http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/07/what_i_miss_about_america.html
Here are just a few of the things I miss since America entered the golden age of Hope and Change in January 2009.
Optimism
Going for minutes, hours, even days, without worrying about what weird insanity the government is dreaming up next
Having money
The Border Patrol
Looking up at the moon and thinking, “America – we own space!”
Having a president whose background isn’t more closely guarded than the formula for Coke
Going on vacation without the TSA auditioning me for “Stella Does Dallas”
Jobs
Not feeling like I have to whisper, if I say something that’s not completely, 100% complimentary about our president
Listening to the latest rant against Israel at the UN, without wondering if it’s coming from the American Ambassador
Feeling protected
Having a president who doesn’t want to fundamentally transform me
Getting a doctor’s appointment right away and not thinking, “That was nice while it lasted.”
Having a president who would never, ever bow to the Saudi king, the Chinese premier, the Japanese prime minister and the mayor of Tampa
Gazing up at the sky and not wondering if that’s a bird or a drone
Snacking on whatever I want, while the First Lady remains calm and indifferent
Having a president who thinks it would be unimaginably crazy to bring the 9/11 conspirators to New York for a civil trial
Privacy
Separation of State and Media
College graduates with a future in America, not China or Hong Kong
Having a president who inspires us to feel that Americans are all in this game together
A dollar that’s worth 100 cents and isn’t signed by a tax cheat
America’s Triple-A rating
Having a president who doesn’t seem needier for attention than Paris Hilton
Strolling through the mall without worrying about racially-motivated flash mobs
Looking at maps without trying to figure out where I can run
Reading 1984 as an interesting work of fiction
Dignity
Pride
What do you miss?
http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=277094&prmusr=keQ9Rw%2fN%2fyJINYq06KmeCfWiWL%2fDUr2Kl1Fk%2bgsr4I%2fUKZTZW2DOPxEYIUVQNh5D
The IOC and the value of Jewish lives
In 2005, I met Donald Cohan, an American Jew who had won a bronze medal in yachting at the 1972 Olympics in Munich. At the time, I was writing for a major newspaper in my home state, working on an essay about Steven Spielberg’s upcoming movie Munich – which drew fire for its lack of fidelity to historical fact and its attempt to reduce Israel’s justified response to a thin gruel of moral equivalence.
I had conducted a lot research, but with Cohan, I struck gold: a bright, articulate man who had kept every German newspaper printed since the moment the press knew the Palestinians had taken the Israeli athletes hostage.
Cohan was nearly shot himself. He had brought his wife to Munich, but spouses were not allowed to stay in the athletes’ dorms. Cohan would steal out evenings to visit her. He had no idea that while he was gone, Black September terrorists had, with the help of some unsuspecting drunken Americans, scaled the fence to get to the Israeli athletes.
Not long after, Cohan, dressed in his athletic suit (not unlike the generic garb which the terrorists had worn to blend in) tried to sneak back to his room, climbing over that same fence. He was stunned: German police were screaming at him with rifles cocked and dogs barking. Using panicky bits of German, Cohan barely avoided being shot.
http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=277350
Until recently, J Street says, it’s worked defensively, “Now we’re taking it to the next level.”
WASHINGTON – J Street opened up a new front in its lobbying efforts Thursday, releasing ads that attack two candidates for not being “pro-Israel” because they don’t endorse a two-state solution.
Until recently, according to J Street spokeswoman Jessica Rosenblum, “J Street has been working defensively, standing up for candidates who stake out pro-peace, pro- Israel positions. Now we’re taking it to the next level.”
The ads represent a new offensive posture of going after politicians whom the organization believes hurt the cause of peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
One ad targeting Representative Joe Walsh, an Illinois Republican, will be broadcast during the Sunday morning news shows in the Chicago media market, while the ad targeting Florida Republican Allen West will only be shown online.
Both productions are similar and accuse the congressmen of “playing with fire” by opposing a two-state solution, noting that Israel’s last three prime ministers have all called for the creation of a Palestinian state.
But the candidates and their staff don’t see the J Street attacks changing their tactics or their appeal to voters.
