Posts Tagged: Even
22
Dec 10
Greece: High-level priest blames Jews for everything, even Hitler
Going way beyond Gregory III, and without any kind of gun to his head, the execrable pro-Hitler hyperdhimmi Metropolite of Piraeus Seraphim echoes the most bizarre claims of Islamic antisemitic conspiracy paranoia.
“Leading priest blames Jews for Greece’s problems,” from the JTA, December 22 (thanks to all who sent this in):
ATHENS, Greece — A high-level priest on the morning show of the largest television station in Greece blamed world Jewry for Greece’s financial problems on Tuesday.
The Metropolite of Piraeus Seraphim also blamed world Jewry for other ills in the country during his appearance on Mega TV.
Mixing Freemasons with Jewish bankers such as Baron Rothschild and world Zionism, the Metropolite said that there is a conspiracy to enslave Greece and Christian Orthodoxy. He also accused international Zionism of trying to destroy the family unit by promoting one-parent families and same-sex marriages.
Thirteen minutes into the program the Greek host asked the Metropolite, “Why do you disagree with Hitler’s policies? If they are doing all this, wasn’t he right in burning them?”
The Metropolite answered, “Adolf Hitler was an instrument of world Zionism and was financed from the renowned Rothschild family with the sole purpose of convincing the Jews to leave the shores of Europe and go to Israel to establish the new Empire.”
Jews such as “Rockefeller, Rothschild and Soros control the international banking system that controls globalization,” the Metropolite also said….
21
Dec 10
Even Better Than Campaign Cash
Chad Outler writes about a recent case of dueling letters from senators who favor and oppose ethanol subsidies:

The following charts compare campaign contributions that pro-subsidy senators such as Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) have received from entities associated with key ethanol stakeholders with contributions to anti-ethanol subsidy senators such as Feinstein. The charts include contributions from Archer Daniels Midland and Monsanto, the largest ethanol producer in the US and the world’s largest seed provider. A contribution search at MAPLight.org returned a variety of corn processing and biofuel companies who contributed to the senators, who make up the balance of the charts. Contributions from the categories provided, “Alternative energy products & services” and “wheat, corn, soybeans and cash grain” have been vetted to eliminate contributors who are not directly related to the corn, ethanol and biofuel industries. Category codes provided by the Center for Responsive Politics.
To me this seems like a terrible example to use if you want to persuade people of the corrupting influence of money. Look at Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken. They’re not getting much of this special interest cash. And yet, they love ethanol. Presumably this is because of something having to do with Minnesota. The Senators from Iowa are soaking up corn cash, but that’s not the reason they take a pro-corn line. They’re pro-corn because corn is king in Iowa. Corn interests back Iowa politicians because it’s in their interest for Iowa politicians to have as much clout as possible.
It’s important to understand this issue correctly, because we need the right institutional change. The big issue here is that a lot of the aspects of our committee system tend to exacerbate problems of interest group capture when we should try to design it to mitigate the problems.
21
Dec 10
Wikileaks: Even Before The Bloody Coup In Gaza, Abbas Helped Israel Against Hamas
If nothing else, Wikileaks has revealed that our perception of the Middle East, as formed by both the media and the Obama administration, is faulty.
For one thing, we have discovered that, contrary to the Obama administration, resolving the Palestinian issue takes a back seat to Iran in the eyes of the Arab world.
More recently, Wikileaks documents have indicated those in Lebanon who would help Israel against Iranian puppet Hezbollah.
Now, today comes a document via Wikileaks revealing the degree to which Abbas was willing to work with Israel against Hamas:
A U.S. cable leaked on Monday said Israel and President Mahmoud Abbas’s forces worked closely together against Hamas as it took over Gaza in 2007, a potentially embarrassing revelation for the Palestinian leader.
Israel has acknowledged working with Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces loyal to the Western-backed Abbas, but the diplomatic memo leaked by WikiLeaks describes a level of cooperation that could fuel criticism of Abbas by his Islamist rivals.
The 2007 cable quoted Yuval Diskin, the head of Israel’s Shin Bet internal security service, as saying the PA security apparatus shares with Israel “almost all the intelligence that it collects.”
“They understand that Israel’s security is central to their survival in the struggle with Hamas in the West Bank,” the cable said.
The cable, dated June 13, 2007, was sent from the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv as Hamas forces were routing Abbas’s security forces to take over the Gaza Strip. Abbas has since ruled only in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Diskin is quoted as referring to Abbas’s forces in Gaza as ”desperate, disorganized, and demoralized.”
