Blogs For Victory

Because the basic contention of the Islamists is that the Jews have to go:

Israel should not have to remove any settlements in a peace agreement with the Palestinians, Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon has told The Jerusalem Post, adding that just as Arabs live in Israel, so, too, should Jews be able to live in a future Palestinian entity.

“If we are talking about coexistence and peace, why the [Palestinian] insistence that the territory they receive be ethnically cleansed of Jews?” Ya’alon asked during a wide-ranging interview that will appear in the Post’s Yom Ha’atzmaut supplement on Monday.

“Why do those areas have to be Judenrein?” he asked. “Don’t Arabs live here, in the Negev and the Galilee? Why isn’t that part of our public discussion? Why doesn’t that scream to the heavens?”

Ya’alon said that if Israel and the Palestinians were truly headed down the path of peace and coexistence, “Jews living in Judea and Samaria under Israeli sovereignty and citizenship” should be possible.

Now, if I were a Jew, I wouldn’t want to live under Moslem rule. Heck, as a Christian I don’t want to – Islamists have this habit of brutality towards Christians as well as a penchant for desecrating Christian holy places. You know, treating us in a manner we’d never dream of treating them – and yet, oddly, they whine endlessly about perceived slights to Islam at the hands of Christians. Strange, huh?

Anyways…

Until the Moslems say to the Jews, “we want you to stay”, there can be no real peace. Until, that is, Islam comes to grip with the fact that non-Moslems have as much right to live and participate fully in society as Moslems, then there can be no real peace. Not between Islam and Israel – not between Islam and anything.

Terribly sorry for my Moslem brothers and sisters, but just because you say your founder talked to God doesn’t mean we have to agree. We Christians, to put it bluntly, consider Mohammed to just be this guy who picked up a bit of the Arian heresy, adapted it to his personal rule and proclivities, and had at it. We respect those aspects of Islam which are morally excellent (calls to regular prayer, strong family life, almsgiving, etc), but trying to tell us, say, that our mere existence is a pollution in your holy city is not conducive to peace and cooperation.

Doesn’t help, either, when Christians are murdered for alleged “insults” to Islam, nor does it help that Moslems who convert to Christianity are then threatened with death. There are lots of things, on all sides, which can promote peace but most of what must be done needs to be done by Moslems – who have been routinely in the wrong.

This is why calls for a renewed peace process in the Israeli/Moslem conflict fall on deaf ears with me – what is the point? Until they change their ways, the best which can be hoped for is an armed truce. And given the nature of things, Israel must be more heavily armed and always able to strike much harder blows than the Moslem world can.

Its a hard thing, but there’s not much we can do about it. The ball is in Islam’s court – lets see what they do with it, then we can move from there.

You can write about whatever you want, as long as there’s no religion in it:

Alliance Defense Fund attorneys filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against the Pulaski County Special School District on behalf of a student and her mother, who were both prohibited from participating in Sherwood Elementary School’s literature distribution program because their fliers were “church-related.”

School officials are standing by the decision even after they received an ADF letter stating that the district’s policy is unconstitutional.

The ADF filed the lawsuit, A.W. v. Pulaski County Special School District, with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, Western Division.

“Christian students shouldn’t be discriminated against for their beliefs,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel David Cortman. “When fliers for many community programs or events are permitted in the district’s policy except for activities that are ‘church-related,’ that’s a textbook violation of free speech protected by the First Amendment. As the U.S. Supreme Court has stated, ‘Students do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate.’”

Religion is not unconstitutional – but that is essentially how some view it. Any expression of any sort of religious belief in the public square is held by some to be prohibited by the Constitution.

Of course, the reality is that the Constitution merely prohibits government from enforcing a creed as well as prohibiting government from banning a creed. If you aren’t coerced by government to worship and the government doesn’t coerce you in to not worshiping, then the entirety of the US Constitution on this matter is observed. There is nothing else for government to do or prevent.

And so, if its pass-out-fliers time at school and people are allowed to pass out literature on whatever strikes their fancy, then there is nothing wrong with passing out religious literature.

Fundamentally, as our people in 1787 were for the most part deeply religious, there can be nothing in our government which acts against the public expression of religious belief. They simply would not have banned themselves from doing things they (a) did all the time and (b) considered to be a good thing for society, as a whole. If you want to ban such things a prayer in school – even organized prayer – then your true recourse is to Constitutional amendment.

Of course, the people fighting religion don’t do that – because they know they’d lose, and lose rather badly. So, they use courts and bureaucrats to do an end-run around both Constitution and people. A large part of our fight is this battle to restore religious liberty in the United States – and it will also be the hardest and most difficult part.

