“You don’t mess with God’s girl.”

No,  you don’t.  Need a little inspiration today? 

Gianna Jessen says Cerebral Palsey–caused by the botched late-term abortion she survived–enriches her life.  She runs marathons.  And speaks truth to power sans a  teleprompter, but when you’re telling the truth with grace, wit and conviction, you generally don’t need one.

Want to see an eloquent speaker?  Behold: 

You might remember abortion survivor Gianna Jessen from the ad aired during the 2008 campaign, the ad in which she rightly detailed Barack Obama’s repeated votes against the  Illinois Born Alive Infants Protection Act while a state senator.  (Hey–at least he didn’t vote present, right? He  stands for something folks, like denying medical care to infants born alive during botched abortions.  What a charmer!  And he’s our president.  Aren’t you proud?)

Check out Gianna’s website here.

UPDATE: linked by Backyard Conservative.  Thanks!

What was that about a 40 year (D)ominance after O’s ascension?

Let’s cut that to size.  Michael Barone:

Extrapolating from the 2008 election results, some Democrats foresaw a 40-year period of Democratic dominance. It turned out to last about 40 weeks, as Republicans passed Democrats in polls on the popular vote for the House in August 2009.

Now if only we could do the same to our debt, right?

 

More on the “generational” damage O has unleashed upon his party from my favorite former Clinton staffer, Dick Morris:

The Democratic campaigns they are waging are formulaic. They make no attempt to defend the administration, but run away from it where possible. They never mention the words stimulus, healthcare reform, card-check, GM takeover or cap-and-trade. 

Instead, they are running almost exclusively negative ads. They base their campaigns on tax liens, failed marriages, DWIs and the like. Where there is a paucity of dirt, they resort to three prefab negatives: that their opponent favors a 23 percent national sales tax, that he wants to privatize Social Security and that he is shipping jobs overseas.

The Republican answers are simple. Republicans want a 23 percent value-added tax (VAT) only as part of eliminating the income tax. Some Republicans do back letting people under 55 divert one-third of their FICA taxes to approved investment alternatives, and most voters agree with them. But, on the campaign trail, simply saying — accurately — that “I oppose any change at all in Social Security for our seniors” takes care of it. And Republicans rebut the jobs overseas charge by citing how the incumbent backed cash-for-clunkers, where 40 percent of the cars bought were foreign; the TARP bailout, which paid billions to overseas banks; and the GM bailout, where two-thirds of the jobs were overseas.

More: Leftie bloggers finally realize Obama is a jerk incapable of fighting fair.  Straw men, straw men, everywhere.

 

Rock the Vote poll should make Democrats very, very afraid: yutes support AZ immigration law, oppose GZ mosque.  As they say in the Army: hooah!

A September Rock the Vote poll showed the Democratic advantage in party affiliation has been cut in half since 2008—down to 9 percent from 18. Democrats get 35 percent, Republicans 26 percent, and Independents 29 percent. (2008 Rock the Vote Numbers were 41 D, 23 R, 25 I).

While Obama and Democrats remain more popular than Republicans, the Tea Party, and conservative figures, young voters’ reactions to issues in two polls belie the assumption that enthusiasm for Obama translated into undying to devotion to liberalism.

For instance, a majority of voters ages 18-29 side with the majority of the American people against the president on the Arizona immigration law and the Ground Zero Mosque. According to the Rock the Vote poll, they support the Arizona immigration law, 53-44.

 Most pressing issues to yutes: jobs, economy, and debt.  Surprise, surprise.  They’d like a future free from insane tax burdens after all.  It’s easy to want “free” health care for all when you’re not paying for it, and “free” money falling off trees, but when the realization dawns that you will be that someone has to pay for the “freebies” for the rest, it’s not as attractive, is it?

Thank you, Obama: the road to (socialist) hell was paved with millions of lost jobs

Glenn Hubbard, Dean of Columbia Business School and former W. economic advisor, declares the U.S. economy “close to a destructive tipping point.”

