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MAY 31,  2011

I WISH YOU'D BEEN THERE – AT 10:19 P.M. ET:  I went to a superb talk tonight given by the distinguished journalist, Richard Miniter, late of The Wall Street Journal and other good sheets.  Miniter has studied international terrorism with a clear eye and a sharp mind, and has written some awfully good books on the subject, including his latest, "Mastermind," about the man who planned the 9-11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM), now a resident of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with former offices in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

What struck me about Miniter's presentation was its starkness.  No political correctness.  No university feel-good propaganda.  I will only hit a few highlights, but I urge you to read "Mastermind."

1.  It is a myth that if those wonderful folks in the Muslim world get to know us better, they'll all love us.  Miniter meticulously destroys this fantasy, pointing out that KSM lived in the United States and studied here, and it was here that he learned to hate us.  As an extreme Islamist, he could not, for example, understand how a man he saw could change the oil in his car while listening to music.  It's a sin to listen to music.  And this man was making other people listen as well.  And he could not understand how a house could be built with a window in the kitchen, since people walking by might see a woman washing dishes.  It is immodest for a woman to be seen at a window.  It is degeneracy.  And that's the way they think,.

2.  It is a myth that only the ignorant join Al Qaeda.  Miniter pointed out that the percentage of college graduates in Al Qaeda is vastly higher than the percentage of college graduates in the Muslim world generally.

3.  KSM personally beheaded the American journalist, Daniel Pearl, primarily to live down a reputation within Al Qaeda that he had no backbone.

4.  Half of all the information that we have about Al Qaeda came from KSM...but only after he was subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding.  That information stopped a number of plots, but we haven't gotten much since we ended those techniques during the latter years of the Bush administration.

5. Our new emphasis on killing Al Qaeda members through drone attacks in Pakistan is a terrible mistake, as dead men can't talk.  Al Qaeda is a family, and capturing a leader could result in an information windfall.  Killing him produces nothing.

6.  Eric Holder, our ideological attorney general, is determined to put on trial CIA agents who used enhanced interrogation techniques against Al Qaeda operatives, as a means of purifying the United States.  Some of these agents have already gone into deep debt to defend themselves.  Miniter believes there won't be any prosecutions until after the next election because of public opposition.  But if Obama is reelected, watch out. 

7.  Miniter told several stories about KSM that say something about the character if the man.  KSM received one trial by a military tribunal in Guantanamo.  Some relatives of 9-11 victims were permitted to watch the proceedings from a gallery.  At one point KSM took a sheet of paper, printed the flight numbers of the planes that were crashed on 9-11 on that paper, folded it into a paper airplane, and sailed it toward the 9-11 survivors.

8. KSM studied the techniques used by interrogators, and knew they were only permitted to pour water on his face during waterboarding for 30 seconds.  As the technique was underway, observers saw KSM count out the 30 seconds on his fingers, knowing how soon the ordeal would be over, trying to hold out.

9. KSM is obsessed with showmanship, and would love to have a civilian trial in the U.S., which he'd turn into a platform. 

This was a remarkable lecture, and brought home what we are up against.  It contrasted with the adolescent, childish attitudes floating around American elites, who assure us that the threat is exaggerated, and that Barack can take care of everything.  It isn't exaggerated, and Barack doesn't understand a thing.

May 31, 2011       Permalink

ILLINOIS – AS USUAL – AT 9:53 A.M. ET:  Illinois politics is not a game for children, or for those who crave fairness.  The Republican Party may take a beating in the next Illinois election because of how the oldest political game in town is played.  From The Politico:

The Democratic-controlled Illinois state Legislature is on the verge of passing a radically redrawn congressional map that has the national party basking in the prospect of ousting as many as six GOP House members — likely to be the Democrats’ biggest redistricting gain nationwide.

Final action won’t come until Tuesday, when the session is constitutionally required to end. But already, after a House committee’s party-line vote approving the plan on Sunday night, key players in both parties have stepped forward — without regard for seniority or the preferences of party bosses — to begin staking their claims to the new seats.

