ERNESTO "CHE" OBAMA

ADAPTED FROM HERE.

1/20/09 -1/19/10: WHAT A DIFFERENCE A YEAR MAKES!

BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA WAS INAUGURATED 1/20/09.

SCOTT BROWN WILL BE ELECTED 1/19/10.

AWESOME. EXACTLY 365 DAYS.

OUR YEAR IN HELL, WILL BE OVER...

UPDATE: A DAY LATER AND THE WASH POST MAKES A ONE YEAR ANALYSIS.

UPDATE #2: MORE HERE.

UPDATE #3: AP AGREES: OBAMA'S YEAR #1 A BIG DISAPPOINTMENT. VIA GLENN.

NYTIMES: NEW HEALTH DANGER FROM CELLPHONES: WALKING WHILE TALKING!

NYTIMES:

Distracted driving has gained much attention lately because of the inflated crash risk posed by drivers using cellphones to talk and text.

But there is another growing problem caused by lower-stakes multitasking — distracted walking — which combines a pedestrian, an electronic device and an unseen crack in the sidewalk, the pole of a stop sign, a toy left on the living room floor or a parked (or sometimes moving) car.

The era of the mobile gadget is making mobility that much more perilous, particularly on crowded streets and in downtown areas where multiple multitaskers veer and swerve and walk to the beat of their own devices.

Most times, the mishaps for a distracted walker are minor, like the lightly dinged head and broken fingernail that Ms. Briggs suffered, a jammed digit or a sprained ankle, and, the befallen say, a nasty case of hurt pride. Of course, the injuries can sometimes be serious — and they are on the rise.

Slightly more than 1,000 pedestrians visited emergency rooms in 2008 because they got distracted and tripped, fell or ran into something while using a cellphone to talk or text. That was twice the number from 2007, which had nearly doubled from 2006, according to a study conducted by Ohio State University, which says it is the first to estimate such accidents.

“It’s the tip of the iceberg,” said Jack L. Nasar, a professor of city and regional planning at Ohio State, noting that the number of mishaps is probably much higher considering that most of the injuries are not severe enough to require a hospital visit.

OY.

IT'S ONLY A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE LEFTIST POLITICIANS REQUIRE A WARNING LABEL ON CELLPHONES AND THE TRIAL LAWYERS FIGGER OUT HOW TO SUE THE PHONES COMPANIES FOR MAKING AN UNSAFE PRODUCT.

OR MAYBE PEOPLE SHOULD JUST BE A LITTLE MORE CAREFUL.

UKIP AGREES WITH SARKOZY: BAN THE BURQA

THE UKIP WANTS TO SAVE BRITAIN - AND WILL DO WHATEVER MUST BE DONE.

THE UKIP WILL ALSO BATTLE THE EU AND EUROMED/EURABIA.

VIDEO: WAFA: ROPMA

ISLAM IS THE PROBLEM. AND PC.

AND IF WE FACE THE TRUTH, WE CAN SAVE 1.3 BILLION PEOPLE FROM THE ENSLAVEMENT TO ISLAM AND SAVE MODERNITY AND THE WEST, TOO.

CLINTON, BUSH AND OBAMA: WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?

A WEEK AFTER DEVALUING THE CURRENCY BY 50%, CHAVEZ INCREASES THE MINIMUM WAGE BY 25%

THIS IS HOW SOCIALISTS RUIN ECONOMIES AND CREATE POVERTY.

IF YOU WANT TO MAKE POVERTY HISTORY, THEN YOU HAVE TO MAKE LEFTISM HISTORY.

CHAVEZ AND OBAMA.

HAMAS AND HIZBALLAH LEADERS MEET IN BEIRUT

TERSE REPORTS HERE AND HERE.

A FACE TO FACE BETWEEN MESHAAL AND NASRALAH.

• THIS IS BIG.
• IMO: THIS MEANS IRAN HAS ORDERED THEM TO BEGIN ESCALATING ATTACKS ON ISRAEL IN ORDER TO CREATE A DIVERSION LASTING A FEW MONTHS.
• IMO: THIS MEANS IRAN IS ONLY A FEW MONTHS FROM BEING ABLE TO TEST A NUKE - AND THEN CLAIM THEY HAVE SEVERAL MORE.
• STAY TUNED.

EGYPTIAN DAILY PRAISES MOSSAD CHIEF FOR HIS ANTI-IRAN EFFORTS

JPOST:

Without Mossad director Meir Dagan, the Iranian nuclear program would have been successfully completed years ago, Egyptian daily Al-Ahram claimed in an op-ed published Saturday.

"Over the past seven years, he has worked in silence, away from the media," the op-ed read. "He has dealt painful blows to the Iranian nuclear program … he is the Superman of the Jewish state."

Among the steps taken by Dagan against Teheran, Al-Ahram listed diplomatic action to embarrass the Islamic republic, action to fuel opposition protests, assassinations and covert attacks against nuclear facilities.

JUST MORE PROOF THAT SUNNI ARABS ARE ALMOST AS THREATENED BY IRAN AS ISRAEL.

IF AND WHEN ISRAEL ATTACKS IRAN'S NUKE ASSETS, THE WORLD WILL BE AS ANGRY AS WHEN ISRAEL ATTACKED SYRIA'S NUKE ASSETS.

IOW: YAWN.

ALL THE REGION HAS TO FEAR IS THE IMMEDIATE IRANIAN MILITARY RETALIATION - WHICH MIGHT BE NEGLIGIBLE IF THE IAF ALSO WHACKS THE IRANIAN ARMY/AIR FORCE AND THE IRG.

1/19/10: ANOTHER SHOT HEARD ROUND THE WORLD!

VIA GERARD:



MORE HERE.

ONCE HERALDED BRITISH MET OFFICE ADMITS THAT ITS LONG-RANGE FORECASTS SUCK

BBC:

The Met Office has now admitted to BBC News that its annual global mean forecast predicted temperatures higher than actual temperatures for nine years out of the last 10.

... The Met Office has been criticised for failing to predict in its seasonal forecasts the UK would suffer this cold winter or the last three wet summers.

After being rapped for its now notorious "barbecue summer" press release, the winter forecast was expressed in probabilistic terms, with a 66% likelihood that the winter would be warmer than average and a one in seven chance that it would be colder.

MORE FROM WUWT:

The Met Office has admitted that it failed to warn the public of the heavy snow that brought swaths of Britain to a standstill on Wednesday.

Forecasters conceded that they did not spot the widespread snow storms that caused transport disruption and a surge of weather-related accidents until it was too late. Up to six inches fell in parts of the South West, with drifts of 7ft in Wales.

Even when the full extent of the threat was realised, flaws in the Met Office’s bad weather warning system meant that the public were not adequately informed, officials said. The system will now be reviewed.

IOW: THE DON'T KNOW WTF THEY'RE DOING WHEN IT COMES TO LONG RANGE FORECASTS.

KEEP THAT IN MIND WHEN THEY ARGUE THAT THE NEXT FEW DECADES ARE GONNA GET WARMER.

LEFTIST LETS MASK SLIP: MSNBC SHOULD FIRE ED SHULTZ FOR ADVOCATING ELECTION FRAUD

ED SHULTZ SAID HE'D CHEAT TO PREVENT BROWN FROM BEATING COAKLEY.

MSNBC SHOULD FIRE HIM FOR ADVOCATING ELECTION FRAUD.

ROUND UP HERE AT MEMEORANDUM.

WHAT'S HAPPENED TO AFRICAN-AMERICAN CULTURE - AND WHY?

THEN (VIA GLENN):



NOW:



THEN:



NOW:



THEN:



NOW:



THEN:



NOW:



THEN:



NOW:



THEN:



NOW:



THE "THENS" INCLUDE MY HEROES AND ALL-TIME FAVORITES.

THE "NOWS" ... ?!?!!? A BUNCH OF THUGGISH NO TALENT WTF'S AND CRETINS.

UPDATE: THE ANSWER IS PROBABLY HERE - THE 1965 MOYNIHAN REPORT, AND IN MANY WAYS, THINGS HAVE GOTTEN WORSE FOR BLACK CULTURE DESPITE ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL GAINS.

• IMHO: SINCE THE GREAT SOCIETY TOOK HOLD, "NEGRO AMERICAN" CULTURE HAS BEEN DOMINATED AND DECIMATED BY WELFARE STATE/LEFTIST/POSTMODERNIST IDEOLOGY. AND DESPITE WELFARE REFORM, BLACKS ARE STILL IN THE THRALL OF LEFTIST IDEOLOGY.

