McChrystal Relieved Of Command..Petraeus Demoted To Take His Place

Well this turned out in an interesting way.

McChrystal being fired was no surprise, and I actually think it's what he wanted. But General David Petraeus taking his place...I have to wonder if he was given any choice in the matter or was simply ordered to do do by Obama, his commander-in-chief.

Actually, this is a step down for General Petraeus, who will go from being commander of CENTCOM to being our commanding General in Afghanistan as Obama appoints a new commander of CENTCOM who will be Petraeus' superior.

In a sense, Obama is doubling down and covering himself on Afghanistan by putting America's best known general in direct command.If it fails, Petraeus will share the onus.

Thus the question on whether Petraeus agreed to take this on or was simply ordered to do so. If he took it on voluntarily, he has to believe that this war can somehow be won. The first thing I'll be looking for is to see whether Petraeus changes the ridiculous Rules Of Engagement when he gets in. I'll also be watching to see what he does with the tribal chiefs and the opium traffic.

A key to understanding Petraeus' thinking is to look at his testimony before Congress on Afghanistan just last week about Obama's written-in-stone July '11 deadline.

"It's important that July 2011 be seen for what it is, the date when a process begins based on conditions, not the date when the U.S. heads for the exits," said Petraeus. "Moreover, my agreement with the president's decisions was based on projections of conditions in July 2011.

From Obama's standpoint, if things go seriously south in AfPak he has a scapegoat. If they go well and Petraeus comes back next year to report on whether conditions are right to start withdrawing next year, Congress and the American people are going to believe him.

Best of luck, General.

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Amnesty For Illegal Aliens By Executive Order?

If Obama is capable of holding border security hostage for amnesty votes, why wouldn't he create amnesty for illegal aliens by decree? Via Michelle Malkin , Numbers USA has the story:

Several Senators have learned of a possible plan by the Obama Administration that would provide a mass Amnesty for the nation's 11-18 million illegal aliens. Led by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), eight Senators addressed a letter to the President asking for answers to questions about a plan that would allow DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano to provide an amnesty if they can't secure enough votes for a bill in the Senate.

The letter that was sent to Pres. Obama earlier today asks the President for clarification on the use of deferred action or parole for illegal aliens. The executive actions are typically used in special cases and are evaluated on a case-by-case basis, but if 60 votes can't be secured in the Senate to pass a mass Amnesty, the Administration may use the discretionary actions as an alternative.

Here is the text of the letter signed by Sens. Grassley, Hatch (R-Utah), Vitter (R-La.), Bunning (R-Ky.), Chambliss (R-Ga.), Isakson (R-Ga.), Inhofe (R-Okla.), and Cochran (R-Miss.).

Dear President Obama:

We understand that there’s a push for your Administration to develop a plan to unilaterally extend either deferred action or parole to millions of illegal aliens in the United States. We understand that the Administration may include aliens who have willfully overstayed their visas or filed for benefits knowing that they will not be eligible for a status for years to come. We understand that deferred action and parole are discretionary actions reserved for individual cases that present unusual, emergent or humanitarian circumstances. Deferred action and parole were not intended to be used to confer a status or offer protection to large groups of illegal aliens, even if the agency claims that they look at each case on a “case-by-case” basis.

While we agree our immigration laws need to be fixed, we are deeply concerned about the potential expansion of deferred action or parole for a large illegal alien population. While deferred action and parole are Executive Branch authorities, they should not be used to circumvent Congress’ constitutional authority to legislate immigration policy, particularly as it relates to the illegal population in the United States.

The Administration would be wise to abandon any plans for deferred action or parole for the illegal population. Such a move would further erode the American public’s confidence in the federal government and its commitment to securing the borders and enforcing the laws already on the books.

We would appreciate receiving a commitment that the Administration has no plans to use either authority to change the current position of a large group of illegal aliens already in the United States, and ask that you respond to us about this matter as soon as possible.

Would Obama try an end run around Congress like this? Absolutely. Like his lawsuit against the State of Arizona, it's designed to endear the Democrats to the pro-Amnesty constituency. The lawsuit may be tossed out of court and the Executive order might be overturned successfully by legislation if the Republicans take back Congress, but this is about political positioning and branding.

And the will of the people be damned.

Via: Memeorandum

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Obama Administration Stops Sand Berm Dredging Off Gulf Coast

Despite pleas from local and state officials, the feds are shutting down the dredging that was being done to build protective sand berms in the Gulf of Mexico to keep the oil off the coasts.

Governor Bobby Jindal had asked for the feds permission to do this within days after the Gulf oil spill erupted, but received no answer from Washington until just before President Obama's Oval office speech, when Jindal erupted and said he was going ahead with the dredging regardless of whether he go the fed's approval..after which, of course, he got the approval.

