Archive for February, 2011
If you like what we do, we need your help with the move
Help us make the move to the new site!
Hiring the team and renting the server space to move over to a new site for HillBuzz where we can transfer over all of our archives and turn them into an effective resource for the 2012 campaign has been much more expensive than we imagined when we decided to push ahead with the new site. The cost has always been the biggest stumbling block to this project…as is the terror of what the monthly usage and bandwidth charges are going to be once those bills start coming in on our own server. HB is going to pass the 15 million hits mark sometime in early March, so ad sales on the new site should ultimately take care of those server costs…but getting there is the hard part.
It is embarrassing to have to directly ask for help like this, but we honestly do need it.
The goal is to raise $3,500 to make the move and be free of WordPress and on our own, where we can finally create the action and activism-oriented site we’ve been evolving since we started so long ago.
The new site launch will happen regardless, but instead of starting things in massive debt to our creative team, we’d be able to begin under our own steam with their work paid in full. There’s no way to adequately express the weight that would take off our shoulders.
So, it’s humiliating to have to do this commercial and let go of enough pride to admit we need help, but we need help and appreciate anything you could chip in to help defray the costs of the move.
Wisconsin leading the way in efforts to strip public employees of collective bargaining rights.
I don’t know how much time you spend in a day thinking about or reading up on Wisconsin, but this is an amazing development: the new Republican Governor, Scott Walker, and the Republican state legislature are aggressively combatting the public employee unions that are attempting to drag Wisconsin down into fiscal insolvency the way these same Democrat-loyal unions loot treasuries in all the blue states, like here in Illinois.
The unions are killing this country.
I don’t know any other way to say that.
One of the most liberating moments of my life came in 2008, after I realized the Democrat Party was no longer something I belonged to, when I finally said out loud what I had always known in my heart but had forever been peer-pressured not to admit in a Democrat-controlled city: the unions are killing this country.
I grew up in Cleveland, where the unions killed the steel and automaking jobs in the 80s and 90s. They killed almost all of the manufacturing jobs pretty much wherever there was a factory anywhere coast to coast, actually.
Now, the public employee unions are killing entire cities, counties, and states because of the stranglehold they have on depleted budgets.
People who work for the government and are paid out of the tax coffers should not be unionized and have collective bargaining powers.
The government should not exist to provide union workers with jobs for life and a Shah’s ransom of benefits (the likes of which those in the private sector can only dream of, dumbfounded).
Government workers should exist to provide a needed public service, for which they should be compensated fairly, not lavishly.
I am sure you have met many government workers in your lifetime. I invite you to list all of whom deserve all the perks, benefits, and mandatory salary increases they enjoy in perpetuity.
Now, we clearly don’t live in a world where what “should” happen does, and that’s not going to change.
But it sure looks like what’s happening in Wisconsin is a step in the right direction.
Can anyone following this story shed some more light on it?
News networks may yank female reporters out of Egypt after rape of Lara Logan by Muslim mob
This is expected, and very much worth talking about: news networks are debating yanking female reporters out of Egypt after the brutal rape of Lara Logan by Muslims, while she was literally standing in a crowded public square covering the chaos in Cairo.
Several months ago, I saw the movie “Cairo Time” with my friend Zara, who had lived in Egypt briefly and who has traveled extensively through Muslim countries. In that movie, Patricia Clarkson plays and American wife of a State Department official, who visits Cairo on a trip to see her husband. One afternoon, in broad daylight, Clarkson’s character gets bored all cooped up in the hotel and decides to take a walk to window shop and explore the neighborhood just a block or so away from where she was staying. Just a few minutes into this stroll, blonde-haired Clarkson attracted a mob of Muslim men who wanted to rape her. The actress telegraphed the terror her character felt in a scene I will never forget…her eyes darted back and forth looking for a way out…sweat beaded up on her forehead as her mind raced to think of some escape…she truly seemed like a woman who knew she was about to be raped if someone or something didn’t save her.
Mercifully, an old shopkeeper spied what was happening through the dirty windows of his store and he pulled Clarkson inside, locking the door behind her, shouting for the mob of men to go away. Still terrified, there was a moment where Clarkson seemed to wonder if the old man would try to rape her too.
At dinner afterwards, Zara told me “he probably would have if they had Viagra in Cairo”…and she wasn’t kidding. She was dead serious. ”This is what it’s like to be a woman in a Muslim country. But, it’s still better than being you, because they’d kill you because you are gay. At least there’d be a hope of maybe living if it’s a woman they are attacking”.
Whenever the Left calls Islam “the religion of peace” or goes on about multiculturalism and how “equally valid” the “culture” in Muslim countries is, the first thing I instinctively think of is the “Cairo Time” rape scene…and from today forward, the next thing I’ll think of is reporter Lara Logan gang-raped in the middle of a crowded square just seconds after filing a televised report during this chaos in Cairo.
It’s horrific, infuriating, and — most frighteningly — just another thing the Left needs you to overlook and pretend doesn’t happen so the “equally valid, religion of peace” meme Democrats seek to institutionalize for Islam can continue unchallenged.
Note about comments and content as we transition our archives to the new HillBuzz site
As many of you have noticed, we’ve begun the transition of our archives over to the new site, and all the other behind-the-scenes work that’s needed to move us over to our new server.
It’s a big project, considering the fact that tomorrow is February 17th 2011, which is the three-year-anniversary of HillBuzz. There is a massive amount of content that needs to be reorganized, sorted, and prepped for how it’s going to be resourced on the new site. It’s a lot of work, and the transition period is taking time away from the things we usually do every day, like writing new essays, researching new articles, and doing things like checking the spam filters constantly to free up errant comments.
