Saturday, September 13, 2008
Glenn Beck on the Attacks on Palin
Glenn Beck:
Britt Hume and Salon.com's Liberal Lesbians Attack on Sarah Palin:
Britt Hume and Salon.com's Liberal Lesbians Attack on Sarah Palin:
(Imported Article) Double Standards -- Media Bias
In the days leading up to Charles Gibson’s interview with Sarah Palin, many demanded that he ask her tough questions on foreign policy and reform. Certainly that is what journalists should do with all of our elected officials and political candidates, but it seems that Gibson doesn’t always meet this standard. Two bloggers have already provided evidence that Gibson treated Democrats much differently.
First, the Anchoress has a list of questions posed by Gibson to Barack Obama three months ago, who has arguably less experience on foreign policy than Palin and no executive experience at all:
Obama interview:
How does it feel to break a glass ceiling?
How does it feel to “win”?
How does your family feel about your “winning” breaking a glass ceiling?
Who will be your VP?
Should you choose Hillary Clinton as VP?
Will you accept public finance?
What issues is your campaign about?
Will you visit Iraq?
Will you debate McCain at a town hall?
What did you think of your competitor’s [Clinton] speech?
Palin interview:
Do you have enough qualifications for the job you’re seeking? Specifically have you visited foreign countries and met foreign leaders?
Aren’t you conceited to be seeking this high level job?
Questions about foreign policy
-territorial integrity of Georgia
-allowing Georgia and Ukraine to be members of NATO
-NATO treaty
-Iranian nuclear threat
-what to do if Israel attacks Iran
-Al Qaeda motivations
-the Bush Doctrine
-attacking terrorists harbored by Pakistan
Is America fighting a holy war? [misquoted Palin]
Newsbusters, meanwhile, has Gibson’s interview with John Edwards in 2004 after being selected as John Kerry’s running mate. Edwards had less than a full term in the Senate as his entire political background, and no foreign-policy, military, or executive experience at all. Yet Gibson didn’t press Edwards on these points at all. In fact, the entire interview consisted of a hard-hitting interrogation … on how mean Republicans are:
GIBSON: You speak with such equanimity this morning. Didn’t they make you mad last night?
EDWARDS: Oh, I thought they were over the top, completely over the top. And, and actually what bothered me more than anything was in the midst of -I mean, there was, if you, if you got up and went to your refrigerator to get a Diet Coke, you would -you would miss everything Dick Cheney had to say about health care and everything he had to say about jobs. I mean, this is the first, we’ve had 11 straight presidents in this country, Charlie, who have created jobs. This is, until George Bush. You know, we’ve got all these folks who are having trouble with their health care premiums going up, 26, 27 hundred dollars, and what do they have to say about it? Nothing. I mean, don’t people deserve to know from their president and vice president what it is they’ve done and what it is they’re going to do? And instead, all we hear is a lot of rhetoric about, about their opponent. I mean, I just think leaders in this country, the American people deserve leaders who are better than that and do better than that.
GIBSON: Did you get mad, though?
EDWARDS: Oh, yeah. I was, I was, especially about the personal attacks against John Kerry, because they’re false. I know this guy and I know what he’s made of inside and he’s ready to lead this country.
Compare, contrast, and draw your own conclusions. The following cartoon by Kirby Garp, exclusive to Hot Air, tells the story:
We would have no problem with tough questioning to hold Republican candidates accountable if the media would perform the same task with Democrats. Yet no major media outlet has reported on Barack Obama’s long association with and defense of William Ayers, an unrepentant domestic terrorist, nor have they pressed him on his lack of executive experience or the absence of any significant political accomplishments except his own elections. We await that interview with great anticipation and no hope whatsoever of it ever occurring.
(Imported Article) Charles Krauthammer Review of the Palin Interview
By Charles Krauthammer
Saturday, September 13, 2008; A17
"At times visibly nervous . . . Ms. Palin most visibly stumbled when she was asked by Mr. Gibson if she agreed with the Bush doctrine. Ms. Palin did not seem to know what he was talking about. Mr. Gibson, sounding like an impatient teacher, informed her that it meant the right of 'anticipatory self-defense.' "
-- New York Times, Sept. 12
Informed her? Rubbish.
The New York Times got it wrong. And Charlie Gibson got it wrong.
