By Steve Milloy

PETA has embraced the puppy-killing revolutionary Che Guevara in a new ad campaign that features Che’s granddaughter, Lydia Guevara.

PETA’s ad quotes Che as saying

“The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.”

PETA goes on to note that,

Well, it looks like the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Che Guevara’s granddaughter, Lydia Guevara, is following in her revolutionary granddad’s footsteps by calling for a “vegetarian revolution.”

Here’s a campaign photo of Lydia trying to imitate Che’s iconic image

But is Che Guevara really someone that PETA wants to snuggle up to? Che is, after all, a puppy murderer.

Here’s the story of Che’s horrific act that occurred while he and his men were on a combat patrol in November 1957, as recounted in Jon Lee Anderson’s 1997 book, Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life (Grove Press).

[Caution: The following text is not for the squeamish]

As the soldiers advanced up the Mar Verde Valley, Che and his men stuck to the flanking forested hills, trying to catch up to them without being seen. They tried to speed up their pace, but discovered that their new mascot, a puppy, had stubbornly trailed them. Che ordered the fighter who was looking after the puppy, a man named Felix, to make it go back, but the little dog continued trotting loyally behind. They reached an arroyo where they rested, and the puppy inexplicably began howling; the men tried to hush it with comforting words, but the little dog didn’t stop. Che ordered it killed. “Felix looked at me with eyes that said nothing,” Che wrote later. “Very slowly he took out a rope, wrapped it around the animal’s neck, and began to tighten it. The cute little movements of the dog’s tail suddenly became convulsive, before gradually dying out, accompanied by a steady moan that escaped from its throat despite the firm grasp. I don’t know how long it took for the end to come, but to all of us it seemed like forever. With one nervous twitch the puppy stopped moving. There it lay, sprawled out, its little head spread over the twigs.”

PETA recently let President Obama off the hook for killing a fly during an interview in the White House because,

As we all know, human beings often don’t think before they act.

Will this rationalization will be applied to the people-as-well-as-puppy-murdering Che as well?

Viva la revolución de hipocresía!

—————————————

 Murderous terrorist thug CHE GUEVARA

By Valeria Fernández, FI2W contributor

PHOENIX, Arizona — Katherine Figueroa was playing outside her home Saturday morning when she overheard the news coming from a nearby TV. The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office had just raided the car wash where her father and mother worked.

She rushed to see her dad’s image on television. His expression looked worried, his hands were tied with plastic cuffs.

Her eyes filled with tears, the 9-year-old made a plea to President Barack Obama to return her parents home in a video produced by Arizona activists and reports on the Univision network.

“I want my parents back, is not fair for me to be alone,” said Katherine who was born in the U.S. and is a U. S. citizen.

Katherine Figueroa saw her father’s immigration arrest on TV. (Photos: Valeria Fernández)

Although the federal government has announced changes to its policies regarding work-site immigration raids, not much has changed in the Phoenix area, where Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is implementing what critics call “his own brand of law.”

“The message I have for everybody is that we’re going to continue to arrest those that violate the ID theft laws, but also if they’re illegal,” said Arpaio during a press conference outside the car wash on Saturday.

The owner of the Lindstrom Family Auto Wash did not respond to an interview request.

The arrest of 14 workers in the small business in central Phoenix is the seventh raid to take place since Arpaio started enforcing a new state law aimed at cracking down on employers who knowingly hire undocumented labor. Over all, at least 248 workers have been arrested and most of them face identity theft charges for working with fake documents.

But no employer has been penalized. The state law includes suspension of a business license at the first offense and revocation of the license if they are caught again.

The consequences for workers are life changing. Family separation and deportation with a felony on their record are the norm.

On Monday, Katherine’s mother Sandra Figueroa, 33, cried inside the Estrella Jail visitation room, worried about her daughter’s well-being and her own future.

“We were just making a living, we weren’t committing any crimes,” said Figueroa, the only woman arrested during the raid. She had worked at the car wash for nine years, her husband Carlos for eleven.

The morning of the raid she was vacuuming a car when Carlos came rushing to tell her she needed to hide. But deputies had circled the premises and found her shortly after.

“I never thought the sheriff would raid our workplace,” she said, adding officers were rude and constantly yelled at those arrested, almost running a worker over with one of their vehicles.

Figueroa remembers that two days before the sweep, two Hispanic men came with cars that had small stickers from the sheriff’s office.

“Maybe they where coming to investigate,” she said.

Katherine with her grandmother Mercedes Hernández.

For undocumented relatives of those arrested the raid creates another obstacle because they’re not allowed to visit their detained relatives.

Arpaio’s policies prohibit undocumented people from entering his jails.

