Mark Steyn, sur l’arrestation au milieu de la nuit du »cineaste » responsable du film anti-Islam :

I use the term “court eunuchs” for the American media because their curiosity doesn’t seem to function. In a week of dramatic and consequential news, nothing seems to arouse them (other than Romney press releases).

For example, the Egyptian president demands the arrest of an obscure American who made an unseen film. And whaddayaknow? Next thing that happens, back in the land of the free, a large posse of heavily armed officers descends on his apartment at midnight so that he can be “voluntarily” taken into custody for alleged “probation violations” – because, as everyone knows, in civilized societies breach-of-probation orders are always served at midnight on a weekend when the dark is so much more conducive to persuading householders to “volunteer”.

Look at Jonah’s post immediately below; look at the picture. What a pity Ambassador Stevens didn’t enjoy the same level of “protection” as Mr Nakoula. Why, if only the United States could bring the same amount of firepower to bear in its Benghazi compound as it brings to a probation-violation arrest in Cerritos. But it’s all about priorities, isn’t it?

Any curiosity about that? Apparently not, judging from Scarborough’s nothing-to-see-here tweets.

Jim Bennett compares Mrs Thatcher’s response to the Ayatollah Khomeini’s Rushdie fatwa with Obama’s to the Muslim Brotherhood’s demands. Salman Rushdie had been a vicious critic of the Conservative Party and the Prime Minister – he called her “Mrs Torture” – but Her Majesty’s Government has provided him with safe houses and Special Branch protection for almost a quarter-century. By contrast, within 72 hours of Morsi’s demands, Mr Nakoula is in a jail cell – “rounded up at midnight by brownshirted men for making a movie that embarrasses El Presidente“.

The vacuum of American global influence is now swallowing the First Amendment. Any curiosity about that, journalists?

Encore un excellent article sur NATIONAL REVIEW

Obama vs. the First Amendment
He has given too much ground to Islamists.
By Andrew C. McCarthy

Democrats and their sharky Obamedia defense lawyers are in a snit. For three dreamy convention days in Charlotte, they told themselves that, for the first time in decades, it was their guy who had the upper hand when it came to national security. Now that bubble has burst, the way contrived narratives do when they crash into concrete challenges. At that point, an airy president of the world won’t do; we need to have a president of the United States, a job that has never suited, and has never been of much interest to, Barack Obama.

Defense against foreign enemies is the primary job of the president of the United States. The rationale for the office’s creation is national defense — not green venture capitalism, not rationing medical care, not improving the self-image of the “Muslim world,” not leaving no child behind, not blowing out the Treasury’s credit line. Yet, though we are entering the late innings, foreign policy and national defense have not been factors in the 2012 campaign.

That is worth bearing in mind when we hear the laugh-out-loud narrative of Obama as foreign-affairs chess master. The president badly wants to win reelection. If there were anything to his alleged prowess, we’d not have heard the end of it. What we’ve heard, instead, is a bumper-sticker: “Obama killed Osama.” The Left hoped to paste it over the president’s generally dreary record. Even with the Obamedia in coordinated overdrive, the plan can work only if Mitt Romney lets it work — and, thankfully, it looks like he won’t. (Lire la suite…)

Disgrace in Benghazi
And a dying superpower’s blundering response.
By Mark Steyn

So, on a highly symbolic date, mobs storm American diplomatic facilities and drag the corpse of a U.S. ambassador through the streets. Then the president flies to Vegas for a fundraiser. No, no, a novelist would say; that’s too pat, too neat in its symbolic contrast. Make it Cleveland, or Des Moines.

The president is surrounded by delirious fanbois and fangurls screaming “We love you,” too drunk on his celebrity to understand this is the first photo-op in the aftermath of a national humiliation. No, no, a filmmaker would say; too crass, too blunt. Make them sober, middle-aged midwesterners, shocked at first, but then quiet and respectful.

The president is too lazy and cocksure to have learned any prepared remarks or mastered the appropriate tone, notwithstanding that a government that spends more money than any government in the history of the planet has ever spent can surely provide him with both a speechwriting team and a quiet corner on his private wide-bodied jet to consider what might be fitting for the occasion. So instead he sloughs off the words, bloodless and unfelt: “And obviously our hearts are broken . . . ” Yeah, it’s totally obvious.

