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Friday Afternoon Roundup - World's Most Famous Pedophile Dies,
World Mourns

Posted: 26 Jun 2009 03:39 PM PDT

With the week coming to a close, Iran's regime
has somewhat predictably decided to escalate the crackdown, reversing
their brief deescalation. That deescalation of course had given the
Iranian opposition enough time to find its feet and gain some confidence,
and refuse to give up. This has once again demonstrated that the Iranian
Islamic Republic which overthrew the Shah, had learned very little from
that overthrow, and are repeating many of the Shah's
mistakes.

While Putin and Medevev, unlike Jimmy Carter, can be
expected to back the Ayatollahs to the hilt, with Russian TV mimicking
Iran's stream of anti-opposition propaganda (predictably picked up by
politicians like Ron Paul, who also backed Putin on Georgia), the problem
isn't simply limited to the supply of firearms. There are only so many
protesters the authorities can massacre, particularly since their reliance
on Basji militia and imported Iran backed Arab terrorist groups such as
Hizbullah and Hamas, reveals a basic weakness.

But besides the support of the Supreme Council, Ahmadinejad has

caught one more lucky break with the death of the World's Most Famous

Pedophile.

If there was one thing sure to distract major portions of the free world, from
someone else's struggle for freedom, it's the death of a major celebrity.
Particularly a depraved one.

The House has already held a moment of
silence for Michael Jackson, which is really nice of them to take a break
from spending America deep into debt, in order to remember a man who had
so much money he could molest as many kids as he wanted and pay off them
by the millions. There's some sort of lesson to be learned from that, but
it's probably not worth learning.

This pathetic national disgrace
interrupted a debate on whomping Americans with the highest energy tax
in history, so that Rep. Jesse Jackson jr, who was willing to pay out six
figures to Governor Blagojevich for a Senate seat, could offer a tribute,
from one unconvicted criminal to another.

Meanwhile Obama was
desperate to get in on the pedophile action, but he had no problem. No
reporter actually asked him anything about Michael Jackson. This made
Obama really sad, since no celebrity story is complete without the Prince
of Chicago being involved in it. Sadly this time the Obama Camp couldn't
prep a Huffington Post reporter to ask the question...

So Robert Gibbs held another press conference and still no one asked him about
Michael Jackson! This was shocking as the death of a celebrity is a common
fodder at White House press conferneces. So Robert Gibbs tactfully
suggested that reporters were too shy to ask the TOTUS about Michael
Jackson, and delivered a statement from Obama on the death of Michael
Jackson.

It's hard to even process the depth of this pathetic
charade. Is it the inability of Obama to stay out of any story, or the
desperate need to get out a statement on a subject that doesn't actually
concern him in any way?

In America's present day celebrity oriented
culture, we expect the media to behave like fools. We expect something
better from our elected officials. Or at least we did before they turned
into celebrities too.

While the Iranian government is hitting bottom, so are we. The same

House of Representatives that did not hold a moment of silence for

Neda or any of the victims of terrorism, held one for the world's most

famous pedophile.

Is there really anything left to say after that?

American political culture is a
consenquence of America popular culture. By corrupting the latter, the
former has also been corrupted. It is why the unacceptables of 20 years
ago become acceptable with each generational turn of the wheel.

If Michael Jackson has any political relevance, it is that he shares one
thing with Obama, he was and is a symptom of cultural degeneration. Once
upon a time Americans would not have elected an admitted cocaine user to
the White House. But before that could change, drug abuse had to become
legitimized through popular culture. And it did.

Once upon a time a
pedophile would have been beyond the pale in popular culture. People like
Michael Jackson, Roman Polansky and Woody Allen proved that didn't have to
be the case. The only question remains, when will we elect our first
pedophile to the White House?

Hey, as long as he's cool and the
kids love him, right? That's how we got the guy we have now.

In the general roundup, the
Scottish flag is now apparently racist, as Scotland gets to enjoy the
same political correctness already enjoyed by millions of
Americans.

The result was an e-mail to all staff warning that such
nationalistic displays could "intimidate non-Scottish
colleagues".

The e-mail, from Alexandra Miller, director of
customer services, said: "I am very disappointed to see that (staff]
continue to have inappropriate material bedecking their workstation.
This includes several saltires and a lion rampant, and the
personalisation of a chair with red tartan."

Ms Miller reminded
employees of the policy of not having anything on desks which could be
regarded as "sexist or racist".

