A Coren Clip: Weighing in on Wisconsin

As a Canadian, I would like to apologize for the stupidity you are about to see in this clip provided by SDAMatt2. It’s from Friday’s episode of ‘The Michael Coren Show’, but listening to what one panel member had to say about the Tea Party, you would think you were watching HBO’s ‘Real Time with Bill Maher’. You have been warned.

Before I start, I would like to mention something about Britt Aharoni. This is a radical who said on an episode earlier this month that former President George W. Bush was a terrorist who should be charged for war crimes. She not only said this, but “Britt the Twit” then went on to discuss how a court could go about doing exactly that. Suffice to say, she is far from the intellectual she pretends to be.

Britt starts this off by dismissing Michael Coren’s remarks on the nature of these kind of protest. As an example of this, she cites the behaviour of the protesters at last year’s G20 summit in Toronto, stating that it was only a very small group of protesters that were violent. Oh really?

Britt’s trying to downplay what actually occurred, pretending that the Black Bloc weren’t getting support from the other protesters. The video shows this claim to be downright false as Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) members are actually shielding the more violent protesters from the cameras. Aside from CUPE, members of the Koffler Student Centre and the Graduate Students’ Union at the University of Toronto were arrested for assisting these very rioters, giving them shelter and trying to hide their weapons from authorities. It is clear that those responsible for the violence at the G20 summit and those who supported their efforts were far from the minority Britt would like us to believe they were.

After lying about this, Britt then goes on to suggest that this behaviour is somehow comparable to that of the Tea Party. We didn’t see Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin or any other conservative figure advocating violence, and yet earlier this week Democrat Congressman Michael Capuano telling union protesters that they are going to need to “get a little bloody when necessary.” (hat-tip Michelle Malkin and The Right Scoop at TheRightScoop.com) This isn’t about democracy, not when protesters take to the streets denouncing a democratically elected politician, calling this same politician a tyrannical dictator and threaten violence if they don’t get their way. As bad as comparing this behaviour to how the vast majority of Tea Partiers have behaved, Britt had only begun her slanderous tirade.

“Britt the Twit” follows this up by stating that not only is the vitriol demonstrated in this video found predominantly in the Tea Party, but that the Tea Party itself is actually a “white power movement.” It wasn’t a Tea Party member who assaulted a FreedomWorks activist this week. It wasn’t a Tea Party member that was caught earlier this week saying “I’ll fuck you in the ass, you faggot!” It wasn’t a Tea Party member who said “The Tea Party is a bunch of dick-sucking corporate butt-lickers who want to crush the working people of this country.” As for racism, Michelle Malkin’s most recent column highlights not only the racism, but also the sexism and homophobia in these rallies, pointing to the more outrageous incidents we have seen this week, as well as a post by El Marco at LookingattheLeft.com displaying the signs carried by the protesters. As much as Britt would like to deny it, this vitriol came from union protesters. If the Tea Party had been caught doing the same, we wouldn’t hear the end of it.

I could go on to discuss Sid Ryan’s defense of Britt’s comments, but it would be redundant. It isn’t as if anyone expected Sid to denounce what she said, let alone point out what’s actually happening in Wisconsin, especially considering that he will not waiver in his support for the labour movement. I could go on to discuss Michael Coren and Claire Hoy’s response to Britt’s and Sid’s comments, but that too would be redundant as much of what they said I have also said refuting Britt’s claims. There is a reason why I spent so much time focusing on the remarks of one panel member instead commenting on what everyone had to say.

What really upsets me about all this is that Britt is portrayed as an intellectual, someone who has a unique perspective on these events and who’s opinion should be respected. Nothing could be further from the truth. This radical displays all the signs of an indoctrinated drone. Listening to her talk about how awful the Tea Party is, claiming that she gets her information from the media (mostly likely MSNBC), shows just how empty headed this moron is. It doesn’t matter to her that, as Seton Motley pointed out, that the vast majority of this Obama-Hitler nonsense, including the Obama-with-Mustache poster, comes from Lyndon LaRouche and LaRouchePAC. Britt will not waiver from this narrative no matter what the facts are. Years of programming by misinformed and misguided authority figures will not allow her to come to any other conclusion.

This isn’t someone who deserves any attention, let alone a panel seat on ‘The Michael Coren Show’. It would be nice if Britt Aharoni just kept her mouth shut, especially since it is quiet clear that she hasn’t anything intelligent, let alone honest, to say. Pathetic…

More TSA Nonsense: Nipple rings and a little boy’s shirt

I have already discussed this at full the other day, so this post is simply an update on more absurd stories that are coming out concerning the Transport Security Administration’s (TSA) security measures.

