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Anti-Assad rebels from the Jabhat al-Nusra Front are reported to have carried out a raid on the Syrian town of Tal Abyad near the Turkish border this past week. Rebel troops are said to have gone door-to-door killing everyone they encountered—including an estimated 450 women, children, and elderly men. The Jabhat al-Nusra Front is one of the groups receiving military assistance from the Obama Administration and was visited earlier this year by Senator John McCain (R-Ariz) for a photo op. McCain hastened to mention that “the reports of the massacre have yet to be confirmed by the Administration. Even if...

Welcome back to our series on what weakens our integrity and how to strengthen it. Thus far we have discussed how we decide to commit a dishonest act, and how the distance between that act and its consequences can increase our ability to rationalize immorality as acceptable behavior. Today we are going to discuss another important factor that influences our comfort level with dishonest decisions: seeing other people make them. Dishonesty as a Social Contagion As psychology professor Dan Ariely explored the nature and motivations for dishonesty, he found himself wondering whether it might spread from person to person like...

Monday, August 12, 2013 Hiroshima's Lessons for the War on Terror Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog In the summer of '45, the United States concluded a war that had come to be seen by some as unwinnable after the carnage at Iwo Jima, with a bang. On August 6th, the bomb fell on Hiroshima. And then on the 9th, it was Nagasaki's turn. Six days later, Japan, which had been preparing to fight to the last man, surrendered. For generations of liberals, those two names would come to represent the horror of America's war machine, when...

Good Evening, We just picked up a Fender Blue Deluxe guitar amp. I've been reading limited but mixed reviews. For your musician friends our there, what say you? You feedback and experience is appreciated. Thanks, TJI

Science is the systematic application of a logico-empiricist method to look at and understand things, and was born in Christian Europe first with the Scholastic philosophy and then with Leonardo da Vinci, Francis Bacon and Galileo Galilei. The necessary foundation for scientific research is the belief in one God that created a universe regulated by immutable laws which can be understood by man exactly because God's mind and man's are similar except in extent. The Christian God is a person. Galileo famously talked about the "book of nature", that scientists try to read, being written by God. This is possible...

Americans from all generations can enjoy this one minute reminder that some of the best things about being an American can never be extinguished by any president no matter how hard he tries.

Liberals love their fantasies about slavery in America. It makes them feel superior to insist America was founded by “Old White Men” (OWM) who loved slavery. They refuse to acknowledge that those same OWMs often freed their own slaves although not until their death. They love their own fairy tale that, “freeing slaves had nothing to do with the Civil War.” Allowing that would force them to credit Lincoln and the (hated) Republicans with freeing the slaves – a gross violation of the false liberal narrative of American history. They are so desperate to keep the truth of who were...

Last week, on Rush's show he spent quite a lot of time talking about how journalists view their industry as being above advertising; that they do not need to make a profit. They should be able to lose money in perpetuity and never face cutbacks. There is an answer to why this mindset exists. In short, journalists view advertising as a hallmark of "yellow journalism". Delos F. Wilcox, Ph. D. gives us the answer we need on page 91 of a book he wrote titled "The American Newspaper: A Study in Social Psychology". Published in 1900, originally in the Annals...

Continuing on the theme of what Muslims did - or more likely did not do - for the world, there is a widespread misconception that they "invented algebra". Maybe this fallacy is due to the fact that "algebra" is a word of Arabic origin, but historical questions are not solved by etymological answers. Yes, the English word "algebra" derives from the Arabic. So does "sugar" (from the Arabic "sukkar") but that doesn't mean that Muslims invented sugar. The word "algebra" stems from the Arabic word "al-jabr", from the name of the treatise Book on Addition and Subtraction after the Method...

They try to justify murder Proverbs 14:12 and 16:25 warn us: “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.” In his “Life of Lycurgus”, the Greek historian Plutarch (48-122 A.D.) records that in Sparta in ancient Greece, the Spartan elders examined all newborn babies and ordered that any who were not well-built and sturdy were to be killed by leaving them in the bush at the foot of Mount Taygetus:

