Savage Republican

A great snippet from Bill Bennett’s morning show on AM1280 The Patriot : The Muslims are saying they will sever the heads and bomb anyone who depicts them in a cartoon as people who sever heads and bomb people.
OK.

MDE points up to this interview in the Mac (Macalester College) Weekly. In it Al Franken showed (again) just what kind of a grasp on the facts that he has.

AF: I think that there are so many that are so important. Health care; the widening gap between the haves and have-nots; the government operating on behalf of special interests, not the public interest, and all that impacts everything. It impacts health care, impacts education, impacts environmental concerns, impacts energy policy. That’s why I’m so disappointed that Democrats aren’t using this Abramoff scandal to talk about ways to get money out of politics.

MW: About that, why would they if so many Democrats are connected to Abramoff?

AF: They aren’t. Why do you assume that? Why do you say that?

MW: Because [Sen.] Byron Dorgan from North Dakota was found to have connections with the Indian tribes and he was advocating on their behalf with Abramoff.

AF: Yeah, but they live in North Dakota.

MW: It was an Indian tribe from Massachusetts.

AF: An Indian tribe from Massachusetts gave to Dorgan? (emphasis mine)

Remember, this is the man that assures his listeners that he subscribes to an incontrovertable standard of truth because he Googles facts before announcing them on the air…

AF: Well connected doesn’t mean anything. Tell me if the Indian tribe from Massachusetts gave Dorgan money. (emphasis mine)

MW: I’m not certain. [The Mac Weekly later sent an article to Franken detailing Dorgan’s connection. See the editor’s note below.]

Sigh…….Then Al launches into a tirade against lobbyist paid trips…

MW: You know [Rep.] Michael Capuano [Democrat] of Massachusetts, a Congressman, recently got back from a privately funded trip to Brazil funded by what seems to be the sources you’ve been alluding to.

AF: And who paid for his trip?

MW: Well, it was interest groups that you’ve been alluding to.

AF: Can you tell me who? I’d like to know.

Editor’s note: The Mac Weekly later sent Franken two newspaper articles.
One, published by the Associated Press in December, detailed Sen. Byron Dorgan’s (D-N.D.) connections to the Mashpee Tribe of Massachusetts and its donation of $11,500 to Dorgan through its representative Michael D. Smith, Abramoff’s partner who pleaded guilty this fall to charges of conspiring to bribe a congressional representative.

The article also revealed a fundraiser hosted for Dorgan by the Mississippi Choctaw Tribe in Abramoff’s arena skybox where Washington power players were commonly wined and dined.
The other article, published in January by The Boston Globe, detailed a trip by Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.) to Brazil. The trip, worth $19,403, was funded by a non-profit business organization financed by the lobbyists and company representatives traveling with the congressman, the Globe reported.

Al, Al, Al….you know it’s bad when a college newspaper has a better grasp on the facts on the issue than you do. Maybe the kid that interviewed you for the Mac Weekly should be the one running for Senate.

Got this interesting tidbit from my friend Captain Ed at Captains Quarters.
I’m always amazed at the reading of the details that put the lie to the Big Story.

Reflecting on what Lady Logician has been saying about cartoons, I recall that this is the religion that bills itself, and left wing calls “The Religion of Peace”.
Obviously.

Yup, Zippergate Willy is completey in error! When he said in his SOTU address in 1996 that “The era of big government is over” Prairie Pravda (PP) says that he’s wrong! In todays homage to Uncle Joe Stalin PP says that the government needs to squeeze personal choice people like you and me. That it needs to force us to drive less, conserve more.That all those elites at 425 Portland Ave. S. know how to address any energy concern. That good ol’ Unca Joe and Cousin Mao were right and state central planning works…or will work… this time…finally…they hope…in spite of decades and decades of proven central planning failures.
Well, kids, we are NOT addicted to oil! Oil is relatively cheap.And efficient. And effective for energy. At least in a comparitively free market. And all GWB is doing is throwing more money at wish list technologies that have not proved effective or efficient in over three decades…thirty years. And yet PP says that government is not too big and needs to be bigger and more intrusive.
Sorry Willy.
And SNAP TO GEORGE!!!!

I was involved in a conversation on the “cartoon riots” when a gentleman in the group compared what is going on today with “die Reichskrystallnacht” of 1938. For those that don’t know what Krystall Nacht was, here is a refresher. I was intrigued by his analogy so I went back and did a little reading of my own. That refresher, triggered memories of stories I was told when we lived in Germany (Mr. Logician was stationed there when we were first married). We lived and worked among many Germans who lived through WWII and they were quite willing to tell the inquisitive Americans their side of the story.

Reading the Wikipedia entry, I was struck with a sobering sense of deja vu. Under the pretense of an “offense” *(in this case the murder of a member of the Reich) rioters rampaged through-out Germany – destroying Jewish shops, homes, synagogues and cemetaries. Jews were beaten to death by the rioters. The attacks were intended to look spontaneous, but they were actually ochestrated by the Nazi government!

