Obama and the Progressive Agenda- A Wounded Tiger?

My friend ShrinkWrapped has a brilliant post up. In it he poses the idea that Multiculturalism and Anthropogenic Global Warning have sustained enough damage in recent events to set them on a course for the oblivion they so richly deserve. He is so accurate about so much that I hesitated to bring up the one big problem I see in his theory. I finally posted a comment that outlines what I see as a terrible unmentioned, terrifying danger arising from this apparent victory for good sense. Here is my comment with some edits and expansion:

Multiculturalism is to nations as the self-esteem movement is to individuals. Unless we can reclaim the principal that only people who work hard, take care of themselves, contribute something of value to society and produce something that other people will pay for, deserve to have a "decent" living and hold their heads up in society, we will never accept that the cultures that value and foster that kind of individual more effectively are, simply put, better cultures.

As to the difficulty of next few years, I see terrible danger. Fascist totalitarianism is the time-honored response of ideologies that have no other chance of success. President Obama fired the opening salvo of a campaign against free thought and speech last Sunday. It was a not so thinly veiled as a reference to ipods etc.. but clearly implied that ungoverned thought, opinion and the speed of information were problematic. In forcing the health care bill through congress he has already proven more than capable of imposing his will over the outcry of the majority. He is surrounded by people who welcome crises and turmoil as opportunities to "change" things...

In my opinion, the worst aspect of this is that there is no organized opposition. The mainstream of the Republican party, for their own reasons, are complicit with the Democrats. The corporate world will be delighted to have legions of docile, socialist drones penned up in cubicles in all the nation's offices like so many veal calves fattening in their boxes. They work a little, complain a lot and their paychecks are ample enough to bleed off and aggregate big corporate bonuses and social entitlements for the vast army of indolent voters that will continue to vote for their unearned privileges in increasing numbers. The cubicle dwellers work too hard and clear too little profit from their labor to outbreed the welfare voting block, so the power shift is on.

The corporations have it made. Every cubicle dweller is one less potential competitive entrepreneur and, anyway, they have been pronounced too big to fail by the party of the welfare bloc. The Tea Party thing is a start but there is no true leadership structure. It is a big tent and a magnet for nut jobs. The danger that one person can fatally damage the movement with one bad gaffe is huge. Leadership must be developed, entrenched and schooled and that takes time.

The Beast is strong in both parties and they are tough and ruthless. They see the folks in the cubicles and the people who make their own way in life waking up to the fact that they are caught in the pincer between the corporate oligarchs and the entitlement class. They have been wounded because the poor economy has made us think about the weight of the bonuses and free goodies we pay for. They are afraid and in pain- a wounded tiger- a whole zoo full of wounded tigers.

There are some good Republicans and even one or two good Democrats but they need to have some faith in the electorate- some where to go for support. If the real independents, the entrepreneurs, producers and creators, do not come to understand the peril before this November's elections and if they only have run-of-the-mill Republicans and Democrats to vote for, I fear that this will not end well.

The Nuance of the Nazis

Via Blazing Cat Fur

Can Nazis be victims of hate?

'Nazi' listed as an identifiable victim group in Toronto Police's 2009 hate crime stats report

Speaking of the stupidity of Nuance!

Q. What do you get when you Nuance a Nazi?

A. A Victim

This really is a shocker! Bernie Farber, one of the leading proponents of Canada's Anti Hate Speech Laws, makes a career out of making sure that a person's statements are judged not by their validity and truth but rather by whether or not they cause distress or foster hatred and then he is surprised that even Nazis can have distress and be "victims" of hatred.

We are all victims now, it seems. Just think how the poor National Socialists must feel! Millions of Jews throwing themselves into trenches and shooting themselves in the back or gassing themselves and burning their own bodies in furnaces with the the poor, stunned Nazis standing by in helpless horror! And, still, sixty years later, they are blamed, even reviled and insulted, by the world for the "jew caused disaster" they were powerless to avert.

Too bad, Bernie did not see this coming. Maybe he was too busy building himself a career and a ridiculously inflated reputation on bad law and phony victimology to see where it would lead...

Personally, I got tired of the victim card in High School when I realized how unattractive and counter-productive it is. Oh well, Nuance is as Nuance Does...

No More Mr. Nuanced Guy!

In my last post I noted that we are indeed fortunate to this point that the people who want to kill us are, in general, a little bit dumber than we are. This has accorded us a certain measure of safety. They busy themselves detonating small charges in their private parts or leaving the keys to their "other car" in automobiles (to which they hold title) laden with unexplodable devices idling by the curb all of which amounts to the equivalent of a set of Mapquest directions to their homes. We, on the other hand, have distracted ourselves with pastimes fit only for overeducated, self-important, arrogant imbeciles: handicapping our security forces by applying the values and protections of our republic too broadly to the entire human race in general (regardless of whether they "buy in" to our system) We chronically, overestimate our own power, while underestimating the unalterable hatred and contempt our enemies harbor for us. Many of us refuse to understand that "they" simply do not share our values or dreams. On top of all that, we insure that we can't even talk or think directly about the danger we face from them because we have outlawed the very words that must be used if we are to define and measure it.

Here below is a nearly perfect example of how invincible and pervasive the stupidity of nuance is in our media and how seductive and Imbecilic its proponents are. The quote is a part of a panel discussion of the “Mystery” of Faisal Shahzad’s sudden jihad that was moderated by the exceedingly nuanced Robert Smith on NPR. Smith is seen here doing his most nuanced “I wouldn’t recognize an Islamist terrorist if he jumped out of a sewer, shouted Allahu Akbar and sawed my head off” interpretation of the evidence.

SMITH: ,… neighbors that actually spotted Shahzad in the last few months say he was acting strange, running in the dark, blasting a radio day and night, and apparently, according to investigators, assembling a car bomb from propane, gasoline and fireworks.

So what happened last summer to Faisal Shahzad to flip him from family man to suspected terrorist?

Bruce Hoffman is a professor of security studies at Georgetown University. He says that it's become a pattern in these kind of cases for the suspect to have recently traveled back to their homeland.

