Bloodthirsty Liberal

Let me put this as succinctly as I can:

To elaborate:

Dick Cheney is not the most popular of politicians, but when he offered a harsh assessment of the Obama Administration’s approach to terrorism last May, his criticism stung—so much that the President gave a speech the same day that was widely seen as a direct response. Though neither man would admit it, eight months later political and security realities are forcing Mr. Obama’s antiterror policies ever-closer to the former Vice President’s.

In fact, the President’s changes in antiterror policy have never been as dramatic as he or his critics have advertised. His supporters on the left have repeatedly howled when the Justice Department quietly went to court and offered the same legal arguments the Bush Administration made, among them that the President has the power to detain enemy combatants indefinitely without charge. He has also ramped up drone strikes against al Qaeda and Taliban operatives in Pakistan.

However, the Administration has tried to break from its predecessors on several big antiterror issues, and it is on those that it is suffering the humiliation of having to walk back from its own righteous declarations. This is Dick Cheney’s revenge.

And as he is probably too busy shooting defenseless little furry creatures (deer, not hippies—although now that you mention it…), let me respond in his stead.

Ahem.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Boy, it sure must suck to have to adopt the policies of someone you find the most evil entity to walk the earth since Rasputin last pulled the wings off a fly.

It would be like me having to admit Al Gore was right. As if.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gitmo, KSM’s trial—the administration has thrown its policies into reverse so many times, they’ve stripped the gears.

As long as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were responsible for keeping Americans safe, Democrats could pander to the U.S. and European left’s anti-antiterror views at little political cost. But now that they are responsible, American voters are able to see what the left really has in mind, and they are saying loud and clear that they prefer the Cheney method.

Mr. Holder has nonetheless begun a campaign to defend his decisions on Abdulmutallab and KSM, telling the New Yorker last week that “I don’t apologize for what I’ve done” and that trying KSM in a civilian court will be “the defining event of my time as Attorney General.”

That’s about the only thing he’s said I agree with.

Ah-one, ah-two, ah-one-two-three and:

“Daddy gave me a present, a machine gun and a rifle.
When I am a big boy, I will join the Liberation Army.
The army of [Izz Al-Din] Al-Qassam (Hamas),
which has taught us how to defend our homeland.
Our homeland is precious, precious.
We [are] victorious, victorious over America and Israel.
[Improvises:] Son of a bitch - what brought you to this land?”

I always thought Izz-Al-Din was a pitcher for the St. Louis Browns in the 30s, but maybe I’m thinking of his brother Dafhi Din.

Now, about that cursing:

It is worth noting that the two hosts, the young girl Saraa and Nassur, an adult in a bear costume, approved of the boy’s choice of song and let him sing it. Only when the boy cursed(”Son of a bitch”), did the young girl cut him off, pointing out that the “program is a program for children, not for anything else.” The objection was to the boy’s cursing, not to the content of the song. The adult inside the puppet ended the exchange by defending the boy: “He didn’t say anything else, Saraa. He said the truth.”

There’s a guy in there?

Be my guest, Yogi. Don’t let the shrapnel hit you in the ass on your way out.

Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain

Much has been written about the EU debt bomb, cleverly called PIGS.

The inevitable “sovereign debt panic” finally struck last week, causing severe one-day drops in stock markets from New York to London to Toronto on Thursday.

Ostensibly, the epicentre of the crisis is Greece, in danger of defaulting on its debt payments to worldwide holders of its government bonds, or sovereign debt.

But the fear about state defaults quickly spread to Spain, Portugal and Ireland, fiscal train wrecks that together with Greece now go by the unfortunate acronym PIGS.

Even then, the scope of a potential second global financial crisis so soon after the credit crisis of 2008-09 goes far beyond the euro zone, the 16 nations sharing a common currency, the euro.

Last week’s dramatics could have been far worse. And they may yet manifest themselves in an ugly fashion in weeks to come if the euro-zone countries don’t rescue what Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou described last week as “the weakest link in the euro zone.”

Greece accounts for just 3 per cent of the euro-zone economy. The crisis in the cradle of Western civilization serves merely as proxy for government over-indebtedness everywhere.

Only a few months ago, a Dubai on the edge of default had to be bailed out by oil-rich neighbour Abu Dhabi. [hard to keep these guys straight, isn’t it? - Aggie] A debt-strapped Argentina recently tried and failed to pay debts by raiding its central-bank treasury.

