Herman Cain Berated for Telling the Truth About Public Unions

Herman Cain Berated for Telling the Truth About Public Unions: "

Political correctness has fostered a thoughtless political discourse where arguments rest on whether someone is offended. There’s no need to determine whether a claim is right or wrong, only whether it hurts someone’s feelings.

A recent example comes from ThinkProgress, who reported earlier this week on a radio appearance by Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain. The former Godfather’s Pizza CEO directed criticism at public employee unions.

After host Carmen Conners declared that public unions are “being driven by communist groups,” Cain agreed that he was concerned about unions, telling Conners that some labor unions “are trying to bring down the United States of America.” Cain also maintained that some unions “are trying to destroy the state of Wisconsin”:

CONNERS: We have public unions that are being driven by communist groups like the CPUSA and all that. Are you concerned about the disruptions being caused by these public unions?

CAIN: Yes I am concerned about that disruption. What the American people have got to be told, which is the truth, that some of these unions and some of these disruptions that we have seen, they really are trying to bring down the United States of America. They are trying to destroy the state of Wisconsin(…)

… Cain’s comments this morning show just how far some are willing to go to appeal to the Tea Party fringe.

That’s an interesting conclusion which neglects the essential question. Is Cain right? Are public unions being driven by communist groups? Are some unions trying to destroy the state of Wisconsin and the rest of the country?

Just the week before the last, a prominent member of the Communist Party USA publicly expressed his surprise at the level of radicalization among Democrat state legislators in Wisconsin. Socialist and communist groups coordinated with SEIU, the AFL-CIO, AFSCME, and others on the “One Nation” rally last year, and again on this year’s “Rally to Save the American Dream.” Socialists and communists were prominent fixtures throughout the protests in Wisconsin over Governor Scott Walker’s proposed legislation curtailing the monopolistic control of those unions. So it seems we can say with a fair amount of certainty that public unions are being driven by communist groups.

The claim that some unions are trying to destroy Wisconsin and the United States is a little more subjective. Surely, the unions and their socialist and communist allies would argue they simply wish to transform our nation into a classless utopia where all would thrive. Cain’s comment simply acknowledges the results which similar efforts have wrecked wherever they’ve been tried.

ThinkProgress here discourages thought. Cain’s remarks are presented as self-evidently extreme, without any attempt to correct them. Perhaps that’s because they don’t require correction.

Fallsview Casino Resort: Lucky Dog

Fallsview Casino Resort: Lucky Dog: "

Advertising Agency: Blammo Worldwide, Toronto, Canada

Director: Steven Tsuchida / Holiday Films

Learn how to do great ads like this on Creative Pro.

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If We Can’t Burn the Koran, Then Islam Isn’t Worth Spit

If We Can’t Burn the Koran, Then Islam Isn’t Worth Spit: "

On Sunday, March 20th, fundamentalist pastor Terry Jones burned a copy of the Koran after conducting a mock trial that found Islam guilty of crimes against humanity. Right-minded people of every political persuasion responded with round condemnation. Shame on them.

Terry Jones strikes me as a bona fide idiot, but this is Western Civilization. We’ve earned the right not to pull punches when it comes to religion, and we’ve earned the right not to have to justify the freedoms our culture grants to individuals.

We Westerners demean religions and all that they hold sacred. We Westerners mock, scorn, and ridicule religious taboos. It’s not just something that we can do because it’s legal. It’s something that we actually do, because it’s part of our cultural tradition.

Sometimes it takes the form of crude and vulgar comedy on animated shows like South Park. Other times we see it in irreverent skits on shows like Saturday Night Live. At times it’s the approach of serious journalism like we saw with the Jyllands-Posten newspaper. Once and while, we see it in a compelling HBO series or a brilliantly-written broadway musical. Occasionally, we even see religious bigotry rear its ugly head, as we saw with attacks on Romney’s Mormonism and Terry Jones’ attack on Islam. First-rate religions take all of this in stride, because that’s the way that it has to be if you’re a religion in the West and you want to play with the big boys.

