In a new video which recently surfaced online, the Taliban appears to brutally and systematically execute 16 unarmed Pakistani policemen in what the terror group called a revenge killing.
The video of the massacre, which reportedly took place in early June, was posted online last week and confirmed by the Pakistani army today. It shows the policemen — who are not in uniform — standing in a line before a Taliban member who appears to be lecturing them. The man, who appears to act as the militants’ commander, accuses the policemen of executing six children in a previous operation and claims their imminent deaths are revenge, according to a summary posted with the video.
Several Taliban members then open fire on the group until all the policemen have fallen. A wailing cry is heard in the background after the initial volley. After reloading, a single fighter walks over each body and shoots them once more in the head.
But yet, President Barack Obama wants to try and negotiate with these monsters.
My friends, you do not negotiate with criminals and cold blooded killers; these people hate Liberty and Freedom. They hate Israel and Jews; kind of like the liberal left and some of the Paleo-Conservative and libertarian right. They are not rational, sane, human beings — they are cold blooded killers. We did not negotiate with Charles Manson and his cult — so why the hell would we negotiate with people like this?
My friends, consider this hallow warning from someone who sat through hours of footage on 9/11 and almost ended up in the psych ward because of it:
IF WE DO NOT SUCCEED ON THE WAR ON TERRORISM, THIS COULD BE A SCENE IN AMERICA VERY SOON!
Dismiss me as an alarmist if you wish; I could not care less. But this is coming to America, if we fall down on the war on terrorism!
America must be protected; Israel must be protected, Liberty and Freedom are at stake! Radical Islam is a threat! Do not believe the lie of the Liberal-controlled, financed, and organized media — which is supplanted by the Government! The liberal media is in bed with the radical and no-so-radical Muslims!
Remember this Video and Blog Posting come November 2012.
We need a President who will stand tall in the face of these bastards and not blink. Bush did it; and paid for it, with his Presidency — but he did not waver for a second. Mistakes were made, that is very true. However, in the end, we won in Iraq and we can win here too. We just have to not give up.
lan astaslem --- I will not surrender --I will not submit.
This is not a game, this is not fake; Ron Paul and his racist, Anti-Semitic friends, who hate Israel and everything related to it are the ENEMY! They must be kept out of the White House, at all costs! They are friends with these people! Consider me a soldier in that battle too.
In the Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth and of in the Name of the Lord GOD Jehovah — Master and Saviour of this World and KING of Kings and LORD of Lords of this World and in the great, wonderful, world to come:
Now to be fair to Michelle Bachmann and her Husband; they are Conservative Christians, I get that part. However, I would think Michelle Bachmann would know that she has appeal to independent voters; and this is not a good way to do this at all.
Now, I also know that this piece is a liberal hit job on Michelle Bachmann. However, there is another reason that this bugs me, the same reason that I did not want Mike Huckabee in the 2012 race, it feeds the Meme that Republicans and all Conservatives hate gay people. Something that I know is just plain bunk. I could care less what gay people do in the privacy of their homes. Just don’t try to push your agenda off on me, like the far leftist gays want to do.
Again, while I believe this to be a hit job; sometimes the things that people say to further and foster false narratives should be critiqued.
In an interview with Steve Kroft for this Sunday’s “60 Minutes” conducted today, President Obama said he won’t release post-mortem images of Osama bin Laden taken to prove his death.
“It is important to make sure that very graphic photos of somebody who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence or as a propaganda tool,” said the president.
“We don’t trot out this stuff as trophies,” Mr. Obama added. “The fact of the matter is, this is somebody who was deserving of the justice that he received.”
The president said he had discussed the issue with his intelligence team, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and that they agree with the decision. White House press secretary Jay Carney said Wednesday that Mr. Obama made the decision today.
In explaining his choice not to release the photo, Mr. Obama said that “we don’t need to spike the football.” He said that “given the graphic nature of the photo it would create a national security risk.”
The president told Kroft he saw the photos following the raid on the compound and knew that bin Laden had been killed.
“We discussed this internally,” he said. “Keep in mind, we are absolutely certain that this was him. We’ve done DNA sampling and testing. And so there is no doubt that we killed Osama bin Laden.”
When Kroft noted that there are people in Pakistan and elsewhere who believe bin Laden is still alive, the president said “we we monitoring worldwide reaction.”
“There is no doubt that Osama bin Laden is dead,” he said. “Certainly there is no doubt among al Qaeda members that he is dead. So we don’t think that a photograph in and of itself is going to make any difference.”
“There are going to be some folks who deny it,” he added. “The fact of the matter is, you will not see bin Laden walking on this earth again.”
You all know my feelings on this; it is either one of the two; either one, the Government is lying about this or two, The President, along with Hillary Clinton and the rest of them are internationalist Democrats who would dare put the feelings of the international Muslim and domestic Muslim community, over those who died on 9/11 and their families; and the American people in general. Either way, it is an act of cowardice on the President’s part and it will cost the election of 2012. Because if you do not prove your word; how can you expect people to trust you?
Of course, the State-run and controlled media, as shown above, just laps this up and basically trusts the Government, as does many of the left-wing and many of the right-wing blogs out there. I do not choose to do such a foolish thing. I did not trust this Government, when Neo-Conservative Bush was in charge and I really do not trust this Government, when Neo-Liberal and internationalist Democrats like Barack Obama are running it — and neither should you.
My mistrust of this Government is not on a partisan basis; this is based on knowledge and in this case —- knowledge is power.
Coffin-draped caskets of American soldiers, on the other hand? Why, INFORMATION MUST BE FREE!*
He’s right. The left about went ape over the fact that their media could not take pictures of returning dead service-members coffins from Iraq; but the Democratic Party and Neo-Liberal President is afraid to offend the Muslims? Just where do his loyalties lie with? It sure is not America.
For a glimpse of how venomous and debased the discourse about Islam has become, consider a blog post in The New Republic this month. Written by Martin Peretz, the magazine’s editor in chief, it asserted: “Frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims.”
