Mohamud thus makes three in a string of recent examples of Islamists who have plotted unsuccessfully to blow up Americans on U.S. soil. Last month in another sting, the FBI arrested Farooque Ahmed in Virginia for casing the D.C. Metro system to plot a bomb attack. In May, Faisal Shahzad created but did not managed to detonate a bomb in New York’s Times Square. These incidents are linked, and so is their failure. The linkage is obvious. All men were Muslim immigrants who decided to bring Jihad to America. That it didn’t work out is not merely a matter of luck. . . .
Dude. When it turns out Saudi royalty is on the same page with Bill Kristol vis-a-vis the need to bomb Iran, you know Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s regime is in trouble.
More seriously: This WikiLeaks dump is extraordinarily damaging to U.S. foreign policy. It impairs the trust of our allies if their confidential communications with our diplomats are not secure. Even the New York Times — which for 40 years has had an unstated editorial policy of undermining America’s national security at every opportunity — feels the need to defend itself for reporting on these leaks.
The investigation to find the persons inside the U.S. government responsible for these disclosures should be a top administration priority, and Congress should hold hearings into the evident laxity with classified information. The White House issues a bland statement, but am I the only one who has noticed that WikiLeaks didn’t seem to have unfettered access to America’s top secrets until the Obama administration came to town?
He’s exactly right. He’s also exactly right that conservatives defend Sarah Palin “not because of who Palin is, but who the Palin haters are.” We hate the haters. And then the professor swings the hammer with such accuracy as to split atoms in the nail:
But as I reflect back on the past two plus years since Palin’s nomination, I’m wondering if an all-out, knock-down, drag-out fight with the Palin haters is just what this country needs most, not least.
Read the whole thing and — Governor Palin, if you’re reading this — hireProfessor Jacobson for your campaign team.
“[T]he goal of third-wave (gender) feminism is the destruction of marriage because of the ‘unequal’ male/female roles inherent in marriage. Third-wave feminists pushed early sex education, recreational pre-marital sex and taxpayer-funded abortion as a way to de-couple sex from marriage. . . . [P]re-marital sex reduces the stability of marriages, and the effect is increased depending on the number of pre-marital sex partners. . . . [W]omen influenced by feminism shun chivalry, and bypass men who excel in the traditional roles and who would make good husbands and fathers, and prefer to have the drama of ‘hook-ups’ with ‘bad boys’ . . . Good men, seeing that goodness is getting them nowhere sexually, will drop goodness like a hot potato and begin to act like bad boys. Naturally, these bad boys are not able to shoulder the burdens of the roles of husband and father, because they were never evaluated or selected to fill those roles. . . . Marriages don’t survive if neither the man or the woman is tested and selected for making self-sacrificial commitments to other people. The real victims of marital instability are the innocent children of the selfish feminists. As a result, boys grow up without fathers, which increases their tendency to be poor students, poor workers and sexually aggressive, and girls grow up without fathers, which drastically lowers the age at which they have sex.”
— Wintery Knight, “What Is Causing the Epidemic of Gang Rapes in Europe?”
A FORMER girlfriend of the ringleader of a Derby gang which raped and abused at least 27 girls has described evil Abid Mohammed Saddique as a “puppet master”.
Toni-Marie Redfern was horrified to discover that during their 18-month relationship the “sexual predator” was waging a campaign of assaults on vulnerable victims as young as 12. . . .
“When I found out what he had been doing I felt physically sick,” said Toni-Marie. “It sounds awful, but I wasn’t surprised. I felt like something wasn’t right from the moment I met him. Even then, I was thinking ‘what have you got yourself into?'” . . .
All the time he was preying on girls in Derby, he was dating Toni-Marie, who was unaware her boyfriend was married to another woman, with a child on the way. Toni-Marie was 16 when she met Saddique, who cornered the teenager while she was out shopping.
Now 20, she said: “For some reason I turned round and caught the eye of Saddique. He was with Liaqat and they just made a beeline for me. . . .”
A SCHOOLGIRL, who was in the care of the city council when she fell victim to a gang of Derby perverts, had been groomed and sexually abused by another man only months earlier, the Telegraph can reveal.
The youngster was placed in a children’s home by Derby City Council for her own protection after police arrested Ansar Hussain, who targeted her when she was just 13.
But despite being under the supervision of social workers, she fell into the clutches of evil Abid Mohammed Saddique and Mohammed Romaan Liaqat – the ringleaders of a gang who raped and abused 27 girls.
And now the council has admitted that it failed to spot clear signs that she was being sexually exploited not once – but twice.
“The public are not so aware of the dangers men like these pose to young people.”
Gee, do you think the public might be more aware if the media and public officials in England weren’t always tiptoeing around uncomfortable facts in an effort to avoid offending “men like these”?
As Nina becomes paranoid about Lily stealing her role, she begins to have delusions — sometimes she believes she’s looking at Lily, only to realize she’s visualizing a darker and more liberated version of herself. The fluidity of that relationship culminates in a heated sex scene between the young women, which is teased in the movie’s trailer and has for months been the subject of media fascination.
It was one of the few scenes the actresses shot together, and Portman — whose character also masturbates in the film — described it as “super awkward.”
Exit Question 1: Were the lesbian scene and the masturbation scene in the original screenplay, or did director Darren Aronofsky add those scenes to the script, just so he could film them?
Exit Question 2: How wrong is it that Aronofsky gets paid for that kind of “work”?
Instead, he would perhaps have us believe, the whole of conservatism is encapsulated in Charles Krauthammer’s brain.
It is not Krauthammer’s fault that the media are obsessed with presidential politics. It is not Krauthammer’s fault that, when Palin’s choice as running mate in 2008 suddenly made the GOP ticket competitive with Obama (see the poll numbers cited here), the media embarked on a search-and-destroy mission against Palin. And it is not Krauthammer’s fault that the media have continued to use Palin as a scarecrow, a Republican demon-figure presented as the too-horrifying-to-contemplate alternative to supporting Obama.
However, it is Krauthammer’s fault that he can’t speak of Palin except to dismiss her with a sneer. (Am I the only one who noticed his significant pause between “glorious” and “woman”?)
Allahpundit isn’t as openly sneering as Krauthammer: “While no one would claim that conservatism begins and ends with Palin, some of her more devoted supporters do seem to regard her as an avatar of the movement.”
Here’s my problem with such dismissive attitudes toward Palin from conservatives: It sets up the 2012 primary contest as a battle between Smart Republicans (who are presumed to oppose Palin) and Dumb Republicans (who presumably support Palin). This message — which is being shouted from the rooftops by Krauthammer, Rove and many others — will tend to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Which is to say, most of the Smart Republicans who take their political cues from the conservative intelligentsia will in fact oppose Palin. But the influence of Rove, Krauthammer et al. is not so great as they wish and, in a multi-candidate field, the irreducible hard core of Palin supporters among GOP primary voters is still large enough to win pluralities in every state where the primary electorate is limited to registered Republicans. (Seriously: Comparing the average Romney supporter to the average Palin supporter, which is more likely to trudge through the snow to attend an Iowa caucus meeting?)
There is therefore a very real possibility of Palin winning the 2012 presidential nomination, at which point all the sneering condescension of the Krauthammer/Rove class will justify the MSM in declaring, “The Dumb Republicans have won!”
And that’s not going to help beat Barack Obama, is it?
At least for the sake of argument, let Palin’s supporters stipulate that, as a candidate, she has very real liabilities. Let them grant that Palin’s detractors are sincere in their criticisms. Rule out of bounds any ad hominem attacks on the “Beltway elite” or any accusation that the anti-Palin conservatives are expressing mere snobbery toward someone they perceive as a provincial rube.
Still, from a standpoint of pure political strategy, Palin’s conservative critics are at risk of wrecking the GOP’s chances in 2012 by their constant reiteration of anti-Palin memes. If Republicans are to defeat Obama in 2012, they absolutely must have the enthusiastic support of the Palinistas, whether or not Palin wins the nomination.
If Palin’s supporters believe that she has been cheated out of the GOP nomination because a cabal of elitists conspired against her, they’re unlikely to volunteer to man phone-banks and canvass precincts and do the other kinds of grassroots activism necessary for some other Republican nominee to beat Obama.
And what if Palin is the nominee?
Elections are about choices, and I presume that Karl Rove and Charles Krauthammer — and even David Frum –would prefer to see Sarah Palin take the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2013, rather than to see Obama win a second term. If I am correct in that presumption, I would hope to see the conservative intelligentsia start acting as if a Palin presidency were both possible and preferable to Obama’s re-election.
Because it is possible, even if Palin is not your ideal candidate for job.
