Which is called “football” in the rest of the world because, well, the rest of the world doesn’t have the grit to play real football – but, at any rate, our boys tied it up…I guess because foreigners never heard of “sudden death overtime”:

A howler by goalkeeper Robert Green gifted the United States an equaliser as England struggled to a disappointing 1-1 draw in their opening Group C game at the Royal Bafokeng Stadium on Saturday…

The news:

Saudi Arabia has conducted tests to stand down its air defences to enable Israeli jets to make a bombing raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities, The Times can reveal.

In the week that the UN Security Council imposed a new round of sanctions on Tehran, defence sources in the Gulf say that Riyadh has agreed to allow Israel to use a narrow corridor of its airspace in the north of the country to shorten the distance for a bombing run on Iran.

To ensure the Israeli bombers pass unmolested, Riyadh has carried out tests to make certain its own jets are not scrambled and missile defence systems not activated. Once the Israelis are through, the kingdom’s air defences will return to full alert…

This is impossible to confirm, but it makes sense – no nation in the middle east wants a nuclear-armed Iran.

To be sure, if Israel were to attack Iran’s nuclear sites (or if we were to do so) the whole Moslem would would be free with condemnations…but also with quiet sighs of relief. Its good to keep in mind that there is a great deal of falsity in the middle eastern stew. Positions have been taken up which are stupid and/or laughably false – but once taken up it is felt they can’t be set down. Officially, the whole Moslem world has taken up hatred of Israel as a matter of policy – but in reality, many Moslem nations have the same interests as Israel…in other words, if “hate Israel” wasn’t something now carved in to Moslem stone, Israel and Saudi Arabia would long since have had a military alliance for mutual defense.

But such is not to be – reality is not allowed to be noted in public. And so we might well see Saudi Arabia temporarily turning off its air defense system to allow Israeli jets to fly alone on a mission vital to Saudi Arabia’s national security and which, indeed, the Saudi air force (equipped much as the Israeli air force is) could render great service in the mutually desired goal of a non-nuclear Iran.

Strange world. Back a few years ago, President Bush tried telling some truth about the whole mess over there – most notably when he broke with Arafat – but it wasn’t pressed forward given the number of other issues which came up. Obama has fallen all the way back to 1979 and is counting on the absurdity of a “peace process” to carry the day. Some day, hopefully, we will get a President who will just tell the whole truth and refuse to allow the other players to maintain their lies…a bit of truth would unravel the middle eastern knot pretty quickly, if someone would just have the courage to really try it.

One former Moslem thinks so – as a measure of self defense:

Born Muslim in Somalia, Ayaan Hirsi Ali grew up in Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya, fleeing to the Netherlands at the age of 22 to escape an arranged marriage. Ten years later, she was elected to the Dutch parliament. A prominent feminist and critic of Islam, she received numerous death threats when she renounced her faith following the 9/11 terrorist attacks…

…Q: One of your more startling arguments in Nomad is that Christian churches should proselytize in immigrant communities to try to convert Muslims.

A: Look at the amount of money Saudi Arabia spends on coming into Muslim communities in America and Europe, building schools and also taking leaders and training them in Mecca and Medina, then replanting them. It’s surprising that no other group of people is targeting the same communities. If you look at Western civilization, at the institutions [and movements] that were engaged in changing people’s hearts and minds—the Christian Church, humanists, feminists—they are doing next to nothing in these Muslim communities. When I was in Holland [recently], I heard about a Christian mission that had been proselytizing in Morocco. The government kicked them out and sent them back to Holland. I thought, “You don’t have to stop proselytizing—just go to the Muslim community in Amsterdam west and carry on there.” But of course there, they’re not only going to face the radical Muslims as opponents, they’re also going to face the multicultural opponents, saying they’re not supposed to be telling people to leave their religion.

Q: So how would they do it?

A: Next to every mosque, build a Christian centre, an enlightenment centre, a feminist centre. There are tons of websites, financed with Saudi money, promoting Wahabism. We need to set up our own websites—Christian, feminist, humanist—trying to target the same people, saying, we have an alternative moral framework to Islam. We have better ideas.

Which is all a very good idea, but most liberals don’t believe in their own ideals, and neither do most Christians. Not to the point of being willing to present those ideas without apology to non-believers. What startles about some of the Christians who do preach in public is not what they say so much as that they are saying it in public. Proclaiming that Christ is Lord is all fine and dandy behind closed doors on a Sunday…but try that in a park almost all Christians within hearing will wince and turn away rather than offer an “amen”.

