It's a toss-up: which is more impotent and hypocritical? The UN or the Obama Administration.

Recent events have revealed the vacuity of "experts" on the Middle East, the hypocrisy and uselessness of the U.N. ( March 18 was supposed to witness the release of a report LAUDING the human rights record of Gaddaffi and sons ) and Obama refrains from doing (or even saying ) anything about revolutionaries being murdered in the streets of Tehran and belatedly joins in a weak denunciation of Gaddaffi ( whose terrorists, until Al Qaeda, murdered more Americans than any other agency ) but throws Mubarak under the bus so quickly a democratic opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood doesn't have time to form.

http://tinyurl.com/4k7r8ms

What was the purpose of Obama's WH remarks after Mubarak's speech?

It is curious that President Obama thought it necessary to interject his own remarks to an American audience after Mubarak had announced that he wouldn't run for re-election. He didn't endorse or gainsay the idea that Mubarak would preside over an "orderly transition" and not stand for re-election. He piously proclaimed that, whatever the Egyptian people decided, the U.S. would continue to stand in support. Perhaps motivated by simple narcissim, some of what he said might be counterproductive.

Now, the best thing for peace and stability in the region is for the military to assume an important role so as to preclude the dominance of the Muslim Brotherhood or even the broad "democratic" will which is anti-American and anti-Israel and will almost certainly jeopardize the peace agreement of thirty years' standing. This would require some time for such a transition to be effected. Obama has essentially committed himself to continuing support ( presumably the aid that he threatened to withdraw if Mubarak didn't do the right thing ) even if the rule in Eqypt becomes quickly Islamist and radicalized. Precipitate action has invariably led to takeover of revolutions by more radical elements. (Cf the Bolsheviks taking over from the Mensheviks, Nasser taking over from General Naguib, Saddam Hussein taking over from those who overthrew the Hashemite king of Iraq, ...even the Ayatollah taking over from the immediate revolt against the Shah and the interim rule of Baktiar.

It has been only the military in Muslim countries that has prevented the otherwise inevitable drift to Islamism. Turkey has only recently, after almost a century of military-led restraint, turned Islamist. Likewise, Algeria and others.

Obama is likely to follow in the footsteps of the feckless Carter, who turned a stanch Iranian into a committed and lethal enemy, and preside over the transition of Egypt from friend to foe, likewise.

Once again, Israel will see the folly of trading a piece of paper for tangible resources. Only between stable democracies, can treaties be counted upon to mean something after the passing of those who signed them ( although, even here, Obama and Clinton have abrogated some agreements put in writing by Bush.)

Unrest in the Mideast finds a Jimmy Carter clone mucking up US foreign policy

The situation in Egypt is very unstable. Mubarek is old and sick and his sons are reported to have just defected to the U.K. with the rest of his family.The Tunisian example makes all regimes unstable and the people, largely young, suffer from umemployment and food shortages. Just as in the Iranian Revolution, a revolution that started off secular is likely to transmute into a religious revolution with the Muslim Brotherhood a clear winner, as were the mullahs in Iran in 1979. Obama is likely, as did Carter, to stay hands off as radical elements take over. Support for El Baradej might do some good if the CIA is on top of the situation ( which, unfortunately, they probably are not.) Obama's position is inconsistent and, amazingly, so far wrong. A year ago, there was a potential revolution in Iran and Obama pissed away the opportunity to endorse it. It was a dominated decision for anyone but an Obama because the regime in power is unalterably hostile to our interests so ANY CHANGE would have been for the better. So Obama endorses the status quo. There was no downside because, even had the wrong side won ( as it did anyway ), those against the mullahs would have remembered and thought they could on the U.S. (Reagan supported the Solidarity Movement in Poland at a speech but then got shot immediately thereafter so it was forgotten...except by Lech Walesa who subsequently said that he drew great support from Reagan's words. ) Carter undermined the Shah and boosted the Ayatollah, without knowing that Iran was going from the frying pan into the fire. Obama should act gingerly until he knows ( assuming his "people" know and that they can convince him ) who is going to replace Mubarek. The difference between Egypt now and Iran a year ago is that Mubarek is presently an ally and the Ahmadinejad was ( and is ) definitely NOT.

It is reflexive but stupid for Obama and Clinton to urge Egypt to reconnect the internet and social networks that were instrumental in spreading the Iranian revolt of a year ago.

The price of oil is likely to go up both because of unrest among oil-producing countries but also because the Suez Canal is at risk. Oil producers well outside the region of instability are likely to profit, provided they can expand their production. This excludes American domestic producers who are hampered by the Obama administration, itself. More promising by far is PBR and STO, the national oil companies of Brazil and Norway, respectively. Other forms of available energy ( i.e. not the blue sky versions of Obamamians ) like coal and natural gas should benefit since they are expandable.

Gold and silver are likely to benefit from the uncertainty as are agricultural commodities because of the food shortages and threat to transportation through the Suez.US aid to Egypt has been largely to aid the military ( which is peculiar given that it is likely directed against Israel with whom the US has counted on Egypt maintaining peace. ) Aid should be redirected to food and consumer goods that might mitigate complaints. Ironically, it might be Bernanke whose policies have exported inflation to other countries resulting in rising food prices in Egypt and other places.

If, as is likely, the Muslim Brotherhood achieves power ( or, at least, great influence ) peace between Egypt and Israel is threatened and more military aid ( albeit not, one hopes, for Egypt ) will be required. That means defense companies will get increased business at least for those things that don't involve American military personnel but, rather, materiEl that will have to be supplied to Israel and other allies in the MidEast with Turkey being a potential hotspot, probably more critical than Egypt because its government has already turned Islamist.

Oil is going 'way up; probably gold as well since inflation will spike all over.Domestic American oil companies will still be hobbled by the environuts of the Obama administration.