Mr. Peretz added: “I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment, which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.”
Thus a prominent American commentator, in a magazine long associated with tolerance, ponders whether Muslims should be afforded constitutional freedoms. Is it possible to imagine the same kind of casual slur tossed off about blacks or Jews? How do America’s nearly seven million American Muslims feel when their faith is denounced as barbaric?
This is one of those times that test our values, a bit like the shameful interning of Japanese-Americans during World War II, or the disgraceful refusal to accept Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe.
It would have been natural for this test to have come right after 9/11, but it was forestalled because President George W. Bush pushed back at his conservative ranks and repeatedly warned Americans not to confuse Al Qaeda with Islam.
As much as I hate to say it; Mr. Kristof is absolutely right. It should noted that Martin Peretz is, in fact Jewish and is, in fact, a rabid Zionist. In fact, Martin Peretz is known for the following comments:
Frankly, I couldn’t quite imagine any venture like [the Iraq War] in the Arab World turning out especially well. This is, you will say, my prejudice. But some prejudices are built on real facts, and history generally proves me right. Go ahead, prove me wrong. — Source
and:
But, frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among those Muslims led by the Imam Rauf there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random bloodshed that defines their brotherhood. So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges [sic] of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse. — Source
Like Kristof said; could you imagine if the above were uttered about the Jews or about the black race? There would a media frenzy about it. Believe me, I know; I have been attacked by those who are of the protected class and all for speaking my mind about them and how they attack those of whom they disagree.
The fact is, that this whole Mosque situation boils down to this; Islam versus Christian Nativists and Jews, Arabs versus Americans, whites versus non-whites. Am I calling those who oppose this mosque racists? Well, my question for you is this; do you feel that burning pages of the Koran normal acceptable practice? Would you feel the same way, if some Muslim took a page out of the Christian Bible and began burning it? How about the Tanakh, the Torah, or The ?umash, the Siddur, the Piyutim or even the Zohar?
The point I am trying to make here is this; I realize that radicalized Muslims attacked the World Trade Center, The Pentagon and Flight 93. However, when you punish an entire religion for the actions of a few, you are practicing a forum of collectivism. That is not anything remotely Conservative, nor is it anything remotely American. Being vigilant against terrorism is one thing; but being idiotic is another, this situation with this Mosque is well beyond that — on both sides.
Update: On the Other hand… these are videos from 9/11:
There are two sides to every argument; one would suppose. There is also this here.
Well, duh, he is a liberal and a Democrat. He does believe in class warfare. Remember you Republicans and Libertarians that voted for him. (You know who you are…)
WASHINGTON — President Obama on Wednesday will make clear that he opposes any compromise that would extend the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy beyond this year, officials said, adding a populist twist to an election-season economic package that is otherwise designed to entice support from big businesses and their Republican allies.
Mr. Obama’s opposition to allowing the high-end tax cuts to remain in place for even another year or two would be the signal many Congressional Democrats have been awaiting as they prepare for a showdown with Republicans on the issue and ends speculation that the White House might be open to an extension. Democrats say only the president can rally wavering lawmakers who, amid the party’s weakened poll numbers, feel increasingly vulnerable to Republican attacks if they let the top rates lapse at the end of this year as scheduled.
It is not clear that Mr. Obama can prevail given his own diminished popularity, the tepid economic recovery and the divisions within his party. But by proposing to extend the rates for the 98 percent of households with income below $250,000 for couples and $200,000 for individuals — and insisting that federal income tax rates in 2011 go back to their pre-2001 levels for income above those cutoffs — he intends to cast the issue as a choice between supporting the middle class or giving breaks to the wealthy.
In a speech in Cleveland on Wednesday, Mr. Obama will also make a case for the package of roughly $180 billion in expanded business tax cuts and infrastructure spending disclosed by the White House in bits and pieces over the past few days. He would offset the cost by closing other tax breaks for multinational corporations, oil and gas companies and others.
While the speech will be centrist in its policy prescriptions other than the Bush tax cuts, Mr. Obama’s language will be partisan as he seeks to sharpen the contrasts between Republicans’ record and efforts by Democrats to create more jobs, aides said.
As much as I would like to jump up, holler and raise a fuss about this; I cannot. We all knew that this was coming. This should be a lesson to the Republican Party. That is, do not run weak or moderate Conservatives during elections. Because when you do; Conservatives, and I mean hardcore Conservatives will not vote — and this is what you get. I know that I, personally, will not be affected by this; neither will my family.
However, I am sure that there will be some families affected by this — not to mention a myriad of business owners out there. This will, I am sure, cause a downtown in hiring by businesses; which will add to the huge downturn in the economy. It is all a domino effect, starts at the top and goes to the bottom.
Another thing to think about; we do have to eventually pay for these two wars. I believe that those who profited off of both of these wars ought to be targeted for taxing. I believe that a special “War Tax”, ought to be appended to anyone making over $500.000 or more a year. I would target multinational companies, like oil companies and so forth. Especially those in Iraq. Perhaps next time, the warmongering class will not be so eager to start a war next time. This taxing would reinforce the idea that those wanting said war, should they actually have to pay for it. Foreign Policy has a price tag; and those who want follow Woodrow Wilson’s steps, should be required to pay that price tag.
Seems another liberal moron is whining about Conservatives actually having a little bit of money:
ANOTHER weekend, another grass-roots demonstration starring Real Americans who are mad as hell and want to take back their country from you-know-who. Last Sunday the site was Lower Manhattan, where they jeered the “ground zero mosque.” This weekend, the scene shifted to Washington, where the avatars of oppressed white Tea Party America, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, were slated to “reclaim the civil rights movement” (Beck’s words) on the same spot where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had his dream exactly 47 years earlier.
Vive la révolution!
There’s just one element missing from these snapshots of America’s ostensibly spontaneous and leaderless populist uprising: the sugar daddies who are bankrolling it, and have been doing so since well before the “death panel” warm-up acts of last summer. Three heavy hitters rule. You’ve heard of one of them, Rupert Murdoch. The other two, the brothers David and Charles Koch, are even richer, with a combined wealth exceeded only by that of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett among Americans. But even those carrying the Kochs’ banner may not know who these brothers are.
