Obama has been getting heckled at rally after rally by liberal protesters who think he hasn’t done enough to fight global AIDS. (Tip for Obama: your side is never satisfied. Never.)

So he said this:

Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, young people? Let me just say this: You’ve been appearing at every rally we’ve been doing, and we’re funding global AIDS, and the other side is not.

So I don’t know why you think this is a useful strategy to take. I think it would make a lot more sense for you guys to go to the folks who aren’t interested in funding global AIDS, and go to that rally. We’re trying to figure out how to finance the things that you want financed. You guys have made your point. Let’s go.

The “other side” means GOP in Obama-speak.

Apparently, Obama was too busy to notice President George W. Bush’s groundbreaking efforts in fighting AIDS.

Whereas Clinton felt the African’s pain, Dubya did something about it. Even MSNBC had to take notice.

Like countless Africans, Mzolisa looks forward to Barack Obama becoming America’s first black president Jan 20. But — like countless Africans — Mzolisa says she will always be grateful to Bush for his war on AIDS, which has helped to treat more than 2 million Africans, support 10 million more, and revitalize the global fight against the disease.

“It has done a lot for the people of South Africa, for the whole of the African continent,” says Mzolisa, a feisty mother of seven. “It has changed so many people’s lives, saved so many people’s lives.”

Mzolisa, 44, was diagnosed with the AIDS virus in 1999 and formed a women’s support group to “share the pain.” In 2004 she received a U.S. grant to set up office in a shipping container and start a soup kitchen from the group’s vegetable garden. She stretches her $10,000 in annual funding to train staff to look after bedridden AIDS victims, feed and clothe orphans, and do stigma-busting work at schools and taxi ranks.

Hundreds of projects get funding
Hundreds of similar small grass-roots projects are being funded by the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, alongside higher-profile charities and big state clinics.

Bush launched the $15 billion plan in 2003 to expand prevention, treatment and support programs in 15 hard-hit countries, 12 of them African, which account for more than half the world’s estimated 33 million AIDS infections. The initiative tied in with a World Health Organization campaign to put 3 million people on AIDS drugs by 2005 — a goal it says was reached in 2007.

Congress last year passed legislation more than tripling the budget to $48 billion over the next five years, with Republicans and Democrats alike hailing the program as a remarkable success.

Noel Sheppard at Newsbusters:

by J.C. Phillips

For decades the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People fought the good fight against racial discrimination. The organization was instrumental in defeating Jim Crow and discrimination in the work-place; it led the charge in establishing voting rights for all and equal access to quality education. Even now the NAACP does some good work in local communities. However, as a national civil-rights organization, it has lost its way.

In his seminal book, “The Souls of Black Folk,” NAACP co-founder, W.E.B. Dubois describes awakening to a morning “when men ask of the workmen, not ‘Is he white?’ but ‘Can he work?’ When men ask artists, not ‘Are they black?’ but ‘Do they know?’”

Sadly, the NAACP has veered far from Dubois’ vision and the realization of the principle of racial non-discrimination. The NAACP is now a defender of a system of racial spoils, a champion of big government, and a promoter of progressive politics. In short, the organization has been transformed into an enforcement arm of the Democrat Party. And that enforcement is achieved through the use of race as a weapon.

The NAACP’s recent report on racism within the Tea Party is a rather clumsy attempt at wielding that weapon in order to demonize political opposition to the Democrat agenda. It is also dangerous because it undermines black political and cultural progress.

The Tea Party has steadfastly held to a few core principles: limited government, fiscal responsibility, and free markets. The NAACP leaders have made it their mission to paint these objective and decidedly race-neutral positions into “white-supremacist beliefs.” The difficulty, of course is that there has never been a sign on the Tea Party door saying “whites only.” There is a difference between a blocked door and a door through which one refuses to enter. Woe to any people who adopt as a measure of ethnic authenticity the belief that limited government, fiscal restraint on the part of the federal government, and free-market capitalism as antithetical to their ultimate success, and who further come to believe that those principles are, in fact, the tools of their oppressor.

Sadder still is when that misguided vision becomes a form of political and cultural indoctrination. Consider what I witnessed while attending an NAACP youth council luncheon.

After the luncheon program, the local NAACP director rose to deliver her closing remarks. She began by discussing the plight of a death-row inmate in Atlanta. She then asked the children if lynching in America was still going on. In one loud voice the children answered YES! The director then proceeded to warn the audience that the Ku Klux Klan and other racial hate-groups were on the rise. I sat in a bit of a daze. My first thought was, “This organization is living in a time-warp.” Yes, racism still exists. Yes, idiocy still exists; I suspect hatred and bigotry in some form will always exist. If, however, the NAACP leadership still believes that the KKK is the chief impediment to black success, then as leaders, they have defined themselves as irrelevant. The fact that the organization would teach black children that black people are despised means the organization has sold-out its original charter and is now worthless!

Perhaps, it is time for the NAACP to change its moniker. I will leave it up to the members of the former august organization to choose its new name. I would, however, like to suggest that they consider “The National Association for the Advancement of Progressive Politics Everywhere” or NAAPPE. The members of the new organization could then rewrite their charter to reflect the true aims of their political advocacy.

For instance, NAAPPE would be very candid in its belief that white racism is the primary cause of black wretchedness. For this reason, NAPPE must have as its main occupation the sniffing out of every last vestige of racism in America. Like hound-dogs, NAAPPE members will sniff through the cultural and political landscape and point when they pick up the scent of racism, especially when that scent seems to emanate from the ranks of all those who oppose the Democrat Party and its national agenda, or who oppose those political groups allied with the Democrat Party.

Unlike NAAPPE, the NAACP simply can’t have it both ways. The organization can’t profess that it is the last word on civil rights and at the same time be an arm of ANY political party. Its moniker can’t announce that it is fighting for racial advancement and at the same time the body remains ambivalent about a policy that results in the death of more black people than heart disease, cancer, strokes, accidents, diabetes, homicide, and chronic lower respiratory diseases combined. The NAACP can’t claim the leadership of the black community and then stand idly by while members of the Congressional Black Caucus garner favor (and campaign donations) from the teachers unions, while selling-out the interests of black schoolchildren in Washington D.C. And it can certainly no longer claim to be a civil rights organization while at the same time it advocates a system of governance that relies on redistributing the fruits of one man’s labor in service of other men.

The scariest thing about Halloween is how gullible parents can be.

Lenore Skenazy in the WSJ:

Halloween is the day when America market-tests parental paranoia. If a new fear flies on Halloween, it’s probably going to catch on the rest of the year, too.

Take “stranger danger,” the classic Halloween horror. Even when I was a kid, back in the “Bewitched” and “Brady Bunch” costume era, parents were already worried about neighboras poisoning candy. Sure, the folks down the street might smile and wave the rest of the year, but apparently they were just biding their time before stuffing us silly with strychnine-laced Smarties.

That was a wacky idea, but we bought it. We still buy it, even though Joel Best, a sociologist at the University of Delaware, has researched the topic and spends every October telling the press that there has never been a single case of any child being killed by a stranger’s Halloween candy. (Oh, yes, he concedes, there was once a Texas boy poisoned by a Pixie Stix. But his dad did it for the insurance money. He was executed.)

Anyway, you’d think that word would get out: poisoned candy not happening. But instead, most Halloween articles to this day tell parents to feed children a big meal before they go trick-or-treating, so they won’t be tempted to eat any candy before bringing it home for inspection. As if being full has ever stopped any kid from eating free candy!

So stranger danger is still going strong, and it’s even spread beyond Halloween to the rest of the year. Now parents consider their neighbors potential killers all year round. That’s why they don’t let their kids play on the lawn, or wait alone for the school bus: “You never know!” The psycho-next-door fear went viral.

Then along came new fears. Parents are warned annually not to let their children wear costumes that are too tight—those could seriously restrict breathing! But not too loose either—kids could trip! Fall! Die!

Treating parents like idiots who couldn’t possibly notice that their kid is turning blue or falling on his face might seem like a losing proposition, but it caught on too.

Halloween taught marketers that parents are willing to be warned about anything, no matter how preposterous, and then they’re willing to be sold whatever solutions the market can come up with. Face paint so no mask will obscure a child’s vision. Purell, so no child touches a germ. And the biggest boondoggle of all: an adult-supervised party, so no child encounters anything exciting, er, “dangerous.”

Read it all.

by Burt Prelutsky

As I’m sure you’re all aware, Gloria Allred, the preeminent media whore and left-wing dirty trickster, has recently garnered the spotlight by trying to scuttle Meg Whitman’s chances of defeating Jerry Brown in California’s gubernatorial race.

Ms. Allred, who may actually be brought up on ethics charges by the California Bar for placing her client in legal jeopardy by exposing her as an illegal alien guilty of perjury and forging official documents, has long carried on like the worst sort of used car salesman. For good measure, Allred shows her true colors by referring to her client not as Ms. Diaz, but as Nicky. When is the last time that you heard an attorney call a client by his or her first name, unless the client was Madonna or Cher?

The things I know about Ms. Allred are not the sort of things she includes in her resume. Some years ago, for instance, Allred, who regards herself as a gallant feminist who has carved out a career fighting alleged male sexism, hosted a party for a group of women she was then heading up, at Chippendale’s, the male strip club. When word got out, a number of her most ardent supporters condemned her as a hypocrite.

On another occasion, she was one of the lawyers my then wife hired to handle our divorce. One morning, while we were waiting to enter the courtroom, Allred and a male associate walked over to the bench where my wife and her 12-year-old daughter were seated. After they were introduced, Allred turned to the child and said, “Lily, you’re very attractive. Have you considered modeling as a career?”

Do you think if a prominent male had made such a patronizing, sexist remark, Allred would have let it pass or would she have rounded up as many TV cameras as she could and publicly condemned him as a chauvinist pig for suggesting the child rely solely on her looks instead of her brains?

Finally, to show you what an absolutely despicable human being she is, when she was a single mother, she married Mr. William Allred. That was in 1968. It was he who paid her way so that she could attend law school and become an attorney in 1975. In 1987, they got divorced, and the guy wound up having to pay her alimony.

In the passage of time, Mr. Allred went to jail for fraud. When he got out, his financial resources greatly diminished, he petitioned the court for a reduction in his alimony payments. Even though he had made her career possible by paying for her education, and even though she was by then earning a handsome living, she fought him tooth and nail.

As I recall, there is a certain circle in Hell, described by Dante, that is reserved for people who not only bite the hand that’s fed them, but kicks their benefactors in the teeth for good measure. I’m willing to bet that there’s a deep, dark cellar in that particular circle that’s reserved for Ms. Allred.

