Egyptians blame Obama for their failing government

There were huge protests in Egypt today against its failing government.   Some say these protests are the biggest political protests in human history.  The protesters remembered Obama's role in supporting the Muslim Brotherhood seizure of power from the Western-friendly Mubarak regime:

The Egyptians are surprised that Obama is supporting a Fascist government. After the recent IRS and NSA revelations, this fact should surprise no one.

Remember when they promised us "smart diplomacy"?

PREVIOUSLY on the Obama administration's foreign policy:
•Insider: Obama's foreign policy subservient to domestic politics
•Reset fail: Hillary Clinton discovers that Russia is trying to "re-Sovietise" •Why has respect for America fallen in Egypt?
•The Sgt. Schultz administration: Obama claims ignorance as his defense
•What Obama wants you to believe about Benghazi
•Is Obama using Carter's speechwriters?
•"Obama, Obama, you are either with us or with them," say Iranians
•Obama gets an education
•Krauthammer on a roll
•Obama's go-it-alone foreign policy: Russian edition
•Obama alienates Germany
•Jimmy Carter's lasting influence, II
•Obama's charm offensive not working
•Obama snubs Brazil
•Obama insults Britain
•On Iran's nuclear program, Obama abandons cooperation with Europe
•Obama antagonizes India
•Jimmy Carter on N. Korea's nuclear bomb tests
•Jimmy Carter's Lasting Influence

Thomas Sowell explains why politicians so rarely seem to solve our problems

Whether it is budget deficits or a broken immigration system or failing public schools, political problems, even the ones that are quite solvable, persist decade after decade.  Thomas Sowell explains:

No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems-- of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two. Whatever is number three is far behind.

Thomas Sowell's birthday is today, June 30.

ALSO from Thomas Sowell:

The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.

America's persistent culture of racism

Rachel Jeantel

The Supreme Court overturned Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act because the racism of Jim Crow era (Democratic) South no longer exists.  America, however, still has pockets of extreme racism, one where the use of racial epithets, such as the n-word or the term "crackers," are "normal."  So testified Rachel Jeantel, a witness in the Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin murder trial.  Mediaite reports:

Jeantel told the court on Wednesday that the late Trayvon Martin had referred to the defendant as a “creepy-ass cracker” shortly before his own death. Defense lawyer Don West continually grilled Jeantel over various questions related to Martin’s use of the word, ultimately culminating with the question of whether it is “normal” within her own local community to use the slur.

“In the culture that you live in, in your community, people there call white people ‘crackers’?” West asked.

“Yes, sir,” Jeantel replied.

“And do they use the n-word regularly?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

PREVIOUSLY on racism:
•Member of Congress attacks "white boy solutions"
•Democrats embrace open racism
•“They’re starting to realize white people are human beings just like us.”
•Recipient of Presidential Medal of Freedom says all whites will go to Hell
•Former Mayor Marion Barry declares that Asians are "dirty"
•Dem. Rep. says Rep. Allen West resembles a hyena
•Is it racist to require a photo ID to buy drain cleaner?
•NY Times: Midwesterners have low-sloping foreheads
•Don't understand what was said? Then it must be racist!
•California offers student tutoring but only for students belonging to the right races
•For liberals, "affirmative action" means "keep the Asians out"
•Occupy Portland protesters hurl racist taunts at an African American
•Democrat: "Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men"
•The subtleties of White Privilege
•Racist cupcakes
•Is witch doctor image racist?
•Obama ally: "I hate white people...."
•“You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.”
•"The city wasn't ready to hire a white police chief."
•A prominent black politician says the white incumbent cannot properly represent black voters.
•San Franciscans discriminate against blacks.
•"He's not black and he can't represent me, that's just the bottom line."

Civil rights in the Obama era

From Scott Kelly (click to enlarge):

Also from Scott Kelly:

Remember back to when the left claimed that George Bush "shredded" the Constitution?