Go read the rest of that. That is if you bear to stomach such stupidity on a Sunday.
I got two words for ’em: George Soros. Is he not a wealthy liberal? Is he not a big financier of all things liberal on the left? Why Yes, Yes he is!
But yet, it is somehow evil that Conservatives have people on their ranks to fiance projects like Beck’s rally or any of the other rallies planned; oh, that’s just evil.
Give me a farking break people. Just another one of your typical double-standard drivel pieces from what used to be a respectable paper. But now is nothing more than a farking liberal scratching pad.
While Obama and the Liberal Democrats are worrying about their little pet crisis in the gulf. Red State Nashville, TN is flooded and the liberal media could honestly care less. Because it is mainly white people, most likely.
Video:
Giving credit where credit is properly due; CNN did do a little coverage:
Nashville, Tennessee (CNN) — The death toll has risen to 31 in three states from a massive weekend storm system that devastated parts of the Southeast, authorities said Thursday.
Twenty-one people have been confirmed dead in hard-hit Tennessee, including one from a tornado spawned by the heavy storms, according to the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency.
The same storm system killed six people in Mississippi and four in Kentucky, emergency management officials said. The death toll could rise as rescue crews continue to search for people who have been reported missing, including two kayakers in Kentucky and others in Tennessee, officials said.
The waters have receded in much of Nashville on Thursday, nearly a week after record-setting rains swelled rivers to historic levels and flooded several neighborhoods.
“Nashville has obviously been hard-hit, and it’s a well-known city, but there are so many other counties in the state and areas … that have been hit very hard as well,” Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen said Thursday morning.
“A lot of people who didn’t have flood insurance, because they never thought floodwaters would ever come anywhere near their home, are really looking at a total loss of their home,” Bredesen said. “It’s very tough on a lot of people right now.”
President Obama has declared 10 Tennessee counties disaster areas.
The same storm system that brought flooding to Tennessee killed 10 people in two other states — six in Mississippi and four in Kentucky, emergency management officials said. The death toll could rise as rescue crews continue to search for people who have been reported missing, including two kayakers in Kentucky and others in Tennessee, officials said.
We’re going to get through this,” Bredesen said. “This is a very resilient state.”
But did you see anything like this on MSNBC? Not really… Big splashy New York Times Article. No. Will it be on the front pages of some of the more influential liberal magazines? No.
Why?
Because it Tennessee is a Red State, has been for years. The Dummycrats don’t care about them Honky rednecks people in Tennessee. Obama’s words were, most likely, “I don’t give a crap about no redneck honky in Tennessee, they oppressed my people!”
The Democrats call that area, “Fly over Country” as in fly over that area to get to the next liberal strong hold.
Thankfully, Obama did declare some places disaster areas, so that funding could be brought in to help. But truth be told, only reason he did, is because Fox News and the Conservative Blogosphere and media would have eaten him alive for not doing it. But, I bet if he could have gotten away with it, he would have ignored it. Like he ignored the gulf spill, until it was not political correct to ignore it any longer.
Just more of your a-typical Liberalism from the Democratic Party. Remember this come November 2010 and in 2012.
A crude car bomb of propane, gasoline and fireworks was discovered in a smoking Nissan Pathfinder in the heart of Times Square on Saturday evening, prompting the evacuation of thousands of tourists and theatergoers on a warm and busy night. Although the device had apparently started to detonate, there was no explosion, and early on Sunday the authorities were still seeking a suspect and motive.
“We are very lucky,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said at a 2:15 a.m. press conference. “We avoided what could have been a very deadly event.”
A large swath of Midtown — from 43rd Street to 48th Street, and from Sixth to Eighth Avenues — was closed for much of the evening after the Pathfinder was discovered just off Broadway on 45th Street. Several theaters and stores, as well as the South Tower of the New York Marriott Marquis Hotel, were evacuated.
Mr. Bloomberg was joined by Gov. David A. Paterson, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly and other officials at the early morning press conference to give a chronology of the vehicle’s discovery, its disarming, and the investigation that has been launched. The mayor and police commissioner had returned early from the annual White House correspondents’ dinner in Washington.
At 6:28 p.m., Mr. Kelly said, a video surveillance camera recorded what was believed to be the dark green Nissan S.U.V. driving west on 45th Street.
Moments later, a T-shirt vendor on the sidewalk saw smoke coming out of vents near the back seat of the S.U.V., which was now parked awkwardly at the curb with its engine running and its hazard lights on. The vendor called to a mounted police officer, the mayor said, who smelled gunpowder when he approached the S.U.V. and called for assistance. The police began evacuating Times Square, starting with businesses along Seventh Avenue, including a Foot Locker store and a McDonald’s.
Police officers from the emergency service unit and firefighters flooded the area and were troubled by the hazard lights and running engine, and by the fact that the S.U.V. was oddly angled in the street. At this point, a firefighter from Ladder 4 reported hearing several “pops” from within the vehicle. The police also learned that the Pathfinder had the wrong license plates on it.
Members of the Police Department’s bomb squad donned protective gear, broke the Pathfinder’s back windows and sent in a “robotic device” to “observe” it, said Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne, the police department’s chief spokesman.
Inside, they discovered three canisters of propane like those used for barbecue grills, two five-gallon cans of gasoline, consumer-grade fireworks — the apparent source of the “pops” — and two clocks with batteries, the mayor said. He said the device “looked amateurish.”
Mr. Browne said: “It appeared it was in the process of detonating, but it malfunctioned.”
Bomb squad officers also discovered a two-by-two-by-four-foot metal box — described as a “gun locker” — in the S.U.V. that was taken to the Police Department’s firing range at Rodman’s Neck in the Bronx to be destroyed, Mr. Kelly said. It was not immediately known what, if anything, was inside it.
