"In Hebrew his favorite expression was en davar (Never mind); and they say it was with these words on his lips that he died, five years later, at Tel-Hai. There was a complete philosophy contained in this en davar : do not exaggerate; do not see danger where none exists; do not regard a man who does his duty as a hero -- for history is long, the Jewish people everlasting, and truth is sacred, but everything else, trouble and care and pain and death, en davar." -- Jabotinsky on Trumpeldor, in The Story of Jewish Legion.
If you thought perhaps that the good guys had taken back the White House, no, it's a little too soon for that. But today was the unveiling of the official White House portraits of George and Laura Bush, and the good guys were out in force.
I watched it from start to finish, and it was comforting to see the former President and First Lady again. They were lovely, gracious and good-humored as usual, but more light-hearted than when we last saw them together in the White House three and a half long years ago.
The present occupier of the Oval Office reminded the largely Republican audience of his lousy "inheritance" and who killed bin Laden, but otherwise behaved more or less appropriately. At times he even bordered on mildly genial. And I think his wife was trying hard. Good for them.
Ostensibly at his own expense, but still.... omigosh.
Report: Obama Flies Special Barber To WH Every Two Weeks
.... The President has been using the same Chicago based barber, who goes by the name Zariff, for the past 17 years. According to German Public Radio, the President flies Zariff from Chicago to DC for a trim every two weeks.
A group of three researchers from the High-Energy Accelorator Research Organization (KEK), Shizuoka University and Osaka University has for the first time revealed the way our universe was born with 3 spatial dimensions from 10-dimensional superstring theory in which spacetime has 9 spatial directions and 1 temporal direction, obtained by numerical simulation on a supercomputer.
According to "Standard Model" cosmology, the universe originated in an explosion from an invisibly tiny point. This theory is strongly supported by observation of the cosmic microwave background and the relative abundance of elements. However, a situation in which the whole universe is a tiny point exceeds the reach of Einstein's general theory of relativity, and for that reason it has not been possible to confirm how the universe actually originated....
Huh. What a "coincidence."
Judaism's ancient mystical teachings, collectively known as the Kabbalah, include a fundamental concept of the true essence of Gd as infinite and unknowable, or Ein Sof (literally, without end), which interacts with the universe not directly, but through ten "attributes," "manifestations," "emanations" [ or dimensions? ] of this essence.
These are known as the Ten Sefirot, customarily represented in a diagram such as this.
"At their fundamental level, the Ten Sefirot are a step-by-step process illuminating the Divine plan as it unfolds ... in our world."
I don't profess to know even a thimbleful of the complex cosmology delineated in Kabbalah, but I can comfortably offer you this "unequivocal statement" by way of Dr. Gerald Schroeder:
.... Nachmanides ... explains that the Hebrew letters Ayin, Resh, Bet ― the root of "erev" ― is chaos. Mixture, disorder. That's why evening is called "erev", because when the sun goes down, vision becomes blurry. The literal meaning [of "there was evening"] is "there was disorder."
The Torah's word for "morning" ― "boker" ― is the absolute opposite. When the sun rises, the world becomes "bikoret", orderly, able to be discerned. That's why the sun needn't be mentioned until Day Four. Because from erev to boker is a flow from disorder to order, from chaos to cosmos.
That's something any scientist will testify never happens in an unguided system. Order never arises from disorder spontaneously and remains orderly. Order always degrades to chaos unless the environment recognizes the order and locks it in to preserve it. There must be a guide to the system. That's an unequivocal statement.
.... According to the teachings of esoteric Judaism all knowledge, both spiritual and material wisdom, originally coexisted in a seamless unity within a higher dimension. Together these two modes of wisdom compromised a larger, all encompassing Universal Torah (Torah meaning "Teachings"). A collapse, however, ensued in which the database of all knowledge split itself into "spiritual" and "material" planes of existence. Thus, we have the basis for the historical conflict between "religion" and "science".
Yet, any given mystical or technological truth can only be one of two sides of the same piece of puzzle. Thus, the material world is also a mode of spirituality, only externalized and concretized. The ultimate truth is not revealed through the supra-natural alone nor is it only discovered through scientific development -- it is more than both.
