An understanding in the Senate that the West must be preserved trumps the Most Equal Comrade's mad vision

This is a fine development indeed:

The Senate on Thursday unanimously passed a resolution welcoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to America and endorsing his speech before a joint session of Congress.

Critics of the Obama administration view the unanimous approval as a rebuke to the White House and Democrats, who have vowed to boycott Netanyahu’s address and work to counter his warnings about the dangers of a nuclear Iran.

No Senate Democrats sponsored the measure, which attracted 50 Republican cosponsors. However, none attempted to block its passage, signaling that support for Israel and Netanyahu’s message has outweighed a pressure campaign by the Obama administration to sabotage the address.

“The Senate warmly welcomes the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, on his visit to the United States, which provides a timely opportunity to reinforce the United State-Israel relationship,” the resolution states.

Congress “eagerly awaits the address of Prime Minister Netanyahu before a joint meeting of the United States Congress,” it continues.

The lawmakers go on to reaffirm their “commitment to stand with Israel during times of uncertainty” and vow to “strongly support Israel’s right to defend itself from threats to its very survival,” according to the measure.

Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas), the chief sponsor of the resolution, said in a statement that the United States must be vocal about its support for the Jewish state as the Obama administration works toward a final deal with Iran that critics argue would permit it to retain the most controversial aspects of its nuclear infrastructure.

Not everyone wants to see Israel and post-America placed under the thumb of the mullahs.

Out partner in patty-cake - todays edition

The latest utterance from the regime to which we have extended the outstretched hand, to which we've extended an invitation to join the "international community," with which we have move the goalpost in the ongoing "negotiations" over its ability to amass a nuclear arsenal to the point where we're no longer taking about getting rid of all centrifuges:

senior Iranian cleric with close ties to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed on Friday that "we will raise the flag of Islam over the White House" in response to the killing of Hezbollah and Revolutionary Guards operatives on the Golan Heights last month.

According to foreign media, Israeli attack helicopters killed six Hezbollah terrorists along with six Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) operatives, including a high-ranking general. 

Among the Hezbollah operatives killed in the strike was Jihad Mougniyeh, the son of Hezbollah's former military leader, Imad Moughniyeh, who according to Western intelligence sources, was in the midst of setting up a terrorism base on the Syrian Golan and plotting rocket attacks, bombings, anti-tank missile strikes, and cross-border infiltrations against Israel.

The cleric, Ali Shirazi, made the remarks to the official Revolutionary Guards web site. His comments were reported by the Saudi-owned news network Al Arabiya.

"The resistance front led by Iran would retaliate from the global arrogance of killing [Iranian officers] and Hezbollah men" on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, Shirazi said during a ceremony honoring Iranian soldiers who died in Syria and Iraq.

A qestion for the cleric:  Why, exactly, were those Revolutionary Guards operatives lurking around the Golan Heights?

And now a question for Secretary Global-Test:  Do you take this attitude into consideration when you sit down with these goons?

senior Iranian official on Thursday threatened to “wipe Tel Aviv and Haifa off the map” in the event of an Israeli attack on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear installations.

General Mustafa Yazdi, the assistant chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces, warned that “Iran will flatten Tel Aviv and Haifa if Israel perpetrates an attack on our country.”

The Lebanese television station Al Mayadeen, which is affiliated with the Shi’ite Hezbollah movement, aired footage of the general’s remarks, which came on the heels of “the threats made by Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman.”

This is not the first time that senior Iranian officials have threatened to “erase Tel Aviv.” Earlier this week, Mujtaba A-Nur, an adviser to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, said that Iran “will erase Tel Aviv in 10 minutes if Israel dares attack Iran.”

“If the Zionist regime attacks us, our missiles will reach Tel Aviv within six, seven minutes, and they will destroy it before the dust and the smoke of their missiles reach us,” he said.

Secretary Global-Test, surely your narcissistic sense of yourself as a visionary being able to melt the hearts of the most hardened enemies with your grand vision of a tofu-and-sprouts, unicorns-and-rainbows world is not so overwhelming that you lose all sight of who it is your dealing with.  Is it?

 

Mr. Speaker, this is the biggest test to date of whether you have any principles; don't blow it

The damn Senate passed a "clean" DHS funding bill.

And then McConnell talked big about the separate Susan Collins bill defunding the Most Equal Comrade's executive-order amnesty for illegal aliens:

“Remember: President Obama said more than 20 times he couldn’t take those kinds of actions. He even referred to overreach like that as ‘ignoring the law.’ So Senator Collins’ measure simply takes the President at his word, and helps him follow the law instead of ignoring it,” McConnell said on the Senate floor Friday morning.

He further noted that a number of Senate Democrats — who voted repeatedly to block the House-passed DHS bill — voiced opposition to Obama’s executive amnesty in the past and should demonstrate their opposition.

“The Collins bill also provides Democrats who led their constituents to believe they’d address executive overreach with a chance to show they were at least a little bit serious. Democrats won’t achieve that by filibustering Homeland Security. And Democrats won’t achieve it by holding hypocritical press conferences, just hours after voting to block funding for DHS,” he said, adding passing the Collins bill is “the least these Democrats owe their constituents.”

And then the damn Senate Freedom-Haters blocked consideration of the Collins bill.

By my watch, there are eleven and a half hours left until DHS runs out of funding.

I realize the pressure on John Boehner is now enormous, but so are the stakes.  It's really up to him to prevent the two chambers of our government's law-making branch to sign off on an illegal move by the executive branch.

Mr. Speaker, do not cap a week in which the Internet has fallen to tyranny, in which the executive branch is illegally getting involved in the business of banning certain types of gun ammunition, and in which an obscure body called the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee has recommended to HHS and the USDA a plan for controlling what we eat, with yet another goose-step toward the complete death of humankind's most unique blessing.