Professor BRUCE HOFFMAN (Georgetown University): And then either before that trip, during that trip, perhaps upon their return, are suddenly radicalized and become involved in a terrorist plot.

SMITH: And even before the trip to Pakistan there were signs that all was not well with Shahzad. The family had been falling behind in their home payments and trying to sell the house. They were being sued for not paying an energy bill. The Wall Street Journal quotes a real estate agent who heard Shahzad say that his father was sick and he needed to return to Pakistan to take care of him.

Hoffman says that it's also not uncommon for terrorists to leave a trail of debt behind them.

Prof. HOFFMAN: Many of these individuals believe it's entirely permissible to, in essence, defraud the Western societies they live in and to use whatever money they have to run up credit card debt, to take out loans that they have no intention of repaying.

SMITH: Still, neighbors say the turnaround in Shahzad's life seemed to happen so quickly. One day the family was holding a tag sale on their lawn and soon after that they were gone. Their foreclosed home in Shelton still has trash and forgotten items strewn inside and out. I found this music CD next to their yard.

(Soundbite of song)

Unidentified Woman: Be ready for a great journey (Singing in foreign language)

SMITH: Other reporters found Shahzad's old passport from Pakistan, discarded greeting cards, and a transcript from college that showed that Shahzad apparently had a 2.78 grade point average. Now that he's in custody, all of that discarded pass is catching up to him. Investigators spent yesterday removing evidence from Shahzad's former life.

(Soundbite of song)

Smith invites Hoffman into the discussion and then completely blunts the important information that Hoffman supplies. Hoffman identifies the pattern of these deadly killers. They go back to their homelands, they feel no compunction about violating the most basic values and responsibilities of American life, they are cynical users and (by our standards) sociopathic. They are different.

Without giving any sign that he even acknowledges the dissonance between Hoffman’s observation with his own bemused, self-inflicted blindness, Smith dances around Hoffman’s statement with random thoughts thrown out, no doubt, to be evocative of mystery “he had a 2.78 gpa”, “he left trash behind”, “he had greeting cards”, there was a song about a long journey found somewhere in the neighborhood of his house. It is as if he is answering Hoffman’s, point by appealing to the canard of “we all want the same things in life”.

He seems to be saying, “Oh, the poor confused man had a soul, and a family and a numerically verifiable participation in parts of our system. How to ever understand the things people do…”

Back in 2006, when I started this blog, my very first post was my account of the event in my own life that made it impossible for me to nuance away the awareness of the hideous monster (beast) of Caliphate Islamism. In retrospect I might have been too vague in putting my finger exactly what that monster is. I was vague intentionally because I felt that if I were too direct and specific, I would risk alienating people who might be on the cusp of awareness but wary of harsh language and un-nuanced thought. I am reposting that story below be cause it is still true.

So here it is, and I will only add that now I understand that nuance is the new stupid so I now renounce nuance entirely. The Beast is Islamism. It’s way through our walls is our own nuance.

My First Encounter With the Beast

We always get a warning that is clear and unequivocal when evil is stalking us. It is up to us to notice. Warnings are all too easy to dismiss. It is a grave responsibility to pay heed to real warnings. It seems so much easier to convince yourself that the warning is not for you, or that the danger is remote and small.

When Hitler, for example, wrote Mein Kampf, in 1925. He left no doubt as to his intentions. The world dismissed the book as the ravings of a mad man. When he got his opportunity to reach power ten years later, much of the world was surprised that he actually did what he said he would. If they had believed him in the first place and acted on that knowledge with resolution and intelligence millions of lives could have been saved.

The good news is that all you have to do is pay attention, believe what you see and hear and have the strength not to deny it. Evil will almost always inform you of its presence and intentions. I was given a very personal warning twenty-five years ago by a particularly profound form of evil. That evil presence has grown and prospered in the world since then. It has grown and become powerful and menacing and yet, even today, in spite of incontrovertible evidence of its existence many people find it altogether too easy to deny.

Back in the early eighties my young family and I lived next door to an Iranian family. They were nice, friendly people. Hamid (not his real name) was a physician who was just starting out in his own practice. His wife, Haideh was also Iranian born. She was a mathematician. She taught at a local college. We moved in to brand new houses just months apart and shared the rigors of nurturing lawns where there had been only bulldozer tracks. We cooperated in the planting of trees and shrubs to define the empty expanses between our new homes. We borrowed tools from each other. Hamid and I played tennis often and even discussed the possibility of building a tennis court in the flat spot where our lots met. Our children played together and his son, Amir and my daughter Amy became very close friends. The two of them were barely more than toddlers when they first met but were soon talking about getting married the way little ones sometimes do when they find a close companion of the opposite sex.

The next summer, they went back to Iran to visit with their families. We were afraid for our friends. We knew the country was in turmoil. They were gone for several weeks. For much of the time my Amy’s days were occupied with day camp but she still missed her friend. They finally returned a week before school. The two seemed to pick up right where they had left off.

It was a sunny Sunday morning and Amy went out right after breakfast and met Amir in his backyard. We watched as they began to play and turned away to read the Sunday paper. We were surprised when Amy came back inside a short while later. She walked by us with her head down and started up the stairs to her room. We had expected to have to call her in for lunch so it was odd that she came back so early. I called after her and asked her what was wrong. She told me how little 5-year-old Amir had matter-of-factly informed my innocent 5-year-old daughter that because she is a Jew it is his duty to kill her.

I went right over to talk with my friend and neighbor. Hamid was deeply embarrassed. He hastened to explain that: “Over there, the radio and TV were full of that kind of thing - you simply couldn’t avoid it. He assumed that Amir had heard this kind of thing on the radio or TV because no one in his family believed such things. He was sure, he told me, that now that Amir was back here he would soon forget it. He assured me that he would talk with Amir and was sure that the boy didn’t even understand what he was saying.

I could see how distressed he was and told him that I understood and that I appreciated his concern. We looked at each other and shook hands and patted each other on the shoulder. I was sure that it would not change things between our families.

