Okay. CBS has a slideshow that makes you go, “NFW!” when you get to this guy.

I was right! Darth Vader is a Republican.

Oh, and so’s Buffy.

And The Rock. And Corporal Klinger. And Mama Partridge. And Adam Sandler. Hey, I thought Hollywood celebs kept their conservative side under wraps for fear of lynch mobs. Oh, and Oprah—did you know Dr. Phil was a Republican?

And last, but not least: Alice Cooper. Coop! I saw him in Jersey City waaaay back when. Awesome show. I’d see him again in a heartbeat.

You know, I may not stay an independent much longer. I think it depends a lot on what direction the Republican Party chooses to go after this election. I’m finding I have less and less common ground with the Democrats. And I’m tired of not having a home of my own, so to speak.

Via Jim Treacher, word not to give up quite yet. (Also from my friend Lynn, who talked me into calling my local McCain HQ and volunteering some time.) From some still-angry Hillary voters, we have the reasons why Obama isn’t quite the anointed one yet:

If you, collectively, can keep Republicans and other McCain voters from falling for these, we believe there’s nothing Obama can do to win this election. The ONLY way McCain loses is if you Eeyores allow the media to keep you from the polls.
Head Games Coming Your Way:

(1) Calls for McCain to just give up and quit, because the race is over. This one is a favorite of the trolls who lurk on pro-McCain sites. We get them here, despite all the spraying and fumigating we do, but notice how we ignore these trolls. We’ve identified two paid Obama staffers who have been assigned to HillBuzz. We picked them up around the same time people from Ace and LGF started picking up some of our stuff — so our guess is they were assigned to us by whoever was monitoring those sites. They’re different trolls than the ones assigned to us during the primaries (we only had one back then, so evidently we’ve gotten more on the radar now). One of them starts posting “her” concern troll remarks here at 8am. The other one starts “his” remarks around 5pm or so. It appears there are two shifts for the trolls — and from what we can see, they share the same computer and IP address. And it’s an address right here in Chicago. Imagine that.

Yeah, imagine that. Dirty politics from Chicago.

Don’t be Eeyores on Tuesday! Get those Eeyore butts off your couches, away from toxic TV, and GO VOTE. Get everyone you know to vote — tell them if they don’t, then Obama will turn America socialist, and we’re going to start with their house and bank account when we begin redistributing wealth. That should motivate them.

(2) Wild claims of Obama winning states that shock and surprise you. Since Obama believes there are 57 states (maybe 58 or 59, depending on how he’s counting that day), the Obamedia will report huge wins for Dear Leader in the states of Confusion, Denial, and Undress, with Atlantis, Oz, Hopetopia, and Leningrad all going to Obama early on November 4th — because everyone loves Obama so much, that places that don’t even exist have voted for him (with 100% of the vote of the dead, cartoon characters, and historical figures going to Dear Leader in unprecedented numbers). The best example of the Obamedia making up lies like this was on Super Tuesday, when every Eeyore we knew ran through the streets crying and pants-wetting, gnashing their teeth and yanking their hair as the sky fell around them — BECAUSE OBAMA IS WINNING CALIFORNIA! MASSACHUSETTS! ARKANSAS! TENNESSEE! NEW JERSEY! NEW YORK! WAAAAAAAAH! DOOOOOOOMED!

But wait. There’s still more.

So, when you see the Obamedia doing all of this to McCain, please know they are crying wolf again. Don’t let that demoralize you!

(3) Repeated insistance that blacks and young people will decide this election, and they are all going to vote in record numbers for Obama. First of all, black voters have always voted Democratic in massive numbers. We don’t think blacks have ever voted for Republicans in any substantial way in any race we can think of. Blacks vote as a race-bloc, and they always vote for the Democrat. Maybe Obama will get blacks who have never voted before to vote for him, or blacks who don’t bother to vote on Election Day to show up and vote, but we doubt that it will be very many people. Black voters were highly motivated to vote in 2004 because they felt George W. Bush stole the 2000 election, and they saw that as a civil rights issue that increased black turnout to one of the highest levels we have ever seen. Remember, Jesse Jackson almost won Election 2000 for Gore but was stopped by the Gore campaign, in the form of Donna Brazile. Watch the HBO movie Recount. Jackson felt the Florida Recount was a civil rights/voter disenfranchisement issue at its heart, and wanted to press that to the public. He revved the black community up and flew down to Tallahassee, but Gore and Brazile made him get back on a plane to Chicago. That was a critically stupid move…and you know how the recount ended.

So, in 2004, THAT’S what the black community thought about, and THAT’S what made people vote to kick Bush out of the White House, for stealing it from Gore in 2000. We just don’t know what people are left to vote in the black community who didn’t vote in 2004, when they were revved up to vote against Bush — a president the black community hates.

But here is my absolute favorite quote from Hillbuzz:

We also feel young voters are the Holy Grail of election delusions, because every Democrat, every election, claims “young people love me and will come out in record numbers to vote for me!”. Well, let us just tell you that early voting ended today in Chicago. In our building, there is a suite full of about 6 frat boys who sometimes stop us in the laundry room to talk politics. They are all hot DePaul hockey players, so we are glad to chat them up any time they want. All of them said they were going to vote for Obama, and all of them forgot to early vote. All of them have class and work on Tuesday. We honestly believe all 6 of these guys are going to forget to vote on Election Day — and the polling station for our neighborhood is literally one street away. We think this will happen not just with the hot hockey players in our building, but in many other buildings in Chicago, and in cities across the US.

As you move out of urban areas, it becomes more of a challenge to get to polling places, as they get further and further apart. That means college students, and Obama’s youth army, need to move further and further out of their daily norm to actually vote. With class, work, and Nintendo Wii, that becomes a big burden, especially since they’re going to whoop it up all Halloween weekend having an absolute drunken blast, and will have a lot to catch up on come Tuesday, since Monday they will be still hungover and not functional.

This is actually an argument not unlike the one I used for the past year while Lynn fretted that the new voters being registered—mostly young voters—would swing the election for the Democrats. And then I remember that when I went to college, fully 80% of the students couldn’t be bothered to stop at the voting booths in the student center they walked past on their way to the cafeteria for lunch to vote in the student government elections. And they’re keeping up the same statistic in the real world: In 2006, only 22% of voters aged 18 to 24 voted.

And if that isn’t enough to make you feel better, I called my local McCain headquarters today and asked about the mood, among other things. It’s very upbeat. Everyone there thinks the polls are skewed. And I’ll be seeing Eric Cantor tomorrow afternoon. (I guess he’s not an Orthodox Jew.)

Think I’ll go to the Sarah Palin rally tomorrow night, after all. She’s in the next county over, near my friends’ house. I’d ask them to come, but they’re voting Obama.

OPEC cut production last week. Oil prices fell. Banks cut interest rates last week. Oil prices rose.

Oil climbed more than $4 a barrel on Oct. 29, the biggest gain in a month, after the U.S. and China, the two biggest energy consumers, cut interest rates to spur economic growth. Prices also rose because the dollar fell the most against the currencies of six major U.S. trading partners since 1998.

The price of crude oil is set to have its Worst Month. Ever.

Crude oil for December delivery fell $1.91, or 2.9 percent, to $64.05 a barrel at 9:15 a.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices, which have tumbled 57 percent since reaching a record $147.27 on July 11, are down 32 percent from a year ago.