• IOW: LEFTISM IS DESTROYING BLACK AMERICAN CULTURE.

• IF WE WANT TO MAKE POVERTY HISTORY - AND SAVE BLACK AMERICAN CULTURE, WE NEED TO MAKE LEFTISM HISTORY.

UPDATE: MORE HERE AT AMERICAN POWER - FROM DONALD DOUGLAS.

MUSLIM CHILD BRIDES ON THE BLACK MARKET IN BRITAIN

Hege Storhaug at Front Page Magazine writes about the sickly case of girls young as 9, just like Ayesha, being sold into marriage slavery right within Britain, and the authorities are doing nothing about it:

First, when I say that the marriage of nine-year-old girls in today’s Britain (and the rest of the EU, for that matter) is unsurprising, my statement is based on my own 17 years of experience in the field of immigration: forms of assault based on tradition and religion – including child marriage, forced marriage, genital mutilation, so-called honor-related offenses such as rape and murder – have become established here as a result of immigration, mostly from Muslim countries. Instances of these offenses have been documented in countries such as Norway (where, to be sure, there have been no recorded cases of marriage to girls as young as nine, but where the marriage of an 11-year-old came to light in a TV documentary that I worked on as journalist; such cases have also been known in Sweden). The only phenomenon that has not been documented in Norway thus far is forced eating by girls before they are to be married off. I was told about this practice by feminists in Paris in 2003, and the phenomenon had been imported into France by immigrants, mostly from Mali. Girls are locked up and fed like geese before being married, because in their culture being fat is considered beautiful.

This being said, the news from Britain, which has been reported in the Times, deserves widespread attention. Because the authorities are obviously aware of very serious information about actual children who are supposedly under the protection of those very same authorities. In other words, Britain’s Ministry of Justice, if the Times is to be believed, knows who these children’s parents are, parents who have attempted to arrange for the rape of their own children. For this is what we are talking about here: the deprival of children’s freedom, plus countless years of repeated rape. Such phenomena must force authorities to sit down with a cool head and a warm heart and ask themselves: who are we, and where are we going? What are we doing to ourselves as a nation, to our heritage, to our culture, to our future? According to the Times, however, British authorities are not doing anything of the kind. Here comes the proposed initiative, and before you read this sentence you had better take a deep breath. The Ministry of Justice says that the children’s parents are receiving help from the authorities “to solve the problem.”

Then we can't possibly trust them to take any serious action to curb this filthy black marketeering, can we? One more reason to stay away from that awful, awful country.

CAIR MAY HAVE FOUND OUT WHERE RIFQA BARY IS STAYING

In Atlas Shrugs's latest update (via Fiery Spirited Zionist), and also in this article featured on Counter Jihad, we're told that CAIR or some other Muslim terrorist front group may have gained access to the knowledge of where Rifqa Bary's current foster home is, and this could put her life in danger.

This is one more reason why it's important to campaign for her freedom but most importantly, for her safety. Jamal Jivanjee tells that the next scheduled court date is January 28th, and that's when to be ready to attend a rally for her.

Note simultaneously that the Columbus Dispatch's Meredith Heagney has drawn moral equations between Rifqa and her parents, and also smears the Lorenz's. Heagney is still quite scummy.

To my brothers and sisters in Massachusetts

To my brothers and sisters in Massachusetts,

Few people ever get a chance to tell their children that they helped save their country. On Tuesday, you have that chance.

By casting a vote for Scott Brown, you can provide the 41st vote in the United States Senate that will block President Obama's agenda.

In casting a vote for Scott Brown, you can stop the 2200-page health care bill that rewards unionized workers, citizens of Nebraska, and medical malpractice lawyers.

In casting a vote for Scott Brown, you can stop "Cap-and-Trade" bills that claim carbon dioxide -- which plants need to produce oxygen -- is a taxable pollutant.

In casting a vote for Scott Brown, you can halt the kind of open borders policy that has destroyed California's economy and which threatens our nation as a whole.

In casting a vote for Scott Brown, you can quietly state your belief in the founding principles of the United States. That is: limited government, a respect for individual liberty, free enterprise and private property.

In casting a vote for Scott Brown, you can reject the massive deficit spending, the class warfare, the wealth redistribution schemes, the targeting and nationalization of entire industries.

Those who oppose your vote reject America's founding principles: the very tenets that led to the creation of the greatest country the world has ever seen.

In little more than two hundred years, Americans defeated slavery, Nazism, military Shintoism and Communism; refined mass production; invented human flight; created 75% of all medical innovations on the planet; put a man on the moon; invented the telephone, the Internet and the search engine; and advanced humankind in millions of other ways, in every field and endeavor.

Those who oppose your vote oppose our Constitution and our Declaration of Independence.

Those who oppose your vote refute the notion of God-given rights of man and carefully constructed limits on an all-powerful, centralized, authoritarian government.

Those who oppose your vote see the world as rigid classes of people that must be manipulated to advance a political agenda; whereas we revel in the notion that America has no static class structure; that every day the rich become poor and the poor rich.

Those who oppose your vote oppose free markets and the power of any individual -- no matter the race, creed, religion or color -- to achieve greatness through hard work, study, inspiration and innovation.

On Tuesday, I humbly ask that you cast a vote for Scott Brown for United States Senate. I ask that you cast a vote for liberty. That you cast a vote for mankind.

Few people ever get this chance. The history books are waiting.

PIGS FLY: GOOD, THOROUGH AND FAIR NYTIMES ARTICLE ON COAKLEY-BROWN AND OBAMACARE AND THE MID-TERMS

WITH ONLY THE SLIGHTEST BIAS.

BOTTOM-LINE: IF BROWN WINS, THEN OBAMACARE IS FINISHED - AND THE DEMS WILL LOSE CONGRESS THIS YEAR.

AND - IMHO: OBAMA HIMSELF IS THROUGH, TOO.

MORE PROOF HAITI'S LOUSY SOCIAL & VALUES SYSTEMS ARE COMPOUNDING THE TRAGEDY

BBC:

Security fears in quake-hit Haiti

There are mounting security concerns in Haiti's earthquake-hit capital as distribution problems continue to hamper getting aid to survivors.

Days after the quake devastated Port-au-Prince, killing tens of thousands, there are some reports of gangs preying on residents and looting.

Officials say thousands of prisoners are unaccounted for after the main prison was destroyed.

Relief has been arriving, but little has moved beyond the jammed airport.

THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN AFTER HORRIBLE QUAKES IN SF OR ITALY. BUT IT HAPPENED IN NOLA AFTER KATRINA, (AND NOT IN MISSISSIPPI AFTER KATRINA).

Yet another probe by terrorists on a jet to Michigan?

MAYBE:

Police questioned a passenger on a small commercial plane that flew from Chicago to a northern Michigan resort town on Friday after the crew reported he was acting suspiciously.

Crew members aboard United Airlines Flight 6036 said the 28-year-old California man had taken ''an article'' into the bathroom and left without it, said Traverse City Police Capt. Steve Morgan. The crew found that a panel inside the bathroom had been tampered with, he said.

BTW: THEY DON'T TELL US WHAT THE SUSPECTED PASSENGER'S "PROFILE" IS.

I THINK THE ENEMY IS TRYING TO INURE US TO SEVERAL POSSIBLE TACTICS IN ORDER TO IMMOBILIZE A POSSIBLE RESPONSE.

WUWT: WHAT GIVES: IT'S THE COLDEST FLORIDA HAS BEEN IN 100 YEARS - BUT THE "GLOBAL MEAN TEMPERATURE" IS UP?

WUWT:

As of Wednesday, Jan. 13, the area has experienced 12 consecutive days of below freezing temperatures — a new record.

National Weather Service Meteorologist Jason Hess said that it’s the length of the cold that is most significant.

“This is the longest stretch ever in 100 years of record keeping.”

A new daily record low temperature was set Sunday, Jan. 11, in the Crescent Communities, with the area reaching 17 degrees.

Since the beginning of January, temperatures have remained more than 20 degrees below normal. Temperatures normally should be up in the 60s during the day and the 40s at night, Hess said.

Recently, the highs have been in the 40s and the lows in the 20s.

MEANWHILE, "GLOBALLY" THE TEMPERATURES HAVE BEEN HIGH:

Many people think that the globe must be terribly cold these days. We’ve seen huge cold snaps and snowfalls in Britain, Eastern parts of the U.S., Western Europe, Central Europe, China, Korea, and India where hundreds of people have frozen.