Remember that this was twenty years before September 11, 2001. It was a few years after the fall of the Shah so, before they had left, I had actually wondered if his kids were going to be exposed to anti-American rhetoric and how that would sit with them. It had never entered my mind though to expect the anti-Semitic to be the dominant theme. Back then many of us believed the myth of the benevolent caliphate and the benign toleration of “Dhimmis” under Muslim rule. After all, I mused, Iran was at war with Iraq. And Israel had recently bombed the Osirac reactor thereby preventing Iraq from developing nuclear weapons.

In the light of everything that has transpired since then, it now seems hopelessly naïve of me but in the dim light of that historical moment I was amazed that what had surfaced first from this child’s sojourn in his homeland was genocidal anti-Semitism. As I lay awake in bed that night I found I couldn’t get the event out of my mind. The idea that a child could have such an idea in his head was staggering by itself. What kind of madness had he been exposed too? What infernal clatter of hatred and fear was there in the streets and media over there that could make it possible for a five year old say such a thing?

I recalled the pictures from the nightly news reports on the recently ended hostage ordeal that always seemed to show dense, agitated crowds of shirt-sleeved young men with posters and bullhorns. For all that it was fascinating, the violent rhetoric and the frenetic seemed somehow so unconnected to me – motivated by such an alien animus that I had watched them with the detachment of one who had every confidence that it had nothing to do with him. Now, as I lay awake, I could see- it was very personal.

It was frightening, it was unfamiliar, it was hateful and I had no idea how big or how close it was.

Was the family back in Iran so very different from Hamid? What kind of people thought nothing of exposing a child to this? What, I wondered, could have been the state of mind of Hamid and his wife that they did not think to talk to their son about this stuff- to “deprogram” him on the way home. The more I thought about it the more it bothered me. I lay awake thinking picturing not the house next door and the people in it, but the sweating, rioting crowds back in Iran and all of their squawking radios and televisions. The morning before, I had thought that all I had to do was talk to my neighbor about this thing. Now I saw clearly that this was very big and very ugly- beyond reach of a friendly neighborhood talk. I got out of bed and looked out the window toward their house, bathed in pale moonlight. The calm fall night was filled with a new shadow- the specter of an evil that had once been faraway and theoretical and was suddenly present and breathing quietly in the dark recesses of this soft night. Just then, it felt close enough that I thought I could feel its hot, humid breath on the back of my neck.

In my innocent, pre-9/11 American way I remember wondering how close we might have actually come to tragedy. A little boy of five might have kept harboring that thought and without comprehending what he was really doing, hurt or even murdered my little girl. God forbid that he might have gotten access to a gun with that in his mind. What kind of horror might have been averted because he spoke instead of acting? I walked down the hall and looked into Amy’s room. Her soft brown curls shone in the moonlight and she stirred and sighed.

I wandered back to my bed and lay down. What kind of society, I wondered, puts ideas like this into the mind of a (rather charming) little boys like Amir? How was it, with even parents like my friends Hamid and Haideh the racket and stink of genocidal hatred could so easily stick to him and be carried so quietly and so deep into the heart of our safe little suburban neighborhood.

Now that the images of Iran I had found it easy to view and dismiss were personal and immediate, I could never again feel quite so secure that all the “Death to America” and “Kill the Jews” rhetoric was empty and rhetoric or that it didn’t pertain to me. If it is said and sanctioned, how far away is it really from execution?

Over the next few years, the war with between Iran and Iraq dragged on; reports were heard in the west of human wave assaults organized by the Islamic army of Iran. Boys as young as fourteen were roped together to prevent desertion and sent out unarmed to try to overwhelm Iraqi positions by shear weight of expendable numbers. Sometimes I would catch sight of Amir in the street and shake my head – grateful that he was here but filled with dread for all of us.

Hamid and his family moved away after a few years. Since then, there have been so many experiences and images that have reminded me of that night when I realized how close the beast is.

I have stood in one of the great central squares of Kiev where there stands a huge statue of the national hero Bogdan Chemielniki who, before Hitler, was history’s greatest slaughterer of Jews. A few miles away I visited the memorial at Babi Yar. To stand at that monument I had to walk there over the half-mile long mound that is the mass grave of more than one hundred thousand Jews.

I have also been to Israel and visited the sites of three of the most infamous suicide bombings. I watched the airplane on which the wife of a friend perished smash into the North Tower of The World Trade Center. Then, I watched the towers crumble. I have downloaded and viewed the video of the slaughter of Daniel Pearl, which is still available on the Internet. I recognized them all as footprints of the same beast. Having lived with its shadow for so long, I am often shocked when I meet people who don’t believe that it is real that it is stalking us even as you read this.

What will it take for you to understand that what they are saying and doing is personal and you need to do something about it?

Nuance: The New Stupid

International Stupid Derby Latest Results:

Mainstream Press pulls ahead in the race with a monumental act of self-ridicule even as Islamist bomber manages to improve technique at least to the extent that ev en though he still botched his terror attempt, he did it without exploding his own genitalia.

This headline is popping up all over the media today on an article supplied by Associated Press:

NY Car Bomb Suspect Cooperates, But Motive Mystery

A quick Google has it on NPR, Yahoo News, ABC News and many, many others.

A Mystery? My friends, this is no mere fathomless act of willful ignorance. This is a full blown stupidity that makes even the “blow my own testicles off” idiocy of the most recent run of Islamist would-be killers look sort of bright. Even though the article quotes Attorney General Holder as saying, "Based on what we know so far, it is clear that this was a terrorist plot aimed at murdering Americans in one of the busiest places in our country," the AP story calls his motivation a mystery.

How exactly? Well I am not entirely sure because most of the story is so un-mysterious that it is hard to tell. I suspect it has something to do with this passage:

“Until recently, his life in the U.S. appeared enviable. He had a master's degree from the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut, a job as a budget analyst for a marketing firm in Norwalk, Conn., two children and a well-educated wife who posted his smiling picture and lovingly called him "my everything" on a social networking website.