There is no single meaning of the Bush doctrine. In fact, there have been four distinct meanings, each one succeeding another over the eight years of this administration -- and the one Charlie Gibson cited is not the one in common usage today. It is utterly different.
He asked Palin, "Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?"
She responded, quite sensibly to a question that is ambiguous, "In what respect, Charlie?"
Sensing his "gotcha" moment, Gibson refused to tell her. After making her fish for the answer, Gibson grudgingly explained to the moose-hunting rube that the Bush doctrine "is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense."
Wrong.
I know something about the subject because, as the Wikipedia entry on the Bush doctrine notes, I was the first to use the term. In the cover essay of the June 4, 2001, issue of the Weekly Standard entitled, "The Bush Doctrine: ABM, Kyoto, and the New American Unilateralism," I suggested that the Bush administration policies of unilaterally withdrawing from the ABM treaty and rejecting the Kyoto protocol, together with others, amounted to a radical change in foreign policy that should be called the Bush doctrine.
Then came 9/11, and that notion was immediately superseded by the advent of the war on terror. In his address to the joint session of Congress nine days after 9/11, President Bush declared: "Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime." This "with us or against us" policy regarding terror -- first deployed against Pakistan when Secretary of State Colin Powell gave President Musharraf that seven-point ultimatum to end support for the Taliban and support our attack on Afghanistan -- became the essence of the Bush doctrine.
Until Iraq. A year later, when the Iraq war was looming, Bush offered his major justification by enunciating a doctrine of preemptive war. This is the one Charlie Gibson thinks is the Bush doctrine.
It's not. It's the third in a series and was superseded by the fourth and current definition of the Bush doctrine, the most sweeping formulation of the Bush approach to foreign policy and the one that most clearly and distinctively defines the Bush years: the idea that the fundamental mission of American foreign policy is to spread democracy throughout the world. It was most dramatically enunciated in Bush's second inaugural address: "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world."
This declaration of a sweeping, universal American freedom agenda was consciously meant to echo John Kennedy's pledge in his inaugural address that the United States "shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty." It draws also from the Truman doctrine of March 1947 and from Wilson's 14 points.
If I were in any public foreign policy debate today, and my adversary were to raise the Bush doctrine, both I and the audience would assume -- unless my interlocutor annotated the reference otherwise -- that he was speaking about the grandly proclaimed (and widely attacked) freedom agenda of the Bush administration.
Not the Gibson doctrine of preemption.
Not the "with us or against us" no-neutrality-is-permitted policy of the immediate post-9/11 days.
Not the unilateralism that characterized the pre-9/11 first year of the Bush administration.
Presidential doctrines are inherently malleable and difficult to define. The only fixed "doctrines" in American history are the Monroe and the Truman doctrines which come out of single presidential statements during administrations where there were few other contradictory or conflicting foreign policy crosscurrents.
Such is not the case with the Bush doctrine.
Yes, Sarah Palin didn't know what it is. But neither does Charlie Gibson. And at least she didn't pretend to know -- while he looked down his nose and over his glasses with weary disdain, sighing and "sounding like an impatient teacher," as the Times noted. In doing so, he captured perfectly the establishment snobbery and intellectual condescension that has characterized the chattering classes' reaction to the mother of five who presumes to play on their stage.
Friday, September 12, 2008
Whoopie Asks Dumb Question
Whoopie on The View asked John McCain if she would become a slave again in reference to McCain speaking about appointing Supreme Court Justices. She apparently doesn't know history too well, those Justices that passed the Dread Scott decision were Democrats. Remember, the Southerners who succeeded were Democrats and the leaders and "Presedential" candidates in the Antebellum South were Democrats. It was a Democrat who crossed over chambers and almost beat to death a fellow Congressman (a Republican) who was fighting against the racist laws the Democrats were trying to get past. The Democrats who thought there shouldn't be succesion in the union were nonetheless segregationists. Get to know history a bit more Whoopie and ask that question of Obama or Biden, the Democrat Candidates.
Pigs Do Fly! L.A. Times Defends Palin?
Is the L.A. Times trying to get some subscribers back?
The Los Angeles Times was among the news outlets crying foul after ABC's interview yesterday with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, her first since Sen. John McCain named her his running mate.
The Times took Charlie Gibson to task for distorting statements Palin made about the Iraq war at her former Assemblies of God church in Wasilla, Alaska.
A well-circulated video shows Palin asking the congregation to pray that the nation's leaders would send troops to Iraq "on a task that is from God." But Gibson, apparently getting his information from an Associated Press story, frames the question with the assumption Palin is contending the U.S. was sending troops to Iraq on a mission from God.
"Are we fighting a holy war?" Gibson asked.
Palin disputed the characterization, pointing out she was paraphrasing Abraham Lincoln, who said, "Let us not pray that God is on our side in a war or any other time, but let us pray that we are on God’s side."
New York Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley said that during the interview, Gibson, who "sat back in his chair, impatiently wriggling his foot," had "the skeptical, annoyed tone of a university president who agrees to interview the daughter of a trustee but doesn’t believe she merits admission."
Much was made by many pundits of Palin's apparent inability to recognize the term "Bush doctrine." But columnist Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post said he's "not sure anyone is entirely clear on what the Bush doctrine is at this particular moment."
Mike Rappaport of the blog Right Coast called Gibson's approach "bad form and bad journalism," asking whether she agrees with the doctrine, without defining it. Rappaport pointed to Wikipedia's entry on the Bush doctrine, which documents that it's a phrase associated with several different foreign policy positions and strategies.
When Palin asked Gibson what he meant by the Bush Doctrine, Gibson clarified: "The Bush doctrine, enunciated September 2002, before the Iraq war."
Then, when Palin apparently needed further clarification, he said, "The Bush doctrine, as I understand it, is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense, that we have the right to a preemptive strike against any other country that we think is going to attack us. Do you agree with that?"
Palin's replied: "If there is legitimate and enough intelligence that tells us that a strike is imminent against American people, we have every right to defend our country. In fact, the president has the obligation, the duty to defend."....
NI hit the Press...
PALIN FAMILY SHOCKERS: WHAT SARAH'S HIDING! REALLY
The NATIONAL ENQUIRER’S exclusive ongoing investigation of GOP VP Nom Sarah 'Barracuda' Palin’s goes far beyond a mere teen pregnancy crisis this week!
The Enquirer’s team of reporters has combed the Alaskan wilderness to discover the hidden truth about Gov. Palin’s family, which has become a central part of her political identity.
The ENQUIRER has learned exclusively that Sarah's oldest son, Track, was addicted to the power drug OxyContin for nearly the past two years, snorting it, eating it, smoking it and even injecting it. And as Track, 19, heads to Iraq as part of the U.S. armed forces, Sarah and her husband Todd were powerless to stop his wild antics, detailed in the new issue of The ENQUIRER, which goes on sale today.
THE ENQUIRER also has exclusive details about Track's use of other drugs, including cocaine, and his involvement in a notorious local vandalism incident.
“I’ve partied with him (Track) for years,” a source disclosed. “I’ve seen him snort cocaine, snort and smoke OxyContin, drink booze and smoke weed.”
The source also divulged the girls would do anything for Track and he’d use his local celebrity status to manipulate other guys “to get them to steal things he wanted.”
“He finally did what a lot of troubled kids here do,” the source divulged. “You join the military.”
And as Gov. Palin has billed the state of Alaska for various expenses related to her children, as reported by The Washington Post, The ENQUIRER's investigation reveals that she was so incensed by 17-year-old Bristol's pregnancy that she banished her daughter from the house.
Another family friend revealed pre-prego Bristol was as much of a hard partier as Track was.
“Bristol was a huge stoner and drinker. I’ve seen her smoke pot and get drunk and make out with so many guys. All the guys would brag that the just made out with Bristol.”
When Sarah found out the teen was pregnant by high schooler Levi Johnston, she was actually banished from the house. As part of the cover-up, Palin quickly transferred Bristol to another high school and made her move in with Sarah’s sister Heather 25 miles away!
And the ENQUIRER also learned that Levi Johnston, the baby mamma’s future wedded dada, who was glad handed by John McCain at the GOP Convention, isn’t too happy about his impending shotgun nups either.
“Levi got dragged out of the house to go to Minnesota,” Levi’s friend told The ENQUIRER. “Levi realizes he’s stuck being with Bristol because her mom is running for Vice President.”
The friend also confided that both Bristol and Levi “broke up a few times and they definitely messed around with other people.”
Meanwhile, as members of the Palin family’s war viciously over “Trooper-Gate” and claims of Sarah’s extramarital affair have turned the political race into a chaotic arena of threats, denials and vicious attacks by political black ops, The ENQUIRER has discovered shocking new details about the red-hot affair scandal!
