Here’s Israel today:

Note the brown glob of the West Bank and the little strip between Gaza and Rafah – owned by Israel, with sizeable Palestinian populations.  These populations are largely highly hostile to Israel.

Here was Israel in 1967:

Doens’t look much different, does it?  And it’s not – except for the fact that there are Israeli troops securing the West Bank.  Note the numbers.  They’re distances to Israel’s major population and economic centers.   When Arabs controlled the West Bank before 1967, every major population center in Israel was threatened.  Today, with Iran supplying Hamas and Hezb’allah with more modern rockets, terrorists can scourge most of Israel at will, if the “peace process” breaks down.

As it will, inevitably.

Obama is insane if he thinks this is a rational solution while the Palestinians are controlled by people who still reject the idea that Israel has a right to exist.   The Israelis are right to reject it out of hand.

Trading in a “moderate” tyrant for extreme theocratic tyrants?

It may not just be for Carter anymore.  Andrew McCarthy in NRO:

Screaming “With our blood and soul, we will defend you, Islam,” jihadists stormed the Virgin Mary Church in northwest Cairo last weekend.

(Trivia question: Which traditional Lutheran, Episcopal, Catholic or Presbyterian hymn does “with our blood we defend you, Christianity” come from?)

They torched the Coptic Christian house of worship, burned the nearby homes of two Copt families to the ground, attacked a residential complex, killed a dozen people, and wounded more than 200: just another day in this spontaneous democratic uprising by Muslim hearts yearning for freedom.

Just another day on the Arab Street?

Well, yeah – but we did put them there.

Worse (in a sense); the media, always running interference for the Administration, is covering up the true nature of the violence:

In the delusional vocabulary of the “Arab Spring,” this particular episode is known as a sectarian “clash.” That was the Washington Post’s take. Its headline reads “12 dead in Egypt as Christians and Muslims clash” — in the same way, one supposes, that a mugger’s fist can be said to “clash” with his victim’s face. The story goes on, in nauseating “cycle of violence” style, to describe “clashes between Muslims and Coptic Christians” that “left” 12 dead, dozens more wounded, “and a church charred” — as if it were not crystal clear who were the clashers and who were the clashees, as if the church were somehow combusted into a flaming heap without some readily identifiable actors having done the charring.

The narrative was set over the winter; the “Arab Spring” was an unalloyed good thing; it was Obama’s foreign-policy baby; it unleashed a wave of arabic Madisons and Jeffersons.  If we just keep believing.

Really.

Conservatives win majority in Canadian parliament:

Canadian voters have radically redrawn the country’s political landscape, handing the Conservative Party its long-sought majority in an election that decimated the Bloc Québécois and humbled the Liberals.

For the first time in history, the New Democratic Party will form the Official Opposition after an extraordinary breakthrough that propelled the party to more than 100 seats.

Looks like Canada has the same coastal/interior, red/blue split we do:

The extent of the transformation is startling. The Liberals now hold just four seats west of Guelph, Ont.

But not entirely:

The Conservatives, formerly shunned by Toronto voters, won nearly half of the seats in that city, twice as many as the Liberals.

If you don’t follow parliamentary politics – even in relatively sedate parliaments like Canada’s or Germany’s – getting a majority is a much bigger deal than in our mostly two-party Congress.   It’s a sign that, at least at the moment, there’s a pretty decisive mandate. And while Canadian conservatives

The night belonged to Stephen Harper, who put his party over the top after five years of minority government and becomes just the third Conservative leader since Confederation to win triple victories.

“We are intensely aware that we are and must be the government of all Canadians, including those that did not vote for us,” Mr. Harper said.

This election was every bit as big as 2011’s was in the US:

Parliament was radically remade. The fragmentation of the 1993 election has been reversed, with the Conservatives and NDP emerging as national parties with support across all regions of the country, although the Tories find themselves in an unusual position, as a majority government with just a handful of Quebec seats.

Rumor is it’s because Canadians are sick and tired of American “progressives” threatening to move to Canada.

Three speeches purporting to be speeches (or syntheses of speeches) asking people to risk all in the brutal insanity of war:

Option A:

Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

Option B:

To summarize, then: In just one month, the United States has worked with our international partners to mobilize a broad coalition, secure an international mandate to protect civilians, stop an advancing army, prevent a massacre, and establish a no-fly zone with our allies and partners. To lend some perspective on how rapidly this military and diplomatic response came together, when people were being brutalized in Bosnia in the 1990s, it took the international community more than a year to intervene with air power to protect civilians. It took us 31 days.

Moreover, we’ve accomplished these objectives consistent with the pledge that I made to the American people at the outset of our military operations. I said that America’s role would be limited; that we would not put ground troops into Libya; that we would focus our unique capabilities on the front end of the operation and that we would transfer responsibility to our allies and partners. Tonight, we are fulfilling that pledge.

