OBAMA SINGS: "IF I WAS A BOY"

SUN TV INTERVIEW WITH LARS HEDEGAARD

The Canadian Sun TV network (via The American Thinker) gave Lars Hedegaard the interview that most stations in the USA do not have the courage to give about the assassination attempt against him by a jihadist this past week that he was lucky to survive.

Update: and in related news, here's an interview with Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard.

THE UN'S DOUBLE-STANDARD ON POSTPONED DEBATES

UN Watch has pointed to a hypocritical double-standard by the UN council on their persecution of Israel for alleged human rights. First, Israel requested a postponement to a meeting and missed one for January 29, for which they were attacked. But what happens when Richard Falk is the focus?

Yet it now turns out that, at the exact same time as the above media storm was blowing, the council was taking an altogether different approach toward a similar request, made by one of its own top UN officials, to postpone a debate on Israel’s alleged violations.

UN Watch has discovered that the council quietly posted a notice that their own Palestine monitor, the infamous Richard Falk, who was kicked out of Human Rights Watch in response to our campaign, will be skipping a scheduled council appearance, postponing his report by several months.

Falk, a 9/11 conspiracy theorist, was scheduled to present his report on Monday, March 18 — on the special day against Israel that is a permanent feature of every session — at the same time as the council’s fact-finding mission on Israeli settlements presents its new report. Instead, we now learn that Falk’s report has been postponed until June. No reasons were given.

Even though the report’s postponement means that a scheduled council debate on Israel’s alleged violations — supposedly a vital instrument of justice on an urgent situation — will now be deferred by several months, suddenly there is no outrage, no objections of principle, and no questions asked by the council and its defenders.

Apparently, the council’s anti-Israel lobby was concerned that Falk’s scheduled diatribe would be drowned out by the competing report on settlements, and so arbitrarily decided to alter the council’s schedule in order to space out their propaganda vehicles in separate sessions.

What this says is that the UN clearly still supports Falk, and would surely back him even more if criticism against him hadn't come up. They really are a pure disgrace.

CURRENCY WAR HEATING UP: VENEZUELA DEVALUES CURRENCY

Venezuela just undertook a massive currency devaluation, re-pegging the bolivar to a value of 6.3 per U.S. dollar from its previous official exchange rate of 4.3 bolivars per dollar. 

The government also announced that it would shutter the Venezuelan currency exchange system known as SITME. 

Given the currency devaluation underway in other economies around the world right now – perhaps most notably in Japan – a few are calling this Venezuela's foray into the global "currency war" between countries trying to devalue their currencies in order to increase export competitiveness.

EVEN THOUGH THE CHAVZISTAS HAVE DOMESTIC REASON FOR THIS MOVE IT IS NEVERTHELESS PART OF THE BURGEONING CURRENCY WAR.

THE PACE WILL PICK UP IN THE COMING MONTHS, AND IT AIN;T GONNA BE PRETTY...

STAY TUNED...

GUARANTEED NOT HALAL: HANSEL AND GRETEL'S GEMMA ATHERTON

BRITISH ACTRESS GEMMA ATHERTON STARS AS GRETEL IN THE UPDATED VERSION OF HANSEL AND GRETEL:

SHE WAS BORN WITH A CRUMPLED EAR AND EXTRA FINGERS.

SURGERY FIXED THEM.

AND SHE WAS RAISED BY A SINGLE MOTHER.

I SHUDDER TO THINK OF HOW SHE AND HER MOTHER MIGHT HAVE BEEN TREATED IN A NATION UNDER ISLAMISM.

SHE CERTAINLY WOULDN'T BE AN ACTRESS, AND PROBABLY WOULDN'T HAVE EVER HAD THE COSMETIC SURGERY SHE RECEIVED.

AND HER MOTHER WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN ALLOWED O DIVORCE OR WORK.

ISLAMO-MISOGYNY DESTROYS MORE LIVES EACH YEAR THAN ISLAMO-TERROR.

WE SHOULD REALLY UNTIL TO PUT AN END TO IT.

IT HAS NO MORE A PLACE ON EARTH TODAY THEM SLAVERY - OF WHICH IT IS A SUB-FORM.

HERE'S MORE PROOF THAT WHEN WE SAID THERE WAS A SLIPPERY SLOPE, WE WERE RIGHT

Judge Lets Baby With 2 Lesbian Moms & 1 Gay 'Dad' Have 3 Parents on Her Birth Certificate

AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SLIPPERY SLOPE IS CHAOS AND THE END OF CIVILIZATION.

WISDOM FROM DR. BENJAMIN CARSON

World-famous neurosurgeon at the Fellowship Foundation National Prayer Breakfast on February 7, 2013:


And the Obamas had to sit and listen.

2 MORE ANTI-SEMITIC ATTACKS IN FRANCE

More Muslim anti-semitism took place in Toulouse and Marseille:

Two young Jews were attacked in France this week, one in Marseille and one in Toulouse, where almost a year ago an Islamist terrorist killed three soldiers and four Jews before police shot him dead.

The most traumatic incident occurred Wednesday at the entrance to the Ohr Torah school in Toulouse, the same place where Islamist terrorist Mohamed Merah opened fire on March 19, 2012, on two Jewish pupils, their father and the headmaster’s daughter.

