Chris S. posted this article from Biz Pac Review about the recent stomping of Jesus at Florida Atlantic University.
Excerpt:
A South Florida college professor’s bizarre classroom antics have made waves for their shocking display of religious intolerance. But they were even more instructive in educating the rest of us on the alarming thought process of yet another Palm Beach County Democratic leader.
Florida Atlantic University professor Deandre Poole instructed his intercultural communications class earlier this month to write the name “Jesus” on a piece of paper, then drop it on the floor and stomp on it.
One student, a devout Mormon, was so so disturbed by the exercise that he complained to school officials, saying Poole had offended his religious convictions. The school responded by suspending the student from the class.
While the incident has made the news, the media has failed to report a key component of Poole’s resume: He is vice-chairman of the Palm Beach County Democratic Party. His recent actions add fire to an already-disturbing pattern of hate coming out of the local party.
Mark Siegel, the former chairman of the county Democratic Party, was forced to resign in September under a barrage of criticism over an anti-Christian tirade at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C.
Siegel, who is Jewish, told an interviewer at the convention that pro-Israel Christians want to see Jews “slaughtered.”
“Oh no, the Christians just want us to be there so we can all be slaughtered and converted and bring on the second coming of Jesus Christ,” he said at the time.
Just two months earlier, in a series of emails, Evelyn Garcia, a Democratic Executive Committee member from Palm Beach County and one of the local party’s Democratic National Committee representatives, accused Israel of “crimes against humanity” and running “mass concentration prison camps.”
Garcia also quit her post in the wake of the public response to her comments.
His biography doesn’t say what area his PhD was in, but judging from this story I’m guessing that it must be in Marxist Studies.
Hugo Chávez’ presidency has been a disaster for the Venezuelan people. Chávez’ “Socialism of the 21st Century” changed Venezuela from one of the most prosperous and politically free countries in Latin America to one of the least competitive and most repressive countries worldwide. Venezuelans who go to the polls today will ponder many of the President’s policy failures, including a long list of Chávez’nblunders in the last year alone.
Under Chávez’ rule, oil-rich Venezuela has become one of the least economically competitive countries in the world. In 2012, the country ranked 126 of 144 in a study by the World Economic Forum. According to the report, Venezuela now has some of the lowest scores worldwide in functioning of public institutions, trust in the justice system and domestic competition. It has some of the highest scores in terms of regulation, trade tariffs, and rules that deter foreign investment. The country has an inflation rate of 26 percent, and has also suffered several food shortages this year.
Venezuelan infrastructure has been falling apart under Chávez. On August 15th, the Cupira bridge near Caracas collapseddespite repeated warnings from engineers that it was in disrepair. Last month, poor drainage infrastructure led to nationwide flooding, resulting in over 400 families losing their homes and 1,500 people ending up in shelters. Chávez also mismanages Venezuela’s oil wealth. Since the government effectively took control of the national oil company in 2004, it has become much less efficient and production is 25 percent lower than when Chávez took office. Accidents are common—an offshore oil rig sank into the sea in 2010 and an oil refinery explosion in August killed at least 48 people. Despite sitting atop the world’s largest proven oil reserves, Venezuela nowimports and rations gasoline.
According to USA Today, Venezuela has the fourth highest murder rate in the world and is now the most violent South American country. Between the time Chávez took power in 1998 and 2012, kidnappings have risen from a few hundred annually to a record of 16,000 in 2011. Homicide rates have nearly tripled and suspect arrests have fallen by 61 percent. Only eight in every 100 murder investigations lead to an arrest. Murder of police officers has risen by 45 percent in the last year alone. Violence is much worse for Venezuela’s inmates despite Chávez’ campaign promises of prison reform. A prison riot on August 24 left 26 people dead and 43 injured after inmates took over the compound and held it for four hours. Venezuelans are 20 times more likely to be killed in penitentiaries than outside of them. More than three hundred people have died and 572 have been injured in Venezuelan prisons this year alone.
Venezuelans have also witnessed alarming revocations of political liberties during Chávez’ presidency. On September 10th, Chávez decided to withdraw from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. He regularly targets media who expose his failures. He recently arrested two journalists for writing a satirical article about his leadership. In addition, he demanded the names of voters who participated in the opposition’s primary election last February, just as he did to those who unsuccessfully voted to remove him from office in 2004. Chávez has banned foreign funding for civil society watch dogs, which will make electoral transparency in upcoming elections difficult.
UPDATE: Reformed Seth sent me this article from Human Rights Watch as well.
Excerpt:
Hugo Chávez’s presidency (1999-2013) was characterized by a dramatic concentration of power and open disregard for basic human rights guarantees.
After enacting a new constitution with ample human rights protections in 1999 – and surviving a short-lived coup d’état in 2002 – Chávez and his followers moved to concentrate power. They seized control of the Supreme Court and undercut the ability of journalists, human rights defenders, and other Venezuelans to exercise fundamental rights.
