Maritime Martyrs - Lies Exposed

Posted on Vimeo by the Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors (CJHS)

Maritime Martyrs

Maritime Martyrs from CJHS on Vimeo.

YouTube Cons the World

Lawrence Solomon says it:

Lawrence Solomon: YouTube Cons The World

YouTube’s reason for shutting down the video sensation?: “This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Warner/Chappell Music, Inc,“ YouTube tells those who try to access the parody.

This claim by YouTube is itself a con. As YouTube well knows, parodies are not subject to a copyright claim. To add to the absurdity of YouTube’s claim, YouTube carries numerous other parodies of “We are the world,” – a search on the YouTube site of “We are the world spoof” turns up 5,100 results.

YouTube’s real problem with this viral hit is the virus of anti-Semitism.

LiveLeak still has it. Here is the embed.



Thanks to the folks at Israelly Cool for finding this for us.


Update: The folks at YouTube apparently did not like getting called out on their anti-Semitism and have reposted the video. I still believe them to be anti-Semites.

Birds in My Yard

I am not a bird watcher, but I have started noticing some of the birds that live in my neighborhood. Here is one.

The Pileated Woodpecker

I did not take this picture myself as I usually do not have a camera handy when I see these birds. This is a picture that I got via an internet search.

Our Incompetent Government - ICE

This speaks for itself.

Deporting 'Son of Hamas'

Mosab Hassan Yousef is a best-selling author who wrote "Son of Hamas" about his life as a Palestinian who became an informant for Israeli intelligence. He's probably near the top of every Islamist terror hit list, yet, incredibly enough, the U.S. may soon deport him as a terror threat.

In 2007, Mr. Yousef came to the United States, where he converted to Christianity from Islam and applied for political asylum. The request was denied in February 2009, Mr. Yousef says, on grounds that he was potentially "a danger to the security of the United States" and had "engaged in terrorist activity." His case has automatically proceeded to the deportation stage, and on June 30 at 8 a.m. he will appear before Judge Rico Bartolomei in Homeland Security Immigration Court in San Diego.

Homeland Security is well aware of the author's history, and in fact is using it against him. According to Mr. Yousef, a letter from Homeland Security attorney Kerri Calcador cites passages in "Son of Hamas" as evidence of his connection to terrorist leaders and suggests that the work he did for Hamas while spying for Israel provided aid to terrorists. "At a bare minimum, evidence of the respondent's transport of Hamas members to safe houses . . . indicates that the respondent provided material support to a [Tier I] terrorist organization," the U.S. lawyer wrote.

But unless Ms. Calcador knows more than she's saying, this is bizarre. As a spy for Israel, Mr. Yousef had to make his colleagues believe he was a loyal member of Hamas. He used that trust to gain information that he provided to Israeli intelligence, which used it to prevent terror attacks and save lives. One of Mr. Yousef's handlers at Shin Bet confirmed his book's account to the Israeli daily Haaretz, and his father, Sheikh Hassan Yousef, has disowned him from the Israeli prison he has occupied since 2005.

I honestly think that Mr. Obama and many members of his administration are actually on the side of Hamas.

Gaza Flotilla Participants Explain: We Con the World

The full text:

There comes a time
When we need to make a show
For the world, the Web and CNN
There's no people dying,
so the best that we can do
Is create the greatest bluff of all

We must go on pretending day by day
That in Gaza, there's crisis, hunger and plague
Coz the billion bucks in aid won't buy their basic needs
Like some cheese and missiles for the kids

We'll make the world
Abandon reason
We'll make them all believe that the Hamas
Is Momma Theresa
We are peaceful travelers
With guns and our own knives
The truth will never find its way to your TV

Ooooh, we'll stab them at heart
They are soldiers, no one cares
We are small, and we took some pictures with doves
As Allah showed us, for facts there's no demand
So we will always gain the upper hand

We'll make the world
Abandon reason
We'll make them all believe that the Hamas
Is Momma Theresa
We are peaceful travelers
we're waving our own knives
The truth will never find its way to your TV

