Wednesday, October 31, 2012

In the Run Up to the Election, the Mainstream Media Refuse to Say the Secret "Woid"

Libya, oh Libya, they won't mention Libya.
Libya's been taboo'd lately.
They're recoiling at Benghazi,
Think Barack is oh, so snazi.
Libya, oh Libya, tingle up the tibia
Is what his press pals all still feel.
Four are dead, including a diplomat,
And Obama's moves have fallen flat,
And it's awf'ly hard not to smell a huge rat.
Worse than Watergate, it's Libya...

The "Experts" Weigh In On the Wrath of Sandy

Al  Gore is convinced, of course, that Sandy is a harbinger of the catastrophic weather we can expect due to man-caused global warming. Meanwhile, local Khomeinist Zafar Bangash sees it as Allah giving Great Satan a well-deserved slap in his effronterous face.

Update: No surprise that the Al Qaeda lunatics are pretty delighted about the terrible weather too.

Why Do Middle Class, Middle Aged White Chicks Dress Like "Hos" for Halloween?

This Forbes dude thinks he's figured it out:
The question remains, however, why do women dress in hyper-sexualized ways on Halloween, a day meant to be “scary”?
The answer to sexy witches lies, perversely enough, in the virginal bride. Indeed, the point of being hyper-sexualized on Halloween is to be sexually pure the rest of the year.
In other words, certain women- particularly white, middle-class women- have been afforded the status of being sexually pure and innocent, real ladies. Other women- especially poor women and/or women of color- have been marked as hyper-sexualized and dirty.
Thus white, middle class women, especially college students and soccer moms, love to put on sexy, slutty costumes on Halloween. In this way, they mark themselves as sexual, but also sexually protected. No one would call your mom or daughter a “ho” on November 1st, but let’s face it, on October 31st she might just be dressed like one. In this way, being a Halloween Ho marks one as “really sexually pure” in the same way that men dressing up as women marks them as “really men.”
M'kay. I would have said that the reason white, middle class chicks dress slutty on Halloween is because they want to feel sexy and recapture their lost youth in a safe, socially-acceptable way. But, hey, that's just me. (BTW, I'm a Halloween grinch. I loathe the macabre and the gruesome, and while I have a soft spot for teensy-weensy chocolate bars, they do not compensate for all the attendant grossness.)



Update: This is the sort of Halloween gross out/Grand Guignol porn I hate:
It will be dark outside, so perhaps they’ll not notice the shower door — Roberge’s homage to the movie Psycho — that next greets them, as they prepare to venture through a dark and narrow corridor made of thick sheets of black plastic. It leads to the butcher’s room, where severed body parts, jars of eyeballs, and a body wrapped in bloody sheets — oh, and a butcher, too, one of 10 friends Roberge has enlisted to help animate the outdoor haunted house — all lie in wait.

Obama's Double Standard for Serbs and Palestinians

Mere days before the presidential election, Hillary Clinton has jetted off to Kosovo. She's trying to persuade a bunch of recalcitrant Christians there to give up their dreams of sovereignty and accept their fate as a minority within a Muslim nation (with all that that entails):
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is touring a Serbian Orthodox church in Kosovo as she seeks to convince ethnic Serbs they have a home in Europe's youngest nation. 
Clinton will visit St. Nicholas Church Wednesday with EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton. They're seeking to advance talks between Serbia and its former province so both can one day join the European Union. 
One stumbling block is the fate of 60,000 Serbs in northern Kosovo. They reject Kosovo's authority and want independence or incorporation into Serbia. 
Washington and Brussels say neither is possible. They're promoting economic cooperation between the countries and telling ethnic Serbs they'll be protected in Kosovo. 
Kosovo declared independence in 2008. The church Clinton is visiting suffered during anti-Serb riots in 2004.
My question: why hasn't the Obama administration made the same pitch to Palestinians? (That's rhetorical, of course. It never would or could ask Arabs to "settle" for anything less than statehood.)

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Peter Beinart: Israeli Democracy Is Doomed, Doomed I Say!

A voluble leftist named Beinart
Has honed and perfected the fine art
Of lamenting the fate
Of the one Jewish state
While downplaying jihad's Judenrein art.

Whose "Taboo" Is It Anyway?

I'm always amused by Jews, including this young fellow, who believe they are breaking some communal taboo by criticizing Israel. Not only has Israel always been on the receiving end of obloquy by some Jews, but on university campuses these days, where Israel is seen as the worst of the worst ("colonialist," "occupier," "apartheid state"), it is a much bigger taboo to criticize those who are critical of the Jewish state. I suppose, though, that the "taboo-breakers," such as the one linked to above, like to think of themselves as mavericks who are defying the fusty and the hidebound within their own community. And no doubt these "taboo-busters" are also seeking the adulation of--or at least acceptance by--the fusty, hidebound majority on campuses, in Lefty-Islamist corridors, and at the UN who, for various reasons, despise Israel and would like to see it disappear.

Hope it works out for you, taboo-dude, but I wouldn't count on it.

'Avengers' Director Makes Edgy Video Warning of More Benghazi Debacles/Economic Catastrophes Should Obama Get In Again

Just kidding. Those Hollywood types looove their Celebrity-in-Chief, no matter how badly and how frequently he screws up. The director in question (Joss Whedon) actually made a decidedly unedgy video warning of a far graver concern for Tinsel Towners--the zombie apocalypse that will be brought on by a Republican victory next week.

Since, ho hum, it's always zombie time for guys like Joss (frankly, the enduring appeal of the undead--who are neither witty nor wise--escapes me) his prognostication is merely another indication of the failure of the leftist imagination.

Update: The U.S. military preps for the zombie invasion. (In a mad, mad world such as ours, fretting about fantastical--which is so say unreal & undead--enemies is a great way to avoid having to deal with real, live deadly ones.)

Monday, October 29, 2012

"You've Got the Talking Down, Just Not the Listening"

Sometimes a song expresses almost exactly how you feel, and what you feel like saying to someone who pays lip service to what can often be the messy give-and-take of conversation, but who, in fact, is incapable of viewing a differing opinion as anything other than a personal attack, and who really only wants an echo chamber (and know this, I am nobody's echo). Thank you, Sara Bareilles, for giving voice to my feelings--and my frustration and disappointment with just such a faux-approachable person.

Coming Soon: Toronto Star Paywall

What would you pay to read Harpoon Siddiqui, the Star's in-house shill for Islamism, online? Me, I'd be willing to cough up exactly what his "profound ideas" are worth: zero, goose eggs, nada, zilch, bupkes.

Beach Blanket Benghazi Bingo

Despite Benghazi being a hot bed of hot-headed (and well-armed) jihadis, there are plans afoot to build a luxury hotel there. Daniel Greenfield writes that there are currently a number of establishments in the area, but they aren't exactly Hiltonesque. One, the Uzu Hotel, is
rated by travelers as, “UZU is closed for maintinace” and “Could do with a facelift.” As well as, “Due to instability in the country at the time, the lobby was swarming with men clad in army fatigues” and “the smell is unbelievable – if your balcony faces the lake then just leave!”
Greenfield summarizes the fraught situation--and Benghazi accommodations--with this droll advisory:
Discerning travelers are advised to avoid Benghazi as there is a high risk of being murdered either by Islamist terrorists, bandits or heavy odors– to be followed shortly by the obligatory cover-up.
 The obligatory cover-up smells, too.

They Don't Call it "The Longest Hatred" for Nothing

Jewish bien pensants in the Diaspora who think they can install a cordon sanitaire around Israel, and thereby prevent the Leftist-Islamist Zionhass that targets Israel from blowing back onto them, should think again. Here's more evidence (it's from the NYT) that the "new" Jew-hate is the same as the old Jew-hate, there's an Israel in the picture to hate along with Jewry, so it's what you could call a package deal: 
LAST week, Twitter shut down a popular account for posting anti-Semitic messages in France. This came soon after the firing of blanks at a synagogue near Paris, the discovery of a network of radical Islamists who had thrown a hand grenade into a kosher restaurant, and the killing of a teacher and young pupils at a Jewish school in Toulouse earlier this year. The attacks were part of an escalating campaign of violence against Jews in France.         
Today, a sizable section of the European left has been reluctant to take a clear stand when anti-Zionism spills over into anti-Semitism. Beginning in the 1990s, many on the European left began to view the growing Muslim minorities in their countries as a new proletariat and the Palestinian cause as a recruiting mechanism. The issue of Palestine was particularly seductive for the children of immigrants, marooned between identities.         
Capitalism was depicted as undermining a perfect Islamic society while cultural imperialism corrupted Islam. The tactic has a distinguished revolutionary pedigree. Indeed, the cry, “Long live Soviet power, long live the Shariah,” was heard in Central Asia during the 1920s after Lenin tried to cultivate Muslim nationalists in the Soviet East once his attempt to spread revolution to Europe had failed. But the question remains: why do today’s European socialists identify with Islamists whose worldview is light-years removed from their own?         
In recent years, there has been an increased blurring of the distinction between Jew, Zionist and Israeli. Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the militant group Hezbollah, famously commented: “If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice I do not say the Israeli.”...
I did notice that, Hasswipe. Why, if I didn't know that this is 2012, I would have thought it was 1933, and you were speaking as a Nazi in Germany.

You can't call his statement an anachronism because that word is defined as something that's out of place in a particular era (like, say, a wristwatch on a charioteer in the film Ben Hur). The Judenhass/Zionhass the Hezbo-Nazi manifests is, well, timeless.

Sunday, October 28, 2012

The Sharia Green Scheme

One of the ways Islamic supremacists employ to endear themselves to clueless kafirs is by harping on all things "green" (including--wait for it--a "greener" hajj).

