HONOLULU (AP) — President Barack Obama will ring in 2011 with friendly competition at his family’s annual New Year’s Eve talent show.

The White House is keeping Obama’s talent a closely guarded secret.

Several friends and family members will join the Obamas at their rented oceanfront home in Kailua.

Even more tragic when you factor in the gutless CiC having absolutely no game-plan and no desire to win…

(CNSNews.com) – With 496 casualties, 2010 was by far the deadliest year for U.S. troops fighting a war in Afghanistan that has now entered its tenth year, according to casualty reports issued by the Department of Defense and tracked in a comprehensive database of war casualties maintained by CNSNews.com.

There were 303 U.S. casualties in the Afghanistan war in 2009, making 2009 the second deadliest year of the war.

Almost 17 times as many U.S. troops were killed in the Afghanistan war in 2010 as were killed in 2002, the first full calendar year of the war. In the past year, U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan were killed at a rate of about one every 18 hours.

Keep reading…

How many of these deaths could have been avoided if the ROE weren’t so absurdly strict?

Pathetic…

Close Gitmo, leave their bodies behind…

(LWJ)- One of the suspects arrested in connection with the recently foiled terrorist plot against Jyllands-Posten, a Danish newspaper that printed cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed, has been arrested twice before.

Munir Awad was among the suspects arrested earlier this week for plotting to kill employees at the Danish newspaper, according to The Local, a Swedish publication. Awad had been arrested twice before because of his suspected ties to the terror network — once by Ethiopian forces in Somalia and a second time in Pakistan.

On both of the previous occasions, Awad and his supporters claimed that he and his traveling companions were merely vacationing.

In 2007, Awad and his girlfriend, the then 17-year-old Saifa Benaouda, were detained in Somalia. They were suspected of answering the call for jihad. New recruits were streaming into Somalia from around the world at the time.

But the worldwide press ran Benaouda’s story that she and Awad were just a young couple mixed up in a foreign adventure. For instance, The New York Times published an account entitled, “Young Tourists Pick Somalia, and a 3-Nation Ordeal Begins.” The Times described Benaouda as having a “blend of naiveté and a love of travel” and explained that she and Awad just happened upon Somalia while in pursuit of an “authentic” Muslim vacation.

In August 2009, Benaouda and Awad, along with their young son, were arrested again. This time they were traveling to northern Pakistan. A former Guantanamo detainee named Mehdi Ghezali was part of their traveling party and was arrested as well.

The Swedish press has reported that Ghezali had previously served 10 months in prison in Portugal because he was suspected of burglarizing tourists and stores. He was freed and attempted to study Islam in Saudi Arabia, but failed to do so. He traveled to London where he may have studied under Omar Bakri Muhammad, a notorious jihadist preacher.

Ghezali then made his way to Pakistan and Afghanistan, where he claims he stayed with family. Press reports indicate that he is suspected of staying in a notorious al Qaeda safehouse in Jalalabad instead. Ghezali was arrested in Pakistan in December 2001.

“Ghezali reportedly was part of a group of 156 suspected al-Qaida fighters caught while fleeing Afghanistan’s Tora Bora mountains,” according to the Associated Press.

Ghezali was sent to Guantanamo and his story became a cause for attorneys and activists in Sweden who portrayed him as a wrongly-detained innocent. In July 2004, Ghezali was transferred from Cuba to Sweden.

But the controversy surrounding Ghezali was not over. Five years after he left Gitmo, Ghezali, along with Awad, Benouada, and nine others, was detained in northern Pakistan. The group had traveled through Iran, and one member of the entourage was an Iranian.

Shortly thereafter, another Muslim Swede, Sahbi Zalouti, was arrested in the same area of Pakistan. Zalouti was also picked up this week in connection with the plot against Jyllands-Posten.

Through their attorneys, Benaouada, Awad, and Ghezali all professed their innocence, claiming they were simply on a pilgrimage to a “larger Pakistani city” in order to celebrate Ramadan.

Pakistani authorities claimed otherwise.

Expressen, a Swedish newspaper, reported that the group may have had the Danish embassy in Islamabad in its sights. A bomb belt, $10,000 in cash stuffed in diapers, maps, and other “detailed information” concerning Western embassies were reportedly found in the group’s possession. If this is true, then it is possible the group had planned an operation similar to the plot against Jyllands-Posten, targeting the Danish embassy as retribution for the controversial cartoons.

Keep reading…

Some Arab cries “oh noes, da Joooos have stolen our gas” on al-Jazeera in 3..2..1…

JERUSALEM — Exploratory drilling off Israel’s northern coast this week has confirmed the existence of a major natural gas field — one of the world’s largest offshore gas finds of the past decade — leading the country’s infrastructure minister to call it “the most important energy news since the founding of the state.”

Houston-based Noble Energy, which is working with several Israeli partner companies, said that the field, named Leviathan, whose existence was suspected months ago, has at least 16 trillion cubic feet of gas at a likely market value of tens of billions of dollars and should turn Israel into an energy exporter.

“If it acts correctly, levelheadedly and responsibly, Israel can enjoy not only the benefit of using the gas, but it can also turn into a gas supplier in the Mediterranean region,” the infrastructure minister, Uzi Landau, said in a statement. “The large reserves of natural gas will enable Israel’s citizens to enjoy the benefit of clean and inexpensive electricity, as well as the expected profits for the state.”

The find means that Israel, with a long history of dependence on foreign energy, and hostility and boycotts from many of the biggest energy powers, could find itself in a much more advantageous position in the coming decade.

Hey, it’s not like there’s video of them stalking the polling place with batons or anything…no, wait…

(NY Times)- When the Obama administration wakes up next month to a divided capital, no cabinet member will be facing a more miserable prospect of oversight hearings and subpoenas than Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.

Mr. Holder is a particularly juicy target because he presides over issues that have served as recurrent fodder for political controversy — including using the criminal justice system for terrorism cases, and federal enforcement of civil rights and immigration laws. . .

Asked about the prospect of oversight hearings and subpoenas involving the New Black Panther case, Mr. Holder said, “there is no ‘there’ there.”

“The notion that this made-up controversy leads to a belief that this Justice Department is not color-blind in enforcement of civil rights laws is simply not supported by the facts,” he said. “All I have on my side with regard to that is the facts and the law.”

Hence the reason ex-Rep. Bob Inglis was crushed in the GOP primary…

(The Hill)- Outgoing Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.) said Thursday that a “credible conservative” movement that doesn’t focus on “hatred” of President Obama is needed.

Inglis was defeated in a landslide by Trey Gowdy in the June primary runoff. Gowdy, a staunch conservative and Tea Party favorite, went on to win the 4th District seat in November.

Inglis lamented on CNN that the current wave of populist conservativism is unlike that of Ronald Reagan.

“We’ll get through and we’ll get back to optimistic conservatism,” he said. “We just got to get through this unfortunate period.”

The congressman said he was wounded in his campaign by not joining “in the real bitterness toward the president.”

“I don’t call him a socialist because he’s not,” he said. “I don’t doubt that he was born in Hawaii because he was. I don’t call him a Muslim because he says he’s a Christian. And I didn’t say anything about death panels because there weren’t any in that health care bill.”

Hoo-rah…

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP)– A U.S. missile strike killed eight alleged militants in northwest Pakistan on Friday on the final day of a year that has seen a major escalation in drone attacks targeting insurgents flowing into neighboring Afghanistan, Pakistani intelligence officials said.

Four missiles struck a convoy of militants traveling by car and on foot near the town of Ghulam Khan in the North Waziristan tribal area along the Afghan border, the two officials said on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media.

Ghulam Khan is known to be dominated by fighters from a militant group headed by Maulvi Gul Bahadur.

It was the third day this week of missile attacks on the North Waziristan tribal region, part of a ramped-up U.S. campaign to take out al-Qaida and Taliban fighters seeking sanctuary outside Afghanistan.

Busted…

(The Hill)- Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) is distancing himself from a memo sent by his office that urged health reform advocates not to advertise new end-of-life counseling regulations to avoid reviving talk of “death panels.”

The weeks-old memo recommended that end-of-life advocates celebrate a “quiet” victory out of concern that Republican leaders would “use this small provision to perpetuate the ‘death panel’ myth.”

Blumenauer now says he regrets the letter’s secretive language, which has only bolstered conservatives’ claims that the Obama administration tried to sneak the provision in under the radar.

“If I had seen the memo, I would have suggested it be worded differently,” Blumenauer told The Hill.

In the memo, first reported on Dec. 26 by The New York Times, Blumenaeur’s office expressed concern new attention to end-of-life care planning could doom a end-of-life provision included in a Medicare regulation issued last month.