The school changed its name after the tragic events from Otzar Hatorah to Ohr Torah.

In the recent incident, a middle school pupil was leaving the school to go home, wearing a kippa, when a woman suddenly brandished a knife at him. He ran back into the building, where guards called security services.

They arrived immediately and arrested the woman, known as a mentally ill neighbor who had spent time in a psychiatric hospital. She didn’t say a word and didn’t try to explain herself, according to police and Jewish sources.

The woman was put under psychiatric watch.

The second attack took place outside Marseille’s main railway station, Gare Saint- Charles, at 3:30 p.m. on Monday.

A 20-year-old Jewish man, wearing a gold Magen David pendant, was leaving the station, which is also a large shopping mall, when two young men on a scooter approached him, tore off the chain from his neck and drove away.

A group of young men standing nearby came over and insulted the victim, using anti-Semitic language, hit him, and stole his MP3 player and 100 euros, according to the Metro newspaper.

The police opened an investigation, treating the case as an anti-Semitic attack.

Eugene Caselli, the president of the Urban Community of Marseille Provence Métropole, which has a high percentage of residents of North African origin, expressing his “profound indignation and rage at this unacceptable act of racist violence.”

There has been a 45 percent increase in anti-Semitic incidents in France since the Merah attack, as recorded by SPCJ, the security service of the French Jewish community.

And the worst part is that it's not bound to stop for a long time.

UN SEVERS TIES WITH LYING OFFICIAL, BUT ONLY QUIETLY

A member of the UN who falsely claimed the Israeli army killed a Muslim girl has been excommunicated, but only quietly (via Jihad Watch):

NEW YORK - ­ Kulhood Badawi, a veteran public affairs officer in the Jerusalem branch of the United Nations Office of the Coordinator of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), has been "separated" from the UN, say officials in New York.

The de facto firing, publicly explained as a contract non-renewal, comes shortly after the conclusion of an internal investigation lasting almost a year.

The investigation conducted by the UN Development Program centered on a February 2012 Twitter post containing the photograph of a dead Palestinian girl, who Badawi insisted was killed by the IDF during its shelling of Gaza.

Subsequent investigations revealed that it was in reality an archived Reuters photo originally taken in 2006.

According to Reuters, the photograph was that of a young woman killed as the result of local clashes in Gaza, not as the result of any IDF action.

Badawi, it was later discovered, had been involved in several earlier controversial actions, including a 2006 demonstration in Jerusalem in which she labeled current Defense Minister Ehud Barak a "war criminal." UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs Valerie Amos, while not disputing Badawi¹s actions, publicly questioned whether the world body could be held accountable for "personal" tweets.

As such, she launched the inquiry that Israel's UN mission charged was a "whitewash," with Ambassador Ron Prosor repeatedly insisting that Badawi be fired.

Amos then explained she was awaiting conclusions and recommendations. Yet weeks turned into months, with the investigation having been concluded in October 2012, and repeated inquiries to Amos for updates produced nothing.

On Wednesday, an email from the UN revealed that all facets of the fact-finding mission had finally been completed, and that the organization had opted not to renew Badawi's contract.

Yet it took nearly a whole year to recognize the taqqiya in this creep's claim. No doubt this was deliberate. But finally, justice was achieved and the propagandist distanced from the world's worst political outfit.

NAFTALI BENNETT REITERATES POSITION THAT HAREDIS SHOULD WORK

The Jewish Home leader has stated the party's position again that Haredis should work and serve in the army:

“The current situation in which thousands of haredim do not study, serve or work cannot continue,” the Bayit Yehudi chairman wrote this week. “It’s not ethical and it’s not sustainable and the Israeli economy cannot withstand it.” He insisted, however, that “haredim are our brothers” and that he merely wants to see their integration into Israeli society.

Bennett said that the phenomenon did not exist anywhere else in the world, writing: “In New York, haredim study and also work.”

That may not be entirely accurate, if what I found earlier about the yeshivas in New York not providing education in English tells something.

He denied that he was feeling any “external pressure” on him and the party, referring to reports that senior national-religious rabbis from the sector’s more conservative wing would oppose any agreement by Bayit Yehudi that would lead to the drafting of haredi yeshiva students.

“I’m not feeling any pressure from these sources, but instead I feel obligated to you, the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who voted for us to enact the principles we presented [in the election campaign],” he noted, indirectly rebuffing any notion that the party might adhere to the will of national-religious rabbis rather than of its voters.

That's right, it's we the voters who want the Haredis to serve in the army and go to work, and we expect the parties we voted for to help see to it that this can be worked out.

So I hope the rabbis affiliated with the Jewish Home will be behind Bennett (and Yair Lapid) on this 100 percent, and understand that if the Haredi leadership is going to be so opposed to serving, there's really no need to act as though they must please them at all costs.

HAREDI DAILY CENSORS WOMEN'S SHOES

It's not just the female species who get censored in Haredi press pictures. Even feminine products can be digitally erased from their pages:

The haredi sector's daily newspapers, which operate under the strict supervision of a "spiritual committee," have an old tradition of refraining from publishing pictures of women. In the past, they even avoided mentioning women's first names. [...]

Hamodia published a report about a baby who opened a shoe drawer, which blocked the door to the room he was in. He got trapped inside the room and fell asleep – before being rescued by firefighters and emergency forces.

