Thursday, December 31, 2009

The End Is Near....

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Per my promise, a little something especially for Elise and like-minded ladies....fair's fair!

Here's wishing all of Joshua's Army the best in the New Year..I have a feeling 2010 is going to be special.

And oh yes....Here's a little something from me to help you celebrate, courtesy of the Old General.




Putin: "Islamic terrorists? Come To Moscow, We'll Cut Your Balls Off."



There's a very revealing video of Russian ex-President (now Prime Minister) Vladimir Putin's response to a question about terrorism at a G-8 summit press conference back in in early 2008 that has surfaced.

Putin apparently has very different ideas about dealing with Islamist terrorism than the current occupant of the White House.

Here's the transcript:

FRENCH JOURNALIST: ...Don't you think that by trying to eradicate terrorism in Chechnya you are going to eradicate the civilian population of Chechnya?

VLADIMIR PUTIN: If you want to become an Islamic fundamentalist and be circumcised, come to Moscow. We are multiconfessional. We have very good specialists. I can recommend one for the operation. He'll make sure nothing grows back.


As you'll see on the video, Putin was deadly serious. Just a tad different from the dry, luke warm response of Barack Obama after the Christmas bombing, I think.

The only thing Vlad missed out on was the pigskin burial afterwards, but credit where credit is due.

I can only imagine how badly Putin punks Obama when it comes to face-to-face negotiations.


Hat Tip, Newsbusters.



13 States Request Reid, Pelosi drop Nebraska's ObamaCare Bribe


The thing is, when you try to do a crooked deal at other people's expense and it goes public, they tend not to be happy about it.

I could have predicted this one a mile off..

Attorneys general from 13 states penned the top two Democrats in Congress Wednesday requesting they remove extra Medicaid funds directed toward Nebraska.

The attorneys general, all Republicans, say that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) tacked on extra Medicare funds to the Senate bill to buy the vote of holdout centrist Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) on healthcare legislation.

The state officials, led by South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster, say that the provision is unconstitutional and ask that Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) remove it as to avoid a lawsuit.

"We ask that Congress delete the Nebraska provision from the pending legislation, as we prefer to avoid litigation," they wrote. "Because this provision has serious implications for the country and the future of our nation’s legislative process, we urge you to take appropriate steps to protect the Constitution and the rights of the citizens of our nation."

Critics, who have dubbed the funds as the "Cornhusker Kickback," say that the $100 million deal is emblematic of Washington wheeling and dealing and that it is not fair to other states who have to use their own funds to pay for the Medicaid expansion included in the healthcare overhaul.


The one thing that surprises me is that these are all Republicans, although a number are from Blue states like Pennsylvania. I know that here in California I've heard a number of Democrats criticizing our two senators for not holding out for a sweet deal, but apparently loyalty to Prez Zero comes before pleasing their own constituents. Or some private assurances have been issued from the White House making some back door promises we won't find out about until later.



Whoops!




Today's Must Reads, New year's Eve Edition



Welcome to today's must reads in news, politics and opinion, hand picked by Natasha.

Feel free to send anything you find that you feel is worthy of a look to me at rmill2k@msn.com and I'll review it. This includes stuff you write yourself. Or if you prefer, you can send it attention Natasha, our official must reads Avatar..she loves mail.


  • Breitbart: Rush Limbaugh resting comfortably at Honolulu hospital



  • Bloomberg: French High Court Rejects Carbon Tax...



  • Salt Lake Tribune:Blizzard squelches global warming protest



  • Doug Ross: My first prediction for 2010: Illinois-based terrorists to be freed, unionized, hired as TSA baggage screeners


  • FOX :WH Rejects Calls to Reconsider Plan to Close Guantanamo Bay


  • Fausta :Panty bomber Abdulmutallab's London al-Qaeda connection


  • WSJ: US Probes Cleric's Tie to Plot


  • Andrew McCarthy/NROHill:The 'Fire Napolitano' Debate


  • Ann Coulter: Ivana trump escorted off plane: Napolitano declares 'the system worked'



  • WSJ :Obama's Security 'Breach'


  • American Spectator : The Politics of Incompetence


  • The Hill:13 States Request Reid, Pelosi Drop Nebraska Deal From HC Bill


  • Phyllis Schlafley :10 reasons ObamaCare can still be killed


  • Toby Harnden, The Telegraph: Obama gets an "F" for protecting Americans



  • Ralph Peters:Do the Mullahs Care Today is Obama's Deadline?


  • Rasmussen :58% Favor Waterboarding of Plane terrorist To Get Information


  • Michael Yon: Into Thine Hand I Commit My Spirit


  • Mudville Gazette:Taliban Kill 8 CIA Agents in Afghanistan


  • Fouad Ajami/WSJ :A cold-blooded foreign policy


  • Chicago Tribune :Massive Rally backs Iran's leaders



  • Bloomberg
    :Iran Prosecutor Threatens to Try Opposition Leaders


  • Tehran Times:Opposition figures arrested after Iran protests


  • Jerusalem Post:US Iran sanctions to be targeted, mild - Obama Administration to block bills which would affect refined fuel imports


  • Jerusalem PostIn·sur·rec·tion:Gen-X Zionist


  • Commentary
    The Illegal-Settlements Myth


  • YNET17% rise in immigration to Israel during 2009




  • San Francisco

    What does it feel like when a long-time love changes into something very different right before your eyes?

    My friend Bookworm gives us a first hand look at that. And given what's going on in Washington these days, it might hit closer to home than you think:

    I was born and grew up in San Francisco. My very earliest memories of the City just predate the advent of the hippies. At that time, the City was a solid amalgam of working class people, middle class people, and a nice handful of the very, very rich. Barring the inevitable slums (and all cities have them), San Francisco was a well-maintained, fairly safe place. Trips downtown (usually triggered by a visit to the doctor in the medical building at 450 Sutter) always ended with a visit to the beautiful City of Paris department store to admire the rotunda (which you can still see in the new Nieman Marcus on the same site), a stop at the marble bathrooms in I. Magnin’s (where Macy’s stands now), and treats at Blum’s Restaurant. Women and men still wore hats in public places, and the women usually wore gloves too. The sidewalks were clean, and there were no beggars.

    I remember, too, when the hippies came along. Initially, at least from a child’s point of view, it was kind of fun. During the Summer of Love in 1967, colorfully dressed young people would be dancing in Golden Gate Park, waving banners, blowing bubbles and handing out flowers to all who passed by. Of course, when they left the Park at the end of these pretty love-ins, the grass was torn to shreds, the flower beds were destroyed, and a few overdosed teens always lay scattered in the detritus left behind. Soon, though, the magic (such as it was) vanished, and all that was left behind was the miserable slum that was the Haight Ashbury.{...}


    The hippies weren’t just an aberration. They were the beginning of a deep rot that set into the City. Some of them remained as anchors for the homeless who still pepper San Francisco’s streets, making those streets unsafe or just very, very unpleasant for ordinary people. Others reformed their lifestyles, but kept their Leftist, SDS influenced politics. They grew up, got jobs, bought homes, and became people of influence in the City. Their influence wasn’t immediately obvious. During the 1970s, the City just drifted along. Self-realization and self-actualization and general self-involvement hit the middle class with a bang, with the result that everyone was running around seeking his bliss, pausing only periodically to do some navel gazing.

