Don't miss Michael's post and lively comments.

Man. There has got to be some buyer’s remorse in the Democratic Party right now.

That from Michael Totten. I agree there should be a severe case, but judging from the Democratic bloggers and spinners, there's no evidence of it. I still can't believe they picked Kerry, but among the faithful, I'm not sure there's any evidence of buyers Remorse. They've deluded themselves into thinking that Bush is evil incarnate.

Fear and hatred of Bush is not enough to win the White House. Tom Junod's essay in Esquire, The Case for George W. Bush tells us why.

The people who dislike George W. Bush have convinced themselves that opposition to his presidency is the most compelling moral issue of the day. Well, it's not. The most compelling moral issue of the day is exactly what he says it is, when he's not saying it's gay marriage. The reason he will be difficult to unseat in November—no matter what his approval ratings are in the summer—is that his opponents operate out of the moral certainty that he is the bad guy and needs to be replaced, while he operates out of the moral certainty that terrorists are the bad guys and need to be defeated. The first will always sound merely convenient when compared with the second. Worse, the gulf between the two kinds of certainty lends credence to the conservative notion that liberals have settled for the conviction that Bush is distasteful as a substitute for conviction—because it's easier than conviction.

Kerry's appeal seems to be strongest among those who believe Ted Kennedy, “The only thing we have to fear is four more years of George Bush.”

By no means am I qualified to predict November's winner. As I said before, the only winners I've voted for since 1976 were Carter and W. But I can't help but believe that Kerry is setting himself up for a Dukakis-like defeat. That can only be good for the far right... Why did they have to nominate Kerry?

Scott Ott at Scrappleface wins, hands down with:Kerry to Tell Undecided Voters: 'I'm One of You'

Ted Kennedy spoke about fear during his speech to the convention. James Lileks shows us why Kerry will not win in November. He doesn't see the threat that Islamists pose to all of us.

What else do you need to know? As Teddy Kennedy said in his convention speech: “The only thing we have to fear is four more years of George Bush.” It’s really quite simple, isn’t it? We live in a manufactured climate of fear ginned up by war-crazed neocon overlords. There is no threat. The only thing we have to fear is Bush, who sits as we speak in the Oval Office sucking the marrow from Whoopi’s shin-bones.

If so, I wonder why anyone agreed to the stringent security policies that characterize this year’s conventions. Why the bomb-sniffing dogs? Why the snipers? Why the metal detectors, the invasive inspection of bags? Is it all an elaborate defense against Bush crashing the party and setting off a bomb belt, shouting God is Great, y’all!

No, they’re fearful of something else.

Damned if I know what, though. Damned if I know.

From the Jerusalem Post, Kerry's aides complain: Sharon prefers Bush.

On the other side.

The Lebanese minister of information, Michael Samaha, also discussed the election on Syrian TV on March 30: "The most important thing that could happen in the coming American elections if Kerry wins is that the neo-conservatives leave. They have a complete ideology regarding their treatment of the world and specifically the Middle East and the Near East to which we belong. If they leave, the real American America will return."

Does anyone doubt that, in their eyes, neo-conservative = JEW?

Those three words: Arabs, Journalism and Truth, don't have a lot in common. A case in point might be the press reports during the Six Day War coming out of the Arab capitols. In 1967 the Arab press reports, which had no resemblance to reality, magnified the shock of their defeat.

This article by Dr. Mamoun Fandy, in London's Al-Sharq Al-Awsat Daily translated by MEMRI, sheds some light into the phenomenon.

"'There are no journalists in the Arab world,' the editor of one of the Arabic papers said to me when I asked him why [his paper] was not covering a particular journalistic story. I heard the exact same complaint from one publisher who said, 'We have authors, but no journalists.'...

..."The first [problem] is that our culture is not like the Catholic culture that emphasizes confession, particularly when the individual has sinned. Likewise, an individual confessing a crime against himself or others [is considered] unacceptable among us. We raise our sons [with the belief] that it is not manly to confess, to cry, or to acknowledge that repression and oppression have broken an individual's determinationand perhaps damaged his masculinity.

"Our newspapers will focus only on heroic deeds and overcoming difficulties. This is praiseworthy. But there are many personal defeats, retreats, and torments, and we must let those who have experienced them talk about them. This requires change in the newspaper culture, or in the so-called newsroom culture.

It's worth a couple of minutes of your time to read it all.

