Palins Fight Back Against Letterman’s Lewd Jokes About Daughter

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From New York Daily News:

“Concerning Letterman’s comments about my young daughter (and I doubt he’d ever dare make such comments about anyone else’s daughter): ‘Laughter incited by sexually-perverted comments made by a 62-year-old male celebrity aimed at a 14-year-old girl is not only disgusting, but it reminds us some Hollywood/NY entertainers have a long way to go in understanding what the rest of America understands — that acceptance of inappropriate sexual comments about an underage girl, who could be anyone’s daughter, contributes to the atrociously high rate of sexual exploitation of minors by older men who use and abuse others.’ ”

Todd Palin added: “Any ‘jokes’ about raping my 14-year-old are despicable. Alaskans know it and I believe the rest of the world knows it, too.”

My Comment

Not being much of a fan of Governor Palin’s, I think I can say that my outrage over the way she’s been treated by the media  is probably pretty objective. So I’m glad to see her rip David Letterman on his tasteless (to put it mildly) comments.  Missing from the column is another Letterman joke – about Sarah Palin’s look –  that of a “slutty flight attendant.”

Perhaps next time, some one should “joke” about Letterman’s own looks. How about a “pedophilic bank teller”? Sounds shocking when it’s done to a man, doesn’t it?

Update:

This is quote from Bernhardt’s “funny” routine about Palin from October, which I blogged here (October 2). I’m posting it again to show how the anti-Palin “jokes”  go far beyond what would have been said about any other candidate without provoking censure or outrage. That’s only the beginning of the routine. I took out the last part which went something like “one of my big black brothers here in New York will rape you” – that’s not a mistake – she really said that. I took it off because in the context of the elections, you never know whom it might set off. It manages to be offensive to Christians, black men, females, and Jews (yes, if I were Jewish, I’d be really unhappy to have Sarah speak for the Old Testament, a fine book that doesn’t need her in-ter-pre-tay- shun).

Now the election is over, I think it’s not irresponsible to post it in paraphrase in the context of proving that there’s a history of this sort of invective against Sarah Palin. Recall that the New Yorker cover of Obama as a terrorist (as stupid an editorial choice as I’ve ever seen) and the cartoon about killing the chimp both were widely considered incitatory – and rightly so.

But when it comes to a white, Protestant woman with fundamentalist beliefs, from a small town, who is pro-life, she doesn’t deserve any consideration whatever…

If this isn’t sexual, racial, and class-based discrimination, what is?

The woman is running for high office, and she’s a slut because she happens to be attractive? That doesn’t affect her job performance? That doesn’t affect how others see her and her work?

Phooey. Something really stinks in the way people think about these things here in the US.

Sorry. No intention to go all nationalist. But actually, Indian female politicians are treated more equitably.* No wonder the US hasn’t had a female president.

Now you got Uncle Women, like Sarah Palin, who jumps on the sh*t and points her fingers at other women. Turncoat bitch! Don’t you f*ckin’ reference Old Testament, b*tch! You stay with your new Goyish crappy shiksa funky bullsh*t! Don’t you touch my Old Testament, you b*tch! Because we have left it open for interpre-ta-tion! It is no longer taken literally! You whore in your f*ckin’ cheap New Vision cheap-ass plastic glasses and your [sneering voice] hair up. A Tina Fey-Megan Mullally broke down bullshit moment.” (rest of the comment censored)

*On second thoughts, I remember some of the language used about Sonia Gandhi, which was also racial. I wrote a piece about it on the net, “The New Post-Colonial Racism.” But it wasn’t misogynistic…

WHO Declares Swine Flu Pandemic

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In the news:

“GENEVA – The World Health Organization told its member nations it was declaring a swine flu pandemic Thursday — the first global flu epidemic in 41 years — as infections climbed in the United States, Europe, Australia, South America and elsewhere.

In a statement sent to health officials, WHO said it decided to raise the pandemic warning level from phase 5 to 6 — its highest alert — after holding an emergency meeting with its flu experts.”

More in this AP report.

88-year old Gunman In Shoot-Out Inside Holocaust Memorial Museum

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In the news:

“An 88-year-old gunman with a violent and virulently anti-Semitic past opened fire with a rifle inside the crowded U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum on Wednesday, fatally wounding a security guard before being shot himself by other officers, authorities said.

The assailant was hospitalized in critical condition, leaving behind a sprawling investigation by federal and local law enforcement and expressions of shock from the Israeli government and a prominent Muslim organization…….

Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center said von Brunn’s Web site has long been listed as a hate site.”

My Comment

It’s interesting how shootings in recent years have had some connection to the Holocaust (one heroic victim at Virginia Tech was a Holocaust survivor and a Holocaust survivor fell victim to the Mumbai attacks).