By his second full term in office, the concentration of power and erosion of human rights protections had given the government free rein to intimidate, censor, and prosecute Venezuelans who criticized the president or thwarted his political agenda. In recent years, the president and his followers used these powers in a wide range of prominent cases, whose damaging impact was felt by entire sectors of Venezuelan society.
Many Venezuelans continued to criticize the government. But the prospect of reprisals – in the form of arbitrary or abusive state action – forced journalists and human rights defenders to weigh the consequences of disseminating information and opinions critical of the government, and undercut the ability of judges to adjudicate politically sensitive cases.
[…]Chávez also rejected international efforts to promote human rights in other countries. In recent years, Venezuela consistently voted against UN General Assembly resolutions condemning abusive practices in North Korea, Burma, Iran, and Syria. Moreover, Chávez was a vocal supporter of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, bestowing upon each of these leaders the “Order of the Liberator,” Venezuela’s highest official honor.
Under Chávez, Venezuela’s closest ally was Cuba, the only country in Latin America that systematically represses virtually all forms of political dissent. Chávez identified Fidel Castro – who headed Cuba’s repressive government until his health deteriorated in 2006 – as his model and mentor.
That’s the dream of people on the left like Sean Penn. They love the idea of doing away with liberty and human rights. They want to force their secular leftist ideology on everyone at gunpoint.
Everyone who is praising this communist dictator today should be ashamed. None of them would move out of the United States to live in Venezuela – it’s nothing but hypocrisy.
Tonight, Washington Post’s Bob Woodward alleged that because he is sticking to his guns in insisting that sequestration was the brainchild of the Obama White House, that it was personally approved by Obama, and that bringing up tax increases now to try to resolve the current sequestration impasse is “moving the goalposts,” he has been threatened by “a very senior person” in the White House. Woodward said so on CNN’s Situation Room earlier today. What’s even more troubling is that Woodward told two Politico reporters the same thing yesterday, and that they appear to have sat on the revelation until this evening when the CNN interview forced their hand. Relevant portions of the CNN transcript and Politico column follow the jump.
This is from a rush transcript at CNN. Woodward was interviewed by the network’s Wolf Blitzer and Kate Bolduan (I checked the first portion of it against the video; there was no supporting video for the last line quoted below; bolds are mine throughout this post):
BOLDUAN: What do you make of the White House’s response to your article?
WOODWARD: Well, I think they’re confused. I think they’ve got this idea. I mean, they put out these long talking points and said, see, even Woodward’s book reports that Speaker Boehner said, let’s get $600 billion over ten years in revenue in the super committee. That’s exactly right. That’s not the sequester. And they’ve said – they have,as you know, I said, get somebody from the White House here, and we’ll debate.
BLITZER: We invited the White House to send someone here, to debate this issue with you, and they declined.
WOODWARD: Why? Why? Because it’s irrefutable; that’s exactly what happened. I’m not saying this is a moving of the goalposts that was some criminal act or something like that, I’m just saying, that’s –
… BLITZER: You’re used to this kind of stuff, but share with our viewers what’s going on between you and the White House.
WOODWARD: Well, they’re not happy at all, and some people kind of, you know, said, look, we don’t see eye to eye on this. They never really said, though – afterwards, they’ve said that this is factually wrong, and they – and it was said to me in an e-mail by a top –
BLITZER: What was said? Yes.
WOODWARD: It was said very clearly, you will regret doing this.
BLITZER: Who sent that e-mail to you?
WOODWARD: Well, I’m not going to say.
BLITZER: Was it a senior person at the White House?
WOODWARD: A very senior person. And just as a matter – I mean, it makes me very uncomfortable to have the White House telling reporters, you’re going to regret doing something that you believe in. And even though we don’t look at it that way, you do look at it that way. And I think if Barack Obama knew that was part of the communication’s strategy – let’s hope it’s not a strategy, but it’s a tactic that somebody’s employed, and said, look, we don’t go around trying to say to reporters, if you, in an honest way, present something we don’t like, that, you know, you’re going to regret this. And just – it’s Mickey Mouse.
… BOLDUAN: That line clearly has touched a nerve with folks at the White House. There’s no question about that.
Why would anyone think that the tactics of this socialist, big-government regime would be any different than other socialist, big-government regimes? They don’t like criticism. They don’t like questions. They don’t like being held accountable.
Hey, Bob, you can’t say we didn’t warn you. We knew this White House was capable of attacking even the great Bob Woodward for telling the truth.
You could have listened to Michael Barone. He saw it coming even before Barack Obama was elected. In October 2008, he penned “The Coming Obama Thugocracy.”
Schmaler’s story is typical of this gang. Her shouting, threats, and rants at reporters would have rendered her unqualified to serve in the press shop of a state department of agriculture.
Leftists have always been like this – the sense of moral superiority, and the dismissal of critics as immoral. The thuggishness is natural because they believe that their plans can never fail because of their innate moral superiority. If their plans do fail, (e.g. – high minimum wage produces higher unemployment), it must be because some group of people is undermining them, and those people must be purged. It can never be that their plans are wrong and don’t produce the results they want. They have good intentions, and how could that not produce good results? Leftists are the same everywhere.
WINTERY KNIGHT 