What Obama doesn't say about Muslims...he's wrong but is it deliberate?

http://tinyurl.com/6zc77bj

It ain't all the things you don't know; it's all the things you know that ain't so.

http://tinyurl.com/m8hgpd
Resisting climate hysteria by Richard Lindzen
****The effects of politically-motivated junk science are not benign.Environmentalist nuts have prevented the construction of dams that would have palliated the flooding in Queensland, Australia and the changing of levees that would have reduced the effects of Katrina in New Orleans. Also, vaccines do NOT cause autism in children but many children were denied vaccination while the false claims had to be dealt with.What accounts for the Left's embracing of all this folly? Perhaps it's a desire to save the world by endorsing some simplistic position that makes them feel useful without the necessity of actually learning scientific method and the humility that comes with it. It is the certainty of religious faith that stokes fervor.For professional scientists, going along with nonsense is lamentably due to the desire for notoriety and grant money that causes them to endorse positions that are unsustainable by actual science.The politicization of science is quite dangerous because remediation of natural disasters is often precluded.****

Muslims and Truth: not much overlap

Muslims and Truth - Benny Morris
In the wake of the New Year's Day bombing outside the church in Alexandria, Egypt, in which 23 Coptic Christians were murdered, Sheikh Muhammad Rashid Qabbani, Lebanon's Grand Mufti, immediately announced: "This assault...is not an individual internal Egyptian act, but a criminal act with Zionist...fingerprints." A spokesman for the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Munim Abu al Fattouh Abdel, said: It could not have been Egyptians. Perhaps it was the Mossad. Iranian TV put it: "It goes without saying that no Muslim...will ever commit such an inhuman act."
This raises a serious question. What are the bounds of credulity in the mendacity-ridden Muslim societies of the Middle East? Is there no limit to what the infidel can be accused of - and to the expectation that the charge will stick? Which raises the still more profound question: What are the long-term prospects for peaceful cohabitation on planet Earth between us in the West and these Muslim societies in which truth has absolutely no traction or importance, where the masses believe that the CIA or the Mossad knocked down the Twin Towers on 9/11? (National Interest)

Despite their protestations, it's the Left that owns violence.

****There are two Leftist precepts that they trot out repeatedly: 1) Accuse others of the things you know to be true of yourself; 2) The RAHMANTRA: Don' let a crisis go to waste. Amidst the phony accusations, one might well ask: Is the far left-wing Daily Kos to blame for instigating the murders in Tucson?****
http://tinyurl.com/37tvxbe
Is Daily Kos to blame for Gifford attack?
Rick Moran
There's no link to the diary entry at Daily Kos that is described in this posting from Hillbuzz. That's because Kos scrubbed it. Thankfully, several bloggers were able to capture screen shots of the post that used the word "dead" in relation to Rep. Giffords several times.
Diary headline: "My CongressWOMAN voted against Nancy Pelosi! And is now DEAD to me!" There are also several references to "dead" in the comment thread.
All of it now deleted - something Kos does on a regular basis when he wishes to change history. Kos also seems to have forgotten a posting of his calling for putting a "bullseye" on Giffords' district. The New York Times insinuated something about Sarah Palin's use of crosshairs in connection with the shooting, but so far as we have noticed, has not mentioned leftist violent rhetoiric and imagery...
****Now, of course we don't really blame DK for causing the murders but it points up the utter hypocrisy of Paul Krugman, the NYTimes, Sen Durbin,and many others of the left-wing hysteriate trying to blame Tea Partiers or Republicans or the right-wing for instigating the murders. It just happens that the loon who committed the crimes is characterized by an acquaintance as a "left-wing pothead" and self-described as admiring The Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf. Not yet mentioned is the fact that Cong. Giffords is Jewish and most American anti-Semitism comes from the Left (e.g. Jimmy Carter, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Cynthia McKinney, Baghdad Jim McDermott, James Traficant, Keith Ellison et al); Mein Kampf might have some relevance here.****

http://tinyurl.com/2exjsq6
The Left, Not the Right, Owns Political Violence By Michael Filozof
It took less than 24 hours for the political left to seize upon the attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the murder of six people on Saturday to blame the political right for the shooting.
Perhaps the most egregious example came from Paul Krugman of the New York Times, who wrote, "We don't have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was." (The newspaper that published plagiarized and fabricated accounts of the "D.C. sniper" by affirmative-action hire Jayson Blair in 2003 is still publishing unsubstantiated suppositions without "proof," eh?)...

The 0.22 caliber solution, not great but best.

The horrendous shooting in Tucson has some lessons, one perhaps counterintuitive. After shooting 19 people, the gunman was incapacitated by three heroes. A 61-year old woman grabbed his empty magazine and also the full one he was trying to reload. Another bystander tackled the gunman, joined by a third person who heard the commotion and ran over to help (toward the sound of gunfire rather than the perhaps more circumspect direction away). The last hero was armed ( covered carry being legal in Arizona ) and said that he would have shot the gunman had it been necessary but was happy that it wasn't since he was able to assist in the takedown.

Of course, there are the reflexive calls from the kneejerk Left for banning guns. There are several responses to this: 1) the gunman was known in some quarters to be mentally unstable and should have been prevented from purchasing a handgun, let alone the extended magazine, under PRESENT Federal law. 2) No law is going to suffice to keep guns away from criminals. Gun laws only suffice to keep guns away from ordinary citizens, usually the victims. 3) While Arizona has liberal gun laws ( and Congresswoman Giffords was a proponent of the Second Amendment ), no-one in the immediate crowd was armed.

Rather than limit gun ownership, it should be encouraged in the following way. Every citizen volunteer who can pass a legitimate and rigorous background check (possibly involving some quasi-deputization )should be encouraged to carry a small 0.22 caliber weapon after appropriate training. It's hard for a single person to do multiple lethal damage with such a weapon. A hail of bullets from several such weapons, however, should be enough to bring down an illegitimate gunman once he has identified himself as such. While this suggestion is not a panacea and wouldn't in all likelihood have prevented the "first-strike" shooting of Cong. Giffords, it likely would have prevented, or at least ameliorated, the shooting of 18 other people.Knowledge of the likely certainty of such a result might even provide an extra deterrent for even a first striker.