The final push?  New Obama EPA rules will cost more than 800,000 jobs.  The irony: the environmental rules that prompt the changes will export jobs to China and result in more pollution.  Irony, shmirony, say the Obami, out with those jobs! (Or is it jobs, shmobs, who needs jobs?) 

VDH on Obama’s path to 40% approval ratings (he’ll be there in a jiffy).  The cause in part:

Nearly every issue the president embraces polls against him, often at a 3-1 margin. Cap and trade, amnesty, state-run health care, more bailouts, takeovers, deficits, taxes, and the national debt. His vision is the same as that of the EU circa 1990 — one that even Europe now rejects as a failure.

The answer to every challenge is to found a new program, borrow billions to run it, hire millions more loyal to the progressive gospel of public employment, and demagogue any who oppose it. The public is starting to see that the president’s ideology is really a mixture of the Ivy League, the left-wing of the Democratic Party, the tired canards of the black caucus, extremist residuals from Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers, and twenty years of university multicultural, utopian pacifist, and moral equivalent indoctrination. His Democratic Party is not one with half the House Democrats and does not appeal to liberal independents. He’s the sort of progressive professor whom the proverbial new student comes home at Thanksgiving to quote to a shocked parent..

Obama can no more adopt a centrist identity that Rev Wright could become a Billy Graham, or Jimmy Carter could pivot like Bill Clinton. Most House Democrats grasp that unwelcome truth and so mightily fear his presence in their districts.

Once again, governing against the will of the people has consequences.  Though the Obami aren’t of this world where actions have consequences–it’s not their fault we’re too stupid to see their brilliance.  

Multiple Michelle ice cream cracks, Black Panthers, and ol’ Fidel: it’s Monday laundry!

Good thing the Michelle hasn’t taken away his ice cream (yet): Poll: Rocky road seen ahead for Obama.

Only 38 percent of respondents said Obama deserves to be reelected, even though a majority of voters hold a favorable view of him on a personal level. Forty-four percent said they will vote to oust him, and 13 percent said they will consider voting for someone else.

It’s Obama’s policies that are hurting him right now. By a 13-point margin, voters are down on the health care law. In an especially troubling sign, more than half of self-identified independents — 54 percent — have an unfavorable opinion of the law, compared with just 38 percent who have a favorable opinion.

Sucks when you govern against the will of the people, no? 

 

Ed Morrissey highlights another impressive number from the poll, one that inspires confidence: Among cable-news networks, MSNBC trusted by … 12%.   There is hope for our country yet.

 

The promised second serving of snark, Pundette on fire this morning:

Has Michelle Obama been placed in charge of the diets of Gitmo detainees? Perhaps that’s the explanation behind the latest Guantanamo human rights violation scandal: Gitmo Horrors Continue: Detainees Limited to One Ice Cream.

Heh.  The horror, the horror!  Maybe Michelle will be named as a defendent in the next civil-rights violation charge, a la Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush?  He only let me have one new prayer rug, but she took away my ice cream!   

 

Jen-Ru explores the bombshell testimony of Chris Coates, the DOJ head of the Black Panther trial team and wonders how the Obama administration will be able to sidestep the coming wave of supoenas.  The media can no longer ignore the story.  She writes:

Try as Democrats might to ignore the blockbuster evidence, Coates’s testimony was a game changer. Granted, the testimony contained information already revealed in conservative outlets and by former DOJ attorney J. Christian Adams. But Coates confirmed these facts and added a wealth of new details. An African American attorney and his mother (who also works for DOJ) were harassed for working on a voting case brought against an African American defendant. Obama’s deputy assistant general for civil rights, Julie Fernandez, repeatedly told attorneys not to enforce Section 8 or bring cases against minority defendants. Coates’s supervisor, who directly ordered the case’s dismissal, told him to stop asking applicants if they could enforce laws in a race-neutral fashion. Coates briefed civil rights chief Thomas Perez on the hostility toward race-neutral enforcement of voting laws — before Perez feigned ignorance of such sentiments in sworn testimony. In sum, Coates’s appearance was the scandal’s tipping point.

