How do you say "Chutzpah" in Persian?

There's nothing more I can add to what Pete has already said about what Iran's doing now. (Aptly titled Brass Balls defined.

You will now go RTWT.

Where have all the darkies gone?

Help me out with this one:

African-Americans are abandoning this famously progressive city at a rate that has alarmed San Francisco officials, who vow to stop the exodus and develop a strategy to win blacks back to the city. In June, Mayor Gavin Newsom appointed a task force to study how to reverse decades of policies--and neglect--that black leaders say have fueled the flight.

Black flight can alter a city's character. "It's important for a city's future that it be a diverse place, and San Francisco is drifting toward being an upper-middle-class city," says Ed Blakely, director of Katrina recovery for New Orleans.

Here's a question...What kind of blacks do they want to come to San Francisco? Are they saying the actively want lower-middle class or lower class blacks? I mean, sounds like it to me! They are bemoaning the fact that the city is getting too rich as well as too white, so isn't that the same as saying they want to bring the city DOWN a notch by bringing back some blacks?

Am I reading it wrong?

And help me understand why--even if that's not the case, even if they just want blacks b/c they are the chocolate chips in an otherwise vanilla city (i.e., there for "flavor" or "diversity")--how is this special task force not the most racist waste of taxpayer money you've ever heard of?

For years people were like "It's so unfair that blacks are shut out of the suburbs by the high cost of living and racism!" Now when they are fleeing all the same problems of urban living that whites have fled for decades, people are upset about THAT? Ummmm....Is it me, or is that a little weird? Shouldn't this be a good thing? I mean, if some of the reasons given are hat blacks are fleeing sub-standard housing and lousy schools, shouldn't we all rejoice that they--or anyone--care enough to seek better ones elsewhere? Or should they keep living in filth and keep their kids in crappy schools just so Gavin Newsom can keep his street cred as a "liberal?" Pretty hard to do if your "liberal" city is full of rich white people right?

/eyeroll

Can you imagine a task force in Detroit to find out why all the white people are leaving?

Yeah, neither can I.

Is he sure he's French?

Hard to believe!

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Monday a diplomatic push by the world's powers to rein in Tehran's nuclear program was the only alternative to "an Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran."

"This initiative is the only one that can enable us to escape an alternative that I say is catastrophic: the Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran," he said, {b}adding that it was the worst crisis currently facing the world[/b].

Nope, your eyes aren't playing tricks on you. A French leader actually suggested that Iran--not the USA--was the biggest threat to world peace, and that Iran, not the situation in Iraq, was the worst crisis facing the world.

Excuse me while I kiss this guy.

Al Qaeda hints at the horror to come

...if we pull out precipitously that is.

Pete finally surfaced from the Wisconsin flood waters long enough to point me to Michael Totten's latest which depicts a crime so heinous, so pointless and brutal that it defies description. But of course, Michael does an admirable job of rising to the occasion anyway. Too bad more of his fellow journalists couldn't manage to do the same. If you don't read about this here or on his site or over at S&G, you probably won't hear about it at all. Guess it doesn't fit the "Al Qaeda isn't really in Iraq so why should we be?" meme.

Gonzo a Go-Go

Buh-bye!
But I'll add, don't be too quick to gloat Dems!

Paul at Powerline summed it up nicely:

I've never been a fan of Gonzales, but I can't help feeling sorry for him. The "scandal" that led to his demise -- the firing of the U.S. attorneys -- appears to involve no wrongdoing on his part. Moreover, the underlying decisions and process appear to have been the product of the White House, not Gonzales. His defense of the decisions was hardly stellar, but if I'm correct, he was handicapped by the fact that they were not really his decisions.

Gonzales's only real offense seems to have been mediocrity. But mediocrity in an Attorney General is nothing new (think Janet Reno), and any blame for this occurrence properly attaches to the White House.

Often the biggest favor a president can do for a friend is to not appoint him or her to very high office.

Amen to that!

But that won't stop Bush from appointing someone equally as mediocre to the job, someone like Michael Chertoff.

Am I the only one out here who wonders whether Bush has a political death wish? Between allowing the floating of Chertoff's name and his little "Vietnam" speech debacle last week, I'm thinking the guy might as well just bite down on that cyanide pill already (metaphorically speaking). Watching him self-destruct is more painful than being forced to watch endless hours of Wow Wow Wubzy (and believe me, I would know).

Badass Marine

My fellow blogger Stephen at Dr. Horsefeathers pointed me towards this very moving poem delivered by a real patriot.

I have nothing to add to it. Just wanted to share it with all of you.

