SATURDAY NIGHT SNOW PATROL, THE CALL, SUZANNE VEGA (UPDATE).

Looks like these guys have found the way to fame. I had a post about them a couple of weeks back with their 2007 hit Shut your eyes. This one, Just say yes, is some light stuff from their most recent album, Up to Now, which was first released in the States in October 2009 - I hope that's recent enough for Mr Ghost.





Then a now forgotten 1986 hit from San Francisco quintet The Call. "I still believe", from the album Reconciled. In the mid-eighties, Peter Gabriel was quite wild over this band. The following song was used in, amongst others, the soundtrack of the movie The Lost Boys (1987). Frontman is Michael Been (vocals, guitar).





Hey, nite all. Except YOU Al Zawahiri, Bert Anciaux, David Miliband, KSM & affiliates.



MFBB.

UPDATE: SUZANNE VEGA

Hey Al, Bert, David and Khalid, you arseholes you, just for now I take that back because I am SUCH a Good Person. Listen to this and try to get your miserable pathetic lives back on track. Suzanne Vega with In Liverpool.





She looks very, very much like my very first girlfriend, Nancy. God, what a beauty she was. Alas, it was not to be. Ahh, memories....

WEDNESDAY NIGHT OPEN THREAD... (UPDATE)

Things are looking okay, since some people just make a career of being clueless.


UPDATE: ADOLF LEARNS BROWN BEAT CROAKLEY.





MFBB.

TAX, LIES AND VIDEOTAPE.

Regular reader Joanne linked to this story from Herb Denenberg over at The Bulletin:

Obama, The Emperor, Has No Clothes

We’ve Reached The Tipping Point And His Programs Must Be Stopped
By HERB DENENBERG, The Bulletin
Saturday, January 16, 2010

"Every politician may break campaign promises. But even the most corrupt ones have limits. Mr. Obama has no limits. At the very core of his campaign, he claimed to be the great post-partisan, non-partisan unifier to bring us all together and listen to every side of every issue. He told us a gazillion times there are no Red States and Blue States but only the United States. He claimed a new politics, with openness and transparency in all matters. He was the great courier of hope and change. But that was just campaign rhetoric and even post-election rhetoric. He has demonstrated he is the exact opposite of his basic claims. He is highly partisan, content to shutout, shut up, and ignore Republican ideas and Republican voices. He rejects transparency, and is as secretive and opaque as possible. Other politicians have broken campaign promises, but never on a scale such as this involving the promises most central to their campaigns, and never before so openly and brazenly with so little regard for the citizens who were sold this fraudulent bill of campaign goods.

For proof of Mr. Obama’s breaking all of his core promises, look at what is going on with ObamaCare. Everyone probably remembers his promise, repeated at least eight times, that negotiations on the health-care bill would be televised on C-SPAN and would be streaming on the Internet. Among his statements: “We’re going to do all these negotiations on C-SPAN…We will work on the process publicly … These negotiations will be on C-SPAN.” He constantly explained that putting all negotiations (yes, he said, “all”) on C-SPAN would assure that everyone could see for themselves whether their Congressmen were putting forth arguments on behalf of insurance companies, drug companies, and other special interest groups or making arguments on behalf of most of their constituents. You can hear him make this promise by going to the Internet, where at least eight videos of Mr. Obama making that promise are collected (www.thenakedemperornews.com)..."

Indeed, let's check out:





Denenberg continues:

"This isn’t hope and change. This isn’t politics as usual. This is worse than politics as usual. This is the corrupt Chicago-style machine politics of thugs and intimidators. Recall that Mr. Obama came out of the corrupt Chicago machine and even refused to work with those trying to bring about its reformation. And now we see he has brought the corruption and thuggery of that style of politics to the White House. We not only have that style of politics in control in the White House, but even worse, its agenda is the radical, liberal, leftist, socialist program that runs contrary to American values and the very principles of our Founding Fathers. As we know, right before his election, Mr. Obama said he was going to fundamentally transform America. And that’s what he is doing, but transforming it by destroying its constitutional structure.

