Newt's "Declaration of Energy Independence".

Newt Gingrich: Defeating Obama 'Most Dangerous President in US History' a 'Duty Of National Security'

HT: IsraelMatzav.

Newt: “I Want America To Become So Energy Independent That No American President Ever Again Bows To The Saudi King.”

HT: JawaReport.

Newt Gingrich skewers Obama Disney visit

MFS - The Other News

                        Afternoon Posting.

• Syria Live Blog - May 14. Here .(Al-Jazeera).

• Libya Live Blog - May 14. Here (Al-Jazeera).

• Updated !Earthquakes in the last 24 hours in the world seismic activity in Japan  today 4.7 activity. More info here.

• Japan - Latest official Situation Update No. 109.Source : Here .

• Japan : For the most accurate info on the nuclear disaster go to : Paul Langley's Nuclear History Blog.Here.

• Watch Live: Army Corps of Engineers to Open the Morganza Floodway at 4:30 (ET) to Ease and Direct Mississippi River Flooding in La.Here.

• Gingrich : Obama ‘food stamp president’.(WashingtonPost).MACON, Ga. — Newt Gingrich opened his presidential campaign here Friday night by introducing a jobs plan that would slash taxes and repeal an array of bureaucratic regulations.Returning to the state where he launched his political career more than three decades ago, the Republican former House speaker presented himself in sharp contrast to President Obama, whom he derided as a “food stamp president.” Gingrich sounded a hopeful tone as he pledged that a Gingrich administration would reaffirm American exceptionalism.“My theme is going to be: Together we can win the future. The right policies lead to the right results. And I’m going to argue that President Obama will lose the future because the wrong policies lead to the wrong results,” Gingrich said in a dinner speech before hundreds of activists at the Georgia Republican Party’s annual convention. He also signed his official statement of candidacy at the event.Gingrich, who has written more than a dozen non-fiction books — he plugged his latest, “To Save America,” on bookshelves now — opened his 30-minute address with a long rumination on American history. He predicted that the 2012 presidential election will be the most consequential since Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860.“We’re at the crossroads,” Gingrich said, repeatedly sniffling from allergies. “Down one road is a European centralized bureaucratic socialist welfare system in which politicians and bureaucrats define the future. Down the other road is a proud, solid, reaffirmation of American exceptionalism.”Central to that promise, he said, would be eliminating the capital gains and estate taxes and reducing the corporate income tax from 35 percent to 12.5 percent. Those tax cuts, as well as freezing the personal income tax rates at their current Bush-era levels, is critical to creating jobs and spurring innovation, he said.“The most important social welfare program in America is a job,” Gingrich said.Gingrich sought to lay blame for the recession, as well as the economic and social upheaval in Detroit, on Obama and his policies. “President Obama is the most successful food stamp president in American history,” Gingrich said. “I would like to be the most successful paycheck president in American history.”Less than two weeks after Obama led a successful raid on al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, Gingrich said Obama “does not have a clue” about foreign affairs.Gingrich said the United States should reevaluate its diplomatic ties with Pakistan since bin Laden was found to have been living there for several years.“I was trying to figure out what the word ally meant,” he said. “I know what the word sucker meant. How stupid do you think we are?” Hmmmm......Dictatorship or Democarcy.Read the full story here.

• IMF boss Strauss-Kahn pulled off plane, arrested in oral sex probe.(NYPost).The French political bigshot who heads the International Monetary Fund was arrested for allegedly sodomizing a Manhattan hotel maid today — getting hauled off an Air France flight just moments before takeoff from Kennedy Airport, police sources told The Post.Three Port Authority detectives pulled Dominique Strauss-Kahn from the plane’s first-class cabin just two minutes before it was due to depart for Paris, the sources said.Strauss-Kahn, 62, was turned over to NYPD officers from the Midtown South precinct, and the case is being investigated by the Special Victims Unit.The trouble began around noon today, when a housekeeper entered Strauss-Kahn’s room at the Sofitel on West 44th Street.Strauss-Kahn was in his bathroom, said sources. He emerged from the bathroom naked, said the sources, and grabbed her.Then, Strauss-Kahn allegedly threw the housekeeper on the room’s bed and forced her to perform oral sex on him, said the sources.Strauss-Kahn let the maid leave — and soon afterward, headed off to Kennedy Airport for his flight to Paris.The NYPD’s special victims unit is investigating the case, the sources said.His arrest tonight could force him to postpone a planned meeting in Berlin on Sunday with German chancellor Angela Merkel.Strauss-Kahn, a leader of France’s Socialist Party, is the leading rival to President Nicholas Sarkozy in the 2012 election.Sarkozy was said in a news report yesterday to have begun a smear campaign against his rival that focused on his lavish lifestyle — including Strauss-Kahn’s purchase of suits from the same tailor who clothes President Obama.But Strauss-Kahn seems able to find trouble on his own. In 2008, he publicly admitted to "an error of judgment" for having an affair with an IMF subordinate.Hmmmm......Talk about getting a 'raise' in hard currency?Read the full story here.

• Misreading Obama.A must read!(EmergingCorruption).By Jack Cashill.From the moment Barack Obama took center stage at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, the world has been busily trying to decipher the man. No one has been more busy reading Obama in the years since than the chair of the Harvard History Department, the esteemed Dr. James Kloppenberg. At numerous symposia, on both sides of the Atlantic, he has shared his distinctive insights on our 44th president.In his new book, Reading Obama: Dreams, Hope, and the American Political Tradition, Kloppenberg has assembled his insights into a misreading of Obama so sincere and so profound that it causes one to doubt the entire academic enterprise. In the heat of the 2008 campaign, a book like this would have been understandable. No one seemed to know much about Obama. Two years into the presidency, one marvels at how much information the author, his readers and editors had to ignore to allow this book to go to press.Working from Obama’s early articles, his later columns in the Hyde Park Herald, his key speeches, and his two books, the 1995 memoir Dreams from My Father and the 2006 policy brief Audacity of Hope, Kloppenberg finds in Obama a philosophical pragmatist with a “firmer grip on America’s past” than any president since Woodrow Wilson.To arrive at this understanding, Kloppenberg had first to convince himself that Obama actually wrote his own material. This was not difficult, at least not for the good professor. “But since I began investigating Obama’s ideas,” he observes, “no one who knows him has expressed any doubt to me that both books are his work.” For Kloppenberg, this was proof enough. Immured in his academic keep, he apparently sheltered himself from the 20,000 or so words I had already put into cyberspace establishing that Obama had substantial help with everything good that he has ever said or is alleged to have written.Kloppenberg’s enthusiasm leads him to overlook the cautions of his own ideological allies as well. This was most evident in his discussion of Obama’s March 2008 Philadelphia speech, “A More Perfect Union.” As the reader will recall, Obama delivered this stem-winder to distance himself, without exactly disowning, the suddenly toxic Rev. Jeremiah Wright.For the Philadelphia speech, according to Kloppenberg, Obama “did not need the assistance of his speech writer Jon Favreau.” This one he wrote from the heart. Jonathan Raban, the esteemed British travel writer and novelist, suspects otherwise. Although once as blind to Obama’s limitations as Kloppenberg, Raban was “disconcerted” to learn that Obama used a speechwriter at all. He was more troubled to learn that the speechwriter in question, Favreau, was a video-game whiz whom Obama had recruited in 2004 when the lad was just 22 years-old.Raban traces his awakening to Obama’s 2009 inaugural address, one that, in his words, suffered from “moth-eaten metaphors,” “faux-antique dialect,” and jarring semantic errors like Obama’s use of the word “forbearers” when he meant “forebears.” Raban felt even more “let down” upon discovering that the “More Perfect Union” speech was “a joint Obama/Favreau production.” Kloppenberg apparently has not yet made this discovery.Read the full story here.

• Eager to recuperate votes Obama shifts on domestic drilling.(TheHill).The White House will take a series of steps — including expediting drilling plans on government lands in Alaska — designed to show that the administration is serious about expanding domestic oil production and lowering gas prices.President Obama announced Saturday the government would hold annual onshore lease sales in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve; extend the life of leases in the Gulf of Mexico and in some areas off the coast of Alaska for one year; speed up ongoing Interior Department testing in the mid- and south-Atlantic to gauge the level of resources; and establish an interagency task force to coordinate permitting for offshore drilling in Alaska.The White House is making the policy shifts after taking intense criticism from Republicans in recent weeks over energy policy as gas prices have topped $4 per gallon in some parts of the country.Many of the proposals are incremental expansions of existing policies and had been set in motion prior to Saturday’s announcement. It’s also unclear by how much the plan will increase domestic oil production.In his weekly radio address, Obama said his administration is working to “increase safe and responsible oil production here at home,” while also pushing his previously stated support alternative fuels and eliminating tax breaks and subsidies for oil companies.The president acknowledged that there are “no quick fixes” to high gas prices and stressed that price spikes “are often temporary,” but he outlined a series of steps meant to show that the administration is taking action to help consumers.Hmmmmm.....Once re-elected all these measures can and will be turned back,so that i can finish my electric car dream?Read the full story here.

• You're Nuts !Federal gun legislation would greatly expand who qualifies as mentally ineligible from owning a gun.(DailyCaller).Recently introduced federal gun legislation would codify and greatly expand the definition of those barred from owning a gun because they suffer from broad, umbrella-like definitions of mental health problems. Mental health advocates, however, say legislators reacting to “deranged” people going on shooting sprees are “completely missing the point.”Last week, New York Democratic Rep. Carolyn McCarthy introduced the Fix Gun Checks Act of 2011, a nearly-identical resolution to that introduced in the Senate in March by her New York colleague, Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer. Both bills include a section dedicated to further codifying in federal law what it means to be “adjudicated as a mental defective.” The proposed change would label any person a “mental health defective” who appears to “lack the mental capacity to contract or manage his own affairs,” or is “compelled” to receive counseling or medication.Other, seemingly more obvious, definitions of a “mental health defective” include anyone who has been found criminally insane, found incompetent to stand trial or found not guilty by reason of mental deficiencies.According to the legislation, decisions of whether someone is of subnormal intelligence, competency and/or mental illness are to be decided by a “court, board, commission, or other lawful authority.” No medical qualifications or background in psychological sciences are specified as necessary for such lawful authorities.Read the full story here.

