A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day...so check back often.
On the Web:
ShrinkWrapped: The Arab Mind: Part XII - [All posts in this series can be found at The Arab Mind archive.] Adult Sexuality: Thus far, I have concerned myself primarily with Arab child rearing habits and tendencies and their effect on childhood development, especially in the realm of sexual development. An additional point that I have not emphasized is the prevalence of child sexual abuse within the Arab world. Such abuse, which I have alluded to, tends to powerfully reinforce the regressive tendencies already noted, and increase the sexual anxieties that fuel the regression. In this segment of The Arab Mind, I rely on Raphael Patai's descriptions to offer a more complete picture of adult Arab sexuality. As with all of these posts, various caveats are in order. First of all, the Arab Mind is a distillation and therefore, a generalization. (READ MORE)
Dr. Sanity: YES, LET'S HAVE A FRANK, OPEN AND HONEST DISCUSSION ABOUT RACE IN THIS COUNTRY, SHALL WE? - Yeah, right. The media focus in on one specific moron to showcase their meme about white racism and how Hillary supporters are just a bunch of racist rednecks voting for Hillary because Obama is black. But then they ignore the key statistic from this article: “Obama won 91 percent of the black vote in North Carolina, but Clinton took 59 percent of the white vote.” 91% of the vote? That statistic approaches the kind of result you see in elections held in totalitarian states where there is only one candidate-- and you'd better vote for him, or else. (READ MORE)
Don Surber: More popcorn, please - For Republicans, the fun has just begun. Consensus now is that Democratic Sen. Barack Obama just put her away. This shifts the Democratic Party’s focus fully on Republican Sen. John McCain. Well, good. Finally. Yes, I have been entertained by the first act and really wished to see a girl fight, but alas, the Rolling Stones were right: You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometime, you find, you get what you need. And Obama-McCain is just what we need. Far more entertaining than another Clintonian siege on the White House. Now the new analysis is all gloom and doom for Republicans. (READ MORE)
Ed Morrissey: (Video) Roosevelt talked to Hitler and Tojo? - During Barack Obama’s victory speech in North Carolina last night, he offered an argument about his much-criticized assertion that he would hold talks with America’s enemies without preconditions. Obama claimed that he would only be following in the footsteps of FDR and Harry Truman with this kind of openness. For a history buff such as myself, this sounds more than a little puzzling: “The other side can label and name-call all they want, but I trust the American people to recognize that it is not surrender to end the war in Iraq so that we can rebuild our military and go after Al Qaida’s leaders. I trust the American people to understand that it is not weakness, but wisdom to talk not just to our friends, but to our enemies, like Roosevelt did, and Kennedy did, and Truman did.” (READ MORE)
Neptunus Lex: Giving ’til it hurts - Sometimes it hurts right away. Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg and Matt Damon collaborated to make “Saving Private Ryan” a few years back, the World War II blockbuster featuring the costly and heroic rescue of a “sole survivor” deep behind enemy lines. Devin Nunes, a California congressman, asked them to throw their star power behind legislation codifying the rights of actual sole survivors, since one of his constituents, having lost two brothers in Iraq, requested and was granted a return to the US. Upon his return, Army Specialist Jason Hubbard got exactly what he was entitled to by law: Nothing. No benefits, no GI Bill, no separation counseling. He was asked to pay back his enlistment bonus. Would the Hollywood power trio care to lend a hand? (READ MORE)
Jules Crittenden: $$$??? - While we’re all waiting to find out who takes Indiana, here’s something fun. Massachusetts Governor/Obamawannabe Deval Patrick’s pro-Obama stump speech includes a misremembered claim that his Obamism goes back to a $5,000 donation in the mid-1990s: “An Associated Press check of records on file in Springfield, Ill., where Obama served in the Legislature for six years and his campaign committee filed its finance reports, didn’t find a donation, and a separate search by Patrick and his campaign staff since last week failed to find any evidence of it.” (READ MORE)
McQ: NC and IN - A very bad night for Hillary Clinton. Yes she won IN. But barely. And she was blown out it NC. So ... what does that mean? Does the dogged and determined Democrat continue the chase, or does she give it up, given the results and bow to the seeming inevitable. As you might imagine, the pundits and prognosticators are all over the place on this. Coming up are two primaries in which she should do well given the demographics of each and how well they match up with her other wins. WV and KY should be Clinton country. But to what end? Even if she wins there, after last night, any ground she had made up in the popular vote was pretty much rubbed out and she certainly didn't gain in the delegate count. And, as many are predicting, she's not going to get the cash bounce she got after her more recent and more impressive wins (and there are rumors she's running short of cash again.). (READ MORE)
