience knows, whenever you find a politician, judge or lawyer raging about the harshness of the criminal justice system, pushing rehabilitation and parole programs for child molesters and sex offenders, rallying behind cop killers or working to disarm or prosecute people who seek to defend themselves from becoming potential victims, it's almost always a Democrat.

A case in point is the stance Virginia Democrats have taken against a popular state law providing for mandatory sentencing of child rapists.

In March, the Virginia state legislature overwhelmingly passed a law that imposed automatic life sentences for any adult convicted of raping a child under the age of 13. It was in response to an appalling statistic - more than half of all rapes in Virginia are to children under 13.

According to the bill's sponsor,Delegate Rob Bell (R.,Charlottesville) “In the past two years we had 228 offenders, only 10 got life sentences. They were appallingly short.”

The figures on recidivism for this type of crime vary between 52% and 88%, depending on how the figures are calculated.

The bill passed by a large majority. Twenty-one state senators and delegates, all of them Democrats, voted no on the bill.

Included among them were Obama surrogates and supporters State Senator Louise Lucas,Delegate Mamye BaCote, a leading member of VA Women for Obama, and Delegate Scott Surovell a member of the Obama campaign’s Truth Team. All of them are prominent in the Obama Campaign's efforts to carry Virginia and unlike the treatment of Todd Akjn by Republicans, none of them have been disavowed by the campaign, much less President Obama.

Ask yourself this question - who's really more involved in the war on women and condoning rape? Is it Democrats who want rapists freed and women disarmed, or Republicans who want women to be able to defend themselves and want convicted rapists off the streets and in jail where they belong?

The hypocrisy is mind numbing.

U Of CO Study That Correctly Predicted The Last 8 Elections Says Romney Will Win

This is interesting..a University of Colorado study that has correctly predicted the winner of the last 8 elections says Mitt Romney will win in 2012:

The key is the economy, say political science professors Kenneth Bickers of CU-Boulder and Michael Berry of CU Denver. Their prediction model stresses economic data from the 50 states and the District of Columbia, including both state and national unemployment figures as well as changes in real per capita income, among other factors.

“Based on our forecasting model, it becomes clear that the president is in electoral trouble,” said Bickers, also director of the CU in DC Internship Program.

According to their analysis, President Barack Obama will win 218 votes in the Electoral College, short of the 270 he needs. And though they chiefly focus on the Electoral College, the political scientists predict Romney will win 52.9 percent of the popular vote to Obama’s 47.1 percent, when considering only the two major political parties.

“For the last eight presidential elections, this model has correctly predicted the winner,” said Berry. “The economy has seen some improvement since President Obama took office. What remains to be seen is whether voters will consider the economy in relative or absolute terms. If it’s the former, the president may receive credit for the economy’s trajectory and win a second term. In the latter case, Romney should pick up a number of states Obama won in 2008.”

This model correctly predicted all elections since 1980, including two years when independent candidates ran in 1980 and 1992.

The study is scheduled to be published in PS: Political Science & Politics, the journal of the American Political Science Association.

The Electoral College model developed by Bickers and Berry is unique reportedly because it's the only one to include more than one state-level measure of economic conditions.

Aside from state and national unemployment rates, the authors looked at per capita income. Their research indicates that voters hold Democrats more responsible for unemployment rates while Republicans are held more responsible for per capita income.

Their results show that “the apparent advantage of being a Democratic candidate and holding the White House disappears when the national unemployment rate hits 5.6 percent,” Berry said. The results indicate, according to Bickers, “that the incumbency advantage enjoyed by President Obama, though statistically significant, is not great enough to offset high rates of unemployment currently experienced in many of the states.”

In 2012, “What is striking about our state-level economic indicator forecast is the expectation that Obama will lose almost all of the states currently considered as swing states, including North Carolina, Virginia, New Hampshire, Colorado, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida,” Bickers said.

In Colorado, which went for Obama in 2008, the model predicts that Romney will receive 51.9 percent of the vote to Obama’s 48.1 percent, again with only the two major parties considered.

Needless to say, the researchers give themselves wiggle room.The data used in the current study was taken five months in advance of the election and Bickers and Berry plan to update it with more current economic data in September. Another factor they mention is that states very close to a 50-50 split could end up with an unexpected result.

Since I don't expect the economy or unemployment to improve between now and November 6th, it'll be interesting to see if Bickers and Berry make it 9-0.