If Islam and terror brighten up your mood
But you worry that it may not look so good
Well well well well don't you realize
You just gotta call yourself
An activist for peace and human aid

We'll make the world
Abandon reason
We'll make them all believe that the Hamas
Is Momma Theresa
We are peaceful travelers
We're waving our own knives
The truth will never find its way to your TV

We con the world
We con the people
We'll make them all believe the IDF is Jack the Ripper
We are peaceful travelers
We're waving our own knives
The truth will never find its way to your TV
We con the world (Bruce: we con the world...)
We con the people (Bruce: we con the people...)
We'll make them all believe the IDF is Jack the Ripper
We are peaceful travelers
We're waving our own knives
The truth will never find its way to your TV
The truth will never find its way to your TV

Courtesy of LatmaTV

Helen Thomas, Anti-Semite

Yes, I mean it. Is she unaware of the treatment that Jews received at the hands of the Germans and the Poles? How can any honest person explain this away?



It speaks for itself. Liberalism indeed.

UPDATE: The anti-semite has since apologized.

"I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians," she wrote. "They do not reflect my heartfelt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance. May that day come soon."

A standard non-apology apology. Since her beginnings 600 60 years ago she has apologized for terrorists and against the defense of Israel. I bet that she would be outraged if someone would say that she should return to Lebanon (I wish she would).

For Jews it is 1930 again.

One Reason Why I Left the Presbyterian Church

Actually one of many reasons.

Presby Peacemakers Attack Jewish Groups in the U.S.

My experience in the PC(USA) was in a community that was very concerned about social and political issues and unconcerned about theological ones. Had you walked into my (Presbyterian) Church when I was there, and said that Jesus the Christ is God and the Son of God, fully God and Fully Man, and asked if anyone there agreed with that, you would have gotten several reactions. The most prominent would have been outrage and loud argument. A very few would have understood the real concept of the Holy Trinity, and even fewer would know what the dual nature of Christ is even though both doctrines are officially at the core of the Presbyterian doctrine.

Rather than educating its members about the teachings of Christ and the early Apostles, the Presbyterian Church would rather play in politics and social issues. And with a very leftist view at that. Pro-abortion, pro-gay, pro-feminist, and pro-huge government while being anti-military were the essential characteristics of the Church when I left it.

The very fact that the IPMN even exists and succeeds as an anti-semitic organization says it all.

A gay clergy is coming to the PC(USA) soon.

My New Blog

Both of my faithful readers know, after long experience with me, that I travel a great deal. While I no longer live in a steel pipe under 800 feet of water, it is still hard to keep up on events in America. I know that there is no excuse as the Internet is universal, but my time became ever more limited. While in Japan I tried to immerse myself in Japanese life. In this I had some success. I read the issues, but being concerned with living in Japan, I did not post.

In fact, I started another (non-issued oriented) blog called "A Wandering Gaijin". In this blog I describe some of my travels in Japan. All photos on this blog are taken by yours truly, or a member of my staff (wife or nearby friend actually).

I will post the occasional post here still, but will be spreading my time between the two blogs.

Thank you for your continued patience.

No Rise of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide

Jeez...I finally beat Matt Drudge to a post and then leave in in my Edit queue to post later. It just goes to show you that you should never hold back. Here is the post.

------------

Of course the global warming believers will say that these scientists are disreputable or kooks or something, but ...

From Science Daily an article based on research published in Geophysical Research Letters, provided by the American Geophysical Union. See also here.

No Rise of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Fraction in Past 160 Years, New Research Finds.

To assess whether the airborne fraction is indeed increasing, Wolfgang Knorr of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol reanalyzed available atmospheric carbon dioxide and emissions data since 1850 and considers the uncertainties in the data.

In contradiction to some recent studies, he finds that the airborne fraction of carbon dioxide has not increased either during the past 150 years or during the most recent five decades.

Granted the AGU says that the Earth is warming due to human activity, but shouldn't Dr. Knorr's result at least be considered before we (meaning our Government) set about destroying our economy?

