† Is Obama Already A Lame Duck?: The Obama administration tapped Lang Lang, a Chinese-born pianist, to play for Chairman Hu Jintao at the White House State dinner on January 19^th. One of the tunes he banged out was “My Motherland,” the theme song to a Korean War-era anti-American propaganda movie “Battle on Shangganling Mountain,” reports The Epoch Times:

Chairman Hu Jintao recognized it as soon as he heard it. Patriotic Chinese Internet users were delighted as soon as they saw the videos online. Early morning TV viewers in China knew it would be played an hour or two beforehand. …

The movie and the tune are widely known among Chinese, and the song has been a leading piece of anti-American propaganda by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for decades. CCP propaganda has always referred to the Korean War as the “movement to resist America and help [North] Korea.” …

The song Lang Lang played describes how beautiful China is and then near the end has this verse, “When friends are here, there is fine wine /But if the jackal comes /What greets it is the hunting rifle.” The “jackal” in the song is the United States. …

 “My Motherland” having been played at the White House will be seen as a propaganda triumph in China.

“In the eyes of all Chinese, this will not be seen as anything other than a big insult to the U.S.,” says Yang Jingduan, a Chinese psychiatrist now living in Philadelphia who had in China been a doctor in the Chinese military. “It’s like insulting you in your face and you don’t know it, it’s humiliating.”

Yang sees Lang Lang choosing this tune as an expression of the deeply anti-American propaganda that is constant in China. …

Excited at this coup, patriotic Chinese have been circulating the clip for the last several days. One netizen wrote “the right place, right time, right song!” …

Another Chinese commenting on a forum responded to the Lang Lang performance by writing, “Defeat America, defeat Obama” (writing Obama’s name with the wrong first character, one meaning “sunken” or “dented.”) …

Whether Chinese officials intended Lang Lang to play this piece, its performance at the White House fits a general pattern of Chinese propaganda attacking the United States. Subtle details are seized on and used to humiliate the United States before the Chinese people.

Thanks to Lang Lang, Obama isn’t just a lame duck, he’s a roasted duck. Bet Lang Lang – who was a favorite of the president and first lady – will be as welcome at a future White House function as Ricky Gervais will be at the next Golden Globes.

† Living In These Mad, Mad, Madoff Times: A 2010 survey by the National Funeral Directors Association found that nearly one in 10 of the 627 funeral home owners who responded said they also owned a community or family center, and with the tough economy killing off banquet halls, couples wanting to stretch their wedding budgets are increasingly utilizing these facilities , reports USA Today:

Across the USA, funeral homes are building and marketing such centers as not just a place to mourn the dead but as sites for events celebrating the living, including weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, holiday parties and proms.

The lure? It is often less expensive; there is greater availability; and the settings - inside and outside - can be nothing short of wedding-picture perfect. …

Although people may think it morbid to start a marriage in a place surrounded by sadness, it would be no different than doing it at a church - where both caskets and newlyweds occupy the aisles throughout the year, says Sue Totterdale, national chairwoman of the National Association of Wedding Professionals. "A banquet hall is a banquet hall, and a chapel is a chapel," she says. "If you can get past the driveway and the cemetery, it's going to be beautiful."

Couples into emo and goth would go for this, but The Stiletto remains unconvinced that this is a mass market trend.

† Updates To Previous Posts (seventh item, Romney: The Sequel): A year before the IA caucus and the NH primary, Mitt Romney “handily” won a nonbinding straw poll of NH Republican State Committee members, beating out 20 other Repubs who aren’t (yet) running for president as well as that perennial also-ran, “Other,” reports The Christian Science Monitor:

Conducted by ABC News and local WMUR-TV, the survey showed Romney with 35 percent, followed by Rep. Ron Paul of Texas at 11 percent, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty at 8 percent, 2008 vice-presidential nominee and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin at 7 percent, and Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota at 4 percent. (Is it coincidence that New Hampshirites picked mainly contenders from cold-weather states?) …

 “Mitt Romney’s strength is not surprising considering his close second-place finish to John McCain in 2008 [in the New Hampshire GOP primary] and his regional advantage of being a former border state governor” of Massachusetts, pollster David Flaherty of Magellan Strategies told NH Journal on Jan. 6. He cautioned, too, that because the 2012 race is off to a somewhat slow start (slower than in 2008, at least), voters are relatively uninformed about the possible candidates and their positions. Read: A lot of people may change their inclinations once the field becomes clearer.

Also not necessarily working to Romney’s advantage is the tea party movement’s rising strength in New Hampshire. His emerging campaign apparatus, currently in the form of state political action committees, draws mainly from establishment Republicans and the business community. He is said to not be courting tea party activists.

Romney will either regret scorning Tea Partiers, or do one of his patented flip-flops and embrace them now that the Republican Committee picked Jack Kimball as its party chairman in the state, instead of Juliana Bergeron, the establishment candidate who had been championed by outgoing party chairman former Gov. John H. Sununu. The New York Times reports that “Kimball wasted no time in saying, minutes after his election, that he wanted the state’s Republican primary voters to choose a ‘good, strong conservative’ candidate”:

Andrew Hemingway, chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire, said Mr. Kimball’s win was evidence that the Tea Party and similar groups were pushing the state’s Republican Party to the right. Mr. Hemingway’s group helped a large number of conservatives, including many with Tea Party support, win election to the state legislature in the fall.