COMMENT:  Ah, democracy.  In fairness we should point out that, because of major gains by the GOP in state legislative elections last fall, most states should show increasing Republican strength because of redistricting. 

But the whole redistricting process leaves a sour taste.  It is one of the weaker links in the electoral chain, and there has to be a better way than to see Congressional districts carved up by whoever wins the last election.  But, until something better does come along, I hope our side isn't meek about demanding its share.

May 31, 2011      Permalink

SNIPPET OF THE DAY – AT 9:12 A.M. ET: 

A nursery school teacher in Mexico has been hailed a hero after a video showed her calmly instructing her pupils to duck and cover and sing songs as a fierce gun battle raged outside their school.  A certificate presented by the governor of the northern state of Nuevo Leon said teacher Martha Rivera Alanis showed "outstanding civic courage" in her steady performance during the Friday gunfight in the northern industrial hub of Monterrey.

I can just envision the CD:  "Songs to sing while your neighbors are killing each other."  What a sad commentary on what is happening in Mexico.

May 31, 2011      Permalink

WHAT A FARCE – AT 8:45 A.M. ET:  Rigidly following the old adage that laziness is the best policy, the mainstream media is reporting Libya with a minimal of digging and a maximum of boredom.  But London's Telegraph deserves a medal for pointing out the farce of the president of South Africa trying to broker a deal with Gaddafi.  This is important:

Three months after the Libyan uprising began, the rebels are too weak to press home the advantage afforded by NATO bombing and Muammar Gaddafi refuses to go. This stalemate continues to cause widespread suffering, though it could end sooner than we expected. The mass defection yesterday of senior military officers, previously loyal to Col Gaddafi, is an encouraging sign that his supporters are feeling the strain. But there is no proof yet that the man himself will give way.

Such an impasse calls for mediation, which arrived in Tripoli yesterday in the person of Jacob Zuma, the South African president. The problem is that he is a partial interlocutor, and the timing of his visit coincides with Nato talk of an endgame. The links between Col Gaddafi and Mr Zuma go back to the 1980s, when the Libyan leader supplied money and arms to the African National Congress (ANC) in its struggle against apartheid. Nelson Mandela repaid the favour by campaigning for the lifting of sanctions imposed on Libya after the Lockerbie bombing. The ANC supported the UN resolution in March authorising a no-fly zone but has since criticised the mission. To the rebels Mr Zuma cannot be an honest broker, and the African Union which he represents is viewed as suspect because of the mercenaries from sub-Saharan Africa fighting for Col Gaddafi. The president should have learnt his lesson when his earlier attempt at mediation was rebuffed in April.

COMMENT:  One of the disgraces of the modern press is its coverage of South Africa.  The press championed, properly, the fight against apartheid in that country, but once apartheid ended it pulled the plug on the TV lights and either went home or started a long pattern of press cover-ups of the real South Africa.

Fact is, South Africa is a mess, and its long collusion with a gangster like Gaddafi is part of the mess.  South Africa is a cynical, crime-filled nation, with one of the highest rates of sexual assault in the world.  Many people in the middle class and above must live behind gated walls.

At the same time, South Africa's foreign policy is a public embarrassment.  Several years ago a freedom-tracking organization in New York ranked the world's democracies in terms of the importance of human rights in their foreign policies.  South Africa ranked dead last.  But too many journalists are invested in South Africa as a symbol of resistance to racism to get the story right.  The issue is no longer apartheid.  The issue is what has happened in the years following the demise of apartheid.  Not many people seem interested.

Of course, the real story would reveal Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, the two best-known "rights" activists in South Africa, as somewhat less enthusastic about human decency than their images would have you believe.  Mandela is an America-hater.  Tutu is a vile anti-Israel activist.  Gaddafi never seemed to bother them.