A member of the rescuing force, Asaf Abres of the Jerusalem Fire Department, took a picture of the baby with the drawer and distributed the photo to the media. In the haredi paper, however, it was only published after the graphics department deleted a pair of women's shoes which were in the drawer.

A source in the newspaper confirmed that Hamodia permits the publication of accessories like bags but censors feminine items like clothes and shoes.

That's how far the deleterious fear the Haredi press has of anything feminine can go. They can even censor the mere mention of pork just because it's unkosher, even though nobody said they had to eat it.

OPHIR BEN-SHETREET SHOULD BE HONORED FOR SINGING

I wrote the other week about the case of Ophir ben-Shetreet, the religious student who was suspended from her religious girls' school for singing on The Voice music program on Israeli TV. The Forward has since written some more about this subject, and interviewed Jerusalem city council member Rachel Azaria, who came out in support of ben-Shetreet:

THE SISTERHOOD: You are an incredibly busy politician and mother. What prompted you to take time out of your packed schedule to write an opinion piece on Ophir Ben-Shetreet’s competing on “The Voice”?

RACHEL AZARIA: I wrote it because I used to sing, just like Ophir. For me, music is the road not taken. I immediately saw myself in her.… I and my friends from the religious Zionist schools and youth groups used to wear dresses like the one she wore on TV; we wore our hair in a braid like she did. She just seemed so familiar to me, like who I was at 17.

What is your response to those who say that the school was justified in suspending Ophir, since she knew ahead of time what its religious rules were?

Those who are saying this are missing the point. Maybe the school had the right to punish her, and maybe it didn’t. Who cares? We need to look at the bigger picture. Something wonderful is happening here with her singing on the show. Look at how much good is coming out of her presenting herself with charm and grace and talking about her love for traditional Judaism… Shouldn’t we be proud of and celebrating — not punishing — her?

Of course we should be proud of her, for doing what the ancient Jewesses who made their way out of Egypt did too after crossing the Red Sea. The song was led by Miriam:

After the Israelites passed through the Red Sea, a song led by Miriam appears in Exodus 15:20-21:
"And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel (tambourine) in her hand, and all of the women followed her, with timbrels and with dancing. And Miriam sang to them:
Sing to the LORD,
for he is highly exalted.
The horse and its rider
he has hurled into the sea."

Do today's Orthodox Judaists who go by the notion of "kol isha" being impure consider Miriam's tune an abomination? By the logic of today's advocates for stifling women's song, even a wonderful Biblical woman like Miriam would be considered foul, which is disturbing when you think about it.

Azaria went on to say:

What do you think is really behind the suspension?

People want ulpana [religious public girls’ high school] girls not to be out there. They want them to be segregated and to stay within their own tribe, so to speak. Someone who wants to cross boundaries and share and collaborate with another tribe can be considered a threat. People get scared and punish this person to try to bring things back to the way they were.

Ophir is crossing boundaries and trying to be part of something larger, more pluralistic and collaborative. Young people like her don’t want to live with these fences anymore.

Are religious schools putting pressure on students and their families to be more observant?

Definitely. There has been a rightward shift. I wrote in my piece about how when I was in ulpana, I sang in front and with boys all the time. Ophir has said that in her family it was never considered a sin to sing in front of men.

This strictness is an issue we are dealing with in other aspects, not just the singing. Kids are coming home from school and questioning their parents’ level of observance. How do you raise children when they are getting two different messages — one from home and one from school?

The part about "rightward shift" is unclear, because assuming she's referring to the taboo standing on singing, it is anything but that. And if they think they're helping the cause of Judaism, they'd do well to think again, and of Miriam. I hope this doesn't mean Azaria thinks right-wing is bad just because many observants in Israel do indeed vote that way.

You wrote that music is perfect medium for bringing Jews of different streams together. Do you think that the arts in general can be a means to that end?

Definitely. Nowadays, there is so much art all along the secular-religious spectrum. But I think that the possibility with music is the strongest, simply because there is so much to work with. With music, it’s just happening all over the place, like with popular musicians such as Kobi Oz singing traditional piyutim (liturgical poems).

What do you think of Ophir’s choosing Aviv Geffen as her mentor on “The Voice?”

In my day, it would have been unthinkable for a religious girl to choose Aviv Geffen as her mentor. I couldn’t have even imagined speaking to him. He was the antithesis of everything we identified with. But, as I said, Ophir is part of this new generation that wants to celebrate one another, and that gives me reason for optimism.

Geffen, back in my day, carried a very leftist viewpoint, wore ridiculous stage makeup and didn't set very good examples when he once called on people to leave the country. Today, he seems to have cleaned up his act and that might be one of the reasons why ben-Shetreet chose him. Another reason could be because she's aware of his questionable past and wanted to try and encourage him to embrace faith and traditions more than he does. He actually responded quite respectably to this. On Life in Israel, a commentor noted:

Secular pop icon panelist Aviv Geffen claimed to be somewhat inclined toward religious tradition. The singer sweetly told him, "En zman m'uchar lachazor bitshuvah," "There is no time when it is too late to return in repentence [to religious observance.]" He said that whenever he gets too close to observance, at the last moment he runs away; then the conversation continues. WHAT IS GOING ON HERE? On a super popular reality Israeli TV show, a beautiful religious young woman tells the famous singer/songwriter/musician/producer twice her age that anytime is a good time to become observant! In a good humored pleasant conversation! He, the other panelists and the audience are all very happy with this! This is not how the religious and secular groups in Israeli are reported in the press as behaving toward each other, but maybe this is the reality. I think the Messiah is finally coming!

