One Way To Quit A Job.......

Ah the ingenuity of perfectly planned revenge...this young lady quit her job by e-mailing 33 photos to her entire office

Not all poems are written with a pen - some use a dry erase board!

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UPDATE: Yes, a hoax...but a really funny one! (Hat Tip, D/D)

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Charlie Rangel Meltdown: 'Fire Your Best Shot'

Congressman Charlie Rangel made a rare use of a member's right to make a "point of personal privilege" on the House floor to go postal in defending himself from thirteen separate charges against him from the House Ethics Committee.

Unmitigated gall and contempt personified:

"You're not going to tell me to resign to make you feel comfortable," the 80-year-old New York Democrat said after reminding the Democratic side of the aisle that "I'm the guy that was raising money in Republican districts to get you here."

"If I can't get my dignity back here, then fire your best shot and get rid of me through expulsion," he said.

The speech was cheered by about three dozen Democrats in attendance,mostly members of the Congressional Black Caucus. I'm sure the race card will be in play shortly, especially since fellow congressional crook Maxine Waters is also up on charges.

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Nine Years After The Sbarro Massacre

Murder most foul...and perhaps almost forgotten, except for the people whose lives it touched.




Today is the anniversary of the Sbarro Pizza Parlor massacre, a deliberate attack designed to murder as many innocent civilians as possible.On August 9th, 2001 fifteen people were murdered at the Sbarro Pizza restaurant in Jerusalem, seven of them children enjoying lunch with their friends and families.Over one hundred and thirty people were wounded, many of them scarred and disabled for life.

The bomber was Izz al-Din Shuheil al-Masri, a Hamas operative, andthey later claimed credit for the 'operation'

But the attack was planned and carried out from the Fatah occupied areas of Judea and Samaria (AKA the West Bank), Fatah operative Abdallah Barghouti constructed the ten kilo bomb belt and the driver was Ahlam Tamimi, a 20-year-old female university student and part-time journalist, who had disguised herself as a Jewish tourist for the occasion. The 'operation' was a joint project, coordinated between Hamas and Fatah.

Because Israel's security barrier was not in place at the time, Tamimi was able to simply escort al-Masri to the restaurant, where he set off the bomb belt in the midst of the lunch time crowd.

Both Barghouti and Tamimi were subsequently caught, tried and sentenced. For his part in the Sbarro murders and a string of other attacks that cost the lives of 66 civilians, Barghouti was handed down 67 life sentences.

Tamimi received 16 life sentences. After her conviction, Tamimi smiled when she was told by an interviewer about the death toll. She expressed no remorse whatsoever. "I am not sorry for what I did. I will get out of prison and I refuse to recognize Israel’s existence…"

She's not alone in that sentiment.One year after the bombing, Palestinian university students at An-Najah University in the Samarian city of Nablus celebrated by creating an exhibition showing the Sbarro attack. The exhibit included a room-sized re-enactment of the bombing complete with broken furniture and splattered with fake blood and human body parts.The entrance to the exhibition was illustrated with a mural depicting the bombing.

Tamimi was subsequently awarded the Al Kuds Mark of Honor, the PLO's highest medal. Tamimi and Barghouti are murderers that both Hamas and Fatah want freed.

There's an interesting remembrance of this in today's Jerusalem Post written by Frimet Roth, whose teenage daughter Malki was murdered in the attack...and an important linkage to today. I reproduce it here in full, since the Jerusalem Post doesn't really archive its material for very long and this deserves to be remembered:

It's been nine years since my daughter Malki was murdered in the suicide bombing of Jerusalem's Sbarro restaurant and terrorism denial is still rampant.

Foreign diplomats may still preface their complaints against Israel with the formulaic "Israel has some genuine security concerns and they have to be met." But after that obligatory line, most feel free to attack Israel with no holds barred.

Some of Israel's home-grown critics don't even bother with such political correctness. Our security is no longer a justified concern in their view and they have no compunction about saying so. Suicide bombers? Intifada? Israeli terror victims? Not in their history books.

Writing recently in Haaretz, columnist Merav Michaeli described a variety of possible solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Her conclusion? It is incumbent upon us to "want to live in peace. Not in security, but in peace." Her column was even entitled "Not in Security, but Peace" in case the message was not clear enough.

Terrorism denial is the foundation on which the Free Gilad Schalit campaign has been built. At some point, its legitimate effort to pressure all involved parties to free Schalit was hijacked. Today its goal is nothing short of maligning and undermining Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for his unwillingness to release every last prisoner demanded by Hamas.

This campaign could not have galvanized so many - some estimate 200,000 joined its eleven-day march to Jerusalem last month - without the groundwork laid by terrorism denial. Were the faces of the 1,000 innocent Israelis murdered during the second intifada still fresh in Israelis' minds, warnings about the dangers of a mass prisoner release would not be dismissed as casually and as persistently as they are being now.

The statistics are chilling. According to government numbers, some 45 percent of released terrorists return to terrorism, while the rate of recidivism among Hamas members is 63%. And yet these numbers impact fewer and fewer Israelis.

Instead we hear Mayor Yoel Levi of Ramle, in an address to the Schalit march participants, calling the warnings against a prisoner release "scaremongering".

And we hear Noam Schalit, Gilad’s father, refer to them as "doomsday scenarios from twenty-five years ago."

In the current climate of terrorism denial, such attitudes gain traction with ease. It is left to the bereaved families to fight this dangerous phenomenon. We, who feel the pain of terrorism every minute of every day, must remind Israelis what "releasing the prisoners" to free Gilad Schalit entails. We must refresh the short collective memory of who those prisoners are, what they did and what can we expect them to do in the future.

Ahlam Tamimi is one prisoner that Hamas wants freed. As a woman, she garners much sympathy for their cause. The mere mention of "woman" and "prison" in one sentence is a surefire tearjerker.

But here are the facts. Tamimi is a mega-terrorist. She is responsible for the deaths of fifteen men, women and children, all of them civilians. She transported 10 kg of explosives hidden in a guitar case into west Jerusalem, handed them to her accomplice and escorted him through the city center disguised as a Western tourist. She led him to the target she herself had selected, an eatery filled with families eating lunch. She then warned her "weapon" to wait fifteen minutes before he detonated the bomb - allowing her enough time to escape unharmed.

After her conviction, Tamimi smiled with pleasure upon learning from an interviewer how many children she murdered. She told Ynet: "I am not sorry for what I did. I will get out of prison and I refuse to recognize Israel’s existence… Discussions will only take place after Israel recognizes that this is Islamic land.” She has served only six years out of sixteen consecutive life terms.