Officials said they had no reports of anyone seen running from the vehicle. Mr. Kelly said police were scouring the area for any additional videotapes but noted that the S.U.V.’s windows were tinted, which could further hamper any efforts to identify those inside. Some of the surveillance cameras nearby were located in closed businesses, and the mayor made clear it would take time to review all available tapes.
Obviously, I am glad that this idiot or these idiots were not successful. Hopefully, the FBI nabs these guys. As you can imagine; The right is hollering “Jihad!” and the left, of course, is playing it down. Personally, I am not going to do either. Because obviously someone intended to cause some pain here. As to whom it was, I am sure the FBI either knows by now or is close to finding out.
What I now look for, is for the media, especially Fox News and the rest of the Conservative talkers to politicize the crap out of this. Which I think is sad; for all we know these idiots could have been just some people trying to scare people. I think everyone should just wait until the investigation is complete; then have at it. But they will not; which is sad.
Update: Bloomburg is on it, as usual:
Good catch by AllahPundit, NYC Police and FBI are checking a possible South Park link. Bomb was set off near Viacom’s offices, which owns that Cartoon:
The device, which failed to detonate, was left near the offices of Viacom, which owns the irreverent cartoon series.
Last month postings on an Islamic website warned the creators of South Park – Matt Stone and Trey Parker – that they could face violent reprisals after an episode of the show featured Muhammad in a bear suit.
A posting on the website of a US-based group called Revolution Muslim warned Stone and Parker that they would “probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh”, the Dutch film-maker who was murdered in 2004 by a Muslim angered by his film about Muslim women.
Images of the Prophet are strictly forbidden in Islam, and Comedy Central, which broadcasts South Park, has banned Stone and Parker from depicting Muhammad in the past. In 2006 the network stopped them from featuring Muhammad in an episode which followed worldwide protests over a caricature of the Prophet by a Danish cartoonist.
Detectives are also understood to be investigating striking similarities between the New York bomb and two car bombs planted by Islamic terrorists outside the Tiger Tiger nightclub in London in 2007.
In both cases, the devices comprised cylinders of propane gas and cans full of petrol intended to be ignited by electronic detonators.
David Paterson, the Governor of New York, described the Times Square incident as an “act of terrorism.”
Wouldn’t it be nice, if they tied that to the guys at Revolution Muslim and put those idiots in jail?
“a Brazilian tourist was right there with camera rolling as the “firecrackers” in the back of the SUV went off. My understanding of the incident until now was that only the local street vendors noticed something amiss and that the cops moved people in the area way back before anything happened in the vehicle. Not so. As you’ll see, there were still crowds around and the firecrackers themselves were heavy duty enough to cause a serious boom. Listen to the guy off-camera shouting about the Taliban 30 seconds in; bystanders clearly knew what the risk was here. If you’re a New Yorker, especially a New Yorker who was in the city on 9/11, this is tough to watch.”
…and Obama says this is nothing to get excited about. 😡
Yemen is a dangerous place that breeds people who want to kill us.
Al Qaeda is determined to attack inside the United States.
Al Qaeda is casting a wide recruiting net for vulnerable young men.
Aspirational terrorists eventually become operational terrorists.
Our airports are not safe.
Metal detectors can’t detect nonmetal explosives sewn into underwear.
Our incomplete no-fly lists are more like “Welcome aboard” lists.
We still can’t connect the dots, even when the dots are flying at us like 3-D asteroids.
The sun rises in the east.
Two plus two equals four.
Heh. Sounds like the lyrics to a heavy metal song. All it would need is that riff from the Marilyn Manson Song; you know, “The Beautiful People“?
and she goes on:
Unlike the Republicans, who have yet to take responsibility for a single disastrous thing they did, President Obama said “ultimately the buck stops with me.”
But when he failed to immediately step up to the microphones in Hawaii after the Christmas terror and thank the passengers for bravely foiling the plot that his intelligence community had failed to see, President Cool reached the limits of cool.
No Drama Obama is reticent about displays of emotion. The Spock in him needs to exert mental and emotional control. That is why he stubbornly insists on staying aloof and setting his own deliberate pace for responding — whether it’s in a debate or after a debacle. But it’s not O.K. to be cool about national security when Americans are scared.
Our professorial president is no feckless W., biking through Katrina. He is no doubt on top of the crisis in terms of studying it top to bottom. But his inner certainty creates an outer disconnect.
He’s so sure of himself and his actions that he fails to see that he misses the moment to be president — to be the strong father who protects the home from invaders, who reassures and instructs the public at traumatic moments.
He’s more like the aloof father who’s turned the Situation Room into a Seminar Room.
Hmmmm, Where the hell was she at around election time? Oh, that’s right, she was swimming the tank! My Bad. Nothing like an Al-Qaeda attack to wake up a Crypto-Leftist out of the Hope and Change stupor.
I have finally got around to posting about this. Sorry, I’ve been napping in the afternoons now. Seeing I got my body-clock somewhat straightened out.
Yes, It is official, according to The New York Times and others, that Iran is making weapons grade nukes:
PITTSBURGH — President Obama and the leaders of Britain and France accused Iran on Friday of building a secret underground plant to manufacture nuclear fuel, saying the country has hidden the covert operation from international weapons inspectors for years.
Appearing before reporters in Pittsburgh, Mr. Obama said that the Iranian nuclear program “represents a direct challenge to the basic foundation of the nonproliferation regime.” President Nicolas Sarkozy of France said that Iran had a deadline of two months to comply with international demands or face increased sanctions.
“The level of deception by the Iranian government, and the scale of what we believe is the breach of international commitments, will shock and anger the entire international community,” Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain said. “The international community has no choice today but to draw a line in the sand.”
The extraordinary and hastily arranged joint appearance by the three leaders — and Mr. Obama said that Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany had asked him to convey that she stood with them as well — adds urgency to the diplomatic confrontation with Iran over its suspected ambition to build a nuclear weapons capacity. The three men demanded that Iran allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to conduct an immediate inspection of the facility, which is said to be 100 miles southwest of Tehran, near the holy city of Qum.