To borrow the meme from Instapundit: They told me if I voted for John McCain, everyone wouldn’t be protected under the law…

 

Line of the day courtesy Mary O’Grady at the WSJ:

At most marine parks in the world the animals provide the entertainment. But at the Havana aquarium last month, Fidel Castro had a couple of humans eating out of his hand and clapping like trained seals.

Read the rest.  She takes Jeffery Goldberg to task for swallowing Fidel’s lures hook, line and …:

Castro again has an urgent need to put a smiley face on his dictatorship. The economy is in dire straits. Food is scarce, electricity is a rarity, and soap and toilet paper are luxuries. Cuba produces almost nothing and this makes it difficult to get hard currency—aka real money—which in turn makes it tough to buy from abroad. Lending sources have dried up.

If the regime is to stay in power, it needs a new source of income to pay the secret police and keep the masses in rice. The best bet is the American tourist, last seen circa 1950 exploiting the locals, according to revolutionary lore, but now needed by the regime. It wants the U.S. travel ban lifted. To prevail, Castro needs to counteract rumors that he is a dictator. Solution: a makeover in the Atlantic. In Mr. Goldberg, he no doubt recognized the perfect candidate for the job.

More:

It never seems to cross Mr. Goldberg’s mind that he is being used in a manner Communists first learned at Lenin’s knee. Or perhaps he is happy to be useful. In a follow-up post he explains that since Fidel is not as bad as Pol Pot, Cubans should stop complaining. And to demonstrate further how little he knows about the plight of the Cuban people, he says that the “release” of political prisoners “is currently being negotiated.” Wrong. Some have been exiled; some others may receive conditional parole meaning that they can be returned to prison at any time if the regime disapproves of their activities.

Mr. Goldberg is peddling his Castro interviews as serious journalism. But while he was “curious” to get a “glimpse of the great man,” he was ill-prepared for the job. Presumably he knew this, which is why he allowed Ms. Sweig to lead him around Havana by the nose.

Ouch.  You can lead a liberal to kool-aid and give him a Che t-shirt, but show him nefarious reasons for Fidel’s change of heart and he won’t see logic.  Such is life.

 

More later.

 

 

Multiculturalism and liberal hand-wringing: theater in Colorado Springs “too white”

Haven’t we moved past this idiocy?

Apparently not:

The air goes out of the room when Desireè Myers finally speaks up.

“I just don’t feel like I fit here,” Myers tells the two dozen or so participants in a Gazette-organized discussion about the lack of diversity in local theater. A trained actor, she hasn’t been cast in a professional production since 2008. Before that: 2004. “I’ve given up.”

Myers is black.

It’s possible, of course, that she’s not cast because she’s untalented. Maybe she’s sensitive about racial issues. Or maybe Myers has good reason to feel excluded.

The story is from the Sunday Colorado Springs Gazette on the lack of diversity in local theater.  I kid not.  Serious liberal hand-wringing on display:

In 2009-10, the major companies — the Fine Arts Center Theatre Company, TheatreWorks and in their first seasons, Springs Ensemble Theatre and the newly resurrected Star Bar Players — cast 15 minority actors. With the exception of TheatreWorks’ and New York artist Ping Chong’s “Invisible Voices,” which was built around the stories of six locals living with disabilities, none were leads.

The final score: 15 actors of color to 174 Caucasian actors.

The numbers are even starker when you go back a few years. Since the 2006-07 season, the FAC and TheaterWorks have cast 928 roles. Fifty-six minority actors were cast: The FAC with nine and TheatreWorks 47.

Producers and directors explain the imbalance by saying the minority talent pool in the Springs is small and non-white actors don’t show to auditions. At a Fine Arts Center audition for the Gershwin extravaganza “Crazy for You,” 225 actors came out. Four were actors of color. None were cast.

