Caroline Glick at 2013 Jerusalem Post Conference

At BCF, "Caroline Glick Let's Fly at the 2013 Jerusalem Post Conference."

Caroline Vreeland Bikini Photos

At Drunken Stepfather, "CAROLINE VREELAND MASSIVE TITS SUCKING IT IN OF THE DAY.

Caroline Glick, Scoop Jackson Lecture: The U.S, Israel and the Arab Revolution

She's awesome. Via Theo Spark:

Professor Caroline Heldman: 'We Are a White Supremacist Society...'

I can remember when she used to come off as a traditional "liberal" feminist, but she's been radicalized these past few years, drunk with power from her rape culture campus shakedown, and now's she's an epic caricature of the fever-swamp LWNJ.

I seriously feel sorry for her, an actual professor of political science.

Jay Whiston, British 17-Year-Old, Killed After House Party Crashed by Facebook 'Friends'

Another one of those incredible teen tragedies you couldn't imagine happening when you were a kid.

At Telegraph UK, "Teenager stabbed to death after Facebook party is gatecrashed":

A promising A-level student was stabbed to death after a quiet house party spiralled out of control when gatecrashers spotted an invite on Facebook.

Jay Whiston, 17, collapsed after being stabbed in the stomach during an altercation over a mobile phone at the party in a quiet suburb of Colchester, Essex.

Partygoers described how the well-behaved teenage gathering, at which the host’s parents were present, descended into chaos as a large number of uninvited guests turned up and began to cause trouble.

According to witnesses, Mr Whiston, who lived with his family in Clacton, was stabbed when he attempted to intervene in a row over a mobile phone.

Paramedics, who were called to Marlowe Way in Colchester shortly after 10pm on Saturday evening, rushed Mr Whiston to Colchester General Hospital but he was pronounced a short time later.

Last night his grieving mother Caroline Shearer, 47, warned parents everywhere of the devastating impact of knife crime.

See also London's Daily Mail, "Boy, 17, stabbed to death as Facebook gatecrashers storm suburban house party supervised by parents of teenage girl."

Rule 5 Rescue: Heidi Montag

Well, considering the news that Heidi Montag has posed for the September issue of Playboy, I thought I'd go ahead and juice some hormones with a lovely shot of the shortlived "I’m a Celebrity" star ...

She looks good, but you'll have to check with Stacy and Cassandra for expert opinion on Heidi's upstairs assets. (Or Stacy's hot cousins Mandy and Lizzy!)

I also want to thanks The Rhetorican for linking my up routinely, as well as my regular battalion of blogging buddies:

Steven Givler, The Astute Blogger, Chris Wysocki, Moonbattery, Sweating Through the Fog, Three Beers Later, PA Pundits, Paco Enterprises, Ken Davenport, Sister Toldjah, Blazing Cat Fur, The Daley Gator, Just One Minute, Dave's World, Sparks From the Anvil, Right Truth, Dave's Notepad, Pat's Daily Rants, Bob's Bar & Grill, Power Line, Melanie Morgan, Dave in Boca, Neo-Neocon, Right in a Left World, Flag Gazer, Politics and Critical Thinking, Riehl World View, Midnight Blue, Caroline Glick, The Average American, The Griper, FouseSquawk, The Other McCain, Cheat Seeking Missiles, Roger Simon, Classical Values, Samantha Speaks, Grizzly Mama, The Capitol Tribune, The Patriot Room, The Real World, RADARSITE, Serr8d's Cutting Edge, Bloviating Zeppelin, Born Again Redneck The Educated Shoprat, Gateway Pundit, Political Pistachio, Liberty Pundit, Not One Red Cent, Phyllis Chesler, Right View from the Left Coast, Generation Patriot, Macsmind, Flopping Aces, Edge's Conservative Movies, Stop the ACLU, The Conservative Manifesto, Gates of Vienna, Joust The Facts, Panhandle Poet, The Red Hunter, Maggie's Farm, The Next Right, This Ain't Hell, Stop the ACLU, Right Wing Nuthouse, Melissa Clouthier, Paula in Israel, Pamela Geller, Vanessa's Blog, St. Blogustine, Yid With Lid, Pondering Penguin, Betsy's Page, The Anchoress, Ace of Spades HQ, Right Wing Sparkle, Thunder Run, The Classic Liberal, Conservative Grapevine, Cassy Fiano, Jim Treacher, NetRightNation, Q and O, Urban Grounds, Ed Driscoll, Cold Fury, Michelle Malkin, Neptunus Lex, Neo-Neocon, The Astute Bloggers, The Liberty Papers, The Monkey Cage, Law and Order Teacher, Mike's America, AubreyJ, Dan Collins, The Jungle Hut, Wake Up America, Dan Riehl, Nikki's Blog, Big Girl Pants, Maggie's Notebook, Hummers & Cigarettes, Mark Goluskin, Jawa Report, Darleen Click, The Skepticrats, Fausta's Blog, Clueless Emma, Obob's World, Seymour Nuts, Red State, Dr. Sanity, The Desert Glows Green, Not One Red Cent, Vinegar and Honey, Sarge Charlie, Thoughts With Attitude, Kim Priestap, Swedish Meatballs Confidential, Five Feet of Fury, Amy Proctor, Blonde Sagacity, Liberty Papers, TigerHawk, Point of a Gun, Right Wing News, And So it Goes in Shreveport, Nice Deb, Becky Brindle, GrEaT sAtAn'S gIrLfRiEnD, Fishersville Mike, Ann Althouse, The Blog Prof, Monique Stuart, No Sheeples Here!, Dana at CSPT, Glenn Reynolds, Obi’s Sister, Right Truth, Gold-Plated Witch on Wheels, Chicago Ray, Ace of Spades HQ, Natalie's Blog, Jimmie Bise, Little Miss Attila, Moe Lane, Private Pigg, Pundit & Pundette, The Rhetorican, R.S. McCain, Saber Point, Stephen Kruiser, Suzanna Logan, TrogloPundit, Doug Ross Journal, Villainous Company, PoliGazette, Prying 1, The Western Experience, The Oklahoma Patriot, Right Wing Sparkle, Conservatism With Heart, Duck of Minerva, Wolf Howling, Right Wing Nation, Stephen Green, The Tygrrrr Express, The News Factor, Gayle's Place, Israel Matsav, The BoBo Files, Grant Jones, Tapline, New Testament News, Wizbang, and William Jacobson.

Tune in this weekend for my regular installment of Full Metal Saturday!

Hat Tip: We Smirch.

Iran Nuclear Deal Furthers Obama Goal of Destruction of Israel

From Caroline Glick, at RCP, "The Goal of Obama's Foreign Policy":

Over the past year, Obama has engaged in systematically weakening Israel’s position both regionally and in Washington. Regionally, the US has forced Israel into talks with the Palestinians that are engineered to weaken Israel strategically and diplomatically. The US has delegitimized Israel’s legal rights to sovereignty and self-defense, while effectively justifying Palestinian terrorism as a legitimate response to Israeli actions – which themselves were perfectly legal. So, too, the US has given a green light to the EU’s illegal, discriminatory economic war against Israel.

Beyond that, the Obama administration has significantly expanded the prospect of war between Israel and Syria by leaking Israeli strikes against Syrian targets that posed a threat to Israel’s security.

The US has also weakened Israel’s capacity to take steps short of war to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons possessing state by leaking key components of Israel’s covert operations against Iran’s nuclear program.

In the US, the Obama administration has targeted Israel’s American supporters. This has been advanced, first and foremost, by actively weakening AIPA C. As Lee Smith explained in Tablet, the administration has taken three key steps to neutralize AIPA C as an effective force in Washington.

It has supported J Street and so legitimized anti-Israel policymaking.

Obama appointed outspoken critics of the US-Israel alliance to key positions in his national security team. First and foremost in this arena was his appointment of Chuck Hagel to serve as defense secretary.

Finally, Obama discredited AIPA C, painting it as an unthinking warmonger by forcing the group to lobby Congress to support his helter-skelter rush to war against Syria. The coup de grace was Obama’s sudden abandonment of his plans to bomb Syria, which left AIPA C high and dry, looking like an anti-Semitic caricature of itself.