Ed Morrissey notes the possible consequences knowing how deeply Abbas cooperated with Israel, consequences that it is doubtful the perpetrators of Wikileaks think through:
Certainly, Abbas’ actions are rational and show him in a better light outside of the cauldron of the Israeli-Palestinian standoff, but it’s not going to be popular on the West Bank by any stretch. It will undermine the PA at a time when the US wants to push hard on peace talks, and make it more difficult than ever to get concessions from Abbas. If the cable itself doesn’t touch off new fighting between Hamas and the PA, a collapse of the peace talks may bring about a new round of intifada. This release goes beyond embarrassment; it will probably cost lives in a manner that might have otherwise been avoided.
Of course, there is cooperation between Abbas and Israel today in terms of the Israeli troops who help Abbas against Hamas in the West Bank-but this is after the bloody coup.
Now we find out that even when there was a supposedly unified Palestinian government, there were problems.
But don’t expect revelations like this to have any effect on the juggernaut for a second Palestinian state.
Technorati Tag: Abbas and Palestinian Authority and Hamas.

19
Dec 10
Giants seek even hand as they look to end Eagles’ dominance – USA Today
Newsday |
Giants seek even hand as they look to end Eagles' dominance
USA Today By Leon Halip, Getty Images By Tom Pedulla, USA TODAY EAST RUTHERFORD, NJ — — If the New York Giants should win Sunday's NFC East showdown against the visiting Philadelphia Eagles and go on to take the division title, they will not soon forget the … Eagle Keys: Keys to the Eagles-Giants game Other week 15 NFL games Eagles and Giants meet for first place in NFC East |
19
Dec 10
Giants seek even hand as they look to end Eagles’ dominance – USA Today
Newsday |
Giants seek even hand as they look to end Eagles' dominance
USA Today By Leon Halip, Getty Images By Tom Pedulla, USA TODAY EAST RUTHERFORD, NJ — — If the New York Giants should win Sunday's NFC East showdown against the visiting Philadelphia Eagles and go on to take the division title, they will not soon forget the … Eagle Keys: Keys to the Eagles-Giants game Other week 15 NFL games Eagles and Giants meet for first place in NFC East |
17
Dec 10
60% Of Voters Wouldn’t Even Consider Voting For Sarah Palin For POTUS
According to two new polls, Sarah Palin has absolutely no chance of beating Barack Obama in 2012. So, why does it look like she’s going to run anyway?
Outside the Beltway
15
Dec 10
Mississippi Sheriff: Even If We Fired Cop For Being Gay, There’s No Law Against It
In October we learned that the ACLU is suing a Mississippi sheriff’s department over the firing of a police officer Andre Cooley, who was outed after calling for help in a domestic dispute with his partner. The Forrest County Sheriff’s Department has is now denying wrongdoing because there’s no state or federal law against what they did.
Cooley claims the firing was because of his sexual orientation. But in an answer to Cooley’s lawsuit, the sheriff’s department argued that no federal or state statute exists in regard to firings over sexual orientation, and that Cooley was an at-will employee who worked “solely at the pleasure of the Forrest County Sheriff.” Cooley filed the lawsuit in federal court. He is seeking punitive damages, court costs, attorney fees and an injunction reinstating him as a corrections officer. Bear Atwood, one of Cooley’s American Civil Liberties Union attorneys, said a significant body of case law exists that protects public workers. “What it fails to do is give any legitimate reason why he would’ve been fired,” she said of the response filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Hattiesburg. “It basically says that it would have been OK to fire him because he’s gay.”
At the time of the firing, Cooley’s boss said that cops who get into domestic disputes “don’t speak well for people in law enforcement.” We can only presume that female cops that get battered by their spouses are immediately fired too.
15
Dec 10
Mellinger: Lee signing makes Greinke look even better – Kansas City Star
![]() Globe and Mail |
Mellinger: Lee signing makes Greinke look even better
Kansas City Star Dayton Moore is sick, literally sick, stuck in bed for most of Tuesday with the flu, but he should still remember it as one of his better days in 2010. Because as news spread that free agent Cliff Lee signed with Phillies, so did the realization that … Lee passes on $ 30M to sign with Phillies Spurning Rangers, Yankees, Lee tosses curveball to market No to New York? There Must Be Some Mistake |
13
Dec 10
14. Because Our Mayor Knows What He Thinksand Sometimes Hes Even Right
It isnt that Michael Bloomberg is stubborn, exactly. He does listen to advice. He does, occasionally, admit to error.
nymag.com: Politics
12
Dec 10
When even Assad says Abbas is wrong…. (Zvi)
From Zvi:
Even Syria’s Bashar al-Assad now says openly that making an Israeli construction freeze in the West Bank a precondition before Abbas will talk to Israel is pointless and stupid.