The monthly price drop is set to surpass February 1986 as the worst month ever, when crude oil declined 30 percent to $13.26 a barrel.

And for this, we are thankful.

Unless the oil-producing nations intend to cut production so far that there isn’t enough supply to fill demand—which I doubt—I don’t think this is going to do much. Here’s hoping. The winter season is upon us, and falling oil and gas prices can only help.

Tig’s pumpkin orange, on orange paper, on the black background of my leather sofa—and yowling. He couldn’t get much more Halloween kitty without being frightened, and, well, I wouldn’t do that just to get a picture.

A “work accident” killed a Hamas terrorist—sorry, “policeman”—in Gaza yesterday. But read the article with me and watch the mysteries unfold.

A Hamas policeman was killed and several Palestinians were wounded Thursday night when an explosive device went off in a police station in Gaza City.

Hamas police spokesman Islam Shahwan said the device was found earlier in the day in the Hamas-controlled territory and was taken to the police station to be dismantled.

The bomb was put there, possibly by Fatah loyalists. Then again, there are so many terrorist groups wandering about Gaza these days, who knows who put the bomb in “Hamas-controlled territory” (which I thought was the entire Gaza Strip).

Here’s one of the things that makes you go Hmm:

While security men were taking the bomb apart, it exploded, causing several secondary blasts, Shahwan said.

“Several secondary blasts” indicates that there were other explosives at this “police station.” Now, I understand that the world is not all like America, but still, explosives aren’t generally kept in a police station where you’re attempting to disarm a bomb.

But here’s the other thing that makes you go Hmm:

Moaaya Hassaneen, director of the Health Ministry’s emergency department, told AFP named the policeman killed as Alaa Jihad al Ajna, 30, and said the incident occurred in a passport office in the center of Gaza City, and not in a police station.

So a “police officer” takes the unexploded bomb to a passport office in downtown Gaza—why, we’re not sure; perhaps he was going to get it papers so it could travel to Israel—attempts to disarm it, and it explodes. Causing “secondary explosions” at this, ah, passport office.

Really, is there truly anyone out there that doesn’t understand what a nest of terrorism Gaza is?

Oh. Wait. Yes, yes, there is.

In fact, there are lots of fools out there. A whole boatload of ‘em.

A boat loaded with international protesters has arrived in the Gaza Strip to bring attention to Israel’s blockade of the Hamas-controlled territory.

The 27 passengers, coming together from 13 different countries include Irish Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead McGuire, Palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouti, and Israeli leftist Gideon Spiro. Israeli MK Jamal Zahalka (Balad) who was reportedly supposed to join the voyage, was not present on the boat.

They are scheduled to remain in Gaza for four days.

The boat chartered by the US-based Free Gaza group sailed from the nearby island of Cyprus on Tuesday and arrived in Gaza in pouring rain early Wednesday.

I wonder if the ship of fools is aware of the incident at the “passport office.” After all, they’ll need passports if they want to get into Israel. I hope this doesn’t impact their ability to get out of Gaza, like it did Tony Blair’s sister-in-law. (Well, of course that was sarcasm. I hope they get stuck there for months.)

The Washington Post which has devoted an editorial to debunking Jim Corsi but never one to dispel scurrilous attacks against the Republican ticket has now come off the sidelines to weigh in on the Rashid Khalidi controversy in An ‘Idiot Wind’. (via memeorandum)

WITH THE presidential campaign clock ticking down, Sen. John McCain has suddenly discovered a new boogeyman to link to Sen. Barack Obama: a sometimes controversial but widely respected Middle East scholar named Rashid Khalidi. In the past couple of days, Mr. McCain and his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, have likened Mr. Khalidi, the director of a Middle East institute at Columbia University, to neo-Nazis; called him “a PLO spokesman”; and suggested that the Los Angeles Times is hiding something sinister by refusing to release a videotape of a 2003 dinner in honor of Mr. Khalidi at which Mr. Obama spoke. Mr. McCain even threw former Weatherman Bill Ayers into the mix, suggesting that the tape might reveal that Mr. Ayers — a terrorist-turned-professor who also has been an Obama acquaintance — was at the dinner.

Khalidi is widely respected. However the nature of scholarship of the Middle East now is so discredited that the respect comes from those who close their eyes. Khalidi is the Edward Said professor of Arab studies at Columbia. The fact that the chair is named after a professor of humanities not a Middle Eastern scholar should say something about the nature of the appointment. Khalidi wasn’t appointed for his Middle Eastern scholarship credentials, but for his political views. While Columbia won’t share the list of those who contributed to the endowment of the chair, Greg Yardley reports:

Of course, even the most ideological pack of professors can’t hire someone to an endowed chair without securing funding. A position like Khalidi’s requires millions of dollars in dedicated endowments. We don’t know who provided these endowments, because Columbia won’t tell us. Only a couple of approximately twenty donors have publicly confirmed donations. However, even these few have disturbing connections to foreign governments. One philanthropist who donated, Rita Hauser, was connected to the Palestinian Authority by her former law firm, registered as an agent for the Palestinian Authority up until 2001. Another, the Olayan Charitable Trusts, is the American charitable arm of a Saudi Arabian corporation.

He also mentions that Martin Kramer has seen the full list of donors and reports that one is a foreign nation.

The Post scoffs at the idea that Khalidi was once a PLO spokesman, but as Kramer notes (h/t LGF):

It is worth explaining what it meant to be “deeply involved in politics in Beirut” during the civil war in Lebanon. It was not at all like community organizing in Chicago. The Lebanese state had ceased to function; the political actors were all armed militias, Lebanese and Palestinian. Every individual needed to be affiliated with such an organization, if not for bread then at least for protection. Khalidi was known to be affiliated with, and protected by, Arafat’s Fatah. A 1979 New York Times report (by Youssef Ibrahim) described Khalidi as “a professor of political science who is close to Al Fatah.” In Beirut, to be “close” to an organization meant you enjoyed its protection in return for loyalty and services rendered. Khalidi’s wife also worked as an English translator for the PLO’s press agency, Wafa. So savvy journalists knew that if they wanted the Fatah spin, they could get it from Khalidi.

Aaron Klein has more:

I also never stated anywhere as fact that Khalidi was employed by the PLO, but that he reportedly worked for the official PLO press agency WAFA in Beirut while the PLO committed scores of anti-Western attacks and was labeled by the U.S. as a terror group. Khalidi’s wife, AAAN President Mona Khalidi, was reportedly WAFA’s English translator during that period.

I fairly note Rashid Khalidi has denied working for the PLO.

Some reports of Khalidi working for WAFA and his associations with the PLO include a New York Times account by columnist Thomas L. Friedman who wrote on June 9, 1982, Khalidi was at that time “a director of the Palestinian press agency” – Wikalat al-Anba al-Filastinija, or WAFA.

In a Jan. 6, 1981, article in the Christian Science Monitor, Khalidi reportedly used the word “we” referring to the PLO.

If he wasn’t a spokesman for the PLO, he was certainly close to it. But there’s plenty to suggest that he did convey the PLO line while he was in Lebanon in 1982.

Unfortunately one of those working to undermine the charges against is Ron Kampeas of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Kramer updated his post to respond to Kampeas’s critique.