“I don’t think it’s fair to say that New Hampshire is a moderate state, and I think this proves it,” Mr. Hemingway said. “There are new people voting, and they have a conservative outlook.”

† Updates To Previous Posts (Philly Abortionist Charged With Murder Of Seven Newborns): As President Barack Hussein Obama celebrated the 38^th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision ("our daughters have the same rights, the same freedoms, and the same opportunities as our sons to fulfill their dreams") , more details were emerging about the Philadelphia  house of horrors abortion "clinic" run by Dr. Kermit Gosnell, where prosecutors say “uncounted hundreds” of babies were killed, in addition to the seven whose murders he has been charged with. The Associated Press reports: 

"(He) regularly and illegally delivered live, viable babies in the third trimester of pregnancy and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors," said a report of the grand jury that investigated Gosnell and his clinic for a year.

The grand jury said while it believes Gosnell killed most of the babies he aborted after 24 weeks, it could not recommend murder charges for all of the cases.

"In order to constitute murder, the act must involve a baby who was born alive," the grand jury said, adding that it was stymied by files that were falsified or removed and possibly destroyed.

"His entire practice showed nothing but a callous disdain for the lives of his patients," said the nearly 300-page grand jury report, released Wednesday.

The panel also had scathing criticism for Pennsylvania state health and medical regulators, saying they had numerous opportunities to shut Gosnell down over the years but ignored complaint after complaint about filthy conditions and illegal operations.

In all, prosecutors said, state officials failed to inspect the clinic despite repeated complaints from 1993 until January 2010, when a federal drug raid investigating heavy painkiller distribution at the clinic shut it down. …

Gosnell was certified in family practice but had never finished an obstetrics/gynecology residency. In the words of Joanne Pescatore, a lead prosecutor on the case, "He does not know how to do an abortion."

Gosnell perforated the uteruses, bowels and cervixes of countless patients, the grand jury report charged. He left fetal parts inside, ignored postoperative pain and bleeding and passed venereal diseases from one patient to the next through bloody and dirty instruments, the report said.

Every time any threat emerges to abortion on demand, NARAL, Planned Parenthood, the Guttmacher Institute, NOW and other fellow travelers raise the specter of “back alley” abortions. Women may have entered into Gosnell’s “clinic” through the front door, but his practices are as barbaric and lethal as any neighborhood woman reputed to be handy with a wire coat hanger in the Bad Old Days before Roe v. Wade. And Gosnell isn’t the only one (also click here). But then, eugenics - not “saving the life of the mother” - was the true aim of Margaret Sanger and other abortion pioneers, which is exactly what Gosnell and his ilk achieved, considering how many poor and minority women were maimed and are unable to conceive.

Editorial Note: At his arraignment, Gosnell said he did not understand why he was being charged with eight counts of murder instead of only one count arising from the death of one of his patients. Before denying him bail, the magistrate explained the other counts involved babies who prosecutors say were born alive.

† Updates To Previous Posts (third item, Prediction: Christians Will Be “Extinct” In The Holy Land Within 60 Years): It’s bad enough that Christian women throughout the Middle East are forced to wear the hijab out of fear of their personal safety, but there is an uptick in Pakistani Christians converting to Islam after a Christian woman named Asia Bibi was sentenced to death for “blasphemy,” reports The Toronto Star:   

At least 20 to 25 former Christians adopt Islam each week by pledging an oath and signing a green and white document in which they accept Islam as “the most beautiful religion” and promise to “remain in the religion of Islam for the rest of my life, acknowledging that blessings are only from God.” …

Human rights advocates say it’s no surprise some of Pakistan’s 3 million Christians are adopting Islam. These are vexing and dangerous days for the country’s religious minorities.

 “No one feels safe right now,” said Nadeem Anthony, a Christian and a member of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. “People are scared. If you want something from your neighbour or you are angry at him, you say blasphemy and that’s it.” …

In Lahore last week, a Christian woman got into a heated argument with her sister-in-law, a Muslim. The Muslim woman went outside their home and cried out that her relative had blasphemed against Islam. A group of protesters stormed into the home and beat the woman. One of the ringleaders later bragged that his own wife had hit the woman the hardest. …

Peter Jacob, executive director of an advocacy organization funded by the Catholic Church, said an average of 400 Christians annually converted to Islam between 2005 and 2010. In 2011, he expects that number to swell. … “People have no faith in the police or justice system and the kind of fear that exists now was never there before.”

† Updates To Previous Posts (fifth item, Mortgage Loan Modification Less Than Advertised): UCLA economics professor Matthew Kahn critiques former Greenport (NY) mayor David Kapell’s idea  of allowing homeowners in foreclosure to rent their homes from the bank “for a reasonable period,” instead of allowing the home to become vacant and deteriorate: 

Lenders … are likely to be handed the keys to a large number of homes in distressed neighborhoods that they will need to hold in inventory (waiting for home prices to rise) rather than holding a more diversified market portfolio.  …

If potential home buyers know that they have an easy exit option, then more of them will try to become home owners earlier. ….

If the local housing market heats up again, the bank will be eager to evict the renter to sell to someone who wants to buy it. Will the renter sue in court?