IRANIAN NUCLEAR THREAT NOT THE SAME FOR THE U.S. AS IT IS FOR ISRAEL

THE IRANIAN NUCLEAR QUESTION
By George Friedman

Outside the Box
John F. Mauldin, Editor
johnmauldin@investorsinsight.com

All along, Obama has focused on diplomacy on the Iran question. To be more precise, he has focused on bringing together a coalition prepared to impose "crippling sanctions" on the Iranians. The most crippling sanction would be stopping Iran's gasoline imports, as Tehran imports about 35 percent of its gasoline. Such sanctions are now unlikely, as China has made clear that it is not prepared to participate — and that was before the most recent round of U.S. weapon sales to Taiwan. Similarly, while the Russians have indicated that their participation in sanctions is not completely out of the question, they also have made clear that time for sanctions is not near. We suspect that the Russian time frame for sanctions will keep getting pushed back.

Therefore, the diplomatic option appears to have dissolved. The Israelis have said they regard February as the decisive month for sanctions, which they have indicated is based on an agreement with the United States. While previous deadlines of various sorts regarding Iran have come and gone, there is really no room after February. If no progress is made on sanctions and no action follows, then the decision has been made by default that a nuclear-armed Iran is acceptable.

The Americans and the Israelis have somewhat different views of this based on different geopolitical realities. The Americans have seen a number of apparently extreme and dangerous countries develop nuclear weapons. The most important example was Maoist China. Mao Zedong had argued that a nuclear war was not particularly dangerous to China, as it could lose several hundred million people and still win the war. But once China developed nuclear weapons, the wild talk subsided and China behaved quite cautiously. From this experience, the United States developed a two-stage strategy.

First, the United States believed that while the spread of nuclear weapons is a danger, countries tend to be circumspect after acquiring nuclear weapons. Therefore, overreaction by United States to the acquisition of nuclear weapons by other countries is unnecessary and unwise.

Second, since the United States is a big country with widely dispersed population and a massive nuclear arsenal, a reckless country that launched some weapons at the United States would do minimal harm to the United States while the other country would face annihilation. And the United States has emphasized BMD [Ballistic Missile Defense] to further mitigate — if not eliminate — the threat of such a limited strike to the United States.

Israel's geography forces it to see things differently. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said Israel should be wiped off the face of the Earth while simultaneously working to attain nuclear weapons. While the Americans take comfort in the view that the acquisition of nuclear weapons has a sobering effect on a new nuclear power, the Israelis don't think the Chinese case necessarily can be generalized. Moreover, the United States is outside the range of the Iranians' current ballistic missile arsenal while Israel is not. And a nuclear strike would have a particularly devastating effect on Israel. Unlike the United States, Israel is small country with a highly concentrated population. A strike with just one or two weapons could destroy Israel.

Therefore, Israel has a very different threshold for risk as far as Iran is concerned. For Israel, a nuclear strike from Iran is improbable, but would be catastrophic if it happened. For the United States, the risk of an Iranian strike is far more remote, and would be painful but not catastrophic if it happened. The two countries thus approach the situation very differently.

How close the Iranians are to having a deliverable nuclear weapon is, of course, a significant consideration in all this. Iran has not yet achieved a testable nuclear device. Logic tells us they are quite far from a deliverable nuclear weapon. But the ability to trust logic varies as the risk grows. The United States (and this is true for both the Bush and Obama administrations) has been much more willing to play for time than Israel can afford to be. For Israel, all intelligence must be read in the context of worst-case scenarios.

BEAN COUNTERS: TO HELL WITH PUBLIC SAFETY

The bean counters’ solution to fixing Los Angeles’ $218 million budget shortfall – stick it to the police and fuck the public’s safety in order to save $69.3 million.

BUDGET ANALYST SUGGESTS L.A. CUT POLICE
By Bob Walsh

PacoVilla Corrections blog
February 4, 2010

A budget analyst has suggested that the LAPD could save over $69 million by the simple expedience of cutting way back on it's police department. The suggestion would be to eliminate 616 current probationary officers and back off on plans to hire another 106 cops.

As one might expect, the prospect of thousands of released criminals running around the streets combined with a significant reduction in the police force is not appealing to the taxpayers or a number of the city council.

Additionally, LAPD has what is possibly THE MOST restrictive gun permit policy in the state. For many, many years the LAPD had issued only ONE gun permit, that was to a guy they hired from out of state as the Chief of Police who had not passed the POST test to get certified in California. They had to loosen up slightly in response to lawsuits, but it is still an almost impossible task, leaving only cops and criminals with guns.

MADE IN THE USA

Talk about a complete turn around. Toyota has always had the reputation of producing reliable quality cars. Now that reputation has been shot to hell.

It all started some time ago when complaints started coming in about the gas pedal sticking on several of Toyota’s most popular models. Toyota claimed that this problem was caused by the floor mats entrapping the accelerator. FLOOR MAT ENTRAPMENT? THAT’S HARD FOR ME TO SWALLOW!

Since then, Toyotas have experienced sudden accelerations with eight of their most popular models. This problem is so serious that the company has suspended production and sales of those models until the acceleration problem can be fixed.

But here is the real rub. All of those problems have occurred only with Toyotas that have been MADE IN THE USA and only with parts MADE IN THE USA. The Toyotas manufactured in Japan have not experienced any of those problems.

What does that tell us about American workmanship?

Adding to Toyota’s troubles, now it is also being reported that the anti-lock brake system on the Toyota Prius Hybrid has been failing.

Toyota is now in a class with Mike Tyson. How far the mighty have fallen.

DON'T CALL ME MA'AM!

I don't know if you saw the news videos showing Barbara Boxer admonishing Brigadier General Michael Walsh because he addressed her as "Ma'am" rather than "Senator" during a Senate hearing last June. As General Walsh was answering a question about the New Orleans levee system, Boxer interrupted him in mid-sentence to demand that he address her as “Senator” and not as “Ma’am.”

Jim Hill, a Captain with Alaska Air Lines who is also an officer in the Air National Guard, was outraged by her rude treatment of General Walsh. After Hill wrote Boxer a letter concerning his feelings about this incident, he received a form-letter reply from her staff notifying him that, since he was not one of Boxer’s constituents, his letter would NOT be shown to the Senator.

I do not agree with some of what Hill wrote, especially not that “many democrats even want American troops killed,” but most of what he said about Boxer and Congress hit the nail right on the head.

Here is the letter Hill wrote to Boxer:

July 6, 2009

Babs:

You were so right on when you scolded the general on TV for using the term, "ma'am," instead of "Senator." After all, in the military, "ma'am" is a term of respect when addressing a female of superior rank or position. The general was totally wrong. You are not a person of superior rank or position. You are a member of one of the world's most corrupt organizations, the U.S. Senate, equaled only by the U.S. House of Representatives.

Congress is a cesspool of liars, thieves, inside traders, traitors, drunks (one who killed a staffer, yet is still revered), criminals, and other low level swine who, as individuals (not all, but many), will do anything to enhance their lives, fortunes and power, all at the expense of the People of the United States and its Constitution, in order to be continually re-elected. Many democrats even want American troops killed by releasing photographs. How many of you could honestly say, "We pledge our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor"? None? One? Two?

Your reaction to the general shows several things. First is your abysmal ignorance of all things military. Your treatment of the general shows you to be an elitist of the worst kind. When the general entered the military (as most of us who served) he wrote the government a blank check, offering his life to protect your derriere now safely and comfortably ensconced in a 20 thousand dollar leather chair, paid for by the general's taxes. You repaid him for this by humiliating him in front of millions.

Second is your puerile character, lack of sophistication, and arrogance which borders on the hubristic. This display of brattish behavior shows you to be a virago, termagant, harridan, nag, scold or shrew, unfit for your position, regardless of the support of the unwashed, uneducated masses who have made California into the laughing stock of the nation.

What I am writing, Senator, are the same thoughts countless millions of Americans have toward Congress, but who lack the energy, ability or time to convey them. Under the democrats, some don't even have the 44 cents to buy the stamp. Regardless of their thoughts, most realize politicians are pretty much the same, and will vote for the one who will bring home the most bacon, even if they do consider how corrupt that person is.

Lord Acton (1834 - 1902) so aptly charged, "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Unbeknownst to you and your colleagues, Mr. Power has had his way with all of you, and we are all the worse for it.

Finally Senator, I, too, have a title. It is "Right Wing Extremist Potential Terrorist Threat." It is not of my choosing, but was given to me by your Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano. And you were offended by "ma'am"?

Have a fine day. Cheers!

Jim Hill

(Street address deleted)
South Hill, WA 98375

CLASSIFIED AS LOW-RISK OR NON-VIOLENT OFFENDERS (2)

Here is another example of inmates who were classified as low-risk or non-violent offenders before they were released from prison:

NON-VIOLENT NON-DANGEROUS PAROLEES ON TRIAL FOR MULTIPLE RAPES AND MURDERS
By Bob Walsh

PacoVilla Corrections blog
February 2, 2010

Steven Hayes, 46, and Joshua Komisarjevsky, 29, were considered non-serious, non-violent parolees in July 0f 2007 when they broke into an occupied home in Chesire, Connecticut. At the time Dr. William Pettit, his wife Jennifer Hawke-Pettit, and their two daughters Hayley, 17 and Michaele, 11, were home.

They beat Dr. Pettit almost to death and left him hogtied in the basement. They raped Mrs. Petit and 11-year old Michaele over a period of 7 hours. One of them then drove Mrs. Hawke-Pettit to the bank to get money, where she managed to alert bank staff of the situation.

After their return to the house the non-violent non-dangerous parolees set the house on fire. Mr. Pettit survived, his wife and children died of smoke inhalation.

[They] are being tried separately for capital murder. In the old days, they never would have made it that far. I guess we are "better" than that now. I am not completely sure why.

PROPELLERS INSIDE THE AIRCRAFT

AIR-MULE WILL HELP IDF MEDICAL RESCUE TEAMS
by Gil Ronen

IsraelNationalNews.com
February 1, 2010

The IDF's inventive powers have produced the Air Mule: an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) which assists medical rescue and evacuation teams, which has recently passed its initial flight tests.