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Bloggers credentialed? I give them a C-. I was looking forward to reading reports about the press room and reporters, about the media happening s that don't make the newspapers and broadcasts. I've been disappointed. Like NZ Bear I was hoping the bloggers would be covering the journalists and the process more than the convention. Instead the journalists seem to have co-opted them by showering them with attention and interviews.

Bloggers at the convention have done very little to highlight the strengths of the blogosphere. Instead they are generally coming across as a group of wannabe journalists. In the last couple of days they'd do well to take the Bear's advice.

An exception is The Command Post's Election Coverage, like this report from the Purple Shamrock.

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What's shocking to me is that the EUnuchs even acknowledge there is a difference of opinion with the Arabs. But as Haaretz reports, (thank you Kathy Kinsley) the Europeans are shocked that the Arabs won't even pretend that they don't hate Jews:

Arab states at the UN are trying to foil a proposal to raise a vote condemning anti-Semitism in the General Assembly this September.

At a closed meeting held recently in New York, UN ambassadors from Arab and EU countries met and the Arabs made clear that they do not accept the initiative for the UN General Assembly to condemn anti-Semitism.

The blunt language used by the Arabs describing their opposition, and their plans to use diplomatic means to prevent the resolution from reaching a vote, shocked the Europeans, said a UN source...

...According to UN sources, the Arab delegates were also critical of a UN seminar on anti-Semitism held last month. A senior Western diplomat said that among the Arabs who spoke with the Europeans was PLO observer Nasser al Kidwe, and he was particularly outspoken in his objections to a UN General Assembly resolution on anti-Semitism.

The source said Kidwe attacked the content of UN Secretary general Koffi Anan's speech to the seminar last month, particularly Annan's pride in the cancelation of the 1975 Zionism equals racism resolution. "The Europeans were depressed when they left the meeting," said the source.

Just facts, a list of facts regarding the Arab-Israeli War from Dennis Prager...

Number of U.N. Security Council resolutions on the Middle East between 1948 and 1991: 175

Number of these resolutions against Israel: 97

Number of these resolutions against an Arab state: 4

Number of Arab countries that have been members of the U.N. Security Council: 16

Number of times Israel has been a member of the U.N. Security Council: 0

Number of U.N. General Assembly resolutions condemning Israel: 322

Number of U.N. General Assembly resolutions condemning an Arab country: 0

...have an easy fast. For a bit of information on the Fast of Tisha b'Av, see last year's post for a list of catastrophes suffered by Jews through the ages... all on the ninth of the month of Av.

I wound up playing with this after visiting Redheaded Ramblings. Go let your inner arteest free for a minute or two...

First the New York Times, now: Arab Press Attacks Arafat MEMRI has the translations.

** "Finally, the Palestinians have begun today to take the reins into their own hands. They have begun to act directly against Arafat's men, the czars of corruption… Arafat himself must go, as head of the corrupt PA and as someone whose political survival is pointless...

**"Arafat has destroyed the foundation of the life of the Palestinian people, and led it to terrorism, destruction, and pointless death out of despair...

**"All the PA institutions are corrupt and illegitimate. Corruption is a contagious disease, and President Arafat allowed this disease to spread until it turned the Palestinian body politic into a reeking, rotting corpse…

**...does Mr. Arafat realize that his time is past and that he must retire willingly – or that things will reach their natural end in other ways?

Shabbat Shalom, I'm reading the Haftarah tomorrow... i need a little more practice.

click image to enlarge

Margot Dudkevitch reports on changes in PLO text books for last year. For the first time they delineated borders for the West Bank and Gaza. Still

the entire territory encompassed by Israel, the West Bank and Gaza is referred to as Palestine, according to an Israeli government report.

These are the two most significant changes in textbooks published by the Palestinian Authority's Education Ministry for the 2003-2004 school year. The PA textbooks continue to deny Israel's right to exist and claim that the only solution to the current conflict is violence, according to a report by the coordinator of government activities in the territories.

The report, which was obtained exclusively by The Jerusalem Post, says Palestine, not Israel, appears on all of the books' maps and all the village, cities, and towns located in Israel are referred to by their Arabic names.

The PA does not teach pupils about co-existence or peace and the overall policy "appears to be one of delegitimization of the State of Israel and Zionists," the document stated.

D'ya think?

