The latest from Prager University:
Is it immoral for the state to kill convicted murderers? Is it immoral for the state not to? Best selling author and nationally syndicated radio talk show host Dennis Prager answers both questions in this powerful five minute presentation.
Why don’t the defense attorneys in the Casey Anthony trial simply argue that their client performed an eleventh-trimester abortion?
Today, the two finalists for the Madden NFL 12 cover were revealed. It couldn’t have turned out worse for EA. Forget being between a rock and a hard place; EA Sports is trapped between a knife and a gun fight: relative unknown Peyton Hillis of the perennially awful Cleveland Browns, or convicted dog-killing pariah and ex-convict Michael Vick. Either EA has to market a game featuring a player the average person cares little about, or they’re hit with animal rights activist protests for a highly controversial cover boy.
EA made a fatal error in preparation of the Madden cover vote. The person voted to be on the cover only hurts or helps EA. It doesn’t impact a Madden fan’s sponsorship opportunities. It doesn’t affect a gamer’s promotion plans. No one voting stops and thinks, “Man, I better not let Vick win or EA will have a tough time doing a media tour.” Don’t think for a moment that EA ever would willingly put Peyton Hillis or Mike Vick on the cover of Madden. They expected the voters to do the right thing for EA. That’s not how popularity contests work.The lesson here: never, ever, give people the option to affect your product unless it’s something you can live with. The 32 players in the Madden voting bracket needed to be 32 players EA would gladly have on the cover. Because, as we can see with the final round in this contest, online voters aren’t predictable. Never assume they have the same priorities or business sensibilities of a publicly traded corporation. The public loses nothing by turning on EA and biting them in the ass.
[W]e now have this from the Dane County election numbers.Total votes for the Supreme Court Election: 182,382
For County Executive: 171,718So we’re dealing with about 10,600 more votes being cast for the Supreme Court election than in the County Executive race. Now, of course the Supreme Court race was very contested, so many may have seen it as more important– but over 10,000 in the city?
Not to mention the fact that last night there were 10,000 (exactly) votes given extra to Kloppenburg by Dane County before the number was retracted.
Village of Grafton Police were called to the Grafton Town Hall because election officials were concerned that protesters were too close to the polling place and were not following the rules established by Wisconsin’s Election Authority or Government Accountability Board (GAB). Two witnesses confirmed that a Police Officer who reported to address the incident apparently refused to deal with the protesters initially. Jessica Schmidt, Grafton Town Clerk, and another witness heard the officer say, “I used to be a conservative but I’m not anymore.” Apparently, this behavior was a result of the recent debate over union rights that has consumed Wisconsin. The officer then walked outside and without addressing the issues presented by the protesters and refused to do his job, allowing the intimidation to continue. The officer’s behavior was apparently upsetting enough that an elderly poll worker was shaking immediately following the incident and needed to be calmed down by a nurse that was present at the polling place.
I have filed a Wisconsin Open records request with the City of Mequon demanding any ballot submitted but not cast in yesterday’s election, including any remnant of a shredded ballot. We have received reports Mequon poll workers destroyed submitted ballots before poll closing time, demanding a driver’s license number from the absentee voter. This request is unusual and the destruction of ballots is of grave concern, given the closeness of the state Supreme Court election. I will consider seeking an injuction to back up my request if Mequon officials are not copperative.
One caller, McKenna said, talked about a “missing box of ballots,” a voter overheard poll workers talking about. On air, McKenna said the ballot box could have contained blank ballots or it could have been filled with Wisconsin voters’ completed ballot. Either possibility presents a dilemma, though, as blank ballots in the hands of the wrong people could be used to illegally influence counts after the election.“There are reports of 17-year-olds voting because they didn’t need to show proof of their age or anything like that,” McKenna told TheDC. “There were folks allegedly using their husbands’ or relatives’ utility bills in voter registration, ballots weren’t being counted because they were using the wrong kind of pens.
