Posts Tagged → political
You call that a scandal? I’ll show you a scandal
New Jersey governor Chris Christie is rightly under fire for shutting down eastbound traffic lanes across the George Washington Bridge into NYC.
Emails, texts, and other sources used by Christie’s senior staff paint an unflattering picture of a guy using every means possible to punish politicians, and citizens, who don’t do what he wants. Like endorse him for reelection. It’s criminal behavior on its face and also because at least one person died due to traffic backups and slow ambulance service.
Amazing now how the American media is buzzing with this scandal, but the deadly Benghazi scandal (abandonment of US personnel and subsequent coverup of their cruel deaths) and the criminal IRS political scandal (destruction of elementary Constitutional principles in government behavior) are nearly off the media’s radar. Where’s the buzz about these huge scandals? Where are the public demands for justice, the mocking, the sneers, the tongue-clucking among network news anchors that they now employ against Christie?
On one hand, we have a scandal about traffic. On the other hand, we have multiple scandals about earth-shaking abuse of power, criminal negligence, undermining of the Constitution that holds America together and guarantees citizen rights. It’s impossible to justify reporting on the bridge, but not on Benghazi, IRS, US Dept. of Justice malfeasance, etc.
I regularly listen to NPR radio, and this double standard was especially strong there, as would be expected.
This double standard, or political activism masquerading as journalism, is just one more example of how the national media have abandoned their watchdog role and are now partisan cheerleaders.
According to the establishment media, Obama can’t do anything wrong; Republicans can’t do anything right. It’s shameful and all the more reason for new, additional fair and balanced news outlets. It’s why citizen reporters are the real journalists.
Patriot News Editorial on Mindlin’s Toss from Ballot
“Infrequently” best describes how often an editorial by the local newspaper, The Patriot News, would appeal to me on logic, principle, or understanding of the facts. However, independent candidate Nevin Mindlin’s political assassination by both Democrats and Republicans is so notoriously egregious that the Patriot News stated the case pretty well, so here it is:
Commonwealth Court sides with mystery challengers to Mindlin’s candidacy: Editorial
Print
Patriot-News Editorial Board By Patriot-News Editorial Board
on October 07, 2013 at 10:59 AM, updated October 07, 2013 at 12:09 PM
Nevin Mindlin, the one-time independent candidate for Harrisburg mayor, is a candidate no more. He has been knocked off the November ballot by court rulings based on the mindlessly literal application of a nonsensical state law. With little time for an appeal to the state Supreme Court, he has decided against waging a write-in campaign.
Nevin Mindlin went to Commonwealth Court in September, seeking to get back on November’s mayoral ballot. Friday, the court turned him down.
Though Mindlin was an independent candidate, not affiliated with any party or organization, state law requires him to name a committee that would replace him should he leave the race. That requirement makes sense for a political party, but it makes no sense for an independent candidate. By definition, an independent candidate is independent of organizational structures that would be entitled to claim an independent’s slot on the ballot.
Knowing all that, Mindlin did not name that committee. The Dauphin County elections office accepted his petition, without any warning that his petition had any fatal defect.
None of that mattered to the lower court that knocked him off the ballot earlier this summer. And it didn’t matter to Commonwealth Court, which last Friday upheld the dubious ruling.
Commonwealth Court used a legal technicality to dodge the heart of Mindlin’s case. He said that the state law in question violates a right enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution — freedom of association. In this case, the law forces Mindlin to associate with a “committee” empowered to choose some undetermined future candidate who could replace him, when the whole point of his candidacy is that he is independent of backroom-type arrangements like that.
Mindlin’s case is an example of the sleazy, insider political game-playing that fuels public disillusionment with elected officials and government.
The court’s hostility to Mindlin’s arguments also contradicts a well-established principle set by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in election cases. Courts in the commonwealth, when applying the election code, are supposed to construe the requirements liberally, “so as not to deprive an individual of his right to run for office, or voters of their right to elect a candidate of their choice.”
Again, the Commonwealth Court used a technicality to completely ignore those claims under the state Constitution.