Israel Tells Egypt To Remove Sinai Military Buildup, Claims Violation Of Peace Treaty

Israel has told Egypt that Israel wants the removal of Egypt's tanks and aircraft from the Sinai Peninsula because their continued presence violates the 1979 peace agreement between the two countries.

According to that treaty, the Sinai was supposed to remain demilitarized by both sides as a buffer.

The message from the Israeli government was sent via the White House, because of the severely weakened relationship between the two countries since the Muslim Brotherhood takeover. The White House is also thought to have leverage with the Egyptians because of the vital $1.3 billion per year the U.S. supplies Egypt with in military aid.

In spite of the message from the U.S.,so far the Egyptian government is claiming publicly it has not received any communication from the Israelis. Israeli officials say they have made their objections known to the Egyptians directly.



Earlier this month, the Israelis agreed to an Egyptian troop buildup in the Sinai for basic security purposes after an attack by al-Qaeda linked terrorists at the beginning of August on an Egyptian border post, which left 16 border guards dead.

That incident ended after the terrorists commandeered an armored vehicle and crashed it through the border into Israel, where it was intercepted by Israeli forces.

However, the Egyptians have continued their military buildup in Sinai far beyond what was originally agreed to, without coordinating it with Israel.

The 'modification' (read 'scrapping') of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty has been a goal frequently expressed by Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood leaders, including the current President Mohammed Morsi.

The Israelis are concerned that the earlier raid is being used by Egypt as an excuse to re-militarize the Sinai.Even during the Mubarak regime, the Egyptian military has always conducted its war games exercises with Israel as its presumed enemy.

The current buildup includes anti-aircraft missiles and launchers that are obviously not intended to fight terrorists in the Sinai.

Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman was quite explicit on the matter:

"We have to be insistent with the Egyptians and be strict about crossing every last 't,' because otherwise we will be on a slippery slope with regards to everything related to the peace agreement," Lieberman said.

It will be interesting to see how the Egyptians respond to this. My guess is they won't, and will continue the military build up in Sinai.

A final remark in passing for those who still swallow the 'land for peace' nonsense...in this part of the world, only losers give up territory.

Israel's ceding the Sinai to Egypt in 1979 was looked at in exactly that way by the Egyptians. It was seen as proof of what the Egyptian government told their people after the 1973 Yom Kippur War and continue to tell them - that it was Egypt, not Israel that had won the war.

Iran Has A Plan To Deal With Uppity Women - Ban Them From Universities

The latest news from the Islamic Republic concerns their way of dealing with the problem of uppity, educated women.

Apparently Iranian clerics feel that too many women are getting an education, and one that makes them far less agreeable to their religiously sanctioned role of becoming property.So they have banned women outright from 77 BA and Bachelor of Science courses of study, thus making them male only domains.

The courses affected include English literature, English translation, hotel management, archaeology, nuclear physics, computer science, electrical engineering, industrial engineering and business management.

Iran's Oil Industry University, which has several campuses across the country, says it will no longer accept female students at all and Isfahan University will no longer allow women to study in its mining engineering degree program.

What they're doing, essentially is excluding women from many of Iran's higher paying occupations. That's going to make them a lot more dependent on men and give women more of an incentive to be content with their sharia defined role.

Islam - the religion where women know their place - or else.

California Ready To Give Illegal Aliens Driver's Licenses

The Democrat dominated state of California is ready to take advantage of President Obama's executive order on amnesty for younger illegal aliens to allow hundreds of thousands of them to obtain driver's licenses:

California is on the verge of allowing hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants to receive driver's licenses for the first time in nearly two decades.

The key question is how to do it.

The issue of granting driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants has raged in the Legislature for much of the past decade, without resolution, but fighting is largely moot now due to a new federal policy.

President Barack Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals gives a select group of undocumented immigrants the right to live and work in the United States for two years without fear of deportation.

California is laying the groundwork for extending the privilege to driving, too, for an estimated 400,000 immigrants.

"It appears that young people who receive federal deferrals will be eligible for California driver's licenses," the Department of Motor Vehicles said in a written statement Tuesday.

"But it remains uncertain whether clarifying legislation or regulations will be necessary," the DMV statement said. [...]

The glitch is that state regulations allow only certain types of federal immigration documents to support the issuance of a driver's license.

If President Obama's Deferred Action program provides participants with "new or different immigration documents," then legislation or regulatory clarification may be needed, the DMV said.