BTW: Dr. Knorr (not a kook) is also interested in how human carbon dioxide emissions affect the carbon cycle and affect global warming. Let's continue to think about this before we do something drastic.

North Korea Starts the Cycle Again

If you believe this, and many apparently do, I have a bridge to sell you.

NKorea Calls for End of Hostile Relations With US

North Korea called for an end of hostile relations with the United States in a New Year's message Friday and said it was committed to making the Korean peninsula nuclear-free through negotiations.

Communist North Korea has long demanded that Washington end hostility toward its government, and said it developed nuclear weapons to deter a U.S. attack. Washington has repeatedly said it has no intention of invading the country.

The New Year statement brightened prospects for North Korea to rejoin stalled international talks on ending its nuclear weapons programs in exchange for aid and other concessions. Washington has sought to coax it to return to the talks, which also include South Korea, China, Russia and Japan.

It seems that those who should know better do not recognize the Dear Monster Kim's dangerous cycle (more on that below)

Cheong Seong-chang, a senior analyst at the private Sejong Institute security think tank, said North Korea is likely to maintain its conciliatory approach toward the U.S.

"The North extended an olive branch to the U.S.," Cheong said, adding that he expects the two sides will agree to set up a liaison office as a symbolic move to end their hostilities.

Kim Yong-hyun, a North Korea expert at Seoul's Dongguk University, also said prospects are not bad for relations between North Korea and the U.S., noting the absence of the usual diatribes against the U.S. in the New Year message.

The statement said North Korea remains committed to improving relations with South Korea, and urged the South to refrain from actions that might aggravate tensions.

Will our Department of State fall for this? Maybe not (we hope)

The United States responded by suggesting that North Korea return to "six-party talks" -- negotiations over its nuclear program involving the U.S., South Korea, China, Russia and Japan. "Actions speak louder than words," a State Department official said.

We have two enemy countries playing the US and the UN for fools and succeeding;

Dangerous Cycle

Both North Korea and Iran’s nuclear diplomacy are testaments to how Western diplomats reward intransigence. Take North Korea: During a June 30, 2006, American Enterprise Institute panel, Danielle Pletka pointed out the pattern: On August 31, 1998, Pyongyang fired the Taepodong-1 missile over Japan. Three months later, U.S. officials held the first round of high-level talks in Pyongyang. North Korean leader Kim Jong Il demanded to be rewarded for ceasing his provocations. He was. The following year, U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry visited North Korea to offer normalized relations and a lifting of economic sanctions if Pyongyang froze and eventually dismantled its long-range-missile program and stopped its missile exports. On September 17, 1999, President Clinton eased sanctions against the north. Two months later, a U.S.-led consortium signed a $4.6 billion contract for two Western light-water nuclear reactors for the Stalinist police state. The Clinton administration began shipping food aid to the famine-ridden north, which Pyongyang used to grease its war machine even as ordinary citizens starved.

Having been given everything it had asked for, Kim Jong Il decided he wanted more. On July 1, 2000, he threatened to restart the nuclear program if Washington did not compensate it for electricity lost by delays in plant construction. Pyongyang then threatened to reverse course on its missile test moratorium. It did. On July 2001, it conducted a Taepodong-1 engine test.

All the while, Kim Jong Il cheated. The Bush administration did not initially agree to accept North Korean smoke-and-mirrors. In October 2002, the Bush administration announced that Pyongyang had operated a covert nuclear-weapons program in violation of its 1994 agreement. Diplomats may celebrate treaties. Many who helped negotiate the 1994 Agreed Framework have meritorious service certificates framed on their wall. But agreements are meaningless if not adhered to, and seldom do autocracies stick to agreements if they gain more through noncompliance.

How long before Kim wants more and initiates another crisis?

Have a Happy New Year

I would like to wish both of my faithful readers the happiest possible year 2010 Anno Domini. May you have great prosperity and health in the coming year.

