In the entry earlier this evening, “Put not thy hope in Stupak,” I pessimistically concluded from Rep. Stupak’s interview at the Weekly Standard that Stupak wants the bill to pass; that it could very well pass; and that if the will exists among the Democrats to make it pass, there’s no human force to stop them.
Here a reader takes the diametrically opposite view of Stupak’s comments and of the bill’s prospects. He says that it’s over. Period.
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It’s a wild world out there, folks—with tragedy and history and comedy and historical tragedy and tragical-comical farce and everything in between all going on at once. Even as America is facing the imminent threat of being taken over by a socialist state and being changed forever from a free to an unfree country, we’re diverted with just-resigned congressman Eric Massa telling us about his nude encounter with White House consiglieri Rahm Emanuel in the House of Representatives locker room while the goofy self-taught political philosopher Glenn Beck looks on sagely and expresses his doubts.
Sam Stein at The Huffington Post provides a vivid account of the bizarre interview (there is a video link below article):
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(Note: in a later entry, a reader takes the opposite point of view from mine in this entry.)
You can read the Weekly Standard’s interview of Rep. Bart Stupak today in two ways, which are not mutually exclusive: that he’s absolutely firm that he (along with his eleven Stupak amendment colleagues) will not vote for the health care bill if it doesn’t contain the Stupak amendment language; and that he is very desirous of voting for the bill it if does contain the language. He acknowledges that there are significant procedural challenges yet to be overcome in “tie-barring” his and the other House hold-outs’ demanded changes to the Senate bill so that the whole thing, the Senate bill and all the fixes, goes through as one package, yet he expresses his optimism: “The majority party can get it done. Where there’s a will there’s a way.”
Given Stupak’s desire to support the bill, I think it would be foolish to expect the Stupak Twelve to remain the biggest obstacle to passage, which has been the main story line in recent days. I think we should expect the worst—expect that the anti-abortion language will get included somehow (though it’s hard to see how), and that the Stupak group will vote yes. But if that is so, by what scenario could passage still be stopped? According to Democratic congressman Emmanuel Cleaver of Missouri today, the bill currently has 201 supporters. Adding the Stupak Twelve makes it 213, only three or four short of the number needed for passage. Stupak in his interviews strikes me as man of integrity. It remains the case that this man of integrity wants to pass this horrible bill, just so long as it doesn’t fund abortion, and subject us to a nightmarish government takeover of society unprecedented in American history. I repeat again—it is not the desire of Stupak to stop the bill; it is his desire to pass it. His uprightness is a wall against government funding of abortions, not against a socialized America.
We cannot put our hope in princes—or in representatives. On the human level, the outcome of this struggle is completely in the hands of the Democrats, our adversaries. At this point, only God can save us from the monstrous thing the Democrats want to do to us, that same God who delivered the Israelites from Pharoah’s army at the Red Sea … and who gave us the Massachusetts Miracle.
Here is the Bart Stupak interview that is discussed in the next entry. Notice the contradiction between the title and the first sentence of the article.
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He is too ignorant to recognize his liberalism.
— Ron L., VFR, March 9, 2010
As many observers including me have suggested over the last couple of days, there may have been more going on with Rep. Massa than a single salty language incident. According to Politico, there was:
The House ethics committee has received allegations that former Rep. Eric Massa groped at least three male staffers and conducted himself improperly with interns as well as full-time aides, a source familiar with the matter tells POLITICO.
As I said yesterday, Rep. Eric Massa’s statements and behavior are erratic. As John McCormack writing at the Washington Examiner points out, Massa’s admitted behavior (posted at VFR yesterday) went well beyond salty language:
Reliable sources on Capitol Hill say the House ethics report on Eric Massa will be damning. Obamacare opponents, like Glenn Beck, might want to think twice before indulging Massa and letting this Democratic creep become the posterboy of Obamacare opposition. It was already self-evident that Eric Massa’s story didn’t add up. As Jonah Goldberg notes, it doesn’t pass the smell test: If Massa admits he “tousled” the hair of a male staffer and told the staffer he ought to be “fracking” him, the whole story is probably much, much worse. And as Michelle Malkin says, “Don’t trust Democrat Rep. Eric Massa any further than you can throw him.” MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 04:39 PM
Daniel Pipes writes today at the Corner:
Iraq’s Cosmetic Election [Daniel Pipes]“It takes a cynical mind not to share in the achievement of Iraq’s national elections.” So writes the Wall Street Journal editorial board today. I’m no cynic, but my mood about Iraq could variously be described as depressed, despairing, despondent, dejected, pessimistic, melancholic, and gloomy.
That’s because the Iraqi regime (along with those of Afghanistan, Lebanon, and the Palestinian Authority) is a kept institution that cannot survive without constant American support. As long as Washington pumps money and sacrifices lives to maintain the Baghdad government, the latter can hobble along. Remove those props and Iranian-backed Islamists soon take over. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 03:11 PM
And if all moderate Democrats fail to resist Obama, we will lose our freedom.
Jay Cost is a knowledgeable, thoughtful, moderately conservative political analyst who writes regularly at Real Clear Politics. In his column today, he addresses the moderate Democrats on the health care bill. He says that Obama’s condescending contempt for the views of the people in this debate goes against the spirit of the Democratic Party (which, after all, is supposed to represent the people), and that if the moderate Democrats fail to stand up to him, the party will be changed into something narrow and sectarian:
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Jeffrey Anderson writes at NRO:
As the Associated Press reports, President Obama is now running a full-court press to try to get House Democrats to pass the Senate version of Obamacare within the next ten days. The president is leaving for Indonesia and Australia on March 18, and he wants the House to pass his proposed $2.5 trillion, 2,700-page overhaul of our nation’s health-care system in time for him to sign it into law before he boards the plane. [LA replies: But according to today’s New York Times, Obama is trying “to push the legislation through a final series of votes in Congress in the next several weeks”—not the next ten days. So which is it?]The president is also imploring Americans to “Make your voice heard.” Never has he given such sound advice. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 11:13 AM
Geoffrey Dickens at Newsbusters quotes Dan Rather on Chris Matthews’s show this past weekend (and also links the audio):
DAN RATHER: Part of the undertow in the coming election is going to be President Obama’s leadership. And the Republicans will make a case and a lot of independents will buy this argument. “Listen he just hasn’t been, look at the health care bill. It was his number one priority. It took him forever to get it through and he had to compromise it to death.” And a version of, “Listen he’s a nice person, he’s very articulate,” this is what’s been used against him, “but he couldn’t sell watermelons if you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.”It’s funny not because it’s “racist”—Obama obviously has nothing to do with Old South stereotypes (except insofar as he puts on a transparently fake black Southern accent from time to time)—but because it’s true. The man is an incredible turn-off. Like a robot turned permanently to “Haranguing Dictator mode,” he keeps repeating, day after day, month after month, “Now is the time to act, “We must move forward now,” “We’ve waited long enough,” “The time to debate is over,” “It’s time to stop talking and starting acting,” “It’s time to make a decision.” Long after we, the American people, justifiably repelled and frightened by what he wants to do to us, have rejected his health care scheme by which we all become the slaves of a monstrous bureaucracy that will impoverish us individually and bankrupt the country, he keeps yammering into our ears that we must enact it, now. The more we reject him, the more he keeps going after us.
So, yes, this guy couldn’t sell watermelons if you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic. He makes normal people want to run from him.
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The blog Weasel Zippers links a YouTube of Glenn Beck’s learned discourse on the “fascist far right” of Europe and on Geert Wilders as a representative thereof, and adds as introduction:
Glenn Beck Losing Me:The entry has many lively comments.
Insinuates Geert Wilders is a Fascist …In Beck’s defense, the title on this YouTube video [“Glenn Beck calls Geert Wilders a fascist”] is misleading, Beck doesn’t explicitly call Wilders a fascist. He does (after labeling Wilders “far-right”) claim in Europe, all of the far-right is fascist. Still, Beck is talking out his a**, how many so-called “fascists” like Wilders have unwavering support for the Jewish state? What is Beck thinking? Have some knowledge of what you’re talking about before making an ass of yourself in front of millions of informed people …
Sure, just as they enrich us with their diversity and energize us with their vitality and firm up our moral tone with their family values and increase our spirituality with their religiosity and improve the safety of our roads with their good driving values and enhance our intellectual life with their love of education…
… and, last but not least, just as they strengthen American nationhood by conditioning their support for U.S. politicians and their moral approval of the United States itself on the unlimited admission of legal and illegal Hispanic immigrants.
Lydia McGrew writes:
I haven’t seen a mention at VFR of the debate over whether Hispanic crime rates are actually lower than white crimes rates. My blog colleague Steve Burton has been doing a lot of work responding to Ron Unz’s article in The American Conservative on this. Summary of the state of the debate is here.MORE…
The discussion launched by Karen from England’s all out attack on the soundness and viability of the United States, which began on March 5 under the title, “Is Europe healthier (conservatively speaking) than the U.S.?”, has filled its original entry to maximum size and continues in this entry.
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Karl D. writes:
Have you seen the Glenn Beck show today? He pretty much threw Geert Wilders and any “Right wing” European parties under the bus by saying they are leading to Fascism! He even asked his viewers to “Tweet” him about these parties. He has fallen into the same familiar trap that anything resembling serious Conservatism or Nationalism in Europe is going to lead to another Hitler. I am sick. I always had mixed feelings about Beck. He had some very good things to say. But his misreading of Europe is astounding. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 05:44 PM
Gintas writes:
Karen in the thread, “Is Europe healthier (conservatively speaking) than the U.S.?”, says:LA replies:
What I meant is that there is a tendency in “conservative” blogs and writers to imagine that a reversal of some leftist ideologies will miraculously return them to a previous imagined golden era.Imagined? There was a comment in the Mangan thread, critical of you:
I think the key to understanding Auster is that he wants to go back to the America of 1950—blacks as second-class citizens, homos in the closet, women in the home, public respect for Christianity, a certain formality of manners and dress, no public porn or trash culture, strong national defense, and meager non-white immigration.His language was pejorative, but I answered: “Sounds great, sign me up.” Several others joined in my endorsement of this dream.
For the record, I have never said that I want blacks to be “second-class citizens,” or homosexuals to be “in the closet,” or women to be “in the home.” What I have said is that the white majority culture of this country must again become the dominant culture; that society should not normalize or approve homosexual conduct; and that women should not occupy high level positions of political leadership.
Nik S. writes:
Do you have any comments on the Oscars?—not that the ceremony even matters any more. But seriously, the winner of Best Director (a woman, no less) saying, “Support our troops!” Under the regime of George Bush, this would have been unimaginable. The times, they are-a-changing.Nick S. continues:
Funny.… with all the recent talk about James Cameron’s Avatar, it seems ironic that his ex-wife (does he have just one?—I can’t keep track) is the person whom has just won awards for Best Director and Best Picture.… for making a movie about war. Is Hollywood trying to upgrade the status of women in movie-making?.… or is Hollywood totally nuts at this point? Or is Hollywood actually, kinda, waking up to reality?And like, dude, should we even care? MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 03:59 PM
Blogger Keith Hennessey sums up the current situation. While he doesn’t say much that is new, he provides useful perspective. He puts the chances of passage at 40 percent. At the time of Scott Brown’s election he put it at under 10 percent. He admits he has been surprised by the Obamapelosiharrycrats’ persistence.
A forty percent chance of an inconceivable calamity that will permanently change our country in a horrible way and it’s not within our power to do anything to stop it, since it’s all up to the Democrats. We need help from a higher source. I repeat the quotation by Mary Baker Eddy that a reader sent a few weeks ago:
Unconstitutional and unjust coercive legislation and laws, infringing individual rights, must be of few days and full of trouble. The vox populi, through the providence of God, promotes and impels all true reform, and at the best time, will redress wrongs and rectify injustice. Tyranny can thrive but feebly under our Government. God reigns, and will “turn and overturn” until right is found supreme.
Gintas writes:
I think Massa is contradictory and hysterical because he can’t get over the horse’s head (or is it a donkey’s head, since it’s the Democrat Party?) he found in his bed. After all, he does oppose The Bill.
This story about Massa’s radio program yesterday, posted early this morning by Roll Call, clearly states that Massa himself said on the program that he was considering rescinding his resignation. That contradicts the statement by Massa’s chief of staff today that Massa is not rescinding the resignaton and that it was not Massa who spoke of rescinding the resignation, but callers who were urging him to do it. The Roll Call piece contains other inconsistent and erratic statements by Massa.
Massa Hints He Could Rescind Resignation
March 8, 2010, 7:14 A.M.Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) suggested on a New York radio station Sunday that he could rescind his resignation—scheduled to take effect at 5 p.m. Monday—after asserting that an ethics investigation into allegations that he sexually harassed one of his aides may have been orchestrated by Democratic leaders to get him out of office before the health care vote. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 02:58 PM
The story comes from Fox News. It’s based on a radio interview in his district that Massa gave yesterday.
Massa Details ‘Salty’ Comment That Led to Resignation, Slams Dem LeadersA “salty” comment made in the company of drunken staff members at a wedding reception on New Year’s Eve was all the Democratic “forces that be” needed to push him out of the House of Representatives and prevent him from possibly casting the vote that would kill health care reform, says outgoing New York Rep. Eric Massa. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 02:45 PM
At his press conference Rep. Massa said (I’m passing this on from a friend who heard Rush Limbaugh play it), that “they’re pushing the bill through no matter what, and they don’t care who they have to smear to do it. This will break apart the country and it will take a generation to get over it.” Massa also indicated something about a “buck naked” confrontation he had with Rahm Emanuel in the House showers (does Emanuel as a former congressman have House privileges?), where Emanuel insulted him in some way and Massa fired back.
UPDATE, 12:32 p.m.: A reader has just told me that “Massa will likely be on the Glenn Beck TV show at 5pm, Fox News, with accusations of corruption in the Obama administration. He may also be retracting his resignation.”
UPDATE, 2:30 p.m. Massa will be resigning after all, effective 5 p.m. today. According to his chief of staff, Massa is in his home district now and is not planning to return to Washington. He says that the “rescind resignation” story was generated from comments make by callers to to Massa on a radio program he had appeared on. However, a story in Roll Call today (I’ll post it soon) clearly states that Massa himself on the radio program spoke of the possibility of rescinding his resignation. There is a disturbingly erratic quality in Massa’s statements and conduct. To start with, since he has now told the world that the House leadership forced him out in order to remove an obstacle to the health care will, why didn’t he say that in his Friday resignation statement? And why did he indicate (repeatedly) the fact that he was “guilty” without specifying what he was guilty of, which only made him look more guilty, while simultaneously saying that all he did was some bad language at a drunken wedding (which is subject of the next post). It will take a while for the truth in this story to come out.
(Update 12:17 p.m., Massa has already given the press conference and Rush Limbaugh is playing excerpts of it now. Massa is going after the Democratic leadership.)
Last week Eric Massa, a freshman Democratic congressman from New York State’s Finger Lakes region and a 24 year Navy veteran, told reporters that he had decided not to run for re-election because of a recurrence of cancer. Then on Friday he announced that he was resigning his seat effective today, because of a complaint that he had sad something to a male staffer that had made him feel uncomfortable. Massa’s resignation statement was exceedingly strange, since he both declared his guilt, repeatedly, and suggested that he had done nothing more than use salty language in his congressional office. Representatives now resign from Congress for using salty language to their male assistants?
Given that Massa is one of only two liberal Democrats who voted against the health care bill in November for the reason that the bill did not go far enough (the other was Dennis Kucinich), the thought naturally occurred that perhaps that Massa had been forced out by the House leadership, thus reducing by one the number of votes they would need to pass the bill.
I’ve just been told that Massa has announced he will hold a press conference today explaining his resignation. Evidently the news was in the broadcast media, not yet on the Web, because it’s not turning up in a search. I don’t know when the press conference will take place or whether it will be broadcast live.
Also Massa’s thoughtful and principled (from a liberal point of view) statement in November explaining why he was voting no on the bill, which I read over the weekend, is very interesting and I’ve been planning to discuss it.
Fox News reports this morning. ” ‘Trust’ gap between House, Senate Dems Hurting Health Care Push.” Indeed, while some say that the House is the thing, others increasingly realize—as shown in the Fox story—that what prevents the House from being the thing is that the Senate is really the thing. I made the same point last week in the entry, “House passage is everything—or is it?”
And this is why some House holdouts are insisting that Obama’s famous “final” push must begin in the Senate, not the House. Let the Senate show that they are capable of passing by reconciliation the additions to the bill that the House members require, by actually passing them. THEN the House will vote on that changed bill. That makes infinitely more sense than the House passing the Senate bill which Obama could then sign into law without the changes that the House holdouts require.
The Democratic leadership will likely resist the demand that the Senate act first. Why? Because they will see that some of the additions required by the House holdouts cannot be passed by reconciliation. In which case Obamacare will fail. But we don’t know this to be true. And this is where imponderables about reconciliation come into focus which apparently no human being at present, including not just you and me but even Senate Budget Committee Chairman Conrad, knows for sure. In any event we non-Democrats have no influence over what is decided among the House and Senate Democratic members. They could override all rules to the contrary and pass the bill tomorrow, and change America in an instant into a hideously controlled, unfree society, the unchanging dream of the left. That could happen. And that is why we need to appeal to help beyond the human. If we haven’t already done do, those of us who believe in God, in the Providence that numerous times in our history has rescued America from disaster, need to start praying.
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(March 8, 12:46 p.m.: More commenters have responded strongly to Karen’s denunciations of the U.S., and Karen has come back even stronger than before.)
Karen from England says that white Americans, unlike the various European peoples, are too diverse to be a people, and therefore lack the ability to join together and save their country from the destructive forces of liberalism. Richard P. from America energetically disagrees.
See the excellent discussion at The Thinking Housewife, beginning with an essay by Kristor, and continuing with replies by Laura Wood and others.
I wrote to Kristor a day or two ago:
Guess who has a huge thread about yours truly. Mangan. Again. A reader told me about it tonight. It’s all about my criticism of the anti-American and nihilistic content of Richard Spencer’s new site. I just glanced at it briefly. Don’t feel like reading it. Much of it seems like the usual, “Auster’s so mean, such a terrible person.” Haven’t these babies noticed that I have taken the same positions forever, and that if a writer, say, morally equates America with Islamic terrorists, I’m going to condemn him sternly? No, they can’t understand that. It’s all about how mean I am. Babies. I have no respect for them.Kristor replies:
I just skimmed the thread. It’s rather droll, really, in a depressing way. They begin by castigating you for condemning doctrines you find damnable. Then they proceed to castigating each other relentlessly over disagreements on several different substantive matters. It’s a shouting match. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 04:55 PM
A week or two ago the former anti-anti-Semitic blogger, and now anti-Semitic blogger, Cesar Tort (a.k.a. Chechar), who during his brief anti-anti-Semite phase treated me as his authority and quoted me extensively, copied a huge 2007 post by his new mentor, the anti-Semite Tanstaafl, under the title, “Tanstaafl on Auster.” It concerns the discovery by Tanstaafl, who had previously (so he said) thought highly of me, that I am a liar and a hypocrite and an agent of the Zionist takeover of America, because I do not apply Auster’s First Law of Majority-Minority Relations in Liberal Society to the Jews.
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A reader thinks that at present the Democrats are not pursuing reconciliation, but are simply trying to get enough votes in the House to pass the Senate bill in its present form and have the president (it still feels strange and inappropriate to refer to that enemy alien by that title) sign it into law.
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What we see in this photo is the self-evident absurdity of a female political leadership class.
In a normal, man-centric political world, an occasional woman who is operating more or less within the standards of that world, such as Margaret Thatcher, can be a leader and function well. But once the political world become predominantly female, then it changes to something fundamentally different and inappropriate to politics.
Similarly, in private life, when a woman is relating to men, she is capable of relating to them intelligently. But once you have a group of women talking together, as in this picture, then it automatically switches over to the female thing, which—sorry, folks!—is a whole different thing from the male thing, is not oriented toward intellectual seriousness about large issues, and is incompatible with political leadership.
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In a column at the Washington Post, Sen. Conrad says that reconciliation could be used for “fixer” measures that reduce the deficit—not for comprehensive changes. But, he continues, that’s ok, since the Senate bill is good, and a few fixer measures would be better.
Thus Conrad makes it clear that he wants the bill, and he would like some changes added by reconciliation, but that all the changes that various House members want cannot happen.
However, aren’t there reconciliation measures that various House holdouts insist on that are not deficit reductions measures—say, abortion?
Thus, while Conrad wants nationalized health care and is not on our side substantively, his procedural position may back up what I said in the previous entry. Which is that in the absence of absolute certainty that the Senate will add the promised measures to the bill after the House passes it, the House holdouts will not agree to vote for it. And since (as I’m guessing) not all the measures they want can be done by reconciliation, at least some of the House holdouts won’t sign on.
Jeffrey Anderson writes at March 4 at Critical Condition, the health care bill blog at NRO:
Don’t Leave the House Unattended [Jeffrey H. Anderson]All of the talk about “reconciliation” seems to have distracted people—like a red herring—from a simple but crucial fact: If the House goes first, as now appears to be the plan, and passes the Senate health-care overhaul, the president would then have a bill in hand that had passed both houses of Congress, and—whether reconciliation subsequently succeeded or failed in the Senate—we would have Obamacare. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 03:03 PM
It is not just that Britain’s top weather experts at the Met Office, which does “weather and climate change forecasts for the UK and worldwide,” cannot predict weather trends over centuries or decades. It’s that they can’t predict them for a single year, or even a season.
Predicting the weather a week in advance, they can handle. Predicting it a day in advance, they’re pretty darned good at.
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Bjorn writes:
One comment should be made re Geert Wilders’s visit to England and the House of Lords yesterday.I attended a portion of the press conference after the showing of Fitna, and even though Wilders was asked many of the standard questions, many were also framed in a different level of semi-respect, in the sense of “If you were prime minister…”, “If you were in the government…”, “If you won in the next election, what would you do about…”, kinds of words and tones.
It was almost as if they were beginning to believe—and acknowledge—that Wilders will actually be a force to be reckoned with in the near future. And I further wonder if this part of the press conference (the questions themselves) was one of the reasons why the TV head office declined to run most of the material—maybe the questioners were too respectful for the censors. After all, the answers from Wilders contained little new material.
Maybe Paul Mirengoff of Powerline is beginning to feel safer in coming out agreeing with Wilders. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 01:33 PM
I wrote to correspondents:
Paul Mirengoff at Powerline says that he likes Geert Wilders and agrees with his main positions, including: “halting Islamic immigration” and “deporting immigrants who … call for … the imposition of Islamic law.”Powerline is basically a neocon site. It was formed for the purpose of defending Bush from the left and supporting the utopian Muslim Democratization policy of Bush and Norman Podhoretz. It opposed the Comprehensive Immigration Reform in 2007, but that was mainly about legalizing illegals. For a writer at Powerline to favor the ending of the immigration of all Muslims and the deportation of sharia believers, to support Wilders’s policy of stopping the Islamization of the West instead of the neocon policy of democratizing Muslims, is remarkable. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 01:31 PM
I don’t mean to be meanspirited when I say this, really I don’t. But is it not fair to say that David Paterson is to governing New York State what Otis Mathis is to leading the Detroit public schools?
(If the above linked video doesn’t work, try this one.)
March 6
Jim C. writes:
“That nameless, unmapped realm beyond incompetence.”You sound like Rod Serling writing for the Affirmative Action Zone.
A major force driving the cultural dissolution of the Anglo-American world has been the belief in free trade, which places the abstract economic good of the whole world ahead of the concrete economic good of one’s own country. Up to this point, the belief in free trade has been as unquestionable in the economic realm as the belief in non-discrimination and mass diverse immigration has been in the cultural realm—and almost as dangerous to challenge. In his new book, Free Trade Doesn’t Work: What Should Replace it and Why, Ian Fletcher addresses the issue on a profound level. In lively language directed at both economists and the general reader, he examines the free trade orthodoxy step by step and shows how free trade hollows out the country that practices it. While the book is not aimed at advancing a conservative or nationalist agenda per se, it should be much welcomed by cultural conservatives.
Here are reviews at Amazon.
(Note, March 8, 12:46 p.m.: the debate has continued today, with several commenters responding strongly to Karen’s denunciations of the U.S., and Karen coming back even stronger than before.)
(Note, March 6: the discussion continues, with Karen expanding on the hopeless inadequacy—conservatively speaking—of everything American, and James P. replies.)
(Note: James P. takes strong exception to Karen’s view that Britain—with its Royal Family, its aristocracy, its established Church, its military regimental structure, and its national system of law—has a conservative strength that the United States lacks.)
Karen writes from England
Regarding your entry, “Against the burka,” I have always thought your pessimism about Europe was misplaced and your optimism about the USA overexuberant. [LA replies: I don’t think it’s correct to say that I have expressed optimism about the U.S. Rather, I’ve said that the U.S. is relatively better off than Europe, that it has more life in it than Europe, that it is not as far advanced in leftism as Europe, and that it has significant conservative elements in its mainstream politics, while Europe seems to have none.] Europe still has its original ethnic identities and traditions. These may have been assaulted by the multiculturalists and politicians, but scratch under the surface and they are still very much there. The electoral wins of Geert Wilders demonstrate that the liberal and tolerant Dutch are not quite as liberal as people had assumed they were and they are leading the way in electing an anti Islamic and anti immigration politician with a back bone. Where is the Geert Wilders of the USA? Where is the Dewinter? Where is the Nationalist party of the USA? There is nothing. The “Conservative” movement in the USA is a collection of liberals with a single “conservative” issue and a veneer of superficial Christianity in which God is a simple cosmic cuddly toy, moulded into whatever form is required to make them feel good. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 01:47 PM
Tom P. writes:
It’s back.LA replies:
Obama looking to give new life to immigration reformIs he really going to try to push this before the mid term elections?In an effort to advance a bill through Congress before midterm elections, the president meets with two senators who have spent months trying to craft legislation.
He and the Democratic leadership have to try, or at least go through motions of trying, in order to keep their base. But how are they actually going to pass comprehensive immigration reform? Via budget reconciliation? MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 01:22 PM
The Queens imam who was supposed to be telling the FBI about Najibullah Zazi’s subway bomb plot but instead told Zazi that the FBI were onto him, pled quilty yesterday:
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But for the good fortune that Scotland Yard last year intercepted an e-mail from a senior al-Qaeda member in Pakistan to 24 year old U.S. immigrant Najibullah Zazi giving him instructions on how to carry out a suicide attack, Zazi would have set off a backpack bomb on a New York City subway during rush hour last September consigning scores of people to a horrible death. Notwithstanding the many news stories on Zazi’s arrest and trial since last September, there has been a routine, almost affectless quality about them. No strong public opinion was aroused by the near mass murder, just as there had been no strong reaction to a similar narrowly averted mass murder in the New York City subways in 1996. The story was presented in such a way that it had no meaning beyond itself, did not point to anything beyond the bare recitation of the facts of the case. And what is that “beyond”? It is the reality that we have allowed people who are religiously commanded to kill us, and to give their moral and financial support to people who kill us, to enter our country and become our fellow citizens; and they now walk about among us, a regular and familiar part of our society.
Like Zazi himself. Here he is, just your average, normal Mideastern immigrant in this land of immigrants, a strapping young fellow in a plaid shirt, striding through the Colorado sunshine … on his way to speak to FBI agents in Denver last September.
The very model of a modern Moslem terrorist
In her TownHall column this week on the growing resistance to the Muslim head cover in Netherlands, Belgium, and France, Diana West expands on the discriminatation that must be made between Islam and the West if the West is to recover and survive:
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It’s not been a good week for New York State’s leading African-American office-holders. The hapless governor, David Paterson, is close to resigning over his grossly improper personal interference in a police matter to protect his closest aide, David Johnson, who had been charged with beating his girlfriend, Sherr-Una Booker; for telling multiple lies about it; and also for telling multiple lies under oath about his receipt of $6,000 worth of World Series tickets. And the state’s most senior member of Congress, Rep. Charles Rangel (my congressman), has just stepped aside as chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, which handles tax matters, over his numerous tax violations including his ownership of many residential properties for which he has never paid taxes, and will probably not seek re-election. Recent photos of the normally affable and on-top-of-the-world Rangel show a shockingly deflated, broken-looking man.
Meanwhile our nation’s African-American chief executive, in the single grossest act of political influence peddling I can remember, named to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals the brother of a Democratic congressman who is undecided on the health care bill, on the same day that he had that congressman come to the White House to discuss the bill.
When I saw the headline of Mark Cunningham’s column in yesterday’s New York Post, “Dems at risk of decades in desert,” my first thought was: how can anyone claim to have the ability to predict electoral trends decades into the future? However, if you leave aside the “decades” part, Cunningham is making a striking and original argument which takes us beyond the usual terms of today’s political debate. He says that if the Democrats push Obamacare into law, not only will they lose a massive number of seats in both Houses, and not only will they lose the majority in both Houses, and not only will the Republicans gain enough seats (by 2012) to repeal Obamacare; but
Passing health-care “reform” runs a huge risk of handing Republicans more power in Washington than they’ve had since the 1920s. And if they have the votes to repeal ObamaCare, they’ll go after scores of things that vastly benefit core [components] of the modern Democratic Party, from community-organizing grants to prevailing-wage laws to the federal budget process.In short, the Democrats’ reach for revolutionary power could result in a counterrevolution against important elements of the modern liberal state. MORE…In other words, if Democrats go for broke to pass “health-care reform,” the party really might wind up losing everything.
An amusing and hopeful thought from Donald Hank (Don H. at VFR) at his blog, Laigle’s Forum (I’m curious to find out what that title means). Here he comments on the meaning of recent events in the Netherlands:
Wilders’s persecution boosts Freedom PartyHere is the site’s lively About page.Wilders’s Freedom Party gaining ground in Holland
There is only one group strong enough and rich enough to destroy the Left and that is the Left itself. And they do it every time, because unlike normal people, lefties believe in their own immortality and the historical inevitability of their hare-brained utopian agendas.
So, believing that all reasonable people everywhere agree with them, they inevitably get careless and start stripping people of their God-given rights, such as the right to speak one’s mind. Censorship is a sure-fire way to ultimately lose and give all the power to your opponent! …
Keep censoring, Lefties. You have found the enemy (psst: he is YOU. Yeah).
c
A. Zarkov writes:
Appearing before the British Parliament’s Science and Technology Committee, disgraced climate scientist Phil Jones squirms as he’s questioned by Lord Lawson of Blaby (Nigel Lawson, Chancellor of the Exchequor during the 1980s). Watch him sweat here. When questioned why he refused to give his data and codes to a requester, he said, “…because we had a lot of work and resources invested in it.” I take this weird answer as an admission that his work was flawed and he didn’t want anyone to find out. When asked again why refused to furnish the raw station data, Jones could said he was only willing to provide the “finished product.” Let me take a moment to explain what the “finished product” means.. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 07:42 PM
Peter B. writes:
As you point out, the warmists claim that less snow in a given year at a given place is proof of warming and that more snow in a given place in a given year is also proof of warming. With these arguments the warmists hope to push into drastic action to avert climate change. Leaving aside the correctness or otherwise of this point of view [LA notes: on this point the warmists appear to have a reasonable argument], how will we know if we’ve succeeded in averting climate change? MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 07:31 PM
Rick Darby has complicated thoughts on the new right-wing website.
In his article today on Geert Wilders, Paul Belien writes:
Wilders regards support for Israel as the litmus test to decide with whom he is willing to cooperate.In the excellent Wilders manner, this is stated so simply and directly. It gets to the heart of the issue and comprehends other, unspoken issues within it.
Today at The Brussels Journal Paul Belien writes about “The Wilders Momentum”:
Yesterday’s local elections in the Netherlands resulted in a victory for the Freedom Party (PVV) of opposition leader Geert Wilders. On June 9th the Dutch will again be called to the voting booths for the general elections. Yesterday’s outcome reinforces the PVV’s momentum, which may result in a political landslide next June with repercussions all over Europe. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 01:00 PM
The Freedom Party is also first in polls for the June parliamentary elections, and Reuters says it will be difficult for the Christian Democrats to form a strong coalition without Wilders.
Dutch Anti-Islam Leader Wilders Is Major Winner In PollsAMSTERDAM/THE HAGUE (Reuters)—Dutch anti-Islamist leader Geert Wilders scored major gains in local authority polls on Thursday, making him a serious challenger for power in a June national election, preliminary results showed.
In the first test of public opinion since the collapse of Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende’s coalition government last month, Wilders’s Freedom Party (PVV) led in the city of Almere and was second in The Hague. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 11:30 AM
(Note: This item was drafted yesterday, March 3, before the returns came in of the Freedom Party’s big victories.)
Today, March 3, there are municipal elections throughout the Netherlands. In two cities, Almere and the Hague, Geert Wilders’s Freedom Party is running a full slate of candidates. A few days ago Wilders, speaking in Almere, gave an idea of the changes that would occur in those cities if the Freedom party wins the elections:
I still have other good news for you. I heard from our party leaders in Almere and the Hague [where the Freedom Party is also contesting], Raymond de Roon and Sietse Fritsma, what the main effort will be for the [coalition] negotiations in Almere and the Hague after March 3: That will be a ban on headscarves in municipal bodies and all other institutions, foundations, or associations, if they receive even one penny of subsidy from the municipality. Thus an immediate ban on headscarves, get rid of that woman-humiliating Islamic symbol. And for all clarity: this is not however meant for crosses or yarmulkes, because those are symbols of religions that belong to our own culture and are not—as is the case with headscarves—a sign of an oppressive totalitarian ideology. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 11:11 AM
Here is an e-mail I’ve sent to Dan Gerstein, who writes a weekly column for Forbes.
Dear Mr. Gerstein:In your article, “Deaf To America: Why Democrats have lost the public’s trust,” you argue that the public does not oppose the federal takeover of the health care industry because they think it’s a bad idea in itself, but only because it goes against their temporary mood of this year, traumatized as they’ve been by the stimulus and other big spending and by the bad economy. You say that the Democrats are foolish to push against this public mood. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 08:09 AM
Up to this point, John Albert Gardner, charged in the murder and attempted rape of Chelsea King, has been repeatedly described in the media as a “registered sex offender.” What that means, and what it meant in practice, we were not told. There was a reference to “lude and lascivious behavior” with a child but no specifics. In this March 3 AP story we finally learn the facts of Gardner’s background. In 2000 he was convicted of luring a 13 year old girl from his neighborhood into his house to watch a TV program and assaulting her. The girl escaped, running from his house with her pants down. Despite a psychiatrist’s report that Gardner was completely unrepentant and the psychiatrist’s urgent recommendation that Gardner be sentenced to the full term of 11 years for the crime (though the story fails to identify what crime he was charged with), he was sentenced to six years and released after five. He completed three years of probation in 2008.
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The body, which has been identified as that of Chelsea King, was found, six days after her disappearance, in a shallow grave about ten feet in from the shoreline of the lake. The article, from ABC News, doesn’t state the cause of death.
Another young woman, 23 years old, had fended off an attempted rape by the same suspect on the same running trail a few weeks ago, by elbowing him in the face as he shook her and running away when he let go.
Were public warnings put out that a rapist was in that park looking for victims?
The story gives no indication of that.
Paul K. writes:
There were many points in the Health Care Summit that keeping returning to my thoughts.One is this story that President Obama told:
When I was young, just got out of college, I had to buy auto insurance. I had a beat-up old car. And I won’t name the name of the insurance company, but there was a company—let’s call it Acme Insurance in Illinois. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 11:55 PM
A generation ago, in order to deflect internal dissension and unify the country around their regime, the dictatorial and murderous Argentine generals invaded the Falkland Islands, a British territory. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and diplomatically backed by the U.S. under President Ronald Reagan, Britain successfully defended the Falklands, and as a result the generals’ regime collapsed. Civilization 1, Barbarism 0. Today, a corrupt and lawless Argentinian government, in order to deflect internal dissension and unify the country around itself, and backed by the leftist dictator of Venezuela, is again sending its (weak and pathetic) navy to test British ownership of the Falklands. But this time, the U.S., under the leadership of an antiwhite, anti-British president, and through the mouthpiece of his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is supporting Argentina.
Given the nature of the current British regime, would anyone be surprised if Britain yielded?
Hillary with the Argentinian president, who is also
the wife of the former and future Argentinian president
In response to Investors Business Daily’s attack on Al Gore’s op-ed, Ken Hechtman argues that, contrary to all appearances, Gore and other warming advocates are not being opportunistic and contradictory when they declare that less snow is proof of warming, and that more snow is proof of warming; he says that both statements are consistent with long-standing warming models.
Obama is now on C-SPAN proposing his latest health care proposal (it’s just eight days since he released his previous health care proposal). I turned it on and heard him say, “The American people need to be able to make decisions about their health care, not insurance company executives. I believe that doctors and nurses need to be free to decide on the best care for their patients.”
Of course what Obama wants is to take away the power of doctors and patients to decide on the best care, and to place that power in the hands of the government. Obama is a conscienceless, Communist-style leader, governing through the use of the Big Lie.
I turned it off. I can read his speech later. I don’t need to have this evil alien in my face.
Jack writes:
Obama is the suicide bomber in the American tent.
Tiberge writing at The Brussels Journal tells of the steady colonization of French food by Muslim halal food, a phenomenon that the French are finally starting to resist. In one recent development, halal meat has been adopted by the French hamburger restaurant chain, Quick.
All of this is in line with Sam Solomon’s explanation of the Islamic method of taking over a previously non-Muslim society via Muslim immigration. First the Muslims plant their immigrant community in a non-Muslim country; then they get their community accepted and tolerated by the surrounding community; then they persuade the surrounding community voluntarily to adopt certain “neutral” Muslim customs (such as getting school cafeterias and restaurant chains to use halal meat); then, finally, they start to make Islamic customs and laws compulsory for everyone. Meanwhile, as Tiberge points out, any attempt to stop the spread of Muslim power over the host society is denounced by the institutions of the host society itself as an illegitimate act of exclusion. “To raise an outcry over halal,” declares ETHIC, a socially conscious French Catholic organization, “is extremely discriminatory.”
We must understand that Muslim immigrant communities in the West will not and can not cease their campaign to spread Islamic sharia law in the West, since that campaign is divinely mandated by the religio-political ideology of Islam. The only way to stop the spread of sharia in the West, is to remove sharia-believing Muslims from the West.
Nigel Farage, a UKIP member of the European Parliament, is being fined 3,000 euros for insulting the president of the European Council. The story is at The Brussels Journal. In his outspoken remarks on the floor of the European Parliament (see YouTube), Farage expresses his complete lack of respect for the European Union, its obscure, unaccountable leaders, and its agenda of extinguishing the nation states of Europe.
Kilroy M. writes:
I’m sorry but this chap displayed a total lack of class. His remarks were unnecessarily personal and unbecoming of the conservative he professes to be. Please don’t get me wrong—I admire him for his many other “outbursts” in the EU “parliament” (such as the one in which he exposed the distressing number of Central European “former” communists in the present EU hierarchy). But his latest was, or should be, an embarrassment to us.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision overturning the gun control law of the District of Columbia two years ago only barred the Congress, which governs the federal district, from outlawing private gun ownership, and did not have general applicability. The current case before the Court concerning the constitutionality of Chicago’s sweeping gun control law would affect all states and municipalities. According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, the Court is clearly prepared to find for the first time in American history that gun ownership is a fundamental individual right, applicable throughout the United States.
Imagine how such a decision will make the Europeans feel about us. They’re rapidly sinking into oblivion, while tsk-tsking at a country that still has life in it.
At her blog, Our Changing Landscape, Kidist Paulos Asrat ventures the thought that the recent anti-terrorism fatwas by Muslim clerics in Canada and the U.S. may be aimed at preventing any interruption in the so far wildly successful peaceful Islamic colonization of those societies.
Who would have imagined that the likes of Roissy and the contributors of The Occidental Quarterly would ever be mentioned at the Weekly Standard, let alone discussed at length? But they are, by Charlotte Allen, in a major article on the “new dating” game and self-described pick-up gurus. Here she discusses F. Roger Devlin, who, unlike Roissy, is a serious conservative thinker on the contemporary crisis in sex relations:
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CBN News goes to London and interviews Choudary Anjem, leader of “Islam for UK.” Choudary has exactly the same understanding of Islam as, say, Geert Wilders. He rejects the idea that Islam is a religion of peace, he says that there is a place for violence in Islam, he says that jihad is the second most frequently commanded duty in the Koran after belief itself, he approves of the 9/11 and 7/7 bombers, and he calls for Britain to be subjected to sharia law.
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Policy expert Peter Ferrara writing at American Spectator explains that Obamacare will be even worse than we imagine. It represents not just a government takeover of health care, but the end of health care in America as we have known it:
Let me reveal my personal stake in this health care debate. My life is at risk. So is yours, as well as the lives of our children, our parents, and everyone else in our families. For the thorough government takeover of health care in America the Democrats are feverishly pursuing, and the outdated socialized medicine policies from other countries they are so religiously committed to adopting, would trash the very ability of the system to provide the health care many of us are likely to need in coming years to extend our lives, and to maintain our basic quality of life. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 08:00 AM
When snow decreases, warmists say that global warming caused it; when snow increases, warmists say that global warming caused it.
From an IBD editorial on Al Gore’s February 28 New York Times op-ed:
The blizzards that have buried the Northeast, he writes, are proof of global warming because record evaporation due to warming is what produces record snows. Except that supporters of his theory not long ago argued exactly the opposite. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 12:19 AM
A story from NBC San Diego dated March 1 (before a body was found in Lake Hodges) includes this, the first acknowledgement I’ve seen in the media that Chelsea’s behavior put her at risk:
Her parents say she was not a risk taker and would not wander from the trails. They say she preferred to run alone, which they frowned upon. [LA replies: First, running by herself, even on the trails, is risk-taking. Had Chelsea never heard of Chandra Levy, who went running alone on a trail in a woodsy park in Washington, D.C. and was murdered? Second, notice that, like typical liberal parents, they didn’t tell her definitely not to run alone, rather they “frowned upon” her running alone.]Whence comes this notion of invincibility? Any person capable of reading a newspaper or listening to television news knows that young females are being murdered all the time, some of them in famous cases that are in the news for weeks and months; some of the young victims even have had laws named after them. We’re supposed to believe that Chelsea King had the smarts and talents to “change the world,” as her parents put it, but that she lacked the most basic knowledge about the world, including knowledge of its obvious dangers. Had her parents never discussed the dangers with her?“We would never allow her to run by herself. But she’s a 17-year old girl,” said Brent King. “If she chose to run by herself on that day, she didn’t do it because her parents said go ahead and run by yourself.”
“When you’re that age, you feel invincible,” said Kelly King. “Bad things aren’t going to happen to you.”
Kelly King, by saying, “When you’re that age, you feel invincible,” justifies her daughter’s reckless behavior, and suggests that there was nothing her parents could have done about it, as though young people’s belief in “their own invincibility” (how many times have we heard that cliche?) is a supreme force, like “raging hormones” (another big cliche) that cannot be questioned or resisted, that must be simply be deferred to.
It is as plain as day that Chelsea King was killed by liberalism. It was liberalism that allowed a child molester to wander at liberty in society instead of confining him, and it was liberalism, in the person of her weak, fatuous parents, that failed to prohibit her from running alone in a large woodsy park.
Here is a Google map with all the key locations in the case marked. (The comments in this entry by VFR readers Scott H., Ferg, and James P., who are familiar with the area, also reference some of the locations in the map.)
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A girl’s body has been found in Lake Hodges in San Diego, where police and volunteers have been searching for 17 year old Chelsea King since last week.
“Although positive identification has not been made, there is strong likelihood that we have found Chelsea,” said San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore during a news conference Tuesday afternoon in San Diego.Emily B., who sent the article, writes:Law enforcement officials confirmed Tuesday afternoon that a girl’s body has been found in Lake Hodges, where extensive search efforts have been underway for missing Poway teen Chelsea King.
I read somewhere that her parents had set down a rule for her not to run alone, but there was no follow-up as to why she was running alone that evening. [LA notes: that is discussed in the next entry.]. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 07:25 PM
I know Richard Spencer, he’s very intelligent, and I respect him. But I’m not sure what he means when he says in an introductory video to his new website, Alternative Right, that it offers a new conservatism that is not part of establishment conservatism. After all, a whole range of paleoconservative and traditionalist conservative publications and websites that are non-establishment conservative have been around for years and decades. Chronicles, the birthplace of paleoconservatism, has been in existence since the 1980s. Taki’s Magazine, where Spencer was the editor until recently, is obviously not a part of establishment conservatism. Yet Spencer is suggesting that prior to Alternative Right, there has never been a right that was non-establishment conservative.
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Carol Iannone writes:
Andrea Peyser writes a good column on how women get away with things men are destroyed for. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 12:46 PM
N.S. writes:
I came across an interesting article in Newsmax about angry parents bringing in a new school board which is looking to vote this morning against continued race-based and/or socio-economic-based busing policies: MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 12:31 PM
As I have said before, I regard Roissy as evil. At the same time, as the below autobiographical account by a reader brings out, Roissy’s war against feminism and the rule of women has helped free young men in their twenties and thirties from lies that have dominated their generation. The problem, of course, is that being freed from liberal and feminist lies is not of much help, if it only delivers you into the lie of Roissyite nihilism. But the reader, Daniel H., did not stop there.
By way of setting this up, I copy his introductory e-mail to me. After that I copy his long e-mail to VFR commenter Kristor in which he tells of the turnabout in his life that was initiated by his immersion in Game.
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The ordeal goes on. There is not going to be any early end to the health care battle. The Democratic leadership, alit with demon fire, will keep fighting it out on this front for months to come, perhaps for the entire year, right up to the moment the Republicans take the gavel from Nancy Pelosi next January 3—which, as a result of the Democrats’ war against America, I now expect to happen, whether the Democrats succeed in passing the bill or not.
I don’t want this site to continue to be so dominated by this one subject for months on end. At the same time, I still have to cover it somewhat.
Here is the story on Speaker Pelosi from yesterday’s Times. The disconnect between the Democratic leadership’s assurance that they can pass the bill by reconciliation, and Sen. Conrad’s assurance that that the Senate rules prohibit that, is total. It’s impossible to make sense of it. We will just have to let events unfold.
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(Note, 3/3: Peter Beinart expands on Ford’s incoherent departure from the race. For example, the day after Ford in his New York Times op-ed said that he had decided not to run because he didn’t want to do anything that would damage the Democrats’ chances of winning, which in practical terms meant that he didn’t want to do anything to damage Senator Gillibrand’s chances of winning, he said that Gillibrand had made no positive contributions in her year as a U.S. senator. Since Ford’s attack on Gillibrand makes it clear that avoiding damage to the likely Democratic nominee was not his real reason for withdrawing, the question arises, what was his reason? Probably that he felt he lacked the money and support to win.)
Here, from his op-ed in today’s New York Times, is former Tennessee congressman Harold Ford’s reason for his surprise decision not to seek the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate in New York. Democratic Party insiders are very brutal, Ford says, and will cream him with attacks if he challenges Sen. Schumer’s sock-puppet, Sen. Kirsten (“Tweetybird”) Gillibrand (that’s the New York Post’s nickname for her). While Ford thinks that he can beat Gillibrand in the primary, the battle would be so bruising that whoever emerged as the winner would be weakened, allowing the Republican candidate to prevail in the general election. And since Ford doesn’t want to hurt the Democrats’ position in the U.S. Senate, he won’t run.
Thus: any Democratic challenge to Gillibrand will cause the brutal New York Democratic bosses to unleash such a degree of brutality against her Democratic challenger that it will lead to a Republican victory in November, and therefore Ford won’t challenge those brutal Democratic bosses. I haven’t seen such convoluted reasons for not seeking office since, oh, since Sen. Evan Bayh announced last month that he’s not running for re-election.
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The previous entry on Biurny Peguero Gonzalez was based on an article in the February 28 New York Post. But, as a reader has brought to my attention, an article in the February 25 Post showed a very different side of Gonzalez’s conduct, which was not mentioned in the February 28 story.
Eric R. writes:
Accounts reveal that Biurny Peguero Gonzalez, pregnant at time of her sentencing, attempted to avoid her testimony after learning she was with child. She sought to retract her confession at the expense of the wrongly imprisoned. Her priest took a proactive role to ensure she followed through. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 06:26 AM
This story covers the gamut, from the depths of human evil to a turning toward God to undo the evil, accompanied by the acceptance of due punishment.
Five years ago, the then 22-year old Biurny Peguero Gonzalez did an inconceivably wicked thing. For no reason to speak of, for a whim, she made up a completely false accusation of rape against an innocent man, and she persisted in the accusation until he was convicted and sent to prison. Years later, tormented by guilt, she confessed to a priest, and he led her to take the steps to free the innocent man. And now she is going to prison for her crime.
A priest showed the way
Rape liar: Confession booth to clink
By BRAD HAMILTON and SUSANNAH CAHALAN
February 28, 2010She thought she might get off with a few Hail Marys. Instead, she got three years in prison.
The 27-year-old New Jersey woman who cried rape and put away an innocent man had no idea what coming clean would cost her when she stepped into a confessional a year ago and told her priest everything.
“She was going to confess this was her sin and that was it,” said a source familiar with the shocking recantation of Biurny Peguero Gonzalez, who on Tuesday was sentenced to one to three years in prison for falsely accusing William McCaffrey of a violent sexual assault in 2005. MORE…
Biurny Peguero Gonzalez
What materialist theory of human nature
can explain her crime or her confession?
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 08:12 PM
Philip M. writes from England:
Sage McLaughlin writes:
I heard a radio spot the other day for the UK Ministry of Tourism (or whatever) promoting their upcoming Olympic games. Their slogan is, “Visit London—See the World!”And where in this “world” is London located? Who lives there? If the historically English people who live there are the ones who are properly English, then that implies that all the other Londoners are not really English. If, on the other hand, all the other Londoners are from all over the world but still just as English as me, then in what sense is London “the world”? MORE…Sort of says it all, doesn’t it?
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 05:09 PM
Here is a video clip of Sen. Kent Conrad on Face the Nation yesterday stating forcefully that reconciliation cannot be used to pass comprehensive health care reform, because it it was “designed” to be used for the limited purpose of reducing deficits in an already passed bill. But, as I’ve mentioned before, I detect an uncertainty of meaning in his words. He speaks of how reconciliation would properly be used, and says “it would be unreasonable” to use it to pass a major bill such as Obamacare. The problem with phrases such as, “it was designed for,” “it would be used for,” “it would be unreasonable to use it for,” is that there is nothing that necessarily stops the Senate from doing something that contradicts the original design of reconciliation if the senators choose to do so, and there is nothing that necessarily stops the Senate from doing something unreasonable if the senators choose to do so. So, the relevant question is not whether reconciliation was designed only for making budgetary changes in existing bills, or whether it would be unreasonable to use reconciliation to pass a major bill, but whether there is any rule preventing the Senate from using reconciliation to pass a major bill. And, according to Conrad himself, there is such a rule—the Byrd Rule. At another point in the same interview, he says (here is transcript):
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On the subject of Governor David Paterson, whom in the wake of a stunning abuse of office the entire political and media establishment of New York State has now deserted and is demanding his resignation, for some reason I just like the guy. I therefore take no pleasure in the New York Post’s brutal article about his work habits and competence, even though it perfectly demonstrates Joseph Kay’s thesis of the Empty Black Suit which has been discussed a good deal at this site. The truth, however, is the truth. And the truth is that Paterson is a shiftless incompetent—inattentive to his responsibities, untrustworthy in his verbal commitments, incapable of making a decision and staying with it, and barely going through the motions of being governor, even as he takes himself seriously and imagines he’s doing a great job. His only virtue is his affabililty. He was Elliot Spitzer’s affirmative action pick for lieutenant governor who became governor through Spitzer’s resignation, and the state has paid a very heavy price for that choice for the last two years.
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In the entry, “Astounding news about how Senate Democrats feel about reconciliation,” Tim W. has an interesting explanation of the anti-abortion congressmen and how their vote is playing out in the health bill debate.
As part of VFR’s continuing support for cultural literacy, here is the famous first sentence of Edward Gibbon’s masterpiece, The Decline and Fall of the Obaman Empire:
In the second month of the Brownian era, the empire of Obama comprehended the most confused part of the earth, and the most distracted portion of mankind.
According to an article at CNN, evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa of the London School of Economics and Political Science has found that, “on average, people who identified as liberal and atheist had higher IQs.”
First, this is so funny. Can you imagine that if, say, hundreds of IQ studies—indeed every relevant study—indicated that on average East Asians and Caucasians had higher IQs than blacks and nonwhite Hispanics, CNN would have published that? Whoops—hundreds of IQ studies do indicate that, but somehow CNN hasn’t gotten around to publishing a story on it. Oh, well.
Second, Kanazawa’s finding repeats Richard Lynn’s finding of 2008 and reflects the same logical fallacies and secularist biases. See my collegial exchange with Professor Lynn that was posted at the time.
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A female student, presumably nonwhite, hangs a noose on a bookcase in the main library of the University of California, San Diego. At the news of the noose, which, notwithstanding the innumerable previous fake white-racist hate crimes that were instigated by nonwhites, everyone immediately assumes was hung by a white racist, the students go nuts and occupy the office of the university’s chancellor, as though the chancellor were the one responsible for the unknown white racist’s act. No one is arrested or punished for occupying the chancellor’s office. Then the student who hung the noose admits to police that she did it. She is not expelled, but only suspended. Meanwhile the noose media, excuse me, the news media, report the fact that the noose hanging was a fake as though this were a discrete, one-time, and meaningless event, never mentioning the pattern of innumerable previous fake white-racist hate crimes instigated by nonwhites of which this current incident is but the latest example. And the beat goes on, the beat goes on.
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Lydia McGrew, of What’s Wrong with the World, writes:
Thanks for your continued, careful coverage of the twists and turns of the health care saga. I find the whole thing so appalling and discouraging that I can hardly bring myself to talk about it. I certainly have nothing original to say about it, which is why I never blog about it anymore. VFR is a good one-stop place to read what’s up at the moment, and I appreciate your being so assiduous.
A registered sex offender named John Albert Gardner is being held for questioning in the disappearance of 17 year old Chelsea King in San Diego (discussed in previous entry). The sheriff says that numerous pieces of physical evidence connect Gardner to King, and that there is a “strong possibility” that he is involved in her disappearance. A statement by Chelsea’s parents says, “She is an extraordinary daughter and also someone who is committed to her community. She has huge dreams and wants to change the world.” Maybe she was dreaming her huge dreams about changing the world when she went jogging alone in a place that, according to several VFR readers who are familiar with the area (see comments by Scott H., Ferg, and James P.), abuts on areas populated by lawless people. Perhaps if she were an ordinary girl who just wanted to live in this world instead of an extraordinary girl who wanted to change it, she might have been paying more attention to her actual environment, or, better, not gone there at all. In no story so far have I seen any suggestion that it was not wise for a teenage girl to go running alone in a park, apparently on one of the many trails in the park. The coverage of the story, the sentimental response, and the statement by Chelsea’s parents assure that other extraordinary young women will keep doing what Chelsea did and delivering themselves into the maw of death.
Chelsea King
John Albert Gardner
Two days ago I wrote:
[I]f you’re thinking that Gore must be falling apart or becoming deeply depressed because of the collapse of the global warming consensus that was the basis of his prophet status, I doubt that that’s the case. As we see from Obama’s undiminished arrogance in the light of all his stunning failures and loss of support, a true false messiah never loses his self-confidence, never admits that he was wrong.Today Gore proves me correct. He writes in a very long (almost 2,000 word) op-ed in the New York Times: MORE…
(Note: Sen. Conrad on TV this morning made much more definitive statements on reconciliation than the ones I discuss in the initial entry. So my effort to tease out the meaning of his indirect statement at the summit is no longer necessary. See Dale F.’s comment below.)
We know that Obama and the Democratic leaders are going to go for reconciliation. Obama himself more or less said so in his concluding statement at the end of the summit. We know that all kinds of opinionators and cheerleaders on the left are urging the Democrats to “ram it through,” and that these commentators believe that the Democrats can ram it through. (See,, e.g., Robert Shrum’s disturbing column, a specimen of leftist mania in and of itself.)
However, statements made last week by Senate Budget Committee chairman Kent Conrad of North Dakota, both before the summit and at the summit, suggest that the path of reconciliation is not politically viable.
MORE…
John Hagan writes:
The NYT has a balanced look at what the Democrats are up against trying to pass the health care bill. I don’t believe they have the votes. Nor do I believe that they will get them.LA replies:
I’m not overly impressed by most of the examples they give in the article of reluctant moderate Democrats, as the objections of such people could be overridden and the members persuaded for the sake of the party to vote yes.However, the article contains this killer paragraph: MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 10:16 AM