Does any rational human being believe that this monster will enroll in a flower arranging course when she is released? Or sit at home writing a novel?

Former prisons commissioner Orit Adato, a staunch advocate of selective release of security prisoners, maintains that some prisoners must remain imprisoned. When asked "Do you think it is possible to rehabilitate the 'ideological' security prisoners?" she replied: "Not the hard core cases."

But neither expert views nor cold statistics are welcome by those eager for a mass prisoner release.

An extraterrestrial landing on earth for the first time would be forgiven for thinking that Netanyahu himself is holding Gilad Schalit captive. In a July 31 speech, marking the 1,500th day of Gilad's captivity, Noam Schalit addressed Netanyahu regarding his son: "Stop abusing him" he said, adding "A captive soldier is not a piece of real estate."

The truth is, Netanyahu has agreed to release 450 prisoners in negotiations with Hamas and another 550 unilaterally as a gesture to the Palestinian Authority. The 450 to Hamas includes over 100 terrorists who murdered more than 600 Israelis. Netanyahu has only refused to release the "mega-terrorists," those responsible for the six most horrific terror attacks of the second intifada.

However Netanyahu's concessions have not won him any friends among the Free Schalit activists. Nor did his call to the international community "to line up alongside the State of Israel and our unequivocal and just demand that our abducted soldier be returned immediately" impress them. They want nothing short of the fulfillment of every Hamas demand.

And with the Israeli media's unstinting support, the chances are they will ultimately win the government's acquiescence.

Columnists and reporters alike have stooped to absurd hyperbole in their coverage of the Schalit campaign. Haaretz's Yoel Marcus wrote last month of the march: "It was the most spontaneous, humane and impressive demonstration ever held here. At the risk of sounding schmaltzy, it was good to see the face of the beautiful Israeli."

Here is "the face of a beautiful Israeli" I would like this country to see today. It’s the face of a fifteen-year-old girl who cared passionately about disabled children and volunteered with them in myriad settings. Who loved and nurtured her own profoundly disabled sister unconditionally. Who studied the flute for years and played classical music on it that brought tears to my eyes. Who kept a diary throughout the last year of her life in which she detailed her activities in school and in her youth movement. Who recorded alongside those anecdotes the names of the victims of every terror attack perpetrated that year. Whose wish for the coming new year, which she did not live to see, was that her family remain close and supportive of one another. It is the face of my daughter, Malki, z"l.

On August 9th for the last eight years, I have urged others to remember the Sbarro bombing and its fifteen victims. One of them was Malki. Five others were the members of one family, a mother, father and three of their eight children. Another victim was an only child who was pregnant with what would have been her parents' first grandchild. One of the "injured," not even counted among the fifteen dead, is a young mother who has remained in a deep coma since that day.

This year, I beg you not only to remember them but to also to remind another person, someone who may have fallen prey to terrorism denial.

There is no negotiating with evil, and the Israelis of all people should know that. If we fail to learn that lesson, then the deaths of Malki and all the other victims of Islamist terrorism will have been in vain. And that is an evil almost beyond comprehension.

One of the problems with Islamist terrorism is that too many of the victims become mere statistics, rather than people who once lived, loved and spread joy and hope to those around them. In that spirit, I include a picture below of the victims(z"l) of this atrocity, so that you may click to see the human faces behind the headlines. They could have been your son, your daughter, your husband or wife, or your best friend.

May a righteous G-d avenge their innocent blood.

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Tom Friedman: Blind Or Just Nearsighted On The Middle East?

The New York Time's Tom Friedman's writings on the Middle East have taken a fascinating turn lately. After years of being harshly critical of Israel and shilling for ideas designed to destroy the Jewish State like the Saudi 'peace' ultimatum, he began writing anti-jihad columns that had me worried that he'd been kidnapped and somebody else was churning out columns under his byline.

His latest, entitled 'Steal This Movie' is a rave for a a film by Shlomi Eldar, the Gaza reporter for Israel’s Channel 10 news, and it illustrates perfectly the disconnect and fuzzy thinking a lot of well-meaning people like Friedman have when it comes to Israel and the Middle East:

I just saw a remarkable new documentary directed by Shlomi Eldar, the Gaza reporter for Israel’s Channel 10 news. Titled “Precious Life,” the film tracks the story of Mohammed Abu Mustafa, a 4-month-old Palestinian baby suffering from a rare immune deficiency. Moved by the baby’s plight, Eldar helps the infant and mother go from Gaza to Israel’s Tel Hashomer hospital for lifesaving bone-marrow treatment. The operation costs $55,000. Eldar puts out an appeal on Israel TV and within hours an Israeli Jew whose own son was killed during military service donates all the money.

The documentary takes a dramatic turn, though, when the infant’s Palestinian mother, Raida, who is being disparaged by fellow Gazans for having her son treated in Israel, blurts out that she hopes he’ll grow up to be a suicide bomber to help recover Jerusalem. Raida tells Eldar: “From the smallest infant, even smaller than Mohammed, to the oldest person, we will all sacrifice ourselves for the sake of Jerusalem. We feel we have the right to it. You’re free to be angry, so be angry.”

Eldar is devastated by her declaration and stops making the film. But this is no Israeli propaganda movie. The drama of the Palestinian boy’s rescue at an Israeli hospital is juxtaposed against Israeli retaliations for shelling from Gaza, which kill whole Palestinian families. Dr. Raz Somech, the specialist who treats Mohammed as if he were his own child, is summoned for reserve duty in Gaza in the middle of the film. The race by Israelis and Palestinians to save one life is embedded in the larger routine of the two communities grinding each other up.

“It’s clear to me that the war in Gaza was justified — no country can allow itself to be fired at with Qassam rockets — but I did not see many people pained by the loss of life on the Palestinian side,” Eldar told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “Because we were so angry at Hamas, all the Israeli public wanted was to [expletive] Gaza. ... It wasn’t until after the incident of Dr. Abu al-Aish — the Gaza physician I spoke with on live TV immediately after a shell struck his house and caused the death of his daughters and he was shouting with grief and fear — that I discovered the [Israeli] silent majority that has compassion for people, including Palestinians. I found that many Israeli viewers shared my feelings.” So Eldar finished the documentary about how Mohammed’s life was saved in Israel.

