tag:typepad.com,2003:weblog-56081 2013-06-18T15:32:01-04:00 "What is Zionism if not the opposite of cowardice? And what are we without Zionism, but homeless... no matter where we happen to live" -- Yael. TypePad tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451bc4a69e20192ab4670c0970d 2013-06-18T15:32:01-04:00 2013-06-18T15:40:25-04:00

Consider this an UPDATE to my earlier post, and the IBD editorial about CAIR getting preferential treatment from the IRS (in the wake of "hundreds" of closed door meetings with the Obama administration, including many in the White House): At Breitbart: Eliana Johnson of National Review Online reports that Cincinnati-based IRS agent Gary Muthert told the House Oversight Committee that the IRS does, in fact, subject pro-Israel tax-exempt groups to higher scrutiny --by sending their applications to a special IRS unit that investigates them for ties to terrorism.

Yael http://bokertov.typepad.com/btb/2013/06/consider-this-an-update-to-my-earlier-post.html tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451bc4a69e201901d8711da970b 2013-06-18T13:04:00-04:00 2013-06-18T13:05:36-04:00

State Department Whistleblower Now Facing Retaliation and Intimidation Katie Pavlich: "Camping out in front of her house? Intimidating her kids? Sounds like these tactics follow the Obama administration whistleblower retaliation playbook perfectly. " AP Photo /Flashback: Obama Annointment at Invesco Field, August 28, 2008 See also StopBullying Dot GOV, a "federal government website managed by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services." "Bullying can affect you in many ways. You may lose sleep or feel sick. You may want to skip school. You may even be thinking about suicide. If you are feeling hopeless or helpless or know someone...

Yael http://bokertov.typepad.com/btb/2013/06/oh-yes-we-can.html tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451bc4a69e201901d86cb48970b 2013-06-18T12:21:46-04:00 2013-06-18T12:21:46-04:00

Elan pegged it when he called my attention to this picture of "Obama looking like Mt. Rushmore" at the G8. EXTRA POINTS if you can identify the foreign leader with whom The Won is dis/engaged in conversation.

Yael http://bokertov.typepad.com/btb/2013/06/g8-photo-of-the-day.html tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451bc4a69e20191037caa9d970c 2013-06-18T12:02:39-04:00 2013-06-18T12:12:31-04:00

There's been a lot of hullabaloo over the [1.8 million shekels] paid to Bill Clinton for his speech at the Peres Academic Center, but he's made it go away by donating it back. This negates the concluding point of Ari Soffer's summary of the speech - posted by David Ha'ivri at facebook - but the rest holds. - Stroke Peres' ego... check - Urge Israelis to "take risks" with their lives and their children's... check - "Warn" us that we're destined to lose the conflict, so we'd better compromise fast... check - Market yourself as a modern liberal whilst warning...

Yael http://bokertov.typepad.com/btb/2013/06/bill-clinton-speech-in-israel.html tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451bc4a69e20192ab44abcd970d 2013-06-18T11:22:22-04:00 2013-06-18T13:08:45-04:00

I can't resist this next bit, as I came across it right after I finished that last post, in which The Won was lecturing on the complexity of the war in Syria. I can't resist. 5 Transitions Great Leaders Make That Average Leaders Don't Shun Complexity– Complexity is a leader’s enemy not their friend. Great leaders live to eliminate or simplify the complex, while average leaders allow themselves and those they lead to be consumed by it. Complexity stifles innovation, slows development, gates progress, and adversely impacts culture. Complexity is expensive, inefficient, and ineffective. I’m not minimizing the fact we...

Yael http://bokertov.typepad.com/btb/2013/06/great-leaders-live-to-eliminate-or-simplify-the-complex.html tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451bc4a69e20191037bb5ce970c 2013-06-18T10:51:33-04:00 2013-06-18T10:51:33-04:00

9 AM and I'm ready to go back to bed. The news is loathsome. An IBD editorial suggests that HAMAS-in-America, known as CAIR, got preferential treatment by the IRS because of its cozy relationship with the Obama White House. .... Despite being blackballed by the FBI, which still suspects it's fronting for Hamas, and despite failing to file annual tax reports as required by federal law, CAIR apparently has found friends in high places at the nation's powerful taxing authority. Last year, in the middle of the national election season, the IRS quietly agreed to reinstate CAIR's tax-exempt status, allowing...