Allahpundit: Pro-life former Romney advisor: Obama’s better on abortion than McCain - It’s Doug Kmiec, previously co-chair of Mitt’s committee on the courts, currently an Obama shill of such mystifying obtuseness that one suspects a head injury’s behind his support. You can’t appreciate this post until you’ve read this one, in which a man of obvious brilliance — professor of constitutional law, scholar of sufficient renown to earn a prominent advisory role to a presidential campaign — somehow ends up affiliated with Team Romney despite the fact that he’s, er, passionately anti-war. Rather than take David Frum’s advice and simply cite that issue as justification for his lurch left, he’s gone the Andrew Sullivan route of arguing that his new candidate is somehow better on all the issues that concern him, not merely the one that concerns him most. (READ MORE)
Skippy's List: A Modest Proposal - For those of you who are just reading for the first time check out this post from last week. So I have been leaving comments in Amy Proctor’s site about this, and my feelings on the subject. I pointed out that nearly every argument that she made could be applied towards banning a religion from the post, provided that someone else objected to it. She responded with: “Right, Skippy, banning the sexualization of women for profit on posts and banning religion are one in the same. I don’t know why i didn’t see it sooner.” Actually, it is the same thing. It is the exact same thing. (READ MORE)
Dr. iRack: Awakening to New Dangers - With all the focus on intra-Shia conflict over the past month, Dr. iRack wanted to draw readers' attention for a moment back to a silent storm brewing: the fate of the "Sons of Iraq." For more than a year, Sunni security volunteers fighting AQI and safeguarding their own neighborhoods have demanded integration into the Iraqi army and police. But very few of the 90,000 mostly Sunni SoIs (including many re-hatted "former" insurgents and even some members associated with AQI) have been integrated or otherwise guaranteed gainful employment by the Iraqi government. Instead, sectarian bias prevails, leaving U.S. forces to pick up the tab and keep them in line. This is not sustainable, and frustrations are growing. Consider this story from Adhamiyah, once one of Baghdad's most violent districts but now calmed (at least temporarily) by the cooperation between SoIs and U.S. forces: (READ MORE)
Army Girl: Esprit de Corps - This past weekend I ventured out of the house for a short while and headed to the National Mall to check out this display and expo type thing they were doing with all of the various civil service and military branches. I don't know what it was called but they had all the toys out for people to hold on to and crawl on. There was one lone protester outside who looked as if she couldn't convince a cat to eat a fish haplessly out of its bowl. In fact, she kind of demonstrated something far greater by BEING there than she probably realized. I'm sure it was unintentional on her part but she evoked this strange urge from me... not to walk up and punch her as my marine buddy wanted to do but to walk up and THANK HER for demonstrating her right to free speech.... (READ MORE)
Robert Mackey: Yeah, it's been a couple of days - Just started a new job for a new company. I've been pondering lately the whole bruhaha over Iran's nuclear program. I like to think of it as my "Thankgiving Day Dinner" analogy. When you were little, you sat at the little table. At the little table, you could throw food, hit your cousin, and basically do whatever you wanted. The grownups at the big table would only occasionally intervene, when the food was hitting the big table, or someone was about to be seriously injured by a drumstick. Then, one day, perhaps it was when you were in high school, you finally moved to the big table. You felt important; an adult. But the rules were different. Fights, unless it involved a well-placed insult at your loathed uncle, were frowned upon. Manners must be obeyed; no more food fights. And thus is life. (READ MORE)
Meryl Yourish: Ehud Barak: Israel is fighting the next war - The IDF is an army that thinks. The Iranians go with what worked in the past. Like I keep telling you: The IDF is going to be fighting the next war, while Hamas and Hezbullah are fighting the last one. From an interview with Ehud Barak: “So how do we deal with the military buildup in Gaza? ‘We’ve already been inside Gaza, and while we were there Qassams were fired and the armament was ongoing. We might have to go back into Gaza – we have to be ready for that. We’re not thrilled about it, but if and when we decide to do it, the operation won’t resemble the Second Lebanon War. Israel is the strongest nation in the Middle East, but we have to apply our strength wisely. War is no picnic. Wars should be prevented and if you can’t prevent them you have to put them off. If war is forced on us, we have to be able to win it quickly, unequivocally, on enemy soil and without any damage to the home front.’” (READ MORE)
Soccerdad: Palestinians cry “canton” - One aspect of Israeli negotiations with the Palestinians that’s constant is that whatever Israel offers will be dismissed as an insult or some other epithet. Now that negotiations are coming down to nitty-gritty details like borders, the cries start anew. The Jerusalem Post reports: “‘Today, it’s clear to us that Israel has no intention of withdrawing from all the territories that were occupied in 1967,’ said one official. ‘If the Israelis and Americans think that they will ever find a Palestinian leader who would accept less than the 1967 borders, they are living under an illusion.’ Another top PA official said that maps presented by the Israeli government to the Palestinians in the past few weeks showed that Israel is planning to retain control over nearly half of the West Bank and large parts of eastern Jerusalem.” (READ MORE)