The Figueroas’ relatives are desperate and heartbroken.

“They’re catching people like birds in their nest, which are the workplaces. That’s the truth,” said Mercedes Hernández, Katherine’s maternal grandmother.

Hernández, 63, denounced the sheriff’s methods.

“Mr. Arpaio arrives with his weapons and his police and everything. Who can stand against him? Why doesn’t he go where there are shootings?” she said.

“But he doesn’t look for criminals. What he looks for is innocent people.”

Several other families have been impacted by the raid, and some are left without their sole breadwinner.

“We’re very sad not just for us, but for everybody else that had someone arrested. There’s a woman with a four-month baby. Mr. Arpaio doesn’t stop to think … Who is going to take care of this woman or who is going to help her,” said Griselda, Sandra Figueroa’s sister, who asked that her last name not be published. “What is going to happen to all these families who have been abandoned?”

Griselda is worried about what could happen to her sister while in detention since she’s heard stories in the news about jailers abusing prisoners.

“He’s enforcing his own brand of law. … Can’t anyone do anything?” asked Andrés, Griselda’s husband.

Listen to Andrés (in Spanish):

The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office is currently under investigation by the Department of Justice, and reportedly the FBI, for alleged civil rights violations and racial profiling.

As Arpaio vowed to continue cracking down on illegal immigration, human rights activists worried about a wave of laws making their way through the Arizona legislature that could further criminalize undocumented immigrants.

Dan Pochoda, lead attorney of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Arizona, said some of the bills might be challenged in court because immigration enforcement is the responsibility of the federal government. Yet the challenges are not always successful, as was the case with the state’s employer sanctions law.

A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision established that immigrant workers can’t be charged with identity theft if they did not knowingly steal the identification number they used to work. But this doesn’t impact Arizona, which has its own identity theft laws, Pochoda said.

Migrants charged with identity theft spend up to three months in detention if they choose to go to trial. Those who plead guilty are later turned over to federal immigration authorities.

Those who are deported with a felony –as would be the Figueroas’ case– don’t have a chance to adjust their immigration status in the future even if an immediate family member is a U.S. citizen.

Inside her aunt’s trailer, Katherine has built a little altar with pictures of her mother and father. She prays and hopes they’ll be released.

“Mom, I love you,” she wrote her in a letter. “I’ll do anything to get you out of there.”

——————————–

Do U.S. citizen parents get a free pass when they commit crimes just because their child is a U.S. citizen? Of course not. While Katherine is not responsible for her illegal alien parent’s crimes, that shouldn’t be a factor for dismissing her parent’s crimes either. Her parents are felonious criminals and must be punished (fined and deported) as should the car wash (heavily fined and business license revoked) that illegally employed them. There are hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizen children whose parents are incarcerated or the child has been removed from their care for a myriad of reasons. Why should Katherine, a U.S. citizen, be treated any differently? These illegal aliens who dump out a baby on U.S. soil want all the benefits their anchor can possibly get them yet don’t want their anchor to be treated like a U.S. citizen when they’re caught in their crimes.  Because Katherine is a U.S. citizen, the fair and right thing to do is to treat her like one.

By Jessie Mangaliman Mercury News

California should formally "express regrets" to the Chinese immigrants who were historically persecuted and abused while they helped build the Golden State’s railroads, mines and agricultural fields, said a state legislator who is promoting legislation that would lead to the first-ever government apology to Chinese-Americans.

Assemblyman Paul Fong, D-Mountain View, the grandson of a Chinese immigrant who was interned at Angel Island, said his goal is to eventually convince the federal government to also issue an apology, and then legislate redress for the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which specifically barred Chinese immigrants from the U.S. It was repealed in 1943.

The first Chinese immigrants to California — who called it "gam saan," or Gold Mountain — faced discriminatory laws that prevented them from marrying or owning property. They were paid less and taxed more while children were denied access to public schools. They were forced out of towns, and in one case in San Jose’s old Chinatown, burned out of their enclaves. And at Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, the "Ellis Island of the West," tens of thousands of Chinese immigrants were detained for months, and sometimes years, separated from their families.

"Those who know history will know that those laws were discriminatory," Fong said. "Those who don’t know will be informed of it for the first time."

At a news conference Thursday afternoon, joined by leaders from civil and immigrant rights groups, and historical associations, Fong said he’s seeking public support for the resolution, ACR 42. Assemblyman Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles, is a sponsor.

The resolution states: The "Legislature deeply regrets the enactment of past discriminatory laws and constitutional provisions which resulted in the persecution of Chinese living in California, which forced them to live in fear of unjust prosecutions on baseless charges, and which unfairly prevented from earning a living."

