Obama's Teensy-Weensy Ideas

Remember how, to save face, Obama wanted to launch an itsy-bitsy, insignificant, so-small-it-would-amount-to-a-mere-slap-on-the-wrist air strike on Syria? Well, in keeping with his "think small" mantra, he is now telling Israel that Iran must be allowed to enrich a "modest" amount of uranium. Which is kind of funny considering that the man himself is anything but modest (i.e. there's nothing teensy-weensy about his ego).

Update: Everybody sing!

It was an itsy-bitsy, later 'gator
Nuclear power generator
That they swore was for peaceable things.
An itsy-bitsy, later 'gator
Nuclear power generator.
Watch the way that old scorpion stings...

Gaza Wise Guys Parody the Van Damme Volvo Ad

ABC News is most sympathetic to their desperate plight, natch:

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip last week showed that Jean-Claude Van Damme isn't the only one who can do an "epic split," and are using a viral video to highlight Gaza's infrastructure issues.  

A comedy troupe in the packed, poverty-ridden Palestinian territory on Thursday released a spoof of a viral Volvo advertisement that featured Van Damme, a Belgian martial artist and actor, doing a split between two moving trucks. 

 The Gazans put a Palestinian twist on the video, titled "The Epic Split," by replacing a monologue from Van Damme about his "ups and downs" and "body crafted to perfection" with a voiceover in Arabic that decries Gaza's poor infrastructure.  

"The electricity cuts off for 12 hours," 28-year-old Mahmoud Zuiter, a member of Tashwesh Productions, says in the video, which has English subtitles. "The water turns on when the electricity cuts off. I miss taking a shower!"  

In the Volvo ad, which has over 58 million, the camera zooms out to show Van Damme suspended between two trucks, which are driving parallel to each other, slowly move apart as the actor drops into a split.  

In the spoof, Zuiter stands on the hoods of two Kia cars...

Two Kia cars? With all the bazillions that have poured into Hamas-controlled Gaza (none of which, apparently, has gone to infrastructure, a la Obama's "stimulus" package that was supposed to--but never did--address U.S., um, "infrastructure issues"), surely they could afford real Volvos. 

And, oh yeah--IT'S ALL ISRAEL'S FAULT!!!

So Much for South Africa Being Nelson Mandela's "Utopia"

If there's one thing the majority of South Africans in the 18-34 year old demographic can agree on, it's that they can't wait to leave the gawdforsaken joint.

Oh, You Mean Bland, Pompous, Doctrinaire Lefty, Zion-Loathing and Insufferably Smug?

'Canada is the CBC'

Artie Erdogan Demonstrates That He Who Writes (or, Rather, Rewrites/Whitewashes) the History Books Gets to Control the Present and the Future

Turkey's strong horse shows how the above credo is working its toxic magic in Kosovo:

Although [Turkey's] money is welcome in impoverished Kosovo, some charge that Turkey is seeking to improve its image in its former possession from the ground up, starting with whitewashing the history of the Ottoman Empire in school books.

For evidence, they point to recent revisions in textbooks for grades five through 12 that strike a conciliatory note toward the Balkans’ former imperial master.

Where last year’s eighth grade history textbook stated, “at the end of the 19th century, Albanians were still facing the cruel Ottoman rule,” this year, pupils learn that “at the end of the 19th century, Albanians were still under Ottoman rule.” 

One sultan is described in the new 11th grade textbook as “strict and shrewd.” Last year, he was “cruel and shrewd.” Twelfth-graders used to read that the Ottomans, after dissolving the League of Prizren – a movement for Albanian autonomy within the empire – “waged previously unseen terror.” Terror has now been replaced by the much milder “political repression.”

Defenders of the changes say they are line with European standards and are intended to combat the tendency, prevalent in the region, to use textbooks to whip up nationalism and to stoke resentment of historical enemies...

Funny, I thought such "European standards" are intended to obfuscate the historical record for the sake of political correctness and to assuage Western self-loathing (although, clearly, that's the exact opposite of why Artie, Islamic supremacist that he is, has become the standard-bearer of these standards).

FYI, such revisionism isn't restricted to Europe. In fact, it's occurring right here in Toronto. In my son's Grade 10 Jewish history course, for example, he is learning that

The city of Medina had many Jews and some Christians living there. The Jews were not persecuted as long as they did not make rebellions against the majority Muslims and as long as they paid taxes.

Gosh, that seems awfully enlightened, don't you think? Considering how rosy things were, one wonders why anyone would balk at being ruled by Muslims.

Update: Here's the bloody, savage, God's-honest truth:

The Quran is replete with comments about Jews. Many are positive and many are offensive, denigrating, and full of Jew hatred. When one considers the Islamic concept of abrogation (Naskh wa Mansukh), whereby the more recent of Muhammad’s revelations cancel out and replace the older ones, matters become much clearer and the seeming contradictions regarding attitudes towards Jews can be easily explained. It becomes evident that when he was militarily weak Muhammad’s pronouncement about Infidels were kindly and respectful, but as Muhammad became more powerful and confident his animosity and hatred of the Jews became more vitriolic. The genocidal beheading of all the men (some 600-900) of the Jewish tribe of Medina Banu Qurayza by Muhammad and his followers, serves as a model of treatment of infidels for Muslims to this very day. 