Mass public killings are fortunately rare but in many such cases, the extent of the killings would dramatically have been palliated by this policy. In the Virginia Tech shootings, also done by known loon who should never have been allowed to purchase a gun under PRESENT law, one of the bystanders had a weapon in his car but couldn't reach it in time since the school policy was to ban weapons from the campus, a stricture obviously not likely to be followed by either a crazy person or a criminal.In the V-Tech case, the shooter wasn't even stopped at the crime scene and had to be apprehended later. Without distance weapons, it takes extraordinary heroism to stop such a shooter before armed security people can arrive.

Tawfik Hamid on The Real Reasons Behind the Arab-Israeli Conflict

http://tinyurl.com/34ujpsz
The Real Reasons Behind the Arab-Israeli Conflict By Tawfik Hamid
...Despite peace treaties such as the Oslo Accords, hatred toward Jews and Israel has risen to unprecedented levels in the Palestinian areas and continues to rise in much of the Muslim world...Israel proved its dedication to peace when it withdrew from Sinai, Lebanon, and Gaza in hope of peace with its neighbors...What perpetuates the stalemate? One ..Palestinians do not accept the existence of Israel...their participation in negotiations is fake, hypocritical, and doomed to fail. It is impossible to negotiate with a partner about borders if this partner does not accept your existence to begin with..second..is the selfish mentality of the Palestinian leadership....True leaders must be ready to make concessions to ensure a better life for their people....third..is the international community's naive belief that less radical Palestinians are “moderates.” Fatah is not much different from Hamas in its refusal to accept that Israel is an established country ...Fatah is also virtually identical to Hamas with regard to its promotion of extreme anti-Semitic and anti-Israel propagandist incitement....fourth...is that the Palestinian leadership prefers to live — and to make their population live — in delusions rather than in reality. Just recently, an official Palestinian report claimed that a key Jewish holy site — Jerusalem's Western Wall — has no religious significance to Jews... impossible to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict if the Palestinian leaders insist on living in such delusions ...fifth factor...is that the Palestinians of Gaza who elected Hamas have not had to pay the price for their choice....Allowing Palestinians to see that Hamas is unable to fulfill its promises would weaken radical Islam in the area. European and American economic support for Gaza...masks the realities of the radical group's poor governance and enables them to survive.
With Hamas still strong,...their version of Islamic doctrine forbids any accommodation with the Jewish state.
What about Israel's role in the stalemate? What mistake does Israel continue to make?
...inhibiting progress has been insufficient use by Israel of negative consequences, perhaps in part because their American and European "allies" would balk at such tactics....until Fatah and Hamas accept the minimal principles necessary for Israel to participate in any further negotiations. These principles would include:
1. Declaration of the right of the Jewish state of Israel to exist;
2. Cessation of both verbal incitement and physical violence against Israeli civilians and;
3. Implementation of all previous agreements between Palestinians and Israelis.
Lastly, what of America's role? Blaming Israel for Palestinian hostility is counterproductive....Concrete evidence shows that unilateral concessions from the Israeli side without significant concessions from the Palestinian side are counterproductive.
Unfortunately, given the mentality of the Palestinian leadership, a strategy by Israel and its allies of negative consequences is probably the only strategy with potential to, at last, give peace a chance.

Do liberals even understand what patriotism IS?

"Cosmopolitan critics, men who are the friends of every country save their own."
-Benjamin Disraeli
Oikophobia Why the liberal elite finds Americans revolting.
http://tinyurl.com/36rr33h

NYC sanitation workers strike during 20"snowfall

A mere 20" of snow brought New York to its knees because 10% of sanitation workers didn't show up for work (undisputed fact) and (reportedly) the New York Post said that the union advised workers to slow down, skip streets, etc and that supervisors would not "write them up." The union unhappiness is over budget cuts resulting in less over-time and fewer promotions to supervisor.

If there is a dispute between two parties (e.g. Bloomberg and the union ) and someone willfully targets innocent bystanders not directly part of the dispute, it is clearly an act of terrorism. The fact that deaths resulted merely reinforces the point.

Napolitano and Holder should take note ( if they cared about terrorism, that is.)

It was Calvin Coolidge who first insisted that "there is no strike against the public good." Where is old Cal when he is needed? Public service employees can NOT be allowed to strike.

US foreign policy is in shambles. Obama's not just bad on domestic issues.

