Meet Mr. O. Moocher

Barack Obama, Political Economy, Private Property, Republicans, Socialism, Taxation

Thief-in-chief “insists the nation can no longer afford tax breaks for the wealthy, while Republicans say any tax increase is a grave mistake.”

The “nation” can no longer afford YOU, Mr. O. Moocher.

“With a tax cut, the plundering class simply agrees to pilfer less. The notion that you must ‘pay for tax cuts,’ … is akin to a burglar promising to return the television he stole just as soon as he is in a better financial position.”

People who earn well are less equal under the “law”; their income is considered forfeit, up for grabs. For their part, Republicans are just repulsive power grabbers. What would happen if they actually stood up for Americans who earn more than average?

Is a man with earning power worth less than a man without? Apparently so, politically speaking, becasue he is a much maligned minority with no representation.

UPDATED: 40,000 Protest Ground-Zero Mosque ("Wilders Was Not Wilders")

Islam, Journalism, Media, Propaganda

Geert Wilders included. So says anti-mosque activist, Pamella Geller. Yet the media is silent. Did you hear anything? I did not. Who are the bums working for?

UPDATE (Sept. 13): I did not read Geert’s speech. Larry Auster contends that in it, “Wilders Was Not Wilders.” Auster postulates that the dictates of the Geller-Spencer duo account for Wilders’ weak, soft message. Some time ago, I delineated clearly how America’s incoherent anti-Islamization contingent differs from the fierce and focused Wilders.

In “Dhimmis At Ground Zero?”, I pointed out that by requesting kindness and consideration from those they regard as conquistadors, these anti-mosque activists run the risk of sounding like dhimmis.

“Such pleas,” I pointed out, “remind me of the victim impact statement so popular in our Courts. How humiliating and futile is it to plead for contrition from sadists who’ve amply proved they are incapable of such sentiment, and derive sadistic pleasure from watching their victims squirm.”

Nor am I convinced that the Washington Post was wrong when it implied that, by prancing around with Pamella, Spencer, a serious scholar of Islam, was undermining his well-established bona fides.

Writes Auster:

Moreover, this is the first time to my knowledge that Wilders has ever done this. In his career as an internationally known Islam opponent over the last six years, he has adopted consecutively harder-line positions on Islam, never reverting to an earlier, weaker position once he had taken a stronger position. Among Wilders’s many admirable traits is his remarkable consistency. So I found his speech on Saturday not only disappointing, but unsettling.

Pamela Geller, a passionate activist, deserves credit for having driven the mosque issue. But the way she has driven the mosque issue may well have had the effect of weakening the anti-Islamization cause, by reducing the meaning of anti-Islamization to “no mosque at Ground Zero.”

UPDATED: 40,000 Protest Ground-Zero Mosque (“Wilders Was Not Wilders”)

Islam, Journalism, Media, Propaganda

Geert Wilders included. So says anti-mosque activist, Pamella Geller. Yet the media is silent. Did you hear anything? I did not. Who are the bums working for?

UPDATE (Sept. 13): I did not read Geert’s speech. Larry Auster contends that in it, “Wilders Was Not Wilders.” Auster postulates that the dictates of the Geller-Spencer duo account for Wilders’ weak, soft message. Some time ago, I delineated clearly how America’s incoherent anti-Islamization contingent differs from the fierce and focused Wilders.

In “Dhimmis At Ground Zero?”, I pointed out that by requesting kindness and consideration from those they regard as conquistadors, these anti-mosque activists run the risk of sounding like dhimmis.

“Such pleas,” I pointed out, “remind me of the victim impact statement so popular in our Courts. How humiliating and futile is it to plead for contrition from sadists who’ve amply proved they are incapable of such sentiment, and derive sadistic pleasure from watching their victims squirm.”

Nor am I convinced that the Washington Post was wrong when it implied that, by prancing around with Pamella, Spencer, a serious scholar of Islam, was undermining his well-established bona fides.

Writes Auster:

Moreover, this is the first time to my knowledge that Wilders has ever done this. In his career as an internationally known Islam opponent over the last six years, he has adopted consecutively harder-line positions on Islam, never reverting to an earlier, weaker position once he had taken a stronger position. Among Wilders’s many admirable traits is his remarkable consistency. So I found his speech on Saturday not only disappointing, but unsettling.

Pamela Geller, a passionate activist, deserves credit for having driven the mosque issue. But the way she has driven the mosque issue may well have had the effect of weakening the anti-Islamization cause, by reducing the meaning of anti-Islamization to “no mosque at Ground Zero.”

“Rhymes With Fagin”

Anti-Semitism, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Middle East

That’s the title of the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens article describing last week’s TIME magazine cover story, “Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace”:

“If you’re a reader of a certain age, you might understand the headline.

In May 1977, when Menachem Begin was elected Israel’s prime minister, Time magazine set out to describe the man, beginning with the correct pronunciation of his last name: ‘Rhymes with Fagin,’ the editors explained, invoking the character from Oliver Twist. Modern Israeli leader; archetypal Jewish lowlife: Get it?

The magazine’s other characterization of Begin was that he was ‘dangerous.’ A year later, he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Egypt’s Anwar Sadat.

Maybe there’s something in the magazine’s DNA. This week, readers were treated to a cover story by Karl Vick titled, suggestively, ‘Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace.’ That’s one way for Time to address the current state of negotiations between the Jewish state and its neighbors, which otherwise barely rate a mention in the article.

Mr. Vick’s essay draws on the testimony of a pair of real estate agents, a columnist for a left-leaning newspaper, and a few others to explain that Israelis are too blissed-out by the fruits of their economic prosperity to pay much attention to the subject of peace, much less whatever sad things may transpire among their neighbors in Ramallah and Gaza. ‘We’re not really that into the peace process,’ says Gadi Baltiansky, a peace activist quoted in the story. ‘We are really, really into the water sports.'”

It’s hard to say what to make of this, since the article concludes by contradicting its central thesis: ‘For all the surf breaks, the palms and the coffee, the conflict is never truly done, never far away,’ Mr. Vick writes.

Indeed it isn’t: Nearly every Israeli has a child, sibling, boyfriend or parent in the army. Nearly every Israeli has been to the funeral of a fallen soldier, or a friend killed in a terrorist attack. Most Israeli homes and businesses come equipped with safe rooms or bomb shelters; every Israeli owns a gas mask. The whole country exists under the encroaching shadows of Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and the prospect of a nuclear Iran. How many Americans, to say nothing of Europeans, can say the same about their own lives?” READ ON.

[SNIP]

What TIME cretin Karl Vick is describing, and depicting with the aid photos of good looking Israelis on the beach, is a plucky people engaged in LIFE; working, playing, making money (horrors!), and having fun, in the face of daily existential threats. This is to be admired not condemned.

My daughter, who was decidedly not pro-Israel when she visited there, came back enthralled with the country and its people (she wrote about it HERE). Never before had she met such tough, positive, feisty sorts (and certainly not in the Jewish school she once attended in South Africa. Israelis and diaspora Jews: never the twain shall meet).

As admirable as is the Israeli absorption with the good life, I’m afraid that regular Israelis need to learn to be more guarded with creeps likes Vick of TIME. And maybe to revive some of that founding patriotism, once again.