So it's quite an irony that here, a whole bunch of TV staffers who could be potentially to the left kept their manners and didn't try to belittle her, but rather, the parents of other girls at her religious school did, her impressive beliefs in her faith and trying to encourage it notwithstanding. I think we can all see here who the real scoundrels are.

While we're on the subject, another writer told something troubling about a school she'd gone to:

Now, I can’t say I’m personally a fan of the notion that schools demand certain behaviors of students outside of school hours and grounds, but this is a legitimate philosophy, whether I agree with it or not. The Bais Yaakov in my hometown had “spies” that would report to the school if a girl was spotted hanging out with boys. Do I agree with that practice, or that rule? No. But the school had a reputation for this behavior, and every student understood the repercussions of hanging out with boys in public. In the school’s view, and likely in the students’ view too, it had a right to punish any student who did so anyway. If the school in Ashdod was clear that it required Orthodox behavior of its students in the public domain — and I say if because I know nothing of this school’s rules — then it has every right to act on those rules.

Make of that what you will, but in my mind, that kind of spying could constitute an invasion of privacy, and it's quite honestly offensive to interfere with someone else's personal life. I don't know if any religious schools do that today, but if they do, it should be criticized for the poor example it sets.

A writer working for Machon Shecter has said:

I was shocked and disappointed to learn that Ophir Ben-Shetreet, a talented young woman contesting on The Voice, was suspended from her religious high school for the crime of singing in front of men. What saddened me even more is that, once again, two values so important to me - gender equality and the richness of Jewish tradition and law - are being treated as diametrically opposed.

Of course, "there is nothing new under the sun," as the Book of Ecclesiastes teaches, and this case is no exception. In 2011, some religious cadets left an Israel Defense Forces ceremony over a female singer. In light of this incident, my teacher Rabbi David Golinkin surveyed the history of Jewish approaches to a woman's voice.

Rabbi Golinkin's research exposed a number of relevant points about the history of how Judaism has treated women’s singing. For one, he noticed that when the Talmud refers to a woman's voice (and the fact that hearing it prevents a man from performing certain commandments), it is not clear whether or not it refers to a woman singing or simply speaking. Furthermore, despite all of the less-than-flattering comments that the Talmud makes about a woman's voice, the early Middle Age commentators (most notably Rabbi Isaac Alfasi) treated these statements as homiletics, not as codified Jewish law.

In fact, despite all of the restrictions that later lawmakers would come to place on a man hearing a woman's voice, it was not until the 19th century that the Hatam Sofer forbade a man from listening to a singing woman. Indeed, for 1600 years of codified Jewish law, no previous authority had forbidden men from hearing a woman sing altogether.

Yet despite the convincing argument that a man is allowed to hear a woman sing in many, if not all, instances, I am troubled by more than just the fact that many rabbis choose to apply the modern stringency, forbidding women from singing in front of male audiences so as to prevent the men from sinning. The much more troubling phenomenon is that once again, male rabbis are exerting their control over women.

And one can only wonder what they'd do to Miriam if she were around today. Would she be punished for singing in joy of the Israelites' freedom from the Phaeroh?

And here's one more writer at The Forward, a Modern Orthodox man who believes God gave this young woman her voice so she could sing to please the world:

As a husband, father, feminist and Modern Orthodox rabbinical student, I am appalled. How can a religious school punish its students for their God given talents? How can its strict adherence to kol isha, the challenging prohibition of listening to a woman’s singing voice, blind the school leadership to the obvious kiddush haShem, the sanctification of God’s name, that took place in having a religious student talk openly about her faith to a largely secular Israeli audience and world?

A year ago, the Jewish community was discussing the attacks young Modern Orthodox girls faced as they walked to school in Ramat Beit Shemesh getting spit on by Haredi miscreants. Rabbi Dov Linzer, the dean of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School, wrote then in The New York Times that: “The Talmud tells the religious man, in effect: If you have a problem, you deal with it. It is the male gaze — the way men look at women — that needs to be desexualized, not women in public.” A year later, the quest for religious tolerance lives on, as modesty patrol committees run rampant in Borough Park and Women of the Wall continue their uphill battle.

The Orthodox world is in the midst of an identity crisis and the question is: who will come out as the true bearer of its tradition? As of now, the extremists are making the headlines. The Salanter Akiba Riverdale High School, a Modern Orthodox co-ed yeshiva, whose students perform a co-ed musical annually isn’t making national news. Where then are the tolerant voices of Modern Orthodoxy discussing kol isha today? Surely, we are not like the Saudi Arabian Muslim fundamentalists who forbid their daughters to drive. Let our Modern Orthodox community come out and talk honestly about the prohibition of kol isha, with its women scholars and leaders, guiding the discussion.