But now, the feds have yanked the approval again and stopped the dredging, citing 'environmental concerns'..as if the oil wasn't an environmental concern!

Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser, who was one of the most vocal advocates of the dredging plan, has sent a letter to President Barack Obama, pleading for the work to continue.

Nungesser said the government has asked crews to move the dredging site two more miles farther off the coastline.

"Once again, our government resource agencies, which are intended to protect us, are now leaving us vulnerable to the destruction of our coastline and marshes by the impending oil," Nungesser wrote to Obama. "Furthermore, with the threat of hurricanes or tropical storms, we are being put at an increased risk for devastation to our area from the intrusion of oil.{..}

The California dredge located off the Chandelier Islands has pumped more than 50,000 cubic yards of material daily to create a sand berm, according to Plaquemines Parish officials.

Nungesser's letter includes an emotional plea to the president.

"Please don't let them shut this dredge down," he wrote. "This requires your immediate attention!"

Absolutely amazing. And yet another chapter in the Obama Administrations farcical response to this disaster...

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McChrystal meeting With Obama; Resignation Likely Tomorrow

At least that's what CNN is saying:

Embattled Gen. Stanley McChrystal is meeting with President Barack Obama at this hour -- a meeting that may decide McChrystal's fate in the wake of politically explosive remarks the general and his aides made about key Obama administration officials in Rolling Stone magazine.

The White House has asked the Pentagon to make a list of possible replacements for McChrystal because Obama wants to be ready if he decides to fire the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, a senior administration official told CNN Wednesday.

McChrystal is unlikely to survive the fallout from the Rolling Stone story, a Pentagon source who has ongoing contacts with the general told CNN earlier.

He will likely resign Wednesday, the source said. Obama was "angry" after reading the general's remarks, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Tuesday.

What's unclear is whom Obama is going to pick as a successor to run his war. I have a feeling that;s a sandwich with a particular aroma that very few people are going to want to take a bite out of. it's also true that out of the US government officials involved, only General McChrystal had anything like a decent relationship with Hamid Karzai.

There's been a lot of talk about getting 'resignations' from Ambassador Eikenberry and Obama's special envoy Richard Holcombe. Possible, but I doubt it.

I'll repeat again what I said yesterday... McChrystal is definitely not stupid. This was basically self-induced career seppuku, a way for him to exit. honorably

There are no 'wins' to be had in Afghanistan, a lot of our warriors on the ground recognize that COIN is a failure there, and that the 'hearts and minds' rules of engagement are causing unnecessary casualties and risking their lives.

By now McChrystal knows COIN is a failure too, but given the dynamics of the Obama Administration and its stake in appeasing the Muslim world, he knew he wasn't going to be able to change what needed to be changed.

It probably got to the point where he was unable to face the troops in the field any more. So he decided on his own exit strategy.

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Watcher's Council Nominations, 6/23/10

The Watcher's Council is a group of some of the most incisive blogs in the`sphere. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one of their own and one from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council.Then we vote on the best posts, with the results appearing on Friday.

So, let's see what we have this week....

Council Submissions

• Joshuapundit - Barack Obama’s Oval Office Speech – The Fiction Cracks
• The Colossus of Rhodey – I wonder if the folks at Newsweek really wonder why their readership is dwindling
• The Glittering Eye - No, We’re Still Paying
• Snapped Shot - Efficiency: Man Denied Doctor Appointment… Because He’s Dead
• Rhymes with Right – When Teachers Become Self-Absorbed
• Right Truth – Banning Sharia Law
• Bookworm Room - Israel hasn’t changed; the world has
• The Provocateur – Man Caused Disaster

Non-Council Submissions

• LATMA – The Three Terrors submitted by JoshuaPundit
• The Chronicle of Higher Education – In Praise of Tough Criticism submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey
• Jay Tea/Wizbang - The Scent Of Fear submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Six Meat Buffet - Why Has The Federal Government Declared War On The States? submitted by Snapped Shot
• Joanne Jacobs - The right way to assess teachers submitted by Rhymes with Right
• Las Vegas Review Journal/ WAYNE ALLYN ROOT - Obama’s agenda: Overwhelm the system submitted by Right Truth
• Pajamas Media/Zombie – Radicals, Islamists and Longshoremen blockade Israeli ship in Oakland submitted by Bookworm Room
• National Affairs - Crisis Economics submitted by The Provocateur
• The Counterterrorism Blog - OPEN SOURCE INTELLIGENCE – An Open Discussion submitted by The Watcher
• Not PC - The schadenfreude of the postmodern president submitted by The Watcher

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Do Loose Lips Sink Generals?

Maybe, in this case.

By now, you've mostly heard that General Stanley McChrystal, our commander in Afghanistan is in a world of hurt over an in depth profile of him in Rolling Stone magazine entitled 'Runaway General'.

