Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called on the US to choose between Israel and Iran on Tuesday night, according to Iranian state media.  Speaking in Istanbul at the 25th Session of the Standing Committee for Economic and Commercial Cooperation (COMCEC) of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the Iranian president said that it was up to US President Barack Obmaa to illustrate his motto of “Change.”

“The support of both Israel and Iran can’t go hand in hand,” he was quoted as saying by IRNA. “No change is made unless great choices are made.” He also slammed investments that pay interest, deemed usury by Muslims, and said they had contributed to financial and social problems such as homelessness.

“Usury, which is entrenched in the capitalist system, is perhaps the main reason why the system has gone bankrupt,” Ahmadinejad said. “It is a way of accumulating capital without working. Usury, according to the Koran, is fighting with Allah.”  [Read More]

(H/T Hot Air)

Minutes ago PelosiCare passed the house 220 – 215.

39 Democrats crossed the aisle and joined Republicans in bi-partissan opposition to state-run healthcare. Only one RINO, Joseph Cao from Louisiana’s 2nd District, voted for PelosiCare.

More to come…

UPDATE: GOP Whip Rep. Eric Cantor is “obviously disappointed about Cao.”

Statement from Cao: “I have always said that I would put aside partisan wrangling to do the business of the people.”

Surely Cao’s heavily Democrat district supported PelosiCare, but he was elected as a Republican. Why not vote differently than William Jefferson would have? He could have shown Louisiana’s second district that freedom and liberty is better than the government spoon-feeding their used to voting for.

…and they don’t look good.

Yesterday’s mass murder at Fort Hood was a terrorist attack, period. I knew it the second I heard the murderer’s name, and although you may not like it, so did you. When I read that the terrorist screamed “Allahu Akbar,” before firing the first of about 100 rounds into his colleagues, there was no question.

But for some god-forsaken reason the military and law enforcement “investigators” still can’t quite wrap their brains around what Major Nidal Malik Hasan’s motive was for killing 13 fellow soldiers and wounding 30 more. It’s because a peice of their brain is missing. I can’t say exactly when the lobotomy procedure began, but by now the whole chunk of the brain that was once used for judgment and critical analysis is gone. Instead of seeing Hasan’s actions over the last few years as a threat, and reason for dismissal from the military, the FBI and US Army sat back and waited until something more concrete happened. It was too late. It will be too late again if Americans keep living in self-imposed ignorance.

Our President said not to “jump to conclusions” about the attack yesterday, because our President is a coward. It’s a problem the whole Western World is dealing with today, too many cowards and too few heroes (except for the brave Men and Women in our military, of course). Instead of jumping to the obvious conclusion that Hasan’s act was a premeditated jihadist terror attack, Westerners jump to protect the “Muslim people.” Now, it sickens me to have to say this every time, but most Muslims are just like the rest of us, no better and no worse. But Muslim jihadists are the ones waging war against America and the West while non-jihadist Muslims really have nothing to fear from us. Mark Steyn captures the West’s self-imposed ignorance perfectly, today at The Corner:

Even if you are concerned that it would be terribly unfair if all Muslims were to be tarred by Major Hasan’s brush, it is, to put it at its mildest, the grossest bad taste to default every single time within minutes to the position that what’s of most interest about an actual actrocity with real victims is that it may provoke an entirely hypothetical atrocity with entirely hypothetical victims.

This terrorist-as-victim mentality was on display this Wednesday when David Horowitz spoke at USC. I had the pleasure of both listening to Horowitz’s lecture and video-taping the “unholy alliance” of protestors both inside and outside of the auditorium. While Horowitz spoke about the danger radical Islam poses to the world, the Students for Justice in Palestine and the International Socialist Organization chanted “this is our campus,” and gave speeches to each-other in a circle declaring that Horowitz and the College Republicans should be afraid to walk around campus. Their threats are less benign than even they may know. It just takes one radical willing to take his “activism” to the next level, and an act of protest can become a tragedy.

I’ll be called a racist and Islamophobe for writing this piece. But I, like many others, am used to it. The problem is the day you stop hearing the holier-than-thou granola munching crowd’s insults because one of their cohorts blew himself up while you were waiting for your latte at Starbucks. As Horowitz notes in a blog post about Fort Hood today, “the embargo of discussion of the islamo-fascist threat puts every American at risk.“

With Election Day 2009 behind us, two new Republican Governors will be taking their seats in Virginia and New Jersey.