Even the most hard-line, anti-Semitic regime in the neighborhood agrees with most Israelis that insisting on a settlement freeze is a complete waste of time; if Mahmoud Abbas wants to stop the growth of settlements, then the only way to do it is to negotiate an agreement.
The column is dressed up in the usual flotilla of paranoid anti-Israel claims, of course, but the final conclusion is actually pretty reasonable:
“What matters are results, not the slogans that we have become addicted to.”
It is time for Pres. Obama, Sec. of State Clinton and Sen. Mitchell, and also the useful EU idiots who wrote an anti-Israel letter to Catherine Ashton the other day, to come to the same conclusion. Blaming the settlers amounts to a mindlessly repeated, worn-out slogan. But the mindless repetition of slogans does nothing to improve the world.
Only an Israel-PA agreement that specifies borders will define the borders of Israeli towns in the West Bank. Without a peace agreement, US or PA attempts to micromanage what construction occurs in Israeli towns in the West Bank bring absolutely no benefit to anyone.
Of course, one cannot lay the blame *entirely* on Mr. Abbas.
The Obama administration, not Mahmoud Abbas, created this fiasco. The Obama administration took a situation that was gradually improving and, by introducing this mindless precondition, completely shut down negotiations. And they pursued this direction, in their arrogance and ineptitude, despite being warned of the consequences.
But Mr. Abbas, of course, had every opportunity to reject such a pointless diversion. Mr. Abbas, being the do-nothing that he is, leaped at the chance to sit around doing nothing. And for that he MUST be blamed.
Since that time, the US insistence on beating up Israel for Abbas’ rejectionism has given those who hate Israel a chance to sit back and smile. But the handful of people who would prefer to actually improve the lot of West Bank Arabs have grown increasingly frustrated.
Meanwhile, naive European and Israeli leftists, by continuing to flog the dead horse of the freeze, have simply prolonged the fiasco.
But there are some people in the Arab world who actually do think about the situation, and these people have increasingly criticized the whole pointless freeze idea. And now even Bashar al-Assad, die-hard enemy of Israel, looks at the freeze and comes to the same conclusion as Netanyahu or Lieberman.
Without a peace agreement, US and PA attempts to micromanage what construction occurs in Israeli towns in the West Bank bring absolutely no benefit to anyone. Only an Israel-PA agreement that specifies borders will define the borders of Israeli towns in the West Bank.
11
Dec 10
Email threat before Stockholm bombings called on mujahedin: “Now is the time to strike, don’t wait any longer. Step up with whatever you have, even if it is a knife, and I know you have more than a knife”
“The person claimed to have been to the Middle East and asked family for forgiveness for lying to them. ‘I didn’t go to the middle east to work,’ the writer wrote. ‘I went there for jihad’.”
He asked forgiveness for lying to his family. But the deliberate, calculated targeting of infidels for mass slaughter, well, that’s all in a day’s jihad. And now, stay tuned for the ritual head-scratching about what “radicalized” the undoubtedly “troubled” individuals behind the attack.
More on this story. “Explosions in Stockholm believed to be failed terrorist attack,” by Per Nyberg for CNN, December 11:
(CNN) — A failed terrorist attack in a central Stockholm district full of Christmas shoppers could have been catastrophic, Swedish authorities said late Saturday.
Police are investigating whether two explosions in Stockholm, an e-mail threat sent shortly before the attack that mentions Afghanistan and the body of a man who was apparently killed in one of the explosions are related.
“Most worrying attempt at terrorist attack in crowded part of central Stockholm. Failed — but could have been truly catastrophic,” Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said in a Twitter message on Saturday.
A Swedish news agency and police said they received e-mail threats against the Swedish people 10 minutes before the explosions, which killed one person and injured two others on Saturday.
“We have not taken any decision to increase the terror threat level,” said Swedish Security Police spokesman Mikael Gunnarsson. “And apart from the e-mail we didn’t have any other indications or threats that this would happen,” Gunnarsson added. […]
Police said the explosions were in a popular pedestrian shopping area.
“One explosion happened at the intersection of Drottninggatan and Olof Palmes Gata,” two busy streets in central Stockholm, said police spokeswoman Petra Sjolander. “This was the car that exploded multiple times.”
A second explosion occurred about five minutes later, at the intersection of Drottninggatan and Bryggargatan streets, Sjolander said. […]
The e-mail writer ended the message with a call for action “to all Mujahadeen in Europe and Sweden,” TT said.
“Now is the time to strike, don’t wait any longer,” the message read, according to TT. “Step up with whatever you have, even if it is a knife, and I know you have more than a knife. Fear no one, fear not prison, fear not death.”