Von Brunn, according to reports, thinks “Jews control the Federal Reserve” and the banking system and are basically evil.  He has a long-standing relationship with Willis Carto, founder of the Liberty Lobby, a white supremacist and anti-Semite.

His is also one of many people who question President Obama’s birth certificate, a group that’s apparently been christened the “birther” movement by many of our liberal-left pundits. At TPM Cafe, Joshua Marshall hastens to let us know that your ordinary, garden “birther” (I first thought they meant some kind of natural child-bearing advocate) is only a harmless wing-nut, but alas, not Von Braun.

Note:

It seems very clear from his previous arrests, writings and statements, that Von Brunn is NOT harmless. While I certainly think the federal government isn’t above milking every bit of lawless behavior to impose further controls, the fact is bigotry does increase during times of stress.  And the most recent “hate crimes” legislation, does, in my estimate, try to deal with a broad range of victims –  including anti-Christian bigotry in its language.

That’s a decided improvement.

I’ve been looking over some sites and postings that I’d consider antisemitic (this applies to other forms of racism or bigotry) and here are some thoughts:

1. Noting the ethnicity/religion of someone (especially if it’s germane to the story) is not racism/antisemitism/bigotry

2. Drawing an ineluctable connection between the ethnicity/religion and the behavior is racism/antisemitism/bigotry (the operative word is ineluctable).

Of course, in ordinary life, people do generalize about other races, even if it’s only in their own minds. In a stressful situation that might be understandable. (You get hit by a car and the driver, from a different race, ignores your plight and speeds off…you react by saying, “all so-and-so always act like this…”).

This sort of reaction is a momentary generalization or simplification of the kind that the brain is actually biologically prone to make (creating a binary of us versus them).  The feeling crosses over and becomes racist when the reactive element in the response is deliberately cultivated and sustained through willfully ignoring all other factors, explanations, and theories.

Here’s what I mean.

It’s one thing to observe that there’s a high proportion of Jewish people working in finance and banking. There is. To deny that is to be out of touch with reality. The danger in trying to pretend this reality isn’t so deny reality is an obvious one. Uninformed people will then assume that every other part of what you’re saying is equally untrue and out of touch with reality. And they will assume every other thing they believe from appearances alone is true, even when in those cases, appearances are deceiving.

Now, if you are not a bigot, after that preliminary observation, several other things will (or should) occur to you. The first is that Jewish people are well-represented in practically all intellectually oriented professions.  This itself should dilute the strength of any argument tending in an anti-Semitic direction.

Perhaps the dominance of Jewish people in banking could then be attributed to other factors – historical and cultural, rather than to “Jewishness.”

Now, I realize I am on tricky grounds here, because sensibilities have become so over wrought that any misstatement can be construed as intentionally offensive. So, let me first say, if I do make a misstep, it’s not intentional and will be glad to restate my position, if someone points out why it might be offensive.

More later..

Meanwhile, Jeremiah Wright has gotten into hot water for saying “the Jews” have kept him from Obama.

And, the thought police (in this case Newsweek) is after Oprah as well. Turns out the Queen of Talk is sympathetic to the anti-vaccine folks – the ones who think that vaccines are often about big pharma’s profts more than about your health. The article also criticized Oprah on other grounds, but methinks that’s the crux of the matter.  The feds might have an interest in nixing any possible joining of forces between left-oriented alternative medicine advocates and right-oriented ones, in advance of selling swine flu vaccine to the public.

A swine flu pandemic also makes a convenient pretext to control the movement of people between countries.

Of course, it could all be coincidental, and I could just be another “wingnut” on the loose….

But so far, the wing-nuts are winning the credibility contest.

2 US Reporters Sentenced to Prison by N. Korea

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In the news recently:

“Reporting from Daegu, South Korea and Beijing — Two American television journalists today were convicted of a “grave crime” against North Korea and sentenced to 12 years of hard labor, a move that increased mounting tensions between the U.S. and the reclusive Asian state.

Laura Ling and Euna Lee, reporters for San Francisco-based Current TV, were sentenced by the top Central Court in Pyongyang in a two-day trial that started Friday as U.S. officials demanded the release of the two women.”

More here at The Los Angeles Times.

