Comic relief from the Dancing Machine-in-Chief.

Flashback: Obama does the “stodgy white man” dance on the Ellen Show.

Via FoxNewsInsider

And as Islamists begin to seize power things will only get worse for Egypt’s large Christian population.

(AINA) — For the second time in as many days, Egyptian armed force stormed the 5th century old St. Bishoy monastery in Wadi el-Natroun, 110 kilometers from Cairo. Live ammunition was fired, wounding two monks and six Coptic monastery workers. Several sources confirmed the army’s use of RPG ammunition. Four people have been arrested including three monks and a Coptic lawyer who was at the monastery investigating yesterday’s army attack.

Monk Aksios Ava Bishoy told activist Nader Shoukry of Freecopts the armed forces stormed the main entrance gate to the monastery in the morning using five tanks, armored vehicles and a bulldozer to demolish the fence built by the monastery last month to protect themselves and the monastery from the lawlessness which prevailed in Egypt during the January 25 Uprising.

“When we tried to address them, the army fired live bullets, wounding Father Feltaows in the leg and Father Barnabas in the abdomen,” said Monk Ava Bishoy. “Six Coptic workers in the monastery were also injured, some with serious injuries to the chest.”

The injured were rushed to the nearby Sadat Hospital, the ones in serious condition were transferred to the Anglo-Egyptian Hospital in Cairo.

Father Hemanot Ava Bishoy said the army fired live ammunition and RPGs continuously for 30 minutes, which hit part of the ancient fence inside the monastery. “The army was shocked to see the monks standing there praying ‘Lord have mercy’ without running away. This is what really upset them,” he said. “As the soldiers were demolishing the gate and the fence they were chanting ‘Allahu Akbar’ and ‘Victory, Victory’.”

Priorities.

(NYDN) — A controversial Queens statue, featured as an “Eyesore Next Door” in the Daily News, should be sold through an online classifieds site, according to a group of elected officials.

U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner said the city should ditch the statue, “Triumph of Civic Virtue,” because it is “sexist.”

Some community leaders have tried for years to get the city to pay for the restoration of the decaying statue.

Weiner and City Councilwoman Julissa Ferreras (D-Jackson Heights) — who want to sell the statue on craigslist to raise funds — said it is offensive because it depicts a nude man stepping on two women.

The statue, crafted more than 100 years ago, is supposed to depict civic virtue, triumphant over the twin sirens of vice and corruption.

Some leaders don’t want to tear the statue down.

“It’s been one of the board’s top priorities for years to have that statue restored,” said Mary Ann Carey, district manager of Community Board 9 in Queens. “We’re not looking to destroy art.”

Isn’t that the dream of every Wahhabi?

(Daily Mail) — The Saudi national accused of plotting to blow up the home of George W Bush wrote a string of chilling emails, notes and a blog calling for jihad on America, it has been revealed.

Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari, 20, is said to have come to the US. and bought chemicals and materials specifically to wage holy war on U.S. soil and kill the former President.

When investigators raided his home in Lubbock, Texas, they found a journal which suggested he had been planning an attack on the U.S. since he was in high school.

It also emerged he had allegedly been planning such an attack since he was a child and had got good grades in school and won a scholarship so he could travel abroad to kill.

Aldawsari has been charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and, if convicted, he could face the death penalty.

Investigators allegedly uncovered a bomb factory at his home including beakers, flasks, sulfuric and nitric acid – which can be used to make explosives — clocks and a Hazmat suit to protect him against chemicals.

One e-mail he sent himself for safekeeping allegedly contained a message stating that ‘one operation in the land of the infidels is equal to ten operations against occupying forces in the land of the Muslims’.

Being lectured on intelligence by this guy’s the height of hypocrisy.

Via AFP Maryland

So what would he call the Islamist suicide bombing of a Christian church on New Year’s Eve that killed 21 people, interfaith outreach?

CAIRO (AP) — The deputy to Osama bin Laden issued al-Qaida’s second message since the Egyptian uprising, accusing the nation’s Christian leadership of inciting interfaith tensions and denying that the terror network was behind last month’s bombing of a Coptic church in Alexandria that killed 21 and sparked protests.

