Friday, October 15, 2010
Common Sense Prevails ::: Wilders not guilty on all counts - Update
The whole western world needs to be firm like this. We welcome and accept Muslims, but they also must respect our freedoms, and our rights.
The public prosecution department on Friday afternoon stated that Geert Wilders is not guilty of discriminating against Muslims. Earlier on Friday it announced he should also be found not guilty of inciting hatred.Prosecutors Birgit van Roessel and Paul Velleman reached their conclusions after a careful reading of interviews with and articles by the anti-Islam politician and a viewing of his anti-Koran film Fitna.
They said comments about banning the Koran can be discriminatory, but because Wilders wants to pursue a ban on democratic lines, there is no question of incitement to discrimination 'as laid down in law'.
On the comparison of the Koran with Mein Kampf, the prosecutors said the comparison was 'crude but that did not make it punishable'.
Dealing earlier on Friday with incitement to hatred, Van Roessel and Velleman said some comments could incite hatred against Muslims if taken out of context, but if the complete text is considered, it can be seen that Wilders is against the growing influence of Islam and not against Muslims per sé.
On Tuesday, the prosecutors said the MP should not be found guilty of group insult.
The public prosecution department was forced to take the case by the high court after anti-racism campaigners protested at its refusal to prosecute Wilders.
His film Fitna is available for viewing online here at wejew.com, and also here at Jihadwatch. They seem to be slightly different versions, but I have not yet had a chance to watch them both through.
Illinois Candidate's Name Misspelled As 'Rich Whitey' On Electronic-Voting Machines
Sad and crazy, yet unfortunately hilarious. Isn't Illinois also having issues with their military ballots as well? Hmmm...
There are typos and then there are complete and utter catastrophes.
The Chicago Sun-Times reports that the name of Green Party gubernatorial candidate Rich Whitney is misspelled "Rich Whitey" on electronic-voting machines in 23 wards -- "about half in predominantly African-American areas." The error only occurs on screens voters would see when they are reviewing their choices (Whitney's name appears correctly on the initial screens), but officials say the error cannot be corrected before election day.
Jim Allen, spokesman for the Chicago Board of Elections, told the Sun-Times he expects 90% of votes on election day to be cast on paper ballots -- minimizing the number of voters who would see the misspelling.
"I don't want to be identified as 'Whitey.' If this is happening in primarily African-American wards, that's an even bigger concern," Whitney told the Sun-Times. The paper says he's considering legal action. "I don't know if this is machine politics at play or why this happened."
The latest Rasmussen poll shows Whitney drawing just 2% of the vote.
Oh, Good Grief. Oprahturf?! ::: Oprah Surprises ‘Daily Show’ Audience
You’re going to D.C.! And you are! And you! And you! And you!
An audience member tells JustJared.com that Oprah surprised the entire Daily Show audience today (October 14) with a promise to fly the audience out to Washington, D.C. for the Rally to Restore Sanity and put them all up in hotels!
Oprah appeared before the live studio audience via satellite.
JustJared.com will be at the rally at the end of the month - for more information on the event, visit RallyToRestoreSanity.com!
Last month, Oprah showed support for the rally on her twitter. “I think Jon Stewart’s on to something. Rally to Restore Sanity,” she tweeted. “Would you consider going? Oct 30, 2010?”
Oprah Surprises ‘Daily Show’ Audience | Jon Stewart, Oprah Winfrey : Just Jared
Kickass Ad - Ken Buck for U.S. Senate - "Ignore Us"
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
-Mahatma Gandhi
Hat-tip to Powerline.
Great Month At The Lost And Found... A Vivaldi! And a Michelangelo!
Two super cool stories.
1-
LONDON (Reuters Life!) – A lost flute concerto by 18th century composer and virtuoso violinist Antonio Vivaldi has been discovered by an academic among a set of dusty papers housed in Scotland's National Archives in Edinburgh.
The extraordinary find, a 300-year-old copy of the Italian Baroque composer's original manuscript, comprises the parts for "Il Gran Mogol," one of a quartet of national concertos.
The others, entitled "La Francia," "La Spagna" and "L'Inghilterro" remain lost.
The musical score, which scholars believe may never have been performed, was found and authenticated by Southampton University research fellow Andrew Woolley.
"This piece was previously known only from a mention in the sale catalog of an 18th-century Dutch bookseller. Discovering that it is actually in existence is unexpected and hugely exciting," Woolley said.
Peter Franklin, spokesman for the University of Southampton, said: "this is an 18th century published copy of the original, so it's not in Vivaldi's own hand, but we don't know of any other copy in existence."
The work is almost complete, missing just a part of the second violin. Woolley was able to reconstruct the missing part by referring to another Vivaldi flute concerto, kept in Turin in Italy, which he said appeared to be a rework of the original.
...
