I am back! Much more to follow. Wanted to wish all my Christian friends the Happiest and best ever Easter.
In a hospital's Intensive Care Unit, patients always died in the same bed, on Sunday morning, at about 11:00 am, regardless of their medical condition. This puzzled the doctors and some even thought it had something to do with the super natural.
No one could solve the mystery as to why the deaths occurred around 11:00 AM Sunday, so a worldwide team of experts was assembled to investigate the cause of the incidents The next Sunday morning, a few minutes before 11:00 AM all of the doctors and nurses nervously waited outside the ward to see for themselves what the terrible phenomenon was all about. Some were holding wooden crosses, prayer books, and other holy objects to ward off the evil spirits Just when the clock struck 11:00, Pookie Johnson , the part-time Sunday sweeper, entered the ward and unplugged the life support system so he could use the vacuum cleaner.
Still Having a Bad Day?
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Appointees from one administration to the next, somehow get buried, remain and resurface. Like cats they have nine lives. (See 1 below.)
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Last week President Obama asked Israeli youth to stand in the shoes of Palestinians. That is a reasonable request. You always learn something when you stand in the shoes of others.
If that were to happen,however, Israelis would wind up eliminating where the Palestinians live on the map, would be teaching their young to hate and would be sending many Palestinian kids in bomb belts to target Israelis and praising them as peace martyrs after they blew themselves to smitherings.
Some would also claim Israelis were targeting Palestinian children and would fake it and get the duped Western press and media to photograph these false settings.
Also, if Israelis were to stand in the shoes of Palestinians they would be locking themselves into victim hood and backward progress.
To keep the shoe metaphor why not ask the same of Palestinians. They might learn something about how to handle incoming rockets and how to dodge rockets aimed randomly and learn how to bomb Israeli children's schools, civilian buses and how to get to the hospital to have chards of glass removed from your body - you get the ideas!
Not sure this is what Obama had in mind but maybe he was not using his teleprompter. (See 2 below.)
But now that I have criticized him I must give the devil his due.
In an aggregate sense Obama's trip was a success and perhaps it demonstrated he is slowly learning.
His orchestration of the 'kiss and make up' between Israel and Turkey was masterful and took some excellent co-ordinating.
It means two of the Middle East's most stable countries could now stand as a bulwark against Iran and it also means the energy development picture among Greek Cypress, Turkey and Israel could be moving in a favorable direction.
Secondly, we now have the CIA involved in aiding the rebel faction in Syria and that could mean, when the Assad matter is resolved, we will have a better ally favorable to our mutual interests than that which happened in Libya. Again, a positive development that Obama should be congratulated for.
Finally, his recognition of Israel, its history and current problems came in for a better resolution and active verbalization and for this Obama should also be given credit.
AIPAC's assessment (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1)Expose and Oppose Obama's Radical Appointees
No matter what progress Republicans may make in electoral politics over the coming years, it will be difficult to roll back the steady march of liberalism that has taken place inside our cultural, bureaucratic and legal institutions -- from academia to regulatory agencies to the Department of Justice -- but we have to try.
A good place to start would be to oppose Obama's radical appointees, the latest being his appointment for Secretary of Labor, Thomas Perez.
Radical liberals are characteristically activists, strategists and organizers. Their plan to infiltrate and dominate academia was hardly spontaneous, and its effects have hardly been sporadic. Peruse any university course catalog and notice the kinds of political tripe that pass for core studies.
The same phenomenon occurs throughout the nation's regulatory bureaucracies. Liberals have managed to place so many ideologically charged people inside powerful administrative agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, that these institutions tend to be radicalized from the bottom up. The radicals pursue their radical agenda no matter how out of phase it is with the will of the majority of Americans -- as if the majority even has a clue or has time to apprise itself as to the kinds of things going on.
But it's not just that we have a disproportionate number of leftists populating our institutions and agencies. This imbalance wouldn't matter so much if their every action weren't driven by ideology and if they played by the rules. But they often see their calling as being not so much to perform their assigned tasks as it is to use their positions to effect radical societal changes.
They don't have the same reverence for the Constitution and the rule of law as conservatives. They view things through an ideological prism and act in deference to their ideology and their political ends more than their conservative counterparts. They see themselves as activist agents for change, as crusaders with the lofty goal of advancing an agenda so morally superior that they don't think twice about bending and twisting rules and selectively interpreting laws and regulations to serve their agenda.
These radicals will continue to pursue their mischief irrespective of the political appointees overseeing their operations, but let's not fool ourselves; the appointees do matter -- some do more than others -- and can make a difference over the long haul. Justice Department and Labor Department appointees are two glaring examples. Department and division heads set policy and set the tone.
Through their radical prism, leftist Justice Department honchos are often blinded to such legitimately noble principles as equal protection of the laws. To them, equal protection doesn't mean equal protection for everyone; it means avenging past wrongs on behalf of historically aggrieved minorities (real and perceived) and not just according those groups preferential treatment but affirmatively discriminating against others -- e.g., whites -- who they believe are not entitled to equal protection.
In his handling of the voter intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party alone, Attorney General Eric Holder proved that he believes that civil rights laws do not exist for the protection of whites from infringement by other groups. Neither he nor his important lieutenants believe in enforcing voting laws in a race-neutral manner, equal protection be damned. Former members of the Justice Department's civil rights division have attested to that fact.
Columnist Quin Hillyer reports that though Thomas Perez wasn't working in this division when the original decision was made to dismiss the case against the New Black Panthers, "his direct involvement in, and hands-on management of, what amounted to a cover-up of the decision's origins should alone be disqualifying for any Cabinet post."
Do you think the American public, even rank-and-file Democrats, would approve of significant divisions of the Justice Department and Labor Department being turned over to radicals like Perez, who believes in using his position to install 113 fellow radicals in career positions at the civil rights division, to impose racial quotas when the law doesn't permit it, to oppose voter ID laws on spurious, manufactured racial grounds, and to harass states such as Arizona merely for trying to assist the federal government in enforcing laws this administration refuses to enforce?
We have to do a better job of exposing radicals and preventing them from overthrowing our constitutional guarantees from inside our government. Sean Hannity, Quin Hillyer, Michelle Malkin and others have stepped up to the plate to expose the radicalism of Perez and other Obama appointees who are dismantling our institutions brick by brick. Others of us need to do a better job in this regard.
When a president appoints radicals who disrespect the Constitution and rule of law and believe they can be manipulated at will to serve their political ends, he forfeits any traditional deference to which his appointments might otherwise be entitled.
Perez must be opposed.
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2)The Best Mideast Intentions
Obama reassures Israel, but peace in Palestine seems a distant hope.
President Obama delivered an impassioned speech to an audience of young Israelis in Jerusalem Thursday, pledging America's commitment to the Jewish state's security while insisting that, when it comes to the Palestinians, "peace is possible." Speaking alongside Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah earlier in the day, he also got a taste of how distant that possibility is.
The best news from this trip is that it seems to reflect Mr. Obama's recognition that America's friends have to trust him before he can broker a peace with adversaries. The President spent his first term trying to put distance between himself and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the result was mutual disappointment and discord.
This week Mr. Obama has sought to reassure Israelis about U.S. commitments even as he coaxes them to take risks for peace. From his reference to Mr. Netanyahu as "my friend Bibi" to his tough language on Iran's nuclear program and his determination to stop it, the President put on a charm offensive designed to woo his skeptical Israeli hosts.
All this is to the good. The President even came around to Mr. Netanyahu's position that negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians should proceed without preconditions. That's another break from the first term's rancor. The Palestinians have so far insisted that they won't come to the table without a total halt to Israeli settlement construction, and the U.S. position encouraged their intransigence.
Mr. Obama assured Israelis that they have a willing peace partner in Mr. Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. But you wouldn't know it from Mr. Abbas's remarks Thursday. The man who is supposed to represent the moderate side of local politics delivered a verbal salvo against Israel's alleged "violence, occupation, settlements, arrests, siege and denial of refugee rights," which isn't mood music for negotiations to resume.
Mr. Abbas's reference to refugees was especially toxic, given that most Palestinians take "refugee rights" to mean repatriating the descendants of Arab refugees from Israel's War of Independence back to Israel itself, which would destroy Israel as a Jewish state. Mr. Abbas continues to advocate "reconciliation" with Hamas, which remains unreconciled to Israel's existence and firmly in control of Gaza.
On the streets of Ramallah, meanwhile, protestors gathered to denounce America—"the head of the snake"—and Mr. Abbas, too. "The people want RPGs, not [security] coordination with the CIA," said one demonstrator quoted in the Times of Israel. If "peace begins in the heart of people," as Mr. Obama told his audience in Jerusalem, the feeling seems dispiritingly absent among too many Palestinians. At least Mr. Obama's Israeli audience gave him a rousing ovation.
History shows that a generation of militants can give way to a generation of pacifists. It happened in Germany and Japan, and nobody should give up hope that such a change will eventually come to Palestinians, whenever they tire of nationalist or religious slogans. Until then, Israel will have to negotiate as best it can with eyes firmly on its security. Mr. Obama's best intentions can't deliver peace until enough Palestinians decide they want it too.
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