Mindlin’s campaign is the latest casualty of ballot bounty hunters, ordinary citizens who mysteriously come forward, armed with expensive lawyers, to press a legal challenge to a candidate’s filing papers.
Hired guns parse signatures for the slimmest possible rationale to disqualify them: using a first initial instead of full name, women whose maiden name and married name are different, imperfect handwriting, stray marks in the signature block.
Even if the candidate survives the challenge, (as third-party Allegheny County council candidate Jim Barr did earlier this summer), he or she has to expend precious time and money fighting in court.
These often-shadowy court challenges to candidates’ paperwork have a corrosive effect on public confidence in the integrity of the election system.
In a comment on PennLive, one reader said Mindlin “must have stepped on the wrong toes.” Another announced, “I won’t be voting for anybody; the best candidate just got bounced.”
Many have wondered who paid the legal bills for challenging Mindlin. But without any public disclosure requirements, the mystery money can remain secret.
All in all, Mindlin’s case is an example of the sleazy, insider political game-playing that fuels public disillusionment with elected officials and government.
Pennsylvania’s legislature could rewrite election law to strike the nonsensical provision that kept Mindlin off the ballot. The legislature could require those filing challenges against candidates to identify how they are paying for all that expensive legal work. The Legislature could lower the unreasonably high barriers now imposed on third parties seeking to get on the state’s ballot.
But as with so many dysfunctional aspects of Pennsylvania’s laws affecting politicians, those who get to make the rules are content with the status quo. After all, they got there by playing by the rules as they are – why would legislators want to change them?
From their selfish perspective, it makes political sense. But from the perspective of the citizen whom elected officials are supposed to serve, allowing ballot bounty hunters so much room to squelch candidates is nonsense.
(from http://www.pennlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2013/10/mindlin_off_ballot_commonwealth_court_bad_ruling.html#comments)
You vs. Machine
Since the days of the Luddites, Human versus Machine has been a persistent theme, with the human being the “good” side, and the machine wearing the black hat. It’s easy to see why.
This theme has been fully developed by Hollywood, with movies such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Terminator series, and plenty of other sci-fi fiction, with future dystopias where humans battle cruel robots and machines that are either under their own control or under some robotic impulse, either way sparing the humans no quarter.
Truth is often the father of fiction, and this week we have seen three real-life Human vs. Machine stories that are much more compelling than the fake thrillers on screen. One is local, one is regional, and one is national.
First up is the local story, where Harrisburg mayoral candidate Nevin Mindlin argued his court appeal this Wednesday in front of a three-judge panel. A former Republican, the hyper-qualified Mindlin is now an Independent. He was removed from the ballot by a bizarre last-second technical objection by his opponent’s friends, after a hearing in a heavily politicized Dauphin County courtroom. See, Mindlin represents a threat to the combined and congruent interests of both the Democratic Party establishment machine and the Republican Party establishment machine, both of which fed in a bipartisan parasitic manner off of the body of Harrisburg City. Mindlin is completely independent of party bosses, and he will run the city (to the extent he can) in a way that is fairest for the Taxpayer. The establishments of both major parties have much to lose if Mindlin wins, because he will demand a criminal investigation into the debt shenanigans that destroyed the city, as opposed to Eric Papenfuse, who will simply look the other way and let the problems slip into the past, while the taxpayers are saddled with yet more unjustified losses. It is Man vs. machine, or really, vs. machines.
Regionally, the Mid-West has been a political toss-up, with one-time Republican Colorado becoming more liberal as Californians flee their home disaster and seek to bring the same bad ideas to an innocent, rural wonderland. This week we saw the recall of two defiantly arrogant state senators who had led the charge for insane gun laws. These laws do zero to effect crime and do everything to hamper lawful gun ownership, the kind Americans have enjoyed since the very beginning of the nation. The fact that both state senators were Democrats and the fact that their opponents did not include the Republican Party, but rather were an assembly of pissed-off citizens makes this a true-life Human vs. Machine contest. The local citizens who led the recall effort faced down and beat the Michael Bloomberg anti-gun machine, the Democratic Party machine, and several other political machines.