Our Incompetent (and Corrupt) Government - DOJ

From Andy McCarthy at NRO, We Interrupt this Socialization of Medicine to Bring You an Abdication of Our National Defense

As always, read the whole thing. It discusses the movement of prisoners out of Gitmo but both the Bush and Obama administrations and impropriety in the Department of Justice. The last paragraph;

And then there is the appearance of impropriety. As Tom Joscelyn explains, the Justice Department has taken the lead role in making release determinations — the military command at Gitmo has "zero input" and "zero influence," in its own words. DOJ is rife with attorneys who represented and advocated for the detainees, and, in particular, Attorney General Holder's firm, represented numerous Yemeni enemy combatants. Does Justice not appreciate not only how perilous but how unseemly it appears under the circumstances for it to be leading the charge to release the Yemeni detainees? And could anyone really believe that the supposedly noxious symbolism of Gitmo is more dangerous to Americans than is deporting terrorists to the places where terrorism thrives?

Our Incompetent Government - Congress

One of the great things about the way our government works is that if a law is passed that is later discovered to be flawed, it can be repealed. This applies even of the law is an amendment to the Constitution, e.g. Prohibition.

Found at The Weekly Standard, Reid Bill Says Future Congresses Cannot Repeal Parts of Reid Bill

On page 1020 of the bill we find,

15 ‘‘(C) LIMITATION ON CHANGES TO THIS
16 SUBSECTION.—It shall not be in order in the
17 Senate or the House of Representatives to con
18 sider any bill, resolution, amendment, or con
19 ference report that would repeal or otherwise
20 change this subsection.

Read the post linked above at The Weekly Standard for Sen. Jim DeMint's comments.

Every graduate of a high school civics course (from back in the days when high schools had civics courses) would know how wrong headed and dangerous this is.

Obama Said What ?!?

Ok, I know that this is old news now (see previous post) but it is interesting news.

From the Great Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs, Obama's Nobel Acceptance Speech.

Of course, Charles and I differ. My thoughts on Mr. Obama are well known. Still, when someone says the right things, it must be acknowledged. While I will not (yet) go so far as to say that Mr. Obama is a centrist president I will commend him for the speech that he gave in accepting the Nobel Peace Prize. Here it is. Read it all.

Text of Barack Obama Nobel Prize acceptance lecture

Over time, as codes of law sought to control violence within groups, so did philosophers, clerics, and statesmen seek to regulate the destructive power of war. The concept of a “just war” emerged, suggesting that war is justified only when it meets certain preconditions: if it is waged as a last resort or in self-defense; if the forced used is proportional, and if, whenever possible, civilians are spared from violence.

For most of history, this concept of just war was rarely observed. The capacity of human beings to think up new ways to kill one another proved inexhaustible, as did our capacity to exempt from mercy those who look different or pray to a different God. Wars between armies gave way to wars between nations – total wars in which the distinction between combatant and civilian became blurred.

In the span of thirty years, such carnage would twice engulf this continent. And while it is hard to conceive of a cause more just than the defeat of the Third Reich and the Axis powers, World War II was a conflict in which the total number of civilians who died exceeded the number of soldiers who perished.

In the wake of such destruction, and with the advent of the nuclear age, it became clear to victor and vanquished alike that the world needed institutions to prevent another World War. And so, a quarter century after the United States Senate rejected the League of Nations – an idea for which Woodrow Wilson received this Prize – America led the world in constructing an architecture to keep the peace: a Marshall Plan and a United Nations, mechanisms to govern the waging of war, treaties to protect human rights, prevent genocide, and restrict the most dangerous weapons.

In many ways, these efforts succeeded. Yes, terrible wars have been fought, and atrocities committed. But there has been no Third World War. The Cold War ended with jubilant crowds dismantling a wall. Commerce has stitched much of the world together. Billions have been lifted from poverty. The ideals of liberty, self-determination, equality and the rule of law have haltingly advanced. We are the heirs of the fortitude and foresight of generations past, and it is a legacy for which my own country is rightfully proud.

And, it seems that he has stopped apologizing.

