Posts
http://tinyurl.com/ygza2wl
Mogahed’s Excuses Don’t Add Up – by Cinnamon Stillwell
As reported last week by Campus Watch, Dalia Mogahed, appointee to President Obama’s Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, executive director and senior analyst of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, and co-author, along with Georgetown University’s John Esposito, of Who Speaks for Islam?: What a Billion Muslims Really Think, appeared (by phone) earlier this month on the UK-based Islam Channel television program “Muslimah Dilemma” (view here and read the complete transcript here.) Ibtihal Bsis, the show’s host, is a member of the Islamist group Hizb ut Tahrir; Mogahed’s fellow guest, Nazreen Nawaz, is the group’s national women’s media representative. Given these affiliations, it’s no surprise that the discussion included such extremist fare as the promotion of sharia law for—of all things—protecting women’s rights, condemnation for secular pluralistic democracy, and the revival of a mythical caliphate as the answer to the Muslim world’s woes.
Mogahed has been roundly criticized for appearing on the show and, in a transparent attempt at damage control,...Stretching credulity, she claimed she “had no idea that the show’s host or the other guest was affiliated with Hizb ut Tahrir,”...
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Friday, October 30, 2009
Blowhard Hillary claims victory ...but it ain't ( fortunately!)
http://tinyurl.com/yh76opk
Honduras 1, Hillary 0 A Honduran compromise provides Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with an elegant diplomatic exit.
The big news in Honduras is that the good guys seem to have won a four-month political standoff over the exile of former President Manuel Zelaya. Current President Roberto Micheletti agreed yesterday to submit Mr. Zelaya's request for reinstatement as president to the Supreme Court and Congress, and in return the U.S. will withdraw its sanctions and recognize next month's presidential elections. Mr. Zelaya, whose term would have expired in January, isn't likely to be reinstated,...
Honduras 1, Hillary 0 A Honduran compromise provides Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with an elegant diplomatic exit.
The big news in Honduras is that the good guys seem to have won a four-month political standoff over the exile of former President Manuel Zelaya. Current President Roberto Micheletti agreed yesterday to submit Mr. Zelaya's request for reinstatement as president to the Supreme Court and Congress, and in return the U.S. will withdraw its sanctions and recognize next month's presidential elections. Mr. Zelaya, whose term would have expired in January, isn't likely to be reinstated,...
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Violent jihad in Michiganistan
http://tinyurl.com/ykxcwob
Michigan Raid Reveals a Mysterious Islamic Sect by STEVEN GRAY
Later today, federal authorities are expected to explain more details behind Wednesday's raid of a suburban Detroit warehouse that revealed a mysterious Islamic sect that apparently seeks to establish an independent state based on Sharia law on American soil...
Read more: http://detroit.blogs.time.com/2009/10/29/michigan-raid-reveals-a-mysterious-islamic-sect/?xid=rss-topstories#ixzz0VNhrQWGz
http://tinyurl.com/ylbbstv
Dearborn Shoot-Out Opens a Window into Homegrown Terror Robert Knight
Luqman Ameen Abdullah, who was the Imam of the Masjid Al-Haqq mosque in Detroit, died in a shoot-out on Wednesday after firing on FBI agents during a raid in Dearborn, Michigan. Another seven Muslims were apprehended and various weapons seized. “We're not any fake terrorists, we're the real terrorists,” Abdullah (aka Christopher Thomas) once bragged...a disciple of none other than H. Rap Brown. If you ever wondered what had become of the‘60s Black Panther leader, well, he converted to Islam while in prison in the 1970s. And he apparently has not changed his mind about what he’d like to do to America....saying, “Violence is necessary. It’s as American as cherry pie,” he goes by the moniker Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, and runs a Sunni group called Ummah (“community”). The Black Muslim organization’s goal is to establish an Islamic regime with Sharia Law within the United States. Brown is doing this from his prison cell at the ADX Florence supermax federal prison in Colorado,****This promises good things when the Guantanamo bunch gets sent to such a "supermax" prison in the U.S.****
...Abdullah encouraged his followers to “pick up guns and do something.” (p. 3) He also said, “If they are coming to get me, I’ll just strap a bomb on and blow up everybody.” (p. 10) He also said while watching a TV show featuring a nuclear bomb that he would like to acquire a “little bomb” and target Washington, D.C. (page 18)....except for the fact that Washington is about 60 percent African-American, should make a proud man out of Al-Brown, who once said, “We must wage guerrilla warfare on the honky white man” and, “If America doesn't come around, then black people are going to burn it down.” The latter threat was made in Cambridge, Maryland, where fiery riots erupted shortly thereafter in July, 1967, fulfilling his prophecy. A color photo of Abdullah, was made available to the press by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)...named an unindicted co-conspirator in a prominent terrorist funding case. On the same day as the Michigan raids, CAIR put out an unrelated editorial “Islamophobia Machine Targets American Muslims,” which denounces Frank Gaffney, Geert Wilders and other prominent critics of radical Islam. CAIR also assisted in the effort to have Christian convert Rifqa Bary, 17, sent Tuesday from Florida back to Ohio, where her Muslim parents are trying to regain custody...Michigan Council on American-Islamic Relations, said of Abdullah, “I know him as a respected man in the Muslim community,” according to the Detroit Free Press. The group’s Website on Thursday made no mention of the raids, and its top press release was about the Roseville Community Schools apologizing for sending out a permission slip for pupils to attend an off-campus Bible study. No parents had complained to the schools, but CAIR had adopted the ACLU’s bullying tactic of accusing school officials of violating the First Amendment...Oct. 19 indictment of a Colorado Imam, Ahmad Wais Afzali, for allegedly lying..about an alleged terror plot to bomb targets in New York City. Najibullah Zazi, of Aurora, Col., and his father, Mohammed Wali Zazi, were arrested in September in Denver in connection with the alleged plot.
The Dearborn shoot-out is especially jarring because 30 percent of the city’s population of 98,000 is Muslim and where many billboards, street signs and storefront signs are in Arabic. At a local high school where 80 percent of the students are Muslim, the principal allegedly punched a boy who had converted to Christianity and “disgraced his family.”...militancy is increasing among Muslims who “believe the whole world should submit to Islam. When they come into the United States of America, they want to see Sharia law implemented, they want to dominate every place of influence—in education and technology and law, in government, in finances.”...Kafir [dog]...The promise of Allah and Islam said, ‘… the worst Muslim is better than the best Kafir.’”...that means that Abdullah’s followers need not worry about legalities. Or, as H. Rap Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin Brown once said, “We did not make the laws in this country. We are neither morally nor legally confined to those laws.” Yes, you are. It’s why you’re behind bars right now.
****And the ACLU would have one believe that a black guy who converted to Islam in prison is a priori no more likely to be dangerous than an elderly grandmother?There's a line in The Departed said by the Mark Wahlberg character: "Better to be tried by twelve than carried by six."****
http://tinyurl.com/yesxkw5
****Hundreds of supporters of imam shot by FBI and allegedly a terrorist.****
Hundreds Turn Out for Funeral of Imam Killed During FBI RaidHundreds of people offered hushed prayers Saturday at the funeral for a slain Detroit mosque leader while authorities across the border in Canada made the final two arrests in a criminal case that is stirring some anger in the Muslim community.Luqman Ameen Abdullah was remembered...who followed the tenets of his Islam faith as an imam, or prayer leader...no one mentioned the FBI's claim that he had a violent, anti-government ideology....Agents wanted him on charges of weapons violations and conspiracy to sell stolen goods, one of 11 people named in a criminal complaint."We ask Allah to reward him with the promised reward of those who are martyred,"...saying the fatal shooting seemed excessive...
Michigan Raid Reveals a Mysterious Islamic Sect by STEVEN GRAY
Later today, federal authorities are expected to explain more details behind Wednesday's raid of a suburban Detroit warehouse that revealed a mysterious Islamic sect that apparently seeks to establish an independent state based on Sharia law on American soil...
Read more: http://detroit.blogs.time.com/2009/10/29/michigan-raid-reveals-a-mysterious-islamic-sect/?xid=rss-topstories#ixzz0VNhrQWGz
http://tinyurl.com/ylbbstv
Dearborn Shoot-Out Opens a Window into Homegrown Terror Robert Knight
Luqman Ameen Abdullah, who was the Imam of the Masjid Al-Haqq mosque in Detroit, died in a shoot-out on Wednesday after firing on FBI agents during a raid in Dearborn, Michigan. Another seven Muslims were apprehended and various weapons seized. “We're not any fake terrorists, we're the real terrorists,” Abdullah (aka Christopher Thomas) once bragged...a disciple of none other than H. Rap Brown. If you ever wondered what had become of the‘60s Black Panther leader, well, he converted to Islam while in prison in the 1970s. And he apparently has not changed his mind about what he’d like to do to America....saying, “Violence is necessary. It’s as American as cherry pie,” he goes by the moniker Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, and runs a Sunni group called Ummah (“community”). The Black Muslim organization’s goal is to establish an Islamic regime with Sharia Law within the United States. Brown is doing this from his prison cell at the ADX Florence supermax federal prison in Colorado,****This promises good things when the Guantanamo bunch gets sent to such a "supermax" prison in the U.S.****
...Abdullah encouraged his followers to “pick up guns and do something.” (p. 3) He also said, “If they are coming to get me, I’ll just strap a bomb on and blow up everybody.” (p. 10) He also said while watching a TV show featuring a nuclear bomb that he would like to acquire a “little bomb” and target Washington, D.C. (page 18)....except for the fact that Washington is about 60 percent African-American, should make a proud man out of Al-Brown, who once said, “We must wage guerrilla warfare on the honky white man” and, “If America doesn't come around, then black people are going to burn it down.” The latter threat was made in Cambridge, Maryland, where fiery riots erupted shortly thereafter in July, 1967, fulfilling his prophecy. A color photo of Abdullah, was made available to the press by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)...named an unindicted co-conspirator in a prominent terrorist funding case. On the same day as the Michigan raids, CAIR put out an unrelated editorial “Islamophobia Machine Targets American Muslims,” which denounces Frank Gaffney, Geert Wilders and other prominent critics of radical Islam. CAIR also assisted in the effort to have Christian convert Rifqa Bary, 17, sent Tuesday from Florida back to Ohio, where her Muslim parents are trying to regain custody...Michigan Council on American-Islamic Relations, said of Abdullah, “I know him as a respected man in the Muslim community,” according to the Detroit Free Press. The group’s Website on Thursday made no mention of the raids, and its top press release was about the Roseville Community Schools apologizing for sending out a permission slip for pupils to attend an off-campus Bible study. No parents had complained to the schools, but CAIR had adopted the ACLU’s bullying tactic of accusing school officials of violating the First Amendment...Oct. 19 indictment of a Colorado Imam, Ahmad Wais Afzali, for allegedly lying..about an alleged terror plot to bomb targets in New York City. Najibullah Zazi, of Aurora, Col., and his father, Mohammed Wali Zazi, were arrested in September in Denver in connection with the alleged plot.
The Dearborn shoot-out is especially jarring because 30 percent of the city’s population of 98,000 is Muslim and where many billboards, street signs and storefront signs are in Arabic. At a local high school where 80 percent of the students are Muslim, the principal allegedly punched a boy who had converted to Christianity and “disgraced his family.”...militancy is increasing among Muslims who “believe the whole world should submit to Islam. When they come into the United States of America, they want to see Sharia law implemented, they want to dominate every place of influence—in education and technology and law, in government, in finances.”...Kafir [dog]...The promise of Allah and Islam said, ‘… the worst Muslim is better than the best Kafir.’”...that means that Abdullah’s followers need not worry about legalities. Or, as H. Rap Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin Brown once said, “We did not make the laws in this country. We are neither morally nor legally confined to those laws.” Yes, you are. It’s why you’re behind bars right now.
****And the ACLU would have one believe that a black guy who converted to Islam in prison is a priori no more likely to be dangerous than an elderly grandmother?There's a line in The Departed said by the Mark Wahlberg character: "Better to be tried by twelve than carried by six."****
http://tinyurl.com/yesxkw5
****Hundreds of supporters of imam shot by FBI and allegedly a terrorist.****
Hundreds Turn Out for Funeral of Imam Killed During FBI RaidHundreds of people offered hushed prayers Saturday at the funeral for a slain Detroit mosque leader while authorities across the border in Canada made the final two arrests in a criminal case that is stirring some anger in the Muslim community.Luqman Ameen Abdullah was remembered...who followed the tenets of his Islam faith as an imam, or prayer leader...no one mentioned the FBI's claim that he had a violent, anti-government ideology....Agents wanted him on charges of weapons violations and conspiracy to sell stolen goods, one of 11 people named in a criminal complaint."We ask Allah to reward him with the promised reward of those who are martyred,"...saying the fatal shooting seemed excessive...
Obama is a foreign policy naif. Will he learn in time or at all?
http://tinyurl.com/ylc7lw6
Truman and the Principles of U.S. Foreign Policy
Jimmy Carter rejected the postwar consensus. President Obama appears to be following a similar path. By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
Upon entering office, Barack Obama knew little about foreign policy....President Obama often invokes the supposed mess abroad—especially in Iraq and Afghanistan—left to him by George W. Bush. But Mr. Obama's inheritance is mild compared to the myriad crises that nearly overwhelmed the rookie President Truman....Truman constantly learned from his mistakes. Gradually, the president shed his Wilsonian trust that there would be a postwar global consensus under the aegis of the new United Nations. Instead, he came to believe that too many trans-Atlantic diplomatic elites had been terribly naïve about Stalin's murderous agenda...Truman...established the parameters of the next half-century of bipartisan American foreign policy. ...Secretary of State Dean Acheson summed up the president's doctrines: "Released from the acceptance of a dogma that builders and wreckers of a new world order could and should work happily and successfully together, he was free to combine our power and coordinate our action with those who did have a common purpose."...Truman's "common purpose." That means containing rival anti-Western ideologies, establishing alliances of similarly-minded democratic allies, and periodically standing up to regional thugs.
Jimmy Carter's presidency was a departure from this strategy...cutting defense... questioned the U.S. commitment to South Korea and offered homilies about the inordinate fear of communism....short-sighted decision to arm radical Islamists in Pakistan, the abrupt abandonment of the previously allied Shah of Iran, and initial courting of the exiled radical Ruhollah Khomeini...stunned into inaction by the subsequent Iranian hostage crisis and the rise of militant Islam...Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Communist inroads into Central America, and the alienation of European governments...Mr. Obama exhibits both the initial inexperience—and some of the naïveté—...He has framed the challenge of radical Islam largely in terms of what a contrite America must do to apologize to the Muslim world, instead of addressing endemic religious intolerance, autocracy, statist economies, tribalism and gender apartheid that help fuel extremism....reaches out to enemies such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bashar al Assad, the Castro brothers and Hugo Chávez. It pays far less attention to British, Colombian, French, Israeli and Japanese allies....the centrifuges keep spinning while we appear unreliable to friends, compliant to rivals, and weak to enemies....greater support to the U.N., seemingly unworried that the organization's illiberal majority has often appeased or abetted autocratic governments.Will an inexperienced Barack Obama...learn quickly that the world is chaotic and unstable—best dealt with through strength and unabashed confidence...? Or will a sermonizing Mr. Obama follow the aberrant Democratic path of the sanctimonious Jimmy Carter: finger-wagging at allies, appeasing enemies, publicly faulting his less than perfect predecessors, and hectoring the American people to evolve beyond their supposed prejudices? America awaits the president's choice. The world's safety hinges upon it.
Truman and the Principles of U.S. Foreign Policy
Jimmy Carter rejected the postwar consensus. President Obama appears to be following a similar path. By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
Upon entering office, Barack Obama knew little about foreign policy....President Obama often invokes the supposed mess abroad—especially in Iraq and Afghanistan—left to him by George W. Bush. But Mr. Obama's inheritance is mild compared to the myriad crises that nearly overwhelmed the rookie President Truman....Truman constantly learned from his mistakes. Gradually, the president shed his Wilsonian trust that there would be a postwar global consensus under the aegis of the new United Nations. Instead, he came to believe that too many trans-Atlantic diplomatic elites had been terribly naïve about Stalin's murderous agenda...Truman...established the parameters of the next half-century of bipartisan American foreign policy. ...Secretary of State Dean Acheson summed up the president's doctrines: "Released from the acceptance of a dogma that builders and wreckers of a new world order could and should work happily and successfully together, he was free to combine our power and coordinate our action with those who did have a common purpose."...Truman's "common purpose." That means containing rival anti-Western ideologies, establishing alliances of similarly-minded democratic allies, and periodically standing up to regional thugs.
Jimmy Carter's presidency was a departure from this strategy...cutting defense... questioned the U.S. commitment to South Korea and offered homilies about the inordinate fear of communism....short-sighted decision to arm radical Islamists in Pakistan, the abrupt abandonment of the previously allied Shah of Iran, and initial courting of the exiled radical Ruhollah Khomeini...stunned into inaction by the subsequent Iranian hostage crisis and the rise of militant Islam...Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Communist inroads into Central America, and the alienation of European governments...Mr. Obama exhibits both the initial inexperience—and some of the naïveté—...He has framed the challenge of radical Islam largely in terms of what a contrite America must do to apologize to the Muslim world, instead of addressing endemic religious intolerance, autocracy, statist economies, tribalism and gender apartheid that help fuel extremism....reaches out to enemies such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bashar al Assad, the Castro brothers and Hugo Chávez. It pays far less attention to British, Colombian, French, Israeli and Japanese allies....the centrifuges keep spinning while we appear unreliable to friends, compliant to rivals, and weak to enemies....greater support to the U.N., seemingly unworried that the organization's illiberal majority has often appeased or abetted autocratic governments.Will an inexperienced Barack Obama...learn quickly that the world is chaotic and unstable—best dealt with through strength and unabashed confidence...? Or will a sermonizing Mr. Obama follow the aberrant Democratic path of the sanctimonious Jimmy Carter: finger-wagging at allies, appeasing enemies, publicly faulting his less than perfect predecessors, and hectoring the American people to evolve beyond their supposed prejudices? America awaits the president's choice. The world's safety hinges upon it.