The concerto will be played for the first time in Perth Concert Hall, Scotland, in January.
2-
This unfinished painting of Jesus and Mary could be a lost Michelangelo, potentially the art find of the century.
But to the upstate family on whose living-room wall it hung for years, it was just "The Mike."
When the kids knocked the painting off its perch with an errant tennis ball sometime in the mid-1970s, the Kober clan wrapped it up and tucked it away behind the sofa.
There it remained for 27 years, until Air Force Lt. Col. Martin Kober retired in 2003 and had some time on his hands. His father gave him a task -- research the family lore that the painting was really a Michelangelo.
..."Now, with your newfound free time, do something with this!" Kober recalled his father telling him.
Kober, now 53, dug into the history of the painting, contacting auction houses, Renaissance art scholars, European archives, and even meeting museum directors in Italy. He found Antonio Forcellino, an Italian art restorer and historian and told him of the tennis ball, and something more horrifying.
"It wasn't the story that had scared me, but that it had been exposed to heating commonly found inside a middle-class home," Forcellino writes in his new book, "La Pieta Perduta," or "The Lost Pieta," published in Italy and due out in the United States next year.
And he did not believe in the existence of another version of Michelangelo paintings that are hanging in Italian museums.
"I had assumed it was going to be a copy," Forcellino said.
Still, Forcellino skeptically visited Kober's home outside Buffalo to view the painting, and the trip left him a bit breathless.
"In reality, this painting was even more beautiful than the versions hanging in Rome and Florence. The truth was this painting was much better than the ones they had. I had visions of telling them that there was this crazy guy in America telling everyone he had a Michelangelo at home," Forcellino said.
A scientific analysis of the painting proved that the Michelangelo claim was not so crazy.
Forcellino told The Post that infrared and X-ray examinations of the painting -- on a 25-by- 19-inch wood panel -- show many alterations made by the artist as he changed his mind, and an unfinished portion near the Madonna's right knee.
"The evidence of unfinished portions demonstrate that this painting never, never, never could be a copy of another painting," Forcellino said. "No patron pays in the Renaissance for an unfinished copy."
...Additionally, the provenance, or ownership history, points to the work being done by Michelangelo around 1545 for his friend Vittoria Colonna. That was about 45 years after Michelangelo did his famed "Pieta," or pity, sculpture of Mary holding Jesus, housed in St. Peter's Basilica....The rare Michelangelo drawings that have come up for sale in recent years have sold for as much as $20 million. And a possible Michelangelo at the Metropolitan Museum of Art could be worth as much as $300 million.
"Millions and millions," Wallace said of the lost Pieta's value.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
One More Time, With Feeling ::: Two Must-See Dem. Sen. Candidate Alvin Greene Interviews
Okay, so the first video I'm embedding is several months old. But it took me this long to get around to finding it. And then I laughed until it hurt.
Then I felt bad about laughing at poor Alvin Greene, the Dems Senatorial candidate challenging Jim DeMint in South Carolina. After watching it, if you haven't already, you'll see what I mean.
But then I was just really gobsmacked at the insanity that this man won the Democrat primary, against a seasoned lifetime politician (Vic Rawl). Alvin is unemployed. He lives with his parents. He has absolutely no experience, and yet he won with almost 60% of the vote.
Is he a Republican plant? Is he a garden plant? Did he win because folks thought he was Al Green? I don't know. But it's crazy.
It's crazy that he currently holds 55% of the Democrat vote in SC.
55%.
(But only 21% statewide.)
Anyway... please sit back... and enjoy.
BTW... I never heard of this O'Donnell guy before but yeesh... what a leftard. I take it this is supposed to be an opinion (as opposed to news) show?
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Great Ad From Christine O'Donnell... Chris Coons, The Taxman
It's nice to see she's finally getting some decent return on the campaign cash that poured in. Really well done ad.
YouTube - Christine4Senate's Channel
YouTube - Christine4Senate's Channel
I Want My Astroturf ::: Big H'Wood Exclusive: Internal Email Reveals MTV Pressuring Employees to Attend Stewart’s Rally (More Free Bussing)
This is an excerpt, the whole thing is worth the read:
by John NolteAn internal email reveals that MTV is investing heavily in making a success of Jon Stewart’s counter-rally to Glenn Beck’s incredibly successful August event. But the music network’s tactics give the whole affair a taint similar to October 2nd’s “One Nation” rally, where all that Big Labor-SEIU astro-turfing still wasn’t able to reproduce Beck’s grassroots success. Below is a portion of an email that I’m told just went out to some, and maybe all, MTV employees. The wording is chipper and upbeat enough, but the subtext is worthy of an SEIU thug: [emphasis mine -- and I've removed any links for fear they go to private internal servers]:
Whether you lean left or right, hail from a blue state or red, prefer keeping sanity, fear, or a healthy dose of both alive and well, the one thing we all have in common is that we’ve pledged allegiance to the MTV Networks flag. And when an opportunity arises to support one (or two) of our own. we’ll take it pretty much every time.
