SATURDAY,  DECEMBER 27,  2008

FASCINATING TAKE ON GAZA - AT 9:55 P.M. ET:  From The Jerusalem Post:   Palestinian Authority officials in Ramallah said Saturday that they were prepared to assume control over the Gaza Strip if Israel succeeds in overthrowing the Hamas government.

"Yes, we are fully prepared to return to the Gaza Strip," a top PA official told The Jerusalem Post. "We believe the people there are fed up with Hamas and want to see a new government."

COMMENT:  This is by far the most interesting statement on today's major combat in Gaza.  What follows is speculation, but the statement suggests that the Palestinian Authority isn't exactly anguished over Israel's air raid in Gaza, despite the usual condemnation it issued.  There might have even been some collusion between Israel and the PA.  Peace prospects would be far better if Hamas were driven out of Gaza.  It has not won many friends.

MORE ON CAROLINE - AT 8:43 P.M. ET:  The case of Caroline Kennedy gets curioser and curioser.  She's now sitting down with various, apparently friendly news organizations to discuss her bid to be appointed to succeed Hillary Clinton in the Senate.  But the results are less than spectacular.  This quote from today's New York Times:

After weeks of criticism that she had not opened up to the public or the press, Ms. Kennedy has embarked on a series of interviews. But in an extensive sit-down discussion Saturday morning with The New York Times, she still seemed less like a candidate than an idea of one: forceful but vague, largely undefined and seemingly determined to remain that way.

If that's The New York Times talking, the lady is in some trouble. 

By the way, there's a joke now circulating: 

Question:  After interviewing Caroline Kennedy, what do journalists call Sarah Palin?

Answer:  Genius.

By every account, Caroline Kennedy is a lovely woman, a class act, dignified and honorable.  I like her.  But appointment to the Senate is a serious step, and it's pretty clear she's on a sharp learning curve.  We're in perilous times, and I get the sense that most New Yorkers feel that we need a stronger voice.  I have no doubt that Mr. Obama can find some useful work for Caroline in his administration.

YOU KNOW, I JUST FORGOT - AT 8:51 A.M. ET:  From an AP interview with Caroline Kennedy: 

Kennedy offered no excuses for why she failed to vote in a number of elections since registering in New York City in 1988, including in 1994 when Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan was up for re-election for the seat she hopes to take over.

''I was really surprised and dismayed by my voting record,'' she said. ''I'm glad it's been brought to my attention.''

COMMENT:  Oh dear.  She is being supported by the same people who trashed Sarah Palin.  She makes Sarah look like a genius.

LET FREEDOM RING? - AT 8:47 A.M. ET:  From The Washington Times:  Last week, the European Parliament, meeting in Strassbourg, France, gave its Sakharov Prize honoring free speech to Chinese freedom campaigner Hu Jia. Bravo. The same day, the Conference of Presidents of the European Parliament cancelled a screening of the Dutch film "Fitna" on the grounds that criticizing Osama bin Laden and other terrorists is tantamount to "racism" against Muslims (never mind that the film is not a hate product and that Islam is a religion, not a race). Boo, hiss.

COMMENT:  The European Parliament, and the EU structure generally, are filled with politically correct types, many of them socialist bureaucrats who drank the anti-free-speech Kool-Aid long ago.  Their attitude is sickening, but not surprising.

OPEN THE CASH REGISTER, MABEL - AT 8:41 A.M. ET:  From The Washington Post:  COLUMBUS, Ohio -- As the economy sputters and tax revenue plummets, governors and mayors across the United States are lining up to ask President-elect Barack Obama and the new Congress for hundreds of billions of dollars to plug holes in their budgets, arguing that services will suffer and joblessness will rise if Washington does not come to the rescue.

COMMENT:  Remember, it's for the children.  We certainly don't welcome suffering, but maybe some cost-cutting is in order.  Also, it's time governments looked at those "services" to find out exactly who's being served.  Often, it's only the people running the programs.  Some discipline is in order.

COMBAT IN GAZA

Posted at 7:38 a.m. ET

After days of warning that it would do so, Israel launched simultaneous air assaults into Gaza, retaliating for the scores of rockets fired into Israel earlier in the week.  The New York Times is doing some reasonably balanced early reporting on the action:

GAZA CITY — The Israeli Air Force on Saturday launched a massive attack on Hamas targets throughout Gaza in retaliation for the recent heavy rocket fire from the area, hitting mostly security headquarters, training compounds and weapons storage facilities, the Israeli military and witnesses said.

I'm glad The Times said "heavy rocket fire."  The accepted narrative of the leftist press usually plays down the rocket fire, asserting that the rockets aren't very accurate - as if that matters to the family that gets hit.