After seeing the flyer (sent to him by someone at USC) that I wrote about yesterday, David Horowitz has responded to the radicals at USC on his own blog.

An article that will run in USC’s Daily Trojan newspaper Tomorrow addresses the USC College Republicans’ decision to keep members of the Students for Justice in Palestine and USC Progressive Alliance who wanted to disrupt the event from being allowed inside.

In the Daily Trojan article SJP President Alex Shams, also known as the guy that wrote the e-mail full of nonsense about Mr. Horowitz, expresses concern about racial profiling by the USC CRs. Shams, of course, could never imagine a world in which there were Muslims who wanted to attend the event out of interest, for intellectual stimulation, or because they actually agreed with Mr. Horowitz.

The USC College Republicans have no interest in racially profiling attendees tonight. Why would they? The USC CRs, have Muslim members, and I’m sure believe that not all Muslims want to “stand up and turn their backs” (something the SJP and USC Progs said they were planning, according to the Daily Trojan piece) on Mr. Horowitz during his speech.

So, the SJP and USC Progressives wanted to disrupt Horowitz’s speech, sorry kiddos, you shouldn’t have let the cat out of the bag so quickly. Leftist/radical “activists” have gotten pretty lame. Really, who tells a campus newspaper that you plan to silently turn your back on a lecturer? If you’re going to do it, at least don’t tell the event organizers the day before!

Yesterday I said the “activists” could learn about tolerance and academic freedom from Horowitz, today there’s a new lesson; activism.

Warren Buffett made the biggest bet of his career, agreeing to buy Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. in a $26.3 billion deal that reflects a very bullish, longterm  outlook toward the investment.

The deal for the nation’s largest railroad operator by revenue will speed the transition of Mr. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Corp. into a megaoperator of industrial firms, moving the Omaha, Neb., conglomerate further from its roots as a nimble investment outfit.   [Read More]

Mr. Buffett’s investment practices have long served as political and economic indicators.  Buffett’s acquisition functions as a reiteration of the lack of confidence in President Obama’s leadership and economic policies: a view that is shared by the majority of Americans according to the latest Rasmussen poll.

If you’re in-the-loop of campus conservatism, you’ve heard the stories of leftist vitriol against conservative students and invited speakers. Campus leftists reserve a special kind of hatred for the few Big-Time  speakers who they can’t bare to share the same planet with—protests, shout-downs, cancelled events, and the occasional pie throwing come to mind.  The University of Southern California has one of those people coming to campus this week.

Conservative activist and Israel advocate David Horowitz was invited by the USC College Republicans to speak on the USC Campus this Wednesday, November 4th; and the lefties are going nuts.

This is a flyer from the USC Progressive Alliance that’s been spotted around campus:

Mr. Horowitz’s topic Wednesday will be combating campus anti-Semitism and anti-Israel activity, so calling him an Islamophobe and racist was the easiest card to play. The quote on the flyer is controversial, but it’s also out of context.

UPDATE: Apparently, the quote on the flyer is something that was never said or written by Horowitz—The quote attributed to Mr. Horrowitz is from a piece by “Hindutva News Analysis”**:Here’s the article from FrontPage Magazine where that quote was published in a 2002 story on 9/11 terrorist Mohammed Atta titled “What makes people like Atta beasts in Human form?“

USC recently had its own experience with a Muslim scripture that called for the indiscriminate killing of Jews everywhere. Horowitz was on the front lines when the “Hadith of Hate” was banned from the USC Muslim Student Association’s university-owned website.

Last week the Students for [in-]Justice in Palestine sent out a similar e-mail to it’s members, a list of sentence fragments taken out of context. [See the e-mail here] The e-mails ends, “Students for Justice in Palestine has voted to oppose this speaker in any way possible, and I am now calling on you to help us figure out how to respond.”

“Oppose this speaker in any way possible”?

Intolerance, (violence?), and the silencing of political, social, and religious minorities on college campuses is exactly what David Horowitz has been fighting against with his Academic Freedom program. Maybe the SJP and USC [Re]gressives could learn a little lesson from their arch-nemesis this Wednesday.

Not to worry, the event will go on. And,  the “opposition” will be televised, so stay tuned for video.