His raw film reflects the Middle East I know — one full of amazing compassion, even among enemies, and breathtaking cruelty, even among neighbors.

I write about this now because there is something foul in the air. It is a trend, both deliberate and inadvertent, to delegitimize Israel — to turn it into a pariah state, particularly in the wake of the Gaza war. You hear the director Oliver Stone saying crazy things about how Hitler killed more Russians than Jews, but the Jews got all the attention because they dominate the news media and their lobby controls Washington. You hear Britain’s prime minister describing Gaza as a big Israeli “prison camp” and Turkey’s prime minister telling Israel’s president, “When it comes to killing, you know very well how to kill.” You see singers canceling concerts in Tel Aviv. If you just landed from Mars, you might think that Israel is the only country that has killed civilians in war — never Hamas, never Hezbollah, never Turkey, never Iran, never Syria, never America.

Destructive criticism closes Israeli ears. It says to Israelis: There is no context that could explain your behavior, and your wrongs are so uniquely wrong that they overshadow all others. Destructive critics dismiss Gaza as an Israeli prison, without ever mentioning that had Hamas decided — after Israel unilaterally left Gaza — to turn it into Dubai rather than Tehran, Israel would have behaved differently, too. Destructive criticism only empowers the most destructive elements in Israel to argue that nothing Israel does matters, so why change?

There are a number of clues to the truth here. But Tom Friedman and those with his mindset simply refuse to put two and two together, because they dislike the answer.

He writes about the Middle East he says he knows, 'full of amazing compassion, even among enemies, and breathtaking cruelty, even among neighbors.' Yet, even after seeing the reality right in front of him, he still can't fathom that the compassion and regard for human life is almost entirely on the Israeli side. He knows, or ought to, the efforts the Israelis have made to avoid civilian casualties, even at the risk of endangering their own soldiers. He certainly knows that had Israel lost a single one of the wars launched against it, the Arabs' treatment of Israel's Jewish inhabitants would have made the massacres in Rwanda, Darfur or Cambodia seem merciful by comparison.

Yet, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, he persists in making the fatal error of trying to look at this through Western, Judeo-Christian norms.

The majority of 'Palestinians' regard the Arab-Israeli conflict as a tribal struggle, and one that can only end with the defeat and massacre of the Jews of Israel. It's winner take all. That's exactly how they were programmed to look at it by Yassir Arafat for several generations and more recently, by Mahmoud Abbas and by Hamas. The 'Palestinians' define themselves entirely out of their opposition to the Jews, their revanchist dreams and a shared feeling on victimization.

It is the clearest example of a national psychosis since Hitler's Germany.

Of course Raida has no gratitude to the hated Jews for saving her son's life. She merely regards them as gullible and weak for doing so.And it's natural given her mindset that she wants her son to become a shaheed and take as many Jewish women and children with him as possible. To our Western sensibilities this seems monstrous, but to the Palestinians,and indeed to a significant part of the Arab world it is not only encouraged by Islam but is heroism worthy of emulation.

This is hardly a unique instance. Aside from deliberately targeting for death as many Jewish children as they can get their hands on, the Palestinians have, on many occasions shown a shocking disregard for the well-being of their own children, to the point that most Westerners would consider it child abuse.

It was the Original Gangster Yassir Arafat himself who best captured this sentiment when he spoke to Palestinian women right before the second intifada and enjoined them to 'have ten children. Keep one for yourself and give the others to me.'

The smartest thing Tom Friedman has to say in his column, albeit inadvertently was the sentiment that 'nothing [positive] Israel does matters.' To Israel's foes both in the Arab world and the West that is literally true. It doesn't matter what Israel does because Israel's existence is the problem, not Israel's good or bad behavior.

The Arab-Israeli conflict will end not with a piece of paper being signed, some land changing hands and yet another part of the Middle East becoming judenrein, free of Jews. It will end when the Arabs are defeated badly enough militarily that war is no longer an option and they grudgingly accept the status quo. That is exactly what led to the armistice Israel now has with Egypt and Jordan in spite of the fact neither Arab country has much in the way of warm and friendly feelings towards Israel.

When the Arab nations give up the idea of Israel being merely the latest version of the old Crusader kingdoms and start programming their people for progress rather than hatred and war, then a lasting peace will be possible.

The problem with Friedman's view -and that of those like him - is that they persist in looking at the War on Jihad through the distorted lens of their Western values and insisting that war be fought accordingly.

For both Israel and the West, this is a suicidal path.

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Michelle Antoinette: Forced To Endure Luxury Vacay To 'Honor Friend's Dead Father'

This is getting embarrassing.

After widespread national disgust over Michelle Obama's luxury Spanish vacation at the taxpayer's expense, the White House has decided to spin this modern day excess. According to the White House and its pet media whores, the First Lady made the trip because she promised one of her closest friends who just lost her father, longtime Chicago pal Anita Blanchard , that she would spend time with her. According to the White House, Mrs. Obama was unable to attend the funeral, which took place in early July.

Awwwwww.

Let's look at one of the menus for the wake:

The AP, quoting a menu released by the palace, said lunch "was Andalusian-style chilled gazpacho soup, char-grilled turbot, veal escalopes with mustard, Oriental rice with sauteed mushrooms, a Mallorca-style vegetable ratatouille and sliced fruit with ice cream, accompanied by wines from the northern regions of Rueda and Rioja."

Sounds delish. I always like to see our Royal Family and their friends eating well..especially when the American taxpayer is picking up the tab.

Oh, and the nonsense about not being able to attend the funeral? A quick internet search reveals most of early July's activities. They started with a Memorial Day long weekend in Chicago; then a trip to the Camp David presidential retreat before July 4; then a weekend in Maine, with a trip to Acadia National Park, from July 16 through Sunday afternoon July 18.

Remember, we are talking about the First Lady here with her basically nonessential activities, not the President.I think she could have managed to get away for a funeral.

By the same token, if the First Lady was going to queen it with a luxury vacation on our dime, there's no reason it couldn't have been in California rather than the Spanish Rivera, where the money would at least benefit the American economy during an economic downturn.

Sacrifice? Austerity? That's for the little people.

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Weekend Monkey On Politics: The Prop 8 Ruling - Monkey See, Monkey Do

Hidey Ho, Primates! Welcome to the one and only Real Banana, your source for the real poop on politics.

Let's do it and get to it..

This week's Big Nooze was the Prop 8 ruling on gay marriage by Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco (where else).