He is involved in an unprecedented expansion of government, explosion of spending, national debts and deficits, taxation, and regulation of every aspect of American life. His debt is unsustainable, and his expansion of government is so great that it is going to squeeze out and kill the private sector. That government expansion will also kill American entrepreneurship upon which America’s productivity has always depended. At the same time, it is contracting our liberties. A gargantuan government controls almost everything and that means the private market and the private citizen control almost nothing. His signature legislation on health-care is an attempt to control America and Americans. The Obama agenda is nothing more than the “road to serfdom.”

I have never made a secret of my dislike for the man who is currently President of the United States. 30 seconds in 2004 sufficed for me to see who this man of smoke and mirrors was. But it is not with glee that, six years later, I find my doubts and reservations confirmed. It's not that I can't hear or see the mistakes Republicans made; I tend to endorse the view of another longtime reader, Mark from Colorado who now goes under the moniker Spiral, that 'Democrats are eager socialists and Republicans reluctant ones' - or something like that. It is just that when you are offered the choice between a glass of piss and a glass of stale beer, imho the normal reaction should be to prefer the latter.

Mainstream Media have, to their eternal shame, played a crucial role in getting this Fraud, because that is what he is and I don't care if I hurt people's feelings, in the White House. Always a keen observer of US politics, insofar that was of course possible in pre-Internet times, I cannot remember a single timeframe in my life when the media so openly waged war on the previous President, while at the same time so lavishly heaping praise on the newcomer. Let us just observe how MSM painted the economic performance of the Bush government in midterm, and how this influenced Americans' perceptions of the economy. The following is an exerpt from a Pew Research Center report, dated September 15, 2005:

By two-to-one (37%-18%), more believe the economy will be in worse shape a year from now than believe things will improve. In August 2004, just 9% said they expected the economy to worsen over the succeeding 12 months. That number doubled to 18% in January, and has doubled again (to 37%).

The public's assessments of current economic conditions, while negative, have not declined since May.

About three-in-ten (31%) rate economic conditions as good or excellent, while about twice as many view things as only fair or poor (68%). Opinion was similar in May (32% good/excellent, 67% only fair/poor).

And yet, when Democrats took over Congress in January 2007, average unemployment under Bush had been... 4.5%. In that month, it was actually 4.4%, the culmination of 55 consecutive months of job creation - real job creation that is, and certainly not jobs "saved". Budget deficits had been shrinking substantially for three years in a row, stood at 162 billion US$, and had not the housing bubble burst - for which a nefarious combination of greedy banksters and Democratic legislators bear the key responsibility - it might have reached zero by now.

Three years after the Democrats took control of Congress, and one year after they took control of the White House.... the unemployment has risen to 10%. As for the budget deficit, it has... grown by a factor 10 and stands now at 1.58 TRILLION DOLLARS.

Suppose that Bush would preside over a budget deficit of 1.58 Trillion dollars, would the media still be throwing flowers at him like they do with Hussein? And for those who think that the latter was simply the heir to the former, I can assure you that when a government implements 787 billion dollar "stimulus" bills with money which it does not have, a jump from minus 162 billion to minus 1.58 trillion is rather quickly made. Just look at that graph below. Look how rosy the predictions are post 2010. Honey, I shrunk the budget deficit. Now, of that deep abyss there, almost puncturing this very blog itself, you can be certain. It is real. Of the climb up later on, well, that was drawn by the same guys who assured you unemployment rate would not be higher than 8%, if only the stimulus bill was implemented.





We should no longer mince our words.

This man has to go. He is a clear and present danger not only for the United States, but even for world stability. On the road to busting him out of the White House, Massachusetts voters play a key role today.

I hope they will rise to the challenge.



MFBB.

CREEPING ISLAMIZATION IN BELGIUM.

It's happening in a less obvious way than in our neigboring countries, but it's happening, alright. Via François Desouche, a photo of a commercial panel in a Brussels shopping gallery.