So these are almost all the important places, right? (At this moment, the speaker forgets that there are places such as Latin America, Australia or the Balkans which have been warm.) So the globe must be cool – cooler than average, people could think.

However, the daily UAH global mean temperature shows a different story. The early January 2010 was warm. And on January 13th, which is the latest day whose temperature is known, we have seen the warmest January day on their record. The brightness global temperature near the surface was

T = -16.36 °C

which may not look excessively warm :-) but it is actually 0.11 °C warmer than the warmest January temperature recorded by UAH so far – which was on January 5th, 2007 (-16.47 °C). Of course, some alarmists might feel happy for a while. They’ve been afraid that the worries about a new ice age could escalate. And they’ve been saved: the global weather is warm again. The strong El Nino episode could have helped them – or someone else. It’s important that they’re saved. ;-)

However, there is another, more important consequence of these numbers. And it is the following: the global mean temperature is irrelevant for you and for everyone else, too. It didn’t help the hundreds of frozen people in India, the passengers whose flights were canceled, and millions of other people in the European, Asian, and American civilization centers.

If you actually draw the monthly data from 1979 to 2009 – the global ones and those in e.g. Prague – you will find out that the correlation coefficient is just 0.17 – well below the maximum possible value of 1.00. It won’t be much higher outside Prague, either. :-)

The Pythagorean average monthly anomaly in Prague has been something like 1.95 °C.

Imagine that you want to use the global temperature in order to improve the estimate of the temperature in Prague for a given month.

If you add the global anomaly and the expected local average temperature in Prague for the month, you will reduce the typical fluctuation from 1.95 °C to 1.92 °C or so – almost no change. The swings in the global temperature won’t visibly help you to improve the predictions of the local temperature.

So while it may be fun to watch the global temperature – a meaningless game that many people began to play in recent years because of the AGW fad (and yes, your humble correspondent only plays these games because others do, not because it is scientifically important) – it is very important to realize that the changes of the global mean temperature are irrelevant for every single place on the globe.

They only emerge when things are averaged over the globe – but no one is directly affected by such an average.

IOW: GLOBAL MEAN TEMPERATURE IS AS MEANINGFUL AS CALCULATING YOUR SALARY IN MARTIAN CURRENCY.

AND ASCRIBING ANY UPWARD CHANGE IN GLOBAL MEAN TEMPERATURE TO MAN-MADE CO2 IS EVEN MORE IDIOTIC.

POLL: BROWN UP BY 10%!

HOT AIR HAS THE DETAILS.

ALLAHPUNDIT ASKS A QUESTION:

If he wins by 10, it means … what? Five Senate Blue Dogs flip on ObamaCare? 20 new Democratic retirements? The return of Cthulhu? What?

MY ANSWER:

IF BROWN WINS BY DOUBLE DIGITS, THEN I PREDICT OBAMA WILL CONVERT TO CHRISTIANITY, CUT TAXES - AND APPLY TO BECOME A US CITIZEN!

SERIOULSY, I AM PRAYING FOR A BROWN LANDSLIDE, BUT I WILL SETTLE FOR A 1% WIN.

OBAMA ANNOUNCES THE TITLE OF THE THIRD VOLUME OF HIS MEMOIRS: "RULES FOR RADICALS POSING AS POST-RACIAL/POST-PARTISAN CENTRISTS"

RULE #1: DON'T GET CAUGHT UNTIL IT'S TOO LATE.


WE'RE LUCKY OBAMA BROKE RULE #1!

DEMS JOOOOOOOZE IS HAWT: THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS SCOOPS JAWA BY 4 DAYS!

BAR REFAELI AT JAWA TODAY.

SHE WAS HERE AT THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS FOUR DAYS AGO.

I GUESS THAT MEANS JWF GOT SLOPPY SECONDS!?!?

REGULAR READERS KNOW WE SCOOP THE BIGGIES ALL THE TIME.

SPREAD THE WORD, BLOGROLL US, BOOKMARK US.

HAITI, THE TRAGEDY OF POVERTY - AND WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT IT

THERE WAS A SURPRISINGLY GOOD COLUMN BY BROOKS, TODAY; HERE ARE THE GOOD PARTS HE GETS RIGHT:

This is not a natural disaster story. This is a poverty story. It’s a story about poorly constructed buildings, bad infrastructure and terrible public services. On Thursday, President Obama told the people of Haiti: “You will not be forsaken; you will not be forgotten.” If he is going to remain faithful to that vow then he is going to have to use this tragedy as an occasion to rethink our approach to global poverty. He’s going to have to acknowledge a few difficult truths.

On Oct. 17, 1989, a major earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 struck the Bay Area in Northern California. Sixty-three people were killed. This week, a major earthquake, also measuring a magnitude of 7.0, struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The Red Cross estimates that between 45,000 and 50,000 people have died.

... Over the past few decades, the world has spent trillions of dollars to generate growth in the developing world. The countries that have not received much aid, like China, have seen tremendous growth and tremendous poverty reductions. The countries that have received aid, like Haiti, have not.

...Haiti has more nongovernmental organizations per capita than any other place on earth.

... As Lawrence E. Harrison explained in his book “The Central Liberal Truth,” Haiti, like most of the world’s poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences. There is the influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile. There are high levels of social mistrust. Responsibility is often not internalized. Child-rearing practices often involve neglect in the early years and harsh retribution when kids hit 9 or 10.

We’re all supposed to politely respect each other’s cultures. But some cultures are more progress-resistant than others, and a horrible tragedy was just exacerbated by one of them.

HERE'S WHERE BROOKS MAKES A HUGE ERROR:

The first of those truths is that we don’t know how to use aid to reduce poverty. Over the past few decades, the world has spent trillions of dollars to generate growth in the developing world. The countries that have not received much aid, like China, have seen tremendous growth and tremendous poverty reductions. The countries that have received aid, like Haiti, have not.

In the recent anthology “What Works in Development?,” a group of economists try to sort out what we’ve learned. The picture is grim. There are no policy levers that consistently correlate to increased growth. There is nearly zero correlation between how a developing economy does one decade and how it does the next. There is no consistently proven way to reduce corruption. Even improving governing institutions doesn’t seem to produce the expected results.

The chastened tone of these essays is captured by the economist Abhijit Banerjee: “It is not clear to us that the best way to get growth is to do growth policy of any form. Perhaps making growth happen is ultimately beyond our control.”

WRONG:

IT'S CLEAR FROM COMPARING RED-CHINA TO HONG KONG AND THE NEW CHINA, AND OLD INDIA TO NEW INDIA, AND NORTH KOREA TO SOUTH KOREA, AND RHODESIA TO ZIMBABWE WHAT "MAKES GROWTH HAPPEN":

• FREE MARKETS,

• PERSONAL LIBERTY,

• AND A GOOD WORK ETHIC - WHICH MEANS PEOPLE WHO WORK HARD TO MAKE THEIR OWN LIVES BETTER.

PERIOD.

SOCIALISM, WELFARE AND NEARLY ALL INTERNATIONAL AID INHIBIT ALL OF THE ABOVE.

AND THAT MEANS POVERTY - THE NATURAL CONDITION INTO WHICH WE ARE ALL BORN - RETURNS.

• REMEMBER: PROSPERITY ISN'T NATURAL; IT'S CREATED. IT'S A PRODUCT OF HARD WORK.

• LEFTISTS THINK THAT POOR PEOPLE HAVE BECOME POOR BECAUSE THEIR NATURAL PROSPERITY WAS RIPPED OFF BY THE RICH AND THEY'VE BEEN EXPLOITED.

• CHINA PROVES THIS IS NONSENSE:

• BY ALLOWING RICH NATIONS TO COME INTO CHINA AND "EXPLOIT THEM" THE CHINESE ARE BECOME PROSPEROUS EVEN WEALTHY.

IN OTHER WORDS: IF WE REALLY WANT TO MAKE POVERTY HISTORY, THEN WE HAVE TO MAKE LEFTISM HISTORY.

(AND ISLAM.)

SADLY FOR HAITI, NEARLY ALL THE HAITIANS WHO HAVE A GOOD WORK ETHIC AND WHO WANT TO BETTER THEMSELVES BY DINT OF THEIR OWN HARD WORK LEAVE - AND HAVE BEEN LEAVING FOR DECADES.

WHEN THEY FEEL THEY CAN GO BACK AND DO WELL, THEN HAITI WILL.

IN THE MEANTIME, I PRAY THAT HAITI'S SUFFERING IS RELIEVED AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

IS MARY JO FINALLY GETTING JUSTICE?