The culmination of this long process of delegitimizing Israel as a warmongering, ungrateful ally and its supporters as turncoats who are forcing the US to endanger itself for the benefit of the Jewish state was the administration’s hysterical campaign against Israel and its supporters in the lead-up to Saturday’s signing ceremony in Geneva. Everyone, from the White House to Kerry, accused Israel and its supporters of trying to force the US to fight an unnecessary war.

When we consider Obama’s decision to wait for a year to sign the deal that enables Iran to become a nuclear power in the context of his main activities over the past year, we understand his foreign policy.

His goal is not to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. It isn’t even to facilitate a rapprochement between America and Iran. The goal of Obama’s foreign policy is to weaken the State of Israel.

All the pathetic shills defending the administration's craven Iran diplomacy are simply enabling Israel's obliteration.

Storm of Troubles Washing Over the Middle East

Mostly economic troubles.

From Caroline Glick, at Jerusalem Post, "Caution: Storm Approaching."

Glick is her characteristically realist self, and I mean that in a good way (not in the Walt/Mearsheimer way).

Barack Obama: Mainstreaming Jew-Hatred in America

From Caroline Glick, "Mainstreaming Jew hatred in America":

U.S. President Barack Obama is mainstreaming anti-Semitism in America.

This week, apropos of seemingly nothing, in an interview with Mathew Yglesias from the Vox.com website, Obama was asked about terrorism. In his answer the president said the terrorism threat is overrated. And that was far from the most disturbing statement he made.

Moving from the general to the specific, Obama referred to the jihadists who committed last month’s massacres in Paris as “a bunch of violent vicious zealots,” who “randomly shot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris.”

In other words, Ahmedy Coulibaly, the terrorist at Hyper Cacher, the kosher supermarket he targeted, was just some zealot. The Jews he murdered while they were shopping for Shabbat were just “a bunch of folks in a deli,” presumably shot down while ordering their turkey and cheese sandwiches.

No matter that Coulibaly called a French TV station from the kosher supermarket and said he was an al-Qaida terrorist and that he chose the kosher supermarket because he wanted to kill Jews.

As far as the leader of the free world is concerned, his massacre of four Jews at the market can teach us nothing about anything other than that some random people are mean and some random people are unlucky.

And anyway, Obama explained, we’re only talking about this random act of senseless violence because as he said, “If it bleeds, it leads.” The media, desperate for an audience, inflates the significance of these acts of random violence, for ratings.

Obama’s statement about the massacre of Jews in Paris is notable first and foremost for what it reveals about his comfort level with anti-Semitism.

By de-judaizing the victims, who were targets only because they were Jews, Obama denied the uniqueness of the threat jihadist Islam and its adherents pose to Jews. By pretending that Jews are not specifically targeted for murder simply because they are Jews, he dismissed the legitimate concerns Jews harbor for their safety, whether in Diaspora communities or in Israel.

If nothing distinguished Coulibaly’s massacre at Hyper Cacher from a mugging or an armed robbery gone bad, then Jews have no right to receive unique consideration – whether for their community’s security in London or Paris, or San Francisco – or for Israel’s security.

As subsequent statements from administration spokespeople made clear, Obama’s statement was not a gaffe. When questioned about his remarks, both White House spokesman Josh Earnest and State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki doubled down on Obama’s denial of the anti-Semitic nature of the massacre at Hyper Cacher. Earnest said that the Jews who were murdered were people who just “randomly happened to be” at the supermarket.

Psaki said that the victims didn’t share a common background or nationality, pretending away the bothersome fact that they were all Jews.

Just as bad as their denials of the anti-Jewish nature of the attack on Hyper Cacher, were Psaki’s and Earnest’s belated revisions of their remarks. After coming under a storm of criticism from American Jews and from the conservative media, both Psaki and Earnest turned to their Twitter accounts to walk back their remarks and admit that indeed, the massacre at Hyper Cacher was an anti-Semitic assault.

Their walk back was no better than their initial denial of the anti-Jewish nature of the Islamist attack, because it amplified the very anti-Semitism they previously promoted.

As many Obama supporters no doubt interpreted their behavior, first Obama and his flaks stood strong in their conviction that Jews are not specifically targeted. Then after they were excoriated for their statements by Jews and conservatives, they changed their tune.