The message Friday from Ayman al-Zawahri, the No. 2 leader of the terror network, comes amid renewed Muslim-Christian tension over the slaying of a Coptic priest and a dispute involving a monastery.

As with his first message, delivered Feb. 18, al-Zawahri in his new, 35-minute videotape makes no mention of the protests or Hosni Mubarak’s fall from power. Al-Qaida had advocated for the destruction of Mubarak’s regime — and al-Zawahri, an Egyptian doctor, was part of a failed militant uprising against the former president in the 1990s.

But the pro-democracy tone of the protests, led by secular liberals, contrasted greatly with the Islamic state al-Qaida envisions.

In the latest video, al-Zawahri devoted much of the time to the Muslim-Christian divide. But he denied that his group was behind the Alexandria bombing, according to a transcript by the SITE Intel group, a U.S. group that monitors militant messages.

Ahead of the bombing, extremist Islamic websites affiliated with al-Qaida circulated lists of Coptic churches in Egypt and Europe — including one that was hit on New Year’s — along with instructions on how to attack them.

“To start, I want to explain that al-Qaida has no connection with the explosion that happened in the church in Alexandria,” he said.

“The first among those who are responsible for setting the situation ablaze is the leadership of the Coptic Orthodox Church under the leadership of the one called Pope Shenouda III,” he said.

He blamed the church leader for spreading “belief that the Muslims have occupied Egypt and they must be driven out as they were kicked out of Spain” in the 15th century.

I for one miss Rage Boy, he was a non-stop source of comedy gold.

He is America’s hated poster-boy of Islam. He is the angry face of separatism in Kashmir. He is the “vigorous organizer of protests” on the streets of Srinagar. Thirty-one-year-old Shakeel Ahmad Bhat, tagged as the ‘Islamic rage boy’ in the West, has again been slapped with Public Safety Act, 9th time in a row since November 2008 when he was arrested in old city Srinagar, in the aftermath of Amarnath Land agitation.

The bony cheeked and unkemptly bearded, Shakeel shot to infamy in 2007 after his ‘jaw-drooping, crooked teeth, closed-fist, eye-bulged-out’ pictures were carried by many international media outlets during a protest in Srinagar. He was quickly dubbed as ‘Islamic Rage boy’ and ‘Poster boy’. Soon his pictures made it to spoof cover of Time magazine, on T-Shirts, posters, mouse-pads, boxer shorts, bumper stickers and beer mugs.

As Police slapped 9th PSA(the act allows police to jail a person for a maximum of two years without trial) against him this week, Hindustan Times team traveled to his home in the shabby Fateh Kadal area of old city to know his story.

Rest here »

Few of IRB’s greatest hits:

I wish he would follow through.

(CBS News) — Back in 2007, then-Sen. Barack Obama said that if he were president, he’d be walking the picket lines in solidarity with workers if unions were ever threatened. Now, the president has that chance in Wisconsin, but the White House says President Obama has no such plans.

Massive demonstrations have gone on for days in Wisconsin, as public workers and their supporters protest Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s so-called “budget repair bill,” which would scale back public workers’ benefits, as well as their collective bargaining rights.

Public workers and their supporters argue that eliminating most public unions’ collective bargaining rights has nothing to do with the budget and that the governor should drop that element of his plan. Walker isn’t budging, however — meaning that the ongoing debate has more to do with ideology than the state budget.

On the campaign trail in 2007, Mr. Obama had this to say: “If American workers are being denied their right to organize when I’m in the White House, I will put on a comfortable pair of shoes and I will walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States.”

CBS News chief White House correspondent Chip Reid asked White House Press Secretary Jay Carney about that promise today, to which Carney responded that the president has already made his position on the matter clear.

“I think that the president has different means of speaking out on issues and being heard,” he said. “And, clearly, he did. He made his viewpoints known on the situation in Wisconsin, the need for people to come together.”

UPDATE: Here’s the vid:

If anyone is leading us down that path look no further than the union goons and their leftist supporters at this week’s protests.