According to the piece,written by Michael Hastings, McChrystal and a number of unnamed aides engaged in serial mockery of a number of Administration figures including Obama, NSC James Jones,( "a clown") VP Joe Biden("who?"), Ambassador Eikenberry and Special Envoy Richard Holcombe( "a wounded animal").

The story also includes a description of McChrystal's staff boozing it up at an Irish pub in Paris, "two officers doing an Irish jig mixed with steps from a traditional Afghan wedding dance," and singing slurred, intoxicated songs about "Afghanistan, Afghanistan."

Once the profile hit the streets, the fit really hit the shan. McChrystal was promptly called home, where he is scheduled to meet personally with President Obama.

A number of the usual suspects are calling for McChrystal to be fired.

Certainly in terms of what almost amounts to insubordination, it would be justified and the word is that McChrystal has already tendered his resignation and Obama is mulling over a substitute.

So...was this just poor judgment on the general's part? I don't think so.

Someone who goes through West Point, Ranger training, survives combat and rises in the ranks the way McChrystal has is definitely not stupid. He had to know who the writer was, who Rolling Stone was and what was likely to come out in the article.

What this was in my opinion was a deliberate move on his part, a sort of career sepukku, a way for him to get of it honorably.

Our war in Afghanistan is a car driving on the freeway with its wheels coming off. The part of the RS article no one is discussing much concerns the failure of our strategy there. Obama's campaign promises about getting our European allies to put more troops into 'the good war' were nothing but unicorn fantasy, as anyone who observed Obama's competency in handling a Senate committee charged with exactly that could have noticed. Our EU allies are leaving - Canada and The Netherlands, two of the few who actually have combat troops on the ground have already announced that they're departing.

The Afghans are either hostile or indifferent to yet another group of ferenghi infidels occupying their country, and the Karzai government despises Obama and pretty much every US government functionary except McChrystal.

The Kandahar offensive is bogged down, al-Qaida and the Taliban have pretty much regrouped in Pakistan and come over at their leisure and a lot of our warriors on the ground recognize that COIN is a failure, and that the 'hearts and minds' rules of engagements are unnecessarily endangering their lives.

At this point, McChrystal knows COIN is a failure too, but given the dynamics of the Obama Administration and its stake in appeasing the Muslim world, he knows he isn't going to be able to change what needs to be changed

The only reason it worked to some degree in Iraq was because al-Qaeda was mostly composed of non-Iraqi foreigners and were incredibly brutal to the locals, to the point where bribing the leaders of the Sunni Awakening movement seemed like the lesser of two evils. And Iraq is a lot more of a cohesive country than Afghanistan has ever been.

As those of you whom read me regularly know, I've had a number of things to say about Afghanistan, a lot of it based on what I'm hearing from men on the ground. The incredible things our warriors have accomplished there are almost beyond belief, but the fact is that there is no 'win' there, no objective to obtain. The only reason for the surge was because of Obama's chest thumping campaign rhetoric about the 'real war', as opposed to Iraq - where ironically, things are relatively quiescent.

Assuming McChrystal is history, I'm not sure whom Obama is likely to get to replace him. Hopefully, a change in command will result in an entirely new strategy for the AfPak region, but given who's in the White House these days I have my doubts.

(via Memeorandum)

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Obama Administration To Sue Arizona Over Illegal Alien Law

Lessee now...the last time I looked, we had an occupation in Iraq to wind down, major problems in Obama's war in Afghanistan, Iran, a huge oil spill in the Gulf, 9.7 percent unemployment across the country and a government so mired in debt that the Democrat Congress isn't even going to bother submitting a Congressional budget this year.

So what does Obama do?Declare war on Arizona:

Obama administration sources tell ABC News that Attorney General Eric Holder is expected to file a lawsuit against the state of Arizona for its immigration law, likely next week.

The suit has been expected for some time now. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a South American television interviewer that the president had told the Justice Department to file the suit on the basis that it's the constitutional responsibility of the federal government -- not states -- to set immigration policy.

"President Obama has spoken out against the law because he thinks that the federal government should be determining immigration policy," Clinton told the interviewer on station NTN 24. "And the Justice Department, under his direction, will be bringing a lawsuit against the act.”

Holder is expected to also claim in his suit that the Arizona law will be enforced in a way that could cause discrimination based on race and nationality.

Some commentators like the Weekly Standard's John McCormack evidences some surprise at this move. The law was well constructed to survive a court challenge, and as he points out for the most part previous state immigration laws have been upheld anyway so there doesn't seem much substance to the suit. Aside from the Arizona law's huge popularity nationwide, the Feds will also have a problem with the argument that only the feds are allowed to enforce immigration laws when Arizona brings up the federally offered Basic Immigration Enforcement Training (BIET) for local law enforcement, an online program that teaches them how to enforce the federal statutes that SB1070 mirrors.

