Photo Credit: AFP/Getty ImagesAs the Senate prepares for confirmation hearings Wednesday to decide whether Samantha Power will be the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, there are some controversial criticisms of America from her past that may be called into question.
Power, a former journalist turned political activist, once connected some of the tactics in the U.S. war on terror to French military support for the Hutu militia, which killed 800,000 people in the Rwandan genocide. She also has called Americans “stingy on foreign aid,” declared that the U.S. should apologize for slavery, and even made indirect references comparing U.S. involvement in the world to that of Nazi Germany.
At a 2002 discussion of her book at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Power questioned the U.S. cooperation with other countries in the war on terror, saying “we’re about to partner with regimes that if they’re not committing genocide they are certainly committing systematic atrocities against their people.”
Power has already come under fire for a New Republic article in which she called for Americans to follow the lead of German leaders post-Holocaust and apologize for their war crimes:
“U.S. foreign policy has to be rethought. It needs not tweaking but overhauling. We need: a historical reckoning with crimes committed, sponsored, or permitted by the United States. This would entail restoring FOIA to its pre- Bush stature, opening the files, and acknowledging the force of a mantra we have spent the last decade promoting in Guatemala, South Africa, and Yugoslavia: A country has to look back before it can move forward. Instituting a doctrine of the mea culpa would enhance our credibility by showing that American decision-makers do not endorse the sins of their predecessors. When Willie Brandt went down on one knee in the Warsaw ghetto, his gesture was gratifying to World War II survivors, but it was also ennobling and cathartic for Germany.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-17 02:46:552016-04-11 11:19:07Controversial Statements from Obama’s Choice for UN Ambassador (+video)
Photo Credit: Newsbusters Just when it seemed that the racial tensions couldn’t get any worse after George Zimmerman’s “not guilty” verdict regarding the charge of the second-degree murder of black teenager Trayvon Martin, along comes Nancy Grace, the host of a weeknight news/interview program on the HLN cable news network, who did her best to fan the flames even higher.
Responding to lead defense attorney Mark O’Mara’s closing argument on Friday night asking the jury to give Zimmerman his life back, the acerbic host growled: “Give Zimmerman back his life? He’s out on bond driving through Taco Bell every night, having a churro”…
Since then, Grace has been accused of using “a very poor choice of words” herself, with some even going so far as to call her a racist for the language she used.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-17 02:39:322016-04-11 11:19:08Hypocritical Nancy Grace Makes ‘Racist’ Claim that Zimmerman is Back to ‘Driving Through Taco Bell and Having a Churro’ (+video)
Tavis Smiley is furious that President Obama has not done more to combat racism in America, and that anger was on full display Monday night. On his self-titled PBS program, Smiley unleashed a pair of long-winded leftist rants barely disguised as questions to his guest, Dr. Tricia Rose from Brown University.
Rose, who directs Brown’s Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, had suggested that Obama was incapable of ending structural racism in America by himself. Hearing that, Smiley erupted: “[I]f you’re right about this, then what the heck is the value of us celebrating a black president?”
Apparently Smiley had rather high hopes when President Obama was elected. He continued:
“But all of this hoopla about his being the first black president, if it doesn’t redound to you in some meaningful way when your back is to the wall and your babies are being shot dead in the streets, if it doesn’t redound to you in some meaningful way at that point… what is the value of having a black president?”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-17 02:38:242016-04-11 11:19:08PBS’s Tavis Smiley: Our Babies are being Shot Dead in the Street, What’s the Use of having a Black President? (+video)
Photo Credit: J. Scott ApplewhiteBy Stephen Dinan. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Monday that the men who wrote the Constitution intended for the president’s nominees to be subject to only a majority vote, and said filibusters of nominees were never envisioned.
The Senate’s leading Democrat, who led repeated filibusters of President George W. Bush’s nominations when Republicans held the majority, said he’s changed his mind since then, and he accused the GOP of forcing his hand by slow-walking so many of President Obama’s nominees.
Mr. Reid, of Nevada, said the Constitution only requires supermajority votes for specific circumstances: treaties, impeachments, constitutional amendments and overrides of presidential vetoes. He said everything else should be subject to a majority vote. Read more from this story HERE.