(AP) — With each bill, newly elected tea party lawmakers are offering Montanans a vision of the future. . . .

Some residents, Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer and even some Republican lawmakers say the bills are making Montana into a laughingstock. And, they say, the push to nullify federal laws could be dangerous.

“We are the United States of America,” said Schweitzer. “This talk of nullifying is pretty toxic talk. That led to the Civil War.”

A tea party lawmaker said raising the specter of a civil war is plain old malarkey.

“Nullification is not about splitting this union apart,” freshman Rep. Derek Skees said. “Nullification is just one more way for us to tell the federal government: ‘That is not right.”

HT: Jay

As the expression goes, if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.

BOISE — Rancor didn’t dominate last week’s legislative debate of education reform, but it certainly ate up a large chunk.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna on Tuesday morning discovered his truck vandalized, its tires slashed and his last name spray-painted and crossed out on its passenger side.

That came after Luna had to tell an unruly man claiming to be a teacher to leave his mother’s house a few days earlier. And later Tuesday, an off-duty police officer escorted a disruptive person away from a coffeehouse where Luna was making a television appearance.

In their entirety, the events meant that instead of talking about issues like student achievement and education standards, debate shifted for a brief spell to questions unrelated to Luna’s proposal — like whether union activism is to blame and whether it’s appropriate for Luna to classify some of the actions as “union thuggery.”

Much was said.

Luna urged the public not to cross the line of civility to involve his family members and damage his property. Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter criticized the harassment of Luna, stressing it’s not the Idaho way to commit such offenses when debating public policy.

The Idaho Education Association, the teachers’ union, denounced the incidents, but also took Luna to task for using the term “union thuggery.”

Luna didn’t back down, stressing he was referring only to the incident that involved his mother.

Debate shifted back to germane issues by Thursday, when the Senate Education Committee heard a final round of testimony on Luna’s reforms and sent the three bills to the Senate floor.

There, discussion re-discovered its home with education reform and questions about whether the bills should pass.

Beyond parody.

(Politico) — The Democratic National Committee wanted to honor Nancy Pelosi Thursday — but its praise wasn’t good enough for the House minority leader.

When the DNC’s Resolutions Committee brought up a resolution commemorating Pelosi’s years as speaker of the House, Pelosi’s daughter sought to alter the proposal at her mother’s behest, adding some of the accomplishments that the elder Pelosi felt the committee had overlooked.

“I have some friendly amendments,” said Christine Pelosi, a political strategist, at the committee’s session during the DNC Winter Meeting at the Marriott Wardman Park hotel Thursday afternoon. She is a member of the committee.

“You think I’m kidding,” Christine Pelosi added, to surprised laughter from the room. The proposed changes, she indicated, came out of a discussion with her mother.

First, Pelosi wanted to add a mention of her fight against HIV and AIDS, because it was “why she went to Congress.” Then, she wanted to insert a paragraph on her “accomplishments for equality,” mentioning the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 and the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” in December.

“Finally, since, as she said, ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she wanted to add, in the final ‘whereas’ clause, ‘. . . and will continue the fight for America’s working families,’” Christine Pelosi said.

Endless amounts of evil.

(CBS News) — A resident of the increasingly violent Libyan capital of Tripoli told CBS Radio News Thursday that armed supporters of Muammar Qaddafi, the country’s longtime leader, have stormed into hospitals to shoot wounded demonstrators and take dead bodies to an unknown location.

“They go in with guns into hospitals,” said the resident, identified only as Adel to protect his safety. “They take the bodies that are dead. In some hospitals, they have shot the wounded. This is true. I know it’s very strange for the States, but this is happening today in Tripoli.”

Because the situation in Libya is growing more dangerous day by day and reporting from the country is difficult for Western journalists, the statements Adel made to CBS Radio News could not be independently verified.

In one example of the violence in Libya, Adel said he saw 62 protesters killed and about 100 more wounded in Tripoli’s Green Square Tuesday.

“They’re putting the bodies on half pickup trucks, and they’re taking them somewhere we don’t know yet because they don’t want these bodies to go into hospitals,” Adel said.

What the protesters want most from the international community is the establishment of a no-fly zone over Libya, Adel said.

“The guys are using helicopter gun ships to shoot people, shooting not bombing,” Adel said. “It is terrifying. It takes a lot of pushing your guts to go out, but you have to.”

The situation in Tripoli continues to deteriorate, Adel said. Because shops are running low on basic supplies, lines more than 1,000 yards long form outside bakeries that do have food to sell.

“It’s very unsafe,” Adel said. “They have cars where mercenaries are shooting at random. Trying to keep a low profile, only at night do we move out to do the demonstrations.”

One thing protesters reportedly face is so-called thugs being flown in from other countries. Adel said he noticed increased activity at the air base near where he lives.

“The amount of planes that are coming in are tremendous,” Adel said. “They’re flying them through . . . and taking helicopters around to other places around Tripoli. Most are Africans.”

How long until they’re awarded a huge government contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars?

(Washington Examiner) — George Soros — whom we’re always told is not serving his own economic interests at all by promoting liberal politicians and big-government policies — is launching a new investment fund that plans to profit off of the “green energy” boom, which is entirely dependent on government subsidies supported by the groups Soros funds.

As the press release puts it, this fund will “leverage technology and business model innovation to improve energy efficiency, reduce waste and emissions, harness renewable energy, and more efficiently use natural resources, among other applications.” As Soros puts it in the same release: “Developing alternative sources of energy and achieving greater energy efficiency is both a significant global investment opportunity and an environmental imperative.” Cadie Thompson at CNBC’s NetNet flagged this.

So, yeah. The big-government policies advanced by the liberal outfits he funds — like Center for American Progress — will enrich the companies in which Soros is investing.

But this story gets better.

The press release casually mentions whom Soros is hiring to run this new fund: Cathy Zoi. As Cadie Thompson at CNBC’s NetNet (edited by my brother John Carney), puts it, Zoi was Barack Obama’s “Acting Under Secretary for Energy and Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.” An Al Gore acolyte, Zoi was Obama’s point-woman on subsidizing green tech. Now she’s going to work for George Soros to profit off of subsidized green tech.

Rest here »

(Politico) — Mitt Romney rejected Mike Huckabee’s call for him to admit that the “RomneyCare” health care program failed, instead saying he’s “proud” of “getting everyone covered” when he was governor of Massachusetts.

“Mitt Romney is proud of what he accomplished for Massachusetts in getting everyone covered,” Romney’s spokesman, Eric Fehrnstrom, told the Boston Globe, in the first direct response Team Mitt made to Huckabee’s criticism of the health plan in his new book.

Fehrnstrom also put daylight between the Romney health care bill and President Obama’s reform package, which is unpopular among voters and is the subject of several lawsuits by different states.

“What’s important now is to return to the states the power to determine their own healthcare solutions by repealing Obamacare,” Fehrnstrom added. “A one-size-fits-all plan for the entire nation just doesn’t work.”

The comments came after POLITICO reported that a chapter in Huckabee’s new book, “A Simple Government,” devotes two full pages to trashing RomneyCare and tethering it tightly to ObamaCare.

“Ever since the debate over (the national) program began, it’s been compared to RomneyCare, the failed statewide health-care program implemented by none other than my fellow GOP member Mitt Romney when he was governor of Massachusetts,” Huckabee says in the book.

“Any critical assessment of this program will show that it failed … and yet the Obama administration decided to emulate it in its pursuit of a national health-care program.”

Take a good look lefties, this is who you’ve been giving verbal fellatio to since his sophomorish prank call.

So, 4000 rubes are dead. Cry me the Tigris. Another 30,000 have been seriously wounded. Boo fucking hoo. They got what they asked for — and cool robotic limbs, too.

Likely, just reading the above paragraph made you uncomfortable. But why?

The benevolence of America’s “troops” is sacrosanct. Questioning their rectitude simply isn’t done. It’s the forbidden zone. We may rail against this tragic war, but our soldiers are lauded by all as saints. Why? They volunteered to partake in this savage idiocy, and for this they deserve our utmost respect? I think not.

