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June 16, 2011

Russia: “Morally Corrupt to the Core”

By Selwyn Duke

When Nevada Senate contender Sharron Angle led incumbent Harry Reid by three points in polls but lost by six on Election Day 2010, it raised some eyebrows. Yet that is nothing compared to the Russian region of Tambov, where Vladimir Putin’s party, United Russia (UR), polled at 35 percent in April but then cruised to victory with a whopping 65 percent of the vote a month later. Now that’s a get-out-the-dead-vote effort even a Chicago ACORN chapter couldn’t have matched.

Yet this is no joke. UR’s “anomalous” win in Tambov, writes long-time Russian parliamentarian Vladimir Ryzhkov, reflects an “entire society” that is becoming “morally corrupt to the core.”

Citing a 20-page report issued by the Tambov regional head of the Party of People’s Freedom, attorney Nikolai Vorobyov, Ryzhkov details Russian election fraud that is truly staggering in scope and organization. (And yet we hear nothing from the Obama administration about the fact that the world’s second most powerful nation is regressing to tyranny.)

Read the rest here.
June 13, 2011

Politically Correct Washington Supreme Court Overturns Murder Conviction

By Selwyn Duke

In 2007, Kevin L. Monday Jr. was convicted for the murder of Francisco Green and received 64 years in prison. The incident ad been caught on a 3-minute video recording shot by a street performer, and the footage clearly showed Monday coolly and calculatingly firing 11 shots at Green on a crowded Seattle, Washington, street corner. Thus, despite the reluctance of witnesses to testify, it was an open-and-shut case.

(more…)
June 13, 2011

Dalai Lama: “I am a Marxist”

By Selwyn Duke

There is no better way to proclaim your lack of spiritual and philosophical depth than by, two decades after the fall of communism, disclosing that you’re Marxist. Yet this is precisely what Buddhist spiritual leader the Dalai Lama did during a speech before 150 Chinese students at the University of Minnesota this month. Journalist Tsering Namgyal reports on the story at Religion Dispatches, writing, “‘as far as socio-political beliefs are concerned, I consider myself a Marxist.’ ‘But not a Leninist,’ he [the Lama] clarified.”

Well, that’s a relief. Those Leninists can really kill ya’. Marxists will just murder you.

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June 13, 2011

City Government Demands Keys to Private Properties

The government of Cedar Falls, Iowa, has actually passed an ordinance that requires owners of commercial property — this includes not just businesses but also apartments and some rental houses — to provide the government with keys to their properties. I kid you not. Notice how, in the city council meeting captured in this video, the statist legislators behave as if the citizens should have to prove why this anomalous, perhaps unprecedented law should be shelved. They conduct themselves with an air of moral superiority, as if they're doing the citizenry a favor and the latter's complaints are an imposition. In reality, these statists should be on the hot seat trying to justify insane legislation that never should have been contemplated in the first place.

I'll tell you, it sometimes seems as if talking is a waste of time. The good townsfolk should just have brought their pitchforks and registered their four-pointed votes.
June 9, 2011

The American Flag is “Offensive” in Schools Now

By Selwyn Duke

Increasingly, it seems that the American flag is joining toy guns and dodgeball on the banned-from-school list. And the latest story on this front involves The Butterfield Elementary in Orange, Massachusetts, where a teacher told an 11-year-old boy that he may not hang his depiction of Old Glory because it might “offend” another student.

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June 9, 2011

Here Comes Peter Cottontail Hopping Down the Statist Trail: Feds Fine Missouri Farmer $90,000

By Selwyn Duke

The definition of “totalitarian” is: “of or pertaining to a centralized government that does not tolerate parties of differing opinion and that exercises dictatorial control over many aspects of life. [Emphasis added.]” And while we’re not quite there yet — we still do hear other (mostly stupid) opinions — read the following and tell me if our government doesn’t meet the italicized portion of the above definition.

Rural Missouri farmer John Dollarhite was just fined $90,000 by our central government for engaging in a commercial endeavor.

Was he an illegal alien running drugs across our border?

No, such people benefit from a Department of Injustice that takes their side against Border Patrol agents.

Was a prostitution ring being run out of his home?

No, such people are rewarded with reelection to Congress.

Rather, Dollarhite’s dastardly sin was that he started a business selling rabbits.