    The City’s gays, contrary to the film Milk, weren’t in a perpetual state of political activism during the 1970s. Instead, they were glorying in the hedonism that was part-and-parcel of escaping the dark closet in which they’d lived for so many years. I can’t say that I blame them — it was a giddy feeling to be free to express a long-hidden sexuality — but the results were deleterious. It’s not healthy for a City to have a neighborhood that’s dedicated to sex, a rather obvious principle that is entirely separate from the fact that the Castro and its myriad bathhouses proved to be perfect Petri dishes for a burgeoning fatal disease that would soon sweep the world.{...}

    The City had also lost what limited control it once had over the worst neighborhoods in town. Nowhere was this more apparent to me than in the area surrounding the venerable Cow Palace. Admittedly, that area was never a very nice one, but I remember as a child going frequently to events at the Cow Palace, going to gymnastic meets at the neighborhood schools, dining on delicious Middle Eastern food at a family-owned restaurant, and visiting people’s houses in the area. Although I didn’t have the vocabulary at the time, looking back I would characterize the neighborhood as lower working class. By the late 1980s, it was just plain scary, with the housing projects dominating and blighting the area. (The worst of those housing projects, incidentally, became so unsustainable that the City eventually destroyed them in an effort at urban renewal. Those that remain are still appalling.) {..}

    As we enter the second decade of the 21st Century, I find myself in the City more and more often. I don’t visit the well-maintained spots that still charm tourists, though. Instead, my children’s activities take me to parts of town other than the little Potemkin neighborhoods, neatly preserved for the tourists or the affluent liberals concerned with preserving lovely enclaves for themselves. On these journeys, consistently, I am appalled by what I see. The City has morphed into a crazy combination of anarchy and Leftist totalitarianism, all neatly wrapped into a package called “political correctness.” This matters, not just because we’re witnessing the death of what used to be one of the most beautiful, desirable cities in the world, but because it perfectly represents the American Leftist paradigm. In other words, San Francisco is the future of American Leftism, and it’s a very scary future indeed.



    Read the whole thing. It's insightful, to say the least.

    My own experience of San Francisco involved frequent visits and actually living there in the early 1980's. I have very pleasant memories of Gomorrah-By-The Bay from visiting and from when I lived there, back in the early '80's. Even then, I guess it was getting sort of obvious the way things were headed if I'd of had my eyes open.It's almost as if the virus of Berkeley metastasized and spread across the Bay like a cancer. I've always felt that the election of über-Leftist Art Agnos was the turning point.

    It's worth noting that none of the friends I made there that I'm still in touch with still lives in the city, and for the most part their reasons for leaving jibe perfectly with Bookworm's, who now lives in Marin.



    Wednesday, December 30, 2009

    Rush Limbaugh Hospitalized

    I'm sorry to report that Rush Limbaugh was taken ill and rushed to The Queen's Medical Center in Honolulu after complaining of chest pains. He's been vacationing at the Kahala Hotel and Resort.

    The last word I had is that he's resting comfortably.

    I'm sure I join the rest of his millions of daily listeners in wishing him a full and speedy recovery.

    This great American is truly a national treasure.



    Sensible Advice From Bill Maher

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    Via Twitter:

    "Guys, I can tell u what to do about this security thing: just ask 'what wld Israel do?' and do that."

    Unfortunately Bill, your friend Barack Obama would never do that in a million years. He'd rather you keep risking your life than take a chance of offending Muslim sensibilities.



    Bailout: Obama Throws More Of Your Money At GM


    Or rather, at his friends in the UAW:

    The U.S. Treasury said today it will inject another $3.8 billion into troubled lender GMAC, part of a deal that will boost the federal government’s stake to 56% and attempt to staunch the company’s losses from bad mortgages.

    All of the money injected by the Treasury will essentially go to shoring up GMAC’s ResCap unit, the arm best known for ditech.com and other housing-boom related mortgage offers that crashed as housing prices withered over the past couple of years. GMAC said the move, along with a $3.3 billion write-down in mortgages at ResCap and Ally Bank, should allow it to explore a sale or other action for ResCap.

    "By protecting the financial performance and strength of our core automotive finance operations, we expect to increase the pace at which we can fully repay the U.S. taxpayer,” said GMAC Chief Executive Officer Michael A. Carpenter.

    The money comes on top of $12.5 billion that the U.S. Treasury had previously invested in GMAC to keep it afloat as the lender of choice for car buyers and dealers at General Motors and Chrysler


    We now own a majority stake in this rapidly failing enterprise:

    GMAC will become the sixth company the U.S. has taken control of in the past two years.

    Public-private mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, auto manufacturers General Motors and Chrysler and the largest commercial insurer in the U.S., American International Group.


    Ain't it fun playing with other people's money? Heckuva job, Barry ( to quote that well known right wing whacko,The New York Time's own Maureen Dowd).




    Cheney: “Obama Trying To Pretend We Are Not At War”


    Leave it to the Dark Lord to lay things out in proper perspective..

    "As I’ve watched the events of the last few days it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war. He seems to think if he has a low-key response to an attempt to blow up an airliner and kill hundreds of people, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if we bring the mastermind of Sept. 11 to New York, give him a lawyer and trial in civilian court, we won’t be at war.

    “He seems to think if he closes Guantanamo and releases the hard-core Al Qaeda-trained terrorists still there, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if he gets rid of the words, ‘war on terror,’ we won’t be at war. But we are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren’t, it makes us less safe. Why doesn’t he want to admit we’re at war? It doesn’t fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office. It doesn’t fit with what seems to be the goal of his presidency — social transformation — the restructuring of American society. President Obama’s first object and his highest responsibility must be to defend us against an enemy that knows we are at war."


    Remember, Cheney (unfortunately) has no political ambitions. He's merely doing what he did for a couple of decades in Washington,trying to protect America when others refuse to face facts. Ahhh, the Dark Lord. How I miss him....

    Here's another vicious right wing neocon attacking the president and saying pretty much the same thing:

    I was walking through a deserted downtown on Christmas Eve with a friend, past the lonely, gray Treasury Building, past the snowy White House with no president inside.

    “I hope the terrorists don’t think this is a good time to attack,” I said, looking protectively at the White House, which always looks smaller and more vulnerable and beautiful than you expect, no matter how often you see it up close.

    I thought our guard might be down because of the holiday; now I realize our guard is down every day.{...}

    Before he left for vacation, Obama tried to shed his Spock mien and juice up the empathy quotient on jobs. But in his usual inspiring/listless cycle, he once more appeared chilly in his response to the chilling episode on Flight 253, issuing bulletins through his press secretary and hitting the links. At least you have to seem concerned.{...}

    Citing the attempt of the Nigerian’s father to warn U.S. authorities six months ago, the president intoned: “It now appears that weeks ago this information was passed to a component of our intelligence community but was not effectively distributed so as to get the suspect’s name on a no-fly list.” {...}

    In his detached way, Spock was letting us know that our besieged starship was not speeding into a safer new future, and that we still have to be scared.