If he gets the state apology, Fong said, he will seek federal redress for the people interned in camps that operated from 1910 to 1942 at Angel Island. However, he did not say how much he wanted the government to pay.

When the U.S. government issued a 1988 apology for the World War II internment of 120,000 Japanese and Japanese-American citizens, it paid reparation of $20,000 for each individual who was interned.

"I was hoping that when the government apologized for the internment of Japanese-Americans, it would eventually apologize for the Chinese exclusion," he said.

Redress movements are rarely successful. Efforts for redress for the enslavement of African-Americans, and the massacre and displacement of Native Americans, have been in circulation for years.

For Eddie Wong, executive director of the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation, it isn’t reparation but public education that counts.

"It’s a point of respect," he said. "I’m not discounting the need for redress, but if the history and contribution are acknowledged in textbooks and pop culture, that’s the ultimate reward."

Fong’s legislation is scheduled for a hearing June 26 before the Assembly Judiciary Committee.

"Such recognition is long overdue," said Helen Zia, author of "American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People," a 2001 book that examines the history of Chinese and other Asian immigrants to the United States.

Many people think that the Chinese-Americans are recent immigrants, she said, and are unaware of their long history in the state and the country.

"A bill like this would recognize that history and acknowledge what happened," Zia said. "An apology is really symbolic," she said, but without it, the struggle of early Chinese immigrants would "go missing in history."

Via LiveLeak

Some women’s groups are outraged over an editorial cartoon that ran in The Oklahoman newspaper on Wednesday – it depicts Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor strung up like a piñata with a sombrero-clad President Obama handing out bats to Republican members of Congress.

Jean Warner, the chair of the Oklahoma Women’s Coalition, wrote:

She’s served on the US Court of Appeals for the 2 More..nd Circuit for 10 years, heard over 3,000 cases and written over 380 opinions (but she’s of Puerto Rican descent ~~ ergo the piñata image – right? wink, wink).

Not funny; actually stupid and damaging. A picture speaks louder than words and that cartoon sends a message to women of all ages: "Back off. Know your place. Or we’ll take a stick to you and teach you a lesson."

 By Helen Gao, Union-Tribune Staff Writer

SAN DIEGO — One of the region’s biggest recipients of federal economic stimulus money is a City Heights-based job training agency, which is pumping millions into funding summer jobs for more than 3,000 local youths.

The nonprofit San Diego Workforce Partnership, which was found by a 2007 audit to have mismanaged federal grants, has been awarded nearly $24 million under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The 35-year-old agency plans to spend $13.3 million on employment and training programs for out-of-work adults and $10.5 million on similar support services for low-income youths.

Mark Cafferty, president and CEO of the Workforce Partnership – credited with turning around the organization – said the agency is well-equipped to handle the influx of money.

The Workforce Partnership has hired an additional accountant to monitor and track the stimulus money, which has doubled the agency’s budget.

To ensure openness and accountability, the agency has posted on its Web site a breakdown of the various pots of stimulus money it has received and how they will be spent.

“There are a lot of people who are watching the recovery money quite closely. We want to make sure we do the best work we can with it,” Cafferty said. “I know there are a lot of folks who are watching our organization to make sure we use this money appropriately.”

Last year, the Workforce Partnership agreed to pay the U.S. Department of Labor $1.1 million as part of settlement after a 2007 audit found issues such as paying rent for empty space and issuing paychecks based on estimates rather than actual hours.

The stimulus money is allocated to the agency based on this region’s population, poverty and unemployment levels.

County Supervisors Ron Roberts and Greg Cox and San Diego City Council members Todd Gloria and Marti Emerald serve on a policy board overseeing the Workforce Partnership, which the city and county created in 1974.

Roberts and Cox both said they have confidence in Cafferty’s leadership and the agency’s administration. They also noted that their staffs are spending more time monitoring the Workforce Partnership in response to the audit.

“Our CEO understands the past history and that past mistakes are not to be repeated,” said Gloria, who also has high praise for Cafferty.

A big chunk of the stimulus money, nearly $8 million, will go toward reviving a dormant youth-employment program, called Hire-A-Youth.

The program will provide summer jobs to 3,200 people ages 14 to 24, who meet income and other eligibility criteria. Mayor Jerry Sanders and other dignitaries will hold a press conference to announce the program today.

Much of the stimulus money will flow from the Workforce Partnership to scores of community organizations, community colleges and universities, which are being contracted by the agency to design and run programs.

A dozen community organizations, including Metro United Methodist Urban Ministry and the San Diego Unified School District, have entered contracts with the Workforce Partnership to place young people in public and private sector jobs. They will earn $8 to $10 an hour.

