Archive for the ‘Foreign Policy’ Category
Monday, August 4th, 2014
Another roundup of news on Operation Protective Edge:
Israel destroys last known Hamas tunnel.
Atheist explains why he refuses to criticize Israel over Gaza. “People are capable of committing genocide. When they tell us they intend to commit genocide, we should listen.”
John Kerry’s asinine “peace” plan alienated not only Israel, but every Arab state not backing Hamas.
More Krauthammer:
Via Iowahawk’s Twitter feed: An “Israel has been rocket free for” counter.
Hamas is a walking catalog of prosecutable war crimes. So who does the UN target for denunciation? You know who.
“Strategically and economically, the Palestinian people are far worse off now than they were two decades ago when then Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organisation chairman Yasser Arafat signed the first Oslo accord in Washington in September 1993.”
Anti-Israeli protestors in Calgary hold silent vigil. Well, silent except for the shouting “Heil Hitler!” part…
Reminder: U.S. protestors against Israel are the usual far-left, Che-loving lunatics they’ve always been.
Tags:Charles Krauthammer, Gaza, Hamas, Iowahawk, Israel, Jihad, John Kerry, UN, video
Posted in Democrats, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Media Watch | No Comments »
Friday, July 25th, 2014
Time for another random roundup of news and links:
“Jimmy Carter looks like frickin’ Bismark next to the feckless dorm-room intellectual currently haunting the golf courses of the greater DC area.”
Even Thomas “What’s The Matter With Kansas” Frank calls Obama “ineffective and gutless.” (Warning: Salon Liberal Whining Ahead.)
Liberal law professor Lawrence Tribe thinks that ObamaCare is probably doomed due to the Halbig decision. “I cannot see how this Court could do anything other than decide the same way as the DC Circuit did. The statue is clear on its face.”
Even “ObamaCare Architect” MIT economics professor Jonathan Gruber said the same thing back in 2012: “What’s important to remember politically about this is if you’re a state and you don’t set up an exchange, that means your citizens don’t get their tax credits.”
Mark Steyn on the Halbig ruling:
As to Mr Earnest’s point on “what Congress intended”, who can say? No Congressman who voted for the bill read it. Presumably, some legislator’s staffer wrote that actual line about “established by the State”. If we could locate him among the vast entourages of the Emirs of Incumbistan, we could ask him what his “intention” was. Until then, calibrating the competing degrees of deference to a corrupt bureaucracy, a contemptuous executive, a politicized judiciary and a feckless hack legislature brings to mind Samuel Johnson’s line about arguing the precedence of a louse and a flea, with a tick and a cockroach thrown in.
Missing from my Gaza roundup: “Shalom, motherf****r.” “I will not apologize for surviving.” (Hat tip: Josh Perry.)
Bill Whittle makes the case for Israel:
Obama won’t help arm Ukraine because he had a key role in disarming them.
Democrats plans for November: All race card, all the time.
50 years of Democratic rule and now Detroit is cutting off people’s water. “Just goes to show that nothing is so expensive as when it is ‘free.'”
“That’s not funny.”
Republicans should stand firm and let the Export/Import Bank corporate welfare boondoggle expire. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Che Guevara, racist:
Maureen Dowd is never so readable as when she’s slamming the Clintons.
“Canadian Candidate Drops Out After Masturbation Video Surfaces.”
Sarah Palin endorses Joe Carr against Lamar Alexander in Tennessee senate primary. I don’t think anyone who watched Alexander’s “Lamar!” flannel flameout in the 1996 Presidential race has ever really trusted him since…
A New York City cupcake truck seems a little unclear on who their clientele might be. (They’ve since deleted both this tweet and the one where they implored people not to “snitch” to cops when they see crimes committed…)
Evidently nobody is actually reading Thomas Piketty’s book.
In praise of Power Girl’s boob window.
Tags:2014 Election, Bill Whittle, Canada, Communism, Democrats, Detroit, Elections, Export-Import Bank, Foreign Policy, Gaza, Israel, Jihad, Joe Carr, Jonathan Gruber, Lamar Alexander, Lawrence Tribe, liberal racism, Mark Steyn, Maureen Dowd, Obama Scandals, ObamaCare, Power Girl, Sarah Palin, Tennessee, Thomas Frank, Thomas Piketty, Ukraine, victimhood, video
Posted in Communism, Democrats, Economics, Elections, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Military, Obama Scandals, ObamaCare, video | No Comments »
Thursday, July 24th, 2014
A whole bunch of news related to Israel’s incursion into Gaza:
Protective Edge enters its seventeenth day.