    Heck of a job, Barry.


    Trust Rush Limbaugh to put the boot in whenever Obama falls over. No wait, this sounds more like Michelle Malkin, doesn't it? Or maybe Krauthammer? Nah..gotta be Laura Ingraham. she's got the sarc mouth to use the old Katrina catchphrase against Obama.

    What a minute...

    Maureen Dowd!!?! MoDo, the same New York Times harridan who practically had an orgasm every time she spoke or wrote the One's name??? That Maureen Dowd? Referring to Obama as 'Spock?'

    This is Obama's Walter Cronkite moment. If he's lost Maureen Dowd, I don't care what the skewed polls say. The Wizard of O's approval ratings are headed for the cellar.



    Watcher's Council Nominations - This Was The Year That Was!

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    Welcome to the latest edition of the Watcher's Council nominations, some of the best writing from a group of the most incisive blogs in the`sphere. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one of their own and one from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The Council votes to pick the winners in each category and the results can be seen in this space on Friday morning.

    COUNCIL NEWS:

    This week, The OyVaY Blog took advantage of our generous link whorage offer this week, and earned honorable mention. If you wish to have your blog earn an honorable mention and have a piece of yours appear on the Watcher's Council page next week, the opportunity is open and up for grabs.

    Here's how you do it:
  • Make a post on your site linking to this week's Council winners when they're posted Friday morning.

  • Send me an e-mail by Tuesday 5 PM with the subject line 'link whorage' at rmill2k@msn.com with a link to the post you wrote linking to this week's winners and a link to a new piece you've written and want to showcase that you want to appear here the following week.

  • We''ll do the rest, and the increased traffic and the resulting fame and notoriety are all yours!

  • So, without further ado, let's see what we have this week....

    Council Submissions



    Honorable Mentions



    Non-Council Submissions






    Monday, December 28, 2009

    The Christmas Crotch Bomber - How He Almost Succeeded And How To Stop Him In The Future

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    By now, most of you know that there was an attempt by a jihadi affiliated with al-Qaeda to take out an airliner by igniting a metal dectector resistant plastic explosive known as PETN hidden in his underwear. The attempt only failed because the chemical detonator malfunctioned the first time and because a courageous passenger on board, was willing to mix it up with the bomber and subdue him, aided by the other passengers.

    The bomber was a Muslim (what a surprise!) from Nigeria, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. According to my sources, his lawyer has already filed assault charges against the passengers and crew for assault and grave bodily injury, citing charges currently filed against some Navy SEALS as a precedent.

    OK, I may have made that last bit up, but what actually happened was just as ludicrous. The Obama Justice Department immediately indicted Abdulmutallab on criminal charges of trying to destroy an aircraft, disregarding the fact that he told the arresting officers he had ties to al Qaeda and had picked up his explosives at an al-Qaeda training camp in Yemen. That means that Abdulmutallab is only subject to the same type of interrogation given any other defendant in a criminal case, with a lawyer present and his Miranda rights read.

    So unless he decides to cooperate voluntarily, we can forget about learning any more about his contacts in Yemen, or any networks or ongoing plots he might be familiar with.

    Even worse, we had a pretty good idea of whom we were dealing with before Abdulmutallab even got on the plane, except that just as in the Clinton era, there were 'walls' put between different data bases designed to safeguard the legal rights of potential terrorists rather than to enhance US security against them. Abdulmutallab's own father back in Nigeria, a fairly wealthy banker, went to the trouble of going to the US consulate and informing them that his son had become involved with Islamic extremists and that he thought his son had visited Yemen and come into contact with jihadis based in Yemen.

    The embassy took a report, sent a cable and Abdulmutallab wound up on a database, but not the database that would have put him on the no-fly, no visa list.Even the Brits got that one right..

    Yemen has been a major destination of 'catch and release' jihadis we've decided to spring from Club Gitmo, even though our intel officials have raised alarms about Yemen as an emerging al Qaeda sanctuary for at least a year. Is it so surprising that this would come back to haunt us?

    This is essentially a symptom of the Obama Administration's entire approach to Islamist terrorism, which is to handle it as an annoying legal problem rather admitting we're in a war, and almost everything they've done, the mirandizing of jihadis captured on the battlefield, the numerous speeches by Obama apologizing to the Muslim world for G-d knows what, the threatened prosecution of CIA interrogators and the show trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York City are all part of a pattern. And if all this sounds familiar, it's exactly the way the Clinton Administration handled things, with results we're all too familiar with.


    Even with al-Qaeda taking credit for the bombing and Abdulmutallab's clear ties to them, President Obama still persisted in calling him an 'isolated extremist' during his brief remarks on the bombing between tee off times.

    Nor is it just the Obama Administration. What do you know? As luck would have it, Two of the four leaders reportedly behind the al-Qaeda crotch bomber plot were released by the U.S. from Club Gitmo back in November, 2007 to the custody of the Saudis after Condi Rice took over these matters, where they were put through a " rehabilitation program" and were set free after promising to never ever to do it again.

    No wonder Abdulmutallab says there are more where he came from. There are, and not just from places like Yemen but our own home grown radical Muslims like the Fort Hood killer Major Hasan.

    So how did the Obama Administration and Homeland Security react to all this? With a set of onerous new regulations for airline passengers and promises to 'review the system' - the one the dimwitted head of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano initially said worked just fine and then had to backtrack and admit it didn't once she realized even the normally compliant dinosaur media was laughing at her.

    What's next - mandatory cavity searches before you're allowed in an airplane?

    We need a new 'system',but even more we need a brand new attitude.

    There is a great deal I could say about this subject, but for the sake of simplicity, let's limit our discussion to airline security.

    Holding airline passengers hostage and continually restricting their movements or what they can carry onboard simply avoids the obvious. We need to target the terrorists,rather than their tools.

    In a word. profiling.

    And by that, I'm not just speaking about ethnic or religious profiling, but psychological profiling, done by highly trained security personnel who know how to read body language and ask questions.Many of the people working for the TSA are obviously trying to do their jobs to the best of their ability, but the vast majority are the sort of people you'd find working at your local Department of Motor Vehicles or the post office, with all that implies.

    The Israelis were forced to confront this problem some time ago for obvious reasons, and they've developed a unique and highly successful way of handling this. The last time a plane with a significant number of Israeli passengers was involved in an 'incident' was the 1973 hijacking of an Air France plane to Entebbe, and even that took place out of the notoriously lax Athens airport.