Despite its name and bulky – if not downright ugly – outward appearance, the UAV is quite an agile performer: IDF journal BaMachaneh reported that the new UAV, which weighs a ton, will be able to carry equipment and fly into zones where navigation is challenging, such as high-rise neighborhoods in urban areas and natural crevices. In addition, the Air-Mule takes off vertically, like a helicopter, and its stability will be guaranteed by a unique flight supervision system.

PROPELLERS INSIDE

Urban Aeronautics, UAV's manufacturer, is one of the world's leading companies in the development of propellers which are installed inside the aircraft instead of outside. The advantage of this is that it allows the aircraft to carry out a wider range of operations in narrow places – as opposed to conventional airplanes and helicopters which can only operate in open areas.

"The number one cause of aerial accidents is damage caused to the rotor, and we managed to overcome this obstacle," the CEO of Urban Aeronautics, Dr. Rafi Yoeli, told BaMachaneh.

The technological devices included in the Air-Mule give it additional abilities: Two laser sensors indicate the flight altitude, and modern technology allows the operators to receive real time information on the activity of the Air-Mule's motor.

During the tests, the Air-Mule succeeded in overcoming difficult weather conditions, and the test team was very satisfied with its flight abilities during a storm that occurred at the test area. It is currently undergoing additional tests to further examine its stability and its ability to fly between two pre-defined locations.

WHAT'S IN YOUR GARAGE?

HIS GARAGE DOOR

The boss walked into the office one morning not knowing his zipper was down and his fly area wide open. His assistant walked up to him and said, 'This morning when you left your house, did you close your garage door?' The boss told her he knew he'd closed the garage door, and walked into his office puzzled by the question.

As he finished his paperwork, he suddenly noticed his fly was open, and zipped it up. He then understood his assistant's question about his 'garage door.'

He headed out for a cup of coffee and paused by her desk to ask, 'When my garage door was open, did you see my Hummer parked in there?'

She smiled and said, 'No, I didn't. All I saw was an old mini van with two flat tires.'

A BRIT GIVES OBAMA'S LEADERSHIP A FAILING GRADE

Nile Gardiner is a Washington-based foreign affairs analyst and political commentator. He appears frequently on American and British television and radio, including Fox News Channel, CNN, BBC, Sky News, and NPR. Here is his take on Obama’s world leadership:

STATE OF THE UNION: BARACK OBAMA GETS AN “F” FOR WORLD LEADERSHIP
By Nile Gardiner

Telegraph.co.uk
January 28, 2010

As expected, Barack Obama’s 70 minute State of the Union address focused heavily on the economy and the domestic political agenda. This was hardly surprising in the aftermath of last week’s catastrophic defeat for his party in the Massachusetts special Senate election, where the Republicans scored an historic victory. American voters are turning strongly against the president’s health care reform package as well as his big government vision for the economy, which has contributed to spiraling public debt and mounting unemployment, now standing at over 10 percent.

But the scant attention paid in the State of the Union speech to US leadership was pitiful and frankly rather pathetic. The war in Afghanistan, which will soon involve a hundred thousand American troops, merited barely a paragraph. There was no mention of victory over the enemy, just a reiteration of the president’s pledge to begin a withdrawal in July 2011. Needless to say there was nothing in the speech about the importance of international alliances, and no recognition whatsoever of the sacrifices made by Great Britain and other NATO allies alongside the United States on the battlefields of Afghanistan. For Barack Obama the Special Relationship means nothing, and tonight’s address further confirmed this.

Significantly, the global war against al-Qaeda was hardly mentioned, and there were no measures outlined to enhance US security at a time of mounting threats from Islamist terrorists. Terrorism is a top issue for American voters, but President Obama displayed what can only be described as a stunning indifference towards the defence of the homeland.

The Iranian nuclear threat, likely to be the biggest foreign policy issue of 2010, was given just two lines in the speech, with a half-hearted warning of “growing consequences” for Tehran, with no details given at all. There were no words of support for Iranian protestors who have been murdered, tortured and beaten in large numbers by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s thuggish security forces, and no sign at all that the president cared about their plight. Nor was there any condemnation of the brutality of the Iranian regime, as well as its blatant sponsorship of terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As the example of Iran showed, the advance of freedom and liberty across the world in the face of tyranny was not even a footnote in the president’s speech. I cannot think of a US president in modern times who has attached less importance to human rights issues. For the hundreds of millions of people across the world, from Burma to Sudan to Zimbabwe, clamouring to be free of oppression, there was not a shred of hope offered in Barack Obama’s address.

Obama’s world leadership in his first year in office has been weak-kneed and little short of disastrous. He has sacrificed the projection of American power upon the altar of political vanity, with empty speeches and groveling apologies across the world, from Strasbourg to Cairo. He has appeased some of America’s worst enemies, and has extended the hand of friendship to many of the most odious regimes on the face of the earth. Judging by the State of the Union address tonight, we can expect more of the same from an American president who seems determined to lead the world’s greatest power along a path of decline.

AMERICA

Lyrics of a wonderful song:


BORN AGAIN AMERICAN
By Keith Carradine


Just a workin’ man without a job
It got shipped off to China via Washington, D.C.
And I know I’m nothin’ special, there are plenty more like me
Just the same
I thought I knew the rules of the game

I stood up for this country that I love
I came back from the desert to a wife and kids to feed
I’m not sayin’ Uncle Sam should give me what I need
My offer stands
I’ll pull my weight you give me half a chance

I went up to a congressman and said to him “you know
Our government is letting people down”
He said he’d need a lot of help to buck the status-quo
I said there was a bunch of us around

I’m a Born Again American, conceived in Liberty
My Bible and the Bill of Rights, my creed’s equality
I’m a Born Again American, my country ‘tis of me
And everyone who shares the dream from sea to shining sea

My brother’s welding chassis at the plant
He’s earning what our granddad did in 1948
While CEOs count bonuses behind the castle gates
How can they see
When all they care about’s the do re mi

It’s getting where there’s nowhere left to turn
Not since the crash of twenty-nine have things been so unfair
So many of our citizens are living in despair
The time has come
To reaffirm that hope’s not just for some

The promise of America’s surrendering to greed
The rule is just look out for number one
But brace yourself ‘cause some of us have sown a different seed
A harvest of the spirit has begun

I’m a Born Again American conceived in liberty
My Bible and The Bill Of Rights
My creed’s equality
A Born Again American, my country ‘tis of me
And everyone who shares the dream from sea to shining sea

It’s clear my country’s soul is on the line
She’s hungering for something that she lost along the way
The principle the framers called upon us to obey
That in this land
The people’s will must have the upper hand

I felt the calling once before and took a sacred vow
And faithful to that vow I have remained
I hear the calling once again, my country needs me now
And to her cause I have been re-ordained

I’m a Born Again American conceived in liberty
My Bible and the Bill Of Rights, all people living free
A Born Again American, my country ‘tis of me
And everyone who shares the dream
From sea to shining sea
And everyone who shares the dream
From sea to shining sea
A M E R I C A

CONSEQUENCES OF A STATE-SANCTIONED JAIL BREAK (5)

From yesterday's Los Angeles Daily News:

Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich [taking issue with the budget-cutting early release of prison inmates] cited a Harvard University study that found that releasing criminals costs more in the long run as they commit additional crimes and are rearrested, retried and re-sentenced.

The study found that for each criminal locked up, there is a reduction of between five and six reported crimes.

"Putting criminals back into our communities is an irresponsible and reckless way to balance the state's budget," Antonovich said.

IDIOTS SEE EVERY POLICE SHOOTING OF MINORITIES AS UNJUSTIFIED

My blog, “Maxine Waters, The Female Al Sharpton” (1-12-10), concerned Waters wanting the federal courts to oversee the Inglewood Police Department because its officers have killed some of her constituents. Now some civil rights groups within the Greater Houston Coalition for Justice - LULAC, NAACP, American GI Forum, American Rights Association - want the U.S. Justice Department to investigate an increase in the number of shootings by police. Many of those shot were blacks and Latinos.

“In the history of the Houston [Police] Department, which is 130 years, never, ever have we ever suffered so much in the community in terms of police brutality and the number of people getting killed,“ said Sylvia Gonzales, vice president of LULAC. WHAT AN INFLAMMATORY PILE OF CRAP! The exact opposite is true. Despite the city’s annual population growth, incidents of alleged brutality have decreased over the years due to the emphasis in training against using excessive force.

NAACP representative Fred Cooper said the shooting upswing has caused questions in the [black] community, including what HPD is doing to determine whether officers could have employed other options before using deadly force. Fair enough. But only morons will say: Wrestle with him or shoot it [the weapon] out of his hand, but if you have to shoot him, shoot him only in the arm or leg. Reasonable persons will say: If he points a gun at you, or comes at you with a knife, shoot first and SHOOT TO KILL.

In 2009, Houston police officers, Harris County officers and cops from cities within the county were involved in 60 shootings, killing 27 people, some of whom were unarmed. Houston officers killed 15 in 29 shootings. Those numbers do not appear to be excessive considering the fact that the population of Harris County is more than 4,000,000.

Much has been made of when officers shot a man pointing a hairbrush at them in one case and a toy gun in another. In the dark or at a distance, a hairbrush can easily be mistaken for a gun. And what about a toy gun? Is an officer supposed to wait and get shot before determining whether a gun is a toy or real? Today’s real guns come in different colors - camo, pink, white, speckled white – to attract a certain clientele, thus making it hard to tell the difference between the real thing and a toy.

I firmly believe that over 90 percent of all police shootings are righteous, whether the person getting shot was armed or not. In the questionable shootings (less than 10 percent), non-lethal force might have been an option. However, in those instances where an officer experiences a moment of panic, the instinct to survive – fight or flight – will kick in and that would make him resort to deadly force.

Maxine Waters and the Houston civil rights activists should place themselves in a police officers boots. It’s scary out there, especially in minority neighborhoods with their high violent crime rates. To an officer in imminent fear of his life, a Tazer or other non-lethal weapon will not be the weapon of choice. Cops have a saying: IT’S BETTER TO BE JUDGED BY TWELVE THAN TO BE CARRIED BY SIX. That makes damn good sense!

