Christopher J. Arndt fights a never ending battle for truth and justice...


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did General Motors pay back the government loan?

General Motors claims that they paid the government back the loan from the automotive bailout.That was April 22nd, apparently.

The United States Department of the Treasury released this on April 21:

	April 21, 2010 TG-650 GM Repays Treasury Loan in Full, TARP Repayments Reach $186 Billion GM Repayment of Remaining $4.7 Billion in Debt Comes Five Years Ahead of Maturity Date WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of the Treasury today announced that General Motors (GM) has fully repaid its debt under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). GM paid the remaining $4.7 billion of the total $6.7 billion in debt owed to Treasury. The repayment comes five years ahead of the loan maturity date and ahead of the accelerated repayment schedule the company announced last year. Total TARP repayments now stand at $186 billion – well ahead of last fall's repayment projections for 2010. With this repayment, less than $200 billion in TARP disbursements remain outstanding. "We are encouraged that GM has repaid its debt well ahead of schedule and confident that the company is on a strong path to viability," said Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. "This continued progress is a positive sign for our auto investment – not only more funds recovered for the taxpayer but also countless jobs saved and the successful stabilization of a vital industry for our country." After this repayment, the remaining Treasury stake in GM consists of $2.1 billion in preferred stock and 60.8 percent of the common equity. ###

Now we must remember two things.

1. Everyone has an agenda.
2. The automotive loan consisted entirely of tax dollars, leaving aside the fact of Chinese loans.

All that kept in mind, I think both the US Dept. of the Treasury and General Motors are lying to the general public. GM never repaid the government loan.

Shikha Dalmia, a senior analyst the Los Angeles-based Reason Foundation, says GM's repayment is actually a "nifty scheme to refinance GM's government debt--not pay it back!" (That's her exclamation point, not ours.)

In a column posted on Friday, Dalmia takes CEO Ed Whitacre to task for ads that tout the "new GM" and say the automaker has "repaid our government loan, in full, with interest, five years ahead of the original schedule." Dalmia called the ad a "fairytale version about Government Motors' grand comeback." In particular, she bemoans the fact that Whitacre doesn't mention that American taxpayers still own 61 percent of GM--money that won't be repaid until the company begins selling public stock again.

A Forbes article says

Forbes, April 23: Sean McAlinden, chief economist at the Ann Arbor-based Center for Automotive Research, points out that the company has applied to the Department of Energy for $10 billion in low (5%) interest loan [sic] to retool its plants to meet the government's tougher new CAFÉ (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards. However, giving GM more taxpayer money on top of the existing bailout would have been a political disaster for the Obama administration and a PR debacle for the company. Paying back the small bailout loan makes the new--and bigger--DOE loan much more feasible.

In short, GM is using government money to pay back government money to get more government money. And at a 2% lower interest rate at that.

Naturally this is convenient for me and my agenda but why wouldn't the government lie about this?

Labels: automotive industry, politics

posted by Chris Arndt at 7/30/2010 06:45:00 PM | |

JournoList verus Keith Olbermann

The fool attacked Carrie Prejean and apparently took it too far. The leftists felt sorry for her.

On a mildly related note...

This is my take on Olbermann, which was censored over at Huffpo:

Olbermann is a laughingstock. He is a chimera of a pouting pompous poodle and a bovine intellect.

Olbermann is a misogynist who has some twisted need to degrade attractive young women as brainless bimbos. It proly goes back to school when cheerleaders mocked him and hid his bottle-bottom glasses and their boyfriends slapped “kick-me” signs on his back to deafing howls of laughter.

Olbermann is a sportscaster whose specialty is bashing athletes with more talent in their little fingernail than in Olby’s entire frail frame. His obsessive need to attack others probably stems from revenge for always being mocked and chosen last to play stick ball.

Olbermann is proud of his cognitive prowess, which he confuses with an ability to pronounce pollysyllabic words in a stilted, pretentious manner. He is proud of having attending an “ivy league” school — the Cornell college of animal husbandry.

