2012 is seeing the largest malware rise in four years.
You probably can’t blame Obama for this.
Oh, hell. Let’s blame Obama for it. It happened under his watch. If it had happened under George W. Bush, rest assured a liberal blogger would be blaming him.
I don’t know what to think about the platform, because if you’re going to hold Barack Obama responsible for every word of it, then you have to hold Mitt Romney responsible for every word of the Republican platform. And as I believe that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare, and that gay men and women should be able to marry, I do not agree with the Republican platform, and will never agree with it unless they take out the language affecting those two subjects.
But it is troubling, and it is what we’ve seen since Barack Obama took office. I think that it means he’s so sure that Jews will vote for him, that he can put into the Democratic platform policies that he has already put into effect, such as his treatment of Jerusalem as NOT Israel’s capital.
Barry Rubin has an analysis that most people will overlook:
But here’s the thing that upset me just as much — the title of the section under which Israel appears: “Strengthening Alliances, Expanding Partnerships, and Reinvigorating International Institutions.” There is only one sentence about all the Middle Eastern countries other than Israel! It is of vital importance for U.S. interests, and for Israel too, that the United States continues to maintain good cooperation with a dozen specific Arab states. The platform is an insult to America’s Arab allies, who have been dissed by Obama as he has tended to help or support their enemies.
He is one of the few pro-Israel pundits who is also a pro-Arab, pro-Muslim pundit. Barry truly cares for ALL of the people in the Middle East. Read his response to people who want to know where all the moderate Muslims are. They are, he points out, being murdered by the Islamists in their countries.
So I don’t know what to think, and I am not surprised that Obama wants to put even more distance between him and Israel–and I hope very much that he and the Dems are thrown out of office in November.
Told you my bullshit detector was pegged on high over yesterday’s report that claimed if Iran didn’t attack U.S. installations, we’d stand by as they retaliated if Israel bombed their nuke sites. Reuters reports today that I was right.
“It’s incorrect, completely incorrect,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told Reuters while accompanying President Barack Obama on a campaign trip in Ohio. “The report is false and we don’t talk about hypotheticals.”
Without naming its sources, Yedioth said Washington had approached Tehran through two unidentified European countries to convey the message that the United States would not be dragged into fighting if Israel carried out threats to attack Iran.
Yedioth said the United States told Iran it should in return refrain from retaliating against U.S. interests, including its military in the Gulf.
In Jerusalem, an Israeli official, who asked not to be identified, described the report as illogical.
“It doesn’t make sense,” the official said. “There would be no need to make such a promise to the Iranians because they realize the last thing they need is to attack U.S. targets and draw massive U.S. bombing raids.”
Note that Carney is not equivocating, as he does when a reporter asks him something that is true. He’s flat-out denying it.
Never, ever, EVER accept a story as big as this one with unidentified sources that only one news outlet is reporting. It’s a dead giveaway that it’s not true.
Say, remember all that talk from the left about civility? Yeah, that’s why the head of California’s Democratic party called Paul Ryan a Nazi.
Ryan told “a bold-faced lie and he doesn’t care that it was a lie. That was Goebbels, the big lie,” Burton told reporters from the Chronicle and CBS News.
For the record, the saying is “bald-faced lie“. A Republican would be forced to resign over something like this. A Democrat? Shyeah. This tool didn’t even really apologize.
“If Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, or the Republicans are insulted by my describing their campaign tactic as the big lie — I most humbly apologize to them or anyone who might have been offended by that comment,” he said.
See the apology? I didn’t insult you, but if you took it that way, I’m sorry. Also note that he did not use “Goebbels” in his apology, he used it to repeat the insult. Right. Civility. Uh-huh.
Then there’s this: The chairman of the Massachusetts Democratic party said that Scott Brown is an “honorary girl” because he folded laundry in a campaign ad. Calling the Senator a girl, which is an insult to both him and to women. Because there’s so much wrong with being a girl, or folding laundry. And get this lame-ass apology:
“In the excitement of getting the convention underway and getting the message out about how important it is to re-elect President Obama and elect Elizabeth Warren, I made a statement about Scott Brown that I regret,” party Chairman John Walsh said in a statement this afternoon. “I apologize for that remark.”
