Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Monday, May 14, 2007
Truth in the Bible..
once again, archeology confirms the veracity of the Bible..
----------------------------------------------
For This They Were Willfully Ignorant. . .
Jack Kinsella
After searching for half his lifetime, Ehud Netzer, an archeologist from Hebrew University, claims to have found, to an historical certainty, the tomb of Herod the Great, ruled Judea from 37 BC to 4 BC.The tomb was located at the base of Herodium, a man-made mountain on which Herod had build one of his most ornate summer palaces. The tomb is located nine miles south of Jerusalem and east of Bethlehem.
Herod was the king who, according to Matthew, ordered the "Massacre of the Innocents." Herod had been elected "King of the Jews" by the Roman Senate in 40 BC, so the Magi's claims were news to him.
When the Babylonian astrologers (the Magi) went to Herod to enquire about the birthplace of the "King of the Jews", he ordered all male children under the age of two years in Bethlehem to be slaughtered, hoping, in the process, to kill this possible challenger to his rule.
The Bible says that Mary and Joseph fled into Egypt to avoid the slaughter, taking the infant Jesus with them.
Like all New Testament accounts, the Massacre of the Innocents is hotly disputed by 'scholars' who grow increasingly desperate in their efforts to discount the New Testament as a book of fables.
Many denied the existence of Herod the Great, despite eyewitness accounts of his life, his bloody reign and his slow, miserable and painful death.
Historical accounts by 1st century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus indicated that Herod was buried at Herodium, and Netzer had been excavating there since 1972.
He finally found the grave midway between the upper part of Herodium and the lower palaces, an area not previously studied.
Herod was also the king credited with expanding the second Jewish Temple atop Temple Mount, which was known to history as "Herod's Temple". (The Arabs -- and in particular, the "Palestinians" continue to deny any such Temple ever existed.)
The Palestinian Ministry of Tourism declined to comment until the site could be examined by a team of Arab archeologists.
It is almost painful to watch the skeptics' efforts to deconstruct this latest in the long list of archeological finds confirming the accuracy and reliability of the New Testament accounts.
I read through some of the reader's comments on the story at the website of Canada's Globe and Mail.
Writing under such names as "Just the Truth From Canada" and "Truth Seeker" one finds comments like, "Ancient Israel, as described in biblical accounts, complete with magnificent gilt palaces, and huge, conquering armies, etc., etc. . . . is not historically accurate, but is folklore, a bunch of tribal fantasies."
Note that this comment was attached to a story about the discovery of Herod's tomb in EXACTLY such an 'magnificent gilt palace'.
Writes another: "Israeli archaeologists probably have no right to dig in the occupied Palestinian West Bank ." To this writer, the discovery is irrelevant to history.
The West Bank is Palestinian, and no stupid historical facts are going to change his mind.
The facts are these, and they ARE facts, even if someone doesn't like them. There has never been an archeological find that disputes any Bible account. Not a single one.
Pontius Pilate was once deemed by those claiming to be 'scholars' to be a New Testament myth. Why? Because there was no archeological confirmation. To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, the absence of evidence was universally accepted by liberal 'scholars' as evidence of absence.
But in 1962, an inscription was found in the town of Caesarea that said, "Pontius Pilate, Prefect of Judea, has presented the Tiberium to the Caesareans."
Sir William Ramsay, one of the greatest archeologists in history, was a confirmed atheist when set out on a quest to disprove the historical accuracy of Luke. What he discovered was that Luke was historically accurate to the tiniest detail. His conclusions?
"I began with a mind unfavorable to it...but more recently I found myself brought into contact with the Book of Acts as an authority for the topography, antiquities, and society of Asia Minor. It was gradually borne upon me that in various details the narrative showed marvelous truth."
Consequently, Ramsay wrote, "Luke is a historian of first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy...this author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians."
Sir William Ramsay died a Christian.
Dr. William F. Albright, initially as skeptical as Dr. Ramsay, eventually came to write;
"The excessive skepticism shown toward the Bible [by certain schools of thought] has been progressively discredited. Discovery after discovery has established the accuracy of numerous details."
Caiaphas, the High Priest of the Sanhedrin who ordered the execution of Jesus, was another such New Testament myth until the Caiaphas family tomb was accidentally discovered by workers constructing a road in a park just south of the Old City of Jerusalem.
Other recent archeological digs have uncovered:
1) The synagogue at Capernaum where Jesus cured a man with an unclean spirit and delivered the sermon on the bread of life.
2) The house of Peter at Capernaum where Jesus healed Peter's mother-in-law and others.
3) Jacob's well where Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman.
4) The Pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem, where Jesus healed a crippled man.
5) The Pool of Siloam in Jerusalem, where Jesus healed a blind man.
6) The tribunal at Corinth where Paul was tried.
7) The theater at Ephesus where the riot of silversmiths occurred.
8) Herod's palace at Caesarea where Paul was kept under guard.
9) An Egyptian parchment confirming the census order that brought Mary and Joseph out of Egypt to Bethlehem to be taxed.
There are at least thirty-nine verifiable extra-Biblical accounts, (including 17 non-Christian sources, that bear witness from outside the New Testament to over 100 details about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
Apart from archeology, there is the question of logic. Dr. Ramsay and Dr. Albright both confirm, using scientific, archeological and historical evidences, Luke's accuracy as an historian.
It is not logical to assume that, although accurate in every possible confirmable aspect, Luke lied about Jesus and then permitted himself to be martyred for that lie.
Neither is it logical to assume that, since Luke confirms the rest of the Gospel writers, they also allowed themselves to be put to death to preserve a lie.
It is illogical to argue that they were sincere, but that they were deceived about Who Jesus was.
Each recorded more or less identical events, under more or less identical circumstances. If it were one witness, one might assume he was mentally unbalanced, or hallucinating.
But twelve? (Plus the uncounted multitudes who, within living memory of Jesus, gladly embraced martyrdom at Roman hands for their witness?)
The discovery of Herod's Tomb is just one more rock atop a mountain of overwhelming evidence confirming the reliability of the New Testament accounts. Keep in mind that in every case, (every single solitary case) where evidence DOES exist, it confirms the Bible account.
Not one shred of archeological evidence disputes a single point of the Gospel account. At worst, there remain unconfirmed details.
It is upon such thin suppositions as the absence of confirmatory evidence that Bible skeptics build their argument that the Bible is an unreliable book of myths.
As each new piece of evidence is uncovered, they scurry to seek some other unconfirmed detail to replace it as the bedrock of their argument.
Peter predicted that "there shall come in the last days, scoffers," explaining the motive for their skepticism as "walking after their own lusts."
Paul, in describing the 'strong delusion' gave as the motivation for their rejection of the truth the fact that they 'had pleasure in unrighteousness." (2nd Thessalonians 2:11)
The skeptic delights in arguing that a righteous God would never condemn someone to eternal damnation just because they were unable to believe. I agree. God doesn't condemn unbelievers because they CAN'T believe. They condemn themselves because they WON'T believe. Peter called them "willingly ignorant."
There is more historical and documentary evidence attesting to the life and times of Jesus Christ than there is of Julius Caesar. But there are no skeptics of whom I am aware that have dedicated their lives and fortunes to denying the existence of Julius Caesar.
It takes conscious, deliberate effort -- and a lot of it -- to convince oneself, especially in the face of such overwhelming evidence, that Jesus Christ was less an historical figure than Julius Caesar.
There is no price, real or perceived, attached to belief in Julius Ceasar.
Belief in Jesus Christ, however, demands a change in perspective. Logically, if one believes in eternal accountability before a Righteous Judge, it therefore follows that it would throw a damper on the 'pleasure of unrighteousness'.
In the final analysis, there is but one sin for which the unbeliever will stand convicted.
"Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men." (Matthew 12:31)
The term 'blasphemy' can best be understood as 'defiant irreverence'. It is a state of defiant unbelief, despite the evidence. Or, as Peter describes it, "willful ignorance."
"Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost" can be understood as a continued and persistently stubborn rejection of the gospel of salvation. This would be THE "unpardonable sin" because as long as a person remains in unbelief, he voluntarily excludes himself from forgiveness of sin.
It isn't God that condemns the unbeliever to eternal separation in the Lake of Fire.
The unbeliever condemns himself by his choice to believe a lie, preferring instead, as Peter noted, to walk after their own lusts, thus ignoring the evidence out of willful ignorance.
"I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live." (Deuteronomy 30:19)
The same choice faces us all
----------------------------------------------
For This They Were Willfully Ignorant. . .
Jack Kinsella
After searching for half his lifetime, Ehud Netzer, an archeologist from Hebrew University, claims to have found, to an historical certainty, the tomb of Herod the Great, ruled Judea from 37 BC to 4 BC.The tomb was located at the base of Herodium, a man-made mountain on which Herod had build one of his most ornate summer palaces. The tomb is located nine miles south of Jerusalem and east of Bethlehem.
Herod was the king who, according to Matthew, ordered the "Massacre of the Innocents." Herod had been elected "King of the Jews" by the Roman Senate in 40 BC, so the Magi's claims were news to him.
When the Babylonian astrologers (the Magi) went to Herod to enquire about the birthplace of the "King of the Jews", he ordered all male children under the age of two years in Bethlehem to be slaughtered, hoping, in the process, to kill this possible challenger to his rule.
The Bible says that Mary and Joseph fled into Egypt to avoid the slaughter, taking the infant Jesus with them.
Like all New Testament accounts, the Massacre of the Innocents is hotly disputed by 'scholars' who grow increasingly desperate in their efforts to discount the New Testament as a book of fables.
Many denied the existence of Herod the Great, despite eyewitness accounts of his life, his bloody reign and his slow, miserable and painful death.
Historical accounts by 1st century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus indicated that Herod was buried at Herodium, and Netzer had been excavating there since 1972.
He finally found the grave midway between the upper part of Herodium and the lower palaces, an area not previously studied.
Herod was also the king credited with expanding the second Jewish Temple atop Temple Mount, which was known to history as "Herod's Temple". (The Arabs -- and in particular, the "Palestinians" continue to deny any such Temple ever existed.)
The Palestinian Ministry of Tourism declined to comment until the site could be examined by a team of Arab archeologists.
It is almost painful to watch the skeptics' efforts to deconstruct this latest in the long list of archeological finds confirming the accuracy and reliability of the New Testament accounts.
I read through some of the reader's comments on the story at the website of Canada's Globe and Mail.
Writing under such names as "Just the Truth From Canada" and "Truth Seeker" one finds comments like, "Ancient Israel, as described in biblical accounts, complete with magnificent gilt palaces, and huge, conquering armies, etc., etc. . . . is not historically accurate, but is folklore, a bunch of tribal fantasies."
Note that this comment was attached to a story about the discovery of Herod's tomb in EXACTLY such an 'magnificent gilt palace'.
Writes another: "Israeli archaeologists probably have no right to dig in the occupied Palestinian West Bank ." To this writer, the discovery is irrelevant to history.
The West Bank is Palestinian, and no stupid historical facts are going to change his mind.
The facts are these, and they ARE facts, even if someone doesn't like them. There has never been an archeological find that disputes any Bible account. Not a single one.
Pontius Pilate was once deemed by those claiming to be 'scholars' to be a New Testament myth. Why? Because there was no archeological confirmation. To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, the absence of evidence was universally accepted by liberal 'scholars' as evidence of absence.
But in 1962, an inscription was found in the town of Caesarea that said, "Pontius Pilate, Prefect of Judea, has presented the Tiberium to the Caesareans."
Sir William Ramsay, one of the greatest archeologists in history, was a confirmed atheist when set out on a quest to disprove the historical accuracy of Luke. What he discovered was that Luke was historically accurate to the tiniest detail. His conclusions?
"I began with a mind unfavorable to it...but more recently I found myself brought into contact with the Book of Acts as an authority for the topography, antiquities, and society of Asia Minor. It was gradually borne upon me that in various details the narrative showed marvelous truth."
Consequently, Ramsay wrote, "Luke is a historian of first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy...this author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians."
Sir William Ramsay died a Christian.
Dr. William F. Albright, initially as skeptical as Dr. Ramsay, eventually came to write;
"The excessive skepticism shown toward the Bible [by certain schools of thought] has been progressively discredited. Discovery after discovery has established the accuracy of numerous details."
Caiaphas, the High Priest of the Sanhedrin who ordered the execution of Jesus, was another such New Testament myth until the Caiaphas family tomb was accidentally discovered by workers constructing a road in a park just south of the Old City of Jerusalem.
Other recent archeological digs have uncovered:
1) The synagogue at Capernaum where Jesus cured a man with an unclean spirit and delivered the sermon on the bread of life.
2) The house of Peter at Capernaum where Jesus healed Peter's mother-in-law and others.
3) Jacob's well where Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman.
4) The Pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem, where Jesus healed a crippled man.
5) The Pool of Siloam in Jerusalem, where Jesus healed a blind man.
6) The tribunal at Corinth where Paul was tried.
7) The theater at Ephesus where the riot of silversmiths occurred.
8) Herod's palace at Caesarea where Paul was kept under guard.
9) An Egyptian parchment confirming the census order that brought Mary and Joseph out of Egypt to Bethlehem to be taxed.
There are at least thirty-nine verifiable extra-Biblical accounts, (including 17 non-Christian sources, that bear witness from outside the New Testament to over 100 details about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
Apart from archeology, there is the question of logic. Dr. Ramsay and Dr. Albright both confirm, using scientific, archeological and historical evidences, Luke's accuracy as an historian.
It is not logical to assume that, although accurate in every possible confirmable aspect, Luke lied about Jesus and then permitted himself to be martyred for that lie.
Neither is it logical to assume that, since Luke confirms the rest of the Gospel writers, they also allowed themselves to be put to death to preserve a lie.
It is illogical to argue that they were sincere, but that they were deceived about Who Jesus was.
Each recorded more or less identical events, under more or less identical circumstances. If it were one witness, one might assume he was mentally unbalanced, or hallucinating.
But twelve? (Plus the uncounted multitudes who, within living memory of Jesus, gladly embraced martyrdom at Roman hands for their witness?)
The discovery of Herod's Tomb is just one more rock atop a mountain of overwhelming evidence confirming the reliability of the New Testament accounts. Keep in mind that in every case, (every single solitary case) where evidence DOES exist, it confirms the Bible account.
Not one shred of archeological evidence disputes a single point of the Gospel account. At worst, there remain unconfirmed details.
It is upon such thin suppositions as the absence of confirmatory evidence that Bible skeptics build their argument that the Bible is an unreliable book of myths.
As each new piece of evidence is uncovered, they scurry to seek some other unconfirmed detail to replace it as the bedrock of their argument.
Peter predicted that "there shall come in the last days, scoffers," explaining the motive for their skepticism as "walking after their own lusts."
Paul, in describing the 'strong delusion' gave as the motivation for their rejection of the truth the fact that they 'had pleasure in unrighteousness." (2nd Thessalonians 2:11)
The skeptic delights in arguing that a righteous God would never condemn someone to eternal damnation just because they were unable to believe. I agree. God doesn't condemn unbelievers because they CAN'T believe. They condemn themselves because they WON'T believe. Peter called them "willingly ignorant."
There is more historical and documentary evidence attesting to the life and times of Jesus Christ than there is of Julius Caesar. But there are no skeptics of whom I am aware that have dedicated their lives and fortunes to denying the existence of Julius Caesar.
It takes conscious, deliberate effort -- and a lot of it -- to convince oneself, especially in the face of such overwhelming evidence, that Jesus Christ was less an historical figure than Julius Caesar.
There is no price, real or perceived, attached to belief in Julius Ceasar.
Belief in Jesus Christ, however, demands a change in perspective. Logically, if one believes in eternal accountability before a Righteous Judge, it therefore follows that it would throw a damper on the 'pleasure of unrighteousness'.
In the final analysis, there is but one sin for which the unbeliever will stand convicted.
"Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men." (Matthew 12:31)
The term 'blasphemy' can best be understood as 'defiant irreverence'. It is a state of defiant unbelief, despite the evidence. Or, as Peter describes it, "willful ignorance."
"Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost" can be understood as a continued and persistently stubborn rejection of the gospel of salvation. This would be THE "unpardonable sin" because as long as a person remains in unbelief, he voluntarily excludes himself from forgiveness of sin.
It isn't God that condemns the unbeliever to eternal separation in the Lake of Fire.
The unbeliever condemns himself by his choice to believe a lie, preferring instead, as Peter noted, to walk after their own lusts, thus ignoring the evidence out of willful ignorance.