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The New Republic's Martin Peretz observes:

On the day that the 216th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) voted to begin divesting its holdings in corporations that do business with and in Israel, there was a pitched street battle in and around Bethlehem. It was not a battle between Jews and Arabs or between Hamas and Fatah. It was a battle between Christians and Muslims. Bethlehem used to be a largely Christian city. It is, after all, where Jesus was born, so where the Church of the Nativity stands. Roman Catholics, Armenians, and Greek Orthodox have lived and flourished there since the first centuries of early Christianity. No longer. As soon as the Palestinian Authority took over in 1994, the Christians of Bethlehem began to leave, many in an understandable panic. For all its secular pretenses, the PA is a militant Muslim jihadist show. A Christian population that not so long ago stood at roughly 75 percent may now be as low as 30 percent. Many of them have come to the U.S. But American churches have averted their eyes from what is really tantamount to an expulsion of Christians not only from Bethlehem but from the Holy Land itself. The Presbyterians have also turned the other cheek by siding with those who torment their own. And they have disavowed Christian Zionism as a heresy. Of course, there are only two and a half million Presbyterians in the U.S.--way down from what once made up this proud church. Moreover, there is growing alienation between the political leadership of the church and lay believers, as there is in the Episcopal communion, much of this revolving around the implicit support of the clerisy for Palestinian terro

He's also got some thoughts on Sandy Berger, Jacques Chirac and Joe Wilson that are worth a look.

Malcolm S over at Occam's Toothbrush gets my attention for the second time this week, with this little reminder from Ralph Peters.

August will mark the anniversary of the needless death of tens of thousands of innocents, of callous disregard for the widespread suffering of the weak on the part of imperious governments.

No, the anniversary has nothing to do with Iraq: It will have been one year since a heat wave swept Europe, killing more than 25,000 of the elderly and unprotected (15,000 in glorious France alone).

The death toll wrought by nonchalant neglect in Europe last August remains considerably higher than the total number of fatalities in Iraq since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom—friendly, enemy and civilian combined.

The American Left never blinked as the real “old Europe” perished in the multitudes. There wasn’t a whisper of criticism of those “more humane” European governments whose apparatchiks refused to interrupt their summer vacations to respond to the mass dying among Europe’s pensioners. Those admirable European health-care systems failed horrendously—yet they remain, of course, the models to which we should aspire (no matter that every European I know prefers private care, if they can afford it).

Had the Bush administration allowed over 25,000 elderly Americans to die while our president cut brush at his ranch, howls of outrage would have shaken the heavens. The Left would have reminded us all of the virtues of Euro-socialism and the evils of a marketplace society.

I know "The Left" is kind of a nebulous term, but as I use it, I refer to many, but not all, in the anti-war crowd, most, but not all, of the Hate Bush crowd... Teddy Kennedy is Left... Barbara Streisand is Left... Michael Moore is Left.

Within today's Left there is a great deal of something resembling willful ignorance... an inability acknowledge reality which does not conform to the Leftist Ideal.... another nebulous concept. Some brilliant people, (and many not so brilliant) have fallen into the abyss of leftist dogma. It's hurting us all.

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Happy two year blogiversary to In Context.

My blogspot archives are acting up, so I'm going to republish the story here that I wrote in March of 2003, when reports of an "Iraqi motorized column" made the news. This article in Arab News, A Day at the Races reminded me of the story below... They even have a photo. Actually the races I attended were pretty close to the region that Tony Walsh describes, and his description of the races is very similar... Read them both.

From March 27, 2003:

News of an Iraqi convoy heading south out of Baghdad reminded me of a trip to Dubai in 1985.

I was in a small group of Naval Officers being hosted by the British ex-patriot community while visiting for a few days. We spent the first afternoon "Wadi Bashing" which was the Brit name for 4-wheeling through the dry riverbeds, or wadis, in the desert. The terrain is generally very rough and mountainous, but some of the wadis had huge, flat sandy areas with hard sand and dunes that was perfect for some rough driving in the Land Rovers. It was also perfect for a desert picnic. I couldn’t have enjoyed myself more.

The following evening, I was invited to tag along with my hosts on an outing to the camel races. Accepting the invite was one of the best decisions I made that trip. I was simply looking forward to another drive in the desert, I had no idea how much more fun this one would be.

Early in the evening I was picked up and we headed out of town, back into the desert. We drove for quite a while before we turned off the road into one of the many wadis. The terrain was very rough, almost mountainous, although they weren't very high, but it was very rough and rocky on both sides of the narrow wadi. But as we rounded the first bend we found ourselves in one of those enormous flat areas I had noticed the day before.