If the locals aren't supposed to enforce federal immigration laws, why are the Feds teaching them how to do so? And if SB1070 is discriminatory and leads to 'profiling' then the federal laws are discriminatory too.

It's going to be a difficult legal argument to pull off..but a successful legal outcome isn't the reason for the suit. Just like everything else withthis president, it's all about politics.

As I pointed out yesterday, the Democrats have almost entirely lost the majority of White, senior, middle class and independent voters beyond all redemption.

With the midterms coming up in a few months, the Democrats are desperately trying to mobilize the youth and minority vote to counteract this.

No matter how the court challenge goes, the very fact that it's being launched is designed to secure points with what I will politely refer to as the pro amnesty constituency and get them to the polls to pull the lever for the Democrats.

Seen from that standpoint rather than law, justice or what might ultimately be best for the country, the move makes perfect sense.

(hat tip, memeorandum)

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SCOTUS: No Such Thing As 'Moderate Terrorists'

In a major decision yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the "material support" laws designed to criminalize aid to designated terrorist organizations.

In a 6-3 opinion announced by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court affirmed that the Constitution is not a suicide pact and that speech, fundraising and other kinds of advocacy in support of designated terrorist groups is illegal, even if it's supposedly for the group's 'humanitarian' efforts or its 'political' wing.

Needless to say, the three dissenters consisted of Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and a certain Wise Latina newly elevated to the Court by President Obama.

The case was brought by a far Left ACLU clone known as the Humanitarian Law Project and involved aid and advice they wanted to give to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) both of whom have been on the US terrorist groups list for years.

The Court decided that the law forbids any type of aid to terrorist groups because it could help to legitimize them and because the terrorist organization can then conserve its resources for terrorist activities. Roberts said Congress had made it clear that the intent of the support was irrelevant, and that only the end result - support for the known terrorist organizations mattered when it came to criminal charges.

"Congress chose knowledge about the organization's connection to terrorism, not specific intent to further its terrorist activities, as the necessary mental state for a violation," Roberts wrote.

Well, duh!

Now that we have this matter straightened out, I wonder - can anyone bring the Obama Administration up on charges for its material support of Hamas or of the Lebanese government, which is basically aid to Hezbollah?

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White House Still Withholding 1600 Kagen Documents - GOP May Boycott Confirmation Hearings

The more we find out about Obama's prospective Supreme Court nominee, the less there is to like - which is precisely why the White House is stonewalling on releasing a number of documents dealing with her time in the Clinton Administration. So in response, the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee are apparently considering the unprecedented step of boycotting the hearings:

Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, on Monday evening warned that Republicans may boycott the start of Elena Kagan's Supreme Court hearings if senators do not get to review scores of documents from the solicitor general's past.

"I don't feel like we're prepared yet," Sessions told POLITICO. "It's becoming more clear that this is not an easy thing to get ready this quick."

Sessions said there appeared to be 1,600 withheld documents, which cover Kagan’s time as a senior White House aide under President Bill Clinton but were not released because of confidentiality concerns. And he called for the Obama administration to at least provide key senators and staff with a chance to privately review the confidential documents so they could weigh in on the validity of the decision to withhold the documents.

Asked if Republicans would boycott the hearings if they did not get to review the documents, Sessions said: “If we feel like we can’t go forward with the hearings … because we don’t have sufficient documents, then yes, we may feel compelled to do whatever it takes to try to insist that the process be done right.”

If the GOP boycotts the hearings, they could still be held and there are certainly enough votes on the Judiciary Committee to move Kagan's nomination forward, and perhaps even enough to get her confirmed.But a GOP boycott would likely incur a firestorm of media attention, which something tells me is the last thing the Obama Administration wants right now.

The article also goes on to quote Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.)on how many documents the committee has already received, blah blah blah.

But as Sessions points out, it ain't the quantity, but the quality and relevancy...especially when you're talking about a back room academic and political apparatchnik with no practical legal experience and a limited paper trail:

“Who gets to decide what’s private?” Sessions said. “President Clinton is involved in this and President Obama - and she did a lot of things like on the impeachment for Clinton, things that he may not want to be revealed that may be very important for the committee. I don’t know that; I'm just saying hypothetically. I'm worried about that many documents being withheld.”

We already know that Elena Kagan has some highly questionable anti-military and anti-Second Amendment stances, among other things. And as far as I'm concerned, the fact that she was President Obama's pick in the first place warrants suspicion in view of the other judicial nominees he's put out there.

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Iran-Pakistan Pipeline Deal Signed - Gas For Missile Technology?

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi essentially defied US Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke and vowed that Pakistan plans to continue with a gas pipeline deal signed with Iran June 13th in spite of what were termed direct warnings form Holbrooke.