Greece’s debt-to-GDP ratio is an eye-popping 95 per cent. But then, the U.S. isn’t far behind at 84 per cent. (The Canadian ratio is estimated at 35.5 per cent in the current fiscal year.) Greece’s deficit-to-GDP ratio is an alarming 13 per cent. But then, Britain isn’t far behind at 12.6 per cent.

And so on. Any thoughts? Maybe this is the End Of The Western World that the Iranians are drooling about? Then again, maybe it is just the usual nonsense.

Elections have consequences:

The U.S. looms largest. President Barack Obama just tabled a budget that projects a doubling in America’s national debt, to $28 trillion (U.S.), by decade’s end. That’s twice the size of the U.S. economy.

- Aggie

He is threatening the West with an unspecified attack on February 11th.

How coy.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the nation will deliver a harsh blow to the “global arrogance” on this year’s anniversary of the Islamic Revolution.

“The Islamic Revolution opened a window to liberty for the human race, which was trapped in the dead ends of materialism,” Ahmadinejad said during a cabinet meeting on Sunday.

“If the Islamic Revolution had not occurred, liberalism and Marxism would have crushed all human dignity in their power-seeking and money-grubbing claws. Nothing would have remained of human and spiritual principles,” he added.

Interesting that he equates Liberalism with Marxism in opposition to the liberty conferred by Sha’aria. Shows to go you what a different planet he inhabits.

More ranting here

BBC Monitoring Middle East, Ahmadinejad spoke on official Iranian television, saying that this year’s “Ten Days of Dawn” celebration, marking the anniversary of the country’s Islamic Revolution, would see the “demise” of the American system.

“I believe that 22 Bahman [ February 11 in the Persian calendar] this year marks the demise of the liberal capitalist system.” Ahmadinejad said.

…

Ahmadinejad claimed that Iran was an “inspiring” and “justice-seeking” country, which was just being “introduced to the world.”

“On the other hand, the Iranian nation is being introduced around the world as an inspiring, idealistic, revolutionary, God-seeking, justice-seeking, pure and humane nation.”

Ahmadinejad continued the narrative of America’s impending doom in a speech Saturday, Jan. 30, claiming that the Iranian revolution was the final step in God’s plan for the world.

“God created mankind … to reach a point that it could have control over the world of creation and days and nights,” Ahmadinejad said. “It is clear to all of us that the Islamic Revolution today is a giant stride toward the implementation of this great goal. The Islamic Revolution is in the direction, and of the same nature of, the great prophet’s move. It is guided by God.”

Well, I certainly look forward to the all the excitement on Thursday!

- Aggie

I’ll spare you the messy details, but I’ve fantasized about Sarah Palin’s palm, too.

But the MSM is positively perverse on the subject. Get your own fantasies, you creepy bunch of sickos!

Which you know they have. Andrea Mitchell lowers herself into a hot bubble bath. She closes her eyes and lets out a deep breath. Thoughts, impure thoughts, spill into her imagination. They involve basketballs and microphones, whipped cream and arugula. She wakes with a start as Alan Greenspan steps in opposite her.

I’d share Chris Matthews’ fantasies, but I’d be shut down by the FCC before the thrill got halfway up his leg.

But while you’re obsessing compulsively over a five-point outline Sarah wrote on her soft, white, gentle, perfect palm, you pervs, you missed a much, much bigger embarrassment:

The president can’t even talk to sixth graders without a pair of teleprompters and a Secret Service agent ready to take a bugger for the president.

“I do not like them, Sam-I-Am. I do not like green eggs and ham.”

I swear, when he tells his fat tubs of goo daughters a bedtime story, he must have a team of writers and a prompter at ha…

What’s that, you say, too mean?

Don’t talk to me. Talk to them:

“We went to our pediatrician all the time,” [Michelle] Obama said. “I thought my kids were perfect — they are and always will be — but he [the doctor] warned that he was concerned that something was getting off balance.”

…

“But we often simply don’t realize that those kids are our kids, and our kids could be in danger of becoming obese. We always think that only happens to someone else’s kid — and I was in that position.”

I won’t name which pretty little girl in question, out of respect for her privacy. But then, I don’t have to:

President Obama is also guilty of talking about his daughters’ weight. In an interview with Parents magazine in November 2008, the president said, “A couple of years ago — you’d never know it by looking at her now — Malia was getting a little chubby.”

You take that back, sir!

Just what all girls need: the commander in chief and leader of the free world—and his lady—opining on the BMI of all girls everywhere. Whoever wrote that on the teleprompter should be taken out and shot.

