Christopher, why don’t you tell us what you really think about sporting events because I don’t believe your latest Newsweek piece, “Fool’s Gold,” did the job.

With trademark flourish, you revealed a portfolio of the world’s worst behavior, decrying sports competition as the catalyst.  As your subtitle stated,

How the Olympics and other international competitions breed conflict and bring out the worst in human nature.

Human nature? A definition would be helpful.  If men are fundamentally good (as the converse of “worst” of human nature suggests), what, then, is the panacea for what ails mankind?  Aside from ending sports competition, that is.

In fairness, I cede your point that such contests can function as a spark, igniting an already-volatile situation between countries or people-groups. But, is it only sporting events which–pardon the pun–get the ball rolling?  Weren’t these conditions latent prior? The event can hardly be to blame except, perhaps, exacerbating said preexisting tension.  If the event is at fault for provoking poor behavior, what about other competition?  How about Spelling Bees and Science Fairs? Chess matches? Theological debates? Not mentioning the business world or political campaigns.  Dear Hitch, (blogger evokes John Lennon) imagine all the people, living live without competition…you can do it if you try!  Yes, well, people have and it’s called Communism.

Aside from this, are there not more immediate “sparks” to squelch rather than wagging your finger at the Olympics, et al? As a cross-cultural pursuit, sports provide far more enjoyment, goodwill, national pride and admitted distraction for people from the difficulty of their daily lives than it does harm.

Ultimately, Hitchens, this is a cheap shot, a foul ball…a poor play.  You bricked it. What would you recommend as the world’s primary form of entertainment or diversion, particularly in the poorer nations you listed?  Sitting in drawing rooms sipping sherry discussing the philosophical import of the latest Ellis novel?

Oh, right.  You’d recommend whiskey.

(Don’t take this the wrong way.  I still adore you.)

Apparently, the mere acknowledgment of a fetus is a big no-no to some militant Feminists. Enough of a no-no, that one had to post about it in the community forum of Feministing.com, a hot bed of predictable Feminist shrieking and cognitive dissonance.

A Yahoo sportswriter committed the horrid politically incorrect faux-pas of writing the following about a pregnant member of the Canadian Women’s Curling team:

As with all curling teams, Team Canada features five members. Well, six, if you really want to get technical with it.

Alternate Kristie Moore, 30, is 5½ months pregnant, making her just the third athlete known to be with child during Olympic competition.

Huh. There doesn’t seem to be anything rage-worthy in those sentences, does there? Not if you are, you know, sane.  However, as Jill Stanek noticed, if you are a militant feminist, it’s a different story. A member of Feministing.com’s community posted about it (I picture her taking a break from scrawling madly in her manifesto to post it, all furious and furrowed brow-y) and said the following:

Thank you, Chris Chase at Yahoo! Sports for perpetuating the myth that fetuses are people and that they are capable of Olympic curling.

Sigh. Sure, this was posted only in their community section, but it is imperative that we remember this is how some pro-abortion (as opposed to pro-choice) zealots actually think.  Everything, I mean everything, is agenda driven. It’s not about women or children; it’s about radical ideology at the expense of everything and everyone else. Even life.

Perpetuating the myth that fetuses are people? Yeah, how dare someone look at the picture above, of a 5 and a half month fetus (the same gestation as the pregnant curler) and think it’s human and alive? We must be cuckoo pants, huh. Hey, at least it’s not like we believe in fudged data and global warming.

Also, curling rocks.

—–

Follow Lori  on Twitter and read more of her work at Snark and Boobs, iOwntheWorld and Right Wing News.

]]> http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/02/18/spotlight-on-leftist-feminist-thinking-dont-acknowledge-fetuses/feed/ 26 http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/02/14/the-human-heart-is-dark-kumaritashvili-death-video-a-top-search/ http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/02/14/the-human-heart-is-dark-kumaritashvili-death-video-a-top-search/#comments Sun, 14 Feb 2010 06:18:30 +0000 David Swindle http://www.newsrealblog.com/?p=32636

Are we so broken that we must seek out footage of this man’s death?

It’s been a long day. I ended up staying up ridiculously late last night — 6:00 AM — working on a book proposal. As a result I’ve been running all day on about 3 hours of sleep. My close friend and co-editor Michael van der Galien noted my crabby mood earlier as we edited the publication throughout the day. I tried to put on a better attitude for him. (Surely another fact which played a key role in my down mood was that I’ve been separated from my wife April since Wednesday as she’s been away visiting potential graduate schools. This is the longest we’ve been apart since getting married in May and my missing her is growing more painful.)