A thoughtful movie star, taking a position Yoda doesn't even hold.
http://tinyurl.com/yhhaoeh
****A compelling presentation of vegetarianism, even veganism, in the HuffPost no less. Although Yoda doesn't subscribe ( and just attended a dinner where filet mignon was served ), the argument is well put and thought-provoking: what will our great-grandchildren think of our habits? Also, Hollywood is not completely lost ( although perhaps it was the admission to ---or the desire to go to--Harvard that makes the difference.)****
****A compelling presentation of vegetarianism, even veganism, in the HuffPost no less. Although Yoda doesn't subscribe ( and just attended a dinner where filet mignon was served ), the argument is well put and thought-provoking: what will our great-grandchildren think of our habits? Also, Hollywood is not completely lost ( although perhaps it was the admission to ---or the desire to go to--Harvard that makes the difference.)****
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Flu vaccine shortage shows incompetence
FLU SHOT SHORTAGE SHOWS GOVT. INCOMPETENCE By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
How can the government pretend that it can manage, overhaul, streamline, and reform the health care system in the United States when it can't even deliver enough flu shots to prevent a pandemic? We have seen the H1N1 virus coming for over a year. It is no surprise that much of America needs vaccination. It was no secret that the flu season was approaching. But, now that it is upon us, we find ourselves pathetically short of shots. One year ago, the government told us that we would have hundreds of millions of vaccinations available. Then, over the summer, the prediction was that 40 million would be on hand by the end of October. Last month, the estimate was scaled back to 28 million. And, as of late last week, only 11.5 million had been delivered, leaving tens of millions vulnerable and, tragically, likely leading to hundreds of preventable deaths. Given the tendency of the virus to strike the young, many of those deaths will be among children.
It should be a fairly simple task to produce and distribute a vaccine - as we do with regular flu shots each and every year. But it was apparently beyond the capacity of the Obama Administration to manage such a routine feat.
If it can't run the epidemiological equivalent of a two-car funeral, how can Obama promise that the government will do an adequate job of managing the nation's health care system? (To say nothing of two car companies and a trove of banks and insurance firms?)
In the debate over health care, the implicit assumption has been that the government can act with competence and timeliness. The discussion has largely centered on what powers to give the government - not on whether it had the ability to wield this new authority. The bill making its way through Congress empowers the federal government to decide on protocols of health care, penalize excessive costs, and moderate reimbursement fees. These are all difficult and delicate tasks and involve decision which must be made promptly and wisely for the system to have a chance of working. Otherwise, endless delays, bottlenecks, and snafus can eventuate. And these failures can have drastic consequences for the health of all Americans.
Do we really have confidence in government's ability to make these decisions? Does its manifest inability to protect us from the Swine Flu do anything to inspire such confidence?
Not so far!//
****We shouldn't forget some other culprits in what could be a fiasco.
1) Hillary arranged for vaccines to be so unprofitable that dozens of vaccine producers were reduced to two, later raised to five majors willing to do this essentially as a public service.
2) Another reason for the shortage is the mandate to manufacture individual doses since that requires less THIMEROSOL per dose ( more is need if in multidose packages.) This is due to the "mercury-causes-autism hysteria" that has no scientific basis ( Mercury and Vaccines (Thimerosal)Thimerosal is a mercury-containing preservative used in some vaccines and other products since the 1930s. There is no convincing scientific evidence of harm caused by the low doses of thimerosal in vaccines, except for minor reactions like redness and swelling at the injection site. However, in July 1999, the Public Health Service agencies, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and vaccine manufacturers agreed that thimerosal should be reduced or eliminated in vaccines as a precautionary measure.
Since 2001, with the exception of some influenza (flu) vaccines, thimerosal is not used as a preservative in routinely recommended childhood vaccines.) ****//
The New York Times (!!) raises questions about the competence of the Obama administration:
http://tinyurl.com/ygkgzr
Shortage of Vaccine Poses Political Test for ObamaBy SHERYL GAY STOLBERG...
How can the government pretend that it can manage, overhaul, streamline, and reform the health care system in the United States when it can't even deliver enough flu shots to prevent a pandemic? We have seen the H1N1 virus coming for over a year. It is no surprise that much of America needs vaccination. It was no secret that the flu season was approaching. But, now that it is upon us, we find ourselves pathetically short of shots. One year ago, the government told us that we would have hundreds of millions of vaccinations available. Then, over the summer, the prediction was that 40 million would be on hand by the end of October. Last month, the estimate was scaled back to 28 million. And, as of late last week, only 11.5 million had been delivered, leaving tens of millions vulnerable and, tragically, likely leading to hundreds of preventable deaths. Given the tendency of the virus to strike the young, many of those deaths will be among children.
It should be a fairly simple task to produce and distribute a vaccine - as we do with regular flu shots each and every year. But it was apparently beyond the capacity of the Obama Administration to manage such a routine feat.
If it can't run the epidemiological equivalent of a two-car funeral, how can Obama promise that the government will do an adequate job of managing the nation's health care system? (To say nothing of two car companies and a trove of banks and insurance firms?)
In the debate over health care, the implicit assumption has been that the government can act with competence and timeliness. The discussion has largely centered on what powers to give the government - not on whether it had the ability to wield this new authority. The bill making its way through Congress empowers the federal government to decide on protocols of health care, penalize excessive costs, and moderate reimbursement fees. These are all difficult and delicate tasks and involve decision which must be made promptly and wisely for the system to have a chance of working. Otherwise, endless delays, bottlenecks, and snafus can eventuate. And these failures can have drastic consequences for the health of all Americans.
Do we really have confidence in government's ability to make these decisions? Does its manifest inability to protect us from the Swine Flu do anything to inspire such confidence?
Not so far!//
****We shouldn't forget some other culprits in what could be a fiasco.
1) Hillary arranged for vaccines to be so unprofitable that dozens of vaccine producers were reduced to two, later raised to five majors willing to do this essentially as a public service.
2) Another reason for the shortage is the mandate to manufacture individual doses since that requires less THIMEROSOL per dose ( more is need if in multidose packages.) This is due to the "mercury-causes-autism hysteria" that has no scientific basis ( Mercury and Vaccines (Thimerosal)Thimerosal is a mercury-containing preservative used in some vaccines and other products since the 1930s. There is no convincing scientific evidence of harm caused by the low doses of thimerosal in vaccines, except for minor reactions like redness and swelling at the injection site. However, in July 1999, the Public Health Service agencies, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and vaccine manufacturers agreed that thimerosal should be reduced or eliminated in vaccines as a precautionary measure.
Since 2001, with the exception of some influenza (flu) vaccines, thimerosal is not used as a preservative in routinely recommended childhood vaccines.) ****//
The New York Times (!!) raises questions about the competence of the Obama administration:
http://tinyurl.com/ygkgzr
Shortage of Vaccine Poses Political Test for ObamaBy SHERYL GAY STOLBERG...
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Not just doubts about anthropic global warming, but possible cheap fixes
http://tinyurl.com/ygsu7b7
Freaked Out Over SuperFreakonomics Global warming might be solved with a helium balloon and a few miles of garden hose. By BRET STEPHENS
...The basic idea is to engineer effects similar to those of the 1991 mega-eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines, which spewed so much sulfuric ash into the stratosphere that it cooled the earth by about one degree Fahrenheit for a couple of years... Not surprisingly, global warming fanatics are experiencing a Pinatubo-like eruption of their own. Mr. Gore, for instance,...Former Clinton administration official Joe Romm, who edits the Climate Progress blog,...****great scientists, both****The Union of Concerned Scientists faults the book for its "faulty statistics." ...But when it comes to the religion of global warming—the First Commandment of which is Thou Shalt Not Call It A Religion—Messrs. Levitt and Dubner are grievous sinners. They point out that belching, flatulent cows are adding more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than all SUVs combined. They note that sea levels will probably not rise much more than 18 inches by 2100, "less than the twice-daily tidal variation in most coastal locations." They observe that "not only is carbon plainly not poisonous, but changes in carbon-dioxide levels don't necessarily mirror human activity." They quote Mr. Myhrvold as saying that Mr. Gore's doomsday scenarios "don't have any basis in physical reality in any reasonable time frame."
More subversively, they suggest that climatologists, like everyone else, respond to incentives in a way that shapes their conclusions. "The economic reality of research funding,...All these suggestions are, of course, horrifying to global warmists, who'd much prefer to spend in excess of a trillion dollars annually for the sake of reconceiving civilization as we know it, including not just what we drive or eat but how many children we have. ..."climate change is the greatest new public-spending project in decades." Who, being a professional climatologist or EPA regulator, wouldn't want a piece of that action?...
Freaked Out Over SuperFreakonomics Global warming might be solved with a helium balloon and a few miles of garden hose. By BRET STEPHENS
...The basic idea is to engineer effects similar to those of the 1991 mega-eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines, which spewed so much sulfuric ash into the stratosphere that it cooled the earth by about one degree Fahrenheit for a couple of years... Not surprisingly, global warming fanatics are experiencing a Pinatubo-like eruption of their own. Mr. Gore, for instance,...Former Clinton administration official Joe Romm, who edits the Climate Progress blog,...****great scientists, both****The Union of Concerned Scientists faults the book for its "faulty statistics." ...But when it comes to the religion of global warming—the First Commandment of which is Thou Shalt Not Call It A Religion—Messrs. Levitt and Dubner are grievous sinners. They point out that belching, flatulent cows are adding more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than all SUVs combined. They note that sea levels will probably not rise much more than 18 inches by 2100, "less than the twice-daily tidal variation in most coastal locations." They observe that "not only is carbon plainly not poisonous, but changes in carbon-dioxide levels don't necessarily mirror human activity." They quote Mr. Myhrvold as saying that Mr. Gore's doomsday scenarios "don't have any basis in physical reality in any reasonable time frame."
More subversively, they suggest that climatologists, like everyone else, respond to incentives in a way that shapes their conclusions. "The economic reality of research funding,...All these suggestions are, of course, horrifying to global warmists, who'd much prefer to spend in excess of a trillion dollars annually for the sake of reconceiving civilization as we know it, including not just what we drive or eat but how many children we have. ..."climate change is the greatest new public-spending project in decades." Who, being a professional climatologist or EPA regulator, wouldn't want a piece of that action?...
A Gentile's View of Germany, circa 2002
http://tinyurl.com/ykp9e4r
William E. Grim is an American writer from Columbus OH who lives in Germany ( at least as of 2002 when this was written ).
THE RETURN OF ANTI-SEMITISM TO GERMANY: IT NEVER REALLY LEFT by William E. Grim
I'm not Jewish. Nobody in my family died in the Holocaust. For me, anti-Semitism has always been one of those phenomena that doesn't really register on my radar, like tribal genocide in Rwanda, a horrible thing that happens to someone else. But I live in a small town outside of Munich on a street that until May of 1945 was named Adolf-Hitler-Strasse. I work in Munich,..the birthplace and capital of the Nazi movement. ...The proximity to evil has a way of concentrating one's attention, of putting a physical reality to the textbook narratives of the horrors perpetrated by the Germans. Then the little things start to happen that...add up to something very sinister....You could have knocked me over with a feather. I half expected one of them to start talking about the historical veracity of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Here were four young, charming, well-educated Germans spewing forth anti-Semitic bilk that would have made Julius Streicher proud. I found that this type of anti-Semitic reference in my professional dealings with Germans soon became a leitmotif ...In my private meetings with Germans it often happens that they will loosen up after a while and reveal personal opinions and political leanings that were thought to have ceased to exist in a Berlin bunker on April 30, 1945....conversations generally have one or more of these components: (1) It was unfortunate that America and Germany fought each other in World War II because the real enemy was Russia. (2) Yes, the Nazis were excessive, but terrible things happen during wars, and anyway, the scope of the Holocaust has been greatly exaggerated by the American media, which is dominated by Jews. (3) CNN is controlled by American Jews and is anti-Palestinian. [Yes, I know it sounds incredible,...there is the widespread belief that the news network founded by Fidel Castro's best friend Ted Turner, who until recently was married to Hanoi Jane Fonda, is a hotbed of pro-Israeli propaganda.] (4) Almost all Germans were opposed to the Third Reich and nobody in Germany knew anything about the murder of the Jews, but the Jews themselves were really responsible for the Holocaust. (5) Ariel Sharon is worse than Hitler and the Israelis are Nazis. America supports Israel only because Jews control the American government and media...I became conscious of anti-Semitism. Sure, anti- Semitism exists elsewhere in the world, but nowhere have the consequences been as devastating as in Germany....2002 has been a banner year for anti-Semitism in Germany. Synagogues have been firebombed, Jewish cemeteries desecrated, the No. 1 best-selling novel, Martin Walser's Death of a Critic, is a thinly-veiled roman à clef containing a vicious anti-Semitic attack on Germany's best-known literary critic, Marcel Reich-Ranicki ( who is a survivor of both the Warsaw ghetto and Auschwitz), the Free Democrat Party has unofficially adopted anti-Semitism as a campaign tactic to attract Germany's sizeable Muslim minority, and German revisionist historians now are beginning to define German perpetration of World War II and the Holocaust not as crimes against humanity, but as early battles (with regrettable but understandable excesses) in the Cold War against communism. ...My thesis is quite simple. While Germany no longer has the military power to enforce the racist ideology of the Nazis and while all extreme manifestations of Nazism are officially outlawed, the internal conditions--that is, the attitudes, worldview and cultural assumptions--that led to the rise of Nazism in Germany are still present because they constitute the basic components of German identity. Nazism was not an aberration; it was the distillation of the German psyche into its essential elements....What is different is that due to its total defeat by the Allies, Germany today is a client state of America and must do its bidding. That means repression of overt anti-Semitism. It's bad for business...Germany, indeed virtually all of Europe, is essentially "Judenfrei" (free of Jews) today due to the efficiency and zeal of the Germans as they perpetrated the Holocaust during the Third Reich. In fact, a very convincing case can be made that Nazism is one of the most successful political programs of all time. It accomplished more of its goals in a shorter amount of time than any other comparable political movement and permanently changed the face and political structure of several continents. Germany is wealthy, stable, relentlessly bourgeois and for all intents and purposes, free of Jews.
Yes, there is a tiny minority of Jews mostly centered in Berlin, and yes, there have been a number of Jews from the former Soviet Union who have emigrated to Germany, but most of the immigrants from Russia are not practicing Jews and do little if anything to promote a unique Jewish-German identity. The result of all this is that Germans today are able to reap the benefits of Hitler's anti-Semitic policies while paying lip service to the "need to remember."
Young Fritz doesn't have to be overtly anti-Semitic today because his grandfather's generation did such a bang-up job of the Holocaust. There just aren't that many Jews left to hate any more, and besides, the Germans have their old buddies, the Arabs, to do their hating for them. You might call the overwhelming German support for the Palestinians to be a form of anti-Semitism-by-proxy.
The German government has made cash payments to the State of Israel, as well as to individual Jews, to settle claims of murder, torture, false imprisonment, slave labor and genocide. Talk to most Germans and you'll soon discover that they think that the score has been settled between Germany and the Jews, that somehow the return of just a portion of what the Germans stole from the Jews is fair recompense for the deliberate murder of millions of people. If you think the Germans are truly sorry for what they did to the Jews, think again. There's never been an official "tut mir leid" offered by the Germans to the victims of the Holocaust and their descendants because that would admit culpability. Germany GmbH has paid off all claims against it without acknowledging responsibility in the same way that the Ford Motor Company engages in recalls of automobiles. It's all done to avoid liability.
German dialogue about the Holocaust is largely done in the subjunctive, passive mood: "Mistakes were made." But never: "We were wrong." The reason for this, I believe, is the myth of German superiority, overtly stated during the Nazi years, but still a major component of the German psyche.
Why is it that the Germans believe they are superior to all other nationalities? It is true that there have been many great German (and especially Austrian) composers, but Verdi is every bit as great a composer as Wagner. Literature? Yes, Goethe is one of the most important writers of all time, but as a dramatist he is a pale shadow compared to Shakespeare, and as a novelist he hardly compares to Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. Engineering and science? Perhaps, but making good-quality cars is not on the same level as sending men to the moon and returning them safely. And we all know who figured out first how to make an atomic bomb. Cuisine, lifestyle, architecture? Now you've got to be kidding. Just think France and Italy.
No, the German belief in their superiority is a form of self-delusion and is based upon pretty thin gruel. Ironically, it may be that bad boy of German philosophy, Friedrich Nietzsche himself, who supplied the reason for this phenomenon. Nietzsche believed that moral systems and notions of national chauvinism were largely the result of ressentiment, that is, the members of a politically weak people band together in their resentment of their more powerful neighbors and convince one another that, while they may be politically weak, they are somehow "morally superior" to their competitors. This could very well explain the German superiority complex in the face of political weakness from the time of the Roman Empire to the Wilhelmine period beginning in the 1870s. It surely goes far to explain present-day German notions of superiority in the face of their devastating military defeat in World War II and subsequent relegation to second-tier status among the community of nations.
I have peviously mentioned that Germans overwhelmingly support the Palestinians as opposed to the Israelis, and that this overwhelming support represents a form of anti-Semitism-by-proxy. Germans may claim to be supporting the Palestinians because they think they are an "oppressed people," but let's be honest -- they are supporting the Palestinians and their Arabs handlers because the Palestinians and Arabs share the same ideals as the Nazis.
There's a long-standing history of German co-operation with the Arabs. In 1942 Hitler personally assured the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem that as soon as German forces conquered Great Britain, the Jews in Palestine (which was then under control of the British Mandate) would be exterminated. We should also keep in mind that the Arab terrorists who perpetrated the 9/11 atrocities did their planning in Germany. There are several reasons for this. The first is the well-known bungling and decentralized chaos of the German federal bureaucracy where literally the "links" hand doesn't know what the "rechts" hand is doing. The second is that Arab terrorists can count on a substantial number of Germans who share their anti-American and anti-Semitic views. The former members of the SS and Hitler's praetorian guards, along with their neo-Nazi supporters, who gather weekly in Munich beer halls, made Osama Bin Laden an "honorary Aryan" after the 9/11 attack.
