"The ["Law of the Sea"] treaty proposes to create a new global governance institution that would regulate American citizens and businesses without being accountable politically to the American people. ... Americans should be uncomfortable with unelected and unaccountable tribunals appointed by the secretary general of the United Nations serving as the final arbiter of such disagreements.
"Even if one were to agree wtih the principle of global wealth redistribution from the U.S. to other nations, other U.N. bodies have proven notably unskilled at financial managements. . . .
The broadest proposal in the draft materials is an initiative by China to give countries authority over "the information and communication infrastructure within their state" and require that online companies "operating in their territory" use the Internet "in a rational way"—in short, to legitimize full government control. The Internet Society, which represents the engineers around the world who keep the Internet functioning, says this proposal "would require member states to take on a very active and inappropriate role in patrolling" the Internet.
Several proposals would give the U.N. power to regulate online content for the first time, under the guise of protecting against computer malware or spam. Russia and some Arab countries want to be able to inspect private communications such as email. . . .
Palin: "And for these lame-stream media characters to get all wee-weed up about that, first you have to ask yourself, 'Have they ever attended a Sunday school class even? Have they never heard of this terminology before?" And that's why they got so, you know, just whacked out about the speech," Sarah Palin told Sean Hannity on FOX News tonight.
Me: Excellent point! No, they probably haven't ever attended a Sunday School class. Instead, they've (media people) imbibed the milk of radical secularism and consequently look on Christians as weird and a danger to society. Which illustrates Santorum's point. America is involved in a spiritual contest. It's original assumption of transcendent morality based on a faith in God (see the Declaration of Independence) is being scrapped for radical secularism and atheism with its attendant consequences.
- (Original Post) Rick Santorum's 2008 speech at Ave Maria University has surfaced in which he said that Satan is destroying academia, politics, and the Protestant Church. I listened to it and agree with everything Santorum said. Pundits, of course, think (and hope) this tape will damage or destroy Santorum's presidential aspirations. It's only four minutes long. Listen and see what you think. I've posted Rush Limbaugh's response below.
RUSH: I mentioned earlier in the program that Santorum, people have dug deep and they found a speech that he gave back in 2008 in Ave Maria, Florida, at Ave Maria University. Drudge has this plastered up. The Democrats have found it. It's all over the place. Think Progress and whatever leftist think tanks have dug this up, and it's part of the predictable attempt to impugn Santorum as an absolute religious nut and wacko. But he did say these things and he'll to have an answer for these things when queried. Let's play these sound bites. We have three of them. This is where Santorum has said that Satan as set his sights on America. Again, this is at Ave Maria University, August of 2008, in Ave Maria, Florida.
SANTORUM: The Father of Lies has his sights on what you would think the Father of Lies, Satan, would have his sights on: a good, decent, powerful, influential country -- the United States of America. If you were Satan, who would you attack in this day and age? There is no one else to go after other than the United States, and that's been the case for now almost 200 years, once America's preeminence was sown by our great Founding Fathers.
RUSH: Okay, so he said it. Can we take you back to the United Nations? What was it, 2000... I don't know, three or four or five or six. Hugo Chavez shows up, he speaks either the afternoon Bush spoke earlier or the next day, but he gets to the microphone at the United Nations and the General Assembly and starts sniffing around. (Sniffing) He says, "I can still smell the sulfur. The Devil was here," and he had accused Bush of being the Devil. And the assembled monsters that look like they're out of Star Wars bar scene that made up the UN General Assembly all started laughing. So we're back to the double standard. Hugo Chavez can show up and call George W. Bush Satan. "Hey, hey! You know what, that's right! That's great. Let's laugh about it. Let's applaud it." Santorum gives a speech in Ave Maria, Florida, back in 2008. "Oh, my God, we're dealing with a nutcase! Oh, wow, what a fanatic weirdo. What are we gonna get next, an exorcism?" So the double standard does exist. Here's more from the same speech from Santorum.
Morrissey says Obama's gaffes have grown into the hundreds, without a single outlet ever asking Obama if he is a “flake” as Chris Wallace rudely asked Michele Bachmann.
That's the title the Wall Street Journal gives to a fascinating article. The article is subtitled, "In designer Jonathan Adler's kaleidoscopic New York digs, it's pretty hard not to feel happy." See what you think.
Take a look at other rooms and accents here. Adler maintains colors can't clash. Is he right?
I found comments on the WSJ article amusing: "love the ap!" "hideous..." "I would say it's more ADD with a tinge of mania than anti-depressive." "I have achieved this same look by shopping entirely at non-profit resale shops and yardsales in Silicon Valley." "I thought LSD was a thing of the past."
Me: It's so far beyond my normal thinking that I am intrigued.
To be honest, I hadn't had occasion before to listen in any sustained way to Tim Pawlenty, the Governor of Minnesota, and possible Republican Presidential Candidate in 2012. Today Ed Morrissey posted three video segments of Pawlenty's appearance on the "Daily Show" last night.
