France Moves To The Right

 

France's municipal election returns are in, and the results may show a coming trend not just in France, but in Europe as a whole.

Less than two years after Socialist François Hollande decisive victory, the French Left has suffered major defeats in France's municipal elections that look to be a trend for the national elections in 2017.

Hollande's socialist policies of sky high tax rates on businesses and 'the rich' and his failure to produce economic growth as a result have resulted in a huge surge in unemployment and economic stagnation in France as well as an exodus of talented professionals and entrepreneurs.

And his support for social policies like homosexual marriage(still anathema in predominantly Catholic France)and the growing unpopularity of the EU and the problems inherent with Muslim immigration and high crime rates in the cities as well as Hollande's personal involvement in a front page scandal involving his partner French journalist Valérie Trierweiler and Hollande's new love interest, an actress named Julie Gayet 20 years his junior have all combined to make him extremely unpopular with all but the Socialist's hard core base.

Disaffection has definitely set in with the French and the record low voter turnout of around 60 per cent(extremely low for France) mirrors America's own low turnout in 2012.

Marine Le Pen's National Front, which took a populist stance on low taxes,immigration and crime garnered some of the best results in their history.

 

The FN won an outright majority in the northern town of Henin-Beaumont and was first-placed in the eastern town of Forbach and the southern towns of Avignon, Perpignan and Béziers. Nationwide, the FN scored seven percent of the vote, according to pollster BVA – a high national tally, given that it only fielded candidates in some 600 of France's total 36,000 municipalities. The FN could be in position to win 10-15 mayoral contests in the second round of voting ( France's election laws mandate a runoff between the two top vote getters if no candidate has above 50% of the vote for a majority).

Mdm. Le Pen said that it had an been “exceptional” election for the party.

“The National Front has arrived as a major independent force – a political force both at the national and local level," she said. Indeed it has.The FN appears more and more to the French as an alternative, capable of taking responsibility and governing. The FN is expected to do quite well in the May runoffs, and will certainly move parties like the UMP further Right.

Nicholas Sarkozy's center right UMP also did fairly well, as parties on the Right overall including the UMP party but not the FN, secured 48 percent. This could put Le Pen's National Front in a 'kingmaker' position in the national elections if these trends hold.

Left wing parties including Hollande's Socialists garnered 43% of the vote but their support was concentrated in certain areas, taking away from their overall strength. One surprise in the election was was the Socialists’ terrible showing in the southern port city of Marseille, where veteran UMP mayor Jean-Claude Gaudin is likely to win a fourth term. The Socialists had expected to do well in Marseilles because of its Muslim population and unionized workers, but Socialist Patrick Menucci was only able to place a distant third behind Gaudin and the FN candidate.

Paris is going to have it's first female mayor, as the runoof will be between  Socialist Anne Hidalgo and the UMP's Nathalie Kosciusko Morizet. Hildalgo is favored because the Greens are expected to  vote for her,but Morizet might get enough FN and other Right-leaning voters to offset that. Cherchez le femme!

North Carolina Passes Anti-Sharia Law

North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory has signed a new bill into law that prohibits judges in the state from considering sharia in their rulings.

The bill, which easily passed both houses of the legislature uses language that targets any foreign laws, without specifically mentioning Sharia and thus will probably avoid what happened in Oklahoma, where a Democrat appointed Federal judge ruled the Oklahoma law unconstitutional on th egrounds it was discriminatory.

There are similar laws now in Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana, South Dakota, and Tennessee with several other states pending, including Alabama, where the legislature approved a constitutional amendment for the state's voters to approve in 2014.

Muslim brotherhood front CAIR was in the forefront of a campaign to get Governor McCrory to veto the bill.They called a 'national action alert' urging Muslims to e-mail the governor:

This “foreign law” bill is a thinly-veiled attack on the state’s Muslim population, that only serves to marginalize Muslims and to deny them equal rights and equal access to the courts enjoyed by other religious groups.

To anyone whom knows anything about sharia law, this is ridiculous. Under sharia, women are essentially property. There is no age limit for a girl to be married off, wife beating is acceptable, a woman's testimony is worth half of a man's and in some cases like rape inadmissible unless there are two male Muslim witnesses. Women have no custody rights to their children in the case of divorce ( which can be done on any pretext by a husband even using three text messages), marital rape is legal, non-Muslims are not allowed to testify in court, and homosexual behavior calls for the death sentence. Far from denying Muslims equal rights and access to the courts, banning sharia from consideration in America's courts ensures it.

It's also necessary to codify this because a number of judges have taken it into their heads to acquit Muslims of crimes like marital rape,child abduction and wife beating because they have ruled that the perpetrators cannot be convicted due to 'cultural norms' and their religious principles.

Another aspect of this has to do with Islam itself. In Britain, where sharia is mandatory for family matters and has the same force as British common law, Muslim women have not only seen their legal rights eroded steadily by the use of sharia courts but it has contributed to the UK's Muslim communities becoming almost a state within a state.

If CAIR and anyone else want to live under sharia, well and good. There are a number of countries where where sharia is the basis of law and the time I checked,our pots and our airports were still functioning.

But this is America, where our laws and Constitution ensure protections that are incompatible with sharia law. To live here in America is to accept that.

Rattle Snake Shake - Abbas Now Says He'll Consider Extending Peace Talks For Additional Israeli Concessions

Palestine's unelected dictator Mahmoud Abbas has an offer he thinks Israel can't refuse, especially with president Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry backing him up.

In his meeting with President Obama, Abbas pretty much urinated all over Kerry's framework agreement that was supposed to keep the peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority going past the April 29th deadline.

Mahmoud Abbas refused to settle for anything less than the re-division of Jerusalem with the Jewish Holy Sites under PA control, refused to recognize Israel as a Jewish State, and would not commit to a peace agreement being an end to the conflict or to forgo the idea that thousands of hostile 'refugees' have a right to resettle in Israel. In other words, as Abbas said when he returned to Ramallah, he "refused to surrender" or to make any concessions at all that a reasonable person would expect the Israelis to accept.

The Israelis originally were arm twisted into committing to release 100 terrorist killers convicted in Israeli civil courts as the price to get Abbas back to the negotiating table. Seeing that Abbas is committed to a rejectionist stance that no Israeli government could conceivably accept, the Israelis are concerned that Abbas will simply accept the last shipment of terrorist killers free of charge and then simply bow out of the talks entirely.So the Israeli government has quite reasonably signaled that
since the talks are collapsing anyway and Abbas shows no signs of being willing to negotiate any of his demands, they will probably hang on to the last batch of killers and leave it at that.

According to Ma'an, the Palestinian news site, a PA official says that Abbas might be willing to extend the talks, but he has new demands, just for the privilege of hearing him say no over and over again for the next few months. Not only does he want the current shipment of terrorist killers kicked loose,but he wants a commitment from Israel to free an additional 100 prisoners between now and December. And he wants a number of high level terrorists freed, including Marwan Barghouti, who was convicted in Israeli courts of planning and carrying out the murder of a number of Israelis and sentenced to five life terms.

But wait, there's more. He also wants Israel to commit to a building freeze in all of Judea and Samaria as well as East Jerusalem, even in areas like the Gush Etzion bloc that are going to remain part of Israel in any peace agreement anyway.A building freeze was never part of the original agreement that restarted the talks, but Abbas is insisting on it as something new, just to get him back to the table.

Kerry and his negotiations teammate Martin Indyk have been working on the Israelis to swallow this, but so far without success. And no wonder. There's really no benefit to Israel to do this.

My source inside the PA confirmed to me that the whole strategy here is to get whatever they can get from Israel and then blow the talks up and go to the UN anyway. The PA has no fear of any U.S. pressure or opposition because of their lawyer and community organizer in the White House.

As for the Israelis, the recent interview President Obama gave where he essentially threatened Israel unless they complied with Abbas' demands, the reception Israeli PM Netanyahu got in Washington, the 180 degree switcharoo by the U.S on insisting that Abbas recognize Israel as a Jewish State and Abbas' failure to accept the framework or even make any reasonable attempt at compromise have pretty much solidified Israeli public opinion except among the diehards and true believers. There's no reason for them to trust anything Kerry or President Obama commit to, let alone Abbas, and the climate for releasing more convicted terrorists is decidedly frosty.