Maybe that’s no surprise when most plays and musicals are written, produced, directed and acted by whites — white men, in fact. In city of 325,921 whites (according to 2009 numbers provided by the city), audiences, too, are predominantly white. If you’re among the city’s estimated 88,000 non-white Springs residents, you will rarely find yourself on stage, hear your stories and even see someone there who looks like you.

As with any count-the-number-of-minority-number-crunching, someone’s feeling’s are hurt as a result of the exclusion:

“If you don’t see yourself on the stage or on the screen, you’re erased,” says Sharon Jensen, director of the New York-based advocacy group The Alliance for the Inclusion in the Arts. Jensen is white. “You’re invisible.”

Of course, the “expert’s” skin color has to be noted.  She’s white.  But she obviously knows how it feels to be excluded, right?  Maybe she felt the angst of females banned from Shakespearean productions. 

More: 

The lack of diversity in theater, while particularly acute in the Colorado Springs, certainly isn’t unique to us. Even theater meccas like New York City fall short of equal casting, especially in lead roles. How many Hispanic Broadway stars can you name? Or playwrights or directors?

“It’s not an equal playing field yet,” says Jensen, who, as head of the New York advocacy group, has been at the front lines of this issue for 21 years. “Far from it.”

In fact, a four-year study of professional theaters revealed more than 90 percent of actors in American shows from 1982 to 1986 were white. If “cultural” productions like “Dreamgirls” were discounted, those numbers went even higher.

My jaw dropped reading this yesterday over coffee.  So Colorado Springs falls short of some mythical standard of multicultural casting that isn’t even the standard in New York City?  Why then all the whining? 

What’s the excuse for the obviously racist theater directors who are all, um, liberal?  (Liberal racism, oh, no, it couldn’t be, could it?)

“It wasn’t so much overt racism,” Jensen says carefully, “as people doing business as they always had. Those people were primarily Caucasian. They were drawing on a pool of talent that was Caucasian because that’s what they knew.”

Ultimately, Jensen says, it’s not an issue of employment, but of doing the right thing. Tony-winning playwright David Henry Hwang, who is Asian American, puts an even finer point on the problem in a 1990 interview by The New York Times.

‘’The real issue is not who gets cast,” he said, “but that any organization continue(s) to perpetuate and encourage stereotypes at the expense of artists of color, which borders on 19th-century imperialism.’’

Hwang was referring to the casting of Jonathan Pryce, a white actor, as the Eurasian lead of “Miss Saigon.”

The Actors’ Equity Association agreed, first barring Pryce from playing the role he originated on London’s West End and then reversing their decision. Pryce won a Tony for his portrayal and played the role on Broadway for 10 years.

Imperialism, of course.  But at the hands of white liberals.  No wonder the angst. 

 

Question: if, according to liberal doctrine, a white man can’t play the part of a minority because he couldn’t possibly be as culturally sensitive and attuned, then what makes it kosher for a minority to play the part of a white?  See why this gets so stupid in a hurry?

 

Want to know how stupid?  Read on:  

[Clinton Turner Davis] also maintains that you can’t task a white director to helm “A Raisin in the Sun,” Lorraine Hansberry’s classic exploration of black family life.

It’s a slap in the face of every minority director looking for work, he says.

“If you have a true commitment to increasing diversity, then the programming would change,” concludes Davis only days before heading to Asia to translate the national poem of Vietnam. “You don’t do ‘1776’ (the Revolutionary War musical running this season). You do something else.”

To the question of whether he’s contradicting his own high standards by presuming to interpret someone else’s culture, he laughs.

“I’m a very culturally sensitive person,” he says. “I’m stepping into this with tremendous humility and profound respect.”

I will give the author of this liberal angst on display props for pointing out the obvious hypocrisy of a black director who rails against the idea of a white person directing a “black” play. 