Mein Kampf is also a best seller in the Arab world, especially in Saudi Arabia, America's putative "friend." Indeed, there is very little difference between the anti-Semitic rantings of Hitler and those of the so-called "spiritual leaders" of Al-Qaeda, Hamas, and Al-Fatah. The Arabs also owe Hitler and the Germans big time. Hitler killed off the Jews, and Konrad Adenauer and his "democratic" descendants replaced them with the Turks. Yes, the Turks aren't Arabs, but they are Muslim, and although Turkey is a member of NATO and has foreign relations with Israel, many Turks identify and support their radical Arab co-religionists. Turkey remains as fragile a democracy as Weimar Germany during the 1920s. It wouldn't take much for Turkey to fall into the dark side of Muslim extremism.
The end results of Muslim immigration into Germany have been twofold: (1) It allows the Germans to feign liberalism and being open to freedom and diversity; and (2) By replacing the Jews they murdered with Muslims, who for the most part are as viciously anti-Semitic as were the Nazis, the Germans have cynically assured that those few Jews who remain in Germany will be unable to reassert political power even in a minority role.
German politicians have now begun to express anti-Semitic viewpoints as a means to curry favor with Germany's substantial Muslim minority. The most notorious example of this is Juergen Moellemann, the Jew-baiting second-in-command of the Free Democrat Party, the political faction that is most closely identified with business interests (favoring policies such as lowering taxes and reducing government expenditures) and other issues of a libertarian slant. Moellemann's strategy is quite simple. In a parliamentary system like Germany's where seats are awarded by proportional voting and in a party like the FDP which seldom garners more 10% of the vote, making an extremist anti-Semitic appeal to racist Muslims is an attempt to gain 1% or 2% of the vote which could result in the FDP becoming the minority partner in a coalition government if the Christian Democratic Party as expected wins the national elections in Germany in September. What is particularly worrisome here is that in CDU/FDP coalition governments in the past, the post of foreign minister has traditionally gone to the FDP. If this occurs again, Germany could shortly have the most anti-Semitic foreign policy since the days of Joachim von Ribbentrop.
A final point that I would like to make concerning the reasons for the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Germany is one that many will find at odds with the prima-facie evidence, or even appear to stretch the boundaries of common sense. Yet, I ask you to consider carefully my line of reasoning.
In many respects Germany got away with the Holocaust without paying much of a price. Yes, many Germans died as a result of German perpetration of World War II and the Holocaust, and yes, there was much physical destruction in the country, but the situation is like the little boy who steals a cookie from the tray when it is cooling on the kitchen table. For his efforts he may have gotten his hand slapped by his mother, but the stolen cookie remains eaten nonetheless.
After having committed the worst crimes in the history of humankind, the Germans were allowed to regain their sovereignty after only ten years, their infrastructure was completely rebuilt thanks to the generosity of the American people, and relatively few Germans were brought to trial for their monstrous crimes. Even those who were tried and convicted received relatively short sentences or had those reduced or commuted in general amnesties. For example, some members of the Einsatzkommandos, those Germans who, before the construction of the death camps, hunted and murdered Jews by the hundreds of thousands, received sentences of as little as five years imprisonment.
If there were true justice in the world, Germany would no longer exist as a separate country, but would have long ago had its territory divided up and dispersed among the Allies. It was an unfortunate historical coincidence that the Cold War began just as Germany was at last being brought to task for its many crimes and atrocities extending back to the First World War. The new threat of the Soviet Union took precedence over a just settling of accounts with Germany. The tragic result is that many of the countries raped and despoiled by Germany, such as the Czech Republic and Poland, are just now coming out of decades of economic decline, while Germany--fat, sassy, arrogant, self-satisfied, and essentially Judenfrei--has enjoyed four decades of undeserved economic prosperity.
We can't turn back the clock to redress all of the historical wrongs that have been committed by the Germans, but there are a number of things that can be done to assure that Germany can never again be in a position to threaten the rest of the civilized world. First and foremost is the realization that, while not all Germans are anti-Semitic, there is an anti-Semitic tendency within German culture that extends back to the time of Martin Luther. Germans are instinctively anti-Semitic in the same way that Americans are instinctively freedom loving. Anti-Semitism has been and unfortunately remains the default ideology of the German people. All things being equal, Germans will instinctively support the enemies of the State of Israel. Therefore, America will need to monitor closely and be ready and politically willing to intervene at a moment's notice in German affairs when it appears that Germany is back-sliding into anti-Semitism.
Additionally, it should be a goal of American foreign policy to oppose and to accelerate the dismemberment of the European Union. We must not allow German domination of the EU to accomplish through parliamentary maneuvering and brokered deals what Hitler and the Germans were unable to accomplish during the Third Reich. Given Germany's resurgent anti-Semitism (and that of France as well), a strong, German-dominated EU that tolerates and even benignly encourages anti-Semitism and is diplomatically allied with the Arab world, is potentially the greatest threat to Judaism since Nazi Germany and a major threat to the United States as well. The enemies of Israel are the enemies of the United States. Let all Jews and Americans stand united as we proclaim never again to both the Holocaust and 9/11.
William E. Grim is a writer who lives in Germany and is a native of Columbus, Ohio. He may be reached at wgrim@myrealbox.com and you can read more by and about him at The Official William E. Grim Web Site.
William E. Grim is an American writer from Columbus OH who lives in Germany ( at least as of 2002 when this was written ).
THE RETURN OF ANTI-SEMITISM TO GERMANY: IT NEVER REALLY LEFT by William E. Grim
I'm not Jewish. Nobody in my family died in the Holocaust. For me, anti-Semitism has always been one of those phenomena that doesn't really register on my radar, like tribal genocide in Rwanda, a horrible thing that happens to someone else. But I live in a small town outside of Munich on a street that until May of 1945 was named Adolf-Hitler-Strasse. I work in Munich,..the birthplace and capital of the Nazi movement. ...The proximity to evil has a way of concentrating one's attention, of putting a physical reality to the textbook narratives of the horrors perpetrated by the Germans. Then the little things start to happen that...add up to something very sinister....You could have knocked me over with a feather. I half expected one of them to start talking about the historical veracity of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Here were four young, charming, well-educated Germans spewing forth anti-Semitic bilk that would have made Julius Streicher proud. I found that this type of anti-Semitic reference in my professional dealings with Germans soon became a leitmotif ...In my private meetings with Germans it often happens that they will loosen up after a while and reveal personal opinions and political leanings that were thought to have ceased to exist in a Berlin bunker on April 30, 1945....conversations generally have one or more of these components: (1) It was unfortunate that America and Germany fought each other in World War II because the real enemy was Russia. (2) Yes, the Nazis were excessive, but terrible things happen during wars, and anyway, the scope of the Holocaust has been greatly exaggerated by the American media, which is dominated by Jews. (3) CNN is controlled by American Jews and is anti-Palestinian. [Yes, I know it sounds incredible,...there is the widespread belief that the news network founded by Fidel Castro's best friend Ted Turner, who until recently was married to Hanoi Jane Fonda, is a hotbed of pro-Israeli propaganda.] (4) Almost all Germans were opposed to the Third Reich and nobody in Germany knew anything about the murder of the Jews, but the Jews themselves were really responsible for the Holocaust. (5) Ariel Sharon is worse than Hitler and the Israelis are Nazis. America supports Israel only because Jews control the American government and media...I became conscious of anti-Semitism. Sure, anti- Semitism exists elsewhere in the world, but nowhere have the consequences been as devastating as in Germany....2002 has been a banner year for anti-Semitism in Germany. Synagogues have been firebombed, Jewish cemeteries desecrated, the No. 1 best-selling novel, Martin Walser's Death of a Critic, is a thinly-veiled roman à clef containing a vicious anti-Semitic attack on Germany's best-known literary critic, Marcel Reich-Ranicki ( who is a survivor of both the Warsaw ghetto and Auschwitz), the Free Democrat Party has unofficially adopted anti-Semitism as a campaign tactic to attract Germany's sizeable Muslim minority, and German revisionist historians now are beginning to define German perpetration of World War II and the Holocaust not as crimes against humanity, but as early battles (with regrettable but understandable excesses) in the Cold War against communism. ...My thesis is quite simple. While Germany no longer has the military power to enforce the racist ideology of the Nazis and while all extreme manifestations of Nazism are officially outlawed, the internal conditions--that is, the attitudes, worldview and cultural assumptions--that led to the rise of Nazism in Germany are still present because they constitute the basic components of German identity. Nazism was not an aberration; it was the distillation of the German psyche into its essential elements....What is different is that due to its total defeat by the Allies, Germany today is a client state of America and must do its bidding. That means repression of overt anti-Semitism. It's bad for business...Germany, indeed virtually all of Europe, is essentially "Judenfrei" (free of Jews) today due to the efficiency and zeal of the Germans as they perpetrated the Holocaust during the Third Reich. In fact, a very convincing case can be made that Nazism is one of the most successful political programs of all time. It accomplished more of its goals in a shorter amount of time than any other comparable political movement and permanently changed the face and political structure of several continents. Germany is wealthy, stable, relentlessly bourgeois and for all intents and purposes, free of Jews.
Yes, there is a tiny minority of Jews mostly centered in Berlin, and yes, there have been a number of Jews from the former Soviet Union who have emigrated to Germany, but most of the immigrants from Russia are not practicing Jews and do little if anything to promote a unique Jewish-German identity. The result of all this is that Germans today are able to reap the benefits of Hitler's anti-Semitic policies while paying lip service to the "need to remember."
Young Fritz doesn't have to be overtly anti-Semitic today because his grandfather's generation did such a bang-up job of the Holocaust. There just aren't that many Jews left to hate any more, and besides, the Germans have their old buddies, the Arabs, to do their hating for them. You might call the overwhelming German support for the Palestinians to be a form of anti-Semitism-by-proxy.
The German government has made cash payments to the State of Israel, as well as to individual Jews, to settle claims of murder, torture, false imprisonment, slave labor and genocide. Talk to most Germans and you'll soon discover that they think that the score has been settled between Germany and the Jews, that somehow the return of just a portion of what the Germans stole from the Jews is fair recompense for the deliberate murder of millions of people. If you think the Germans are truly sorry for what they did to the Jews, think again. There's never been an official "tut mir leid" offered by the Germans to the victims of the Holocaust and their descendants because that would admit culpability. Germany GmbH has paid off all claims against it without acknowledging responsibility in the same way that the Ford Motor Company engages in recalls of automobiles. It's all done to avoid liability.
German dialogue about the Holocaust is largely done in the subjunctive, passive mood: "Mistakes were made." But never: "We were wrong." The reason for this, I believe, is the myth of German superiority, overtly stated during the Nazi years, but still a major component of the German psyche.
Why is it that the Germans believe they are superior to all other nationalities? It is true that there have been many great German (and especially Austrian) composers, but Verdi is every bit as great a composer as Wagner. Literature? Yes, Goethe is one of the most important writers of all time, but as a dramatist he is a pale shadow compared to Shakespeare, and as a novelist he hardly compares to Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. Engineering and science? Perhaps, but making good-quality cars is not on the same level as sending men to the moon and returning them safely. And we all know who figured out first how to make an atomic bomb. Cuisine, lifestyle, architecture? Now you've got to be kidding. Just think France and Italy.
No, the German belief in their superiority is a form of self-delusion and is based upon pretty thin gruel. Ironically, it may be that bad boy of German philosophy, Friedrich Nietzsche himself, who supplied the reason for this phenomenon. Nietzsche believed that moral systems and notions of national chauvinism were largely the result of ressentiment, that is, the members of a politically weak people band together in their resentment of their more powerful neighbors and convince one another that, while they may be politically weak, they are somehow "morally superior" to their competitors. This could very well explain the German superiority complex in the face of political weakness from the time of the Roman Empire to the Wilhelmine period beginning in the 1870s. It surely goes far to explain present-day German notions of superiority in the face of their devastating military defeat in World War II and subsequent relegation to second-tier status among the community of nations.
I have peviously mentioned that Germans overwhelmingly support the Palestinians as opposed to the Israelis, and that this overwhelming support represents a form of anti-Semitism-by-proxy. Germans may claim to be supporting the Palestinians because they think they are an "oppressed people," but let's be honest -- they are supporting the Palestinians and their Arabs handlers because the Palestinians and Arabs share the same ideals as the Nazis.
There's a long-standing history of German co-operation with the Arabs. In 1942 Hitler personally assured the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem that as soon as German forces conquered Great Britain, the Jews in Palestine (which was then under control of the British Mandate) would be exterminated. We should also keep in mind that the Arab terrorists who perpetrated the 9/11 atrocities did their planning in Germany. There are several reasons for this. The first is the well-known bungling and decentralized chaos of the German federal bureaucracy where literally the "links" hand doesn't know what the "rechts" hand is doing. The second is that Arab terrorists can count on a substantial number of Germans who share their anti-American and anti-Semitic views. The former members of the SS and Hitler's praetorian guards, along with their neo-Nazi supporters, who gather weekly in Munich beer halls, made Osama Bin Laden an "honorary Aryan" after the 9/11 attack.
Mein Kampf is also a best seller in the Arab world, especially in Saudi Arabia, America's putative "friend." Indeed, there is very little difference between the anti-Semitic rantings of Hitler and those of the so-called "spiritual leaders" of Al-Qaeda, Hamas, and Al-Fatah. The Arabs also owe Hitler and the Germans big time. Hitler killed off the Jews, and Konrad Adenauer and his "democratic" descendants replaced them with the Turks. Yes, the Turks aren't Arabs, but they are Muslim, and although Turkey is a member of NATO and has foreign relations with Israel, many Turks identify and support their radical Arab co-religionists. Turkey remains as fragile a democracy as Weimar Germany during the 1920s. It wouldn't take much for Turkey to fall into the dark side of Muslim extremism.
The end results of Muslim immigration into Germany have been twofold: (1) It allows the Germans to feign liberalism and being open to freedom and diversity; and (2) By replacing the Jews they murdered with Muslims, who for the most part are as viciously anti-Semitic as were the Nazis, the Germans have cynically assured that those few Jews who remain in Germany will be unable to reassert political power even in a minority role.
German politicians have now begun to express anti-Semitic viewpoints as a means to curry favor with Germany's substantial Muslim minority. The most notorious example of this is Juergen Moellemann, the Jew-baiting second-in-command of the Free Democrat Party, the political faction that is most closely identified with business interests (favoring policies such as lowering taxes and reducing government expenditures) and other issues of a libertarian slant. Moellemann's strategy is quite simple. In a parliamentary system like Germany's where seats are awarded by proportional voting and in a party like the FDP which seldom garners more 10% of the vote, making an extremist anti-Semitic appeal to racist Muslims is an attempt to gain 1% or 2% of the vote which could result in the FDP becoming the minority partner in a coalition government if the Christian Democratic Party as expected wins the national elections in Germany in September. What is particularly worrisome here is that in CDU/FDP coalition governments in the past, the post of foreign minister has traditionally gone to the FDP. If this occurs again, Germany could shortly have the most anti-Semitic foreign policy since the days of Joachim von Ribbentrop.
A final point that I would like to make concerning the reasons for the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Germany is one that many will find at odds with the prima-facie evidence, or even appear to stretch the boundaries of common sense. Yet, I ask you to consider carefully my line of reasoning.
In many respects Germany got away with the Holocaust without paying much of a price. Yes, many Germans died as a result of German perpetration of World War II and the Holocaust, and yes, there was much physical destruction in the country, but the situation is like the little boy who steals a cookie from the tray when it is cooling on the kitchen table. For his efforts he may have gotten his hand slapped by his mother, but the stolen cookie remains eaten nonetheless.
After having committed the worst crimes in the history of humankind, the Germans were allowed to regain their sovereignty after only ten years, their infrastructure was completely rebuilt thanks to the generosity of the American people, and relatively few Germans were brought to trial for their monstrous crimes. Even those who were tried and convicted received relatively short sentences or had those reduced or commuted in general amnesties. For example, some members of the Einsatzkommandos, those Germans who, before the construction of the death camps, hunted and murdered Jews by the hundreds of thousands, received sentences of as little as five years imprisonment.
If there were true justice in the world, Germany would no longer exist as a separate country, but would have long ago had its territory divided up and dispersed among the Allies. It was an unfortunate historical coincidence that the Cold War began just as Germany was at last being brought to task for its many crimes and atrocities extending back to the First World War. The new threat of the Soviet Union took precedence over a just settling of accounts with Germany. The tragic result is that many of the countries raped and despoiled by Germany, such as the Czech Republic and Poland, are just now coming out of decades of economic decline, while Germany--fat, sassy, arrogant, self-satisfied, and essentially Judenfrei--has enjoyed four decades of undeserved economic prosperity.
We can't turn back the clock to redress all of the historical wrongs that have been committed by the Germans, but there are a number of things that can be done to assure that Germany can never again be in a position to threaten the rest of the civilized world. First and foremost is the realization that, while not all Germans are anti-Semitic, there is an anti-Semitic tendency within German culture that extends back to the time of Martin Luther. Germans are instinctively anti-Semitic in the same way that Americans are instinctively freedom loving. Anti-Semitism has been and unfortunately remains the default ideology of the German people. All things being equal, Germans will instinctively support the enemies of the State of Israel. Therefore, America will need to monitor closely and be ready and politically willing to intervene at a moment's notice in German affairs when it appears that Germany is back-sliding into anti-Semitism.
