Brutally Honest

Right move?

The Wall Street Journal reports, you decide:

After a high-visibility display of military power aimed at deterring North Korean provocations, the White House is dialing back the aggressive posture amid fears that it could inadvertently trigger an even deeper crisis, according to U.S. officials.

The U.S. is putting a pause to what several officials described as a step-by-step plan the Obama administration approved earlier this year, dubbed "the playbook," that laid out the sequence and publicity plans for U.S. shows of force during annual war games with South Korea. The playbook included well-publicized flights in recent weeks near North Korea by nuclear-capable B-52 and stealth B-2 bombers, as well as advanced F-22 warplanes.

The U.S. stepped back from the plans this week, as U.S. officials began to worry that the North, which has a small nuclear arsenal and an unpredictable new leader, may be more provoked than the U.S. had intended, the officials said.

"The concern was that we were heightening the prospect of misperceptions on the part of the North Koreans, and that that could lead to miscalculations," a senior administration official said.

Is this capitulation?

Is this, in essence, bowing?

If so, then wouldn't Obama be playing right out of his playbook?

Just sayin'...

Meet NY Governor, Andrew Cuomo; idiot extraordinaire

Guest posted by tim, The Godless Heathen (and NY State resident)

From Gateway Pundit (where there's video if you can stomach it) - 

Gov. Andrew Cuomo dismissed the latest lawsuit against the state’s new gun control law, the SAFE Act, as “propaganda” that the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association is using to keep its members in line.

(…)

“What the extremists do is spread fear and unrealistic theories of conspiracies and the citizenry that needs to be armed because the government is possibly tyrannical, and they need their arms to defend themselves against the tyrannical government,” Cuomo continued. This is true: at gun rallies, I’ve heard this “slippery slope” line of argument from multiple attendees. They view the right to bear arms as a kind of check against government power. 

Here reads the "slippery slope", the "a kind of check", brought to us by "extremists" -

'A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.'

Hey Andy, google 'District of Columbia v. Heller' for some more “propaganda”.

 

Jim Carrey ridicules Muslims

The Hollywood comedian was on twitter this past week making fun of radical Muslims and their hatred of others when.... what's that?  It wasn't Muslims?

Oh.  

The comedian/actor Jim Carrey tweeted earlier this week a hateful message about the Catholic Church mocking the sacrament of confession and the Church's teaching on sexuality. Here they are:

I get ppl's need 4 absolution bt being cleansed by a skunk won't make u smell better.You can ask God directly. #themiddlemanispopeless ;^•>+

I knew the sickess in the catholic church all stems from the denial of human sexuality.Gay or straight. #denyingsexleavesyoupopeless 8^•>+   

I don't know about you but i may go off the rails if they don't find a new Pope soon! #lifeispopeless

There r good Catholics bt if a good woman allows her kids 2 b molested by their step father bcuz she's afraid 2 b alone, is that good? ;^\>+

I just think denying who u really r while telling others who 2 b is hypocracy,but hey,worship wherever you want.U have my blessing. ;^P>+

Jim Carrey is very successful in Hollywood because he's very funny, not because he's informed or even coherent about the Catholic faith in which he was raised. I would inform Carrey that he's wrong on many counts when it comes to the Catholic Church.

There's much more and it's informative and intelligent.

Unlike Mr. Carrey.

You might be a low information voter...

I started thinking about what the qualifications might be of your typical low information voter and a few things came to mind pretty quickly.

You might be a low information voter if...

... you didn't bat an eye when Maxine Waters said that 170 million people would lose their jobs over sequestration cuts.

... you believe the White House cordially, cheerfully and courteously asked Bob Woodward to tone down his Obama-is to-blame-for-the-sequestration rhetoric.

... you believe Obama when he says he has nothing against religious freedom.

... you disbelieve the fact that the Democrats have yet to pass a budget since Obama took office.

... you fail to understand why healthcare premiums are rising and you hold the position of DNC chairwoman.

... you think the best reason to vote for Obama is because he'll give you a free phone.

... you think Nancy Pelosi is a faithful Catholic.

... you believe Barack Hussein Obama still walks on water.

... you believe Barack Obama has little to do with what ails this country (thus the image at the top).

And I'm sure, there's more.

So leave them in the comments.  It ought to be fun... and educational.

But please, keep it clean.

:)

Dumb ashes

It's alarming really when you come face to face with how religiously ignorant this country has become.  

Sample dumb ash tweets follow:

Is anyone else watching around the horn right now? Tony Rially has black ink smirred across his forehead #ESPN

— Jon(@Jon2Nyy) February 13, 2013

Hey @aroundthehorn you've got some stuff on your face. Your makeup person should be fired for letting you go on air with that.

— SAL (@SAL_CD) February 13, 2013

@bomani_jones what's up with Reali's forehead?

— Justin (@JustinBauer13) February 13, 2013

There's more where those came from.

Here's a pic of what's baffling many:

I shouldn't be surprised.  I really shouldn't.

H/T Deacon Greg.