Pawlenty strikes me as a genuinely impressive guy -- in command of facts, down-to-earth, unruffled, one who laughs naturally, and genuinely likable. The conversation was limited to domestic affairs. Click here.
- Update - I meant to note that as far as I know, YouTube is
fully blocked in Turkey. Accordingly, nobody there has seen the Israeli IDF
videos, allowing the Turkish government to continue their lies.
- I have posted a good bit about Turkey in recent days, and for solid reasons. Now Mark Steyn offers a vivid and sad image that needs noting, painful though it be. Steyn says Turkey's Prime Minister Erdogan
looks at the American hyperpower and sees, to all intents, a late
Ottoman sultan — pampered, decadent, lounging on its cushions puffing a
hookah but unable to rouse itself to impose its will in the world. In
that sense, Turkey’s contempt for Israel is also an expression of near
total contempt for Washington.
Steyn explains that demographics determines destiny:
Surprise! ACORN and its defenders, including the media, have tried to argue that the organization was not totallycorrupt because James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles got tossed out of its Philadelphia office. Media Matters
even went so far as to air an interview with ACORN office director
Katherine Conway-Russell that asserted that she refused to help them,
called the cops, and threw them out. Big Government
has now released some of the video of that visit — and it appears that
a lot of media outlets will have some retractions to write this
afternoon.
Morrissey says:
Big Government will air the full, unedited video and audio streams
later today or tomorrow, in order to demonstrate the poor performance
of the media in this story. Bertha Lewis and ACORN will be shown to
have lied, and outlets like the Washington Post and Philadelphia
Inquirer will have to scrape the egg off of their faces for accepting
their word at face value.
Well, not exactly. In order to help out President Obama and the Left because of the exposure of ACORN's
unbelievable corruption, Clinton resurrected the tired and empty accusation of a "vast right-wing conspiracy." So once again we have a "shoot the messenger" strategy employed by Clinton, Podesta, and the Left. Will it work? The media so far has shown little interest in investigating ACORN, but a lot of interest in investigating the intrepid reporters, Giles and O'Keefe. Andrew Breitbart analyzes the predictable "protective" behavior of the devoted left-wing media (once known as "mainstream"), and doubts it will work a second time. ACORN has been exposed as corrupt, and it would seem a little hard to deflect attention from that fact long term. We'll see.
Doctor Zero does a superb job explaining the inevitability of organizations like ACORN that form circles of corruption in a society that has moved from humility to entitlement. I despair of extracting quotes since the whole article needs to be read to understand the cancer that ACORN represents.
Well, I've changed my mind. I will extract some quotes.
When charity is replaced by entitlement, the
voluntary flow of donations to small, local organizations transforms
into the accumulation of stupendous amounts of money in Washington. Not
only is there a huge pile of taxpayer loot to be divided, but the power
of government is fantastically valuable. ACORN made a huge amount of
money - and helped crash the entire financial system - by using
government
Doug Giles is the father of Hannah Giles (of recent fame!) Most readers will want to read Doug's Townhall column setting straight many false accusations hurled at James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles -- and Dad Giles, too.
Update9/21/09: Andrew Breitbart, creator of biggovernment.com (the site which posted the O'Keefe/Giles videos exposing ACORN), explains the strategy. The Breitbart piece is well worth reading. Not only has ACORN been exposed, but also the bias of old-line media. To get past the protective, leftist, old-line media gatekeepers and spinmeisters, there had to be a strategy. Breitbart explains it. (HT: HotAir)
Story here. Wow! "ACORN" - what a slimy organization! And they get millions of tax dollars to do their unethical, illegal, and smutty stuff. That's my first reaction. My second is, "Wow, what a smart team of undercover kids" (James O'Keefe & Hannah Giles). They didn't limit themselves to just one ACORN office. (See yesterday's blog post on their undercover work at the Baltimore "ACORN" office). My hat is off to them. They deserve the gratitude of the entire country. Here's the video on their undercover work in the ACORN Washington, D.C. office.
Update: It's become obvious to me that anyone wanting to keep up with the news needs to keep tabs on the biggovernment.com website. Recent headlines:
Update 9/11/09 - Hannah Giles, the 20 year old woman posing as a prostitute, tells the story of the sting operation.
(Original Post) - Wow! What an amazing undercover operation. Fox news carries the story here. Incredible, damning videotape can be seen in its entirety here at the BigGovernment.com blog. Andrew Breitbart says of the undercover man, James O'Keefe:
So who is James O’Keefe?
Morley Safer meets Sacha Baron Cohen, I think. Not precise. But you get the point.
This isn’t your mother’s “60 Minutes.” But then again, why would a
twenty five-year old even think straight journalism? His crowd doesn’t
even know who Don Hewitt is. They need it quick cut, set to music and
packaged to go viral on YouTube.
From what I gather, James wants to speak to his twenty-something
peers who have been asked to pay for unaccountable big government
ventures like ACORN on their maxed-out