Yael http://bokertov.typepad.com/btb/2013/06/the-news-is-awful-find-something-else-to-do.html tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451bc4a69e201901d7f6af2970b 2013-06-17T17:42:34-04:00 2013-06-17T17:42:34-04:00

October 2008: Glenn Reynolds at USA Today: .... Over the weekend, the Associated Press reported that the spying goes well beyond the Prism program reported by whistleblower Edward Snowden. As AP notes, "while Prism has attracted the recent attention, the program actually is a relatively small part of a much more expansive and intrusive eavesdropping effort. . . . documents show it is one of the major sources for what ends up in the president's daily briefing." From the descriptions available, it appears that the NSA basically just copies everything going over the Internet, and can look at it either...

Yael http://bokertov.typepad.com/btb/2013/06/fundamental-transformation-nearly-complete.html tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451bc4a69e20192ab3d8ae9970d 2013-06-17T17:14:46-04:00 2013-06-17T17:17:23-04:00

President Obama calls the head of the CIA and asks, "How come the Jews know everything before we do?" The CIA chief says, "The Jews have this expression, 'Vus titzuch?' The President asks, "What's that mean?" "Well, Mr. President," replies the CIA chief, "It's a Yiddish expression which roughly translates to 'what's happening?' They just go around asking each other 'vus titzuch?' and they end up knowing everything." The President decides to go undercover to determine if this is true. He gets dressed up as an Orthodox Jew and is secretly flown in an unmarked plane to New York, picked...

Yael http://bokertov.typepad.com/btb/2013/06/vus-titzuch.html tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451bc4a69e20192ab3cda49970d 2013-06-17T15:27:56-04:00 2013-06-17T15:27:56-04:00

Yael http://bokertov.typepad.com/btb/2013/06/sigh.html tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451bc4a69e201901d7d5c87970b 2013-06-17T13:14:39-04:00 2013-06-17T13:14:39-04:00

Wikipedia defines a "police state" as a state in which "... the government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic and political life of the population. A police state typically exhibits ... little or no distinction between the law and the exercise of political power by the executive." On this weekend's show, Mike Huckabee discussed the NSA scandal with William (Bill) Binney, a "former NSA official with more than 30 years" at the agency. In this video - at about 4:32 - Gov. Huckabee asks, "What gives us any confidence at all that somebody doesn't decide to manipulate...

Yael http://bokertov.typepad.com/btb/2013/06/is-it-a-police-state-yet.html tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451bc4a69e201910372d083970c 2013-06-17T11:07:01-04:00 2013-06-17T11:09:15-04:00

On the one hand, I hate to repeat this. On the other hand, the mind-blowing chasm between rationality and Obama Worship is well worth illustrating, especially for those who don't dare go see what's happening on the other side of the curtain. At Tom and Lorenzo (dot com), these are the actual words that introduce Annie Liebowitz's photo of FLO, from the April issue of Anna Wintour's VOGUE magazine: "... all y'all need to bow the f--k down for THIS: "

Yael http://bokertov.typepad.com/btb/2013/06/on-the-other-side-of-the-curtain.html tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451bc4a69e201901d7cacd8970b 2013-06-17T10:46:05-04:00 2013-06-17T10:49:26-04:00

... we probably... agree that it's a very good thing to teach our kids to share. You may see this as simple courtesy; I see it as simple courtesy plus training for building a more shareable society. First the playground, tomorrow the world." [Source: Shareable.net/blog] Obamacare will share personal health info with federal, state agencies: A new rule issued late Friday requires state, federal and local agencies as well as health insurers to swap the protected personal health information of anybody seeking to join the new health care program that will be enforced by the Internal Revenue Service. Personal health...

Yael http://bokertov.typepad.com/btb/2013/06/building-a-more-shareable-society.html tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451bc4a69e20192ab3abae6970d 2013-06-17T10:09:56-04:00 2013-06-17T10:22:04-04:00

From the bluff head where I watch'd to-day, I saw her in the doldrums; for the wind Was light and baffling." -- Lord Byron, 1824. For Elan, that it should help him recover from his present malaise: 47 pct approve, 21 pct strongly. 52 pct disapprove, 40 pct strongly so. Data from The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday, graphed by Yours Truly for BtB.