http://tinyurl.com/2g9c86q
Why Latin American turned By Caroline B. Glick
There is no doubt that the Venezuelan-Iranian alliance and its growing force in Latin America goes a long way towards explaining South America's sudden urge to recognize "Palestine." But there is more to the story...
Those trends are the rise of Hugo Chavez, the influence of the Venezuela-Iran alliance, and the cravenness of US foreign policy towards Latin America and the Middle East...Largely out of hatred for America, Chavez has turned toIran...Chavez's choice of Iran as a strategic ally was not a fluke.
Iran's footprint in Latin America has grown gradually. Beginning in the 1980s, Iran has used Latin America as a forward base of operations against the US and the West. It deployed Hizbullah and Revolutionary Guards operatives and other intelligence and terror assets along the largely ungoverned tri-border area between Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil. That staging ground in turn enabled Iran to bomb Israeli and Jewish targets in Buenos Aires in the early 1990s....With Chavez's assistance, Teheran is expanding its web of alliances throughout Latin America at the expense of the US and Israel...."there is information from international agencies that indicate that uranium from Bolivia and Venezuela is being shipped to Iran."...the WikiLeaks sabotage campaign against the US gave us a first person account of the magnitude of Ahmadinejad's electoral fraud....reported a conversation with an Iranian source regarding the true election results. The Iranian source referred to results as a "coup d'etat." The regime declared Ahmadinejad the winner with 63% of the vote. According to the Iranian source, he received less than a tenth of that amount. ...****And what did Obama/Clinton do/say about this fraud and the uprising? They supported the regime in Iran!***the impact of US foreign policy - in South America and the Middle East alike - has had on the positions of nations like Brazil and Argentina towards Israel. During the Bush administration, US Latin America policy was an incoherent bundle of contradictions....Under the Obama administration, the US Latin American policy has become more straightforward. The US has turned its back on Colombia and Honduras. US President Barack Obama is interested in appeasing the Chavez crowd...April 2009 Obama sat through a 50-minute anti-American rant by Ortega at the Summit of the Americas. He then sought out Chavez for a photo-op. In his own address Obama distanced himself from US history saying, "We have at times been disengaged, and at times we sought to dictate our terms. But I pledge to you that we seek an equal partnership. There is no senior partner and junior partner in our relations." ...Obama's attempted appeasement hasn't done any good. Nicaragua invaded neighboring Costa Rica last month along the San Juan River. Ortega's forces are dredging the river as part of a plan with Iran to build a canal along the Isthmus of Nicaragua that will compete with the Panama Canal.Indeed, even Obama's ambassador in Managua admitted in a recent cable that Ortega remains deeply hostile to the US. In a cable from February illicitly published by WikiLeaks Ambassador Robert Callahan argued that Ortega's charm offensive towards the US was "unlikely to portend a new, friendly Ortega with whom we can work in the long-term."...Brazil's President...and Argentina's President...are also responding the US's signals towards Iran and Israel. Obama's policy ...has no chance of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and just like the Arabs and the Europeans, the South Americans know it....From (their) perspective, there is no reason...to participate in the US charade of preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power.(They)might as well be on the winning side. And since Obama doesn't mind Iran winning, Iran will win....Like the Europeans, the Arabs, the Asians and everyone else, the Latin Americans have clearly noted that Obama's only consistent foreign policy goal is his aim of forcing Israel to accept a hostile Palestinian state and surrender all the land it took control over in 1967 to the likes of PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas and Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. They note that Obama has refused to rule out the possibility of recognizing a Palestinian state even if that state is declared without a peace treaty with Israel. That is, Obama is unwilling to commit himself to not recognizing a Palestinian state that will be in a de facto state of war with Israel.
The impression that Obama is completely committed to the Palestinian cause was reinforced this week rather than weakened with the cancellation of the Netanyahu-Clinton deal regarding the banning of Jewish construction in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. The deal which was to see Israel banning Jewish construction for an additional 90 days in exchange for a US pledge not to ask for any further bans, to support Israel at the UN Security Council for a limited time against a Palestinian push to declare independence without peace, and to sell Israel an additional 20 F-35 fighter jets sometime in the future. It came apart because Obama was unwilling to put Clinton's commitments - meager as they are - in writing. ...signals to the likes of Brazil and Argentina and Uruguay that they might as well go with Chavez and Iran and turn their backs on Israel. No one will thank them if they lag behind the US in their pro-Iran, anti-Israel policies. And by moving ahead of the US, they get the credit due to those who stick their fingers in Washington's eye...

Left-handed honesty

BEST OF THE WEB TODAY DECEMBER 27, 2010
Happy Easter!
The Obama administration has hidden surprises in store for you.By JAMES TARANTO
We'll be on Sean Hannity's "Great American Panel" tonight, assuming we can get to the studio through the 20 inches of global warming that fell on New York overnight"My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government," the newly inaugurated President Obama declared in a memo to department and agency heads in January 2009. "Government should be transparent. Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing."
How's that working in practice? The New York Times reports on how an Obama ally in Congress, Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, responded after the administration made a regulatory decision he had urged:
After learning of the administration's decision, Mr. Blumenauer's office celebrated "a quiet victory," but urged supporters not to crow about it.
"While we are very happy with the result, we won't be shouting it from the rooftops because we aren't out of the woods yet," Mr. Blumenauer's office said in an e-mail in early November to people working with him on the issue. "This regulation could be modified or reversed, especially if Republican leaders try to use this small provision to perpetuate the 'death panel' myth."
Moreover, the e-mail said: "We would ask that you not broadcast this accomplishment out to any of your lists, even if they are 'supporters'--e-mails can too easily be forwarded."
The e-mail continued: "Thus far, it seems that no press or blogs have discovered it, but we will be keeping a close watch and may be calling on you if we need a rapid, targeted response. The longer this goes unnoticed, the better our chances of keeping it."
Even though Blumenauer sent the warning not to send emails about the regulation by email, both the regulation and the effort to keep it a secret remained secret until yesterday when the Times reported them.
The regulation imposed a prospective ObamaCare provision that, amid public outcry, had been cut from the law Congress enacted. "Under the new policy," the Times explains, "the government will pay doctors who advise patients on options for end-of-life care, which may include advance directives to forgo aggressive life-sustaining treatment." Although this provision was part of the "death panel" controversy, even Wesley Smith of the Discovery Institute, a leading opponent of medical homicide, acknowledges that "the new regulation is not alarming in and of itself."

So why the coverup? It's partly a matter of form: It looks bad for the administration to impose by executive fiat a provision that the people's representatives had expressly rejected, though of course the inevitable discovery of the effort to keep the secret only compounds that problem.

But there is also a substantive reason why the administration and its allies wanted to keep this quiet: It reminds people that ObamaCare's promise to deliver "universal health care" while saving money can be kept only if the government assumes the power to deny medical treatment in the name of controlling costs. Death panels are intrinsic to the ObamaCare scheme, as Shikha Dalmia of the Daily Beast explains:

The administration is defining Medicare fraud down to include "unnecessary" and "ineffective" care. And to root this out, it plans to make expanded use of private mercenaries--officially called Recovery Audit Contracts--who will be authorized to go to doctors' offices and rummage through patients' records, matching them with billing claims to uncover illicit charges. What's more, Obamacare increases the fine for billing errors from $11,000 per item to $50,000 without the government even having to prove intent to defraud.

It's reminiscent of the Climategate emails, which detailed an effort to deceive the public so as to justify expanded government control of the economy. And the Obama administration is acting in defiance of the citizenry on the global-warming front too, as the Associated Press reports:

Stymied in Congress, the Obama administration is moving unilaterally to clamp down on greenhouse emissions, announcing plans for new power plants and oil refinery emission standards over the next year.