Thus it was nice to get a break for a few hours this evening. Some of my friends from high school and college came up from Indianapolis and we went out to dinner. I directed them to a comfortable Irish pub where I ordered these spicy mini hamburgers that I’d enjoyed on a previous visit. (I’ve found as I’ve been getting older that I’ve been craving spicy food more.) I also treated the table to the fried mushrooms appetizer that April and I always order when we go out on our dates.

Afterward my friends came back to my apartment and we watched Julie and Julia, one of my favorite films from last year. Of course all the while, Maura was being disruptive, demanding attention and playtime from my guests and me.

And now here I am to check in on NewsReal Blog and make sure the publication isn’t burning down in my absence. It’s not, but instead I’m greeted with something far more disturbing.

I did a very brief post earlier this evening, just before my friends arrived, about the Olympic athlete who was killed in a luge accident. I expressed how disturbed I was by the footage of his death and how morally reprehensible it was that NBC continued to play it over and over again.

Looking at our traffic stats I noticed that this tiny, nothing, throwaway post had generated considerable traffic — no doubt because of the timely nature of the subject. I began to pat myself on the back but then my unearned self-satisfaction began to melt away as I came to understand why the post had become such a draw. These are the top search engine terms which led people to NRB this evening:

Maybe if I was not so exhausted and emotionally drained this would not have hit me as much as it did.

How many people online right now are actually searching for this snuff film?

Here’s a question: if you heard that someone was killed in a tragic accident and there was a video available would your first instinct be to go and watch it? Why?

Here’s an answer: because we are evil, broken creatures. Such is the nature of humanity. If we still had public executions and gladiator fights people would surely go and watch them. Hell, people would join in if they could. Such is the plain reality of human nature to all who can see with eyes unobstructed by the fog of the progressive faith.

But the Left is entirely blind to all this, living in a fantasy world. In the middle of the day I got a phone call from my progressive friend Pat. I’d refused to debate with Pat for several weeks after I’d grown fed up with him ignoring my arguments. It had just become a waste of my time as we spun our wheels. But having him on the phone was not as easy to ignore as when he’d bait me with fiery text and email provocations. And besides, I cared about my friend and wanted to give him some attention instead of continuing to push him away.

It was the same song with Pat as he laid out his political analysis: there needs to be a people’s movement to rise up and demand that Washington politicians rein in corporate power and institute federal jobs programs and universal health care. The super rich need to be taxed more. Pat expressed his frustration that ordinary Americans were unaware at how much they were being screwed by malicious corporations. He didn’t get why there was not a movement akin to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s to fix the injustices in our society.

I said something like this to Pat in response:

“Your plans cannot work, Pat, because human nature is stacked against you. (And the government the founders devised is also biased against the radical change you want. It’s not an accident that it takes more than simple majority rule to get legislation passed.) The reason there isn’t some massive ‘people’s movement’ marching in the streets is because most people don’t care about politics. They just want to live their lives and take care of themselves. They’re not interested in raising everyone’s taxes to pay for big government programs. They’d rather just do their jobs, spend time with their families, and watch dumb TV shows every night.

At this point I started to get more aggressive in my tone:

You think you can actually fix problems if only you can fix the laws, change the politicians, and install new institutions. But it won’t work, Pat. And that’s because the problem is not with all those things. It’s with people; it’s with human nature. People are self-interested, lazy, and evil. You think taxing the rich is going to work? All they’ll do is move their money around so you can’t get to it. On Glenn Beck the other day he talked about how even “good progressives” like Bono and Oprah do things so they can pay less in taxes.

Pat, you can’t fix the problem because the problem is inside every human being. Conservatives get this. Leftists don’t.

Pat didn’t have an answer for me on this. He just changed the subject like he usually does. He has yet to grapple with the reason why his big government schemes and his grandiose dreams of a “people’s movement” won’t work — the same reason why so many people are going to search for a snuff film. There is darkness within us all.

And so I can only return to the answer I’ve found before, inspired by someone else who died far too soon. From my review of David Horowitz’s A Cracking of the Heart:

Both those on the Right and the Left need to understand this: the way to heal the world is one shattered human soul at a time. This is not a political task. Only we as individuals can do it.

That’s about all the optimism I can summon at this point. But tomorrow is another day and hopefully I’ll be able muster some sunnier commentary with a full night’s sleep.

