He Who Must Not Be Named

Michelle Obama has revealed the terrible truth: her husband's name is so powerful that it cannot be uttered without inspiring terror and dread.

Michelle Obama, who often has decried "the fear bomb'' that opponents have used against her husband for his middle name -- Barack Hussein Obama -- said in Canton, Ohio, today that it is happening again and shows why it's so important that he wins election as president.

"They threw in the obvious, ultimate fear bomb," Obama said today of her husband's 2004 Senate race. "We're even hearing [that] now. … 'When all else fails, be afraid of his name, and what that could stand for, because it's different.'"

As with most great questions of life, J.K. Rowling has shown us the way forth from this dilemma. Her villain Tom Marvolo Riddle so hated his birth name that he formed it into an anagram to give himself the title by which he reduced the wizarding world to abject terror: Lord Voldemort.

So, since his real name inspires terror, let's apply the same solution in reverse to Barack Hussein Obama's name and see what anodyne alternatives we come up with. Hmmm... some very promising candidates:

• Cabana Braises Hokum


• Cabana Amok Hubrises


• Cabanas Amok Bushier


• Cabanas Abhor Muskie


• Cabanas Ukase Rhombi


• Casaba Bohemian Rusk


• Casaba Manure Kibosh


• Caesarian Kabob Mush


• Maharani Abuses Bock


• Maharani Kabobs Cues


• Marihuana Babe Socks


• Marihuanas Cakes Bob


• Anaerobic Samba Husk


• Aback Amoebas Inrush


• Aback Abash Monsieur


• Aback Aha Submersion


• Aback Mania Rosebush


• Aback Sahib Enamours


• Scarab Bohemian Auks


• Scarab Banshie Oakum


• Scarabs Bemoan Haiku


• Abacus Amoeba Shrink


• Abacus Abash Moniker


• Amebas Caribous Khan


• Baseman Cobras Haiku


• Abrasion Ambush Cake


• Marabou Scab Hankies


• Chimaera Nabobs Auks


• Massacre Nabob Haiku


• Maraschino Babes Auk


• Maraschino Beau Bask


• Harmonicas Beau Bask


• Ashcan Kabobs Uremia


• Maniac Hauberk Basso


• Sharia Kabobs Acumen


• Sauna Kabob Chimeras


• Saurian Kabob Sachem


• Mania Backhoe Bursas


• Shamans Caribou Bake

But for my money, there's one clear winner. I want to hear the Sergeant-at-Arms of the House say these immortal words:

"Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.... BABUSHKA MACARONIES!!!"

Don't tell me the media aren't biased toward Obama

Certainly media outlets are on the prowl for opportunities to take unflattering, even subliminally damning, photos of Hillary.

First these pictures of her waving with what looks like a stiff right arm salute (Madame Goebbels, your car is waiting):




And now this (is she supposed to be standing in front of her boss's portrait?):



Lest you think I am cherry-picking, here's the kind of photo the media takes of Obama:



Some difference, huh?

Cindy Sheehan in Egypt for Islamists - Yahoo! News

Someone will have to explain this to me.  Even through the lens of her opposition to U.S. involvement in Iraq, how is it a good thing to demand the release of Muslim Brotherhood members -- who are standing trial on money laundering and terrorism charges?

Quoted from http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080213/ap_on_re_mi_ea/egypt_sheehan_protest;_ylt=AsvwzSd3run0IFQl_4yUh8cLewgF:

Cindy Sheehan in Egypt for Islamists - Yahoo! News

CAIRO, Egypt - Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan joined a protest Wednesday seeking the support of Egypt's first lady in ending a military trial of members of the country's largest Islamic organization.

Under the watchful eyes of dozens of black-clad and helmeted anti-riot police, some 50 heavily veiled wives and children of 40 senior members of the Muslim Brotherhood detained for the past year, gathered in front of the headquarters of first lady Suzanne Mubarak's National Council Women carrying banners calling for their release.

"I am here to protest the trial of civilians in front of a military tribunal as this is a violation to international law," said Sheehan, who gained fame in the U.S. for her sit-in outside President Bush's Texas ranch following the death of her son in Iraq.

