Tag: funeral

Justice Antonin Scalia, Chick-Fil-A, and Petulant President Pantywaist

On By kingsjesterIn Politics5 Comments

D-Wounded-600-LIWe are now at a point in our nation’s history, where a Fast Food Chain is showing more deference to the death of a Senior United States Supreme Court Justice than the President.

Christianpost.com reports that

Chick-fil-A restaurants that display the American flag are flying them at half-staff in memory of recently deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. 

The fast food chain that specializes in chicken sandwiches and headed by a conservative Southern Baptist family asked their restaurant managers to lower the American flag in remembrance of Scalia, who died Saturday of natural causes. 

“Anytime the president orders the flag be flown at half-staff, Chick-fil-A restaurants do so — as is the case with honoring Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia,” read a statement sent to The Christian Post by the fast food company.

“Honor”.  A word that, in the case of the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC, seems to be virtually nonexistent.

Politico.com reports that

President Barack Obama is preparing for a fierce battle with the Senate over the Supreme Court vacancy, but he’s not planning to attend Justice Antonin Scalia’s funeral — a decision that puzzled even some of his allies and incensed conservative media.

“If we want to reduce partisanship, we can start by honoring great public servants who we disagree with,” Obama’s former “car czar” Steven Rattner tweeted with a link to a headline about Obama skipping the funeral.

Fox News host Sean Hannity blasted out his own site’s article that dismissed the decision as disappointingly expected: “Obama To SKIP Scalia Funeral, Here’s A List Of OTHER Funerals He Was Too Busy To Attend.”

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest revealed the president’s plans during the

daily briefing, saying Obama and first lady Michelle Obama will go to the Supreme Court on Friday “to pay their respects to Justice Scalia” while the justice lies in repose in the Great Hall. Vice President Joe Biden and his wife Jill Biden, who share Scalia’s Catholic faith, will be at the services instead.

Earnest refused to be drawn out about why the president would not attend the funeral, saying he didn’t know what the president plans to do on Saturday, and Scalia’s son, Eugene, did not immediately respond to a question about whether the family requested that Obama not attend the funeral.

“The president, obviously, believes it’s important for the institution of the presidency to pay his respects to somebody who dedicated three decades of his life to the institution of the Supreme Court,” Earnest said, adding that Friday marked an “important opportunity” to pay those respects.

Inspite of the criticism, people close to the Scalia family said Obama was making the right choice. “I wouldn’t have expected President Obama to attend the funeral Mass, and I see no reason to fault him for not attending,” said Ed Whelan, a former Scalia clerk who now heads the Ethics and Public Policy Center. “The ceremony at the Supreme Court seems the most apt opportunity for the president to pay his respects, but he obviously might have severe competing demands on his time.”

There’s not substantial historic precedent for presidents attending the funerals of sitting justices. President George W. Bush not only attended, but also eulogized Supreme Court chief justice and fellow conservative William Rehnquist in 2005. But before him, the last justice to die in office was Robert H. Jackson in 1954.

Still, the decision to forgo the funeral on Saturday was played up by some as a partisan snub.

Tim Miller, the communications director for Jeb Bush, simply tweeted “Same.” in response to a message from MSNBC host Chris Hayes, who said, “Some amazing advice my mom gave me once: ‘If you’re wondering whether you should go to the funeral, you should go to the funeral.”

The optics of paying his respects to Scalia are tricky for Obama, who would have been the subject of constant cutaways to his reactions and interactions with members of Congress during the funeral, distracting from memorials for the giant of American legal thought.

Obama so far has taken pains to show reverence for Scalia, even as he urged Republicans to keep an open mind about a replacement. In the immediate aftermath of Scalia’s death last weekend, Obama praised his wit and predicted that he would be remembered as one of the “most consequential judges and thinkers to serve.”

Confronted with a series of questions during a press conference on Tuesday about Republican plans to block a nominee, Obama was careful to again express gratitude for Scalia’s service before launching into a Constitutional lecture directed at the opposing party.

Scalia’s death ripped open a political seam that has suddenly consumed both the presidential race and the Senate, especially after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell immediately issued a statement calling for Scalia’s replacement to be delayed until the next president is in office. Obama almost as quickly announced he would not be deterred, and pronounced his intent to nominate a fair-minded legal heavyweight to replace Scalia.

Former justice Sandra Day O’Connor on Wednesday appeared to back Obama’s decision to move forward with a nomination, telling a Fox affiliate, “We need somebody in there to do the job and just get on with it.”

So far, however, the president has not tipped his hand as far as top candidates, or even whether he will considering picking a moderate who could be palatable to the Republican-controlled Senate.

The White House said no nomination is expected this week while Congress is in recess, but there’s still been plenty of speculation and tea-leaf reading about both Obama’s and the Senate’s intentions.