Both forms of wisdom are destined to reunite with each other. Perforce this is stimulating a worldwide paradigm shift in consciousness. This stage of global evolution is the messianic age that is central to the teachings of esoteric as well as to traditional Judaism.
With the swearing in of a seventh Federal Reserve board member, the panel is operating at full strength for the first time since 2006, amplifying the activist stamp of President Barack Obama.
Mr. Obama appointed six of the seven, including naming Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke to his second term....
I don't understand why this is still so close. The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows
Mitt Romney with 46% of the vote to Obama's 45%
49% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the president's job performance. Forty-nine percent (49%) at least somewhat disapprove
Gallup: "Americans prefer President Obama over Mitt Romney for handling healthcare, while Romney is favored on the deficit and the two are about tied on unemployment."
The number of American applying for unemployment insurance payment rose to a five-week high, a sign progress in reducing joblessness may be stalling.
First-time claims for jobless benefits increased by 10,000 to 383,000 last week, Labor Department figures showed today.
BUT But but... just four years ago March, when the economy shed 80,000 jobs and the unemployment rate "SURGED" from 4.8 to 5.1 percent, dhimmedia said it was "dismal ... about as bad as one could expect."
Tomorrow we'll see the report everyone's been waiting for, the unemployment rate for May. Can you wait?
What Geraghty said about Obama in today'sMorning Jolt --
"It must be nice -- or blinding -- to walk through life constantly telling yourself and others -- and hearing others say -- that you're the best at everything. All the time."
-- seems to hold for the entirety of the Left, as far as the eye can see.
Over at Acculturated, they're contemplating the question, "Are conservatives bad at popular culture?"
I suppose I have to post something about the Jew-News out of the White House yesterday, even though I'd prefer to ignore such gross indignities altogether.
For posterity, then, here's Adam Kredo at the Washington Free Beacon:
President Barack Obama’s inaccurate assertion that Nazi extermination camps in occupied Poland were in fact “Polish” has led to concern among historians and foreign policy that the president’s knowledge of Jewish history and Israel is lacking.
During a ceremony honoring a Polish resistance fighter who told the world about Nazi atrocities, Obama referred to a “Polish death camp,” a term that incorrectly blames Poland for operating Adolf Hitler’s extermination camps.
Obama’s flub came just hours after the president informed a group of Jewish leaders that he “probably knows about Judaism more than any other president because he read about it.”
However, over the course of his presidency, Obama has repeatedly promulgated erroneous notions about the Jewish state and made policy declarations that experts deem either patently false or grossly misleading...
What follows is an extensive list, in case anyone wants to mosey on down Memory Lane with Kredo. For me, it's altogether too dark. And the sooner we can put it well behind us, the better.
President Barack Obama can't seem to stop bad-mouthing the record of former President George W. Bush. But on Thursday, Obama is going to welcome his predecessor and proudly preside as Bush's image and legacy are enshrined at the White House forever.
Obama and first lady Michelle Obama will join Bush and his wife, Laura, as their official portraits are unveiled. The incumbent is keeping up a presidential tradition typically defined by cheer and graciousness, but not without some uneasiness.
Hardly a day goes by without Obama or his aides talking about the mess they inherited — meaning, from Bush.
It was just one week ago that Obama, revving up campaign donors, turned Bush into a punch line. Obama depicted Republican rival Mitt Romney as a peddler of bad economic ideas, helping the rich at the expense of the middle class, and then added to laughs: "That was tried, remember? The last guy did all this."
Now the last guy is coming back.
So, too, will his father, former President George H.W. Bush and the former first lady Barbara Bush. The Obamas will hold forth in the ornate East Room as George and Laura Bush are honored for their service before an invited audience of Bush friends and former staff members.
"President Bush has been around politics a long time. He's been around how presidents deal with each other for a long time," said Tony Fratto, one of his former spokesmen at the White House. "He has an understanding for separating the necessities of political rhetoric from the job itself."