"I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live." (Deuteronomy 30:19)
The same choice faces us all
Thursday, May 03, 2007
damascus
things are setting up to be interesting this summer..
"See, Damascus will no longer be a city but will become a heap of ruins. The cities of Aroer will be deserted and left to flocks, which will lie down, with no one to make them afraid." (Isaiah 17:1-2)
---------------------------------------------------
Despite Syrian military border build-up, Israel has no plans to attack but stands ready to ward off a surprise Syrian strike
May 3, 2007
Reporting that this message had been relayed from Jerusalem to Damascus, Israeli Ambassador to US Salai Meridor said in Washington Wednesday night that Syria has amassed on Israel’s borders strength and missiles capable of reaching every part of the country. On April 30, DEBKAfile reported exclusively that Bashar Assad had shifted units from the Iraqi to the Lebanese border shortly after the Winograd panel had slammed the Olmert government for its mishandling of the Lebanon War. Our military sources specified that an infantry brigade had been relocated from the Iraqi border to beef up the Syrian 14th Commando Division deployed opposite Golan and the sensitive Mt. Hermon- Shabaa Farms sector where the Lebanese, Syrian and Israeli borders converge. A source in Israel’s northern command says the stationing of an infantry brigade on the forward line with Israel stiffens Syrian defenses and frees up Syrian command units for operational duties.
A careful watch is trained on these movements to ascertain whether Assad is engaging in mere muscle flexing, or trying to capitalize on the Israeli government’s weakness for a military move on the Golan Heights.
"See, Damascus will no longer be a city but will become a heap of ruins. The cities of Aroer will be deserted and left to flocks, which will lie down, with no one to make them afraid." (Isaiah 17:1-2)
---------------------------------------------------
Despite Syrian military border build-up, Israel has no plans to attack but stands ready to ward off a surprise Syrian strike
May 3, 2007
Reporting that this message had been relayed from Jerusalem to Damascus, Israeli Ambassador to US Salai Meridor said in Washington Wednesday night that Syria has amassed on Israel’s borders strength and missiles capable of reaching every part of the country. On April 30, DEBKAfile reported exclusively that Bashar Assad had shifted units from the Iraqi to the Lebanese border shortly after the Winograd panel had slammed the Olmert government for its mishandling of the Lebanon War. Our military sources specified that an infantry brigade had been relocated from the Iraqi border to beef up the Syrian 14th Commando Division deployed opposite Golan and the sensitive Mt. Hermon- Shabaa Farms sector where the Lebanese, Syrian and Israeli borders converge. A source in Israel’s northern command says the stationing of an infantry brigade on the forward line with Israel stiffens Syrian defenses and frees up Syrian command units for operational duties.
A careful watch is trained on these movements to ascertain whether Assad is engaging in mere muscle flexing, or trying to capitalize on the Israeli government’s weakness for a military move on the Golan Heights.
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
a prayer for death..
when we are told this to our faces and we ignore it, we risk our values and the future of our society..
-----------------
On Palestinian television last week, Dr. Ahmad Bahar (acting Speaker, Palestinian Legislative Council) delivered this sermon:
“This is Islam, that was ahead of its time with regards to human rights in the treatment of prisoners, but our people was afflicted by the cancerous lump, that is the Jews, in the heart of the Arab nation. Be certain that America is on its way to disappear, America is wallowing [in blood] today in Iraq and Afghanistan, America is defeated and Israel is defeated, and was defeated in Lebanon and Palestine. Make us victorious over the infidel people. Allah, take hold of the Jews and their allies, Allah, take hold of the Americans and their allies. Allah, count them and kill them to the last one and don’t leave even one.” [PA TV, April 20, 2007]
Hat tip: Palestinian Media Watch. http://www.pmw.org/
common sense from fred thompson..
i'm not sure if he's going to run or not, but i enjoy his straight forward, fact based writing style. the world will get their cup of life without america soon enough.. i suppose the present time is just to allow their mouths to foam just a little more before getting what they ultimately want.. how does the old saying go, be careful what you ask for because you just might get it.
-------------------------------------------------------
Sticks and Stones
Fred Thompson
It bothers Americans when we're told how unpopular we are with the rest of the world. For some of us, at least, it gets our back up -- and our natural tendency is to tell the French, for example, that we'd rather not hear from them until the day when they need us to bail them out again.
But we cool off. We're big boys and girls, after all, and we don't really bruise that easily. We're also hopeful that, eventually, our ostrich-headed allies will realize there's a World War going on out there and they need to pick a side -- the choice being between the forces of civilization and the forces of anarchy. Considering the fact that the latter team is growing stronger and bolder daily, while most of our European Union friends continue to dismantle their defenses, that day may not be too long in coming.
In the meantime, let's be realistic about the world we live in. Mexican leaders apparently have an economic policy based on exporting their own citizens, while complaining about US immigration policies that are far less exclusionary than their own. The French jail perfectly nice people for politically incorrect comments, but scold us for holding terrorists at Guantanamo.
Russia, though, takes the cake. Here is a government apparently run by ex-KGB agents who have no problem blackmailing whole countries by turning the crank on their oil pipelines. They're not doing anything shady, they say. They can’t help it if their opponents are so notoriously accident-prone. Criticize these guys and you might accidentally drink a cup of tea laced with a few million dollars worth of deadly, and extremely rare, radioactive poison. Oppose the Russian leadership, and you could trip and fall off a tall building or stumble into the path of a bullet.
The hundreds of demonstrators the Kremlin has had beaten and arrested in the last few weeks alone, we are told, were not pro-democracy activists but common criminals -- like world chess champion Garry Kasparov. Demonstrating without a permit is a serious crime and, luckily for the Kremlin, it turns out that pro-government youth groups seem always to have permits for rallies at the exact times and places that anti-government protesters gather.
Another group that seems to be having trouble with permits is the media. Newspapers and television stations that aren't smart enough to know that America is the enemy and that things are great in Russia can't seem to get their paperwork in order. It’s some sort of IQ test, I guess.
President Vladimir Putin, though, shows no sign that he feels defensive about his remarkable string of luck. He knows who's really to blame for "meddling" in Russian "internal affairs." It's the United States.
He's lambasting us for yielding too much power. One example of this excessive power is the missile defense radar system we want to install in Poland and the Czech Republic -- to give the free world early warning of a missile attack by terrorists or a rogue nation like Iran. Perhaps it’s just a coincidence that the Russians have been supplying Iran with both nuclear and missile technology while using their UN veto to block sanctions that would force Tehran to back down. Regardless, we're clearly at fault, he says, for putting a defense system close to Mother Russia.
So I wouldn't worry too much about the criticisms we receive. We make mistakes and at times the "carping" may even be on target, but it seems to me that we ought to look at a lot of the complaints as a badge of honor.
]
-------------------------------------------------------
Sticks and Stones
Fred Thompson
It bothers Americans when we're told how unpopular we are with the rest of the world. For some of us, at least, it gets our back up -- and our natural tendency is to tell the French, for example, that we'd rather not hear from them until the day when they need us to bail them out again.
But we cool off. We're big boys and girls, after all, and we don't really bruise that easily. We're also hopeful that, eventually, our ostrich-headed allies will realize there's a World War going on out there and they need to pick a side -- the choice being between the forces of civilization and the forces of anarchy. Considering the fact that the latter team is growing stronger and bolder daily, while most of our European Union friends continue to dismantle their defenses, that day may not be too long in coming.
In the meantime, let's be realistic about the world we live in. Mexican leaders apparently have an economic policy based on exporting their own citizens, while complaining about US immigration policies that are far less exclusionary than their own. The French jail perfectly nice people for politically incorrect comments, but scold us for holding terrorists at Guantanamo.
Russia, though, takes the cake. Here is a government apparently run by ex-KGB agents who have no problem blackmailing whole countries by turning the crank on their oil pipelines. They're not doing anything shady, they say. They can’t help it if their opponents are so notoriously accident-prone. Criticize these guys and you might accidentally drink a cup of tea laced with a few million dollars worth of deadly, and extremely rare, radioactive poison. Oppose the Russian leadership, and you could trip and fall off a tall building or stumble into the path of a bullet.
The hundreds of demonstrators the Kremlin has had beaten and arrested in the last few weeks alone, we are told, were not pro-democracy activists but common criminals -- like world chess champion Garry Kasparov. Demonstrating without a permit is a serious crime and, luckily for the Kremlin, it turns out that pro-government youth groups seem always to have permits for rallies at the exact times and places that anti-government protesters gather.
Another group that seems to be having trouble with permits is the media. Newspapers and television stations that aren't smart enough to know that America is the enemy and that things are great in Russia can't seem to get their paperwork in order. It’s some sort of IQ test, I guess.
President Vladimir Putin, though, shows no sign that he feels defensive about his remarkable string of luck. He knows who's really to blame for "meddling" in Russian "internal affairs." It's the United States.
He's lambasting us for yielding too much power. One example of this excessive power is the missile defense radar system we want to install in Poland and the Czech Republic -- to give the free world early warning of a missile attack by terrorists or a rogue nation like Iran. Perhaps it’s just a coincidence that the Russians have been supplying Iran with both nuclear and missile technology while using their UN veto to block sanctions that would force Tehran to back down. Regardless, we're clearly at fault, he says, for putting a defense system close to Mother Russia.
So I wouldn't worry too much about the criticisms we receive. We make mistakes and at times the "carping" may even be on target, but it seems to me that we ought to look at a lot of the complaints as a badge of honor.
]
Thursday, April 26, 2007
ham sandwich hate crime..
i can't wait til they have pizza day.. damn the pepperoni! (or should it be somali sausage?)
------------------------------
When Ham Sandwiches Attack
Jack Kinsella
Generally speaking, ham sandwiches are quiet and unassuming and don't really seem to have much of an opinion on any given subject.Indeed, a ham sandwich can be a welcome friend, it can be a traveling companion, eventually, it can even be lunch, but there is no recorded incident in which a ham sandwich has ever exhibited any malevolence.
The last time a ham sandwich gave society a major problem was the Mama Cass Affair. When Cass Elliot (Mama Cass of the Mamas and the Papas -- in case you were out of town for the 70's) died in 1974, her death was popularly ascribed to having choked to death on a ham sandwich.
The ham sandwich was innocent. There was a ham sandwich and a Coke found by her bedside, but the sandwich was untouched. The coroner eventually ruled that Cass Elliot died of a heart attack brought on by obesity.
Blaming the ham sandwich was a bad beef. . .
Actually, the only thing a ham sandwich has ever been guilty of, in my experience, was bad judgment. Who can forget the time that a ham sandwich incorrectly assumed two packages would not get mailed unless somebody took them to the Post Office? Or how humiliated that same ham sandwich was when the Post Office Lady picked the packages up?
(Come to think of it, that particular ham sandwich had a Jewish accent. Hmmmm)
Now, sadly, another ham sandwich is back in the news. This time, however, it isn't charged with murder, or parodied in a TV commercial for its bad judgment.
In this latest incident, the ham sandwich is charged with committing a hate crime.
Once again, however, it appears that the ham sandwich is getting a bum wrap. Allow me to explain. . .
A middle school student in Lewiston, Maine is being investigated by police for a possible hate crime because he placed a bag containing a ham sandwich on a cafeteria table where Muslim students from Somalia were eating their lunch.
Why Muslims students from Somalia were in a middle school in Maine eating lunch is grist for a different mill. Don't they have cafeterias in Somalia? But I digress.
Anyway, the school superintended took prompt action, ordering the student who brought the ham sandwich to school suspended, and promising more disciplinary action, should the investigation prove the ham sandwich was guilty as charged.
"Placing ham where Muslim students were eating as an awful thing," said Stephen Wessler, the executive director of the Center for Prevention of Hate Violence. "It's extraordinarily hurtful and degrading. They probably felt like they were back in Mogadishu starving and being shot at."
(Images of ham sandwiches running amok with high-powered automatic weapons flash across my mind at this point. No wonder Clinton pulled us out of Somalia in the 1990's.)
Continued Wessler, "No child, Muslim or normal, should have to endure touching a ham sandwich."
But wait! Isn't there some other rule about not touching somebody else's lunch in a cafeteria?
Evidently, THAT'S kosher -- provided one isn't actually IN Somalia, where touching somebody else's lunch can be a capital crime punishable by death -- depending on how well-armed the owner of that lunch is at the time.
And what does the guy mean by, "No child, Muslim or NORMAL?" Surely Stephen Wessler, as executive director of the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence, wasn't suggesting that Muslim children aren't 'normal', was he?
Wessler continued, "Incidents like this that involve degrading language or conduct are often said by the perpetrator as a joke. But unfortunately we don't live in a world where young children try to be funny, we live in a society in which these types of actions always escalate into violence against minorities."
"If people think insulting Muslims with ham is okay, more degrading acts will follow. The Jews had to go through the same thing when the Nazis would force-feed them bacon; do we really want our schools to become concentration camps?"
To which I reply with a hearty, "Heck, NO!" I can see Wessler's point. First, some kid brings a ham sandwich to school . . . and the next thing you know, Jewish kids in middle schools all over America will be forced by Nazis to eat bacon.
A joke??? I'm not laughing. And neither is the Executive Director of the Ham Sandwich Anti-Defamation League.
According to Porky Pig, "H--h-ham s-s-sandwiches are r-r-r-routinely t-t-t-t-targeted f-f-for m-m-m-m-m-m-mal-l-l-l-icous p-pprosecution. How mmmmany t-t-times have you heard that a prosecutor c--c-can g-get a g-g-g-grand jury to indict a h-h-h-ham s-s-s-sandwich?"
The middle school principle, Leon Levesque, assured Somali parents throughout Maine, "the incident does not reflect the moral values of the school staff and students. We need to take a look at this and review how a careless act is degrading and causes hurt to other people. All our students should feel welcome in our schools, knowing that they are safe from attacks with ham, bacon, porkchops, or any other delicious meat that comes from pigs."
You probably think that I'm making this up. (Ok. I admit I made up the Porky Pig quote.) But the story was reported by both Boston. com and the Lewiston Sun-Journal -- it's on the level.
According to the Sun-Journal, its been a rough week for Somalis in Maine.
"A lot of anger and hate has been flying around," said Steve Wessler of the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence. In the days after last Thursday's report of a hate incident at Lewiston Middle School involving a ham steak left at a lunch table to insult Somali students, a Sun Journal newspaper forum was so filled with hostility it was shut down.
Wessler said he received hate e-mail and two phone messages in which a man threatened to commit violence against him." The poor guy. What should be done? That is the question that has Pine Tree Staters all a'twitter.
Noted the Sun-Journal; "For years, Catholics suffered prejudice before being accepted." (But, as everybody knows, it is harder to use a ham sandwich to commit a hate crime against a Catholic. He would be just as likely to eat the weapon, destroying the evidence in the process.)
But change is in the works. Last year, a local man named Brent Matthews rolled a pig's head into a local mosque. Last Saturday, perhaps driven to despair by angry falafels, Matthews committed suicide in the local Marsden's parking lot.
As one local, Edward Boucher, told the paper, "Eventually these things work themselves out."
"But does it make it right?" the Sun-Journal quoted Zamzam Mohamud, 32, the mother of one traumatized victim. "Then does it just keep going? Where does it stop? There isn't much of a community if we don't make a change."
And THAT is where the laughter stops.
America's reputation was built around the concept of the Great American Melting Pot. In happier times, new immigrants would come to America to become Americans. The idea was to melt all the various cultures of all the various immigrants into a single, uniquely American culture.
Under that concept, Americans were not required to adopt the culture of its immigrants, but rather, immigrants were expected to adopt the culture of America. What made it a 'community' was that immigrants made 'the change' to conform to the existing culture.
The concept of "multiculturalism" -- the Holy Grail of the liberal Left -- insists that immigrants refuse to assimilate into American culture, forcing immigrants into cultural 'ghettos' where liberal politicians can pander to concentrated special interest lobbies.
One can't win in Florida without the Cuban vote. One can't win in Texas or California without the Mexican vote. One can't win in the Northeast without the black vote, or in New York without the Jewish vote. And one can't win in certain parts of Michigan without the Muslim vote.
So a liberal need only pander to the demands of the various concentrations of minorities to win public office -- from which he can strengthen his base by bashing America as a whole as a collection of hateful xenophobes.
One can't engage in class warfare without some underprivileged class to champion. And the best way to ensure that is to keep immigrants concentrated in ethnic ghettos as exiles from their home countries, rather than as immigrants to the New World.