Additionally, it should be a goal of American foreign policy to oppose and to accelerate the dismemberment of the European Union. We must not allow German domination of the EU to accomplish through parliamentary maneuvering and brokered deals what Hitler and the Germans were unable to accomplish during the Third Reich. Given Germany's resurgent anti-Semitism (and that of France as well), a strong, German-dominated EU that tolerates and even benignly encourages anti-Semitism and is diplomatically allied with the Arab world, is potentially the greatest threat to Judaism since Nazi Germany and a major threat to the United States as well. The enemies of Israel are the enemies of the United States. Let all Jews and Americans stand united as we proclaim never again to both the Holocaust and 9/11.
William E. Grim is a writer who lives in Germany and is a native of Columbus, Ohio. He may be reached at wgrim@myrealbox.com and you can read more by and about him at The Official William E. Grim Web Site.
Monday, October 26, 2009
State control, print money, attack free press...Hmmm
http://tinyurl.com/yz5ckln
Argentina's Kirchner Targets the Press
As the state-run economy hits the skids, the government responds with a crackdown on the free press. By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY
...in a bad economy is to wrest control...and start printing lots of pesos....a government that expects to survive will find it necessary to silence its critics. Just ask Argentines, who are living all of this in real time...The story of how Argentina got here is important to recall...A demoralized nation was looking for a savior. It thought it found one in Néstor Kirchner... the market, he maintained, had failed...He demonized the private-sector and investors. Using price controls, subsidies and regulation he made himself a Robin Hood to the masses. The legislature granted him extraordinary powers...popular dissatisfaction showed up at the polls in the June midterm elections, when Mrs. Kirchner's wing of the Peronist party lost badly....Mrs. Kirchner and her husband have decided that they lost because of bad press coverage....This is why the president forced a media law through the legislature two weeks ago, creating a new "audio-visual" regulatory board controlled by the executive....philosopher and writer Santiago Kovadloff summed up opposition sentiment about the government's use of "the law" to consolidate power: "The law has become a beloved tool of corruption," Mr. Kovadloff wrote. "The executive has put it at its service. It manipulates it with skill." And where does that leave society? "Insecurity is no longer a threat. We are in the jungle." ****Argentina North in the making?****
Argentina's Kirchner Targets the Press
As the state-run economy hits the skids, the government responds with a crackdown on the free press. By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY
...in a bad economy is to wrest control...and start printing lots of pesos....a government that expects to survive will find it necessary to silence its critics. Just ask Argentines, who are living all of this in real time...The story of how Argentina got here is important to recall...A demoralized nation was looking for a savior. It thought it found one in Néstor Kirchner... the market, he maintained, had failed...He demonized the private-sector and investors. Using price controls, subsidies and regulation he made himself a Robin Hood to the masses. The legislature granted him extraordinary powers...popular dissatisfaction showed up at the polls in the June midterm elections, when Mrs. Kirchner's wing of the Peronist party lost badly....Mrs. Kirchner and her husband have decided that they lost because of bad press coverage....This is why the president forced a media law through the legislature two weeks ago, creating a new "audio-visual" regulatory board controlled by the executive....philosopher and writer Santiago Kovadloff summed up opposition sentiment about the government's use of "the law" to consolidate power: "The law has become a beloved tool of corruption," Mr. Kovadloff wrote. "The executive has put it at its service. It manipulates it with skill." And where does that leave society? "Insecurity is no longer a threat. We are in the jungle." ****Argentina North in the making?****
Reduce the cost of healthcare...by vengefully taxing it????
OBAMA TAXES PACEMAKERS, HEART VALVES By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
The more fiscal details of the health care bills emerge, the more appalling they seem. The Senate Finance Committee bill includes a broad provision taxing all manner of medical devices. This tax includes such frivolous luxuries as pacemakers, stents, artificial heart valves, defibrillators, automated wheelchairs, mechanized artificial limbs, replacement hips and knees, surgical gurneys, laparoscopic equipment, and the like.
President Obama is planning to reduce the cost of medical care by taxing it!
The most recent Gallup Poll reflected that 49% of respondents said they believed that the Obamacare plan will increase their health care costs. Only about 20% said it would lower them. It is taxes like these that substantiate this kind of concern.
The origins of this new medical device tax are troubling as well.
The medical device industry had its day at the White House as did the insurance industry, the drug makers, the nurses, and the doctors. In turn, each group heard the White House request that they come up with voluntary cuts in their health care costs and support Obama's proposed changes in return for assurances that Congress would not impose deeper cuts (or, in the case of the doctors, that it would actually rescind cuts already scheduled under current statutes).****The insurance industry and the others have found that, when making a deal with the Devil, the Devil reneges on his part.Who can trust any deal made by this administration?****
But, unlike all these other groups, the medical device industry refused the deal. This posture enraged the tyrants in the White House who vowed to punish the industry with cuts imposed by Congress. The result was a decision by the revenue-hungry Senate Finance Committee to extract billions in funds from the industry.
The legislation does not work like a sales or excise tax. Rather it follows the model of the punitive tobacco settlement imposed on cigarette companies in the 90s. It assesses an industry-wide payment which firms must make in proportion to their market share. It bars the them from passing along the cost of the assessment by charging more for certain basic products, but allows them to raise the price of others to raise the funds for the fee.
So, the result will be that virtually every piece of advanced surgical equipment will be subject to a price increase to meet the levy from Washington. No matter that these devices often make the difference between life and death and that, in effect, taxing them raises the cost of vital treatments. The vengeful White House will have its pound of flesh from the medical device industry for daring to be independent and to refuse to knuckle down to Administration pressure!
This tax, imposed in a spirit of haughty arrogance, falls on totally inappropriate objects. Valves, prosthetic limbs, pacemakers, hearing aids, and such are essential therapies that make life longer, better, and less painful. To tax them makes no sense. Except in the world of sharp elbows and interest group politics that grips this take-no-prisoners and show-no-mercy White House.
The more fiscal details of the health care bills emerge, the more appalling they seem. The Senate Finance Committee bill includes a broad provision taxing all manner of medical devices. This tax includes such frivolous luxuries as pacemakers, stents, artificial heart valves, defibrillators, automated wheelchairs, mechanized artificial limbs, replacement hips and knees, surgical gurneys, laparoscopic equipment, and the like.
President Obama is planning to reduce the cost of medical care by taxing it!
The most recent Gallup Poll reflected that 49% of respondents said they believed that the Obamacare plan will increase their health care costs. Only about 20% said it would lower them. It is taxes like these that substantiate this kind of concern.
The origins of this new medical device tax are troubling as well.
The medical device industry had its day at the White House as did the insurance industry, the drug makers, the nurses, and the doctors. In turn, each group heard the White House request that they come up with voluntary cuts in their health care costs and support Obama's proposed changes in return for assurances that Congress would not impose deeper cuts (or, in the case of the doctors, that it would actually rescind cuts already scheduled under current statutes).****The insurance industry and the others have found that, when making a deal with the Devil, the Devil reneges on his part.Who can trust any deal made by this administration?****
But, unlike all these other groups, the medical device industry refused the deal. This posture enraged the tyrants in the White House who vowed to punish the industry with cuts imposed by Congress. The result was a decision by the revenue-hungry Senate Finance Committee to extract billions in funds from the industry.
The legislation does not work like a sales or excise tax. Rather it follows the model of the punitive tobacco settlement imposed on cigarette companies in the 90s. It assesses an industry-wide payment which firms must make in proportion to their market share. It bars the them from passing along the cost of the assessment by charging more for certain basic products, but allows them to raise the price of others to raise the funds for the fee.
So, the result will be that virtually every piece of advanced surgical equipment will be subject to a price increase to meet the levy from Washington. No matter that these devices often make the difference between life and death and that, in effect, taxing them raises the cost of vital treatments. The vengeful White House will have its pound of flesh from the medical device industry for daring to be independent and to refuse to knuckle down to Administration pressure!
This tax, imposed in a spirit of haughty arrogance, falls on totally inappropriate objects. Valves, prosthetic limbs, pacemakers, hearing aids, and such are essential therapies that make life longer, better, and less painful. To tax them makes no sense. Except in the world of sharp elbows and interest group politics that grips this take-no-prisoners and show-no-mercy White House.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
A relevant story from the farm
John was in the fertilized egg business. He had several hundred young layers (hens), called 'pullets,' and ten roosters to fertilize the eggs. Jack Welch, CEO when GE was still emblematic of great management, used to winnow out the lowest 5% of his producers every year. John had read Welch's books and was a careful manager, kept records, and any rooster not performing went into the soup pot and was replaced.
This took a lot of time, so he bought some tiny bells and attached them to his roosters. Each bell had a different tone, so he could tell from a distance, which rooster was performing.Now, he could sit on the porch and fill out an efficiency report by just listening to the bells.
John's favorite rooster, Hussein, was a very fine specimen, but one morning he noticed Hussein's bell hadn't rung at all!
When he went to investigate, he saw the other roosters were busy chasing pullets, bells-a-ringing, but the pullets, hearing the roosters coming, could run for cover.
To John's amazement, Hussein had his bell in his beak, so it couldn't ring.He'd sneak up on a pullet, do his job and walk on to the next one.
John was so proud of Hussein, he entered him in the Renfrew County Fair and he became an overnight sensation among the judges. The result was the judges not only elected Hussein #1 Renfrew Rooster but awarded him the No Bell Piece Prize and also the extra Pulletsurprise, as well.
Clearly Hussein was a politician in the making.
Who else but a politician could figure out how to win two highly coveted awards by being the best at sneaking up on the populace and screwing them when they weren't paying attention.
When you go to the polls, "Vote carefully, the bells are not always audible."
This took a lot of time, so he bought some tiny bells and attached them to his roosters. Each bell had a different tone, so he could tell from a distance, which rooster was performing.Now, he could sit on the porch and fill out an efficiency report by just listening to the bells.
John's favorite rooster, Hussein, was a very fine specimen, but one morning he noticed Hussein's bell hadn't rung at all!
When he went to investigate, he saw the other roosters were busy chasing pullets, bells-a-ringing, but the pullets, hearing the roosters coming, could run for cover.
To John's amazement, Hussein had his bell in his beak, so it couldn't ring.He'd sneak up on a pullet, do his job and walk on to the next one.
John was so proud of Hussein, he entered him in the Renfrew County Fair and he became an overnight sensation among the judges. The result was the judges not only elected Hussein #1 Renfrew Rooster but awarded him the No Bell Piece Prize and also the extra Pulletsurprise, as well.
Clearly Hussein was a politician in the making.
Who else but a politician could figure out how to win two highly coveted awards by being the best at sneaking up on the populace and screwing them when they weren't paying attention.
When you go to the polls, "Vote carefully, the bells are not always audible."
Proposed exemptions from "Cadillac" excise tax based on politics, not fairness.
****Union workers are already exempted from the weird excise tax on "Cadillac" health insurance plans in the current plans and now Dems want to exempt Federal workers as well.
WHY? The argument being made by liberal talking heads on Saturday is that Federal workers have already given up salary for the extra benefits. It is a falsehood! Federal workers actually are compensated considerably more than are comparable workers in the private sector.****
http://tinyurl.com/ygdwncn
Federal Pay Gap With Private Sector Growing By Ralph Smith August 25, 2009
According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (an organization within the Department of Commerce), the average federal employee now makes $79,197, not including benefits. And, when benefits are added in, the average federal employee compensation averaged $119,982 based on 2008 figures...The average private sector employee salary averaged $49,935. And, when including benefits, the average private sector employee averaged $59,909 in total compensation...Stated differently, the benefit cost for the average federal employee back in 2008 was $40,785. The average benefit cost for private sector employees for the same year was $9974...
http://tinyurl.com/yhftq2u
U. S. Federal Employee Pay is Above Market 10 March 1996 Congresssional Testimony by Wendell Cox before Subcommittee on Civil Service, Committee on Government Reform and Oversight United States House of Representatives
****Why are Democrats proposing to exempt both these groups? Because they are base voters for Democrats. These together are 25% of the total workforce with the excise tax burden having to be borne by others, who are not so reliably-Democratic voters. ****
WHY? The argument being made by liberal talking heads on Saturday is that Federal workers have already given up salary for the extra benefits. It is a falsehood! Federal workers actually are compensated considerably more than are comparable workers in the private sector.****
http://tinyurl.com/ygdwncn
Federal Pay Gap With Private Sector Growing By Ralph Smith August 25, 2009
According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (an organization within the Department of Commerce), the average federal employee now makes $79,197, not including benefits. And, when benefits are added in, the average federal employee compensation averaged $119,982 based on 2008 figures...The average private sector employee salary averaged $49,935. And, when including benefits, the average private sector employee averaged $59,909 in total compensation...Stated differently, the benefit cost for the average federal employee back in 2008 was $40,785. The average benefit cost for private sector employees for the same year was $9974...
http://tinyurl.com/yhftq2u
U. S. Federal Employee Pay is Above Market 10 March 1996 Congresssional Testimony by Wendell Cox before Subcommittee on Civil Service, Committee on Government Reform and Oversight United States House of Representatives
****Why are Democrats proposing to exempt both these groups? Because they are base voters for Democrats. These together are 25% of the total workforce with the excise tax burden having to be borne by others, who are not so reliably-Democratic voters. ****
Conservation, environmentalism and rationality.
****Current "environmentalism" often seems to elevate the environment over people and conveys the idea that humans are the enemy of The Earth. A founder of the conservation movement had no such fanaticism.Gifford Pinchot believed the environment should serve Man and that, in turn, Man should be a good steward of it.****
http://tinyurl.com/yjsucty
... "The Big Burn" should be commended for shining a light on the real hero of the story, Gifford Pinchot, as important a figure in the protection of wildlands as his better-known contemporaries Roosevelt and John Muir...He founded the Forest Service in 1906 and, with President Roosevelt's help, made the term "conservation" known across the world.
Pinchot is at his most interesting when his views clash with current environmentalism. He hated forest fires, none more than the Big Burn, while most environmentalists today agree that fire helps keep forests healthy. Pinchot was certainly aware of fire's benefits: An article he wrote in 1899, when fire was making its annual foray through the West, was among the first to describe the salutary effects of forest fires. He noted, for instance, that tree seedlings such as those of the giant sequoia in California flourish only on burned ground. Pinchot nonetheless believed in combating forest fires at all costs. He considered the national forests large tree farms, and if fire had once ruled the grasses of the Great Plains, only to be thwarted and supplanted by intensive farming, there was every reason to think the same fire-conquering success might be made in the forests of the West.
Pinchot took other positions that might make today's environmentalists choke on their trail mix. In addition to being an implacable foe of forest fires, he favored logging in California's Yosemite National Park, as well as the damming of one of Yosemite's most beautiful valleys. ...I found it bracing to return to Pinchot's own writing, the expressions of a man with an interest in protecting the land yet with none of the religious feeling that today's environmentalism so often evokes. For him "conservation" simply meant "the use of the natural resources for the greatest good of the greatest number for the longest time." An inspiring creed in the early 20th century and a challenging one today.
http://tinyurl.com/yjsucty
... "The Big Burn" should be commended for shining a light on the real hero of the story, Gifford Pinchot, as important a figure in the protection of wildlands as his better-known contemporaries Roosevelt and John Muir...He founded the Forest Service in 1906 and, with President Roosevelt's help, made the term "conservation" known across the world.
Pinchot is at his most interesting when his views clash with current environmentalism. He hated forest fires, none more than the Big Burn, while most environmentalists today agree that fire helps keep forests healthy. Pinchot was certainly aware of fire's benefits: An article he wrote in 1899, when fire was making its annual foray through the West, was among the first to describe the salutary effects of forest fires. He noted, for instance, that tree seedlings such as those of the giant sequoia in California flourish only on burned ground. Pinchot nonetheless believed in combating forest fires at all costs. He considered the national forests large tree farms, and if fire had once ruled the grasses of the Great Plains, only to be thwarted and supplanted by intensive farming, there was every reason to think the same fire-conquering success might be made in the forests of the West.
Pinchot took other positions that might make today's environmentalists choke on their trail mix. In addition to being an implacable foe of forest fires, he favored logging in California's Yosemite National Park, as well as the damming of one of Yosemite's most beautiful valleys. ...I found it bracing to return to Pinchot's own writing, the expressions of a man with an interest in protecting the land yet with none of the religious feeling that today's environmentalism so often evokes. For him "conservation" simply meant "the use of the natural resources for the greatest good of the greatest number for the longest time." An inspiring creed in the early 20th century and a challenging one today.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Profiles in Courage
First, Obama's record in the Illinois Senate was distinguished by his myriad votes of "Present". Now, he sits on a request from Gen. McCrystal for 40,000 troops to reinforce the military already in Afghanistan and, according to that Obama-appointed expert, in danger of imminently losing: not deciding yea or nay but dithering for 60 days and counting. Today, realizing that his chosen candidate for Virginia Governor, Democrat Creigh Deeds, is far behind the Republican, Obama's White House is excoriating Deeds for not having listened to Obamaian counsel "in time" i.e. the WH is bailing on a losing campaign and distancing from a losing candidate. Then we have Obama reneging on the defensive missile agreement with Poland and The Czech Republic in order to knuckle under to Russian demands for which he got...nothing.