Instead of piling on the police, civil rights activists would better serve the public if they were to apply their time and energy in attempting to reduce the violence so readily resorted to by members of the black and Latino communities.

DEFENDANT DEMANDS JURORS BE GENETICALLY TESTED FOR A "ZIONIST OR ISRAELI BACKGROUND"

COURTROOM CIRQUE DU JIHAD
by Michelle Malkin

Townhall.com
January 29, 2010

Imagine this nightmare courtroom scenario: Unhinged Jew-bashing, open mockery of American soldiers, juror intimidation and coldly calculated exploitation of U.S. constitutional protections by a suspected al-Qaida defendant. Well, there’s no need to wait for the Gitmo terror trial circuses. New York City is already getting a glimpse of the future.

Jihadi scientist Aafia Siddiqui is on trial right now in a federal Manhattan court for the attempted murder and assault of U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan’s Ghazni province two years ago. She’s an accomplished Karachi-born scientist who studied microbiology at MIT and did graduate work in neurology at Brandeis University before disappearing in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

Counterterrorism investigators connected Siddiqui and her estranged husband, anesthesiologist Dr. Mohammed Amjad Khan, to Saudi terror funders. The couple’s bank account showed repeated purchases of high-tech military equipment and apparel, including body armor, night-vision goggles and military manuals. Her second husband, fellow al-Qaida suspect and 9/11 plot helper Ammar al-Baluchi, is one of five Gitmo detainees the Obama administration is planning to transfer to New York for trial.

Siddiqui was identified as an al-Qaida operative, financier and fixer by no less than 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed during U.S. interrogations. Al-Baluchi is KSM’s nephew. Mohammed reportedly enlisted Siddiqui in a Baltimore-based plot to bomb gas stations, fuel tanks and bridges, and to poison water reservoirs in the greater Washington, D.C., area. Siddiqui was taken into custody in Ghazni in July 2008 after attempting to shoot U.S. military interrogators and FBI agents.

Now, the savvy “Terror Mom” of three is pulling out all the stops to win a mistrial. Among her Cirque du Jihad antics:

-- Demanding that jurors be genetically tested for a “Zionist or Israeli background” to ensure a fair and impartial jury of her Jew-hating peers.

-- Ranting about 9/11 Israel conspiracies during voir dire.

-- Screaming out loud during the testimony of U.S. Army Capt. Robert Snyder, who was in the room in Ghazni when Siddiqui allegedly grabbed an M-4 rifle and proclaimed, “Allahu Akbar!” and “I hate Americans! Death to America!” Before being ejected from the courtroom, Siddiqui shouted to Snyder, “You’re lying!” She also babbled about torture at a secret prison.

-- Blurting out “I feel sorry for you” to the witness in front of the jury before being led out of the courtroom again.

Siddiqui’s defense team, funded in part by the Pakistani government, asserts that Lady al-Qaida is so mentally ga-ga that she should not be allowed to take the witness stand. Bleeding-heart human-rights groups have dutifully rallied around Siddiqui. She’s Mumia Abu-Jamal in a burqa. Indeed, her supporters have launched their own “Free Aafia” campaign. But two government-retained psychiatrists, working independently, determined last year that Siddiqui’s so-called symptoms of mental illness were attributed to “malingering” and “manipulation.” The judge in the case concluded that she is competent and understands full well the charges against her.

The Crazy Jihadi tactic is in perfect sync with the al-Qaida training manual advising its operatives to claim victimhood status if arrested and put on trial. This act is also in keeping with a long tradition of terror defendants invoking the insanity card -- from “20th hijacker” Zacarias Moussaoui (whose lawyers chalked up his mass-murdering ambitions to a traumatic childhood) to Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan (whose defense will undoubtedly play up his lonely bachelorhood).

To make matters worse, the New York Post reported this week that an “unidentified man in a white headdress” mouthed an obscenity at the Siddiqui trial and cocked his finger like a gun at two jurors. The jurors were let go; it remains unclear whether the thug in white headdress will be charged and what relation, if any, he has to Siddiqui.

Would you answer a jury summons knowing you could end up sitting in front of a jihadi sympathizer on the loose who is mentally painting a target on your forehead? And would you trust the White House ringmasters and Justice Department terror-coddlers to protect you from harm?

These suspects belong in controlled military tribunals, not federal courtrooms that are being turned into al-Qaida P.R. platforms. The O.J. Simpson spectacle of a smirking murder suspect, preening defense attorneys, a showboating judge and the judicial process run amok on cable TV 24/7 was bad enough. The 1993 World Trade Center bombing trial, which gave the bin Laden network a multimillion-dollar tax-subsidized legal team, free translation services, personal dry-cleaning services, race-baiting defense witnesses and access to information that was allegedly used by jihadists to evade surveillance, was even worse.

The specter of 10, 15, 20 Siddiqui-style courtroom carnivals -- at a cost of at least $1 billion to taxpayers -- threatens to throw our civilian court system into complete chaos. America can’t afford to clown around with national security.

WEATHER FORECASTING

It's late fall and the Indians on a remote reservation in South Dakota asked their new chief if the coming winter was going to be cold or mild.

Since he was a chief in a modern society, he had never been taught the old secrets. When he looked at the sky, he couldn't tell what the winter was going to be like. Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, he told his tribe that the winter was indeed going to be cold and that the members of the village should collect firewood to be prepared.

But, being a practical leader, after several days, he got an idea. He went to the phone booth, called the National Weather Service, and asked, "Is the coming winter going to be cold?"

"It looks like this winter is going to be quite cold,'" the meteorologist at the weather service responded.

So the chief went back to his people and told them to collect even more firewood in order to be prepared.

A week later, he called the National Weather Service again.

"'Does it still look like it is going to be a very cold winter?"

"Yes," the man at National Weather Service again replied, "it's going to be a very cold winter."

The chief again went back to his people and ordered them to collect every scrap of firewood they could find.

Two weeks later, the chief called the National Weather Service once again.

"Are you absolutely sure that the winter is going to be very cold?"

"Absolutely,' the man replied. "it's looking more and more like it is going to be one of the coldest winters we've ever seen."

"How can you be so sure?" the chief asked.

The weatherman replied, "Because the Indians are collecting a shitload of firewood."

WAMBAUGH'S BOOK AND THE MOVIE RECALLED

CALIF. ‘ONION FIELD’ KILLER DENIED PAROLE
Gregory Powell kidnapped and killed an L.AQ. officer in ’63

Associated Press
January 28, 2010

LOS ANGELES — A convicted killer was denied parole Wednesday 47 years after he and a partner kidnapped two Los Angeles police officers and shot one to death in a case made famous by the book and movie "The Onion Field."

A California Board of Prison Terms panel found the 76-year-old Gregory Powell unsuitable for parole after a hearing at the California Men's Colony at San Luis Obispo. It was his 11th parole hearing.

Deputy District Attorney Alexis De la Garza, who spoke to The Associated Press after the hearing, said the denial's duration would be for three years.

De la Garza said that Powell told board commissioners John Peck and Randy Kevorkian that he has terminal prostate cancer and would like to be released before he dies.

"I've done enough time. I'm a different man and I'm ready to be paroled," De la Garza quoted Powelll as saying.

However, she said the commissioners pointed out that during his nearly half century in prison he has taken no steps to participate in self help, educational or vocational programs.

De la Garza argued that the heinousness of the crime made him unsuitable for parole.

"It was a cold, deliberate crime," she said, "and he had a long time to reflect on it."

The crime was chronicled in Joseph Wambaugh's best-selling book, "The Onion Field."

De la Garza recounted that Powell and co-defendant, Jimmy Lee Smith, kidnapped Officer Ian Campbell and his partner, Karl Hettinger, on a March night in 1963 in Hollywood after they were pulled over in a routine traffic stop. They drove north to a Bakersfield onion field where Campbell was shot five hours later but Hettinger escaped.

Hettinger had been forced to give up his gun but escaped by running into the onion field. He was haunted by that night for the rest of his life, was shunned by his colleagues, and died in 1994 at the age of 59.

Powell and Smith were sentenced to death but their sentences were commuted to life in prison after the death penalty was briefly outlawed in the 1970s.

[Smith was initially released in 1982, but returned to prison several times on drug-related parole violations. In December 2006, he failed to report to his parole agent and a warrant was issued for his arrest. He was caught in February 2007 and charged with violating his parole. On April 7, 2007, he died of an apparent heart attack while in custody at the Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic. He was 76.]

ISRAEL'S DISPROPORTIONATE RESPONSE (2)

The left, member states of the European Union and the Muslim World accuse Israel of responding disproportionately to aggression from Hizballah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. None of them have praised Israel’s disproportionate response to Haiti’s earthquake.

Bill Clinton and a few American correspondents have given recognition to the life-saving procedures Haitians received at the Israel Defense Force’s field hospital which set up shop within a couple of days after the disaster.

BILL CLINTON PRAISES IDF HAITI HOSPITAL
by Gil Ronen

IsraelNationalNews.com
January 28, 2010

The IDF's rescue operation in Haiti received praise Thursday from former US president Bill Clinton, who is the UN Secretary General's Special Emissary to the Caribbean disaster zone.

Clinton mentioned the hospital at a round table session on philanthropy held Thursday at the International Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, in which Israeli President Shimon Peres was also a member of the panel.

Addressing Peres as the audience looked on, Clinton said: “Shimon, I don't know what we would have done without the Israeli hospital at Haiti. The Israeli hospital was the only operational facility which was able to perform surgery and advanced tests.”

Clinton added that “in the name of the aid workers that operated in Haiti, in the name of the people who live there, and on a personal level I want to thank, we all want to thank, Israel from the bottom of our hearts.”

Peres responded by saying that “Israel will be happy to offer all of its abilities in assisting the rehabilitation of the island.”

CLASSIFIED AS LOW-RISK OR NON-VIOLENT OFFENDERS

From time to time I am going to post some examples of inmates who were classified as low-risk or non-violent offenders before they were released from prison. Here is the first example:

NON-VIOLENT NON-DANGEROUS PAROLEE TO STAND TRIAL IN LILY BURK MURDER
By Bob Walsh

PacoVilla Corrections blog
January 27,2010

Charles Samuel, 50, was today held over to stand trial in the murder of Lily Burk.