• Bill Clinton: Create Internet agency.(Politico).Bill Clinton doesn’t like all the misinformation and rumors floating on the Internet. And he thinks the United Nations or the U.S. government should create an agency to do something about it.“It would be a legitimate thing to do,” Clinton said in an interview airing Friday on CNBC.The agency, Clinton said, would “have to be totally transparent about where the money came from” and would have to be “independent” because “if it’s a government agency in a traditional sense, it would have no credibility whatever, particularly with a lot of the people who are most active on the internet.”“Let’s say the U.S. did it, it would have to be an independent federal agency that no president could countermand or anything else because people wouldn’t think you were just censoring the news and giving a different falsehood out,” Clinton said.“That is, it would be like, I don’t know, National Public Radio or BBC or something like that, except it would have to be really independent and they would not express opinions, and their mandate would be narrowly confined to identifying relevant factual errors” he said. “And also, they would also have to have citations so that they could be checked in case they made a mistake. Somebody needs to be doing it, and maybe it’s a worthy expenditure of taxpayer money.”At the same time, though, political figures in other countries “will be careful what they say to America’s representatives around the world for a while because they’ll have bad memories of the, you know, the leaked memo,” he said.Stressing the dangers of putting some information online, Clinton said that he and his wife keep hard copies of their living wills that can’t be tampered with.Hmmmm......."Bill Clinton doesn’t like all the misinformation and rumors floating on the Internet" one name:Monica Lewinsky.Read the full story here.

• Osama Bin Laden porn Movie titles released.Here.

• "Change" there was a time the best qualified got the job offer.Chicago Ordered to Hire 111 Black Firefighters.(NYTimes).CHICAGO — The City of Chicago must hire 111 black firefighter applicants who were passed over for jobs years ago and pay tens of millions of dollars in damages to about 6,000 other black candidates under a ruling issued on Friday by a federal appeals court. The decision from the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit is only the latest in a legal battle that began with a written employment test for firefighters more than a decade ago, wound its way to the United States Supreme Court by last year and remains a matter of division and concern among the city’s firefighters. “For some of the people involved, this is a very emotional moment,” said Joshua Karsh, a lawyer who represented black applicants who accused the city of employment discrimination. “The city could have cleared this up a long time ago.” In 1995, 26,000 people took an employment test to become firefighters. The city said anyone who had scored above 65 was considered “qualified,” but chose its initial hires from random sets among candidates who scored 89 or better, a group it deemed “highly qualified,” court documents say. But after complaints were filed, the city conceded that the 89-point cutoff created a “disparate impact” against black candidates — 6,000 of whom had gotten qualified scores — compared with white candidates, the documents show. The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 last year that despite claims by the city, the group of black job candidates had not waited too long to file its lawsuit. Still uncertain on Friday was precisely how the court’s decision would be carried out. Among the 6,000 black candidates who sought jobs, 111 of them — it is unclear for the moment which ones — will be given jobs after receiving physical tests and training. Those who do not seek the jobs will split back pay that would have gone to the 111 had they been hired years ago. Jennifer Hoyle of the Chicago Department of Law estimated that cost to be $30 million. Mr. Karsh said he expected that the amount would be larger.The costs come at a difficult time for the city, where some people are predicting a budget shortfall in the hundreds of millions of dollars next year. A spokesman for Rahm Emanuel, who is to be sworn in as mayor on Monday, declined to comment on the ruling.Hmmmm......The end of 'common sense as we know it'.Read the full story here.

• UN: Iran, N.Korea traded technology.(YNet).Diplomats say technology exchange, which violates UN sanctions, was enacted through China.North Korea and Iran appear to have been regularly exchanging ballistic missile technology in violation of UN sanctions, according to a confidential United Nations report obtained by Reuters on Saturday.The report also said that the illicit technology transfers had "trans-shipment through a neighbouring third country." That country was China, several diplomats told Reuters on condition of anonymity. The report was submitted to the UN Security Council by a UN Panel of Experts, a group that monitors compliance with UN sanctions imposed on Pyongyang after it conducted two nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009. The UN sanctions included a ban on trade in nuclear and missile technology with North Korea, as well as an arms embargo. The UN measures also banned trade with a number of North Korean firms and called for asset freezes and travel bans on a number of North Korean individuals. "Prohibited ballistic missile-related items are suspected to have been transferred between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) and the Islamic Republic of Iran on regular scheduled flights of Air Koryo and Iran Air," the report said.Several Security Council diplomats said that China was unhappy about the report. Beijing has prevented the publication of expert panel reports on North Korea and Sudan in the past. Earlier this week, Russia took similar steps to suppress an equally damning expert panel report on Iran.Hmmmm.....Sanctions that 'Byte"?Read the full story here.

• Tenerife beheading victim is retired female, British Norfolk County Council road safety officer.(edp.)Jennifer Mills-Westley, a retired Norfolk County Council road safety officer, was brutally killed whilst holidaying on the island.Her family paid tribute to her and said they were devastated by her death.Her daughter Sarah said: “Mum retired a number of years ago and was fully enjoying her retirement travelling between Tenerife and France where she spent time visiting her daughter and grandchildren, and her other daughter in Norfolk.“She was full of life, generous of heart, would do anything for anyone.“We now have to find a way of living without her love and light and we would ask at this difficult time for some privacy as we try to come to terms with our loss.”The 60-year-old was originally from Norwich, Norfolk, before retiring from her job as a road safety officer with Norfolk County Council and leaving the UK.A spokesman from Norfolk County Council said: Our deepest sympathies go to Jenny’s family and friends following this terrible news. “Jenny was a popular and well respected member of staff, who during her time with Norfolk County Council worked as a Road Safety Officer - working with many schools and children to teach cycling training and make Norfolk’s roads safer.”She had two daughters and five grandchildren.She died horrifically yesterday when a man attacked her in the Valdes shopping centre on Avenida Juan Carlos in Los Cristianos.Witnesses spoke of their horror and disbelief after she was stabbed and decapitated in a supermarket.The suspect, who was arrested. was named in reports as Deyan Valentinov D - with Spanish police only providing the first initial of his surname.He is believed to be 28 and a homeless Bulgarian with a police record.Police are investigating the man’s movements leading up to the killing and studying CCTV and witness statements to establish precisely what happened.The suspect was alleged to have carried Ms Mills-Westley’s head outside and was reportedly saying “God is on earth’’.Hmmmmm......Islam is the largest minority religion in Bulgaria. According to the 2001 Census 12.2% of the populationis Muslim.Most of the Muslims in Bulgaria are Sunni Muslims as Sunni Islam was the form of Islam promoted by the Ottoman Empire during their five-century rule of Bulgaria.Read the full story here.

• Is Bahrain the fuse in the Middle Eastern "Powderkeg"?Malaysia offers to send troops to Bahrain.(Al-Arabiya).Prime Minister Najib Razzak of Malaysia has offered to send his country’s troops as part of a peacekeeping force to help “de-escalate tension” in Bahrain. Mr. Razzak also backed Saudi Arabia’s efforts in resolving regional unrest, according to Agence-France Presse. Bahrain was rocked by protests in March when demonstrators took to the streets demanding greater personal liberties in the Shiite majority kingdom ruled by Sunnis.In March, at the request of the Bahrain government, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates sent their troops to quell the protests and restore calm. “Malaysia stands ready to contribute peacekeepers to Bahrain, if invited to do so by the leadership,” Mr. Razzak said in a statement late Friday following a meeting in Riyadh with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.“Malaysia will consider it a great honor to offer assistance in this noble effort,” the prime minister said.He said his country, where Malay Muslims dominate a population consisting also of Chinese and Tamils, “supported the national dialogue process launched by Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al-Khalifa in a bid to de-escalate tension in the country,” reported the AFP.Hmmmm.....Something tells me this will just escalate.Read the full story here.

• According to Al-Jazeera Bahrain is targeting Shia religious sites.(Al-Jazeera). The Bahraini government has destroyed a number of mosques in continuation of its aggressive crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, a special Al Jazeera investigation has revealed.At least 28 mosques and Shia religious institutions have been destroyed in the Gulf state since the crackdown on Shia-led protests began in Mid-March, the opposition group, Al Wefaq, told Al Jazeera's Charles Stratford.The Justice Ministry, however, said it was tearing down the mosques because they were not licensed."It is a war against identity," one man told our correspondent. "This Sunni government of Bahrain is fighting the Shia, destroying their places of worship and holy places."Adel Al-Moawda, deputy chairman of the Bahraini parliament, denied the report that mosques were being destroyed."The mosques that have been demolished, most of them are not mosques," Al-Moawda told Al Jazeera. "There were only expansions of mosques in some private territories. Very few numbers of mosques, which are illegally built, have been demolished."He said Sunni mosques were also among these few that had been demolished. "What is happening in Bahrain now ... everybody is following the law and order, that is all," he added.Earlier, Al Jazeera revealed that medics who worked to assist wounded protesters have been targeted, with hundreds facing arrest and investigation by the regime.Bahraini police also carried out raids on girls' schools, detaining and beating them, during its crackdown, secret filming by Al Jazeera's Stratford revealed.The government denied this report. "The allegations made by Al Jazeera English are totally baseless and without credibility," sources quoted by the Bahraini news agency said.Al-Moawda repeated the denial, saying "there is a big exaggeration in some of what I have just heard now about torturing doctors and nurses".Hmmmm....."We must cut off the head of the snake"?Read the full story here.

