"I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened"
Featuring:
'I see parchment burning,
but the letters are soaring free'
Jeff Jacoby
"Know who you are standing with"
"Show me your friends and I'll show you your future"
~~~lll~~~
Random Acts of Jihad?
In an recent interview with Vox, Barack nObama pontificated on the recent jihadi attacks in Paris, which he said was perpetrated by "a bunch of violent, vicious zealots who ... randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris." It was absurd to say the attack was "random" when the Muslim jihadis' explicit motive was a killing Jews. nObama mouthpiece Josh Earnest struggled mightily to explain his boss's comments: "The adverb that the president chose was used to indicate that the individuals who were killed in that terrible, tragic incident were killed not because of who they were but because of where they randomly happened to be." He then told reporters, "There were people other than just Jews who were in that deli." Earnest repeatedly denied the kosher status of the market had anything to do with the attack. What utterly asinine horse pucky. American cops are clearly racist, according to nObama, but Muslims couldn't possibly target Jews on purpose. nObama and his underlings have a serious problem denying the role of Islam in the rise of terrorism on his watch. But perhaps even nObama's cronies realized how ridiculous the whole episode was, later taking to Twitter to "clarify" things. "Our view has not changed," Earnest tweeted. "Terror attack at Paris Kosher market was motivated by anti-Semitism. POTUS didn't intend to suggest otherwise." Somehow, we're disinclined to believe that. -The Patriot Post 
Shock: nObama Lied About Support for Traditional Marriage
According to David Axelrod's memoir, Barack nObama once told his former adviser, "I'm just not very good at bulls----ing." We know; total BS. The subject matter was nObama's political choice to feign support for traditional marriage during the 2008 campaign. Even nObama's water carriers at Time magazine were dismayed: "Barack nObama misled Americans for his own political benefit." Right, this just in. According to Axelrod, "Opposition to gay marriage was particularly strong in the black church, and as [nObama] ran for higher office, he grudgingly accepted the counsel of more pragmatic folks like me, and modified his position to support civil unions rather than marriage, which he would term a 'sacred union.'" nObama even couched his lie in terms of his faith -- "as a Christian..." he said. So he lied about his own faith and principles, but Axelrod says it's a virtue that he was uncomfortable doing so. nObama then spent the next couple of years "evolving" on the issue so he could appear to have been persuaded by the evidence. Naturally, nObama claims he didn't mislead voters, he just hadn't come up with "a sufficient way of squaring the circle" of his personal beliefs and political reality. We don't buy it. Such deceit on nObama's part shouldn't surprise anyone. He knows nothing but politics, and he uses every issue, including family and his supposed Christian faith, for his own political benefit. -The Patriot Post
According to David Axelrod's memoir, Barack nObama once told his former adviser, "I'm just not very good at bulls----ing." We know; total BS. The subject matter was nObama's political choice to feign support for traditional marriage during the 2008 campaign. Even nObama's water carriers at Time magazine were dismayed: "Barack nObama misled Americans for his own political benefit." Right, this just in. According to Axelrod, "Opposition to gay marriage was particularly strong in the black church, and as [nObama] ran for higher office, he grudgingly accepted the counsel of more pragmatic folks like me, and modified his position to support civil unions rather than marriage, which he would term a 'sacred union.'" nObama even couched his lie in terms of his faith -- "as a Christian..." he said. So he lied about his own faith and principles, but Axelrod says it's a virtue that he was uncomfortable doing so. nObama then spent the next couple of years "evolving" on the issue so he could appear to have been persuaded by the evidence. Naturally, nObama claims he didn't mislead voters, he just hadn't come up with "a sufficient way of squaring the circle" of his personal beliefs and political reality. We don't buy it. Such deceit on nObama's part shouldn't surprise anyone. He knows nothing but politics, and he uses every issue, including family and his supposed Christian faith, for his own political benefit. -The Patriot Post
Nobody Needs 10 Rounds Unless 'Arming Against the Government'
Undeterred by their ignominious defeat in the midterm elections, Democrats are bound and determined to keep pushing a losing issue -- gun control. Sen.Chris Murphy (D-CT), who so thoroughly politicized the murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School, introduced a bill to ban all magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds. He exploited a recent security crisis on Capitol Hill. Capitol Police claim to have foiled a planned mass murder in the halls of Congress. "Think of the damage that someone could do in the U.S. Capitol with 30 rounds," Murphy warned. Because he says he hasn't met "a single hunter or a single person who hunts for sport" who needs more than 10 rounds, he thinks none of us need that many. In fact, if we do, we're "arming against the government." That's an interesting thing to say since the final straw for colonists who launched their bid for independence from Great Britain was Redcoats coming to confiscate ammo and arms. Just saying. More... -The Patriot Post
Undeterred by their ignominious defeat in the midterm elections, Democrats are bound and determined to keep pushing a losing issue -- gun control. Sen.Chris Murphy (D-CT), who so thoroughly politicized the murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School, introduced a bill to ban all magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds. He exploited a recent security crisis on Capitol Hill. Capitol Police claim to have foiled a planned mass murder in the halls of Congress. "Think of the damage that someone could do in the U.S. Capitol with 30 rounds," Murphy warned. Because he says he hasn't met "a single hunter or a single person who hunts for sport" who needs more than 10 rounds, he thinks none of us need that many. In fact, if we do, we're "arming against the government." That's an interesting thing to say since the final straw for colonists who launched their bid for independence from Great Britain was Redcoats coming to confiscate ammo and arms. Just saying. More... -The Patriot Post
Is Climate Change Really the Biggest Threat?
As part of Barack bObama's new National Security Strategy, the administration identified a bogus threat: "Climate change is an urgent and growing threat to our national security, contributing to increased natural disasters, refugee flows, and conflicts over basic resources like food and water." Asked about the rationale behind putting such emphasis on global warming while downplaying Islamic terrorism, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said, "The point that the president is making is that there are many more people on an annual basis who have to confront the direct impact on their lives of climate change ... than on terrorism." Pressed to explain further, Earnest doubled down, saying, "When you talk about the direct daily impact, on the daily lives of Americans, particularly Americans living in this country ... more people are directly affected by [climate change] than by terrorism." nObama's priorities are mixed up by design. Expand the government here, diminish U.S. standing abroad. Mission accomplished.
-The Patriot Post
NBC's Williams Angling for Comedy Job
NBC News anchor Brian Williams lied repeatedly about his experience in Iraq, but also perhaps about other events in his career. Given this unsettling truth, NBC could no longer just ignore the problem. "We have decided today to suspend Brian Williams as Managing Editor and Anchor of NBC Nightly News for six months," the network wrote Tuesday. "The suspension will be without pay and is effective immediately. ... While on Nightly News on Friday, January 30, 2015, Brian misrepresented events which occurred while he was covering the Iraq War in 2003. It then became clear that on other occasions Brian had done the same while telling that story in other venues. This was wrong and completely inappropriate for someone in Brian's position." Of course, deceit is nothing new for the Leftmedia, but the Williams episode is really quite astonishing. And it will cost him about $5 million. In related news, Comedy Central's Jon Stewart announced he will leave the "Daily Show," so, if things don't work out for Williams at NBC, maybe the two comics could simply swap roles. More...
-The Patriot Post
1.
Hannah Graham Killer Jesse Matthew Indicted ‘First Degree Murder’
(LARRY O'DELL) - Nearly four months after his arrest in the disappearance of a missing University of Virginia student, Jesse Matthew Jr. has been indicted on a murder count in the case...but he won't face the death penalty and still has not been charged in the death of another student. Matthew, 33, is charged with first-degree murder and abduction with intent to defile, Albemarle County prosecutor Denise Lunsford said Tuesday. Hannah Graham, 18, disappeared in September and was found dead in the county a few weeks later. Lunsford declined to say why Matthew was not charged with the higher count of capital murder, which would have carried a possible death-penalty sentence. The abduction and first-degree murder charges are punishable by up to life in prison. http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2015/02/10/hannah-graham-killer-jesse-matthew-indicted-first-degree-murder-no-death-penalty-no-charges-in-morgan-harrington-case-yet/
2.
