Sunday, January 31, 2010

From Best of the Web

ObamaCare may be dead, but TV reporter Keith Baldrey, in an op-ed piece, argues that getting health costs under control is still crucial:

Is health care becoming the mortal enemy of our country's education system?

I don't pose this question facetiously. When we're discussing public
services, it's important to remember that at the end of the day, everything
comes down to money.

And it is obvious that health care is increasingly getting that money at
the apparent expense of other public services--most notably education.

In fact, our health-care system's voracious and unending appetite for tax
dollars is crowding out spending in all sorts of other areas.

If only we had a single-payer system like Canada's . . . Oh, wait! Baldrey's article is about Canada's system. It appears in the Surrey (British Columbia) Now.

Friday, January 29, 2010

Merits Reading

Remember the Muslim cable TV executive in Buffalo who beheaded his wife?

Well, his trial has began and he offers an interesting and novel approach in his defense. Read about this and the defense approaches in the trials of other Muslims in the West.

Click here to read the article.

Charles Krauthammer on the soft stance on terror of the Obama administration.

Click here to read Krauthammer

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Sick, and getting sicker...

Political correctness running amok.

In Great Britain, a recruitment agency worker was told by a job agency that she couldn’t advertise for “hard working and reliable” workers, because an ad with such requirements could be offensive to unreliable persons.

No, this is not something published in The Onion.


The offensive ad.

Click here to read the article.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Is anti-Semitism inherent in the Polish character?

Bishop Tadeusz Pieronek


Reading an article in the Jerusalem Post on comments by Polish Catholic bishop Tadeusz Pieronek, a close friend of Pope John Paul II, I was reminded of former Prime Minister of Israel Itzhak Shamir who said in 1989 that “Poles suck in anti-Semitism with their mother’s milk.”

The article in question reports on statements made by the bishop to the effect that Jews use the Holocaust as propaganda:

The Holocaust only receives media coverage because of affluent Jews’ financial backing, military might and lobbying fronts, presenting a skewed version of events to the world, a high-ranking Polish bishop told a Catholic news portal on Monday.

Polish bishop and professor Tadeusz Pieronek told the Web site Pontifex.roma that while the Holocaust was not exclusively Jewish, Jews had monopolized it in lieu of encouraging “serious historical debate, free from prejudice and victimization.”

Pieronek alleged that Jews today use the Holocaust as “a weapon of propaganda, used to obtain benefits which are often unjustified,” citing as an example the unconditional support for Israel by the US. “This promotes a certain arrogance that I find unbearable,” he said, explaining that Israel was using its position of power and exploiting historical tragedies to treat the Palestinians “like animals.”

The bishop stated that American support for the Jews had not always been so readily given. “What did the Jewish-American and allied forces do in [World War II] to avoid these tragedies? Little or nothing,” he said.

Pieronek stressed that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians did not compare to “the shame of the concentration camps and the aberrations of Nazism,” but was still a cause for concern ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which occurs on January 27.

“The Holocaust as such is a Jewish invention … a day of remembrance must also be set for the many victims of Communism, persecuted Catholics and Christians and so on,” he told the Web site. Tragedy, he stressed, must not be turned into propaganda.
Every time that I begin to question my perception of Poland as a bastion of anti-Semitism, some Polih political or religious leader manages to make a statement that again removes any doubt that Shamir was not exaggerating about the contenet of Polish maternal milk.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Hatred and the Religion of Peace


The "Moderate" Malaysian PM and Al Gore.



Malaysian Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad has once again stuck his foot in his mouth and made comments that show that the leadership of Muslim nations is either engaged in demagoguery for survival or worst, they actually believe the dangerous nonsense they utter.

To illustrate this point, the Malaysian PM stated that 9/11 was a staged event to justify an attack on the Muslim world. Of course, no attack against the United States can take place without also attacking Israel, whom Dr Mahathir calls a creation of Europe to address the Jewish problem that the final solution and the Holocaust failed to solve.

The political correct crowd keeps calling Islam a great religion and a religion of peace. Terrorists, they tell us, have perverted Islam and are the exceptions among Muslims. Yet, Muslims around the world embrace leaders such as the Malaysian PM and so many of the crazies that are ruling Muslim countries around the globe. No condemnations are heard, and no demonstrations are staged to protest the insanity of the statements made by their leadership.

The reason for this is simple. The Majority of Muslims agree with them. As long as the West fails to accept this, the situation is going to get worst.

Read article about Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad

LAWFARE

Lawfare is term that refers to Muslim use of the law as an asymmetrical warfare weapon. Win or lose Muslims sue, usually financed by Saudi Arabia, thus tying their victims in years of costly litigation. The result has had a chilling effect on the publishing industry and free speech in general. For example, Yale University Press refused to publish the controversial Danish cartoons in a book dealing with the events that occurred in Denmark.

In Canada, litigation wasted time and money of Maclean Magazine and Mark Steyn, after the magazine published an article that Muslims found offensive. And we all know that it doesn't not take a lot to offend them. Now two new trials are taking place. One in Canada against freedom of speech advocate Ezra Levant and in the Netherlands against Geert Wilders.

Here are some critical articles on the subject, and a must read about a topic that for too long has been neglected by the easily intimidated mainstream media. More are coming.

Click here to read Ezra Levant's article on the lawsuit against him.


Click here for article by Phyllis Chesler on the trial of Geert Wilders in Holland.

Click here for article on Lawfare and how it works to chill freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

Friday, January 22, 2010

And the farse continues...

The report that started all.

Debate heats up over IPCC melting glaciers claim

UN climate chief admits mistake on Himalayan glaciers warning.

How long until Dr Rajendra Pachauri resigns as head of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change’s? His retraction of a prediction that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035 is not enough. A Japanese person would have comitted harakiri by now. Has he no shame? Of course not. He works for the UN.

A Statement from From Norman Podhoretz,

In my new book, "Why Are Jews Liberals?", I argue that it no longer makes any sense for so many of my fellow Jews to go on aligning themselves with the forces of the Left. I also try to show that our interests and our ideals, both as Americans and as Jews, have come in recent decades to be better served by the forces of the Right.

In the course of describing and agreeing with the book the other day, Rush Limbaugh cited a few of the numerous reasons for the widespread puzzlement over the persistence of liberalism within the American Jewish community. And while discussing those reasons, he pointed to the undeniable fact that for “a lot of people”--prejudiced people, as he called them twice--the words “banker” and “Wall Street” are code words for "Jewish." Was it possible, he wondered, that Obama’s attacks on bankers and Wall Street were triggering a certain amount of buyer’s remorse within the American Jewish community, which gave him 78% of its vote? Finally, taking off from my observation that many Jewish liberals like to call themselves independents, he wondered whether a fair number of the self-described independents who deserted Obama and voted for Scott Brown might actually have been Jewish liberals. If so, he concluded, Brown’s “victory could be even more indicative of an even bigger change in the political temper of the country than has so far been recognized.”

