February 15th, 2011
Things are pretty slow on the 2012 Texas Senate race (which happens when you’re more than a year away from the primary).
Both Michael Williams and Ted Cruz were at CPAC, and evidently Williams came off the better of the two. Also, I must not have been paying attention enough attention to Cruz’s resume, as I was unaware he was born in Canada.
Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert is evidently edging closer to a run.
And speaking of Dallas mayors, that piece also suggests that former mayor and current U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk will make a run for the seat on the Democratic side. The last time he ran for the Senate, he lost to John Cornyn to replace the retiring Phil Gramm.
And speaking of Democrats, the John Sharp campaigns continues to be virtually invisible, except for those occasions when it’s actually worse than invisible, with http://www.sharpsenator.com/ being squatted by a company selling, ahem, “male enhancement.” Of course, this report says that he called off his campaign last year, but that was before Hutchison announced her retirement.
Tags: CPAC, John Sharp, Michael Williams, Ted Cruz, Texas, Texas Senate Race, Tom Leppert
Posted in Elections, Republicans, Texas | No Comments »
February 14th, 2011
And they’re every bit as warm as those for Spiderman: Turn off the Dark:
Mary Steyn: “For the last three weeks, the superpower has sent the consistent message to the world that (as Bernard Lewis feared some years ago) America is harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend.”
Niall Ferguson in Newsweek (yes, it’s evidently still being published):
“Last week, for the second time in his presidency, Barack Obama heard those footsteps, jumped up to grasp a historic opportunity … and missed it completely….This failure was not the result of bad luck. It was the predictable consequence of the Obama administration’s lack of any kind of coherent grand strategy, a deficit about which more than a few veterans of U.S. foreign policy making have long worried….The defining characteristic of Obama’s foreign policy has been not just a failure to prioritize, but also a failure to recognize the need to do so. A succession of speeches saying, in essence, ‘I am not George W. Bush’ is no substitute for a strategy.”
Michael A. Walsh in the New York Post: “No matter how things shake out in Egypt, one thing has become depressingly clear: Something is very wrong with the American intelligence services.”
Investor’s Business Daily:
“As our once-stable ally Egypt hurtles down a path leading into the dark unknown, the U.S. can blame itself. The White House apparently did little after our intelligence agencies warned late last year that President Hosni Mubarak’s government was wobbly. Like Jimmy Carter’s handling of Central America, the U.S. backed a revolution, hoping it would make the revolutionaries our friends.”
Victor Davis Hanson in National Review: “For nearly three weeks, the Biden/Clinton/Obama policy concerning the tottering Mubarak regime was contradictory, incoherent, and predicated entirely on the perceived pulse of the demonstrations.”
Like Julie Taymor’s production (which I have not seen, but I have seen enough of Ms. Taymor’s previous work to trust the reviews of it I’ve read), Obama’s foreign policy is far more concerned with flash and spectacle than the boring matter of actual substance. Unfortunately, there’s no chance that Obama’s foreign policy will fold in previews, and we can’t make things better by getting Bono and The Edge to write us a few new tunes…
Tags: Egypt, Foreign Policy, Hosni Mubarak, Jihad, Mark Steyn, Michael A. Walsh, Middle East, Niall Ferguson, Obama, Spiderman: Turn off the Dark, Victor Davis Hanson
Posted in Democrats, Foreign Policy, Jihad | No Comments »
February 11th, 2011
According the latest news flash. I’m guessing the military finally told him they’d had enough.
What’s next? Anyone’s guess. If I had to venture a guess, I’d say talks with some elements of the opposition together with a crackdown against others.
Tags: Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, Jihad
Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad | No Comments »
February 10th, 2011
Things have been relatively quiet on the Jihad front this week, but there’s always something happening:
BBC Presenter: “Islam must not be offended at any price, although Christians are fair game because they do nothing about it if they are offended.”
Synagogue torched in Tunisia.
Reading the Bible? You know that’s a shooting.
Meet Yussuf al-Qaradawi, the Egyptian version of the Ayatollah Khomeini.
Over at JihadWatch, Roland Shirk offers up parallels between the modern Middle East and World War I.
Egyptian blogger Sandmonkey reveals identity.
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu sees more parallels between the Iranian revolution and the situation in Egypt.
Geert Wilders: “All over Europe multicultural elites are waging total war against their populations. Their goal is to continue the strategy of mass-immigration, which will ultimately result in an Islamic Europe – a Europe without freedom: Eurabia.”
“Renegade ex-MILFs burn Christian village.” (Attention Farkers: This link is probably a lot less gratifying than you might believe…)
Pakistani suicide bomber kills 31 at army base.
Today’s latest American convert to Islam Jihadi comes to you from Baltimore.
Georgia is the latest state to ban Sharia.
German state Hesse bans face veils for public workers.
“Islam: The Religion of Sauron”. (No, really, that is the title. I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that this comparison is a tad overwrought…)
(Hat tips: JihadWatch, Fark, Instapundit, Michael Totten, and the usual suspects.)
Tags: Benjamin Netanyahu, Egypt, Geert Wilders, Georgia, Germany, Israel, J. R. R. Tolkien, Jihad, Muslim Brotherhood, Pakistan, Roland Shirk, This Week in Jihad, Yussuf al-Qaradawi
Posted in Jihad | 1 Comment »
February 10th, 2011
Despite the predictions of all the Usual Supects, Mubarak isn’t stepping down. I guess my low opinion of the sagacity of Leon Panetta has been borne out.
In email, Stratfor is saying that Rather than letting protesters storm the Presidential Palace, or firing on them to prevent same, the Egyptian military will replace Mubarak in a coup. I remain skeptical; except for a couple of signs early in the crises, they has been no hard evidence that the army has ever wavered in its support of Mubarak.
It is hard to tell at this remove how effective the calls for a general strike have been. Those claiming the strike is widespread have tended to be left-leaning publications that celebrate just about any strike.
The Magic 8-Ball has the same answer it’s been giving since unrest began: ANSWER CLOUDY, ASK AGAIN LATER.
Tags: Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, Leon Panetta, unrest
Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad | No Comments »
February 10th, 2011
So goes the rumor de jour. Of course, since Obama’s CIA director Leon Panetta is one of the sources of information, I would take that with a huge grain of salt…
Tags: Egypt, Jihad, Leon Panetta
Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad | 1 Comment »
February 9th, 2011
If Buddy Roemer’s name is unfamiliar to you, that’s because he was last governor in January of 1992, which was the year after he switched from the Democratic to the Republican Party. Twenty years is an awful long time time for someone to go between elections, much less for someone most famous for losing to ex-Klansman David Duke. (Duke has been thankfully absent from our political landscape as of late, his support for left-wing anti-war catspaw Cindy Sheehan notwithstanding.)
If anyone outside his immediate family has been urging Mr. Roemer to run, it has escaped my attention…
Tags: 2012 Election, Buddy Roemer, Louisiana, Presidential Race
Posted in Democrats, Elections, Republicans | No Comments »
February 8th, 2011
From Rick Perry vs. The World comes this dandy video roundup of various Republican contenders for the 2012 Senate race. I hope to have time to watch all of them sometime today…
Tags: David Dewhurst, Elizabeth Ames Jones, Michael Williams, Roger Williams, Ted Cruz, Texas, Texas Senate Race, Tom Leppert
Posted in Elections, Republicans, Texas | No Comments »
February 7th, 2011
I saw this dandy Michael Totten piece on Israeli military preparation (including building an entire town for training exercises) a few weeks ago, and meant to write something about it, but got busy with other things.
Being a curious sort, I went searching for that training center on Google maps, and think it might be at 31.163869, 34.532279; you may have to zoom out or scroll south and to the west to see it, since Google Maps centers on the nearest road. (I don’t think anything visible on Google Maps is a military secret, and I doubt anyone in Hamas reads my blog anyway.)
However, even more interesting is the structure due south of it at 31.139718, 34.531937:
There are a lot of structures in the Nagev with a sort of circular berm around them, and I guess those are just oases or something equally benign. But the interesting thing about this one is the big X across the top of it. what is that? Storage facility? Secret silo? For all I know it could be a hazardous waste dump.
But given the Big X, I’m guessing this is the entrance for Professor Charles Francis Xavier’s secret Israeli academy for mutants…
Tags: Israel, Jihad, Michael Totten
Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad | No Comments »
February 5th, 2011
“Texas Democratic Congressman Ruben Hinojosa – a member of the House Financial Services Committee – filed for personal bankruptcy late last year.”
The eight-term congressman was forced to file for bankruptcy after Wells Fargo Bank won an arbitration hearing that found Hinojosa owed the bank $2.6 million. That left him with $2.9 million in liabilities against less than $1.5 million in assets.
If I put this in a novel, an editor would reject it for heavy-handed symbolism…
(Hat tip: Instapundit)
Tags: bankruptcy, Democrats, Ruben Hinojosa, Texas
Posted in Democrats, Economics, Texas, Waste and Fraud | No Comments »