The nearly two-thirds of us who know this war is bullshit need to stop sucking off the troops. They get enough action raping female soldiers and sodomizing Iraqi detainees. The political left is intent on “supporting” the troops by bringing them home, which is a good thing. But after rightly denouncing the administration’s lies and condemning this awful war, relatively sensible pundits — like Keith Olbermann — turn around and lovingly praise the soldiers’ brave service to the country. Why?

What service are they providing? I don’t remember ordering 300,000 dead Iraqis — although I was doing a lot of heavy narcotics back in ’03. Our soldiers are not providing a service to the country, they’re providing a service to a criminal administration and their oil company cronies. When a mafia don orders a hit, is the assassin absolved of personal responsibility when it’s carried out? Of course not. What if the hit man was fooled into service? We’d all say, “Tough shit, you dumb Guido,” then lock him up and throw away the key.

As a society, we need to discard our blind deference to military service. There’s nothing admirable about volunteering to murder people. There’s nothing admirable about being rooked by obvious propaganda. There’s nothing admirable about doing what you’re told if what you’re told to do is terrible.

Rest here »

The above article isn’t stopping the AFL-CIO from running a TV ad highlighting Murphy’s call to  Governor Walker.

(The Hill) — A liberal blogger’s prank telephone call to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) has become the focal point of a new television ad criticizing the governor.

Walker’s opponents pounced on the prank call by a blogger posing as billionaire Republican businessman David Koch. The Wisconsin AFL-CIO-sponsored ad released Thursday accuses Walker of pushing his budget repair bill, which includes provisions that limit collective bargaining rights for public employees.

The ad will be mixed into a standing buy of statewide broadcast and cable television airtime, according to AFL-CIO spokesman Eddie Vale.

Nor did it stop CNN from heaping praise on him.

And if anyone feels like taking out some aggression: Ian@buffalobeast.com.

Transparency we can believe in!

(Politico) — Caught between their boss’ anti-lobbyist rhetoric and the reality of governing, President Barack Obama’s aides often steer meetings with lobbyists to a complex just off the White House grounds — and several of the lobbyists involved say they believe the choice of venue is no accident.

It allows the Obama administration to keep these lobbyist meetings shielded from public view — and out of Secret Service logs kept on visitors to the White House and later released to the public.

“They’re doing it on the side. It’s better than nothing,” said immigration reform lobbyist Tamar Jacoby, who has attended meetings at the nearby Jackson Place complex and believes the undisclosed gatherings are better than none.

The White House scoffs at the notion of an ulterior motive for scheduling meetings in what are, after all, meeting rooms.

But at least four lobbyists who’ve been to the conference rooms just off Lafayette Square tell POLITICO they had the distinct impression they were being shunted off to Jackson Place — and off the books — so their visits wouldn’t later be made public.

Obama’s administration has touted its release of White House visitors logs as a breakthrough in transparency, as the first White House team to reveal the comings and goings around the West Wing and the Old Executive Office Building.

The Jackson Place townhouses are a different story.

There are no records of meetings at the row houses just off Lafayette Square that house the White House Conference Center and the Council on Environmental Quality, home to two of the busiest meeting spaces. The White House can’t say who attended meetings there, or how often. The Secret Service doesn’t log in visitors or require a background check the way it does at the main gates of the White House.

Great news!

Richmond, Va. (AP) — Virginia took a big step Thursday toward eliminating most of the state’s 21 abortion clinics, approving a bill that would likely make rules so strict the medical centers would be forced to close, Democrats and abortion rights supporters said.

Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican and Catholic, supports the measure and when he signs it into law, Virginia will become the first state to require clinics that provide first-trimester abortions to meet the same standards as hospitals. The requirement could include anything from expensive structural changes like widening hallways to increased training and mandatory equipment the clinics currently don’t have.

While abortion providers must be licensed in Virginia, the clinics resemble dentists’ offices and are considered physicians offices, similar to those that provide plastic and corrective eye surgeries, colonoscopies and a host of other medical procedures.

Democrats and abortion rights supporters said the change would put an estimated 17 of the state’s 21 clinics out of business. Most of the clinics also provide birth control, cancer screenings and other women’s health services.