How the Movie "Argo" Makes Obama Looks Bad

Isn't it obvious? A regime that told intelligence operatives seeking to come to the aid of America's Libyan ambassador to "stand down" three--count 'em, three--times would likely never have greenlighted Tony Mendez's scheme, and everyone involved would have died a horrible death.

You Grovel to the Max and What Do You Get? An Emboldened Saudi Monarch Making Kooky, Sharia-Based Demands

The Wahhabi potentate wants the UN to do something--pronto--to halt the blasphemy:
Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah yesterday urged the United Nations to adopt a resolution condemning those states and groups that abuse divine religions and Prophets (peace be upon them). 
Addressing a reception given to prominent personalities and heads of foreign Haj missions at Mina Palace, he urged Muslims to strengthen their unity. “Haj is a symbol of Islamic unity and solidarity,” he said. 
“From the vicinity of Grand Mosque in Makkah, I demand a UN resolution that condemns any country or group that insults religions and prophets,” he said. “It is our duty and that of every Muslim to protect Islam and defend the Prophets.” 
The king’s statement comes after a low-budget film produced in the US, “Innocence of Muslims,” triggered a wave of deadly anti-American violence last month across the Muslim world targeting US symbols ranging from embassies and schools to fast-food chains...
You mean those abject apologies from Barack and his obsequious minions didn't satisfy the regal custodian? My, he's hard to please.

Global News Does a "Gotcha" on the "Human Rights" Mausoleum While the Real Scandal--the Cost of Building and Running This Sucker--Is Ignored

In a blistering expose, Global News has uncovered an outrageous scandal involving the Canadian "human rights" mausoleum.

No, not the fact that this ill-conceived white elephant is hoovering up mountains of our hard-earned tax dollars with no end in sight. The fact that some of the gift shop items it's flogging may have been produced in Third World countries "with poor human rights records."

Yeah, I get the irony, but don't you think they're missing the behemoth in the room?

As for mausoleum gifts shop tchotchkes: unless there's a T-shirt emblazoned with "Someone I know visited the Mass Atrocity Zone, and all I got was this lousy shirt," I'm not interested.

Buckaroo Bangash B-B-Qs the "Sacred Cow" of Free Speech

Friendly local Khomeinist Zafar Bangash, the guy behind Toronto's anti-Mo film protest as well as our annual Queen's Park Al Quds Day seethe-a-thon, has a bone to pick with Western notions of "free speech." It's so unfair, he moans from his bully pulpit in Khomeinist 'zine Crescent International, that Muslims don't get to speak freely by, say, freely indulging in anti-Semitism. And any time there's the "mere" suspicion "that they might be 'thinking' to harm Americans," Muslims run afoul of what he calls "systemic targeting." Quel "double standard," he fumes. Furthermore,
Why do the French, Americans and Westerners think they can insult the most revered personalities of Islam but Muslims must put up with it because of this sacred cow called “free speech”? It appears the notion of “free speech” in the West means the freedom to insult, in foul language, the revered personalities of Islam.
Dern tootin', cowboy. If you don't like it--and, going out on a limb here, I have a sense that you prefer the sharia way of arranging these matters--you could always relocate to, say, Iran, where such speech is not tolerated; where it is, in fact, dealt with in the harshest terms possible. The price of living here is having to put up with something that you find intolerable, but that we infidels revere.

Look at it this way: if we didn't have free speech, you wouldn't be able to put on your anti-Zionist hoe-down every year, and that would suck for you, buckaroo.

Update: Speaking of sacred (or is it scared?) cows...

Ha'aretz Unleashes Its Samson Strategy

Bleeding readership like crazy, in a mean-spirited act of self-loathing the hard leftist Israeli rag steps up efforts to bring down the Zionist enterprise along with its failing paper.

Obama Puts Out the Call for More "Political" Tunes

Your wish is my command, Barack:

Come gather round voters wherever you live,
And admit that Obama has nothing to give,
And accept his support's leaking just like a sieve.
For four years now the debt has been climbing.
His delusions are something we'll come to forgive
For the change is all in the timing.

Come reporters and pundits who haven't a clue
And observe that your guy doesn't know what you do.
He has ginned up class warfare although it's not new.
Karl Marx long ago did such priming.
It is slimy as hell and it's just buying time
For the change is all in the timing.

Come mothers and sisters please take a good look.
Your priorities aren't about Sandra Fluke.
Get your own contraception by hook or by crook.
Aren't you fed up with all of her whining?
If she gets you to pay you're a really big schnook,
For the change is all in the timing.

"Iran Felicitates Muslims on Eid-al-Adha"

If you say so, Ayatollah breath, but doesn't that usually earn one a death sentence in your parts?

What Happens When Kooky "Green" Schemes Take Priority Over Something as Simple as Repairing Leaky TDSB Roofs?