Sunday, August 11, 2013 Winning the Peace Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog In our modern age, things no longer exist to perform their function. Washing machines aren't designed to clean clothes, but to save water and energy. Food isn't there to be eaten, but not eaten. And armies aren't there to win wars, but to be moral. And the truly moral army never fights a war. When it must fight a war, then it fights it as proportionately as possible, slowing down when it's winning so that the enemy has a chance to catch up and...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Here are 239 examples of Barack Obama’s lying, lawbreaking, corruption, cronyism, etc. In the 2008 United States election, I wrote in Ron Paul for President. In the 2012 election, I voted for Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson. Those who are of a more leftist persuasion than myself might want to consider voting for the Green Party in future elections. Some of the things on this list are major events that should scare the daylights out of any true liberal who cares about civil liberties.Other things on this list are medium things that some Obama supporters may...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Here are 239 examples of Barack Obama’s lying, lawbreaking, corruption, cronyism, etc. In the 2008 United States election, I wrote in Ron Paul for President. In the 2012 election, I voted for Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson. Those who are of a more leftist persuasion than myself might want to consider voting for the Green Party in future elections. Some of the things on this list are major events that should scare the daylights out of any true liberal who cares about civil liberties.Other things on this list are medium things that some Obama supporters may...

But there is more that is far from funny. Not only did I publicly detail the misfeasance of Magistrate Judge Robinson in dismissing the indictment against the fugitive Elizabeth Duke in my Petition, I requested in my Motion to Expedite that the Court let me file ex parte and under seal information which would explain "why" the Obama Department of Justice took the extraordinary step -- in violation of their own regulations -- to orally move without explanation to dismiss an indictment against a fugitive terrorist.

In "Sociology for the South: or, The failure of free society", George Fitzhugh writes the following: (pages 244-246) Domestic slavery in the Southern States has produced the same results in elevating the character of the master that it did in Greece and Rome. He is lofty and independent in his sentiments, generous, affectionate, brave and eloquent; he is superior to the Northerner in every thing but the arts of thrift. History proves this. A Yankee sometimes gets hold of the reins of State, attempts Apollo, but acts Phaeton. Scipio and Aristides, Calhoun and Washington, are the noble results of domestic...

In an appearance on the Tonight Show, President Barack Obama criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin for what he labeled a “cold war mentality.” At issue was Putin's grant of asylum to NSA leaker Edward Snowden and his refusal to allow the US to extradite him. “The whole idea of the 'reset button' was that our two governments would cooperate with each other,” Obama lamented. “Now, instead of doing what we ask the Russians have suddenly developed scruples against spying on citizens. They invented spying on citizens. They're such hypocrites.” The fact that the US has granted asylum to many defectors...

As rumors brew further regarding Sen. Ted Cruz's (R-Texas) 2016 presidential ambitions, the bold champion of constitutional conservatism is off to Iowa today (Saturday) to meet with/speak to a conservative group in the influential primary state. The event will be in conjunction with the Family Leadership Summit, and held at Iowa State University (Ames) this afternoon.  Cruz made an appearance in New Hampshire -the first voting primary state, vital for any 2016 hopeful- just last month, where he headlined a NH state Republican Party fundraiser, and has already popped up in early-voting South Carolina, where the good Senator spoke at the...

Friday, August 09, 2013 Friday Afternoon Roundup - The Road to Amnestyville Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog 0 Comments  "In a way this is the perfect role for Alec Baldwin since he’s been playing an MSNBC host all his life. Now he’ll finally get to play one in real life." DE JURE AMNESTY The 1986 amnesty or the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which neither reformed nor controlled immigration, took in some 3 million illegal aliens. The new amnesty or Comprehensive Immigration Reform covers 12 million illegal aliens. If 1986’s euphemistic amnesty was a mere amnesty,...

The guy just doesn’t fit in. He needs to quit now in order to explore great new opportunities for the sake of the children. Chicago’s Police Superintendent Garry Francis McCarthy, known lovingly as McStreetlights, was hand picked by Mayor Rahm “Tiny Dancer” Emanuel to do something about Chicago, a city whose kill stats are worse than those of Afghanistan. In a stunning panoply of ironic details, the man blew in from NYPD’s CompStat program, moved over to Newark, then sent letters to Chicago gang bangers, telling them in essence that he knew where they lived and to have a nice...

How would America ever survive without the central planners in the Obama administration and at the Federal Reserve? What in the world would we do if there was no income tax and no IRS? Could the U.S. economy possibly keep from collapsing under such circumstances? The mainstream media would have us believe that unless we have someone "to pull the levers" our economy would descend into utter chaos, but the truth is that the best period of economic growth in U.S. history occurred during a time when there was no income tax and no Federal Reserve. Between the Civil War...

Venezuelans never had a right to keep and bear arms, not even before Chavez. Of course, the death of Chavez has not stopped draconian push for even more gun control, and contrary to The Christian Science Monitor, gun ownership was never unregulated.Still, I assume the rest of their article is truthful, so here are the highlights.“The CPD and Mixed Commission differed mainly over the issue of restricting the sale and carrying of legal arms. According to Fernández, “The illegal market is nourished by legal arms.” In contrast, the military faction argued that the two issues were distinct and that,...

Russia's immigration issues would be familiar to Americans: Millions of impoverished migrants have come and found low-wage jobs. Some are in Russia illegally and are exploited by their employers. And a growing number of Russians fear this influx of migrants, many of whom are Muslim, is changing the face of the country. At 3:30 on a recent morning, the train from Dushanbe, Tajikistan, pulls into Moscow after a four-day journey. The passengers hauling their bags out onto the damp, ill-lit platform are mostly men. Russian police eye the new arrivals with suspicion. Every day, trains and planes arrive from Uzbekistan,...

Thursday, August 08, 2013 Quality of Life Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog It's hard to remember sometimes that the latest Bloombergian crusade to ban all the sodas, steal all the salt or wall off half the streets to automobile traffic had its roots in another New York City where Times Square was a seedy flickering danger zone, entire neighborhoods were always on the verge of an explosion and the only optimistic people were the ones moving out. Some twenty years ago, Rudy Giuliani began tackling crime directly with waves of men in blue using smarter and...

On August 8, 1974, Richard M. Nixon, fearing certain conviction by the United States Senate in an impeachment trial, resigned the office of the Presidency, the only person ever to do so. There were good reasons to impeach him. He had committed the economic sin of signing and managing a leviathanate Democrat hodgepodge of wage and price controls. He had negotiated and signed an Anti-Ballistic Missile reduction treaty that basically advertised that we could not now, and never would, defend ourselves against ICBMs. He oversaw the creation of nanny-state agencies such as the EPA and OSHA. He created the well-intentioned...

More at Reaganite Republican...

Aside from the often ignored coincidence that left and sinister share a common meaning, the very fact that the Left, particularly the moderate sounding Leftists, have long disguised their intentions with pleasant sounding labels should automatically send our native instincts on edge that there has been something sinister going on over there. So let us always be ready to review their history. The Left has a pattern that it consistently follows. They call themselves progressive; but their lust for power makes them regressive. Concentrated power comes at the expense of individual rights. There is no exception.They call themselves liberal; but...

The video that you can see by clicking on the link just below this post title is that of a BBC lynch mob against Tommy Robinson of the English Defence League, during the programme called - a misnomer - FreeSpeech on BBC3. It is not free speech if you verbally abuse and even incite to murder someone for exercising his right to free speech, as it happens in this "debate". Interestingly, the comments to the video on YouTube reveal how the audience was cherry-picked by the BBC to fit its political bent and in no way represents the British general...

Europe 's view of the present Israeli offensive against Hezbollah as an "overreaction" and "disproportionate use of force" is rooted in relatively recent history, say progressive researchers. In 1943, Europe itself suffered from a similar Jewish overreaction to some controversial German policies, in an event known as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, when Zionist radicals attacked the National Socialist German Workers Party that was loved by the German people for its far-reaching educational and social welfare services. In fact, many academics who teach Peace Studies at prestigious universities believe that it was the Zionists' "disproportionate use of force" that had ruined...

Wednesday, August 07, 2013 Sacrifices of Peace Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog In one of the most famous events in the Bible, G-d commanded Abraham to sacrifice his only son. So Abraham took his son Isaac, bound him on an altar and prepared to bring him up as a burnt offering. And then the voice of the angel called to him and told him not to harm his son. G-d did not want human sacrifices. The peace process does. After the handshake with Arafat in the Rose Garden led to a wave of terrorist attacks, Prime...

“Yes, we are facing difficult days. Yet there is hope ahead. Have faith and love for every member of the human race. It is time to hate the sin and love the sinner. We can set the example with personal and communal repentance, revival, restoration, rebuilding, recovery and renewal.” For Alveda King, “it’s all about redemption.” Her uncle once said: “We must discover the power of love, the power – the redemptive power of love. And when we discover that we will be able to make of this old world a new world. We will be able to make men...

THE IMPOSSIBLE AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN ULTIMATUM TO SERBIA IN 1914Aleksandra's Note: What follows is the impossible ultimatum presented to the Serbian government by Austria-Hungary on July 23, 1914, just over 3 weeks after the June 28th assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Fair historians have assessed this ultimatum as being both unreasonable and, more importantly, clearly intended to set Serbia up to fail to meet the demands, thus giving the green light for the war against the Serbs the Empire had been planning all along. All dates indicated are according to the current [Gregorian] calendar. The "old calendar" [Julian] date...