Post-America's exaltation of the ugly

Pamela Geller has a piece at The American Thinker today that is one of those "the-encapsulation-of-everything-I've-been-trying-to-say-in-all-my-work-as-a-pundit" essays.  She starts out ruminating on the cultural significance of the smiling-excrement emoticon, and expands from there to a reflection of all that it symbolizes:

Post-9/11 America, and especially America in the Obama presidency, is a different world from America as she was before Obama, and before the left started its long march to destroy this nation.  America today is increasingly anti-freedom, anti-truth, anti-ideas, anti-capitalsim – anti-reason.  A nation built on a morality of reason has all but abandoned its foundational principles.  Public schools and academia produce zombies – goose-steppers like the Hitler Youth – who are militant and violent in their imposition of the leftist/Islamic agenda.  And when they do it, they congratulate themselves about how they have stood up against “fascism” and “intolerance,” when the intolerant fascists are they themselves.  Intellectually, young Americans are the most docile conformists, no matter how vocally and self-righteously they declare themselves free.  They have accepted as dogma all the philosophical beliefs of their elders of the hard left without question or exploration.  A continuing negation of life and self.

The culture is ugly.  The music is ugly, violent, and misogynistic.  Every crime drama and suspense series is rife with the most unimaginable gore.  Game of Thrones, Law and Order (Sex Crimes), American Horror Story – they’re all devoid of humanity and morality.  Devoid of goodness.  It’s a cultural rout.  It’s not that the line between good and evil has been blurred – it’s nonexistent.  We are living in a cultural free-for-all, or more accurately, a free fall.

Pain, blame, victimhood are the ideals.  When Pharrell performed his confection of a tune “Happy” at the Grammys, he was compelled to turn it into a dirge.  A bright, happy, sparkling little jewel of a tune was accompanied by ugly political rhetoric and costume, #handsup, hoodies, and a porter/bellman costume for Pharrell.

In-your-face crudeness is not just to be found among rubes.  Geller points out, and even provides pictures of, jewelry and shoes from Bloomingdale's and Bergdorf Goodman sporting the poo icon.

The inability to recognize beauty and the innate nobility of the human being is now a given for the emerging generation:

A culture that would love such a thing is incapable of true humanity and love.  Hollywood is incapable of writing or producing a Casablanca.  There are no adults anymore – just petulant children who know nothing but to scream that they know everything and to heap contempt on anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their liberal fascism.  Logic and facts are scorned and derided; myths (global warning, “Islamophobia”) and feelings are held up as fact and science.I was watching a movie not long ago, a dated fifties musical short on Turner Classic Movies. It was bursting with life.  The kids in the room wanted me to put on something gory, negative, dark, and I said, no, no, watch this, this is great stuff – this is America.  And one of the teens replied, no it’s not, that’s from when America was happy.  And that struck me.  It hit me like a ton of bricks.  The left has worked so hard to make us miserable, and has succeeded.

I have mentioned before that I am an adjunct lecturer in rock and roll history at a community college.  I run into the phenomenon Geller is describing every semester.  The younger students' eyes don't really light up until we get to about 1967, when the drug use, undeniably a significant feature of American music since at least the beginning of the twentieth century, came out of the closet and became an overt feature of what was being created.  It's only from that point on that they can readily relate to what I'm presenting.

And this is what we're up against, a task even more daunting than haranguing Congress to stop the machinations of the jackbooted executive branch and its arsenal of regulatory agencies.

Culture, to reiterate an oft-made but still-crucial point, is upstream from politics, and a clear way to rescue it from these dark forces is not readily apparent.

 

They're staying away from Bibi's speech because they hate Israel

The Freedom-Haters in Congress didn't just look at this development in isolation and conclude that it was an inadvisable foreign-polciy move for the legislative branch.  No, it's of a piece with their general modus operandi:

It’s instructive to compare the list of boycotters to the 54 members of Congress who signed a letter calling for an end to Israel’s blockade of Hamas in Gaza.

Of the 25 current boycotters, Earl Blumenauer, Raúl Grijalva, Keith Ellison, Peter DeFazio, Betty McCollum, Jim McDermott, Barbara Lee and John Yarmuth had also signed the Hamas letter in 2010.

Considering how much the makeup of the House has changed then and not in the favor of the Democrats, the overlap is quite significant. A number of these are also among the top recipients of CAIR cash in Congress.

Their boycott isn’t some new response to something Netanyahu did. They’re longtime opponents of Israel.

Actively working to bring down our civilization.  And sitting in our federal law-making body.

Hillary knew the Benghazi attack was jihad right away

God bless Judicial Watch for making this documentation public:

From the very first moments of the terrorist attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her top aides were advised that the compound was under a terrorist attack. In fact, less than two hours into the attack, they were told that the al-Qaeda affiliate in Libya, Ansar al-Sharia, had claimed responsibility.

These revelations and others are disclosed by a trove of e-mails and other documents pried from the State Department by Judicial Watch in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The FOIA litigation focuses on Mrs. Clinton’s involvement in the government actions before, during, and after the Benghazi attack, in which Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, was murdered by terrorists. Also killed in the attack were State Department information management officer Sean Smith, and two former Navy SEALs, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, who were contract security employees and who had fought heroically, saving numerous American lives. At least ten other Americans were wounded, some quite seriously.

Here is a key set of exchanges that occurred:

At 4:07 p.m., just minutes after the terrorist attack began, Cheryl Mills, Secretary Clinton’s chief-of-staff, and Joseph McManus, Mrs. Clinton’s executive assistant, received an e-mail from the State Department’s operations center (forwarded to her by Maria Sand, a special assistant to Secretary Clinton). It contained a report from the State Department’s regional security officer (RSO), entitled “U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi is Under Attack.” The e-mail explained that approximately 20 armed people had fired shots at the diplomatic mission, that explosions had been heard as well, and that Ambassador Stevens was believed to be in the compound with at least four other State Department officials.