But shortly after becoming a U.S. citizen a year ago, he gave up his job, stopped paying his mortgage and told a real estate agent to let the bank take the house because he was returning to Pakistan.

Once there, according to investigators, he traveled to the lawless Waziristan region and learned bomb making at a terrorist training camp.”

I think that if you stand back and squint at this section, you can see what they are getting at. Its very nuanced, but it is in there. The mystery in their minds stems from the pathetic notion that brother Faisel’s pre-jihad situation did not have any tell-tale triggers that would “explain” his acts. He was not a victim of the mortgage bust, he was not obviously politically readicalized or a social outcast. He was living as if he were really “just like us”.

And all good progressive liberals are compelled to believe that that is all anyone in the world is. They are supposed to want all the things we want and desire the life satisfactions that we desire. So, when they see this guy leaving all that behind, getting bomb training and making a sincere (if, fortuitously, inept) to slaughter innocent people on the streets of our cities, they are powerless to understand it. Even though the Islamist clergy has clearly and specifically put us on notice that they “love death more than we (in the west) love life” the AP and those blinded by the Progressive ideology just will not accept that those people are different from us in a very basic way.

It is this dogma that makes profiling a crime against the humanity of others. If we were all the same, with the same values and dreams, then to be aware that some nationality or religion may be more likely to cause a problem than others would indeed be counter-productive.

But we are not. They are happy to tell us so is we will only listen to them, Still the AP and it subscribers continue to make a fetish of denying the plain fact that the source of the vast majority of the terror in the world is done by Islamist radicals

That is stupid. I am talking about Darwin Award Stupid here. It is the same exact stupid that is at work when people express a fear of profiling. It was, after all, ever so smart and nuanced of The Army to ignore the anti-American ravings of mass killer Major Hassan so that they could be sure not to be accused of profiling.

Is it ever going to be a good thing, something "we all want", when a newly minted U.S. citizens gives up paying on a viable house mortgage and returns to his native Pakistan (you know Pakistan, don’t you, where Osama is hiding, where the Mumbai killers came from and where Daniel Pearl had is head sawn off?) for a six month graduate degree in bomb making? Would it not seem prudent, if noticeably un-nuanced, to keep an eye on someone like that? But, I know, this is a simplistic view- not very nuanced and progressive.

Here is the obligatory disclaimer: I am not advocating putting all Muslims into internment camps or deporting them. I am saying we need to pay attention to what they are saying and doing.

HELLO! AP! There IS no mystery here. There is no nuance that can excuse, explain or rationalize this. In fact, Nuance is the new Stupid. And it is Stupider than the old one.

Update:

Gagdad Bob appended this at the link to this article on American Digest:

"Readers and Viewers Flee MSM for Other News Sources, But Motive a Mystery"

The Earliest Lame Duck in History

President Obama is an avian mixed metaphor. He has tried to be the early bird, pushing very hard on his radical agenda in the face of economic hardships. But he has only suceeded in making himself the earliest lame duck in history. Case in point is here:

The man is either living in a fool's paradise or he is just trying to do as much damage as he can before he is deprived of his minions next year and swept out of office in three years. The election is NOT over- in America the election is every day. He looks around him grasping at straws and ends up only finding Harry Reid and Chris Dodd as his examples! Hold on there, Mr. President. Chris has already acknowledged that he cannot possibly get reelected by his constituents and Harry, by all acconts, is headed for electoral elimination next year!

That is the beauty of American Democracy- the election is never over- we the people will always have our say.

Let's mix the metaphore even more, Obama's presidency has turned into an empty suit leading an army of dead-men-walking.

Note to U C Irvine: Don't Look Now But They Have Taken Your School Right Out from Under You!

This video is all you need to know about both the Middle East and the challenge it presents to Western Civilization.

The problem for us in the west is that the people who come out of the Arab Islamic culture in which violence is the currency of leadership and coercion masquerades as truth, have achieved three pivotal advances in positioning, tactics and strategy.

They have achieved sufficient affluence to study at (or at least hang around) a University.

They have learned to manipulate and capture the imagination of impressionable and alienated young westerners.

They have mastered the Alinsky rule book for intimidating and perverting their host culture.

Here are Alinsky’s rules and my scorecard for this event:

1. "Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.

Ambassador Oren relates that he was warned by the Foreign Minister of Israel, “Oy, are you going to have a hard time!” – an admission that reasonable people know that UC Irvine is a place that is not just intellectually opposed but so openly hostile, emotionally intimidating and aggressively closed minded that it is not possible to carry on a dialogue there.

2. "Never go outside the experience of your people.

Not that being disruptive and attempting to keep a speaker from presenting his ideas and thoughts is such an involved undertaking but you will notice that at 6:11 and 6:39 of the clip it is obvious that someone had gone to the trouble of providing at least two of the young men who got up to shout their epithets and taunts with little slips of paper from which to read their outbursts. Pathetic, I know, that those two dolts and perhaps others (we just don’t get a chance to see them as they start yelling) cannot even manage to be boorish and ignorant without a script, but the scary thing is that someone obviously knew that about them and got them prepared…

3. "Wherever possible go outside of the experience of the enemy.

Not possible in this case. If they aren’t lobbing outrageous lies, their cousins are lobbing Qassam missiles. Jews and Israelis have seen worse than this.

4. "Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.

Unfortunately, (probably due in large part to # 1 above) the impotent UC officials lived up to a very high-toned reading of the rules. This was obviously a very tightly orchestrated and planned disruption. After the second outburst and boisterous agitation, it should have been clear that the presumption of innocence for most of that side of the room was an example of cowardice not fairness. They should have been rounded up and arrested. They conspired to deprive Ambassador Oren of his right to speak and his sponsoring group of their right to assemble. Oh, where is the ACLU now? Must be out defending the right of Neo-Nazis to have a parade in a Jewish neighborhood…

5. "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon.

Well, you can’t win them all. The protesters, in the end, didn’t use much ridicule. They showed themselves to be ridiculous (see the capering young woman at 8:41 for example) but that is not the same thing.

6. "A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.