Option C:

Now, I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country. Men, all this stuff you’ve heard about America not wanting to fight, wanting to stay out of the war, is a lot of horse dung. Americans traditionally love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle. When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, the big league ball player, the toughest boxer. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. I wouldn’t give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That’s why Americans have never lost and will never lose a war. Because the very thought of losing is hateful to Americans.

Which reads like a challenge to a nation sending its sons and daughters out to risk their lives, and which reads like the wrapup to a senior seminar lecture?

Remember when the feminists said if women ran the world, peace would break out?

Reality says not so:

The change became possible, though, only after Mrs. Clinton joined Samantha Power, a senior aide at the National Security Council, and Susan Rice, Mr. Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, who had been pressing the case for military action, according to senior administration officials speaking only on condition of anonymity. Ms. Power is a former journalist and human rights advocate; Ms. Rice was an Africa adviser to President Clinton when the United States failed to intervene to stop the Rwanda genocide, which Mr. Clinton has called his biggest regret.

Now, the three women were pushing for American intervention to stop a looming humanitarian catastrophe in Libya.

If a “progressive” and an inexperienced president had a kid, what would it be?

A neocon!

Remember when the feminists said if women ran the world, peace would break out?

Reality says not so:

The change became possible, though, only after Mrs. Clinton joined Samantha Power, a senior aide at the National Security Council, and Susan Rice, Mr. Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, who had been pressing the case for military action, according to senior administration officials speaking only on condition of anonymity. Ms. Power is a former journalist and human rights advocate; Ms. Rice was an Africa adviser to President Clinton when the United States failed to intervene to stop the Rwanda genocide, which Mr. Clinton has called his biggest regret.

Now, the three women were pushing for American intervention to stop a looming humanitarian catastrophe in Libya.

If a “progressive” and an inexperienced president had a kid, what would it be?

A neocon!

The editorial page at the Pittsburgh New Tribune is noticing President Obama’s disconnect:

Much of the Middle East is ablaze in revolution, the thuggery of Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi being the highlight of how low megalomaniacs will go to stay in power.

And, of course, the nuclear tragedy unfolding in Japan, following the devastating earthquake and tsunami, is reeling the world.

Then there’s that little matter of a looming government shutdown.

But what’s the leader of the free world been up to?

On Wednesday, Mr. Obama appeared on ESPN to announce his picks for the NCAA basketball tournament.

Earlier in the week, he gave “exclusive” interviews to TV stations from around the country — including Pittsburgh’s KDKA — on “education reform.” (KDKA’s story catapulted pro forma local TV video stenography to news lows.)

Saturday last, when not giving his weekly radio address on the critically important issue of Women’s History Month, Obama was playing golf — reported to be the 61st round of his presidency — joking that it was not “playing” at all but an “investment.”

That was fast on the heels of his riveting summit on “bullying.”

Can you imagine how the mainstream media would have reacted to such disconnected behavior had it been a Republican president?

As re the Middle East, Japan and the budget?  We’ve had an entire month of “My Little Goat”.

This isn’t a matter of “optics” but one of judgment. This president is woefully out of touch with reality and how a leader should behave in such trying times.

Bring on 2012.

Unlike our First Lady, I have almost always been proud of my country, and to be an American.

Never more so than when I see things like this; it’s a chopper crew from the USS Ronald Reagan delivering supplies to Japan.

It should go without saying that this blog’s prayers are with the people of Japan, and everyone in areas covered by the tsunami warning.

We’ll wait for an update from regular commenter Terry, who is (presumably) safely esconced way up on a mountain somewhere in the islands.

Andrew Exum, a former Ranger officer who blogs at Abu Muquwama (which is affilaiated with the Center for a New American Security) on a a factoid about the “rebel”, eastern part of Libya:

I was looking through the Sinjar documents (.pdf) today because I remembered (incorrectly, as it turns out) that Benghazi had sent more foreign fighters to Iraq than any other city in the Arabic-speaking world. On a per capita basis, though, twice as many foreign fighters came to Iraq from Libya — and specifically eastern Libya — than from any other country in the Arabic-speaking world. Libyans were apparently more fired up to travel to Iraq to kill Americans than anyone else in the Middle East. And 84.1% of the 88 Libyan fighters in the Sinjar documents who listed their hometowns came from either Benghazi or Darnah in Libya’s east. This might explain why those rebels from Libya’s eastern provinces are not too excited about U.S. military intervention. It might also give some pause to those in the United States so eager to arm Libya’s rebels.

Of course (as a commenter notes) it could be that Qaddhafi used Iraq as an excuse to get ride of Muslim militants that could just as easily have bedeviled him.

But the Middle East is like unravelling an onion.

This has just got to piss Nick Coleman off – and, commensurately, leave Chad the Elder pretty stoked:

That’s a Libyan freedom fighter with a UND Fighting Sioux T-shirt.

Politically-incorrect here; a sign of freedom there.