Unless Brown takes a stand against issuing driver's licenses, passage of such legislation appears a sure thing in a Democratic-controlled Legislature that has consistently supported driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants in years past.

President Obama's Deferred Action executive order covers illegal aliens between the ages of 15 and 31, who were brought to America before the age of 16 and have no criminal record. Participants also must be either high school students or graduates who have lived in the United States continuously for five years.

In many Blue states with substantial illegal alien populations like California,the order is being interpreted as applying to people who have merely attended high school at some point, and most crimes except violent felonies are being ignored.

The idea,of course, is not driver safety or forcing illegal aliens to obtain auto insurance. Let alone illegal aliens, there are a significant amount of legal residents of California who drive without licenses, auto insurance or both simply because they have no major assets and nothing to lose if they get into an accident. That's why every auto insurance policy in California includes a surcharge to cover damage to the insured caused by uninsured motorists.

No, the real deal is to turn illegal aliens into voters. Everyone applying for a driver's license is given voter registration papers, thanks to President Clinton's 1993 National Voter Registration Act, usually referred to as the 'motor-voter law', one of the best facilitators of voter fraud ever devised.

If California's Democrats get their way, the illegal aliens covered by the Deferred Action order will have driver's licenses indistinguishable from those of legal residents, there's absolutely nothing to stop them from registering to vote and being added to the rolls.

It's notable that there's nothing in the Deferred Action order that specifies that illegal aliens covered are to get driver's licenses. It merely exempts them from any fear of deportation proceedings for two years.In Arizona, California's next door neighbor, Governor Jan Brewer has already signed an executive order this month directing Arizona's Department of Motor Vehicles not to issue driver's licenses to Deferred Action participants.

In California, by contrast, Democrats see this as an avenue to add thousands of new voters to the rolls, and long time advocates for these policies like Los Angeles Democrat Assemblyman Gil Cedillo see this as an opening for the future amnesty and voter registration of all illegal aliens, openly admitting that granting driver's license rights to a select group now could pave the way for "expanding such opportunities for more undocumented immigrants in years to come."

In other words, a built in majority that will keep people like Mr. Cedillo in power for years to come.

And of course, that's the whole point.At least, until the entire rotten structure collapses.

Watcher's Council Nominations - 'Legitimate Rape' Edition

Ah, the Democrat strategy...(A) Find a Senate race featuring an unpopular incumbent you're almost certain to lose, with a contested Republican primary, especially in a state with an inexpensive media market (B) Pick the least likely GOP candidate to defeat your incumbent, especially if he or she has a history of being a loose cannon and shooting his or her mouth off (c) stick big time money behind them so that they win the nomination (C)Set up a situation for the new GOP nominee to say something abysmally stupid, and then use your media lackeys to make a nationwide media firestorm out of it.

That's how you take a almost certain Senate takeover by Republicans and turn it back into a 50-50 horserace at worst. Even better, you turn the national focus away from the economy and an incumbent Democrat president's execrable performance in office and put it back where you want it - on abortion and the so called 'Republican war on women' meme. Especially when you can rely on the stupidity, shortsightedness and grubby ambition of the nominee in question to stay in the race and keep the game going until the November elections.

Talk about committing rape!

Not good for the country in the least, but good for Democrats and admirable in its deviousness. Give the Alinskyite devil his due.

Welcome to the Watcher's Council, a blogging group consisting of some of the most incisive blogs in the 'sphere, and the longest running group of its kind in existence. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council.Then we vote on the best two posts, with the results appearing on Friday.

Council News:

I'm very proud to announce that Tom White over at VA Right! was named Blogger of the Month by the AFP news service...quite an honor, mais oui. Congrats, Tom!

This week, Right Truth, Tina Trent.Com, Ask Marion and The Pirate's Cove took advantage of my generous offer of link whorage and earned honorable mention status by sending in some killer pieces.

You can, too! Want to see your work appear on the Watcher’s Council homepage in our weekly contest listing? Didn’t get nominated by a Council member? No worries.

Simply head over to Joshuapundit and post the title a link to the piece you want considered along with an e-mail address ( which won't be published) anywhere in the comments section no later than Monday 6PM PST in order to be considered for our honorable mention category.

Then just return the favor by creating a post on your site linking to the Watcher’s Council contest for the week when it comes out Wednesday morning.

It's a great way of exposing your best work to Watcher’s Council readers and Council members. while grabbing the increased traffic and notoriety. And how good is that, eh?