The prohibition in Jewish law of listening to a woman’s voice comes from the Gemara. Brachot 24a states: “Shmuel says: the voice of a woman is ervah as the verse in Song of Song writes, “Let me hear your voice because your voice is pleasant and your appearance attractive.” And so the laws and stringencies follow with applicabilities varying depending on the rabbi. Some rabbis forbid hearing a woman’s singing voice at all times while others forbid it only during prayer. Some say the law doesn’t apply to mixed singing of men and women or religious music, and others hold one must get up and leave the room when a woman sings. The seemingly brave rabbis in the Modern Orthodox community say the prohibition applies to sexualized singing only. There are those who even say the law causes such emotional pain it alienates women from religiosity altogether. All of these positions are made by male rabbis and intended for male listeners. Where are women voices in this conversation today?

The mission of staying spiritually engaged, intellectually challenged and religiously committed to a tradition that can inspire and at times compete with modern sensibilities is our struggle as Jews striving to live an honest Judaism in the 21st century. It’s our role to hold these dissonances and talk about them openly, rather than shy away from them. I just can’t believe that the community that produced the first ever Orthodox woman rabbi and Shabbat friendly electric wheelchairs and hearing aids can’t find a way while maintaining their halachic integrity to say unequivocally to Ben-Shetrets’s school: “shame on you.”

The Gemara in Bava Metzia 59a teaches that “it’s better to throw oneself into a fiery furnace than publicly put one’s fellow human being to shame.” The value of human dignity, kavod habriyot, is paramount in halacha. Couldn’t this color a new conversation about kol isha? As Blu Greenberg, the noted Orthodox thinker and feminist once said, “Where there’s a rabbinic will, there’s a halachik way.” Critics might say this undermines the halachik process if Jewish law is merely dictated by the will of the rabbis, but they must also remember the Talmud’s dictum in Bava Matsia 59b, “Lo ba-shamayim hi.” The ultimate fate of the law is not in Heaven’s hands. Must it really be lost then to extremists in the court of public opinion?

There will always be the hard-liners among us who will shout we are caving into “Western culture” and insist there is no wiggle room within the halacha. However, even they listen to Miriam and Deborah’s song as it’s read in synagogues during Parashat B’Shalach, just two weeks ago. Certainly, those stories were chanted by men in most Orthodox settings. But they are about women, and men.

When the Israelites were freed from slavery, their instinctive communal response was to sing. How can we remain silent to their song?

My thoughts exactly, as I just stated. We find freedom from slavery in ancient Egypt and then we start stooping to ludicrous, backwards positions that are almost the same? Good grief.

From what I can tell, the position today on "kol isha" stems from Hatam Sofer's declarations. If so, then today's rabbinical leaders who advocate that belief have a lot of explaining to do on how and why they consider a 19th century ruling perfectly acceptable when it was never done in ancient times, and why they're ignoring the song of biblical Miriam.

And again, I wish ben-Shetreet a happy future, and if she has to leave that school, it may be for the best.

GARY SINISE: ONE OF THE GOOD GUYS

With a hat tip to Adrienne's Corner:


More about the Gary Sinese Foundation HERE

One of my former homeschool families is active in helping veterans and regularly works with Gary Sinise. This family says, "Gary Sinise is the real deal!"

Yes, America, we still have true patriots. Even in Hollywood.

MORE PROOF THAT MORE RESTRICTVE GUN CONTROL CAUSES MORE GUN CRIME

FACTS HERE.

THIS IS ONLY COUNTER-INTUITIVE TO PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN BRAINWASHED BY LEFT-WINGERS/STATISTS.

TO PEOPLE WHO HAVE NOT BEEN BRAINWASHED, OR WHO HAVE BEEN DEPROGRAMMED, IT'S OBVIOUS THAT: 

WHEN YOU DISARM LAW-ABIDING PEOPLE ...
AND MAKE THE FACT THAT THEY ARE DISARMED ...
CLEAR TO NE'R DO-WELLS ...
WHO DISOBEY GUN LAWS ...
AS EASILY AS THEY IGNORE ...
RAPE LAWS AND ...
BURGLARY LAWS AND ...
MURDER LAWS ...
THAT THE BAD GUYS WILL COMMIT MORE CRIMES WITH GUNS.

REMEMBERING RONALD REAGAN ON HIS BIRTHDAY

February 6, 1911 - June 5, 2004:

Sadly, we shall not see his like again.

OBAMA SOLD GUNS TO THE MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS AND GAVE THEM TO AL QAEDA IN SYRIA AND LIBYA, BUT HE WANTS AMERICANS DISARMED?

... AND HE'S GIVING F16'S TO EGYPT DESPITE THE FACT THAT EGYPT IS MORE AND MORE ALLYING ITSELF TO IRAN.

THAT'S WEIRD, ISN'T IT?

JUST SAYING.

MORE PROOF GLOBAL WARMING IS TOTAL BS: SNOWIEST MOSCOW IN 100 YEARS!

The heaviest snowfall in a century brought Moscow and the surrounding region to a near standstill and left hundreds of people without power, officials said Tuesday. And with snowfall set to continue at least until the end of the week, the authorities are bracing for more chaos on the roads. "There hasn't been such a winter in 100 years," Pyotr Biryukov, deputy mayor for residential issues, said Tuesday in comments carried by Interfax. "The snow this year has already reached one and a half times the climatic norm," he said. The capital has seen 216 centimeters of snow fall since the beginning of winter, Biryukov said. Average snowfall in Moscow is 152 centimeters a year.

AGW = BS.