Unless you have been living under a rock [in Califonria] for the last several months you will remember that Lily Burk was 17-years old when she was murdered, allegedly by Charles Samuel, a parolee living in an "in-custody drug treatment facility" operated by a private contractor in the LA area. The girls cell phone and car keys were found on Samuel when he was arrested for drinking in public by the LAPD. He had a significant amount of blood spatter on him, but there was not, at that time, a crime to tie him to. The parole division was at first very unhelpful about placing a parole hold on good old Charlie. Fortunately the cops knew of a parole agent who didn't have his head up his butt and they managed to keep Samuel in custody until they could figure out what was going on.

Lily Burk, who was 5-2 and weight about 100 pounds, had numerous injuries all over her body, including the bottom of her feet and bite marks on her face. It is likely she was killed by being stabbed in the neck with a broken beer bottle.

Samuel has been charged with kidnapping and murder. Even if convicted he will almost certainly die of old age in prison rather than be executed, all the time sucking up taxpayers money and getting Cadillac health care and other delivery of quality services. Makes you proud to be a taxpayer, doesn't it?

AN INSULT TO RACIAL MINORITIES

BLACKS HELD TO LOWER STANDARDS IN PERPETUITY
by La Shawn Barber

Townhall.com
January 28, 2010

One idea that transcends political lines is that blacks are inferior and should be held to lower standards in perpetuity.

In 2007, the Department of Justice (DOJ) under George W. Bush filed suit against the New York City Fire Department (FDNY) for violating the Civil Rights Act. The Vulcan Society, a fraternal organization of black firefighters, joined the lawsuit. Did the department hire and fire based on race? Did it deny promotions based on race? No. The department requires all candidates seeking employment, regardless of race, to take an exam that assesses "reading comprehension, problem solving, spatial recognition and applying rules to general concepts." For reasons that will be discussed and debated until the end of time, blacks as a group don't score as well as whites on such tests.

Last summer, a federal judge ruled that FDNY discriminated against blacks and Hispanics with an exam used in 1999 and 2002. Two weeks ago, the same judge ruled that New York City intentionally discriminated against minorities by continuing to use the exam.

Earlier this month, Barack Obama's DOJ filed suit against New Jersey and its Civil Service Commission for using an exam that "discriminates" against blacks and Hispanics, because these groups scored "statistically significantly lower" than whites.

"This complaint should send a clear message to all public employers that employment practices with unlawful discriminatory impact on account of race or national origin will not be tolerated," Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez told The Star-Ledger. "The Justice Department will take all necessary action to ensure that such discriminatory practices are eliminated and that the victims of such practices are made whole."

As head of DOJ's Civil Rights Division, Perez is only getting started. He's promised to bring more disparate impact lawsuits. In December, he told a left-leaning audience at the leftist American Constitution Society (oh, the irony!) that his department has "dusted off the disparate impact theory. If the fact support the use of disparate impact theory, whether it’s in the housing context, the voting context, the employment context, we will use the disparate impact theory because every court that has ruled on this has said that it is permissible to do so."

The disparate impact theory of liability was articulated in Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971). The Supreme Court held that for purposes of hiring, an employer's use of a high school diploma requirement and aptitude tests violated the Civil Rights Act. Black applicants disproportionately lacked diplomas and/or scored low on the tests. Under the disparate impact analysis, discrimination need not be intentional. Even if an employment practice is "facially neutral," it's suspect if it has an adverse impact on members of a protected class. To avoid liability, businesses would have to demonstrate that such tests are a business necessity or related to job performance.

Racial minorities, especially blacks, should feel highly insulted by the entrenched assumption that they should not be expected to compete against whites on pencil-and-paper multiple choice civil service tests. Not only should they speak out against such condescending assumptions, they should refuse any and all special treatment, and demand to be treated as capable and responsible individuals. Such attitudes may be the impetus needed to put an end to these ridiculous and embarrassing lawsuits.

Remember the whole point of the civil rights movement: to be treated equally as individuals by the government, without regard to race. Every lawsuit and complaint that cites "disparate impact" confirms that our government believes blacks and other preferred minorities should be held to lower standards in perpetuity.

54 DEMOCRATIC MEMBERS OF CONGRESS CALL ON OBAMA TO PRESSURE ISRAEL

54 members of the House of Representatives, ALL DEMOCRATS, sent a letter to President Obama last week calling on him to pressure Israel into dropping its blockade of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

The letter was written by House members Jim McDermott of Washington and Keith Ellison of Minnesota. It was spearheaded by McDermott and Ellison, as well as by Betty McCollum and Jim Oberstar, both of Minnesota.

Ellison, the first Muslim to be elected to Congress, had earlier lashed out at his fellow representatives for voting against the UN's Goldstone Report, which accused Israel of committing war crimes during last year's military response to ongoing Hamas rocket fire. McCollum has been a harsh critic and foe of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

One of the signers, James Moran of Virginia has long blamed Jews for starting wars. Several left-wing groups pushed the letter, including J Street, the Jewish anti-AIPAC lobby, and Americans for Peace Now.

Here is the full text of the letter:

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Obama,

Thank you for your ongoing work to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and for your commitment of $300 million in U.S. aid to rebuild the Gaza Strip. We write to you with great concern about the ongoing crisis in Gaza.

The people of Gaza have suffered enormously since the blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt following Hamas’ coup, and particularly following Operation Cast Lead. We also sympathize deeply with the people of southern Israel who have suffered from abhorrent rocket and mortar attacks. We recognize that the Israeli government has imposed restrictions on Gaza out of a legitimate and keenly felt fear of continued terrorist action by Hamas and other militant groups. This concern must be addressed without resulting in the de facto collective punishment of the Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip. Truly, fulfilling the needs of civilians in Israel and Gaza are mutually reinforcing goals.

The unabated suffering of Gazan civilians highlights the urgency of reaching a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and we ask you to press for immediate relief for the citizens of Gaza as an urgent component of your broader Middle East peace efforts. The current blockade has severely impeded the ability of aid agencies to do their work to relieve suffering, and we ask that you advocate for immediate improvements for Gaza in the following areas:

 Movement of people, especially students, the ill, aid workers, journalists, and those with family concerns, into and out of Gaza;

 Access to clean water, including water infrastructure materials,

 Access to plentiful and varied food and agricultural materials;

 Access to medicine and health care products and suppliers;

 Access to sanitation supplies, including sanitation infrastructure materials;

 Access to construction materials for repairs and rebuilding;

 Access to fuel;

 Access to spare parts;

 Prompt passage into and out of Gaza for commercial and agricultural goods; and

 Publication and review of the list of items prohibited to the people of Gaza.

Winter is arriving and the needs of the people grow ever more pressing. For example, the ban on building materials is preventing the reconstruction of thousands of innocent families’ damaged homes. There is also a concern that unrepaired sewage treatment plants will overflow and damage surrounding property and water resources.

Despite ad hoc easing of the blockade, there has been no significant improvement in the quantity and scope of goods allowed into Gaza. Both the number of trucks entering Gaza per month and the number of days the crossings have been open have declined since March. This crisis has devastated livelihoods, entrenched a poverty rate of over 70%, increased dependence on erratic international aid, allowed the deterioration of public infrastructure, and led to the marked decline of the accessibility of essential services.

The humanitarian and political consequences of a continued near-blockade would be disastrous. Easing the blockade on Gaza will not only improve the conditions on the ground for Gaza’s civilian population, but will also undermine the tunnel economy which has strengthened Hamas. Under current conditions, our aid remains little more than an unrealized pledge. Most importantly, lifting these restrictions will give civilians in Gaza a tangible sense that diplomacy can be an effective tool for bettering their conditions.

Your Administration’s overarching Middle East peace efforts will benefit Israel, the Palestinians, and the entire region. The people of Gaza, along with all the peoples of the region, must see that the United States is dedicated to addressing the legitimate security needs of the State of Israel and to ensuring that the legitimate needs of the Palestinian population are met.

Sincerely,

Members of Congress

Arizona
Raul Grijalva

California
Lois Capps
Sam Farr
Bob Filner
Barbara Lee
Loretta Sanchez
Pete Stark
Michael Honda
Lynn Woolsey
Jackie Speier
Diane Watson
George Miller

Connecticut
Jim Himes

Indiana
Andre Carson

Iowa
Bruce Braley

Kentucky
John Yarmuth

Maryland
Elijah Cummings
Donna Edwards

Massachusetts
Michael Capuano
William Delahunt
Jim McGovern
John Tierney
John Olver
Stephen Lynch

Michigan
John Conyers
John Dingell
Carolyn Kilpatrick

Minnesota
Keith Ellison
Betty McCollum
James Oberstar

New Jersey
Donald Payne
Rush Holt
Bill Pascrell

New York
Yvette Clarke
Maurice Hinchey
Paul Tonko
Eric Massa

North Carolina
David Price

Ohio
Mary Jo Kilroy
Marcy Kaptur

Oregon
Earl Blumenauer
Peter DeFazio

Pennsylvania
Chaka Fattah
Joe Sestak

Vermont
Peter Welch

Virginia
Jim Moran
Glenn Nye

Washington
Jim McDermott
Adam Smith
Jay Inslee
Brian Baird

West Virginia
Nick Rahall

Wisconsin
Tammy Baldwin
Gwen Moore

NO WONDER WE'RE GOING TO HELL

You are going to roll your eyes in disbelief when you read the following Galveston County Daily News report. A school board member with a Ph.D., at best an educated idiot, gave a speech to middle school students which turned into a description of how to perform oral and anal sex. Worse yet, school officials tried to keep her scandalous behavior secret.

We are going to hell, not because some educated idiot inappropriately ran her moth off, but because idiots, educated or not, keep electing a bunch of sorry candidates like her to public office.