You have to believe in something in order to offer it so another. And you have to at least try to live your faith in order to be in any way credible as a witness. Feminists who slander someone like Sarah Palin; liberals who are fabulously wealthy; Christians who won’t lend a hand – these are not the sort of people a doubter will listen to. But an Islamist who offers a quick and easy explanation for all the ills of the world and who appears to live a devout life (easy in Islam as there isn’t much externally to being a Moslem, other than the requirement of prayer) can sway someone who is miserable (even if through personal failure) and wants a purpose in life.

I’m afraid that we are first going to have to re-convert ourselves. Then we’re going to have to convert our surrounding culture. Only then will we have a good alternative to offer the Islamist rank-and-file.

From Rasmussen:

Most voters continue to believe it would be better for the country if the majority of Congress is thrown out this November, but they also remain unconvinced that a Republican takeover will make a noticeable difference.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 19% of voters think it would be better for the country if most incumbents in Congress were reelected this November. Sixty-five percent (65%) disagree and say it would be better if most were defeated. Sixteen percent (16%) aren’t sure.

There is a political tsunami out there for the asking – and we’ll have to see if the GOP can craft a message which resonates. If the GOP can do this, then the anti-incumbent fervor – the utter contempt Americans increasingly hold for Congress – will result in a blowout win for the Republicans.

If, on the other hand, Republicans hope to just cruise to victory on anti-government animus, then they’ll just have some modest wins. What the GOP does between now and November will make the difference between a 35 seat GOP House win and a 70 seat win. We’ll have to see if Steele and the boys (and all our very great girls recently shot to stardom) can do it.

Guess they got tired of draining the swamp:

The Office of Congressional Ethics, a powerful symbol of Democrats’ promise to “drain the swamp” in Washington, is in danger of having its power stripped after the midterm elections.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus have led the charge, airing complaints about the aggressive, independent panel in a private session with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last month, and they’ve drafted a resolution that, if approved, would severely curtail the panel’s power…

There are a few Republicans who are making noises against the Office – and I’d like to see them booted out of office, tarred and feathered for sheer stupidity. Democrats created this thing, it is causing them no end of headaches and all Republicans should just stand silent and allow the Democrats to screw themselves over by attacking their own creation.

The Democrat party is hopelessly mired in corruption – this is because, as Matt and I pointed out in Caucus of Corruption, Democrats are never punished for corruption. They created this new Office as window dressing for their alleged campaign against the “culture of corruption” in DC, never thinking that anything would come of it. Trouble is, corruption is so endemic among Democrat ranks that the New Media was bound to find some, and thus force action. Now that they realize the Office is causing trouble, they want it to go away.

Of course, in addition to being corrupt, they are also cowards – so they won’t move on it until after the mid-terms.

Ed Note: Video is really fixed.

You may copy and distribute this video freely if you are not voting for Harry Reid. Not for syndication! Please view in HD and/or full screen view as it makes reading the text easier.

Getting it wrong before he even gets to the Presidential starting gate:

Beyond the debt and the deficit, in Daniels’s telling, all other issues fade to comparative insignificance. He’s an agnostic on the science of global warming but says his views don’t matter. “I don’t know if the CO2 zealots are right,” he said. “But I don’t care, because we can’t afford to do what they want to do. Unless you want to go broke, in which case the world isn’t going to be any greener. Poor nations are never green.”

And then, he says, the next president, whoever he is, “would have to call a truce on the so-called social issues. We’re going to just have to agree to get along for a little while,” until the economic issues are resolved…

To call a truce in the matter of social issues is to surrender them to the left – because they will never, ever call a truce. This is one of thing which burns me up about some Republicans – the way they don’t get it about the left: they are in it to win the whole ball of wax.

The left wants America to be a carbon-copy of Canada, or France. Everything controlled by government, moral depravity given public support, Christianity booted out of the public square (they wouldn’t even mention Christianity in the proposed European constitution – as if anyone can make any sense of Europe without a grasp of Christianity) and the people disarmed, welfare addicted and prevented from actually changing the way things are done in government. It is what they want and they will never call a truce and will never compromise – anything they get in negotiations is just one more step on the path to total victory.