They really need to stop showing the video immediately. There’s no reason to continue reshowing it like they’ve been doing. If anyone needed another definitive example of our media’s moral bankruptcy then this is it.

A recent headline in the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail reads “Amy Goodman’s Border Woes Have Americans in a Tizzy.” Really? Because this is the first I’ve heard of it.

Don’t know who Amy Goodman is? You’re not alone. As host of the television/radio program Democracy Now! (undoubtedly the most ironic misnomer in the history of news media), her activist-style “journalism” has kept her operating on the periphery of mainstream media.

Fact is, a quick Google news search shows that the only U.S. news outlets to report on her “ordeal” have been, well, Amy Goodman for Democracy Now! and her left-wing-nut-job soul mate Keith Olbermann for his show on MSNBC.

Apparently, Amy Goodman was held and questioned at the U.S.-Canada border for 90 minutes, during which “Canadian border guards demanded to know her views on the Olympics.”

I would be outraged – if the whole damn ordeal wasn’t so laughable.  Just say this to yourself, or out loud – “Canadian border agents interrogate journalist Amy Goodman for a grueling 90 minutes about her views on the Olympics.”

Good grief, where to start? Let me begin by making it clear that I DO NOT find it acceptable for border agents ANYWHERE in the world to detain ANY journalist unless the journalist in question is also suspected of participating in an illegal activity – say, running drugs across the border. Without question, the situation should be addressed with the Canadian government.

That said…

Poor Amy – interrogated by Canadians about the Olympics! It must have been horrifying. No doubt the tea they served her during questioning was only luke warm. I honestly cannot stop laughing. (I’m sorry, Amy. I don’t mean to diminish the gravity of your ordeal. Okay – maybe I do.)

Who is Amy Goodman?

The Canadian border agents in this case made two errors: first, choosing to hold a journalist for questioning; second, mistaking Amy Goodman for a journalist. Let’s be clear on this second point – Goodman is NOT a journalist. She’s an activist with a microphone and a soapbox.

The Society of Professional Journalists is quite clear on the issue of ethical journalism. In part, their code of ethics states:

Journalists should be free of obligation to any interest other than the public’s right to know. Journalists should: avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived; and, remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility.

At no point in her career has Goodman failed to grandstand on a liberal issue. As a matter of fact, Goodman has frequently chosen actions antithetical to the ethics of journalism by opting to BE the news – a cardinal sin for journalists. In September 2008, Goodman was arrested for conspiring to cause a riot at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis.

She is known to launch into conspiratorial tirades against what she views as a largely right-wing media, and often gives speeches (on and off her show) and writes in support of popular left-wing agenda items like single-payer universal health care, civil rights for terror suspects, opposition to the War on Terror, and man-made global warming.

Her credibility has been steadily eaten away by her own thoughtless rhetoric, offering such analysis as:

“The women of New York had a champion in Eliot Spitzer. The good news in the wake of the governor’s resignation is that his successor, David Paterson, and the state’s activists are ready to keep up the fight.”

– Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!, March 2008

I grew up in New York, just outside our capitol city of Albany. The delusions she expressed didn’t get by me and are actually now being acknowledged by members of the Democratic Party – including President Barack Obama – as they seek to discourage a determined but failed Gov. David Paterson from running for election in 2010 to the post he stepped into after the sex scandal that led to Eliot Spitzer’s resignation.

Imagine that –Eliot Spitzer (or Client #9), a champion for women. And his successor has been a success in nothing. Paterson has failed to fight for anything, save his position on next year’s ballot.

We have long tolerated a leftist bias in mainstream media. Should we also come to accept activists operating under the cloak of protection offered to journalists?

Everyone has an agenda, and in the information age, everyone has an outlet for the viewpoints. However, journalists should be held to higher standards – the very standards they have established for themselves as a profession.

Amy Goodman has flaunted her partisan activism in the face of her profession, waving her microphone – the lone piece of evidence available to her – as proof that she is a journalist. Like a soldier in war, wearing a red cross on her back to avoid enemy fire, she hides behind such props of the journalism profession. In reality, she’s just another leftist radical.

President Obama made a fool of himself and of America by his fly-by visit to Copenhagen to plead Chicago’s bid to host the 2016 Olympics.   Chicago, Obama’s home town and power base, was knocked out in the first round of voting.   Rio emerged triumphant.

Obama was still out of the country when it was announced that the unemployment rate reached 9.8% in September, the worst since June 1983.   Given the utter failure of his economic stimulus package, which we were promised would keep unemployment from rising above 8%, the president probably did himself a favor.

