We are glad to join the huge number of bloggers today in celebrating our victory in Iraq.  Thank you to all that have made this possible.  Thank you to all them men and women who fought for what was right in taking down Saddam and trying to keep the peace in a truly unstable terrorist hotbed following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.  There may have been mismanagement from the beginning, but we changed tactics and finished the job that we got ourselves into.

I can’t imagine what would’ve been for the entire region had we not killed as many terrorists as we did.  Although our government and the media will not officially recognize our victory, the mission in Iraq should be recognized not only the US but the entire middle east region.

And to think the Democrats this war was lost just last year.

Here’s some quotes from some of my favorite bloggers:

Gateway Pundit:

The American public was tired of the daily bombings and the reports of death. Thanks to the efforts of the media and continual pounding from Democratic Party members America was ready to give up on this front and quit. America was told was the worst foreign policy decision in its history. Some believed this was the worst slaughter of American lives in history. Some even scoffed at the genocide that would occur if we left. America no longer understand why victory was essential or why war was called war. The images of Saddam Hussein being pulled out of a spider hole were a distant memory.  America had lost its will to fight.

But, President George W. Bush would not accept defeat.

Despite the best efforts of Democrats and their partners in the media, President Bush understood what was best for this country and what was best for Iraq and the Middle East.

A new fighting plan with a surge of troops was organized.  A new general named Petraeus was put in charge.

America would finish the fight and bring democracy to Iraq.
President Bush would give it one last try.

Zombie Time:

Let us honor the sacrifice, dedication and sheer determination of American, coalition and Iraqi troops who have brought freedom to the nation and people of Iraq.

Although our governments have chosen to not name any official day marking the end of this war, we the people have taken it upon ourselves to commemorate November 22, 2008 as the day of victory over the forces of tyranny, oppression and terror in Iraq.

Join fellow bloggers and other members of the public in this virtual ticker-tape parade for our brave troops, to celebrate their success, to remember the fallen, and to declare, in the words of President John F. Kennedy (RIP):

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

Stop The ACLU

Today we declare that November 22, 2008, is Victory in Iraq Day. We Won. Period. If people want to see what it looks like, just check out the papers. Having a hard time finding many stories about the Iraq war, eh? Not on the front page, eh? All that massive bad news is missing, eh? Barely anything in the rest, eh? The biggest story is about Iraqis protesting the security pact with the U.S., back on page A8 of the NY Times. And the protest was by Mookie’s peeps. Can you imagine a protest happening just a few years ago? No. Saddam wouldn’t have allowed it, and, 2 years ago, they would have been homicide bombed by the extremists.

Here is a list of blogs also particpating today:

Blackfive
Little Green Footballs
Rantburg
sisu
Because No One Asked
Dog Opus Blog
Oh No, Another Conservative Blog
Who Is John Galt?
Gathering of Eagles (national)
Gathering of Eagles New York
Gathering of Eagles North Carolina
Stop the ACLU
The Surfing Conservative
Civilian Irregular Information Defense Group
The Wide Awake Cafe
The Foxhole
Lighthouse on the Right
Arming Liberty
Uncle Sam Ate My Baby
Down Is Up
Foreign and Domestic
WOT Daily
The Blog of Record
Serr8d’s Cutting Edge
Army Wife: Rants from Ft. Livingroom
Hamilton, Madison, and Jay Rochester Conservative
The Daily Blogster
I Call BS!
Macker’s World
Something should go here, maybe later
Nice Deb
The Bronze Blog AZresident
The Irascible Chef
Sharp Right Turn
TigerHawk
Tman In Tennessee
Thunder Pig
Sith by Sithwest
OutOfTheBlue
Anti-CAIR
Marooned in Marin
Thoughts Enroute
More Weight
Anti-Strib
The Jack Knows
Red State Rumblings
High Plains Blogger
Air Force Pundit
Fallback LGF
Liberty for USA
Diary of a Madman
The Rumbler Report
D.C. Thornton
Lock and Load
Fat Angie
Gegenkritik
Oedipal Beatdown
Conservative Action Network
A Herd of Turtles
Penny’s Potpurri
Sayyad al Wahabiyya
Brain-Surgery With Spoons
American Syndicalist Party
Broadsides
Public Secrets
Freedomplow
Toxic Taxation
Berman Post
HumbleInfidel
The Inquisition
Pax Parabellum
CrossFit Camp Pendleton
Freedom Watch
American Truths
Destination OBX
Fearless Dream
Theodore’s World
The Cool Blue Blog
Life With Monkeys
Woody’s Place
Wild Weazel
The Atheist Conservative
King’s Right Site
We are the Grizzwolds
redc1c4