The President Whose O-Care Website Is a Technological Nightmare Invites American Young'uns to Make a Short Film Touting the Benefits of--Wait For It--Technology

His White House is an irony-free zone, apparently.

Icon, Shmicon

Once you get past the hysterical hagiography, it becomes evident that Nelson Mandela said a lot of dang-fool things in his life.

Obama's Road to Serfdom Gives Rise to a Gaping Divide

The "haves" and the "have-nots"? That's soooo Das Kapital. The "1%" versus the "99%"? No, that won't do, either. Here, let Mark Steyn unpack the real societal divide of our time:

So what does every initiative of the Obama era have in common? Obamacare, Obamaphones, Social Security disability expansion, 50 million people on food stamps . . . The assumption is that mass, multi-generational dependency is now a permanent feature of life. A coastal elite will devise ever smarter and slicker trinkets, and pretty much everyone else will be a member of either the dependency class or the vast bureaucracy that ministers to them. And, if you’re wondering why every Big Government program assumes you’re a feeble child, that’s because a citizenry without “work and purpose” is ultimately incompatible with liberty. The elites think a smart society will be wealthy enough to relieve the masses from the need to work. In reality, it would be neo-feudal, but with fatter, sicker peasants. It wouldn’t just be “economic inequality,” but a far more profound kind, and seething with resentments.

Something to consider: "progressives" are actually possessives. That is, they want to possess all the power they possibly can (for the greater good of all, purportedly)--and possess you via the geegaws and shiny baubles they dole out. And Obama? Why, he's the biggest possessive to ever occupy the White House. It will take generations to undo the damage he's wrought--if, indeed, it can be undone.

Mandela's Legacy: It's Not What Many Think It Is and Would Like It To Be

Daniel Greenfield pens some harsh truths:

South Africa is just as divided by race as it was when Mandela was in prison. It is broken up into countless tiny factions protected by real and metaphorical violence. There is no trusted institution in the country that unites it. There is no trust by South Africans in each other. 

When a farmer’s family is brutally murdered by his own workers and men rape the children of their neighbors in the hopes of curing themselves of AIDS—there can be no such thing as trust. The story told in so many of the movies where Mandela played by Sidney Poitier or Morgan Freeman teaches blacks and whites to set aside their hatred has not worked out nearly as well in real life. 

In the new apartheid, the black government represses a white minority and abuses its power over the black majority in ways that Western liberals would never tolerate if it were being practiced by men with Dutch last names. Every government crime is covered up by more incitement against the white minority with each generation of activists struggling to outdo the previous generation in its anti-white racism. 

There has been no moment of transcendence that endured. No cure for the things tearing the nation apart. There is no new spirit in South Africa. There is a new apartheid defined not by law, but by hate. Freedom and democracy are equally vaporous under the rule of a political movement obsessed with the vicious pragmatism of power now being exercised by Mandela’s African National Congress successors.

Nelson Mandela may have been a great man who stood for great things (even if, when it came to the likes of Yasser Arafat, his judgment was less than astute). But the South Africa of today, the one that hails him as a father and an icon, is a suppurating mess.

Toronto Grinchiness: Dancing Crossing Guard Ordered to Stop Dancing

Her dancing is dangerous. Supposedly. Not really. Actually, not at all:

The woman adored by west-end children and parents as the “dancing crossing guard” may have had her last waltz. 

Kathleen Byers became a local fixture as she strutted, sashayed and swirled her way across Dufferin St. with her safety vest and stop sign, guiding students at Alexander Muir/Gladstone Ave. public school and Grove Community School to the beat of music from portable speakers. But Wednesday morning, police told her the dancing had to stop.  

“I was essentially told not to bring my music, not to dance, not to dance without music, and when I asked if I could exercise, just light movement, I was told not to do that as well,” Byers said. “So essentially I guess they wanted me to stand there, which isn’t me at all.” 

Byers, 64, has been a crossing guard for 10 years and she’s been dancing for almost four. There have been no accidents involving children on her watch, she said.

Maybe so, but that doesn't make it "safe":

Crossing guards are regulated through the Toronto Police Service’s traffic department. Byers was featured in a video posted on the police YouTube channel in late September, but a supervisor in the traffic department later had concerns that she was not following proper procedures, said spokesman Const. Clint Stibbe.

  

For example, her stop sign is not always visible to drivers when she does her dance moves, and sometimes she dances across the street with children instead of stopping in the middle of the intersection before letting them come out, he said. 

“We have to make sure the directions she’s giving drivers are clear,” Stibbe said. “So essentially we’re asking her to do her job properly and clearly so drivers and pedestrians are clear what’s happening and there’s no confusion or risk to a child. 

“We’ve directed her to focus on her task at hand, which obviously is to get the children across the road safely.” 

Even her dancing on the sidewalk could be a distraction to drivers that could put other pedestrians at risk, he said — something police are paying close attention to as the number of pedestrians killed in traffic collisions has surged this year.

Though, of course, none has occurred on her watch while she's been dancing.

Gee, do you think more crossing guards should take up the practice?

Rest Easy, Webster. We Love You. We'll Miss You