Political Digest January 25, 2010

I post articles because I think they are of interest. Doing so doesn’t mean that I necessarily agree with every—or any—opinion in the posted article.

UK students recruited for Somali jihad
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6999929.ece
Poverty causes terrorism the leftists say, including apparently being a poor student in a good university. Excerpt: STUDENTS from some of Britain’s top universities are travelling to Somalia to fight with a terrorist group linked to Al-Qaeda. Almost a dozen young British Muslims, including a female medical researcher, are said recently to have joined Al-Shabaab, an extremist rebel organisation blamed for hundreds of deaths in the east African state.

Hezbollah's relocation of rocket sites to Lebanon's interior poses wider threat
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/22/AR2010012204494.html
Wish BO would send them the Islam-is-a-religion-of-peace memo and end this stuff. Excerpt: Hezbollah has dispersed its long-range-rocket sites deep into northern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, a move that analysts say threatens to broaden any future conflict between the Islamist movement and Israel into a war between the two countries.

Making license plates and terrorists
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/editorials/making_license_plates_and_terrorists_RcNNaVkn44jxT7NNq7oKQO
Can’t do anything about it—that would be “Islamophobic,” and career-ending. Better innocent Americans should die. Hope it’s not your family. Excerpt: It should come as no surprise that up to three dozen American Islamists re vealed this week to have skipped off to terror training camps in Yemen were radicalized in US prisons. The surprise would be if corrections officials did anything about it.

Bin Laden claims Christmas terror attempt in new tape
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2010-01-24-bin-laden-tape-christmas-attack_N.htm?csp=24&RM
Excerpt: Osama bin Laden endorsed the failed attempt to blow up a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day and threatened new attacks against the United States in an audio message released Sunday that appeared aimed at asserting he maintains some direct command over al-Qaeda-inspired offshoots. However, U.S. officials and several researchers who track terrorist groups said there was no indication bin Laden or any of his top lieutenants had anything to do with or even knew in advance of the Christmas plot by a Yemen-based group that is one of several largely independent al-Qaeda franchises. A U.S. State Department spokesman said al-Qaeda's core leadership offers such groups strategic guidance but depends on them to carry it out.

PM Netanyahu You cannot negotiate peace with an enemy who wants to destroy you
www.pmo.gov.il/PMOEng/Communication/EventsDiary/eventforeignpress200110.htm
Excerpt: And I believe that this requires in the case of a future settlement with the
Palestinians, this will require an Israeli presence on the eastern side of a prospective Palestinian state. I’m not saying how it will be done, I’m not saying in what format, but I’m saying based on recent experience, we’ve seen that in Lebanon we had an international guarantee – the United States Resolution – 1701 – an insurance policy signed by the entire international failed miserably and Hizbollah is just pouring in weapons, more and more weapons to fire into Israel. And you know that we had also an understanding with other countries when we left Gaza about the Philadelphi corridor and I appreciate the efforts made by President Mubarak and the Egyptian government to stop it, but you can see that there is massive infiltration continuing all the time.

Too Much of a Bad Thing
http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=MThlOTBiN2QwNDgzNTk0MDBkZjNhYzM2MWQyODUyOWY
Excerpt: So what went wrong? According to Barack Obama, the problem is he overestimated you dumb rubes’ ability to appreciate what he’s been doing for you. “That I do think is a mistake of mine,” the president told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “I think the assumption was if I just focus on policy, if I just focus on this provision or that law or if we’re making a good rational decision here, then people will get it.” But you schlubs aren’t that smart. You didn’t get it. And Barack Obama is determined to see that you do. So the president has decided that he needs to start “speaking directly to the American people.” Wait, wait! Come back! Don’t all stampede for the hills! He only gave (according to CBS News’s Mark Knoller) 158 interviews and 411 speeches in his first year. That’s more than any previous president — and maybe more than all of them put together. But there may still be some show out there that didn’t get its exclusive Obama interview — I believe the top-rated Grain & Livestock Prices Report — 4 A.M. Update with Herb Torpormeister on WZZZ-AM Dead Buzzard Gulch Junction’s Newstalk Leader is still waiting to hear back from the White House. But what will the president be saying in all these extra interviews? In that interview about how he hadn’t given enough interviews, he also explained to George Stephanopoulos what that wacky Massachusetts election was all about: “The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office,” said Obama. “People are angry and they’re frustrated, not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years but what’s happened over the last eight years.” Got it. People are so angry and frustrated at George W. Bush that they’re voting for Republicans. In Massachusetts. Boy, I can’t wait for that 159th interview.

Rahm Emanuel Warned Not To Make Son’s Bar Mitzvah In Israel
http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/article.php?p=45762
Excerpt: Chevron activists Baruch Marzel and Itamar Ben-Givir, who also serve as parliamentary aides to MK (Ichud HaLeumi) Dr. Michael Ben-Ari, have sent a letter to White House Chief of Staff Rom Emanuel suggesting he celebrate his son's bar mitzvah elsewhere, not at the Kosel as reports indicate he plans to do. In their letter they quote Maseches Avos, in which we learn a child reaching bar mitzvah is responsible for adherence to mitzvos, stating that his example and observance of mitzvos to date is as far from what the Torah demands "as East and West", and even worse, that "he is a Hellenist, working against Israel and Eretz Yisrael". They point out that "to our sorrow? during the last year, President Barak Obama's tenure in the White House, "You have worked against the State of Israel and the Jewish People". They remind Emanuel of his recent comment to Israel's consul general to Los Angeles, in which he is quoted as saying "I have had it with the Israelis". "You are not the first Jew in history trying to advance himself at the expense of his people.

Voters spurn the 'boob bait' of the educated class
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Voters-spurn-the-_boob-bait_-of-the-educated-class-82433262.html
Excerpt: When the New York Times columnist David Brooks first sat down with Barack Obama, they talked a lot about Burke. That's Edmund Burke, the 18th century conservative British politician and philosopher. Not Jimmy Burke, the 20th century Massachusetts pol, who said that all you had to know to serve in Congress was "Social Security and shoes." The cold hard numbers in the Massachusetts special Senate election this week tell you something important about the appeal of Barack Obama and his policies on his 365th day in office. Democrat Martha Coakley did fine among the voters that would be impressed by your knowledge of Edmund Burke. But she got a thumbs down and Republican Scott Brown got a thumbs up from the children and grandchildren of the people Jimmy Burke represented 40 or 50 years ago.

Axelrod: No W.H. shakeup
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/31900.html
Excerpt: President Obama is moving swiftly to try to recover from his worst week in the White House, speeding up his schedule for engaging in the 2010 political races and planning to use his State of the Union address on Wednesday to show the public a feisty side, White House senior adviser David Axelrod said in a telephone interview with POLITICO. He vowed, however, that there will be “no reinventing” of the president, even though “Washington loves a shakeup or human sacrifice.” “There’s no need to,” Axelrod said. “We’re governing through difficult times. There’s a sense of impatience and frustration about the state of the economy, but also about the nature of how Washington works. That was true in 2008, and it’s true now. The president is as determined to deal with those things now as he was then.”

Despite vows, Dems following similar script on health reform
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/77709-despite-vows-dems-despite-vows-dems-following-similar-script-on-health-reform
Excerpt: Parallels between Obama’s and Clinton’s 1994 health efforts emerge despite great pains taken by Democrats. Democrats have taken great pains to avoid the healthcare missteps Bill Clinton made, but this year is looking more and more like a rerun of 1994. Healthcare reform in the 111th Congress is a long way from dead, but it’s closer than it ever has been to being six feet under. Obama and congressional Democrats vowed they had learned from Clinton’s errors. But a growing number of similarities between Obama’s healthcare push and Clinton’s have emerged since Republican Scott Brown won Sen. Edward Kennedy’s (D-Mass.) old seat in Tuesday’s special election. Following that devastating blow to the White House, some Democrats on Capitol Hill pronounced the House- and Senate-passed bills as dead. Obama quickly floated an idea of focusing on the “core elements” of healthcare reform. Some House Democrats quickly embraced the idea, saying they want to pass health reform on a piecemeal basis.

Ten reasons health reform stalled
http://info.aaos.org/exchange/bob@aahks.org/Inbox/News%20from%20The%20Hill:%20Ten%20reasons%20health%20reform%20stalled.EML?Cmd=open
Excerpt: President Barack Obama’s hope for healthcare reform is in peril, and it’s not all because of Scott Brown’s win in Massachusetts. The tough spot in which Democrats find themselves is the result of a dozens of decisions made over the past year. Some of those strategic moves were key in getting the House and Senate to pass their respective health bill. However, the clock was running out – even though few realized it at the time.

GOP division could keep Va. seat in Democrats' hands
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/23/AR2010012302951.html?wpisrc=newsletter
Get the RINO, even if it keeps Pelosi in charge! Excerpt: By all rights, Tom Perriello should have almost no chance to win reelection to Congress. He's a stimulus-backing, health-care-reform-loving, cap-and-trade-supporting liberal Democrat who represents a conservative central Virginia district where antipathy to the president and all things Washington runs high. Perhaps too high. Perriello's opponents are so divided about who is the best conservative to replace him that they are transforming what should be a gimme for Republicans into a national emblem of GOP strife, potentially setting up a replay of the special election in Upstate New York in November that handed the Democrats a seat in a region they hadn't represented in more than 100 years. As in New York, Republican leaders in Virginia are backing a moderate state lawmaker, Sen. Robert Hurt, whose record enrages many conservatives, including a disparate band of Tea Party activists. To them, Hurt is not a real conservative because of his past support for tax increases, and they're promising a third-party challenge if he wins the nomination. And lurking on the sidelines is Virgil H. Goode Jr., the former GOP congressman who lost to Perriello by 727 votes and has hinted at running as an independent.

Taxing the banks
Every average Joe who cheered BO’s attack on the banks—yeah, go get ‘em—might want to check how that has affected their 401k balance since it was announced.

New Airport Security Policies
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZfbTlYpKYo
This is humor. I think.