May 31, 2011       Permalink

MICHELE ENERGY – AT 8:13 A.M. ET:  She is apparently ready to battle the smear job that the mainstream media will do on her, just as it did on Sarah Palin.  It's clear Michele Bachmann, congresswoman from Minnesota, is moving toward a presidential race.  From The Politico:

Her formal announcement about whether she’ll run for president isn’t expected for a few weeks, but Rep. Michele Bachmann already has her sights set on President Barack Obama.

Asked Monday night why she’d run for president rather than challenging Democrat Al Franken for his Senate seat, the Minnesota Republican’s answer focused where she’s put much of her energy in recent months: “Because we need a person who is going to stand up to Obamacare,” she said, according to The Washington Post.

“You’ve got to be willing to take on our party, the other party and then explain it to the people,” she told Republicans in New Hampshire. “I know I can make the case to the American people and win them over to our side.”

“Obama has to go and has to be replaced, but not just by anyone,” Bachmann said. “We need someone who is committed to taking that thing out,” she continued, referring to Obama’s health care law, “because it is the crown jewel of socialism, and if it’s allowed to stand we will never get our country back.”

Bachmann said last week that she plans to announce whether she’ll run for the Republican presidential nomination in her childhood hometown of Waterloo, Iowa, in June.

COMMENT:  Sounds like a candidate.  But would she be a good one? 

There are positives and negatives.  On the negative side, she's only a junior congresswoman.  She tends to be rigidly ideological, identifying almost exclusively with the Tea Party movement.  She wins her elections, but by smaller margins than would be expected in her district.  She is not a national figure.  She has a history of making kooky comments that inevitably will be dug up by the same media that sent reporters to Alaska to go through Sarah's trash cans.

On the positive side, she comes prepared.  She does her homework.  She can handle a tough interview, once she puts ideology aside.  She was a respected tax lawyer.  She has the ability to modulate her voice and sound presidential, a serious problem for Sarah.  She has a warm personal story, given her caring for foster children.  She is personally attractive. 

I think it's a tough climb, but I'd like to see her get in.  Even liberal Dan Rather said last week that Bachmann should be taken seriously and could go all the way. 

May 31, 2011       Permalink

BANKERGATE – AT 7:49 A.M. ET:  Is this legit, or has someone learned the meaning of the term "cash settlement"?  From the New York Daily News:

An Egyptian businessman has followed in the footsteps of pervy Frenchman Dominique Strauss-Kahn - sexually abusing a maid in a swanky Manhattan hotel, police said Monday night.

Mahmoud Abdel-Salam Omar, 74, former head of the Bank of Alexandria and now chairman of a leading Middle Eastern salt company, is accused of locking the 44-year-old hotel employee inside his $900-a-night room at The Pierre on E. 61st St. off Fifth Ave.

He had called for room service requesting tissues and answered the door in his pajamas, police sources said. When the maid, whom he had not specifically requested, arrived at his 10th-floor room, he asked her to put the box of tissues on a table, sources said. As she moved toward the table, he locked the door.

"He locked her in the room and had her trapped," a police source said.

And you know what allegedly happened next.

Omar then asked the maid for her phone number, a police source said. After she gave him a made-up number he let go, and she fled the room.

This is apparently what passes for suave in Egypt:  First, you abuse the maid, then you ask for her phone number.

The incident happened about 6 p.m. on Sunday but was not reported to police until Monday morning.

"Experienced NYPD detectives found the complainant to be credible," said Paul Browne, the NYPD's top spokesman.

If our guys say it's credible, it probably is.

The alleged perp should have told them that this is all part of the Arab Spring.

May 31, 2011     Permalink

MAY 30,  2011

LUCKY TO BE AN AMERICAN – AT 11:14 P.M. ET:  And it's a good day to reflect on that.  Consider this story, which reflects the horrible deterioration of conditions in Egypt:

Cairo (CNN) -- A senior Egyptian general admits that "virginity checks" were performed on women arrested at a demonstration this spring, the first such admission after previous denials by military authorities.