State Senator Elbert Guillory explains why he became a Republican

Louisiana State Senator Elbert Guillory on "Why I Am a Republican":

"Recently I have made what many are referring to as 'a bold decision' to switch my party....  You see, in recent history, the Democrat party has created the 'illusion' that their agenda and their policies are what's best for black people. Somehow it has been forgotten that the Republican party was founded in 1854 as an abolitionist movement, with one simple creed: that slavery is a violation of the rights of man.... The Democrats, on the other hand, were the party of Jim Crow. It was the Democrats who defended the rights of slave owners.... You see, at the heart of liberalism, is the idea that only a great and powerful big Government can be the benefactor of social justice for all Americans. But the left is only concerned with one thing: control and they disguise this control as charity.... Their support of dependency over self-reliance, of everything but traditional marriage, of abortion on demand, their policies have encouraged the high teen birth rates, high school drop-out rates, high incarceration rates and very high unemployment rates."

Global Warming and the religious left

The left may pride itself on banishing primitive superstitions.  What they have done, though, often appears to be merely replacing one superstition with another.  Taking 'global warming,' for example.  Even though over 30,000 American scientists are on record opposing the alarmist view of global warming, the left believes in it strongly not merely as 'science' but as religion.  Take, for example, this article by Alan Weisman from CNN which attributes god-like qualities to the planet

In support of his thesis, Weisman cites "gaia-scientist" James Lovelock.  Two years after Weisman's CNN piece, even Lovelock came out against global warming alarmism.

Weisman is not alone in merging environmentalism with religion.  Writing in the Chronicle of Education, Pascal Bruckner explores the parallels between global warmism and religion:

Consider the meaning in contemporary jargon of the famous carbon footprint that we all leave behind us. What is it, after all, if not the gaseous equivalent of Original Sin, of the stain that we inflict on our Mother Gaia by the simple fact of being present and breathing? We can all gauge the volume of our emissions, day after day, with the injunction to curtail them, just as children saying their catechisms are supposed to curtail their sins. [Emph. added]

PREVIOUSLY on the subject of liberals replacing irrational old religions with just as irrational religions or spiritualities:
•UN invokes Mayan goddess in support of 'global warming'
•Orthodox environmentalism
•Democrats twice as likely to think they have seen a ghost
•Obama campaign is a "transcendent" "religious" movement
•Atheism is a belief shared by Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao, and Democrats
•Obama supporters tell of spiritual conversion
•Obama's church and its Black Liberation Theology
•Toy guns at Yale: Political correctness as a primitive religion

PREVIOUSLY on support for global warming:
•Engineers and geoscientists are overwhelmingly skeptical of IPCC and global warming alarmism
•Study: those most knowledgeable about science are least fooled by climate alarmists
•It is never too cold for a Climate Crisis Rally
•Science versus the UN: 125 scientists expose UN's fraudulent claims
•Global warming hypocrite of the day is Arnold

Germans accuse Obama of creating a new Stasi

Germans, whose countrymen suffered first-hand under two of the 20th centuries worst tyrannies, are accusing Obama of creating a new police state.  Reuters reports:

German outrage over a U.S. Internet spying program has broken out ahead of a visit by Barack Obama, with ministers demanding the president provide a full explanation when he lands in Berlin next week and one official likening the tactics to those of the East German Stasi.…

Government surveillance is an extremely sensitive topic in Germany, where memories of the dreaded Stasi secret police and its extensive network of informants are still fresh in the minds of many citizens.…

Markus Ferber, a member of Merkel's Bavarian sister party who sits in the European Parliament, went further, accusing Washington of using "American-style Stasi methods".  [Emph. added]

America, once home of the free, is now the land of the new Stazi.

Not mentioned in the Reuters article is that Obama is also, reminiscent of East Germany, using the government to harass, attack, and intimidate his political opposition.  The tactics range from using the IRS to silence opposition groups, illegal leaking of donor lists, to permitting the New Black Panthers to stand at polling booths with billy clubs.

The immigration bill winding its way through Congress promises to create tens of millions of new illiterate voters, creating the kind of electorate that is most vulnerable to demagogues.

In 2008, Obama promised to "fundamentally transform" America.  He appears to be succeeding.

Hat tip: Ed Driscoll and Instapundit.