You may have heard that Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are hosting a little get together on the National Mall in Washington, DC on Saturday, October 30th. … This will be a day when — no matter what transpires from Jon, Stephen, and their special guests — our brothers and sisters at Comedy Central will own the cultural conversation, without question. Who would want to miss that one?
On the morning of October 30th, we’re loading up a fleet of buses here at 1515 Broadway and sending as many of you as we can down to DC for a free one-day, round-trip journey to join in the Rally to Restore Sanity and March to Keep Fear Alive. It’s about a 5 ½ hour trip down 95 to our nation’s capital[.]
In an economy plagued with chronically high unemployment, how would you react to a memo like that? The opening paragraph makes clear that MTV expects you to put your political beliefs aside and take one for the team – in the form of a grueling 11 hour bus ride. The line MTV draws is also clear. Those who choose to attend Stewart’s left-wing event are loyal to the company, and those who choose not to attend … are not. After all, you did pledge allegiance to the “MTV Networks flag,” right?
What’s a conservative to do in a situation like this? You either conform or…
We’ve all worked for companies where a little above and beyond was expected from time to time. But this is something else. No matter how Jon Stewart tries to spin it, his October 30th “Restore Sanity” rally is not only a political event, it’s a political event meant to help the party currently holding power. And we know this because the leader of that party told us so. To pressure an employee to take part in a political rally anathema to his or her personal beliefs crosses a line.
Money for nothing. Chicks for free.
Jake Tapper Interview ::: Axelrod to US Chamber: What Are You Hiding? (US to Axelrod... you first!)
I absolutely love this Tapper/Axelrod exchange.
As politics followers know, the latest Dim plot for the elections is to smear the US Chamber of Commerce because they're spending a lot of money on Pubbie ads for the mid-terms. So they've come up with baseless charges and are now demanding the CofCs disprove them.
Now, Jake Tapper could have asked ol' Axie if Obama was still beating his wife, which would be the perfect retort, but he actually went one better.
TAPPER: But what do you say to people who argue you are demonizing an organization for a charge that nobody knows if it's true or not?
AXELROD: Well I’m not demonizing the Chamber of Commerce. I’m simply suggesting to them that they disclose the source of the $75 million that they are spending in campaigns and put to rest, put to rest the questions that have been, that have been raised.
TAPPER: Isn't that like the whackjobs that tell the president he needs to show them his full long-form birth certificate so he can put to rest the questions that have been raised?
AXELROD: The president’s birth certificate has been available to people.
TAPPER: The long form?
AXELROD: Someone once in the course of this debate about whether we should have a law to force these organizations to disclose where they’re money is coming from in the campaigns, someone said, and I think they’re right – “the only people who want to keep things secret are folks who have something to hide.” If the Chamber doesn’t have anything to hide about these contributions, and I take them at their word that they don’t, then why not disclose? Why not let people see where their money is coming from?
So Axie... are you saying Bambi has something to hide?
Entire transcript is here: Axelrod to US Chamber: What Are You Hiding That You Don’t Want the American People to See? - Political Punch
Monday, October 11, 2010
Arianna Pulls A Castro with A Quarter Mil To Bus 'Em In ::: Jon Stewart Rally Astroturf Alert
“Jon and I were talking in the green room about the rally. I said, ‘Oh my God, how are those people going to get there?’ On the air I decided to make that offer, it was spontaneous, and nobody knew. My people were in the green room with me, and even they had no clue.”
To Stewart’s delight and apparent surprise, the new-media mogul pledged “as many buses as there are people to fill them” from Huffpo’s headquarters in Manhattan to the comedian’s Oct. 30 rally on the Washington Mall.
"How are those people going to get there?" Good grief. Here, in America, we have plenty of options when it comes to means of travel.
What is it with lefties and their busses?! Are they going to hand out sandwiches, too? (Apparently there were lots of trashed boxed lunches left on the ground after the "One America" rally. Heck, for a free ride and a sammy I might have attended too.)
Weird eBay Find Of The Day ::: trashed sweet ballet flats, $199, "nice odor"
I'm not sure what's going on here, but I imagine it's meant to be kinky.
| Q: | hi Gabby i want these shoes. Ireally want them. i live in the usa.please tell me something about them. are the your shoes. will pics be available of your feet and your feet in them. what is the least you will accept? will 80.00 dollars make them mine? i want to hear from you please. I want these shoes.thx so much. Anthony. | Oct-10-10 |
| A: | Hi Anthony, you write so sweet I would really love to sell these shoes to you. But I can't do anything with the price due to 2 reasons. 1. It is not mine. It belong to a friend of mine. She is a 25 years old very attraktive and bold but lovely russian girl. It was her absolute favourite pair and she loved them so much. Normally she wouldn't give them away but as she saw some of our auctions she said, "ok, for 200 $ I would give my boloved flats away". AND they have a nice odor too. 2. I have buy-now-bids for already 120 EUR which is 165 US$. I know, for those shoes you have to wait years to get another similar one. It so soft leather and totally worn to the death. And more. If you buy them I would be willing to send you some pics of Anastasia (the owner) and her feet. kind regards Gaby |
The pictures are worth the click (including a really odd hand-up-a-skirt shot.)
