Thursday, April 25, 2013

Another Week of Reprieve At Least!

Last memo before we leave for Pittsburgh so no more memos for another week or so.
---

Corny but worth a few laughs!


Punography

When chemists die, they barium.

Jokes about German sausage are the wurst.

I know a guy who's addicted to brake fluid. He says he can stop any time.

How does Moses make his tea? Hebrews it.

I stayed up all night to see where the sun went. Then it dawned on me.

This girl said she recognized me from the vegetarian club, but I'd never met
herbivore.

I'm reading a book about anti-gravity. I just can't put it down.

I did a theatrical performance about puns. It was a play on words.

They told me I had type-A blood, but it was a Type-O.

PMS jokes aren't funny; period.

Why were the Indians here first? They had reservations.

We're going on a class trip to the Coca-Cola factory. I hope there's no pop
quiz.

I didn't like my beard at first. Then it grew on me.

Did you hear about the cross-eyed teacher who lost her job because she
couldn't control her pupils?

When you get a bladder infection urine trouble.

Broken pencils are pointless.

I tried to catch some fog, but I mist.

What do you call a dinosaur with an extensive vocabulary? A thesaurus.

England has no kidney bank, but it does have a Liverpool .

I used to be a banker, but then I lost interest.

I dropped out of communism class because of lousy Marx.

All the toilets in London police stations have been stolen. The police have
nothing to go on.

I got a job at a bakery because I kneaded dough.

Haunted French pancakes give me the crepes.

Velcro - what a rip off!

A cartoonist was found dead in his home. Details are sketchy.

Venison for dinner again? Oh deer!

---
Food for thought!




---
This from  friend and memo reader who seemed to miss my memos:

"Mr. Berkowitz, glad to have you back and here's a super follow up to your observations on obama's take on Islam that needs to be shared via your e-mail.  It's verifiable and as they say in today's jargon, "spot on!"  Churchill nailed it over 100 years ago." C---- D---."


This is amazing. Even more amazing is that this
hasn't been published long before now.

CHURCHILL ON ISLAM

Unbelievable, but the speech below was written in 1899...
(check Wikipedia - The River War).
The attached short speech from Winston Churchill, was
delivered by him in 1899 when he was a young soldier
and journalist. It probably sets out the current views of
many, but expresses in the wonderful Churchillian turn
of phrase and use of the English language, of which he
was a past master. Sir Winston Churchill was, without
doubt, one of the greatest men of the late 19th and 20th centuries.
He was a brave young soldier, a brilliant journalist, an
extraordinary politician and statesman, a great war
leader and British Prime Minister, to whom the Western
world must be forever in his debt. He was a prophet in
his own time. He died on 24th January 1965, at the grand
old age of 90 and, after a lifetime of service to his country,
was accorded a State funeral.


HERE IS THE SPEECH:

"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays
on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as
dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this
fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many
countries, improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture,
sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property
exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.
A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and
refinement, the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact
that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to
some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a
wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of
slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great
power among men.
Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities, but the
influence of the religion paralyses the social development
of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force
exists in the world. Far from being moribund,
Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith.
It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising
fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity
is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science
against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of
modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome ..."
Sir Winston Churchill; (Source: The River War,
first edition, Vol II, pages 248-250 London).
Churchill saw it coming......
---

Dick
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1)

