P.J. Gladnick's blog

It is the religion that dare not speak its name...at least on NBC News and at the Associated Press among other politically correct circles. Both media outlets reported on a verdict in an "honor killings" case in Canada while managing to avoid mentioning a certain religion whose name starts with "M." To watch or read both reports, you would think that "honor killings" was some sort of bizarre ritual limited to the family in question or perhaps a few other members of an unidentified "patriarchal culture."

First the AP report on the MSNBC site which does mention a religion but not the one you think:

Is it safe?

Is it safe?

No, that wasn't Laurence Olivier as a Nazi dentist drilling holes into Dustin Hoffman's teeth in Marathon Man as he kept repeating that question. In this case it was the Des Moines Register wondering if it was "safe" to mention that a former Obama campaign staffer, Zachary Edwards (see mug shot), who was arrested on Friday for attempted identity theft of the Iowa Republican Secretary of State, Matt Schultz, was a prominent member of a well known Democrat campaign consulting firm, LINK Strategies. On Friday, the day the Des Moines Register first briefly reported the arrest, it wasn't "safe" to mention Link Strategies:

How do you get a liberal talk radio host to do your bidding?

Easy. Just threaten his future invitations to White House events if you are a Democrat president. Such was apparently the case with Tavis Smiley of the Smiley & West radio show which he co-hosts with Cornell West. According to Politico, Smiley was recently ousted as the speaker of the upcoming Martin Luther King luncheon.

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

Oops! I mean the sea is rising! The sea is rising!

Such is the premise, chock full of laughable hysteria mixed in with premonitions of massive governmental spending based on a theory yet to be proven, in this Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel front page story by David Fleshler. As Chicken Little Fleshler describes, the plan to combat an unproven problem isn't just any plan, it's a BATTLE plan:

Divers all over South Florida were probably drooling last night while watching the huge lionfish that appeared in the 60 Minutes broadcast about Cuba's Jardines de la Reina coral reef off that island's southern shore. The reason is that the state of Florida has declared open season on the invasive lionfish, introduced from Asia, which is known to devastate marine life on coral reefs. Fortunately lionfish flesh is quite tasty and its population has been kept in check in Florida by hungry divers with spearguns.

Not so in Cuba. As you can see in the video at the 15 second mark and later in their full broadcast, the lionfish at the Jardines de la Reina are both quite large and numerous. Why? It seems that Anderson Cooper shied away from asking the question that would have a politically very uncomfortable answer.

George Washington was the father of our country.

Eh! No big deal. Barack Obama is better...at least in his own mind. Such was the laughably absurd claim of President Obama on 60 Minutes last Sunday. What? You didn't see it? That was because 60 Minutes conveniently left it out of its broadcast. If you want to see Obama engage in this latest bit of over the top braggadocio you can only see it at the online 60 Minutes Overtime which has a video of the entire interview. You can catch Obama's excessive praise of himself at the tail end of the interview starting with Steve Kroft's question just before the 55 minute mark:

Remember the OWS protestor, Justin Wedes, who along with his sanity-challenged companion, Ketchup, was featured on the Colbert Report as a spokesman for the Occupy Wall Street movement? Camera hog Wedes was notable for his massive self-righteous chip on the shoulder which caused him to give "down twinkles" to what he claimed as the moral failings of the "One Percent."

Well, down twinkles to Wedes himself who has been exposed in the New York Post as a scam artist forger who tried to cheat the taxpayers out of nearly $5000 for a government grant despite the fact that his "One Percent" family from the plush Michigan neighborhood of Huntington Woods could easily afford to just give him that money:

Oh how your humble correspondent has yearned for his own Marshall McLuhan moment. You might remember that scene from the movie "Annie Hall" when some pompous blowhard on a theater line pontificated about the thoughts of the author of "the medium is the message." An irritated Woody Allen then pulled out McLuhan himself to harshly rebuke the guy.

Well, now I get that opportunity with comics  artist and writer Frank Miller severely criticizing the Occupy Wall Street protests. First let us look at Stephen Kelly of the UK Guardian speculating that Batman could become a hero for the OWS movement:

As reported on Thursday by Newsbusters' Mark Finkelstein, Joe Scarborough and some members of his MSNBC Morning Joe crew shot their mouths off about what Mike Barnicle described as a  "police riot" at the Occupy Oakland protests before waiting for all the facts. And now it appears that the Morning Joe folks have shot themselves in the foot as well since reports from the scene show that it was the police who were clearly provoked by the Occupy Oakland demonstrators.