That aside, rest assured that when the talks blow up, President Obama will publicly work on shifting the blame on Israel and Netanyahu and use it as an excuse to do with what he always wanted to do anyway - create that 'daylight ' he wanted between the U.S. and Israel and help establish 'Palestine' on the '67 lines in the UN...even if it's just on paper.

Justice - Canadian Court Seizes Iranian Assets To Compensate Terrorism Victims

The U.S.may have felt like it was 'unable' to enforce legal judgments against Iran for terrorist activities, but Canada is refreshingly different.

An Ontario court has ordered the seizure of more than $7 million in Iranian assets to compensate American victims of Iran-sponsored terrorism for judgments they received in American courts. The judgments were the result of court verdicts in America against Iran for the regime's role in training, arming and financing Hamas and Hezbollah.

The American victims and their families were previously awarded damages in US courts but were not allowed collect from any Iranian government assets in the United States. While lawsuits against countries like Iran that sponsor terrorism have been made possible by the "terrorism exception" Congress added to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, the U.S. State Department and the Department of Justice routinely attempt to block victims from collecting on the grounds that allowing the assets to be taken "can have a significant, detrimental impact on the conduct of our foreign relations" . They have successfully blocked victims of Iranian backed terrorism from collecting judgments in a number of cases.

However, many countries, including Canada have reciprocity treaties which allow judgments in one country to be valid in another. And Canada's 2012 Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act. The law strips state immunity in civil lawsuits from countries deemed to be “supporting terrorism.”

The Canadian courts ordered one bank account worth $1.47 million controlled by an Iranian diplomat, and another with a balance of $511,000 controlled by Iran’s charge d’affaires in Ottawa to be seized when evidence established that the funds were actually controlled by the Iranian government.

And two building labeled as 'cultural centers', one in Toronto and one in Ottawa with a combined estimated value of over $5 million will also be sold with vthe proceeds going to the defendants. Bioth building are actually owned by a front group for Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

The plaintiffs are Edward Tracy and the family of Joseph Cicippio. Both men were captured and held hostage in Beirut from 1986 to 1991 and both got legal judgments in U.S. courts that they were prevented from collecting against Iranian assets in America. Several other plaintiff including a Canadian dentist who was badly wounded by a Hamas terrorist will also share in the award due to a side deal worked out between the lawyers.

Iran did not contest the case, but the regime responded in the usual vicious fashion against the ruling.

Kudos to Canada for having the courage to rule on the side of justice and decency. Hopefully Canada will set the example for other countries to do the same, including my own.

Malaysian PM: "Flight 370 Crashed With No Survivors" ( And What They're Not Telling You)

 

Today, Malaya's Prime Minister Najib Razak announced in a press conference today that said that he was briefed by Britain's Air Accident Investigations Branch on data from Inmarsat, the satellite company that provided data used in the search for the missing plane. It showed that Flight 370's last position was in the Indian Ocean, due west of Perth, Australia.

"This is a remote location, far from any possible landing sites,'' Mr. Najib said. "It is therefore with deep sadness and regret that I must inform you that, according to this new data, Flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean."

A text from the airline to the victim's families put it this way: “We deeply regret that we have to assume beyond any reasonable doubt that MH370 has been lost and that none of those on board have survived.”

Given the fuel capacity, the chances are that they're correct, although as yet no wreckage or debris has been found. And, as Prime Minister Razak himself said, there are still numerous questions about what happened.

The one thing that's clear is how little we know, but that's largely because we're looking not at the facts we know for sure and how they might fit together.

I recently received an e-mail from one of my sources that, combined with a few other known facts, gives us a fairly plausible line of inquiry to follow.

That this was an attempted hijacking of some sort is pretty obvious by now. As I wrote previously, For a modern airliner to simply disappear like this is almost unheard of, because of the modern tracking technology involved. Aside from the routine radar and satellite tracking, every airliner contains a flight recorder and a transponder which emit electronic signals, as well as an emergency location beacon, a highly durable electronic signaling device to enable an airliner to be quickly located if something unexpected occurs.

Apparently, the transponder which identifies the flight and provides heading and altitude data was deliberately switched off shortly after that last known last radio contact with the jet, when co-pilot Fariq Ab Hamid said "all right, good night," to air traffic controllers.

This is totally against procedure. Someone did it for a reason, and that person had to have been in the cockpit at that exact time, which means it was either co-pilot Fariq Ab Hamid, the pilot Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah or an unknown third party.

Not only that, but later on, someone in the cockpit turned off the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS). This system sends out electronic pings to satellites and continued to do so after Flight 370 disappeared from the air traffic controller's radar. That's how we know the plane changed course and headed west. If it wasn't turned off, it would have continued to send out signals no matter where the plane was - in the air or on the ground. The last contact came from Thai military radar at 2:15 AM local time.

There are also other signals, from the radar altimeter and weather radar. These could also have been disabled, but a prudent pilot wouldn't have done so, first because they came in handy in certain situations and second because while they send out signals, they're difficult to distinguish from other planes if Flight 370 was on established commercial flight paths. Think of a bunch of cars on the highway at night. They all have their headlights on, but it's hard to pick out an individual auto on a highway, as opposed to one car on a small street at night. There's also the fact that various governments might not want to necessarily reveal any signals they got from these sources because it could reveal their electronic intel collection methods.

My friend Sara Noble over at the Independent Sentinel has a piece worth reading that draws on a story from the UK Independent that the plane slipped under Pakistani radar and is sitting somewhere under Taliban control, covered by radar-absorbent camouflage netting. It could be, although a 777-200 requires a runway length of 3,300 to 5,000 feet or so (1,000 to 1,500 meters) at least to land under most conditions. That's between over half a mile and almost a mile in length, and a decent landing field that covert might have been hard to find but not impossible - unless the Taliban either had help or we're not talking about the Taliban at all. Or even a landing, since as I originally thought, Flight 370 succumbed to a 'work accident' and crashed en route to wherever it was headed.

So let's take this to the next step. Who might have wanted to hijack this particular Boeing 777-200? And why?

While the use of Flight 370 as a terrorist weapon is certainly possible, 9/11 showed that it was just as easy to hijack a plane filled with highly combustible jet fuel, smash it into something and cause a great deal of damage and death. So I rate the motive of hijacking the plane for use as a flying bomb unlikely. Moreover, if the plane did land and is being converted into a terrorist weapon, it might not make it to target since every military in the region is watching for it and the minute it surfaces it will likely attract something like a HellFire missile fairly quickly.

So let's look further at what other reason there might have been to hijack Flight 370,and who might have been involved.

We know that this plane was originally bound for China and was loaded with Chinese nationals.We also know that the pilot (and possibly the co-pilot) were fanatic devotees of Anwar Ibrahim, a hard line Islamist with major ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and who was endorsed when he ran for prime minister in Malaysia by none other than Brotherhood leader Sheikh Youseff Qaradawi. Ibrahim lost the election and was later jailed for 5 years for sodomizing one of his aides (homosexuality is illegal in Malaysia) which infuriated his supporters.

I've already said why I believe  hijacking Flight 370 for use as a 'flying bomb' is unlikely. The only way that could have happened is with Pakistan's connivance (the idea of a Boeing 777-200 'slipping under Pakistani radar' is ridiculous), which is certainly possible if somewhat unlikely. But if the plane wasn't hijacked for use as a terrorist bomb, what was the motive for doing it?

Again, remember that Flight 370's passengers were primarily Chinese.

Most of you will be unaware of the low level jihad being waged in Western China by the Uighers, Chinese Muslims who  seek to establish a sharia state  and who have committed a number of terrorist attacks against Han Chinese nationals.

Given the Islamist orientation of the pilot and co-pilot, I feel fairly certain that the idea here was to fly to Pakistan and ransom the plane and the passengers to China for cash, either to support the Uigher jihad or other Islamist causes. The ransom demanded could easily have been in the tens of millions.