The D-Word


Deportation has become a near-taboo word. Yet the recent Boston bombings inevitably rekindle old questions about the way the U.S. admits, or at times deports, foreign nationals.
Despite the Obama administration's politically driven and cyclical claims of deporting either a lot more or a lot fewer non-citizens, no one knows how many are really being sent home -- for a variety of reasons.
There are not any accurate statistics on how many people are living in the United States illegally. And how does one define deportation? If someone from Latin American is detained by authorities an hour after illegally crossing the border, does he count as "apprehended" or "deported"?
"Deportation" is now politically incorrect, sort of like the T-word -- "terrorism" -- that the administration also seeks to avoid. The current government emphasis is on increasing legal immigration and granting amnesties, but by no means is Washington as interested in clarifying deportation.
Why was the Tsarnaev family granted asylum into the United States -- and why were some of them not later deported? Officially, the Tsarnaevs came here as refugees. As ethnic Chechens and former residents of Kyrgyzstan, they sought "asylum" here from anti-Muslim persecution -- given that Russia had waged a brutal war in Chechnya against Islamic militants.
Yes, the environment of Islamic Russia was and can be deadly. But if the Tsarnaevs were supposedly in danger in their native country, why did the father, Anzor, after a few years choose to return to Dagestan, Russia, where he now apparently lives in relative safety? Why did one of the alleged Boston bombers, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, return to his native land for six months last year -- given that escape from such an unsafe place was the very reason that the United States granted his family asylum in the first place?
That is not an irrelevant question. Recently, some supposedly persecuted Somalis were generously granted asylum to immigrate to Minnesota communities, only to later fly back to Somalia to wage jihad. Were they true refugees fleeing persecution against Muslims, or extremists looking for a breather in the United States?
What, exactly, justifies deportation of immigrants of any status? Failure to find work and to become self-supporting? Apparently not. The Tsarnaev family reportedly had been on public assistance. This is not an isolated or unusual concern. President Obama's own aunt, Zeituni Onyango, not only broke immigration law by overstaying her tourist visa but also compounded that violation by illegally receiving state assistance as a resident of public housing. Only after Obama was elected president was his aunt finally granted political asylum on the grounds that she would be unsafe in her native Kenya.
Should those residing here illegally at least avoid arrest and follow the rules of their adopted country? Apparently not -- given that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, a skilled boxer, was charged in 2009 with domestic violence against his girlfriend. His mother, Zubeidat, also back in Russia now, was reportedly arrested last year on charges of shoplifting some $1,600 in goods from a Boston store.
Again, these are not irrelevant questions. President Obama's own uncle, Onyango Obama, is at present illegally residing in the United States. In 2011, he was cited for drunk driving after nearly slamming into a police car.
Would embracing radical ideological movements that have waged war on the United States be a cause for deportation? Apparently not. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was interviewed by the FBI in 2010, based on information from a foreign intelligence agency that he might pose a threat as a radical Islamist. The FBI knew from Tsarnaev's Web postings about his not-so-private sympathies with radical Islam.
Americans are a generous people who take in more immigrants than any other nation in the world. So the sticking point in the current debate over "immigration reform" is not necessarily the granting of residency per se -- given that most Americans are willing to consider a pathway to citizenship for even those who initially broke immigration law but have since not been arrested, have avoided public assistance, and have tried to learn the language and customs of their newly adopted country.
The problem is what to do with those who have not done all that.
Unless the government can assure the public that it is now enforcing immigration laws already on the books, that foreign nationals must at least avoid arrest and public assistance, and that it is disinclined to grant asylum to "refugees" from war-torn Islamic regions and then allow them periodically to go back and forth from their supposedly hostile homelands, there will be little support for the current immigration bill.
In short, the Tsarnaev brothers have offered us a proverbial teachable moment about what have become near-suicidal immigration policies.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2)Why Do So Many Muslims Embrace Religious and Ideological Warfare?
Victor Sharpe 