I was glad to see that this judge ruled in favor, especially since this Monkey won a few shekels on it. I mean, did any of the primates expect anything else? If Walker had ruled any other way, would his pals down at the bath house or over in the Castro have ever talked to him again?

Frankly, I think the primates are entirely too stirred up over this.I mean, who cares who's boinking who and what they call it, as long as there are consenting bodies involved? And who cares how many bodies or what age or gender? It's not the government's business.

This ruling basically ended years - centuries - of prejudice by saying that limiting the definition of marriage to being between a man and a woman is unconstitutional,not to mention immoral. I support that, because it opens up a new era of freedom and sets an important precedent, one that affects this Monkey directly.

For years, the inter-species love between humans and their primate cousins has been the love that dare not speak its name, to borrow a phrase from some antiquated porn novel.

Think I'm exaggerating? Watch the relationship between Gloria Swanson and her beloved chimp in Sunset Boulevard and read between the lines. Or that of the late Michael Jackson and Chatter, or Travis and his long time lover Sandra Herold.

Who knows how much the tension and stress of Travis and Sandra having to live a lie contributed to that tragedy? What about their rights, their happiness?

Now, with this new found freedom, couples like Travis and Sandra no longer have to live in the closet - they can be free to live their lives as they see fit. That's exactly what happened in a lot of countries in Europe after they finally decided to legalize same sex marriages.The laws against what we still refer to here in America as bestiality fell apart, and there was a lot more love in this world,lemme tell ya..

Now, once the lawyers and judges do their thing, we can experience the same thing here. Climb the tree with me and envision an America where marriage is whatever you want to make it, with who ever you want to make it with and mean whatever you want it to. No limits.

I don't make a habit of quoting ReThugs, but Dick Cheney was more right than he knew when he said "Freedom means freedom for everybody."

The political angle? Yeah, my Democrats may lose some votes in the short run. But as we see more inter-species relationships it's going to open up a whole new constituency for them. And probably for me. And that can only be a good thing.

Later, primates!

Weekend Monkey was a Democratic candidate for president in 2008 and is JoshuaPundit's> political Guru. He can be reached for personal appearances,freebies and interesting offers at wendmonkey@yahoo.com

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Conservative Gays Choice To Headline Their Fundraiser? Ann Coulter!

GOProud, a Washington-based group that represents gay conservatives is having a fundraiser dubbed 'Homocon'..and their first and only choice to headline the event?

None other than conservative diva and best selling author Ann Coulter:

“I’m so tickled that she agreed to do it,” Jimmy LaSalvia, executive director of GOProud told The Daily Caller. “Think about it: She’s hilarious, she’s provocative and, honestly, our folks just love her.”

LaSalvia said Coulter was the only person the group asked to headline the party, and she immediately agreed.

“Of course I’ll do it,” Coulter wrote to GOProud when they asked her to join the event. “I’m the right-wing Judy Garland!”

The right-wing Judy Garland - love it!

The event is scheduled to be held in New York City on September 25.Get your tickets early.

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Watcher's Council Results - August 6th Edition

The Council has spoken! Here are the results of our weekly Watcher's Council contest.

This week's council winner was Mere Rhetoric for After Lebanon Border Ambush, Reuters First Out Of The Gate With Demonstrably False Anti-Israel Propaganda, an exposure of al-Reuters use of a blatantly false caption to slant the news of the recent Lebanese Army attack on IDF troops.

My piece on Obama’s Latest Anti-Israel Tactic – Getting Others to Do the Dirty Work For Him took second this week....nothing's really changed between Obama and Israel.

Our non-council winning post was Why We’re Just Flatly Screwed in Afghanistan by Winds of Change a great exposition on exactly what's wrong with our approach there. A hint - yet another undeclared war with no clear strategic objective.

Here are the full results:

Council Winners

• First place with 2 1/3 votes! – Mere Rhetoric - After Lebanon Border Ambush, Reuters First Out Of The Gate With Demonstrably False Anti-Israel Propaganda
• Second place *t* with 1 2/3 votes - JoshuaPundit - Obama’s Latest Anti-Israel Tactic – Getting Others to Do the Dirty Work For Him
• Second place *t* with 1 2/3 votes – Wolf Howling - What Direction Our Economy
• Third place with 1 1/3 votes – The Colossus of Rhodey -The conclusion is: “Common Sense”
• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote – Rhymes with Right - Sorry, Charlie — Obama Can’t Fix The Racial Climate He And His Supporters Have Created
• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote - Virginia Right! - Will Washington’s Failures Lead to Second American Revolution?
• Fifth place with 2/3 vote – Bookworm Room - Anne Rice and neo-paganism
• Sixth place with 1/3 vote – Snapped Shot – The Future of Photojournalism

Non-Council Winners

• *First place with 3 2/3 votes! – Winds of Change - Why We’re Just Flatly Screwed in Afghanistan submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Second place with 2 2/3 votes – Seraphic Secret – Nazis To Open Museum Of Tolerance At Aushwitz submitted by Wolf Howling
• Third place with 1 2/3 votes - Yaacov Lozowick’s Ruminations - Fog of War, Foggy Thinking, Pure Malice submitted by The Watcher
• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote – News Real Blog – Dr. Phyllis Chesler - What Happens to Women if We Leave Afghanistan? Time Magazine Gets it Wrong submitted by Right Truth
• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote – Andrew Breitbart/Big Journalism – I Got My Correction Thanks to the The New York Times — Now Who’s Next? submitted by JoshuaPundit
• Fifth place with 2/3 vote – DaTechguy’s Blog – If professor Bambridge is embarassed to be a conservative these days… submitted by The Watcher
• Sixth place with 1/3 vote – StandWithUs (You Tube) – Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions submitted by Bookworm Room

As always, congratulations not only to the winners but to the participants.

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Michelle Antoinette

"...everybody in the country is going to have to sacrifice something, accept change for the greater good. Everybody is going to have to give. Everybody is going to have to have some skin in the game." - President Barack Hussein Obama

Well, as Orwell famously said, some animals are more equal than others.

As details of First Lady Michelle Obama's Spanish vacation leak out, a lot of American taxpayers' jaws are dropping at the extravagance when much of the nation is struggling and whole sectors of the US economy could easily be said to be on life support.