• Arabian Gulf or is it Persian Gulf?Prominent UAE businessman urges UN to identify the Gulf as Arab.(Al-Arabiya).If prominent UAE businessman Khalaf al-Habtoor has his way semantics will be the next battleground in escalating tensions between Iran and the Gulf states.Mr. Habtoor has asked United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and his Arab League and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) counterparts, Amr Moussa and Abdullatif Al-Zayani, in a letter obtained by Al Arabiya to officially refer to the Gulf as the Arabian Gulf.In making his request, Mr. Habtoor appears to be seeking to rekindle a long-standing dispute between Iran and the Gulf states over the correct reference to the region. The dispute has persuaded much of the world over the years in deference to the controversy to back away from calling the region the Persian Gulf and instead simply referring to it as the Gulf.Mr. Habtoor argued in his letter that reference to the region as the Persian Gulf was obsolete. “I think most members of the council agree about this,” he wrote. “We rely on present facts and realities that reflect history. The vast majority of Gulf people are Arabs, both from the Arab countries overlooking the Arab Gulf or from the areas controlled by Iran,” he added in a reference to the Iranian province of Khuzestan that is predominantly populated by Iranians of Arab origin.Mr. Habtoor’s proposal is likely to be politely rejected by Mr. Ban. The United Nations has enough Middle Eastern issues on its plate, including Iran’s nuclear development and the brutal suppression of anti-government protests in various Arab states, to want to take on another hot potato.GCC leaders like Mr. Habtoor are well aware that terminology in the Middle East almost always reflects a political view. If the identification of the Gulf is controversial so is the naming of Palestinians territories: to Palestinians the West Bank is occupied territory and part of Palestine; to many Israelis it’s Yehuda and Samaria, names that indicate that Israel too has Biblical claims to the land.As a result, GCC leaders despite their charges that Iran instigated the turmoil in Bahrain and ran a spy ring in Kuwait may not want to expand their dispute into the realm of semantics.In his letter, Mr. Habtoor argues, however, that that is the very reason why the GCC should take semantic action. It would constitute a response to “Iranian ambitions that exceed the bounds of reason,” he says. Mr. Habtoor argued that identifying the Gulf as Arab was “necessary to confront Iranian ambitions and reveal some truths and intentions of Iran to control the region and interfere in Arab countries’ domestic affairs and damage their social fabric.”Mr. Habtoor’s suggestion certainly taps into a widespread emotion across the Gulf. Yet, if adopted, it is unlikely to persuade Iran to change its views or policies. If anything, it would spark a war of words that would more likely than not clutter debate about the real issues that divide Iran and the Gulf states. The Gulf has sufficient burning issues that need to be resolved and is better off without distractions that may produce a feel good effect but no real solution.Hmmmm......The 'ball' is now in the Iranian camp.Ahmadinejad speech in 3....2....1?Read the full story here.

• Erdogans buddy and 'reformer' Assad breaks promises as more blood of pro-democracy protesters is spilled in Syria.(Al-Arabiya).President Bashar al-Assad of Syria keeps on breaking his promises to be conciliatory as more pro-democracy protesters fall dead because of the authoritarian regime’s brutal crackdown. On Saturday, fresh blood was spilled in the western border town of Tall Kalakh, close to Lebanon. A witness told Agence-France Presse that troops fired into a swarm of demonstrators, killing three people and wounding several others.“The security forces, who had been encircling Tall Kalakh since the morning, fired machineguns. At least three people were killed and several were wounded,” the witness told AFP.On Friday, at least six people were killed in protests in cities of Homs, Damascus and Deraa on Friday.A leading human rights activist told the Associated Press that three people were killed in Homs, two in Damascus and one in a village outside Deraa, the southern city where the revolt began two months ago.“At first they opened fire in the air, but the people continued on their way, and then they shot directly into the crowd,” an eyewitness said by telephone from Homs.Activist Louay Hussein said President Assad’s adviser Bouthaina Shaaban told him in a phone call on Thursday that “definitive presidential orders have been issued not to shoot demonstrators and whoever violates this will bear full responsibility.”Mr. Hussein was among four opposition figures that saw Ms. Shaaban this month and presented demands that included an end to violent repression of protesters and the introduction of political reform in the country, ruled by the Assad family since 1970, according to Reuters.The meetings were the first between the opposition and senior officials since demonstrations calling for political freedom and an end to corruption erupted in the southern city of Deraa on March 18.“I hope we will see (no firing at demonstrators) tomorrow. I still call for non-violent form of any protest regardless of the response of the security apparatus,” Mr. Hussein said in a statement sent to Reuters.Read the full story here.

• Woman held for wearing 'tight' pants ... even under a gown.(Emirates247).Police ran after woman to arrest her as she walked in a park in Dammam.Saudi Arabia’s most feared Islamic police arrested a woman while she was doing a walking exercise with tight pants worn under her gown, a local newspaper reported on Saturday.Members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice stopped the woman as she was doing her regular exercise in a park in the eastern town of Dammam.“At first she ignored them when they shouted to her to stop,” Sharq Arabic language daily said. “They then ran after her and arrested her for wearing a tight pants under her gown.”Hmmmmm........Feel free to fill in the dots,it's getting beyond words!Read the full story here.

• Cairo, take two: Chairman President Obama to deliver second major Middle East speech.(DailyCaller).The president will deliver a second major speech on the Middle East to reset his foreign policy following the changes that have swept through the region since his much-lauded June 2009 Cairo speech.The contents of the planned Thursday speech are being closely held by administration officials, who only offer generalities, both off and on the record. “I’m sure that it will be a fairly sweeping and comprehensive speech about what we’ve all been privileged enough to witness since January,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said Friday. “I’m not going to say too much because I obviously want the president to have the field,” he added.The timing of Obama’s address is puzzling, because turmoil in the Arab countries — dubbed “the Arab Spring” — may rapidly invalidate any speech, said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the president of the GOP-affiliated American Action Forum, a libertarian-minded think-tank. “We’re still in spring, we’re not even in summer — why do you really want to talk in the middle of that?”The rapid pace of change was underlined Friday, when the president’s envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations resigned, citing personal reasons. The envoy, former Sen. George Mitchell, announced he was stepping down shortly before the president’s scheduled meeting with Israel’s visiting prime minister.The president is the chief author of the policies and words that will go into the the speech, which is to be delivered at the U.S. Department of State, said administration officials.He “has really been the central intellectual force in these decisions, in many cases, designing the approaches,” Thomas E. Donilon, the White House’s national security adviser, told the New York Times. The same article reported that the president “often surfs the blogs of experts on Arab affairs or regional news sites to get a local flavor for events … [and] has sounded out prominent journalists like Fareed Zakaria of Time magazine and CNN and Thomas L. Friedman … [and] ordered staff members to study transitions in 50 to 60 countries.”The president should use his official staff to gather needed information, said Holtz-Eakin, who served as director of the Congressional Budget Office from 2003 to 2005. “That’s why they’re there. [He should] ask them, and they’ll go find out,” he said.Obama’s emphasis on his personal role creates political risks. For example, Obama overrode his advisers and pushed for the resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in February, partly because he wanted to aid Westernized activists, including Google executive Wael Ghonim, the New York Times’ report said. But Ghonim has since been sidelined by the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood group, and has signed a contract to write a book.Hmmmm....Sounds pretty dictatorial to me ...one man deciding a country it's future?Chairman Obama hasn't done such a good job so far,what's the next Obamination recognising the Palestinian state?Read the full story here.

• U.S. imams arrested for alleged Pakistani Taliban links.Miami (CNN) -- Two South Florida imams and a third family member were arrested Saturday on charges of providing support to the Pakistani Taliban, the Justice Department said.In addition, three others in Pakistan were also indicted on the same charges.FBI agents arrested Hafiz Khan and his son Izhar Khan in South Florida, the department said. They are expected to make their initial court appearance in federal court on Monday.Another of Hafiz Khan's sons, Irfan Khan, was arrested in Los Angeles and will appear in court there.Also charged are three Pakistani residents: Ali Rehman, Alam Zeb, and Amina Khan. Amina Khan is Hafiz Khan's daughter, and Zeb is his grandson.The four-count indictment alleges that all six defendants conspired to provide material support to a conspiracy to kill, injure and kidnap people abroad, and that they provided support to the Pakistani Taliban.Hafiz Khan is the imam at Flagler Mosque in Miami. Izhar Khan, is an imam at the Jamaat Al-Mu'mineen Mosque in Margate, Florida."Despite being an imam, or spiritual leader, Hafiz Khan was by no means a man of peace. Instead, as today's charges show, he acted with others to support terrorists to further acts of murder, kidnapping and maiming," U.S. Attorney Wilfredo A. Ferrer said. "But for law enforcement intervention, these defendants would have continued to transfer funds to Pakistan to finance the Pakistani Taliban, including its purchase of guns."The indictment describes a number of occasions where Hafiz Khan transferred money to Pakistan, and where money was withdrawn once there."Khan solicited and distributed funds for the Pakistani Taliban, both personally and on behalf of others, and worked with the co-defendants and others to support the Pakistani Taliban's jihad," the indictment states.The elder Khan also built a madrassa in Pakistan's Swat Valley that provided shelter for the terrorist group, the indictment states.The Pakistani Taliban represent a confederation of Taliban groups in northwestern Pakistan, where they are based, said Bill Roggio, military-affairs analyst who is managing editor of The Long War Journal.Those fighters attack targets in Pakistan and across the border in Afghanistan.The group, which is headquartered in Quetta, is different from the Afghan Taliban, which has been focused on re-establishing the Islamic Emirate in Afghanistan.Both groups swear allegiance to Taliban leader Mullah Omar and have close ties to al Qaeda, he said.Hmmmm....Two years After the Cairo speech the Middle East is even more negative towards the US than before!No More 'outreach'.Read the full story here.

• Russian sects: from Rasputin to the 'Jesus of Siberia'.(Telegraph).Russia has spawned a number of bizarre sects since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union as ordinary Russians have struggled to make the transition from state-sponsored atheism to a society where the Russian Orthodox Church is again in the ascendancy.Experts say there are as many as 700 sects in Russia attracting between 600,000 to 800,000 followers. The latest sect to make the headlines is an all-female group, which believes that Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, is a reincarnation of early Christian missionary Paul the apostle. Read the full story here.