At that point, the riverbed was probably a little more than 2 miles long before it disappeared around another bend. There were sharp cliffs on one side and a gentler, though more rocky and hilly terrain on the other side. It made a pseudo-canyon a bit less than a mile wide. At the near end there were 25 or 30 cars jumbled together with a few more following behind us. Land Rovers, Suzuki SUVs, Jeeps, Toyota pick-ups, and Mercedes diesel sedans were stopped haphazardly with small groups of friends milling around and socializing in an Arab-style desert tailgate party. There was plenty of food, but the ubiquitous question was “Brown or White?”... Whiskey or Gin... I thought it was strange that everyone was so very discreet about all of the overt drinking, but absolutely no one was bothered by it in the least. Anyway, it wasn't the only oddity.

We talked about the strange mixture of the group, British men and women... many Arabs... an American, and even a small group of Japanese men. We laughed a lot as we just enjoyed the company, the food and drink, and the beautiful desert evening. Although I noticed a few young boys on camels watching our curious group from the perimeter, I didn’t see anything that looked like a racetrack or even a race. I could see that some of the men were betting, but that was the only indication of racing that I noticed.

I was engrossed in a young lady's story and trying to get my drink freshened up, when suddenly all hell broke loose. Everyone but me was overcome with the need to get to the closest vehicle and get out of Dodge as fast as they could. For a moment I was confused by all the activity, but I figured I better move or be left behind, so I made a dash to the Land Rover I arrived in. I did not appreciate the urgency of the situation. What followed was a sight that will stick with me forever.

The boys on camels I had noticed earlier, about 10 of them, had bolted from one end of the wadi heading for the other. They guided their loping camels to some unseen finish line somewhere up the wadi. In their trail was a fleet of cars and SUVs and 4x4's speeding through the desert, dust flying everywhere. No one following any road, all just speeding across the sand.

Some vehicles had people hanging out of windows, shaking their fists and waving their arms. I saw jeeps with people standing up on the seats holding onto the roll bars with one hand and drinks in the other. I saw heads sticking out of sun roofs of sedans, all wildly cheering these boys while avoiding running into the other spectators. I'm sure some of them waved fists full of cash.

I imagined myself dressed in thobe and kaffiyah and participating as a fun-loving Yosemite Sam, charging with a horde of other cartoon characters toward some comic catastrophe. Daffy in a Kaffiyah, Bugs in his Foreign Legion Uniform, Popeye as Bedouin, along with Bluto/Ali Baba and his 40 thieves. My senses overloaded my imagination.

I was a little slow on the uptake and didn’t really follow the camel race, I don't think I even realized it had started. In my mind we weren’t watching the race we WERE the race. I found myself in the middle of some sort of a combination of Gumball Rally, Penelope Pitstop, Bugs Bunny and Raiders of the Lost Ark Keystone Cops slapstick comedy. If Mel Brooks had done Blazing Camel Saddles, this scene would have closed it. It was, a genuINE cluster-@*$#, and to this day I'm amazed no one was hurt and no cars were damaged.

It’s that haphazard collection of vehicles, that comical image of a disorganized gaggle racing through the desert with dust clouds flying, which is forever burned into my memory that came to my mind when I read reports of “light vehicles” moving south out of Baghdad. I'm sure I had more fun racing with the camels than they had racing into battle. And I'm sure the Iraqi column was no more organized.

Last week I wrote about the well-intentioned blindness of The Presbyterian Church (USA). It's been a tough one for me to take and to understand... I'm not so sure the blindness is well-intentioned.

Dennis Prager goes a step further and says the group is committing evil through a particularly virulent strain of moral idiocy and meanness. ...And that's jsut the nicest thing he has to say...

Incredibly, The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) joins the list of religious groups committing evil. In the name of Jesus, it has called for the economic strangulation of Israel. They have equated the Jewish state with South Africa during apartheid and called for a universal divestment from it.

The Presbyterians are the first Christian church to do this, and, ironically, the divestment campaign came the very week that the Roman Catholic Church signed a document equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.

It takes a particularly virulent strain of moral idiocy and meanness to single out Israel, not Arafat's Palestinian Authority, or terror-supporting, death-fatwa-issuing Iran, or women-subjugating Saudi Arabia, for condemnation and economic ruin. One of the most decent societies, one of the most liberal democracies in the world, is fighting for its life against Islamic fascists who praise the Holocaust and publicly call for the annihilation of Israel — and the Presbyterian Church calls for strangling Israel!

Apartheid state? This Goebbels-like Big Lie, concocted by the world's anti-Israel and anti-American Left and by those who want Israel destroyed, is now an official doctrine of the Presbyterian Church.