For this, Rush Limbaugh has been subjected to a vile attack by Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League. Of course, Mr. Foxman has a long history of seeing an anti-Semite under every conservative bed while blinding himself to the blatant fact that anti-Semitism has largely been banished from the Right in the past forty years, and that it has found a hospitable new home on the Left, especially where Israel is concerned. This makes Foxman a perfect embodiment of the phenomenon I analyze in "Why Are Jews Liberals?" Now Foxman has the chutzpah to denounce Rush Limbaugh as an anti-Semite and to demand an apology from him to boot. Well, if an apology is owed here, it is the national director of the Anti-Defamation League who should apologize for the defamatory accusation of anti-Semitism that he himself has hurled against so loyal a friend of Israel as Rush Limbaugh.

The Right is Alive and Well

To enlarge, click on cartoon

One year ago, as Obama was sworn in, those of us of the Conservative/Libertarian persuasion were bombarded by the punditry with news of our demise. Today we can safely paraphrase Mark Twain and say that reports of our demise have been greatly exaggerated. The full swing of the political tide, which normally is measured in decades, occurred this time in 365 days.

In 48 hours America was offered the following gifts:

• A Republican senator to fill the vacancy left by Ted Kennedy.

How ironic that in a way Kennedy was responsible for the demise of 2000 pages of metaphorical shackles to the right of Americans to choose how to deal or not deal with their own healthcare. Whatever needs to be fixed will be fixed using market forces. Milton Freedman must be smiling.

• The Supreme Court ruling on McCain-Feingold, protecting freedom of speech.

If any evidence is needed to prove that this was a great ruling, all we have to do is look at Senator Schumer foaming at the mouth. The big bad corporations will inject money into the political process. How terrible. We all know that when unions donate money is only for altruistic reasons. When Exxon donates money it is only to destroy the planet.

• Nancy Pelosi’s announcement that she does not have enough votes to pass the Senate’s version of Obamacare.

• The demise of Air America, the sewer of anti-Americanism disguising itself as a radio network.

There are two explanations for this. Either liberals listen to Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Mark Levine and Sean Hannity or there are a lot less liberals that we thought.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) admission that they lied.

IPCC admitted yesterday that the prediction of the disappearance of the Himalayan Glaciers by 2035 in its landmark 2007 report was “poorly substantiated” and resulted from a lapse in standards. “In drafting the paragraph in question the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly,” the panel said. The global warming crowd has once again been proven to be less than candid and faking data to substantiate their claims. Add this report to the one of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit.

Other than this, liberals are doing fine.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
With respect to the SCOTUS decision on the MacCain-Feingold, here are two quotes posted on Best of the Web:
• "Sen. Barack Obama reversed his pledge to seek public financing in the general election yesterday, a move that drew criticism from adversaries and allies alike but could provide him with a significant spending advantage over Republican rival John McCain. Obama will become the first major-party presidential nominee to reject the public funds."--Washington Post, June 20, 2008

• "President Barack Obama is condemning a decision by the Supreme Court to roll back restrictions on campaign donations by corporations and unions. In a written statement, Obama says the campaign finance ruling will lead to a 'stampede of special interest money in our politics.' Obama declared that his administration will work with Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress to come up with a 'forceful response' to the high court's action. . . . Obama called it a big victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and other powerful interests."--Associated Press, Jan. 21, 2010
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For further reading:

Krauthammer on Scott Brown's victory

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

The People's Seat

Click on the cartoon to see enlarged version

Middle Ages Redux

This is incredible.

A video is circulating in blogs and YouTube placed by a black man named T. West, head of AfriSynergy Productions.

In this video the antisemitic imbecile shows a CNN report about a field hospital in Haiti that was set up by the Israel Defense Forces and is saving lives. However, at the end of the report T. West warns viewers that Israelis have been known to harvest organs, and might be in Haiti for this purpose.

I would normally ignore such a post, where it not for the fact that they tend to metastasize and propagate through the Internet.

Memo to Israel: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.

Click here to view video

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Thank you Massachusetts!!!

52% SCOTT BROWN (R) 1,153,808
47% MARTHA COAKLEY (D)D: 1,052,391

Massachusetts, from blue to Brown!

Thank you!

Let the UN Rebuild Haiti

Once again the US is at the forefront of helping a country in trouble, and instead of thanks we get a kick in the butt.

Yesterday Alain Joyandet, French minister in charge of humanitarian relief, called on the UN to clarify the role of US troops after a scuffle with and American commander. He then accused Americans of being an occupying force. The scuffle took place with the commander of the airport's control tower over the flight plan for a French evacuation flight. "This is about helping Haiti, not about occupying Haiti," Mr. Joyandet said.

Doctors Without Borders also complained that lives were being endangered by US refusal to allow DWB planes carrying medical supplies to land.

The big egos of the anti-American left couldn’t stand American soldiers in camouflage and carrying guns daring to actually organize a system that would allow the arrival of relief in an organized way. If priorities were given to the USAF, this was because their planes were arriving with much more supplies and equipment than the planes of other nations and organizations.

American soldiers were not patrolling Port au Prince carrying guns because they were an occupying force, but because they were trying to bring some semblance of order in a country that in the best of times is a thugocracy. Pictures of looters with machetes abound, but anyone who dares to mention this is deemed a cold hearted racist.

Talking about thugs, Hugo Chavez also accused the United States of being an occupying force.

Haitians should be so lucky as to have American forces occupying the hell hole that Haiti has been for more than two hundred years.

Does anyone in his right mind really believe that if you sent supplies and money to Haiti, the nation would rebuild itself? We have been sending billions with nothing to show for it.

Advise to America. The next time a disaster strikes around the world, write a check matching China’s contribution and send American troops home to their families. The French will do a great job. Just like they did in WWI, WWII, Algeria, and Indochina.

Read Article in the Telegraph

Monday, January 18, 2010

Marth Coakley: Prosecutor end Persecutor

If you are in Massachusetts and undecided, read this article by Dorothy Rabinowitz in the Wall Street Journal. Rabinowitz has written many columns about the unjust persecution and prosecution of the Amiraults. If you don't remember the case, read about it. It shows how then District Attorney Martha Coakley helped convict a family purely for political gain.

She didn't deserve to be DA then and she doesn't deserve to be a senator now.

Read Article

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Is this a python in the water?

Well...here is my new adventure in Boca Raton.

Here in South Florida, one hears constantly about the problem with pythons that have been bought as pets, and upon growing to a size that requires feeding them a pig instead of a mouse, were released into the Everglades. Every once in a while the newspapers report that one of these wonderful creatures was captured in a garage or patio or a garden.