So what you see here is an ad for the 'solden', in French 'soldes', with which in Belgium a particular period in early summer or winter is indicated during which massive discounts are advertised. I wouldn't know the appropriate wording in English but "Bargain Time" is a decent shot. Anyway... this panel is not in Molenbeek, with its 78% muslims. It's not in Kuregem or Anderlecht. No, it's in the commercial heart of the centre of Brussels, in the City2 shopping gallery. Arabic, for God's sake.


This news is already one month old, but I have my reasons for mentioning it now. From Belgian daily De Standaard, December 15, 2009:

Belgium: Mosque asks to allow call to prayer

The alderman college of Beringen (Belgium) will decide this week on the issue of loudspeakers for the Fatih mosque.

The Fatih mosque asked the city to allow them to call the faithful to prayer. They want to hang loudspeakers outside the mosque so that the muezzin - which calls the faithful to prayer - will also be heard out in the streets. The Fatih mosque in Beringen is one of the few Belgian mosques with a minaret.

Mosque chairman Yilmaz Centurk would only confirm yesterday that the request was made. Selahattin Koçak (SP.A), alderman in Beringen: "I hope that we can make a collegial decision with a full alderman college already this week. Until then I will make no comment, although I think that you can guess my point of view."

Beringen's mayor Marcel Mondelaers (CD&V) was not available for comment yesterday, but according to party member Anne Cuypers, second alderman of Beringen, the CD&V hasn't yet taken a stand. "We're first asking the advice of all instances, such as the environmental service and the police regulations relating to sound pollution, and should also look at how often they want to do the call'...

The Turkish Fatih mosque in Beringen. Can you imagine that the pitiful remnant of christianity in Turkey is allowed to build a church this large?


And that is how it goes... inch by inch, they are crawling forward, recknoning on demographics and exhaustion from indigenous locals. We see here a deliberate strategy that is being implemented, a soft ethnic cleansing. If this thing gets through, what do you think the chances are that non-Turkish Belgians will keep living around a mosque of which the minarets' loudspeakers awake them at five in the morning with the appalling, heinous sound of a muezzin calling muslims to prayer?

None.

Flemings will move away.

They will sell their house for a fraction of its worth, since no other Flemings will want to buy it. Guess who will move in? Yes, you guess right. And what is going to be the result? In fifteen-twenty years, Beringen will be "Fleming-rein".

Among true DowneastBlog readers, the name Beringen may sound a bell. Indeed, a little over three years ago, on December 4, 2006, I had a post about this town titled "In Beringen, it was Kristallnacht again". Here are some exerpts:

"BRUSSELS - Last Thursday, November 30, a group of Jewish orthodox youths was pelted with stones and chased away from the youth hostel they were staying in. The agressors were Belgian "youths" of Turkish origin.

On Thursday evening a group of around sixty youths from an Orthodox Jewish school in Antwerp arrived at 8.30 pm in Youth Hostel "De Kompel" in Beringen, an old mining town in the province of Limburg, eastern Belgium. They had been mountainbiking in Valkenburg, right across the border in Holland, and wanted to stay in Beringen for the night, planning to visit Beringen's Mining Museum the next day before resuming their journey.

At 9pm a group of Turkish youths gathered in the vicinity of the youth hostel. They shouted anti-Jewish slogans and besieged the hostel, throwing stones and pieces of concrete through the windows. Police arrived on the scene "to ease the tensions" and by 10pm "the situation was under control". Thereupon a school teacher accompanying the chassidic youngsters decided not to stay for the night in Beringen and fetch the boys back to Antwerp by bus.

Ten youths of Turkish origin, six of them minors, were arrested and led before a Court in Hasselt, where "alternative punishments" were meted out: they must pay for the damage, offer apologies to the jewish youths and were sentenced to 30 hours of community service..."