Just What I Needed Today ::: Wyclef Jean - Redemption Song/America (Tribute to 9/11 Heroes [Video])
I've never forgotten this great rendition of Redemption Song by Wyclef Jean at the 9/11 Tribute to Heroes concert in '01. And, after finding a video of it, I see my memory still serves me well. It's still wonderful. (Second best moment of that night after Mike Moran telling Osama to kiss his royal Irish ass.)
Thursday, October 07, 2010
How Come All The Republicans With Testicular Fortitude Are Women? (New Sharron Angle Ad: "Thanks, Pal")
First we have Jan Brewer taking on the obnoxiousness of foreign nations being given "friends of the court" status vs. Arizona, now this no-punches-pulled ad from Sharron Angle.
(Dennis Miller talks about campaigning for Angle [and continues his hilarious pummeling of Harry Reid] on O'Reillys show here.)
Anyway... back to Angle's ad:
(P.S. and FWIW... I find the visual that goes along with the tuition break part a little problematic, but I like the ad as a whole. However, if I were on her team, I would tweak that part.)
Tuesday, October 05, 2010
Head Shaker Of The Day ::: Council Member MELTDOWN Highlights - Vancouver City, WA (9.13.10)
The arrogance of councilmember Jeanne Harris is truly a sight to behold. The Mayor of Vancouver City is a total drip. And councilmember Jeanne Stewart really needs to take over the whole place.
Eco-Fascists Show Their True Colors... Again ::: How to Cut Carbon Emissions
How these loonies got the delectable Gillian Anderson to participate in this insane campaign, I'll never know. Or perhaps I just don't want to know.
And yes... this is a real ad. That they've now pulled.
The "again" in the subject title refers to the Audi "Green Police" Super Bowl ad, which, in case you missed it:
Friday, October 01, 2010
I Heart The Worm ::: In a Computer Worm, a Possible Biblical Clue - CNBC
I've been following this story intently since last week, and love everything about it. For the record, from the beginning I put ten bucks on this being a gift from the Mossad. lol.
Originally in the NYT:
Deep inside the computer worm that some specialists suspect is aimed at slowing Iran’s race for a nuclear weapon lies what could be a fleeting reference to the Book of Esther, the Old Testament tale in which the Jews pre-empt a Persian plot to destroy them.
That use of the word “Myrtus” — which can be read as an allusion to Esther — to name a file inside the code is one of several murky clues that have emerged as computer experts try to trace the origin and purpose of the rogue Stuxnet program, which seeks out a specific kind of command module for industrial equipment.Not surprisingly, the Israelis are not saying whether Stuxnet has any connection to the secretive cyberwar unit it has built inside Israel’s intelligence service. Nor is the Obama administration, which while talking about cyberdefenses has also rapidly ramped up a broad covert program, inherited from the Bush administration, to undermine Iran’s nuclear program. In interviews in several countries, experts in both cyberwar and nuclear enrichment technology say the Stuxnet mystery may never be solved.
There are many competing explanations for myrtus, which could simply signify myrtle, a plant important to many cultures in the region. But some security experts see the reference as a signature allusion to Esther, a clear warning in a mounting technological and psychological battle as Israel and its allies try to breach Tehran’s most heavily guarded project. Others doubt the Israelis were involved and say the word could have been inserted as deliberate misinformation, to implicate Israel.
“The Iranians are already paranoid about the fact that some of their scientists have defected and several of their secret nuclear sites have been revealed,” one former intelligence official who still works on Iran issues said recently. “Whatever the origin and purpose of Stuxnet, it ramps up the psychological pressure.”
[snip]
Read the rest here: Technology Story: In a Computer Worm, a Possible Biblical Clue - CNBC
The New Democrat Motto
A FReeper posted this one yesterday... and I just had to share...
The new Democrat motto. We came, We saw, We sucked. Now we just need to translate it into Latin. Veni Vidi Lewinski
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Jon Stewart On Obama And Billy Ayers "Subverting the Constitution"!
I never thought I'd see the day when Jon Stewart would make such a comment. If you're in a hurry, the relevant section begins at 2:26, but the whole clip is worth the watch.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Indecision 2010 - Democratic Campaign Woes | ||||
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