Teddy can't play keep away anymore.

He met the Judge, and the verdict is in.

And part of the sentence is that the people get their Senate seat back.

The one Teddy sold his soul to keep.

RIP MARY JO.

BJ CLINTON: "HAITI CAN WAIT!"

BJ CLINTON - FOR THE LAST YEAR OBAMA'S SPECIAL ENVOY TO HAITI - IS NOT ANYWHERE NEAR HAITI; DESPITE THIS BEING HAITI'S GREATEST TIME OF NEED, BJ CLINTON IS IN MASSACHUSETTS CAMPAIGNING FOR COAKLEY (OBAMACARE/SOCIALISM).

DETAILS HERE AND HERE.

EURABIAN UNION WILL BE FORMALIZED IN ONLY 14 DAYS...

... AND JORDAN'S AMBASSADOR WILL BE SECRETARY GENERAL; CLICK FOR DETAILS; (THEY CALL IT "EUROMED" - OR THE EUROPEAN-MEDITERRANEAN UNION) .

• EUROPE'S LEFTIST BUREAUCRATS ARE DESTROYING JUDEO-CHRISTIAN EUROPE WITH TRANS-NATIONAL SOCIALISM AND ISLAMIFICATION/DHIMMITUDE.

• IF THEY SUCCEED, THEN "THE WEST" WILL BE GREATLY DIMINISHED - EFFECTIVELY REDUCED TO THE USA, CANADA, AUSTRALIA, JAPAN, SOUTH KOREA AND ISRAEL.

• (IMO: CHINA AND INDIA ARE - LIKE SOUTH & CENTRAL AMERICA - ONLY PARTLY WESTERNIZED.)

"OBAMA IS DOING JUST FINE."‏

"OBAMA IS DOING JUST FINE."‏

If you listen to the White House, Obama is doing just fine.

Corzine sucked. Deeds sucked. And Coakley sucks.

But Obama and Pelosi and Reid are doing just fine.

BWAHAHAHAHA!

JEWISH WOMAN LUCKY TO ESCAPE GAZA WITH HER CHILDREN

One of those foolish enough to marry a Muslim man has now escaped with her 4 children, from the Gaza strip, no less (via The Jawa Report):

Dressed in a hijab and running for her life, Oshrit Ochana - with her four children in tow - reached Gaza's Erez crossing midday on Tuesday, and was ushered through to the Israeli side.

Ochana, a 29-year-old Jewish Israeli who grew up in Ashdod, married a Muslim man seven years ago and then moved to Gaza with him.

Speaking to The Jerusalem Post just hours after her escape while on her way to her family's home in Ashdod to celebrate, she said she had reached the decision months ago to get away from her husband, Abdallah, who ekes out a living smuggling goods through the elaborate system of tunnels connecting Rafah with Egypt.

"That was no life for me and the children," she said. "The children had dreams that I wanted to make true. And we couldn't as long we remained in Gaza.

"Now I am trying to forget everything."

An opportunity to escape presented itself after Abdallah was arrested in Egypt for attempting to travel illegally to Europe.

Ochana and her four children - Mahmoud, seven; Abdel Rahman, five; Sali, six; and Asma, not yet two - left the apartment they shared with her husband's family on Tuesday morning. She told her brother-in-law that she was accompanying her sister-in-law to school and was going to buy a few things for the kids before returning to the small apartment.

But she had other plans.

Ochana's family in Ashdod had already contacted Yad L'Achim, a haredi anti-missionary organization that also helps Jewish Israeli women extricate themselves from marriages with Israeli Arabs and Palestinians.

The Ochana family told the haredi organization about Ochana's predicament and Yad L'Achim went into action.

"We notified [Shas chairman and Interior Minister] Eli Yishai and the Defense Ministry," said Rabbi Shalom Dov Lipshitz, chairman of Yad L'Achim.

"At first, security officials were suspicious. They were concerned that she might be a spy or a suicide bomber," Lipshitz said.

A decision was made that Ochana would make her way to the Erez crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel, where Israeli military officials would be notified and she would be let through. Yad L'Achim promised to find a hideout for Ochana and her children and to help them financially.

But making it to Erez, on the extreme northern side of the Gaza Strip, from Rafah, located about 60 kilometers away on the extreme southern side, was not easy. Suspicious that she might try to escape, Ochana's in-laws were carefully watching her.

As she stood in downtown Rafah, her brother-in-law's threat that he would kill her if she tried to run away still rang in her ears. Still, she waved down a taxi. She knew she had to take the chance.

Ochana piled her children inside and ordered the driver to take her to the Erez crossing.

The driver was suspicious of a woman wearing a hijab and speaking Arabic with a Hebrew accent who wanted to cut across the Gaza Strip to reach Erez.

"I told him that my father was very sick and I needed to visit him as quickly as possible."

She managed to pass through the Hamas-controlled side of the Erez crossing. On the Israeli side, the commanding officer had been notified that Ochana would be arriving.

Israeli security officials began questioning Ochana. But when one of her children passed out due to the excitement and dehydration, the interrogation was cut short and the Ochanas were rushed to Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon.

On Tuesday evening, Ochana celebrated her new-found freedom with her family in Ashdod. She plans to change the names of her children to Hebrew names.

Yad L'Achim's Lipshitz, who has helped other women escape from marriages with Arabs, said there were "hundreds" of Israeli women in similar situations.

"Some are in Gaza, others are in Nablus or Tulkarm, and there are some in neighboring Arab countries," he said.

"We are not a racist organization. But we do not want to lose Jewish souls. We lost enough in the Holocaust," he said.

Ochana warned other women not to make the mistake she made.

"It was stupid," she said. "I had a friend who introduced me to Abdallah. We had fun together. We danced and drank - I got carried away. I was his lapdog."

Ochana said she would not miss Abdallah. "I am still young enough to start my life over again."

I'd written about this before, and it's a lesson well worth noting - do NOT marry an Islamist. It will only result in disaster.

AHEAD IN THE LATEST POLL: SCOTT BROWN HAS THE DEMOCRATS ALL WEE-WEED UP

AWESOME DUDE!

THEY'RE GONNA BE POSITIVELY SWIMMIN' IN THE WEE-WEE IN DC ON THE NINETEENTH!

I GIVE THE DEMOCRATS A SOLID B+

COAKLEY'S MOUTH: THE GIFT THAT KEEPS GIVING

YOU GOTTA LISTEN TO COAKLEY ON THE RADIO: SHE DISSED CATHOLICS!

• SHE'S FREAKIN GAFFETASTIC!

• RANKED ON FENWAY FANS AND NOW THE RC CHURCH!

• LAST WEEK SHE SAID THERE WERE NO AL Q IN AFGHANISTAN.

SHEESH.

NOW I KNOW WHY OBAMA WANTS HER IN DC:

SHE'LL MAKE BIDEN LOOK SMART!

Ominous, Yet Wholly Unsurprising Intelligence From STRATFOR

This can't be good.

SATELLITE IMAGERY OF HAITI'S DESTRUCTION

HERE.

1/2010: MIGHT BE BRITAIN'S COLDEST JANUARY IN 37 YEARS

AGW = BS.

SCOTT RITTER APPOINTED OBAMA'S ASSISTANT DEPUTY SECRETARY OF EDUCATION FOR SCHOOL SAFETY

Could Scott Ritter be appointed Obama's next Assistant Secretary for Education and School Safety?!?!?!

• YES, HE COULD BE -- AFTER ALL, HE LIKES TO DO WHAT KEVEN JENNINGS LIKE TO DO.

• ONLY RITTER GOT ARRESTED FOR IT.

• ROUND UP AT MEMEORANDUM.

HAITI'S BAD CULTURAL AND SOCIAL VALUES MAKE THE HORROR WORSE

YOU DON'T SEE MORE CIVILIZED PLACES WITH EARTHQUAKES TOTALLY FALLING TO PIECES SOCIALLY, BUT YOU DO IN HAITI.

THE WEAK VALUE SYSTEM AND CORRUPT GOVERNMENT IN HAITI MAKES THE EARTHQUAKE TOLL WORSE - LIKE NEW ORLEANS AND THE KATRINA TOLL.

SAN FRANCISCO DIDN'T FALL APART SOCIALLY FROM ITS QUAKE.

AND FLORIDA DIDN'T FALL APART FROM IT'S THREE AWFUL HURRICANES - AND NEITHER DID MISSISSIPPI FROM KATRINA.

