Brilliant Goal Celebration

From the Icelandic league! Seriously!

Do you know what is in the Bank Bailout Bill?

Technically, it is the Financial Reform Bill. But I don't know what is in the bill, because right now I don't have the time to look into another 2000 page bill. But others do. I am 99.999% sure that most of Congress doesn't know what is in the bill. There is this little gem:

Four members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights have signed a letter complaining that Section 324 of the conference report titled the “Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act” “includes a section on race and gender that even those who pride themselves on keeping up with national affairs may have failed to notice.” This provision, which can be found on page 172 of the conference report, may lead to unconstitutional racial and gender preferences being forced on financial institutions covered by the new law.

The letter from members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights was signed by Commissioners Peter Kirsanow, Ashley Taylor, Gail Heriot, and Todd Gaziano. In the letter these experts in civil rights law explain that the legislation “requires that each covered agency establish an ‘Office of Minority and Women Inclusion’ responsible for ‘all matters of the agency relating to diversity in management, employment, and business activities.’” This law will empower federal bureaucrats to issue rules and regulations governing the financial sector of the economy, if those businesses are doing any work for the federal government.

The Commissioners further argue that these new bureaucrats will be empowered to shall “’develop standards’ for ‘assessing the diversity policies and practices of entities regulated by the agency’ and ‘develop and implement standards and procedures to ensure, to the maximum extent possible, the fair inclusion and utilization of minorities, women, and minority-owned and women-owned businesses in all businesses and activities of the agency.” According to the letter, this new mandate will cover “financial institutions, investment banking firms, mortgage banking firms, asset management firms, brokers, dealers, financial services entities, underwriters, accountants, investment consultants and providers of legal services.” If these institutions are doing business with the government, newly minted bureaucrats will be allowed to study the racial and gender composition of these covered entities work forces to search for companies with not enough minorities and women in a decision making capacity.

Here is another piece about this section which notes

What would be the mission of this new corps of Federal monitors? The Dodd-Frank bill sets it forth succinctly and simply - all too simply. The mission, it says, is to assure "to the maximum extent possible the fair inclusion" of women and minorities, individually and through businesses they own, in the activities of the agencies, including contracting.

How to define "fair" has bedeviled government administrators, university admissions officers, private employers, union shop stewards and all other supervisors since time immemorial - or at least since Congress first undertook to prohibit discrimination in employment.

So, not surprising, the definition of "fair" is going to be in the eye of the beholder. The problem is that the beholder will be a group of unelected bureaucrats who will get to make up the law without any real accountability.

So what will we get? Quotas--make no mistake about it.

Look, I like the idea of minority and women owned business. I believe that the law, however, should be completely neutral on the regulatory front. No rules should be put in place that favor one type of business owner over another, not on race, not on gender, not on anything.

Daily Caller Leading the Way on "Journolist" Scandal

This story about disgraced Washington Post writer Dan Weigel is just one of the stories leading the Daily Caller today.

This story is ugly and not likely to get better anytime soon.

Documents show media plotting to kill stories about Rev. Jeremiah Wright

The Daily Caller's Jonathan Strong looks at the spike job some members of the media did on the Reverend Jeremiah Wright story that threatened to derail President Obama's election campaign:

It was the moment of greatest peril for then-Sen. Barack Obama’s political career. In the heat of the presidential campaign, videos surfaced of Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, angrily denouncing whites, the U.S. government and America itself. Obama had once bragged of his closeness to Wright. Now the black nationalist preacher’s rhetoric was threatening to torpedo Obama’s campaign.

The crisis reached a howling pitch in mid-April, 2008, at an ABC News debate moderated by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. Gibson asked Obama why it had taken him so long – nearly a year since Wright’s remarks became public – to dissociate himself from them. Stephanopoulos asked, “Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?”

Sounds like Gibson and Stephanopoulos were doing their job, right? Perhaps, but some liberal media members were not happy and started plotting ways to eliminate the story from the news cycle.