American officials said that they had been tracking the covert project for years, but that Mr. Obama decided to disclose the American findings after Iran discovered, in recent weeks, that Western intelligence agencies had breached the secrecy surrounding the complex. On Monday, Iran wrote a brief, cryptic letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency, saying that it now had a “pilot plant” under construction, whose existence it had never before revealed.
[….]
The newly discovered enrichment plant is not yet in operation, American officials said, but could be by next year. A senior Western official characterized the facility as “excavation, tunneling, infrastructure for centrifuges.”
Mr. Obama’s announcement will probably overshadow the meeting of the Group of 20, whose leaders have gathered to plan the next steps in combating the global financial crisis. Instead, here and during the opening of the United Nations in New York, senior officials from several of the countries were pulled aside for briefings on the new intelligence and for strategy sessions about the first direct talks with Iran in 30 years — set for Thursday — that will include the United States.
American officials said they expected the announcement to make it easier to build a case for international sanctions if Iran blocked inspectors or refused to halt its nuclear program.
“They have cheated three times,” one senior administration official with access to the intelligence said of the Iranians late on Thursday evening. “And they have now been caught three times.”
I said this yesterday when Israel’s President Netanyahu basically called the U.N. to the carpet; that this would lead to Military action in Iran. It appears that I might be actually right. There are some that are saying that the sanctions will not work. Well, let me assure you; sanctions are just the first step. I look for this to ratcheted up to a full bore; either you all drop the nukes, or we bomb the piss out of you; type of a matter —— in a matter of weeks.
President Obama might have a great deal of flaws, but enjoying being lied to, is not one of them; and with Russia and many others on board, I believe Iran will either do one of two things. They will either back down and dismantle this new site and do some major ass kissing to the international community. If not that; Iran will dig its heels in and remain defiant, and keep on producing the nukes. I can tell you, right now that those actions will prove to be fetal to the people of Iraq; because Israel is highly pissed, and the rest of the G20 gang are quite ticked as well.
Iran may have very well played its last hand at deception with the rest of the world.
Irving Kristol, the political commentator who, as much as anyone, defined modern conservatism and helped revitalize the Republican Party in the late 1960s and early ’70s, setting the stage for the Reagan presidency and years of conservative dominance, died Friday in Arlington, Va. He was 89 and lived in Washington.
His son, William Kristol, the commentator and editor of the conservative magazine The Weekly Standard, said the cause of death was complications of lung cancer.
Mr. Kristol exerted an influence across generations, from William F. Buckley to the columnist David Brooks, through a variety of positions he held over a long career: executive vice president of Basic Books, contributor to The Wall Street Journal, professor of social thought at New York University, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
He was commonly known as the godfather of neoconservatism, even by those who were not entirely sure what the term meant. In probably his most widely quoted comment — his equivalent of Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame — Mr. Kristol defined a neoconservative as a liberal who had been “mugged by reality.”
[….]
By now Mr. Kristol was battling on several fronts. He published columns and essays attacking liberalism and the counterculture from his perches at The Wall Street Journal and The Public Interest, and in 1978 he and William E. Simon, President Nixon’s secretary of the treasury, formed the Institute for Educational Affairs to funnel corporate and foundation money to conservative causes. In 1985 he started The National Interest, a journal devoted to foreign affairs.
But Mr. Kristol wasn’t railing just against the left. He criticized America’s commercial class for upholding greed and selfishness as positive values. He saw “moral anarchy” within the business community, and he urged it to take responsibility for itself and the larger society. He encouraged businessmen to give money to political candidates and help get conservative ideas across to the public. Republicans, he said, had for half a century been “the stupid party,” with not much more on their minds than balanced budgets and opposition to the welfare state. He instructed them to support economic growth by cutting taxes and not to oppose New Deal institutions.
Above all, Mr. Kristol preached a faith in ordinary people. . “It is the self-imposed assignment of neoconservatives,” he wrote, “to explain to the American people why they are right, and to the intellectuals why they are wrong.”
Mr. Kristol saw religion and a belief in the afterlife as the foundation for the middle-class values he championed. He argued that religion provided a necessary constraint to antisocial, anarchical impulses. Without it, he said, “the world falls apart.” Yet Mr. Kristol’s own religious views were so ambiguous that some friends questioned whether he believed in God. In 1996, he told an interviewer: “I’ve always been a believer.” But, he added, “don’t ask me in what.”
“That gets too complicated,” he said. “The word ‘God’ confuses everything.”
In 2002, Mr. Kristol received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, often considered the nation’s highest civilian honor. It was another satisfying moment for a man who appears to have delighted in his life or, as Andrew Sullivan put it, “to have emerged from the womb content.”
He once said that his career had been “one instance of good luck after another.” Some called him a cheerful conservative. He did not dispute it. He had had much, he said, “to be cheerful about.”
I will not lie. I did not agree with Mr. Kristol’s Politics or his version of Conservatism. In fact, I have been known to make a crack at people on other blogs; when they were spewing stupidity, especially the George W. Bush Cheerleaders, I would always say, “Where did you learn that line? From Bill or Irving Kristol?” or something usually to that effect. Some of Irving Kristol’s ideology was very controversial; like the desire for a full scale invasion of Iran; of which I found to be horrifically stupid. Thankfully, Bush’s people agreed. Much of his ideology can be summed up as Wilsonian; the man believed that war was the answer, always. I disagreed then and I still do.
However, it is not to say that Kristol was a total loss; He did work to take the Conservative movement away from the Anti-Semites within the Republican Party. He also exposed and expelled the blatant racists that had taken root since the days of Abraham Lincoln. Between Kristol and Buckley; Conservatism become a bit more intellectual and not the knuckle-dragging simpleton nonsense that it has become now; Sarah Palin being a perfect example.
May God Bless the man, I am sure will be missed. May he rest in peace.
I notice in the Blogosphere today that the Liberals are accusing Conservatives of lying about the turn out in Washington D.C.