What ultimately happened to Flight 370? Pure speculation on my part, but when the truth comes out if it ever does, I think we'll find that one of these scenarios occurred:

(A) The plane was unable to land as planned and crashed where the authorities are saying it did or somewhere else,either from lack of fuel or from a 'work accident' in midair.

(B) The plane landed successfully, the ransom demands were submitted and the Chinese refused to deal. So the plane was destroyed and the passengers killed, either on the ground or in the air.

(C) The announcement of the crash was a hoax designed to take the spotlight off this story, because ransom negotiations are continuing.

If scenarios B or C are the way things went down, the motivation of the authorities to simply treat this as a mysterious crash and move on are obvious.

My thanks to the Warlord for providing a needed missing piece here.

Forum:What Is The Meaning Of 'Spirituality' To You?

Every week on Monday morning , the Watcher's Council and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher's Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week's question:What Is The Meaning Of 'Spirituality' To You?

Liberty's Spirit:Spirituality is the understanding that the universe is greater than yourself, but at the same time, you are obligated to better the world around you as if you, and you alone, are responsible for the continuation of all living creatures. It matters not to me how any one person comes to this realization. I do not believe that a person has to have a religion to be a good person (unfortunately there are too many people in the world who use religion as a weapon to hurt others instead of a path to goodness). What matters is that individuals understand that their singular actions effect everyone around them and that there is a ripple effect in the dynamics of the universe. The constant desire to be kind to all living creatures around you is the epitome of spirituality. Every little action can have a positive effect on a stranger. A simple smile at a passing individual could bring joy to their world in ways you will never know. Trying to be a better person than you were the moment before is the path to spirituality and the constant challenge of humanity.

Simply Jews:That one sent me to the dictionary.

The first meaning ("Property or income owned by a church") is hardly relevant to me.
The second one ("Concern with things of the spirit") is somewhat more interesting, although, I suspect, much easier to deal with for religious people, which I am not.

So, I shall have to define it for myself, then. I would say that spirituality means several activities that a person occupies him/herself during the breaks in the daily mundane pursuit of happiness in its material aspect.

Our spiritual pursuits could be the main difference between us and the animals, although as a definition this statement doesn't add much understanding of spirituality.

So, to be more specific, let's go by example: fine arts, literature, music and, (unfortunately I have to say it), the elements of popular culture such as pop, heavy metal and similar kinds of musics, should be all named as part of our spirituality.

As, of course, the religious person's study of things religious and praying, equivalent of which for a secular person would be philosophy - provided the secular person indulges in this field of activity.

And, if you want to take the root of the word "spirituality" more literally, a good bottle of spirit, like the one distillated by the magicians of Scotland, has something to do with spirituality too. Depending on the dosage, of course.

The Noisy Room: The meaning of 'spirituality' to me is simply my lifelong walk with God. As a child, my father was in construction and we moved constantly. My father was agnostic and my Grandmother was a devout Christian. However, we were never forced to go to church. From the time I can remember walking and talking, I have always gravitated to the Bible and its teachings. I went to church myself from the time I was very young - always alone. I have always felt Him with me - in the good and bad times and he has sustained me through many battles during my life. I could no more separate my life and being from my belief in God, than I could stop fighting against Communism. Most of my life, I have felt led by my spirituality to pursue the work I am ensconced in. It is my belief that I follow a calling from God and each and every day I pray for guidance. I gladly follow my path and His lead... I always will until I leave this world for the next.

JoshuaPundit: Spirituality is the horse that takes you on your journey towards Almighty G-d. Faith and acceptance is the reward at journey's end. And should you be so fortunate as to be so close to the Father of Us All to be blessed with faith and acceptance, the next step is the self discipline to practice and live that faith and acceptance in this world, as an offering.

GrEaT sAtAn"S gIrLfRiEnD: “Authentic spirituality involves an emotional response, what I will call the spiritual response, which can include feelings of significance, unity, awe, joy, acceptance, and consolation. Such feelings are intrinsically rewarding and so are sought out in their own right, but they also help us in dealing with difficult situations involving death, loss, and disappointment. The spiritual response thus helps meet our affective needs for both celebration and reconciliation. "

As Richard Dawkins puts it in his book Unweaving the Rainbow, we have an "appetite for wonder," an appetite for evoking the positive emotional states that are linked to our deepest existential questions.
But what might evoke these states? Spirituality often involves a cognitive context, a set of beliefs about oneself and the world which can both inspire the spiritual response and provide an interpretation of it. Our ideas about what ultimately exists, who we fundamentally are, and our place in the greater scheme of things form the cognitive context for spirituality. By contemplating such beliefs we are temporarily drawn out of the mundane into the realization of life’s deeper significance, and this realization generates emotional effects. But equally, the spiritual response thus generated is itself interpreted in the light of our basic beliefs; namely, it is taken to reflect the ultimate truth of our situation as we conceive it. The cognitive context of spirituality and the spiritual response are therefore linked tightly in reciprocal evocation and validation.

A third essential component of spirituality is what is ordinarily called spiritual practice. Since the intellectual appreciation of fundamental beliefs alone may not suffice to evoke a particularly deep experience, various non-cognitive techniques can help to access the spiritual response. Activities such as dance, singing, chant, meditation, and participation in various rituals and ceremonies all can play a role in moving us from the head to the heart. And it is in the heart, or gut, after all, where we find the most powerful intrinsic rewards of spirituality, as profound as its cognitive context might be.

Although the emotional content of the spiritual response - feelings of connection, significance, serenity, acceptance – is common to all spirituality, the background beliefs and specific practices vary tremendously. Almost all of us have the biological capacity to feel spiritually transported, but the cognitive context of those moments and the techniques to induce them are a matter of our culture.

A fascinating variety of spiritual traditions have arisen, ranging from the rigorous, ascetic regimes of Zen meditation to the ecstatic communal celebration of a Sunday morning gospel service, and each tradition has its own conception of the world and the individual’s place in it.

Stemming from these beliefs there are a multiplicity of spiritual objects of veneration, of deeper realities to be encountered: God, Earth, Nature, Emptiness, angels, devils, ancestors, previous incarnations, the Force, you name it (for a current, pop-cultural sampling of these, visit Beliefnet). For each tradition, spiritual experience is taken to be the direct appreciation of the ultimate truth about the world, a way to transcend one’s limited everyday perspective in the quest for meaning, unity, and serenity.

One of the most prominent recurring themes in Paul's writings is the contrast between the flesh and the spirit. In the original Greek manuscripts of Paul's letters, the Greek word SARX appears over ninety times. This word is most often translated as "flesh" and represents the physical, literal, carnal viewpoint. The opposite of the word SARX is the word PNEUMOS. This word appears over one hundred and thirty times in Paul's writings and is translated as "spirit".

The PNEUMOS represents the spiritual, non-physical, symbolic view. One of the best examples illustrating this contrast between the fleshly, literal outlook and the non -physical, spiritual perspective can be found in the epistle that Paul wrote to the Christians of Rome.

In this letter he declared: "there is therefore now no condemnation to those... who do not walk according to the flesh (SARX), but according to the Spirit (PNEUMOS)... for the mind of the flesh (SARX) is death; but the mind of the Spirit (PHRONEMA TOU PNEUMATOS) is life and peace; because of this the mind of the flesh (SARX) is enmity towards God... those in the flesh (SARX) are not able to please God... if anyone has not the Spirit (PNEUMOS) of Christ, this one is not His... for as many as are led by the Spirit (PNEUMOS) of God, these are sons of God" -Romans 8 (Interlinear Bible)

When Paul spoke of "those in the flesh [who] are not able to please God", he certainly was not implying that anyone who has a physical, fleshly body can't please God. Instead, he's referring to the "mind of the flesh (SARX)"... the fleshly, literal attitudes, interpretations and ways of thinking which "are not able to please God". It is the "mind of the flesh" - being literal minded which is "death." It is the "mind of the spirit" - having a spiritual viewpoint which "is life".

To make absolutely certain that Christians don't miss this important point, Paul repeats it again in another passage. He wrote: "God made us able ministers of a new covenant; not of letter, but of Spirit (PNEUMOS). For the letter [the literal] kills, but the Spirit makes alive" -2 Corinthians 3:6 (Interlinear Bible)

The literal "kills". The "mind of the flesh" is "death". But seeing things in terms of their spiritual meanings breathes life into them and fosters true understanding.It was to these kinds of literal minded people that Jesus was referring when he said "seeing they do not see and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand".