What happens, of course, is that TDSB school kids get wet so their elders can feel all warm and virtuous about being so freaking green:
The Toronto District School Board could use a Plan B for getting its leaky school roofs fixed. Except that it’s got its back so far up against the financial wall, that may be near impossible. 
The roofs were supposed to be repaired through a “landmark” solar panel project deal, announced a year ago last May. 
School roof space was to be leased to a solar power developer —who would put solar panels up and generate money from them — in exchange for getting major repairs on 450 roofs over a 20-year period. 
The first batch of panels was supposed to have started producing power last spring. The worst roofs were to be fixed within the first three years...
Um, not to be low-tech and retrograde about it, but I hear that tar and shingles can work like a charm.

"Social Egg Freezing"

What a bizarre way to describe the process whereby chicks who are fertile now but who may not be if and when they actually get around to the messy business of pregnancy and motherhood put their eggs away for another day.

Not that I care what they do with their their own biological matter, but what the heck is "social" about it?

Imran Khan Drones On and On

U.S. officials pulled Pakistan's Imran Khan, a gent with a known penchant for the Taliban, off an airplane on Canadian soil bound for New York City. They wanted to know, apparently, how he felt about U.S. drones flying over Pakistan and occasionally killing droves.

Now, I'm no fan of Mr. Khan, but what did they expect him to say?

"Love those drones"?  

"Drones rock"?

"Please, sir, can I have some more drones"?

The Benghazi Debacle Proves That the Obama Gang Should be Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

It was instructive watching Bob Woodward, a news hound who in another era sniffed out the Watergate scandal, talk to Sean Hannity last night about Obama's ghastly Benghazi antics. You could see that, on the one hand, ace reporter that he is, he felt compelled to admit that things do not add up. On the other, one could sense his obvious discomfort in having to talk about it, his reluctance to point fingers at a man who, despite a record of failure in every sphere, remains an object of media veneration.

Woodward urged folks not to rush to judgement because all the facts have yet to emerge (no thanks to a shockingly incurious media). But as Thomas Sowell (as quoted today by Salim Mansur) notes, "...[Y]ou don't need to eat a whole egg to know that it is rotten."

Indeed. And, despite the sulphuric fumes trickling out of the White House, the media, including "All the President's Men" Bobby, continue to evince a fraction of the interest in the story they would have had something so rank occurred on a Republican watch.

As always, Mark Steyn sums it up best. In response to the crucial question "why?," he writes:
Because to launch a military operation against an al-Qaida affiliate on the anniversary of 9/11 would have exposed the hollowness of their boast through convention week and the days thereafter – that Osama was dead, and al-Qaida was finished. And so Ty Woods, Glen Doherty, Sean Smith and Chris Stevens were left to die, and a decision taken to blame an entirely irrelevant video and, as Secretary Clinton threatened, "have that person arrested." And, in the weeks that followed, the government of the United States lied to its own citizens as thoroughly and energetically as any totalitarian state, complete with the midnight knock-on-the-door from not-so-secret policemen sent to haul the designated fall guy into custody. 
This goes far beyond the instinctive secretiveness to which even democratic governments are prone. The Obama administration created a wholly fictional storyline, and devoted its full resources to maintaining it. I understand why Mitt Romney chose not to pursue this line of argument in the final debate. The voters who will determine this election are those who voted for Obama four years ago and this time round either switch to the other fellow or sit on their hands. In electoral terms, it's probably prudent of Mitt not to rub their faces in their 2008 votes. Nevertheless, when the president and other prominent officials stand by as four Americans die and then abuse their sacrifice as contemptuously as this administration did, decency requires that they be voted out of office as an act of urgent political hygiene.
To put it in terms of Broadway show tunes, which is more than appropos given Steyn's expertise in and love of the genre, it's time for Americans to pull a Nellie: to wash that man right out of their hair and send him on his way.

Friday, October 26, 2012

A "Frankenstorm" By Any Other Name Would Sound More Fierce

Shouldn't a monstrous storm have a name with more oomph than the cutesy/wimpy Sandy?

Hurricane Rambo or Conan the Barbarian, say.

"It Was Like Shaking Hands With a Dead Fish"

The father of a Navy Seal killed in the Benghazi attack describes how he felt when his POTUS mumbled "an insincere apology" in his ear. The father was also underwhelmed by Hillary Clinton and her promise to nail the dude who made the anti-Mo film.

CBS News' Racist Query: Will White Men Sink Obama?

Fingers crossed, anyway. But if he goes down, it'll be because white chicks and non-whites, both male and female, also "sunk" him.

If There Were an Award For Most Despicable Non-Jewish Jew of the Year, UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk Would Win Hands Down

What a sweetie pie! Wrote him a song:

Day after day,
There at Turtle Bay,
The man with an animus
Thinks trashing Zion's okay.
But nobody seems to stop him,
'Cuz the daft OIC's so strong.
And nobody's going to drop him
'Cuz the ghoul in the Bay
Sees the Jews goin' down
And the Arabs arise
And jihad's spinnin' round...