Dr. Muawiya Hassanein, the head of emergency services at the Gaza Ministry of Health, said at least 140 Palestinians were killed in the raid.

Most were members of the security forces of Hamas, the Islamic group that controls Gaza, but a few civilians were also among the dead, including children. Scores more Palestinians were wounded.

Casualty figures are notoriously inaccurate from that region, but the report that most casualties involved members of Hamas security forces is an unusual admission. 

The air attack came after days of warnings by Israeli officials that Israel would retaliate for intense rocket and mortar fire against Israeli towns and villages by Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza. On Wednesday alone, more than 60 rockets and mortars were fired, some reaching further than previously. While the rockets are meant to be deadly, and several houses and a factory were hit, sowing widespread panic, no Israelis were killed or seriously injured in the recent attacks.

Fair, well-written statement.  It's the terror factor that dominates.  When you have 60 rockets a day fired into an area, that's sheer terror. 

Expecting some kind of Israeli response, the Hamas leaders in Gaza had already been in hiding for two days.

Pretty much tells the story of these heroes.  They leave their people exposed and go into hiding.

We now await statements from the president-elect and his transition team.  Let's hope they don't issue one of those "both sides must exercise restraint" releases, and, instead, demand that Hamas in Gaza stop its rocket fire into Israel, which would end the threat of Israeli retaliation.  There is no rocket fire coming from the West Bank, which is run by the Palestinian Authority. and where the security situation seems to be improving. 

Story is ongoing.

December 27, 2008.       Permalink          

FRIDAY,  DECEMBER 26,  2008

THE GOVERNOR SPEAKS - AT 10:03 P.M. ET:   CHICAGO (AP) -- Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (bluh-GOY'-uh-vich) says that if what he's done as Illinois governor is an impeachable offense, he's living on the ''wrong planet'' and is in the ''wrong place.'' 

COMMENT:  The flight to Mars leaves as soon as the flight crew clears security.  Is it conceivable that members of the Obama transition team, based in Chicago, didn't know what this man is about? 

THIS JUST IN - AT 4:55 P.M. ET:  From the UK's Daily Mail:   Hundreds of schools have barred teachers from marking in red in case it upsets the children.  They are scrapping the traditional method of correcting work because they consider it ‘confrontational’ and ‘threatening’.  Pupils increasingly find that the ticks and crosses on their homework are in more soothing shades like green, blue, pink and yellow, or even in pencil.

COMMENT:  This is the country that stood alone against Hitler's Luftwaffe.

MORE ON IRAN, FROM BANAFSHEZ ZAND-BONAZZI - AT 2:09 P.M. ET: 

Iranian regime-run television reported that today another series of shoe-throwing contests organized by the Mohammad Rassoolollah Brigade was held in Tehran, after the Friday prayers.  For today's shoe- throwing contest, however, footwear was stolen from around the mosques in Tehran! The competition was  devised in order to support the pro-Mullah Iraqi who threw his shoes at President Bush during his trip to Baghdad two weeks ago. Reportedly, those who flung their shoes and hit the "target" - a George Bush poster printed and provided by the Mohammad Rassoolollah Brigade - were given a prize.

COMMENT:  More mullah education for the 21st century.

MEANWHILE, IN IRAN

Posted at 8:35 a.m. ET

My Iranian dissident friend, Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi, and her techno-whiz husband and political commentator husband, Elio, have written a tough piece exposing the disgusting behavior of Code Pink, whose pinkish leaders recently visited Iran to grovel before the dear leaders.  Expect more of this kind of thing as the new administration takes office:

On Wednesday, November 26, a 39-year-old woman, Fatemeh Haqiqat-Pajouh, was hanged, together with nine male prisoners, in Tehran’s infamous Evin prison. In 2001, Fatemeh had killed her husband while he was attempting to rape Fatemeh’s then-14-year-old daughter, Zahra, born from a previous marriage. She was given a stay of execution twice in the past by Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, the head of the Islamic judicial authority of Iran. Twice she was returned to her cell from the gallows in light of public and international protest.

Just cultural characteristics.  That's all.  Nothing to see here.

On a per capita basis...Iran is by far the number one country in the world to administer death sentences to its citizens.

Why should that stop death penalty opponents on the extreme left?

A few days before Fatemeh’s execution, Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans, two wealthy American women and co-founders of Code Pink, arrived in Tehran on a “citizen diplomacy” trip.

And...