Naturally, the mainstream media has said very little if anything about this incredible feat. Naturally they haven’t, because to inform the voters out there that their future might really be in their hands, then their favored political party might lose power. So they hush it up. Recall that the failed effort to recall Wisconsin’s governor and several allied state senators was reported heavily every day for months and months, until it in fact failed. And then the mainstream media quickly slunk away and said “Never mind, folks.”
Finally, one Human vs. Machine story is still playing out in front of us on the national stage. That is the effort to define who is a journalist and what is journalism. No kidding.
With traditional and mainstream media sources dying left and right, this effort to exclude citizen journalists and artificially buoy up the legacy media is really just an effort to retain an old power that is quickly slipping through away, but which the Democrats need.
The advent of Internet media, blogs, and email have greatly leveled the playing field between citizen, voter, and political machine. At one time the only place where a voter could get news was from the news media, which is heavily invested in liberal and Leftist values (witness the 100th major media personality to leave the mainstream media and join the 0bama administration, this week, going from “satellite” duty to “in-house” role). Now, voters can get all kinds of reporting and information, without subjecting themselves to the heavy filtering and manipulation of the mainstream media, as best represented by CBS, NPR, ABC, NBC, the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, etc. This threat to one of the most important sources of power and control has one political party scrambling. And so is no surprise that US Senator Dianne Feinstein of California is now leading the charge to make only the failing legacy media be defined as “real” journalism, and the new media, with citizen reporters like me, as somehow unfit and thus, not “real” journalists.
Never mind that any website is pretty much the same website as the New York Times, except that with many others (like here) you get no advertisements. Never mind that journalism school is really just an advocacy training system, teaching young liberals how to go out and spread their Gospel of Leftism and liberalism.
I mean, really, how much training does it really take to make calls, knock on doors, interview people, look up facts, and then write about them? Journalism school should be about one semester long.
So now we see the Human vs. Machine playing out with us citizens fighting to maintain our right to free speech, our right to be heard like anyone else, our right to have our desktop printing presses be just as valued as someone else’s larger printing press. And the machine we are battling is a national political party.
As usual, I sign off by asking you dear readers to do something practical about this problem. Do something to support the little guy, like help Nevin Mindlin by going door-to-door for him in Harrisburg City. Donate ten bucks to your favorite gun rights group. And write an op-ed or a comment on some website, as a symbol of your own independent thinking, free of the hatchet jobs of political parties or the mainstream media.
Bill Tully for Judge sporting clay shoot
Bill Tully is a candidate running for Dauphin County Judge. He is the older and much, much more experienced of two candidates vying for the same seat. Bill is holding a sporting clays shoot at Hummelstown Field & Stream Association on May 4th, starting with the 8:30 breakfast.
It is $75 per participant and is open to kids 12 and up.
Questions should be directed to www.billtullyjudge.com
Islam Coexists? Really?
ISLAM COEXISTS?
By Bill Warner
April 26th, 2013
There is an enormous irony contained in the Boston Marathon bombing. When the jihadi Tsarnaev brothers carjacked a Mercedes, it had a Coexist bumper sticker.
The Coexist bumper sticker is the religious symbol of the multicultural crowd — you know — all religions are the same. Well, the leading symbol of those who want to Coexist is the star and crescent Islam. And exactly how well has Islam coexisted with all the others? What kind of neighbor has Islam been over history?
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/assets/Coexst.png
Start with Mohammed. We know an enormous amount about Mohammed as a neighbor to Kafirs (non-Muslims), pagans, Jews, and Christians.
When Mohammed was in Mecca before he became a Muslim, he was a good neighbor who was prosperous and helped to settle disputes. But, that all changed when he became the prophet of Allah. Once he became a public preacher of Islam, he became an irritant to his neighbors. You see, not only did Mohammed know what was right, he demanded that everybody do everything his way, Allah’s way. He was a neighbor who was always right and you were always wrong. Not only were you wrong, but your parents and grandparents were wrong. Mohammed no longer settled arguments; he created arguments. After 13 years of this, the Meccans told Mohammed to leave Mecca.
