I’ll bet you think I’m crazy for putting up that picture of a disgusting old man with pale legs and blue hair on the front page early on Monday morning, don’t you? Well, that’s not half as crazy as what the House GOP is doing with that nutjob. According to Amanda Carpenter at the Washington Times;
Why were House Republicans holding an off-the record meeting on health care with the liberal Dr. Patch Adams Thursday morning?
An email about the meeting sent from Georgia Republican Rep. Jack Kingston’s office was obtained by the Washington Times from a disgrunteld GOP staffer who questioned why any Republican would seek Dr. Adam’s advice.
Dr. Adams’s unconventional approach to treating patients, like preparing a noodle bath for a sick woman for example, was made famous in the 1998 film “Patch Adams” in which he was portrayed by actor Robin Williams. Today, Dr. Adams leads the Gesundheit Institute that supports a single-payer health care system.
Yes, that’s Patch Adams in the photo – and that’s his preferred color for his hair all of the time, not just for last year’s Code Pink Mothers’ Day event in DuPont Circle where I took that picture.
I’ll admit that I’ve never seen the Robin Williams movie, mostly because I know that people who are tagged as “unconventional” these days are what we’d call crackpots a few decades ago. Adams is a crackpot.
Proof? Look at some of the people he hangs out with. Code Pink doesn’t have a rational solution to the war against terror, so why would the House Republicans think Patch Adams has a rational solution for healthcare? Is this what Republicans call presenting their own plan for healthcare – free government subsidized daily noodle baths for everyone?
A few hours ago, I mentioned the Code Pink statement made on Friday that Obama was doing the right thing by staying out of the Iranian protests. Of course, the following day Obama reversed course and issued his toughest statement on the situation to date.
That’s the way I’d do it – if Code Pink thought I was right about something, I’d change course, too. But I set out to look at what the far Left is saying about the protests and they all seem to think that President Bush is still pulling the strings.
I also mentioned Paul Craig Roberts’ piece seething with Bush Derangement Syndrome. As evidence that the Iranian protests are a CIA plot, Roberts cites Kenneth Timmerman of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran; (more…)
Finally, President Obama, after a week of trying to remain neutral in the conflict in Iran, summoned some testicular fortitude and stood up for freedom yesterday. The Washington Post called it a “cautious response”;
[T]he president called on the Iranian government “to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people.”
U.S. officials say Obama is intent on calibrating his comments to the mood of the hour. They say he is seeking to avoid having the demonstrators accused of being American stooges and is trying to preserve the possibility of negotiating directly with the Iranian government over its nuclear program, links to terrorism, Afghanistan and other issues.
I’d agree, if Obama made that statement after the first death in Tehran, but amid unsubstantiated reports of hundreds of casualties, the wording sounds weak. From the Washington Times;
An Iranian who asked to be identified only by his first name, Ali, told The Washington Times that he saw security forces near Azadi (Freedom) Square dropping tear-gas canisters into buildings sheltering demonstrators, driving motorcycles into crowds of people and firing tear gas into demonstrators’ eyes. As he spoke, continuous shooting could be heard in the background, along with cries and shouts.
A graphic video posted on Facebook by Goli Fassihian, a spokeswoman for the National Iranian American Council, showed the body of a young woman whose face was covered in blood. Another video showed a young man with blood on his chest lying on the street, with gunshots ringing out around him.
Here’s some video from yesterday. Sporadic gunfire breaks out at about 3:00 into the video;
And another;
Actually, if Obama’s intent is to avoid being blamed for the riots, that ship has sailed. Last week, the mullahs had already blamed the US, the UK and the west in general for the protests. This morning, the Malaysian Insider published Ahmadinejad’s warning to the west;
Iranian authorities today blamed “terrorists” for clashes in which at least 10 people were killed and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the United States and Britain to stay out of unrest sparked by his disputed re-election.
Iran state television said 10 people were killed and more than 100 others injured in protests held in Tehran yesterday in defiance of a stern warning by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. A separate report put the number of deaths at 13.
State television said the violence included the torching of a mosque, which it blamed on “rioters”.
“In the unrest leading to clashes 10 people were killed and more than 100 wounded,” it said. “The presence of terrorists … in yesterday’s event in Enghelab and Azadi avenues was tangible.”
The harshness of the language suggested the authorities could be preparing for a crackdown to end more than a week of protests.
Obama’s reliance on words to resolve the problem is fairly naive (Fox News link);
And Obama cited the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s, famous quote: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
“I believe that,” Obama said. “The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples’ belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.”
In other words, if we just wait long enough, everything will shake out in the end. Unfortunately, Martin Luther King was talking about rational governments and rational societies. A rational government in Iran wouldn’t have let the current conditions there get this far. The mullahs would have suggested a power-sharing agreement with the opposition by now, if they were indeed committed to peace in the streets instead of the line about an 11 million-vote gap in the elections.
The Iranian government knows, after years of dealing with the pussy-footing West over their nuclear ambitions, their is little chance of a Gordon Brown/Barrack Obama insurgency into Iran. The mullahs can get away with anything, so the Iranian people are pretty much on their. Bullets against voices.
The blame for that can rest on the forlorn wailing of the anti-war crowd who have been protesting direct action against Iran for at least three years that I know of. As recently as this Spring, Code Pink has been praising the Ahmadinejad government and advocating for further suppression of women and minorities in Iran.
The American Left consistently comes down on the wrong side of history. Proof? How about the Code Pink press release from Friday;
CODEPINK calls on the Obama Administration to fulfill its commitment to pursue diplomacy with Iran through face-to-face talks without preconditions; as Obama promised during his campaign, “We should not just talk to our friends, we should be willing to engage our enemies as well. That is what diplomacy is all about.” CODEPINK also affirms the Obama administration’s decision to withhold comment on the Iranian election and its government’s decisions around conducting a recount or reelection.