Today I went to my fourth floor balcony with a new book expecting to enjoy the sun and the balmy 77 degrees, when I saw my wife with her binoculars playing her role of naturalist extraordinaire and iguana expert. A normal man would have made a u-turn and gone to read the book in the bathroom; but not me. I walked straight into the trap. My wife turned to me and asked: "Is this a python in the water?"

For those of you who don't know my wife; without glasses she is as blind as a bat, and with glasses she is not much better. As evidence to her poor sight; she married me. But here she was pointing to something moving in the water. I took the binoculars and looked. Sure enough, a dark thing was zigzagging on the shore of the canal. At one point it went underwater, and when it emerged again it seemed to be looking at some birds on the shore.

Given that children are known to fish in the area, I did what every good citizen would have done. No, I didn't lock myself in the bathroom. I called 911.

The courteous operator responded with the demeanor of someone used to hearing the most outrageous complaints. I played cool, and informed her of my sighting. "How long is it?" she wanted to know. I wondered whether to go to the tool cabinet, take the measuring tape and go down to measure it, until I remembered that I am terrified of garden variety snakes that are measured in inches, let alone ones measured in yards.

"BIG," I responded. "Very big."

"Would you mind escorting a sheriff when he arrives and showing him the location?" she asked.

"No problem," I responded, looking to walking towards a python as much as I look forward to root canal without anesthesia.

The sheriff arrived, and together we started walking towards the snake. Of course, the sheriff had a gun in his hand, I had a cell phone to protect me. I was ready to text message it to death.

We walked slowly. The iguanas were looking at us cautiously. The birds flew with a cacophony of sounds. We continued walking. We whispered words of encouragement to each other. From the balcony my heroic wife was screaming "to the left, more to the left."

And so it was that her guidance and my courage we found the very long rubber tube that was floating in the canal.

Like a chameleon, I changed colors, acquiring a reddish tint. I looked up at my wife and her binoculars; and had no choice but to tell the sheriff: "She made me call you."

You might not hear this on the Sunday shows

Ed Schultz , the liberal commentator on MSNBC should be indicted for incitement to violate federal law. Here is the statement he made last week concerning the special election in Massachusetts next Tuesday:

I tell you what, if I lived in Massachusetts I'd try to vote 10 times. I don't know if they'd let me or not, but I'd try to. Yeah, that's right. I'd cheat to keep these bastards out. I would. 'Cause that's exactly what they are.
I have always felt that the extreme left really felt contempt for the democratic process, and I know quite a few liberals who would agree with him. The scary thing is that the democrat machine, SEIU, ACORN and other operatives will work very hard the ensure that Ed Schultz's wishes are carried out.

Friday, January 15, 2010

Blood Libel XXI Century Style

Al-Ameen, a Muslim newspaper from British Columbia, has published a story that alleges that Israelis are targeting 25,000 Ukrainian children for organ harvesting. The story was uncovered by Terry Glavin, a Canadian journalist.

The article was a reprint from Press TV, a mouthpiece of the Iranian regime known or its Holocaust denying material and additional anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic material. Al-Ameen defended itself claiming that they lacked the resources for fact checking.

How lame!

The Internet today offers most of the tools required for fact checking, and thousands of fair minded bloggers do so every day.

As Honest Reporting Canada reports:

With respect to this Al-Ameen report, B'nai Brith Canada promptly and commendably condemned it as a "blood libel," while the B.C. Muslim Association
called the article "racist and anti-Jewish."

Friday's editions of the National Post, Vancouver Province, and Calgary Herald, all covered the conflagration. B'nai Brith Canada noted that the Al-Ameen posting was a "hideous blood libel against the Jewish community and has no place in Canada or anywhere else."

With regards to the source of the story, Press TV, Frank Dimant, executive vice-president of B'nai Brith, said that it's "the official mouthpiece of the terrorist-sponsoring Iranian regime."

Subsequent to B'nai Brith's complaint, Al-Ameen removed the article online (to enlarge click image), publicly apologized for the article, and retracted the report.

According to the apology: "in the spirit of honoring our most cherished Canadian Values, and to demonstrate our commitment to upholding and defending such values, the Editorial Board of al-Ameen Post, without prejudice, extends its honest and sincere apology to our fellow Jewish Canadians for any hurt which may have caused by us publishing or communicating such a news article."
As far as I am concerned, apology not accepted.

In the meantime in Gaza British MP George Galloway recycles the Swedish blood libel to employ Holocaust analogy. Click here to read more about it.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Not vastly reported by the mainstream media

Al Aqsa TV, the mouthpiece of Hamas in Gaza and a tool for the indoctrination of children has new cartoon series. In this picture from the cartoon we see the stereotypical Jew with a machine gun, the Palestinian victims, and a new villain is added; the Palestinian Authority security service which is represented by the officer who does nothing while the children are murdered.

The West is sending millions of dollars in aid to the Palestinians. Much of these funds are diverted to produce these type of propaganda.

Thank God for the Internet which prevents the mainstream media from hiding this type news. The only newspaper where I saw this reported was the New York Post.

The Tel Aviv Cluster, by David Brooks

David Brooks, whom I hate or admire, depending on his staements and columns, has written a great article about Israel. Rather than place the link, here is the column:

The Tel Aviv Cluster

By

David Brooks

Published: January 11, 2010

Jews make up 2 percent of the U.S. population, but 21 percent of the Ivy League student bodies, 26 percent of the Kennedy Center honorees, 37 percent of the Academy Award-winning directors, 38 percent of those on a recent Business Week list of leading philanthropists, 51 percent of the Pulitzer Prize winners for nonfiction.

In his book, "The Golden Age of Jewish Achievement," Steven L. Pease lists some of the explanations people have given for this record of achievement. The Jewish faith encourages a belief in progress and personal accountability. It is learning-based, not rite-based.

Most Jews gave up or were forced to give up farming in the Middle Ages; their descendants have been living off of their wits ever since. They have often migrated, with a migrant's ambition and drive. They have congregated around global crossroads and have benefited from the creative tension endemic in such places.

No single explanation can account for the record of Jewish achievement. The odd thing is that Israel has not traditionally been strongest where the Jews in the Diaspora were strongest. Instead of research and commerce, Israelis were forced to devote their energies to fighting and politics.

Milton Friedman used to joke that Israel disproved every Jewish stereotype. People used to think Jews were good cooks, good economic managers and bad soldiers; Israel proved them wrong.

But that has changed. Benjamin Netanyahu's economic reforms, the arrival of a million Russian immigrants and the stagnation of the peace process have produced a historic shift. The most resourceful Israelis are going into technology and commerce, not politics. This has had a desultory effect on the nation's public life, but an invigorating one on its economy.