Just goes to show you – wherever tyranny needs to be toppled, whether in Saint Paul or in the Sahara, North Dakotans, or our clothes, will be there.

Mubarak is out; the Egyptian military finally staged a coup:

The protest movement that began on Jan. 25 grew from small groups of youth activists organizing on the Internet into a mass movement that tapped into the discontent to become the largest popular uprising in the Arab world.

Up to the last hours, Mubarak sought to cling to power, handing some of his authorities to Suleiman while keeping his title.

But an explosion of protests Friday rejecting the move appeared to have pushed the military into forcing him out completely. Hundreds of thousands marched throughout the day in cities across the country as soldiers stood by, besieging his palace in Cairo and Alexandria and the state TV building. A governor of a southern province was forced to flee to safety in the face of protests there.

This was the interesting part:

His fall came 32 years to the day after the collapse of the shah’s government in Iran.

Here’s the big question: the military is in control.  In the Moslem world, military rule frequently means stability – the Turkish constitution requires the military to depose a government that tries to junk the constitution’s secular rules.  And the military is, if not friendly to, at least closely linked with the US; those tanks you see in the streets were built in the USA.  Will the combination of stability and influence work to the long-term benefit of an Egyptian demcoracy?

Or will it tamp a kettle onto any Islamicism fermenting in the country, allowing it to manufacture itself some martyrs and become an extremist movement?

One things’ for sure; however it turns out, it’ll be a surprise to the Obama Administration.

…at least something good happened.

No, I’m not serious.  What do you think I am, a leftyblogger?  I don’t believe in “karma”, but I think what goes around comes around, so I have to believe there’s at least a little cosmic payback going on for his “teabagger” slurs from two years ago.

Still – while I believe Anderson Cooper is a poster child for the Hollywooding of the American “news” media, Violence, especially physical violence, is a bad thing.  People – please, stop hitting each other.

There is a more important, and sinister, story behind this; there appears to be a push by pro-Mubarak forces to push the western media away from the story.  There’s a method to the madness; they’ve seen how radicals the world over (and there’s at least a fair case to be made that there are radicals behind, and using, the popular unrest for their advantage) use the western media, especially American media, to manipulate world opinion, frequently with grossly-mangled context.

Liberty as we understand it in America is a wonderful thing – one we should try to export.  But before you can have liberty, you must have stability, and the rule of law.  Is Egyptian society stable enough, and are their society’s institutions mature enough in their approach to the idea of the rule of law, to be reasonably sure that what replaces Mubarak will be better?

In Turkey, one can reasonably say “I think so”, and support the case.

In Iran?  Michael Ledeen has been making that case better than anyone in the media for half a decade at least.

Tunisia?  Syria?  Egypt?

Sorry to say, I’m less hopeful.

Katie Kieffer on  the mixed messages Obama is sending China – aka “America’s Lienholder”:

Mixed messages are useful if we want confuse, frustrate or anger another country. They are not useful in diplomacy or relationship-building. Mixed messages are dangerous because they make the U.S. appear weak and untrustworthy. Here are some of the mixed messages that we’ve given China, our biggest debtor and whose central bank owns $896 billion in Treasury bonds:

What, you think I’m doing to just paste the whole thing?  Read the post.

Britain more conservative now than when Thatcher was PM:

Britain is now more Thatcherite than when Margaret Thatcher was in power, with people much less supportive of the welfare state and the redistribution of wealth than in the 1980s, according to an authoritative study of the country’s mood.

New Labour oversaw the biggest recorded shift to the right in public attitudes on those measures, despite a surge in concern about the scale of the wealth gap between rich and poor.

The British Atlas’s shoulders seem to be itching…:

Sympathy towards benefit claimants has evaporated, along with support for redistributive tax and spend policies, over the past 20 years, with Labour governing during a period of significant hardening of attitudes towards the poor, the annual results of the British Social Attitudes survey reveal.

So there is hope in Europe.

While the rest of the world’s economy spits and sputters, Canada’s makin’ bacon like nobody’s business, recovering from the world’s recession more convincingly than any other developed nation. Now, having gained a chip in the world economic game, they want to cash it in.

“When countries feel confident they tend to assert their national interests,” says Perry Spitznagel, vice-chair of law firm Bennett Jones LLP and organizer of a business forum last week titled “Canada Rising: Our Future as a Global Economic Leader.”

Down the road, experts say, Canada might use its newfound muscle in any number of ways, from demanding better treatment in trade deals with the U.S. to taking a leading role in the development of oil and other resources in the Arctic.

Ahhh. Hmmmm. I see.

My seasoned, thoughtful analysis: I can’t believe anyone lives North of International Falls.

I almost feel sorry for Barack Obama. He’s traveling the world over, looking for some love, and coming up empty.

America handed him an epic rejection of virtually everything he has “accomplished”  just two years in. Knowing fully well what was coming, he skipped the country on a trade mission, a multi-bazillion-dollar entourage in tow, hoping to bring home a trade agreement…or…something.

