Friday Afternoon Roundup - Hearts and Minds

HEARTS AND MINDS

The Benghazi hearings sucked most of the oxygen in the room on the right, which is why the press conference on the next day by SEAL families and military experts on the Seal Team Six attack got little attention from the conservative media.

Those that did write about it focused mainly on the Muslim prayer, but not on the bigger issues involving the Rules of Engagement. And those issues, believe it or not, are bigger than Benghazi.

Let's begin with Charles Strange, the father of Navy SEAL Michael Strange, calling out Biden and the administration's Muslim appeasement in true Philly fashion.




"They hate us. They know our rules of engagement," he tells the people, too many of whom aren't listening. "After the crash, the Taliban came up with kids in front of them to see if they could skin our soldiers alive." William and Karen Vaughn's layout of the appeasement that got their son killed is even more important.





“The hearts and minds of the enemy are more valuable to this government than my son’s blood. This is submission and the cost of that submission on August 6 was my only son,” Karen Vaughn says.

 “If my son had gone in on an MH-47 that night with guns blazing and they had been shot out of the sky that night, it would have been a whole lot easier to live with. If the air weapons teams had been offering suppressive fire because a 3.5 hour operation was already underway in the valley, but you know why we were not… because according to a high ranking three-star admiral, Admiral Harward, made a statement to the grieving families that day. We want to win the hearts and minds of the enemy.

Aaron did not become a Navy SEAL Team 6 Gold Squad to win the hearts and minds of the Islamic Jihadists. He became a Navy SEAL to fight for this republic and defeat the enemy," William Vaughn says.

Former Pacific Fleet commander, James Aloysius “Ace” Lyons, Jr, and father of the Navy Red Cell, an anti-terrorism group composed of Navy Seals he established in response to the Marine Barracks bombing in Beirut offers more context of the political correctness killing national defense.

These are just excepts. The entire conference is well worth watching at The United West.




A FEARFUL SYMMETRY

According to Al-Ahram, Stone told prosecutors the attack took place while he was on his way to the US Embassy to finish some paperwork for his wife. A young man enquired about his nationality and stabbed him in the neck after he said he was American.

The man who stabbed an American in Cairo on Thursday says he was motivated by a hatred of the United States.

Ironically, hating the United States was something that Mahmoud had in common with Christopher.

When invited to a seven year old’s Israel themed birthday party, Stone declined by asserting that he didn’t just hate Israel… he also hated America, writing… “If she had invited me to a party celebrating the US I suspect my response would have been the same. This is not ONLY because of the odious behavior of the US and Israeli governments, but also because of the destruction wrought in the name of nationalism in general.”

American Professor Who Hates America Stabbed in Cairo by Muslim Who Also Hates America




PEACE IN OUR TIME

Whenever the media needed a “moderate” Palestinian Arab official to trot out, they would mention Jibril Rajoub.

 CBS News describes him in its bio as “Rajoub, a moderate, was a longtime player in peace talks and truce negotiations with Israel.”

The New York Times wrote of him as, “the West Bank security chief, who is known as one of the more moderate and pragmatic Palestinian officials.”

 The left-wing Geneva Initiative ran ads featuring Jibril Rajoub telling Israelis in Hebrew, “I am your partner” and informing them that there is a historic opportunity with a Palestinian leadership committed to a two-state solution.

Three years earlier, Rajoub had said, “Israel is a cancer in the region, by Allah, I’m sure every speck of Palestine from the sea to the river – will return to us!”

 Now to everyone’s surprise, the moderate peace partner, when discussing the negotiations, made a series of outrageous demands and told the television hostess, “Listen we as yet don’t have a nuke. But I swear that if we had a nuke, we’d have used it this very morning.

 Former Palestinian National Security Advisor: “if We Had a Nuke, We’d Have Used It This Very Morning”




 CAFFEINE EVERYWHERE AND NOT A DROP TO DRINK

In true Obamaesque form, the FDA has put out a cheerful flyer warning that caffeine is everywhere. It’s in your jelly beans. It’s in your shoes. It might even be in the air you breathe. The flyer includes a bizarre Q and A with its own boss, echoing Obama Inc’s strategy of fake interviews that make it seem like they have their own in-house press.