    Airline security Israeli-style starts well before you reach the ticket counter. At Ben Gurion Airport, There's a checkpoint manned by a police officer and several well armed guards backing him up.The police officer will speak to you briefly, check your passport( the norm on passport checks to get on board an El-Al airplane is five times) and if you or your body language arouse their suspicions, they err on the side of caution and will either pull you over for a search right there and then or call ahead to the terminal and flag you to let the security guards there know you require special attention.

    When you go into the terminal with your luggage, there's security watching you, and if you arouse any suspicions or seem overly nervous, you can expect more questions.

    All El Al terminals worldwide (not just in Israel) are staffed by a number of very well trained plain-clothes and uniformed security agents who are fully armed and watch what's going on like hawks(don't ever leave a carry on bag or a back pack just laying around on a bench somewhere).And yes, like I said, they profile. Mahmoud the Pakistani student on his way to Londonistan is going to receive a lot more scrutiny than Mrs. Goldfarb, the elderly grandma on her way back to New York.

    All passengers and luggage are checked by highly trained security agents and every passenger is subjected to those famous personal interviews. Passengers will be asked questions about where they came from, where they're going and why, who they visited in Israel, whether they packed their bags themselves,whether anyone gave them a package to take..almost anything you can imagine.

    An example of how well this works involved the true story of a pregnant Irish girl who told the Israeli security officers that yes, her Palestinian fiance had given her a gift to bring home to her parents. When the Israelis carefully unwrapped it, they found a bomb set up to detonate over the Mediterranean.

    But wait, there's more.

    At the check-in counter the passengers’ passports and tickets are closely examined. A ticket without a sticker from the security checkers will not be accepted. At passport control passengers’ names are checked against information from the FBI, Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), Scotland Yard, Shin Bet, and Interpol databases. Luggage is screened and sometimes hand searched. In addition, bags are put through a decompression chamber simulating pressures during flight that could trigger explosives.El Al is the only airline in the world that passes all luggage through such a chamber. Even at overseas airports, El Al security agents conduct all luggage searches personally, even if they are supervised by government or private security firms.


    After all that, making passengers take off their shoes or taking away their water bottles or aftershave is unnecessary. And timewise, the procedure takes no longer than the normal check in time at a US airport, provided you haven't aroused anyone's suspicions and been subjected to extra questioning.

    The key, of course is highly trained personnel unafraid of being sued or reprimanded simply for doing their jobs. Which of course is why Department of Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano's current trip to Israel to observe all this firsthand is a waste of time, since the Obama Administration's top priority in these matters seems to be 'Thou shalt not offend Muslims, no matter what'.

    To actually resolve the problem of airport security threats, you have to admit where those threats originate from and acknowledge that frisking a housewife from Kansas while letting an Imam from Brooklyn pass through in the name of political correctness is not only stupid, it's suicidal.

    I'd love to be proven wrong, but I don't see the current occupant of the White House or his minions going there. Instead, they will be content to suffer an incident here and an incident there, since that's easier than acknowledging the real problem and actually doing something about it.

    The death of a thousand cuts will likely continue.

    Rabbi Meir Chai Avenged - And What it Says About The 'Peace' Process

    Rabbi Meir Chai's brutal murder last week has been avenged as the IDF brought the killers to justice:

    IDF troops overnight Friday eliminated three Al Aksa Brigade terrorists who on Thursday murdered Shavei Shomron resident Rabbi Meir Chai as he was driving from his home to the town of Einav. The three terrorists were identified as Anan Subeh, 33, Raed a-Sarkaji, 38, and Raghsan Abu Sharah, 39 whose brother is considered a top terrorists in the group. All three have been involved in a string of previous terror attacks.

    According to reports, IDF troops entered the center of Shechem early Saturday morning and surrounded the houses where the terrorists were holed up. Two of the three were killed when they refused the soldiers' call to surrender, while the third was killed in a gunbattle.


    As noted above, all three of the killers were long-time members of the Al-Aksa Martyr's Brigade and thus on the Fatah payroll.

    One of them, Raed a-Sarkaji was released in January 2009 from an Israeli prison after serving seven years in an Israeli prison on terrorism charges, one of those concessions made to 'bolster' PA President Mahmoud Abbas. Another was Anan Subuh, an Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades operative who had received a pardon from the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) as part of the 2007 deal, under which 400 Fatah terrorists handed in their weapons, promised to cease their terror activity and in return were assured of an amnesty.

    This is only the latest in a series of terrorist attacks involving convicted terrorists freed by Israel, and the timing has served to give the Israeli government second thoughts about freeing 1,000 plus terrorists convicted in Israeli civilian courts as ransom for kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

    Thus, Rabbi Chai's(HY"D)murder could thus save the lives of hundreds of his fellow Israelis.

    These cockroaches' funerals became a huge public event with an interesting twist - this time most of the slogans and threats were directed against the Palestinian Authority and Mahmoud Abbas:

    During the funerals of the three men, all veteran members and leaders of Fatah's armed wing, the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, thousands of Palestinians chanted slogans accusing the PA of collusion with Israel and calling for an end to security coordination with Israel and the dismantling of the PA.

    For several hours during the funerals, which took place in Nablus, it seemed as if the PA and not the IDF had killed the three men. It was, in the words of a local journalist, "one of the biggest anti-Palestinian Authority demonstrations" in many years.

    The relationship between the PA and local Fatah activists has always been tense. Nablus and its surrounding refugee camps, especially Balata refugee camp, has long been a stronghold for disgruntled Fatah militiamen who occasionally vent their frustration against the PA leadership and security forces.

    For years during the second intifada, Nablus, the largest Palestinian city in the West Bank, was controlled by dozens of Fatah gunmen and thugs who imposed a reign of terror on wealthy clans.

    Many local families did not hide their satisfaction when IDF troops raided the city during Operation Defensive Shield in 2002 and killed or arrested scores of Fatah gunmen, including the infamous Ahmed Tabouk, one of the leaders of the Aksa Martyrs Brigades.

    In the context of its efforts to restore law and order to the city, the PA offered four years ago to recruit many of the gunmen to various branches of its security forces if they agreed to lay down their weapons.

    The PA also managed to persuade Israel to stop pursuing those gunmen who agreed to hand over their weapons and abandon violence.

    In return, the PA took on itself the mission of holding the "pardoned" gunmen in one of its security installations for a limited time and as a first step toward granting them total freedom of movement.

    Most of the Fatah gunmen who complied were added to the PA's payroll, but not all were happy with the arrangement. Some complained that the PA had broken its promise to appoint them to senior positions in its security forces, while others said that their salaries were too low. Others complained that despite their agreement to surrender their weapons and open a new page in their lives, Israeli security forces were continuing to target them.

    Friends and relatives of the Fatah operatives who were killed in the recent IDF operation accused the PA of failing to fulfill its "commitments" to give them more money and good jobs. Some did not rule out the possibility that the Fatah cell that murdered Rabbi Meir Chai last week had received money from an "outside" party, such as Hizbullah or even Hamas.

    In the past, there were a number of cases where Fatah militiamen in the West Bank openly admitted to receiving funds from Hizbullah. The gunmen justified their action by arguing that the PA had failed to "compensate" them for the "sacrifices" they made in the fight against Israel.