Olbermann’s shtick at first appears to be a parody of some classicly pompous news anchor, until shockingly you realize that this sad little man is actually serious.

Olbermann is self-righteous, self-important, and self-absorbed. He has not a whit of wit, nor an iota of irony and is humorless and dull. His narrow mind is like a carnival whack-a-mole game which quickly crushes any emerging original thoughts. He has no clue about how the real world works and lacks any hint of curiosity in learning.

Worst of all Olbermann is utterly predictable, soporific, boring and lacks any redeeming qualities whatsoever, as is reflected in his consistently dreadful ratings.

No wonder he is considered an intellectual giant by the mental midgets of the Left.

3:07 PM 07/23/2010 - 3:07 PM

by "Freedom Fan",a registered DailyCaller commenter

Labels: media, politics

posted by Chris Arndt at 7/30/2010 04:24:00 PM | |

Charlie Rangel versus Michel Faulkner

Could the corrupt Charlie Rangel be toppled?

Hope in Harlem

Could a Reaganite, community-organizing pastor topple Charlie Rangel?

Labels: New York, politics

posted by Chris Arndt at 7/30/2010 04:08:00 PM | |

no surprise that Democrats cut budget on military

Peace through strength

Friday, July 23, 2010

Troubling Talk of Defense-Budget Cuts [Marc Thiessen]

The New York Times has a front-page story today on the growing momentum on Capitol Hill to cut defense spending. It is not surprising that in an age when the Democrats are showering money on almost every domestic initiative known to man, the one area they would seek spending cuts is the defense budget.

By contrast, the one area where the GOP has traditionally supported increased government spending is national defense. With the brief exception of the ill-considered post–Cold War “peace dividend,” since the 1970s the Republican party has consistently supported increased investments in national defense. But now there are some troubling rumblings on the right that if the GOP takes power in November, defense should not be exempt from the budget-cutting knife.

Earlier this week, I asked Rep. Paul Ryan during his outstanding talk at the American Enterprise Institute what a GOP Congress would do when it comes to the defense budget. Ryan said that while the Pentagon should not be exempt from the scalpel, and there is plenty of waste to be found, any savings should be plowed back into the core mission of the department — and the GOP should seek net increases in defense spending. You can see his full comments here.

This is important. The movement for fiscal responsibility is vital to the long-term survival of our way of life — but it must not come at the expense of the fundamental responsibility of government to “provide for the common defense.” With growing threats such as a nuclear Iran, a rising China, and the continuing danger of terrorist attack, increased defense investments are something every constitutional conservative should support.

07/23 09:53 AMShare

Labels: Democrats, politics, war

posted by Chris Arndt at 7/30/2010 04:04:00 PM | |

Obama narcissism

Charles Krauthammer notes President Obama's massive narcissism and lack of great faith in his own country. One should contrast it directly to how Ronald Reagan viewed the trappings of the Presidency. Krauthammer didn't here but I hope to later.

Bolden added that the United States cannot get to Mars without international assistance. Beside the fact that this is not true, contrast this with the elan and self-confidence of President John Kennedy's 1961 pledge that America would land on the moon within the decade.

There was no finer expression of belief in American exceptionalism than Kennedy's. Obama has a different take. As he said last year in France, "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." Which of course means: If we're all exceptional, no one is.

Take human rights. After Obama's April meeting with the president of Kazakhstan, Mike McFaul of the National Security Council reported that Obama actually explained to the leader of that thuggish kleptocracy that we, too, are working on perfecting our own democracy.

Nor is this the only example of an implied moral equivalence that diminishes and devalues America. Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner reported that in discussions with China about human rights, the U.S. side brought up Arizona's immigration law -- "early and often." As if there is the remotest connection between that and the persecution of dissidents, jailing of opponents and suppression of religion routinely practiced by the Chinese dictatorship.