And he’s even more drunk on his celebrity than the fanbois, so in his slapdashery he winds up comparing the sacrifice of a diplomat lynched by a pack of savages with the enthusiasm of his own campaign bobbysoxers. No, no, says the Broadway director; that’s too crude, too ham-fisted. How about the crowd is cheering and distracted, but he’s the president, he understands the gravity of the hour, and he’s the greatest orator of his generation, so he’s thought about what he’s going to say, and it takes a few moments but his words are so moving that they still the cheers of the fanbois, and at the end there’s complete silence and a few muffled sobs, and even in party-town they understand the sacrifice and loss of their compatriots on the other side of the world. (Lire la suite…)

Vous vous mariez cet été ? L’Amerique d’Obama a besoin de vous. Plutôt que d’encombrer vos placards avec de la porcelaine inutile, des verres en en cristal fragiles ou un robot dont vous ne vous servirez jamais, suggérez à vos amis que ça vous ferait vraiment très plaisir qu’ils fassent une donnation à la campagne d’Obama en votre nom pour célébrer cet événement majeur de votre vie et mettez Obama sur votre liste. Et surtout ne vous limitez pas à votre mariage ! Un anniversaire ? Une naissance ? Communion solennelle ? Bar Mitzvah ? La liste d’occasions est illimitée, et la campagne d’Obama a tout prévu pour vous aider à inclure cette suggestion dans votre liste .

Gallup vient de publier le taux moyen d’approbation d’Obama pour l’année
2011 : 44 % ( 47% en 2010 et 57% en 2009). Ce taux est basé sur
l’interview de 175 000 adultes tout au long de l’année 2011.
Historiquement c’est le taux le plus bas enregistré pour un president
« moderne » dans la 3ème année de son 1er mandat, sauf Carter, qui lui
était à 37,4 %.

Le Rat, c’est Chirac… Hitchens est probablement mort avant d’avoir appris que Chirac avait enfin ete condamne pour corruption.
Son eulogie sur le Wallt Street Journal aujord’hui

The Rat That Roared
By Christopher Hitchens
The Wall Street Journal | February 6, 2003

To say that the history of human emancipation would be incomplete without the French would be to commit a fatal understatement. The Encyclopedists, the proclaimers of Les Droites de l’Homme, the generous ally of the American revolution . . . the spark of 1789 and 1848 and 1871, can be found all the way from the first political measure to abolish slavery, through Victor Hugo and Emile Zola, to the gallantry of Jean Moulin and the maquis resistance. French ideas and French heroes have animated the struggle for liberty throughout modern times. (Lire la suite…)

Proposed S. Korean Towers Resemble Exploding World Trade Center
The unveiling of pictures of planned luxury residential towers scheduled to be built in Seoul, South Korea, has sparked instant controversy. The reason is obvious. The towers, which include a so-called “cloud” feature connecting them around the 27th floors, clearly resemble the World Trade Towers in the process of collapsing following the 9/11 attacks.
The designers of the towers, Dutch architectural firm MVRDV, have responded to the controversy by quickly publishing an apology in English. “It was not our intention to create an image resembling the attacks,” the designers insist, “nor did we see the resemblance during the design process.”

They did not see the resemblance during the design process? The problem with this assertion – apart from its inherent implausibility – is that they have admitted the contrary in Dutch. Thus Jan Knikker of MVRDV told the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad, “I have to admit that we also thought of the 9/11 attacks.” (Lire la suite…)

A croire qu’ils n’ont rien de mieux a faire …
Cette semaine se tenait à Genève la 31e conférence internationale de la Croix Rouge et du Croissant Rouge. Le Comité International de la Croix Rouge, branche principale de la plus vieille organisation humanitaire au monde, s’est réuni en petit comité pour aborder la question de la violence dans les jeux vidéo et leur portée sur les joueurs, en se concentrant en particulier sur le respect du Droit International Humanitaire établit en 1949 et à la base de bon nombre de règles qui régissent les conflits entre pays ou entre populations, la plus connue étant probablement l’interdiction de la torture. Les membres de l’organisation ont trouvé comme conclusion qu’il faudrait demander le respect du DIH dans tous les jeux vidéo à venir.

Six hundred million gamers could be war criminals, Red Cross says

Ils sont généreux, mais il ne faut pas exagerer.
Les cuisiniers volontaires qui se dévouent depuis plusieurs semaines a cuisiner des mets savoureux pour les « revolutionaires » de Occupy Wall Street (Tres bonne nourriture, selon les critiques des restaurants de
New York, nourriture bio et tout, et tout …) ont décidé de faire la gréve pendant 3 jours et ne servir que du riz brun, pour protester contre le nombre croissant de SDF qui viennent se servir au milieu de la foule de protestataires. Apparement le bouche a oreille dans les restos du coeur New Yorkais a été efficace, et la nourriture sophistiquée servie aux petits bourgeois révolutionnaires attire les gourmets parmi les Homeless de New York.
Il faut donc en conclure que les SDF new yorkais ne font pas partie de 99% pour lesquels nos petits cheris révolutionnaires se battent !