Europe’s Jewish Population Continues to Plummet
(ETHAN EPSTEIN) - If you ignore the cringe-worthy opening line of this article from the Pew Research Center – the Holocaust did far worse than “decimate” Europe’s Jewish population...you will find some interesting facts. In a nutshell, Europe’s Jewish population continues to decline. There are now approximately 1.4 million Jews living in Europe, compared to 9.5 million in 1939. Only 10 percent of the world’s Jews now live in Europe, and a mere 0.2 percent of Europeans are Jewish. And apparently, Europe’s Jewish population will only continue to decline. Thousands of French Jews, for example, are emigrating each year, most commonly to Israel. A Europe without Jews would be almost without precedent; the continent has played host to Jewish communities for millennia. It would also be an immeasurably poorer place, in myriad ways. We’re talking about the culture that produced Kafka, Freud, and Stefan Zweig – in addition to the bagel. http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/europe-s-jewish-population-continues-plummet_846826.html?utm_campaign=Weekly%20Standard%3A%20Daily%20Digest&utm_source=Weekly%20Standard%3A%20Daily%20Digest%20-%2002%2F10%2F15&utm_medium=email
3.
nObama Brags To U.N. About 46.5 Million Americans On Food Stamps
(nicedeb) - If you thought that record numbers of people on foodstamps was a negative thing – a problem that needs solving – you were wrong...The fact that a quarter of all Americans receive some kind of “food assistance” is something to “boast” about in today’s America – which is striving to compete with those paragons of human rights virtue – CUBA. Some day – if we work really really hard – The United States of America may be able to reach that pinnacle of Democratic fairness and equality that Cuba has become under the Castros. Hey let’s not forget the free nObamaphones, housing subsidies, welfare expansion, disability expansion – all of it – every bit rife with fraud. Oh there is so much to be proud of, here, America. At some point they are going to run out of other people’s money. I guess we’ll find out in 2016 if America wants to go full Greece. https://nicedeb.wordpress.com/2015/02/10/obama-regime-brags-to-u-n-about-46-5-million-americans-on-food-stamps/
4.
Former Adviser: ‘nObama Lied In Order to Win 2008 Election’
(Prissy Holly) - David Axelrod, who has had close ties with Barack nObama for years and even served as his chief campaign adviser at the beginning of his presidential career, has come out with a startling revelation in his new book “Believer: My Forty Years in Politics” about the president...In his book, Axelrod notes that nObama’s stance on same-sex marriage was a complete lie in order to garner support for his initial entry into the White House. Taking the counsel from his political advisers, nObama stated publicly that he opposed same-sex marriage, citing religious reasons. http://madworldnews.com/obama-lied-win-election/
5.
nObama: Media Overstates Terror Threat
(Robert Spencer) - nObama’s timing couldn’t be worse. Just as a new report has demonstrated yet again that global warming is a hoax, he has backed it in a new interview as a “longer-term” problem than jihad terror...During a lengthy conversation published over two days by the far-Left publication Vox, interviewer Matthew Yglesias asked nObama: “Do you think the media sometimes overstates the level of alarm people should have about terrorism and this kind of chaos, as opposed to a longer-term problem of climate change and epidemic disease?” nObama readily agreed – and his full answer was revealing in several ways: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/robert-spencer/obama-media-overstates-terror-threat/?utm_source=FrontPage+Magazine&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=67b908bdca-Mailchimp_FrontPageMag&utm_term=0_57e32c1dad-67b908bdca-156509103
6.
‘ISIS Is Here’: Islamic State Graffiti in America
(Dawn Perlmutter) - On February 4, 2015 the head of the FBI’s counterterrorism division, Michael Steinbach said that the FBI has seen children as young as 15 recruited by the Islamic State aka ISIS, ISIL...Two days later FBI Director James Comey said there are open cases looking into individuals who may be connected to ISIS in every state in the Union except Alaska. Evidence of the Islamic State’s successful recruiting efforts in America is literally written on the walls. Islamic State graffiti has appeared in Minneapolis, MN, Houston, TX, La Vegas, Nevada, Phoenix, AZ, Bakersfield, Ca, Washington, DC , Brooklyn, NY, and in many cities around the world. Followers of the U.S. designated terrorist group are showing their support in every form of graffiti from full color pieces to the graffiti genre of stickers; aka labels or slaps. http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/dawn-perlmutter/isis-is-here-islamic-state-graffiti-in-america/?utm_source=FrontPage+Magazine&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=67b908bdca-Mailchimp_FrontPageMag&utm_term=0_57e32c1dad-67b908bdca-156509103
7.