Two Wongs Don't Make a Right--Especially in Internet Scams

This one eked through the spam filter, gave me a chuckle:
Good Day Sir,
Thank you very much for your email, let me introduce myself again, I am Francis Yue-Cheong of (Shanghai Commercial Bank Ltd,Hong Kong) before the U.S and Iraqi war our client Mr.Ashraf Taysir Shaker Alqawasmi a business merchant made a fixed deposit of USD27.3m for 2Yrs where i was the only one that knew about his deposits. Upon maturity during the war in 2003, Ashraf, his wife and only daughter died in a bomb blast that hits His Residence. Investigations showed that he didn't declare any next of kin. As a foreigner,I want you to stand as the next of kin to claim the fund because according to the laws of my country at the expiration 8years the funds will revert to the ownership of the Hong Kong Government if nobody applies to claim the funds. I have an attorney that will prepare all the documents to back you up as the next of kin to Mr.Ashraf Taysir Shaker Alqawasmi. Please reach me only on my email with your full names, age, current occupation, Physical address, direct telep hone and fax numbers to enable th
Regards,

Francic Yue-Cheong Wong
Admiral General Ashraf Taysir Shaker Alqawasmi--wasn't that the name of Sasha Baron Cohen's character in The Dictator? ;)

First Amendment No Biggie to Power-Besotted Obama Gang.

How quick the Obama White House was to throw America's exceptional First Amendment under the bus by rounding up the unusual suspect, the director of a crappy film trailer that "insulted" Islam's founder. And how helpful the media have been in covering for their guy, first by zeroing in on Romney's "gaffe," second by remaining steadfastly incurious about...well, let's call it Benghaziquiddick, shall we?, since, unlike Watergate, real human beings suffered the ultimate insult--an ignominious death. All in all, one of the most shameful episodes in American history and the history of the media. One must therefore conclude that so-called progressives do not care about truth or justice or freedom or the American way. All they care about is power--how to get it, and once they have it, how to keep it.


Thursday, October 25, 2012

American Jews' Cluelessness Stands the Test of Time

Today they're gaga for Obama, the Democratic who has repeatedly demonstrated that he is no friend of Israel. Back then, they were even more gung-ho for FDR, a haughty aristocrat who cared not a whit that Europe's Jews were being wiped out. Then, as now, it was a Republican who was the mensch, and who had the Jews' backs. This little known episode of history had been lost in the mists of time, but has now been dusted off in a scholarly work. City Journal's Harry Stein reviews it here. He writes:
By then [January 1942], news of mass exterminations of Jews had already leaked out, and FDR was facing pressure to do something about it. He was disinclined to act, because he regarded the matter as a distraction from the larger project of winning the war. To the extent he regarded the murder of Jews as a problem, he saw it as a political issue to be managed, lest it affect the outcome of the 1944 campaign. 
This is where Herbert Hoover comes in. No one ever described Hoover as haimish—Yiddish for down-to-earth, simpatico—let alone as a mensch. An Iowa-born Quaker, wealthy and self-made, he was stiff, formal, and bland, a living caricature of the sort Republican Jewish voters have long regarded with special scorn. But where their favorite Franklin Roosevelt, all jaunty bonhomie, brilliantly played at empathy, Hoover was a genuine humanitarian. Indeed, it was his remarkable record of saving millions of Europe’s destitute from starvation in the wake of the First World War that forged his political career. That career came crashing down, of course, with his failure as president to manage the Depression. But in the thirties and forties, from the political wilderness and in the face of isolationists in his own party, Hoover bravely took up the cause of Europe’s Jews. 
Returning from a visit to Germany and a meeting with Hitler in early 1938, Hoover denounced the Nazi state in the harshest possible terms, speaking out about concentration camps and the country’s “darkest picture . . . the heart-breaking persecution of helpless Jews.” Already he was pushing for the lifting of immigration restrictions favored by the Roosevelt administration, as later he would futilely urge decisive action to rescue those who still might have been saved. Moreover, along with such other leading Republicans as Wendell Willkie and Clare Boothe Luce, he embraced the cause of Jewish statehood, resulting in a pro-Zionist plank in the 1944 Republican platform. 
Meanwhile, with cover unfailingly provided by America’s most prominent Jewish spokesman—the American Jewish Congress’s Rabbi Stephen Wise, who referred to FDR as “The Chief” and “The All Highest”—Roosevelt did nothing. Only when the still-vibrant Jewish press began making an issue of the administration’s inaction in response to the tragedy of Europe’s Jews did Roosevelt, fearing a potential backlash at the polls, even make the gesture of getting a similar plank inserted into the Democratic platform. Not that he had any cause for concern: in 1944, 90 percent of Jewish voters went for FDR.
 

Funny "Hormonal" Correction on CNN

Oopsy!
A post previously published in this space regarding a study about how hormones may influence voting choices has been removed. 
After further review it was determined that some elements of the story did not meet the editorial standards of CNN.
Well, that just makes me want to read up on the study.

