That's the thing about cockroaches........

...........you can never wipe them out completely. Kill them in one place and they will pop up in another: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article4425820.ece. Apparently, the Surge in Iraq (you know, the one that Barack Obama STILL says he wouldn't have supported) has driven a lot of would-be terrorists out of Iraq, leaving them to (in some cases) return home or as is so often the unfortunate case, to seek out new battlegrounds. Those battlegrounds are the Arab states of North Africa, so I would think that in the next few years, we will see an increase in terrorism in and emanating out of countries such as Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Morocco, etc. Tracking the human vermin who are terrorists will be incredibly difficult, given the hostility of the regimes where the terrorists are now residing.

Iran Uber Alles

At best, you could say that the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing in Germany. More realistically, it would seem as though the Germans are being duplicitous: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121745139798598187.html?mod=djemEditorialPage. At the same time as Chancellor Angela Merkel is promising that Germany will stand by Israel in any confrontation with Iran, German actions can lead to no other conclusion than that economic ties between Germany and Iran are strong and getting stronger, placing the Germans at odds even with their fellow Western European neighbours.

So long as countries such as Germany support Iran economically, the Iranian nuclear program will proceed.

The "R" word is ON the table

It doesn't take any great leap of the imagination to figure out that a President Obama would support the concept of paying reparations for slavery: http://starbulletin.com/2008/07/28/news/story05.html. I wasn't born here, and I'm not African American. I can't pretend to understand the racism that any of them may have experienced. I will ask this, though. What will reparations achieve? Can ANYONE answer that question?

Don't let the door hit you on the way out

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has announced that he will resign in September, no doubt due to the ongoing swirl of criminal allegations surrounding him: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080730/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_politics. Unfortunately, he stayed on several years too long (one day in power was too many for this delusional moron), leading Israel to falter miserably in the war against Hezbollah in 2006 and to the unfathomable prisoner exchange with the terrorist group just a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, his most likely successor is Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who is as naive and appeasement-minded as Olmert..........

Could his ego possibly get ANY bigger???

I somehow doubt it. Dana Milbank has a piece in today's Washington Post where he outlines the incredible hubris (his word, not mine) of Democractic Presidential Nomineee Barack Obama: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/29/AR2008072902068.html?hpid=topnews. One quote in particular struck me as emblematic of this man's obviously colossal ego, an ego which he is obviously finding it more and more difficult to hide:

"The 5:20 TBA turned out to be his adoration session with lawmakers in the Cannon Caucus Room, where even committee chairmen arrived early, as if for the State of the Union. Capitol Police cleared the halls -- just as they do for the actual president. The Secret Service hustled him in through a side door -- just as they do for the actual president.
Inside, according to a witness, he told the House members, "This is the moment . . . that the world is waiting for," adding: "I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions.""

Get OVER yourself, Barack. It may be one thing to think that you're God's gift to humanity and the United States, a perception which Dana Milbank would have to admit if he's being honest is fed by MSM outlets such as the very newspaper for which he works. Nonetheless, it's quite another to publicly proclaim how wonderful you are. Americans don't mind a President who has a bit of a swagger. In fact, they generally like it. Arrogance is quite another thing, however.

More deafening silence.

Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have "women-free" Olympic teams: http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2008/05/21/should-men-only-muslim-teams-be-barred-from-the-olympics/. It's strange how this seems not to upset feminists in the least. You don't hear a word out of NOW or any other feminist organization. Nope, instead they're focussing on horrors such as construction work signs which say "Men at work". The IOC as well of course has nothing to say about this.

Talk about your priorities being completely out of whack.............

No easy solutions

Pakistan's government is corrupt and has links to worldwide terrorism. Of that there can be no doubt: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/30/world/asia/30pstan.html?_r=1&oref=slogin. However, what would replace it if it fell? Does anyone want to contemplate the idea of a Taliban-style government with nuclear weapons? How long does anyone think it would take before one of those nukes came into the possession of al Qaeda, or Hamas, or Hezbollah, or any of the other terrorist organizations out there?

We may not like the Pakistani government, but we should be VERY leery of what might take its place...........