NYTIMES:

Disorder Adds to Misery in Reeling Haiti; Red Cross Says Death Toll May Be 50,000

By SIMON ROMERO and NEIL MacFARQUHAR

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Hundreds of bodies lay abandoned outside the morgue in Haiti’s capital on Thursday. The main airport was so overwhelmed by planes carrying foreign aid that incoming American flights were suspended. The national police had all but vanished, and officials reported looting at a collapsed grocery store.

Signs of tension and urgency were growing in this impoverished nation on Thursday, two days after an earthquake reduced much of the capital to rubble, killing what the best estimates put at tens of thousands of people, and leaving Haiti without a functioning central government.

UPDATE: Reuters agrees with the description of Haiti's lack of a viable social system and how it creates more chaos and worsens the catastrophe:

"The problem is that unlike traditional disaster situations we have few local partners to work with, because most of them have had their buildings destroyed and are looking for their own dead and missing," said Margaret Aguirre, a senior official with International Medical Corps.

Haitians are doing their best to survive chaotic conditions in the absence of any clear leadership, said Latin America expert Dan Erikson of the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue think tank.

"The sad truth is that no one is in charge of Haiti today. This vacuum, coupled with the robust response from the Obama administration, has inevitably created a situation where the U.S. will be the de facto decision-maker in Haiti."

... In poor areas, there was little sign of any coordinated rescue activities.

..."There is no one in our country capable of sorting this out. Everyone is looking after their own families. Only the world can come to our rescue," said shop owner Edner Baptiste.

THE HAITIANS SEEMS TO HAVE NO SENSE OF SELF-RELIANCE.

PEOPLE WITH BAD VALUES AND WEAK SOCIAL SYSTEMS SUFFER MORE FROM THESE EVENTS THAN PEOPLE WITH GOOD VALUES AND STRONG SOCIAL SYSTEMS.

I PRAY THE HAITIANS RECOVER AND THAT THEY DEVELOP BETTER VALUES AND A BETTER SOCIAL SYSTEM AND A BETTER GOVERNMENT.

UPDATE #2:

CBS:

Gangs Armed With Machetes Loot Port-Au-Prince

Central Business District Resembles Hell On Earth As Bodies Pile Up And Armed Men Battle Over Food, Supplies PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (CBS) ―

The earthquake aftermath has brought out the best and worst of the people of Haiti.

Much like the days after Hurricane Katrina, looting has become a problem very quickly.

GANGS LIKE THIS- SPONTANEOUSLY TAKING OVER - IS A SIGN OF DEEP AND WIDESPREAD CULTURAL AND SOCIAL AND MORAL BANKRUPTCY - THIS IS WHY THERE'S HUMAN MAYHEM COMPOUNDING THE HORROR.

IT'S WHY HAITI IS SO POOR AND WHY THEY HAVE REACTED SO POORLY TO THIS HORRIFIC ORDEAL.

ORDEALS LIKE THIS BRING OUT THE BEST AND THE WORST IN PEOPLE.

IF ONE RESPONSE DOMINATES IT'S BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT THE PEOPLE HAVE BECOME DEEP DOWN INSIDE.

GOLDMAN SACHS ADMITS CONFLICTS OF INTERESTS

NYTIMES:

For years, Wall Street whispered that Goldman Sachs profited handsomely by trading ahead of — or even against — its own clients.

Goldman Sachs tried to allay criticism of its trading and disclosure practices.

On Tuesday, a Goldman executive made an unusual admission that, in some cases, the rumors were true.

In an e-mail message to select clients, Thomas C. Mazarakis, the head of Goldman’s fundamental strategies group, acknowledged that his unit often provided investment ideas that the firm had already traded on. Sometimes Goldman has even taken the opposite approach, betting against particular instruments that the group has recommended.

“We may trade, and may have existing positions, based on trading ideas before we have discussed those trading ideas with you,” he wrote.

The statement comes as the firm faces growing criticism over its role in the financial crisis, and is a rare acknowledgment of Goldman’s conflicts with certain of its clients.

“The way that the business is evolving is that it is laden with conflicts of interest,” Anant K. Sundaram, a professor of finance at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, said.

Last month, the Securities and Exchange Commission and Congress began investigating how Goldman and other firms had created bundles of mortgages known as collateralized debt obligations, or C.D.O.’s, that were sold to investors at the same time that the banks had privately bet against the instruments. Some of these C.D.O.’s later fell in value, creating losses for those clients who bought them — and profits for Goldman.

THE GOLDMAN PEOPLE DESERVE TO LOSE ALL THEIR CLIENTS.

WALL STREET WOULD BE FINE OF THE GAME WASN'T RIGGED BY CROOKS LIE GOLDMAN.

THE CONFLICTS OF INTEREST ARE NEITHER FREE OR FAIR; THEY'RE CRIMINAL.

THEY HURT A FREE MARKET. THEY MUST BE PUNISHED.

HAITI IS HELL - WHAT ABOUT IT'S NEIGHBOR, THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC?

HAITI IS A HORROR MADE WORSE BY THE HORRIFIC TOLL OF THE EARTHQUAKE.

HAITI SHARES AN ISLAND WITH ANOTHER NATION - THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, WHICH ISN'T DOING ANY WORSE AS A RESULT OF THE QUAKE AND IS AIDING HAITI:

Haiti, a former French colony, and the Dominican Republic, with roots as a Spanish colony, have tensions that go back to those days, Sagas said.

The Dominican Republic gained its independence from Haiti in 1844, after Haiti had occupied it. The Dominicans spent the next 20 years fighting off Haitian invasion attempts.

By the early 20th century, Haitians had become a source of cheap labor in the neighboring country. Racism and security concerns resulted in a massacre in 1937. Dominican leader Rafael Trujillo ordered the execution of Haitians living near the border between the countries, resulting in the killings of 20,000 to 30,000 Haitians, historians say.

The current tragedy appears to push those tensions further into the past.

"This is the worst disaster in Haiti's recorded history," Sagas said. "The best role the DR can play is to open its border for other nations to funnel all the aid to Haiti."

The Dominican Republic appears to be following that path.

The government on Wednesday started sending food, medicine and rescue crews to Haiti, the El Nacional newspaper reported. Top Dominican leaders amassed at the border as a staging ground to begin transporting aid into the country.

I HOPE THAT HAITI GETS THE AIDS IT NEED IN TIME TO MAKE THE SUFFERING AS MINIMAL AS POSSIBLE.

THE SITUATION SEEMS TO ME TO BE A LITTLE LIKE NORTH AND SOUTH KOREA.

FOR HAITI TO RECOVER - AND THRIVE, THEY WILL ALSO NEED TO ABANDON THE CULTURAL AND POLITICAL VALUES AND INSTITUTIONS WHICH MADE THEM THE POOREST NATION IN THE CARIBBEAN, AND THEY NEED TO BECOME MORE LIKE THE DR.

I'M PRAYING THEY DO.

Hitler Drinking Game: evidence of a new and truly lost generation in the West

SKY NEWS:

Hitler – The Drinking Game, involves students downing drinks on the turn of cards laid out in the shape of a Swastika.

Players are required to make Nazi salutes and "interrogate" other players.

There is also a section called The Holocaust where players have to "down in one" a pint glass filled with spirits.

The game has its own Facebook group created by Huddersfield University students Nicholas Rowley and Anthony Pike.

Facebook group has 12,000 members

In the group both describe themselves as "Fuhrers".

The group currently has 12,000 members.

Those who submit pictures of themselves playing the game are promoted to Nazi "officers".

Students have also posted pictures of themselves with moustaches in the style of Adolf Hitler.

For young people in the West to be doing this... well, er um... it shows how poorly educated they are about REAL history and how thoroughly postmodern they've become that they can make light of so horrible a person and event.

IT'S SICKENING. I CAN'T IMAGINE CHINESE OR KOREAN KIDS MAKING LIGHT OF THE RAPE OF NANKING OR AFRICAN KINDS MAKING LIGHT OF RWANDA, OR THAI KIDS MAKING LIGHT OF POL POT.

TURKEY SHOULD BE THROWN OUT OF NATO: THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS SCOOPS NRO AND THE WALL STREET JOURNAL BY MONTHS

• NRO TODAY SUGGESTED THAT IT MIGHT BE TIME FOR TURKEY TO BE EXPELLED FROM NATO - CITING A NOVEMBER OP-ED IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

WE HIT EARLIEST AND HARDEST ON THIS ISSUE MONTHS AND MONTHS AGO - BEFORE EITHER OF THEM:

• FIRST CALLING FOR TURKEY'S EXPULSION FROM NATO HERE ON 10/26/09.