The Inevitable Disappointment of the Worshipful--and How to Remedy It

Victor Davis Hanson assesses the three debates between Obama and Romney. He notes that "hope and change" has been vastly downgraded this time around to "the lesser of two evils," which, I predict, won't exactly lure 'em into the voting booth. In the prologue of her 2005 book Heroes: A History of Hero Worship, Lucy Hughes-Hallet offers this warning to those--hello, Obamasoxers!--who invest their dreams in a mere mortal, thereby elevating him to super-human status (and often diminishing themselves):
Thomas Carlyle, who wrote on the same subject...a century and a half ago, declared that there was "no nobler feeling" than hero worship. "Heartfelt prostrate admiration, submission, burning, boundless, for a noblest god-like Form of Man...it is to this hour and at all hours the vivifying influence in a man's life." I disagree. An exaggerated veneration for an exceptional individual poses an insidious temptation. It allows worshippers to abnegate responsibility, looking to the great man for salvation or for fulfillment, which they should more properly be working to accomplish for themselves. Carlyle approvingly called it "the germ...of all religion hitherto known," but to make a fellow human the object of religious devotion is unwise. Hero worshippers, as the stories in this book repeatedly demonstrate, are frequently disappointed in, and lay themselves open to abuse by, the heroes of their choice. 
In other words, hero-worship is a kind of laziness. So get off your duffs, Americans, and don't elect the guy who thinks he's Jesus H. Christ (and who somehow managed to persuade you of the same). Hand the reigns to the guy who has no delusions of grandeur, and who actually knows how to run things.

Simple as that, really.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Exactly Two Whole Hours

Demurs and misdirection to the contrary, that's how long it took the White House to be apprised of the true nature of the Benghazi attack (i.e. that it was planned and not "spontaneous" and hadn't been prompted by some crappy youtube video) once it was underway.

As John once queried of Paul, how do you sleep at night, President O?

A Desperate Housewife Shills for Her Beloved Hopeychanger

A starlet named Eva Longoria
Is gripped by Obama euphoria.
Her spiel's well received
By all those who've believed
But one doubts it plays well in Peoria.

The "Secret Weapon" Azerbaijan Aims at Bossy Iran: JLo

From the Toronto Star:
BAKU, AZERBAIJAN—The latest weapon in this country’s ideological war with Iran arrived in an armada of jets from California, accompanied by a private security force, dazzling pyrotechnics and a wardrobe that consisted of sequins and not much else. 
A crowd of nearly 30,000 gathered to watch as the leader of this mini-invasion pranced onto a stage built on the edge of the Caspian Sea. With a shout of “Hello, lovers!” Jennifer Lopez wiggled out of her skirt and launched into a throbbing disco anthem, delighting her Azerbaijani fans and — it was hoped — infuriating the turbaned ayatollahs who live just across the water. 
“You could almost feel the Iranians seething,” said an Azerbaijani official who attended the U.S. pop star’s first concert in this predominantly Shiite Muslim country of 9 million. 
“This stuff makes them crazy.”
Um, I'm pretty sure they'd be crazy even without the American bombshell. Nonetheless, this one's for you, Ayatollah-breath:

Why the New "Human Rights" Mausoleum is Old Hat

Someone else has noticed that our national shrine to victimhood, which looks like this,


bears an stunning resemblance to distinctive military headgear, which looks like this:


A letter in the Winnipeg Sun clarifies the matter once and for all:
Re: Eerie resemblance, Letters, Oct. 22.
The helmets that Cindy Eaglesham refers to looking like Nazi helmets were actually German/Prussian First World War helmets. They do not represent an image of the Nazi’s as the Nazi party was not formed until after the end of the First World War by unemployed German soldiers. The Nazis did not form a government until 1933. There is no connection between the design of the human rights museum and the Nazi party as implied in her letter.
Bill Parkes
Well, maybe not once and for all, for the following questions remain: Why does a "human rights" edifice resemble any military chapeau? Isn't that what might be described as a glaring design flaw?

Narrative, Shmarrative: Israel "As Is" Is Alive and Kicking and Very "Engaging"

Israel's Shalom Hartman Institute, which certain Jews in North America hold in high esteem, offers what it calls iEngage. It's a course funded by some unknown, unnamed benefactor (George Soros, perhaps?). Its aim: to rewrite the "narrative" that allegedly disenchanted and disengaged Diaspora Jews recount re Israel, because the current "narrative" (dreadful word)--an Israel that is capitalistic and under the influence of the hated, right-wing Netanyahu; an Israel that's "weak" and under existential threat and therefore in need of support by Diaspora Jews who may well need to seek haven there should Judenhass erupt at home--is apparently so out of date and distasteful for those of a tikkun olam-y, universalist bent, especially for the narcissistic young'uns in university, that they are turned off by and are turning away from an Israel that is not their mirror image.