The allegations arose in an Amnesty International report, published weeks after the March 9 protest. It claimed female demonstrators were beaten, given electric shocks, strip-searched, threatened with prostitution charges and forced to submit to virginity checks.

At that time, Maj. Amr Imam said 17 women had been arrested but denied allegations of torture or "virginity tests."

But now a senior general who asked not to be identified said the virginity tests were conducted and defended the practice.

"The girls who were detained were not like your daughter or mine," the general said. "These were girls who had camped out in tents with male protesters in Tahrir Square, and we found in the tents Molotov cocktails and (drugs)."

The general said the virginity checks were done so that the women wouldn't later claim they had been raped by Egyptian authorities.

"We didn't want them to say we had sexually assaulted or raped them, so we wanted to prove that they weren't virgins in the first place," the general said. "None of them were (virgins)."

None?  Yeah, I'll bet.  This is what is happening to the Egyptian revolution.  And yet our president, and his interns in the mainstream media, still talk about the Arab spring as if it's real.

Be glad you're an American.

May 30, 2011       Permalink

BY THE NUMBERS – AT 11:21 A.M. ET:  Next year's election may well turn on registration, and the latest trends give the GOP an opening in many states.  From AP:

While Democratic registrations ballooned prior to the 2008 election, the numbers have declined in several important states, including:

- Florida: Democrats added more than 600,000 registered voters between 2006 and 2008, giving Obama about 4.8 million registered Democrats to help his cause. Registered Democrats now number 4.6 million in the Sunshine State. Republican registrations have slipped from 4.1 million in 2008 to about 4.05 million in mid-March, the most recent data available. Nearly 2.6 million voters in Florida are unaffiliated.

- Pennsylvania: Democrats maintain a 1.5 million voter advantage in registrations over Republicans, but their numbers have dwindled since Obama's election. There were 4.15 million registered Democrats through mid-May, compared with about 4.48 million in 2008. Democrats added about a half-million voters to their rolls in the two years prior to the 2008 election. Republicans currently have more than 3 million registered voters, compared with 3.2 million in 2008. About 500,000 Pennsylvania voters are unaffiliated.

- Iowa: Republicans have gained ground in the state that launched Obama's presidential bid. GOP registrations increased from about 625,000 voters in 2008 to nearly 640,000 in early May. Democrats, meanwhile, have fallen from about 736,000 voters in 2008 to about 687,000 in May. Nonpartisan voters remain the largest bloc in the Hawkeye State, representing more than 762,000 voters.

Democrats' numbers have also fallen in North Carolina, where Obama became the first Democratic nominee to carry the state since 1976, and Nevada, a high-growth state that has been battered by the recession.

Several Democratic-friendly cities have not been immune, either. Philadelphia had 880,000 registered Democrats in 2008; that number has fallen below 800,000. Denver, where Democrats held their 2008 convention, had about 200,000 registered Democrats in November 2008 - that's now down to about 120,000. In Mecklenburg County, N.C., whose county seat, Charlotte, is the site of the 2012 Democratic National Convention, Democrats' numbers have fallen after major gains leading up to the 2008 election.

COMMENT:  Of course, these are tentative figures, pending registration drives this year and next...and Democrats are very good at registration drives.  Why, in Chicago, even the dearly departed come out to register.  Well, they don't exactly come out.  They stay in, but they register anyway. 

The keys for the GOP will be an outstanding presidential candidate and a set of policies that are clear, convincing, and easily explained.  This election can be won, but we can never count on a political pro like Obama to lose it.

May 30, 2011       Permalink

NO HOLIDAY IN THE MIDEAST – AT 10:39 A.M. ET:  We commemorate (not celebrate) Memorial Day here, but there is no holiday in the Mideast.  The "Arab Spring" is turning into a very bad farce.  From Fox:

A Yemeni medical official says soldiers loyal to Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, have stormed a protest camp in the southern city of Taiz and fired on the crowds indiscriminately, killing at least 20.