I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King said in this same ceremony years ago – “Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones.” As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King’s life’s work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there is nothing weak –nothing passive – nothing naïve – in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.

But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince Al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism – it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.

I raise this point because in many countries there is a deep ambivalence about military action today, no matter the cause. At times, this is joined by a reflexive suspicion of America, the world’s sole military superpower.

Yet the world must remember that it was not simply international institutions – not just treaties and declarations – that brought stability to a post-World War II world. Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: the United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms.

The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans. We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will. We have done so out of enlightened self-interest – because we seek a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if other peoples’ children and grandchildren can live in freedom and prosperity.
So yes, the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace. And yet this truth must coexist with another – that no matter how justified, war promises human tragedy. The soldier’s courage and sacrifice is full of glory, expressing devotion to country, to cause and to comrades in arms. But war itself is never glorious, and we must never trumpet it as such.

I hope that he means what he says, for I am in complete agreement.

My Last Windows Machine

Once again I find myself apologizing to both of my faithful readers for the gap in my posting. My computer, a Hewlett Packard Laptop running Windows Vista. There is a motherboard failure of some kind. Without going into details, the Repair Service people told the NEX (Navy Exchange) people on thing about what the will do and how much they will charge, and then when I called for the telephone troubleshooting that I expected to do, they told me something entirely different. They had given an minimum estimate to the NEX. When I called them they gave me a minimum estimate $100 higher. In the course of my computer issues, by backups failed as well (I won't go into that now, but beware of Nero) so I have lost all of my data. The result of a perfect Windows data storm. The time is right for a switch.

So, that is the end of Windows machines for me. I know that this particular problem is (mostly) not a software problem, but I have had many of those as well. As for the hardware, it seems that manufacturers of Windows machines crank them out a a rate that does not allow for adequate quality control. Between my wife and I we have owned machines by (in chronological order) Flex, AST, Hewlett Packard, Fujitsu (the only one that never failed), Dell, Sony, Toshiba, and Hewlett Packard again (the laptop that is the subject of this post).

My wife has now owned a MacBook Pro for two years that has not so much as hiccuped.I work with engineers, two of whom own MacBooks and have had the same experience. Very nearly everyone I know that owns Windows machines tell me that the have problems at least once a year, and sometime more often than that. That is my experience as well.

So I'm through. When I have saved the money (approx 6 weeks - I pay cash for everything except houses and cars) I will buy the base MacBook. I don't need the Pro. The base one has all of the computing power that I need and a 7 hour battery. With a 13 inch screen (a little small, I admit) it will be truely portable - lasting long enough to be really useful on my long and now frequent flights to Japan. And, if I should be able to recover my data, Mac will process all of that as well. iWork handles all Microsoft Office file types.

Good.Bye.Windows.

How Free is Your State

Freedom in the 50 States: Index of Personal and Economic Freedom

Strange how the most "liberal" states are the least free.

Anti-Semitic UN to Act

The loathsome United Nations will, in its great tradition of antisemitism, act against Israel this week.

The Great Mona Charen writes,

Israel's Deadliest Foe to Strike This Week

The war over the war in Gaza is heating up. Next week, the United Nations General Assembly will consider the tendentious Goldstone Report, the highest profile exercise in blaming the victim in the U.N.'s tawdry history. Simultaneously, lawyers in Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, and Norway are drawing up criminal indictments against IDF officers who participated in the Gaza operation. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that a number of names are on a police watch list for arrest and detention should they attempt to enter Britain.

Israel's enemies certainly seek to terrorize and demoralize Israel. But the more important campaign -- which is gaining traction -- is to delegitimize her and to brand Israel's self-defense as a war crime.

Hamas wants the world to recognize them as a legitimate government, and many in the world do. If they are, then it seems to me that the same rules should apply. This piece offers a comparison.

ISRAEL

Consider the assessment of Col. Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, and a veteran of the Gulf War and the conflicts in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, and Macedonia. "During Operation Cast Lead, the IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare. Israel did so while facing an enemy that deliberately positioned its military capability behind the human shield of the civilian population."