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Hat Tip: Malcom S at Occam's Toothbrush.

This time addressing the General Assembly, Ambassador Gillerman is, once again, straightforward and accurate.

For years, if not decades, this Assembly has entertained the Palestinian representative's attempts to manufacture a virtual reality. An alternate world in which there is but one victim and one villain, in which there are Palestinian rights but no Palestinian responsibilities, in which there are Israeli responsibilities but no Israeli rights.

This persistent campaign has contributed little to the credibility of the United Nations, and nothing to the cause of peace...

There's much more.

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Who Watches the Watchers? That's what N.Z. Bear wants to know. So do I. I hope he's right and the bloggers credentialled in Boston can shed some light about how that news sausage is made.

Sure, the blogger's initial focus will be on the pols and their staged rituals and behind-the-scenes antics. But I predict that much of the most compelling coverage from our colleagues journeying to New York and Boston will come when they turn their attention to the parallel shadow dance that our press corps performs alongside the public, visible routines of the political operators. Want to know how that news sausage is made? You are about to find out.

They may not know it yet, but the bloggers aren't there to cover the convention. They are there to cover the journalists.

At what point does the insurrection against Arafat get labeled a Civil War? From the NYT:

Arafat, a former guerrilla leader, is facing the sharpest challenge to his rule since Palestinians received a measure of self-rule a decade ago, and some fear it could eventually boil over in civil war.

The confrontation is also widely seen as a power struggle between Arafat's Old Guard and younger rivals staking out turf before Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon carries out a plan to remove Jewish settlements from Gaza by the end of 2005.

A former guerrilla leader??? WTF... I guess that's better than "Legitimately, popularly, elected president of the palestinian people" even though Terrorist is more accurate. Is there a better reminder of Arafat's reality than the coming Olympic Games.

Still... at what point does their insurrection become a Civil War???

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Democrats are doing incredible harm to their party, they're gift-wrapping the Presidency for Bush. In their zeal, particularly from the far left, to demonize the President, they risk losing all of their credibility. Over-zealousness by some Republicans helped ensure Clinton's re-election by alienating voters in the middle. The Democrats appear to be making the same mistakes now.

It's no surprise that most of the major media is in the anti-Bush corner. But why do we have to search for retractions or corrections for the lies put forward by the anti-Bush press? How many Bush haters still believe the Turkey was plastic? How many Bush haters still think Joe Wilson was both honest and correct?

Buried as a note at the end of a story on political surprises is an admission that the turkey was real... so I guess the NYT is being honest and forthright. But what are the chances of seeing a "Wilson Lied" article on the front page. At least Christopher Hitchens and William Safire are shining some light.

You have to like this from Hitchens

Two recent reports allow us to revisit one of the great non-stories, and one of the great missed stories, of the Iraq war argument. The non-story is the alleged martyrdom of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Wilson, supposed by many to have suffered cruel exposure for their commitment to the truth. The missed story is the increasing evidence that Niger, in West Africa, was indeed the locus of an illegal trade in uranium ore for rogue states including Iraq.

Mr. Lapid appears to be a little behind the times. Where's he been?

Justice Minister Yosef Lapid warned Monday that Israel is on the verge of becoming an international pariah and urged the government not to ignore the International Court of Justice...

..."In the end, there may even be economic sanctions, Israeli goods may be rejected and we may even be banned from European sporting competitions," Lapid said.

Doesn't he know that it's already happened?

Then take a look at this.

...the United Nations is now systematically organized to criticize the United States and Israel. It is instructive that in a statement emanating from the Secretariat's office condemning the construction of the fence, not a word was mentioned about suicide bombers who precipitated the construction.

As I see there is very little that can be done at the moment to change international opinion. Israel has an obligation to its own people to remain resolute against usually unfair and hateful allegations. For the Middle East this is the Dark Ages. But if the Arab world wishes to enter the 21st century — a far from clear conclusion — it will have to adopt and perhaps emulate much of Israeli life. On that slim reed, hope shall continue to exist.

It's unfathomable to me how such well-intentioned people can be so blind to reality. I hate to think it's simple anti-Semitism, but when groups like Presbyterian Church (USA) Label Israel an apartheid state I find it hard to believe that ignorance of reality is completely to blame.

Apartheid.... on one side is a wannabe Arab state who kills people simply because they are Jews... murders homosexuals, subjugates women, persecutes Christians, lives in a tribal society where any non-Arab is suspect.