The subtext is clear. The same Jews who are targeted no more than anyone else, are so powerful and all controlling that they forced the poor Obama administration to bow to their will and parrot their false and self-serving narrative of victimization.

The administration’s denial of the unique threat Jews face from jihadists is not limited to its anti-Semitic characterizations of the attack at Hyper Cacher.

It runs as well through Obama’s treatment of Israel and its actions to defend itself against its jihadist enemies from Hamas to Hezbollah to Iran...

The left's Jew-hater-in-Chief.

Keep reading.

Iran, Obama, Boehner and Netanyahu

From Caroline Glick:

Iran has apparently produced an intercontinental ballistic missile whose range far exceeds the distance between Iran and Israel, and between Iran and Europe.

On Wednesday night, Channel 2 showed satellite imagery taken by Israel’s Eros-B satellite that was launched last April. The imagery showed new missile-related sites that Iran recently constructed just outside Tehran. One facility is a missile launch site, capable of sending a rocket into space or of firing an ICBM.

On the launch pad was a new 27-meter long missile, never seen before.

The missile and the launch pad indicate that Iran’s ballistic missile program, which is an integral part of its nuclear weapons program, is moving forward at full throttle. The expanded range of Iran’s ballistic missile program as indicated by the satellite imagery makes clear that its nuclear weapons program is not merely a threat to Israel, or to Israel and Europe. It is a direct threat to the United States as well.

Also on Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was invited to address a joint session of Congress by House Speaker John Boehner.

Boehner has asked Netanyahu to address US lawmakers on February 11 regarding Iran’s nuclear program and the threat to international security posed by radical Islam.

Opposition leaders were quick to accuse Boehner and the Republican Party of interfering in Israel’s upcoming election by providing Netanyahu with such a prestigious stage just five weeks before Israelis go to the polls.

Labor MK Nachman Shai told The Jerusalem Post that for the sake of fairness, Boehner should extend the same invitation to opposition leader Isaac Herzog.

But in protesting as they have, opposition members have missed the point. Boehner didn’t invite Netanyahu because he cares about Israel’s election. He invited Netanyahu because he cares about US national security. He believes that by having Netanyahu speak on the issues of Iran’s nuclear program and radical Islam, he will advance America’s national security.

Boehner’s chief concern, and that of the majority of his colleagues from the Democratic and Republican parties alike, is that President Barack Obama’s policy in regard to Iran’s nuclear weapons program imperils the US. Just as the invitation to Netanyahu was a bipartisan invitation, so concerns about Obama’s policy toward Iran’s nuclear program are bipartisan concerns.

Over the past week in particular, Obama has adopted a position on Iran that puts him far beyond the mainstream of US politics. This radical position has placed the president on a collision course with Congress best expressed on Wednesday by Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez. During a hearing at the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee where Menendez serves as ranking Democratic member, he said, “The more I hear from the administration and its quotes, the more it sounds like talking points that come straight out of Tehran.”

Menendez was referring to threats that Obama has made three times over the past week, most prominently at his State of the Union address on Tuesday, to veto any sanctions legislation against Iran brought to his desk for signature.

He has cast proponents of sanctions – and Menendez is the co-sponsor of a pending sanctions bill – as enemies of a diplomatic strategy of dealing with Iran, and by implication, as warmongers.

Indeed, in remarks to the Democratic members of the Senate last week, Obama impugned the motivations of lawmakers who support further sanctions legislation. He indirectly alleged that they were being forced to take their positions due to pressure from their donors and others.

The problem for American lawmakers is that the diplomatic course that Obama has chosen makes it impossible for the US to use the tools of diplomacy to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. That course of diplomatic action is anchored in the Joint Plan of Action that the US and its partners Germany, France, Britain, China and Russia (the P5+1) signed with Tehran in November 2013...

Keep reading.

Politically Incorrect: The 'Nordic type is still quite a popular commodity in the dating market...'

My wife is the "Nordic type," lol.