Hamas turns down John Kerry’s ceasefire deal. Wait, you mean the designated terrorist organization that uses its own civilians as human shields as part of its jihad to exterminate world Jewry isn’t moved by the verbal blandishments of the Secretary of State for the most feckless U.S. Administration in history? Imagine my shock.
And why would they heed John Kerry when they just got $47 million from him? Just think of all the missiles and tunnels those “humanitarian” dollars will buy…
Hamas provoked the current round of conflict because they suck at everything else.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is shocked, SHOCKED that there are rockets at a UN school in Gaza.
Roger Simon calls for an investigation.
“Hamas hides its rockets in schools and places its command bunkers under hospitals. It wants war, and it wants civilian casualties.”
Even the Washington Post has a clue:
The depravity of Hamas’s strategy seems lost on much of the outside world, which — following the terrorists’ script — blames Israel for the civilian casualties it inflicts while attempting to destroy the tunnels. While children die in strikes against the military infrastructure that Hamas’s leaders deliberately placed in and among homes, those leaders remain safe in their own tunnels. There they continue to reject cease-fire proposals, instead outlining a long list of unacceptable demands.
One of those demands is for a full reopening of Gaza’s land and sea borders. While this would allow relief and economic development for the territory’s population, it would also allow Hamas to import more missiles and concrete for new tunnels.
Sayeth Instapundit in reference to the Post piece: “Because ‘the world’ basically approves when people kill Jews.”
Parisian supporters of Palestine hold respectful protests, call for peaceful resolution of Gaza crisis. Ha, just kidding! They go all Kristallnacht on Jewish shops and yell “Gas the Jews!” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Pictures from that “mostly peaceful” protest. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Previously: The Battle of Rue de la Roquette.
In related news, students in the West Bank shout “Jews back to Birkenau!” Oh wait, did I say the West Bank? I meant Boston.
Chief Rabbi in The Netherlands has stones thrown at him. Next up: Hunting down that Zionist Frank girl…
FAA bans American flights taking off or leaving from Tel Aviv Airport, then lifts the ban, but not before Ted Cruz calls the action a boycott of Israel.
Cruz also says that the Obama Administration is the most anti-Israel administration America has ever had. Probably, though I know Israel was really not happy with the Eisenhower Administration during the Suez crisis…
“Anyone killed or martyred is to be called a civilian from Gaza or Palestine, before we talk about his status in jihad or his military rank. Don’t forget to always add ‘innocent civilian’ or ‘innocent citizen’ in your description of those killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza.”
Tags:anti-semitism, Boston, Foreign Policy, France, Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Jihad, John Kerry, Operation Protective Edge, Ted Cruz
Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad, Military | No Comments »
Monday, July 21st, 2014
Here’s something from the “Blind Squirrel Find Acorn” department: Bill Maher actually making sense on Israel’s incursion into Gaza.
Some choice quotes:
“If Hamas had the opportunity, they would kill the maximum number of Israelis, which would be all. And Israel has the capability to kill a lot more and they do not. They seem victims of the soft bigotry of high expectations.”
“Can we ask why Israel wins all the time? Because they’ve won every war. They have to. You can’t go 8-1 and be Israel. You have to go 8-0 every year to still exist.”
“Jews have 155 Nobel Prizes and Muslims have two. Maybe it’s who you know, but that seems a big advantage for Team Hebrew.”
Tags:Bill Maher, Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Jews, Jihad, Military, Muslim, video
Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, video | No Comments »
Thursday, July 17th, 2014
Israel has launched what it calls a limited ground offensive into Gaza, mainly to destroy terrorist infrastructure like tunnels.
If so, expect both parties to go through this same dance in, oh, about two years. Assuming there’s not a full-scale Shunni/Shia civil war raging across the region by then.
Here’s a live blog from the Times of Israel.
Tags:Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Jihad
Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad | No Comments »
Sunday, July 13th, 2014
Just a quick note to compliment Israel on a perfect sense of timing in picking this week to kick Hamas’ incompetent ass (yet again) in Operation Protective Edge:
No one cares about Hamas’ propaganda bullshit anymore:
Hamas has done more harm to the Palestinian movement in the past two decades, than any opponent of the Palestinians could have done. It has sabotaged relations with a sympathetic media through muddled press conferences and moronic bombastic statements about “opening the gates of hell.” It has driven out international supporters, managed to decrease the support it did have among various “free Gaza” committees and “shot its bolt” in its various ill-conceived wars with Israel.
Snip.
It gained a respite with the election of Mohammed Morsi in Egypt in 2012. But like Morsi, it over-reached and overestimated its military chances against Israel. It must have gained hope from Turkey’s Islamist government AK party and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s strong messages of support. But the Gaza flotilla incident of 2010 seems like a high point of Turkish resolve. Hamas’ other erstwhile friends in Iran and Hezbollah; although Shi’ite extremists, seemed like they might bolster the organization. The 2006 Lebanon War, which was roundly seen as a blunder for Israel, was a by-product of Hamas’ own kidnapping of Gilad Schalit that year. But Hezbollah and Iran were drawn into the Syrian quagmire and Hamas was left alone. The overthrow of Morsi by General Abdel Fatah al-Sisi in Egypt put another nail in the blockade around Gaza as Sisi sought to root out terror in Sinai. Pro-Gaza activists from the West were roughed up routinely in Egypt.
Whereas Hamas could once propagate stories about flour or electricity shortages in Gaza, the international media and activists began to shrug their shoulders. Another perennial sewage problem? In June of 2014 Reuters noted, “sewage at the beach, piles of garbage mar Gaza’s summer.” Various alarmist UN statements, such as a 2008 claim that the “blockage [by Israel and Egypt] is putting Gaza at risk of starvation” were met with a yawn. Hamas’ Gaza policy, with its need for international attention, has been marred particularly by the mass atrocities that have been taking place throughout the Middle East. Media outlets like the BBC caught on to the fact that images from Syria are routinely passed off as being from Gaza and there is less international outrage at Israel than in previous years as the European public is inured to suffering in the region.
This latest round of violence is indicative. Al-Jazeera cobbled together various world leaders’ reactions to the conflict. The usual suspects were there – but were markedly tepid in their criticism of Israel.
Indeed, with much of the region embroiled in the ongoing merged Syrian and Iraqi conflicts, both sides of the nascent Sunni/Shia civil war are too preoccupied with possible existential issues to bother with any but the most perfunctory denunciations of Israel. Sure, they’d still like to wipe Jews off the face of the earth, but they have more pressing concerns right now. And with all the other atrocities going on, the usual “Hey, look at these horrible pictures of dead children because we just happened to put our rocket launchers in their preschool” photos just don’t pack the same punch.
Likewise, with ISIS making mischief on their own border, Iran may be in no mood to buy Hamas another round of missiles for them to waste launching indiscriminate attacks on civilians in Israel in the mostly vain hope one might manage to kill a Jew or two. (Iron Dome seems to be working pretty well.)
As the War Nerd pointed out, the World Cup slaughters jihad porn in the viewer ratings derby. By launching Protective Edge during the final week of the World Cup, Israel insured that all the regions casual jihad sympathizers were too busy watching people kick a ball on TV to go through the motions of pretending they cared what happens to Palestinians.
All that said, I bet we go through the whole thing again another two years from now…
Tags:Gaza, Hamas, Iran, Iron Dome, Israel, Jihad, Middle East, Military, Operation Protective Edge
Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad, Military, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Friday, July 11th, 2014
More news from inside the handbasket, including the dust-up in Gaza and the illegal alien surge at the border:
Israel hits Gaza for a third day in retaliation for yet another round of rocket attacks. Is there really anything left to say about this that hasn’t been said before? Hamas is the elected government of Gaza, they fire rockets indiscriminately against Israeli civilians and fire them from their own civilian areas to maximize civilian damage at both ends, making them legitimate military targets under international law.
And speaking of rockets, Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system racks up a 90% success rate. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ, who adds “Suck It 1980s Lefties”.)
And Hamas might be receiving taxpayer money.
Also speaking of rockets, in Iraq ISIS seizes control of one of Saddam’s chemical weapons sites, filled with rockets full of nerve gas agents. You know, the ones liberals swore didn’t exist in 2004…
Food inflation costs overwhlem wage growth.
Get ready for the next round of ObamaCare rate shock.
Scabies outbreak at the border. Well, that’s just lovely. Thanks, Obama!
Even Democrats think Obama should visit the border.
Are veterans being turned away from appointments because treating illegal aliens takes precedence? Caveat: Twitter is not a source.
But the Obama Administration seems to be going to great lengths to prevent lawmakers from inspecting illegal alien holding facilities.
“We can medically treat non-citizens in a few days, maybe even hours, but not our own veterans.”
Planes full of illegal aliens landing in El Paso.
They’re even trying to house illegal aliens in Virginia.
The scale of the problem:
Important reminder: Not all Hispanic immigrants are in favor of unlimited illegal aliens coming to the country.
Greg Abbott criticizes Obama. “Whether it’s on the broken VA system, or our porous border, he is all talk and no action. He’s all hat and no cattle.”
Airlines reduce flights to Venezuela due to cash trapped in the country by currency controls. How’s that socialism working out for ya?
Hillary Clinton and Adultery. Then again, maybe Hillary is one of Ashley Madison’s fake profiles.
Hillary’s book drops off the Amazon 100 list. Evidently there are tens of millions of Democrats who found that not buying Hard Choices was, in fact, an easy choice…
Public employees union AFSCME severs ties with the United negro College Fund because they took money from the Koch brothers. So it’s more important to display their hate than to help black people go to college…
50 colleges now charge more than $60,000 a year to attend, and Harvard, Yale and MIT are not among them. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Evidently former Merrill Lynch chairman Stan O’Neal wants this to disappear.
Tags:AFSCME, amnesty, Border Controls, chemical weapons, college, Democrats, education, El Paso, Gaza, Greg Abbott, Hamas, Hillary Clinton, inflation, Iron Dome, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Israel, Jihad, Obama, ObamaCare, Scabies, Strategic Defense Initiative, unions, Virginia, Welfare State
Posted in Austin, Border Control, Communism, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Obama Scandals, ObamaCare, Texas, unions, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | 1 Comment »
Friday, June 27th, 2014
A small LinkSwarm for a busy Friday:
Evidently Obama wants $500 million to arm the Syrian rebels that we’re supposedly trying to fight in Iraq. Oh, the article says he wants to arm “moderate” rebels. Has anyone seen these moderate rebels? Who are they? Kurds? Oppressed Christians? The problem isn’t that they don’t exist, the problem is that the actual moderates seem to have forces too small to affect the outcome of the fight, and I don’t trust this administration on, well, anything, but especially on their ability to discern the difference between “moderate” rebels and radical Islamic militias from 6,000 miles away….
Welcome to the ObamaCare Death Spiral.
The War Nerd suggests that Putin is mucking around in eastern Ukraine less to take it outright than to keep it at a simmer so he gets to keep the Crimea without a fight. Also include this epic quote: “Tom Friedman, the Michael Jordan of wrong.”
Obama gets unanimous beatdown from the Supreme Court. For the 13th time.
Even liberals are turned off by Hillary’s poor, poor pitiful me act.
As Hillary Clinton gears up for a Presidential run in 2016, ABC decides to make one of Bill Clinton’s chief aides a network anchor. Lovely.
Hillary’s book sells more than 100,000 copies, but woefully short of what it would need to earn back it’s whopping $14 million advance…
“Did Obama Fail Black America?” Obviously the question mark is unnecessary, as the only question is whether that headline is one or two words too long.
Feminism: The Tiny Elite: “You don’t have to look far to realize that victimhood is the flavor of the moment in America. Deeming oneself a victim delivers an afforded reverence, especially if said victimhood is biologically based.” Today feminism is “a group working largely for the interests of elite white women.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
How the media discriminates against stories than indict big government.
Phil Collins donates his extensive collection of Alamo relics to the state. In fact, Collins is donating not only his existing collection, but stuff he continues to acquire. Three cheers for him.
Much like obeying the law, word problems are not Democratic Rep. Alcee Hastings’ strong suit.
Texas man told to remove American flag from his balcony because it was “a threat to Muslims.” Get a rope…
Far-left cartoonist Ted Rall gets the axe. I’m not sure there’s a violin tiny enough…
Finally, you too can own the screenplay to Manos: The Hands of Fate.
I hope to have a longer post of the kangaroo court trying Michael Quinn Sullivan next week…
Tags:ABC, Alcee Hastings, Democrats, feminism, George Stephanopoulos, Hillary Clinton, Iowahawk, Iraq, Jihad, John Stossel, LinkSwarm, Media Watch, ObamaCare, Phil Collins, Syria, Ted Rall, Ukraine
Posted in Democrats, Foreign Policy, Media Watch, Military, Obama Scandals, ObamaCare, Regulation, Supreme Court, Texas | No Comments »
Saturday, June 21st, 2014
I see that #NoMoreAusterity is trending on Twitter this morning. It seems the usual leftist protest sorts are rallying against the Cameron government’s “austerity.”
The only problem is it doesn’t exist.
Real austerity is cutting government spending until it matches receipts. Under David Cameron, deficit spending has merely gone from 11.4% of GDP in 2010 to a projected 5.8% in 2014. So the UK government hasn’t practiced austerity, it’s merely slowed the rate at which it’s digging its own grave.
For the protestors, this simply will not do. They want government to give them things, and if it means having the moribund economies of Greece and Spain, so be it.
But unlike Greece and Spain, the UK won’t be able to get Germany to bail them out, nor to hold down the hyperinflation that is the inevitable endpoint of excess deficit spending.
Tags:austerity, deficits, European Debt Crisis, Foreign Policy, UK
Posted in Budget, Foreign Policy | No Comments »