Instapundit
The Jawa Report
Ed Driscoll
Facebook group for Victory in Iraq Day
Barking Moonbat Early Warning System
Exurban League
Noblesse Oblige
Protein Wisdom Pub
Black & Right
Johnson County Republican Party
Winefred’s Well
Still Unbounded
The Liberty Boys
Atlanta ROFTers
Tennesseefree.com
This is Scooter Country
The Crescent Moon
From My Position…On the Way!
Letters to a Dying Dream
Blogs for Victory
RealChoice
EagleSpeak
HXC Christian.com
Conservative Diggs
zomblog
Erica Marceau
Pirate’s Cove
Let’s Get It Right
Cmblake6’s Weblog
What Bubba Knows
RightwingSparkle
NavyWife
Psycmeister’s Ice Palace!
Stable of Zionist Hore #2
Conservative in Seattle
Karridine Delivers
LifeoftheMind
ahavafriend
Zim’s View
I Am, Therefore I Think
Patriot Missive
USS Neverdock
Dan Cirucci
The Conservative Contessa
The Four Rs
Wake up America
The C-Square
Sarge Charlie
Red-Hot Right
Echoes in Eternity
American Infidel
buckferkeley
supporting the troops
One Model Place
The Dumber Ox
The Lightning News BackyardConservative
2nd Exposure
DailyAviator
Lindy’s Blog: Where Mom is Always Right
Comics Pundit
No Clever Pseudonym
Free Frank Warner
The Digital Hairshirt
The Blue Pelican
Krigsblogg
Nothing But the Facts
Gegenstimme
Environmental Republican
Irons in the Fire
no blood for sauerkraut!
The Individualizer
TechnoChitlins
ebulous Continuum
Take Our Country Back
The Conservative Radical
Zion Beckons
Antihippies
Soldiers’ Angels Germany
Paul Ibrahim
jweaks on Squidoo
Marie’s Two Cents
The Other Club
The Anchoress
Beyond the Veil
Michigan Taxes Too Much
Once More Into the Breach

He’s used to covering his face, he’ll fit right in with the muslimahs.

MICHAEL JACKSON has become a Muslim

The skint superstar, 50, donned Islamic garb to pledge allegiance to the Koran in a ceremony at a pal’s mansion in Los Angeles, The Sun can reveal.

Jacko sat on the floor wearing a tiny hat after an Imam was summoned to officiate — days before the singer is due to appear at London’s High Court where he is being sued by an Arab sheik.
A source told last night how Jacko, brought up as a Jehovah’s Witness, decided to convert as he used a studio at the home of his chum to record a new album.
The star — whose hits include The Way You Make Me Feel — was spotted looking “a bit down” by a producer and a songwriter who had both embraced Islam.

The source said: “They began talking to him about their beliefs, and how they thought they had become better people after they converted. Michael soon began warming to the idea.

“An Imam was summoned from the mosque and Michael went through the shahada, which is the Muslim declaration of belief.” Mikaeel is the name of one of Allah’s angels

“Jacko rejected an alternative name, Mustafa — meaning “the chosen one”.
Brit singer Yousef Islam, 60 — who was called Cat Stevens until he famously converted — turned up to help Jacko celebrate

The pair’s new names are Dawud Wharnsby Ali and Idris Phillips.
Jacko now prays to Mecca after the ceremony at the Hollywood Hills home of Toto keyboard player Steve Porcaro, 51, who composed music on the singer’s Thriller album.

At the UN, the Organisation of Islamic Conference is pushing to make “defamation of Islam” a global criminal offence.