About a half-hour later, another e-mail — this one from Scott Bultrowicz, then director of diplomatic security (DSCC) — related:

15 armed individuals were attacking the compound and trying to gain entrance. The Ambassador is present in Benghazi and currently is barricaded within the compound. There are no injuries at this time and it is unknown what the intent of the attackers is. At approximately 1600 [4 p.m.] DSCC received word from Benghazi that individuals had entered the compound. At 1614 [4:14 p.m.] RSO advised the Libyans had set fire to various buildings in the area, possibly the building that houses the Ambassador [REDACTED] is responding and taking fire.

At 6:06 p.m., another e-mail that went to top State Department officials explained that the local al-Qaeda affiliate had claimed responsibility for the attack:

Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack (SBU):  “(SBU) Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and call for an attack on Embassy Tripoli”

The post-American public's capacity for seriousness is gravely diminished, but can it be so badly diminished that it will elect as president someone so evil that she would deliberately obscure a jihadist attack on American soil?

It's a done deal now

Tom Wheeler's 322-page set of regs for the Internet, per the vote of the unelected FCC commissioners, is a fait accompli.

It also takes us much farther down the road toward full-fledged totalitarianism;

These new rules would not only affect your services, it would also give FCC regulators the power to decide what content on the Internet was “just and reasonable.” Commissioner Tom Wheeler makes the absurd comment that the FCC would never use those powers. But in a February 4 issue of Wired, he already hints at ways bureaucrats could start dictating what they view as “threats” on the Internet:

“…my proposal includes a general conduct rule that can be used to stop new and novel threats to the Internet. This means the action we take will be strong enough and flexible enough not only to deal with the realities of today, but also to establish ground rules for the as yet unimagined.”

In other words, they want to establish new rules and regulations for stuff that hasn’t even been imagined yet!

Equally galling is the process by which this government takeover is happening. The 332 pages of new FCC rules have been held in secret, and even after Thursday’s vote, they are not being released. Like Nancy Pelosi said of ObamaCare, “We can read it after we vote on it.” 

Back in 2007, then-Senator Barack Obama insisted that the FCC put out in public any changes that they are proposing before they vote on it. As Mr. Obama said at the time: “Congress and the public have the right to review any specific proposal and decide whether or not it constitutes sound policy.”  Power does have a way of changing one’s preferences.

Also inappropriate has been the White House’s role in developing up the new Internet rules. The FCC is supposedly an “independent” agency…it’s supposed to draw up its own rules. But in this process, the White House injected itself right into the rule making process. Here again is Commissioner Pai, speaking to our own Sean Hannity:

“White House aides have been running a parallel FCC, and they’ve persuaded the president to pick this issue as one where he would make a pronouncement, now, just to let your listeners know, this never happens, hardly.”

Just as with Freedom-Hater-care, or EPA regs for the coal industry, the cattle-masses get no chance to consider the overlords' machinations until they are officially imposed.

And you may have heard that this is next on the jackboots' to-do list:

As promised, President Obama is using executive actions to impose gun control on the nation, targeting the top-selling rifle in the country, the AR-15 style semi-automatic, with a ban on one of the most-used AR bullets by sportsmen and target shooters.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives this month revealed that it is proposing to put the ban on 5.56 mm ammo on a fast track, immediately driving up the price of the bullets and prompting retailers, including the huge outdoors company Cabela's, to urge sportsmen to urge Congress to stop the president.

How do we adequately fight this?  This has a real Cuba-spring-of-1959, or Russia-late-1917 feel to it.  We are Dr. Zhivago coming home to find the family mansion subdivided into cramped, squalid little apartments filled with desperate strangers.

I swear, people with Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome should be quarantined away from the rest of us

Yesterday on my podcast, I talked about the particular dangers to post-America posed by those afflicted with Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome, also known as RINOs or squishes.  It's a different kind of danger, although no less in degree, than that pose by actual Freedom-Haters.

Case in point: the Senate Judiciary Committee's vote to move Loretta Lynch's nomination to be attorney general to the Senate floor.  She of the endorsement of executive-order amnesty for illegal aliens.  She of the proud proclamation that there is no daylight between how she'd do things and how Eric Holder has been doing the.

Which Pubs sided with the Freedom-Haters to put her over the top?

You guessed it: Hatch, Flake and Graham.

Those vulgar, divisive, West-hating Democrats - today's edition

The Durbin - Feinstein invite to Bibi wasn't exactly perfumed with cordiality:

The invitation was issued by liberal Democrats Dick Durbin of Illinois and Dianne Feinstein of California in a letter on Tuesday that barely disguised how badly Democrats are seething that Netanyahu accepted an invitation from House Speaker John Boehner to speak before a joint meeting of Congress in March.

“This unprecedented move threatens to undermine the important bipartisan approach towards Israel — which as long-standing supporters of Israel troubles us deeply,” Durbin and Feinstein wrote, according to the Jerusalem Post.

“To maintain Israel’s dialogue with both political parties in Congress, we invite you to a closed-door meeting with Democratic senators during your upcoming visit to Washington.”

It noted that Netanyahu’s visit could have “lasting repercussions” on Israel’s relationship with the United States.

The veiled, bullying tone is remarkable — make nice or else. Netanyahu probably gets friendlier invitations from the Palestinians.

Not surprisingly, he turned it down flat – on the logical grounds that meeting behind closed doors with one political party in America would only heighten the political tensions surrounding his visit.

But he answered with the dignity of an adult with adult concerns, talking to squabbling children.

“I regret that the invitation to address the special joint session of Congress has been perceived by some to be political or partisan,” Netanyahu wrote.

The original invitation to him was from one coequal branch of the federal government.  Period. And it was one of the most serious, clear-eyed, grownup things John Boehner has ever done.

The Most Equal Comrade, the supreme wizard of planned decline

After years of sitting on the fence and keeping us cattle-masses guessing as to what kind of firm decision he'd make on the Keystone XL pipeline, he has has committed himself to a policy - a policy that deliberately hobbles post-America:

Defying the Republican-run Congress, President Barack Obama rejected a bill Tuesday to approve construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, wielding his veto power for only the third time in his presidency.

Obama offered no indication of whether he'll eventually issue a permit for the pipeline, whose construction has become a flashpoint in the U.S. debate about environmental policy and climate change. Instead, Obama sought to reassert his authority to make the decision himself, rebuffing GOP lawmakers who will control both the House and Senate for the remainder of the president's term.

"The presidential power to veto legislation is one I take seriously," Obama said in a brief notice delivered to the Senate. "But I also take seriously my responsibility to the American people."

Obama vetoed the bill in private with no fanfare, in contrast to the televised ceremony Republican leaders staged earlier this month when they signed the bill and sent it to the president. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Republicans were "not even close" to giving up the fight and derided the veto as a "national embarrassment."

The move sends the politically charged issue back to Congress, where Republicans haven't shown they can muster the two-thirds majority in both chambers needed to override Obama's veto. North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven, the bill's chief GOP sponsor, said Republicans are about four votes short in the Senate and need about 11 more in the House.

Anybody who takes offense at what Rudy Guliani said about the Most Equal Comrade not loving America is morally warped.  The MEC's disdain for Western civilization couldn't be more apparent.

Playing identity politics with what ought to be the most impartial aspect of government

That's what Dick Durbin's up to:

Democratic Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin said in an interviewthat Republicans should pause before opposing Obama attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch, because the 50th anniversary of the Selma civil rights march is approaching.

“I would think, as we approach the 50th anniversary of Selma, that Republicans should be more sensitive about what they’re doing to this woman,” Durbin said. If confirmed, Lynch would be the first African-American women appointed to the post.

Durbin, who is white, was even more explicit in a response to a follow-up question from NBC’s Frank Thorp. “She is an African-American woman who has been nominated for the highest law enforcement position in the history of the United States. She’s being held up for no substantive reason. That’s not an implication. That’s a statement.”

“You can’t celebrate civil rights and ignore the reality that one of the most important civil rights milestones, the appointment of an African-American attorney general, is being held up for no good reason,” he concluded. 

Goofy and scary at the same time.

Oceans do not buffer us against jihad

A casual stroll by a Montreal municipal worker leads to a chilling discovery:

A sophisticated tunnel has been discovered near a major sporting venue and a university in Toronto, reports said Monday, with Canada on edge over the threat of possible extremist attacks. 

A municipal worker was walking through woods near York University and the Rexall Center last month when he spotted a piece of corrugated metal on the ground, lifted it up and found a passageway, the public broadcaster CBC said. 

The tunnel was about 23 feet long and 2.5 meters tall and was lit by an electric generator. The walls and ceilings had been reinforced and tools had been left inside. 

Toronto is hosting the Pan American Games in July and the Rexall Center is one of the venues. The facility also hosts major tennis events. 

National security officials have been alerted but there was no immediate suggestion the tunnel posed a threat, CBC said.

I don't think there's any kind of wide array of possible explanations.

Why we call them Freedom-Haters - today's edition

Welcome to post-America:

The permissionless Internet, which allows anyone to introduce a website, app or device without government review, ends this week. On Thursday the three Democrats among the five commissioners on the Federal Communications Commission will vote to regulate the Internet under rules written for monopoly utilities. 

No one, including the bullied FCC chairman, Tom Wheeler, thought the agency would go this far. The big politicization came when President Obama in November demanded that the supposedly independent FCC apply the agency’s most extreme regulation to the Internet. A recent page-one Wall Street Journal story headlined “Net Neutrality: How White House Thwarted FCC Chief” documented “an unusual, secretive effort inside the White House . . . acting as a parallel version of the FCC itself.”

There is nothing that our overlords can't leave alone.

Couldn't she have seen this coming?

As I've said before, hypocrisy doesn't generally excite me.  A person either espouses right principles or wrong ones, and whether he or she doesn't live up to them is secondary at best to those principles' worth.

So it's mainly with bemusement that I learn that Hillary, who makes inequality a pillar of her for-public-consumption worldview, paid female staff 72 cents to male staffers' dollar.

Mainly, it seems to me, it brings into question her judgement.  I mean, before she went and opened her yap should she not have considered the pay structure within her organization?  Really, it amazes me the extent to which public figures do not take proactive measures to cover their tail ends.

I really don't care that Hillary's pay structure was what it was.  Perhaps she had learned what studies have borne out for some time:  Women place greater priority on balance in their lives and therefor take more time off for family.

But before these noble visionaries for justice indulge in self-congratulatory preening and haranguing of Da Man, you'd think they'd look at their own realms and see if maybe keeping their pie holes shut might not be the better option.

Talk about flimsy reasoning

The regime is claiming that if it doesn't get a stay on Judge Hanen's injunction against executive-order amnesty for illegal aliens, there will be a grave threat to national security.

Um, exactly how?

Asked at the White House press briefing to specifically to identify how the government would suffer irreparable harm from a stay blocking Obama's amnesty program, Earnest said, "To put it bluntly, the Department of Homeland Security was ready last week to begin taking the steps that would bring millions of people out of the shadows. These are individuals who have been in this country for a substantial period of time and have family connections inside the country. These are individuals who would begin paying taxes. These are individuals who would submit to a background check. So every day that goes by we have individuals who will continue to be in the shadows, who will continue to not pay taxes, and who will continue to not have gone undergone a background check which means that they could pose a threat to public safety."

Earnest did not explain why or when exactly the 11 million illegal immigrants currently living in the United States suddenly became so much of a national security threat that the Department of Homeland Security had to give them all background checks.