– Here is what I don’t get. 222,761 votes were tallied in the Milwaukee County Exec race. [CF: Yep – see here.] 227,577 votes were tallied in the Supreme Court race. [CF: Yep – see here.] That is a difference of a touch over 4,800 votes. Shouldn’t they be almost identical? And by almost I mean with a few hundred votes? I didn’t take the time to do that math associated with cross checking numbers but wouldn’t one assume they should be closer? Does this mean that Milwaukee County didn’t count over 4,800 votes for the supreme court race? It was on the ballot so why the difference?– I guess my mother and I were given the wrong ballot to fill out. I know that doesn’t make a lot of difference in the Prosser/Kloppenburg race, but we were given the River Hills-Glendale School District ballot when we should have been given the Maple Dale-Indian Hill School District ballot.– (Waukesha) My son moved over a year ago and filled out all the proper forms for change of registration of his new address and ward. However his name is still listed on our old ward’s registration listing, I saw it just below mine! He easily could have voted twice, not that he would, but it exposes a problem. There should be no outstanding registration changes before an election occurs. he moved over a year a ago! This is also a disturbing loophole as even showing ID won’t fix this. Maybe it would be caught some other way, but let’s catch up on registration change paperwork people – scary.– In my voting location, the machine was not accepting ballots first thing in the morning, so the guy was throwing them some place behind the machine. What number did my district turn in? The count on the machine that did not include my vote or did they remember to add those ballots later on when the machine was working?– Secondly, in a Milwaukee neighborhood of a relative, two people came to the door asking who lived there. The woman lived alone, but mentioned the name of her deceased husband. The person on the porch put his name into his palm pilot, thanked her, and left. It dawned on her later what must be going on – getting potential names of voters (whether dead or alive), but too late. The people involved in this activity had gone. No one knows how many names they got to use for voting.– There are people on the voter rolls in my community that haven’t lived there for years. I bet there are some people who move frequently who are registered to vote in many different places. Such a shoddy system, and the democrats like it that way.– As a student at a state university, I sat in a class where they encouraged students to vote Tuesday. “Just bring your campus ID to prove you’re a student and you can vote.” What about proving residence? What about students like me who vote in their home district becuase they live off campus? Could I have voted twice? There was a large push all over campus to get students to “vote against Walker by voting for Kloppenburg.” Her non-experience as a judge shouldn’t matter, I guess. I think re-counts should focus on college campuses…– I was at Greenfield City Hall from 8:00PM – 10:15PM and watched as the ballots, machine tallies, and other materials were returned and added. I noticed 2 problems. The first was that several ward officials were returning bags of ballots that had not been sealed. The second was that people were leaving their bags of ballots unattended (on benches, on the ground, etc.) as they walked away to chat with other election officials returning their ballots.
“[T]he difference between this gruesome killing machine and a ‘safe’ clinic is aesthetics, really,” wrote Lori Ziganto in RedState.com. “There is no denying the horror of what was found in this ‘doctor’s’ office. But it happens in every abortion clinic across the land.”
She’s completely wrong. Gosnell’s clinic was in no way representative of most abortion facilities, which is why the country’s largest organization of abortion providers, the National Abortion Federation, refused him membership and testified against him to the grand jury.
Sticking a scalpel in a baby’s neck in utero has the same result as sticking it in the neck with scissors outside the womb: Death.
In this case, people can visualize the actual babies, as they were horrifically kept in jars and bottles. In “safe” clinics, they are hidden away in haz-mat disposals or chopped up into tiny pieces before being sucked out of their mother’s womb and disposed of like trash. Hidden away, allowing people to blind themselves to what is actually happening. It is easier to remain blissfully ignorant and ignore the fact that a baby is a baby, in utero or out.
Aside from being contemptible for its sheer dishonesty, the Left’s blood libel campaign blaming conservatives for the shooting spree carried out by (anti-war, Christianity-hating) psychopath Jared Loughner is also a clear example/vindication of Ann Coulter’s most recent book, Guilty: Liberal “Victims” and Their Assault on America, which targets (if you’ll pardon the expression) the cherished leftist propaganda tactic of using real and perceived victims as props with which to browbeat critics of their policies into silence.
One of Loughner’s victims, Eric Fuller, has disgraced himself by blaming Republicans for his injury:
“It looks like Palin, Beck, Sharron Angle and the rest got their first target,” Eric Fuller said in an interview with Democracy NOW.
“Their wish for Second Amendment activism has been fulfilled — senseless hatred leading to murder, lunatic fringe anarchism, subscribed to by John Boehner, mainstream rebels with vengeance for all — even 9-year-old girls,” he added, referring to the death of Christina Taylor Green.Fuller, a 63-year-old veteran, had campaigned for Giffords during her reelection and was at the supermarket for her Congress on Your Corner event.
“I would put Sarah Palin in first place there. I think, really, she should be incarcerated for treason for advocating assassinating public officials,” Fuller said in an interview with Media Matters. “That map I saw that she published on the Internet had crosshairs on it and one of them was meant for Gabrielle Giffords.”