The Occupy Wall Street volunteer kitchen staff launched a “counter” revolution yesterday — because they’re angry about working 18-hour days to provide food for “professional homeless” people and ex-cons masquerading as protesters.
For three days beginning tomorrow, the cooks will serve only brown rice and other spartan grub instead of the usual menu of organic chicken and vegetables, spaghetti bolognese, and roasted beet and sheep’s-milk-cheese salad.
They will also provide directions to local soup kitchens for the vagrants, criminals and other freeloaders who have been descending on Zuccotti Park in increasing numbers every day. (Lire la suite…)

Mais plein d’humour quand même…

Mad Debt
A threat to liberty.

On Thursday, in honor of Barack Obama’s 50th birthday, the Dow dropped ten points for every year he has walked among us. It was the ninth largest drop in history. We should be relieved he wasn’t turning eighty.

The markets are apparently concerned that the entire global economy may be “stalling.” You don’t say? Observant fellows, these market chappies.

And yet, in a certain sense, these are still the good times. At the end of the week, U.S. Treasury yields plunged to Eisenhower-era rates. America, explained Ethan Harris of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, “still gets the safe haven money.” That’s to say, as crazy as Washington is, Europe is perceived to be crazier. In confirmation of the point, over in Italy, which is (believe it or not) a G7 economy, police raided Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s over allegations that all the meanie things that the rating agencies have been saying about the Italian economy were having an impact on Italian stock prices. Apparently that’s a crime in Italy. They’re not yet shooting the messenger. But they are dragging him through the streets in chains pour encourager les autres. Good luck with that.

But I wonder if “the safe haven money” is quite as safe as its investors assume. Under the “historic” “resolution” of the debt crisis (and don’t those very words “debt crisis” already feel so last week?), America will be cutting federal spending by $900 billion over ten years. “Cutting federal spending by $900 billion over ten years” is Washington-speak for increasing federal spending by $7 trillion over ten years. And, as they’d originally planned to increase it by eight trillion, that counts as a cut. If they’d planned to increase it by $20 trillion and then settled for merely $15 trillion, they could have saved five trillion. See how easy this is? (Lire la suite…)

Une Musulmane condamnée a 6 mois de prison pour fausse accusation d’un policier, vient d’être libérée par le juge en appel, sous prétexte que l’on ne pouvait être sur que c’était bien elle qui avait porte plainte, puisque la personne qui avait fait la declaration devant la police portait une Burka et était donc in-reconnaissable.
De quelle fausse accusation s’agit-il ?
Elle avait accusée a la télévision, puis par une plainte officielle, le policier « raciste » qui l’avait arrêtée d’avoir essaye d’arracher sa burqa de son visage. La vidéo obtenue de la camera de la voiture de police avait prouve que c’était faux.

Muslim woman Carnita Matthews escapes jail by remaining behind her burqa

Extrait:

After being stopped by NSW police last year for not displaying her P-plates, Ms Matthews was ordered to pay $276 in fines and court costs.

She claimed on Channel Seven and allegedly in a statutory declaration to Campbelltown police that the officer who stopped her had attempted to tear the burqa off her face, a claim that was proven untrue by the police patrol car video camera.

A magistrate last year found her guilty of making a deliberately false statement and sentenced her to jail for six months. Ms Matthews appealed, saying there was no proof she was the person in the burqa making the atatement and Judge Clive Jeffreys in the District Court yesterday upheld her appeal.

Intéressante supputation dans le Wall Street Journal aujourd’hui :

What If Jews Had Followed the Palestinian Path?
Postwar Jewish refugees left everything they had in Europe—no ‘right of return’ requested.

By WARREN KOZAK

It is doubtful that there has ever been a more miserable human refuse than Jewish survivors after World War II. Starving, emaciated, stateless—they were not welcomed back by countries where they had lived for generations as assimilated and educated citizens. Germany was no place to return to and in Kielce, Poland, 40 Jews who survived the Holocaust were killed in a pogrom one year after the war ended. The European Jew, circa 1945, quickly went from victim to international refugee disaster.