President Obama’s hopes of emerging from his Asia trip with the twin victories of a free trade agreement with South Korea and a unified approach to spurring economic growth around the world ran into resistance on all fronts on Thursday, putting Mr. Obama at odds with his key allies and largest trading partners.

Does the whole world hate Obama?

After five largely harmonious meetings in the past two years to deal with the most severe downturn since the Depression, major disputes broke out between Washington and China, Britain, Germany and Brazil.

OK, maybe not the whole world, just a majority of the largest economies of the world, so technically there are countries out there, theoretically, that don’t think America’s fiscal and monetary policies are being crafted by an administration consisting of a band of arrogant bookworms that have never owned, created or run anything resembling an enterprise.

In two years, the Obama administration has effectively rendered America to the economic equivalence of adolescence, world leaders now treating Obama and his staff like underclassmen.

As if a global scolding wasn’t embarrassing enough for the soon-to-be one-term President, his Treasury Secretary, steeped in academentia, was fending off attacks from back home.

The disputes were not limited to America’s foreign partners. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner got into a trans-Pacific argument with one of his former mentors, Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, after Mr. Greenspan wrote that the United States was “pursuing a policy of currency weakening.” Mr. Geithner shot back on CNBC that while he had “enormous respect” for Mr. Greenspan, “that’s not an accurate description of either the Fed’s policies or our policies.” He added, “We will never seek to weaken our currency as a tool to gain competitive advantage or grow the economy.”

Well, if you say so.

…well, at least not again…because the Fed’s current plan to buy $600 Billion of government securities is precisely, explicitly that.

Does Geithner actually believe we are all that stupid or that he’s so much smarter?

Much of the rest of the world seemed to share Mr. Greenspan’s assessment. Moreover, Mr. Obama seemed to be losing the broader debate over austerity. The president has insisted that at a moment of weak private demand, the best way to spur economic growth is to have the government prime the pump with cheap credit and government stimulus programs. He quickly found himself in an argument with Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany.

Wait, who? Great Britain? Isn’t Great Britain…like, our Huckleberry? How retarded does the President and his staff have to be to screw up that relationship?

America isn’t subscribing to this administration’s ineptitude and neither is the rest of the world.

Playing a fools game, hoping to win, telling those sweet lies and losing again.

Tom Emmer has taken some heat – unjustified as usual – for a (out of context) remark in the Marshall newspaper last year:

“I don’t think you can call yourself a freedom-loving American and be a Democrat,” Emmer said. “I don’t think that’s a grassroots Democrat who says now ‘That’s not what I voted for, this isn’t the America I want.’ It’s the leaders of the Democrat party.”

Some Democrats have gotten exercised over the quote, lately – out-of-context, naturally.   Of course freedom-loving people can be Democrats…

…even though so many of their leaders S have sided with the world’s totalitarians, mass-murderers and tyrants that it seems Emmer may have been too kind in his treatment of the left:

Senator Edward M. Kennedy offered to work in close concert with high level Soviet officials to sabotage President Ronald Reagan’s re-election efforts and to arrange for congenial American press coverage of General Secretary Yuri Andropov, according to a 1983 KGB document.

That’s Ted Kennedy.

The patron saint of the mainstream Left in America.

Actively working with the KGB against then-President Ronald Reagan.

That’s the KGB; they of the Lubyanka and the Black Marias and the Gulag and show trials and sixty million dead Russians, Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Germans.  The KGB of the Holodomor, the government-imposed starvation of Ukraine.

One more time from the heart:  Ted Kennedy worked with the K G freaking B against a sitting President.

Specifically, Kennedy offered to have “representatives of the largest television companies in the U.S. contact Y.V. Andropov for an invitation to Moscow for the interview.” The idea here would be for the Soviet leader to make an end run around Reagan and make a direct appeal to the American people.

Kennedy suggested that Walter Cronkite, Barbara Walters and Elton Raul, the president of the board of directors for ABC, be considered for the interviews with Andropov in Moscow.

That’s Yuri Andropov – former KGB head, one of the architects of the “Prague Spring”, a man with rivers of human blood on his nicotine-stained hands – for whom Ted “Camelot!” Kennedy, leader of the “Mainstream” American left, was serving as a Public Relations flak.

Question for all of you liberal hamsters who were calling Michele Bachmann and the Tea Party “seditious” for fomenting suspicion of government, and who huffed “Don’t you dare question the left’s patriotism” between 2001 and 2008; where is the revulsion?

I’m sure it’ll happen as soon as the mainstream media covers Kennedy’s treachery:

The confidential correspondence between Sen. Kennedy and Soviet agents first came to light in a Feb. 2, 1992 report published in the London Times entitled “Teddy, the KGB and the Top Secret File.

To sum up:  A mainstream liberal leader goes behind the back of the sitting President to double-deal with not just any foreign power, but the most murderous group of butchers in human history, because he saw them as the reasonable party.