GOP Energy Agenda: Build Keystone, Stop The EPA
(Michael Bastasch) - Republican lawmakers have released a new energy strategy to boost counter President Barack nObama’s climate agenda. The main points of the plan: build the Keystone XL pipeline and other projects like it and prevent the EPA from over-regulating... “Our energy realities have changed dramatically – we’ve gone from bust to boom practically overnight,” GOP Reps. Fred Upton of Michigan Ed Whitfield of Kentucky said in a statement. “Today’s energy policies are lagging far behind, and are better suited for the gas lines in the 1970s than this new era of abundance.” The strategy, called the “Architecture of Abundance,” urges Congress and the president to pass laws that enhance energy security, keep prices down and shepherd a manufacturing resurgence. The plan also includes calls for reforming the energy project permit process; keeping prices affordable; and stopping EPA global warming. http://dailycaller.com/2015/02/09/gop-energy-agenda-keystone-epa/?utm_campaign=547f4d2f01958a5001000e49&utm_source=boomtrain&utm_medium=email&bt_alias=eyJ1c2VySWQiOiJjNTliYzIxYy1kM2ZhLTQ5MWMtYjhmZC02M2M2MjhjYzNjZjMifQ%3D%3D
8.
The dangerous allure of partnering with Iran
(Danielle Pletka) - The immolation of a Jordanian pilot is only one of many signs of a Middle East collapsing into brutal disorder. Leaders have fallen, civil wars are spreading and terrorism is thriving...It’s tempting to yearn for the relative security of years past, when the United States’ client dictators kept the region quiet, and to look for another candidate to play the role. Of course, the lore of the old, stable Middle East is more myth than reality — the half-century before the Arab Spring saw multiple governments fall, the rise of Islamist terror, three Arab-Israeli wars and civil wars in Yemen and Lebanon. Still, the allure of the strongman pervades Washington. The latest example is what appears to be the nObama administration’s efforts to create a regional compact centered on Iranian power. https://www.aei.org/publication/dangerous-allure-partnering-iran/?utm_source=today&utm_medium=paramount&utm_campaign=021015
9.
US costs, foreign benefits
(Kevin A. Hassett) - President nObama came into office with a plethora of policy objectives, from passing “card check” legislation to halting the rise of the oceans. For the most part, and perhaps as a student of the Constitution, he pursued these objectives in his first term with legislative action...Lately, though, the administration has used executive orders and regulatory actions to enact policy objectives by decree. By far the most economically significant of these actions is the EPA’s decision to require states to reduce their carbon emissions by 30 percent. Such a reduction would increase the cost of coal-fired electricity, for example, by about 80 percent. Most observers believe that states could meet this objective only by enacting a cap-and-trade system, an approach Representatives Henry Waxman (D., Calif.) and Ed Markey (D., Mass.) tried and failed to legislate into federal law in 2009. The courts will eventually decide whether nObama’s team has the legal authority under the Clean Air Act to enact such sweeping changes. In the meantime, the analysis that the nObama team provides to support its regulatory action sheds fascinating light on the global climate debate. This fact was made especially clear by a recent analysis of the EPA’s own data by Harvard professor Rob Stavins, a supporter of climate action but also an old-fashioned, honorable academic (who perhaps should be protected under the Endangered Species Act). http://www.aei.org/publication/u-s-costs-foreign-benefits/?utm_source=today&utm_medium=paramount&utm_campaign=021015
10.
Half-million U.S. women mutilated in barbaric practice
(Curtis Ellis) - A disturbing Population Research Bureau report indicates the number of women in the United States at risk of ritual female genital mutilation has doubled in 10 years, in tandem with the increase in immigration from Muslim countries in Africa...The practice, also known as female circumcision, is common in Muslim countries in Africa and the Middle East. The report from the bureau indicates more than half-a-million women in the U.S. may have already been mutilated or could soon have the procedure done to them. The latest reports on the practice coincide with the United Nations’ International Day of Zero Tolerance. The U.N. estimates 130 million women and girls in the Middle East and Africa have undergone some form of the procedure. While the U.N. and associated groups are working to end the barbaric practice, none of the official reports and statements mentions the fact that Muslim religious leaders and scholars prescribe it. http://www.wnd.com/2015/02/half-million-u-s-women-mutilated-in-barbaric-practice/
'I see parchment burning,
but the letters are soaring free'
Jeff Jacoby
(jewishworldreview.com) - Book burning is as old as books, and as current as this week’s news.