In an announcement posted on the agency's website late Thursday, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson said the aim was to better cope with pollution contributing to climate change.

They timed this to coincide with--forgive the expression--Christmas, when no one would be paying attention. The timing is embarrassing in another way, since yesterday saw a blizzard so severe that it led to the postponement of a professional football game.

The New York Times, however, was prepared lest the global-warmist faithful be tempted to stray. Theologian Judah Cohen appeared on the Times op-ed page Sunday to explain that "the overall warming of the atmosphere is actually creating cold-weather extremes":

As global temperatures have warmed and as Arctic sea ice has melted over the past two and a half decades, more moisture has become available to fall as snow over the continents. So the snow cover across Siberia in the fall has steadily increased.

The sun's energy reflects off the bright white snow and escapes back out to space. As a result, the temperature cools.

But wait. Greenhouse gases are supposed to prevent the sun's energy from escaping back into space, aren't they? A careful reader noted with delight that Cohen has denied a central doctrine of global warmism. Even skeptics find an easter egg from time to time.
****Funny as this inadvertent denial is, the idea that one can modify one's theory ex post facto to use contradictory evidence as affirmative, bespeaks of either a complete misunderstanding of scientific method, of logic, of basic reasoning OR a disingenuous attempt to say anything that might work for a general public for whom the Anthropic Global Warming clerics have contempt. One of the AGW clerics was asked what, if any, disconfirming evidence there could POSSIBLY be since warming proves AGW and cooling proves AGW. The answer was even worse: disconfirming evidence would be only if NO CHANGE in the weather occurs! *****
Stop Global Warming Before the Snow Storm Bears Go Extinct!
"Snow Storm Bears Down on Mid-Atlantic, Northeast"--headline, Associated Press, Dec. 26

The danger of liberals and substituting Gov for God

C.S.Lewis - "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims my be the most oppressive.Those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience..."

W.D. by James Kavanaugh
One thing God should never do
Is answer anyone's prayers.
If He answered but a single prayer
He wouldn't be God anymore.
But King of the Welfare Doles.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
God is not a cosmic bellhop.

Voluntarism and a suggested addendum to the progressive agenda

http://tinyurl.com/23z2qem
Tea Partiers and the Spirit of Giving Charitable gifts are a cheerful protest vote against the growing state.By ARTHUR C. BROOKS
...The tea party activists...and...the nearly one-third of Americans who classify themselves as "supporters" of the movement, according to Gallup—endure endless abuse ...One particular line of attack focuses on their supposed selfishness.
...the millions of Americans who advocate for private entrepreneurship and limited government...may be stingy when it comes to giving away other people's money through state redistribution, but they are surprisingly generous when it comes to giving away their own money privately.
...When it comes to voluntarily spreading their own wealth around, a distinct "charity gap" opens up...Your intuition might tell you that people who favor government redistribution care most about the less fortunate and would give more to charity.....the data tell a different story....a large, nonpartisan survey asked people about both redistributive beliefs and charitable giving was 1996. ...the General Social Survey (GSS) found that those who were against higher levels of government redistribution privately gave four times as much money, on average, as people who were in favor of redistribution...they also gave about 3.5 times as much to nonreligious causes. Anti-redistributionists gave more even after correcting for differences in income, age, religion and education....there are other ways to give than with money. Here again the results may be different from what you might expect. The GSS in 2002 showed that those who said the government was "spending too much money on welfare" were more likely to donate blood than those who said the government was "spending too little money on welfare." The anti-redistributionists were also more likely to give someone directions on the street, return change mistakenly handed them by a cashier, and give food (or money) to a homeless person.
...
****Given that liberals don't trust voluntarism and prefer to defer to the coercion of the IRS, let me propose an addition to the progressive agenda. The blood supply is too important to leave to invidivual altruism ( and we have seen that redistributionists don't donate much). Rather, the obligation to give blood ( or have it extracted ) should be levied as a tax to create sufficiency.

In the spirit of fairness of our progressive income tax code, the blood tax would exempt approximately fifty percent, the skinniest, in the population. Fat people have more blood and should obviously have more extracted from them than should thinner folk and the amount should be progressively higher for the fatter parts of the population if it is deemed that some do not "pay their fair share.". As the burden falls increasingly on a decreasing fraction of the population we might finally get an answer to the question: "How much is too much?"***
,