Is there a contrast to be made between Palin’s attitude toward her Down’s Syndrome son (”he’s perfect”) and Obama’s cute daughter (”she’s chubby”)?

Holocaust remembrance

[Written by Helen Zegerman Schwimmer]

Lilly Friedman doesn’t remember the last name of the woman who designed and sewed the wedding gown she wore when she walked down the aisle over 60 years ago. But the grandmother of seven does recall that when she first told her fiancé Ludwig that she had always dreamed of being married in a white gown he realized he had his work cut out for him.

For the tall, lanky 21-year-old who had survived hunger, disease and torture this was a different kind of challenge. How was he ever going to find such a dress in the Bergen Belsen Displaced Person’s camp where they felt grateful for the clothes on their backs?

Fate would intervene in the guise of a former German pilot who walked into the food distribution center where Ludwig worked, eager to make a trade for his worthless parachute. In exchange for two pounds of coffee beans and a couple of packs of cigarettes Lilly would have her wedding gown.

For two weeks Miriam the seamstress worked under the curious eyes of her fellow DPs, carefully fashioning the six parachute panels into a simple, long sleeved gown with a rolled collar and a fitted waist that tied in the back with a bow. When the dress was completed she sewed the leftover material into a matching shirt for the groom.

A white wedding gown may have seemed like a frivolous request in the surreal environment of the camps, but for Lilly the dress symbolized the innocent, normal life she and her family had once led before the world descended into madness. Lilly and her siblings were raised in a Torah observant home in the small town of Zarica, Czechoslovakia where her father was a melamed, respected and well liked by the young yeshiva students he taught in nearby Irsheva.
He and his two sons were marked for extermination immediately upon arriving at Auschwitz. For Lilly and her sisters it was only their first stop on their long journey of persecution, which included Plashof, Neustadt, Gross Rosen and finally Bergen Belsen.

Four hundred people marched 15 miles in the snow to the town of Celle on January 27, 1946 to attend Lilly and Ludwig’s wedding. The town synagogue, damaged and desecrated, had been lovingly renovated by the DPs with the meager materials available to them. When a Sefer Torah arrived from England they converted an old kitchen cabinet into a makeshift Aron Kodesh.

“My sisters and I lost everything - our parents, our two brothers, our homes. The most important thing was to build a new home.” Six months later, Lilly’s sister Ilona wore the dress when she married Max Traeger. After that came Cousin Rosie. How many brides wore Lilly’s dress? “I stopped counting after 17.” With the camps experiencing the highest marriage rate in the world, Lilly’s gown was in great demand.

In 1948 when President Harry Truman finally permitted the 100,000 Jews who had been languishing in DP camps since the end of the war to emigrate, the gown accompanied Lilly across the ocean to America. Unable to part with her dress, it lay at the bottom of her bedroom closet for the next 50 years, “not even good enough for a garage sale. I was happy when it found such a good home.”

Home was the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. When Lily’s niece, a volunteer, told museum officials about her aunt’s dress, they immediately recognized its historical significance and displayed the gown in a specially designed showcase, guaranteed to preserve it for 500 years.

But Lilly Friedman’s dress had one more journey to make. Bergen Belsen, the museum, opened its doors on October 28, 2007. The German government invited Lilly and her sisters to be their guests for the grand opening. They initially declined, but finally traveled to Hanover the following year with their children, their grandchildren and extended families to view the extraordinary exhibit created for the wedding dress made from a parachute.

Lilly Friedman and her parachute dress on display in the Bergen Belsen Museum

There’s more at the link, if you’re interested.

- Aggie

If public radio says it’s real, then it’s gotta be real, doesn’t it?

Complications of surgery

A spokesman says Democratic Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, a retired Marine Corps officer who became an outspoken critic of the Iraq war, has died. He was 77.

He had been suffering complications from gallbladder surgery.

In 1974, Murtha became the first combat veteran of the Vietnam War elected to Congress. He wielded considerable clout for two decades as a leader of the House subcommittee that oversees Pentagon spending. But frustration over the Iraq war led him to call for an immediate pullout of U.S. troops in 2005.

Murtha’s congressional career was clouded by questions about his ethics—from the Abscam corruption probe in 1980 to more recent investigations into the special-interest spending known as earmarks and the raising of cash for election campaigns.