PREVIOUSLY on the state of freedom in the era of Obama:
•Creeping fascism
•Justice Breyer looking to overturn the First Amendment
•Obama administration: free speech does not include the right to criticize Obamacare
•Obama sells out free speech
•Physicians' group to sue Obama administration over suppression of dissent
•Canada's liberals oppose free speech
•Free speech and its enemies
•University upset at free speech
•The Right of Free Speech, Selectively Applied
•Tolerating free speech, IV
•Tolerating free speech, III
•More on tolerating free speech
•Those who cannot tolerate free speech

Well, it's a start: MSNBC apologizes for one "historically illiterate mistake"

On Tuesday's edition of Chris Haye's "All In," MSNBC claimed that vile racist Gov. Geo. Wallace (D-AL) was a Republican:

Today, after having been called out on the issue, Chris Hayes tweeted an apology:

"This was a stupid, inexcusable, historically illiterate mistake.I should have caught it and apologize for failing to.mediaite.com/tv/msnbc-mista…"— Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) June 12, 2013

Such confusion/denial is expected on MSNBC.  Democrats have not come to terms with their racist past.  What is new is that fact-checkers in the new media are influential enough that corrections, such as Hayes', are now occasionally forthcoming.

RELATED: Back in January, Breitbart.com reviewed (hat tip: Ed Driscoll) five incidents of NBC broadcasting fake news:

1. During last year's presidential election Andrea Mitchell was caught manufacturing a Romney gaffe where none existed.

2. During last year's GOP primary, Ed Schultz edited video of Texas Governor Rick Perry to make him look racist.

3.  In April of last year, the "Today Show" was caught editing audio of a 9-1-1 call to make George Zimmerman look racist.

4. In August of 2009, Contessa Brewer sliced and diced a photograph so it wouldn't look like a black man attended a Tea Party carrying a firearm.

[5.] And just today, NBC was caught in yet another malicious edit, this time to make Second Amendment advocates look as though they did something as heinous as heckling the heartsick father of a child who lost his six-year-old son in the Sandy Hook massacre. You can watch the full video and NBC's science fiction adaptation side-by-side here.

PREVIOUSLY on MSNBC:
•MSNBC commentator calls Republicans "crazy crackers"
•MSNBC coverage of GOP convention is openly racist
•Misogyny at MSNBC
•MSNBC rewrites history
•MSNBC's Rachel Maddow bizarre accusation of "fake" reporting at Fox
•Hypocrisy over "shredding the Constitution" •MSNBC considers ThinkProgress to be a "credible source" •MSNBC and the paranoid style of American liberalism 
•Selective editing at MSNBC 
•On Obamacare, are Democrats just faking it?
•The Brown election: MSNBC says it's all about racism and sexism
•Full-fake mode on MSNBC: Bush let bin Laden get away "intentionally"
•MSNBC host advocates vote fraud
•University study says Fox more fair than NBC (and MSNBC doesn't count)
•MSNBC reports fake news
•MSNBC crops photo to support their lie
•Chief Meteorologist at the NBC's Grand Rapids affiliate, objects to MSNBC's global warming propaganda.
•MSNBC: Garafola gets her hate on
•MSNBC responds to tea party protests with obscene jokes
•Shareholders boo Immelt's defense of MSNBC
•MSNBC's sexist attacks on Sec. Rice
•Sexism at MSNBC
•MSNBC falls for hoax
•MSNBC's Olberman and his defective fact checking

Flashback: NSA personnel listened to phone sex calls between Americans

From back in 2008, ABC News reported

[I]ntercept operator, former Navy Arab linguist, David Murfee Faulk, 39, said he and his fellow intercept operators listened into hundreds of Americans picked up using phones in Baghdad's Green Zone from late 2003 to November 2007. . . .

Faulk says he and others in his section of the NSA facility at Fort Gordon routinely shared salacious or tantalizing phone calls that had been intercepted, alerting office mates to certain time codes of "cuts" that were available on each operator's computer.

"Hey, check this out," Faulk says he would be told, "there's good phone sex or there's some pillow talk, pull up this call, it's really funny, go check it out. It would be some colonel making pillow talk and we would say, 'Wow, this was crazy'," Faulk told ABC News.[Emph. added]

If ABC's report is true, the type of massive surveillance that the NSA does seems to be incompatible with a free and democratic country.  One well-placed employee at the NSA with a political agenda could find and leak very private information.   The leak of the "47%" tape did damage to Romney.  An incumbent with the willingness to use what the NSA knows would be invincible.

Hat tip: LegalInsurrection.

