Alison Grimes, Democratic candidate for the US Senate;
“Obviously, Israel is one of our strongest allies in the Middle East, and she has the right to defend herself,” Grimes said. “But the loss of life, especially the innocent civilians in Gaza, is a tragedy. The Iron Dome has been a big reason why Israel has been able to withstand the terrorists that have tried to tunnel their way in.
Q) And the consequences are? How dangerous a situation is it?
This is analogous to Afghanistan, say, in August 2001. And this time, it is Al Qaeda version 6.0. They make bin Laden’s 2011 Al Qaeda look like Boy Scouts.
They are far stronger; they are far more numerous. They have thousands who hold foreign passports and require no visas to get into the United States or other Western countries.
They are well funded, they are battle-hardened, and they are well armed. And they now control far more territory exclusively than bin Laden ever did. They have the security; they have the safety to plan their next set of operations; and they are a messianic movement.
Believe me, they are planning those operations. That’s why the Saudis moved 30,000 troops up to their border. They know that ISIS wants Mecca and Medina.
They also want to come after us. And I can tell you, as we sit here today in Washington, they’re sitting in Mosul figuring out how they’re going to get at us next.
The underlying principle of Official Multiculturalism is that all cultures are equal and thus it is wholly inappropriate to criticize any aspect of any other culture. The next time you talk with a Liberal or NDP politician, ask them if they support views such as these:
Update: On a related subject, George Jonas decimates the Israel-Hamas moral equivalency argument. h/t Jamie MacMaster
If further proof of aesthetic genius is needed, I’ve managed to track down video of Ms Wang collaborating with Shizu Homma on a “guerrilla performance piece” on a bridge in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The length of said recording, a mighty 24 minutes, is necessary to convey the magnitude and seriousness of the work in question. Brace yourselves.
Green Party delegates went into their July 19-20 convention in Fredericton with a leadership-endorsed motion that was specifically intended to lure these disaffected “anti-Zionist” New Democrats.
Big mistake.
In tonight’s musical detour en route to the Tips we’re going to mix things up a bit with Jennifer Lopez’s 2001 dance-pop confection Play.
The comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.
Interesting revelations from Alberta’s Auditor General:
Former premier Alison Redford’s staff listed “false passengers” on government flights in order to block others from flying with her, shows a report from Alberta’s Auditor General.
In an internal government report obtained by CBC News, Auditor General Merwan Saher found that Redford’s staff entered fake passengers into the government’s online booking system and then erased the passengers before printing a final flight manifest.
“We were told by [the premier’s] office staff and multiple staff from the Department of Treasury Board and Finance that for certain flights the remaining seats available on the plane were blocked to restrict access to Premier Redford on the aircraft,” part of the review states.
“The implications of this practice were that other government employees or elected officials would not have been able to travel on those aircraft.”
Update: Charles Adler discusses the scandal with Lorne Gunter.
Related: Limiting the Role of Government
A quick survey across our country reveals some troubling trends:
Related: Lorrie Goldstein provides a brief primer on who Israel is fighting right now.
Well worth a watch to the end:
h/t Marc in Calgary
Enormous Crowd of Muslims Protest the Deaths of 120,000 Civilians in Syria.
Pass the eggs;
The cholesterol myth has suffered a bit of a triple whammy of late, making it harder and harder for heart specialists to uphold the company line. This information is just the latest in a long line of science disproving the need for the saturated fat phobia.
Incidentally, I saw that on a bumper sticker in Elkhorn, WI yesterday.
The inflation-adjusted net worth for the typical household was $87,992 in 2003. Ten years later, it was only $56,335, or a 36 percent decline, according to a study financed by the Russell Sage Foundation.
The one beside it read “OBummer”. h/t
“In the United States, Eid also reminds us of the many achievements and contributions of Muslim Americans to building the very fabric of our nation and strengthening the core of our democracy.”
Related: Obama Calls Netanyahu, Demands ‘Unconditional’ Cease-Fire.
Not just anyone can play the alphorn. You need a certain amount of room, for one thing, and a healthy set of lungs. In tonight’s amusement en route to the Tips, the mighty Alphorntrio URU blows Hegleren across the valley and into your speakers.
The comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.
Democrat.
Daphne Bramham has provided an excellent preview of what will likely be the main debate in the run-up to this Fall’s civic election in Vancouver:
There’s no question that the hodgepodge of gardens along CP Rail’s Arbutus corridor are charming and no doubt that homeowners prefer gardens and a leafy walkway to trains.
But are Vancouverites willing to pay $100 million for it? Because that’s how much Canadian Pacific Railway wants for the 66-foot-wide right-of-way that runs for 11 kilometres from the Fraser River almost to False Creek.
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Consider how generous taxpayers may feel toward one of the city’s wealthiest neighbourhoods, a community that already has more green space than most others and where, little more than a decade ago, resident Pamela Sauder declared herself and her neighbours to be Vancouver’s “crème de la crème.”
Consider that the Vision-dominated council’s top priority is ending homelessness. This year, it allocated $16.6 million in its capital budget toward that.
The unfolding hilarity will pit Latte Liberals who have squatted on the CPR land against those demanding more money to fight homelessness. In some cases the same person will be on both sides of the argument! It will fascinating to find out how many of the 4,000+ people who signed a petition to keep the gardens along the tracks as-is will be willing to put their money where their mouths are. A contribution of $5,000 – $10,000 per person would be a good start!
Luckily for America’s self-esteem, it was liberal Democrats that produced this particular shambles. If Republicans had done this, the media would be on the administration non-stop, perhaps comparing Samantha Power to Paul Wolfowitz–a well-meaning humanitarian way over her head who wrecked a country out of misguided ideology. There might also be some pointed questions for future presidential candidates who supported this fiasco. But since both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have their fingerprints all over Libya, there isn’t a lot of press hunger for a detailed, unsparing autopsy into this stinking corpse of policy flub.
If Obama were a Republican, the press and the weekly news shows would be ringing with hyperbolic, apocalyptic denunciations of the clueless incumbent who had failed to learn the most basic lessons of Iraq. Indeed, the MSM right now would be howling that Obama was stupider than Bush. Bush, our Journolist friends would now be saying ad nauseam, at least had the excuse that he didn’t know what happens when you overthrow a paranoid, genocidal, economically incompetent Arab tyrant in an artificial post-colonial state. But Obama did–or, the press would nastily say, he would have done if he’d been doing his job instead of hitting the golf course or yakking it up with his glitzy pals at late night bull sessions. The ad hominem attacks would never stop, and all the tangled threads of incompetence and failure would be endlessly and expertly picked at in long New Yorker articles, NYT thumbsuckers, and chin-strokings on all the Sabbath gasbag shows.
But he’s not a Republican, so it’s Bush’s fault.