So were these reports from the usual "rightwing" suspects? Nope. The reports confirming the provocations from the demonstrators came from the leftwing Mother Jones magazine and were supported by the very liberal San Francisco Chronicle. Here is the initial report from the scene by James West of Mother Jones:

"I'm ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille."

New York Times writer, Corey Kilgannon, chose Occupy Wall Street protester, Edward T. Hall III, as a representative of the OWS protests in an article about an arranged discussion between Hall and Wall Street worker Jimmy Vivona. Although the very thin patina of rationality presented by Hall might have fooled some liberals such as Brian Williams who want to desperately believe in the validity of the OWS protests, almost any normal observer wouldn't have been the least bit fooled by Hall's act. However, should any doubt remain about Hall's mental state, check out this video (below the fold) of Hall revealing his true self at the OWS protests. A word of warning: Not only is the language quite strong but Hall's off the chart Drama Queen antics are so burst out laughing funny from the get-go that you risk covering your monitor with coffee so please put your mug down while watching. A fringe benefit is a brief followup act by a female protester who attempts to match Mr. Hall in the Drama Queen department:

Bush also did it!

Bush also did it!

That is the current talking point desperately being promoted by the Associated Press, and now picked up by the San Francisco Chronicle, to try to explain away the selling of guns to members of the Mexican drug cartel by the Obama administration. The only problem is that the Associated Press left out a key detail as pointed out by Katie Pavlich of Townhall. First the misleading claim by AP:

Let us give credit for honesty (at least temporarily) to the New York Times "conservative" columnist, David Brooks, for his brutal self-recognition of a political flaw. Brooks flat out admits that he is a sap:

I’m a sap, a specific kind of sap. I’m an Obama Sap.

Brooks lays out in some detail his discovery of what most of the rest of us already knew; his extreme gullibility when it comes to believing Obama:

When the president said the unemployed couldn’t wait 14 more months for help and we had to do something right away, I believed him. When administration officials called around saying that the possibility of a double-dip recession was horrifyingly real and that it would be irresponsible not to come up with a package that could pass right away, I believed them.

Reuters appears to have taken the side of the Obama Administration in the Operation Fast & Furious scandal in which guns were permitted by the Bureau of Alcohol Firearms Tobacco and Explosives  to be "walked" across the Mexican border via the sale to straw buyers. The Department of Justice has portrayed this as a mere "botched" operation in which "mistakes" were made rather than the result of malignant intent. And if you read this Reuters article about Attorney General Eric Holder's attempt to distance himself from what has been dubbed "Operation Gunwalker" they go out of their way to emphasize the "botched" nature of the operation which has been the administration line on this matter:

(Reuters) - Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday sought to distance himself and other senior Justice Department officials from a botched operation to track guns smuggled to Mexican drug cartels, saying they were not involved.

The U.S. Attorney for Arizona resigns in disgrace this week and Politico writer Josh Gerstein wrings his hands in a show of great concern over the future political viability of this Democrat. First a little background from Michelle Malkin in NewsBusters about  U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke of Operation Fast and Furious notoriety:

There's been only one visible Fast and Furious resignation: U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke in Phoenix, who quietly stepped down on Tuesday. One of his last acts? Opposing the request of murdered Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry's family to qualify as crime victims in a court case against the thug who bought the Fast and Furious guns used in Terry's murder.

(Check the update at the bottom of this story. Bristol may have accidentally tipped us off as to the intentions of her mother.)

You know what a true insult from comedian Don Rickles would be? It would be if you appeared on a stage with Rickles and did NOT receive an "insult" from the "Merchant of Venom."

However, many media websites seem to be unaware of Rickles' stock in trade. They are crowing over the fact that they believe Don Rickles delivered serious insults to Bristol and Sarah Palin during a visit of the former to the Tonight Show last Thursday where the comedian was one of the guests. As you can see in this video (and below the fold), Rickles "insults" were relatively mild compared to the zingers he directed towards President Ronald Reagan on stage during his second inauguration in 1985. And the reaction from The Gipper was sheer delight at the "insults."

Yet here we have such sites as Raw Story and andPOP taking the Rickles insults as if they were some sort of serious political commentary.  Raw Story leads off with a headline that could also describe a Rickles encounter with anybody on a stage: "Don Rickles makes fun of Bristol Palin to her face."