HAREDI DOMINANCE MUST END

David Weinberg's written about why the time has come to put a stop to all the problems the Haredi community's caused to Israel:

The haredi draft issue is proving to be the sticking point in the current coalition negotiations. Rightfully so, because focusing on this matter is the key to ending the chokehold that ultra-Orthodox parties have had on Israeli politics and matters of religion and state for the past 20 years. [...]

The point is that by focusing on the draft issue — which makes it almost impossible for Shas and United Torah Judaism to join the coalition — Yair Lapid of Yesh Atid and Naftali Bennett of Habayit Hayehudi are attempting to strip the haredim of the inordinate political power they have held in Israeli politics for far too long.

This explains the venom expressed in the press over the past two days by Shas toward Lapid and even more so toward Bennett. It also explains attempts by haredi rabbis to pressure Bennett into backing down by going over his head and appealing to a series of national-religious rabbis who straddle the haredi-religious Zionist divide, to the right of Bennett.

But these attempts to weaken Bennett and "save" the haredi community from facing reality mustn’t be allowed to work.

To begin with, the current appeal of haredi leaders to religious Zionist leaders to "save them" from the clutches of Yair Lapid is overwhelmingly hypocritical and worthy of complete rejection. These are the same haredi leaders, especially the ugly rabble-rousers of Shas, who just last month called the Habayit Hayehudi (The Jewish Home) party the "house of goyim," and who have worked assiduously for two decades to weed out any remaining, moderate influence of religious Zionist rabbis and politicians in national affairs. [...]

Bennett must not give into the pressure to back off the haredi draft effort or his alliance with Lapid because rolling back haredi influence on matters of religion and state is critical to the health and unity of this country. It's time, once again, for the face of Torah and Jewish religion in public life to be one that is not ambivalent toward the Zionist enterprise, that does not scorn the rule of law and democratic institutions, that does not evince utter rejection of modernity, and that does not disparage and denigrate the secular public.

Let’s remember that since the political Left in Israel unfortunately handed the keys to Israel's Jewish character over to the ultra-Orthodox in the 1990s (to purchase haredi support for Oslo I and II, the disengagement from Gaza and more), ultra-Orthodox parties and their rabbis have conducted a slow but inexorable conquest of the rabbinate and religious courts, conversion courts, municipal religious councils, kashrut agencies, and more.

Pay careful attention to the above, because much of the problems Israel has with socialist-minded Haredis today who feel entitled to the rest of the public's tax shekels, act like victims and declare almost everyone and anyone who isn't Haredi an abomination...were caused by the left - namely, the Labor and Meretz parties. They provided them with shiploads of benefits, all so they could get the Oslo accords through, and never actually cared that what the Haredi community was doing could harm even their own voters, who shouldn't have bothered to vote for them in the first place if all they cared about was the "peace process".

The deleterious results are clear: City rabbis who demand extreme gender separation requirements at municipal public events and in public spaces, burial societies that institute strictures in funeral proceedings (especially in regard to women), courts that apply stringencies in matters of marriage and divorce and especially conversion, and haredi politicians (some also claiming the title rabbi) sounding off with xenophobic, anti-Zionist, anti-modern and anti-nationalist statements on public matters several times per week.

In addition, Shas leaders have created a rapidly growing network of party-affiliated schools that entrenches and glorifies ethnic resentments, teaches absolute religious condescension toward all others and disdain for the modern world, and which prepares its graduates to do nothing in the working world. In short, a retrogressive Torah education, not a wholesome, productive and broad religious education.

I also refuse to forgive and forget haredi leaders and rabbis who have described religious Zionists as "fools who believe anything," leftist politicians as "Amalek," and Supreme Court justices as "niddah rapists" (breakers of the laws of ritual purity). Former Shas MK Rabbi Moshe Maya even called Supreme Court justice Dr. Elyakim Rubinstein, who is a religious Zionist, "an anti-God blasphemer who should be excommunicated."

The irony is how, despite all the benefits and bribes the left gave the corrupt Haredis who made those degrading statements, they're still willing to say disgusting things about them, even as they're almost automatically willing to align themselves with the left provided there's tax money and other items to exploit for their selfish goals. What Shas has done is inexcusable, and they need to be held accountable for the horrific contempt for wider society they instill in the minds of the students who attend their schools, not to mention the alarmingly poor manners and examples they've set.

The insufferable overflow of self-righteousness, and the hostility toward broader Israeli society, evident in haredi political behavior needs to be curbed. The haredi political juggernaut needs to be rolled back. Instead, it is time for moderate religious Zionism to reassert its place in matters of religion and state and public policy.

Bennett should not back down.

I fully agree here. I've seen how quite a few Haredi politicians - most notably from Shas - have been acting in all their greed to speak degradingly of others, in complete violation of the Torah belief that "life and death are in the power of the tongue" (once a Shas member said in 1999 that Natan Sharansky wanted the interior ministry "so he can bring in all the goys and prostitutes". It was absolutely disgusting), and showed no remorse for any of the harm they ended up causing to the wider public. Who knew that Haredis could believe vulgarity was perfectly fine? With that kind of etiquette, it's no wonder the public's becoming so disgusted and fed up to the chin with them.