Makes Americans comfortable to have this guy as President.//
Playing politics while American troops need reinforcement
Karl Rove thinks Obama's dithering on responding to Gen. McCrystal's request for 40K troops is political, fearing that his liberal base will rebel and screw up the elections in New Jersey and Virginia and scare Obama's Congressional supporters. Thus, he's waiting until after the elections to announce the sending of troops.
http://tinyurl.com/yzjafyo
Makes Americans comfortable to have this guy as President.//
Playing politics while American troops need reinforcement
Karl Rove thinks Obama's dithering on responding to Gen. McCrystal's request for 40K troops is political, fearing that his liberal base will rebel and screw up the elections in New Jersey and Virginia and scare Obama's Congressional supporters. Thus, he's waiting until after the elections to announce the sending of troops.
http://tinyurl.com/yzjafyo
A warlord culture incompatible w/nat'l unity. Afghanistan? No, Chicago!
http://tinyurl.com/yld8f2s
The Chicago Way by Kimberley Strassel
Using Malone's dialogue from The Untouchables, Strassel says "What is a little novel is the public and bare-knuckle way in which the Obama team is waging these campaigns against the other side." ****The other side is Fox, Humana, the Chamber of Commerce, Chrysler bondholders, the State of Arizona (to silence Sen. Jon Kyl), Sens. Bennett and Alexander and others. This isn't necessarily smart: "the corporate community is realizing that playing nice doesn't guarantee safety...health execs signed up only to remain pinatas...unions-now running their ads against Obamacare-haven't been targeted...If the choice is cooperate and get nailed, or oppose and possibly win, some might take that bet...many Americans voted for this president in thrall to his vow to bring the country together...voters might just notice."//
http://tinyurl.com/yzfc7t6
Fox WarsThe Obama administration wants to delegitimize any significant dissent. by Charles Krauthammer
...White House aides openly told Politico that they’re engaged in a deliberate campaign to marginalize and ostracize recalcitrants, from Fox to health insurers to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce...We have norms, Madisonian norms... its defense against tyranny, requires the contest between factions or interests....Seeking to deliberately undermine, delegitimize, and destroy is not Madisonian. It is Nixonian.... Fox News is no monopoly. It is a singular minority in a sea of liberal media. ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, NPR, CNN, MSNBC vs. Fox. The lineup is so unbalanced as to be comical — and that doesn’t even include the other commanding heights of the culture that are firmly, flagrantly liberal: Hollywood, the foundations, the universities, the elite newspapers.Fox and its viewers ... need no defense. Defend Fox compared to whom? To CNN — which recently unleashed its fact-checkers on a Saturday Night Live skit mildly critical of President Obama, but did no checking of a grotesquely racist remark CNN falsely attributed to Rush Limbaugh? Defend Fox from whom? ...Defend Fox from the likes of Anita Dunn? She’s been attacked for extolling Mao’s political philosophy in a speech at a high-school graduation. But the critics miss the surpassing stupidity of her larger point: She was invoking Mao as support and authority for her impassioned plea for individuality and trusting one’s own choices. Mao as champion of individuality? Mao, the greatest imposer of mass uniformity in modern history, creator of a slave society of a near-billion worker bees wearing Mao suits and waving the Little Red Book?
The White House communications director cannot be trusted to address high schoolers without uttering inanities. She and her cohorts are now to instruct the country on truth and objectivity?//
***At first the other news outlets did nothing, happy that a potent competitor seemed to be disadvantaged. Now they're starting to rebel, remembering remarks from the Nazi era:
"First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
"Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
"Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
"Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
"Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up." The author was Martin Niemöller, a German pastor imprisoned by Hitler from 1937 to 1945.***
****In discussing corruption in New Jersey, a commentator remarked that NJ was the most corrupt state with the exception of Illinois. Otherwise, a gratuitous reference to Illinois but the standard, nevertheless.****
The Chicago Way by Kimberley Strassel
Using Malone's dialogue from The Untouchables, Strassel says "What is a little novel is the public and bare-knuckle way in which the Obama team is waging these campaigns against the other side." ****The other side is Fox, Humana, the Chamber of Commerce, Chrysler bondholders, the State of Arizona (to silence Sen. Jon Kyl), Sens. Bennett and Alexander and others. This isn't necessarily smart: "the corporate community is realizing that playing nice doesn't guarantee safety...health execs signed up only to remain pinatas...unions-now running their ads against Obamacare-haven't been targeted...If the choice is cooperate and get nailed, or oppose and possibly win, some might take that bet...many Americans voted for this president in thrall to his vow to bring the country together...voters might just notice."//
http://tinyurl.com/yzfc7t6
Fox WarsThe Obama administration wants to delegitimize any significant dissent. by Charles Krauthammer
...White House aides openly told Politico that they’re engaged in a deliberate campaign to marginalize and ostracize recalcitrants, from Fox to health insurers to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce...We have norms, Madisonian norms... its defense against tyranny, requires the contest between factions or interests....Seeking to deliberately undermine, delegitimize, and destroy is not Madisonian. It is Nixonian.... Fox News is no monopoly. It is a singular minority in a sea of liberal media. ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, NPR, CNN, MSNBC vs. Fox. The lineup is so unbalanced as to be comical — and that doesn’t even include the other commanding heights of the culture that are firmly, flagrantly liberal: Hollywood, the foundations, the universities, the elite newspapers.Fox and its viewers ... need no defense. Defend Fox compared to whom? To CNN — which recently unleashed its fact-checkers on a Saturday Night Live skit mildly critical of President Obama, but did no checking of a grotesquely racist remark CNN falsely attributed to Rush Limbaugh? Defend Fox from whom? ...Defend Fox from the likes of Anita Dunn? She’s been attacked for extolling Mao’s political philosophy in a speech at a high-school graduation. But the critics miss the surpassing stupidity of her larger point: She was invoking Mao as support and authority for her impassioned plea for individuality and trusting one’s own choices. Mao as champion of individuality? Mao, the greatest imposer of mass uniformity in modern history, creator of a slave society of a near-billion worker bees wearing Mao suits and waving the Little Red Book?
The White House communications director cannot be trusted to address high schoolers without uttering inanities. She and her cohorts are now to instruct the country on truth and objectivity?//
***At first the other news outlets did nothing, happy that a potent competitor seemed to be disadvantaged. Now they're starting to rebel, remembering remarks from the Nazi era:
"First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
"Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
"Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
"Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
"Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up." The author was Martin Niemöller, a German pastor imprisoned by Hitler from 1937 to 1945.***
****In discussing corruption in New Jersey, a commentator remarked that NJ was the most corrupt state with the exception of Illinois. Otherwise, a gratuitous reference to Illinois but the standard, nevertheless.****
You can't fool ALL of the people ALL of the time--unless they're Democrats.
Poll: US belief in global warming is cooling By DINA CAPPIELLO, Associated Press WASHINGTON – Americans seem to be cooling toward global warming. Just 57 percent think there is solid evidence the world is getting warmer, down 20 points in just three years, a new poll says. And the share of people who believe pollution caused by humans is causing temperatures to rise has also taken a dip, even as the U.S. and world forums gear up for possible action against climate change.
In a poll of 1,500 adults by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, released Thursday, the number of people saying there is strong scientific evidence that the Earth has gotten warmer over the past few decades is down from 71 percent in April of last year and from 77 percent when Pew started asking the question in 2006. The number of people who see the situation as a serious problem also has declined. The steepest drop has occurred during the past year, as Congress and the Obama administration have taken steps to control heat-trapping emissions for the first time and international negotiations for a new treaty to slow global warming have been under way. ... The poll was released a day after 18 scientific organizations wrote Congress to reaffirm the consensus behind global warming. ...Only about a third, or 36 percent of the respondents, feel that human activities — such as pollution from power plants, factories and automobiles — are behind a temperature increase. That's down from 47 percent from 2006 through last year's poll.
"The priority that people give to pollution and environmental concerns and a whole host of other issues is down because of the economy and because of the focus on other things," suggested Andrew Kohut, the director of the research center, which conducted the poll from Sept. 30 to Oct. 4. "When the focus is on other things, people forget and see these issues as less grave."****An alternative is perhaps that people are realizing that "consensus" is not the way that science is done, that Al Gore won't debate, and that more and more reputable scientists are coming out of the closet against chimerical efforts to destroy competitiveness in pursuit of an illusion.****... Political breakdowns in the survey underscore how tough it could be to enact a law limiting pollution emissions blamed for warming. While three-quarters of Democrats believe the evidence of a warming planet is solid, and nearly half believe the problem is serious, far fewer conservative and moderate Democrats see the problem as grave. Fifty-seven percent of Republicans say there is no solid evidence of global warming, up from 31 percent in early 2007.... Despite misgivings about the science, half the respondents still say they support limits on greenhouse gases, even if they could lead to higher energy prices. And a majority — 56 percent — feel the United States should join other countries in setting standards to address global climate change. But many of the supporters of reducing pollution have heard little to nothing about cap-and-trade, the main mechanism for reducing greenhouse gases favored by the White House and central to legislation passed by the House and a bill the Senate will take up next week...."Perhaps the most interesting finding in this poll ... is that the more Americans learn about cap-and-trade, the more they oppose cap-and-trade," said Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., who opposes the Senate bill and has questioned global warming science. Regional as well as political differences were detected in the polling. People living in the Midwest and mountainous areas of the West are far less likely to view global warming as a serious problem and to support limits on greenhouse gases than those in the Northeast and on the West Coast. Both the House and Senate bills have been drafted by Democratic lawmakers from Massachusetts and California.
One of those lawmakers, Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, told reporters Thursday that she was happy with the results, given the interests and industry groups fighting the bill.
"Today, to get 57 percent saying that the climate is warming is good, because today everybody is grumpy about everything," Boxer said. "Science will win the day in America. Science always wins the day.".****Boxer wouldn't know science from a hole in the ground.****
Earlier polls, from different organizations, have not detected a growing skepticism about the science behind global warming
Since 1997, the percentage of Americans that believe the Earth is heating up has remained constant — at around 80 percent — in polling done by Jon Krosnick of Stanford University. Krosnick, who has been conducting surveys on attitudes about global warming since 1993, was surprised by the Pew results. He described the decline in the Pew results as "implausible," saying there is nothing that could have caused it.****How about Krosnick's own studies having been biased and wrong?**** The poll's margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.
In a poll of 1,500 adults by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, released Thursday, the number of people saying there is strong scientific evidence that the Earth has gotten warmer over the past few decades is down from 71 percent in April of last year and from 77 percent when Pew started asking the question in 2006. The number of people who see the situation as a serious problem also has declined. The steepest drop has occurred during the past year, as Congress and the Obama administration have taken steps to control heat-trapping emissions for the first time and international negotiations for a new treaty to slow global warming have been under way. ... The poll was released a day after 18 scientific organizations wrote Congress to reaffirm the consensus behind global warming. ...Only about a third, or 36 percent of the respondents, feel that human activities — such as pollution from power plants, factories and automobiles — are behind a temperature increase. That's down from 47 percent from 2006 through last year's poll.
"The priority that people give to pollution and environmental concerns and a whole host of other issues is down because of the economy and because of the focus on other things," suggested Andrew Kohut, the director of the research center, which conducted the poll from Sept. 30 to Oct. 4. "When the focus is on other things, people forget and see these issues as less grave."****An alternative is perhaps that people are realizing that "consensus" is not the way that science is done, that Al Gore won't debate, and that more and more reputable scientists are coming out of the closet against chimerical efforts to destroy competitiveness in pursuit of an illusion.****... Political breakdowns in the survey underscore how tough it could be to enact a law limiting pollution emissions blamed for warming. While three-quarters of Democrats believe the evidence of a warming planet is solid, and nearly half believe the problem is serious, far fewer conservative and moderate Democrats see the problem as grave. Fifty-seven percent of Republicans say there is no solid evidence of global warming, up from 31 percent in early 2007.... Despite misgivings about the science, half the respondents still say they support limits on greenhouse gases, even if they could lead to higher energy prices. And a majority — 56 percent — feel the United States should join other countries in setting standards to address global climate change. But many of the supporters of reducing pollution have heard little to nothing about cap-and-trade, the main mechanism for reducing greenhouse gases favored by the White House and central to legislation passed by the House and a bill the Senate will take up next week...."Perhaps the most interesting finding in this poll ... is that the more Americans learn about cap-and-trade, the more they oppose cap-and-trade," said Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., who opposes the Senate bill and has questioned global warming science. Regional as well as political differences were detected in the polling. People living in the Midwest and mountainous areas of the West are far less likely to view global warming as a serious problem and to support limits on greenhouse gases than those in the Northeast and on the West Coast. Both the House and Senate bills have been drafted by Democratic lawmakers from Massachusetts and California.
One of those lawmakers, Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, told reporters Thursday that she was happy with the results, given the interests and industry groups fighting the bill.
"Today, to get 57 percent saying that the climate is warming is good, because today everybody is grumpy about everything," Boxer said. "Science will win the day in America. Science always wins the day.".****Boxer wouldn't know science from a hole in the ground.****
Earlier polls, from different organizations, have not detected a growing skepticism about the science behind global warming
Since 1997, the percentage of Americans that believe the Earth is heating up has remained constant — at around 80 percent — in polling done by Jon Krosnick of Stanford University. Krosnick, who has been conducting surveys on attitudes about global warming since 1993, was surprised by the Pew results. He described the decline in the Pew results as "implausible," saying there is nothing that could have caused it.****How about Krosnick's own studies having been biased and wrong?**** The poll's margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Obamacare venality, intellectual dishonesty and misrepresentation
The Obama Administration's claim that American doctors support Obamacare ( e.g. HR 3200 ) is a lie.
The American Medical Association did endorse HR 3200 within 48 hours but the AMA represents less than 18% of American doctors with most of those being medical students and recent graduates who don't know better. The AMA is no longer a professional organization that gets its revenues from subscription fees as once it was. Now it gets $20M from such fees but $300M/year from its monopoly over Current Procedural Terminology ( CPT codes). These are copyrighted and earns the AMA a fee from any use of or access to the codes, the usage of which will vastly expand under the public option. Google "CPT Codes" and anyone can see the restrictions and demands for fee for use by the AMA.
Most doctors, in fact, are BOTH not members of the AMA and ARE OPPOSED to Obamacare. The AMA Journal is considered a joke publication with actual medical advances being published in the New England Journal of Medicine ( as well as specialty journals.) The AMA, just like AARP, no longer represents constitents but is, instead a revenue-enhancing bureaucracy ( the AARP gets its revenue from being a sales agent for insurance .)
The American Medical Association did endorse HR 3200 within 48 hours but the AMA represents less than 18% of American doctors with most of those being medical students and recent graduates who don't know better. The AMA is no longer a professional organization that gets its revenues from subscription fees as once it was. Now it gets $20M from such fees but $300M/year from its monopoly over Current Procedural Terminology ( CPT codes). These are copyrighted and earns the AMA a fee from any use of or access to the codes, the usage of which will vastly expand under the public option. Google "CPT Codes" and anyone can see the restrictions and demands for fee for use by the AMA.
Most doctors, in fact, are BOTH not members of the AMA and ARE OPPOSED to Obamacare. The AMA Journal is considered a joke publication with actual medical advances being published in the New England Journal of Medicine ( as well as specialty journals.) The AMA, just like AARP, no longer represents constitents but is, instead a revenue-enhancing bureaucracy ( the AARP gets its revenue from being a sales agent for insurance .)
An old analysis but deserving of repetition
HELL EXPLAINED BY A CHEMISTRY STUDENTThe following is an actual question given on University of Arizona chemistry mid term.
The answer by one student was so 'profound' that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well:
Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?
Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant.
One student, however, wrote the following:
First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. There fore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today.
Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.
This gives two possibilities:
1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.
2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell
freezes over.
So which is it?
If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, 'It will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you,' and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number two must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that
since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct....leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting 'Oh my God.'
THIS STUDENT RECEIVED AN A+.
The answer by one student was so 'profound' that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well:
Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?
Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant.
One student, however, wrote the following:
First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. There fore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today.
Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.
This gives two possibilities:
1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.
2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell
freezes over.
So which is it?
If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, 'It will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you,' and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number two must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that
since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct....leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting 'Oh my God.'
THIS STUDENT RECEIVED AN A+.
Apocalyptic but plausibe: decline of America; especially when led by someone who'd like to see it happen.
http://tinyurl.com/yh9q4fg
Death of 'Soul of Capitalism': Bogle, Faber, Moore 20 reasons America has lost its soul and collapse is inevitable By Paul B. Farrell
ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Jack Bogle published "The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism" four years ago. The battle's over. The sequel should be titled: "Capitalism Died a Lost Soul." Worse, we've lost "America's Soul." And, worldwide, the consequences will be catastrophic.That's why a man like Hong Kong contrarian economist Marc Faber warns in his Doom, Boom & Gloom Report: "The future will be a total disaster, with a collapse of our capitalistic system as we know it today."...//
Harvard Prof: U.S. Empire in DeclineBy: Dan Weil
The United States’ growing debt burden means the American empire is on the decline while China is on the rise, says Harvard history professor Niall Ferguson. “People have predicted American decline in the past. . . and been wrong,” he told Yahoo! News. “But let’s face it. If you’re trying to borrow $9 trillion to bail out your financial system and economy and already half your public debt is held by foreigners, it’s not really the conduct of a rising empire, is it?” He compared the United States to Spain in the 17th century and Britain in the 20th. “Excessive debt is usually a predictor of subsequent trouble.” The government debt burden is expected to total 56 percent of GDP this year.
While the U.S. is fading, China is rising, Ferguson says. “There is a fundamental relationship between economic change and political change,” he points out.“When China's economy is equal in size to that of the U.S., which could be as soon as 2027. . . it means not only that China is a major economic competitor — it's that already. It then becomes a diplomatic competitor and a military competitor."Legendary investor Jim Rogers also sees the U.S. losing its economic hegemony.Part of that slide will include an abandonment of the dollar as the world’s primary reserve currency, he told Moneynews.com. “The dollar is a terribly flawed currency” Rogers said. “We’re the biggest debtor nation in the history of the world.”
Death of 'Soul of Capitalism': Bogle, Faber, Moore 20 reasons America has lost its soul and collapse is inevitable By Paul B. Farrell
ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Jack Bogle published "The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism" four years ago. The battle's over. The sequel should be titled: "Capitalism Died a Lost Soul." Worse, we've lost "America's Soul." And, worldwide, the consequences will be catastrophic.That's why a man like Hong Kong contrarian economist Marc Faber warns in his Doom, Boom & Gloom Report: "The future will be a total disaster, with a collapse of our capitalistic system as we know it today."...//
Harvard Prof: U.S. Empire in DeclineBy: Dan Weil
The United States’ growing debt burden means the American empire is on the decline while China is on the rise, says Harvard history professor Niall Ferguson. “People have predicted American decline in the past. . . and been wrong,” he told Yahoo! News. “But let’s face it. If you’re trying to borrow $9 trillion to bail out your financial system and economy and already half your public debt is held by foreigners, it’s not really the conduct of a rising empire, is it?” He compared the United States to Spain in the 17th century and Britain in the 20th. “Excessive debt is usually a predictor of subsequent trouble.” The government debt burden is expected to total 56 percent of GDP this year.