Fast forward almost 70 years to today. Under the pretense of an “offense” Muslim rioters rampage through the streets of Syria, Lebanon and European cities. Embassies are burned (Austrian, Danish and Norwegian), tourists kidnapped and a Roman Catholic church attacked. The attacks looked spontaneous, but where (as this author asks) “did they get all of those Danish flags to burn?” A question that he does not directly ask is “why did it take so long (remember these cartoons were initially published back in October) for these ‘spontaneous’ riots to happen?” Couple these incidents with statements released recently by the new President of Iran where he stated that the Holocaust never happened and that Israel has no right to exist with statements made by the Nazi Regime. Even current German Chancelor Merkle has made the connection.

Let’s go back in time again to 1938. In the days following Krystall Nacht the world reacted in horror and outrage. Yet they did nothing. Krystall Nacht ushered in a new era of anti-Semetic activities from the German government. Will the Muslim governments in Syria and Lebanon follow suit (in the form of anti-Western behavior)? If they do, what will the world do? Will the world move in unison to stop this anti-social behavior or will they simply speak platitudes (as they did in WWI) and do nothing?

Have we learned nothing from our recent history? Or are we doomed to repeat it?

The world has watched as the Middle East has disolved into mass chaos. Riots have broken out over a cartoon that has offended the Muslim World. Embassies have been burned, tourists kindapped, bomb threats, bombs thrown, EU offices over-run by gun wielding hooligans….all of this has unfolded before our eyes in the last 48 hours. Much has been said on this issue across the blogosphere. However, few have dared to ask this question, has the Holy War begun? The short answer??? YES – ABSOLUTELY – POSITIVELY!!!!

“Jihad” has been defined as a holy war and bin Laden and his associates have said that this is jihad. If that is the case, then the Holy War came to us over 20 years ago. When is the “West” going to wake up to this fact?

I came across this great parable and immediately thought of the lefty pukes (and too many Republicans) out there that do this to the American taxpayer:

Once upon a time a monk stole 3 ducks from a farmer, plucked them and stuffed their feathers into a bag. He quietly picked up the bag, so as not to be noticed, and ascended the stairs of his monastery’s highest tower. Upon reaching the top of the tower, he dumped the feathers out of a window. The feathers were swept away by the wind and scattered irretrievably.

Down below, the blacksmith saw the monk’s curious actions. He reported to his neighbors what the monk had done: “The monk has stolen 3 geese and scattered their feathers!”

Confronted with his crime, the monk denied any wrongdoing. He instead turned to the blacksmith and replied, “The feathers I scattered were from ducks, sir, not geese, and you are a slanderer.”

The crowd nodded in agreement. They chastised the blacksmith for his carelessness and consoled the shamefully treated monk.

And the farmer was out 3 ducks.

(From Apelles )

Though Nick Coleman from Prairie Pravda can not be explained by anything less than my political opposite, he has written a truly readable column on the mother of murdered St. Paul police Sgt.Jerry Vick.
As a matter of fact, I thought it was a superb column, and I even wrote Nick and complimented him on it.
It is a compelling read on the deep grief of a woman who in short order (a month) lost her son, her husband and her husband’s mother-in-law.
Please read it and pray for Mrs. Vick.

“A couple of simple caricatures printed in a Danish newspaper has the Arab world outraged. Unfortunately, the paper apologized for the Muhammad-critical cartoons and democratic values lost out to totalitarian ideology. “

Thus begins an excellent article in Der Speigle about the riots in the Middle East. I am not going to focus on what is wrong with Islam (for that you want to check out Anti-Strib’s long running series on Islam). What I do want to focus on is the inconsistency of certain members of our society in reaction to this. For the record, I find the cartoons in question to be as crass and tasteless as, oh say, Andes Serrano’s dreadful “Piss Christ” or Martin Scorsese’s equally dreadful “Last Temptation of Christ“. If you want a cartoon comparison, the WaPo’s Tole cartoon depicting our military as a quadraplegic with Dr. Rumsfeld calling them “battle hardened” ranks up there on the old insult meter. In fact, Christians and Jews (and their respective deities) have been ridiculed on the pages of most Arab, American and European newspapers for as long as there have been newspapers!

Now, let’s take a look at the reactions to said “offenses”. When Christians are offended, and they complain, they are told to suck it up a take it like a man. When the military is offended and they complain, they are accused of censorship. When Muslims are offended they take to the streets with plackards reading “Behead those who insult Islam” or “Freedom go to Hell” or calling in bomb threats to the papers who had the audacity to run with these cartoons. Michelle Malkin has the context (of the cartoons) that no one seems to care to look at. What struck me though was the reaction of the broadcast media. MSNCB, in covering the situation last night, refused to show the cartoons out of “respect” of Islam and yet NBC has planned for a Good Friday broadcast an episode of Will and Grace that insults Christians! I am saddened, but not surprised, that our American media has choosen to kow-tow to the fascists in radical Islam. For they are only more than willing to hand over their “cherished” free expression to a regime as long as that regime holds fast to the presses anti American sentiment. Shame on the US Media!

You be the judge readers. Is this

any more insulting than this or this or this? Horribly poor taste yes, but hardly worthy of mass riots, bomb threats and suicide bombers.