The Glittering Eye: I think that people refer to themselves as "spiritual" when they don't want to be inconvenienced by a religion or systematic theology or ethics that might demand something from them or constrain their actions.

Perhaps that's unkind of me.

Ask Marion: Spirituality to me is my (everyone’s) personal connection to God, our creator, but also to each other, to all living creatures and to nature. I liken it to a telephone for our souls.

Spirituality is the personal side of religion. Religion educates us and often helps people find a way to meet and mingle with like minded souls or searchers, but organized religion also has a worldly agenda that sometimes steers us far from spirituality and what I see as organized religions’ true and original intent.

I grew up Catholic and they actually steer you away from what I see as spirituality where each of us can speak and pray to God directly at any and all times instead of having to go through a third party. You can see how popular I was with the nuns… ;-)

For me spirituality includes the little voice in our heads, the tug in our hearts and the dreams or premonitions that tell us what is right or lead us in the right direction… if we listen. For those of us driver personality types, like me, I try to listen and often hear but then have to fight myself not to try to take control and argue with God, in our discussions that I have with him throughout the day, for my point of view.

The voice of spirituality is far too often not heard by many and even if they do, it is equally as often ignored. I remember Dr. Robert H. Schuller, Founder of the Crystal Cathedral, saying in one of his sermons, that we in countries like the United States and other first world countries, where we have so much to be grateful for, often have a much shallower connection to God and that inner voice than people in very poor nations where merely surviving is an every day struggle, because our world is so busy, so noisy and so full of distractions, that we no longer search for God, take time to listen to him talking to each of us, or recognize His messages to us. Just like many of us never take the time to pray or just talk to God... until we need or want something from Him. for as they say... there are no athiests in foxholes.

Also included in the realm of spirituality for me are joy and sadness… the feeling you get when you look into your children’s eyes; the feeling you get when you look into your pets' or any animals' eyes; the indescribable feeling you get when you see the beauty in nature; the feeling of peace you get when you took action or stood for the right thing, no matter what the personal cost to you. Spirituality is what makes living creatures of all kinds help each other and do good deeds that no one will ever know about and for which the only reward is the fulfillment of having done something good. But for me it is also the sadness you feel when we, humans anywhere in the world, abuse each other, when animals are mistreated, when we destroy a part of the world's landscape or when humanity falls short no matter how far we are removed from the person (people), place, living-creature or event… and the guilt that we should feel for not having stepped-up. It is also the combined feeling of joy and sorrow that one feels if they were ever blessed to be holding another living creature... a loved-one or a pet, when they take their last breath and leave this world, knowing... if you have the belief, that they are entering the next.

Spirituality is the glue that holds us all together and that will hopefully someday prevail over the hate and politics that run the world.

 Bookworm Room: When I was young, I called myself an atheist. There is no God, I thought.

As I've grown older, though, I've realized a few things. First, we humans are definitely greater than the sum of our parts. We can deconstruct humans down to the atomic level without ever touching upon the animating force that powers us or understanding our ability to function not just mechanically, but in a moral, abstract way. Second, no one has answered to my satisfaction what preceded the Big Bang. And third, without a belief in something greater than ourselves, nothing controls our baser instincts. Incidentally, by greater than ourselves, I don't mean a collection of individuals, such as government, as opposed to a single individual or a small group of individuals. When I speak of something greater, I refer to an entity other than mankind. I don't know if this entity created us, controls us, or just observes us, but I believe it exists and that we would be wise to assume that it has certain expectations about our behavior.

To me, then, spirituality means accepting that there is -- and must be -- something out there bigger than we are, and believing that this greater being demands that we behave according to our best abilities, not our worst. I find the Judeo-Christian tradition a very satisfying way of both recognizing a greater being and demanding a higher standard of living.

  Well, there you have it.

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Obama Secretly Rewrote Freedom Of Information Act to Exclude Him And All WH Docs

 

It has come to light the President Obama, who promised the most transparent administration history was lying to the American people - again.

On April 15, 2009, a mere four months after he was sworn into office, the president decided to secretly rewrite the Freedom Of Information Act, which is designed to inform the public and provide oversight of various government activities and behavior to keep any of what it called “White House equities” from being released without a White House review:

The rewrite came in an April 15, 2009, memo from then-White House Counsel Greg Craig instructing the executive branch to let White House officials review any documents sought by FOIA requestors that involved "White House equities."

That phrase is nowhere to be found in the FOIA, yet the Obama White House effectively amended the law to create a new exception to justify keeping public documents locked away from the public.

The equities exception is breathtaking in its breadth. As the Greg memo put it, any document request is covered, including "congressional committee requests, GAO requests, judicial subpoenas and FOIA requests."

And it doesn't matter what format the documents happen to be in because, according to Greg, the equities exception "applies to all documents and records, whether in oral, paper, or electronic form, that relate to communications to and from the White House, including preparations for such communications."

This secret rewrite basically stopped federal agencies from answering FOIA requests which might include “White House equities” within the 20 days required by law, and there is no time limit on how long a 'review' might take. It covers whatever the White House says it covers and keeps whatever it wants hidden away as long as the White House wants to.

Since the White House gets to decide for itself what “White House equities” consist of and how long the White House feels like taking to review requests which might possibly include them, what the president and his team have effectively done is to make the FOIA law meaningless. They can label nearly everything as a 'White House Equity' and stonewall and exclude the public and the media forever,or pick a time to sign off on whatever does get released when it's politically advantageous, if at all.

In one case cited by Cause of Action, the response to a request from a Los Angeles Times reporter to the Department of the Interior for "communications between the White House and high-ranking Interior officials on various politically sensitive topics" was delayed at least two years by the equities review.

"Cause of Action is still waiting for documents from 16 federal agencies, with the Department of Treasury having the longest pending request of 202 business days.

"The Department of Energy is a close second at 169 business days. The requests to the Department of Defense and Department of Health and Human Services have been pending for 138 business days," the report said.

By the way, rewriting a portion of existing law secretly like this by the Executive Branch without going through congress is not only highly unethical, it is illegal and unconstitutional. It is a clear violation of President Obama's Oath of Office and de facto grounds for impeachment all by itself.

An actual Speaker of the House who had respect for congress and cared about the Constitution  would make a major public stink, bring charges in the House and submit them to the senate for trial to force the Democrats to vote against such an outright violation of law - if they dared. Unfortunately, John Boehner isn't that kind of Speaker.

Michelle Obama And Her Entourage Living It Up In China - On Your Money

As you may know, First Lady Michelle Obama is in China on yet another vacation paid for by the American tax payers.

The First Lady, her mother, and her daughters are staying in the presidential suite at the Westin Beijing Chaoyang, a 3,445-square-foot suite designed with the ultimate luxury in mind that costs a whopping $8,350 a night.

 

Ah, but that's just for the Obamas. An assortment of her retainers and Chicago and DC hangers on have additional rooms in the hotel, and the Secret Service and lower level help have an entire floor booked.

Mrs. Obama's previous luxury romp in Spain cost close to half a million of your tax dollars, and according to the UK Daily Mail, Judicial Watch reports that it cost more than $11 million for President and Mrs. Obama to travel to Africa for Nelson Mandela's memorial service in December, where the president and his wife and their entourage were in Africa for less than 13 hours. This week-long China trip will come with a heavy tab, what with the increased flying time to Beijing, the five star accommodations and meals and all the additional security.The entire spectacle amounts to over 70 people getting a luxury trip to China on the American taxpayers for what is essentially a tourist excursion with no official business involved at all - yet it's being billed as an 'official trip.'

Yep, real warriors for the middle class! There's a quaint expression that comes to mind here, but I digress.

Abbas And PA Refuse To Accept Kerry Framework

Palestine's unelected dictator Mahmoud Abbas has defiantly refused to accept U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's frame work for a peace agreement with Israel.

Kerry, realizing that the two Israel and Abbas and the Palestinian Authority were still far apart decided to put together a non-binding framework dealing with a broad look at solutions on the main issues and an extension of the talks past the April 29th deadline.