Another person whose character seems to consist entirely of a pathological egotism is our president. For my part, I am not only sick and tired of listening to that self-absorbed donkey braying 24/7 on the tube, but I’ve had it up to here with those damn shirtsleeves.

God knows I’m no fashion plate, but I’m just me and he’s supposed to be America’s commander in chief, the leader of the free world.

I used to think it was hilarious when Las Vegas entertainers like Tony Bennett and Steve Lawrence would pretend that singing was the equivalent of shoveling coal by undoing their bowties halfway through a performance. But at least they were working up a sweat under those hot lights. Obama, on the other hand, shows up in his shirtsleeves even when all he’s doing is reading from his teleprompter in an air-conditioned auditorium.

In a country with nearly 10% unemployment and a deficit that’s not only burying us, but our children and our grandchildren, is this arrogant mug actually trying to get our sympathy? I’m afraid he’ll have to settle for our contempt.

Of late, rumors are floating around that if his approval numbers continue to tank, Hillary Clinton will challenge Obama for their party’s nomination in 2012. At first blush, one can imagine thinking that anyone but Obama would not only be an improvement, but could work as a campaign slogan. However, we should all keep in mind that Mrs. Clinton not only tried to push through HillaryCare when her husband was up to his usual monkey business in the Oval office, but more recently charged Arizona with human rights violations at the U.N., this putting it on a par with China, Iran and North Korea.

In short, she is every bit the loony lefty that Barack Obama is. In fact, there are only two real differences I’m aware of; one, he’s 50% blacker than she is and, two, she manages to keep her jacket on during working hours.

A 1.5 mile trip down Market Street in San Francisco in 1906, one week before the earthquake that killed thousands and destroyed most of the city.

Jim Treacher has fun with Katie Couric bragging about getting out among the “great unwashed middle of the country.”

That’s also known as “fly over country” to the snots who presume to be our betters.

I’m annoyed and I even live in SoCal, so I’m presumably clean in Couric’s book.

She could on to something. Maybe we are just unbrainwashed and haven’t succumbed to the elitist group think.

Tad Dehaven at CATO:

Vice President Joe Biden is an affable fellow, which sometimes makes his tendency to exaggerate the truth somewhat amusing. However, Biden’s latest tall tale is as unamusing as it is wrong.

From the New York Daily News:

“Every single great idea that has marked the 21st century, the 20th century and the 19th century has required government vision and government incentive,” he said. “In the middle of the Civil War you had a guy named Lincoln paying people $16,000 for every 40 miles of track they laid across the continental United States. … No private enterprise would have done that for another 35 years.”

I’ll go straight to the 19th century railroads issue by referencing the work of two Cato scholars who probably know a little bit more about the topic than Joe Biden.

Forget the railroads. Take Google. Was that Al Gore’s idea?

The modern Internet is an example of an unfettered free market creating vast wealth and innovation. If the feds created the ‘net as Clinton wanted to do, it would look like America Online version 4.0.

And we’d never know what we’re missing.

As for Biden, so what if he’s affable? He’s an embarrassment to the nation.

Slide show here.

Dana Milbank:

On Comedy Central, the joke was on President Obama Wednesday night.

The president had come, on the eve of what will almost certainly be the loss of his governing majority, to plead his case before Jon Stewart, gatekeeper of the disillusioned left. But instead of displaying the sizzle that won him an army of youthful supporters two years ago, Obama had a Brownie moment.

The Daily Show host was giving Obama a tough time about hiring the conventional and Clintonian Larry Summers as his top economic advisor.

“In fairness,” the president replied defensively, “Larry Summers did a heckuva job.”

“You don’t want to use that phrase, dude,” Stewart recommended with a laugh.

Dude. The indignity of a comedy show host calling the commander in chief “dude” pretty well captured the moment for Obama. He was making this first-ever appearance by a president on the Daily Show as part of a long-shot effort to rekindle the spirit of ‘08. In the Daily Show, Obama had a friendly host and an even friendlier crowd.

Andrew Malcolm:

As usual, the Washington-wise Howard Kurtz has produced another cogenanalysis of communications in the nation’s capital — “White House goes into bunker mode.”

According to Kurtz over at his new Daily Beast online domicile, as the S.S. Obama cruises toward its midnight rendezvous with a gigantic electoral iceberg on Nov. 2, the president’s communications aides are running around on deck, frustrated that their alternative storyline isn’t gaining traction in the cacophonous world of modern political babble.

It’s like “spitting in the ocean,” White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer complains to Kurtz.

There can’t be more than two or three breathing Americans who haven’t heard …

… Obama’s economy storyline several times by now: You know, about the eight years of failed you-know-whats by you-know-who, about the huge hole Obama inherited after spending $750 million of other people’s money to buy responsibility for the presidency and how the national ship isn’t sinking as fast as it was 22 months ago. Never mind all those new 0’s on the national debt. And the still missing Recovery Summer. And Guantanamo. And DADT.

And who crashed the national car into the ditch? And who wants the keys now? And who has to get in the back seat? And something about a Slurpee, moving forward?

In fact, there’s a little-known theory that Osama bin Laden isn’t hiding in a Waziristan cave for fear of American attacks, but to avoid exposure to Obama’s economy yada-yada even one more time.

