Mere Rhetoric

Hamas Arms Smuggling At Pre-Cast Lead Levels, Rockets Against Israeli Civilians Normal Again

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:16:04 -0800

I know. Despite the security assurances swirling around Israel's decision to call off Cast Lead. I mean, sure the international community made identical assurances in the context of Israel's original withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. And sure those first assurances were provided with an extra exclamation point, where Palestinian shelling was understood to justify massive Israeli retaliation. And...

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The Omri Ceren Show - 2pm PST Today - Bowing And Scraping The US Into Decline

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:20:43 -0800

One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show goes on the air in a little under an hour. Remember that to hear it live - and to participate - you need to go to the show's main page here. Continuing with this morning's "let's see how this goes" theme, I won't be doing a full guest interview for the first time ever. You're not totally getting abandoned - Dan Diker is still dropping in for 15 minutes of...

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The Omri Ceren Show - Martin Sherman Wrap Up, Changes To The Show (POLL!)

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:02:13 -0800

First, some odds and ends from last week. I should have posted a formal message after the Martin Sherman show, which was arguably the best TOCS yet and is available for download. I didn't get to it so let's take care of the formalities here. Prof. Sherman's a former Shamir adviser, a military intelligence specialist, a widely-cited academic, and - unarguably - among the most careful scholars on...

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Obama: We're Giving Iran More Time Because Of Their "Unsettled Political Situation"

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:17:28 -0800

At least now we know what unblinking pretexts Obama's getting from his Iran advisers. They need to explain why all their nuanced Tehranology - which always ends with some new inscrutable justification for pro-Iran gestures - has merely emboldened Khamenei into confidently coming out as a hardline thug. It can't be that liberal foreign policy experts have spent the last few decades disingenuously...

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Watchers Council Nominations - Agitprop At Home, Weakness Abroad, And Jihad Everywhere

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 05:37:25 -0800

Each week, the members of the Watchers Council nominate one of their own posts and a second from outside the Council for consideration by other council members in a contest for the week's best post. With a new list coming out in a few hours, it's probably about time for me to post last week's nominated posts. That's the kind of tight ship we run here at MR HQ. Why do these posts always go up at...

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Carter II: Obama's Losing Turkey To Political Islam

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 09:52:40 -0800

The elegant thing about Turkey's slide from the West is how starkly it juxtaposes liberal pseudo-sophistication with conservative warnings. On one side you have Obama's ephemeral charisma, where Turkey was the first Muslim country he visited as part of his global Presidential apology tour. At a minimum that should have made Ankara more rather than less inclined to lean toward the US and NATO. On...

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Watchers Council Nominations - Conservative Wins And Losses

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:56:09 -0800

Each week, the members of the Watchers Council nominate one of their own posts and a second from outside the Council for consideration by other council members in a contest for the week's best post. Last week's submissions were written in the background of the grassroots victory over Scozzafava in the NY-23, polls showing a Republican crush in Virginia, and the promise of at least moral victory...

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WH: GOP Wins Just Prove People Want Cost-Cutting Nationalized Health Care

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 07:15:45 -0800

Buried on the second page of Politico's "don't believe the post-election conservative hype" article, this is going to have Mickey Kaus positively tickled. Couple it with how death panels got reinserted into House legislation, and everything old really does seem new again: White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs insisted Wednesday that the White House plans no changes whatsoever in its...

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The Omri Ceren Show - 2pm PST - Barry Rubin On Lebanon's Crisis And Ours

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:11:16 -0800

Today's TOCS episode goes on the air a little less than an hour, with highlights from my interview with Prof. Barry Rubin, analysis from Dan Diker, and the weekly roundup of US, Israeli, and international news. To hear the show live - and to submit questions via the chat room or get on the air through the phone lines - head over to the show's Blog Talk Radio page at 2pm PST. The call with Diker...

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Agitprop-Funding NEA Chief: "Barack Obama Is The Most Powerful Writer Since Julius Caesar"

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:46:25 -0800

First of all - and I know this is ticky-tacky but the left's ubiquotous pseudo-sophisticated name checking gets obnoxious - Julius Caesar was not a particularly great writer. Even if that wasn't true, Marcus Aurelius was in every way a better scribe and at least equally as powerful. And as a purely historical matter, though it's distasteful to admit, Lenin and Mao also need to be included as...

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Confirmed: Obama Administration Alienates Every Last AfPak Leader

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:52:02 -0800

I just checked this to be sure, and "AfPak" definitely stands for Afghanistan and Pakistan. It's the region in which we're currently engaged in a hot war that we're desperately trying not to lose. So - at least in theory - alienating the leaders of both Afghanistan and Pakistan would be one of those geopolitical blunders that we've been assured were hallmarks of the Bush administration....

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Lebanon: Israeli Agents Launching Rockets At Themselves To Make Us Look Bad

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:52:13 -0800

Well sure it sounds batshit crazy. But if you look at it from the perspective of a conspiracy-addled antisemite - "whatever helps Israel must have been instigated by Israel, including the genocidal wars Arab States start and lose" - then it makes a lot of sense. Why wouldn't Israel fire on its own citizens, thereby exposing Lebanon to the unbearably withering prospect of an Israeli complaint to...

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Watchers Council Nominations - Insincerity As A Political Ideology

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 05:45:20 -0800

Each week, the members of the Watchers Council nominate one of their own posts and a second from outside the Council for consideration by other council members in a contest for the week's best post. My submissions for this week are roughly "liberals always support the war we're not in" and "liberal American Jews always support Israeli self-defense except when Israel actually tries to defend...

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The Omri Ceren Show - Wednesday 2pm PST - Norman Podhoretz On Why Jews Are Liberals (Plus: New Features!)

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:32:58 -0800

Tune in tomorrow afternoon at 2pm for the fourth installment of One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show. I wrapped up the interview with Norman Podhoretz this morning and will play you some highlights on the air, split about 66/33 between Podhoretz's new book Why Are Jews Liberals? and his previous work World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism. There just wasn't enough depressing...

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Collective Nutroots Wisdom: Lieberman Blocking Public Option So Israel Can Attack Iran Or Something

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:46:41 -0800

Cherry picking nutroots comments sections and finding antisemitism - not a neat trick. Finding the same antisemitic meme in comments across six top nutroots blogs - still not a particularly neat trick because what do you expect from Daily Kos, Wonkette, HuffPo, ThinkProgress, FiveThirtyEight, and DU? But closer! What would be really interesting is if blogs like HuffPo had been randomly filtering...

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