Mahatma Gandhi is quoted in the book, Gandhi: The Power of Pacifism, by Catherine Clement, as follows:
While Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Parsees and Jews, along with several million adherents of an animistic religion, all coexisted in relative harmony, one religion that would not accept compromise stood out from the rest: Islam.
Gandhi, a Hindu, was referring to the experience during his lifetime in the Indian sub-continent, but the growth of Wahhabism and the current resurgence in Islamic triumphalism since Gandhi's death in January 1948 now poses an increasingly existential threat to the West, to Judeo-Christian civilization, as well as to Hindus, Buddhists, Bahai and members of other faiths or of no faith.
The question repeatedly posed by the talking heads on the TV networks and cable television is how and why so many Muslims, young and old, living in the West and enjoying all the material and educational benefits bestowed upon them, are committing hideous acts of terror and perpetrating atrocities upon innocent civilians, even against their very own neighbors.
The Times Square bombing attempt on May 1, 2010 by Pakistan-born Faisal Shahzad and the 2009 Fort Hood massacre of unarmed members of the military by Major Nidal Hasan (still described by the problematic U.S. administration as “workplace violence”) are well-known. So too is the attempt at terrorism by a Somali immigrant, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, who had come to America at the age of five with his family as a refugee from the hell that is Somalia, and who attempted to kill thousands during a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in Portland, Oregon.
But until the Chechen Muslim Tsanaev brothers succeeded in their massacre at the Boston Marathon, most terror attacks had been thwarted since the 9/11 destruction of the Twin Towers and part of the Pentagon by the 19 Saudi Arabian hijackers, in which 3,000 people were murdered. This time, however, the Muslim miscreants succeeded.
It was the baleful President Carter who undercut the shah of Iran, an autocrat who jailed and restricted the jihadists and Islamic groups and who was a supporter and ally of America. Just like President Obama, who equally undercut Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the subsequent vacuum was quickly and gleefully filled by Islamic fundamentalists and the Muslim Brotherhood respectively who imposed sharia law and raised the banner of Islamic supremacy.
With the shah's fall came the Ayatollah Khomeini from his exile in France, and almost immediately Carter's foolish act resulted in a seemingly endless and humiliating imprisonment of American Embassy staff in Tehran. Since then Iran has fed the flames of Islamic terror around the globe, arming and funding terror organizations such as Hamas and Hezb'allah.
Ayatollah Khomeini preached violence to ultimately conquer “the land of the infidel.” By that he meant Israel, Christian European states and Britain, the United States, and the entire non-Muslim world. His followers throughout the Muslim and Arab world have all endorsed the legitimacy of jihad against what they call the “enemies of Islam.” Islamic martyrdom operations — specifically blowing up soft targets like spectators at sporting events — are their guarantees to paradise even if the victims are children.
So the answer to those talking heads in the media who endlessly ask why so many Muslims commit such atrocities can be seen both in Koranic passages and in, for instance, the sickening hate indoctrination found in the government-controlled Palestinian TV and radio broadcasts.
Here are some of the grisly passages from the Koran:
“Kill the unbelievers wherever you find them.” Koran 2:191
“Make war on the infidels living in your neighborhood.” Koran 9:123
“When opportunity arises, kill the infidels wherever you catch them.” Koran 9:5
“Any religion other than Islam is not acceptable.” Koran 3:85
“The Jews and the Christians are perverts; fight them.”… Koran 9:30
“Maim and crucify the infidels if they criticize Islam” Koran 5:33
“Punish the unbelievers with garments of fire, hooked iron rods, boiling water; melt their skin and bellies.” Koran 22:19
“The unbelievers are stupid; urge the Muslims to fight them.” Koran 8:65
“Muslims must not take the infidels as friends.” Koran 3:28
“Terrorize and behead those who believe in scriptures other than the Qur'an.” Koran 8:12
“Muslims must muster all weapons to terrorize the infidels.” Koran 8:60
And here are some examples of the Palestinian broadcasts that sow hate among children as young as three years of age, spawning yet another generation of terrorists and destroying hope of any true and lasting peace with the embattled State of Israel.
For example, the children's show, The Best Home, included a scene in which a young girl recited a poem filled with messages of hate and other libels demonizing Jews. The poem made the vile and fantastic assertion that Jews, “Allah's enemies, the sons of pigs,” defiled the Quran and Jerusalem, “murdered children,” “cut off their limbs,” and “raped the women in the city squares.”
This message of vitriol — aimed at the future generation of Palestinians — not only serves to foster hatred and violence, but undermines the very essence of coexistence and peace. It poisons the minds of innocent young children instead of promoting respect for one another, which is a cornerstone for true peace. The irony is that these grotesque and deceitful charges are exactly what is routinely found perpetrated by the regimes within so many Muslim and Arab states.
In our politically correct world, members of the media and commentators often seek to distance Islam from so many acts of horrific violence, using terms of alleged distinction such as “radical Islam” or “moderate Islam” and so on. But let us reflect on the words of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the close friend of Iran's genocidal president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
In reply to the terms “moderate and radical Islam,” which was apparently quoted to him by a Western journalist, Erdoğan said: “These descriptions are very ugly; it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam, and that's it.”
Certainly, attempting to constantly give, as liberals do, a free pass to Islamic abuses; to play down its violent ambitions of world conquest; to ignore the evident threat to Judeo-Christian civilization from sharia law and imposed dhimmitude merely encourages the violent tendencies of the followers of what has been called “an ideology wrapped in a religion.”
It has been an aim of Islamic terrorists and jihadists to use people who do not look Arab or Middle Eastern to commit atrocities on soft targets in the U.S in order for them to blend in better with the majority population. This could be the first wave of such terror.
The two Chechen brothers thus almost certainly embraced the hatred towards non-Muslims which proliferate in Islamic texts, in the fiery sermons of Imams, on Islamic websites, and in Islamic social media. And they are not alone.
Victor Sharpe is a freelance writer and author of the trilogy Politicide; The attempted murder of the Jewish state.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3)Immigration Gambles