By Newsmax, Reuters and The Associated Press. U.S. senators said on Monday that no agreement had yet been reached to avert a showdown over President Barack Obama’s executive-branch nominees and threats by Democrats to strip Republicans of their filibuster power to block such nominations.
As the talks entered their fourth hour, Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer said a deal was unlikely on Monday, but Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss said the chamber’s two leaders, Democrat Harry Reid and Republican Mitch McConnell, were urged to keep trying to find common ground.
Votes are set for Tuesday on seven of Obama’s nominees.
Meanwhile, Democratic Sen. Jon Tester indicated progress, telling reporters: “The two sides aren’t off by far.”
All but three senators returned to Washington Monday night for the unusual joint-caucus meeting behind closed doors to hammer out a deal. Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-16 03:06:362016-04-11 11:19:10Sen. Harry Reid Morphs Into a Constitution-Loving Patriot in Describing Why the Filibuster Must Go (+video)
Photo Credit: WNDBy Drew Zahn. Some of America’s top labor unions – including the influential Teamsters – have suddenly realized Obamacare is bad deal, and they’re suffering some serious buyer’s remorse.
“In campaign after campaign we have put boots on the ground, gone door-to-door to get out the vote, run phone banks and raised money to secure [the Obamacare] vision,” wrote three leading labor unions in an open letter to Congressional Democrats last week. “Now this vision has come back to haunt us.”
The letter, signed by James Hoffa of the Teamsters, as well as the presidents of the UFCW and UNITE-HERE, demands Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., “fix” the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act – also known as “Obamacare” – before it “destroy[s] the very health and well-being of our members along with millions of other hardworking Americans.”
“When you and the president sought our support for the Affordable Care Act, you pledged that if we liked the health plans we have now, we could keep them. Sadly, that promise is under threat,” the unions wrote to Reid and Pelosi. “Unless you and the Obama Administration enact an equitable fix, the ACA will shatter not only our hard-earned health benefits, but destroy the foundation of the 40-hour work week that is the backbone of the American middle class.”
According to the letter, Obamacare is laced with “perverse incentives” that create “unintended consequences” and “nightmare scenarios.” Read more from this story HERE.
By Avik Roy. The union leaders are concerned that Obamacare’s employer mandate incentivizes smaller companies to shift their workers to part-time status, because employers are not required to provide health coverage to part-time workers. “We have a problem,” they write, and “you need to fix it.”
“The unintended consequences of the ACA are severe,” they continue. “Perverse incentives are causing nightmare scenarios. First, the law creates an incentive for employers to keep employees’ work hours below 30 hours a week. Numerous employers have begun to cut workers’ hours to avoid this obligation, and many of them are doing so openly. The impact is two-fold: fewer hours means less pay while also losing our current health benefits.”
What surprises me about this is that union leaders are pretty strategic when it comes to employee benefits. It was obvious in 2009 that Obamacare’s employer mandate would incentivize this shift. Why didn’t labor unions fight it back then? Read more from this story HERE.
Avik Roy appeared before the Health Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee to testify on the White House’s one-year delay in implementing the employer mandate of the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. “Obamacare”), which requires firms to offer health coverage to their full-time workers:
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-16 02:48:362016-04-11 11:19:11Teamsters, Other Unions Now Protest the Obamacare Nightmare They Helped Create (+video)
Photo Credit: YouTubeA Mid-South woman has filed a complaint with the Tennessee Department of Health after she said the doctor she went to see for back pain gave her an insulting diagnosis.
“He said ‘I know what the problem is. It’s ghetto booty,’” said 55-year-old Terry Ragland about what she was told by Dr. Timothy Sweo in April.
“I think I blacked out after he said ghetto booty. I think my mind was just stuck on the phrase because I couldn’t believe he said that,” said Ragland.
Ragland said this was not her first time at this doctor’s office. She had been there several times before and said her experiences were good. But this is the first time she had seen Dr. Sweo.
“It’s one of those things where my hip seems to slip, like it’s slipping out of place a little bit. It’s painful when you get up to go walk it kind of slips, you know,” said Ragland about her lower back pain.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-16 02:30:072016-04-11 11:19:13Doctor Gives and Defends Diagnosis of “Ghetto Booty” for Back Pain (+video)
Photo Credit: TownhallBy Thomas Sowell. There are no winners in the trial of George Zimmerman. The only question is whether the damage that has been done has been transient or irreparable.