• THEN AGAIN THREE DAYS LATER.

• AND AS RECENTLY AS THREE DAYS AGO.

I GET CALLED A BLUNT HOTHEAD FREQUENTLY, BUT I USUALLY END UP RIGHT - FIRST AND RIGHT MORE OFTEN THAN NOT, AND MORE OFTEN THAN ANY OTHER BLOGGER IN THE BLOGOSPHERE.

REGULAR READERS KNOW THIS.

SPREAD THE WORD. BLOGROLL US. BOOKMARK US.

THE ECO-NUTSIES' INTERNECINE WAR

DESCRIBED IN THE NYTIMES; EXCERPT:

Environmentalists are more openly at odds over two goals: the preservation of wide open spaces vs. the use of public lands for renewable energy projects.

The boosters of renewable energy development won a victory last week when the Bureau of Land Management announced that 31 proposed projects have been put on the fast track for approval.

But there are battlegrounds like the Mojave Desert in California , where several solar and wind farm proposals were stalled by legislation introduced by Senator Dianne Feinstein to protect a million acres that had earlier been set aside for preservation.

THE ROOT CAUSE OF THE INTERNECINE WAR IS SIMPLE: THEY'RE UTOPIANISTS WHO MAKE THE GOOD THE ENEMY OF THE PERFECT.

AND AS POSTMODERNISTS THEY'RE ANTI-HUMANISTS WHO THINK WE ARE A PLAGUE ON THE PLANET. ESPECIALLY WHITE PEOPLE. ESPECIALLY CAPITALISTS. ESPECIALLY JEWS AND CHRISTIANS. ESPECIALLY AMERICANS. ESPECIALLY CONSERVATIVES.

THE END OF BRITAIN: FIRST THE NAVY AND NOW THE ARMY

Last week we posted on how far the British Navy has fallen: the Sea Lord has basically conceded to the Somali pirates.

Now these two items:

First:

Almost 5,000 soldiers and officers - or one in five army personnel - are unfit for frontline combat duties, figures from the Ministry of Defence show.

ER UM . . . DOES THAT MEANS WHAT I THINK IT MEANS!?!?!?

BRITAIN HAS ONLY 25000 ACTIVE SOLDIERS IN THE ARMY!?!?

Second:

The British armed forces could be forced to shrink by up to a fifth because of a lack of money, a military think tank has predicted.

The Royal United Services Institute said the number of trained military personnel could fall from 175,000 to little more than 140,000 by 2016.

Its report said the cost of troops and equipment was rising, and major cuts were "inevitable".

The Ministry of Defence said budgets would not be cut at all next year.

The report's author, defence expert Professor Malcolm Chalmers, warned hard choices lay ahead and efficiency savings would not be enough to put Britain's defences on a sustainable footing.

He said even being "cautiously optimistic", intense pressure on government finances meant the MoD's budget was likely to fall by 11% in real terms by 2017.

And he said a much deeper reduction of about 15% over the next three years could not be ruled out.

'Political pain'

He warned the problem would be made worse because the costs of employing troops and civilian personnel have been rising in real terms, as has buying and running equipment.

Cuts to the available budget combined with growing costs meant the next six years were likely to see a reduction of about 20% in the number of service personnel, the report said.

Military capabilities in terms of ships, aircraft and ground formations would also be reduced by a similar amount.

In military terms, the British are of almost no use to the Free World. Pity: they were once the best in the world, and for much of the last century were probably the second best. All that is lost - or soon will be.

This is what the Left would like to see happen here.

AN OPEN LETTER TO MASSACHUSETTS DEMOCRATS

Maybe you're unhappy with the way things are going down in DC but afraid to vote Brown and GOP?

Well, think of it this way: you'll still have Kerry on the Democrat side of the aisle, one of the senior most on that side.

By adding a GOP Senator you get a strong voice on the other side of the aisle and in the GOP Caucus, and you make the voice of Massachusetts stronger.

And you send a message to DC and the Democrat Party.

It's a win-win.

DO IT.

Many Democrats in NYC - which is AT LEAST as liberal as Massachusetts - voted for Rudy and Bloomberg for the good of the city.

DO IT FOR THE GOOD OF MASSACHUSETTS.

For the good of us all.

Complete round up of the race here at Memeorandum.

90% OF ALL EU CARBON TRADING IS FRAUDULENT: THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS SCOOPS WUWT BY A MONTH

• WUWT TODAY.

• THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS LAST MONTH.

REGULAR READERS KNOW THIS HAPPENS ALL THE TIME. SPREAD THE WORD, BLOGROLL US, BOOKMARK US.

BOTTOM-LINE: ONE OF THE MAJOR REASONS CO2 IS HYPED IS THE FACT THAT THE HYPERS CAN MAKE BILLIONS; THE ARTICLES IN THE LINKS ABOVE PROVE IT.

JEWS RULE: BAR REFAELI IN LINGERIE

MORE ON HOW GREAT JEWS ARE HERE.

NETANYAHU: TURKEY A BIG PROBLEM

WE SAID SO HERE LAST WEEK.

TODAY, BIBI AGREES.

THE OBAMA EFFECT: TALKS OF RAISING TAXES YESTERDAY; WALL STREET TANKS TODAY

THE LEFT JUST DOESN'T GET IT:
NYTIMES/REUTERS :

U.S. stocks slid in a broad selloff on Tuesday as investors pummeled financials on concerns about a potential government levy on banks.

...President Barack Obama is considering a levy on financial services firms to recoup losses from the Troubled Asset Relief Program as part of the fiscal 2011 budget he will unveil in February, according to a senior U.S. official.

Treasury has provided the White House's Office of Management and Budget with a new estimate that TARP will ultimately cost U.S. taxpayers about $120 billion -- down from a $141 billion estimate on December 6, a government source said. The final estimate is likely to decline even further.

Investors feared that a levy might hurt bank profits at a time when the sector was trying to recover from the financial crisis, analysts said.

OBAMA IS A DISASTER - FOR THE ECONOMY, FOR OUR NATIONAL SECURITY, FOR THE FREE WORLD.


JUST AS WE PREDICTED: LEFTIST POLICIES ALWAYS FAIL.

ASSASSINATED IRANIAN NUCLEAR SCIENTIST WAS MOUSAVI SUPPORTER - DID KHAMEINI KILL HIM?

From Jerusalem Post:

A nuclear physics professor who publicly backed Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi in the disputed June presidential election was killed Tuesday when a remote-controlled bomb rigged to a motorcycle blew up outside his home.

State media identified the victim as Masoud Ali Mohammadi, 50, a professor at Tehran University, which has been at the center of recent protests by student opposition supporters. Before the election, pro-reform Web sites published Ali Mohammadi's name among a list of 240 TehranUniversity teachers who supported Mousavi.

The government blamed the bombing on an armed Iranian opposition group that it said operated under the direction of Israel and the US. Iran often accuses both countries of meddling in its affairs - both when it comes to postelection unrest and its nuclear program. Israel's foreign ministry had no comment.

The Iranian nuclear program has been fraught with problems which are the result of sabotage.

And, both the United States and Israel are known to be actively attempting to contribute to the sabotage of the nuke program.

The nuclear scientist may have been a mole for our side.

And the regime may have had him whacked in a way that could be blamed on us.

DEPUTY FOREIGN MINISTER VISITS HEBRON

Israel National News reports that deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon and another member of Yisrael Beitenu have paid a visit to Hebron's Jewish community, a very positive step.

MIEP GIES PASSES AWAY AT 100

Miep Gies, the Dutchwoman who helped Anne Frank and her family hide from the nazis, is now dead at 100:

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands – Miep Gies, the office secretary who defied the Nazi occupiers to hide Anne Frank and her family for two years and saved the teenager's diary not, has died, the Anne Frank Museum said Tuesday. She was 100.

Gies' Web site reported that she died Monday after a brief illness. The report was confirmed by museum spokeswoman Maatje Mostar, but she gave no details. The British Broadcasting Corp. said she died in a nursing home after suffering a fall last month.

Gies was the last of the few non-Jews who supplied food, books and good cheer to the secret annex behind the canal warehouse where Anne, her parents, sister and four other Jews hid for 25 months during World War II.

After the apartment was raided by the German police, Gies gathered up Anne's scattered notebooks and papers and locked them in a drawer for her return after the war. The diary, which Anne Frank was given on her 13th birthday, chronicles her life in hiding from June 12, 1942 until August 1, 1944.

Gies refused to read the papers, saying even a teenager's privacy was sacred. Later, she said if she had read them she would have had to burn them because they incriminated the "helpers."