Why do morons across the globe keep claiming that Islam is a race? Last I checked there were Muslims from ALL races.  Islam is an IDEOLOGY.  what is confusing about that?

OIC & THE UN: ISLAMOPHOBIA AND “DEFAMATION OF RELIGION”

Durban I — the UN’s first World Conference on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance — which was held in Durban, South Africa, in early September 2001 ended with a walkout over its virulent anti-Semitism. Yet sadly it now seems clear that the Durban Review Conference (or Durban II), which will be held in Geneva in April 2009, is shaping up to be even worse.

As a prelude to Durban II, a Second Preparatory Session of the 20-state Preparatory Committee — of which Libya has been elected chair with Cuba, Pakistan and Iran as vice-chairs — was held in Geneva from 6 to 17 October 2008. The resulting “Draft Outcome Document for the Durban Review Conference 2009″ is now available on the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) website.

It is clear from the draft document, as well as from reports emanating from the subsequent 63rd UN General Assembly meeting held in Geneva during the first week of November, that a central focus of Durban II will be “Islamophobia”, which is being presented as “a new form of racism”.

Muslims, the draft declaration asserts, are at dire risk of a racial “holocaust” due to “a new form of racism” — “Islamophobia” — which is incited through “defamation of Islam”.

The draft declaration recommends that local, national and international laws and human rights covenants be reviewed and amended as necessary so that “defamation of Islam” is made a criminal offence, losing the protection it has long enjoyed under the “pretext” of “freedom of expression, counter terrorism or national security”. It recommends that legal instruments be established to punish offenders — that is, those who “defame” Islam by associating it with violence, human rights abuses or terrorism.

httip: Gateway Pundit and ROP

The lady says: “Oh martyr. You are in the most wonderful place”

And the martyr answers: “Paradise? Denmark?”

hattip: ZIP

This is just sick…

This was posted at The Dirty:

“This guy and girl dressed up as one of the twin towers and a plane for halloween, when the girl was asked if she thought she would offend anyone she replied, “No, it’s cool, my aunt died on the 64th floor, and it was a conspiracy anyway.” Are you kidding me? I’m all for grossly offensive jokes but not when it’s taken THAT far.”

Notice the falling people…

hattip: GatewayPundit

Ah the glorious humane form of government: Islamic Law

Yahoo News

Islamist insurgents whipped 32 people in Somalia Saturday after arresting them for taking part in a traditional dance in rebel-held territory south of the capital Mogadishu

Fighters enforcing a strict form of sharia law have been slowly advancing on the city, raising the stakes in their two-year rebellion and undermining fragile U.N.-brokered peace talks to end 17 years of chaos in the Horn of Africa nation.

Last month, they stoned to death a young woman accused of adultery in the rebel-controlled southern port of Kismayu.

Islamist spokesman Sheikh Abdirahim Isse Adow said those arrested had been warned several times against dancing.

“We arrested 25 women and seven men who were dancing near Balad (town). We released them after whipping them. We warned them many times, but they wouldn’t listen,” he told Reuters.

“The dancing of men and women together is illegal and totally against Islam. We neither killed them nor injured them, but only whipped them according to the Islamic law,”Adow said.

httip: ZIP

Like him or not, Ted Nugent speaks like a poet sometimes.  And I’m listening.

Your logic, your truth, your good will, your decency, your work ethic — it still is the guide post of America. You are “We the people.”

It is the lunatic fringe that is celebrated by a media bent on socialism, bent on revitalizing the Mao Zedong agenda — you are not the minority, you are the majority.

You know rush hour? What a pain in the *ss rush hour is? Do you have rush hour in Bakersfield? I bet you have rush hour. You know what that is? You know what that is? Those are people with alarm clocks. Those are people who get up because they have a burning fire in their soul that says, “You must be productive. In order to be a good, decent human being, you must be an asset. You must work hard before you play hard.”

So Gary, you are not along. But, what the real curse is, it’s not the lying, left-wing, Mao media, it’s those of us who know better, but don’t speak up. The people of California have backed down. The people who are productive in California have backed down to the pimps, and the whores, and the welfare brats, and their media, and their politically correct representatives, Boxer, Feinstein, Schwarzenegger, who literally will lie through their teeth to benefit some blood sucking constituency while your paycheck is being raped and pillaged to pay for some bling-bling infested punk.