Enjoy, and be sure to say "thank-you" even if he won't hear you say it.

Oops, he did it again! (Obama that is)

He's put himself in a position to be spanked by Hillary again! (If she's on-top of this as I would expect she is...although it's odd she hasn't brought it up yet).

PACs and lobbyists aided Obama's rise
Data contrast with his theme

By Scott Helman, Globe Staff | August 9, 2007

Using campaign appearances, e-mails to supporters, and Iowa TV ads, Illinois Senator Barack Obama has repeatedly reminded voters that his presidential campaign does not accept contributions from lobbyists or political action committees, casting his decision as a noble departure from the ways of Washington.

He hit the theme hard again in Tuesday's Democratic debate in Chicago as he sought to capitalize on rival Hillary Clinton's remark last weekend that taking lobbyists' cash is acceptable because they "represent real Americans."

"The people in this stadium need to know who we're going to fight for," Obama said at Soldier Field. "The reason that I'm running for president is because of you, not because of folks who are writing big checks, and that's a clear message that has to be sent, I think, by every candidate."

But behind Obama's campaign rhetoric about taking on special interests lies a more complicated truth. A Globe review of Obama's campaign finance records shows that he collected hundreds of thousands of dollars from lobbyists and PACs as a state legislator in Illinois, a US senator, and a presidential aspirant.

In Obama's eight years in the Illinois Senate, from 1996 to 2004, almost two-thirds of the money he raised for his campaigns -- $296,000 of $461,000 -- came from PACs, corporate contributions, or unions, according to Illinois Board of Elections records. He tapped financial services firms, real estate developers, healthcare providers, oil companies, and many other corporate interests, the records show.

Obama's US Senate campaign committee, starting with his successful run in 2004, has collected $128,000 from lobbyists and $1.3 million from PACs, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit organization that tracks money in politics. His $1.3 million from PACs represents 8 percent of what he has raised overall. Clinton's Senate committee, by comparison, has raised $3 million from PACs, 4 percent of her total amount raised, the group said.

What's up with this guy? Is he just that good at pretending to be pure as the driven snow, or is he clueless as to where his money is coming from?

Not sure I'm too keen on either answer, but either way, he sure has a lot of people fooled.

Well, at least they got the transliteration of "Menino" right

No further commentary necessary:

Candidates' names won't be transliterated
Dispute centered on Chinese voters

August 8, 2007

A three-judge federal panel has denied a move by the Justice Department to require that transliterated candidate names be printed on the ballot in certain Chinese-speaking precincts in Boston. In a decision filed Friday, the judges sided with Secretary of State William F. Galvin that agreements to translate ballots do not require transliteration, rendering non-Chinese names into Chinese characters.

The Globe reported in June that language specialists said that with Chinese characters, Mitt Romney could be read as "Sticky" or "Uncooked Rice," Fred Thompson as "Virtue Soup," and Thomas M. Menino could be "Rainbow Farmer" or "Imbecile."

How to win friends and influence people the Obama way

Or so it seems!

I'm sorry, he is compounding his mistakes on that debate stage with rhetoric like this:

The Illinois senator warned Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf that he must do more to shut down terrorist operations in his country and evict foreign fighters under an Obama presidency, or Pakistan will risk a U.S. troop invasion and losing hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid.

"Let me make this clear," Obama said in a speech prepared for delivery at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. "There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al-Qaida leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will."

Oh really? We "will" invade a sovereign nation that is technically our ALLY? A nuclear nation at that? Uh-huh, OK, and that would win us friends and present us as in a more diplomatic, less "unilateral" light than we're in now how exactly?

This guy is starting to scare me because polls say he's striking a chord with this stuff, and I don't get it! Can someone please explain to me why they would support someone who would
1) give the terrorists a public heads-up like this, over a year before he's even elected,
2) threaten (yes, threaten) a foreign leader who has been (albeit imperfect, still) an ally in the war against the Islamists.
3) do exactly what Bush is criticized for doing (but has actually never done) which is to openly threaten a nuclear power with invasion if they don't do what we want, when we want them to?

Substitute the name "Giuliani" or "Thompson" or "Romney" for "Obama" and count the nanoseconds before the hew and cry from everyone from the MSM to the Kossaks would be deafening!

So this is what Democrats call "diplomacy? And to think all this time I thought it had something to do with "talking" to our enemies, not "invading" our friends!

I mean, that's what Obama told us last week on that stage. Or is it both? Talking with enemies AND invading friends? I'm so confused, but then again, I don't speak Moonbat.
[Hat tip Klaus]