“Judicial Supremacy is the gospel of modern American constitutional law.” (1) It is the dishonest method whereby the nation’s highest court may create–or recreate–the supreme law of the land with each successive decision. Two hundred and twenty three years ago, the Constitution was ratified after the adoption of the Bill of Rights. It was from the beginning a document written not for the judiciary or the legal elite, but by and for the American people. Look at the Preamble: “We the People of the United States” it begins. The preamble of a legal document in 1787 identified the parties involved...

Think: could a 30 year old paper passport file feature digitally re-constructed photos?Without replacement of the actual.... image found its way into the digital file that matters. It’s the fact that the digital file itself is totally fabricated.What’s more, it’s not just .... that are forged and fraudulent. All “Stanley Ann Dunham� files are fraudulent..... is the manufactured mother presented by “Obama� to occlude his actual, living mother’s multiple identities, political posturing, and criminal history.“........ is as fake a person as her made-up son, “BHO II�.The Terrible Truth

Watch as Louisiana State Senator Elbert Lee Guillory, who recently switched to Republican, joins Rev. James Manning and announces his opposition to Democrat policies as destructive of the Black family. Sen. Guillory has become the head of FREE AND LAST PAC.

Are American workers paid enough? That is a topic that is endlessly debated all across this great land of ours. Unfortunately, what pretty much everyone can agree on is that American workers are not making as much as they used to after you account for inflation. Back in 1968, the minimum wage in the United States was $1.60 an hour. That sounds very small, but after you account for inflation a very different picture emerges. Using the inflation calculator that the Bureau of Labor Statistics provides, $1.60 in 1968 is equivalent to $10.74 today. And of course the official government...

Monday, August 05, 2013 Five Lessons from Egypt and the Arab Spring Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog 1. Don't Believe Anything You Hear Egyptian liberals allied with the Muslim Brotherhood to overthrow Mubarak and challenge the military. In those heady Tahrir Square days, they ridiculed the idea that the Muslim Brotherhood was part of the protests and that Mubarak's overthrow would benefit it. Now those same liberals have teamed up with the military to take down a Muslim Brotherhood government that they told us would never come to power. But don't be surprised if a year...

I.A. Ilyin. On Totalitarian RegimeThirty years ago it wouldn’t have occurred to anyone to include in the science of jurisprudence the concept of "totalitarian" state; not because the idea of such a state has never appeared on the horizon of a historian (that would be wrong!), but because such a regime seemed impossible and no one could evilly contemplate it. Even if someone "invented" it (cf. e.g. Shigalev –Verkhovenskii’s project in "Demons" by Dostoevsky!), all would have said no, there is no such shameless and crazy people on the face of the earth, no such monstrous government offices , no...

Cap Black The Hood Conservative Anti Crime Activist Organizer Brothers Against Crime http://capblackhood.blogspot.com/2013/07/brothers-against-crime-flyer.html New Orleans   Press Release   Times Picayune article: Unarmed teen shot inside homeowner's fenced yard, but not breaking into home, NOPD warrant says http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2013/07/marigny_homeowner_shooting.html   Below is my post about this on nola.com:   "He would steal -- he was a professional thief, sure," David Coulter said. "But he would never pick up a gun, not in a million years. He was too scared to aim a gun at the grass, let alone aim it at a person. No way. Before he'll ever pick up...

Sunday, August 04, 2013 A Schizophrenic Elephant Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog The Republican Party's biggest problem is mental illness. The big elephant party is suffering from a severe case of split personality disorder. It's an old problem that has only gotten worse over the years. It can be hard to remember sometimes while swimming in the media bubble that depicts the Republican Party as some offshoot of the John Birch Society, the KKK and the Confederacy, that it's the exact opposite. All of the organizations mentioned got their start opposing the Republican Party. The Republican...

Wikipedia/Co Tibbets - the Enola Gay What's in a name? Ships so often are named after women.  And even airships ... we call them airplanes. ;)  And the Enola Gay was one of them. This Boeing B-29 bomber was named after her commander's mother - Enola Gay Haggard Tibbets.   The commander's name back then in 1945 was  Colonel Paul Tibbets.   And the mission of this bomber hastened the end of the most deadly war in the 20th century, if not in human history  - World War Two.   (For an interesting set of statistics of causalities of war by...

It is now reported that there were numerous CIA operatives on the ground in Benghazi during last year's assault on the Consulate that killed Ambassador Stephens and three other Americans. Representative Frank Wolf (R-VA) contends that some of these operatives want to testify, but have been intimidated into silence. According to CNN reporter Drew Griffin, the Agency has implemented a full-court-press of monthly polygraph tests aimed at finding out if anyone has been talking to the media or Congress. Talkers reportedly have been threatened with termination or worse. Several have been reminded that their families' safety could be at risk....

