Sunday, August 10, 2008

Interesting Links From Around The Web - 10 August 2008


Some of the most interesting links from around the web, all below the fold:
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Art: Wolf Drinking Water By Moonlight, John Nieto

Obama

At Ankle Biting Pundits, blogging on the Democrats Orwellian pay-off to big Labor – long supported by Obama – the "Employee Free Choice Act." As ABP notes, it is not "free" and provides no "choice."

Per Don Surber, Obama has a BFF, and its George Clooney whom he often contacts for advice.

In an effort to help the left side of the aisle and comics everywhere relearn how to laugh at politicians, and in particular the One, My Vast Rightwing Conspiracy is soliciting Obama jokes.

A superb post at Politics and Pigskins drawing the parallels between the message and symbolism of Obama to that used by the Nazis in their bid for power. Similar thoughts are expressed at Transterrestrial Musings.

PlumBob Blog has a very well written post on Obama and the left’s plans to use the police powers to criminalize dissent and political disagreements.

Protein Wisdom takes a look at latest Obama symbolism and sees in it a painful national cornhole.

The Right

Hillbilly Politics muses that the first black President will likely be a Republican. I have long thought that a probability. And it will have nothing to do with the color of his – or her - skin. I would consider a write-in vote for Thomas Sowell myself.

A must see video at Ms. Underestimated, "speaking truth to power" on the liberal’s war for oil.

At The Deleware Curmudgeon, its bikers for McCain.

Paris Hilton’s energy plan was enough to bring Jules Crittenden temporarily out of his blogging hiatus.

The Left

Brain Droppings post on Rep. Luis Gutierrez who wants all immigration raids stopped, equating the Dept. of Homeland Security with the Gestapo.

MoveOn celebrates their "successes" in 2007. It is mindlessness given voice.

CodePink tops their list of concerns with preventing the U.S. from going to war against Iran. Do they realize Iran is already at war with us? Does it matter to them?

Oil

Viking Pundit notes how the left looks for any alternative to answer rising oil prices – but increase supply. Can we send these guys some copies of "The Wealth of Naions?"

MSM

Bizzy Blog post on an article by John Rutten in the LA Times wherein he opines that the MSM no longer sets the parameters of the news. Bizzy Blog thinks that the lesson to be learned from the MSM’s cone of silence is dependent on whether John Edwards makes a return to politics.

The Anchoress blogs on the many betrayals in the Edwards train-wreck.

At Weapons of Mass Discussion, exposure of how AP is covering up Obama’s communist mentor.

Crime:

WatchPaul has the story of a murder conspiracy recently uncovered. It makes for a disturbing read.

BarbaraJTJ is posting on how half of our states (25, not 28.5) are not retaining DNA evidence.

War

Dave in Boca posts his thoughts on the "EU-nuchs, Georgia, and the invasion by Russia." Davie is very intelligent, a former State Dept. officer, and always is worth a read. He sees this as an assessment by Putin that America is weak and now is the time to reassert Russian hegemony over Eurasia.

From Joshuapundit, the Sec. of Def. has authorized a huge expansion of the Afghan military and, finally, unification of the command structure in country.

Four Rightwing Whackos post on the execution of 8 German saboteurs during WWII, back when Democrats still had testicles.

Religion, Islam, Israel

Eternity Road has a series of ruminations, some serious, some tongue in cheek, relating to Catholicism and Church.

Kollarow has an educational post on Shia dogma, posting on the al Madi.

At Blogging For A Free World, the authors note the uptick in violence in the Gaza Strip as Hamas and Fatah batter one another.

At Firebase America, posting on a story out of Genoa, Italy: A proposal to turn a medieval palace in Genoa founded by Crusader knights into a multi-faith prayer centre for muslims, Jews and Christians has run into opposition from local politicians who say muslims are "not welcome".

Yourish posts on how Israel is raising a real stink in Gaza. Its crowd control by skunk.

Elder of Ziyon posts on bias at NBC in their descriptions of Israel and "Palestine."

Stating The Obvious

From Jammie Wearing Fool, researchers in the UK have confirmed the beer goggle theory of beauty and desirability. No kidding.

From Sake White: "When ever I go to one of these youtube videos and see such comments, what I usually am thinking is "just how much of humanity can be sacrificed and our civilization would never even notice the loss"?"

Breakfast People – The Nuts & Flakes

Counterknowledge is posting on author Patrick Geryl who writes that the earth will succumb to the apocalypse in 2012 per the Mayan prophecy.

Heh

From Slapstick Politics, the top ten ways that the DNC are like the Beijing Olympics. Very well done. One of my favorites: 8. To the untrained ear (or those of you who disappoint Barack Obama by not speaking a dozen foreign languages), both Chinese (Mandarin or Cantonese) and moonbat are completely unintelligible.

Some biting satire at MAD magazine via the Educated Shoprat.

Scrappleface has the first draft of Bill Clinton’s speech to be given at the DNC Convention.

3 comments:

Ymarsakar said...

Four Rightwing Whackos post on the execution of 8 German saboteurs during WWII, back when Democrats still had testicles.

The Democrats were as unjust back then as they are now.

If those are the same people that I am thinking of, and the numbers and infiltration route looks the same (by submarine), then they were caught only because more than 2 of those German "saboteurs" turned themselves voluntarily in, gave all the information on their buddies and other plans without need for "deals", and the guy in charge of the FBI still got rid of em.

That sound like Democrats to you, wolf? It sounds like em to me.

Ymarsakar said...

Shouldn't you, Wolf, know better by now, given the Democrat history, that their virtues were never theirs to begin with?

Or at least be suspicious of such.

This is the comment I posted at the link, with the benefit of a research site given to me by another commenter there.

“You and I are going to have a talk,” Dasch said, “And if we disagree, only one of us will walk out that door—the other will fly out this window.”

He then revealed the truth to Burger: he had no intention of going through with the mission. He hated the Nazis, and he wanted Burger on his side when he turned the entire plot over to the FBI. Burger smiled. Having spent seventeen months in a Nazi concentration camp, his own feelings for the party were less than warm. He, too had been planning to betray the mission. They were agreed.

The two men were uncertain how best to proceed with their plan. They were reluctant to contact the authorities, having been told by their handlers that the Nazis had infiltrated the FBI. Eventually, Dasch concluded that their best option was an anonymous phone call to test the waters and arrange for further contact. He called the FBI’s New York Field Office, and after several transfers was put in touch with a special agent. Identifying himself as “Pastorius,” the name of the mission, Dasch carefully recited his story. Then, ominously, the man on the other end of the line hung up. Dasch was stricken with panic. Had he just exposed himself to a Nazi spy? Had the call been traced?

George John Dasch (left) and Ernst Peter Burger (right)George John Dasch (left) and Ernst Peter Burger (right)In fact, he had been speaking to the office’s “nut desk,” the post responsible for fielding calls from Cleopatra and the wolf-man. In the midst of the most important case in the Bureau’s history, the agent on duty had dismissed their only lead as a prank.

Shaken but not discouraged, Dasch ordered Burger to stay put and keep an eye on the other men while he headed for Washington D.C. to set things straight. The morning of June 19, a week after his landing at Long Island, Dasch stepped into the FBI’s headquarters carrying a briefcase. He explained who he was and asked to speak with Director Hoover.

The agents in the building, however, were too busy catching spies to be bothered with every crackpot off the street who happened to know classified details about secret Nazi landings. Dasch was bounced from office to office until finally Assistant Director D.M. Ladd, the agent in charge of the manhunt, agreed to humor him with five minutes of his time. Dasch angrily repeated his story, only to find himself greeted once again with patronizing nods and glances toward the door. Fed up at last, he lifted the briefcase he had been carrying, tore open its straps, and dumped the entire $84,000 of mission funds onto the Assistant Director’s desk. Ladd blinked with astonishment and began to reconsider Dasch’s claims.

For the next week, Dasch was the subject of an intense interrogation, and he happily revealed all he knew. His operation, he explained, was just the first of a long series of sabotage missions planned by the Germans to cripple the American war effort. They were scheduled to land every six weeks, with the second team expected imminently. Dasch exposed the targets he had been instructed to hit as well as the methods he had been trained to use. He revealed key information about German war production, plans, and equipment. He turned over a handkerchief upon which the names of local contacts had been written in invisible ink—although Dasch, who had snoozed his way through spy school, couldn’t remember how to reveal it. Most important of all, Dasch disclosed the locations of his three accomplices and their aliases, taking care to note Burger’s role in the defection.

The three men who had landed with Dasch were quickly located using the information he’d supplied. Dasch knew little about the second four-man team, but with the help of his handkerchief contacts—which the FBI’s lab quickly discovered could be revealed by ammonia fumes—they were soon tracked down and arrested. Just two weeks after the first landing, and without a single attempt at sabotage, all eight men were in custody.

J. Edgar HooverJ. Edgar HooverHoover broke the media blackout on the evening of June 27. Across the nation, American citizens were astonished to wake up to front-page headlines declaring “U-BOATS LAND SPIES; EIGHT SIEZED BY FBI.” But it wasn’t the story known to those on the inside. Hoover reasoned that letting the truth be known now would do nothing to discourage the Germans from making further sabotage attempts. It was better to perpetuate the myth of an invincible FBI that had halted the plot through its own ingenuity and all-seeing eye—a story that also happened to fit nicely into Hoover’s personal agenda.

At his press conference, Hoover therefore made no mention of the defection of Dasch, or indeed of any details on how the case was broken. He opted instead to praise the brilliance and efficiency of his FBI. “The detective work of the century,” Hoover called it, referring perhaps to agent Ladd’s astute observation of $84,000 cash bouncing off of his forehead. Further details, he explained, would have to wait until after the war. The unsatisfied press room erupted with speculations about elite FBI agents infiltrating the Gestapo and the High Command. Hoover refused to confirm any such wild theories, but his triple-eyebrow raises, exaggerated winks, and menacing cackles encouraged the reporters to adopt their own conclusions.

With the last of his accomplices rounded up, it was time at last for Dasch to get his due. On July 3, his contacts at the FBI greeted him with smiles and handcuffs, and tossed him into a cell alongside his men. It was not the response Dasch had been expecting, but the arresting agents assured him it was little more than a formality. If he just went along with it, he was told, J. Edgar Hoover would ensure that he received a presidential pardon within 6 months.

Hoover had indeed already spoken to President Roosevelt about the arrest, but his conversation had nothing to do with advocating Dasch’s release. The president was given an account similar to the one furnished to the press, with no mention of Dasch or Burger’s role in the investigation. According to Hoover, Dasch had been “apprehended” two days after his accomplices; and the arrest had been made in New York, not Washington, implying that the arrest of the subordinates had led to the capture of their leader rather than the other way around. Hoover’s revisions to the story may have had something to do with the river of letters and telegrams later received by the president urging him to award the FBI Director with the Congressional Medal of Honor. As it turned out, the majority of these messages came from the FBI’s own Crime Records Division, the office just a few doors down from Hoover's. The campaign, however, was unsuccessful.

[....]Nevertheless, the only concern of the US government was in reassuring its citizens and sending a powerful message to the Nazis. Since the men hadn’t actually committed any crime, a normal court could sentence them to at most a few years in prison—or even acquit them entirely. To President Roosevelt, this was unacceptable. In a memorandum sent to Attorney General Biddle, he wrote: “Surely they are as guilty as it is possible to be and it seems to me that the death penalty is almost obligatory.” A military tribunal, he felt, was the only way to ensure this outcome. “I won’t give them up,” he told Biddle, “I won’t hand them over to any United States marshal armed with a writ of habeas corpus.”

He would find no objections among the American populace. As shown in polls and editorials across the country, the general public was overwhelmingly in favor of execution for all eight terrorists. A letter printed in one newspaper called for the men to be fed to Gargantua, the Ringling Brothers’ famous giant circus gorilla.


Such people have no honor. They deserve neither the cooperation nor the allegiance of Sunnis, nor any other enemies who would have helped them, had they a shred of integrity worth it for such to do so.

Sacrificing the honorable solely to make it look good on your resume, is not an honorable act.

Just because the Democrats were cowardly and expedient exploiters in FDR's time, does not mean Bush should emulate them now, when Democrats are cowardly and expedient exploiters.
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Back when Dems had testicles and were willing to take public opinion hits and personal sacrifices for the good of the nation? Negative. They never did nor had.

Ymarsakar said...

I've learned over the years that whenever you think you have hit the bottom of Democrat depravity, injustice, and extra-legal abuses of American and US Constitutional power, you ain't even seen half of the real deal, yet.

Within a month of the initial landing at Long Island, the eight saboteurs were put before a closed-door US military tribunal—the first to be assembled since the days of the Civil War. It was presided over by a panel of seven generals; there would be no jury, no press, and no appeal. During the trial, none of the defendants denied their involvement with the plot, instead claiming that they were forced into the mission by the Nazis, or that they had joined as a means to escape from Germany. Due to his unique circumstances, Dasch was defended separately. His counsel argued competently in his favor, noting that the case would never have been broken without him, that the FBI had promised him his freedom, and that he clearly had been planning to betray the mission from the start. Not only had he disobeyed orders by sparing coastguardsman Cullen, he had also deliberately revealed his face and assigned name—George John Davis—to the man.

Explosive delay devices disguised as pens, submitted as evidenceExplosive delay devices disguised as pens, submitted as evidenceAfter 16 days in session and two rejected constitutional appeals from the defense, both sides had said their piece. A verdict was signed and sent directly to the president, who was to be the final arbiter of the sentencing. It was unanimous: the Germans, all eight of them, were guilty. The recommended sentence was death.

It was only upon reading the transcript of the trial that Roosevelt learned how Hoover had misled him. Regardless, it apparently didn’t shake the foundation of his opinion on the case. At the urging of defense counsel, FDR gave only enough ground to commute Dasch's sentence to 30 years of hard labor, and Burger's to life. George John Dasch, a man who had envisioned himself being welcomed as a hero by the American people and perhaps earning his own Medal of Honor, would instead spend what was likely to be the rest of his life in prison. His six accomplices were not so fortunate. Five days after the trial’s end, they were marched to the electric chair in alphabetical order. Within two months of landing in America, the men had been captured, charged, tried, and executed. The official verdict of the tribunal wouldn’t be released for another three months.

Dasch and Burger were locked away in a federal penitentiary, their true story only known to a handful of military and government officials. But as ethically suspect as J. Edgar Hoover’s deception may have been, his cover-up worked. Hitler was infuriated at the news of his men’s capture, and he refused to risk another submarine for further missions. Just as he had intended, Hoover effectively stopped any attempts at German sabotage for the remainder of the war.


And guess what, in the end filthy Democrat retards attempt to use this example as being a "successful coup" to damage President George W. Bush's efforts to detain terrorists at GitMo.

Democrats and the Left have no shame. They feel no responsibility for FDR's actions as being the actions of the Democrat party, and they being members of the Democrat party have a responsibility to atone for the acts of their leader and their party.

They even give credit to Hoover for something he didn't do, solely to make the case stronger against Bush, to say that even keeping terrorists away from Americans is a good solution for America, it is still unjust like Hoover's actions against the Germans were unjust.

Hoover's actions against the German defectors were unjust and unnecessary. Period. The Left has no idea of what is necessary or unnecessary, reasonable or unreasonable, lawful or unlawful, concerning actions that affect nations and peoples.

All I hear are excuses. The excuses people use to sacrifice the weak and the innocent for their own political self-aggrandizement. Those people have no honor. If it was up to me, they would be the ones swinging from the scaffold.