For the full story of the secrets Sarah Palin is trying to hide – pick up the new ENQUIRER!
The Enquirer’s team of reporters has combed the Alaskan wilderness to discover the hidden truth about Gov. Palin’s family, which has become a central part of her political identity.
The ENQUIRER has learned exclusively that Sarah's oldest son, Track, was addicted to the power drug OxyContin for nearly the past two years, snorting it, eating it, smoking it and even injecting it. And as Track, 19, heads to Iraq as part of the U.S. armed forces, Sarah and her husband Todd were powerless to stop his wild antics, detailed in the new issue of The ENQUIRER, which goes on sale today.
THE ENQUIRER also has exclusive details about Track's use of other drugs, including cocaine, and his involvement in a notorious local vandalism incident.
“I’ve partied with him (Track) for years,” a source disclosed. “I’ve seen him snort cocaine, snort and smoke OxyContin, drink booze and smoke weed.”
The source also divulged the girls would do anything for Track and he’d use his local celebrity status to manipulate other guys “to get them to steal things he wanted.”
“He finally did what a lot of troubled kids here do,” the source divulged. “You join the military.”
And as Gov. Palin has billed the state of Alaska for various expenses related to her children, as reported by The Washington Post, The ENQUIRER's investigation reveals that she was so incensed by 17-year-old Bristol's pregnancy that she banished her daughter from the house.
Another family friend revealed pre-prego Bristol was as much of a hard partier as Track was.
“Bristol was a huge stoner and drinker. I’ve seen her smoke pot and get drunk and make out with so many guys. All the guys would brag that the just made out with Bristol.”
When Sarah found out the teen was pregnant by high schooler Levi Johnston, she was actually banished from the house. As part of the cover-up, Palin quickly transferred Bristol to another high school and made her move in with Sarah’s sister Heather 25 miles away!
And the ENQUIRER also learned that Levi Johnston, the baby mamma’s future wedded dada, who was glad handed by John McCain at the GOP Convention, isn’t too happy about his impending shotgun nups either.
“Levi got dragged out of the house to go to Minnesota,” Levi’s friend told The ENQUIRER. “Levi realizes he’s stuck being with Bristol because her mom is running for Vice President.”
The friend also confided that both Bristol and Levi “broke up a few times and they definitely messed around with other people.”
Meanwhile, as members of the Palin family’s war viciously over “Trooper-Gate” and claims of Sarah’s extramarital affair have turned the political race into a chaotic arena of threats, denials and vicious attacks by political black ops, The ENQUIRER has discovered shocking new details about the red-hot affair scandal!
For the full story of the secrets Sarah Palin is trying to hide – pick up the new ENQUIRER!
It's Back... Hate Crimes
The bible will be considered “hate literature” like in a few other countries if we do not stop this egalitarianism from the Left. You can either have equality or liberty, never will the two meet. A few books come to min:
- The New Thought Police: Inside the Left's Assault on Free Speech and Free Minds, by Tammy Bruce (a lesbian pro-choice Kennedy Democrat).
- The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a basis for Social Policy, Thomas Sowell (109 reviews on Amazon and it has a 41/2 star rating. Definitely one of Sowell’s best).
- The Dark Side of the Left: Illiberal Egalitarianism in America, by Richard J. Ellis (at the writing of this book he is [still ?] lifelong Democrat, a "card-carrying member" of the ACLU, an environmentalist, a supporter of women's rights and a federalist).
- The New Tolerance: How a Cultural Movement Threatens to Destroy You, by Bob Hostetler and Josh D. McDowell.
- The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised As Freedom, by David Kupelian (a great read... 227 Amazon reviews with a 41/2 star rating).
Catholicism - A Hate Crime in Canada?
June 4th, 2008 by Pete Vere
“If one, because of one’s sincerely held moral beliefs, whether it be Jew, Muslim, Christian, Catholic, opposes the idea of same-sex marriage in Canada, is that considered ‘hate’?”
The question was not rhetorical. Nor was it theoretical. Fr. Alphonse de Valk, a Basilian priest and pro-life activist known throughout Canada for his orthodoxy, is currently being investigated by the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) — a quasi-judicial investigative body with the power of the Canadian government behind it. The CHRC is using section 13 of Canada’s Human Rights Act to investigate the priest. This is a section under which no defendant has ever won once the allegation has gone to tribunal — the next stage of the process.