“Thus far, it seems that no press or blogs have discovered it, but we will be keeping a close watch and may be calling on you if we need a rapid, targeted response,” the memo read. “The longer this goes unnoticed, the better our chances of keeping it.”

Because the Macarena is un-Islamic…

(India Express) — The Muslim clerics of Jamiat Ulema Hind have called for a ban on using Disc Jockeys (DJ) and display of dowry goods by community members during weddings’ saying it is against Islamic law.

The clerics also appealed the ulemas to avoid performing nikah in such marriages.

The decision came during a meeting held yesterday in which several Muslim clerics were present.

The clerics decided to ban DJs and exhibition of dowry goods during marriage saying that it is against the Shariat law.

The clerics who participated in the meeting included President of Utter Pradesh Imam Organisation Mufti Zulfikar, District President of Jamiat Ulema Hind Maulana Nazar Mohammad and District Secretary Maulana Tahir Kasmi.

And 10 years ago the researchers at the University of East Anglia’s CRU (people behind Climategate) told us snowfalls in the UK “are now just a thing of the past”…

(Daily Star) — BRITAIN’S winter is the coldest since 1683 and close to being the chilliest in nearly 1,000 years.

Latest figures reveal that the average temperature since December 1 has been a perishing -1C.

That makes it the second coldest since records began in 1659.

The chilliest on record was 1683/84, when the average was -1.17C and the River Thames froze over for two months.

But with January and February to come, experts believe we could suffer the most freezing cold winter in the last 1,000 years.

Fine with me, let’s see ’em…

(Ynet) — Julian Assange, founder of the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, said he holds the names of senior officials in the Arab world who visit US embassies in their respective countries voluntarily “to establish links” with the CIA.

“These officials are spies for the US in their countries,” Assange said in the second part of his interview with Arab television network Al Jazeera. He said the leaked documents in his possession show that Arab officials reveal sensitive information on their colleagues and respective countries.

The WikiLeaks founder said the website would consider exposing the names of the Arab officials only if it would be certain it would not lead to their death.

Assange warned that the revelations may lead to dangerous coups in the Arab world. He added that WikiLeaks plans to reveal some 7,000 documents related to Egypt and its president, Hosni Mubarak.

HT: Blazing Cat Fur

And we thought Ed Schultz was dim, his fill-in Cenk Uygur (from the radical leftist Young Turks website) is even dimmer (if that’s even possible)…

Uygur: They don’t like who you are. They don’t like your identity.

Guest: First off, I completely and totally reject that. We’re — for the second year in a row participating in CPAC. The largest –

Uygur: Congratulations. Two years in a row. How about all of the other years?

Guest: First off, we’ve only been around for two years.

Uygur: Oh okay.

Al Gore’s bank account hardest hit…

(AZ Central)- With plunging temperatures and lingering cloud cover, Valley residents caught a rare glimpse of what many thought were brief periods of snow flurries Thursday.

Sightings were reported in Scottsdale, Paradise Valley, Fountain Hills, Cave Creek, Carefree, Peoria, Glendale and Anthem, Apache Junction, Mesa and parts of Phoenix.

However, National Weather Service officials said that what people actually saw was a phenomenon called graupel — soft hail that freezes higher in the atmosphere and as it comes down, warms and melts a little, much like a snowflake.

Meteorologist Charlotte Dewey said it looks like snow, but technically it’s not snow.

“What people are seeing is graupel,” she said. “They kind of look like like Dippin’ Dots.”

Initially, the Weather Service said they were receiving reports of graupel, hail and snow.

Several residents separately confirmed seeing falling flurries, including several in the Scottsdale area.

Temperatures were hovering in the 40s with windy conditions throughout the Valley most of today.

Dewey said the low in Phoenix tonight will be about 30 degrees with lower temperatures in the outer Valley, and a 10 percent chance of precipitation, with a greater chance in areas east of the Valley. A freeze warning is in effect, meaning residents should cover tender plants and take other precautions.

Dewey said residents still shouldn’t have their hopes dashed about actual snow flurries.

“If the temperature gets low enough while there is a chance for precipitation, snow will likely fall in Valley,” she said.

This “green” nonsense is simply a trojan horse being used by the radical left to jam their Socialist agenda down our throats under the guise of helping the environment…

Fun fact: Van Jones was in charge of distributing $40 billion in Stimulus cash.

Via The Blaze

HT: Milton

Let the games begin…

Via BreitbartTV