Vice Admiral: Obama was outmaneuvered by Russians on START U.S. Naval Institute - December 23, 2010
President Barack Obama was outmaneuvered by the Russians and should have abandoned the New START negotiations instead of seeking a political victory, says former nuclear plans monitor Vice Admiral Jerry Miller, USN (Ret).
“The Obama administration is continuing a dated policy in which we cannot even unilaterally reduce our own inventory of weapons and delivery systems without being on parity with the Russians,” Miller told the U.S. Naval Institute in Annapolis, Md. “We could give up plenty of deployed delivery systems and not adversely affect our national security one bit, but New START prohibits such action - so we are now stuck with some outmoded and useless elements in our nuke force.”
After meeting resistance from several Republicans, the U.S. Senate ratified the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia by a vote of 71-26 on Wednesday.
“The Soviets/Russians were done in by Reagan and our missile defense program because they cannot afford to build such a system,” said Miller. “They instead try to counter our program with rhetoric at the bargaining table. And they won by outmaneuvering Obama. START plays right into their hands.”
Former President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) is often credited with bankrupting the U.S.S.R. because the Soviets were unable to keep pace with the technology being developed by the United States.
“We have always been superior in quality of our nuclear force, so we did not have to negotiate with a party we do not trust,” said Miller. “If Obama wanted to save some money and improve national defense, he should have gotten out of the nuke negations and acted unilaterally. START is simply a political victory for Obama.”
Miller, who helped prepare the National Strategic Target List and Single Integrated Operational Plan for waging nuclear war and later participated in arms control meetings with the Soviet government, expressed concern that START could leave the United States vulnerable to other emerging threats.
“The treaty prohibits the conversion of an existing ballistic missile system into a missile defense system,” said Miller. “We might want to do that with a Trident or an ICBM sometime in the future, particularly if the Chinese alleged threat materializes.”
Miller’s book “Stockpile: The Story Behind 10,000 Strategic Nuclear Weapons” details the buildup of nuclear arms and the policies to keep the stockpile under control.
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Thunderstorm Patriot • Actually, Obama was not outmaneuvered by the Russians at all. That would require that Obama actually cares that America got a fair deal. But Obama has proven time and time again that he is more concerned with the image of what he accomplishes than having details that actually work. The man is shallow and goal oriented. As long as he reaches his goals he does not seem to sweat how much of a mess he makes for the future.
• ABU HUSSAIN
Is everybody STUPID? Or ...just lazy? "Obama was outmaneuvered"? How does this guy figure that? He must think that it was Hussain's objective, to get the best deal he could, for US? "The Treaty prohibits the conversion of existing Ballistic Missile Systems in to a Missile Defense System."
What's your point? Little Barry Soetoro doesn't WANT us to have a Missile Defense. He's a DEMOCRAT. He's a LIBERAL. He's a MARXIST.
Has ANYONE read his books? Does ANYONE know ANYTHING about his life?
We're talking about a guy who thinks that the Good Guys LOST the Cold War. A guy who's Father was a Muslim Marxist. His Mother was an Atheist Communist. His Grandparents were Communists.
His 1st Mentor - Frank Marshall Davis - was a Communist. He sat in the pews of his next Mentor - Jeremiah Wright - listening to his White-Hating, Jew-hating, America-Hating, diatribes for 20 YEARS.
He began his political career in the Living Room of Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.. Two Domestic Terrorists. who KILLED Police Officers. BLEW UP Recruiting Stations. And BOMBED the Pentagon.
I'm trying to figure out why you think that this AMERICA-HATING MUSLIM MARXIST was snookered? I guarantee ya, that this Treaty is EXACTLY what Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro/Abu Hussain wanted.
Try doing a little RESEARCH next time, Admiral.//
****It is perhaps a good time to review the Constitutional requirement that the President be a “natural-born” American citizen. This has often been challenged and an issue has been made of the LEGALISM of whether President Obama is, in fact, a natural-born citizen (i.e. whether he was in fact born in Hawaii or whether he gave up his American citizenship at some point.) This is not the place to argue the legal, factual issues but only to address the “why” of the requirement. It might be the case that the President fulfills the LETTER of the requirement but not the SPIRIT of it.****
“…Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) has proposed to amend the Constitution to allow naturalized Americans to become President. If his amendment were adopted any person who had been a United States citizen for at least twenty years would be eligible to hold the Presidency. This is not a new idea. However, Senator Hatch's proposed amendment places emphasis on contemporary political leaders who otherwise never would be eligible to become President.
Perhaps no better person could refute the proposed Hatch Amendment than the late Balint Vazsyoni, Director of the Center for the American Founding. I had the honor of knowing this gentleman, a concert pianist who came to our country from his native Hungary while it was under Communist rule. More than most, Vazsyoni appreciated the wisdom that was displayed by the Founding Fathers in framing the Constitution and our country's unique heritage of offering freedom and liberty to all people. Vazsyoni witnessed for himself and knew of the damage done to countries whose guiding principles were set -- often arbitrarily -- by despotism and the ideologies of fascism and Communism.
A hearing by the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution was held on July 24, 2000 to review amending the Constitution to allow foreign-born citizens to become President. Vazsyoni both testified in person before the Subcommittee and submitted prepared remarks.
Vasyoni noted that the Founding Fathers created three branches of government and placed no stricture requiring citizenship to become a member of the Legislative or Judicial Branch. However, power is centralized in one person in the Executive Branch. Vazsyoni insisted that he did not view it to be an "excessive requirement" to have a native-born American to hold that one office. America presents immigrants with a great deal of leadership opportunities.
In his prepared remarks, Vazsyoni stated: "It is well known that the Founding Fathers were mindful in the extreme of foreign influences, and the dangers therein to the Republic. While experience has shown that a native-born Chief Executive is not necessarily immune to foreign influence, the odds are certainly more favorable if the President is an American plain and simple, who has never been, and is not at the time of taking office, anything else…."
****The thrust of Vazyoni’s insights is that the Founders wanted the President to have no question about his having only American values and allegiances. It was naturally assumed in the more-circumscribed world of 1787 that people didn’t travel as much as they do today let alone be subject to foreign influences before they reached adulthood.
Consider the second set of comments and note additionally that the President spent formative years in a foreign country ( and not, as Senator McCain was, still thoroughly under American influences, perhaps HYPER-American influences of military bases), had a natural father who was Kenyan and an influential step-father who was Indonesian. Indeed, although abandoned by his natural father early in life, Obama’s own books reflect the great influence this father had on him ( e.g. Dreams FROM My Father ). Hawaii is not mainstream America as EVEN CALIFORNIA would have been. It’s no wonder Obama seems to have no appreciation of American exceptionalism and on almost every occasion where the matter appears, seems to prefer being a “citizen of the world.” George Soros is a naturalized American citizen but there is little doubt that he shares this attitude. The point is that one can be a “natural-born” American citizen according to the letter of the law and still be as loyal as George Soros or the natural-born Jeremiah Wright or Bill Ayers.****

Mozart and Vivaldi make for happiness - these are especially delightful

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnplU5hgVw0&feature=related vocal Rondo Alla Turca

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOxXwxe6TCc&feature=related Carmel A Cappella Eine Kleine Nachtmusik

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uxs5O6hMBvg&feature=related Carmel A Cappella
sings Vivaldi (Spring)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eZw0bXmlWw&feature=related Swingle Singers Rondo Alla Turca

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk0ROE0V4HI&feature=related Swingle Singers Eine Kleine Nachtmusik

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10LU2tBPD5A&feature=related Swingle Singers Zauberflote

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJV5zT8DugA&feature=related Swingle Singers Vivaldi fugue

Wow! "Pro the facts and pro the truth..." Unique!