Some years back the voters of a neighboring school district elected a real blockhead to their school board. He had been a cop who got fired for evading police officers from several departments during a long car chase, a chase which started when another cop caught him parked while screwing a woman, not his wife. Before he got fired, he had made more drug possession busts than any other cop in Galveston County, but his cases did not hold up because he lacked probable cause. This sorry excuse for a human being had a limited vocabulary – he spoke the “f” word almost every other sentence. Amazingly though, after he got fired the voters elected him to oversee the education of their children.

TRUSTEE’S SPEECH TO KIDS TURNS INTO SEX TALK
By T.J. Aulds

The Galveston County Daily News
January 23, 2010

HITCHCOCK — What was supposed to be a motivation speech to a collection of sixth- through eighth-grade girls at Crosby Middle School instead turned into an explicit sex talk, including descriptions on how to perform oral and anal sex, Hitchcock school officials said.

The motivational speaker turned out to be a Hitchcock school board member, Shirley Price.

Hitchcock Superintendent Mike Bergman said the Jan. 15 pep talk was supposed to be a motivational speech.

Price, who was born with physical handicaps, still managed to earn a doctoral degree and also won a seat on the school board.

Bergman said when Price was introduced, she asked that the school’s principal leave the room. Most of the teachers remained, but they did not step in when Price’s speech turned inappropriate, Bergman said.

“Somehow she got some story that she heard that students were having sex on campus and went into a speech about sexual type things,” Bergman said. “There was no motivational speech at all.”

The speech reportedly turned graphic and included instructions on how to perform oral and anal sex and included several curse words, Bergman said.

Students apparently were told to keep the contents of the speech secret, Bergman said.

Attempts to reach Price, who does not have a working listed land line phone and whose mobile phone answered with a generic “not available” recording, were unsuccessful.

The district has been flooded with calls from outraged parents who were unaware of the presentation until a couple of parents spoke at Tuesday’s school board meeting.

After that meeting, Price apologized and met one-on-one with some of the parents, Bergman said.

The district did not inform parents of the presentation until a letter was sent home with students Friday.

The letter, which does not name Price, said that a school trustee’s speech was “off-target and objectionable.”

“The topic discussed was not the agreed upon topic,” the letter says.

Bergman’s letter said the controversy would be a topic for discussion at the next regular school board meeting.

Meanwhile, the district tightened its policies on presentations to students. It now requires the school principal to be present for all presentations.

Teachers also would be given more leeway to interrupt a presentation deemed inappropriate, no matter who the speaker is, Bergman said.

MORONS WILL SAY: WRESTLE WITH HIM OR SHOOT THE MACHETE OUT OF HIS HAND

DON’T TAKE A KNIFE TO A GUN FIGHT, EVEN IF IT’S A BIG KNIFE
By Bob Walsh

PacoVilla Corrections blog
January 25, 2010

Edward Smith, 65, of San Francisco is now the late Edward Smith. He learned the hard way that guns and alcohol and drugs don't mix, especially if you are the one who is drunk and stoned and the other guy has the gun.

The SFPD got a call about 5:25 pm yesterday reporting a man under the influence in the vicinity of Maynard St. and Mission. The cops showed up and spotted Smith, who came at them with a machete. The two officers ordered him multiple times to drop the toad sticker but he just kept coming so they stopped him with 3 rounds of whatever they are using in the People's Republic [of San Francisco]. Smith was pronounced dead at the scene.

I am fully confident the cops will now be subjected to a barrage of verbal abuse from morons who think they should have either wrestled with him or shot the machete out of his hand. Looking on the bright side however, it is one homicide they shouldn't have any trouble solving. It will help their stats.

A STATE-SANCTIONED JAIL BREAK SUPPORTER DEFENDS THE INDEFENSIBLE (3)

Matthew Cate, a lawyer appointed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger as Secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, has been the foremost defender of CDCR’s failing practices. Initially, he heaped praise on CDCR for its handling of the infamous Garrido kidnapping and rape case. Now he’s praising the state-sanctioned jail break which begins today.

As I’ve said many times, THE ONLY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A LAWYER AND A LIAR IS THE SPELLING.

CATE HAILS MASS RELEASE AS "LANDMARK ACHIEVEMENT" IN PUBLIC SAFETY
By Paco

PacoVilla Corrections blog
January 25, 2010

CALIFORNIA INMATE RELEASE PLAN BEGINS
By Sam Stanton

The Sacramento Bee
January 25, 2010

The state's controversial plan to reduce its prison population by 6,500 inmates over the next year begins today, with victims and law enforcement groups once again warning it will increase crime...Corrections director Matthew Cate has called the plan a "landmark achievement" in increasing public safety because it calls for parole agents to focus on higher risk parolees and cuts their average workloads from 70 parolees to 48.

Under the plan, convicts not subject to parole supervision still will be subject to law enforcement searches. Opponents say that is meaningless in practice.

"The one condition imposed on the released inmates, that they may be searched without a warrant, is a pretense that there are at least some limitations and oversight in place," Paul M. Weber, president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, said in a statement issued last week.

"However, since local law enforcement doesn't even know who these inmates are, there is no substance to the search condition."

...Sacramento County Sheriff John McGinness said the result will be increased costs for local jails and courts.

"We're on the verge of a real crisis in criminal justice in California," he said.

Paco says:

Insofar as the SecrAttorney knows nothing about public safety, it is possible he really believes what he is saying. Yet, he is, first and foremost, a lawyer--Parsing words and misrepresenting the truth is what they do.

Thus, the question arises: Is Matt Cate a bald-faced liar or simply an idiot? Granted, the two aren't mutually exclusive: plenty of liars are idiots and vice versa. In any case, the math doesn't compute.

CLEARLY, releasing 6,500 inmates EARLY and keeping them off [parole] agent caseloads couldn't possibly result in the caseload reductions Cate touts. This isn't "fuzzy math"-- It is an outright lie.

According to CDCR's own reports, the parole population was 137,765 as of 12/31/2009. How can a reduction in the parole population of some 5% result in 30% reductions in parole agent caseloads?

SecrAttorney Cate is lying.

What else is new?

A STATE-SANCTIONED JAIL BREAK SUPPORTER DEFENDS THE INDEFENSIBLE (2)

ReentryConsultantOnline continues to defend the indefensible – a state-sanctioned jail break. Tomorrow the State will begin to dump thousands of prison inmates onto the streets of California, many of them WITHOUT ANY paroles supervision, thereby placing the public’s safety in peril.

In Bob Walsh’s words, “He is obviously a ‘warm and fuzzy care and treatment’ individual.” That, or he is a propagandist for the Governor and the Department of Corrections. ReentryConsultantOnline’s assertion that many of the released inmates need no supervision because they will “self correct” is absurd.

Back in the 1960s, the California adult parole division tried an interesting experiment. Three groups of parolees were established, each group having similar characteristics. Two consisted of the regular 70-man caseload. The third consisted of 35 parolees. One of the large groups required the established number of periodic field visits while the other large group received no supervision. The small group required intensive field supervision with a minimum of one visit a month for each parolee.

After one year, the results for the large group with supervision and the other group with no supervision were the same – a 40 percent recidivism rate. And what about the small group with intensive supervision? Its recidivism rate was much greater. Why? Because the parole agent conducting monthly field visits was able to detect criminal behavior more readily than the parole agent with the 70-man caseload.

In response to BarkGrowlBite and Bob Walsh’s rebuttal of his contention that the mass release of prison inmates would not jeopardize public safety, ReentryConsultantOnline wrote:

“BarkGrowlBite, It is true that it is not uncommon for the D.A. to offer a plea bargain to defendant’s but, that point in no way influence the outcome of a risk assessment in that, risk assessments are not determined by the inmate’s sentencing offense and/or criminal history only. The courts will not routinely allow the reduction of charges for defendant’s who perpetrate serious or violent felonies.

Of equal importance to note is that assessments of an inmate’s risk level (low, moderate, high) are determined by an assessment of the entire criminal history, overall risk potential, history of substance abuse, education, family background, triggers of criminal behavior and social functioning This is a nationwide practice.

For the definition of serious and Violent felonies in the state of California refer to 1192. 7 Penal Code (Serious Felonies) and 667.5 Penal Code (Violent Felonies) These penal codes will provide you with a laundry list of crimes which meet the definition of serious and violent felonies.

BarkGrowlBite I was not clear on one point regarding the low to moderate population. Research shows that low risk offenders are self-correcting and will not reap significant benefits from intensive treatments and many times will experience an increase in recidivism. The moderate risk offender does need intensive treatment for the best possibility of a reduction in recidivism. It is unfortunate that this population will be going on the Non-Revocable Parole status.

Bob Walsh - I agree that there are some flaws in the plan but; I can also tell you that California is following in the footsteps of many other states in the nation, by adopting policies supported by research. My comments were meant to correct the misinformation stated by the LAPPL.”

And here is how Bob Walsh responded to the above remarks by ReentryConsultantOnline:

“My mom once asked me if I would jump off a cliff if everybody else jumped off the cliff. I'm not a lemming.

California and many other states are making criminal justice decisions based on their wallet and available cell space and, to a lesser extent, political belief. Prisons are expensive.

Thing is, crime is expensive too. Prisons may not rehabilitate, but they do incapacitate. That's not wonderful, but it's better than a frozen carrot in the eyeball.

I am perhaps most bothered by the intellectual dishonesty of the presentation. The idea that you can predict dangerous behavior is idiotic. Anybody that tells you otherwise is delusional or a liar. When you add the fact that CDCR has a horrible track record in doing things as basic as complete file reviews (Charles Samuel and Phillip Garrido to name two of the most salient) the assertion that the people who will participate in the program will be properly screened to a meaningful criteria is false on it's face.

The intellectually honest thing to do (imagine that from a politician, or a professional bureaucrat) would be to say to the public; 'We believe we are spending too much money to keep prisoners in prison, therefore we are going to start not doing that. We will make a reasonable attempt to pick less dangerous criminals to let out of prison early. We will make a reasonable attempt to supervise some of the people we let out. Sometimes we will be successful. Sometimes we will fail. Some of these people will rob, rape and kill during the time period when they would otherwise be in prison. That's life in the real world. If you want more/better public safety, you as voters must demand that priorities be shifted. Have a nice day.'