Earnest also did not explain how giving background checks only to those who qualify for Obama's amnesty would somehow protect Americans from all the illegal immigrants that won't come out of the shadows since they know they would fail a background check.

Earnest also did not mention that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, those who would benefit from Obama's amnesty would consume billions more in government services than they pay in federal taxes. 

Should be interesting to see if they can find a judge who will buy that.

The fruits of leading from behind

ISIS tightens its grip on Libya's throat:

Islamic State fighters said they were behind attacks on the residence of the Iranian ambassador in Tripoli and eastern Libya’s Labraq airport, a group statement on Twitter said on Sunday.

Two bombs detonated in front of the residency of the Iranian ambassador in Tripoli on Sunday, while rockets were fired on Labraq airport overnight Friday into Saturday. Iran’s official IRNA news agency confirmed the blasts and the absence of casualties, adding that Iran had previously suspended operations at its embassy.

“Two devices were laid, one exploded first and then the other. The point of the second bomb was to create confusion,” Col. Jumaa al-Mashri from the National Security Agency told Tripoli-based al-Nabaa television.

A Reuters reporter at the scene saw the second device going off some 30 minutes after the first one. Minor damage could be seen at the gate.

And there is some real toxic stuff that seems to be accessible to the jihadists:

On Saturday, Arab media reported that insurgents in Libya have captured chemical weapons from storage areas in southern and central parts of the country.
“Unfortunately [chemical weapons] exist in locations known to the militias, who have seized large amounts of them to use in their war against the [Libyan] army,” a Libyan military official told the London- based daily Asharq Alawsat.
Gaddafi’s former regime had held the chemical weapons and the official warned that Islamic State could obtain the chemicals, which include mustard gas and the nerve agent Sarin.
“Before his death, Gaddafi left approximately 1,000 cubic tons worth of material used for manufacturing chemical weapons and about 20,000 cubic tons of mustard gas,” added the military official.
In addition, Asharq Alawsat obtained a video of what seems to be fighters testing the chemical weapons in a mountainous area near the town of Mizda, 160 km. south of Tripoli. The video shows the firing of a projectile that produced fire and dense white smoke.

Locals told the Arab newspaper that an armed group that was guarding a chemical factory in Jufra District, 600 km.

southeast of Tripoli, transferred some of the mustard gas to the Mediterranean city of Misrata. 

And, as they reminded us with the symbolic move of taking a video of the blood of those Egyptian Coptic Christians washing into theMediterranean Sea, they're just a little over 100 miles from Europe.  And somebody among them knows how to fly military aircraft.

Why we call them Freedom-Haters - today's edition

As I always say in these situations, when the jackboots turn their attention to what is going in Daddy's mouth, it's personal:

The federal committee responsible for nutrition guidelines is calling for the adoption of “plant-based” diets, taxes on dessert, trained obesity “interventionists” at worksites, and electronic monitoring of how long Americans sit in front of the television.

The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) released its far-reaching 571-page report of recommendations to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Thursday, which detailed its plans to “transform the food system.”

The report is open for public comment for 45 days, and will be used as the basis by the government agencies to develop the 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The guidelines are used as the basis for government food assistance programs, nutrition education efforts, and for making “decisions about national health objectives.”

DGAC proposed a variety of solutions to address obesity, and its promotion of what it calls the “culture of health.”

“The persistent high levels of overweight and obesity require urgent population- and individual-level strategies across multiple settings, including health care, communities, schools, worksites, and families,” they said.

In response, DGAC called for diet and weight management interventions by “trained interventionists” in healthcare settings, community locations, and worksites.

“Government at local, state, and national levels, the health care system, schools, worksites, community organizations, businesses, and the food industry all have critical roles in developing creative and effective solutions,” they said.

DGAC also called for policy interventions to “reduce unhealthy options,” limit access to high calorie foods in public buildings, “limit the exposure” of advertisements for junk food, a soda tax, and taxing high sugar and salt items and dessert.

I want those tax dollars back, damn it - the ones that have been used to cook this s--- up.  And I want this committee disbanded yet this afternoon.

H/T: Gay Patriot

What you need to remember when anyone starts bringing up The Crusades

This bit of history:

n this week’s issue of the Arlington Catholic Herald, we find another instance of moral and historic clarity, this time about the Crusades.  It’s worth a read to shatter the conventional wisdom about the Crusades.

How did we get to this point?  As Father William Saunders writes in the Catholic Herald:

Given the circumstances in which we live and with so many politicians referring to Islam as a “peaceful religion,” the subject of the Crusades is used not only to ameliorate the atrocities of Islamic extremists but also to discredit Christianity, particularly the Catholic Church. Also, too many people only have knowledge of the Crusades through a superficial and selective presentation of events as presented on the History Channel or by the politically correct intelligentsia.

What circumstances gave rise to the Crusades?  Again, Saunders:

When Pope Urban II declared the First Crusade, there was just cause. We must know the facts. Muslims believe Muhammad (570-632) had visions beginning in 610; in these visions, Allah literally dictated the Koran.  By 622, Mecca converted to Islam. Then, the warfare began, and Islam spread by the sword, i.e. jihad. Muhammad’s message was, “He who dies spreading the faith enters paradise.” Islam itself means “submission,” submission of everyone to Allah, Muhammad and the Koran.

Conversion alone wasn’t adequate.  Conquest followed.

The Muslims then waged war beyond their borders: Damascus fell in 635, Jerusalem in 638 and Alexandria in 641. By 652, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Persia had fallen to Islam. By 730, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Pakistan and Spain had fallen. The Muslims would have taken France, but Charles Martel stopped them at the Battle of Tours in 732. Remember: These were all Christian lands that were unjustly attacked. However, the Koran justified these acts: “True believers fight for the cause of God, but the infidels fight for the devil. Fight, then, against the friends of Satan” (Sura 4:76).