This was clearly a great success in the enjoyment department. Apparently, accusing intelligent, egalitarian and earnest people from the one country in the middle east that gives equal rights to religious minorities and women and bends over backwards not to kill people who have sworn to destry them of murder and even genocide is intensly diverting for them, They smirk, giggle and congratulate each other as if their team had just won a soccer match.

7. "A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.

They took up a lot of time here but I do think they knew when to file out en mass. Yup, they had this about right.

8. "Keep the pressure on.

This does not apply to this one instance- it is a long term goal- but this would certainly be an occasion at which they are “keeping the pressure up.”

9. "The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.

Exactly, they howl and mewl but that is not so bad. Even on campuses, though, nowadays you can’t help but wonder if there is a Major Nadal Malik Hasan or Abdul Farouk Umar Abdulmutallab in the crowd.

10. "Major premise for tactics is development of operations that will maintain constant pressure upon the opposition.

Sure, they do this kind of this thing enough and they will wear away the resistance to all kinds of little projects of theirs- academic boycotts, for example. Even more insidiously, though, it is a common ploy of radicals to take extreme positions and shout outrageous things at high volume so that people like Ambassador Oren wind up begging only to be heard. This imbalance makes the radical seem magnanimous when he allows someone else to so much as finish a sentence while Ambassador Oren looks demanding when he insists on his absolute right to express himself.

11. "If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside.

Check, here they are championing proxy armies, dictatorships, corrupt monarchies and Islamofascist regimes and making it seem as though Israel is the villain state.

12. "The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.

They utterly fail at this. Every time an Israeli tries to find a formula for Coexistence, an Arab calls for the destruction of Israel. For them killing Jews seems constructive, I guess.

13. "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

They shout outrageous personal calumny, lies and accusations at the honored guest, but he is not even the real target of this demonstration. They identify the true victim as they file out. At 8:15 of the clip you can hear one of them repeatedly shout, “Whose University is it?” and each time they answer in chorus “My University”.

Until the administration of UC Irvine develops enough spine to take it back, I am afraid they are quite right about that.

Note: As of this posting this clip has had over a quarter of a million views on YouTube. Maybe that will embarrass them into doing something to these thugs who have shamed the school. Click on it! I always clapped my hands for Tinker-belle too.

The Biggest Freudian Slip in the History of Propaganda

On one of my regular visits to Seraphic Secret (one of the finest, most interesting blogs on the internet) I was reminded that Feb. 11th is Revolution Day in Iran. Robert posted this picture which I think should get more attention so I am borrowing it and putting up here as well. I left a comment at Seraphic Secret about it and will expand on it here...

Correct me if I am mistaken, it looks to me that Obama has just beheaded Lady Liberty in that picture. If so, this must be in the running for the title of "The Biggest Freudian Slip in the History of Propaganda".

Think about it! What exactly are they saying here? Do they agree with many of our own American conservatives that President Obama's agenda is a deadly threat (intentional or not) to Liberty? Are they suddenly concerned for the preservation of American ideals? What is the meaning of an obviously verdi-copper colored statue bleeding red blood?

No, they care nothing for and know less about Liberty. The rage and pain in the Islamist soul renders them inchoate. There is nothing deeper here than hatred pure, mockery vile and fury unbounded. Poor un-manned Obama with an odd sort of orgasmic look on his face holding the desecrated female symbol of Liberty (name me one brave, important and powerful female symbol in all of Islam!) expresses their impotence more perfectly than any essay or analysis ever could. They are powerless to express the overwhelming rage. Their inability to see the real cause of the rage turns their every attempt at expression turgid and recursive.

This is why they call it Revolution Day. They celebrate their revolution with shows of irrational cascades of bloody symbolism and threats of death.

We call The Fourth of July Independence Day because something was born that day. The day that shooting started on started in our revolution, has been relegated to a second class state holiday in Massachusetts and we instead celebrate as a nation the publication of the document that proclaimed a new and unique way of organizing a government in these words:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. "

Nothing was born on Revolution Day, it was just the latest in a series of bloody events that stretch back to the origin of the species, events that promise nothing but more and bigger of the same.

It was, after all my family's intimate encounter with a distant but deadly ripple from the utter insanity of Iran's streets that gave me my first inkling of the beast that is stalking us. But this picture is really a crystal window into what a squalid dead-end Iran and the dream of the Caliphate really is. These people haven't a clear thought in their heads. They are twisted and knotted so thoroughly around the Islamist armature of collectivism, misogyny and ignorance that they are truly "beside themselves" and they just HATE the neighborhood.

As for President Obama, believe what you will about his intentions and the bankruptcy of his agenda, his apparent acquiescence in the nuclear ambitions of these people put him in danger of becoming the chief enabler of the next holocaust- the most avoidable and horrifying one ever...

All the News That's Written by Imbeciles

Here (hat tip to Dan Friedman) is a new and utterly transparent illustration of how anything that is bad for Israel seems good to The New York Times. I'll quote the whole sad mess below so you don't have to increase their traffic volume.

By the reasoning in this article, it would be a good idea to bring back smallpox so we could sell vaccinations to the people we want to have beholden to us. The Times would ONLY think this a printable idea if the biggest possible loser in the scheme were Israel. Even more horrifying is that the imbecile who wrote it is a "defense analyst" at the Air Force Institute.

Update:

Friend, noted scholar and astute observer, Judith Klinghoffer writes:

It is stupid analysis as it assumes that Arabs would pay for security or that Arab autocrats will repay the American favor by becoming less autocratic and anti-American. Historically, this has never been the case. The opposite has been true. And it is even more unlikely to be the case with Obama in power. The man simply is shilling for defense contractors who worry about a decline in traditional defense spending.

Judith

Read it and be enlightened:

February 9, 2010

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

Iran’s Two-Edged Bomb

By ADAM B. LOWTHER

Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala.

With Iran having notified the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency that it is now enriching its stockpile of uranium to a higher level, we should admit that Washington’s approach to countering the Islamic Republic is leading nowhere. What’s needed, however, may be less of a change of plan than a change in how we view the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.