Nothing new here. In his major addresses, Obama's modesty about his own country has been repeatedly on display as, in one venue after another, he has gratuitously confessed America's alleged failing -- from disrespecting foreigners to having lost its way morally after 9/11.

It's fine to recognize the achievements of others and be non-chauvinistic about one's country. But Obama's modesty is curiously selective. When it comes to himself, modesty is in short supply.

It began with the almost comical self-inflation of his presidential campaign, from the still inexplicable mass rally in Berlin in front of a Prussian victory column to the Greek columns framing him at the Democratic convention. And it carried into his presidency, from his posture of philosopher-king adjudicating between America's sins and the world's to his speeches marked by a spectacularly promiscuous use of the word "I."

Notice, too, how Obama habitually refers to Cabinet members and other high government officials as "my" -- "my secretary of homeland security," "my national security team," "my ambassador." The more normal -- and respectful -- usage is to say "the," as in "the secretary of state." These are, after all, public officials sworn to serve the nation and the Constitution -- not just the man who appointed them.

It's a stylistic detail, but quite revealing of Obama's exalted view of himself. Not surprising, perhaps, in a man whose major achievement before acceding to the presidency was writing two biographies -- both about himself.

Obama is not the first president with a large streak of narcissism. But the others had equally expansive feelings about their country. Obama's modesty about America would be more understandable if he treated himself with the same reserve. What is odd is to have a president so convinced of his own magnificence -- yet not of his own country's.

Labels: Barack Obama, Democrats, politics

posted by Chris Arndt at 7/29/2010 08:32:00 PM | |

Troy, MI texting ban measures

It's more or less common knowledge that Michigan passed a ban on texting on your phone while driving.

This is excessive and unnecessary, redundant, considering that reckless driving is already a crime in Michigan.

Troy, MI has added additional punishments.

Labels: Michigan, politics

posted by Chris Arndt at 7/29/2010 08:25:00 PM | |

Sherrod

Nominally I do not trust the New York Times, its website, or much else about it but in this case I am nearly certain that this Opinion piece is accurate.

Editorial

Faster Than a Speeding Blog

Published: July 21, 2010

The Obama administration has been shamed by its rush to judgment after it forced the resignation of a black midlevel official in the Agriculture Department who was wrongly accused of racism by the right-wing blogosphere. Shirley Sherrod was sandbagged by a two-and-a-half-minute clip from a 45-minute speech in which the real message was reconciliation.

Instead of tracking down the whole speech, the administration ran scared. Tom Vilsack, the agriculture secretary, dismissed Ms. Sherrod from her job as the chief of the department’s rural development office in Georgia. On Wednesday, Mr. Vilsack apologized that Ms. Sherrod had been “put through hell” and offered her a new job with a “unique opportunity” to help the agency move past its checkered civil rights history. The White House admitted it “bungled” the entire affair.

Truth be told I never made it a priority to learn about this event and it all more or less happened when I was not paying attention, and when I was paying attention this bored me. The only thing about this that seems relevant to me is that the United States Executive Branch, the federal government, just has contingencies in place to give jobs as apologies to people when the government screws up.

In her March speech at an N.A.A.C.P. event in Georgia, Ms. Sherrod recalled a period 24 years ago when she worked for a nonprofit agency that helped rural farmers fight bankruptcy. In the excerpt, she spoke of helping a white farmer, but not with the “full force” that she then believed black farmers needed. She said the farmer ultimately opened her eyes to the truth that white farmers faced much the same threat as blacks and that “there is no difference between us.” Her message was confirmed by the white farmer’s family. “She’s a good friend,” said Eloise Spooner. “She helped us save our farm.”

The N.A.A.C.P. also had to apologize after swallowing the excerpt and condemning Ms. Sherrod. The organization certainly should have first checked with its chapter in rural Georgia, which had the full speech on tape.

I do not care if she is a racist, just as long as government officials act in an above-board and ethical fashion, and when Miss Sherrod failed to do so, she purportedly repented. This does not take away from the fact that the NAACP is a left-wing political advocacy organization that never admits to that.