Jay Tea: Lies, Damned Lies, And Politics - Last week, when I was visiting that Tufts class, one of the accomplishments of the blogosphere I touted was our (collective here; I take no individual credit) busting of various fraudulent stories the mainstream media has pushed. I talked about AP photographer Bilal Hussein, the AP's fabricated source "Jamil Hussein," Adnan Hajj and numerous other Reuters photographers, and whatnot. When I mentioned how "Jamil Hussein" kept citing atrocities in and around Baghdad that no one else had heard of and could not verify, Charley from Blue Mass Group asked me a rather pointed question: "are you saying that atrocities aren't happening over there?" I answered so quickly that I didn't even realize what I'd said: "if there are so many, why do people have to make them up?" (READ MORE)
Lawhawk: Hizbullah Goes On Offensive Against Lebanese Government - Is this the first step in arranging the stage for the fight against Israel to come? “Explosions and gunfire rang out across Lebanon's capital. The cause of the explosions was not immediately known and there was no word on casualties. The violence deepened tensions in a country already mired in a 17-month-old political crisis pitting the Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah against the government of Prime Minister Fuad Saniora. The troubles have left the country without a president since November.” (READ MORE)
Richard Landes: Failed Jihad 1948: The Real Naqba - Benny Morris has a new book out on 1948. In the course of researching it he discovered how intense the religious dimension of the conflict that year. Such an observation is on the one hand, quite ordinary and empirical, on the other, a violation of the principles of cognitive egocentrism whereby the Arab objection to Jewish independence must be formulated and presented to the public as a “rational” objection, as a “nationalist” argument. Negotitations according to the PC Paradigm will only work if the dispute is about territories and rational national narratives that can come to a mutual understanding (2-state solution). But if it is profoundly zero-sum and religious in nature, then all the pacific bromides about war not being the answer fall by the wayside. Here Morris discusses the religious dimension of 1948 and chides the modern historian for not taking it seriously. (READ MORE)
Big Dog: Obama’s Plan; Wishful Thinking - Throughout this never ending campaign season Barry Obama has trumpeted to the masses that he is different than the others. He has told us that he is a DC outsider and that he has the vision for America that is not clouded by politics as usual. This, of course, is a crock of excrement and one only needs to look at his career to see that politics as usual played a big part in how he was elected in Illinois and how he eventually got a seat in the elite club known as the US Senate. After the primaries yesterday Obama put out a press release (I know it was his campaign but they speak for him) which stated that Rush Limbaugh had encouraged people to vote for Clinton because he wanted her to win and that Republicans were scared of Obama. The underlying theme is that she only won by 2% with all of Limbaugh’s “help.” (READ MORE)
The Belmont Club: Saddam and Bin Laden - Did Saddam Hussein cooperate with al-Qaeda to attack America? The Institute for Defense Analyses survey of Saddam Hussein's relationship to terrorist organizations, based on 600,000 captured documents, categorically concludes they can't find the connection -- there's "no smoking gun (i.e., direct connection) between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda" -- but thoroughly documents the Iraqi dictator's systematic use of terrorism to attack Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, Iraqi dissidents all over the world and, when it suited him, American interests. The lasting value of the IDA report will be as a portrait of a certain type of Middle Eastern state, for whom terrorism is a normal instrument of policy. Although the report is about Iraq, it could just as easily describe the basic structure of statecraft in Iran, Syria, Egypt, "Palestine" and Saudi Arabia. (READ MORE)
Confederate Yankee: Once More Unto the Breach: More Biased AP Reporting in Iraq - It seems to matter little whether the location is Gaza or Baghdad. If there is a way to spin a story, Associated Press reporters will find it. Today, American forces called in an AC-130 for support when they came under fire in the Kazimiyah district of Baghdad. The Associated Press editorializes: “The AC-130, a lethal tool used by the military since the Vietnam War, can slowly circle over a target for long periods. Human rights groups have criticized their use in urban settings where militants may be among crowded populations of noncombatants. The four-engine gunships were also used to support the U.S. attack that took the western city of Fallujah from insurgents in November 2004.” What the Associated Press does not mention is that the modern AC-130U is the most complex aircraft weapons system on the planet, and the reason for its complexity is that the aircraft's sensors, navigation, and fire control systems are calibrated to conduct exceedingly accurate surgical strikes. (READ MORE)
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