Soda No, Plan B Morning After Pill... Of Course

Disturbing news coming out of the New York City school system:

New York City schools are offering young girls a full menu of birth control options, free of parental counsel, thanks to an unpublicized project by Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration.

School nurses handed out 12,721 doses of the Plan B One-Step “morning-after” pill in 2011-12, up from 10,720 in 2010-11 and 5,039 in 2009-10, the New York Post reports.

Mona Davids, president of the NYC Parents Union, was stunned by the report.

“I’m in shock,” she said. “What gives the mayor the right to decide, without adequate notice, to give our children drugs that will impact their bodies and their psyches? He has purposely kept the public and parents in the dark with his agenda.”

Besides “emergency contraception,” about 40 school-based clinics have dispensed prescriptions for contraception, intrauterine devices and hormone-delivering injections, the Post reports.

Stunning.  

Here's but a sampling of the warnings and precautions for the Plan B One-Step "morning-after" pill:

The most common adverse events (>10%) in the clinical trial for women receiving Plan B One-Step included heavier menstrual bleeding (30.9%), nausea (13.7%), lower abdominal pain (13.3%), fatigue (13.3%), and headache (10.3%).

Think of the parent who sees his/her daughter suffering from any or all of these symptoms and being oblivious to the likely cause. 

Then think about the fact that the same guy passing out these Plan B pills like M&Ms at city schools is the guy who doesn't want your daughter to drink soda.

It's incredible.

Progressive logic... is neither.  

It's regressive stupidity.

This happening today isn't surprising, it happening in North Carolina however...

First grader's poem edited by school officials.  Her crime?  She wrote of her grandfather praying to God during the Vietnam War.

This is America?

Officials at an elementary school in North Carolina are in hot water with local residents — as well as veterans across America — after they forced a first grader to remove references to God from a poem she had written to honor her grandfather. The student, whose grandfather served in the military during the Vietnam conflict, had expected to read the poem at a Veterans Day ceremony at West Marion Elementary School in McDowell County, North Carolina. In the poem the proud and patriotic little girl included the lines — “He prayed to God for peace, he prayed to God for strength” — to describe the actions of her grandfather during the war. But when a member of the community supposedly complained about the poem's mention of God and its inclusion in the ceremony, school officials forced the girl to remove the offending lines before presenting it at the Veterans Day observance.

Chris Greene, an employee of McDowell County Schools, told CBS News that the elementary school “had one parent concerned with the use of the word God in this program. This parent did not want the word God mentioned anywhere in the program.”

Explaining the school's actions, McDowell County school superintendent Gerri Martin told the McDowell News that “we wanted to make sure we were upholding the school district’s responsibility of separation of church and state from the Establishment Clause.”

The elementary school principal, Desarae Kirkpatrick, echoed that excuse, saying: “We jointly decided that we must err on the side of caution to prevent from crossing the line on the Establishment Clause of the Constitution.” She added that “as a principal of a public school, I must put aside my personal religious beliefs and follow the law, which upholds that we have freedom of speech and freedom of religion, but that we, as public schools, cannot endorse one single religion over another.”

Zero Tolerance.  For common sense.

This goes beyond idiocy.

 

 

Obama Derangement Syndrome

That term's been used to disparage those of us who find Mr. Obama and his ideology to be problematic and it's revenge of sorts for the left who were offended when the right diagnosed the hatred of Bush as Bush Derangement Syndrome.

But what follows, taken from the Amazon purchase page for the book it's describing, takes ODS in a different direction and to new depths:

Publication Date: July 31, 2012

Yes, Barack had worked tirelessly on behalf of the American people, especially those who elected him in 2008. His followers needed to re-elect him to a second term, so that he could continue to accomplish the promises he made, thus, realizing his vision of America as a more perfect political union or “heaven here on earth.”

Then, as I began to contemplate ways to assist Barack in his 2012 re-election bid something miraculous happened. I felt God’s (His) Spirit beckoning me in my dreams at night. Listening, cautiously, I learned that Jesus walked the earth to create a more civilized society, Martin (Luther King) walked the earth to create a more justified society, but, Apostle Barack, the name he was called in my dreams, would walk the earth to create a more equalized society, for the middle class and working poor. Apostle Barack, the next young leader with a new cause, had been taken to the mountaintop and allowed to see over the other side. He had the answers to unlock the kingdom of “heaven here on earth” for his followers. The answers were repeated – over and over – in speeches Barack had made from his presidential announcement to his inaugural address. Those speeches or his teachings contained the answers to the middle class and working poor people living in a “heaven here on earth.” For when the answers were unlocked and enacted, Apostle Barack’s vision of America would be realized.

That is simply grotesque and sick and evokes a strong gag reflex in me.

I don't believe you can get any more twisted.

SMH.

H/T to PJ Tatler.

Now What?