While the U.S. is fading, China is rising, Ferguson says. “There is a fundamental relationship between economic change and political change,” he points out.“When China's economy is equal in size to that of the U.S., which could be as soon as 2027. . . it means not only that China is a major economic competitor — it's that already. It then becomes a diplomatic competitor and a military competitor."Legendary investor Jim Rogers also sees the U.S. losing its economic hegemony.Part of that slide will include an abandonment of the dollar as the world’s primary reserve currency, he told Moneynews.com. “The dollar is a terribly flawed currency” Rogers said. “We’re the biggest debtor nation in the history of the world.”
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Why did the UN Security Council condemn terrorism IN Iran although never BY Iran?
http://tinyurl.com/ylhxqda
UN Security Council strongly condemns terrorist attacks in Iran
UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 20 (Xinhua) -- The UN Security Council on Tuesday voiced its strong condemnation of "the deadly terrorist attacks" in the border city of Pishin in Iran, which left at least57 people dead and 150 others injured...
UN Security Council strongly condemns terrorist attacks in Iran
UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 20 (Xinhua) -- The UN Security Council on Tuesday voiced its strong condemnation of "the deadly terrorist attacks" in the border city of Pishin in Iran, which left at least57 people dead and 150 others injured...
Mishandling Iran and waffling on Afghanistan, too.
http://tinyurl.com/yhlgreo
Geneva: Big, Ominous Win for Iran By: Kenneth R. Timmerman...meeting in Geneva between the great powers and Iran delivered a big win for Iran, whose President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could go to bed that night once again truly believing "America can do nothing" — a phrase his mentor, Islamic revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, loved to repeat...Expectations ran high that Iran's representative would simply grandstand and use the talks to sermonize the United States, that we would walk out, and "crippling sanctions" would begin. But the Iranians played us masterfully. Instead of repeating Mr. Ahmadinejad's mantra that the nuclear issue was "off the table" and Iran would be happy to discuss the terms of our surrender, his representative, Saeed Jalali, bought precious time for Iran to continue its clandestine nuclear activities.
Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut independent, set the standard for what the talks should have produced in remarks to a conference on Capitol Hill at the very moment our negotiating team was getting snookered by the Iranians.
"If our engagement with Iran is to have credibility, the parties need to emerge from the meeting in Geneva today with a set of clear and credible benchmarks for mutual steps forward and a timetable for meeting them," Mr. Lieberman said. "These benchmarks must include verifiable suspension of all enrichment activities, as repeatedly demanded by the U.N. Security Council, and full cooperation with the [International Atomic Energy Agency] to resolve all outstanding questions about Iran's nuclear-related activities."
None of that came out of Thursday's meeting with the five permanent Security Council members plus Germany (P5+1). Instead, the Iranians changed the subject. ...
****Even the revelation that Iran was cheating with another, secret nuclear site, hidden under a Revolutionary Guards base --and a mountain-- was handled ineptly by the West and by Obama especially, who didn't want to "spoil" his UN debut with nasty truth about Iran.****
http://tinyurl.com/yktyhkw
...President George W. Bush personally briefed select members of Congress who were closely tracking Iran’s nuclear weapons activities many months earlier.
Despite those briefings, not a word of the secret project leaked out, even as top Republicans in Congress blasted the CIA for what they considered to be a politically-skewed National Intelligence Estimate on Iran issued in December 2007 that concluded that Iran had shut down its nuclear weapons programs in 2003.
...a defector from the IRGC named Brig. Gen. Ali Reza Asghari provided key information on the Qom facility....French intelligence officials who interviewed Asghari found his information so credible and alarming that they took it to president Nicolas Sarkozy in September 2007...totally contradicted everything France and its allies had been hearing from the International Atomic Energy Agency and from the CIA about Iran’s nuclear programs.
...But Sarkozy’s stance on Iran, and his effort to generate international focus on Iran’s nuclear weapons programs, was undercut by a politically-charged National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran released by the National Intelligence Council in December 2007. That much-disputed NIE seemed to run counter to everything that Sarkozy and French intelligence had learned from General Asghari. It also challenged earlier CIA conclusions about the Iranian nuclear weapons program....after the NIE was released, Sarkozy dismissed it in an interview with the French newsweekly, Le Nouvel Observateur. “Everyone agrees that what the Iranians are doing has no civilian explanation,” he said....Some of the analysts who worked on the December 2007 NIE have told reporters that they felt an overwhelming sense of political responsibility in drafting their report: to make sure they didn’t give President George W. Bush an excuse for launching military strikes on Iran.****So they distorted the truth! Lying to the prejudice of national security used to be called treason and was punishable by death.**** Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger publicly chided the analysts who wrote the NIE for politicizing intelligence....He excoriated them for seeking to become “surrogate policy-makers and advocates,” instead of analysts. The goal of the analysts writing the NIE was widely seen as tying the hands of President George W. Bush on Iran and specifically taking a military option off the table....analyst Tom Fingar, who coordinated the NIE, told an audience at the New Americas Foundation that the Iran NIE had been written and rewritten by June 2007, but that he and other analysts weren’t pleased with it because it repeated earlier estimates that Iran was continuing to pursue nuclear weapons....Sources who read the 1,500 source notes to the 140-page report said that its most dramatic assertion was based on “a single, unvetted source,”...“That’s not what I told the CIA,” he said. “I didn’t tell them that the nuclear weapons program had been shut down, but that it was ongoing.”
...An intelligence community fact sheet on the Qom enrichment facility released by the White House recently claimed that the new information on Qom “does not contradict our 2007 assessment of Iran’s nuclear program.” ****Incredible! Aside from that Mrs. Lincoln, it was quite an enjoyable evening at the theater, wasn't it?****
Geneva: Big, Ominous Win for Iran By: Kenneth R. Timmerman...meeting in Geneva between the great powers and Iran delivered a big win for Iran, whose President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could go to bed that night once again truly believing "America can do nothing" — a phrase his mentor, Islamic revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, loved to repeat...Expectations ran high that Iran's representative would simply grandstand and use the talks to sermonize the United States, that we would walk out, and "crippling sanctions" would begin. But the Iranians played us masterfully. Instead of repeating Mr. Ahmadinejad's mantra that the nuclear issue was "off the table" and Iran would be happy to discuss the terms of our surrender, his representative, Saeed Jalali, bought precious time for Iran to continue its clandestine nuclear activities.
Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut independent, set the standard for what the talks should have produced in remarks to a conference on Capitol Hill at the very moment our negotiating team was getting snookered by the Iranians.
"If our engagement with Iran is to have credibility, the parties need to emerge from the meeting in Geneva today with a set of clear and credible benchmarks for mutual steps forward and a timetable for meeting them," Mr. Lieberman said. "These benchmarks must include verifiable suspension of all enrichment activities, as repeatedly demanded by the U.N. Security Council, and full cooperation with the [International Atomic Energy Agency] to resolve all outstanding questions about Iran's nuclear-related activities."
None of that came out of Thursday's meeting with the five permanent Security Council members plus Germany (P5+1). Instead, the Iranians changed the subject. ...
****Even the revelation that Iran was cheating with another, secret nuclear site, hidden under a Revolutionary Guards base --and a mountain-- was handled ineptly by the West and by Obama especially, who didn't want to "spoil" his UN debut with nasty truth about Iran.****
http://tinyurl.com/yktyhkw
...President George W. Bush personally briefed select members of Congress who were closely tracking Iran’s nuclear weapons activities many months earlier.
Despite those briefings, not a word of the secret project leaked out, even as top Republicans in Congress blasted the CIA for what they considered to be a politically-skewed National Intelligence Estimate on Iran issued in December 2007 that concluded that Iran had shut down its nuclear weapons programs in 2003.
...a defector from the IRGC named Brig. Gen. Ali Reza Asghari provided key information on the Qom facility....French intelligence officials who interviewed Asghari found his information so credible and alarming that they took it to president Nicolas Sarkozy in September 2007...totally contradicted everything France and its allies had been hearing from the International Atomic Energy Agency and from the CIA about Iran’s nuclear programs.
...But Sarkozy’s stance on Iran, and his effort to generate international focus on Iran’s nuclear weapons programs, was undercut by a politically-charged National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran released by the National Intelligence Council in December 2007. That much-disputed NIE seemed to run counter to everything that Sarkozy and French intelligence had learned from General Asghari. It also challenged earlier CIA conclusions about the Iranian nuclear weapons program....after the NIE was released, Sarkozy dismissed it in an interview with the French newsweekly, Le Nouvel Observateur. “Everyone agrees that what the Iranians are doing has no civilian explanation,” he said....Some of the analysts who worked on the December 2007 NIE have told reporters that they felt an overwhelming sense of political responsibility in drafting their report: to make sure they didn’t give President George W. Bush an excuse for launching military strikes on Iran.****So they distorted the truth! Lying to the prejudice of national security used to be called treason and was punishable by death.**** Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger publicly chided the analysts who wrote the NIE for politicizing intelligence....He excoriated them for seeking to become “surrogate policy-makers and advocates,” instead of analysts. The goal of the analysts writing the NIE was widely seen as tying the hands of President George W. Bush on Iran and specifically taking a military option off the table....analyst Tom Fingar, who coordinated the NIE, told an audience at the New Americas Foundation that the Iran NIE had been written and rewritten by June 2007, but that he and other analysts weren’t pleased with it because it repeated earlier estimates that Iran was continuing to pursue nuclear weapons....Sources who read the 1,500 source notes to the 140-page report said that its most dramatic assertion was based on “a single, unvetted source,”...“That’s not what I told the CIA,” he said. “I didn’t tell them that the nuclear weapons program had been shut down, but that it was ongoing.”
...An intelligence community fact sheet on the Qom enrichment facility released by the White House recently claimed that the new information on Qom “does not contradict our 2007 assessment of Iran’s nuclear program.” ****Incredible! Aside from that Mrs. Lincoln, it was quite an enjoyable evening at the theater, wasn't it?****
The Nanny State educates her children.
From Taranto's Best of the Web
No Egg Sit "The BBC has defended a decision to change the ending of nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty," reports London's Daily Express:
A version used on the CBeebies channel was altered so rather than "couldn't put Humpty together again" all the King's horses "made Humpty happy again".
The broadcaster said the change was made purely for creative reasons rather than trying to give a soft version of the rhyme for children.
A spokeswoman said: "We play nursery rhymes with their original lyrics all the time and the small change to Humpty Dumpty was done for no other reason than being creative and entertaining."
But "Citygent," a commenter on the Express Web site, says he was traumatized by the original: I for one can date the exact moment when my childhood was ripped from me, and that was when I first heard that Humpty Dumpty's injuries were terminal. The callousness of how I was given the news after becoming so attached to him during the first line of the rhyme. I still haven't found closure.
On a different note, I can't look at a cow without assuming it will attempt a lunar orbit at any moment. It amazes me how they get milk out of them. As for Hickory Dickory Dock--I'm forced to relive the way the clock murdered one of the mice, constantly replaying it in my head over and over.... Stupid nursery rhymes ruined my life! Save our children from this horror!!
To our mind, the only problem with the BBC's revision is that it doesn't go far enough in removing the rhyme's invidious elements. Sitting on a wall is dangerous, not only because it increases the risk of a great fall, but also because such a sedentary lifestyle contributes to the obesity epidemic. And seriously, "all the king's horses and all the king's men"? This is elitist, sexist and offensive to equine-Americans! How about this:
Humpty Dumpty worked out on a beam
Humpty Dumpty had great self-esteem
All Gaia's creatures and humanity
Made Humpty feel proud to be GLB
Now if we can just get Child Protective Services to open an investigation into that elderly woman who lives in a shoe.
No Egg Sit "The BBC has defended a decision to change the ending of nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty," reports London's Daily Express:
A version used on the CBeebies channel was altered so rather than "couldn't put Humpty together again" all the King's horses "made Humpty happy again".
The broadcaster said the change was made purely for creative reasons rather than trying to give a soft version of the rhyme for children.
A spokeswoman said: "We play nursery rhymes with their original lyrics all the time and the small change to Humpty Dumpty was done for no other reason than being creative and entertaining."
But "Citygent," a commenter on the Express Web site, says he was traumatized by the original: I for one can date the exact moment when my childhood was ripped from me, and that was when I first heard that Humpty Dumpty's injuries were terminal. The callousness of how I was given the news after becoming so attached to him during the first line of the rhyme. I still haven't found closure.
On a different note, I can't look at a cow without assuming it will attempt a lunar orbit at any moment. It amazes me how they get milk out of them. As for Hickory Dickory Dock--I'm forced to relive the way the clock murdered one of the mice, constantly replaying it in my head over and over.... Stupid nursery rhymes ruined my life! Save our children from this horror!!
To our mind, the only problem with the BBC's revision is that it doesn't go far enough in removing the rhyme's invidious elements. Sitting on a wall is dangerous, not only because it increases the risk of a great fall, but also because such a sedentary lifestyle contributes to the obesity epidemic. And seriously, "all the king's horses and all the king's men"? This is elitist, sexist and offensive to equine-Americans! How about this:
Humpty Dumpty worked out on a beam
Humpty Dumpty had great self-esteem
All Gaia's creatures and humanity
Made Humpty feel proud to be GLB
Now if we can just get Child Protective Services to open an investigation into that elderly woman who lives in a shoe.
Snubbing the Dalai Lama is part of a pattern
http://tinyurl.com/yf7j5gp
Does Obama Believe in Human Rights? Human rights "interfere" with President Obama's campaign against climate change. By BRET STEPHENS...****Tibet, Chinese suppression of domestic dissidents, Sudan, Iran in every respect, Burma...all examples of "pre-emptive appeasement." Jimmy Carter is looking good by comparison--How can anyone be worse than Jimmy Carter?****
Does Obama Believe in Human Rights? Human rights "interfere" with President Obama's campaign against climate change. By BRET STEPHENS...****Tibet, Chinese suppression of domestic dissidents, Sudan, Iran in every respect, Burma...all examples of "pre-emptive appeasement." Jimmy Carter is looking good by comparison--How can anyone be worse than Jimmy Carter?****
Monday, October 19, 2009
As it goes with the Dalai Lama, so goes Obama with good and evil.
http://tinyurl.com/yfqxldc
The small nations of the world are at the mercy of the bad guys with Obamaian morality in charge.
The small nations of the world are at the mercy of the bad guys with Obamaian morality in charge.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Intelligence community wants a "do-over" when, in fact, they were just wrong ( or biased!)
http://tinyurl.com/yj9ay8o
U.S. Considers a New Assessment of Iran Threat
Amid Pressure After Latest Nuclear Revelations, Spy Agencies Rethink a 2007 Judgment That Weapons Effort Had Been Halted By SIOBHAN GORMAN and JAY SOLOMON
WASHINGTON -- U.S. spy agencies are considering whether to rewrite a controversial 2007 intelligence report that asserted Tehran halted its efforts to build nuclear weapons in 2003, current and former U.S. intelligence officials say.The intelligence agencies' rethink comes as pressure is mounting on Capitol Hill, and among U.S. allies, for the Obama administration to redo the 2007 assessment, after a string of recent revelations about Tehran's nuclear program.German, French and British intelligence agencies have all disputed the conclusions of the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, or NIE, in recent months, according to European officials briefed on the exchanges...****The agencies responsible for the NIE are claiming that
"there's new information" since the 2007 report as if they were right then and now merely have to update. Actually, the three authors of the 2007 report, Tom Fingar et al, were biased agents and were WRONG at the time and probably knew it, deliberately distorting the truth for their own political agenda. "The new information" merely demonstrated irrefutably that their supposed conclusions were erroneous; other intelligence agencies didn't believe the report AT THE TIME.It is the POLITICIZATION of intelligence that should be investigated. When one is shown to have lied, you don't give him a mulligan to avoid charges of perjury.****
U.S. Considers a New Assessment of Iran Threat
Amid Pressure After Latest Nuclear Revelations, Spy Agencies Rethink a 2007 Judgment That Weapons Effort Had Been Halted By SIOBHAN GORMAN and JAY SOLOMON
WASHINGTON -- U.S. spy agencies are considering whether to rewrite a controversial 2007 intelligence report that asserted Tehran halted its efforts to build nuclear weapons in 2003, current and former U.S. intelligence officials say.The intelligence agencies' rethink comes as pressure is mounting on Capitol Hill, and among U.S. allies, for the Obama administration to redo the 2007 assessment, after a string of recent revelations about Tehran's nuclear program.German, French and British intelligence agencies have all disputed the conclusions of the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, or NIE, in recent months, according to European officials briefed on the exchanges...****The agencies responsible for the NIE are claiming that
"there's new information" since the 2007 report as if they were right then and now merely have to update. Actually, the three authors of the 2007 report, Tom Fingar et al, were biased agents and were WRONG at the time and probably knew it, deliberately distorting the truth for their own political agenda. "The new information" merely demonstrated irrefutably that their supposed conclusions were erroneous; other intelligence agencies didn't believe the report AT THE TIME.It is the POLITICIZATION of intelligence that should be investigated. When one is shown to have lied, you don't give him a mulligan to avoid charges of perjury.****
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Data destroyed that supposedly showed global warming. Hmmm!
http://tinyurl.com/ycnr377
Govt-Funded Research Unit Destroyed Original Climate Data by Christine Hall
CEI Petitions EPA to Reopen Global Warming Rulemaking
Washington, D.C., October 6, 2009―In the wake of a revelation by a key research institution that it destroyed its original climate data, the Competitive Enterprise Institute petitioned EPA to reopen a major global warming proceeding...CEI general counsel Sam Kazman stated, “EPA is resting its case on international studies that in turn relied on CRU data. But CRU’s suspicious destruction of its original data, disclosed at this late date, makes that information totally unreliable. If EPA doesn’t reexamine the implications of this, it’s stumbling blindly into the most important regulatory issue we face.”
http://tinyurl.com/ylxh8qv.
http://tinyurl.com/yzw5chr
Govt-Funded Research Unit Destroyed Original Climate Data by Christine Hall
CEI Petitions EPA to Reopen Global Warming Rulemaking
Washington, D.C., October 6, 2009―In the wake of a revelation by a key research institution that it destroyed its original climate data, the Competitive Enterprise Institute petitioned EPA to reopen a major global warming proceeding...CEI general counsel Sam Kazman stated, “EPA is resting its case on international studies that in turn relied on CRU data. But CRU’s suspicious destruction of its original data, disclosed at this late date, makes that information totally unreliable. If EPA doesn’t reexamine the implications of this, it’s stumbling blindly into the most important regulatory issue we face.”
http://tinyurl.com/ylxh8qv.
http://tinyurl.com/yzw5chr
Both sides of the appeasement process shows a lack of honor
We know President Obama as an appeaser: of the Iranians, of the Muslim world generally, of the auto unions and trial lawyers. He has also been the APPEASED when the health insurance industry tried to strike a deal with him that motivated their support for his Obamacare, until recently. What happened? The industry thought they had bought protection by promising to implement guaranteed issue ( no denial for prior illness ) and community rating ( most insureds would get the same rate.) However, they thought they would get new policyholders through high penalties for those without health insurance and certainly thought they would get a fair shake on the public relations front. The President's word could not be trusted, however, and it became clear that many would remain uninsured and then the President started to demonize the industry.
