Nakoula Basseley Nakoula Has No Regrets

You might think what happened to this guy would only be possible in a fascist state.

Well think again. Times have changed. It can happen here.

At the New York Times, "From Man Who Insulted Muhammad, No Regret":

LOS ANGELES — Fuming for two months in a jail cell here, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula has had plenty of time to reconsider the wisdom of making “Innocence of Muslims,” his crude YouTube movie trailer depicting the Prophet Muhammad as a bloodthirsty, philandering thug.

Does Mr. Nakoula now regret the footage? After all, it fueled deadly protests across the Islamic world and led the unlikely filmmaker to his own arrest for violating his supervised release on a fraud conviction.

Not at all. In his first public comments since his incarceration soon after the video gained international attention in September, Mr. Nakoula told The New York Times that he would go to great lengths to convey what he called “the actual truth” about Muhammad. “I thought, before I wrote this script,” he said, “that I should burn myself in a public square to let the American people and the people of the world know this message that I believe in.”

In explaining his reasons for the film, Mr. Nakoula, 55, a Coptic Christian born in Egypt, cited the 2009 massacre at Fort Hood, Tex., as a prime example of the violence committed “under the sign of Allah.” His anger seemed so intense over the years that even from a federal prison in 2010, he followed the protests against the building of an Islamic center and mosque near ground zero in New York as he continued to work on his movie script.

Until now, only the barest details were known about the making of the film that inspired international outrage. Initial reports made it seem as if the film had been thrown together in about a year.

But a longer, more intricate and somewhat surreal story emerges from interviews with Mr. Nakoula, church and law enforcement officials and more than a dozen people who worked on the movie — those who knew its real subject and those who were tricked into believing it was to be a sword-and-sandal epic called “Desert Warriors.” Together, they paint a picture of a financially desperate man with a penchant for fiction who was looking to give meaning and means to a life in shambles.

A troubled man. Now a prison scapegoat for this administration's national security clusterf-k.

Continue reading.

RELATED: At the Wall Street Journal, "First Amendment Affront":

In his address to the United Nations earlier this week, President Obama condemned "the crude and disgusting video [that] sparked outrage throughout the Muslim world." Some 48 hours later, police in California arrested the man behind the film "Innocence of Muslims," and a federal judge on Thursday night ordered Nakoula Basseley Nakoula held in jail without bond.

Mr. Nakoula allegedly used the alias Sam Bacile to produce and post an amateurish clip of the film, which may not exist in full, on YouTube. The government has charged him with eight counts of violating parole. In 2010, he was convicted of bank fraud and served a year of a 21-month sentence. His use of the Internet is restricted.

We're not privy to the specific parole terms to be able to pass judgment on the technical merits of the government's case. A judge will sort it out. But the decision to pursue him in the first place was a discretionary call by the government.

We doubt that every Web surfer on similar probation gets hauled back to prison. Or gets denied bail by a judge who called Mr. Nakoula "a flight risk," though it's hard to imagine he'd want to return to his native Egypt, the scene of the first violent protests on September 11, or go anywhere else. A minister in the Pakistani government has put a $100,000 bounty on his head....

In that same speech on Tuesday, President Obama rightly noted that, "Americans have fought and died around the globe to protect the right of all people to express their views—even views that we disagree with."

The government's actions send a different message. The Obama Administration asked YouTube to yank the video off the site. (YouTube didn't.) And now the filmmaker sits behind bars—whether on legally justifiable grounds is besides the point. The First Amendment also protects speech that causes the White House headaches abroad.

Progressives value freedom of speech, but only speech that furthers their agenda of socialist statism and the destruction of Judeo-Christian cultural hegemony.

PREVIOUSLY: "The End of Freedom of Expression in the West."

East Germany's Living Hell

An outstanding photo-essay, at Reaganite Republican, "The LIVING Hell of Socialism":

East Germany (DDR = Deutsche Demokratische Republik)
blamed capitalists for everything,
nationalized industry,
suppressed dissent,
glorified a (paranoid) leader,
spied on their own citizens,
hated Israel, supported Palestinian radicals,
and did it all the name of the 'common man'
-sound familiar, Obammunist tools?

Don't miss it, at the link.

The Repeated Claim That Benghazi Was Spontaneous Was a Monstrous Lie, Vile and Done for the Basest of Reasons

An especially powerful commentary from Michael Goodwin, at the New York Post, "David Petraeus Testimony Pins Mistruths to White House":

Until Friday, there were two possible explanations for why the White House failed to immediately call the Benghazi attack an act of terrorism. One was incompetence, the other was worse.

Now there is only one, and it is the worse one. Based on the persuasive testimony of ex-CIA boss David Petraeus, it is clear the Obama administration made a deliberate decision to mislead Congress and the American people.

The repeated claim that the attack was spontaneous and grew out of a demonstration against an anti-Islam video — a claim made by the president and secretary of State as they stood next to the bodies of four dead Americans — was a monstrous lie. It was vile and done for the basest of reasons.

Because we now know the truth of what happened — CIA reports were edited to remove the names of al Qaeda groups involved in the attack, Petraeus said under oath — we also know the motive. It was political self-preservation, meaning the president and his team put politics first.

The timing helps tell the tale. Just days removed from his Charlotte convention, where he danced on the grave of Osama bin Laden and boasted that al Qaeda was decimated, Obama couldn’t bear to admit that affiliated groups were thriving in North Africa. And he certainly couldn’t admit they had carried out a murderous attack on our consulate on the 11th anniversary of the most awful day in American history.

To do so would be to acknowledge the failure of his decision to ignore hard-line Islamists and that his team had erred egregiously in rejecting pleas for more security from Libya Ambassador Chris Stevens.

So the president lied, including in a speech to the United Nations, where he cited the video as the reason for the attack. He sent out reams of flunkies to do the same, including his snide press secretary, Jay Carney.

Most notably, UN Ambassador Susan Rice went on five Sunday television shows to spin the nonsense about the hijacking of a demonstration — a demonstration that never existed. Rice made a fool of herself, and now, she, too is damaged goods.

Oddly, Petraeus, brought down by the reckless affair with his biographer, nonetheless looks like the only honest man in the drama.

A briefing he gave soon after the attack is now more suspect because it adhered to the party line, despite his belief that it was always a terrorist attack.

But Friday in his testimony behind closed doors, Petraeus told the truth as he knew it, even though the administration announced the day before that it was investigating his conduct at the CIA.

If that was meant to pressure him to protect the president, it failed spectacularly. Whatever his personal failings, Petraeus reinforced his reputation for professional integrity.

The next move is up to Congress. While Democrats are predictably and shamefully trying to deny the significance of Petraeus’ revelation, Republicans say they are determined to get the full truth, wherever the hunt takes them.

Kirsten Powers: Obama Nominating Susan Rice Would Show His 'Arrogance'

A great video at RealClearPolitics:

Kirsten Powers on if President Obama named Susan Rice as his next Secretary of State: "I don't know. I think if he does though it could be, that kind of arrogance, which I think it would be, would be his undoing. Because if she is put under oath and is forced to go through and answer all of these questions about Benghazi, it's going to put the administration into a really bad position. And I don't think she was the frontrunner. I don't understand where this came out of... It's now become almost a sense of pride... His defense of her was fine but then it kind of went into an area that didn't make sense."

I hope he goes ahead with that nomination. This ought to be very interesting.

Ke$ha Gets Rockin' With 'Warrior'

At the New York Times, "Dancing Up a Storm but Dying to Rock: Kesha Tilts Closer to a Rock Sound With ‘Warrior’":

At the Third Encore rehearsal studio in North Hollywood there’s a wall decorated with photographs of clients who’ve prepared there for tours, legends like Robert Plant and Slash. In a room behind that wall, waiting while her band and dancers rehearse for a live appearance at the American Music Awards, sat Kesha, 25, a young woman who’d really like to join that swaggering pantheon. A hugely popular, if deeply polarizing, singer who ruled the radio in 2010 with No. 1 smashes like “Tik Tok“ and now returns with “Warrior” (RCA), the follow-up to the smash album “Animal” and its EP supplement, “Cannibal,” Kesha would be filed under dance pop by most people. So it’s surprising to discover just how much reverence she has for the rock 1970s, an era that ended seven years before she was born.

