Tribute to Trump & Rosie, Apologies to Neil Diamond

Produced by the ScrappleFace Enterprise Institute
Scott Ott, president, guitar, vocals

Why some people should not be allowed to procreate:

Gov. Phil Bredesen (D-Tenn.),
misappropriation of brain waves…

The Tennessean

Bredesen’s Christmas card depicts Muslim girl
Picture and message leave church leaders scratching their heads

Gov. Phil Bredesen has given an unusual twist to his family’s Christmas card: He is marking a Christian holiday with a card depicting a Muslim girl.

The card’s cover is a print of a painting by the governor of a young woman he met when he toured Afghanistan in March.

“May the peace and joy of this Christmas season be with you and your loved ones throughout the coming year,” the card reads.

“While it may seem odd to put a portrait of a young Muslim woman on a Christmas card, this Season reminds us that He loves His children most of all,” Bredesen stated on the back of the card.

Khaled Sakalla, spokesman for the Islamic Center of Nashville, said the local Muslim community also wishes Christians a peaceful and happy holiday. But, he said, if the governor saw a Muslim woman in Afghanistan as depicted — with her head partially uncovered — that’s not the Muslim dress code.

“Women shouldn’t have their faces fully covered, nor should they have their hair half-uncovered,” Sakalla said.

A local conservative Christian minister also wasn’t sure.

“If he is saying Christmas is about honoring all religions, I don’t agree,” said the Rev. Maury Davis of Cornerstone Church in Madison. “If the message is to love all people, that is Jesus Christ’s message. The governor’s message is just not very clear.”

The back of the card closes with, “May the miracle of Christmas help bring peace to this young woman and her wounded land.”

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>> The Tennesean

Phyllis Schlafly @ The Eagle Forum:

Tech Industry Lies About H-1B Visas

The technology industry has dispatched its wallet-filled lobbyists to demand that the new Congress vastly increase the number of foreign computer software techies and engineers who can be imported on H-1B visas. This demand is based on the claim that we suffer a labor shortage in those fields, but that’s a bare-faced lie to erect a smokescreen around the real reasons.

Three reasons motivate the tech giants to use their political clout and PAC contributions to increase H-1Bs. (a) Cost-cutting: H-1Bers are paid much less than Americans. (b) The influx of H-1Bers depresses the “prevailing wage” for all computer techies and engineers.

(c) The hiring of H-1Bers prevents potential competition from Americans who might resign to work for other firms or start companies of their own. H-1B visas are not for entrepreneurs or executives, but are for employees who are tied to the company that imports them (much like indentured servants) and are supposed to depart from the United States after a few years.

[...] Continued… The Eagle Forum

The Washington Post:

In the wee hours of the morning Dec. 7, Senate negotiators rejected a Medicare measure pushed by outgoing House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) that would have meant big revenues for an insurance company in Hastert’s home state. But a day later, the $100 million proposal was alive and well, paired with a plan for a major Nevada land swap backed by Sen. Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), the incoming Senate majority leader.

>> and on the second day of Christmas…

San Francisco Chronicle
A FAMILY’S TRAGEDY
Fumbles, missteps hindered search
Father hiked 16 miles in effort to save family

“In the end, it was an amateur helicopter pilot who had nothing to do with the official search who saved Kati Kim and her young daughters.”

h/t: Michelle Malkin

In case you missed it…

Newt Gingrich on Meet The Press Part 1 — 08:46

Newt Gingrich on Meet The Press Part 2: 08:58

Newt Gingrich on Meet The Press Part 3: 07:46

Newt Gingrich on Meet The Press Part 4: 04:09

Bookworm @ Bookworm Room writes, “Jimmy Carter — you are a very bad man” and proceeds to prove it… then finds backup from:

…David Horowitz also takes on Jimmy Carter’s manifestly anti-Semitic views. Carter vehemently denies being an anti-Semite, but I think that the shoe fits, given his pronouncements about how the evil Jewish state has destroyed the peace and peace-loving Palestinians. An opinion that deviates this far from reality has to be driven by some other force and, in this case, anti-Semitism seems as good an explanation as any. Here is how Horowitz destroys just one of Carter’s many lies:

It is a lie that Palestinians “had their own land, first of all, occupied.” This is like saying that Texans had their own land occupied by Hispanics, ignoring the fact that Hispanics were there first. The very word Palestine is a Roman appellation for the people called Philistines, who were not Arabs but red-haired sailors from the Aegean. The Jews were there as well.

In short, first of all the Jews were in the land before the Arabs.

Second of all, the Arabs who inhabited the Palestine Mandate in 1948, at the time of the creation the state of Israel, considered themselves Syrians.

Third, the Palestine Mandate was not created on land taken from the Syrians or the Arabs. It was taken from the Turks.

It was not taken from the Turks by the Jews, but by the British and the French. They took it because Turkey sided with Germany in the First World War and, of course, lost. The Turkish empire had ruled the entire region including Syrian, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan for four hundred years before Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan were artificially created by the English and the French. Jordan — a state whose majority is Palestinian — occupies 80% of the Palestine Mandate.

So it is a preposterous lie to say that the Palestinians had their own land and that it was occupied by the Jews.

Fourth, the individual plots of land that Jews now own were in the first instance bought from the Arabs who regarded themselves as Syrians and who lived in the area of Israel. The only property that was confiscated was confiscated as a spoil of the aggressive war that five Arab states waged against Israel from the day of its birth. Five Arab armies invaded Israel, a sovereign state, with the declared intent of “pushing the Jews into the sea.” The cry today of the Muslim majority in the Middle East is to “liberate Palestine from the river to the sea.” In other words push the Jews into the sea.

>> Read the whole thing.

Steve Sailor @ VDare: Is America headed for Idiocracy?

What hath Dr. Spock wrought?

The Boston Herald
No holiday humor in radio pair’s jollies over degrading homeless

Some people may have giggled at the idea of a gaggle of homeless men taking over the upscale Short Hills Mall in New Jersey, a stunt staged by radio shock jocks Opie and Anthony and heard by WBCN listeners all weekend. It was tantamount to bringing a bus filled with the bedraggled from Boston Common to sit on Santa’s lap at the Chestnut Hill Mall.

But Mayor Thomas M. Menino was not amused in the slightest.

“This so-called ‘shopping spree’ is a sick and twisted exercise that degrades the most vulnerable members of our society. This is an outrage. This is wrong, and we need the public and our partners who care about the homeless and about basic human decency to stand up and tell them so,” Menino said, adding that the broadcast came on the same day that the city began counting the Hub’s homeless.

“The homeless people who will be used for this event are human beings who may have been struggling for years with the adversity and problems that come with alcoholism and addictions, or with mental illness and other disabilities,” Menino said.

“The fact that WBCN has chosen the homeless and the holidays to present this humiliating and shameful attempt at humor is inhumane and shameful.”

Of course, Menino has his own problems with the shock jocks.

The pair was already infamous for inhumane behavior — such as airing a couple having sex inside St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, enraging Catholics nationwide.

But no prank is worse than the one they pulled on April Fool’s Day in 1998, the one that got the duo fired by WAAF.

They went on the air and told listeners that Menino had been killed in a car crash, terrifying his wife, children, grandchildren and loved ones.

Call me humorless, but who could find that funny? Apparently, a lot of people, because the two knuckleheads moved to New York and their show became syndicated.

In this weekend’s highly publicized trip, “homeless and lunatics” were brought to the fancy mall in New Jersey and treated to Christmas presents, makeovers — and booze.

And there were girls — I’m certain they were decked out in $200 Juicy sweatpants and armed with their daddy’s Amex cards — who called the show to complain that Opie and Anthony were ruining their shopping experiences.

They were called over-privileged “whores” on the air.

And all this Christmas cheer comes just days before National Homeless Persons Memorial Day.

OK, maybe creating a memorial day to the country’s homeless population is a bit too crunchy granola, but I’m also opposed to using down-on-their luck folks who could be mentally ill, or desperate alcoholics for financial gain.

Remember “Bum Fights” — those atrocious videos that show teenage punks beating up homeless people and then urinating on them? Those uplifting clips provoked the beatings of at least a half-dozen homeless people across the country.

At least the homeless brought to the Short Hills Mall got a few beers, pictures with Santa and maybe even some Gap sweatshirts, rather than a beating.

And then they were dropped off back on the streets they were rousted from in the name of fun.

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>> The Boston Herald