Obama has several problems. The worst is he’s the Real Good Talker.

That’s how he made his first national splash at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, as the Real Good Talker. That’s been his strong suit, thanks to Teleprompters that enable him to read the words while focusing more on delivery. Like some MLB pitcher going to his trademark fastball way too often.

To put it bluntly, it’s arrogance. Prof. Obama is so sure that he’s right — and, therefore, so is his insular staff — that he keeps on talking full speed because if he just explains his thinking one or two or 30 more times using the same metaphors and jokes, even the dimmest of his pupils is bound to get it. And to realize that what they thought they wanted isn’t really what their president knows they need.

That’s why last year Obama wasted 59, as in nearly five dozen, town hall meetings selling his colossal healthcare bill to the public and to dozens of Democratic House members, who are now inching fatalistically forward in the sad line toward Tuesday’s political firing squads.

For 22 months of the Obama Era now, frightened Americans have been watching their friends, families and neighbors lose the onetime givens in American life — jobs, homes, savings, spouses and hope.

And they’ve been telling every pollster and reporter and Republican, “It’s the economy, Mr. President.” And until the last few weeks the president’s response has been, “No, it’s not, stupid.”

American voters are never the most attentive. Through most waking hours, they collect fragments of information from an amazing array of sources — TV, online, radio, co-workers, cellphones, family, neighbors.

Again without paying attention, over time those bits and pieces coagulate into an impression. And once that impression sets, it’s like a deep grass stain impervious to even New, Improved Tide, regardless of verity. Was Gerald Ford clumsy? Is George W. Bush smart? Does Bill Clinton have an eye for ladies?

Despite all his Great Society social legislation, Lyndon Johnson paid for the nation’s impression of the awful Vietnam War and the searing social poison that spread everywhere back home. Richard Nixon denied he was a crook, but that same public wasn’t buying it by then.

The other night, David Letterman said he woke up that morning, went to let the dog out, but instead found an uninvited Obama in the backyard talking about the economy. And millions laughed, revealing they shared the same set impression about the predictably tireless talker just weeks before the midterm elections that will be a referendum on him.

And that impression is that Obama may be a Real Good Talker. But he’s a Real Bad Listener.

In Kurtz’s credible scenario, the vast diversity of competing info sources has (more…)

One business owner explains why Obamacare hurts and doesn’t help.

Larry Elkin of Palisades Hudson:

For 15 years, I have taken pride in paying the full cost of health insurance for every full-time Palisades Hudson employee who wanted it. This month marks the last time I will do that.

Beginning in October, our 20 employees will make their own decisions, and their own arrangements, regarding health coverage. They can stay on our company’s plan, but they will have to pay the entire cost – ranging from $574 to $683 per month – themselves, through payroll deductions. Though I am raising everybody’s salary by $3,000 per year, or $250 per month, as a partial offset to the loss of company-paid health coverage, those who remain on the company plan will have a significant new out-of-pocket expense.

Some will undoubtedly make other arrangements instead. A few can elect to be covered under a spouse’s or domestic partner’s plan. In New York, where a state law already requires insurers to cover family members through age 29, some may be able to join a parent’s plan. These staffers may end up benefiting from the pay raise.

My employees could opt to go uninsured. The new federal requirement for all adults to have insurance or pay a penalty does not take effect until 2014. I hope nobody makes this choice, but they are adults, and the decision now is in their hands.

Our employees in Florida and Georgia have checked out the market for individual insurance. In those states, they may be able to purchase acceptable, if not ideal, coverage with the $250 per month raise I am giving them. There are adverse tax consequences, which we may address later with some type of flexible benefits program, but our workers in those states need not take a big economic hit to stay insured.

New York is another story. It has a broad range of mandates for individual insurance policies that make such coverage in the Empire State very expensive. Our Scarsdale staff is likely to find that the company plan, expensive as it is, is cheaper than individual insurance even for a healthy young adult. (more…)

by Burt Prelutsky

No matter how much attention a person tries to devote to the political scene, some questions appear to be unanswerable. For instance, with Nevada, a state suffering from an unemployment rate hovering around 15%, why is Harry Reid, a man with the personality of an unsuccessful undertaker, running neck-and-neck with Sharron Angle? Is it that extra “r” in her first name? Do Nevadans fear that someone given to wasting letters is a greater danger than a senator who doesn’t think twice about squandering their tax dollars?

And what’s with the voters in West Virginia? Barack Obama vowed in 2008 to bury the coal industry and send our energy costs soaring, and the folks in West Virginia can’t decide between the Democrat and the Republican in the Senate race? Perhaps all that coal dust has affected their brains.

For that matter, what is it with those undecided voters?= According to the polls, in some congressional races, there are still 10% of the voters who haven’t made up their minds. After nearly two years of Obama, Pelosi and Reid, running America into the ground, why would anyone remain undecided? I realize that conservatives and sensible Independents will vote for the GOP, just as I understand that dopey left-wingers and youngsters, who are convinced that other people should pay their way through college and that their parents should pay for everything else, will vote for Democrats, but who the heck are all these lunkheads who will apparently flip a coin on election day?

Much has been made of Barack Obama foregoing golf so that he could take his family to church services on Sunday, September 19th. Cynics wrote it off as a political, not spiritual, gesture. But it seems that there might be more to it than that.

