Yvonne Hitchens ate bitter and the teeth of her sons, Christopher and Peter, are on edge. What else can the teeth of children, whose mother first concealed her identity and then committed suicide, be?
In a hail-mary attempt to garner main street support for Democrats before the elections put an end to the legislative season, President Obama finally was able to push the small business lending bill through the Senate, thanks to two retiring Republicans who crossed the aisle to vote for the stimulus package.
I remember in the weeks and months after 9/11 Western reporters were having the same problems whenever they went to mosques to interview imams or whoever else was relevant to a story — and the young boys in the mosques were all over the reporters’ private parts.
Last week in New York, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the press that if the United States attacked Iran over its nuclear program it would face war like it had never seen.
The White House is like a sinking ship these days, and a lot of rats are taking a dive. In the last month or so, top economic advisers Larry Summers, Christina Romer, and Peter Orszag have all either left or announced their departures. Next up is probably Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who’d like to put his knife-wielding skills to better use as Mayor of Chicago. There have been whispers that other high-level advisers are looking for a way out of the hellhole as well.
Striving to appear even handed at his UN address, President Obama repeatedly drew a parallel between continued Israeli settlements and Palestinian incitement. Yet while the media is filled with reports of the Obama administration’s disappointment with Israel’s refusal to renew the temporary suspension of settlement building, not a peep is heard regarding the ongoing vile anti-Israeli propaganda emanating from the Palestinian Authority. Clearly, the media understands Obama’s “even-handedness” is not to be taken seriously.
The Republican leadership just unveiled a “Pledge to America,” a series of commitments it is making to the American people going forward. It includes promises to cut taxes and spending, repeal Obamacare, and reduce the regulatory burden on business.
America’s enemies understand deeply and intuitively that nothing at stake in the Middle East–no U.S. war aims or resources anywhere in the region–is remotely as important as Israel. Why can’t American leaders figure this out?
Something ticked Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of. He blew his top at an end of a most successful charm offensive. Or, perhaps, he merely reverted to form by pulling the rug from under those who have been reporting that Iran signals interest in talks on nuclear program, diplomats say
I’m one of many people who have been waiting for the day that The People’s Cube website, a spoof of “progressive” ideology, could be held in one’s hand, in the form of a book. That day is finally here. People’s Cube proprietor Oleg Atbashian has released his first book, Shakedown Socialism.
Those doubting the fact that American investors and analysts have indeed embarked on a kind of strike Ayn Rand would have predicted, have only have to refer to the results of the latest quarterly Bloomberg global poll of investors and analysts.
I cannot imagine a worse horror story than our poor American soldiers fighting according to a six page strategic paper written by our military ignoramus president. But that is what has been happening. Surprise, surprise, the war is not going well. Or in other words, like the economy, it is not going as well as “expected!” How could it if even the commander does not know what “well” is?
As if the Democrats didn’t have enough headaches of their own making. Today, the American people hear a number of appalling new things. Just when you thought you had heard it all with these lunatic Democrats, something else comes flying at you.
There is nothing wrong with criticizing many of the policies of the current Israeli government — and those of the previous ones. And it is completely uncalled for to try to tar such critics as anti-Semites. Indeed, many Israeli citizens are more critical of their government than their American counterparts.
If anyone wonders why many Americans are shaking teabags at the American titled classes, their catered academies of arts and sciences and their lapdog elite politicians like Delaware grandee Mike Castle, look no further than today’s fetid festivities at the Heinz headquarters in Pittsburgh.
Today, the New York Times reports that Obama’s key political aides are thinking about running national ads leading up to November’s elections blasting the Tea Party as “extreme.”
Forget Western elite apologists and the aggressive American Muslim leadership, the Arab/Muslim heartland has little difficulty comprehending the American sensitivities about building a mosque on ground zero. 58% of the Arab world saw the mosque as “a project of folly” and even more, 63% consider America to be a tolerant country. They know that if the West is beginning to view Islams suspiciously, it is because Islamists attempts to convert the world by force to Islam is giving the religion a bad name. So, instead of demanding that the world treat Islam as if it has nothing to do with Islamism, they demand that Jihadist cease and desist their terrorist activities. Noman Benotman, A Libyan former Al Qaeda member writes:
If you live in California, I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know when I say that our state is in trouble. As of today, 77 days have gone by since the deadline has come and gone for our state budget to be passed and implemented, but we are still not close on a budget. Until now, the budget crisis has mostly been limited in its impact to state employees and private contractors, but its implications for the future of the state are frightening.
Looking back at the whole story now that the renegade BP oil well in the Gulf is officially capped, is like watching a cautionary tale about handling a PR crisis. As a CNN money reporter stated in May: “Oil giant BP has a marketing slogan dubbed “Beyond Petroleum.” If only that were true. That ad campaign has to rank up there with Toyota’s “Moving Forward” motto as the most unintentionally hilarious of the year.” The spill is bad enough. But what makes is much worse is the response from the oil company leadership. Here’s a basic chronology:
Last week, Andrea Mitchell, senior foreign correspondent for NBC News, interviewed Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Teheran prior to his visit to the UN this upcoming week. For the televised occasion, Ms. Mitchell wore a white headscarf that covered some of her very blonde hair and then dropped gracefully across her shoulder; Mr. Ahmadinejad wore a western suit with an open collared white shirt. This is not the first time that western women have covered their heads when interviewing Muslim heads of state - Barbara Walters and Christiane Amanpour have done the same for their respective networks. It makes me wonder why newsmen aren’t doffed with yarmulkes when interviewing Netanyahu. After all, Ahmadinejad is not a religious figure, nor was the interview conducted in a house of worship, nor is the Iranian uncomfortable with being in the company of unveiled women in his various appearances at western universities, auditoriums and banquet halls. Do viewers deserve to know whose protocol is being served? Is it a concession that the network agrees to in order to get the interview or is it a politically correct assumption that networks make pre-emptively in order to appease Muslim expectations.
Human rights leader Simon Deng, a former Sudanese national swimming champion and escaped slave, has launched his 250-mile freedom walk from the United Nations to Washington D.C. this week to gain U.S. support for the independence of South Sudan.
For those who wonder how to distinguish between ‘moderate’ Muslims and Islamists, here’s a ‘quiz’ developed by Dr. Tawfik Hamid, an Egyptian-American who once belonged to a radical group and is now an outspoken opponent of Islamism. Dubbed the Radical Islam Support Test, it’s presented in his excellent book, Inside Jihad (pp. 114-15):
As Israeli and Palestinian negotiators meet under U.S. auspices to hammer out a peace agreement, Palestinian TV broadcasts a song calling for Palestinians to retake the land of Israel by force.
In the current wave of accusations that Americans are extremists and Islamophobes, Raymond Ibrahim offers a sobering look at the question of Muslim loyalty to America. He notes:
Former U.S. Representative Joseph DioGuardi of New York won the Republican nomination to take on Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand in Novermber’s election…DioGuardi, 69, represented the northern New York City suburbs in the House from 1985 to 1989…
This weekend was Attack of the Mosque People in downtown New Yawk City. It was so bad that the Chinese guy at the corner of Church and Vesey ran out of copies of “Never Forget!,” the standard twenty-buck souvenir photo book that purports to be a reverent memorial to 9/11 but is actually the most grisly collection of Al Qaeda destruction since the burning deck of the USS Cole. (Plunging suicidal bodies anyone? He’s got em all.)
One cannot but respect President Obama for heeding his inner voice, come what may. It may be disastrous politics and cost the Democrats and the country dearly, but people claim that they want a public leader who does not mind the public opinion polls. Well they got one, with a vengeance.
To transition into the point I want to make here, I’ll start with a short follow-up to Angelina Jolie’s Big Bosnian Adventure and her inverted version of the story of Sarajevo’s Romeo & Juliet (the young Serb/Bosnian couple killed while crossing out of Sarajevo in May 1993). In my previous blog mentioning this couple, we were left with a question as to who was really responsible for the murder of the young lovers — the Serbs (who were immediately blamed), or the Bosnian Muslims. The following comes from Nebojsa Malic, who lived through the Bosnian War: