‘Son of Hamas’: Israel Has A Moral Code, Hamas Not

Free Speech, Israel, Jihad, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Palestinian Authority, Reason, Terrorism, The West

Enlightened, realistic, intelligent people (western, left-liberal intellectuals are precluded by definition) who visit or come to know Israel—the place, the people, the purpose of it all—abandon the easy, destructive, fashionable path of the Palestinians.

Such a man is Mosab Yousef, a “Son of Hamas”—also the title of his book—interviewed extensively by CNN’s Christian Amanpour.

This extremely bright young man’s central conversion is religious—once he embraced Christianity, his political change of heart followed. (How ironic, then, that western “intellectuals,” claiming to bear christian witness, routinely root for savagery as against civilization?!)

Amanpour, a fan of that authentic, ever-elusive, tame Islam, was shocked to hear these two stupendously courageous statements from Mosab Yousef:

1. The gangster of the world is the God of the Qu’ran.

2. Shin Bet has rules; is committed to a constitution, is not thirsty to kill Palestinians. Hamas’s goal, on the other hand, is to kill civilians, plain and simple.

Amanpour—who finds herself unable to abide Yousef’s admission that Shin Bet has a moral code, Hamas does not—then spent the rest of the admittedly penetrating interview trying to discredit Israel and the convert.

“Who turned you to working for the Israelis,” she demanded of Yousef.

Tellingly, the Hamas gangster she entertained to that end had a fit about being pitted against an Israeli expert on espionage, Yossi Melman of the leftist Haaretz.

An enlightened young man, with a fidelity to what’s infront of his eyes, turning against Hamas? This, to the western woman hot for the Hamas hottie, his bombs and his “causes”, is incredible.

Amanpour and the other Muslim academic she herded in for the occasion are, seemingly, quite invested in discrediting a born-again Christian whose conversion has seen him reject barbarism.

Regulars on the pro-Palestinian libertarian/left sides of the ideological spectrum might be warned of a major contradiction they risk committing, as they gather to slander Mosab Yousef, “Son of Hamas”:

Boy-oh-boy, has this man hungrily embraced civilization both from the depths of his being and in his actions. Yousef is risking his life to court the ways of the West: speaking, writing, arguing; having fun and making money while doing it all.

Now this is a hero in the Randian mold. May he stay safe.

Chile Is No Haiti

Foreign Aid, Media, Nationhood, Race, The West

Does anyone not a moron dispute the fact that Chile has coped reasonably well with what was “one of the most powerful earthquakes in history”? If to judge by the number of opprobrious pieces the malfunctioning media, activist Anderson Cooper in the lead, ran about the little looting there was in Chile—they have been hoping that Chile, who’s been subjected to aftershocks as strong as Haiti’s main event, would fare as poorly as did the Africa of the Western Hemisphere.

But Cooper will have to reserve his fashionable T shirts for another time. The death toll in Chile has been revised down from about 800 to 452. Troops and firefighters have galvanized. Chilean telethons are being conducted, lo, without George Clooney, and Chileans are flying patriotic slogans such as “Chile Helps Chile.”

The country’s economy is quite good and the GDP per-capita decent.

I suspect that at bottom, the following blog title reflects what Cooper, the Alpha female at CNN, would have liked to have said and proven:

“Chile Earthquake Proves White People Loot Too.”

Chile’s ethnic groups: “white and white-Amerindian 95.4%, Mapuche 4%, other indigenous groups 0.6% (2002 census)”

The Pigs Outnumber The Productive

Debt, Democrats, Elections, Labor, Republicans, Socialism, The State, Welfare

The Wall Street Journal called it his finest hour. When Jim Bunning “dared to put a hold on a $10 billion spending bill to extend jobless insurance and fund transportation projects,” the a Republican from Kentucky was pilloried.

Read the emotional histrionics from the mindless mainstreamers here:

JON STEWART, HOST, “THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART”: Talking about Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning`s ongoing effort to single-handedly (EXPLETIVE DELETED) the extension of unemployment benefits for 1.1 million Americans.

ALI VELSHI, CNN REPORTER: I bet you Senator Jim Bunning has someplace warm to sleep tonight. But the Republican from Kentucky is almost single- handedly responsible for cutting a vital financial lifeline to more than a million down-and-out Americans.

ED SCHULTZ, HOST, “THE ED SHOW”: Is this the most heartless thing you have seen the Republicans do?

The whole affair is not even about the fact the “the president of the United States and the Democratic majority in the Senate” lied about their intention to abide by the new pay-go bill that they passed, … which “says specifically … that we should pay for everything that we spend on the floor of the U.S. Senate.”

Anyone with a brain cell knows that the pay-go promise is a lie, plain and simple, whether Democrats or Republicans commit to it. They all lie.

The lesson from Jim Bunning’s relatively minor, days-long standoff—a position not even the crooked Chris Matthews could condemn in its entirety —is this:

The welfare state is intractable. The pigs outnumber—or are stronger electorally than—the productive. The first are feeding off the second and will not let up. Try to put distance between the state’s dependents and their Big Teat, and they’ll tear you to pieces.

Updated: 'Don’t Bet On A Recovery'

Debt, Federal Reserve Bank, Inflation, Labor, Uncategorized

PETER SCHIFF CHALLENGES “those who fantasize about a consumer-led recovery to describe where the spending money will come from. Most consumers are tapped out, millions are unemployed, and home equity has been wiped out. The only reasonable thing for them to do is to pay down debt and sock away as much money as possible to rebuild their savings.

Beyond the question of ‘how’ the spending could be achieved, is the deeper question of ‘why’ such activity should be sought at all. Excessive spending, fueled by an insane housing bubble and catalyzed by reckless monetary and fiscal policy, was the reason that our current recession became unavoidable. Why would we want to go down that road again?

During the run up to the crash, excess spending had created economic distortions that have yet to be resolved. Too many resources, including land, labor, and capital, were devoted to servicing an unsustainable economic model in which Americans borrowed money to buy homes, products and services they really could not afford. In many cases consumer behavior was influenced by overly optimistic assumptions regarding real estate related riches.

However, now that the real estate bubble has burst, Americans are coming to terms with a more sober reality. Many have cut up their credit cards, dramatically reduced their spending, and have squirreled away as much money as they can. This change in behavior should necessitate a dramatic shift in the labor market as workers move away from jobs associated with consumer spending and toward jobs associated with real production, primarily for exportable goods.

The real problem is that monetary and fiscal policy designed to re-inflate the burst spending bubble is preventing this transition from taking place. As a result we are not creating the jobs we need to replace – the ones we have lost in mortgage servicing, home improvement, and real estate sales (which we never really needed to begin with). As these jobless remain unable to find alternative employment, our economy will continue to languish.

Some will argue that the new jobs created by government stimulus spending will provide the additional purchasing power necessary to revitalize consumer spending. There are two problems with this expectation. First, those jobs being ‘created’ by the government are outnumbered by those being destroyed by government domination of resources. Second, even if it were possible for job growth to return, having hopefully learned from their mistakes, workers will be far more frugal with their paychecks than they were in the past.”

The complete column is HERE.

Update: From the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics comes “THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION — FEBRUARY 2010.” It’s not good.