Of course Davis possesses the cultural sensitivity, humility and respect for his project–the translation of a national poem of a culture with which he holds no bond or tie even though he condemns the same from any white who dare do the same.  But no one else can possibly have the same degree of cultural know-how as a liberal black college theater professor.   Especially someone white.

 

I’m sure Davis agrees with the argument that a white English teacher cannot possibly teach Invisible Man or Native Son.  For that matter, maybe woman should be barred from teaching either one?  By his measure, what makes him think a black teacher can “access” Shakespeare?  No one asks that question.  Of course, they say, a black teacher can teach Shakespeare because Shakespeare wrote about the human condition.  What makes Native Son or A Raisin in the Sun any less human? 

 

I loathe the politics of multiculturalism because it leads to division, not unity.

 

Big Bird a Birther!

I’m not, but this is wicked funny.  Palate cleanser via Hillbuzz.

Obamaloo, Spitzer on “dirty, nasty” and more: it’s Friday laundry!

Obamaloo?  O down eight points in three weeks to 42% approval, the lowest evah among adults–not registered voters or likely voters.  Ouch.

Even the hopiest of the hopey changey cult losing hope: Shepard Fairey loses hope.  Lame-o MSM quote:

Maybe it was inevitable that Hope would fade.

Someone actually wrote this?  With a straight face?  No wonder they’re all losing their jobs, no?

Eliot Spitzer, client no. 9, claims gubernatorial candidate (D) Cuomo is the “dirtiest, nastiest” of politicians.  Takes one to know one?

Filed under the “nothing about this White House would surprise me anymore” category: If this Malik Shabazz visiting the White House residence is the Malik Shabazz…. then the President owes us all an explanation.

I say potato, you say potato. I say public, you say…

Whoops!  Via Doug Powers @ Michelle Malkin, his “Billboard of the Day.”

 Guess spelling isn’t among the 15.  Or common errors. 

(If, by chance,  you’re in need of a handy dandy guide to help you differentiate between oh, antidote and anecdote or depreciate and depricate, this is a handy guide which provides hours of fun reading if you’re of the geeky persuasion.  I taught from the book as a supplement to my high schoolers.   A partial list is also available online here.)

Misleading headline of the day falsely demonizing GOP courtesy the AP

Dear Associated Press and Yahoo! News:

I take offense at your misleading headline, “Republicans block bill to lift military gay ban,” for myriad reasons.

Namely, with one Republican Senator (well, RINO Murkowski, but I digress) absent, it is impossible for “Republicans” to “block” the bill.

Why, you ask?

Well, with 41 Republicans in the Senate minus the absent sore loser from Alaska, that’s only 40 votes. 

Elementary math: 100 Senators (minus) 40 GOP (equals) bill passage with 60 votes.

So why did the bill not pass with the crucial 41st GOP vote absent?

Oh, Democrats voted against the measure?

Whoopsie!  Right, you just made a mistake!

The kicker:

Democratic Sens. Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor of Arkansas sided with Republicans to block the bill. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., also voted against the measure as a procedural tactic. Under Senate rules, casting his vote with the majority of the Senate enables him to revive the bill at a later date if he wants.

Emphasis mine.  Three Democrats sided with 40 Republicans.  Three Democrats, not Republicans, are the reason the bill didn’t pass.

More garbage from the AP:

Senate Republicans on Tuesday blocked legislation that would have repealed the law banning gays from serving openly in the military.

The partisan vote was a defeat for Senate Democrats and gay rights advocates, who saw the bill as their last chance before November’s elections to overturn the law known as “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

With the 56-43 vote, Democrats fell short of the 60 votes needed to advance the legislation. It also would have authorized $726 billion in defense spending including a pay raise for troops.

Senate Democrats attached the repeal provision to the defense bill in the hopes that Republicans would hesitate to vote against legislation that included popular defense programs. But GOP legislators opposed the bill anyway, thwarting a key part of the Democrats’ legislative agenda.

Those eevil Democrat thwarters, Lincoln, Pryor, and Reid!  Is it any surprise two of the three struggle in their reelection bids? 

