Friday Afternoon Roundup - And Now the News

BUT FIRST A LITTLE NEWS

I have been asked to run the Freedom Center's blog "The Point" at Front Page Magazine. You can see the latest stories from "The Point" to the right of you. Hopefully you'll click on some of them for a closer look.

"The Point" will be something like the roundups, but it will have more of a point to it and there will be plenty of overlaps. And Be'ezrat Hashem it will be a way of getting some of the materials you see here out to a larger audience. If you have any suggestions for the future of the Roundup or the Point, the comments are open.

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For by Thee I run upon a troop; and by my God do I scale a wall. (Psalms 18:30)



THE MACHINE

The most impressive thing about RNC 2012 was the smoothness of the entire thing. If the 2008 RNC stumbled, but ran on enthusiasm, the 2012 edition was a polished frictionless machine, except for one awkward moment with Eastwood, and even that seemed geared to give the critics something petty to pick apart that would not reflect badly on Mitt Romney and the Republican Party.

Mitt Romney is a machine politician, but not a politician of the political machine. He appears to excel at building a smoothly running machine around him. It's not high praise and yet it's not counter to the impression that he gives. It reflects his message that he takes charge and builds things that work.

Behind all the speeches and showpieces, RNC 2012 is a reflection of Romney's whole campaign, it is the precisely calculated work of people who know what they are doing, who don't always get it right, but have ability, ambition and even some guts.

Romney's people went into this understanding that Obama and his allies would run on destroying him as a man, on making him into an ugly caricature, a running joke, a bad human being. And they worked to make that pitch as hard as possible to sell. They knew that the Democrats would focus on the white female vote, so they beat them to it. It's not a new game, Reagan played it too, but it's gone up to a new level.

Some wanted this event to hit Obama much harder. But it hit him hard enough. What it really did was make Romney much harder to hit. Romney's people understand that common sense is on their side and that their mission is to defang the negative attacks from the media that will make people feel bad or guilty about following their common sense. And they did a pretty good job of that tonight.

And the guts kicked in when they picked their battles. It would have made sense for Romney to dodge Bain and for Ryan to avoid Medicare, instead they turned around, picked up both issues and ran on them, and rammed them back into Obama's teeth. It's gutsy, but there's also a common sense element to it. If you're going to get attacked remorselessly on an issue, then you might as well own the issue and use it to send a message to your opponent that the attacks will hurt him as much as you.

That's what RNC 2012 did.

Romney ran in the primaries as the most electable candidate, not by virtue of any special ability, but on determination and competence. RNC 2012 reflected that. It's the work of people who are determined to win and who play hard. That may not be enough, but it's a harder run for his money than Obama got last time around.





THE TROUBLE WITH TUNISIAN VALUES

Bertrand Delanoe, the Socialist mayor of Paris, condemned the attack as the work of an "extremist minority" in contradiction to "Tunisian values." "The Tunisian people I know," he said, "are committed to tolerance, democracy, pluralism and human rights."

Secretary-General Jean-Francois Cope, of the conservative UMP opposition, agreed that the Tunisian people were not to blame. The perpetrators, he said, only "pretend to be animated by religious convictions," and dubbed them fanatics and extremists who "do not represent the people of Tunisia."

The peculiar phenomenon of Bertrand Delanoe and Jean-Francois Cope telling the Tunisian people what their values are is not limited to Gallic shores. As the tides follow the moon, Muslim terrorist attacks are followed by Western leaders asserting that the terrorists do not represent Islam and its tolerant values.

My Gatestone column, The Trouble with Tunisian Values, explores this recurring absurdity of Western apologists telling Muslims what their values are while Muslims elect Islamists to show what their real values are.



LEGITIMATE RAPE

Brought to you by Michael Moore, George Galloway, Naomi Wolf and the President of Ecuador.

Michael Moore, discussing the case where Assange raped a sleeping woman, told the BBC that the assault was only a “so-called crime” and suggested that it “wouldn’t actually be a crime if it was committed in Britain.” Moore has shown his faith in Assange’s legitimate rape by donating $20,000 to Assange’s defense fund.