The First Lady is staying in Spain's Costa del Sol with her youngest daughter Sasha at the five-star Villa Padierna, a millionaire's playground rated as one of the world's top 30 hotels, with 40 friends, her personal entourage....and booking sixty,yes sixty hotel rooms. Based on a cost of $700 per night for the Secret Service peons and $3, 100 per night for the luxury rooms for the Royal Family and their special guests, I would say the hotel rooms alone are costing the American taxpayer between $50,000 and $70,000 per night.

The First Lady and her guests flew in on Air Force Two, with probably a second plane for the Secret Service and the less favored members of her entourage. The tab for that is about $150,000 for the round trip - not counting time on the ground or the food and beverage bill both ways.

The American taxpayer will also cover the cost of the only official part of the holiday, a visit the First Lady and her posse are scheduled to pay to the Spanish royal family on the island of Majorca.

Total cost? Probably between $400-500 thousand. But whose counting when you're spending other people's money?

And this is by no means the end of it. By the end of this summer,Michelle Obama will have enjoyed no less than eight tax payer funded holidays -including her trip to Los Angeles last June, a visit to the Florida's Gulf Coast next weekend and a ten-day trip to Martha's Vineyard later in August.

This is not mere envy on my part. I could care less what the Obama's do with their money. But I do have concerns with what they do with ours.

If this kind of luxury jaunt was really vacation was really an absolute necessity at a time when a lot of Americans are wondering how they're going to pay their bills, why Spain? Why not California, which has equally wonderful hotels and beaches and where the money would at least benefit the American economy that desperately needs it?

The truth of it is, the Obamas are so out of touch with what the average American thinks and feels that this probably didn't even occur to them.

Yet another example of this are President Obama's frequent rounds of golf. Whatever one might say about George W. Bush, he understood the symbolism of that.

President Bush actually gave up playing golf once the Iraq and Afghanistan wars started - because, in President Bush's own words, "I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the Commander-in-Chief playing golf."

"I feel I owe it to the families to be as - to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal."

Of all people, Peggy Noonan, an Obama fan, hints at this disconnect in latest piece, where she talks about the country 'boiling over' because it's Ruling Class is so out of touch with the concerns of ordinary Americans.

As a certified flack for the Ruling Class, Noonan of course blames 'Washington' as a whole for being so out of touch. But to quote an old Russian proverb, a fish always rots from the head.

Just like the 18th Century French Bourbons, the Obamas and their minions remain clueless.

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Elena Kagan Confirmed By The Senate

Well, we knew this was coming but it still leaves a foul taste in the mouth.

The vote was 63 to 37, with Republicans Richard Lugar of Indiana, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, galpal Lindsay Graham of South Carolina and Judd Gregg of New Hampshire voting for her and Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska joing the rest of the Republicans to vote against.

Kagan, who has never even been a judge and has little or no practical legal experience is now a Supreme Court Justice.

The real villain of this tragedy is Lindsay Graham, a member of the Senate Judiciary committee.According to Senate rules,at least one member of the minority party has to vote for closure to move a nomination from committee to the floor for a full vote.

Guess which committee member was willing to vote for closure?

The sole bit of good news is that Kagen merely replaces John Paul Stevens, who has been a Leftard statist's wet dream on the Court, so the balance remains the same.

The bad news is that this Left wing ideologue might be on the Court for as long as four decades, and the balance of the Court could change considerably in that time.

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The Nanny State Runs Amuck, Closes Down Kid's Lemonade Stand

The heavy hand of government strikes again...

This time on a budding entrepreneur in Northeast Portland, Oregon named Julie Murphy, a 7-year-old girl with a lemonade stand.

Julie first got the idea of having a stand after watching an episode of cartoon pig Olivia running one, said her mother, Maria Fife.So Julie went into action.

She put together a sign, working hard to make it just right by coloring in the letters and decorating it with a drawing of a person saying "Yummy." She made a list of supplies. Then, she got her mom to take her to a neighborhood street fair, with gallons of bottled water and packets of Kool-Aid and set up for business.

Business was good,and people were glad to help a little girl earn a little summer mad money. According to her mom, Julie was careful about making the lemonade, cleaning her hands with hand sanitizer, using a scoop for the bagged ice and keeping everything covered when it wasn't in use.

But then Big Government struck. After 20 minutes, a "lady with a clipboard" came over and asked for their license. When Fife explained they didn't have one, the woman told them to leave or face a $500 fine.

When the inspector moved off and Julie and her mom began to pack up, the peasants revolted. The people staffing the booths next to them told them to stay, insisting that the inspectors had no right to kick them out of the neighborhood gathering. They also suggested that they accept donations for the lemonade instead of charging a fixed price, and one of them even made an announcement to the crowd to support Julie's lemonade stand.

The crowd responded enthusiastically, business picked up - and then TWO government apparatchniks came back and forced them to close down. Julie started crying, while others confronted the inspectors. "It was a very big scene," Fife said.

But the stand was forced to close.

What the State wanted from little Julie Murphy was a $120 temporary restaurant license.In fact, in Oregon any lemonade stand, even if your child puts up one on your front lawn has to fork over or be closed down.

Obviously, for a start-up business on Julie Murphy's scale, a $120 fee is pretty much a deal killer.

Julie's mom says that Julie still tells her mother "it was a bad day" and complains about the inspectors shutting down her lemonade stand. But on the plus side, Julie Murphy just got a life lesson in how Big Government works, and I hope she remembers it.

And her mom? "It's gotten to the point where they need to be in all of our decisions. They don't trust us to make good choices on our own."

Yes indeed.

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'Palestinian' Programming - Garbage In, Garbage Out

From the Jerusalem Post

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California's Prop 8 On Gay Marriage Ruled Unconstitutional

Well, with this judge what did you expect?

Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco ( who is an open homosexual) basically made his ruling based on the foggy grounds that there is a moral stigma to civil unions, basically an ipse dixit (legalese for 'because I said so') decision rather than any actual harm or existing precedent:

"Moral disapproval alone is an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and lesbians. The evidence shows conclusively that Proposition 8 enacts, without reason, a private moral view that same-sex couples are inferior to opposite-sex couples." Walker wrote.

Is this judge trying to legislate thought crime from the bench?

This is particularly interesting in California, where the domestic partnership laws were deliberately formulated to eliminate any differentiation in rights and privileges between heterosexual marriages and civil unions.

And since Judge Walker's scope was only supposed to be the legality of Prop 8 according to the California State constitution, I get the feeling that this was an effort to simply kick this upstairs...and it will undoubtedly hit the US Supreme Court.

The supporters of gay marriage are essentially risking all the marbles as they seek to impose this by judicial fiat.I have a feeling they may have over reached.