Watching this all at home were members of Journolist, a listserv comprised of several hundred liberal journalists, as well as like-minded professors and activists. The tough questioning from the ABC anchors left many of them outraged. “George [Stephanopoulos],” fumed Richard Kim of the Nation, is “being a disgusting little rat snake.”

Others went further. According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.

In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”

Sound familiar?

As I noted in my previous post, labeling someone with the tag "racists" is the liberals favorite tactic. It is mean, spiteful, hateful and 99 times out of 100, just flat out wrong. That so-called journalists have political views is not the problem, nor would one or two or even a dozen journalists, working independently, to burnish Obama's reputation during the scandal be a problem for me (so long as they were doing it in the op-ed pages and not in the news pages). But when a group of journalists, self-selected liberals, discuss and collude to hide a legitimate story about the credibility, background and thinking of a presidential candidate--that is a real problem, nay a scandal.

I have never met the President personally (and not likely to), but I don't need to meet the man in order to make a decision about his politics. That doesn't make me racist--it makes me conservative, libertarian or simply a guy who doesn't like the Obama policy program. I don't know if Fred Barnes or Karl Rove are racists and given that I have no evidence on the matter, I will give them the benefit of the doubt.

Simply put, this story is going to get some legs and it will not look good for the mainstream press.



Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/20/documents-show-media-plotting-to-kill-stories-about-rev-jeremiah-wright/#ixzz0uFAq6pJe

Race Card Fraud

I wish I were as eloquent as Thomas Sowell on Race Card Fraud:

Credit card fraud is a serious problem. But race card fraud is an even bigger problem.

Playing the race card takes many forms. Judge Charles Pickering, a federal judge in Mississippi who defended the civil rights of blacks for years and defied the Ku Klux Klan back when that was dangerous, was depicted as a racist when he was nominated for a federal appellate judgeship.

No one even mistakenly thought he was a racist. The point was simply to discredit him for political reasons-- and it worked.

This year's target is the Tea Party. When leading Democrats, led by a smirking Nancy Pelosi, made their triumphant walk on Capitol Hill, celebrating their passage of a bill in defiance of public opinion, Tea Party members on the scene protested.

All this was captured on camera and the scene was played on television. What was not captured on any of the cameras and other recording devices on the scene was anybody using racist language, as has been charged by those playing the race card.

When you realize how many media people were there, and how many ordinary citizens carry around recording devices of one sort or another, it is remarkable-- indeed, unbelievable-- that racist remarks were made and yet were not captured by anybody.

Now we hear that the sacking of Mark Williams by the Tea Party movement is proof of the Tea Party's racism.

Make no mistake, Williams' letter was ill-timed, ill-conceived and poorly executed. However, just because Williams is associated with the Tea Party doesn't make the organization racist. Nor for that matter does it make Williams racist. The truth is if you strip away references to color, the President and Colored People, the message in Williams letter is about freedom, about individuality, about liberty. In short it is about what the Tea Party stands for.

The Democrat play book is easy to read and see coming a mile away. If an organization or a person threatens them, the easiest, most effective method of destroying that organization or person is to call them a racist. No matter what evidence is marshaled against the charge, the word sticks like a brand burned onto a person's forehead. I can't be shaken and it ruins lives and organizations. It is wrong and it will continue until someone calls B.S. on the NAACP.

The problem is that the NAACP has already labeled Thomas Sowell as an "Uncle Tom," itself a racist term. The bigger problem is that pulling the race card is easy. The biggest problem is that we as a society allow this crap to continue.

Proper Reaction?

Eugene Robinson's "Purge This Poison" piece talks about the "rightness" of the NAACP's "Tea Party is Racist" resolution now being proved true by the actions of the Tea Party expelling Mark Williams:

That was quick. We now have proof the NAACP was right.

When the nation's leading civil rights organization passed a resolution condemning displays of racism by tea party activists, leaders of the movement reacted with umbrage so thick you could cut it with a knife -- then demonstrated that the NAACP's allegation was entirely justified.

On Sunday, the National Tea Party Federation announced it had expelled one of the movement's most prominent figures -- a California blowhard named Mark Williams -- because of the outrageously racist things he had said about the NAACP. Ejected along with Williams was his whole organization, Tea Party Express, which had been a particularly active, high-profile group.