Obama did manage to give General McChrystal, his choice as his commander on the ground in Afghanistan,  some face time on Air Force One.  But evidently nothing of substance was decided.  We are still adrift in Afghanistan. 

But while the cable and radio talk show pundits who complained about Obama’s priorities in wasting his time on the Copenhagen visit are right, considering all of the big problems the country is facing,  maybe we got a break since he only makes the problems worse when he sticks around.   He could not even persuade the International Olympic Committee to see things his way.  There is no chance that he will have any success where it counts.

What bothers me more about President Obama’s failed trip than his lack of judgment about the right priorities is the sheer hypocrisy he demonstrated in going to Copenhagen in the first place.

Ironically, the negotiations to finalize a new global warming treaty are set to take place in the very same city – Copenhagen - this December.   Taking his usual swipe at the Bush administration, President Obama boasted at the United Nations Climate Summit meeting last week:

 ”I am proud to say that the United States has done more to promote clean energy and reduce carbon pollution in the last eight months than at any other time in our history…We understand the gravity of the climate threat.  We are determined to act. And we will meet our responsibility to future generations.”

So what does Obama actually do?  He flies to the host city of the negotiations on a global warming treaty for a frivolous purpose, leaving an enormous carbon footprint in his wake.

The distance from Washington D.C. to Copenhagen, Denmark and back is 8,100 miles.   The total warming effect of CO2 for the president’s own flight on Air Force One (Boeing 747 / VC-25A) has been estimated by a researcher of climate change to be 2,785 tons of CO2, which must be multiplied by two since a spare plane accompanies the president on his Air Force One trips.

Then we have to add in the carbon emissions from (1) the First Lady’s separate flight plus (2) what we can assume would have been at least two cargo planes that fly ahead of Air Force One to provide the president with such items as vehicles for his motorcade.   These three planes are estimated to have a warming effect of CO2 of 2,178 tons  – a  conservative estimate because it assumes the use of the more fuel  efficient Boeing 737-800.

Using these estimated figures and conservative assumptions, the GRAND TOTAL FOR THIS ONE PRESIDENTIAL TRIP TO COPENHAGEN ALONE COMES TO 7749 TONS OF CO2 EMISSIONS.

To put this carbon fuel spewing extravangaza in perspective, the average family in the United States has an estimated carbon footprint of 19.5 tons of CO2 per year.   This means that President Obama’s fruitless trip emitted as much carbon gas as nearly 400 American families do in an entire year!

Hypocrisy + Fecklessness:   What a great combination we have serving as our president, not even counting his left-leaning policies and appointments.

 

 

Despite the best efforts of President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey to bolster Chicago’s bid to host the Olympic Games in 2016, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) awarded the “honor” to the City of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

The White House lobbied hard and had made the argument that hosting the Olympics in Chicago would showcase the United States and provide a “tangible economic benefit” to that city.

On hearing about the IOC’s rejection, the President and his team were visibly devastated. White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters that the president received the bad news aboard Air Force One while watching TV, alone in his quarters on the presidential jet as he and his wife, Michelle, flew back to Washington from Copenhagen.

In these trying economic times, it seems the First Family was lamenting the fact that all of the revenue generated from hosting the Olympics would now find its way to Rio.

Of course, if history is any guide, instead of sadness, the President should have been elated, for according to sportswriter Dave Zirin, Amy Goodman’s guest on Democracy Now! last evening, the Olympics have never been anything but a financial drain on the host country.

Consider the following:

DAVE ZIRIN: Well, I don’t know about you, but I never take my kids out and say, “Hey, let’s go out and do a fun luge, or what do you say we go out and do some synchronized swimming?” And that’s part of the problem, is that these facilities get built that have no real use after the cameras have gone and people have gone home. And what places are left with is debt.

I mean, let’s—we could go down the list, chapter and verse, on this. But China, for example, they spent as high, according to the LA Times, as $42 billion to get their Olympics there. My favorite example—not favorite—but Athens, Greece, they went 1,000 percent over budget in Athens. That defies my knowledge of math that they went a thousand percent over budget. The city of Montreal, 1976 Olympics, they finished paying off their debt in 2006. It took thirty years to do it.

The 2012 games, which will be held in London, were originally projected by that city to cost less than $5 billion, but in actuality the figure may now end up costing London much, much, more—the price tag is now approaching $19 billion!

