Fast forward through the first 1:50 until R. Lee starts talking. Then it gets really awesome, really fast…

HT: Creative Minority

Remind me again of the inhumane detention conditions at Club Gitmo?

(The Seattle Times) — With the prison camps at Guantánamo approaching their 10th year, the majority Yemeni captive population has just received a new perk: Video conferencing back to family via a new link set up by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The Geneva-based group announced the service’s inauguration on Tuesday, saying four Yemeni captives had been allowed to use the teleconferencing this month in calls beamed between the Navy base in southeast Cuba and the nation on the Arabian Peninsula.

Prisoners and family can speak by video for up to an hour, according to a Red Cross statement. It said some detainees and their families can now see and speak to each other “for the first time in almost a decade.”

(more…)

So being a pompous ass isn’t good for ratings, who knew?…

The bad news keeps coming for MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. The 2010 ratings data is starting to trickle in, and the news is not so great for the Countdown host. In a down year for cable news where all three networks registered a decline in viewers, Keith Olbermann lost 11% of his total audience, but what is most troubling is that among the coveted age 25-54 demographic Olbermann lost 25% of his audience.

Keith Olbermann’s total drop in viewership was 2% higher than MSNBC’s network average, (11% vs 9%). In contrast, Rachel Maddow lost less of her audience than MSNBC as a whole. Maddow only declined by 6% compared to the network’s 11%. Maddow’s total loss was almost half of her lead in Olbermann, (6% compared to 11%). Olbermann also lost a higher than network percentage of those viewers age 25-54. MSNBC lost 18%. Olbermann lost 25%. Maddow only lost 14%.

Keep reading…

UPDATE: Couldn’t resist rubbing it in…

The Douchemaster’s response (I can’t isolate it because he protects his Tweets)

Layup comeback…

CAIR Chief Ibrahim Hooper goes on Iran’s state-run Press TV and drops this whopper…

Press TV interviewed Head of Islamic Human Rights Commission, Massoud Shadjareh from London, and National Director of Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Mr. Abraham Hooper, and from Washington, Founder and Director of the Democracy Institute, Patrick Basham regarding increasing anti-Islamic sentiment in the US and Europe. . . .

Press TV: We are almost out of time. In a minute could you just tell me something because a lot of Americans feel that the majority of American Muslims want to implement Islamic Sharia in that country? What would you say to such concerns as those?

Hooper: Sharia has become one of these hot button issues that is a litmus test now for American Muslims. When American Muslims pray, they follow Sharia, when they fast, they follow Sharia, and when they interact with their family and go to school. I mean nobody is asking for the constitution to go away. In fact the constitution is our last line of defense against these anti-Muslim bigots. So we are the first defenders of the constitution.

Full interview here

Succeed at what? Destroying the country?…

(Politico)- Americans are less supportive of President Barack Obama’s policies than they were a year ago, but a majority of those surveyed in a new poll still hope his policies will be successful.

In a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released Wednesday, 61 percent of Americans surveyed said they hope Obama’s policies succeed. A year ago, 71 percent hoped for Obama’s policy success.

Those surveyed were also less confident that the president’s policies would succeed, with 44 percent saying they would and 47 percent saying they would fail. A year ago, 52 percent of Americans said they thought Obama’s policies would be successful, while 41 percent said they thought his policies would fail.

Fifty-one percent of Americans said they think the GOP majority in the House of Representatives will be a good thing for the country, while 42 percent said they think it will be a bad thing.

Enough with the RINOism…

(Daily Caller)- If the Tea Party movement had come along four years ago, John Shadegg might now be the incoming Speaker of the House.

The Arizona Republican ran for majority leader in 2006 but was beaten by John Boehner, the Ohio Republican who has been minority leader since the fall of 2006 and is now set to take the gavel from Democrat Nancy Pelosi in one week’s time.

Shadegg, who in 2006 was the choice of National Review magazine and the conservative blog Redstate, is going home to Arizona. He decided to retire after 16 years in office.

Shadegg, 61, has a unique perspective on conservative Republican politics. He came to Washington as part of the Republican Revolution of 1994 that swept the GOP into control of the House for the first time since 1954.

The Daily Caller sat down with Shadegg recently to glean any clues on how the Tea Party is different than past conservative waves.

Shadegg talked at length about the fact that the new Republican majority in the House is “on probation,” and said the reason that there is no leader of the Tea Party is because grassroots conservatives are gun shy after being “betrayed” by the House Republicans who took office in 1994.

“When the Gingrich revolution happened, the Gingrich revolution collapsed. It had betrayed its supporters,” Shadegg said. “So now I think there’s a reticence for a movement to arise under the Tea Party with a leader because nobody trusts a leader.”

Keep reading…

Wrong “ism,” I think he meant Socialism…

(NY Observer) — In a wide-ranging interview before he prepares to leave the House of Representatives, Hudson Valley Congressman John Hall warned that the nation could quickly descend into Fascism if more is not done to curb the influence of corporate money in politics.