A failing school substitutes liberal indoctrination in place of teaching

Commenting on the toy gun buyback program created by Strobridge Principal Charles Hill, ConservativeTeacher writes:

Perhaps Mr. Hill and the gang at Strobridge Elementary should be focusing on academics and not the firearms bugaboo.  After all,  a quick search of the California Department of Education web site shows Strobridge to be a 1/1 school.  The first 1 means that, in terms of academic performance, their school is in the lowest decile of all schools in California.  The second 1 means that if, instead of being compared to all schools in the state, they're only compared to schools with similar demographics, they're still in the bottom decile.

So, is the school failing because it emphasizes trendy liberal claptrap, like toy gun buybacks, instead of actual teaching of three Rs?  Or, is the focus on toy guns merely an attempt to divert parental attention away from the failure to educate?  Or, possibly the two are so intertwined that it is like deciding which came first: the chicken or the egg?

Hat tip: Instapundit.

PREVIOUSLY on the subject of education:
•Prioritizing gimmicks over education
•Are public schools succeeding?
•Paradox: student test scores improve after school budgets are cut
•The great minds of the Ivy League
•Study: teacher's unions are bad for education
•Study: sexist women teachers stunt learning of girl students
•Black students, harassed for "acting white," get $150,000
•Teaching self-esteem backfires
•Education in Korea vs. the US: does "self-esteem" backfire?
•LA pays teachers not to teach
•What teachers learn in teacher's ed.
•Obama promises to throw money at schools
•How to get a job teaching in California even if you are illiterate
•Affirmative action backfire
•California offers student tutoring but only for students belonging to the right races
•High school implements race-based punishments for misbehavior

MSM ignored NSA scandal for 14 months

Pundit Press reports:

In April of 2012, whistleblower William Binney went on the program Democracy Now to reveal that the NSA was lying to the American people about their actions. Binney is a former intelligence agent.

He stated that the NSA had "20 trillion transactions" on record. Specifically, transactions are phone calls, emails, internet searches, and credit card purchases made by average citizens.

When asked if he believed that the United States government had every single email American citizens had sent, Binney stated that, "I believe they have most of them."

When asked about the difference between the Obama and Bush administrations, Binney cautioned, "Actually, I think the surveillance has increased, in fact I would suggest that they've assembled on the order of 20 trillion transactions about US citizens with other US citizens. 20 trillion." [Emph. added]

The April 2012 Democracy Now show is available online here.  The US MSM covered the story only after it appeared in The (UK) Guardian.

Breitbart has pointed out that the MSM also failed to break the DOJ-AP phone record scandal, the Benghazi scandal, and the IRS scandal.

Wow! Rep. Trey Gowdy takes on the IRS' culture of entitlement

The human impact of the IRS' abuse of power

Collected highlights from the IRS hearings:

HHS Sec. Kathleen Sebelius says gays more likely to have mental illness

The Examiner reports:

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Monday said that members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered community will be a special focus of Obamacare because "for too long...[they] were pushed to the side."

"For too long, the health concerns of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals were pushed to the side. LGBT individuals have faced limited access to health care and insurance. They have been less likely to get the preventive care they need to stay healthy, they have higher rates of tobacco use, and they are often at increased risk for mental health illness," said Sebelius in her statement. [Emph. added]

Wait a minute!  The Obama administration is saying that gays and lesbians are more likely to have mental illness.  Isn't that homophobic?

Also, if Obamacare will have a "special focus" on LGBT issues, what does that mean for the rest of the country?  Will it be time for their needs to be "pushed aside"?  Hope n'Change explores this issue:

WELCOME to readers of BookwormRoom.

UPDATE: For Sebelius' full statement, click on "Secretary Kathleen Sebelius statement on LGBT Pride Month."

The IRS' "willful act of intimidation"

"Government agents made invasive and excessive demands for information they were not entitled to. . . .  This was not an accident. This is a willful act of intimidation to discourage a point of view." —Becky Gerritson, President of the Wetumpka Tea Party

Worth watching to the end:

Chicago's culture of racism

Rep. Rush (D-Ill)

The Chicago Sun-Times reports on a clash between two of Illinois' members of Congress:

Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) is highly critical of a proposal by Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) for mass arrests of 18,000 Gangster Disciples, telling the Sun-Times on Wednesday that Kirk's approach is "headline grabbing" and an "upper-middle-class, elitist white boy solution to a problem he knows nothing about." [Emph. added]

Rep. Rush has not qualified, amended, or apologized for his racist slur (hat tip: Instapundit).  Neither has the MSM called him on it.  Among Democrats, racism seems to be entirely acceptable as long as it is of a politically correct type.