• Cops increase security for Bintan bikini beach party.(JakartaPost).Police will deploy extra security measures for a so-called Bikini Beach Party on Bintan in Riau.Islands on Saturday that will be broadcast by Fashion TV, following protests from hard-line Muslim groups.Police said the theme of the event did not violate the anti-pornography law as alleged by opponents.Bintan Police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Dwi Sulistiyono told The Jakarta Post on Friday that the event, which would be held at the Nirwana Garden Resort in the Lagoi International Tourism Zone, would go on as scheduled.“In response to objections by a number of groups, the police will increase security for this events,” Dwi said.He added that it was normal for people to wear bikinis on the beach.“Furthermore, we were told that the event is not open to the public. The large signboards [advertising the party] are just to enliven the event,” he said.Dwi added 100 police officers would be deployed at the event.The head of the Riau Islands branch of the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), Tengku Azhari Abbas, told the Post on Thursday that the MUI was shocked to learn the event would be held on Bintan, despite the fact that the ethnic Malays in Bintan and the Riau Islands are mainly Muslim.He claimed the event would have a negative effect on the public, so the MUI was strongly opposed to it.Event organizers expressed confidence the event would take place as scheduled despite the protests. They said the exclusive nature of the venue was added value as it prevented disturbances.Event organizers expressed confidence the event would take place as scheduled despite the protests. They said the exclusive nature of the venue was added value as it prevented disturbances.Nirwana Garden Resort general affairs and administrative director Anton told the Post that those invited to the event had been told the dress code was white bikinis.Fashion TV booked all 400 rooms at the Nirwana Garden Resort. The event is expected to draw 800 people. Fashion TV had requested a venue that could hold 1,000 guests.“All the rooms are fully booked for tomorrow’s event. Guests who are not accommodated here can stay in other resorts in Lagoi,” Anton said.Read the full story here.

MFS - The Other News

                         Afternoon Posting.

• Egypt volatile situation : President Mobarak adress the nation live - Al Jazeera English - Live Streams From Egypt ! Here .
• Egypt protests on Twitter!  here.
• Liveblog - Egypt's protests erupt. here.

• Egyptian government on last legs, says ElBaradei.The Egyptian dissident Mohamed ElBaradei warned President Hosni Mubarak today that his regime is on its last legs, as tens of thousands of people prepared to take to the streets for a fourth day of anti-government protests.The Nobel peace prize winner's comments to the Guardian represented his strongest intervention against the country's authoritarian government since he announced his intention to return to Egypt to join the protests. "I'm sending a message to the Guardian and to the world that Egypt is being isolated by a regime on its last legs," he said.His words marked an escalation of the language he used on arrival in Cairo last night, when he merely urged the Mubarak government to "listen to the people" and not to use violence.ElBaradei has been criticised by some Egyptians for the late return to his homeland, two days after the protests began – hundreds of people have already been arrested and exposed to the brutal tactics of the security services. But ElBaradei was keen to stress his solidarity with the protesters."There is of course a risk to my safety today, but it's a risk worth taking when you see your country in such a state you have to take risks," he said. "I will be with the people today."Hmmmm.....So far the declarations of the Muslim Brotherhood's spokes person?Read the full story here.

• Related :Egypt Nobel laureate ElBaradei under house arrest(AP).Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Peace laureate who returned to his Egyptian homeland to participate in anti-government protests, has been placed under house arrest by security officials, according to a report by the Associated Press.Police have warned ElBaradei that he cannot leave his house in suburban Cairo to join demonstrators in the city.Earlier, police used water cannons and batons against ElBaradei during prior protest marches.Upon arrival in Egypt yesterday, ElBaradei told reporters “it is a critical time in the life of Egypt. I wish we didn’t have to go into the streets to impress upon the regime that they have to change.”The government warned that will take "decisive measures" to quell the uprising. At least seven people have died in the protests and about 1,000 have been arrested.
  Hmmmm.......This won't go as easy as TunesiaRead the full story here.

• 2 killed in Egyptian clashes, ElBaradei under house arrest.One woman killed in Cairo, another man shot to death in Suez in latest round of protests; ElBaradei arrested after hiding in mosque; Egyptian gov't imposes curfew, orders army reinforcement as violent clashes continue.At least two people were killed on Friday in mass Egyptian protests against the government. One woman was killed in Cairo, and another man was shot to death in Suez.The Egyptian government imposed a curfew from 6 pm to 7 am on Friday, in the cities of Cairo, Alexandria, and Suez after violent demonstrations there.The decree was handed down by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak who ordered the Egyptian army to give reinforcement to police to quell the protests, reported al-Jazeera.Also Friday, police placed Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei under house arrest. Earlier, after joining the latest round of protests, ElBaradei and his supporters were forced to hide inside a mosque while hundreds of riot police laid siege to it, firing tear gas in the streets around so no one could leave.One of the leaders of the opposition, Ayman Nour of the "El-Ghad" movement, also sustained a head injury from a stone, said al-Jazeera.Friday's protests saw tens of thousands of anti-government demonstrators pouring into the streets of Egypt, stoning and confronting police who fired back with rubber bullets and tear gas in the most violent and chaotic scenes yet in the challenge to President Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule.Hmmmm....."ElBaradei and his supporters" read "ElBaradei and the muslim brotherhood?Read the full story here.

• Protests jolt Egypt's stock market to second biggest drop in history.CAIRO: Egypt's main EGX 30 index closed 10.52 percent lower on Thursday, at 5,646.5 points, its second sharpest drop in history.Suspended trading early in the day for 40 minutes, when the index was down 6.24 percent at 5,916.74 points, and then resumed trading at 11:30.Minutes later the benchmark index dipped lower to 8 percent and then to more than 10.72 percent before starting to pick up slowly, ending the day 10.52 percent lower.Upon reopening Thursday morning with a steep decline, a trader at CI Capital said, "It is a panic," referring to investors' sell-off in the market.Mohamed Elzayat, analyst at CI Capital, said, "Big investors, hedge funds and institutions are less nervous than retail investors."In total, 1.1 billion in volume was traded on the market, said CI Capital's head of research Mona Mansour.By the end of the day, total market capitalization reached LE 406.9 billion, according to the stock exchange website. The market has lost more than $10 billion.The Egyptian pound also continues its slide, falling to 5.854 against the green back, Mansour noted. The day before it closed at 5.8300 against the US dollar, the lowest since January 2005.In total this week the market lost nearly 40 Billion Dollar.Hmmmm....If they think the Muslim Brotherhood will solve unemployment in Egypt think again.Read the full story here.

• Obama Administration Lifts US Ban on Muslim Brotherhood Leader.The Barack Obama administration has decided to lift a ban preventing Muslim Scholar Professor Tariq Ramadan from entering the United States. Ramadan, an Egyptian currently living in Switzerland, is a leading member of Europe’s Muslim Brotherhood branch and the grandson of the movement’s founder Hassan al-Banna. The Muslim Brotherhood is the parent organization for Hamas and some of the groups that recently merged into al-Qaeda, including Ayman al Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad.Ramadan was invited to teach at the University of Notre Dame in 2004 but the George W. Bush administration revoked his visa, citing a statute that applies to those who have “endorsed or espoused” terrorism. The administration later dropped the terror endorsement claim and linked the ban to $1,336 in donations Ramadan made between 1998 and 2002 to a Swiss charity that was later blacklisted by the US.Although the White House asked the court last March to uphold the Bush-era entry ban on Ramadan, the administration has now decided to lift the ban and possibly allow both Ramadan and South African Muslim activist Professor Adam Habib onto American soil. State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters that the government no longer views Ramadan or Habib as representing threats to the United States. “The next time Professor Ramadan or Professor Habib apply for a visa, they will not be found inadmissible on the basis of the facts that led to denial when they last applied.”Hmmmm.....Anyone still doubting who Obama supports in Egypt?And why he has not called Mubarak?Read the full story here.

• Obama Monitors Situation in Egypt.Al Jazeera: Obama doesn't support Mubarak ,no direct talks.President Barack Obama is closely monitoring the growing protests in Egypt, where thousands of people have taken to the streets to denounce the 30-year rule of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, a White House official said this morning.At the State Department, spokesman P.J. Crowley expressed “deep concern” after Mr. Mubarak shut down the Internet and mobile phone service in Cairo. On his Twitter account, Mr. Crowley wrote: “Events unfolding in #Egypt are of deep concern. Fundamental rights must be respected, violence avoided and open communications allowed.”The remarks mark a shift since Thursday when Mr. Obama, at a YouTube town hall meeting, said Mr. Mubarak has been a strong ally of the U.S. “But I’ve always said to him that making sure that they are moving forward on reform — political reform, economic reform — is absolutely critical to the long-term well being of Egypt,” Mr. Obama said. He also said the government and protesters should be careful about resorting to violence and clamping down on free speech. “I think that it is very important that people have mechanisms in order to express legitimate grievance,” he said.Hmmmm....Obama is not to be seen or heard,the Commander in Chief in hiding,did he even take the 3 Am call?Read the full story here.

• HT:Memri.Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami in Friday Sermon: A New Islam-Based Middle East Is In the Making. Unrest Is Aftershock of 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran.In his sermon today, Tehran interim Friday prayer leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ahmad Khatami said that in contrast to the U.S.'s dream of a new Middle East under its domination, a new Middle East based on Islamic principles is now taking shape. Stating that the popular uprisings in the Arab world herald the creation of "an Islamic Middle East" based on the religion and religious democracy – in contrast to claims by former U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice that a new Middle East would be developed under the leadership of the U.S. and Israel – he underlined that this ongoing unrest is the aftershock of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran.He added that the recent uprisings in the Arab world have Islamic support, as people poured into the streets with the slogan of "Allahu Akhbar (Allah is the Greatest)."Referring to the ongoing rallies in Yemen, he said that such developments are inspired by the Islamic Revolution in Iran. He also noted that Tunisians were holding their first Friday prayers since the departure of their dictator to demonstrate the Islamic Revolution's influence on their protests.Hmmmmm.....Obama "Islam is a Great Religion.Read the full story here.