 “An instant oatmeal on the market boasts that one serving has as much caffeine as a cup of coffee, and then there are similar products,” the flyer ominously informs us. I haven’t seen this over-caffeinated oatmeal anywhere, but maybe it’s sneaking up on me right now.

FDA Moving to Regulate The Deadly Menace of Caffeine



DON'T WORRY, BE SWEDISH

Majed, a 17-year-old Iraqi immigrant, stabbed his sister Maria to death inflicting 107 wounds with two knives and a pair of scissors. His sister had returned to Landskrona after she broke up from a forced marriage in Iraq. She was found dead in his apartment in Landskrona on the evening of 23 April, the day after her birthday.

 Majed’s lawyer thought that the original sentence of 8 years in prison was too harsh. “I thought the sentence was very strong, it was a very tough punishment. I do not share at all the district court’s perception of the seriousness of the offense,” says the 17-year-old’s defense attorney, Mr. Jansson.

And the defense attorney got his wish. The 8 year sentence has been reduced to 4.

Swedish Court Sentences Muslim Who Stabbed His Sister 107 Times to 4 Years in Prison



THE ARMY OF TINY MINORITY OF EXTREMISTS

The tiny minority of extremists is so great that law enforcement officials are having trouble finding names in the tiny 875,000 names on the list. The number of names on a highly classified U.S. central database used to track suspected terrorists has jumped to 875,000 from 540,000 only five years ago, a U.S. official familiar with the matter said. And worse still, this isn’t anything like a comprehensive list. These are just the names that came up and were entered into it. The actual list would be vastly larger than a mere 875,000 names. But even 875,000 names is the equivalent of an army. The United States Army only has 561,437 active duty personnel.

Terrorist Watch List of Tiny Minority of Extremists Approaching 1 Million




I BLAME THE BILL OF RIGHTS

It was dastardly of the 2nd amendment of the Bill of Rights to set up an illegal operation smuggling guns to Mexico. And the time when the 2nd amendment’s Attorney General was held in contempt of congress for stonewalling about the illegal operation was pretty bad too. There are some people who say that it was Obama who did those things, not the 2nd amendment, but accountability is so 1792.

Obama Smuggles Guns to Mexico, Blames 2nd Amendment for Mexican Gun Violence




ADIOS LOS ANGELES

California is already circling the drain. Its real hole is already somewhere between 150 billion and 300 billion (despite the glowing media stories on how Jerry Brown balanced the budget and turned the state around.)

California has 12 percent of the nation’s population but 34 percent of its welfare population. It is third in per capita welfare spending. And while a lot of illegal aliens are already cashing in, those numbers will jump in a big way after amnesty.

 Will Amnestied Illegal Aliens Bankrupt New Jersey and California?




GREEN ENERGY POWERS WEINERS

So what was Mr. Huma Abedin doing after his retirement from politics and before his return to public life? The early profiles suggested that he sat around all day moping on the couch and learning how to speak entirely in cliches from self-help books. The reality is that he made more money than his wife did by cashing in on two liberal boondoggles.

ObamaCare and Green Energy.

Anthony Weiner’s post-scandal career is an education in crony capitalism and progressive payoffs.

Weiner Cashed In on Green Energy and ObamaCare During his “Break”





ANARCHY IN THE UK

L’s great obsession is the cultivation of empathy. Like most sociopaths, he is incapable of genuinely empathizing with others, but has a narcissistic obsession with the experience of emotion as spectacle.

Embodying the privileged empathy of the left, L promises to raise up the people, but instead degrades them, robbing them of their dignity, their humanity and finally their lives, in order to force them to identify with the sufferings of the less well off.

