Friday Afternoon Roundup - A Sleeping Giant Wakes

                                    
O'Donnell's victory in Delaware is already being credited to Sarah Palin and the Tea Party Movement, but more credit probably goes to a backlash against a GOP that provided a coronation to a liberal Republican and used vicious and hate-filled tactics against his opponents, that doubtlessly reminded many Republicans of the tactics Democrats were using against Sarah Palin.

I would much rather have had Hayworth knock out McCain, than have O'Donnell knock out Mike Castle. That would have removed one of the Senate's biggest liberal Republicans, and would have probably given his obnoxious daughter the boot out of the spotlight too. Hayworth was also a much stronger candidate in the general election than O'Donnell will be. But that isn't the point. The Republican party can't just "do what we were doing before", which is exactly what will happen if the Senate Republicans backing Castle had gotten their way. Whether O'Donnell wins and loses, the Battle of Delaware was another strong warning that business as usual cannot go on.

The Delaware primary was ugly, in-state and on the internet. But had the Delaware GOP not backed Castle at all costs, and had Castle's defenders online actually made an honest case for him (count the number of times that pieces like that mentioned the words Cap and Trade) without treating O'Donnell the way the media had treated Palin, as a crazy laughable nut with ethical problem who isn't worth mentioning except to make sexist jokes about her, the backlash might never have happened. This was Anti-Insideritis in a big way.

But Castle and his GOP backers couldn't debate on the issues. The Tea Party had them running scared. So instead they conducted vicious personal attacks against O'Donnell, with their only argument being electability. But the Tea Party turnout was not about party loyalty, it was about wanting real reform. And there's no way to package Mike Castle as signifying real reform. And without reform as the brand, the GOP may win the Senate, but lost in 2012. And that is the real deal.

Bringing Castle to the Senate would have just given McCain and Graham, someone else to join them in playing bipartisan footsie with Obama. Putting a Democrat in that seat will not be pretty, but for the Republican brand to mean anything, then putting someone like Castle in is even worse. This is not just about 2010, it's also about 2012 and 2014. It's about changing the way the government works. And it's about not just blocking Obama, but showing him and his cronies the door for good.

Delaware is another warning to the GOP that a sleeping giant has woken. And they had better start paying attention. McCain's turn rightward probably will not hold, but on the other hand having to spend 20 million dollars may have convinced him to tone it down a little. And Delaware may finally convince the Republican party to stop business as usual, and start paying attention. Viral smears, paid commenters and controlling the top 1 percent of the blogsphere is not enough. You actually have to win the war of ideas, or lose it all.

The media, which always loves falling back on their last tactic, is treating Christine O'Donnell as the new Sarah Palin. But there's one problem with their lame attacks, which is that O'Donnell's statements about sexuality that they're highlighting are conventional Catholic ones. The media can bash O'Donnell for them, but not without attacking the Catholic Church itself. But they're dishonestly pretending that they're the eccentric views of a single woman, rather than the position of a global religious movement which covers a whole lot of America.

Still the Dems know their best chance isn't on policy, it's on portraying the Republican party as crazy, extremist and dangerous. If they can't get voters to vote for them because they like them, they hope to at least get voters to vote them as the lesser evil. Except they might be overestimating the degree to which voters are currently interested in "moderation". The media can character assassinate Palin or O'Donnell, but it can't change voter dissatisfaction. And constant establishment attacks at a time when the public is dissatisfied with the establishment can have the opposite effect of the one intended, as Castle found out.

Maybe that's why the Tea Party Movement is moving beyond the United States. Because it's a stand in for a larger trend in the First World, Euroskeptics in Europe and small government advocates in the US question federalism and centralization. The Tea Party movement is the populist expression of those concerns in America.

So Colbert and Stewart and the left wing snark machine can belatedly chug into motion, a month too late, to mock the Restoring Honor rally, and all that accomplishes is the elitists amusing the elitists, while the Louvre burns.

Meanwhile Bernie Marcus, the founder of Home Depot, is making headlines for an angry denunciation of Obama and his left wing policies.





Here's a brief bio of Marcus

Bernard "Bernie" Marcus (born 1929 in Newark, New Jersey) is a co-founder of Home Depot.

He was born to Jewish-Russian immigrant parents in Newark, New Jersey. He grew up in a tenement and wanted to become a doctor. He couldn’t afford the tuition, so he worked for his father as a cabinet maker through Rutgers University to earn a pharmacy degree.[1] While there he joined the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity.[2] He was also a brother of Alpha Kappa Psi Business Fraternity.

Later, he worked at a drugstore as a pharmacist but became more interested in the business and retailing part of the business. He worked at a cosmetics company and various other retail jobs, eventually reaching a position as a top executive with Handy Dan Improvement Centers, a Los Angeles-based chain of home improvement stores. In 1978, after a disagreement with his boss at Handy Dan, he and Home Depot co-founder Arthur Blank were both fired.