TT said that it was not clear from the e-mail or the audio files if the person belongs to any specific organization.
The person claimed to have been to the Middle East and asked family for forgiveness for lying to them. “I didn’t go to the middle east to work,” the writer wrote. “I went there for jihad.”
10
Dec 10
Triangulation: What Is It? Does It Even Exist?
Mori Dinauer quips, “Isn’t ‘Triangulation’ Just Another Way of Saying ‘Makes Political Deals?’” Jonathan Bernstein nods his head and adds that, “Triangulation is an advertising slogan coined by Dick Morris to advertise himself — to give him as large a share of the credit for Bill Clinton’s 1996 re-election as possible. That’s all. Trying to find any deeper meaning in it is like trying to find the deeper meaning in ‘Coke Adds Life’ or ‘Tiger in Your Tank.’”
Now, while I agree with pretty much every word of the rest of the post — which explains the nature of achieving political compromise, how it varies based on changing situations, and why political strategists get far too much credit — I disagree on this particular point. (Also: Jonathan may want to watch some ads from this century to avoid dating himself.)
Yes, Morris is a self-promoting jackass whose actual political advice is usually wrong. But “triangulation” is actually a real thing: It’s when a president presents himself as the sane middle ground between the opposition party and his own base. Bill Clinton’s “welfare reform” package was a classic case, in that he picked an issue that Republicans had been hammering Democrats on for years, claimed it as his own, and stiffed his own party’s congressional delegation in so doing. Triangulation, in other words, isn’t about the process of negotiating bills at all but rather how a president leverages the process for his own political gain.
Typically, presidents are forced to compromise with the opposition party because he either needs their votes (they hold the majority in one or more Houses of Congress or, at very least, have the ability to filibuster in the Senate). He takes a bill that was much less than his ideal or gets pretty much what he wanted but also has to swallow a poison pill — adding on something that he personally hates but is small potatoes compared to the bill he’s trying to get done. It’s pretty much what Obama did with health care reform.
On this tax compromise, he basically sold out on the key principle he’d been advocating since his campaign — that taxes had to be raised on those earning over $ 250k a year — in order to get through some other things he ultimately thought more important. No triangulation there — that’s just the legislative reality he had to deal with.
Where the triangulation came in was in his press conference, wherein he denounced his own party’s congressional leadership as “sanctimonious” and “purist.” Also — and this is obviously pure conjecture on my part — I firmly believe that he was happy to cave in on this issue and therefore not have to fight the “he raised taxes during a recession” charge during his re-election campaign. And likely also delivered a mild short-term stimulus — or, at least, taken away the charge that things would have gotten better if only he hadn’t raised taxes. In other words, he’s put his fellow Democrats in a very tough spot but enhanced his own re-election prospects.
Now, Greg Sargent makes a reasonable argument that Obama’s deal is different from Clinton’s.
Obama’s dispute with the left isn’t an effort to position himself ideologically as a centrist. It’s part of a broader effort to present himself as Washington’s lone resident adult in a room full of bickering children on both sides — the last line of defense for the American people against Washington business-as-usual.
[…]
The reason Obama’s attacks on the left smack of triangulation is that he persists on painting the left and the right with the same brush: He presents himself as the last reasonable man trapped between two sides blinded to reason by ideology. Hence his insistence yesterday that he won’t be held to any unreasonable “ideal.” But as irksom as this is, it isn’t really the same as positioning oneself ideologically by arguing that the left is wrong on policy substance, as Bill Clinton did.
While this distinction is indeed worth noting, it doesn’t change the substance of the matter: Both Clinton and Obama intentionally use their own party’s base as a foil for political advantage.
Sargent’s related point is better:
Obama’s argument with the left, at bottom, is more a dispute over what’s achievable, and less an argument over what is desirable to achieve. Obama opposes extending the high end tax cuts, just as the left does. His disagreement with the left is over whether there’s another way to achieve the goals Obama and the left agree on: Extending the middle class cuts and extending unemployment benefits. The left says a protracted fight would achieve those things. Obama and his advisers say a fight wouldn’t achieve those things, or at least that a fight wouldn’t achieve them in time to stave off a tax hike for the middle class. Hence his willingness to reach a deal.
I do think this is right. If Obama had 65 votes in the Senate, he’d have done a much more radical version of healthcare reform, repealed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and many other things rather than play this triangulation game. Then again, if Clinton had won big in the 1994 midterms rather than getting trounced, he’d never have brought Dick Morris back into the fold. In both cases, triangulation is a reaction out of necessity rather than instinct.