For instance Kesha’s look today was inspired by Marc Bolan of the glam-rock band T. Rex. “I was watching a documentary on Bolan, and he’s wearing all these funny suits, and I was like, ‘I want to wear a funny suit,’ “ she said. She was sporting a black wide-brimmed hat with a pink rose nestled in it, a black jacket with a garish floral pattern and a pimplike extravagance of rings. Strangely, though, there’s no glitter, one of Kesha’s trademarks and an affinity she shares with that long-dead rocker. And like Bolan, Kesha practices her own androgyny. The persona she developed on “Animal” parties hard, trash-talks and treats conquests like sex toys, just as male rock stars have done for decades. But precisely because Kesha challenged double standards by seizing male rock’s license to misbehave, she became a lightning rod for contempt.

“Oh God, I have so many people who hate me, it’s unbelievable,” Kesha said, her laughter tinged with discomfort. “It’s the main reason I don’t go online.” She added, “There’s people who want me to die.” The Web abuse includes hate blogs and a patronizing video skit made by a Princeton humor magazine in which the poet Paul Muldoon analyzes “Tik Tok.”

Attributing her use of rapping and AutoTune to an inability to sing, detractors assumed that Kesha was a manufactured puppet. Actually she jointly writes her songs, supplying the lyrics and most of the vocal melodies. The rap element, influenced by the Beastie Boys, and the gimmicky use of AutoTune effects, inspired by Daft Punk, were deliberate choices. As with other female stars with over-the-top cartoon images, like Lady Gaga and Nicki Minaj, the persona is her own creation. “Kesha” is an amped-up caricature of Kesha Sebert’s real self and the feral lifestyle she was leading here at the time “Animal” was recorded. And whether you find her trashy antics annoying or refreshing in a pop era of anodyne glamour, there’s no denying that Kesha’s music caught the mood of embattled hedonism in post-crash America. Her live-for-now stance, in songs like the current hit single “Die Young,” made her pop’s YOLO queen two years before that acronym, which stands for “You only live once,” became a rallying cry for let’s-get-wrecked recklessness.

Discussing her potty-mouthed, Jack Daniels-swigging image, she said: “You must realize by this point that I’m in on the joke. I know I sound like a jackass half the time. I do it on purpose.” Actually Kesha seemed not very jackasslike that evening, but reflective and earnest. Flashes of the flirty playfulness of her videos were offset by hints of vulnerability.

Robin James, a professsor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte who writes about female personas in 21st century pop culture, argued that messy hedonism is treated differently when the perpetrator is female. “If you look at, say, Judd Apatow movies, the women have to be responsible and stable and pursue careers, while the men get to behave badly,” she said. “But when women are irresponsible, they get punished for it.”

Continue reading.

Ohio Republicans Seek to Revive Heartbeat Bill

And boy does Ohio Democrat State Senator Nina Turner get all batshit crazy about it, Via Jill Stanek.

I swear, this lady sounds like a freakin' gang-banger:

Scientists Show That Unborn Babies Yawn Repeatedly in the Womb

At LifeNews, "Amazing 4-D Ultrasound Captures Baby Yawning in the Womb."

'This notion that the Senate is dysfunctional is not because of the rules. It's because of behavior...'

That's Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell shooting down the Democrats' bullshit meme that the parliamentary rules have gridlocked the Senate. At the New York Times, "The New Senate's First Task Will Likely Be Trying to Fix Itself" (at Memeorandum).

Professor John Pitney has some great perspective on this, "Switching Sides on the Filibuster." And one with a much, much lesser intellect says dammit, stand aside and let the Democrats have their way!

The End of Freedom of Expression in the West

"Silent Conquest," via Blazing Cat Fur:

Cyber Monday Sales

If you're doing any shopping online you can help this blog with no extra cost to yourself.

The Amazon widgets are here at the post and at the sidebar. I'll be updating periodically with reminders throughout the season. Thanks for your readership and support!

Freedom to Blog Update November 25, 2012

I haven't abandoned my "Freedom to Blog" series. We've had a political campaign and so forth, although there remains considerable activity growing out of the left's summer assault on conservatives online.

For now folks should read Robert Stacy McCain, "The Dishonesty of Bill Schmalfeldt," and "Pray for Ten Thousand Angels."

And here's one more, "@Karoli: Weiner Truther? And Other Questions of Remaining Interest."

Never cave to these fuckers, because it empowers them.

RELATED: "The Lies of Scott Eric Kaufman — Leftist Hate-Blogger Sought to Silence Criticism With Libelous Campaign of Workplace Harassment," and "Progressives Are the Biggest Threat to Freedom of Speech in America."

Iran Shipping Rockets to Gaza

At the Times of Israel, "Fresh shipment of Iranian-made rockets reportedly already en route to Gaza":

Less than a week after the conclusion of Operation Pillar of Defense, and with Hamas boasting of an imminent increase in military aid from Iran, Israeli satellites have spotted a ship at the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas being loaded with rockets and other military supplies ostensibly bound for Gaza, the British Sunday Times reported.

The report cites Israeli intelligence sources who surmised that the cargo, loaded a week ago, would be shipped to Sudan and from there smuggled over land to Gaza.

According to the report, the cargo may include Fajr-5 rockets of the likes already fired by Hamas during the recent conflict, and whose stocks were reportedly depleted by Israeli bombings. Also possibly included: components of Shahab-3 ballistic missiles, which could be stationed in Sudan and used as a direct threat to Israel.

“With a lot of effort, Iran has skillfully built a strategic arm pointing at Israel from the south,” an Israeli source was quoted as saying.

FDL's Kevin Gosztola Wanted Bush-Cheney War Crimes Prosecutions But Gives Obama a Pass on Unprecedented Violations of International Law

Following up on my earlier commentary on Obama's push to codify his illegal killing regime, it turns out Kevin Gosztola of Firedoglake used that New York Times report to attack Mitt Romney as some kind of a neocon warmonger-in-waiting. See, "Obama Administration Was Not Willing to Trust Romney With a Secret Kill List."

Having posted on the topic, I called out Gosztola on Twitter. Typical leftist hypocrite couldn't defend his own writing and instead resorted to childishly calling me a "whackjob."

Whackjob RT @ampowerblog Why give Obama a pass? is.gd/KNTBE6 Beef of that story is buried in your piece and you know it
— Kevin Gosztola (@kgosztola) November 25, 2012

I also pointed out that progressives called for Bush-Cheney war crimes prosecutions under the incoming Obama administration:

@kgosztola Remember how Bush/Cheney were war criminals and all that? If you believe, Obama's 100 times worse. is.gd/KNTBE6 #Drones
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) November 25, 2012

And no surprise, but it was Gosztola himself who was leading the charge to put Dick Cheney on trial. See this one of many entries at Firedoglake, "Torture Decriminalized: How the State Department Provides Space for the Culpables’ Book Tours":

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who should be investigated and tried for war crimes that include but are not limited to torture and abuse of detainees, has mounted a tour to publicize his memoir In My Time. Waterboarding has historically been considered torture and a war crime yet he is able to go on Dateline on NBC News and tell Jamie Gangel that he would strongly support using it again. He is also able to go on and express support for wiretapping and secret prisons, which seem to be mechanisms an authoritarian and not a democratic society would use.

That post then goes on to attack the Obama administration for not mounting prosecutions against the Bush-Cheney cabal. This was a common refrain on the radical left at the time of election in 2008, that a new administration should not close the book on the past. Leftists argued that the Bush administration should be brought before the bar of history, with progressives attacking President-elect Obama's pledge "to look forward as opposed to looking backwards." Here's more from Gosztola's post:

In July 2008, the New York Times published an editorial on the “disturbing victory” the Bush administration had won when a federal appeals court ruled the administration could “continue to detain Ali Al-Marri,” who had “been held for more than five years as an enemy combatant.” They noted the “sweeping power” could deprive citizens as well as noncitizens of freedom. Al-Marri, a Qatar citizen, was legally residing in the US. He was arrested in Peoria, Illinois, on “ordinary criminal charges” and seized and imprisoned by the military. The evidence in support of his secret detention was based on “thin hearsay evidence” and also based on the fact that he had been in an army and carried arms on a battlefield, which makes it even more difficult to celebrate al-Marri as a case that is an example of the Obama administration’s efforts to renew respect for the rule of law.

