NRO: Mark Steyn – Everybody Draws Mohammed Day (spread the risk)

May 20, 2010Jenny Marie Hatch

I could not embed the video that is buzzing around the web right now because it just revolted me when I watched it just now. And I am NOT into provocation for its own sake. But I do agree with Steyn. We need to spread the risk around and stand with those whose lives have been ruined (and ended) because of this out of control issue.

Jenny Hatch

Mark Said:

“Veronique, I initially had mixed feelings about Everybody Draws Mohammed Day. Provocation for its own sake is one of the dreariest features of contemporary culture, but that’s not what this is about. Nick Gillespie’s post reminds us that the three most offensive of the “Danish cartoons” — including the one showing Mohammed as a pig —were not by anyJyllands-Posten cartoonists but were actually faked by Scandinavian imams for the purposes of stirring up outrage among Muslims. As Mr Gillespie says:

It is nothing less than amazing that holy men decrying the desecration of their religion would create such foul images, but there you have it. It is as if the pope created “Piss Christ” and then passed it off as the work of critics of Catholicism.

…I’m bored with death threats. And, as far as I’m concerned, if that’s your opening conversational gambit, then any obligation on my part to “cultural sensitivity” and “mutual respect” is over. The only way to stop this madness destroying our liberties is (as Ayaan Hirsi Ali puts it) to spread the risk. Everybody Draws Mohammed Day does just that. Various websites are offering prizes. I only wish we could track down those sicko Danish imams* who drew their prophet as a pig, and send them the trophy.

(*PS If I seem somewhat obsessed by this point, it’s because the Government of Alberta spent three years investigating my friend Ezra Levant for publishing the (authentic) Motoons, and, despite the cost to taxpayers, assigned a halfwit apparatchik to grill him about the cartoons who didn’t even know that what she called the three “worst” ones were fakes.)”

Tea Party Power Rising

May 20, 2010Jenny Marie Hatch

I don’t have much to add to Dr. Zero and John Podhoretz. Both share excellent overviews of the primary votes from tuesday. Things are shaping up this year just as I had hoped and believed they would. The song above is the official music video of the tea party movie.

It has been so fun to rise up with fellow activists this past year as the tea party movement hit the ground running. So happy to have been a part of history.

Jenny Hatch

Dr. Zero: The Teaparty Imperative

Our Freedom is not for sale

“No one welcomes the understanding that a system they have lived under their entire lives, built over the course of a century, is fatally flawed and headed for collapse. This knowledge is a heavy burden. The Tea Party is determined, not spiteful. It’s about renewal, not doom… demanding better from the political and media elite, not lashing out with blind fury as the light fades from America’s eyes.

This is the Tea Party imperative: No more politicians voting for legislation they haven’t written, or denouncing state laws they haven’t read. No more billion-dollar environmentalist con jobs. No more programs that can never be repealed. No more fraudulent candidates. No more illusory “moderate Democrats” representing a party that abandoned every plausible claim of “moderation” when it rammed the health-care monstrosity down our throats. No more “moderate Republicans” cutting deals with a system only a few years away from crashing down on all our heads.

Arlen Specter got over 480,000 votes last night. Pennsylvania’s District 12 elected the successor of a crook they made Senator-for-Life. The power of incumbency is not to be underestimated. In November, with the future of this country hanging in the balance, we will discover its limits.”

Podhoretz: No Seat is Safe

“The electoral year that began in January with Republican Scott Brown’s staggering victory in the Senate race for Teddy Kennedy’s seat in overwhelmingly Democratic Massachusetts is nowhere near done with us yet — or with them.

What is happening in the 2010 elections goes far beyond the conventional interpretations. Yes, voters are expressing dissatisfaction with the status quo. Yes, conservatives are displaying anger with runaway liberalism and what they perceive as accommodationism. Yes, populists are using their primary votes or special-election votes to stick it to the elites.

None of that gets at the central fact with which all American politicians will be forced to grapple going forward: The era of political stability for incumbents and veteran political players has truly reached its end.

The point is not that every incumbent is vulnerable — certainly Chuck Schumer isn’t — but that every incumbent might be.

The threat might come, as it did to congressional Republicans in 2006 and 2008, from Democrats taking advantage of voter exhaustion with the GOP in districts and states that should have been safe conservative territory. Or it might come, as it has over the past month, from within the incumbent’s party itself.

If Bob Bennett can be ousted in Utah and Alan Mollohan can be ousted in West Virginia — in their own party’s primaries in seats they not only they held for decades, but that their fathers held in turn before them, in states noted for the relative docility of their party’s internal electorate — then anything can happen.”

Townhall: David Harsanyi – No Speech for you

April 2, 2010Jenny Marie Hatch

“So Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is demanding that citizens justify their political speech under oath. Nervous Nellies doubtlessly will characterize this as an “overreach.” Crybabies will grouse about the “chilling” effect or the “muzzling” of dissent.

Yet in these heady days of change, it’s all about context. In this case, you’ll be relieved to know, we’re talking about CEOs. These people take home considerably more pay than I do. Accordingly, they deserve to sit through hours of absurd inquires from sanctimonious politicians as a matter of karmic justice.

What they don’t deserve is free speech. The president ably expounded on the matter in the State of the Union address: Corporations should not be entitled to the same constitutional protections as the rest of us.

With this in mind, it should surprise no one that Waxman has requested the “personal testimony” of a few CEOs, who have reported billions of dollars in negative impact to their businesses — per Securities and Exchange Commission disclosure requirements — because of the passage of health care reform.”

Michelle Malkin has a challenge to all business owners:

Beltway Confidential: Limbaugh Responds to the President

April 2, 2010Jenny Marie Hatch

Rush Limbaugh (Getty Images)

In his new interview with CBS, President Obama refers to the “troublesome” talk and “vitriol” of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.

“Keep in mind that there have been periods in American history where this kind of vitriol comes out,” Obama says. “It happens often when you’ve got an economy that is making people more anxious, and people are feeling like there is a lot of change that needs to take place. But that’s not the vast majority of Americans. I think the vast majority of Americans know that we’re trying hard, that I want what’s best for the country.”

I asked Limbaugh what he thought about the president’s comments. His program’s popularity is undeniably soaring now, but has it risen and fallen with economic anxiety — that is, was he less popular during times of economic security and more popular in times of economic worries? Since Limbaugh has been broadcasting nationally for more than 20 years, there ought to be some sort of pattern, if what Obama says is accurate.

“I have yet to have a down year at the EIB Network,” Limbaugh responds. “I and most Americans do not believe President Obama is trying to do what’s best for the country. Never in my life have I seen a regime like this, governing against the will of the people, purposely. I have never seen the media so supportive of a regime amassing so much power. And I have never known as many people who literally fear for the future of the country.”

The point, Limbaugh says, is not that listeners are feeling anxiety about the economy, although many undoubtedly are. It’s that they are feeling anxiety about the Obama agenda.

Rep. Michele Bachmann Says Her Property Was Vandalized & She Received Threats

March 26, 2010Jenny Marie Hatch

Gateway Pundit

“Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) told Sean Hannity tonight that her property was vandalized and that she received several threats. The Minnesota conservative said she did not make a big deal out of the attacks because, unlike democrats, she did not want to stir the crazy pot.”