So, let's take a look and see what we have this week....

Council Submissions

• The Noisy Room – Israel – Barbarians at the Gate



• The Independent Sentinel – Obama's Stealth Move Towards Single Payer Healthcare



• The Political Commentator – I am going to vote for Obama/Biden 2012 because...



• Joshuapundit-Is Israel Preparing A Fall Strike Against Iran?



• VA Right! - RANT: I Would Rather PAY a BRIBE to Open a Business Than Deal With the American Bureaucracy



• GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – Caliphate General Staff



• The Colossus of Rhodey – Predictably infuriating



• The Right Planet – Democrat 101: Always Accuse the Enemy of the Very Same Crimes They Themselves Are Committing
  



• Gay Patriot – Legacy Media's Todd Akin obsession: one more way to amplify Democratic talking points



• Bookworm Room – The predictable Democrat ad hominem attack against those special forces who fear the administration's loose lips



• The Razor – In Support of Pussy Riot



• The Glittering Eye -Spending Madness



• Rhymes With Right – Christian Child With Down Syndrome Charged With Blasphemy In Pakistan



• The Mellow Jihadi – Olga and Evgeniya, Two Policewomen, Meet Pussy Riot



• Simply Jews – The mysterious Putin's visit to Israel and powers of self-deception

Honorable Mentions

• Right Truth - The Lourdes Myopic, a/k/a Lourdes of the Lies



• Tina Trent.Com - History Mystery: How Fast Can PBS and the NYT Destroy a Generation of Young Minds?



• Ask Marion - Palin Not Speaking at GOP Convention in Tampa… Huge Disappointment to Many – Mistake or Smart by Romney Campaign?



• The Pirate's Cove - So, How Awesome Is Renewable Energy?

Non-Council Submissions

• Andrew McCarthy/NRO –Egypt’s Military and the Arab Spring submitted by The Noisy Room



• Front Porch Politics – Obama's Scandals Get Wider As Lawmakers Probe Deeper submitted by The Independent Sentinel



• Sultan Knish -The World of Tomorrow submitted by The Political Commentator



• Ben Cohen/Commentary – Attacking Israel Online submitted by Joshuapundit



• RedState – Radical Islam Joins the DNC submitted by VA Right!



• Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses – Pakistan's Descent into Chaos submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD



• Wired Science – Apocalypse Not: Here's Why You Shouldn't Worry About End Times submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey



• Defining Ideas – Franklin Delano Obama submitted by The Right Planet



• Cato @ Liberty/David Boaz -The Cost of Government submitted by Gay Patriot



• Reuters Gallery-A Teleprompter Obscures U.S. President Barack Obama submitted by Bookworm Room



• Dustin Stockton –Courtesy Of Twitter, The 10 Best #ObamaSeuss Tweets submitted by The Razor



• Alex Tabarrok/Marginal Revolution – Racism by Political Party submitted by The Glittering Eye



• Right Wing News/Cherna Moskowitz – Racist To Tell Jews Where They Can And Cannot Live submitted by Rhymes with Right



• The Union Label Blog –Unions Protest the U.S. Marines For...No Reason submitted by The Mellow Jihadi



• PJ Media/ Michel Gurfinkiel – No Future in France: Dire Times for French Jews submitted by The Watcher



• John Fund – Voter Fraud in the Keystone State submitted by The Watcher

Enjoy! And don't forget to like us on Facebook and follow us Twitter..'cause we're cool like that!

Washington Post: Dems Spent $1.5 Mil To Help Akin Win Missouri GOP Primary

Seems like it's turning out to be a pretty wise investment on their part:

Senate Democrats got exactly what they wanted in Missouri on Tuesday night. Now comes the hard part.

Republican Rep. Todd Akin’s primary victory clearly boosted vulnerable Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill’s survival odds this fall. But to win, McCaskill will have to make the general election campaign as much about her opponent as herself.

That’s easier said than done. But Akin — and some of the things he’s said in the past — does make it a bit easier.

There’s a reason why Democrats spent over $1.5 million trying to help Akin win his three-way primary. He was the most conservative candidate in the field — and the most unpredictable one. He shook up his campaign staff late last year. He recently released a head-scratching and jumbled campaign ad. And Democrats have already launched a microsite highlighting his controversial statements that won’t play well with moderates. (“America has got the equivalent of the stage III cancer of socialism because the federal government is tampering in all kinds of stuff it has no business tampering in,” Akin once said.){...}

“I’m not going to tell you this is definitely a gimme for McCaskill, but I think the framework of the race is different,” said Democratic strategist Roy Temple, a veteran of Missouri politics.