Perhaps because St. John’s Episcopal Church is just across the street from the White House, folks assumed the choice was merely based on its convenient location. But I’m not so sure that was the case.

For one thing, St. John’s pastor, Rev. Luis Leon, delivered a sermon that day that dealt with Matthew 20:1-16. Apparently the parable tells of a landowner who needed to have his crop harvested quickly, and at the end of the day he paid those who had only worked for the final hour the same amount that he paid those who had labored in the heat throughout the entire day.

According to Rev. Leon, “The full-day workers believed in the world of merit, not the world of grace.” In their eyes, according to the pastor, the owner’s graciousness was seen as injustice. Instead of seeing themselves as selfish or self-absorbed, they saw the landowner as unfair, and the tragedy, Rev. Leon told his congregation, is that they estranged themselves from the source of graciousness.

The pastor, it seems, believes that payment should be determined not according to ability or even effort, but simply according to need. Or, in other words, he was making a case for the redistribution of wealth. I’m sure he got a big shout-out from at least one person in the congregation that day.

At St. John’s, where apparently the Gospel According to St. Marx is promoted, they have a series of guest speakers. On that particular Sunday, the speaker was Dr. Ziad Asali. Dr. Asali is described as a Middle East activist. If that sounds something like a community organizer, there’s a good reason. It seems Dr. Asali has addressed Congress on more than one occasion, demanding additional aid for the Palestinian Authority and complaining about “Israel’s disproportionate use of force in Gaza.” In case you haven’t noticed, “disproportionate use of force” is Arab and Muslim code for “How dare the Jews defend themselves!”

Among Dr. Asali’s nefarious activities was serving as a member of the U.S. delegation to Yasser Arafat’s funeral. Which strikes me as a highly questionable honor unless it was to make certain that the Nobel Prize-winning terrorist was, in the words of the coroner of Oz, “not only merely dead, but really most sincerely dead.” The corpse in this case wasn’t the Wicked Witch of the East, but of the Middle East.

I know that many people were disappointed that as a self-proclaimed Christian, Barack Obama had only attended church three times in a year. But I suspect that now that he knows that Washington’s St. John’s isn’t all that different from Chicago’s Trinity United, he and Michelle will be occupying the amen corner from now on.

I took this photo last month while returning from a shoot. In the foreground are bee hives in old wooden boxes.

This is Camarillo, California. If you followed the line of the crop rows for 5 miles, you’d reach the Pacific. If you took the road at left, in one mile you’d reach Cal. State Channel Islands.

Jonah Goldberg on Robert Reich’s HuffPo post.

…Republicans are also more disciplined (ask yourself which party attracts authoritarian personalities and which attracts anti-authoritarians). This makes it easier for them to stay the course. Their base continues to organize and fulminate even after midterm defeats. Democrats, on the other hand, are less organized. Electoral defeats tend to fracture and dissipate whatever organization they have.

…isn’t there something funny about Reich claiming that the GOP is full of authoritarian personalities, even as the Democrats have just enacted a law that orders Americans to buy health care?

Which party is asking that government do a whole lot less and which is asking it do a whole lot more?

Which party wants the government to boss people around more?

Which party is more likely to attract people who find this sort of thing compelling?

Which party wants to get rid of the union secret ballot?

Which party wants to restore the “fairness” doctrine?

Which party wants the government to be able to ban smoking, regulate salt, and ban political speech?

Which party attracts people who like campus speech codes?

Which party attracts movie stars who vow to be servants of Obama? Or educators who expect likewise of their students?

Just curious.

Jackson Diehl:

Last Tuesday 215,646 Internet users in Iran evaded their regime to visit sites such as Facebook, Twitter and RadioFarda.com, the U.S.-funded Persian-language news service. In Syria, 14,886 people freely surfed; in Vietnam, 10,612; in Saudi Arabia, 14,691; in China, 18,000.

I know this because I saw the internal logs of a company called UltraReach, which created and manages a firewall-breaching system that is allowing as many as half a million people a day to visit Web sites banned by their governments, and circumvent or avoid detection. To watch the traffic stream through the company’s servers is to see a parade of the world’s most oppressed people. In the few minutes I watched I also saw Cubans, Burmese, Uzbeks, Belarusians, Algerians, Cambodians and Libyans traveling via an Internet link to Northern California, where they were able to visit any non-pornographic site without being blocked or identified.

That the technology created by UltraReach and an affiliated company called Freegate works is not a matter of debate. Its success has been recognized from the State Department to the Chinese government, which has devoted enormous resources to trying to defeat it, so far unsuccessfully. The question is what is to be done. The companies’ volunteer founders and operators say that if they could get $30 million in funding they could ramp up their server networks to accommodate millions more users — and effectively destroy the Internet controls of Iran and most other dictatorships.

Since 2007, a few in Congress have been trying to get that funding by putting earmarks into the State Department budget — a total of $50 million so far. Yet the firewall-busting firms, which have formed an entity called the Global Internet Freedom Consortium, have yet to receive a dime. In fact, $35 million of the funds has yet to be spent, even though it was included in State’s budgets for 2009 and 2010.

You’d think State would be eager to act. After all, Hillary Clinton gave a major speech last January saying that the promotion of Internet freedom would be a top priority. Her senior aide for human rights and democracy, Assistant Secretary Michael Posner, says that defeating Internet censorship could be “a game-changer” in countries like Iran.