Yael http://bokertov.typepad.com/btb/2013/06/bho-in-the-doldrums.html tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451bc4a69e20192ab34cae8970d 2013-06-16T18:34:43-04:00 2013-06-16T18:41:17-04:00

I thought it might be "politically safe" (the child of "politically correct") to take a trip back to 2004, now that our media has undergone a "fundamental transformation" such that it no longer seeks to destroy the American president. You'll pardon the understatement. May 2004 Iraqi WMDs, Now in Syria "Week after week after week after week," said Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., about President Bush's rationale for going to war with Iraq, "we were told lie after lie after lie after lie." Were we? Jordan recently seized 20 tons of chemicals trucked in by confessed al-Qaeda members who brought the...

Yael http://bokertov.typepad.com/btb/2013/06/are-syrias-chemical-weapons-the-iraqi-wmds-that-didnt-exist.html tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451bc4a69e201910369b9b7970c 2013-06-16T11:36:05-04:00 2013-06-16T11:58:20-04:00

USA Today: The Washington Post estimates that Obama's Africa trip could cost $60 million to $100 million, citing a person familiar with the details... .... "The infrastructure that accompanies the president's travels is beyond our control," Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security adviser for strategic communication, told the Post. "The security requirements are not White House-driven, they are Secret Service-driven." ARGH & GRRR. If we had any real journalists in the media, they would follow up by asking Rhodes who decided the destination for all that "infrastructure."

Yael http://bokertov.typepad.com/btb/2013/06/la-casa-blanca-blames-secret-service-for-exhorbitant-cost-of-trip-to-sub-saharan-africa.html tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451bc4a69e20192ab319ea7970d 2013-06-16T10:22:48-04:00 2013-06-17T10:26:31-04:00

========================================================================= UPDATE: Oops. I made a mistake in this graph. It obviously does not accurately show the 22% strong approval. Better luck next time. ========================================================================= The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 47% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Obama's job performance. Fifty-two percent (52%) now disapprove. Today’s figures include 22% who Strongly Approve of the way Obama is performing as president and 41% who Strongly Disapprove. This gives him a Presidential Approval Index rating of -19 (see trends). That’s the lowest Approval Index rating for the president in nine months. Just 46% of Democrats...

Yael http://bokertov.typepad.com/btb/2013/06/obama-hits-new-low-52-pct-disapprove.html tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451bc4a69e20192ab315aac970d 2013-06-16T10:15:03-04:00 2013-06-16T10:15:03-04:00

GUESS where I saw this : .... In a healthy economy, job openings are plentiful and unemployment is low. April’s tally of 3.8 million openings might sound like a lot, but it is still well below the prerecession average, in 2007, of 4.5 million openings a month. It is also far lower than the record high of 5.2 million openings in December 2000, when the survey was started near the peak of a long economic expansion. If we didn't know better, we might think the New York Times Editorial Board had stopped propping up The Won, but not quite (the...

Yael http://bokertov.typepad.com/btb/2013/06/nyt-dont-blame-the-work-force.html tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451bc4a69e201901d72a152970b 2013-06-16T08:40:05-04:00 2013-06-16T09:06:50-04:00

I agree with Chelsea Clinton that it's time we saw a woman president, but it shouldn't be her mom. Hillary Clinton has never proved herself as an executive, accomplished nothing positive when Secretary of State and worst of all, she's of the same radical leftist, Islamophile ilk that informs the ongoing disaster emanating from the White House today. No, the only woman on the national scene who has proven executive capability and more courage than can be found in all of Washington DC, is Sarah Palin. Love her or hate her, you have to admit she does not lead from...

Yael http://bokertov.typepad.com/btb/2013/06/i-agree-with-chelsea-clinton.html tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451bc4a69e201901d726181970b 2013-06-16T08:00:21-04:00 2013-06-16T08:00:21-04:00

In case you missed it. George Will on the "Scowling face of the state" As soon as the Constitution permitted him to run for Congress, Al Salvi did. In 1986, just 26 and fresh from the University of Illinois law school, he sank $1,000 of his own money, which was most of his money, into his campaign to unseat an incumbent Democratic congressman. Salvi studied for the bar exam during meals at campaign dinners. He lost his campaign. Today, however, he should be invited to Congress to testify about what happened 10 years later, when he was a prosperous lawyer...

Yael http://bokertov.typepad.com/btb/2013/06/promise-me-.html