Thursday, January 08, 2009

PETA's latest bizarre demand: fish should be called 'sea kittens'


Update: Sea Kittens: the other pink meat!

Radical animal rights group PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) just launched its most ludicrous campaign yet. It is demanding that fish be called "sea kittens."

[PETA] believes calling fish sea kittens will make sea food less appealing.

It wants to change the image of fish as slimy and slithery creatures by claiming they are similar to cuter, more popular animals. "Would people think twice about ordering fish sticks if they were called sea kitten sticks?" PETA asked on its website.

Well, not all people.

A spokesman for PESCA (People Eating Steak, Chicken and other Animals) said that it was launching an alternative campaign called "Damn, them deep-fried sea kittens are some mighty fine eatin'!".

Linked by: Hot Air and Michelle Malkin. Thanks!

Ronaldo wrecks Ferrari -- $275,000 later, he walks away unhurt


Manchester United Football star Cristiano Ronaldo was apparently speeding near the Manchester (UK) airport when he lost control of his Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano. The results weren't pretty.

A club spokesman said: “He was involved in an incident this morning. No other cars were involved… He’s fine and is training as normal with the team this morning.”

It’s unclear exactly how Ronnie made it to training without his Ferrari. The BBC notes that Manchester United keeper Edwin Van Der Sar was following his teammate in his own Bentley when the incident occurred. Perhaps Van der Sar gave him a lift, unless he took the bus. “The image of him sheepishly waiting for a bus with his Louis Vuitton man bag under his arm is just too delicious for words,” writes Mike Norrish for the Telegraph.

Or perhaps he took one of his other rides. Ronaldo also owns a Bentley Continental GT Speed, a Rolls Royce Phantom Drophead Coupe, two Porsche Cayennes and a BMW M6.

The 599 GTB Fiorano is Ferrari’s two-seat Berlinetta encased in an all-aluminum body and slightly underpowered with a 611-horsepower V12 descended from the Ferrari Enzo's powerplant.


This is what one looks like new. The list price? A paltry $275,000.

You say his teammate owns a Bentley? And he's got 5 additional super-cars? I shoulda listened to Mom and gone into pro soccer.

"Keep the phones switched on so we can hear the gunfire"


Bill Roggio, writing at Long War Journal, has a transcript of conversations between the Mumbai terrorists* and their handlers in Pakistan. Roggio also links to the dossier of evidence assembled by the Indian government.

* Got that, Bill Keller? I used the T-word. Learn it. Live it. Love it.

The transcript, even more than the pictures of sexual mutilation inflicted by the terrorists, emphasizes the barbarism and blind evil of Islamofascism.

The Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based terror group allied with al Qaeda and supported by powerful elements within Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence agency and the military, carried out the attack... Six Pakistani handlers monitored the news coverage from Mumbai and kept in constant touch with the terrorists holed up in Nariman House and the Taj Mahal and Trident hotels during the three day siege.

A senior US military intelligence official familiar with the dossier said that [one handler named] "Major General" is indeed Hamid Gul, the retired former chief of the ISI... The Pakistan-based handlers provided real-time intelligence and directed the terrorists to killed specific hostages... The exchange[s show] they planned and executed the attack for maximum media coverage, ordered the murder of hostages, and cheered after the murders were carried out...

“Everything is being recorded by the media,” the handler identified as Kafa told Rehman. “Inflict the maximum damage. Keep fighting. Don’t be taken alive.”

“Kill all hostages, except the two Muslims,” the other handler told Rehman and Fahadullah. “Keep your phone switched on so that we can hear the gunfire.”

“We have three foreigners, including women,” Fahadullah said. “From Singapore and China.”

“Kill them,” the handler said.

According to the dossier, Abdul Rehman and Fahadullah are recorded ordering all of the hostages except for two Muslims to stand in line. The terrorists then shot and killed the hostages.

The handlers are heard cheering in the background.

...In the early evening of November 27, the handler identified as Wassi instructs the terrorists at Nariman House to kill the hostages as soon as they become a “burden” and hoped to create a diplomatic row between Israel and India. Nariman House is an orthodox Jewish center.

“Keep in mind that hostages are of use only as long as you do not come under fire because of their safety,” Wassi said. “If you are still threatened, then don’t saddle yourself with the burden of the hostages. Immediately kill them.”

“The [Indian] Army claims to have done the work without any hostage being harmed,” Wassi then said, referring to the commandos deployed to rescue the hostages. “Another thing: Israel has made a request through diplomatic channels to save the hostages. If the hostages are killed, it will spoil relations between India and Israel.”

“So be it, God willing,” one of the terrorist at Nariman House responded.

DNA India reported yesterday that Nariman House, not the hotels, was the central target of the terrorists. That building housed a Jewish center and, once inside, the terrorists sexually mutilated and then killed five individuals including Rivka Holtzberg, who was five months pregnant.
These terrorists, the ideological cousins of Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda and the other enemies of civilization, must be eradicated like the cockroaches they are.

Rufus: the slingshot man


Rufus is 65 years old and lives in North Carolina. He grew up dirt poor. To catch dinner as a 10-year old, he learned to kill rabbits with a slingshot.

Rufus is still a dead-eye, slingshot master.

This video depicts him smashing quarters out of the air with pebbles.

Hat tip: Tim.

Larwyn's Links: "And it came to pass in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, in the tenth day of the month..."


One pissed-off dude: Big Hollywood
The images they show: A Soldier's Mother
Yes, it's anti-Semitism: Jeff Jacoby

First ten bills of the Eleventy-First Congress: Ace o' Spades
Panetta: An Awful Pick: New York Post (Ralph Peters)
Evidence Obama lied about Blago?: Flopping Aces

Hamas Suicide Operations: Dr. Sanity
War Crimes in Gaza: Jules Crittenden
Tenth of Tevet: On Determination & Resolve: Yaacov Lozowick

Nariman House, not Taj, was Mumbai Target #1: DNA India
Israel in the balance: National Review Online (Stephanie Gutmann)
East London Mosque's Poster Draws Ire - East London Advertiser

Global Warm-monger: More Silk from a Pig's Ear: American Thinker (Gregory Young)
Jews unsafe in Europe: History News Network
Stop Juan Cole: Michael J. Totten (Vote here)

Top American Islamic Cleric Threatens U.S. on Egyptian TV - Pajamas Media
Funds tie Obama to Richardson 'pay-to-play' figure: ABC News
Waiting for Dodd's Countrywide Mortgage Info: Wall Street Journal

Times's Crime Confusions Persist: Error and distortion at the paper, Heaven help us, of record: City Journal
Housing push for Hispanics spawns wave of foreclosures: Wall Street Journal
Coulter vs. the Counter-Coulters: Creators' Syndicate:

...liberals who claim to oppose "inflammatory rhetoric" on television when it comes from conservatives have no problem with uncivil liberalism. Or 100 percent hate-filled left-wing character assassination. Take NBC, which could not look sillier if it ever seriously banned Coulter for being hyperbolic, when vicious, hyperbolic liberals (Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews) dominate MSNBC... [consider] Al Franken suggesting Karl Rove and Scooter Libby should be executed over Plamegate. (NBC's Matt Lauer and his off-camera crew laughed at that... Or recall Bill Maher on his HBO show in 2007 suggesting Arianna Huffington shouldn't ban commenters on her website wishing Dick Cheney had died in a terrorist attack in Afghanistan.

"That's a funny joke," Maher said. "If this isn't China, shouldn't you be able to say that?"

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Paul Krugman, the second-dumbest Nobel Prize winner alive*


Paul Krugman is stupid. Capital S stupid. Ignorant as the day is long. He longs for senility, knowing it will increase his intelligence. Paul Krugman -- the second-dumbest Nobel Prize winner alive* -- claims that government spending, in the form of a gigantic stimulus package, can create wealth.

* Al Gore still holds the title by a significant margin.

Now, what we’re hearing about the Obama plan is that it calls for $775 billion over two years, with $300 billion in tax cuts and the rest in spending. Call that $150 billion per year in tax cuts, $240 billion each year in spending.

How much do tax cuts and spending raise GDP? The widely cited estimates of Mark Zandi of Economy.com indicate a multiplier of around 1.5 for spending, with widely varying estimates for tax cuts. Payroll tax cuts, which make up about half the Obama proposal, are pretty good, with a multiplier of 1.29; business tax cuts, which make up the rest, are much less effective.

Never mind that Krugman fails to mention where the government gets its money. That's critical, because government only has a few ways it can secure funds:

• It taxes, sucking it out of the real economy to fuel a bureaucracy aimed at penalizing individuals and businesses for their success.

• It spends money it doesn't have, increasing its deficits.

• Or it prints money, which eventually leads to inflation.

Put simply, taxation simply redistributes money and also serves to fund government operations. This drains the economy of productive labor because every dollar pulled out of the economy for taxes can't be spent on goods and services. In short, government isn't exactly a value-creator.

Deficit spending is borrowing, plain and simple, in this case from other countries. Every dollar borrowed must be paid back -- with interest -- in the future.

And endlessly printing money hearkens back to the days of the Weimar Republic, when wheelbarrows were used to transport money for grocery shopping.

As for real value creation? Consider Google. Sergey Brin and Larry Page were a couple of students sitting in a dorm room a dozen years ago. One brilliant idea later, their company's market capitalization is over $100 billion (even after the stock market meltdown). That's value creation.

Putting Paul Krugman in charge of the economy would be akin to letting Rosie O'Donnell run Jenny Craig. The only certainty is the wide scale of the resulting disaster.

Update: High Plains Blogger correctly points out that Krugman is actually the third-dumbest Nobel Prize winner alive. Jimmy Carter edged out Krugman for the #2 slot.

Update II: "A patriotic stimulus."

Hat tip: Scott.

The Energy Weapon


On January 1, 2009 Russia, in what has become an annual ritual, reduced its natural gas supply to Europe by the exact amount the country of Ukraine uses. Unlike previous years, however, a quick resolution to pricing and shipment disputes was not forthcoming. Instead the situation has escalated.

On Jan. 6, Russia reduced the flows further — by the amount that Moscow estimates Ukraine is siphoning —- which shut down some major branches of the line. As a result, a minor inconvenience to European customers has turned into an energy crisis with lights and heat going out in Serbia and Bosnia. Other countries facing flow reductions —- ordered from most to least severe —- are Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Hungary, Croatia, Austria, the Czech Republic, Romania, Slovakia, Poland, Germany and Italy.

Russia could —- and very well might —- turn full supplies back on at any moment, but that would mean that Moscow either backed down or achieved its goal. Russia is attempting to use the natural gas pricing issue to topple Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, the leader of the country’s pro-Western factions.

Perhaps someone could alert our Democratic leadership that energy can be used as a weapon.

The Democrats' bizarre attempts to suppress U.S. exploration for fuel is not only foolhardy, it is hazardous to the health and well-being of the country.

Russia's treatment of the Ukraine should serve as a warning. But, given our brilliant Democratic leadership and its avowed allegiance to "The No Zone", somehow I think we've got a better chance of seeing Leon Panetta winning American Idol.

12-inch Netbooks on the way, much to Intel's chagrin


TechCrunch reports that 12-inch netbooks are on the way and Intel isn't a bit happy about it.

12 inch Netbooks are coming. Dell has the Inspiron Mini 12, Samsung will unveil its 12 inch netbook model to the U.S. shortly, and more are coming. And Intel isn’t happy about this at all...

We asked Intel if they forbid manufacturers to build Netbooks with larger than 10 inch screens, which is what those manufacturers are telling us (Dell notwithstanding). Their answer: “Intel defines a netbook as a 10″ or smaller screen size. We recommend that OEMs and netbook manufacturers use that guideline as well in order to get the best user experience.”

That’s a nice statement but it’s complete rubbish. There is no performance loss with a 12 inch screen v. a smaller screen (other than power usage). A 12 inch Netbook is just as fast or as slow as a 10 inch one...

It seems that netbooks, which are powered by low-cost Atom chips, are eating into the market share of conventional laptops. And that translates to less dual cores -- high-end workstation chips -- sold.

Problem is, if you don't cannibalize yourself, someone else will take the opportunity. So Intel needs to keep on keepin' on.

Of course missing an already reduced revenue projection by $500 million (as Intel just did), would put any corporate muckety-muck in a bad mood.

Larwyn's Links: Dead terrorists and missiles found at UN school in Gaza


Hamas terrorists, missiles at UN school in Gaza: Gateway Pundit
What Congress Knew About 'Torture': Wall Street Journal
Library of Congress photo stream: LOC

Apostasy and Freedom: Pakistan Christian Post
Why does the New York Times love Hamas?: Daily Beast
Talking Joe: Biden makes news: Politico

Reuters: in the service of Hamas: Pajamas Media (Bob Owens)
The Franken Threat: Wall Street Journal
True Evil Exposed: Hamas in the Schoolyard: A Blog for All

Beyond the headlines: tragedy at the Jebaliya school: Ministry of Foreign Affairs (IL)
70,000 Iranian students 'volunteer to carry out suicide bombings in Israel': Telegraph (UK)
Revealing Silence at the Gaza/Egypt Border: Pajamas Media (Richard Landes)

Rebuilding the GOP, one Internet user at a time: Pajamas Media (Mindy Finn)
Report: Al-Qaida #2 blames Obama for Gaza fight: AP
Andrew Breitbart launches Big Hollywood: Big Hollywood

Quote: "I notice in the pictures of demonstrations in western cities many of the protestors appear to be Muslim. There is a crude arithmetic logic about European antipathy to the Zionist Entity: For your average finger-in-the-windy politician, there is simply no electoral upside in being pro-Israel, and quite a lot of potential downside. If you think Europe is soft on Israel's "right to exist" now, just wait another ten years." -- Mark Steyn

Tuesday, January 06, 2009

One Minute Action News: January 6, 2009



Good evening. I'm Bip Ripley and this --


-- is One Minute Action News!


And now the headlines: Bernard Madoff accused of running massive Ponzi scheme: Social Security


Obama names new head of CIA, old experienced hand Sandy Berger


UN calls for truce between Microsoft and Google


Teachers Unions defend Obama's choice of private schools for kids


Blago has a new pick for Illinois Senator: Dan Rostenkowski


Somali pirates acquire General Motors


and, finally, Al Jazeera, NPR and Media Matters announce new cable channel for kids


This has been One Minute Action News! I'm Bip Ripley and thanks for --

Red Alert: The bizarre earmark of Blago's Senate Candidate 3

Remember hearing about "Senate Candidate 3" in the complaint filed by the U.S. District Attorney against Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich?

You may recall that "Senate Candidate 1" was Barack Obama's choice: his friend, the ultra-qualified Valerie Jarrett. And "Senate Candidate 5" was Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., a man with a better sense of "fundraising" than Carolyn-esque entitlement. But who was "Senate Candidate 3"?

That would appear to be none other than Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL, what else?). Schakowsky and her family have a deeply troubling history with non-profits.

• In 2006 Anne Leary reported that Schakowsky's husband -- Robert Creamer -- was sentenced to five months in prison and eleven months of house arrest for bank fraud and tax violations involving a non-profit called the "Illinois Public Action Council" (IPAC). The indictment charged Creamer with floating "check and wire transfer deposits between bank accounts to... hide their deficiencies... [and used] the inflated balances to pay expenses of his organization, as well as his own salary and discretionary expenses." Creamer resigned his longtime leadership positions after "the FBI questioned him about a $1 million overdraft... [he was also charged] with failing to pay more than $300,000 in federal income taxes for employees of the group and for himself between 1996 and 2000. Four other counts allege he filed false income tax returns between 1996 and 1999... Each count of bank fraud carries a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison and $1 million fine. Each count of failing to collect and pay withholding taxes carries a penalty of five years, and each count of filing a false tax return carries a penalty of 3 years."

• Schakowsky served on the board of IPAC while her husband was committing various felonies. But we're betting she was completely unaware of her hubby's scams. Hubby was "swindling nine financial institutions of at least $2.3 million while he ran a public interest group in the 1990s." And Schakowsky "co-signed the fraudulent tax returns".

Schakowsky's curious earmark: SALF


• Rep. Schakowsky authored a 2009 earmark for another Chicago-area nonprofit called The Save A Life Foundation (SALF), which is described on her website as a "Community Response Systems Initiative". Run that by me again?

• A 2006 ABC investigation revealed that while Save a Life received millions of dollars in government funds and corporate donations, it made a series of "misleading claims [including] deceptive credentials that raise doubts about [its] integrity, funding and training." According to ABC, founder Carol Spizzirri represented herself as a registered nurse specializing in kidney transplants. But ABC claims she never received a degree of any kind nor was she ever registered as a nurse.

The president of the National Council Against Health Fraud, a watchdog organization of medical professionals, says that federal and state funding agencies have been defrauded by Spizzirri's claims that she has a nursing degree and license... Save-A-Life charged [Chicago schools] $50,000 the past two years.

...Spizzirri pays herself an annual salary of $120,000, according to Save-A-Life records on file with the Illinois attorney general. She travels on a generous expense account while working to obtain additional government funding for expansion of her organization nationally.

ABC also reported that Spizzirri fabricated circumstances of her daughter's death when lobbying lawmakers.


• A subsequent ABC investigation in 2007 revealed more problematic activities linked to Save-a-Life and possible misuse of public funds.

SALF and Emil Jones


During its 2007 investigation ABC questioned Illinois State Senate President Emil Jones, who was listed as a spokesperson for the organization.

Save-A-Life has received millions of dollars in state and federal funding, and has listed powerful State Senate President Emil Jones as one of its major backers...

"I've never supported it funding-wise," Jones said.

And Jones says the charity is not currently slated to receive money in next year's state budget. The apparent cut-off of government funds follows I-Team disclosures about Save-A-Life founder Carol Spizzirri.

...Both senators Trotter and Jones have been given awards by Save-A-Life, Jones for saving someone from choking in a Springfield restaurant. Since then, Jones says he has been wrongly listed as Save-A-Life's "Illinois spokesman" and that he has never even helped fund the group.

"What do you mean support? I saved a woman's life down here in Springfield and this group came together, and they want to honor me for the woman choking to death in the Globe restaurant. Remember that?" Jones said.

Problem for Jones is a little-known Internet tool called Google.

Why is Jones important? Not only is he known as "The Godfather of the Southside", last month -- just before the Blago scandal broke -- Illinois State Senator Emil Jones was leaked as the front-runner to take Obama's empty Senate seat.

Someone is lying about Jones' funding of SALF


Put simply, someone is lying about Jones' funding of SALF. A perusal of SALF's website and a review of its IRS forms show that Jones was intimately involved with SALF.

In 2004 SALF claimed Jones had "yet again... led the Illinois State delegation in securing a spot for SALF in this year's budget."

In 2005 SALF named Jones its spokesperson and thanked him for his funding of its efforts.

"President Jones has lead [sic] the challenge in helping SALF pass an Illinois mandate for all police and firefighters to be trained in CPR and First aid prior to graduating from their academy in 1993, He has supported state funds to allow SALF to train over one million Illinois school children in these life saving skills. President Jones is a true humanitarian by saving the lives of three individuals by using the Heimlich maneuver. As our State Spokesman he will encourage others to follow his example of bravery to learn vital skills, especially our school children, should they ever be faced with a life-threatening emergency" – Carol Spizzirri, SALF President/Founder.

And on SALF's IRS 990 forms (non-profit tax returns), Jones was listed as director in both 2004 and 2005.

Put simply, someone is lying. Jones appears on official IRS forms as a SALF director and is described in numerous articles and press releases as funding SALF.

Despite these questions, SALF is on target to receive yet another bundle of cash -- this time at federal taxpayers' expense, no less -- courtesy of a bizarre Illinois earmark.

Shouldn't Jan Schakowsky be investigating SALF, not funding them?


A whole bunch of questions come to mind:

• Why is Schakowsky funding SALF and not investigating them?

• Why is either SALF or Emil Jones lying about his involvement with the group?

• Did someone lie to the IRS about Jones' directorship and thereby falsify a tax return?

• Why is Schakowsky avoiding questions about her SALF earmark?

• Why is Spizzirri avoiding questions about her background?

• And where did all the millions already sent to SALF go?

Someone needs to stop this madness before it gets even worse. Schakowsky's earmark needs to be shot down and investigated.

And I thought the Clintons were bad.

Linked by: Marathon Pundit and Right Side of Life. Thanks!

Good news: we've got the moral high ground!



Thank goodness the new administration won't haze any terrorists! We wouldn't want to lose credibility with the "Arab Street!"

Larywn's Links: Kristallnacht in Antwerp


Kristallnacht in Antwerp: Gateway Pundit
Dem governors seek $1 trillion to 'keep afloat': Politico
Someone thaw out Gore: sea ice ends year at '79 levels: DailyTech

Then Clintons' Iranian Connection: Forbes
Daily Scoreboard: Don Surber
The Three-State Option for Middle East Peace: Washington Post (John Bolton)

20 most annoying liberals of 2008: Right Wing News
NBC bans Ann Coulter for life: Gateway Pundit
Pelosi plans rules rewrite to suppress GOP dissent: Human Events

Iranian student group: Hamas is a bunch of terrorists: Taif-e 'Alameh (via MEMRI)
Cars loaded with petrol bombs launched at French synagogue: Straits Times
Ethically Challenged? What does Richardson say about Obama?: Fox News (Andrea Tantaros)

Hall of Shame Links


Obama must get tough with Israel: Newsweek
Nineteen hijackers died on 9/11. What should be done with their remains?: Newsweek

Quote o' the Day: "If we see Roger Clinton performing at some inaugural event, then we know the Clintons have the goods on Obama." -- Jammie Wearing Fool

Monday, January 05, 2009

Federal Appeals Court: Government can withhhold detainee IDs


Brace for the exploding heads over at Daily Kos. Earlier today a federal appeals court ruled that the U.S. government can keep the identities of its detainees secret.

The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan reversed a lower court judge regarding eight files containing records documenting allegations of detainee abuse by military personnel and documents containing reports of allegations of detainee-against-detainee abuse.

The misconduct alleged to have been carried out by military personnel included spraying detainees with water hoses, striking them, using pepper spray against them and splashing them with cleaning products.

A three-judge panel of the appeals court found that the detainees and their families have a privacy interest in their identifying information. The government had argued that the detainees faced possible harm if their identities were revealed.

The appeals court said that The Associated Press, which sought the identities, had not shown how the public interest would be served by disclosing them.

Gee, the Associated Press?

Courtesy of Newsbusters, some of the AP's recent hits include:

• Chicago Homicides Exceed U.S. Iraq Deaths: Not News
• The Associated Press Chronicles 'Guerrilla Warrior' Castro's 'Push to Power'
• AP Cries That People Are Mean to Barack
• AP Attacks Gov. Palin Even in Birth Announcement of Grandson
• For Zimbabweans, A Cow Dung Christmas; AP Still Partially Deflects Blame from Mugabe

The news isn't all bad for the AP. Though they just got shot down by the Appeals Court and the dying newspaper business is melting away revenues, the AP did just save 15% on their car insurance at GEICO.

Chicago... my kind o' town!


Papa B, a native Chicagoan, sent this one in

Chicago....

Who Runs it?
Senators: Barack Obama & Dick Durbin
Representative: Jesse Jackson, Jr.
Illinois Governor: Rod Blogojevich (arrested)
Illinois House leader: Mike Madigan
Illinois Attorney General: Lisa Madigan (daughter of Mike)
Chicago Mayor: Richard M. Daley (son of Mayor Richard J. Daley)
The leadership in Illinois? All Democrats.

Thank you for the combat zone in Chicago.

Body count in the last six months: 292 killed (murdered) in Chicago -- more souls lost than in Iraq.

State pension fund - $44 Billion in debt, worst in the country.

Cook County (Chicago ) sales tax - 10.25% highest in country (Look it up).

Chicago school system - rated one of the worst in the country and Obama just named the Arne Duncan, Superintendent of Chicago Public Schools as his Secretary of Education. Only 17% of 8th graders under his command read at grade level. That means 83% of Chicago aged students are reading below grade level. Over 60% are reading four or more grade levels below.

Of course, they're all blaming each other. They can't blame Republicans because there aren't any.

Change!

I didn't bother checking Snopes because I don't care.

It's Magic! Al Franken creates 359 votes out of thin air


Over the course of the last decade the Democratic Party has assembled an impressive history of vote fraud.


ACORN, ostensibly a non-partisan voter registration group, is alleged to have created hundreds of thousands of bogus registrations. And all of the frauds discovered thus far, in more than a dozen states, benefit Democratic candidates. ACORN has even been caught paying for votes with crack cocaine.


Barack Obama's presidential campaign intentionally disabled all elements of credit-card security for its fundraising efforts and thereby appears to have accepted tens of millions in illegal and/or foreign contributions.

And in an eerie precursor to the Franken case, Republican Dino Rossi lost the governorship in Washington state after winning the vote and the initial recount in 2004. In a final recount, Rossi lost by 133 votes and subsequent investigations found rampant fraud involving (who else?) ACORN, 1,392 votes cast illegally by felons, 252 improperly counted provisional ballots, and at least 19 dead voters.

But just when you think the Democrats have actually hit bottom, they break out the pick-axes and start digging deeper. Such is the case with the 2008 election for a Minnesota senate seat that pitted the incumbent, Norm Coleman, against former comedian and talk-show host Al Franken.

Thanks to dozens of bizarre "coincidences" in Minnesota -- and a Democratic Secretary of State -- Franken may yet steal the Senate seat despite losing the election by 215 votes.

After a recount fraught with challenged ballots, county officials attempting to discern voter "intent" and mysteriously appearing and disappearing ballots, Franken leads by 225 votes. And now that he leads, Franken is demanding the recount process stop altogether! Some of the problems that have benefited Franken include:

25 precincts now have more ballots than voters and a State Supreme Court Justice has acknowledged ballots were "very likely" counted twice. This double-counting appears to have added 100 votes to Franken's total.

When recounts benefited Coleman, the Franken campaign demanded the election night totals count instead. For example, one precinct vote swap gave Franken an extra 46 votes.

But when another county's recount ended with 177 more ballots than recorded votes, Franken's campaign demanded the recount total be used. A single precinct vote swap like this one gave Franken another 37 votes.

Franken-leaning counties submitted 1,350 absentee ballots after the election claiming they had been erroneously rejected. But Coleman-leaning counties, presumably attempting to play by the rules, did not submit any significant number of "incorrectly rejected" absentee ballots. This imbalance gave Franken another 176 votes.

Hugh Hewitt once wrote a book called If it's not close, they can't cheat (subtitled "Crushing the Democrats in Every Election and Why Your Life Depends on It").

Looks like the Democrats have proven Mr. Hewitt right once again.

Linked by: Hill Street Blahg. Thanks!

Larwyn's Links: "Amanpour makes s*** up as she goes along"


Union bosses getting paid for bowling and drinking beer: STACLU
Harry Reid discredits U.S. military (again): Gateway Pundit
Escape from Hamas (Fox Special on YouTube): Dark Skies

The Audi R8's lights cost more than your entire car: Gizmodo
Why 2009 May Be The Nail In Newspapers’ Coffins: paidContent UK
BBC subtly indoctrinates its viewers: Huffington Post (Hannah Fisher)

Obama team throws Richardson under the bus: ABC (Jake Tapper)
Farfour the Mouse: canceled for the spring season: IsraelMatzav
Someone Finally Looked Up What "Disproportionate Force" Really Means: Daled Amos

Obama's Commerce Secretary resigns, engulfed in pay-for-play scandal - Fox News
Stop This Vicious Slaughter! England Must Stop Waging War On The Nazis! - Huffington Post (Martin Lewis)
Annihilation of Terrorists; No One Protested (No Jews involved): National Review (Tom Gross)

CNN: Israel overreacting because Hamas is too incompetent to murder Israelis consistently: Mere Rhetoric:


Pollak goes on to note that Amanpour's casualty figures were off by 75%, an error statisticians often attribute to "being a f***ing imbecile." Still better than the UN stooge who insisted that "it's obvious" that Hamas was interested in a truce because they only fired one rocket on December 26. That was a 96% error, or what statisticians call "making s*** up as you go along."

Sunday, January 04, 2009

The True Roots of Palestinian Nationalism and Islamic Jihad


On October 28, 2005, President George W. Bush used for the first time the term “Islamic fascist” to describe the Muslim terrorist groups currently at war with the West. He denounced them as movements that have a “violent and political vision”, and call for “the establishment by terrorism, subversion and insurgency, of a totalitarian empire that denies all political and religious freedom.”

The Muslim groups which today threaten the West with terrorism, subversion and insurgency, and which, in their own words, seek to bring about a global totalitarian empire are not only fascist in the broad sociological sense, but can trace their literal historical origins to Nazism and its genocidal ambitions.

The ideology of the Islamists whose ranks today include not only al-Qaeda but also Hamas and Hezbollah -- originated with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. And the Muslim Brotherhood finds not just its roots, but much of its symbolism, terminology, and political priorities deep within the heart of Nazi fascism.

Hassan al-Banna (1906 - 1949) was born into the family of a poor watchmaker in southern Egypt. As a child, he was attracted to the extremist and xenophobic aspects of Islam which were hostile to Western secularism and to its system of rights, particularly women’s rights.

While still in his teens, the young al-Banna and friends (they referred to each other as ‘brethren’) met frequently to discuss the situation in the Middle East, to argue about the ills of Arab society, and to lament the decline of Islam. Their angst was in large part a reaction to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the end of the Muslim Caliphate, the British occupation of Egypt, and the resulting exposure of Arab society to Western values.

It was to strike back against these evils that al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928. Among the perspectives he drew on to address these issues were the anti-capitalist doctrines of European Marxism and especially fascism.

The group expanded during the 1930’s as Al-Banna would describe, in inflammatory speeches, the horrors of hell expected for heretics, and consequently, the need for Muslims to return to their purest religious roots, re-establish the Caliphate, and resume the great and final holy war, or jihad, against the non-Muslim world.

The first big step on the path to the international jihad came during “The Great Arab Revolt” of 1936-9, when one of the most famous of the Muslim Brotherhood’s leaders, the Hajj Amin al-Husseini, Grand Mufti (Supreme Muslim religious leader) of Jerusalem, incited his followers to a three-year war against the Jews in Palestine and the British who administered the Mandate. By the end of the 1930’s there were more than a half million active members registered, in more than two thousand branches across the Arab world.

It was during this time that the Muslim Brotherhood found a soul mate in Nazi Germany. The Reich offered great power connections to the movement, but the relationship brokered by the Brotherhood was more than a marriage of convenience. Long before the war, al-Banna had developed an Islamic religious ideology which previewed Hitler’s Nazism. Both movements sought world conquest and domination.

Both were explicitly anti-nationalist in the sense that they believed in the liquidation of the nation-state in favor of a trans-national unifying community: in Islam the umma (community of all believers); and in Nazism the herrenvolk (master race). Both worshipped the unifying totalitarian figure of the Caliph or Führer.

And both rabidly hated the Jews and sought their destruction.

As the Brotherhood’s political and military alliance with Nazi Germany developed, these parallels facilitated practical interactions created a full-blown alliance, with formal state visits, de facto ambassadors, and overt as well as sub rosa joint ventures.

Al-Banna’s followers easily transplanted into the Arab world a newly Nazified form of traditional Muslim Jew-hatred, with Arab translations of Mein Kampf (translated into Arabic as “My Jihad”) and other Nazi anti-Semitic works, including Der Sturmer hate-cartoons, adapted to portray the Jew as the demonic enemy of Allah.

The single best known and most active Nazi sympathizer in the Muslim Brotherhood was not al-Banna himself, but the Hajj Amin al-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and one-time President of the Supreme Muslim Council of Palestine. As one commentator has noted, to understand the Hajj’s influence on the Middle East in the 1930s and 40s is to understand the ongoing genocidal program of the Arab terrorist organizations warring against the Jews of Israel today.

Al-Husseini used his office as a powerful bully pulpit from which to preach anti-Jewish, anti-Zionist, and (turning on his patrons) anti-British vitriol. He was directly involved in the organization of the 1929 riots which destroyed the 3000-year-old Jewish community of Hebron. And he was quick to see that he had a natural ally in Hitler and in the rising star of Nazi Germany.

As early as the spring of 1933, he assured the German consul in Jerusalem that “the Muslims inside and outside Palestine welcome the new regime of Germany and hope for the extension of the fascist, anti-democratic governmental system to other countries.”

The youth organization established by the Mufti used Nazi emblems, names and uniforms.


During the “Great Arab Revolt” of 1936-9, which al-Husseini helped organize and which Germany funded, the swastika was used as a mark of identity on Arabic leaflets and graffiti. Arab children welcomed each other with the Hitler salute, and a sea of German flags and pictures of Hitler were displayed at celebrations. The Grand Mufti declared certain zones in Palestine to be “liberated” from the Jews and British; and he mandated Shari’a - Islamic religious law. Christian as well as Muslim women were forced to veil themselves. Opponents were liquidated.

The British sent massive reinforcements to put down the revolt. Al-Husseini fled to Lebanon, where he worked tirelessly on behalf of Germany and Nazism. He played a pivotal behind-the-scenes role in instigating a pro-Nazi coup in Iraq in 1941, in urging Nazis and pro-Nazi governments in Europe to transport Jews to death camps, in training pro-Nazi Bosnian brigades, and, after Hitler’s cause was lost, in funneling Nazi loot into post-war Arab countries.

His Muslim “Hanjar” division was credited with the murder of roughly 90% of Bosnian Jewry.

He succeeded, almost single-handedly, in engraving on the Arab consciousness the image of the Jew as the demonic apotheosis of all things evil. Not only was everything Jewish evil; but under al-Husseini’s deft diatribe, everything evil was Jewish.

After meeting with Hitler on November 21, 1941, Husseini praised the Germans because they “know how to get rid of the Jews, and that brings us close to the Germans and sets us in their camp.”

On March 1, 1944, the Mufti called out in a broadcast from Zeesen: “Arabs! Rise as one and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. Kill them with your teeth if need be. This pleases God, history, and religion. This saves your honor.” His goal, with the help of the Nazis, was “to solve the question of the Jewish elements in Palestine and in other Arab countries as required by national interests, and in the same way as the Jewish question in the Axis lands is being solved.”

His own memoirs, and the testimony of German defendants at the Nuremberg trials later on, showed that he planned a death camp modeled on Auschwitz to be constructed near Nablus for the genocide of Palestine’s Jews.

It was the Mufti who urged Hitler, Himmler, and General Ribbentrop to concentrate Germany’s considerable industrial and military resources on the extermination of European Jewry. The foremost Muslim spiritual leader of his time helped in his own way by lobbying to prevent Jews from leaving Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria, even though those governments were initially willing to let them go.

As Eichmann himself recounted: “We have promised him [the Mufti] that no European Jew would enter Palestine any more.”

But Germany’s defeat in North Africa meant that the Einsatsgruppen, which had murdered more than one million of the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust, never took its ghastly show to Palestine. The Mufti suddenly found himself a prisoner of war in France, and condemned as a war criminal by the Nuremberg prosecutors.

But with the Cold War looming, the British and the Americans sought to curry favor with the Arab world (and prevent the USS R from making political headway there) by allowing him to escape. He fled first to Egypt, and later to Syria. From Damascus, Hajj Amin al-Husseini reestablished himself as the foremost spokesman for the Arabs of Palestine.

A few years later, when the question of Palestine came before the United Nations, he and Hassan al-Banna urged the Arab world to unite in opposition to it. The two men saw in the UN resolution for the partition of Palestine an example of the “Jewish world conspiracy,” even though the plan provided for an Arab state in Palestine alongside of the Jewish one. But in their view a state for the Arabs of Palestine took a back seat to the eradication of Zionism and the annihilation of Palestine’s Jews.

As the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Arabia and Morocco invaded Israel in 1948, the general-secretary of the Arab League, Abd al-Rahman Azzam (aka Azzam Pasha), who had previously stated privately that he considered the partition of Palestine to be the only rational solution, now stood shoulder to shoulder with the Mufti. “This war,” he declared on the day of the Arab attack, “will be a war of destruction.” It was: but it was the armies assembled by Arab generals, many of whom had fought with Rommel in behalf of the Third Reich that were destroyed.


Al-Husseini’s Nazi ambitions, even though they were now seen as part of the Holocaust that he had helped in his small way to engineer, continued to be a source of pride for his Arab supporters after his death in 1948.

And he found admirers elsewhere in the decades ahead as well. Professor Edward Said -- an associate of Barack Obama -- praised al-Husseini, former partner with the Nazis in their crimes against humanity, as “the voice of the Palestinian people.”

Yasser Arafat, a cousin of al-Husseini, referred to him as “our hero.”


Source: The Terrorism Awareness Project's The Nazi Roots of Palestinian Nationalism and Islamic Jihad (PDF)
Related: Pajamas Media's Comparing Hamas to Hitler is an insult to the Nazis