What the letter plainly shows is the contempt the State Department and Obama administration has for addressing the lawlessness of the Bush administration. With Cheney’s book tour to defend torture underway, the letter takes on even more significance. He is someone, who is culpable for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Yet, it is next to impossible to mount a prosecution when the Obama administration has decriminalized the Bush administration torture regime by arguing steps have been taken to leave behind that unsavory past.

It's hypocrisy all the way down with these idiots.

As I pointed out earlier, the fact is, from the left's human rights perspective, the Obama administration's national security policies are exponentially more grievous than any U.S. administration in history. But all the anti-Bush agitation was never about human rights or humanitarian international law. It was about raw power and revenge against political enemies. If progressives truly cared about human rights abuses we should be seeing antiwar protests across the globe, on the scale of the protests on the eve of the Iraq war in 2003. President Obama himself campaigned in 2008 as the most far-left candidate since George McGovern, but since taking office has eliminated virtually nothing from the Bush administration's national security program. Indeed, Fox News confirmed that the CIA was holding prisoners at the Obama administration's black site in Benghazi. What's worse is that Obama's secret prisons are in violation of his own administration's executive order abolishing extraordinary rendition and secret overseas prisons.

People like Kevin Gosztola know all of this, but in the service of progressive power are not only giving the president a pass on the massive illegality of the kill list regime, but have in fact aided and abetted a cover-up of the Benghazi murders to perpetuate Democrat power in Washington. That's the real crime here. The historical fucking moral bankruptcy of the left, people who will stop and nothing to keep political power, and thus expand the vicious leftist power grab in government even if innocent people are killed.

Sunday Cartoons

At Flopping Aces, "Sunday Funnies."

More at Reaganite Republican, "Reaganite's Sunday Funnies," and Theo Spark, "Cartoon Round Up..."

Obama Pushes to Codify Rules for Drone Warfare

At the New York Times, "U.S. Election Speeded Move to Codify Policy on Drones":

WASHINGTON — Facing the possibility that President Obama might not win a second term, his administration accelerated work in the weeks before the election to develop explicit rules for the targeted killing of terrorists by unmanned drones, so that a new president would inherit clear standards and procedures, according to two administration officials.

The matter may have lost some urgency after Nov. 6. But with more than 300 drone strikes and some 2,500 people killed by the Central Intelligence Agency and the military since Mr. Obama first took office, the administration is still pushing to make the rules formal and resolve internal uncertainty and disagreement about exactly when lethal action is justified.

Mr. Obama and his advisers are still debating whether remote-control killing should be a measure of last resort against imminent threats to the United States, or a more flexible tool, available to help allied governments attack their enemies or to prevent militants from controlling territory.

Though publicly the administration presents a united front on the use of drones, behind the scenes there is longstanding tension. The Defense Department and the C.I.A. continue to press for greater latitude to carry out strikes; Justice Department and State Department officials, and the president’s counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan, have argued for restraint, officials involved in the discussions say.

More broadly, the administration’s legal reasoning has not persuaded many other countries that the strikes are acceptable under international law. For years before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the United States routinely condemned targeted killings of suspected terrorists by Israel, and most countries still object to such measures.

But since the first targeted killing by the United States in 2002, two administrations have taken the position that the United States is at war with Al Qaeda and its allies and can legally defend itself by striking its enemies wherever they are found.

Partly because United Nations officials know that the United States is setting a legal and ethical precedent for other countries developing armed drones, the U.N. plans to open a unit in Geneva early next year to investigate American drone strikes.

The attempt to write a formal rule book for targeted killing began last summer after news reports on the drone program, started under President George W. Bush and expanded by Mr. Obama, revealed some details of the president’s role in the shifting procedures for compiling “kill lists” and approving strikes. Though national security officials insist that the process is meticulous and lawful, the president and top aides believe it should be institutionalized, a course of action that seemed particularly urgent when it appeared that Mitt Romney might win the presidency.

“There was concern that the levers might no longer be in our hands,” said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity. With a continuing debate about the proper limits of drone strikes, Mr. Obama did not want to leave an “amorphous” program to his successor, the official said. The effort, which would have been rushed to completion by January had Mr. Romney won, will now be finished at a more leisurely pace, the official said.

Mr. Obama himself, in little-noticed remarks, has acknowledged that the legal governance of drone strikes is still a work in progress.

“One of the things we’ve got to do is put a legal architecture in place, and we need Congressional help in order to do that, to make sure that not only am I reined in but any president’s reined in terms of some of the decisions that we’re making,” Mr. Obama told Jon Stewart in an appearance on “The Daily Show” on Oct. 18.

In other words, it's illegal, and for outward appearances it might be good if the United States wasn't completely fucking oblivious to international norms, much less international legal regimes, such as the Geneva Conventions, which make illegal the fatalities of civilian non-combatants. Obama campaigned in 2008 on a massive antiwar humanitarian agenda. He attacked the Bush administration on all fronts, from Guantanamo to the Iraq war. His antiwar image was one of the biggest attractions of his candidacy. He was going to heal America's reputation as a warmongering imperialist power. All that was talk, of course. Big rhetorical bullshit in the furtherance of power. One of the biggest scandals of his administration --- and there are many --- is the ease with which he's been able to kill both American citizens and foreign civilians with no checks and balances whatsoever, to say nothing of political consequences. The only person writing about Obama's historical authoritarianism is Glenn Greenwald. Otherwise, progressives down the line give this president a pass where previously they had sought war crimes indictments for such policies under his predecessor. That's the rankest kind of hypocrisy that makes its way all the way to the current Oval Office, for I don't for a second believe that President Obama embraces his unprecedented shift in war powers in terms of national security. No, this president sees targeted killings as gruesome fodder for earned reporting from the Obama media's press retinue, all in service of the maintenance and expansion of power. In contrast, President George W. Bush genuinely believed that his policies would make the nation more secure, and they have.

In any case, Greenwald considers Obama the worst civil liberties president in American history. I don't like Greenwald, although I have recommended his consistency on such matters. See, "Who is the worst civil liberties president in US history?":

Abraham Lincoln illegally suspended the core liberty of habeas corpus without Congressional approval. Wilson's attacks on basic free speech in the name of national security were indeed legion and probably unparalleled. Franklin Roosevelt oversaw the due-process-free internment of more than 100,000 law-abiding Japanese-Americans into concentration camps.

And then there are the two War on Terror presidents. George Bush seized on the 9/11 attack to usher in radical new surveillance and detention powers in the PATRIOT ACT, spied for years on the communications of US citizens without the warrants required by law, and claimed the power to indefinitely imprison even US citizens without charges in military brigs.

His successor, Barack Obama, went further by claiming the power not merely to detain citizens without judicial review but to assassinate them (about which the New York Times said: "It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing"). He has waged an unprecedented war on whistleblowers, dusting off Wilson's Espionage Act of 1917 to prosecute more then double the number of whistleblowers than all prior presidents combined. And he has draped his actions with at least as much secrecy, if not more so, than any president in US history...

Lincoln's Language and its Legacy

A lengthy review article from Adam Gopnik, at the New Yorker, "ANNALS OF BIOGRAPHY: ANGELS AND AGES":

The tendency to obsess over single words and phrases reflects, in part, the semi-divine status of Lincoln in American history. But it also reflects a desire to show that rhetoric and writing were as essential to his career as acts and orders and elections. In the past twenty-five years, and particularly since the publication of Garry Wills’s “Lincoln at Gettysburg” (1992), language and its uses has become a central Lincoln subject. Two prominent strains of rhetoric run through the period—the Biblical and the classical—and political ideas tend to get tinted by whichever of them the speaker uses. Reading Edward Everett’s Gettysburg address, the two-hour set speech that preceded Lincoln’s and was meant to be the real event of the Gettysburg commemoration, one is startled to see how relentlessly classical it is in tone and analogy: Everett goes on and on about Marathon and the Greeks and the Persian invasions, in order to “elevate” Gettysburg and the Union soldiers. Lincoln’s rhetoric is, instead, deliberately Biblical. (It is difficult to find a single obviously classical reference in all of his speeches.) Lincoln had mastered the sound of the King James Bible so completely that he could recast abstract issues of constitutional law in Biblical terms, making the proposition that Texas and New Hampshire should be forever bound by a single post office sound like something right out of Genesis.