    The killing of the three men is now being exploited by leading figures in Fatah to incite against the PA leadership in Ramallah. One of the main instigators is Husam Khader, a charismatic and extremely popular Fatah operative from Balata who has long been attacking the PA and its security forces, accusing them of financial and moral corruption and collaboration with Israel.

    Khader and another senior Fatah operative, Kadoura Fares of Ramallah, are convinced that continued cooperation with Israel on security matters would eventually turn Palestinians against the PA leadership. The two, along with many of their followers in Fatah, believe that a third intifada is on its way, but that this time it would be directed against the PA and not Israel.


    This is very indicative of exactly why the so-called peace process between Israel and the Palestinians is dead in the water.

    Three terrorists on Fatah's payroll who had supposedly forsworn further terrorist activities murder an unarmed Rabbi on the roads after an IDF checkpoint is removed, and yet public anger is not directed against the killers for breaching and endangering the peace agreements but at the Palestinian Authority for participating in any sort of cooperation with Israel!

    Considering how corrupt, weak and illegitimate a government Abbas and the Palestinian Authority actually are, the Israelis ought to be very wary about making deals with them..especially when it comes to giving up land and removing security checkpoints.If the IDF ever actually pulled out of Judea and Samaria completely, Abbas and his gang would last perhaps a month before being over thrown by the local jihadis and Hamas.



    Sunday, December 27, 2009

    Iran On Fire Again...

    An Iranian opposition supporter next to a burning police motorcycle in Tehran


    Two concurrent events combined to provoke massive unrest in Tehran and other cities in Iran this week - the death of Ayatollah Montazeri, a senior Shi'ite cleric identified with Rafasjani, Mousavi and Iran's Green movement and the coming of Ashura,a Shi'ite festival commemorating the death of Ali, Mohammad's grandson and son-in-law in one of Islam's first power struggles.A big part of Ashura involves voluntary bloodletting and hysterical self flagellation.

    http://religiousfreaks.com/UserFiles/Image/ashura.jpg

    Combined with the political unrest going on and Mantazeri's death, it has created a volatile mix some people are dubbing an Iranian 'intifada'.

    There's no way of actually knowing what's really going on in Iran, since the news is dependent of either government sources or grainy cellphone camera images and commentary sent via the internet. What we've heard so far is that eight people have died in the street protests, including Mousavi's nephew who was reportedly gunned down by the paramilitary basij militia. It could just as easily be eighty - there's no way to tell. There are also numerous protesters probably locked up in the regime's dungeons.

    While I wish the Iranian people well in their struggle for freedom, anyone who thinks that 'Green Movement' and its leader Mousavi are going to make the problems of Iran's illegal nuclear weapons program and its ongoing support for Islamist terrorism go away in the unlikely event they overthrow Khamenei and his regime is simply in denial.

    Mousavi is just as much as Islamist fascist as Ahmadinejad and Khamenei and no democracy-minded reformer. He's always been a longtime proponent of Islamist triumphalism and terrorism, a hardliner on Iran's illegal nuclear weapons program and an anti-Semite who has called for Israel to be destroyed. He was a key aide to Ayatollah Khomeini during the Islamic revolution in 1979 and played a large part in Khomeini's decision to overrun the US embassy and take American diplomats hostage. As Iran's prime minister between 1981-89, Mousavi was vociferously anti-Western and anti-American. He had a major hand in the creation of Hezbollah in Lebanon. His handpicked interior minister, Ali Akbar Mohtashami, was Mousavi's liaison when the Iranian government formed and funded that terrorist group. One of Mohtashami's first major operations was the murder of 240 US Marines in Lebanon, and he's also been implicated in the blowing up of the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

    As the recent election campaign revealed, when it came to issues that matter to the West -- Iran's quest for nuclear weapons, threats of genocide aimed at Israel, interference in Iraq and Afghanistan, support for Islamist terrorism and any reasonable compromises with the West on these issues -- Ahmadinejad and Mousavi were virtually the same.

    Some of Mousavi's followers might actually be pro-democracy, but their viewpoint is not likely to be the one that would prevail in the event of a another Iranian revolution. There were a lot of Iranians who learned that the hard way after the Shah was ousted in 1979 and the revolution was co-opted by the Ayatollah Khomeini and his hardliners into something very different than what they had imagined. Those of Mousavi's supporters who claim to be for real democratic reform in Iran may have forgotten that Mousavi and his patron Rafsanjani were a key part of the process that turned the revolt for democratic freedom against the Shah into Khomeini's Villayat-e faqih, a revolutionary Islamic republic.If Mousavi returns to power, expect a slightly less clerically dominated Islamic Republic, with simply a new set of 'ins'.

    Even the patron saint of the latest outbreak, Ayatollah Montazeri had the typical Shiite intolerance for non-Muslims, and only became identified with with Rafsanjani and the so-called reform movement after he lost a power struggle with Khamanei and was more or less sidelined.

    Mousavi's followers claim the Islamist color green as their emblem and shout "Allahu akbar!" as a battle cry from the rooftops. There are Iranians who yearn for political liberty, but their number is dwarfed by the ones that embrace Islamism.

    That's especially true since the Obama Administration has refused to voice any concrete support for Iran's pro-democracy movement whatsoever.Had the president made a point of doing so, it might have made a difference. As it is, he's now stigmatized as a supporter of the old regime, just as Jimmy Carter was.

    Is the Iranian revolution going to succeed? A key turning point will be if the Pasdaran( Republican Guards) and the armed forces either join a revolt against the mullahs or stand aside, as they did in 1979. So far, that hasn't occurred, although there are indications that Khamenei and other Iranian leaders may be making contingency plans for the future if their regime is overthrown.

    If it happens,don't expect any miraculous changes. As Omar Abdel-Rahman, the so-called Blind Sheik who masterminded the first World Trade Center bombing was fond of saying, "Islam is Islam."

    And it trumps everything in this part of the world.



    Obama Cedes Sovereignty To Interpol,Axes Constitutional Protections


    This is huge.

    While you were sleeping, President Obama did something that has serious implications for your rights and freedoms.

    On December 17th, he amended Executive Order 12425 in a significant manner to allow InterPol to operate freely on US soil out of our own Department of Justice, making them immune from all the Constitutional protections American normally enjoy regarding law enforcement agencies.

    InterPol, for those of you who don't know is essentially an offshore information repository and data base on criminals that American and European law enforcement officials can have access to for crimes that cross international borders. Obama just changed it into a full fledged police and investigative agency with arresting powers freely operating on US shores with no US oversight and not subject to US laws:

    Section 2c of the United States International Organizations Immunities Act is the crucial piece.

    Property and assets of international organizations, wherever located and by whomsoever held, shall be immune from search, unless such immunity be expressly waived, and from confiscation. The archives of international organizations shall be inviolable. (Emphasis added.)

    Inviolable archives means INTERPOL records are beyond US citizens' Freedom of Information Act requests and from American legal or investigative discovery ("unless such immunity be expressly waived.")

