When jeffandrus.com  debuted on the world wide web in 2000, the first piece I posted was a short story written fourteen years earlier, Return of the Hun.  I palmed it off on poliitcalmavens in May of 2007.  The story is about  a drunk out-of-work screenwriter who is a post-modern resurrection of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Pat Hobby character, another drunk, out-of-work screenwriter but in a classier time.   A number of people have questioned my sleazy homage to Fitzgerald, wanting to know about the writer behind the character, as well they should.  There are actually two writers—The Real Me and Toxic Jeff.  We’re a team.   And one of us would like to clear up some misconceptions.

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An Arab joint effort against terrorism is not only beneficial on military and security levels but also and mainly on ideological levels. For Arab intellectuals and NGOs, when approached and supported seriously, can be efficient in countering radicalization and indoctrination by Jihadi Salafis and Khomeinists.

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It’s amazing how one little election can focus the mind.

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Predictably, Bill Clinton is still alive and as healthy as ever after undergoing heart surgery on Thursday. He was finally fitted with a human heart to replace the mechanical one that was causing years of crocodile tears, and frequently malfunctioned: the tears would switch on heavily for world tragedies affecting people of color, but would dry up for Europeans that his bombs dismembered and for women that he raped.

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     In the NYTimes of Feb 11th, an article concerning an Arab petition to the UN to halt construction of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s new museum is headlined “Museum Creates New Jerusalem Divide;”  it features a large photograph of the Mamilla Cemetery, an ancient burial site which Arabs claim will be wiped out if the museum is built.  In the text of the article, Isabel Kershner reports that much of the cemetery has already been developed into a school, a road, a park and most pertinently, a municipal parking lot built in the 1960’s and used daily since then by thousands of city residents without protest from the Arab community. It is on the grounds of this parking lot that the museum will be built, a move previously challenged and then adjudicated by the Israeli Supreme Court in favor of the project going forward. Rather than  showing a photograph of the parking lot, the Times selected a picture of the remaining cemetery which is not threatened by the projected new building and has literally nothing to do with the Wiesenthal Center’s plans or the headline of Kershner’s article.

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On April 15 at Dallas City Hall, I looked out over a sea of attendees at one of several national gatherings that launched the Tea Party movement.

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Late last month, the Dhaka home of Bangladeshi journalist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, publisher and editor of that country’s largest weekly newspaper, The Weekly Blitz, was broken into. Police in Dhaka have done nothing to investigate the incident.

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Obama failed to make progress on the most important issue to the United States right now — economics and trade. We’re experiencing a $200-plus billion-a-year trade deficit with China, but no measure came out of the visit to ease that pain.

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I’ve received this e-mail a dozen times, or more. Headlined “How Did We Survive??” it’s a tribute to the generation that, alas, I’m a part of, those “born between 1930 and 1979.” This anonymous exercise in nostalgia brags about simpler times when there was far less emphasis on health and safety.

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“We knew they wanted to hurt us but we did not believe they are capable of so doing,” US intelligence members explained when asked to justify their failure to stop the Christmas bomber. They were referring, of course, to Al Qaeda Yemen. The sentiment, however, is reflecting current intelligence assessment of the Iranian Mullahcracy. Yes, it is true that Iran wishes harm to the West (and not only to Israel). It is true that Ayatollah Khamenei, whom President Obama hoped to charm by insisting on his honorific “Supreme Leader,” has just promised to celebrate the 31st anniversary of the Iranian revolution with a stunning anti-Western “punch.” It is also true that the “selected, not elected” Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has just ordered his nuclear scientists to enrich uranium to 20% purity. It must be acknowledged that such enrichment would enable Iran to produce weapons-grade uranium in a relatively short time and that the Iranians have been repeatedly able to hide their nuclear progress from the West.

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This weekend, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin delivered a stem-winder, barn-burner of a speech to the first Tea Party Convention. She spoke passionately of first principles: limited government, fiscal restraint, the Constitution. She had the crowd in the palm of her hand, but they share her views anyway. Now, however, we find that up to 80 percent of the American people share her views. According to Gallup, 78% of Americans disapprove of the liberal Congress. Remember: until new MA Senator Scott Brown was sworn in last week, Republicans could not stop anything the Democrats wanted to do. The Democrats luxuriated in their supermajorities and force-fed the American people a steady diet of Far-Left, progressive nightmares.