Zamzan Mahamud's solution was quoteworthy because her solution fits the liberal agenda -- that America that must change its culture to conform to that of its immigrants.
Since America is made up of immigrants from every country in the world, there will always be more changes to demand, more immigrant groups to pander to, and more elections to be won.
Today, the ham sandwich. Tomorrow, Sharia law. Eventually, pictures of Osama bin Laden festooning American cities and towns.
Sound far-fetched? No more so than the fear of Nazis force-feeding bacon to Jewish kids in American concentration camps -- cleverly disguised as middle-schools.
When a ham sandwich is a hate crime, NOTHING is too far-fetched.
------------------------------
When Ham Sandwiches Attack
Jack Kinsella
Generally speaking, ham sandwiches are quiet and unassuming and don't really seem to have much of an opinion on any given subject.Indeed, a ham sandwich can be a welcome friend, it can be a traveling companion, eventually, it can even be lunch, but there is no recorded incident in which a ham sandwich has ever exhibited any malevolence.
The last time a ham sandwich gave society a major problem was the Mama Cass Affair. When Cass Elliot (Mama Cass of the Mamas and the Papas -- in case you were out of town for the 70's) died in 1974, her death was popularly ascribed to having choked to death on a ham sandwich.
The ham sandwich was innocent. There was a ham sandwich and a Coke found by her bedside, but the sandwich was untouched. The coroner eventually ruled that Cass Elliot died of a heart attack brought on by obesity.
Blaming the ham sandwich was a bad beef. . .
Actually, the only thing a ham sandwich has ever been guilty of, in my experience, was bad judgment. Who can forget the time that a ham sandwich incorrectly assumed two packages would not get mailed unless somebody took them to the Post Office? Or how humiliated that same ham sandwich was when the Post Office Lady picked the packages up?
(Come to think of it, that particular ham sandwich had a Jewish accent. Hmmmm)
Now, sadly, another ham sandwich is back in the news. This time, however, it isn't charged with murder, or parodied in a TV commercial for its bad judgment.
In this latest incident, the ham sandwich is charged with committing a hate crime.
Once again, however, it appears that the ham sandwich is getting a bum wrap. Allow me to explain. . .
A middle school student in Lewiston, Maine is being investigated by police for a possible hate crime because he placed a bag containing a ham sandwich on a cafeteria table where Muslim students from Somalia were eating their lunch.
Why Muslims students from Somalia were in a middle school in Maine eating lunch is grist for a different mill. Don't they have cafeterias in Somalia? But I digress.
Anyway, the school superintended took prompt action, ordering the student who brought the ham sandwich to school suspended, and promising more disciplinary action, should the investigation prove the ham sandwich was guilty as charged.
"Placing ham where Muslim students were eating as an awful thing," said Stephen Wessler, the executive director of the Center for Prevention of Hate Violence. "It's extraordinarily hurtful and degrading. They probably felt like they were back in Mogadishu starving and being shot at."
(Images of ham sandwiches running amok with high-powered automatic weapons flash across my mind at this point. No wonder Clinton pulled us out of Somalia in the 1990's.)
Continued Wessler, "No child, Muslim or normal, should have to endure touching a ham sandwich."
But wait! Isn't there some other rule about not touching somebody else's lunch in a cafeteria?
Evidently, THAT'S kosher -- provided one isn't actually IN Somalia, where touching somebody else's lunch can be a capital crime punishable by death -- depending on how well-armed the owner of that lunch is at the time.
And what does the guy mean by, "No child, Muslim or NORMAL?" Surely Stephen Wessler, as executive director of the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence, wasn't suggesting that Muslim children aren't 'normal', was he?
Wessler continued, "Incidents like this that involve degrading language or conduct are often said by the perpetrator as a joke. But unfortunately we don't live in a world where young children try to be funny, we live in a society in which these types of actions always escalate into violence against minorities."
"If people think insulting Muslims with ham is okay, more degrading acts will follow. The Jews had to go through the same thing when the Nazis would force-feed them bacon; do we really want our schools to become concentration camps?"
To which I reply with a hearty, "Heck, NO!" I can see Wessler's point. First, some kid brings a ham sandwich to school . . . and the next thing you know, Jewish kids in middle schools all over America will be forced by Nazis to eat bacon.
A joke??? I'm not laughing. And neither is the Executive Director of the Ham Sandwich Anti-Defamation League.
According to Porky Pig, "H--h-ham s-s-sandwiches are r-r-r-routinely t-t-t-t-targeted f-f-for m-m-m-m-m-m-mal-l-l-l-icous p-pprosecution. How mmmmany t-t-times have you heard that a prosecutor c--c-can g-get a g-g-g-grand jury to indict a h-h-h-ham s-s-s-sandwich?"
The middle school principle, Leon Levesque, assured Somali parents throughout Maine, "the incident does not reflect the moral values of the school staff and students. We need to take a look at this and review how a careless act is degrading and causes hurt to other people. All our students should feel welcome in our schools, knowing that they are safe from attacks with ham, bacon, porkchops, or any other delicious meat that comes from pigs."
You probably think that I'm making this up. (Ok. I admit I made up the Porky Pig quote.) But the story was reported by both Boston. com and the Lewiston Sun-Journal -- it's on the level.
According to the Sun-Journal, its been a rough week for Somalis in Maine.
"A lot of anger and hate has been flying around," said Steve Wessler of the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence. In the days after last Thursday's report of a hate incident at Lewiston Middle School involving a ham steak left at a lunch table to insult Somali students, a Sun Journal newspaper forum was so filled with hostility it was shut down.
Wessler said he received hate e-mail and two phone messages in which a man threatened to commit violence against him." The poor guy. What should be done? That is the question that has Pine Tree Staters all a'twitter.
Noted the Sun-Journal; "For years, Catholics suffered prejudice before being accepted." (But, as everybody knows, it is harder to use a ham sandwich to commit a hate crime against a Catholic. He would be just as likely to eat the weapon, destroying the evidence in the process.)
But change is in the works. Last year, a local man named Brent Matthews rolled a pig's head into a local mosque. Last Saturday, perhaps driven to despair by angry falafels, Matthews committed suicide in the local Marsden's parking lot.
As one local, Edward Boucher, told the paper, "Eventually these things work themselves out."
"But does it make it right?" the Sun-Journal quoted Zamzam Mohamud, 32, the mother of one traumatized victim. "Then does it just keep going? Where does it stop? There isn't much of a community if we don't make a change."
And THAT is where the laughter stops.
America's reputation was built around the concept of the Great American Melting Pot. In happier times, new immigrants would come to America to become Americans. The idea was to melt all the various cultures of all the various immigrants into a single, uniquely American culture.
Under that concept, Americans were not required to adopt the culture of its immigrants, but rather, immigrants were expected to adopt the culture of America. What made it a 'community' was that immigrants made 'the change' to conform to the existing culture.
The concept of "multiculturalism" -- the Holy Grail of the liberal Left -- insists that immigrants refuse to assimilate into American culture, forcing immigrants into cultural 'ghettos' where liberal politicians can pander to concentrated special interest lobbies.
One can't win in Florida without the Cuban vote. One can't win in Texas or California without the Mexican vote. One can't win in the Northeast without the black vote, or in New York without the Jewish vote. And one can't win in certain parts of Michigan without the Muslim vote.
So a liberal need only pander to the demands of the various concentrations of minorities to win public office -- from which he can strengthen his base by bashing America as a whole as a collection of hateful xenophobes.
One can't engage in class warfare without some underprivileged class to champion. And the best way to ensure that is to keep immigrants concentrated in ethnic ghettos as exiles from their home countries, rather than as immigrants to the New World.
Zamzan Mahamud's solution was quoteworthy because her solution fits the liberal agenda -- that America that must change its culture to conform to that of its immigrants.
Since America is made up of immigrants from every country in the world, there will always be more changes to demand, more immigrant groups to pander to, and more elections to be won.
Today, the ham sandwich. Tomorrow, Sharia law. Eventually, pictures of Osama bin Laden festooning American cities and towns.
Sound far-fetched? No more so than the fear of Nazis force-feeding bacon to Jewish kids in American concentration camps -- cleverly disguised as middle-schools.
When a ham sandwich is a hate crime, NOTHING is too far-fetched.
nuts in the crosshairs..
i supposed the right is called right for a reason..
---------------------------------
Nuts in the Crosshairs
By Ann Coulter
For cranky right-wingers who think politicians don't listen to them, this week I give you elected Democrats running like scared schoolgirls from the media's demand that they enact new gun control laws in response to the Virginia Tech shooting.
Instead, Democrats are promoting a mental health exception to the right to bear arms. We've banned mass murder and that hasn't seemed to work. So now we're going to ban mass murderers. Yes, that will do the trick!
This is a feel-good measure that is both wildly under-inclusive (the vast majority of nutcases receive no formal court adjudication of their nuttiness) and wildly over-inclusive (the vast majority of nuts don't kill people). The worst thing most nuts do is irritate everybody else by driving their electric cars on the highway.
As lovely as it would be, we cannot identify mass murderers before they have broken any law, and mass murder is often the first serious crime they commit. No one can be locked up permanently for being potentially dangerous.
Even stalking laws can put away a person known to be dangerous for only a few years – at best – which is generally not worth spending a day sitting in court, facing your stalker and then waiting a month for the court order.
So on one hand, the mental health exception is a feel-good measure that would be largely pointless. But on the other hand, it's no skin off my back. Liberals go to therapy. Conservatives go to church. And I think we'd all sleep better knowing that David Brock could not buy a gun.
In fact, I think we should expand the mental illness exception to cover First Amendment rights as well as Second Amendment rights.
I note that before mass murder, the only harassment the Virginia Tech killer was guilty of involved speech: creepy e-mails, creepy short stories, creepy phone calls. Stalkers, too, engage in frightening speech – but that is protected. Revealing a stalking victim's address is "speech" but is little different from being the one to pull the trigger.
This small measure would have taken Dan "What's the Frequency, Kenneth" Rather off the airwaves years ago, preventing him from presenting doctored National Guard documents to the American people to try to throw a presidential election. A mental illness bar would deal a quick blow to Air America and both its remaining listeners. It would also free up about 90 percent of the Internet.
And it would end the public lunacy of Jim Wallis, the Democrats' Christian. Wallis' first remark on the massacre at Virginia Tech last week was to hail the remarkable "diversity" of the victims. True, Cho murdered 32 people in cold blood. But at least he achieved diversity!
Anyone who thinks a single-minded fixation on diversity must be the ultimate goal of every human endeavor, including mass murder, is not the sort of person who should be able to buy a gun or to publish his daft ruminations in public forums.
But just to get this straight: Democrats are saying we should be able to jail "strange" or "angry" people, but we can't deplane imams who demand extra-length seatbelts after boarding?
Speaking of which, has anyone else noticed the public expressions of shame and contrition from the Korean-American community after the Virginia Tech shooting? Of course, no one blames this exemplary community for the actions of one nut. The Koreans are manifestly law-abiding and decent – nipping at the heels of Italians as the greatest Americans and tied for second with the Cubans.
Indeed, I believe this marks the first time a Korean has killed anyone in the United States, not involving an automobile. Nonetheless, Korean congregations, community groups and the family members themselves are issuing statements of sorrow. Not "pleas for tolerance." But sorrow. Remorse. Remember those? They were big back in the day.
If the Koreans can do it, why can't the Muslims? What explains the lack of a Muslim guilt impulse – so normal, as seen in the case of the saddened Koreans – after dozens of terrorist attacks on Americans?
How about a Muslim exception to the Second Amendment? That would have prevented the Virginia snipers from killing 10 people within three weeks in 2002. But most important: It would help us achieve "diversity" in our gun law prohibitions.
---------------------------------
Nuts in the Crosshairs
By Ann Coulter
For cranky right-wingers who think politicians don't listen to them, this week I give you elected Democrats running like scared schoolgirls from the media's demand that they enact new gun control laws in response to the Virginia Tech shooting.
Instead, Democrats are promoting a mental health exception to the right to bear arms. We've banned mass murder and that hasn't seemed to work. So now we're going to ban mass murderers. Yes, that will do the trick!
This is a feel-good measure that is both wildly under-inclusive (the vast majority of nutcases receive no formal court adjudication of their nuttiness) and wildly over-inclusive (the vast majority of nuts don't kill people). The worst thing most nuts do is irritate everybody else by driving their electric cars on the highway.
As lovely as it would be, we cannot identify mass murderers before they have broken any law, and mass murder is often the first serious crime they commit. No one can be locked up permanently for being potentially dangerous.
Even stalking laws can put away a person known to be dangerous for only a few years – at best – which is generally not worth spending a day sitting in court, facing your stalker and then waiting a month for the court order.
So on one hand, the mental health exception is a feel-good measure that would be largely pointless. But on the other hand, it's no skin off my back. Liberals go to therapy. Conservatives go to church. And I think we'd all sleep better knowing that David Brock could not buy a gun.
In fact, I think we should expand the mental illness exception to cover First Amendment rights as well as Second Amendment rights.
I note that before mass murder, the only harassment the Virginia Tech killer was guilty of involved speech: creepy e-mails, creepy short stories, creepy phone calls. Stalkers, too, engage in frightening speech – but that is protected. Revealing a stalking victim's address is "speech" but is little different from being the one to pull the trigger.
This small measure would have taken Dan "What's the Frequency, Kenneth" Rather off the airwaves years ago, preventing him from presenting doctored National Guard documents to the American people to try to throw a presidential election. A mental illness bar would deal a quick blow to Air America and both its remaining listeners. It would also free up about 90 percent of the Internet.
And it would end the public lunacy of Jim Wallis, the Democrats' Christian. Wallis' first remark on the massacre at Virginia Tech last week was to hail the remarkable "diversity" of the victims. True, Cho murdered 32 people in cold blood. But at least he achieved diversity!
Anyone who thinks a single-minded fixation on diversity must be the ultimate goal of every human endeavor, including mass murder, is not the sort of person who should be able to buy a gun or to publish his daft ruminations in public forums.
But just to get this straight: Democrats are saying we should be able to jail "strange" or "angry" people, but we can't deplane imams who demand extra-length seatbelts after boarding?
Speaking of which, has anyone else noticed the public expressions of shame and contrition from the Korean-American community after the Virginia Tech shooting? Of course, no one blames this exemplary community for the actions of one nut. The Koreans are manifestly law-abiding and decent – nipping at the heels of Italians as the greatest Americans and tied for second with the Cubans.
Indeed, I believe this marks the first time a Korean has killed anyone in the United States, not involving an automobile. Nonetheless, Korean congregations, community groups and the family members themselves are issuing statements of sorrow. Not "pleas for tolerance." But sorrow. Remorse. Remember those? They were big back in the day.
If the Koreans can do it, why can't the Muslims? What explains the lack of a Muslim guilt impulse – so normal, as seen in the case of the saddened Koreans – after dozens of terrorist attacks on Americans?
How about a Muslim exception to the Second Amendment? That would have prevented the Virginia snipers from killing 10 people within three weeks in 2002. But most important: It would help us achieve "diversity" in our gun law prohibitions.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
eloquence from the president..
bush isn't the best communicator in the world, but his speech at VA Tech was a highlight.. speaking from the heart, he gets it right.
"People who have never met you are praying for you. They're praying for your friends who have fallen and who are injured. There's a power in these prayers. Real power. In times like this we can find comfort in the grace and guidance of a loving God. "
-- President Bush, at Virginia Tech.
"People who have never met you are praying for you. They're praying for your friends who have fallen and who are injured. There's a power in these prayers. Real power. In times like this we can find comfort in the grace and guidance of a loving God. "
-- President Bush, at Virginia Tech.
democratic victory = american defeat
i'm not sold on Giuliani as the candidate for me, but he sure has it right on the war against islamic terror.. since the dems are invested in our defeat - meaning they lose if we win, it's more and more important people point this out. the dems are so out of bounds and out of touch and power mad.. harry reid is focused on senate seats, not what's best for america. pelosi too busy to meet with the general in charge in iraq, but speaks as if she's the expert on the subject..
----------------------------------------
Giuliani warns of 'new 9/11' if Dems win
By: Roger Simon
MANCHESTER, N.H. —- Rudy Giuliani said if a Democrat is elected president in 2008, America will be at risk for another terrorist attack on the scale of Sept. 11, 2001.
But if a Republican is elected, he said, especially if it is him, terrorist attacks can be anticipated and stopped.