Of course it was a rare, one-off aberration, right?

Wrong.

So it might be possible to be a freedom-loving American and a liberal Democrat.   But I’d love someone to explain the baggage for me.

Back in 1960, after the Washingon Senators’ franchise collapsed in the wake of the water-polo-loving Kennedy Administration’s accession to power, the franchise, desperate for a homeland, moved to Minnesota and became the Twins.

Starved for major-league Baseball – which the state had not seen since the fans of the Minneapolis Millers and Saint Paul Saints had been cast forth years earlier – fans flocked to the new team.

But not everyone was happy.

The area had been home to many Milwaukee Brewers (and before that Braves) fans, and even fans of the Chicago Cubs and even the Cleveland Indians.  And they  – especially the Milwaukee franchise – were irate at losing their fan base in the area.

So team owner Bud Zelig told the Brewers fans in Minnesota to flee to Wisconsin, where they would live in Motel Sixes and wait for Wisconsin baseball to return to Minnesota.

The Twins’ management – owner Carl Pohlad, of course, and general manager David Ben Green – told the Brewers’ fans that there was plenty of room in Minnesota for fans of all teams, and while the Twins would love to have them as fans, really, they were free to coexist peacefully with Twins fans in Minnesota.   And it seemed ever-so-briefly that Ben Green’s initiative would work; some moderate Brewers fans suggested maybe it would be possible for the teams to co-exist side by side.  Some even suggested that maybe they should leave the Motel Sixes in Hudson and Prescott, and return to Minnesota – or even just bite the bullet and settle in Wisconsin.

Zelig would have nothing to do with it; to him and his inner coterie, the only acceptable solution was for the Brewers to dominate baseball in Minnesota.  The refugees were of no value to him in Minnesota, and even less in Wisconsin.  So Zelig sent thugs (led by “Brewers In Minnesota Forever” president Chuck Arrowfad, a Brewers zealot and former Richfield, MN linoleum salesman, to track down and pants the “moderate” Brewers fans.  

The rest of them fell into line, spending much of the next fifty years sallying forth from their Motel Sixes to come to Twins games and cause mischief.  They’d throw big cafeteria-size mustard jars from the top deck to the field, to stain the Metrodome’ s astroturf.  When the ‘dome’s security measures got ahead of that, they switched to peeing all over the men’s rooms; the Twins responded by stationing attendants armed with mace in the restrooms.  Next, they started spraypainting “I EM FATT” on Kirby Puckett posters – until Pucket retired. 

Finally, in 2000, the Twins’ director of fan services, Ed Braak, made the Brewers’ fans a controversial offer; if they’d cut the mischief, they’d get their own section in the stands; much of the left-field second deck, and two whole sections on the lower level off the right field line, near the home plate that everyone wanted to see.  It was controversial – “why should we loyal Twins fans give up seats for these louts” asked Ben Nathanson of “Twins Fans United”, a key Twins fan group.

But the Twins were desperate for a resolution to the crisis; they’d spent tens of thousands of dollars cleaning urine and mustard stains over the years.  So they went ahead with it the plan.

And on opening day, 2001, the Brewers fans filed into their special sections – and, as the opening pitch wound up, hundreds of the fans turned, dropped trou and launched a flatulent  “brown cloud” in the direction of the field; the Dome erupted in Chaos.

The Twins’ Fan Investigation Division found links between the disgraceful episode and representatives from the Brewers, Cubs and the Kansas City Royals, and even an emissary from Major League Baseball itself; the stunt had been organized on one of the first, crude “social networking” websites, “Interleague Fart Alliance” – often shortened in conversation to “Interfarta”.  Braak was fired…

…but for the past ten years, that’s been the status quo at the ‘dome and now the new Target Field.  Even with Braak’s departure (and the eventual hiring of Nathanson to replace him in the Fan Relations office), the Brewers fans retained the rights to their sections, where to this day they launch mustard bottles to the field and pee all over the rest room floors; Arrowfad sits in his place of honor and roots for any team the Twins are playing against.

“I have to!”, Arrowfad said in a 2007 interview.  “It’s in our bylaws; our mission is to send the Twins back to DC, or put them out of business”.

Asked what he thought that meant for Twins fans, Arrowfad responded “they should go back to Washington, where they came from!”

“There are no good guys in this story”, opined Rick Richardson, noted baseball blogger from “The Progressive Diamond Watch”. 

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard”, said Nathanson.  “We’ve spent fifty years trying to cater to these people, trying to meet them halfway and even further.  Sure, I’m sorry, we’re not the Brewers, but we have a right to do business and play ball, too!”

Recent public opinion polls show that the Twins enjoy the support of over 95% of respondents.  “Look, the Twins have bent over backwards to accomodate those Brewers fans, consistent with staying in business at all”, said Towanda Murphy, a poll respondent.  “What kind of idiot would ignore that simple historical fact?”