The Post also mocks the effort of the McCain campaign to obtain the video of the dinner. But as Andrew McCarthy argues, the LA Times report only gives us a taste of what went on at the dinner, clearly it wasn’t as innocuous as the Times portrays (h/t Instpundit).

Moreover, we also know that several speakers that night sang paeans to Khalidi — who regards the establishment of a Jewish state in “Palestine” as the Nakba (i.e., “The Catastrophe”) and justifies terrorist attacks against Israeli military and government targets. The Times concedes the party was a forum “where anger at Israeli and U.S. Middle East policy was freely expressed.” Yet, again, we are given only two blurbs:

[A] young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, “then you will never see a day of peace.” One speaker likened “Zionist settlers on the West Bank” to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been “blinded by ideology.”

You know there was a lot more where that came from, spouted by several other speakers whom the Times story fails to name. Why not put out a transcript of what was said and by whom? And if the Times has information about what was in the commemorative book that was prepared for the occasion of Khalidi’s triumphant departure to assume the Edward Said chair at Columbia University, why not put that out too?

It’s ironic (or hypocritical or dishonest) that the Washington Post, which, two years ago, inferred all sorts of nasty stuff about then Sen. George Allen from a single comment he made is so incurious about the guy they endorsed for President. While they allow that they disagree with some of Khalidi’s views, they don’t share exactly which views they object to.

Is it that he calls Israel an “apartheid state?” Or that he justifies terror attacks against Israeli soldiers? Or that he finds it hard to say that the killing of Jews living in Judea and Samaria is wrong? These are all troubling. Look at the end of the editorial:

It’s fair to question why Mr. Obama felt as comfortable as he apparently did during his Chicago days in the company of men whose views diverge sharply from what the presidential candidate espouses. Our sense is that Mr. Obama is a man of considerable intellectual curiosity who can hear out a smart, if militant, advocate for the Palestinians without compromising his own position.

Being untroubled by the extreme views of a friend is problematic, especially for a candidate for President. Does Sen. Obama, despite public statements of support for Israel still find Khalidi’s views in any way valid? It may be convenient for the Post to ascribe this contradiction to “intellectual curiosity,” but that’s because the Post holds Sen. Obama in very high regard.

If there was evidence that Sen. McCain had attended a dinner with white supremacists five years ago, would the Post be as incurious as to what went on? Would the Post say that it was wrong to tie McCain to his dubious associates? Would the Post tell its readers to trust McCain and that he was only at the dinner to satisfy his “intellectual curiosity?”

Please also see Judeopundit.

UPDATE: It occurred to me that the Post allowed Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas - not a spokesman - the byline for an op-ed when Hamas was engaged in ongoing terror attacks against Israel two years ago. At the time, the Post’s ombudsman Deborah Howell argued that the reason for giving him the forum was to “enlighten and provoke” us. The Post credits Sen. Obama’s contact with Rashid Khalidi a one-time (and unapologetic) spokesman for the PLO to “intellectual curiosity.” It’s interesting that for the Post’s editors getting to know terrorists and their mouthpieces is a noble pursuit, but let the wrong word - like “macaca” - escape your lips and you’re unfit for public office.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

The UN General Assembly, that most anti-Israel and anti-American of bodies this side of the OIC (oh, wait—the OIC is part of the UN), put forward the now-annual resolution to end the US embargo on Cuba, passed the resolution 185-3, with two abstentions.

Guess who one of the three nations standing by America was?

WASHINGTON - Israel was one of only two countries who stood by the United States on Wednesday at a United Nations General Assembly vote to lift the American trade embargo on Cuba.

The vote in the 192-member world body was 185 to 3, with 2 abstentions. The US, Israel and Palau voted “no” while Micronesia and the Marshall Islands abstained.

[...] “We proudly voted with the US, at a time where most of the world showed solidarity with Cuba,” said Israel’s Deputy UN Ambassador Daniel Carmon, “the decision was made by a solid majority, which is similar to the automatic majority against us in Palestinian decisions.”

“When the vote was over, applause and shouts were heard, which is unacceptable in the UN,” he added.

Wednesday’s approval of the resolution was the 17th straight year that the General Assembly called for the embargo against Cuba to be repealed “as soon as possible.”

“We expect that the new president will change the policy toward Cuba,” Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque told the Associated Press in an interview following the vote.

Yeah, don’t hold your breath on that. If Obama wins, he won’t give up the Cuban vote. He’ll want Florida for his next term.

Another kassam rocket breaks the “truce.” I’ve lost track of how many times the “truce” has been broken.

The ceasefire between Israel and the armed Palestinian groups in Gaza was breached Thursday when a Qassam fired from the Hamas-controlled enclave landed in an open field near a kibbutz in the Sderot area. No injuries or damage were reported in the attack.

In response to the attack Defense Minister Ehud Barak has ordered that the goods crossings between Israel and Gaza remain closed, including Kerem Shalom and the fuel terminal at Nahal Oz.

At least the AP isn’t spinning this anti-Israel, for a change. And they’re not using weasel-words about the violation.

Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip have fired a rocket into southern Israel in violation of a 4-month-old truce, but the strike did not cause any injuries or damage.

The Israeli Defense Ministry has responded Thursday by snapping shut cargo crossings into Gaza until further notice.

I think the AP is too busy hyping Obama at the moment to pay any attention to slamming Israel.

In his column yesterday, Thomas Friedman wrote:

Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, compares it to bargaining for a Persian carpet in Tehran. “When you go inside the carpet shop, the first thing you are supposed to do is feign disinterest,” he explains. “The last thing you want to suggest is ‘We are not leaving without that carpet.’ ‘Well,’ the dealer will say, ‘if you feel so strongly about it …’ ”

The other lesson from the carpet bazaar, says Sadjadpour, “is that there is never a price tag on any carpet. The dealer is not looking for a fixed price, but the highest price he can get — and the Iran price is constantly fluctuating depending on the price of oil.” Let’s now use that to our advantage.

This is from an expert who has been writing for the past eight years that we “know” what Israel will need to concede to achieve peace with the Palestinians. He also advocates every single forum to pressure Israel to make those concessions. The advice he quotes would also makes sense regarding Israel, I doubt that he’d ever see that.

By stressing the importance of peace for Israel, peace processors of all disciplines show great interest. That, of course, raises the cost of peace. (It encourages the Palestinians and other Arabs to demand more concessions from Israel.)

If anything Eric Trager understands this much better than Friedman:

For this reason, the winner of next week’s presidential election would be well advised to renounce Annapolis as soon as possible. The incoming president should announce a freeze on U.S. involvement in Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking until both parties’ domestic political situations are resolved. Without this declaration, Israel and the Palestinians will have every reason to believe that the next U.S. administration will follow along the lines of Annapolis–and thus every reason to sideline American proposals indefinitely.

If the winner is Barack Obama, don’t count on it.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

It’s near $70/bbl now.

Oh, well. Gas is under $2 a gallon in Richmond. I’ll have to go somewhere tomorrow so I can fill up one last time under $2 per.

1.) Where are the glasses and the frown?

2.) Where are the hardball questions?

Let’s face it. Charles Gibson did not do his job tonight. He had the first interview with Obama in over a month, and the toughest question he asked was, “If you lose, have you thought about November fifth and beyond?”