He regrets, but is not sorry, for insulting women (and Scott Brown). That makes him an honorary asshole. No, actually, he’s a real asshole. No honorary about it.
Watch them arrest Jews for it: Someone painted “No to war” in Farsi, Hebrew, and English in Shiraz, Iran. See title.
Revving up the war engines: Hassan “Chipmunk Cheeks” Nasrallah is heading out from his secret underground hideout to give a fiery speech in Tehran about how Iran, Lebanon, Egypt, and anyone else who wants to hop on the wagon are going to destroy Israel. But there’s no need to worry that they might be serious about it. Just ask people like Stephen Walt and John Cole. It’s just rhetoric. Like the rhetoric that Lebanon won’t use chemical weapons against Israel, only lots of exploding missiles. And we believe him. (Actually, I think we really do, because he knows damned well that if chemical weapons from Lebanon hit Israel, retaliation would be awful.)
The outrageously outraged outrage machine is running: For five straight years, the Negve Museum has held a wine festival in the courtyard between it and a neighboring mosque. There was not a peep from the world about “insulting” Muslims. Suddenly, there’s an organized, world-wide outrage over the “insult to Islam”. There’s a picture of the courtyard. Tempest. Teapot. Deliberate. The Muslim Brotherhood and its allies are looking for reasons to get the Muslim world to hate Israel even more than they already do. That’s my feeling. Watch for this story to get legs in the wire services.
Muslim ERA watch: So, those moderate Muslim Brotherhood guys who are now running Egypt? They’re so, so moderate that Egypt’s state news anchorwoman now has to wear a hijab. You gotta love the explanation:
But new Islamist Information Minister Salah Abdel Maqsud told a private satellite channel on Saturday he could see no reason why a woman in hijab could not present the national news.
“Finally the revolution has reached” Egyptian media, Nabil told the Muslim Brotherhood’s daily newspaper, Freedom and Justice.
You know who predicted this? Barry Rubin. You know who didn’t see this coming at all? Tom Friedman. Which one is the high-paid New York Times columnist? Yeah, the one who’s always wrong.
Facebook Revolution my ass.
I don’t buy this at all: Barack Obama may be a lousy president, but I do not believe that the U.S. would abandon Israel in this respect. I’m calling bullshit on this from the get-go.
The United States has indirectly informed Iran, via two European nations, that it would not back an Israeli strike against the country’s nuclear facilities, as long as Tehran refrains from attacking American interests in the Persian Gulf, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Monday.
According to the report, Washington used covert back-channels in Europe to clarify that the US does not intend to back Israel in a strike that may spark a regional conflict.
In return, Washington reportedly expects Iran to steer clear of strategic American assets in the Persian Gulf, such as military bases and aircraft carriers.
That’s the move of a cowardly nation, like certain European nations who made deals with the Palestinians so they wouldn’t be attacked by terrorists. (Yes, I’m looking at you, Germany.) That is not what Americans do. Not even President Obama’s administration. Don’t believe it, because I don’t.
Hal David, the man who partnered with Burt Bacharach to write so many top 40 hits, has died. This man wrote the songbook of my youth. There is not a song on this list that I cannot sing.
At about the same time, they teamed up with Warwick, a studio singer they met at a recording session for the Drifters vocal group. David wrote the lyrics for “Do You Know the Way to San Jose,” “I Say a Little Prayer,” “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again,” and “Walk on By,” all top-10 hits for her.
Award-Winning Year“What the World Needs Now” was a top-10 single for Jackie DeShannon in 1965, the same year that Tom Jones had a hit with “What’s New Pussycat.” Dusty Springfield preceded them into the top 10 with her version of “Wishin’ and Hopin’.”
“What’s New Pussycat,” the title song of a movie starring Peter Sellers, earned Bacharach and David their first Academy Award nomination in 1966. They were finalists the next year with “Alfie” and in 1968 with “The Look of Love.”
The duo’s first No. 1 pop single arrived in 1968, when Herb Albert’s version of “This Guy’s in Love With You” climbed to the top of Billboard’s chart.