Keith Olbermann went even further than Moore, retweeting a link from Bianca Jagger to an article written by a neo-Nazi Holocaust denier that named Assange’s victims and accused them of working for the CIA. UK Left-wing activist Craig Murray named one of the victims, prefacing his statement by saying, “Let us look at the conduct of these women.”

George Galloway, who became a hero to the American left for his defense of Saddam Hussein, said that even if the two women were telling the truth, the only thing that Assange was really guilty of was “bad sexual etiquette.” Galloway is currently a part-time Muslim and it is hard to say whether his notion that rape is just “bad sexual etiquette” is rooted in him being a bad human being or in the pages of the Koran.

from my Front Page column, "The Left's Version of Legitimate Rape"




A RATINGS ADVISORY

Ignore the news stories unfavorably comparing the current RNC ratings to previous conventions. It's one of those true but false stories. You might as well compare the number of listeners to a radio address from today and 1956. If you watched any part of the convention online, you already know why those numbers don't hold up.

Of the most-watched television events, almost all of them took place before the dominance of the internet. No Super Bowl that took place since the mid 90′s has scored anywhere near the same ratings.

Compare Super Bowl XLII in 2008 at 48.66 million with Super Bowl XlVI with 50.15 million in 1983. You can see the same difference with television finales. The newer a broadcast is, the lower its ratings are by comparison. This doesn’t mean that it’s unpopular, it just means that the way we watch things has changed.

But the media will dishonestly try to squeeze every ounce of negativity out of every story.



GULFIE FEMINISM

Hey you know what media outlet is best qualified to criticize Paul Ryan's feminist credentials? That's right, Al Jazeera, an outlet run by the Qatari tyranny where women are considered subhuman.

The State Department’s Human Rights report stated that, “the application of Sharia denied women equal status in certain civil proceedings such as marriage, divorce, and witness testimony. In such instances, a women’s testimony was equal to half of a man’s.”

EGYPT'S LAST SYNAGOGUE DIES

For the first time in 2,000 years, this year there will be no Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur services at the Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue in Alexandria.

The synagogue was the last ‘working’ synagogue in Egypt. The Egyptian authorities have banned High Holiday services for ‘security’ reasons.

Levana Zamir, who heads the International Association of Egyptian Jews in Israel, comments: “It seems this is really the end of Jewish life in Egypt. The authorities have found a way to take over the last Jewish bastion, since all the remaining synagogues are already archaeological and tourist sites. It is very sad.”

I provide a little more context on Egypt's treatment of its Jewish population at The Point.



COMPETING WITH CHINA

Obama keeps telling us that we need to get our Socialism on to be able to better compete with China. But is that really a wise idea?

China’s economic ills are far more deeply rooted: an overbearing state squandering capital and squeezing out the private sector, systemic inefficiency and lack of innovation, a rapacious ruling elite interested solely in self-enrichment and the perpetuation of its privileges

It's almost as if we're a little too much like China already under Obama.

 Han Zhiguo, an economist with more than 2.5 million followers on Sina Weibo, offered a sarcastic tweet calling the whole matter a "Chinese miracle:"

    1. The bridge was slated to be built in three years but was actually finished in 18 months. Such progress can be called a “Chinese miracle.”

    2. The bridge collapsed after it has been opened to traffic for 8 months. Such quality of construction can be called a “Chinese miracle.”

Can you think of any Obama miracles?




THE IMAM AND THE FORTY THIEVES

Like a lot of Muslim convert Jihadis, Imam Abu Taubah is one of the most colorful terrorist characters around. Formerly known as Marcus Dwayne Robertson, he was a leader of a Muslim gang of Brooklyn bank robbers known as the Forty Thieves.

The “Forty Thieves” robbed more than 10 banks, private homes, and post offices at gun point, and members shot three police officers, attacking one officer after he was shot with an improvised explosive device constructed from PVC.

These days Imam Marcus is into Jihad.




HURRICANE CHICAGO

10 people were wounded in shootings across Chicago last night. 28 more have been wounded. Over the weekend, 9 people were killed in Chicago and 37 were wounded.