P.J. O’Rourke:

Perhaps you’re having a tiny last minute qualm about voting Republican. Take heart. And take the House and the Senate. Yes, there are a few flakes of dander in the fair tresses of the GOP’s crowning glory—an isolated isolationist or two, a hint of gold buggery, and Christine O’Donnell announcing that she’s not a witch. (I ask you, has Hillary Clinton ever cleared this up?) Fret not over Republican peccadilloes such as the Tea Party finding the single, solitary person in Nevada who couldn’t poll ten to one against Harry Reid. Better to have a few cockeyed mutts running the dog pound than Michael Vick.

I take it back. Using the metaphor of Michael Vick for the Democratic party leadership implies they are people with a capacity for moral redemption who want to call good plays on the legislative gridiron. They aren’t. They don’t. The reason is simple. They hate our guts.

They don’t just hate our Republican, conservative, libertarian, strict constructionist, family values guts. They hate everybody’s guts. And they hate everybody who has any. Democrats hate men, women, blacks, whites, Hispanics, gays, straights, the rich, the poor, and the middle class.

Democrats hate Democrats most of all. Witness the policies that Democrats have inflicted on their core constituencies, resulting in vile schools, lawless slums, economic stagnation, and social immobility. Democrats will do anything to make sure that Democratic voters stay helpless and hopeless enough to vote for Democrats.

Whence all this hate? Is it the usual story of love gone wrong? Do Democrats have a mad infatuation with the political system, an unhealthy obsession with an idealized body politic? Do they dream of capturing and ravishing representational democracy? Are they crazed stalkers of our constitutional republic?

No. It’s worse than that. Democrats aren’t just dateless dweebs clambering upon the Statue of Liberty carrying a wilted bouquet and trying to cop a feel. Theirs is a different kind of love story. Power, not politics, is what the Democrats love. (more…)

Biden mistakes millions for billions.

In an interview with Al Hunt of Bloomberg News scheduled to be shown Friday night, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. commented on the need for disclosure when corporate interests contribute to political groups.

“I was amazed at the amount of money, this $200 billion of money that is — where there’s no accountability,” he said. “When I say accountability, we don’t know where it’s coming from. There’s no disclosure, so the folks watching the ad can’t make a judgment based upon motive when you say it’s paid for by so-and-so.”

Mr. Biden clearly meant “million” with an “M,” not “billion” with a “B.”

But his tongue slipped again a moment later. “So it really — I’ve never seen this before, so the only caveat I’d put in terms of the House is how much impact this $200 billion are going to mean.”

by J.C. Phillips

I arrived at the Los Angeles Airport more than an hour early. I had made good time on the highway. I wasn’t checking any bags, so with my boarding pass in hand I proceeded to the gate. I was greeted with a security line that was almost an hour long. The line snaked around the terminal, out the door, and stretched down the sidewalk. At the front of the line sat a lone Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) officer studiously checking identification with a jeweler’s loupe, the small magnifying glass jewelers use to look for flaws in gemstones.

It is little wonder that polls consistently find that the TSA is the most hated U.S. government agency, even more despised than the Internal Revenue Service. Americans believe that the TSA is rude, invasive, obnoxious, and dull-witted. Sure, there are good, honest, hard-working folks employed with the TSA; I have met some of them. However, I tend to share the negative assessment that airport security is not firing on all cylinders.

When I finally reached the security station, I discovered the source of the delay. In addition to TSA incompetence, the lines were backed up going through a new security machine ironically called a “Rapid Scan.”

The “Rapid Scan” is one of the new x-ray machines recently employed by the TSA to perform full-body scans on airline passengers.

It is truly a testament to the adaptability of the American spirit that not only does an hour long wait at security barely raise eye-brows, but passengers are willing to submit to a virtual strip-search with nary a whimper as well. Perhaps it is ambivalence. I suspect, however, that after the abuse of waiting in lines for everything from parking to security, stripping down to one’s BVDs is a small price to pay to be allowed to sit down.

The federal government has also convinced a great many Americans that the TSA is the thin gray and blue line standing between the terrorists and their wives and children. As far as the Federal Government is concerned, long, slow-moving lines, the invasion of privacy, and the dull-witted rudeness of the TSA agents are the costs of peace of mind.

Apparently, I am not the only one who believes the Transportation Safety Administration has an inflated opinion of itself. I wish I had the guts of Tennessee pilot Michael Roberts.

Last week, Roberts, a first officer for ExpressJet Airlines, refused to take a body scan and then refused to be “manhandled” by the TSA giving him a physical pat-down. Roberts went home and is now waiting to see if he will lose his job. According to newspaper reports, Roberts said that like all Americans, he has safety concerns, but called TSA a “make-work” program that doesn’t make travel safer.

And he is correct.

The TSA has largely succeeded in enforcing its own rules. How many bombers has the TSA thwarted since its inception? The answer is zero. Contrast that figure with the gallons and gallons of hand lotion the agency has confiscated. As bags pass on the conveyer belt, agents stare intently at x-ray screens. What could they be looking for? Could it be that one of these passengers standing in line could be attempting to smuggle a bomb on board? Of course not! The agents are looking for yogurt! They are looking for baby formula! They are looking for deodorant larger than the allowable three ounces.

Often, the security lines move slowly because the TSA has not assigned enough agents to pour over every passenger’s identification with a jeweler’s loupe and a black-light. But wait, all 19 of the “murderingscumwhoarecurrentlyburninginhell” responsible for the attacks on 9/11 had legal identification. In fact, the only reason we know who they are is because they presented proper, legal identification at the security station. The same is true of Richard Reid as well as the Christmas day bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

As for the “Rapid Scan? Alas, it is only rapid compared to an MRI. Passengers must stand still in a box for 10 seconds and then wait for the machine to analyze the data it has compiled. Oh, and you have to take the money out of your pockets because this brilliant piece of equipment apparently can’t distinguish between a dollar bill and a bomb!

Airline passengers now have a choice: virtual strip-search or be subjected to the much longer process of being physically groped by a stranger. Sadly, in the same way that travelers now look at an hour wait in a security line as, “Hey, that’s not so bad.” We will also get used to having our privacy further infringed upon. The long and short of it is that the entire process has lost its civility and is on the verge of losing any semblance of dignity. No? Consider that the not-so-rapid-scan is also unable to scan inside the body cavity. How long will it be before all travelers are asked to drop trou, bend over, and cough?

The body scanner would not have discovered the explosives hidden by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and yet Americans continue to be told that the TSA is making travelers safe. I am of the opinion that the security measures at airports have largely been successful only at irritating passengers and making air-travel more unpleasant than, well, just about anything else I can think of.

Mike Cosgrove at IBD:

Americans need to reverse the fiscal and regulatory policies of this administration.

The U.S. economy generated 46 million net new jobs between 1980 and 2008, then fell into a major recession and financial crisis. President Obama, in response, decided to jettison the principles of limited government, freedom of choice, free enterprise and profits.

Instead there is federal government control, government spending and wealth-sharing. Obama’s economic and regulatory policies paralyzed the U.S. economy, created nearly 10% unemployment, a high rate of underemployment and a heavy dose of government control.

Americans respond to incentives and disincentives. Higher costs of new regulations, the threat of higher tax rates embedded in the huge federal deficits and major increases in federal government control in this economy over the past 21 months have created major roadblocks for business creation, hiring and business expansion.

Those obstacles to growth need to be eliminated or reduced so the U.S. economy can follow the principles of economic growth, free enterprise, limited government and personal responsibility.

Policies necessary to reclaim those principles include:

1. Freeze federal outlays at their Office of Management and Budget-estimated level of $3.83 trillion (2011) until outlays once again amount to 20% of economic activity, the historical average.

Congress can allocate $3.83 trillion annually to those areas and programs it chooses, no more. That means Congress would need to cut or eliminate programs to increase spending on others. Members of Congress can make those decisions. (more…)

by Burt Prelutsky

No matter how much attention a person tries to devote to the political scene, some questions appear to be unanswerable.  For instance, with Nevada, a state suffering from an unemployment rate hovering around 15%, why is Harry Reid, a man with the personality of an unsuccessful undertaker, running neck-and-neck with Sharron Angle?  Is it that extra “r” in her first name?  Do Nevadans fear that someone given to wasting letters is a greater danger than a senator who doesn’t think twice about squandering their tax dollars?

            And what’s with the voters in West Virginia?  Barack Obama vowed in 2008 to bury the coal industry and send our energy costs soaring, and the folks in West Virginia can’t decide between the Democrat and the Republican in the Senate race?  Perhaps all that coal dust has affected their brains.

            For that matter, what is it with those undecided voters?=  According to the polls, in some congressional races, there are still 10% of the voters who haven’t made up their minds.  After nearly two years of Obama, Pelosi and Reid, running America into the ground, why would anyone remain undecided?  I realize that conservatives and sensible Independents will vote for the GOP, just as I understand that dopey left-wingers and youngsters, who are convinced that other people should pay their way through college and that their parents should pay for everything else, will vote for Democrats, but who the heck are all these lunkheads who will apparently flip a coin on election day?

            Much has been made of Barack Obama foregoing golf so that he could take his family to church services on Sunday, September 19^th.  Cynics wrote it off as a political, not spiritual, gesture.  But it seems that there might be more to it than that.

            Perhaps because St. John’s Episcopal Church is just across the street from the White House, folks assumed the choice was merely based on its convenient location.  But I’m not so sure that was the case.

            For one thing, St. John’s pastor, Rev. Luis Leon, delivered a sermon that day that dealt with Matthew 20:1-16.  Apparently the parable tells of a landowner who needed to have his crop harvested quickly, and at the end of the day he paid those who had only worked for the final hour the same amount that he paid those who had labored in the heat throughout the entire day.

            According to Rev. Leon, “The full-day workers believed in the world of merit, not  the world of grace.”  In their eyes, according to the pastor, the owner’s graciousness was seen as injustice.  Instead of seeing themselves as selfish or self-absorbed, they saw the landowner as unfair, and the tragedy, Rev. Leon told his congregation, is that they estranged themselves from the source of graciousness.

            The pastor, it seems, believes that payment should be determined not according to ability or even effort, but simply according to need.  Or, in other words, he was making a case for the redistribution of wealth.  I’m sure he got a big shout-out from at least one person in the congregation that day.

            At St. John’s, where apparently the Gospel According to St. Marx is promoted, they have a series of guest speakers.  On that particular Sunday, the speaker was Dr. Ziad Asali.  Dr. Asali is described as a Middle East activist.  If that sounds something like a community organizer, there’s a good reason.  It seems Dr. Asali has addressed Congress on more than one occasion, demanding additional aid for the Palestinian Authority and complaining about “Israel’s disproportionate use of force in Gaza.”  In case you haven’t noticed, “disproportionate use of force” is Arab and Muslim code for “How dare the Jews defend themselves!”

            Among Dr. Asali’s nefarious activities was serving as a member of the U.S. delegation to Yasser Arafat’s funeral.  Which strikes me as a highly questionable honor unless it was to make certain that the Nobel Prize-winning terrorist was, in the words of the coroner of Oz, “not only merely dead, but really most sincerely dead.”  The corpse in this case wasn’t the Wicked Witch of the East, but of the Middle East.

            I know that many people were disappointed that as a self-proclaimed Christian, Barack Obama had only attended church three times in a year.  But I suspect that now that he knows that Washington’s St. John’s isn’t all that different from Chicago’s Trinity United, he and Michelle will be occupying the amen corner from now on.

by Burt Prelutsky

For as long as I can remember, people have been cajoled, harangued and even bullied, into voting.  They’ve been reminded incessantly that their ancestors fought and died so that they would have the right to choose their leaders.  It’s been pointed out to them that even today there are hundreds of millions of people to whom universal suffrage is nothing more than a fantasy.

All of which is true, but so what?

The beauty of our system isn’t that we have the right to vote.  After all, Russians got to vote for Joseph Stalin and Iraqis got to vote for Saddam Hussein.  No, the nice thing is that people who are too dumb or lazy or uninformed to bother casting a ballot aren’t compelled to vote.  And no apologies are required.  In fact, in my opinion, thanks are in order.  Far too many people are voting, as it is.

            I liken our elections to major sporting events such as the World Series and the Super Bowl.  It’s a fact that millions of Americans who have no particular interest in baseball or football get caught up in the hype, and, come October and January, park their fannies in front of their TVs.

            There’s nothing wrong with this, you understand.  There’s no reason on earth why people who can’t fathom the infield fly rule or tell you how many points a safety is worth shouldn’t get caught up in the fervor and maybe even risk five bucks in the office pool.  But you sure wouldn’t leave it up to them to select the All Star team or pick the league MVPs.

            So why on earth would you urge citizens who have done their level best to avoid thinking about the issues or the candidates to suddenly roll off the couch on election day and do their civic duty?

            Before the last election, some busybody suggested that, as an incentive to stir up the electorate, there should be a special lottery open to anyone who bothered to vote.  I have no problem with the idea of a lottery, but, frankly, I think it should be limited to those people who, by remaining steadfast in the face of relentless peer and media pressure, did the honorable thing…and stayed home!

From David Zucker

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees is now the biggest outside spender of the 2010 elections, thanks to an 11th-hour effort to boost Democrats that has vaulted the public-sector union ahead of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the AFL-CIO and a flock of new Republican groups in campaign spending.

The 1.6 million-member AFSCME is spending a total of $87.5 million on the elections after tapping into a $16 million emergency account to help fortify the Democrats’ hold on Congress. Last week, AFSCME dug deeper, taking out a $2 million loan to fund its push. The group is spending money on television advertisements, phone calls, campaign mailings and other political efforts, helped by a Supreme Court decision that loosened restrictions on campaign spending.

“We’re the big dog,” said Larry Scanlon, the head of AFSCME’s political operations. “But we don’t like to brag.”

Once upon a time, government employees were prohibited from unionizing. Now they’re the tail wagging the dog.

Dr. Charles Krauthammer, who is a real life psychiatrist, writes:

In an increasingly desperate attempt to develop a narrative for the coming Democratic collapse, the Democrats have indulged themselves in what for half a century they’ve habitually attributed to the American right: the paranoid style in U.S. politics.

The talk is of dark conspiracies — secret money, foreign influence, big corporations, with Karl Rove and, yes, Ed Gillespie lurking ominously behind the scenes. The only thing missing is the Halliburton-Cheney angle.

But after trotting out some of these with a noticeable lack of success, President Obama has come up with something new, something less common, something more befitting his stature and intellect. He’s now offering a scientific, indeed neurological, explanation for his current political troubles.

The electorate apparently is deranged by its anxieties and fears to the point where it can’t think straight. Part of the reason “facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time,” he explained to a Massachusetts audience, “is because we’re hard-wired not to always think clearly when we’re scared. And the country is scared.”

Opening a whole new branch of cognitive science — liberal psychology — Obama has discovered a new principle: The fearful brain is hard-wired to act befuddled, i.e., vote Republican.

But of course. Here Obama has spent two years bestowing upon the peasantry the “New Foundation” of a more regulated, socially engineered and therefore more humane society, and they repay him with recalcitrance and outright opposition. Here he gave them ObamaCare, the stimulus, financial regulation and a shot at cap-and-trade — and the electorate remains not just unmoved but ungrateful.

Faced with this truly puzzling conundrum, Dr. Obama diagnoses a heretofore undiscovered psychological derangement: anxiety-induced Obama Underappreciation Syndrome, wherein an entire population is so addled by its economic anxieties as to be neurologically incapable of appreciating the “facts and science” undergirding ObamaCare and other blessings their president has bestowed upon them from on high.

Who was it?

Just tweaking the twit running NPR, one Vivian Schiller.

Let’s hope Nevadans send Harry into a solitary depression.