Boker tov, Boulder!

The Sultan Nails It

 

 

If you agree with Obama, you're a liar.

And if you disagree with him, you're a racist.

It's useless to conduct a political debate under these conditions.

This level of divisiveness is less about Obama, and more about the way the left has used institutions under its control to promote him and silence his critics. And there's a price to pay for that.

Constant propaganda works. And it doesn't.

You end up with two types of people.

One type who believes everything the authorities say. The other who wouldn't believe them if they said the sun was shining.

 

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2011/04/friday-afternoon-roundup-liars-vs.html

seen on the innernut

 

"I voted for Obama to prove that I am not a racist.

Now who do I vote for to prove that I am not an idiot?"

 

Pathological J Street

Representatives of J Street are planning to arrive in Israel early next week and meet – on Holocaust Memorial Day – with leaders of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah.

They plan to remain here for a week after that, closing their trip with a meeting with radical Israeli left-wing activists who speak out against IDF soldiers – on IDF Memorial Day.

 

The article goes on to say that the Israeli government refuses to meet with J-Street, but President Shimon Peres will.  (Is he not part of "the Israeli government"?)

Read about the "Storm of Opposition" at Arutz Sheva.

 

Meanwhile, Z Street is holding its first annual conference in Washington DC on May 4th. Go if you possibly can.

Ouch!

Caroline Glick worked as Assistant Foreign Policy Advisor to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu 1997-1998, so she knows him very well, but my gosh, she's really hard on him this time!

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s response to the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority’s peace deal with Hamas would be funny if it weren’t tragic. Immediately after the news broke of the deal Netanyahu announced, “The PA must choose either peace with Israel or peace with Hamas. There is no possibility for peace with both.”

Netanyahu’s statement is funny because it is completely absurd. The PA has chosen.

The PA made the choice in 2000 when...

The PA made the choice in 2005 again when...

The Palestinians made the choice in 2006, when...

They made the choice in March 2007...

The PA made the choice in 2008...

The PA made the choice in 2010...

Now the PA has again made the choice by signing the newest peace deal with Hamas.

IN A real sense, Netanyahu’s call for the PA to choose is the political equivalent of a man telling his wife she must choose between him and her lover, after she has left home, shacked up and had five children with her new man.

You'll want to read it all.

Another New Low

 

Doubtlessly overlapping with the 20-25% who strongly approve of "the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president,"  21% Say U.S. is Heading in Right Direction.

Peter Wehner provides the stats behind the stats:

Today we learned that in the first quarter of this year total economic output for the country grew by an anemic 1.8 percent. This was a significant slowdown from the fourth quarter of 2010, when the growth was 3.1 percent, which was itself unimpressive, especially in the aftermath of a recession, when one would expect growth to be much more robust.

In addition... the number of jobless claims increased... Consumer prices were up 3.8 percent from last year... The price of gas is 35 percent higher than a year ago. The dollar continues to decline...  And real estate experts are predicting that home prices could decrease...

.... Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the nation is in decline. As David Brooks wrote earlier this week, “The country is anxious, pessimistic, ashamed, helpless and defensive.”

 

These days, even former State Dept. spokesman P.J. Crowley (whose performance in that position regularly provided comedic fodder for the contentions of Rick Richman) can be found criticizing Obama, specifically his "Doctrine of Inconsistency" on the "Arab Spring."

Failing at policy both domestic and foreign does not bode well for his re-election, but let us not forget that Barack Hussein Obama has surprised us before.

Israel and Egypt

Great News. The New Arab-sprung Egypt will cease cooperating with Israel on the blockade of Gaza and furthermore, will soon open the Rafah border crossing.  Now that they've said No to Pharaoh, they're on a roll, saying No to all sorts of things.

 

CAIRO (AFP) – Egypt will permanently open the Rafah border crossing to ease the blockade on Gaza, Foreign Minister Nabil al-Arabi said Friday, sparking Israeli concerns over the implications for regional security.

Arabi said in an interview with [guess] Al-Jazeera his country would take "important steps to help ease the blockade on Gaza in the few days to come," according to the Arabic-language satellite channel.

He said Egypt would no longer accept that the Rafah border -- Gaza's only crossing that bypasses Israel -- remain blocked, describing his country's decision to seal it off as "shameful."

 

 

While Israel is understandably concerned about the weaponry that will likely pour into the Gaza strip, I would guess there would be a great deal of traffic in the opposite direction as well.  The last time the border was opened - when HAMAS blew a giant hole in it in January 2008, thousands - tens of thousands, and maybe even hundreds of thousands - of Gaza Arabs poured into Egypt.

(IsraelNN.com) Tens of thousands of PA Arabs crossed the Gaza-Egypt border Wednesday morning after masked Hamas men bombed the border fence in at least 15 locations.

 

  Palestinians make their way to Egypt after Palestinian gunmen blew up a section of the border wall between the Gaza Strip and Egypt January 23, 2008. Palestinian militants blew up part of the wall between Gaza and Egypt on Wednesday, and tens of thousands of Palestinians poured into Egypt... REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa (GAZA)

This went on for days and days.  Avi Issarcharoff, writing at Haaretz, called it a "reverse Exodus into Sinai."   The UN estimated that "as much as half of Gaza's 1.5 million population" had crossed the border.

Maybe the other half will go this time.  It wouldn't be surprising, given the consistent pattern of reaction.  Anyone remember 2005? (It helps if you have an archive at your fingertips.)

 

  AFP - Sat Sep 17 [2005] 2:49 PM ET Palestinians cross the Gaza-Egypt border in the divided city of Rafah. Palestinian forces fired warning shots and pushed back stone-throwing crowds on the southern Gaza Strip's Egyptian border, attempting to reimpose order after a week of illegal crossings by thousands of people.(AFP/Mohammed Abed)

I'm trying not to print my thought that, should sufficient numbers of Gazans cross into Egypt, Israel could walk in, establish a real border and pave the Gaza strip.  Jews could use the parking lot to go to the beach.  

One last thing, though, in all seriousness. I'm thinking... So what if they "say no" to Mubarak, quit the blockade and open the border?  Let them proceed to break the treaty that has provided a "cold peace" for decades. 54 pct of Egyptians would like to see it annulled anyway.  

The reason I think what we're seeing is Good News is if Egypt does abrogate the Sadat-Begin peace agreement then Israel gets the land back... Sinai oilfields and all.

 

 "The Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula showed that Israel is willing to make painful sacrifices for peace." 

By withdrawing from Sinai, Israel gave up:

* The homes of over 7,000 Israelis

* The Alma Oil Field, discovered and developed by Israel, and valued at over $100 billion [in 2005] 

* More than 170 military installations

* Dozens of early warning stations and strategic defense locations

 

It wouldn't be a bad deal. Peace for Land, instead of Land for Peace. We've learned, after all, that of the two, Land is the more lasting, less fickle, commodity. Or at least we should have learned that... by now.

You'll never guess what the IAEA's done now

 

From Carl in Jerusalem:

The IAEA has confirmed for the first time that the Syrian facility that was destroyed by Israeli warplanes in 2007 was a nuclear reactor.

 

These global bureaucracies move like molasses, don't they?

The good news is, I suppose, that if the UN were really to curse the world with yet another oppressive and dangerous Arab Muslim state among the nations, we would have several years before we'd have to worry about anything actually happening.

 

Okay, so that's not funny.  But neither is this: 

Obama Laughs, Unemployment Climbs

“So today was a fun day,” President Obama laughed at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in New York City last night. “[N]obody checked my ID at the door.”

.... Taking trips to lavish, big-city fundraisers is fun. Sparring with a clownish reality-show host is fun. Lounging on Oprah’s set is fun. But if the jobless rate this week is anything like last week’s, then yesterday probably wasn’t fun for the more than 61,000 Americans who are filing for unemployment benefits for the first time. And it’s time for Obama to get serious.

 

In my humble opinion, anyone who's still saying - after these last 28 months - that "it's time for Obama to get serious," should themselves get serious.  Such frivolous advice is, at this point, like telling someone to look both ways before they cross the street just after they've caused a fatal car accident.

Signs of the times

Storm death at 269 in South...
Violent tornadoes devastate...
Swarm could break record...
Unimaginable destruction...

 

 

The Huffington Post reports that President Obama will travel to Alabama on Friday.

The president postponed a White House event honoring the BCS National Champions, the Auburn Tigers, to make the trip.

 

 

Stat of the Day. Read it and weep.

 

“Beyond Distancing,” the oft-cited 2007 study by professors Steven M. Cohen and Ari Y. Kelman [pdf], drove home the point:

Only 48 percent of young, non-Orthodox American Jews, it reported, would view Israel’s destruction as “a personal tragedy.”

 

Quoted in "The Zionist Imperative" by Marla Braverman - at AzureOnline.

Obama's Birth Certificate, and with it a can of worms

Alex Jones (whoever that is) at InfoWars.com says the birth certificate is a forgery.

Upon first inspection, the document appears to be a photocopy taken from state records and printed on official green paper. However, when the government released PDF is taken into the image editing program Adobe Illustrator, we discover a number of separate elements that reveal the document is not a single scan on paper, as one might surmise. Elements are placed in layers or editing boxes over the scan and green textured paper, which is to say the least unusual.

When sections of the document are enlarged significantly, we discover glaring inconsistencies. For instance, it appears the date stamped on the document has been altered. Moreover, the document contains text, numbers, and lines with suspicious white borders indicating these items were pasted from the original scan and dropped over a background image of green paper.

Let’s assume the state of Hawaii scanned the original document and placed it on the green textured background. This does not explain the broken out or separate elements. There is no logical reason for this to be done unless the government planned to modify the document and make it appear to be something other than it is.

 

A non-scientific poll at The Colorado Springs Gazette has 57% saying it's probably forged.

What could go wrong?