“If any Republican is elected president —- and I think obviously I would be the best at this —- we will remain on offense and will anticipate what [the terrorists] will do and try to stop them before they do it,” Giuliani said.
The former New York City mayor, currently leading in all national polls for the Republican nomination for president, said Tuesday night that America would ultimately defeat terrorism no matter which party gains the White House.
“But the question is how long will it take and how many casualties will we have?” Giuliani said. “If we are on defense [with a Democratic president], we will have more losses and it will go on longer.”
“I listen a little to the Democrats and if one of them gets elected, we are going on defense,” Giuliani continued. “We will wave the white flag on Iraq. We will cut back on the Patriot Act, electronic surveillance, interrogation and we will be back to our pre-Sept. 11 attitude of defense.”
He added: “The Democrats do not understand the full nature and scope of the terrorist war against us.”
After his speech to the Rockingham County Lincoln Day Dinner, I asked him about his statements and Giuliani said flatly: “America will be safer with a Republican president.”
Giuliani, whose past positions on abortion, gun control and gay rights have made him anathema to some in his party, believes his tough stance on national defense and his post-Sept. 11 reputation as a fighter of terrorism will be his trump card with doubting Republicans.
“This war ends when they stop coming here to kill us!” Giuliani said in his speech. “Never, ever again will this country ever be on defense waiting for [terrorists] to attack us if I have anything to say about it. And make no mistake, the Democrats want to put us back on defense!”
Giuliani said terrorists “hate us and not because of anything bad we have done; it has nothing to do with Israel and Palestine. They hate us for the freedoms we have and the freedoms we want to share with the world.”
Giuliani continued: “The freedoms we have are in conflict with the perverted, maniacal interpretation of their religion.” He said Americans would fight for “freedom for women, the freedom of elections, freedom of religion and the freedom of our economy.”
Addressing the terrorists directly, Giuliani said: “We are not giving that up, and you are not going to take it from us!”
The crowd thundered its approval.
Giuliani also said that America had been naive about terrorism in the past and had missed obvious signals.
“They were at war with us before we realized it, going back to ’90s with all the Americans killed by the PLO and Hezbollah and Hamas,” he said. “They came here and killed us in 1993 [with the first attack on New York’s World Trade Center, in which six people died], and we didn’t get it. We didn’t get it that this was a war. Then Sept. 11, 2001, happened, and we got it.”
----------------------------------------
Giuliani warns of 'new 9/11' if Dems win
By: Roger Simon
MANCHESTER, N.H. —- Rudy Giuliani said if a Democrat is elected president in 2008, America will be at risk for another terrorist attack on the scale of Sept. 11, 2001.
But if a Republican is elected, he said, especially if it is him, terrorist attacks can be anticipated and stopped.
“If any Republican is elected president —- and I think obviously I would be the best at this —- we will remain on offense and will anticipate what [the terrorists] will do and try to stop them before they do it,” Giuliani said.
The former New York City mayor, currently leading in all national polls for the Republican nomination for president, said Tuesday night that America would ultimately defeat terrorism no matter which party gains the White House.
“But the question is how long will it take and how many casualties will we have?” Giuliani said. “If we are on defense [with a Democratic president], we will have more losses and it will go on longer.”
“I listen a little to the Democrats and if one of them gets elected, we are going on defense,” Giuliani continued. “We will wave the white flag on Iraq. We will cut back on the Patriot Act, electronic surveillance, interrogation and we will be back to our pre-Sept. 11 attitude of defense.”
He added: “The Democrats do not understand the full nature and scope of the terrorist war against us.”
After his speech to the Rockingham County Lincoln Day Dinner, I asked him about his statements and Giuliani said flatly: “America will be safer with a Republican president.”
Giuliani, whose past positions on abortion, gun control and gay rights have made him anathema to some in his party, believes his tough stance on national defense and his post-Sept. 11 reputation as a fighter of terrorism will be his trump card with doubting Republicans.
“This war ends when they stop coming here to kill us!” Giuliani said in his speech. “Never, ever again will this country ever be on defense waiting for [terrorists] to attack us if I have anything to say about it. And make no mistake, the Democrats want to put us back on defense!”
Giuliani said terrorists “hate us and not because of anything bad we have done; it has nothing to do with Israel and Palestine. They hate us for the freedoms we have and the freedoms we want to share with the world.”
Giuliani continued: “The freedoms we have are in conflict with the perverted, maniacal interpretation of their religion.” He said Americans would fight for “freedom for women, the freedom of elections, freedom of religion and the freedom of our economy.”
Addressing the terrorists directly, Giuliani said: “We are not giving that up, and you are not going to take it from us!”
The crowd thundered its approval.
Giuliani also said that America had been naive about terrorism in the past and had missed obvious signals.
“They were at war with us before we realized it, going back to ’90s with all the Americans killed by the PLO and Hezbollah and Hamas,” he said. “They came here and killed us in 1993 [with the first attack on New York’s World Trade Center, in which six people died], and we didn’t get it. We didn’t get it that this was a war. Then Sept. 11, 2001, happened, and we got it.”
for the gun control crowd..
a reminder for the bleeding heart do-gooders. while you pay for your armed bodyguards and lobby against the constitutional right of citizens to be armed, you once again ignore the facts and push forward with your self absorbed agenda.
----------------------------------------
They Never Learn
By Robert A. Levy
"What is needed, urgently, is stronger controls over the lethal weapons that cause such wasteful carnage." So said the New York Times in its predictable but wrongheaded editorial the day after the horrific events at Virginia Tech. Anti-gun advocates, however noble their motives, help create the environment in which horrors like Virginia Tech occur.
Possession and use of guns on the Tech campus violated state-imposed restrictions. But crazed fanatics, undeterred by laws against murder, will not be dissuaded by laws against guns. More such laws will accomplish nothing. Indeed, liberalized laws might have enabled responsible, armed citizens on campus to defend the hapless victims. It took two hours for the killer methodically to massacre 32 people and injure another 15. Why did nobody intervene sooner to stop the killer?
For one possible explanation, consider this report from a Roanoke Times article: A bill, introduced on behalf of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, would have given properly licensed public college students and employees the right to carry handguns on campus. The bill died on January 30, 2006 in the Virginia General Assembly. Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker was pleased with the outcome. "I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus." Tell that to the ill-fated victims of April 16 and their families.
The article goes on to relate that most universities in Virginia require students and employees, other than police, to check their guns with police or campus security on entering campus. The proposed legislation would have eliminated that requirement for anyone who possessed a valid concealed handgun permit. Ironically, Tech's governing board had approved in June 2005 a violence prevention policy reiterating the school's ban on students, employees, or visitors -- even those properly licensed -- from bringing handguns onto campus.
At the Virginia Tech press conference after the slaughter of 32 defenseless people, the university's president cautioned that it wouldn't be possible to have police guard every classroom and dorm. What he omitted was this cold, hard fact: By making the university a "gun free zone," his administration and the state legislature had fostered a climate in which ubiquitous police would be necessary. Without a means to protect themselves, Virginia Tech students, faculty, and other employees were more likely to be victimized by the only people on campus who had readily available guns: killers and lunatics.
Meanwhile, the New York Times, the Brady Center, and the rest of the usual suspects continue their clamor for more gun regulations -- apparently oblivious to the destructive effects of their own proposals. The evidence is clear: more guns in the hands of responsible owners yield lower rates of violent crime. Gun control does not work. It just prevents weaker people from defending themselves against stronger predators.
Here are the numbers, as summarized by legal scholar Don B. Kates: Over the 30-year period from 1974 to 2003, guns in circulation doubled, but murder rates declined by a third. On a state-by-state basis, a 1 percent increase in gun ownership correlates with a 4.1 percent lower rate of violent crime. Each year, approximately 460,000 gun crimes are committed in the United States. But guns are also used to ward off gun criminals. Estimates of defensive gun use range from 1.3 million to 2.5 million times per year -- and usually the weapons are merely brandished, not fired. That means defensive uses occur about 3-to-5 times as often as violent gun crimes. Just as important, armed victims who resist gun criminals get injured less frequently than unarmed victims who submit. In more than 8 out of 10 cases where the victim pulls a gun, the criminal turns and flees, even if he's armed. "So much for the quasi-religious faith that more guns mean more murder."
Finally, two federal government agencies recently examined gun control laws and found no statistically significant evidence to support their effectiveness. In 2004, the National Academy of Sciences reviewed 253 journal articles, 99 books, and 43 government publications evaluating 80 gun-control measures. The researchers could not identify a single gun-control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide, or accidents. A year earlier, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on an independent evaluation of firearms and ammunition bans, restrictions on acquisition, waiting periods, registration, licensing, child access prevention laws, and zero tolerance laws. Conclusion: none of the laws had a meaningful impact on gun violence.
When will the gun controllers learn?
----------------------------------------
They Never Learn
By Robert A. Levy
"What is needed, urgently, is stronger controls over the lethal weapons that cause such wasteful carnage." So said the New York Times in its predictable but wrongheaded editorial the day after the horrific events at Virginia Tech. Anti-gun advocates, however noble their motives, help create the environment in which horrors like Virginia Tech occur.
Possession and use of guns on the Tech campus violated state-imposed restrictions. But crazed fanatics, undeterred by laws against murder, will not be dissuaded by laws against guns. More such laws will accomplish nothing. Indeed, liberalized laws might have enabled responsible, armed citizens on campus to defend the hapless victims. It took two hours for the killer methodically to massacre 32 people and injure another 15. Why did nobody intervene sooner to stop the killer?
For one possible explanation, consider this report from a Roanoke Times article: A bill, introduced on behalf of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, would have given properly licensed public college students and employees the right to carry handguns on campus. The bill died on January 30, 2006 in the Virginia General Assembly. Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker was pleased with the outcome. "I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus." Tell that to the ill-fated victims of April 16 and their families.
The article goes on to relate that most universities in Virginia require students and employees, other than police, to check their guns with police or campus security on entering campus. The proposed legislation would have eliminated that requirement for anyone who possessed a valid concealed handgun permit. Ironically, Tech's governing board had approved in June 2005 a violence prevention policy reiterating the school's ban on students, employees, or visitors -- even those properly licensed -- from bringing handguns onto campus.
At the Virginia Tech press conference after the slaughter of 32 defenseless people, the university's president cautioned that it wouldn't be possible to have police guard every classroom and dorm. What he omitted was this cold, hard fact: By making the university a "gun free zone," his administration and the state legislature had fostered a climate in which ubiquitous police would be necessary. Without a means to protect themselves, Virginia Tech students, faculty, and other employees were more likely to be victimized by the only people on campus who had readily available guns: killers and lunatics.
Meanwhile, the New York Times, the Brady Center, and the rest of the usual suspects continue their clamor for more gun regulations -- apparently oblivious to the destructive effects of their own proposals. The evidence is clear: more guns in the hands of responsible owners yield lower rates of violent crime. Gun control does not work. It just prevents weaker people from defending themselves against stronger predators.
Here are the numbers, as summarized by legal scholar Don B. Kates: Over the 30-year period from 1974 to 2003, guns in circulation doubled, but murder rates declined by a third. On a state-by-state basis, a 1 percent increase in gun ownership correlates with a 4.1 percent lower rate of violent crime. Each year, approximately 460,000 gun crimes are committed in the United States. But guns are also used to ward off gun criminals. Estimates of defensive gun use range from 1.3 million to 2.5 million times per year -- and usually the weapons are merely brandished, not fired. That means defensive uses occur about 3-to-5 times as often as violent gun crimes. Just as important, armed victims who resist gun criminals get injured less frequently than unarmed victims who submit. In more than 8 out of 10 cases where the victim pulls a gun, the criminal turns and flees, even if he's armed. "So much for the quasi-religious faith that more guns mean more murder."
Finally, two federal government agencies recently examined gun control laws and found no statistically significant evidence to support their effectiveness. In 2004, the National Academy of Sciences reviewed 253 journal articles, 99 books, and 43 government publications evaluating 80 gun-control measures. The researchers could not identify a single gun-control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide, or accidents. A year earlier, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on an independent evaluation of firearms and ammunition bans, restrictions on acquisition, waiting periods, registration, licensing, child access prevention laws, and zero tolerance laws. Conclusion: none of the laws had a meaningful impact on gun violence.
When will the gun controllers learn?
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
as in the times of Noah..
i felt this was a well written summary of the last week.. it's overwhelming, really. when you stop to think of the constant senseless bloodshed over issues so small, it reminds you that time is short. these are the birth pangs Jesus mentioned in Matthew 24.. and they will increase in frequency and intensity leading up to the rapture of the church.
as a Christian, it's an exciting time to be alive, the promises to generations of people are unfolding before our very eyes. but we are also reminded that we have friends and neighbors who haven't accepted the pardon Christ provides.. and for that, time is short indeed.
------------------------
The Days of Noe
Jack Kinsella
I was watching Glenn Beck's program on CNN the other day. He said something that bothered me when I first heard it, and it bothers me even more today. He mentioned how devastated he had been following the Columbine shooting in 1999.
But then he noted that the Virginia Tech massacre didn't seem to have such a devastating effect on him. Or, it seemed, on most of America. Not because it wasn't as terrible as Columbine-- the VT massacre claimed more than twice as many lives -- but because it isn't as shocking as it used to be.
Shortly after the crazy little whack-job in Virginia (I refuse to honor him by repeating his name -- he's gotten enough publicity) murdered thirty-two students at Virginia Tech, some guy at NASA shot his boss because he thought he might lose his job.
Afterwards, the guy shot himself in the head while the police 'closed in'. (I set that off in quotes because it seems the police no longer 'close in' until AFTER the gunfire stops.
There was a murder/suicide in Woodland, California (that you probably didn't hear about) where a 54 year-old guy shot his 52 year-old girlfriend and then killed himself.
Fifteen hundred miles away, another guy shot his girlfriend to death and then killed himself in Houston. There was another three days ago in Portland, Texas. Two more the next day, one in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and one in Murrieta, California.
In Queens, NY, Jimmie Dawkins killed his mother, her boyfriend and his health care attendant before putting the barrel of his .40 cal pistol in his mouth and pulling the trigger.
Another murder suicide in Michigan the same day also claimed four lives. And yet another; a man in Lake Havasu City, Arizone killed his girlfriend, his baby, and then himself.
This morning, I heard of a truck bomb that went off in Baghdad that killed 25 Iraqi policemen and wounded 125 Iraqi bystanders. Twenty-one members of a religious minority in Mosul, Iraq were dragged off a bus and shot dead, execution style.
In Laguna Beach, a woman and her husband were shot dead during a confrontation with police. At press time, the police weren't sure if they killed the couple, or if it were yet another murder-suicide.
One week's time. Rivers and rivers of blood.
Seriously, how did the news that 32 students were murdered at VT affect you? Or the news of the 125 people maimed by an Iraqi car bomb? Or the 21 Iraqis in Mosul pulled from a bus and executed? What about the litany of murder-suicides across the US in the past seven days that you just read about?
That list is by no means a comprehensive one -- those were just the murder suicide cases that popped up on Google's first page when I queried it. Are you shocked?
I wish that I were, but I am not. Not particularly. I thought about what Glenn Beck said about it on his program, and I realized that the calluses on my soul were even thicker than his.
The last time I can remember being truly shocked was the OKC bombing of the Murrah Building back in 1995. And I was less troubled by that event than I was the destruction of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco two years before that.
I was moved by the horror that must have permeated the Waco compound as the flames claimed the lives of 83 men, women and children. By the time of the OKC bombing, the horror was mixed with a sort of clinical detachment.
By the time the Columbine killers went on their rampage, I had already become desensitized to the evil of children murdering children. Eight blood-soaked years later, I realized my first thought at hearing of the VT shootings wasn't horror.
The first thing that came to my mind was the logistics. How did one guy carrying only two pistols manage to kill that many people? It wasn't until I caught Glenn Beck's program that I realized just how scarred my soul has become.
I used to be shocked by evil. My reaction has morphed from, "How could anybody do such a thing?" to "Not again!" to musing about the logistics involved in the commission of mass murder.
When asked of the signs of His return, among the signs Jesus gave was the "sign of Noe." (Noah)
"But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be." (Matthew 24:37)
"And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man." (Luke 17:26)
Genesis 6:5-6 give us the Lord's perspective on the 'days of Noah':
"And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually."
When we aren't confronting actual evil in the form of crazy little gunmen and rivers of blood on our campuses, we seek it out for entertainment. Television and movies can rightly be called "the imagination of thoughts of our hearts" -- indeed, what is a movie if not our imagination brought to life?
And the more violence and sex a movie contains, the more popular it is. No wonder we are so desensitized to evil.
The most popular video games are also the most violent. I confess that enjoy the WWII action games like "Medal of Honor" and "Call of Duty" and even admit to downloading the latest 'blood patch' to make the game even more gory. What in the world is wrong with ME?
"And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold." (Matthew 24:12)
The more acceptable iniquity and sin becomes, the colder our love of righteousness gets.
The Bible teaches that the Tribulation Period is a period set aside for the judgment of a Christ-rejecting world and to effect the national redemption of Israel. But what of the Church?
In the days of Noah, God decided to judge sinful man, but he saved Noah and his family alive out of the flood by making a way of escape via the ark. Jesus said His return would be like the days of Noah. Wickedness, evil and the promise of judgment.
Genesis 6:8 says that "Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord." The Bible also says that the Church is the recipient of God's grace.
"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:" (Ephesians 2:8)
"Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference:" (Romans 3:22)
Noah was found righteous in the eyes of the Lord and he was spared the judgment that came upon the whole earth. Later, when God purposed to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham pleaded with God not to destroy the cities if even five righteous men could be found within.
Only Lot was found righteous, and a way was made for he and his family to escape the judgment that was reserved for the unrighteous.
Of His return, Jesus also said;
"Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed." (Luke 17:28-30)
The Church, like Noah and Lot, have found grace in the eyes of the Lord and we are clothed in the imputed righteousness of Christ. God views the imputed righteousness of Christ as being no different than that of Noah or Lot. (Romans 3:22)
God didn't judge Noah for the sins of his neighbors. Neither did He judge Lot for the sins of his neighbors. And since the Church is clothed in the righteousness of Christ, it follows that He will not judge the Church for the sins of a Christ-rejecting world.
I can find no other understanding of these passages that makes logical sense, apart from the promise that the Lord will return for His Church BEFORE the judgment of the Tribulation Period.
If the Church goes through the Tribulation Period, then the Lord's references to Noah and Lot are puzzling. Why refer to the only two historical instances in which God saved the righteous from being included in mass judgment in conjunction with the events that lead up to His second coming?
The only logical answer is that provided by the Apostle Paul:
"For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord." (1st Thessalonians 4:16-17)
As we wade through rivers of blood, our souls callused over by a constant barrage of unspeakable evil, it seems only logical that either judgment is due this old world, or God owes an apology to Sodom and Gomorrah.
The Bible promises "there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love His appearing." (2nd Timothy 4:8)
If His appearing comes at the conclusion of seven years of judgment and death for the Church, then "loving His appearing" is an act of spiritual perfection that is unfortunately a bit above my paygrade. If that is to be the case, I'd prefer that He'd tarry.
And Paul's final words about the Lord's return for those who are 'alive and remain' would seem to make little sense.
"Wherefore, comfort one another with these words." (1st Thessalonians 4:18)
as a Christian, it's an exciting time to be alive, the promises to generations of people are unfolding before our very eyes. but we are also reminded that we have friends and neighbors who haven't accepted the pardon Christ provides.. and for that, time is short indeed.
------------------------
The Days of Noe
Jack Kinsella
I was watching Glenn Beck's program on CNN the other day. He said something that bothered me when I first heard it, and it bothers me even more today. He mentioned how devastated he had been following the Columbine shooting in 1999.
But then he noted that the Virginia Tech massacre didn't seem to have such a devastating effect on him. Or, it seemed, on most of America. Not because it wasn't as terrible as Columbine-- the VT massacre claimed more than twice as many lives -- but because it isn't as shocking as it used to be.
Shortly after the crazy little whack-job in Virginia (I refuse to honor him by repeating his name -- he's gotten enough publicity) murdered thirty-two students at Virginia Tech, some guy at NASA shot his boss because he thought he might lose his job.
Afterwards, the guy shot himself in the head while the police 'closed in'. (I set that off in quotes because it seems the police no longer 'close in' until AFTER the gunfire stops.
There was a murder/suicide in Woodland, California (that you probably didn't hear about) where a 54 year-old guy shot his 52 year-old girlfriend and then killed himself.
Fifteen hundred miles away, another guy shot his girlfriend to death and then killed himself in Houston. There was another three days ago in Portland, Texas. Two more the next day, one in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and one in Murrieta, California.
In Queens, NY, Jimmie Dawkins killed his mother, her boyfriend and his health care attendant before putting the barrel of his .40 cal pistol in his mouth and pulling the trigger.
Another murder suicide in Michigan the same day also claimed four lives. And yet another; a man in Lake Havasu City, Arizone killed his girlfriend, his baby, and then himself.
This morning, I heard of a truck bomb that went off in Baghdad that killed 25 Iraqi policemen and wounded 125 Iraqi bystanders. Twenty-one members of a religious minority in Mosul, Iraq were dragged off a bus and shot dead, execution style.
In Laguna Beach, a woman and her husband were shot dead during a confrontation with police. At press time, the police weren't sure if they killed the couple, or if it were yet another murder-suicide.
One week's time. Rivers and rivers of blood.
Seriously, how did the news that 32 students were murdered at VT affect you? Or the news of the 125 people maimed by an Iraqi car bomb? Or the 21 Iraqis in Mosul pulled from a bus and executed? What about the litany of murder-suicides across the US in the past seven days that you just read about?
That list is by no means a comprehensive one -- those were just the murder suicide cases that popped up on Google's first page when I queried it. Are you shocked?
I wish that I were, but I am not. Not particularly. I thought about what Glenn Beck said about it on his program, and I realized that the calluses on my soul were even thicker than his.
The last time I can remember being truly shocked was the OKC bombing of the Murrah Building back in 1995. And I was less troubled by that event than I was the destruction of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco two years before that.
I was moved by the horror that must have permeated the Waco compound as the flames claimed the lives of 83 men, women and children. By the time of the OKC bombing, the horror was mixed with a sort of clinical detachment.
By the time the Columbine killers went on their rampage, I had already become desensitized to the evil of children murdering children. Eight blood-soaked years later, I realized my first thought at hearing of the VT shootings wasn't horror.
The first thing that came to my mind was the logistics. How did one guy carrying only two pistols manage to kill that many people? It wasn't until I caught Glenn Beck's program that I realized just how scarred my soul has become.
I used to be shocked by evil. My reaction has morphed from, "How could anybody do such a thing?" to "Not again!" to musing about the logistics involved in the commission of mass murder.
When asked of the signs of His return, among the signs Jesus gave was the "sign of Noe." (Noah)
"But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be." (Matthew 24:37)
"And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man." (Luke 17:26)
Genesis 6:5-6 give us the Lord's perspective on the 'days of Noah':
"And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually."
When we aren't confronting actual evil in the form of crazy little gunmen and rivers of blood on our campuses, we seek it out for entertainment. Television and movies can rightly be called "the imagination of thoughts of our hearts" -- indeed, what is a movie if not our imagination brought to life?
And the more violence and sex a movie contains, the more popular it is. No wonder we are so desensitized to evil.
The most popular video games are also the most violent. I confess that enjoy the WWII action games like "Medal of Honor" and "Call of Duty" and even admit to downloading the latest 'blood patch' to make the game even more gory. What in the world is wrong with ME?
"And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold." (Matthew 24:12)
The more acceptable iniquity and sin becomes, the colder our love of righteousness gets.
The Bible teaches that the Tribulation Period is a period set aside for the judgment of a Christ-rejecting world and to effect the national redemption of Israel. But what of the Church?
In the days of Noah, God decided to judge sinful man, but he saved Noah and his family alive out of the flood by making a way of escape via the ark. Jesus said His return would be like the days of Noah. Wickedness, evil and the promise of judgment.
Genesis 6:8 says that "Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord." The Bible also says that the Church is the recipient of God's grace.
"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:" (Ephesians 2:8)
"Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference:" (Romans 3:22)
Noah was found righteous in the eyes of the Lord and he was spared the judgment that came upon the whole earth. Later, when God purposed to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham pleaded with God not to destroy the cities if even five righteous men could be found within.
Only Lot was found righteous, and a way was made for he and his family to escape the judgment that was reserved for the unrighteous.
Of His return, Jesus also said;
"Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed." (Luke 17:28-30)
The Church, like Noah and Lot, have found grace in the eyes of the Lord and we are clothed in the imputed righteousness of Christ. God views the imputed righteousness of Christ as being no different than that of Noah or Lot. (Romans 3:22)
God didn't judge Noah for the sins of his neighbors. Neither did He judge Lot for the sins of his neighbors. And since the Church is clothed in the righteousness of Christ, it follows that He will not judge the Church for the sins of a Christ-rejecting world.
I can find no other understanding of these passages that makes logical sense, apart from the promise that the Lord will return for His Church BEFORE the judgment of the Tribulation Period.
If the Church goes through the Tribulation Period, then the Lord's references to Noah and Lot are puzzling. Why refer to the only two historical instances in which God saved the righteous from being included in mass judgment in conjunction with the events that lead up to His second coming?
The only logical answer is that provided by the Apostle Paul:
"For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord." (1st Thessalonians 4:16-17)
As we wade through rivers of blood, our souls callused over by a constant barrage of unspeakable evil, it seems only logical that either judgment is due this old world, or God owes an apology to Sodom and Gomorrah.
The Bible promises "there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love His appearing." (2nd Timothy 4:8)
If His appearing comes at the conclusion of seven years of judgment and death for the Church, then "loving His appearing" is an act of spiritual perfection that is unfortunately a bit above my paygrade. If that is to be the case, I'd prefer that He'd tarry.
And Paul's final words about the Lord's return for those who are 'alive and remain' would seem to make little sense.
"Wherefore, comfort one another with these words." (1st Thessalonians 4:18)
Friday, April 20, 2007
Thursday, April 19, 2007
guns in the gun free zone..
i'm in favor of sad-free..
----------------------------------------
Let's Make America a "Sad-Free Zone"
By Ann Coulter
FrontPageMagazine.com April 19, 2007
From the attacks of 9-11 to Monday's school shooting, after every mass murder there is an overwhelming urge to "do something" to prevent a similar attack.
But since Adam ate the apple and let evil into the world, deranged individuals have existed.
Most of the time they can't be locked up until it's too late. It's not against the law to be crazy – in some jurisdictions it actually makes you more viable as a candidate for public office.
It's certainly not against the law to be an unsociable loner. If it were, Ralph Nader would be behind bars right now, where he belongs. Mass murder is often the first serious crime unbalanced individuals are caught committing – as appears to be in the case of the Virginia Tech shooter.
The best we can do is enact policies that will reduce the death toll when these acts of carnage occur, as they will in a free and open society of 300 million people, most of whom have cable TV.
Only one policy has ever been shown to deter mass murder: concealed-carry laws. In a comprehensive study of all public, multiple-shooting incidents in America between 1977 and 1999, the inestimable economists John Lott and Bill Landes found that concealed-carry laws were the only laws that had any beneficial effect.
And the effect was not insignificant. States that allowed citizens to carry concealed handguns reduced multiple-shooting attacks by 60 percent and reduced the death and injury from these attacks by nearly 80 percent.
Apparently, even crazy people prefer targets that can't shoot back. The reason schools are consistently popular targets for mass murderers is precisely because of all the idiotic "Gun-Free School Zone" laws.
From the people who brought you "zero tolerance," I present the Gun-Free Zone! Yippee! Problem solved! Bam! Bam! Everybody down! Hey, how did that deranged loner get a gun into this Gun-Free Zone?
It isn't the angst of adolescence. Plenty of school shootings have been committed by adults with absolutely no reason to be at the school, such as Laurie Dann, who shot up the Hubbard Woods Elementary School in Winnetka, IL, in 1988; Patrick Purdy, who opened fire on children at Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton, CA, in 1989; and Charles Carl Roberts, who murdered five schoolgirls at an Amish school in Lancaster County, PA, last year.
Oh, by the way, the other major "Gun-Free Zone" in America is the post office.
But instantly, on the day of the shooting at Virginia Tech, the media were already promoting gun control and pre-emptively denouncing right-wingers who point out that gun control enables murderers rather than stopping them. Liberals get to lobby for gun control, but we're disallowed from arguing back. That's how good their arguments are. They're that good.
Needless to say, Virginia Tech is a Gun-Free School Zone – at least until last Monday. The gunman must not have known. Imagine his embarrassment! Perhaps there should be signs.
Virginia Tech even prohibits students with concealed-carry permits from carrying their guns on campus. Last year, the school disciplined a student for carrying a gun on campus, despite his lawful concealed-carry permit. If only someone like that had been in Norris Hall on Monday, this massacre could have been ended a lot sooner.
But last January, the Virginia General Assembly shot down a bill that would have prevented universities like Virginia Tech from giving sanctuary to mass murderers on college campuses in Virginia by disarming students with concealed-carry permits valid in the rest of the state.
Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker praised the legislature for allowing the school to disarm lawful gun owners on the faculty and student body, thereby surrendering every college campus in the state to deranged mass murderers, saying: "I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus."
Others disagreed. Writing last year about another dangerous killer who had been loose on the Virginia Tech campus, graduate student Jonathan McGlumphy wrote: "Is it not obvious that all students, faculty and staff would have been safer if (concealed handgun permit) holders were not banned from carrying their weapons on campus?"
If it wasn't obvious then, it is now.
----------------------------------------
Let's Make America a "Sad-Free Zone"
By Ann Coulter
FrontPageMagazine.com April 19, 2007
From the attacks of 9-11 to Monday's school shooting, after every mass murder there is an overwhelming urge to "do something" to prevent a similar attack.
But since Adam ate the apple and let evil into the world, deranged individuals have existed.
Most of the time they can't be locked up until it's too late. It's not against the law to be crazy – in some jurisdictions it actually makes you more viable as a candidate for public office.
It's certainly not against the law to be an unsociable loner. If it were, Ralph Nader would be behind bars right now, where he belongs. Mass murder is often the first serious crime unbalanced individuals are caught committing – as appears to be in the case of the Virginia Tech shooter.
The best we can do is enact policies that will reduce the death toll when these acts of carnage occur, as they will in a free and open society of 300 million people, most of whom have cable TV.
Only one policy has ever been shown to deter mass murder: concealed-carry laws. In a comprehensive study of all public, multiple-shooting incidents in America between 1977 and 1999, the inestimable economists John Lott and Bill Landes found that concealed-carry laws were the only laws that had any beneficial effect.
And the effect was not insignificant. States that allowed citizens to carry concealed handguns reduced multiple-shooting attacks by 60 percent and reduced the death and injury from these attacks by nearly 80 percent.
Apparently, even crazy people prefer targets that can't shoot back. The reason schools are consistently popular targets for mass murderers is precisely because of all the idiotic "Gun-Free School Zone" laws.
From the people who brought you "zero tolerance," I present the Gun-Free Zone! Yippee! Problem solved! Bam! Bam! Everybody down! Hey, how did that deranged loner get a gun into this Gun-Free Zone?
It isn't the angst of adolescence. Plenty of school shootings have been committed by adults with absolutely no reason to be at the school, such as Laurie Dann, who shot up the Hubbard Woods Elementary School in Winnetka, IL, in 1988; Patrick Purdy, who opened fire on children at Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton, CA, in 1989; and Charles Carl Roberts, who murdered five schoolgirls at an Amish school in Lancaster County, PA, last year.
Oh, by the way, the other major "Gun-Free Zone" in America is the post office.
But instantly, on the day of the shooting at Virginia Tech, the media were already promoting gun control and pre-emptively denouncing right-wingers who point out that gun control enables murderers rather than stopping them. Liberals get to lobby for gun control, but we're disallowed from arguing back. That's how good their arguments are. They're that good.
Needless to say, Virginia Tech is a Gun-Free School Zone – at least until last Monday. The gunman must not have known. Imagine his embarrassment! Perhaps there should be signs.
Virginia Tech even prohibits students with concealed-carry permits from carrying their guns on campus. Last year, the school disciplined a student for carrying a gun on campus, despite his lawful concealed-carry permit. If only someone like that had been in Norris Hall on Monday, this massacre could have been ended a lot sooner.
But last January, the Virginia General Assembly shot down a bill that would have prevented universities like Virginia Tech from giving sanctuary to mass murderers on college campuses in Virginia by disarming students with concealed-carry permits valid in the rest of the state.
Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker praised the legislature for allowing the school to disarm lawful gun owners on the faculty and student body, thereby surrendering every college campus in the state to deranged mass murderers, saying: "I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus."
Others disagreed. Writing last year about another dangerous killer who had been loose on the Virginia Tech campus, graduate student Jonathan McGlumphy wrote: "Is it not obvious that all students, faculty and staff would have been safer if (concealed handgun permit) holders were not banned from carrying their weapons on campus?"
If it wasn't obvious then, it is now.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
war posturing..
the looming Israeli, iranian showdown is heating up.. it could be that Israel and US forces strike a serious setback to the iranian nuclear plan, killing invested soviet engineers, creating the stage for a larger escalation.. we could certainly see a 2 front war opened up on Israel from the north and south, allowing iran to use it's proxy hizballah and puppet syria to inflict losses on Israel. Israel will more than likely be less inclined to offer a disorganized response as they did last summer, which could result in significant losses for both hizballah and syria.. it would not be out of the question to see syria use chemical/biological weapons on Israel, eliciting a nuclear response.
the summer could be rocky..
Espionage Galore under a Middle East Nuclear Cloud
DEBKAfile Special Analysis
April 17, 2007, 9:19 PM (GMT+02:00)
It sounded like a contest.
On Tuesday, April 17, the Shin Bet intelligence service reported Iranian intelligence had intensified its efforts to recruit Israelis as spies, targeting former Iranians applying for visas to visit their families. One young man had been snared and paid “expenses” for enlisting a friend in security and collecting information. The Shin Bet detained him on landing home, before he did any harm.
Two hours later, in Cairo, a nuclear engineer Mohammed Gaber, was accused by Prosecutor-General Abdul-Maquid Mahmoud of spying on Egypt’s nuclear program on behalf of the Mossad, which was said to have paid him $17,000. An Irishman and Japanese were sought in connection with the affair. Israel dismissed the charge as another of Cairo’s unfounded spy myths, whose dissemination was not conducive to good relations.
Neither case is isolated. Two days earlier, the Israeli-Arab parliamentarian Azmi Beshara admitted from a safe distance to the Qatar-based al Jazeera TV channel that he was under suspicion of spying for Hizballah during its war with Israel and would not be returning home any time soon.
Add on the US defense secretary Robert Gates’ visits to Jordan, Israel and Egypt this week reportedly to coordinate and oversee preparations connected to a potential military operation against Iran and, in the view of DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources, these espionage rumbles denote a far greater upheaval boililng up below ground.
Most can be traced one way or another to the mysterious disappearance of the Iranian general Ali Reza Asgari from Istanbul in February. Tehran’s job description of the missing general – a former deputy defense minister, who also worked with the Lebanese Hizballah in the 1980 - is correct as far as it goes. But the failure to bring it up to date is an attempt to obfuscate the fact that, at the time of his disappearance, he headed Iran’s Middle East spy networks.
The cases disclosed Tuesday may be just the tip of the iceberg, with more spy dramas on the way. But even at this early stage of a potential intelligence earthquake, certain conclusions are indicated.
Firstly, Israeli will soon have no choice but to declare Iran an enemy state and ban Israeli travel to the Islamic Republic for the first time in the 28 years since Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution. Surprisingly, Israelis are still legally permitted to visit Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Iran.
The Shin Bet did not need to publicize Iran’s intense hunt for Israeli spies in order to stop those visits; there are other ways. The espionage case would not have been brought out in the open without the knowledge of the relevant ministers – certainly not a graphic account of how the Iranian consulate in Istanbul, whence Gen. Asgari vanished, doubles as the distribution center for visas to Iran and a recruiting center for spies. Israelis applying for visas are obliged to deposit their Israeli passports there and issued with travel documents which gain them entry to Tehran. This process is drawn out to enable Iranian intelligence agents to make their first pitch to the targeted Israeli. It is followed up after he enters Iran.
The Shin Bet’s sudden outburst of transparency indicates that the scene is being set for a major diplomatic, military or intelligence step in the summer. This time, the Israeli government will not repeat at least one of the mistakes committed in July 2006, when it refused to declare that Israel was at war and the Hizballah an enemy, even after its forces crossed in to northern Israel, kidnapped two soldiers and let loose with a Katyusha barrage.
Israel is now putting the horse before the cart and declaring Iran an enemy country before the event.
It is therefore vital to deter Israeli nationals from visiting Iran in advance of potential Middle East hostilities. If Iran is involved, even through its allies or the Hizballah, Israelis in the Islamic Republic would be in danger of being taken captive or hostage.
Israel’s latest posture and precautions are likely to have the dual effect of raising Middle East tensions and placing Iran’s ancient Jewish community, reduced now to 25,000, in jeopardy.
“Israeli spy rings” may soon be “uncovered” by Iranian security agents.
Second, the Middle East has embarked on a nuclear arms race. It is no secret that at last month’s Arab summit in Riyadh, the Saudi ruler strongly urged his fellows to unite their national nuclear programs under a single roof. Though played down, this was the summit’s most important decision – not the so-called Saudi peace plan, although it made the most waves. It was a step intended to produce an Arab nuclear option versus the Iranian weapons program.
Every aspect of the unified Arab nuclear program is therefore extraordinarily sensitive and hemmed in with exceptional security measures. Each has become a prime intelligence target - and not only for Israel. Hence the song and dance the Egyptian prosecutor general made Tuesday of an alleged Israeli spy network said to operate out of Hong Kong, with an Irish and a Japanese agent charged with planting Israeli espionage software in Egyptian nuclear program’s computers, together with an Egyptian engineer. Egyptian intelligence was making sure to warn off any Egyptian tempted to work for Israeli intelligence, just as the Shin Bet was cautioning Israelis to beware of falling into Iranian intelligence traps.
The events of a single day brought Iran and its nuclear threat into sharp relief as the most pressing issues for Israel. Relations with the Palestinians and Syria, on which so many words are poured day by day, pale in comparison.
the summer could be rocky..
Espionage Galore under a Middle East Nuclear Cloud
DEBKAfile Special Analysis
April 17, 2007, 9:19 PM (GMT+02:00)
It sounded like a contest.
On Tuesday, April 17, the Shin Bet intelligence service reported Iranian intelligence had intensified its efforts to recruit Israelis as spies, targeting former Iranians applying for visas to visit their families. One young man had been snared and paid “expenses” for enlisting a friend in security and collecting information. The Shin Bet detained him on landing home, before he did any harm.
Two hours later, in Cairo, a nuclear engineer Mohammed Gaber, was accused by Prosecutor-General Abdul-Maquid Mahmoud of spying on Egypt’s nuclear program on behalf of the Mossad, which was said to have paid him $17,000. An Irishman and Japanese were sought in connection with the affair. Israel dismissed the charge as another of Cairo’s unfounded spy myths, whose dissemination was not conducive to good relations.
Neither case is isolated. Two days earlier, the Israeli-Arab parliamentarian Azmi Beshara admitted from a safe distance to the Qatar-based al Jazeera TV channel that he was under suspicion of spying for Hizballah during its war with Israel and would not be returning home any time soon.
Add on the US defense secretary Robert Gates’ visits to Jordan, Israel and Egypt this week reportedly to coordinate and oversee preparations connected to a potential military operation against Iran and, in the view of DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources, these espionage rumbles denote a far greater upheaval boililng up below ground.
Most can be traced one way or another to the mysterious disappearance of the Iranian general Ali Reza Asgari from Istanbul in February. Tehran’s job description of the missing general – a former deputy defense minister, who also worked with the Lebanese Hizballah in the 1980 - is correct as far as it goes. But the failure to bring it up to date is an attempt to obfuscate the fact that, at the time of his disappearance, he headed Iran’s Middle East spy networks.
The cases disclosed Tuesday may be just the tip of the iceberg, with more spy dramas on the way. But even at this early stage of a potential intelligence earthquake, certain conclusions are indicated.
Firstly, Israeli will soon have no choice but to declare Iran an enemy state and ban Israeli travel to the Islamic Republic for the first time in the 28 years since Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution. Surprisingly, Israelis are still legally permitted to visit Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Iran.
The Shin Bet did not need to publicize Iran’s intense hunt for Israeli spies in order to stop those visits; there are other ways. The espionage case would not have been brought out in the open without the knowledge of the relevant ministers – certainly not a graphic account of how the Iranian consulate in Istanbul, whence Gen. Asgari vanished, doubles as the distribution center for visas to Iran and a recruiting center for spies. Israelis applying for visas are obliged to deposit their Israeli passports there and issued with travel documents which gain them entry to Tehran. This process is drawn out to enable Iranian intelligence agents to make their first pitch to the targeted Israeli. It is followed up after he enters Iran.
The Shin Bet’s sudden outburst of transparency indicates that the scene is being set for a major diplomatic, military or intelligence step in the summer. This time, the Israeli government will not repeat at least one of the mistakes committed in July 2006, when it refused to declare that Israel was at war and the Hizballah an enemy, even after its forces crossed in to northern Israel, kidnapped two soldiers and let loose with a Katyusha barrage.
Israel is now putting the horse before the cart and declaring Iran an enemy country before the event.
It is therefore vital to deter Israeli nationals from visiting Iran in advance of potential Middle East hostilities. If Iran is involved, even through its allies or the Hizballah, Israelis in the Islamic Republic would be in danger of being taken captive or hostage.
Israel’s latest posture and precautions are likely to have the dual effect of raising Middle East tensions and placing Iran’s ancient Jewish community, reduced now to 25,000, in jeopardy.
“Israeli spy rings” may soon be “uncovered” by Iranian security agents.
Second, the Middle East has embarked on a nuclear arms race. It is no secret that at last month’s Arab summit in Riyadh, the Saudi ruler strongly urged his fellows to unite their national nuclear programs under a single roof. Though played down, this was the summit’s most important decision – not the so-called Saudi peace plan, although it made the most waves. It was a step intended to produce an Arab nuclear option versus the Iranian weapons program.
Every aspect of the unified Arab nuclear program is therefore extraordinarily sensitive and hemmed in with exceptional security measures. Each has become a prime intelligence target - and not only for Israel. Hence the song and dance the Egyptian prosecutor general made Tuesday of an alleged Israeli spy network said to operate out of Hong Kong, with an Irish and a Japanese agent charged with planting Israeli espionage software in Egyptian nuclear program’s computers, together with an Egyptian engineer. Egyptian intelligence was making sure to warn off any Egyptian tempted to work for Israeli intelligence, just as the Shin Bet was cautioning Israelis to beware of falling into Iranian intelligence traps.
The events of a single day brought Iran and its nuclear threat into sharp relief as the most pressing issues for Israel. Relations with the Palestinians and Syria, on which so many words are poured day by day, pale in comparison.
the continuing evolution of the axis among iran, syria and russia falls right in to place with the words of Ezekiel 38.. what a very interesting time to be alive.
_______________________________
Israel's Next War
By P. David Hornik
FrontPageMagazine.com April 17, 2007
Ze’ev Schiff—left-of-center, not a hawk, and considered by many to be Israel’s foremost military analyst—cites security sources as saying those Qassams that Islamic Jihad has been raining on Gaza-bordering communities during the “ceasefire” with Hamas are in fact supplied by Hamas.
Hamas, the sources said, while “maintaining a front of abiding by the ceasefire,” is actually “emerging as the lynchpin of Palestinian terrorist activities against Israel.” That is believed to include providing Islamic Jihad with Russian-made 16-kilometer-range Grad rockets, already used last year to target the town of Ashkelon with its strategic facilities.
An analysis last month already warned that Hamas is “improving its rocket capabilities” while “seeking to build anti-tank and anti-aircraft systems that will neutralize Israel’s current ability to easily penetrate Gaza.”
The deteriorating situation in the south led Brig.-Gen. (ret.) Tzvika Fogel, formerly chief of staff for Southern Command, to warn on Israel’s Channel 10 that Israel faces two choices: to “continue its ostrich-like stance” until the Gaza terror forces mount a surprise attack, or to launch a full-scale preemptive attack of its own.
Meanwhile, shifting the lens to the north, last week the head of Israeli Military Intelligence, Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin, reported to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that Syria is “purchasing massive amounts of ground-to-ground and anti-tank missiles from Russia”—a country whose name tends to turn up in these contexts—and that, while “there is a low probability that Syria will initiate a war against Israel,” Syria could launch attacks in the Golan Heights even though it could lead to war.
Another report gave an even more ominous picture of an “unprecedented military buildup in Syria,” including the deployment of 300 home-manufactured Scud missiles just north of the Golan Heights, the establishment of new commando units, and a spike in training for urban and guerrilla warfare.
A source in IDF Northern Command said that “Syria saw the difficulty the IDF had during the fighting inside the southern Lebanese villages [last summer] and now . . . wants to draw us—in the event of a war—into battles in built-up areas where they think they will have the upper hand.”
And over in Lebanon itself, the fallout from last summer’s war is just as negative and the prognosis no better. In his same testimony to the Knesset committee last week, Maj.-Gen. Yadlin noted that up to several hundred Al Qaeda members have arrived in Lebanon with the aim of attacking UNIFIL and other Western targets; and that Hezbollah remains entrenched in southern Lebanon and keeps amassing large quantities of arms from Syria and Iran.
Rounding out the circle by returning to the south, Yadlin also said some Al Qaeda operatives have infiltrated Gaza as well, and that Hamas is gaining financial and political strength while its members receive training in Syria and Iran.
Overall, “the MI chief stressed that Iran continues to provide funding and weapons to Syria, Hamas, and Hezbollah, and has close military and intelligence coordination with Syria.” Add Russia to the mix and the picture is complete: a Shiite-Sunni-Russian terror-military axis seeking to surround, pressure, and harass Israel and ultimately eradicate it.
Tragically, this is happening at a time when Israel has a government hobbled by incompetence, unpopularity, scandals, infighting, and delusory dovishness, and that, apart from stepped-up training for some IDF units, is essentially doing nothing about the growing threats. It does not help that Israel’s U.S. ally keeps obsessively choreographing diplomatic dances with the likes of PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas, the Saudis, and the Arab League with which Israel dutifully complies—achieving nothing except to further project weakness to Israel’s enemies and lull the parts of the Israeli public that are eager to be lulled.
As Schiff points out in another analysis, it was the reluctance to enter a two-front war that led Israel to allow Hezbollah’s major military buildup in southern Lebanon in the first place. After Israel pulled out of southern Lebanon in 2000 against the advice of most of the IDF top brass, Prime Minister Ehud Barak and then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon found themselves facing a Palestinian terror onslaught mounted from the West Bank and Gaza and did not want to further complicate matters by doing something about Hezbollah in Lebanon.
So Israel, Schiff notes, “never once struck at the convoys transferring the missiles to Lebanon, and never struck even one Hezbollah missile warehouse, or even the short-range rockets near the border.” The end result was that Israel found itself at war on two fronts anyway—when Hamas attacked from Gaza and kidnapped a soldier last June, and Hezbollah followed suit the next month with an attack and kidnapping from Lebanon; and now faces the prospect of a further two-front war against enemies with enhanced capabilities.
Hope resides mainly in the interim report later this month of the Winograd Committee, set up to investigate the failures in last summer’s war and also expected to address the whole period of 2000-2006. Sufficiently harsh conclusions against Prime Minister Ehud Olmert could lead him to resign or cause other political ferment leading to new elections. As time goes on and Israel, aside from antiterror policing work in the West Bank, remains almost entirely passive against the growing threats, it does not appear that Olmert’s government has the will or ability to do anything about them, and its continued tenure appears to spell disaster.
If there is a chance—apart from a strike on Iran that would alter the region’s strategic balance—for Israel to avoid another two-front entanglement, it lies mainly in regaining its deterrence by making an effective move in Gaza. A hard-enough blow to Hamas and its friends there could make Hezbollah and Syria think twice about starting more trouble in the north. But there may be little time left, and such an outcome requires a functioning government in Jerusalem. It also calls for a Washington able to look past short-term diplomatic concerns and give Israel the backing it needs.
_______________________________
Israel's Next War
By P. David Hornik
FrontPageMagazine.com April 17, 2007
Ze’ev Schiff—left-of-center, not a hawk, and considered by many to be Israel’s foremost military analyst—cites security sources as saying those Qassams that Islamic Jihad has been raining on Gaza-bordering communities during the “ceasefire” with Hamas are in fact supplied by Hamas.
Hamas, the sources said, while “maintaining a front of abiding by the ceasefire,” is actually “emerging as the lynchpin of Palestinian terrorist activities against Israel.” That is believed to include providing Islamic Jihad with Russian-made 16-kilometer-range Grad rockets, already used last year to target the town of Ashkelon with its strategic facilities.
An analysis last month already warned that Hamas is “improving its rocket capabilities” while “seeking to build anti-tank and anti-aircraft systems that will neutralize Israel’s current ability to easily penetrate Gaza.”
The deteriorating situation in the south led Brig.-Gen. (ret.) Tzvika Fogel, formerly chief of staff for Southern Command, to warn on Israel’s Channel 10 that Israel faces two choices: to “continue its ostrich-like stance” until the Gaza terror forces mount a surprise attack, or to launch a full-scale preemptive attack of its own.
Meanwhile, shifting the lens to the north, last week the head of Israeli Military Intelligence, Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin, reported to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that Syria is “purchasing massive amounts of ground-to-ground and anti-tank missiles from Russia”—a country whose name tends to turn up in these contexts—and that, while “there is a low probability that Syria will initiate a war against Israel,” Syria could launch attacks in the Golan Heights even though it could lead to war.
Another report gave an even more ominous picture of an “unprecedented military buildup in Syria,” including the deployment of 300 home-manufactured Scud missiles just north of the Golan Heights, the establishment of new commando units, and a spike in training for urban and guerrilla warfare.
A source in IDF Northern Command said that “Syria saw the difficulty the IDF had during the fighting inside the southern Lebanese villages [last summer] and now . . . wants to draw us—in the event of a war—into battles in built-up areas where they think they will have the upper hand.”
And over in Lebanon itself, the fallout from last summer’s war is just as negative and the prognosis no better. In his same testimony to the Knesset committee last week, Maj.-Gen. Yadlin noted that up to several hundred Al Qaeda members have arrived in Lebanon with the aim of attacking UNIFIL and other Western targets; and that Hezbollah remains entrenched in southern Lebanon and keeps amassing large quantities of arms from Syria and Iran.
Rounding out the circle by returning to the south, Yadlin also said some Al Qaeda operatives have infiltrated Gaza as well, and that Hamas is gaining financial and political strength while its members receive training in Syria and Iran.
Overall, “the MI chief stressed that Iran continues to provide funding and weapons to Syria, Hamas, and Hezbollah, and has close military and intelligence coordination with Syria.” Add Russia to the mix and the picture is complete: a Shiite-Sunni-Russian terror-military axis seeking to surround, pressure, and harass Israel and ultimately eradicate it.
Tragically, this is happening at a time when Israel has a government hobbled by incompetence, unpopularity, scandals, infighting, and delusory dovishness, and that, apart from stepped-up training for some IDF units, is essentially doing nothing about the growing threats. It does not help that Israel’s U.S. ally keeps obsessively choreographing diplomatic dances with the likes of PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas, the Saudis, and the Arab League with which Israel dutifully complies—achieving nothing except to further project weakness to Israel’s enemies and lull the parts of the Israeli public that are eager to be lulled.
As Schiff points out in another analysis, it was the reluctance to enter a two-front war that led Israel to allow Hezbollah’s major military buildup in southern Lebanon in the first place. After Israel pulled out of southern Lebanon in 2000 against the advice of most of the IDF top brass, Prime Minister Ehud Barak and then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon found themselves facing a Palestinian terror onslaught mounted from the West Bank and Gaza and did not want to further complicate matters by doing something about Hezbollah in Lebanon.
So Israel, Schiff notes, “never once struck at the convoys transferring the missiles to Lebanon, and never struck even one Hezbollah missile warehouse, or even the short-range rockets near the border.” The end result was that Israel found itself at war on two fronts anyway—when Hamas attacked from Gaza and kidnapped a soldier last June, and Hezbollah followed suit the next month with an attack and kidnapping from Lebanon; and now faces the prospect of a further two-front war against enemies with enhanced capabilities.
Hope resides mainly in the interim report later this month of the Winograd Committee, set up to investigate the failures in last summer’s war and also expected to address the whole period of 2000-2006. Sufficiently harsh conclusions against Prime Minister Ehud Olmert could lead him to resign or cause other political ferment leading to new elections. As time goes on and Israel, aside from antiterror policing work in the West Bank, remains almost entirely passive against the growing threats, it does not appear that Olmert’s government has the will or ability to do anything about them, and its continued tenure appears to spell disaster.
If there is a chance—apart from a strike on Iran that would alter the region’s strategic balance—for Israel to avoid another two-front entanglement, it lies mainly in regaining its deterrence by making an effective move in Gaza. A hard-enough blow to Hamas and its friends there could make Hezbollah and Syria think twice about starting more trouble in the north. But there may be little time left, and such an outcome requires a functioning government in Jerusalem. It also calls for a Washington able to look past short-term diplomatic concerns and give Israel the backing it needs.
Monday, April 16, 2007
imus(t) post this..
another well written piece on the imus fiasco..
----------------------
Imus go down to the idiocy again
April 15, 2007
MARK STEYN
I was at LaGuardia the other day. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just the usual four-hour delay brought on by yet another of these April snowstorms Al Gore has arranged as a savvy marketing gimmick for his global warming documentary. Anyway, as always when you're at the gate for hours on end, there's nothing to do but watch CNN. I gather air traffic delays now account for 87 percent of CNN's audience. If it's just a routine holdup of two or three hours because the gate agent hasn't shown up, you know you'll be out of there before Wolf Blitzer's said goodnight. But, if it's something serious, like a light breeze at O'Hare, you know you'll be watching Larry King right through to the plug for tomorrow night's full hour with Tina Louise.
So I had the pleasure of sampling a typical evening's lineup of Don Imus coverage, from Wolf bringing us up to speed on the various networks that have fired him to Paula Zahn hosting a balanced panel of three African Americans and a guilt-ridden honky. It would have been a bad day for Ahmadinejad to drop the big one because nothing was going to prize CNN from their Imus-In-the-Morning-Noon-and-Night coverage.
Pundits are supposed to have opinions on everything, but to be honest I had no strong views on the scandal roiling the nation. I've never listened to the Imus show. The closest I get is if I happen to be driving around of an afternoon listening to WXZO from Burlington, Vt., and I hear one of their promos for the show, usually consisting of a 60-second highlight. In all the years of that condensed acquaintanceship with Imus, no "highlight" has ever struck me as funny or insightful. But I assumed that was simply because I'd left it too late: As with "Days of Our Lives" or "As the World Turns," if you've missed the first seven or eight decades it's hard to get into it.
So I don't know whether calling the Rutgers basketball ladies "nappy-headed hos" is a mean old white guy's racist slur or an artful parodic jest on the way black women are talked about by black men -- or at least by the ones on the record charts. After all, the only way mean old white folks know the expressions "nappy" or "ho" is because they heard 'em from hip young black folks. Indeed, one could argue it's a tribute to how non-racist America is that an elderly Caucasian would wish to talk like a gangsta rapper. What was it Martin Luther King dreamed of? A nation where men would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their characterizations?
Alas, it's not that simple. Apparently, when two hip-hoppers are up on stage doing their "Who was that ho I saw you with last night?"/"That was no ho, that was my bitch" shtick, they're just keepin' it real. When a white guy does it, he's just keepin' it real unlikely he'll find gainful employment again. Unless, of course, the networks are now proposing to apply the Imus standard to all performers, in which case the Grammy Awards will last 10 minutes (Best Liner Notes on a Polka Album and Best Tony Bennett Celebrity Duets CD of the Last Two Months).
It's a good rule of thumb in American scandals that, no matter how big an idiot someone is, the outrage over him will always be more idiotic. Let us take the easiest ones first. "I've received hundreds, if not thousands of e-mails, both internal and external, from people with very strong views about what should happen," said Steve Capus, president of NBC News. "And many of them are people who have worked at NBC News for decades, people who put their lives on the line covering wars and things like that." Is that a lobby group yet? War Correspondents Against Racism? Capus was taking no chances. "This decision was made after listening to the people who work for NBC News, who have placed a trust and respect the trust that America has given us."
Is it written somewhere in the Media Code of Ethics that you're not allowed to fire anyone without sounding like a pompous self-regarding bore? Playing catch-up and terminating Imus 24 hours after MSNBC, CBS chairman Les Moonves left NBC's "trust" and "respect" and "respect for the trust" in the dust: "We are now presented with a significant opportunity to expand on our record on issues of diversity, race and gender. We intend to seize that opportunity as we move forward together." That sounds like a helluva morning show you're developing there, Mr. Chairman. Unless it's just off-the-peg meaningless pap to be forgotten as soon as the press release is shoved in the filing cabinet.
Needless to say, Moonves fired Imus after first meeting with the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton. I have a dream that my children will one day live in a nation where a white guy can be fired for racist remarks without his employers having to prostrate themselves before clapped out professional grievance mongers and shakedown artists. But dream on. Two men who slandered the Duke lacrosse players not just as racists but as rapists (by the way, has the Rev. Jackson come through on his promise to pay for the "victim" to go to college?) are the go-to guys when it comes to judging rhetorical excess in respect of varsity sports teams. Surely even a network president isn't such a craven squish he can go through a meeting like that with a straight face?
And saddest of all were the Rutgers basketball gals themselves. Almost a century and a half after the abolition of slavery, 40 years after the civil rights era, a group of young black women who've achieved great success went on TV and teared up because of a cheap crack by an over-the-hill shock jock. As a female correspondent to the Powerline Web site commented:
"Here are these tough women on top of the world and they are so fragile that a remark knocks them down. Hey, why wouldn't they have said 'F--- you? Who the heck is this fool Imus? We are queens of national basketball and there is no stopping us now. We can be and do anything we choose to be or do. . . . We don't need Al Sharpton to protect us. . . . ' But no, they look devastated and say they are damaged irreparably.''
Only in America: a team of champions who think they're victims, an old white fool who talks like a gangsta rapper and multi-millionaires grown rich on race-baiting who promote themselves as guardians of civility. Good thing there are no real problems to worry about.
----------------------
Imus go down to the idiocy again
April 15, 2007
MARK STEYN
I was at LaGuardia the other day. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just the usual four-hour delay brought on by yet another of these April snowstorms Al Gore has arranged as a savvy marketing gimmick for his global warming documentary. Anyway, as always when you're at the gate for hours on end, there's nothing to do but watch CNN. I gather air traffic delays now account for 87 percent of CNN's audience. If it's just a routine holdup of two or three hours because the gate agent hasn't shown up, you know you'll be out of there before Wolf Blitzer's said goodnight. But, if it's something serious, like a light breeze at O'Hare, you know you'll be watching Larry King right through to the plug for tomorrow night's full hour with Tina Louise.
So I had the pleasure of sampling a typical evening's lineup of Don Imus coverage, from Wolf bringing us up to speed on the various networks that have fired him to Paula Zahn hosting a balanced panel of three African Americans and a guilt-ridden honky. It would have been a bad day for Ahmadinejad to drop the big one because nothing was going to prize CNN from their Imus-In-the-Morning-Noon-and-Night coverage.
Pundits are supposed to have opinions on everything, but to be honest I had no strong views on the scandal roiling the nation. I've never listened to the Imus show. The closest I get is if I happen to be driving around of an afternoon listening to WXZO from Burlington, Vt., and I hear one of their promos for the show, usually consisting of a 60-second highlight. In all the years of that condensed acquaintanceship with Imus, no "highlight" has ever struck me as funny or insightful. But I assumed that was simply because I'd left it too late: As with "Days of Our Lives" or "As the World Turns," if you've missed the first seven or eight decades it's hard to get into it.
So I don't know whether calling the Rutgers basketball ladies "nappy-headed hos" is a mean old white guy's racist slur or an artful parodic jest on the way black women are talked about by black men -- or at least by the ones on the record charts. After all, the only way mean old white folks know the expressions "nappy" or "ho" is because they heard 'em from hip young black folks. Indeed, one could argue it's a tribute to how non-racist America is that an elderly Caucasian would wish to talk like a gangsta rapper. What was it Martin Luther King dreamed of? A nation where men would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their characterizations?
Alas, it's not that simple. Apparently, when two hip-hoppers are up on stage doing their "Who was that ho I saw you with last night?"/"That was no ho, that was my bitch" shtick, they're just keepin' it real. When a white guy does it, he's just keepin' it real unlikely he'll find gainful employment again. Unless, of course, the networks are now proposing to apply the Imus standard to all performers, in which case the Grammy Awards will last 10 minutes (Best Liner Notes on a Polka Album and Best Tony Bennett Celebrity Duets CD of the Last Two Months).
It's a good rule of thumb in American scandals that, no matter how big an idiot someone is, the outrage over him will always be more idiotic. Let us take the easiest ones first. "I've received hundreds, if not thousands of e-mails, both internal and external, from people with very strong views about what should happen," said Steve Capus, president of NBC News. "And many of them are people who have worked at NBC News for decades, people who put their lives on the line covering wars and things like that." Is that a lobby group yet? War Correspondents Against Racism? Capus was taking no chances. "This decision was made after listening to the people who work for NBC News, who have placed a trust and respect the trust that America has given us."
Is it written somewhere in the Media Code of Ethics that you're not allowed to fire anyone without sounding like a pompous self-regarding bore? Playing catch-up and terminating Imus 24 hours after MSNBC, CBS chairman Les Moonves left NBC's "trust" and "respect" and "respect for the trust" in the dust: "We are now presented with a significant opportunity to expand on our record on issues of diversity, race and gender. We intend to seize that opportunity as we move forward together." That sounds like a helluva morning show you're developing there, Mr. Chairman. Unless it's just off-the-peg meaningless pap to be forgotten as soon as the press release is shoved in the filing cabinet.
Needless to say, Moonves fired Imus after first meeting with the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton. I have a dream that my children will one day live in a nation where a white guy can be fired for racist remarks without his employers having to prostrate themselves before clapped out professional grievance mongers and shakedown artists. But dream on. Two men who slandered the Duke lacrosse players not just as racists but as rapists (by the way, has the Rev. Jackson come through on his promise to pay for the "victim" to go to college?) are the go-to guys when it comes to judging rhetorical excess in respect of varsity sports teams. Surely even a network president isn't such a craven squish he can go through a meeting like that with a straight face?
And saddest of all were the Rutgers basketball gals themselves. Almost a century and a half after the abolition of slavery, 40 years after the civil rights era, a group of young black women who've achieved great success went on TV and teared up because of a cheap crack by an over-the-hill shock jock. As a female correspondent to the Powerline Web site commented:
"Here are these tough women on top of the world and they are so fragile that a remark knocks them down. Hey, why wouldn't they have said 'F--- you? Who the heck is this fool Imus? We are queens of national basketball and there is no stopping us now. We can be and do anything we choose to be or do. . . . We don't need Al Sharpton to protect us. . . . ' But no, they look devastated and say they are damaged irreparably.''
Only in America: a team of champions who think they're victims, an old white fool who talks like a gangsta rapper and multi-millionaires grown rich on race-baiting who promote themselves as guardians of civility. Good thing there are no real problems to worry about.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
afraid of the truth..
a great read.. absolutely spot on.
------------------------------------------------------
Imus isn’t the real bad guy
Instead of wasting time on irrelevant shock jock, black leaders need to be fighting a growing gangster culture.
JASON WHITLOCK
Thank you, Don Imus. You’ve given us (black people) an excuse to avoid our real problem.
You’ve given Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson another opportunity to pretend that the old fight, which is now the safe and lucrative fight, is still the most important fight in our push for true economic and social equality.
You’ve given Vivian Stringer and Rutgers the chance to hold a nationally televised recruiting celebration expertly disguised as a news conference to respond to your poor attempt at humor.
Thank you, Don Imus. You extended Black History Month to April, and we can once again wallow in victimhood, protest like it’s 1965 and delude ourselves into believing that fixing your hatred is more necessary than eradicating our self-hatred.
The bigots win again.
While we’re fixated on a bad joke cracked by an irrelevant, bad shock jock, I’m sure at least one of the marvelous young women on the Rutgers basketball team is somewhere snapping her fingers to the beat of 50 Cent’s or Snoop Dogg’s or Young Jeezy’s latest ode glorifying nappy-headed pimps and hos.
I ain’t saying Jesse, Al and Vivian are gold-diggas, but they don’t have the heart to mount a legitimate campaign against the real black-folk killas.