"The gas pipeline project with Iran is in Pakistan's interests, " the Pakistani Foreign Minister told a news conference in the city of Multan in Punjab.

Qureshi said that as far as Pakistan is concerned, the recent UN sanctions on Iran don't affect the gas pipeline project since it is a bilateral agreement between the two countries (!) and both countries have already finalized the deal.

The pipeline was initially supposed to carry gas from Iran to Pakistan and then to India, but India withdrew from the deal last year as part of its nuclear deal with the United States.

So Iran and Pakistan are continuing with the pipeline project.

Just another boring commercial transaction...between an oil and natural gas producing Islamic state working very diligently on acquiring nuclear weapons and missile technology and another basket case, stony broke Islamic state with nothing much to sell except nuclear weapons and missile technology.

Nothing to see here, move along....

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'Change Jordan's Name To Palestine': Was Geert Wilders Right?

Dutch politician Geert Wilders ruffled more than a few feathers by suggesting that one solution for the Middle East would be to change Jordan's name to Palestine and make that the Palestinian homeland.

"Jordan is Palestine," declared Wilders, who heads the third-largest party in Holland. "Changing its name to Palestine will end the conflict in the Middle East and provide the Palestinians with an alternate homeland."

Wilders also said that Israel deserved a special status in the Dutch government because of Jerusalem and called for the Dutch government to refer to Jordan as Palestine and move its embassy to Jerusalem.

"If Jerusalem falls into the hands of the Muslims, Athens and Rome will be next. Thus, Jerusalem is the main front protecting the West. It is not a conflict over territory but rather an ideological battle, between the mentality of the liberated West and the ideology of Islamic barbarism," he said.

According to the Saudi paper Al-Watan the Kingdom's embassy in the Hague was outraged, and said that the Dutch ambassador in Riyadh would be summoned to explain Wilder's remarks as well as how democracy works in all likelyhood.

Jordan's minister for media affairs and communications, Nabil Al Sharif, described Wilders' statements as "an echo of the voice of the Israeli Right" and "crows' screams".

"Jordan is an independent and secure country which supports the Palestinian issue, and these imaginings of finding them an alternate homeland are nothing but the delusions of a few people," he said.

Delusions, hmmm? *chuckle*

The fact is that Wilders is correct,both historically and demographically.

The Kingdom of Jordan was a made up country courtesy of the British Government, and it sits on over 80% of the original Palestine Mandate.The Brits received the Palestine Mandate in 1919 from the League of nations with the express, written responsibility of creating a Jewish homeland there.This was in accordance with Britain's Balfour Declaration of 1917, and aside from an expression of philo-semitism by Christian Zionists like Arthur Balfour was partially a reward for the services of the Zion Mule Corps at Gallipoli, the Jewish spy ring in Palestine and chemist Chaim Weitzman's discovery of a way to extract nitrogen from air, without which the Allies would have run out of materials to make gunpowder and would have had to sue for peace.




What the British did five years later was to lop off 80% of Palestine, bar settlement to any Jews and remove those who had settled east of the Jordan River and install a Hashemite Bedouin monarchy over the Palestinian Arabs there under Abdullah, the son of the Bedouin Arab leader Feisal. Feisal's other son Ali, the one Lawrence of Arabia had the hots for, ended up with what was thought to be the far richer prize of another made up country, Iraq.




The idea behind the partition of Palestine aside from giving Abdullah a throne was to create both an Arab and a Jewish state there to eliminate any future tensions. Needless to say,even 80% of Palestine wasn't enough and the Arabs objected to any presence of Jews in the Middle East unless it was under sub-Jim Crow style dhimmi status.

Even worse from the Palestinian's view point, they were placed under the rule of what amounted to a foreign potentate and his henchmen, the minority Bedouin Hashemites who viewed these non-Bedouin local town Arabs with disdain.

Both the Bedouin and the Palestinians have recognized this reality in different ways.After the Jordanians and their British officers ethnically cleansed Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem of their Jewish populations, every 'Palestinian' residing there was made a Jordanian citizen. And even after Jordan lost these areas after attacking Israel in 1967, the Kingdom of Jordan passed laws stating that every inhabitant of these areas 'who was not a Jew' remained a Jordanian citizen.

Even more bizarre was the spectacle of Jordan keeping its own citizens out of what was supposedly their own country! The Palestinian 'Jordanian citizens' living there were restricted to Judea and Samaria by the Hashemite monarchy and forbidden to come into Jordan proper without special permission, which usually included depositing a substantial cash bond with the Jordanian government to make sure they returned.

The Palestinians, for their part attempted to overthrow the Hashemite monarchy and crate a Palestinian state in Jordan under Yasir Arafat in 1970.

