UPDATES Below

Berkeley continues its attempt to rival San Francisco as the capital of Military Derangement.

It seems like it was mostly just the vigorous activities of Code pink, as noted in this blog, that accounted for the Military hatred, but now the City has climbed into bed with Code Pink in their battle against the Marine Corps. Via Michelle Malkin:

 Berkeley wants to treat military recruitment offices like porn shops

Only in Berkeley. Sigh:

In response to a Marine Corps recruiting office established in Berkeley last year, local activists are trying to make it more difficult for future recruiting centers to open in the city.

If passed by a majority of Berkeley voters, a proposed initiative would require military recruiting offices and private military companies in Berkeley to first acquire a special use permit.

To obtain this permit, a business must hold public hearings and a public comment period.

If the initiative passes, recruitment offices could not be opened within 600 feet of residential districts, public parks, public health clinics, public libraries, schools or churches.

Currently, a recruiting office is held to the same standards as most other businesses, which do not require a public hearing or have limits on where offices can be established.

The author of the initiative, Berkeley-based lawyer Sharon Adams, modeled the initiative after current zoning law that restricts the location of adult-oriented businesses.

“In the same way that many communities limit the location of pornographic stores, that’s the same way we feel about the military recruiting stations,” said Phoebe Sorgen, an initiative proponent and a member of the city’s Peace and Justice Commission.

Question their patriotism? Damned straight.

Um, yea I tend to agree.

 Megan Sego at California Patriot issues a call to arms:

I blogged this yesterday, and I expected some negative reaction, but not this soon.  The story and reactions have come from around the world, thanks to the power of the internet.  Of note is the Tehran Times in Iran which parroted the original article.

Hmm, what kind of message about unity in America is Brattleboro giving, and what impact could that have on foreign policy?

The Boston Globe has also noticed the story.

The blowback on the story involves something I personally find distasteful: Harassment and threats.

In my original post I chose not to treat the matter in such fashion, I went with scorn, ridicule and derision.  Harassment makes martyrs of the people whose hatred drives them to such ideological foolishness, ridicule and exposure merely shows it as the foolishness it is.

LSU condemns any threats against the officials.  A lot of them are only doing their jobs.

I will post some highlights from several articles

WCAX TV:

Officials in Brattleboro say they have been inundated with threats after word broke about a controversial item that will appear on the Town Meeting Day ballot. It calls for President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to be arrested for war crimes if either of them steps foot in Brattleboro.

Workers at the town offices had to stop answering their phones Monday due to numerous threats. Local and federal authorities say they will prosecute anyone whose messages cross the line and harass town officials.

WPTZ:

Town officials in Brattleboro are being inundated with complaints from across the country about a decision to let voters decide whether arrest warrants should be issued for President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Town Clerk Annette Cappy said the “nastiness” of the calls prompted the town office to stop answering its phones Monday.

One message from a Minnesota man said he’d like to see terrorists cut off the heads of some Brattleboro officials.

The Times Argus:

Tonight was the Presidents final SOTUA.  Some good things, some so so.  I won’t overly editorialize it, I will let you make your own call.  Read the text here.

The absolute best line:

Some in Washington argue that letting tax relief expire is not a tax increase. Try explaining that to 116 million American taxpayers who would see their taxes rise by an average of $1,800. Others have said they would personally be happy to pay higher taxes. I welcome their enthusiasm, and I am pleased to report that the IRS accepts both checks and money orders.

Love it.

OK, the highlights:

• Make tax cuts permanent
• Cut spending
• Make earmarks fewer and more transparent
• Help homeowners
• Make health care better with more choices
• No Child Left Behind works, keep it alive
• More free trade
• More entitlements for the jobs lost because of free trade
• Less oil consumption
• More clean energy
• More adult stem cell research
• No cloning
• Judges should follow the constitution
• Congress hates Judges that follow the constitution
• Americans who volunteer rock.
• We need Social Security and Medicare reform
• Secure the border
• Make it easier for illegals to come here legally
• Don’t be mean to those illegals already here
• Democracy rocks
• Terrorists suck
• More troops for Afghanistan
• The surge in Iraq is working
• Failure in Iraq would be extremely bad
• Palestine may not be totally hopeless
• Iran sucks
• No new attacks in America since 2001
• FISA helped make that happen
• Genocide sucks
• Poverty sucks
• Disease sucks
• AIDS sucks
• The military rocks
• Veterans rock
• Americans rock
• America rocks

There you have it.

He may be a lame duck, but never think that stops people from letting their irrational hatred lead them into gross stupidity.

Bush Derangement lives, in Vermont:

Brattleboro to vote on arresting Bush, Cheney

Brattleboro residents will vote at town meeting on whether President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney should be indicted and arrested for war crimes, perjury or obstruction of justice if they ever step foot in Vermont.

Sigh.  The same old lie.  The liberals have been preaching this BS Bush lied mantra ceaselessly despite never having shown one single lie.  The rest of it shows they know little of how prisoners of war are actually supposed to be treated.

The Brattleboro Select Board voted 3-2 Friday to put the controversial item on the Town Meeting Day warning.

According to Town Clerk Annette Cappy, organizers of the Bush-Cheney issue gathered enough signatures, and it was up to the Select Board whether Brattleboro voters would consider the issue in March.

Cappy said residents will get to vote on the matter by paper balloting March 4.

Kurt Daims, 54, of Brattleboro, the organizer of the petition drive, said Friday the debate to get the issue on the ballot was a good one. Opposition to the vote focused on whether the town had any power to endorse the matter.

Which it really doesn’t.  If he has done something illegal, that’s a matter for Congress.  That’s in the Constitution and everything.