What strikes a newcomer to Lincoln’s speeches, however, is how rare those famous cadences are; their simple, resonant language—“with malice towards none, with charity for all”; the concluding and opening lines of the Gettysburg Address—is memorable in part because there isn’t much of it. The majority of Lincoln’s public utterances are narrowly, sometimes brilliantly, lawyerly—even, on occasion, crafted to give an appearance of inevitability to oratorical conclusions that are not well supported by the chain of reasoning that precedes them. The undramatic, small-print language in which Lincoln offered the Emancipation Proclamation is the most famous instance of his mastery of anti-heroic rhetoric. (Karl Marx said that it reminded him of “ordinary summonses sent by one lawyer to another.”)

But Lincoln believed in legalism. One of his first public speeches, the Address Before the Young Men’s Lyceum, in Springfield in 1837, declared a radical insistence on “reason” to be the only acceptable form of public discourse; the cure for the prevalence and epidemic of violence in American life would be “hewn from the solid quarry of sober reason”: “Passion has helped us, but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason—cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason—must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence.” Lincoln tempered but never really abandoned that conviction. His rhetorical genius lay in making closely reasoned argument ring with the sound of religious necessity...

Grab a cup of coffe and read it all. It's well done.

Brisk Sales Point to Breakout Holiday Shopping Season

At LAT, "Shopping season off to strong start":

Opening their doors earlier than ever for Black Friday paid off for retailers as shoppers mobbed malls thick with sales across the Southland, snapping up electronics, toys and other deals.

Hundreds of bargain hunters surged toward the Glendale Galleria before midnight, some banging on one entrance and shouting to be let in. At the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, shoppers rushing into Urban Outfitters shattered a glass door. Mall traffic was a nightmare throughout Southern California.

Despite the chaos, early signs point to a blockbuster shopping day for merchants — with stores raking in even more than the record $11.4 billion for Black Friday they reported last year. More comprehensive numbers are expected Sunday.

"Overall it was a smash hit," said Britt Beemer, a retail expert at America's Research Group who has been tracking holiday sales nationally for more than three decades. "In all the years I have been out, I have never seen such crowds in my life."

Target, Sears and the Disney Store reported a surge in customers. Wal-Mart said it was the retail behemoth's best Black Friday sale ever. Mall operators saw long lines, and shoppers scooped up even some full-price items as well as bargains in stores and online.

The shopping frenzy cheered merchants and Wall Street, which enjoyed a big boost Friday.

There was no violence reported in Southern California, where last year at least 10 people were injured when a shopper used pepper spray to ward off rivals at a Porter Ranch Wal-Mart.

But protests erupted over working conditions at dozens of Wal-Marts nationwide, including one that led to the arrest of nine people blocking a street in Paramount. And two people were shot in what police said was a scuffle over a parking spot at a Wal-Mart in Tallahassee, Fla.

LAist has more on that, "Local Walmart Workers Stage Black Friday Walkout [VIDEO]."

Egypt's Islamist Coup

At WSJ:

The Egyptian revolution took another bad turn Thursday, as President Mohamed Morsi gave himself dictatorial powers over the legislature and courts. The world has feared that the Muslim Brotherhood would favor one-man, one-vote, once, and the Morsi coup is an ominous sign.

"The people wanted me to be the guardian of these steps in this phase," Reuters quoted Mr. Morsi as saying on Friday. "I don't like and don't want—and there is no need—to use exceptional measures. But those who are trying to gnaw the bones of the nation" must be "held accountable."

Mr. Morsi says his diktat will merely last as long as it takes the country to adopt a new constitution, which is what authoritarians always say. They claim to be a necessary step on the way to democracy, but democracy never arrives. Mr. Morsi's rationalization is that he must have this power to "protect the revolution," as if the demonstrators who deposed Hosni Mubarak in 2011 merely wanted another Mubarak with a beard and prayer rug. Mr. Morsi is claiming more power than Mr. Mubarak ever had.

Egyptians took to the street on Friday in protest, sometimes violently, and nearly every other major political leader denounced the putsch. That includes Abdel Monheim Aboul Fotouh, a former Muslim Brotherhood leader and presidential candidate. The violence is regrettable, but the protests may be the only way Egyptians can prevent the Muslim Brotherhood from becoming their new dictators.

The Brotherhood doesn't control the military or Ministry of Interior, yet neither one is going to rush to defend a more liberal Egyptian state. The military's main goal is to protect its role in government and its economic interests, and the Brotherhood's draft constitution puts the military outside of civilian control.

As long as Mr. Morsi doesn't challenge those interests, the military and police may let him control the courts, the media and the legislature. This is a recipe for rule a la Pakistan, with an increasingly Islamist state but the military and intelligence services as an independent power. The immediate losers will be Egypt's liberals and the Western journalists who inhaled the vapors of Tahrir Square. But whatever Mr. Morsi intends, the Pakistan model is not a recipe for a more stable Egypt.

Mr. Morsi's coup is also awkward for the Obama Administration, which had been praising the Egyptian in media backgrounders for his role in brokering the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. Mr. Morsi was hailed as a moderate statesman. Yet Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had barely left Cairo before Mr. Morsi made his move. He may have figured that all the praise made it easier for him to grab more power.

It's awkward alright.

The administration basically installed the Muslim Brotherhood and now Morsi's making a bid for the region's pan-Islamist leader to rival even Iran's influence. You get what you bargain for, I guess. And boy, did Obama ever bargain for his Muslim Brothers!

RELATED: From David Goldman, "Obama Legitimizes Morsi’s Protection Racket."

Gratuitous Kate Upton Rule 5 Video

She's lovely and so far you can't get enough of her.

And speaking of Rule 5, congratulations to Bob Belvedere for his blogging milestone: "2,000,000 Hits – Thanks to You All."

And a little more from Bob, "Rule 5 News Special Report: The Mammary Murder Plot."

That'll get you another two million in no time!

'Gangnam Style' Video is Most-Viewed on YouTube

Well, it's pretty gay, so no surprise.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Psy's "Gangnam Style" video is the most-viewed video on YouTube."

Bethany's Black Friday Shopping

Well, this is much more relaxed than Walmart in Georgia:

Professor Paul Frampton Convicted in Denise Milani 'Honey Trap' Case

Well, clearly those big breasts proved too hard to resist.

At ABC News, "Paul Frampton: Court in Argentina Convicts UNC Professor of Drug Smuggling":

A court in Argentina has convicted an Oxford educated University of North Carolina professor of attempting to smuggle four pounds of cocaine into the United States.

Paul Frampton, a 68-year-old esteemed professor of physics and astronomy, says he thought he was flying to South America to meet with a bikini model but ended up getting caught in what they call a "honey trap."

Frampton flew to Bolivia from North Carolina earlier this year after communicating with someone who claimed to be Denise Milani, winner of Miss Bikini World 2007. She never showed up.

Instead, Frampton says he was met by a man who gave him a suitcase, identifying himself as an intermediary for Milani, and instructing him to take it to her in Argentina.

Once there, he says he could not find her and decided to board a plane home, with that suitcase in hand. Police opened it up at the airport and found more than four pounds of cocaine inside.

"He has a high IQ, is well-known and very distinguished in the field of physics and other scientific areas, but when it comes to common sense he scored a zero," said former DC homicide investigator Rod Wheeler.

The Argentinean court sentenced Frampton to serve four years and eight months in custody after prosecutors there presented evidence of text messages they say Frampton sent to the person he thought was the model, saying, "I'm worried about the sniffer dogs," and "I'm looking after your special little suitcase."

The University of North Carolina has cut off Frampton's salary in a move that prompted dozens of his colleagues at the university to sign a letter of protest to administrators.

"As more information about his case becomes available ... it becomes more and more obvious that Paul was the innocent, although very gullible, victim of a scam," the joint letter said.

Many wrote separate letters of reference on a website they created to support the embattled professor, who is hoping to serve his time under house arrest in Argentina at a friend's apartment.

From prison Frampton has said, "It does seem unfair that an innocent scam victim is treated as a professional drug smuggler."

Well, it's hard out there for swinging academics.

There's an ABC News video here: "Professor Paul Frampton Convicted of Drug Smuggling."

And see the Independent UK, "The Denise Milani conspiracy: 'Honey trap' professor gets five years in Argentina jail," and "The case of Denise Milani and the British scientist proves – set a honeytrap and men fall in every time."

BONUS: At Hollywood Tuna, "Denise Milani Picture Moment."

Arlington's One More Page Bookstore Caters to Royalty, Closes to Public During Obama's Presidential Visit

Well, you wouldn't want to inconvenience the presidential family by having the riff-raff nearby.