You’ve got to start raising Hell — and I am constantly being gunned down by the media; I’m a curse, I’m a dangerous guy, I’m a madman, I’m scary, I have too many guns, I shoot all the deer — eat me. I stand up and I take the bullets because my name is Davy Crockett. This is the wall of the Alamo. If you can’t shoot Santa Anna’s men, shut up and load my gun. So get tough and get tougher.

You don’t need tough love in America, you need tougher love. Around the water cooler, at the church, at school. At the work place, at the picnic, and the bowling alley. You should be pounding the desk with your fist, raising hell, and take this beautiful state back from the pimps, and the whores, and the welfare brats, and the gang-bangers who seems to have all the rights in the world while the good people, the productive, law abiding people don’t have jack squat — and I think I am going to throw up.

hattip: RightWingNews

This is from CNN, I’m posting it in it’s entirety.  Too good to pass up.  I’ve also added Acevedo’s diary pictures.

_______________________

LOMA LINDA, California (CNN) — Anthony Acevedo thumbs through the worn, yellowed pages of his diary emblazoned with the words “A Wartime Log” on its cover. It’s a catalog of deaths and atrocities he says were carried out on U.S. soldiers held by Nazis at a slave labor camp during World War II — a largely forgotten legacy of the war.

See inside his Diary

Acevedo pauses when he comes across a soldier with the last name of Vogel.

“He died in my arms. He wouldn’t eat. He didn’t want to eat,” says Acevedo, now 84 years old. “He said, ‘I want to die! I want to die! I want to die!‘”

The memories are still fresh, some 60 years later. Acevedo keeps reading his entries, scrawled on the pages with a Schaeffer fountain pen he held dear.

He was one of 350 U.S. soldiers held at Berga an der Elster, a satellite camp of the Nazis’ notorious Buchenwald concentration camp. The soldiers, working 12-hour days, were used by the German army to dig tunnels and hide equipment in the final weeks of the war. Less than half of the soldiers survived their captivity and a subsequent death march, he says.

Acevedo shows few emotions as he scans the pages of his diary. But when he gets to one of his final entries, the decades of pent-up pain, the horror witnessed by a 20-year-old medic, are too much.

“We were liberated today, April the 23, 1945,” he reads.

His body shakes, and he begins sobbing. “Sorry,” he says, tears rolling down his face. “I’m sorry.”

Acevedo’s story is one that was never supposed to be told. “We had to sign an affidavit … [saying] we never went through what we went through. We weren’t supposed to say a word,” he says.

The U.S. Army Center of Military History provided CNN a copy of the document signed by soldiers at the camp before they were sent back home. “You must be particularly on your guard with persons representing the press,” it says. “You must give no account of your experience in books, newspapers, periodicals, or in broadcasts or in lectures.”

The document ends with: “I understand that disclosure to anyone else will make me liable to disciplinary action.”

The information was kept secret “to protect escape and evasion techniques and the names of personnel who helped POW escapees,” said Frank Shirer, the chief historian at the U.S. Army Center for Military History.

Acevedo sees it differently. For a soldier who survived one of the worst atrocities of mankind, the military’s reaction is still painful to accept. “My stomach turned to acid, and the government didn’t care. They didn’t give a hullabaloo.”

It took more than 50 years, he says, before he received 100 percent disability benefits from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Despite everything Acevedo endured during the war, little had prepared him for his own father’s attitude toward his capture. “My dad told me I was a coward,” he says.

“I turned around and got my duffel bag, my luggage, and said, ‘This is it, Father. I’m not coming back.’ So I took the train the following day, and I didn’t see my parents for years, because I didn’t want to see them. I felt belittled.”

For decades, Acevedo followed the rules and kept his mouth shut. His four children didn’t know the extent of his war experience. He says he felt stymied because of the document he signed. “You never gave it a thought because of that paper.”

Now, he says it’s too important to be forgotten. In recent years, he’s attended local high schools to tell his story to today’s generation.

“Let it be known,” he says. “People have to know what happened.”

Born July 31, 1924, in San Bernardino, California, Anthony C. Acevedo is what is known in today’s parlance as a “citizen child” — one who was born in the United States to parents from Mexico.

A Mexican-American, he was schooled in Pasadena, California, but couldn’t attend the same classes as his white peers. “We couldn’t mix with white people,” he says. Both of his parents were deported to Mexico in 1937, and he went with them.

Acevedo returned to the States when he was 17, he says, because he wanted to enlist in the U.S. Army. He received medical training in Illinois before being sent to the European theater.

A corporal, he served as a medic for the 275th Infantry Regiment of the 70th Infantry Division. Acevedo was captured at the Battle of the Bulge after days of brutal firefights with Nazis who surrounded them. He recalls seeing another medic, Murry Pruzan, being gunned down.

“When I saw him stretched out there in the snow, frozen,” Acevedo says, shaking his head. “God, that’s the only time I cried when I saw him. He was stretched out, just massacred by a machine gun with his Red Cross band.”

He pauses. “You see all of them dying out there in the fields. You have to build a thick wall.”

Acevedo was initially taken to a prison camp known as Stalag IX-B in Bad Orb, Germany, where thousands of American, French, Italian and Russian soldiers were held as prisoners of war. Acevedo’s diary entry reads simply: “Was captured the 6th of January 1945.”

For the next several months, he would be known by the Germans only as Prisoner Number 27016. One day while in Stalag IX-B, he says, a German commander gathered American soldiers and asked all Jews “to take one step forward.” Few willingly did so.

Jewish soldiers wearing Star of David necklaces began yanking them off, he says. About 90 Jewish soldiers and another 260 U.S. soldiers deemed “undesirables” — those who “looked like Jews” — were selected. Acevedo, who is not Jewish, was among them.

They were told they were being sent to “a beautiful camp” with a theater and live shows.

“It turned out to be the opposite,” he says. “They put us on a train, and we traveled six days and six nights. It was a boxcar that would fit heads of cattle. They had us 80 to a boxcar. You couldn’t squat. And there was little tiny windows that you could barely see through.”

It was February 8, 1945, when they arrived. The new camp was known as Berga an der Elster, a subcamp of Buchenwald, the Nazi concentration camp where tens of thousands of Jews and other political prisoners were killed under Adolf Hitler’s regime.

Acevedo says he was one of six medics among the 350 U.S. soldiers at Berga. Political prisoners from other countries were held at Berga separate from the Americans. “We didn’t mingle with them at all,” he says, adding that the U.S. soldiers worked in the same tunnels as the other political prisoners.

“We were all just thin as a rail.”

The U.S. prisoners, Acevedo says, were given 100 grams of bread per week made of redwood sawdust, ground glass and barley. Soup was made from cats and rats, he says. Eating dandelion leaves was considered a “gourmet meal.”

If soldiers tried to escape, they would be shot and killed. If they were captured alive, they would be executed with gunshots to their foreheads, Acevedo says. Wooden bullets, he says, were used to shatter the inside of their brains. Medics were always asked to fill the execution holes with wax, he says.

“Prisoners were being murdered and tortured by the Nazis. Many of our men died, and I tried keeping track of who they were and how they died.”

The soldiers were forced to sleep naked, two to a bunk, with no blankets. As the days and weeks progressed, his diary catalogs it all. The names, prisoner numbers and causes of death are listed by the dozens in his diary. He felt it was his duty as a medic to keep track of everyone.

“I’m glad I did it,” he says.

As a medic, he says, he heard of other more horrific atrocities committed by the Nazis at camps around them. “We heard about experiments that they were doing — peeling the skins of people, humans, political prisoners, making lampshades.”

about 30 miles (48 kilometers) from Berga. They noticed large pipes coming from one building.

“We thought we were going to be gassed when we were told to take our clothes off,” he says. “We were scared. We were stripped.”

“Rumors were around that this was where the political prisoners would be suffocated with gas.” It turned out to be a shower, the only time during their captivity they were allowed to bathe.