Abu Toameh: What the Western Media Misses
...Arsen Ostrovsky

A few days ago, I was fortunate to attend a talk by Israeli Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh in Jerusalem.

Toameh gave an incredibly wide ranging talk about the peace process, the double standards rife in the West and the media when it comes to coverage of the Middle East and his perspective as a Muslim Arab of Palestinian descent living in Israel (and you thought you had identity issues!).

Toameh has been working as a journalist for almost 30 years now, covering Palestinian affairs, focusing predominantly on the West Bank and Gaza, including for the Palestinian press under the PLO and for various international media outlets in the US and Europe. He is currently at the Jerusalem Post writing on Palestinian issues. Toameh is also an Israeli citizen living in Jerusalem. In other words, he is aptly qualified to comment on the issues of his discussion.

However, if you expected Toameh to jump on the anti-Israel bandwagon with the familiar cries that Israel is an un-democratic apartheid state responsible for all that is wrong including the bubonic plague or to have a single-minded focus on the occupation, you would have been sorely disappointed.

Instead, he spoke openly, courageously and in his words, said it “as it is . Asked what he thought was the essence of the conflict, Toameh said it was not about money or even settlements, as many so-called pundits often imply, as a precursor to blaming Israel. Rather, his answer was very simple: “This conflict is about Israel’s very existence in this part of the world.

But before you get any conclusions, Toameh is not a card-carrying Zionist or as somebody once asked him “when did you get on the Israel lobby payroll . In his own words, he says:

“I’m not pro-Israel, I’m not pro-Palestinian and I’m not pro-American. But as a journalist, I’m pro the facts and pro the truth.

Here are some of Toameh’s illuminating comments:

I asked Toameh how, as an Arab Muslim Israeli, he responds to accusations that Israel is an apartheid state.

His response:

“Israel is not an apartheid state. But there are problems and some discrimination with the Arab minority inside Israel. If Israel were an apartheid state, I, for example, would not be allowed to work for a Jewish newspaper or live in a Jewish neighborhood or own a home. The real apartheid is in Lebanon, where there is a law that bans Palestinians from working in over 50 professions. Can you imagine if the Knesset passed a law banning Arabs from working even in one profession? The real apartheid is also in many Arab and Muslim nations, like Kuwait, where my Palestinian uncle, who has been living there for 35 years, is banned from buying a house. The law of Israel does not distinguish between a Jew and an Arab.

As for the uniqueness of the Israeli media in the middle East, Toameh added:

“Israel is a free and open country with a democracy, that respects the freedom of the media. You can basically write any anti-Israel story and still walk in downtown Jerusalem or Tel Aviv without having to worry about your safety. Anyone can be a journalist in Israel.

Toameh says he finds it ironic that as an Arab Muslim living in this part of the world, the only place he can express himself freely is in a ‘Jewish newspaper’, noting that:

“We don’t have a free media in the Palestinian area, we didn’t have one when I was working there in the late 70’s and early 80’s, we didn’t have one when the PLO came here after the signing of the Oslo accords and we still don’t have one under Fatah and Hamas.

But what about the media’s need for an anti-Israeli angle on stories? Toameh says that when he tried to alert many of his foreign colleagues that Palestinians were dying because of an internal power struggle or gross corruption by Arafat and the Palestinian Authority, their reflex response was:

Where’s the anti-Israel angle to the story? Give us an anti-occupation story. Make our lives much easier. An Arab killing an Arab, that’s not a story for us.

Toameh notes that the same foreign journalists would then ask him: “Are you on the payroll of the Israel lobby? “Do they [the Jews] pay you to say these things against Arafat and the PLO? Toameh’s response to them:

“What do the Jews have to do with this? I’m telling you what the Palestinians are saying about there being corruption in the Palestinian Authority. I’m even telling you that the PA is saying that the PA is corrupt.

“It is a sad reflection on the state of society, and in particular, the media industry, that not only are they not sufficiently concerned or outraged at the death of Arabs by Arabs (which coincidentally has claimed many more lives than the Israel – Palestinian conflict), but that they will only muster even an iota of concern if they can put in an ‘anti-Israel’ angle.

On the proposed loyalty oath as well, Toameh offered a pragmatic response: “I have no problem with it because it applies equally to both Jews and non-Jews alike.

One of the biggest and most intractable sticking points has consistently been the Palestinian demand for a right of return, which Israel will not agree to because it would mean the death knell of Israel as a Jewish state.

However, Toameh offers a very simple and pragmatic three stage solution, where the Palestinian refugees could:

1. Go to the future Palestinian state;

2. Resettle elsewhere, including other Arab states; and

3. Be offered compensation.

Most tellingly though, and in a statement seldom ever heard from Arabs (or the West), Toameh then asked: “And what about Jewish refugees that were forced to flee Arab nations , suggesting that the issue of Jewish refugees must also be part of any future solution.

Focusing on the problem from Arab dictatorships and their insistence on inciting their people against Israel, Toameh says that we have a problem in the West in failing to believe what people tell us.

“If Hamas say they want to destroy you, you have no reason not to believe them. And if Ahmadinejad says he wants to destroy you, there’s no need to start analyzing what he means by that. Stop fooling ourselves, and if anyone thinks that Hamas will ever recognize Israel’s right to exist, you’re also living in an illusion. Take it from their mouth directly…the PLO however is different – they will tell you one thing in English and then another in Arabic.

On the subject of Arab dictatorship, Toameh says:

“Arab dictators survive by constantly blaming the misery of their people on Jews and the West and never accepting responsibility for anything. And by inciting against Israel and the West, you divert attention from problems at home. Why? Because you always need to make sure that your people are busy hating someone else. If they’re not hating Israel and the West, they might wake up one day and come to you, and God forbid, demand reform and democracy.

The crux of the message is:

“If you keep inciting your people, then they ask ‘well, why are we then making peace with the Jews?’ We should be killing them as Hamas is saying’.