What a load of crap. Watch it for yourselves.

Softball:

GIBSON: When John McCain calls you, then, a redistributionist, do you take that as a complement or an insult or an accusation?

OBAMA: Well, I — I gather he means it as an insult. And I think it’s part of an old argument, an old language that doesn’t apply any more. I mean, I think there was a strong argument to be made when Ronald Reagan came in in 1980 that, marginal tax rates — the tax rates for the very wealthy were so punitive that people were going through all kinds of changes to avoid them.

After softball:

So what’d you mean when you told that plumber you wanted to spread the wealth?

OBAMA: Well, if you look at the tape, what I said was exactly what I said right now, which is that if people are doing very well, then there’s nothing wrong with us going back to these old tax rates in order to give tax relief to 95 percent of Americans who have been struggling even when the economy was growing.

After softball:

GIBSON: So there’s two scenarios. You can win. You can lose. So let’s start with win. Let’s talk about them, but let’s start with win. From the beginning, you said you wanted new politics. You wanted to work with Republicans. An overwhelming likelihood is, if you win, you would have a very strong majority of Democrats in both the House and Senate. You’ve said you want to work with Republicans. Why would you need to?

No followup to the non-answer to this question. If you find an answer to “Didn’t you break a promise” in there anywhere, I’ll give you a hundred bucks. Instead, Gibson thinks that it’s tough journalism to ignore the broken pledge and the reports of credit card fraud that Obama is using to collect donations, and concentrates instead on the big stuff: The names of the small donors.

GIBSON: You’re going to have a half an hour broadcast tonight on a number of the networks. And the expense is not inconsiderable to buy that much time.

OBAMA: Right.

GIBSON: Aren’t you able to buy it only because you broke a promise on campaign financing?

OBAMA: Well, look, there is no doubt that the amount of money that we’ve raised in this campaign has been extraordinary and surprised me as much as anybody — maybe more than anybody. What I would simply point to is that the way we have raised this money has been by expanding the pool of small donors in this country in an unprecedented way.

GIBSON: But you haven’t released their names.

OBAMA: We’ve got…

GIBSON: We don’t know who they are.

OBAMA: Well, look, the — a whole bunch of them were out here today. I mean, you’re looking the people who are giving 5, 10, $25. Ordinary folks who have gotten impassioned about this campaign in a way that is unprecedented. And that, really, is…

GIBSON: Shouldn’t we know the names of that list?

And Obama suddenly gets coy about being president before he’s president.

GIBSON: Should you win this thing, first priority as president-elect, what would you want to get out of the lame duck session of Congress?

OBAMA: Well, the lame duck session of Congress, I’m not going to be president. I’m going to be president-elect.

False modesty doesn’t suit you, Barry.

I sure hope the polls are lying. Because I’m not going to be able to watch the news for the next four years if they’re not.

Saudi Arabia is breaking ground for the world’s largest women’s college.

Here’s the funniest part of the article:

The declared aim of the Women’s University is to promote women’s education in the kingdom, improve the situation of Saudi women and make them a more integral part of Saudi Arabia’s development.

The reason it’s so funny? Men can’t teach. And women can’t drive.

Saudi Arabia practices a strict form of Sunni Islam called Wahhabism, and men and women are for the most part segregated. In universities, male lecturers cannot stand in front of a classroom of women, so teaching is done through a screen or a phone line, which can pose technical problems.

But yes, people like Jimmy Carter should totally go after Israeli “apartheid,” and ignore utterly the sexism of much of the Muslim world.

Yossi Beilin is removing himself from politics, about 20 years too late.

Former Meretz head and a prominent leader of the left-wing camp, Knesset Member Yossi Beilin, announced that he will not be seeking a spot on his party’s Knesset roster in the upcoming elections.

Dr. Beilin informed Meretz Chairman Chaim Oron of his decision on Tuesday evening. The move marks the end of the veteran statesman’s political career.

Beilin apparently intends to enter private practice, but was reluctant to elaborate on its nature or the circumstances surrounding his decision to retire from political life. His aides told Ynet that he “will remain a public figure and will keep pursuing his political initiatives, most of all the Geneva Initiative.”

The Geneva Initiative was an attempt by Beilin to make an end run around the Israeli government and create a peace agreement with no official sanction whatsoever. It was, of course, cheered by the rest of the world, instead of being slammed as an attempt by someone to subvert the elected government of a democratic nation. So Yossi, goodbye, and don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. Although from his vagueness of where he’s going, my guess is to a Soros-funded organization that will try to ram yet another “peace” accord down Israel’s throat. Or perhaps the Obama Israel camp has already reached out to Beilin. I wouldn’t rule it out.

Helena Cobban is shocked:

Since when is it okay for a state (or an individual) to set out to kill a person based solely on accusations against him that have never been publicized and have never been tested against even the most basic norms of criminal procedure?

It is not okay. Extra-judicial killings, also known as assassinations, are always abhorrent. They shock the conscience of anyone who believes in the rule of law. When carried out by states they represent a quite unacceptable excess of state power.

“Extra-judicial killings” is a term pacifists use to define war. It has the convenient side effect of legitimizing terror. Essentially it means that terrorists who operate outside of the norms of international law should be exempt from military actions against them.

Cobban continues:

This week, we have had yet another shocking example of

(a) our government– speaking through still unnamed “administration officials”– trying to “justify” the acts of lethal aggression it committed against Syria on Sunday by saying that they were aiming at (and indeed, also succeeded in) killing an alleged long-time operative of Al-Qaeda in Iraq called Abu Ghadiya; and

(b) this explanation being reported by many branches of the media– e.g. the NYT, “Wired” magazine, and Britain’s ITV– without those reporters also providing the essential background in national or international law, or in common morality, that would indicate that such acts of assassination constitute serious violations of the rule of law. And without seeking out and quoting the opinion of anyone who states anything to that effect… In other words, these acts of extra-judicial killing are treated by these reporters and the editors who stand behind them simply as “business as usual”, the kind of “normal” acts that a government carries out need that not be exposed to any particular questioning or criticism.

So not only is our government illegitimate or at least involved in illegitimate activities, but our media is abetting our criminal government. I’m not going to go into a long discourse about irregular warfare, but it is Cobban who is ignorant of international law (as well as much of the MSM) because she denies countries their legitimate right of self defense. Maybe she should spend some time in the courtroom of Judge George Daniels and learn about the difference between terror and warfare.

So what was the United States doing in Syria this week? Here’s how Michael Yon describes the situation:

It is extremely safe to say that many hundreds, indeed thousands, of Iraqis have been killed by the handiwork of foreign fighters. Untold tons of munitions have flowed across the border over time. Those arms are a lifeline to the remnants of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Anbar has gone mostly quiet and Special Forces and conventional forces have been making progress up there in Nineveh, but Mosul is the last serious redoubt of al-Qaeda in Iraq, as well as other insurgent groups. (Diyala still has some problems.) In 2007 and early 2008 when I was last there, explosives were coming in through Syria. In fact, the last combat mission I did in Iraq this year was with a Special Forces team that specifically was searching for weapons coming in through Syria.