From a political standpoint, this is yet another disaster for the Democrats, as there is very little actual voter support for same sex marriage, even in a Blue state like California. I'd say it's worth at least five points at the polls.

It will be seen as yet another instance of activist judges attempting to invent whatever rights it wants to in the Constitution and to force the public to accept it.

UPDATE: Wolf Howling considers this decision the new Roe V. Wade. He's also got a number of other reactions....

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Ahmadinejad Survives Assassination Attempt

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad survived an assassination attempt today when a homemade hand grenade was tossed at his motorcade during a visit to the western city of Hamadan. One person was reportedly arrested.

Ahmadinejad commented that he was the target of an assassination plot by Israel. "The stupid Zionists have hired mercenaries to assassinate me," he said.

Mahmoud old buddy, if the 'Zionists' were really trying to bump you off, I doubt they'd use some wacko with a crude, home made device to make the hit. And the results might have been somewhat different.

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Hail To Our Dear Leader On His Birthday!

Workers and peasants unite to send our Dear Leader best wishes!

Barack Hussein Obama will be spending birthday #49 on his own in Chicago. Or at least that's the story.

First Lady Michelle Obama is in Spain's Costa del Sol this morning with her youngest daughter Sasha. They're staying at the five-star Villa Padierna, rated as one of the world's top 30 hotels, with 40 friends....and booking sixty,yes sixty hotel rooms. Based on a cost of $700 per night for the peons and $3, 100 per night for the luxury rooms for the Royal Family and their special guests, I would say the hotel costs alone are costing the American taxpayer somewhere in the neighborhood of $70,000 per night.

In an embarrassing diplomatic faux pas, the US State Department had to move quickly to remove a travel advisory on Spain that included the phrase 'racist prejudices could lead to the arrest of Afro-Americans who travel to Spain,' from its website on Monday.

The Obama's older daughter Melia is in summer camp, so Obama is going to be batching it in Chicago.

I admit, it does seem odd to me that the Obamas would be deliberately taking separate vacations on Barack Obama's birthday, but I'm sure they have their reasons.

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Pravda-On-The-Hudson Rolls Over - Breitbart Wins Again

Remember how the dinosaur media claimed en masse that members of the Congressional Black Caucus were hit with racial slurs by Tea Party members at the rallies in DC over ObamaCare? Remember how there wasn't any evidence in spite of numerous video cams in evidence? And remember how nevertheless, it was the story for a couple of weeks?

Remember how many Journolistas and leftard 'reporters' flacked this as the gospel?

And remember how Andrew Breitbart got no takers when he offered $100K of his own money to anyone who had a single snippet of video showing it?

After all that, the New York Times has finally printed a correction - buried at the bottom of an unrelated story:

"The Political Times column last Sunday, about a generational divide over racial attitudes, erroneously linked one example of a racially charged statement to the Tea Party movement. While Tea Party supporters have been connected to a number of such statements, there is no evidence that epithets reportedly directed in March at Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia, outside the Capitol, came from Tea Party members."

Notice the cute little slur without any evidence whatever: 'Tea Party supporters have been connected to a number of such statements.'

Breitbart's reaction?

* The Times is admitting that there is absolutely no evidence that any epithets were shouted at the Congressman by any member of the Tea Party.
* This correction demonstrates we have finally proven our point to the nation’s most eminent and influential liberal media organ: that Rep. Andre Carson lied when he told the AP that members of the Tea Party hurled the “N-word” 15 times during the March 20 health-care rally that took place at the U.S. Capitol.

That’s great, as far as it goes – a thorough vindication of the Tea Party — but it doesn’t go far enough.

* It’s not enough for the Times to make a correction having let that calumny sit out there unrebuked for weeks and months and then, way after the fact, issue a correction.
* It’s not enough because the Times continues to imply that something racially charged might happened on the steps of the Capitol, when we have shown conclusively, via multiple videos of the moment in question, that nothing of the sort occurred.

It’s not enough because the Times correction is just the beginning. The same correction needs to come from every other major media outlet that blithely repeated this defamation, including the AP, the Washington Post, The Hill, and MSNBC – not just in their news columns, but in their editorials, op-ed and opinion columns and shows as well. Until then, there will be no closure, because the Tea Party will not stop in its pursuit of vindication until the same media effort that went into propagating this lie goes into dispelling it and giving the millions of Americans – 23% of whom are minorities, according to Gallup — their good name back.

Which media outlet is going to have the courage to air the exculpatory videos? Which will be the first to admit that Congressman Carson lied about the events of that day? That he slandered the Tea Party and had his charges believed by a gullible press corps that did no reporting and pursued no corroboration from among the 400 people and the Capitol Police officers whom Carson claimed had witnessed the event?
Why? Because it didn’t “fit the narrative.’

What we had here was intentional provocation by members of the Black Caucus who went out to the Tea Party rallies and baited the crowds in an attempt to get just one of them to provide that little video snippet that could have been aired over and over again to discredit the Tea Party.

When that failed, they simply made it up - aided by the hacks in the media who work the Ruling Class.

Both the CBC members that indulged in this and their media allies are beneath contempt.

Congratulations to Andrew Breitbart for proving it.

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Virginia Federal Judge Throws A Major Monkey Wrench Into ObamaCare

All hail the Old Dominion!

There are currently 22 lawsuits aimed at ObamaCare's constitutionality, and one of them was filed in Virginia.

Federal District Judge Henry Hudson ruled against the feds and declined to dismiss a lawsuit brought by the State of Virginia challenging the Obamacare health care mandate as going beyond the scope of the Commerce Clause and as a violation of the 10th Amendment. The judge allowed the suit to proceed on both grounds.

At the heart of the matter is whether the federal government has the right to mandate the purchase of a particular consumer item...not as a prerequisite to some other privilege, like driving, but merely because they exist.

If the government does have that right, then there is pretty much nothing the federal government cannot do, and the entire premise of the Constitution that government has limited powers as definitively stated no longer applies.

If the government can't force you to buy something from a private corporation simply because you happen to live in America, than the entire premise of ObamaCare is unconstitutional (something some of us have maintained all along) and the entire rotten edifice crumbles.

As a side point, remember that our forefathers fought a revolution in part because the ruling government tried to force them to buy stamps for day to day activities.

It's important to note that this ruling merely means the suit has legal grounds and can proceed.But the judge made extensive findings in his ruling as to the law itself, and that law is pretty much as it is and isn't going to change, unlike say, the evidence in a criminal trial or a civil law suit.