Allahpundit sees the Reid move as motivation for his base in Nevada:

Reid’s strategy in bundling the defense bill together with the DREAM Act and repealing DADT was, I assume, aimed at forcing a Republican no vote which he can now use to motivate liberals and Latinos in Nevada to turn out for him in November. Which would make sense, I guess, if not for one thing: Wouldn’t he have been better off trying to pass the DREAM Act and repeal of DADT as standalone measures?

No lie.  I think ol’ Harry can’t avoid stepping on his own crank at EVERY turn right now. And I’m thankful–no, estatic–that his strategy fell short.  More Allah brilliance on why ol’ Harry had no choice but to bungle bundle the bill:

Actually, here’s the real reason that Reid bundled all these bills together — I think: He was worried that if he split them all up and held individual votes on each, they’d be filibustered anyway because of Democratic opposition, not Republican. That would be a double defeat for Reid, not only losing on the vote itself but signaling to his party that he’s a weak majority leader who can’t deliver even on basic liberal items like DADT and the DREAM Act. Consider that he probably picked up a few votes on his own side in favor of this bill precisely because it was framed in the larger context of defense spending; Ben Nelson voted yes because now he can claim he did it “for the troops,” but imagine him having to take a straight up-or-down vote on DADT or amnesty with re-election in 2012. Imagine the embarrassment for Reid if he got Collins and Snowe to vote with him on DADT and lost the vote anyway because Nelson, Lincoln, and Pryor all said no. A vote on DREAM, which could have won multiple Republicans — and lost even more Democrats — would have been even dicier. (Speaking of which, why is Blanche Lincoln still voting with Republicans? Does she really not understand she’s going to lose in November regardless?) Reid likely figured that his best bet here was to lard the bill up with controversial liberal wish list items in hopes of unifying the Republican opposition so that he could then blame their failure solely on GOP obstructionism. If that was the plan, it worked. Anyone seriously believe it’ll do him much good?

No, they’ll see him as the weakling leader he is thirty-odd days before an election.  The end result: even with a liberal majority and a number of sympathetic RINOs, Harry still couldn’t pass basic progressive legislation.  What a winner, no?

For background on the shamnesty-bailout–for-illegal-students DREAM act, see Michelle Malkin here and here.

Thank you, Obama

Without you, we wouldn’t have tea!

People are so enamored with Hopenchange that they prefer Palin’s politics: 52% to 40.  Go Mama Grizzly!

Via Beltway Confidential:

Fifty-two percent (52%) of Likely U.S. Voters say their own views are closer to Sarah Palin’s than they are to President Obama’s, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Just 40% say their views are closer to the president’s than to those of the former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate.

And is this any surprise?

Among the Political Class, however, 68% say their views are more like Obama’s, while 63% of Mainstream voters describe their views as more like Palin’s.

No.  Ed Morrissey elaborates:

Interestingly, in the same survey, Palin only gets a 48% favorable rating, with a 49% unfavorable rating.  That seems to indicate that while some voters think she represents their values, they may not be as supportive of her as a candidate.  Similarly, respondents are almost exactly split on whether Palin is good for the GOP, 40/39, with 20% unsure.  They’re also somewhat less likely to vote for a candidate endorsed by Palin (27%) than to support one endorsed by her (16%), with 55% saying it makes no difference.

However, on values, Palin clearly comes up aces against Obama.  She beats Obama among both men (55/37) and women (48/43).  She has majorities in every age demographic, even an 18-point majority among Obama’s core constituency of college-age voters (18-29YO, 52/34).  Fourteen percent of Democrats choose Palin, and she wins handily among independents by more than 2-1, 59/27.  She only loses in two income categories, both by pluralities: under $20K (40/42), and $60-75K (41/49).

Conservatives for Palin has the crosstabs. 

My best: more folks will come on board with common sense over Keynesianism.  Since the recession is over (huh? even Obama voters tire of the beans-n-franks the Obama economy dishes out).