    Property and assets being immune from search and confiscation means precisely that. Wherever they may be in the United States. This could conceivably include human assets - Americans arrested on our soil by INTERPOL officers.

    Context: International Criminal Court

    The importance of this last crucial point cannot be understated, because this immunity and protection - and elevation above the US Constitution - afforded INTERPOL is likely a precursor to the White House subjecting the United States under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC). INTERPOL provides a significant enforcement function for the ICC, just as our FBI provides a significant function for our Department of Justice.

    We direct the American public to paragraph 28 of the ICC's Proposed Programme Budget for 2010 (PDF).

    29. Additionally, the Court will continue to seek the cooperation of States not party to the Rome Statute and to develop its relationships with regional organizations such as the Organization of American States (OAS), the Arab League (AL), the African Union (AU), the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), ASEAN and CARICOM. We will also continue to engage with subregional and thematic organizations, such as SADC and ECOWAS, and the Commonwealth Secretariat and the OIF. This will be done through high level visits, briefings and, as appropriate, relationship agreements. Work will also be carried out with sectoral organizations such as IDLO and INTERPOL, to increase efficiency.

    The United States is not a party to the Rome Statute - the UN treaty that established the International Criminal Court. (See: Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court)



    This essentially has the potential to put Americans under UN and ICC jurisdiction. Not only are US Constitutional protections against illegal search and seizure voided, but Americans can be tried under 'international' statutes.

    For instance, American military personnel accused of 'war crimes' or Americans interrogating Islamist terrorists could face arrest and trial under international warrants and remanded to third world hellholes for trial. Commentators and authors found guilty of 'hate speech' could be forced to defend themselves before Human Rights Tribunals ( ask Mark Steyn about that). And allies visiting America from countries like Israel could be met with warrants issued by the ICC, effectively prohibiting them from coming to the US. That's already happened in the EU, where the member countries honor ICC jurisdiction.

    Another interesting thought..you all remember the infamous Department of Homeland Security report identifying 'right wing extremists' and mil veterans as the chief threats to the nation's security? Imagine if Prez Zero plans to use his new InterPol pals with their Contitutionally exempt surveillance, search and seizure powers to ferret out a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. Can you say 'Reichstag Fire incident', necessitating lots more emergency powers for the White House ? Sure you can.

    This should be front page headlines all over country, and its constitutionality needs to be challenged forthwith. It's just like the current occupant of the White House to pull this when Congress is not in session and the country is distracted by the Holidays.

    Get fighting mad....and let your representatives in Washington know that this is not going to stand.

    Here's a few links to other articles on this at:

    The Patriot Room

    Andy McCarthy – National Review Online – Why Does Interpol Need Immunity from American Law?

    Atlas Shrugs – Obama Throws Americans, Constitution Under the Bus: Gives Interpol Immunity

    Ed Morrisey – Hot Air – Did Obama exempt Interpol from same legal constraints as American law-enforcement?

    Bookworm Room – Barack Obama and Interpol

    Dr. Melissa Clouthier – More On President Obama’s Executive Order








    Friday, December 25, 2009

    Reagan's Christmas Address To The Nation, 1981





    One of President Reagan's best speeches, given to the nation in 1981.

    For those of us who've forgotten, this is how a real leader speaks and acts.Listen closely.

    Note especially his concrete support for the freedom of the Polish people as opposed to a certain other more recent occupant of the White House's lack of support for the same thing in Iran.

    And notice also how the entire speech is full of phrases like: "we" and "us" and "Americans".. and then take any speech of Obama's and count all of the "I's" and "me's".

    *sigh*

    But I have no doubt better days are coming.



    US Consulate Car Tried To Run Over Israeli Checkpoint Guard

    Un-freaking- believable. Or maybe not, unfortunately:

    A dispute is rumbling between Israel and the US Consulate in Jerusalem after a US diplomatic car allegedly tried running over a Defense Ministry security guard recently at an IDF checkpoint in the West Bank. The car had been stopped after the occupants refused to present identification papers.

    Israel is also furious that one of the consulate cars was found to have transported a Palestinian without permits between Jerusalem and the West Bank.

    The identification of American diplomats from the consulate at IDF checkpoints has been a major sticking point for several years.

    In January 2008, the Civil Administration of Judea and Samaria filed complaints with the Foreign Ministry after both US Security Coordinator Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton and then-consul-general Jacob Walles refused to roll down their windows or open their car doors and show identification papers at a checkpoint.

    However, Israel's ire reached a new level after an incident on November 13 in which a five-car convoy of consulate vehicles with diplomatic plates arrived at the Gilboa crossing.

    According to a detailed official Israel Police description of the incident obtained exclusively by The Jerusalem Post, the drivers refused to identify themselves or open a window or door. The drivers, according to the report, purposely blocked the crossing, tried running over one of the Israeli security guards stationed there and made indecent gestures at female guards.

    The entire incident was documented by cameras at the crossing.

    Following the incident, the head of the police's Security Department, Lt.-Cmdr. Meir Ben-Yishai, convened a meeting on November 18 at police headquarters in Jerusalem with the regional security officer at the consulate, Tim Laas. Also present were officials from the Defense Ministry and the Foreign Ministry, and the regional security officer at the US Embassy in Tel Aviv, Dan Power.

    According to a protocol of the meeting, obtained by the Post, Ben-Yishai said he assumed the drivers of the consulate vehicles had received permission to act the way they had. He said that in the future, if a diplomatic car did not stop and identify its passengers "immediately," it would not be allowed to pass the checkpoint.

    Ben-Yishai described additional violations by consulate workers, and referred to at least one case in which a female Palestinian without appropriate documentation was found in a diplomatic car. Defense officials told the Post that there had been other similar cases in the past.

    "We view this as an attempt to illegally transfer someone," Ben-Yishai said, according to the official police protocol.

    Ben-Yishai also said the drivers of the cars, from east Jerusalem, hid their Israeli identity cards and put stickers over their names on their consulate-issued identity cards, since, as they claimed, "they are in a diplomatic vehicle and cannot be touched."

    He added that police had filed a complaint with the Foreign Ministry and were conducting their own investigation to identify the driver who had tried running over the Israeli security guard.

    While Power apologized for the incident and tried
    smoothing things over, Laas angered Ben-Yishai, according to the protocol, when he said it was unacceptable for "simple guards" to inspect senior diplomats.

    Laas said the communication needed to be between the guard and the driver, since "we can't know who the guard is."

    This was understood by those present as
    indicating his lack of trust in Israeli guards.

    "This situation is being misused, and as proof in the latest incident, they refused to identify themselves and even tried smuggling a Palestinian without permission," Ben-Yishai said, according to the protocol. "The security guards at the crossings are licensed and are authorized by me, and that is how they should be treated. They are not 'simple guards‚' as Tim Laas called them."

    Laas claimed that the Palestinian woman who had been in the car served as a translator for Dayton and the consul and that she had been returning with the team to Israel. He said it was possible that there had been a mishap with her papers.