Obama Absolutely Wrong Again: "Weapons of War Have No Place On Our Streets"

1) Let us note President Pansy-Pants has decided that it is in his purview to decide which guns are "weapons of war" and which are not. According to Barack Obama, it is not Congress' decision, the People's decision, nor, Lord knows, it is not the decision of the Bill of Rights. No, it is Obama's decision. 

2) Weapons of War do belong in the hands of the people. The 2nd Amendment articulates our God-given Right to defend ourselves, as citizens, against the forces of tyranny, even if that tyranny be our own government at some point in the future. LIKE NOW, for instance. 

That means the People must be armed for war.

Lost in all this back and forth of the past month or so is that it is not the right of the government to be better-armed in the streets of America

The Government does not have the right to do this to the People:

IT IS NOT THE RIGHT OF GOVERNMENT 

TO BE BETTER-ARMED 

IN THE STREETS OF AMERICA 

THAN THE PEOPLE, 

WHO RULE AMERICA.

WE OWN THE GOVERNMENT. 

THE GOVERNMENT DOES NOT OWN US.

ATTEMPTED SHOOTING OF DANISH ISLAM CRITIC

Frederiksberg, 11:21 am.    Historian, journalist, and founder of the Freedom of Press Group (Trykkefrihedsselskabet af 2004)  Lars Hedegaard was the target of an attempted shooting earlier today.

SHARI'A IN THE UK

The Islamification of the UK continues apace, and even non-Muslims are voluntarily submitting to shari'a law:

SUPER BOWL HALF-TIME REVIEW: I LOVE BEYONCE, BUT ALL THAT'S MISSING FROM HER PERFORMANCE ARE THE STRIPPER POLES

WHY DO SO MANY CONTEMPORARY FEMALE PERFORMERS ASPIRE TO LOOK LIKE WHORES AND DANCE LIKE STRIPPERS?

BEYONCE IS A FANTASTIC SINGER AND GREAT DANCER.

THE BEST AROUND TODAY.

AND GORGEOUS.

BUT TO ME THE TYPE OF PERFORMANCE SHE PUT ON AT THE SUPER BOWL HALF-TIME IS MORE LIKE A LAP-DANCE FOR A BILLION MEN, THAN A GREAT SHOW BY A SUPREMELY TALENTED SINGER AND DANCER.

ALL SHE AND HER CREW WERE MISSING WERE STRIPPER-POLES.

AND A  BRA MALFUNCTION.

SAD.

I THINK IT'S PARTLY A RESULT OF THE FACT THAT SEX SELLS - AND ALWAYS HAS.

AND THE FACT THAT IN TODAY;S MEDIA CIRCUS THERE'S SO MUCH CLUTTER, PERFORMERS AND PRODUCERS DEPEND ON SENSATIONALISM TO BREAK FREE OF THE CLUTTER AND GET NOTICED.

AND THE FACT THAT THE POST-VIETNAM FEMINIST MOVEMENT - FROM THE 1970'S ON - DENIGRATED MOTHERHOOD, FEMININITY AND MARRIAGE, ESSENTIALLY ADOPTING A MALE CHAUVINIST ATTITUDE TOWARD THEM ALL, THAT MOTHERHOOD AND MARRIAGE WERE DENIGRATING.

AND THAT BEING A SLUT WAS SOMEHOW "LIBERATING".

INSTEAD, WOMEN SHOULD HAVE DEMANDED THE RESPECT THAT MOTHERS AND WIVES AND HOMEMAKERS DESERVE.

ABSOLUTE TOTAL RESPECT. NOTHING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN HOME-MAKING AND MOTHERHOOD.

PITY.

THAT HORSE IS OUT OF THE BARN....

AT LEAST BEYONCE DIDN'T LIP-SYNCH.

:)

MORE FASCISTIC AND RACIST SOCIAL-ENGINEERING FROM BLOOMBERG

DIRECTOR BLUE:

Bloomberg secretly distributed abortifacients to teens without telling parents: 

"population control on blacks and Latinos" 

When it comes to Mayor Bloomberg, salt and 16-ounce sodas are out -- but abortifacients are in. 

Handouts of the “morning-after pill” to sexually active students have skyrocketed under an unpublicized project in which health centers in public schools offer girls a full menu of free birth-control drugs and devices, records obtained by The Post show. 

Last September, the city revealed it had started giving out Plan B and other birth control in the nurses’ offices of 13 high schools. At the time, officials said 567 girls had gotten Plan B... But the birth-control blitz was much bigger than the city had acknowledged. About 40 separate “school-based health centers” doled out 12,721 doses of Plan B in 2011-12, up from 10,720 in 2010-11 and 5,039 in 2009-10, according to the newly released data. 

...The revelations stunned Mona Davids, president of the NYC Parents Union, whose 14-year-old attends a Manhattan high school... 

“I’m in shock,” she said. “What gives the mayor the right to decide, without adequate notice, to give our children drugs that will impact their bodies and their psyches? He has purposely kept the public and parents in the dark with his agenda...  

“This was population control on blacks and Latinos without our knowledge,” she said. 

Plan B has become Plan A in the Bloomberg administration’s stealth war on teen pregnancy.

WHEN THE STATE HAS MORE TO SAY ABOUT 
THE LIVES OF CHILDREN 
THEN THEIR PARENTS DO, 
THEN YOU LIVE IN A FASCIST STATE.