The first comes from Erick Erickson at RedState.com concerning return soldiers having to give up nail clippers and not their unloaded guns.

…This might be a good time to remind everyone that approximately 233 people re-boarded that plane with assault rifles, pistols, and machine guns–but nothing that could have been used as a weapon.

The second story comes from Gateway Pundit. A CBS 2 news report from July 2008 concerning some of the earlier TSA security procedures. This is why I don’t refer to these intrusive screenings and “new” since they really aren’t.

The last two stories come from The Right Scoop. The first is a video via Hot Air of a little boy who was forced to remove his shirt for a pat-down. Suffice to say, this was overly inappropriate and it definitely crossed the line concerning common sense and decency.

The second is another story concerning flight attendant Cathi Bossi, who was forced to remove her prosthetic breast after it was discovered by the TSA agent who was giving the pat-down. Like the previous story, this reeks of incompetence and a lack of common sense. Here’s the story as reported on WBTV.

Suffice to say, this kind of nonsense will continue until those in charge surrender political correctness for common sense. We know who we are looking for and it is clear by these stories that the TSA will treat everyone but Muslim fundamentalists like terrorists. The upsetting thing about all this is that it is most likely just the “tip of the iceberg”… Pathetic…

UPDATE: To highlight the absurdity of these security procedures, Doug Powers at Michelle Malkin’s blog is reporting on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton comments on the matter. When asked about the intrusive pat-downs this morning by Bob Schieffer on ‘Face the Nation’, she responded “No, I mean who would?”

Hot Air’s Allahpundit is also reporting on this, noting that while Clinton does have a chuckle about these pat-downs, she does defend the use of such intrusive searches. This does raise a question though; If it isn’t something she would submit to, why should anyone else? Mind-boggling…

UPDATE: Two new stories from Hot Air. The first comes from Matt Lewis who discusses the importance of Matt Drudge and The Drudge Report to bringing this issue to the forefront. Returning to the video from Gateway Pundit, this kind of nonsense has been going on for a few years now, but thanks to Drudge’s efforts, this has now become the major focus of news media. The second article comes from Cubachi, discussing a statement made by Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal about how the American government protects the rights of terrorists and not those of the citizenry. This point has been made a lot recently, but it needs to be stressed. Barack Obama and Eric Holder, along with many on the left, seem far more concerned with whether or not terrorists like Ahmed Ghailani are getting fair trials, then they are with whether or not these intrusive security measures violates the Fourth Amendment rights of American airline passengers. It does seem fairly clear that, as Jindal pointed out, this administration has its priorities wrong.

UPDATE: Doug Powers at Michelle Malkin’s blog is posting about the Erick Erickson story from RedState.com. While it isn’t about the intrusive TSA security procedures we have been hearing about, as Powers points out, it highlights the kind of “bureaucracy in action” nonsense we have come to expect from those behind this program.

Midterm Election Results: What They Mean for Barack Obama and America

With the majority of the votes in and counted, as predicted, Republicans have captured the House and made significant gains in the Senate. This is a crippling loss for Barack Obama and the Democrats as they no longer have the votes to continue pushing their agenda. Unlike Republicans who were forced to examine their mistakes last election, the majority of Democrats and their supporters refuse to accept that voters don’t embrace “Hope and Change” anymore. Instead of gloating, let’s breakdown the election results to see why even worst case scenarios for Democrats weren’t able predict such a massive Republican victory.

What does this election say to Obama and the Democrats? As Charles Krauthammer said the morning after the election on Fox News, “I think that the message is unmistakable that the Obama agenda is dead.” After being elected in 2008, Obama and the Democrats had a supermajority in both houses. They had assumed their election victory was a mandate by the people to radically change how Washington is run, but the truth was that voters were frustrated with President George W. Bush and Republicans and naively believed that the promise of “Hope and Change” would end the financial crisis and lead to massive job creation. After trying a “two-year experiment in hyper-liberalism”, the financial crisis has gotten much worse, there has been a sharp increase in the unemployment rate, government spending has become unmanageable, etc and the American people had had enough. The problem is that Democrats and their supports seem unable to realize this.