The administration’s haste to fire Ms. Sherrod was unfair and unseemly. She told of how an agriculture under secretary phoned her to demand she resign instantly via her BlackBerry. The official anxiously cited the likelihood the furor would “be on Glenn Beck tonight.”

It is more than a little disgusting that the United States federal government and its employees, agents, and whatnot is/are apparently afraid of what a cable talk show host may or may not say.

By the time the conservative commentator took up the issue, the full transcript of the speech was out and Mr. Beck was citing Ms. Sherrod — but as a victim of administration recklessness. This time, he was right.

It is what it is and the New York Times credited Glenn Beck properly. This roughly summarizes what happened and what all the important parts are. I am still miffed that after unjustifiably firing the woman the government spent our money (well, China's money) inventing a new one for her at purportedly our expense because they feared media backlash that never came and would never come. This is fake accountability at its best.

The context is the escalation of racial politics in the wake of President Obama's policies. Victor Davis Hanson summarized it well recently and I hope I can delve into it further in the future. Relevant is a sad double-standard (not that I am against double-standards but this one is unfortunate) that existed prior to the Obama policies taking effect, but was always unfortunate.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has claimed that the loosely organized Tea Party includes "racist elements." The National Council of La Raza has ripped the state of Arizona for its new anti-illegal alien legislation. Jesse Jackson characterized aspects of the multimillion-dollar bidding war to acquire basketball superstar LeBron James in terms of masters and slaves. Pundits are arguing whether the fringe racist New Black Panther Party is analogous to the Klan.

In turn, a number of Americans want to know why -- nearly a half-century after the Civil Rights Act, affirmative action and Great Society programs -- some national lobbying organizations still identify themselves by archaic tribal terms such as "colored people" or "La Raza" ("the race") when it would be taboo for other groups to adopt such racial nomenclature... the country passed the old white/black divide years ago. We are a racially diverse society of Asians, blacks, Hispanics, whites, and mixtures of all that and more. In a world of conservative Cubans and liberal whites, race is no longer necessarily a guide to politics.... The more the president appeals to his base in racial terms, the more his appointees identify themselves as members of a particular tribe, and the more political issues are framed by racial divisions, so all the more such racial obsession creates a backlash among the racially diverse American people.

America has largely moved beyond race. Tragically, our president and a host of his supportive special interests have not.

It ultimately means that while most Americans don't care about race most America there are enough that would use tribal or racial distinctions as either a rhetorical weapon and that there are Americans who genuinely care about race in a fashion that contains a genuine a antipathy towards white people.

Since the modern American social standard means that everyone should regard everyone else in any way that is totally irrespective of race it has become a trigger event that if anyone is revealed as a "racist" he is outside the standard and treated as a villain. Whether that is a valid thing or not, the sad fact is this new aspect of American life creates an opening where political factions can slander, defame, and discredit other political factions with mere accusations of racial prejudice. What is worse is the genuine suspicion that the Conservative philosophy is rife with inherent antipathy to black or Hispanic people, that Conservative must be racist because execution of ideas like lower taxation for all is racist in effect. As it the Tea Party Movement has come under fire from the NAACP as a band of racists, when the message of the movement is nearly devoid of anything outside of fiscal policy attitudes.

Shirley Sherrod was purged from the umbrella of protection by the NAACP when evidence surfaced that suggested she was a racist, even if she was not. I don't care whether she is a racist. NAACP doesn't care either, as stated before by the New York Times, the Department of Agriculture and the NAACP merely fear bad publicity. Broader social context does not really help this, explain this, and my views of the contemporary American racial climate are all arguable in terms of objectivity.

The more immediate context involves Andrew Breitbart. The termination of Shirley Sherrod has much less to do with fact than appearance and the appearance of her racism is the liability of Andrew Breitbart presenting her in line with his suspicions rather than investigate for greater context. He likely made an honest mistake which would indicate he was not lying about indicating she was a racist. He likely should have done more research into the matter. James Taranto says thus

It is entirely fair to observe that Breitbart's Monday report on Sherrod was journalistically shoddy. He misinterpreted a quote whose meaning was at best ambiguous. He should have sought out the full speech (the NAACP has posted it here), and he should have given Sherrod an opportunity to comment.