So the ruling gives us a good indication of how the judge views the law, and that view looks favorable to a judgment in favor of Virginia.

Since this now has to wend its way through the courts, the provisions of ObamaCare will undoubtedly be suspended until a final legal decision is made, and that almost certainly means the Supreme Court.

Thanks to the Ruling Class hacks known as Journolistas and their associates in Dinosaur media,this story is not getting much attention. But remember, you heard it here first.

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Obama: 41% Approval In Gallup Poll

heh!

And remember, Gallup oversamples Democrats, and has consistently had Zero's best numbers.

I think we'll be looking at Bush-style numbers circa 2008 for Obama by early next year.

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Update On Lebanese Attack On Israeli Troops

Summary Briefing from IDF Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich

Today's unprovoked attack by the Lebanese army against the IDF, took place in Israeli territory along Israeli's Northern border. In some areas, there is a gap between the IDF security fence and the actual border, which is where this attack took place. IDF soldiers were conducting routine maintenance work including clearing bushes from the area. This sort of activity is crucial to keep an open line of sight, to prevent attacks and kidnappings, like the one in the summer of 2006, which was in a similar location.

This crucial work was fully coordinated with UNIFIL, and there was nothing unique about it.

A Lebanese sniper opened fire towards IDF forces in a clear and blatant violation of UN security council resolution 1701.

The IDF retaliated with artillery and helicopter fire.

IDF intelligence is investigating if this was premeditated attack.

The LAF opened fire not at the soldiers who were doing the routine maintenance work on the fence, but at the commanders who were standing nearby observing the work. This indicates that it was a preplanned attack not in reaction to the work on the fence.

We estimate 4 casualties on their side.

Some parts of the LAF are influenced by Hezbollah

After the initial exchange of fire, we were requested to suspend our fire so that they could evacuate their wounded. roughly half an hour after we suspended our fire, LAF shot an RPG at one of our tanks. They missed the tank and our tank returned fire.

IDF only opened fire in response to our soldiers being shot at and wounded.

This is the most serious incident along the northern border since 2006.


Official Casualty Statement:

Lt Col (res) killed: Dov Harari.
Critically wounded (res) company commander (Captain).

(hat tip: Carl)

There are a number of other indications that this was a preplanned ambush.

The Hezbollah press, including photographers was present. One of the Lebanese dead was a reporter for al-Akhbar, a Hezbollah newspaper.It's also interesting that UNFIL troops were right in the immediate area and were able to intervene once the Israelis started retaliating.

This was obviously a Hezbollah operation, which means their Iranian masters were involved. That's the real back story behind today's attack, and we'll no doubt find out the full implications presently.

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Lebanon Fires On IDF Patrol In Israeli Territory

The IDF released a statement this morning ( hat tip Carl:

LAF Opens Fire at IDF Force on Northern Border

Earlier today during the mid-day hours, the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) fired at an IDF position along the Lebanese border in northern Israel. The force was in Israeli territory, carrying out routine maintenance and was pre-coordinated with UNIFIL. The border area is east of the Israeli town Metula. The incident occurred west of the internationally recognized "Blue Line" (the border between Israel and Lebanon) and east of the security fence, thus lying in Israeli territory.

The IDF force immediately returned fire with light arms at a force of the LAF, and the IDF also made use of artillery fire. Several minutes later an Israel Air Force (IAF) helicopter fired at the LAF Battalion Command Center in Al-Taybeh, damaging several LAF armored combat vehicles.

The IDF holds the LAF responsible for the incident that disrupted the calm in the region, and its consequences.

The IDF Chief of the General Staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi arrived at the Israeli-Lebanese border, is following the events closely as they unfold, and is constantly holding situation assessment reports with the OC Northern Command, Maj. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, as well as the Galilee Regional Division commander and additional commanders

The Israeli public in the Galilee region to carry on with their routine way of life.

Three Lebanese soldiers and a journalist were reported killed, but that has yet to be verified.

Since Lebanon's Army is intertwined and coordinated with Hezbollah's forces, this was likely a Hezbollah attack.

Which likely means Iran is involved.

More later.

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Obama's Latest Anti-Israel Tactic - Getting Others to Do the Dirty Work For Him

I've never considered President Barack Hussein Obama to be overly bright, but I've always credited him with the survival instincts of a cockroach and the ability to learn from his mistakes.

Two recent developments concerning Israel are a good example.

Having seen that bullying Israel overtly himself didn't play too well politically with Americans, he appears to have decided on a different tactic - getting others to do the job for him.

First, he had Israeli PM Netanyahu over to the White House for a smilin' photo-op where nothing of major substance was discussed or decided to try and give the appearance that his behavior towards Israel over the last year and a half was just a silly misunderstanding between friends, and Netanyahu played along because it benefited him in terms of domestic politics as well.

That out of the way, Obama began his new tactic - he simply found people that have a natural anti-Israel inclination anyway and got them to do the dirty work of pressuring Israel for him, backed by the same old threats behind the scenes.

The first one of these to surface out of the ooze was British PM David Cameron.

Shortly after meeting with Obama at the White House, Cameron traveled to Turkey as a guest of the Islamist Erdogan government and took the occasion to open up on Israel with both barrels. In harsh, undiplomatic language that surprised a good many people, Cameron publicly condemned Israel for the 'attack' on what he called the “humanitarian” flotilla to Gaza and referred the Gaza Strip as a “prison camp” with the clear implication that Israel was the warden.

Of course, that there was no 'attack' on the Gaza flotilla. Instead, there was simply a clearly announced attempt to prevent a group of ships from breaking a legitimate and legal blockade to a terrorist controlled state.

All of the ships except one agreed to sail into Israeli ports and have their supplies off loaded, checked and then shipped to Gaza...except for one, the Mavi Marmara, where Turkish "activists" with links to the terrorist supporting IHH prepared an ambush for unsuspecting IDF soldiers who came aboard the ship armed with paintball guns.

And far from being a prison camp, Gaza's stores are fully stocked, and a brand new shopping mall and a number of resorts have opened up and are doing a thriving business.

Cameron also shilled for Turkey to join the EU and announced "Turkey shares our determination to fight terrorism in all its forms, whether from al-Qaeda or from the PKK."

Apparently he doesn't consider Erdogan's support for the brutal Hamas regime or their Iranian overlords to be support for terrorism. What a surprise, eh?