He served his country for years, both in the military and in Congress. Perhaps the biggest stain on his record was the 2006 comment that the US military intentionally kills civilians in cold blood

I’m sorry to have to report that because we all say things that we wish we hadn’t. May he rest in peace.

- Aggie

Do you want to:

- have all past debts forgiven?
- be a hit with the ladies?
- take care of your family?
- be tight with your God?
- go straight to the top?

Ask me how!

Six privileges, or kindnesses, to be granted the holy Martyr are mentioned in a hadith (tradition attributed to the Prophet Muhammad in Islam) and were explained in a recent Friday sermon broadcast on Hamas TV.

The privileges that are bestowed upon the one who dies for Allah and mentioned in the hadith are:

1- The Shahid’s sins are forgiven
2- He sees his place in Paradise and lives a full life of joy with Allah
3- He is protected from “the Great Shock” on Judgment Day
4- He is crowned with a crown of honor
5- He marries 72 dark-eyed wives
6- He will be able to intervene on behalf of 70 of his family members on Judgment Day, thereby ensuring them the reward of Afterlife

For years, both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have promoted the ideal of dying as a Martyr for Allah. The promotion has been successful.
Palestinian Media Watch has collected many examples of Palestinian children and adults expressing belief in and desire for Shahada. Men and women aspire to become Shahids, and parents express pride and happiness when their children fulfill their aspirations and become Martyrs for Allah.

Don’t miss this can’t-miss opportunity to get in on the ground floor (where the blast can do the most damage to the foundations). Women and children especially welcome! (NINA: No Israelis Need Apply)

Let me not run through the roster of dishonest statements (February’s a short month!).

Let me add just one more:

How Many Press Conferences Has Bush Held?
By Patrick on Nov 10, 2008 12:50 PM

An interesting exchange during today’s White House press briefing:

Q [C]ould you tell us the total number of press conferences held by President Bush?

MS. PERINO: I couldn’t tell you. …

Q The New York Times reported, “Mr. Obama has indicated he will hold a news conference once a month, but nothing has been set.” Does the President, as an upcoming private citizen, hope that his successor will try to emulate FDR in the number of his press conferences?

MS. PERINO: I don’t think the President will be providing any advice as to how many press conferences he has.

He might suggest that the new president keep his word:

Six months ago, network executives were complaining that the White House was costing them tens of millions of dollars by pressing them to carry presidential news conferences in prime time.

Problem solved: President Obama hasn’t held a full-scale news conference since July. Instead, he answered a dozen people’s questions last week on YouTube, most of them easily finessed and — extra bonus! — no annoying follow-ups of the kind posed by real, live journalists.

How about holding a press conference during All My Children or General Hospital? Why does the Messiah (heavenly chorus: ah-h-h-h!!) have to commandeer prime time for every utterance? I recall press conferences for previous presidents being held in daylight.

For comparison’s sake:

In the 21 months since his second inaugural, Bush has already held 15 solo press conferences. Last year, 2005, he held nine – more than double the number he averaged each of his first four years. In 2006, he’s already held six – including one in each of the last five months. At this rate his second term would not only easily surpass his first-term total but equal it in two years.

…

“Like most of his recent predecessors, President Bush does news conferences when it suits his purposes, not those of the press,” said Knoller. “It’s a myth to think that he’s in any way scared of the press or our questions. And he has shown increasingly that he enjoys the intellectual give and take - and needling reporters about their style, clothing or questioning.”

“To the extent there have been more regular press conferences in recent months, you can credit the calendar. The midterm elections loom large and he has much at stake.

So, maybe we’ll get more Barack Obama, after all.

Oy.

Anyway, here’s something of what we’ve been missing:

In practice, no single news organization can cover the ground of a 45-minute Q&A with newspapers, wire services, magazines, television, radio and bloggers, seen live on the air.

“What’s lost is the ability to get beyond talking points,” says Michael Shear, a White House reporter for The Post. “This is a president and White House that know how to be very scripted and very on message. . . . Frankly, we make our living studying and following details of these issues so we can zero our questions in on where the real tension lies in a particular issue.”

Obama has talked to correspondents at occasional press “avails” overseas. While he has taken as many as a half-dozen or more questions, that figure has been shrinking, and if a foreign leader is present, the American side may get just one or two chances.

Todd says that while he and other network correspondents have been granted short interviews abroad, there is no time for wide-ranging questions on, say, Iran or the Middle East. “All these pre-set interviews, they try to attach them to a specific topic,” he says.

Maybe they can put the press conferences on C-SPAN!