“J Street does not support the strength and security of the State of Israel, and is in fact anti-Israel,” West fired back in response to the lobby’s ad. “J Street’s efforts to attack me only embolden my stand for our greatest ally and my spiritual home, the State of Israel.”
Marc Morano, Publisher of Climate Depot Statement: “Why, oh why would Romney choose a V.P. who is smitten with the UN climate process. The stench of the carcass of the UN global climate treaty process is overwhelming and despite this, Rice in 2011 regretted that Pres. Bush rejected it. Romney could do so much better than to pick Sec. Rice.” End Morano statement.
Warmist Condi Rice for Romney’s VP?! Flashback: Rice laments Bush rejection of Kyoto — Rice believes not ‘promising to seek alternatives to Kyoto was a ‘self-inflicted wound’ — Ms. Rice offers several regrets. The way Mr. Bush rejected the Kyoto climate change treaty without promising to seek alternatives was a “self-inflicted wound’
Flashback: ‘Will Romney Recycle GW. Bush’s Global Warming Fiasco?’ ‘Seems bent on recycling Bush’s climate muddle, a hodgepodge of subsidies & policies that did nothing but waste money’
Flashback 2007: Sec. of State Condi Rice challenged the world’s biggest polluters Thursday to ‘cut the Gordian knot of fossil fuels’ by shifting toward energy sources that will reduce global warming’
Condi Rice in 2007: Declares ‘growing problem’ should be resolved under UN auspices
Another Tack: What if his name was Bibi? I couldn’t help rubbing my eyes in disbelief at the joyful celebrations which greeted former premier Ehud Olmert’s acquittal in two corruption cases and the simultaneous belittling of his conviction on a third – what his cheerleaders portrayed as the “minor” matter of breach of trust. I couldn’t […]
http://townhall.com/columnists/dianawest/2012/07/13/israel_is_on_its_own_in_war_against_terrorism
The Washington Free Beacon reported this week on the continuing omission of Israel from a U.S.-sponsored organization called the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF). At a recent forum meeting in Spain, Maria Otero, U.S. undersecretary of state for civilian security, democracy and human rights, delivered a speech titled “Victims of Terrorism,” but, in her roll call of victims, she didn’t mention Israel. The conference at which she spoke was described as a “high-level conference on the victims of terrorism,” but Israel wasn’t a participant.
It bears repeating because it is so fantastic: At an international conference devoted to victims of terrorism, the world’s leading victim or, better, leading target of terrorism — Israel — was nowhere in sight, or mind.
Welcome to the GCTF — U.S. counterterrorism’s new “normal.” This 30-member organization got its official start last September as a “major initiative” of the Obama administration when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced its launch in New York.
It was quite an occasion; Hillary curled her hair. Seated next to her Turkish co-chairman, ensconced amid ministers from Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and 18 other miscellaneous member-states plus the European Union, she then said the magic words: “From London to Lahore, from Madrid to Mumbai, from Kabul to Kampala, it’s innocent civilians who have been targeted …”
http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/
Methodist Ministers Denounce Their Pro-Israel Jewish Critics
“There are many paradoxes in the propaganda war against Israel,” observed South African writer Steve Apfel earlier this year in a must-read article:
“The most puzzling of them perhaps would be the way many Christian groups and Churches side with the Palestinians. On the evidence one would expect the opposite. Believing Christians have every logical reason to be pro-Israel, where alone in the Middle East Christendom’s holy sites are protected; where Christians may pray openly; and where Christian followers face no pressures to convert.
On the Palestinian side of the fence none of those freedoms exist. How in that case to explain groups like the Presbyterians, the World Council of Churches, Christian Aid and so forth aiming their missiles at the Jewish state? It is the wildest of peculiarities: anti-Israel Christians.
Population movements tell half the story, though not nearly the absorbing half. In 1949 Israel had a Christian population of 34000; today the number is 168000, and growing. From the Palestinian side the arrows point the other way. Christians have poured out; perhaps 70 percent who once lived in the West Bank now live abroad. Bethlehem, Christianity’s cradle, provides stark confirmation.
In 1950 the city was 80 – 90 percent Christian; today that fraction is down to no more than 20 percent. So in Palestine Christians run the gauntlet, while in Israel they practice, while in Israel they practice their faith freely. Yet churchmen aim their missiles where?
…. Christianity under the whip, yet people of the church clamber to help Christian persecutors and punish Christian-protecting Israel. Can men of the cloth, even pooling their faith, justify the perversity? Can they square the circle of anti-Israel activism mixed with indifference to Christendom’s plight hard on Israel’s borders? What if, in good faith and without bad conscience, they cannot? And if goaded to action what would matter most to men of the cloth: attacking Israel or defending Christians?”
Two years ago, influenced by their conference report which cited such Israel-bashers (advocates of a single state for Jews and Palestinians among them) as Ilan Pappe, Avi Shlaim, Robert Fisk and Anglican cleric Stephen Sizer while studiously ignoring mainstream Jewish voices, Britain’s Methodists voted to boycott goods from the “Occupied” (i.e. Disputed) Territories, and also voted to review whether Zionism is compatible with their beliefs.
Reflecting mainstream Jewish communal opinion as a whole, the Board of Deputies stated:
“This outcome is extremely serious and damaging, as we and others have explained repeatedly over recent weeks. Israel is at the root of the identity of Jews and of Judaism, and is an expression of Jewish spiritual, national and emotional aspirations. Zionism cannot simply be ruled as illegitimate in the way that the conference has purported to do. This smacks of breathtaking insensitivity, as crass as it is misinformed. That this position should now form the basis of Methodist Church policy should cause the conference to hang its head in shame, just as surely as it will cause the enemies of peace and reconciliation to cheer from the sidelines.”
David Singer is an Australian Lawyer, a Foundation Member of the International Analyst Network and Convenor of Jordan is Palestine International – an organisation calling for sovereignty of the West Bank and Gaza to be allocated between Israel and Jordan as the two successor States to the Mandate for Palestine. Previous articles written by him can be found at www.jordanispalestine.blogspot.com.
Attempts by foreign Governments and international aid agencies to politically influence the outcome of negotiations begun under the Oslo Accords in 1993 – now seriously threaten the total abandonment of those Accords.
The battleground for such foreign interference is Susiya village – located in Area C which comprises about 60% of the West Bank – but where only 5% of the current West Bank Arab population live.
Area C has remained under the total administrative and security control of Israel for the last 45 years.
All the Jewish towns and villages in the West Bank have been established in Area C.
Allocation of sovereignty in Area C was to be determined in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo Accords and the Bush Roadmap of 2002.
Those negotiations have hit a brick wall with the continuing refusal of the Palestinian Authority to resume such negotiations unless Israel places a total ban on further building in the West Bank for the duration of those negotiations.
The Governor of Hebron – Kamel Hamid – has highlighted Susiya’s problems in an open letter – stating
“I would like to draw your attention to the intention of the Israeli authorities to demolish Khirbet Susiya, located south of the town of Yatta in Hebron Governorate. The so-called Israeli “Civil Administration” has distributed final demolition orders on June 12, 2012, to 51 structures in the Khirbet while giving the population only 3 days to object to the decision. The demolition will devastate the lives of at least 160 Palestinians including 60 children. The lawyers of the Palestinian residents of the Khirbet, Rabbis for Human Rights, managed to get a freeze on the demolition for a period of 14 days from the Civil Administration only to find the decision reversed on June 17, 2012.”
Susiya has been the subject of many court cases before Israel’s High Court of Justice.
A brief – but incomplete – summary was presented to the Senate of the Australian Parliament by Senator Lee Rhiannon on 26 June 2012:
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3160/european-armies-recruiting-muslim-soldiers The chaplain’s top priority has been to organize a pilgrimage to Mecca for Muslim soldiers. “For me, the army is not about standing up for a nation; it’s about finding a job.”Germany is seeking to recruit more Muslims into its army: it cannot find enough native Germans to fill its ranks after it abolished […]
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3166/freezing-settlements-help-peace Israel has given such “goodwill gestures” to the Palestinians before, but the reciprocal gestures were never as good-willed. In exchange for “goodwill gestures,” Israel gets concussions. The current US administration has been advocating the freezing of Israeli settlement activity in Judea and Samaria, and so have several global players involved in the peace process. […]