Believe it or not, there are some potential benefits to the United States should Iran build a bomb. (I’m speaking for myself here, and in no way for the Air Force.) Five possibilities come to mind.

First, Iran’s development of nuclear weapons would give the United States an opportunity to finally defeat violent Sunni-Arab terrorist groups like Al Qaeda. Here’s why: a nuclear Iran is primarily a threat to its neighbors, not the United States. Thus Washington could offer regional security — primarily, a Middle East nuclear umbrella — in exchange for economic, political and social reforms in the autocratic Arab regimes responsible for breeding the discontent that led to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Until now, the Middle East autocracies have refused to change their ways because they were protected by the wealth of their petroleum reserves. A nuclear Iran alters the regional dynamic significantly, and provides some leverage for us to demand reforms.

Second, becoming the primary provider of regional security in a nuclear Middle East would give the United States a way to break the OPEC cartel. Forcing an end to the sorts of monopolistic practices that are illegal in the United States would be the price of that nuclear shield, bringing oil prices down significantly and saving billions of dollars a year at the pump. Or, at a minimum, President Obama could trade security for increased production and a lowering of global petroleum prices.

Third, Israel has made clear that it feels threatened by Iran’s nuclear program. The Palestinians also have a reason for concern, because a nuclear strike against Israel would devastate them as well. This shared danger might serve as a catalyst for reconciliation between the two parties, leading to the peace agreement that has eluded the last five presidents. Paradoxically, any final agreement between Israelis and Palestinians would go a long way to undercutting Tehran’s animosity toward Israel, and would ease longstanding tensions in the region.

Fourth, a growth in exports of weapons systems, training and advice to our Middle Eastern allies would not only strengthen our current partnership efforts but give the American defense industry a needed shot in the arm.

With the likelihood of austere Pentagon budgets in the coming years, Boeing has been making noise about shifting out of the defense industry, which would mean lost American jobs and would also put us in a difficult position should we be threatened by a rising military power like China. A nuclear Iran could forestall such a catastrophe.

Last, the United States would be able to stem the flow of dollars to autocratic regimes in the region. It would accomplish this not only by driving down the price of oil and increasing arms exports, but by requiring the beneficiaries of American security to bear a real share of its cost. And in the long run, a victory in the war on terrorism would save taxpayers the tens of billions of dollars a year now spent on overseas counterinsurgency operations.

What about the downside — that an unstable, anti-American regime would be able to start a nuclear war? Actually, that’s less of a risk than most people think. Unless the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, and his Guardian Council chart a course that no other nuclear power has ever taken, Iran should become more responsible once it acquires nuclear weapons rather than less. The 50-year standoff between the Soviet Union and the United States was called the cold war thanks to the deterrent effect of nuclear weapons.

There is reason to believe that the initial shock of a nuclear Iran would soon be followed a new regional dynamic strikingly like that of cold-war Europe. Saudi Arabia and Iraq would be united along with their smaller neighbors by their fear of Iran; the United States would take the lead in creating a stable regional security environment. In addition, our reluctant European allies, and possibly even China and Russia, would have a much harder time justifying sales of goods and technology to Tehran, further isolating the Islamic Republic.

Iran may think its enrichment plans will put fear into the hearts of Americans. In fact, it should give us hopes of a renaissance of American influence in the Middle East.

Feb. 9. 2010: This Op-Ed has been updated to reflect the news.

Adam B. Lowther is a defense analyst at the Air Force Research Institute.

Corpseman- It's No Mere Gaffe

Gaffes are one thing, ignorance and dereliction of responsibility are another thing altogether. Everyone is missing the point about the President’s latest gaffe. It is more telling than Dan Quayle misspelling a food item and it is much more chilling than any of the famous malapropisms of former president Bush.

Here is why. President Obama is not just our political leader, he is the Commander-in-Chief of our armed forces. He is the one we have given the ultimate responsibility to keep us safe. He has the power to send our young people into harm’s way. He can, likewise, withhold military action when Americans are in peril. Protecting and defending us is supposed to be the first priority of the President. Compelling the healthcare system to wipe more noses even if it is with rougher tissue paper, changing our national culture by weaning us away from our “bitter” clinging to God and guns and keeping industry from creating jobs by producing more than a certain quota of fossil fuel smoke are supposed to be somewhere down the list.

There is a common legend that Eskimos have a variety of words to describe snow. It makes sense for people to whom snow is important and whose lives often depend on a clear understanding of snow’s condition and appearance would have evolved sophisticated was of classifying and communicating about it. If Barack Obama were an Eskimo, he and all he leads would die in the ice.

We know that he has never served in the armed forces himself but, for God’s sake, Mr Obama walks past the Marines who guard his life every day. He flies in the helicopter Marine One to Camp David and other places constantly. The unofficial name for The Marine Band is “The Presidents Own”. He daily makes decisions in which he calls upon members of the various Corps of the armed forces to risk their own lives and take the lives of others. Do you think he might at some point have taken the time to listen to the military men and women talk about themselves?

Does he call “his own” band the Marine Corpse Band?

Is he really THAT disinterested in one of the most powerful instruments of policy available to him? Has he such a small appreciation for one of the key guarantors of his own personal safety? If so, what does that say about the priority he gives to the protection and preservation of the rest of us- our lives and livelihoods?

Calling a service member a corpseman is no mere gaffe it is one more proof that Mr. Obama does not understand his job, overestimates his own importance and has no idea what is truly important.

If you owned a cabinet making business would you hire a guy who, in the course of a job interview, called the big planer that you use to mill wood down to a smooth and even thickness a planner- confusing it with a calendar book day-timer?

Would you let a surgeon who says car-toid instead of carotid for the artery that carries all of the blood to your brain operate on your neck?

If not, then why would you want this guy to be your Commander-in-Chief?

UPDATES:

1. This was not the first time Obama has made this mistake one of my commenters on Free Republic has sent me this:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxORB49KtsE

2. My friend Professor Barry Rubin writes of the Eskimo analogy:

Actually, they would develop a stiumulus package that bought trillions of dollars of refrigerators. Professor Barry Rubin, Director, Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center http://www.gloria-center.org The Rubin Report blog http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/ Editor, Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal http://www.gloria-center.org Editor Turkish Studies, http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=t713636933%22

What's the Difference (between an Imam and a Rabbi)?