Together, with the help of New York investment banker Ken Langone who assembled a group of investors and business partner Arthur Blank, they launched the highly successful home-improvement retailer, Home Depot, in 1979. The store revolutionized the home improvement business with its warehouse concept and the three became billionaires as a result. He was the company's first CEO for 19 years and served as chairman of the board until his retirement in 2002

It's a great All-American story, and Marcus has been a fairly reliable Republican donor and even fundraiser. I have no disagreement with anything he says, and it's good that people who actually create and run businesses have come out like this.

But I have to ask, why, if Marcus opposes such policies in the US, is he funding the Israel Democracy Institute, a left-wing think tank, which is pushing them in Israel?

Sometime before Independence Day, the High Court of Justice will decide whether the Israel Prize ought to be awarded to the leading left-wing think tank, the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI). The prize was awarded by a committee of three distinguished academics, all of whom have participated in IDI programs. The committee was set up by former MK Nahum Langenthal, who went directly from the IDI's employ to become former education minister Yuli Tamir's adviser on the Israel Prize. Before she recused herself, Justice Miriam Naor, who is also a graduate of IDI programs, headed the panel scheduled to hear the case. It's not surprising that so many people involved in IDI's prize appear to be connected to the institute. IDI assiduously pursues influence.

Established not quite two decades ago, it quickly established close links to the unelected elites, chiefly in the legal establishment, the media and academia, who determine so much of public policy. IDI engages a significant proportion of the country's good and great and provides its affiliates with prestige, media exposure and, not infrequently, money. IDI dispenses a budget of five or six million dollars a year. That's very big by Israeli standards. One of my colleagues, a doctoral candidate at Bar-Ilan University's law school, told me, "I look around at my fellow grad students and it seems nearly everyone is on the [IDI] payroll."

The IDI is also hostile to the Tea Party Movement. Take this op-ed from Tamar Hermann, an IDI fellow...

Some view the Tea Party Movement as a healthy popular response to the Obama Administration’s effort to salvage Wall Street in the wake of the great collapse of 2009. Yet the less comfortable truth is that the regular mass protests held by this movement express a failure to recognize the legitimacy of the elected Administration and of President Obama.

The protestors, most of them white males from the middle class and holding a conservative worldview closer to that of the Republican Party - which rushed to embrace the new popular movement – do not live at peace with the Administration’s declared intention to expand the State’s involvement in the free market economy and to earmark funds, mostly to come from taxes, in order to improve and expand services such as healthcare.

...

Although many components in the Obama Administration’s policy, which the tea party participants protest against, mark the direct continuation of President George W. Bush’s policies, the protestors are united by a sense that the White House was “hijacked” in the last elections by a group headed by a black president who has an interest in taking care of poor and non-white population groups that voted for him en mass, shape an expensive policy on their behalf, and present the bill – in the form of high taxes – to the white middle class.

Bernie Marcus is paying for this kind of left-wing academic pablum to be produced, but he's also paying for the erosion of Israeli civil rights, under the influence of an unelected and corrupt activist judiciary.

Supreme Court Justice Breyer, who recently suggested that there is no right to political protest when it involves the Koran, is one of IDI's advisors.

So will Bernie Marcus put his money where his mouth is, by defunding IDI, which is another left-wing think tank funded from abroad while undermining Israel?

Not that IDI is the limit, but the domestic anti-Israel left is being funded from abroad, whether the money comes from Marcus, Soros or the EU. Take a look at the ugly fight being raised over a bill to force funding transparency on NGO's

The European Commission has made known its concern over a draft Israeli bill that forces domestic NGOs to regularly disclose funding received from foreign governments.

EU enlargement commissioner Stefan Fuele told the European Parliament on Tuesday that Brussels did not support the draft bill.

"We are following with extreme concern the debate in the Knesset over this draft legislation to oblige Israeli NGOs to make public any funds received from foreign governments," he told MEPs. "We have made our concern clear on several occasions to the Israeli government."

Of course they have, because the EU is funding organizations subverting Israel in order to help the terrorists.

Meanwhile striking a blow for religious tolerance, prospective EU member state, Turkey, showed its extensive commitment to religious freedom by forbidding Greeks from holding a prayer service in the Hagia Sophia cathedral.

The Turkish government had said in no uncertain terms that the group would not be allowed to conduct a religious service at Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia.

“A message was delivered to [event organizer] Chris Spirou that his attempts were seen as a provocation,” Turkish diplomatic sources told reporters Thursday.

...

“We have directly and indirectly held talks to stop this [Hagia Sophia] initiative,” another Foreign Ministry official told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review. “We made it clear that any attempt to disturb the public order would not be tolerated.”

The Daily News has also learned that the ministry has contacted its Greek and American counterparts to try and get their support for stopping the group’s attempt to hold a religious service at Hagia Sophia, an act that is believed to pose a threat to the bilateral relations between Turkey and Greece.

The Turkish government’s efforts to stop the service are being coordinated by the Foreign Ministry with the participation of the Interior and Culture ministries. One option is to refuse the group entry to Turkey, officials said.

“The state will take measures against such efforts,” Culture Minister Ertuğrul Günay said, speaking to private CNNTürk television.

Of course attempts by non-Muslims to pray in Muslim countries are always a "provocation". But Muslims should have the religious freedom to offend anyone's sensibilities. Because religious freedom only works one way.