I’ve been right up to that desolate border on a number of occasions. The terrorists just come across that border to murder and otherwise intimidate Iraqi villagers in Nineveh to achieve their nefarious ends. Some of the truck bombs in Nineveh and Mosul proper have been massive, and during one attack that I have previously written about, perhaps four to five hundred Yezidis were murdered within minutes. The Yezidis are very friendly toward Americans and have treated me like an honored guest. When they were attacked, it felt like a punch into my own stomach, and so I wrote “[2] Stake Through Their Hearts” after hundreds were murdered.

The insurgency in Mosul is the last big thorn left in Iraq’s paw. That we struck targets in Syria does not surprise me and I am not appalled. I am appalled that Syria allows these groups to use its territory as a base and conduit to destabilize Iraq. A Syrian government that allows these groups to penetrate Iraq’s borders and murder Iraqis and Americans doesn’t have much moral standing to complain about an incursion into its territory.

Bill Roggio explains how the U.S. learned about the terror network in Syria:

The US military learned a great deal about al Qaeda’s network inside Syria after a key operative was killed in September of 2007. US forces killed Muthanna, the regional commander of al Qaeda’s network in the Sinjar region.

During the operation, US forces found numerous documents and electronic files that detailed “the larger al-Qaeda effort to organize, coordinate, and transport foreign terrorists into Iraq and other places,” Major General Kevin Bergner, the former spokesman for Multinational Forces Iraq, said in October 2007.

Bergner said several of the documents found with Muthanna included a list of 500 al Qaeda fighters from “a range of foreign countries that included Libya, Morocco, Syria, Algeria, Oman, Yemen, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Belgium, France and the United Kingdom.”

Eli Lake (via memeorandum) shows how this represents a legitimate escalation of the war on terror.

We have entered a new phase in the war on terror. In July, according to three administration sources, the Bush administration formally gave the military new power to strike terrorist safe havens outside of Iraq and Afghanistan. Before then, a military strike in a country like Syria or Pakistan would have required President Bush’s personal approval. Now, those kinds of strikes in the region can occur at the discretion of the incoming commander of Central Command (Centcomm), General David Petraeus. One intelligence source described the order as institutionalizing the “Chicago Way,” an allusion to Sean Connery’s famous soliloquy about bringing a gun to a knife fight.

Plus, Lake wonders

On one level, this new policy conflicts with Obama’s stated desire for opening up diplomatic channels to places like Tehran and Damascus. On the other hand, this is precisely the type of policy that he has repeatedly promised at least for Pakistan, whose territory is believed to host Osama bin Laden: If America has actionable intelligence on al Qaeda leaders, and the country housing those terrorist sits on its hands, we will act. His campaign rhetoric has now become the official war policy he will inherit. Is this a development that pleases him?

Similarly, Noah Pollak thinks that the candidates, especially the favorite must address this escalation:

What’s important right now is that both candidates go on record about the raid. Should there be repeat performances — as many as needed to impress Bashar that his days of meddling with impunity are over? Should Iran be targeted for similar strikes? Do you, Mr. Obama, view this news as an unacceptable expansion of the war that will never be countenanced in your administration, or do you believe it a vital component of a winning strategy in Iraq?

I think most people intuitively know how McCain would answer these questions.

The New York Times adds this context to Lake’s report:

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States has attacked terrorism suspects in the ungoverned spaces of countries like Yemen and Somalia. But administration officials said Monday that the strikes in Pakistan and Syria were carried out on the basis of a legal argument that has been refined in recent months to justify strikes by troops and by rockets on militants in countries with which the United States is not at war.

The justification is different from the concept of pre-emption the administration articulated immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, and which was used as the rationale for the invasion of Iraq. While pre-emption was used to justify attacks against governments and their armies, the self-defense argument would justify attacks on insurgents operating on foreign soil that threatened the forces, allies or interests of the United States.

Administration officials pointed Monday to a passage in President Bush’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly last month as the clearest articulation of this position to date.

“As sovereign states, we have an obligation to govern responsibly, and solve problems before they spill across borders,” Mr. Bush said. “We have an obligation to prevent our territory from being used as a sanctuary for terrorism and proliferation and human trafficking and organized crime.”

The Hashmonean reports on another recent anti-terror success that seems to bolster Lake’s point.

By the same token, America’s international anti-terrorism efforts scored huge this past week. It is little reported but a massive terror funding ring has been blown wide open in a long, complex US anti-terror and anti drug investigation which has revealed massive ties between Hezbollah & South American and Colombian Narco trafficking. An entire Hezbollah criminal drug funding ring has been busted while at the same time revealing the deep tentacles that organization has to brutal criminal elements and enemies of America. The Terrorists are dealing drugs for profit.

The Washington Post reports on this story from the vantage of Syrian government:

In the same letter, Syria urged Iraq to investigate the U.S. raid and said the attack came as Syria had been increasing efforts to stem the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq.

“In this regard, we refer that this unjustified act of aggression comes at a time when the Iraqi and US sides recognize Syria’s efforts exerted to preserve Iraq security and prevent any illegal infiltrations into its territories,” the letter said. The Syrian news agency did not specify which Syrian officials signed the communication.
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Underscoring the possibility that the raid could hinder U.S. efforts to stabilize Iraq, Syria on Tuesday indefinitely postponed Syrian-Iraqi talks on regional cooperation that had been set for Nov. 12 in Baghdad.

Yon and Roggio, though, undermine the Syrian claim to making efforts to stem the deadly tide of smuggling. However the Washington Post’s editorial showed a level of comprehension absent in the news report:

The logic of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad seems to be that his regime can sponsor murders, arms trafficking, infiltrations and suicide bombings in neighboring countries while expecting to be shielded from any retaliation in kind by the diplomatic scruples of democracies. For most of this decade that has been lamentably true: U.S. commanders and Iraqi officials have over and over again pointed to the infiltration of al-Qaeda militants through the Damascus airport and the land border with Iraq, and Syria’s refusal to curtail it, without taking direct action. Yet in the past year Israel has intervened in Syria several times to defend its vital interests, including bombing a secret nuclear reactor. If Sunday’s raid, which targeted a senior al-Qaeda operative, serves only to put Mr. Assad on notice that the United States, too, is no longer prepared to respect the sovereignty of a criminal regime, it will have been worthwhile.

However I’m not so impressed with the closing paragraph:

Mr. Assad’s government has lately taken a few cautious steps toward breaking out of its isolation, participating in indirect peace talks with Israel and granting formal diplomatic recognition to Lebanon for the first time. European governments have been quick with rewards, and the next U.S. president — if it is Barack Obama — may also hasten to upgrade contacts. If the Syrian regime is genuinely interested in making peace with Israel, distancing itself from Iran and the terrorist movements it sponsors, and rebuilding ties with the West, that is to be welcomed. What Damascus should not be allowed to do is reap the diplomatic and economic rewards of a rapprochement while continuing to plant car bombs, transport illegal weapons and harbor terrorists. Israel has let Mr. Assad know that it is prepared to respond to his terrorism with strikes against legitimate military targets. Now that the United States has sent the same message, maybe the dictator at last will rethink his strategy.

That’s a big if. Unless American and Israeli pressure persist, Assad will have no reason to change his behavior. That will only happen when the cost of threatening the United States (and Israel) outweighs the benefits of subscribing to a phony peace.

Overall, this looks like a big win for the United States, but the next administratin needs to keep this policy in place or it will lose contol of Iraq.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Go read it. H/T: Stretch (my shooting teacher).