Akin’s uncompromising brand of social conservatism, for example, might lead him to say something that may give political moderates — the same moderates who don’t like the economic policies advanced by Obama and Senate Democrats — pause in the Senate race.

Everything has to go right in the fall for McCaskill to survive. Akin has to slip up, she has to be flawless, and it may even take a little luck. But on this day, Democrats can argue that much of the race has gone right for them so far, with Akin’s win being the latest example of their strategy succeeding. And they’d be correct.

This was written August 8th, by the way.

Interesting the way these things work out.Spend some cash to get a gaffe prone idiot to win the primary and then just wait for him to do your work for you.

Just turning the election focus from Obama's abysmal record and his performance on the economy to the abortion issue was probably worth it all by itself.

Of course, the big question is whether this cynical ploy did the country any good as a whole. But as I might have mentioned before, I don't think that's really what concerns the leadership of the Democrats at the moment.

Bipartisanship? What's That Really Mean?

Today's Washington Post has a 3 pager purporting to show that independents favor cooperation between the two parties and less partisan warfare.

The backbone is a study the Post did with the Kaiser Family Foundation that polled 3,000 randomly selected adults designed to 'to explore the views of the growing number of people who decline to pledge allegiance to either party.'

We've seen what the WaPo's polls are like before, and as usual,the WaPo declined to post a link to the mechanics, but the entire flavor of the article can pretty much be sampled by the opener:

President Obama and Mitt Romney are waging one of the most partisan campaigns in recent memory, energizing their bases with heated rhetoric and harsh tactics. But among political independents, some of the most prized voters in the electorate, speaking more softly about the other side may be a key to winning their support.

This is insidious and biased on a number of levels.

The entire theme of  "a harsh, partisan campaign" was absent from the pages of organs like the Washington Post for months while the Obama Campaign and its surrogates were calling Governor Romney a tax cheat, a felon, a racist who wanted to put black people back in chains and a murderer. No one had much to say about commentary that appeared with sly digs at his religion, or his wife, or claimed that his father would be ashamed of him.

The WaPo, to my knowledge, didn't even call President Obama to account when he outright lied in yesterday's press conference about his deliberately negative campaign.

The dinosaur media first deigned to notice the negative campaigning when Governor Romney finally had enough and told President Obama,  "take your campaign of division and anger and hate back to Chicago."

It was only after that speech that we saw dozens of articles in media outlets like the WaPo commenting on how 'negative' and 'partisan' the campaign had gotten.

So for the WaPo to now to refer to the two campaigns as being equally partisan with "heated rhetoric and harsh tactics" is the height of cynicism and partisanship in and of itself.

And it also gives rise to a good look at what bi-partisanship and cooperation between the two parties means to the WaPo and other media organs like them.

The dinosaur media often refers to 'moderate Republicans'. It's a cute phrase that essentially means one thing: Republicans usually willing to vote for all or part of the Democrat's agenda and it's commonly applied to people like Maine's Senator Olympia Snowe.

Think about it. You never see the phrase 'moderate Democrat' used. There are very few Democrats who vote with Republicans all or part of the time, as you'll see if you examine the roll calls on votes.The Democrats have almost completely driven them out of the party, as they did to Joe Lieberman. But the rare Democrat that does vote with Republicans even part of the time is invariably described not as 'moderate', but as 'conservative'.

If you examine in your own mind the connotations the word moderate has, you'll see this is no accident.

Because what the Washington Post and their brothers and sisters in the dinosaur media really want when they make calls for 'bi-partisanship' and 'a softer tone' is not for Democrats to move from the left to the center, but for Republicans and Republicans only to move towards the left. They want all Republicans to be 'moderates' and vote for the Democrat's agenda.

And most of all,they want Republicans to put up with the most scurrilous and bitter attacks from Democrats without responding.

Speaking as an independent myself, I reject this out of hand.

Politics is indeed the art of the possible, and quid pro quo concessions are part of what makes a democracy work. But to demand it of the right side of the aisle while giving the left a pass is not  a call for concessions but a demand for a full scale abandonment of principle.

During President Obama's first two years in office, he had a veto proof majority in congress. During that time, when ObamaCare and the so-called stimulus were being crafted, the Republican minority was locked out the room - literally. Long standing rules in the senate and the House were thrown out at the Democrat's whim in order to get their agenda passed, and even the reconciliation process was misused in order to get ObamaCare passed.