See the Other McCain, "The Instagram Influencer Grift: What Is Caroline Calloway’s ‘Brand’ Value Now?":

Let me say some things so politically incorrect that Heidi Beirich at the SPLC might find them interesting: Despite all the left-wing demonization of white people that has saturated elite culture in recent years, the Nordic type is still quite a popular commodity in the dating market. A young white person who is generally attractive won’t be lonely, no matter how many academics, journalists and politicians blame them for all the evil in the world. My youngest son — so blond-haired and blue-eyed he could be a poster boy for the Hitlerjugend — is remarkably popular among his peers of all races. While the paranoid prophets of demographic doom obsess over declining white fecundity (“It’s the birth rates,” as the New Zealand shooter proclaimed in his manifesto), life is not so bad for young people who were lucky enough to be born white. Unless you’re a pathetic Beta loser, which my son is not. The doomsayers are misguided, and their fear-based perspective on demographics is not helpful. But I digress . . .

More.

Caroline Wozniacki Body Paint (VIDEO)

Nice!

Khodorkovsky and the Freedom Agenda

From Caroline Glick:

Until his arrest in October 2003, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the oligarch and oil executive, was the richest man in Russia. He might have still been the richest man in Russia today if he hadn’t started thinking about politics, and objecting to the fact that under President Vladimir Putin, Russia had abandoned all prospects for democracy.

With his billions, Khodorkovsky had the means to finance a challenge to Putin’s authoritarian rule. His arrest in 2003 and his 10-year imprisonment was ordered and orchestrated by Putin as a means of silencing and destroying the former KGB officer’s only potent challenger for power.

After 10 years behind bars, Khodorkovsky was suddenly released from prison last Friday, immediately after Putin issued him a presidential pardon. He held a press conference in Berlin the next day. There he showed that prison had changed his political thinking. Whereas in 2003, Khodorkovsky thought it was possible to transform Russia into a democracy by simply winning an election, after 10 years behind bars, he recognizes that elections are not enough.

“The Russian problem is not just the president as a person,” he explained. “The problem is that our citizens in the large majority don’t understand that their fate, they have to be responsible for it themselves. They are so happy to delegate it to, say, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and then they will entrust it to somebody else.”

In other words, until the Russian people come to the conclusion that they want liberty, no one can give it to them. They will just replace one dictator with another one. In his words, “If you have a ‘most important person’ in the opposition… you will get another Putin.”

So whereas George Washington was seen as the first among equals, an opposition leader who would succeed Putin, would be more like Robespierre in post-revolutionary France.

Khodorkovsky’s remarks show that you can’t instantly import democracy from abroad. The US defeated the Soviet Union in the Cold War. But the Soviet defeat didn’t make the Russians liberal democrats. Until the seeds of democracy are planted in a nation’s hearts and minds, the overthrow of its overlord will make little difference to the aspirations of the people...

In other words, Russia's authoritarian culture resists the freedom wave.

Continue reading. A great piece.

Caroline Glick: The Israeli Solution

Caroline writes, at Frontpage:

In its annual survey of American Jewry published last October, the American Jewish Committee found that 75 percent of American Jews agree with the statement, “The goal of the Arabs is not a peaceful two-state agreement with Israel, but rather the destruction of Israel.”

And yet, American Jews supported the establishment of a Palestinian state 50% to 47%.

Next week over 10,000 predominantly Jewish Americansupporters of Israel will gather in Washington at AIPAC’s annual policy conference. Given their high commitment to Israel, probably most of those gathered belong to the 47% of American Jews who opposed Palestinian statehood.

Yet at the conference they will embrace the two-state formula. And on March 4 they will go up to Capitol Hill and tell their representatives that they support it.

They will do so not because they are addled. They will do so because for the past 20 years all they have heard is that Israel has no alternative to the two-state plan.

Israel’s fervent and committed supporters at AIPAC have been told that Israel needs a Palestinian state more than the PLO does. Only by bringing such a state into existence in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem can Israel get the Palestinian demographic albatross off its neck.

These committed supporters of the Jewish state have been sternly lectured that Israel is doomed if it doesn’t give the Palestinians an outlet for their political impulses outside of Israel, because within a year or two there will be more Palestinians than Israelis west of the Jordan.

The same day AIPAC’s delegates meet with members of both houses of Congress, my new book, The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East, will be released by Crown Forum, a division of Random House.

In my book, I show that the demographic time bomb is a dud, and a malicious one at that.