Chicago’s proposed budget for the Olympics was $4 billion, and it was projected that revenue from hosting the event would earn the State of Illinois $22 billion; $13 billion of which would go to the city of Chicago. The Wall Street Journal, however, cites an independent analysis which found that $4.4 billion dollars in generated revenue would be a much more realistic figure. At a cost of $4 billion (and this assumes that the cost estimates are correct), hosting the Olympics hardly seems worth it.

So cheer up, Mr. President—even though the Olympics will not be held in Chicago, there is still plenty to celebrate. After all, the United States just dodged a financial bullet.

See Big Ed decry conservatives's "lack of patriotism."

In the misty past of ten months ago, dissent was patriotic, mass protests were a sign of passionate civic engagement, and the greatest sin any politician could commit was questioning someone’s patriotism. But that was America, B.B.O. (Before Barack Obama). Now dissent is potential incitement, middle American protesters are Swastika-carrying yokels, and disagreeing with a president’s decision to put his hometown above the well-being of troops in Afghanistan demonstrates a “lack of patriotism.”

On Friday’s edition of MSNBC’s “The Ed Show,” Ed Schultz blamed Chicago’s first-round rejection, not on Rio or behind-the-scenes maneuvering, but on American conservatives who questioned whether Obama ought to spend more time finalizing his Afghanistan strategy — incredibly saying their actions were comparable to Jane Fonda’s in Vietnam.

He began by blaming the loss, not on Obama’s failed full court press, but on Republicans….

You can hang it right on the right-wing talkers, and yes, the Republican Party. Their negativity and lack of patriotism underscores just how damaged the country has become over the last eight years…Their negativity in the 11^th hour just cost this country billions of dollars in economic development and hundreds of thousands of jobs – and I might add, union jobs that are greatly needed…This is not a failure of President Obama. This is a failure of Republican Party, the right-wing talkers in this country that openly, openly, campaigned against the Olympics by denigrating the president again.

This is not a failure of Obama? He made it the highest profile event of the week — dispatching Michelle and Oprah Winfrey as emissaries of Chicago, then personally pleading in a futile effort to land the games…in a way that may have benefited his political cronies. Yet again, the charm offensive fell short. Big Ed blamed those who tried to warn him, equating their domestic statements with Jane Fonda’s propaganda broadcast against U.S. troops in the field:

The same crowd that says they support the troops didn’t support the United States getting the Olympics. They only support the troops when it’s good for them. They only support America when it’s good for them. They only support America when it’s good for their political agenda. What the Republicans did I think rivals Jane Fonda sitting on a gun in North Vietnam.

So, Rush Limbaugh is no different than this:

This is part of the Left’s ongoing attempt to equate conservative deviation from the left-wing party line with…the left-wing party line. Until Kruschev’s secret speech, the Left looked to the Soviet Union as a beacon of socialism in practice. The New Left idolized Cuba, then sent its faithful on pilgrimages of North Vietnamese “rice roots democracy.” After the slaughter of more than a million Southeast Asians, Fonda and her ilk moved on, to pictures of Daniel Ortega wearing sunglasses and now draws hope from figures like Hugo Chavez. But as they change the beneficiaries of their useful idiocy, they blame the crimes of their last heroes on conservatives. Thus, today’s history-challenged (and irony-impaired) leftists sometimes call conservatives “Stalinists.” One group produced a picture of David Horowitz wearing a Maoist revolutionary uniform. Such is the lot of those who cannot face up to the consequences of shilling for totalitarians.

Opposing a sitting president wasting an entire week obsessing over the Olympics, while refusing to commit to a strategy to win a declining war in Afghanistan has got to be the flimsiest excuse yet for equating anti-Communists with traitors.

Leave it to MSNBC.

Glenn Beck said yesterday that President Obama shouldn’t be jetting off to Copenhagen, Denmark, in order to help promote Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympics.

While the president is jetsetting around the world, he’s ignoring his responsibilities as America’s military commander-in-chief, Beck argued.

The troops that are coming home dead from Afghanistan. And, while he’s found the time to talk to everyone but the Food Network and FOX News about his Chicago White Sox, Obama has only had one meeting with his national security advisers to discuss the 66-page memo from General Stanley McChrystal from August, which says troops are urgently needed.

General McChrystal, Beck said the other day, still hasn’t received orders from the president about troop strength in Afghanistan. McChrystal says an extra 30,000 soldiers are needed to train local troops and beat the Taliban.

The report was submitted in late August but the president hasn’t bothered to make a decision yet, Beck said.

McChrystal said the troops are urgently needed “or we lose,” in Afghanistan.