On Tuesday, some Republicans signaled they’re open to at least holding hearings, if not also allowing a confirmation vote. Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin in an interview with POLITICO bristled at the suggestion that his party would completely ignore a nomination, saying, “It’s amazing how many words are being put in everybody’s mouth.”

Also on Tuesday, Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, whose panel would evaluate any potential Obama pick, said he wouldn’t rule out holding hearings. 

On Wednesday, Nevada GOP Sen. Dean Heller broke with his party’s strategy and called on Obama to put forward a consensus candidate. “The chances of approving a new nominee are slim, but Nevadans should have a voice in the process,” said Heller, a purple state senator, in the most direct rebuttal to McConnell’s plans to complete block a Supreme Court nominee.

But McConnell is still making hay of the Senate’s oppositional force, penning a letter on Wednesday afternoon for the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm that told donors that their “support means everything at this pivotal moment in American history.”

“Senate Republicans have made a commitment to ensuring that the American people have a voice in the selection of the next Supreme Court Justice,” McConnell wrote. “Stand with Senate Republicans as we hold our ground in waiting to confirm a new justice until after 2016, the time by which the American people will have chosen a new president and a new direction for our country.”

At the press briefing on Wednesday, Earnest also tried to clarify Obama’s view on his own decision as a senator to filibuster against President Bush’s Supreme Court nominee, Samuel Alito, in 2006. Earnest said Obama “regrets” the decision. But, he said, the situation was different.

“The president considered the qualifications and world view and credentials and record of the individual that President Bush put forward and then-Sen. Obama raised some objections,” Earnest said. “And what the president regrets is that Senate Democrats didn’t focus more on making an effective public case about those substantive suggestions.”

According to the Media Research Center,

President Obama will become the first U.S. president to skip the funeral of a sitting Supreme Court justice in at least 65 years when he skips the funeral service for Justice Antonin Scalia, scheduled to be held this Saturday.  

While Supreme Court justices are appointed for life, in recent history most have retired from the bench prior to their deaths.

Most recently, President George W. Bush gave the eulogy at the funeral of Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who passed in 2005 while still on the bench.

Prior to Rehnquists’ death, Dwight D. Eisenhower was photographed attending the funeral of Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson, who served on the court until he passed away in 1953. 

The funerals of sitting Supreme Court Justices were far more common before the 1950s, but it is unclear if sitting presidents attended the funeral services of those sitting justices or if not as few records of attendance exist. 

Why is the President not attending the funeral of the Senion Justice on the Supreme Court/

Petulant President Pantywaist couldn’t be holding a grudge, could he?

Does the very thought of Hillary Clinton and Yoko Ono having a “fling” make you want to hurl?

On February 12, 2014, usatoday.com reported that

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia criticized the annual State of the Union ritual Tuesday night, calling the presidential speech something worth skipping because it is a “rather silly affair.”One of three justices who did not attend President Obama’s speech at the U.S. Capitol — along with Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito — Scalia bemoaned that “it has turned into a childish spectacle, and I don’t think that I want to be there to lend dignity to it.”

“The State of the Union is not something I write on my calendar,” Scalia said during his own remarks before the Smithsonian Associates at George Washington University. But he quipped, “I didn’t set this up tonight just to upstage the president.”

Scalia’s views are shared by Chief Justice John Roberts and Alito, both nominated to the bench by President George W. Bush. Roberts once said the presidential speech has “denigrated into a political pep rally” and added that it was “troubling” to expect members of the high court to sit there expressionless.

Indeed, Alito was seen on TV cameras during Obama’s 2010 remarks shaking his head and mouthing the words “not true” when the president criticized the high court’s ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which upheld the right of corporations and unions to make unlimited, independent political expenditures.

Next to a presidential inauguration, the State of the Union Address has similar stagecraft and drama. The president speaks before a joint session of Congress, and the justices, Cabinet members, foreign diplomats and assorted guests are in attendance in the packed House chambers.

 

Petulant President Pantywaist, as I dubbed him, years ago, behaves as if the world should genuflect when he enters the room, hanging on his every syllable in rapt attention.

Justice Scalia, appointed by an AMERICAN PRESIDENT by the name of Ronald Reagan, was a man’s man, a Christian and a Constitutionalist, who believed in American Exceptionalism and Traditional American Values.

His Legal Writings were brilliant in scope and interpretation.

By contrast, Obama was the first Editor of the Harvard Law Review, who never contributed to that publication.

Obama’s childish snubbing of Justice Scalia’s Funeral tells you everything that you need to know about him.

History will remember Justice Scalia as a Giant Among Men.

It will not be as kind toward Petulant President Pantywaist.