"As a mother of a son who was killed in the war, I presented a letter to Ms. Suzanne Mubarak to realize how those women and children are suffering."

How is it that in Cindy Sheehan's world, the only mothers who are suffering are mothers of terrorists... and herself?  She'd be a useful idiot, if she was useful.

Triangulating McCain

John Bicknell at Congressional Quarterly hits the nail squarely on the head: The Real Conservative Conundrum: A President McCain Working With a Democratic Congress.

Conservatives who have opposed McCain during the campaign have cited his positions on a range of issues — immigration, campaign finance, climate change, tax cuts, legal rights for detainees — where he has sided with Democrats.

But the positions McCain has taken are only part of the problem for conservatives.

As president, with a Democratic Congress, it is the other part — the stylistic part — that will prove to be a much greater problem for conservatives.

When McCain has been on the conservative side, as he has been on the vast majority of issues, he gives it full-throated support. He is not afraid of giving offense to appropriators when he sticks up for cutting spending, and he has not been shy about deriding Democrats who oppose the war in Iraq, to cite two potent examples.

But when he is with the Democrats, he is really with them. McCain is not someone who simply reaches across the aisle to form coalitions with the other side. He walks across the aisle, puts on the other team’s uniform and sings the other team’s fight song.

If he wants to accomplish things — and every president wants to accomplish things — he will have to do so on the Democrats’ terms.

That means his agenda will include those things on which he agrees with the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate:

• A cap and trade regime for climate change.

• Expansion of McCain-Feingold regulations for campaign finance.

• Expanded legal rights for enemy combatants, and probably the closing of Guantanamo.

• Comprehensive immigration overhaul, with a guest worker program and a path to citizenship for the millions of illegal immigrants already in the country.

This will not be a “reaching across the aisle.” This will be a full partnership of the president and the Congress, who just happen to be of different parties. The shrunken GOP minority in the Senate might serve as a brake, especially on immigration. But it will be only a brake, not a standing astride history yelling “stop!”

Compare and contrast (excerpt from same article):

In his victory speech on Super Tuesday, McCain laid out his GOP credentials.

“I am a Republican because, like you, I want to relieve the American people of the heavy hand of a government,” he said. “I am a Republican because, like you, I believe government must defend our nation’s security wisely and effectively,” he said. “I am a Republican because I believe, like you, that government should tax us no more than necessary, spend no more than necessary,” he promised.

And, he said, “I am a Republican because I believe the judges we appoint to the federal bench must understand that enforcing our laws, not making them, is their only responsibility.”

Except that he's likely to be so busy selling out conservatives on the things the Democrats want that he's unlikely to be able to push back on those same Democrats for the conservative values (lower taxation, less government, non-activist judges and strong defense) that he claims he wants too. The Democrats are willing to accept compromise from opponents but never offer it in return (unless their re-election prospects are on the line): they're funny that way.

"... it would require an act of deep duplicity by Mr. McCain."

In his Feb. 7 Wonder Land column in the Wall Street Journal, Daniel Henninger advises conservatives to shut up and get with the McCain program:

Conservatives, for whom any glass is always half full, have sold themselves short. Notwithstanding the moderate pedigrees of the three major GOP candidates on entry, all emerged from the debates as Reagan conservatives on what matters: taxes, spending, regulation and national defense. Most of the worrisome moderate positions were in the past.

When Reaganomics appeared in the late 1970s, the Republican establishment mocked it. Voodoo economics, someone said. Today for a Republican presidential candidate, it's gospel.

This is an achievement.

Some will say the debate promises were just politics. As opposed to what? Presumably moving people toward one's position is the point of all this daily political heavy-lifting. To now call a candidate's embrace of your ideas unacceptable is churlish and self-defeating. Conservatives won a decades-long debate in their party. Bank it. The demand now that Sen. McCain repudiate that old vote on the Bush tax cuts is an attempt at public humiliation. Ain't gonna happen. If life doesn't work for you without public penance, join a monastery.