How ironic that the Socialists are crying foul about lying; seeing that their own dear leader is quite the liar himself.
Let’s review, shall we?
My that’s quite a bit of lying.
I think his nose should be growing…
Remember this little whopper of a big lie?
…and the Kool-Aid Drinkers bought it; hook, line and sinker.
So, perhaps…. Joe Wilson; was right?
Of course, the bill was changed, after Joe Wilson called the President on it. But still, are not these other lies legit? I think they are.
Exit Question: If a Republican lied like this man has, would not he be held to a higher scrutiny? But because he is a black liberal, he skates for free? Isn’t that the honest truth?
BAGHDAD — Insurgents struck at the heart of the Iraqi government on Wednesday in huge and coordinated bombings that exposed a new vulnerability after Americans ceded control for security here on June 30. Nearby American soldiers stood by helplessly — despite the needs of hundreds of wounded — waiting for a request for help from Iraqi officials that apparently never came.
A wave of bombings targeted symbols of government, the Foreign and Finance Ministries in central Baghdad, lending an air of siege to the capital. Dozens were killed and hundreds were wounded in the apparently coordinated attacks.
“As much as we want to come, we have to wait to be asked now,” said an American officer who arrived at one blast site almost three hours later and who spoke in return for anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters. At one blast site, American soldiers snapped pictures of the devastation before ducking out of the streets.
After weeks of escalating violence in Iraq, powerful truck bombs killed at least 95 people and wounded nearly 600 people at the Foreign and Finance Ministries in central Baghdad, assaults on symbols of government that lent an air of siege to the capital. The bombs crippled the downtown area, closed highways and two main bridges over the Tigris River and clogged hospitals with wounded.
The bombings, the worst since American forces handed over security responsibilities to Iraq at the end of June, shook the Iraqi government’s confidence that it was ready and able to secure the nation.
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki called for a reassessment of his security measures, calling the attacks “a vengeful response” to his recent, optimistic order to remove blast walls from the streets of Baghdad.
A Defense Ministry spokesman, Maj. Gen. Mohammed al-Askari, was quoted by Reuters as telling American and Iraqi military officers: “We must face the facts. We must admit our mistakes, just as we celebrate our victories.”
And Baghdad’s security spokesman, Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, told Iraqiya state television, according to Reuters, that attacks were “a security breach for which Iraqi forces must take most of the blame.”
The explosions, one close to the heavily fortified Green Zone and the other less than three miles away, sent plumes of smoke billowing over the capital, ripped a gaping hole in a compound wall and set cars ablaze, trapping drivers inside.
“The whole thing is just so disgusting,” the United States ambassador, Christopher R. Hill, said as he read reports from his staff about the extent of the damage while on an official visit to the northern city of Kirkuk. “They’re just psychopathic.”
Around 11 a.m., the two truck bombs struck the Foreign Ministry and the Finance Ministry within three minutes, officials said, sending white smoke into the sky. The second, more powerful blast was so intense that parts of a main highway near the Finance Ministry collapsed, the rubble littered with shrapnel and splotches of blood. It shattered windows inside the nearby Green Zone and shook houses in many parts of the city. At least 60 people were killed at the Foreign Ministry and at least 35 at the Finance Ministry.
At roughly the same time, attacks in other parts of the city, including three roadside bombs and some mortar and rocket fire, left 13 people wounded, Iraqi officials said.
Of course, the Liberal New York Times had to make sure that this quote was in there; Seeing they are the Anti-Military Paper that they are:
Though no one took credit for the attacks, Iraqis doled out blame both to their government, now fully responsible for security, and to the United States for coming to Iraq in the first place.
“This country is finished,” said one resident, Jamil Jaber, 45, whose five-room home behind the Foreign Ministry had been flattened, crushing a 4-month-old infant. “It’s just robbery and killing.” He cursed the United States and former President George W. Bush.
Oh, Of course, It is Bush’s fault because some idiot rag-head terrorist sets off a fucking bomb in the city of Baghdad. What a fucking ingrate! we should have just nuked that fucking Country into the damned stone age, instead of sending 4000+ of our troops into the Country to basically die; and for what? So some asshole Iraqi can blame us for their problems? What an asshole! That is if it is not a fake quote, which would not surprise me at all.
Here’s the deal folks; War is fucking hell, shit happens, people die. Get used to it! Saddam’s not in power anymore, and the people there are free. That idiot Iraqi sounds like most African-American Liberals; they want to blame someone else, namely White People, for their own damn problems. I suppose some Liberal might try and say that this is happening because we are in that Country in the first place. That is bullshit and most liberals know it.; We have all but left the damn country and the Iraqi Government is now running the show. Hence the Government taking forever to get on the scene.
One other thing I notice is, that most other Bloggers, Conservative and liberal are just not talking about this anymore. I think it is because of the healthcare debate; most people just are not thinking about Iraq. I am not one of these and I hope like hell, that President Obama does not pull us out, before the mission is over. We, as a Nation, cannot afford to make the mistake that we made in Vietnam. We made it before and had a black mark on us for years. We cannot do it again, it will be our shame, if we do.
Countdown to screechy liberals screaming at Obama for us to leave in 5…..4…..3….2…
A pair of nuclear-powered Russian attack submarines has been patrolling off the eastern seaboard of the United States in recent days, a rare mission that has raised concerns inside the Pentagon and intelligence agencies about a more assertive stance by the Russian military.
The episode has echoes of the cold war era, when the United States and the Soviet Union regularly parked submarines off each other’s coasts to steal military secrets, track the movements of their underwater fleets — and be poised for war.
But the collapse of the Soviet Union all but eliminated the ability of the Russian Navy to operate far from home ports, making the current submarine patrols thousands of miles from Russia more surprising for military officials and defense policy experts.
“I don’t think they’ve put two first-line nuclear subs off the U.S. coast in about 15 years,” said Norman Polmar, a naval historian and submarine warfare expert.
The submarines are of the Akula class, a counterpart to the Los Angeles class attack subs of the United States Navy, and not one of the larger submarines that can launch intercontinental nuclear missiles.