The last straw was a "satirical" letter that Williams, a right-wing talk radio host, posted on his website. It was supposed to be a missive from NAACP President Ben Jealous to Abraham Lincoln, and the Tea Party Federation deemed it "clearly offensive." With good reason.

I think the Tea Party was right to denounce Williams from only a PR standpoint.

But I have a question for Robinson and the rest of the NAACP: Have you ever publicly expelled someone for making comments that could be construed as racist?

No.

Yeah, thought so.

It Depends On What the Definition of "Is" is.

Gateway Pundit has the story of the NAACP trying to parse its way out of the Tea Party is racist resolution passed by the NAACP earlier this week.

Go read it. It does remind me of the Parser in Chief, Bill Clinton.

Anti-Obama=Racist

Jenny Beth Martin and Mark Meckler at POLITICO.com point out the pattern:

A clear pattern of behavior has emerged over the last 16 months. According to liberals, if you disagree with their thinking, and if you disagree with the Obama administration, you are not only wrong, you are a “racist.”

The latest strike by the left comes from the NAACP, which has resolved that the tea party movement is inherently “racist.” At its most simple, this is a direct attack on the First Amendment rights of millions of Americans.

The NAACP has long history of liberalism and racism.

If you are a conservative — including a conservative African-American — there is no room for you at the NAACP. If you have opinions that differ from the NAACP and the liberal establishment, and if you are African-American, you are an “Uncle Tom,” a “negro,” “not black enough” and “against our people.”

In other words, the NAACP fancies itself the thought police for millions of black Americans. Disagree with them and you will be ostracized and attacked. You will be subjected to public humiliation and racist commentary from NAACP leadership. The message is clear: Toe the line or pay the price.

But the NAACP does not stand alone in this regard. The left has a long history of using the race card. It has been pulled on people across the political spectrum.

President Bill Clinton was smeared as a racist by the Obama campaign when Hillary Clinton was running for president. It seems that anyone who disagrees with the far left, socialist policies of Barack Obama and the current administration is subject to the heavy hand of the race card.

If you can't beat them with logic, then beat them with a smear campaign.

Are there racists in the Tea Party Movement? Probably--any large sample of people will have some loathsome creatures. Are there racists in the NAACP? Probably for the same reason.

When things like this happy, I wonder what icons of the NAACP would think, men like Thurgood Marshall. He has to be spinning in his grave. I don't like some of NAACP's politics, but I never thought of them as stupid. Now I am not so sure.



Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/39745.html#ixzz0tqqpzRr2

Is the Foreclosure Crisis Getting Worse? | The Atlantic Wire

Is the Foreclosure Crisis Getting Worse? Yes according to the Atlantic.

Here is the gist. Mortgages get paid when people have sufficient income to pay them. To have sufficient income, you have to have a job. If the economy is tanking so bad that jobs are not being created, you can't get a job. Without a job, you can't get income to pay the mortgage.

There are some other reasons as well, but read the whole thing.

Seriously?

Complaints about a naked mannequin in Nebraska.

Seriously?

Most Americans Not Willing To Pay Higher Taxes For Public Employees, Entitlement Programs - Rasmussen Reports™

Look, I like the work that Scott Rasmussen does, I think he is a very good pollster who doesn't ask overly slanted questions and does a good job interpreting the results of his polls in a fair way.

Michael Caine has said that on a number of occaisions and I remember Charlton Heston being asked why he did the Bud Light Commercials and he said because they paid him an obscene amount of money for voiceover work. What does that have to do with Rasmussen--I think he takes cake walk polling jobs for a paycheck--not that I mind--he has to make a living too. But this polling gig was just too easy: most Americans are not willing to pay higher taxes for public employees and entitlement programs. Wow there is a shocker.

Rasmussen will be dining out on that gig for a while without having to break a sweat.

What's Wrong With This Statement

From this CNN.com story:

"We have grave concerns that the punishment does not fit the alleged crime, " Assistant Secretary of State P.J. Crowley said Thursday. "For a modern society such as Iran, we think this raises significant human rights concerns."