The Palestinians might have succeeded in ousting King Hussein with Syrian help if it wasn't for the Israelis the Jordanians currently hate so much. When the Syrians began to move armor and troops into Jordan to support Arafat, the IDF mobilized at the request of President Nixon as a counterweight and the Syrians withdrew, leaving Arafat and the Palestinians at the mercy of King Hussein's Arab legion.

This event is known in Palestinian annals as 'Black September' because of the huge amount of Palestinians who were killed ( conservative estimates run at better than 10,000) and expelled with the PLO, mostly into Lebanon, where many of them still live in squalid camps like Ein-Al-Hewar.

Arik Sharon, in his autobiography 'Warrior' makes the case quite well that moblizing Israeli troops to protect the Hashemite monarchy was a major strategic error on both Israel and America's part, because it deprived the Palestinians of their actual and historic homeland in order to maintain what basically amounts to a foreign monarchy installed by the British over the local population.

At this point, the ratio of Palestinian to Bedouin is roughly 80% to 20%, respectively and the Bedouin monarchy is trying its best to even the odds even now by arbitrarily depriving Palestinians of Jordanian citizenship who have held it for years.

The entire idea of another Palestinian state has always been a fiction, which is why no one called for it or even mentioned the 'Palestinians' as a separate people until after Israel took over the areas west of the Jordan.

It's simply been a tool used to deligitimize Israel, because the idea of the hated Jews living in 'Arab Land' in peace and equality has always been the real issue.

The Arab countries not only got away with waging aggressive war on Israel in defiance of the UN in 1948, they also got away with not having to integrate into their countries the Arab refugees whose plight they were directly responsible for, or having to pay a dime for their keep ever since.

Wilders is entirely correct that integrating the 'Palestinians' in Judea and Samaria into Jordan where they're already a huge majority and then making a final border settlement with Israel would provide them with a homeland and go a long way towards effectively ending Arab-Israeli conflict.

Unfortunately, the only solution most of the Arabs would be interested in accepting involves Israel disappearing entirely.

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Iran Bars Two IAEA Inspectors From Entering

The game continues...

Iran said Monday it has banned two U.N. nuclear inspectors from entering the country because they disclosed to the media the contents of a "false" report on the country's disputed nuclear program before the U.N. nuclear watchdog reviewed it.

A report posted on the Web site of the state broadcasting company quoted Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, as saying the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, has been informed of the decision to ban the inspectors, whom he did not identify.

The ban is the latest twist in Iran's deepening tussle with the Vienna-based IAEA and the West over its nuclear program. The United States and Israel say Iran's program is geared toward making nuclear weapons. Iran denies the charge, insisting that it is for peaceful purposes only.

Earlier this month, Salehi rejected the report by the agency as "false with the purpose of influencing public opinion."

In January, Iran told the IAEA it had carried out pyroprocessing experiments, prompting a request from the agency for more information — but then backtracked in March and denied conducting such activities.

IAEA experts in May revisited the site — the Jaber Ibn Hayan Multipurpose Research Laboratory in Tehran — only to find out that the electrochemical cell had been "removed" from the unit used in the experiments, according to the report.

Iran has already threatened several times to end all cooperation with the IAEA. I'm surprised they still bother, but I suppose there enjoyment on a certain level for the regime to continue to game the West and show its contempt.

And really, none of it - the so-called sanctions, the IAEA or the 'diplomacy'- really matters.The mullahs want nuclear weaponry and the centrifuges are continuing to spin, so it's simply a matter of time.

(hat tip, memeorandum)

In a related development, according to an Arabic newspaper in London, Al-Quds al-Arabi a dozen American warships including the USS Harry Truman aircraft carrier strike group and several Israeli warships crossed through the Suez Canal on Friday with the complete assistance of the Egyptian government.

The Israelis are likely along to deal with the Iranian flotilla ship, while the Americans are likely there to deal with Iranian attempts to interdict Persian Gulf shipping...and to conduct drills for contingency plans dealing with Iran's nuclear facilities.

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Sen. Kyl: Obama Told Me He Won't Secure the Border Unless He gets GOP Votes For Amnesty

Arizona GOP Senator John Kyl went public at a townhall meeting in Tempe, saying that during a private meeting in the Oval Office President Obama told him personally that the White House is deliberately ignoring securing our southern border because he's holding it hostage as a bargaining chip for his 'immigration bill:'

On June 18, 2010, Arizona Republican Senator Jon Kyl told the audience at a North Tempe Tea Party town hall meeting that during a private, one-on-one meeting with President Obama in the Oval Office, the President told him, regarding securing the southern border with Mexico, “The problem is, . . . if we secure the border, then you all won’t have any reason to support ‘comprehensive immigration reform.’” [Audible gasps were heard throughout the audience.] Sen. Kyl continued, “In other words, they’re holding it hostage. They don’t want to secure the border unless and until it is combined with ‘comprehensive immigration reform.’”