Furthermore, CODEPINK calls on the United States to cease threats of new economic sanctions, remove existing sanctions, and end threats of war.
These affirmations will lend much needed credibility and legitimacy to Obama’s commitment to improve relations with Iran and the Arab-Muslim world, and uphold his campaign promise to meet with Iranian officials without preconditions.
Emphasis is mine. In other words, Code Pink supports the mullahs on their continued murder of gays and stoning of women as well as the current atrocities on the streets of Iranian cities. Peace at any cost.
In truth, it’s a repeat of the 1979 revolution – Jimmy Carter supported the Shah’s government and we became The Great Satan for three decades. Obama is tacitly supporting the Mullahs, so we’ll get another few decades of being The Great Satan to the rest of Iran.
I know you’re relieved like I am. One of those links goes to an article on Huffington Post by Ann Wright who describes the incident;
Israeli police and military violently shoved the group back into a wall. Delegation member Tighe Barry from Santa Monica, Cali. was struck in the face with the butt of a military rifle and pushed to the ground where he could barely breathe. He was taken by ambulance to the Trauma Center of Tal-Hashomer hospital in Tel Aviv where he was treated for a concussion, an injured neck and an asthma attack. Benjamin and several other delegation members were bruised in the arms and upper body from being shoved and manhandled by the police and military.
The journalist was taken to a local police station and released an hour later without charges. Mr. Barry was treated overnight at the hospital.
Yeah, can someone show me the screen shot of Barry getting buttstroked? If there was one I’d have already blown it up wall poster size and put it in the window next to my son’s Blue Star. After reviewing the video a few times, none of the police involved in pushing the protesters back even had a long gun with which he could buttstroke Barry. I call BS. And who paid for his night in the hospital? George Soros?
“Is this the great democracy that the U.S. taxpayers pay for with $3 billion dollars a year?” Benjamin cried, as she was being dragged away by the police.
Did anyone see Benjamin getting dragged off by the police in the video? No she’s getting pushed back by the police.
If you watch the video at my first post about this (at this link), at about 1:30, you can see Wright screaming her ass off and she’s no where near the police – just screaming for dramatic effect. Then she runs around the small crowd and intentionally wedges her widebody between a pole and a barrier and starts flailing around like the police put her there.
There’s nothing in the video or Ann Wright’s account of the incident related to teargas, except in Barry’s email.
Code Pink took their street fair to Israel the other day and ran into some Israeli police. I’ll have the video up in a minute, but first let me explain a little bit about what you’ll see. First Lil Suzie Benjamin suddenly has relatives who suffered in the Holocaust to lend herself some credibility – you know like folks who come here and try to get creds on military issues by telling us that their nephew’s neighbor’s grandfather watched the History Channel on Memorial Day.
Then (at about 1:30 in the video) Tighe Barry (Suzie’s poodle), Ann Wright and Suze try to push through Israeli police barriers. The police push back (duh) while Tighe has to tell the police “you’re pushing women, you’re pushing women….” probably because none of the women the Israeli cops are pushing look like women in Israel (well, speaking from my own personal experience).
Tighe is totally faking (he’s such a drama queen). He might have got conked on his noggin but you can’t see any blood or marks. So he lays on the pavement and writhes like a two-year-old so Suzie will touch him.
Just so you recognize him in the video, this is Tighe last year at the Code Pink Mothers’ Day;
Here’s the video;
Now we know why Tighe Barry left Hollywood and took up with the Code Pink Street Theater Company – he’s such a bad actor.
I came across a link at Don Surber‘s place this morning to a HuffPo piece by Rachel Weiner (I don’t know if it’s pronounced “weener” or “whiner” but either would be appropriate, i suppose) entitled Right-Wing neocons Rooting for Ahmadinejad Win. It’s a pretty sad display of projection. here’s the screen capture;
Don did an excellent job of knocking Weiner down a few pegs. But I’d like to add that the American Left has been rooting for Ahmadinejad for six years. they’ve been rooting for Ahmadinejad’s new buddy Hugo Chavez for ten years.
Last month, I got an email from Code Pink calling on Nancy Pelosi to press forward with the investigations of the Bush Administration’s use of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EITs) against terrorists;
The Washington Times and the Washington Post both announced this morning that Speaker Pelosi knew about Enhanced Interrogation Techniques according to records of the briefings to Pelosi and Porter Goss on September 4, 2002. The Times;
The report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times, indicates that a classified CIA briefing of Mrs. Pelosi included specific details of the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” or EITs, on terrorism suspect Abu Zubaydah.
“Briefing on EITs included use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah, background on authorities, and a description of the particular EITs that had been employed,” the report said of the Sept. 4, 2002, briefing.
The U.S. government acknowledged in the “torture memos” that President Obama declassified last month that the interrogation of Mr. Zubaydah included waterboarding, a technique that simulates drowning and is widely denounced as torture, 83 times in August 2002, a month before the Pelosi briefing.
The Post reports that Pelosi is still clinging to her previous lie despite the evidence against her;
In a carefully worded statement, Pelosi’s office said today that she had never been briefed about the use of waterboarding, only that it had been approved by Bush administration lawyers as a legal technique to use in interrogations.
“As this document shows, the Speaker was briefed only once, in September 2002. The briefers described these techniques, said they were legal, but said that waterboarding had not yet been used,” said Brendan Daly, Pelosi’s spokesman.
Pelosi’s statement did not address whether she was informed that other harsh techniques were already in use during the Zubaydah interrogations.
So will Code Pink now demand an investigation into Pelosi’s involvement? Not holding my breath.