We’re very sorry about any hassle or frustration you may have in this transition period, and we are working as hard as we can to get to everything that needs doing. There’s a reason the move to a new site hasn’t happened before now…and it’s the massive amount of work that’s going into making that happen. It’s stressful, time-consuming, frustrating, and messy.
But, it was time for this little site that started out three years ago as a Hillary for President campaign site to evolve into something that’s much better able to play a unique part in the 2012 campaign. I know there is a metaphor in here about caterpillars, butterflies, and bees somewhere, but I’m just too tired to do that justice right now.
Please continue to pardon our dust and be patient with the comments showing up as our regular routine here is slightly disturbed while efforts and energy are shifted towards the move and launch of the new site. The goal was to have this done by our anniversary tomorrow, but it’s a slower process than I anticipated, so we’re clearly not going to make this date…but look on track to have the new site up and running as a better platform and resource towards the end of this month.
There will be some bumps, hiccups, and stumbles as we get things moving…but it will be worth it in the end.
“House” actress Lisa Edelstein does ad for abortion
I HATE it when actors and actresses do things like this. I really like the TV show “House” but I will never be able to watch it again thanks to this nitwit. It just won’t be the same. Everytime I see her pathetic face on the screen, I’ll want to throw something at it. Of course MoveOn.org is responsible for this ad. Do they mention that there are alternatives to abortion? Adoption?
Of course not.
Because they’re MoveOn.org
Update on whining Canadian Muslim immigrants
It appears that there are some Muslims who appreciate the freedoms of the west. Mahfooz Kanwar is a member of the Muslim Canadian Congress and he had some choice words for the Muslim immigrant families who wanted their children excused from music and PE class in school (because it didn’t mesh with their culture).
Here is what he said…
“I’d tell them, this is Canada, and in Canada, we teach music and physical education in our schools. If you don’t like it, leave. If you want to live under sharia law, go back to the hellhole country you came from or go to another hellhole country that lives under sharia law,” said Kanwar, who is a professor emeritus of sociology at Mount Royal University in Calgary.
Love it! Love it! Love it!
Go Mahfooz Go!
Wednesday Open Thread: February 16th, 2011
Is this who we need leading our great country in these troubled times?
What’s on your minds this Wednesday?
What are people talking about in your part of the country?
Jordan’s Justice Minister calls Israeli schoolgirls’ killer a hero.
- In 1997 Ahmad Dakamseh fired an automatic weapon at a group of Israeli schoolgirls, killing seven.
This is who we are dealing with in the Middle East. Jordan’s Justice Minister Hussein Mujalli called Ahmad Dakamseh, the monster who murdered 7 Israeli schoolgirls’ in 1997, a hero. Yes…a hero. Hussein is the justice minister of Jordan…someone with power….and this is how he feels?
(from Al Arabiya)
AMMAN (AFP)
Jordan’s justice minister on Monday described a Jordanian soldier serving a life sentence for killing Israeli schoolgirls in 1997 as a “hero,” joining a sit-in to demand his release.
“I support the demonstrators’ demand to free Ahmad Dakamseh. He’s a hero. He does not deserve prison,” Hussein Mujalli, who was named minister last week, told AFP, after taking part in the sit-in held by the trade unions.
“If a Jewish person killed Arabs, his country would have built a statue for him instead of imprisonment.”
“It is still my case and I will still defend him. It is a top priority for me,” he said.
“Dakamseh needs a special pardon. Only the king can issue a special pardon,” the state-run Petra news agency quoted Mujalli as saying.
In March 1997, Dakamseh fired an automatic weapon at a group of Israeli schoolgirls as they visited Baqura, a scenic peninsula on the Jordan River near the Israeli border, killing seven and wounding five as well as a teacher.
The attack came almost three years after Jordan and Israel signed a peace treaty, only the second between an Arab country and the Jewish state.
The motives of Dakamseh, who was 30 at the time and a married father of three, were never clear. Then king Hussein cut short a visit to Europe and rushed home to condemn the attack. He later travelled to Israel to offer his condolences to the families of the slain schoolgirls.
Jordan also paid compensation.
Maisara Malas, who heads a trade unions’ committee to support and defend the soldier, told AFP he handed a letter to Mujalli, demanding Dakamseh’s release.
“We cannot imagine that a great fighter like Dakamseh is in jail instead of reaping the rewards of his achievement,” the letter said.
Jordan’s powerful Islamist movement and the country’s 14 trade unions, which have more than 200,000 members, have repeatedly called for Dakamseh’s release.
Tuesday Open Thread: February 15th, 2011
What’s on your minds this Tuesday?
What are people talking about in your part of the country?
Mika Brzezinski gets schooled on Egypt
This little exchange took place this morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe between “Strong like Bull” Mika Brzezinski and the very dashing and brilliant Niall Ferguson ( Professor of History at Harvard). Just watch this video…watch it several times….it will make your day. I so love Niall Ferguson and I so detest Mika ( I don’t care for Joe either). Mr. Ferguson made the crew of Morning Joe look like a bunch of uninformed idiots (which of course, they are). There is something about Mika that irritates me (aside from the fact that she LOVES Obama). She’s one of those aggressive know-it-all rabid liberal females. UGH! I love it when she gets put in her place….which is back under a rock. I bet they won’t have Mr. Ferguson on again anytime soon.
Go Niall Go!