Tel Aviv has become one of the world's foremost entrepreneurial hot spots. Israel has more high-tech start-ups per capita than any other nation on earth, by far. It leads the world in civilian research-and-development spending per capita. It ranks second behind the U.S. in the number of companies listed on the Nasdaq. Israel, with seven million people, attracts as much venture capital as France and Germany combined.

As Dan Senor and Saul Singer write in "Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle," Israel now has a classic innovation cluster, a place where tech obsessives work in close proximity and feed off each other's ideas.

Because of the strength of the economy, Israel has weathered the global recession reasonably well. The government did not have to bail out its banks or set off an explosion in short-term spending. Instead, it used the crisis to solidify the economy's long-term future by investing in research and development and infrastructure, raising some consumption taxes, promising to cut other taxes in the medium to long term. Analysts at Barclays write that Israel is "the strongest recovery story" in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Israel's technological success is the fruition of the Zionist dream. The country was not founded so stray settlers could sit among thousands of angry Palestinians in Hebron. It was founded so Jews would have a safe place to come together and create things for the world.

This shift in the Israeli identity has long-term implications. Netanyahu preaches the optimistic view: that Israel will become the Hong Kong of the Middle East, with economic benefits spilling over into the Arab world. And, in fact, there are strands of evidence to support that view in places like the West Bank and Jordan.

But it's more likely that Israel's economic leap forward will widen the gap between it and its neighbors. All the countries in the region talk about encouraging innovation. Some oil-rich states spend billions trying to build science centers. But places like Silicon Valley and Tel Aviv are created by a confluence of cultural forces, not money. The surrounding nations do not have the tradition of free intellectual exchange and technical creativity.

For example, between 1980 and 2000, Egyptians registered 77 patents in the U.S. Saudis registered 171. Israelis registered 7,652.

The tech boom also creates a new vulnerability. As Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic has argued, these innovators are the most mobile people on earth. To destroy Israel's economy, Iran doesn't actually have to lob a nuclear weapon into the country. It just has to foment enough instability so the entrepreneurs decide they had better move to Palo Alto, where many of them already have contacts and homes. American Jews used to keep a foothold in Israel in case things got bad here. Now Israelis keep a foothold in the U.S.

During a decade of grim foreboding, Israel has become an astonishing success story, but also a highly mobile one.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Diversity Visas and Other Issues


The other day I was watching the news when someone discussing the issue of terrorism mentioned the problem of Diversity Visas (DV). I usually cringe when I hear the word diversity, since this term is always accompanied by some social engineering program that is far removed from sanity. I did some research, and lo and behold, this program exists and once again demonstrates the insanity of liberalism and the fear of opposing anything that might label you a racist.

The DV program was instituted 20 years ago to ensure the entry to the United States of immigrants from countries with low representation among immigrants. And so, the State Department, under a mandate from Congress, has to issue 50,000 visas to countries such as (I am listing countries that received more than 1,000 visas each) Syria, Sudan, Malawi, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Morocco,Senegal, Sierra Leone, Albania, Algeria, Iran, Congo, Nigeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nepal, Armenia, Bulgaria and a myriad of other countries that got visas only in the hundreds.

The immigrants are selected by a process of lottery and in many cases have to supply less information about themselves than a tourist coming to visit from Uruguay or the Netherlands. Many justifiably fear that this program is becoming a way for potential terrorists to arrive here legally. Furthermore, after five years these diverse collection is entitled to citizenship and with it comes reunification of families. So it is that we can ensure a steady supply of salesmen of fake watches from Nigeria to hustle around Rockefeller Center in Manhattan.
To quote Bob Grant: It's sick and getting sicker.
*********************************************************************************
This would be hilarious if it weren't so sad. On C-Span, IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman admitted that he uses a tax preparer to file his taxes because the tax code is too complex. If this is not an endorsement of a national sales tax or a flat tax, I don't know what is.
*********************************************************************************
Someone said that God protects children, fools and the United States of America. This could become a truism next Tuesday if the people of Massachusetts reject the Democrat candidate Martha Coakley and elect Republican Scott Brown as U.S. Senator, thus ending the 60 vote filibuster proof of the the Democrats, and send Obamacare back to the drawing board. I howver, am not holding my breath. A state that could have elected Kennedy and Kerry will probably reject Brown.

God, please let me be wrong.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Off for a couple of days

I will return to blogging in a couple of days. Keep visiting. Your hits mean a lot to me.

Mario

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Oliver Stone: Fifth Columnist Extraordinaire

Stone and Castro

Stone and Chavez

Oliver Stone is once again presenting us with his controversial point of view of history in a new series he is directing for Showtime “Secret History.” In the series Stone promises to put Hitler, Stalin, Mao and McCarthy “in context.”

Of course the “context” is his context. And as a lover of history and freedom I am not denying him the right to offer us his perspective. However, he betrays his feelings when he groups McCarthy with three murderers who combined are responsible for at least 120 million deaths. Then of course, Stone has to rehash the old accusations against IBM and GM for doing business with the Nazi regime. I wonder if he will put their reasons in “context.” Finally, he couldn’t avoid the demonization of Truman for dropping the atomic bomb on Japan.

I will definitely watch this series, and I am looking forward to the debate it will engender. After all Stone has already announced in a press conference that conservatives will not like the series. I wonder why not? Is it perhaps because conservatives dislike tyranny and dictatorships as much as Stone seems to like them?

But my main concern is the propaganda tool that this fifth columnist has become. He is not satisfied with Showtime showing this work; he has announced that he “eventually hopes to send ‘Secret History’ to schools as a teaching curriculum.” I have no doubt that thousands of social studies teachers will show the series to millions of students who will watch the film without the basic background in history to critically evaluate what they are watching.

These teachers will show Secret History for two reasons. The first is because they agree with Stone. After all most social studies teachers know very little history and were brainwashed by schools of education. The second reason is that social studies teachers are always on the look for something to show while they sit in the back of the classroom.

Memo to all my former colleagues and teachers who worked with me or for me: In my accusations I didn’t mean you.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Raving and Rambling


President Sarkozy has asked French “competition authorities,” whatever this may mean, to look into the possibility of imposing a tax on Google’s advertising revenue.

As the Financial Times reports:

Mr Sarkozy commented after the publication of an independent report for the French culture ministry that proposed a tax on Google, Yahoo, Facebook and other sites, to help fund initiatives for writers, musicians and publishers to make money from the web.

The report recommended issuing music cards to young people with €25 ($36) in credit provided by the government as a way of encouraging legal downloading of cultural works.
This has been the French modus operandi for a long time. If the French public stands in line to see Avatar, while some pedantic avant garde French film fails to draw a crowd, it is the fault of American cultural imperialism. If the public flocks to Disney World, if young people line up to eat le hamburger at le MacDonalds, French culture is threatened. And now it’s the Internet that is in the cross hairs of the French cultural elite.

To a certain extent I should gloat at the persecution of the hypocrites at Google. After all they support any left wing liberal agenda, except when it applies to them. But I know the result of the imposition of such a tax will be carefully studied by our politicians in Washington, always on the prowl for new revenue. Ultimately these taxes will come out of our pockets. As they always do.

Memo to Sarkozy: If you cannot sell French mouse traps without subsidies, build a better one.
**********
In the meantime, in New York State truckloads of unused swine flu vaccines are being returned
because demand never materialized. What happened to the end of the human race that was supposed to occur if enough vaccine was not manufactured? Politicians called press conferences to insist about the existence of tremendous demand for these vaccines, although among my relatives and friends I know of no one that intended to get vaccinated. The only person I know that was affected by the swine flu survived with no more inconvenience than a regular flu and was back at work after four days of rest.

So let's add Swine Flu to the list that includes Y2K, global cooling, global warming, breast implants, contaminated apples, farm raised salmon, tooth fillings that contained mercury, sun exposure, AIDS among heterosexuals, acid rain, cellphones, and I don't remember how many more scares generated by politicians in search of votes or scientists in search of a grant.

I guess planet earth and the human race are a lot more resilient than proponents of the nanny state want us to believe.
**********
Dear President Obama:

We know; everything wrong in the universe, including the shortage of Unobtainium is the fault of President Bush. Now, deal with it, you big cry baby. Happy First Anniversary as POTUS! The only gift your policies have given us is trillion dollar deficits and 10% unemployment.
**********
In the meantime Senator McCain has become tough and his radio ad in Arizona states that "President Obama is leading an extreme left-wing crusade to bankrupt America." Where was that aggressiveness during the presidential campaign? He found that his reelection might be in trouble and suddenly he discovered that Obama is a lefty. What a phony. Run as the gentleman you pretended to be two years ago. We can use a new senator in Arizona. If it's a democrat we won't know the difference.
**********
In New Jersey a Chinese doctoral student has been arrested for trespassing to kiss his girlfriend goodbye at Newark Airport, triggering a six hours lock down of the airport. He faces a $500 fine. Senator Lautenberg wants the penalty to be much tougher. Sure, Senator, lets send him to Gitmo. By the way senator, where were you when the nincompoop guard that allowed the trespassing was "reassigned"? You wouldn't dare to demand that the guy be fired. He is a union member. I hope I have not offended you using the term nincompoop. We all know that that term applies to you.
**********
Human sacrifices are on the rise in Uganda
. I guess the next step is to make them members of the UN Human Rights Commission.
**********
It's freezing and raining in Florida. Can you guess that I am in a bad mood?

Friday, January 8, 2010

Something to read this weekend.

Charles Krauthammer again offers his pearls of wisdom. This time about Gitmo.

Read Krauthammer

Jonah Goldberg's advise to the Republican Party: Learn from Domino Pizza. Will the GOP listen? Only next November will we know.

Read Goldberg's column

One Egyptian policeman was killed and scores of Egyptians and Palestinians were wounded in a clash on the Gaza-Egypt border. The incident was organized by Hamas to protest Egypt's refusal to open the border and Egyptian practices designed to prevent the construction of smuggling tunnels. I am waiting for the UN Security Council to convene and condemn the use of violence by Egypt.

Oh, I forgot, Muslims killing other Muslims is a perfectly legitimate practice.

Read NY Times article

Medicare and the Mayo Clinic. Is this the wave of the future under Obamacare?

Read Column in The Wall Street Journal

Thursday, January 7, 2010

A tranny walks into a bar...



Victimologists (I think I just invented a new word) from the gay community are demanding that David Letterman apologize for "inappropriate and incendiary remarks" he made in his monologue. The remarks poked fun at Amanda Simpson, a transgender appointee to the Commerce Department. In a letter of complaint to NBC Nina Tassler, of Human Rights Campaign called the bit "inappropriate and incendiary" and said it reflected "transphobia," a fear or hatred of transgender people.

Are these human rights pimps insane? Have they no real jobs to tire them and force them to take a nap rather than waste our time with complaints and more complaints about the most inane subjects?

So Letterman suffers now from “transphobia." For second I thought that he might be afraid of transformers. No jokes allowed about men who think that they are women or women who think that they are men? Can we joke about men that think that they are Napoleon? Or are short or are fat or are black or are Jewish, or are Muslims or are…whatever. Only jokes about whilte men are allowed?

If we will attach the modifier phobia to Letterman based on the victims of his jokes than in addition to transphobia, he also suffers from taxidriverphobia, Palinphobia, Bushphobia, O’Reilleyphobia, Foxphobia, Metsphobia, and thousands more phobias. After all he has been making tasteless (or is it phobic) jokes for thirty years.

Memo to Ms. or Miss, or Mrs. or Mr. or Sir or Monsieur or Madam Amanda Simpson.

Get a f…….. remote control.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Not Prominently Reported by The Mainstream Media

I am in Florida, and the temperature has been in the 40's for most of the week. The good news is that if we have bellow 40 degrees for 3 days the iguana population will come back under control. The bad news is that 4 hours of subfreezing kills oranges.

Has anybody hear Al Gore comment on this map?

Interesting Graph
No comment. Just look at the graph and see where are we heading.

Iraq is in the process of eradicating all traces of Judaism in that country where Jews lived 1000 years before Islam. I an egregious violation of the responsibility of nations to preserve historical evidence, the Iraqi government has began to build a mosque over the tomb of the prophet Ezekiel, a site sacred to Jews and Christians. The building of mosques in sites important to other religions is a long established custom in Islam. We heard an international outcry when the Taliban blew some of Buddha's statues at Bamyan. The silence now is deafening.

Read more about this topic

Bill Bennett has an interesting analysis of Obama's first year in office, analyzing his popularity numbers declining, the economy and the war on terror.


Daniel Pipes has an excellent article on security in airports.


Engineers from the United States and Europe, slave labor from Asia; money from gas stations around the world. What an inferiority complex. If you are one of those impressed by the opening of Burj Khalifa in Dubai, read the following article.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Charter Schools in NYC: A Microcosm of Education in Large American Cities


Surprise!

UFT rips charter schools on lack of inclusion of high-needs students, based on new union report.

This headline in the NY Daily News once again illustrates the obstacles faced by any attempt at reforming the decaying public school system in New York City, and the irresponsible lack of concern of the UFT for any educational reform that is not within the grasp of its tentacles.

In a press conference UFT President Michael Mulgrew offered the following data to substantiate his claims:

• In the South Bronx, 62% of charter school students are poor enough to qualify for free lunch, compared with 87% in the district public schools.

• About 9% of students in South Bronx charters aren't fluent in English, compared with 22% in local public schools.

• In central Brooklyn, 55% of students are poor enough to qualify for free lunch, compared with 80% in the district public schools.

• About 1% of students in charters in central Brooklyn aren't fluent in English, compared with 11% in nearby public schools.
If these numbers are correct, why is the UFT not demanding that charter schools enroll more poor, special education students and students with limited English proficiency? Many charter schools principals and educational leaders agree to the equalization of numbers. However, this will not satisfy the UFT whose real complain is that many charter schools are not unionized.

The reason for this press conference was an attempt to push politicians not to vote for the elimination the state cap of 200 charter schools. This vote has to come before January 19, date of the deadline to apply for $700 million in competitive Race to the Top federal funds. Federal guidelines for the grant require no limit on charters, and charter advocates say New York State's 200-school cap puts it at a disadvantage

The fact is that education has never been at the forefront of the UFT demands. Over the last 40 years, any attempt to introduce educational reforms was stonewalled by the union. Reforms that would have required longer school days, a longer school year, additional preparation, better prepared teachers, firing of incompetent teachers, more substantial staff development were met with "It will not work," even before an attempt at experimentation was carried on. The few reforms introduced were cosmetic and designed to justify the increases in salaries of teachers.

Years ago when statistics demonstrated that private schools were producing much better educated students and had much better results in standardized tests, the UFT again used the canard that those schools skimmed, and took only the best kids. Cardinal O'Connor, then archbishop of New York, made an offer. Give one thousand of your worst students and lets place them in Catholic schools and look at the results. His offer was never accepted. Guess why?

Two Papers in One

• "The U.S. failures have included a lack of focus on al-Qaeda's growing stature, insufficient funding to and cooperation with Yemen, and a misunderstanding of the Middle Eastern country's complex political terrain, Yemeni officials and analysts said. U.S. policies in the region, they said, often alienated top Yemeni officials and did little to address the root causes of militancy."--news story, Washington Post, Jan. 3

• "Even before the failed attack, [President Obama's] administration has been working aggressively with Yemeni authorities to deal with extremists there."--editorial, Washington Post, Jan. 3


From Best of the Web.

Monday, January 4, 2010

Playing Ping Pong With The Constitution

Is this what the founders of this republic and the authors of the Constitution envisioned when creating a representative form of government?

Did they ever imagine that bill a that transforms a sixth of the US economy would be reconciled and passed without any input of the minority party?

Apparently this is what is about to happen in Congress where, as The New Republic reports, the process of reconciliation will be "informal" so that they can bypass any input from the Republicans. As TNR reports:

Now that both the House and Senate have passed health care reform bills, all Democrats have to do is work out a compromise between the two versions. And it appears they’re not about to let the Republicans gum up the works again.

According to a pair of senior Capitol Hill staffers, one from each chamber, House and Senate Democrats are “almost certain” to negotiate informally rather than convene a formal conference committee. Doing so would allow Democrats to avoid a series of procedural steps--not least among them, a series of special motions in the Senate, each requiring a vote with full debate--that Republicans could use to stall deliberations, just as they did in November and December.

“There will almost certainly be full negotiations but no formal conference,” the House staffer says. “There are too many procedural hurdles to go the formal conference route in the Senate.”

One reason Democrats expect Republicans to keep trying procedural delays is that the Republicans have signaled their intent to do so. On Christmas Eve, when the
Senate passed its bill, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell memorably vowed in a
floor speech that “This fight isn't over. My colleagues and I will work to stop
this bill from becoming law."

“I think the Republicans have made our decision for us," the Senate staffer says. "It’s time for a little ping-pong.”

“Ping pong” is a reference to one way the House and Senate could proceed. With ping-ponging, the chambers send legislation back and forth to one another until they finally have an agreed-upon version of the bill. But even ping-ponging can take different forms and some people use the term generically to refer to any informal negotiations


What the Democrats are failing to realize is that eventually the pendulum will swing and the Republicans in power will emulate the methodology they are using today. The losers of all these shenanigans are "we the people." Shame on them!

We Will Pay With Blood For This Action

As reported by The Guardian, Jake Tapper of ABC News, Hotair.com, and The Long War Journal, the US has swaped Qays Khazali, head of the Iran backed Shiite Asaib ahl al Haq or League of the Righteous in exchange for a British soldier. Released is a better term. The release has been explained as taking place in the “spirit of reconciliation.”

Since this murderer is not a household name, let’s recapitulate a bit and find out who he is. His career started as a deputy of al-Sadr, and he was also a leader of Hezbollah and directly responsible for the assassination of five American soldiers in Karbala. When he and his brother were arrested the identification cards of the soldiers were recovered at the scene.

The Long War Journal quotes American officers as stating:

“We let a very dangerous man go, a man whose hands are stained with US and Iraqi
blood,” a military officer said. “We are going to pay for this in the future.”

The US military has maintained that the release of members and leaders
of the League of the Righteous is related to a reconciliation agreement between
the terror group and the Iraqi government, but some US military officers
disagree.

“The official line is the release of Qazali is about reconciliation, but in reality this was a prisoner swap,” a military intelligence official said…

“This was a deal signed and sealed in British and American blood,” a US military officer told The Long War Journal. “We freed all of their leaders and operatives; they [the League of the Righteous] executed their hostages and sent them back in body bags. And we’re supposed to be happy about it.”

First PM Brown's release of Al-Megrahi the Lybian terrorist responsible for Pan Am 103 and now Obama's release of Qazali have sent a clear message to international terrorists: "We are open for deals." The result will be more kidnappings and more terror.

Welcome to the cowardly new world of Obama. Wait and see how Islamists treat cowards.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Vintage Pilar Rahola: Jews of Six Arms

As I have done before, I am reprinting here a speech given by Pilar Rahola at the Conference in the Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism. For those of you not familiar with Dr. Rahola, she is a Spanish Catalan journalist, writer, and former politician and Member of Parliament.

Pilar Rahola has published several books in Spanish and Catalan and is a columnist in La Vanguardia, Spain; La Nación, Argentina; and Diario de América, USA. Rahola appears frequently on television and has taken part in several university lectures. From 1987 to 1990, she was director of the Catalan publishing house Pòrtic, and as a journalist, she covered the Eritrean-Ethiopian War, the Balkan Wars, the Gulf War, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. As a politician, Rahola was the only member of the Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya in the Spanish Congress of Deputies in 5th and 6th Spanish legislatures. She also served as vice-mayor of Barcelona. Rahola also participated in several committees of investigation, especially those related to political corruption such as the comisión Roldán. In 1996, she left Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya to join Àngel Colom and Joan Laporta in a new political group, the "Partit per la Independència", but after this failed, she concentrated on journalism and writing. Her areas of interest include women's rights, international human rights, and animal rights. In recent years she has attracted controversy in Spain for her critical support of Israel and Zionism.