Legally speaking, Zimmerman has won his freedom. But he can still be sued in a civil case, and he will probably never be safe to live his life in peace, as he could have before this case made him the focus of national attention and orchestrated hate.
More important than the fate of George Zimmerman, however, is the fate of the American justice system and of the public’s faith in that system and their country. People who have increasingly asked, during the lawlessness of the Obama administration, “Is this still America?” may feel some measure of relief.
But the very fact that this case was brought in the first place, in an absence of serious evidence — which became painfully more obvious as the prosecution strained to try to come up with anything worthy of a murder trial — will be of limited encouragement as to how long this will remain America.
The political perversion of the criminal justice system began early and at the top, with the President of the United States. Unlike other public officials who decline to comment on criminal cases that have not yet been tried in court, Barack Obama chose to say, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” Read more from this story HERE.
By Aaron Klein. Racism won in the Trayvon Martin shooting case, declared Van Jones, President Obama’s former “green jobs” adviser.
“The verdict: Racism won. #TrayvonMartin,” Jones tweeted.
The former White House staffer made the comments even as it was reported that an extensive FBI investigation found no evidence indicating George Zimmerman racially profiled Martin. Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-16 01:08:302016-04-11 11:19:13Is This Still America? (+video)
Photo Credit: APGeorge Zimmerman to Get His Gun Back
By Matt Gutman. George Zimmerman will get his gun back now that he has been cleared of murder and his lawyer said today that Zimmerman needs the weapon “even more” than before.
Zimmerman’s lawyer Mark O’Mara also practically dared the family of Trayvon Martin to file a widely expected civil suit against him, but said that Zimmerman might be filing lawsuits of his own.
O’Mara, in an exclusive interview with ABC News, suggested that Zimmerman has no regrets about carrying a gun on Feb. 26, 2012, the night he killed Martin, a teenager.
Prosecutors in their closing argument had said that Zimmerman getting out of his car with a loaded gun to follow the teenager led to Martin’s shooting. He was acquitted Saturday night of murder in Martin’s death in a case that has sparked widespread outrage among supporters of the Martin family.
The lawyer said Zimmerman, 29, will be entitled to get his Kel Tec 9 pistol back. Read more from this story HERE.
Zimmerman wants to go to law school to help others like him – friends
By Chris Francescani. After his acquittal on murder charges for fatally shooting Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman may go to law school to help people wrongly accused of crimes like himself, close friends told Reuters on Sunday.
The 29-year old was found not guilty late Saturday for shooting the unarmed black teenager in a case that sparked a national debate on race and gun laws. One of his first calls was to defense witness John Donnelly and his wife Leanne Benjamin.
They got to know Zimmerman in 2004 when he and a black friend opened up an insurance office in a Florida building where Benjamin worked. They grew close and the couple spent time with him during the trial.
Over dinner with Zimmerman recently, Benjamin said he told them he would like to go to law school.
“I’d like to help other people like me,” she quoted him as telling them. Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-15 23:15:152016-04-11 11:19:14Zimmerman Getting Gun Back, Wants to Go to Law School (+video)
Photo Credit: Fox NewsBy Fox News. The Justice Department said Sunday that it will review the George Zimmerman case for possible civil rights violations, after a jury acquitted the Florida neighborhood watch volunteer in the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.
As Zimmerman’s attorney cautioned that his client’s safety is at risk, the Justice Department responded to appeals from NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous and several lawmakers to keep investigating the defendant.
The department may find itself in a vulnerable spot. Last week, a conservative watchdog accused an obscure agency within the DOJ of helping support the “pressure campaign” against Zimmerman in the wake of the shooting last year. Judicial Watch claimed documents and public accounts showed “extraordinary intervention” by the department in the campaign that eventually led to Zimmerman’s prosecution.
The department, however, claims that it dispatched agency representatives to reduce tensions in the community – not to take sides.
By The Wall Street Journal. An American criminal defendant is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and that’s the standard to keep in mind when considering the jury’s not guilty verdict Saturday for George Zimmerman in the murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.