Britain's late Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said it all when she wrote that the world has "never ceased to be dangerous," but the West has "ceased to be vigilant."
Nothing better illustrates her point than the fact that the West has imported vast numbers of people who hate our guts and would love to slit our throats. Political correctness has replaced self-preservation. The Boston Marathon killer who set a bomb down right next to an eight-year-old child is only the latest in an on-going series of such people.
Senator Patrick Leahy has warned us not to use the Boston Marathon terrorists as an argument against the immigration legislation he advocates. But if we are not to base our laws on facts about realities, what are we to base them on? Fashionable theories and pious rhetoric?
While we cannot condemn all members of any group for what other members of their group have done, that does not mean that we must ignore the fact that the costs and dangers created by some groups are much greater than those created by other groups.
Most members of most groups may be basically decent people. But if 85 percent of group A are decent and 95 percent of group B are decent, this means that there is three times as large a proportion of undesirable people in group A as in group B. Should we willfully ignore that when considering immigration laws?
It is already known that a significant percentage of the immigrants from some countries go on welfare, while practically none from some other countries do. Some children from some countries are eager students in school and, even when they come here knowing little or no English, they go on to master the language better than many native-born Americans.
But other children from other countries drag down educational standards and create many other problems in school, as well as forming gangs that ruin whole neighborhoods with their vandalism and violence, and cost many lives.
Are we to shut our eyes to such differences and just lump all immigrants together, as if we are talking about abstract people in an abstract world?
Perhaps the most important fact about the immigration bill introduced in the Senate is that its advocates are trying to rush it through to passage before there is time for serious questions to be explored and debated, so as to get serious answers.
Anyone who suggests that we should compare welfare rates, crime rates, high school dropout rates and drunk driving arrest rates among immigrants from different countries, before we set immigration quotas, is likely to be stigmatized as a bad person.
Above all, we need to look at immigration laws in terms of how they affect the American people and the American culture that gives us a prosperity that has long been among the highest in the world.
Americans, after all, are not a separate race but people from many racial and ethnic backgrounds. Yet most Americans have a higher standard of living than other people of the same racial or ethnic background in their respective ancestral home countries. That is even more true for black Americans than for white Americans.
Clearly, whatever we have in this country that makes life here better than in the countries from which most Americans originated is something worth preserving. A hundred years ago, preserving the American way of life was much easier than today, because most of the people who came here then did so to become Americans, learn our language and adopt our way of life.
Today, virtually every group has its own "leaders" promoting its separate identity and different way of life, backed up by zealots for multiculturalism and bilingualism in the general population. The magic word "diversity" is repeated endlessly and insistently to banish concerns about the Balkanization of America -- and banish examples provided by the tragic history of the Balkans.
We are importing many foreigners who stay foreign, if not hostile. Blithely turning them into citizens by fiat, rather than because they have committed to the American way of life, is an irreversible decision that can easily turn out to be a dangerous gamble with the future of the whole society.
What happened in Boston shows just one of those dangers.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4)Some pretty amazing statistics you will never hear from the mainstream media!!  Isn't that strange
 
Newtown, CT Nineteen of 20 Newtown children are white.
 
All of a sudden the 2nd amendment should be repealed or altered.
 
Chicago children are mostly black.  The media is silent about Chicago violence.
WHY?
 
Chicago: 446 school age children were shot last year and Chicago has one of the strongest gun laws in country the media is silent.
 
The cesspool known as Chicago probably has the toughest gun laws in the country, yet despite all the shootings, murders, and bloodshed, you never hear a peep about this from the corrupt state run media.
 
In Chicago , there have been 446 school age children shot in leftist utopia run by Rahm Emanuel. 62  school aged children have actually been killed by crazed nuts in Chicago so far this year.
 
So why isn't this news worthy? Is it because it would embarrass those anti second amendment nuts who brag about  Chicago's tough gun laws?
 
Is it because most of the kids who were shot and killed were minorities? Or is it because the corrupt media doesn't want to show Chicago in a bad light?
 