Yet within a very brief time, this epic calamity disappeared, so much so that few people today even remember the period. How did this happen in an era when Palestinian refugees have continued to be stateless for generations? (Lire la suite…)

Ou Comment faire baisser le cout astronomique des etudes aux Etats-unis…

Time to Make Professors Teach
My new study suggests a simple way to cut college tuition in half.
By RICHARD VEDDER

No sooner do parents proudly watch their children graduate high school than they must begin paying for college. As they write checks for upwards of $40,000 a year, they’ll no doubt find themselves complaining loudly about rising college costs—even asking: « Is it worth it? »

It’s a legitimate question. As college costs have risen wildly, the benefits of the degree seem less and less clear. Larger numbers of college graduates are taking relatively low-paying and low-skilled jobs.

The good news? There are ways to greatly ease the burden and make college more affordable, according to new data from the University of Texas at Austin.

In a study for the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, Christopher Matgouranis, Jonathan Robe and I concluded that tuition fees at the flagship campus of the University of Texas could be cut by as much as half simply by asking the 80% of faculty with the lowest teaching loads to teach about half as much as the 20% of faculty with the highest loads. The top 20% currently handle 57% of all teaching. (Lire la suite…)

Je compte sur Sil pour nous faire une jolie fable sur cette histoire…

Saudi Cleric Warns of Western Conspiracy: Design of Jedda Airport Resembles a Penis And a Vagina…

(MEMRI) – Following are excerpts from a video featuring Saudi cleric Dr. Ali Baqna (June 1, 2011):

Ali Baqna: This clip reveals the true story behind the design of the [Jedda] airport. We can see clearly in this picture… This is the head, here is one hand, and here is another hand. This is a leg, and here is the other leg. But what do we have here? This is a women’s vagina. And what do we have here? A man’s penis. And here we have another vagina.

This is a man’s penis [coming out] of a vagina, but opposite it, there is a woman lying on the land of the Arabian Peninsula. This pillar represents the penis – God forbid – in this pagan design, and this represents the female. This is exactly what it represents. It is very clear, Allah be praised.

This is a drawing made according to this model. This is the airport. Here is the head, these are the hands, and here you have the legs. The woman’s vagina is very clear in this drawing. This is a depiction of the tallest control tower in the world.

This is only to make things clear to you, and to show you that this design is a pagan design, a design of the sacred woman whom they worship, in order to sanctify fertility, witchcraft, paganism, and so on.

Here you can clearly see the head, the hands, and the legs. The tower erected here represents a human penis, God forbid. This here represents a woman’s vagina, God forbid. To my view, this is crystal clear.

People who know how the West thinks realize that this reflects their never-ending ways of deception. It is as Allah said: “Nor will they cease fighting you.” They are fighting you with weapons, with spearheads, with ideology, and so on.

This is a vagina from which a penis comes out. “Allah’s curse be upon them, how they are deluded away from the truth.” The [West] relies upon such theories, such desires, and the so-called women’s liberation. Why? Women’s liberation? So that women can be like the rebellious Lilith.

A rajouter au debat sur l’exploitation du gaz de shiste en France

Everything you’ve heard about fossil fuels may be wrong
The future of energy is not what you think it is

Are we living at the beginning of the Age of Fossil Fuels, not its final decades? The very thought goes against everything that politicians and the educated public have been taught to believe in the past generation. According to the conventional wisdom, the U.S. and other industrial nations must undertake a rapid and expensive transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy for three reasons: The imminent depletion of fossil fuels, national security and the danger of global warming.

What if the conventional wisdom about the energy future of America and the world has been completely wrong?

As everyone who follows news about energy knows by now, in the last decade the technique of hydraulic fracturing or « fracking, » long used in the oil industry, has evolved to permit energy companies to access reserves of previously-unrecoverable “shale gas” or unconventional natural gas. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, these advances mean there is at least six times as much recoverable natural gas today as there was a decade ago.

Natural gas, which emits less carbon dioxide than coal, can be used in both electricity generation and as a fuel for automobiles.

The implications for energy security are startling. Natural gas may be only the beginning. Fracking also permits the extraction of previously-unrecoverable “tight oil,” thereby postponing the day when the world runs out of petroleum. There is enough coal to produce energy for centuries. And governments, universities and corporations in the U.S., Canada, Japan and other countries are studying ways to obtain energy from gas hydrates, which mix methane with ice in high-density formations under the seafloor. The potential energy in gas hydrates may equal that of all other fossils, including other forms of natural gas, combined. (Lire la suite…)

A new billboard that debuted yesterday in Grand Junction, Colorado:
The billboard’s tagline, “Vote DemocRAT–Join the game,” is littered with every conceivable meme that has been leveled at President Barack Obama as four iterations of the President–as Muslim/Terrorist, Nazi/Fascist and gangster, Communist/open borders supporter, and a supporter of gay rights–play cards, ostensibly “gamble” with the Statue of Liberty, a figure of blindfolded Justice, the Holy Bible, an American soldier, Uncle Sam, and a bald eagle. As they play, grinning vultures bearing the labels “$oro$” and a blue U.N. helmet look on, while several rats lurk from below, variously labeled “trial lawyer,” “IRS,” “EPA,” and “FED.”