On the other side is a democracy who periodically changes its leadership by a vote of the people, a nation that includes Arabs, South Americans, Americans, Europeans, Russians, Yemenis, Moroccans, native Israelis... in short, perhaps one of the most diverse nations on earth... which is the apartheid state? Are the Presbyterians ignorant? do they know what apartheid was? Do they just hate Jews?

The Presbyterians don't like the security barrier. Which side of the barrier are Christians safer? Which side of the wall are Christians albe to voice their opinions or frustrations with the government (governing authorities)?

It really saddens me to read the reports of the Assembly. They support the PLO... Why does that arouse my suspicians?

Thanks to Kathy Kinsley for pointing me to this bit on John McCain. Since CNN is not a site I visit often I'd have missed it.

Aside from just being wrong in its essense, it's wrong to be amending the constitution to ban anything. From Senator McCain,

"The constitutional amendment we're debating today strikes me as antithetical in every way to the core philosophy of Republicans," McCain said. "It usurps from the states a fundamental authority they have always possessed and imposes a federal remedy for a problem that most states do not believe confronts them."

McCain also said the amendment "will not be adopted by Congress this year, nor next year, nor any time soon until a substantial majority of Americans are persuaded that such a consequential action is as vitally important and necessary as the proponents feel it is today."

"The founders wisely made certain that the Constitution is difficult to amend and, as a practical political matter, can't be done without overwhelming public approval. And thank God for that," he said.

On Bill Cosby and the left's monopoly of affection for all downtrodden minorities, Thomas Sowell has this to say:

Reactions to Bill Cosby's recent criticisms of some counterproductive ghetto behavior patterns have ranged from applause from some in the black audience that heard him to a cheap attack from white liberal Barbara Ehrenreich in the New York Times. "Billionaire bashes poor blacks" is the way Ms. Ehrenreich puts it.

Over the years, Bill Cosby has poured enough of his efforts and money into advancing blacks that he does not need any lessons from Barbara Ehrenreich on how to help his own people. But her attempts to pose as a friend and defender of blacks has implications that reach far beyond this one silly woman.

According to Ms. Ehrenreich, "it's so 1985 to beat up on the black poor." Among her other radical chic comments is, "it must be fun to beat up on people too young and too poor to fight back or the elderly rich wouldn't do it."

This is just one of innumerable ways that the political left evades criticisms -- whether of young thugs or schoolteachers or anyone else -- by simply calling the criticism "bashing" and shifting the focus to the supposedly bad motives of those who criticize...

... In today's climate, too many teachers think they are doing black students a favor by feeding them grievances from the past and telling them how they are oppressed in the present -- and how their future is blocked by white racism. These are the kinds of friends who do more damage than enemies.

Why endure all the hard work, self-discipline and self-denial that a first-rate education requires if The Man is going to stop you from getting anywhere anyway? People who have been pushing this line for years are now suddenly surprised and dismayed to discover that many black students across the country regard academic striving as "acting white."

Many young blacks likewise regard speaking correct English, or even observing the rules of polite society, as "acting white." White liberals often cheer them on in their self-destructive behavior or at least "understand" them and defend them.

Blacks have, in effect, been adopted as mascots by many white liberals. Mascots serve to symbolize something for others but the actual well-being of the mascot himself is seldom a major concern. Blacks have long been used by the left to indict American society.

People like Barbara Ehrenreich get their jollies saying clever things to needle American society, whether on race or other issues. The actual consequences of their liberal vision for blacks themselves get remarkably little attention.

Read it all. And for another opinion, go read about Cobb's epiphany.

Abu Mukh questioned the International Court of Justice ruling Friday that condemned it as illegal and inhumane.

"I'm wondering if the judges ever have been here or lived here and understand the real reason for its construction," the 30-year-old asked, relaxing on his front porch with a cup of sweet Arabic coffee. "If not, they should listen and not judge."

This from an Arab, an Israeli Arab. The Anti-Semitic Twits at The Hague aren't interested in reality... nor justice... nor liberty.

When I put those two words together... palestinian and victims... I'm not thinking of the same people that The International Court in The Hague have in mind.

I think of people like Ma'ayan Na'im and Shiri Negari or David and Nava Applebaum. I think of Yanai Weiss, Ran Baron, and Dominique Hass at Mike's Place. And I think of eleven murdered in 1972: David Berger, Zev Friedman, Yosef Gutfruend, Eliezer Halfin, Joseph Roman, Kehat Schorr, Amitzur Shapira, Mark Slavin, Andre Spitzer, Yacob Springer, and Moshe Weinberg...

