Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Soccer Dad

Soccer Dad

Hezbollah's next milestone?

Posted: 28 Apr 2010 02:55 PM PDT

Close to a year and a half ago, Meryl observed a news report that despite Security Council resolution 1701, Hezbollah was three times as strong as it had been during its war against Israel in 2006 leading her to snark: I'm so happy that UN is concentrating on the important things, like a day of mourning for the Palestinians to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the UN partition of the British Mandate. It's great that Nobel Peace Prize winners are calling for the expulsion of Israel from the UN, but not a nation that has taken an armed terrorist group,...

Big Brother Breaks Burger-Bauble Bond

Posted: 28 Apr 2010 01:19 PM PDT

Only in California:A California county is stopping restaurants from using toys to lure children to high-calorie, salt-laden food such as popular "Happy Meals" hawked by fast-food giant McDonald's. Elected officials in the county of Santa Clara, in the heart of technology center Silicon Valley south of San Francisco, voted Tuesday to enact the ban to fight an "obesity epidemic" sweeping California and the United States. "This ordinance prevents restaurants from preying on children's love of toys to peddle high-calorie, high-fat, high-sodium kids meals," said Ken Yeager, the county supervisor behind the ban. "This ordinance breaks the link between unhealthy food...

The "science" of the nfl draft

Posted: 28 Apr 2010 05:30 AM PDT

I'm excited because many of the experts feel that the Ravens had an excellent draft last week. However, as Gregg Easterbrook writes: The idea that drafting is "scientific" is best seen in this year's frenzied debates regarding which quarterback belonged where. On "SportsCenter" shortly before the first round began, Mel Kiper, insisting Clausen belonged in the high first round, grew so agitated that I worried his hair gel would ignite. Clausen went in the middle of the second round. Is that right or wrong? No one knows. Mayock said Tebow belonged in the fourth round; Peter King of Sports Illustrated...

Hamas, hate and humanitarianism

Posted: 28 Apr 2010 03:55 AM PDT

Robert Mackey writes about an ad that Hamas released implicitly threatening to kill Gilad Schalit. The video, which was posted on the Web site of the Hamas Qassam Brigades and on YouTube, uses the real voice of the captured solider -- from a previously released "proof of life" video -- over a computer-generated animation that shows his father wandering forlorn past billboards showing statements from Israeli leaders promising to free his son. At the end of the video, the elder Mr. Shalit is shown witnessing the return of his son's coffin -- before waking with a scream to realize that...
Posted by Soccer Dad at 10:05 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Soccer Dad

Soccer Dad

Why we need bloggers ...

Posted: 27 Apr 2010 04:08 AM PDT

Take a paragraph from a recent New York Times news story: The talks with the two leaders had been expected to begin last month but were delayed after Israel announced plans to build 1,600 housing units in East Jerusalem, where the Palestinians hope to build their capital. The Palestinians and President Obama were furious at the announcement, made during a visit to Israel by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., and the Americans made a number of demands of Israel aimed at restoring the negotiations Pretty straightforward? Israel antagonized the United States and the Palestinians by planning to build new...

And then the general walked into a bar ...

Posted: 27 Apr 2010 04:07 AM PDT

A lot has been written the joke Gen. James Jones, the administration's national security advisor said at the dinner given by the Washington Institute for Middle East Policy last week. It's actually a very funny joke, but what bugged people, was the "ethnicizing" of the principles of the joke and making two of the parties "Jewish merchants." (I didn't know that Muslims aren't supposed to wear ties!) Still my bigger problem isn't that Gen Jones told the joke however clumsily he told it; it's his policies that bother me. Just One Minute plumbs the contents of the speech and points...

Why peace processes don't work

Posted: 27 Apr 2010 03:51 AM PDT

Recently, Meryl, Daled Amos and I have both written about the perverse incentives and results of the peace procdess. Now Bret Stephens writes about how Peace Processes never work: But he misses a deeper point. Even as peace processes almost invariably fail between the warring parties, they also almost invariably succeed as political theater for the peace processors themselves. Kim Dae Jung, Arafat and Shimon Peres all burnished their prestige with Nobel Peace Prizes. President Obama won one pre-emptively. And Mr. Clinton still basks in an ill-founded reputation as a peacemaker. Ironically, the only real peace he ever achieved, in...
Posted by Soccer Dad at 10:03 PM 0 comments

Monday, April 26, 2010

Soccer Dad

Soccer Dad

Syria-sly bad behavior

Posted: 26 Apr 2010 04:11 AM PDT

The Washington Post gets it right: BASHAR AL-ASSAD is proving to be an embarrassment for the Obama administration. In pursuit of President Obama's policy of "engagement" with U.S. adversaries, the State Department has dispatched several senior envoys to Damascus for talks with the Syrian dictator. It has also nominated a new ambassador and repeatedly expressed the hope for a step-by-step improvement in relations. So far Mr. Assad has responded by holding a summit with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, at which he publicly ridiculed the U.S diplomatic initiative. In secret, he has stepped up an illegal...

Were you kayaking at great falls yesterday?

Posted: 26 Apr 2010 04:11 AM PDT

We went to Great Falls yesterday. In the middle of the Falls there's a formation called "five fingers," it's in the bottom center of the picture below. At some point I noticed a couple of kayaks at the top of the five fingers. I figured that they couldn't go down the 4 falls on the left; they looked too steep. But soon the orange kayaker proved me wrong. After he completed the plunge, he was momentarily submerged but then righted himself. I believe - but am not certain - that he touched his head or made a similar motion as...
Posted by Soccer Dad at 10:34 PM 0 comments

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Soccer Dad

Soccer Dad

The Elders put in an appearance at IRIB Radio

Posted: 25 Apr 2010 07:30 PM PDT

IRIB, in case you didn't know, stands for "Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting." I have been noting Holocaust-denial and general conspiracist looniness in the English offerings of the Iranian Press and in the utterances of Iran's major officials recorded therein for some time, but I don't see explicit references to the Protocols that often. Some things, however, are inevitable: [...] But the question here is how these elements have succeeded in brainwashing the people of the world to portray themselves as oppressed, in addition to such other disputed claims as being intelligent and hardworking geniuses. The answer is obvious....

Abbas, The Useful Peace Partner (With Apologies To Thomas The Tank Engine)

Posted: 25 Apr 2010 11:13 AM PDT

Do you know what happens when you blog while your 2 year old listens to Barney and Thomas The Tank Engine--All. Morning. Long? Strange associations form in your mind--like between Thomas The Tank Engine and Mahmoud Abbas. I read Jennifer Rubin, and when she wrote The Obami are rewarding intransigence and bribing Abbas not to embarrass George Mitchell and crew by wrecking the proximity talks. I began to think...  He's a Really Peace PartnerHe's a really useful peace partner, you knowAsk the White House--they'll tell you soHe threatens to boycott talksThat Obama values soHe's the really useful partner they adoreHe's...

Obama vs. Israel? Let The Spin Begin!

Posted: 25 Apr 2010 09:41 AM PDT

The Obama administration has started a major PR pushback, intended to reassure the Jewish community--and Congress--that there is nothing to all those stories about friction, and worse, between Obama and Netanyahu.In W.H. launches Israel P.R. offensive, Laura Rozen recounts what has gone into the PR blitz so far--o Obama and Secretary of State Clinton congratulated Israel on Israel's Independence Day and conveyed best wishes to Netanyahu.o White House political adviser David Axelrod spoke twice: at an Independence Day event in Washington hosted by Israeli Ambassador Oren in Washington and at the National Jewish Democratic Council.o Clinton gave a friendly speech to a revived pro-Israel...

Abbas Lectures Obama On His 'Duty' To Palestinian Arabs

Posted: 25 Apr 2010 09:35 AM PDT

It seems that Abbas only heard half of what UN Ambassador Susan Rice said at the Arab American Institute's Kahlil Gibran Awards ceremony last week:First, let there be no doubt: President Obama and all of us in his Administration are determined to reach a comprehensive peace in the Middle East--central to which is a two-state solution. President Obama has defined this goal as a vital U.S. interest. Now, none of us need to be reminded that this is very tough work. But we believe that through good-faith negotiations, the parties can mutually agree to an outcome that ends the conflict and reconciles...

The peace process is about to continue ... no it isn't ... arrgh!

Posted: 25 Apr 2010 05:00 AM PDT

What's the current state of Middle East negotiations? According to the New York Times ... they're back on track ... maybe The American envoy to the Middle East, George J. Mitchell, planned to meet on Friday with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, a sign that indirect Israeli-Palestinian peace talks may be getting back on track, officials from all three parties said. In advance of encounters with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and, separately, with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, Mr. Mitchell met on Friday with the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, Reuters reported, but no details of the discussions were made public....

Going mad about obamacare

Posted: 25 Apr 2010 04:28 AM PDT

Marc Ambinder (h/t Legal Insurrection) asks if conservative have gone mad. I think it's because there's so much misinformation out there -- most of it spread by the conservative echo-chamber. With the advent of Fox News and the power of that echo-chamber, complaints about liberal media bias are quite irrelevant -- the reaction to it being like lupus's reaction to the body, as Jon Stewart correctly noted. Ambinder working from the same premise as all those who dismiss Sarah Palin's charge that the health care reform advocated by the President would result in "death panels." But then there was David...

The Further Adventures of George Galloway

Posted: 24 Apr 2010 10:30 PM PDT

The folks at Harry's Place remind us that Galloway appears as a "patron" of the Palestine Telegraph site. British ex-MP Jenny Tonge had her patron listing removed, evidently, after the site featured a David Duke video. Galloway's still there. Meanwhile, anti-voting Muslims have mounted another attack on Galloway's Respect Party:THE RESPECT party's Bethnal Green headquarters have been defaced with stickers telling people not to vote. Labels have been stuck over photos of the faces of Respect's parliamentary candidates George Galloway and Abjol Miah in the window of the office in Club Row. Mr Galloway believes the offices have been targeted...
Posted by Soccer Dad at 10:10 PM 0 comments
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