“Raindrops,” a song from the 1969 movie “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” that was a No. 1 for B.J. Thomas, earned David an Oscar. He also won a Grammy Award for that year for co- writing the score of “Promises, Promises,” a Broadway musical, whose title song was a top-20 hit for Warwick.
The Bacharach-David team produced another chart topper, the Carpenters’ “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” in 1970. “One Less Bell to Answer,” by the Fifth Dimension, peaked at No. 2 that year.
Here’s one of my favorites. And I still miss Karen Carpenter.
A rabbi from the same town as the teenagers who attacked Arab-Israelis last week wrote a letter to his community emphasizing how wrong it is to attack Arabs. This is why I simply cannot grasp how much of the world is behind the Palestinians and demonizes the Israelis. Find me one–ONE–letter such as this from a Muslim cleric to Palestinians who conducted attacks on Israelis. Go ahead. Just one.
In a letter to Bat Ayin residents, Rabbi Cohen said, “Such an act is a crime and points to moral degeneration that fails to distinguish between murder and defense, war and terror. Such acts are wrong and reprehensible; they indicate confusion and lack of judgment.”
He urged Bat Ayin’s youth “not to be led astray by inflammatory ideas. Build yourselves with Torah and toil. Build this country with hard work and devotion. Join a yeshiva or the army.”
The rabbi also addressed the national settlement debate. “The problem is not the Arabs, but an internal moral debate within the Israeli society.” He stressed, “Harming Arabs is wrong and detrimental in terms of the debate.” He concluded by saying, “Remember, it’s okay to protest the government’s – but only legally.”
Of course, the anti-Israel forces are playing up the attack and ignoring the national outcry over it. Will the New York Times publish this rabbi’s letter? Doubtful. It goes against the narrative of violent religious Jews.
More rockets in Sderot, more yawns from the world: Rockets hit a home in Sderot today. Thankfully, no one was hurt. The AP barely notices it. But the news article (as well as the AFP) doesn’t note a single, extremely important detail. Why were there no injuries? Because the rocket failed to explode.
Security forces arrived at the scene to remove the Qassam rocket, which failed to explode completely when it hit the house.
Media bias? Yeah, we got that.
This is why I always leave a cash tip: Besides the fact I allow my servers to cheat on their taxes (oh, come on, you know they all claim less in tips than they receive), I’d already heard something about how they’re forced by management to share a large percentage with the restaurant staff, even if you’re tipping them highly because they were great. But then there’s this:
“Owners have forced waiters to give the kitchen a cut of the tips. Illegal. Instead of paying their hardest-working (kitchen) employees more, quite a few owners will steal it from the waiter. This is an old story.”
Nice. I’m a firm believer in having restaurants pay wait staff at least minimum wage. Tipping prevents that from occurring. Why doesn’t the SEIU care about waiters and their wages, I wonder? The minimum cash wage for wait staff is $2.13 in most states. Super.
This one’s almost positive: The reviews pile in for Romney’s speech. And yeah, I don’t know what Clint Eastwood was trying to do, either. But this was one of my favorite moments: Jeb Bush telling Obama to STFU about W. Can’t WAIT to see the Dems’ responses next week.
And the IAEA has such a believable record: WaPo says Iran is speeding up uranium production, but the IAEA says a lot of it can’t be used to make nukes. The is the same IAEA that was led by a man who constantly helped Iran by downplaying its readiness to create nuclear weapons. Also, if they’re so hot for research nukes, why did it level the ground that IAEA inspects were supposed to see to the point where they could find nothing useful?
U.N. officials also criticized Iran for refusing to grant IAEA inspectors access to facilities where Iranian scientists are
suspected to have carried out nuclear-weapons related experiments. Tehran has sparred for months with the U.N. nuclear watchdog over whether inspectors can examine a military site known as Parchin, where Iran is believed to have tested a type of detonator used to trigger nuclear explosions.Months of negotiations failed to produce an agreement on access to Parchin, and U.N. officials cited satellite photographs showing that cleanup work has been underway there.
“Significant ground-scraping and landscaping have been undertaken over an extensive area at and around the location,” and several buildings have been demolished or covered with large shrouds, the report said.