Abbas came to Washington last week to meet with President Obama, and the president's idea obviously was that he was going to be able to convince Abbas to at least agree to an extension and accept the guideline. As usual, Barack Obama was convinced the the very awesomeness of his persona was going to work miracles.

Unlike the reception Netanyahu got, there were no bombs dropped or thinly veiled threats in the press while Abbas was en route, and no frosty reception when Abbas arrived. Instead, the president greeted Abbas warmly, praised him effusively and in a reversal of reality so profound as to worthy of 'bizarre-o-world' in the old Superman comics, praised him as "somebody who has consistently renounced violence."

As I wrote previously, the one thing President Obama could have done to get Abbas on board would have been to do something the president has never done with Abbas and the Palestinians...let Abbas know that this time, a refusal was going to entail serious consequences.

Of course we all knew the president wasn't ever going to do that, and as a consequence Abbas and the Palestinians said no to both the framework and the extension of negotiations.

What was in the framework? It's supposedly secret, but enough has slipped out that I've been able to confirm with my own sources that I can give you a pretty good idea of the main points:

The official end of the conflict and of all claims by both sides.

Borders to be arranged based on the pre-1967 lines, with Israel to keep the Jewish inhabited areas in Area C and a few other places in exchange for mutually agreed land swaps.

A Palestinian capitol in part of East Jerusalem.

Abbas and the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a Jewish State.

A gradual Israel withdrawal from the Jordan Valley,to be replaced by a high tech security zone with electronic fences, drones and sensors.

No Arab 'right of return' to Israel in the final settlement.

Needless to say, there are a number of problems with the above from Israel's standpoint, but since this is a non-binding agreement about an agreement that isn't an agreement yet ( this seems to be a Kerry specialty) the Israelis had signaled that they were at least open to proceeding provided the talks were extended to the end of December 2014.

Abbas flatly turned President Obama down on all counts. He's not willing to commit to an end to the conflict, or to forgo the idea that thousands of hostile 'refugees' have a right to resettle in Israel. He wants all of East Jerusalem as a capitol, including sovereignty over the Jewish Holy sites. He wants an immediate withdrawal of the IDF from the strategic Jordan Valley. He insists that all Jews living within Palestine's new borders be removed. And he outright refuses to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

That last is a very big deal. Israel insists on this because it's the sole real basis for an agreement. It would signify a final end to the conflict, terminate the Palestinian fiction that Jews are just 'colonists' who have no connection or rights to the land of Israel and end the idea of Palestinian 'refugees' somehow having a right to resettle in Israel. Without it, all the Israelis are getting is a worthless deal with Arafat II that Hamas won't accept, creates thousands of Jewish refugees and simply gives the Arabs whom identify themselves as Palestinians a closer platform to shoot at Israel.

President Obama's reaction? To move America closer to Abbas' position. Kerry, to his credit actually tried to put in the framework some realistic points that would actually signify a final end to the conflict. But that apparently didn't sit well with the Palestinians and their lawyer and community organizer in the White House.

President Obama has obviously decided it's no longer necessary to lie and refer to Israel as a Jewish State or to insist as he did in his speech in March of 2013 in Jerusalem that "Palestinians must recognize that Israel will be a Jewish state".

Now,the president has Kerry saying that it's "a mistake for some people to be, you know, raising it [recognition of Israel as a Jewish State] again and again as the critical decider of their attitude towards the possibility of a state and peace, and we've obviously made that clear."

After this 180 degree turn, what's actually clear is two things. First, that the Israelis have just been reminded that any commitments they receive or agreements they make with the Obama White House are worthless. And second, that the president has decided to return to his previously more hostile stance against Israel in order to pin the blame on Israel when the peace process goes in the toilet again, as it was always going to anyway.

Does anyone have to be reminded that Abbas already refused an offer giving him everything he claims to want now at the hands of the craven Ehud Olmert?

In this entire charade, it has always been a one way street. It was Israel who was arm twisted into releasing 100 terrorist murderers simply to get Abbas back to the table, Israel who has been pressured by Obama and the EU, Israel that has made concessions. Abbas and the Palestinians have never been asked to do anything.

Instead of pressuring Abbas, the president has given him permission to continuing his rejectionist stance. And by doing this, President Obama is setting the stage to blame Netanyahu for the collapse of the peace process, so that when the violence and diplomatic isolation the president threatened Israel with becomes a reality, President Obama can have the U.S. join in wholeheartedly...just as this president has wanted all along, ever since he first took office.

Obama Ranked Fifth Best President In History

Yes, it's true, and as my pal Nice Deb relates, even Ted Cruz agrees.

Who'd a thunk it?

(h/t,Louie Louie)

The Council Has Spoken!! This Week's Watcher's Council Results

Alea iacta est...the Council has spoken, the votes have been cast, and we have the results  for this week's Watcher's Council match up.

"Israel exists; it has a right to exist in peace behind secure and defensible borders; and it has a right to demand of its neighbors that they recognize those facts. I have personally followed and supported Israel's heroic struggle for survival, ever since the founding of the State of Israel 34 years ago. In the pre-1967 borders Israel was barely 10 miles wide at its narrowest point. The bulk of Israel's population lived within artillery range of hostile Arab armies. I am not about to ask Israel to live that way again." -Ronald Reagan, 1982


"The Jews are alone in the world. If Israel survives, it will be solely because of Jewish efforts....I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us.Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us." - Eric Hoffer, 1968

"We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps." - Barack Obama, 2011





This week's winner, Joshuapundit's  'Nice Little Jewish State Ya Got There..Shame If Anything Were to Happen To It' is a reaction and analysis of a widely publicized interview President Obama gave when Israeli leader Benyamin Netanyahu was en route to meet with him, and how it related to some subsequent events. Here's a slice:

While Israeli PM Benyamin Netanyahu was already en route to the United States to discuss the Middle East peace process,  President Obama gave an interview at the beginning of last week to a friendly journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg.The shock waves from what the president had to say are still reverberating.

President Obama started by talking about the Israeli-Arab peace process.

The president, to summarize briefly, embraces the tired idea of 'linkage' wholeheartedly. In his view, Israel catering to the demands of the Palestinian Authority, giving up strategic territory in exchange for vague promises from Mahmoud Abbas and accepting the establishment of a hostile state on Israel's borders will magically lead to peace in the Middle East. Israel's Arab neighbors will all immediately become allies and friends, the Iranians will stop their quest for nuclear weapons and stop threatening to destroy Israel every two weeks or so and Hamas and Hezbollah will close up shop, disarm and go out of business.

When Goldberg prompted him, he made a few pro forma remarks about Netanyahu and about the  American 'commitment to Israel being rock solid'. But as he made plain, he wants Israel to comply with all of the Palestinian demands, and quickly. Or else. Because, you see, there are going to be a lot more Palestinians and Israeli Arabs who will overwhelm Israel demographically, the EU and others are going to isolate Israel internationally and the U.S. is going to not be able to defend Israel diplomatically any longer. Unmentioned is that much of any diplomatic isolation Israel faces is a direct result of the animosity exhibited towards the Jewish State by President Obama and his administration.

Even Goldberg, a long time Obama supporter,  evidenced some shock in a subsequent interview with PBS's Charlie Rose and characterized this as a threat.

The president,of course, focused exclusively on Arab rights rather than Jewish ones, and on Israeli security...which of course, he expects Israel to depend totally on the United States to oversee and handle, something that can be changed at the president's whim. He characterizes the Palestinians as ready for peace, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, because to the president, it’s those stubborn Jews who are holding things up.

Just for the record, that demographic threat the president and Secretary Kerry keep focusing on that is supposed to doom Israel as a democratic state unless those Jews do what he wants and fast is pure fantasy. The real truth as I write this is that the trends shows a Jewish majority in Judea and Samaria of well over 60%, because the Jewish fertility rate has increased while Palestinian rates have collapsed. In fact, Jewish fertility rates in Judea and Samaria have already overtaken Arab rates at 3.04 vs. 2.91 children per woman. Israel continues to attract a high rate of immigration, with many more to come, especially from Europe, while Palestinian emigration rates have risen sharply. Time is on the side of Israel, not the Palestinians...which is the real reason for the haste to push through a deal by the White House.