Benjamin and Evans wrote daily accounts of their trip to Tehran on their blog — and wasted not a word on poor Fatemeh or on the tragedy of women’s rights in Iran under the mullahs and their Sharia laws. Benjamin and Evans portray a rosy and unrealistic situation, where Iranians of all social classes and political persuasions welcome them enthusiastically, share their anti-war sentiments, and desire for peaceful and loving relations with the U.S. and all nations. Medea Benjamin, who lived for seven years in Cuba calling the Castro dictatorship “a paradise on earth..."

Medea Benjamin appears on TV in the United States often.  None of this background is ever brought out.  If someone mentioned the Cuba years, that someone would immediately be accused of "McCarthyism."

Benjamin and Evans, Code Pink women, have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to political campaigns, including to those of Democrats Obama, John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, and Republican-cum-truther Ron Paul. They can afford to travel to Tehran, stay in one of the best hotels, and cozy up to the same regime that put Fatemeh and so many other women and children to death. Jodie Evans candidly admits on her daily blog report that she and Benjamin had introductions to people they cannot meet because it would upset the government, the same government which gave the consent to visit Iran. She is so eager to please her hosts that she thinks she will be able to keep her scarf on much more than the last trip, as, she admits, “we are all on our best behavior.”

Pathetic.  Utterly pathetic.  These are Lenin's "useful idiots," carried to an extreme.

It is revolting to even consider the self-aggrandizement of these women in contrast to the self-stifling required of Iranian women today. Benjamin and Evans should have stayed in Iran, where they might learn something about freedom.

Here, here!

Obama’s position is not an enviable one when it comes to having to deal with the Code Pink pest; in accepting these frivolous women’s bundles of campaign contributions and by offering to hold direct and unconditional dialogue with the mullahs, he has put himself in the position of having to deliver. If he goes along with Code Pink’s demand he stands the chance of alienating Europeans who have finally begun to see the mullahs for who they really are and, at least verbally, are taking them to task as well as resisting the call for dialogue without precondition.

Yes, it's true.  In certain areas the Europeans are actually getting tougher than we are. 

What we have here is a group, Code Pink, that has benefited enormously from the willful blindness of the mainstream media.  If Code Pink were right wing, its entire history would be examined in impeccable detail.  But it is a leftist group; therefore, no questions are asked.  After all, we don't want to crush dissent, do we?  We don't want to go back to the Red Scare, do we?

And that's the argument.  And that's how Code Pink gets away with it.

December 26, 2008.      Permalink           

WARMTH?  - AT 7:40 A.M. ET:  We've printed some comments and cited some links regarding the "climate change" and "global warming" issues.  Here are some others that may interest you:

The late Michael Crighton discusses his doubts about global warming in a three-segment interview with Charlie Rose, via YouTube here. 

There was a vigorous debate in Australia, noted by reader James Croak.  Also via YouTube here.

COMMENT:  We claim no independent knowledge about global warming here at Urgent Agenda.  We do insist that each aspect of the subject needs to be examined constantly, that dissenters be permitted to present full arguments, that attacks on dissenters as "heretics" cease, and that the full extent of scientific dissent be reported by the press.  Comments like "the debate is over" are militantly anti-intellectual and have no place in research.  No debate is ever completely over because debate, and further research, might turn up something new and startling. 

We must also be aware that science makes mistakes, that there is a mob effect in science as in other disciplines, and that the need to beg for funding can produce distorted effects. 

HORROR IN THE HOLY LAND - AT 7:12 A.M. ET:  As we celebrate the holidays, their place of origin is seeing a dramatic increase in tension.  We're just not paying attention, but major combat may break out at any minute.  From The Jerusalem Post: 

Palestinian militants fired 22 mortar shells from the Gaza Strip overnight Thursday and early morning Friday, as the Israel Defense Forces continued its preparations for military action in Gaza...

...Reportedly, a "limited operation" will begin within days that will combine an air attack with some ground operations against Hamas and other Gaza terror groups.

COMMENT:  The latest barrage follows a day in which scores of rockets were sent into Israel.  What is the motive of Hamas?  Possibly to draw Israel into a military operation for which "the world" will then blame Israel.   

ABSENCE OF CHALICE - AT 7:08 A.M. ET:  From the Chicago Tribune: 

HONOLULU — Barack Obama has long stressed the importance of religion in his life.  But as his fellow Christians around the world attended Christmas services on Wednesday and Thursday, the president-elect and his family remained sequestered at their vacation compound on the windward coast of Oahu.

His lack of attendance at formal religious services showcased a dilemma faced by Obama, who is between churches and often expresses concern about bringing the disruption of his security detail into the lives of others.  Still, he has not attended a public church service since before being elected, a departure from the actions of his two immediate predecessors.

COMMENT:  A mistake on Obama's part.  He should have shown respect by attending a Christmas church service.  Parishioners understand the security.