Yeah, I totally believe the IAEA. They’re never wrong. Right. sure.
The difference between Israel and the Palestinians: Israel prosecutes its lynchers, rather than idolizing them. While we’re on the subject, find me one Palestinian who has criticized suicide bombings for the evil acts that they are. One. Just one. Meantime, Ha’aretz could probably run six articles a day criticizing (rightly) the Israeli teens who beat up the Israeli Arabs.
Please finish the investigation so we never have to see his ugly mug on the news again: Yeah, yeah, yeah, here we go again with the magical Zionist death ray that poisoned Yasser Arafat, or something. Never mind that scientists have stated that the half-life of the supposed radioactive isotope found on his clothing is such that there’s no way such high concentrations could still be there all these years after his death. The AP is going to run with this one as long as it can. Because how else can they use headlines that subtlely incriminate Israel? “Former official denies Israel poisoned Arafat“–oh, look, they’re denying it! They must have something to hide!
Oh, that makes it all better: Ban Ki-Moon told the Iranians, without naming names, that they should stop calling for the destruction of Israel. Here’s the sternly-worded speech, doubtless given with a slight frown:
“I strongly reject threats by any member state to destroy another or
outrageous attempts to deny historical facts such as the Holocaust,” Ban
said in his speech to a Non-Aligned Movement summit in the Iranian
capital.“Claiming that Israel does not have the right to exist
or describing it in racist terms is not only wrong but undermines the
very principle we all have pledged to uphold,” he added.
Oooh. That’ll show ’em. I’m sure that the appearance of representatives from all 120 members of the Non-Aligned Movement, plus the head of the UN, showed Iran how isolated and wrong they are. And Iran is bragging about it.
And we believe him, too: Iran’s supreme leader, the Mad Mullah of Tehran, says that Iran will never seek a nuclear weapon. Or use it. See above.
I’ll be shuttering Yourish.com any day now and moving over to my new digs.
You may find that someone might be imitating my style over at Elder of Ziyon‘s blog. I wouldn’t worry too much about it. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Or something.
But I would recommend putting Elder in your daily feed. I’m pretty sure it will make up for what you used to have over here.
Israeli courts declared the IDF not at fault.
Con Coughlin is getting himself in trouble by asking on his blog “What on earth was Rachel Corrie doing in front of an Israeli army bulldozer in the first place? (Read the comments.)
The Guardian article has no comments, but plenty of bias.
The AP story goes on for 11 paragraphs before it publishes this fact:
On the day Rachel Corrie died, she and other activists had entered a closed military zone to protest the demolition policy.
That’s a fact that is glossed over by Corrie supporters. She and the other “activists” were in an active military zone. They were standing in front of bulldozers that had to have special reinforced metal cabins–and thus limited line-of-sight–because Palestinian terrorists were shooting at them. Rachel Corrie’s death is tragic, but it is also the risk that she and the other ISM “activists” took by siding with the terrorists who were smuggling weapons and bombs into Israel. And that’s the other aspect of the case that isn’t mentioned much in the mainstream press: The bulldozers were destroying smuggling tunnels that day.
The fix, of course, is in. NPR quotes Corrie’s mother, using maximum bias, but nobody from the Israeli government.
Corrie’s mother, Cindy, told The Jerusalem Post that she was “hurt” by the verdict. The family’s lawyer said the court’s decision was so close to the government’s conclusion, the government could have written it.
“From the beginning it was clear that there is a system to protect soldiers and provide them with impunity at the cost of civilians,” she told the Post. “Now we now that the protection for soldiers extends to the court.”
Cindy added: “At least we have had access to a court system, which most Palestinians are denied.”
That is an outright lie. Also, if you click on the link to the Post article that NPR includes above, you find this in the lead:
In the verdict, Judge Oded Gershon invoked the principle of the combatant activities exception, noting that IDF forces had been attacked in the same area Corrie was killed just hours earlier.
Funny how the NPR doesn’t think that side of the story is relevant. Nor do they quote this from the New York Times article they refer:
Ms. Corrie’s parents and sister attended every session of the trial, spending about $200,000 on travel, translation services and other expenses.