All of them, and thousands of others, victims of palestinians... Murdered by palestinians for being Jews. Does anyone in The Hague care?

Reading Dan Froomkin's re-introduction to Dave Barry reminded me of an awkward re-introduction I once made that was not as effective.

The first time I met Prince Andrew was here in Jacksonville in 1982. Andrew was a pilot embarked in HMS Invincible which was visiting Florida on her way home from the Falklands. My squadron was serving as the liaison/host squadron for Prince Andrew's squadron. A few different social events had been arranged, but the main event was the 3rd or 4th Annual Pimp and Whore party that one of our officers was throwing the weekend of the visit.

Andrew's rumored relationship with Koo Stark led to the British, if not the world's, tabloid press and a swarm of Paparazzi appearing in town. The local press was buzzing with rumors the two were going to be getting together while here in Florida, so we were pleasantly surprised when he actually showed up at the party, even though Koo was nowhere to be seen.

He didn’t drink or dance but he was very friendly and gracious to everyone he talked to… at least until one of the party-goers called a local radio station to spill the beans. Andrew was ushered away long before the first of the “press” showed up. But it wouldn’t be the last time I saw him.

Three years later I was on exchange to the Royal Navy and assigned to the same squadron as H… Yes, that’s what He was called… just H… short for HRH, or His Royal Highness. Anyway, H and I were in line for lunch at the cafeteria during my first few days in the squadron.

He was very nice in welcoming me and asking polite questions about my transition to living in England and to a different language. We made our way through the line and to a small table with two other guys and sat down to eat. At that point I said to Him, “Actually we’ve met before.”

“Oh really?”

“Yes. I was in HS-1 when you visited Jacksonville with Invincible, and we met at the Pimp and Whore Party.” I probably should have been less specific.

Well H didn’t really want to go there. I got the impression the other guys were surprised that He’d go to such a rowdy sounding party… they may have even given him a little credit for being normal… but simply changed the subject. Obviously, I wasn’t very well versed in Royal etiquette.

Over the next two years, although we spoke frequently, I always felt the subject of his visit to Jacksonville was taboo. Actually many of the guys had similar feelings about relating to H. He was friendly but aloof, no one would ever consider him as one of the guys… understandable, but sad… His Loss.

Shabbat Shalom

I found this by reading Michael Froomkin, a fellow Floridian's site. His brother, with a stroke of genius, e-mailed Dave Barry (another Floridian):

Dave,

Hi! You once came to a party of mine and peed in my bushes.

But that's not why I'm writing.

He was writing to point out this article on predicting the Presidential loser. It's all in the sense of humor... Gene Weingarten gives us the questions that the press should ask. I think the funniest answer might come from this

Question for George W. Bush: Your political adversaries seem to enjoy making unfair insinuations that your cognitive abilities are deficient. Just for the record, to clear this up once and for all, please explain how the proof for Fermat's last theorem can be established through use of the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture.

Victor Davis Hanson contributes to the "level of invective not seen since the summer of 1864"... c'mon, the SAT scores joke was funny... but he's spot in observing that Civilization... that is western liberal civilization... is coming to Iraq. VDH illustrates:

Last week, the carnivore Saddam Hussein faced the world in the docket. There was none of the usual Middle East barbarity. The mass murderer was not hooded and then beheaded on tape, in the manner of al Qaeda. Civilization has come to Iraq.

Nor was the destroyer of Iraqi dissidents hitched — Saudi-style — to a Humvee and dragged to pieces through the streets of Baghdad. The pillager of Kuwait did not lose a limb on the precepts of a sharia-inspired fatwa. A young Saddam-like Baathist assassin did not break in and shoot the desecrator of the Mesopotamian marshlands in the back of the head. And a West Bank-like mob did not lynch the torturer of dissidents in the public square. Even al Jazeera, an enthusiast of the usual barbarity, was wondering what the heck was going on in its own neck of the medieval woods.

Surely, the slow emergence of real civilization in Iraq is one of the seminal events in the history of an Arab and Muslim Middle East that has had no prior record of either consensual government or an independent judiciary. Unlike Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, a global criminal is facing his victims in a legitimate court administered by the beginnings of a free republican government. The more Washington, D.C., insiders insist that the transfer of power was a meaningless construct, the more we are beginning to see the future shape of an autonomous, free, and civilized Iraq. Don't listen to cynical American reporters and played-out professors who laugh at the idea of civilization. Watch instead how dictators and monarchs in the region recoil at it all. After all, such autocrats have lots to worry about: 70 percent of the world is democratic; excluding Israel, 0 percent of the Middle East is.