Bill Blum on the Obama Cult

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Bill Blum at the Anti-Empire Report:
“The praise heaped on President Obama for his speech to the Muslim world by writers on the left, both here and abroad, is disturbing. I’m referring to people who I think should know better, who’ve taken Politics 101 and can easily see the many hypocrisies in Obama’s talk, as well as the distortions, omissions, and contradictions, the true but irrelevant observations, the lies, the optimistic words without any matching action, the insensitivities to victims.  Yet, these commentators are impressed, in many cases very impressed.  In the world at large, this frame of mind borders on a cult.
In such cases one must look beyond the intellect and examine the emotional appeal.  We all know the world is in big trouble — Three Great Problems: universal, incessant violence; financial crisis provoking economic suffering; environmental degradation.  In all three areas the United States bears more culpability than any other single country. Who better to satisfy humankind’s craving for relief than a new American president who, it appears, understands the problems; admits, to one degree or another, his country’s responsibility for them; and “eloquently” expresses his desire and determination to change US policies and embolden the rest of the world to follow his inspiring example.  Is it any wonder that it’s 1964, the Beatles have just arrived in New York, and everyone is a teenage girl?
I could go through the talk Obama gave in Cairo and point out line by line the hypocrisies, the mere platitudes, the plain nonsense, and the rest.  (“I have unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by the United States.” — No mention of it being outsourced, probably to the very country he was speaking in, amongst others. … “No single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons.” — But this is precisely what the United States is trying to do concerning Iran and North Korea.) But since others have been pointing out these lies very well I’d like to try something else in dealing with the problem — the problem of well-educated people, as well as the not so well-educated, being so moved by a career politician saying “all the right things” to give food for hope to billions starving for it, and swallowing it all as if they had been born yesterday.  I’d like to take them back to another charismatic figure, Adolf Hitler, speaking to the German people two years and four months after becoming Chancellor, addressing a Germany still reeling with humiliation from its being The Defeated Nation in the World War, with huge losses of its young men, still being punished by the world for its militarism, suffering mass unemployment and other effects of the great depression.  Here are excerpts from the speech of May 21, 1935.  Imagine how it fed the hungry German people.
———————
HITLER:
“….. Germany, too, has a democratic Constitution.  Our love of peace perhaps is greater than in the case of others, for we have suffered most from war.  None of us wants to threaten anybody, but we all are determined to obtain the security and equality of our people……….
The German Reich, especially the present German Government, has no other wish except to live on terms of peace and friendship with all the neighboring States. Germany has nothing to gain from a European war.  What we want is liberty and independence.  Because of these intentions of ours we are ready to negotiate non-aggression pacts with our neighbor States.
Germany has neither the wish nor the intention to mix in internal Austrian affairs, or to annex or to unite with Austria.
The German Government is ready in principle to conclude non-aggression pacts with its individual neighbor States and to supplement those provisions which aim at isolating belligerents and localizing war areas…….
Germany is ready to participate actively in any efforts for drastic limitation of unrestricted arming. She sees the only possible way in a return to the principles of the old Geneva Red Cross convention. She believes, to begin with, only in the possibility of the gradual abolition and outlawing of fighting methods which are contrary to this convention, such as dum-dum bullets and other missiles which are a deadly menace to civilian women and children.
To abolish fighting places, but to leave the question of bombardment open, seems to us wrong and ineffective. But we believe it is possible to ban certain arms as contrary to international law and to outlaw those who use them. But this, too, can only be done gradually.  Therefore, gas and incendiary and explosive bombs outside of the battle area can be banned and the ban extended later to all bombing.  As long as bombing is free, a limitation of bombing planes is a doubtful proposition. But as soon as bombing is branded as barbarism, the building of bombing planes will automatically cease.
Just as the Red Cross stopped the killing of wounded and prisoners, it should be possible to stop the bombing of civilians……
The German Government is of the opinion that all attempts effectively to lessen tension between individual States through international agreements or agreements between several States are doomed to failure unless suitable measures are taken to prevent poisoning of public opinion on the part of irresponsible individuals in speech, writing, in the film and the theatre.…… [1]

— End of speech excerpts —

How many people in the world, including numerous highly educated Germans, reading or hearing that speech in 1935, doubted that Adolf Hitler was a sincere man of peace and an inspiring, visionary leader?

NOTES
[1] The entire speech can be found at: http://members.tripod.com/~Comicism/350521.html

Reiki Therapy at Maryland Trauma Center

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Alternative medicine gets some recognition at the University of Maryland:

“At one of the nation’s top trauma hospitals, a nurse circles a patient’s bed, humming and waving her arms as if shooing evil spirits. Another woman rubs a quartz bowl with a wand, making tunes that mix with the beeping monitors and hissing respirator keeping the man alive.

They are doing Reiki therapy, which claims to heal through invisible energy fields. The anesthesia chief, Dr. Richard Dutton, calls it “mystical mumbo jumbo.” Still, he’s a fan.

“It’s self-hypnosis” that can help patients relax, he said. “If you tell yourself you have less pain, you actually do have less pain.”