Note that the left's association of anything
nationalistic with racism continues, even if it is in a context that makes
absolutely no sense. Is the Scottish flag sexist? Is it racist? If it's a
national flag of a non-third world country, the message seems to be that
it is.

Newt Gingrich's American Solutions site has a petition to stop the Energy Tax

Maggie's Notebook comments on the absurdity of Michael Jackson's death

hijacking the nation's news coverage

Michael Jackson is dead. From Fox News to the BBC, it
has already been decided, this is the major issue of the day. Forget
about nuclear proliferation. Forget about escalating threats and
impending confrontations. Forget about the Global War on Terror. The
Western World has spoken, they have made their priorities known. The
Western World has decided what is truly important today, and what is
not. And you, Ahmadinejad, and you Kim Jong Ill, just don't have what it
takes to compete with this current crisis.

I haven't actually watched any of the news coverage,
and it's times like this that make me glad I no longer bother with
television and get my news online. Watching even serious news programs, or
supposedly serious news programs turn into cheap tabloids is a dispiriting
and depressing sight for any citizen of a democratic
country.

Meanwhile Israpundit has Elliot Abrams article disproving
Hillary Clinton's claim that there was no agreement made with Israel
on settlements.

It is true that there was no U.S.-Israel “memorandum of
understanding,” which is presumably what Mrs. Clinton means when she
suggests that the “official record of the administration” contains none.
But she would do well to consult documents like the Weissglas letter, or
the notes of the Aqaba meeting, before suggesting that there was no
meeting of the minds.

Mrs. Clinton also said there were no
“enforceable” agreements. This is a strange phrase. How exactly would
Israel enforce any agreement against an American decision to renege on
it? Take it to the International Court in The Hague?

Regardless of what Mrs. Clinton has said, there was a bargained-for exchange. Mr.
Sharon was determined to break the deadlock, withdraw from Gaza, remove
settlements — and confront his former allies on Israel’s right by
abandoning the “Greater Israel” position to endorse Palestinian
statehood and limits on settlement growth. He asked for our support and
got it, including the agreement that we would not demand a total
settlement freeze.

For reasons that remain unclear, the Obama
administration has decided to abandon the understandings about
settlements reached by the previous administration with the Israeli
government. We may be abandoning the deal now, but we cannot rewrite
history and make believe it did not exist.

The key point of course is that there is nothing Israel
can do to enforce any such agreement, but that inherently makes any
agreement with the Obama Administration worthless. Which is why it's a
shame that Netanyahu appears to be going soft now, dismantling

checkpoints which help save lives, and pulling back.

He is making the same mistake he did back in his first term.

Whcih is why this Arutz 7 article is an important reminder of the real face

of Israel's "peace partners"

Members of Fatah put on a show recently boasting that
Fatah leads other organizations, particularly Hamas, in anti-Israel
terrorism. The event was attended by former Palestinian Authority
leaders.

The performance was videotaped and shown on Fatah TV --
the television station cpntrolled by Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian
Authority

In the pro-Fatah performance, actors portrayed a
classroom setting in which pro-Fatah students debated their pro-Hamas
classmates and teachers over which of the two groups deserved most
credit for attacks on Israel. The play includes a segment in which
pro-Fatah students criticize Hamas for failing to attack Israel more
frequently since taking control of Gaza:

The full article contains the video itself.

At Forbes Magazine, Anna Bayefsky takes Obama to task for his failures on

human rights.

A week later there were multiple casualties, injuries
and threats, and 46 million voters wrenched away from that doorway to
freedom that had opened--if only a crack. But when the president was
asked Tuesday: "Is there any red line that your administration won't
cross where that offer [to talk to Iran's leaders] will be shut off?" He
answered: "We're still waiting to see how it plays itself
out."

And when asked again, "If you do accept the election of
Ahmadinejad … without any significant changes in the conditions there,
isn't that a betrayal of what the demonstrators there are working to
achieve?" He answered: "We can't say definitively what exactly happened
at polling places."

And asked again: "Why won't you spell out the
consequences that the Iranian people…" He answered: "Because I think
that we don't know yet how this thing is going to play out."

And yet again: "Shouldn't the present regime know that there are
consequences?" He answered: "We don't yet know how this is going to play
out."