• Obama eyes unfolding events in Egypt.President Barack Obama has requested "multiple briefings" on the unfolding crisis in Egypt, where thousands of demonstrators were clashing with security forces, White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said Friday.Obama has not called Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak -- the target of the protesters' anger -- "but there is daily contact between the U.S. and Egyptian governments through various channels, including the embassies and other organizations in which Obama's messages and concerns are relayed," Vietor said.Obama has urged the government and demonstrators to refrain from violence as protests continued."It is very important that people have mechanisms in order to express legitimate grievances," he said this week.Vice President Joe Biden told PBS NewsHour on Thursday that Mubarak should listen to protesters. He also said the embattled Egyptian president is no dictator.Still, he said "violence isn't appropriate and people have a right to protest.""This is an important time for the government to demonstrate its responsiveness to the people of Egypt in recognizing those universal rights," Gibbs said.Hmmmm....How about Christians their rights in that region?Read and see the full story here.

• HT:Aina.Khomeini's Return?What happened in Tunisia apparently hasn't stayed in Tunisia. Reportedly organized via the website Facebook, 90,000 Egyptians agreed to demonstrate in a "National Day of Wrath" on Police Day, an Egyptian national holiday. Demonstrators marched in Alexandria, the Nile Delta cities of Mansura and Tanta, and the southern cities of Aswan and Assiut, witnesses reported. Thousands massed in the capital city of Cairo, congregating at the central Tahrir (Liberation) Square on Tuesday chanting, "Down with Hosni Mubarak, down with the tyrant. We don't want you!" All across the Muslim world turmoil is erupting -- Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, and now Yemen. The frightening possibility is that, rather than being a force for liberation, these regional protests may in fact be undermining democracy by imperiling pro-Western allies one-by-one and fertilizing the soil for Khomeini-like Islamic factions to gain power and sow their killing fields. It could be the Iranian Revolution of 1979 all over again in these nations, and if it is, it represents a horrific scenario for Western and Israeli interests -- as well as for the people who will find themselves the victims of the Islamist bloodbaths that will by necessity ensue.Despite claims by the Interior Ministry that the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest opposition group (although legally banned), is to blame for the mobilization, the Evening Standard of London is reporting that another opposition group, Sixth of April Youth, was responsible for the uprising. "Tomorrow, don't go to work. Don't go to college. We will all go down to the streets and stand hand in hand for you, our Egypt. We will be millions," one activist wrote on its website. As in Tunisia, where protesters were apparently inspired by the death of a poor Tunisian vegetable vendor who set himself on fire to protest corruption, Egyptians were reportedly aroused in similar fashion by the killing of Khaled Said, a young Egyptian who was reportedly beaten to death by two policemen in Alexandria last year.Rising food prices are contributing to the country's woes as well, a reality reflected by Sami Imam, a 53-year-old retired teacher who took part in Tuesday's protests. "I have not visited the butcher in six months," he said. Mr. Imam also said something that might encapsulate the reason why so many Egyptians, who have long feared the legendary brutality of Egypt's 1.4 million strong security forces, took to the streets: "The police cannot kill us because we, to all practical purposes (sic), are already dead."That sentiment seems to reflect the current reality which some in the media are referring to as a "tipping point," the "crossing of a psychological barrier" or a "domino effect" in a country where protests have usually drawn no more than a few hundred people at any one time. Yet the government itself may have played an integral part in allowing the demonstrations to gain momentum: according to Reuters, several police officers reported they were "under orders not to force a confrontation." It is speculated that the Egyptian authorities did not want "an escalation as in Tunisia, where a rising number of deaths and casualties only served to fire up protesters."Democracyjournal.org illuminates a possible way out with respect to Egypt, but one which may also prove effective in dealing with whatever governments finally emerge in all three nations. The journal offers a strategy that consists of a two-pronged approach: "positive conditionality," in which military assistance provided by the U.S. would require quid pro quo political reform; and "answering the Islamic question," by which the Obama administration would signal a willingness to deal with the hard-line, anti-American factions (including Islamist groups), "as long as they fulfill the conditions of renouncing violence and committing to the rules of the democratic game."In other words, the carrot and the stick. But the carrot and stick need to be maneuvered with the kind of skill in foreign affairs that the Obama administration has yet to demonstrate to any degree of aptitude. There are no easy answers here, but if history is truly being made, it behooves this administration to get on the right side of it. Countries which have been allies are suddenly question marks, and the alternative "answer" is obvious: with Hezbollah in charge, Lebanon is effectively an Iranian proxy. On Facebook there is already a site calling itself the "Tunisian-Iranian Solidarity Network." Egypt? Time will tell--but time is not on America's side with respect to any of these upheavals. It is urgently important that Obama gauges the mistakes made by Carter in losing Iran to Khomeini in 1979, and to do all he can to avoid Iran all over again in the Middle East in 2011 and after.Hmmmmm........Obama ....do you hear him warning the Muslim Brotherhood?Read the full story here.

• Kuwaiti ruler grants $4 bn, free food to citizens.KUWAIT CITY (AFP) – Kuwait's Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah on Monday ordered the distribution of $4 billion and free food for 14 months to citizens as the oil-rich emirate prepares to mark national occasions.Each of the 1.12 million native citizens will get 1,000 dinars ($3,572) in cash as well as free essential food items until March 31, 2012, the KUNA news agency cited state minister for cabinet affairs Rudhan al-Rudhan as saying.The Gulf state, whose financial assets top $300 billion, will next month mark the 50th anniversary of independence, 20th anniversary of liberation from Iraqi occupation and the fifth anniversary of the emir's ascendance to power.The announcement was made following an overnight meeting of the cabinet. The 2.4 million foreign residents of Kuwait are excluded from the grant and the free food.The fifth largest OPEC producer has posted budget surpluses in each of the past 11 fiscal years, totalling more than $140 billion, and is also headed for another healthy surplus this year thanks to rising oil price.The government has made similar but smaller grants in the past.The Gulf Arab state provides a cradle-to-grave welfare system to its citizens who receive most public services and petrol at heavily subsidised prices and pay no income tax.Some 80 percent of Kuwait's 360,000-strong national workforce are employed in government jobs, where the average monthly wage is more than $3,500.Hmmm.....Fear is a powerfull motive?Read the full story here.

• HT:Memri.In New Audio Message, Al-Qaeda Deputy Commander Sa'id Al-Shihri Calls Iran, U.S. Practical Allies Against Sunnis. Calls For Immediate Arming Of Every Sunni To Face Shi'ite Threat. Openly Endorses Gaza Salafist And Abdallah Azzam Brigade.In a new audio message posted on the Shumukh Al-Islam forum by the Al-Malahim media company, which is the media wing of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), Al-Qaeda  deputy commander and former Guantanamo detainee Abu Sufyan Al-Azdi (aka Sa'id Al-Shiri) speaks about the imminent, Iran-driven Shi'ite threat to Sunni Muslims in the region, with a special reference to the Houthis in Southern Yemen, and notes that Iran's and the U.S.'s shared agenda to eliminate the threat of the Sunnis (ahl al-sunna) has made them allies in practice.Read the full story here.

• HT:AmericanThinker.Sharks Are Not Misunderstood Dolphins, and Islam Is Not a Religion of Peace.I've often been told rumors from very old, wise people about a time, long before I was born, when "Saturday Night Live" was both funny and relevant. It's hard to believe, but in those unimaginably distant days deep into the past, Chevy Chase played a Land Shark who wore various disguises in attempts to break into people's apartments and eat them. When subterfuge and gimmicks failed, he just lied and told various idiots he was a dolphin.Whenever there's a new Islamic terrorist attack somewhere in the world (and that's somewhat redundantly phrased because just about the only terrorist attacks that occur in this world are Islamic, unless of course you have heard of murder sprees the Amish and Buddhists often go on whenever someone draws a cartoon they don't like or names a dog after a self-proclaimed prophet they revere...oh wait, no, those are Muslims who do that, as usual...never mind), I always think of this dusty old SNL skit. The American media deliberately plays the role of stunned bystander shocked that there really was a Land Shark at the door.The idiots. No matter how many times the delusional fools in the American media try to convince you otherwise, sharks are not misunderstood dolphins, and Islam is not a religion of peace.When a Muslim commits an act of mass-murdering terrorism, in contrast, the left does not camp out in front of the shooter/assassin/bomber's home and scrutinize every person he ever in his life came in contact with and blame them all for his actions. Instead, the media personalities report on acts of terrorism the way they do shark attacks. When great whites gobble a surfer or menace a beach somewhere, the media runs footage of vacationers running screaming from the water, family members of the victims shocked and in tears huddled together by the lifeguard station, and plenty of stock footage of ambulances racing to hospitals with helicopters overhead surveying the carnage. No effort is made to track down the family of the sharks responsible for the attacks, and not much effort at all is made to get inside the mind of the sharks to figure out why they did what they did, or to pretend Governor Palin was behind it after all, just as everyone in the media suspected. Palin is behind everything, you know, except the things the media likes, which she's singlehandedly responsible for making less likable just because she's breathing. Always breathing, somewhere, living rent-free in the media's nightmares.If a big story about some explosive, horrific event comes knocking at the door, rest assured the New York Times and rest of the dinosaur media will first ask if a Muslim's involved before they decide on the course and tone of their coverage. If it's a member of the "Religion of Peace" who blew dozens to pieces, then the trusty old shark attack template for reporting is dusted off, with no blame assigned to anyone or anything for this lone animal's aggressive actions. If it's anyone at all with a link to conservatism who held the gun or lit the fuse, especially anyone connected to Governor Palin, no matter how remotely, then the story is covered obsessively, for months, with the full resources of the Gray Lady dumped into an indictment of every Republican less than a thousand miles away from the scene of the crime.It is as predictable and tired as a stale old "Saturday Night Live" skit. Only it's half as funny, and ten times as stomach-turningly tragic.Read the full story here.

• Cold truths about electric cars' cold-weather shortcomings.Count me among the many thousands of Washington area residents who spent Wednesday night stuck in traffic as a snowstorm sowed chaos all around us. Being car-bound in sub-freezing weather for six hours can make a guy think. I counted my blessings. The situation could have been worse, I realized: My fellow commuters and I could have been trying to make it home in electric cars, like the ones President Obama is constantly promoting, most recently in his State of the Union address. It is a basic fact of physical science that batteries run down more quickly in cold weather than they do in warm weather, and the batteries employed by vehicles such as the Nissan Leaf or the Chevy Volt are no exception. The exact loss of power these cars would suffer is a matter of debate, partly because no one has much real-world experience to draw on. But there would be some loss. Running the heater to stay warm, or the car radio to stay informed, would drain the battery further.Even with substantial government subsidies, I doubt the president will get there. Michael Omotoso of J.D. Power and Associates - a consulting firm that, unlike the Obama Energy Department, has spent a lot of time asking consumers what they actually want - told me the number could reach 750,000 by 2015, and 1.1 million by 2020 if all goes well. But the million-car goal is meaningless: It would represent 0.4 percent of the U.S. automotive fleet, yielding no substantial reduction in carbon emissions or U.S. dependence on foreign oil for the government's multibillion-dollar investment. Alternative policies, such as a modest increase in the gas tax or support for more efficient internal combustion engines, would do more to accomplish the administration's legitimate goals faster and at lower cost. Call me a curmudgeon, but I think J.D. Power is optimistic. This subsidized market niche is just one well-publicized malfunction away from disaster. Perhaps a Volt battery will overheat and burst into flames, as some computer batteries have been known to do. Or maybe a Leaf driver will suffer frostbite while stuck in the next blizzard. Let's just hope one of his neighbors pulls over to help him out.Hmmmm....Driving that RAM Dodge gas guzzling truck?Read the full story here.

• Obama vigorously defends Dems' healthcare reform: 'Granny is safe'.In his most vigorous defense of the healthcare law since Republicans took control of the House, Obama fired back Friday at GOP claims that the law deprives essential care for seniors and balloons the deficit.“You may have heard once or twice this is a job-crushing, granny-threatening, budget-busting monstrosity,” Obama said to pro-reform advocates at the Families USA annual conference in Washington. “That just doesn’t match up to the reality.”With House Republicans using committee hearings this week to pose the reform law as bad for business, Obama touched on a report from a large business advocacy group that said the law would reduce premiums for workers.“That’s money that business can use to grow to invest or hire. … That’s money workers won’t have to see vanish from paychecks or bonuses. That’s good for all of us,” he said.“And I can report that granny is safe,” he added, hitting back at GOP claims that the administration wants to ration expensive care for the elderly.“What I’m not willing to do is go back to the days when insurance companies could deny someone coverage because of a pre-existing condition,” he continued.Over the past month, Democrats have been emphasizing the law’s numerous consumer protections that have already gone into effect, such as coverage for children regardless of pre-existing conditions and discounted drugs for seniors in Medicare’s coverage gap. Touting those protections, Obama made clear Friday morning that repeal was out of the question for him.“I don’t want that for America, he said. “I don’t want that for our families. That’s not who we are, that’s not what we stand for.”Hmmmmm......I want,i want ...i don't want....What happened to the will of the people?Sounds pretty tyranny like ?Read the full story here.

• Obama Plan to End Oil Tax Breaks Taps Controversy.President Obama is earning both praise and criticism for suggesting in his State of the Union address that gas and oil companies are "doing just fine on their own" and don't need the tax breaks they currently enjoy.Oil industry experts suggest the president, by singling out oil companies, could be defeating two of his stated goals: creating jobs and boosting renewable energy research."The administration seems poised to stifle one of the best ways to create jobs," said Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, citing potential job growth in new petroleum exploration."We need policies that help the 9.2 million hardworking men and women in the industry, not hurt them," Gerard said.Gerard also says the industry invested over $58 billion dollars from 2000 to 2008 in "zero carbon emission technologies."Obama said on Tuesday that he is seeking a comprehensive approach to energy development."Some folks want wind and solar. Others want nuclear, clean coal and natural gas. To meet this goal, we will need them all -- and I urge Democrats and Republicans to work together to make it happen."Hmmmmm....It's high time that the President takes a big breath of reality?Read the full story here.

• HT:Aina.'Top Muslim Scholars' Seem to Be Telling Us That Dialogue With Them is a Waste of Time.The decision of certain "top Muslim scholars" to suspend all dialogue with the Vatican in protest against Pope Benedict XVI's condemnation of anti-Christian violence in Egypt is deeply depressing, but I suppose we ought to have expected it. I recently reported, in a mood of probably foolish optimism, that there had been a backlash against anti-Christian attacks, not just among the Copts, but among Egyptian Muslims, too. There had been widespread calls by Muslim intellectuals and activists for Egyptian Muslims at large to flock to Coptic churches across the country to attend Coptic Christmas Eve mass, to show solidarity with the nation's Coptic minority, and also to serve as "human shields" against possible attacks by Islamist militants."Are there here," I asked, "signs of hope?" Perhaps, I ventured, "this is the beginning of a new era". I also added: "Then again, maybe it isn't. We shall see." Well, now I fear we have seen, despite those brave "human shields": for, in the end, I fear, this has been a welcome but impermanent moment of tolerance which has by now almost certainly dissolved.And the point is, of course, that whether or not they are for some reason engaging in "dialogue", these same "scholars" think they have a right and a duty not merely to urge the oppression of other religions but in the end to eliminate them entirely on their territory. Just as Sheik Ahmad el-Tayeb was breaking off dialogue with Rome, one of his colleagues in the al-Azhar University, Dr Imad Mustafa, was issuing a fatwa. "He began," reports the Jerusalem Post:"… by stating the well-known doctrine of 'defensive jihad', that is Muslims must go to war against infidels who attack them. Of course, the word 'attack' is often spread rather thinly to justify aggression.But now Mustafa has publicly and explicitly come up with a new concept, one that up until now was supposedly restricted to groups like al-Qaida: 'Then there is another type of fighting against the non-Muslims known as offensive jihad… which is to pursue the infidels into their own land without any aggression [on their part]…'Two schools [of Islamic jurisprudence] have ruled that offensive jihad is permissible in order to secure Islam's border, to extend God's religion to people in cases where the governments do not allow it, such as the Pharaoh did with the children of Israel, and to remove every religion but Islam from the Arabian peninsula.' "And to remove every religion but Islam": what a detestable euphemism for murder. And that, in the end, it seems, is the ambition of the "scholars" of this important Islamic "university". I put these words into inverted commas to indicate what is rapidly becoming very obvious, even to those determined to put as optimistic a gloss on interfaith relations as possible: that the words really don't seem to mean to the Muslim world anything remotely like what we mean by them.Perhaps I am wrong to write thus in anger: but there is such a thing as righteous, or justified anger. If I am indeed wrong in what I have said here about the Muslim world, it is now up to that section of Islamic opinion which fundamentally disagrees with the views emanating from the al-Azhar University to make its views known as vigorously as the "scholars" have done. The ball is now in the court of "moderate" Islamic opinion. Is there anyone out there? If so, for heaven's sake, say something.Hmmmm....Anyone still doubting that the war on Christianity is busy?Read the full story here.

• HT:TundraTabloids.Canada - Quebec - Neo Nazi site calls for boycott of Israeli shoes.Anti-Israel boycott at shoe store suspended; one protest group calls other racist.MONTREAL - The boycott of a shoestore that sells footwear made in Israel, which attracted national attention, has been temporarily called off by organizers worried it's become a magnet for extremists.The independently owned store, Le Marcheur, was dragged into the mire of Middle East politics when a group called Palestinian and Jewish Unity (PAJU) began protesting outside its doors every Saturday several months ago.The group is hoping a boycott will encourage the owner to stop selling BeautiFeel, a line of women's shoes made in Israel.Its actions triggered an angry backlash by several prominent Montreal figures, including both Liberal and Conservative politicians. But it's one of the boycott supporters that has PAJU worried.The Mouvement Nationaliste-Revolutionnaire Quebecois — or, in English, the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement of Quebec — announced plans recently to join the weekly protest.PAJU accuses the rival group of advocating racism, anti-immigrant beliefs and revolutionary violence."We are not going to permit extreme-right elements to promote their own racist agenda," said PAJU's president, Bruce Katz. "We're certainly not going to let them discredit our own legitimate actions."The MNRQ, on its website, calls for an anti-Israel "intifada in Quebec — just like in Gaza."The group is anti-capitalist, pro-Quebec independence, and proudly espouses its support for ethnic nationalism — namely, protecting the "identity and ethnicity of Quebec." It urges a crackdown on immigration.Archambault, who has been in business for 25 years, is in the process of buying his stock for next season, and says he has no intention of dropping the BeautiFeel line."This is Quebec. No one is going to tell us what to sell," he said.Pro-Palestinian activists have long advocated a general boycott of goods made in Israel as a way of pressuring the state to end what they describe as apartheid policies in occupied territories.But even boycott supporters have expressed some reservations about PAJU's decision to target a small, independent merchant."In my opinion, it's a mistake to boycott the whole store," said Amir Khadir, a member of the provincial legislature who heads the left-wing provincial party Quebec solidaire.Read the full story here.More on this from the TundraTabloids.

• HT:Judicial Watch.Obama Justice Department Colluded with ACLU to Attack Arizona’s SB 1070 According to Documents Uncovered by Judicial Watch.Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today announced that it has received documents from the Department of Justice (DOJ) that show DOJ worked hand-in-hand with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in mounting their respective legal challenges to SB 1070, Arizona’s get-tough illegal immigration law. The documents, obtained by Judicial Watch pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed on June 17, 2010, include email exchanges between DOJ officials and ACLU staff.Included among the documents obtained by Judicial Watch is a July 27, 2010, email exchange between Lucas Guttentag, leader of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project and the DOJ’s Edwin Kneedler, Deputy Solicitor General.“It is one thing to share the ACLU’s disrespect for the rule of law but it is quite another to collude with the organization on a prosecutorial strategy against the State of Arizona. Frankly, these new documents show it is hard to tell where the ACLU ends and the Justice Department begins,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The Obama Justice Department is supposed to be an independent, nonpartisan law enforcement agency. Many Americans will be disturbed, though maybe not surprised, to find that Eric Holder’s Justice Department is colluding with one of the most leftist organizations in the nation. We know whose ‘side’ this Justice Department is on when it comes to the enforcement of our immigration laws.”Hmmmm....A Democratic Administration or a Regime?Read the full story here.