Christians and Jews in conquered lands were persecuted.  Churches were destroyed or seized.  Christians were forced to wear 10 pound crosses and Jews forced to carry a calf’s head made of wood.

How did the Christian West respond?  Saunders:

Finally, Christians realized action had to be taken. Righteous war had to be waged against jihad. The Christians had just cause. Byzantine Emperor Alexius (1080-1118) appealed to Pope Urban II for aid. On Nov. 18, 1095, at the Council of Clermont, the Holy Father said, “An accursed race … has violently invaded Christian lands and depopulated them by pillage and fire. … They have either destroyed God’s churches or taken them for the rites of their own religion.” So, as a last resort, the legitimate leaders with good intention declared a Crusade for just cause. Therefore, the declaration of a Crusade was an act of just war.

Imagine if Rudy Giuliani talked like this.

Then again, no one has ever accused theMost Equal Comrade of being a heavyweight historian.

Throwback Sunday with the Most Equal Comrade

I came across this in the comment thread under Dana Milbank's WaPo column today.  The column was Milbank's attempt to craft a posture of disgust at what Guliani said at that dinner last week, and to make Walker's statement (in being asked about what Guliani said) that he didn't know whether the Most Equal Comrade was a Christian or not, and then try to make Walker's recent "I'll-punt-on-that" response to a question about evolution equal in weight.  And to try to make Cruz and Jindal seem nutty as well for agreeing with Guliani.

Anyway, let us remember this:

Barack Obama, 2001:  

'If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court ... the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society.  

And to that extent as radical as people tried to characterize the Warren court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted. 

And the Warren court interpreted it in the same way that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. It says what the states can’t do to you, it says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf.  

And that hasn’t shifted. One of the I think tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributed change and in some ways we still suffer from that.'

These are not the words of a man who understands and cherishes that which is exceptional about America.  These are the words of an enemy of America.

Hey, Dana, do I now qualify for your pantheon of nutters?

Just when you thought the leftist worldview couldn't get any more tortured and convoluted . . .

 . . . along comes Rpofessor Gorski:

A self-described activist is teaching an eye-opening “Animal Rights as Ecofeminism” course at George Mason, the largest public university in Virginia.

Professor Paul C. Gorski, who believes meat producers perpetuate racism and that a powerful dairy lobby is responsible for the idea that milk promotes health, will be teaching a course about “mass food production, mass clothing production, pharmaceutical and medical testing.”

According to the course syllabus, students are required to write about how animal rights relates to “sexism, racism, heterosexism, imperialism, and poverty.” He asks students to consider questions such as:

(1) How is pig farming abusive to low-wage workers and the environment? Who feels the greatest impact of the environmental and worker exploitation (across race, class, etc.?)
(2) Who are the beneficiaries of this exploitation and abuse? How do they justify it? How do they create the conditions that allow it to happen?
(3) Beyond abuses during production, what are other ways in which the products of industrialized pig farming are harmful? What impact does it have on community health? Whose health is at highest risk and why?

In the course, students are commanded not try to justify the ways they “exploit” animals.

One of those straight-out-of-central-casting wackjobs who, in an infinite universe, is a statistical necessity.

The kind of oopsie that happens when an entity doesn't have to worry about competition

Freedom-Hater-care just gets more and more high-quality:

We all knew Obamacare would make tax season a nightmare for all of us, and it has, but the government just made it a lot worse by sending the wrong tax information to nearly one million customers. 

The Obama administration revealed Friday that it sent about 800,000 HealthCare.gov customers a tax form containing the wrong information, and asked them to hold off on filing their 2014 taxes. 

Here is the long-winded, complicated and confusing explanation from Healthcare.gov: 

If you enrolled in a plan through the Health Insurance Marketplace for 2014, you should’ve received an important tax statement in the mail, called Form 1095-A. This statement has information you need to fill out your 2014 federal income tax return.

Most people received a correct Form 1095-A. However, if we contact you because your Form 1095-A is incorrect, here's why. Some forms included the monthly premium amount of the second lowest cost Silver plan for 2015 instead of 2014, which needs to be corrected. The incorrect amount is listed in Part III, Column B of the Form 1095-A. We're working quickly to resolve this and any other issues with the 1095-A forms. This does not mean that your tax credit was incorrect; this is purely an error in what was printed on the form.

Close enough for gummint work, indeed.

A random act of violent extremism

Just some guys who got a little trigger-happy:

Some 20 people, including senior officials, have been killed in an attack on a hotel in the Somali capital, witnesses have told the BBC.

The Central Hotel, often frequented by politicians, was hit by a car bomb and a suicide attack. Gunmen then stormed the hotel mosque and opened fire during Friday prayers.

An MP and Mogadishu's deputy mayor were among the dead, the government says.

Islamist militant group al-Shabab has said it was behind the attack.

al-Shabab says it shot them while they were praying because they were apostates.

Clarke smacks down Holder

Perhaps you've heard about Eric Holder's plan to have the D0J sue Ferguson, Missouri and stick its nose into that town's police department practices.

Perhaps you've been hoping to see a ringing refutation of the move.  Herewith Milwaukee County, Wisconsin sheriff David Clarke:

“Well, it’s more of the same from Eric Holder,” Clarke said. “Look this is an abuse of power. Eric Holder has gone 15 for 15 in terms of indicting police departments of some sort of wrongdoing. That doesn’t pass the smell test. There’s no objectivity in his investigations and oftentimes the conclusion is written before the investigation even starts. If I were the city of Ferguson I would fight this. Look, the Ferguson grand jury got it right. Officer Darren Wilson acted reasonably in defending his life against Mike Brown. It was a tragedy, we all know that. But Eric Holder early on before that investigation had started said we’ll get this right and the fact that the grand jury ruled not the way he thought they should have, he’s still going to try to extract his pound of flesh. But Brian, these investigations are costly and not only the investigation but when they put you under consent decree this is nothing more than an exercise in writing reports for law enforcement officers. That takes up time — valuable time that takes them away from the street for driving in high crime communities and servicing the people of the city of Ferguson, MO.”