President Obama's fantasy world also includes a portrait of Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority as committed to peace.At one point, the president referred to Abbas as 'the most moderate Palestinian leader the Israelis are ever going to get.'

This could have been the cue for Goldberg to remind the president that this is the same Mahmoud Abbas who has repeatedly said that he will not make any concessions to Israel, who insists on a Jew free reichlet and who recently signed a unity agreement with the genocidal Hamas. This is the same 'moderate' who wrote his thesis at Moscow University on how the Holocaust was a myth and made it a required part of the Palestinian educational curriculum, regardless of what he told a group of hand-picked Leftist Israeli students in Ramallah last week. This is the same leader supposedly  committed to peace and co-existence who sees to it that convicted murderers of Israeli civilians are honored as 'holy martyrs', heroes and role models and rewards them financially.

Instead, Goldberg  merely pointed out that Abbas was "also the leader of a weak, corrupt and divided Palestinian entity that is already structurally semi-powerless. Do you think he could deliver anything more than a framework agreement? Is this the guy who can lead the Palestinian people to say, "OK, no more claims against Israel, permanent peace, permanent recognition?"

And President Obama's reply? "I think it has to be tested. The question is: What is lost by testing it?" The answer, of course is the same thing that was lost because of Oslo and the Road Map - hundreds of Jewish lives and hundreds of others maimed for life. President Obama, to be frank, didn't seem all that put out by the idea of Jewish bloodshed, as long as a Palestinian state the way he envisions it is the result.

Israeli PM Netanyahu probably came to the U.S. prepared to accept the non-binding Kerry framework and to try once more to convince President Obama that the Iranians are committed to obtaining nuclear weapons, that they must be stopped and time is running out. Instead, he was hit with this while in mid air.

Not only did President Obama convince a lot of Israelis that his view of an Israeli/Palestinian peace accord isn't rooted in reality and that they can no longer depend on the U.S. as any kind of honest broker, but the president's remarks had to let Netanyahu know in advance that any attempt to get President Obama to look at reality on Iran was a waste of time.

In the interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, President Obama also did some chest thumping about Iran, saying that the Iranians were cooperating because they were afraid of him! To hear President Obama talk, because they're so scared of what he might do, "they've halted their nuclear program, no centrifuges being installed; the 20 percent enriched uranium being drawn down to zero; Arak on hold."

Absolutely none of this is true. The Iranians say flatly that enrichment is continuing, a whole new crop of advanced centrifuges is being installed , and the Iranian heavy water reactor at Arak,which has no peaceful application is not on hold at all.

In the end, instead of publicly accepting the framework, Netanyahu merely took a copy from the president privately without commenting and left for home. Among other things, this completely sandbagged Secretary of State John Kerry, who was not briefed on the interview in advance and according to one of my sources definitely in a position to know, was left scrambling to do damage control.

The latest indication of this president's disdain for Israel occurred after Netanyahu left the White House. One of Israel's written-in-stone conditions for any peace agreement is the formal acceptance by Abbas of Israel as a Jewish State. Israel wants this because it would signal a final end to the conflict, terminate the Palestinian fiction that Jews are just 'colonists' who have no connection or rights to the land of Israel and end the idea that thousands of those hostile Arabs whom represent themselves as Palestinian 'refugees' somehow have a right to resettle in Israel.

Abbas has always refused to do this for exactly these reasons, and once this interview was released, he repeated it once again. Not only that, but those Arabs whom represent themselves as Palestinians and whom President Obama claims are ready for peaceful coexistence refuse to accept Israel as a Jewish state either. Because like Abbas, they still cling to the dream of someday driving the Jews into the sea.

 

When Abbas again repeated his refusal, what was different this time is that our own State Department backed him up on it.

Much more at the link

In our non-Council category, the winner was Victor Davis Hanson with A New Obama Doctrine? submitted by Bookworm Room , which poses the question of whether President Obama will change his foreign policy direction ala' President Carter after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

OK, here are this week’s full results. Only Rhymes With Right was unable to vote this week,but was not subject to the mandatory 2/3 vote penalty.:

Council Winners

• *First place with 5 1/3 votes!Joshuapundit –'Nice Little Jewish State Ya Got There..Shame If Anything Were to Happen To It'


• Second place with 1 2/3 votes –The Noisy Room – Internet Control — Keys To The Kingdom


• Third place *t* with 1 1/3 votes –The Razor – Putin's Man In The White House


• Third place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – Bookworm Room – The anti-bossy campaign is just the latest example of the Left’s obsession with gender, sex, and sexuality as a way of remaking society


• Fourth place with 1 vote –GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – Air/Sea Battle II


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote –VA Right! - I Still Love My Country, But Thanks to Obama, I Am Embarrassed for America


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote –The Right Planet – The World’s Slide Towards the ‘Second October Revolution’


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote –Nice Deb – Ron Fournier: POTUS May Be In The Middle Of “Full Blown Constitutional Crisis” (Video)


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote –Liberty's Spirit – The Importance of the Words "Jewish State"


• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote – Simply Jews – Vladimir Vladimirovich, please liberate us!


• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote – The Independent Sentinel – Boeing Believes Flight MH370 Is In Taliban Territory in Pakistan – Updates

Non-Council Winners

• First place with 3 1/3 votes! – Victor Davis Hanson-A New Obama Doctrine? submitted by Bookworm Room


• Second place with 2 votes – Daniel Greenfield(Sultan Knish)/ FrontPage Mag –The End of International Law submitted by The Noisy Room


• Third place with 1 1/3 votes -Dr. Stuart Schwartz/American Thinker – My Wife's Last Days -- And the Coming ObamaCare Death Panel submitted by The Right Planet


• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote-Skeptoid –What I’d Say to the Latest Anti-Vaccine Celebrity submitted by The Razor


• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote-Avi Issacharoff/Times of Israel – Assad is Starving Palestinians to death in a Syrian Camp, And Nobody Cares submitted by Liberty's Spirit


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -The Passing Parade – Leisure time on someone else's nickel, or so I'm told submitted by Simply Jews


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -Arthur Herman/Commentary – Will Israel Be the Next Energy Superpower? submitted by Joshuapundit


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -Lilia Shevtsova/The American Interest – Falling into Putin’s Trap submitted by The Glittering Eye


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote - Blazing Cat Fur – Uighur leader: “We have plans for many attacks in China,” plus police officer killed in Xinjiang's capital submitted by Watcher


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -Boudica Weblog –Rabbi in Crimea urges Jews to leave Ukraine, fears neo-Nazi attacks submitted by The Independent Sentinel


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -Alexandria – 44 Imposes Sanctions On Russia submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -David Limbaugh -Obama, In His Sole Discretion submitted by Nice Deb


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote - Volokh Conspiracy/WAPO – Dateline: Shushan, Persian Empire, 600 BCE submitted by The Watcher

See you next week! Don't forget to tune in on Monday AM for this week's Watcher's Forum, as the Council and their invited special guests take apart one of the provocative issues of the day with short takes and weigh in...don't you dare miss it. And don't forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.....'cause we're cool like that!

Iran Building A Mock Lifesize U.S. Aircraft Carrier

 

The New York Times is reporting that Iran is building a full scale mock-up of the USS Nimitz in its shipyards.

Apparently they're also taking no trouble to hide it.

The model, which is described as more like a large barge and has no engine components has the Nimitz’s number 68 neatly painted in white near the bow, with fake aircraft on the flight deck.

“Based on our observations, this is not a functioning aircraft carrier; it’s a large barge built to look like an aircraft carrier,” said Cmdr. Jason Salata, a spokesman for the Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, across the Persian Gulf from Iran. “We’re not sure what Iran hopes to gain by building this. If it is a big propaganda piece, to what end?” [...]