What army has offered 48 hours notice to its enemies of planned operations? Israel did so, dropping 2 million leaflets in advance of army movements. Twenty-four hours before the IDF moved on a suspected terrorist site, the army phoned civilians to warn them to evacuate. There were 100,000 calls. And five minutes before an operation began, the IDF sent out text messages. The calls and messages contained not just warnings, but instructions on which roads were safe to take and which schools or other buildings could be used for shelter. In the midst of the conflict, hundreds of trucks brought food, water, and medical supplies to Gaza.

In Rafa, Israel sought to close 225 tunnels (with 800 entrances) used to smuggle arms to Gaza from Egypt. The easiest and safest course for the IDF would have been to level the homes without warning that contained the entrances using air power or tanks. In Gaza City, to avoid civilian casualties, IDF infantrymen went house to house, encountering booby traps along the way and fending off seven attempted kidnappings.

Hamas was so confident that Israel would not knowingly shoot at civilians that they hid behind human shields throughout the short war. It was common, when word came of an impending attack, for Hamas to send children out to play in the streets at that moment. "Will I shoot?" Gruber asks. "I will not." There is video of a terrorist with a rocket launcher slung over his shoulder grabbing a 10-year-old boy by the collar and dragging him across the street to deter Israeli snipers. And it worked. Israel has similar video (from Reuters actually) showing U.N. ambulances ferrying armed men. "Yes," says Gruber with resignation, "the 'ambulances' were always at the front."

HAMAS

There are scores of other examples -- Hamas firing from mosques, schools, private homes, and hospitals. The very fact that Hamas used human shields betrays their admission that Israel abides by ethical standards in war fighting. They took advantage of Israel's moral qualms about harming non-combatants. Now they accuse Israel of the crimes they themselves committed -- deliberately targeting civilians by raining down 12,000 missiles on southern Israel since the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

Liberals, amongst whom antisemitism is mainstream (of course they accuse we conservatives of it constantly), will back the UN in efforts to punish Israel for defending herself and support the real terrorists.

UPDATE: Just in case anyone objects to my view that modern liberalism™ is the home of mainstream antisemitism, this from Caroline Glick;

Former ambassador to the UN Dore Gold should probably buy himself a flak jacket. Gold is scheduled to debate Richard Goldstone at Brandeis University next Thursday and the anti-Israel forces are organizing quite a reception for him.

Goldstone, who chaired the UN Human Rights Council's commission charged with accusing Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, has become a darling of the anti-Israel Left in the weeks since his report accusing Israel of committing both war crimes and crimes against humanity was published last month. And anti-Israeli leftists don't like the idea of someone challenging his libelous attacks against Israel in a public debate at a university.

In an e-mail to a campus list-serve, Brandeis student and anti-Israel activist Jonathan Sussman called on his fellow anti-Zionists to disrupt the event that will pit the "neutral" Goldstone against Gold with his "wildly pro-Zionist message." Sussman invited his list-serve members to join him at a meeting to "discuss a possible response."

As the young community organizer sees it, "Possibilities include inviting Palestinian speakers to come participate, seeding the audience with people who can disrupt the Zionist narrative, protest and direct action." He closed his missive with a plaintive call to arms: "F**k the occupation."

Apparently the aspiring political organizer never considered another possibility: listening to what Gold has to say.

More to follow on liberalism™ and antisemitism.

Our Incompetent Government - POTUS Inner circle

A note to the President and his yes men senior aides - YOU are the power. Please grow wake up.

The Great Mark Steyn tells the tale.

REALITY CHECK ON THE OBAMA AS CAESAR CULT

Valerie Jarrett announced the other day that “we’re going to speak truth to power”.

