Warped Poppycock

Ace of Spades HQ: "This isn't the first time Obama has spouted this same warped poppycock.
From his Cairo speech in 2009:

“Islam has always been a part of America’s story. The first nation to recognize my country was Morocco. In signing the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796, our second President John Adams wrote, “The United States has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims.”
.............................

And when the first Muslim-American was recently elected to Congress, he took the oath to defend our Constitution using the same Holy Koran that one of our Founding Fathers – Thomas Jefferson – kept in his personal library.”

'Islam has always been a part of America’s story.'

Indeed!
That would be the same Treaty of Tripoli that was essentially a protection racket against the United States, requiring that tribute be paid to avoid being the victim of piracy.

That would be the same John Adams who reluctantly figured that bribing the pirates of Barbary was cheaper than military engagement (out of an understanding that the political will and money for creating the necessary naval force was out of reach for the time being).

And that would be the same Thomas Jefferson who, with his great knowledge and understanding of the Koran, reversed our course and decided that military engagement against the various Muslim states engaged in piracy was the only sensible way to proceed.
And then bombarded their coastline, invaded them, and persuaded them to find a new hobby."

LauraW pretty well smashes this one out of the stadium. And her ending points out how "plus ca change, plus ca meme chose":

The best that can be said about our regard for Islam at the time is this: The United States' concern was for the economic and physical safety of the United States' interests and people and there was no religious conflict in effect (“The United States has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims.”).

That's it. We don't have a problem with you because of what you believe, but because of what you do.

It's pretty much the same deal now, frankly.

Couldn't Think Of One

The Unconstitutional Congress | Hoover Institution: "In 1800, when the nation's capital was moved from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C., all of the paperwork and records of the United States government were tightly packed into 12 boxes, and then transported the 150 miles to Washington on a horse and buggy. That was truly an era of lean and efficient government.

In the early years of the Republic, government bore no resemblance to the colossal empire it has evolved into today. In 1800, the federal government employed 3,000 people and had a budget of less than $1 million ($100 million in today's dollars). That's a far cry from today's federal budget of $1.6 trillion and workforce of 3 million.

Since its frugal beginnings, the U.S. federal government has come to subsidize everything from research into Belgian endives to maple-syrup production to the advertising of McDonald's french fries in Europe and Japan. In a recent moment of high drama before the Supreme Court, during oral arguments involving the application of the interstate-commerce clause of the Constitution, a bewildered Justice Antonin Scalia pressed the solicitor general to name a single activity or program that our modern-day Congress might undertake that would fall outside of the bounds of the Constitution. The stunned Clinton appointee could not think of one."

Con-fessions

Libertarian Quotes - now at LQuotes.com: "A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.": "Confessions of a 'Public Servant'
by Mr. X

This article originally appeared in the May 1995 Free Market.

You're looking for a job. You want to get paid several times your worth, come and go when you please, work only when you feel like it, take as long a lunch as you want, and get ten paid holidays per year and six weeks paid vacation per year. There's only one way to go: work for the federal government.

Few Americans, I'm afraid, have any idea, what it's like. If they did, there would be a political earthquake. As a member of the Parasitic Class for 15 years, I have witnessed and participated in this corrupt and grotesquely unfair system first hand. I am both qualified and morally obligated to expose it."

RTWT.

L'Ancien Regime

The Obama presidency increasingly resembles a modern-day Ancien R�gime: extravagant and out of touch with the American people – Telegraph Blogs: "What the great French historian Alexis de Tocqueville would make of today’s Obama administration were he alive today is anyone’s guess. But I would wager that the author of L’Ancien R�gime and Democracy in America would be less than impressed with the extravagance and arrogance on display among the White House elites that rule America as though they had been handed some divine right to govern with impunity."

RTWT. Note that there are 874(!) comments as I post this and it at least starts out looking like they're mostly Americans (the Telegraph is British) starved to ditch MSNBCNBCBSNYeT! Gardiner pretty much nails it too...

Kulaks

American Kulaks - Ricochet.com: "My friend the Crazy Uke is a mortgage guy; he’s getting me another refi. Years ago - oh, decades - we sat up all night in the back booth of a college restaurant and argued politics; now we sit around the kitchen table of the house he helped us buy, sign endless forms and documents, then pour a drink and agree about politics. I changed. He didn’t. As the son of Ukrainian DPs, he had anti-Soviet and anti-statist ideas poured into his marrow as he grew up, and his accounts of his parents’ lives during the famine and the war were not inconsiderable elements in my political education. It’s one thing to have a college bull session about the Cold War; it’s another to argue with a guy who was actually detained by the KGB and kicked out of the Eastern Bloc."

COTD: Monkey Business

Gateway Pundit: "I got this in an email and was amused at the fitting parallels with todays politics;

Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana.

As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all the other monkeys with cold water. After a while another monkey makes the attempt with same result, all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon when another Monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.

Now, put the cold water away. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs.

To his shock, all of the other monkeys beat the snot out of him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one.

The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm."

Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, then the fifth. Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs he is attacked.

Most of the monkeys that are beating him up have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs OR even why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey. Finally, after replacing all of the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana.

Why not?

Because as far as they know, that is the way it has always been done around here.

And that, my fellow monkeys, is how Congress operates – And precisely why we need to REPLACE all the original monkeys this November.

Yes, we need to do this. But we need to figure out how to do more, don't we? Washington wasn't kidding when he warned about allegiance to political parties now was he?

Behind The Bullsh*t

Pleasure and Vacation Policy Michelle (Why is Michelle Reportedly Meeting Arab Officials In Spain?): "Read and translated by both Victoria Delsoul and aruanan for accuracy,Victoria Delsoul wrote:

It says, that it's going to be a meeting between Michelle Obama and prince Salman bin Abdelaziz, governor of Riyadh and brother of the deceased Rey Fahd of Saudi Arabia; whereas there would be another meeting of the first lady with the owner of the Malaga CF, businessman multimillionaire, son of the Secretary of the Interior of Qatar and member of the real family qatar�, Abdullah Al Thani.
- - - - - - - - - - -

It is important to point out, that nothing about her meeting with the above named has been mentioned in the Lame Stream Media, just out of character scolding and gripes about the expense of her trip!

Another fascinating fact: Jesse Jackson Jr, is also along on the trip. Yes, son of shakedown artist himself."

Somewhere, Anne Frank Spins In Her Grave

neo-neocon � Blog Archive � Coming soon to a country near you: decoy Jews?: "Decoy Jews are now being used by police departments in the Netherlands—that is, cops disguised as Jews—a response to increasing reports that Jews wearing skullcaps cannot travel the streets of some European cities such as Amsterdam without being harassed:

Since 1999, Jewish organizations in the Netherlands have been complaining that Jews who walk the Dutch streets wearing skullcaps risk verbal and physical attacks by young Muslims. Being insulted, spat at or attacked are some of the risks associated with being recognizable as a Jew in contemporary Western Europe.

Last week, a television broadcast showed how three Jews with skullcaps, two adolescents and an adult, were harassed within thirty minutes of being out in the streets of Amsterdam. Young Muslims spat at them, mocked them, shouted insults and made Nazi salutes."

In fact, her spinning should be quite audible I would think...

At Least So Far As They'll Announce

FT.com / US / Economy & Fed - Fed set to downgrade outlook for US: "The Federal Reserve is set to downgrade its assessment of US economic prospects when it meets on Tuesday to discuss ways to reboot the flagging recovery.

Faced with weak economic data and rising fears of a double-dip recession, the Federal Open Market Committee is likely to ensure its policy is not constraining growth and to use its statement to signal greater concern about the economy. It is, however, unlikely to agree big new steps to boost growth."

Senility?

Hot Air � Ding Dong, Dong-Feng!: "It’s the combination of weapons China can increasingly bring to bear that the US Navy is worried about.� If we’ve got one big, honking set of tactical constraints imposed by the Chinese submarine threat, another posed by the Chinese attack aircraft threat, and another posed by supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles, adding the DF-21D as a flight-ops harassment problem makes it that much harder for our forces to keep their heads above water:� to use our weapons to actually attack the enemy, rather than just to defend ourselves.

(And yes, George and Meredith Friedman, authors of The Future of War, called this prospect for our carriers “senility,” and predicted it in theory, if not because of the particular threat posed by the DF-21D, back in the mid-1990s.)"

Bigoted New Yorkers

Shut Up, He Explained | The Weekly Standard: "Knowing nothing, or wishing to know nothing, about the mosque, Bloomberg took it upon himself to lecture his fellow New Yorkers on their obligation to be true to “the best part of ourselves.” That part is apparently the part of us that allows at once for intellectual obfuscation and moral preening. Bloomberg never acknowledged that sane and tolerant people might object to a 15-story Islamic community center and mosque right next to Ground Zero. He could not be bothered to take seriously the reservations and objections of a clear majority of his constituents. “In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists—and we should not stand for that.” So public sentiment be damned. There’s nothing to be learned from the ignorant and bigoted residents of New York."

Nitwits?

TheTerrorWonk Plus: Terrorists: Nitwits or Masterminds?: "Recently, in the Atlantic Monthly Daniel Byman and Christine Fair (two first-rate analysts) argue that the reality is that the terrorist enemies of the United States are not highly disciplined religious fanatics – but in fact are a bunch of nitwits. The article is interesting, provocative, and makes some important points. But we cannot dismiss the terrorists as nitwits quite yet – they’ve had failings in attacking the U.S. homeland directly, but they have also had some important successes.

Byman and Fair point out the many cases of terrorist incompetence such as the Times Square bomber, the UK doctors, and the Miami jihadis. In many regards, I agree with them. Terrorist groups are extremely constrained in their efforts to hit “far targets.” I’ve argued that this is a logistical issue. With intelligence agencies worldwide on high alert it is increasingly difficult to move operatives long distances. This complicates long-range terror strikes."

Better Late Than Never

A day late... - Winds of Change.NET: "A DAY LATE..."