Category Archives: Blogosphere

Obama administration sex scandal

It’s about time. Illicit sex is about the only scandal that hasn’t arisen so far.

“Some of the allegations are against then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s security detail who allegedly hired prostitutes, a U.S. ambassador accused of trolling public parks for paid sex and a security official in Beirut committing sexual assaults on foreign nationals.”

If any agency knows how to cover up a scandal it’s the State Department. Think Benghazi. Not to mention their former queen Lady Macbeth. If you were married to the Groper you might be expert at covering up sex scandals, too.

Rebuild the Temple? Lord I hope not

British historian Paul Johnson’s 2009 book A History of The Jews is as good as advertised by Roger L. Simon who called it “a fantastic book I had promised myself [to read] for years.”

I’ve read so many histories of the Jews that I wondered if I could possibly learn anything new. Well, I have and I’m only up to Herod The Great. But the bit on Herod led me to something I’ve pondered ever since the first time I visited the Kotel, or Western Wall of the Temple Mount, in Jerusalem. And I think Johnson has given me the answer: Please Lord, don’t ever let them rebuild the Temple.

And not because it would outrage the goat lovers. What doesn’t? No, the worst possible consequence would be the return of the animal sacrifices. Here’s Johnson, using multiple sources to convey what it was like 2,000-plus years ago:

“The sacrifice rituals struck visitors as exotic, even barbarous, for most strangers came at feast times when the quantities of sacrifices were enormous. At such times the inner Temple was an awesome place—the screams and bellows of terrified cattle, blending with ritual cries and chants and tremendous blasts of horn and trumpet, and blood everywhere.

“The author of the Letter of Aristeas, an Alexandrine Jew who attended as a pilgrim, says he saw 700 priests performing the sacrifices, working in silence but handling the heavy carcasses with professional skill and putting them on exactly the right part of the altar.

“Because of the huge number of animals, the slaughter, bloodying and carving up of the carcasses had to be done quickly; and to get rid of the copious quantities of blood, the platform was not solid but hollow, a gigantic cleansing system.”

It’s nice to learn they could collect and wash away all that blood “in the twinkling of an eye,” as Aristeas put it with a phrase that shows how really old some cliches can be. But it sounds ghastly. If Israel is unfairly battered by the UN now, and it certainly is, just imagine what condemnations resuming animal sacrifices would bring. In addition to the godawful mess and the smell.

Not to worry. It will never happen. Rabbinic and synagogue Judaism long ago replaced animal sacrifice (with the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E.) and that’s a very, very good thing.

Rule 5: Fahriye Evcen

Turkish television actress Fahriye Evcen doesn’t look like the sort of covered woman PM Erdogen has in mind for his country’s fundy Muslim future. She was born in Germany of immigrant Turkish parents. But her appearance nevertheless represents the young, freedom-seeking Ankara Istanbul protesters now trying to overthrow Erdogen. I suspect Evcen would join me in wishing them good fortune and god speed.

Via Dustbury.

UPDATE: Now it gets bloody. Erdogen’s police forces move in. Crunch time.

Partisan IRS: Independent prosecutor or more hearings?

Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal plumps for the prosecutor:

“…down the road an independent counsel is going to be needed because the House does not have all the prosecutorial powers an independent counsel would—the powers to empanel a grand jury, grant immunity to potential witnesses, find evidence of criminal wrongdoing, indict.”

The Journal itself is opposed:

“This scandal is best handled in Congressional hearings that educate the public in the next year rather than wait two or three years for potential indictments.”

Mollie Hemingway at Riccochet agrees. And she also has none of Noonan’s taint as a onetime (2008) Wormtongue apologist:

“There’s definitely an argument that public accountability is key here, particularly given how devastating this incident has been to the public trust.”

I’d like both, actually, a special prosecutor to indict the partisan bastards and congressional hearings to shame them. But if I have to choose, and it seems I do, because a prosecutor would tuck everything out of sight for years, I’ll place my bet on the hearings.

And meanwhile pay equal attention to the Benghazi takedown of Lady Macbeth and her thankfully dwindling political future.

Baby Boomers: Saving Medicare and Social Security

Baby Boomers, also known as the pig in the population python, are finally getting a chance at a notable accomplishment other than that swine wallow called Woodstock: they are committing suicide in such numbers that they may yet save Medicare and Social Security from bankruptcy.

““We’ve been a pretty youth-oriented generation,” said Bob Knight, professor of gerontology and psychology at the University of Southern California, who is also a baby boomer. “We haven’t idealized growing up and getting mature in the same way that other cohorts have.”  Even as they become grandparents and deal with normal signs of getting old, such as hearing and vision losses, many boomers are reluctant to accept the realities of aging, Knight said.”

Well, boo hoo. Just off yourself without making another big mess for someone else to clean up, okay? In case you’re wondering, I am not a Boomer. Born in 1944, I just missed becoming another porker in the big reptile. Fortunately. And being preoccupied in Viet Nam at the time, I also missed Woodstock, for which I have always been thankful.

Via Vox Popoli.

Our creepy president

Barry’s recent reactions to the multiple scandals of his administration are revealing the real man behind the passive “black” mask:

“It turns out that they have nothing to do with him: he has no idea what is going on in the Treasury Department, the Department of Justice, the State Department, the IRS, or, apparently, anywhere else, other than what he reads in the newspaper. He takes no responsibility…”

Not to mention his baldfaced lie (at the Defense University, of all places) that the Islamists are on the ropes and we can safely and immediately conclude the Bush war on terror. In fact, as Spengler rebuts:

“[W]e face tens of thousands–-perhaps millions–-of anonymous enemies armed with cheap weapons,  but advantaged by the element of surprise and the will to commit suicide in order to damage us. We have entered a new and terrible epoch of war–and the president has announced that the war is over.”

Of course President Pinocchio’s delusions are only surprising to those who have not been paying attention to the leader of the Choom Gang. His entire claim to fame all along has been race. How else could an opponent of bans on late-term abortions in the Illinois legislature have been elected U.S. senator and then president?

Otherwise, as Sultan Knish succinctly explains, Barry is no less than Grima Wormtongue:

“The man in the White House clawed his way to power by stabbing his mentor in the back, leaking the divorce records of his political opponents and throwing out the votes of Democrats in Florida and Michigan to claim the nomination. And he was just getting started.

“In the last election, Obama urged voters to punish our ‘enemies’. It was a window into the mindset of a man who moans and groans about partisan politics, but talks like Huey Long when he gets in front of the right audience.”

The Kingfish in black face, well, the tan man in “black” political cover. Our recipient of the politically-correct Nobel Peace Prize is anything but peaceful, just like his prize predecessor Yasser Arafat, the world’s then oldest terrorist. Although Arafat had the virtue of being open about it most of the time.

If the loyal Democrat stenographers of the snooze media hadn’t been diligently covering Barry’s sorry ass since 2008, his duplicity wouldn’t be keeping his polls up. He’d be as disgraced as he is disgraceful.

And then, briefly, his chief stenographer, the NYTimes, turned on him. Until Drudge used the line “has lost all credibility” in a headline and some NYTimes elves snuck in to their Web site and rewrote it to soften it. Still in the tank.

UPDATE:  More consequences of Wormtongue’s creepy lies

Weaponizing the tax code in California

The Boy Scouts (Mr. B. is a rising First Class) recently changed their policy to start admitting homosexual boys, even here in Texas. They still refuse, however, to allow homosexual adults as full or assistant scoutmasters.

So California—naturally it would be the Californicators—is raising the ante. The scouts must allow homosexuals in all capacities or lose their nonprofit status there. Also the California churches and synagogues that frequently sponsor their outfits (called troops) must do the same or suffer the same.

The way to fight this, it seems to me, would be to demand (via a good lawsuit if necessary) that it be enforced equally. Politicians don’t do equal very well, for all their pious prattle about it.

Force mosques, for instance, to allow homosexuals in all capacities. Since the goat-lovers are about the only fully-protected American minority these days, their howling might get this oppressive nonsense stopped. Might. Or it may take the Boy Scouts joining the business exodus out of California.