The case has been fraught with racial politics from the start, but inside the Sanford, Florida courtroom, the jurors had to wrestle with the standard that is a hallmark of American justice. No one but Mr. Zimmerman knows what happened that early evening in 2012 when he followed Martin, an unfamiliar young, African-American male visiting the neighborhood. A scuffle ensued, Zimmerman shot Martin in what he says was self-defense, and prosecutors never produced an eyewitness or even much evidence to disprove Mr. Zimmerman.
The verdict compounds the tragedy for the Martin family, but no one can claim that their son was not represented in court. The state threw everything it had at Mr. Zimmerman. Gov. Rick Scott replaced local prosecutors with a special team from Jacksonville, the judge often ruled favorably for the prosecution, including the addition of the lesser manslaughter charge (in addition to second-degree murder) at the end of the trial…
[But] Benjamin Jealous of the NAACP is already lobbying Attorney General Eric Holder to indict Mr. Zimmerman on federal civil-rights charges. To do so and win a conviction would require proof that Mr. Zimmerman was motivated by racial animus when the record shows little more than a reference by Mr. Zimmerman to “punks” in a comment to a police dispatcher.
Millions of Americans would see such federal charges as an example of double jeopardy, and a politicized prosecution to boot. In this context, it was good to see Mr. Obama’s statement Sunday that “we are a nation of laws, and a jury has spoken.” Read more from this story HERE.
FBI records: agents found no evidence that Zimmerman was racist
By Frances Robles and Scott Hiaason. After interviewing nearly three dozen people in the George Zimmerman murder case, the FBI found no evidence that racial bias was a motivating factor in the shooting of Trayvon Martin, records released Thursday show.
Even the lead detective in the case, Sanford Det. Chris Serino, told agents that he thought Zimmerman profiled Trayvon because of his attire and the circumstances — but not his race.
Serino saw Zimmerman as “having little hero complex, but not as a racist.”
The Duval County State Attorney released another collection of evidence in the Zimmerman murder case Thursday, including reports from FBI agents who investigated whether any racial bias was involved in Trayvon’s Feb. 26 killing…
Federal agents interviewed Zimmerman’s neighbors and co-workers, but none said Zimmerman had expressed racial animus at any time prior to the Feb. 26 shooting of Martin, a black teen, in a confrontation at a Sanford housing complex. As Sanford police investigated the circumstances of Martin’s death, the FBI opened a parallel probe to determine if Martin’s civil rights had been violated. Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: APDershowitz Calls for Federal Civil Rights Case Over “Prosecutorial Tyrant”
By David A. Patten. Famed defense lawyer and Harvard law professor Alan M. Dershowitz is calling for a federal investigation into civil rights violations stemming from the George Zimmerman case — but he says the probe should focus on prosecutorial misconduct rather than on allegations of racial profiling and bias.
Speaking Sunday in an exclusive Newsmax interview, Dershowitz said the jury’s finding that Zimmerman was not guilty of either second-degree murder or manslaughter was “the right verdict.”
He added, “There was reasonable doubt all over the place.”
Immediately after the verdict was announced, however, the NAACP and outspoken activist Al Sharpton called on the Justice Department to launch a federal civil-rights probe, charging that the case had been racially tainted.
Dershowitz is calling for a civil-rights probe as well. But he contends the person whose rights were violated was Zimmerman. Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-15 01:59:432016-04-11 11:19:14Unbelievable: Fed’s Now Considering Prosecution of Zimmerman for Civil Rights Violations (+video)
Photo Credit: Mark TurnauckasA publicly funded radio host [Peter Sagal] likened Chick-fil-A to Adolf Hitler Saturday in a warped attempt at humor…
He asked guest Amy Dickinson: “KFC is considering suing a restaurant in Thailand for using its logo and replacing Col. Sanders with blank?” The advice columnist guessed the Buddha, but the correct answer was Hitler.
Dickinson gasped when she heard about the true story. However Sagal, who is Jewish, continued. “Yum Brands which owns KFC was pretty ticked off when it noticed the Hitler restaurant in Bangkok was using the Col. Sanders logo with Hitler’s head Photoshopped in.
“Yum Brands is planning legal action,” continued Sagal. “But the owners of the Hitler restaurant say they are very sorry for insulting a chicken restaurant by associating it with a symbol of intolerance — and next time they will just go with Chick-fil-A.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-15 01:51:302016-04-11 11:19:14NPR Radio Host Shamelessly Associates Chick-fil-A With Hitler (+video)