Five years ago today, August 3, 2008, one of my heroes died. I never met him, but I think I know him. Of one thing I’m certain, the influence exerted on me by Alexander Solzhenitsyn is incalculable. It’s difficult to explain the personal impact of Solzhenitsyn. He was such a massive figure in the public eye and provoked controversy (the good kind) throughout the course of his life. He was born on December 11, 1918, in Kislovodsk in southern Russia. Toward the end of WW II, in 1945, while serving as a captain in the Red Army, he was arrested...

Russia’s decision to grant a temporary one-year asylum to NSA whistle blower Edward Snowden was described as “unfortunate” and “extremely disappointing” by Presidential Press Secretary Jay Carney. Carney contrasted “Russia’s uncooperative stance with FDR’s extraordinarily accommodating attitude toward the repatriation of millions of unwilling refugees from the Soviet Union after World War II. FDR knew that these refugees didn’t want to go back. Many faced torture, imprisonment in the Gulag, and execution. He could have balked for humanitarian reasons. But his personal sense of obligation to Stalin overrode his qualms.” “Now with the roles reversed, Stalin’s heirs won’t even return...

There was no shortage of candidates this week for our dubious Jerk of the Week honors. From Obama to Charlie Rangel to others, a lot of people vied to win the top honor. While many of those are individuals who could easily win every week, it is our solemn duty to highlight those whose conduct is most egregious. For that reason, our winner this week is Michael Shulan, creative director of the 9/11 Memorial Museum. Shulan started out the week strong, and nobody else managed to catch him in terms of sheer jerkitude. (Yes, I made that word up.) Shulan...

Friday, August 02, 2013 Friday Afternoon Roundup - Krugmanism and Communism Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog Egyptians Protest Obama by Photoshopping him as Osama   SLIDING INTO THE EAST RIVER New York may be ruled by a governor who helped cause the financial meltdown, while New York City may have a mayor who was forced to resign from Congress and its comptroller will be a former governor who was forced to resign for transporting a prostitute across state lines. He will be replacing the current comptroller who may go to jail for campaign finance fraud. All...

“This issue transcends partisanship, and we must work together,” said AG Eric Holder in a speech before the National Urban League in Philadephia a week ago. (1) The “issue” Holder referred to was the overthrow by the Supreme Court of the preclearance requirement–Sections 4, 5–of the Voting Rights Act. Thanks to the ruling in Shelby County v Holder it will no longer be necessary for selected states and jurisdictions to have all proposed changes to voting procedure approved (precleared) by the Department of Justice or the DC District Court. And how has the Attorney General decided to “transcend partisanship” and...

Aleksandra's Note: I had the pleasure of meeting RCAF veteran Norman Reid in Chicago in 1994 at the 50th anniversary celebration of the Halyard Mission, as part of a week long world-wide commemoration of the 50th anniversary of D-Day. He impressed me as a kind, soft-spoken, unassuming gentleman who escorted me to the D-Day activities on Lake Michigan that same week. I had hoped to keep in touch with Mr. Reid in the following years. I do not know if he is still alive and hope that if anyone does know, they will get in touch with me.These are the...

Thursday, August 01, 2013 The Environmental Apocalypse Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog Early in the morning, while most are still sleeping, groups of elderly Chinese women spread out across city streets. They tear open trash bags, pick through the litter and sort out bottles and cans that come with a deposit. And then they bring them to the local supermarket to a machine that scans and evaluates each can, accepting and rejecting them one by one, and finally printing out a receipt. The interaction between the elderly immigrant who speaks broken English or the homeless man...

Imagine what else archaeologists and historians would have found had the Muslim authorities not systematically destroyed artifacts and historical discoveries in what Natan Sharansky has called the largest archeological catastrophe in history. Obviously there is a savage movement afoot that doesn't want to know; nor do they want anyone else to, either. MK Aryeh Eldad has brought to the floor of the Knesset the unsupervised digging carried out by the Muslim authorities (the "Wakf") on the Temple Mount by means of heavy machinery. "I received a series of photographs of digs on the Temple Mount near the Dome of the...

Tuesday, July 30, 2013 Playing for Islam Against Ourselves Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog WWI was caused less by the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, and more by Germany and Austria Hungary's eagerness in courting the Muslim Ottoman Empire. Before and during WW2, England and Germany both assiduously courted Muslim support in the Middle East. The Holocaust was one of the byproducts of this rivalry, as Germany courted Muslims by appealing to the genocidal impulses of the Mufti of Jerusalem, while England reneged on its agreements, and shut the door to Jewish refugees trying to Israel. The...