More in this AP report.

Time to Run

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My latest piece, “Time to Run”, at Lew Rockwell:

“Is it time to run?

That’s what I’ve been asking myself for three years now.

Before that, I thought it was simply a matter of finding a better place to live. A place that was quieter and cheaper. Where flippers and developers hadn’t taken over the neighborhood. Somewhere safe I could park my car on the street and not worry about it.

But by the time I found it, I also found that the thieves were inside the house, not on the street. There’s really no hiding from them. And no hiding from what they can do.
Our mene, mene, tekel upharsin is on the wall.

It’s time to run, not hide.
I mean that. We’re in the throes of an economic collapse of a kind last seen in the 1930s. The government is intent on grabbing control of whatever it can. American firms are dropping like flies. Unemployment is soaring. Debt is soaring. The money supply is soaring. Our foreign policy is a wreck – we have more enemies than we can count. We have a drug war on the borders, we have gang war in the ghettos, we have culture wars in the academy and media.

We have criminals in government.
The future isn’t any brighter. Subprime is only the first leg down. We still have a second wave of housing trouble in store, centering around commercial real estate and option ARM loans.

Gerald Celente, the CEO of Trends Research, wrote a piece last year predicting that by 2012 there would be food riots, tax rebellion, and revolution across the country. Celente has a good track record in the forecasting business.

Experts predict a 100% rise in prices across the board. In the best-case scenario, it will happen over ten years. In the worst case, it might happen within months….”

Read the rest at Lew Rockwell

Paul Craig Roberts on the End of Empire (comment added)

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Washington Arrogance Has Fomented a Muslim Revolution
by Paul Craig Roberts

Hat-tip to David Redick for the link

“In a government of law, the existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.”

~ Justice Louis Brandeis

Is Pakistan responsible for the Mumbai attack in India? No.
Is India’s repression of its Muslim minority responsible? No.
Is the United States government responsible? Yes.

The attack on Mumbai required radicalized Muslims. Radicalized Muslims resulted from; (Item numbers inserted by ARTS)

1. the US overthrowing the elected government in Iran and imposed the Shah;
2. from the US stationing troops in Saudi Arabia;
3. from the US invading and attempting to occupy Afghanistan and Iraq,
4. bombing weddings, funerals, and children’s soccer games;
5. from the US violating international and US law by torturing its Muslim victims
6. from the US enlisting Pakistan in its war against the Taliban;
7. from the US violating Pakistan’s sovereignty by conducting military operations on Pakistani territory, killing Pakistani civilians;
8. from the US government supporting a half century of Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their lands, towns and villages;
9. from the assault of American culture on Muslim values;
10. from the US purchasing the government of Egypt to act as its puppet;
11. from US arrogance that America is the supreme arbiter of morality.

As Justice Brandeis said, crime is contagious. Government teaches by example, and America’s example is lawlessness. America’s brutal crimes against the Muslim world have invited every Muslim to become a law unto himself – a revolutionary. It is not terror that Washington confronts but revolution……

The change over which Obama will preside will have no American victories. The change will come from

1. America as a failed state,
2. from the dollar dethroned as reserve currency,
3. from America repudiated by its allies and paid puppets,
4. from massive unemployment for which there is no solution,
5. from hyperinflation that produces anarchy.
6. The day might arrive when Washington is faced with revolution at home as well as abroad.

December 5, 2008

My Comment

Roberts’s piece is provocatively stated, so I thought should add this comment.  I think he’s fairly correct to state that the Pakistani and Indian governments are not to blame, fundamentally, for what’s happening. However, to the degree that these governments – like others – tend to take the line of least resistance and  go along with Washington’s agenda, or buy into it, or stand on the sidelines while that agenda is enacted elsewhere, they encourage the misdeeds of the prime culprit. And, to the degree that they are themselves corrupt or lawless,  they don’t help the situation…

(Not following either of the two countries’ internal politics, I can’t do more than make a general statement).

How not to go along, you might ask?

Well, there’s Angela Merkel’s recent condemnation of global central bank interventionism. Why can’t we hear more of that from the global community?

Or has the cat got its tongue on every issue but the issue of Israel-Palestine?

What’s the Point of Dollar Devaluation?

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“If all a country needed to do to achieve manufacturing supremacy and economic dominance was devalue their currency then Georgia and Bosnia would be considered paragons of economic prosperity.”

—   Michael Pento, via 321 gold.

Aha. The folly of naivete. Mr. Pento’s mistake is to think that manufacturing supremacy is what our oligarchs have in mind for the US.  He must be kidding.

The goal is to destroy US economic independence (let alone dominance) and subjugate it to an international cabal centering around….guess who…the oligarchs.