(by guest blogger Morgan K. Freeberg)

That's the question all reality-attached Americans are asking themselves as of last night, sometime around nine Pacific as the election was called for President Obama's re-election. It's a big question in that context, but I mean it in another. I mean it as a pointed inquiry, to be directed toward Obama's slobbering toadies. Quoting myself, in some personal correspondence:

Okay, we've kept the eeeeevil Mormon out of the White House; the Bush tax cuts are going away and employers have to worry about ObamaCare before they hire anybody, which means they won't be hiring anybody until they're absolutely backed into a corner. But the top-dog is a likable guy, or is rumored to be, although He's a snob, this much seems provable, has never held a real job, seems to only be going through the motions of building anything useful while He's destroying entire industries everywhere you look...He can't be told a damn thing, and apparently is rather proud of this. Now what?

It's an important question, America needs and deserves an answer to it every place it applies, and it hasn't been getting asked enough. The platform of Obama, and the democrats, has been replete with the phrase "and that should work out just great," in some annotation placed immediately behind the huge bubble taking up most of the chalkboard, marked "some miracle occurs here."

Make sure Warren Buffett pays as high a tax rate as his secretary -- meaning that the capital gains tax bite is always equal to or higher than federal withholding, on a per-dollar basis -- and that should somehow work well. In other words, level the playing field, even though the federal budget isn't balanced, not even close to being balanced, doesn't even exist and that should work well.

Tax the millionaires and billionaires so they "pay their fair share." We're a bit starved for details as to what exactly that means, over the longer term, other than "more." And that should somehow work well.

Spend a trillion dollars more out of the treasury than it can take in, just don't worry about the budget deficit for that year or any other, and that should work well.

Pay out hundreds of billions of dollars in stimulus funds to provide maintenance jobs, jobs which are upkeep and are not supposed to actually create new assets, primarily (temporary) road construction work & teaching. Ignore the plain and simple fact that there must be a resulting and counterbalancing lack of jobs existing wherever this money was siphoned away, we'll never find out about what those jobs would've been...but the road construction guy gets to work. Temporarily. And that should work well.

Tear up the roads all over the country in this misguided massive road construction frenzy. All at the same time, so it takes half again as long to transport anything anywhere. And that should work well.

Keep that guy who said that idiotic thing, out of the Senate...so that the Senate is made up entirely of people who say soothing, sensible, wise things (gigglesnort). And that should work well.

Keep the oil in the ground. Sink taxpayer money into "green" energy which, even if it works perfectly, costs several times more than petroleum on a per-joule basis and will for the next century or so, perhaps forever. If everything works perfectly. And that should work well.

When the green energy companies soak up the taxpayer money and then go bankrupt, ignore it. That should work well.

Why, you even see it in their debating strategies. Vice President Biden showed how it's done: Just cackle and sneer at everything like a petulant child, and that should work well.

Obama's supporters, faced with anything that is glaringly wrong with their strategies and can be expressed in simple and obvious terms: For example, "Businesses are not likely to hire more people if it is more expensive to hire them," or "If the economy is to improve, some people are going to have to get rich, and Obama seems to have a problem with that" -- reply with the pablum that this is complicated stuff, and we need to come together to make it work. If those things are really true, then as we come together to make it work for the sake of the country, we owe it to the country to go back to that huge blank bubble marked only with "a miracle occurs here" and clarify things a bit in that bubble. We owe it to the country to stop relying on "and that should work well" and start filling in an answer to the question that cries out to us, "How, exactly?"

And the people like me who saw the President for what He really is, back to the first day, don't need to worry about answering it. Speaking just for myself, I think I know the answer and it sickens me. This is, as I noted, a question for the President's supporters. They need to provide some working, credible details.

In the case of many of them, probably for the very first time in their lives.

Update: And this is not doing much to answer my question...

Cross-posted at House of Eratosthenes.

Michael Bloomberg; idiot extraordinaire

Guest posted by tim, The Godless Heathen

Hot Air:

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been on the receiving end of a firestorm of criticism lately, particularly for his ham handed handling of the Hurricane Sandy recovery. But this story is almost too stupid to check.

Mayor Bloomberg has snubbed Borough President Markowitz’s impassioned plea to bring the National Guard to Hurricane Sandy-scarred Brooklyn — arguing that approving the Beep’s request would be a waste of federal manpower and turn the borough into a police state.

“We don’t need it,” Mayor Bloomberg said on Wednesday during a press update on the city’s ongoing Hurricane Sandy cleanup. “The NYPD is the only people we want on the street with guns.”

I’m not sure, but I think we’re witnessing the complete implosion of somebody who was once considered a pretty influential politician on the rise. Yes, Bloomberg doesn’t much care for the Second Amendment and doesn’t want people to have guns. We get it. But we’re talking about the National Guard here. Has this guy completely lost his mind?

This is a time when leaders up and down the east coast are loudly singing the praises of the National Guard for their rapid deployment and efficient rescue, recovery and security work. It’s also a time when people out on Staten Island are hanging on by a thread, with looting and violence being a serious threat on top of the hurricane’s destruction. Who in their right mind even suggests that Guardsmen carrying their weapons is an issue at a time like this? I understand wanting to express your support of and confidence in the police department and the firefighters, but even some of the finest first responders in the nation are completely swamped by the magnitude of this disaster. They could use the help and the Guard stands ready to provide it.

The rest.