Archive for the ‘opinion/news’ Category

The upside down world of the left and Wisconsin

Posted: March 4, 2011 by datechguy in opinion/news, politics
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As you may have already heard, the absent senators in Wisconsin are being held in contempt and not just by voters:

Republicans voted, 19-0, to find the Democrats in contempt of the Senate and issued orders to Wisconsin law enforcement to detain them.

“We simply cannot have democracy be held hostage because the minority wants to prove a point,” said Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau).

The Senate voted in the morning that absent Democrats would be in contempt of a Senate rule requiring attendance if they did not return by 4 p.m. When they didn’t return, the Senate reconvened and Fitzgerald signed for each missing senator an “order to detain (in the nature of a warrant to arrest and deliver).”

Additionally the protests at the Capital has come at a cost to the voters, literally:

State officials said Thursday that damage to the marble inside and out the State Capitol would cost an estimated $7.5 million.

Cari Anne Renlund, chief legal counsel for the state Department of Administration, said in Dane County court that estimates of damage to marble includes $6 million to repair damaged marble inside the Capitol, $1 million for damage outside and $500,000 for costs to supervise the damage.

Much of the damage apparently has come from tape used to put up signs and placards at the Capitol.

Meanwhile two different recall efforts are under way in Wisconsin. Two weeks ago recall efforts were launched against some democratic senators for fleeing the state. Now the Union supported democrats are launching counter recall efforts against republicans who stayed and they are putting some serious green into it:

The Wisconsin recall effort is only a day old, but it’s going strong. The state Democratic Party has launched a website called Recall the Republican 8 to coordinate events. They have volunteer and contribution pages. There’s also a separate ActBlue page set up for the recall. A separate effort to air a powerful TV ad from the PCCC and DFA, filmed on the day of the 100,000-plus protests last Saturday, has already raised over $225,000.

I suspect a lot of help for union families could be done with 225k but leave that aside for a moment. Let’s look at the arguments:

This past weekend, constituents of Republican state Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, gathered in an effort to recall her.

“She let it out of committee. She had a chance to look at the bill and say, ‘This reaches too far,'” Darling recall organizer Kristopher Rowe said Saturday.

Or as State Democratic Party chairman Mike Tate puts it:

“In 60 days you can take Wisconsin back by recalling the Republican senators who have decided to push Scott Walker’s divisive attack on the rights of workers and his assault on schools, universities and local communities,”

While on the other side:

“You’re not representing me if you’re not in the Capitol to vote,” said constituent Amanda Cabrera, as she signed the petition.

“Vote yes or no, whether they agree or not, but they need to be in Madison,” said constituent Sandra Dolye. “If (Wirch) can’t do his job, he should get out.”

That’s all you need to know about this: Republicans want to recall people for playing Hooky. Democrats and Unions wants to recall people for showing up.

There is a distinction

Posted: March 3, 2011 by datechguy in abortion, catholic, opinion/news
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The Anchoress being a wholly more holy person than me talks about the death penalty and Kermet Gosnell and finds herself opposing it:

If you remain unaware of what investigators (who were actually looking for evidence related to drug trafficking) found when they entered Gosnell’s abattoir-for-humans, read the Grand Jury’s Report, if you can take it.

Nevertheless, I would defend this man’s right to live his life out in prison, rather than watch the state take his life. His life is not anyone else’s to take. For pro-lifers, this is a no-brainer.

And he may need many years and much time, in order to understand the enormity of what he has done, and allow his heart to be turned. He may need time for conversion and salvation.

I would have to disagree here, this is not a “no-brainer” for pro-life people.

Unlike the elderly who have committed no offense other than being old, the sick who have committed no offense other than being sick or the unborn who have committed no offense other than being conceived Kermet Gosnell has committed acts that under our laws can bring the death penalty.

She is absolutely right that his may need time for conversion, repentance and salvation and we are OBLIGATED as Christians to pray for this, but even if he is convicted, loses all appeals and the sentence carried out there will likely be many years of time to avail himself of the opportunity. As long as the process takes place before death it will be achieved, remember Timothy McVeigh a lapsed Catholic in fact received confession and absolution mere hours before his execution, saving his soul if not his life.

But there is a huge difference between protecting innocent life and life taken under due process in a free society. Even Ed is ambivalent.

I am totally indifferent in this matter. I have absolutely no problem with him (if convicted) being given life in jail and I also have no problem if he gets the death penalty. Neither Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI nor has any pope proclaimed ex cathedra the death penalty sinful or an intrinsic evil. Until and unless he does so then I submit that it is not a “no brainer” that we oppose the death penalty in this or any case and there is no obligation for us to think otherwise.

