Showing posts from December, 2010

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Friday Afternoon Roundup - Begging Your Pardon

 You can tell which Republican the media thinks is a threat by seeing whom they go after. Besides Sarah Palin, the current target seems to be Haley Barbour. The outrage de jour is over Barbour's pardon for Gladys and Jamie Scott, two sisters who served as insiders in an armed robbery. Defenders of the Scott sisters routinely emphasize that they got a life sentence for only an 11 dollar robbery. But it was only an 11 dollar robbery because that was all they had. It was still however an armed robbery executed at gunpoint. The second line of argument is the usual "racism of the criminal justice system". But the victims who testified against them were also black. With all that in mind, Haley Barbour's pardon of the Gladys sisters after 16 years and under the current medical context is not unreasonable. His attachment of a condition in which one sister must donate her kidney to the other is more problematic, because it all opens all kinds of doors that should probably s

Bloomberg's Snow Job

Had Mayor Bloomberg spent as much time preparing for a massive snowfall, as he did promoting the construction of the Ground Zero Mosque, New Yorkers might have been able to get to work, receive emergency help and be able to walk down the street without injury. But the Mayor who spent the summer lecturing us on everything from the salt content of our food to the evils of Islamophobia--ignored the one thing he should have actually been preparing for. Winter. It's possible that Bloomberg's ideology fooled him into thinking that winter just wasn't coming this year. Back in 2008, he had compared Global Warming to the threat of terrorism, and focused the city's resources on buying into the eco-scam. Last winter, in response to his special Global Warming panel's alarmist claims of coastal flooding and higher temperatures in the city by 2080, the Mayor said, " We cannot wait until after our infrastructure has been compromised to begin to plan for the effects of cl

Who's Afraid of Israeli Democracy?

Haven't you heard, Israeli democracy is in danger. That's the latest media talking point on Israel. And where is the threat to Israeli democracy coming from? From its democracy. Confused? That's probably because you think that the word 'democracy' has something to do with the popular vote and the right of every person, irrespective of their religion, country of origin or accent to vote for the party of their choice. As misguided as the vote may be. When it actually means the right of media pundits, academics and elitist judges to dictate how the country is run based on the values of a entitled upper class scrambling to hold on to power. Out of their concern for Israeli democracy, the American media and the Obama Administration have been pressuring Netanyahu to "broaden" his coalition by replacing the Shas party of Middle Eastern Jews and the Israel is Our Home party of Russian immigrants, with the Kadima party. Traditionally calls for a broader coalition

The Addiction of Anti-Americanism

Like a Rorschach test which tells you more about the patient, than about the image on the card, Wikileaks reveals more about the left than it does about America. And what it reveals is that the left's antipathy toward America is not policy based at all. If Wikileaks' heavily edited helicopter video at least allowed the left to pretend that it was opposing American war crimes, the leaked diplomatic cables are based on nothing more than opposing American diplomacy. Not even the capital D diplomacy, but the small letter diplomacy. The minor observations, petty notes and random scribbles of a bored diplomatic corps observing well known situations. The diplomatic cable leaks were not broadcast to protest against the war, or to undermine a right wing government-- they were broadcast because Anti-Americanism is a compulsive need. While American liberals fancy that the right man in D.C. can make the world love us, their own comrades internationally need an America to hate. If an Amer

EXCLUSIVE: Allahu Akbar and Ho, Ho, Ho

"A flag bearing a crescent and star flies from a flagpole in front of the World Trade Center, next to a Christmas tree and a menorah." New York Times , 1997 In 1997, Mohammed T. Mehdi, head of the Arab-American Committee and the National Council on Islamic Affairs, lobbied to have a crescent and star go up at the World Trade Center during the holiday season. His wish was granted, despite the fact that Mehdi had been an adviser to Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the religious leader behind the original bombing of the World Trade Center. Long before the Ground Zero Mosque was even a twinkle in the eye of a violent ex-waiter and a slumlord Imam , the World Trade Center allowed Mohammed T. Mehdi to bully it into flying the symbol of Islam. By 1997, Mohammed T. Mehdi had become an unambiguously ugly public figure. He had been fired by Mayor Dinkins in 1992 for anti-Semitic remarks. The year before he had proclaimed that, " Millions of Arabs believe Saddam stands tall having

Obama Has Lost the World

After the 2010 elections, it's not exactly news that Obama has lost America. But in a less public referendum, he also lost the world. Obama's cocktail party tour of the world's capitals may look impressive on a map, but is irrelevant on a policy level. In less than two years, the White House has gone from being the center of world leadership to being irrelevant, from protecting world freedom to serving as a global party planning committee. Even the Bush Administration's harshest critics could never have credibly claimed that George W. Bush was irrelevant. He might have been hated, pilloried and shouted about-- but he couldn't be ignored. However Obama can be safely ignored. Invited to parties, given the chance to show off his cosmopolitan sophisticated by reciting one or two words in the local lingo, read off a teleprompter, along with some cant about the need for everyone to pull together and make the world a better place, and then dismissed for the rest of the e

Friday Afternoon Roundup - Hijacking the Internet

There has been a good deal of talk about Net Neutrality, but the Clinton Administration's internationalization of ICANN means that there's a much more serious threat to freedom of speech on the internet than even the FCC. A threat that hardly anyone is talking about. Here's a brief excerpt of a much longer piece 10) Further alterations to the geographical makeup of ICANN's Board of Directors would mean a considerable shift in power towards the Arab League, which would presumably vote as a bloc far more than preexisting Geographic Regions. 12) Should the League of Arab States gain bloc voting power at ICANN, there is every indication that it will seek to replicate its effective takeover of the United Nations General Assembly, likely in conjunction with the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). 15) On October 28, 2010, at OIC-CERT's Second Annual General Meeting, OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu noted the following as a core mission of OIC