Gen. Amos Gilad gives an overview of Israel’s strategic environment.

Currently, Israel is living in a relatively good strategic environment. We are not facing imminent war and have not faced a hostile coalition since the 1970s. We seem to have defeated suicide terror, at least temporarily.

In the end he concludes:

Iran is trying to convince some states in the Middle East that this is the era of the Iranian Empire. It is not only Israel who is threatened. Iran has global ambitions to become a superpower that is recognized by the whole world, like the empire of Cyrus the Great.

This is the main challenge to the entire world and I hope we will be united against it. I am not sure that the diplomatic option will be effective enough to prevent it, and we have to measure success based on results. There are other options, but I am against boasting and declarations. All options are on the table and, at the end of the day, Israel will make its own decision.

Towards the beginning Gen. Gilad writes something that’s likely to get lost:

We in Israel are determined to have a real peace agreement with the Palestinians. Our goal is to have two states for two peoples living side-by-side in peace and security. This policy is easy to define, but it is very difficult to achieve. The main issue for Israel is the security issue.

The Palestinian Authority is split into two entities. Israel is ready to sign a peace deal with the Palestinians. This is the policy of the State of Israel. But we need to sign an agreement with the entities that represent both Gaza and the West Bank.

We are able to discuss this policy at all only because of the unprecedented success of the Israel Defense Forces in the West Bank. Between 2000 and 2002, Israel did not have great success in preventing Palestinian suicide bombers from targeting Israel’s major cities. The only reason that we are living quietly today is our success in identifying the terrorists and enhancing the cooperation between intelligence and the army.

Operation Defensive Shield worked. It’s a point that doesn’t get mentioned much as the peace processors have seized the day, the initiative and the talking points. In order for there to be peace there needs to be an agreement.

More importantly, as Gen. Gilad points out, the terrorists must be defeated. And though he doesn’t write it, the Palestinians must accept Israel’s right to exist. No number of agreements or Israeli concessions will ever be enough if that premise doesn’t exist.

Overall it’s an interesting read. I think that Gen. Gilad is a bit too complacent about Hamas. And it’s interesting that both Hamas and Hezbollah consider Al Qaeda an enemy.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Last week Gallup released a poll showing that American Jews support Sen. Obama by a margin of 74 to 22. But if you look at the breakdown at the end, the October results were recorded over a shorter period of time and, more importantly, were the result of a somewhat smaller sample with a larger margin of error.

It’s clear that Sen. Obama will win the American Jewish vote, but it’s not clear that he will win it by 3 - 1 as writers have been claiming.

Martin Peretz weighs in:

But first I’ll write about the Palestinians, with a little digression to the hysterical Jews and cynical Republicans who are trying to convince these very Palestinians that Barack Obama is their greatest ally. After all, he once was caught in a photograph with Edward Said. But these savvy Arabs are having none of this. They simply don’t believe it.

Well it wasn’t that Sen. Obama was once photographed with Edward Said. It was that he was close friends with Rashid Khalidi. And that he attended a dinner in Khalidi’s honor where anti-Israel speeches were given, which didn’t seem to upset Sen. Obama. The feeling is that his closeness to Khalidi suggests an agreement with him.

And as far as the Palestinians not believing that a President Obama would be more sympathetic to their cause than a President McCain, there’s some evidence to the contrary.

23 year old [Palestinian] Ibrahim Abu Jayyab sits by the computer in the Nusairat refugee camp [in the Gaza Strip] trying to call American citizens, in order to convince them to vote for the Democratic candidate for president, Barack Obama…
Most of the Palestinians feel hatred towards USA, whose administrations have always stood by Israel…

Abu Jayyab’s idea is to make telephone calls to American citizens through Internet sites that allow making free calls… in order to use them [to make phone calls] for the campaign supporting Obama. Abu Jayyab says: We dial random numbers and try to call people without knowing their identity or their affiliation…

(h/t Daled Amos)

Peretz concludes:

Except for black Americans, American Jews will back Barack Obama by the highest percentage in the country. So much for Jewish conservatism. So much for Jewish distrust of African Americans. Put that nonsense in the trash.

These are straw men. The question is how supportive of Israel Sen. Obama is likely to be. If Jews would question Sen. Obama’s support of Israel, it wouldn’t be because of conservative values or because of mistrust of African Americans. It would be on policy grounds.

Still if American Jews are somewhat comforted by Sen. Obama’s campaign regarding Israel, Israelis apparently are not:

These are the types of threats that color Israelis’ worldviews and influence the type of American president they want: someone who will take a hard line when confronting any existential threat to the Jewish state.

“They look at [Sen. John] McCain and they see a tough president willing to help them do what is necessary. The look at Obama and they see a liberal with big ideas. But when the time comes when Israel has to do something tough and not so beautiful, they don’t know whether he’ll say ‘do what you have to do,’ ” says Shmuel Rosner, an Israeli expert on US politics.

That perception has placed Senator McCain 12 points ahead of Obama in a recent poll conducted by the TNS Teleseker polling agency. The survey, commissioned by the Rabin Center for Israel Studies, found that 52.5 percent of those polled thought McCain would do a better job of protecting Israel.

I wonder what would happen if the identification of the voter was pro-Israel instead of Jewish. After all Shmuel Rosner recently wrote that Israel was not a major concern for most American Jews. If that’s the case, then the Jewish support of Sen. Obama is largely independent of his stands on Israel.

Michael Oren has looked more closely at the statements of the two candidates. It’s a comprehensive look at the statements of each, not at their advisers.(it’s a must read.) Here’s one point of divergence (h/t PB):

These disparities are rife with ramifications for Israel. Long time advocates of preemption, Israelis may be disappointed by an Obama administration that abandons the tactic and recoils from further preventative action against terrorists. They will have to grapple with the fallout of an American evacuation from Iraq, which is almost certain to be perceived in the region as an Islamist triumph. Still, Israel could benefit from a United States that is less inclined to pursue polices unilaterally and more in line with international opinion.

The situation might be reversed under McCain. The U.S. would continue to press its anti-terror campaign in the Middle East and stay the course in Iraq but remain to a large extent isolated globally. The Israeli ideal of an America that is engaged militarily in the Middle East and in sync with the international community may well prove elusive.

I don’t know how important being in “sync with the international community” is to Israel. Certainly American support during Operation Defensive Shield was essential but it also went against the international consensus. In the end Oren concludes that Israel needs the candidate who is the better leader in charge because events will often dictate American actions more than previously stated policies.

After reading Oren, I’m more convinced that McCain is the better choice regarding Israel. I don’t know that Oren would agree with that conclusion.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Dean Barnett died today, at the too-young age of 41. He died of complications from cystic fibrosis, a disease he’d been fighting his entire life. The world is a poorer place without him.

But the thing about CF is that they’re getting closer and closer to a cure, and that’s important to me. Because there’s a young man in my life that will benefit from that cure. If you’ve been reading this blog for any of the last six years, you’ve met that young man. His name is Max.

So reading about Dean’s death saddens me greatly—but it makes me that much more hopeful that by the time Max is 41, we will have found a cure for CF.

I’m asking my readers to donate, not just for Dean, but for Max, and for the 30,000 Americans who have it. And that’s one of the problems: Because CF is so uncommon, it’s not heavily funded, and it’s not heavily publicized. There’s no Jerry Lewis telethon raising millions of dollars every year for CF.