It is us. At this time, we are our own worst enemies. We have allowed our youths to buy into a culture (hip hop) that has been perverted, corrupted and overtaken by prison culture. The music, attitude and behavior expressed in this culture is anti-black, anti-education, demeaning, self-destructive, pro-drug dealing and violent.
Rather than confront this heinous enemy from within, we sit back and wait for someone like Imus to have a slip of the tongue and make the mistake of repeating the things we say about ourselves.
It’s embarrassing. Dave Chappelle was offered $50 million to make racially insensitive jokes about black and white people on TV. He was hailed as a genius. Black comedians routinely crack jokes about white and black people, and we all laugh out loud.
I’m no Don Imus apologist. He and his tiny companion Mike Lupica blasted me after I fell out with ESPN. Imus is a hack.
But, in my view, he didn’t do anything outside the norm for shock jocks and comedians. He also offered an apology. That should’ve been the end of this whole affair. Instead, it’s only the beginning. It’s an opportunity for Stringer, Jackson and Sharpton to step on victim platforms and elevate themselves and their agenda$.
I watched the Rutgers news conference and was ashamed.
Martin Luther King Jr. spoke for eight minutes in 1963 at the March on Washington. At the time, black people could be lynched and denied fundamental rights with little thought. With the comments of a talk-show host most of her players had never heard of before last week serving as her excuse, Vivian Stringer rambled on for 30 minutes about the amazing season her team had.
Somehow, we’re supposed to believe that the comments of a man with virtually no connection to the sports world ruined Rutgers’ wonderful season. Had a broadcaster with credibility and a platform in the sports world uttered the words Imus did, I could understand a level of outrage.
But an hourlong press conference over a man who has already apologized, already been suspended and is already insignificant is just plain intellectually dishonest. This is opportunism. This is a distraction.
In the grand scheme, Don Imus is no threat to us in general and no threat to black women in particular. If his words are so powerful and so destructive and must be rebuked so forcefully, then what should we do about the idiot rappers on BET, MTV and every black-owned radio station in the country who use words much more powerful and much more destructive?
I don’t listen or watch Imus’ show regularly. Has he at any point glorified selling crack cocaine to black women? Has he celebrated black men shooting each other randomly? Has he suggested in any way that it’s cool to be a baby-daddy rather than a husband and a parent? Does he tell his listeners that they’re suckers for pursuing education and that they’re selling out their race if they do?
When Imus does any of that, call me and I’ll get upset. Until then, he is what he is — a washed-up shock jock who is very easy to ignore when you’re not looking to be made a victim.
No. We all know where the real battleground is. We know that the gangsta rappers and their followers in the athletic world have far bigger platforms to negatively define us than some old white man with a bad radio show. There’s no money and lots of danger in that battle, so Jesse and Al are going to sit it out.
------------------------------------------------------
Imus isn’t the real bad guy
Instead of wasting time on irrelevant shock jock, black leaders need to be fighting a growing gangster culture.
JASON WHITLOCK
Thank you, Don Imus. You’ve given us (black people) an excuse to avoid our real problem.
You’ve given Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson another opportunity to pretend that the old fight, which is now the safe and lucrative fight, is still the most important fight in our push for true economic and social equality.
You’ve given Vivian Stringer and Rutgers the chance to hold a nationally televised recruiting celebration expertly disguised as a news conference to respond to your poor attempt at humor.
Thank you, Don Imus. You extended Black History Month to April, and we can once again wallow in victimhood, protest like it’s 1965 and delude ourselves into believing that fixing your hatred is more necessary than eradicating our self-hatred.
The bigots win again.
While we’re fixated on a bad joke cracked by an irrelevant, bad shock jock, I’m sure at least one of the marvelous young women on the Rutgers basketball team is somewhere snapping her fingers to the beat of 50 Cent’s or Snoop Dogg’s or Young Jeezy’s latest ode glorifying nappy-headed pimps and hos.
I ain’t saying Jesse, Al and Vivian are gold-diggas, but they don’t have the heart to mount a legitimate campaign against the real black-folk killas.
It is us. At this time, we are our own worst enemies. We have allowed our youths to buy into a culture (hip hop) that has been perverted, corrupted and overtaken by prison culture. The music, attitude and behavior expressed in this culture is anti-black, anti-education, demeaning, self-destructive, pro-drug dealing and violent.
Rather than confront this heinous enemy from within, we sit back and wait for someone like Imus to have a slip of the tongue and make the mistake of repeating the things we say about ourselves.
It’s embarrassing. Dave Chappelle was offered $50 million to make racially insensitive jokes about black and white people on TV. He was hailed as a genius. Black comedians routinely crack jokes about white and black people, and we all laugh out loud.
I’m no Don Imus apologist. He and his tiny companion Mike Lupica blasted me after I fell out with ESPN. Imus is a hack.
But, in my view, he didn’t do anything outside the norm for shock jocks and comedians. He also offered an apology. That should’ve been the end of this whole affair. Instead, it’s only the beginning. It’s an opportunity for Stringer, Jackson and Sharpton to step on victim platforms and elevate themselves and their agenda$.
I watched the Rutgers news conference and was ashamed.
Martin Luther King Jr. spoke for eight minutes in 1963 at the March on Washington. At the time, black people could be lynched and denied fundamental rights with little thought. With the comments of a talk-show host most of her players had never heard of before last week serving as her excuse, Vivian Stringer rambled on for 30 minutes about the amazing season her team had.
Somehow, we’re supposed to believe that the comments of a man with virtually no connection to the sports world ruined Rutgers’ wonderful season. Had a broadcaster with credibility and a platform in the sports world uttered the words Imus did, I could understand a level of outrage.
But an hourlong press conference over a man who has already apologized, already been suspended and is already insignificant is just plain intellectually dishonest. This is opportunism. This is a distraction.
In the grand scheme, Don Imus is no threat to us in general and no threat to black women in particular. If his words are so powerful and so destructive and must be rebuked so forcefully, then what should we do about the idiot rappers on BET, MTV and every black-owned radio station in the country who use words much more powerful and much more destructive?
I don’t listen or watch Imus’ show regularly. Has he at any point glorified selling crack cocaine to black women? Has he celebrated black men shooting each other randomly? Has he suggested in any way that it’s cool to be a baby-daddy rather than a husband and a parent? Does he tell his listeners that they’re suckers for pursuing education and that they’re selling out their race if they do?
When Imus does any of that, call me and I’ll get upset. Until then, he is what he is — a washed-up shock jock who is very easy to ignore when you’re not looking to be made a victim.
No. We all know where the real battleground is. We know that the gangsta rappers and their followers in the athletic world have far bigger platforms to negatively define us than some old white man with a bad radio show. There’s no money and lots of danger in that battle, so Jesse and Al are going to sit it out.
Friday, January 26, 2007
a world without America?
the frogs are starting to realize it's not the utopia they hoped for.. (at least some of them)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
France's Pro-America Turn
By Kenneth R. Timmerman
FrontPageMagazine.com January 26, 2007
(St. Tropez, France) – Not only in America did a presidential election cycle kick off this past week, but also in our alter-ego, France.
There were no grand debates about war and peace, however. No questions raised about this candidate trying to disguise his Muslim upbringing by joining a mainstream Christian church. No huge gambles over the fate of the free world.
This is France, after all. So the biggest “news” of the presidential campaign – just three months from the first round! – was the grammatical error Socialist Segolene Royal made during a trip to China. Or again, an offhand comment she made in Paris this week in support of a visiting separatist leader from Quebec.
France has become a profoundly frivolous nation, dedicated to pleasure, and that suits many French men and women very well.
In St. Tropez this week, the movie stars and the sun-bathers have gone home. Now as the mistral whips the port into a chilly froth, the local clothing boutiques are well into their annual half-price sale, and nearly everyone one of them is staffed by wannabe teenage beauty queens or by ever-tanned women in the 50s who can still wear skin-tight jeans and boots and look stunning..
Disco Volante of James Bond fame looked positively tiny parked down the quai from two 135 foot Mangousta yachts registered in Nassau and the Cayman Islands (one of them called, appropriately, Don’t Touch!). How many of you have ever seen a 135 foot yacht? It’s the maritime equivalent of a ten carat diamond. – and about as expensive.
The biggest gripe among locals this week was the outrageous price of fresh truffles. Alas, they’ve quadrupled from last year and are going for 1,000 euros a kilo – that’s $650 a pound. What is the world coming to?
Nicholas Sarkozy is widely touted as the front-runner for president, and that is good news for America. He is smart, he is conservative, and he understands that the protector of French prosperity is in Washington, not Brussels.
No French president is going to increase French defense spending to the level where the French could actually deploy an army overseas any time in the near future. Unlike the other candidates, however, Sarkozy doesn’t just know this, he says it openly with realism and clarity.
He came to Washington this past autumn – none of the locals there noticed him much, but his visit was widely commented upon here in France. Sarkozy the pro-American, his enemies call him. And to his credit, he finds that title just fine.
Sarkozy began his political career three decades ago as the protégé of Jacques Chirac. At one point, he was even dating Chirac’s daughter. He fell out first with one, then the other, and became a fierce critic of Chirac’s silly (and at times, dangerous) anti-Americanism during the Iraq war.
Two years ago, Chirac was hoping to put an end to Sarkozy’s career once and for all, as allegations floated in the media that he had a secret (and illegal) overseas bank account. This perfidious deed came to light when a list of these secret accounts, held with Clearstream in Luxembourg, surfaced in the French press.
To Chirac’s surprise, Sarkozy didn’t just bow down and surrender; he fought back, filing a civil lawsuit for defamation. That turned the matter over to a French investigative magistrate, who bit by bit began interrogating witnesses under oath until – mince, alors! – he discovered that the whole business appeared to have begun in 2004 in the private office of Dominique Galouzeau de Villepin, Chirac’s swashbuckling foreign minister.
Sarkozy came out the winner, and it was Villepin’s career that took a fatal tumble. Instead of rushing to battle on his white charger, a fanion with Napolean’s eagle waving in the breeze, the overwrought Prime Minister plunged to his political death at under 20% in the polls. He recently pledged fealty to Sarkozy, for the few centimes his support is still worth.
A very pleasant man named François Bayrou has also joined the presidential steeple chase, and the press is falling over themselves to push him forward. He hails from the centrist party of former president Valery Giscard d’Estaign, and is a very sensible, honorable professional politician.
But French politics can get serious, and it can get ugly. And it can have a decided negative impact on the United States, as the 2002 election showed. Faced with neo-fascist leader Jean-Marie LePen in the second round, Chirac rallied the left and won the run-off with a resounding 82% of the vote. That led him to believe – mistakenly – that he had a mandate to transform France into America’s strategic adversary and save the Middle East for French banks, oil companies and arms merchants.
The press would love Mr. François Bayrou to become the spoiler, and knock out Sarkozy in the first round so their real favorite, the Socialist Segolene Royal, will face the ageing LePen in the run-off.
That’s the scenario, folks. And unlike America’s elections, we’ll know how it plays out soon enough.
Meanwhile, the French have begun to see the downside of a weakened George W. Bush. Just last week, political commentator Bernard Guetta was reviewing the Latin American tour of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, where he was squired around by Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.
The two of them pledged to try to convince OPEC to lower production quotos, so oil prices would return to record highs. Ah, but why didn’t America do anything about all this, Monsieur Guetta wondered. What did this mean? He knew the answer (after all, he is French).
“It means we are seeing the weakening of America,” he moaned.
When America is too strong, too self-confident, and too rich, the French worry they will become insignificant and do everything they can to hold us in check (as Chirac did in Iraq).
But when America becomes weak, the French start to fear for their own safety.
America is still the guarantor of freedom in this fallen, imperfect world of ours. And we should never forget it.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
France's Pro-America Turn
By Kenneth R. Timmerman
FrontPageMagazine.com January 26, 2007
(St. Tropez, France) – Not only in America did a presidential election cycle kick off this past week, but also in our alter-ego, France.
There were no grand debates about war and peace, however. No questions raised about this candidate trying to disguise his Muslim upbringing by joining a mainstream Christian church. No huge gambles over the fate of the free world.
This is France, after all. So the biggest “news” of the presidential campaign – just three months from the first round! – was the grammatical error Socialist Segolene Royal made during a trip to China. Or again, an offhand comment she made in Paris this week in support of a visiting separatist leader from Quebec.
France has become a profoundly frivolous nation, dedicated to pleasure, and that suits many French men and women very well.
In St. Tropez this week, the movie stars and the sun-bathers have gone home. Now as the mistral whips the port into a chilly froth, the local clothing boutiques are well into their annual half-price sale, and nearly everyone one of them is staffed by wannabe teenage beauty queens or by ever-tanned women in the 50s who can still wear skin-tight jeans and boots and look stunning..
Disco Volante of James Bond fame looked positively tiny parked down the quai from two 135 foot Mangousta yachts registered in Nassau and the Cayman Islands (one of them called, appropriately, Don’t Touch!). How many of you have ever seen a 135 foot yacht? It’s the maritime equivalent of a ten carat diamond. – and about as expensive.
The biggest gripe among locals this week was the outrageous price of fresh truffles. Alas, they’ve quadrupled from last year and are going for 1,000 euros a kilo – that’s $650 a pound. What is the world coming to?
Nicholas Sarkozy is widely touted as the front-runner for president, and that is good news for America. He is smart, he is conservative, and he understands that the protector of French prosperity is in Washington, not Brussels.
No French president is going to increase French defense spending to the level where the French could actually deploy an army overseas any time in the near future. Unlike the other candidates, however, Sarkozy doesn’t just know this, he says it openly with realism and clarity.
He came to Washington this past autumn – none of the locals there noticed him much, but his visit was widely commented upon here in France. Sarkozy the pro-American, his enemies call him. And to his credit, he finds that title just fine.
Sarkozy began his political career three decades ago as the protégé of Jacques Chirac. At one point, he was even dating Chirac’s daughter. He fell out first with one, then the other, and became a fierce critic of Chirac’s silly (and at times, dangerous) anti-Americanism during the Iraq war.
Two years ago, Chirac was hoping to put an end to Sarkozy’s career once and for all, as allegations floated in the media that he had a secret (and illegal) overseas bank account. This perfidious deed came to light when a list of these secret accounts, held with Clearstream in Luxembourg, surfaced in the French press.
To Chirac’s surprise, Sarkozy didn’t just bow down and surrender; he fought back, filing a civil lawsuit for defamation. That turned the matter over to a French investigative magistrate, who bit by bit began interrogating witnesses under oath until – mince, alors! – he discovered that the whole business appeared to have begun in 2004 in the private office of Dominique Galouzeau de Villepin, Chirac’s swashbuckling foreign minister.
Sarkozy came out the winner, and it was Villepin’s career that took a fatal tumble. Instead of rushing to battle on his white charger, a fanion with Napolean’s eagle waving in the breeze, the overwrought Prime Minister plunged to his political death at under 20% in the polls. He recently pledged fealty to Sarkozy, for the few centimes his support is still worth.
A very pleasant man named François Bayrou has also joined the presidential steeple chase, and the press is falling over themselves to push him forward. He hails from the centrist party of former president Valery Giscard d’Estaign, and is a very sensible, honorable professional politician.
But French politics can get serious, and it can get ugly. And it can have a decided negative impact on the United States, as the 2002 election showed. Faced with neo-fascist leader Jean-Marie LePen in the second round, Chirac rallied the left and won the run-off with a resounding 82% of the vote. That led him to believe – mistakenly – that he had a mandate to transform France into America’s strategic adversary and save the Middle East for French banks, oil companies and arms merchants.
The press would love Mr. François Bayrou to become the spoiler, and knock out Sarkozy in the first round so their real favorite, the Socialist Segolene Royal, will face the ageing LePen in the run-off.
That’s the scenario, folks. And unlike America’s elections, we’ll know how it plays out soon enough.
Meanwhile, the French have begun to see the downside of a weakened George W. Bush. Just last week, political commentator Bernard Guetta was reviewing the Latin American tour of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, where he was squired around by Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.
The two of them pledged to try to convince OPEC to lower production quotos, so oil prices would return to record highs. Ah, but why didn’t America do anything about all this, Monsieur Guetta wondered. What did this mean? He knew the answer (after all, he is French).
“It means we are seeing the weakening of America,” he moaned.
When America is too strong, too self-confident, and too rich, the French worry they will become insignificant and do everything they can to hold us in check (as Chirac did in Iraq).
But when America becomes weak, the French start to fear for their own safety.
America is still the guarantor of freedom in this fallen, imperfect world of ours. And we should never forget it.
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