The American Medical Association, representing about 18% of American doctors, also tried to appease the President thinking that they would get "protestion" for endorsing Obamacare in principle. Again, the putative benefits promised to the AMA were withdrawn when the various Congressional plans surfaced with diminished reimbursements for physicians in the offing and penalties for doctors running up too much in medical costs ( as, for example, by prescribing too many tests or drugs, raising the issue of what they are to do when they cannot diagnose the cause of an illness with n tests and need n+1 or more.) The doctors have also been scammed although Obama trumpeted their "support" in the past.
AARP signed on to Obamacare despite the fact that $500B in Medicare cuts were contemplated from the getgo. AARP is only nominally a representative of American seniors; actually it is a sales arm of the Colonial Penn Insurance companhy and hopes to sell insurance with an inside track.AARP seems still to be on board although its members are leaving and forming other groups.
The drug companies, hospitals et al seemed to sign on because their promises of cuts of hundreds of billions of dollars over ten years was expected to be made up for by increased utilization. Now it turns out that the promises were accepted but the quid pro quo is absent.
The lesson of all this is general and specific: appeasement never works and Obama's word is worthless. Poland, The Czech Republic and Israel are taking notice.Unfortunately, so are Russia, Iran, North Korea and Al Qaeda.
http://tinyurl.com/ylq5h6c
DEMS BETRAY HEALTH CARE QUISLINGSFor anyone not familiar with the term “quisling,” it means “traitor or collaborator.” It entered the vernacular after WWII. Wikipedia provides the following etymology:After Norwegian politician Vidkun Quisling, who assisted Nazi Germany to conquer his own country.This is why the term is so apposite for the people at the AMA, Big Pharma and other health industry players who collaborated with the President and congressional Democrats on Obamacare...these idiots thought genuflecting at the altar of ”reform” would buy them special treatment. They thought the beast would eat someone else. They were, of course, being played for chumps by Obama and the Dems...
The American Medical Association, representing about 18% of American doctors, also tried to appease the President thinking that they would get "protestion" for endorsing Obamacare in principle. Again, the putative benefits promised to the AMA were withdrawn when the various Congressional plans surfaced with diminished reimbursements for physicians in the offing and penalties for doctors running up too much in medical costs ( as, for example, by prescribing too many tests or drugs, raising the issue of what they are to do when they cannot diagnose the cause of an illness with n tests and need n+1 or more.) The doctors have also been scammed although Obama trumpeted their "support" in the past.
AARP signed on to Obamacare despite the fact that $500B in Medicare cuts were contemplated from the getgo. AARP is only nominally a representative of American seniors; actually it is a sales arm of the Colonial Penn Insurance companhy and hopes to sell insurance with an inside track.AARP seems still to be on board although its members are leaving and forming other groups.
The drug companies, hospitals et al seemed to sign on because their promises of cuts of hundreds of billions of dollars over ten years was expected to be made up for by increased utilization. Now it turns out that the promises were accepted but the quid pro quo is absent.
The lesson of all this is general and specific: appeasement never works and Obama's word is worthless. Poland, The Czech Republic and Israel are taking notice.Unfortunately, so are Russia, Iran, North Korea and Al Qaeda.
http://tinyurl.com/ylq5h6c
DEMS BETRAY HEALTH CARE QUISLINGSFor anyone not familiar with the term “quisling,” it means “traitor or collaborator.” It entered the vernacular after WWII. Wikipedia provides the following etymology:After Norwegian politician Vidkun Quisling, who assisted Nazi Germany to conquer his own country.This is why the term is so apposite for the people at the AMA, Big Pharma and other health industry players who collaborated with the President and congressional Democrats on Obamacare...these idiots thought genuflecting at the altar of ”reform” would buy them special treatment. They thought the beast would eat someone else. They were, of course, being played for chumps by Obama and the Dems...
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
"Miracles" take lots of preparation
http://tinyurl.com/yg3a7pa
What We Can Learn From Sully's Journey By JEFFREY ZASLOW US Airways Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger has flown thousands of flights in the last 42 years. "But now," he says, "my entire career is being judged by how I performed on one of them."...One letter that was particularly touching to Sully came from Paul Kellen of Medford, Mass. "I see a hero as electing to enter a dangerous situation for a higher purpose," he wrote, "and you were not given a choice. That is not to say you are not a man of virtue, but I see your virtue arising from your choices at other times. It's clear that many choices in your life prepared you for that moment when your engines failed...
What We Can Learn From Sully's Journey By JEFFREY ZASLOW US Airways Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger has flown thousands of flights in the last 42 years. "But now," he says, "my entire career is being judged by how I performed on one of them."...One letter that was particularly touching to Sully came from Paul Kellen of Medford, Mass. "I see a hero as electing to enter a dangerous situation for a higher purpose," he wrote, "and you were not given a choice. That is not to say you are not a man of virtue, but I see your virtue arising from your choices at other times. It's clear that many choices in your life prepared you for that moment when your engines failed...
Fecklessness in government.
****When Obama proudly declaimed that "I didn't take calculus" he indicated he didn't know it is important to understand economics and science so he understands neither. Worse, he doesn't care... much as he doesn't care about American exceptionalism or is actually opposed to it!The cavalier attitude toward the dollar demonstrates this.****
http://tinyurl.com/yffbyuv
The Message of Dollar Disdain With U.S. debt set to exceed 100% of GDP in 2011, it's no wonder people are looking for alternative ways to preserve wealth. By JUDY SHELTON Unprecedented spending, unending fiscal deficits, unconscionable accumulations of government debt: These are the trends that are shaping America's financial future. And since loose monetary policy and a weak U.S. dollar are part of the mix, apparently,...the reputation of our nation's money is being severely compromised...To be "sound as a dollar" is to be deemed trustworthy, dependable, and in good working condition.***Or used to be.***
...the dollar is increasingly perceived as the default mechanism for out-of-control government spending, its role as a reliable standard of value is destined to fade. ...the projected budget numbers anticipate a permanent pattern of deficit spending and vastly higher levels of outstanding federal debt....it's a mathematical impossibility to reduce debt if you continue to spend more than you take in....To put it in perspective: U.S. federal debt was equal to 61.4% of GDP in 1999; it grew to 70.2% of GDP in 2008 (under the Bush administration); it will climb to an estimated 90.4% this year and touch the 100% mark in 2011, after which the projected federal debt will continue to equal or exceed our nation's entire annual economic output through 2019.****N.B. The "debt" is an integral number, the cumulative sum of annual "deficits." The GDP ( as is the deficit ) is a differential number, referring to only one's year's results. The analogy to a company's books is that the debt is the same but the GDP is only the annual REVENUE, i.e. not even profits.**** The U.S. is thus slated to enter the ranks of those countries...with the highest government debt-to-GDP ratio (which measures the debt burden ...The U.S. has long served as the world's "indispensable nation" and the dollar's primary role in the global economy has likewise seemed to testify to American exceptionalism. But the passivity in Washington toward our dismal fiscal future, and its inevitable toll on U.S. economic influence, suggests that American global leadership is no longer a priority and that America's money cannot be trusted.
...Whether the U.S. can once more summon the resolve to address its problems is an open question. But the world's growing dollar disdain conveys a message: Issuing more promissory notes is not the way to renew America's promise.
http://tinyurl.com/yffbyuv
The Message of Dollar Disdain With U.S. debt set to exceed 100% of GDP in 2011, it's no wonder people are looking for alternative ways to preserve wealth. By JUDY SHELTON Unprecedented spending, unending fiscal deficits, unconscionable accumulations of government debt: These are the trends that are shaping America's financial future. And since loose monetary policy and a weak U.S. dollar are part of the mix, apparently,...the reputation of our nation's money is being severely compromised...To be "sound as a dollar" is to be deemed trustworthy, dependable, and in good working condition.***Or used to be.***
...the dollar is increasingly perceived as the default mechanism for out-of-control government spending, its role as a reliable standard of value is destined to fade. ...the projected budget numbers anticipate a permanent pattern of deficit spending and vastly higher levels of outstanding federal debt....it's a mathematical impossibility to reduce debt if you continue to spend more than you take in....To put it in perspective: U.S. federal debt was equal to 61.4% of GDP in 1999; it grew to 70.2% of GDP in 2008 (under the Bush administration); it will climb to an estimated 90.4% this year and touch the 100% mark in 2011, after which the projected federal debt will continue to equal or exceed our nation's entire annual economic output through 2019.****N.B. The "debt" is an integral number, the cumulative sum of annual "deficits." The GDP ( as is the deficit ) is a differential number, referring to only one's year's results. The analogy to a company's books is that the debt is the same but the GDP is only the annual REVENUE, i.e. not even profits.**** The U.S. is thus slated to enter the ranks of those countries...with the highest government debt-to-GDP ratio (which measures the debt burden ...The U.S. has long served as the world's "indispensable nation" and the dollar's primary role in the global economy has likewise seemed to testify to American exceptionalism. But the passivity in Washington toward our dismal fiscal future, and its inevitable toll on U.S. economic influence, suggests that American global leadership is no longer a priority and that America's money cannot be trusted.
...Whether the U.S. can once more summon the resolve to address its problems is an open question. But the world's growing dollar disdain conveys a message: Issuing more promissory notes is not the way to renew America's promise.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Reductio ad absurdum
http://tinyurl.com/yhcu3po
A Wicked and Ignorant Award
How Barack Obama could help redeem the Norwegian Nobel Committee's grievous mistake By PEGGY NOONAN
It is absurd and it is embarrassing. It would even be infuriating if it were not such a declaration of emptiness.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has embarrassed itself and cheapened a great award that had real meaning.
It was a good thing, the Nobel Peace Prize. Every year the giving of it was a matter of note throughout the world, almost a matter of state. It was serious. It mattered that it was given to a woman like Mother Teresa in 1979... //
****When Yasser Arafat, a known terrorist, got the Nobel Peace Prize it seemed questionable that the prize meant anything. When it caused people to look at the history of the prize, other questions were raised about its meaningfulness or value. The Obama award has removed all doubt. The loony liberal Norsemen commit errors of both the first and second kind, are just silly and have ALWAYS BEEN SO. Absurdity is sometimes clarifying and useful, especially for Americans who might well question whether loony liberal Norsemen accord with American values or are, rather, a CONTRAINDICATION. If Castro, Chavez, Gadhafi et al AND the loony Norsemen love someone, should we?****
http://tinyurl.com/yj5etem
A Perfect Nobel Pick By BRET STEPHENS
...some of the worthies of yesteryear who were favored with a Nobel Peace Prize before disappearing into the footnotes of history...you really know nothing about the values and thinking that have informed a century of prize giving. Far from being an aberrant choice, President Obama was the ideal one, Scandinavianally speaking. The peace Nobel is a much misunderstood prize. With the exception of a few ...most of the prize winners draw from the obscure ranks of the sorts of people the late Oriana Fallaci liked to call "the Goodists." Who are the Goodists? They are the people who believe all conflict stems from avoidable misunderstanding. Who think that the world's evils spring from technologies, systems, complexes (as in "military-industrial") and everything else except from the hearts of men, where love abides. Who mistake wishes for possibilities. Who put a higher premium on their own moral intentions than on the efficacy of their actions. Who champion education as the solution, whatever the problem. Above all, the Goodists are the people who like to be seen to be good...So let there be no doubt that the Nobel Committee did well in choosing Mr. Obama. What this portends for the kind of peace and security that has been bequeathed to us by the exertions of such non-Nobelists as Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan is another question.
A Wicked and Ignorant Award
How Barack Obama could help redeem the Norwegian Nobel Committee's grievous mistake By PEGGY NOONAN
It is absurd and it is embarrassing. It would even be infuriating if it were not such a declaration of emptiness.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has embarrassed itself and cheapened a great award that had real meaning.
It was a good thing, the Nobel Peace Prize. Every year the giving of it was a matter of note throughout the world, almost a matter of state. It was serious. It mattered that it was given to a woman like Mother Teresa in 1979... //
****When Yasser Arafat, a known terrorist, got the Nobel Peace Prize it seemed questionable that the prize meant anything. When it caused people to look at the history of the prize, other questions were raised about its meaningfulness or value. The Obama award has removed all doubt. The loony liberal Norsemen commit errors of both the first and second kind, are just silly and have ALWAYS BEEN SO. Absurdity is sometimes clarifying and useful, especially for Americans who might well question whether loony liberal Norsemen accord with American values or are, rather, a CONTRAINDICATION. If Castro, Chavez, Gadhafi et al AND the loony Norsemen love someone, should we?****
http://tinyurl.com/yj5etem
A Perfect Nobel Pick By BRET STEPHENS
...some of the worthies of yesteryear who were favored with a Nobel Peace Prize before disappearing into the footnotes of history...you really know nothing about the values and thinking that have informed a century of prize giving. Far from being an aberrant choice, President Obama was the ideal one, Scandinavianally speaking. The peace Nobel is a much misunderstood prize. With the exception of a few ...most of the prize winners draw from the obscure ranks of the sorts of people the late Oriana Fallaci liked to call "the Goodists." Who are the Goodists? They are the people who believe all conflict stems from avoidable misunderstanding. Who think that the world's evils spring from technologies, systems, complexes (as in "military-industrial") and everything else except from the hearts of men, where love abides. Who mistake wishes for possibilities. Who put a higher premium on their own moral intentions than on the efficacy of their actions. Who champion education as the solution, whatever the problem. Above all, the Goodists are the people who like to be seen to be good...So let there be no doubt that the Nobel Committee did well in choosing Mr. Obama. What this portends for the kind of peace and security that has been bequeathed to us by the exertions of such non-Nobelists as Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan is another question.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Lefty Norsks see end of American exceptionalism and values; when will Americans?
http://tinyurl.com/yklrkwn
The Nobel Hope Prize An award for the end of American exceptionalism.
The Nobel Peace Prize awarded to President Obama yesterday was greeted with astonishment as much as any other emotion, even among many of his admirers. Our own reaction is bemusement at the Norwegian decision to offer what amounts to the world's first futures prize in diplomacy, with the Nobel Committee anticipating the heroic concessions that it believes Mr. Obama will make to secure treaties...****that will diminish America and American values.The europeans recognize one of their own; when will Americans?****
The Nobel Hope Prize An award for the end of American exceptionalism.
The Nobel Peace Prize awarded to President Obama yesterday was greeted with astonishment as much as any other emotion, even among many of his admirers. Our own reaction is bemusement at the Norwegian decision to offer what amounts to the world's first futures prize in diplomacy, with the Nobel Committee anticipating the heroic concessions that it believes Mr. Obama will make to secure treaties...****that will diminish America and American values.The europeans recognize one of their own; when will Americans?****
Friday, October 9, 2009
The Nobel Peace Prize for subverting America
****It's the reductio ad absurdum of the politicization of the Norwegians' dislike for traditional American values. It's in the spirit of awards to Jimmy Carter (specifically stated to be a slap at Bush), Gore, Kofi Annan, El Baradei, Arafat et al.Even Hitler is said to have been nominated.****
http://tinyurl.com/yz6zkb6
THE NOBEL PRIZE TO OBAMA: EUROPE'S BID TO RE-COLONIZE AMERICA
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN...
The Great Onion
****The Onion has achieved superstar status.Yoda's first thought on seeing this morning's news was that it was a headline from the Onion. We were not alone:Life Imitates the Onion Imitating Life
• "Gore Wins Oscar, Nobel Peace Prize for Slide-Show Presentation"--headline, Onion, Dec. 18, 2007
• "When I saw this morning's top New York Times headline--'Barack Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize'--I had the same immediate reaction which I'm certain many others had: this was some kind of bizarre Onion gag that got accidentally transposed onto the wrong website, that it was just some sort of strange joke someone was playing."--Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com, Oct. 9, 2009
• "Maybe it was because I saw the headline early this morning not on the N.Y. Times's website or the Wall Street Journal's, but rather on Google News. I instantly assumed that the Onion had successfully landed a story on the home page of that fine aggregator. "Barack Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize," the headline said. I chuckled, silently congratulated the Onion on its clever idea, and clicked the link."--Stephen Dubner, New York Times Web site, Oct. 9, 2009
• "I woke up, read the New York Times website and thought I had come to the Onion instead. I hit refresh. Still there: 'Obama Wins Nobel for Diplomacy.' "--Richard Kim, The Nation Web site, Oct. 9, 2009//
http://tinyurl.com/yge8jly
Most Embarrassing MomentThe Norwegian Nobel Committee makes President Obama look ridiculous. By JAMES TARANTO...
http://tinyurl.com/yz6zkb6
THE NOBEL PRIZE TO OBAMA: EUROPE'S BID TO RE-COLONIZE AMERICA
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN...