It's no surprise that Iran is openly funding Turkey's AKP Islamist thugs.

But not all is lost, there's still a place for women in Islam. As long as they blow themselves up.

For example, Barbara Freyer Stowasser, Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University, endorses Qaradawi in Global Mufti because he allows women to kill Jews without asking their parents’ or husband’s permission. Women are even allowed to commit such crimes unveiled! Stowasser portrays these crimes as acts of “defensive jihad” against Israel. For Stowasser, Qaradawi’s fatwa on women and suicide bombing is a sign of “true gender equality.”

Muslim women can at last unveil, so long as they're killing infidels, and themselves.

Finally Mark Musser looks at the combo of ecofascism and Islam

Contrary to such an innocuous suggestion is that injecting environmentalism into Islam is hardly uncontroversial. In reality, it only multiplies the dangers by stuffing more flammable material into a rich concoction of explosive anti-western civilization sentiments, all in the name of green moderation. Both Islam and environmentalism loathe western financial institutions, all of which was best represented by the Twin Towers—the bastion of international free trade—before they came crashing down in flames on 9/11. Thus to suggest that a green mosque is uncontroversial is naïve at best, and in reality, completely disingenuous. New York’s Ground Zero area might be better served by a typical mosque with plenty of prayer rugs on hand for its worshipers. That environmental regulations have already played a large role in stalling the rebuilding of Ground Zero is not something that should go unnoticed, especially now with a green mosque going up nearby.

In the roundup, Boker tov Boulder has a photo that reminds us that incidents like Wellesley did not begin yesterday

In Think Israel's latest issue, Ashraf Ramelah's look at the bonds of Islam as relating to the Ground Zero Mosque

The free world has already allowed the most egregious actions to take place, such as; the placement of Iran onto the UN Commission for Women's Rights, the FIFA reversal of the banning of the hijab worn in Olympic games, and the Egyptian sponsorship of the UN Religious Defamation Act, to name just a few in recent days. Shall we add to this list the building of an Islamic mega-center at the sacred site of Ground Zero as if the teachings consistent with the forces that caused this tragedy will not be taking place inside?

In order to identify the pattern of Islamic immigration and its consequences it is necessary that we look into the histories of other countries where we see Islamic religious doctrine playing out in societal changes to suit Islamic doctrine within the occupied country. Arab-Muslims seek to dominate by aiming to erase the identity and culture of the conquered population and replacing it with a desert culture dating back 1,400 years. The history of Egypt, before and after the Arab occupation, is an excellent model of the Arab path and methods.

ARAB-MUSLIMS NEVER INTEGRATE INTO A NEW SOCIETY to become a part of it because their allegiance is first to Islam. Recently a member of the Egyptian Parliament who was also a member of the Muslim Brotherhood stated he would not have a problem if a Pakistani-Muslim ruled his country, but he would never allow an Egyptian Copt to have the same right. Copts living in Egypt are the descendents of the ancient Egyptians and would logically have this right; however, his conviction was based on what all Muslims are taught, to put Islam first before duty to country. Islamic doctrine states that no kafier (Jew or Christian) can lead or command a Muslim believer.

Saberpoint calls out Peter Beinart's latest Islamophobia screed

As such, Islam puts both our freedoms and our safety at risk. 9/11 was a dramatic introduction to the aggressive violence of Islam, where 3,000 Americans were murdered for Islamic religious reasons. Essentially, those victims were human sacrifices to this murderous "religion." That atrocity, and others that have followed, make it clear that Islam is a dangerous and lethal ideology. Indeed, if Islam were a man instead of a religion, that man would be a homicidal maniac. Since 9/11 Muslims have carried out crimes against humanity in London, Madrid, Beslan and Mumbai, as well as various other places across the globe.

In the United States we have seen numerous honor killings, "sudden jihad syndrome" where some disgruntled Muslim decides to start killing "infidels." A Muslim murdered a complete stranger at Los Angeles Airport, who was waiting at the ticket counter for Israeli Airlines. Muslims murdered an army recruiter in Oregon and a Jewish woman in Seattle. A Muslim U.S. Army Major shot and killed 13 people at Fort Hood, most of them soldiers. A Muslim college student rented a car and tried run over non-Muslim students on his college campus. A Muslim soldier fragged and killed his lieutenant while his unit was preparing to deploy to Iraq. Even the Beltway Sniper, who killed 10 complete strangers, was a Muslim convert who claimed he killed for Allah.

Then there were the various plots to launch terrorist attacks that were broken up by the FBI. It is clear that Islam is not our friend. Mass murder has been a longtime Islamic tradition and its documented history backs me up.

Other less barbaric Islamic practices include the veil for women, second class status for women and non-Muslims, beating of wives, child brides and polygamy. I don't want this hateful ideology to take root in America. I want it gone. Islam is incompatible with democracy, pluralism, tolerance and modernity.

Robert Avrech bids goodbye to Sweden

Good news from Genuine GOP Mom. Rand Paul has dropped his Senate bid in Kentucky, and will be taking a shot at Alaska instead.

And finally a message from two young couples in Israel to Hillary on the proposed freeze extension.

Gmar Hatima Tova