There were no calls for bi-partisanship and softer rhetoric then. Certainly no one in the dinosaur media wrote pieces like this crying for it. Instead, they were busy cheer leading for the Obama Administration and how historic and wonderful the new regime was.

No, the call for bi-partisanship and the articles about the bitter divide in Washington came after the 2010 midterms, when the Republicans took the House and enough Senate seats that they couldn't simply be locked out of the room and abused any longer.

Personally, I'd be more than happy to see the two parties working together. And in fact when both parties honored the basic principles on which this nation was founded, America benefited from that co-operation..

Where there are Democrats prepared to be moderate and work for fiscal sanity, the sanctity of private property, freedom of choice in other areas besides killing babies, the full use of America's energy resources, the downsizing of government and a strong national defense - in short, for the good of the country rather than to appease special interest groups - I welcome them and their ideas as part of the solution.

In the absence of that, they're merely part of the problem, and I could care less about bi-partisanship that involves them.

In fact, I reject it utterly. Because it has no meaning.

Clock Ticking On GOP Senate Candidate Akin

Todd Akin, the Missouri GOP Senate candidate under fire for his remark about how victims of 'legitimate rape' rarely get pregnant' is under increasing pressure to leave the senate race and resign his nomination.

According to Missouri law, if he does it today, he can simply do it unilaterally with a declaration. After that, he would have to go through the courts. Not only would that eat up more time, but it might cut down on available replacements as people make other commitments.

Akin appears to be hanging on, so far. He just put out a new ad asking for “forgiveness” from the voters of Missouri and acknowledging that he used “the wrong words in the wrong way.”

Akin's faux pas has severely cut into his support among voter in his state, with most recent polling showing him narrowly ahead as opposed to the virtual shoo in he was before against incumbent Claire McKaskill, who is widely unpopular in the state.

What happens if Akin quits the race? If he does it before end of business today, the state's Republican central committee would huddle together to pick his replacement.

If Akin does not drop out by today’s deadline, he has until September 25th to withdraw via a court order. In that scenario, State law would require Akin to cover any costs for reprinting ballots, and the GOP central committee would select a substitute candidate.

They have 28 days from a candidate’s withdrawal to name a replacement, so if Akin drops out today, Missouri Republicans would need to select a new candidate by September 18. It's almost certain they would probably try to name someone much sooner, and in fact I'd be surprised if they haven't already quietly done so in the expectation Akin may yield to nationwide calls from Republicans and pull out.

Since there are already candidates running for his vacated House seat, ending his senate race amounts to Akin ending his political career unless the state Republican committee can pull some strings.

Akin is probably waiting to see how this 'forgiveness' ad polls and will likely make a decision fairly soon so he doesn't get stuck with ballot printing costs.

Soccer Dad's Mideast Media Sampler, 8/21/12

Today's sampler and analysis of Mideast media content from my pal Soccer Dad:


1) Al Jazeera on Baltimore


Walter Russell Mead in The Last Compromise

In some ways the City of Baltimore as depicted in The Wire is a disturbingly accurate picture of inner-city African-American life three decades into the post-civil rights era racial settlement. We see blacks represented in positions of authority in many though not all institutions; city government, the police and the schools have a particularly strong black presence. But we also see the projects, the prisons, the long-term unemployed and the hopeless. And dominating the picture is the decline in Baltimore’s economic situation: the port, the freight yards and manufacturing no longer provide steady work at middle- or lower-middle-class wages for Baltimoreans black or white. Baltimore has negotiated a careful and reasonably successful compromise that both races can live with, but the bottom has fallen out from under the city’s economy. The inner city’s social structure has imploded as a consequence, the political culture makes Tammany Hall look like Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity, and thousands of young black children are growing up in a murderous and toxic—and almost totally segregated—world.

David Zurawik in Al Jazeera looks at Baltimore in a new Documentary:

"Baltimore: Anatomy of an American City" will debut Tuesday night to a potential worldwide audience of 260 million homes. And what those viewers will mainly see is a landscape of young men on bleak street corners, block after block of boarded-up rowhouses, drugs, death, crime scenes and prisons.

The port stands idle, factories are silent and warehouses look empty. Images and repeated references to the war on drugs evoke HBO's"The Wire." Except, of course, this is real.