Really? $200,000 in expenses? Who’s paying for it? The Corries are not wealthy, and your credit cards can only go so far. Find out who is paying the expenses, and you’ll see who is pushing this battle. Dollars to donuts Mahmoud Abbas has had the PA contribute to the defense.
And lastly, check out this lovely piece of subtle bias in the Reuters account:
Few Israelis showed much sympathy for Corrie’s death, which took place during the second Palestinian Intifada (uprising) in which thousands of Palestinians were killed and hundreds of Israelis died in suicide bombings.
Note that Palestinians were killed, while Israelis died. Suicide bombings? Just another cause of death, like cancer. But these are those damned unsympathetic Israelis, who can’t find it in their hearts to feel sorry for a woman who died while trying to protect Palestinian terrorists’ homes and smuggling tunnels from being destroyed.
Shame on those heartless bastards.
Exit question: Think the Corrie verdict news articles will outpace the number of news articles on Syria?
A jihadi riddle for you: What happens when you put a jihadi in charge of a country where super-jihadis operate freely? The jihadi negotiates an agreement with the super-jihadis. No doubt Morsi told the Salafists that he doesn’t care how many Jews they kill, but they’re no longer allowed to murder Egyptians on the way to Israel. And doubtless, when Morsi is feeling secure enough, his people will call their people and they’ll do lunch–in Israel, with bombs and weapons galore.
Shocked, shocked, I tell you: The Egyptians who stormed the Israeli embassy last year were all given suspended sentences. I’m utterly surprised that the Egyptian courts didn’t see this violation of diplomatic protocol as important at all. After all, they’re just following the example set by Iran in the 70s.
And the world says, so what? Three more rockets fired from Gaza, more yawns from the world. But they’re yawning about the death toll in Syria now, which is higher than the entire death toll from Israel’s wars since 1948. It’s at what, 20,000 now? Funny how the world media goes after Israel 24/7 when there’s a Gaza operation, but the same thundering editorials and op-eds and protests don’t seem to be as evident when it isn’t Israel killing the Arabs. Double standard? You betcha.
I have just finished formatting my novel in Adobe InDesign and will be uploading it to CreateSpace (sans cover) to see how it looks in their format.
I am days away from publishing.
Also, I’ve had merylyourish.com up for a while now. I’m still getting the hang of the featured image thing, but those of you who want to stick around for the post-political blogging can register as users if you like. Understand that at the moment, I have no intention of covering anything other than my writing life (which includes the kitties). Things may change in the future, but I’m hanging up my political blogging shoes and putting on my writer blogging shoes very, very soon.
You’ll have to get your daily dose of Zionism and Israel news from Elder of Ziyon and his fellow JBloggers.
This is why Israel’s enemies’ casualties are so high: Hezbollah is recommending that residents of southern Lebanon trust in God to protect them in the event of a war with Israel. Yeah, that worked so well last time. Perhaps, instead, they should not let Hezbollah build missile launching pads and stockpiles in and under their homes.
A victory for Iran: The nation that is supposedly under great sanctions that will get it to stop enriching uranium is holding a summit for the 120 non-aligned nations, including a visit by the head of the UN, Ban Ki-moon. Yep. That isolation is working so good that Mad Mahmoud is calling the summit proof that Iran is not being isolated. And you have to admit, he’s not wrong about that. More proof that the Obama Administration’s smart power is working!
Awesome. The Rafah crossing is opening 24/7: And in celebration, terrorists fired three rockets into Sderot. Wait, what’s that? Someone predicted that Hamas and the new Muslim Brotherhood government were just waiting for the outrage over the terrorist attack that killed 16 Egyptian soldiers to die down? Boy, that person must be prescient or something.
So, now that the Rafah crossing is open, think it will stop Israel’s enemies from talking about Gaza being an “open-air prison”? Or the Gazans are starving or something? Think it will stop the Israeli boycotts?
Of course not. They still have all their “Settler! Settler!” cries in order, and they will always find a new reason to hate Israel. The latest one is how racist Israel is because a group of Jewish teens beat up an Arab-Israeli teen. Funny how they never seem to cry racism when it’s the other way ’round. It’s always “oppression” then.