Dhimmitude isn’t pretty.

Srinagar (AsiaNews) — Suspected Islamic militants set fire on Feb. 19 to the School of the Convent of St. Luke, a Protestant educational institution that began its activities about 17 years ago in Srinagar, Kashmir. The damage is estimated at 60 million rupees (958 thousand euro). The attack occurred at about 22.30 local time. Eight rooms, including classrooms, library and computer labs were completely destroyed.

The school’s principal, Grace Paljor, said they are currently compiling an inventory of the damages, which are now calculated for 60 million rupees. She also claims to have been verbally threatened, several times, before the accident, for being Christian. The school has 450 students. At the time of the attack it was closed for the holidays and so there was no harm to people. The school will reopen on 1 March.

“The school administration is used to receiving threatening phone calls from time to time from extremists. They had threatened to set fire to the school, and have carried out their threat. After the Tyndale Biscoe was burned in August of 2010, the extremists have begun to target the Christian schools in the valley. We complained to the Munshi Bagh police station. ” Sources have told AsiaNews that the school has been targeted because of baseless rumours about a conversion.

Hence the failure to mention Gaddafi by name.

From July 17, 2010 (American Thinker):

Remember as a kid drawing connect-the-dots pictures? Simply follow the dots and a clear picture emerges. As an adult, connecting the dots of Obama’s actions leads to an oxymoronic picture. A clear picture of a murky web. Obama’s actions continually link him to people and causes that the majority of Americans do not support. The recent event of another aid ship sailing to Gaza is an example of to whom and what the strands of Obama’s web link him, and unfortunately America.

Last year, right around the time Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi called Obama “our son,” Obama earmarked $400,000 for two Libyan charities. The money was divided between two foundations run by Gaddafi’s children; Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation, run by his son Saif, and Wa Attassimou, run by his daughter Aicha. What noble causes did our tax dollars potentially help support thanks to Obama’s generosity?

Funding of the ship Amalthea: The Amalthea sailed to Israel with the intent of breaking the Israeli blockade on Hamas. It carried aid for a pseudo humanitarian crisis and supporters who were said to be “keen on expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people in the plight amidst the siege imposed on Gaza.” The ship was funded by Saif Gaddafi’s charity, Gaddafi International Charity and Development Association. Obama’s friend, Bill Ayers, joined attempt #1 against Israel’s blockade on Hamas. Saif joined attempt #2. One has to wonder which of Obama’s friends will step up to the plate at attempt #3.

Because you can’t read the master’s book and not his apprentice’s.

Viewing cable 08TRIPOLI833, COLONEL AL-QADHAFI’S SUMMER READING LIST

C O N F I D E N T I A L TRIPOLI 000833

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/20/2018
TAGS: PGOV PREL PINR KBIO LY
SUBJECT: COLONEL AL-QADHAFI’S SUMMER READING LIST

CLASSIFIED BY: Chris Stevens, CDA, Embassy Tripoli, Department
of State.
CLASSIFIED BY: Chris Stevens, CDA, Embassy Tripoli, Department of State. REASON: 1.4 (b), (d) 1. (C) During a recent meeting at the office of MFA Secretary for the Americas (A/S-equivalent), Dr. Ahmed Fituri, P/E Chief commented on a stack of English-language books on current affairs on Fituri’s desk. Fituri offered that he had been personally tasked by the Leader, Muammar al-Qadhafi, to read and summarize in four- to seven-page Arabic-language reports “significant” English-language books dealing with American politics and policy, current affairs and history.

. . . . Fituri estimated that he has summarized six to eight books per year, as well as miscellaneous articles from key journals and magazines. He was currently summarizing Fareed Zakaria’s latest book, “The Post-American World” and was about to begin work on Thomas Friedman’s “The World is Flat 3.0″. He had recently translated in full the Secretary’s article in the Foreign Affairs journal. Other books Fituri had summarized in the past year included Zakaria’s “The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad” (which al-Qadhafi liked), Barack Obama’s “The Audacity of Hope” and George Soros’ “The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror”.