Mead's goal is to show how American politics has changed in the past in the past forty or fifty years. Zurawik's goal is to praise Al Jazeera.


Here's how Al Jazeera's correspondent describes the point of the "'documentary:"

"Baltimore's a place where we've actually filmed quite a lot," Walker said in a telephone interview last week. "I've been based in D.C. since 2008, and I was there in Baltimore when the Russians were taking over the steelwork plant [Sparrows Point] back in 2009. It's a city that we like because it's close to D.C. and it's a great place to go and get a sense of what's really going on in the country. It's one of the places where the economic crisis has been keenly felt."

In other words, it's the Real America — or, at least, a city within an hour's train ride that feels distinct from Washington. Baltimore's neighborhoods have long been a favorite of international journalists in Washington looking for an America with less marble, more grit and plainspoken citizens who can give voice to some of the nation's more pressing concerns.

"We came to Baltimore in the run-up to 2008 to sort of take the pulse of the city and see how people were feeling about the possibility of the first African-American president to enter the White House and how that might change things for them," Walker said. "We wanted to get a sense of how it might change the war on drugs and the incarceration system that afflicts Baltimore."

That last sentence show that the point of the program is advocacy, but that doesn't bother Zurawik who proceeds to list all of the awards Al Jazeera's won and an approbation by Secretary of State Clinton calling the network "real news."


Here's Al Jazeera's agenda:

But like all TV news operations, from MSNBC to Fox News, there are certain narratives Al Jazeera English favors. And that also helps explain why Baltimore, with its seemingly endless backdrop of boarded-up rowhouses, is a favorite of the channel.

"Their basic approach to narrative is that they favor the interests of what they call the Global South," Seib says, "which has never been the case with the American and European broadcasting giants in the past. They're sensitive to the idea that they are giving voice to and adopting the outlook of parts of the world that in the past were very much just passive recipients and have been condescended to."

"Global South" has a specific meaning.

"North is the U.S., Western Europe and Russia, for that matter," Seib says. "South is black Africa, Latin America and South Asia."

It's a cute bit equivalence here. Al Jazzera has an agenda just like MSNBC or Fox!


Interestingly Zurawik is so intent on boosting Al Jazeera's credibility he forgot to mention a critic, Dave Marash. Marash is an American journalist who became the news anchor for Al Jazeera English. After two years Marash quit. Here's is part of his explanation:

There was a series entitled “Poverty in America” which, in the first place, was done in a way that illustrates some of the infrastructural problems that disturbed me greatly. The idea of a series about poverty in America was broached by the planning desk in Doha. The specifics of the plan were so stereotypical and shallow that the planning desk in Washington said that we think this is a very bad idea and recommend against it and won’t do it. And so the planning desk in Doha literally sneaked a production team into the United States without letting anyone in the American news desk know, and they went off and shot a four-part series that was execrable. That was essentially, if I may say so, here a poor, there a poor, everywhere a poor poor.

Now, there is poverty in America, and there is a very wide gulf between rich and poor in America and that is a trend for which there are stories to be reported. But this series reported nothing beyond the stereotype and the mere fact that there were homeless people living on the street in Baltimore, for example. Well, were they there as a consequence of mental illness that was not properly cared for because of a generation of a policy of de-institutionalization? Al Jazeera didn’t know because they didn’t ask. Frankly they didn’t know enough to ask. It was enough for them to show poor people living in wretched conditions in a prosperous American city and decry it. Then they went to South Carolina and found a town that—I know this is going to shock you, Brent—had very rich people and, on the other side of the railroad tracks, very poor people. And the wretchedness of the poor people’s living conditions was enumerated. In fact this memorable question and answer exchange occurred:

The economic divide is a story and the reasons why, over a long period of time in this South Carolina town there should be very little transmigration across the line between rich and poor, is a story. The sources of wealth of the rich may be a story. The lack of opportunities for the poor may be a story. But again, you gotta report all these things. This series merely named them in a very accusatory way. This to me is the very quintessence of what television news should not be doing. And by the way is not the kind of reporting you see very much elsewhere on Al Jazeera English.

Marash who saw how Al Jazeera opreated, found it to be blatantly political. Initially he bought all of the myths that Zurawik bought. Zurawik, unfortunately, took no time to question the premises of Al Jazeera's documentary.