Don’t get me wrong, the economic and fiscal crisis in the United States commands priority but nothing exists in isolation. You won’t be able to sustain a free market economy if you have a population on welfare. People who are waiting for their government checks are not likely to be much moved by appeals to individual responsibility. Daniels might win the battle for a tax cut – but he’ll lose the war unless the people have the internal grit necessary to take advantage of a low tax economic climate.

There is a triad of things we must do to rescue our nation:

1. Balance the budget, lower the tax burden.

2. De-fund the left – taking away the massive government subsidies to things like Planned Parenthood who undermine the very concept of freedom which makes a low-tax, low-regulation environment worth while.

3. Vigorously investigate all forms of political corruption in the United States.

None of these things can be done in isolation – success in any one of them requires success in the other two. We can’t balance the budget without de-funding the left; we can’t de-fund the left unless we expose the corruption whereby the left gains its government subsidies; we can’t investigate corruption unless we make it part of a general reform of government as opposed to something which could be cast as a political witch-hunt. All are necessary, all are connected and failure in any one of the three will mean that our nation’s story is told.

And Mitch Daniels wants to call a truce! That, in and of itself, shows that he’s not ready to be the sort of President we need. Competent he would be; he would get some good things done – but unless he fully engages in the entire battle to restore America, everything he does will be ultimately pointless.

Goodness, this is getting weird:

House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) called for South Carolina to investigate the circumstances that led to Alvin Greene winning the Democratic Senate primary in his state earlier this week.

“There were some real shenanigans going on in the South Carolina primary,” Clyburn said during an appearance on the liberal Bill Press radio show. “I don’t know if he was a Republican plant; he was someone’s plant.”…

This is the guy the Democrats elevated to the Majority Whip post – one of the highest positions in the House and one of the most influential in the nation. A place normally to be held by a sensible, hard nosed realist is filled by a man who is clearly unbalanced mentally. A Republican plant? How about you idiots in the Democratic party just plain and simple blew it?

Can’t get these cretins out of office fast enough…

Noted by Mitt Romney:

Has it come to this again? The president is meeting with his oil spill experts, he crudely tells us, so that he knows “whose ass to kick.” We have become accustomed to his management style — target a scapegoat, assign blame and go on the attack. To win health care legislation, he vilified insurance executives; to escape bankruptcy law for General Motors, he demonized senior lenders; to take the focus from the excesses of government, he castigated business meetings in Las Vegas; and to deflect responsibility for the deepening and lengthening downturn, he blames Wall Street and George W. Bush. But what may make good politics does not make good leadership. And when a crisis is upon us, America wants a leader, not a politician…

Unfortunately, all we’ve got is a politician – who only seemed to get galvanized to action when the polling started to go against him. Think about it – still no Presidential action on the floods in Tennessee. Why? No major MSM coverage (just as there wasn’t at the start of the oil leak) and thus no growing sense of crisis – and no effect on the President’s polling numbers.

Once the scope of the Gulf disaster could no longer be ignored, things started to look increasingly rocky for Obama and his Democrats – especially with the mid-terms looming. So, “action” started to be taken – mostly in laying blame, finger pointing and attempting to use the crisis to advance the leftist agenda. Lots of action, but still no leadership – and after all this time, as we approach the two month point, its clear we’re never going to get any. This problem will be solved by the ad hoc actions of people like Governor Jindal, not by Obama…Jindal is a leader in politics, Obama is just a politician.

The spill is not Obama’s fault. BP’s gross failure to recognize how bad it was is not Obama’s fault. What is Obama’s fault is his complete inability to take the clear, hard decisions necessary to repair the damage as swiftly as possible. This is all we’ve seen from Obama – its all we’re ever going to get from him. We’ve got an Occupant in Chief in the White House, not a President.

From Rasmussen:

Sharron Angle, following her come-from-behind Republican Primary win Tuesday, has bounced to an 11-point lead over Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in Nevada’s closely-watched U.S. Senate race.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Nevada, taken Wednesday night, shows Angle earning 50% support while Reid picks up 39% of the vote.

The Reid smear machine is gearing up – he knows he can’t win on his record and his only hope is to make Angle do odious that Nevadan’s hold their nose and vote for him. We can’t let him do that – but to stop him, its going to take some money. Reid has millions from the special interests who have bought him – Angle needs $25 from you.

Give it to her – and lets send Harry Reid back to Searchlight.