According to Defense Department officials, one of the Russian submarines remained in international waters on Tuesday about 200 miles off the coast of the United States. The location of the second remained unclear. One senior official said the second submarine traveled south in recent days toward Cuba, while another senior official with access to reports on the surveillance mission said it had sailed away in a northerly direction.
This is exactly what the United States does not need right now. Rogue Subs near our coastal waterways; If the President was a real President and loved this Country the way he should. He would order those vessels out of the area or He would order the Military to get them out of our area. The President needs to stop playing patty cake with the Russians and give forceful with them. Ether get in line or else, face our wrath. But seeing this is the apology tour President; I do not expect much from him, at all.
In a July 12th hit piece published on the front page of the New York Times, reporters Jim Rutenberg and Serge Kovaleski (assisted by Kim Severson and William Yardley in Alaska) made the following claim:
Friends worried that she appeared anxious and underweight. Her hair had thinned to the point where she needed emergency help from her hairdresser and close friend, Jessica Steele.
“Honestly, I think all of it just broke her heart,” Ms. Steele said in an interview at her beauty parlor in Wasilla, the Beehive.
This tidbit was seized upon and has bounced through the Internet and blogosphere — a Google search for “Palin hair thinned” now returns nearly 400,000 hits. Lefties such as Eleanor Clift seized on it as some kind of meme that Palin can’t handle stress. Well, Jessica Steele, proprietor of The Beehive and the Palin friend and hairdresser quoted by the NYT, is outraged at the claim and making it known through a forum immediately available – her Twitter feed
Of course the New York Times is going to lie about Sarah Palin. They lie about everyone that they fear. They did it to George W. Bush, They did it John McCain and now they are doing to Sarah Palin.
But I do ask one question; does not Sarah Palin have this coming? After all, it was Sarah Palin and John McCain who allowed themselves to be interviewed by every liberal news network out there; but refused to come onto Fox News Channel, at all. Was it not Sarah Palin and John McCain who came on to Saturday Night Live and allowed themselves to be openly mocked by the liberals?
The way I see it, if you run with the wolves; you should not complain or protest, when they decide to devour you.
Now the Palin-bots are going to try attack me for saying she deserves this; because she is a woman; which is so typical of these so-called “Feminist Conservatives”. But that is NOT what I am saying at all. I am saying that when you play the liberal game; or as some would call it, if you “Jump through their hoops”, you pay the price.
Sarah Palin should have never agreed to any of the “Liberal hoop jumping” during the election, this is why they are attacking her now.
I can almost guarantee that this will kill the New York Times, if they go through with this:
July 9 (Bloomberg) — New York Times Co. said in a survey of print subscribers that it’s considering a $5 monthly fee for access to its namesake newspaper’s Web site.
Times Co. also asked whether subscribers would be willing to pay a discounted fee of $2.50 a month for access to the site, in the poll confirmed today by Catherine Mathis, a company spokeswoman. Nytimes.com, the most visited among newspapers’ sites, is currently free.
Times Co. is contemplating additional sources of revenue as marketers slow spending on the Internet. Ad sales at the publisher’s sites, also including about.com and boston.com, fell 8 percent and 3.5 percent in the first quarter and fourth quarter of 2008 respectively. They gained 6.5 percent last year.
“The question here for consumers is the psychological barrier of now paying when you were getting it for free before, and you’re going to lose some readers as a result,” said Ken Doctor, an analyst at Outsell Inc. in Burlingame, California. “The New York Times will also have to evaluate what this means for ad rates as they lose readers.”
Times Co., based in New York, lost 11 cents, or 2.2 percent, to $4.80 at 4:15 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares have fallen 35 percent this year.
The New York Times had an average of 647,695 weekday home delivery subscribers as of the 26 weeks ended March 29, according to Audit Bureau of Circulations data. That doesn’t include single-copy sales or third-party sales. Its site is the most visited among news sites, according to ComScore Inc. data.
Here is why I believe that this will be a business killer for the New York Times. Quite simply put; people are just not going to pay for content that they can access elsewhere. Sure, the locals will pay to access to the local related content; but all the National News stuff usually comes from the AP or Reuters; and people just are not going to pay for it, when they can get it for free elsewhere.
The reason the New York Times is hurting for revenue is two fold. One; is the economy, people just are not spending the extra money to buy papers and Businesses are tightening their belts due to losing in the Stock Markets and because of the major recession. Secondly; it is because of the liberal slant of the paper. The average person is just not as far left as the New York Times. People want honesty and integrity; and the New York Times, along with the rest of the Liberal media went into the tank for President Obama. It worked for a little while, but people have begun to see, that they were being sold a bag of lemons and are now waking up to the fact that President Obama is more of the same in Washington D.C.
This is especially true on the far, far, left. The Iraq War still continues, and this after Obama promised to end the war. The Gay community sees President Obama as a enemy to their cause. President Obama’s poll numbers are a reflection of this. As you might already know, his poll numbers took a major dip; especially in Ohio. This could come back haunt him come 2012, if he runs again. It also could be a indication of things to come in 2010.
Either way, this idea, like the one that Rupert Murdoch proposed doing with the New York Post, will be a business killer. Hopefully, these knuckleheads wise up and don’t follow this plan of disaster.
“More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.”
“More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when we were looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.”
All Dowd did was change “we were” to “the Bush crowd was”.
Now, I’m all for cutting & pasting. As a blogger I do it all the time, but I always give credit.
So, if this isn’t outright plagiarism by a top NY Times Editorialist, than I’m a happily married, straight man with 4 kids, 2 dogs, a lovely 2nd wife of 15 years with a girl half my age on the side.
Which I assure you all, I am not.
Josh has a valid point. When we bloggers use content from other sites, or we copy something, we ALWAYS; well unless someone’s being an prick or something like that, credit the original source and link to that source article. Like I did this piece. What Dowd did was totally unprofessional and just plain rude. Of course, when called on it; Dowd is in full backward cat crawl mode:
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, in an email to Huffington Post, admits that a paragraph in her Sunday column was lifted from Talking Points Memo editor Josh Marshall’s blog last Thursday.