THE LIST OF MURDERED SCHOOL AGE CHILDREN IN 2013
 
18 YEARS OLD- 15
 
17 YEARS OLD- 16
 
16 YEARS OLD- 16
 
15 YEARS OLD- 6
 
14 YEARS OLD- 4
 
13 YEARS OLD- 2
 
12 YEARS OLD- 1
 
07 YEARS OLD- 1
 
06 YEARS OLD- 1
 
446 School Age Children Shot in Chicago so Far Last Year THE LIST OF SCHOOL AGE
 
CHILDREN SHOT IN 2012
 
18 year old -110
 
17 year old - 99
 
16 year old - 89
 
15 year old - 62
 
14 year old - 39
 
13 year old - 21
 
12 year old - 10
 
11 year old - 2
 
10 year old - 3
 
09 year old - 1
 
07 year old - 3
 
06 year old - 2
 
05 year old - 1
 
04 year old - 1
 
03 year old - 1
 
01 year old - 2
 
So why isnt this news worthy?
 
The Political Leaders in Illinois; All  Democrats!
 
President: Barack Hussein Obama Senator:  Dick Durbin House Representative: Jesse Jackson Jr. Governor:  Pat Quinn House leader: Mike Madigan Atty.  Gen.: Lisa Madigan (daughter of Mike) Mayor: Rahm Emanuel
 
Chicago school system is rated one of the worst in the country.
 
State pension fund $78 Billion in debt, worst in the country.
 
Cook County ( Chicago ) sales tax 10.25% - highest in country.
 
A culture of corruption that would make a Louisiana politician blush with envy.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why don’t we just hand over the keys of the Department of Homeland Security to Bin Laden or Nasrallah?  That makes sense when you consider that we’re basically doing that anyway.
kareemshora.jpgnawarshora
The Syrian Muslim Shoras:
They’ve Got Homeland Security, TSA Covered for Their Jihadi Friends
On Thursday, the Muslim-dominated, deceptively-named American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) announced that the group’s legal director, Nawar Shora–a Syrian Muslim–would become Senior Policy Advisor to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).  And it’s not a political appointment.  It’s a civil service position, which means that Obama is installing this extremist in the position until he chooses to leave or retire.
Shora is an extremist.  Although ADC was not behind the Flying Imams lawsuit, Shora’s “policy recommendations” and other absurdities are behind their shenanigans.  Shora is the force behind ADC “training videos,” which instructed federal agents from the Department ofHomeland Security to remove their shoes before entering a Muslim suspect’s home (even if they’re there to arrest the guy) and other similar absurdities.  And he’s opposed to anysecurity measure that will help root out Islamic terrorists.  He’s exactly the kind of personIslamic terrorists would want in a senior policy position at TSA, even if his position is at TSA’ s Office of Civil Rights.  That office has tremendous influence on all of TSA’s policies, practices, and procedures.  And, in his position, Shora will have access to top secret,classified info that he can easily pass off to his extremist buddies.
Even more scary is that FBI director Robert Mueller awarded Shora–for all of his bitching and moaning on behalf of the fifth column within America–with its Community Service Leadership Award at the J. Edgar Hoover Building.  Several years ago, Mueller planned to give the same award to another ADC “gem,” immigration fraud perpetrator and “former” Islamic terrorist, Imad Hamad, . . .  and you know how that fiasco turned out (my New York Post column stopped the award).  So, other than his whining, why is Shora getting an award from Mueller?  Well, because he set up a pipeline for his fellow extremist Muslims to get into the FBI:
Shora will be honored by FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, receiving the director’s Community Leadership Award, for his role in creating the FBI’s Future Agents in Training program, which began as “a cross between Space Camp and Boys State” aimed at South and Central Asian youths and has since become a week-long program introducing the bureau to 40 high school juniors selected from across the country.
Can you imagine the FBI helping a Nazi sympathizer set up a way for the German American Bund to infiltrate the Bureau during World War II, then giving him an award for it? Robert Mueller should have been fired several times over by President Bush and at least once already by President Obama. But this utter failure has more than the proverbial nine lives.
Oh, and in case you think Shora is an Obama phenomenon, think again. Under President Bush, Shora commanded the attention of top Homeland Security and Justice Department officials. And President Bush had his own version of Shora in TSA. Suhail Khan–who invited Islamic terrorism supporters into the Bush White House, and whose father twice brought Qaeda’s Ayman Al-Zawahiri into the U.S. to raise money for Al-Qaeda–was Bush’s counsel for TSA. He got the same access to classified info and influence on policy decisions as Shora will have under Obama.
And by the way, if the surname Shora sounds familiar, that’s because you’ll recall my report when Obama appointed his close relative, Kareem Shora–also from Muslim-dominated ADC, as a top policy advisor for Homeland Security, last summer.  That was an advisory position, but, then, DHS hired him into a permanent position as Senior Policy Advisor, where he now works and accesses classified info on a daily basis.   Yup, the jihadists have America’s federal law enforcement agencies covered.
Like I always say, TSA really stands for Tough S—, America. But, then, so does our entirefederal law enforcement system. Our enemy is now running the show from within.
What’s that I hear? Giant belly-aching laughs from Mr. Bin Laden’s cave and Mr. Nasrallah’s Bint Jbeil, Lebanon above. America’s national security doesn’t exist . . . except as a joke on the Arab street.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6)Departure of Palestinian prime minister leaves Obama peacemaking in tatters
Leo Rennert
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has called it quits.  His resignation has been accepted by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.  And with Fayyad gone, the Obama administration has suffered a huge setback in its peace-making efforts -- a quixotic undertaking to begin with.  Now there definitely is no serious or even halfway dependable Palestinian leader left with whom to kick-start negotiations.
Fayyad, with his Western finance credentials, was the latest Washington hope for resumption of peace talks. Twenty-four hours before Fayyad and Abbas officially parted ways, Secretary of State John Kerry telephoned Fayyad in a last-ditch effort to get him to rescind his resignation.  Kerry implored Fayyad not to go.  It proved futile.
This is a bitter pill for Kerry to swallow.  But he only has himself to blame.  Self-delusion never has been a promising foundation for genuine peace-making
Following up on President Obama's recent trip to Jerusalem and Ramallah, Kerry had started his own shuttle diplomacy, seeking to build a modicum of halfway-stable relations between Israel and the Palestinians -- with the lure of a Kerry bag of economic aid to the Palestinian Authority.  Now, there's nobody left on the Palestinian side to use such dollars for their intended purpose.  Abbas presides over a corrupt kleptocracy.
Fayyad had ingratiated himself with the Obama administration by building a small semblance of governmental institutions in pursuit of statehood.  Fayyad out of the picture leaves the Palestinians with proto-emperors without clothes.
The Fayyad-Abbas feud was an open secret for a long time.  Even as a Western-revered prime minister, Fayyad had few, if any, domestic cards to play.  His problem was that he lacked any real political base.  Leaders of Abbas's Fatah movement hated him, and the Hamas regime in Gaza called him a Western stooge.
He was a thin reed on which to base efficacious peace talks.  And now he's gone, leaving the Obama administration's gung-ho push for a two-state solution without a political/diplomatic leg to stand on.
Leo Rennert is a former White House correspondent and Washington bureau chief if McClatchy Newspapers.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7)Fact-Free Crusades
 
Apr 16, 2013
 
Amid all the heated, emotional advocacy of gun control, have you ever heard even one person present convincing hard evidence that tighter gun control laws have in fact reduced murders?
Think about all the states, communities within states, as well as foreign countries, that have either tight gun control laws or loose or non-existent gun control laws. With so many variations and so many sources of evidence available, surely there would be some compelling evidence somewhere if tighter gun control laws actually reduced the murder rate.

And if tighter gun control laws don't actually reduce the murder rate, then why are we being stampeded toward such laws after every shooting that gets media attention?

Have the media outlets that you follow ever even mentioned that some studies have produced evidence that murder rates tend to be higher in places with tight gun control laws?

The dirty little secret is that gun control laws do not actually control guns. They disarm law-abiding citizens, making them more vulnerable to criminals, who remain armed in disregard of such laws.

In England, armed crimes skyrocketed as legal gun ownership almost vanished under increasingly severe gun control laws in the late 20th century. (See the book "Guns and Violence" by Joyce Lee Malcolm). But gun control has become one of those fact-free crusades, based on assumptions, emotions and rhetoric.
What almost no one talks about is that guns are used to defend lives as well as to take lives. In fact, many of the horrific killings that we see in the media were brought to an end when someone else with a gun showed up and put a stop to the slaughter.

The Cato Institute estimates upwards of 100,000 defensive uses of guns per year. Preventing law-abiding citizens from defending themselves can cost far more lives than are lost in the shooting episodes that the media publicize. The lives saved by guns are no less precious, just because the media pay no attention to them.

Many people who have never fired a gun in their lives, and never faced life-threatening dangers, nevertheless feel qualified to impose legal restrictions that can be fatal to others. And politicians eager to "do something" that gets them publicity know that the votes of the ignorant and the gullible are still votes.

Virtually nothing that is being proposed in current gun control legislation is likely to reduce murder rates.
Restricting the magazine capacity available to law-abiding citizens will not restrict the magazine capacity of people who are not law-abiding citizens. Such restrictions just mean that the law-abiding citizen is likely to run out of ammunition first.

Someone would have to be an incredible sharpshooter to fend off three home invaders with just seven shots at moving targets. But seven is the magic number of bullets allowed in a magazine under New York State's new gun control laws.

People who support such laws seem to blithely assume that they are limiting the damage that can be done by criminals or the mentally ill -- as if criminals or mad men care about such laws.

Banning so-called "assault weapons" is a farce, as well as a fraud, because there is no concrete definition of an assault weapon. That is why so many guns have to be specified by name in such bans -- and the ones specified to be banned are typically no more dangerous than others that are not specified.

Some people may think that "assault weapons" means automatic weapons. But automatic weapons were banned decades ago. Banning ugly-looking "assault weapons" may have aesthetic benefits, but it does not reduce the dangers to human life in the slightest. You are just as dead when killed by a very plain-looking gun.

One of the dangerous inconsistencies of many, if not most, gun control crusaders is that those who are most zealous to get guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens are often not nearly as concerned about keeping violent criminals behind bars.

Leniency toward criminals has long been part of the pattern of gun control zealots on both sides of the Atlantic. When the insatiable desire to crack down on law-abiding citizens with guns is combined with an attitude of leniency toward criminals, it can hardly be surprising when tighter gun control laws are accompanied by rising rates of crime, including murders.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
8) Obama is destabilizing The Military?
 
By having General Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs-
of-Staff, issue an order to the US Armed Forces that all Flag and 
General Officers will now be evaluated by the subordinates under their 
command, Obama is destabilizing the US military chain of command 
structure. That directive violates good order and military leadership 
principles taught in Leadership Courses to all officer trainees in every 
Military Academy in every country in the world. General Dempsey 
directive is a purely inept politically correct policy order that will 
destabilize unit cohesion, unit moral, and will destroy the principles of 
the chain of command structure followed in the US Armed Forces by 
the US Military Officer Corp.  What is really going on here is that 
Obama is employing enlisted personnel in the US Armed Forces to submit written evaluations on Flag and General Officers, in order to make sure they 
tow the line in support of Obama's radical Social Experiment on Diversity.  

The same type of reporting by enlisted personnel has been going on for 
4 years of unit commanding officers; enlisted personnel have been 
encouraged for 4 years, to use an (800) telephone hot line set up for 
them, to put the commanding officers of their units on report for 
various reasons; it has resulted in the removal of hundreds of 
Commanding Officers (COs) for various infractions, many of whom have 
not agreed with Obama's Social Experiment on Diversity (they have 
been removed for matters of supporting the religious conscious of 
chaplains, issues affecting the repeal of "Don't Ask Don't Tell," 
female/male sexual harassment complaints against their COs, gross 
failures in command at sea by unqualified female COs, attempts to 
rescue Navy SEALs being attacked by Al Q'ieda terrorists in Benghazi, 
etc.).

The inept order encouraging subordinates to put Flag and General 
Officers on report is similar to how enlisted members in the Wehrmacht during WWII were encouraged to put Germany's Flag and General Officers on report 
for not following the party line on Nazi philosophy. By clicking on the 
below listed link, you can read how the news is being managed to mislead the American people on the true source of where this inept and destructive Order 
came from, and how it will be reported nationally by the left of center 
liberal media establishment, to provide the resident of the Oval Office 
with cover for another of his anti-military policies that are destabilizing
 the US Armed Forces, in this latest case, in destroying the military 
chain of command structure that has worked so very effectively for 238 years.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
9) Pat Condell continues to spout truths in an, in your face manner:


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


 
 
 

No comments: