The Bookworm Beat — empty house edition
We have a house guest arriving in a couple of days, which necessitated my cleaning out the guest room, which has inexorably morphed into a storage room. I have thrown away a great deal of unnecessary stuff that we hung onto for no good reason, and I’ve neatly stored other stuff that we treated too shabbily considering its sentimental worth. My house looks surprisingly empty. I like the look.
My browser, however, is filled with tabs, all marking things I thought are interesting. I don’t have time to tell you about all of them now, but I can share some of them:
Overseas, Rand Paul is just Obama redux
When it comes to domestic policies, I think many of us appreciate Rand Paul’s fidelity to the notion of small government. However, once one starts looking outside of America’s borders, Bruce Kesler compellingly argues, Rand Paul is no better than Obama (and, I’ll add, there’s always that anti-Semitic stench that wafts off his father):
The Obama-Paul paths in foreign policy are immoral in undermining self-preservation and in tossing lives into avoidable horrors. Barack Obama and Rand Paul’s foreign policies are similar in their appeal to tiredness to argue for US non-involvement with the difficulties of the world. This amounts to an existential defeatism to avoid the difficulties of being involved in the world by avoiding the moral and physical exertion of US power even when and where it could be effective. The extremism of this withdrawal endangers our security by encouraging the spread of barbaric enemies sworn to our destruction. Along the way, many millions of innocents are slaughtered or brutally enslaved.
Read the rest here.
UNRWA — the real war criminal in Gaza
Israel’s exceptionally humane efforts to defend herself (what other nation in the world calls in air strikes before they take place?) is leading to the usual chit-chat about prosecuting her for war crimes. Simply Jews, however, has a much better candidate for war crime prosecution: UNRWA, which has been actively complicit in all phases of Hamas’s genocidal plans and conduct for Israel.
Just one example of UNWRA’s close alliance with Hamas comes from a report about Hadar Goldin’s last moments (may his memory be a blessing):
The officer explained how, after the suicide bombing that killed Lt. Goldin, a second kidnapping team of Hamas terrorists grabbed parts of his body and ran back into the tunnel from which the terrorists emerged. The tunnel led back into a mosque. From the mosque, they escaped in a clearly marked UNRWA ambulance. The terrorists then made contact with high-ranking Hamas officials hiding in the Islamic University. (Emphasis added.)
For more information about UNRWA’s complicity in war crimes, check out Shurat Hadin — The Israel Law Center.
The latest song on Israel’s hit parade
Hamas wrote a song about Israel that’s typical for anything Hamas says about Israel: It has excited visions of seeing Israel utterly destroyed, with walls of flame and seas of blood. Hamas was so excited about the song, it created a Hebrew-language version. It’s not a very good song (pop pabulum), but it’s been a big hit . . . in Israel. Learn why.
Obama’s malignant narcissism reveals itself again over Iraq
Do you remember how part of Obama’s 2008 platform was that he would withdraw from Iraq? And do you remember how Obama set timetables for withdrawing from Iraq? And do you remember how Obama boasted that he had completely removed America’s troops from Iraq? Yeah, I remember all of that too.
Funnily enough, though, Obama doesn’t remember any of that. He now claims that America’s withdrawal from Iraq was unrelated to his role as Commander in Chief of the American military. Instead, he says it was the Iraqi’s own fault that the American security force withdrew.
Obama’s not lying, you know, at least not in his own mind because he’s a malignant narcissist. Rule number one for malignant narcissists is that the truth is always what they need to say at a particular moment to protect themselves from blame or to advance an agenda. Despite his blatant untruth, he’d easily pass a lie detector test. It’s true if he needs it to be true.
Obama starts another war, but still has no plan
How bad is Obama’s current plan regarding protecting people in Iraq from ISIS? It’s so bad that even the WaPo has an editorial saying he has no idea what he’s doing.
By the way, to the extent (a) I don’t want American troops facing off directly against ISIS and (b) I do want ISIS completely demolished, I suggested massive air strikes. Earl added another component to that strategy: Arm the Kurds!
Incidentally, how many of you have noticed that our president again seems to be going to war without bothering to get congressional authorization? Eli Lake points out that, practically within hours of the first strike, Obama announced a fairly complex military effort lasting months. That sounds like war to me.
The 1973 War Powers Resolution requires presidents to notify Congress when invoking Article II powers and to seek authorization from Congress if the new conflict lasts more than 60 days.
In this sense Obama’s new Iraq war is for now undeclared, even though the authorization for the old Iraq war remains on the books. Obama campaigned in 2012 in part on his accomplishment of ending the Iraq War and as recently as last month, his administration urged Congress to repeal the 2002 law that authorized it.
Is it because they did or did not listen to Rev. Wright’s sermons?
When tapes emerged of Rev. Jeremiah Wright damning America and gloating about her travails, Obama, who boasted of his twenty-year long relationship with this father figure announced that he’d never actually listened to Wright’s sermons. With news breaking that Wright’s daughter has been convicted in a fraud scheme, I’m having trouble deciding whether, like Obama, she ignored her father’s sermons or, again like Obama, she probably listened and absorbed every word.
Bill Nye, lying science guy
I’ve never liked Bill Nye. Rather than seeing him as a friendly, accessible guy, I’ve always seen him as a grim, dour, rather angry person. Now I’ve learned that he’s also intellectually dishonest (or perhaps just really dumb) — something that was manifestly clear the moment he jumped on the “climate change” bandwagon.
Grab a tissue for this one
The will that drives a soldier doesn’t necessarily vanish when that soldier suffers an injury, even one that’s more traumatic than most of us can comprehend:
