Bad Tattoos

Aviva Yael has penned a scholarly work entitled: No Regrets: The Best, Worst, & Most #$%*ing Ridiculous Tattoos Ever

I only bring it to your attention because it helps me understand how a guy named Hussein can be elected President of the United States following an attack on this country by Islamic terrorists.

What troubled me most was finding the photograph of a tattoo belonging to my beloved high school Civics teacher, Daisy Cutter. Can you guess which one is his? Yup, you're right.

Let's All Join In Singing Nickie Goomba's Theme Song

Take a few moments away from 2009 to enjoy Louis Prima, Keely Smith and Sam Butera

Louis Prima - Just a Gigolo
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Try to remember...

The President flings a perfect strike wearing a flak jacket.

Then there's this...

The Democrats' War on our Spies

Jed Babbin at Human Events takes a look at the latest Democrat attack on America.

"But what Obama and Pelosi are doing is vastly more important. Pursuing their strategy aimed at vilifying the Bush administration, they are creating turmoil in our intelligence agencies. According to one intelligence community source, Panetta and Director of National Intelligence Adm. Dennis Blair are in a “polar struggle”, the kind of constant infighting that thwarts our ability to pursue, gather and apply the best intelligence we can, the information we need to survive the war we are in."

The Democrats’ war against our spies has taken two new turns. In their zeal to punish Bush administration officials -- and protect House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca) from publication of the facts showing her complicity in then-legal waterboarding of terrorist prisoners -- the Democrats have again accused the CIA of lying.

This came during the same week when it was reported that Attorney General Eric Holder is considering the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate and prosecute those who authorized and committed alleged torture of prisoners at CIA “black sites”, the secret prisons where high-value terrorists were interrogated since 9-11.

Holder’s move is a part of the Democrats’ war on our intelligence agents and those who authorized their activities in the essential work of gathering information to save American lives. If he proceeds, the “ongoing investigation” claim will effectively block all other inquiries, and could prevent for years the publication of information that could prevent further damage to our intelligence community.

This time, the accusation of a CIA lie is about an intelligence program that went on for years and was not revealed to Congress. In a June 26 letter to CIA Director Leon Panetta (concealed from House Intelligence Committee Republicans until it was sent and apparently leaked simultaneously to the press) seven House Dems asked Panetta to correct his May 15 statement that the CIA’s policy is not to mislead Congress.

The letter said, “Recently you testified that you have determined that top CIA officials have concealed significant actions from all Members of Congress, and misled Members for a number of years from 2001 to this week. This is similar to other deceptions of which we are aware from other recent periods.” What the lie is about is, of course, still classified. (More...)

The Islamofascists are the Fascists, Not Geert Wilders

A. Millar of the Brussels Journal writes about the growth of Europe's national-interest political parties in the wake of overwhelming and uncontrolled Islamic immigration.

"If supporters of Israel are now portrayed as far-Right, the Jews are portrayed as the new Nazis, or 'Zio-Nazis' by pro-Hamas agitators in Britain and Europe. At Durban II recently, a member of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's entourage even accosted Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel, and repeatedly screamed 'Zionazi' at him. In this applied historical revisionism – aided by the useful idiots of Britain’s and Europe’s politicians and media – Muslims must be portrayed as the new Jews, and Palestine, the new or real Holocaust."

Last month’s EU election results saw the press reacting with horror at the rise of “far-Right” parties. However, while some parties (such as the anti-Semitic Jobbik, which created a paramilitary wing in 2007) are indeed far-Right, some others described as such, are, as Soeren Kern has observed, among “[…] the best allies that Jews (and Israel) will find in Europe today.”

The most egregious piece of propaganda I saw during the recent EU election period was an article on EUobserver.com about Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom. Written by one Andrew Willis, and entitled “Netherlands embraces far right in EU elections,” the author decried the party as “far-Right” and “xenophobic.” This despite the fact that the Party for Freedom is a staunch defender of Israel, and that Wilders spent some of his youth in the country, and still visits it regularly.

Particularly troubling, however, was a photograph of a group of skinheads accompanying the text, along with the caption: “Neo-nazi youth look on as Geert Wilders campaigns in Leeuwarden, Netherlands.” The suggestion was of course that “neo-Nazi youth” are the real voters of the Party for Freedom, because the party is really neo-Nazi. Yet, nothing could be further from the truth (and curiously, there is not the slightest hint of Wilders or his party in the photograph).

Although it opposes mass immigration, especially from Muslim countries, the Party for Freedom wants its immigrants to assimilate into Dutch society and enjoy the benefits of democracy and liberty. The party also ran on an essentially libertarian platform of defending women’s rights and protecting gays from street violence perpetrated by Muslim gangs (the extent of the latter problem was revealed last year after fashion model Mike Du Pree was dragged from the catwalk and assaulted by ten Muslim youths, shocking the Netherlands). (More...)

OBAMACARE

What would a health care system look like if it were designed by Socialists, college students, obese film makers, or Democrats? Here's a sneak preview.

Palin In Iowa? Watch The Heads Explode!

Riehl World View reports and interesting development...

Is this a sincere effort by the Iowa GOP to recruit Sarah Palin because they think she'll be a great draw? Or, was it arranged, as in one of those inside politics moves by operators that don't come with fingerprints? Let the speculation begin, assuming she accepts. I imagine Romney, Newt and Huckabee want to know, if they don't already.

Iowa Republican Party officials Wednesday said they are aggressively courting Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to headline the state GOP's premier annual fundraising event. (More...)

The Palin Effect

I predicted that Sarah Palin's new focus would cause a stirring in the political world. We will finally start hearing some effective voices opposing Obama and the Democrats' lemming-fest.

Liz Cheney open to political run

"It gets more and more appalling every day," she said. "I think they're very worried about Speaker Pelosi."

Joseph Weber of the Washington Times sez:

The daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that running for political office is on her horizon.

"It's something I very well may do," said Elizabeth "Liz" Cheney, a lawyer and State Department appointee who has worked on two Republican presidential campaigns.

Ms. Cheney, 44, has emerged as one of the strongest defenders of the effectiveness and legality of Bush-Cheney policies on enhanced interrogation methods. More recently, she and her father have become two of the most outspoken critics of President Obama's position on terrorism and other national security issues, which has led Republicans to consider her a strong candidate for national political office. (More...)

Theodore Dalrymple at The First Post opines on more smoke and mirrors from the National Health Service.

"The scheme, then, has several possible purposes. The first is to give the government an excuse to cut costs. The second is to insinuate to the public that doctors are not working hard or well enough."

In yet another governmental attempt to pretend that British public services are responsive to the opinions of the people they serve, GPs will have the incomes of their practices reduced if a sufficient number of patients answer a questionnaire, sent to them six months after their contact with the practice, unfavourably.

In a real market, of course, dissatisfied patients would simply up sticks and take their custom elsewhere, without filling in any forms at all. Except where there was no competition, a doctor who dissatisfied his patients would soon find himself without income and would, presumably, try a little harder.

But the NHS is predicated upon an absence of real or effective choice for the great majority of patients, on the grounds that the government knows and organises best.

"Those who complain have little reason to and are often professional malcontents."

In my little town, for example, all the GPs have been removed into one of those vast practices known in the trade as Darzi's khazis (after the junior health minister, Lord Darzi), so that if the income of the practice were reduced because of unfavourable replies by patients to the questionnaire the population of the whole town would suffer. For example, by forcing the redundancy of a nurse. (more...)

Obama Administration plans Cheney Witch Hunt as Diversion from Disasterous Economic Moves

The TimesOnline (UK) reports that Dick Cheney ordered that a secret CIA Counter-Terrorism program remain secret.

"Critics of the agency, however, want it to be more forthcoming about its secret programmes."

The CIA withheld information about a secret counter-terrorism programme for eight years on the orders of former Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a report in The New York Times.

The agency's director Leon Panetta terminated the programme after learning about it last month, the newspaper reports The following day he called an emergency meeting with the House and Senate Intelligence committees to brief them.

Previous directors of the agency had not informed Congress of the programme because the intelligence-gathering effort had not developed to the point that they believed merited a congressional briefing, a former intelligence official and another government official told The New York Times.

Mr Cheney played a central role in overseeing the Bush administration's surveillance programme and was a key advocate of using controversial interrogation methods such as waterboarding on terrorism suspects.

The surveillance programme was the subject of an inspectors general report last week which noted that Mr Cheney's chief of staff, David Addington, personally decided who in former President George Bush's inner circle could know about the secret programme; a degree of secrecy that the report concluded had hurt the effectiveness of the counter-terrorism surveillance effort.

An effort to reach Mr Cheney was unsuccessful.

Asked about the report in the New York Times, CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano told Reuters said it was not the agency's practice to discuss classified briefings. (More...)