Bush showed that all through 2008, when Obama assailed his record on war and the economy en route to the White House. It was hard to remember at times that Obama was running not against Bush, who was finishing the last year of a tumultuous eight-year term, but rather Arizona Sen. John McCain.
Is anyone buying the notion that Obama's treatment of Bush has been a necessity? Or that the "community" of people who work and have worked in the White House "transcends political... differences." That last invention was Jay Carney's -- "in the same briefing Wednesday in which he reminded everyone that Obama inherited a huge budget deficit (from Bush.)"
.... Jenna Bush Hager, one of the George W. Bush's daughters, said she was invited for the ceremony and that the day will include a private lunch for the Bushes with the Obamas.
She told "Fox & Friends" the day will be a chance to "celebrate his work, 'cause he worked pretty hard so I think he deserves at least a painting."
As to where it will go, she said: "Probably in the very back somewhere. I'm just kidding."
The painting will actually hang prominently in the formal entrance hall to the White House...
9:30 am || Receives the Presidential Daily Briefing 12:10 pm || Lunch with Mrs. Obama, George W. Bush and Laura Bush; Red Room 1:25 pm || Attends official unveiling of portraits of George W. Bush and Laura Bush; East Room 5:00 pm || Meets with Treasury Secretary Geithner
When [the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act] was being considered, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that it would increase budget deficits by $787 billion between fiscal years 2009 and 2019.
CBO now estimates that the total impact over the 2009–2019 period will amount to about $831 billion.
By CBO’s estimate, close to half of that impact occurred in fiscal year 2010, and more than 90 percent of ARRA’s budgetary impact was realized by the end of March 2012. CBO has estimated the law’s impact on employment and economic output using evidence about the effects of previous similar policies and drawing on various mathematical models that represent the workings of the economy. …
On that basis CBO estimates that ARRA’s policies had the following effects in the first quarter of calendar year 2012 compared with what would have occurred otherwise:
– They raised real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) by between 0.1 percent and 1.0 percent,
– They lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.1 percentage points and 0.8 percentage points,
– They increased the number of people employed by between 0.2 million and 1.5 million,
– They increased the number of full-time-equivalent jobs by 0.3 million to 1.9 million. (Increases in FTE jobs include shifts from part-time to full-time work or overtime and are thus generally larger than increases in the number of employed workers.)
OK, so without the stimulus, there would be anywhere from 200,000 to 1.5 million fewer people employed right now? That means the current cost-per-job created is somewhere between $4.1 million and $540,000.
Sounds about right to me. Not long ago, I checked out the stimulus money received in West Virginia (two-tenths of one percent of the total), where it created just over a thousand jobs -- at a cost of $1.35 million per job.
And another bit Pethokoukis quoted -- from the CBO:
... CBO expects that the legislation will have no long-term effects on employment because the U.S. economy will have a high rate of use of its labor resources in the long run.
ARRA’s long-run impact on the economy will stem primarily from the resulting increase in government debt.
To the extent that people hold their wealth in government securities rather than in a form that can be used to finance private investment, the increased debt tends to reduce the stock of productive private capital.
In the long run, each dollar of additional debt crowds out about a third of a dollar’s worth of private domestic capital, CBO estimates.
To increase RAE participation in 2011 and 2012 the VPC is conducting research-driven year-round civic engagement, information-raising and voter registration, Vote by Mail (VBM), turnout and other mobilization programs in states were large populations of the RAE are unregistered or under-perform on Election Day.
The plan is to mobilize the largest number of voters in states high in RAE and unregistered RAE members by doing what the VPC does best: conducting pilot programs and control group studies of its programs to learn how to do it smarter, better, faster and cheaper both in-cycle and cycle to cycle; learning from and building on the advances made by the state tables, the Analyst Institute, VPC programs and others while ensuring all new knowledge is shared quickly and broadly; and, mining data and survey research the VPC conducts to develop cutting edge models to bring to the community to ensure rapid advances in effectiveness and cost-efficiency.
After the VPC conducts this research, we roll out the learnings to civic engagement groups.
According to the latest Census data, the RAE is overwhelmingly responsible for the recent growth in the U.S. population:
The RAE accounted for 81 percent of the growth between 2000 and 2010 and a jaw dropping 95 percent between 2008 and 2010.
Unmarried women and Latinos drove the explosive growth of the RAE in the last decade, both growing by 8 million between 2000 and 2010.
These two factors—the stunning growth in the RAE as a whole and the particular growth of unmarried women and Latinos —are critically important to note because:
Marital status is a major determinant of participation; unmarried women register and turnout to vote at lower rates than married women.
While the groups in the RAE are the most under-represented groups in the electorate, they make up the new majority in this country whose views are not being represented by their elected leaders.
In 2010, more than 71 million unmarried women, people of color and people under thirty—the groups that make up the Rising American Electorate and the majority of voting eligible members in America’s democracy—did not vote.
Nearly two thirds of them, 46 million, were not registered to vote; 25 million were registered but did not vote. In 2008, the last presidential election year, more than 46 million Rising American Electorate members failed to vote. Of those non-voters, 37 million were not registered compared to 9 million who were.
In case you haven't figured this out yet, or even if you did, you should see the new profile of this group from our friends at Discover The Networks.
... VPC uses controlled clinical trials to determine which tactics are most effective. Further, the Center conducts research on “the public policy needs” (regarding suchissues as healthcare, childcare, and economic security) of the RAE population, with the intent of using this information to persuade RAE voters to support the candidates (i.e., Democrats) who can most effectively address those concerns.
VPC carries out this research in partnership with think tanks such as the Center for American Progress and the National Women’s Law Center; other civic-engagement and voter-education organizations including the League of Conversation Voters Education Fund; public-opinion experts such as Greenberg, Quinlan, Rosner Research (GQRR) and Lake Research Partners (LRP); and academics.
VPC opposes voter-identification requirements (e.g., photo ID at the polls) on grounds that they make voting “more complicated and difficult, especially for the RAE, who are not traditionally engaged in the public or political debate.” To buttress its claim that such requirements have a disproportionate effect on single women, nonwhite minorities, and young people, VPC cites research conducted by the Brennan Center for Justice.
VPC's Vote-By-Mail campaign promotes the increased use of absentee voting by means of mailed ballots. Critics such as the Heritage Foundation, however, point out that such arrangements are highly susceptible to fraud.
During each election cycle, VPC mails millions of voter-registration applications and vote-by-mail applications to unregistered single women, blacks and Hispanics, and young adults in selected states. In preparation for the November 2012 elections, the Center specifically set a goal of making 30 million contacts (via mailings and other approaches) with RAE citizens and generating 1 million returned voter-registration applications (slightly more than VPC’s 2008 total) as well as 250,000 applications for vote-by-mail ballots.
One of VPC's partcularly effective get-out-the-vote initiatives is its Promise Program, which starts with a live phone call to a targeted RAE voter, asking if he (or she) intends to vote in the coming election. Once the person commits to voting, he is told to expect, as the election draws near, a letter in the mail not only reminding him of his commitment, but also informing him that VPC will later check to see whether or not he actually did cast his ballot (which is a matter of public record). Moreover, the voter receives an automated reminder phone call at some point shortly before election day. This program was first used in the Kentucky governor’s election of 2007, with impressive results.
Longtime Rep. Silvestre Reyes lost his Democratic primary contest in Texas on Tuesday night. Reyes was defeated by former El Paso City Councilman Beto O'Rourke 50 percent to 44 in the primary for Texas's 16th congressional district.
[....]
President Obama had endorsed Reyes, an eight-term House member, in the contest, and former President Clinton had campaigned in the district for him.
Reyes thus joins the long list: Caroline Kennedy, Jon Corzine, Martha Coakley, Arlen Specter, Charlie Crist, Blanche Lincoln, Ted Strickland, Whatshisname Giannoulias .... I'm sure there are others, but I can't think of them off the top of my head right now.
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but there's something fishy about Obama's endorsements.
Maybe I'm missing some Big News but I'm just not seeing much today.
For Birthers Only, however, there is a story at WND about recent comments of former governor of New York, David Paterson.
In the process of following the DNC Memo of the Day (which obviously instructs the UniMedia to discuss -and where possible, criticize- Romney's association with Donald Trump), Patterson followed orders, but then had this to say about the "birther" issue:
“Even if he wasn’t born in the United States at this point,” Paterson said. “It’s kind of like he got away with it.”
He continued, “A lot of people get away with a lot of things.”
Paterson compared Obama’s actions to those of President Richard Nixon.
“We learned later that Nixon spied on Johnson’s Paris peace talks,” Paterson said. “That was actually an act of … uh … I mean it was against the interests of the U.S. government. You’ve got to say that before you would say it’s treason. But he got away with it. Decided it wasn’t a good thing to bring up at that particular time. Not only did he get away with it, he won the election.”
"This map is comprised of data collected and maintained by the Sierra Club Environmental Law Program, and is part of the Club's ongoing campaign to wean the United States off coal, a dirty fossil fuel."
"The true engine of economic growth will always be companies like Solyndra," President Obama declared two years ago this past weekend.
That statement was already doubtful in May, 2010, when Obama visited the solar panel manufacturer's Fremont, Calif., headquarters between political fundraisers, to celebrate the $500 million it had received in taxpayer-funded stimulus cash.
Today, with Solyndra's operations shuttered, its employees laid-off and its assets (including those paid for by taxpayers') divvied up among creditors in bankruptcy, Obama's statement from two years ago makes for a good laugh. Unfortunately, it isn't so funny for the operators of America's real economic engines -- the businesses out there that use energy and do not require government handouts for their day-to-day survival.
Even as he has shoveled stimulus cash into green losers like Solyndra, Beacon Power and others, Obama's EPA has been working hard to keep his 2008 campaign promise to make electricity prices "necessarily skyrocket" for winning businesses that employ Americans.
If you wonder how Obama could perform so poorly in his primaries against non-entity challengers in Appalachian states like Kentucky and West Virginia, look no further than the president's war on coal. A number of recent EPA rules issued by the Obama administration are shutting down coal-fired power plants, to the delight of environmental extremists in his base. The left-wing group Beyond Coal has gleefully posted a tally online of how many coal-fired plants have shut down so far -- 110 out of 522, or 13 percent of all coal-based electric capacity in the United States.
Two rules in particular -- the Utility MACT rule and a rule on coal ash -- will place a $31 billion annual burden on the U.S. economy, according to EPA's own estimates, which will ultimately be borne by consumers and ratepayers.
The consequences of this regulatory demolition go far beyond the coal industry itself....
... there is still a chance to take this campaign and elevate it, finally, to a serious debate about major issues...
... we’d like to hear fewer character attacks and a lot more discussion of the nation’s many problems...
In case you can't easily recall March 2008, that was when the unemployment rate "SURGED" from 4.8% in February to 5.1%, "the highest unemployment rate since September 2005."
.... Economist David H. Wang said the March 2008 jobs data "is about as bad as one could expect. It's a dismal March report."
TOPEKA, KS May 29, 2012: On Monday May 21, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback signed into law American Laws for American Courts legislation (SB79) to protect the fundamental constitutional rights of Kansans. The legislation was approved earlier this month by an overwhelmingly bipartisan 33-3 vote in the Kansas Senate following unanimous 120-0 passage in the Kansas House of Representatives.
The Kansas legislation, sponsored by Rep. Peggy Mast, is based closely on the American Laws for American Courts (ALAC) model legislation put forth by the American Public Policy Alliance (APPA).
“This bill should provide protection for Kansas citizens from the application of foreign laws,” Stephen Gele, attorney spokesman for APPA told the Associated Press. “The bill does not read, in any way, to be discriminatory against any religion. It is perfectly constitutional.”
The passage of American Laws for American Courts legislation in Kansas is the latest vindication of a long-term national trend supporting constitutional protections for ALL Americans – especially women and children who would be most adversely affected—against foreign laws and foreign legal doctrines which have found their way into our court systems.