California does not have a 70% recidivism rate because lack of good intentions. California has a 70% recidivism rate because criminal behavior is tolerated, and tolerated, and tolerated. Criminals expect that we will continue to tolerate it. In the thousands of C-files I have reviewed I have seen I believe THREE inmates who went to prison on a first offense, all were for murder. We offer multiple chances for people to get their mind right. At what point do we draw the line?

When do we pull needed funds out of 'normal' schools to pay $250,000per year for a DJJ [juvenile] ward? Why should we pay a ton of money for ‘special programs’ for violent assholes when students who want it are struggling for a basic education.

The FACT of the matter is you can not rehabilitate someone. They choose to rehabilitate themselves. They get tired of crime. They get tired of being arrested. They get tired of the risk. Then they rehabilitate themselves. They will stay off the drugs, off the booze. We can't force them. We can help them, but we can't force them.

Until they have reached that point the safest thing to do is either kill them or keep them locked up until they are ready. One option is not reasonable, the other is not cheap. Leaving felons on the street to continue to commit crimes will result in more crime. IT’S WHAT THEY DO, IT’S WHO THEY ARE."

Bob Walsh has made a compelling case against the cost-cutting early release of prison inmates. For our safety, on the other hand, ReentryConsultantOnline would have us rely on unpredictable predictions concerning the future behavior of criminals.

ReentryConsultantOnline accuses the Los Angeles Police Protective League with disseminating misinformation. My question is: Who should we believe? Someone who supports a state-sanctioned jai break or an organization that speaks for the 9,900 sworn members of the Los Angeles Police Department who try to keep that city safe? The answer is obvious and it's NOT ReentryConsultantOnline!

A STATE-SANCTIONED JAIL BREAK SUPPORTER DEFENDS THE INDEFENSIBLE

As you know, I have posted four “Consequences Of A State-Sanctioned Jail Break” blogs. It wasn’t until today that I noticed a comment posted on the Jan. 17th blog. ReentryConsultantOnline claims to be a long-time “Criminal Justice Practitioner” and tries to justify the upcoming early release of thousands of inmates from California’s prison system.

ReentryConsultantOnline said...

“First, let me straighten the record here, the California Department of Corrections (CDCR) will begin releasing inmates to a Non-Revocable Parole status only if they are assessed at low to moderate risk to recidivate and generally this group will self-corrects without post supervision. In fact in many cases, you can do more harm than good by housing this population with the more hardened criminal.

Inmates are excluded from Non Revocable Status if they have any Serious or Violent Felonies in their adult criminal history. Additionally, these parolees cannot have any serious prison violations during their incarceration. Sex Offenders will not be released to this status either.

An example of a Non-Revocable Parolee would be an individual who has a criminal history of property and/or drug related offenses. Many times, they have failed probation supervision and the courts elected to send them to prison.

The best way to address this population's triggers for criminality is by providing comprehensive service delivery to them at the local level.

As a Criminal Justice Practitioner, for more than 30 years, I can tell you that this group should be serviced on the local level. Research have demonstrated that Correctional Agencies will get the biggest bang for their buck (taxpayers buck) by concentrating their efforts on the inmate who represent the highest risk of recidivating.

Although the statistics that have been quoted in this blog regarding the costs of recidivism are true, they do not necessarily apply to the inmate that CDCR is releasing to Non-Revocable Parole status.

Last, LAPD and all other law enforcement agencies have access to a CDCR database which will inform them who is on active or Non-Revocable Parole.”

This is how I responded to his false assertions:

“What a crock!

As a criminal justice practitioner of more than 30 years, ReentryConsultantOnline knows very well that many of those "low to moderate risk to recidivate" inmates copped a plea to reduced charges - from a crime of violence to a non-violent offense or from a serious felony to a less serious felony.

His statement that "this group will self-corrects without post supervision" is absurd and flies in the face of numerous academic studies on the recidivism of released prison inmates.”

And this is how Bob Walsh, a pragmatic correctional expert, responded:

“Any moron can leave a comment. Some of them you wonder what planet they came from. This guy’s terminology is a dead giveaway. He is a shill [for the California corrections department]. The notion that the government can predict future dangerousness by looking at tiny slices of a person’s background is ludicrous.

While it is indeed possible the ReentryConsultantOnline has had some sort of 30 year past as a ‘criminal justice practitioner’ it is doubtful that he is truly involved in law enforcement.

He is obviously a ‘warm and fuzzy care and treatment’ individual. His use of the catch phrase ‘providing comprehensive service delivery’ makes that obvious.

I am not a lock them up forever guy. That would be idiotic and counterproductive. In fact I even support the notion of a small, focused, carefully chosen summary parole program just to see what happens.

However, when you kick out thousands and thousands of convicted felons using a pocket calculator as your primary tool, the goal being simply to empty cells, you can not seriously claim to be helping or supporting public safety.

ANY form of conditional release has issues, and will occasionally produce failure. When it's done off the cuff, it will produce many failures, some of them spectacular, to the detriment of the general public. Pretending it is being done carefully and with due consideration will not make it so.”

This is Centurion’s conclusion:

“I maintain that this has come from someone pretty high up in our [California corrections] administration. He used all the right buzz words and phrases, has the company mindset, is well educated, and writes very well. The adherence to and observance of the current administration mantra regarding this early release travesty is there as well.

ReentryConsultantOnline sounds like one of Arnold Schwarzenegger's bureaucratic talking heads. I know spin when I see it......and I've just seen it. This guy is a company man through and through.”

Bob Walsh and Centurion have exposed this charlatan for what he is – a spokesperson defending the indefensible on behalf of the Department of Corrections and the Governor.

Let me remind everyone that “according to independent research organizations, for every 5,000 felons who receive an early release, 45,500 new crimes will be committed over a three-year period, and 9,000 of those crimes will be violent felonies.”

ReentryConsultantOnline had to have read those alarming facts since that was the leadoff paragraph in the blog to which he responded with his comments. He conveniently chose to disregard those facts as well as numerous other studies that have reached similar conclusions.

ESSENCE OF ISLAM (2)

USELESS FORT HOOD LEAVES AMERICANS UNPROTECTED
by Diana West

Townhall.com
January 22, 2010

"Do you believe in 'radical Islam'?" the famous Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders once asked me.

The occasion was a banquet last summer at the Reagan Library outside of Los Angeles where later that evening Wilders would receive a Hero of Conscience award from the American Freedom Alliance. I would have the honor of introducing him. "What did you say?" I could barely hear him over the speaker at the podium elaborating on the perils of, yes, "radical Islam."

"'Radical Islam,'" he repeated. "Do you think there is 'radical Islam,' or only 'Islam'"?

Me, I'm an "only Islam" kind of gal, as I told him. Who am I to argue with Muslims ranging from terror-cleric Abu Qatada to Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan? Erdogan is particularly interesting as a democratically elected Islamic leader who eschews all word-modifiers of Islam including "moderate," the adjective the media often applies to his AKP political party. "These descriptions are very ugly," Erdogan said in 2007. "It is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam, and that's it." Erdogan has also bluntly rejected descriptions of Turkey itself as an example of "moderate Islam," saying last April: "It is unacceptable for us to agree with such a definition. Turkey has never been a country to represent such a concept. Moreover, Islam cannot be classified as moderate or not."

I mention this now because after the fireworks over Scott Brown's U.S. Senate victory in Massachusetts have died down, we will have to return to the same, old, equal parts humdrum and deadly wrangle over how to think, talk about and grapple with Islam in what remains a post-9/11 world.

Two related events took place just as the Massachusetts miracle sucked the oxygen from non-election news excepting Haiti coverage. First, the Pentagon report on the Fort Hood massacre came out. It is 86 pages long and doesn't mention the words "Muslim," "Islam," "jihad," "Sharia" (Islamic law), "Koran" -- despite the fact that we know, among other things, that the killer, who initiated his massacre with a cry of "Allahu Akbar," was a Muslim inspired by Islam to perform an act of jihad as sanctioned by Sharia derived from the Koran.

These facts, however, rate official silence. So what else is new? From the Bush years to the present, see-no-Islam denial has turned U.S. government attempts to assess and discuss national security issues into Kabuki gibberish, a perpetual exercise in make-believe that the core doctrines and traditional institutions of Islam -- not "radical Islam," not "Islamism," not other aliases -- pose no threat to the core doctrines and traditional institutions of the non-Islamic Free World. Naturally, mum's the Pentagon word over jihad at Fort Hood. Or, rather, "self-radicalization" is the word. It is mentioned more than a dozen times in the report.

I can't imagine a greater dereliction of duty than this failure of U.S. government leaders to recognize, articulate and defend against what in military parlance is known as the "enemy threat doctrine." But this dereliction, this failure will trigger no investigations or court proceedings on how and why our leaders consistently mask, soft-soap and otherwise fail to assess and repel the existential threat posed by the imposition or accommodation of these same Islamic doctrines.

Talk about irony: Within days of the report's release, one of the few politicians in the world who understands, articulates and fights the imposition and accommodation of these same Islamic doctrines went on trial in the Netherlands for doing exactly that.

I refer again to Geert Wilders, now enmeshed in a Kafkaesque court trial in which the Dutch government is subverting its own democratic institutions -- namely, freedom of speech and the will of the people -- in an effort to shut down Wilders and his political opposition to the Islamization of the Netherlands. The government's case rests on Wilders' increasingly successful efforts to win support for his anti-Islamization program from the Dutch people through speeches, writings and the short film "Fitna" (easily viewable online) -- a body of work that only a tyrannical, Islamically correct government could designate as "evidence" of a crime.

How Dutch government officials must envy America's Sharia-compliant public servants who willingly generate see-no-Islam blather such as the Fort Hood report.

They can have it.

CONSEQUENCES OF A STATE-SANCTIONED JAIL BREAK (4)

LA POLICE UNION: PUBLIC SAFETY JEOPARDIZED BY INMATE EARLY RELEASES WITHOUT CONDITIONNS

OurLA.org
January 21, 2010

The Los Angeles Police Protective League (LAPPL), representing the 9,900 sworn members of the Los Angeles Police Department, wrote to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today outlining three steps the Governor should take before releasing thousands of felons back into local communities.