Cameron's motivation in doing this is obvious. Aside from increasing Britain's commercial ties with Turkey, this was a way of ingratiating himself with Obama, and extricating the UK from the American public relations nightmare over British Petroleum's doings in the Gulf spill and the oil deal with Libya that resulted from the freeing of the Lockerbie bomber.

And it had the added bonus of appealing to some of Britain's Muslim voters and to Cameron's far Left coalition partners in the Liberal Party, most of whom are anti-Israel to the point of obsession.

Another example of Obama's latest tactic came out just today.

Israel had launched its own inquiry into the Gaza flotilla incident, with a commission including a retired Israeli Supreme Court justice and international participants. In spite of that Ban Ki Moon, Secretary General of the UN, had been insisting on putting together an anti-Israel witch hunt in the form of a UN 'independent investigative commission' designed to railroad Israel over the matter.

Just last week, Moon was saying that the UN's effort at forming a commission was likely not possible without Israeli cooperation.Today, the Israelis caved in and agreed to do exactly that, contrary to even Moon's expectations. What changed?

As I reported a week ago, the Obama Administration decided to support the creation of a UN-backed kangaroo court to 'investigate' the Gaza flotilla incident. Obama likely threatened Israel with refraining from American vetoes in the Security Council and abstaining from voting in areas like the General Assembly, the infamous UN Human Rights Council and the other U.N. bodies where ridiculously biased anti-Israel motions and resolutions are the normal, day to day routine.

Obama's UN ambassador Dr. Susan Rice hailed this, saying “The United States expects that the Panel[‘s]…work will be the primary method for the international community to review the incident, obviating the need for any overlapping international inquiries.” She said in her statement that the panel probing the incident would have limited authority and will "make recommendations as to how to avoid such incidents in the future."

Meanwhile, outside of fantasy land, the so-called UN Human Rights Council, which has already condemned Israel's “outrageous attack” is holding its own investigation of exactly the same flotilla incident on what it has already labeled as Israeli 'aggression.' Since the UNHRC is controlled by the member states rather than the UN itself, that 'investigation' is going to continue. And there's absolutely nothing that mandates which investigation is going to receive precedence.Or how 'limited' their scope or authority is going to be.

Netanyahu probably went along went along with this because he felt that he had more to gain than to lose in terms of American good will. That was a mistake of historic proportions.

What he has done, for the first time ever, is to subject the actions of the armed forces of a democratic state under attack by a terrorist entity to the jurisdiction of the UN.

There are no limits over what the 'inquiry' will cover, who can be made to testify, where information and evidence gathered by the 'inquiry' can be used or what charges can be leveled against IDF soldiers afterwards. Rest assured that any 'inquiry' by the UN will focus entirely on Israel and ignore Turkey, Hamas or the IHH. And that any time Israel defends itself in the future, the entire circus will be repeated.

Aside from setting a horrendous precedent for Israel, imagine the spectacle of American military personnel dragged before the International Court of Justice under the Muslim dominated UN auspices to be sentenced for 'human rights offenses' in Afghanistan, Iraq or elsewhere. Thanks to Obama's support for a UN lynching of Israel, a precedent has been set for America as well.

This sort of blowback probably doesn't trouble Obama as long as he's able to use this technique to undermine Israel. But it could very well come back to haunt us in the future.

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The Scum Rises In The East: Maxine Waters Charged With Ethics Violations

This has been coming for quite a while.

Congresswoman 'No Justice No Peace' (her catch phrase during th eRodney King riots in Los Angeles) has long been known as someone who went into government to do good and did real well for herself. But as a veteran Democrat and a senior member of the Congressional Black Caucus, she's always been pretty invulnerable.

What's happened is that she just finally got a bit too blatant out of familiarity and contempt, just like Charlie Rangel.

Here's what went down.

Back in September of 2008, Waters lobbied for TARP funds for OneUnited Bank, under the guise of it being part of an association of minority controlled banks.

Waters' husband Sidney Williams had been a board member of OneUnited from 2004 to 2008 and was and still is a stockholder.

After the meetings with Treasury officials that Waters arranged, OneUnited got $12.1 million in TARP funds.Meanwhile, Treasury officials testified that they never knew of her personal ties to OneUnited.

The Office of Congressional Ethics, who investigated what happened found that "there is a substantial reason to believe" that Waters violated House ethics rules by arranging the meetings and not disclosing her personal financial interest. Waters says that the meetings were held on behalf of the National Bankers Association, a trade group representing minority-owned banks. While that's technically correct, the OCE found in its investigation that "the discussion at the meeting centered on a single bank-- OneUnited."

Barney Frank, chairman of the House financial services committee is apparently also involved and may have helped drop a dime on Waters. Frank, who is identified in the OCE report as "Representative A".

According to the OCE report, Waters spoke to Frank about OneUnited's problems.

"Representative Waters told Representative A that she was in a predicament because her husband had been involved in the bank, but 'OneUnited people' were coming to her for help," the report states. "According to Representative A, she knew she should say no, but it bothered her. It was clear to Representative A that this was a 'conflict of interest problem.'"

Frank says he told Waters to 'stay out of it' and then asked his staff to take over the OneUnited issue from Waters.

The report adds: "Representative A had at least two conversations with Representative Waters in which he told her to not get involved in the OneUnited matter."

If you read between the lines,what likely happened is that Waters felt that Frank either wasn't moving quickly enough or decisively enough for her taste, so she decided to move on it herself.

Needless to say, with both Waters and Charlie Rangel being brought up on charges, the race card is definitely being played:

The question of whether black lawmakers are now being singled out for scrutiny has been simmering throughout the 111th Congress, with the Office of Congressional Ethics a focal point of the concerns. At one point earlier this year, all eight lawmakers under formal investigation by the House ethics committee, including Rangel and Waters, were black Democrats. All those investigations originated with the OCE, which can make recommendations — but takes no final actions — on such cases.

There’s a “dual standard, one for most members and one for African-Americans,” said one member of the Congressional Black Caucus, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

You betcha.

I'm not surprised Waters opted for a trial, after seeing that all Rangel is facing is a 'reprimand'.

Why not? Nothing will happen until after the midterms and like Rangel she can stop the trial any time by simply confessing to the charges and taking a wrist slap during the lame duck period, when the Democrats will still control Congress.

Obama, Pelosi and company didn't drain the swamp in DC..they stocked it with a bunch of contemptuous and very greedy alligators.

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