Clap your hands, CAIR

In conjunction with the self-hating left here in the U.S. and in Europe, you are slowly and insidiously turning the Gitmo detainees--all of whom are very, very bad men, into victims: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121737320982594975.html?mod=djemEditorialPage. Let's face facts. The people who are at Gitmo would not be there unless they had done some seriously bad things or been in places where they should not have been unless they were planning on or hoping to do all of us harm. That doesn't bother the lawyers who are defending these people in the least, nor does it apparently bother a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court Justices, as the Boumedienne v. Bush decision clearly shows.

The alliance between the far left and the Islamofascists has never really made much sense to me, except for the fact that both share a pathological hatred for the United States and Israel. I guess that it's a case of "The enemy of my enemy is my friend". Regardless, and to come full circle, that CAIR and the far left have turned the Gitmo detainees into victims is nothing short of an abomination.

The end of my blog???

Maybe. Someone--or more than just a single someone--apparently complained to Google/Blogger that my blog was a "spam blog". I'm not sure exactly what that is, but I find it troubling that this complaint was made. My blog is e-mailed to no one. In fact, it's about as obscure as they come. I can only imagine that someone was offended by the contents of the blog--maybe they're a Barack Obama partisan, or a supporter of Islamofascists. Who knows?

I've contacted Google/Blogger to try to have the "spam" label taken off of my blog, but I have no idea when that response will come. If it doesn't come, or if Google/Blogger refuses to remove the label, that may be the end of the BHG's blog, because the hoops I now have to jump through to get a posting published are a major pain in the rear end, and I don't have that kind of free time....................

UPDATE (2:05 p.m.): No indication yet from Google/Blogger that it will remove the restrictions placed on my blog. Here is what Google/Blogger's policy is regarding so-called "Spam Blogs", and how they are defined:

"Is spam permitted on Blogger?
What Are Spam Blogs?
As with many powerful tools, blogging services can be both used and abused. The ease of creating and updating webpages with Blogger has made it particularly prone to a form of behavior known as "link spamming". Blogs engaged in this behavior are called spam blogs, and can be recognized by their irrelevant, repetitive, or nonsensical text, along with a large number of links, usually all pointing to a single site.

Spam blogs cause various problems, beyond simply wasting a few seconds of your time when you happen to come across one. They can clog up search engines, making it difficult to find real content on the subjects that interest you. They may scrape content from other sites on the web, using other people's writing to make it look as though they have useful information of their own. And if an automated system is creating spam posts at an extremely high rate, it can impact the speed and quality of the service for other, legitimate users."

I ask you, does my blog fit within this category?

Not so even Stevens

Alaska Senator Ted Stevens has been indicted on corruption charges, a very ominous development in a year where Republicans are already looking at a potentially poor showing come November: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121737532663995153.html?mod=djemEditorialPage. Stevens of course is famous--or should I say, infamous--for the "Bridge to Nowhere" for which he secured funding. This incredibly expensive bridge connects two islands in his state that no one wanted connected.

Stevens may still decide to run for reelection in November, and he is already promising that he will fight the charges which have been filed against him. Either way, he will be an albatross around the necks of every other Republican running for office in the upcoming election.

Don't bother, Gary, he's not listening

Gary Kasparov, chess savant and political activist, has some words of advice for Barack Obama, who he (correctly) thinks is intent on placating American foes wherever and whenever possible. The advice is to stand firm, and (gasp!) even be aggressive in defending American principles, particularly in dealing with Russia: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121728831357691467.html?mod=djemEditorialPage.

Well, I hate to break it to you, Mr. Kasparov, but he's not going to do that. This is a man who is so beholden to his left wing ideology that he refuses to nowledge that his vote against the Surge in Iraq was wrong, and that the Surge itself worked. This is a man who thinks that we can reason with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Mullahs in Iran. So, why would anyone think that he'd be any different in dealing with other countries?

From the "People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones" department

Thanks to Atlas Shrugs for this gem. The FAA is quietly considering cutting back on the number of flights it allows from Israel to the United States: http://wcbstv.com/national/faa.israel.flights.2.780248.html. Why is this, you might ask? Allegedly deficient security procedures. Fascinating. Can anyone tell me the last time an El Al flight was hijacked? How about ANY airline's flight originating out of Israel? When was the last time that an Israeli flight was commandeered using boxcutters? I'm just wondering............

They won't give up, will they?

BDS sufferers are nothing if not remarkably persistent. Even though we are just 99 days away from the November election, they are STILL determined to impeach President Bush: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jul/26/committee-hears-about-trying-bush/. What in the world do they hope to accomplish with this? What could it possibly achieve? All that is being done is that even more government resources than normal are being wasted on a fool's errand, which is saying something.

Historical ignorance is bliss

That must be what Barack Obama is thinking--how else can anyone explain his failure to attribute anything positive the American military might, including the Berlin Airlift?! How can anyone go to Berlin and deliver a speech on U.S. foreign policy which fails to mention what was arguably the most significant example of the positive use of American military force: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/07/27/missing_from_that_berlin_speech/. Then again, he talked about how the Berlin Wall was brought down without mentioning President Ronald Reagan, the man who brought it down, so I guess that this too should not surprise me.

Exposing a fallacy

Martin Peretz, despite writing for the New Republic and being an unabashed Barack Obama supporter, is also a rock of support for Israel (I haven't figured out how to reconcile his love for Israel with his love for Obama). Here he writes a very effective debunking of the (at best) stunningly naive doubletalk written by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times: http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_spine/archive/2008/07/26/love-or-tough-love-both-worthless-without-understanding-nicholas-kristof-actually-understands-nothing-about-israel-or-the-palestinians.aspx. As Peretz notes, Kristof's thesis (that the U.S. must show Israel "tough love", i.e., that it must force Israel to give up everything to the Palestinians while they in turn give up nothing by empty promises) is based on historical ignorance and/or a completely misguided understanding of what Israelis and Palestinians really want.

Then again, Kristof writes for the New York Times, so why should we in any way be surprised?

He happens to be right

Leonard Pitts, a columnist for the Miami Herald, has written a thought-provoking Op-Ed on how, well, people don't think. He calls it the "Stupification of America": http://www.miamiherald.com/285/story/618348.html. The thing is, he's right. Whether it be in the form of asinine "Reality" shows or talk shows where the hosts do nothing but scream at the callers, stupid seems to be "in", and that's not a good thing at all.

I noticed this long ago

John Bolton, who sees the world in much the same way that I do, has written an Op-Ed (in the Los Angeles Times, of all places) in which he pointedly notes that Barack Obama's speech in Berlin, which was delivered to an adoring throng of 200,000 people, was long on naivete and short on historical knowledge: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-bolton26-2008jul26,0,4549608.story.

No kidding. Obama's glaring lack of historical knowledge ("The world" tore down the Berlin Wall? Mr. Obama, meet President Reagan. President Reagan, meet Senator Obama.) alone should scare anyone who is considering voting for him. When you combine that with his left wing, kumbaya, "can't we all get along?" mentality and a world where enemies of this country (and sorry to break it to you, Senator, but we DO have enemies--Islamofascists, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela, China, etc.) would be more than happy to take advantage of a suddenly impotent United States, this is a recipe for disaster.

Better late than never

The FCC has finally gotten around to approving the proposed merger between XM and Sirius, the two satellite radio providers: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/25/AR2008072503026.html. It took much too long--there was no reason this could not have been done at some point in 2007 or earlier this year, but at least it's now been accomplished. As an XM subscriber, I'm excited about the possibility of listening to Howard Stern and getting my fix of NFL games when driving around on Sunday afternoons.....

An all-too-rare moment of sanity at an insane place

The Arab Bloc at the U.N. has "voluntarily" withdrawn the resolution it submitted seeking to condemn Israel for its "West Bank Settlements" after being told that the United States, France, Great Britain, Belgium and Croatia would all vote against any such resolution: http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1005285.html. It's not surprising that the U.S. would send out this signal, but it is pleasantly surprising that the European nations would do likewise. However, Europe being Europe, I have no doubt that it will soon return to form, and to its traditional anti-Israeli mindset.

He understands Hockey better than Gary Bettman ever will

Sorry, I misspelled, the NHL Commissioner's name in the byline--I meant to write "Buttman". In any case, National Hocke League Players Association Executive Director Paul Kelly was asked for some general comments about the sport, and while he stated that revenue sharing was a key (no surprise there, that has long been a position of the NHLPA), he also spoke strongly about how several other Canadian cities could and would be viable NHL markets, listing specifically Hamilton, Winnipeg and even Halifax: http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=244291.

It's nice to know that at least one of the powers that be in the NHL hierarchy understands the importance of Canada to the NHL's future.