(continuation of the December 4, 2006 post):

"Beringen is a community with a lot of Turkish immigrants. In fact, during the municipal elections the main contest for the mayor's seat ook place between Marcel Mondelaers, of the Christian Democratic Party CD & V, and a resident of Turkish origin, Selahattin Koçak, of the Socialist Party SP.a. Koçak stood a very good chance of becoming the first mayor of immigrant origin of a Belgian town, but his socialist party was in extremis beaten by the christian democrats with a difference of... 0.3%. Given the fact that indigenous Belgians, with a fertility rate of 1.5 children per woman, are on the road to extinction while the Turkish community with 3.5 children per woman is on the rise, Marcel Mondelaers may very well be Beringen's very last native Belgian mayor. Note, also, that Mr. Koçak preferred to throw in his lot with a socialist party. As I have already mentioned ad nauseam on these pages, it's striking how immigrants from a culture with archconservative views on the role of women in society, homosexual people, abortion and euthanasia and what not, time and again choose the side of leftist parties with views and values diametrically opposed to theirs.

So, although Mr. Koçak narrowly lost, in Beringen he remains the pater familias, so to say, of the Turkish immigrants, who voted massively for him. In my humble opinion, and knowing that this gang of racaille will offer excuses to the Jewish boys the day Eid-al-Fitr falls on Easter, it would have been a proper reaction of Mr. Koçak to apologize for the behaviour of the little stinker buggers.

But instead, it was Mayor Mondelaers who apologized. Again, from newspaper "De Gentenaar":


BERINGEN - "The town of Beringen offers her apologies to the Jewish community... We offer the group of teenagers the possibility to resume the planned visit to the town of Beringen. We want to prove that in spite of this incident the town remains a hospitable and tolerant place." - dixit Marcel Mondelaers, Mayor of Beringen.

Have you got an idea what is going here? Know what I see? I see a christian democrat mayor and a town council who, since December 15, have apparently decided to let the matter of loudspeakers on minarets rest, for it was really not smart of those Fatih guys and Koçak to bring it up right after the Swiss referendum on minarets. I've been checking news from Beringen for one month now, and it's eerily quiet. No coincidence, take it from moi. Remember that the issue would be brought before the town council in the third week of December. We're one month further now, and there are forces at work to keep a low profile for now, that's all. They must have gotten a bit scared from all the commotion the matter raised in the Flemish press. Now, Mr. Mondelaers is at best halfway his term and it's going to be his last... as it is also going to be the last of a native Belgian. So even if the loudspeaker issue is defeated in this town college, what do you think the chances are it will pass when Selahattin Koçak is mayor of Beringen?

Take a GOOD, HARD LOOK at this scoundrel:



Selahattin Koçak, alderman now, Beringen mayor in the future. A guy who couldn't bring himself to utter ONE WORD of an apology for muslim scum, from HIS COMMUNITY, who chased away peaceful Jewish schoolchildren on bikes passing through a town rapidly islamicizing.

Now, that was 2006.

In 2009 they try to sneak loudspeakers on minarets through.

What's it gonna be in 2012? 2015? 2020?

One last thing.

Selahattin Koçak is a member of the Flemish Socialist Party SP.a.

But, I suspect you suspected that already.



MFBB.

HAITI AGAIN - APPEAL FOR HELP.

I actually intended to do a small post on another subject but the urgency of the situation in Haiti trumped that. As it is now crystal-clear what a terrible disaster has befallen the small Caribbean nation I'd like to once again encourage people to donate, even if it is only a small sum. I think this is not the time to hide behind arguments that your support will never reach its intended target. Even if one would know that only 10% of a donation would come through, that's still better than nothing. Now, there ARE organizations out there that are doing prodigious work and where a gift is certainly making a difference. If you are still suspicious, just do some research and take your pick.

In the meantime I'd like to recommend either the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders. I certainly have my issues with the Belgian branch Artsen zonder Grenzen/Médecins sans Frontières, and especially some of their leadership, but what is clear is that their field workers are doing a hell of a job.

These people need your donation in order to work, so please...





To make it easier for Flemings or our friends the Dutch, click here. Walloons and Frenchmen, click here s.v.p.

Thank you for your gift. You acted like a human being.


MFBB.