Fuller’s status as both a shooting victim and a veteran will probably scare many away from discussing this honestly, but it shouldn’t. The simple fact is, nothing justifies telling vicious lies to, or about, your countrymen.
In an ironic twist of fate, Fuller has made a toxic contribution of his own to the public discourse:
When Tucson Tea Party founder Trent Humphries rose to suggest that any conversation about gun control should be put off until after the funerals for all the victims, witnesses say Fuller became agitated. Two told KGUN9 News that finally, Fuller took a picture of Humphries, and said, “You’re dead.”
When State Rep. Terri Proud (R-Tucson) rose to explain and clarify current and proposed gun legislation in the state, several people groaned or booed her. One of those booing, according to several witnesses, was Fuller. Witnesses sitting near Fuller told KGUN9 News that Fuller was making them feel very uncomfortable.
The event wrapped up a short time later. Deputies then escorted Fuller from the room. As he was being led off, Fuller shouted loudly to the room at large. Several witnesses said that what they thought they heard him shout was, “You’re all whores!”
A Pima County Sheriff’s spokesman told KGUN9 News that they charged Fuller with one count of threats and intimidation, and said they plan to charge him with at least one count of disorderly conduct. Humphries told KGUN9 News that he does plan to press those charges.
Of course, because Eric Fuller’s hate is directed at the Right, there’s probably a root cause for it the rest of us to understand. There always is.
UPDATE: The Mental Recession has more – apparently it’s not really his fault; PTSD made him do it. Of course.
My latest NewsRealBlog post:
Among the many divergences from the theories and principles of the American Founding wrought by progressivism is the very nature of the presidency. Originally conceived as a limited office chiefly concerned with (domestically, at least) little more than the fair and effective execution of the laws, progressives such as President Theodore Roosevelt transformed the nation’s understanding of the presidency into an office charged with “bound actively and affirmatively to do all he could for the people,” free to do anything not explicitly forbidden by the Constitution.
If anything, President Barack Obama sees his job in an even more expansive light than Roosevelt. At the Daily Beast, Mansfield Frazier opines Obama’s injecting himself into, of all things, the redemption of football player Michael Vick:
“So many people who serve time never get a fair second chance,” Obama reportedly told the owner of Vick’s football team, the Philadelphia Eagles. “…It’s never a level playing field for prisoners when they get out.”
The Eagles signed Vick after he served 19 months in prison for running a dogfighting operation, and by praising the team’s owner for giving the quarterback a second chance, the president is broaching a subject that’s sure to be polarizing. As states across the U.S. struggle with looming budget deficits, Obama perhaps realizes the timing may be right to address what he has called the country’s “incarceration and post-incarceration crisis” and remove barriers that inhibit successful prisoner reentry by offering former offenders an opportunity to reclaim their lives and a modicum of dignity.
On Friday, a lunatic named Harlan James Drake allegedly shot and killed two people, including a pro-life activist named Jim Pouillon, who was protesting abortion outside a school in Owosso, Michigan (the other murder, of Michael Fuoss, was apparently personal). The suspect was reportedly offended by Pouillon’s graphic signs depicting aborted babies.
Is Barack Obama, Kate Michelman, Andrew Sullivan, NARAL, Planned Parenthood, Barbara Boxer, or the broader pro-choice movement responsible for this crime? Of course not, and presently, pro-lifers are not suggesting otherwise. In fact, American Life League’s statement on the killing (issued prior to the establishment of a motive) urges only caution against hasty conclusions. I have yet to see any politicization of this tragedy, aside from observing the obvious left-wing and media hypocrisy, which is legitimate.
After George Tiller’s death, liberal after liberal wasted no time in slandering the entire pro-life movement as culpable for the actions of one man (yet the abortion movement is never responsible for violence committed by its adherents). Unlike the numerous pro-life organizations who promptly condemned the murder of Tiller, NARAL and Planned Parenthood have said nothing about Pouillon’s murder as of this morning. President Obama evidently doesn’t think Pouillon’s death is as statement-worthy as Tiller’s.
This is simply the Left’s long-standing totalitarian impulse at work yet again, from the same playbook as what we’re seeing with the healthcare townhalls—don’t address substantive arguments honestly, don’t foster real discussion, just use whatever you can to intimidate your opposition into silence. It’s all about control, by any means necessary.
Conservative Standards 