The billboard itself lacks the shoulder badges emblazoned with the Muslim crescent and star, the swastika, and the hammer-and-sickle that appear to either have been part of the original picture, or were added later.

Enough Already with Reverend Jones
September 10, 2010 12:23 P.M.
By Victor Davis Hanson

Everyone is trying to outdo one another in righteous condemnation of the Reverend Terry Jones and his micro-flock, to assure the world that 50 people out of 300 million does not a majority make. That is altogether fine and good, and yet we all know the asymmetry involved — whether it is a scholarly remark made by a pope and the Muslim riots in response, or the policies of many Arab countries forbidding open worship by other religions and, in some cases, the presence of non-Muslims in entire cities (Lire la suite…)

Burning Questions
The Koran-burning stunt is a stupid and pointless provocation — sound familiar?

How do you know your vacation has been too short? You leave behind one charlatan, whose concept of “building bridges” is a patently offensive project to build a giant Islamic center on a site where the remains of the thousands killed by Islamist terrorists are still being found, and then return to deal with another charlatan, one whose idea of nurturing a Christian community is to rally it to the gratuitously offensive gesture of burning Korans.

It’s a shame that we need to waste time condemning minister Terry Jones. He’s obviously a nincompoop. But I suppose the fact that he’s being universally condemned for this useless provocation is an improvement. Remember the classified prisoner-abuse photos that the Obama administration was hot to disclose last year, until a groundswell of protest from the military and the public finally impelled Congress to act responsibly when the president wouldn’t? That, too, was a gratuitous provocation that would have served no purpose other than to pull the hair-trigger of Muslim rage. Yet the Left — including the Justice Department — was indifferent to the threat posed to our troops by that action. The pictures simply had to be disclosed because they may have made the United States and the Bush administration look bad, and anything that can make the United States and the Bush administration look bad is worth doing, no matter the cost. (Lire la suite…)

L’administrateur de la NASA, Charles Bolden, a déclaré dans une interview à Al Jazeera que la plus importante mission de l’agence spatiale était d’améliorer les relations avec le monde musulman, selon les instructions qu’il a reçues d’Obama lors de sa nomination.

« Quand je suis devenu administrateur de la NASA, il m’a charge de trois choses. Aider a inspirer les enfants a faire des maths et des sciences, étendre nos relations internationales,et troisièmement et ce qui est peut-être le plus important, il voulait que je trouve le moyen de tendre la main au monde musulman et d’avoir plus de contact avec les nations a dominance musulmanes pour qu’ils apprécient mieux leur contribution historiques à la science… aux maths et à l’ingénierie » a-t’il déclaré durant l’interview.

Hum… Exploration de nouvelles frontières… On ne va plus sur la lune , parce qu’on n’a pas les moyens, mais par contre on va dépenser de l’argent à essayer de rendre les musulmans fiers d’eux mêmes… Faut dire qu’il a du boulot sur la planche ce pauvre Bolden. Il aura du mal à convaincre qui que ce soit des contributions scientifiques de ces bonnes gens qui en sont encore à lapider les femmes adultères, et considèrent que réciter le Coran par cœur est toute l’instruction nécessaire pour les enfants !

Excellent article de Mark Steyn sur l’attitude d’Obama concernant McChrystal et la catastrophe ecologique dans le Golfe du Mexique

The Unengaged President

Obama’s lack of interest in the world is evident in his handling of the oil spill and the Afghan War.

What do General McChrystal and British Petroleum have in common? Aside from the fact that they’re both Democratic-party supporters.

Or they were. Stanley McChrystal is a liberal who voted for Obama and banned Fox News from his HQ TV. Which may at least partly explain how he became the first U.S. general to be lost in combat while giving an interview to Rolling Stone: They’ll be studying that one in war colleges around the world for decades. The executives of BP were unable to vote for Obama, being, as we now know, the most sinister duplicitous bunch of shifty Brits to pitch up offshore since the War of 1812. But, in their “Beyond Petroleum” marketing and beyond, they signed on to every modish nostrum of the eco-Left. Their recently retired chairman, Lord Browne, was one of the most prominent promoters of cap-and-trade. BP was the Democrats’ favorite oil company. They were to Obama what Total Fina Elf was to Saddam. (Lire la suite…)