“Cultural Imperalism” and Sati (Suttee)

Posted: March 3, 2011 by datechguy in culture, internet/free speech, opinion/news
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At Piece of work in progress Dan Collins talks about the “consequences of the Multicult”

The liberals who comprise the MSM majority have in essence adopted the stance that insistence on religious tolerance in Muslim majority nations is an undue imposition of Western standards of human rights on foreign states and cultures, which is an expression of lingering imperialism, and thus bad, while millions of Muslims and non-Muslims suffer under the yoke of Islamist fundamentalism in all of its forms. One of the most egregious examples is the media’s treatment of the Muslim Brotherhood, but there are many more.

In consequence, the United States stands by as ethnic cleansing is accomplished versus Copts and other Christian minorities in Muslim majority nations.

Not two minutes ago on Morning Joe (I’m writing this at 8:37 a.m.) Mika mentioned the killing of two soldiers at the Frankfurt airport. They stressed “Germany” and the “last time there was a shooting in Germany” but they were unwilling to talk about what was brought up on MSNBC Europe’s own web page:

Family members in Kosovo described the suspect as a devout Muslim, who was born and raised in Germany and worked at the airport.

Nope, nothing to see here, not a thing going on. The Catholic minister in Pakistan murdered? No comment, nothing to see here. Copts killed in Egypt, none of our business.

Our unwillingness to defend our cultural values is dooming millions to oppression. Consider this story from history:

General Charles Napier held the offices of Governor of Bombay and Commander-in-Chief of India for the British Empire,was confronted with the tradition of Sati (or Suttee) where the new widow of a deceased man would be thrown alive on his funeral pyre. Napier forbade it, and when leaders of the community objected saying it was their custom. Napier with all the confidence of an 1850’s Brit with this classic answer (via Mark Steyn’s book America Alone)

“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”

Sati or Suttee has been gone from India for 160 years. How many widows did not die in excruciating pain because of this example of “cultural imperialism”?

And what is the situation now? Now we’ve reached the point that the same British who stopped Suttee in India now have unofficial “gay free zones” in their capital imposed by unassimilated Muslims who are imposing their own “cultural imperialism” right back at em.

I think Steyn nailed it with this sentence:

Multiculturalism was conceived by the Western elites not to celebrate all cultures but to deny their own.

Until we look this straight in the eye we will be seeing more headlines like this:

German prosecutors said on Thursday that Islamic radicalism may have motivated a Kosovar to open fire on an American military bus at the Frankfurt airport, killing two United States airmen and wounding two others.

And it will be our own fault.

Am I actually seeing Morning Joe reporting on the media difference?

Posted: March 3, 2011 by datechguy in blogs, media, opinion/news
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The difference in Wisconsin coverage that is, why yes, Politico wrote about the double standard concerning “signs”:

“The mainstream media’s professed concern with uncivil engages only when it is practiced by conservatives,” asserted the Washington Post’s conservative blogger Jennifer Rubin.

And conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who has made her blog something of a clearinghouse of alleged union misdeeds, boasts she is doing “the reporting the tea party-bashing national media won’t do on the rabid outbreak of progressive incivility and violence at Big Labor protests across the country.”

and Morning Joe is talking about the double standard in the Wisconsin coverage.

They are not touching on the PHYSICAL stuff, nor did they show any extended clip with the union folks actually saying what they are saying but they did do a whole segment on the double standard and objected loudly to it.

It’s interesting to note they Politico didn’t embed any of the actual video, and Morning Joe didn’t play any of the audio.

This is very revealing, this means that the video and audio can’t be hidden, it means that it has spread on social networking sites and blog and getting out there. It means that Politico, forced to cover the story has decided to make it one about the media double standard. (a very valid story) instead of what the Unions and their supports are actually doing.

Even funnier is their defense of the media pointing to a single blog post at the NYT online:

In fact, the New York Times’ Michael Shear did write a blog post about the Wisconsin GOP’s slickly produced video, calling it “striking” for its juxtaposition of incendiary rhetoric from union protestors with liberal accusations about angry conservative rhetoric.

As I mentioned before, look at the actions to see what is happening, this story and Morning Joe’s coverage of it tells you an awful lot about who is actually winning this debate.

Update: It’s worth noting that they only touched on this in the 6 a.m. hour then dropped it like a hot potato.

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