Speaking about the Citizen’s United decision, which allowed unregulated flow of cash into campaign coffers, Hall said, “I learned when I was in social studies class in school that corporate ownership or corporate control of government is called Fascism. So that’s really the question — is that the destination if this court decision goes unchecked?”

Hall said that the flow of corporate dollars is why he and the Democrats lost control of Congress.

“The country was bought,” he said. “The extremist, most recent two appointees to the Supreme Court, who claimed in their confirmation hearings before the Senate that they would not be activist judges, made a very activist decision in that it overturned more than a century of precedent. And as a result there were millions of extra dollars thrown into this race.”

Rest here>>>

Good read…

(Human Events)- Few Americans would deny that Judeo-Christian beliefs and values informed the Founding of this country and that they continue to shape much of American life today. Nor would many of us deny that Americans who embrace Islamic values are a distinct minority here.

I raise these two facts because of an emerging reality: that, in a variety of contexts, American Muslims are treated better than American Christians. That might seem like a bizarre assertion, so think about it in another way: What if the Christians were treated like Muslims in America, and Muslims like Christians?

If Muslims were treated like Christians in America, Muslims would have to tolerate the defamation of their holiest images in our national museums, acts which would be called “artwork” — and, if particularly provocative, even given taxpayer-funded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. They would also have to accept Korans being burned and thrown into toilets, which instead of inciting worldwide outrage and retribution would provoke a collective shrug of the shoulders.

If Muslims were treated like Christians, Muslims would be mocked by late night TV talk show hosts and lampooned in crude cartoon parodies. If Christians were treated like Muslims, conspicuous Christianity would be celebrated by our elites as a sign of our diversity and open-mindedness, not disparaged as an embarrassment, a nuisance and a breach of the law.

If Christianity were treated like Islam, our students would be taught a white-washed version of Christian history, with the troubling bits miscast or omitted from textbooks and lesson plans.

If Christianity were treated like Islam in America, our president, a professed Christian, would proudly attend Christian-themed dinners and events while skipping Ramadan dinners, not vice versa. And Muslim politicians would go out of their way to assure people that their faith would not affect their policy-making.

If Christianity were treated like Islam, Christmas and Easter would be publicly celebrated for what they are — the signature events of Christianity, marking the birth and the death and Resurrection of Christ — not stripped of all their theological meaning and transformed into secular holidays devoted to crass consumerism.

If Christians were treated like Muslims, NASA would be tasked with reaching out to Christians and recognizing their faith’s profound achievements and contributions to science, math and engineering, instead of being told to make Muslims feel good about their rather meager scientific accomplishments.

Keep reading…

HT: Jawa

And by far the most radicalized in Europe…

(Telegraph)- There is a remarkable statistic in today’s main Daily Telegraph leader:

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life estimates that there are 2,869,000 Muslims in Britain, an increase of 74 per cent on its previous figure of 1,647,000, which was based on the 2001 census. No demographic statistics are reliable in an era of open borders, but such an expansion is unprecedented.

Pew’s UK figure for 2010 is 2,869,000, which is equivalent to 4.6% of the population. In absolute terms, the UK has the third largest Muslim community on the continent, after Germany (4,119,000) and France (3,574,000).

The figure of 2.87 million was first published by Pew in a little-noticed press release last September, announcing a report on Muslim Networks and Movements in Western Europe. The Pew Centre, based in Washington DC, is one of the most respected demographic research bodies in the world; its methodology is scrupulous and its approach non-partisan.

Keep reading…

The four-legged jihadi sex machine finally getting its due…

Riyadh – A beauty competition for goats began on Wednesday in Saudi Arabia, as part of an auction bringing together traders and herders in the holy Muslim city of Mecca.

Auction supervisor Fawzi al-Subhi said that over 170 animals are competing for the coveted title ‘most beautiful goat.’ He expects the winner to be sold for at least 18,000 dollars.

According to al-Shams newspaper, the four-legged contestants are purebred Hijazi goats, a distinct breed named after the province in which Mecca is located.

Pastoralists and their flocks still roam the Hijaz region and other parts of the oil-rich Arabian kingdom.

Beyond parody…

(TIME) — It’s become as much a winter tradition as eggnog at Christmas and champagne on New Year’s Eve — the first major snowstorm of the year bringing out the climate-change skeptics. And the bona fide blizzard that has frozen much of the Northeast just a few days after winter officially began definitely qualifies as major. But while piles of snow blocking your driveway hardly conjure images of a dangerously warming world, it doesn’t mean that climate change is a myth. The World Meteorological Organization recently reported that 2010 is almost certainly going to be one of the three warmest years on record, while 2001 to 2010 is already the hottest decade in recorded history. Indeed, according to some scientists, all of these events may actually be connected.