Clarke explained that the end of the Holder era at the DOJ couldn’t come soon enough.

“It’s a typical politics of Eric Holder and the United States Department of Justice — at least under his tenure. You know, we can’t see this guy out the door soon enough. I know he’s leaving. I just hope that the next attorney general that comes in, whoever that might be, won’t be Eric Holder 2.0. It will be a little more open minded and more supportive of local law enforcement. Look, the city of Ferguson has problems, just like any other city in America. Milwaukee is no different. But these things should be solve and settled and discussed at the local level without federal interference.

Exactly.

Why jihad appeals to far too many - and how to defeat it

I cede the floor to Erick Erickson, who absolutely nails it:

The West sees more and more of its citizens running away to the Islamic State not because they have it so bad at home, but because they recognize a void in their lives and they want to fill it. They see the Islamic State filling that void. The West has reduced its chief aim to comfort and self-pleasure. Uncomfortable with your life? Go buy something. Play an app. Have sex. While elites in the West and their high priests think the whole world is an accident -- a swerve of atoms -- most people innately know there is more to life than that. Most people know life does not end at death.

The siren call of the Islamic State speaks to that void. The materialists of the West may think they can fill the void with a jobs program, cash or hugs, but the Islamic State offers something more. It offers meaning, purpose, struggle, danger and death in pursuit of something greater than self. Western elites, having shrugged off such notions as outmoded and silly, cannot compete with the innate longing of a soul wandering to be satiated.

For the West to beat the Islamic State, it must do two things. First, it must wage relentless, awful and violent war against them. The West must make the pain and burden of joining the Islamic State insurmountable and assure that death comes quickly, brutally and before any Islamic fighter can find meaning in the struggle.

Second, the West must recognize there is real truth, real good and real evil. A post-modern elite who cannot recognize truth and is too ashamed of its own history has nothing to offer in competition to the soul satiating ideas of struggle, danger and death.

A Herculean task, given the thorough secularization of the West, but the alternative is too grim to consider.

Clinton Foundation: self-congratulatory rhetoric masking political donations from wherever they can be schmoozed

Two really good pieces today about the Clinton Foundation.

Kim Strassel at the WSJ speaks plainly about what it really is:

With the news this week that Mrs. Clinton—the would-be occupant of the White House—is landing tens of millions from foreign governments for her shop, it’s long past time to drop the fiction that the Clinton Foundation has ever been a charity. It’s a political shop. Bill and Hillary have simply done with the foundation what they did with cattle futures and Whitewater and the Lincoln Bedroom and Johnny Chung—they’ve exploited the system. 

Most family charities exist to allow self-made Americans to disperse their good fortune to philanthropic causes. The Clinton Foundation exists to allow the nation’s most powerful couple to use their not-so-subtle persuasion to exact global tribute for a fund that promotes the Clintons. 

Oh sure, the foundation doles out grants for this and that cause. But they don’t rank next to the annual Bill Clinton show—the Clinton Global Initiative event—to which he summons heads of state and basks for a media week as post-presidential statesman. This is an organization that in 2013 spent $8.5 million in travel expenses alone, ferrying the Clintons to headliner events. Those keep Mrs. Clinton in the news, which helps when you want to be president. 

It’s a body that exists to keep the Clinton political team intact in between elections, working for the Clintons’ political benefit.

And she makes plain the implications of all this global largesse:

This is the baseline scandal of the Clinton Foundation—it’s a political group that gets to operate outside the rules imposed on every other political player. Then comes the ethical morass. Republican National Committee spokesman Michael Short summed it up perfectly in a Wednesday WSJ story: “When that 3 a.m. phone call comes, do voters really want to have a president on the line who took truckloads of cash from other countries?” 

The nation’s ethics guardians have gently declared the Clintons might clear this up with more disclosure, or by again limiting the foundation’s acceptance of foreign money. What about the amounts already banked? The damage is done. If this were Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a likely GOP candidate, he’d be declared disqualified for office. The benefit of being a Clinton is that the nation expects this, and the bar for disqualification now sits in the exosphere. 

You see, we're talking about the Clintons.  Perhaps no other dynasty in the history of the Freedom-Hater party has made self-admiration such a core value, and it rubs off on the fans.  They get to feel like they're part of something noble and visionary by supporting these people.

Matthew Continetti at the Washington Free Beacon gives us a taste of how exquisite this appeal is:

Needless to say, the gargantuan troll-like conflict of interest that arises as soon as the foundation of the leading candidate for the presidency of the United States begins accepting money from overseas is apparent to every sentient being on the planet except members of the Clinton family and the growing number of advisers, consultants, strategists, pollsters, groupies, allies, and hangers-on whose livelihood depends on that family’s political success. “These contributions,” the foundation said in a statement to the Journal, “are helping improve the lives of millions of people across the world, for which we are grateful.”

What I love about this statement is its flip shamelessness, the way in which its airy sentimental public relations gobbledygook is both a denial of what is obviously a corrupt practice and an implicit endorsement of it. I do not doubt for a moment that the Clinton flack who led the email chain that came up with this blistering retort to the Journal is indeed “grateful” for every single one of the donations that foreign governments are making to his organization, because life in Manhattan and North Caldwell, New Jersey, is very expensive and these kids are not going to be paying for college on their own you know. If a little charity on the part of his excellency Sultan Qaboos of Oman can help pay for the lake house in Connecticut and the monthly installment on that brand new Tesla you’ve been eyeing through the window of the store on 25th Street, well, what’s the harm? The programs you run—“transforming communities,” “creating partnerships of purpose,” devising other alliterative slogans—“improve the lives of millions of people across the world.” OK, maybe not “millions of people,” but certainly the lives of the oligarchs and monarchs and functionaries and foreign agents who sign checks to the Clintons and can count on reciprocity, not to mention the lives of one very special pair of grandparents, their beloved daughter, her husband (especially when Goldman Sachs is footing the bill for losses at his hedge fund), and beautiful Charlotte.