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Recently Barack Obama observed — celebrated is not the word — his first year since taking office. Health care is a basket case. Unemployment is near 10 percent, and stuck. The Federal deficit is $1.5 trillion, and soaring. The Nobel Prize’s darling will never be Rookie of the Year.

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In 1999 Hitler’s Pope by John Cornwell attacked the Vatican’s role in World War II, especially the inaction of Pope Pius XII. Within eighteen months of the hardcover publication of Hitler’s Pope Papal Sin by Garry Wills, Under His Very Windows by Susan Zuccotti and Constantine’s Sword by James Caroll entered the fray to discredit Pius XII.

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We all blinked furiously when we read the government’s claim that the number of unemployed rose in January by 20,000 but the unemployment rate fell from 10% to 9.7%. Somebody has obviously been cooking the numbers in a most ingenious manner. On Meet the press, Alan Greenspan explains the absurdity thus:

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What is wrong with this president? It is, as Hammerstein wrote in “The King and I,” a puzzlement.

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     On Easter Sunday in April, 1993, 450 prisoners, spurred on partially by Black/Muslim instigators, fomented a riot in the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, Ohio.  Their demands included:  amnesty for the riot; the right to wear Muslim caps and attire; the provision of halal food; the cessation of integrated cells and the more general demands for better service, i.e. more phone calls and visitors.  At the end of the eleven day riot, after nine inmates had been beaten to death and one guard strangled by the rioters, the state of Ohio agreed to review prisoner complaints and institute appropriate changes.  It cost more to repair the $40 million dollars worth of damage to the prison than it had cost to build it.  Over the next decade, Ohio tripled its prison budget, built twelve new prisons, hired 900 more guards and  provided better medical and educational programs for its prisoners.

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Let me be clear (as President Obama loves to say): After a year in office, there isn’t much for this White House to brag about foreign policy-wise, in spite of rhetorical flourishes and grandiose promises.

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I just returned from Haiti with _____. We flew in at 3 AM Sunday to the scene of such incredible destruction on one side, and enormous  ineptitude and criminal neglect on the other.

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Day laborers in one California city are suing city officials for passing an ordinance prohibiting their standing around trying to get work, an Associated Press story said.

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In my town of Vallejo, California, a city worker was attacked the other day by dozens of what appeared to be a pack of high school-aged punks and beaten to within an inch of his life.

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In a townhall meeting in New Hampshire on Tuesday, President Obama made yet another laughable statement about fiscal responsibility.  The most profligate spender in American history went on another lecture spree, saying with a straight face that the government needs to tighten its belt. Seriously.  Perhaps he forgets that he IS the government.  Or perhaps he’s just full of crap.

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These are not the measurements of some alien being.

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After nearly a year of well-intentioned efforts to develop the United States’ relationship with the People’s Republic of China, President Barack Obama isn’t so gung-ho anymore - and ties are taking a downturn.

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“Starting in 2011, we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years. Spending related to our national security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will not be affected. But all other discretionary government programs will. Like any cash-strapped family, we will work within a budget to invest in what we need and sacrifice what we don’t.”–Barack Obama, State of the Union, Jan. 27, 2010

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Complaining about the Grammys (or any awards shows, for that matter) is like complaining about the weather. What’s the point, right?

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For the past year we were ruled by a single party, the Democratic one. We have a Democratic president with a veto proof Democratic Congress. The result? Massive economic harm. Blaming Republicans is absurd but clearly Tom Friedman believes in the BIG LIE and so did many pundits this past Sunday. He writes:

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For the past eight years, I’ve had a brochure from the Talland Bay Hotel, in Cornwall on the southern coast of England, floating around in the slurry of papers on my desk. Every so often, it’ll bob to the surface and I’ll notice it and think, “I’ve got to get that in the newspaper somehow.” But the opportunity is never right.

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