[Mitch adds:  “Seems like common sense to me!”]

Just so we’re clear on things – this blog is an unabashed supporter of Israel.  I say this as a firmly committed goy.

That is not to say Israel is perfect; it is to say that the Jewish State has extended itself in the interest of peace, over and over again, and gotten slapped for it by the “international community” every time. 

Yoram Dori – an advisor to Shimon Peres – responds to Helen “Send ’em back to Warsaw” Thomas by noting that his parents, like so many Israelis, come to Israel from those countries for very good reason; his father and mother were the only survivors of their families from Austria and Poland, respectively.  Over two out of three German Jews died during World War II; nine out of ten Polish Jews died as well.

That is why they went to Israel in the first place; because the only parts of the “international community” that didn’t let them down during the war were the parts that were actively hoping for their deaths.  Just like today.

IN THE 62 years of our existence, we have had seven wars, thousands of terror attacks, buses which have exploded in streets, firing into schools, mortars fired on kindergartens. Yet you wish to exile us back to the inferno, as if nothing happened 65 years ago in Europe, as if our hands have not been stretched out for peace since the establishment of the state?

We were victorious in the wars imposed upon us by Egypt and we signed a peace agreement with it after yielding all the territory and all the oil. We signed a peace agreement with Jordan. We yielded all the territory and much water. We withdrew from Lebanon to the international border and, in return, we received Hizbullah katyushas on our citizens. We left Gaza and in return, we received massive firing on our citizens in the South. Are you aware, Ms. Thomas, that many children from Sderot and the area around Gaza wet their beds until a late age out of fear of the Hamas missiles? And it is us that you wish to exile? Why? Because you think that we are weak or because it annoys you that we are not defeated?

Lest you think Dori is a fire breathing Tea Matzo Partier…:

As someone, who throughout his adult life has been a member of the Israeli “peace camp,” notwithstanding you and your strange and angering views, my friends and I (and I hope also my government) will continue to turn over every stone and scour every corner to attain peace.

Would that it could be.

Thomas is only the most public, risible example of her kind.

Last year on Marty Owings’ “Radio Free Nation”, I got a chance to ask Representative Keith Ellison if he, in his capacity as the first Muslim in Congress and one of the most powerful people in the Islamic world, repudiated the Hamas charter, which calls for the destruction of Israel and the extinction of the Jews.

His response:  “How many Palestinians do you know?”

Y’see, I was the bad guy for asking.

In 1598, William Shakespeare wrote of English politics in his otherwise unremarkable play “King John”:

O inglorious league!
Shall we, upon the footing of our land,
Send fair-play orders and make compremise,
Insinuation, parley, and base truce
To arms invasive?

412 years later David Cameron enters stage left, arms as invasive as ever before in Britain’s Conservative Party.  Will he be equally as unremarkable as “King John”?

In the last year, the youthful, moderate, almost too-charismatic leader of the Tories has yo-yoed from political genius/cross-Atlantic conservative inspiration to cautionary tale and nearly (within the last 24 hours) the head of the loyal opposition instead of Prime Minister.  Instead Cameron sent “fair-play orders” (which in Shakespeare’s era was tantamount to surrender) and made compromise with the exceedingly left-wing Liberal Democratic Party to form the oddest fusion since the Second Coalition of the Napoleonic Wars.  Or maybe Elton John and Eminem at the Grammys.

The tendency in Anglo-American political relations has long been to see parallels across the pond.  Churchill and Roosevelt, Reagan and Thatcher, Blair and Clinton.  Indeed, from the moment Barack Obama positioned himself at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, conservatives both of the big ‘C’ and litle ‘c’ variety, began to argue that Cameron was positioning himself as a fellow change agent en route to occupying 10 Downing Street.

Perhaps the most accurate link between between Obama and Cameron was their first and foremost notion of what such “change” meant – having the other party out of power.  Most certainly for Cameron, at least on the campaign trail, having Gordon Brown out of power was the only real change he promised to offer the United Kingdom:

As long as I can remember, American Jews have regarded Israel about the same way as northeastern Catholics look at abortion; something that’s supposed to be of overriding importance, but doesn’t really affect their voting patterns.

But Obama’s radical dissociation from Israel, and his shameless treatment of Prime Minister Netanyahu, seems to be provoking a change.  I heard these numbers over the weekend, while interviewing Mark Miller of the Republican Jewish Coalition; for the first time,   American Jews are souring on Obama and the Democrats:

United States President Barack Obama has lost nearly half of his support among American Jews, a poll by the McLaughlin Group has shown.

The US Jews polled were asked whether they would: (a) vote to re-elect Obama, or (b) consider voting for someone else. 42% said they would vote for Obama and 46%, a plurality, preferred the second answer. 12% said they did not know or refused to answer.

Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll go to the GOP endorsee; that’s the GOP’s job to take care of.