So what does Toameh think about Mahmoud Abbas, the PA President?

“Abbas is corrupt, discredited, weak and does not have much power. He is reliant on Israel, whose presence in the West Bank is ironically the only reason he has managed to stay in power.

And if Israel withdrew to the 1967 borders as demanded by Abbas and the PLO:

“Abbas will collapse and Hamas will take over the West Bank in less than a day. If I were Israel, I would not give Abbas one inch of land in the West Bank – not for ideological reasons, but to avoid a situation where Hamas and others would take over the area.

When we asked him how best to defeat the extremists, radicals and terrorists like Hamas and Hizbullah, Toameh answered:

“The first and most important thing is you go to the Arab governments and tell them, “Stop the incitement that’s feeding these radicals and driving people into their hands. Sometimes there’s no difference between what is written about Israel and the Jews in the papers in Egypt and Saudi Arabia with what is written by Hamas.

Noting again the billions of dollars in aid provided by the US and EU to various Arab dictatorships, Toameh says: In other words, and even more clearly, they should tell them: “Stop calling for my death with my money.

I asked Toameh about what steps were needed to move forward. According to him, the answer is “very simple and involves the following steps:

1) The Palestinians must start investing money (provided to them mainly by the US and EU) for the welfare of their people instead of incitement. Then dismantle all militias, establish a free press and democratic institutions, end the infighting, insist on good governance and speak with one voice so at least we know who we’re talking to. And then, he suggests, they should go speak with Israel and see what it has to offer them.

2) Deal with the enemies of peace – if you weaken the enemies of peace, like Iran, Hizbullah, Hamas, the moderates will rise and start speaking out. But as long as Iran is breathing down the neck and threatening, together with Hamas and Hizbullah, who are threatening to kill anyone who makes concessions, no moderate Arab will ever dare sign an agreement with Israel. Toameh says:

“I don’t even rule out military action against any of them because this is the only language these guys understand. Talking to them and appeasing them is even more dangerous.

3) “We can’t move forward when you don’t have a clear, strong, reliable and credible partner on the Palestinian side says Toameh. According to him: “Abbas is not a partner. He and Fayaad might be nice guys with good intentions – but they cannot deliver. So the PA are not partners because they cannot deliver and Hamas are not partners because they don’t want to be partners.

Addressing the issue of whether there was a clear and credible partner on the Israeli side, Toameh said:

“I don’t care who is in government in Israel. There is a partner. And my partner is the Jewish people. Why? Because a majority of Jews have already accepted a two-state solution. I see a majority of Jews who don’t care anymore about Gaza. I see a majority of Jews who want to disengage from the Palestinians. I see a majority of Jews over the last 15 years marching toward moderation and pragmatism. I don’t know today of one Jewish mother that wants to send her son back to the streets of Ramallah or Gaza. I don’t know of one Jew who wants to control the lives of the Palestinians and run their education and health system. Sadly though, while the Jewish public has been marching towards pragmatism and realism and moderation, on the Arab side the message remains no, no and no.

In an incredibly candid address, for me perhaps the most defining statement Toameh made was when I asked him: Would you rather continue living as a member of a minority in Israel or move to another Arab country? Toameh’s response was simple, honest, and telling:

“Israel is a free and open democratic country. I enjoy living here and I would rather live as a second-class citizen in Israel, even though I’m not, than a first-class citizen in any Arab country.

In a world where it’s all too easy to turn a blind eye to courage, Khaled Abu Toameh is a welcome breath of fresh air. A man, deeply committed to peace, who is seen as a traitor by many and who bravely continues to put his own life on the line each day, Toameh perhaps says it best himself:

“I’m not pro-Israel, I’m not pro-Palestinian and I’m not pro-American. But as a journalist, I’m pro the facts and pro the truth.

it's outrageous that privileged information is leaked.

Parent and Guardian
"Lawyers for Julian Assange have expressed anger about an alleged smear campaign against the Australian WikiLeaks founder," the Australian reports:

In a move that surprised many of Mr Assange's closest supporters on Saturday, The Guardian newspaper published previously unseen police documents that accused Mr Assange in graphic detail of sexually assaulting two Swedish women. One witness is said to have stated: "Not only had it been the world's worst screw, it had also been violent."

Bjorn Hurtig, Mr Assange's Swedish lawyer, said he would lodge a formal complaint to the authorities and ask them to investigate how such sensitive police material leaked into the public domain. "It is with great concern that I hear about this because it puts Julian and his defence in a bad position," he told a colleague.

"I do not like the idea that Julian may be forced into a trial in the media. And I feel especially concerned that he will be presented with the evidence in his own language for the first time when reading the newspaper. I do not know who has given these documents to the media, but the purpose can only be one thing--trying to make Julian look bad."

This is the sort of story that makes our job difficult. What, after all, could we possibly say that would be equal to the absurdity of Hurtig's own words? Well, how about this:

Finally, it is pointed out that college is NOT like volunteering for the military

James Taranto in Best of the Web:
'...What's really objectionable about Klein's Saturday evening post, however, is the implication that higher education and military service are morally equivalent. We did spend several years in college, and we did it for the same reasons that most people do--to improve our employment prospects and to kill time while we figured out a direction in life. As a former college student, we can attest that going to college is not a patriotic act but a self-serving one.

Nothing wrong with that, but society has no moral obligation to reward self-serving actions. If the Dream Act made it possible for illegal aliens to earn citizenship by serving honorably in the military, and no more than that, we would support it unreservedly. Perhaps the act's higher-education provisions would have economic benefits. But if so, why does Klein need to rest his argument on a false equivalence between soldiers and students?..."

***Conflating the promise to attend college with actual service in the defense of the nation is absurd.It's not even clear why the "reward" for being illegal is citizenship. If something extraordinary is done, like serving in the military ( not merely promising to do so ), it's more the case that this is the appropriate reward. If the justification is merely to allow illegals to come out of the shadows, it should be sufficient to provide permanent residency without the ability to use citizenship as a justification (under the misguided Family Unification policy )for bringing in countless relatives. ***