“It is an advisory thing,” said Daims, a retired prototype machinist and stay-at-home dad of three daughters.

Otherwise known as a useless waste of time, and pandering to the nutroots.

So far, Vermont is the only state Bush hasn’t visited since he became president in 2001.

I’m sure it’s high on his list now…

Daims said the most grievous crime committed by Bush  and Cheney was perjury — lying to Congress and U.S. citizens about the basis of a war in Iraq.

Since I lost paower part of the day, here is a clip for fun….Another amazing artist from Japan.

Carry on!

I am a bit late on this, but I still find it cute. After Hillary slams Obama for working for a slumlord we find a picture of her and Bill:  with the same slumlord.

Photo surfaces of Hillary Clinton and Tony Rezko

A photo has surfaced that shows Hillary and Bill Clinton posing with Chicago developer Tony Rezko, a Barack Obama contributor whom Hillary Clinton condemned as a “slum landlord” supporter of the Illinois senator earlier this week.

Clinton was shown the photo during an interview on NBC’s Today Show this morning but told host Matt Lauer she did not remember meeting Rezko.

As she herself noted, there are literally thousands of people who had their pictures taken in the many photo ops.  This is not damning, just ironic. 

Of course, the fact he was a donor to her husband’s 1996 reelection campaign might be more interesting.  Apparently slumlords; suck, but their money sure is nice.  Exit question:  How many toilets in his slums would the donations to the democrats have paid to fix?

Hmmmm?

Speaking of Bill, he is under a some serious scrutiny:

Bill Clinton again wagging finger, raising eyebrows

The resurgence of the old Bill Clinton, flushing with anger and wagging his finger as he fights for his wife’s presidential bid, has cast a shadow over her campaign and could mar his new image as a global statesman.

On Friday, Hillary Clinton herself said her husband had told her he may have gone too far. “He said several times yesterday that maybe he got a little bit carried away,” she told CBS’s “Early Show.”

Add to that:

Kerry blasts former president for ‘abusing truth’

John Kerry, the Democratic Party’s 2004 nominee for president, took aim at Bill Clinton Friday, telling the National Journal the former president does “not have a license to abuse the truth.”

As a humourist, comic, satirist or pundit, he has the right to mock anyone he wants.

But Al is more.  He is now a political candidate, and as such, is it really a good thing to mock his potential constituents?  Like it or not, when you are elected you represent all the people in your State, not just the ones you agree with.

Apparently Al needs a lesson in what a Representative Republic is…and on how to be professional.

Franken didn’t exactly leave ‘em laughing in Northfield - Franken apparently had more fun than senior history major Peter Fritz.

Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate Al Franken didn’t exactly leave ‘em laughing in Northfield.

Earlier this month Franken was at Carleton College, where the late Sen. Paul Wellstone was a professor,  for a student rally related to a special election in the state Senate District 25. After the rally in the great space of Sayles-Hill some students crowded around to take photos with the “Saturday Night  Live” alum, author, satirist and celebrity.

Franken’s spokesman Andy Barr said via e-mail Tuesday that Al “remembers having a spirited convo w/ College GOPer at the urging of some of the kid’s College Dem pals. Seemed like everyone was having a good time, or as good a time as you can have debating Reaganomics.”

Franken apparently had more fun than senior history major Peter Fritz.

According to Fritz, things started out fine with him taking photos of  fellow Carls (that’s what students call themselves) with Franken. Then Franken’s curiosity was raised about why Fritz didn’t want to be in a pic.

Apparently, his ego is such that no one should NOT want to have their picture taken?

He’s a conservative, another Carl yelled out by way of explanation.

At that point, Franken reportedly began peppering Fritz with questions about supporting  President George W. Bush and former President Ronald Reagan’s tax hikes. Fritz told me he got tense and, as he does in those situations, started chewing the inside of his mouth,, a gesture he said was mimicked by Franken; Fritz also thought  his style of speech was mocked by Franken.

Obama seems like the dream boy to some: young, charismatic, articulate and witty.  If presidents were only selected for personality and charm, he would win handily in the race.

But charm only goes so far, and once that runs out, Obama does have some problems to overcome in his policies and beliefs.

One that I personally discount is the whole “Islamic” factor.  I don’t think he is and I don’t give much credence to those emails.

But in an area that does closely dovetail to Islam, he does have some issue concerning Israel. 

What trickled this to my attention was an article sent to me from Commentary Magazine.

Obama and Israel–It Gets Worse

A follow-up to my post yesterday about the troubling views of one of Barack Obama’s top foreign policy advisers, Samantha Power. In 2002 she sat for an interview with Harry Kreisler, the director of the Institute for International Studies at Berkeley. Kreisler asked her the following question:

Let  me give you a thought experiment here, and it is the following: without addressing the Palestine -  Israel problem, let’s say you were an advisor to the President of the United States, how would you respond to current events there? Would you advise him  to put a structure in place to monitor that situation, at least if one party or another [starts] looking like  they might be moving toward genocide?

Get a load of Power’s response:

What we don’t need is some kind of early  warning mechanism there, what we need is a willingness to put something on the line in helping the situation. Putting something on the line might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import; it may more crucially mean sacrificing — or investing,  I think, more than sacrificing — billions of dollars, not in servicing Israel’s military, but actually investing in the new state of Palestine, in investing the billions of dollars it would probably take, also, to support what will have to  be a mammoth protection force, not of the old Rwanda kind, but a meaningful military presence. Because it seems to me at this stage (and this is true of actual genocides as well, and not just major human rights abuses, which were seen there), you have to go in as if you’re serious, you have to put something on the  line.

This is totally rocking, and one of the coolest things I have found on You Tube yet.

Enjoy.

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