After the attack on the anti-government protesters, residents say Yemen's air force launched an offensive against Al Qaeda and Islamic militants who overran the city of Zinjibar. Residents also told Reuters that Zinjibar was being shelled with artillery.

Hospital sources told Reuters that at least 120 were wounded in the Taiz attack.

The crowds gathered to demand the release of a fellow protester who was arrested Saturday, Reuters reports.
Security forces first tried to clear the square in Taiz with water cannons, tear gas and sound bombs, sending thousands rushing for shelter.

At last report, Al Qaeda was still in control of Zinjibar, the first town in the Mideast it has taken outright.  The death of bin Laden has not stopped the Al Qaeda crazies.  Their movement is built on an ideology, not a person.

From the Israeli prime minister:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Monday that Egypt's new military government was having a "hard time" controlling the rise of international terror organizations in the Sinai Peninsula.

"Egypt is having a hard time realizing its sovereignty in Sinai," Netanyahu said during a meeting of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. "International terror organizations are stirring in Sinai and their presence is increasing due to Sinai's connection to Gaza."

And the quote of the day belongs to columnist Ben Stein, who tells it like it is, unlike some journalists who are career-invested in boosting the "Arab Spring":

Now, I am going to tell you the truth about the so-called "Arab Spring," and about the Middle East generally right now.

First, the "Arab Spring" as a force for democracy, human rights and peace in Egypt seems to me to be a fraud.

The dictator and his entourage who were kicked out in Egypt were pro-West, a bit restrained on Israel, open to free enterprise, and resistant to Iranian-sponsored terror.

Egypt is now rapidly becoming anti-Israel, pro-Iran, pro the Iranian-sponsored terrorist group Hamas, and very far from being pro-human rights. They are arresting businessmen right and left in Egypt just for the crime of being successful. They have arrested Mubarak's sons, and have said they plan to try Mubarak.

The most potent of the political forces in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, hates the United States, loathes Israel, condemns the killing of bin Laden (whom they praised as a martyr), and have been wedded to terror for their entire existence.

COMMENT:  And what does our president have to say about all this?  Well, just about everything and anything.  He's made so many contradictory remarks that you can pick any of them out of a hat.  But I do hope he has someone on his staff who knows what's actually happening on the ground in Egypt and elsewhere, and cares.

May 30, 2011        Permalink

OUR LATEST DELUSIONS – AT 10:29 A.M. ET:  Our last post last night dealt with the price of gasoline.  One way to (eventually) bring that price down is more drilling for the plentiful oil we have in the United States.  But wait.  There are risks.  There are sins.  There are...lizards.  From the Houston Chronicle:

People in Midland like to say God felt such remorse for the dry, dusty landscape that he decided to give it oil.
He also gave it the dunes sagebrush lizard, and now, the tiny, sand-dwelling reptile could put a halt to oil and gas exploration and production in parts of West Texas and harm school budgets across the state.

The federal government has proposed that the lizard, which has all but disappeared from these parts, be listed as an endangered species — a designation that could save it from extinction but slow the pace in one of the nation's most prolific oil patches.

Oilmen and some state and local officials fear that adding the lizard to the list could put the brakes on drilling, road and pipeline construction and other activities - at least while the federal government studies their impact on the habitat in seven West Texas counties, including the top two oil-producing counties in the state.

"It's reptile dysfunction," said Jerry Patterson, the state's land commissioner, who has filed comments with federal officials in opposition of the proposed listing.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is seeking legal protection for the lizard because of the dramatic loss of its habitat due to oil and gas activity and cattle grazing.

COMMENT:  I knew cattle were evil and disruptive.  Cattle and people.  If only we didn't have to have them, we could have such an environmentally perfect world. 

We are in the midst of an energy crisis that impacts not only our economy, but our national security.  I'm all for lizards.  I've known a number of them in Hollywood.  But maybe this one time we can ask not what we can do for lizards, but ask instead what lizards can do for our country. 

I'm afraid, though, the lizards will win.  Look at who's in power.

May 30, 2011     Permalink