Most of the distrust of the McCain candidacy is rooted in personal ill will. He's a hard case, and activists are often brittle. The fear is that one of the strongest impulses in a McCain presidency will be payback, and that he might sell out conservatives on taxes and the judiciary. That is possible, though by now it would require an act of deep duplicity by Mr. McCain. Here again, the conservatives should show more self-confidence.

Hmm... I don't think conservatives lack self-confidence. Rather, they are all too confident in their knowledge that Senator McCain is capable of acts of deep duplicity. Bill Clinton ran as a centrist and immediately began to govern as a hard-left liberal, until Newt Gingrich and the new GOP majority in Congress forced him to "triangulate" back to the center. Who in Congress will force a President McCain to triangulate, and in which direction? What in his record in the Senate indicates that he would even wish to stand up to Congressional Democrats to defend conservative domestic policies -- especially given the likelihood that they will demand he cave to their domestic policy priorities in return for allowing him some leeway on foreign policy and military affairs?

The diminishing value of racial profiling

The Scotsman newspaper reports that al-Qaeda is recruiting non-Asians to convert to Islam and carry out jihad in Britain: Al-Qaeda's white army of terror.

As many as 1,500 white Britons are believed to have converted to Islam for the purpose of funding, planning and carrying out surprise terror attacks inside the UK, according to one MI5 source.

Lord Carlile, the Government's independent reviewer of anti-terrorism legislation, said many of the converts had been targeted by radical Muslims while serving prison terms.

Security experts say the growing secret army of white terrorists poses a particularly serious threat as they are far less likely to be detected than members of the Asian community.

It appears that British law enforcement understands how the jihadist threat is evolving and is trying to adapt to match. It remains to be seen whether the public understands the issue, and whether the political class has the guts to back up law enforcement. A silver lining in this story is that it aligns with the political correctness of the political class: now law enforcement is saying that the color of a man's skin isn't the best predictor of his propensity to jihadist murder.

Life imitates movies

First, we have "Weekend at Bernie's": Men Wheel Dead Roommate to Check Cashing Store, Arrested for Trying to Cash His Social Security Check

Second, "Idle Hands": Man Sees 'Mark of the Beast'; Cuts Off, Microwaves Hand

Lastly, "The Godfather": Man Gets Probation for Mailing Cow's Head to Wife's Lover

BONUS -- I can't remember the movie (if there was one), but there should be one: Polish Man Finds Wife Working in Brothel (come to think of it, it's a bit reminiscent of the Rupert Holmes song "Escape (The Pina Colada Song).")

Be prepared

Why can't we see more of this in the Muslim world (the Boy Scout, I mean, not the Islamofascist would-be assassin)? Boy scout saves leader of the Maldives.

The scout was identified as Mohamed Jaisham Ibrahim, who had lined up to welcome Gayoom, according to the president's Web site.

The boy was injured in the hand by the knife. "His wound was stitched but later he complained that he could not move some of his fingers, so he was flown by a sea plane to Male," Shareef said...

The attacker had wrapped the knife in a Maldives national flag as he stood among a crowd waiting for Gayoom, 70.

A police Web site identified the attacker as Mohamed Murshid, 20. No motive was given, and other details were not disclosed.

More evidence of UN uselessness

Proffered without comment:

UN peacekeepers ambushed in Darfur barely a week after launching mission

Bomb wounds 2 UN peacekeepers on patrol south of Beirut

Status quo won't change after Katyusha': 2 rockets hit North; Barak to "assess situation before responding;" UNIFIL to 'Post': No suspect ruled out.

CAIR acts as a foreign agent, so it should register as one

Think about this for a moment: Foreign Agents Registration Act

The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) was enacted in 1938. FARA is a disclosure statute that requires persons acting as agents of foreign principals in a political or quasi-political capacity to make periodic public disclosure of their relationship with the foreign principal, as well as activities, receipts and disbursements in support of those activities. Disclosure of the required information facilitates evaluation by the government and the American people of the statements and activities of such persons in light of their function as foreign agents. The FARA Registration Unit of the Counterespionage Section (CES) in the National Security Division (NSD) is responsible for the administration and enforcement of the Act.

Is that clear in your mind? Good. Now keep it in mind as you read this press release from CAIR (with a tip-o'-th'-hat to Little Green Footballs):

WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group today called on Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani to drop a campaign advisor who offers rhetorical support to a group designated as "terrorist" by the U.S. government.

The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said Daniel Pipes, who recently signed on to Giuliani's campaign as a foreign policy advisor, is a vocal supporter of the terror group Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK). Earlier this year, Pipes even participated in a foreign rally for MEK leader Maryam Rajavi.

Shouldn't CAIR be required to register as a foreign agent under FARA?

Good thing Netflix doesn't operate in Gaza

Otherwise these people would be renting The Great Escape or Stalag 17 to learn how it's done: Hamas operative dies while digging tunnel.

A Hamas operative was killed Wednesday while digging a tunnel between the Gaza Strip and Israel, Palestinian News agencies reported.

The operative, 21-year-old Muhammad Salakh, was a member of a "tunnel unit" belonging to Hamas's Izzadin al-Kassam Brigades.

Hamas reported that Salakh was killed early Wednesday during a "special Jihad mission."

Three weeks ago, a Hamas operative was killed and two more were injured when a tunnel they were digging collapsed. Hamas's military wing also reported then that the operative was killed during a "Jihad mission."

Oh, say, can you see...?

Senator Barack Obama won't wear an American flag lapel pin, because it's not "true patriotism" to do so. Read his explanation, and then learn what it really means:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said he doesn't wear the American flag lapel pin because it has become a substitute for "true patriotism" since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Asked about the decision Wednesday in an interview with KCRG-TV in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the Illinois senator said he stopped doing so shortly after the attacks and instead hoped to show his patriotism by explaining his ideas to citizens.

"The truth is that right after 9-11 I had a pin," Obama said. "Shortly after 9-11, particularly because as we're talking about the Iraq war, that became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security.

"I decided I won't wear that pin on my chest," he said in the interview. "Instead, I'm going to try to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great, and hopefully that will be a testament to my patriotism."

If wearing a lapel pin is not an expression of true patriotism, why did Obama wear one "right after 9-11"? Because 9-11 was the defining moment for Progressives and Liberals: it was finally okay to love America, because America was a wounded victim.

Victimhood is the only basis for holding the moral high ground in the minds of American Leftists. Only the weak and oppressed deserve sympathy, admiration and solidarity. All others are oppressors, who deserve to be despised.

The classic example of this phenomenon is Israel. The Left felt sympathy and admiration for Israel when the perception was that Israel was comprised of victims of white European oppression. The Six-Day War changed things: ever since, Israel has been an outpost of white European oppression against the noble and long-suffering Arab and Muslim peoples of the Middle East. (Never mind that a large number of Israelis or their parents fled the nations neighboring Israel to escape Muslim oppression.)

So, too, has the United States fallen from grace in the eyes of Progressives and Liberals. They mourn the fact that President Bush had the audacity and short-sightedness to strike back at our enemies, thus "robbing America of its moral authority" and "squandering the goodwill of the world." Their oft-repeated lament, that "after 9-11, the whole world was on our side," tells you what they truly believe: they are ashamed of an America that isn't weak, wounded and helpless. They also completely misunderstand the nature of America's enemies, for rather than feeling remorse or shame at the 9-11 attacks, our enemies felt emboldened, invigorated and thirsty for more American blood.

This is why Obama says, "I'm going to try to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great" -- not, "I'm going to try to tell the American people what I believe makes this country great." For Obama and the other Progressives and Liberals, America ascendant and victorious in military battle is the opposite of a great country, and only an America that bows and scrapes to its enemies -- and subordinates its own national interests to the "greater good" defined by those enemies -- can be truly great. They love this country so much that they want to see it destroyed in order to become the ultimate morally admirable victim.

Palestinian civil war in the refugee camps of Lebanon

The Hamas-Fatah internicine war that divided the Palestinian government into a Gaza Hamas administration and a West Bank Fatah one is now playing itself out in the Palestinian refugee camps in other countries. Here is an example from Lebanon.

The clash erupted in the Miyeh Miyeh camp near the main southern coastal city of Sidon at about 1 am (2200 GMT Wednesday) and raged for about 90 minutes before calm was restored, a Palestinian source said.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's secular Fatah faction has been in open conflict with Hamas since the Islamist movement's violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in June.

The fighting broke out over a dispute between a Hamas militant and a Fatah rival over electricity supplies to a sector of the camp, the source said.

"It was an isolated incident that was rapidly brought under control," said Munir Maqdah, the Palestine Liberation Organisation's official in southern Lebanon.

"We don't want the events of Gaza to happen in the Lebanese camps."

Abu Mahmud, a Hamas official in Miyeh Miyeh, accused Fatah of "provocation" saying its supporters had ripped up posters of the late Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and his successor Abdel Aziz Rantissi, who were both assassinated by Israel.

The two injured men, who suffered bullet wounds, were identifed as a Fatah militant and a Lebanese who lives next to the camp.

After the events at the Nahr al-Bared camp, the Lebanese are in no mood to continue hosting Palestinian refugees if the camps are going to break out into open civil war.

Suicidal tendencies

A strange suicidal madness is spreading: FOX News Poll: Nearly 1 in 5 Democrats Say World Will Be Better Off if U.S. Loses War.

Nearly one out of every five Democrats thinks the world will be better off if America loses the war in Iraq, according to the FOX News Opinion Dynamics Poll released Thursday.

The percentage of Democrats (19 percent) who believe that is nearly four times the number of Republicans (5 percent) who gave the same answer. Seven percent of independents said the world would be better off if the U.S. lost the war.

Click here for results of the poll.(pdf)

Overall, 11 percent of Americans think the world would be "better off" if the U.S. lost the war, and 73 percent disagree.

Opinion Dynamics Corp. conducted the national telephone poll of 900 registered voters for FOX News from Sept. 25 to Sept. 26. The poll has a 3-point margin of error.

My question for those affirmative respondents is, better off how, exactly?

Congressional water torture

Not that there is any credible evidence that the Bush Administration has authorized torture, but key Democrats in Congress are demanding that the Bush Administration turn over "alleged" directives authorizing torture.

House Democrats demanded Thursday that the Justice Department turn over two secret memos that reportedly authorize painful interrogation tactics against terror suspects — despite the Bush administration's insistence that it has not violated U.S. anti-torture laws.

Spokespeople for the White House and the Justice Department said a memo written in February 2005 on this subject did not change an administration policy issued in 2004 that publicly renounced torture as "abhorrent."

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers and Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., promised a congressional inquiry into the two Justice Department legal opinions that reportedly "explicitly authorized the use of painful and psychological tactics on terrorism suspects."

"Both the alleged content of these opinions and the fact that they have been kept secret from Congress are extremely troubling, especially in light of the department's 2004 withdrawal of an earlier opinion similarly approving such methods," Conyers, D-Mich., and fellow House Judiciary member Nadler wrote in a letter Thursday to Acting Attorney General Peter D. Keisler.

It's wonderful to see that Democrats have their priorities straight. No matter what the threat to the lives and safety of Americans, the real thing they keep first and foremost in their minds is not being unduly mean to terror suspects.

"The secret authorization of brutal interrogations is an outrageous betrayal of our core values, and a grave danger to our security," Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said in a statement. "We must do whatever it takes to track down and capture or kill terrorists, but torture is not a part of the answer — it is a fundamental part of the problem with this administration's approach."

Here's the fundamental question for Obama, Nadler and Conyers: how many Americans are you willing to let die to keep to your anti-torture principles? If "torture is not part of the answer," excluded from "whatever it takes" to defend America from terror attacks, then you must state explicitly that America must never torture any terror suspect, no matter how many American lives are lost by foregoing the information that suspect has. Tell us that you truly believe that the human rights of the terror suspect to be exempted from torture outweigh the rights of American civilians to be exempted from being murdered.