"Why can you not get this deal?"

That was the attitude of CNN's Candy Crowley on yesterday's State of the Union. She acted like if only the Republicans were "reasonable" and accepted some "revenue" enhancements, then a deficit deal could be cut. House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy set her straight on why the deal as presented was unacceptable. Oh, Candy tried and tried to make a deficit deal agreement seem reasonable but McCarthy kept knocking her assertions out of the ball park as you can see in the interview video below the fold. Candy led off by accusing House Speaker John Boehner of engaging in a "bargaining ploy" instead of serious negotiation. McCarthy hit that accusation out of the ballpark while simultaneously stressing the sad state of the current unemployment situation in this country:

"HERETIC!!!"

That is what leftwingers will be screaming at their computer monitors when they read The New Republic article by Ruy Teixeira in which he praises President Barack Obama for agreeing to extend the Bush tax cuts which are so hated by liberals. Even worse, he claims that the Bush tax cuts extension will improve the economy to the extent that they could improve Obama's re-election chances. Well, there are a lot of other factors at play which will serve to keep the economy in its current doldrums but what Teixeira specifically says about the Bush tax cuts are enough to send liberal blood pressures through the roof over his "heresy." Here a few "heretical" tidbits from Teixeira:

...Far from dividing Obama's coalition, the tax-cut deal is brilliant move that could cement it, in the process winning back some of the white working-class voters who deserted the Democrats in 2010. That's because Democrats' devastating defeat in the midterm elections resulted primarily from the weak economy and the government’s perceived failure to improve it, not from any lack of resoluteness in upholding liberal principles or applying liberal rhetoric. Therefore, the central task for the Obama administration after the election was—and is—to improve the economy by any means necessary.

The sounds of the slaps you hear are those of the DUers at the Democratic Underground and the Kossacks at the Daily Kos slapping themselves silly for ever believing Anthony Weiner's very obvious lies. The only thing that makes them angrier than their gullibility being publicly exposed is the fact that Weiner apologized to Andrew Breitbart. That really drove them over the edge and contributed greatly to their sudden disillusionment with the New York congressman.

To get a handle on the unbelievable extent of their gullibility, we need to take a short trip down memory lane to just over a week ago to May 29 when the DUers were completly buying into the assertion in the title of their thread, "Anthony Weiner: Hackers posted lewd photos on Twitter." A few choice tidbits of their outrage over the belief that it was Weiner who was hacked:

I knew those monsters would go after Weiner. They always attack the best of us. Psychopaths always attack your strengths. Grrrrr

They messed with the wrong person this time. Anthony Weiner is not going to be silent while they go after him. This could actually be a good thing.

Didn't Harvard Law Professor Randall Kennedy get the word? Barack Obama's re-election is all but guaranteed if you believe the liberal mainstream media. Just today the CNBC head of news reported the belief that Obama's re-election would be guaranteed by the actions of the Fed. So why the concern about the health of Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer? Could it be that Kennedy doesn't quite (GASP!) believe in the political invincibility of the Lightworker?

Apparently such "heretical" thoughts must have occurred to Professor Kennedy judging by his New Republic article in which he urges the two aging justices to retire now because of the inference that they could die during a Republican administration elected next year and be replaced by (EEK!) conservatives. Of course, Kennedy tries, not too successfully, to be delicate in his suggestion:

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer should soon retire. That would be the responsible thing for them to do. Both have served with distinction on the Supreme Court for a substantial period of time; Ginsburg for almost 18 years, Breyer for 17. Both are unlikely to be able to outlast a two-term Republican presidential administration, should one supersede the Obama administration following the 2012 election. What’s more, both are, well, old: Ginsburg is now 78, the senior sitting justice. Breyer is 72.

Dismal economic growth. 

It's hard to be upbeat about that but since it occurred during a Democrat administration, Reuters does its best to accentuate whatever positive it can find in its report. First the downbeat news as relayed by Reuters reporter Lucia Mutikani:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Economic growth slowed more than expected in the first quarter as higher food and gasoline prices dampened consumer spending, and sent a broad measure of inflation rising at its fastest pace in 2-1/2 years.

And now the first of several Reuters exercises in excuse making:

But the pull back in output, which was also the result of harsh winter weather, a widening trade gap as well as weak government spending, will probably be fleeting given a firming labor market.