More Americans were shot this weekend in Chicago than in Afghanistan. That makes Obama’s hometown an official war zone. Hurricane Isaac has not killed any Americans. The same can’t be said for Hurricane Chicago

...from Celebrating While Black People Are Dying




THE LAST CAR YOU WILL EVER BUY

Planning to buy a car? Forget about it

.The Obama administration has finalized new fuel economy rules that will require the fleet-wide average of new cars and trucks sold in the U.S. to double over the next 13 years. The average fuel economy must reach 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, up from 28.6 mpg at the end of last year.

That bonus will raise the price of a car by 15 thousand dollars.

When Romney spoke out against the move, Obama said, "“Maybe the steam engine is more his speed”

At this rate steam powered cars will be the only cars we can drive.




THAT SHOULD GO WELL WITH HIS NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

The White House Press Office announced today that President Obama will soon be inducted into the Special Forces Association and receive an honorary Green Beret.

Come on. That tank photo op has to come any day now. Maybe he'll drive up in it to the Convention under a Mission Accomplished banner.




THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS #71

The U.S. Justice Department says it has reached a settlement with the Sacramento Public Library over a trial program that lets patrons borrow Barnes and Noble NOOK e-book readers.

DOJ and the National Federation of the Blind objected to the program on grounds that blind people could not use the NOOK e-readers for technological reasons.

I had to Google this to be sure it wasn't a parody. It's not. Holder's DOJ shook down a library to get them to stop using e-readers because the blind can't use them.

The Justice Department said the settlement is aimed at stopping discrimination: “Emerging technologies like e-readers are changing the way we interact with the world around us and we need to ensure that people with disabilities are not excluded from the programs where these devices are used,” said Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez in a news release.

I guess they'll have to go back to plain old books. Oh wait, the blind can't read those either.

Can you remember when we used to laugh at the USSR?




WELL THAT'S A CHEERFUL THOUGHT

Speaking at a rally marking 9/11, Anjem Choudary bragged that a birth explosion would let followers of Islam take control of the country.

The mob bayed and cheered as he said: “About 500 people in Britain become Muslim every day.

“The Home Office say there are 1.5million Muslims but there were 1.5million ten years ago. Since then our brothers in Bethnal Green, Whitechapel and other places have had eight or nine children each. Eight children here, ten children, 15 children. There must be at least six million people.

“It may be by pure conversion that Britain will become an Islamic state. We may never need to conquer it from the outside.” 

Well they may not understand how birth control works, but neither do they understand how the calendar works.

He's not that great with math either.





FEROCIOUS DIGESTION METAPHOR

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, speaking Thursday at the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit host by his country, called Israelis “ferocious Zionist wolves who digest the Palestinian people.”

Well I'm sure it sounded better in the original Persian or German.




UN-REALLY RELATIVE

Solutions to all these woes seem to elude us because the proximate causes vary widely from issue to issue. But all can in fact be traced back to a common source; a massive shift in worldview. Western civilization is rapidly rejecting transcendent truths. And when everything is relative, nothing is real anymore.

...from Surreality



GAMECHANGER?

I've learned to take stories about Israel becoming an energy superpower with a grain of salt, but this one comes from the Financial Times, which gives it somewhat better pedigree.

The two fields, together with a string of smaller discoveries, will cover Israel’s domestic demand for gas for at least the next 25 years, and still leave hundreds of billions of cubic feet for sale abroad. Should these estimates be confirmed through discoveries in the years ahead, Israel’s natural gas reserves would count among the 25 largest in the world, on a par with the proven reserves of Libya and ahead of those of India and The Netherlands.

The recent discoveries are so large, and have come so swiftly, that some Israelis are having difficulty adjusting to the new reality. Even hardened energy executives speak of a “miracle” when discussing Israel’s natural gas story; others have resorted to the heavens to explain the new-found wealth. No less a figure than Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, recently compared the discoveries to “manna from heaven” – the mystical food that sustained the Israelites during their 40 years in the desert.

As miracles go, this one is very timely, considering global affairs, and I don't mean Iran. The circle is tightening around Israel.

But this is really good news for the left. Just think they will finally be able to claim that the US alliance with Israel is all about oil... well natural gas. But close enough.

I look forward to Code Pinkers chanting "No Blood for Natural Gas" at the next really.