Dowd claims that she never read his blog last week but was told the line by a friend of hers. In a follow-up email, she forwarded her desire to apologize to Marshall, writing that had she known, she would have gladly credited Marshall.
josh is right. I didn’t read his blog last week, and didn’t have any idea he had made that point until you informed me just now. i was talking to a friend of mine Friday about what I was writing who suggested I make this point, expressing it in a cogent — and I assumed spontaneous — way and I wanted to weave the idea into my column. but, clearly, my friend must have read josh marshall without mentioning that to me. we’re fixing it on the web, to give josh credit, and will include a note, as well as a formal correction tomorrow.
Oh Yeah, the old “I got it from a Friend” line…. Josh chimes in here:
Indeed. Dowd got busted and now she’s trying to walk it back. She’ll be either fired or will take vacation till the heat blows over…. or at wost, end up as lackey over at MSNBC with the rest of the Plagiarizing idiots. (You know who I mean… I hope.)
Boy. Take a break from Blogging and all the cool stuff happens. Wow! 😮
How the news coverage of the swine flu isn’t so much indicative of any serious crisis, but the mainstream media’s corporate and government, PC sensibilities.
I post this because I believe that it is interesting. Alex Jones has always struck me as a kook. Someone amongst the “Tin Foil Hat” crowd. However, it is something interesting to watch.
Enjoy…
What do you think? Do you think that there is any truth to this?
Yes, I’ve heard about it. I really do not have anything negative to say about him going to the NYT. Douthat on the other hand, I found to be a bit snobbish. I once sent him an e-mail and never got a response. I suppose that Mr. Douthat, a beltway type; has no time for us amateur basement dwellers. Which is pretty fucking ironic, because that is how this whole blogging thing got started, by a bunch of basement dwellers who decided to start writing about politics; Liberal, Conservative, and yes even Libertarian…. and decided to make our own damned community.
I agree with the fact that Douthat will most likely will do better than David Brooks, and believe that is not saying much at all. Brooks was about a fucking idiot. He was a perfect example of the idiotic mumbling that comes out of the Neo-Conservative circles anymore. Which is why the Harlem globetrotter is in the White House now.
Anyhow, I hope he does well and gets his facts straight, because God-knows the Republican Party needs a image makeover right now.
Sources close to the White House say Mr Obama and his staff have been “overwhelmed” by the economic meltdown and have voiced concerns that the new president is not getting enough rest.
British officials, meanwhile, admit that the White House and US State Department staff were utterly bemused by complaints that the Prime Minister should have been granted full-blown press conference and a formal dinner, as has been customary. They concede that Obama aides seemed unfamiliar with the expectations that surround a major visit by a British prime minister.
But Washington figures with access to Mr Obama’s inner circle explained the slight by saying that those high up in the administration have had little time to deal with international matters, let alone the diplomatic niceties of the special relationship.
Allies of Mr Obama say his weary appearance in the Oval Office with Mr Brown illustrates the strain he is now under, and the president’s surprise at the sheer volume of business that crosses his desk.
A well-connected Washington figure, who is close to members of Mr Obama’s inner circle, expressed concern that Mr Obama had failed so far to “even fake an interest in foreign policy”.
A British official conceded that the furore surrounding the apparent snub to Mr Brown had come as a shock to the White House. “I think it’s right to say that their focus is elsewhere, on domestic affairs. A number of our US interlocutors said they couldn’t quite understand the British concerns and didn’t get what that was all about.”
The American source said: “Obama is overwhelmed. There is a zero sum tension between his ability to attend to the economic issues and his ability to be a proactive sculptor of the national security agenda.
“That was the gamble these guys made at the front end of this presidency and I think they’re finding it a hard thing to do everything.”
Oh, it gets better, trust me… Too Tired?!?! Seriously? Think that’s bad?
President Obama declared in an interview that the United States was not winning the war in Afghanistan and opened the door to a reconciliation process in which the American military would reach out to moderate elements of the Taliban, much as it did with Sunni militias in Iraq.
Mr. Obama pointed to the success in peeling Iraqi insurgents away from more hard-core elements of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a strategy that many credit as much as the increase of American forces with turning the war around in the last two years. “There may be some comparable opportunities in Afghanistan and in the Pakistani region,” he said, while cautioning that solutions in Afghanistan will be complicated.
[…]
“I don’t think that people should be fearful about our future,” he said. “I don’t think that people should suddenly mistrust all of our financial institutions.”
As he pressed forward with ambitious plans at home to rewrite the tax code, expand health care coverage and curb climate change, Mr. Obama dismissed criticism from conservatives that he was driving the country toward socialism. After the interview, which took place as the president was flying home from Ohio, he called reporters from the Oval Office to assert that his actions have been “entirely consistent with free-market principles” and to point out that large-scale government intervention in the markets and expansion of social welfare programs began under President George W. Bush.
Sitting at the head of a conference table with his suit coat off, Mr. Obama exhibited confidence six weeks into his presidency despite the economic turmoil around the globe and the deteriorating situations in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He struck a reassuring tone about the economy, saying he had no trouble sleeping at night.
[…..]
Asked if the United States was winning in Afghanistan, a war he effectively adopted as his own last month by ordering an additional 17,000 troops sent there, Mr. Obama replied flatly, “No.”
Again, can someone please tell me why we elected this feckless idiot douche nozzle? I am really beginning to believe that America blew it. In a really, really, really, big way.
Those who were actually stupid enough to vote for this socialist idiot, get what is coming to them. (yes, that applies to my family too.)
I mean, this asshole is acting like this is some sort of a community organizer job. Being the President is a serious job and this idiot is not even acting remotely like a President. 😡
As much as I disagreed with President George W. Bush on Iraq, I will say this; you never, EVER heard George W. Bush complain or his staff ever say to reporters, even anonymously say that the job was making him tired! Not once.