“We are very concerned that the released prison inmates will be completely unsupervised and will be sent back into local communities without any attempt to transition them back into society,” said Paul M. Weber, President of the Los Angeles Police Protective League. “Released felons will be on ‘non-revocable’ releases, meaning they cannot be sent back to prison unless charged and convicted of a new crime – so in essence, their sentence for the current crime has been commuted.”

“The one condition imposed on the released inmates, that they may be searched without a warrant, is a pretense that there are at least some limitations and oversight in place. However, since local law enforcement doesn’t even know who these inmates are, there is no substance to the search condition,” added Weber.

“We are concerned about victims these felons will leave in their wake before being rearrested for committing new crimes. Our concerns are supported by research,” stated Weber. In an extensive study titled The Effect of Prison Release on Regional Crime Rates, UC Berkeley Professor Steven Raphael and UCLA Professor Michael Stoll explicitly document a rise in crime correlated to prison release and warn of the dangers of large releases – like the one we are on the verge of.

The text of the LAPPL letter to the Governor follows:

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger:

We are writing to express our deepest concerns about the upcoming massive release of state prison inmates throughout California.

The safety of the residents in our communities must always be the most important obligation of government. The planned early release of 25,000 inmates on January 25 will seriously compromise the efforts of law enforcement to control crime in their communities and protect the public. As the leaders of the largest law enforcement unions in the state, we would like to request that the state implement the following three measures before you begin your massive early prisoner release:

1. Ability to object prior to release -The state should notify local law enforcement agencies with information regarding each felon who is to be released early, and a review board should be established which will allow the local law enforcement officials to object to the release of a felon and have its objections both reviewed and documented by State Parole. This allows each impacted community to voice their concerns about the inmate prior to release, and hopefully impact releases which will adversely affect the community.

2. Notification prior to release - Once a determination has been made to release a felon, the state must notify the local police station two weeks prior to release or authorized relocation of any felon. The following information should be conveyed: the felon's address; the crime for which they were committed and full criminal history; the name of the responsible parole officer and that officers' supervisor, and any conditions which have been placed on the parolee so that local law enforcement can perform Fourth Amendment waiver searches.

3. Tools to monitor after release - The state must immediately notify the local police station of any parolee who absconds, tampers with GPS or other tracking devices, undertakes any efforts to subvert the officers' ability to monitor the parolee, or has been given permission by Parole to relocate out of the community. As a condition of release, the state should require that every felon released early be required to identify himself/herself to any law enforcement officer, and acknowledge his/her “search and seizure” term as if on supervised parole when contacted by local law enforcement

We are concerned that in an effort to save money, public safety and the crime reductions that many communities have seen will be jeopardized. We believe that the three suggestions above are reasonable and reconcile the needs of public safety and the cost reductions the state desires while lessening the adverse impacts of the upcoming release program upon local communities.

TEFILLIN TERRORIST

The Islamic terrorists are winning! The underwear bomber has set off a state of panic among air travelers and airline crews. A Jewish youth set off a bomb scare on an airliner when he started to pray with his tefillin.

Tefillin are a set of small cubic leather boxes painted black, containing scrolls of parchment inscribed with verses from the Torah, with leather straps dyed black on one side, and worn by Orthodox Jewish men during weekday morning prayers. The hand-tefillin is placed on the upper left arm, and the strap wrapped around the arm, hand and fingers; while the head-tefillin is placed above the forehead, with the strap going around the head and over the shoulders. The Torah commands that they should be worn to serve as a "sign" and "remembrance" that God brought the children of Israel out of Egypt.

When the youth started his prayer ritual, the passengers and crew panicked. The flight was diverted to Philadelphia International Airport where it made an emergency landing and taxied to a remote section of the tarmac. The plane was immediately surrounded by fire trucks, ambulances and police cars. The passengers and crew were evacuated and the plane was boarded by Philadelphia police officers, FBI agents and TSA officials. Police “escorted” the 17-year-old “terrorist suspect” off the aircraft. A bomb squad searched the plane for explosive devices.

Here is a New York Daily News report on the tefillin terrorist:

JEWISH TEEN’S TEFILLIN SETS OFF BOMB SCARE THAT DIVERTS US AIRWAYS FLIGHT FROM LaGUARDIA AIRPORT
BY Rocco Parascandola and Larry Mcshane

NYDailyNews.com
January 21, 2010

A Jewish prayer box worn by a teen passenger caused a Thursday morning furor on a flight from LaGuardia Airport, forcing an emergency landing in Philadelphia, authorities said.

The mix-up involved the 17-year-old boy's tefillin, a black box filled with Biblical verses and tied with leather straps to his head, said Philadelphia police Lt. Frank Vanore.

Fears of a potential terrorist attack led the Louisville, Ky.,-bound flight to instead land at Philadelphia International Airport just before 9 a.m., authorities said.

All 15 passengers and 3 crew members aboard U.S. Airways Express Flight 3709 were safely evacuated after the sudden landing, said airline spokesman Jim Olson.

Although the teen explained the significance of the tefillin to the crew, the pilot opted to land the plane in Philadelphia anyway, Vanore said.

The tefillin-wearing youth was traveling with his sister from New York to Louisville. The boxes - a second one is tied around the arm - are typically worn by men in certain Orthodox Jewish communities.

The flight was met by law enforcement personnel and officials from the Transportation Security Administration.

The teen was interviewed and the plane swept for explosive devices, with nothing found, the TSA said in a statement.

Vanore said the unidentified youth was cooperative with authorities after the plane landed.

ISRAEL'S DISPROPORTIONATE RESPONSE

Many countries and world leaders have accused Israel of responding disproportionately to aggression from Hizballah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.
However, it is time that the world press and media speak of another
disproportionate response from Israel.

The terrible disastrous earthquake in Haiti has generated responses from many nations. The US has sent supplies and personnel, Britain sent 64 firemen and 8 volunteers, France sent troops for Search and Rescue. Many large and wealthy nations of the world sent money. The Arab and Moslem world nothing.

Israel, a nation of 7.5 million people has sent a team of 220 people that include Medical personnel and will establish the largest field hospital with state-of-the-art diagnostic equipment in Haiti, treating up to 5000 people a day, an experienced Search and Rescue team and medical supplies. As in previous earthquake disasters, such as in Gujarat India in 2001 and in Turkey, in the bombings in Kenya, Israel has been one of the most generous givers of aid and assistance. Turkey seems to have forgotten this help as its extreme Moslem Government is cozying up to Iran.

The favorite occupation in the UN is Israel bashing. More resolutions have been passed condemning Israel than all the so called democratic nations such as Sudan, China, Russia and others for their crimes against their minorities.

It is time that the world should know about Israel's disproportionate response.

OFFICER, I ..........

The police officer got out of his car as the kid who was stopped for speeding rolled down his window. 'I've been waiting for you all day,' the officer said.

The kid replied, ‘Yeah, well I got here as fast as I could.'

When the cop finally stopped laughing, he sent the kid on his way without a ticket.


A truck driver was driving along on the freeway and noticed a sign that read: Low Bridge Ahead. Before he knows it, the bridge is right in front of him and his truck gets wedged under it. Cars are backed up for miles.

Finally a police car comes up. The cop gets out of his car and walks to the truck driver, puts his hands on his hips and says, 'Got stuck, huh?'

The truck driver says, 'No, I was delivering this bridge and I ran out of gas.'

I PREDICT THAT ..........

(1) Obama will be a one-term president.

(2) Within a year or so, Hillary Clinton will resign as Secretary of State to free herself up for a 2012 run for the presidency.

ESSENCE OF ISLAM

President Obama has declared that "the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam." Wake up Mr. President, Islam is at war with us and has been for a long time.

Geert Wilders is a Dutch politician and leader of the Party for Freedom, a political party in The Netherlands. He has benn outspoken on the Islamization of Europe. His trial on charges of inciting racial hatred against Muslims began today in Amsterdam.

Here are some excerpts from a speech Wilders gave in Copenhagen, Denmark on June 14, 2009:

For the first time in world history there are dozens of millions of Muslims living far outside the Dar al-Islam, the Islamic world. Al-Hijra may be the end of European civilization as we know it: The second Dutch city, Rotterdam, will have a non-Western majority within 3 years. Europe has now more than 50 million Muslims, it is expected that this will be doubled in just 20 years. By 2025, one third of all European children will be born to Muslim families.

As I said, many of those Muslims in Europe would like to implement Shariah Law in our judicial systems. As you know, Shariah law covers all areas of life, from religion, hygiene and dietary laws, to dress code, family and social life and from finance and politics to the unity of Islam with the state. For some crimes, horrific, barbaric punishments are prescribed, such as beheading and the chopping off of opposite limbs. In Shariah Courts no woman may become judge. Shariah Law does not recognize free speech and freedom of religion. Polygamy and killing an apostate are ‘virtues’, but the consumption of alcohol is a crime. This is the sick Shariah Law in a nutshell, and it is unbelievable and unacceptable that the cultural relativists allow Shariah banks, Shariah mortgages, Shariah schools and unofficial — and in Britain even official — Shariah tribunals in Europe.

Ladies and gentlemen, these are of course shocking facts, figures and statements. However, they are not particularly surprising to anybody who has some knowledge of the Koran and knows who Muhammad was.

In this connection, ladies and gentlemen, allow me to very briefly discuss the essence of Islam, and let me come straight to the point: Islam is not so much a religion as, first and foremost, an ideology; to be precise, like communism and fascism, a political, totalitarian ideology, with worldwide aspirations.

Of course, there are many moderate Muslims. However, there is no such a thing as a moderate Islam. Islam’s heart lies in the Koran. The Koran is an evil book that calls for violence, murder, terrorism, war and submission. The Koran describes Jews as monkeys and pigs. The Koran calls upon Muslims to kill the Kaffirs, the non-Muslims.

The problem is that the injunctions in the Koran are not restricted to time or place. Rather, they apply to all Muslims, in any period. Another problem is that Muslims also regard the Koran as the word of Allah. Which means that the Koran is immune from criticism.