In 1997, the head of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics Hassan Abu Libdeh told The New York Times that he was carrying out a census which would serve as a “civil intifada,” that is, as a statistical terror assault.

And he was right. The goal of terrorism is to force a target population to take actions it otherwise would not have taken. The goal of statistical warfare is to manipulate numbers to coerce a target society into taking actions that it would otherwise not take.

The Palestinian census claimed that by 2015, Arabs would be the majority west of the Jordan River. And once Jews were the minority, the Arabs could destroy Israel just by demanding the vote.

The Clinton administration, the US Jewish leadership and theIsraeli Left rushed to embrace the findings, even though they were totally inconsistent with annual Palestinian population surveys the Israeli military government conducted from 1967 through 1996.

All crowed that true, the PLO still supports terrorism, but if Israel didn’t cough up the territories, it would be demographically overwhelmed.

It took seven years until an independent group of Israeli and American researchers studied the PLO data and exposed the fraud at their foundation. The American- Israeli Demographic Research Group showed that the Palestinian data inflated the Arab population by a whopping 50 percent.

The news for Israel has only gotten better in the intervening years. The Jewish fertility rate has increased as the Palestinian rates have collapsed along with those of the Muslim world as a whole. Israeli Jews now have higher fertility rates than the Arabs of Judea and Samaria, (3.04 vs. 2.91 children per woman). Israel’s immigration rate is high and rising. Palestinian emigration rates have skyrocketed over the past decade.

The demographic good news has percolated throughout Israeli society. And with the news, more and more Israeli politicians have come to favor applying Israeli law to all or parts of Judea and Samaria, just as Israel successfully applied its laws to united Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in the past.

Most Likud members of Knesset and all members of the Bayit Yehudi party support partial or full implementation of Israeli law in the areas. 59% of Israeli Jews support such action as well and support doing so unilaterally.

Indeed, even leftist Israelis support Israel’s unilateral application of its laws to parts of Judea and Samaria. For instance, former ambassador to the US Michael Oren supports the unilateral withdrawal from parts of Judea and Samaria. But Oren foresees the retention of the major Israeli settlement blocs under Israeli law. In the absence of a peace deal, such a step can only be taken through the unilateral application of Israeli law to those areas.

In the current Knesset session, members have submitted two bills calling for the application of Israeli law to the large Israeli population centers in Judea and Samaria and to the Jordan Valley, respectively.

But while all of this is going on in Israel, Israel’s supporters in the US remain in the dark about the existence of a better – facts based – alternative path for Israel.

In The Israeli Solution, I fill in the blanks that plague the American discourse on Israel and the Palestinians...

Continue reading.

PRE-ORDER at Amazon: The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East.

Obama's Spectacular Failure

From Caroline Glick:

Two weeks ago, in an unofficial inauguration ceremony at Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt's new Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Mursi took off his mask of moderation. Before a crowd of scores of thousands, Mursi pledged to work for the release from US federal prison of Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman.

According to The New York Times' account of his speech, Mursi said, "I see signs [being held by members of the crowd] for Omar Abdel-Rahman and detainees' pictures. It is my duty and I will make all efforts to have them free, including Omar Abdel-Rahman."

Otherwise known as the blind sheikh, Abdel Rahman was the mastermind of the jihadist cell in New Jersey that perpetrated the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. His cell also murdered Rabbi Meir Kahane in New York in 1990. They plotted the assassination of then-president Hosni Mubarak. They intended to bomb New York landmarks including the Lincoln and Holland tunnels and the UN headquarters.

Rahman was the leader of Gama'a al-Islamia - the Islamic Group, responsible, among other things for the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981. A renowned Sunni religious authority, Rahman wrote the fatwa, or Islamic ruling, permitting Sadat's murder in retribution for his signing the peace treaty with Israel. The Islamic group is listed by the State Department as a specially designated terrorist organization.

After his conviction in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Abdel-Rahman issued another fatwa calling for jihad against the US. After the September 11, 2001, attacks, Osama bin Laden cited Abdel-Rahman's fatwa as the religious justification for them.

By calling for Abdel-Rahman's release, Mursi has aligned himself and his government with the US's worst enemies. By calling for Abdel-Rahman's release during his unofficial inauguration ceremony, Mursi signaled that he cares more about winning the acclaim of the most violent, America-hating jihadists in the world than with cultivating good relations with America.

And in response to Mursi's supreme act of unfriendliness, US President Barack Obama invited Mursi to visit him at the White House.

Continue reading.

A Middle East Powder Keg

It's Caroline Glick, "A Powder Keg, Courtesy of Washington."

From Yemen to Turtle Bay

From Caroline Glick:

Off the coast of Yemen and at the U.N. Security Council we are seeing the strategic endgame of Barack Obama’s administration. And it isn’t pretty.

Since Sunday, Iran’s Houthi proxies in Yemen have attacked US naval craft three times in the Bab al Mandab, the narrow straits at the mouth of the Red Sea. The Bab al Mandab controls maritime traffic in the Red Sea, and ultimately control the Suez Canal.

Whether the Iranians directed these assaults or simply greenlighted them is really beside the point. The point is that these are Iranian strikes on the US. The Houthis would never have exposed themselves to US military retaliation if they hadn’t been ordered to do so by their Iranian overlords.

The question is why has Iran chosen to open up an assault on the U.S.?

The simple answer is that Iran has challenged US power at the mouth of the Red Sea because it believes that doing so advances its strategic aims in the region...

Keep reading.

Self-Induced Demise of the American Superpower

I love Caroline Glick's writing, and she's in peak form in her new essay, "Surviving in a Post-American World":

Like it or not, the United States of America is no longer the world's policeman. This was the message of Barack Obama's presidential journey to Britain, France, the Czech Republic, Turkey and Iraq this past week.

Somewhere between apologizing for American history - both distant and recent; genuflecting before the unelected, bigoted king of Saudi Arabia; announcing that he will slash the US's nuclear arsenal, scrap much of America's missile defense programs and emasculate the US Navy; leaving Japan to face North Korea and China alone; telling the Czechs, Poles and their fellow former Soviet colonies, "Don't worry, be happy," as he leaves them to Moscow's tender mercies; humiliating Iraq's leaders while kowtowing to Iran; preparing for an open confrontation with Israel; and thanking Islam for its great contribution to American history, President Obama made clear to the world's aggressors that America will not be confronting them for the foreseeable future.

Whether they are aggressors like Russia, proliferators like North Korea, terror exporters like nuclear-armed Pakistan or would-be genocidal-terror-supporting nuclear states like Iran, today, under the new administration, none of them has any reason to fear Washington.

This news is music to the ears of the American Left and their friends in Europe. Obama's supporters like billionaire George Soros couldn't be more excited at the self-induced demise of the American superpower. CNN's former (anti-)Israel bureau chief Walter Rodgers wrote ecstatically in the Christian Science Monitor on Wednesday, "America's... superpower status, is being downgraded as rapidly as its economy."

Read the entire essay. The "superpower downgrading" is more a function of this particular administration than America's structural power profile.

I'll be glad when Obama's gone, in any case.

**********

UPDATE: Glick's piece is now up at the Jerusalem Post (via Memeorandum), and Dr. Sanity's got an entry on it, "The 'O' Team: Obama's Emasculation of America."

But get this, movie director Ron Howard, who has made a few fairly patriotic - if not masculine - films, is calling for an America that is a "less preeminent superpower," not driven by a "sort of militarism and this need to export, you know, democracy ..." See Newsbusters, "Ron Howard Yearns for Less Powerful America Not 'Driven by Militarism'."

Donald Trump's Truth Talk Inspires

He inspires, but also divides and inflames, according to the Los Angeles Times, "Donald Trump's immigration stance divides, inflames and inspires":

For Mark Ulatowski, the opportunity to see Donald Trump — brash, fiery and unapologetic as ever — was well worth the three-hour drive north from his home near the U.S.-Mexico border.

"He speaks to me. He speaks to a lot of us, because he speaks the truth," said Ulatowski, a U.S. Army veteran who made the trek Saturday to see the real estate mogul turned reality television star, and now GOP presidential hopeful, denounce illegal immigration and castigate Democrats and fellow Republicans alike.

"It's not just about him actually standing up and fighting against illegal immigration," said Ulatowski as he stood in 100-degree heat alongside thousands waiting to enter the sprawling downtown convention center. "He says what politicians would never say, and that's refreshing."

A blunt-spoken hero to fans like Ulatowski, an exasperating blowhard to his many critics, Trump seized the spotlight in the Republican presidential campaign with his inflammatory comments about Mexican immigrants, and for more than two weeks has refused to relinquish center stage despite increasingly frantic pleas from GOP officials.

His denunciations of illegal immigrants and foreign competitors, from China to Mexico, have struck a chord with millions of voters — particularly older, white conservatives, polls indicate — who feel that most politicians have ignored their concerns. Their backing has propelled Trump to the front rank of the splintered GOP field.

At the same time, Trump's words have harmed the party's already tenuous efforts to attract minority voters, particularly Latinos, whom a Republican presidential nominee would need to win key states in the 2016 election. And the cautious and tentative comments that most of the other GOP candidates have made in response have highlighted how narrow a path the party must tread if it hopes to win the presidency — trying to reach out to minority voters while fearing to alienate the conservative whites who have formed the GOP's base of support in recent elections.

In an appearance here that coupled fiery rhetoric with over-the-top displays of self-love — "I went to the Wharton School of Finance; I'm, like, a really smart person," he declared at one point — Trump reinforced both parts of his image. He served up the sort of blunt talk that his supporters praise along with lines that critics cite when they label him an overweening narcissist.

His supporters, he said, were a "silent majority" who would be able to tilt the Republican presidential primaries, which will begin seven months from now, in his favor.

Appearing with Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a fierce foe of illegal immigration, Trump did not limit himself to immigration issues. At various points, he took on President Obama ("You know I don't use teleprompters like the president — I speak from the heart"), Caroline Kennedy, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Jeb Bush, NBC and Univision.

He offered few specifics for a campaign, other than to insist he'd do a better job than either Clinton or Bush — two candidates on opposite sides of the aisle who come from political dynasties that many of his backers see as symbols of an unresponsive political establishment.

That's been enough to push Trump forward. In a Reuters-Ipsos poll released Saturday, Bush and Trump were tied at 15% for the lead nationwide in the Republican field.

The Reuters survey was the second national poll in recent days showing Trump with about 15% of the GOP vote and in the top tier of the crowded field. An Economist/YouGov survey showed Trump was one of the Republican front-runners and simultaneously its most widely disliked candidate...

So he's divisive. At least he's standing up for something, which again explains why he's surged literally to the top of the polls. He's got the establishment quaking. It's pretty amazing. And it would have been pretty amazing to see him speak at the Phoenix rally.

Terror Decentral

From Caroline Glick:

In the postmortems of the terrorist car attacks in Jerusalem, it is easy to see the writing on the wall.

Ibrahim al-Akary, the terrorist who on Wednesday ran over crowds of people waiting to cross the street and catch the Jerusalem Light Rail, was the brother of one of the terrorist murderers freed in exchange for IDF hostage Gilad Schalit. He had placed the photograph on his Facebook page of Moataz Hejazi, the terrorist killed by police after shooting Yehuda Glick outside the Begin Heritage Center last Wednesday.

A few days before Abdur Rahman Slodi got into his car and mowed down three-month-old Chaya Zissel Braun and a dozen other pedestrians two weeks ago, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas exhorted the Palestinians to prevent Jews from visiting the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site, by all means possible.

Slodi had served time in prison for terrorist offenses and was active on social media where he expressed murderous hatred for Jews and a desire to kill them.

So yes, the writing was on the wall. But unfortunately, the writing is on all the walls, or Facebook walls. It is not at all clear how Israeli security services could have known to distinguish these men from the thousands of other Palestinians and Jerusalem Arabs who hate Israel, support the murder of Jews and identify with various terrorist organizations.

On Thursday security forces arrested several people in villages around Hebron with suspected ties to Akary. So he may not have been acting on his own. But all the same, neither he nor Slodi seem to have been directed to carry out their attacks by a cell commander who himself was directed by a higher level terrorist operative. Rather, in all likelihood, something triggered both men to carry out attacks in a wholly independent or semi-independent manner.

The question is, what was the trigger and how was it pulled?

Uh, Palestinian Jew-hatred?

Nah. Can't be that.

But continue reading, just in case.