Jews of Six Arms, speech by Pilar Rahola

A meeting in Barcelona with a hundred lawyers and judges a month ago.

They have come together to hear my opinions on the Middle-Eastern conflict. They know that I am a heterodoxal vessel, in the shipwreck of “single thinking” regarding Israel, which rules in my country. They want to listen to me, because they ask themselves why, if Pilar is a serious journalist, does she risk losing her credibility by defending the bad guys, the guilty? I answer provocatively – You all believe that you are experts in international politics when you talk about Israel, but you really know nothing. Would you dare talk about the conflict in Rwanda, in Kashmir? In Chechnya? – No.

They are jurists, their turf is not geopolitics. But against Israel they dare, as does everybody else. Why? Because Israel is permanently under the media magnifying glass and the distorted image pollutes the world’s brains. And because it is part of what is politically correct, it seems part of solidarity, because talking against Israel is free. And so, cultured people when they read about Israel, are ready to believe that Jews have six arms, in the same way that during the Middle Ages people believed all sorts of outrageous things.

The first question, then, is why so many intelligent people, when talking about Israel, suddenly become idiots. The problem that those of us, who do not demonize Israel have, is that there exists no debate on the conflict. All that exists is the banner; there’s no exchange of ideas. We throw slogans at each other; we don’t have serious information, we suffer from the “burger journalism” syndrome, full of prejudices, propaganda and simplification. Intellectual thinkers and international journalists have given up on Israel. It doesn't exist exist. That is why, when someone tries to go beyond the “single thought” of criticizing Israel, he becomes suspect and unfaithful, and is immediately segregated. Why?

I’ve been trying to answer this question for years: why?

Why, of all the conflicts in the world only this one interests them?

Why is a tiny country which struggles to survive criminalized?

Why does manipulated information triumph so easily?

Why are all the people of Israel, reduced to a simple mass of murderous imperialists?

Why is there no Palestinian guilt?

Why is Arafat a hero and Sharon a monster?

Finally, why when Israel is the only country in the World which is threatened with extinction, it is also the only one that nobody considers a victim?

I don’t believe that there is a single answer to these questions. Just as it is impossible to completely explain the historical evil of anti-Semitism, it is also not possible to totally explain the present-day imbecility of anti-Israelism. Both drink from the fountain of intolerance and lies. Also, if we accept that anti-Israelism is the new form of anti-Semitism, we conclude that circumstances may have changed, but the deepest myths, both of the Medieval Christian anti-Semitism and of the modern political anti-Semitism, are still intact. Those myths are part of the chronicle of Israel.

For example, the Medieval Jew accused of killing Christian children to drink their blood connects directly with the Israeli Jew who kills Palestinian children to steal their land. Always they are innocent children and dark Jews. Similarly, the Jewish bankers who wanted to dominate the world through the European banks, according to the myth of the Protocols, connect directly with the idea that the Wall Street Jews want to dominate the World through the White House. Control of the Press, control of Finances, the Universal Conspiracy, all that which has created the historical hatred against the Jews, is found today in hatred of the Israelis. In the subconscious, then, beats the DNA of the Western anti-Semite, which produces an efficient cultural medium. But what beats in the conscious? Why does a renewed intolerance surge with such virulence, centered now, not against the Jewish people, but against the Jewish state? From my point of view, this has historical and geopolitical motives, among others, the decades long bloody Soviet role , the European Anti-Americanism, the West’s energy dependency and the growing Islamist phenomenon.

But it also emerges from a set of defeats which we suffer as free societies, leading to a strong ethical relativism.

The moral defeat of the left. For decades, the left raised the flag of freedom wherever there was injustice. It was the depositary of the utopian hopes of society. It was the great builder of the future. Despite the murderous evil of Stalinism’s sinking these utopias, the left has preserved intact its aura of struggle, and still pretends to point out good and evil in the world. Even those who would never vote for leftist options, grant great prestige to leftist intellectuals, and allow them to be the ones who monopolize the concept of solidarity. As they have always done. Thus, those who struggled against Pinochet were freedom-fighters, but Castro’s victims, are expelled from the heroes’ paradise, and converted into undercover fascists.

This historic treason to freedom is reproduced nowadays, with mathematical precision. For example, the leaders of Hezbollah are considered resistance heroes, while pacifists like the Israeli singer Noa, are insulted in the streets of Barcelona. Today too, as yesterday, the left is hawking totalitarian ideologies, falls in love with dictators and, in its offensive against Israel, ignores the destruction of fundamental rights. It hates rabbis, but falls in love with imams; shouts against the Israeli Defense Forces, but applauds Hamas’s terrorists; weeps for the Palestinian victims, but scorns the Jewish victims, and when it is touched by Palestinian children, it does it only if it can blame the Israelis.

It will never denounce the culture of hatred, or its preparation for murder. A year ago, at the AIPAC conference in Washington I asked the following questions:

Why don’t we see demonstrations in Europe against the Islamic dictatorships?

Why are there no demonstrations against the enslavement of millions of Muslim women?

Why are there no declarations against the use of bomb-carrying children in the conflicts in which Islam is involved?

Why is the left only obsessed with fighting against two of the most solid democracies of the planet, those which have suffered the bloodiest terrorist attacks, the United States and Israel?

Because the left no longer has any ideas, only slogans. It no longer defends rights, but prejudices. And the greatest prejudice of all is the one aimed against Israel. I accuse, then, in a formal manner that the main responsibility for the new anti-Semitic hatred disguised as anti-Zionism, comes from those who should have been there to defend freedom, solidarity and progress. Far from it, they defend despots, forget their victims and remain silent before medieval ideologies which aim at the destruction of free societies. The treason of the left is an authentic treason against modernity.

Defeat of Journalism. We have more information in the world than ever before, but we do not have a better informed world. Quite the contrary, the information superhighway connects us anywhere in the planet, but it does not connect us with the truth. Today’s journalists do not need maps, since they have Google Earth, they do not need to know History, since they have Wikipedia. The historical journalists, who knew the roots of a conflict, still exist, but they are an endangered species, devoured by that “fast food” journalism which offers hamburger news, to readers who want fast-food information. Israel is the world’s most watched place, but despite that, it is the world’s least understood place. Of course one must keep in mind the pressure of the great petrodollar lobbies, whose influence upon journalism is subtle but deep. Mass media knows that if it speaks against Israel, it will have no problems. But what would happen if it criticized an Islamic country? Without doubt, it would complicate its existence. Certainly part of the press that writes against Israel, would see themselves mirrored in Mark Twain’s ironical sentence: “Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please”.