The main Buchenwald camp was officially liberated on April 11, 1945. But the camp and its subcamps were emptied of tens of thousands of prisoners as American troops neared. The U.S. troops held at the Berga compound were no exception.

“Very definite that we are moving away from here and on foot. This isn’t very good for our sick men. No drinking water and no latrines,” Acevedo wrote in his diary on April 4, 1945.

He says they began a death march of 217 miles (349 kilometers) that would last three weeks. More than 300 U.S. soldiers were alive at the start of the march, he says; about 165 were left by the end, when they were finally liberated.

Lines of political prisoners in front of them during the march caught the full brunt of angry Nazi soldiers.

“We saw massacres of people being slaughtered off the highway. Women, children,” he says. “You could see people of all ages, hanging on barbed wire.”

One of his diary entries exemplifies an extraordinary patriotism among soldiers, even as they were being marched to their deaths. “Bad news for us. President Roosevelt’s death. We all felt bad about it. We held a prayer service for the repose of his soul,” Acevedo wrote on April 13, 1945.

It adds, “Burdeski died today.”

To this day, Acevedo still remembers that soldier. He wanted to perform a tracheotomy using his diary pen to save Burdeski, a 41-year-old father of six children. A German commander struck Acevedo in the jaw with a rifle when he asked.

“I’ll never forget,” he says.

On a recent day, about a dozen prisoners of war held during World War II and their liberators gathered at the Jerry L. Pettis Memorial Veterans Medical Center in Loma Linda, California. Many applauded Acevedo for his heroics.

“Those of us in combat have our own heroes, and those are the medics. And that’s Antonio. Thank you, Antonio,” one of the men said.

The men gathered there nodded their heads. Two stood to shake Acevedo’s hand.

“The people that are in this room really are an endangered species,” another man said. “When they’re gone, they’re gone. … That is why they should be honored and put in history for generations to come, because there are not that many of them left.”

Donald George sat next to Acevedo. The two were captured about a half-mile apart during the Battle of the Bulge. “It’s hard to explain how it is to be sitting with a bunch of people that you know they’ve been through the same thing you’ve been through,” George said.

“Some of us want to talk about it, and some of us don’t. Some of us want to cry about it once in a while, and some of us won’t. But it’s all there,” he said.

“We still like to come and be together a couple times a month,” George added, before Acevedo finished his sentence: “To exchange what you are holding back inside.”

Acevedo says the world must never forget the atrocities of World War II and that for killing 6 million Jews, Hitler was the worst terrorist of all time. He doesn’t want the world to ever slide backward.

His message on this Veterans Day, he says, is never to hold animosity toward anybody.

“You only live once. Let’s keep trucking. If we don’t do that, who’s going to do it for us? We have to be happy. Why hate?” he says. “The world is full of hate, and yet they don’t know what they want.”

Ed Morrissey adds some good points:

• Charisma - Regardless of what one thinks of Barack Obama’s (lack of) experience, he became a leader that people wanted to follow … and then some.  If John McCain had run against John Kerry, he could have beaten him.  The Republicans have to find leadership that inspires.
• Fundraising/grassroots/Internet use - These are the infrastructural changes that the Democrats made under Howard Dean and the GOP have neglected.  Best advice?  Hire Patrick Ruffini and Jon Henke to run that side of the house, if either will do it.  Their new effort, Rebuild the Party, speaks directly to this.
• Staff unity - Anyone who kneecaps Sarah Palin, for instance, should expect to work in a different industry in the future.  Ronald Reagan called it the Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of your fellow Republicans.  Criticize policy, but no personal attacks.  A party prepared to govern would already know this.

I also agree that mindless bipartisanship is futile.  Voters will not elect Republicans who act like Democrats; they’ll just vote for the authentic Democrat instead.  However, notice that Laura never advises to start spouting insanities in an effort to out-do the nutcases on the Left.  Stick to the facts and never let up, and build the GOP into a rational, clear alternative to the statist policies of the Democrats over the next two years.

To all who have served, to all who have sacrificed, to those families who have lost loved ones or who are waiting for them to return home, we salute you and your service to America.  You make all of us proud to be Americans.

For more links, Michelle Malkin has a good roundup of for Veterans Day
 

Scott Rasmussen writes at the Wall Street Journal

During Reagan’s campaign, the nation suffered from high unemployment and high inflation. This time around, data from the Rasmussen Reports Daily Presidential Tracking Poll showed that Mr. Obama took command of the race during the 10 days following the collapse of Lehman Brothers — when the Wall Street meltdown hit Main Street. Before that event John McCain was leading nationally by three percentage points. Ten days later Mr. Obama was up by five and never relinquished his lead.

Mr. Obama’s tax-cutting message played a key role in this period of economic anxiety. Tax cuts are well-received at such times: 55% of voters believe they are good for the economy. Only 19% disagree and see them as bad policy.

Down the campaign homestretch, Mr. Obama’s tax-cutting promise became his clearest policy position. Eventually he stole the tax issue from the Republicans. Heading into the election, 31% of voters thought that a President Obama would cut their taxes. Only 11% expected a tax cut from a McCain administration.

The last Democratic candidate to win the tax issue was also the last Democratic president — Bill Clinton. In fact, the candidate who most credibly promises the lowest level of taxes has won every presidential election in at least the last 40 years.

But while Mr. Obama was promising to cut taxes, the Bush administration took the lead on a $700 billion, taxpayer-backed bailout bill — with very little marketing finesse. Few Americans supported the bailout, and a majority of voters were more concerned that the government would do too much rather than too little. In terms of getting the economy going again, 58% said that more tax cuts would better stimulate the economy than new government spending.

A Rasmussen survey conducted Oct. 2 found that 59% agreed with the sentiment expressed by Reagan in his first inaugural address: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Just 28% disagreed with this sentiment. That survey also found that 44% of Obama voters agreed with Reagan’s assessment (40% did not). And McCain voters overwhelmingly supported the Gipper.

The real challenge for the new president will be attempting to govern with a message that resonates with most voters but divides his own party. Consider that 43% of voters view it as a positive to describe a candidate as being like Reagan, while just 26% consider it a negative. Being compared to Reagan rates higher among voters than being called “conservative,” “moderate,” “liberal” or “progressive.” Except among Democrats, that is. Fifty-one percent of Democrats view that Reagan comparison as a negative. There’s Mr. Obama’s dilemma in a nutshell.

Mr. Obama won the White House promising tax cuts, but he will be governing with a Democratic Congress bursting with desire for a more activist government. As he faces this challenge, he might remember the fate of another man who made taxes the central part of his campaign: the first President Bush, whose most memorable campaign line — “Read my lips, no new taxes” — was as central to his victory as Mr. Obama’s promise to cut taxes for 95% of Americans. George H.W. Bush famously reneged on that promise. Voters rejected his bid for a second term.

Mr. Obama ran like Reagan. Will he be able to govern that way, too?

Read the whole thing

It’s funny that a lot of times when I meet someone new and begin to tell them a little about myself, a lot of times it will come up that I’m a blogger and they’ll say “oh, what’s your blog?“.  It got me thinking because what I normally do is say “It’s an anti-Jihad, anti-terrorism blog called Infidels Are Cool”.

But what if I didn’t approach it this way and were to say instead, “It’s an anti-Islam site”.

Of course,  one could perfectly make that argument since we seek to reveal the honest truth about Islamic doctrine, the life of Mohammed and the political agenda of Islamic Law that seeks to spread itself throughout the world, many times using Islam in the news to reveal itself.  We bring the news stories to you, and you decide.  A lot of times it will be words from a Muslim Cleric or Imam himself, or text from Islamic documents like the Hadith or Koran.

But what does the average individual think about when they first hear “It’s an anti-Islam site“.  Of course, before they read anything on the site,  the knee jerk reaction is to think,  “Well I’m sure there’s a lot of Muslim hatred there“, or “I’m sure it’s full of Muslim hate”

Nothing could be further from the truth.

When someone tries to come forward with information about a particular subject, in this case the religion of Islam, why is that person presumed to “hate all Muslims” which so many people accuse me and others on this site of being?  In many cases, it is teachings from Muslims themselves or words and actions from Muslims themselves who make it easy for us.  All we do is bring their words, actions and teachings to our audience.  Trust me, if the content weren’t in such abundance, this blog wouldn’t exist.

Why are we called religious bigots or racists? What’s the point? The reality is that people cannot handle criticism of ones religious or political beliefs.  They must discredit, defame or insult rather than addressing the true issues at hand.  This even goes for soft-Christians or liberal Jews who’ve never touched the controversial subject of Islam due to their indoctrination of multiculturalism. This is also why so many so-called “moderate Muslims” who come on this site criticize us for exposing what they are saying, teaching and doing around the world, rather thank joining us in the fight.

It doesn’t mean that we think ALL Muslims are like this.  Of course there are good Muslims around the world.  No one is disputing that.  And of course we do not “hate all Muslims”.  Anyone looking honestly at what we do would understand this. I can’t tell you how refreshing it would be to have a good Muslim, who cares about the issues of radical and political Islam, to come on this site and join us instead of hate us.

Robert Spencer at JihadWatch also experiences this on a daily basis.  He is in even deeper than any of us on this subject, and I’m sure he gets it all the time.  Just today he addresses the issue again:

If you speak honestly and accurately about the Islamic jihad doctrine and the Islamic supremacist agenda, and even confine your case entirely to quotes from authoritative Islamic sources and spokesmen, you will still be accused of “hating Muslims.” This is the constant refrain of apologists for jihad and their useful idiots in the West — and they constantly have recourse to it because they know that it is effective: it turns the Left and much of the squishy Right away from the message of the “hater,” regardless of how outlandish and unjust the charge is.

Myself, I don’t hate Muslims. I love Muslims. Telling the truth is not an act of hate. I am not “Islamophobic,” I am Islamorealistic. I tell the truth about Islam and work to defend Western civilization and society from the encroachments of a legal and societal system that oppresses Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

Here at IAC, we never receive support from a “moderate Muslim” thanking us for helping THEM root out the evil within their own.  It’s always attacks and vitriolic hatred towards us saying that we are “misrepresenting” Islam and that we are ignorant for reporting actions, words and teachings from within their own.  The reality is that ALL moderate Muslims should be THANKING us for doing the job THEY should be doing.

Keep em coming…

Let’s hope we ID the bastard

The News

BANNU: At least 13 people, including five foreigners, were killed in a missile strike on Friday by a suspected US drone in Pakistan’s troubled North Waziristan tribal region bordering Afghanistan.

 

The missile struck the home of a tribesman in Jani Khel area near FR Bannu, 45 km from Miranshah, the headquarters of North Waziristan Agency, early this morning. Five foreigners were among the dead, officials told.

Five missiles were fired and one hit the home of a tribesman, Ghani Gul, killing 5 foreigners including a senior al-Qaeda commander. However, their names could not be known.

The attack was the latest in a series of missile strikes carried out in Pakistan’s lawless tribal belt by US drones operating from Afghanistan.

httip: Jawa

And so the discussion begins…

LA Times

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today posted a congratulatory message to President-elect Barack Obama on his official website.

But his lengthy note also cautioned Obama to change America’s ways and to reverse policies based on what he described as “belligerency, occupation, bullying, demagoguery,” among other things.

It is part of Iran’s complicated response to the election of Obama, who has said he’d be willing to speak with Iran’s leadership, as detailed in a report written for today’s Los Angeles Times.

Ahmadinejad begins his note with the kind of flowery, somewhat overblown language typical in the Middle East:

I congratulate you on your success in mustering the majority of votes cast in the presidential elections. You know pretty well that the opportunities God grants to people he has created are short-lived, and they could either serve perfection of mankind and interests of nations or, God forbid, disserve nations. I hope that His Excellency will favor the genuine interests of people and justice over the never-ending demands of a selfish and fallible minority, so that you can seize on this chance in the best manner and leave behind a good legacy.

But he quickly gets down to the nitty-gritty, advising the freshman senator on what he must do to be an effective president.

Ahmadinejad writes that Obama must “overhaul” America’s domestic and foreign policies because the people of the world and U.S. expect it.

 

httip: Malkin