• Top Dem: We will ‘hang’ Republicans.Amidst a national dialogue about softening political rhetoric, members of an Obama-affiliated organization are threatening to hang Granite State Republicans in the New Hampshire House of Representatives, according to a news story in the Citizen of Laconia.“They’re going to hang themselves,” said Belknap Democratic Chair Ed Allard of Republicans. “And we’re going to help them.”Allard’s threat came during a meeting of despondent Democrats in Belknap County on Thursday evening. The meeting was hosted by President Obama’s Organizing for America.Allard’s remarks come at a time when some in the national Democratic Party have attempted to blame conservative rhetoric for the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Gifford in Tuscon, Az. earlier this month.After the tragedy in Tuscon, President Obama himself urged Americans to “pause for a moment, and to make sure that we are talking to each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.”Hmmmmm....."Together we Thrive" on the murder of innocent people?Read the full story here.

• Obama put union bosses in charge of federal agencies, then exempted them from FOIA.President Obama is garnering lots of critical attention for his recently signed executive order directing federal agencies to conduct what appears to be a purely symbolic review their regulations for their economic impact, but another presidential document he signed nearly two years ago is anything but figurative.The document is Executive Order 13522, aka "Creating Labor-Management Forums to Improve Delivery of Government Services." As RedState's Labor Union Report notes, this EO was signed when the nation was distracted by the Obamacare debate.What the EO means, however, is that Obama "has turned over a significant portion of the Executive Branch of the United States government to union bosses." This could be the most significant federal policy decision regarding federal labor-management relations since President Kennedy signed the first EO in 1962 granting representatial rights to federal employee unions.In other words, Obama has given veto power on federal policy to the bosses running the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).As dangerous and destructive as that decision is, I guess nobody should be surprised that Obama and his advisors were careful to write the EO in such a manner as to exempt agencies under the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) from having to disclose documents that shed light on how this new management process actually functions.Ostensibly, the purpose of the exemption is to protect federal officials and encourage them to provide their most candid advice to decision-makers. In practice, the pre-decisional exemption is routinely used by federal bureaucrats and political leaders to shield from public exposure documents that reveal the influence of special interests.Special interests like federal employee unions.Go here for RedState's excellent explication and discussion of this very disturbing development.
  Hmmmmm.....How a dictatorship creeps up on you?Read the full story here.

• HT:Northeast Intelligence Network.Constitutional contempt !28 January 2011: This is the most difficult report update I’ve ever filed on any investigative matter on which I’ve worked, and certainly the most important. It strikes directly at the heart of the national security of the United States, which has been under attack from within for the last 75 years or longer. What exists today began with people who are long dead, but whose agendas live on through others to whom the torch has been passed. It is the proverbial rabbit hole that goes deeper than most can fathom.At center stage stands Barack Hussein Obama, the man who currently holds the highest office in the free world. He is the contemporaneous result of decades of treasonous deceptions and socialist penetration into areas of our government that we were warned about by Senator Joe McCarthy, a man whose legacy has been deliberately rewritten so that the mere mention of his name evokes undeserved revulsion by the majority of people in America. Even though Mr. McCarthy has not been with us for over 50 years, his investigative work as a U.S. senator figures prominently into our current state of affairs.The marginalization of McCarthy and the deliberate expunging of historical records exposing the Marxist, Socialist and Communist infiltration into nearly all levels of our government of that era explains why we still find ourselves questioning not only the eligibility status of our current president, but the majority of his background. It is an undeniable fact that Barack Hussein Obama has refused to provide authenticated evidence of his eligibility to occupy our White House, the house of the American people. In fact, he has fought the release of records that would prove, once and for all, this most basic issue, and further refused to release documents that would provide insight into America’s most mysterious president.The mystery behind Obama extends well beyond the birth certificate controversy, although that has grown into the most recognizable issue of late. For better or worse relative to the truly important aspects of Obama, the actions and behavior of Hawaiian Governor Neil Abercrombie have fueled speculation among “birthers,” a pejorative term assigned to Americans who care about constitutional issues and the rule of law. Over a half-century ago, it’s likely that birthers would have been referred to as “McCarthyites” instead. The names have changed, but the template of marginalization is the same.The goals of the globalists have not changed. The desire to subjugate our national sovereignty has never before been so rabid. The closer our enemies within come to accomplishing their objectives, the greater the danger becomes to the freedom granted to us by God and our Constitution.As long as Obama is permitted to occupy the highest office without any person, group or agency demanding answers and accountability, the more dangerous and perilous times become. The longer we allow our elected officials to disregard our demand for answers, dismiss us, ignore us, or impugn the reasonableness of our concerns, the closer we are to losing our Republic.At issue is more than a piece of paper detailing the pedigree of Barack Hussein Obama. We need complete disclosure, and we need it now, not in 2012. Tomorrow might be too late.Hmmmm.....Meanwhile like a cancer  metastasis he's spreading his controll in the whole American administration?Read the full story here.

• US president re-nominates envoy to Turkey.U.S. President Barack Obama late Thursday re-nominated Francis Ricciardone, the recently installed U.S. ambassador in Ankara, to the same position in an effort to extend his position to a full four years, the White House has said.Obama also re-appointed Matt Bryza, ambassador to Azerbaijan, Robert Ford, ambassador to Syria, and Norm Eisen, ambassador to Czech Republic, to the same posts and for the same purpose.While the chances of Ricciardone’s ultimate confirmation appear high, Bryza’s seem slimmer given his unpopularity among many members of the U.S.’ Armenian community."Armenian-American voters are, once again, disappointed that President Obama – having failed to honor any of his many pledges to Armenian American voters – is now, over the strong objections of senators from his own party, pressing for Senate confirmation of his controversial and deeply flawed recess appointment of Matt Bryza as ambassador to Azerbaijan," said Aram Hamparian, executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America."We look to senators to stand up for U.S. interests, American values, and our nation's diplomatic credibility by doing everything in their power to prevent the confirmation of this candidate," he said Friday.Radical Armenians view him as a pro-Turkish and pro-Azerbaijani official and are working against his appointment as U.S. ambassador to Baku. During last year's confirmation hearing at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, pro-Armenian Democratic Senators Robert Menendez and Barbara Boxer vetoed Bryza's new job.Hmmmm.....'Muslims don't commit Genocide'?Read the full story here.

• Davos leaders: Save the euro, and the planet.France's president tried to save the reputation of Europe and its currency, battered by debt crises and worries about whether the continent is being steamrolled by speedier eastern economies.The presidents of South Africa and Mexico, meanwhile, worked to save the planet, sharing notes on hosting climate talks and how to get the U.S. and China - and the business community - to invest in cleaner energy.The overall mood at the World Economic Forum this year is more upbeat than the past two, but by no means celebratory. Thursday was no exception, as leaders, bankers and investors struggled for ideas to get Europe growing again.French President Nicolas Sarkozy sought to shake the euro worriers awake, vowing that he and European partners will "never turn our backs on the euro" and calling it a linchpin of peace and prosperity. That gave an extra boost to the rebounding currency on world markets."The disappearance of the euro would be so cataclysmic that we can't even possibly entertain the idea," Sarkozy said.Despite fears about the 17-nation currency's survival since the European Union and International Monetary Fund, or IMF, had to bail out debt-laden Greece and then Ireland last year, "the euro is still there," he said."Europe has had 60 years of peace and therefore we will never let the euro go or be destroyed. ... I speak as much for my German friends as I do for the French," he said.U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said his country had more confidence now that there is a sustainable expansion - but added that it is not a boom.Geithner, speaking Friday at the World Economic Forum, said in the wake of some expansion in the world's top economy, there was more confidence that slipping back into a recession was avoidable.He said that confidence was justified, citing economists who have forecast growth of between 3 and 4 percent this year and next for the United States.Read the full story here.

• HT:Memri.Clarification by Queen Rania to MEMRI's Report on Holocaust Denial Posts in Her Facebook Account.On January 25, 2011, MEMRI reported on Holocaust denial posts featured on Queen Rania's official Facebook account. On January 26, the "Office of Her Majesty Queen Rania Al-Abdullah" emailed MEMRI, saying that the Facebook page is a "Fan page" and that only "profane" posts are removed by the administrator, since Queen Rania "welcomes full and frank discussions of all issues."It should be noted that the reason that MEMRI chose to report on these posts is that the link to this Facebook "fan page" appears on Queen Rania's official website: http://www.queenrania.jo/. In addition, it appears that questioning whether the Holocaust is a myth was not considered "profane" enough to justify removal. Following is the "Office of Her Majesty Queen Rania Al-Abdullah"'s response to MEMRI's report, followed by the report itself."To Whom It May Concern,Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah's Facebook page is a fan page and, as such, has an administrator. The administrator only removes posts which are profane. No other posts are removed. Any other messages which have been deleted have been removed by those who post them. Queen Rania welcomes full and frank discussions of all issues on her Facebook fan page.Thank you,Office of Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah".Read and see the full story here.

• Hawaii senators hold prayer despite vote to end it.HONOLULU – A group of nine Hawaii senators held hands, bowed their heads and sought God's blessing Wednesday, signaling that they'll still pray despite a vote last week to abandon official invocations.Fears of court challenges compelled the state Senate to end prayers, making it the first legislative body in the nation to do so.The informal prayer Wednesday took place in the Senate chamber before the daily lawmaking session, convened in such a way so as not to contradict the decision to remove invocations from Senate business."The message is that not all senators have eliminated prayer," said Sen. Will Espero, D-Ewa-Ewa Beach-Lower Waipahu, who organized the group. "We're well within the confines of the law."The 25-member Senate changed its rules in a unanimous voice vote last Thursday to end prayers after the American Civil Liberties Union sent lawmakers a letter complaining that the invocations often referenced Jesus Christ, contravening the separation of church and state.Senate President Shan Tsutsui, who did not participate in the prayer session, said he condoned their independent movement to keep prayer alive."It's a matter of free speech," said Tsutsui, D-Wailuku-Kahului. "We do encourage members, at their own will and desire, to go ahead and engage in prayer."He said prayers could be held in the Senate in the future because the chamber's rules are silent on the issue following last week's vote.The brief prayer asked God to bless senators' choices and sought guidance to do right for the people they represent, said participant Sen. Pohai Ryan, D-Lanikai-Waimanalo."Government and faith should be separate. But just because I voted against it doesn't mean I'm not a spiritual person," Ryan said.Read the full story here.

• HT:BigGovernment.Is SEIU Working With Hamas And FARC?Prominent current and former members of SEIU local 73 are being investigated for their potential ties to the Hamas and FARC terrorist groups.Late last year, their homes were raided by the FBI, and they were subpoenaed to appear in front of a grand jury for questioning.Joe Iosbaker, Chief Steward of SEIU 73, and Tom Burke (former board member of SEIU 73) are among 9 people who are subjects in the investigation. None of them have been charged with any crimes, yet.Two days ago, they refused again to appear in front of the grand jury.The interesting thing about these SEIU folks is that they also belong to a violently radical group called the Freedom Road Socialist Organization.It gets worse from there.This is the same group who, along with the other subjects of the FBI investigation, takes credit for staging the 2008 RNC protest-riots.Shockingly, SEIU leadership is supporting their accused members, and the chosen strategy of not cooperating with law enforcement.Beginning at 6:15 in the video below, SEIU’s Matt Brandon gives the union’s full-throated support for targets of the investigation.Let that sink in for a minute. SEIU members are being investigated for potential ties to terrorists, and SEIU leadership is supporting non-cooperation with law enforcement. Can we question their patriotism yet??Imagine Haliburton being investigated by DOJ for potential ties to terrorists, and their management comes out in support of ignoring grand jury subpoenas. Do you think mainstream media outlets might cover it?The bottom line is that in addition to demanding the right to riot on the streets of America, the Progressive movement in this country (including SEIU) wants the right to organize “non-violent” actions with Hamas and FARC.Hmmmm.......Fifth Column anyone?Read and see the full story here.

• Opinion: Gingrich’s take on Obama’s vision.When I first heard that President Obama was using "winning the future" as the theme of his state of the union I thought it was ironically funny.I wrote a book, "Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract with America" in 2005. I used the title "Winning the Future" to make the case that the future was not automatically ours, that we Americans were not winning the future with our current policies and that we would have to make real changes to win.My book was also a warning to Republicans. It was a serious critique of the Republican failure to thoroughly rethink and replace failing government policies and institutions. I was suggesting the Republican Congress, after a decade of power, and the Republican administration were not being bold enough, creative enough or conservative enough.They didn't listen and suffered the consequences in the 2006 and 2008 elections.After telling us government is failing (with a cute story about three different departments dealing with salmon) he then proposed more power and more money for the very institutions he has just suggested were ineffective and inefficient.However, what was most depressing about President Obama's State of the Union address was not its big government liberalism, its clever maneuvering to keep all the big government of the last two years, or its failure to admit how much liberalism had failed to create jobs.What really saddened me about the President's State of the Union address was its shallowness and lack of serious dialogue.For three years we have been in the worst economy since the great depression. Millions of Americans are suffering from unemployment. We just learned that first time applications for unemployment benefits jumped by 51,000 last week. Housing prices are continuing to struggle.What has the president learned from these three years of failure? What should we change to get back to job creation? Why should we expect more spending by failing bureaucracies (President Obama's version of investment) to work?Sadly, there is no Obama plan for winning the future.There is an Obama plan for protecting big government, for pouring more money into broken bureaucracies, for borrowing several trillion more from the Chinese dictatorship.President Obama is on a path to lose the future while pretending to change things. The Republican House of Representatives should aggressively move forward and propose a scale of change to genuinely win the future. Let the American people see the contrast and let the American people decide if they want big government, high taxes, economic decay and dangerous cuts in defense.I believe the American people want to genuinely win the future and will prefer a future of smaller government, more entrepreneurship, more genuine investment within a free market, more replacement of failing policies and institutions and a lot more honesty about the real change we need.Hmmmm.....No to Big government and tyranny!Read the full story here.

• HT:ChallahHuAkbar.Israel's End and the Annihilation of the Jews – Prophesied in the Koran & Bible.In an article in the Egyptian government weekly Al-Liwaa Al-Islami, Hassan Al-Hafanawi wrote that Israel's destruction was inevitable because it was prophesied in the Torah, the New Testament, and the Koran. Following are excerpts."The truly strange thing is that the greatest astrologist of all time, Nostradamus, confirmed in his prophecies that the world would witness the end of a foreign state on Arab lands before the thirtieth year of the [21st] century... In the prophecy of Armageddon in the Book of Revelation, the prophet John [of Patmos] emphasizes that the Kingdom of Israel would come to an end when the planet Pluto became visible from Earth, and this planet actually appeared in 1999, for the first time in some 30,000 years. In [Greek] mythology, [Pluto] is the lord of the dead and god of the underworld. What is more, according to Christian theology, the number 999 signifies the beginning of the anticipated end of the Jews, the beginning of the countdown... Read the full story here.Related :The Month of April 2011 and the Coming Changes in the world.Hmmmm....Now we have an aproximatly time?Read the full story here.

• Portsmouth councillor in imam prayer protest.A Portsmouth councillor walked out of a council meeting because an imam was asked to deliver an opening prayer.Conservative councillor Malcolm Hey left Tuesday night's Portsmouth City Council chamber while Sheikh Fazle Abbas Datoo was speaking.The imam, from the Al Mahdi mosque in Wickham, had been invited by the city's lord mayor Paula Riches.Mr Hey said it was not appropriate for a Muslim to deliver prayers at the start of a full council meeting.His behaviour was heavily criticised by Muslim community group Wessex Jamaat, which said snubbing the imam by walking out was "a serious issue".Mr Hey, ward councillor for Copnor, is a founder member of the Grace Baptist Church in Copnor Road."In a letter, and without any consultation, the lord mayor invited, and will invite, other religions to take part and I was not happy with that," he said."I'm a Christian, not a Muslim, and I do not believe we are praying to the same god."I think we have a tradition of Christianity in this country, our legal system is based on that, and most of our official meetings have some Christian prayers or worship as part of that event."I do not think at this point in time it's reasonable to change our history and have, say, some Muslim tradition brought into that environment".Read the full story here.

• A new Holocaust?Op-ed: Combination of threats may end up leading to mass murder of Israeli Jews.On January 27th, 66 years ago, the Auschwitz extermination camp was liberated. In many countries, it has become Holocaust Memorial Day. On a day which recalls absolute evil, it is natural to ask questions such as: Will Iran succeed in making an atom bomb and if so, when will it become operational? In light of the many years of threats by its leaders, will Iran use it against Israel? These seem to be the most realistic aspects of a far more diverse discussion of whether once again, there can or will happen a “genocide of Jews” (which is a more adequate expression than “Holocaust.”)The Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi told US Air Force General T. Michael Moseley in 2007 that the waterways for oil transport from the Middle East would be threatened by an Iranian bomb. He asked the American army to stop Iran’s nuclear program “by all means possible.” The same request was made in 2009 by the King of Bahrain to US General David Petraeus. Many Iranian leaders have an apocalyptic world view. Former Iranian President Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani said in 2002 that “the use of a nuclear bomb in Israel will leave nothing on the ground, whereas it will only damage the world of Islam.”The publicity around the threat of genocide is focused mainly on Iran. Another possible nuclear threat can manifest itself much faster. From documents exposed by WikiLeaks we know that authorities in the United States, Great Britain and Russia are worried that Islamic terrorists could come into possession of Pakistani atom bombs or fissile material.American Ambassador in Karachi Anne Patterson informed Washington at the beginning of 2009 that it was not probable that an Islamic militant would steal an entire weapon. However, the probability existed that someone in the nuclear installations could slowly smuggle out sufficient material to make a bomb.Once combined, all of this anti-Israel propaganda and related activities could lead to such huge political pressure that Israel would have no choice but to return to indefensible borders – those which Abba Eban once termed “the Auschwitz borders.” If this scenario comes to fruition, it increases the possibility of a - be it delayed - mass murder of Israeli Jews. Read the full story here.

• HT:TheAmericanDream.Moral Relativism.John Adams, the second president of the United States, once made the following statement: "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other." As we promote a return to constitutional principles, perhaps we should also be asking ourselves if the American people are moral enough to uphold and defend our Constitution anymore. Will a political shift in Washington D.C. solve all of our problems, or should we be looking into our own hearts as well? As controversial as it may be to question the morality of the American people, the truth is that after all of the shocking things that have transpired in this nation over the last 50 years someone certainly should be willing to ask the hard questions. It would be hard to deny that moral relativism and moral decay are absolutely rampant in the United States today, and that our moral problems are very much at the heart of many of our problems.A lot of people don't like to talk about morality. In fact, many of my regular readers will probably throw a fit just because I am using the word "morality" in an article. But you know what? Without morality a society cannot function. Our founding fathers knew this. But somehow we have come to believe that morality and politics can be separated.The truth is that when you fully take all morality out of politics you end up with a Hitler or a Stalin or a Mao. You end up with death camps, torture, mass genocide and social chaos.Unfortunately, Americans can't really seem to agree on what is "moral" and what is not anymore. Moral relativism dominates in our society today. Nobody really knows what the "rules" really are.But if we all are living by different rules, then how is society going to continue to function? The truth is that moral relativism simply does not work and our society is starting to find that out.The list posted below is a perfect example of that.Many of the things that I think are "morally wrong" will cause outrage among my regular readers.Why?Because the vast majority of us have become moral relativists. We just make up right and wrong as we go along.But hopefully most Americans that will read this list will realize that these 20 signs are indications that something is very, very wrong with the moral compass of this nation....Read the full story here.

• HT:CreepingSharia.Florida: Muslim leader pleads guilty to assault and battery.(Tallahassee, FL) January 26, 2011 Bassem Alhalabi of United Voices for America (UVA) pled guilty to assault & battery charges on J. Mark Campbell of the Florida Security Council and investigative journalist and Chairman of Americans Against Hate Joe Kaufman.According to the States Prosecutor Tiffany Cruz Bassem Alhalabi took the plea for a reduced sentence of community service and the attendance of the court ordered anger management course.Read and see the full story here.