Sen. Kyl also said he reminded President Obama that the President and the Congress has an obligation, a duty, to secure the border.

Do I believe this? 110%. Given how Obama has behaved in office, this is right in character.

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Honeywell: Enabling Iran's Quest for Nuclear Weapons

There's an interesting demonstration planned tomorrow, June 21st at a corporate headquarters in New Jersey by a wide variety of groups, including StandWithUs, United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), No Nukes for Iran and a number of other groups between 1:00 and 2:00 PM.

The target? The Honeywell corporate headquarters located at 101 Columbia Road in Morristown.

What Honeywell done to excite all this well-deserved wrath is reminiscent of those companies that continued to trade with Hitler even after his violent and genocidal aims became clear.

Honeywell, you see, does a great deal of business in Iran, especially with its energy sector. A Honeywell subsidiary, Universal Oil Products is currently expanding and upgrading Iran's Arak refinery, helping the regime to overcome one of its primary strategic weaknesses.

Another interesting facility located in the Arak complex is Iran's heavy water plant, a facility that has no peaceful application and is only useful in helping to formulate nuclear weapons.

Honeywell has consistently refused to address this, very interesting considering that Honeywell is involved in more US government contracts than any other company currently doing business in Iran and the bi-partisan support in Congress for increased sanctions aimed at Iran's oil and natural gas industry.

Not to mention simple decency.

If you can't be at the demonstration, you can send a message to Honeywell here

I also recommend that you contact your representative in Congress and call for a total investigation of the government contracts Honeywell is currently involved in, with an aim of terminating them or switching them to other vendors to the degree this is possible.

Certainly they shouldn't be the recipient of any more government business.

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Mark Steyn's Latest: 'The Epitome of Mediocrity'

Leave it to Mark Steyn to phrase it just right:

I believe it was Jean Giraudoux who first said, "Only the mediocre are always at their best." Barack Obama was supposed to be the best, the very best, and yet he is always, reliably, consistently mediocre. His speech on oil was no better or worse than his speech on race. Yet the Obammyboppers who once squealed with delight are weary of last year's boy band. At the end of the big Oval Office address, Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews and the rest of the MSNBC gang jeered the president. For a bewildered President Obama, it must have felt like his Ceausescu balcony moment. Had they caught up with him in the White House parking lot, they would have put him up against the wall and clubbed him to a pulp with Mr. Matthews' no-longer-tingling leg.

For the first time, I felt a wee bit sorry for the poor fellow. What had he done to so enrage his full supporting chorus? In The Washington Post, the reaction of longtime Obammysoxer Eugene Robinson was headlined "Obama disappoints from the beginning of his speech."

So what? He always "disappoints." What would have been startling would have been if he hadn't "disappointed." His eve-of-election rally for Martha Coakley "disappointed" the Massachusetts electorate so much it gave Ted Kennedy's seat to a Republican. His speech for Chicago's Olympic bid "disappointed" the Oslo committee so much it gave the games to Pyongyang, or Ougadougou, or any city offering to build a stadium with electrical outlets incompatible with Mr. Obama's teleprompter. Be honest, guys, his inaugural address "disappointed," too, didn't it? Oh, in those days, you still did your best to make the case for it. "He carries us from meditative bead to meditative bead, and invites us to contemplate," wrote Stanley Fish in the New York Times. "There is a technical term for this kind of writing - parataxis, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as 'the placing of propositions or clauses one after the other without indicating ... the relation of co-ordination or subordination between them.'"

Gotcha. To a fool, His Majesty's new clothes appear invisible. But, to a wise man, the placing of buttons and pockets without indicating the relation of co-ordination is a fascinating exercise in parataxical couture.

Read the rest here....strong stuff.


(hat tip, Soccer Dad

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Democrats Earmark $50M To Lure Young And Minority Voters To The Polls

There's a very revealing story in today's WAPO about the Democrats new get out the vote efforts for the midterms:

As political gambles go, it's a big and risky one: $50 million to test the proposition that the Democratic Party's outreach to new voters that helped make Barack Obama president can work in an election where his name is not on the ballot.

The standard rule of midterm elections is that only the most reliable voters show up at the polls, so both parties have traditionally focused on the unglamorous and conventional work that turns out their bases. But this year, the Democrats are doubling down on registering and motivating newer voters -- especially the 15 million heavily minority and young, who made it to the polls for the first time in the last presidential election.

"It's a great experiment to see whether we can bring out voters whose only previous vote was in 2008," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

The party's overall budget for reaching new voters is more than twice as big as the $17 million it spent during the tumultuous 2006 midterm, which returned control of both houses of Congress to the Democrats. {...}

"When that announcement was made, it just wasn't taken very credibly," says Republican National Committee spokesman Doug Heye. "Those voters just aren't going to be there this time."