California unemployment rises to 12.6%.

Can you feel the hope? Taste the change?

One thing rather curious – in the March report on jobs, the State which had the largest gain was Maryland which, of course, has DC in it. The State which lost the most jobs? Easy – the State where a lot of our factories used to be: Michigan.

Who is benefiting from Obamunism? Bureaucrats.

UPDATE: 9 more banks fail.

UPDATE II: Some cities in economic free fall.

No surprise, at all:

The billionaire hedge fund manager at the center of an alleged fraud hatched at Goldman Sachs, a leading investment bank…gave $30,400 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in June, qualifying him as a major Democratic donor.

He also gave $2,300 to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) reelection campaign in February of last year and $4,800 to Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) last April, according to records filed at the Federal Election Commission.

The report notes that he’s given to Republicans – but that is what hedge fund managers do: they hedge their bets both in economics and politics. But he’s a major Democrat donor – and yet another bit of proof that Democrats are the party of Big Business.

We’ve got the video to the event in Las Vegas up at Noonan for Nevada. Here is my impression of the event and what it means:

The TEA Party Express endorsement of Sharron Angle for United States Senator may or may not shake up the Republican Senate primary, but it is abundantly clear that the TEA Party has shaken up American politics.

On April 15th I went down to Sunset Park in Henderson in order to observe the Tax Day TEA Party rally. When I arrived, I was disappointed – one guy parading with a “Don’t Tread on Me” banner, and not much else. But as I was heading out the door, as it were, a couple flag-bedecked cars arrived with people clearly there for a TEA Party. I followed them.

Turns out, I had just gone at the wrong end of park – and hadn’t realized just how big Sunset Park is.

As I followed along behind the activists, I noted more and more converging in the same direction. I also noted the “crash the tea party” infiltrators. About four or six fit, young men shouting obscenities at little, old ladies and mothers with children. Keep it classy, liberals – but it also shows the weakness of the left. Bereft of ideas or, even, a sense of decency, all they’ve got is insults. Great credit to all the people subjected to the insults – no one reacted.

At the event, itself, was a large crowd. Keeping in mind that TEA Party activists hold down jobs, this was a big turn out for a Thursday afternoon. When I arrived, at least 250 people, growing swiftly to about 500 and then steadily increasing from there.

Read the rest at Nevada News and Views.

UPDATE: Jewish TEA Parties?

Terrible, but not at all surprising:

When the New York Times published a series of articles on top-secret counterterrorism efforts at the National Security Agency in 2006 and 2007, supporters of the Bush administration reacted with outrage. Oddly, though, the same people who expressed outrage over the exposure of Valerie Plame as a CIA analyst never got terribly exercised over these breaches of national security (and to be fair, the same holds true in reverse). The Bush administration complained loudly about the Times’ decision to expose these programs but never made a public show of a probe to discover the source of the leaks.

Ironically, that effort apparently succeeded in uncovering at least one leaker — and the Obama administration gets the credit for it:

A former senior executive with the National Security Agency has been indicted on 10 felony charges related to the leaking of classified information to a national newspaper in 2006 and 2007, the Justice Department announced Thursday morning.

Thomas A. Drake, 52, headed an office in the NSA’s Signals Intelligence Directorate at Fort Meade between 2001 and 2005, and continued to work with the agency as a high-ranking contractor through 2008, U.S. officials said. The indictment alleges that Drake allegedly exchanged hundreds of e-mails with an unidentified reporter for a national newspaper and served as a source for its articles about Bush administration intelligence policies between February 2006 and November 2007, U.S. officials said.

Everyone on our side suspected this to be the case – that someone in the intelligence community was deliberately leaking info to the MSM. Only question: was this man a traitor for money, or for ideology? Meaning, was he getting paid for his stories, or was he doing it because he disliked Bush Administration policies.

If it was for money, 10 years or so in jail is sufficient – if it did it for ideology, then it must be life in prison. Why? Because employees of the government are not permitted to dissent from policy set by elected officials. They can put up with it, or they can quit – and that is all. Selective leaking of documents by a junior bureaucrat is not just a violation of trust, but also a threat to American security because the junior bureaucrat simply cannot know all the info which went in to making the decision he disagrees with.

And, yes, if any conservative in the ranks violates such a public trust to leak Obama Administration policy secrets then I’ll want him roasted on a spit, to (in a manner of speaking, of course).

As an aside, I take issue with Morrisey’s comparison of this to the Plame case – Plame wasn’t covert and her name wasn’t leaked. But, be that as it may, the assertion still stands: break trust, and pay a high price.

Record number of foreclosures in the first quarter, 2010.