We can’t raise millions. But we can raise thousands. Please give a little bit today. I’m a very selfish person. I want keep Max around for a long, long time.

Looks like the falling price of oil is getting better and better results.

The same tumbling oil prices that led OPEC to slash output last week threaten to send Venezuela’s economy into a tailspin, and put an end to President Hugo Chavez’s ambitions to expand his socialist revolution at home and abroad.

To cope with plummeting oil revenue, the source of half the government’s spending, Chavez may have to cut domestic handouts and foreign aid. The first items likely to go will be arms purchases from Russia, oil subsidies for Cuba, and job-creating local projects such as bridges and subways, economists say.

“You have a country with an oil boom, that doesn’t know how to save, doesn’t know how to set up productive industries that generate jobs, and goes into debt,” said Elsa Cardozo, a professor of political science and international relations at the Universidad Central de Venezuela. “Then oil prices fall and the party ends.”

Venezuela may be poised to repeat the economic collapse it suffered in the 1980s at the end of its last oil boom. Former President Carlos Andres Perez, employing policies similar to Chavez’s, lavished petrodollars on public works projects, foreign aid and nationalizations in the late 1970s, setting the stage for a 1983 currency devaluation and spending cuts that sent millions of Venezuelans into poverty.

Not the poverty of Venezuelans part. I feel bad for the ordinary schlub who bought into Hugo’s twaddle. But I won’t be sorry to see the bastard go. Him, and his newfound Iranian and Hezbollah buddies. Buh-bye, billions in anti-Israel aid! Buh-bye, state-sanctioned raids on Jewish centers!

Update: Ended the day below $62 a barrel. Good times!

Israel will be weaning the Palestinians off the Israeli power grid.

A Jordanian official said Monday that the Palestinian Authority will join a regional power grid that so far links Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Libya and Turkey.

Israel is not hooked up to this grid.

Jordanian Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Khaldoun Qteishat said during a meeting Monday of electricity and energy ministers in the network members that the Palestinian accession will help the territories face challenges of providing safety and security to its power supply.

What will the UN protest about when the Palestinians have all the tools of self-sufficiency, yet still wallow in the mire of despotism and poverty?

Who are you going to trust? The AP bias or your lying eyes?

Get a load of this jaw-dropping bias in the lead:

Families in this village near the Iraqi border buried loved ones Monday who they said were killed when the U.S. military launched a rare attack in Syrian territory. During the funerals, angry residents shouted anti-American slogans and carried banners reading: “Down with Bush and the American enemy.”

The Syrian government said four U.S. military helicopters attacked a civilian building under construction shortly before sundown Sunday in Sukkariyeh about five miles inside the Syrian border.

The government statement said eight people were killed, including a man and his four children and a woman. However, local officials said seven men were killed and two other people were wounded, including a woman among the injured.

An Associated Press journalist at the funerals in the village’s cemetery saw the bodies of seven men - none of them minors. The discrepancy could not immediately be explained.

They receive a report on the scene that utterly contradicts the lies of the Syrian government, and yet, they still publish those lies in the lead—before pointing out the “discrepancy” of the fact that only adult males were being buried. You know, the kind of people that generally go to Iraq to perform terrorist acts.

And once again, let me point out that most local newspapers publish only the first three to five paragraphs of AP world news articles. The truth is in the fourth paragraph.

The Associated Press: All the lies they see fit to print.

The New York Times reports on yesterday’s raid into Syria and concludes:

The United States is trying to negotiate a strategic agreement with Iraq that would allow American troops to remain in the country and carry out military operations. The pact faces strenuous opposition from neighboring countries, especially Syria and Iran, because of fears that the United States might use Iraqi territory to carry out attacks on them.

The United States has no diplomatic relations with Iran and has withdrawn its ambassador to Syria.

It is kind of odd to make the focus of the article the fears of Syria and Iran. Part of the problem is that the Times’s report seems to have been early and they haven’t updated it.

The Washington Post provides more information and context:

U.S. attacks inside Syria are extremely rare, though the U.S. military has stepped up security along Iraq’s border with Syria in recent months to stem the traffic of fighters and weapons into Iraq. U.S. officials say many insurgents, particularly suicide bombers, arrive in Iraq via the Syrian border.

The two most obvious questions are what was U.S. military doing and why now?

(more via memeorandum)
Bill Roggio gives some background and speculates what the United States may have been after.

If the raid occurred, the US military must have detected a senior member of al Qaeda in Iraq in the region. Abu Ayyub al Masri, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, is reported to have left the country earlier this year after the terror group lost its sanctuaries in Diyala province.

The US military may be closing in on al Qaeda’s senior leadership. US forces killed Abu Qaswarah, al Qaeda in Iraq’s second in command, during a raid in Mosul in northern Iraq on Oct. 15. The military has also killed and captured numerous al Qaeda leader and couriers over the past several weeks. The information obtained during these raids help to paint a picture of al Qaeda’s command structure inside of of Iraq as well as in neighboring countries.

Amos Harel of Ha’aretz makes an interesting observation:

The common denominator to all these operations is that nobody takes the Syrians seriously anymore, given the repeated violations of their sovereignty. It is doubtful the domestic security situation there has ever been this unstable.

Then he adds:

The lack of stability in Syria adds to the already-tense situation between Israel and Lebanon. Military Intelligence chief Amos Yadlin said Sunday that weapons-smuggling from Syria to Hezbollah is continuing across the country.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned that Israel is prepared to attack weapons convoys, on a background of Hezbollah efforts to equip itself with anti-aircraft missiles.

Is it possible that the American raid is a signal to Israel then?

After observing that the raid took place 5 years too late, Noah Pollak frames it in the context of the Presidential election:

What’s important right now is that both candidates go on record about the raid. Should there be repeat performances — as many as needed to impress Bashar that his days of meddling with impunity are over? Should Iran be targeted for similar strikes? Do you, Mr. Obama, view this news as an unacceptable expansion of the war that will never be countenanced in your administration, or do you believe it a vital component of a winning strategy in Iraq?

Joshua Landis writes:

The Bush administration seems to be ratcheting up action against Syria during its last days in power. The cross border raid undertaken on Sunday, which killed eight people, seems to fit into a broader pattern of the Bush administration initiating cross boarder attacks into countries that it is not officially at war with. The recent attacks in Northwest Pakistan are a case in point.

The Bush warmonger meme, which we will now doubt see quite a bit in the MSM in the coming days. The idea, as Bill Roggio wrote that there was likely as specific target, will get little attention.

Mere Rhetoric, Meryl and LGF have previously blogged this.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Take a Sunday afternoon nap, and you wake up to the news that some jihadis on the Syrian/Iraqi border have been taken out.

An official Syrian spokesman confirmed reports by the country’s state-run television and witnesses, who said that four US military helicopters attacked an area along Syria’s border with Iraq, killing eight people and wounding at least five.

SANA’s report quoted unnamed Syrian officials and said the area is near the Syrian border town of Abu Kamal. It later added that US soldiers stormed a building during the aerial raid.

Local residents told The Associated Press by telephone that two helicopters carrying US soldiers raided Hwijeh village, 17 kilometers inside Syria’s border, killing seven people and wounding five others. One of the witnesses said five of the dead were from a single family.