The Associated Press reported on Monday that Islamic State fanatics have ravaged the Central Library of Mosul, the largest repository of learning in that ancient city. Militants smashed the library’s locks and overran its collections, removing thousands of volumes on philosophy, science, and law, along with books of poetry and children’s stories. Only Islamic texts were left behind.
“These books promote infidelity and call for disobeying Allah,” one of the ISIS jihadists announced as the library’s holdings were emptied into sacks and loaded onto pickup trucks. “So they will be burned.”
There was more book-burning soon afterward, when Islamic State vandals sacked the library at the University of Mosul. “They made a bonfire out of hundreds of books on science and culture, destroying them in front of students,” AP reported. Lost in the libricide were newspapers, maps, and texts dating back to the Ottoman Empire. UNESCO, the United Nations’ educational and cultural agency, decried the libraries’ torching as “one of the most devastating acts of destruction of library collections in human history.”
Perhaps the most chilling words ever written about book-burning were penned in 1821 by the great German poet Heinrich Heine: Dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen — “Where they burn books, they will in the end also burn people.” Today that axiom is etched on a plaque in Berlin’s Bebelplatz, the public square where more than 20,000 books deemed “un-German” and “decadent” were destroyed in a vast Nazi bonfire on the night of May 10, 1933.
Though Heine’s words are indelibly associated now with the Holocaust, they have lost none of their grim prescience. Just one day after news emerged of the book-burnings in the Islamic State’s so-called “caliphate,” the jihadists released a ghastly video exulting in the murder of Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kasasbeh, who was burned alive in a metal cage.
There is something uniquely diabolical about setting books on fire, a lust to obliterate that almost ineluctably leads to even more dreadful evils. It is no coincidence that those obsessed with annihilating the physical expression of dangerous thoughts or teachings so often move on to annihilating the people who think or teach them.
“A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it,” orders Captain Beatty, the book-hating fire chief in “Fahrenheit 451” Ray Bradbury’s dystopian classic. “Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man’s mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man?”
Yet if the long and heartbreaking history of book-burning teaches anything, it is that books cannot be killed by fire. Pages can be burned, libraries can be reduced to ash, treatises can be found guilty of heresy or sedition and set ablaze. But ideas are not so easily extirpated. Heine’s books were among those the Nazis flung on the bonfires in 1933; so were the books of more than 2,000 other authors, including Bertolt Brecht, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Ernest Hemingway, Leo Tolstoy, and Franz Kafka. Josef Goebbels assured the enthusiastic crowd that they would “commit to the flames the evil spirit of the past.” The books, however, are still alive. It was the Third Reich that went down in flames.
The story of books is the story of books being suppressed — a story of staggering cruelty, and of equally staggering futility. The destruction of Mosul’s libraries prompted one Iraqi parliamentarian, Hakim al-Zamili, to compare ISIS to the Mongols who conquered Baghdad in 1258. Then, too, prized works of learning — on history, medicine, astronomy — were demolished. “The only difference is that Mongols threw the books in the Tigris River, while now ISIS is burning them,” al-Zamili said. “Different method, but same mentality.”
Indeed, in their bloodlust and zealotry, the book-burners of ISIS have many antecedents — Crusaders, Mongols, Nazis, Wahhabis, Khmer Rouge. But ISIS too will find that it is easier to slaughter human beings than to destroy ideas.
The Talmud records the death of Chanina ben Teradion, a 2nd-century Jewish sage killed by the Romans for violating a ban on teaching Torah. It was a terrible death: He was wrapped in the scroll from which he had been teaching and set on fire, with wet wool placed on his chest to prolong the agony. His horrified disciples, forced to witness his death, cried out: “Rabbi, what do you see?” He replied: “I see parchment burning, but the letters are soaring free.”
Any brute can burn parchment, or ransack a library, or blow up a mosque, or bulldoze cultural treasures. But not even mighty armies can destroy the ideas they embody. The Roman Empire couldn’t keep the letters from soaring free. ISIS can’t either.
Comments