A UK government inquiry into the intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq is expected to conclude that Britain's spies were correct to say that Saddam Hussein's regime sought to buy uranium from Niger.

The inquiry by Lord Butler, which was delivered to the printers on Wednesday and is expected to be released on July 14, has examined the intelligence that underpinned the UK government's claims about the threat from Iraq.

...read it all

In a column that can not be described as Politically Correct, Jackie Mason and Raoul Felder take on the Religion of Peace, and show us the best we can expect:

Of course, not all Muslims participate in violence or even express joy at the perpetration of violence against the West in general, or Americans in particular, just as all Germans in the forties did not believe when they heard their anthem, Deutschland uber alles, that it meant literally that Germany must conquer all other nations. Some Germans embraced a passive longing for Germany to be victorious; some few actually despised fascism, and some, an almost non-existent few acted against it. So it is with Islam and the Muslims. About the best the civilized world can expect is a joyous but passive reaction to the mindless violence.

They also remind us that Islam’s war against America is not a recent phenomenon;

[It is of interest to note that the United States went to war with Muslim powers in 1801. Barbary pirates kidnapped and made slaves of our citizens, demanding tribute for their release. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson asked of the envoy of Tripoli by what right did he make his claim for payment. As reported to Congress by Jefferson, "The Ambassador answered us that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners." ]

The enemy is not really the United States, nor even Israel. The enemy is modernity itself and the forces of change that have made them irrelevant. The West has persevered and they have lost. They are the have-nots, and to the degree that they have the economic power of oil, even this has been denied to them as a society by the corruption of their own despotic rulers. They are the past in a present and future that belongs to the West. There is a chord that joins them with other losers like Lee Harvey Oswald and Lee Boyd Malvo, devoid of any distinction or ability to even control their own lives, who strike out in spasms of hate-filled rage.

Muslims, married to a failed past, offer little hope for integration into modern society. Israel giving them land to which they are not entitled, or the United States not punishing them for criminal acts will not assuage their rage. America must learn it cannot negotiate or reason with people who consider us infidels. It must recognize that the enemy is often among us and all the exposure available to them in Western civilization with its tolerances and respect for individual rights will not affect their seething anger at imagined wrongs, injustices, and illogical sense of entitlement.

Here's an article in Haaretz that hits at the heart of my problems with the withdrawal.

First, we must abandon the conception that all territory that is not, or will not be, under Israeli sovereignty must be cleared of any Jews living there. That may be consistent with the doctrine of radical Islamists, and reminiscent of anti-Semitic rhetoric, but cannot be justified on the ground of principles of morality accepted in democratic societies. Of course, Jews will be able to live in territories that are not under Israeli sovereignty only within the framework of an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, and not based on unilateral disengagement. This is another reason why unilateral disengagement will only lead us away from the aim of a peaceful settlement with the Palestinians.

By giving the Arabs a taste of what they want... Land Free of Jews... we simply encourage their racist ideals. If transfer of one population is accepted then what about the other side? The whole concept of transferring populations just seems so wrong.

Why do we encourage the Arabs to think that clearing Jews from the land... any land... is acceptable? Is it?

I had an interesting conversation over lunch today with a consultant brought in to train some of the company. He is a new American citizen originally from Canada and said something intriguing about his reasons for thinking America is a better place than Canada.

His first observation was that Canada is a nation of refugees while America is a nation of immigrants. His impression is that people generally come to America because they are looking for a better life whereas Canada is more welcoming to those who are forced to leave their countries and are looking for refuge and looking to be taken care of. Canada, being a generally socialist country was more accepting of those who need to be taken care of .

I thought it was an interesting way of looking at the differences and I can certainly see his point. His impression is that “refugee” groups in Canada kept themselves isolated in their own communities with little effort to assimilate, whereas in America there is more intermingling and more of an effort to assimilate and become American.

Granted his first experience living in America was in Beverly Hills and is arguably not truly representative. He saw the Iranians in LA as a refugee group, not immigrants, in that they were forced from Iran and didn’t really come to build lives as Americans, but want to keep their national identity in the hope of returning. He thought most of Canada’s foreign residents were similar in that they had no real interest to contribute to Canadian life and experience.

Still I wonder if his impression of America and of the Refugee vs Immigrant issue might have been different if his first home in th4e US was in Detroit as opposed to Beverly Hills….

Have a nice weekend… Shabbat Shalom.