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

 

 

 

DeBlasio Vs. the NYPD Continues

On By kingsjesterIn PoliticsLeave a comment

AFBrancoDeBlasio12282014On Saturday, 28,000 Law Enforcement Officers come to New York City to honor…and bury…one of their own.  While there, New York’s Men in Blue let their feelings be known, once again, concerning current Mayor Bill DeBlasio.

The New York Post reported yesterday that

Thousands of NYPD cops turned their backs on Mayor de Blasio on Sunday outside a Brooklyn funeral home as he eulogized a murdered NYPD officer inside.

As de Blasio addressed the loved ones of Detective Wenjian Liu in the Aievoli Funeral Home in Bensonhurst, the sea of blue watching the funeral on huge TV screens outside showed their disgust for Hizzoner by turning around as he spoke.

Cops have been furious with de Blasio mainly since the grand-jury rulings involving the deaths of Staten Island dad Eric Garner and Missouri teen Michael Brown, two unarmed black men who died during confrontations with white cops. Neither cop was criminally charged.

The mayor said afterward that he worries about how his son, Dante, who is half-black, might be treated by police because of his race.

The cops say de Blasio’s comment is just another instance in which he has added to the anti-cop sentiment in the city.

Liu and Officer Rafael Ramos were sitting in their patrol car in Bedford-Stuyvesant on Dec. 20 when deranged, cop-hating killer Ismaaiyl Brinsley came up from behind to execute them. Brinsley committed suicide before cops could catch him.

Officers first turned their backs to de Blasio when he visited the hospital where Ramos and Liu were treated. They then also turned turned their backs to him outside the church where Ramos’ funeral was held Dec. 27.

NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton asked officers not to repeat that silent protest at Liu’s funeral Sunday.

There’s more to the story than that…

On Dec. 2, 2914, The New York Post reported that

… De Blasio and the race-baiting Rev met withPresident Obama and other clergy, cops and pols Monday about “simmering” tensions between the police and minorities across the United States.

Sharpton, a White House regular under Obama, got a prime seat at the table — directly facing the president — during the two-hour session at the Eisenhower Office Building.

Hizzoner, meanwhile, got a seat farther away from Obama.

…Sharpton’s police power play began over the summer at an event at City Hall dealing with the chokehold death of Eric Garner, where he humiliated de Blasio and NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton by lecturing them on the department’s supposed ills.

“If Dante wasn’t your son, he’d be a candidate for a chokehold. And we’ve got to deal with that reality,” Sharpton said at the time, referring to Hizzoner’s biracial son.

At the Monday meeting, Dante’s name came up again — this time from Obama.

“The president referred to when he met my son, Dante. Well, I can tell you I think every night about my son, making sure he comes home safely . . . We have to make sure all our children are safe, living in justice,” de Blasio said.

The August killing of unarmed black teenMichael Brown by white Police OfficerDarren Wilson in Ferguson, Mo., prompted Monday’s meeting — but Sharpton said he also mentioned Garner’s death.

Tensions have been rising across New York City as a grand jury nears a decision on whether to indict in the Garner case, but Sharpton refused on Monday to make predictions about any possible fallout from a ruling.

“I could not talk about aftermath when I don’t know what the decision is,” he told The Post.

The issue of leveling government “sanctions” at police departments that violate standards came up at the meeting, he said.

Sharpton had raised the issue after the Trayvon Martin shooting in Florida in 2012.

Participants said Obama didn’t state an opinion on the grand jury’s failure to indict Wilson.

Obama said the situation was emblematic of a larger issue.

“Ferguson laid bare a problem that is not unique to St. Louis, and that is a simmering distrust that exists between too many police departments and too many communities of color,” he said.

The White House also announced plans to outfit 50,000 cops nationwide with body cameras.

Officials proposed spending $75 million in 2015 to help local police buy the devices as part of a $263 million request by Congress to aid local law enforcement.

As I wrote last week, it’s a funny thing about that word “respect”. It works both ways.

When New York City’s Communist mayor, Bill DeBlasio, prissed around, preening and grandstanding for the cameras with Al Sharpton and the other race-baiters, taking their side in the protests over Brown and Gardner, he quite literally showed his backside to New York’s Finest.

Just as Obama has not seemed to figure out, yet, being a leader of a diverse group of citizens, means just that: leading all of them.

You’re not just a community organizer, anymore

You are actually part of the Establishment, meaning that you have to put your old anti-Establishment Ways in your toy chest with your childhood possessions.

It’s time to be a grown-up, and to know the difference between playtime and reality.

And, when it comes to the lives of two police officers, killed in the coldest of blood, while sitting in their patrol car, that is as real as it gets.

DeBlasio has yet to apologize for his comments and his actions.

Once again, he’s lucky that they just turned their backs on him at their fellow officer’s funeral, instead of giving him a mass one-finger salute.

But, these are Men of Honor, unlike Politicians.

DeBlasio is quickly undoing every good thing that Rudy Giuiliani accomplished as the Mayor of New York City.

It is truly sad that the Mayor of the Big Apple is such a worm.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Barack Obama and the $5,000,000 Selfie

On By kingsjesterIn Politics3 Comments

Obama SelfieYesterday morning, the world watched as Liberals, Communists and Former U.S. President George W. Bush spoke at the Funeral of Former South African President and Leader of the bloody ANR, Nelson Mandela.

The 44th President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama was welcomed as a “True Son of Africa” and after receiving thunderous applause for a rain-soaked crowd of 35,000 South Africans, preceded to lecture…err…eulogize the late Communist Leader.

Mandela showed us the power of action; of taking risks on behalf of our ideals. Perhaps Madiba was right that he inherited, “a proud rebelliousness, a stubborn sense of fairness” from his father. And we know he shared with millions of black and colored South Africans the anger born of, “a thousand slights, a thousand indignities, a thousand unremembered moments…a desire to fight the system that imprisoned my people,” he said.

But like other early giants of the ANC — the Sisulus and Tambos — Madiba disciplined his anger and channeled his desire to fight into organization, and platforms, and strategies for action, so men and women could stand up for their God-given dignity. Moreover, he accepted the consequences of his actions, knowing that standing up to powerful interests and injustice carries a price. “I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I’ve cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and [with] equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.” (Applause.)

Mandela taught us the power of action, but he also taught us the power of ideas; the importance of reason and arguments; the need to study not only those who you agree with, but also those who you don’t agree with. He understood that ideas cannot be contained by prison walls, or extinguished by a sniper’s bullet. He turned his trial into an indictment of apartheid because of his eloquence and his passion, but also because of his training as an advocate. He used decades in prison to sharpen his arguments, but also to spread his thirst for knowledge to others in the movement. And he learned the language and the customs of his oppressor so that one day he might better convey to them how their own freedom depend upon his. (Applause.)

Mandela demonstrated that action and ideas are not enough. No matter how right, they must be chiseled into law and institutions. He was practical, testing his beliefs against the hard surface of circumstance and history. On core principles he was unyielding, which is why he could rebuff offers of unconditional release, reminding the Apartheid regime that “prisoners cannot enter into contracts.”

Actually, Mandela’s early release hinged on him renouncing all violence, which he refused to do….as victims of he and his wife’s favorite execution method of “necklacing” would attest to…if they were still here to do so.

Anyway, do you know how much the Obama’s attendance at Mandela’s Funeral cost us, boys and girls?

$5,000,000 of OUR MONEY was spent for Scooter and Mooch’s little jaunt, during which he shook the hand of Cuban President Raul Castro, another Marxist Leader who is running his country straight into the ground, continuing the mission of his brother Fidel.

And, as you saw by the picture in the upper left corner of today’s blog, he used this solemn occasion to pose for a “selfie” with the beautiful Blonde Prime Minister of Denmark, and the Liberal Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, David Cameron.

That’s a torqued-off Michelle Obama, sitting in the background. Whether she’s P.O’ed about the inappropriate “Selfie” or the pretty blonde, I don’t know.

Although, knowing her usual disposition, it’s probably both.

As the late, great American Patriot and America’s Clown Prince, Red Skelton used to say, speaking about his wife, in an aside to the audience,

I’m not saying she’s mean…but, where she spits…grass never grows again.

Most Americans, in a moment that will never come again, had the same reaction to Obama’s stupid stunt as Mooch did.

And, guess what, the rest of the world agrees with us.

In a story about the inappropriate self-aggrandizement by the Manchurian President, the Denmark Dish, and Scooter’s bud Cameron, the London Daily Mail asks,

Is this REALLY time to take a selfie, Dave?

So, in the spirit of that question, allow me to ask what Obama’s MSM Lackeys won’t…

Does your Family Tree not fork, Barry?

As if the entire world was not laughing at us already for being stupid enough for electing a lightweight like you twice, now you have to act like a 14 year-old stuck in a church service he did not want to attend.

I swear, Scooter.

You must think “decorum” is something Mooch’s Staff does to a room in the White House  and “class” is something you skipped in Hawaii to go chooming with your buds.

You are an embarrassment. A President of the United States is supposed to represent his country with dignity at a State Funeral.

Not act like he is hanging out with his fellow 9th Graders at the local Chicago Pizzeria.

Yesterday, Comedian and Political Observer Dennis Miller quipped,

“Obama is a Selfie”.

He is right. And, a dangerous, immature, petulant “Selfie” at that.

Until He Comes,

KJ