L is Big Brother given form, substance and motive. His resentments and narcissism represent all too well the modern left. Obsessed with image, L is driven to be a cult figure and succeeds in achieving true cult status at the expense of millions for his grand experiment in enforced empathy

My Review of Jillian Becker's L: A Novel History




RESISTANCE IS FUTILE

In keeping with Marxist dogma, the wealthy men of "Mad Men" just can't help themselves. They are the bourgeoisie pawns of an evolving dialectical materialism, and so their arrogance and duplicity, which cannot be forgiven, come naturally to them. The class these "Mad Men" hucksters represent will be overthrown because their greed, avarice, selfishness, and corruption are internally self-destructive.

 That's the slick but unspoken Marxist premise, the "hidden persuader," and schedule of coming events underlying the series. The "exploiters" will be exploited in turn and trounced by "the people." Don Draper, Pete Campbell, and Roger Sterling will all get their dialectical comeuppance.

In "Mad Men" this Hegelian process eventually leads to the depiction of the "natural" intrusion of the civil rights movement and the invasion of the hippy-dippy, pot-smoking "counter culture," of the rise of feminism and gays and lesbians coming out of their closets. Fans not entirely satisfied with the Progressivism of the series are watching it closely to see if Don Draper and his partners and the 60s culture dissolve into their deterministic futures. And soon all the monarchs of mendacity will be shown the door. It's "historical materialism," you see. Resistance is futile. 

...from Edward Cline's look at Mad Men




THE RECKONING

After clearing the border the Tecate Truck followed Highway 94 north to it's merge with Highway 8 at La Mesa, California, and then drove west towards Highway 5. It pulled off the road at a rest stop where it picked up a technician in a Tecate uniform who was carrying a case with the necessary electronics and a couple of weapons. After that, the two men followed the road thought the heart of San Diego. It got off the freeway in downtown and quickly made its way to the intersection of North Harbor Drive and West Broadway. It's total travel time from the border to downtown San Diego was just over an hour. It was running close to schedule. It was about 11:30 in the morning.

The truck pulled over and parked along North Harbor drive and the technician took out some binoculars and scanned the harbor beyond the Navy Region Southwest Complex whose entrance was less than 100 yards away. Intelligence was correct. The USS Ronald Reagan was in its home port and riding comfortably at anchor.

The technician opened his case and took a wire that ran from the back of the truck along the floorboards. He plugged it into a jack in the simple switching device in the case. He looked at the driver and smiled. The driver smiled back. They both began to recite a prayer in Arabic while looking over the San Diego harbor. At some point in the prayer, without really thinking about it, the technician threw the switch. In the next instant, at the intersection of North Harbor Drive and West Broadway in San Diego, California on a warm August morning, a miniature version of the Sun appeared on the surface of the Earth.

Gerard envisions a possible and all too probable history...



CONFLATION INFLATION

The left does this on purpose and urges its mindless sheeple to not think, to be “tolerant” and to think that tolerance somehow means acceptance, even submission.  It does not.  I can tolerate something without accepting it, much less submitting to it.  There’s a huge difference, actually, but the English language seems to be a bit problematic for shallow, unthinking leftists (probably why they feel the need to “revise” and “adapt” it so often).

For Leftists: Thinking, Hard.




PLAYING THE GAME

Once the bill makes it out of committee, Republicans are free to grandstand and pretend that they are concerned that the “triggers” that lead to a pathway to citizenship need to be strengthened, and will then note that in good conscience they cannot vote for the bill.  Knowing full well that the Democrats already have the simple majority vote to pass it.

It is a fan dance, and one we’ve grown painfully accustomed to.  And yet we do nothing to stop it.

...

Now, go hug an illegal. They are the best of us, after all, far more hardworking and noble than the crass Americans who won’t wash their own dishes or pick their own lettuce or tend to their own children but who nevertheless seek to keep down these industrious, god-fearing angels by stubbornly insisting upon the right of country to control the influx of citizens from other countries. They deserve it. Along with free healthcare, reduced-cost tuition, and welfare payments that they can send out of the country.

And after you’ve done that, go find somebody who’s made a YouTube video — it doesn’t matter who, or what, just express your OUTRAGE — then throw a sack over his head and lock him in a closet for the next several months.

At the very least, it’ll give you a feeling of belonging.  And who doesn’t crave that?

Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom: A ruling class FYI