But the NAACP's defense that it was "snookered" by Breitbart--and Frum's implication, in turn, that Breitbart is the only "villain" of the piece--is laughable. Are we to believe that Ben Jealous thought Breitbart was what Dan Rather, before his fall, claimed to be--an impartial and reliable purveyor of facts? In the unlikely event that the answer to that question is yes, doesn't his failure to know better reflect a stunning incompetence?

The defense against accusations of Dan Ratherism is mounted as a response to fool David Frum.

On the website of the magazine This Week, David Frum weighs in with a post titled "Shirley Sherrod and the Shame of the Conservative Media":

You'll never guess who emerged as the villains of the story in this second-day conservative react. Not Andrew Breitbart, the distributor of a falsified tape. No, the villains were President Obama and the NAACP for believing Breitbart's falsehood.

Breitbart went almost universally unmentioned. . . .

When people talk of the "closing of the conservative mind" this is what they mean: not that conservatives are more narrow-minded than other people--everybody can be narrow minded--but that conservatives have a unique capacity to ignore unwelcome fact.

When Dan Rather succumbed to the forged Bush war record hoax in 2004, CBS forced him into retirement. Breitbart is the conservative Dan Rather, but there will be no discredit, no resignation for him.

Frum's reasoning is extraordinarily slipshod. As far as we know, Rather insists to this day that the crudely forged documents to which he "succumbed" were, or at least might have been, genuine. Yet it doesn't seem to dawn on Frum that the Rather example disproves the assertion that conservatives have a unique "capacity to ignore unwelcome fact."

More to the point, though, Frum's description of Breitbart as "the conservative Dan Rather" is silly. We interviewed Brietbart for The Wall Street Journal last year, and here is a key passage of the resulting profile:

Although Mr. Breitbart practices a form of journalism, as an independent operator he moves freely across boundaries that would constrain a traditional newsman. He makes no pretense of impartiality and openly engages in political activity. On Sept. 12, he took time off from the Acorn video roll-out to travel to Illinois, where he spoke to a tea-party rally. . . . You might say he's something of a community organizer.

In the same piece, we observed that Breitbart has a "flair for publicity"; that his work on the Acorn story "has centered on a sophisticated public-relations campaign" devised "with politics in mind"; that he describes himself as having " 'planted traps' for Acorn and its defenders"; that in developing his tactics, he took inspiration from Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals"; and that the methods his collaborators used in gathering information about Acorn were "grossly unethical by the standards of institutional journalism."

Dan Rather obviously was not the liberal Andrew Breitbart. Imagine if someone had written a profile in 2003 that included a sentence beginning: "Although Mr. Rather practices a form of journalism . . ." If such an assertion made any sense at all, it would have been part of a very snide hit piece. Rather is--or rather, was--simply a journalist. His critics had long charged him with bias, and his conduct in the 2004 "Memogate" affair strongly suggested they were right. Unquestionably, his work on that story was incompetent. CBS dumped him because he had fallen spectacularly short of his profession's standards.

David Frum, by the way, is a "Conservative" who makes his living now by attacking Conservatives. He would have nothing otherwise.

It is important to note that

Breitbart has posted a correction atop his Monday post: "While Ms. Sherrod made the remarks captured in the first video featured in this post while she held a federally appointed position, the story she tells refers to actions she took before she held that federal position."

That clarification is not an apology. Power Line notes (especially in regard to the Taranto piece)

I asserted that Andrew had made a mistake and owed Shirley Sherrod an apology. Whether I am right or wrong about that, I also think he is right to withhold it under the circumstances.

All of that is in the context of the declaration that Andrew Breitbart is likely the William F. Buckley of the internet age, at least in terms of creating a presentational format and venue for Conservative views.