Anne Frank died of typhus at age 15 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945, just two weeks before the camp was liberated. Gies gave the diary to Anne's father Otto, the only survivor, who published it in 1947.

After the diary was published, Gies tirelessly promoted causes of tolerance. She brushed aside the accolades for helping hide the Frank family as more than she deserved — as if, she said, she had tried to save all the Jews of occupied Holland.

"This is very unfair. So many others have done the same or even far more dangerous work," she wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press days before her 100th birthday last February.

"The Diary of Anne Frank" was the first popular book about the Holocaust, and has been read by millions of children and adults around the world in some 65 languages.

For her courage, Gies was bestowed with the "Righteous Gentile" title by the Israeli Holocaust museum Yad Vashem. She has also been honored by the German Government, Dutch monarchy and educational institutions.

Nevertheless, Gies resisted being made a character study of heroism for the young.

"I don't want to be considered a hero," she said in a 1997 online chat with schoolchildren.

"Imagine young people would grow up with the feeling that you have to be a hero to do your human duty. I am afraid nobody would ever help other people, because who is a hero? I was not. I was just an ordinary housewife and secretary."

Born Hermine Santrouschitz on Feb. 15, 1909 in Vienna, Gies moved to Amsterdam in 1922 to escape food shortages in Austria. She lived with a host family who gave her the nickname Miep.

In 1933, Gies took a job as an office assistant in the spice business of Otto Frank. After refusing to join a Nazi organization in 1941, she avoided deportation to Austria by marrying her Dutch boyfriend, Jan Gies.

As the Nazis ramped up their arrests and deportations of Dutch Jews, Otto Frank asked Gies in July 1942 to help hide his family in the annex above the company's canal-side warehouse on Prinsengracht 263 and to bring them food and supplies.

"I answered, 'Yes, of course.' It seemed perfectly natural to me. I could help these people. They were powerless, they didn't know where to turn," she said years later.

Jan and Miep Gies worked with four other employees in the firm to sustain the Franks and four other Jews sharing the annex. Jan secured extra food ration cards from the underground resistance. Miep cycled around the city, alternating grocers to ward off suspicions from this highly dangerous activity.

In her e-mail to the AP last February, Gies remembered her husband, who died in 1993, as one of Holland's unsung war heroes. "He was a resistance man who said nothing but did a lot. During the war he refused to say anything about his work, only that he might not come back one night. People like him existed in thousands but were never heard," she wrote.

Touched by Anne's precocious intelligence and loneliness, Miep also brought Anne books and newspapers while remembering everybody's birthdays and special days with gifts.

"It seems as if we are never far from Miep's thoughts," Anne wrote.

In her own book, "Anne Frank Remembered," Gies recalled being in the office when the German police, acting on a tip that historians have failed to trace, raided the hide-out in August 1944.

A policeman opened the door to the main office and pointed a revolver at the three employees, telling them to sit quietly. "Bep, we've had it," Gies whispered to Bep Voskuijl.

After the arrests, she went to the police station to offer a bribe for the Franks' release, but it was too late. On Aug. 8, they were sent to Westerbork, a concentration camp in eastern Holland from where they were later packed into cattle cars and deported to Auschwitz. A few months later, Anne and her sister Margot were transported to Bergen-Belsen.

Two of the helpers, Victor Kugler and Johannes Kleiman, were sent to labor camps, but survived the war.

Around 140,000 Jews lived in the Netherlands before the 1940-45 Nazi occupation. Of those, 107,000 were deported to Germany and only 5,200 survived. Some 24,000 Jews went into hiding, of which 8,000 were hunted down or turned in.

After the war, Otto Frank returned to Amsterdam and lived with the Gies family until he remarried in 1952. Miep worked for him as he compiled the diary, then devoted herself to talking about the diary and answering piles of letters with questions from around the world.

After Otto Frank's death in 1980, Gies continued to campaign against Holocaust-deniers and to refute allegations that the diary was a forgery.

She suffered a stroke in 1997 which slightly affected her speech, but she remained generally in good health as she approached her 100th birthday.

Her son Paul Gies said last year she was still receiving "a sizable amount of mail" which she handled with the help of a family friend. She spent her days at the apartment where she lived since 2000 reading two daily newspapers and following television news and talk shows.

Her husband died in 1993. She is survived by her son and three grandchildren.

She's very brave to have done what she could to help, and must always be remembered for that.

THE NIGHT AND THE MOMENT SCOTT BROWN BECAME THE NEXT SENATOR FROM MASSACHUSETTS

TONIGHT, HE RAISED MORE THAN $1,000,000WITH AN ON-LINE MONEYBOMB.

AWESOME!

AND TONIGHT HE SAID THIS:



(VIA THE INVALUABLE GATEWAYY PUNDIT.)



WITH ONLY 7 MORE DAYS TO GO, BROWN IS THE NEXT SENATOR.

NO ONE ELSE ON THAT STAGE CAME CLOSE TO MATCHING HIS STATURE: NOT COAKLEY, NOT KENNEDY, NOT GERGEN.

MASSACHUSETTS WILL SEND BROWN TO THE SENATE.

WILL TWO PROPOSED ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATURAL GAS PIPELINES GET BUIILT?

Federal regulators are recommending approval of two natural gas pipelines that could sharply increase fuel shipments from the Rockies to population centers in the Midwest and on the West Coast.

The Rockies hold an estimated 375 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, or almost as much as the Gulf of Mexico.

The fuel has been promoted as a less-polluting alternative to coal because it emits less greenhouse gas. Yet moves to crank open the spigot in the Rockies are getting pushback from environmentalists worried about the growing number of pipelines crisscrossing the West.

Combined, the two latest proposals would move almost 2 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day — enough to fuel about 9 million homes. That would amount to a roughly 25 percent increase over current gas exports from Colorado, Wyoming and Utah.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is expected to make final decisions on the Bison and Ruby pipelines in the next two to three months, said agency spokeswoman Tamara Young-Allen. Construction could begin by spring.

Building the pipelines — each hundreds of miles long — would entail crossing more than 1,200 streams and other bodies of water and disturbing thousands of acres of undeveloped land, according to recent environmental studies by the commission's staff.

TransCanada's $610 million, 310-mile Bison pipeline would run from Gillette, Wyo., through southeastern Montana to Morton County, N.D. From there, the line would feed into other pipelines serving the Midwest.

El Paso Corp.'s $3 billion Ruby pipeline would run from Opal, Wyo., to Malin, Ore., passing through Utah and Nevada along a 675-mile route.

Environmentalists have singled out the Ruby pipeline as particularly damaging because of its route through the remote wilds of northern Nevada. Also, horse advocates claim the project is prompting the removal of wild mustang herds along the proposed route by the Bureau of Land Management.

But commission staff concluded the environmental effects would be outweighed by the economic benefits of the pipelines, including roughly $30 million in annual property taxes. They also said the routes chosen minimized harm to the environment.

WILL THE ECO-NUTSIES STOP THESE PIPELINES!?! WILL THEY BE ABLE TO PREVENT US FROM USING THESE 375 TRILLION CUBIC FEET OF GAS?!

I SURE HOPE NOT.

BUT THE ANTI-BUSINESS LEFTIES ALWAYS SEEM TO HAVE A REASON FOR STOPPING INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT - EVEN OF GAS/COAL "ALTERNATIVES" - LIKE THE WIND FARM IN NANTUCKET.

TO INCREASE OUR PROSPERITY AND IMPROVE OUR LIVING STANDARDS AND LIFE SPANS WE NEED MORE ENERGY.

THESE GAS DEPOSITS COULD HELP.

PREVENTING THEM WILL ONLY CAUSE MORE HUMAN HARDSHIP - SOMETHING THE ECO-LEFTIES SEEM NOT TO CARE A WHIT ABOUT.

I'LL TELL YA ONE THING FER SURE: SARAH PALIN WOULD GET THEM BUILT.

ROOT CAUSES OF TERROR? I GUESS THAT "DEPENDS"...

JUST BAN PANTS!?!? TYPICAL LIBERAL HALF-ASSERY.

HE HAS TO ALSO BAN UNDERPANTS AND DEPENDS!

PALIN'S GIG WITH FOX MEANS SHE'S NOT RUNNING FOR POTUS; SHE'S GONNA BE THE NEXT RUSH, O'REILLY AND OPRAH ALL ROLLED UP INTO ONE

MEMEORANDUM HAS THE ROUND UP OF ALL THE NEWS AND OPINION ON PALIN'S DEAL WITH FOX.