The "punishment" we are talking about is this:

She will be buried up to her chest, deeper than a man would be, and the stones that will be hurled at her will be large enough to cause pain but not so large as to kill her immediately, according to an Amnesty International report that cited the Iranian penal code.

This woman's crime is adultry.

I am not condoning the adultry, but to call Iran a "modern" society with this kind of middle ages era punishment is a bit of a stretch.

Divorce Agreement Proposal

I got this forwarded to me and thought it was kind of funny. I don't know who the author is, but who cares:


Dear American liberals, leftists, social progressives, socialists, Marxists and Obama supporters, et al:

We have stuck together since the late 1950's for the sake of the kids, but the whole of this latest election process has made me realize that I want a divorce. I know we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future generations, but sadly, this relationship has clearly run its course.

Our two ideological sides of America cannot and will not ever agree on what is right for us all, so let's just end it on friendly terms. We can smile and chalk it up to irreconcilable differences and go our own way.

Here is a model separation agreement:
Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by landmass each taking a similar portion. That will be the difficult part, but I am sure our two sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be relatively easy! Our respective representatives can effortlessly divide other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate tastes.

We don't like redistributive taxes so you can keep them. You are welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU. Since you hate guns and war, we'll take our firearms, the cops, the NRA and the military. We'll take the nasty, smelly oil industry and you can go with wind, solar and biodiesel. You can keep Oprah, Michael Moore and Rosie O'Donnell. You are, however, responsible for finding a bio-diesel vehicle big enough to move all three of them.

We'll keep capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceutical companies, Wal-Mart and Wall Street. You can have your beloved lifelong welfare dwellers, food stamps, homeless, homeboys, hippies, druggies and illegal aliens. We'll keep the hot Alaskan hockey moms, greedy CEO's and rednecks. We'll keep the Bibles and give you NBC and Hollywood .

You can make nice with Iran and Palestine and we'll retain the right to invade and hammer places that threaten us. You can have the peaceniks and war protesters. When our allies or our way of life are under assault, we'll help provide them security.

We'll keep our Judeo-Christian values. You are welcome to Islam, Scientology, Humanism, political correctness and Shirley McClain. You can also have the U.N. but we will no longer be paying the bill.

We'll keep the SUV's, pickup trucks and oversized luxury cars. You can take every Subaru station wagon you can find.

You can give everyone healthcare if you can find any practicing doctors. We'll continue to believe healthcare is a luxury and not a right. We'll keep "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "The National Anthem." I'm sure you'll be happy to substitute "Imagine", "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing", "Kum Ba Ya" or "We Are the World".

We'll practice trickle down economics and you can continue to give trickle up poverty your best shot.
Since it often so offends you, we'll keep our history, our name and our flag.

Would you agree to this? If so, please pass it along to other like-minded liberal and conservative patriots and if you do not agree, just hit delete. In the spirit of friendly parting, I'll bet you answer which one of us will need whose help in 15 years.

Sincerely,
John J. Wall
Law Student and an American

P. S. Also, please take Ted Turner, Sean Penn, Martin Sheen, Barbara Streisand, & Jane Fonda with you.

P. S. S. And you won't have to press 1 for English when you call our country.

Liverpool confirm appointment of Roy Hodgson - Barclays Premier League - ESPN Soccernet

Sucks for Fulham

Kagan can't answer: Does Congress have the power to tell people what to eat?

American Thinker Blog presents a bit of a problem for freedom: She refused to outline the limits of the Commerce Clause.

You may remember the Commerce Clause, it is part of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. The Commerce Clause has been used for good-i.e. enforcing civil rights for example, but it has also been used for bad--i.e. ObamaCare, bailouts, etc.

Ms. Kagan refused to say if a law that mandates how and what we are to eat is unconstitutional, which can be legitimately interpreted to mean that she doesn't see such a law as a violation of the Commerce Clause. Now, she did say it was a dumb law, but stupidity is not unconstitutional per se.