But everything is all better, now. Obama and the Banksters say so.

Hot Air has the details of Crist’s veto of a Florida education bill which would have tied teacher raises to student test scores – and the very negative reaction not just of former governor Jeb Bush, but also Crist’s political mentor, former Senator Connie Mack, who has now resigned as chairman of Crist’s campaign.

Ok, so is this just a bit of boneheadedness on the part of Crist, or a preparation for switching to Independent? Sort of getting himself kicked out of the party as bogus-justification for ditching the GOP primary?

Time will tell.

We’ll update from time to time during the day as events transpire. I hope to get some video of local events which I’ll link to over at Noonan for Nevada. If you come across anything you think note- or link-worthy, let us know.

Meanwhile, what does it all mean to you? The TEA Party? The revolutionary ferment in the nation? The increasing unpopularity of Obama and his Democrats? Are you attending a rally today? Are you a kook leftist assigned to infiltrate a rally (OO, we’re looking at you)?

This is an open thread, but try to keep it to the various aspects of today’s TEA Party events.

UPDATE: Sorry about light updates today – but here we go.

I got to the TEA Party rally in Henderson, NV. At least 500, maybe as many as 1,000 showed up. Nice crowd, strongly libertarian and in another blow to the slander about TEA partiers being racist, there were black people there.

We did have infiltrators, after a fashion. They didn’t have the guts to get in to the thick of it – preferring to stay about 100 yards away, shouting obscenities at little girls and housewives as they walked towards the demonstration. Classy – and just oh, so liberal.

We’ve got some bad video up at Noonan for Nevada – with much, much better video to come.

UPDATE II: Pajamas Media has a run down on several “crashers”. Mostly, they are pathetic.

UPDATE III: A New York Times (yes, that New York Times) poll shows that TEA Partiers are, well, not at all what liberal bigots think they are.

Michael Barone writes up what the GOP should be thinking of in the upcoming debate over banking reform:

The big media tends to portray Republicans as opposed to all financial regulation. But every intelligent person knows that some form of financial regulation is necessary. And the 2008 financial collapse shows we need smarter regulation that will discourage, not encourage, government bailouts of Wall Street.

Republicans have good policy and political reasons to argue not for weaker regulation but for tougher regulation of Wall Street firms. They should oppose resolution authority that helps the big firms and, while they’re at it, seek to increase the capital requirements on such firms that are left vague in the Dodd bill. Democrats have taken the side of Wall Street. Republicans should stand up for Main Street — and taxpayers — instead.

It is a myth – but a durable one – that the GOP is the party of big business and/or bankers. It used to be so, but mostly since Goldwater and definitely since Reagan, big business types really haven’t found a home in the GOP – but they have found a home in the Democrat party.

There are two reasons for this: one, the leaders of big business tend to be educated at the same elite universities as the leaders of liberalism; they are steeped in the same worldview as the left. Two, the leaders of big business prefer to cut deals with big government rather than, say, make the best product or do a good overall job.

But the debate over banking reform will bring out the class war rhetoric from the Democrats – we GOPers will be cast as defenders of big business by Democrats who are raking in donations from same. The proposed reforms of the Democrats will thus be long on anti-business rhetoric, short on anything which might actually make big business more responsive to the needs of the American people.

And there in lies our big chance to break out of the liberal parameters of the debate. We can craft a reform message which attacks the actual problems – which actually will force big business to work for the benefit of America, rather than for the benefit of the corporate bosses and their kept politicians in the Democrat party.

Lots of things can be done, but I think the key element of a conservative reform of banking – or a conservative reform of any big business activity – is to enforce the notion that if you’re going to make piles of money, you’d better do so by creating something useful. Banking is vital in a modern, free market economy – it is the necessary mechanism for distributing capital around the economy. Our job is to ensure that this capital is directed towards wealth-creation, rather than merely piling up cash and awarding big bonuses to a select few.

It is an absurdity, for instance, that we would allow an investment firm to cook up screwball things like credit default swaps. Its nice for bankers because they can make money if an investment works, or goes south – but it doesn’t actually do anything to create wealth…and thus it doesn’t do anything to create jobs. Conservative reform would be to put an end to such scams (which have played such a huge role in our current economic crisis) and encourage wiser use of money.

This sort of reform would allow us to war on the bankers who have made such a hash of things while preventing us from falling in to a Statist model which would merely substitute government for corporate idiots in the mismanagement of capital. It would also, of course, put us on the side of the people – not “the people” in Democrat terms, which is just a mythical prop in a leftist morality play, but the real people – the people who do the work of this nation and who will astound the world if just given the chance to create wealth unfettered.