To his credit, CNN Senior Political Analyst David Gergen stated on Anderson Cooper 360 Wednesday night that not only is the American public outright rejecting ObamaCare, but by voting overwhelmingly for the Republicans, they showing that they believe America is heading in the wrong direction. The problem is that the majority of Democrats and their supporters are unwilling to accept that “Hope and Change” is no longer popular. Since Tuesday night we have heard one left-wing pundit after another saying that this wasn’t an election to end Obama and the Democrat’s agenda, citing exit polls as the basis for this belief. The problem is that exit polls aren’t good indicators as to how or why people voted. Aside from ignoring the election results, these explanations also fail to consider recent polling data which clearly indicates that this is definitely not the result of poor messaging by the Democrats. Former Clinton pollster Doug Schoen recently released a poll indicating that fifty-six percent of Americans don’t believe Obama deserves another term in office. Another poll, this one released by Rasmussen the day before the election, stated that fifty-eight percent of likely voters favoured a repeal of ObamaCare. Besides these polls, Hot Air’s Allahpundit points out the fact even the moderate “Blue Dog” Democrats were voted out, many of which not only voted against health care reform, but openly attacked soon-to-be-former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, showing that the majority of Americans wanted to eliminate even the unlikeliest of votes for other pieces of legislation put forth by the Democrats.

What does this say about the direction of the Democrat party itself? While many left-wing pundits will claim that Obama was a “moderate” or “centrist”, or that it was the Republicans which drove him to the left, the truth is that he and his administration were always staunchly liberal. One only has to look at his Senate voting record when for proof of this. Why is this a problem? As a recent Gallup poll showed, 42% of Americans view themselves as conservatives, with only 20% stating that they are liberal or very liberal. This means that not only the Obama administration, but the Democratic Party itself will need to shift towards the center to be electable outside liberal dominated districts. Compromising with Republicans on issues like natural-gas might help win a few votes, but there definitely needs to be a realignment by the Democrats so that they are more in sync with the political makeup of America, especially if they don’t want to suffer similar losses in the 2012 presidential election.

Even with all this, Democrats and their supporters refuse to accept that the vast majority of Americans don’t like the direction the country is heading, instead blaming the economy, poor messaging and “a period of know-nothingism” for the poor election results.

More on the Stewart/Colbert rally: Attendence Numbers and ‘Drinking with Bob’

I had said in the previous post, I was waiting on something more official than earlier estimates on the crowd size of the ‘Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear’, the event Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert had on Saturday. CBS is reporting 215,000 but there is reason to doubt their numbers. Aaron Worthing at Patterico’s Pontifications has a post up saying that CBS’ numbers, and Little Green Footballs’ Charles Johnson’s support for said numbers, are wrong and that more people did attend Glenn Beck’s ‘Restoring Honor Rally’, providing photographic evidence to back up his claim.

And the latest from Johnson is now he is bull___ting about Stewart’s rally. Like I said, I don’t care about crowd size at these things, but I do expect honesty on the subject. So as of now, Johnson has a post that proclaims that 215K attended the Stewart rally….

…Well, which should we believe, Charles? CBS news or our lying eyes?

As stated previously, NBC’s Domenico Montanaro tweeted that officials estimated that 300,000-325,000 people attended the Beck rally, which is still considerably higher than the 215,000 estimated to have attended the Stewart rally. Still, I have trouble trusting CBS’ estimate, especially given how partisan their station and its affiliates have become. Today it came out that reporters from KTVA, CBS’ affiliate in Alaska, accidentally left a voice mail for Republican Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller which reveals they were going to attempt to smear him by locating a child molester at his rally. Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey has been covering this story since this morning, posting on KTVA’s disingenuous admission of half-guilt, in which they claimed that while the reporters did in fact work for them, the recording wasn’t as it sounded. Suffice to say, CBS’ bias towards Democrats, as well as their bias towards the Stewart/Colbert rally, is hard to ignore so whatever they report now shouldn’t be accepted without serious scrutiny.

Aside from the number of attendees, what about the who these people were that attended the rally? The Daily Caller’s Matthew Boyle and Laura Donovan covered this, pointing out that not only did most of them not know who was running in their districts, but they were going to vote Democrat. NewsBusters.org’s Matthew Sheffield reported on the attendees’ hatred of Glenn Beck and Fox News, as well as the signs they were carrying around, some with “Adolph Hitler mustaches” on prominent Republicans and conservatives like Sarah Palin, John Boehner and Rush Limbaugh. Reason TV’s Nick Gillespie and Michael Moynihan also attended the event, discovering, as Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey pointed out, that “sanity” was a relative term.

Suffice to say, these people are definitely different then those who attended Beck’s rally. As shown in Reason TV’s video, many of them were typical “drones”, people who were unable to accept that Barack Obama and the Democrats were in any way responsible for the situation America was in. Why is this? As ‘Drinking with Bob’ points out, they were told previously by Jon Stewart that “The One” was the one to vote for, and while many of them can no longer trust the man they helped put in the White House, they continue to trust the person who told them who to elect him.