As Fleming Rose eloquently noted in his Washington Post article defending his Mohammed cartoons in 2006:

[I]f a believer demands that I, as a nonbeliever, observe his taboos in the public domain, he is not asking for my respect, but for my submission. And that is incompatible with a secular democracy.

We’ve rejected this brand of submission, and we must not be in the habit of apologizing for anyone who refuses to submit.

Here in the West we put Christians, Buddhist, Hindus, and Jews all on the same footing. When some nut burns a Koran or South Park puts Mohammad in a bear suit or Fleming Rose solicits cartoons of Mohammed, they’re attempting to treat Islam as an equal to other religions; they’re inviting Islam to take a seat at the table with the major world religions.

When large segments of the world’s Muslim population respond with violence or threats to Western depictions of their religion, they are rejecting that seat at the table. Their actions have the effect of denying that their religion has a place alongside the great religions.

The choice is clear: We either accept their verdict that Islam is a second-class religion or we proceed undeterred with our Western treatment of Islam. Personally, I’m not comfortable handling Islam with kid-gloves, treating it with the same tact and delicacy that we otherwise reserve for the mentally retarded. So my message to anyone with a match and a Koran is simple: “Burn, baby! Burn!.”

"

like they’d evar

like they’d evar: "

This February, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals—widely seen as one of the more liberal federal courts in the nation—issued its ruling in Darensburg v. Metropolitan Transit Commission, a lawsuit brought by poor, largely minority riders of public buses in the San Francisco Bay Area. The plaintiffs had alleged that, since a large majority of the city’s bus riders were nonwhite, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s preference for rail-expansion projects over bus-expansion projects was racially biased and a violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The court ruled against the plaintiffs and issued a stinging rebuke to their lawyers. Is it possible that, even in California, courts long tolerant of questionable claims of racial discrimination may finally be running out of patience?

Sylvia Darensburg, the primary plaintiff in the case, is an African-American mother of three who lives in East Oakland and relies on public buses as her primary form of transportation. Darensburg, said the Equal Justice Society—a San Francisco–based activist organization that advocated on behalf of the plaintiffs, though it wasn’t involved in the case itself—“experiences the reality of transit inequality.” She “endures” long waits for the two buses she rides and has to walk 12 blocks from home to the nearest bus stop. The plaintiffs argued that while nearly 80 percent of Bay Area bus riders were people of color, the region’s rail service predominantly benefited white riders. So the Metropolitan Transit Commission’s disproportionate funding of rail projects was biased….

"

so anywho…

so anywho…: "

Attorney General Eric Holder today will announce that self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad will be tried in a military commission, CBS News has learned. A source says the commission will be held at the Guantanamo Bay prison.

Trying Mohammed in a civilian court and closing the Guantanamo prison were once some of the Obama administration’s top priorities……..

"

on Broadway

on Broadway: "

On Broadway, the creators of the “South Park” TV show have put together an irreverent musical called “The Book of Mormon.” The show depicts clueless missionaries trying to spread their faith in Africa, along with interludes depicting Mormon prophet Joseph Smith as a con man.

The LDS church didn’t boycott or denounce the show, and the press reported on reported on faithful Mormons who traveled far to see it. Muslims would react very differently to a satirical Broadway show called “The Koran.” A tiny gesture of disrespect in Florida led Islamic mobs to murder UN workers in Afghanistan. The contrast between Mormon and Islamic responses to provocation shows the difference between people who are secure and confident in their faith, and those who treat even the slightest disrespect as potentially lethal to an ancient but troubled religion.

“…funnier than Dick Cheney gasping for breath…”

—Mika Brzezinski

“…It was better than Cats…”

—Shakeel Ahmad Bhat

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Dodge loves car chases, appropriate or not

Dodge loves car chases, appropriate or not: "

I think we can all agree with Dodge's premise, in the commercial below, that car chases make any movie better. Imagine how great The King's Speech would have been if George VI's Bentley had smashed through the gates of Buckingham Palace and exploded on the royal cricket pitch. A cool chase is shown in the Dodge spot, depicting the high-speed hijinks of some Merchant-Ivory type historical characters. It ties in with the movie Fast Five, the latest entry in the Fast and the Furious franchise. The commercial, from Wieden + Kennedy, isn't as revolutionary as Dodge's patriotic outing last year, but seeing a hammy 'unscrubbed son of a blacksmith's apprentice' punch out a windshield to woo his beloved is worth it. Eagle-eyed YouTubers with too much time on their hands point out that in the final shot, the glass is magically intact again. Hey, many real action films have even worse continuity. Also, Dodge's invisible chimp delivers some Oscar-worthy work in this new spot. You can't see him, though—so you'll just have to trust me on that.