2) Fouad Ajami grades Hillary Clinton


Fouad Ajami recently assessed the Secretary of State in Hillary and the Hollowness of 'People-to-People' Diplomacy :

Presidents and secretaries of state working in tandem can bend historical outcomes. Think of Truman and Acheson accepting the call of history when the British could no longer assume their imperial role. Likewise, Ronald Reagan and George Shultz pushed Soviet communism into its grave and gave the American people confidence after the diplomatic setbacks of the 1970s and the humiliations handed to U.S. power under the presidency of Jimmy Carter.
Grant Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton their due—they have worked well together, presided over the retrenchment of American power, made a bet that the American people would not notice, or care about, the decline of U.S. authority abroad. This is no small feat.

Yet the passivity of this secretary of state is unprecedented. Mrs. Clinton left no mark on the decision to liquidate the American presence in Iraq—the president's principal adviser on Iraq was Vice President Joe Biden. We have heard little from her on Afghanistan, except last month to designate it a "major non-NATO ally." She opened the tumult of the Arab Spring with a monumental misreading of Egypt: Hosni Mubarak was a "friend of my family," she said, and his reign was stable. She will long be associated with the political abdication and sophistry that has marked this administration's approach to the Syrian rebellion.

The way Ajami puts it, there would be room for Gov. Romney to campaign against the President on the basis of foreign policy too. However it appears that this campaign will be mostly about domestic issues.

Todd Akin Being Hammered By GOP To Quit Missouri Senate Race

After his remarks that 'legitimate rape rarely results in pregnancy.', Rep. Todd Akin, the GOP nominee for the Missouri Senate race is resisting calls from all sides in the Republican party to withdraw.

"I am in this race to win. We need a conservative Senate," Akin tweeted Monday afternoon, as he solicited new donations. He also told Fox News' Sean Hannity on his radio show that "we're going to stay in."

The tweet followed scattered and unconfirmed reports that Akin was moving to withdraw from the race. Akin, though, rejected those claims publicly even as Republican leaders leaned on him hard to reconsider his bid for Senate.

A source within the National Republican Senatorial Committee told Fox News that Sen. John Cornyn, head of the Senate GOP campaign arm, already has told Akin that if he stays in the race, the $5 million set aside for the Missouri race will be withdrawn. Cornyn, according to the source, told him the party is concerned his presence in the race could imperil Republicans' chances of winning the Senate majority. {...}

Adding to the wave of condemnation, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell called his comments "totally inexcusable."

"What he said is just flat wrong in addition to being wildly offensive to any victim of sexual abuse," McConnell said. "Although Representative Akin has apologized, I believe he should take time with his family to consider whether this statement will prevent him from effectively representing our party in this critical election."

Several other GOP Senate candidates were also putting serious distance between their campaigns and his, as they tried to head off Democratic efforts to link Akin's comments to other members of the party.

GOP Sen. Scott Brown, who's in a tough race against President Obama ally Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts, tweeted that he found Akin's remarks to be "outrageous."

He followed up with a written statement calling on Akin to bow out.

"As a husband and father of two young women, I found Todd Akin's comments about women and rape outrageous, inappropriate and wrong," Brown said. "There is no place in our public discourse for this type of offensive thinking. Not only should he apologize, but I believe Rep. Akin's statement was so far out of bounds that he should resign the nomination for U.S. Senate in Missouri."

Further, NRSC Chairman Cornyn used a brief written statement to nudge Akin to reconsider his bid for Senate.

"Congressman Akin's statements were wrong, offensive, and indefensible," Cornyn, R-Texas, said in a statement. "I recognize that this is a difficult time for him, but over the next twenty-four hours, Congressman Akin should carefully consider what is best for him, his family, the Republican Party, and the values that he cares about and has fought for throughout his career in public service."

GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney also weighed in, as did a number of other Republicans. "Congressman Akin's comments on rape are insulting, inexcusable, and, frankly, wrong," Romney said in an interview with the National Review.

And the Crossroads PAC, which had $2 million in ads scheduled to run in Missouri for Akin has cancelled them.

Akin has already tried walking this back, saying he 'misspoke' but it's hard to put toothpaste of this kind back in the tube.

Congressman Todd Akin is right...we do need a conservative senate. What we don't need is a stupid one.Nor do we need another careerist who puts his own ambition before what's good for the conservative cause he claims to believe in.

This is a test of character for Mr. Akin. He's obviously not ready for prime time. And he needs to withdraw from the race....now.

I also note the difference between the majority of Republicans and Democrats when one of their own does something wrong and makes an asinine statement.Like say, Joe Biden.