**I am checking why the article by “Hindutva News Analysis” seems to be attributed to FRONTPAGEMAG.com, a website run by Horrowitz. It seems as if “www.frontpagemag.com” was just added to the article. For now, it looks like I and the USC Progressives both made an error in attributing the article to Horowitz.

Governor

New Jersey   (R) Chris Christie 42% (D) Jon Corzine 40% [Quinnipiac]

Virginia       (R) Bob McDonnell 54% (D) Creigh Deeds 41% [Rasmussen]

Congress

New York 23   (R) Doug Hoffman 41% (D) Bill Owens     36% [Sienna]

Has Dick Cheney gone European on us, or has Europe gone Cheneyesque?  Neither, actually, but both Europe and Cheney have something in common, according to a Der Speigel editorial.  Both of them have grown impatient with Barack Obama’s lengthy decision-making process on Afghanistan.

The headers of the sections of the editorial are quite telling, especially for a publication not known for its opposition to Obama or particular love for President George W. Bush.  [Read More]

(H/T Hot Air)

Victicrat: Ft. Alfonzo Rachel, Produced by Eric Elder; Starring James O’Keef, Ryan Sorba and more…

More from PJTV.

(h/t Ryan Sorba)

WASHINGTON — The Chinese government is ratcheting up its cyberspying operations against the U.S., a congressional advisory panel found, citing an example of a carefully orchestrated campaign against one U.S. company that appears to have been sponsored by Beijing.

The unnamed company was just one of several successfully penetrated by a campaign of cyberespionage, according to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission report to be released Thursday. Chinese espionage operations are “straining the U.S. capacity to respond,” the report concludes.

China is among more than 100 countries that have the capability to conduct cyberspying operations.

The report highlights several departments of China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army, responsible for components of cyberspying. Together these divisions oversee electronic spying and attack efforts, as well as research and development.

The PLA has also been creating a number of cyberwarfare militia units, which draw on civilians in the telecommunications and technology sectors, as well as academia, the report found.  [Read More]

(H/T WSJ)

According to The Hill, a poll released over the weekend shows that a mere 34 percent of Californians approve of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) job performance, a decrease of 14 points from March of this year.

The study, conducted by the Field Research Corportation, also showed that 44 percent of respondents disapproved of her job performance while 22 percent held no opinion. In the organization’s last poll in March, 48 percent of respondents approved of Pelosi’s job performance while 35 percent disapproved.  [Read More]

(H/T The Drudge Report)

According to an NBC Connecticut Report, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination process was so controlled that the White House even approved her clothes, she told Yalies when she appeared at her 30th Yale Law School reunion on Saturday.

Sotomayor described her grueling nomination process privately when she spoke to 1,800 alumni, students and faculty , the New Haven Register reports.  State Sen. Ed Meyer attended the event and said Sotomayor became teary at times, but kept the crowd laughing.

The Yale Law School grad talked about shopping for clothes to wear to her acceptance ceremony, but government officials took over the fashion decisions. They told her to bring five suits and then recommended which one she should wear, Meyer said.  [Read More]

(H/T The Drudge Report)

According to a St. Petersburg Times report, more than $2.3 million in federal economic stimulus grants have gone to eight Tampa Bay area cosmetology and massage schools to pay tuition for the hairdressers, masseuses and nail technicians of tomorrow.

That’s swell news for those who see the beauty trades as a way to gain a firmer footing in the job market. But is there truly demand for more beauty school graduates at bay area salons?  Some area salons are hiring in this economy, but even industry lobbyists say beauty school is rarely a ticket to a thriving career.  Only 1 to 2 percent of beauty school graduates will be working in the field five years from graduation, said Bonnie Poole, treasurer of the Florida Cosmetology Association.  [Read More]

(H/T The Drudge Report)

–

Well just as talk of the famous porkulus bill had settled down and Obama’s conquest for Socialized Medicine has taken full force, Americans are once again reminded of what more than half of them voted for last November: lots of Pork!

HOW’S THAT HOPE AND CHANGE WORKIN’ FOR YA?

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea fired five short-range missiles off its east coast on Monday, news reports said, even as South Korea proposed working-level talks with its communist neighbor.