Still, you don’t see these kinds of numbers every day:

In the Presidential elections of 2008, 78% of Jewish voters, or close to 8 out of 10, chose Obama. The McLaughlin poll held nearly 18 months later, in April 2010, appears to show that support is down to around 4 out of 10.

The poll showed that key voter segments including Orthodox/Hassidic voters, Conservative voters, voters who have friends and family in Israel and those who have been to Israel, are all more likely to consider voting for someone other than Obama.

Among Orthodox/Hassidic voters, 69% marked ‘someone else’ vs. 17% who marked ‘re-elect.’ Among Conservative-affiliated voters the proportion was 50% to 38%. Among Reform Jews, a slim majority of 52% still supported Obama while 36% indicated they would consider someone else. Among Jews with family in Israel and those who had been to Israel, about 50% said they would consider someone else…

It’s still two and a half years ’til the election, so nobody needs to get excited.  But not since Reagan have we seen such an erosion among Jewish support for the Democrats.

I can’t honestly say I have a coherent, consistent opinion about Arizona’s immigration law yet.

On the one hand, there can be no more repugnant thought to a citizen of a free society than the idea of police wandering around going “your papers, please?”. 

On the other hand, that’s not what the Arizona law is about.  According to actual lawyer Joe “Learned Foot” Tucci, who actually has some background in Arizona law, and who noted in my comment section yesterday:

Reasonable suspicion, I think, pertains to searches after an arrest has been effected. The example here being: a cop pulls a guy over for speeding and when the perp opens the car door window, pot smoke billows out. The cop then has reasonable suspicion that there may be pot in the car and can search it without a warrant.

That distinction (if I’m correct) is key to the critical language in the blurb you quote from 11-1051, “Lawful contact”. That term is not defined in Arizona Revised Statutes. However, given the context, I think it may mean a search or arrest pursuant to probable cause. Meaning that the mandate for cops to make a “reasonable effort” to ascertain a person’s immigration status (based on a “reasonable suspicion” of illegality) only kicks in if the person is stopped or arrsted for the violation of some other law.

That said, if I’m wrong and “lawful contact” means merely a cop ambling up to some browish dude with an accent and saying “hey, how ya’ doin’? Papers please,” then this law is repulsive, and proably unconstitutional.

If my interpretation is correct, then a lot of people are getting their panties in a wad over nothing.

To the best of my knowledge, the Arizona law does not mean law enforcment will be driving down the street rounding up brown-looking people who don’t have IDs on them. 

As many proponents of the Arizona law note, the law just reiterates federal law, as it is supposed to be enforced (but isn’t).  I’m no lawyer.  I don’t know. 

On the third hand, there are a lot of people who dont’ really care if you know the real truth or not.  To our nation’s media and current political elites, disinformation is just fine.  Christina Cordova at  “MNSpeak” is part of the disinformation, whether as a producer, a consumer, or both:

A new Arizona law makes it a state crime to be in the U.S. illegally, and requires local law enforcement to ask for papers from anyone they reasonably suspect is in the country illegally — in other words, anyone that “looks” like they “may” not be… a “white” American. Hmm…

If someone can show me the “racial dragnet” portion of this law, please speak up.

On the third-and-a-half hand, we all know that there are cops who will made their collars first and bother with “reasonable” this and “probable” that later, and pretty much assume that nobody’s got the money to fight City Hall anyway.  And that’s usually a fair bet; I know of not a few situations where the police have trampled over ostensible constitutional rights, knowing that the victims weren’t going to be able to do anything about it on their budgets anyway. 

On the fourth hand, that’s a separate issue.  The fact that some cops give ten miles per hour of leeway over the posted speed limit, and some give none at all, doesn’t invalidate the speed limit law.   We need to keep our cops accountable.

On the fifth hand, more enforcement is only part of the answer to the narcotraficante problem.  The “War On Drugs” is a failure by every possible moral, ethical and practical measure.  We need to end it.

On the sixth hand, until we do end it, we have to deal with the hand we’re dealt.  It’d be far better to keep illegal immigrants on the other side of the border.  Perhaps it’s time to abandon the farce of the “open, unfortified border”, and screw the whole idea of a “fence”, and move the Army down there.

On the seventh hand, barring a major commitment in fence-building or a major redeployment of the Armhy, our border is utterly permeable.  And cops in Arizona – and all along the border – are facing an awful situation.  It’s not just would-be landscapers and fry cooks coming across the border.  Once low-crime Phoenix is awash in narcotraficante crime these days.  Trafficers from across the border are causing all kinds of mayhem, and killing not a few innocent Americans who are in the wrong place at the wrong time.  And the feds are apparently doing nothing useful, and the mainstream media are pretending there is no story, largely because they ideologically support open borders.  Hey, news anchors need cheap nannies too.

On the eighth hand, the illegal immigration problem predates the drug war in Mexico by quite a bit.  The current drug war and the longstanding illegal immigration problem tie into the fact that Mexico is a failed, socialist state, while the US, so far, isn’t.  The open border has allowed Mexico’s failed socialist government to put off its day of reckoning with its own people.

On the ninth hand, to a big chunk of our nation’s political and media elite, the idea of separating ourselves from a neighbor’s failure – even for both country’s mutual good – is noxious.  America is guilty, they think, for much of the hemisphere’s dysfunction, one way or the other.  The whole “the world is one” conceit isn’t just idle talk to them.

And as part of exercising that conceit, there is an epic slander underway.  It’s of a piece with the slander of all dissent that our political aned media elites are engaged in, in which all dissent on any subject is called “racist”, “violent” and otherwise depraved. 

Part of that campaign is the deliberate blurring of the distinction between legal and illegal immigrants.  You will never see a lefty commentator, from Christina Cordova to Chris Coleman, use the word “illegal” immigrant when talking about the subject of the law; they never qualify the term “immigrant”, to the point of lying (Coleman’s little squib yesterday about the law affecting his sainted Irish grandmother, who would no doubt kick his ass if she saw the way he was torturing context; every good Irish Catholic gramma knows a lie by omission is a lie just the same).

On the tenth hand, I know of not one single conservative, anywhere, who actually favors clamping down on legal immigration.  “Build a high fence, and a wide gate”, most of us say. 

On the eleventh hand, the media would rather cover peckerwoods waving shotguns from the backs of their pickup trucks, a la “Reno 911″‘s classic “Minutemen” episode, than the actual facts.

So with eleven hands raised, where does that leave us?

Make sure the law is constitutional – as in, “actually follows the law”, as opposed to “makes my white-liberal-guilty heart droop”.

James Corum – a former US Army officer who teaches at the Baltic War College – on Obama’s new foreign-policy fecklessness.

We know that Obama’s had no love lost for Israel:

Israel sensibly boycotted Obama’s nuclear summit in Washington. Israel has recently been treated with such hostility by President Obama, the Israeli prime minister avoided what looked like a set up for some Islamic nations dictatorships to turn the occasion into an anti-Israel forum. Thanks to Obama, we have a nuclear proliferation summit in which Israel, a nuclear power, is pushed away – but where Liberia shows up.

Unforgiveable enough.  To damn with nearly nonexistant praise, it could be said that Israel is a hot potato.

Still less forgiveable is his treatment of Poland:

It is hard to imagine how Poland’s treatment by Obama could have been worse. It was a week of shock and grief for the Poles – a close NATO ally that has sent large forces to fight alongside America in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama used the Iceland eruption as an excuse to cancel his trip to the funeral of Poland’s president and top leaders killed in the air crash. But those of us who live in Eastern Europe know that Cracow Airport was open and Obama could have flown in there. A president who respected true friends and sacrifices in blood would have made a serious gesture. Not Obama – he took off to play golf and did not bother to take a few minutes to sign the consolation book at the Polish Embassy on the way to the course.

This follows on two other just-plain-stupid insults against the Poles; his neglect of the 70th anniversary of the German invasion, and his unilateral bailing out on the missile defense system on which the Kaczynski administration had burned up tons of political capital.

Finally, the US Ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, insulted America’s closest ally in Central America by called the Honduran Congress’ removal of President Zelaya last year a “coup d’etat.” (Llorens’ letter to Wall Street Journal, April 14). Now Honduras is a genuine democracy and the removal of Zelaya was done lawfully and with the support of the majority of the Honduran Congress. The removal was no coup – it was an appropriate act to stop an out of control president who tried to overthrow the constitution by grabbing an illegal second term.

In context, it’s almost forgiveable; it’s the kind of thing you see in Chicago all the time.

Remember when people called Obama “smarter than Bush?”

Alienating three close allies in one week is quite a trick, even for a president as inept in foreign policy as Barack Obama. However, it fits a pattern. President Obama has never shown any understanding for the basic rules of foreign policy which include cultivating allies, avoiding unnecessary friction, and doing one’s homework. These things happen because Obama is fundamentally uninterested in foreign policy. It is part of a pattern that began when Obama was elected to the Senate.

Ironic, isn’t it, that the only parts of  “smart”, “intellectually curious” president’s foreign policy that actually work are cribbed from “the dumb one?”

I read the story in Power Line, who wrote:

Not only is Obama mostly uninterested in foreign policy, but his instincts are bad because at bottom, he doesn’t believe in advancing America’s interests. Moreover, perhaps because of his own jaundiced view of American history, he seems to be instinctively contemptuous of people and nations that are pro-American.

Wonder how Obama will be billing among Europeans in 2012?

A volcano in Iceland is is erupting:

An Icelandic volcano is still spewing ash into the air in a massive plume that has disrupted air traffic across Europe and shows little sign of letting up, officials said on Friday.

The Twin Cities AFSCME has not yet told us whether they consider this  a threat to them from the Tea Party.