Who’s Valerie Jarrett? She’s “Senior Advisor” to the President of the United States – ie, the leader of the most powerful nation on the face of the earth. You would think the most powerful man in the most powerful nation would find a hard job finding anyone on the planet to “speak truth to power” to. But I suppose if you’re as eager to do so as his Senior Advisor, there’s always somebody out there: The Supreme Leader of Iran. The Prime Minister of Belgium. The Deputy Tourism Minister of the Solomon Islands. But no. The Senior Advisor has selected targets closer to home: “I think that what the administration has said very clearly is that we’re going to speak truth to power. When we saw all of the distortions in the course of the summer, when people were coming down to town hall meetings and putting up signs that were scaring seniors to death…”

Read the whole thing, there is a lot more...

Meanwhile, Larry David is now doing televised NEA exhibits on his HBO show “Curb Your Enthusiasm”. Christians are said to be “angry” at him because of an episode in which, after he accidentally sprays his urine on a picture of Jesus, his assistant mistakes the droplets for tears and calls in her mother to witness the miracle of Christ weeping. Ha-ha! Oh, those brave transgressive artists! Of course, Christians aren’t “angry” in the sense that two US residents arrested last week are. The pair – one an American citizen, the other Canadian – were so “angry” about the Mohammed cartoons published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten that they hatched a plot to kill the artist and his editor. As many commentators pointed out, Mr David’s splashy stunt is a dreary provocation: It’s easy to be provocative with people who can’t be provoked. If he were to start urinating in a more Mecca-ly direction, he’d find an entirely more motivated crowd waiting for him at the stage door.

But I liked the point made by the Anchoress, a writer at the magazine First Things: Putting Mohammed et al aside, if Larry David had a yen to urinate hither and yon, wouldn’t it have been “braver” to have done it to the religious icon du jour? That’s to say, Barack Obama. And then maybe Ashton Kutcher could have marveled at how even Obama’s image was empathizing tearily with all 687 million Americans without health insurance. Or, alternatively, dribbling warm champagne from his Norwegian Nobel banquet toast. C’mon, Larry. Sure, you might not have a career afterward, but, unlike any Islamo-provocations, you’re not gonna get killed. Just fired, and probably damned as a racist. But at least you wouldn’t be a simpering suck-up to power like Rocco Landesman and the other creeps.

A Terrible Tragedy

On Saturday night a Seattle police officer was in the residential Central District in a marked police car with a female trainee when the car was hit several times with gunfire. The police officer was killed, the trainee was injured.

Seattle police say officer killed in shooting

Police say a male officer was training a female student officer in a marked patrol car Saturday night when their vehicle was struck several times by gunfire. They say the student officer suffered minor injuries in the shooting that took in the mostly residential Central District.

Pray for them.

Ok - So It Took an Outrage

Again I find myself apologizing to both of my faithful readers, life continues to be very, very full and sadly blogging fell down the priority list. I promise that when I get settled into my apartment in Japan (yes, I spend that much time there) I will have more time to blog.

Anyway, the thing that prompted me was this.

Loraine Mullen-Kress carries a Bank of America credit card and religiously pays off her balance.

"Flawless credit," she boasted.

Yet now, her good credit habits could cost her. Earlier this month Bank of America started notifying customers like Mullen-Kress that they will be charged a new annual fee of $29 to $99.

"There is a big segment of their population that they will have never made money on, which is people who pay their bills on time every month," said Ben Woolsey, Director of Consumer Research at CreditCards.com.

Bank of America said in a statement: "At this point we're testing the fee on a very small number of accounts and haven't made any final decisions." Citigroup is also trying out an annual fee with some card holders, and analysts expect more banks to follow their lead.

The banks are starting to charge fees to reliable customers in response to a slew of new credit card industry regulations that will limit when banks can hike interest rates. Cardholders who get a new annual fee notice in the mail will be in a no-win situation.

"They can either pay that fee or they can close the account, and if they have had the account for a while and they close it, they are potentially going to hurt their credit card score," said Woolsey.

If they do this to you let them know what you think. After all of the business that I have done with Bank of America, if they start charging me a fee to use their card, I will never apply to them for credit again. I will use Discover, or JCB, or Fred's (a Steve Martin joke).

I seriously hope that, if they try this, it hurts them badly.