He's not alone in thinking that.

Some veteran Democratic Party operatives are also skeptical that the $50 million investment will pay off -- except, perhaps, in keeping the grassroots operation alive for Obama's reelection bid two years from now. Some even suggest that the president's team has put his long-term interests ahead of his party's immediate struggle for survival.

"I have zero confidence that they're heading in the right direction here," says one longtime Democratic organizer who didn't want to be quoted by name criticizing his party's major midterm election initiative. Added another: "I think they're going to come in for a very rude awakening. It's going to be brutal."

If that turns out to be the case, the doubters say, Democrats will wake up the morning of Nov. 3 wishing they had spent that $50 million on more traditional methods, like television ads, for reaching their base and persuading independents.

Let's translate this into non-PC terms.

The Democrat hierarchy is admitting here that they have lost the majority of White, senior, middle class and independent voters beyond all redemption. So they are spending their money - lots of it - to try and turn out inexperienced and usually credible college students, Black America ( where Obama still polls decently for reasons I'll allow you to fill in for yourselves) and the pro amnesty constituency.In other words, people who form a disproportionate percentage of non-taxpayers.

That, along with Obama's far left base and Big Labor has become the new Democrat constituency. They've lost almost everything else.

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Exposed -The Real Story On The 'Peace Activists' behind The Hezbollah Flotilla

Keep this in mind, especially if the Israelis need to use forceful means to stop them.

I would guess that the 'goods' carried on these ships will be similar to the first flotilla - poorly packed foods ( even though no one is Gaza is starving), expired medicines and a few medical items in poor repair.The idea here is propaganda, after all.

Subsequent shipments will be the ones containing Iranian missiles and weaponry.

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Leftist PR Firm Flacks For Jihad - And There's A J-Street Connection

Fenton Communications, a far Left PR and communications firm with offices in D.C., New York, and San Francisco whose biggest project to date was taking Geore Soros' MoveOn.Org and turning it into a national brand name and political force has a brand new project.

They've signed contracts with the government of Qatar to create an international campaign with the object of delegitimizing Israel and generating 'activist' support for Hamas, with special attention paid to university campuses.

The campaign is known as the “Al Fakhoora Project.”

Fenton’s Al Fakhoora project is cleverly disguised as a campaign to help students in Gaza in the pursuit of a better education.

One of the documents filed with the Department of Justice describes Al Fakhoora as a “student-led campaign to protect education from violence during war or conflicts, specifically in Gaza, and to lead an international public opinion awareness campaign that advocates for the accountability of those who participated in attacks on schools in Gaza.”

Al Fakhoora Director Farooq Burney explains in a YouTube video about the Gaza flotilla attack that “the purpose of us to join this trip was number one, to allow support, or to enable us to interact with students in Gaza. Our intention was to go there and lend our support to students in Gaza and let them know that people care for them, and people are advocating for them to have access to quality education.”

"Unfortunately,” Burney went on, “we were attacked by the Israeli navy. People were killed. People were injured. It was very saddening to see that, to have somebody die in front of you . . . We talk about humanitarian work, we talk about activism. I don’t know how much more peaceful this could have been.”

I think enough of you have seen the videos by now to see exactly how 'peaceful' the jihadists were on the Mamera.

Now Fenton Communications rings a bell...because the anti-Israel group J-Street's director Jeremy Ben-Ami just happened to have been Fenton Communications’ senior vice president right up until he 'launched' J-Street with George Soros' money.

Tell me - do you think J Street’s refusal to support Israel’s Operation Cast Lead to stop the missiles coming at them from Hamas had anything to do with his prior ties to Fenton? And that's assuming he has no present ties or financial interest in the company.

And what about J-Street's financial support via its PAC for a number of Lefty Democrat Congressmen who signed a letter supporting Hamas, including Israel haters like Keith Ellison, John Conyers, Jim Moran, Mike Honda, Barbara Lee,and Jim McDermott - not to mention J-Street officially endorsing the letter? Were Ben-Ami's ties to Fenton behind that?

Somehow I doubt it's a coincidence. Although it does point out, as if it needed pointing out at this late date that Anti-Semitism definitely has a home in a least a decent sized part of the 'progressive' Left.

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The Full LATMA Update, Including The Three Terrors And Other Skits

Wicked Israeli political satire at it's best. I especially like the Prince Chuckie bit and the comment right after the Three Terrors bit featuring Obama...

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LATMA's Latest Video: 'The Three Terrors'

Iran's Ahmadinejad, Turkey's Tayyip Erdogan and Syria's Basher Assad...all on one stage ( unfortunately, not for the first time).

From the same folks who brought you the Gaza Flotilla choir singing 'We Con The World.'

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