Also at Forbes, Joel Kotkin
looks at challenges to Obama from the left

Glenn Greenwald at Salon meanwhile notes that
the Washington Post fired one of its most popular liberal columnists,
who regularly criticized Obama. Froomkin's statement seems to suggest that
he was fired precisely because the Post no longer wanted a White House
Watch in the Obama era

I’m terribly disappointed. I was told that it had been
determined that my White House Watch blog wasn’t "working" anymore. But
from what I could tell, it was still working very well. I also thought
White House Watch was a great fit with The Washington Post brand, and
what its readers reasonably expect from the Post online.

As I’ve
written elsewhere, I think that the future success of our business
depends on journalists enthusiastically pursuing accountability and
calling it like they see it. That’s what I tried to do every day. Now I
guess I'll have to try to do it someplace else.

Considering that Froomkin's next
to last column was harshly critical of Obama, from a left wing
perspective, it's not too hard to figure out why he was let go. Greenwald
and co. can try to blame it on the neo-cons, but it's not the neo-cons who
have a problem with criticism of Obama. Nor do they run the Washington
Post.

Gateway Pundit meanwhile
makes an excellent point about the Sanford case

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) answered an ad placed in a
Washington, D.C. homosexual paper, the Washington Blade, by Stephen
Gobie, a male prostitute. Gobie became Barney Frank’s live-in sexual
companion, and was soon running a male prostitution ring from Barney
Frank’s condo. Today Frank chairs the Financial Services
Committee.

Rep. Mel Reynolds (D-IL) was indicted for sexual
assault and criminal sexual abuse for engaging in a sexual relationship
with a 16-year-old campaign volunteer that began during the 1992
campaign. Despite the charges, he continued his campaign and was
re-elected that November. Reynolds initially denied the charges, which
he claimed were racially motivated. He was convicted on 12 counts of
sexual assault, obstruction of justice and solicitation of child
pornography.

Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt)- in a 1985
television appearance Leahy disclosed classified information that one of
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's telephone conversations had been
intercepted. The information that Leahy revealed had been used in the
operation to capture the Arab terrorists who had hijacked the Achille
Lauro cruise ship and killed American citizens, and the Union-Tribune
claimed that Leahy's indiscretion may have cost the life of at least one
of the Egyptian operatives involved in that operation. Because of his
several leaks he was forced to step down from his seat on the Senate
Intelligence Committee. Today he is Chairman of the Senate Judiciary
Committee.

Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) kills girl . Leaves her in
pond to drown. Today he is second longest serving member (next to the
former kleagle) in the Senate.

Of course there are almost as many tears being shed for
Ted Kennedy, as for Michael Jackson.

Is it really any surprise in a
culture that celebrates the worst of human behavior?

Finally, view Jew with a View, an excellent article by Jack Englehard, "Obama's
Jewish Experts"

A few days ago, George Mitchell once again expressed
his position, and opposition, even to “natural growth” in Judea and
Samaria. Both Mitchell and Hillary Clinton speak for themselves and for
President Barack Obama, who’s made this – Jewish life in the
“settlements” – his priority above all other international
disputes.

Even the language is disturbing. Mitchell – top Middle
East envoy along with Clinton – explained that the controversy centered
on “the number of Jewish births.”

Where have we heard this
before? To my mind, as someone who was born under similar conditions, in
France under Vichy, where Jews were kept within “restricted zones,” this
sounds too much like Verboten!

When I hear American diplomats,
and Obama himself, count the number of children allotted per Jewish
family, at the same time measuring Jewish growth by the inch, the images
that come to mind, to my mind, are of an earlier time, though not so
long ago, when the Third Reich confronted the “Jewish Problem” by way of
the Nuremberg Laws and the Wannsee Conference.

I picture Reinhard
Heydrich and Adolf Eichmann. They, too, were “Jewish
Experts.”

Indeed, and the entire premise of leveraging blame on
Israel for the terrorism directed against it, was very much the attitude
of those who may not have perpetrated the Holocaust, but nevertheless
allowed it to happen... because they felt that the Jews were to blame for
the Nazi persecutions of them.

That is an attitude that Ben Hecht
ably chronicled in A Guide for the Bedeviled, writing that they were like
a policeman interrogating a corpse demanding to know what he had done to
upset his murderer. There are no shortage of corpse interrogators in the
liberal ranks, in the foreign service or in the Obama Administration all
certain that the only way to solve the Middle East's problems with
Muslims, is to make whatever lands Muslims consider to be theirs,
Judenrein.