Since I already feel engaged with Israel, I feel no need to rewrite the "narrative"; Canadian Jews as a whole are already far more engaged than their American counterparts, for whom this project appears to have been devised. Someone else who has no need for the revisionist exercise: David Solway. He writes that, like it or not--and there are indeed many who don't like it--Israel "as is" is here to stay:
[T]he international Left has long had it in for what it regards as a Zionist gadfly that has the temerity to assert a strong sense of national purpose in opposition to the post-democratic utopian doctrine of transnational progressivism and the chutzpah to resist the encroachment of the Left’s Islamic friends and allies. Many of the Protestant churches are busy divesting from companies that do business with Israel on the meretricious grounds that it is an apartheid state; indeed, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has added his authority to this latest cargo of anti-Israeli archrubbish, asserting that the Israeli security fence, built “ostensibly for keeping out the terrorists,” is contributing to the decline of the Christian community in the Holy Land” (italics mine). The mainstream media have done their utmost to render Israel a pariah state—“render” in both senses of the term—as has the corrupt and partisan United Nations. And then, of course, there is the rump Israeli Left, the so-called “peace parties,” the foreign funded NGOs, the activist Supreme Court, and the brain-dead academics that inhabit the festering swamps of institutional decrepitude like Ben-Gurion University, all of whom will not rest content until Henry Kissinger is proven right. 
This is a formidable axis of annihilationist forces that even a superpower might regard with trepidation. Additionally, Israel has made many crucial mistakes, such as being signatory to the Oslo Accords, which led to the repatriation and the terrorist initiatives of Yasser Arafat, the surrendering of the oil-rich and buffering Sinai Peninsula in the interests of a cold peace with Egypt that is now being piecemeal abrogated, and the disengagement from Lebanon and Gaza which resulted in over 10,000 rockets being launched against its civilian communities. 
Nevertheless, Israel is a tough, resilient and indefatigable little nation, able to withstand adversity and capable of triumphing in the long run. Admittedly, it must show more resolve in countering the subversive elements within its own population, for the gravest threat to the integrity of the Jewish state is its own fifth column. Israel’s democracy has been remarkably flexible in accommodating those who work against its sovereignty and strength; yet the political direction of the country has been gradually but tenaciously shifting toward a more realistic stance regarding the dissident agenda of its internal assailants. Indeed, Israel has the extraordinary capacity to survive itself, a considerable accomplishment when compared to the interior divisions afflicting most Western nations whose geopolitical situations are far less critical.
It will even, I suggest, survive those who seek to rewrite its "narrative" (for their own entirely selfless purposes, of course).

Barry's Barbra Showstopper

Don't tell me I lack will,
That's simply silly.
If someone takes a spill,
It's Hill, and not me.
Don't bring around Fox News
To prate about my reign.

Don't say that I'm not great,
Great's what they've always told me.
I've steered the ship of state;
It was so deft and so bold of me.
Don't bring around Fox News
To prate about my reign.

I'll march my fans out
In the press corps.
It always pans out
'Cuz they say, "He's the very coolest.
So what if machinations fool us?"

But whether I detest exception'lism.
And if my thinking fosters a great schism.
A red-blue separation that will never die.
I gotta fly now,
I gotta lie now,
I gotta go bamboozle.
Ooo, life is po-mo, po-mo so I'll go
Wing it 'cuz they'll excuse. So
Get ready for me; I'm your bestest bet.
Four years from now a twenty trillion dollar debt.
Don't bring about Fox News to prate about my reign.

I'm gonna win and win big.
Ignore the polls--they've been rigged.

One vote and I'm in like Flynn.
Triumph of Barnum-like spin.
Eyes on the prize I deserve.
No one can say I lack nerve.
Hey, Mr. Romney, throw your curve...

I'll march my band out, they'll beat my drum,
My biggest fans shout--Letternan and Stew-art,

Whoopi, Joy B. their askew art.
Get ready for me, Mitt, 'cuz I won't blow it.
Benghazi, that Mo-film, don't care to know it.
No Romney, no, no Romney, is gonna ruin my parade.

 
Update: Barbra sends out an S.O.S. for her man, Barry.

And Speaking of Delusion--Obama Thinks Megalomaniacal Fanatics in the Grip of a Messianic, Apocalyptic Reverie Can Be Swayed Via "Bilateral" Discussions

Thereby demonstrating he knows nada about Shiism, Twelverism, jihadism, totalitarianism, anti-Zionism, anti-Great Satanism and the mentality of Iran's truly heinous true believers.

Any American who gives the groveler his/her vote in two weeks is either similarly ignorant, or has a death wish veering into the pathological.

For Jewry, Everything Old is New Again (Whether Or Not You're in Denial About It)

There are many Diaspora Jews, more than a few of them who lean left, who are really bummed out by what they see as anti-Israel blowback splashing unfairly onto them. With their tikkun olam-y outlook and universalist principles, these bien pensants are keen to draw a red line, a cordon sanitaire, around Israel, so that the Zionhass will remain, they think, in situ.