But unlike Iran’s efforts to conceal its underground nuclear-related sites, the Iranian Navy has taken no steps to cloak from prying Western satellites what it is building pierside at the busy shipyard. “The system is often too opaque to understand who hatched this idea, and whether it was endorsed at the highest levels,” said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The article speculates that the Iranians are planning to tow this barge out to sea and blow it up as a 'propaganda coup'. As if the Iranians can't use CGI tosimulte the Nimitz getting blown up on film, the way they simulated an Iranian attack of Israel and the U.S awhile back!

I just love experts.

Two words: t-a-r-g-e-t t-r-a-i-n-i-n-g.

Iran's naval defense is made up of antiquated frigates, ship mounted and land based anti-ship missiles,3 refitted Russian SSK Kilo attack submarines, a handful of Ghadir and Nahang class mini submarines and a flotilla of small power launches armed with machine guns and torpedoes, and a few small missile boats like this one:



Now let's see...why would Iran want a large scale mock-up of a U.S. aircraft carrier except to train crews manning their anti-ship missiles, practice suicide attacks by the launches and train their submarine crews?

The Iranians are doing what's called contingency planning. I have a feeling we aren't,  at least with Barack Obama as commander-in-chief, because he has no intention of stopping the Iranians from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Obama Commends Abbas For 'Consistently Renouncing Violence' ???

 

On Monday, before his meeting with Palestine's unelected dictator Mahmoud Abbas, President Obama did the usual press appearance with Abbas and said something quite interesting:

"I have to commend President Abbas," Obama said alongside the Palestinian leader. "He has been somebody who has consistently renounced violence, has consistently sought a diplomatic and peaceful solution that allows for two states, side by side, in peace and security; a state that allows for the dignity and sovereignty of the Palestinian people and a state that allows for Israelis to feel secure and at peace with their neighbors."

Let's examine that, shall we?

For starters, Abbas just signed a new unity agreement with Hamas, an organization that is openly genocidal and makes its members swear an oath to pursue a second Holocaust.

Abbas is a Holocaust denier, even if he lies about it today to handpicked audiences of Left wing Israelis. And his Moscow University thesis denying that the Holocaust occurred is a required part of Palestine's educational curriculum.

Abbas and the Palestinian Authority under his control have always glorified the murderers of Israeli civilians. Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah, after all, are the same folks who made child murderer Sami Kuntar an honorary 'Palestinian' citizen and gave him a hero's welcome after he was released in a prisoner swap. Abbas and his Fatah faction have made a point of naming public buildings and streets after murderers and teach their children about the virtues of killing Jews in their mosques, media and schools.

And Abbas pays terrorist murderers who are convicted in Israeli civilian courts monthly salaries to encourage further violent  attacks against Jewish civilians, with the higher salaries for both Hamas and Fatah killers reserved for those who commit the most heinous murders and thus get longer jail terms.

The Fogel family who lived in the Jewish community of Itamar  were at home relaxing after the Sabbath on March 11, 2011 when two Palestinians affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) Hakim Awad and Amjad Muhammad Fawzi Awad carried out an 'operation' they had planned in advance. After cutting through a security fence, they broke into the Fogel's home and murdered five members of the family pictured above, including a 3-month-old baby. They butchered them without even the regard a slaughterer usually gives to an animal. They are on the PA's salary list, receiving top dollar because of the five life sentences they received.These are your tax dollars at work, courtesy of President Obama, the UN and the EU.

Another killer Abbas has on the PA payroll is Mahmud Amro, a member of Fatah's Tanzim, who admitted deliberately targeting 10-month-old Shalhevet Pas while she was in her stroller at a playground full of children and murdering her back in 2001.



Abbas refers to monsters like these (and the Awads and Amro are by no means exceptional) as 'heroes of freedom' and 'holy martyrs'. The ones the Israelis have unwisely released like child murderer Sami Kuntar have always received a hero's welcome and honors from Abbas, and he is insisting that every one of them be freed as part of any peace agreement.

This is the man that our president lauded as someone who has 'consistently renounced violence.'

That must have been in between the times Abbas was openly encouraging and rewarding it.

I find it hard to even comprehend the mentality of a president who would refer to Mahmoud Abbas in this fashion.

And to add to the mix,  President Obama has not only spent millions of your tax dollars knowingly supporting Abbas and Hamas, he has spent additional millions building up a Palestinian army.  Run by General Keith Dayton, an Obama favorite, we have basically set up the equivalent of two combat brigades for Abbas, armed with U.S. equipment including APC carriers...with more to come. Even General Dayton admitted to congress that there was a good possibility of these troops we're equipping and training turning those weapons on Israel's civilians.

This president's disdain for Israel is palpable and so his tolerance for Islamist terrorism.

Obama Spends $17M Per Month Of Our Money Advertising ObamaCare

 

According to Pravda-On-The Hudson, the Obama Administration is spending $17M per monthof your tax dollars advertising for ObamaCare:

From January until the end of March, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which runs the HealthCare.gov site and administers the Affordable Care Act, will have spent $52 million on paid media, officials said. Conservative opponents of the law have concentrated their spending on ads focusing on Democratic candidates and sowing doubts about the viability of the law.

The idea is to get young, uninsured Americans to sign up for President Obama's signature program - high, unaffordable pricing, minimal coverage, high deductibles,numerous glitches and abominable security for personal data. Not surprisingly, they're avoiding it like the plague.

The president's new tactic reveals exactly how stupid he thinks we all are:

Russian troops were rolling through Crimea when Denis R. McDonough, the White House chief of staff and a foreign policy expert, was deployed on a mission to do media outreach. But the focus of Mr. McDonough’s calls to local talk radio stations was not geopolitical tensions in Eastern Europe, it was health care.

Mr. McDonough chatted with Andy Baskin and Jeff Phelps, hosts of a popular sports talk radio program on WKRK-FM (92.3) in Cleveland, about the coming N.F.L. draft, basketball at the White House and his days playing college football in Minnesota. Mr. McDonough then pitched a new website featuring games, videos and superstar athletes explaining the benefits of health insurance: a sports-themed portal to HealthCare.gov.

“We’ve all seen it happen,” said Mr. McDonough, promoting the portal, GamePlan4Me, to the hosts of “Baskin & Phelps” and their mostly young, mostly male audience. “Somebody’s playing hoops, and they blow out a knee or something. And then all of a sudden, if you don’t have health care, you’re going to bankrupt yourself.”

Actually, with the standard deductible for Bronze coverage being between a hefty $5,000 to to $6,350 for a single adult, the average person is going to go bankrupt with that kind of injury whether he or she buys ObamaCare or not. As a matter of fact, given the stiff premiums, you might go bankrupt even if you avoid a major injury.

But again, this president thinks everyone's stupid but him and that you'll be distracted by games and celebrity endorsements.

The only people whom win in this con game are people who qualify for MedicAid, AKA free stuff. Which of course, was always what this was about - government control and a huge transfer of wealth from the Middle class  to the entitlement class.

The fact that the president, congress and the rest of the Ruling Class are trying to force you to buy into this cynical fraud when they  aren't willing to take advantage of this 'wonderful program' themselves ought to clue you in to how horrible it really is.

40 Percent of What You Pay for Beer Goes to Taxes!

Yes, 40%. And that's just an average. In high tax Blue states ( and especially in Democrat run big cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles) it's even higher:

The next time you pour yourself a cold one, give yourself a pat on the back in the name of patriotism. On average, 40 percent of the price you paid for that beer is going straight to Uncle Sam and the state.

Lobbyists in Washington are pushing to reduce those taxes, at least by a few cents. The Beer Institute is supporting legislation cleverly titled the BEER Act, which would reduce the federal excise tax from $18 per 31-gallon barrel (an amount that doesn't actually exist; a keg is 15.5 gallons) to $9 for large brewers. Smaller operations would pay nothing in excise taxes on the first 15,000 barrels they produce, while kicking in a mere $3.50 through 60,000 barrels.

Passing the bill would not only (slightly) reduce the cost of beer, but could also lead to an uptick in the number of breweries in the United States. The industry, which the Institute has tracked since 1887, has been growing rapidly in the last two decades, thanks in part to tax breaks for small brewers.

The original excise tax on beer was levied by the Feds as a small, temporary tax to help pay for the cost of the Civil War. Needless to say, it wasn't removed after the war and has been a reliable 'sin tax' for politicians to plunder ever since.