As previously mentioned, ALAC passed with broad bipartisan support in Kansas, just as it did previously in Tennessee, Louisiana and Arizona. In fact, versions of ALAC have been in force in Tennessee and Louisiana since 2010 and have never been challenged in court.
ALAC’s passage in Kansas comes despite well-funded efforts opposing the bill by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Council on American Islamic Relations, as well as a $3 million national pro-Shariah campaign by the Muslim Brotherhood-tied Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA).
CAIR in particular has spread disinformation on the Kansas law, declaring it is discriminatory against Muslims. But a reading of the actual bill as passed into law clearly shows that this is not the case. The Kansas American Laws for American Courts law is oriented toward protecting the fundamental constitutional rights of all Kansans, and will be especially useful in protecting the rights of Muslim-Americans who have come to America to escape the barbaric and totalitarian legal systems extant in nations such as Iran, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Egypt.
Previously, Center for Security Policy CEO Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. and ACT for America CEO Brigitte Gabriel collaborated on an article entitled “Ten Questions for the Council on American Islamic Relations,” challenging CAIR’s propaganda campaign aimed at American Laws for American Courts.
While some observers have mistakenly assumed that foreign legal systems based on Shariah never appear in US court cases, the Center for Security Policy conducted research refuting that claim, publishing a report highlighting 50 such cases in US state courts....
Geraldo Rivera's race-colored glasses have long driven me to distraction, so I just had to write to him - yet again - when I heard him expounding that the only possible reason anyone would question Obama's 'natural born citizenship' just has to be that the questioner is intrinsically RACIST.
That Obama spent the preponderance of his childhood living in Indonesia, and his mother's husband having been a Kenyan citizen - actually, at the time of Junior's birth, a British subject - have nothing to do with it, I guess.
Rivera's accusation can't be factually disproven (which accounts for its perpetuity), but when he says that this kind of scrutiny has never been applied to any other president or presidential candidate, then he's simply WRONG and I feel compelled to explain just how wrong.
From: Anne Lieberman Subject: John McCain's Citizenship was Questioned To: Geraldo Rivera <atlarge@foxnews.com> Cc: "Bill O'Reilly" <oreilly@foxnews.com>
Mr. Rivera,
I just heard a radio clip of you asking someone if they'd ever heard of a president's citizenship being questioned before -- the "logic" being that anyone who questions Obama's citizenship is "racist."
Indeed, questions of citizenship/eligibility were raised when John McCain ran in 2008, and Barry Goldwater before him.
But of course, [McCain and Goldwater] being Republicans, no one objected to the scrutiny.
Check out the New York Times archives, as the Senate held hearings on the question of McCain's citizenship/eligibility and the Times covered it extensively.
Recognizing that John Sidney McCain, III, is a natural born citizen.
Whereas the Constitution of the United States requires that, to be eligible for the Office of the President, a person must be a `natural born Citizen' of the United States;
Whereas the term `natural born Citizen', as that term appears in Article II, Section 1, is not defined in the Constitution of the United States;
Whereas there is no evidence of the intention of the Framers or any Congress to limit the constitutional rights of children born to Americans serving in the military nor to prevent those children from serving as their country's President;
Whereas such limitations would be inconsistent with the purpose and intent of the `natural born Citizen' clause of the Constitution of the United States, as evidenced by the First Congress's own statute defining the term `natural born Citizen';
Whereas the well-being of all citizens of the United States is preserved and enhanced by the men and women who are assigned to serve our country outside of our national borders;
Whereas previous presidential candidates were born outside of the United States of America and were understood to be eligible to be President; and
Whereas John Sidney McCain, III, was born to American citizens on an American military base in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That John Sidney McCain, III, is a 'natural born Citizen' under Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution of the United States.
Op-Ed Contributor - Citizen McCain - Op-Ed Does the Constitution prohibit John McCain — who was born to two Americans in the Panama Canal Zone — from becoming president? July 17, 2008 - By MICHAEL I. MEYERSON - Opinion - Article - Print Headline: "Citizen McCain"
BtB "missed" Memorial Day due to the overlap with Shavuos, but it's never too late to thank those whose service and sacrifice have protected our lives and our freedom.
Nothing is simple anymore (she said wistfully). On one end of the ever-widening spectrum, we have Chris Hayes of MSNBC:
Why do I feel so uncomfortable about the word 'hero'? I feel uncomfortable about the word hero because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war. I don’t want to obviously desecrate or disrespect the memory of anyone that’s fallen, and obviously there are individual circumstances in which there is genuine, tremendous heroism, you know, hail of gunfire, rescuing fellow soldiers and things like that. But it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that is problematic. But maybe I’m wrong about that.
Hayes is another one of these overgrown adolescents with skimpy resumes who try to pass themselves off as journalists and intellectuals in the Leftist media. I have no respect for him -- not as a writer, not as a talking head, not as a thinker and certainly not as a patriot. To me he represents the gutter into which American politics have descended. I wouldn't include him here except to point out that end of things, as it looms dangerously over all our lives.
On the other end of the spectrum as I see it, we have that which I keep at the top of this blog as a constant reminder, Jabotinsky's explanation of Joseph Trumpeldor's philosophy. He says in part, "do not regard a man who does his duty as a hero." This modest and transcendent statement is somewhat troublesome for us in America today, given the paucity of honor in our contemporary culture, but it defines the other end of the spectrum, and gives us a destination we can aspire to reach.
In the meantime, somewhere between these two, though closer to a Trumpeldor or Jabotinsky, we find the American patriot.
It is a time to remember that who we are and what we are as a nation unique in history has depended on our sense of duty and its inevitable call to sacrifice.
And while the particular duty–the often perilous duty–of defending our country is accepted by the professional soldier, it has often been imposed on many others and carried out reluctantly and with trepidation. For most, this duty has meant the sacrifice of time–“the best years of our lives”—and of broken bodies. But for many others it has meant a sacrifice of life itself.
It is easy to forget what those gravestones and fluttering flags mean; easy to fly on past the cemetery, headed for the lake or ball game without giving it a thought. I’ve been no better than most about this. So in recent years, I have made it a point to remember. I drive up to the Ligonier Valley Cemetery on or around Memorial Day. I park on the narrow road below Section D and walk up the grassy, flag-bedecked slope to row 4. There at my feet are two small rectangles of granite. Incised on the larger, older one is the inscription:
ALVIN P. CAREY 1916 – 1944 S/Sgt 38 Inf 2nd Div
A few feet below this monument, a newer, smaller stone, emplaced years later, bears Staff Sergeant Carey’s name and the words CONGRESSIONAL MEDAL OF HONOR. I never look down at those gray rectangles set against the green grass without my mind rushing back to a hot day in July 1948 when, as a little boy, I sat in a church pew transfixed by something I had never seen before–a coffin covered completely by a fresh new American flag.
The nearest most folks will get to any graveyard, let alone a military cemetery, is a file photo in the local newspaper or obligatory footage on the television news.
Alvin Carey, quiet, bookish Alvin Carey, had come home....
Full disclosure: Youngest Yidlet did a bunch of horse-riding back in the day. She wasn't terribly interested in dressage, but liked show jumping way too much (it scared me to pieces).
So now we know (those of us who followed the link) that the libs hate not only White Republicans, especially of the female variety, but they also hate Olympic sports!
Dontcha know, the right kind of FLOTUS would never take up such a challenging sport as equestrian dressage, but would content herself with gardening, running barefoot on the White House lawn and using a hula hoop to stay in shape.
At first glance, then, we haven't missed much in taking time off for the festival of Shavuos (I hope everyone got some cheesecake) -- except for Memorial Day [next post] and THIS:
On Friday there was an old-fashioned "blog-burst" (first suggested by Lee Stranahan) on the excreable BRETT KIMBERLIN.
Kimberlin is a convicted domestic terrorist who is intimidating, bullying and harrassing the right-wing bloggers who have been courageous in outing his campaign of political terrorism, as well as the financial support he receives from the Left (e.g., Teresa Hines Kerry's Tides Foundation, and yes -- George Soros).
Kimberlin has perpetrated a dangerous hoax called SWATting on blogger Patterico:
THE NIGHT I COULD HAVE BEEN KILLED BECAUSE OF MY BLOGGING
At 12:35 a.m. on July 1, 2011, sheriff’s deputies pounded on my front door and rang my doorbell. They shouted for me to open the door and come out with my hands up.
When I opened the door, deputies pointed guns at me and ordered me to put my hands in the air. I had a cell phone in my hand. Fortunately, they did not mistake it for a gun.
They ordered me to turn around and put my hands behind my back. They handcuffed me. They shouted questions at me: IS THERE ANYONE ELSE IN THE HOUSE? and WHERE ARE THEY? and ARE THEY ALIVE?
I told them: Yes, my wife and my children are in the house. They’re upstairs in their bedrooms, sleeping. Of course they’re alive.
Deputies led me down the street to a patrol car parked about 2-3 houses away. At least one neighbor was watching out of her window as I was placed, handcuffed, in the back of the patrol car. I saw numerous patrol cars on my quiet street. There was a police helicopter flying overhead, shining a spotlight down on us as I walked towards the patrol car. Several neighbors later told us the helicopter woke them up. I saw a fire engine and an ambulance. A neighbor later told me they had a HazMat vehicle out on the street as well.
Meanwhile, police rushed into my home. They woke up my wife, led her downstairs and to the front porch, frisked her, and asked her where the children were. Then police ordered her to stand on the front porch with her hands against the wall while they entered my children’s bedrooms to make sure they were alive.
The call that sent deputies to my home was a hoax. Someone had pretended to be me. They called the police to say I had shot my wife. The sheriff’s deputies who arrived at my front door believed they were about to confront an armed man who had just shot his wife. I don’t blame the police for any of their actions. But I blame the person who made the call.
Because I could have been killed.
The weirdest part of the whole thing was that I halfway expected this might happen. Because I was not the first one it had happened to.
Sunday night as my family and sister’s family were around the dinner table and playing outside, sheriff’s deputies pulled into my driveway responding to an accidental shooting at my home.
One deputy was in the driveway. Another blocked the end of the driveway with his car. A neighbor tells me another was up the hill from the house.
There was no shooting at my home. Someone called 911, claimed to be at my home, and claimed to witness a shooting at my home.
As the one deputy and I spoke, the other deputy walked up the driveway, positioned himself behind the car in the driveway, and kept his eyes on me and his hand on his gun. My three year old ran between us all thinking it was so cool to have a police car in the driveway with its blue lights flashing.
Luckily, after I had starting writing about Kimberlin, I advised the Sheriff’s Department to be aware this could happen.
The other day convicted terrorist Kimberlin called McCain's wife's employer to say Stacy was harassing him. The message the terrorist was sending was clear, he was telling the blogger "I know where you live--so watch out!"
Think about that for a second.. most bloggers get nasty emails, even threats and rebukes from politicians and public figures.... McCain got a threat from someone convicted of domestic terrorism. Even worse Stacy didn't get an overt threat, those are easier to deal with -- he got the implied threat, the kind that can't be acted on by the authorities.
Velvet Revolution, started with Brad Friedman of BradBlog, received $51,000.00 in 2009 from the Tides Foundation, which also gave Media Matters for America $75,000.00 the same year.
Justice Through Music, which claims to do “voter education and registration” is a Tides Foundation grant recipient. According to Breitbart’s Big Journalism site, Justice Through Music “has received a total of over $1.3 million in public gifts and grants since 2005 for these efforts.” (See also the Justice Through Music Project 2008 Form 990-EZ)
The Ancient Greek phrase ... [Molon Labe] means "Come and take them." It is a classical expression of defiance reportedly spoken by King Leonidas I in response to the Persian army's demand that the Spartans surrender their weapons at the Battle of Thermopylae.
Rebecca Rigdon, of Lawrence, practices with Solei, a mid-level dressage horse, at Freedom Hill Farm in Olathe. Rigdon has trained with Steffen Peters, who is a member of the U.S. Olympic dressage team. (photo: LJWorld.com, Lawrence Kansas)