    'Simple guards', hmmm? Obviously not worthy to inhabit the same universe as exalted diplomatic personnel.

    From the Israeli's point of view, this is a no-brainer. The Palestinians have used Red Cross ambulances as well as UNRWA and diplomatic vehicles in the past to transport terrorists, explosives and weapons inside Israel without any compunction, since a lot of the employees who work for these organizations - including the US Consulate - are Arabs more than willing to work for the cause of murdering Jews.

    The Israelis have no way of knowing who's in the car, and the normal procedure an ally would follow would be to respect those security procedures by showing their identification and cooperating.

    Instead, they're deliberately showing their contempt.

    I'm not surprised at General Dayton's behavior in the least - he's in the Palestinian Authority training an army with your tax dollars for America's preferred terrorists precisely because of his long standing anti-Israel views. But US diplomatic personnel ought to at least go through the motions of treating the host country with respect. Can you imagine US embassy employees acting like this in Saudi Arabia? They'd loss their jobs in an instant.

    Since it's Israel, I doubt they'll even be reprimanded.

    The Israelis are probably going to have to enforce their security checks and push the envelope, even if it means refusing entry or disabling a consular car and detaining the occupants.

    Simply amazing.



    Watcher's Winners For A Holiday Weekend!

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/galleries/christmas/images/10.jpg

    It's that time again... the Council has spoken, choosing the winners of this week's competition. And there's some superb Christmas weekend reading in your stocking for you...No lumps of coal here!

    In the Council category, the winner this week was Bookworm Room with an interesting essay on Communism's role in th eglobal warming controversy, The Communist Cat is out of the Climate Change Bag:
    Since the beginning, climate change skeptics have said that the hysteria of the man-made global warming movement, aside from being based on manifestly shoddy and often dishonest science, was in fact a Leftist political gambit. The Communists, having failed to win the world over with a Cold War had regrouped and were seeking to win it over with a warm war. By targeting Western (that is, capitalist) nations as the evildoers in the world’s imminent boiling destruction, and then playing on the fear, guilt and ignorance of those same Western nations, the Communists . . . er, global warming saviors . . . announced a solution: the West should give up its wealth by transferring it en masse to poor nations. The West should also give up its lifestyle, by abandoning electricity, gas and even toilet paper. The West, in other words, should give true meaning to global warming by engaging in self-immolation.

    The last month, though, has seen this Communist-inspired house of cards collapse as quickly as the Soviet bloc did back in 1989. First came ClimateGate, which revealed to the whole world the fact that the most ardent climate “scientists” were, in fact, ideologues who cared little about science, and a great deal about achieving a political goal. They lied about their data, destroyed their facts, and systematically set out to muzzle and destroy anyone who disagreed with them.

    In the non-Council category the winner this week is the always scintillatingMichael Yon with a birdseye view of the ewar in Afghanistan entitled Arghandab & The Battle for Kandahar :
    People are confused about the war. The situation is difficult to resolve even for those who are here. For most of us, the conflict remains out of focus, lacking reference of almost any sort. Vertigo leaves us seeking orientation from places like Vietnam—where most of us never have been. So sad are our motley pundits-cum-navigators that those who have never have been to Afghanistan or Vietnam shamelessly use one to reference the other. We saw this in Iraq.

    The most we can do is pay attention, study hard, and try to bring something into focus that is always rolling, yawing, and seemingly changing course randomly, in more dimensions than even astronauts must consider. All while gauging dozens of factors, such as Afghan Opinion, Coalition Will, Enemy Will and Capacity, Resources, Regional Actors (and, of course, the Thoroughly Unexpected). Nobody will ever understand all these dynamic factors and track them at once and through time. That’s the bad news.

    The good news is that a tiger doesn’t need to completely understand the jungle to survive, navigate, and then dominate. It is not necessary to know every anthropological and historical nuance of the people here. If that were the case, our Coalition of over forty nations would not exist. More important is to realize that they are humans like us. They get hungry, happy, sad, and angry; they make friends and enemies (to the Nth degree); they are neither supermen nor vermin. They’re just people.

    But it always helps to know as much as you can. This will take much time, many dispatches, and hard, dangerous work. Let’s get started.

    Council Notes: If you want to see your blog piece listed on the Watcher’s Council page as an honorable mention, our generous offer of link whorage remains open. Here's how you take advantage of it:
  • Simply make a post linking to this week’s Council winners

  • Send me an e-mail with the subject line ‘link whorage’ at rmill2k@msn.com before 5PM next Tuesday, December 22nd. Include a link to that post and a link to the piece you want to appear in next week's Honorable Mentions

  • The resulting fame, glory and increased traffic are yours for the taking.

  • Here's the complete rundown of this week's results. Only the Provocateur and Mere Rhetoric were unable to vote, but only Mere Rhetoric was affected by the mandatory 2/3 vote penalty.

    I can't wait to see next week's exciting entries, and as always, congratulations not only to the winners but to all the participants.

    Have a great Christmas weekend!

    Council Submissions



    Non-Council Submissions






    Thursday, December 24, 2009

    Merry Christmas!

    I want to wish each and every one of you a merry and joyous Christmas...this is a special time of year and may it be blessed for all of you and yours.



    Rabbi Murdered By Palestinians In Israel

    I was hoping to keep today light, but I feel this needs attention.

    Rabbi Meir Chai HY"D was murdered near Shavei Shomron in Samaria(AKA The northern part of the West Bank) yesterday afternoon.

    He was a teacher at the local Talmud Torah School,who left a wife and seven children ranging from a two months-old to an 18 year-old. He was only 45.

    He was murdered by automatic weapons fire as he was driving along Route 57, between the Samaria communities of Shavei Shomron and Einav.

    According to the Jordanian news agency Ma'an,'credit' for his murder was taken by a group affiliated with Fatah's al-Aksa Martyr's Brigade...you know, the Obama Administration's preferred terrorists.

    It would be interesting to do a ballistic study and determine if the shots came from one of those shiny new M-16's General Keith Dayton is using to arm the Palestinian army he's training.

    A key part in the assassin's being able to get in and out easily was the removal of two IDF checkpoints last week, which was done as a gesture to President Obama and the Palestinians even though the residents begged them not to:

    Shomron Regional Council head Gershon Masika also criticized the government for not doing enough to ensure the safety of the settlers in the West Bank.

    "Following a long period of calm, and despite our warnings, they opened the main checkpoint between Shavei Shomron and the West Bank city of Tulkarem. The government of Israel prefers to upkeep the lifestyle of Palestinian rather than that of its own citizens," said Masika.

    Kedumim Regional Council head Hananel Durani added that "this murderous attack is the direct result of the government's weakness, the construction freeze and the turning of defense resources against the Jewish people." {...}

    Sarah Eliash, a resident of Kedumim settlement, knew the family well. "Meir Avshalom Hai's wife, Elisheva, is currently on maternity leave with a 2-month-old baby," Eliash told Ynet.