Lobbyists for the brewers who want the tax lowered are arguing that it would allow them to grow their operations and create jobs, which would actually provide more tax revenues.

While the BEER Act seems pretty much destined to die in committee, it's largely a push back by the industry to prevent even more tax hikes,which have already been proposed at the federal and state levels as well as various municipal levels.

The result, as with most regressive taxes is that people simply buy less. In California, for example, politicians in state and municipal governments raised taxes on tobacco products and then spent the money they anticipated making from those awful smokers feeding their habit. They then passed laws severely limiting where the people they anticipated plundering could smoke.

Caught between massive price hikes and limited areas to smoke, guess what? Tobacco sales plummeted as people either quit, moved to roll your own or to electronic cigarettes and the anticipated tax revenues never materialized.

While that may have been a good thing health-wise (full disclosure, I'm a non-smoker) it turned out to be lousy fiscal policy. And higher taxes on beer would be even a worse idea, since it's comparatively easy to make at home.

In fact, now that you know this, I suggest that every American who enjoys a cold beer on occasion avoid being ripped off by unreasonable taxation that I'm sure you never voted for. Save a ton of money and extend a raised digit to the greedy politicians by making your own at home. It's what our forefathers who founded our beloved Republic did faced with the same situation.

Sharia Rears Its Head In Pennsylvania

This one caught my eye (h/t, This Ain't Hell).

In Mechanicsburg, PA, there was a Halloween parade. And a group calling themselves 'The Parading Atheists of Central Pennsylvania' decided it would be a hoot to dress up as the Pope, Jesus, Mohammed, and other religious figures and portray them as zombies.

A Muslim watching the parade with his family became livid over what he saw as blasphemy and there was a confrontation. What it consisted of depends on whom you believe. The plaintiff/victim Ernest Perce V,
whom just happens to be the Pennsylvania State Director of American Atheists, Inc.,claims he was physically assaulted, choked from behind by the defendant, Taaliq Elbayomy, that the defendant attempted to smash the sign over his head and pull his costume beard off. In addition, the atheists caught the entire episode on video.

The police were summoned, and in their interview with Taaliq Elbayomy, he admitted there had been physical contact.There's a Pennsylvania law against this sort of thing, so the police and the DA took it to court, which is when things got strange.

The trial was presided over by Judge Mark W. Martin. The first thing he did was to refuse to allow the video of the altercation taken by the plaintiff to be used as evidence. And he allowed Elbayomy to testify without challenge, saying that there was no physical contact, thus changing the story he told the police. That in itself is a crime since its illegal to lie to an officer of the law. Elbayomy also told the court that he was under the impression that to parade around dressed as Mohammed was against the law here in America (which it isn't) and that he felt he needed to show his young son that he was willing to fight for his Prophet.

In delivering his verdict, Judge Martin then proceeded to give Ernest Perce V a tongue lashing, lecturing him on the Qu'ran, sharia law and Muslim culture. The judge's rant starts at about 27:00:

“Having had the benefit of having spent over 2 and a half years in predominantly Muslim countries I think I know a little bit about the faith of Islam. In fact I have a copy of the Koran here and I challenge you sir to show me where it says in the Koran that Mohammad arose and walked among the dead. I think you misinterpreted things. Before you start mocking someone else's religion you may want to find out a little bit more about it. It makes you look like a doofus and Mr.Elbayomy is correct. In many Arabic speaking countries something like this is definitely against the law there. In their society in fact it can be punishable by death and it frequently is in their society.”

“Islam is not just a religion, it's their culture, their culture. It's their very essence, their very being. They pray five times a day towards Mecca to be a good Muslim, before you die you have to make a pilgrimage to Mecca unless you are otherwise told you can not because you are too ill too elderly, whatever but you must make the attempt. Their greetings wa-laikum as-salaam (is answered by voice) may god be with you. Whenever, it's very common when speaking to each other it”s very common for them to say uh, this will happen if it's Allah's will, they are so immersed in it.”

“Then what you have done is you have completely trashed their essence, their being. They find it very very very offensive. I'm a Muslim, I find it offensive *. But you have that right, but you're way outside your boundaries or first amendment rights. This is what, and I said I spent about 7 and a half years living in other countries. when we go to other countries it's not uncommon for people to refer to us as ugly Americans..this is why we are referred to as ugly Americans, because we are so concerned about our own rights we don't care about other people”s rights as long as we get our say but we don't care about the other people's say.”

The judge than said that what he basically had here was a he said, she said situation, that the burden of proof was on the defendant and that it was not "proven to me beyond a reasonable doubt that this defendant is guilty of harassment, therefore I am going to dismiss the charge”

(* First, before we go further, let's discuss at that asterisk. In the video linked above,which is a recording of the trial Judge Martin appears to clearly say "I'm a Muslim, I find it offensive." However, the judge claims what he actually said is 'I'm not a Muslim, I find it offensive.' You can take your pick, although I will say for a non-Muslim, it's interesting that he had a Qu'ran so handy, claimed such authoritative knowledge of it, seemed so enamored of sharia, seems to not understand the First Amendment and seems to somewhat regret that our atheist friend isn't being beheaded for blasphemy.)

I actually understand Judge Martin's verdict. The selfie video doesn't show things all that clearly,mainly a lot of shouting. Not allowing it as evidence in a non-jury trial is not how I would have proceeded,but Judge Martin was within his rights to do so.

It's also true that when the atheists chose to dress up as religious figures, they were obviously looking to provoke a confrontation. To do something like that and then claim 'oh, I'm such a victim' is pretty typical in Obama's America, but that doesn't make it right. Personally, whenever I hear a militant atheist like Mikey Weinstein pule on about those 'evil Christianists' and how we have to get G-d out of our military, I admit to experiencing a pretty disgusted reaction myself. But I also recognize that he's entitled.

Since there wasn't any clear evidence of an actual physical assault, I think Judge Martin was entitled to dismiss the case.

But that's where it stops.

There's absolutely no excuse whatsoever for Judge Martin to use the bully pulpit of the bench to deliver a one sided rebuke to an American clearly exercising his First Amendment rights. If someone wants to burn a Qu'ran or a Bible or an American flag, that is both stupid, disrespectful and unkind, but it is not illegal.At least not in America, not yet.

Here Judge Martin had a defendant who is an immigrant and plainly admitted in court he wasn't aware of how the First Amendment works. Did Judge Martin engage in what was obviously called for, a rebuke that explained Mr.Elbayomy's mistake to him and included some basic information on how our Bill of Rights works? Nope. In fact, the way he ruled and his subsequent remarks obviously left Mr.Elbayomy feeling like what he did was entirely correct behavior, as well as providing an interesting model of conduct to his children.

Must.not.offend.Islam.or Muslims.ever.

You see, that's where sharia kicks in.In his off the wall rant, Judge Martin essentially honored the Muslim blasphemy laws, implying that anyone could understand what Mr.Elbayomy did. Why, his essence was being attacked!

This is unfortunately symptomatic of a trend in some American legal circles that seek to legitimize a legal code totally incompatible with America's Constitution and our freedoms. No less than Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has weighed in about how foreign law and sharia needs to be considered in U.S. jurisprudence, and how respect for a Qu'ran should trump the First Amendment. And President Obama's new Justice Elena Kagan who lied openly during her confirmation hearings is also very sharia friendly as evidenced by her conduct while on the Harvard faculty.

 Here's a list and evaluation of about fifty  cases where sharia law has figured in American judicial proceedings, and it's by no means all inclusive.While many of these cases were overturned at the appellate level, the fact that sharia was considered at all even as a legal argument is cause for concern. Britain, where sharia is now mandatory for Muslims in family matters has proved a disaster for women's rights and is a clear warning to other countries about what a slippery slope this can be.

It's quite obvious that for whatever reason, whether he is a Muslim or not, Judge Martin holds certain very positive views on Islam and sharia and accords sharia an equal status with U.S. law, and he went out of his way to express them. It's also obvious that it affected how he treated the case and the plaintiff and that his bias would affect how he would treat future cases, future lawyers and plaintiffs whose fate he might be deciding.

This is clear judicial misconduct, and Judge Martin should be removed for it.