It is any wonder why Arianna Huffington and Oprah Winfrey paid for the buses to get these people to the rally? As Doug Powers at Michelle Malkin’s blog stated, there is a noticeable lack of support for the Democrats with midterm elections two days away.

Even with CBS spinning the attendance numbers, the truth is that rally was a failure. Sure it was mildly entertaining for those who attended, but it didn’t give attendees any real reason vote on November 2nd. They know who they are supposed to vote for, though I have a hard time believing that they will be at the polls in significant enough numbers to make any noticeable impact on the elections’ results. Democrats are going to suffer significant loses and there nothing Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and CBS can do to change that.

UPDATE: What did I say about “drones”? Michelle Malkin has a post up looking at Obama’s most dedicated and delusional followers from before the last election and now as “Hope and Change” will be voted down tomorrow. One has to wonder if “Nameless the Begger” was at the ‘Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear’ eh?

UPDATE: Hot Air’s Allahpundit has a post up concerning Glenn Beck’s response to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s ‘Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.’ While Beck take a few shots at Stewart, more of his criticism is for Colbert who “jumped the shark” with his antics. TheRightscoop.com has the video up of the discussion on Beck’s show about the event and I recommend my modest readership give it a watch.

Jon Stewart’s Dark Side Connection; The Stewart Trooper

Aside from blogging, I also enjoy collecting figures. I am not one of those “completionists” who must have every figure available, but I do enjoy picking up the occasional figure for my modest collection. It all started when I was in Nantong, China, when I had a fair bit of spending money with very little to spend on. It all started with a few Transformers movie figures, and from there I started collecting Star Wars figures as well. I quickly started following figure releases, bookmarking Seibertron.com and Rebelscum.com, two of the top resources for Transformers and Star Wars collectors respectively. JediTempleArchives.com is also a good resource, but this post is picking up on a story that was first posted on BathaSkull.com…

Earlier this afternoon at STAR WARS Celebration V in Orlando, ‘The Daily Show’’s Jon Stewart sat down for a one-hour interview with STAR WARS creator George Lucas in what was billed “The Main Event.” Hasbro is proud and honored to create a special gift for Stewart, which Lucas presented to him during the event – a one of a kind (NOT FOR SALE) 3.75-inch Jon Stewart Stormtrooper action figure! The figure, which is packaged on a unique blister card, includes a removable helmet and two interchangeable heads sculpted in Stewart’s likeness – one with a clean shaven face and the other styled with Stewart’s recent goatee.

Click the link to get a look at the figure itself, as it is a pretty good likeness of John Stewart. Suffice to say, this kind of action from George Lucas doesn’t surprise me. His comparison of Barack Obama to the Jedi from the Star Wars series during and after the election was downright nonsensical (one has to wonder now with his rising disapproval whether or not Obama is more like Anakin rather than Luke Skywalker) and definitely exposes Lucas as a left-wing ideologue. So if Obama is Darth Vader, it would be fitting for Jon Stewart to be one of many Stormtroopers. Let’s not pretend that Stewart isn’t one of this administration’s loyal soldiers, especially with such comments like his his recent ones criticizing Republican worries concerning rising taxes and deficits. ‘The Daily show’ might take a shot at a Democrat, once in a while, but it is more like “friendly fire”, then an all about “rebellion”. Definitely not the “rebel scum” he would want his audience to believe he is…

I know the big news for Star Wars fans is the alternate opening for Return of the Jedi that was shown at the Star Wars Celebration V convention last weekend, but I felt this story needed to be told. In my opinion, this figure is very much a metaphor for Jon Stewart’s place in the political arena. While George Lucas didn’t intend his gift to ‘The Daily Show”s host to be seen this way, it would be a laugh if other political commentator’s picked up on it. After all, this joke does seem a lot funnier than Stewart these days… Hilarious…

UPDATE: Two things to add to this post. First, the picture of the Stewart Stormtrooper from BanthaSkull.com. I feel my post is incomplete without it, but I do want to give credit to the website which had this story first.

The second update is a video from TheRightScoop.com. Jon Stewart, being the “Stormtrooper” that he is, attacked the “rebel scum” Glenn Beck over comments made about the Ground Zero Mosque. Beck has since responded and took the Daily Show host to task over his inability to distinguish his statements from those made by the mosque organizers and supporters.

Once again, this goes to that Stewart is a “loyal soldier of the Empire”… And yes, I can’t resist all the Star Wars references and puns…