Tell me again why anti-Semitism is on the rise in France?

Q: What do you call a Muslim Imam who respects other religions and believes in acting like a citizen of the country and century he actually lives in?

A: A National Hero- he gets invited to dine with the leaders of the state!

Q: What do you call a Rabbi who respects other religions and believes in acting like a citizen ot the country and century he actually lives in?

A: No Biggie- thats 99% of them.

To Annihilate Evil

Ho-hum, another day, another Jew is accused of being blood-thirsty. No surprise either that another Jew is adding to the chorus. There is a gem of insight to be found here though so bear with me and slog through this hideous little example of faux journalism from Russia Today. Fellow Blogger Carl in Jerusalem, by the way, is the "blood-thirsty" exemplar here and he has blogged on the mess here.

I watch this video and the outrage I feel at the lies, anti-Semitic innuendo and the outright blood-libels is dwarfed with a kind of wonder at the utter absurdity of the Israeli woman, Inna Michaeli. Is there no limit to the venal careerism of people like this toad from "Women for Peace"? I wrote about Amira Hass as the Queen of the Toads three years ago and the same things I said about her back then apply double here to Inna Michaeli. She perverts and subverts liberal democratic ideals by implying that there is a moral equivalence between Israel's struggle to survive and protect her people and the annihilationist Arab Jihad against her, she obscures truth by inferring that Israel has not tried to achieve peace in ways other than warfare, and she betrays her own country a country which, judging by her accent, not so long ago redeemed her from the oppression of living in some part of the former Soviet Union. Now she is a professional in an organization that raises money and thrives on that betrayal, obfuscation and perversion. As with Hass, she has made her livelihood at betrayal and perversion and she takes her public acclaim and professional standing as her justification.

But who is blood-thirsty? Is it Carl who's only sin is in identifying evil and warning of its consequences or is it this fraud Inna Michaeli who pretends to want peace but who works to prevent Israel from asserting her power advantage (while she still has it) to secure her own people and survival. Who will be more responsible as the wars drag on and the land runs with blood for yet another generation?

The answer is made plain when she says “war is inevitable because ...wars and military action by our government simply goes unpunished..."?

If all military action is punished, who punishes the punishers? This is nothing less than a subconscious manifestation of the essential leftist yearning for world totalitarianism. This is the call for unending war.

Then too, Israpundit posted a brilliant speech by Spanish politician and Journalist Pilar Rahola at the Conference in the Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism. This quote was debated in the comment stream, “The World is a dangerous place. Not because of the people who are evil; but because of the people who don’t do anything about it”. I was moved to write a comment which I have expanded upon below.

The only thing to disagree with here is that she comes so close but then misses the heart of the real problem. That is that ALL people are evil. The founders of the U.S. knew, as they learned it from Genesis, that man's heart inclines toward evil from his birth. The Patriarchs were evil Thomas Jefferson owned slaves NO ONE is perfect. The genius of America is that the founders were honest about evil. They constructed the first human constitution that accepted that honest appraisal and was specifically designed to make sure that no one person or party could dominate and hold the rest hostage. They constructed check and balances so that the next ruler would not have to kill his predecessor. By making it so that we were responsible for keeping each other "honest", They gave us a reason to work with and trust each other. On the whole, it has worked. Israel's government has very similar aims.

What is so insane about the left is the utter dishonesty about evil- the pretense that the government (any government) or the financial system or bourgeois morality or organized religion or The Jews or the Republicans are the cause of evil. In "resisting" these and other "institutions of evil" they are blindly and ironically undermining the very Institutions that have evolved to control and channel ever-present human evil. The left has declared a war of annihilation against evil, thinking that that is good. It is not an accident that the greatest slaughters of human history have been perpetrated by socialists and communists. They are ready to pursue and exterminate evil right down to the last human heart in which it resides.

And, like Inna Michaeli, they all pretend to virtue and compassion...

A Jew Who Says Merry Christmas

Note:

This will be the third time I have edited and posted this little essay. I feel the need to change it a little every year but this one is changed a bit more than usual. I am posting it before Thanksgiving this year and you'll have to read it to find out why:

A Jew for "Merry Christmas"

I am a Jew and I have to tell you, no one is going to discourage me from celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas this year. No, I am not loosing my Jewish identity; on the contrary, I am very sure that it is stronger than ever.

I grew up in an observant Jewish home ( I am observant still) in which we greeted Christmas with a mixture of fascination, respect and a little irritation. At some point I became fond of expressing my ambivalence by quoting Jackie Mason, who once said:

“I don’t understand something about Christmas; maybe you can explain this to me? Why is it that this time of year you Christian people bring all of the trees inside the house and take all the lights and put them outside”

That line, for many years summed up the bemusement that I affected about the whole public Christmas celebration.

My feelings were mixed for a variety of reasons. My Dad had a retail store so the weeks leading up to Christmas were always a time of tension and brutally long hours of work. The traffic on the roads, crowds in the stores, and the saturation of television (especially in those pre- cable times) and radio airwaves with Christmas programs and music were overwhelming. I found the frenzy mentally punishing, the free-floating goodwill unsettling and the talk about Jesus (in whose divinity I was not supposed to believe) uncomfortable.

It left me very glad to have it over on December 26th.

And I was always just a little unsure of how to respond when some well meaning person would wish me a Merry Christmas. I was often caught between wanting to thank him noncomittaly, try to summon a convincing Merry Christmas in return or to say,” Thanks Very much but I don’t celebrate Christmas and then have to deal with the uncomfortable silence or explanations and apologies.

I am ashamed to admit it today but I was, at first, pleased when I saw, over the years, the ACLU and Multi-culti types pushing “Merry Christmas” out of the vocabulary of cultural discourse in favor of the more generic “Happy Holidays”.