The Great Onion
****The Onion has achieved superstar status.Yoda's first thought on seeing this morning's news was that it was a headline from the Onion. We were not alone:Life Imitates the Onion Imitating Life
• "Gore Wins Oscar, Nobel Peace Prize for Slide-Show Presentation"--headline, Onion, Dec. 18, 2007
• "When I saw this morning's top New York Times headline--'Barack Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize'--I had the same immediate reaction which I'm certain many others had: this was some kind of bizarre Onion gag that got accidentally transposed onto the wrong website, that it was just some sort of strange joke someone was playing."--Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com, Oct. 9, 2009
• "Maybe it was because I saw the headline early this morning not on the N.Y. Times's website or the Wall Street Journal's, but rather on Google News. I instantly assumed that the Onion had successfully landed a story on the home page of that fine aggregator. "Barack Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize," the headline said. I chuckled, silently congratulated the Onion on its clever idea, and clicked the link."--Stephen Dubner, New York Times Web site, Oct. 9, 2009
• "I woke up, read the New York Times website and thought I had come to the Onion instead. I hit refresh. Still there: 'Obama Wins Nobel for Diplomacy.' "--Richard Kim, The Nation Web site, Oct. 9, 2009//
http://tinyurl.com/yge8jly
Most Embarrassing MomentThe Norwegian Nobel Committee makes President Obama look ridiculous. By JAMES TARANTO...
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
The rookie's being tested...and blinks.
Joe Biden's right...about Obama being tested in foreign policy early on. So far, he's consistently failed:betraying allies and appeasing enemies becoming known as The Obama Doctrine. Now he's just dithering; and they said he couldn't continue to vote "Present" as President.
http://tinyurl.com/ybuqmrr
Obama and the General The White House finds a four-star scapegoat for its Afghan jitters....
http://tinyurl.com/ybuqmrr
Obama and the General The White House finds a four-star scapegoat for its Afghan jitters....
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
No rationing? It's here from the getgo.
http://tinyurl.com/y94c5vz
The War on Specialists ObamaCare punishes cardiology and oncology to finance GPs.
...Compared to bread-and-butter primary care doctors, specialists cost more to train and make more use of expensive procedures and technology—and therefore cost the government more money...the quiet war Democrats are waging on specialists is astonishing....they're trying to engineer a "cheaper" system so that government can afford to buy health care for all—even if the price is fewer and less innovative ways of extending and improving lives...
The War on Specialists ObamaCare punishes cardiology and oncology to finance GPs.
...Compared to bread-and-butter primary care doctors, specialists cost more to train and make more use of expensive procedures and technology—and therefore cost the government more money...the quiet war Democrats are waging on specialists is astonishing....they're trying to engineer a "cheaper" system so that government can afford to buy health care for all—even if the price is fewer and less innovative ways of extending and improving lives...
How completely plausible this collusion between the US and the UN
http://tinyurl.com/ya5gmvr
How Israel Was Disarmed News analysis from the near-future. By BRET STEPHENS... ****At the UN, Obama discussed this rather than mention the latest Iranian nuclear facility.***
How Israel Was Disarmed News analysis from the near-future. By BRET STEPHENS... ****At the UN, Obama discussed this rather than mention the latest Iranian nuclear facility.***
Monday, October 5, 2009
Honduras' Zelaya is, and/or s supported by, an anti-Semite
****Perhaps that's the attraction to the U.S. State Department of a Hugo Chavez wannabe like Zelaya.****
http://tinyurl.com/ybdlaea
Revolutionary Anti-Semitism By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRAD
Sometimes I ask myself if Hitler wasn't right when he wanted to finish with that race, through the famous holocaust, because if there are people that are harmful to this country, they are the Jews, the Israelites. David Romero Ellner, Executive Director, Radio Globo, Honduras, Sept. 25, 2009
Meet one of Honduras's most vocal advocates for the return of deposed president Manuel Zelaya to office...
http://tinyurl.com/ybdlaea
Revolutionary Anti-Semitism By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRAD
Sometimes I ask myself if Hitler wasn't right when he wanted to finish with that race, through the famous holocaust, because if there are people that are harmful to this country, they are the Jews, the Israelites. David Romero Ellner, Executive Director, Radio Globo, Honduras, Sept. 25, 2009
Meet one of Honduras's most vocal advocates for the return of deposed president Manuel Zelaya to office...
Count on the U.N. and El Baradei to look the wrong way.
ElBaradei says nuclear Israel number one threat to Mideast: report
www.chinaview.cn http://imgs.xinhuanet.com/icon/2006english/2007korea/space.gif2009-10-04 22:44:00
http://imgs.xinhuanet.com/icon/2006english/xiao.jpghttp://imgs.xinhuanet.com/icon/2006english/2007korea/space.gifhttp://imgs.xinhuanet.com/icon/2006english/da.jpghttp://imgs.xinhuanet.com/icon/2006english/2007korea/space.gifPrint
TEHRAN, Oct. 4 (Xinhua) -- Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed ElBaradei said Sunday that "Israel is number one threat to Middle East" with its nuclear arms, the official IRNA news agency reported.
At a joint press conference with Iran's Atomic Energy Organization chief Ali Akbar Salehi in Tehran, ElBaradei brought Israel under spotlight and said that the Tel Aviv regime has refused to allow inspections into its nuclear installations for 30years, the report said.****Since it never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Pact, it doesn't have to.****
"Israel is the number one threat to the Middle East given the nuclear arms it possesses," ElBaradei was quoted as saying.****He might be right but HOW DOES HE KNOW? Actually, he knows that less than he knows that Iran is striving for nuclear weapons. ****
Israel is widely assumed to have nuclear capabilities, although it refuses to confirm or deny the allegation.
"This (possession of nuclear arms) was the cause for some proper measures to gain access to its (Israel's) power plants ... and the U.S. president has done some positive measures for the inspections to happen," said ElBaradei.ElBaradei arrived in Iran Saturday for talks with Iranian officials over Tehran's nuclear program.
Leaders of the United States, France and Britain have condemned Iran's alleged deception to the international community involving covert activities in its new underground nuclear site.****Has he inspected the nuclear weapons of France, Britain, China, Russia, North Korea?****
Last month, Iran confirmed that it is building a new nuclear fuel enrichment plant near its northwestern city of Qom. In reaction, the IAEA asked Tehran to provide detailed information and access to the new nuclear facility as soon as possible.
On Sunday, ElBaradei said the UN nuclear watchdog would inspect Iran's new uranium plant near Qom on Oct. 25.
www.chinaview.cn http://imgs.xinhuanet.com/icon/2006english/2007korea/space.gif2009-10-04 22:44:00
http://imgs.xinhuanet.com/icon/2006english/xiao.jpghttp://imgs.xinhuanet.com/icon/2006english/2007korea/space.gifhttp://imgs.xinhuanet.com/icon/2006english/da.jpghttp://imgs.xinhuanet.com/icon/2006english/2007korea/space.gifPrint
TEHRAN, Oct. 4 (Xinhua) -- Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed ElBaradei said Sunday that "Israel is number one threat to Middle East" with its nuclear arms, the official IRNA news agency reported.
At a joint press conference with Iran's Atomic Energy Organization chief Ali Akbar Salehi in Tehran, ElBaradei brought Israel under spotlight and said that the Tel Aviv regime has refused to allow inspections into its nuclear installations for 30years, the report said.****Since it never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Pact, it doesn't have to.****
"Israel is the number one threat to the Middle East given the nuclear arms it possesses," ElBaradei was quoted as saying.****He might be right but HOW DOES HE KNOW? Actually, he knows that less than he knows that Iran is striving for nuclear weapons. ****
Israel is widely assumed to have nuclear capabilities, although it refuses to confirm or deny the allegation.
"This (possession of nuclear arms) was the cause for some proper measures to gain access to its (Israel's) power plants ... and the U.S. president has done some positive measures for the inspections to happen," said ElBaradei.ElBaradei arrived in Iran Saturday for talks with Iranian officials over Tehran's nuclear program.
Leaders of the United States, France and Britain have condemned Iran's alleged deception to the international community involving covert activities in its new underground nuclear site.****Has he inspected the nuclear weapons of France, Britain, China, Russia, North Korea?****
Last month, Iran confirmed that it is building a new nuclear fuel enrichment plant near its northwestern city of Qom. In reaction, the IAEA asked Tehran to provide detailed information and access to the new nuclear facility as soon as possible.
On Sunday, ElBaradei said the UN nuclear watchdog would inspect Iran's new uranium plant near Qom on Oct. 25.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Brit news claims Ahmadinejad born Jewish are quickly debunked.
http://tinyurl.com/y9jbqvv
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad revealed to have Jewish past
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's vitriolic attacks on the Jewish world hide an astonishing secret, evidence uncovered by The Daily Telegraph shows.By Damien McElroy and Ahmad Vahdat...
****I suspect Jews will try to keep this quiet.He's not much to be proud of.****
http://tinyurl.com/y8juw5h
Ahmadinejad has no Jewish roots Rumours that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's family converted to Islam from Judaism are false. In fact, they are proud Shias...***The first report did appear unbelievable and inconsistent with his position as a fanatical believer in an apocalypse and return of the legendary "twelfth Imam".***
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad revealed to have Jewish past
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's vitriolic attacks on the Jewish world hide an astonishing secret, evidence uncovered by The Daily Telegraph shows.By Damien McElroy and Ahmad Vahdat...
****I suspect Jews will try to keep this quiet.He's not much to be proud of.****
http://tinyurl.com/y8juw5h
Ahmadinejad has no Jewish roots Rumours that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's family converted to Islam from Judaism are false. In fact, they are proud Shias...***The first report did appear unbelievable and inconsistent with his position as a fanatical believer in an apocalypse and return of the legendary "twelfth Imam".***
Is Obama anti-Semitic and anti-Israel? Here's why.
THE SOURCE OF OBAMA’S ANTI-ISRAEL POLICY
by Bishop E W Jackson Sr
Like Obama, I am a graduate of Harvard Law School. I too have Muslims in my family. I am black, and I was once a leftist Democrat. Since our backgrounds are somewhat similar, I perceive something in Obama’s policy toward Israel which people without that background may not see. All my life I have witnessed a strain of anti-Semitism in the black community. It has been fueled by the rise of the Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan, but it predates that organization.
We heard it in Jesse Jackson’s “HYMIE town” remark years ago during his presidential campaign. We heard it most recently in Jeremiah Wright’s remark about “them Jews” not allowing Obama to speak with him. I hear it from my own Muslim family members who see the problem in the Middle East as a “Jew” problem.
Growing up in a small, predominantly black urban community in Pennsylvania, I heard the comments about Jewish shop owners. They were “greedy cheaters” who could not be trusted, according to my family and others in the neighborhood. I was too young to understand what it means to be Jewish, or know that I was hearing anti-Semitism. These people seemed nice enough to me, but others said they were “evil”. Sadly, this bigotry has yet to be eradicated from the black community.****Where, really, is the greatest remaining racism in American society? That's why they have to define that minorities CANNOT be racist.****
In Chicago, the anti-Jewish sentiment among black people is even more pronounced because of the direct influence of Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. Most African Americans are not followers of “The Nation”, but many have a quiet respect for its leader because, they say, “he speaks the truth” and “stands up for the black man”. What they mean of course is that he viciously attacks the perceived “enemies” of the black community white people and Jews. Even some self-described Christians buy into his demagoguery.
The question is whether Obama, given his Muslim roots and experience in Farrakhan’s Chicago, shares this antipathy for Israel and Jewish people. Is there any evidence that he does? First, the President was taught for twenty years by a virulent anti-Semite, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. In the black community it is called “sitting under”. You don’t merely attend a church, you “sit under” a Pastor to be taught and mentored by him. Obama “sat under” Wright for a very long time. He was comfortable enough with Farrakhan, Wright’s friend, to attend and help organize his “Million Man March”. I was on C-Span the morning of the march arguing that we must never legitimize a racist and anti-Semite, no matter what “good” he claims to be doing. Yet a future President was in the crowd giving Farrakhan his enthusiastic support.
The classic left wing view is that Israel is the oppressive occupier, and the Palestinians are Israel’s victims.Obama is clearly sympathetic to this view. In speaking to the “Muslim World,” he did not address the widespread Islamic hatred of Jews. Instead he attacked Israel over the growth of West Bank settlements. Surely he knows that settlements are not the crux of the problem. The absolute refusal of the Palestinians to accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state is the insurmountable obstacle. That’s where the pressure needs to be placed, but this President sees it differently. He also made the preposterous comparison of the Holocaust to Palestinian “dislocation”.
Obama clearly has Muslim sensibilities. He sees the world and Israel from a Muslim perspective. His construct of “The Muslim World” is unique in modern diplomacy. It is said that only The Muslim Brotherhood and other radical elements of the religion use that concept. It is a call to unify Muslims around the world. It is rather odd to hear an American President use it. In doing so he reveals more about his thinking than he intends. The dramatic policy reversal of joining the unrelentingly ant-Semitic, anti-Israel and pro-Islamic UN Human Rights Council is in keeping with the President’s truest albeit undeclared sensibilities.
Those who are paying attention and thinking about these issues do not find it unreasonable to consider that President Obama is influenced by a strain of anti-Semitism picked up from the black community, his leftist friends and colleagues, his Muslim associations and his long period of mentorship under Jeremiah Wright. If this conclusion is accurate, Israel has some dark days ahead. For the first time in her history, she may find the President of the United States siding with her enemies. Those who believe as I do that Israel must be protected had better be ready for the fight. We are.
NEVER AGAIN!
E.W. Jackson is Bishop of Exodus Faith Ministries, an author and retired attorney.
by Bishop E W Jackson Sr
Like Obama, I am a graduate of Harvard Law School. I too have Muslims in my family. I am black, and I was once a leftist Democrat. Since our backgrounds are somewhat similar, I perceive something in Obama’s policy toward Israel which people without that background may not see. All my life I have witnessed a strain of anti-Semitism in the black community. It has been fueled by the rise of the Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan, but it predates that organization.
We heard it in Jesse Jackson’s “HYMIE town” remark years ago during his presidential campaign. We heard it most recently in Jeremiah Wright’s remark about “them Jews” not allowing Obama to speak with him. I hear it from my own Muslim family members who see the problem in the Middle East as a “Jew” problem.
Growing up in a small, predominantly black urban community in Pennsylvania, I heard the comments about Jewish shop owners. They were “greedy cheaters” who could not be trusted, according to my family and others in the neighborhood. I was too young to understand what it means to be Jewish, or know that I was hearing anti-Semitism. These people seemed nice enough to me, but others said they were “evil”. Sadly, this bigotry has yet to be eradicated from the black community.****Where, really, is the greatest remaining racism in American society? That's why they have to define that minorities CANNOT be racist.****
In Chicago, the anti-Jewish sentiment among black people is even more pronounced because of the direct influence of Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. Most African Americans are not followers of “The Nation”, but many have a quiet respect for its leader because, they say, “he speaks the truth” and “stands up for the black man”. What they mean of course is that he viciously attacks the perceived “enemies” of the black community white people and Jews. Even some self-described Christians buy into his demagoguery.
The question is whether Obama, given his Muslim roots and experience in Farrakhan’s Chicago, shares this antipathy for Israel and Jewish people. Is there any evidence that he does? First, the President was taught for twenty years by a virulent anti-Semite, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. In the black community it is called “sitting under”. You don’t merely attend a church, you “sit under” a Pastor to be taught and mentored by him. Obama “sat under” Wright for a very long time. He was comfortable enough with Farrakhan, Wright’s friend, to attend and help organize his “Million Man March”. I was on C-Span the morning of the march arguing that we must never legitimize a racist and anti-Semite, no matter what “good” he claims to be doing. Yet a future President was in the crowd giving Farrakhan his enthusiastic support.
The classic left wing view is that Israel is the oppressive occupier, and the Palestinians are Israel’s victims.Obama is clearly sympathetic to this view. In speaking to the “Muslim World,” he did not address the widespread Islamic hatred of Jews. Instead he attacked Israel over the growth of West Bank settlements. Surely he knows that settlements are not the crux of the problem. The absolute refusal of the Palestinians to accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state is the insurmountable obstacle. That’s where the pressure needs to be placed, but this President sees it differently. He also made the preposterous comparison of the Holocaust to Palestinian “dislocation”.
Obama clearly has Muslim sensibilities. He sees the world and Israel from a Muslim perspective. His construct of “The Muslim World” is unique in modern diplomacy. It is said that only The Muslim Brotherhood and other radical elements of the religion use that concept. It is a call to unify Muslims around the world. It is rather odd to hear an American President use it. In doing so he reveals more about his thinking than he intends. The dramatic policy reversal of joining the unrelentingly ant-Semitic, anti-Israel and pro-Islamic UN Human Rights Council is in keeping with the President’s truest albeit undeclared sensibilities.
Those who are paying attention and thinking about these issues do not find it unreasonable to consider that President Obama is influenced by a strain of anti-Semitism picked up from the black community, his leftist friends and colleagues, his Muslim associations and his long period of mentorship under Jeremiah Wright. If this conclusion is accurate, Israel has some dark days ahead. For the first time in her history, she may find the President of the United States siding with her enemies. Those who believe as I do that Israel must be protected had better be ready for the fight. We are.
NEVER AGAIN!
E.W. Jackson is Bishop of Exodus Faith Ministries, an author and retired attorney.
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