Defeat of critical thinking. To all this one must add the ethical relativism which defines the present times: it is based not on denying the values of civilization, but rather in their most extreme banality. What is modernity?

I explain it with this little tale: If I were lost in an uncharted island, and would want to found a democratic society, I would only need three written documents: The Ten Commandments (which established the first code of modernity. “Thou shalt not murder“ founded modern civilization.); The Roman Penal Code; and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And with these three texts we would start again. These principles are relativized daily, even by those who claim to be defending them.

“Thou shalt not murder” ... depending on who is the target, must think those who, like the demonstrators in Europe, shouted in support of Hamas.

“Hurray for Freedom of Speech!”..... , or not. For example, several Spanish left-wing organizations tried to take me to court, accusing me of being a negationist, like the Nazis, because I deny the “Palestinian Holocaust”. They were attempting to prohibit me from writing articles and to send me to prison. And so on... The social critical mass has lost weight and, at the same time ideological dogmatism has gained weight. In this double turn of events, the strong values of modernity have been substituted by a “weak thinking”, vulnerable to manipulation and Manichaeism.

Defeat of the United Nations. And with it, a sound defeat of the international organizations which should protect Human Rights. Instead they have become broken puppets in the hands of despots. The United Nations is only useful to Islamofascists like Ahmadinejad, or dangerous demagogues like Hugo Chavez which offers them a planetary loudspeaker where they can spit their hatred. And, of course, to systematically attack Israel. The UN, too exists to fight Israel.

Finally, defeat of Islam. Tolerant and cultural Islam suffers today the violent attack of a totalitarian virus which tries to stop its ethical development. This virus uses the name of God to perpetrate the most terrible horrors: lapidate women, enslave them, use youths as human bombs. Let’s not forget: They kill us with cellular phones connected to the Middle Ages. If Stalinism destroyed the left, and Nazism destroyed Europe, Islamic fundamentalism is destroying Islam. And it also has an anti-Semitic DNA. Perhaps Islamic anti-Semitism is the most serious intolerant phenomenon of our times; indeed, it contaminates more than 1,400 million people, who are educated, massively, in hatred towards the Jew.

In the crossroads of these defeats, is Israel. Orphan and forgotten by a reasonable left, orphan and abandoned by serious journalism, orphan and rejected by a decent UN, and rejected by a tolerant Islam, Israel suffers the paradigm of the 21st Century: the lack of a solid commitment with the values of liberty. Nothing seems strange. Jewish culture represents, as no other does, the metaphor of a concept of civilization which suffers today attacks on all flanks. The Jews are the thermometer of the world’s health. Whenever the world has had totalitarian fever, they have suffered. In the Spanish Middle Ages, in Christian persecutions, in Russian pogroms, in European Fascism, in Islamic fundamentalism. Always, the first enemy of totalitarianism has been the Jew. And, in these times of energy dependency and social uncertainty, Israel embodies, in its own flesh, the eternal Jew.

A pariah nation among nations, for a pariah people among peoples. That is why the anti-Semitism of the 21st Century has dressed itself with the efficient disguise of anti-Israelism, or its synonym, anti-Zionism. Is all criticism of Israel anti-Semitism? NO. But all present-day anti-Semitism has turned into prejudice and the demonization of the Jewish State. New clothes for an old hatred.

Benjamin Franklin said: “Where liberty is, there is my country.” And Albert Einstein added: “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”. This is the double commitment, here and now; never remain inactive in front of evil in action and defend the countries of liberty.

Thank you.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

2010


2010 has began, and I can prophesize that the more things have changed, the more they will remain the same.

Environmentalists will continue to claim that we have 10 years left to save the planet. Ten years ago they said the same thing. It reminds me of the sign that hang for many years in a store: "We will offer credit tomorrow." One hundred years from now the world will still be away ten years away from extinction, and the scientists who will make these claims will still be high school dropouts that made it in Hollywood or lawyers with a career in politics.
In the meantime, new research shows no evidence of increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over the last 160 years. Al Gore has offered no comment on this research. Neither has Gorbachev, Leonardo di Caprio or Barak Hussein Obama. It is bad news for those who use the climate change canard for the purpose of redistributing wealth.


On the subject of Israel, the international community and the mainstream media will continue to abuse and hold Israel to a standard higher than any other nation on earth. The New York Times will call Israeli settlers an obstacle to peace, and Muslims who murder will be called anything but terrorists.

While on this topic; Jimmy "I have lust in my heart" Carter has issued an apology to the Jewish people. I take this apology cum grano salis. I remember Jessee Jackson apologizing too. The perfect response to this apology was written the Liberal with Sanity and former mayor of New York Ed Koch.


Since I and those who hold political views similar to mine want a smaller and less intrusive government we will be called fascists, and since we don't believe in affirmative action we will be called racists. Since we don't like Obama we will be again called racists. Since we demand less taxes we will be called hatemongers, and since we don't like Hillary and Nacy Pelosi we will be called sexists. How do they reconcile this with our affection for Sarah Palin.

Since we don't believe in man made global warming we will be compared to holocaust deniers.

The census will show that states with high taxes lost population and states without income tax have gained population. The democrats will promise to cut the deficit and more vehemently so as November 2010 approaches. It will not help them. The Republicans will make significant gains and once elected will govern like democrats.

At least bloggers like me will have plenty of material to complain about. Happy New Year!

Friday, January 1, 2010

The Everglades

I went with friends to explore the Everglades in Florida.

What is it about people who recoil in fear when they see a cockroach or a spider, but in the wild become fearless explorers? My friends, their daughter, my wife and I spent a day looking for alligators and taking pictures of them from the safe distance of 10 feet. Of course, later on we found out that alligators can run at speeds of up to 45 mph, although only for short distances.

We didn't see any pythons, but I didn't forget for a minute that there are about 10,000 of those delightful creatures hiding in the vegetation of the region. The non-native species in Florida are becoming a real threat to the ecosystem. People are dumping their aquariums into the canals, letting birds free and getting rid of exotic snakes and lizards by releasing them in the Everglades. Many of these animals have no natural predators and are multiplying at a rapid rate. Contractors who have been hired to get rid of the pythons have captured an impressive 39 snakes. 9,961 to go.

I saw some exterminators use a fishing pole with fruit to capture iguanas. They are quite efficient. However the number of iguanas in South Florida could be controlled much more efficiently replacing the fishing rod with a machine gun. Another efficient method could be letting some of the drivers here drive in the wild.

Well, here are some pictures to document this entry. Be aware that these alligators are free and there is no dividing wall or fence between us and them.