I’ve grownup, though, and I’ve grown into a new perspective on this whole question and, today, when someone wishes me a Merry Christmas, I have a new response. It’s really simple-

I stop what I am doing

I don’t have any hesitation or second thoughts.

I wish them a great big “Merry Christmas” in return.

I would like to encourage all my fellow Jews to join me in this. Here’s why:

I have come to see quite clearly that even if there are politically correct, multi-cultural, morally relativistic, post modern progressive busybodies who would like us to believe that our Christian friends’ and Neighbors’ spontaneous Christmas wishes are somehow injurious to us and our culture, they are nothing of the kind. A sincere “Merry Christmas is more American and better for the republic and her people than the blandest, most guarded “Happy Holidays”

You see, the U.S. was founded by Christians. Not just any Christians. The early colonists were both devout and independent. They were fervent Protestants whose purpose in coming here was to leave the Kings, Priests, state religions and archaic laws of the Old World behind.

Even if some of them were supersessionists and dogmatic, they were also egalitarian and self-reliant. They came here to build a country where every man could read scripture for himself and be his own priest- where he could be free to elect political leadership that he could follow gladly. Ultimately, that experiment gave rise to the constitution and form of government we have today. At over two hundred years old, it is still the one in the entire world that best honors the individual and guarantees most rights to any individual who accepts the constitutional responsibilities of a citizen.

It was those fiercely independent Protestants who set the tone for the nation in which we now live. Their fierce spiritual presumption of the liberty of the human soul is, still today, the great central mast that lifts the canopy of democracy and holds it above us as a sanctuary from the despotism and effete decay that afflicts most of the rest of the world.

Crystallized in the constitution, the devotion of deeply religious people and spiritually awakened souls like Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams are what have made it the highest standard of self rule and freedom in the history of the human race.

Among all their other unique achievements the fact that they decided that there could be no Official Religion in a country that aimed not just at physical or intellectual freedom shows that they understood that full human freedom means spiritual freedom too- Freedom of Religion.

To honor their genius fully we have to understand that Freedom of Religion must never be allowed to be a mandate for Freedom from Religion. As a Jew, I am exquisitely aware that freedom to practice my form of religion exists in this country because of those Christians and their vision of what a Christian country should stand for.

This uniquely Christian openness is why America has become the destination of choice for any one wishing to escape repression or lack of opportunity elsewhere in the world. That's why Jews have gravitated here for two hundred years. But we all (Christians, Jews, Muslims and Atheists) are in danger of forgetting how this all works and I think this whole “anti-Merry Christmas” thing is a symptom of that amnesia.

Fortunately, though, Jews do have a collective memory of stories if we just listen to them. My grandfather told me stories about life in turn-of-the(last)–century Eastern Europe so I have some idea of what he escaped by coming here. And its not just that he was not in Zhitomir, his Ukrainian home town, thirty years after he left for America, when the Waffen SS slaughtered thirty six thousand Jews there in one day! That is a gift indeed but it is in and of the past. No, it is the gift of equality and the opportunity to prosper that still lives on. It is that continuing gift that sustains the American dream and should call upon our constant love and loyalty.

The United States of America, as conceived by her Protestant founders, has been a miracle and a blessing to the entire human race. It has been especially important to the Jewish people.

We Jews are barely over one percent of the population here. We (a lot of us anyway) take pride in our contribution to America’s dynamism. We point with satisfaction to the fact that the founding fathers of this country were inspired and informed by our holy book which they called The Old Testament. Many of them read it in the original Hebrew, something few of us “modern” Jews can do.

But why do I need to explain this? Why don’t we all understand the centrality of the Protestant ethic to the goodness of America? Partly, it’s because of a lack in the educational program. But it’s also because our media, whose responsibility it should be to make us aware of the important ideas, events and issues has other agendas. Our “Mainstream” media is often found to be doing just the opposite.

In the media, America is assailed daily for her imperfections; and if not assailed, then damned by the faintest of praise. The media emphasizes the imperfections instead of the achievements- the discords not the harmony.

Historical revisionism has been used by the joyless progressives, secular humanists and multiculturalists to sap the joy and meaning out of Thanksgiving and the goodwill out of Christmas.

It has even come to pass that our President goes abroad and cannot seem to visit another country without some pathetic apology for America’s past- as if there is any country on earth whose history is so pristine that they are in a position to judge.

I am only one Jew- not a Rabbi and not a spokesman for a community organization, just a simple Jew. Nevertheless, I would like to call on all Jews, indeed, all Christians, Muslims and whoever else will standup with me and celebrate the blessing that The United States of America is to us and to the human family. Let us bow our heads together this Thanksgiving and resolve that instead of fretting about how saying “Merry Christmas” might make us an overly Christian country, we will thank our own, private God that we live in this country where “Happy Thanksgiving” and “Merry Christmas” mean what they mean here.

We need to loosen up and get a perspective on this “Merry Christmas” thing. It is not the people who say “Merry Christmas” and mean it that we need to be discouraging in America at this time. It is the people who find something wrong and suspect in the energy, enthusiasm and good-will that animates that “Merry Christmas” that we need to discourage.

We must side with our fellow Americans, the overwhelming majority of whom are warm-hearted friends with morals and ethics or we will have become unwitting dupes to heartless enemies with no moral compass who think they can rationalize almost anything and undermine our great civilization with reasonable sounding, non-judgmental sophistry. Do you need a moment to think about that?

By saying “Merry Christmas” in public we are not necessarily agreeing that Jesus was the son of God, we are just acknowledging that some very good people believe it. When we say it, that does not constitute accepting Jesus as our personal savior; it does show his followers that we see them as fellow countrymen, friends and brothers-in-arms in the defense of the highest ideals of our civil society and Judeo-Christian culture. What is the problem with that?

The first four words of this essay “I am a Jew”, are exactly the words that Daniel Pearl was forced to say on camera just before he was pinned down and his head was sawn off. I'd like you to try a little thought experiment simulating a better world here- Pretend that the next sentence that I write followed that first one and I had no need for the rest of the explanation in between...

"Have a Merry Christmas"