NYC IS A FASCIST CITY - 

ONE WHERE YOU CANNOT BUY A 16 OZ DRINK, 

WHERE YOU CANNOT SMOKE IN A BAR, 

AND ONE IN WHICH THE EVER MORE 

FILTHY SUBWAYS DO NOT RUN ON TIME. 

AND ONE IN WHICH INNER CITY GIRLS 

ATTENDING PUBLIC SCHOOL - 

MOST OF WHOM ARE BLACK AND HISPANIC - 

ARE MORE ENCOURAGED TO HAVE UNPROTECTED SEX 

AND TAKE ABORTIFACIENTS, 

THEN THEY ARE TO BE CHASTE, 

DO THEIR HOMEWORK AND GRADUATE.

FACT: 

BLOOMBERG'S PRO-ABORTION/ANTI 16OZ DRINK 
ADMINISTRATION HAS PRODUCED THE WORST 
HIGH SCHOOLS IN THE NATION:

WNBC TV NEWS: 

NY Graduation Rates for Black, Hispanic Boys Lowest in Nation

Study: Only 37% graduate high school in four years

By Melissa Russo and Tom Burke 

|  Monday, Sep 24, 2012 -

BLOOMBERG HAS BEEN AN AWFUL MAYOR. 

AND A SHITTY NANNY.

JOHN KERRY BECOMES SECRETARY OF STATE, AND WHOM DOES HE CALL?

He called Mahmoud Abbas:

NEWLY sworn-in US Secretary of State John Kerry has telephoned Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to say they should meet on peace efforts, a presidential spokesman says.

Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina told the official Palestinian news agency Wafa that the two discussed "the necessity to hold meetings in the near future to talk about a number of issues which help maintain the peace process".

According to Wafa, Kerry assured Abbas on Sunday that "US President Barack Obama cares about the peace process and supports efforts related to it", and that the US administration was aware of the Palestinians' current financial crisis.

It was the first high-level contact between Obama's new administration and the Palestinian government.

Kerry met with Abbas several times while serving as chairman of the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee.

You can be quite sure nothing good will come from this. Simply awful.

THE IRS ANALYSIS OF OBAMACARE COVERAGE COSTS REVEALS THE LEFT'S REAL AGENDA

THE IRS RECENTLY ANNOUNCED THAT OBAMACARE MANDATED COVERAGE FOR A FAMILY OF FOUR WILL COST $20,000/FAMILY.

The Obamacare "tax"/penalty for NOT buying coverage is only $2500 for that family of four.

If this is correct, then no business is going to offer - and no breadwinner is going to choose to BUY - healthcare insurance; they will ALL choose to pay the IRS $2500 (saving around $7500/family - assuming the average business contributes half of the cost of the insurance).

As a result, dozens and dozens of MILLIONS of people and households will exit the PRIVATE healthcare insurance market - and this will make it actuarially unsound. Private healthcare insurers will exit the market effectively creating a single-payer socialist healthcare system.

I'd believe that this was a bug of Obamacare, (a result of the fact that it was a HUGE bill that wasn't properly thought-out or properly vetted),  if this seemingly unanticipated "side-effect" wasn't what the backers of Obamacare all really wanted in the first place.

Therefore, I believe this was a hidden feature of Obamacare, and its stealth goal all along.

And remember: once private insurers exit the business, they would probably never re-enter.

Time will tell. 

BBC CENSORS PLAY ABOUT HONOR MURDERS TO AVOID OFFENDING GUESS WHO

Typical path taken at the Beeb:

The BBC have cut a line from play about honour killing in the Muslim community to avoid “potentially misrepresenting majority British Muslim attitudes to honour killing.” Playwright Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, who was asked to amend the line in the Radio 4 play, has accused the broadcaster of “extraordinary” censorship.

Bhatti’s episode is called The Heart of Darkness and will be broadcast on Radio 4 on Friday afternoon as part of the station’s DCI Stone series. The drama follows an investigation into the murder of a 16-year-old Asian girl, who it later emerges is a victim of honour killing. DCI Stone is told to treat the case “sensitively” because of her Muslim heritage.

Bhatti spoke about the changes made to the play at Tuesday’s Index On Censorship conference, which discusses artistic freedom of expression in the UK. As reported in The Independent, Bhatti explained the controversial line: “At the end, a character says: ‘There is so much pressure in our community, to look right and to behave right.’ The compliance department came back and said, ‘we don’t want to suggest the entire Muslim community condones honour killings.’”

Bhatti continued, “It’s an extraordinary and awful situation. They said the lines were offensive but they absolutely were not. We live in a fear-ridden culture.” Bhatti said that the line was “a crucial part of the story”, and that the BBC said it could be kept in if she found factual evidence of community pressure resulting in an honour killing.

Once, there might have been freedom of expression in Britain. Now, there is not. And even if Bhatti can present factual research, I don't think the Beeb would let it pass anyway. They're already too far gone down the drain.

MESSAGE TO MY MANY DEAR FRIENDS STILL ON THE LEFT

MESSAGE TO MY MANY DEAR FRIENDS STILL ON THE LEFT:

You guys are the establishment and I am the dissenter.

You guys are the status quo and I am the protester.

You guys are for more government, more regulations, more taxes and more power to career politicians, and I am for more personal liberty.

:D