One theory is that a warmer Arctic may actually lead to colder and snowier winters in the northern mid-latitudes. Even as countries like Britain — suffering through the coldest December on record — deal with low temperatures and unusual snow, the Arctic has kept on warming, with Greenland and Arctic Canada experiencing the hottest year on record. Temperatures in that region have been 5.4°F to 7.2°F (3°C to 4°C) above normal in 2010. As a result, the Arctic sea-ice cover has continued to shrink; this September, the minimum summer sea-ice extent was more than 770,000 sq. mi. (2 million sq km) below the long-term average, and the third-smallest on record. Snow may be piling up in midtown Manhattan, but the Arctic is continuing its long-term meltdown.

HT: Noel Sheppard

The never-ending cartoon jihad…

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Denmark’s intelligence service on Wednesday arrested four people suspected of planning an “imminent” terror attack against a newspaper that printed the controversial Prophet Muhammad cartoons.

The Danish Security and Intelligence Service, known as PET, said three of the four men were residents of Sweden and had entered the country during the night of Tuesday to Wednesday.

Jakob Scharf, the head of PET, said that “an imminent terror attack has been foiled.” He described some of the suspects as “militant Islamists.”

PET said the group was planning to enter the building where the Jyllands-Posten daily has its Copenhagen newsdesk and had wanted “to kill as many of the people present as possible.”

If so we’d have a solid case against Obama for trying to impersonate him…

KARACHI: Religio-political parties including Jamaat-i-Islami (JI), Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam, Jamait Ulema-i-Pakistan (JUP), Jamiat Ahle-Hadith, Tanzeem-i-Islami, Tahreek-i-Islami have announced a complete shutter-down strike across Pakistan on December 31, 2010.

JI’s deputy chief, Professor Abdul Ghafoor Ahmed, said on Tuesday that the strike will be held to protest against the “conspiracies” of present rulers to repeal the blasphemy law. Ghafoor said that he regretted that “anti-Islam elements and their local agents” were out to repeal the blasphemy laws in Pakistan to achieve their “malicious goals” against Muslims.

He said that the blasphemy laws had been drafted by clerics from all schools of thought and passed by the National Assembly unanimously.

Ghafoor said that sentences for blasphemy against Jesus Christ are incorporated in the laws of western states, including the United States and the United Kingdom among other countries. He said that no religion in the world allows blasphemy against messengers of God.

Ouch…

(Business Insider) — It was also the only news channel to hit the top 10 in cable networks, ranking fourth in Primetime behind USA, ESPN and TNT.

Want some context for that? Fox News’ total viewers for the year exceeded MSNBC, HLN, and CNN combined.

That dominance came primarily at the expense of CNN which lost 29% of its total viewership in 2010 and 34% of its prime time viewers. Yes, you read that right.

MSNBC, meanwhile stayed the course in total day total viewers — it was the only news channel not to drop in that category — but dropped 5% year over year in prime time total viewers and 9% in the prime time demo.

Keep reading…

It’s almost like he’s trying to convince us of something…

HONOLULU — President Obama’s trip to church Sunday followed a steady rebirth over the past three months in public expressions of his Christianity.

Obama has publicly mentioned his “Christian faith” more times in the past three months than he has over the past year. He has more frequently cited passages of the Bible, including repeated references to the spirit of Genesis 4:9 — “I am my brother’s keeper; I am my sister’s keeper” — which was a mainstay of Obama’s 2010 campaign stump speech. And he’s taken his family to church twice, a shift for a president who has preferred to worship privately since the end of the 2008 campaign.

The White House says nothing has changed in Obama’s public remarks. The president “has consistently talked about his Christian faith, and the role of faith in America, over the course of his public life,” deputy press secretary Bill Burton said.

Indeed, Obama has spoken about his religion at various prayer breakfasts and in a 2009 commencement address at Notre Dame. And earlier this year, he held the first Easter prayer breakfast at the White House for Christian pastors, welcoming them as “my brothers and sisters in Christ.”

But one key difference between the way Obama is now referencing his “Christian faith” and how he has in the past is in the types of events.

Keep reading…

And he’s just realizing this now?…

Love this guy…

(Fox News)- Rep. Peter King plans to use his new bully pulpit to target immigration.

The New York congressman, who will become the new chairman of the House Homeland Security next week, told the New York Post that he will push for legislation to tighter border security and arrest more immigrants crossing the border illegally.

He said President Obama’s immigration policies were failing.

“The Obama administration continues to display an obvious lack of urgency when it comes to gaining operational control of the border, which is absolutely critical,” King (R-LI) told the newspaper.

King said Obama has “done little” during his term to curb undocumented immigration, adding that the country needs a new game plan “that incorporates the necessary staffing, fencing and technology to do the job.”

His proposals will target private companies that employ undocumented immigrants and beefing up local police to give them free range to make immigration arrests.