Most defendants end up paying thousands of dollars in fines and compensation. This is in addition to various court costs. Moreover, defendants are responsible for their own legal defense. In contrast, the commission provides free legal assistance to the complainant.
What was Father de Valk’s alleged ‘hate act’?
Father defended the Church’s teaching on marriage during Canada’s same-sex ‘marriage’ debate, quoting extensively from the Bible, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and Pope John Paul II’s encyclicals. Each of these documents contains official Catholic teaching. And like millions of other people throughout the world and the ages - many of who are non-Catholics and non-Christians — Father believes that marriage is an exclusive union between a man and a woman....
Return of 'hate crimes' plan looms in Congress
Legal crackdown on biblical condemnation of homosexuality feared
Posted: September 12, 2008
A federal "hate crimes" plan to criminalize speech or thoughts critical of homosexuality – dropped from Congress' agenda earlier because of a veto threat from President Bush – may be resurrected before the election, according to an opponent of such advocacy laws.
"Here's ultimately what we expect," Mathew Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel and dean of the Liberty University School of Law, told WND today. "The hate crimes plan is to be offered as an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2009 Department of Defense reauthorization bill. That's what the word is, that it's going to be offered as an amendment."
Pro-homosexual advocates long have sought such a law but opponents fear it would be used to crack down on those who maintain a biblical perspective that condemns homosexuality as sin. Observers note that it would criminalize speech and thought, since other criminal actions already are addressed with current statutes.
Canada already has an aggressive "hate crimes" law, and there authorities there have gone so far as to tell a Christian pastor he must recant his faith because of the legislation that bans statements that can be "perceived" as condemning another person.
Some states already have similar statutes, too, and in New Mexico, a photography company run by two Christians was fined $6,600 by the state for declining to provide services to a lesbian couple setting up a lookalike "marriage" ceremony. Also, Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter recently signed a bill into law that opponents describe as draconian, with one analyst expressing the opinion that it actually could be read as outlawing publication of the Bible in the state because of its injunctions against homosexuality...
... Former White House insider Chuck Colson, in his Breakpoint commentary, at one point decried what he described as a "Thought Crimes" plan.
"This bill is not about hate. It's not even about crime. It's about outlawing peaceful speech – speech that asserts that homosexual behavior is morally wrong," he said.
"Some say we need this law to prevent attacks on homosexuals. But we already have laws against assaults on people and property," Colson continued. "Moreover, according to the FBI, crimes against homosexuals in the United States have dropped dramatically in recent years. In 2005, out of 863,000 cases of aggravated assault, just 177 cases were crimes of bias against homosexuals…"
Activists warn Christians targeted under new 'hate crimes' proposal
Posted: February 15, 2007
Two Christians in Australia have been indicted for criticizing Islam, and another for criticizing Zionism. A filmmaker has been threatened with arrest for using the word "homosexual" rather than "gay." Now a German priest faces jail time for publicly criticizing abortionists, and in Holland, "fornicators" and "adulterers" are protected classes and cannot be criticized.
All courtesy of the concept of federal "hate crimes" legislation, which unless defeated soon could be mandatory in the United States, warns a rising chorus of critics.
"All that matters are the delicate feelings of members of federally protected groups," said Michael Marcavage, director of RepentAmerica.com "Truth is not allowed as evidence in hate crimes trials. … A homosexual can claim emotional damage from hearing Scripture that describes his lifestyle as an abomination. He can press charges against the pastor or broadcaster who merely reads the Bible in public. The 'hater' can be fined thousands of dollars and even imprisoned!"
Peter LaBarbera, of Americans for Truth, noted that in Canada and France both, legislators have been fined for publicly criticizing homosexuality. Three years ago, a Swedish hate crimes law was used to put Pastor Ake Green, who preached that homosexuality is a sin, in jail for a month.
"And recently, a British couple told how they were denied the chance to adopt because it was determined that their Christian faith might 'prejudice' them against a homosexual child put in their care," LaBarbera added.
Already in the United States, Catholic Charities of Boston halted all adoption operations in the state after being told under Massachusetts' pro-'gay' nondiscrimination law, only agencies that placed children in homosexual-led households would get licensed by the state.
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