Some of the contractors are focusing on introducing young people to clean technology jobs, such as solar panel and windmill manufacturing and installation.

Drew Pleasant, 21, employed by Metro, has been cold-calling local clean-tech companies to get them interested in bringing youngsters on board.

Pleasant has struggled to find steady employment. He is working toward becoming an electrician specializing in solar installations.

“It will be real stable because of the expansion of renewable energy that’s needed because of global warming,” the Escondido High graduate said.

With the money Pleasant makes, he plans to buy a car to aid him in his job search.

Aid Sentiyhu Ejigu posed with Johnson Elementary students yesterday. The stimulus grant supports her work with the after-school program. (Eduardo Contreras / Union-Tribune)

 FYI: For the school year 2007-2008 Johnson Elementary School was 40 percent Hispanic and 55 percent black (most likely Spanish speaking Africans and not American blacks), because 94% percent we’re English learners and spoke Spanish. No doubt they’re all illegal aliens. Sweet!

Excerpt: The poll, released Tuesday, said that roughly a third of the country has a favorable view of Sotomayor, while 18 percent view her unfavorably. Half of those polled say she should be confirmed; 22 percent oppose her confirmation.

Never mind demographics. 1000 people were polled. 1000 people polled do not one third of Americans or the country make. It’s bullshit propaganda.

WASHINGTON — Americans have a more favorable first impression of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor than they did for any of President George W. Bush’s nominees to the high court, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll.

The public also backs her confirmation in higher numbers.

The poll, released Tuesday, said that roughly a third of the country has a favorable view of Sotomayor, while 18 percent view her unfavorably. Half of those polled say she should be confirmed; 22 percent oppose her confirmation.

President Barack Obama nominated the 54-year-old appeals court judge last week. She would replace Justice David Souter, who will retire in a few weeks.

Bush put forward three Supreme Court nominees in the course of four months in 2005. The Senate confirmed Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, but Harriet Miers withdrew from consideration under pressure from conservatives who generally supported Bush.

Of the three, Roberts had the highest favorable rating, 25 percent, and the most support for confirmation, 47 percent of those polled. Each of the three Republican nominees also had unfavorable ratings four or five percentage points lower than Sotomayor.

Nearly four in 10 people said they have not heard enough to form an opinion about Sotomayor, who has been a federal judge since 1992. That number is smaller than it was for Bush’s three nominees, suggesting a higher level of interest about the imminent court vacancy.

The poll also found a partisan divide, with Democrats overwhelmingly saying that they have a favorable opinion of Sotomayor and want her confirmed. Independents also view her more favorably than not.

But more than 40 percent of Republicans said she should not be confirmed, compared with 30 percent of Republicans who favor confirmation. A third of Republicans also said they have an unfavorable opinion of Sotomayor, while only 14 percent had a favorable view.

The AP-GfK Poll was conducted May 28 to June 1 by GfK Roper Public Affairs & Media. It involved landline and cell phone interviews with 1,000 adults nationwide, and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Source

Via 24Ahead:

Washington Post "Staff Writer" Sally Quinn offers "The Nation’s Embracing, and Embraceable, Arms" (link):

"May I change the subject," said a prominent Washington theologian at a recent dinner. The conversation had been high-minded — religion, philosophy, the nature of evil. "I’d like to talk about Michelle Obama’s arms," he said.

He is a big fan of those arms. We then began a discussion about the significance of the first lady’s arms. Actually, it turned out to be equally serious. Michelle Obama’s arms, we determined, were transformational. Her arms are representative of a new kind of woman: young, strong, vigorous, intelligent, accomplished, sexual, powerful, embracing and, most of all, loving…

It goes on, but I stopped watching after I ran out of quarters.

Update: CBS5 says all involved are Hispanic.

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif.—Authorities say a 3-year-old boy has been kidnapped by two gunmen who broke into his family’s home in Southern California and tied up his mother and her five other children.

An Amber Alert was issued late Sunday for 3-year-old Briant Rodriguez.

Sheriff’s spokeswoman Cindy Beavers says the men burst into the San Bernardino home with handguns Sunday afternoon, ransacked the house and stole money and property, then left with Briant and told the still-bound mother and children not to call police.

Beavers says one of the children freed himself then untied the rest of the family.

The mother tells investigators she did not know the two gunmen.

No witnesses saw their vehicle.

San Bernardino is about 60 miles east of Los Angeles.

Source

So, two men burst into this woman’s home and take cash, property, and one of her SIX kids and she claims she doesn’t know the two men. Exactly how much cash does a woman with SIX kids have layin’ around the house anyway? And what kind of property (besides cash and the kid) could she have that two armed men would want?