In its 14 years of existence the Clinton Foundation has raised a sum approaching $2 billion. A McClatchy analysis found that 40 percent of contributions in the last decade have come from foreign sources. “It’s a massive sum of money—though no one has done a story yet on how overseas programs they fund have worked,” Maggie Haberman of the New York Times noted on Twitter. Gee I wonder why. It’s almost as though the political press is morally and intellectually disarmed whenever it hears words like “global dialogue” and “wellness” and “economic development” and “women and girls,” as if the gritty, cynical, I’ve-seen-it-all correspondents for our major newspapers and networks turn to bubbling bittersweet goo as soon as some Clinton flack tells them, “We are working with global partners to build an evidence-based case for the full participation of women and girls in the 21st century,” and their eyes fall on a picture of a cute, vibrant, and diverse group of young women surrounding the aging potentate and her daughter and former NBC News special correspondent. What it would take the Post or the Times to dispatch a reporter to Ishmaelia or wherever to examine, in skeptical detail, just where the Clinton money is going, to report on the precise state of the President Peter Mutharika Water Reclamation Plant and Convention Center, is beyond me. Certainly the reports from Haiti are not encouraging. Even the Journal is not clear when the Clinton Foundation dropped its ban on foreign money, a mystery the Foundation itself does not seem to be in any hurry to solve.

One can always count on the media’s herd instinct, however, and in the hours since the initial Journal scoop and the Clintons’ flagrant doubling-down on buckraking from overseas interests, a group of stories has appeared that suggests the Clintons have a big problem on their hands. A Washington Post analysis “found substantial overlap between the Clinton political machinery and the foundation,” and noted that “nearly half of the major donors who are backing ready for Hillary, a group promoting her 2016 presidential bid, as well as nearly half of the bundlers from her 2008 campaign, have given at least $10,000 to the foundation, either on their own or through foundations or companies they run.” What do you think they want for all of that money? An Eid al-Fatr card?

McClatchy draws our attention to donors such as “Mohammed Al-Amoudi, a billionaire businessman who lives in Ethiopia and Saudi Arabia, retired German race car driver Michael Schumacher, and Denis O’Brien, the Irish chairman of Digicel phone company,” who “each donated between $5 million to $10 million.” You know, regular folks; American-Gothic types; the sort of common people who so puzzle Clinton that she is asking more than 200 policy wonks for advice on how to talk to them.

How I would love to have been in the room with Bill Clinton and Doug Band and God-only-knows-who-else as the former president sweet-talked Herr Schumacher, telling him stories of his childhood and presidency and subsequent career, confiding his preferred cigar brands, mixing up funny vignettes with economic and political analysis, dropping hints at Hillary’s political future and impending ascension to the status of Sun-Queen, dispensing tips on vegan dieting, interspersing his unending monologue with deadpan treacle like “it’s for our children” and “we’re all one big global village” and “you should see what they’re doing for women’s health in Rwanda,” as the “retired German race car driver” kept his mouth contorted in a tight grin, ready to mention the quo for the quid, feeling like a big man for gaining proximity to the biggest big man of them all.

It's not just an invitation to feel like a compassionate person.  To be schmoozed by a Clinton or a Clinton insider is to be granted the privilege of feeling like a VIP member of the pointy-headed administrative / managerial bureaucracy that is destined to rule the world.

Exactly why the Pubs must - must - put up someone with none of this kind of odor about him.  In other words, a non-Jeb.

When even Vox can see what is going on . . .

Talk about having gotten out of hand.  Nobody's buying the Most Equal Comrade's attempt to craft and impose a narrative:

On the one hand, the US is at war with ISIS, an Islamist extremist group, which has murdered American citizens; it has been fighting al-Qaeda ever since it murdered thousands on September 11. Americans are understandably concerned and want to hear that their commander in chief understands the threat of Islamist extremism and takes it seriously.

On the other, Obama is clearly wary of worsening the wave of Islamophobia that ISIS has inspired in the US. Unduly emphasizing the role of religion could inspire more backlash against Muslims, of whom there are 2.6 million in the US. It could also indulge ISIS's view (also endorsedby some Americans, unfortunately) that the US is at war with Islam. Obama also surely wants to push against dangerous arguments, made by both ISIS and some prominent American voices, that ISIS represents true Islam.

Balancing these goals would be extraordinarily difficult for any president. George W. Bush struggled with it throughout his administration. But Obama is faltering. He has veered so far into downplaying Islamist extremism that he appears at times to refuse to acknowledge its existence at all, or has referred to it as violent extremism. While he has correctly identified economic and political factors that give rise to extremism, he has appeared to downplay or outright deny an awkward but important fact: religion plays an important role as well.

This is backfiring. Obama's conspicuous and often awkward attempts to sidestep the role of religion in Islamist extremism end up only drawing more attention to it. By refusing difficult questions about the role of religion in violent extremism, Obama is ceding those conversations to people like Bill O'Reilly, who has called Islam a "destructive force" and on Tuesday announced the US was in "a holy war."

Or how about the assessment of Andrea Mitchell at NBC News?

“Here he has the summit, no heads of government coming, the participation has not been at a particularly high level. We’ll have foreign ministers, we’ll be speaking to the Egyptian foreign minister shortly, who will be participating,” Mitchell said. “But there hasn’t been a whole lot of support from Europe or the Middle East at a very high level for what the president is setting out here.”

“It seems to be more of a dog and pony show,” Mitchell added.

And if you think Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un, the Ayatollah Khameini, the leaders of ISIS, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram and the Taliban aren't taking note, you need to give it more thought.