There are other things that Shirley Sherrod has said but that is not the point. There are other assaults on Andrew Breitbart but that is not the point. All of those things can be covered later.

Rich Lowry is generally not as someone I turn to for especially great insights. (He has a particularly workmanlike approach to Conservative punditry, which is not a bad thing but it is only what it is). His syndicated column placed the whole Sherrod affair into the best and largest context historically. He contrasts the "controversy" of her being lambasted for something she never said while speaking in public, with the fact that over one hundred years ago a white racist sheriff in the south could attempt to murder a black man and it would not be considered controversial at all, let alone something to be punished.

Labels: link dump, politics

posted by Chris Arndt at 7/29/2010 05:37:00 PM | |

partisan economic accountability based on legislative power

the last time the Republicans were in charge of spending the deficit was under 200 million dollars

that was in 2006

the Democrats have been in charge since 2007

Labels: Barack Obama, Democrats, George W. Bush, politics, Republicans

posted by Chris Arndt at 7/13/2010 03:05:00 AM | |

Rooney in Congressional Candidate forum

I cannot argue with thisNor will I clarify with additional context.

Labels: Brian Rooney, Conservatives, Eaton County, Mark Schauer, Michigan, Michigan 7th District, Republicans

posted by Chris Arndt at 6/29/2010 02:29:00 PM | |

Tucker Carlson versus David Brock

In 1997 Microsoft Slate.com hosted a four-part "e-mail" Dialogue between a 26-year-old Tucker Carlson, then a writer for the Weekly Standard, and David Brock, just before he formally parted ways with the American Spectator.

The most concise historical context is that David Brock, who went on to form the non-profit 501(3)(c) Democrat/Obama/Clinton advocacy organization (I think this is a violation of various tax codes, but no one cares what I think) Media Matters, was a fake Conservative whose genuinity, sincerity of conservatism lay not in anything he believed, a set of core personal ethos, or a political philosophy but in that he took the side of one set of partisans against the other side. He considered himself "right-wing" because he wrote articles and books defending Conservatives, advocating their positions, and attacking leftists. I don't know why he joined that group in the first place because it obviously did not have anything to do with his ever-lasting principles; no one who holds Conservative beliefs, however it is defined, joins the other side out of a disagreement in tactics or message tone. No person of integrity goes from protecting life from abortion to insisting that babies can be forcefully and prematurely torn from the mother's womb simply because they find the tone of the anti-abortion message distasteful and I cannot think of anyone that truly believes in the Austrian economic system switching to a command-economy philosophy just because he does not like how various libertarians make their case. Anyone who switches sides on the grounds of the message is a liar. That is context.

• One of David Brock's most famous jaunts as a "right-wing"er, a "right-wing hit man" was his defense of Clarence Thomas against Anita Hill.
• Tucker Carlson is very young here; The Clinton administration is in the midst of its second term; National Review Online is young; the Republicans sitting in a state of power are in the federal Legislature and the Democrats control the White House so Conservative journalists are in the odd position of who to criticize and for whom to carry water.
• It is pretty clear that no matter when you arrive in history it is not going to be possible for the "Conservatives" as a collective entity to provide a totally united, unified front on all levels.
• Why should it?

There is a line of thought even now that writers should have the integrity of their own respective convictions while there are challenges for people to police those who supposedly think like them.

The dialogues, overall entitled "Right-Wing Journalism" consist of four entries:

1. Tucker Carlson addresses and contradicts David Brock's claims of damage, hurt, injury, outcast, and censorship as fallout for breaking away from an orthodoxy.
2. David Brock asserts charges of homogeneity in Conservative thought as a refutation to Carlson's argument that Brock was attacked only by fringe thinkers.
3. Tucker Carlson directly refutes the notion of a Conservative "party line".
4. David Brock insists that "Journalistic independence is often met on the Right with accusations of betrayal and social ostracism."

Tucker Carlson in part 3 asserts the narrative of differing principles in a sort of ongoing discussion which includes obvious dissension and unity among various agents and agencies and David Brock in part 4 demonstrates that he only sees it in terms of allegiances and personal loyalty among the voting bloc.

Labels: Conservatives, Microsoft, politics

posted by Chris Arndt at 6/29/2010 12:23:00 PM | |

Tavis Smiley versus Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Joe Hicks (never heard of him) says this:

Smiley is the host of a nightly PBS TV broadcast which claims to be a “hybrid of news, issues, and entertainment.” But let’s be clear: he is, in all-too-many ways, simply Al Sharpton with an updated hair style and a better sense of fashion. Like the Reverend Al, he’s a political opportunist and a shameless self-promoter with a bad case of “hate America” politics.

But up to now, he’s just been another annoying liberal TV host playing the usual game of racial-victim politics.

Tavis Smiley has actually been a left-wing talk show host whose programming has been paid for by American (Conservative, Republican, libertarian, independent, and non-involved) tax dollars and local donations.

Tavis Smiley, like Rosie O'Donnell, insists that Christian belief is a direct source of terrorism, and that the faith inspires murderous action from its believers. I do not know what Rosie O'Donnell believes but Tavis Smiley is quite elaborate.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali asks about Christians:

Do they blow people up every single day?

Tavis Smiley replies:

Yes, Christians. Every day, people walk into post offices, they walk into schools, that’s what Columbine — I mean I could do this all day long. There’s so many more examples of Christians — and I happen to be a Christian — that’s back to this notion of you idealizing Christianity to my read. There’s so many more examples, Ayaan, of Christians who do that than you could ever give me examples of Muslims who have done that inside this country where you live and work.

Columbine had nothing to do with Christianity except that the two juvenile monsters enjoyed executing Christians and taunting them at gunpoint.

Now the fact of the matter is that either proper Islam promotes terror and death in the name of Allah for the purposes of a Jihad theology or proper Islam teaches something entirely different for the Jihad purposes. Now if the first is true than the true Muslims are the Terror Muslims and the peaceful ones are the heretics in the eyes of Allah; if the second is true than peaceful Muslims know what true Islam and true Jihad is the violent ones are extremists; as far as I know both groups are filled with heretics; Islam holds no path to heaven.

Now there is a leftist meme

that Islam is always and everywhere “a religion of peace.”

and so there are "those who bend themselves into contortions attempting to portray Islam as a victimized religion" rather than something that with conflicting actors.

An interesting but not unpredictable list —

Let’s ignore momentarily the dozens of terror plots — all designed and organized by Muslim-Americans — that have been uncovered and thwarted by this nation’s security forces. I will instead direct Smiley’s attention to these attacks against Americans:

• 1993: The World Trade Center bombing in New York killed 6 people.
• 1996: The Khobar Towers bombing killed 20 and wounded 372.
• 1998: The bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania left 224 dead and 4,000 injured.
• 2001: On 9/11, 19 hijackers flew planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. Nearly 3,000 perished.
• 2009: U.S. Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan shot and killed 13 at Texas’ Fort Hood.
• 2010: Faisal Shahzad attempted to detonate a car bomb in Times Square.

So now who is Ayaan Hirsi Ali?

Hirsi Ali fled a traditional Muslim life in Somalia, a life that included being the victim of female genital mutilation as a child, and eventually made her way to the Netherlands where she rejected Islam and literally underwent an intellectual awakening. She now lives in America.

Hirsi Ali’s name made international headlines after her colleague, Theo van Gogh, was butchered by a Muslim assassin in broad daylight in the middle of a busy street in Amsterdam. The Muslim immigrant vowed to kill both van Gogh and Hirsi Ali after the release of Submission, a film they made together that spotlighted the treatment of women under Islam.

It’s also important to know that Hirsi Ali lives under the constant watch of security guards, since her life continues to be threatened by Islamic extremists... Nomad calls on key institutions of the West — universities, feminists, and Christian churches — to wage a war of ideas against Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism.

Our beliefs against the others'. Works for me.

Tavis Smiley attacks the local "religion" because supposing Christians are a threat is fairly safe. He even takes up a political target of the left and attaches them to wants to project as bad.

Pulling out the tea party movement for one more bashing, he claimed that tea party activists “are being arrested for making threats against elected officials, for calling people ‘nigger’ as they walked into Capital Hill, for spitting on people.”

I’ve addressed all of these claims before on The Hicks File — claims which have been shown to be completely false. There was no malicious spitting on anyone, the N-bomb wasn’t dropped on black elected officials, and if arrests were made of people threatening elected officials this had nothing to do with tea party activism — and had no connection whatsoever to Christianity.

The leftist narrative includes a very strong indictment of all sort of bigotry on the part of economic activists. One reason that leftists feel free to vilify the local religion is in large part because it's easy and again, safe. Eastern religion cannot be faithfully explored because people like Tavis Smiley are afraid to confront certain possibilities. Ayaan Hirsi Ali does not merely desire confrontation with those possibilities she was confronted by the negative aspects of Islam. Mark Steyn explains

She lives under armed guard and was forced to abandon the Netherlands because quite a lot of people want to kill her. And not in the desultory behead-the-enemies-of-Islam you-will-die-infidel pro forma death-threats-R-us way that many of us have perforce gotten used to in recent years: her great friend and professional collaborator was murdered in the streets of Amsterdam by a man who shot him eight times, attempted to decapitate him, and then drove into his chest two knives, pinning to what was left of him a five-page note pledging to do the same to her.

Her perspective is not superstitious or bigoted.

In fact, she wrote a screenplay for a film; Muslim belligerents threatened to kill her and her director; they made good on one half of that threat. This isn’t shtick... At the age of five, Ayaan was forced to undergo “FGM” (female genital mutilation), or, in the new non-judgmental PC euphemism, “cutting.” When she had her first period, her mother beat her. When she was 22, her father arranged for her to marry a cousin in Canada. While in Germany awaiting the visa for her wedded bliss in Her Majesty’s multicultural utopia, she decided to skip out, and fled to the Netherlands.

It is what it is.

Labels: link dump, Mark Steyn, politics

posted by Chris Arndt at 6/24/2010 05:39:00 PM | |

Townhall's 100 Most Hated By The Left

Glenn Beck is hosting a PDF copy of this list of so-called Conservatives on his http:glennbeck.com website.

I'll go over the list later. I have downloaded it but haven't read it all.

I knew James O'Keefe from earlier and I don't believe Rupert Murdoch is a Conservative by any stretch.

Labels: Conservatives, Glenn Beck

posted by Chris Arndt at 6/24/2010 04:32:00 PM | |

Betty White is like teflon?

Willa Paskin floats the theory that the media is averse to dealing Betty White serious criticism, as well as any Betty White projects.

Apparently her new cable-only sitcom (which I will never watch) about sex and "cougars" is just okay but writer are overly diplomatic in writing about high expectations being dashed.

For the record I never thought of Janes Leeves as a "cougar" as cougars are supposedly old(er) women, but I suppose she is; I never ever thought Wendy Malick was attractive ever.

Labels: television

posted by Chris Arndt at 6/24/2010 04:05:00 PM | |

Star Trek Armada cheats

Cheat Codes

Press Enter while playing then enter these cheats:

Effect	Code
2000 Dilithium	showmethemoney
Better cloaking abilities	seeyoulater
Boot list in multi-player mode	screwyouguysimgoinghome
Chat list in multi-player mode	phonehome
Faster crew production	avoidance
Faster warp	gobabygo
Increase ship AI	canofwhoopass
Increase Ship Creation	youstopmecold
Level Skip Cheat	kobayashimaru
More powerful weapons	targetacquired

Labels: PC games, Star Trek

posted by Chris Arndt at 6/24/2010 03:59:00 PM | |