How foolish, and how delusional, they are. Here's Shoshana Bryen with a sharp pin to burst their little bubble (a covering which won't protect them from resurgent Jew-hate, engendered in the main by Islamists and their fellow lefties):
In France and Sweden -- and in the UN -- authorities fail to acknowledge that Europe's Jewish communities are under attack by Muslims who have formed insular, radical and often criminal enclaves. They are attacked NOT because of what they do or do not do; NOT because of what Israel does or does not do, and NOT because their tormentors face discrimination in Europe, but because they are Jews.
'Twas ever thus.

Obama Mobilizes, Motivates the Orwellian Muslim Mob

The attack on the American consulate in Benghazi may not have been prompted by a trailer for a two-bit movie, but as Deborah Weiss notes, the constant harping on/apologizing for it certainly got the hopeychangey sharia types all hot 'n' bothered:
On Sunday, October 14, 2012, thousands of Muslims stormed the London Headquarters of Google, the parent company of YouTube. They were protesting the notorious anti-Islam video clip, titled “Innocence of Muslims,” a 14-minute, amateurish, low-budget trailer that portrays Mohammad in a negative light. The video had been falsely blamed by administration officials for the murders of US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other US diplomats in Benghazi, Libya. 
Barricades were erected around the building, and numerous streets in England’s capital were blocked off near the Queen’s palace. Those in protest were demanding that YouTube pull down the video. 
The Muslim Action Forum organized the event and approximately 800 imams from mosques across the UK assisted. Muslims from Manchester, Blackburn, and Luton attended. Others came from as far away as Glasgow. 
The Birmingham Mosque told its attendees that it was important to attend the event in honor of the Prophet, and warned participants to refrain from violence in order to prove to the world that Islam is a religion of peace. The mosque provided buses to transport crowds to the event. 
Though police reported that only approximately 3000 people attended, the Muslim Action Forum insists that attendance was closer to 10,000. At a glance, the irate mob appeared to consist primarily of men, but in fact, a smaller gathering of women joined them, as is often the case, in the back of the crowd. They were fully covered from head to toe in hijabs and chadors.
Wow, it sounds like those scenes in Argo (which I caught at the local multiplex last night). Plus ca change, eh? In a similarly nostalgic vein, the affronted gave their protest a decidedly 1984-ish moniker:
The name of the campaign was “The Campaign for Global Civility.” Demonstrators carried signs that demanded civility from others, even as they intimidated those with whom they disagreed. Others signs proclaimed “Islam is a religion of peace,” even as an implied threat of violence filled the air. And some even had the audacity to wave signs that read, “Prophet Muhammad is the founder of freedom of speech” despite the fact that the entire purpose of the protest was to shut people up. Additional signs read that “Google is a worldwide terrorist” and “[H]ow dare you insult the blessed Prophet.”...
To paraphrase another blessed prophet: All free speech is equal, but some is more equal than others.

"Bidementia"

The Veep of a guy with, ahem, memory issues should be careful about accusing others of forgetfulness. (What the accusation-hurlers are hoping, of course, is that Americans will forget their deplorable record.)

A Guide for the Harried American

Dorothy Rabinowitz weighs in on the undeniable reality of Obama's record of prevarication (and how it seems so unreal):
In the 1967 film "A Guide for the Married Man," a husband, played by a peerless Walter Matthau, is given lessons in ways to cheat on his wife safely. The most essential rule: 
"Deny! Deny! Deny!"—no matter what. In an instructive scene, he's shown a wife undone by shock, and screaming, with reason: She has just walked in on her husband making love to a glamorous stranger. 
"What are you doing," she wails, "who is that woman?" 
"What woman, where?" the husband serenely counters, as he and the tart in question get out of bed and calmly dress. 
So the scene proceeds, with the distraught wife pointing to the woman she clearly sees before her, while her husband, unruffled, continues to look blankly at her, asking, "What woman?" Confused by her spouse's unblinking assurance, she gives up. Two minutes later she's asking him what he'd like for dinner. 
For much of the past four years, the Obama administration's propensity for asserting views of reality wildly at odds with those evident to most rational citizens has looked increasingly like a page from that film script...

Sunday, October 21, 2012

A Key Part of Obama's Re-election Strategy: Keep the Dude Who Created the Infamous Anti-Mo Film Cooling His Heels in the Slammer

Were he able to sue the POTUS and his minions for slander (which, sadly, he can't, because it's unconstitutional), he would surely have attorneys aplenty beating a path to his jail cell.

Ceeb Sin of Omission--It Doesn't Mention That Those Behind "the Largest Human Trafficking" Scam in Canadian History Belong to the Hungarian Roma Mafia

Due to what I suspect is political correctness and a disinclination to contradict the multiculti narrative which holds that the persecuted can't also be persecutors, you will search in vain for any trace of the "R" word in this Ceeb story. The racketeers' provenance is mentioned here.

Not to say that all Roma are engaged in such disreputable behaviour: that would be absurd. But so is pretending that all are saintly--and should therefore be allowed into Canada as refugees, no questions asked--because they've faced persecution and were Hitlers' victims, like the Jews.