So he went to the town of Medina, which was half Jewish. And what kind of neighbor was Mohammed to the Jews? Put briefly, two years later, Medina was Judenrein (cleansed of Jews). When he arrived, there were three tribes of Jews. In rapid order, the first tribe was driven out of town, bereft of its goods. Then the second tribe of Jews was exiled. They were lucky. The last of the Jewish tribes suffered the most. The women were enslaved and sold wholesale for money to purchase horses and arms for jihad. For the rest of his life, Mohammed used slavery to help finance his jihad. The children were kidnapped and adopted into Muslim families to be raised as Muslims. Then the 800 male Jews were all beheaded.
But wait. Mohammed was not through coexisting with the Jews. Later he left Medina and went to Khaybar and attacked them. Mohammed crushed them, took their wealth and put them to work under the Sharia s dhimmis and give him half of what they earned.
That was how Mohammed coexisted with the Jews.
But Mohammed was not through with coexisting with the Arabians. He attacked the Meccan caravans. His jihadists killed, kidnapped, stole, assassinated and fought the pagan Arabs at every turn. Mohammed’s coexistence policy with the Arabs was jihad. This went on until every Arab became a Muslim.
After Mohammed made every soul in Arabia convert to Islam, he turned his coexistence policy to the Christians north of Arabia in Syria. He attacked the Christians, with the losers becoming dhimmis just like the Jews.
Dhimmis are the way that the Sharia allows Kafirs to coexist within a Muslim society. The dhimmi is a third-class non-citizen who pays special taxes and has no real civil rights. A dhimmi cannot testify against a Muslim in court, for instance.
Look at how Islam coexisted with Africa. A clue as to the nature of that coexistence is that Arabic has one word, “abd”, that means both black slave and African. Context must supply which meaning is used. Islam ran the slave trade on the West coast, East coast and Mediterranean coasts of Africa. Islam sold every slave that was brought to the Americas. Conservative estimates are that 120 million Africans were killed in the jihad that produced all of the slaves in Africa.
How did Islam coexist with the Buddhists in what is now Afghanistan? Jihad annihilated every single Buddhist and their libraries and monasteries.
There is a massive database of the coexistence between Islam and the rest of the world at thereligionofpeace.com. It catalogs more than 20,000 jihad attacks around the world since 9/11 2001. Here is a chart of the data of the top 4 nations as victims of jihad:
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/assets/Jihad%20stats.png
Put another way, this is how Islam coexists today with Jews, Buddhists, Christians and Hindus. It practices jihad against all non-Muslims – Kafirs.
The idea of “coexist” has a social ring to it: we’re all one big happy family. But how do we talk about all religions and not get into which one is right or best? Well, there is an easy way to do it. If you are not a member of a religion, the only thing you care about is how you are treated by those who belong to that religion. In short, you only care about the ethics and character of the adherent.
All of the world’s religions have an ethical code that is rooted in the Golden Rule. Islam does not have a Golden Rule. Mohammed’s life is the perfect example of how not to be a good neighbor. How do you coexist with a neighbor who has the ethical choice of jihad – of murder and deceit?
What do religious leaders in American think about coexisting with Islam? They love it. “Coexist” is the mental mush that fills the heads of the useful idiots that go to the Family of Abraham religious dialogues. The ministers and rabbis who attend these dialogues know as much about Islam as can be found on the Coexist bumper sticker. Their ignorance is astounding. They are there to coexist and the imam is there to dominate. Dhimmi Christians and Jews want to tie, the Muslim wants to win.
But the mental mush of coexistence is not just in the heads of the dhimmi religious leaders, it also fills the heads of law enforcement and military. Under Bush and Obama, all of those who actually know something about Islam inside the military and law enforcement have been removed. FBI and military training files have been purged to satisfy the Muslim Brotherhood. So our protectors are forbidden to study the war doctrine of political Islam. They are prevented from naming the enemy and studying them.
There is only one way to coexist with Islam over time. Islam must submit to Kafir civilization and we must never submit to Islam, not even in the smallest detail. This means we must all know the smallest details of Islam and that begins with the knowledge of Mohammed and his wars against all Kafirs.
Bill Warner is the director of the Center for the Study of Political Islam