A culture in which racism is acceptable has consequences.  One of them is the "knockout game."  At American Thinker, John Bennett explains:

In general, the knockout game involves "unprovoked attacks on innocent bystanders," according to police who have had to deal with it.  A retired police officer explains, "Normally it was a group of black males, one of which would strike [the victim] as hard as he could in the face, attempting to knock him out with one punch." The victims are typically not robbed, but simply punched with no provocation.

In one such case of racial violence last year, three teenagers in Chicago struck and killed a 62-year-old man.  They were caught after posting video of the murder on facebook.  Last week in Syracuse, a man was killed in a similarly racially-tinged attack.  Thomas Sowell recommends a book, "White Girl Bleed a Lot" that collects many examples of such incidents.

As long as our political class condones racism, there will be little chance of stopping racist violence.


PREVIOUSLY on racism:
•Democrats embrace open racism
•“They’re starting to realize white people are human beings just like us.”
•Recipient of Presidential Medal of Freedom says all whites will go to Hell
•Former Mayor Marion Barry declares that Asians are "dirty"
•Dem. Rep. says Rep. Allen West resembles a hyena
•Is it racist to require a photo ID to buy drain cleaner?
•NY Times: Midwesterners have low-sloping foreheads
•Don't understand what was said? Then it must be racist!
•California offers student tutoring but only for students belonging to the right races
•For liberals, "affirmative action" means "keep the Asians out"
•Occupy Portland protesters hurl racist taunts at an African American
•Democrat: "Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men"
•The subtleties of White Privilege
•Racist cupcakes
•Is witch doctor image racist?
•Obama ally: "I hate white people...."
•“You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.”
•"The city wasn't ready to hire a white police chief."
•A prominent black politician says the white incumbent cannot properly represent black voters.
•San Franciscans discriminate against blacks.
•"He's not black and he can't represent me, that's just the bottom line."

What explains the liberal over-reaction to toys?

LegalInsurrection surveys some recent insanity as schools ban anything that looks like a gun:

We’ve previously covered the gun-shaped breakfast pastry, a pencil pointed like a gun, and a Quarter-size Lego piece.  Hot Air also has the story of the 5-year old who brought a cap gun to school.

The zero-tolerance war on young children who innocently bring something that looks like a gun to school is pathological bordering on mental abuse.

Here are four more recent examples, including instances where the young child merely talked about things such as a Nerf or Bubble gun. . . . .

Such extreme over-reactions cannot be explained by logic.  We have discussed this issue before in the context of Yale banning the use of toy guns in a university play.  These all appear to be examples of 'sympathetic magic.'  Read more here.

In 1934, the US government suppressed a film warning of Hitler's rise

In 1934, reporter Cornelius Vanderbilt IV returned from Germany with footage warning about the dangers of Hitler.  It included footage of Jewish refugees fleeing for their lives.  Fearful that the footage would offend Hitler, progressive era officials across the US censored or stopped the screening of the film.  The New Yorker reviews how this happened:

Roy Norr, a representative of the Motion Picture Association of America, was sent to the Mayfair to deliver judgment. Norr acknowledged the negative depiction of Germany, but approved of the film in all, stating that “a government cannot be insulted by the depiction of its own acts.”

However, George Canty, the Berlin-based trade commissioner for the U.S. Department of Commerce, got wind of protests against the film by the German Ambassador in Washington, and concluded that “the film serves no good purpose.” Across the country, censors took Canty’s view, and the film was denied a license, banned, and cut by New York City and State censor boards. In Chicago, the film passed the censors but was stopped when the city’s Nazi consul insisted that the footage was fake.

Obama's affections for Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, and Putin are in the long tradition of liberal inability to distinguish friends from enemies.

Below is an excerpt from the film. Note that several of the scenes are obviously reenactments.


Hat tip: Instapundit and OpenCulture.

PREVIOUSLY on liberals and fascism:
•FDR admires Mussolini
•NY Times: MUSSOLINI EAGER TO MAINTAIN PEACE
•NY Times defends Hitler; says his anti-Semitism "only a dark detail."
•NY Times praises Stalin as "Buddha of the Kremlin."

RELATED:
•In 1864, anti-war Democrats wanted to allow the South to keep their slaves