• MY PREDICTION IS THAT THIS IS JUST THE WARM-UP, THE DRESS REHEARSAL, AND THE SHAKEDOWN CRUISE FOR HER CAREER AS THE NEXT RUSH AND O'REILLY AND OPRAH ALL ROLLED UP INTO ONE.

• I PREDICT THAT IN THE NEXT FEW YEARS O'REILLY WILL RETIRE AND THAT PALIN WILL REPLACE HIM WITH A MORE OPRAH-LIKE PRIME-TIME SHOW AND THAT IT WILL BE A HUGE HIT.

SHE'D REACH MILLIONS EVERY NIGHT AND BE AS INFLUENTIAL AS RUSH AND O'REILLY AND OPRAH ALL ROLLED UP INTO ONE.

THAT'S AS GOOD AS BEING POTUS. FOR A LOT MORE MONEY AND WITH A LOT LESS HEADACHES.

I THINK THERE'S ONLY ONE THING THAT COULD BE BETTER THAN PALIN HAVING A PRIME TIME SHOW OF HER OWN ON FOX:

OBAMA HAVING ONE ON CNN STARTING IN 2012!

UPDATE: MAYBE PALIN CAN ALSO REPLACE COWELL ON IDOL?

THE KHOST ATTACK - ANALYZED IN DETAIL

HERE.

BRRRRRRR!: SNOW IN SOUTHERN SPAIN FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 50 YEARS!

SINGAPORE'S STRAITS TIMES:

SNOW fell in parts of Spain for the first time in half a century on Monday as a wave of Arctic cold that has killed scores of people and caused billions of euros in damage to Europe's economy swept southwards.

As villages in parts of north-east Germany remained cut off from the outside world by giant snowdrifts, authorities sounded the alert in 18 regions across central and northern Spain in anticipation of further snow and icy temperatures.

More than 270 flights were cancelled at Madrid-Barajas airport, while neighbouring Portugal also struggled to cope with snowfall which caused the closure of around 50 main roads. Scores spent the night stuck in their vehicles.

The southern Spanish city of Seville, which normally enjoys [WINTER] temperatures in January of around 15 deg C [ABOUT 60F], shivered under its first snowfall in half a century.

AGW = BS.

TWO NAVY SEALS TO BE TRIED IN IRAQ

NYTIMES/AP: 2 Navy SEALs' Detainee Abuse Trials Moved to Iraq

Two Navy SEALs accused in the mistreatment of an Iraqi detainee should be tried at the U.S. base in Iraq where the alleged victim is being held, a military judge ruled Monday.

Cmdr. Tierney Carlos moved the trials after government prosecutors said they would make the detainee available for deposition at Camp Victory in Baghdad but would not bring him to Naval Station Norfolk to testify. The judge ruled that Petty Officer 2nd Class Jonathan Keefe of Yorktown, Va., and Petty Officer 1st Class Julio Huertas of Blue Island, Ill., have a right to face their accuser in open court.

A hearing for a third defendant, Petty Officer 2nd Class Matthew McCabe of Perrysburg, Ohio, is tentatively set for Wednesday before a different judge.

McCabe is accused of punching Ahmed Hashim Abed, the suspected mastermind of a 2004 ambush that killed four U.S. security contractors in Fallujah. The contractors' bodies were dragged through the streets and hung from a bridge.

UNBEFRICKINLIEVABLE:

• NONE OF THESE SEAL GUYS SHOULD BE ON TRIAL.
• THEY'RE BEING TREATED WORSE THAN KSM.
• IT'S SICKENING.
• THESE GUYS ARE HEROES; THEY DESERVE MEDALS AND A TICKER-TAPE PARADE, NOT A TRIAL AT A MILITARY BASE IN IRAQ.
  

OBAMA SHOULD GIVE THEM ALL PARDONS!

UPDATED!: IT'S TIME TO EXPEL TURKEY FROM NATO

SCROLL DOWN FOR IMPORTANT UPDATES!

ERDOGAN CALLED ISRAEL A THREAT TO WORLD PEACE:

Until recently, Turkey had been a solid ally of Israel's from the Muslim world. However, Ankara has taken a stance against Israel over last year's war in the Gaza Strip, leading to a deterioration of ties.

"Is the Israeli government in favor of peace or not?" Erdogan said. "Gaza was bombed again yesterday. Why?... There were no rocket attacks."

Erdogan was referring to an Israel Air Force strike Sunday on a rocket-launching ground in central Gaza, where three Islamic Jihad militants posing to fire at Israel were killed. Approximately four mortar shells were also fired from Gaza toward the western Negev on Sunday.

UPDATE: Turkey also airs TV shows which would make Hitler and Nasrallah happy.

FRANCE RECALLED ITS AMBASSADOR.

WHAT WILL OBAMA DO?

PROBABLY SAY ERDGONA'S SPEECH AND THE TV SHOW ARE JUST WORDS.

UPDATE #2: Gaza rocket hits Israel for fifth consecutive day

A Qassam rocket fired by Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip struck the Western Negev on Monday, a day after an Israel Air Force assault killed three Islamic Jihad men posed at a launching ground in the coastal territory.

There were no casualties or damages reported in the incident Monday. Israeli security forces were summoned to the area to identify the location of the rocket.

The IAF strike Sunday came hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed a "powerful response" to recent rocket and mortar shell attacks from the coastal territory. The strike targeted a cell as its members, which included a senior Jihad field commander, were launching rockets at Israel.

Four mortar shells were also fired at Israel from Gaza on Sunday, but they exploded on the Palestinian side of the border.

Addressing an increase of rocket fire into Israel from Gaza, Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Monday advised Gaza's Hamas rulers to "watch their step, and not to cry crocodile tears if they force [Israel] to take action."

ERDOGAN IS WRONG ABOUT WHETHER THERE HAVE BEEN ROCKET ATTACKS, THE IDF, AND WRONG ABOUT ISRAEL'S RIGHT OF SELF-DEFENSE.

ERDOGAN IS AN ISLAMIST WHO HAS TAKEN TURKEY OUT OF THE WEST AND PLANTED IT FIRMLY IN THE ENEMY CAMP.

• ERDOGAN IS AN ISLAMIST WHO HAS TAKEN TURKEY OUT OF THE WEST AND PLANTED IT FIRMLY IN THE ENEMY CAMP.

• ERDOGAN IS AN ISLAMIST WHO HAS TAKEN TURKEY OUT OF THE WEST AND PLANTED IT FIRMLY IN THE ENEMY CAMP.

THE CONTINUED PRESENCE OF AN ISLAMIST TURKEY MORE ALIGNED TO IRAN THAN NATO IS A THREAT TO NATO AND OUR MUTUAL SECURITY.

UPDATE#3:

Turkish PM awarded King Faisal Int''l Prize

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was awarded on Monday with the King Faisal International Prize for his service to Islam for the year 2010, while four other scholars won the prize for their studies in various domains.

UPDATE#4: TURKEY REJOINING THE UMMAH:

Ankara will send foreign staffers to work in border regions before they take office in an effort to remove diplomatic walls, the Turkish foreign minister said.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the government is embarking on a new campaign of diplomacy aimed at shoring up relations with neighboring countries, Turkish daily Today's Zaman reports.

The minister said diplomats would be assigned to work in provinces neighboring Iraq, Syria and Bulgaria before taking office in order to make sure envoys understand bilateral issues at a local level.

"There will be no more borders or walls," he said. "Of course this doesn't mean the border between the two countries will be removed. What we mean is that we are people that have ties that transcend the borders."

RE: BULGARIA:

Bulgaria PM Boyko Borisov has stated that ethnic Turkish DPS party leader Ahmed Dogan will try to use ethnic tensions to hit his center-right GERB government.

“I have always pointed at Dogan as a strong political opponent as he is most able to use ethnic tensions and economic lobbies with enormous financial capital masked as firms to hit us badly,” Borisov told bTV.

Borisov predicted that there maybe social protests organized by Dogan in February/March when the financial crisis is at its worst; “They will try to destabilize – of course with the help of Yane Yanev.”

Borisov’s comments follow former Deputy Chair of the ethnic Turkish DPS party Osman Oktay’s recent statement that Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS) party leader, Dogan, is preparing social protests to destabilize Bulgaria.

TURKEY IS NO LONGER AN ALLY OF THE WEST.

THE CONTINUED PRESENCE OF AN ISLAMIST TURKEY MORE ALIGNED TO IRAN THAN NATO IS A THREAT TO NATO AND OUR MUTUAL SECURITY.