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5 Questions for Michael Moore from Thomas Jefferson

5 Questions for Michael Moore from Thomas Jefferson: "

That whole up-is-down, black-is-white thing that the Left’s got going does leave a sane person wondering if they’re all off their meds. How else to explain professional blowhard Michael Moore’s appearance on Colbert this week, where he offered up several big heapin’ helpings of crazy. Bet you didn’t realize Professor Moore was a scholar and expert on all things Founding Father-related? Or that he and Thomas Jefferson had so much in common? Check it out:

Quite a compendium of misleading statements, outright lies, and utter nonsense, no? The coup de grace has got to be that mangling of the legacy of Thomas Jefferson to serve Moore’s own fevered fantasies of collectivism. I don’t know which quote book he’s using, but as far as I can tell Jefferson never said, as Moore claims, “the earth belongs to all of us and we are to share in its resources and labor.”

Best I can tell, this is the quote that Moore was attempting to torture into Marxism: “The earth is given as a common stock for men to labor and to live on… Wherever in any country there are idle lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. Everyone may have land to labor for himself, if he chooses; or, preferring the exercise of any other industry, may exact for it such compensation as not only to afford a comfortable subsistence, but wherewith to provide for a cessation from labor in old age.”

The somewhat controversial implication that Jefferson did indeed appear to make was that IF there were land/resources that were not being used, and IF there were poor people sitting around doing nothing and not providing for themselves, then perhaps some of that land/resources should be redirected to said poor people. But remember the time and place in which Jefferson made his statements. I think it’s safe to assume that there was significant land sitting around that was not yet considered anyone’s legal private property (after all, the West hadn’t been settled yet).

But note that Jefferson went on to promote that poor people should be exercising some industry of their own, and that they were to earn not only what would make them comfortable now, but MORE than they needed (retirement savings, as it were).

Contrast that with Moore’s utterly unhinged idea that the richest people in this country have “sucked wealth” out of the economy and are “sitting on it.” But Mr. Moore – aren’t they doing exactly what Jefferson was suggesting?

In fact, I have a few more questions for the Left’s favorite filmmaker – because, after all, all quotes are best studied in context. Let’s take a look at a few more of Jefferson’s quotes, and see how they line up with Moore’s “workers of the world unite” rhetoric.

First: On the connection between working and eating…

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Headache

Headache: ""

Magic Beans Keep Coffee Proper Temp

Magic Beans Keep Coffee Proper Temp: "

Seen here keeping a non-drug using friend's urine just the right temperature before smuggling it into a piss test, magic Coffee Joulies were designed to cool coffee to a drinkable temperature 3x faster, then keep it there 2x longer. Sound like boner pills to me.

Coffee Joulies are stainless steel coffee beans with a special phase change metal inside of them. 'Phase change' just means that it's a metal that goes from solid to liquid and back again, but doing that is a lot of work, and the metal sucks up a substantial amount of heat when it melts. This means that when you drop one of these beans into hot coffee, the bean's insides will melt and the coffee will get cooler.


The melted nugaty centers of those beans will slowly release their pent-up heat back into your coffee after they've melted, helping to keep it from getting all cold and gross. The upshot of all of this phase changing is that Coffee Joulies can cool your coffee down to a comfortable 130 or 140 degrees Fahrenheit three times faster, and then keep it at that temperature for about twice as long.

Sure, why not? The guys that invented them have a Kickstarter page where, instead of just donating money, you can pre-order a set of five magic beans for $40 to help get manufacturing started. Me? I don't need any magic beans. No, I like my coffee like I like my nipples: piping hot and being blown on.

One more closeup of the 'Jack is jealous' after the jump. Huh? JACK AND THE BEANSTALK YO, GET WITH IT!"