Ed Morrissey has more, including an email from Bill Roggio.

Countdown to the Arab press calling the deaths all civilians at three, two one….

Update: That was quick. Syrian agencies already calling them civilians. And of course the BBC quotes them.

In an article about the Obama money machine and its fraudulent donations, the WaPo has this to say about Obama breaking his pledge to pursue public financing:

One immediate result of Obama’s fundraising showing this fall is that it may render obsolete the current system of public financing for presidential campaigns. Because McCain opted into the system, he was limited to spending the $84.1 million provided to his campaign by the Treasury once he claimed the GOP nomination. Obama, who chose to remain outside the system after initially suggesting that he would participate in it, is expected to raise and spend at least three times that amount in the general election campaign.

Here’s his initial suggestion, which looks a hell of a lot like a promise to me:

OBAMA: Yes. I have been a long-time advocate for public financing of campaigns combined with free television and radio time as a way to reduce the influence of moneyed special interests. I introduced public financing legislation in the Illinois State Senate, and am the only 2008 candidate to have sponsored Senator Russ Feingold’s (D-WI) bill to reform the presidential public financing system. In February 2007, I proposed a novel way to preserve the strength of the public financing system in the 2008 election. My plan requires both major party candidates to agree on a fundraising truce, return excess money from donors, and stay within the public financing system for the general election. My proposal followed announcements by some presidential candidates that they would forgo public financing so they could raise unlimited funds in the general election. The Federal Election Commission ruled the proposal legal, and Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has already pledged to accept this fundraising pledge. If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election.

There is also this diminishment of the fraud, belittling it by saying it “only” amounts to one percent of the total.

While the potentially fraudulent or excessive contributions represent about 1 percent of Obama’s staggering haul, the security challenge is one of several major campaign-finance-related questions raised by the Democrat’s fundraising juggernaut.

I remind you that the total has been averaging $150 million in one month. That 1 percent is $1.5 million in fraudulent donations, per month, for what, a year? Two years? That adds up to quite a lot of fraudulent donations paying for quite a lot of TV and radio time. Obama is buying this election, and the media is complicit with him.

But hey, don’t get mad. Get even. Go out and vote for McCain next Tuesday. If you won’t do it for yourself, then do it for me. I don’t want an Obama presidency. I like keeping the money I’m earning.

I wrote my 1 p.m. post earlier today and scheduled it. Here’s the lead from the first version of the AP story about Tzipi Livni calling for new elections:

Prime Minister-designate Tzipi Livni on Sunday abandoned her efforts to form a new coalition government and said she would recommend early parliamentary elections.

Palestinians worried the decision could put already fragile peace talks in limbo for months until the elections are held. The balloting could also clear the way for opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who rejects sweeping territorial concessions to the Palestinians, to reclaim the premiership.

And here’s the lead in the AP update:

Prime Minister-designate Tzipi Livni abandoned efforts to form a government Sunday, putting Israel on course for new elections and endangering already fragile Middle East peace talks.

Palestinians fear the decision could put a year’s worth of peace talks in limbo for months, until elections are held. The balloting opens the door for opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who rejects sweeping territorial concessions to the Arabs, to return to power.

There’s also this, which wasn’t in the earlier piece:

Peacemaking foundered during Netanyahu’s 3-year tenure as prime minister in the 1990s, and his positions have not softened since.

He quit Ariel Sharon’s government because he opposed Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and opposes ceding sovereignty over any part of east Jerusalem, which Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.

Do you know what they fail to mention? Why peacemaking “foundered” during Netanyahu’s term.

As Prime Minister, Netanyahu negotiated with Yasser Arafat in the form of the Wye River Accords (1998). No progress was made regarding negotiations with the Palestinians, and although they failed to implement agreed-upon steps of the Oslo Accords, Netanyahu turned over most of Hebron to Palestinian jurisdiction. In 1996, Netanyahu and Jerusalem’s mayor Ehud Olmert decided to open an exit for the Western Wall Tunnel. This sparked three days of rioting by Palestinians, resulting in both Israelis and Palestinians being killed.

You see, Netanyahu turned over Hebron to Arafat, but the Palestinians rioted over lies that their precious aqsa mosque was being destroyed (obviously, it was not).

But just in case you weren’t sure that Netanyahu was one of those evil Likud guys that Obama likes to denigrate, the AP points it out for you. And lays all the blame of the “foundering” peace talks on his shoulders. Not on, say the terrorist bombings that happened just before and during his term as PM:

• Mar 3, 1996 - In a suicide bombing of bus No. 18 on Jaffa Road in Jerusalem, 19 were killed (16 civilians and 3 soldiers).
• Mar 4, 1996 - Outside Dizengoff Center in Tel-Aviv, a suicide bomber detonated a 20-kilogram nail bomb, killing 13 (12 civilians and one soldier).
• Mar 21, 1997 - Three people were killed when a suicide bomber detonated a bomb on the terrace of a Tel Aviv cafe. 48 people were wounded.
• Jul 30, 1997 - 16 people were killed and 178 wounded in two consecutive suicide bombings in the Mahane Yehuda market in Jerusalem.
• Sep 4, 1997 - Five people were killed and 181 wounded in three suicide bombings on the Ben-Yehuda pedestrian mall in Jerusalem.
• Oct 29, 1998 - One Israeli soldier was killed when a terrorist drove an explosives-laden car into an Israeli army jeep escorting a bus with 40 elementary school students from the settlement of Kfar Darom in the Gaza Strip.

Funny how the AP doesn’t mention these things.

I do.

The AP never fails to disappoint. Now they’re upset that—horrors—an election might give Israelis a chance to elect someone the AP doesn’t agree with.

Prime Minister-designate Tzipi Livni on Sunday abandoned her efforts to form a new coalition government and said she would recommend early parliamentary elections.

Palestinians worried the decision could put already fragile peace talks in limbo for months until the elections are held. The balloting could also clear the way for opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who rejects sweeping territorial concessions to the Palestinians, to reclaim the premiership.

Oh noes! Israelis could vote for Likud again! And we all know what that means. It’s Obamanable:

“I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel, then you’re anti-Israel, and that can’t be the measure of our friendship with Israel,” leading Democratic presidential contender Illinois Senator Barack Obama said Sunday.

I love the “early elections” bit. They are long overdue.

Shas asked for too much. Livni was either more explicit with the Israeli press, or the AP cleaned up her quotes.

“I’m sick of this extortion,” Livni was quoted as telling her advisers. “We’ll see all these heroes in 90 days.”

However, it ain’t over ’til it’s over. That article says Livni has postponed her meeting with Peres, leading some to believe that Shas has lowered its ransom demand to a reasonable level for Livni.

Really, really disgusts me, the politics in Israel. You need to rewrite your election laws completely, Israel.

Three out of four of Jews are voting for Obama, but we can still read what they’re saying. Because I think I found most of the 25% that aren’t Obamatons.

Haveil Havalim is here this week.

Some clips:

More on “Every Day is ‘Hit a Jew’ Day”

A sukkah on wheels (yes, really) and one on a boat, and one that used to have squirrels in residence.

Elisson on Simchat Torah, and why there was a baby bonnet on a Torah reader at his schul.

Funny.

Feline funny.

Not funny: Yid with Lid on