The reported launches were the first since the regime conducted a barrage of seven ballistic missile tests in early July, and come despite signs North Korea is reaching out to rival South Korea and the United States after months of heightened tensions over its missile and nuclear programs.  [Read More]

(H/T The Wall Street Journal)

–

As the world awaits President Obama’s decision on an Afghanistan counter-insurgency strategy, the North Koreans are growing restless with their lack of coverage by the U.S. left-wing media.  Pyongyang has clearly grown jealous that it’s  rival regime, Iran, has unveiled several war-grade nuclear facilities and thereby trumping any coverage of their most recent antics.  Pyongyang clearly thought that by launching five missiles over the pacific they could successfully re-enter the talking points of the nation’s media outlets.  Well, Considering the President believes socialist healthcare and the nobel peace prize for nothing are more important than our Troops overseas, border security, and the nation’s economy, it’s no wonder that North Korea won’t be receiving the desired coverage and has clearly been placed quite far down the proverbial “to-do list.”  One can only wonder how Pyongyang will react in the future after clearly being “stiffed” by the press and their “friend” President Obama.  Possibly North Korea will summon their new bff Bill Clinton for another comedy-filled play date featuring Hillary as the punchline once again.

From Bronwen Maddox at the Times Online:

Scrap the Nobel Peace Prize. It’s an embarrassment and even an impediment to peace. President Obama, in letting the committee award it to him, has made himself look vain, a fool and dangerously lost in his own mystique.

Where do you start, in the daftness of it? Anointing a leader whose character the panel admires, but who is only a fifth of the way through his term of office and has not yet clinched any peace? The fey, fanciful lack of criteria, which does no favours to the rigorous awards in science that, unfortunately, share the same brand name?

No, start with two hard-edged points. The Peace Prize has begun to distort and damage crucial negotiations. And Obama’s acceptance of the supposed honour is a misjudgment that will give power to his critics. [Read More]

SF Chronicle reports:

CA GOP gubernatorial cadidate Meg Whitman endorsed Barbara Boxer for US Senate in 2004.

Senior European Union envoy Javier Solana said at the end of talks with Iran Thursday that he expects Tehran to open its uranium-enrichment plant to United Nations inspectors “within two weeks,” adding that Iran appeared to understand that circumstances have changed since it stonewalled in similar talks 15 months ago.

Thursday’s talks in a villa on Lake Geneva included a rare high level one-on-one meeting between the U.S. and Iran, which have no diplomatic relations. It wasn’t immediately clear, however, the extent of the progress made Thursday, though U.S. officials said before the meeting they would not have further talks for their own sake.

While Thursday’s meeting isn’t expected to address the issue of new sanctions, European members of the P5+1 are pushing for quick action if Iran fails to persuade the group that it is willing to engage to find a solution to concerns over its fuel program. The facilities Iran is developing can enrich uranium to weapons grade or to be used in civilian power plants.  [Read More]

(H/T Marc Champion, WSJ)

In a BBC News report, World powers have increased pressure on Iran, urging the country to reveal the nature of its nuclear programme during six-party talks in Geneva on Thursday.

A spokesman for the German chancellor said Iran was “comprehensively failing to co-operate”.  The International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran was the wrong side of the law in hiding a second uranium plant.  Tehran revealed the existence of the previously secret site, partially built into a mountain, last week.

Iranian representatives will meet on Thursday for talks with the five permanent Security Council seat holders – the UK, China, France, Russia and the US – plus Germany – the so-called P+1.  The US and its allies are contemplating tightening sanctions against the country. The UN Security Council has so far imposed three sets of sanctions against Iran over its refusal to freeze its nuclear programme.   [Read More]

NEW YORK – Former Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu was sentenced Tuesday to more than 24 years in prison by a judge who accused him of funding his fraud by manipulating the political process in a way that “strikes at the very core of our democracy.”

U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero sentenced the 58-year-old Hsu, who raised money for Hillary Rodham Clinton and others, to 20 years in prison for his guilty plea to fraud charges and another four years and four months in prison for his conviction at trial for breaking campaign finance laws.

“Mr. Hsu’s disgraceful use of political campaigns to perpetuate his Ponzi schemes, as well as his acts of campaign finance fraud, strikes at the very core of our democracy,” Marrero said.  [Read More]

(H/T Larry Neumeister, AP, Yahoo)