Read the rest here.
June 8, 2011

He May be a Dog, but Weiner Will be a Winner in 2012

By Selwyn Duke

New York Congressman Anthony Weiner’s sexual impropriety sure does make titillating copy. I mean, take his zipper-like stature, the nature of his transgressions, and combine that with his name, and you have the perfect running joke. And we can add to this a touch of irony. The following is still found on Weiner’s website:

Protecting Children On the Internet — In early 2007 my office did a study that found that over 85% of registered sex offenders in New York City live less than five blocks from schools, and 670 sex offenders live within just two blocks. Some offenders are even closer, permanently residing less than 500 feet away from unwitting parents, educators and children. Along with several colleagues in Congress, we introduced & passed the KIDS (Keeping the Internet Devoid of Sexual Predators) Act of 2007.

Now, a fellow journalist who used to reside in Weiner’s neighborhood informs me that the congressman’s home “is about two blocks (less than 100 yards) from Our Lady Queen of Martyrs (Catholic) School and about five blocks (less than 300 yards) from Public School 101” and asks, “Does this mean that Anthony Weiner — by his ‘own’ law — will have to register with the police?"

Read the rest here.
May 31, 2011

Desexing Children: The Acceptable Abuse

By Selwyn Duke

“We've decided not to share Storm's sex for now — a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a stand up to what the world could become in Storm's lifetime (a more progressive place? …).” So wrote parents David Stocker and Kathy Witterick after the birth of their third child, who they really did name “Storm.”

This isn’t the first story about parents who don’t want their children to be influenced by others’ sex-role expectations. In 2009, a Swedish couple, citing the feminist philosophy stating that “gender is a social construction,” refused to reveal the sex of their 2 ½-year-old child “Pop” (I have it on good authority, from Snap and Crackle, that it’s a boy).

Witterick says her inspiration came from “X: A Fabulous Child's Story,” a fictional account of a character who hides his biological sex from others. Well, we can only be thankful that she didn’t read a story about Carthaginian infant sacrifice.

Read the rest here.
May 21, 2011

This Is the Article That Will Never be Published

By Selwyn Duke

As you may know, the world will end today at 6 p.m.

Or, that’s the prediction at least by 89-year-old California preacher Harold Camping.

Camping had forecast the Earth’s demise before, in 1994, and thus joined a list of errant end-of-worlders that goes back to biblical times and beyond.

Of course, whether you believe in the End Times in the Christian sense or not, you probably know that one of these days Camping, or one of his doomsayer descendants, will likely be right. The collision of two collapsed stars a thousand light years away could yield gamma-ray bursts that would irradiate the Earth into oblivion, and if a “rogue” black hole, which roams about, happened our way, it would act as a big vacuum cleaner/trash compactor that would suck us in and never spit us out. For a slightly more mundane end, our Sun will eventually become a supernova and incinerate us in the blink of an eye. And, even if we should escape this fate by venturing out into space, we’re told that the Universe, which is now expanding, will reverse that process and start contractions that result not in birth, but death.

Read the rest here.
May 14, 2011

Soviet Style, Facebook Plants Negative Stories about Google

By Selwyn Duke

Sometimes you just wish that both sides in a contest could lose. Such is the case with respect to the latest revelation about Facebook: that it hired a PR firm to plant negative stories about Google. Writes Dan Lyons at The Daily Beast:

For the past few days, a mystery has been unfolding in Silicon Valley. Somebody, it seems, hired Burson-Marsteller, a top public-relations firm, to pitch anti-Google stories to newspapers, urging them to investigate claims that Google was invading people’s privacy. Burson even offered to help an influential blogger write a Google-bashing op-ed, which it promised it could place in outlets like the Washington Post, Politico, and The Huffington Post.

The plot backfired when the blogger turned down Burson’s offer and posted the emails that Burson had sent him. It got worse when USA Today broke a story accusing Burson of spreading a “whisper campaign” about Google “on behalf of an unnamed client.”

After learning that the unnamed client was Facebook, The Daily Beast subsequently received confirmation from a company spokesman that it had, in fact, hired Burson. And the company is well-suited to the task it was assigned. Lyons also tells us, “Mark Penn, Burson’s CEO, has been a political consultant for Bill Clinton, and is best known as the chief strategist in Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.” In other words, Burson could probably disgorge a 25-page analysis on the definition of the word “is.”

Read the rest here.