Apart from the Koran, there is also the life of Muhammad, who fought in dozens of wars and was in the habit of decapitating Jews with his own sword. The problem here is that, to Muslims, Muhammad is ‘the perfect man’, whose life is the model to follow.

This is why Jihadists slaughtered innocent people in Washington, New York, Madrid, Amsterdam, London and Mumbai.

Now it is clear why Winston Churchill, in his book ‘The second world war’, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Literature, compared the Koran to Adolf Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’. Now is clear why the famous Swiss theologian, Karl Barth, in 1936 said, and I quote, “It is impossible to understand national socialism unless we see it in fact as a new Islam, its myth as a new Allah, and Hitler as this new Allah’s prophet.” Now is clear why Heinrich Himmler was an admirer of Islam. And now is clear why President Obama, who last week, in Cairo, said that Islam has a tradition of tolerance, should be sent back to school.

Just like communism, fascism and nazism, Islam is a threat to everything we stand for. It is a threat to democracy, to the constitutional state, to equality for men and women, to freedom and civilisation. Wherever you look in the world, the more Islam you see, the less freedom you see. Islam is a threat to the Europe of Bach and Michelangelo, Shakespeare and Socrates, Voltaire and Galileo.

Ladies and gentlemen, there is one Western country that has been forced to fight for its values since the very first day of its existence: Israel the canary in the coal mine. Let me say a few words about that wonderful country.

Like Bosnia, Kosovo, Nigeria, Sudan, the Caucasus, Kashmir, southern Thailand, western China and the south of the Philippines, Israel is situated exactly on the dividing line between Dar al-Islam, the Islamic world, and Dar al-Harb, the non-Islamic world. It is no coincidence that it is precisely this dividing line where blood is flowing. All those conflicts concern the Jihad, Jihad in the spirit of the barbarian Muhammad.

Islam forces Israel to fight. The so called ‘Middle East conflict’ is not at all a conflict about land. It is not about some inches of land in Gaza, Judea or Samaria. It is a conflict about ideologies, it is a battle between freedom and Islam, a battle between good and evil, to Islam the whole of Israel is occupied territory. To Islam Tel Aviv and Haifa are settlements too.

Israel is the only democracy in the entire Middle-East. Israel is an oasis of enlightment, whereas the rest of the Middle-East is covered by the black veil of the night. This is no coincidence, in 1939 Winston Churchill said about the Jews in what is now called Israel: “They have made the desert bloom”.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am very much in favour of a two-state solution. One Jewish state called Israel including Judea and Samaria and one Palestinian state called Jordan.

PAY CUTS OR JOB CUTS

Police and fire departments are not recession proof. Budgets are being cut. That means jobs are going to be on the line. When faced with job cuts or pay cuts, the police union of the Tracy (California) Police Department agreed to forego pay raises and benefit increases, in effect agreeing to a pay cut. How many other police and fire departments will be faced with the same choices?

TRACY POA MAKES MAJOR CONCESSIONS
By Bob Walsh

PacoVilla Corrections blog
January 19, 2010

The Tracy Police Officers Association took a vote Friday. They decided to significantly amend their current contract, which runs until July 2011. They agreed to forgo scheduled pay raises and benefit increases for the length of the contract. They further agreed to bump up the retirement age from 50 to 55. The outcome of the vote was as expected according to Marc Berman, president of the TPOA.

The Department has 85 officers and took a $1.12 million dollar hit. The concessions will avoid layoffs, which would have included the gang unit, two Sergeants and one Captain.

The Tracy City Council is expected to vote on the proposal possibly as soon as tonight.

WE ARE AT WAR WITH ISLAM

To jumpstart his love affair with Muslims, President Obama addressed the Turkish parliament last April and declared “The United States is not and never will be at war with Islam.” Oh yeah? How naive can our president be?

As I’ve said before, we are at war with Islam, not with al-Qaida or the Taliban. President Obama just doesn’t get it. He’s too busy reaching out to the Muslim World, which is the part of the world that wants to destroy us.

Political commentator Mark Steyn believes that Eurabia — a future where the European continent is dominated by Islam — is an imminent reality that cannot be reversed. Here is his take on the illusionary course Obama has been following:

BUT WE’RE STILL GONNA KILL YOU
Isolated extremists? This “war” is about the intersection of Islam and the West.

By Mark Steyn

nationalreview online
January 9, 2010

Not long after the Ayatollah Khomeini announced his fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the British novelist suddenly turned up on a Muslim radio station in West London late one night and told his interviewer he’d converted to Islam. Marvelous religion, couldn’t be happier, Allahu Akbar and all that.

And the Ayatollah said hey, that’s terrific news, glad to hear it. But we’re still gonna kill you.

Well, even a leftie novelist wises up under those circumstances.

Evidently, the president of the United States takes a little longer. Barack Obama has spent the last year doing bigtime Islamoschmoozing, from his announcement of Gitmo’s closure and his investigation of Bush officials to his bow before the Saudi King and a speech in Cairo to “the Muslim world” with far too many rhetorical concessions and equivocations. And at the end of it, the jihad sent America a thank-you note by way of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s underwear: Hey, thanks for all the outreach! But we’re still gonna kill you.

According to one poll, 58 percent of Americans are in favor of waterboarding young Umar Farouk. Well, you should have thought about that before you made a community organizer president of the world’s superpower. The election of Barack Obama was a fundamentally unserious act by the U.S. electorate, and you can’t blame the world’s mischief-makers, from Putin to Ahmadinejad to the many Gitmo recidivists now running around Yemen, from drawing the correct conclusion.

For two weeks, the government of the United States has made itself a global laughingstock. Don’t worry, “the system worked,” said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Incompetano. Don’t worry, he was an “isolated extremist,” said the president. Don’t worry, we’re banning bathroom breaks for the last hour of the flight, said the TSA. Don’t worry, “U.S. border-security officials” told the Los Angeles Times, we knew he was on the plane and we “had decided to question him when he landed.” Don’t worry, Obama’s chief counterterrorism John Brennan assured the Sunday talk shows, sure, we read him his rights and he’s lawyered up but he’ll soon see that “there is advantage to talking to us in terms of plea agreements.”

Oh, that’s grand. Try to kill hundreds of people in an act of war and it’s the starting point for a plea deal. In his Cairo speech, the president bragged that the United States would “punish” those in America who would “deny” the “right of women and girls to wear the hijab.” If he’s so keen on it, maybe he should consider putting the entire federal government into full-body burkas and zipping up the eye slit so that henceforth every public utterance by John Brennan will be entirely inaudible. Americans should be ashamed by this all-fools’ fortnight.

On Thursday, having renounced over the preceding days “the system worked,” the “isolated extremist,” the more obviously risible TSA responses, the Gitmo-Yemen express checkout, and various other follies, the president finally spoke the words: “We are at war.” As National Review’s Rich Lowry noted, they were more or less dragged from the presidential gullet by Dick Cheney, who’d accused the commander-in-chief of failing to grasp this basic point. Again, to be fair, it isn’t just Obama. Last November, the electorate voted in effect to repudiate the previous eight years and seemed genuinely under the delusion that wars end when one side decides it’s all a bit of a bore and they’d rather the government spend the next eight years doing to health care and the economy what they were previously doing to jihadist camps in Waziristan.

On the other hand, if we are now at war, as Obama belatedly concedes, against whom are we warring? “We are at war against al-Qaeda,” says the president.

Really? But what does that mean? Was the previous month’s “isolated extremist” — the Fort Hood killer — part of al-Qaeda? When it came to spiritual advice, he turned to the same Yemeni-based American-born imam as the Pantybomber, but he didn’t have a fully paid-up membership card. Nor did young Umar Farouk, come to that. Granted the general over-credentialization of American life, the notion that it doesn’t count as terrorism unless you’re a member of Local #437 of the Amalgamated Union of Isolated Extremists seems perverse and reductive. What did the Pantybomber have a membership card in? Well, he was president of the Islamic Society of University College, London. Kafeel Ahmed, who died after driving a burning jeep into the concourse of Glasgow Airport, had been president of the Islamic Society of Queen’s University, Belfast. Yassin Nassari, serving three years in jail for terrorism, was president of the Islamic Society of the University of Westminster. Waheed Arafat Khan, arrested in the 2006 Heathrow terror plots that led to Americans having to put their liquids and gels in those little plastic bags, was president of the Islamic Society of London Metropolitan University.

Doesn’t this sound like a bigger problem than “al-Qaeda” — whatever that is? The president has now put citizens of Nigeria on the secondary-screening list. Which is tough on Nigerian Christians, who have no desire to blow up your flight to Detroit. Aside from the highly localized Tamil terrorism of India and Sri Lanka, suicide bombing is a phenomenon entirely of Islam. The broader psychosis that manifested itself only the other day in an axe murderer breaking into a Danish cartoonist’s home to kill him because he objects to his cartoon is likewise a phenomenon of Islam. This is not to say (to go wearily through the motions) that all Muslims are potential suicide bombers and axe murderers, but it is to state the obvious — that this “war” is about the intersection of Islam and the West, and its warriors are recruited in the large pool of young Muslim manpower, not in Yemen and Afghanistan so much as in Copenhagen and London.

But the president of the United States cannot say that because he is over-invested in a fantasy — that, if only that Texan moron Bush had read Khalid Sheikh Mohammed his Miranda rights and bowed as low as he did to the Saudi king, we wouldn’t have all these problems. So now Obama says, “We are at war.” But he cannot articulate any war aims or strategy because they would conflict with his illusions. And so we will stagger on, playing defense, pulling more and more items out of our luggage — tweezers, shoes, shampoo, snowglobes, suppositories — and reacting to every new provocation with greater impositions upon the citizenry. You can’t win by putting octogenarian nuns through full-body scanners. All you can do is lose slowly. After all, if you can’t even address what you’re up against with any honesty, you can’t blame the other side for drawing entirely reasonable conclusions about your faintheartedness in taking them on.

After that cringe-making radio interview, Salman Rushdie subsequently told the Times of London that trying to appease his would-be killers and calling for his own book to be withdrawn was the biggest mistake of his life. If only the president of the United States were such a quick study.


— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is author of America Alone. © 2010 Mark Steyn