At London's Daily Mail, "Must be nice being President! Obama avoids Black Friday crowds as bookstore closes for his visit as he shops for Christmas presents with his girls."

Pictures at the link. And I don't see any red carpets. These people are slacking!

Here's the store's website: One More Page Books, located in Arlington, Virginia.

ADDED: Here's video, "Raw: Obama, Daughters Go Christmas Shopping."

Ideological Discrimination at University of Iowa Law School

At The TaxProf, "Jurors Agree: University of Iowa Law School Discriminated Against Faculty Applicant Due to Her Conservative Views" (via Memeorandum):

Following up on my previous posts (links below) about Teresa Wagner's federal lawsuit: Des Monies Register, Jurors Say They Saw Hiring Bias at University of Iowa; But University, Not Former Law Dean, Wronged Conservative Job Applicant:

A federal jury believed the University of Iowa’s law school illegally denied a promotion to a conservative Republican because of her politics, former jurors told The Des Moines Register.

However, jurors said they felt conflicted about holding a former dean personally responsible for the bias. They wanted to hold the school itself accountable, but federal law does not recognize political discrimination by institutions. “I will say that everyone in that jury room believed that she had been discriminated against,” said Davenport resident Carol Tracy, the jury forewoman.

Meanwhile, attorneys for Teresa Wagner on Tuesday filed a motion for a new trial in the case that scholars agree could have national implications in what some argue is the liberally slanted world of academia.

Des Moines Register editorial: U of I Needs to Respect Diversity of Thought, Too: The Claim of Political Bias in Hiring at the Law School Should Not End with the Deadlocked Jury...

Continue reading.

Hey, when you go after bias at the universities, you're hammering away at the enemy's beachhead of Marxist cultural power and ideological indoctrination.

More at Volokh, "Jurors in Bias Case Believe University of Iowa Engaged in Ideological Discrimination."

Peter Suderman's Twitter Tutorial Shows How Walmart Helps Nation's Poor

It's really very straightforward. Walmart's low prices make more goods available to more people, especially people at the lower income quintile. I used to talk a lot about Walmart during my class discussions on the economy. One thing Suderman doesn't mention is that Walmart's economies of scale create dramatic ripple effects throughout the entire economy. There's a tremendous benefit from lower prices for families across the board, as the company's market-setting impact improves the well-being of individuals and families at all income levels. Basically, Walmart helps keep prices low economy-wide. Suppliers, wholesalers, shippers and other interdependent businesses must keep costs down to stay competitive, or Walmart shifts its purchasing and contracting relations to more efficient concerns. Inflation is reduced nationally. And national well-being increases. Left-wing attacks on Walmart are not designed to help workers, who will end up losing their higher wages to big labor bosses in any case, when they pony up their mandatory union dues. It's power the big bosses want, not social improvements for society's poor.

See Twitchy, "Reason magazine’s Peter Suderman destroys the Left’s irrational Walmart criticism."

9. Raise prices to pay for increased wages and you cut into the store’s huge low-price benefits for the poor. It’s regressive.
— Peter Suderman (@petersuderman) November 24, 2012

And at The Blaze, "Reason Senior Editor Dismantles the Left's Chief Anti-Walmart Talking Points."

Walmart Black Friday Shopping

At JWF, "Bloody Friday: Deranged Shoppers Battle Over Cell Phones at WalMart."

(Also on YouTube, "Walmart Black Friday Fighting Over Phones During 2012.")

Republicans and the Hispanic Vote

Two articles getting some attention: Kim Strassel, at the Wall Street Journal, "The GOP Turnout Myth," and Byron York, at the Washington Examiner, "Hispanics favor Dems but didn't decide election."

I don't think Hispanics are naturally conservative (as Charles Krauthammer argued recently, erroneously), although I do think that Republicans can pick up enough Hispanics to reduce the Democrat electoral advantage in key swing states. Strassel's essay points that out:

In Florida, 238,000 more Hispanics voted than in 2008, and Mr. Obama got 60% of Hispanic voters. His total margin of victory in Florida was 78,000 votes, so that demographic alone won it for him. Or consider Ohio, where Mr. Romney won independents by 10 points. The lead mattered little, though, given that black turnout increased by 178,000 votes, and the president won 96% of the black vote. Mr. Obama's margin of victory there was 103,000.

This is the demographic argument that is getting so much attention, and properly so. The Republican Party can hope that a future Democratic candidate won't equal Mr. Obama's magnetism for minority voters. But the GOP would do far better by fighting aggressively for a piece of the minority electorate.

And that, for the record, was the GOP's real 2012 turnout disaster. Elections are about the candidate and the message, yes, but also about the ground game. Republicans right now are fretting about Mr. Romney's failures and the party's immigration platform—that's fair enough. But equally important has been the party's mind-boggling failure to institute a competitive Hispanic ground game. The GOP doesn't campaign in those communities, doesn't register voters there, doesn't knock on doors. So while pre-election polling showed that Hispanics were worried about Obama policies, in the end the only campaign that these voters heard from—by email, at their door, on the phone—was the president's.

Often missed in talk of the GOP's "demographics problem" is that it would take relatively modest minority-voter shifts toward Republicans to return the party to a dominating force. The GOP might see that as the enormous opportunity it is, rather than a problem. The key to winning turnout is having more people to turn out in the first place.

Texas Secession Fever

At the New York Times, "With Stickers, a Petition and Even a Middle Name, Secession Fever Hits Texas":

HOUSTON — In the weeks since President Obama’s re-election, Republicans around the country have been wondering how to proceed. Some conservatives in Texas have been asking a far more pointed question: how to secede.

Secession fever has struck parts of Texas, which Mitt Romney won by nearly 1.3 million votes.

Sales of bumper stickers reading “Secede” — one for $2, or three for $5 — have increased at TexasSecede.com. In East Texas, a Republican official sent out an e-mail newsletter saying it was time for Texas and Vermont to each “go her own way in peace” and sign a free-trade agreement among the states.

A petition calling for secession that was filed by a Texas man on a White House Web site has received tens of thousands of signatures, and the Obama administration must now issue a response. And Larry Scott Kilgore, a perennial Republican candidate from Arlington, a Dallas suburb, announced that he was running for governor in 2014 and would legally change his name to Larry Secede Kilgore, with Secede in capital letters. As his Web page, secedekilgore.com, puts it: “Secession! All other issues can be dealt with later.”

In Texas, talk of secession in recent years has steadily shifted to the center from the fringe right. It has emerged as an echo of the state Republican leadership’s anti-Washington, pro-Texas-sovereignty mantra on a variety of issues, including health care and environmental regulations. For some Texans, the renewed interest in the subject serves simply as comic relief after a crushing election defeat.

But for other proponents of secession and its sister ideology, Texas nationalism — a focus of the Texas Nationalist Movement and other groups that want the state to become an independent nation, as it was in the 1830s and 1840s — it is a far more serious matter.

It's interesting, if not something of a sideshow.

RELATED: From Saberpoint, "Vox Popoli Hates Californians -- Even Conservatives."

Tea Party Looks to Oust Republicans Seen as Not Conservative Enough

This isn't anything new, although there's obviously greater urgency amid the left's information coup and the second term of the Obama disaster. Basically, double down hoping to gain some traction before we're all shot to hell.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Tea Party Seeks to Regroup: Movement Sets Sights on Ousting Republicans Seen as Not Conservative Enough":

The tea-party movement is trying to regroup after taking some licks in this month's elections. Several groups already are setting their sights on 2014 congressional races, in which they plan to promote their preferred candidates and hope to weed out Republicans they consider insufficiently conservative.

Many tea-party activists say they remain dumbfounded by the Nov. 6 defeat of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and favored GOP candidates for the Senate, and opinions are swirling over how the movement should push forward.

In Virginia, organizations that canvassed aggressively for Mr. Romney are now girding for next year's election for governor. Many are moving to support Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli in his GOP primary contest against Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling.

Conservative groups also are considering potential challenges to GOP Sens. Lindsey Graham in South Carolina, Lamar Alexander in Tennessee and Saxby Chambliss in Georgia, whom some activists view as not conservative enough.

After scoring a wave of successes in the 2010 midterm elections, tea-party groups found the environment much less hospitable this year in states where President Barack Obama's campaign made gains with the electorate.

One of the movement's most outspoken advocates, Rep. Allen West of Florida, lost his first bid for re-election, while Rep. Michele Bachmann, a founder of the congressional Tea Party Caucus, barely scraped by to keep her Minnesota seat. Still, many House freshmen backed by the tea party in 2010 survived this year, and Republicans retained their House majority.

"This was a very difficult year, with the strength of the Obama ground game and the fact that Romney just didn't inspire much enthusiasm," said Jamie Radtke, an unsuccessful 2012 Senate candidate and founder of the Virginia Federation of Tea Party Patriots, a statewide umbrella group that continues to expand and now has over 60 member organizations. "But in many ways, we are stronger than ever," she said.

The federation, Ms. Radtke said, plans to play a big role in 2013 Virginia races, including those for the governor's and lieutenant governor's offices.

Across the country, tea-party activists are drawing different lessons from the year's setbacks.

One of the movement's big losses was in the Indiana Senate race, where Richard Mourdock, a favorite of tea-party activists, toppled six-term Republican Sen. Richard Lugar in the Republican primary, only to lose this month to conservative Democrat Joe Donnelly. Mr. Mourdock's campaign took a hit after he said that "even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something God intended to happen."

Tea-party activist Greg Fettig, a founder of Hoosiers for a Conservative Senate and a backer of Mr. Mourdock, said the main lesson from the loss is that activists need to be sure the campaigns they support are well-run.

In South Carolina, tea-party activists are looking to mount a primary challenge against Mr. Graham, whom they oppose in part because he voted to confirm Mr. Obama's Supreme Court nominees, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

"I think he will face a strong primary challenge," said Joe Dugan, South Carolina coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots. "The extent of that challenge and the money that can be raised will depend on his actions from this time forward."

Mr. Graham didn't respond to requests for comment.

Andrea Alarcon to Take Leave of Absence

At LAT, "Mayor's top appointee on Board of Public Works will take leave."

She's also "seeking help." See: "Public works commissioner says she’s seeking 'professional help'."

Democrats need professional help, so there you go. And this lady's actions are criminal. She should being doing time for her kind of progressive child abandonment and endangerment.

PREVIOUSLY: "Andrea Alarcon, President of Los Angeles Board of Public Works, Under Investigation for Child Endangerment."

Protesters Storm Muslim Brotherhood Headquarters in Alexandria

The opposition to the Morsi coup is pretty widespread.

See, "Protests rock Egypt after Morsi seizes new powers."

More: "Morsy reassures Egyptians as protests grow."

Obama Copies California, While State's Residents Flee to Texas

An absolutely amazing development, but no surprise givien the long-standing stagnation of this once "Golden State." At IBD, "Obama Policies Copy Moribund California, Not Texas":

Anyone who thinks that President Obama's economic policies will spur strong growth should consider U-Haul rates between California and Texas.

Renting a 20-foot truck one-way from San Francisco to San Antonio, for example, will cost $1,693. But the U-Haul tab to go in the opposite direction is just $983.

To University of Michigan economist Mark Perry, who has tracked this "U-Haul Index," the difference in these rental rates is the result of straightforward supply and demand.

Put simply, far more people want to leave California for Texas than vice versa. Why? Because California's economy is moribund while Texas' is thriving.

"The American people and businesses are voting with their feet and their one-way truck rentals to escape California and its forced unionism, high taxes, and high unemployment rate for a better life in low-tax, business-friendly, right-to-work states like Texas," noted Perry, who is also a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

California Nation

The problem is that Obama's economic policies are pushing the country to be more like the California people are leaving and less like the Texas they're flocking to.

"Every dream program that the administration embraces — cap and trade, massive taxes on the rich, high-speed rail — is either in place or on the drawing boards" in California, notes Joel Kotkin, executive editor of NewGeography.

Like President Obama, California's Gov. Jerry Brown pushed for a substantial new tax on the "rich" that raises the top rate to 13.3%, a hike voters approved in November. Even before these taxes kick in, California was the fourth most heavily taxed state, according to a ranking by the Tax Foundation.

Also like Obama, the state is regulation happy. The Mercatus Center at George Mason University ranks California as one of the four worst states in terms of regulations. The state also imposes one of the heaviest tax burdens on businesses.

As a result, California consistently ranks at or near the bottom for business friendliness.

And like Obama — who has pushed federal spending up to historic highs for the past four years — per-capita spending in California has climbed 42% from 2000 to 2010, even after adjusting for inflation. The state is now one of the biggest spenders in the country.

The contrast in economic policies between California and Texas — which otherwise share many things in common, since both are big-population border states with lots of immigrants — could not be more striking.

Continue reading.

Erin Andrews Models Brooklyn Decker Boots

Via Twittter.

And indeed, those are Brooklyn Decker boots: "Boots on a motha effin' plane."

Protests Against Mohammed Morsi

AT Telegraph UK, "Violence breaks out across Egypt as protesters decry Mohammed Morsi's constitutional 'coup'":

Violence broke out in cities across Egypt yesterday (Friday) as demonstrators took to the streets and besieged Muslim Brotherhood offices in anger at authoritarian new powers seized by President Mohammed Morsi.

Headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political front, the Freedom and Justice Party, were ransacked and burned in Alexandria, Port Said and Ismailiya. Protesters described Mr Morsi as “Egypt’s new pharaoh” and said his declaration on Thursday night was a “constitutional coup”.

In Cairo, the biggest demonstrations for months filled Tahrir Square, reviving the spirit and chants of last year’s revolution against the country’s former leader, ex-President Hosni Mubarak. “Out, out,” the crowd chanted. The people want the downfall of the regime.”

Mr Morsi publicly defended his decision to make his decrees unchallengeable by law as necessary to complete Egypt’s transformation. He told a crowd of supporters gathered in front of the presidential palace that he was trying to stop a “minority” trying to “block the revolution”.

He also alleged that money stolen under the old regime was being used to fund new protests, including by "thugs" - a politically loaded term suggesting that the pro-democracy protesters were the same as Mr Mubarak's hired henchmen.

"There are weevils eating away at the nation of Egypt," he told them, insisting that he by contrast, was trying to assure "political stability, social stability and economic stability".

"I have always been, and still am, and will always be, God willing, with the pulse of the people, what the people want, with clear legitimacy," he said.

Mr Morsi, fresh from his success in negotiating a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas on Wednesday night, made the unexpected announcement of his new powers on Thursday.

As noted earlier, developments in Egypt are of huge, structural significance and will have deep impact on U.S. foreign policy. I'll have more later, but meanwhile check out Barry Rubin, "News Flash: Egypt’s Islamist President Assumes Dictatorial Powers." (Via Memeorandum.)

Mohammed Morsi Appoints Himself 'Egypt's New Pharaoh'

This is not a joke.

At Telegraph UK, "Mohammed Morsi grants himself sweeping new powers in wake of Gaza."

And Twitchy, "President of Egypt grants himself dictatorial powers."

There's a longer clip here.

And check the Los Angeles Times, "Mideast shifts may weaken Iran's pull with Palestinians":

CAIRO — Iran for years has supplied Hamas with weapons as part of its own struggle against Israel, but the conflict in the Gaza Strip reveals a shift in regional dynamics that may diminish Tehran's influence with Palestinian militant groups and strengthen the hand of Egypt.

The longer-range missiles fired by Hamas over the last week — believed to be modifications of Iran's Fajr 5 missiles — startled Israel by landing near Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. A front-page story in Iran's conservative daily, Kayhan, boasted: "The missiles of resistance worked." Tehran would not confirm the weapons' origin, except to say it sent rocket "technology" to Hamas.

Instead, Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told reporters: "What is important is that the people of Palestine must be equipped to defend themselves, and it is the responsibility of all countries to defend the rights of the people of Palestine."

But the Gaza fighting erupted during a new era in the Middle East brought about by the rise of Islamist governments, notably in Egypt, that have replaced pro-Western autocrats. The political catharsis has spurred anti-Americanism, which Iran relishes, but it also has upset Tehran's regional designs.

In Syria — which along with the militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah has been Iran's proxy opposing Israel — a revolt inspired by the "Arab Spring" could force President Bashar Assad from power and bring in a government less friendly to Tehran. Hamas angered Iran by opposing Tehran's continued support of Assad and siding with the Syrian rebels, who are mostly fellow Sunni Muslims.

Iran's immediate concern in Gaza is keeping Hamas from strengthening its ties to Arab capitals. This may be difficult, as evidenced by the fact that Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, which inspired the founding of Hamas and now is in charge of the Egyptian government, played a key role in brokering the cease-fire announced Wednesday.

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi is likely to press the militant group not to further agitate the region — and Egypt's many domestic problems — with sustained violence against Israel. But Egypt has been criticized for tacitly arming Hamas by not tightening its border with Gaza to stop weapons smugglers from Libya and Sudan.

"The Iranians [had] better understand the paradigm is shifting in the Middle East," said Nabil Fahmy, former Egyptian ambassador to the U.S. and founding dean of the School of Public Affairs at the American University in Cairo. "Hamas needs Cairo tremendously. It really has no other interlocutor to deal with Israel."

But he added that the region is so fluid and unsettled that it is too early to predict winners and losers: "If there are peaceful resolutions, this will lead to a reduced Iranian role. If, on the other hand, you have an increased use of violence," he said, "then ultimately any player that has been supportive of a more aggressive posture will gain ground."

This reminds me of Henry Kissinger in early 2011: "Kissinger on Egypt: 'Classic Pattern of Revolution'."

The Times of Israel is also reporting that Israel ruled out a ground invasion to prevent the possibility of a collapse of regional peace agreements and the emergence of a three-front war. See: "TV report: Warnings that peace deals with Egypt, Jordan could collapse led Israel to end Hamas assault with no ground offensive."

Big changes. All while President Obama's busy pardoning turkeys. He's so insignificant in the global sweep of things, and so wrong. So deeply wrong. Americans will be choking on some of the biggest buyers remorse ever.

More on all of this later ...

Patriotic Thanksgiving Wreath

I came home from work on Wednesday and my wife had mounted this wreath on the front door.

Stuff like this makes up for some of that "dwindling optimism" I mentioned earlier:

Democrats Vote the Mentally Disabled

From David Horowitz, at FrontPage Magazine:

I am incredibly steamed this Thanksgiving Holiday over what the Democrats are doing to my country. Everybody by now knows – or should know – how readily Democrats conduct election fraud, and how determined they are to defend it. Dan [James?] O’Keefe and others have taken videos of paid Democratic operatives encouraging citizens to vote twice. O’Keefe was even able to claim Attorney General Eric Holder’s own ballot at a district polling place by claiming to be him, and then to vote in his place. Democrats have promoted Motor Voter laws and same day registration, and month-long election days to help them mobilize the votes of people who are so unconnected to the political process and so uninterested in the country’s future, and perhaps so incompetent to understand what voting entails that they require keepers to see that they get to the polls and then vote the “right” way.  In the election that put Al Franken in the Senate by a few hundred votes, more than a thousand felons voted illegally because of the loose laws that govern the polling booth – laws the Democrats want to make even looser. It is in fact the number one civil rights issue of the NAACP this year to give felons the right to vote. So we know that Democrats have little respect for the election process, and we should assume they will attempt to pursue their victories by any means necessary.

But even knowing this, I was not prepared for a conversation I had at Thanksgiving dinner today with my brother-in-law, Henry, who has lived most of his life in a home for the mentally disabled, and though now in his forties has the intelligence level of a six-year-old.

“Obama saved me,” he said to me out of the blue.

“What do you mean?”

“I voted for him for president and now he’s saving me.”

I was taken aback by these words, since Henry had no idea who Obama was, or what a president might be, and would be unable to fill out a registration form let alone get to the polling place by himself. So I asked him how he knew that and how he had registered and cast his vote. In halting, impeded speech he told me that the people who take care of him at the home filled out “the papers” to register him to vote, told him how Obama cared for him, even taught him the Obama chants, and then took him to the polling place to vote. They did the same for all of the mentally disabled patients in their care, approximately sixty in all...

More at the link.

Cathy McMorris Rodgers Delivers GOP's Thanksgiving Address

She's a good lady, recently elected conference chairwoman.

More at the Los Angeles Times, "Obama, GOP lawmaker deliver Thanksgiving messages."

Video Allegedly Shows Workers Abusing Turkeys at Butterball Plant

My wife bought a Butterball and it was delicious. The birds should be treated humanely, however.

At NBC Los Angeles, "'Shocking Abuse': Butterball Accused of Kicking, Stomping Turkeys at World's Largest Turkey Plant."

And here's the secret camera report: "Hidden Camera Video: Shocking Truth Behind Butterball Thanksgiving Turkey."

The abuse is awful, but the radical left's animal rights groups have freakin' jumped the shark. See Dustin Stockton, "PETA: The Plight of Turkeys is Like That of Blacks, Women and Gays."

Union Thuggery Emboldened by Obama's Re-Election

At the Los Angeles, "Unions, buoyed by election results, are taking a stand":

They're fed up and they're not going to take it anymore.

That's the case for thousands of employees across the country who are striking and walking out of jobs rather than accept changes to their pay and benefits. It might be a shot in the arm for a labor movement that had been left for dead but saw big gains in the November election as voters elected pro-labor candidates.

The number of union-related work stoppages involving more than 1,000 workers, which reached an all-time low of just five in 2009, rose to 13 this year as of October. And unions aren't done yet.

Nurses are striking this week at hospitals operated by Sutter Health in California; workers voted against concessions at Hostess Brands Inc., forcing the company's hand; pilots at American Airlines are wreaking havoc on the airline's schedule as it tries to cut pension and other benefits.

"There's a lot of agitating going on," said Julius Getman, a labor expert at the University of Texas. "People are unhappy. They feel that they're not being well-treated. There is a swelling of annoyance at the rich."

This week, labor faces a pivotal test of just how strong this movement is, with a group called Our Walmart asking associates to strike at stores across the country during the retailer's busiest days of the year.

The group says it is protesting Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s retaliation against workers who seek to unionize. It wants to get the corporation to sit down with the group and listen to workers' complaints.

"There comes a time when you have to stand up and you have to fix what is broke, and Wal-Mart is broken," said Evelyn Cruz, 41, who works at a Wal-Mart in Pico Rivera and walked off the job there Tuesday.

PREVIOUSLY: "West Coast Port Shut Down," and "Progressives Sink Knives Into Walmart."

Cartoon Credit: Legal Insurrection, "Branco Cartoon – Stuffed Turkey."

'Doom and Gloom'

At the Los Angeles Times, "First impression: Rolling Stones' new single, 'Doom and Gloom'."

BONUS: At Telegraph UK, "Evocative images of the Stones published."

Lindsey Stone Fired for Vulgar Facebook Photo at Arlington National Cemetery

The Other McCain reported on this earlier, "Lindsey Stone of Plymouth, Mass., Has ‘Been Placed on Unpaid Leave Pending the Results of an Internal Investigation’."

But she's gone now, according to the Boston Herald, "Shamed Facebook poster loses her job":

Lindsey Stone — the Plymouth woman taking an online beating for posting a photo of herself flipping the bird at Arlington National Cemetery on Facebook — has lost her job.

“Lindsey resigned and we accepted her resignation,” LIFE Inc. CEO Diane Enochs told the Herald tonight.

LIFE Inc. of Hyannis — a Cape Cod nonprofit that helps adults with special needs — announced tonight that Stone, along with the woman who snapped the offending photo, are not working there.

Ironically, the formal announcement was made on Facebook.

“We wish to announce that the two employees recently involved in the Arlington Cemetery incident are no longer employees of LIFE. Again, we deeply regret any disrespect to members of the military and their families. The incident and publicity has been very upsetting to the learning disabled population we serve. To protect our residents, any comments, however well-intentioned, will be deleted. We appreciate your concern and understanding as we focus on the care of our community,” the statement reads.

There's more at that top link, but see this from the Herald as well, "Father ‘appalled’ by disrespectful Facebook pic":

The mortified father of a Plymouth woman under cyber assault for posting a photo of herself flipping the bird at sacred Arlington National Cemetery said his only daughter apologizes to anyone she’s offended — especially soldiers.

The controversial Facebook photo shows Lindsey Stone with her mouth wide open and giving the finger near what appears to be the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and a sign that reads: “Silence and Respect.”

“She’s totally apologetic. She apologizes to anybody she’s offended,” her father, Peter Stone, told me last night. “She was reacting, I guess, to the sign instead of the place and didn’t intend it to be what it turned out to be.

“She had a lack of judgment,” added her father, who learned of the controversy yesterday. “I think they were just being funny, which is sad. It’s not how she or the family feels by any means.”

The photo wound up in the blogosphere and has sparked a “Fire Lindsey Stone” Facebook page that had fetched more than 9,000 likes as of last night.

Stone and Jamie Schuh, the woman who snapped the photo, have been put on unpaid leave from their jobs at the Hyannis-based LIFE Inc. — a nonprofit that helps adults with special needs — while it investigates the incident.

Well, it's permanent unpaid leave for the both of them now.

And extremely poor judgement it was. No doubt the company considered the woman to continuing liability to the concern and had to cut her loose.

And head back over to The Other McCain for a bit on the sordidness of Ms. Stone's actions. Word has it she was visiting Arlington on a company-paid trip, so that would make it look like the non-profit was financing the vulgarity. There's no way they could keep her on, although as bad as it was, for all it's vulgarity, flipping off the Tomb of the Unknowns is a form of political speech. Perhaps the outcome would have been different had Ms. Stone visited on her own time and her own dime. She would at least have had a better case for keeping her job. Either way, she's paying for her stupidity as much as her speech.

'Hey, I also made you a video...'

Samsung's got some smokin' advertisements. This one's been running pretty frequently of late, including during the Dallas-Washington game a little while ago:

Danica Patrick to Divorce After Seven Years of Marriage

Well, I image racing fans won't be too sad at the news. Ms. Patrick is quite the looker and will no doubt inspire romantic dreams in the hearts of many.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Danica Patrick announces divorce on Facebook."

And in case you were wondering, from Lance Burri, "Yes, we here at The Trog are aware that Danica Patrick has announced her divorce…":

We here at The Trog do not celebrate divorce, as necessary as divorce may sometimes be. As the (un)official blog of Wisconsin native Danica Patrick, we wish both her and Paul the best, and hope they can overcome whatever bitterness (if any) might remain between them.

Divorce is a bummer, that's for sure. Both my wife's and my parents divorced when we were children. It's traumatizing.

'This is how you change the culture and the narrative...'

From Pamela Geller, "IBD Editorial: 'Israel Vs. Hamas is Civilization Vs. Savagery'."

Pamela's doing the most vital work ever, fighting against the maul of progressive evil. She writes:

More proof that we are right and we are righteous, and that our ads, despite the bloody howls from evildoers and the useful idiots in their service, are essential. We hit a nerve. And why? Because the enemedia so furiously spins an anti-human, anti-goodness narrative that the truth is a shock to the senses. But good people respond to it. Applaud it. Want it. Which is why we were able to raise the money to take the campaign nationwide. From San Francisco to NY, DC, Portland, Chicago, Denver .... you made that happen.

This is how you change the culture and the narrative. This is how you defeat the forces of evil in the information battle-space. This is how you begin to win.

Check the link for more.

Pamela posts this from IBD, "Israel Vs. Hamas is Civilization Vs. Savagery":

Celebration within Gaza after the bombing of a bus filled with innocent Israeli civilians is an object lesson on the so-called Palestine question. Those who would celebrate such a cowardly act are savages.

No one can imagine Washington's troops firing shots to celebrate a supporter of American independence trying to kill a group of Royalist civilians. During the Cold War, U.S. support for Lech Walesa's Solidarity would have dried up if he handed out candy after a Polish nationalist targeted, say, innocent Muscovites going to work.

We may live in a complex world, but evil is identifiable even when its practitioners claim their cause is good.

The gunfire across Gaza celebrating an explosion on a bus in central Tel Aviv on Wednesday is evil. And the Iranian-backed Hamas' rulers praising the bombing, which injured 15 passengers, is evil. "Hamas blesses the attack in Tel Aviv and sees it as a natural response to the Israeli massacres ... in Gaza," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters.

The "Israeli massacres," i.e. self-defensive airstrikes, are exactly how the U.S. would react if, let's say, Mexico were doing to us what Hamas has been doing to Israel: firing hundreds of rockets into populated areas.

It is, in fact, what any civilized nation would be doing.

Continue reading.

IMAGE CREDIT: Blazing Cat Fur.

Amusing Bunni ROLL CALL!

Zilla put out the call the other day, "ROLL CALL! Amusing Bunni needs us RIGHT NOW!"

I just hit Bunni's tip jar, which is accessible through Zilla's entry. I meant to get to it earlier, but I'm just now having some down time with the Thanksgiving holiday.

Bunni's got incurable cancer of the liver. If you can, hit her tip jar and say a prayer or two as well.

Bunni's page is here.

Wishing you as much health and happiness of God's grace during this season, Bunni.

Dwindling Optimism This Thanksgiving

I'll be enjoying some tasty leftovers today, grading papers and watching football. I'll also be blogging the holiday. I noted last night that I'm thankful that we have our wonderful U.S. Constitution to safeguard against tyranny, and right now boy do we need all the protection we can get. But notice how I argued that the current progressive ascendancy is "brief." Sure, we'll always have the idiot big government types who think their ideology has an answer for every public problem through more statism, but ideological trends run in cycles, and when things get bad enough there'll be a shift back to markets and federalism to invigorate our economy and polity. We may have a long way to fall before that happens, and literally millions of American lives could be harmed, if not destroyed by leftist failures, but in time the economy simply won't be able sustain all that the left imposes on it. California is America's Greece. Prop. 30 is just a breather to a fiscal reckoning that won't be long in coming. The national government's going to have its own reckoning, but alas it won't be during the second half of the Obama interregnum. We'll have to wait for a resurgence of pro-American values in our national political leadership. It will come. The hardships will be in enduring the interim.

In any case, I was inclined to riff further on this by Alan Caruba and his essay, "Memories of Thanksgiving's Past":

I have always been an optimistic person, but that optimism has been drained by four years of Obama’s regime and the prospect of four more. It is compounded by a Congress that has steadily marched toward turning America into a European socialist economy now on the brink of financial collapse and, worse, by a nation that has abandoned many of the values and shared beliefs that made it great; a beacon of freedom for those who chose to come here, a superpower following World War II, a compassionate and largely tolerant nation.

Continue reading.

I'll have more throughout the day.

Too Few Oppressors, Too Many Victims

That's the title from a Victor Davis Hanson essay at PJ Media the other day.

But check out Maggie's Farm as well, with the results from some comment trolling from Hanson's piece, "Sorry to tell you this..."

Andrea Alarcon, President of Los Angeles Board of Public Works, Under Investigation for Child Endangerment

Democrat family values, at the Los Angeles Times, "Top L.A. official's daughter, 11, found unattended at City Hall":

The president of the Los Angeles Board of Public Works is under investigation by Los Angeles police after her 11-year-old daughter was found unattended at City Hall last week, sources familiar with the case said Wednesday.

No charges have been filed against Andrea Alarcon, 33, and she was not arrested.

Sandi Gibbons, spokeswoman for Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, confirmed an investigation regarding Alarcon had been referred to her office but said prosecutors requested more evidence before determining whether to file any charges.

"If police present us new evidence, we of course will review it and make a determination as to how to proceed. However, we cannot comment on the case because we have nothing pending at this time," Gibbons said.

Alarcon, an appointee of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, declined to discuss the investigation, saying she is celebrating the holiday with her family.

"My daughter and I have an extremely close relationship and as a single mother, she often accompanies me to special events for work," Alarcon said. "Out of respect for my daughter's privacy and because she is a minor, I really have nothing further to say about this matter."

Few details about the case were released. Sources told The Times that officers found Andrea Alarcon's daughter at City Hall at around 11:45 p.m. Friday and took her to the Los Angeles Police Department's Central Division station. Police tried to locate Alarcon, who turned up at around 2 a.m., said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case was ongoing.

Police opened a child endangerment investigation and contacted the county's Department of Children and Family Services, the sources said.

The incident took place the same night that City Hall's rotunda and Spring Street entrance were used for a party thrown by Project Restore, a group devoted to restoring city-owned landmarks...

Still more at the link.

Ms. Alarcon was also arrested on suspicion of DUI last December, and that was with a child in the car.

Can I Still Keep Kicking You in the Balls Without You Retaliating?

This is LOL material, via Bruce Kesler at Maggie's Farm.

The Great Destroyer: Barack Obama's War on the Republic

I'm reading David Limbaugh's book, available at Amazon.

I've read a lot of Obama books, but Limbaugh's has a precision and comprehensiveness to it that's scholarly. Highly recommended.