    Shavei Shomron spokeswoman, Menora Chazani, told Ynet the Hai was the childrens' Rabbi, and used to teach them Talmud and Torah in kindergarten.

    "He would buy the children sweets and surprises, and teach them to sing. The kids admired him, and still do," Chazani said


    My heart breaks for his family.

    Ever wonder if there's media bias? I guarantee you, if this had been Jews killing an Imam it would have been on the front pages of every newspaper in the world.

    This is an excellent illustration of what I've always said, that the key to Middle East peace has nothing to do with land, or borders, or refugees. It's about the fact that the Arabs can't abide the presence of Jews at all in peace and equality.

    Rabbi Chai's 'crime' was simply being a Jew, and that's why he was murdered.It really is that simple.


    Hat tip to Carl and Aussie Dave.



    The Ultimate Christmas Project - A Beer Tree!!!



    Seeing is believing....Merry Christmas!


    The Heart Of The Matter


    "Despair is a dividend paid to disaster before it is due" - Sir Winston Churchill

    This is where things get real.

    A number of my readers and other people whose opinion I respect deeply have let me know that the recent debacle in Washington has disheartened and disturbed them to the point of despair.

    I hope none of you take what I'm about to say personally, but I think the obituaries are a mite premature...and even harmful.

    Part of what fuels decadence (and eventual destruction and defeat) is the belief that everything is rotten beyond repair, so why even try anymore? If enough people feel that way, then they contribute to the defeat and it's over. So it's important to act with optimism and positive energy even when it seems hopeless.

    One of the things that surprised me in reading Winston Churchill's history of World War II is how frequently he succumbed to despair during the run-up to the Second World War when he could see where things were headed, and afterward,when he finally took power and the Nazis were expected to invade at any moment.

    Sir Winston referred to these periods of depression as 'the black dog'...but he made a point of never sharing these emotions with anyone, and indeed made a point of acting especially cheery and unperturbed when things seemed darkest. And there were plenty of such moments.

    He understood instinctively one of William James' basic principles of psychology, that moods are infectious and affect others and that a positive attitude, even a partially feigned one, can have positive results.

    And there are positive results to be had. We have a country to win, and one that's worth fighting for.

    What we are seeing here is the final act of Gramscian Warfare, named after Communist strategist Antonio Gramsci, who theorized that the Soviets could best export their poisonous ideology to free societies not by military means but by attacking a country's culture and institutions from within. The Soviets first planted this virus in our country as early as the 1930's, and Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, David Axelrod and a great many of the others in and around the current administration are the ultimate products, the dancing and the disease all at the same time.

    What's happening in Washington is beneficial because it brings things out in the open where they're readily apparent even to people who normally don't focus on such things in daily life.This is just the recovery phase of the Marxist virus first implanted here 70 years ago, and sometimes recovery has a certain amount of discomfort, especially if a major regurgitation of something poisonous is involved.

    For years, there's been a certain constituency for a quasi-fascist welfare state in America in very broad terms because it was couched in appealing language like 'fairness' 'equal opportunity', 'diversity', 'progressive' and 'rights' to various entitlements never mentioned in our Constitution. The Smart People and tenured radicals in the universities supported it and the media and Hollywood promoted it, so the average American vaguely endorsed it because the alternatives were never promoted with anything like the same fervor.It seemed like the right way to think and sounded good, because the pitfalls to the socialist nirvana were never clearly explained to them and few of them had experienced it up close in person.

    That's all changed now, and it will be even more apparent in the future. When your enemy is out in the open, he can be defeated. This is a threshold moment.

    When Mark Steyn says that Obama and his minions have been thinking strategically, he's only half-right. Because they've also succumbed to hubris and dropped the mask, a major tactical error at this point in the game.

    It's the classic conman's mistake, underestimating the mark and pushing for the kill too soon.

    There's nothing Obama and the current regime can do that can't be overturned, and that includes everything in the ObamaCare bill, notwithstanding the language Harry Reid put in requiring a super-majority to dissolve the Independent Medical Advisory Board in charge of rationing care, AKA the Death Panels.*

    It would have been much harder to dismantle with an expansion of Medicare or the so-called public option, something the more astute Leftards understand all too well.

    And if ObamCare passes as it now stands, it will be a massive club to beat Prez Zero and his accomplices with at election time, especially as the high taxes, increased premiums, rationing and penalties kick in immediately and the 'benefits' don't begin until 2014. The average voter understands this instinctively, especially seniors, and we're all going to get a firsthand look at what Obama's neo-Marxist paradise looks and smells like. Only without the job security, of course.

    Where Steyn and other usually astute observers are perhaps being influenced by is the current state of the Republican Party.However,that's already changing, in spite of the best efforts of the GOP establishment. The biggest segment of the electorate right now consists of independents and mad-as-hell tea party adherents, and they are already moving the party in their direction....just ask Charlie Crist.

    So far, the only mainstream political figure to pick up on this new energy and channel it has been Sarah Palin, who has a huge advantage simply because she was first out of the box by a long shot. However, there will be others, and the Republican Party will have to accommodate them if it doesn't want to go the way of the Whigs.

    However, to take advantage of this opportunity to remake the country requires that we work, and even more importantly, it requires faith.

    I believe that America is exceptional, and I have no doubt that that was part of G-d's plan, just as the challenges we face now are part of His design.He does nothing by accident, and I think he has good things in store for America in the future.

    However, it's up to us to choose that future.

    This comes down to the old free will versus divine will puzzle. For my part, I've always felt like G-d is several steps ahead of the game, but allows us to move the pieces he sets on the board. We play in the cosmic chess game, but with a Master Player who can see where the game's going at all times.

    I just got through celebrating a holiday that commemorates the miraculous victory of a bunch of untrained farmers and artisans over one of the most advanced professional armies of its time, the heirs to Alexander the Great. They could never have done it if they had allowed doubt to triumph.

    The quasi-fascism Obama and his buddies are flirting with is a wake up call for our beloved Republic. In the end it will not kill us, but make us stronger.

    And we will need that strength. If even tools like Tom Friedman are recognizing that we will have to defeat Islamic fascism to survive, the real war is not far off.

    Remember....when it comes down to it, Americans still rise superbly to challenges. So rise up and don't succumb to despair, because this is a fight we can win. Rise up, and fight harder,because the alternative is you telling your grandchildren what it used to be like to live in a free country.

    The choices are really that stark.

    -selah-


    *Aside from the fact that this violates Senate Rules and was likely unconstitutional under Article I, if the rest of the nonsense is repealed there's nothing much for the 'advisory board' to ration.

    And to the extent this section is legislation, it doesn't prevent a future Congress from ignoring it and amending the statute anyway - the 'last in time' rule would preclude a court assault on any act doing so.

    On the other hand, if it wasn't a rules change but a 'procedures change', as the Dems blithely told Jim DeMint, a future (Republican) presiding officer could easily concur that yes, the applicable wording was not rules change, and the usual rules still apply, thus allowing a repeal without a super-majority. Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander.